18 Century In Indian History: The Problem

18th Century in Indian History: The Problem 1. The Dark Age: characterized by political disintegration, economic decline, warfare and disorder after the decline of the Mughal Empire. 2. Rise of Autonomous States: Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad, Mysore, Marathas, Sikhs, (Rohillas, Jats, Rajputs) etc. 3. Establishment of Colonial Rule: Beginning of the new era in Indian History (Continuity, Decline or Development ?) 4. Regional Studies in the last Five Decades: Politico-economic decline of a few regions viz-a-viz Social, Economic as well as Cultural Flourishment of many other regions.

The Dark Age: The Colonial and Nationalist Interpretation • James Mill: The British scholar portrayed the 18th century as the Dark Century in Indian history which he believed was rescued by Colonial Rule. • The Nationalist Scholars later contended that the so called Dark Century proved fertile for the establishment of the colonial regime under which the situation further deteriorated. • The early 20th century witnessed the focus of the scholars such as J. N. Sarkar, Irvin etc. on the policies of the Mughal Emperors (admn. and religious particularly) which contributed to the decline of the empire.

The Post-Colonial Interpretation: Structural and Materialist analysis of Decline • Proposed by the Aligarh School which refuted and challenged the earlier theories of the “Dark Age” or “Bleak Century”. • The School argued that the structural weakness of the centralized revenue collection system of the empire was the reason for its fiscal crisis. • Satish Chandra’s argument was that the fiscal crisis was caused by the incapability of the imperial officers to collect revenue smoothly. He laid stress on the inability of the ruling class to find new avenues when the tripolar relationship between the center, the zamindars and the Khudkasht (resident cultivator who cultivates with his plough and bullock) was under stress. The situation was worsened by the inability of the state to meet the mansabdar’s demand for jagirs. • He later attributed the relative decline of jagirs to the flawed functioning of the jagirdari system itself which had lead to a ‘jagirdari crisis’. • In the 1980s, Satish Chandra would further argue that the jagirs had become unfertile and the intensification of the difference between jama (estimated revenue) and hasil (actual yields) had affected revenue income.

Continue…. • Satish Chandra by 1983 had started changing his opinion as he was able to discover possibilities for economic growth in the 18th century. • He refers to the elasticity and adaptability especially in the sphere of cloth production, long distance trade, dadni (term of agreement for providing means for production to artisans), cash crop, insurance, banking and other categories of rural fiscal mechanisms which led to the emergence of sahukari class to a position of economic and social prominence. He referred to the categorizaiton ( of rural society into two groups – the riyasati or privileged and the raiyati or others) The riyasati class was the rural aristocracy comprising of the upper strata, the customary holders (malik) of village lands (khud kashta) and those who held official positions at the village level. These constituted the core of the rural gentry (elite) and they played an important role in the new state structures which emerged in the 18th century.

Continue….. • Irfan Habib is of the opinion that the political forces which emerged subsequently on the debris of Mughal empire represented “reckless rapine, anarchy and foreign conquest.” • He argues that The state’s appropriation of the agricultural surplus was based on oppressive practices since those who subsisted on peasant’s produce continued to increase the demand and a large part was utilized by the parasitic ruling class in urban areas for extravagant purposes but there was no corresponding increase in the agrarian production which resulted in agrarian distress. The state’s oppression had created resistance from the peasants suffering from exploitation leading to peasant rebellions and an agrarian crisis. • The jagirdars extracted from their jagirs as much as they could within the few years they were allotted before they were transferred and further increased the deterioration of the peasantry leading to the revolts by the peasants. • The subsequent revolts were also supported by zamindars who resented the extraction of surplus from their villages by the state. • The link between the jagirdari crisis and zamindari resentment however appears exaggerated.

Continue……. • Athar Ali opines that it was the shortage of Jagirs rather than high demand of revenue which was the real cause of the decline of the Mughal Empire. He identifies transition with the collapse of Mughal empire and then with the apparent chronological gap in which transitional regimes intervened (with) the rise of British power. • He too like Satish Chandra and Irfan Habib lays emphasis on economic factors which caused the weakening of the Mughal state edifice and paved the way for the establishment of colonial rule. The Scholar mentions three categories of state formations in 18th century India: 1) Successor states like Hyderabad, Awadh and Bengal which were part of the Mughal empire and emerged due to the disintegration of Mughal empire.Their administrative structure was a continuation of the Mughal model. 2) The Maratha confederacy, Jats, Sikhs and Afghans rose to power as a consequence of the crisis which had weakened the Mughal imperial structure. 3) South Indian state of Mysore under Hyder Ali Khan and Tipu Sultan.

Continue… • His argument however is countered by J. F. Richards by proposing that there was no lack of jagirs since the Deccan had plenty of them, but that most of the allotted jagirs were infertile since the fertile ones were added to the state’s khalisa.

• All the theories till 1980’s whether put forward by the Colonialists, the Nationalists or the Marxists are of the consensus that the eighteenth century was the period of decline and downfall in India.

Regional Studies in the last Five Decades • These studies have attempted further to not limit themselves to the lenses of the ‘agrarian system’ and the machinery of ‘revenue extractions’ in order to focus on non-economic productions and relations also. • These studies refute the view that the downfall of the Mughals was brought about by the decline in various institutions and suggest that expansion of the economy is responsible for the same. They claim that economic expansion led to the emergence of mercantile community and rural gentry who eventually wanted to turn their wealth into resources thereby sharing political power. • This attempt provided for the emergence of regional studies that questioned the extent of Mughal centralization itself. • According to Chetan Singh, while we view the Mughal state as highly centralized due to a presentist attitude, in actuality there were huge informal arrangements in its functioning. He argues that in the peripheries of the empire the state's relation with communities was informal and the collapse left no impact. • To Barnett, the empire was made up of blocks glued together by the emperor and even at the decline of the state, the blocks merely came apart without deterioration. • Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam compare the empire to “a patchwork quilt” rather than “a wall to wall carpet”. • Muzaffar Alam demonstrated that peasant rebellions were in areas of relative agrarian prosperity and rebellions occurred because they were willing to alienate their prosperity from the Mughal state. His detailed study for provinces like Awadh and Punjab that demonstrated that the peasant rebellions led by zamindars were in areas of relative agrarian prosperity. This was a serious challenge to the “high revenue leading to exploitation – leading to poverty – leading to rebellion”.

Rise of Autonomous States • The 18th century, according to these historians need not be viewed from the point of view of the Mughals only. • Delhi and Agra might have been in decline. • However, provinces such as Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad, Marathas, Mysore and Punjab etc. were witnessing dynamic changes and economic reorientation. • Not satisfied with the term “collapse”, they focused on “decentralization” and “regionalization” as the key words for the century: the Mughal Empire was ‘disaggregated’ rather than ‘monolithic’.

Continue…. • The eighteenth century according to these historians witnessed slow population growth, rise in prices, urbanization, commercialization and the growth of new markets and political forces rather than deterioration or stagnancy. • Seema Alavi suggests that recent studies on the 18th century have created a divide. Scholars studying the Mughal decline suggest that with the collapse of the Mughal state structure the important institutions tied to it also crumbled down creating chaos. Recent historians claim that the entire process was that of decentralization of state power and assertion of regional powers rather than an outright decline of the same. • Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Alam, particularly believe that though ridden with political turmoil, the first half of the century did not undergo widespread economic deterioration. • Muzaffar Alam’s work suggests “that in the first half of the 18th century the Indo-Gangetic subas of the North, from Allahabad to Lucknow and Multan to be precise, experienced multivariate manifestations of crisis rather than a positive linearity of decline.” He regards Awadh as being a picture of progressive activities with scope for emergence of a regional political system but in the Punjab suba he finds few indications, which testify to modifications in the Mughal system in the sphere of polity and economic growth. • Bayly puts forth the typology of these regional states was as follows: the successor states which had grown out of erstwhile Mughal provinces (Awadh, Bengal, and Hyderabad), the warrior states created by groups which had been at war with the Mughal state (the Marathas and the Sikhs) and the compact states which were relatively smaller, such as Mysore. These new states were patrimonial rather than prebendal in nature.

Continue…. • Christopher Bayly traces three important developments that led to the political consolidation of these regional centers. • Firstly, the commercialization of power or the strong involvement of a mercantile group in politics in terms of revenue farming or giving credit to the state merged merchant and agrarian interests, giving rise to a new class of intermediaries who Bayly and Subrahmanyam called “portfolio capitalists”, who derived their power from their position as revenue collectors and from these portfolios. For example, the Jagath Seths were the chief financers in Bengal and provided credit and participated in revenue farming, creating new demand as an intermediate class. In Maratha, to cite another example, Steward Gordon studies the rise of Chitpavan Brahmins and the subsequent increase in trade, banking and financial activities. • Secondly, a class of scribes, accountants etc. (Kayasthas for example) were created through the gentrification process and this class lent its support to the regional state machinery. • Thirdly, the large armies that these new states required could be sustained through the practice of military-fiscalism. For example, Mysore under Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali was a centralized state and had its own elaborate bureaucracy, an army trained in European techniques and a group that gained from the tensions among the rulers. Mysore further practiced tributary commercialism, whereby the extraction of tribute linked villages to networks of commercial mobility. Due to the strong roots of the practice of military fiscalism therefore, Mysore was thriving by the 18th century and boasted an army of 60000 soldiers.

Continue… • Bernard S. Cohn in his important article, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, titled “Political systems in 18th century India: the Banaras Region” deviates from the earlier position of scholars who analyse the 18th century in the context of the crisis which developed in the Mughal administrative and economic system. • He attempted to study the political system which developed in the 18th century especially the micro system i.e. the Banaras zamindari as an autonomous domain under the Nawab of Awadh which was finally subordinated to the control of British East India Company. • Cohn did not contest the proposition of the pan-Indian imperial structure which developed cracks. His originality lay in the attempt to find resilience in the political configurations and the process of building up of power and dominance in the society of that period. • He followed the systems approach. According to this approach political structures comprise of not only the centralized states, which lie at the pinnacle of the graded and hierarchical system, but also consist of clan dominated villages, bands, groups, associations etc. at the local and community level. The latter too played an important role in the policymaking and implementation. Cohn argued that political control in pre-modern times was organized along vertical lines (hierarchical). The dominance of the hierarchically superior powers was sustained through antagonism among the different categories in society. • Although state power was legitimized through traditions, rituals etc. but it could be maintained only through rivalry and balance among the various groups in society. On this premise Cohn was able to formulate four types of political systems in pre-modern India: 1. Imperial 2. Secondary 3. Regional 4. local. The Mughal power represented the imperial category 18th Century Successor States. • Cohn studied the micro-level polity of the Mughal successor state, Awadh especially, the Banaras Raja’s position vis a vis the Nawab of Awadh and the Rajput biradaris at the taluka and tappa level were analysed. Earlier the political changes which took place in the 18th century have been explained as a transition from one empire to another or in the context of agrarian or economic crisis. However, Cohn’s system approach and the conflict and consensus paradigm inherent in it offer a different explanation of the 18th century state formation.

Continue…. • Hermann Goetze’s work on 18th century music and architecture and Bernard Cohn’ work on Benares, where he studied the efforts of Mughal functionaries to create a niche for themselves in the power structure. Both these studies mark the continuation of the social and economic structures of the Mughals even after their collapse. • Karen Leonard talks about the indigenous bankers and merchants who owned great firms and how their shift of loyalty from the Mughal state to the new regional centers caused the former’s downfall and the latter’s growth. • There was both movement of goods from Delhi to regional states and widespread mercantile migration to these new areas where there was scope of growth. • Dasgupta argues that though internal trade flourished during this period, the port cities such as Surat, Masulipatanam and Dacca declined due to European competition and were replaced by the ports of the East India Company such as Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. • Grover studies rural commerce in north India, showing how local production gained new markets in the subcontinent, compensating for the loss of foreign trade.

Continue……. • Stewart Gordon and Burton Stein suggest that the most important factor of the 18thcentury transition was war and pillaging. The former looks at the state building processes in the Malwa territory as rooted in pillaging. • Perlin carries this forward by suggesting that the complexity of Maratha state building witnessed commercial activity and that this was not created by state demand alone. The state was able to gather revenue from trade with sophistication. • As far as Awadh is concerned, Muzaffar Alam’s work on it shows considerable economic social and cultural prosperity, which in the face of Mughal coercion led the Zamindars to resist and protect their wealth. • In Punjab, Chetan Singh says, the political unrest was due to the tensions between the agrarian economy of the Mughal plains and the fringe tribal societies that were increasingly becoming sedentary.

Continue….. • The two processes happening in the 18th century were the divergence of resources away from feudal aristocracy to newly emergent social groups particularly merchants and rural gentry, and the spatial divergence of resources from Delhi to regional states. • Even the establishment of the colonial state should not be seen as a part of colonial competence of the British but as a part of larger social processes.

Establishment of Colonial Rule • The nature of the debate among historians regarding this half of the century it largely concerning whether British rule marked a complete deviation from the past socio-political and economic systems and structure or not. • Om Prakash and Sushil Chowdhury claim that contrary to Marshall’s view of an already declining Bengal state at the advent of colonial rule, it was after the Battle of Plassey that the decline of Bengal set in. • Marshall’s opinion is more widely spread and his sources claim that textiles such as Chintz, Calico and Muslin were popular in Europe. He cites that while between 1777 and 1786 an average of 550790 piece goods were sold in London per year, by the period of 1792 to 1801, it had increased to 777237. • Rajath Datta opines that the privileged classes gained in status and were able to gain more control as the fiscal pressure increased. • In the Coromandel Coast, political instability left uninterrupted trade and commodity production, which shifted to new centers. • Punjab under Ranjit Singh in 1799 was still flourishing and continued to until he was defeated.