Regional Principalities: Nizam’s Deccan, Bengal, Awadh

Regional Principalities: Nizam’s Deccan, Bengal, Awadh

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• Following the decline of the Mughal Empire, a number of independent regional states emerged across India.
  • Contemporary Persian chroniclers and early British historians, however, tended to overlook this genuine development — instead overprojecting the decline of the Mughal Empire while glorifying the establishment of British rule.
• More recent scholarship on 18th-century India has drawn attention to the need to study this period on its own terms, rather than merely as a story of imperial decline or as a prelude to colonial rule.

Historical Perspective on the Emergence of Regional Polities

• Understanding the dynamics of Mughal provincial polity in the 18th century is essential to tracing how and why regional powers emerged.
• The Mughal administration was, by design, highly centralised — its success resting heavily on the emperor’s own power and ability to keep nobles, zamindars, jagirdars, and provincial officials firmly under control.
  • Through his control over appointments, the emperor indirectly controlled the entire structure of provincial administration.
  • The two most important provincial functionaries — the diwan (head of revenue administration) and the nazim (executive head) — were both appointed directly by the emperor, as were other officials such as amils, faujdars, and kotwals.
  • Provincial governors, too, depended entirely on the emperor’s continued goodwill to remain in office.
• As the central administration became crippled by financial crisis and factional rivalry among the nobility, the emperor grew increasingly unable to prevent this deterioration or extend the protection provincial governors had traditionally relied upon.
  • In response, provincial governors — particularly from the early 18th century onward — began building independent bases of power of their own. Signs of this shift included:
    • Making local appointments without prior imperial permission.
    • Attempting to establish dynastic succession within their provinces.
  • Beyond a purely theoretical allegiance to the Mughal emperor — expressed chiefly through the sending of tribute — provincial governors effectively established their own independent authority over their territories.
  • Even the autonomous states of the Deccan, Rajputana, and elsewhere — which had never been directly ruled by the Mughals but had acknowledged Mughal suzerainty — gradually severed their remaining ties with the Empire.
• The states that emerged during this period can be classified into three broad categories:
  • States that broke away from the Mughal Empire — founded by former Mughal provincial governors, such as Bengal, Hyderabad, and Awadh.
    • These are also known as successor states, since their founders — Mughal provincial governors — never formally severed their ties with the imperial centre, even as they exercised virtually complete autonomy in the actual exercise of local power.
  • New states founded by rebels against the Mughals, also known as rebel states — including the Marathas, the Sikhs, the Jats, and the Afghan kingdoms of Farrukhabad and Rohilkhand. These states emerged, in essence, as a direct protest against Mughal rule.
  • Independent states — regions that had never been under direct Mughal control and were already semi-independent or autonomous, such as the Rajput states, Mysore, and Kerala (Travancore). These states primarily took advantage of the growing destabilisation of imperial authority in the provinces to further consolidate their own position.

Successor States

Bengal

• The subah of Bengal gradually slipped from Mughal control following the appointment of Murshid Quli Khan as its governor in 1717.
  • He was first appointed diwan (revenue collector) of Bengal by Aurangzeb; when Farrukhsiyar became emperor, he was further made deputy governor of Bengal and governor of Orissa.
  • In 1717, on being appointed nazim (governor) of Bengal, Murshid Quli was granted the unprecedented privilege of simultaneously holding both the offices of nazim and diwan — effectively dismantling the traditional Mughal system of checks and balances that had long kept these two offices separate and mutually restraining.
• This concentration of authority allowed Murshid Quli — already known for his efficient revenue administration — to consolidate his position considerably further, even though he never formally defied Mughal authority and continued to regularly remit revenue to the imperial treasury.
  • Indeed, Bengal’s revenue was often the only reliable source of income for the increasingly beleaguered Mughal emperors during periods of financial crisis.
  • Yet behind this veneer of formal allegiance, Murshid Quli came to enjoy considerable autonomy within his own domain, effectively initiating what amounted to a dynastic rule — notably, he was the last governor of Bengal ever appointed directly by a Mughal emperor.
• The true foundation of Murshid Quli’s power lay in his highly successful revenue administration, which kept Bengal a consistent revenue-surplus province even amid political chaos elsewhere in the Empire — revenue collection rose by roughly 20 per cent between 1700 and 1722.
  • He carried out detailed land surveys and compelled zamindars to pay their dues in full and on time, encouraging the growth of a few powerful zamindaris at the expense of smaller, inefficiently managed ones, while punishing refractory zamindars and transferring some jagirdars to the outlying province of Orissa, their former estates being converted into khalisa (crown) land.
  • His key initiatives to streamline revenue administration included: eliminating small intermediary zamindars; expelling rebellious zamindars and jagirdars to the frontier region of Orissa; encouraging larger zamindars who took on responsibility for revenue collection and payment; and steadily enlarging the scope of khalisa lands.
    • By the time of Murshid Quli’s death in 1727, just fifteen of the largest zamindaris accounted for roughly half of the province’s entire revenue.
• Alongside the rise of zamindars as a powerful new provincial elite, this period also saw the growing importance of merchants and bankers in Bengal.
  • Trade: Bengal had long possessed a lucrative trading economy, and the political stability and rising agricultural productivity under Murshid Quli gave this trade further impetus.
    • In the 17th century, Bengal’s silk, cotton textiles, sugar, oil, and clarified butter travelled overland to Persia and Afghanistan via several north and west Indian distribution centres, and by sea through the port of Hughli to Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. During the political turmoil of the 18th century, overland trade partially declined, but oceanic trade thrived, buoyed by rising investment from the Dutch, French, and English trading companies.
    • By the first half of the century, Europe had become the principal destination for Bengal’s goods — a shift with significant consequences for the region’s textile industry.
    • Bengal consistently enjoyed a favourable balance of trade, with the European companies bringing in surplus bullion to purchase Bengal goods, which was then smoothly absorbed into the province’s cash economy and revenue-remittance system.
  • On the Indian side, this trade was dominated by a mix of Hindu, Muslim, and Armenian merchants — some of them substantial magnates, such as the Hindu merchant Umi Chand or the Armenian trader Khoja Wajid, who controlled his own fleet of ships.
    • These merchants enjoyed notably cordial relations with the state and its bureaucracy, since the Mughal administration had traditionally never sought to squeeze merchant capital.
    • The constant pressure on zamindars to remit revenue promptly and regularly to the imperial treasury in Delhi brought powerful financiers and bankers into ever greater demand — providing security at every stage of revenue transactions and enjoying unprecedented gubernatorial patronage, which formed one of the key supportive pillars of the nazim’s own power.
    • The most notable instance of such collaboration was the rise of the banking house of Jagat Seth, which eventually became treasurer of the provincial government in 1730, with strategic control over the regional mint.
  • Beyond zamindars, merchants, and bankers, Murshid Quli further secured his position by appointing friends, relatives, and loyalists to key offices while actively driving potential rivals out of the province — a degree of personal control over appointments that would have been unthinkable during the height of Mughal power.
• After Murshid Quli’s death in 1727, his daughter’s son Sarfaraz Khan initially succeeded him, but was soon displaced by his own father, Shujauddin Muhammad Khan (Murshid Quli’s son-in-law), who took charge of Bengal and Orissa and had his position confirmed by Emperor Muhammad Shah.
  • Shujauddin, too, maintained formal ties with the Mughal court while enjoying real autonomy in local administration — a position sustained by the same emerging forces in Bengal politics: zamindars, merchants, and bankers.
  • Bengal’s government, in this sense, began to resemble a cooperative arrangement among the province’s dominant social forces, rather than rule imposed purely from outside.
  • This same shift, however, also implied a corresponding decline in the authority of the nazim himself.
• This tension became starkly evident in a coup of 1739–40, in which Shujauddin’s son Sarfaraz Khan, by then nazim, was overthrown by his own army commander, Alivardi Khan, with the crucial backing of the Jagat Seth banking family and several powerful zamindars.
  • Sarfaraz’s downfall stemmed not merely from administrative inefficiency, but from having alienated the house of Jagat Seth and lost the support of a number of key officials.
• Alivardi Khan became the new nazim, later securing formal imperial sanction for his government — but his reign marked a genuine virtual break with Mughal authority: all major appointments were now made without any reference to the emperor, and eventually the regular flow of revenue to Delhi ceased altogether.
  • Although there was never any formal defiance of Mughal authority, an essentially autonomous administration — free of practical imperial control — had, by this point, clearly emerged across Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.
• Alivardi’s chief challenges came from outside his own province: Maratha depredations and an Afghan rebellion.
  • The Marathas, pursuing their broader pan-Indian ambitions from the west, invaded Bengal repeatedly, causing extensive damage to life and property; in 1751, Alivardi finally reached a settlement with them, agreeing to pay chauth (one-fourth of revenue) and to cede Orissa.
    • One consequence of these Maratha raids was serious disruption to Bengal’s trade, particularly along its overland routes to north and west India — though this proved short-lived, with recovery aided by a substantial increase in European trade, both corporate trade by the companies and private trade conducted by their officials.
    • While this did not immediately displace Indian merchants from the market, it clearly marked the beginning of European commercial dominance in Bengal, laying the groundwork for the eventual English takeover of the province.
  • Separately, rebel Afghan troops under Mustafa Khan seized Patna in 1748, posing a further serious challenge to Alivardi’s authority; he eventually succeeded in suppressing the Afghans and recovering the city.
• Alivardi Khan died in 1756, naming his grandson Siraj-ud-Daulah as his successor.
  • This succession, however, was contested by two rival claimants — Shaukat Jang (faujdar of Purnea) and Ghaseti Begum (Alivardi’s daughter) — producing intense court factionalism, as Bengal’s overmighty zamindars and merchant elite grew wary of an unusually ambitious and assertive young Nawab.
  • This internal instability was swiftly exploited by the English East India Company, which secured a decisive foothold in Bengal politics through the so-called Plassey conspiracy of 1757, bringing Siraj-ud-Daulah’s rule to an end.

Hyderabad

• The autonomous kingdom of Hyderabad was founded in 1724 by Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I (Chin Qilich Khan) — a powerful noble and leader of the Turani faction at court.
  • Under Muhammad Shah, Nizam-ul-Mulk had served as wazir from 1722 to 1724, but eventually concluded that carving out his own autonomous principality in the Deccan held greater promise than continued court politics.
  • In 1722, he defeated Mubariz Khan, the Mughal governor of the Deccan, and the following year assumed the position of subahdar of the Deccan, consolidating his power around Hyderabad.
• The kingdom’s genuine independence may be dated from 1740, when the Nizam finally left north India to settle permanently in the Deccan.
  • He subdued refractory zamindars while showing considerable tolerance towards Hindus who held economic power within the region — fostering the emergence of a new regional elite that came to support his rule.
  • By the time of his death in 1748, Hyderabad was a firmly established power in Deccan politics, acknowledging Mughal suzerainty only in a largely symbolic sense: coins continued to be minted in the emperor’s name, and his name still appeared in the khutba (Friday sermon).
    • In practice, however, the Nizam acted with complete independence — waging war, signing treaties, conferring mansabs, and making key appointments entirely without reference to the emperor.
• After Asaf Jah I’s death, Hyderabad entered a period of considerable crisis.
  • Maratha depredations remained a persistent source of anxiety, and a bitter war of succession broke out between his son Nasir Jung and grandson Muzaffar Jung — a conflict the French under Dupleix skilfully exploited to their own advantage, with Muzaffar ultimately emerging victorious.
  • In the years that followed, the Marathas, Mysore, and the Carnatic all settled long-standing territorial disputes with Hyderabad at its expense.
  • Stability eventually returned under Nizam Ali Khan (1762–1803), who successfully settled border disputes with his neighbours, finally bringing Hyderabad the political stability it had long lacked.
• The Hyderabadi administrative system made no attempt to dismantle existing indigenous power structures; instead, it sought to fold them into a “patron-client relationship” with the central authority.
  • Locally powerful traders, moneylenders, and the military aristocracy played a crucial supporting role within the polity, providing the Nizam — now the polity’s chief patron — with vital financial and military backing.
  • Locally entrenched, semi-autonomous rulers were permitted to continue governing their inherited territories in exchange for an annual tribute, or peshkash, paid to the Nizam.
• Administration: While the older Mughal institutions were not entirely discarded, they underwent substantial changes in character.
  • Land revenue was now collected through powerful intermediary revenue farmers, though — unlike Mughal practice — little effort was made to keep them under close control.
  • Jagirs under this new system effectively became hereditary, and the mansabdari system retained only a few of its original Mughal features.
  • There was also a notable shift in the composition of the nobility: while the older military aristocracy retained much of its former standing, new men skilled in revenue and financial management increasingly rose from lower ranks.
  • On the whole, power in the Hyderabadi administrative structure remained widely diffused, rather than tightly concentrated at the centre.

Awadh

• Saadat Khan was appointed Mughal governor of Awadh in 1722, tasked with the difficult challenge of subduing rebellious local rajas and chieftains.
  • He accomplished this within a year, earning from Emperor Muhammad Shah the honorific title of Burhan-ul-Mulk.
• Frustrated by the politics of the imperial court, Saadat turned instead to building an independent power base within Awadh itself.
  • As a first step, he secured imperial recognition of his son-in-law, Safdar Jung, as his deputy governor.
  • A further step towards effectively dynastic rule was to render the office of diwan virtually independent of central imperial control.
• To consolidate his position, Saadat pursued several key measures: suppressing rebellious local zamindars and chieftains; curtailing the authority of madad-i-maash grantees; systematising revenue collection; and negotiating directly with select local zamindars.
  • The persistent problem of refractory zamindars was resolved over time, and a new land-revenue settlement was introduced, raising revenue demand by more than half.
  • The jagirdari system was itself reformed, with jagirs increasingly granted to the local gentry, while a flourishing trade helped keep the province genuinely affluent.
  • This process gave rise to a new regional ruling elite, drawn chiefly from Indian Muslims, Afghans, and Hindus, who became Saadat’s core support base.
• Throughout this period, Saadat kept communication channels with the imperial court open, steadily expanding the frontiers of the Awadh subah — but always with formal imperial approval.
  • He continued to nurture his ambitions within imperial court politics, only to be repeatedly frustrated — most notably in 1739–40, when the coveted post of mir bakhshi went instead to the Nizam, despite Saadat’s own considerable service during Nadir Shah’s invasion. Considering this a personal betrayal, he switched allegiance to the Persian invader in retaliation.
  • Unable, however, to tolerate Nadir Shah’s arrogance for long, Saadat, in sheer frustration and despair, poisoned himself to death the day after Delhi’s occupation.
• By the time of his death in 1740, Saadat had unquestionably built a semi-autonomous regional political system in Awadh — one with vastly reduced financial obligations to Delhi, but no formal break with the Mughal state.
  • Safdar Jung succeeded him, though only after paying 20 million rupees to Nadir Shah (who remained “emperor” of India for barely two months); Muhammad Shah later confirmed his appointment.
  • Safdar Jung’s real opportunity came only in 1748, when both Muhammad Shah and Nizam-ul-Mulk died and the new emperor, Ahmad Shah, appointed him imperial wazir.
    • Using this new position, Safdar Jung significantly extended his own sphere of influence, most notably through the seizure of Farrukhabad from the Pathans.
  • His growing self-aggrandisement, however, soon alienated both the imperial family and the court nobility, who together engineered his ouster in 1753.
    • This year marked a genuine turning point in the political history of north India — signifying, as historians have put it, “the visible secession of Awadh and Allahabad from the remainder of the dwindling empire.”
• Even so, the formal connection with Delhi was never fully severed.
  • After Safdar Jung’s death in late 1754, his only son, Shuja-ud-Daula, was once again appointed governor of Awadh — this time by the puppet emperor Alamgir II.
  • When the fugitive crown prince staged his own coronation as Shah Alam II upon Alamgir II’s death in December 1759, he named Shuja his own wazir — a largely nominal position, though Shuja continued to hold real power within his own domain, making him a much sought-after ally when the Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Abdali arrived once more in India to confront the Marathas at the Third Battle of Panipat (1761).
    • Shuja joined the Afghan side chiefly to see his own local rivals, the Marathas, weakened — but throughout the conflict, he conducted himself as an independent partner in an alliance of equals, rather than a mere subordinate.
  • Within his own domain of Awadh and Allahabad, Shuja’s autonomy and power remained essentially unchallenged until his eventual confrontation with the English East India Company in 1764.

Rebel States

The Marathas

• Among the various provincial powers that emerged during this period, the Maratha state was easily the most prominent.
  • The rise of the Marathas reflected both a regional reaction against Mughal centralisation and the broader upward mobility of certain classes and castes — the Mughals, notably, had never fully established effective control over the Maratha heartland.
• Under Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath, the office of the Peshwa grew considerably more powerful, and the Maratha state system evolved into a genuinely dominant, expansionist power.
  • From Balaji Vishwanath through the reign of Balaji Baji Rao, Maratha power reached its zenith, extending in every direction — south, east, north, and central India.
    • The Third Battle of Panipat (1761), fought between the Marathas and the Afghans, dealt the Marathas a major setback, halting their expansionist momentum after the Afghans’ decisive victory.
• In terms of administration, Maratha territory was divided into non-regulation and regulation areas.
  • In non-regulated areas, existing zamindars and chieftains were permitted to continue administering their territories, provided they paid regular tribute to the Peshwa.
  • In regulated areas, the Marathas exercised direct control, developing their own system of revenue assessment and management — most notably the watan system, under which watandars held hereditary rights in land vested not in a single individual, but in an entire brotherhood of patrilineal relatives.
• While the Marathas did adopt certain elements of the Mughal administrative system, their primary focus remained the extraction of surplus rather than institution-building; in the absence of a well-defined system of provincial authority, they ultimately failed to consolidate their influence into a durable administrative structure.

Punjab

• Developments in Punjab followed a markedly different trajectory from other regions. Zakaria Khan, governor of Lahore, attempted to establish his own independent political system in the province, but failed — primarily due to the sustained Sikh struggle for independent political authority.
  • The Sikh movement, originally founded by Guru Nanak to reform religious belief and strengthen communal solidarity, gradually transformed into a genuine political movement over the course of the 18th century.
    • Sikhs organised themselves into numerous small, highly mobile bands known as jathas, posing an increasingly serious challenge to Mughal imperial authority.
• A combination of foreign invasion (both Persian and Afghan), Maratha incursions, and persistent internal rivalry within the provincial administration created a highly fluid political situation in Punjab — one the Sikhs skilfully exploited to consolidate their own base.
  • By the second half of the 18th century, the various Sikh groups had reorganised themselves into twelve larger regional confederacies, or misls, each led by a prominent local chieftain.
  • The final consolidation of an autonomous Sikh state was completed only under Ranjit Singh, at the very beginning of the 19th century.

The Jat State

• The Jats, an agriculturist caste inhabiting the Delhi-Agra region, were responsible for one of the most significant agrarian revolts faced by the Mughal Empire in the second half of the 17th century.
  • Following the broader trend of the period, the Jats similarly sought to carve out an autonomous zone under their own control.
  • Churaman and Badan Singh took the earliest initiative, but it was Suraj Mal who ultimately consolidated the Jat state at Bharatpur, between 1756 and 1763.
• At its height, the Jat state extended east to the Ganga, south to the Chambal, north to Delhi, and west to Agra.
  • The state was essentially feudal in character, with zamindars holding both administrative and revenue authority within their respective domains.
  • The polity did not, however, survive for long after Suraj Mal’s death.

Independent States

Mysore

• Mysore had never come under the direct control of the Mughals; it was instead transformed from a former viceroyalty of the Vijayanagara Empire into a fully autonomous state under the Wodeyar dynasty.
  • The Wodeyar rulers were themselves eventually overthrown, in a bid to further strengthen the state’s autonomy, by Haidar Ali and later his son Tipu Sultan during the course of the 18th century.
• Mysore’s early challenges came chiefly from the Marathas on one side and Hyderabad and the Carnatic on the other, even as the English waited patiently for an opportunity to intervene.
  • Haidar Ali, beginning his career as a junior officer in the Mysore army, rose swiftly to become its most brilliant commander.
    • He recognised clearly the importance of a modern, disciplined military and sought to reorganise the Mysore army along European lines, drawing on French assistance to instil greater organisational discipline.
    • By 1761, he had succeeded in overthrowing Nunjaraj, the minister who had until then wielded the real power behind the Mysore throne.
  • Haidar Ali went on to considerably extend Mysore’s boundaries, drawing him into open conflict with the Marathas, Hyderabad, and the English alike.
    • In 1769, he inflicted a notable defeat on British forces — though the broader conflict continued well beyond his own death in 1782, after which his son Tipu Sultan carried forward his father’s campaigns through the remainder of the 18th century.

The Rajputs

• The Rajput rulers, too, sought to establish independent political authority, pursuing territorial expansion largely at the expense of their neighbours.
  • The principal Rajput states — Mewar, Marwar, and Amber — formed a loose league against Mughal authority, though persistent internal rivalry among the Rajput states themselves considerably weakened their collective strength.
  • The most prominent Rajput rulers of this period were Ajit Singh of Jodhpur and Jai Singh of Jaipur.

Kerala

• At the start of the 18th century, Kerala remained divided into numerous small principalities under local chieftains and rajas, with little visible Mughal presence in the region.
  • By the second half of the century, however, these smaller principalities had largely been absorbed by the more significant regional powers of Cochin, Travancore, and Calicut.
• The expansion of Mysore under Haidar Ali placed Kerala in a particularly difficult position, with Haidar Ali eventually annexing both Malabar and Calicut outright.
  • Travancore, which managed to escape Haidar Ali’s invasions, emerged as the region’s most prominent power.
    • Under King Martanda Varma, Travancore’s boundaries were extended from Kanyakumari to Cochin; he further sought to reorganise his army along Western lines and introduced various administrative reforms to strengthen and develop the state.