Debates over 18th century India change v PDF

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Debate of 18th century...

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Harshita B.A. (hons.) History IIIrd Year 0327 Daulat Ram College

Recent writings on 18th century have considerably altered our understanding of the period. Elaborate. INTRODUCTION: The eighteenth century in Indian history marks it relevance by two crucial developments-the decline of Mughal Empire and the expansion of British Empire, which changed the social, economic and political structure. An extensive study of these two phases has resulted in diverging views. There is the traditional view of a period of ‘Dark Age’ which is of decline and stagnation, and the recent view of economic prosperity. Moreover, historians stress on the changing and evolutionary pattern and also a substantial continuity. Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 marks the beginning of Mughal decline, but his territorial expansions that put a huge dent on the financial structure of the state are also contributing. The break-up of the Mughal State was followed by the emergency of large number of independent and semi-independent smaller units. These were of three-distinct types- firstly, the warrior states established by Sikhs, Jats and Marathas in the course of rebellions against the Mughals, who adopted military fiscalism; secondly, independent kingdoms where subedars asserted their independence, e.g. Nawabs of Bengal, Nizams of Hyderabad; and thirdly, local kingdoms whose sovereignty acquired more substance in the 18th century, e.g. the Rajput states, Mysore etc., which resorted to military fiscalism within compact domains, achieving varying degrees of success in extracting revenues from trade and production. Initially, the nationalist and colonialist writers focused on the weaknesses of individual Mughal rulers for the decline of the empire. Marxist and Annaliste historians dominated the revisionist work about the eighteenth century in the 1980s and 1990s and tried to uncover the structural transformations that were rooted deep in the Indian society under the political history of empires. David Washbrook and Prasannan Parthasarthi have made interesting interventions about the status of labour in South India during the 18th century.

Meanwhile, British historians like C.A. Bayly and David Washbrook, working on the local and provincial origins of Indian nationalism in the late nineteenth century, looked back to explore deep social histories of the Indian elites and middle classes who lead the later nationalist politics. This contradicted the view that the Mughal Empire collapsed due to rebellions by resentful and oppressed landlords and peasants. Muzaffar Alam and Andre Wink, expressed Mughal centralized power’s decline as a process in which local elites who under the patronage of Mughal started gaining more symbols and substance of sovereignty. Most of the revisionist work questioned the economic decline theory that both imperialist and nationalist histories posed. They speculated regional variations that showed significant economic growth and with increased monetization, agricultural and commercial expansion as evidence. They did not just focus on the decline of the Mughal imperial centre but on the dynamism of regional and local polities. Robert Travers talks about how social history was pitted against cultural history as the eighteenth century revisionists were said to be rivals of the cultural and linguistic leaning Subaltern studies. This was emphasized upon in South Asian history by postcolonial theory politics and critics. The disputes started losing their edges as both the debates settled down and it became clear that both of them had a different approach, different time periods, different social groups etc. These debates raise many contests such as collaboration versus resistance, Indian agency versus colonial intervention, continuity versus change, social history versus cultural history. Bernard S. Cohn, one of the revisionist historian talks about the existence and interaction of multiple “levels of power,” from villages and local land controllers to kings, provincial governors and emperors.

NATIONALIST AND COLONIALIST SCHOOL: Influential historians of the early-twentieth century like Jadunath Sarkar claimed that the Maratha, Jat and Sikh resistance was evidence of a strong Hindu opposition against Aurangzeb’s religiously bigot policies and they were the reason for the ultimate collapse of the Mughal empire. The nationalists further argue that Hindu rulers such as the Marathas should have been the legitimate successors of Mughals. Colonialists, on the other hand, believed that the British East India Company of occidental origin with its rule of law, governance model and the “gift” of civilization were the legitimate heir to the decadent Muslims. They wanted to civilize the barbaric, oriental despots of east.

The British colonialists kept trying to portray India as a timeless and stagnant land in contrast to their progress and dynamic traits, while the Indian nationalists claimed the antiquity of their cultural and political ideals. ALIGARH SCHOOL OF MARXIST HISTORIANS: The Aligarh School of Marxist historians focused on state-formation process and on the important role of bankers, merchants and elites who held lands in forming precolonial and colonial states. These historians took economy as the base with politics, society and culture as the super-structure. Irfan Habib argues for an agrarian crisis, he broadly accepts the centralized nature of Mughal polity and the large amount of surplus that the land-tax represented. He asserts that, 'the peculiar feature of the state in Mughal India was that it served not merely as the protective arm of the exploiting classes, but was itself the principal instrument of exploitation'. He insists that the centralized Mughal rule coexisted and collaborated with the localized hereditary ‘junior’ ruling class i.e. the Zamindars who shared in the surplus as well. The view that Mughal agrarian system was a relationship between the state and the peasantry was replaced by the idea of a three-tier structure of the imperial ruling class, the zamindars and the peasants. The rotational allotment of land to mansabdars led to increasing pressure on the peasantry for extraction of revenue. This compromised the fertility of the land and also the rising illegal demands pushed the peasantry to poverty and rebellion which weakened the Mughal authority. Muzaffar Alam’s study of Awadh shows that it was the landlords who were refusing to pay revenue to the state-treasury and hence asserting their supremacy instead of the peasants. Even with the difference between Jama and Hasil, the estimated land revenue and the actual revenue collected, the peasants were not benefitting. Satish Chandra offers an excellent synthesis on sources of Mughal political history and administration in his works. He propounds the theory of a Jagirdari as well as a Mansabdari crisis. He talks about Jama and Hasil where Jama is the estimated revenue and Hasil is the actual revenue extracted in case of the Jagirdars and Zat and Sawa in case of the Mansabdars. Zat was the rank allotted to the Mansabdar and Sawa was the number of horses that he had to maintain. M. Athar Ali supports Chandra’s theory, except, he asserts that the reckless expansion and expeditions of Aurangzeb compromised the land revenue payments of the officials who maintained a ready supply of troops, thus decreasing their number. He also criticizes the elementary error of historians to assume that if the Mughal Empire was centralized and had administrative unity then it was same as the Post-Reformation European Enlightened Despotism. He is one of the harshest critics of the various revisionist projects and insists that the breakdown of the Mughal empire into

“mutually conflicting small political units,” collectively less strong than centralized empire paved the way for European expansion. J.F. Richards criticises him, his study of Deccan shows that Aurangzeb’s Deccan policy did not lead to Bejagiri as there was enough land to be granted as Jagirs to Mansabdars.

CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL: The traditional views have been challenged by the Cambridge school that see the arrival of colonialism as a long-drawn historical process. C.A. Bayly initiates the ‘revisionist’ approach to the analysis of Mughal polity, he emphasizes that ‘the key note of Mughal rule had been size and centralization’. He sees the decline of the Mughal empire in a positive light, where ‘Corporate groups’ or ‘social classes’ played their role through the ‘commercialization’ and ‘decentralization’ of Mughal polity in extending agriculture and intensifying commerce, and later shifting their allegiance to the British for beneficial power. Bayly’s continuity thesis assesses the performance of the regional elites, forming the 18th century transition states. His thesis is supported by Muzaffar Alam who believes that the glorification of the permanent Jagir and revenue farming (ijara) were indices of regionalization, commercialization and growth, not of collapse of government and equity. Andre Wink’s approach is somewhere along the line of Bayly’s argument, he assumes that ‘Mughal sources’ consist of only a few chronicles which ‘merely hide behind a façade of moralistic or religious condemnation’. Sanjay Subrahmanyam has suggested a global approach by speculating the increased connectivity of the local and the supra-local, through travel, commerce, conflict, and intellectual/cultural exchange, as a critical and widespread feature of early modernity. He suggested the term ‘portfolio Capitalist’ for the groups that were simultaneously involved in both commerce and politics like traders, bankers and merchants. CASE STUDY OF AWADH AND DECCAN: According to Muzaffar Alam, the decline of centralization of Mughal power must have been a complex process of decentralization, in which local elites who had prospered under the Mughal hegemony began to appropriate more of the symbols and substance of sovereignty. He studied Persian sources to understand aspects of agrarian uprisings focusing on the regions of Awadh, Banaras etc.; he showed that various castes and communities held Zamindari rights in these regions. He argues that clans often fought against each other and in some cases the Mughal state came to aid and

eventually played one clan against another to overcome the threat of rebellion. He says that often peasants resisted Zamindars since the rural population was a victim of Zamindar revolts. He argues for a context of economic prosperity which led to Zamindar ascendency and points out that villages and zamindars had great availability of money and agrarian prosperity was a result of basic trade carried out by Banjaras. J.F. Richards has challenged the idea of shortage of Jagirs in the Deccan with his study of Mughal administration in Golconda. He concluded that the Deccan was not deficit in land and hence be-jagiri couldn’t have been a major cause of Mughal decline. NEO-REVISIONISTS: Neo-revisionists like Prasannan Parthasarthi and David Washbrook have re-questioned the revisionists’ argument on colonialism. Parthasarthi shows that labourers in South India had higher earnings and a better standard of living than their British counterparts. This was due to the high agricultural productivity that enabled artisans to survive on a lesser wage and gave the industry a competitive edge in terms of cost of production and price. High demand translated into greater power in the case of merchants. Moreover, conditions of labour scarcity and corporate traditions within weavers meant that they could effectively control their own labour. Finally, the lack of any tradition of state intervention in disputes over labour worked decisively to the advantage of the weavers as this prevented the erection of effective structures of coercion and control. He goes on to argue that the Industrial Revolution was in part born out of the British desire to compete with the Indian textile industry, thereby reducing the export of bullion to India. Washbrook argues that the closing decades of the 18th century was a Golden Age for lowritual status, non-specialized working (pariahs). The wars of the period increased demand for labour; competition among mercantilist states for trade and cash to feed their armies also created the spaces within which labour could negotiate better conditions; and finally, the drain of labour away from agricultural activities enhanced the bargaining power of those that did remain. Thus, at least for labour in some regions, the 18th century was a period of relative prosperity. CONTINUITY VS. CHANGE: Thus, we can clearly see that 18th century polity, economy and society are characterized by trends that reflect both change and continuity. This debate becomes more intense and pertinent for the second half of the 18th century, which saw the beginnings of British colonial expansion in northern India and its impact on the local society and economy. Here again, the contention is over whether 1757 marked a decisive break with pro-colonial past, or whether, as the Revisionists have argued, the basis for

colonialism was already present in India and these elements were simply initiated by colonialism. Continuity and change in the field of music, architecture, economic systems and culture is also debatable. The artists shifted to other regional centres as the Mughal Empire became insufficient to support their patronage; this change was juxtaposed with an element of continuity as the patron-client relationship remained same. Politically, the same structure remained; the Mughal Empire was still the head even though the same process of administration and economic system was now followed in the regional areas without any direct control from the Mughal throne of Delhi. DARK AGE VS PROSPERITY: Also, the economy of the 18th century is again a topic of dispute. The view that dominates is that political decentralization leads to economic decline. The increasing tendency towards systems of revenue farming and the perception of Marathas and other groups as looters incapable of building an administration is cited to strengthen the idea of a Dark Age. But, although political developments do influence the economy and society were characterized by general buoyancy, despite some key weaknesses and contradictions. The dynamism that had characterized many agrarian regions since 1600 had not abated in the 18th century. States exacted tribute from systems of agricultural commodity production that tied villages to expansive networks of commercial mobility and exchange. It was this vibrant commercialism branching off, which made India, look attractive to European companies. The establishment of the Company Raj thus constituted ‘a revolution within tributary commercialism’. CONCLUSION: We can conclude that evidently 18th century cannot be seen as a period of total decline, be it politically, socially or economically. It was an eventful period and not just a gap between two empires or a dark period before the ‘gift’ of civilization by the occidentals. It was a period marked by change as new regional polities emerged as well as indigenous economic and cultural elements were sucked in by the Company Raj. The period also affirms that the correlation assumed between decentralization and decline is baseless. Instead, there were major developments in the field of religion, culture, literature, music etc. The argument of a stagnant, unchanging and backward society does not stand as well....