Question

State the condition of indian society in the eightneeth century

Answer 1

In the middle of the 1980s two books published within a few years of each other,
Christopher Bayly‟s Rulers, Townsmen and Bazars and Muzaffar Alam‟s The Crisis of Empire
in Mughal North India brought a renewed focus on the 18th century. The 18th century had
always been important in Indian history. Generally it was seen as a period of transition in
which the land-based Mughal empire gave way to the power of the sea-based British
empire. The consensus till the 1980s was that the moribund Mughal state had collapsed due
to its own contradictions and the English East India Company representing the aggressive
mercantilist forces of the West had taken advantage of the ensuing confusion to subjugate
and reduce India to a colony. The transition was not simply political – one regime replacing
another, but also economic: the pre-modern economy of the Mughals was forcibly linked to
world capitalist markets to India‟s detriment. For Indian historians, the 18th century
signalled the beginning of a new historical era of pillage and colonial rule.
The historian Seema Alavi has suggested that the new writings on the 18th century have
created a divide. Those studying the process of the decline of the Mughals – which happened
in the first few decades of the 18th century – have a tendency to extend their views and
apply them to the entire century. For instance, these historians argue that with the collapse
of the centralized Mughal state structure the important political, economic and social
institutions tied with the state also crumbled, bringing unrest and havoc through the
century. The newer historians studying the later period paint a less gloomy picture. They
argue that their viewpoint – which studies trends from the peripheries and not the centre -presents an altogether different scenario. According to them the process was one of
decentralization and assertion of regional powers rather than outright decline. They say that
these trends were noticeable early and left their mark on the rest of the century. Clearly
there was little agreement between the two views and this clash of interpretations is what
we will examine below. One outcome of this debate was that it is now possible to present a
more holistic and varied picture of the 18th century than before.

Decline of the Mughals
This is a well-worn topic and we are familiar with the most influential arguments in the work
of historians of the „Aligarh School‟ – Satish Chandra, Athar Ali and Irfan Habib. Our
intention is not to go over these arguments once again but to delineate the major strands
which have relevance for the debate on the 18th century. Satish Chandra in his book on
politics in the Mughal court had argued that it was really the crisis in Mughal institutions –
the mansab and jagir that brought about a fiscal crisis in the Mughal state leading to its
weakening and collapse. Athar Ali in a complimentary study demonstrated how the crisis in
the Mughal state was due to be-jagiri i.e. the lack of jagirs. The emperor Aurangzeb was
aware of such a problem and in a widely quoted document had apparently written: „ek
anaar, sau bimaar‟ which implied that there were too few fruits of office being chased by too
many candidates. Such a state of affairs, both these historians argue, was due to the
crushing burden of expansionist wars, rebellions and the attempt by the Mughal state to
accommodate newer elements in the higher echelons of the administration i.e. within the
mansabdari system. The crisis occurred because there were too many people awaiting the
patronage of the state and not enough land to distribute as jagirs. The implication was that
this led to disaffection and eventually the weakening of the central structure of the Mughal
state.