State of Politics, Culture and Economy on the eve of the British Conquest

State of Politics

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• The first half of the 18th century witnessed the decline of the once-mighty Mughals, who had been the envy of their contemporaries for nearly two centuries.
  • The reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707) proved to mark the beginning of the end of Mughal rule in India — it is argued that his misguided policies weakened the stability of the state, with decline gaining further momentum after his death, driven by wars of succession and a succession of weak rulers.
  • Though Muhammad Shah ruled for a long span of 29 years (1719–48), no genuine revival of imperial fortunes occurred, given his own incompetence as a ruler.
    • His reign witnessed the establishment of the effectively independent states of Hyderabad, Bengal, Awadh, and Punjab. Numerous local chiefs began asserting their independence, and the Marathas started making their own bid to inherit the imperial mantle.

Challenges Before the Mughals

External Challenges

• In the absence of internal strength, the Mughals could not mount an effective defence against mounting external challenges, which arrived chiefly in the form of repeated invasions from the north-west — a frontier the later Mughals had largely neglected, expending little effort on its protection.
• Nadir Shah, the Persian emperor, attacked India in 1738–39, conquering Lahore and defeating the Mughal army at Karnal on 13 February 1739. Muhammad Shah was subsequently captured, and Delhi was thoroughly looted and devastated.
  • According to one estimate, apart from the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor diamond, some seventy crore rupees were collected from the official treasury and the private safes of wealthy nobles.
  • Nadir Shah also gained the strategically vital Mughal territory west of the Indus, including Kabul — leaving India once again vulnerable to attack from the north-west.
• Ahmad Shah Abdali (or Ahmad Shah Durrani), elected Nadir Shah’s successor after the latter’s death in 1747, invaded India repeatedly between 1748 and 1767, continually harassing the Mughals, who attempted to buy peace in 1751–52 by ceding Punjab to him.
  • In 1757, Abdali captured Delhi, leaving behind an Afghan caretaker to oversee the Mughal emperor. Before departing, he recognised Alamgir II as Mughal emperor, and the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula as Mir Bakhshi of the empire, tasked with acting as Abdali’s personal “supreme agent.”
  • In 1758, Najib-ud-Daula was expelled from Delhi by the Maratha chief Raghunath Rao, who also captured Punjab.
  • In 1759, Abdali returned to India seeking revenge against the Marathas, ultimately defeating them at the Third Battle of Panipat (1761).
  • Abdali’s final invasion came in 1767.

An Internal Challenge

• Bahadur Shah I (1709–March 1712): After a war of succession lasting nearly two years, the 63-year-old Prince Muazzam, eldest son of Aurangzeb, became emperor under the title Bahadur Shah (later known as Bahadur Shah I) — killing his brothers Muhammad Azam and Kam Bakhsh in the course of this succession struggle.
  • Khafi Khan conferred upon him the title “Shah-i-Bekhabar.”
  • He pursued a broadly pacific policy toward the Marathas, Rajputs, and Jats — releasing the Maratha prince Shahu from Mughal captivity, and confirming Rajput chiefs in their respective states.
  • However, the Sikh leader Banda Bahadur attacked Muslims in Punjab, prompting the emperor to take action against him. Bahadur Shah I died in February 1712.
• Jahandar Shah (March 1712–February 1713): Became emperor with the assistance of Zulfikar Khan, who was appointed prime minister and introduced the ijara system in an effort to improve the empire’s financial condition. Jahandar Shah also abolished the jizya.
• Farrukhsiyar (1713–1719): Became emperor after killing Jahandar Shah with the help of the Sayyid brothers — Abdullah Khan and Hussain Ali (known as the “Kingmakers”).
  • He pursued a policy of religious tolerance, abolishing the jizya and the pilgrimage tax, and in 1717, granted trading farmans to the British.
  • In 1719, the Sayyid brothers, with the assistance of Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath, dethroned Farrukhsiyar, who was subsequently blinded and killed — the first instance in Mughal history of an emperor being killed by his own nobles.
• Muhammad Shah (1719–48): Following the death of Rafi-ud-Daula, Raushan Akhtar became the Sayyid brothers’ next choice, going down in history as Muhammad Shah, earning the title “Rangeela” owing to his luxurious lifestyle.
  • With the help of Nizam-ul-Mulk, Muhammad Shah had the Sayyid brothers killed. In 1724, Nizam-ul-Mulk became wazir and founded the independent state of Hyderabad.
  • In 1737, Baji Rao I, the Maratha Peshwa, invaded Delhi with a small force of just 500 horsemen.
  • In 1739, Nadir Shah defeated the Mughals at the Battle of Karnal, imprisoned Muhammad Shah, and annexed territories west of the Indus into the Persian empire.
• Ahmad Shah (1748–1754): An incompetent ruler who left state affairs largely in the hands of Udham Bai, the “Queen Mother” — given the title Qibla-i-Alam, a woman of limited intellect who governed with the assistance of her paramour, Javid Khan, a notorious eunuch.
• Alamgir II (1754–1758): A grandson of Jahandar Shah. Ahmad Shah Abdali reached Delhi in January 1757 during his reign; the Battle of Plassey was also fought during this period, in June 1757.
• Shah Alam II (1759–1806): His reign witnessed two decisive battles — the Third Battle of Panipat (1761) and the Battle of Buxar (1764).
  • In 1765, under the terms of the Treaty of Allahabad (August 1765), he was taken under East India Company protection and resided at Allahabad, also issuing a farman granting the Company the Diwani (right to collect revenue) of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in perpetuity.
  • In 1772, the Marathas took him to Delhi, where he resided until 1803, when he again accepted English protection following the defeat of Daulat Rao Scindia. Thereafter, the Mughal emperors became effective pensioners of the English.
• Akbar II (1806–37): Conferred the title of Raja upon Rammohan Roy. In 1835, coins bearing the names of Mughal emperors ceased to be minted.
• Bahadur Shah II (1837–1857): Known as Bahadur Shah Zafar (Zafar being his pen-name), he was the last Mughal emperor. The Revolt of 1857 made a futile attempt to formally declare him Emperor of India.
  • He was captured by the English and exiled to Rangoon, where he died in 1862.
  • In strict legal terms, the Mughal Empire came to a formal end on 1 November 1858, with the declaration of Queen Victoria.

Causes of the Decline of the Mughal Empire

• The precise causes of Mughal decline have long remained a subject of historical debate, with scholarly opinion broadly divided along two lines — those who view the causes as fundamentally empire-related, and those who regard them as essentially region-related.
  • The empire-related (Mughal-centric) view locates the causes of decline within the internal structure and functioning of the empire itself.
  • The region-related view instead finds the causes of decline in the turmoil and instability affecting different parts of the empire.
  • In reality, the decline resulted from a combination of both aspects.
• The process of Mughal disintegration began during Aurangzeb’s own reign, but gained real momentum only after his death in 1707 — at the time of his death, conditions were not yet such that the process of decline could not have been checked.
  • Although Mughal authority was challenged by numerous chiefs and regional rulers, none could yet fully assert independence in the face of remaining imperial might. The Sikhs, Marathas, and Rajputs lacked the capacity to actually overthrow the empire outright — they merely resisted Mughal power sufficiently to gain and preserve independence within their own respective territories.
  • Thus, had Aurangzeb’s successors proven genuinely capable rulers, the empire might well not have fallen when it did. Instead, most emperors who followed Aurangzeb proved incapable, weak, and dissolute monarchs, who only hastened the empire’s process of disintegration and, ultimately, its collapse.

Shifting Allegiance of Zamindars

• Two distinct classes shared state power with the emperor during the medieval period — the zamindars and the nobles.
  • Zamindars were hereditary landowners enjoying certain hereditary privileges, variously known by titles such as rais, rajas, thakurs, khuts, or deshmukhs. They occupied an important place within the empire, assisting in revenue collection and local administration, for which purpose they maintained their own soldiers.
  • Though the Mughals had sought to curb zamindari power and establish direct contact with the peasantry, they had never wholly succeeded in this effort.
• During Aurangzeb’s own reign, there was already a marked increase in the power and influence of the zamindars — the biggest consequence being the encouragement of growing regional loyalties. Many local zamindars assisted the nobility — the other powerful class within the empire — in exploiting the empire’s growing weakness to carve out independent kingdoms of their own.

Jagirdari Crisis

• The nobility comprised individuals either assigned large jagirs and mansabs, or appointed as subahdars of Mughal provinces with responsibility for their administration — this class included numerous Rajput rulers, subahdars, and mansabdars.
  • Mughal rule has often been characterised as, in effect, “the rule of the nobility,” given the central role these nobles played in administering the empire.
• Although Akbar had established a well-knit organisational structure for the nobility, genuine divisiveness persisted along lines of religion, homeland, and tribe, with each category tending to form its own distinct faction.
  • Mutual rivalry, jealousy, and factional contests for power among these groups during the era of the later Mughals — in the absence of strong central leadership — not only diminished the emperor’s own prestige, but directly contributed to the empire’s broader decline.

Rise of Regional Aspirations

• Aurangzeb’s own reign had already witnessed powerful regional groups — the Jats, Sikhs, and Marathas — openly defying Mughal authority in their own respective bids to establish independent kingdoms.
  • Though none fully succeeded in these initial efforts, each meaningfully shaped the future course of political events within their own regions.
  • Their continued struggle against imperial authority for political ascendancy considerably weakened the empire over time. Aurangzeb, and later Bahadur Shah I, by attempting to suppress the Rajputs, in fact spurred them further into active resistance against Mughal rule.
  • The later Mughals did attempt a policy of reconciliation with the Rajputs, but by then it was already too late — the Rajputs no longer trusted the Mughals sufficiently to genuinely ally with them for the empire’s welfare.
• The Marathas, meanwhile, were emerging as a genuinely formidable adversary. Their aims, initially confined to regaining control over the Maharashtra region, soon expanded to include securing formal legal sanction from the Mughal emperor to collect sardeshmukhi and chauth throughout India.
  • Pushing steadily northwards, by 1740 they had succeeded in extending their influence across the provinces of Gujarat, Malwa, and Bundelkhand.
• The combined effect of continued Rajput resistance and growing Maratha ambition and power thus dealt a severe blow to overall Mughal strength.

Economic and Administrative Problems

• The number of amirs, and their corresponding mansab ranks, had increased sharply over time, leaving little available land to distribute among them as jagirs.
  • Aurangzeb attempted to address this acute shortage of jagirs (bejagiri) by inflating the recorded income figures attributed to existing jagirs — a short-sighted measure, since amirs subsequently sought to actually recover this artificially inflated recorded income by pressuring the peasantry directly, thereby antagonising both the amirs themselves and the peasantry alike.
• Continuous warfare, the luxurious lifestyles of both emperors and nobles, and a steady reduction in khalisa (crown) land all placed further mounting strain on the state — with the result that state expenditure came to substantially exceed its income.
  • There was, moreover, no significant scientific or technological advance capable of revitalising an increasingly stagnant economy.
  • Once-flourishing trade failed to meaningfully enrich the empire’s coffers, even as European trading interests made growing inroads along coastal India.
• These economic and administrative problems only multiplied further following Aurangzeb’s death — the empire had, by this point, simply become too vast to be efficiently administered by a centralised system under increasingly weak and incompetent rulers.

Satish Chandra’s Assessment

According to the historian Satish Chandra, the roots of Mughal disintegration may be traced to:

• The underlying stagnation of trade, industry, and scientific development within the constraints of the medieval Indian economy.
• The growing financial crisis, which manifested specifically as a crisis of the jagirdari system, affecting virtually every branch of state activity.
• The nobility’s inability, under these circumstances, to realise their own ambitions through continued service to the state — leading, consequently, to factional struggles and ambitious nobles increasingly seeking independent dominion of their own.
• The Mughal emperors’ inability to genuinely accommodate the Marathas, or to adjust their claims within the broader framework of the Mughal empire — and the consequent breakdown of the wider attempt to build a genuinely composite ruling class in India.
• The cumulative impact of all these developments upon court politics, upon the wider country, and upon the security of the vulnerable north-western passes.

Individual failings and faults of character among individual rulers undoubtedly played their own part, but must necessarily be understood against the backdrop of these deeper, more structural and impersonal factors.

Rise of Regional States

The states that emerged from the decline of the Mughal Empire can be classified into three broad categories:

• Successor States: Former Mughal provinces that effectively became independent states after breaking away from central authority. Though they did not formally challenge Mughal sovereignty, the establishment of virtually independent, hereditary authority by their governors reflected the emergence of genuinely autonomous polities within these territories — examples include Awadh, Bengal, and Hyderabad.
• Independent Kingdoms: States that emerged primarily from the destabilisation of Mughal control over the provinces — examples include Mysore, Kerala, and the various Rajput states.
• The New States: States established by outright rebels against Mughal authority — examples include the Maratha, Sikh, and Jat states.

Survey of Regional Kingdoms

Hyderabad

• The founder of the Asaf Jahi house of Hyderabad was Kilich Khan, popularly known as Nizam-ul-Mulk.
  • It was in fact Zulfikar Khan who first conceived the idea of an independent Deccan state, though his death in 1713 left this dream unfulfilled.
  • Kilich Khan, disgusted at the Mughal emperor’s appointment of Mubariz Khan as full viceroy of the Deccan, chose to fight him directly — defeating and later killing Mubariz Khan at the Battle of Shakr-Kheda (1724).
  • He subsequently assumed control of the Deccan, becoming viceroy in 1725 and conferring upon himself the title Asaf Jah.

Awadh

• The founder of the independent principality of Awadh was Saadat Khan, popularly known as Burhan-ul-Mulk.
  • A Shia, Saadat Khan had joined a conspiracy against the Sayyid brothers, which led to his being granted an enhanced mansab. Later driven from court, he was prompted to establish a new, independent state of his own.
  • Saadat Khan ultimately took his own life under pressure from Nadir Shah, who was demanding a huge sum of booty from him. He was succeeded by Safdar Jang as Nawab of Awadh.

Bengal

• Murshid Quli Khan was the founder of the independent state of Bengal — a capable ruler who made Bengal a genuinely prosperous state.
  • He was succeeded in 1727 by his son Shuja-ud-din. His own successor, Sarfaraz Khan, was killed in 1740 by Alivardi Khan, deputy governor of Bihar, at Gheria — Alivardi Khan then assumed power, making himself effectively independent of the Mughal emperor while continuing to pay a nominal annual tribute.

The Rajputs

• The Rajputs sought to re-establish their independence during the 18th century.
  • This forced the Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah I to march against Ajit Singh in 1708, who had allied with Jai Singh II and Durgadas Rathor — though this alliance ultimately broke down, saving the situation for the Mughals.
  • At one point, Rajput influence extended across the entire territory from south of Delhi to the western coast.

Mysore

• Another important state to emerge during the 18th century was Mysore, located at the junction of the Eastern and Western Ghats and ruled by the Wodeyars.
  • Various rival powers, drawn to this territory, turned the region into a near-constant battlefield. Eventually, Mysore came under the rule of Haider Ali, who governed the state amid continuous difficulty — engaged in near-constant warfare with the British, a struggle later continued by his son, Tipu Sultan.

Kerala

• Martanda Varma established an independent Kerala state, with Travancore as his capital, extending his territory’s boundaries from Kanyakumari to Cochin.
  • He made determined efforts to organise his army along Western lines, and adopted various further measures to develop his state.

The Jats

• The agriculturist Jat settlers living around Delhi, Mathura, and Agra rose in revolt against Aurangzeb’s oppressive policies.
  • After some initial setbacks, Churaman and Badan Singh succeeded in establishing the Jat state of Bharatpur. It was, however, under Suraj Mal that Jat power reached its true zenith — providing an efficient system of administration while greatly extending the state’s territory.
  • His state extended from the Ganga in the east to the Chambal in the south, encompassing the subahs of Agra, Mathura, Meerut, and Aligarh.
  • The Jat state, however, declined sharply following Suraj Mal’s death in 1763, subsequently splintering into small territories controlled by petty zamindars largely sustained by plunder.

The Sikhs

• Guru Gobind Singh transformed the Sikhs into a militant community, organised in defence of their religion and liberties.
  • Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, who assumed Sikh leadership in 1708, was subsequently defeated and killed. In the wake of the invasions of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali, however, the Sikhs once again asserted their authority — at this stage organising themselves into twelve misls (confederacies), each exercising control over different parts of the Punjab region.
• Credit for establishing a genuinely strong kingdom of Punjab belongs to Ranjit Singh, son of Mahan Singh, leader of the Sukerchakia misl.
  • Ranjit Singh brought the area extending from the Sutlej to the Jhelum under his control, conquering Lahore in 1799 and Amritsar in 1802. By the Treaty of Amritsar with the British, he acknowledged British authority over the cis-Sutlej territories.
  • Ranjit Singh proved an efficient administrator, substantially modernising his army with European assistance.
  • Toward the close of his reign, however, the English compelled him to sign the Tripartite Treaty of 1838 with Shah Shuja and the English Company, agreeing to provide passage for British troops through Punjab, with a view to installing Shah Shuja on the throne of Kabul.
  • Ranjit Singh died in 1839; his successors proved unable to keep the state intact, and the British soon took control of it.

The Marathas

• Perhaps the single most formidable province to emerge from Mughal decline was that of the Marathas.
  • Under the capable leadership of the Peshwas, the Marathas uprooted Mughal authority across Malwa and Gujarat, establishing their own rule.
  • At one stage, they claimed the right to be the chief inheritors of the entire Mughal dominion, though this claim was decisively challenged by Ahmad Shah Abdali at the Third Battle of Panipat (1761).
  • The Marathas nonetheless recovered swiftly from this defeat, going on to offer the single most formidable challenge to the English East India Company in the broader struggle for political supremacy in India.

Rohilakhand and Farrukhabad

• The states of Rohilakhand and the kingdom of the Bangash Pathans emerged as a direct consequence of large-scale Afghan migration into India.
  • This large-scale immigration, driven by mid-18th-century political and economic turmoil in Afghanistan, allowed Ali Muhammad Khan to exploit the collapse of authority in north India following Nadir Shah’s invasion, establishing the petty kingdom of Rohilakhand — encompassing the Himalayan foothill region between Kumaon in the north and the Ganga in the south.
  • The Rohillas, as Rohilakhand’s inhabitants were known, subsequently suffered heavily at the hands of rival regional powers — the Jats and Awadh rulers, and later, the Marathas and British.
  • Muhammad Khan Bangash, an Afghan, similarly established an independent kingdom east of Delhi, around Farrukhabad, during the reigns of Farrukhsiyar and Muhammad Shah.

Nature and Limitations of the Regional States

• The independent political systems that emerged within the provinces generally continued to maintain formal ties with Mughal imperial authority, acknowledging the emperor’s continued importance as a symbolic overarching authority — even rebel chieftains of the Marathas and Sikhs formally recognised the Mughal emperor as supreme authority in principle.
• The polity emerging within these states remained fundamentally regional in character, functioning through the collaborative support of various local groups — zamindars, merchants, local nobles, and chieftains — whose diverse interests provincial rulers had to carefully accommodate in order to maintain their own position.
  • Exceptions did exist, however — in Mysore, for instance, rulers notably did not recognise local chieftains in this manner.
• These regional states nonetheless faced certain genuine limitations: provincial rulers generally failed to develop systems grounded in genuinely sound financial, administrative, and military organisation.
  • Though some states — Mysore most notably — did attempt genuine modernisation, most remained broadly backward in science and technology.
  • A further significant drawback was the near-constant warfare these states waged against neighbouring regional powers — conflicts in which none could ultimately achieve lasting dominance. These states, in fact, proved strong enough to genuinely challenge Mughal power, yet none proved capable of replacing it with a stable, all-India polity of its own.
  • The underlying jagirdari crisis intensified further as agricultural income declined, even as the number of contenders for a share of the remaining surplus continued to multiply. Trade — both internal and foreign — continued largely undisrupted, and even prospered in places, even as the rest of the broader economy stagnated.

Socio-Economic Conditions

• 18th-century India failed to make adequate economic, social, or cultural progress at any real pace.
  • India became, in this period, a genuine land of contrasts — extreme poverty and extreme luxury existing directly side by side. The common populace remained largely impoverished, backward, and oppressed, living at bare subsistence level, while the rich and powerful enjoyed lives of considerable luxury and extravagance.
  • It is nonetheless worth noting that, by most accounts, the condition of the Indian masses was, on the whole, somewhat better in the 18th century than it would become after a full century of subsequent British rule.

Agriculture

• Though technically backward, agriculture remained sustained by the sheer hard labour of the peasantry — labour whose rewards, however, seldom reached the peasants themselves.
  • Even though agricultural produce effectively supported the rest of society, the peasant’s own personal reward remained miserably inadequate — cultivators were forced to pay exorbitant sums to the state, the zamindars, the jagirdars, and revenue farmers alike. This underlying situation, notably, only worsened further under subsequent British rule.

Trade and Industry

• Owing to India’s considerable self-sufficiency in handicrafts and agricultural goods, the country did not import foreign goods on any large scale — while its own industrial and agricultural products remained in strong demand across foreign markets. Exports accordingly exceeded imports, with the resulting trade balance settled through the import of silver and gold — India was, in this sense, widely known as a genuine “sink” for precious metals.
• Items of import included: pearls, raw silk, wool, dates, dried fruits, and rose water from the Persian Gulf region; coffee, gold, drugs, and honey from Arabia; tea, sugar, porcelain, and silk from China; gold, musk, and woollen cloth from Tibet; ivory and drugs from Africa; and woollen cloth, copper, iron, lead, and paper from Europe.
• Items of export included: cotton textiles, raw silk and silk fabrics, hardware, indigo, saltpetre, opium, rice, wheat, sugar, pepper and other spices, precious stones, and various drugs.
• Important centres of the textile industry included: Dacca, Murshidabad, Patna, Surat, Ahmedabad, Broach, Chanderi, Burhanpur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, Agra, Multan, Lahore, Masulipatam, Aurangabad, Chicacole, Vishakhapatnam, Bangalore, Coimbatore, and Madurai, among others; Kashmir was a particularly noted centre of woollen manufacture.

Shipbuilding Industry

• Maharashtra, the Andhra region, and Bengal led the way in shipbuilding, with Indian shipping traditions also flourishing along the Kerala coast, at Calicut and Quilon.
  • The Zamorin of Calicut relied on the Muslim Kunjali Marakkars — renowned for their considerable seafaring skill — to command his navy.
  • Shivaji Bhonsle’s own navy mounted an effective defence along the west coast against the Portuguese.
  • According to the historian Bipan Chandra, European trading companies frequently purchased Indian-built ships for their own use.

Status of Education

• The education imparted across 18th-century India remained largely traditional in character, unable to keep pace with the rapid intellectual developments then underway in the West.
  • Available knowledge remained largely confined to literature, law, religion, philosophy, and logic, generally excluding the study of the physical and natural sciences, technology, and geography.
  • Indeed, an over-reliance on ancient learning tended to actively discourage genuinely original thought.
• Elementary education, however, remained fairly widespread among both Hindus and Muslims — conducted in Hindu pathshalas and Muslim maktabs respectively, generally confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic.
  • Children from lower-caste backgrounds sometimes attended such schools, though female attendance remained rare. Chatuspathis or Tols, as they were known in Bihar and Bengal, served as centres of higher education — some of the most famous centres for Sanskrit education included Kashi (Varanasi), Tirhut (Mithila), Nadia, and Utkala.
• Madrasahs served as institutions of higher learning in Persian and Arabic — Persian being the court language, studied by Hindus and Muslims alike; Azimabad (Patna) was a particularly famous centre for Persian education.
  • Those wishing to study the Quran and Muslim theology were required to acquire genuine proficiency in Arabic.

Societal Set-Up

Many Castes, Many Sects

• 18th-century Indian society remained characterised by a broadly traditional outlook and considerable social stagnation. Though a degree of broad underlying cultural unity did exist, the population remained deeply divided along lines of caste, religion, region, tribe, and language.
  • The prevailing family system was primarily patriarchal, with caste remaining the central organising feature of Hindu social life. Beyond the four traditional varnas, Hindus were further divided into numerous sub-castes, which effectively fixed an individual’s social position on a largely permanent basis.
    • Though choice of profession was largely determined by caste considerations, significant exceptions occurred across large parts of the country, leaving actual caste status considerably more fluid in some regions than in others.
    • Caste councils and panchayats served to enforce prevailing caste norms and regulations.
  • Even though Islam formally enjoined social equality among its followers, Indian Muslims too remained divided by considerations of caste, race, tribe, and social status — religious distinctions kept Sunni and Shia nobles apart, just as ethnic distinctions separated Irani, Afghan, Turani, and Hindustani Muslim nobles and officials from one another.
    • The sharif Muslims — comprising nobles, scholars, priests, and military figures — frequently looked down upon the ajlaf Muslims (the lower-class Muslim population), in a manner broadly comparable to how higher-caste Hindus treated lower-caste Hindus.
  • Religious conversions occurred throughout this period, and caste proved, overall, to be a major divisive force and element of social disintegration within 18th-century India.

Position of Women in Society

• Within India’s broadly patriarchal family system (with certain exceptions among some social groups in Kerala), women generally possessed little real individuality of their own, though notable exceptions certainly existed.
  • While upper-class women generally remained confined to the home, lower-class women frequently worked in the fields and beyond the home, supplementing overall family income.
  • Certain outdated and genuinely exploitative social customs persisted throughout this period — including purdah, sati, child marriage, and polygamy — all of which meaningfully hindered women’s broader social progress.
  • The condition of the Hindu widow remained, in most cases, genuinely miserable, with the practice of dowry especially widespread in Bengal and Rajputana.
    • Sensitive contemporary observers were often deeply moved by the harsh realities of widows’ lives — Raja Sawai Jai Singh of Amber and the Maratha general Prashuram Bhau both attempted to promote widow remarriage, though ultimately without success.

Menace of Slavery

• European travellers and administrators arriving in the 17th century reported the widespread prevalence of slavery across India.
  • It is believed that some families were compelled to sell their own children owing to severe economic distress, famine, natural calamity, and extreme poverty.
  • Higher-caste communities — Rajputs, Khatris, and Kayasthas in particular — generally kept female slaves for domestic labour. The overall status of slaves in India, however, remained notably better than that prevailing in contemporary Europe — slaves were generally treated as hereditary household servants, rather than as mere menial labour.
    • Marriages did take place among enslaved individuals, and any resulting offspring were considered free citizens in their own right.
• The arrival of the Europeans, however, considerably heightened both slavery and the wider slave trade within India.
  • European trading companies purchased slaves from markets across Bengal, Assam, and Bihar, transporting them onward to European and American markets — Abyssinian slaves, in particular, were commonly sold at Surat, Madras, and Calcutta.

Development in Art, Architecture and Culture

• The decline of the imperial Mughals forced many genuinely talented individuals to seek patronage instead from the newly established regional courts — Hyderabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Murshidabad, Patna, Kashmir, and others.
  • Given the prevailing political uncertainty of the era, sustained large-scale building activity generally could not be prioritised. At Lucknow, however, Asaf-ud-Daula built the celebrated Bada Imambara in 1784.
  • In the first half of the 18th century, Sawai Jai Singh built the “Pink City” of Jaipur, along with five astronomical observatories at Delhi, Jaipur, Benares, Mathura, and Ujjain.
    • He also prepared a set of astronomical time-tables, the Zij Muhammad Shahi, intended to assist scholars in the ongoing study of astronomy.
  • In the south, in Kerala, the Padmanabhapuram Palace — celebrated for both its architecture and its mural paintings — was similarly constructed during this period.
• Several new schools of painting were born during this period, achieving genuine artistic distinction.
  • The paintings of the Rajputana and Kangra schools grew increasingly prominent, revealing considerable fresh vitality and refined taste.
  • The Patna School of Painting (also known as Patna Qalam) developed in Bihar — regarded as the world’s first genuinely independent school of painting to deal exclusively with the life of the ordinary commoner.
  • Muhammad Shah himself employed master artists such as Nidha Mal (active 1735–75) and Chitarman, whose lively paintings vividly depict scenes of court life — Holi celebrations, hunting, and hawking among them.
  • By this stage, however, many painters formerly attached to the imperial studio had already begun migrating toward the various provincial courts — the loss suffered by the Mughals thus becoming, in effect, a genuine gain for the developing provincial painting styles.

Literary Life

• A distinct feature of 18th-century literary life was the marked growth of the Urdu language and poetry — this was the era of celebrated Urdu poets such as Mir, Sauda, Nazir, and (into the 19th century) Mirza Ghalib.
  • It was during Muhammad Shah’s reign specifically that Urdu grew genuinely popular among the wider populace, with the emperor formally declaring it the official court language, replacing Persian.
• In south India, Malayalam literature flourished under the active patronage of the Travancore rulers — Kunchan Nambiar was a particularly noted Malayalam poet of this period.
  • Tamil literature was similarly enriched through the tradition of siddhar poetry — Tayumanavar (1706–44), one of the finest exponents of this tradition, notably protested against abuses of temple authority and the wider caste system.
• Heer Ranjha, the celebrated romantic epic of Punjabi literature, was composed by Waris Shah.
  • In Sindhi literature, Shah Abdul Latif composed the Risalo, a celebrated collection of poems.
• The development of music received considerable further impetus at the court of Muhammad Shah — two celebrated vocalists, Sadarang and Adarang, made particularly notable contributions to the art of singing.
  • Several new forms of music developed during his reign, closely associated with the khyal tradition, alongside newer forms such as tarana and dadra.
• Bahadur Shah Zafar was himself a noted Urdu poet, authoring numerous Urdu ghazals, later compiled into the Kulliyat-i-Zafar.
  • The court he maintained served as home to several prolific Urdu writers of the era, including Mirza Ghalib, Dagh, Momin, and Zauq.