Eighteenth-Century Political Formations

This is Chapter 8, the last chapter of Our Pasts – II. gess104 followed the Mughal Empire to its height and the strains of the late seventeenth century; this chapter covers what came next, roughly from 1707, when Aurangzeb died, to the third battle of Panipat in 1761. NCERT’s opening point, made with two maps: within a short span of time, the boundaries of the Mughal Empire were reshaped by new, independent kingdoms, and by 1765 another power, the British, had taken large territories in eastern India. The chapter covers the crisis of the empire and the later Mughals, the Rajputs, and three groups who ‘seized independence’ — the Sikhs, the Marathas and the Jats. This is the rationalised text: the old account of the successor states (Hyderabad, Awadh, Bengal) is now a single sentence, so this page gives a short Beyond-NCERT table and links hess202 rather than re-teaching it. About nine pages of reading, so eight concept sections. Groups are described historically; nothing here ranks one community or region above another or reads the past through present-day politics.

• Links in this book: gess104 (the Mughal Empire, mansabdars and jagirs, the Rajputs, and the ‘decline’ readings in full); gess106 (Guru Gobind Singh and the Khalsa); gess107 (painters who moved to the hill courts after Nadir Shah’s sack of Delhi, 1739; Kathak at Jaipur and Lucknow).
• Deeper pages: iest203 (Resistance and Resilience, 1000–1700 CE: Shivaji, the Ashtapradhan, forts, Mewar’s resistance and the early Sikhs); hess202 (Class 8: the Bengal nawabs, Plassey and Buxar, the Anglo-Maratha wars, Ranjit Singh’s kingdom and its annexation); lehs204 (Mughal agrarian relations); hess201 (how historians use sources and periods). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: Prelims has asked what broke up the Mughal Empire (1980), Ranjit Singh’s capital (1994), the seats of the Maratha chiefs (1995), the dates of Nadir Shah and Shivaji (1998), the Marathas after the Mughals (2003) and the third battle of Panipat (2004). GS1 asked why so many battles were fought at Panipat (2014) and how mid-eighteenth-century India was a ‘fragmented polity’ (2017).

• Frame: 1707 (Aurangzeb dies) to 1761 (third battle of Panipat); by 1765 the British hold large territories in eastern India (Maps 1–2).
• Crisis: Deccan war; weak control of mansabdars; subadars with diwani + faujdari; revenue to the capital falls; peasant and zamindari revolts; Nadir Shah 1739; Abdali 5 times, 1748–1761; Iranis vs Turanis; Farrukh Siyar and Alamgir II killed, Ahmad Shah and Shah Alam II blinded.
• Rajputs: Amber and Jodhpur; Ajit Singh — Gujarat, Nagaur; Sawai Jai Singh — Malwa, Bundi, Jaipur, Agra (1722), five Jantar Mantars; checked by the Marathas from the 1740s.
• Sikhs: Khalsa 1699; Banda Bahadur (coins; Sutlej–Jamuna; executed 1716); jathas → misls, dal khalsa, gurmata at Amritsar; rakhi 20%; coin again 1765; Ranjit Singh, Lahore, 1799.
• Marathas: Shivaji (1630–1680), deshmukhs, kunbis; Peshwas (Chitpavan Brahmanas), Poona; expansion 1720–1761; chauth 25%, sardeshmukhi 9–10%; Delhi raided 1737; Sindhia, Holkar, Gaekwad, Bhonsle.
• Jats: Churaman; between Delhi and Agra; Suraj Mal — Bharatpur (1756–1763), Lohagarh; garden palace at Dig. Readings of the ‘decline’ and of Maratha, Sikh and Mughal relations are set side by side, with no verdict.

NCERT reminds us (Chapter 4, gess104) that the empire faced a variety of crises by the end of the seventeenth century. Aurangzeb had depleted its military and financial resources by fighting a long war in the Deccan. Under his successors the efficiency of the imperial administration broke down: the later emperors found it increasingly difficult to keep a check on their powerful mansabdars. Nobles appointed as governors (subadars) often controlled the offices of revenue and military administration (diwani and faujdari) as well, which gave them extraordinary political, economic and military powers over vast regions. As governors consolidated their provinces, the periodic remission of revenue to the capital declined. Peasant and zamindari rebellions in many parts of northern and western India added to the problem — sometimes caused by mounting taxes, sometimes attempts by powerful chieftains to consolidate their own positions. Mughal authority had been challenged before; the difference now was that these groups could seize the economic resources of the region. The emperors after Aurangzeb could not stop political and economic authority shifting to provincial governors, local chieftains and other groups.

In the midst of this crisis, Nadir Shah, the ruler of Iran, sacked and plundered Delhi in 1739 and took away immense wealth. This was followed by a series of plundering raids by the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali, who invaded north India five times between 1748 and 1761 (NCERT’s count). Already under pressure from all sides, the empire was further weakened by competition among groups of nobles, divided into two great factions, the Iranis and the Turanis (nobles of Turkish descent). For a long time the later emperors were puppets in the hands of one or the other. The worst humiliation came when two emperors, Farrukh Siyar (1713–1719) and Alamgir II (1754–1759), were assassinated, and two others, Ahmad Shah (1748–1754) and Shah Alam II (1759–1816, as NCERT prints it), were blinded by their nobles. With the emperors’ authority in decline, the governors of large provinces and the great zamindars consolidated their power in different parts of the subcontinent, such as Awadh, Bengal and Hyderabad.

The successor states — what the rationalised book leaves out. NCERT now names Awadh, Bengal and Hyderabad in one sentence (and on Map 1). The table below gives only the founding facts (all Beyond NCERT) so the names are not empty; how Bengal’s nawabs met the East India Company, Plassey and Buxar is taught in hess202.

Many Rajput kings, particularly of Amber and Jodhpur, had served the Mughals with distinction; in exchange they enjoyed considerable autonomy in their watan jagirs (gess104). In the eighteenth century they tried to extend control over adjacent regions. Ajit Singh, ruler of Jodhpur, was also involved in the factional politics at the Mughal court. These families claimed the subadari of the rich provinces of Gujarat and Malwa: Raja Ajit Singh held the governorship of Gujarat and Sawai Raja Jai Singh of Amber was governor of Malwa; Emperor Jahandar Shah renewed these offices in 1713. They also seized imperial territory next to their watans: Nagaur was conquered and annexed to Jodhpur, while Amber seized large portions of Bundi. Sawai Raja Jai Singh founded a new capital at Jaipur and was given the subadari of Agra in 1722. Maratha campaigns into Rajasthan from the 1740s put severe pressure on these principalities and checked their further expansion.

The organisation of the Sikhs into a political community in the seventeenth century (gess106) helped regional state-building in the Punjab. Guru Gobind Singh fought several battles against Rajput and Mughal rulers, before and after instituting the Khalsa in 1699. After his death in 1708, the Khalsa rose in revolt against Mughal authority under Banda Bahadur, declared sovereign rule by striking coins in the name of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, and set up its own administration between the Sutlej and the Jamuna. Banda Bahadur was captured in 1715 and executed in 1716. In the eighteenth century the Sikhs organised themselves into bands called jathas, and later misls; their combined forces were the ‘grand army’ (dal khalsa). The whole body met at Amritsar at Baisakhi and Diwali to take collective decisions called ‘resolutions of the Guru’ (gurmatas). A system called rakhi offered protection to cultivators for a tax of 20 per cent of the produce. Guru Gobind Singh had inspired the belief that the Khalsa’s destiny was to rule (raj karega khalsa). Their well-knit organisation let them resist the Mughal governors first and then Ahmad Shah Abdali, who had seized the rich province of the Punjab and the Sarkar of Sirhind. The Khalsa struck its own coin again in 1765, with the same inscription as on its orders in Banda Bahadur’s time. By the late eighteenth century Sikh territories reached from the Indus to the Jamuna but were divided among different rulers; Maharaja Ranjit Singh reunited them and made Lahore his capital in 1799.

NCERT says the Maratha kingdom was established by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj — another powerful regional kingdom to arise out of sustained opposition to Mughal rule. Shivaji (1630–1680) carved out a stable kingdom with the support of powerful warrior families (deshmukhs). Groups of highly mobile peasant-pastoralists (kunbis) were the backbone of the Maratha army; Shivaji used these forces to challenge the Mughals in the peninsula. After his death, effective power in the Maratha state was held by a family of Chitpavan Brahmanas who served Shivaji’s successors as Peshwa (principal minister). Poona became the capital of the Maratha kingdom. Under the Peshwas the Marathas developed a very successful military organisation: they bypassed the fortified areas of the Mughals, raided cities, and fought Mughal armies where their supply lines and reinforcements could easily be disturbed.

Between 1720 and 1761 the Maratha empire expanded, gradually chipping away at Mughal authority. Malwa and Gujarat were seized from the Mughals by the 1720s (NCERT). By the 1730s the Maratha king was recognised as overlord of the entire Deccan peninsula, with the right to levy chauth and sardeshmukhi across the region. After raiding Delhi in 1737, the frontiers of Maratha domination spread rapidly — into Rajasthan and the Punjab in the north, Bengal and Orissa in the east, and Karnataka and the Tamil and Telugu countries in the south. These areas were not formally included in the empire but were made to pay tribute as a sign of accepting Maratha sovereignty. Expansion brought enormous resources, but at a price: it made other rulers hostile, and so they were not inclined to support the Marathas at the third battle of Panipat in 1761. Alongside the campaigns the Marathas built an effective administration: once conquest was complete and rule secure, revenue demands were introduced gradually, taking local conditions into account; agriculture was encouraged and trade revived. This gave chiefs (sardars) such as Sindhia of Gwalior, Gaekwad of Baroda and Bhonsle of Nagpur the resources to raise powerful armies. Maratha campaigns into Malwa in the 1720s did not harm the region’s cities: Ujjain grew under Sindhia’s patronage and Indore under Holkar’s — large, prosperous commercial and cultural centres. New trade routes emerged: silk from the Chanderi region found an outlet in Poona, and Burhanpur, once part of the Agra–Surat trade, extended its hinterland to Poona and Nagpur in the south and Lucknow and Allahabad in the east.

Like the other states, the Jats consolidated their power in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under their leader Churaman they acquired control of territories west of Delhi, and by the 1680s (NCERT) they dominated the region between the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra; for a while they were the virtual custodians of Agra. The Jats were prosperous agriculturists, and towns like Panipat and Ballabhgarh became important trading centres in their areas. Under Suraj Mal the kingdom of Bharatpur emerged as a strong state; when Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, many of the city’s notables took refuge there. His son (NCERT: ‘Jawahir Shah’) had 30,000 troops of his own and hired 20,000 Maratha and 15,000 Sikh troops to fight the Mughals. The Bharatpur fort was built in a fairly traditional style; at Dig the Jats built an elaborate garden palace combining styles seen at Amber and Agra, modelled on architectural forms first associated with royalty under Shah Jahan. A side box adds that Jat power reached its zenith under Suraj Mal, who consolidated the state at Bharatpur in 1756–1763; his lands broadly included parts of modern eastern Rajasthan, southern Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Delhi; he built forts and palaces, and the Lohagarh fort at Bharatpur is regarded as one of the strongest in the region.

NCERT’s chapter shows three routes to power in the eighteenth century. Governors and great zamindars turned Mughal provinces — Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad — into their own states. Old allies, the Rajput rulers, used Mughal offices and their watan jagirs to expand. And groups that grew out of opposition — the Sikhs, Marathas and Jats — built states by organising soldiers, claiming revenue, and protecting or taxing cultivators and trade. All three depended on control of the region’s revenue, and all three show that political power had become regional. NCERT’s maps add a fourth actor: by 1765 the British controlled large territories in the east — the story picked up in hess202.

The chapter’s question boxes, in page order, and ‘Imagine’.

‘Let’s recall’ (1), ‘Let’s discuss’ (2–5) and ‘Let’s do’ (6), page 104.

Numbers

One-liners

• Governors (subadars) often also controlled diwani and faujdari.
• The remission of revenue to the capital declined as governors consolidated their provinces.
• Nadir Shah, ruler of Iran, took the Peacock throne from Delhi in 1739.
• The Mughal nobles were divided into Iranis and Turanis.
• Awadh, Bengal and Hyderabad were consolidated by governors and great zamindars.
• Ajit Singh of Jodhpur annexed Nagaur; Jai Singh of Amber seized parts of Bundi and founded Jaipur.
• Maratha campaigns from the 1740s checked Rajput expansion.
• Banda Bahadur struck coins in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh.
• Sikh bands were called jathas, later misls; their combined forces were the dal khalsa.
• Gurmatas were taken at Amritsar at Baisakhi and Diwali.
• Raj karega khalsa: the Khalsa’s destiny is to rule.
• Shivaji built his kingdom with deshmukhs; kunbis were the backbone of the army.
• The Peshwas were a family of Chitpavan Brahmanas; their capital was Poona.
• Areas beyond the Maratha core paid tribute but were not formally annexed.
• Ujjain grew under Sindhia, Indore under Holkar.
• Chanderi silk found a new outlet in Poona.
• Suraj Mal made Bharatpur a strong state; Delhi’s notables took refuge there in 1739.
• The Dig palace combined styles seen at Amber and Agra.

Traps to avoid

• Nadir Shah (Iran) sacked Delhi, not Bengal; Abdali was Afghan.
• Emperor Ahmad Shah (1748–1754) is not Ahmad Shah Abdali.
• Assassinated: Farrukh Siyar, Alamgir II. Blinded: Ahmad Shah, Shah Alam II.
• Shah Alam II died in 1806 — NCERT prints 1759–1816.
• Ajit Singh = Jodhpur = Gujarat; Jai Singh = Amber = Malwa, then Agra (1722).
• Sawai Jai Singh ruled Amber/Jaipur, not Indore.
• Rakhi is 20% of the produce; chauth is 25% and sardeshmukhi 9–10% of the land revenue.
• Banda Bahadur led the Khalsa after Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708) — not under Guru Tegh Bahadur.
• Ranjit Singh’s capital was Lahore, not Amritsar (Amritsar was where gurmatas were held).
• ‘Established by Shivaji (1630)’: 1630 is his birth; crowned 1674. Shivaji died in 1680, not 1686.
• Third Panipat (1761): Marathas vs Abdali; first Panipat (1526): Babur vs Ibrahim Lodi.
• ‘Jawahir Shah’ in NCERT = Jawahar Singh, Suraj Mal’s son.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Causes of the empire’s break-up: UPSC 1980 (succession war, Nadir Shah and Abdali, revolts of Jats, Sikhs, Rajputs — ‘all of the above’). Learn section 1’s chain and section 2’s invaders and factions.
• Sikhs: UPSC 1994 (Ranjit Singh’s capital — Lahore). Learn the jatha–misl–dal khalsa–gurmata ladder, rakhi and the 1699 / 1708 / 1716 / 1765 / 1799 dates. UPSC 2004 (Banda Bahadur ‘appointed by Guru Tegh Bahadur’ — false) is linked from gess106 and lehs202.
• Marathas: UPSC 1995 (seats of the Scindias, Holkars, Gaekwads and Bhonsles — Gwalior, Indore, Baroda, Nagpur; the original was a map question), UPSC 1998 (dates: 1556 Akbar’s accession, 1600 the Company’s charter, Shivaji’s death, 1739 Nadir Shah — the stored stem prints ‘1686’, a typo for 1680), UPSC 2003 (Marathas the strongest power after the Mughal decline — A true, R false), UPSC 2004 (Abdali defeated the Marathas, not Ibrahim Lodi, at the third Panipat). The Ashtapradhan (1995, 1998), the Kulkarni (1992), Raigad (1985) and Rajaram (2000) are taught in iest203, not here.
• Likely statement material: chauth/sardeshmukhi percentages; Jai Singh’s five observatories; Nagaur, Bundi, Jaipur; Iranis/Turanis; Suraj Mal, Bharatpur, Dig, Lohagarh; NCERT’s own slips (Shah Alam II’s dates, ‘Jawahir Shah’).

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 2017 (‘Clarify how mid-eighteenth century India was beset with the spectre of a fragmented polity’): NCERT’s three routes — governors (Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad), Rajput expansion, and Sikh, Maratha and Jat states — plus invasions and factions at Delhi, the tribute system that made enemies, and Map 2’s British foothold; balance with the ‘regional vitality’ readings (Alam, Bayly, Marshall). hess202 carries the Company side.
• GS1 2014 (‘The third battle of Panipat was fought in 1761. Why were so many empire-shaking battles fought at Panipat?’): NCERT gives the 1761 context — Maratha expansion, hostile neighbours, Abdali’s raids; add (Beyond NCERT) Panipat’s position on the north-western route to Delhi, open plains suited to cavalry and the battles of 1526 and 1556, and their outcomes. Keep the readings of 1761 attributed (NCERT, Shejwalkar, Sarkar).

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