Islamic loot: How the Mughals drained wealth out of India
Aurangzeb: A cut above
The cruel and fanatic Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was perhaps the biggest Indian donor to Muslim lands. During the years 1661-67, he received at his court the kings of Persia, Balkh (in Afghanistan), Bukhara, Kashgar (in Xinjiang, China), Urganj (Khiva) and Shahr-i-Nau (in Iran), and the Turkish governors of Basra (in Iraq).
According to the Cambridge History of India, “His policy was to dazzle the eyes of these princes by lavish gift of presents to them and to their envoys, and thus induce the outer Muslim world to forget his treatment of his father and brothers. The fame of India as a soft milch cow spread throughout the middle and near East, and the minor embassies were merely begging expeditions.”
On the embassies received and the return-embassies sent out, Aurangzeb spent in presents nearly Rs 3 million in the course of seven years, besides the large sums which he annually distributed at Mecca and the gift of Rs 1 million to Abdullah Khan, the deposed king of Kashgar, who had taken refuge in India in 1668 and died at Delhi in 1675.
The Sharif of Mecca in particular used to send his agents to the Delhi court every year with the object of levying contributions in the name of the Prophet, till Aurangzeb’s patience was worn out and he stopped all donations to the Sharif. However, the flow of cash to Mecca continued – Aurangzeb sent his gifts to scholars and mendicants through his own agents.
Ripoff artists from the Islamic crescent
Mughal gift giving was a purely one-way street as far as the flow of wealth was concerned because the return gifts were pretty pathetic or at best ordinary and base. This is illustrated by an episode from the travelogue of Francois Bernier, the Frenchman who spent a considerable length of time in Delhi.
In 1664, the Christian monarch of Ethiopia sent an embassy represented by two ambassadors – an Armenian Christian named Murat and a Muslim merchant. They arrived in Delhi with the following ‘gifts’ – a mule skin, the horn of an ox, some arrack and a few famished and half-naked African slaves.
Upon receiving them, Aurangzeb presented the embassy with a brocade sash, a silken and embroidered girdle, and a turban of the same materials and workmanship; and gave orders for their maintenance in the city. Later at an audience, he invested each with another sash and made them a present of Rs 6,000. However, the fanatic that he was, Aurangzeb divided the money unequally – “the Mahomaten receiving four thousand roupies, and Murat, because a Christian, only two thousand”.
And that wasn’t the end of Aurangzeb’s largesse. The cunning merchant solemnly promised Aurangzeb that he would urge his King to permit the repair of a mosque in Ethiopia, which had been destroyed by the Portuguese. Hearing this, the emperor gave the ambassadors Rs 2,000 more in anticipation of this service.
Another interesting embassy came from the Uzbek Tatars. The two envoys and their servants brought some boxes of lapis-lazuli, a few long-haired camels, several horses, some camel loads of fresh fruit, such as apples, pears, grapes, and melons, and many loads of dry fruit.
The embassy which was led by two Tatars is described by Bernier as remarkable for the “filthiness of their persons”. He adds: “There are probably no people more narrow minded, sordid, or unclean than the Uzbek Tatars.”
But to Aurangzeb – who otherwise took the greatest offence at the smallest of slights – the wretched condition of the stinking embassy was a minor inconvenience that could be easily overlooked. All that mattered was that the beneficiaries were Muslims. So, in the presence of all his courtiers, he invested each of them with two rich sashes and Rs 8,000 in cash. Plus, a large number of the richest and most exquisitely wrought brocades, a quantity of fine linens, silk material interwoven with gold and silver, a few carpets, and two daggers set with precious stones.
In total Aurangzeb sent Rs 70 lakh to Muslim countries in six years. “This amount was almost twice the total revenue of England,” “This wasn’t foreign diplomacy since nothing but Islamic relics ever came back in return. The same Aurangzeb hanged to trees all Indian peasants who had defaulted on tax.”
Reality of Mughal rule
Leftist and secular historians are right about one thing – the Mughals were the richest dynasty of their time. But wealth has never been the yardstick for greatness. What they don’t see is the reality hiding in plain sight – India under the Mughals was one of the most miserable countries in the world. The relentless wars of the Mughals, in particular Aurangzeb’s 28 year war of attrition with the Marathas, and the loot of the peasantry were the prime reasons why the Indian economy was in tatters. In contrast to the previous Hindu rulers who taxed the farmers just 16 per cent of the total produce, the Mughal tax rate was 30-50 per cent, plus some additional cesses.
As Bernier observed, gold and silver “are not in greater plenty here than elsewhere; on the contrary, the inhabitants have less the appearance of a moneyed people than those of many other parts of the globe”. This is perhaps the greatest indictment of Mughal rule – that the richest empire in the world also had the greatest mass of poor citizens.
Even during Jehangir’s time, the English ambassador Thomas Roe had noted the backwardness of the countryside. While his eyes dazzled at the mountains of diamonds, rubies and pearls displayed in the Mughal court, he also noted the generally large number of destitute people – all along the route from Surat to Delhi.
Under Aurangzeb’s rule the condition of the people worsened. It is “a tyranny often so excessive as to deprive the peasant and artisan of the necessaries of life, and leave them to die of misery and exhaustion,” writes Bernier.
“It is owing to this miserable system of government that most towns in Hindoustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials; that there is no city or town which, if it be not already ruined and deserted, does not bear evident marks of approaching decay.”
A significant reason for India’s growing backwardness under the Mughals – as it was under the previous Sultanate Period of 334 years – was a predatory and unsustainable economic system institutionalised by India’s new rulers who had supplanted the country’s ancient Hindu royal houses.
“Labourers perish due to bad treatment from Governors. Children of poor are carried away as slaves. Peasantry abandon the country driven by despair. As the land throughout the whole empire is considered the property of the sovereign, there can be no earldoms, marquisates or duchies. The royal grants consist only of pensions, either in land or money, which the king gives, augments, retrenches or takes away at pleasure.”
According to historian K.S. Lal, All the resources available in India were fully exploited to provide comforts and luxuries to the Muslim ruling and religious classes. “Muslim chronicles vouch for this fact. They also vouch for the fact that the enjoyment of the Muslim elite was provided mainly by the poorest peasants through a crushing tax system.”
