Abstract and Keywords
This chapter focuses on the regional administration problems encountered by the Mughals in Punjab during 1707-15. A major failure of the Mughals in the region was their inability to deal with the Sikh problem. The period saw the resurgence of the Sikh uprisings directed against the Mughal state. The Sikhs viewed the Mughal state as the source of all tyranny, since it not only had the largest share in the social surplus but also legitimized and sustained the existing power-structure in the locality. The Sikh movement challenged the Mughal authority and significantly eroded it during the four phases of struggle under the leadership of Banda Bahadur. The Sikhs posed challenges by posing alternative concepts of rule and rulers, by integrating several Jat and Jat Sikh zamindars and gaining strength from the overt and covert resistance of hill chiefs against Mughal power. However, the support base of the Sikhs withered away over a period of time. The khatris and the non-Jat zamindars aligned with the Mughals due to their political and economic interests. The local magnates too gravitated towards the more distant power of the Mughals. Some of the hill chiefs too sided with the Mughals. While the Mughal power had regained some ground and although Banda Bahadur, the formidable Sikh leader of the early-eighteenth century was captured and slain in 1715 along with 700 other Sikhs, Sikh hostility continued to erode the foundations of Mughal power until the province was in total disarray in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Keywords: Mughal empire, imperial power, Jat Sikh zamindars, non-Jat zamindars, Sikhs, Banda
Bahadur, hill chiefs, Khatris, local administration, provincial administration, regional administration,
uprisings
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178Mughal Power, the Sikhs and Other Local Groups in the Punjab
THE PROBLEMS OF LOCAL and provincial administration were much more serious in the Punjab. The province continued to be in trouble, notwithstanding the constant efforts and partial success of the governors in restoring a measure of stability for some years. The course of the decay of the imperial authority was largely determined by the nature of the Sikh movement which challenged the very basis of the Mughal power structure and had its own concepts of the ruler and rulership. The developments outside the north-western frontiers also influenced, very crucially, the history of the region in the eighteenth century. While the growth and stability of the empires beyond Kabul and Qandahar enriched the Punjab and the areas around the Indus in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, the turmoil and disturbances in Persia and Central Asia adversely affected the fortunes of the Punjab and also of different north-western regions of the Mughal empire in the eighteenth century.
A major failure of the Mughals in the region is illustrated in their inability to cope with the Sikh question. Though Banda Bahadur, the formidable Sikh leader of the early-eighteenth century, and along with him over 700 other Sikhs were captured and slain in 1715, Sikh hostility continued to subvert the foundations of Mughal power till the province was in total disarray in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Sikh movement under Banda had a strong social base among (p.137) the zamindars, the peasantry and the lower classes. The movement, however was not free from weaknesses which in part became responsible for its failure in 1715. But the Mughals under Bahadur Shah could not make use of these weaknesses nor did they succeed in mustering their own strength against the Sikhs. Factionalism at the court and some hasty measures to meet the Sikh threat enervated the Mughals, while slackening imperial control over the local administration together with the open or secret support of the hill chiefs to the Sikhs offset the advantages of the local ties that the Mughals had in the province.
Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the tenth and the last Guru of the Sikhs, is said to have transformed the character of the Sikh religion in the late-seventeenth century. He converted it into a militant organization.1 The Khalsa, the name that he gave to his followers, became a symbol of armed resistance to what the Guru considered tyranny. The new doctrine brought the Guru’s followers, who comprised largely the Jat peasantry and the zamindars,2 into direct conflict with the hill rajas, and some bigger zamindars of the Punjab. The contingents of the hill rajas were a source of substantial strength to the Mughals in suppressing the rebellion of the Sikhs during the last years of Aurangzeb’s reign.3
Guru Gobind’s clash with the chief of Bilaspur signified primarily, the lowly placed Sikhs’ inherent conflict with the big zamindars. The Guru also had political ambitions of taking over the leadership of the locality.4 The Sikhs had a serious quarrel with the Mughal state when the state, by supporting the chiefs against the Sikhs, identified Mughal (p.138) interests with those of the
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179Mughal Power, the Sikhs and Other Local Groups in the Punjab
dominant intermediaries. Aurangzeb could not appreciate it, but his successor Bahadur Shah who had governed the Punjab and his wazir, Mun‘im Khan who had deputized for him in the province, probably recognized the necessity of a new arrangement with the zamindars in the Punjab. Bahadur Shah invited Guru Gobind Singh to his court, conferred upon him a robe of honour, and asked him to accompany the royal march towards the Deccan.5 For reasons not known to us, Bahadur Shah could not satisfy the Guru. Our period then saw the resurgence of the Sikh uprisings. The Sikh struggle in our period was directed more vehemently against the Mughal state. To the Sikhs the Mughal state was the source of all tyranny, since the state not only had the largest share in the social surplus but it also legitimized and sustained the existing power-structure in the locality.