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Some Reflections On The Town and Country in Mughal India
Some Reflections On The Town and Country in Mughal India
Author(s): K. N. Chaudhuri
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1978), pp. 77-96
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311823
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beauty of these towns, he was sometimes astonished to hear the contemptuous manner in which Europeans in the Indies spoke of these and
other places. They complained that the buildings were inferior in
beauty to those of the western world, forgetting that different climates
required different styles of architecture. What was useful and proper
in Paris, London, or Amsterdam would be quite out of place in Delhi.
According to Bernier, if it were possible for any one of those great
capitals to change place with the metropolis of the Indies, it would
become necessary to throw down the greater part of the city, and to
rebuild it on a totally different plan.2 If we have here the rudiments of
an ecological theory of the eastern city, there was practically nothing
comparable either on points of information or theoretical analysis in
the purely indigenous historical sources. Even Khafi Khan, one of the
ablest of the Mughal historians, referred in the most general terms to
the numerous towns and cities whose history had such a critical role to
play in his political narrative. Consider the following passage describing the famous destruction of Sirhind in 1708 by the Sikhs under
Banda: 'Sirhind was an opulent town, with wealthy merchants,
bankers, and tradesmen, men of money, and gentlemen of every class;
and there were especially learned and religious men in great numbers
residing there. No one found the opportunity of saving his life, or
wealth, or family.'3 For more than a century Sirhind had been one of
the most flourishing towns of the Empire, producing high-quality
cotton textiles and containing more than 300 mosques and many
dargas and serais. No contemporary civic records of the town, of any
nature, commercial, religious, or administrative, are known to have
survived to this day.
The urban history of any society can be written from two different
points of view. There is first of all the particular approach. Each town
or city is treated in terms of-its unique history. Even when such urban
centres are grouped together and treated collectively the time scale is
all-important. The factors responsible for their rise and fall, prosperity
and depression, remain strictly historical as discrete points on a temporal
plane. The second approach is to consider the totality of the political,
economic, and social order which sustains the urban localities as viable
entities. It is of course a truism that no town or city can exist by itself.
The great past debates among urban sociologists on the rural-urban
2
ed. A. Constable
FranCois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. I656-1668,
(London, I891), pp. 239-40.
3 Muhammad
Hashim, Khafi Khari, Muntakhabu-l Lubab, translation printed in
Sir H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India as Told by its own Historians, 8 vols
(London, I877), Vol. 7, pp. 414-I5.
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I-23;
with Special Reference to Mexico City', printed in A. Southall (ed.), UrbanAnthroStudiesof Urbanization(London and New York, I973), pp. 125-38.
pology:Cross-cultural
5 Max Weber, The City, ed. Don Martindale and G. Neuwirth (New York, I958),
pp. 80-1.
6 G.
City (Glencoe, Ill., i960), pp. 4-5.
Sjoberg, ThePreindustrial
7 For a theoretical discussion of these
points, see H. M. Mayer, 'A Survey of
Urban Geography', printed in P. M. Hauser and L. F. Schnore, (eds), The Studyof
Urbanization(New York, I965).
8 For the
emphasis on the industrial function of Mughal towns, see H. K. Naqvi,
UrbanCentresand Industriesin UpperIndia 1556-1803 (Bombay, I968), p. I35.
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other extreme is the view that the Asian city was primarily an administrative, political, and cultural phenomenon. There seems to be a
general consensus among many western observers of the Indian city
that it was essentially an expression of national political will, a symbol
of legitimacy, and an upholder of what Redfield and Singer call the
'Great Tradition'.9 Commercial and industrial functions are taken to
have played only an insignificant role in the formation of such cities, and
Sjoberg goes so far as to say that he could find no instance of significant
city-building through commerce alone.10 As a contrasting viewpoint,
one might juxtapose the comment made by John Henry Grose when he
visited Surat, the great Mughal port, in the middle of the eighteenth
century: 'the City on the bank [of the river] is perhaps one of the
greatest instances in the known world, of the power of trade to bring in so
little a time wealth, arts, and population to any spot where it can be
brought to settle'.1 A possible explanation for the functional existence
of the pre-modern towns may be found in the theory of central places.
Originally developed as an analysis of urban locations, the theory of
central places has been recently extended to examine the concept of
exchange in human society and early settlements. In a penetrating
essay Colin Renfrew makes the suggestion that every civilization, if it
is to advance from the condition of isolated and self-contained chiefdoms,
must have a permanently functioning central place.12 The emergence
of central places is not the same as the origin of urbanization, but the
process provides the necessary condition for it. The key to Renfrew's
argument is the notion that exchange of goods or of information can
take place at two levels, that of reciprocity and redistribution. If there
are N number of communities which wish to exchange one another's
surplus products, at the reciprocal level there will be a series of transN.N.-i.
actions and journeys given by the formula
But if there is a
2
of Cities', p. 60.
Indies, 2 vols (London, 1772), I, 98.
Distance: Questions of Integration and
and C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky
(eds),
New Mexico, i975), pp. 3-59.
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taking listing of cities and qasabasin Ain-i-Akbari marks the contemporary awareness of the distinction between urban and rural. But there was
perhaps a subtle way in which the coming of Islam to the subcontinent
and its military subjugation had altered this perceived distinction. The
Sanskritic term for the town, nagar, has mainly cultural overtones and is
quite distinct from a rajdhani, the seat of royal power. The Islamic
word shahristan,on the other hand, was a place of political and military
power, and it was this term that came to be universally used throughout
northern India to denote a town or city. The conquest of India by
Islam brought with it the special role which urban centres occupied in
its political ideology. Von Grunebaum, in speaking of the great period
of Arab expansion, has stated that the empire and its culture were
carried on the shoulders of the peasants, but dominated by the townsmen: 'The countryside was organized from the town and exploited by
princes, burghers and mercenaries. The Islamic East, from the intrusion
of the Turks in the ninth century to the fall of Baghdad ([A.D.] I258), is
the history of the victory of a predominantly Turkish military landowning aristocracy over the landowning but primarily mercantile
Arab or Arabizing aristocracy dominant in civil government.'16 A
similar analogy could also be applied to the history of India from the
thirteenth century to the sixteenth. The Arab garrison towns in
common with all expanding empires had a vital function in upholding
the political power and influence of the conquerors. To what extent
these settlements also coincided with the existing economic central
places is a separate topic of investigation. But in time Islam came to
recognize only the towns as the true repository of the faith.17 The whole
development gave rise to the twin features of Muslim urbanization in
its political role. As the sharia made no distinction between one member
of the faith and another, between different classes or communities, the
inhabitants of towns also enjoyed no special privileges. There was no
historical necessity to treat the towns as politically autonomous and
separate from the countryside. At the same time, however, they
provided the nodal points through which a conquering ruling elite
could assert its power.
In India an additional complexity was created by the refusal of the
Hindus to accept mass conversion to Islam. But even here the political
assimilation of subjects of other religious beliefs was made possible by
the principle of the jizya. While the poll tax legalized the toleration of
infidels in the land of true believers, its mitigation or re-imposition
16G. E. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam; A History 600-1258 (London, I970), p. 99.
17 W.
J. Fischel, 'The City in Islam', Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol. 7 (1956), 227-32.
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Lahore, Delhi-Agra, Patna, Burhanpur, and Ahmedabad. If the northwestern frontier is included, Kabul and Kandahar could also be added
to the list. Whoever controlled these eight primate cities was the true
Padshah of Hindustan. A single dissension or loss was tantamount to the
most public display of the weakening power of the reigning Emperor.
When a royal prince raised the flag of rebellion the capture of one of
these cities was an inevitable part of the military campaign. Equally, the
subadar of Patna, Burhanpur and Ahmedabad was often a close
relative of the Emperor. At the height of the Mughal imperial power
the main function of these primate cities was political; their strategic or
military significance was only secondary. But there was an additional
string of garrison towns, such as Gwalior, Allahabad, Chunar, Aurangabad, and Junnar, which provided the military sinews of the Empire.
The pattern of political conflicts in the subcontinent in this period
indicates clearly the key role played by towns and cities. The early life
of Babur was characterized by fierce struggles to master Samarkand
and Tashkent. As long as Babur remained a wandering warrior encamped in high mountain valleys the political basis of his power also
remained strictly limited. It was the possession of Kabul which eventually provided the real foundation of his later success in the plains of
India. The military campaigns of Akbar followed a similar sequence.
Of the thirty or so rebellions committed by insubordinate Amirs during
the half-century of his reign, twenty-eight took place in towns, and
the list includes Agra, Lahore, Kabul, Allahabad, Jaunpur, Patna, and
Ajmer.23 The terrible example which Akbar made of the garrison and
the inhabitants of Chitor was intended as a demonstration to the
Rajputs of the Mughal determination to overcome the dangerous
resistance at the flank of the Empire. Chitor was perhaps the greatest
fortress-town in northern India at the time. Its destruction by Akbar's
forces had the same message as did later the conquest of Golconda and
the overthrow of Abul Hassan by Aurangzeb.
As seats of imperial power the twin capitals of Agra and Delhi with
other satellite primate cities functioned as central places exchanging
political information. Access to the Imperial Court by the ambitious
Umara was an indispensable condition of advancement. For the Iranian
or Turani gentry seeking patronage and lucrative employment the
Mughal capital cities proved unfailingly attractive for more than two
centuries. The constant migration of the administrative and military
personnel from the periphery of the Empire to the primate cities and
23 See H. K. Naqvi, Urbanization and Urban Centresunderthe Great Mughals 1556-1707
(Simla, 1972), pp. 175-7.
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from the latter to the lesser towns in search of higher financial rewards
was both a demographic and a social phenomenon, which had important political consequences for the survival of the Mughal imperial
institutions. Even in the days of its decline in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, the sanction of legitimacy conferred by the imperial
sanad was a necessary condition for success in provincial politics. The
records of the European trading companies amply confirm this. In 171
the English Council in Surat reported to Bombay that the Governor,
Amanat Khan, had recently returned from Delhi after having spent
six lakhs of rupees in presents, which secured the continued confirmation of his office.24 Two decades later, in the crumbling political world
of Gujarat, it was still a matter for comment when a local governor
defied the authority of Delhi. On the eve of the famous revolution in
Surat in I732, the East India Company's official Broker, Sheth Laldas
Vittaldas Parakh, warned the Company of the need to be cautious in
dealing with the existing Governor, Sorab Khan, saying: 'Consider
gentlemen, you have a Governor to deal with who by force of arms has
maintened his post in rebellion against his Sovereign, against whom
he has shutt his gate in the form of Mustapha Khan, presented with
royal grants for the Government of Surat.'25 The urban concentration
of political power was not without its source of weakness. In 1626
Pelsaert could exclaim that Jahangir, whose name implied that he
grasped the whole world, was no more than the king of the plains or the
open roads. For rebellious chiefs, thieves and robbers did not hesitate
to pillage up to the very gate of Ahmedabad, Burhanpur, Agra,
Delhi, and Lahore.26 It is interesting to compare the Dutchman's
comment with the accession farman of Jahangir which reads in its
preamble, 'In as much as thieves and robbers carry off people's goods in
isolated places, it is ordered that new qasabas should be populated, and
the jaghirdars are directed, wherever they find considerable areas of
waste and uninhabited land, to arrange to provide masjids, dharmasalas and water-tanks so as to populate these areas.'27 Foundation of new
townships was typically seen as an answer to lawlessness.
If the political role of the main primate cities identified so far was
unambiguous, their economic ranking was no less evident. With the
exception of Delhi, which was in a special class, all the others were
24 Letter from
Bombay to the Court of Directors, 26 April I 7 0, I.O.R., Abstract of
Letters Received from Bombay, Vol. 449, para. I4, p. I43.
25
I.O.R., Bombay Public Proceedings, 29 November 1723, Vol. 5.
26 Pelsaert, The Remonstrantie,
pp. 58-9.
27 Ali Muhammad Khan,
Mirat-i-Ahmadi,quoted by M. S. Commissariat, A
Historyof Gujarat(Bombay, 1957), p. 43.
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second decade of the century Lahore still had a brisk trade in fine cotton
goods, the famous chintz products of Golconda and Masulipatam,
which were exported in large quantities to Central Asia and Persia. The
large Hindu Khattri merchants carried on business on what was left of
their old profits, and the frequent visits ofJahangir to the city gave it a
renewed air of splendour.29 But by the time Tavernier visited the place
large parts of the town were falling into ruins. The silting up of the
Indus around Tatta had affected the trade of Multan, which in its turn
caused many merchants to stay away from Lahore.30
It is evident that the prevailing emphasis on the administrative and
political function of the Indian towns rests on a confusion between
their origin and foundations and subsequent development. No urban
centre in any part of the world is able to survive without political
authority and legal order. An examination of the main urban localities
in Mughal India during the period from 1550 to I750 (about 250 in
number) would lead to the conclusion that a great many of them were
founded on the initiative of local political rulers, where they were not
already the seats of existing kingdoms. But the unresolved question
remains as to what caused the founders to select a particular site. Is it a
possible conjecture that these were already serving as some sort of
central place as defined by Renfrew? Three of the greatest sea ports and
commercial cities in India, Surat, Masulipatam, and Hugli, had little
political significance and their prosperity lasted long enough to qualify
them as economic primate cities. What explanations can we offer for
the success and survival of these places ? In the case of Surat, favourable
geographical location, access to rich markets, and the presence of an
active entrepreneurial class must head the list. On the landward side
caravan routes from the north, east, and the south converged on the
city. It was the hub from which sea-lanes radiated to all the famous
ports of the Indian Ocean and beyond. Described as bandar-i-mubarak
in the early coins of Aurangzeb, Surat had a special role for the pious
Muslim: it was the gateway to Mecca. All contemporary European
accounts of India agree that as a commercial metropolis Surat had no
serious rival on the western seaboard of India. The English author of a
memorandum on 'country trade' wrote from Fort St George in 1965:
'Surat, the most ancient Presidency and Emporium of the Northern
parts of India, is a City extraordinary well scituated for Trade, not
improperly termed the Mogull's Chamber, and seaport to Agra,
29 Ibid., p. 30.
30 Jean
Baptiste Tavernier,
(London, I925), I, 9I.
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32 Grose,
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CHAUDHURI
lodgings were hard to find and the three suburbs were all overflowing.42
A long tradition of internal migration, an essential safety-valve to
political instability and natural calamities, made for the volatile
demographic features of both town and country in Mughal India. In
the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Surat became a substantial industrial centre because of the influx of skilled workmen and
artisans from Ahmedabad.43 During the same period in southern India,
textile weaving suburbs sprang up in numerous towns where the local
rulers made special provision for the settlement of weavers fleeing from
disturbed and famine-stricken areas.44 In years of severe harvest
failures and grain shortages, it was common for the starving populace to
seek relief in towns. In I660 the streets and bazars of Delhi were
choked with poor helpless people who had come to the capital in the
hope of escaping from famine which scarred the rural areas during
that year.45
The catastrophic nature of these events makes it easier for us to note
the temporary movements of population to and from towns than to
derive any positive estimate of the permanent elements of Mughal
urban demography. Information on the size of town populations is
almost universally lacking. Even Bernier, who specifically referred to
the population of Delhi, did not venture beyond saying that it was
much less than that of Paris.46 From European travel accounts we can
identify the larger cities from lesser towns and we know that the
average housing density was fairly high. The gross overcrowding of the
present-day Indian towns was probably absent, though not the characteristic mixture of better-class houses with wretched mud and bamboo
huts. There were so many of these even in Delhi that Bernier often
thought of the imperial capital as a collection of villages or a military
encampment.47 The reader who follows through Tavernier's journeys
from Surat to Agra and down to Bengal is struck by the monotonous
repetition of similar epithets applied to one town after another through
which he travelled. Sironj was a large town with a population mainly
composed of merchants and artisans who lived there from generation to
generation. This is why it contained some houses of stone and brick.
Burhanpur was also large, but it was much ruined and the houses were
for the most part covered with thatch. In Patna, which measured at
Indian Travelsof ThevenotandCareri,ed. S. Sen (New Delhi, 1949), p. 2I.
I.O.R., Factory Records Surat, 27 September I742, Vol. 27, pp. 27-30.
4 Letter from Madras to the Court of Directors,
13 January 1736, Recordsof Fort
42
43
46
47
Ibid., p. 246.
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least two coss (5 miles) in length, the houses were no better than in the
majority of the other towns of India and they were nearly all roofed with
thatch or bamboo. The approaches to Dacca were completely marred
by unsightly settlements of carpenters and boatbuilders. Only Benares
was singled out for special praise. It was not only large and well built,
but the majority of the houses were of brick and cut stone and higher
than anywhere else.48 The mixed appearance of Mughal towns, to
which Tavernier and other contemporary travellers from Europe
direct our attention, certainly reflected great disparities in income
distribution and cultural traditions. But we have to distinguish between
the various features of a town before we can analyse the way in which its
character changed or the process through which it prospered and
declined. These features may be geographical, as, for example, Fernand
Braudel's suggestion of slow-changing elements or semi-permanent
elements; they may also be economic, political, and social.49 Towns
which were constructed on permanent lines and built with durable
materials were the ones that could change their character from one
typology to another, i.e. from commercial to banking, or administrative
and political to industrial, more successfully than smaller towns containing less durable houses or public buildings. The fluidity of Indian
political tradition was reflected in the flimsily-built dwellings. Was the
economy of the towns correspondingly impermanent? Here again we
should separate those towns which had permanent markets for their products and services from those which did not.
When Babur came to northern India he rightly lamented Hindustan's
lack or running water and gardens. Anyone who has seen the spring
blossoms in the courtyard of Madrese Mader-e Shah at Isfahan or the
great sycamores in the garden of Chihil Sutun will understand the
feelings of home sickness which a largely Persianized Mughal aristocracy must have felt in this hospitable but culturally alien land. Even
Europeans travelling from India to Persia noted the difference. In 1677
John Fryer wrote in his diary, as he landed in Bandar Abbas after
having come from Surat, 'So strange an alteration in Three hundred
Leagues as passes admiration! for whereas we left a Sullen, Melancholy,
Sunburnt Nation; an Open, Jovial, and a Clear Complexioned Race of
Mankind is offered in exchange.'50 But this very contrast was responsible
for creating the great driving force behind the cultural tradition of
48 Tavernier,
1672-1681,
II, I59.
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cloths, silks, and brocaded fabrics, there were twenty-five where nothing
was to be seen but pots of oil or ghi, piles of baskets filled with rice,
wheat, millet, and endless variety of other grains and pulses.53It was
only the fruit markets of Delhi which could claim any credit for a
proper display. Bernier's description of the public appearance of the
Mughal capital in this respect contrasts unfavourably with the famous
qaisariyyaof Isfahan. When Fryer visited these vaulted and galleried
streets which also converged on the public square, the maidan-i-shah,
he
was so struck by their fine aspect that he thought that the European
bourses were only mediocre buildings compared to the bazars of
Isfahan. His admiration was heightened on the discovery that the
cloth market contained a greater variety and quantity of English
broadcloth than Blackwell-Hall itself.54
The contrast between the classical cities of Iran and those of Mughal
India must surely be ascribed to the difference between a homogeneous
culture and a heterogeneous one, between an indigenous style and a
transplanted version. But the essentially Islamic character of the north
Indian towns cannot be questioned. In the south and in parts of
western India the Hindu influence and ideas were of course still strong.
Much depended on the tradition fostered by the political rulers. At the
height of its power the reputation of Hyderabad, the capital of the
Qutb Shahi dynasty, was greater than that of any Mughal city. Its
great public buildings, gardens, and caravanserais were famous
throughout India. The subtle influence of Islam in its architectural
manifestation did not remain confined to Muslim towns alone. The
lake palace in Udaipur built in the early eighteenth century has the
classic outlines of Shahjahan's pavilions in Ajmer. Its interior gardens,
of ravishing beauty and elegance, were designed on the pattern of
Mughal gardens softened by Rajasthani sensibilities. The list could be
extended. The pre-modern cities and towns of India were the products
of the prevailing forms of technology and social institutions. Their
economic existence depended on the ability of the countryside to
produce a surplus and the way in which the latter was distributed. But
there was an organic bond, an ecological balance between the rural
and the urban. Our understandingof the working of the urban economy
and society depends on the ability to decipher the inner nature of this
relationship.
There is one final problem which has not been explicitly touched upon
in this essay. It is the question of the factors that led to the rise and fall of
53 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, pp. 248-9.
54Fryer, New Accountof East India, II, 241, 249-50.
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