Day 6

The “real” founder of the Mogul Empire was indeed Akbar (Padshah, i.e. emperor, from 1556 to 1605). Akbar put an end to the political chaos in north India by subduing the Afghans and the Rajputs. Further, he reorganized the administration. By the time of Akbar’s death in 1605, the Mogul Empire had established a stable administrative machinery in north and central India and was in the process of moving slowly into Deccan. Until the fourteenth century, the dominant mode of military recruitment in India was the mamluk system. The mamluks were slave soldiers of the Muslim world. However, by the end of the sixteenth century, due to Akbari reorganization, a sort of quasi-mercenary-cum-quasi-professional military employment known as the mansabdari system became dominant. The beginning of the seventeenth century witnessed the gradual expansion of Mogul power into Deccan under Akbar’s son and grandson, named Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658) respectively. They continued to operate within the administrative fabric established by their illustrious predecessor. By the mid-seventeenth century, two contradictory processes were unfolding in the subcontinent. While the Mogul Empire under the dynamic leadership of Emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707) was poised for expansion, simultaneously the administrative institutions established by Akbar were slowly becoming dysfunctional. This was partly because the Mogul economy was in the grip of what is known as the “agrarian crisis” and partly due to the new forms of warfare introduced by the Marathas and the Persians.
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Military history is neglected in the South Asian academic field due to the dominance of Marxism and, more recently, post-modernism. We have a few books on the military history of medieval India. The earliest modern work on the Mogul army is by the British historian of colonial India, William Irvine. He argues that Indian “racial inferiority” resulted in continuous treachery, infighting, and backbiting, and that this racial/cultural trait prevented the Moguls from constructing a bureaucratic professional standing army capable of waging decisive battles and sieges. The latest work on the Mogul army by a Dutch historian, Jos Gommans, asserts that the Mogul army was not geared for decisive confrontations aimed at destroying the enemy. Rather, the Mogul grand strategy was to absorb potential enemies within the loose structure of the Mogul Empire. The Mogul army functioned as an instrument to frighten, coerce, and deter enemies.

The principal debate in the field is about weak states and flower/ritual warfare versus strong states, standing armies, and decisive battles. Most modern non-Indian scholars (Dirk Kolff, Gommans, Andre Wink, Doug- las Streusand, Burton Stein, Lorne Adamson, Stephen Peter Rosen, etc.) argue that the Mogul state was a shadowy structure. The imperial fabric comprised innumerable semi-autonomous principalities held together by the personality of the emperor and the pomp and splendour of the Mogul durbar (court). The emperor did not enjoy a monopoly of violence in the public sphere. The Moguls lacked a drilled and disciplined standing army for crushing opponents on the battlefields. Treachery, diplomacy, bribery, and a show of force resulted in the absorption and assimilation of enemies. What Irvine has categorized as Indian racial inferiority had been transformed as the unique culture of the “Orientals” in the paradigm of these modern scholars.

In contrast, John F. Richards and many of the Indian Muslim historians who are influenced by Marxism and belong to a group which can be labelled the Aligarh School, assert that the Mogul Empire was a centralized agrarian  bureaucratic polity. The Aligarh School turns the limelight on the agrarian economy; focusing on the revenue documents, they argue that the Moguls’ ability to claim about 50 per cent of the gross produce from the land proves that they had a strong presence at the regional/local level. The sucking of economic surplus from the countryside was aided by the military supremacy of the Moguls, exemplified by the use of cavalry and gunpowder weapons. However, M. Athar Ali notes that, unlike the Tudor state, the Mogul state lacked the capability and the intention to legislate. Probably the nature of the Mogul state and Mogul warfare lies somewhere in between the two extreme viewpoints discussed above.

~~ [ESSAY] From the mamluks to the mansabdars: A social history of military service in South Asia, c. 1500 to c. 1650 -by- Kaushik Ray (from the book "Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500-2000")