AN INQUIRY INTO Culture System in Subcontinent PDF

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AN INQUIRY INTO
THE CULTURE OF POWER OF
THE SUBCONTINENT
ILHAN NIAZ
Quaid-I-Azam University
Department of History
Islamabad
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Alhamra Publishing - based in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Bertem, Belgium.
First published in Pakistan in 2006 by Alhamra Publishing

Copyright © 2008 by Ilhan Niaz
ISBN 969-516-170-7
www.alhamra.com
Published by Shafiq Naz

Alhamra Publishing
6, 1st floor, Al-Babar Centre, F-8 Markaz
44000 Islamabad, Pakistan
Printed and bound in Pakistan by

Alhamra Printing, Islamabad, Pakistan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reprinted or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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To those who serve.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T he present volume is the product of a research effort conducted

within a framework that successfully combined institutional and
personal dimensions. The former is represented by the Department
of History at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, the Advanced
Studies and Research Board, and the University Research Fund.
The latter is represented by family, elder statesmen, colleagues, and
friends.
The individual who served as a link between these two spheres was
Dr. Sikandar Hayat, my supervisor. Without his active encouragement,
guidance, and support, neither the M.Phil. thesis from which the
present work is derived, nor the published version itself, would have
materialized. To Dr. Sikandar Hayat I owe the first of several debts of
gratitude that I can never reasonably hope to repay.
I owe an equal debt to Zafar Iqbal Rathore, a police officer retired
as Interior Secretary, and a family friend, who is widely and accurately
acknowledged as one of the best read and wisest public servants
produced by Pakistan. From my first exchange of ideas with him in
August 2000, till present, I have remained in awe of the magnanimity
with which he shared, and continues to share, his insight, time, and
extensive private library. The conceptual portion of this inquiry is
substantially derived from our discussions over a number of years and
freely draws upon the wisdom accumulated by him over many decades
of public service, self-education, and reflection. I am also grateful for
his help in facilitating correspondence with former ambassador Mansur
Ahmad and Brigadier (retired) Mohammed Aslam Malik. Their written
feedback was perceptive, heartening, and of considerable research value
since the present work is addressed as much to public servants as it is to
academia.
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VIII | An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent
My parents, Kamran and Nuzhat Niaz, went beyond the call of

parental duty and took turns proof reading and criticizing my work
at both the thesis and publication stage. This they did in spite of the
considerable work and socialization requirements associated with their
ambassadorial assignment to Tokyo since March 2003.
In addition to Dr. Sikandar Hayat, Zafar Iqbal Rathore, and my
parents, there are several others with whom I shared my findings and
from whom I received feedback, both written and verbal. Particularly
valuable was the assistance rendered by Dr. Raees Ahmad Khan, the
external examiner for my Masters in Philosophy thesis and referee to
the University Research Fund. Dr. M. Naeem Qureshi, in whose course
on the philosophy of history I prepared a research paper on the culture
of power of the Timurid Empire two years ago, provided feedback on
earlier drafts of the present work.
I am thankful to my senior colleagues Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid, Dr.
Saeedudin Ahmad Dar, Dr. Wiqar Ali Shah, and Rabia Umar Ali, and
my friends, Mohammed Suleiman and Ghulam Murtaza, for their input
and support. Farooq Dar provided timely assistance in the preparation
of this manuscript by generously taking on some of my administrative
tasks. I am also grateful for the opportunities I have had to discuss the
culture of power of the subcontinent with professors David Ewick,
and M. Sadria of the faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Tokyo,
Mir Annice Mahmood from the Pakistan Institute of Development
Economics, and Salimullah Khan of the National Documentation
Center in Islamabad. For the errors, inconsistencies, and limitations that
inevitably characterize works of such sweep and complexity, I alone am
to blame.
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PREFACE
I n the subcontinent, the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, Africa,

and large parts of South East Asia and Latin America, human
civilization faces the collapse of the state of order. Leaders of states and
international organizations regularly bemoan the increasing incidence of
state and societal failure. This incidence does not appear to be affected
by the formal structures of government. Democracies, such as India,
the Philippines, South Africa, and Mexico, seem as incapable of dealing
with their respective crises of state as theocratic Iran and Saudi Arabia,
or secular despotisms in Egypt, Congo, and former Soviet Central Asia.
Ruling elites in an alarmingly large portion of the world simply lack the
wisdom and historical understanding necessary for the effective and
responsible exercise of state power.
In August 2000, as debate raged in Pakistan over the proposed
creation of elected local governments, I was invited by Zafar Iqbal
Rathore to a series of private discussions in which he shared his
perspective on the broader implications of the local government reforms.
The invitation was precipitated by my decision to seek admission to the
post-graduate program at the Department of History at the Quaid-i-
Azam University, Islamabad. Although we had met many times before
at social and family gatherings, this was my first academic encounter
with Rathore sahab.
Our discussion began with my being asked to diagnose the crisis
of state in Pakistan. Although I have forgotten the exact wording of
my response, I know that it included many favorite catch phrases,
such as “feudalism”, “middle class”, “colonial legacy”, “praetorian
domination”, “institutional failure”, “civil society”, etc., which echo
through the living, dining, and seminar rooms of third world elites eager
to mask their unfortunate lack of reasoned judgment behind semantic
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X | An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent
smokescreens derived from equally sub-rational American, Marxist, or

religious discourses.
Rathore sahab then shared his perspective. He first explained the
nature of the state in the subcontinent and elsewhere in the civilized
world. This he called the continental bureaucratic state. Then he discussed
the nature of the state in England and her dominions of settlement.
This he called a government of laws. Next, Rathore argued that each
form of the state over centuries led to the creation and entrenchment
of powerful political habits, social responses, intellectual rationalization,
and economic expectations. These behavioral patterns he called the
culture of power. Finally, relating these ideas to the Pakistani context,
Rathore concluded that Pakistan is an abysmally governed continental
bureaucratic state. If elected local governments were introduced on the
pattern proposed by the National Reconstruction Bureau, the quality
of governance would deteriorate even further. He warned that by using
international financial assistance to create elected local governments we
would further compromise the principal mechanism of order, i.e. the
civilian bureaucracy, create an atmosphere of incipient warlordism and
anarchy, and gradually draw the military into direct confrontation with
fractious local notables incapable of governing themselves.
Drawing upon numerous historical examples from the subcontinent,
continental Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon countries, Rathore sought to
establish that the only realistic and long-term solution to the crisis of
state in Pakistan, or any continental bureaucratic state, for that matter,
is the improvement of the intellectual and moral qualities of the ruler
and his servants, that is, rendering the executive function effective,
enlightened, and responsible. Although Rathore sahab had said as much
to the National Reconstruction Bureau, his views were dismissed as
symptomatic of an incurably “anti-people” and “colonial mindset”, by
those in charge of the “grassroots empowerment” process.
My initial reaction was a mixture of admiration and indignation.
Admiration flowed from the fact that Rathore was the only South
Asian I had ever encountered who had developed an independent,
reasoned explanation, of the historical process and, more specifically,
the global crisis of order. Rathore unmistakably served the empire of
reason. Indignation stemmed from the violence he did to my cherished
assumptions about the nature of Pakistan’s crisis of state, of the
inevitability and desirability of the advance of Americanism, and my
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Preface | XI
faith in the equality and alterability of human nature. The result of

these early encounters was an article critical of the local government
scheme. However, I thought no more of cultures of power and focused
instead on far more congenial topics, such as American history and
Pakistan’s foreign policy.
It was not until January 2003 that I had cause to further reflect
upon cultures of power and the crisis of state in Pakistan. There were
several reasons for this. The first was that information from sources as
diverse as the media and friends indicated the local government reforms
had unleashed arbitrariness and confusion on an unprecedented scale.
Confidence in the viability of the Pakistani State had sunk, and continues
to sink, to new lows – a perception confirmed by outside observers
such as the United Nations. The accuracy of Rathore’s earlier prediction
and assessment was chilling.
The second was my reading of Stephen Cohen’s India: Emerging
Power. The book was laudatory but contained many facts whose
significance eluded the author. One of these was that two hundred of
India’s five hundred and thirty-five districts were in a state of more or less
permanent disturbance. In 2002, the provincial authorities in Gujarat,
one of India’s most prosperous and educated provinces, presided over
the ethnic cleansing of its Muslim minority with the connivance of the
central government. Clearly, India was reverting to medievalism at the
highest levels and the Indian State was failing, even as lobbies in the
United States tried to project considerable advances in certain sectors
as indications of emergence. The question was why?
The third incentive to inquire into the culture of power of the
subcontinent was derived from my admission to the M.Phil. program
at the Department of History, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad,
in January 2003. The interview for admission was held in the dead
of winter. However, heating units in much of the Punjab, North-
West Frontier Province, and Islamabad, were rendered inoperative
because tribal raiders in Baluchistan had knocked out the natural gas
transmission grid at Sui. It was the twenty-ninth time in two years that
the Sui gas field had been attacked. In Islamabad, President Musharraf
and his advisors lamented the ineffectiveness of the “writ of the state”
and reluctantly contemplated direct military intervention. At the time
of this writing, the crisis in Balochistan continues with undiminished
intensity. I indicated to the interview panel that if admitted to the
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XII | An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent
M.Phil. program I intended to write about the culture of power of the

subcontinent as no one else had yet done so and, given how close to
home the problem was, it had to be understood.
In March 2003, having secured Dr. Sikandar Hayat’s approval,
I visited Rathore sahab and informed him that I wished to write my
M. Phil. thesis on the culture of power of the subcontinent. He was
extremely supportive and put me on a crash program of reading a
wide range of books that had shaped his opinions on the subject over
a period of forty years. Fortunately, my experience as a book reviewer
enabled me to read and digest the major conceptual inputs by June
2003, which is when I put down my thoughts on paper and submitted
a rather raw eighteen pages long introductory article on the subject to
Dr. Sikandar Hayat, who had agreed to supervise my thesis. I had also,
as my understanding developed, continued to write short summaries
and definitions of the major concepts involved. This inquiry has grown
a great deal since I began work on it in summer 2003. The definitions,
format, line of argument, and data, have been repeatedly adjusted in
response to feedback.
The inquiry that follows is in many respects a history of the exercise
of state power in the subcontinent from the earliest known times to
the present day. As an academic work, it is not prescriptive in nature.
Indeed, any rational attempt to understand an important aspect of the
human condition must allow for the possibility that there may well
be no solution. Unless we make a sustained effort to understand the
complexities inherent in the exercise of power, however, our ability to
contemplate solutions will remain compromised and subject to irrational
tutelage. This effort must be made as in the subcontinent three and a
half of the last four millennia have been spent in chaos. If the collapse
of the state of order can be arrested in the subcontinent then there may
yet be hope for the many other parts of the world experiencing similar
catastrophe.
Ilhan Niaz
Islamabad
Summer 2006
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION | 1
CHAPTER I
The First Raj:
The Indus Valley Civilization: 2250 BC – 1750 BC | 21
CHAPTER II
Reigns of Fire:
The Early Aryan Age, 1750 BC – 185 BC | 29
CHAPTER III
War and Magnificence:
185 BC – AD 1000 | 51
CHAPTER IV
Great Outsiders:
Arabs and Turks, AD 712 – AD 1186 | 63
CHAPTER V
Shadows of God:
AD 1186 – AD 1526 | 73
CHAPTER VI
The House of Timur:
AD 1526 – AD 1764 | 89
CHAPTER VII
The Culture of Power of the Anglo-Saxons:
500 BC – AD 1756 | 123
CHAPTER VIII
The New Paradigm:
AD 1757 – AD 1857 | 159
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XIV | An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent
CHAPTER IX
The Last Raj:
The British Empire in India, 1857 – 1947 | 191
CHAPTER X
The Culture of Power and
The Governance of India Since 1947 | 237
CHAPTER XI
The Culture of Power and
The Governance of Pakistan Since 1947 | 263
CONCLUSION | 287
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 303
INDEX | 313
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INTRODUCTION
T he two basic functions of the state are the maintenance of order

and the collection of taxes. The former task is the domain of
the criminal justice system. The latter is the function of the financial
administrative machinery. The manner in which power is exercised
determines the effectiveness and justice of law enforcement and tax
collection. Prolonged failure in the performance of these two core
functions condemns the state to anarchy and collapse. Keeping
the apparatus in line is the role of the central executive and political
leadership. Without a reasonably strong, enlightened, and rational,
directing impulse from above the full predatory potential of the state
is in time unleashed upon society, which in turn becomes progressively
more ungovernable.
This inquiry has three basic purposes. The first is to describe in a
reasonable amount of detail the exercise of power by the state under
Harappan, Maurya, Gupta, Turkic, Timurid, and British rule. The second
is to analyze the contribution of these six ruling groups to the formation
and development of the Indian subcontinent’s culture of power. The
third, and arguably the most important, goal is to apply the lessons
learnt from the inquiry to India and Pakistan since independence. In
the course of the description and analysis, certain terms that require
definition will be used.1 These are as follows:
A) Power: The starting point and central focus of the present
inquiry is power as exercised by the state. For our purposes, it
suffices to say that power divides society into three classes –
those who wield it, those who benefit from its exercise, and those
1 “My ideas are new, and therefore I have been obliged to find new words, or to
give new acceptations to old terms, in order to convey my meaning.” Charles
de Secondat, Baron of Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (New York: Prometheus
Books, 2002), xv.
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2 | An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent
who suffer the consequences of its exercise, or are otherwise

marginalized by it. Power itself can be understood as “concerned
with the bringing about of consequences”, is based on sources
as diverse as charisma and coercion, and may serve purposes as
varied as spiritual salvation and private enterprise.2 It has also
been argued that power is “the fundamental concept in social
science” and that “love of power is the cause of the activities that
are important in social affairs”.3 The basic problem with power,
which this inquiry will investigate, is that its character does not
change unless a conscious effort is made by the state and society
to alter it. All power carries within it the seeds of excess and abuse.
Imperial power, derived from the conquest and exploitation of
foreign lands, has a stronger tendency towards excess and abuse
than non-imperial state power. Progress in relation to the exercise
of power makes the individuals and institutions that wield it less
arbitrary, erratic, and intrusive, and more humane, predictable,
and tolerant. The experience of a society with power conditions
its attitudes towards, and expectations of, the politically dominant
class. To explore the historical experience of governance
necessitates focusing on the manner in which those charged with
the exercise of power behaved during their period of association
with the state.
b) The Culture of Power: Culture is a composite phenomenon
influenced by geography, climate, technology, governance,
historical experience, economics, thought, and social structures. It
affects our perception of reality, shapes our ethics, and, above all
else, it determines our attitude towards power and the character
of authority. The culture of power reflects the power equation
between state and society and represents the individual and
collective behavior of members of the three groups4 in relation to
the state. This equation is determined by the realities of geography,
climate, topography, and the historical experience generated by
human efforts to overcome and exploit these objective limitations
on, and opportunities for, subsistence and growth. The culture
2 Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, eds, The Social Science Encyclopedia (Lahore:
Services Book Club, 1989), 635-639.
3 Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Unwin Books, 1960),
9.
4 Wielders, beneficiaries, and victims.

Introduction | 3
of power is the aggregate of the behavior of all individuals and

groups that exercise, or have exercised, power through the state
over a historically significant period. It is the human expression
of the evolution of the state and the determinant of the behavior
of the state and its officials towards each other and the people
governed. Certain indicators that help us determine the nature
of a particular region’s culture of power include the condition of
the institution of private property, the presence of autonomous
institutions that can lawfully challenge the power of the ruling
class, the prevalence of moral relationships between servants
of the state, the composition and cohesion of the ruling class,
the degree to which the intelligentsia is dependent on the state
apparatus, the position given to the rulers by the ideology or
religion they use to legitimize their dominance, the allocation of
resources to the internal security apparatus and armed forces, the
functioning of the financial administration and criminal justice
systems, and the discretionary powers of the supreme executive
and those officials or institutions that exercise power in his
name.
c) Oriental Despotism: The term “oriental despotism” is certainly
a Euro-centric construct that generalizes about the nature of
state-power in the non-Western world. Insofar as generalizations
go, however, oriental despotism expresses the historical truth
that until the advent of modern totalitarianism the vast majority
of over-centralized and despotic states were to be found in the
“orient”. One of the most vigorous expositions of the exercise
of power by the state in the pre-modern world is Karl Wittfogel’s
Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power5 which,
however, suffers from certain limitations. Wittfogel, for example,
cites examples from Hawaii and Mesoamerica in an effort to
prove the link between the hydraulic mode of environmental
exploitation and the rise of despotism, and thus the label
“oriental” is misleading.
d) The Continental Bureaucratic Empire (or State): A possible
substitute for oriental despotism, which is free from racial stigma
5 Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New

Haven: Carl Purington Rollins Printing Office of the Yale University Press,
1963).

and is not Euro-centric, that can be used to describe a centralized

state headed by a dominant or omnipotent executive ruling through
a class of appointed servants is the continental bureaucratic
empire.6 The continental bureaucratic empire is almost as old as
human civilization itself. The first such states arose in the river
valleys of what are today the states of Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and
China, and later spread to the territories that presently comprise
Iran, Italy, Greece, India, Mesoamerica, and Japan. The primary
objective of these states was the regulation and protection of the
distribution and production of food. Despots, who monopolized
access to the agricultural surplus, initially through brute force, but
eventually through a class of intermediaries – the bureaucrats –
ruled these societies. In Egypt, the priestly and scribe class served
as bureaucrats. In empire-hungry societies like Assyria or the
Roman Empire, soldiers and pro-consuls did the administrating.7
The Chinese, always the innovators, developed the first
competitive examination system.8 The bureaucratic structures
6 The terms continental bureaucratic empire and continental bureaucratic state

can be used interchangeably. When applied, both terms indicate that the rul-
ing class comprises primarily the appointed servants of the central executive
authority distributed for the purposes of administration over geographic sub-
units.
7 The example of Egypt is particularly instructive. More than ninety percent of
all Egyptians now, as in ancient times, live along the Nile River on less than one
twenty-fifths of the country’s total land area. To the east and west of the culti-
vable strip lie deserts, to north is the Mediterranean Sea, and to the south lay
hostile Nubian tribes. It is easy to see how a sedentary population attached to a
tiny trip of cultivable land trapped between a river that floods regularly and en-
croaching deserts, required strong centralized control to survive. Once, around
3200 BC, such control was established, the same environmental and geographic
conditions allowed the perpetuation of arbitrary despotism by a succession of
God-Kings until 31 BC, when Egypt was annexed by the Roman Empire. Soon
thereafter, Rome too succumbed to ideocratic arbitrary rule by rulers claiming
to be deities.
8 In Imperial China, “…all legitimate power was limited to officialdom, and no
significant forms of power were supposed to be at the command of any other
element of the population, regardless of social station…. Whereas in other so-
cieties merchants and gentry landlords wielded legitimate economic power, in
China they were treated as though they did not or should not exist. Merely to
suggest that landlords had, for example, local power was to imply corruption.
The mandarinate made sure that officialdom had a total monopoly of power,
and that no individual pushed his own special interests.” Lucian W. Pye and
Mary W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

Introduction | 5
of other continental states fell somewhere between these three

models.9 All these continental bureaucratic states, however, shared
a particular culture of power. In this culture of power, the center
of the political, social, economic, cultural, and religious universe
was an absolute despot or monarch. The servants of the state
were his personal servants. He held the powers of life and death,
fortune and destitution, honor and disgrace, over all subjects and
was answerable to no one on earth. All land, commerce, wealth,
and labor were owned, at least in theory, by the monarch.10 Any
local attempt to share power with the center, or expression of
disagreement, was tantamount to treason. Quality of life rose
and fell with the ability and will of the monarch to manipulate
the governmental machinery at his disposal. A feeble monarch
1985), 57. China, owing to a combination of Confucian ethics and Legalist
politics, established one of the most durable continental bureaucratic empires
in history. From its unification in 221 BC to the present day, China’s periods
of unification have a combined duration far greater than the periods of break-
downs. The opposite is true of the subcontinent.
9 Writes Gibbon of the Antonine Emperors of Rome (AD 96-180): “The vast
extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power…The armies
were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose
characters and authority commanded involuntary respect”. These virtuous and
wise emperors, however, “…must often have recollected the instability of a
happiness which depends on the character of a single man. The fatal moment
was perhaps approaching” when the succession of competent rulers would fail,
and the empire be plunged into chaos.” Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, Abridged and with an Introduction by Frank C. Bourne
(New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1963), 73. At the local level “…all the various
powers of executive government were committed to the Imperial magistrate,
the ordinary magistrates of the commonwealth languished in obscurity, without
vigor, and almost without business.” Ibid., 66.
10 “Historically, Iran has been an arbitrary society where there has been no state,
social class, law and politics as observed in European history and explained
and analysed by European theorists. The system of arbitrary rule was based on
the state monopoly of property rights, and on the concentrated – although not
necessarily centralized – bureaucratic and military power to which it gave rise.
There could be no rights of property ownership in land, only privileges which
the state granted to individuals (and some clans and communities), and which
it could therefore withdraw at any time.” Homa Katouzian, State and Society
in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London:
I. B. Tauris, 2000), 2. Furthermore, “…both the mighty and the humble rightly
understood that anything was possible. Just as the chief minister’s life and prop-
erty could be taken at the will of the ruler, the humblest person could become
chief minister at the ruler’s pleasure.” Ibid., 4. At present, Iran continues to be
subjected to ideocratic arbitrary rule – even though the rulers are now priests,
Iran’s arbitrary culture of power remains unreformed.

would quickly consign the state apparatus to disintegration. A

strong and capable one would rapidly accumulate wealth, invest it
in the armed forces, wage wars to expand his tax base, and build
great monuments to overawe the masses and future generations.
The mode of governance comprising an omnipotent executive
legitimized by divine sanction ruling through a class of appointed
servants can be referred to as ideocratic arbitrary rule. Thus,
continental bureaucratic empires are generally hostile to the
existence of autonomous institutions. One of this inquiry’s
primary undertakings is to determine the extent to which the
historical experience of governance of the Indian subcontinent
fits the pattern of continental bureaucratic empires.
e) Ideocratic Complex: The term ideocratic refers to a set of beliefs
or doctrines used by the state for the purpose of legitimacy.
Historically, continental bureaucratic empires employ either
religion, divine sanction, or, in modern times, an ideology
grounded on unquestionable assumptions, to place their rulers
above lawful opposition. The ideocratic complex refers to those
institutions, personnel, and practices, that cater to the legitimacy
requirements of the ruler, and may range from astrologers and
poets, to priests and the academia. The fact that in continental
bureaucratic empires the persons employed in the ideocratic
complex are salaried employees of the state enables them to
function as a bureaucratic intelligentsia socially and economically
dependant on the apparatus.11 This intelligentsia supplies the
rulers with the aesthetic and intellectual input that enables the
11 This dependence could have fatal results. In 212 BC Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi,
who had brought about China’s first imperial unification, decided “…to con-
duct a purge of scholars, some 460 being condemned to death. Not even the
protest of the crown prince, Fu Su, could stem the rising tide of his anger at
‘alchemists who had wasted millions without obtaining any elixir and scholars
who said that the throne lacked virtue.’ Prince Fu Su had dared to suggest that
the killing of so many Confucian scholars might unsettle the population. To
counter dissidence, the First Emperor banished Fu Su, along with his support-
ers, and hasted the destruction of city walls.” Arthur Cotterell, China: A History
(London: Pimlico, 1995), 92. In AD 845, the Tang Chinese Empire, to bring
Buddhism and other “foreign faiths” under the control of the imperial civil ser-
vice, confiscated monastic property and dismissed “260,500 monks and nuns.”
Ibid., 158. At present, the roles of “alchemists” in continental bureaucratic em-
pires are played by consultants and development experts who exploit the ruler’s
un-wisdom in order to pursue self-enrichment, out of public funds.

Introduction | 7
former, in most cases, to live in a world of make-believe.12

f) The State of Laws: England’s historical experience of governance
progressed in such a manner that in 1688 there emerged on its soil
a rationally derived constitutional order, or State of Laws, based
upon the supremacy of representative institutions and private
enterprise. The process that ultimately bore fruit that fateful year
was initiated centuries earlier in 1215, when King John, under
pressure from his barons, signed Magna Charta. The mode of
historical evolution found among the Anglo-Saxons is, of course,
not entirely without parallel. The city-states of Renaissance
Italy were in many respects merchant-aristocracies governed by
laws, and the Netherlands approximated, and at times exceeded,
England in the quality of its representative institutions and the
reach of its private enterprise. In Europe’s classical antiquity,
there were also the examples of the Roman Republic and
Athenian democracy, whereas its medieval civilization, based on
the feudal decentralization of administrative and judicial power
and aristocratic and corporate privileges, was also resistant to
bureaucratic centralization.13 What makes the Anglo-Saxons
12 Mao Zedong, the ruler of Communist China from 1949-1976, “…knew by
heart the lessons of the dynastic histories. It was not chance that led him to
choose, among all his imperial predecessors, the First Emperor of the Qin – who
throughout Chinese history had been feared and reviled as the epitome of harsh
rule – as the man against whom he wished to measure himself. ‘You accuse us
of acting like Qin Shihuangdi,’ he once told a group of liberal intellectuals. ‘You
are wrong. We surpass him a hundred times. When you berate us for imitating
his despotism, we are happy to agree! Your mistake is that you did not say so
enough’….To Mao, the killing of opponents – or simply of those who disagreed
with his political aims – was an unavoidable, indeed, a necessary, ingredient
of broader political campaigns.” Philip Short, Mao: A Life (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1999), 630-631. More than two thousand years separated Mao
from the First Emperor, and yet, far from becoming less arbitrary, state power
in Maoist China was manifestly more destructive, unpredictable, personalized,
and centralized than ever before. Cultures of power do not exhibit innate capac-
ity for substantial change.
13 “The political history of the medieval west is especially complicated because
it is a survey of numberless tiny areas which owed their existence to the frag-
mentation of the economy and society and to the fact that public powers were
monopolized by the leaders of these relatively isolated groups. This…was one
of the main consequences of the feudal system. Yet the reality for the west in
the middle ages was not only the fact that government was split up into small
particles but also the fact that vertical and horizontal powers were entangled.
People in the middle ages did not always know to which of the many lords,
the Church and individual churches, the towns, princes, and kings, they were

stand out, is the vastly superior scale and durability of their

achievements in each of these respects, their ability to export
their culture of power across continents by colonization and, if
charged with the governance of densely settled areas with strong
political traditions of their own, to develop a synthesis.14 One
of the most important areas that came under British dominion
was the subcontinent. One of the contentions of this inquiry
subordinate. We can observe this complexity even at the administrative and ju-
dicial level in the jurisdictional conflicts with which medieval history is filled.”
Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization: 400-1500, trans. Julia Barrow (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1984), 95-96. That said, the feudal system entered a period
of crisis in western and central Europe in the 1200s and 1300s, and gradually
the corporate institutions of the medieval world, such as the Estates–General
of France and the Cortes of Spain, gave way to continental bureaucratic states
governed directly by appointees of royal councils. A combination of territorial
expansion, population growth, and modernization drove these changes in Eu-
rope. Ibid., 104-105.
14 “The English colonies – and that was one of the main reasons for their prosper-
ity – have always enjoyed more internal freedom and political independence
than those of other nations; nowhere was this principle of liberty applied more
completely than in the states of New England.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democ-
racy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed., J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper-
Collins, 2000), 39. Tocqueville elaborates: “All the general principles on which
modern constitutions rest, principles which most Europeans in the seventeenth
century scarcely understood and whose dominance in Great Britain was then
far from complete, are recognized and given authority by the laws of New Eng-
land; the participation of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes,
the responsibility of government officials, individual freedom, and trial by jury
– all these things were established without question and with practical effect.”
Ibid., 43. Tocqueville was particularly impressed with the practice of self-taxa-
tion: “…taxes are, it is true, voted by the legislature, but they are assessed and
collected by the township; the establishment of a school is obligatory, but the
township builds it, pays for it, and controls it. In France, the state tax collector
receives the communal taxes; in America the township tax collector collects the
state taxes. So, whereas with us the central government lends its agents to the
commune, in America the township lends its agents to the central government.”
Ibid., 68. Tocqueville, accustomed to French bureaucratic centralization, was
intrigued by the strange absence of bureaucracy in a vast continental empire
such as the United States: “In a very small number of previously defined cases,
the township and county officials are bound to communicate the results of their
actions to the officers of the central government. But there is no central-govern-
ment official with the duty to make general police regulations or ordinances for
the execution of the laws, to keep in routine communication with the township
and country officials, or to supervise their conduct, direct their behavior, and
punish their faults. So there is no central point on which the radii of adminis-
trative power converge.” Ibid., 74. It was the Anglo-Saxon culture of power,
completely liberated from the social constraints of England, that had produced
such unique results.

Introduction | 9
is that at the advent of the British Empire in India in 1757, the

culture of power of the Anglo-Saxons had matured to a stage
where it was highly resistant to the pull of the subcontinent’s
long-standing tradition of ideocratic arbitrary rule by despots
and their appointed servants. Responsible criticism or praise
for the activities of the British in India is possible provided one
understands of how, and why, the historical process in England
did not lead to the emergence of a bureaucratic state. The
contrast with France, Prussia, and Russia, all of which sacrificed
the autonomy of their civil and religious institutions at the altar
of bureaucratic centralization15 contemporaneously with the
emergence of a participatory democracy in England, is one
aspect of European history that is nearly always overlooked by
students of imperialism and colonialism.16 To discuss the legacy
15 Of Russia under Nicholas I (1825-1855): “The emperor surrounded himself

with military men to the extent that in the later part of his reign there were
almost no civilians among his immediate assistants. Also, he relied heavily on
special emissaries, most of them generals of his suite, who were sent all over
Russia on particular assignments, to execute immediately the will of the sover-
eign” they represented an extension, so to speak, of the monarch’s own person.
In fact, the entire machinery of government came to be permeated by the mili-
tary spirit of direct orders, absolute obedience, and precision, at least as far as
official reports and appearances were concerned. Corruption and confusion,
however, lay immediately behind this façade of discipline and smooth func-
tioning.” The Third Department of His Majesty’s Own Chancery, the political
police “which came to symbolize to many Russians the reign of Nicholas I”
acted as the autocrat’s main weapon against subversion and revolution and as
his principal agency for controlling the behavior of subjects and for distributing
punishments and rewards among them” and were “incessantly active”. Nicholas
V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977),
360-361. The Czar “…paid the most painstaking attention to the huge and
difficult business of government, did his own inspecting of the country, rushed
to meet all kinds of emergencies, from cholera epidemics and riots to rebellion
in military settlements, and bestowed special care on the army. Beyond all that,
and beyond even the needs of defense, he wanted to follow the sacred principle
of autocracy, to be a true father of his people concerned with their daily lives,
hopes, and fears.” Ibid., 361-362. The arbitrariness of the Czarist system can be
gauged by this fact: Czar Paul (1795-1801) dismissed thousands from official
positions. Czar Alexander (1801-1825) granted an amnesty and “restored to
their former positions up to twelve thousand men dismissed by Paul”. Ibid.,
336. Both dismissal and amnesty flowed from the arbitrary powers of the czar.
16 Writes de Tocqueville of the intendant or commissioners appointed by the Roy-
al Council to govern provinces as collector-magistrates: “In reality the inten-
dant controlled the government”. He “…was a man of common birth, always
a stranger to the province, young, a man with his career still to be made. He

of the British Empire in India without first comprehending the

worldview, culture, and historical experience of governance, of
the men who built and operated it is to discard even the pretence
of objectivity.
g) Legal Democracy: When continental bureaucratic empires
introduce a measure of public participation in the affairs of state
through reforms inspired by the State of Laws as extant in the
Anglo-Saxon countries, the final product is a legal democracy.17
This form of government is similar to the Anglo-Saxon model
of participatory governance based on self-taxation in that it
requires the establishment of a full range of formal institutions
and practices associated with popular sovereignty such as regular
elections, municipal corporations, declarations of civil rights and
liberties, district boards and councils, and so on and so forth. The
differences, however, are numerous and originate in the historical
experience of governance of continental bureaucratic empires,
which dictates that the powers of taxation, district administration,
and policing, be retained by the bureaucracy. Soon, the bureaucratic
did not exercise his powers by virtue of election, birth or purchase. He was
chosen by the government from the junior members of the Council and was al-
ways subject to dismissal…he was both administrator and judge…Beneath him,
and appointed by him, an official removable at his discretion was placed in
each canton: the subdelegate.” De Tocqueville then relates an account from the
memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson that emerged from a conversation with Mr.
Law who stated “I would never have believed what I saw when I was control-
ler of finance. Know that the kingdom of France is ruled by thirty intendants.
You have neither a parlement, nor estates, nor governors; it is thirty subordi-
nate officials, detached for duty in the provinces, on whom the happiness or
misfortune of the those provinces, their prosperity or their poverty, depend.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, trans. Alan S. Ka-
han, Edited and with an Introduction by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 120. Furthermore, the French
“mounted police” that “were spread out over the kingdom in small units” were
“placed under the intendant’s authority.” Ibid., 123.
17 An interesting comparison that further reveals the contrast between cultures
of power within the West is provided by George Kennan: “Tocqueville, believ-
ing the strength of American democracy to lie in its local institutions, traveled
almost exclusively in the provinces, greatly neglected the organs of the central
authority, visited Washington only briefly, towards the end of his journey, and
with only perfunctory interest. Custine, coming to a country where power was
centralized as nowhere else in the Christian world, quite properly and naturally
confined his attention largely to the capital city, the court, and the central ap-
paratus of government.” George F. Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and his
‘Russia in 1839’ (London: Hutchinson, 1972), 19.

Introduction | 11
apparatus finds itself in conflict with politicians seeking to use

their newly acquired powers to direct state patronage towards
their supporters, victimize their rivals, and secure, at election
time, favorable results. Depending on the intellectual and moral
qualities of the civil servants and the emergent political class, the
esprit de corps and character of the army and bureaucracy, and
the societal context, the results of the experiment may vary from
(i) an outright victory for either the bureaucracy or politicians, (ii)
a stable compromise, (iii) a continuous though contained tussle,
and (iv) a dangerous dis-equilibrium that leads to the termination
of the experiment by military coup, revolution, or the destruction
of the state.18
As the first attempt to understand and articulate the culture of
power of the subcontinent in a proper historical research framework,
this inquiry is, in many respects, an exploration of un-chartered waters
with conceptual tools of analysis. Many of the key terms used, such as
culture of power, continental bureaucratic empire, the State of Laws,
legal democracy, ideocratic arbitrary rule, and the historical experience
of governance, are not in common usage. At a less abstract level, the
inquiry, by placing in comparative perspective, the historical experience
of governance of the subcontinent under its greatest ruling groups,
is of considerable utility to students of government, bureaucracy,
18 An excellent example of a failed legal democracy is Germany between 1919 and
1932: “Parliament having demonstrated its incapacity to give effective govern-
ment to Germany, the country now passed into a condition similar to that which
prevailed in Rome in the fifth decade before Christ, when the civil power lost
its authority and the soldiers and demagogues took over. The fall of the Müller
cabinet marked the beginning of a degree of military intervention in German
politics that had been exceeded only by the behaviour of the Third Army Com-
mand in the years 1916-1918. On this occasion, however, the military politi-
cians lacked the will to take responsibility boldly into their own hands. They
preferred to operate through chosen agents whom they could control and of
whom they could dispose when they had outlived their usefulness. This was
a difficult game at best, and they weren’t very good at it. In the end they lost
heart, and their last agent became their master.” Gordon A. Craig, Germany:
1866-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 533. The “last agent”
refers to Hitler. The Prussianization of united Germany by Bismarck created
an efficient and highly centralized political system that rested on the Kaiser’s
command of the Prussian army and his unlimited constitutional powers, which
included the right to interpret a truly Byzantine constitution, behind the façade
of an elected but powerless parliament at the center and autonomy for the non-
Prussian states within the Germany. See Ibid., “The Institutional Structure of
the Empire”, 38-60.

leadership, and even civil society. Indeed, in order to understand the

causes of the widely acknowledged deterioration in the governance of
the subcontinent since independence one must know how power has
been exercised by successive rulers.
An essential indicator of the quality of governance is the level of
arbitrariness in decision-making, administration, and the ability of the
state to perform its core functions.19 It must be borne in mind that the
idea of the state as an agent of social progress and welfare is a product
of the European experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. These functions are, no doubt, extremely important for any
modern state, but are quickly rendered irrelevant if there is a persistent
failure to deliver on the core functions. A state that cannot maintain law
and order or manage its financial administrative machinery is not likely
to succeed in attaining development goals.20 The great challenge for the
modern state is expanding the scope and effectiveness of its welfare
activities while securing a high level of performance in the delivery of
core functions.
The level of arbitrariness, which is normally quite high in continental
bureaucratic empires, stems from a culture of power that leads the
19 The maintenance of law and order and the collection of taxes.
20 That said, modern states can combine welfare activities with extraordinarily vi-
olent and arbitrary behavior. The experience of the Soviet Union, the twentieth
century welfare state par excellence believed by millions of otherwise intelligent
people to represent the hope for humanity clearly indicates this: “In January
1930, Molotov planned the destruction of the kulaks, who were divided into
three categories”. The first was to be “immediately eliminated,” the second to
be herded into concentration camps, the third, to be deported. “During 1930-
31, about 1.68 million people were deported east and north. Within months
Stalin’s and Molotov’s plan had led to 2,200 rebellions involving more than
800,000 people. Kaganovich and Mikoyan led expeditions into the country-
side with brigades of OGPU troopers and armoured trains like warlords. The
magnates’ handwritten letters to Stalin ring with the fraternal thrill of their war
for human betterment against unarmed peasants….” Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Phoenix, 2003), 47. By 1937, about
5.7 million households, or nearly 15 million people, “had been deported, many
of them dead.” Ibid., 87. “The Party justified its ‘dictatorship’ through purity
of faith. Their scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded
as ‘scientific’ truth. Since ideology was so important every leader had to be,
or seen to be – an expert on Marxism-Leninism, so that these ruffians spent
their weary nights studying to improve their esoteric credentials, dreary articles
on dialectical materialism.” Ibid., 89. The construction of the 227 kilometers
long Baltic-White Sea canal was accomplished in the early 1930s by the “Phar-
onic slavery of 170,000 prisoners, of whom 25,000 died in a year and a half.”
Ibid.,123.

Introduction | 13
executive to treat the entire country as if it were his personal estate,

and public servants as if they are personal retainers. These attitudes
militate against the attainment of the general prosperity and social
progress achieved by the industrial democracies over the past sixty
years. Reforming this overriding tendency in continental bureaucratic
empires, which is manifestly evident in the behavior of Indian politicians
and bureaucrats and other South Asian elites and leaders, requires
knowledge of its origins and historical evolution. The need for historical
analysis focused on the culture of power is made even more urgent by
the emergence in India and Pakistan of well-organized national parties
that advocate mutually exclusive utopias at the expense of the existing
order. In India, the conditions for the rise of these elements, however,
has been created in large measure by the inability of the Indian National
Congress, which ruled India almost uninterrupted for its first fifty years,
to exercise power in a manner compatible with the survival of the State
of Laws made possible by the British imperial legacy. In Pakistan, the
same can be said of the westernized elite of modernist Muslims that
created it and have ruled it since independence, albeit in the context of
far greater instability and a relatively meager imperial inheritance.
Above all else, however, one need note that the present inquiry can
serve as the starting point for future investigation, in greater detail, not
only of its individual components specific to the subcontinent but also
of the cultures of power of other states, regions, and civilizations. As
it is, a discussion of the culture of power of the subcontinent cannot
be complete without referring to the historical evolution of the Anglo-
Saxons, Arabs, or Turks.
The only literary source that has so far come to notice that directly
deals with the topic is Blanning’s The Culture of Power and the Power of
Culture in Old Regime Europe.21 As the title of the source indicates, the
focus is on seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, and Blanning
does not define or elaborate upon the concept of the culture of power.
Principally, his contribution focuses on aesthetics though it does furnish
useful information about England and France, which is of direct
relevance to the inquiry.
Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism places too much emphasis on the
role of hydraulic agriculture as the root cause of arbitrary rule. Insofar as
21 T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime
Europe 1660-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

the Maurya Empire is concerned or even Harappa, Wittfogel’s argument

stands on a fairly firm empirical base. In dealing with the Timurid
Empire, however, the link between the hydraulic mode of management
and the emergence of arbitrary despotism breaks down. Under the
Timurids, no more than one-twentieth of the total cultivated land in the
subcontinent was canal irrigated. This percentage rose to about one-
fourth under the considerably less arbitrary rule of the British. Clearly,
in both cases a greater historical force than just hydraulic management
was conditioning the behavior of the state apparatus. This force, the
inquiry will attempt to prove, was the culture of power of the ruling
class.
For the chapters on the Harappan, Maurya, and Gupta empires, for
example, the secondary sources selected range from John Keay’s India:
A History,22 to Kosambi’s classic The Culture and Civilization of Ancient
India.23 For the period of Turkish-Timurid rule, the main selection
includes the Ain-i-Akbari,24 Athar Ali’s The Mughal Nobility Under
Aurungzeb,25 and Abraham Eraly’s The Last Spring: The Lives and Times
of the Great Mughals.26 It is noted, however, that the original Mughal
historians and chronicles, far from criticizing state policies, rarely
express even the slightest reservations or skepticism. This is no doubt
due to the omnipotence of the executive power many of the Mughal
writers served and the absence of lawful means to oppose the will of
the emperor. The British period draws on, among many others, the
testimony of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan,27 the hard statistical insight of
The Cambridge Economic History of India,28 and the remarkably perceptive
evaluations of the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform
22 John Keay, India: A History (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

23 D. D. Kosambi, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical
Outline (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1985).
24 Abul Fazl Allami, A’in-I Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann (Calcutta: Calcutta Ma-
drassah, 1873; reprint, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2003).
25 M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurungzeb (New Delhi: Asia Publish-
ing House, 1970).
26 Abraham Eraly, The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals
(New Delhi: Viking, 1997).
27 Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, trans., Colonel Graham
and Auckland Clovin, with an introduction by Francis Robinson (Karachi: Ox-
ford University Press, 2000).
28 Dharma Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol II, c. 1757
– c. 1970 (Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the Cambridge University, 1982;
reprint, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1984).

Introduction | 15
for 1933.29 The inquiry uses both descriptive and analytical methods
and is a series of integrated essays built around the culture of power.
The descriptive portion of each essay discusses the organization of
the state, the manner in which power was exercised, and the relative
position of the main indicators of the culture of power.30
The sources are divisible into three major categories. The first
comprise works that have contributed to the development of the
conceptual framework of the culture of power, the second includes
primary sources, and the third secondary sources. The first category
of sources cover a select range of books that deal directly or with
individual indicators of the culture of power such as private property,31
moral relationships,32 aesthetics and power, geography and the mode
of environmental exploitation,33 and societal contexts.34 The second
category consists of primary sources that describe the actual functioning
and organization of the state in the subcontinent during the periods
with which this inquiry is concerned. The two most important of these
sources are the Arthasastra35 and the Ain-i-Akbari. The former provides
a detailed description of the exercise of state power under Maurya rule
while the latter describes in almost overwhelming detail the administrative
organization of the Timurid Empire in the subcontinent.
In addition to the Arthasastra and the Ain, there are a host of primary
sources such as chronicles,36 memoirs,37 official histories,38 and travels,39
29 Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform Session 1933-34, vol I, part
I (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1934).
30 Autonomous institutions, private property, moral relationships, legitimization
etc.
31 Robert Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
32 Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity
(New York: The Free Press, 1995).
33 Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism.
34 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).
35 Kautilya’s Arthasastra, trans. Dr. R. Shamasastry’s (Bangalore: Government
Press, 1915).
36 Khafi Khan, History of Alamgir, trans., S. Moin-ul-Haq (Karachi: Pakistan His-
torical Society, 1975).
37 Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, trans. Alexander Rogers, ed., Henry Beveridge, vol 1, Years
1-13 (n.p. 1909-1914 reprint; Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers,
1978).
38 Inayat Khan, Shahjahan-nama, trans. A. R. Fuller, eds., W. Begley and Z. A.
Desai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).
39 François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire: AD 1656-1668, trans. Irving
Brock, revised and improved edition, Archibald Constable (London: Archibald

from which the data relevant to the study of the culture of power has
been extracted. The third category is that of secondary sources and
includes general histories,40 multi-volume narratives,41 biographies,42 and
histories that deal with specific topics43 but contain material relevant to
the culture of power.
Given the sweep of the inquiry, its conceptual nature, and the
relative novelty of its argument and interpretation, it has been found
conducive to the integrity of the research process to rely on information
from known and respected primary and secondary sources. Much effort
has been made to ensure fairness and objectivity in the selection of the
sources.
The inquiry is organized into eleven chapters. Chapter I discusses
the emergence of the Indus Valley civilization and the likelihood that
it operated as a continental bureaucratic empire. Chapter II elaborates
upon the formation of the Maurya Empire and draws on the available
documentary evidence to determine the extent to which it conformed
to the general pattern of behavior and organization for continental
bureaucratic empires. Chapter III deals with the rise and fall of
the Gupta Empire and seeks to determine the extent the norms of
governance extant under the Mauryas continued to prevail.
Chapter IV analyzes the Arabs and Turks prior to their arrival in
India and contends that they had developed cultures of power similar to
the pattern of ideocratic arbitrary rule by an omnipotent executive and
his appointed servants prevalent in the subcontinent.44 The implication,
Constable and Company, 1891; reprint, Karachi: Indus Publications, n.d.).
40 Hermann Kulke, and Dietmar Rothermund A History of India. New Delhi:
Manohar Publications, 1991.
41 Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. vols. 1-4 (Lon-
don: Cassell, 2002).
42 John Clive, Macaulay: The Shaping of a Historian (Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1987).
43 Danny Danzinger and John Gillingham, 1215: The Year of Magna Carta (Lon-
don: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003).
44 The territorial expansion of the Arab Empire “demanded a new style of govern-
ment.” The Ummayads established the first Muslim dynastic state (661-750)
and absorbed the cultures of power of the Persians and Byzantines. Mercenaries
replaced the tribal armies of early empire, the focal points of the administra-
tion shifted from the city-states of Arabia to the metropolitan centers and ag-
ricultural hinterlands of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and real power was
transferred away from the Arab aristocracy to slaves and civil servants subservi-
ent to the rulers. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 26-27.

Introduction | 17
therefore, is that aside from the Islamic rhetoric of the newcomers, there
were no substantial differences in the manner in which the Umayyads,
Abbasids, or Ghaznavids, exercised power and the Hindu rulers they
replaced. Chapter V discusses the formation of a settler-colonial state
ruled by culturally Persianized Turks,45 perpetually strengthened by the
arrival of migrants from other parts of the Muslim world, as the first
major state formation within the subcontinent for which clear written
historical evidence of ideocratic arbitrary rule is available. Chapter
VI deals with the establishment of the Timurid Empire in India, its
Under the Abbasids (750-1258), who overthrew the Ummayads, “…within a
generation a new ruling elite of high officials had been created” that comprised
a few family members, former slaves, and Persian converts to Islam. Ibid., 33. In
addition to a vizier, who supervised the daily operations of the state, there were
several ministries. Furthermore, “A ruler governing through a hierarchy of of-
ficials spread over a wide area had to make sure they did not become too strong
or abuse the power they exercised in his name. A system of intelligence kept
the caliph informed of what was happening in the provinces….” This “Absolute
rule mediated through a bureaucracy” that collected taxes, supervised massive
public works, especially canal construction in the Baghdad region, administered
justice, and was assisted by a standing army of mercenaries and Turkish slaves,
made the Arab Empire one of the greatest continental bureaucratic empires
of its time. Ibid., 35. Eventually, the Turks overthrew their Arab masters, and
established great continental bureaucratic empires of their own in the Middle
East, Persia, and the subcontinent.
45 The greatest of the continental bureaucratic empires established by the Turks
was the Ottoman Empire (1326-1924). At its height the Ottoman Empire
comprised more than thirty kingdoms, and taxed its subjects with “rigour and
efficiency.” Andrew Wheatcroft, The Ottomans (London: Viking, 1993), 72.
Salaried officials, called emins, were deputed by the sultan to collect revenues
directly from the urban centers, while a system of tax farming, known as mül-
tezim, was used for the countryside. Ibid. The janissaries, the elite corps of highly
disciplined slave-soldiers, were at the heart of the Ottoman system – much like
a central administrative and military reserve that the sultan could draw upon
to impose his arbitrary will upon the recalcitrant. “To be an Ottoman meant
acquiring privilege, visible to the outer world in the multitudinous distinctions
of official rank. The life of a state servant, military or civil, was unquestionably
more comfortable than those who stood outside the charmed circle”, until, of
course, as punishment for failure or disobedience, real or perceived, the sultan’s
executioners paid a visit carrying silken cords with which to strangle the errant
official. At that moment it really didn’t matter whether the officer was the grand
vizier, a general, or a commissioner. Ibid., 75-77. Within the vast personal estate
of the sultan, his officers carved out smaller networks of patronage, promoted
their family members, and “were often rapacious because they feared that their
opportunities for gain might suddenly be cut off ”. Ibid., 77. When the central
power fell into the hands of the harem party and degenerate janissaries, the Ot-
toman Empire went into decline and the state became even more arbitrary and
predatory.

consolidation, and its expansion, and provides some of the clearest

historical evidence of the workings of a continental bureaucratic empire.
The study of the structure of the Timurid Empire makes it possible to
theorize about the nature of the state under the Mauryas and Guptas,
in addition to revealing the behavioral patterns exhibited by a society at
the mercy of an omnipotent, and often predatory, state.
Chapter VII covers the culture of power of the Anglo-Saxons as
it developed in England and takes into the consideration the historical
process that led to the emergence of a State of Laws.46 This helps
explain why the British attempted to reform the exercise of power in
the subcontinent in accordance with the norms derived from their rather
unique culture of power. Chapter VIII deals with the initial mishaps of
the East India Company as it attempted to reconstitute itself as both a
trading corporation and a political entity. The importance of this period
is that the British began the introduction of reforms unprecedented in
the history of the subcontinent, including private property, encouraging
autonomous institutions, and the rule of law. It was during this period
that many of the institutions, such as permanent civil and judicial
services recruited on merit and constituted as autonomous sub-units of
the state, were founded and developed.
Chapter IX evaluates and assesses the British Raj. The importance
of this period stems from the persistent efforts of the British to reform
the exercise of power in the subcontinent by making it less arbitrary and
also introducing a measure of popular participation, which ultimately
led to the introduction of legal democracy in the early twentieth century.
Chapters X and XI use the indicators for the culture of power and
the understanding of the historical experience of governance gleaned
from the study of state structure and behavior, to identify the ways in
which the Indian and Pakistani leaderships have reverted to treating the
state as a personal estate, and analyzes the increasing likelihood of the
reassertion of ideocratic arbitrary rule.47
46 Writes Voltaire: “It has not been without some difficulty that liberty has been
established in England, and the idol of arbitrary power has been drowned in
seas of blood; nevertheless, the English do not think they have purchased their
laws at too high a price. Other nations have shed as much blood, but then the
blood they spilled in defense of their liberty served only to enslave them the
more.” Ben Ray Redman, ed., The Portable Voltaire (New York: Viking Penguin
Inc,, 1977), “Selections from the English Letters”, 514.
47 Voltaire, reflecting upon the uniformities and divergences evident in a compara-
tive historical study of the human condition, asserted in the “Recapitulation”

Introduction | 19
The Conclusion summarizes the preceding discussion, and indicates

how the culture of power of the subcontinent remains a challenge, indeed
a threat, to both state and society, in this part of the world. Although
providing a prescription for improvement is beyond the purview of this
work, it is hoped the pages that follow make evident that any serious
attempt at the reform of the exercise of state power in the subcontinent
should be considered very carefully and designed to reduce the level
of arbitrariness. The mechanics of such a reform, however, need to be
reflected upon, and determined by, senior public servants and leaders
cognizant and appreciative of the enormity of the task – progressive
alteration of the culture of power of the subcontinent.
of his Essays on the Manner and Spirit of Nations: “From all that we have
observed in this sketch of universal history, it follows that whatever concerns
human nature is the same from one end of the universe to the other, and that
what is dependent upon custom differs…. The dominion of custom is much
more extensive than that of nature, and influences all manners and usages. It
diffuses variety over the face of the universe. Nature establishes unity, and ev-
erywhere settles a few invariable principles; the soil is still the same, but culture
produces various fruits. As nature has placed in the heart of man interest, pride,
and all the passions, it is no wonder that, during a period of about six centuries
we meet with a continual succession of crimes and disasters. If we go back to
earlier ages, we shall find them no better. Custom has ordered it so that evil has
everywhere operated in a different manner.” Ibid., 555.

CHAPTER I
THE FIRST RAJ:

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION 2250 BC – 1750 BC
A ncient India is a term that refers to the history of the subcontinent

prior to the advent of Muslim rule. It is also referred to as Hindu
India or “Early India”.1 The broad outline of this period is that the social,
cultural, economic, and political, norms associated with Hinduism,
ranging from the metaphysical ambiguities of Vedic lore and the caste
system, to the numbing amorality of the Arthashastra, and endless
internecine conflicts of the chivalric Rajputs, developed and attained a
high degree of maturity, albeit without producing a corpus of historical
texts.
This is a serious limitation as the only reliable source from which
it is possible to extract, determine, and analyze the culture of power is
written historical knowledge. In the absence of written records, one can
only make educated guesses based on the data provided by archaeology, a
host of other sciences such as numismatics, philology, and anthropology,
and analogical reasoning, about the manner in which power was
exercised by the rulers. However, size, duration, achievements, coupled
with the fact that the Harappans were the first to establish an extensive
civilized entity in the subcontinent, render them useful and relevant for
a detailed analysis. In fact, Karl Wittfogel’s understanding of the origins
and expansion of the state in areas conducive to large-scale irrigation
(hydraulic) agriculture provides a starting point. The state, he argues,
1 Romila Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD
1300 (London: Penguin Books, 2002).

… come[s] into being when an experimenting community

of farmers finds large sources of moisture in a dry but
potentially fertile area. A large quantity of water can be
channeled and kept within bounds only by the use of mass
labor; and this mass labor must be coordinated, disciplined,
and led. Thus a number of farmers eager to conquer arid
lowlands and plains are forced to invoke the organizational
devices which…offer the one chance of success: they must
work in cooperation with their fellows and subordinate
themselves to a directing authority2
…the hydraulic agriculturists outgrew and outfought

the majority of all neighboring peoples wherever local
conditions and international circumstances one-sidedly
favored an agro-managerial economy and statecraft.3
In the subcontinent, the state can trace it origins to the third millennium
BC when there arose in the Indus River Valley one of antiquity’s most
accomplished and urbanized civilizations. In terms of the territorial
extent, with a total land area of one million three hundred thousand
square kilometers4 and hundreds of important sites, the Harappans
dwarfed the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Elamites. At its height,
the Harappan Civilization stretched from Shortugai in the Oxus basin,
to Lothal in Indian Gujarat and Sutkagen-Dor in Pakistani Makran.5
Although considerable variation in rainfall exists across this vast expanse,
the entire area can be broadly categorized as arid or semi-arid.6 The size
of the Harappan civilization makes possible its division into six major
geographic sub-units or “domains”.7 These are the Eastern, Northern,
Central, Southern, Western, and Southeastern centered on Kalibangan,
Harappa, Ganweriwala, Mohenjodaro, Kuli, and Lothal, respectively.8
The location of cities and towns apparently conforms to the “riparian
2 Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, 18.

3 Ibid., 19.
4 Gregory Possehl, ed., Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (New
Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., 1982), 223.
5 Keay, India: A History, 11.
6 Possehl, ed., Harappan Civilization, 223.
7 Ibid., 20.
8 Ibid.

The First Raj: The Indus Valley Civilization 2250 BC – 1750 BC | 23
pattern” of the other great river valley civilizations.9

The core area of the Harappan Civilization is represented by the
major cities of Mohenjodaro, Kalibangan, and Harappa.10 In the northern
region of settlement, the plains are formed of alluvium deposited from
the hills by the Bolan river.11 At the southern extremity, there exists
the plain of Las extending ninety kilometers inland from the coast and
“composed of alluvium deposited by the Purali, Hab, and Malir”.12
Lake Manchar, fed by the flood channels of the Indus, swells to five
hundred square kilometers and contracts to thirty-six square kilometers
after monsoon, thus creating ideal conditions for agriculture.13 To the
southeast, in Gujarat, the plains between the marshy coasts and the
rugged interior “are remarkably flat where most of the rivers descending
from the highlands change into sluggish meandering streams.”14 The
Indus, though by no means a sluggish stream, “makes a deep S-shaped
curve” which adds to the total cultivable area.15 The Indus river system
is inundated during the spring snowmelt and the summer monsoons
makes it possible to raise crops in both summer and winter.16 In Sindh,
for example, the flood plain can extend up to sixteen kilometers17 or ten
miles – the same narrow band as the Nile when it floods.18
Equally important to the growth of early civilization was the role
played by rivers as communications arteries. Until the advent of the
chariot, the fastest and most secure means of travel were navigable rivers.
Here again, the Harappans are indebted to the Indus – a river marginally
more benevolent than “the dangerous, menacing source of sudden,
ruinous inundations, amid which the men of Sumer struggled...”19
The Harappans were also experts at water management and urban
development on a grand scale. In Gujarat, on the plateaus of Kathiawar,
are found numerous dykes, some as wide as sixty meters.20 Lothal’s
9 Ibid., 69.
10 Ibid., 12.
11 Ibid., 5.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 7.
15 Ibid., 5.
16 Ibid., 7.
17 Ibid.
18 Kosambi, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, 62.
19 J. M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),
52.
20 Ibid., 7.

acropolis had dimensions of one hundred and fifty by one hundred and
twenty feet, its walls enclosed the lower city, and the same pattern of
urban planning as Harappa and Mohenjodaro was followed.21 Impressive
as these features may sound for a city clearly on the periphery of the
civilization, they pale in comparison to the “770 feet long, about 120
feet wide and 15 feet deep” basin located east of Lothal.22 To place
the size of the basin, which was probably used to store irrigation water
or as a large dock in perspective, one need only note that Lothal itself
was “900 feet long and 750 feet wide”23 In the fertile plain between the
Sutlej and the Yamuna are found Harappan sites at Kotla Nihang Khan
(260 by 100 meters), Bara (550 by 330 meters) and Dher Majra (105 by
90 meters).24
The major city of the eastern region, Kalibangan, was founded
in 2400 BC as a planned city, seven hundred and fifty feet long, with
fortifications, a sewerage system, and brick built houses.25 Around
2250 BC, the city was abandoned, and subsequently rebuilt in a design
reflective of Harappa and Mohenjodaro with, for the first time, “a clear
distinction in Kalibangan between an acropolis and a separate lower
town” and the specifications of bricks and streets brought into line with
the two great cities.26
At the opposite extreme of the Harappan Civilization, in Pakistani
Makran, lies Sutkagen-Dor. The site is now thirty miles inland and
includes an acropolis, extensive fortifications, and an outer town.27 The
acropolis is “190 yards from north to south and 113 yards from east to
west, with a massive defensive wall approaching 30 feet in basic width…
armed with an uncertain number of rectangular towers.”28
The core area of the Harappan Civilization is determined by
Mohenjodaro and Harappa, which lie six hundred kilometers apart.29
Both cities were “at rough estimate, upwards of 3 miles in circuit”, and
each had an acropolis “400-500 yards from north to south and 200-300
yards from east to west, with a present maximum height of about 40 feet
21 Kulke, A History of India, 27.
22 Ibid., 28.
23 Ibid.
24 Possehl, ed., Harappan Civilization, 140-143.
26 Ibid.
27 Wheeler, The Indus Civilization, 60.
28 Ibid.

The First Raj: The Indus Valley Civilization 2250 BC – 1750 BC| 25
above the flood plain.”30 Harappa’s defensive wall is forty-five feet wide
at the base and there are twelve granaries fifty by twenty feet each “…
ranged symmetrically in two rows of six, with a central passage 23 feet
wide”.31 Mohenjodaro possesses the remains of a single granary “150
feet from east to west and 75 feet wide”.32 The total floor space of each
granary is around the same – about nine thousand feet.33 According to
Wheeler, “…there is at present no granary in the pre-classical world
comparable to the specialization of design and in monumental dignity
to the examples from the two Indus cities.”34
To this one may add the standardization of weights, measures, and
construction materials and estimates that place the population of the
Mohenjodaro and Harappa in the range of thirty thousand souls each.
To maintain such cities required not only “…effective transport, both
by river and road, but also a reliable rural surplus, a large rural force, and
some means of crop storage.”35 The level of urban development is an
indicator of political control over the hinterland that supplied the cities
with raw materials and food. In addition to religion, the nature of this
political control probably included military strength, and a strong civil
administration.36
Sumerian documents indicate trade in copper with a land (Meluhha)
believed to correspond to the Harappan Civilization. Contact between
the two civilizations is conclusively demonstrated by the discovery of
Indus seals in Mesopotamia37 whereas the presence of a Harappan seal
and pottery “in the Oxus basin confirms the source of Indus lapis lazuli”.38
Fitting neatly into the picture is the transition of the Namazga culture
of Southern Turkmenia to “…a fully urban status as evidenced by the
excavations at Altin Depe, with its large ziggurat and other structures
30 Wheeler, The Indus Civilization, 26.
31 Ibid., 33.
32 Ibid., 43.
33 Ibid., 44, 33.
34 Ibid., 36.
35 Keay, India: A History, 13
36 One writer theorizes that the static nature of the Indus cities combined with the
absence of archaeological evidence indicating the presence of royalty indicates
that “Fundamentalist priests and dogma held sway over the Indus cities. While
they ruled, there was no initiative, no science, no invention.” Aitzaz Ahsan, The
Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan (Lahore: Nehr Ghar Publications, 2001),
29-30.

indicating corporate labor and administrative functions”.39 Coupled

with the “stimulus-response nature” of the relationship between Sumer
and Elam40 it is apparent the Harappans were participants in the process
of interaction between third millennium BC civilizations.
Chronologically, the golden period of the Harappans lasted
about four hundred years starting from 2250 BC41 and resulted in the
“establishment of an extraordinary degree of uniformity over a vast
area”.42 The Harappans were probably proto-Australoid, or Dravidian,43
and their written language, found on more than twenty-five hundred
seals, bears resemblance “to the Dravidian tongues still used in southern
India”.44 The Harappan script, though still to be deciphered, appears,
like the pottery, tools, and seals, to have been “static”.45 Even the cities
show hardly any variation until the very end when planning breaks down
altogether and the civilization collapses.46 Equally intriguing is the fact
that out of the seventeen hundred and fifty-five seals found at Mature
Harappan sites, eleven hundred and fifty-six depict an animal with “the
body of a bull and the head of a zebra, from which head a single horn
curls majestically upwards and then forwards.”47
Paleo-climatic studies, pollen diagrams, and surviving specimens
of wood reveal that the environment in which the Harappans operated
and ultimately thrived was “little changed from the present day.”48 The
similarity between “geographical factors relevant to the settlements in the
Indus Valley” and Mesopotamia cannot be discounted.49 The productive
base of the Harappan Civilization was, like Egypt and Mesopotamia,
provided by the local variant of flood-irrigation regulated by dams and
dykes.50 Other important indications of Harappan excellence in water
management are to be found in the drainage systems of its great cities51
39 Ibid., 63.
40 Ibid., 62.
41 Roberts, History of the World, 97.
45 Kosambi, Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, 63.
46 Ibid.
49 Ibid., 3.
50 Kosambi, Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, 62.

The First Raj: The Indus Valley Civilization 2250 BC – 1750 BC | 27
and the usefulness of burnt bricks in flood control.52

The uniform nature, and large scale, of Harappan urban development
was certainly not achieved or sustained by spontaneous outbursts of
civic enthusiasm. Coupled with the presence of large fortifications,
which imply both a security threat and a standing armed force, the
indications are that the masters of the Harappan Civilization, like their
Egyptian and Mesopotamian equivalents, possessed and exercised the
capacity for sustained labor mass-mobilization
The large size of the Harappan Civilization, the standardization
of weights, measures, and construction materials, and the recurrence
of the Indus “unicorn” on seals, have led some to argue that the
Harappans were the rulers of a “veritable” empire.53 From the histories
of other empires, it is evident that standardization and the spread of a
particular emblem or symbol followed in the wake of the expansion
of administrative control from a single center. A coincidence of some
interest is the emergence of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia
under Sargon I between 2400 BC and 2350 BC, the Elamite conquest
of Ur in 2000 BC54, and the nearly parallel rise and fall of Harappa.
As to the charge that the Harappan Civilization lacked monumental
architecture – the ultimate signature of autocracy – it can be pointed
out that in their prime the great cities must have been as awe-inspiring
to behold as the pyramids, ziggurats, and palaces of Egypt and
Mesopotamia. That said, the Harappans were not outdone in the scale
or quality of their construction. The great palace of Mari, considered
“the finest evidence of the authority the monarch came to enjoy” under
the Babylonian Empire has dimensions of one hundred and fifty by
two hundred yards.55 The White Temple of Uruk measures seventy-
three by fifty-seven feet and the ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu at Ur
around 2113-2096 BC, had dimensions of two hundred and seven by
one hundred and sixty-three feet including the court area. The acropolis
at either Mohenjodaro or Harappa could hold two such great palaces
whereas the granaries alone compare favorably in dimension to the
White Temple and Ur-Nammu’s ziggurat.
It is unlikely that Harappan expansion was benign. At Amri, a
hundred miles south of Mohenjodaro, a “completely uniform style
54 Roberts, History of the World, 45-47.
55 Ibid., 49.

which replaced all regional styles” accompanied the rise of Harappa

towards the end of the third millennium BC. At Kot Diji, thirty miles
from Mohenjodaro, “elaborate fortifications” from the pre-Harappan
period, and the reconstruction of the town in the Harappan style56,
suggests an unsuccessful resistance followed by assimilation. A similar
process probably explains the abandonment and reconstruction of
Kalibangan during the initial period of Harappan ascendance.
The ruins of the Harappan Civilization resonate with the echoes of
an omnipotent, centralized, continental bureaucratic empire, operated
on a pattern similar to its Bronze Age contemporaries in Egypt and
Mesopotamia. Indeed, one explanation of the ultimate collapse
is that the “managerial bureaucracy” necessitated by the mode of
administration outran the resources required to sustain it.57 A variant of
this explanation is that the moral and intellectual quality of the executive
authority declined and undermined the effectiveness of the state.
This form of administrative overstretch accompanied by increasingly
degenerate leadership is common to the experience of most continental
bureaucratic empires.
The degree to which the Harappan Raj influenced the migrating
Aryans is wide open to speculation although contact and conflict
between the two peoples certainly took place.58 The subsequent political
development, character of authority, and the nature of the exercise of
power in the subcontinent, confirm, however, that Leviathan had come
to stay.

58 Ibid., 37.

CHAPTER II
REIGNS OF FIRE:
THE EARLY ARYAN AGE, 1750 BC – 185 BC
P astoral, warlike, and armed with the chariot, the Aryans1 migrated
from the obscurity of the Central Asian steppes to the civilized
lands of the subcontinent and West Asia in search of living space. In
a peace treaty between the Hittites and the Mittani dated to c1350 BC
gods of the Hindu pantheon are invoked as witnesses.2 The influx began
at some point in the second millennium BC and may have coincided
with, or contributed to, the fall of the Harappan Civilization. Some light
is shed on the Aryan mode of governance by the Rig Veda and texts
such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
The Aryans had developed institutions of kingship and clergy.
Their entry into the subcontinent was contested by the dark skinned
indigenous inhabitants who sought refuge in fortifications. The chief god
Indra is praised as “a breaker of forts” or purandara.3 In this enterprise
Agni, the fire god, was also of assistance. The fifth hymn of the seventh
book of the Rig Veda states:
Bring forth your song of praise to mighty Agni, the speedy

messenger of earth and heaven, Vaisvanara, who, with
those who wake, hath waxen great in the lap of all the Gods
Immortal.
1 The word “Aryan” means “noble”.

3 Ibid., 35.

Sought in the heavens, on earth is Agni established, leader

of rivers, Bull of standing waters. Vaisvanara when he hath
grown in glory, shines on the tribes of men with light and
treasure
For fear of thee forth fled the dark-hued races, scattered

abroad, deserting their possessions, When, glowing, O
Vaisvanara, for Puru, thou Agni didst light up and rend
their castles.
The caste system probably developed as a means of reserving military

and religious functions for the conquering Aryans. Dalit-Bahujans, also
known as Lokayatas resisted the advance of Aryan-Brahmanism into the
Indus region and the term “Brahma” is itself a derivative of the name
of an Aryan war-leader who “was said to have killed many Indus food
producers”.4 The exact period during which the caste system took its
present shape is a matter of dispute, though the combination of divinely
sanctioned inequality and racism it represents remains deeply ingrained
in the culture of the subcontinent.
The first written reference to “India” , found on an inscription at
Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Emperor Darius I, is dated to
about 518 BC, and lists the “Hi(n)du” as one of the imperial domains.5
The sprawling Achaemenid Empire was divided into geographic subunits
administered by royally appointed satraps. Imperial administration
was supervised by a central secretariat under the direct control of the
emperor. The term “Hi(n)du” is the Persian variant for “Sindhu”, which
is the Sanskrit word for river.6 Darius sent Scylax, a Greek captain, to
explore the Indus river system shortly after its submission to Persian
arms.7 Scylax observed that in India “the kings were held to be of a
superior race to their subjects”.8
This early explorer was the first in a line of Greek writers, emissaries,
and officials to refer to India in their reports, histories, and literary
4 Ghanshyam Shah, ed., Dalit Identity and Politics: Cultural Subordination and
the Dalit Challenge, vol 2 (Sage Publications: New Delhi, 2001), 114.
6 Ibid.
7 E. J Rapson, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 1, Ancient India (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921; reprint, New Delhi: S. Chand &
Company (Pvt.) Ltd., 1987), 353.
8 Ibid.

Reigns of Fire: The Early Aryan Age, 1750 BC – 185 BC | 31
renditions. Hecataeus, the author of the geographical work, the Period os

Ges, written around 500 BC, refers to a people called the “Gandhari” who
lived on the upper Indus.9 Herodotus wrote of the ethnic, linguistic, and
geographic diversity of India, its vast population, and political division
into both tribes and settled communities.10 Of the sources from the
second half of the first millennium BC for the subcontinent, the most
elucidative are the reports of Megasthenes and the Arthashastra.
In 303 BC, Seleucus Nikator, ruler of Alexander the Great’s
Asian dominions, sent Megasthenes as ambassador to the court of
“Sandrokottos” (Chandragupta) at “Palimbrotha” (Pataliputra).11
Chandragupta had, as a youth, seen Alexander,12 and, more importantly
from Seleucus Nikator’s perspective, could field an army of half a million
men and nine thousand war elephants.13 Seleucus, quite possibly after
being worsted on the battlefield, chose to establish friendly relations
with his powerful neighbor and transferred control of territories beyond
the Indus, including Kandahar, Kabul, Punjab, and parts of Gedrosia
(Balochistan) in exchange for five hundred war elephants.14 His Indian
counterpart had seized the throne of Magadha in or around 320 BC15
at the instigation of Vishnugupta Chankya (Kautilya) from the Nanda
ruler, whom he had served in the capacity of army chief.16
The kingdom of Magadha controlled territories that roughly
correspond to the present Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar
Pradesh, and Orissa. Its old capital, Rajgir is located near hills so rich
in iron ore that flakes can be found with “hardly any mining”.17 Hot
and cold springs and adjacent grazing lands provided the city with the
requisite means of life support while the hills add defensive value.18
Southeast of Rajgir lies the settlement of Goya and beyond that a dense
forest traversed by explorers in search of useful metals.19 The ores were
mined and processed in the hills and transported to the Gangetic plains
9 Ibid., 354.
10 Ibid., 355.
11 Charles Allen, Buddha and the Sahibs (London: John Murray, 2002), 23.
12 Rapson, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 1, Ancient India, 386.
13 Ibid., 387.
14 Ibid., 388.
15 Kulke , A History of India, 61.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.

for use.20 Indeed, for the Magadhans:
The main task of their king and source of profit for the
state was to clear the heavy jungle, to bring all wasteland
under the plough, aided by a state monopoly of mining and
metals. This sort of kingship had to burst through all barriers
of tribal privilege, property-sharing, and exclusiveness.…21
The Marxist perspective is bound to attribute Magadhan ascendance

and the rise of the ideological superstructure of kingship to changes
in the economic base. The lack of both archaeological evidence and
references in ancient texts to the extensive and centrally organized use of
iron to effect an agricultural revolution in the Gangetic plains does not
rule out the strategic edge that even a modest qualitative or quantitative
advantage in iron weaponry would have conferred on Magadha.22
Regardless of the order of importance in which one places
strategic advantage and the means of appropriating resources, Magadha
developed a standing army, paid for, and equipped by, the state, under
the personal direction of the king and his generals. Bimbisara, a patron
of Buddhism23 and the greatest of the Haryanka rulers,24 who ruled
from 540 to 490 BC and laid the foundations of Magadhan supremacy,
was imprisoned and starved to death by his son Ajatashatru.25 Together
with the kingdom of Kosala, Magadha defeated the tribal republics of
the north. The tribal republics, with their assemblies and hundreds of
ruling families, failed to defend themselves against their despotically
governed neighbors, and were henceforth relegated to a declining
role in Indian history. In 364 BC26, Mahapadma Nanda, held to be a
lowly son of a barber and courtesan by Jaina traditions and Quintus
Curtius, assassinated the last Haryanka king and the royal princes, and
“exterminated all Kshatriyas”.27
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 127.
22 Kulke, A History of India, 57-58.
24 Majumdar R. C., H. C. Raychaudri, and Kalikinkar Datta, An Advanced His-
tory of India, Third Edition, Macmillan Student Editions (London: Macmillan,
1967), 56.
26 Ibid., 58.
27 Majumdar, An Advanced History of India, 60.

Mahapadma was “succeeded on the throne by his eight sons”28 and

the Nandas are reviled in later Indian literature for their heavy exactions
and low birth. Their army, estimated at more than two hundred
thousand foot, twenty thousand cavalry, two thousand chariots, and
three thousand elephants29 helped them subjugate much of North India
and deterred the Greeks from advancing beyond the Indus. When
Chandragupta overthrew the last Nanda, nearly a century had elapsed
since questions relating to the most effective system of government had
been settled. Until the advent of the British Empire in India, monarchical
absolutism would remain the dominant mode of political organization.
Megasthenes was probably the first occidental ambassador to
encounter the enduring local tradition of taking creative liberties with
the past. At the court of Pataliputra, which was “built at the confluence
of the Ganges and the Son”,30 the ambassador was presented with a
list of one hundred and fifty-three kings, the combined duration of
their reigns exceeding a grand total of six millennia, who had preceded
Chandragupta on the throne.31 Undaunted, Megasthenes proceeded to
report on the size and layout of the imperial capital, which measured
nine miles in length, one and a half miles in breadth, and was equipped
with five hundred and seventy towers and sixty-four gates.32 The scale
of construction, scarcely paralleled in ancient times, was no doubt
sustained by the surplus generated by harvests in both summer and
winter, which struck the Greeks as “the sign of astounding fertility”.33
Quite as impressive was the extraordinary discipline of Chandragupta’s
camp, which at the time was host to four hundred thousand men.34
Megsthenes’s statement that “Any Indian has never been convicted
of lying”35 indicates that the people were either extremely adept at
deception or that the punishment of mutilation for false testimony36
was an effective deterrent.
Megasthenes divided Indian society into seven classes each of
which performed a specialized function. The first class was that of the
28 Ibid., 61.
29 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 367.
34 Ibid., 371.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.

philosophers, in which Brahmans and ascetics were lumped together.

The members of this class performed no work but spent their lives
in religious worship and contemplation. The second class comprised
cultivators who “never took part in war” and would continue their
work with stolid indifference “At the very time when a battle was
going on”.37 One fourth of their output was paid to the monarch as
rent,38 as “in India all land belongs to the king and no private person
is allowed to own land”.39 Hunters and herdsmen, who were paid in
corn for their services by the king, constituted the third class.40 The
fourth class consisted of merchants, artisans, and boatmen, all of whom
paid taxes, though the arms industry received royal subsidies.41 The fifth
class comprised fighters specialized solely in war, received regular pay
during times of peace, and were supplied with the necessities of life by
other classes.42 Secret inspectors and spies formed the sixth class while
the king’s ministers and advisors, responsible for important decisions,
constituted the seventh class.43
Megasthenes divided Indian bureaucracy into district, town, and
military cadres. District officials were responsible for irrigation, land
measurement, hunting, communications, and roads in the sub-unit of
their assignment.44 Town officials were charged with the supervision
of factories, population registers, markets and goods inspections, and
collection of a sales tax amounting to a proportion of one-tenth.45 The
military administration included the admiralty, transport, commissariat,
infantry, cavalry, chariots, elephants, arsenals, stables, and logistics.46
Soldiers were provided weapons, and transport by the state, and, once
the campaign was over, the implements of war would be returned to
the state’s arsenals and stables.47 Of all the classes and cadres, however,
Megasthenes noted that “The Brahmans have the greatest prestige” and
that “they have a more consistent dogmatic system”.48
37 Ibid., 368.
38 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 368-9.
43 Ibid., 369.
44 Ibid., 375.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., 376.

One Brahman to whom we owe a most comprehensive account

of the exercise of power in Ancient India is Vishnugupta Chankya or,
as he is more popularly known, Kautilya. The Arthashastra,49 which is
compiled and partially authored by him, is a treatise that comprises
fifteen books, one hundred and fifty chapters, and one hundred and
eighty sections. Books VII, IX, X, XII, and XIII cover warfare and
relations betweens states and make it clear that the Arthashastra is a
manual for a king of a small or medium sized state operating in the
viciously unstable atmosphere of geopolitical pluralism characteristic of
all but five or six centuries of the subcontinent’s history.
Kautilya had been insulted by the Nandas who were lower caste
upstarts who waged war upon the higher castes.50 Together with
Chandragupta, he attempted dynastic change in Magadha itself but
failed and probably fled to the northwest.51 Plutarch states that a person
named Chandragupta actually met Alexander the Great possibly while
“enjoying Taxilan sanctuary as he prepared to rebel against Nanda
authority”.52 The duo adopted the strategy of working from the
periphery to the center with the help of other malcontents hostile to the
Nandas. A “powerful hill-chief” allied with Chandragupta was poisoned
after the successful conquest of Magadha in 320 BC.53 On Ashoka’s
accession in 268 BC, the empire stretched from Bengal to Kandahar
and bordered present day Karnataka.54 Approximately eight-tenths
of the subcontinent’s landmass came under Mauryan control – a feat
emulated only by the Mughals and British.55
The seven elements of sovereignty that held a monarchy together
were the ministers, the country, forts, the treasury, the army, allies, and,
most importantly, the king himself:
A king endowed with a significant personality makes the

imperfect constituents perfect. A king without personality,
on the other hand, destroys the constituents even though
49 Arthashastra means “the science of material gain”. Unless otherwise indicated,
references to the Arthashastra are based on R. Shamasastry’s translation (Ban-
galore: Government Press, 1915).
51 Ibid., 82-83.
52 Ibid., 79.
53 Ibid., 83.
55 Keay, India: A History, xii-xiii.

they are well developed…56
Only if a king is himself energetically active do his officers

follow him energetically. If he is sluggish, they too, remain
sluggish. And besides, they eat up his works.57
The King was the highest court of appeal and his edicts (Rajasasna) took
precedence over all other laws, customs, and traditions. Royal edicts
provided the entire legal basis for the institutions of state, all the higher
officers were directly appointed by the king and the council of ministers
were salaried servants of the state who held office during the king’s
pleasure. Ministers and officers alike were continuously spied upon and
tested for loyalty and obedience. The masses were kept in awe of the
king through the employment of astrologers, priests, and soothsayers
who were to “convince the people of the conquering king’s power and
the divine sanction of the program”.58 Not far behind the ideocratic
façade was “the fear of the coercive power of the king”59 which ensured
that those who dared oppose invited overwhelming retribution, as royal
wrath was “more powerful than fire”.60 Book V of the Arthashastra
recommends ways of ferreting out seditious ministers:
The king in the interests of righteousness may inflict

punishment in secret on those courtiers or confederacy of
chiefs who are dangerous to the safety of the kingdom and
who cannot be put down in open daylight.
A spy may instigate the brother of a seditious minister and

with necessary inducements, take him to the king for an
interview. The king, having conferred upon him the title
to possess and enjoy the property of his seditious brother,
may cause him to attack his brother; and when he murders
his brother with a weapon or with poison, he shall be
56 Ainslie T. Embree, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition, vol 1, Second Edition, From
the Beginning to 1800 (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1992), 246.
57 Ibid., 242.
58 B. P. Sinha, Readings in Kautilya’s Arthasastra (New Delhi: Agam Publishers,
1976), 47.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.

put to death in the same spot under the plea that he is a

parricide.
The same measure will explain the proceedings to be taken

against a seditious Pârasava (one who is begotten by a
Bráhman on Sûdra wife), and a seditious son of a woman-
servant.
Or instigated by a spy, the brother of a seditious minister

may put forward his claim for inheritance. While the
claimant is lying at night at the door of the house of the
seditious minister or elsewhere, a fiery spy (tîshna) may
murder him and declare “Alas! the claimant for inheritance
is thus murdered (by his brother).” Then taking the side
of the injured party, the king may punish the other (the
seditious minister).
Spies in the presence of a seditious minister may threaten

to beat his brother claiming inheritance.61
The ruling class of the Mauryan Empire was the bureaucracy, which
was paid fixed salaries and allotted lands and villages for upkeep. The
king, his ministers, and advisors stood at the apex of the bureaucratic
pyramid and constituted a selection committee for appointments to
higher positions. The recruitment process included the testimony,
written or otherwise, of local notables, friends, and fellow citizens who
knew the applicant, and tests of education and character.62 The highest
salary was forty-eight thousand panas and the lowest was sixty panas.63
In the highest grade fell the king’s councilors, the queen mother,
the queen, the crown prince, the royal guru, a sacrifice performing
priest, and the defense chief.64 The chamberlain, inner-palace officials,
treasurer, and chancellor received twenty-four thousand panas a year,
while the governors, comptroller, and auditor, received twelve thousand
61 Kautilya, Arthashastra, trans. Shamasastry, 312-313. Panas were silver coins
minted by the Mauryas and used as standard currency.
62 Sinha, Readings in Kautilya’s Arthasastra, 52.
63 Ibid., 54.
64 Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangaraja (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
1992), 208.

panas a year.65 Magistrates and military corps commanders drew eight

thousand panas a year while superintendents and divisional commanders
received four thousand panas.66 With the exception of those civil servants
attached to the king’s personal retinue, all were subject to transfers
between departments and districts.67 Madams of brothels were salaried
employees of the state and received one thousand panas a year68 while
village headmen were paid five hundred panas a year.69 All, however,
were aware that “Service under a King has been compared to living in
a fire. A fire may burn a part of one’s body and, at its worst, all of it;
but a King may either confer prosperity or may have the whole family;
including wives and children, killed” and thus the “wise” government
servant makes “self-protection his first and foremost concern”.70
Spies, disguised as everything from wandering ascetics to
professional colleagues, watched and reported on all members of the
apparatus, who were thus kept wary of royal displeasure. Undercover
agents and intelligence officers were paid one thousand panas, village
level assassins, poisoners, and spies, received five hundred panas, while
informants earned two hundred and fifty panas.71 Perhaps the most oft-
quoted part of the Arthashastra relates to the forty ways civil servants
can embezzle or misappropriate the king’s money. Kautilya informs us
that detecting corruption amongst the imperial officials is as difficult
as determining the amount of water drunk by fish or the flight paths
of birds. This, of course, reveals a cycle of insecurity. Bureaucrats,
fearful of the caprices of their omnipotent sovereign, seek to protect
themselves and their families by amassing and hiding wealth gained from
the abuse of their powers. The king, of course, sought to counter these
practices, not by limiting his prerogatives but by employing spies and
secret agents, which made his appointed servants even more insecure.
Comptrollers, treasurers, auditors, and heads of departments, were
thus required to maintain spies in their departments to keep corruption
within tolerable limits. This effort may have resulted in some success
while simultaneously displacing a proportion of the corruption to the
65 Ibid., 209.
66 Ibid., 290.
68 Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangaraja, 351
69 Ibid., 364.
70 Ibid., 205.
71 Ibid., 292.

intelligence apparatus itself.

Book II of the Arthashastra provides an exhaustive description
of the superintendents employed by the king. Superintendents were
appointed for the treasury, gold, store houses, commerce, forest
produce, arsenals, weights and measures, tolls, weaving, farming, liquor,
prostitutes, cows, horses, elephants, cities, passports, chariots, infantry,
pastures, slaughter houses, and ships. Commissioners were appointed
by the collector-general to oversee the superintendents and three-dozen
heads of department functioned under the perpetual threat of royal
inspection.
The king also had at his command a “Central Bureau of Espionage”
that trained five kinds of spies and kept the entire country under
surveillance.72 Orphans were particularly favored in recruitment to the
secret service for they would be completely dependent upon the state
and could be easily disposed of without anyone missing them. Evidently,
the king had much to fear as he never slept in the same room two nights
in a row, employed elaborate security measures including special kinds
of birds and trees, and placed severe restrictions on the movement of
his personal staff.73 Special targets of the secret service’s attention were
the king’s wives and the royal princes who Kautilya quite accurately
compares to crabs in light of their propensity to consume the one who
begets them. The king was advised to kill rebellious or seditious princes
provided he had enough sons in reserve. The king as the “embodiment
of the state” was aware that “Everyone posed a threat”74 and had to
“employ, without hesitation, the methods of secret punishment against
traitors in his own camp and against enemies”.75 Those that who
spoke ill of the king or criticized the state, regardless of official rank or
social status, had their tongues pulled out, while individuals reported
as angered by the king were marked for assassination. An important
function of the secret service was to plant conspiracies and encourage
people to speak against the king so that malcontents could be exposed
and eliminated. Poisoners posing as cooks and doctors were infiltrated
into the household establishments of senior officials while other spies
befriended family members and encouraged rivalries within their
families to provide the king with a ready pretext to kill the officials in
72 Ibid., 59.
74 Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangaraja, 157.
75 Ibid., 158.

question and seize their property.

Census lists were compiled by the officer in charge of five or ten
villages (gopa), supervised by a circle officer (sthanika), who in turn
reported to the collector-general’s office.76 Each district comprised two
hundred villages, each division four hundred, and each province eight
hundred. Villages were settled by the state, which was the principal
clearer of land, and the population of each settlement was maintained
at a number between one hundred to five hundred family units.77 The
villages were run by an officially nominated and salaried headman and
his body of arbitrators (panchayat).78 Farmers were allotted lands by the
state for both cultivation and animal husbandry only for their lifetimes,
whereas the village administration, including district and divisional
officers, as well as accountants and the record keepers, received
land grants in exchange for service. In addition, there existed a vast
bureaucratic underclass consisting of scribes, clerks, policemen, labor
contractors, and peons at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Crown lands were administered by a Director of Agriculture
responsible for cultivation and providing the farmers with ploughs,
cattle, and the services of artisans.79 The state built canals, reservoirs,
and wells, and levied irrigation and water taxes.80 If any villager did not
participate in public works, he still had to send servants and bullock carts
but would not be entitled to benefit from the project.81 The state also
encouraged private individuals to build irrigation works and provided
tax exemptions as an incentive – the catch was that “neglect” by the
owners would lead to seizure by the state.82 Any cultivator found guilty
of hiding grain from inspection would be punished by a fine eight times
greater than the value of the concealed produce.83 The entire surplus,
barring the bare subsistence requirement, was collected by the state as
tax. Given that most farmers barely kept afloat, a fine of such magnitude
would almost certainly drive them into slavery, bondage, or debt. The
power that the officers responsible for making sure that privately owned
irrigation works did or did not suffer from “neglect” had over the rural
77 Ibid., 71.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., 78.
83 Ibid., 82.

entrepreneur must have been considerable.

Trade, manufacturing, and services, were equally subject to state
ownership and control. Mining, armaments, and factories were, for
all practical purposes, state-owned or controlled, enterprises. Rates of
profit, hours of business, and commercial areas were all determined by
the state. Merchants paid a fee for having their merchandise stamped
and inspected by officials and the commerce department “issued
bulletins indicating demand for an article”.84 The king was a great trader
in his own right and the surplus from factories and the forests was sold
by traders on contract.85 “Collective obstruction” in the forms of strikes
and protests were illegal86 and licenses were required by traders and
could be revoked if they misbehaved. The Chief-Controller of Private
Trading was empowered to “confiscate any stocks held by brokers in
excess of authorized limits and deliver them to the Chief-Controller of
State Trading”.87 At each customs post four or five customs collectors
kept detailed records of goods and merchants and were assisted by spies
that had infiltrated caravans or posed as merchants. Book XI of the
Arthashastra reveals ways to break autonomous organizations:
Spies, gaining access to all these corporations and finding

out jealousy, hatred and other causes of quarrel among
them, should sow the seeds of a well-planned dissension
among them, and tell one of them: “This man decries
you.” Spies, under the guise of teachers (áchárya) should
cause childish embroils among those of mutual enmity on
occasions of disputations about certain points of science,
arts, gambling or sports. Fiery spies may occasion quarrel
among the leaders of corporations by praising inferior
leaders in taverns and theatres…
Spies, under the guise of astrologers and others, should bring

to the notice of the corporations the royal characteristics
of the prince, and should induce the virtuous leaders of
the corporations to acknowledge their duty to the prince
who is the son of such and such a king, and who is the
84 Ibid., 78.
85 Rapson, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 1, Ancient India, 430-431.
86 Ibid., 431.

hearer of their complaints. To those who are thus prevailed

upon, the conqueror should send men and money for the
purpose of winning over other partisans…
spies should pretend to declare their agreement (with the

enemy of the corporations), their mission, their rewards,
and bags of money with the golden seals of the enemy;
when the corporations appear before the spies, they
may tell the corporations that they (the spies) have sold
themselves to the enemy, and challenge the corporations
for war. Or having seized the draught animals and golden
articles belonging to the corporations, they may give the
most important of those animals and articles to the chief of
the corporations, and tell the corporations, when asked for,
that it was given to the chief (for the purpose of causing
quarrel among them).88
The administration of justice was the function of village panchayats,

magistrates, the police, and the law courts. The courts were divided into
two categories. The Kanakasoahana courts were responsible for cases
between subjects. The Dharmasthya courts dealt with cases involving
violations of royal edicts, state property, and disturbances of the peace.
Three judges, Brahmins, like most higher officials, presided. Those in
search of justice from the courts paid fees and the loser would pay a
fine equal to one-fifth of the amount in dispute in addition to the daily
wages of the court peons for the duration of the trial. Book IV of the
Arthashastra provides us vital clues as to nature of interrogation and
punishment:
Torture of women shall be half of the prescribed

standard…
There are in vogue four kinds of torture…

Six punishments (shatdandáh), seven kinds of whipping
(kasa), two kinds of suspension from above (upari nibandhau),
and water-tube (udakanáliká cha).
88 Kautilya, Arthashastra, trans. Shamasastry, 486-487.

As to persons who have committed grave offences, the

form of torture will be nine kinds of blows with a cane:--
12 beats on each of the thighs; 28 beats with a stick of the
tree (naktamála); 32 beats on each palm of the hands and
on each sole of the feet; two on the knuckles, the hands
being joined so as to appear like a scorpion; two kinds of
suspensions, face downwards (ullambane chale); burning one
of the joints of a finger after the accused has been made to
drink rice gruel; heating his body for a day after be has been
made to drink oil; causing him to lie on coarse green grass
for a night in winter. These are the 18 kinds of torture…
Each day a fresh kind of the torture may be employed.
Regarding those criminals who rob in accordance with the

threat previously made by them, who have made use of the
stolen articles in part, who have been caught hold of in the
very act or with the stolen articles, who have attempted to
seize the king’s treasury, or who have committed culpable
crime, may, in accordance with the order of the king, be
subjected once or many times to one all of the above kinds
of torture.
Whatever may be the nature of the crime, no Brahman

offender shall be tortured. The face of a Brahman convict
shall be branded so as to leave a mark indicating his
crime…89
Some of the crimes that merited capital punishment include murder of

family members (head set aflame), civilians caught stealing arms were
shot dead with arrows, and theft of temple or royal property meant
death accompanied by torture. Pickpockets and common thieves could
be sentenced to death at the magistrate’s discretion. Caste, racial, and
status considerations played a significant part in the judicial process.
Brahmans, for example, enjoyed immunity from capital punishment,
torture, and confiscation because they were sacred people. No Aryan
could be made a slave, though selling oneself into slavery was permitted,
89 Ibid., 291-292.

and the Sudras, though considered Aryan, were subject to more severe
punishments than the higher castes. Spies posted to drinking houses
kept watch over lavish spenders and gathered information about
“strangers and natives who may pretend to be Aryans”.90 Kautilya
advises the king to treat “petty crimes indulgently”, not to prosecute
if the offender “has the support of a strong party”, but punish those
with “no such support” and confiscate their property.91 People could
be arrested if they concealed their profession, acted prodigally, traveled
often, remained indoors all the time, avoided meeting others, interacted
with strangers, or gave cause for suspicion.
Magistrates combined executive with judicial functions insofar
as they were in charge of criminal investigations and assisted revenue
officials, while chancellors were responsible for both tax collection and
the maintenance of law and order over the countryside. In these tasks,
they were assisted by the provincial governors, magistrates, and the
armed forces. Cities were administered by appointed governor-generals,
divisional officers, and record keepers for individual wards. The head
of each house was required to report the arrival and departure of his
guests. If he failed to do so, then he would be held responsible for any
crimes committed at night in the neighborhood. Spies were employed
to tempt judicial officers and litigants with bribes to determine the level
of honesty. The great flaw in the system, however, was not so much its
lack of justice but the way in which officials were deprived of the right
to take initiatives without first referring the matter to the center during
periods of normalcy.92 One of the reasons why Kautilya recommends
the strict division of the king’s day and night into sixteen separate time
slots reserved for different activities93 was to ensure that the parchment
(or palm leaves) mill kept running smoothly. Indeed, two thirds of the
day and one half of the night was to be allocated by the king to official
business.94
Under Ashoka, the attention of the bureaucratic apparatus was
directed towards the promotion of virtue and the construction of

91 Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, 75-76.
93 Embree, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition, vol 1, From the Beginning to 1800,
242-243.
94 Ibid., 243.

religious monuments.95 The Third Council of Buddhism was held at

Pataliputra under Ashoka’s patronage and some of his own children
became missionaries.96 New religious officials were added to the
hierarchy specially for spreading “religious propaganda”.97 Ashoka’s
seventh pillar edict98 heralds the arrival of the invariably odious rule of
the virtuous: “I will publish precepts of piety, I will inculcate instructions
in piety; hearing these the people will conform, will be elevated, and
will grow strongly with the growth of piety….”99 The task is entrusted
to “dignitaries of piety”100 who now joined the Director of Religious
Properties and Temples and the king’s spiritual advisors.
Ashoka’s reign is portrayed as one of stabilization and consolidation
that came at a time when further expansion would have jeopardized the
empire.101 The period of consolidation, however, did not make much
difference to the fate of the Mauryas. Brahman sources indicate that
after Ashoka’s death seven to ten Mauryas ruled for a maximum of
seventy-five years.102 Jaloka, one of Ashoka’s sons, ruled from Kashmir,
extended his empire to Kanauj, and persecuted Buddhists.103 The
last Maurya was assassinated in 185 BC during a military parade by
Pushyamitra Shunga, his general.104 From this point on, until the rise of
the Gupta dynasty, the subcontinent reverted to the chaotic conditions
that had spawned the Arthashastra State.
The culture of power of this state manifests itself in the single
overriding tendency of the central executive to undermine such
autonomous institutions and collective units as did exist, and prevent
the development of any check on its powers. Land, the main source of
political and economic power in pre-industrial times, was dominated,
if not owned directly, by the king. There was no independent class of
landowners; only land possessors and salaried officials. The Brahmins,
who had the right to bequeath land to their progeny, were an integral
part of the apparatus. Indeed, they were the recruitment pool for higher
96 Ibid., 450.
97 Ibid., 458.
98 Ibid., 459.
99 Ibid., 460.
100 Ibid.
103 Ibid., 461-2.

offices, enjoyed special exemptions under the law, and were aware of the
fact that the king could have their choice of heir changed if he so willed.
Furthermore, through their exertions, and that of salaried soothsayers,
fortune-tellers, and astrologers, the king received divine sanction for his
policies, which were, of course, developed and executed with the help
of Brahmin officials and advisors. During Turkish and Timurid rule,
Brahmins were a necessary component of the administration and under
the British continued to form a substantial part of the bureaucracy.105
The servility of the managerial bureaucracy was further ensured by the
king’s powers of appointment and dismissal, the threat of expropriation
or worse, and, of course, the salaries, benefits, and status they enjoyed.
Merchants, artisans, and industries were firmly under state
regulation, employment, or ownership. The state guaranteed compliance
through what would today be dubbed “License Raj” and control of
the “commanding heights” of the economy. Rich private individuals
lived in fear of confiscation. Kautilya advises the king to augment his
finances, when necessary, by arbitrary demands on the property of the
rich “vigorously giving them no chance to slip away”.106 The king is also
advised to have a spy “get a rich trader drunk, rob him, falsely accuse him
of crime, or even murder him” and confiscate his “goods and money”.107
It is hardly difficult to imagine in the present day the kind of tyranny
that was surely visited by the state on private enterprise and property.
The Arthashastra actually recommends that the most dishonest officials
should be employed in the procurement of raw materials from forests,
and in the operation of mines and factories. Wittfogel’s analysis of the
kinds of behavioral reactions produced by the conduct of government
in a manner analogous to organized crime could well be mistaken for an
editorial or opinion published in our own time:
The wealthy businessman is equally vulnerable. Taxation

being the prerogative of a government whose declared
demands are heavy and whose agents tend to go beyond
the official demands, the private men of property seek to
protect themselves as best as they can. They hide their
treasure in the ground. They entrust it to friends. They send

106 Ibid., 76.

it abroad. In brief, they are driven to commit acts which

make most of them potential fiscal criminals. In many
instances their efforts are successful, particularly when they
are buttressed by well-placed bribes…108
Down at the village level the headman was, as earlier indicated,

officially nominated, and owed his position to the executive authority.
It is possible that prior to the success of monarchical absolutism villages
elected their own leaders.109 By the time of Magadhan ascendancy,
however, whatever political autonomy existed was extinguished and the
state became the founder and regulator of village communities. People
from a single caste would be settled in a village, which thus gave rise to
insular, sub-political, units capable of little else except endurance, and
devoid of an inner mechanism for cumulative change. Taxes on land,
fixed as a proportion of the produce and subject to yearly revision, were
an additional source of disincentive to productivity. Book XI of the
Arthashastra formulates means by which autonomous tribal cultivators
can be reduced to submission through a judicious combination of
bribes and espionage. After subjugation, lands would sometimes be
forcibly resettled, and Ashoka employed this policy after his campaign
in Kalinga.110 Land assignments in villages were for life only and special
permission was required to transfer landholdings that could, however,
be reassigned at “any failure to cultivate”.111 Furthermore, in crown
villages no assemblies for any purposes than “kinship groups (sajata) if
it existed, or for the necessary public works” were allowed.112 That there
were laws against both free movement of cultivators, and any person
becoming an ascetic without first providing for dependents,113 indicate
that life was sufficiently unbearable to make asceticism an attractive
alternative lifestyle.
In a lighter vein, Alexander the Great had deputed Onesicritus
to communicate with Indian ascetics – a task which necessitated the
employment of three interpreters.114 The ascetics enjoyed the attention

109 Ibid., 119.
111 Ibid., 150.
112 Ibid., 151.
113 Ibid. 150.

but regretted “that the wise men of the Greeks had clung to such
superficialities as clothing”.115 Many years later Bindusara, Ashoka’s
father, asked Antiochus I, his Seleucid counterpart, to buy and send
“some sweet wine, some figs, and a sophist to teach him to argue”.116
Antiochus duly sent the figs and the wine but explained “sophists were
not a marketable commodity among the Greeks”.117
The range of foreign contacts afforded by the size of the empire did
not alter the fact that even the most energetic king could not personally
supervise all of it. The central government was based in Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh, and viceroyalties administered the North West, Central India,
the West India, and Kalinga.118 The border peoples, as Ashoka’s edicts
affirm, were pacified by a combination of patronage and punishment.119
This policy, with some alterations, has also survived down to the present
day.
The preponderant military force at the king’s disposal kept control
of these territories. Chandragupta’s army is estimated at between
four and six hundred thousand strong, or two to three times that
of the Nandas.120 The army chief was paid the same amount as the
crown prince (forty-eight thousand panas) while corps and divisional
commanders were paid as much as magistrates and superintendents.
The corps were service groups (infantry, cavalry, elephants, chariots),
subdivided into divisions and battalions. Rivalries between officers and
commanders were encouraged and courtesans and spies kept a close
eye on the loyalty of the armed forces. The generous remuneration and
benefits granted to the army chief and his officers, as well as the large
proportion of resources required for the kind of militarization from
above sustained by the Mauryas, did not secure the military’s loyalty to
its royal master should the opportunity to overthrow him arise. Indeed,
the first Maurya had served as the army chief of the Nandas, and the last
Maurya was overthrown by his own military commander. The culture
of power dictated that in order to survive, the ruler of the Kautilyan
continental bureaucratic empire had to be more praetorian than the
praetorians.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid., 389.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., 463.
119 Ibid., 463-4.

Ashoka’s philosophy and worldview, however, clashed with those

of the Arthashastra. That he came to power by defeating and killing all his
brothers in a war of succession121 or merely his elder brother Susima122
does not alter the fact that upon accession Ashoka embarked upon a
campaign of conquest and commissioned a new palace at Pataliputra –
the traditional policy of war and magnificence. The carnage at Kalinga
made a profound impression on Ashoka who converted to Buddhism
and declared that he: “…does not consider glory and fame to be of
great account unless they are achieved through having his subjects
respect Dharma….”123
The means employed, which can best be described as bureaucratic
proselytization, entailed the appointment of a Dharma-mahamatra
or “minister of morality” who presided over “a new class of
plenipotentiary supervisors” with special funding and control over the
existing bureaucracy.124 Ashoka never deemed himself above warfare
and there is no evidence to suggest that any units of the army were
disbanded.125 Improving the roads and insisting on greater uniformity
in the administration of justice neatly compliment the expansion of
executive power.126 The degree of personal control may well have
increased as Ashoka began taking regular tours of the empire every five
years, 127 though the costs of doing so must have entailed considerable
investment in both time and money and caused administrative
disruption. The disintegration of the Mauryan Empire after Ashoka’s
death is a poor advertisement for the wisdom and foresight of his reign
and the unprecedented fusion of power and piety that it purported to
represent.
A change of idiom did not alter the pattern of arbitrary rule
developed under successive Magadhan dynasties. The ruling class of
bureaucrats derived its position from the state and was subject to the
will of the king, which was reinforced by a vast network of spies and a
massive army. Subjects may have been protected from one another but
in relation to the state, their vulnerability was absolute. Laws pertaining
121 Allen, Buddha and the Sahibs, 163.

123 Allen, Buddha and the Sahibs, 185-186.
126 Ibid., 98.

to administration, taxes, and the criminal justice system were all subject
to one-sided manipulation by the king and his advisors. The king also
employed a variety of salaried theocrats to provide the apparatus with
a veneer of divine sanction. The marginal position of the institution of
private property deprived society of a socioeconomic base upon which
resistance to the state could be attempted or organized. Even Brahmin
ministers were not safe from interference in their choice of heirs to
their property, which the king could change if he so desired. The rich
were more vulnerable than the official class though both were victims-
in-waiting of an executive authority that knew no check save those
imposed by geographical and biological limitations or its own needs
and caprices. The extreme concentration of power, and the absence
of any legal means to resist the state, generated conditions suitable to
either abject submission to the Pax Arthashastra or rebellion, anarchy,
and warlordism.

CHAPTER III
WAR AND MAGNIFICENCE:

185 BC – AD 1000
I n 165 BC, the Yueh-chi, one of the nomadic tribes encountered

by China on its northern frontier, were defeated by the Huns and
ejected from their lands.1 The Yueh-chi numbered between five hundred
thousand and a million and their migration generated great unrest.2 The
Wu-Sun, another tribal people were “routed” and the Shakas of the
Jaxartes were driven southwest into Bactria.3 The Bactrian populace was
disarmed, divided into insular settled communities, and entrusted to
magistrates.4 Military conquest by the Shakas, or anyone else for that
matter, only “changed the landlord to whom customary dues must
be paid”.5 Mithradates II (123-88 BC) of the Parthians checked the
nomadic advance towards West Asia and, consequently, the Shakas
were deflected into India where they met comparatively little resistance,
adopted the title of “King of Kings”, and ruled through appointed
satraps and military governors drawn from prominent families.6
Around AD 78 Taxila came to be ruled by the first Kushana, who
was succeeded by Kanishka, his famous son. This new dynasty adopted
the title “Great King, Supreme King of Kings, Son of the Gods”7 and
its power was projected as far as Malwa and Surashatra. Thus, from AD
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 511.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 513-514.
7 Ibid., 525.

119 to 388, a semblance of imperial order was superimposed over the

northwest and Gujarat.
The South had developed dynastic states of its own led by the
Satavahanas whose rule waxed and waned from king to king for a
period of three hundred or four hundred and fifty-six years, depending
on the source of information.8 The Satavahana dynasty ended in the
middle of the third century AD and was succeeded by, among others,
the Vakatakas in Upper Maharashtra and the Pallavas near Madras.9
At the start of the first millennium AD, the Chola king, Per-nar-
killi, and his Chera counterpart, Nedun-jeral-adan, went to war and
annihilated one another on the battlefield.10 Karikal, the next Chola
king, established the preeminence of his dynasty, defeated the Cheras,
crushed his domestic rivals, made his capital at Pugar, and secured the
city “by raising the banks of the Chauvery and constructing canals”.11
Karlikal’s death led to insurrection in the capital, rebellion, and fresh
war that resulted in Chera ascendance under Cen-guttavan.12 After his
death, the Pandyas, under Nedun-jeliyan II, rose, defeated the Cheras,
and secured local hegemony until the rise of the Pallavas.13 The clear
link between the fortunes of these states and the capabilities of their
supreme executives, coupled with evidence of centrally directed water
management for political purposes, all point to the establishment of
continental bureaucratic empires in South India in response to a
combination of internal and external stimuli.
In the core territories of the fallen Maurya Empire Pushyamitra,
the regicide, ruled for thirty-six years14 after his successful military coup
in 185 BC. He was succeeded by his son, Agnimitra, the hero of one of
Kalidasa’s dramas, though after his death the dynasty faded away.15 Until
the time of the Scythian (Shaka) conquests, Magadha and the Ganges-
Jumna valley were ruled by “Princes with names ending in Mitra”.16
The period of political fragmentation ended only with the rise of Gupta
power.
8 Majumdar, An Advanced History of India, 109-110.
9 Ibid., 110.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 542.
13 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 109.

War and Magnificence: 185 BC – AD 1000 | 53
Chandra Gupta I, the first famous ruler of his dynasty, married the
Licchavi princess, Kumaradevi, to enter into matrimonial alliance with
this powerful Bihari clan.17 Chandra Gupta’s coronation took place in
AD 32018, he took the title of maharaja-adhiraja (Overlord of the Great
Kings), and, by his death, the Guptas ruled from South Bihar and Oudh,
to Allahabad.19 Samudra Gupta, who was formally designated heir to the
throne by his father, came to power in AD 335 and ruled for forty years.
The Allahabad pillar inscription, which is composed by the court poet
Harishena, eulogizes the feats of Samudra Gupta.20 Though damaged,
it still provides a good idea of the course of the reign and catch a few
glimpses of the governance of the Gupta Empire.
The first campaign launched by Samudra Gupta was a war of
extermination against his neighbors. Pataliputra was captured, and the
inscription lists Achyuta, Nagasena, Rudradeva, Matila, Nagadatta,
Chandravarman, Ganapati Naga, Nandin, and Balararman as princes
that were “violently exterminated.”21 The “forest-kings” of the Vindhya
region were next to be reduced to servitude though a conquest of the
Deccan was not undertaken.22 Vassal kingdoms ruled East Bengal,
Assam, Nepal, and Jalandar, and victory against the Shaka (Scythian)
satraps provided access to the maritime trade and profit of Gujarat.23
Tribute, however, was received from as far as Ceylon.24
Chandra Gupta II, or Vikramaditya, succeeded Samudra Gupta and
ruled until AD 413 or 415. Literary “hints” raise the possibility that
the legitimate successor was Rama Gupta, who brought disgrace on
his dynasty by surrendering his queen to a lustful Shaka ruler daringly
assassinated in time by Chandra Gupta II.25 The hero proceeded to
usurp the throne, disposed of his weakling brother, and married his
sister-in-law.26 The imperial policy during the reign of Chandra Gupta
II was one of conciliation. The Nagas were pacified by the marriage of
their princess Kubernaga to the Gupta king while the royal princess
17 Ibid., 137.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 140.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.

Prabatavi was married to Rudrasena II, ruler of the Deccan state of

the Vakatakas.27 Rudrasena II died soon after the marriage and his
Gupta queen assumed the regency, which lasted from AD 390 – 410.28
Thus, the Guptas extended their control into the Deccan at negligible
cost. It is possible that the legend of Vikramaditya Sakari, whose court
was adorned by nine gems, refers to Chandra Gupta II.29 Fa-Hsien,
a Buddhist pilgrim from China, visited the Gupta Empire during this
reign and was struck by the beauty of the capital, the quality and quantity
of religious monuments, the generosity of the rich, the leniency of the
criminal justice system, the degree to which order prevailed, and the
welfare activities of the state. For example, the punishment for treason,
Fa-Hsien reports, was the amputation of the right hand.30
Coins from the reign of Kumara Gupta I (415-455) indicate that
the empire spread as far south as Satara in the Deccan.31 Kumara Gupta
I may have died fighting the “Pushyamitra revolt in the Narbudda
Valley”32 and Skanda Gupta seized the throne from the crown prince
Puru Gupta, ruled from 455 to 467, met the internal security threat,
and defeated the Huns.33 Guards were posted throughout the empire34
and the imperial provinces were placed under special Wardens of the
Marches.35 Skanda Gupta’s death led to another war of succession
between his son and Budha Gupta, Puru Gupta’s son. Budha Gupta
avenged his father’s death and reigned as the last of the great Gupta
monarchs from 467 to 497.36
After Budha Gupta’s death, the empire began to disintegrate. In
510, the Huns, led by Toramana, invaded, established an empire ruled
from Sialkot, and enjoyed a brief ascendancy that was “shattered” by
Yasodharma around 533.37 Gupta rule in North Bengal lingered until
the year 543 or 544.38 The Chinese emissary to the Hun court in 520
testifies to their cruelty. The Huns inflicted great violence on the urban
27 Keay, India: A History, 142..
28 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
38 Ibid.

life of the northwest, disrupted trade, dealt a mortal blow to Buddhism,

and may have provided the Rajputs with ancestors.39
The wealth of the Guptas, which no doubt provided the Huns
with an added incentive to invade, is well attested by the fact that they
are the only Indian dynasty to “have regularly minted in gold”.40 Pliny
the Younger (62-113), a Roman administrator, blamed trade with India
for draining gold out of the Roman Empire long before the Gupta’s
came to power.41 The process of accumulation must have reached a
critical mass by the fourth century AD to render possible the quality
and quantity of gold coinage under the Gupta Empire. Little, however,
is certain about the financial administration of this period though one
can infer from the coinage and the relative durability of the Gupta order
that the taxation system must have been rather effective.
What is known about the administrative structure of the Gupta
Empire reveals the outlines of a continental bureaucratic empire. In
the core territories the older rulers were wiped out and the land placed
under the direct administration of the king’s appointed servants.42
Provinces were administered by royal governors and subdivided into
districts headed by a visayapati or district officer.43 The ultimate powers
of appointment, dismissal, and transfer rested with the king though in
the larger provinces royal governors enjoyed considerable discretion
over the district administration.44 The more important cities were run by
Ayukatas appointed by the governor, assisted by clerks, and advised by
notables.45 A similar combination of officials supplemented by a clerical
staff and in consultation with local notables administered the villages.46
The district officers kept everything in balance, were placed in charge of
transactions such as the sale of land, and performed judicial functions
(adhikarana).47
Land used for food production was held collectively by the village.
Wastelands were assigned for a fee by the state. Taxes on agriculture
39 Thapar, Early India, 418.
40 J. C. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (London:
Penguin Books, 1986), 88.
42 Kulke, A History of India, 88..
43 Ibid., 93.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 93-94.

were collected in kind and a portion converted in cash was sent to the
king.48 Royal officials monopolized armed force49 and received grants
of land for upkeep.50 The number of artisans in each village was fixed
at twelve and “Plots for the village carpenter, etc are first mentioned in
Gupta charters.”51
The thousands of stupas and many well-endowed monasteries
run by armies of monks, mentioned by Fa-Hsien,52 were certainly not
maintained without royal patronage. The later account of Hsiuen-tsang
reveals that at Nalanda the ruler assigned the revenues of more than
one hundred villages to support ten thousand monks.53 The “galaxy of
poets and scholars”54 to be found at court were hardly kept there by a
sense of charity, pure devotion to the emperor, or a sense of national
duty. Like the officials, they probably received salaries and constituted a
bureaucratic intelligentsia dependent on state patronage. An indicator of
the nature of the relationship between the king and his highly articulate
salaried sycophants is the pillar inscriptions from Allahabad, which
lists the princes exterminated by Samudra Gupta and extols his mercy
towards the defeated.
The ideocratic complex of the Gupta Empire was structured around
the revival of “the old Indian morality”55 and the “Hindu institution of
kingship”.56 The favorite symbol of the Guptas was Vishnu’s eagle57 and
they performed the horse sacrifice.58 The Gupta period is witness to a
convergence of artistic style “between Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and
most of the Hindu gods and goddesses”.59 Gupta art is overwhelmingly
religious in content and its most notable characteristic is “its uniformity
over the whole of the empire…This uniformity is even more marked in
the terracottas”.60
The most important insight into the culture of power of the
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., 195.
51 Ibid., 196.
55 Ibid. i.e. Brahmanic dominance.
57 Ibid.,89
58 Ibid., 87.
59 Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 89.
60 Ibid.

Gupta Empire is afforded by the position of the king. The Allahabad

inscription declares that the king is “mortal only in celebrating the rites
of observances of mankind (but otherwise) a god (deva), dwelling on
earth”.61 The kings were depicted as gods in their own right on coins
and inscriptions. The titles of maharaja-adhiraja, later expanded to
paramaharaja-adhiraja are both transparent adaptations of the Persian
imperial boast “I am the Great King, King of Kings, King in Persia”.62
Rulers that enjoy the status of divinity incarnate have a dismal record
of tolerating dissent and respecting institutional autonomy. God-kings
also possess an unlimited and unchallengeable scope for legislation. The
numismatic evidence suggests that the king had the monetary resources
with which to maintain a large standing army answerable only to him.
The empirical base upon which any understanding of the exercise
of power by the Guptas can rest is disappointingly meager. The pillar
inscription at Allahabad is incomplete and complicated:
A word of twenty components with a total of fifty-four

syllables is used in the Allahabad inscription to describe
the nature of Samudragupta’s feudatory sway…historians
would willingly trade it for a single clear statement of
policy….63
Monstrous semantic constructions and the proliferation of specialized

jargon “for every discipline”64 demonstrate a hearty regard for
obfuscation. Reliance on Ancient Indian literary sources for purely
historical purposes is about as dangerous as using Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
and Romeo and Juliet, to construct a history of Europe. Literature is,
however, a key component of culture and may provide a distorted
version of the historical experience of governance. Sanskrit was, after
all, the language of power.
If the Gupta Empire encountered “advanced opponents”65
organized into states capable of taxation and administration, it, unlike
the Mauryas, would not have to raise an establishment from scratch. The
bureaucratic machine already in place could be employed by the new
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid., 140

conqueror with a few changes of personnel. Better yet, a state could pay
tribute, pledge loyalty, send hostages, enter into a matrimonial alliance,
or execute a combination of these maneuvers and be spared the ordeal
of conquest and occupation or punitive campaigns. The exact nature
of the relationship between directly administered territories, provinces,
vassals, and tributaries is of limited relevance to the culture of power
if all, or most of them, were governed by despotic executives and their
appointed servants, and locked in competition with one another to win
imperial favor and imitate the magnificence of the emperor’s court.
A comparison with the Persian system of satrapies representative
of geographic subunits and coordinated by a central secretariat suggests
itself. The delegation of power by the Persian emperor to his appointed
satrap did not reduce the level of state-arbitrariness. The imperial
proconsuls of the God-kings were, if anything, more prone to capricious
and high-handed behavior. Furthermore, the rulers of smaller states
allied to a strong empire are nearly always strengthened relative to their
own subjects.
The Gupta kings were gods, revivers of Hinduism, great conquerors,
and ruled through appointed servants. They encountered other states
administered much like their own and provided certain welfare services
to those who lived under their authority. The insularity of village life
was cemented, taxes remained proportionate to output, and the process
of land clearance initiated by Magadha was “completed by force”66
and extended to Bengal.67 The guilds, which show signs of autonomy,
were destined to “break up” once the mode of “village production”
encouraged by Gupta policies “became the norm”.68 The coins and
sculptures furnish some more proof of centralization, at least in the
cultural and economic spheres.
If a couple of Ashoka’s pillars, an impressive amount of coins, the
account of a single pilgrim interested primarily in religious establishments
and monuments, and dramas, were the only sources of information
available for the Maurya Empire then many utopian theorizations
similar to those inflicted on the Guptas, would have, no doubt, been
made and propagated with an ardor that can spring only from ignorance.
Fortunately, for the discipline of history, Kautilya and Megasthenes


ensure that the moral acrobatics masquerading as historical arguments

required to construct utopian myths about the Maurya Empire are, to
say the least, extremely complex. In the absence of a political treatise,
detailed ambassadorial reports, or even a small body of reliable written
historical knowledge, two observations about the Gupta dynasty are still
pertinent. One is that it is highly unlikely that the Guptas were more
benevolent or just, and less arbitrary, than their Magadhan predecessors
– state run facilities for the poor existed well before the Guptas and do
not, at any rate, reveal much about the exercise of power.69 The other
observation is that the probability of the territories under the indirect
or direct control of the Gupta Empire being governed in the arbitrary
manner typical of continental bureaucratic empires is quite high.
The erosion of Gupta power was underscored when Yasodharma,
after defeating the Huns in 533, established his own imperial state, which
stretched from the Brahmaputra and the Eastern Ghats to the Western
Ocean.70 The “dominant powers” in the 500s “were the Maukharis in
the Ganges Valley and the Chalukyas of the Deccan.”71 In 606, Harsha
acceded to the throne of Kanauj, ruled for forty years, and established
an empire that comprised most of North India.72 The Harshacharita,
which is a biography of Harsha by Bana, and the account of Hsiuen-
tsang, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who stayed in India from 630-643,
briefly lift India above the historical horizon. Hsiuen-tsang observed
that Harsha’s “subjects obey him with perfect submission”.73
Harsha, however, was not the recognized paramount ruler. Eastern
India and Orissa were added to his empire in the fifteenth year of his reign
and, in 630, Pulakeshin II of the Chalukya inflicted a “crushing defeat”
on Harsha at Badani in Karnataka.74 The Chalukya victory spared South
India from northern invasions for six centuries. During this period,
however, the peninsular was divided into dynastic states locked in armed
struggle and engaged in the construction of monumental architecture.75
69 For example, the welfare services provided by totalitarian states like the Soviet
Union or Communist China are, if compared to Britain or India, more compre-
hensive and have a superior reach. This does not translate into a state that is less
arbitrary towards its people or more tolerant of dissent.
71 Ibid.
73 Ibid., 110.
74 Ibid.
75 Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 254 – 354.

The great Saira temple at Tanjore, for example, rises to nearly two
hundred feet, and has fourteen stories. The massive stone block from
which it was sculpted was transported four miles to its location on a
specially built inclined road. The capital city built by Rajendra Chola
includes an artificial lake some fifteen miles long.76 There are many
more monuments of comparable design and scale. Pre-modern societies
subject to the feudal diffusion of power into land-owning aristocracies
capable of resisting the central executive simply could not mobilize or
coordinate the resources required for the scale of construction that is
the signature of continental bureaucratic empires from Aztec Central
America to Imperial China.
The Rajput period (647-1200), that neatly parallels the dynastic war
dance of South India, was witness to a frequency of change in ruling
houses that “prevented bonds of loyalty from developing”77 and had
a “demoralizing effect”78 on the populace. In the Rajput states, “all
land” belonged to the “ruling chief” who assigned portions to “his
lieutenants”. 79 These bureaucratic landlords rendered military service
and paid a share of their revenue to the chief.80 The was no written
legal code for the land, and the impact that “constant warfare”81 coupled
with insecurity had on the rapacity of the rulers, and those governed by
them, is not terribly difficult to imagine: “No wonder more than half of
the Hindu populace stood forth as mere spectators when the Rajputs
were confronted by the Turks” early in the eleventh century.82
The country was rich but its surplus was wasted in endless internecine
warfare and monumental extravagance. The moral and intellectual
capacity of the leadership declined and showed few, if any, symptoms
of internal reinvigoration. The arbitrariness of the smaller states that
emerged in the wake of Gupta collapse was far greater than that of the
Guptas or their Maurya predecessors. Kautilya’s warning of the danger
posed by the “great outsider” who can decisively affect the balance of
inter-state relations in the subcontinent but is not necessarily a part of
it, went unheeded. Aryan, Achaemenid, Greek, Parthian, and Scythian,
77 Srivastava, Kamal S., Some Aspects of Indian History (Varanasi: Sangeeta Pra-
bashan, 1998), 78.
78 Ibid., 79.
79 Ibid., 90.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid., 91
82 Ibid.

were all once “great outsiders” hovering on the periphery ready to strike
as soon as they saw an opportunity. To this list of predators would soon
be added the Turkasa.

CHAPTER IV
GREAT OUTSIDERS:
ARABS AND TURKS, AD 712 – AD 1186
T he Arabs of the peninsular desert were divided into tribes, practiced

agriculture on a small scale1, and took part in the caravan trade of
West Asia. For the mighty empires that bounded Arabia, there was little
to be gained from the penetration of such a vast, hostile, and desolate
expanse. Yemen, where archaeological remains confirm the existence
of an urban civilization that practiced irrigation agriculture, had been
reduced to the status of a zone of conflict between the Persian and
Abyssinian empires by the sixth century AD. The Arab tribes of the
north were in contact with imperial state formations since the ninth
century BC and enlisted along side rival powers as auxiliaries and
confederates. An Assyrian inscription of 854 BC reveals that “Gindibu
the Arab” led a force of one thousand camels against Shalamaneser III.2
Punitive expeditions aside, direct control was not exercised over the
barren lands inhabited by these turbulent nomads.
When the banner of Islam was unfurled in the seventh century
AD, the desert Arabs had no experience of a centralized, omnipotent,
continental bureaucratic empire. Mecca was governed by an assembly
within which each of the ten kinship groups were assigned special
functions, and the Prophet of Islam entered into a formal compact with
the citizens of Medina after his flight from Mecca in 622. Whether the
Arabs could have evolved a culture of power reflective of the egalitarian
1 Centered on oases and wells.

2 J. J. Saunders, A History of Medieval Islam (London: Routledge, 1965; reprint,
1996), 5.

and republican ethos of the faith that had inspired, reformed, and
galvanized them remained to be seen.
The fact is that they did not. Instead, after the Arabs expanded
into Sassanid and Byzantine territory, they adopted the administrative
systems and public ethos of their defeated rivals. By 661, the republican
experiment was abandoned and the rise of the Umayyad dynasty
completed the process by which power was concentrated in the hands
of the central executive. Government by consultation was replaced by
pledges of loyalty to the caliph after his ascension. To refrain from doing
homage invited all “the consequences of rebellion”.3 During the reign of
Walid (d. 715), the Umayyad dominion expanded to include both Spain
and Sindh. The subjugation of the latter was entrusted to the Governor
of Khurasan, Hajjaj bin Yousuf, and the field command of the invasion
force was entrusted to his seventeen year old nephew, Mohammed bin
Qasim.
The ruler of Sindh, Raja Dahir, had married his own sister on
the basis of an astrologer’s prediction that her son would be a great
ruler, and defeated his brother Dharasaya, who sought to capitalize
on the indignation caused by this incestuous union.4 Dahir’s unstable
and violent temperament prevented his officers from giving him “any
sane advice”, and this hesitation was reinforced by the murder at their
master’s hands of the messenger who bore “news of the Arab crossing
of the Indus”.5 Kaka, one of Dahir’s senior officers, deserted his camp
and found justification in “astrological calculations” that predicted Arab
victory.6
Hajjaj, in the meanwhile, was in constant touch with Mohammed
bin Qasim as letters were sent and received every three days.7 The
policy adopted by the Umayyad satrap and his nephew was to uphold
the prerogatives of the upper classes, offer security of life and property
to those who surrendered, and ensure that the taxes paid to Dahir
were redirected to Arab coffers.8 Hindus in general, but Brahmins
in particular, were recruited for public service, local notables were to
3 K. A. Nizami, ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period: Col-
lected Works of Professor Mohammed Habib, vol 2 (New Delhi: Peoples Publish-
ing House, 1981), 4.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 11.
6 Ibid., 10.
7 Ibid., 9.
8 Ibid.

Great Outsiders: Arabs and Turks, AD 712 – 1186 | 65
collect taxes, and tax incentives were given to encourage conversion.9

Mohammed bin Qasim’s proven competence did not save him from
death and disgrace after his uncle died in the summer of 714. In 715, the
Caliph Walid followed the proconsul to his eternal rest, before he could
alter the succession in favor of his son. Soon after the change of ruler,
an official messenger “arrived with orders for bin Qasim’s arrest”.10
Hajjaj had executed the brother of Salih al-Wasit, who now found favor
with the imperial court and took revenge by torturing Mohammed bin
Qasim to death.11 A similar fate was the reward of the royal servant who
brought Iberia, at the opposite extremity of the known world, under his
sway. It is only natural for an order that lacks legitimacy and is operated
on the arbitrary wishes of a single individual and his personal favorites
and servants, to view successes achieved without direct supervision
with suspicion. The victorious general or brilliant administrator of
today could well be the emperor or kingmaker of tomorrow. The annals
of the Abbasid dynasty, which succeeded the Umayyads in 750, also
contain many references to viziers and subordinates arrested or killed
by the caliph and his favorites, which reveal an atmosphere of mutual
suspicion and intrigue.12 Given the unreasonably high rate of attrition, it
is hardly surprising that viziers had no compunctions against eliminating
or manipulating a ruler who showed weakness.
The Arab invasion of India was a limited affair and thus had a
correspondingly marginal impact. The task of effecting a third imperial
unification of the subcontinent was left to others. Neither Arab nor
Hindu could imagine the historical process would lead both to the path
9 Ibid., 14-15, 19.
10 Ibid., 22.
11 Ibid.
12 One of the most valuable examples of this behavior is that of the rise and fall
of the Barmarkids, a succession of powerful ministers of Persian origin who
dominated the Abbasid court from 770-803. These ministers “…developed and
streamlined the administration of the state: after their fall the mail piled up un-
opened in sacks…. They provided leadership and inspiration for generations of
secretaries.” Hugh Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: When Baghdad Ruled the
Muslim World (London: Phoenix, 2005), 65. In 803, the Barmarkids suddenly
met their nemesis when the Abbasid ruler, Haroun al-Rashid (immortalized in
the Arabian Nights), stunned “almost everyone at that time” and “ordered the
destruction of the Barmarkids. Yahya and his son Fadl were placed under arrest
and his favourite Ja’far was summarily executed in the middle of the night, his
body being cut in pieces and displayed on the bridges of Baghdad for every pass-
er-by to see. Their possessions were confiscated and their officials arrested.”
Ibid., 71.

of subjection to Turkish rule.

The Turks originated in the Southern Siberian plains, and were
organized into small family groups headed by a father figure.13 By the
sixth century AD, the Turks had founded two large states stretching
from the northern reaches of China to the Black Sea.14 Tang China
evidently saw the presence of these two states as a threat and managed to
overthrow them by 660.15 Seven years later, the Arabs crossed the Oxus
and raided Bokhara, Samarkand, and other tributaries of the Turks.16
Until their contact with the Arabs, the Turks essentially had a tribal-
confederate political organization and practiced shamanism. Transition
from a principally tribal society on the margins of civilizations, to the
most successful dynasts in Muslim history took three, not mutually
exclusive, forms.
Initially, some Turkish clans on the periphery of the Arab Empire
that accepted Islam and pledged loyalty to the Arab rulers were granted
governorships. In this manner, four grandsons of Saman-Khudat were
made governors of Samarkand, Ferghana, Shash, and Herat in 819 by
Ma’mun al-Rashid and laid the foundations of the Samanid dynasty.17
The second, and most famous, way in which the Turks established their
dynastic rule was through the institution of military slavery. By the ninth
century, the Abbasids had come to rely heavily on Turkish slaves for
military purposes. Caliph Wathik (842-846) began granting Turkish
chiefs governorships and, consequently, in 868 Ahmad bin Tulun
became sovereign of Egypt18 – the first Turk to carve an independent
13 Carl Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers, 1995), 163.
14 Ibid., 163-4.
15 Ibid., 164.
16 Saunders, A History of Medieval Islam, 68-69.
17 Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples, 165.
18 At about the same time as Egypt’s secession from the Abbasid dominion, the
Turkish military leadership at the capital, Samarra, murdered the sovereign af-
ter having forced him to “voluntarily” abdicate through a written instrument
solemnly and spinelessly “witnessed by the judicial establishment.” Hugh Ken-
nedy, The Court of the Caliphs, 287. The junta also had the imperial secretar-
ies flogged, an act that “made a deep impression” for the secretaries “…were
respected figures, well-educated in the great traditions of Abbasid bureaucracy,
and this barbarous assault showed both the power and the savagery of the Turk-
ish leadership.” Ibid., 290. With the collapse of Abbasid power, the Turkish led
military effectively went on a rampage that lasted until 935, when Ibn Raiq as-
sumed the mantle of political power as the Amir-al-Umara. The Abbasids were
allowed to exist by the Turkish amirs in order to acquire divine sanction. Thus,

principality for himself out of the caliphate.19 The third mode of

transition consisted of migration from the steppes to Anatolia and
gradual settlement with war against the Byzantines a near permanent
feature of Turkish statecraft after the Battle of Manzikert 1071.20 Thus,
when Mahmud of Ghazni assumed control of his principality in 997 and
styled himself “Sultan”, the decline of Arab power was terminal.
Subuktagin, Mahmud’s father, was succeeded by on the throne by
his elder son Ismail, who proved to be “an incompetent spendthrift”.21
Seven months after Subuktagin’s demise, Ismail was forced to abdicate
and Mahmud ascended the throne.22 Sultan Mahmud led seventeen
expeditions into India, and arranged for the administration of subject
territories in the Punjab during the latter half of his thirty-three year reign.
The wealth looted from India enabled Mahmud to establish a glittering
court adorned by some four hundred poets23 churning out tribute to
the sultan’s manifest magnificence. Firdausi, who composed “by the
special order of the king”, fled the court, having satirized the sultan
because of the insufficient “reward” given to him for the Shahnama.24
The punishment for those who dared oppose the sultan was death by
the particularly awful method of “being trampled by elephants”.25 Shaik
Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna), the famous physician and biologist, was forced
to seek asylum in Ray upon his refusal to come to Mahmud’s court.26
Al-Beruni, the author of the unmatched Kitab-ul-Hind also suffered
imprisonment and royal disfavor at the hands of Sultan Mahmud.27
Some satisfaction can be derived from the superior endurance of
the “monuments of the pen”28 left behind by these luminaries of the
“Persian Renaissance”29 of which the Ghaznavids were comparatively
the Abbasids were relegated to the highest position within the ideocratic com-
plex of the Turkish warrior-elite’s state.
19 Saunders, A History of Medieval Islam, 120-121.
20 Ibid., 149.
22 Ibid.
23 Edward C. Sachau, Alberuni’s India: An account of the Religion, Philosophy,
Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astrology, Customs, Laws, and Astrology of
India About AD 1030, vol 1 (Lahore: Ferozesons, 1962), vii.
24 Ibid., viii.
25 Ibid.
26 Nizami, ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period, 69.
27 Ibid.
28 Sachau, Alberuni’s India, 3.
29 Ibid.

transient manifestations.
The language of power and refinement of the age was Persian,
and Sultan Mahmud exercised power in the manner of Achaemenid
or Sassanid rulers. The daily routine of administration was left to
salaried ministers and officials who were at the absolute mercy of the
sultan in whose name they wielded power, and from whose will came
their status and wealth. The most accurate gauge of the power of the
sultan over his officials is the status of the office of the vizier, who, for
all practical purposes, was the first minister due to his charge of the
revenue department. Sultan Mahmud’s first vizier was Abul Abbas Fazl
bin Ahmed.30 His eventual fall from royal favor was due to “alleged”
financial corruption, the jealousy of some nobles, and his refusal to
transfer one of his “favorite slaves” to the sultan.31 Fazl bin Ahmed was
“cruelly treated” and “died under merciless torture”.32
Next was Abul Qasim Ahmed bin Hasan al-Maimandi, a “class
fellow”, and “foster brother” of the sultan.33 After eighteen years of
loyal service, the sultan’s sister and partisans secured his dismissal from
office and imprisonment in an Indian fort.34 The vizier who served
Sultan Mahmud until the end of his reign in 1030 was his close friend and
confidante, Hasanak.35 In the war of succession that followed Mahmud’s
death, notwithstanding the will he left in favor of his son Mohammed,
his other son Masud emerged victorious. When Hasanak realized that
Mohammed was doomed, he tried to switch sides to Masud’s party but
was arrested, executed, and had his property confiscated.36 The throne
successfully usurped from the hands of Mohammed, Masud developed
the habit of inviting advice only to overrule his advisors. Masud was
finally imprisoned by his own slaves, and his blind brother Mohammed
was placed on the throne, while the affairs of state were entrusted to his
mad son.37
One is reminded by these lesser-known examples of Nizam-ul-
Mulk Tusi, author of the Siyasatnamah, and vizier to the Seljuk Turks.
30 Raj Kumar, ed., Local Governments and Administration During Muslim Rule in
India (New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2000), 66.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 67.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 68.
37 Ibid., 90.

Tusi was dismissed from office in his early nineties due to the queen’s
intrigues against him over the issue of succession, suffered accusations
from him enemies, and was conveniently murdered by a religious
fanatic. One of the principal advantages of appointing a vizier, from
the sultan’s perspective, was that it spared him direct association with
the administration of a state that was even at the best of times heavy-
handed and structurally prone to concentrating power in unscrupulous
and often unaccountable officials. Appeals directed against the behavior
of the apparatus were heard by the sultan and provided him with the
option of making examples of some officials. Their ill-gotten property,
of course, would go into the royal treasury. A timely change of vizier
accompanied by the incumbent’s death or disgrace would further project
the sultan as a good man misled by evil advisors who had, mercifully,
been found out and punished.
The Ghaznavids, to their credit, twice attempted to reform the
exercise of power by their subordinates. Sultan Mahmud had his senior
officials nominate a panel from which he would select a vizier.38 This
practice was abandoned after Mahmud’s death. The second attempted
reform was the separation of military from civilian government in the
Punjab. Ali Ariyaruk was entrusted with regional command of the
former and Qazi Sherazi took charge of the latter from the seat of
government in Lahore,39 and to keep the two in control bul Hakan was
made superintendent of news carriers.40
The reform misfired. Soon Qazi Sherazi was running around in
military robes and Ariyaruk “bore down all opposition”.41 The immediate
crisis ended when Ariyaruk was arrested in 1031 and replaced by
Niyaltgin who, in turn, rapidly developed differences with the Qazi.42 As
soon as Niyaltgin went on a campaign deeper into India, the Qazi sent
reports to his superiors informing them, to use the current phraseology,
of the leakages from which his military counterpart had benefited at the
sultan’s expense.43 Niyaltgin was not amused by these shenanigans and
laid siege to Lahore, but suffered defeat at the hands of imperial forces
38 Kumar, ed., Local Governments and Administration During Muslim Rule in

India, 69.
40 Ibid., 85.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.

under the command of a Hindu named Tilak.44 This second failure led
to the restoration of the old system of viceroys that combined in their
person supreme military and civil authority, subject to review, transfer,
dismissal, or liquidation, by the sultan. Prince Majdud, Masud’s son, was
thus made viceroy and sent to Lahore.
Perhaps the greatest good that came of Masud’s reign was his
restoration to favor of Al-Beruni, now granted a pension that freed
him from mundane worries.45 The Kitab-ul-Hind sheds light on the
culture, philosophy, and religion of Hindu India around AD 1030, prior
to Turkish colonization and Islamic proselytism. Al-Beruni observed
that the Hindus had a classical language spoken and understood “only”
by the “upper and educated classes”, and a “neglected vernacular” for
the masses.46 Indian scribes are described as “careless” individuals who
neglected “to produce correct and well-collated copies”.47 Only “that
which is known by heart” was considered “canonical”, which further
devalued the written word.48 The embarrassing lack of written historical
knowledge for India before the Muslim conquests appears to confirm
Al-Beruni’s harsh evaluation.
The people were arrogantly insular to the extent that “if you tell
them of any science or scholar in Khurasan or Persis, they will think
you to be both an ignoramus and a liar”.49 Hindus were also divided
into castes called varnas (colors), and a mass of humanity existed
beneath the caste-system, who performed degrading menial work,
and antyaja (guilds) that rendered services.50 Each caste had special
functions and the lower orders were criminally culpable if they violated
the restrictions placed on them by divine sanction. Al Beruni recounts
Ram’s murder of a candala who performed rituals forbidden to his kind
and the subsequent justification that “I kill thee on account of a good
action which thou art not allowed to do”.51 Al Beruni also confirms the
existence of state managed prostitution to raise revenues.52 The practice
must have continued at least since the time of Kautilya (c 300 BC) and is
44 Ibid., 86.
45 Sachau, Alberuni’s India, xviii.
46 Ibid., 20.
47 Ibid., 21.
48 Ibid., 22.
49 Ibid., 27.
50 Ibid., 133-1.35
51 Ibid., 184-185.
52 Ibid., 210.

comparable to a policy devised by: “the Buyide prince ‘Adud-aldaula…

who besides also had a second aim in view, viz. that of protecting his
subjects against the passions of his unmarried soldiers”.53
The Ghaznavid state that alternately terrorized and patronized Al
Beruni was well on its way to collapse by the time the Kitab-ul-Hind was
completed. This was largely due to the deficient leadership of Sultan
Mahmud’s sons. Ghaznavid rule, however, would endure in parts of the
Punjab until 1186 when a fresh wave of Turkish invaders descended
from the northwest and laid the foundations for the political order of
the Delhi Sultanate. The Arab and Ghaznavid empires had, by then,
cast in iron the culture of power later Muslim invaders would carry
deeper into the subcontinent. In both cases, the central executive was
omnipotent, praetorian, legitimated by divine sanction, and recognized
no lawful opposition. The personal favorites and appointed servants
of the central executive constituted the ruling class. Private property,
landed or otherwise, maintained a precarious existence as evidenced by
the frequent Abbasid practice of levying “monetary fines” on the rich
in the range of “fifty thousand to a hundred thousand dinars”.54 The
Caliph Muqtadir, in 914, “confiscated the fortunes of a jeweler, valued
at four million dinars”.55 The country, in other words, was the personal
estate of the ruler.
The dominant religion of Islam was bent and broken to provide the
system with divine sanction by a historical experience of governance long
determined by geography, climate, and the compulsions of hydraulic
civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia, that predated Islam by
millennia.56 The rulers had at their disposal a bureaucratic intelligentsia
dependent on royal largesse, and could do as they pleased with their
officials and subjects. In short, all the characteristics consistent with
the behavior of continental bureaucratic empires established within the
53 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 The Abbasids, who took power in the name of religion and promised a return
to an earlier age of purity, rapidly founded their dominion “on a solid founda-
tion with a paid professional army of mostly Khurasani soldiers and an efficient
tax system to collect the money to pay for them.” Hugh Kennedy, The Court of
the Caliphs, 26. Within a generation, revolts by the Alids were brutally crushed
and the Abbasid imperium “…looked very much like the Umayyad one it re-
placed, but with different people in charge.” Ibid., 21. The Umayyad, in turn,
maintained the structure of the bureaucratic state they inherited from the Byz-
antine and Persian empires.

subcontinent centuries before the Muslim conquest, which have been

investigated in the previous chapter, also manifested themselves in the
governance of the states and peoples that would establish the hegemony
of an alien race and confession over the Aryan heartland.57
57 The Indo-Gangetic plain.

CHAPTER V
SHADOWS OF GOD:
AD 1186 – AD 1526
T he conditions and events pertinent to the foundation and growth

of a Turkish settler-colonial state in the subcontinent in 1206 are
reasonably well documented. Under Alauddin Jahan Sez (1149-1166)
the Ghorid kingdom expanded and in 1173-74 Ghazni was occupied.1
In 1186, the Ghaznavids were exterminated and after the second battle
of Tarain in 1192, Delhi fell to Ghorid arms.2 With territorial expansion,
the pull of centralization soon made itself felt. Shihabbudin Ghori
“must have become familiar at Ghazni with the traditions of the empire
of which that city had been the capital”.3 The “attraction” of raising a
slave corps “to make his writ run” and secure his lands and riches from
“clannish co-sharers” was no doubt considerable.4 After Shihabbudin’s
death in 1206, the Indian provinces came under the control of his
slaves. Amongst them Iltutmish (1210-12365) can be regarded as the
“true founder” of the Delhi Sultanate.6
The sultanate lasted from 1206 to 1526. Over the course of these
three hundred and twenty years, six dynasties rose and fell.7 Of the
1 Irfan Habib, ed., Medieval India: Researches in the History of India 1200-1750
(Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, 1999), 2, 4.
2 Ibid., 5.
3 Ibid. 7.
4 Ibid.
5 Dates indicated duration of reign.
6 Irfan Habib, ed., Medieval India, 9.
7 The Turkish dynasties were the Shamsids (Slave Dynasty), Ghiyathids, Khaljis,
Tughluqids and collectively account for the years 1210-1412. The Turko-Af-
ghan dynasty was that of the Sayyids and the Afghan dynasty of the Lodhis

sultans those that merit the greatest attention are the Shamsid Iltutmish,
the Ghiyathid Balban (1266-87), Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316), and the
Tughluqids Muhammad Shah (1324-51) and Firuz Shah (1351-88).
Although the sultanate was unstable in comparison to the mono-
dynastic Maurya and Gupta empires, the total period of effective rule
for all the dynasties combined, at a generous estimate, is approximately
one hundred and fifty years. In terms of territorial extent, the Delhi
Sultanate is comparable to the Gupta Empire under its last effective
ruler or the empire established by Harsha in the seventh century AD.
The core area of the Delhi Sultanate was the Indo-Gangetic
plain, which stretches from the Bolan Pass in the northwest to the
Bhramaputra delta in the southeast. The highest points across this vast
expanse rise no more than one thousand feet above sea level, and the
plain is watered by two river systems.8 Geographic subunits in the plain
region are often determined by rivers. The borders of the provinces of
Delhi, Allahabad, and Oudh, and the five sarkars of Lahore, all conform
to the course of rivers.9 Under Muhammad Shah Tughluq, the Sultanate
attained its greatest level of territorial expansion and comprised twenty-
four provinces that corresponded to “ancient natural divisions”.10 When
the imperial center weakened, the geographic subunits would emerge
as independent entities. Typically, the first to rebel were the furthest
removed from the center such as the provinces of Bengal and Gujarat.
In the mountainous regions and deserts, where conquest would cost
far more than the land could yield in taxes, the sultans did not venture
unless necessary, though attempts were made to appoint or nominate
headmen11 and leaders so that punitive expeditions would not be
required as often.
The central state was organized into four ministries12 and several
departments. Revenue, local government and administration, markets,
and war, enjoyed full ministerial status while departments dealt with
the administration of justice, the admiralty, slaves, and agriculture.
Irrigation, canals, reservoirs, subsidies for farmers, centrally controlled
collectively account for the years 1412-1526.
8 The Indus and the Ganges
India, 10.
10 Ibid., 35.
11 Ibn Batutta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-54 (London: Routledge and Kea-
gan Paul, 1929; reprint Lahore: Services Book Club, 1985), 188.
12 In accordance with the Sassanid tradition.

Shadows of God: AD 1186 – 1526 | 75
or coordinated grain storage, road construction, palace construction,

fortifications, and the post were also important functions of the state.
Police functions were performed by the military in conjunction with
metropolitan and village authorities. The tax on land was the principal
source of income and was collected directly by amils appointed,
dismissed, and transferred, by the revenue office.13 The record of
arable land was kept by the patwari and was communicated directly
to the center.14 Governors were also responsible for keeping a record
and reporting to the center. Discrepancies between the sets of figures
received from different sources were made good through the torture of
suspected officials.15 Land was divided into khalsa16 (crown) and iqta17
(revenue assignments) and the sultan was “the biggest landholder in the
kingdom, in fact the only one whose property had an undisputed legal
basis. He could choose the most fertile tracts of land and employ the
resources of the state to enhance their productive capacity.”18 Alauddin
Khalji raised the tax rate to about one-half of output and confiscated
the revenue assignments of Kol, Baran, Mirat, Amroha, Afghanpur, and
the entire Doab.19 Ghiyathuddin Tughluq inaugurated his reign by the
confiscation of “all grants” made by his predecessor Khusraw Shah and
“instituted proceedings” against “all others” save for those given by
Alauddin.20
The ministry for markets was the second greatest source of revenue
for the state. It was responsible for the issue of licenses, regulating prices
of commodities, collecting duties, standardizing weights and measures,
the registration of tavern keepers, and related economic functions.21
Inspectors were appointed to ferret out violators of the price controls,
transaction procedures, and standards.22 A central depository for goods
13 Nizami, ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval, 374.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 375.
16 Crown lands were directly under the control of the sultan’s officials.
17 Revenue assignments made to servants of the state for upkeep. Subject to trans-
fer and confiscation by the center. A share of the revenue was sent to the royal
treasury.
18 K. M. Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1959), 64.
19 Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 242-244.
20 Ibid., 250.
22 Ibid., 156.

was set up in the capital as part of the regulatory mechanism and the
punishment for failure to comply was that the miscreant had his joints
“opened” by a sword.23 One of the inspectors kept the oil merchants
and producers of Delhi in line and was invested with the power to have
violators thrown “into the oil mill and let them be squeezed therein
and confiscate everything they possessed”.24 Wealthy traders, such as
those of the port of Kambhayet,25 were dependent on royal favor and
patronage. Officers were deputed to deal with retailers “through the
whip of justice”26 and one Maulana Ziyauddin of Bayana, a prominent
member of the judiciary who held the title of Sadr-ul-Mulk “had
misappropriated a hundred thousand …like many other agents of the
government, he always had his eyes on the wealth of others and his
stony heart served as a lode-stone, drawing to itself the money of the
people. Even the shirt on his body belonged to others”.27
Superintendents and nobles were placed in charge of royal factories
that were manned by skilled slaves or wage laborers.28 Alauddin Khalji
owned fifty thousand slaves, and Firuz Tughluq owned nearly two
hundred thousand, of which twelve thousand were craftsmen and forty
thousand were with the “royal equipage”.29 In addition to catering for
the conspicuous consumption at the court, and the well-developed
hedonistic inclinations of the bureaucratic elite, the factories also
sold surplus production and so contributed to the sultan’s revenue.
For example, Muhammad Shah Tughluq gave out some two hundred
thousand robes of honor every year, and maintained twelve hundred
physicians, ten thousand falconers, three thousand dealers in “articles
required for hawking”, twelve hundred musicians, one thousand slave
musicians, one thousand poets, and five hundred table companions.30
To place these figures in perspective, at the death of Maximilian I of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1619 there were only six “courtiers officially
in attendance on the Emperor”.31 When Joseph II, the Habsburg
23 Ibid., 158.
24 Syed Hasan Askari, Medieval India: A Miscellany (New Delhi: Asia Publishing
House, 1969), 15.
25 Ibid., 11.
26 Nizami, ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period, 155-6.
27 Askari, Medieval India: A Miscellany, 13.
28 Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan, 64.
29 Ibid., 59.
30 Ibid., 65.
31 T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime

modernizer, began the “purge” of his court in 1780, the number

of courtiers in attendance had risen to “about” fifteen hundred.32
Regardless of whether the treasury was filled by loot from campaigns,
taxes from land, duties on merchants, or the sale of surplus from royal
factories one point was clear to all – the wealth of the land and its
treasury were the personal possessions of the sultan who spent and did
as he pleased.33 Ibrahim Lodhi34, the last of the Delhi Sultans, had his
vizier arrested when he tried to prevent the disbursement of a large sum
from the hard-pressed treasury.35
More proof of the distortions produced by total lack of financial
unaccountability is found in the court custom that the sultan was
required to give a supplicant a greater gift than the one he had received.
Ibn Battuta relates how merchants provided loans to persons en route
to the imperial court so that they could give the sultan a very valuable
gift and receive something of far greater value in return, pay off the debt,
and pocket the balance.36 Ten miles from Multan goods and baggage
were inspected and taxed at the rate of seven dinars per horse and one-
fourth of “everything brought in by merchants”.37 The governor of
Multan, Qutb-ul-Mulk, was presented by Ibn Battuta with a white slave,
a horse, raisins, and almonds38 - a scaled down version of the far more
Europe 1660-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 54.

32 Ibid.
33 An interesting parallel is found in the rise of the Ottoman Empire. As the
Ottoman Empire expanded in the 1300s “the bureaucratic traditions of near
eastern states” came to dominate “statecraft and administration.” Halil Inalick,
The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 (London: Phoenix, 2000),
65. The core organizing “principle” of this empire was that the subjects and all
their land belonged to the sultan. Ibid., 73.The purpose of the state structure
was to ensure the effective exercise of the sultan’s universal proprietorship. The
system of military and administrative slavery meant that the army and bureau-
cracy were also “owned by the ruler.” Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire
and Early Modern Europe: New Approaches to European History (Cambridge:
University Press, 2002), 49.
34 Ibrahim Lodhi was a strong believer in the divine right of kings, and was fond
of imitating Sassasind court protocol. That the territories he ruled were con-
fined to the area around Delhi did nothing to diminish his pretensions or tem-
per the arbitrary exercise of royal prerogative within the small area under his
control.
India, 50.
36 Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 182-183.
37 Ibid., 186.
38 Ibid., 187.

lavish gifts reserved for the sultan at Delhi.

The writ of the sultan ran so long as he commanded overwhelming
military force. The war ministry was responsible for the administration
of the army, which was subdivided into infantry, archers, and cavalry.
The total number of enlisted men is estimated at between three hundred
thousand and six hundred thousand39 and is not significantly different
from the figures available for the Maurya period.40 If it is assumed each
soldier represents a family unit of four, the number of people directly
dependent on the military for livelihood would range from one million
two hundred thousand to two million four hundred thousand. The
army was directly recruited by the sultan’s appointed officials, paid fixed
wages, equipped at state expense, maintained in peacetime, and subject to
reporting and surveillance in the forms of descriptive rolls, inspections,
and espionage. It is likely that the economic policy implemented by
Alauddin Khalji, which came to include the confiscation of “all private
property” and “all existing grants”, inclusive of those marked for
charitable purposes, was motivated by the need “to maintain a standing
army and do so on fixed pay.”41 Sultan Aladuddin’s economic policy
certainly had a devastating impact on the richer Hindu cultivators and
revenue farmers who “are said to have become so poor that no trace of
gold or silver or money remained in their houses and their wives were
compelled to work as maid servants for wages.”42
The Maurya emperors were confronted by the same problem and,
as evidenced by the Arthasashtra, tried to solve it by a system of elaborate
economic controls and prerogatives every bit as intrusive, arbitrary, and
predatory, as those instituted by the sultans. One difference, however,
was that though the Mauryas often personally led campaigns, they also
appointed a handsomely remunerated army chief. The sultans made
no such provisions and either performed the function themselves or
“appointed commanders when required”.43 The military had its own
judges, the war minister had purely administrative duties to perform,
and Islamic injunctions for the division of war-booty twenty-eighty44
39 Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, 240.
40 400,000 – 600,000.
41 Ibid., 240-241.
42 Tapan Raychaudhry and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of
India, vol 1, c1200 to c1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
55.
44 The share of the state in war booty is one-fifth. The remainder is to be distrib-

“between the state and the soldiery were ignored”.45 That this division
“was essentially inapplicable”46 to a salaried class of professional soldiers
who “enjoyed unprecedented ease”47 is indicative of the extraordinary
degree to which the nature of power in the tribal-mercantile society of
Arabia differed from that of continental bureaucratic empires.
The communication of orders to governors and officials in the
provinces and districts was entrusted to the ministry of local government.
There was plenty of “red tape”48 and the insularity of village life did
much to sap society’s power to resist the state49 and heighten the
sense of alienation from the central authority. The standing of village
headmen can be gauged by the fact that local officials could “rope ten
or twenty headmen and extract taxes by means of blows and kicks”.50
Headmen were “compelled” to forswear “riding and bearing arms” and
were reduced to performing guard duty on the highways, and reporting
on caravans and travelers “on the sultan’s behalf”.51 Should arms be
found in the house of a Hindu it would be confiscated and become
“the sultan’s property”.52 Leading merchants were “obliged” to live in
villages “along the Yamuna”53 where they could be supervised and kept
within easy reach of the sultan.
The sultan’s reach was rendered unchallengeable by the justice
system. The Chief Qazi at Delhi was an appointee of the sultan who
held office at his pleasure. Qazis dealt with disputes involving Muslims
and there were no professional lawyers to provide litigants with advice
and representation.54 They did not, however, deal with disputes related
to the administration and, the sultan, as the highest court of appeal,
could interfere with any court or overturn any judgment. The “laws of
the Sultanate” can indeed “be summarized in one phrase – the will of
the sultan.”55
The appointment of a few committed Muslims to offices effectively
uted among the soldiers.
46 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., 245.

“disarmed the opposition”56 while state endowments for religious

purposes, which could be withdrawn if the sultan so desired, further
cemented the ideocratic complex of the sultanate. The ulema propagated
the doctrine that resistance to the sultan was a sin as well as a crime and
asserted that there was no difference between obedience to God and
obedience to the sultan. Indeed, it was claimed that Islamic traditions
upheld the principle “If there be no Sultan, the people will devour one
another.”57
The ulema in the judiciary and, like the Brahmins in the Maurya and
Gupta empires, had little interest in opposing an executive that rewarded
their compliance with robes, honors, pensions, and status. Ibn Battuta,
for example, was appointed Qazi of the Malikites by Muhammad Shah
Tughluq, granted a “pension” of twelve thousand dinars, and assigned
the revenues of five villages.58 When he fell from favor, he was forced
to turn to a life of asceticism to convince the sultan of his piety and
devotion.59 Another qazi was “notorious for misappropriating the
property of others.”60
The sympathies of the ulema lay with the winning side in any
confrontation. In 1257, they “conspired with Mongol protégés” and
established that they were prepared to betray “Muslim political power
in India instead of safeguarding it.”61 The sultan, therefore, was not
without justification for having confined the ulema to “purely judicial or
theological matters” or reserving the right to overrule their decisions.62
Muhammad Shah Tughluq accomplished the “decentralization of the
Chisti Sufis”63 and, subsequent to their dispersal and “humiliation”,
they “became less ascetic and accepted favors from rulers or nobles”.64
The Suhrawardi Sufis, on the hand, “remained on cordial terms” with
the state and were used by Muhammad Shah Tughluq “for political
ends”.65
56 Ibid., 44.
57 Ibid., 47.
58 Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 205.
59 Ibid., 210.
61 Aziz Ahmed, An Intellectual History of Islam in India (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1969), 5-6.
62 Ibid., 6.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid. 35.
65 Ibid., 39.

In addition to the ulema and Sufis, the sultan had at his disposal a
bureaucratic intelligentsia dependent on the state for livelihood. Under
state patronage serious scholarship in religion, history, language, and
medicine, was accompanied by investments in astrologers, soothsayers,
musicians, artists, and the like. Sikandar Lodhi (1489-1517) insisted
“on a certain educational level” for his officers and replaced Hindi
with Persian “as the language of the lower administration.”66 The latter
measure forced Hindus to learn Persian or face elimination from the
administrative class. The Hindus responded by attending schools that
imparted education in Persian “which were not attached to mosques.”67
Ibn Battuta sought to cash in on the sultan’s love of praise, inspired by
the reward of one thousand silver dinars per verse given to “the doctor
Shamsuddin” for “a laudatory ode” written in Persian.68
The fine praise lavished on the sultan by his courtiers and officers
did not alter the fact that retaining control over the activities of his
appointed servants was a serious problem. One way of maximizing
control was to rely on slaves. As they were the property of the sultan
and lacked their own family and social base, they were less likely to
revolt or disobey. Another method, relied upon by Sultan Balban,
himself a slave of Iltutmish, was to appoint only those individuals of
good birth to important positions on the assumption that the well-born
were less likely to be ambitious. A third policy, which climaxed under
Muhammad Shah Tughluq, was to give preference to foreigners, or the
foreign qualified, in recruitment to government service. Ibn Battuta
observed that the majority of “his courtiers, palace officials, ministers
of state, judges, and relatives by marriage are foreigners”.69
The recruitment of imported personnel had two major advantages
from the sultan’s point of view. One was that, like slaves, they lacked
local roots, while the other was their good birth, education, and ignorance
of Indian conditions. At least in theory, the foreigners were less likely
to become politically ambitious. Indeed, many of the foreigners were
driven more by a desire to acquire a fortune from state service and
retire to their native land.70 The heterogeneity of the bureaucratic class
that resulted from this policy further eroded the potential for collective
66 Ibid., 53-54.
67 Ibid., 54.
69 Ibid., 182.

action against the sultan.

The most effective means of control that the sultan had his disposal
was terror. The two dimensions of this device were omniscience, or
inculcating terror of the sultan’s knowledge, and omnipotence, or terror
of the sultan’s wrath. The intelligence service ensured the former and
directed the coercive apparatus at the sultan’s disposal.71 A judicious
mixture of the two elements ensured that the sultan was feared and
obeyed.
Balban’s policy of assassination and surveillance towards the
leading Turkish nobles and their partisans is a well-known example of
the state successfully employing asymmetric violence against perceived
opponents.72 Under Alauddin Khalji, the superintendent of the market
was accompanied by an intelligence officer, overseers were responsible
for reporting on prices, village headmen performed guard duty on
highways and kept a watchful eye on outsiders,73 and even young
children were used to “detect malpractices.”74 Spies and informers were
appointed and moved about “constantly from dawn till darkness in the
midst of the poor and destitute.”75
The vizier and other high officials reported directly to the sultan
and Alauddin Khalji created the office of Divan Musta Khraj to inquire
into financial irregularities and invested it with “penal powers”.76 The
level of corruption appears to have been kept in check only so long as
the sultan took an active interest in keeping the “powerful penholders”77
under control. To this end, Balban had separated the military from the
71 In the Arab empires rulers “relied heavily on an organization called the barid.
This is usually translated as ‘post’, but though it did carry official correspon-
dence its remit ran much wider. The agents of the barid operated in every city
and district a sort of alternative government structure, reporting directly to the
caliph” everything from the behavior of government officers to fluctuations
in the prices of essential commodities. Hugh Kennedy, The Court of the Ca-
liphs, 15. The speed at which official correspondence and reports could travel
through the courier-relay system under the control of the barid was phenom-
enal. In 809, when the Abbasid ruler Harun al-Rashid died at Tus, some 1900
kilometers from the capital Baghdad, the news arrived there in less than two
weeks – making for an average daily speed of about 150 kilometers. Ibid., 85.
73 Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate, 245-248.
India, 78.

general accounts. The Khaljis appointed a Divan-i-Vaqoof to deal with

papers of expenditure. Inquiries were made into the finances of all
persons “unfortunate” enough to attract the attention of the apparatus
and “spies and reporters” were a constant nuisance.78
Ibn Battuta provides further proof of the “atmosphere of perpetual
suspicion and distrust”79 that pervaded the Delhi Sultanate. The arrival
of Ibn Battuta and his entourage was reported to the governor of
Multan by “officials of the intelligence service”.80 The march from
Sindh to Delhi was normally “fifty days” but intelligence was sent
via special couriers, part of the postal service, mounted or on foot,
and reached the sultan within “five days”.81 Communications sent by
couriers on foot changed hands every one-third of a mile, and those
on horse changed every four miles.82 The couriers were also used to
transport everything from “criminals on stretchers”, to the “Sultan’s
drinking water and fruits.”83 Reports about international arrivals were
“minutely scrutinized” by the sultan and no entry was allowed until
permission came from the imperial capital. The sultan’s eyes and ears in
the provinces was the postmaster, who reported on “all that happens”
in the towns and districts.84 Mere suspicion was enough to condemn
even the sultan’s relatives to death:
The Sultan had a half-brother named Masud Khan,

whose mother was the daughter of Sultan Alauddin…He
suspected him of wishing to revolt and questioned him
on the matter. Masud confessed through fear of torture,
for anyone who denies an accusation of this sort which
the sultan formulates against him is put to torture, and the
people consider death a lighter affliction.85
The infliction of pain – physical, psychological, economic, social,

and moral – on those who disagreed with the sultan, rebelled against
79 Ibid., 369.
81 Ibid. This speed of travel and communication was unmatched until the advent
of the train and the telegraph.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid., 182.
84 Ibid., 187.
85 Ibid., 201-202.

him, or were suspected of malcontent, was the function of the coercive

apparatus. Perhaps the most instructive incident from the bloodstained
annals of the Delhi Sultanate is Balban’s suppression of the revolt in
Bengal led by his governor Tughril Khan. That the rebellious governor
was killed is hardly unexpected for the rebel had to either prevail or
perish. The vengeance that was subsequently wrought on his family,
comrades, and supporters was as follows:
Gibbets were ranged along both sides of the long bazaar

of Lakhnauti, and on them were strung rows of rebels: the
sons and kinsmen and followers of Tughril were killed and
hung up to the horror of all beholders. Two days and more
the work of retribution went on; even a beggar to whom
the usurper had been kind was not spared and old men
told Barani half a century later “such punishment as was
inflicted on Lakhnauti had never been heard of in Delhi,
nor could anyone remember such a thing in all Hindustan.”
When it was over the sultan sent for his son, Bughra Khan
Mahmud, and made him take an oath to recover and
hold the rest of Bengal, of which he was then and there
appointed governor. Then he solemnly asked the prince,
“Mahmud, dost thou see?” The son did not understand.
Again he said “Dost thou see?” and the prince was still
silent and amazed. A third time the question was asked and
then the old sultan explained: “You saw my punishments in
the bazaar? If ever designing and evil-minded men should
incite you to waver in your allegiance to Delhi and to throw
off its authority, then remember the vengeance you have
seen wrought in the bazaar. Understand me and forget not,
that if the governors of Hind or Sind, Malwa or Gujarat,
Lakhnauti or Sonargaon, shall draw the sword and become
rebels to the throne of Delhi, then such punishments as has
fallen upon Tughril and his dependents will fall upon them,
their wives and children, and all their adherents.”86
86 Stanley Lane-Poole, Medieval India Under Mohammedan Rule: 712-1764 (Lon-

don: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd.; reprint, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1991),
86-87.

According to Ibn Battuta, the citizens of Delhi wrote “anonymous

criticisms” of the government and one sealed box of these documents
came into the sultan’s possession.87 The sultan read the criticisms and
reacted by buying “all the houses in Delhi” and ordering everyone to
move to the new capital at Daulatabad in the Deccan.88 A cripple and a
blind man that stayed after the deadline for evacuation had expired were
made examples. The former was flung to his death while the latter was
dragged on the road from Delhi to Daulatabad and was consequently
dismembered.89 After this display of royal wrath, people “fled” from
the city and left their possessions behind.90 In their place, people from
other parts of the country were moved into Delhi.91 As the bulk of the
population of Delhi was dependent on the government for livelihood,
the change of capital to the Deccan would, in time, have produced
a peaceful demographic shift driven by employment opportunities.
Ziyyaudin Barani, who served Muhammed Shah Tughluq for seventeen
years, was dismissed from service by Firuz Tughluq, and eventually
died in poverty as a result, laments the fact that he, and his colleagues,
could not tell his master the truth due to lust for money, honors, and
promotions.92
Whatever residual basis for loyalty to the state that had survived the
methodical exactions of the ancient Indian empires, waves of invasions,
and interminable civil wars that followed imperial collapse, evaporated
in the face of a deliberate policy of humiliation visited on the Hindus by
the Turks. In addition to the looting of temples in vogue since the time of
Mahmud of Ghazni, the Delhi Sultans used construction materials from
destroyed temples in their monuments and placed idols in the gateways
of mosques so that the faithful may tread on them to and from worship.93
The conquest of Benares, in 1194-95, resulted in the conversion of one
thousand “idol temples” into “houses for Muslims”.94
The culture of power of the Delhi Sultanate very nearly approximates
the pattern of ideocratic arbitrary rule characteristic of the Maurya and
Gupta empires. Differences fall primarily in the realms of idiom and
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 203.
92 Nizami, ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period, 272-273.

rhetoric and had no positive impact on the exercise of power by the state.
The sultan, styled as the “Shadow of God”, had the power to override
any law, eliminate any subject, and dismiss any official. Alauddin Khalji
and Muhammad Shah Tughluq are even credited with contemplating
founding their own religion.95 The people ruled by these autocrats knew
“no rights, only obligations”.96 Under Balban and Alauddin Khalji, the
nobility was “terrorized” into “abject submission”.97 There were few,
if any, moral relationships between or within the ruling and subject
classes. At best, the sultan inspired a combination of servility and latent
hostility amongst his appointed servants and subjects. Society, divided
into insular sub-political villages and urban centers dependent on the
state for sustenance, had neither an inner mechanism for change nor
a sound socioeconomic base from which to challenge the state and
organize a measure of lawful opposition. Further complicating matters
was the sultan’s quantum of insecurity, which manifested itself most
clearly in the extensive use of espionage in a manner that Kautilya would
have heartily approved of. A combination of religion, language, ethnic
background, and the continuous arrival of foreigners, circumscribed the
ability of the ruling elite to assimilate or understand the people they ruled.
Thus, state and society were adversaries locked in a war of attrition,
unable to contribute constructively to one another’s development.
Excess was the norm, and the state was staffed by a bureaucratic
hierarchy whose members were appointed, dismissed, transferred, or
liquidated at the sultan’s discretion. The effectiveness of the central
state rose and fell with the intellectual and moral capacity of the sultan,
though from Alauddin Khalji’s mass confiscations of private property
and land grants, one may infer that rational sultan appreciated the
functionality of his writ more than the well-being of his subjects. Wealth
that was not dependent on the sultan’s order was perceived as an actual
or potential threat to it. Private property was at the mercy of the state,
merchants were kept firmly under control, and village headmen served,
for all practical purposes, as low-grade employees of the sultan. The
justice system, which combined Islamic courts with the older system
of arbitration, was subservient to the wishes of the sultan, who meted
out arbitrary justice. The military, which was the major consumer of
95 Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan, 32

96 Ibid. 32

public finances and the major cause of the sultan’s economic policy, was
directly headed by the sultan to minimize the possibility of a coup.
In short, the sultan combined in his person supreme administrative,
economic, legal, religious, and military, power, brooked no opposition,
and tolerated no autonomous institutions. The nature of the bureaucracy
ensured that the sultan’s idiosyncrasies, both good and bad, would be
magnified and felt throughout the machinery of government and the land
so governed. A weak sultan would soon have his powers appropriated
by his vizier. Under the Sayyid dynasty, the vizier assumed the role of
military commander and auditor general, in addition to the normal role
as head of the revenue department.98 When Sultan Mubarak Shah tried
to relieve the vizier of the auditor-general’s office he was murdered and
replaced by a more pliable character.99 The concentration of power in
the hands of vizier did not temper the arbitrariness and intrusiveness
of the state. It, however, diminished the state’s capacity to perform
its core functions and added to the general level of insecurity. Only
the cultivation of trust, regard for law, and shared values can, in time,
lead to the establishment of a stable and enduring political system. An
omnipotent, unaccountable, and erratic, state, like the Delhi Sultanate,
only depletes the reserves of these “social virtues.”100

India, 47.
99 Ibid.
100 “Social capital is a capability that arises from the prevalence of trust in a soci-
ety…. People who do not trust one another will end up cooperating” in a frame-
work characterized by formalization and rigidity backed by “coercive means.”
Fukuyama, Trust, 26-27. Societies that manifest high levels of trust will gravitate
towards governmental structures that rely upon delegation of effective power.
The high level of social discipline will allow for the maintenance of order with-
out a powerful coercive centralizing state. Societies that manifest low levels of
trust will gravitate towards centralized state structures in the absence of which
the lack of social discipline and autonomous civil associations will ensure the
collapse of order. Ibid., 31. The rise or fall of trust and its attendant “social
virtues” depends heavily on the structure of the state. Continental bureaucratic
empires are generally hostile to the development of trust and seek security in
the atomization of the societies they govern. It is one of the greatest and most
delicious ironies of the human condition that those peoples most accustomed
to thinking in terms of an abstract collective, such as the Chinese or Russians,
trust each other least, while the Anglo-Saxon societies, apparently the most
individualistic, demonstrate the greatest capacity for social discipline and trust.
The cause of this lies in cultures of power and the historical experience of
governance. The former examples are the products of continental bureaucratic
empires, the latter, of the State of Laws.

Terminally in decline by the last half of the fifteenth century,

Turkish imperialism in the subcontinent was reinvigorated, and taken to
new heights by the descendants of Amir Timur, whose invasion of India
in 1398-99 had done much to ruin the Delhi Sultanate. The first of this
line to establish an empire in India was Babur (d. 1530) though it was
not until the reign of Akbar (1556-1605) that the Timurid imperium was
able to fully establish itself. Though the new dynasts were Turks, their
empire is more commonly, though somewhat misleadingly, referred
to as “Mughal”101 - a term synonymous with wealth, extravagance, and
power.
101 Mongol.

CHAPTER VI
THE HOUSE OF TIMUR:

AD 1526 – AD 1764
A mir Timur (1336 – 1405), the founder of the line that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries would effect the most complete imperial
unification of the subcontinent since the age of the Mauryas, came to
power in Transoxiana by eliminating his overlord, Amir Husayn, in
1370.1 The next thirty-five years bore witness to a series of campaigns in
the course of which Timur’s armies chastened the Russians, humiliated
the Ottomans, smashed the Persians, and massacred the residents of
Delhi. Timur’s empire comprised Transoxiana, Khwarizm, Turkistan,
Iraq, Azerbaijan, Persia, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and northwest India.2
These are no mean achievements for the son of a minor Chengezi
Turkish chieftain who, as youth, used to steal sheep. Early in 1405, he
set out to bring China under his sway but fell ill, returned to his capital
city of Samarkand, and passed away.
Amir Timur, being of humble origins, did not possess the birthright
to rule. An important feature of his administration was the quriltay or
assembly of notables, which met to plan for war.3 Theoretically, the first
Timurid Empire was considered tribal property4 and had a hierarchy
of tributaries, chiefs, and subject kings5 linked by a pledge of loyalty to
1 Syed Jamaluddin, The State Under Timur: A Study in Empire Building (New
Delhi: Har Anand Publishers, 1995), 52.
2 Abu’l Fazl, The Akbarnama, trans. H. Beveridge, vol 1, (Lahore: Islamia-al-
Saudia Printers, 1984).
3 Jamaluddin, The State Under Timur, 53.
4 Ibid., 83.
5 Ibid., 98.

Timur. It would be a gross misrepresentation, however, to compare the

structure of Timur’s empire to the system of feudal relationships and
obligations prevalent in Europe at that time.
Sultan Isa, the ruler of Mardin and tributary of Timur, roused the
imperial wrath in 1394, was deposed, and imprisoned for three years,
during which, Isa’s brother was placed on the vacant throne by Timur.6
When Isa regained favor, he was restored to his throne.7 Ibn Arabshah
observes that when the rulers of subject territories came to pay tribute
at court they “stood on the threshold of slavitude”.8 The princes had to
be confirmed by Amir Timur, were obliged to attend the quriltay, kept
troops ready for campaigns, and received “the royal seal and decree”.9
Tributary chiefs and nobles were placed under similar obligations10 and
Abul Fazl reports how:
Kings and kings’ sons from various countries came and did
homage. The ruler of Egypt coined much red and white
money and sent it to the world protecting court. Other
rulers of the surrounding countries raised the flag of well-
wishing on the plain of obedience. And from the pulpits of
Mecca, Medina and other holy places, the khutba (sermon)
was read in his name.11
To keep the empire under control Amir Timur divided it into districts,
townships, villages, and subject kingdoms.12 At the center, Timur
appointed, among others, a prime minister, court secretary, chief
secretary, judges, “declarers of the truth”, readers of annals, astronomers,
physicians, orators, writers, chess players, entertainers, artists, and “tree
planters”, among others.13 Timur personally appointed “high officers
throughout the realm”, had at his command superintendents for law
and order, tax collection, and public works.14 Magistrates, known as
kotwals, were maintained in important forts to keep a constant watch on
6 Ibid., 112.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 144.
9 Ibid., 146.
10 Ibid., 147
11 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol 1, 211-212.
13 Ibid., 144-145.
14 Ibid., 147.

The House of Timur: AD 1526 – AD 1764 | 91
the country.15 Timur also had at his disposal a “well organized system”
of spies (jasusan) with personnel employed “throughout the empire”.16
The persons recruited as spies ranged from beggars and astrologers to
sportsmen and “crafty old women”.17
Amir Timur “himself presided over the department of justice”18
and, for example, spent eighteen months in 1401 and 1402 dispensing
it.19 He also headed the military and supervised finance even though
the prime minister (diwan-i-ala) oversaw the daily operations of the
accountants, clerks, scribes, and collectors.20 The land grants and revenue
assignments given by the state to its servants were of a “temporary
nature” and subject to the Amir’s will.21 The punishment for “sedition
and rebellion”, as the people of Ispahan learned the hard way, was death
and massacre.22
Even though Amir Timur died before he could complete his
conquests and devote his attention fully to the task of consolidation,
the evolutionary tendency of the state is ascertainable. The chiefs and
notables would, in time, be reduced to, or supplanted by, a class of
appointed servants distributed over geographic subunits. The size of
the empire would, even at the best of times, have placed enormous
strains on the moral and intellectual capacity of the supreme executive.
The extreme violence that accompanied the empire’s establishment, as
well as the rapidity of its rise, would have ensured catastrophe as soon
as the quality of leadership declined and the latent hostility of subject
peoples and the servants of the state towards their ruler got a chance
to surface. For the subcontinent, the fragmentation of the first Timurid
Empire soon after its founder’s death delayed by about one hundred
and fifty years the day that his line would rule over its land and people.
The second Timurid Empire was founded in the subcontinent by
Zahir-ud-din Babur, who defeated the last Delhi Sultan, Ibrahim Lodhi,
at the first battle of Panipat, in 1526, and ruled till 1530, when he died
and was succeeded by his eldest son, Muhammad Humayun. In 1556,
15 Ibid., 148.
16 Ibid., 145.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 152.
19 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol 1, 211.
21 Ibid., 149.
22 Abu’l Fazl, Akbarnama, vol 1, 208-209.

his son Jalal-ud-din Akbar23 ascended the throne and ruled until his
death in 1605. His son and successor, Jahangir reigned from 1605 to
1627, was succeeded by Prince Khurram, who took the imperial title of
Shahjahan, and ruled until he was deposed in 1658 by his third eldest
son, Aurungzeb Alamgir (1658-1707). The Timurid rulers that followed
from 1707 to 1857 are known as the Later Mughals24 and include
Bahadur Shah I (1707-1712), Jahandar Shah (1713), Farrukh Siyar
(1713-1719), Shahjahan II and Rafi-ud-Darajat (1719), Muhammad
Shah (1719-1748), Ahmed Shah (1748-1754), Alamgir II (1754-1759),
Shah Alam II (1759-1806), Akbar Shah II (1806-37), and Bahadur Shah
II (1837-1858).
From 1526 to 1590, the Timurid Empire established itself in the
subcontinent. Babur inflicted a number of defeats on the Afghans and
Rajputs, but expired before he could organize the administration of the
country. Humayun nearly lost the empire won by his father, spent more
than a decade in exile having been chased out of the subcontinent by
the Afghan Sher Shah Suri (1540-45). Humayun’s own ineptitude, as
evidenced by his administrative “reforms”,25 which indicate a disturbingly
unbalanced state of mind, love of pleasure, and indulgence towards his
brothers Askari, Kamran, and Hindal, were all partly to blame. It was
not until Sher Shah’s dynasty collapsed due to internal weaknesses that
Humayun returned to the subcontinent and, with Persian assistance,
subdued his back-stabbing brothers. When he died by falling down the
steps of his observatory in 1556, the Timurid Empire was as unstable
as it had been in 1530. The burden of empire was now transferred onto
the shoulders of his illiterate, fourteen-year-old son, Akbar.
At the time of Akbar’s accession in 1556, the Timurid Empire
was merely the largest of about twenty states in the subcontinent. At
23 The only Timurid, and only the second emperor in the subcontinent’s history
other than Ashoka to be called “The Great”.
24 The first six emperors, Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan, and Au-
rungzeb, are collectively referred to as the “Great Mughals”. The word “Mu-
ghal” is a corruption of the word “Mongol”. The Timurids, however, looked
down upon the Mongols as savages and thought of themselves as Turks de-
scended from Amir Timur.
25 The “Carpet of Mirth”, the division of the state into four departments that
corresponded to the elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth, a “Cap of Honor”,
a special tent divided into twelve parts representative of the zodiac, a special
round carpet with orbits and spheres on which the emperor stood on the golden
circle representative of the sun, wearing clothes each day by the color of the
planet.

his death, in 1605, the Timurid Empire stretched from Kabul and
Kandahar in the north, to Bengal and Orissa in the east, Gujarat in the
southwest, and Ahmednagar in the south, and was, without question, the
paramount power. Akbar’s three great successors, Jahangir, Shahjahan,
and Aurungzeb, would, over the course of one hundred and two years,
expand the empire slowly and painfully into the Deccan, and keep the
system operational. After 1707, the empire declined and fragmented,
though the Timurids lingered on as pensioners of the British till the
uprising of 1857, when their participation on the losing side brought
about their final downfall.
The rise and fall of the second Timurid Empire corresponds to
the general pattern for imperial order in the subcontinent. Five to
seven decades26 were required for the establishment of the state and
its expansion over the Indo-Gangetic plain.27 For approximately one
hundred and twenty years, the imperial order was at its peak. After 1707,
however, fifty to sixty years of fragmentation and decline followed, so
that by 1764 the remnant of the Timurid Empire was at the mercy of
external forces.
Though the turbulence of the eighteenth century destroyed a great
many of the millions of documents produced by the Timurid Empire,
the amount of material that has survived is sufficient to turn the
traditional paucity of documentary evidence confronted by students of
the subcontinent’s history on its head. In addition to the vast amount
of work published by modern historians, there exist royal memoirs,
official histories and compendia of administrative measures, accounts
of foreign travelers and emissaries, and personal correspondence.
That the overwhelming majority of the Timurid sources and accounts
were authored by members of the imperial service establishes that
in continental bureaucratic empires, at least in the subcontinent, the
functions of scholar and think-tank are performed by the servants of
the state – not individuals external to it.28
26 Kashmir, Sind, and Orissa were not brought under imperial control until the
1580s and 90s, but the greater part of the Indo-Gangetic was secured by the
1570s.
27 The historic imperial heartland of the subcontinent.
28 A parallel is found “In the Ottoman Empire…bureaucrats were required to
possess an encyclopedic knowledge, and for this reason they displayed an inter-
est in all fields of practical and useful knowledge – literature, language, callig-
raphy, law, history or geography, the principles of the calendar, surveying and
agriculture. The ulema had no direct interest in these subjects, and the most

The entire imperial service structure was organized in accordance

with the mansabdari29 system devised by Akbar. Its logic, for the most
part, is consistent with the system of transferable revenue assignments
(iqta, jagir) used by the Delhi Sultans, i.e., use taxes on land, which provide
the bulk of the revenue, to pay salaries and maintain military forces, the
two main heads of expenditure. The emperor, of course, reserved a
proportion of the lands for himself, collected taxes directly from it, and
maintained his personal establishment and armed contingents.
The mansabdars were granted a dual rank that comprised zat
(personal) and sowar (cavalry). The personal rank represented the pay,
status, and privileges, whereas the cavalry rank indicated the size of the
armed contingent that the mansabdar had to keep ready at all times.30
Remuneration was given in cash and as jagir, and on occasions that
merited it, inams (rewards) were given.31 Newly arrived Turks from
“Iran or Turan” that joined government service received pay in cash
until they “became acquainted with the land and people”.32 In order
to make up for differences between official revenue assessments of
jagirs and the actual amount collected, a month-based conversion scale
was adopted.33 Thus, if the assessment for a jagir were seven thousand
two hundred rupees a year, and the actual collection amounted to six
thousand rupees, it would be called a ten-monthly jagir. The emperor
also advanced money to mansabdars at the outset of campaigns that, in
due course, had to be repaid.34 Under Aurungzeb, incessant warfare
placed such a strain on the exchequer that the emperor ended up owing
mansabdars arrears.35 Consequently, the policy was dropped and officers
“usually found it very difficult to get their money back”.36
A noble under the mansabdari system was one who held a personal
rank of more than one thousand. During Akbar’s reign, seven out of
ten nobles whose origins are traceable hailed from “families which
had either come to India with Humayun or had arrived at court after
important Ottoman writings in these fields are the work of professional secre-
taries.” Inalick, The Ottoman Empire, 103.
29 Mansab simply means rank. A mansabdar is, thus, a rank holder.
30 Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurungzeb, 39.
31 Ibid., 43.
32 Khafi Khan, History of Alamgir, 190.
34 Ibid., 52.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.

Akbar’s accession”.37 In the first half of Aurungzeb’s reign, when service

conditions began to deteriorate, thirty-two out of fifty-one mansabdars
of five-thousand38 and above were foreigners39 compared to just four
Indian Muslims.40
The Persianized Caucasians that migrated to the subcontinent did
not do so out of a desire to beneficially affect the lives of ignorant,
toiling, masses. They came to partake of the fabulous wealth of the
Indo-Gangetic plain through state-service. To illustrate this point, in
1637, the total revenue of Iran was twenty-four million rupees. When
Yamin-ud-Daula, a leading Timurid noble based in Lahore, died, on
November 21, 1641, the value of his estate was estimated at twenty-
five million rupees.41 In 1647, some sixty-eight nobles and princes drew
nearly thirty-seven percent of the empire’s total income, which was
estimated at more than two hundred million rupees.42
Entry into the ruling class of mansabdars was determined by
a combination of royal will, political expediency, and patronage.
The emperor was considered competent “to discern the merits and
demerits” of all who came before him.43 Candidates were required “to
provide a surety” so that any claims against them by the government
could be met.44 Promotions were made at the start of the year and on
special occasions except in cases of exceptional merit. Under Akbar, the
Rajputs were reconciled to expansion of imperial power thoughts grants
of mansabs, lands in other provinces, and the judicious application of
martial and marital maneuvers. Aurungzeb used the lure of mansabs to
cause officers in the service of the Deccan states and Maratha leaders,
against whom he waged war, to defect. The unremitting pressure
generated by the Deccan campaigns (1679-1707) had the curious result
of forcing Aurungzeb to let more Marathas into the imperial service.45
Given a choice, the Timurids preferred to recruit from Persia and Central
37 Ibid., 16.
38 The mansabdars with a rank of more than 5000 were also called panj hazari,
and constituted the elite corps of military and civil officials. Panj means five,
and hazari means thousand.
40 Ibid., 21.
41 Inayat Khan, Shahjahan-nama, 233.
42 Irfan Habib. Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perspective (New
Delhi: Tulika, 1995), 97.
44 Ibid., 60.
45 Ibid., 32.

Asia. Once, Mirza Yar Ali, Aurungzeb’s postmaster, in connection

with evidence given by a Turani said that Turanis were intrinsically
unreliable.46 To this the emperor responded, “He (Mirza Yar Ali) does
not take into consideration the fact that we are also Turanis”.47
The mansabdars were not subdivided into specialized cadres though,
broadly speaking, they can be broken down into two equally important
categories. The first comprised those who stayed in attendance upon the
emperor at court and included royal ministers, and senior and talented
servants of the state. The emperor thus retained a pool of officers that
could be deputed to the provinces should the need arise. The existence
of an administrative reserve also enabled the emperor to keep a close
watch on his most powerful servants and maintain at his immediate
command a significant proportion of the empire’s military strength.
The second category consisted of mansabdars appointed to posts in the
provincial administration of the empire. When the mansabdars were on
the move with the imperial court, in attendance upon the emperor,
engaged in military campaigns, or otherwise unable to be near their jagirs,
their agents would collect the revenue and send it to them. Transfers
of jagirs and posts were frequent, as the emperor did not wish that his
servants develop associations or a sense of identification with those
they governed. The Timurid nobility, generally preferred to live in urban
areas, as absentee landlords, and have their agents collect and send them
revenue.
For administrative purposes, Akbar divided the country into twelve
provinces (subahs), one hundred divisions (sarkars), and three thousand
subdivisions or districts (parganas). For territories other than the Indo-
Gangetic plain and the strategically important northwestern frontier
centered on Kabul, acknowledgement of Timurid paramountcy and
payment of tribute were considered sufficient. Khafi Khan reports
that the Chief of Tibet “realized” that “his welfare” was best served
by loyalty to Aurungzeb and the payment of tribute.48 The chronicle
thoughtfully adds that “Tibet is mostly a wasteland” that cannot be
brought under cultivation.49 The Timurids, in the absence of either
strategic danger or irresistible opportunity, were content to keep to the
rich plains that contributed the bulk of the two hundred and twenty
46 Khafi Khan, History of Alamagir, 378.
47 Ibid.
49 Ibid., 189.

million rupees of revenue collected by the state in 1647.50 The Rajputs,

lords of many a barren waste, reaped great economic benefit from their
collaboration with the Timurid Empire due to the assignment of “jagirs
in other provinces”.51
Keeping direct control of the provinces was, as is, essential to the
survival of continental bureaucratic empires. Sher Shah Suri and his
son Islam Shah greatly appreciated this structural imperative. Abul Fazl
recounts how Sher Shah “divided all India, except Bengal” into forty-
seven divisions and “carried into effect” some of Alauddin Khalji’s
reforms.52 In Bengal, the power of the governor was broken by splitting
the province into several governorships reporting directly to the emperor
and replacing the governor with an administrative coordinator.53 Law
and order was entrusted to the chief military administrator, revenue and
civil affairs were the domain of the Chief Munsif, and major towns were
run by appointed prefects.54
Sher Shah Suri had started his career as a jagirdar in Bihar and
secured complete control over its affairs by “terrorizing most villages
into submission” and “sacking those that resisted”.55 The “terror tactic
worked”56 and when Sher Shah became emperor, village headmen were
made personally culpable for crimes committed in their villages, and
military outposts (thanas) were established in the provinces.57 Islam
Shah even attempted to “abolish jagirs” and replace them with “cash
salaries”, and “many native chiefs” were compelled to swear allegiance
to Delhi.58
The Timurids completed the process of bureaucratic centralization
set in motion by Sher Shah. The provincial hierarchy was headed by
the governor (Nizam, Sipahsalar, Subedar) and the provincial revenue
minister (diwan). The paymaster (Bakhsi), city magistrate (kotwal), in
charge of religious grants and charity (sadr), judge (qazi), and official
news recorders (waqia-nawi) comprised the bureaucratic middle-order.
50 Eraly, The Last Spring, 312.
51 Ibid., 145.
52 Abul Fazl, Akbarnama, vol 1, 399.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 75.
56 Ibid., 76.
57 At present, the term thana means prison or police station.
58 P Saran. The Provincial Government of the Mughals: 1526-1658 (Allahabad:
Kitabistan, 1941; reprint Lahore: Faran Academy, 1976), 62.

Beneath them was a vast bureaucratic underclass of clerks, peons,

policemen, informers, and the like. The provincial officials were
appointed with the recommendation of their equivalent at the center,
and were confirmed by the emperor. Provincial governors, of course,
were directly appointed by the emperor.
The seal of the imperial revenue minister was required for the
appointment of lower ranking officers such as superintendents and
inspectors, in the provincial revenue department. In 1596, Akbar made
it compulsory for “all provincial diwans” to “report their proceedings to
His Majesty”, as advised by the imperial diwan, Khwaja Shamsuddin.59
Provincial diwans could draw funds up to a maximum of two thousand
five hundred rupees on their own authority without reference to the
center. The revenue collectors (amil) had recorders known as bitikchis,
and were subject to supervision, transfer, and dismissal by the governor.
Treasurers could only make disbursements with the sanction of the
revenue minister.
The proportion of produce to be taken as tax varied from one-third
to one-half in different parts of the empire and was often collected in
cash. The saffron cultivators of Kashmir under Jahangir, for example,
handed over half their produce to the government.60 In crown lands,
taxes were collected directly “for the royal treasury” and, in the jagirs,
by the emperor’s “assignees for themselves”.61 One tactic employed
by state officials was to fix a cash amount, “quite arbitrarily” on an
entire village.62 On occasion, “the whole village could be so heavily
assessed that the peasant population was threatened with slaughter and
enslavement, in case the revenue demand was not met.”63
A high level of peasant debt was complimented by flight from the
land, which in the seventeenth century, when the Timurid Empire was
at its height, “was a common phenomenon”.64 “Merchant farmers”
were rare and the linkages between agriculture and the “mercantile
classes” were weak.65 The technological base of the empire was stagnant
with agricultural tools, methods, and organization, hardly undergoing
59 Ibid., 189.
60 Memoirs of Jahangir, trans., H. M. Elliot, ed., John Dawson (n.p., 1871 re-
print; Lahore: Islamic Book Service, 1975), 134.
61 Habib. Essays in Indian History, 188.
62 Ibid., 187.
63 Ibid., 192.
64 Ibid., 195.
65 Ibid., 199.

any change.66 The tax on land, fixed as a proportion that varied from
one-third to three-fourths, bore down heaviest on the small farmer.
One of the titles adopted by the Hindu kings of the subcontinent in the
first millennium BC was “devourer of peasants”.67 Under the Timurids,
the process of taxation was referred to by the peasants as “eating”.68
François Bernier describes the impact of this particular manifestation
of the subcontinent’s culture of power:
…even a considerable portion of the good land remains

untilled from want of laborers; many of whom perish in
consequence of the bad treatment they experience from
the Governors. These poor people, when incapable of
discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are not
only often deprived of the means of subsistence, but are
bereft of their children, who are carried away as slaves. Thus
it happens that many of the peasantry, driven to despair by
so execrable a tyranny, abandon the country…69
The Timurid Empire’s financial administration70 appears to have been

motivated by “the uncomplicated desire of a small ruling class for
more and more material resources” and characterized as “An insatiable
Leviathan” pervaded by “A cavalier indifference to economy”71 that
probably claimed between one-third and one-half of gross national
product as revenue.72 Examples of imperial extravagance included:
The tent which took a thousand men one week to erect

with the help of machines, the employment of five or
more persons to look after each elephant in the imperial
66 Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 331.
67 Habib, Essays in Indian History, 119.
68 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and
Military Conflict 1500-2000 (London: Fontana Press, 1989), 16.
69 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 205.
70 Under Akbar the Timurid Empire collected about 130 million rupees in rev-
enue. This rose to about 220 million rupees under Shahjahan and, from there,
to about 380 million rupees under Aurungzeb. Thus, the rate at which revenue
demands were raised far outpaced population, agricultural, and mercantile,
growth.
71 Raychaudhry, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol 1, c1200 to
c1750, 172-173.
72 Ibid., 178.

stables, the production of increasingly large-sized cannon

which were often dysfunctional, all suggest an emphasis on
grandeur at the cost of efficiency.73
The officers assigned jagirs were frequently transferred and so extracted

“as much as they could from the peasantry without any concern for the
economic future of the areas temporarily under their control”.74 That
said, Hindu rulers who presumably “had more long-term interests in
the economic welfare of their territories” are also described as “most”
tyrannical and were not appreciably better managers of their estates
than Timurid mansabdars.75
An interesting figure at the provincial and local administrative levels
was the zamindar or “master of the land”. Revenue regulations under
both Akbar and Aurungzeb “exclude the zamindars from the framework
of the standard revenue machinery”76 although they were used by the
state to collect and assess revenue. Unlike the jagirdars, they were not
transferred and often had local roots, even though the emperor could
dispossess zamindars and extend patronage to other persons.77
Zamindars had at their command a body of armed followers that
helped them collect the revenue. Since they received a share of the
revenue, an increase in the proportion demanded by the state could cut
their income and prompt rebellion.78 It was thus essential that the jagirdar
maintain a superior armed force to keep the local zamindars in line. If
need be, the jagirdar could ask the emperor to expropriate troublesome
zamindars.
In 1636, Inayat Khan reports, that the zamindar of Jammu was
“slain along with a great number of his connections” having rebelled
due to “the innate vileness of his disposition”.79 In Bihar, a zamindar
named Pratab rebelled “without any apparent cause” and so brought
about “the annihilation of his friends and supporters”, even though
he had been “given” charge of the government of “his native land”
by the emperor.80 In 1637, the hill tribes of Naghar slew the leader of
73 Ibid., 172.
74 Ibid., 173.
75 Ibid., 173-174.
77 Ibid., 85.
78 Ibid.
79 Inayat Khan, Shajahan-nama, 205.
80 Ibid., 209.

their rebellion once imperial forces arrived on the scene and begged
for mercy, and in Assam an uprising was crushed with totality that
“all the zamindars and unruly spirits of that quarter took warning from
these repeated successes and became submissive and obedient”.81 In
1566, when Akbar and the imperial court arrived at Lucknow “many
of the zamindars of the country came in to pay their allegiance, and
were graciously received. Those who were unable to come sent their
representatives with presents and offerings.”82
Ensuring submission and obedience to the Timurid order was the
task jointly carried out by the military authorities and spies. The cities,
which contained some fifteen percent of the empire’s population,83
were placed under care of city magistrates. The magistrate had at his
command one hundred infantry and fifty cavalry, and his full range
of functions included the disposal of heirless property, control of the
market, surveillance of the inhabitants, and hearing of criminal cases.
The magistrate received a monthly salary, kept record of the people
living in the town neighborhood by neighborhood, maintained spies,
and used the state owned inns, of which Sher Shah Suri alone is said to
have built seventeen hundred in the five years he ruled,84 to track the
movement of merchants and travelers.
In the countryside, law and order was the domain of the faujdars and
shiqdars, semi-military officials that kept infantry and cavalry contingents
ready for policing duties. Their basic functions were to keep the highways
clear of brigands, support the revenue assessors (amin) and collectors, and
suppress peasant and zamindar rebellions. Evidently, they were kept quite
busy given that the Akbarnama, which can be considered a panegyric,
mentions one hundred and forty-four rebellions during Akbar’s reign.85
Inayat Khan’s Shahjahan-nama records twenty-three major rebellions in
the first twenty years of Shahjahan’s reign. On the borders of the Indo-
Gangetic plain, the faujdars were entrusted with the important task of
extracting tribute from the recalcitrant primitives whose lands were not
quite worth the effort of actually bringing under regular administration.
Tribute was often paid under duress and the hill-chiefs capitalized on
81 Ibid., 236.
82 Nizam-ud-din Ahmed, Tabakat-i-Akbari, trans. Sir H. M. Elliot (n.p. 1871 re-
print; Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy, 1975), 137.
85 Ibid., 149.

any opportunity to raid and harass their tormentors.

The Afghan tribes of the northwestern frontier, due to geographic
location, were repeatedly exposed to the military might of the Timurid
Empire. Safavid Persia contested control of Kandahar with the Timurids
and posed a formidable military threat. Keeping the northwestern
frontier region pacified was thus a strategic imperative for successive
emperors. When the Yusufzai Afghans rebelled against Aurungzeb
the governor of Kabul and his faujdars were ordered to “uproot the
ill-natured community”.86 In the suppression that followed “several
thousand Afghans were killed” and two thousand four hundred heads
were sent to the imperial court to be made into a tower of skulls, as
was the Timurid custom.87 Later, as the disturbances continued around
Peshawar, an imperial servant was deputed to the scene who “used
his swords so skillfully” that minarets of the heads of “the wretched
Afghans” were “raised around Kabul and Peshawar”.88 Aurungzeb,
however, was not especially cruel by Timurid standards. Earlier revolts
under Shahjahan and Jahangir had also been mercilessly put down. Sir
Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to Jahangir’s court, reported that
he once “overtook a camel laden with three hundred heads” of dead
rebels sent “from Kandahar to the King”.89
In another instance, a band of one hundred robbers was brought
before Jahangir, who ordered their execution and had the leader “torn
to pieces”.90 Jahangir explains the rationale behind the extraordinary
punishment of death by impalement meted out to three hundred of the
rebellious prince Khusrau’s partisans:
My trouble was this, that my son, without any cause or

reason should become an opponent and an enemy. If I
should make no attempt to capture him, the fractious or
rebellious would have an instrument or else he would take
his own way and go for an asylum to the Uzbeks or the
Persians, and contempt would fall upon my government.91

87 Ibid., 211. Emperor Akbar, upon conquering Gujarat, had a pillar of about two
thousand skulls erected.
88 Ibid., 232.
89 Memoirs of Jahangir, 237.
90 Ibid.
91 Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, vol 1, 54.

Jahangir’s anxiety was understandable. He had rebelled against

father and was responsible for the murder of Abul Fazl, Akbar’s right
hand man, in 1602. Shahjahan too rebelled against his father, and his
son, Aurungzeb, deposed him and kept him under house arrest. One of
Aurungzeb’s sons, Prince Muhammad Akbar, rebelled in 1680/81 and
ultimately died in exile in Persia, while the others were, at one time or
the other, imprisoned.
Those less fortunate in the incidence of birth could hardly expect
any mercy. Saqi Mustad Khan recounts the suppression of the Satnami
rebellion in the Miwat district, where a body of five thousand men
belonging to that sect plundered villages.92 The Satnamis “in their
rebellious pride…felt their heads to be an intolerable burden.” and
resolved to fight when, in March 1672, imperial forces arrived to restore
order.93 Needless to say, the Satnamis were no match for the Timurid
army.
The size and structure of the Timurid military is supremely relevant
to the culture of power as it reflects the priorities of the state and the
ethos of the ruling class of Persianized Caucasians. The most frequently
quoted figure, derived from Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari, is that the military
was four million four hundred thousand strong with about four million
infantry and four hundred thousand cavalry. Mansabdars were responsible
for maintaining armed contingents. The emperor either led campaigns
himself or appointed a commander-in-chief if, and when, the need arose.
The fusion of the military and civil arms of government approximated
totality, as the mansabdars were both soldiers and bureaucrats. At the
societal level, even if one assumes the improbably high population of
one hundred and fifty-million, and a low ratio of four dependents to
one soldier, cavalryman, or armed retainer, the total number of persons
deriving their livelihood from the military stands at seventeen million
six-hundred thousand or nearly twelve percent of the population.94
Military recruitment for the imperial contingents was overseen by the
emperor and that for the forces maintained by mansabdars was their
responsibility. The necessity of maintaining such a massive military
establishment arose from the fact that the Timurid Emperor:
92 Saqi Mustad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, trans. Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta: Royal
Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1947 reprint; New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1985), 71.
93 Ibid.
94 11.73%, to be exact.

…is a foreigner in Hindoustan, a descendant of Tamerlane…

who, about the year 1401, overran and conquered the Indies.
Consequently he finds himself in an hostile country, or
nearly so; a country containing hundreds of Gentiles to one
Mogol…he is under the necessity of keeping up numerous
armies, even in times of peace. These armies are composed
either of natives, such as Rajpous and Patans, or of genuine
Mogols and people who, though less esteemed, are called
Mogols because [they are] white men, foreigners, and
Mahometans…It should be added, however, that children
of the third and fourth generation, who have the brown
complexion, and the languid manner of the country of their
nativity, are held in much less respect that new comers, and
are seldom invested with official situations.95
The Timurid Empire was as frightfully paranoid as it was praetorian.

For spies, of course, an over-militarized state dominated by a small group
of outsiders, is an ideal source of employment. Provincial governors
and revenue ministers spied on each other to curry royal favor. In the
administrative subdivisions, agents were placed in all key offices and
reported “on a daily basis”.96 Spies were responsible for uncovering the
assets of both ordinary subjects and mansabdars. Inayat Khan reports,
for example, that in 1635 Shahjahan sent “trusty persons” to search
for treasures hidden near the fort of Jhansi.97 About two million eight
hundred thousand rupees were successfully “exhumed from the wells”
in that part of the empire.98 A further three million four hundred
thousand rupees were recovered from the “forests of Dhamani” that
had been buried by Raja Bir Sing Deo and the rebel Jujhar Singh.99 The
investigating officers were ordered by the emperor to “make sure” that
the “local zamindars did not keep any of the treasure….”100
The reports of spies were sent to the postmaster and then conveyed
to the imperial court. The occasions that the chroniclers and observers
refer to the receipt of information by spies and reporters are sufficiently
95 Bernier, Travels in the Mogol Empire, 209.
96 Saran, The Provincial Government of the Mughals, 198.
97 Inayat Khan, Shahjahan-nama, 162.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.

numerous to suggest that the emperor’s sense of reality, and opinion

of his servants, were based on these confidential sources. Particularly
important targets of surveillance were the emperor’s sons, wives, and
close associates. For instance, on January 7, 1681:
The Emperor learnt, from the letters of spies, approved

observers, and other well-informed persons that through
the instigation of the Rathors and some ungrateful imperial
servants, Prince Muhammad Akbar had rebelled, promoted
those of the imperial officers who agreed with him, and
imprisoned those he suspected of being unfriendly.101
Nothing escaped the notice of the reporters as evidenced by the news

writer of Jumnar’s message that a zamindar had a son with horns on his
head, and that a woman delivered a multi-colored daughter.102
To verify the reports pouring in from official and semi-official
sources, it became necessary to employ harkaras, or spies who spied
on spies. These superior secret agents “were appointed throughout the
imperial dominions”, were organized under a “chief superintendent”,103
and sought to mitigate the impact of the “disgraceful collusion” that
often occurred between the waqia nawis and the provincial executives.104
The harkaras informed governors of conditions in the districts of their
province, and sent reports to the imperial court via the postmaster.
The secret reports were read to the emperor at night and a “parallel
organization” of spies and reporters watched the military.105 The
emperor also sent high officials on tours of inspection and whenever
the court moved he would conduct reviews and receive obeisance from
local notables en route.
A most important fact about the Timurid Empire is that in spite of
hundreds of rebellions from 1556 to 1707, it not only retained overall
control but also managed to sustain an impressive program of territorial
expansion, administrative consolidation, and aesthetic extravagance.
The sheer size of the military establishment and the network of spies
no doubt go a long way towards explaining this achievement. Equally
101 Saqi Mustad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, 122.
102 Ibid., 132.
104 Bernier, Travels in the Mogol Empire, 231

important, however, was the structure of what has been misleadingly

referred to as “local government”. In fact, it can be more accurately
termed as village administration.
Under Aurungzeb, the empire is thought to have had some four
hundred thousand villages,106 many of them dominated by a single caste.
Each village had a headman (chaudari), a body of arbitrators (panchayat),
and committees to deal with administrative matters. The village
administration “cooperated with the official machinery… and in certain
respects became part of it”.107 Generally, “It was so self-sufficient that
the fall or rise of higher institutions or political actors was altogether
immaterial to its life….”108
The state was an externality imposed by force of arms that sustained
its hold over the village by coercion, extracted the surplus, and gave little
in return. The subcontinental village was simply too autarkic to form
associations with its neighbors and climb out of the sub-political limbo
to which the Arthashastra state had consigned it about two millennia
prior to the rise of the second Timurid Empire. When the state was
powerful the headmen, as Jahangir testifies, were official nominees and
recipients of patronage as he “gave headship to those landholders who
had shown loyalty, and to everyone of the chaudaris between the Jhelum
and the Chenab” he “gave land for their support”.109
The atomization of society brought about by the Mauryas was
sustained and intensified by the Timurid continental bureaucratic empire.
The historical experience of governance explains the “remarkable
deficiencies” of peasant revolts so dear to the adherents of the Marxist
confession for “The peasants might fuel a zamindar revolt (Marathas),
they might rise in a locality (the Doab), or as a caste (Jats), or as a sect
(Satnamis, Sikhs) but they fail to attain a recognition of any common
objectives that transcended parochial limits”.110
The judiciary of the Timurid Empire was concentrated in the
towns and cities and took care of civil and religious cases involving
Muslims that could not be redressed by arbitration at the village level.
The emperor appointed a Chief Qazi, reserved the right to overrule any
decision, served as the highest court of appeal, and could summarily
108 Ibid., 241.
109 Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, vol 1, 69.

punish anyone he chose. So long as the religious laws and traditions

did not run counter to, or place limits on, the will of the ruler they
were enforced. Cases involving disputes between Hindus were settled
in accordance with their customs and religious traditions and there was
not even the pretence of a uniform law code. Cases pertinent to the
administration and security of the state were dealt with by the security
apparatus. Bernier observed:
There is no one before whom the injured can pour out his
just complaints; no great lords, parliaments, or judges of
local courts, exist, as in France, to restrain the wickedness of
those merciless oppressors,111 and the Kadis, or judges, are
not invested with sufficient power to redress the wrongs of
these unhappy people.112
The Emperor’s suspicion alone was enough to condemn the highest

noble or prince, or the meanest subject to incarceration, death, and
disgrace. Khafi Khan relates that a “skilled wrestler” who had come
from Iran and stayed at the capital was suspected by the emperor of
being a Persian spy.113 Aurungzeb ordered the city magistrate to arrest
him and deputed Itimad Khan, a mansabdar of five thousand “notorious
in the world for severity”, to interrogate the hapless wrestler.114 Soon
the wrestler was arrested and “in the grip of the claws of death knew
that there was no way of escape” as “the truth was not acceptable” to
his interrogator.115 The wrestler managed to grab a dagger, killed Itimad
Khan, and was “torn to pieces”.116
In 1694, there was a dispute involving a Sayyid of Barha and an
imperial officer that led to fight. The emperor ordered the Sayyids to
go to the qazi117 and when they refused to comply the emperor fumed
“A group of men who have often been beaten by me and felt my anger,
dare give such a reply when asked to conform to the Holy Law?”118
111 A reference to the provincial governors and bureaucracy.
112 It was also noted that the “abuse of royal authority” was less near the capital,
major towns, and seaports. Bernier, Travels in the Mogol Empire, 225.
114 Ibid., 205-206.
115 Ibid., 206.
116 Ibid., 207.
118 Ibid.

All the Sayyids in the “old retinue” were dismissed and expelled from
their place at court.119 The chiefs of the Sayyids sought shelter in the
“houses of influential grandees” and “protested a thousand times” that
they were not party to the act of disobedience.120
Qazis were appointed by the state and held office, like any other
official, at the emperor’s pleasure. There were no lawyers or regular
procedures for evidence so litigants were directly exposed to the legal
apparatus. Revenue cases were heard by the provincial revenue minister
and could be appealed to his imperial counterpart. Criminal cases went
from the shiqdar to the city magistrate as the magistracy of the central
town in a division applied to all its subdivisions.
The justice system was prone to massive abuse, corruption, and
a great deal depended on the personality of the presiding officer.
Abdul Wahab, Aurungzeb’s Chief Qazi, had a “peerless reputation
for corruption”121 whereas his son, who succeeded him by royal favor,
rejected “the ways of his father and his brothers and in fact other
Qazis of the age, he showed remarkable honesty and selflessness in
the scrutiny of cases”.122 Unfortunately for the judicial service the good
qazi, on November 13, 1683, “decided to renounce” worldliness, and
recommended his brother in law, Sayyid Abu S’aid, to succeed him.123
The recommendation was accepted by the emperor.
Akbar encountered difficulties of his own with the judiciary.
Maulana Abdullah Sultanpuri had “large estates around Lahore” but
evaded payment of zakat124 by transferring to his wife “all cash and
property assessable for zakat” before a whole year could pass.125 The
cleric persecuted “all those whom he considered heretics”126 and when
he fell from favor and “died from chagrin” his wealth and property were
seized by the state.127 Among the items confiscated were “solid gold
bricks” that were buried in what Sultanpuri claimed were the “graves of
119 Ibid., 222.

120 Ibid.
124 The wealth tax levied on better-off Muslims to fund charity. It is normally 2.5%
of total assets/income.
125 M. Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1967),
240.
126 Ibid., 239.
127 Ibid., 240.

his ancestors”.128
Another notable example, is that of Shaikh Abdun Nabi, who came
to court in 1566 and so impressed Akbar that he was appointed Chief
Qazi.129 When he fell from favor, he was exiled to the holy cities of Arabia.
However, he returned and presented himself before Akbar, who was so
angered that he “struck him on the face” and ordered an investigation
into the Shaikh’s performance as Qazi.130 The inquiry revealed that the
Shaikh was “grossly partial and unfair” and guilty of embezzlement.131
Consequently, he was thrown in jail and died in misery.
Mahabat Khan, writing after the appointment of Asad Khan to the
office of vizier in 1676, complained bitterly of Aurungzeb’s policy of
giving the spiritually inclined preference in government recruitment132:
The experienced and able officers of the state are deprived

of all trust and confidence while full reliance is placed on
hypocritical mystics and empty-headed scholars. Since
these men are selling their knowledge and manners for
the company of Kings, to rely upon them was neither in
accordance with the divinely prescribed path, nor suited
to the ways of the world. Thus these men are robbers
in everyway. The country is being laid waste; the army
disheartened; the peasantry ravaged; the lowly crying of
distress; the higher ones seeking to raise disturbances. (As
the saying is) The finances are given over to the Qazi and
the Qazi is satisfied only with bribes.133
In the case of Asad Khan, however, it is reported that after his

appointment Aurungzeb personally conducted the affairs of the vizier’s
office.134
The ideocratic complex of the Timurid Empire consisted of the
128 Ibid.
129 Ibid., 241.
130 Ibid.
131 Ibid.
132 It is well within the realm of possibility that under Ashoka the older members
of the service class felt a resentment similar to that expressed by Mahabat Khan
towards the “dignitaries of piety” and new officials appointed by the emperor
to infuse the apparatus with religious zeal.

by now familiar combination of divine sanction for the emperor, a

bureaucratic intelligentsia, and a pliable assortment of astrologers, poets,
fortune-tellers, and mystics.135 The declaration extracted by Akbar on
September 2, 1579, from the leading ulema of the land that he could act
as a “final arbiter” in religious matters,136 and the creation of a syncretistic
royal cult that incorporated aspects of different religions and was named
the Din-i-Ilahi137 were both victories for the culture of power of the
subcontinent. While the declaration merely confirmed royal dominance
over Islam and made possible its theoretic manipulation to serve the
legitimacy requirements of the Timurid Empire, the Din-i-Ilahi and the
public adoption of fire worship in May 1580,138 took Akbar as close as
it was possible, without openly breaking with Islam, to the status of a
God-King or deva-raja.
Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi, a religious thinker and reformer of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rejected Akbar’s religious policies,
and aimed at “the outright conversion of Jahangir to the orthodox
Islamic policy in the state”.139 Sirhindi was of the opinion that the only
way to reverse the changes made by Akbar was to become close to his
successor and try and influence him. Sirhindi’s experiences in attempting
to influence the emperor sheds light on the hyper-centralization of
the Timurid Empire. Sirhindi was summoned to court to explain a
controversial letter of his, which his enemies claimed meant he thought
himself closer to God than the First Caliph.140 More important than
theological hairsplitting was that fact that the prime minister, Asaf Khan,
and Empress Nur Jahan, were Shiite Muslims, as were many members
135 Bernier, in a lighter vein, said of astrologers that “The majority of Asiatics are
infatuated in favor of being guided by the signs of the heavens that, according
to their phraseology, no circumstance can happen below, which is not written
above. In every enterprise they consult their astrologers…no commanding of-
ficer is nominated, no marriage takes place, and no journey is undertaken, with-
out consulting Monsieur the Astrologer. Their advice is considered necessary
even on the most trifling of occasions; as the proposed purchase of a slave, or
the first wearing of new clothes. This silly superstition is so general an annoy-
ance…that I am astonished it has continued so long….” Bernier, Travels in the
Mogol Empire, 161.
136 The much vaunted “Infallibility Decree”.
137 Eraly, The Last Spring, 203-205.
138 Ibid., 196.
139 Muhammad Yasin, A Social History of Islamic India: 1605-1748 (Lucknow:
n.p., 1958 reprint; Lahore: Book traders, n.d.), 152.
140 Ibid., 154.

of the nobility, and thus rather unsympathetic to plans for a revival of

orthodox Sunni Islam. When produced before the emperor, Sirhindi
tried to explain his letter but refused to prostrate himself as required by
court etiquette. He was subsequently thrown into the fort of Gwalior
and kept there for one year, after which Jahangir reconsidered and
decided to release him and gave him a robe of honor and one thousand
rupees. 141 Sirhindi stayed with the imperial camp for three years and
in the eighteenth year of Jahangir’s reign, received an additional two
thousand rupees.142 It is, however, possible that Sirhindi was not
permitted to leave the royal camp by officials desirous of keeping him
under surveillance.143
Under Aurungzeb, the state claimed divine sanction wholly from
orthodox Islam, and re-imposed the jizya, or poll tax on non-Muslims
under Muslim rule, in 1679, which Akbar had abolished more than
a century earlier. The nobility advised the emperor against the re-
imposition but dared not oppose him.144 The state expended a “huge
amount of money” on repairing mosques and hiring staff, providing
“daily stipends” and land grants to Islamic scholars, and covering the
regular expenses for their students.145 Hindus, except for Rajputs, were
forbidden from bearing arms, and riding elephants or Middle Eastern
horses.146 In 1670, for example, orders were given to demolish the temple
of Mathura and build a “lofty mosque” in its place.147 The temple was
built by Bir Singh Deo Bundela, Abul Fazl’s murderer, with Jahangir’s
permission, for three million three hundred thousand rupees.148 The
idols were taken to Agra and “buried under the steps of the mosque
of the Begam Sahib” so that the faithful may “continually” tread upon
them.149 Mathura was renamed Islamabad.150
The example of Mathura is one of many from Aurungzeb’s reign and
he has been criticized for his religious bigotry, which, it can be argued,
141 Ibid., 156.
142 Ibid., 157.
143 I. H. Qureshi, Ulema In Politics: A Study Relating to the Political Activities of
the Ulema in the South Asian Subcontinent from 1556 – 1947 (Karachi, Inter-
services Press Ltd., 1972), 96.
146 Ibid., 224.
147 Ibid., 60.
148 Ibid.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid.

was as unethical as it was impractical. In contrast, Akbar is heralded as

a hero of Indian nationalism, the creator of the first national state in
India, and a secularist. What these views fail to take into account is that
in continental bureaucratic empires the legitimating doctrine merely
reflects the personal interests, inclinations, and preferences of the ruler
and is subject to arbitrary manipulation. Neither Akbar’s fondness for
religious debate, nor Aurungzeb’s orthodoxy, prevented them from
concentrating absolute power in their own hands. Both, however, used
religion to legitimize their pursuit of omnipotence in the manner most
compatible with their idiosyncrasies.
Effective internal and external limits on the ability of society to
offer meaningful resistance to the state had important ramifications
for the economy of the Timurid Empire, and the terms of service
for the mansabdars, for the emperor’s arbitrariness extended to fiscal
management. Inayat Khan reports that when Princess Jahanara,
Shahjahan’s daughter, was badly burnt in an oil lamp accident and
struggled for her life, the emperor, in order to solicit the favor divine
favor, revoked an edict that authorized investigation of the “claims
of all proprietors of rent free lands” and other recipients of stipends
“throughout the imperial domains”.151 On April 30, 1644, Shahjahan
released “all those in prison” for revenue offences and thus forgave
some seven hundred thousand rupees in owed revenue.152 When
Jahanara got better celebrations were held, one million rupees worth of
gifts were given to princes and princesses, the mendicant responsible for
her recovery was given his weight in gold,153 and fifty thousand rupees
were sent to Medina.154 Princess Jahanara received one million rupees
worth of presents and was assigned the revenues of Surat and its port,
which were then worth one million rupees per year.155 Thus, a humble
oil lamp had cost the exchequer three million seven hundred and fifty
thousand rupees, exclusive of the seven hundred thousand rupees in
owed revenue forgiven and the gold given to the mendicant.
In the first two decades of his reign, Shahjahan spent some ninety-
five million rupees on gifts.156 His campaigns in the territories now part
151 Inayat Khan, Shajahan-nama, 309.
152 Ibid., 312.
153 Ibid., 318.
154 Ibid., 320.
155 Ibid., 308.

of Afghanistan cost one hundred and twenty million rupees and the
territory of Balkh, occupied after such great expense, yielded a mere
one million five hundred thousand rupees in revenue.157 An equally
impressive portion of the country’s revenue was sunk in forts, palaces,
new capitals, moving tent cities, and monumental architecture. Almost
without exception, the monuments and buildings built by the Timurids
were paid for by funds generated through taxation that fell heaviest on
the poor.
The wealthier sections of society lived under cloud of insecurity.
Mansabdars and merchants lived and worked under the threat of
expropriation. Both tried, as hard as they could, to loot and deceive
the state. Sometimes, no doubt, they were successful and got away with
it. On many occasions, however, they did not. European accounts of
the Timurid Empire are quite clear on the King’s ownership of all the
land. Roe reports that “No subject of this empire holds any lands by
inheritance, neither have they titles but such as depend on the will of
the king”158 while Captain Hawkins, who knew both Persian and Turki,
observed that “The custom of the Mogul is to take possession of all the
treasure belonging to his noble when they die, giving among the children
what he pleases”.159 Confirmation of this practice is provided by none
other than Aurungzeb who in 1666 and 1691 “Forbade the practice of
confiscation of property where no debt was due to the state…whereas
in former reigns the imperial collectors used strictly to confiscate such
property”.160 That said, Manucci, another European traveler, reports of
Aurungzeb that:
He seizes everything left by his generals, officers, and

other officials at their death, in spite of having declared
that he makes no claim on the goods of defunct persons.
Nevertheless, under the pretext that they are his officers
and in debt to the crown, he lays hold of everything.161
Even the ancestral homelands of the Rajputs were subject to confirmation

by the emperor on the death of their rulers.
157 Inayat Khan, Shajahan-nama,.
159 Ibid.

Abdun Nabi Khan, the faujdar of Mathura, died quelling a village

uprising in 1669. The fallen officer is described as a “religious and
benevolent man” who “combined administrative capacity with bravery
in command”.162 His property was seized by the state and netted one
million three hundred thousand rupees and ninety-three thousand gold
mohars.163 On the other hand, Abul Hasan, “who never ventured further
than Muhammadnagar to Hyderabad” and found “this daily riding
was very painful” was allowed to retire and granted a pension of fifty
thousand rupees a year.164 Saqi Mustad Khan declares “What marvelous
kindness was it on the part of the emperor to nurse such a felon in the
cradle of ease and comfort and pardon his sins”.165 The mansabdars also
had to worry about the emperor making demands on their wives and
concubines. Should the emperor express a desire for one of his noble’s
women, she would be divorced and sent to the imperial harem.166
When one of the harem inmates died, her property was seized by the
emperor.167
The emperor was, theoretically and practically, the sole proprietor
of the land and wealth of the country. The peasant merely paid rent
and was often compelled to till the land by force. Zamindars held land
at the emperor’s pleasure and could be dispossessed if they proved
disobedient or resistant. The lands held as jagirs, which comprised the
bulk of the cultivated area, were regularly transferred and did not belong
to the assignee. Neither qazi nor Hindu custom could prevent the
emperor from exercising his prerogative over the wealth of his subjects.
That occasionally, such as after Abu’l Fazl was murdered, when the
property of the deceased noble was brought before the emperor and he
chose to let the biological heirs have their rightful share, reflects nothing
more than personal attachment or sympathy. The level of insecurity in
the system was not diminished by occasional acts of kindness and the
emperor, Bernier recounts,
…constitutes himself the heir of all the Omrahs, or lords,

and likewise of the Mansabdars, or inferior lords, who are in
163 Ibid. “Mohar” means stamp, but in this context translates to “coin”.
164 Ibid., 187.
165 Ibid.
167 Ibid., 661.

his pay; and, what is of the utmost importance, that he is

proprietor of every acre of land in the kingdom, excepting,
perhaps, some houses and gardens which he sometimes
permits his subjects to buy, sell, and otherwise dispose of,
among themselves.168
Under these conditions, the rational response at the individual level is

greed. Shaista Khan, Aurungzeb’s governor of Bengal, monopolized the
internal trade of that province in commodities including salt, betel nuts,
saltpeter, and grass.169 Nobles that participated in internal trade saw
to it that their inexperience and ineptitude were “amply compensated
by the abuse of their influence and authority”.170 Bribery was endemic
and often palms had to be greased not to solicit favors, but also for
the performance of routine functions. The emperor set the standard
himself and would receive presents and cash from everyone seeking
an audience. This thinly veiled form of bribery, called peshkash, was an
integral part of court protocol and culture.
It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that financial corruption went
all the way up to the emperor’s closest servants and relatives. Daulat
Khan, Akbar’s chief of eunuchs, was so rapacious that “there was not
his second in the empire” and when he died, he left about one hundred
million in specie.171 Jahangir’s superintendent of the royal household and
later revenue minister, Ghiyas Beg, was known to be “totally corrupt”.172
Aurungzeb’s chief secretary, in two and a half years of service, amassed
one million two hundred thousand rupees in cash through abuse of
his position, which were confiscated, along with his property and
possessions, when he fell from favor.173 To place these examples in
context one can point to Aurungzeb’s generosity when he learnt, in
1678, that grain had become expensive in Lahore, the provincial capital
of the Punjab.174 The emperor, in his manifest munificence, ordained
that twenty rupees were to be added to the daily budget of the relief
kitchen.175
169 Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurungzeb, 155-156
170 Ibid., 155.
172 Eraly, The Last Spring, 271-272.
174 Ibid., 105.
175 Ibid.

It is possible to continue ad infinitum about the confiscations, cases

of corruption, and irregularities, under the Timurid Empire. Many of
the figures one comes across, such as the one hundred and seventy
million rupees made by Shaista Khan by speculating in gold, the millions
expended by Nur Jahan on patronizing her favorites, the two million
rupees spent by Yamin-ud-Daula on his Lahore residence, the three
hundred million rupees spent on the Taj Mahal, or the two hundred
and fifty thousand rupees spent every year by Daud Khan on his dogs,
are quite high even if they are applied to the modern day without any
adjustment for the decline in purchasing power and increase in prices
over the past three centuries. Add to the level of corruption certain
fiscal practices such as formally abolishing some taxes but increasing
the total assessment to prevent any decline in revenue, and the pattern
of behavior that emerges can be best described as predatory to the
extreme.
The impact of this behavioral pattern on the merchants and artisans
is well known. The former, foreign or local, had to bribe the complex
official machinery to get it moving. At the port of Surat, for example,
superintendents were appointed for the import of Middle Eastern
horses, the cattle market, offices, the treasury, the courts, stores, public
works, the mint, salt, customs, internal transit, charity, the jewel market,
rent, hospitals, the poor kitchen, the corn market, and annual presents
for the holy places.176 Merchants required passports from their place of
departure that were to be produced at custom posts and paid duties
on inland transit.177 Merchants were dependent on official favor and
patronage and had to be wary of spies and reporters revealing the full
extent of their wealth to the administration, lest they be expropriated.
When Sultan Parviz became the Governor of Patna “his mere presence
caused a dislocation of trade, since no one wanted to appear to have any
money”.178 Nevertheless, some merchants enjoyed considerable success.
Virji Vora was reputed to be the richest merchant at the port of Surat
in Gujarat in 1663, and had an estate of some eight million rupees.179 The
177 Ibid., 325-327.
178 Raychaudhry, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol 1, c1200 to
c1750, 186. At present, Patna is the capital of the Indian province of Bihar,
and is located near the ancient Maurya capital city. Arbitrariness, then as now,
pervades the administration of the state to a degree that is excessive even by the
subcontinent’s dismal standards.

relative weight, however, of Virji Vora’s wealth can be gauged by the

arrival at court, in 1681, from Ahmedabad, which is also in Gujarat, of
the property of the deceased Timurid noble, Hafiz Mohammed Amin
Khan.180 The offering included seven million rupees in cash, seventy-
six elephants, four hundred and thirty-two horses, one hundred and
seventeen camels, “ten chests of chinaware”, and sixty carts.181 Quite
often, however, the success of a merchant depended upon securing the
patronage of a powerful officer of the state and,
There can be little encouragement to engage in commercial

pursuits, when the success with which they may be attended,
instead of adding to the enjoyments of life, provokes the
cupidity of a neighboring tyrant possessing both the power
and inclination to deprive any man of the fruits of his
industry. When wealth is acquired, as must sometimes be
the case, the possessor, so far from living with increased
comfort and assuming an air of independence, studies the
means by which he may appear indigent.182
The position of artisans under the Timurids was dismal. The emperor
and nobles maintained workshops that churned out the luxuries
they craved. The artisan was paid not for the quality of the work but
whatever his employer deemed fit. It was expedient to put slaves to
work wherever possible. Artisans that worked in the market could
be summoned and forced to render service. The artisan had “reason
to congratulate himself if the korah (whip)” was not “given in part
payment”.183 Slavery was an integral component of the Timurid lifestyle
as nobles kept large household establishments, but the use of slaves for
administrative purposes appears to have been the exception rather than
the rule.
The low status of merchants and artisans is but one expression
of the culture of power of the Timurid Empire, which, divided into
geographic subunits, administered by an official hierarchy, and ruled
by an omnipotent executive, was one of the greatest continental
bureaucratic empires in history. For over a century an emperor and
181 Ibid.

his appointed servants ruled over a territory half the size of Europe
through an elaborate and centralized administrative mechanism. Totally
subject to the will of the emperor, the Timurid Empire exhibits a mania
for documentation and organization along quasi-rational lines, though,
for all necessary intents and purposes, the entire country was managed
like a vast personal estate.
The mansabdars were the emperor’s personal servants and were
beholden to him for promotion, transfers, and remuneration. The
emperor could dismiss them, seize their property, or liquidate them and
their families if he so willed. It was of course in the imperial interest
that, absolute servility assured, the mansabdars should be rewarded and
punished according to merit. There was, however, no objective criteria
for determining merit prior to appointment. Furthermore, the emperors
had different ideas of what aspect of an applicant’s personality should
be given preference. Humayun had a ridiculous penchant for astrology.
Jahangir, to test the fortitude of newly arrived Persians, would summon
them, and, when they least expected, pierce their ear with special needle
he kept on his person.184 The reaction of the Persian to this sudden
infliction of pain would be taken as the surest indicator of his character
and determine the subsequent favors of the emperor.185 Aurungzeb had,
as earlier discussed, a preference for religious-minded persons. Even at
its height, the mansabdari system was considerably inferior to the Chinese
system of determining merit through competitive examinations.
The heterogeneity of the mansabdars as a ruling class undermined
their ability to take collective action against the emperor. There was
always enough incentive to try to use royal power to settle scores
amongst the ruling class as the case of Akbar’s treatment of his guardian,
Bahram Khan, in 1560, helps demonstrate:
The royal ears having been filled with injurious stories

and statements…so the Khan’s message did not receive
His Majesty’s approval…when the report of His Majesty’s
displeasure with Khan-i-Khanan (Bahram Khan) became
public, all men turned their backs upon him and their faces
towards the Emperor. Among the first who were admitted
to royal favor was Kiya Khan Gang. Shab-ud-din Ahmed
185 Ibid.

Khan, with the assistance of Maham Anka, inspired

everyone who came to court with the hope of receiving
dignities and jagirs suitable to their condition.186
Jahangir explains, in his memoirs, that his motive for having Abu’l
Fazl killed was that he was fearful of the latter poisoning Akbar’s mind
against him. Where the ruler is omnipotent, the importance of acquiring
some security by currying favor with those capable of exercising
personal influence over him cannot be underestimated. Indeed, it is
reasonable to expect that an autocracy so absolute as to undermine
the moral relationships between fathers and sons would be capable of
inculcating the same suspicion and distrust between the emperor and
his employees, and the rulers and ruled.
The primary incentive for state employment was wealth. To be
a servant of the state meant to be capable of exercising power over
one’s subordinates and the subjects of the empire. The opportunity for
enrichment was by far the greatest in the imperial service. The experience
of the Timurids shows that in continental bureaucratic empires economic
wealth flows from the exercise of state power and patronage – not vice
versa. The mansabdars received cash and jagirs proportionate to the size
of the military contingents they maintained and their personal ranking.
The jagirs were so frequently transferred that the jagirdar’s agent “never
had any hope for confirmation the next year”.187 Consequently, the
assignees had every incentive to hire outsiders as their agents and extract
as much as they could from the jagir. As the size of the mansabdar class
expanded faster than the empire could add cultivable land to its territory,
the jagirs diminished in value, and the process became cumbersome to
the point that when Mirza Yar Ali, whose sound legal advice to the
emperor has been quoted earlier, presented a youth for a mansab whom
the emperor thought was too young, he replied that the lad’s “beard
would turn gray” by the time he managed to get his mansab and “enter
the fold of the Imperial Servants”.188 As the mansabdar class expanded
in size, it became harder for the emperor to supervise and control his
subordinates. The slackening of royal control over the imperial servants
only increased the level of fraud, dishonesty, and arbitrariness.189
186 Nizam-ud-din Ahmed, Tabakat-i-Akbari, 86.
189 One favorite method was to maintain fewer troops than required by the cavalry

The laws of God and man were bent and broken to suit the
emperor. The emperor forgave those rebels that he chose and mercilessly
punished others for tiny infractions. He could choose one of the
existing interpretations of religious law and local custom, ignore them
altogether, or launch his own religious cult. Akbar’s syncretism, which at
best contained the level of latent hostility and alienation felt by subjects
for their imperial overlords, and Aurungzeb’s militant orthodoxy, which
more than undid any good that came from the temporary reprieve
granted by his great grandfather, are both manifestations of the total
lack of earthly accountability characteristic of the subcontinent’s culture
of power. The mode of rhetoric reflected imperial idiosyncrasies and
did not diminish in any appreciable way the arbitrariness of the state
or the omnipotence of the emperor. There existed no autonomous
institutions capable of exercising a check on the state, and society was
distributed amongst sub-political villages and cities dependent on the
state for social and economic survival.
The principal determinants of the strength of the Timurid Empire
were the intellectual and moral equipment of the emperor himself. It is
sheer coincidence that four great emperors (Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan,
Aurungzeb) willing and able to stay involved with the daily functioning
of the state not only sat on the throne in succession, but also managed
to live long enough to lend stability to their administration. After 1707,
however, the Timurid’s luck ran out. The rapid succession of emperors
between 1707 and 1720 meant recurring warfare between rival
contenders and turned the cracks in the structure of the empire, clearly
visible under Aurungzeb, into gaping chasms. Jahangir’s testament
that “sovereignty and government cannot be managed and regulated
by men of limited intelligence”190 was lost upon his eighteenth century
descendants.
Jats, Sikhs, Marathas, and Afghans, long at the receiving end of
Timurid fire and steel, struck back. The soldiers, left unpaid, turned
to brigandage and relieved the wealthy of their material possessions
and, if they resisted, of their lives as well. As the state collapsed and
provinces broke away to form independent kingdoms, the emperor and
his favorites continued to spend rupees, by the millions, on frivolous
items such as birthday celebrations. The heterogeneity of the nobility,
rank. Another was to withhold pay from the soldiers.

the indifference of the masses, and the lack of autonomous institutions,

meant that the central administration was the only unifying force in the
country. With effective central control gone, the nobility degenerated
into warlords locked in mutual rivalry. Though the Afghans invaded
the Indo-Gangetic plain more than a dozen times after 1748, and
defeated the Marathas at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, they lacked
the foresight or the understanding to stay permanently and establish
an imperial order of their own. Their repeated onslaughts, however,
prevented indigenous forces from regrouping.
By the eighteenth century forces based in the seafaring nations
of Western Europe, that had long stood on the periphery of the
subcontinent and traded peacefully with the Timurid colossus, were
no longer able to ignore the dangers and opportunities afforded by
the renewal of geopolitical pluralism. One of these powers was an
island nation, separated from the European continent by a sliver of
water, and dominated by a race known as the English. The population
of this country was in 1750, no more than ten million five hundred
thousand people.191 Though tiny when compared to the continental
bureaucratic empires of Asia and North Africa, or, for that matter,
even the individual provinces of the Timurid Empire, the people of this
island possessed an overwhelming edge in entrepreneurial ability and
self-government. These islanders emerged victorious from the many-
sided conflict that wrought devastation for more than a century after
the death of Aurungzeb, established a new order, and brought about the
subcontinent’s fifth imperial unification.
191 Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 128.

CHAPTER VII
THE CULTURE OF POWER OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS:

500 BC – AD 1756
Introduction and Early Development 500 BC – AD 1215
I t is necessary that a brief account be given of the evolution and

growth of the culture of power of the Anglo-Saxons in order to
understand precisely how different the harbingers of the subcontinent’s
fifth imperial unification were in their political habits from the earlier
conquerors. The stage upon which the State of Laws would ultimately
emerge was a territory referred to by the Romans as Albion (Britain):
…an island not widely sundered from the continent, and

so tilted that its mountains lie all to the west and north,
while the south and east is a gently undulating landscape
of wooded valleys, open downs, and slow rivers. It is very
accessible to the invader, whether he comes in peace or
war, as pirate or merchant, conqueror or missionary.1
The area of the island is approximately one hundred and thirty thousand
kilometers square with more than one thousand eighteen hundred
kilometers of coastline. The highest point is about one kilometer above
sea level while the lowest is some three meters below sea level.
There are three distinct geographic zones in Britain. The Pennines
Chain is the main mountain range and stretches from Scotland to
1 Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, The
Birth of Britain (London: Cassell, 1956; reprint, London: Cassell, 2002), viii.

halfway down the length of England and is rich in coal. The South West
Peninsula is a combination of a low plateau merging into highlands made
of granite. The Lowlands comprise all those areas that the Pennines
and Peninsula do not cover. They include the plains of Lancashire,
Yorkshire, and the Midlands. The area around the Thames river valley
is low, flat, and makes good farmland. The major rivers on the island
include the Thames, Tee, Humber and Tyne, which flow into the North
Sea, and the Mersey, Dee, Sevan, and Avon, which flow into the Irish
Sea. Historically, the bulk of the population has resided in the Lowlands
turning them into the center of political power and economic wealth.
The process of land clearance in the predominantly sylvan
environment of Britain began in earnest with the arrival of iron-wielding
Celtic groups from the European continent between 800 and 450 BC.2
As conditions became more settled, towns gradually emerged as did
trade between Celtic tribes on both sides of the channel.3 The tribes
did not make the transition to statehood and remained locked in armed
conflict. It is possible that delegates from weaker tribes invited Julius
Caesar, then Proconsul of Gaul, to invade and help contain the growing
power of the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes.4 Caesar’s expedition of
55 BC to conquer Britain, the population of which was no more than
half a million, at the head of fifty thousand Roman soldiers, proved
abortive.5 It was not until AD 43 that “the officials of highly competent
departments” in Rome convinced Emperor Claudius, “a clownish
scholar”, to append Albion to the Roman Empire.6
The second Roman invasion, undertaken by fifty thousand troops
representing about one-eighth of the empire’s armed strength, was
successful.7 Many local chiefs collaborated with the imperialists and
felt that the Roman presence “would strengthen rather than weaken
their local authority”.8 Nevertheless, the pacification of the island
took more than a generation and reached completion under Agricola,
2 Keith Feiling, A History of England From the Coming of the English to 1918
(Trowbridge & Esher: Book Club Associates., 1975), 6.
3 Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC- AD
1603 (London: BBC Worldwide Ltd., 2000), 24-5.
4 Ibid., 26.
5 Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, The Birth of Brit-
ain, 4.
6 Ibid., 15.
7 Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World?, 31.
8 Ibid., 28.

The Culture of Power of the Anglo-Saxons: 500 BC – AD 1756 | 125
appointed governor in AD 78.9 In AD 122, work had commenced on

the construction of a wall, seventy-three miles long, seven to ten feet
thick, and fifteen to twenty feet high, that ran from Solway Firth to
the Tyne, and bears the name of Emperor Hadrian, who ordered its
construction after a tour of inspection.10
The orientalization11 of the Roman culture of power was quite
advanced by the time Britain was annexed and brought under imperial
administration. Roman republican institutions lost their power as the
Empire expanded. Sardinia and Sicily became the first Roman provinces
in 227 BC.12 By 112 BC, the republic had entered its terminal phase
characterized by political instability, social unrest, and the emergence
of dictators, like Sulla and Julius Caesar.13 Continuous warfare and
territorial aggrandizement caused power to drain away from the Senate
to the administrators and generals in the provinces. Outside Italy, under
the republic, despotism prevailed so that “Each province was like an
immense estate left by its owner to an unprincipled agent, who abused
his position to enrich himself and his followers.”14 Corruption was so
pervasive that “it was said…a province had to yield three fortunes to
its governor, one to pay his debts, one to bribe his judges,” and one
to compensate him for his “arduous and disinterested” efforts.15 Each
provincial governor was surrounded by “a hungry cohort of friends and
adherents” and assaulted by a “greedy multitude” of speculators and tax
farmers from Rome for favors.16 Indeed, during the crisis-plagued final
century of the republic,
Nothing contributed so much to determine the course of

the great constitutional changes which were impending
over Rome as the vast powers of the provincial governors.
Surrounded by devoted adherents, removed from the

ain, 23.
11 The Roman Emperor came to resemble the Pharaohs of Egypt, and God-Kings
of Persia and India.
12 Roberts, History of the World,185.
13 Ibid., 191.
14 H. L. Halvell, Ancient Rome: The Republic (New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset,
2003), 332.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 333.

restraints of the capital, and living amongst subject peoples,

the ruler of a Roman province wielded an authority which
was virtually despotic.17
Perhaps the greatest achievements of the absolutist monarchical
government that emerged in place of the republic in 27 BC was “…
that the provincial administration was regularly organized, and
vigilantly watched by the eye of the reigning sovereign.”18 One of the
most important developments that led to the rise of absolutism was
that in 107 BC, the Roman citizen-army recruited from the ranks of
property-holding free men formally gave way to a salaried class of “poor
volunteers”.19
From the growing chaos there emerged, in 27 BC, a new order
led by Octavian, a nephew of Julius Caesar, who established “behind
a façade of republican piety”20 the reality of an omnipotent continental
bureaucratic empire. The provincial administration and military
functions were entrusted to salaried officials reporting to the emperor.
The Praetorian Guard was created and for the first time a military force,
at the emperor’s command, was stationed in Rome during peacetime.
In 12 BC, Octavian, following Julius Caesar’s footsteps, became “head
of the official cult”.21 Octavian decided who was to be “elected” to the
Senate and the emperor’s legitimate jurisdiction was expanded to enable
him to interfere in provinces that had no legions stationed in them.22
In all parts of the Roman Empire other than the Italian peninsula, “all
land…was ultimately the property of the emperor”.23 The cultivators
were “imperial tenants” and “paid rents to Roman officials”.24
Britain, which became the forty-fifth province of the Roman
Empire, was ruled directly by the emperor’s appointed governor and
had legions stationed on its soil until AD 410, when the sack of Rome
by Alaric the Goth forced the Romans to withdraw their forces from
the island.25 Britain was dotted with well planned towns populated by
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
20 Ibid., 195.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Pipes, Property and Freedom, 123.
24 Ibid.

fifteen to twenty thousand subjects,26 and the local elite, once educated,
aspired to join the state service, and lived comfortably in town houses
with “engineered water supplies” unmatched in quality till the nineteenth
century.27 Estimates for the population of the island under Roman rule
go as high as one and a half million, and it “seems certain” that the
military, civil bureaucracy, “townsfolk”, and the well-off, and their
dependents, were three or four hundred thousand in number.28 That
Roman Britain had a highly cash-dependent economy compared to its
successors is indicated by the fact that though coin hoards have been
discovered “all over the country” very few of them date later than AD
400.29
The calm of Roman bureaucratic despotism in Britain was broken
in AD 367 by the combined assault of the Picts from Scotland, the
Gaelic Dal Riata from Ireland, and the Anglo-Saxons from across
the North Sea in Germany.30 Roman Britain was dead by the seventh
century and the Anglo-Saxons established themselves in the south and
east of the island. The earliest surviving document of English law, dated
to AD 600, deals with private property rights31 and towards the end
of the ninth century the Saxon lords, in response to the dire threat
posed by the Vikings, overcame their differences and submitted to the
authority of a single king.32 Alfred the Great (871-899) was the leader
responsible for bringing about a semblance of political coherence over
the strong-willed, armed, landowning aristocracy, of Saxon England.
King Alfred founded the English navy, and issued regulations that grew
into a body of laws, which, over centuries, evolved into the Common
Law.33 For his pivotal role in state-formation, and his exploits against
the Vikings, Alfred earned the title of “Great” – a title that has not been
given to any ruler of England since. The Anglo-Saxon rulers, in the
Germanic tradition, governed the country with the help of the witena
26 Ibid., 38.
27 Ibid., 40.
ain, 30.
29 Ibid., 38.
ain, 94-95.

gemot or “council of the wise”.34 Major decisions were submitted to an

assembly of freemen, or folkmoot, which met twice a year, and taxation
and legislation required the consent of the “great” and the freemen.35
When William, the Duke of Normandy, invaded England in
1066 and wiped out the ruling class of four or five thousand Anglo-
Saxon nobles,36 pacified the country with “terror” and “bribery”37, and
institutionalized military feudalism, the process of divergent evolution
slowed down. The Domesday Book of 1086, a detailed census record of
every shire under Norman control, is one indicator of centralization.
Another indicator was the Norman practice of considering the nobility
not as landowners but as “tenants-in-chief” of the king, granted lands to
maintain a quota of troops which, if not met, could entail confiscation by
the crown and reassignment to a more competent person.38 The normal
practice, however, was that estates were held for life and inherited by
the eldest son though, in the absence of a suitable heir, the widow could
be forced by the king to remarry, and, if the children were too young,
the lands would pass under the king’s wardship. The Norman kings,
their attention divided between the continent and the island, relied
principally on customs duties, forests, and crown lands for finances.
The nobles were responsible for law and order on their estates and
to decide cases the disputants would swear oaths, submit to an ordeal, or
fight a duel that ended when one of the participants begged for mercy.
The logic of the duel was that as God was on the side of justice, the
person with the legitimate complaint would always win. Consequently,
those individuals and groups that could afford it, maintained armed
champions to handle litigation. Henry II (1154-1189), the first of the
Plantagenet line of Anglo-Norman kings, saw in this undeniably dismal
state of affairs the opportunity to increase royal power. He did not have
at his disposal enough armed strength to break the power of the great of
the realm39 through force. Nor was King Henry rich enough to reconcile
his nobles by grants of wealth and offices. In 1175, for example, the
royal income was twenty thousand pounds40 or one-fourth of the

35 Ibid., 125.
37 Ibid., 107.
39 The nobility.
40 Danzinger, 1215, 126.

income of the Roman Catholic Church in England, which, incidentally,

also provided the king with one-seventh of the total military service
owed by English landowners.41
King Henry, to draw freemen away from the manor courts, instituted
the practice of trial by jury. As only the king could summon juries, they
were available only to those who sought justice in royal courts. This
innovation provided litigants with an option other than duel, ordeal,
or oath. Furthermore, the royal courts administered “a law common
to all England and all men”42. The jurymen were locals and selected
because they were likely to know the plaintiff and defendant and be in a
better position to ascertain the truth.43 The principal advantages of the
system of royal courts administering a common law with the assistance
of locals were enhanced legal predictability and protection:
…so long as a case has to be scrutinized by twelve honest

men, defendant and plaintiff alike have a safeguard from
arbitrary perversion of the law. It is this which distinguishes
the laws administered in English courts from Continental
legal systems based on Roman Law.44
King Henry’s effort to make Churchmen accountable to royal courts

misfired. In 1162, Thomas Beckett, the king’s chancellor since 1155,
became Archbishop of Canterbury. Contrary to the king’s expectations,
Beckett “went out of his way” to oppose the royal will and objected to
the marriage of Henry’s younger brother to a wealthy heiress because
the couple were too closely related.45 Beckett’s opposition to the policy
of making the clergy accountable before royal courts forced him to flee
to France in 1164.46 Murdered in 1170 by some of the king’s overzealous
partisans, the outrage was sufficiently strong to compel Henry to
humiliate himself by doing penance at Beckett’s grave in 1174.47
Though the church may well have been “the greatest landlord and
capitalist” in the realm, served as a semi-autonomous institution that
41 Ibid., 146.
ain, 170-172.
43 Ibid., 173.
44 Ibid.
45 Danzinger, 1215, 139.
46 Ibid., 139-40.
47 Ibid., 142.

posed as “constant challenge” to the king, and was not to be trifled

with, the executive was not entirely at its mercy.48 One advantage that
the king had was that the church had to wait for his permission before
it could elect new bishops and abbots.49 In the interval, however, the
crown collected the church’s revenue and, thus, could prolong vacancies
to boost its finances.50 King John (1199-1216), for example, kept the
ecclesiastical office occupied by Hugh of Lincoln, who died in 1200,
vacant until July 1202, and netted a profit of two thousand six hundred
and forty-nine pounds.51
Another source of royal strength were the forests, which were royal
monopolies administered by the king’s officials. In addition to ferocious
penalties for hunting, logging, and onerous rules and regulations for the
subjects living near the forests, there were plenty of fines that could
be imposed. The records of the forest courts show that the kings were
“much more interested in taking their subjects money than their lives
and body parts.”52 The forest administration was headed by a Chief
Forester, and run by justices of the forest and their deputies. When
the king needed extra money, forest commissions would be sent and
in 1175, Henry II managed to raise twelve thousand pounds through
this medium.53 Evidently, Henry didn’t doubt “that his Chief Forester,
Alan de Neville, would go to hell” given the sordid nature of the forest
administration.54
King Richard the Lion Heart (1189-1199), and his successor
King John, were so beset with foreign entanglements that they started
declaring districts dis-afforested55 in exchange for a fee to raise money
for war.56 King John dis-afforested all of Cornwall for two thousand
two hundred marks, Devon for five thousand marks, and Surrey for five
hundred marks.57 This process gained momentum “because people in
those counties raised funds and petitioned for something they regarded
ain, 162.
49 Danzinger, 1215, 143.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 125.
53 Ibid., 126.
54 Ibid.
55 Declared that a district was no longer considered as a forest for administrative
purposes.
56 Danzinger, 1215, 127.
57 Ibid.

as being of benefit.”58 However, even in areas that were dis-afforested,

the locals were obliged to attend forest courts and the gross inequity of
the system “united rich and poor alike in opposition to the crown.”59
The example of the forests does help show that there existed a
political process in the country and that a legitimate framework for
opposition to the king had survived the Norman conquests. The
Normans, notwithstanding their high regard for king’s person and
council, did not replace the Saxon system of local government. As the
estates were hereditary and held for life, the nobility came to regard the
land and people as their own. This, King John discovered to his dismay
when his nobles refused to render military service in a “foreign” land
like France since their feudal obligations applied only to England.60
The Norman nobility and English clergy were not the only classes
that mattered from a political standpoint. Between 1066 and 1230, one
hundred and twenty-five new towns were founded, and the burgesses,
who bought plots of lands in the new towns, enjoyed the right of private
property, were exempt from forced labor, and had the right to build
their own hand-mills.61 Most of these settlements were established by
“wealthy landowners, bishops, abbots, and above all secular nobles”,
not the state.62 The investment made by clerical and lay entrepreneurs
represented a long-term commitment to the locality. The incentive
was that once the town market became large enough it would generate
enough dues to enrich both the burgesses and the founder, and, of
course, pay for maintenance.63
The late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries marked the beginning
of a “managerial revolution” in the countryside prompted by inflation
caused by increased demographic pressure. As prices rose, more lords
took over the management of their manors and began selling the
surplus directly on the market for a profit because rents from land no
longer sufficed to keep them solvent.64 The earliest record or detailed
financial account for a manor is from 1208, and the rising demand for
trained specialists in financial affairs resulted in the opening of a school
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid., 127-8.
ain, 195.
61 Danzinger, 1215, 52-53.
62 Ibid., 54.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., 42-43.

of business administration at Oxford in the thirteenth century.65

The first decade of the thirteenth century is important for the
emergence on the English landscape of two creatures destined to play
a vital role in the formation of England’s culture of power. In 1209, a
clerk studying the liberal arts at Oxford killed a woman and fled. The
mayor had his housemates arrested and hanged in retaliation though they
knew not where their companion had runaway. Outraged, the masters
and students, three thousand by one estimate, left the town in protest
and formed a “university” (literally means corporation), which, like a
borough, had legal rights and responsibilities.66 The Common Law, in
the meantime, had led to the creation of a permanent King’s Bench
at Westminster Hall where litigants came to plead their cases, and by
1200, there had emerged in London a group of attorneys prepared “to
represent any client for a fee.”67
It is in this context, that King John, eager to reclaim Normandy,
which was lost to the French in 1204, began pushing his feudal
prerogatives to unacceptable limits to raise money for a campaign of
re-conquest. His seizures of church property, persecution of the clergy,
rigorous collection of taxes, abuse of the forest laws, may have resulted
in a temporary break with Rome, but they also drove his barons and
senior clergymen into rebellion. The result of this episode, on June 15,
1215, was Magna Charta.
The Rise of the State of Laws: 1215-1688
Magna Charta was the outcome of negotiation between the king

and his nobles after the latter had rebelled to preserve the rights and
liberties that were part of feudal custom. The nobles felt that the king
had violated this custom by his arbitrary wielding of royal authority
as evidenced by his taxation policy, military adventures, meddling
with the inheritance of nobles, raising a mercenary army, and relying
on foreign favorites from France. King John, when confronted by the
prospect of rebellion, offered to make England a fief of the pope. The
offer was accepted, and in return, all enemies of the king were to be
excommunicated. Still, within England, the rebels enjoyed more support
65 Ibid., 45-46.
66 Ibid., 83-84.
67 Ibid., 193.

than the king, especially in London, the capital, then as now. Thus, the
rebels drew up a charter and demanded that King John sign it. Sensing
the popular mood and desirous of buying time, the king chose to accept
the rebel demands and sign their charter.
The royal signature set a precedent that came to define the
constitutional and political struggle from 1215 to 1688. In agreeing to a
formal contract that limited royal power in theory and in practice, King
John had set a legitimate threshold for rebellion and accepted the legal
right of the aristocracy to dispute and question the monarch’s conduct
of policy. If the king violated the contract, the nobles had the legal, as
well as the moral, right to resist with all the resources at their command.
Magna Charta established a principle with which the kings,
…as the highest justices of the land, could not conceivably

quarrel: that the law was not simply the will or whim of the
king but was an independent power in its own right…All
this, in turn, presupposed something hitherto unimaginable:
that there was some sort of English ‘State’ of which the king
was a part (albeit the supreme part) but not the whole.68
King John’s death in 1216, and the succession of a minor, Henry III
(1216-1272), meant that power passed into the hands of a regency
council, which, in 1217, issued a Forest Charter that curtailed the king’s
arbitrary power over the forests. To distinguish the charter extorted from
King John in 1215 from the Forest Charter the former was renamed
Magna Charta. Magna Charta was reissued thirty-eight times, became
the rallying point for legitimate opposition to the crown, and without
it the principle that there is a law, here on earth, which the king cannot
break, could not have taken hold as surely as it did in England.69
The sixty-three articles that comprise Magna Charta make for
interesting reading. Articles Two through Six, tackle the power of
the king to interfere with inheritance while Seven and Eight protect
wealthy widows from forcible remarriage and provide them security of
property. Articles Nine, Ten, and Eleven, set limits on the ability of the
state to seize land due to default on debts, and provide some protection

ain, 200.

to private debtors that had taken loans from Jews.70 Article Thirteen,
assures all urban settlement in general, but the city of London, which
with its empathy for the rebel cause did much to ensure their success,
in particular, of rights, exemptions, and customs. Articles Twelve and
Fourteen, assert that the king may not levy financial demands without
summoning the higher nobility and clergy and securing their approval.
Thirteen of the articles71 place limits on the power of the king to
appoint local officials such as sheriffs, ensure local supervision over law
and order, require the production of “credible witnesses” to support
charges, deprive constables and sheriffs of their powers to confiscate
the property of subjects, and makes it illegal for any freeman to be
imprisoned, exiled, or disgraced “except by lawful judgment of his peers
or by the law of the land.” Article Thirty-Five, standardizes weights
and measures, and Article Forty-One guarantees merchants, foreign
and local, safety of their person, the right to travel unhindered, and
the freedom to buy and sell as they choose. Even in the event of war,
merchants from a hostile country are to be detained “without damage
to their person or goods.” Articles Fifty and Fifty-One, expel powerful
foreign nobles and “all alien” military forces from England.
The drift towards “arbitrary despotism” was checked, but the
outcome was not “the withering anarchy of feudal separatism”.72 Even
after Magna Charta, the king was powerful, indeed, “far stronger than
any great lord, and stronger than most combinations of great lords”.73
This alone furnished an incentive for members of the nobility to break
ranks in order to gain more power by courting the king’s favor. An
intelligent sovereign, by balancing and encouraging rivalry through the
calculated distribution of his limited powers of patronage could steadily
expand his power. That the eighteenth article of Magna Charta actually
asks the king to send justices around the country four times a year,
accompanied by four knights chosen from each county, to hear cases
and dispense justice, is testament to the durability and wisdom of Henry
II’s reforms. The English king could, as his French counterpart did,
use the royal justice system to uphold the rights of the weak against
the local notables and in the process destroy the “aristocratic privilege”
70 The Jews were expelled from England in 1290.
71 Articles 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 48, and 54.
ain, 198.
73 Ibid., xv.

upon which local autonomy and political power rested.74 Preventing

the rise of personal rule by the king meant that the opposition needed a
demographic base greater than that provided by the nobility and higher
clergy75 and an institutional framework that could concentrate and
channel the power of the localities to act as a counterweight to the king.
In the 1230s, the word “Parliament”, derived from the term “to parley”,
entered the political discourse.76
After coming of age, Henry III extended patronage in the form
of castles, offices, bishoprics, and land, to his foreign favorites.77
The “baronial parliament” began “to assert” that it had “the right to
approve, veto, or even dismiss” the king’s appointments to offices.78
In 1258, the King’s Council of twenty-four was replaced by a council
of fifteen, with the royal delegation reduced to a mere three while the
remainder were to be elected by the baronage and higher clergy.79 From
each county knights were to be chosen, at the rate of four per shire,
who would travel around the district, collect complaints, and deliver
them to the Justiciar (Chief Legal Officer).80 Sheriffs were to be chosen
“exclusively from the county community” and appointed for one
year, and “foreign undesirables” were marked for expulsion.81 These
changes were rejected by the king who raised an army of mercenaries
and secured papal backing.82 In July 1264, the leader of the opposition,
Simon de Montfort, sounded the call to arms and raised a people’s
army.83 The country gentry and lesser landlords, formed an association
called “The Community of the Bachelors of England” and threw their
support behind de Montfort, who now “rebuked the great lords” for
the arbitrary exercise of power on their estates and extended to them
the reforms already made in the royal administration.84
74 Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (London: Allen Lane Penguin Press,
2000), 18.
ain, xv.
77 Ibid., 173.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid. 176.
80 Ibid., 177.
81 Ibid
82 Ibid., 178.
83 Ibid., 180-181.
ain, 217.

In 1264, the king’s party, strengthened by barons who did not

wish to see reforms on their estates, was defeated, King Henry and the
heir apparent, the future Edward I (1272-1307), were captured and a
treaty was signed.85 When Parliament met in January 1265 at London,
de Montfort used the country gentry and townsmen “to override” the
magnates and royalists.86 Though de Montfort died in battle following
a resumption of civil war, and Edward I ascended the throne a few
years later and proved to be a strong king, the principle of parliamentary
opposition had come to stay and the ranks of the politically active
citizenry had been swelled by the inclusion of the country gentry and
burgesses.
The reigns of Edward I, Edward II (1307-27), and Edward III (1327-
77), regularized the practice of calling parliaments to raise taxes to meet
extraordinary expenditures, and permanent departments of state were
established for the Exchequer, Chancery, Privy Seal, and Wardrobe. In
1294, Parliament was called to raise taxes for war against France, which it
did, quite willingly at first. Customs duties were imposed on leather and
wool, cargo was impounded until the duties were paid, and the clergy
were ordered to give the king half of their revenues.87 When the king
left for Flanders the opposition demanded the confirmation of both
Magna Charta and the Forest Charter, and stipulated that henceforth,
parliamentary consent was required for taxation, goods must not be
impounded in the future, and the earls that had refused to serve abroad
were not to be punished.88
Under Edward II the barons, powerful magnates, and royal
household officials set up a committee called the “the Lords Ordainers.”89
Parliament, which was summoned about once a year during Edward
II’s reign, was able to gain power by throwing its weight behind the
barons or the king. It thus came to hold the balance of political power
even though, as an institution, it became progressively more different
in composition and worldview from the baronage or crown party.90
In 1327, the representatives of the shires and boroughs petitioned
85 Ibid., 218-219.
86 Ibid., 220-222.
87 Ibid., 231.
88 Ibid., 233.
89 Ibid., 246.
90 Ibid., 249.

separately as a body and so gave birth to the House of Commons.91

Under Edward III, the collective petitions by the Commons became the
basis for legislation and Parliament gained recognition as an essential
part of the fiscal and legal machinery of the state.92
The reign of Richard II (1377-99) saw parliamentary power and the
constitutional framework challenged by the executive. In 1380, a poll
tax levied for defense against France precipitated a revolt of peasant
proprietors, which turned into the Peasant’s Rebellion of 1381, and
culminated in a march on London to petition the sovereign.93 King
Richard bought time by making concessions but continued to rule
through his favorites and ignored the need to keep a coalition of interests
behind him.94 In 1387, Parliament demanded that the king dismiss his
councilors, which Richard declined to do having been fortified by
“lawyers’ advice” that Parliament had no legal right to interfere with
the management of the court.95 The king’s efforts to arrest the Earl of
Arundel, one of the main opposition figures, only made things worse
and once it became clear that the royal troops could not subdue the
“armed barons”, the only option left was to surrender.96 The “Merciless
Parliament” that followed this successful resistance had Chief Justice
Tresilian and four others responsible for the Nottingham Declaration,
which supported royal supremacy, “hanged, drawn, and quartered.”97
On May 3, 1389, a year after Parliament had so violently asserted
its supremacy, Richard took his seat at the Council and “asked blandly
to be told how old he was”.98 Upon being informed that he was twenty-
three years old, Richard declared that “he had certainly come of age” and
would now “manage the realm himself” as, indeed, was his legal right.99
The erstwhile rebels, in response, handed over the Great Seal, and made
way for the inclusion of royal “nominees” and favorites.100 It was one
thing to rebel to protect the law, and quite another to prevent the king
91 Ibid., 282.
92 Ibid., 283.
93 Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World?, 246-249.
94 Ibid., 249.
95 Ibid., 256.
96 Ibid., 257.
ain, 299.
98 Ibid., 300.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.

from exercising his legitimate power. From 1389 to 1397, Richard II

ruled as a constitutional monarch with the consent of the Lords and the
Commons. After 1394, however, Richard began raising in Ireland “an
army dependent upon himself”101 and, in 1397, he struck back at the
opposition leaders, who were killed or arrested.102 A “praetorian guard”
was established and the king set about replacing county officials that
had local roots with “dependable hacks.”103
In February 1399, John of Gaunt, the king’s uncle died. The king
confiscated his properties, redistributed them among his favorites,
and banished his uncle’s son, Bolingbroke, from the realm. Parliament
had already been strong-armed into suspending most constitutional
rights and delegated its powers to a wrecking-crew of eighteen persons
beholden to the king.104 Having confiscated the greatest inheritance in
the land, Richard II had violated his coronation oath and the contract
between the king and nobles. The king, therefore, “needed to be
stopped.”105 The lords and bishops “wanted a pragmatic, rather than
an erratic, mystically self-absorbed king, a king who would understand
that it had been man, rather than God, who had put the crown on his
head.”106
The rebellion was a success and before 1399 was out, Bolingbroke
led the House of Lancaster to victory and was crowned Henry IV
(1399-1413). That the new king was technically a usurper played
into the hands of Parliament for it alone could provide him with the
legitimacy he needed.107 Parliamentary control of finance increased and
it began receiving accounts from the high officials of the state.108 Henry
V (1413-1422) reorganized the fleet, recognized that laws needed the
approval of the Commons,109 and became the first king to send royal
messages and letters in the English language.110 Henry VI (1423-1461)
suffered reversals in France and thus defeats abroad combined with an
101 Ibid., 301.
103 Ibid.
ain, 303.
106 Ibid.
ain, 308.
108 Ibid., 310.
109 Ibid., 316.
110 Ibid., 322.

economic crisis at home. The royal debt, for example, rose from one
hundred and sixty-eight thousand pounds in 1433, to three hundred and
seventy-two thousand pounds by 1449.111 Soldiers returning from the
war found employment in private armies raised by the aristocracy and
from 1455 to 1485, England endured a civil war known as the Wars of
the Roses, which ended when Henry VII (1485-1509) of the House of
Tudor, finally restored the king’s peace. The civil war was,
…for the landed aristocracy a social rather than a natural

catastrophe, a bloodletting that severely weakened them
and enabled the Tudor dynasty which emerged from the
struggle to resume with greater success the process of
consolidating royal power.112
The consolidation of royal power was matched, however, by the

consolidation of land holdings carried out by lords through a “variety
of legal and semi-legal means” and their conversion to enclosures that
could raise sheep to sell wool on the market.113 The “commercialization
of agriculture” marked the beginning of the end for both the peasantry
and the “feudal seigneur” who lived off rents, and the latter’s gradual
replacement by “an overlord who was closer to an acute man of
business.”114 The Court of the Star Chamber and the Court of Requests,
were two legal instruments used by the king to protect the status of the
peasantry and, in the process, expand his power. The Star Chamber was
a regular feature of Westminster, had two presiding justices, and tried
cases that merited special consideration due to the “excessive might”
of one of the litigants, as well as cases concerned with the maintenance
of private armies and the corruption of juries.115 Parliament gave Henry
VII’s royal council the powers to examine persons “without oath”
and “condemn” subjects “on written evidence alone”, treasurers were
personally appointed by the king and submitted their accounts to him.116
Unlike the French king, however, the English king could not raise taxes
111 Feiling, A History of England From the Coming of the English to 1918, 300.
113 Ibid., 9.
114 Ibid., 10.
115 Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 2, The
New World (London: Cassell, 1956; reprint, London: Cassell, 2002), 19.
116 Ibid.

without parliamentary sanction, and possessed neither a standing army

nor “a great artillery park.”117
Henry VIII’s reign (1509-1547) saw the continuation of the
process of centralization evident under his predecessor. Cardinal
Wolsey, appointed Lord Chancellor in the winter of 1515, kept that
position for twelve years during which Parliament was summoned only
once.118 The Star Chamber became more active, Common Law rules
of evidence were dispensed with, and Justices of the Peace backed by
royal sanction, became the king’s instruments in the countryside.119 The
Foreign Service was re-vamped, an efficient intelligence network was
set up on the Continent, and the navy was equipped with new cannon-
bearing ships.120 Wolsey enriched himself in a manner befitting the
satraps and viziers of continental bureaucratic empires. His personal
retinue numbered one thousand, he enjoyed an annual income of half
a million pounds in “early twentieth century money”, owned palaces
that surpassed the king’s own, enriched his relations, and showed a
particularly extreme partiality for his illegitimate son, who held eleven
Church appointments.121 Wolsey’s life ended in disgrace when the
sovereign he served turned against him and many of his palaces were
confiscated by the crown.
Henry VIII’s clash with, and ultimate victory over, the Catholic
Church, has earned him notoriety thanks, in no small part, to Hollywood
movies that project him as a libidinous and capricious monster whose
desire for Anne Boleyn led him to want the annulment of his marriage
to Catherine of Aragon. The pope refused to grant this request and
so the king broke with the Catholic Church, replaced it with the
Church of England, and compelled the clergy, on February 7, 1531, to
acknowledge him as “their protector” and “supreme head.”122 Church
lands were seized, small monasteries were liquidated, and papal taxes
were abolished. Those who refused to swear an oath of allegiance
and submit to the new order of royal supremacy over ecclesiastical
affairs were guilty of treason and to even verbally insult the king or
117 Ibid., 23.

118 Ibid., 33.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., 34.
121 Ibid., 32.
122 Ibid., 45.

queen became a crime.123 “Visitors” were sent around the country to

confiscate relics and religious ornaments because they represented
“superstition”.124 Pilgrimages and saints days were banned, and relics
were smashed in public.125
All of this was accomplished even though the “only centrally
controlled armed force in England” were the Beefeaters at the Tower
of London.126 Henry VIII’s advisors
…knew very well that sooner or later, the pope would

wheel his big gun, excommunication, into the battle, and
if the king were to win he had better be prepared to fight
back with something more or less novel in the language of
politics, namely, patriotism…so it had to be the parliament,
the voice of the nation, that enacted the laws instituting the
royal supremacy.127
The Parliament certainly did enact in accordance with the king’s wishes.
It was in 1530 that the support of Parliament was made a prerequisite
for statutes to become laws and Henry VIII relied on the Lords and the
Commons to draft and vote the legislation that broke the back of the
Catholic Church in England. The confiscations of monastic property
were undertaken with parliamentary approval and two-thirds of the
confiscated land was sold and became private property.128 In this way,
landowners and townsmen, quite literally, bought a share in the Tudor
enterprise.
The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) can well be regarded as
the golden age of monarchy in England. During this period, Crown
revenue as a share of national revenue stood at nearly thirty percent,129
religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants was contained, and
England began making its presence felt as far away as the Ottoman
Levant, Spanish America, and Timurid India. Queen Elizabeth opened
England’s first stock exchange, and encouraged English privateers
124 Ibid., 310.
125 Ibid., 315.
126 Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 2, The New World,
36.
129 Ibid., 147. The exact share was 28.83%.

to raid Spanish treasure ships and ports. The Queen herself invested
twenty thousand pounds in Francis Drake’s expedition of September
1585.130 When Drake returned from his expeditions to the Americas
one of his ships carried loot equal in monetary value to two years’ royal
revenue.131 Elizabeth, like her father Henry VIII, did not attempt to
dispense with Parliament. Instead, she used it with great success to raise
money for war with Spain. Between 1588 and 1601, Parliament approved
two million pounds for the war effort.132 Even though “Elizabethan
England became Walsingham’s national security state” with spies and
agents “kept busy”,133 it appeared that the island had made it through
the Reformation without losing its institutional balance. The queen
was strong, inspired devotion, and gave Parliament its due, private
enterprise was ascendant, the law continued to evolve, and excesses that
were committed, such as the execution of four hundred and fifty rebels
in 1569-70,134 are exceedingly small in comparison to the decimation of
populations that took place on the Continent at that time. In France, for
example, ten thousand Protestants were murdered in 1572 in an event
known as St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.135
Queen Elizabeth died heirless and so the crown of England passed
to the House of Stuart, which then ruled Scotland. The first two Stuart
kings, James I (1603-1625) and Charles I (1625-1649) suffered from
illusions of omnipotence and regarded the principles of monarchical
absolutism as moral and political imperatives. Curing the Stuarts of
their illusions would take decades and trigger a series of political crises
that would finally lead to the emergence of a State of Laws.
James I believed that kings were above the law, possessed the
divine right to tax their subjects and legislate as they chose, and should
be able to govern through their appointed servants without being
answerable to any temporal power. The English political reality was that
Parliament controlled taxation and approved and drafted legislation, the
nobility and gentry owned most of the land and wielded political power
in the countryside, and the taxes of the upper classes were collected
130 Giles Milton, Big Chief Elizabeth: How England’s Adventurers Gambled and
Won the New World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001), 158.
132 Ibid., 135.
134 Ibid., 365-368.
135 Pierre Birnbaum, The Idea of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 12.

on the basis of self-assessment without bureaucratic interference.136

Furthermore, the taxes collected by the crown were either from the
king’s private estates or from custom duties on major trade items such
as wine and wool.137 The right to collect custom duties was given to the
king by Parliament, normally for life,138 and “Attempts to circumvent
parliamentary authority in taxation by extorting forced loans, made
both by Henry VIII and Queen Mary139 met with such fierce resistance
that they had to be abandoned.”140
When James I ascended the throne of England, the royal debt
stood at four hundred thousand pounds.141 In 1608, the debt stood at
one million pounds and his expenditure during peacetime was equal to
what Queen Elizabeth had spent “in a year of full war.”142 Some two
hundred thousand pounds were spent in gifts for Scottish courtiers and
favorites.143 To meet rising expenses, James I sold six hundred and fifty
five thousand pounds worth of crown land.144 This practice provided
liquidity in the short term but diminished the Crown’s ability to generate
revenue from its own estates.
In 1610, the judges, led by Chief Justice Coke, “launched a concerted
campaign” against the king’s avowed desire “to decide which channel
of the law he would employ.”145 One of the first targets of the judges
was the High Commission, a religious institution under royal control
responsible for enforcing doctrinal conformity. The judges’,
…detailed complaints, that High Commission had no right

to imprison or deprive except for heresy and schism, or
that a royal commission could not create a new court, sink
into insignificance beside their guiding principle; namely,
that only Parliament could alter the law, and only common-
law judges could interpret Acts of Parliament.146

137 Ibid., 133.
138 Ibid.
139 Ruled from 1553-1558
140 Pipes, Property and Freedom, 135-136.
142 Ibid.
143 Ibid.
146 Ibid.

King James declined to heed advice “against behaving like a foreign

tyrant” and confided to the Spanish ambassador “his surprise that his
predecessors had allowed the Commons to come into existence.”147 In
1610, Parliament, eager to remind the monarch of its existence, declared
that sovereign authority rested with the “King-in-Parliament”, not the
“King-in-Council”.148 The king, confronted by an increasingly hostile
Parliament, which was as upset by his pro-Spanish leanings as it was by
his autocratic pretensions, resorted to the “prostitution of honors”.149
Two thousand three hundred knights were created, the peerage was
increased from fifty-nine to one hundred, and, after 1614, he allowed
his favorites to act as middlemen for the sale of noble titles.150 To evade
Parliamentary control, King James began meddling with the cloth
exporters with the result that by 1615 the value of their exports had
fallen to “half of what they had been in 1610.”151 Not surprisingly, by
1615, traders refused to extend the crown any further credit.152
By the time Parliament met in 1621, relations with the king had
become acrimonious. The Commons urged King James to marry the
crown prince to a Protestant and enter the war raging on the Continent
against the Habsburgs.153 When the king read the riot act to the
Commons for “meddling” in matters that did not concern them and
declared that their existence and rights were due to his grace, the reply
was that the Commons derived the power to speak freely on all matters,
religion and foreign policy included, on the basis of its “privileges” as
an institution and the “birthright” of the assembled representatives of
the governed.154 Infuriated, the king dissolved Parliament and “Coke,
Phelips, Pym, were now added to those in custody, then the premier
earl, Oxford, for words against royal policy, then Sage and Sele for
instigating refusal of a benevolence.”155
147 Ibid., 446.
149 Feiling, A History of England From the Coming of the English to 1918, 449. i.e.
the sale of titles and ranks.
150 Ibid.
151 Ibid.
The war in question was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) that pulverized
central Europe and killed thirty percent of the German population.
154 Ibid.
155 Ibid.

The volume of trade, in spite of the king’s antics, continued to

expand as did the returns from customs receipts. Historically, arable
land has been the source of wealth and political power. In England,
however, a transformation had been unleashed following the defeat of
the Spanish Armada in 1588. From 1590 to 1623 receipts from customs
rose from fifty thousand pounds to three hundred and twenty-three
thousand pounds – a six-fold increase in little over a generation.156 The
king’s income, at this rate of increase, could rise substantially enough to
make him independent of Parliament within one or two generations.
Parliament was well aware of the implications of the rapid increase
in the returns from customs duties. When Charles I (1625-1649)
ascended the throne and summoned Parliament, the income from his
estates was just thirty thousand pounds.157 On the continent assemblies
such as the French Estates General and the Spanish Cortes were falling
into disuse due to the increased financial autonomy of the crown. Thus,
the Commons of 1625 broke with the tradition of granting the king the
right to collect customs duties for life and, instead, limited the grant to
only one year.158 Parliament, when called the next year, proved hard to
manage, and the defiant mood was reinforced by the poorly planned
and clumsily executed military interventions on the continent. The
third Parliament summoned by Charles complained bitterly of “un-
parliamentary taxation, martial law, billeting of troops, and unregulated
powers of imprisonment.”159 When La Rochelle, a Protestant enclave
on the French Atlantic coast, fell, in 1629, the Commons were roused
to frenzy against the king, and, on February 24, they held the Speaker
down in his chair when he called for adjournment and locked the doors
to the assembly hall. Royal guards were sent to restore order and in
March, Parliament was dissolved while the leaders of the opposition
were sent to the Tower of London.
Charles I, like his French or Spanish counterparts, now ruled
England through his Royal Council, appointed servants, and notables
that saw gain in collaborating with the king. However, King Charles had
“no standing army”160 and a professional bureaucracy that numbered
157 Ibid., 138.
159 Ibid., 454.
155.

about twelve hundred, a tiny fraction of the forty thousand or so civil

servants that the French king had at his command during the same
period.161 To make ends meet, King Charles sold six hundred and forty
seven thousand pounds worth of royal land between 1625 and 1635, and
by 1630, his income from the royal estates had plunged to ten thousand
pounds.162 Though peace was made with France in 1629, and Spain, in
1630, King Charles remained in desperate financial straits. He demanded
“loans” from affluent subjects, with the result that “Hundreds refused
to pay” and seventy-six were thrown in jail.163 Through extortion
and the collection of customs duties without parliamentary approval,
Charles managed to increase the royal revenue to six hundred thousand
pounds and incurred “a regular deficit”.164 The king, to gain legitimacy,
“sustained the Church in its property” and in exchange the Church
preached “the duty of obedience” and divine right.165
The crisis that plunged England into civil war and a spell of
theocratic despotism was sparked by the imposition of “ship money”,
or taxes levied to raise money for the navy, on counties that were
inland. In 1636, Charles got “his judges to rule that he could impose
such a charge when the kingdom was in danger” – the catch was that
the king was the sole judge of what constituted “danger.”166 Soon
thereafter, John Hampden, a wealthy former Member of Parliament
from Buckinghamshire, refused to pay the tax and argued that “even
the best of taxes” are legitimate only if levied “with the consent of
Parliament.”167 The protests that followed Hampden’s arrest, trial, and
imprisonment, were so widespread that whereas nine-tenths of the
ship money assessed for 1637 was collected, only two-tenths of the
assessment was paid in 1639.168 Meanwhile, Scotland, the Stuart home
base, spun out of control as Scottish notables, “shrewdly advised” by
their lawyers, petitioned King Charles to withdraw the new Prayer Book

162 Ibid., 138.
163 Ibid., 141.
159.
158.
168 Ibid.

from circulation.169 In 1638, the General Assembly of Scotland “refused

to dissolve” upon royal command.170
To gain some control over the situation, the Earl of Strafford, who
was the king’s First Minister, advised Charles to summon Parliament
in the belief that the Commons could be managed. Parliament, when it
met on April 13, 1640, was so hostile that the king hastened to dissolve
it and hold fresh elections.171 The election results were an even greater
disaster for the king. The Scots had invaded England, two hundred
and ninety-four out of four hundred and ninety-three members of the
Short Parliament were returned, and many of the newcomers were
unmanageably hostile as well.172
The City of London paid off the Scots, Strafford was executed, the
king agreed to summon Parliament at least once in three years. The Star
Chamber was abolished,173 and on June 1, 1642, the Nineteen Provisions
stripped the king of “his whole effective sovereignty”.174 In response,
the king issued orders for the raising of a royal army and on August 22,
1642, “Charles set up his standard at Nottingham”.175 Parliament raised
a New Model Army, which was led by Thomas Cromwell, a Puritan
member of the Commons. By the spring of 1646, armed resistance by
the royalists was beaten down.
The king may no longer have posed a threat to Parliament but the
New Model Army certainly did. The soldiers were restive, owed arrears
by the government, and refused to disband until they received sufficient
compensation. In autumn 1647, each regiment elected representatives
who were to form a military assembly that would debate contentious
issues, and a secretary was appointed to record the proceedings.176 The
danger of mutiny, however, was quelled not by points of order in a
parliamentary style debate, but by Cromwell’s personal intervention and
ability to command the confidence of some “twenty thousand resolute,
169 Ibid., 163.

170 Ibid.
171 The Short Parliament.
170.
185.
215.

ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics.”177

Cromwell was dictator by 1653, England and Wales were divided
into eleven districts headed by major generals responsible for policing,
public order, and ensuring tax collection, Parliament was purged,
and “Everywhere was prying and spying”.178 Scotland and Ireland
were invaded, Cromwell styled himself as the “Lord Protector” and
combined in his person supreme administrative, military, legislative,
and religious powers, and had the support of a fanatic armed minority
of Puritans. Cromwell’s Holy Protectorate, fortunately for England, did
not survive his death in 1658. Cromwell’s legacy, which inadvertently
contributed to parliamentary supremacy in the end, was that “What his
sword had wounded never rose to its full life again, neither monarchy
nor lords, Scottish Kirk nor Irish Catholics.”179 Furthermore, Charles
I’s execution, in 1649, “was a grisly reminder” for “subsequent English
kings.”180
In 1660, the “Rump” of the Long Parliament that had made it
through Cromwell’s Protectorate was dissolved by “its own consent”,
and a new Parliament was convened, which opted to offer the son of
Charles I the throne.181 The prince accepted this offer and ascended the
throne of England as Charles II (1660-1685). This momentous event,
…was not only the restoration of the monarchy; it was the

restoration of Parliament…the House of Commons had
broken the Crown in the field; it had at length mastered the
terrible army it had created for that purpose. It had purged
itself of its own excesses, and now stood forth beyond
all challenge, or even need of argument, as the dominant
institution of the realm…the victory of the Commons and
the Common Law was permanent.182
The army was disbanded, the new king relinquished his rights of escheat
and wardship, an annual income of one million two hundred thousand
177 Ibid., 219.

178 Ibid., 248.
259.
182 Ibid., 261.

pounds was settled on the king out of which he was to pay the salaries of
the civil service and meet his own expenses, a public accounts committee
was constituted, the Triennial Act of 1664 was approved, and the
liberties of Englishmen were confirmed. Habeas Corpus became a full-
fledged Act, and from 1668 onwards, the five principal office holders
came to be called Cabinet Ministers. This anti-Puritan Parliament sat
for eighteen years and though it “rendered all honor to the King”, its
members “had no intention of being governed by him”.183
The State of Laws had finally come into being and after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, which was more of a palace coup staged by William
of Orange and Mary Stuart with parliamentary support against James II
(1685-1688), whose Catholicism and pro-French leanings angered many
powerful interests, its position became unassailable. In February 1689,
Parliament passed the Declaration of Rights which stipulated, among
other things, that the king could not suspend laws, raise taxes, or raise
an army, without parliamentary consent, Protestant subjects had the
right to bear arms, and Members of Parliament were assured of their
right to speak freely.
The State of Laws: 1688-1756
King William (1689-1702) followed the custom of the Netherlands

in summoning Parliament annually184 and during this period, the share of
the Crown in national revenue fell to one-fiftieth.185 The National Debt
and the Bank of England were created in 1693-94 and Parliament gained
power over the dismissal and appointment of judges. Henceforth, no
judge could be removed from office unless guilty of an offence or both
Lords and Commons demanded his dismissal. In place of “the somber
warfare of creeds and sects” came “the squalid but far less irrational
strife of parties”, represented by the Whigs and Tories.186 Inter-party
conflict meant that an organized opposition emerged within the
assemblies directed at the group that had a majority and so exercised an
internal check on the ability of the Commons to wield absolute power.
183 Ibid., 267.
185 Ibid., 147. The exact share was 1.98%.
259. The term “Whig” meant “clever, bigoted, greeted Scots Presbyterian”,
while Tory meant “Irish Papist Bandit”.

In 1720, came the South Sea Bubble, the world’s first financial
scandal of truly international proportions. The plan that went disastrously
wrong was “dreamed up” by the South Sea Company and “required
the privatization of a large portion of the National Debt”.187 People
were encouraged to trade their long-term government bonds for stock
in the South Sea Company which sold the idea “that the appreciation
of South Sea Stock” would bring in more money than could ever be
hoped for through long-term bonds.188 The company was given a
monopoly to trade in the West Indies and South Sea even though it
had no ships of it own.189 Bribes were liberally distributed among the
Lords, Commons, and even the Royal Court, to secure privatization.
The hype generated by the exercise, the objections of the Bank of
England notwithstanding, was so successful that between January and
June 1720, the value of South Sea Stock rose from one hundred and
twenty-eight to nine hundred and fifty and peaked on June 24 at one
thousand and fifty.190 When “some prominent stockholders”, including
Isaac Newton and Thomas Guy, decided to cash in, a chain reaction
set in.191 From September 1 to October 1, the stock crashed from seven
hundred and twenty-five to two hundred and ninety, and before the
year was out, “The country was left drowning in worthless paper”.192 Into
the chaos stepped Robert Walpole, a Whig party leader, and First Lord
of the Treasury. The Bank of England and the Treasury took over the
National Debt, the Sinking Fund was activated, and Walpole used his
knowledge of how badly individual parliamentarians and court officials
and favorites had been compromised to rally his party behind him,
pacify his rivals, and overawe the king.193
Walpole was head of government from 1721 to 1742. During his
twenty-one years in power a silent revolution occurred in the executive
arm of the government, due partly to the fact that the Hanoverian kings
that sat on the throne of England after Queen Anne (1702-1714), didn’t
know very much about England, were preoccupied with their lands
187 Simon Schama, A History of Britain: The British Wars 1603-1776 (London:
BBC Worldwide Ltd., 2001), 352.
188 Ibid., 353.
189 Ibid.
190 Ibid.
191 Ibid.
192 Ibid.
193 Ibid., 355.

on the continent, and let their ministers hold meetings unsupervised.194

The term “Prime Minister” had been used by kings in earlier reigns,
and most English monarchs had their ministerial favorites. What
distinguished Walpole was his reliance on Parliament to reorganize
the “great offices of state” and the fact that his fall from power was
due not to the withdrawal of royal support but his inability to control
the Commons.195 After Walpole’s fall from power, there were twenty
changes of government, and fourteen different prime ministers, from
1742-1782.196 Most of the individuals who held the position of head of
government were, like Walpole, First Lords of the Treasury.197 England
had developed a dual executive that comprised king and prime minister
and mirrored the division of the legislative assembly into Lords and
Commons. The components balanced one another and Walpole, for
one, deliberately avoided “great issues that might divide the country”,
had a healthy respect for the “mass of hostile opinion” that existed
“in the manor-houses and parsonages of England” and was determined
“not to provoke it”.198 Taxation was kept to the minimum required and
the land tax, “anxiously watched by the Tory squires, was reduced by
economy to one shilling”.199
The English were conscious that their strength as a nation was
based upon a “positive attitude towards trade” and, indeed, “this was
a preeminence recognized by social hierarchy, as the great houses
and estates of the merchant princes around London demonstrated…
many of the greatest families owed their fortunes to trade and did
not disdain to return to it or to marry merchants’ daughters.”200 The
sense of achievement provided by a nearly unbeatable entrepreneurial
capacity was amplified “by the belief that the country’s enemies were
consumed by malicious envy”.201 One particularly important result of
the depersonalization of credit achieved by the Bank of England was
that by the mid-eighteenth century there were sixty thousand public
194 Harold Wilson, The Governance of Britain (London: Book Club Associates,
1976), 12.
195 Ibid., 13.
196 Ibid., 14.
197 Ibid.
198 Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 3, The Age
of Revolution (London: Cassell, 1956; reprint, London: Cassell, 2002), 96.
199 Ibid., 97.
200 Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, 303.
201 Ibid., 304.

creditors202 out of a population of nine or ten million.203 The contrast

with France in the eighteenth century could not have been greater:
No one thought that any important business could be

well-managed without the involvement of the state. The
farmers themselves, people ordinarily very impatient of
instruction, were brought to believe that if agriculture
was not progressing, it was chiefly the government’s fault,
because it gave them neither enough advice nor enough
help. One of them wrote to an intendant, in an irritated
tone in which one can already hear the Revolution: “Why
doesn’t the government name inspectors who would go
into the provinces once a year to see the state of crops,
who would teach the farmers how to improve them, who
would tell them what to do with their animals, how to
fatten them, raise them, sell them and where one ought to
market them? These inspectors ought to be well-paid. The
farmer who showed the best crops would receive public
honors.” Inspectors and medals! This is an idea that would
never occur to a Suffolk farmer.204
Another indicator of British priorities was the navy, which expanded

in size from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-four ships of the
line from 1689 to 1739, while its French rival fell in strength from one
hundred and twenty to fifty during the same period.205 Even the army
expanded rapidly and rose from seventy-five thousand men in 1710
(compared to the Netherlands which had an army one hundred and
thirty thousand strong and a population of less than two million) to
two hundred thousand in 1756 (compared to three hundred and thirty
thousand for France, which had a population of twenty one and a half
million).206 The astonishing ability of perfide Albion to raise finances and
secure materials faster and more efficiently than absolute monarchies
with vastly superior powers of taxation and legions of civil servants
was due, according to Jacques Necker, the French Controller-General
202 Ibid., 307.
203 Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 128.
204 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, 143.
205 Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 129.
206 Ibid., 128.

of Finance, to the fact that “taxation was viewed as a legitimate part

of parliamentary government”.207 British self-government was, indeed,
founded on the principle of self-taxation. The two made each other
possible and provided the British State with a rational basis for legitimacy
that enabled it in a crisis to command the loyalty and resources of the
country in a manner scarcely comprehensible to the Sun Kings, First
Servants, Czars, and Emperors of continental bureaucratic empires.
A corollary to self-government, self-taxation, and private enterprise,
was “a frugal but functional court” that impressed observers by its
simplicity.208 The capital city of London, with its franchise of twelve to
fifteen thousand, elections every seven years, two hundred printing
presses, “thousands of public places”, and a population of more than
seven hundred thousand by the end of the eighteenth century, was a
monument to “private money” and the power of commerce.209 London
stood in sharp contrast to Versailles, Vienna, or St. Petersburg, all of
which were monuments to royal grandeur and stately magnificence. In
the English countryside of the eighteenth century, “The political and
economic supremacy of the larger landlords was partly the result of
trends that long antedate the Civil War, chiefly the authority of local
notables and the absence of a strong bureaucratic apparatus…even
under the Tudors and Stuarts”.210
The development of a strong parliamentary government in Britain
by the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries parallels the rise of
centralized bureaucratic states in France, Prussia, Russia, and, to a lesser
degree, Austria. Britain, like these continental bureaucratic empires
underwent a road construction boom following the establishment of an
effective central government. The similarity, however, ends there. On
the continent, roads were built by the state with public funds, maintained
by taxes, and supervised by government officials. Louis XIV of France
had a strong Royal Road Administration with a budget of nearly nine
hundred thousand livres in 1700, which had risen to four million livres
by 1770, and nine million livres by 1786.211 The roads were built with
forced labor imposed on communities by the state apparatus and the
communications network that emerged from this effort “favored
207 Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, 307.
208 Ibid., 318.
209 Ibid., 328.
211 Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, 127..

communications between Paris and the provinces”.212 Spain and Austria

followed the French example and the state ownership and control of
roads in continental bureaucratic empires from ancient times is a well-
documented phenomenon. To develop their road network, however, the
British set up turnpike trusts, which were “private companies authorized
by Act of Parliament” to build, improve, and maintain roads and collect
tolls in exchange for these services.213 The eighteenth century was
boom-time for these trail-paving entrepreneurs and by 1800, “no fewer
than” sixteen hundred “turnpike trusts had been formed”.214 By 1754, it
took only four days to travel from London to Manchester and between
the 1740s and 1780s travel time from Birmingham to London fell from
two days to nine hours.215 Meanwhile, across the English Channel, in
Bourbon France, “not even a charity workshop located in the depths
of a far distant province could be established but that the controller-
general wanted to directly supervise its expenses, write its regulations,
and choose its location.”216 Furthermore, the “…paperwork was already
enormous, and official procedure was so slow that…it always took at
least a year for a parish to obtain authorization to rebuild its bell tower
or repair its rectory; usually two or three years passed before the request
was granted.”217
The culture of power of the Anglo-Saxons was, by the mid-
eighteenth century, anomalous in the European context, and freakishly
different from the continental bureaucratic empires of East Asia, the
subcontinent, the Middle East, and North Africa. The divergence in
evolution is explained to a great degree by geography and location. The
land was not rich enough to allow the landed aristocracy to maintain or
improve their lifestyles through rents alone once population pressure
began driving prices up towards the end of the twelfth century. The
relative poverty and scarcity of the land led the landlords towards raising
sheep to sell wool on the market, which required little labor, and by the
fourteenth century the wool traders were a powerful lobby. Location
dictated that the safety of the south and east could only be ensured by a
strong navy, and armies were raised as the need arose and packed off to
212 Ibid.
213 Ibid., 128.
214 Ibid.
215 Ibid.
216 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, 138.
217 Ibid.

France, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, or some far distant theatres

of war. For amazingly long periods, England has remained at peace
with itself with no centrally controlled, organized, or equipped, standing
army. That Germanic political traditions survived and developed far
better in England, than on the northern and eastern plains of Germany,
is another indicator of the decisive impact of geography and location
on the development of cultures of power. The English contemporaries
of Emperor Fredrick Hohenzollern, the Iron Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck, and the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, were Sir Robert Walpole,
Disraeli and Gladstone, and Winston Churchill, respectively. History
furnishes few examples of greater divergence between peoples sharing
the same religion and ethnic, linguistic, and cultural roots.
In continental bureaucratic empires, the servants of the state are the
ruling class and consume the greatest portion of the country’s wealth.
The Anglo-Saxon historical experience of governance was marked
by the conspicuous absence of a bureaucratic class and though state
patronage is important, and many legislators were content to place a
monetary value on their support and patronage, it was one of many
potential sources of great economic wealth. Careers in trade, financial
speculation, stocks, manufacturing, insurance, education, medicine, law,
or raiding Spanish galleons, were in many respects more economically
rewarding than state service. If anything, the state acted as the agent of
private enterprise.
Private property, in both land and capital, further diminished the
ability of the central authority to concentrate economic wealth. The
Norman kings may have disliked the theoretical position of private
property, but, in practice, could not reverse the trend in favor of it.
The hereditary nature of fiefs granted to lords to maintain troops
allowed time for a strong sense of association to develop between
rulers and the ruled at the local level. Power, both legal and physical,
was dispersed through the realm, and the nobility came to court not as
craven supplicants in search of offices, confirmation of their lands, or
remuneration for providing the king with a poetical ego-massage, but as
politicians with the capacity to exert power independently of the crown,
to which they were bound by a feudal contract that gave each party
a legitimate sphere of action. Magna Charta and Parliament are both
outgrowths of the will and the ability of the baronage and their allies in
the clergy to preserve their lawful autonomy.

Parliament is central to the Anglo-Saxon culture of power for it is

through this artifice that the baronage enlisted the support of the gentry
and merchants to contain the central government without, however,
destroying it or rendering it ineffective. Parliament has repeatedly come
to the support of merchants being abused by the king and made it clear
to more than one sovereign that arbitrary impositions on the property of
merchants, extorting forced loans, or collecting custom duties without
parliamentary approval, were violations of the contract between the
king and his subjects. The security of private property helps explain why
the landlord in England was willing to make long-term investments in
founding boroughs or studying better business management methods.
The conditions that prevailed in England meant that that the rational
thing to do was to save and invest in private enterprise and, after 1694,
public credit, not consume, waste, and conceal, wealth derived from the
abuse of state power. By one estimate, the proportion of Englishmen
that “lived by agriculture” was “probably not over fifty percent” by the
mid-seventeenth century.218
The greatest achievement of Parliament was that it accelerated
and completed the standardization of law begun by Henry II without
necessitating the centralization of administrative power. The fact
that England developed a relatively uniform judicial process, and the
legitimate means to make changes to it, reduced the ability of the king to
maneuver his way to arbitrary power by taking advantage of ambiguous
and conflicting codes. Furthermore, where there is only one law, and a
vocal class of lawyers and judges, it is easier to identify violations by the
state, and in time consensus on interpretation can emerge. If Parliament
drew up laws for the entire realm, the Common Law judiciary upheld
Parliament’s prerogative and received in return the right to interpret
legislation. The wise sovereign worked through Parliament and accepted
the fact of his or her subjection to an autonomous temporal reality,
sustained by powerful landed and mercantile interests, and articulated
by elected representatives in the form of laws. To deny or undermine
this principle meant that the sovereign had broken the contract and
rendered the inevitable Parliament-led rebellion that followed a legally
and morally justifiable, if not imperative, exercise against tyranny.
The State of Laws that emerged in 1689 was no longer in danger
of dissolution by the executive and the emergence of political parties

added an internal check on the ability of Parliament to attain consensus

without compromise. The State of Laws was one and indivisible. Self-
government and self-taxation formed a virtuous cycle. Laws were
made and changed by elected representatives. Wars were waged when
necessary and with a level of efficiency that left the proud militarists of
the Continent gaping with awe. Public participation in national political
and economic life was greater than anywhere else in the world except,
perhaps, England’s colonies in North America. The aristocracy did not
serve as a strong barrier to social mobility and contributed to the creation
of an institutionally stable and gradually evolving political hierarchy
that existed autonomously of the executive. In stunning contrast, the
greatest handicap that continental bureaucratic empires have labored
under through the ages is that the omnipotence of the executive reduces
institutions to the level of mere instruments torn between servility,
when the ruler is strong, and self-destruction, when he becomes weak.
That is not to say that the State of Laws in England had attained
perfection by 1756. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, the American
and French Revolutions, the industrial revolution, and a host of other
important constitutional, economic, political, and international events
that would affect the culture of power of the Anglo-Saxons still lay
generations in the future. The achievement, by 1756, was of a sense
of purpose, direction, and process, combined with instituional means
of progress by consensus, and the freedom to pursue goals through
reason, logic, observation, and laws.
Voltaire, in the Philosophical Dictionary, in 1756, asked, “Why
can’t the world be more like England?”219 Decades earlier, he had
experienced the delights of the Bastille for “publishing a satirical poem”
and saw England, the place of refuge for tens of thousands of French
Protestants after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, as “a
model of freedom and liberty”.220 He wondered, “Why can’t the laws
that guarantee British liberties” be adopted elsewhere and enquiringly
observed that coconuts, which “bear fruit in India, do not ripen in
Rome.”221 India and the Papal States were very different in geography,
soil, and climate, but in time, with the application of reason, and careful
cultivation, the coconut tree could be made to bear fruit anywhere. The
219 Ian Buruma, Voltaire’s Coconuts or Anglomania in Europe (London: Phoenix,
2000), 20.
220 Ibid.
221 Ibid.

same was true of the State of Laws that Voltaire saw in Britain and was
captivated by. It too, could become “a universal model”.222 Voltaire,
admittedly, “was more in love with the idea of freedom and commercial
enterprise than with its cruder manifestations. What goes for the theatre
(or American movies) applies to the press as well”.223 However, he
dismissed such incongruities and excesses as he saw as “the bad fruits
of a very good tree called liberty.”224
Three generations of Englishmen had lived under the shade
provided by that “very good tree” embodied in the State of Laws when,
in 1757, the British East India Company defeated the ruler of Bengal at
the Battle of Plassey, seized control of that province, and inaugurated
the British Empire in India. The men who led this enterprise of conquest
were merchants and adventurers like most of the pioneers that settled
North America. The subcontinent, however, was too densely populated
for colonization and had its own longstanding traditions of governance.
In fact, there was little reason to expect that the British, within a
generation, would commence the introduction of administrative, legal,
and political reforms, unprecedented in the historical experience of
governance of the subcontinent.
222 Ibid., 23.

223 Ibid., 31.
224 Ibid.

CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW PARADIGM:

AD 1757 – AD 1857
T he story of how a group of merchant-adventurers came to the

subcontinent in search of profits and ended up responsible for
the exercise of power over its territory and people has been retold
and reinterpreted by successive generations of historians, critics, and
polemicists. The growth and development of the English East India
Company is divisible into two main parts.1 The first takes us from the
founding of the Company in 1600 to its emergence by the mid-eighteenth
century as a militarily significant entity capable of decisive interference
in the struggle for Timurid imperial succession. The second part covers
the years 1757 to 1857 during which the Company acquired political
control of a progressively greater proportion of the subcontinent and
established itself as the successor to the Timurid Empire.
The Company was a chartered organization with rights, liberties
and prerogatives that could not be arbitrarily changed by the reigning
monarch and successfully “resisted efforts to appoint a court favorite”
to lead the first voyage to the Orient.2 Its trading activities were financed
by raising subscriptions from private investors organized into a General
Court and an executive Court of Committees.3 The employees of the
Company were paid salaries that ranged from five pounds for a writer
1 The East India Company’s website is under construction at www.theeastindia-
company.com .The Company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and still
conducts trade.
2 John Keay, The Honorable Company: A History of the East India Company
(London: HarperCollins, 1991), 14.
3 Ibid., 26.

to two hundred pounds for a president, given an allowance for one suit
of clothing, and engaged in a small amount of private trade. The great
distances involved effectively prevented the investors of this “Company
of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies” from exercising
real control over their subordinates stationed in the Orient.4 The best
the central organization could hope to do was regulate the flow of
trade, make important personnel changes as and when the opportunity
arose, seek to extract some leverage over its employees by encouraging
internecine rivalry, and hoping that the Timurid emperor would formally
grant the Company trading rights through an imperial edict (firman).
So long as the Timurid Empire was strong, its rulers refused to
grant the Company a firman. Its first emissary to the Timurid court,
Captain William Hawkins was “heartily welcomed” by Jahangir, granted
a salary of three thousand two hundred pounds a year and a mansab
of four hundred, but found his requests for permission to open an
English factory at Surat “stalled”.5 Later, Jahangir granted permission
but “inexplicably” changed his mind and “countermanded” his earlier
directive.6 Notwithstanding early difficulties, towards the close of the
seventeenth century a sort of symbiosis was achieved due to the Timurid
Empire’s need for bullion and the ability of the Company to oblige
in exchange for raw materials and textile products. Between 1681 and
1685, for example, the Company exported to the Timurid Empire some
two hundred and forty thousand kilograms of silver and seven thousand
kilograms of gold.7 Thus, the fall in the Company’s imports from eight
hundred thousand pounds, before the outbreak of the first Anglo-
Timurid war in 1686, to eighty thousand pounds in 1691, was hurtful
to the finances of both Aurungzeb and the investors in London.8 An
important consequence of this war was that the Company was allowed
“to select a site” for a factory in Bengal and so Calcutta was born and
joined Surat, Bombay, and Madras as a major port of call.9
The first forty years of the eighteenth century stand in sharp
contrast to the preceding and subsequent century of the Company’s
4 Ibid., 14.
5 Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the
Course of History (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999), 187.
6 Ibid., 130.
7 Keay, The Honorable Company, 150.
8 Ibid., 177.
9 Ibid., 158.

The New Paradigm: AD 1757 – AD 1857 | 161
history. The annual dividend stabilized at a dignified eight percent and

Company stock became “the eighteenth-century equivalent of a gilt-
edged security, much sought after by trustees, charities and foreign
investors”.10 The Company had made the transition from a high-risk/
high-return (red chip) investment in the seventeenth-century to a low-
risk/medium to low return (or blue chip) status.
The basis for future greatness is often established in quiet times.
It was in July 1715 that the Company entered into negotiations to
secure an imperial firman. The emperor at the time was Farrukhsiyyar,
a degenerate, hedonistic, and incompetent man dependent on the
services of two ambitious and highly cunning men referred to as the
Saiyyid brothers.11 In addition to presents ranging from gold coins to
“a massive globe more than six feet in diameter, inlaid with gold and
silver”, bribes were solicited by Timurid officials, and the embassy’s
doctor successfully treated the aesthetically displeasing symptoms of
“sexual excess” on the imperial groin.12 Ultimately, neither monetary
nor medicinal inducements brought success to the mission. It was only
when the Company threatened to withdraw from Surat and so diminish
the Timurid Empire’s supply of bullion that “suddenly all objections
were quashed”, the firman was signed and by December 1717 the mission
was on its way back to Calcutta.13
Finally, the sovereign authority of the subcontinent had recognized
the right of the Company to trade, granted it certain exemptions, and
accepted that relations with the Company were to be conducted within
a contractual framework that placed limits on the ability of the emperor
and his appointed servants to interfere in its affairs. The problem was
that the Company had secured the firman at the same time as the emperor
was rendered an ineffective stooge and lost control of his subordinates.
After 1721, there was little reason to hope that appeals to Delhi for the
“enforcement” of the firman would yield anything other than silence or
empty assurances.14
The refusal to grant the Company a firman while Timurid power was
effective prevented a predictable, mutually recognized, and reasonable
working relationship from developing. The grant of a firman at a time
10 Ibid., 220.
11 Farrukhsiyyar was deposed and murdered by the Saiyyid brothers in 1719.
13 Ibid., 228.
14 Ibid., 231.

when Timurid power was in decline meant that the Company had the
blessings of the emperor and, should he fail to rein in his subordinates,
the right to take the law into its own hands. Deteriorating conditions
within the subcontinent combined with a series of international wars
after 173915 rendered impossible peaceful commerce and set the
Company on the path of empire.
In 1742, the Timurid governor of Bengal, Allahvardi Khan, carved
out for himself an independent state out of the provinces of Bengal,
Bihar, and Orissa. His policy towards the French and English was one
of letting them ply their trade, kill each other, and vie for favor in his
court. In 1756, Nawab Allahvardi Khan died, and was succeeded by his
nephew, Nawab Siraj-ud-daula. No sooner had the new Nawab occupied
the throne of Bengal that tidings of an imminent war between France
and Britain began to arrive. The French and British began strengthening
their fortifications in Bengal at Chandernagore and Calcutta, respectively,
in anticipation of the coming struggle. Siraj-ud-daula was justifiably
alarmed by the upsurge in military activity and demanded that both the
French and the British stand down. Neither complied with the Nawab’s
directive but whereas the French “sent a discreet reply” the British
response suggested that “Siraj-ud-daula was incapable of keeping order”
and that the successful prosecution of the coming war with France may
entail interference in Bengal’s domestic affairs.16 The British had already
“annoyed” the Nawab by having engaged “in correspondence” with
rival factions at his court and granting asylum in Calcutta to “a rich
Hindu whom he wanted to plunder”.17
The military outcome of the struggle that began when Siraj-ud-
daula commenced seizing British factories and threatened to expel
them for their indifference and insolence was not in serious doubt after
Chandernagore surrendered on March 13, 1757. The disparity between
the firearms and training of European troops and those commanded
by the rulers of the subcontinent had reached a stage where a single
field gun of the former had the firepower of thirty belonging to the
15 The War of Austrian Succession 1740-1748, The Seven Years War 1756-1763,
the wars of the American Revolution 1776-1782, the wars of the French Revo-
lution 1792-1799, the Napoleonic Wars 1799-1802 and 1804-1815.
16 Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India (London: Gerald
Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1989), 41.
17 Ibid.

latter.18 The Nawab’s forces were numerous but lacked a comparable

level of training, morale, and cohesion. To make matters worse, the
Nawab’s mistreatment of Hindu bankers coupled with his “tyrannical
conduct” towards “Allahvardi Khan’s old servants” and inability to
suppress the conspiracies directed against him fatally compromised his
military capacity.19 Jagat Seth, a leading banker who had been struck in
the face and “threatened…with circumcision” by the Nawab, and Mir
Jafar, the commander of the army, were plotting his overthrow by June
1757.20 An agreement was reached between the disaffected elements
and the British but the interception of Robert Clive’s letter compelled
Mir Jafar to swear a false oath of loyalty to Siraj-ud-daula and ostensibly
dissociate himself from the conspiracy.21
As a precautionary measure at the time of the British assault on
Chandernagore, the Nawab had deployed some fifty thousand troops
and fifty artillery pieces at Plassey. Clive, the British commander, had
at his disposal a total of two thousand seven hundred troops and eight
light artillery pieces. The battle between the two forces took place on
June 23, 1757, and though the total casualties numbered no more than
six hundred, the Nawab’s dispirited and disloyal forces were routed. On
June 29, Mir Jafar formally took charge of the affairs of Bengal, Bihar,
and Orissa. The Timurid emperor confirmed the change, those involved
in the affair “were for the most part glad” and the entire sordid episode
“was for the mass of the people a matter of complete indifference”.22
Siraj-ud-daula was captured and executed.
Mir Jafar went about the implementation of the agreement reached
with the Company. Two million pounds23 were paid as compensation
for damages caused by Siraj-ud-daula’s occupation of Calcutta, the
Company received the zamindari of twenty-four districts yielding one
hundred thousand pounds per annum, and extracted “donations” of
four hundred thousand pounds for its armed forces and one hundred
and twenty thousand pounds for “Clive and the members of the Select
Committee”.24 The Company did not assume any responsibility for the
18 Keay, The Honorable Company, 281. A single “French trooper” by the 1740s
was equal in military effectiveness to ten of his subcontinental equivalents.
19 Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, 51.
20 Ibid., 52.
21 Ibid., 53.
22 Ibid., 55.
23 £ 1 = Rs. 10

governance of the province though the terms of the agreement placed an

intolerable financial burden on Mir Jafar. When Siraj-ud-daula’s treasury
was opened, it was found to contain only one and a half million pounds.
The estimated annual revenues of Bengal amounted to between two and
three million pounds but given the disrupted condition of the country
and the enervation of the state apparatus, it was unlikely that Mir Jafar
could expect to return his dominion to financial solvency even without
having to make payments to the Company. Nevertheless, Mir Jafar gave
Clive an additional gift of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds and
made a part payment of one million pounds on the total sum owed
to the Company under their agreement. Though the unconditional
surrender of Pondicherry, the main French enclave in the Carnatic25 on
January 15, 1761, rendered the Nawab of that province, Muhammad
Ali, dependent on British support, it was in Bengal that the course of
events gravitated towards direct rule by the Company.
The crisis in Bengal was due in no small part to the exemption from
customs duties granted to goods traveling under a pass (dastak) issued
by the Company. The salaries of Company employees were abysmally
low but now, in addition to indulging in private trade, they could sell
passes to anyone willing to pay. The result was that with each passing
month, the Nawab’s source of income shrank while his commitments
and expenditures did not. The Company, in the meanwhile, was
maintaining an army in Bengal whose cost “far exceeded” its “regular
annual revenue”.26 The Nawab was aware of the fact that his nobles
would rebel if they felt that he had lost the support of the British. The
Company wanted to force the Nawab to agree to finance its military
expenditures on a regular basis from his diminishing fiscal resources.
When he refused to submit to this extortion, a conspiracy was hatched
against him that aimed at making Mir Kasim, the Nawab’s son-in-law
the diwan and pensioning off Mir Jafar while letting him retain the title
of Nawab. When Mir Jafar was confronted with the reality of these
machinations he readily chose to abdicate and live in Calcutta under
British protection.
The new arrangement did nothing to improve the situation and, by
1762, Mir Kasim and the Company were headed for a confrontation
over the abuse of the system of passes. The “exasperated” Nawab
25 South India.

struck a critical blow against the Company’s privileges by proclaiming

the abolition of “all customs duties throughout his territories” on
all goods and traders.27 This maneuver made the Company’s passes
utterly redundant. The Company resolved to go to war and hostilities
commenced in June 1763, and ended a year later with the defeat of
Mir Kasim, Shuja-ud-daula,28 and Shah Alam,29 at the battle of Buxar.
Shah Alam sought the protection of the British and conferred upon the
Company the diwani (financial administration) of Bengal in exchange for
an annual contribution of two hundred and sixty thousand pounds.
This system, under which the Company took charge of the financial
administration based in the Nawab’s capital at Murshidabad and handed
over three hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year to the Nawab for
his upkeep and the maintenance of law and order was known as the dual
government and lasted from 1765 to 1773. However, during this period
the “actual administration” remained with the deputy finance ministers
(naib diwans) Muhammad Reza Khan in Bengal and Shitab Rai in Bihar.30
The old bureaucracy was to a “limited extent regulated by British
supervisors”, but for the most part the Company found itself in the
rather unenviable position of having acquired political control without
the requisite knowledge to make its writ effective.31 The Company
was subjected to mounting criticism in England for its embarrassingly
manifest ineptitude and corruption, while the Nawab lacked the will and
the resources to maintain law and order. The Company, in turn, “strongly
suspected” the naib diwans of “intercepting a great part of the revenue”32
though when Reza Khan and Shitab Rai were tried for corruption the
charges could not be proved and the two were acquitted.33 What can be
appropriately termed as dual misgovernment functioned badly at the
best of times. It would have been abandoned even if the rains had come
on time in 1769, and no famine occurred the following year.
In 1767, the Company delayed parliamentary intervention in its
affairs by agreeing to pay four hundred thousand pounds a year into the
27 Ibid., 99.
28 Ruler of Oudh.
29 Timurid Emperor.
30 H. H. Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol 5, British India 1497-1858
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921; reprint, New Delhi: S. Chand
& Company (Pvt.) Ltd., 1987), 206.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 207.
33 Ibid., 209.

public exchequer and to facilitate the export of English manufactures.34

Thus, two years before the rains failed and Bengal was afflicted by a
famine that may have claimed the lives of as much as one-third35 of
its population, the Company had agreed to a significant increase in
its financial commitments in order to preserve its autonomy from
Parliament. The major obstacle to parliamentary regulation before
1772 was constitutional. The Company was one of many chartered
bodies. If its rights and liberties were curtailed by Parliament then,
no matter how unimpeachable the case for intervention, a precedent
would be established and whichever party had a majority could go about
undermining the lawful autonomy of other chartered organizations.
By 1772, however, a combination of famine in Bengal, rampant
corruption in the financial administrative machinery, and rising financial
demands of the directors, had compromised the sustainability of the
Company and “unless something was done” it “would crash”.36 The
House of Commons formed a committee to investigate the Company’s
finances and found that it owed one million six hundred thousand
pounds in “overdue bills”, obligations totaled nine million pounds and
assets only five million pounds.37 In March 1773, the Company was
forced to limit its dividends to six percent and submit to the Regulating
Act of 1773 in return for a loan of one million four hundred thousand
pounds.38 The Act elevated the governor of the Bengal Presidency to
the rank of governor-general of all the Company’s territories in the
subcontinent. It also created a council of members appointed with
34 Jeremy Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trial of Warren Hastings
(London: Auram Press Ltd., 2000), 63.
35 Famine claimed the lives of about one-fifth of the population of the North
Indian plains between 1783 and 1784, and there were severe food shortages
in 1791, 1801, and 1805. Though there have been famines in the subcontinent
during periods of effective central control, the frequency and scale of devasta-
tion wrought by crop failures during periods of geopolitical plurality have been
far higher, and should serve as a stark reminder of the tremendous human cost
entailed by the fragmentation and weakening of continental bureaucratic em-
pires.
36 Bernstein, Dawning of the Ra,j 79.
37 Ibid., 80.
38 The British government also helped the Company restore sanity to its finances
by granting a monopoly of tea in the American colonies. The American colo-
nists, however, protested, and in an event known as the Boston Tea Party, ran-
sacked Company ships in Boston harbor leading directly to the adoption of
coercive measures by the British government, which, in turn, further alienated
the colonists and led to the American Revolution (1776-1783).

parliamentary approval and settled on the councilors and the governor-

general generous salaries. Decisions taken by the council were to be
determined by a simple majority with the governor-general casting the
deciding vote in the event of a tie.
Warren Hastings, sent to Bengal as governor in December 1771,
found himself elevated to the over-lordship of the Company’s territories
in Surat, Bombay, and Madras in addition to Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.39
The newly constituted council, however, was supremely suspicious of
Hastings and between 1774 and 1776 did everything it could to challenge
him on both internal and external policies. Philip Francis, the leader of
the opposition in the council, fancied himself as the next governor-
general and “began communicating his discontents” to London “almost
as soon as he landed in Calcutta”.40 General Clavering, the newly
appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was a stickler for
protocol, and believed that he was the logical successor to Hastings.41
Further complications arose from ambiguities in the Regulating Act
as to who would command the armed forces in an emergency. The
creation of a Supreme Court with British judges in Calcutta, though
admirable in itself, was not accompanied by clear-cut instructions as to
its relationship with the executive and left the conflicts among English
law, Roman law, Muslim laws, Hindu customs, and the bewildering
array of caste regulations un-addressed.42
Hastings’s reforms were designed to restore the effectiveness
39 Some idea of the challenges faced by Parliament in governing peoples with

different cultures of power can be gleaned from contemporary occurrences in
North America. Quebec had been conquered by the British from the French in
1759. The Quebec Act of 1774 preserved the French Civil Law, granted reli-
gious toleration to some 70,000 French Catholics, allowed the Catholic Church
to collect tithes, and dispensed with elected assemblies in favor of a nominated
council. The Quebec Act represented the continuation of the French system
of bureaucratic centralization and rule through appointed servants and under-
scored the divergence between the cultures of power of France and Britain. To
the American colonists, however, the continuation of a system in Quebec that
was not based upon elected assemblies and the Common Law (Habeas corpus,
trial by juries) was cause for consternation and a contributing factor to the
American Revolution. The people of Quebec, however, were relieved by the
continuation of a system of government that was not only intelligible to them
but also greatly expanded the boundaries of their province. Simon Schama, A
History of Britain: The British Wars 1603-1776, 470.
40 Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj, 84.
41 Ibid., 85.
42 Ibis., 85-86.

of central executive authority. The postal service was revamped, a

geographical survey was launched, the currency system was unified,
learned Brahmins were commissioned to codify Hindu law as best
they could, the Bhagavad-Gita and Emperor Aurungzeb’s edicts were
translated, and, in 1784, the Asiatic Society of Bengal was founded under
the leadership of William Jones. Hastings, himself fluent in Persian and
Hindi and with decades of experience in the subcontinent, knew that to
administer the territories under British rule a working knowledge of the
local languages and rational understanding of the history and culture of
the region were indispensable.
The system of dual misgovernment43 was taken apart. Customs
duties were standardized at two and a half percent, the misuse of
passes was thus curtailed, and the illegal customs houses maintained
by zamindars with the help of their armed retainers to extort money
from merchants were “suppressed”.44 The sum due to the Nawab every
year was cut from three hundred and twenty thousand pounds to one
hundred and sixty thousand pounds, and the treasury was moved from
Murshidabad to Calcutta so that Hastings could personally supervise the
financial administration.45 Annual salaries of ninety thousand pounds
were settled on the naib diwans to ensure their incorruptibility but the
local zamindars and qanungos (land revenue record keepers) continued to
prevent “any real knowledge of whatever amount of revenue actually
paid by the ryot46 to the zamindar from coming to the knowledge of the
Company”.47
Hastings, long acquainted with the realities of the subcontinent,
was content to retain the status of universal landlord traditionally held
by the state48 and farm out revenues for five-year periods by public
auction.49 The first such revenue settlement was made in October
1772 and to make it work the post of district collector, to be filled by
43 Clive was impeached in 1772 for having introduced the system of dual govern-
ment but was acquitted.
44 Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol 5, British India 1497-1858,
208.
45 Ibid., 210.
46 Cultivator.
47 Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol 5, British India 1497-1858, 410-
411.
48 Ibid., 424.
49 Ibid., 416.

a European, was created.50 Under the terms of the auction, no relation

of a tax-farmer could purchase or hold a tax farm.51 The system did not
work and the “records of the Board of Revenue from 1773-1776 record
a monotonous list of large deficits, defaulting zamindars, absconding
farmers, and deserting ryots”.52 The ban on relatives of a tax-farmer
holding tax-farms was “grossly violated”, the arrival on the scene of the
district collector undermined the zamindari authority, and the Supreme
Court “paralyzed” the provincial financial administration by “issuing
writs of habeas corpus in favor of persons confined by orders of the
provincial diwani adalat”.53
The Regulating Act made illegal the acceptance of presents by
Company officials from persons seeking to engage them in their official
capacity. However, an integral component of the subcontinent’s culture
of power was to approach officials and royalty with gifts that served as
bribes. Rejection of gifts indicated that the supplicant had fallen into
disfavor. Hastings’s attitude towards the receipt of gifts was ambiguous
and he accepted some to avoid giving offense while rejecting others.54
This attitude was also reflected in the behavior of the officers of the
Company, many of whom, continued to accept gifts from supplicants.
In March 1775, Nand Kumar, an acquaintance of Hastings since
the 1750s, accused him of accepting a bribe of three hundred and fifty
thousand rupees from Munni Begum, the regent of Bengal.55 As proof,
Nand Kumar furnished “a transparently forged letter from the Munni
Begum” and the opposition, led by Philip Francis, jumped at the chance
to prove the governor-general a crook and send him home in disgrace.56
Nand Kumar owed his career as a revenue collector to Hastings and, in
1769, escaped prosecution, with Hastings’s help, for having defrauded
the heirs of a wealthy native banker of half their father’s estate.57 Nand
Kumar probably thought that by turning on Hastings and ingratiating
himself with Philip Francis, he would be rid of an old connection, which
knew him all too well, and get on the right side of the man likely to
become the next governor-general. Hastings, of course, was no angel,
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 421.
52 Ibid., 419.
53 Ibid., 421.
54 Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj, 103-104.
55 Ibid., 106.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 108.

had “compromised to a certain extent with evil, and to bind men to his
interests, he freely used the means of patronage at his disposal”.58
This time, however, Nand Kumar was not about to get away, and,
in May 1775, he was accused of forgery. His trial was conducted under
the Common Law, which held forgery to be a capital offense and, unlike
Hindu caste customs, which granted Brahmins immunity from capital
punishment, applied the standards of justice without regard to incidence
of birth. The jury59 “deliberated all night” and as “the documentary proof
was incontrovertible” declared Nand Kumar guilty.60 The opposition in
the council ditched Nand Kumar, and Hastings, even if had wanted to,
he lacked the power to commute sentences.61
Hastings saw himself and the Company as the successors to
the Timurid Empire, not as the vanguard of a new paradigm. The
subcontinent’s tradition of an omnipotent executive ruling through
appointed servants that enforced his claims to universal landlord
status through tax-farmers and collectors was to be made effective,
not significantly altered. Indeed, under the conditions that prevailed in
the subcontinent, the best one could do was conduct government in
a manner of an enlightened arbitrary despot and keep the Company’s
military machine at ready.
Though Hastings had led the British to victories between 1774
and 1783, at a time when the American colonies were in revolt, and
returned to England with a modest fortune (by nabob standards),
he was impeached by the House of Commons for high crimes and
misdemeanors. Chief Justice Impey was also impeached even though
he had taken on Hastings on the issue of court jurisdiction and by doing
so “nearly destroyed” their friendship.62 Impey was acquitted, not least
because Nand Kumar’s own counsel “corroborated the defense” and
maintained that his client had received a “perfectly fair trial”.63
Hastings’s trial began in April 1786 and continued until 1795.
212.
59 The jury comprised only Englishmen since a jury of Brahmins was certain to
disregard the evidence and pronounce their caste-fellow not guilty. Chief Justice
Impey was a class-fellow and old friend of Hastings.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., 136
235.

The man leading the charge against Hastings was Edmund Burke,
quite possibly the greatest orator of his age. Burke’s interest in the
governance of the subcontinent became “passionate” after he made a
detailed “study of the Company in 1781”.64 Burke presented the articles
of impeachment and performed the task of prosecution. These articles
make for fascinating reading not only for the accusations but also for
the assumptions that underlie them. Hastings stood accused of, among
other things, having “trodden underfoot” the “rights” of “the people
of India”, subjecting the ruling family of Oudh to “insupportable
hardship”, the illegal use of British troops against the Rohillas, extorting
concessions from the Raja of Benares, and the “wanton, unjust, and
pernicious exercise of his powers”.65
The substance of these charges was ultimately found seriously
wanting and Hastings was acquitted and granted a generous annual
pension of four thousand pounds.66 Implicit in Burke’s accusations
were certainly revolutionary principles for he imagined that there
existed a collective historical consciousness that could be categorized as
“the Indian people”. The “people”, were imagined to possess “rights”,
which no previous ruler of the subcontinent had ever acknowledged,
that the British executive authority was bound to respect. That the
relationship between the center and its feudatories was governed by
nothing more than the balance of power and the whims of the former
was as unacceptable as exterminating or banishing enemy peoples.
Hastings’s crime was that he had failed to uphold the “state morality”67
of England while governor-general of the Company’s territories in the
subcontinent. Hastings, in other words, was dragged through eight
years of litigation, vilified, and humiliated, for having behaved like a
subcontinental while in the subcontinent. The 1784 India Act aimed at
further reform of the Company and served “to bring to an end the day
of the free-booting nabob”.68 The governor-general would henceforth
owe his position to Parliament and the king, not to dividend-driven
directors and proprietors.
64 Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody (London: Minerva, 1993), 259.
65 Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: The
Penguin Press, 2003), 54.
66 Thrice the amount that Burke received for his pension. O’Brien, The Great
Melody, 579.
68 Ferguson, Empire, 55.

The first of the “grandees” sent to the subcontinent was Lord

Cornwallis (1786-1793).69 Before embarking, Cornwallis was instructed
to reach a workable settlement of the land revenue in “cooperation”
with the zamindars, simplify and standardize the administration, properly
remunerate officials, work through the district collectors, rely on
Englishmen to the greatest extent possible, and was assured command
of military forces in an emergency.70 Cornwallis didn’t speak a word
of Persian or Hindi but was quite willing to listen to his advisors and
“acknowledged plainly his debt to them”.71 To the admirable quality of
knowing when to defer to the judgment of more experienced officers like
John Shore and James Grant, Cornwallis brought with him an “invincible
honesty”, a “soldier’s sense of duty to his superiors”, and a “desire for
the public good”.72 His arrival also signaled the commencement of war
against the culture of power of the subcontinent, and heralded the end
for rule by corporate raiders. The Lord Sahibs, as Richard Wellesley,
Second Earl of Mornington, and Governor-General from 1798 to 1805
eloquently summed up, realized that the subcontinent was to be ruled
from the palace, not the counting house.
Cornwallis found that the “oriental principles of government”
were responsible for the kind of chaos and uncertainty that prevailed in
the subcontinent.73 The solution lay not in making arbitrary despotism
effective but in the limitation of state power to “prevent its abuse”.74
The state had to be limited to the performance of its core functions
of financial administration and “ensuring the security of person and
property”.75 A permanent revenue settlement would reduce the functions
of the boards of revenue and the collectors to the “mere collection of
public dues” and eliminate fluctuating assessments often determined
by venal intermediaries.76 Cornwallis was the first supreme executive
in the history of the subcontinent to renounce the right of the state to
the universal ownership of property, especially in land, observed and
69 Ibid.
433.
71 Ibid., 434-435.
72 Ibid., 437.
73 Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1959; reprint, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 4.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., 5.
76 Ibid.

commented upon by visitors ranging from Megasthenes77 to François

Bernier.78 Calls for a permanent settlement of land revenue were first
heard in the early 1770s, and, in 1772, Colonel Dow recommended that
such an arrangement be made with the zamindars.
The logic upon which the Permanent Settlement of 1793 was based
was eminently sound. Human beings are by nature acquisitive. Under
arbitrary despotism, they are rendered insecure. This leads them to
corruption and wastage. Because the landlord can be dispossessed at
the ruler’s whim and every year has to fend off predatory tax officials he
loses all incentive to save and invest productively. Instead, he uses the
armed retainers at his disposal to terrorize the peasantry and merchants
in his area in order to sustain himself and his dependents in indolence
and luxury. The Permanent Settlement sought to redress the imbalances
on both sides of the equation. The zamindars were given proprietary
rights in perpetuity. The only condition under which they could lose
their lands involuntarily was if they failed to pay the taxes determined
in the settlement.79 No revenue assessors would descend on the
landlords every year to increase the assessment and so appropriate any
additional surplus.80 The zamindars were now deprived of their bands of
armed retainers and a police force reporting to the district judge was
77 Greek ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya c 300 BC.

78 François Bernier, a French physician who traveled through the Timurid Em-
pire from 1659 to 1668, states that “the land throughout the whole empire is
considered the property of the sovereign”, and explains that consequently there
are no royal servants that possess “titles derived from domains and seignories as
usual in Europe”. Bernier also observed “royal grants consist only of pensions,
either in land or money which the king gives, augments, retrenches or takes
away at pleasure”. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 5.
79 In that event, lands equal to the amount in default would be auctioned to
the highest bidder. In 1790, Cornwallis had instituted a ten-year settlement to
replace the old five-year settlements. In 1793, the Permanent Settlement sub-
sumed the earlier arrangement.
80 Bernier, writing to Jean Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister, to de-
scribe the political, military and economic conditions of the Timurid Empire,
observed the impact of the insecurity perpetuated by the state on the judicious
application of capital. After describing the terror-stricken behavior of mer-
chants and men of private wealth, Bernier asked “whether it would not be more
advantageous for the King as well as the people, if the former ceased to be sole
possessor of the land, and the right of private property were recognized in the
Indies as it is with us?” Bernier concluded that the “absence” of private property
among the people is injurious to the best interests of the Sovereign himself ”.
Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 226.

established.81
In January 1787, Cornwallis suspended members of the Board
of Trade suspected of illegal financial aggrandizement and examples
were made of several serving and retired members.82 Later that year
the pay structure for the district administration was revised so that
the district collector now received fifteen hundred rupees per month
and was provided with two to three Englishmen as assistants paid
five hundred to three hundred rupees a month.83 Collectors and their
administrative staff were banned from participating in private trade, had
to hand over all “presents” they received to the public treasury, enjoyed
limited powers in the field of criminal justice and were empowered to
handle civil disputes.84 So long as the collectors performed their duties
to the satisfaction of the boards of revenue, they were secure against
removal, imprisonment, or liquidation. If suspected of wrongdoing, the
procedure was to suspend the official in question pending an impartial
investigation. If evidence were uncovered formal charges would be
brought against the suspect.
Between 1788 and 1790, Cornwallis began the process of reforming
the criminal justice system. He identified the presence of multiple
conflicting codes of laws and customs, and procedural defects, as the
principal causes of the arbitrariness and unpredictability of the system
extant in the subcontinent.85 Four courts of circuit that were required to
make semiannual tours of their jurisdictions were established in Bengal,
additional native judges were appointed to handle litigation at lower
levels, and the long-term goal was to bring “the law administered into
line with that of England”.86 In 1791, salaried superintendents of the
police with the limited function of maintaining order, responding to
criminal acts, and arresting suspects, were appointed.87 Consequently,
when the zamindars were “relieved” of the responsibility of keeping the
peace and disbanded their armed retainers in 1792, a new police force
was ready to step in.88
The Cornwallis Code of May 1793 spelt out the separation of the
81 Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, 7.
82 Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol 5, British India 1497-1858.
83 Ibid., 443-444.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid., 444.
86 Ibid., 446.
87 Ibid., 451.
88 Ibid., 452.

judicial from the revenue administration. English judges presided over

provincial courts of appeal and criminal courts of circuit.89 The judicial
line culminated in the Supreme Court at Calcutta, the commercial line in
the Board of Trade, and the revenue line in the boards of revenue.90 The
Cornwallis Code endured for over a generation as the closest thing to
a uniform code of laws and it is generally accepted that the years 1786-
1793 represent the beginnings of the Indian Civil Service.
From 1793 to 1813, reforms in the administration of Bengal were
tactical in nature and aimed at the improvement of the functioning of
the Permanent Settlement and facilitating civil and criminal justice.91
A major difficulty was that the zamindars, the overwhelming majority
of them non-Bengalis, proved extraordinarily inept at the management
of their estates and, deprived of their armed retainers with whom to
terrorize merchants and peasants as in the good old days of Turco-
Persian colonial rule, were unable to make the tax payments. The
zamindars began losing their lands to Bengali bankers and merchants,
many based in Calcutta, who had saved, invested, and multiplied their
wealth under the relative security of British rule. In order to contain “the
flood of sales” and the “mass of revenue suits”, Cornwallis’s successors,
Sir John Shore (1793-1798) and Richard Wellesley, restored some of the
coercive powers of the zamindars, and re-imposed the registration fee
for law suits.92
Wellesley also eliminated the power of the governor-general’s
council to act as “the high court of the Company’s judicial system” and
“defended the abandonment of the native tradition” of fusing executive
with judicial power at the highest level “by the Whig argument that
all power was inherently liable to abuse”.93 Therefore, an impersonal
government of institutions operating in accordance with well-defined
legal norms and regulations, and interacting with each other through
correspondence, committees, boards, and councils, was the best way
“to limit the interference of the state”.94 The curse of the absolutism of
unaccountable individuals had destroyed the capacity of subcontinental
societies to undergo meaningful, cumulative, change. The rule of
89 Ibid., 454.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 456.
92 Ibid., 456-457.
93 Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, 7-8.
94 Ibid.

accountable and impersonal institutions was the remedy that needed to

be administered so that the latent force of self-improvement, taught by
the European Enlightenment to be inherent in human nature, distorted
and suppressed by arbitrary despotism for centuries, could be released.
The expansion of British power into the Carnatic between 1790
and 1810 was also accompanied by numerous reforms. In South India,
the British found that “the agriculturalists and artisans hoped little
and feared much from their rulers”.95 Criminal justice was based on
“mutilation for the poor and fines for the rich”, there was no generally
accepted code, the region was plagued by “criminal tribes” that lived off
protection racketeering, and the yearly struggle between government
agents and villagers had caused “the cultivator” to “lose all interest in
his land”.96 Indeed,
…in the Carnatic, as in Bengal, the local people – Tamil

speaking Hindus – were already in a state of abject
subjugation. No ruler, from the Nawab down to the
pettiest poligar97 seems to have been of Tamil birth…while
the Tamil ryot took cover amongst the palmayras, the
armies, including those of the English and French, which
trampled his paddy fields and commandeered his buffalo
were composed of Punjabis, Afghans, Rajputs, Pathans,
and Marhatas…Government was simply a euphemism
for oppression under the imperial sanction of the Moghul
authority.98
In 1794, the system of district collectors was extended to the

Madras Presidency. Five years later, Thomas Munro was posted
to the newly occupied Kanara district to assume command of the
financial administration. Munro made some startling discoveries. One
was that money assessments on individual holdings had been settled
“centuries before” and subsequent impositions notwithstanding,
“the original assessment was still known and recorded”.99 Munro
463.
96 Ibid., 464-466.
97 Local landlord and tax-farmer. Approximate equivalent of the zamindar.

was thus convinced,
…that the ryotwari system was the indigenous system of

South India, and therefore presumably the system best
suited to the needs of the country. Under his direction it gave
good results in Kanara. There, too, Munro found surviving
a strong sense of private property in land, of which he had
seen no trace in the Baramahal. He traced the existence of
this sense of private property to the original low level of
the land assessment. He held that the development of this
sense of property was the only road to the improvement of
the country.100
Wellesley, however, was determined to introduce the zamindari

system into the Madras Presidency and between 1802 and 1804 it was
experimented with over the objections of officials with direct experience
in the field including Munro, Metcalfe, Malcom, and Elphinstone.101
These officials agreed with the governor-general in their evaluation of
the importance of private property rights. The disagreement was over
“the hands in which they were to be lodged” and the practicality of
“a formal declaration of un-alterability”.102 Many of the poligars chose
to fight rather than peaceably submit to disarmament in exchange for
proprietary rights and a stable tax assessment.103
Resistance, however, was beaten down and along with district
collectors and private property came a new civil and criminal justice
system based on Common Law rules, implemented, to the greatest
extent feasible, by British judges104 and extended to the ryotwari districts
in 1806.105 In 1804, however, the Madras government was warned by
the Court of Directors not to conclude “permanent settlements in
haste” and, in 1808, permission was granted to restart experiments
470.
100 Ibid.
101 Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, 9. Elphistone served as governor
of Bombay from 1819-1827 and was succeeded by Malcolm who served from
1827-1830. Munro was governor of Madras from 1819-1827.
102 Ibid., 83.
475.
104 Ibid., 474.
105 Ibid., 476.

“with village settlements”.106 In the Madras and Bombay presidencies,

direct settlements with peasants or villages in exchange for proprietary
rights became the norm in the 1820s.
A logical extension of the debate over land revenue was the
disagreement over the mode of administration best suited to the
governance of the subcontinent. The dispute between the followers of
Cornwallis and those of Munro was predominantly practical in nature
for neither side questioned the “theoretic virtue” of the State of Laws.107
The question that still awaited an adequate response pertained to the
standardization of an administrative system that was practical and took
into account the historical experience of governance of the subcontinent.
Some way had to be found to achieve a synthesis between the culture
of power of England and the confounding alternate reality left behind
by the continental bureaucratic empires the British had succeeded in the
subcontinent. The need for reaching a consensus was made acute by the
rapid expansion of the British Empire. In 1815, there were some forty
million Indians under British rule.108 By 1857, that figure would rise to
well over one hundred and fifty million.
The greatest fault with the system of impersonal government
introduced by Cornwallis was that it was unintelligible to its Indian
subjects. A clear indicator of this was the fact that by 1824 there was
a backlog of more than one hundred and twenty thousand lawsuits in
Bengal alone.109 The people for whom the changes had been made, long
accustomed to arbitrariness and predatory behavior, generated litigation,
a great deal of it fraudulent, far faster than the British could import judges
into India. The level of unintelligibility inherent in the transplantation
of the idiosyncratic state morality of England was compounded by the
policy of minimizing the level of reliance on natives, but, unable to
recruit sufficient English personnel, trying to get the “Indian agency at
their command…to observe the elaborate procedure laid down in an
unfamiliar code”.110 Replacing arbitrary, vicious, personal government
with an incomprehensible impersonal system was hardly the mark of
great wisdom.
106 Ibid.
477.

The counter-argument to Cornwallis’s experiment in transplantation

was, essentially, that rationality in the exercise of power is context-
specific. The introduction without modification “of the rule of law”
and the separation of powers in a region devoid of the experience of
self-government was simply not going to work.111 The Munro school of
thought argued “for paternal direction and an easily intelligible form of
law and government” to meet the requirements “of a peasant society”.112
Munro argued that the British must “make the greatest possible use
of native institutions and native agency” and won a significant victory
when, in 1812, the Madras government was ordered to restore the
ryotwari settlement.113 The district magistracy and control of the police
were transferred from the district judge to the collector who, in turn,
was made directly responsible to the Board of Revenue.114 However,
the village panchayats, in whom Munro tried to breathe new life, were
unable to compete “with professional lawyers and judges”, though,
on the plus side, the level of uncertainty was reduced, the financial
administration became less complex and more efficient, and the poligars
were mastered.115 In 1822, the state’s performance of its core functions
rendered tolerable, Munro instituted an inquiry into the condition of
education in the Madras Presidency.116
At the heart of the Munro school’s program was “the one visible
representative of the government” at the district level – the collector.117
Munro and his supporters presented and won the case for a strong
executive arm operating at the district level through an appointed
official in whose person was vested sufficient discretionary power to
handle day-to-day problems and disputes without recourse to litigation.
When Lord William Bentinck118 arrived to take charge as governor-
general in 1828, Holt Mackenzie was ready with a program of reforms
111 Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, 15, 20.
112 Ibid., 21.
479.
114 Ibid., 481.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid.
118 Served as governor-general from 1828 to 1835 and governor of Madras from
1803 to 1807. He knew and approved of Munro’s view on administration, and
embarked on a program of reform that tackled social issues like widow-burning
(suttee), female infanticide, and the ritual murder of travelers by devotees of a
Hindu cult known as the thugs.

that entailed the abolition of provincial boards, a the implementation of

a system of commissioners in charge of administrative units no larger
than what they could personally supervise organized in a clear hierarchy
in which the officers would supervise each other.119
The proposal was accepted and the process of implementation
began in 1829 in the Bengal Presidency, which was divided into twenty
divisions, each headed by commissioners of revenue and circuit. The
divisions comprised three or four districts each with a hierarchy of
commissioners who replaced the provincial boards of revenue, took
over the superintendence of the police, and enjoyed limited civil and
criminal jurisdiction. This new class of civil servants came through a
competitive examination in which graduates of Haileybury College were
allowed to participate.120 English district judges were given the authority
to send all civil cases involving damages or claims worth less than five
thousand rupees to well-remunerated Indian subordinates.121 Thus, twin
hierarchies of collector-magistrates or commissioners and English and
native judges replaced the “collective bodies” in which Cornwallis had
reposed his trust.122
To ensure that the servants of the state behaved themselves,
Bentinck encouraged officers to report excesses directly to the center. An
example was made of Edward Colebrooke, the Resident at Delhi, aged
sixty-five, who had fallen prey to the temptation of keeping the “gifts”
given to him by natives instead of making them over to the treasury.123
On June 6, 1829, Colebrooke’s twenty-one years old assistant, Charles
Travelyan, wrote to the Chief Secretary at Calcutta and informed him
of what was going on.124 Colebrooke had been paying into his Calcutta
bank account sums far too large to be explained by his regular sources
of income.125 Colebrooke was suspended, an inquiry was launched, and,
on December 29, 1829, he was dismissed from service, and Bentinck

120 Ferguson, Empire, 185. Haileybury was founded in 1805 to train civil servants
for the Company. Competitive exams were first held in 1827, though it was
not until 1858 that the civil service was opened to all other higher educational
institutions and Indians.
122 Ibid., 162.
123 Raleigh Travelyan, The Golden Oriole (New York: Viking, 1987), 145.
124 Ibid., 146.
125 Ibid., 145.

personally wrote a letter of appreciation to Charles Travelyan.126

The rationalization and standardization of the executive arm
coincided with the renewal of the Company’s charter in 1833. Twenty
years earlier, in 1813, the Company’s monopoly on trade had been taken
away and missionaries allowed to proselytize in its territories.127 By the
1833 India Act the Government of India was formally constituted,
the governor-general was relieved of the responsibility of heading the
Bengal administration, a legislative council was created, and secretaries
of state replaced Presidency councils.128 The Governor-General’s council
comprised the representatives of the Agra, Bombay, Madras, and
Calcutta presidencies and one law member.129 The commissioners were
to submit semi-annual reports on the condition of the people and the
working of the administration.130
In June 1834, the new law-member of the council, Thomas
Babbington Macaulay, was entrusted with the task of drafting a code of
laws applicable to British India in its entirety, arrived.131 The principles
adopted by Macaulay in this Herculean endeavor were “uniformity”
where possible, “diversity” where necessary, and “in all cases certainty”.132
When Macaulay left for England in January 1838, he had completed
the draft of the Indian Penal Code,133 abolished the licensing system
for publications through the Press Act of 1835, and, in 1836, allowed
native judges to try Englishmen in what became known as the “Black
Act”.134 The irony of the situation could not have been greater when
“the English community of Calcutta, stirred to fury by the ‘Black Act’,
made use of the press, whose freedom he had helped ensure, in order
to conduct a campaign of vilification against him”.135
In drafting the Indian Penal Code Macaulay was “influenced by
the simpler ordering” of the Code Napoleon136 and divided offences into
126 Ibid., 147.
127 The Evangelicals collected 837 petitions signed by about 500,000 people to
lobby against the Company’s policy of keeping Christian missionaries out of its
territories. Ferguson, Empire, 138.
129 Ibid., 181.
130 Ibid., 188.
131 Clive, Macaulay, 427.
132 Ibid.
133 Implemented in 1861.
134 Clive, Macaulay, 333-334.
135 Ibid., 337.

four classes – those committed against the public, person, property,

and reputation. According to Stokes, “The Indian Penal Code is indeed
remarkable in its drafting when compared with the cumbrous form of the
contemporary parliamentary statute” and adds that “Macaulay rejected
the technical denomination and arrangement of offences which English
law inherited from its historical growth”.137 Particularly impressive is the
fact that the actual drafting process lasted from 1835 to 1837. Macaulay
accomplished in two years what no ruler, or succession of rulers, of the
subcontinent had been willing or able to undertake over the preceding
two millennia – the creation of a uniform, rational, predictable, and
remarkably humane code for the operation of the criminal justice
system. No less important in its implications for the culture of power of
the subcontinent was Macaulay’s famous (or infamous) assessment of,
and predictions for, the British Empire in India made on July 10, 1833:
The destinies of our Indian Empire are covered with thick

darkness. It is difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate
reserved for a state which resembles no other in history,
and which forms by itself a separate class of political
phenomena. The laws which regulate its growth and its
decay are still unknown to us. It may be that the public
mind of India may expand under our system till it has
outgrown that system; that by good government we may
educate our subjects into a capacity for better government;
that, having been instructed in European knowledge, they
may, in some future age, demand European institutions.
Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never
will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it
will be the proudest day in English history. To have found
a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and
superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them
desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would
indeed be a title to glory all our own. The scepter may pass
away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most
profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to
our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no
reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes
137 Ibid., 230-231.

of decay. These triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason

over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of
our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.138
Here, then, was the answer to the question that Voltaire had raised in
the Philosophical Dictionary in 1756. The successful export of the State of
Laws required that the “public mind” of the Indian people be educated,
so that they may appreciate the need for establishing amongst themselves
the rule of institutions, and become capable of applying rational analysis
to their intuitive reactions to their own culture of power.
Within the limited funding available, it was imperative that as much
as possible go towards promoting English and the vernacular languages
to the exclusion of the Sanskrit and Persian, the old languages of power.139
Employment in government service would now go to natives that had
a working knowledge of English. In the Bombay Presidency, the policy
objective was to establish vernacular schools in all villages that had
populations greater than two thousand and, by 1842, there were over
one hundred and twenty such schools with a combined enrollment of
seven thousand.140 By April 1845, the total number of students receiving
instruction at government expense in British India stood at more than
seventeen thousand.141
In uncovering the subcontinent’s historical landscape, the Asiatic
Society in Bengal, which was founded, in 1784, by William Jones and
thirty other individuals with varied research interests, played a pioneering
role.142 Of these pioneers it is said:
Few if any of them derived any material gains from their

work, and most of them appear to have met the expenses
of their research out of their own pockets. The main motive
in most of their minds seems to have been the study of
India for its own sake.143
A major problem faced by the members of the Society was that
138 Quoted from Clive, Macaulay, 232.
139 This was years before public funds were made available for education in Eng-
land itself.
141 Ibid., 408.
142 William Jones himself knew twenty-eight languages.
143 O. P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past:
1784-1838 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), ix.

their intermediaries, learned Brahmins (pundits), did not value historical

truth.144 Francis Wilford, for example, sought the assistance of pundits
“to find further parallels between Greek and Roman mythologies,
the Old Testament and the Sanskrit texts”.145 The pundits deceived
Wilford by inserting “into the old Sanskrit texts materials cleverly
forged” that “specifically mentioned Adam, Abraham and other
Biblical personages”.146 The forgery was discovered and in spite of
setbacks, such as the one suffered by Wilford, the discovery of “India’s
forgotten and buried past” and its articulation as a “coherent history”
was achieved between 1784 and 1838147 and gave the emerging class of
educated Indians a rational historical imagination out of which national
consciousness, with all its attendant consequences for law, governance,
culture, society, and the state, would emerge.
The years 1839 to 1857 marked the final phase of the expansion of
British India’s territorial frontiers. Sindh was annexed in 1843, Punjab
in 1849, and Oudh in 1856. Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindh,
“most decidedly” condemned “the way we148 have entered this country”
but observed of the Talpoor Ameers, from whom control was taken,
that it was “impossible, to give to these tyrannical, drunken, debauched,
cheating, intriguing, contemptible Ameers, a due portion of the plunder
they have amassed from the ruined people they conquered sixty years
ago”.149 Any policy that enabled “these rascals to go on plundering the
country to supply their debaucheries” was unacceptable.150 Moralization
aside, the British, like the Timurids in 1585,151 annexed Sindh because it
was untenable from the perspective of realpolitik to have a wavering
tributary state that shared borders with foreign powers. The Talpoors,
of course, were an armed minority of Baluchis who ruled Sindh by right
of conquest. Once their forces were routed at the battle of Miani in
144 See Chapter 4 for Al-Beruni’s evaluation of the learned men of India around
AD 1030. Evidently, after eight centuries of invasions and imperial domination
by Turks, Afghans, and Timurids, the level of scholarship in Sanskrit, never par-
ticularly impressive even in comparison with Ancient Greco-Roman or Chinese
thought and intellectual endeavor, had become utterly degraded.
145 Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past, 43.
146 Ibid.
147 Ibid., 222.
148 i.e. the British have entered Sindh.
149 Quoted from Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol 5, British India
1497-1858, 538.
150 Ibid.
151 See Abul Fazl, A’in-I Akbari, 829.

1842, there were no serious problems in pacifying the country and, in

1843, Napier took charge as Sindh’s first British governor.
The situation in the Punjab was more complex. The Punjab was
invaded seventy times and ruled by twelve non-Punjabi dynasties in
succession from the eleventh century, to the rise of Sikh power under
Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799-1839).152 The Sikhs, though an intensely
praetorian, militant, and violent armed minority, were converts from the
predominantly peasant caste of Jats indigenous to the Punjab and shared
with many of their subjects a common ethnicity and spoken language.
The Sikhs had displaced Muslim “rural elites” and maintained a standing
army eighty thousand strong, equipped, and trained along European
lines that consumed about four-tenth’s of the Maharaja’s annual
revenue.153 The Sikh Empire was divided into seven provinces ruled by
appointed, salaried, governors given “almost unlimited authority” over
their subordinates and subjects so long as they gave Ranjit Singh his
share of the revenue and submitted “regular administrative reports”.154
Jagirs were granted in order to support the servants of the state and
represented between one-third and one-half of the Sikh Empire’s total
fiscal resources.155 Kashmir and Peshawar, the two outermost provinces,
were placed under “temporary and rapacious” governors.156 Ranjit
Singh “always asserted the right to decide family succession issues”
and elevated and demoted commoners to and from chieftainships and
honors as he chose.157 The Maharaja’s vizier alone held ten million
rupees worth of revenue farms and more than two million rupees in
jagirs.158 The nature of Ranjit Singh’s power “was personal and as he
founded no permanent institutions which could live apart from himself
his death was the signal for the beginning of anarchy.”159 The succession
crisis that followed his death in 1839 plunged the Sikh Empire into
chaos and while the individual “struggles were intricate and not very
important, the fact that mattered being that as they became more and
152 Andrew J. Major, Return to Empire: Punjab under the Sikhs and British in the
mid-Nineteenth Century (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1.
153 Ibid., 19.
154 Ibid.
155 Ibid., 21.
156 Ibid.
157 Ibid., 30.
158 Ibid., 31.
544.

more intense, they brought the army into ever greater prominence.”160
As the Sikh state disintegrated and rival factions fought each other the
numerical strength of the military swelled from eighty thousand in 1839
to one hundred and twenty-three thousand in 1844.161
The Anglo-Sikh wars of 1845-1846 and 1848-1849 brought the
Punjab under British rule. Sir James Ramsay, Tenth Earl of Dalhousie
and governor-general from 1848 to 1856, was an unabashed advocate
of the expansion of direct British administrative control. He claimed,
with some justification, that the subcontinent’s rulers were inept,
corrupt, and quite indifferent, if not actively hostile, to the well-being
of their subjects, and, therefore, whenever the opportunity arose, the
Government of India, as the paramount power, should intervene and
assume direct responsibility for the governance of the territories in
question.
The Punjab was to be ruled in a manner that avoided the mistakes
committed by the British in lands occupied in a more innocent time. The
Lawrence brothers, Henry and John, and Charles Mansel, constituted
the Board of Administration for the Punjab. Henry Lawrence was the
President of the Board, Mansel was Senior Member responsible for the
criminal justice system, and John Lawrence was the Junior Member and
responsible for the financial administration. In a bureaucratic blitzkrieg,
some three million pounds were poured into a modernization program
from 1849 to 1856 to repair and improve infrastructure, a hierarchy of
commissioners was introduced, and a vigorous disarmament drive was
launched which, in its first year alone, resulted in the confiscation of
one hundred and twenty thousand weapons, the punishment of one
thousand violators, and the demolition of one hundred and seventy-two
out of two hundred and forty-eight mud forts in the Lahore division.162
In the middle of these changes, a serious dispute arose between the
Lawrence brothers that ended only with Dalhousie’s intervention. The
debate was over the role and status of local notables and chieftains who
had supported the British against the Sikhs. Henry, the older brother,
thought that grants in jagirs and pensions should be made permanent
and the commissioners should work in tandem with the native elite.163
160 Ibid., 547.
161 Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in
Colonial Punjab, 1849-1947 (Lahore: Vanguard, 2005), 34.
162 Major, Return to Empire, 140.
163 Ibid., 145.

John, however, argued that “It was not their intention that the British
would share power in the Punjab with a chieftain class, and it was still
less their intention to alienate state revenues in preservation of a non-
governing chieftain class.”164 Dalhousie concurred with John Lawrence’s
assessment and recommendations and approved a policy that would
result, in three generations, in the resumption of nearly nine-tenths of
the revenue from jagirs “claimed by these loyal chieftains in 1849”.165
Another source of danger to the landlord class was that, coupled with
disarmament, the introduction of British courts gave moneylenders
“unprecedented facilities” to recover the debts owed to them and
by 1857 some eight out of ten civil suits concerned the recovery of
debts.166
It was, however, in 1857, precisely when the power of British India
stood supreme and determined to confront and eliminate the remaining
enclaves of subcontinental autocracy, that an insurrection broke out in
units of the Bengal Infantry. The violence that followed, and lasted well
into 1858, can best be described as a great uprising of disaffected soldiers
led by elements of the Hindu or Muslim ancien regime that had either lost,
or stood to lose, from a continuation of the territorially revisionist and
socio-economically reformist policies pursued by successive governors-
generals since Cornwallis that had been greatly accelerated by Bentinck
and Dalhousie.
The new paradigm introduced by the British between 1757 and 1857
possessed several remarkable features and offered the subcontinent the
opportunity to alter the destiny imposed upon it by its culture of power.
It was an emanation of the European Enlightenment, which reached
the subcontinent through the work of some individuals animated by
rational, secular, and liberal concerns. It made possible the foundation
of a bureaucracy whose esprit de corps, efficiency, and effectiveness,
remain unmatched in the annals of history, especially compared to
the continental bureaucratic empires that had preceded it. What is all
the more remarkable about this process is that it was characterized
by an extraordinary level of accommodation and sought to transform
the bureaucratic instruments of absolute rulers into autonomous
institutions.
164 Ibid., 154.

165 Ibid., 149.
166 Ibid., 168.

The state had voluntarily relinquished its claim to be the sole

proprietor of land and through the introduction of the institution of
private property greatly enhanced the security of capital and provided
society with an economic base from which to challenge the state.167 The
governor-general, though strong, was not omnipotent, laid no claim to
divinity, had only limited powers of appointment and dismissal over
members of the bureaucracy, certainly did not go about having people
killed for his viewing pleasure or forcing his officers to hand over their
possessions and wives, and could be impeached by Parliament. The
civil service, though clearly the ruling class, operated in accordance
with codes of conduct and procedures which, in recognition of the
historical need for an executive presence that could solve problems
as they arose without recourse to extensive correspondence or arcane
legal procedures, deposited sufficient discretionary power at each
level of seniority. British civil service officers were trained specifically
for the task of administration, entered service through competitive
examinations, and, though well remunerated in absolute terms, were
paid remarkably little in comparison to the mansabdars and tax-farmers
they replaced.168 The terms of service were stable and officers were
secure against arbitrary changes in their designated status and assured of
a fair hearing in case suspicions arose against them. Like the governor-
general, they were salaried employees of an impersonal institution called
the Government of India, which had its basis in an Act of Parliament,
and operated under, not above, the law. The judiciary was, in turn, quite
secure against executive interference, and judges did not hold office
at the governor-general’s pleasure though, given the need to have a
powerful executive in continental bureaucratic empires, they did not
enjoy the same high profile as they had in England.
The British Empire in India lacked an ideocratic complex even
167 It is a matter of some interest that during the centuries in which capital, in the
form of gold and silver bullion, was pouring into the subcontinent, there was
no significant changes in the economic structure or qualitative improvements in
organization, entrepreneurship, and banking and investment.
168 In the 1850s, for example, a divisional commissioner earned Rs. 33,000 a
year, a deputy commissioner Rs. 12,000 to 19,200 a year, assistant commission-
ers received Rs.6000 to 8400 a year, and extra assistant commissioners earned
Rs. 3000 to 6000 a year. There were probably never more than one thousand
British civil service officers in service during the entire period of British rule.
The contrast with the mansabdari system of the Timurid Empire, discussed in
Chapter 6, could scarcely be greater.

remotely comparable to that of its imperial predecessors or, for that

matter, of the successor states of the Timurids like the Sikh Empire.
Indeed, the Company and most of its officials did not want Christian
missionaries to come and preach the virtues of the Bible as a supplement
to British rule. Far dearer to the hearts of reformers like Cornwallis,
Bentinck, and Dalhousie, and thinkers like John Stuart Mill, was the
vision of a modernized and culturally Anglicized India.169 Given that Hindu
and Muslim rulers held antithetical religious beliefs but were practically
identical in their political habits, it is most unlikely that conversion
to Christianity would have produced any substantive change in the
subcontinent’s culture of power. Were it not for the widespread belief
in a Christian missionary conspiracy to deprive Hindus and Muslims
alike of their religion, the 1857 uprising would have probably remained
a limited affair. Thus, the missionaries ended up causing immense harm
to the state under whose reluctant aegis they sought to preach. The
British Empire in India, as demonstrated by the 1857 uprising, could
exist either as a secular institution or not at all.
Last, but certainly not least, the British had begun the process of
selective assimilation through a combination of economic incentive and
educational opportunity. The class that would emerge from this process
would, as Macaulay foresaw, take the reins of power from the British but
recognize the merits of the State of Laws and continue the process of
adapting it to function in the subcontinent. Unlike previous conquerors,
the British did not labor under the false impression of permanence. On
the contrary, they were painfully aware of their historical transience,
understood that changes in cultures of power occur at a glacial rate – if at
all – and realized that “…whereas a Muslim or Hindu despotism might
be reestablished in a month, a century would scarcely suffice to prepare
India for self-government on the European model.”170 After 1857, the
British had exactly nine more decades left to rule the subcontinent and
call forth into existence a more complete synthesis between the State of
Laws and the continental bureaucratic empire.


CHAPTER IX
THE LAST RAJ:

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA, 1857 – 1947
T he 1857 uprising was not the product of the expansion of India’s

public mind. It began as a mutiny in the Bengal Army due to
deteriorating service conditions and fears of a Christian missionary
conspiracy to convert the soldiers. Once the mutiny began elements
within the Muslim and Hindu nobility, whose existence was being
brought to an end by the utilitarian authoritarianism of the British
Empire in India, tried to use the opportunity to overthrow the state. Had
that happened, the outcome would have been reversion to ideocratic
arbitrary rule and a new war of imperial succession. The fact that the
uprising failed, and the Government of India survived, had much to
do with the services and loyalty of the great majority of native soldiers,
administrators, and notables.
One such notable was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898), a judge
in the government’s service since 1838 and a member of the Timurid
nobility whose ancestors had served in high offices under the old order.
In 1858, Sir Syed wrote a pamphlet titled The Causes of the Indian Revolt,
and of the five hundred copies he had printed in Urdu, at his own
expense, he sent most to England, one to the Government of India,
and kept a copy for himself. This pamphlet reveals, with extraordinary
lucidity and economy of words, the chasm that separated the cultures of
power of the subcontinent from that of the ascendant British power.
To Sir Syed, the principal cause of the revolt was the total absence
of Indians from the Governor-General’s Legislative Council, which
resulted in suspicion of the government’s intentions and a sense of

alienation. The host of secondary causes included the failure of the

government to hold lavish ceremonies in which presents and awards
were given to notables, allowing the transfer of property in case of default
on debts, curtailing the powers of tax-farmers, instituting competitive
examinations for government jobs, extending patronage to Christian
missionaries, protecting Hindu widows, promoting secular education
in vernaculars, and trying to force people to send their girls to schools.
About female education, Sir Syed writes,
There was at the same time a great deal of talk in Hindustan

about female education. Man[y] believed it to be the wish
of Government, that girls should attend, and be taught
at these schools, and leave off the habit of sitting veiled.
Anything more obnoxious than this to the feelings of the
Hindustanees cannot be conceived. In some districts the
practice was actually introduced. The Pergunnah visitors
and Deputy Inspectors hoped by enforcing the attendance
of girls, to gain credit with their superiors.1
In other words, the rule of law, competitive examinations, private

property, productive expenditure, the promotion of secular education in
vernaculars and English, patronization of missionaries, the obsolescence
of the old service-nobility, and social sector reforms, had followed
one another too quickly. Sir Syed, however, observed, “that there was
not one of the great landed princes who espoused the rebel cause”
while the “mutineers were for the most part men who had nothing
to lose, the governed, not the governing classes”.2 In the meanwhile,
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858, and the formal substitution of
Company rule by that of the British government, preempted Sir Syed’s
analysis – as he admits:
The proclamation issued by Her Majesty contains such

ample redress for every grievance which led up to that revolt,
that a man writing on the subject feels his pen fall from his
hands…Yet I think that loyal men, and such as really wish
well to their Government, should not content themselves
1 Khan, Causes of the Indain Revolt 20.
2 Ibid., 5.

The Last Raj: The British Empire in India, 1857 – 1947 | 193
with reflection: but explain with all possible fidelity, their

views on the origin of this rebellion. Although, therefore,
the causes of complaint have been met, and the grievances
redressed, I think it my duty to record my opinion on the
subject.3
While Sir Syed did his duty, the governments of India and Britain,
took stock of the situation. The revolt had affected one-fourth of the
army, one-third of British India’s territory, disrupted communications
over large parts of the country for weeks at a time, and led to large-
scale outbreaks of lawlessness. The economic cost of raising new armies
and restoring order caused government debt to swell from about five
hundred and sixty million rupees in 1857, to about one billion rupees
in 1861.4 Had the rebels been better led or if they had defeated a
sizeable government contingent in a pitched battle, their cause could
have gained the upper hand. Sir Syed attributed the loyalty displayed by
the Punjab to the vigorous military recruitment policy adopted by the
British, which ensured that “all the Sikhs, Punjabees and Pathans, who
might otherwise have tried their hand at rebellion, had already taken
service or were being formed into corps and the desire for the plunder
of Hindustan was strong on them.”5 Fifty-four leading chieftains of the
Punjab were rewarded by the British with titles, honors, pensions, and
land grants, for standing by the government in its hour of need.6
The second century of British rule in the subcontinent thus began
amid the realization that the “project to modernize and Christianize
India had gone disastrously wrong; so wrong that it had ended up by
barbarizing the British.”7 At Delhi, the epicenter of the revolt, a great
many “were taken for mutineers and shot.”8 Even in the Punjab, which
had remained loyal and contributed decisively to the government’s
war effort, nearly two thousand four hundred persons were executed
and more than three thousand two hundred were incarcerated,
received corporal punishment, or fined.9 Back in England, unrepentant
3 Ibid., 1.
4 Kumar, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol II, c. 1757 – c. 1970,
939.
5 Khan, Causes of the Indian Revolt, 54.
8 Ibid., 151.

evangelicals preached holy war against the rebellious Indian infidels

whilst the vehement opposition from the tiny European settler-
community to Governor-General Canning’s Clemency Resolution,
which sought an end to reprisals, betrayed a level of hostility worthy of
Aryan purandaras or Turkish budh-shikan (idol smashers). However, the
ruling class in neither Britain nor India succumbed to the exhortations
of the evangelicals or the bloodlust of the European settlers. The
legacy of the 1857 revolt was a complex compromise that involved
alliance with the remaining princes, the incorporation of local notables
into the power structure, the continuation of an executive-centric
district administration, the creation and consolidation of autonomous
institutions within and without the state, a new military recruitment
policy, the Indianization of the higher bureaucracy, and constitutional
reforms gradually leading to legal democracy.
One must bear in mind that British society was intensely
hierarchical and “characterized by a seamless web of layered gradations”
extending “in a great chain of being from the monarch at the top to the
humblest subject at the bottom.”10 The acquisition of a vast overseas
empire through trade, colonization, and conquest, “reinforced” this
“hierarchical” world-view, which survived the empiricist and collectivist
onslaught of the Enlightenment, and encouraged the British ruling elite
to recognize “status similarities” and proceed with the “cultivation
of affinities, that projected domestically originated perceptions of the
social order overseas”.11 Prior to the 1857 revolt, the dominant view
was that native rulers were irredeemably arbitrary, capricious, and quite
incapable of arriving at a rational and tolerably humane comprehension
of the interests of their subjects and states. The alternate view, which
gained ascendance after 1857, was that the princes and local notables
were “traditional and organic” and represented “an authentic world of
ordered, harmonious, time-hallowed social traditions.”12
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858 ended the expansion
of direct British rule at the expense of native princes, under whose
autocratic sway were left some two-fifths of the subcontinent’s territory
and one-fifth of its population.13 All told, there were six hundred and
10 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4.
11 Ibid., 5, 8.
12 Ibid., 12.
13 British India covered about 820,000 square miles. The princely states covered

seventy princes and chiefs recognized by the Government of India of

which five hundred were supervised by the provincial governments and
one hundred and seventy by the central government. A hundred or so
of these princes received nine-gun salutes or more, while the states of
Hyderabad, Kashmir, Gwalior, Mysore, and Baroda, received twenty-
one gun salutes. The Foreign and Political Department of the central
government was the institution responsible for the conduct of relations
with the princely states under vice-regal suzerainty. This department
comprised about fifty officers, three-fourths from the army and one-
fourth from the civil service, specially selected by the viceroy for their
political skills. The more important states received a British resident,
while lesser states were grouped together under a single resident, who,
as the viceroy’s representative, gathered intelligence about the rulers
and states he was posted to, coordinated defense and foreign policies,
and provided political and administrative advice.
All princely states recognized the Government of India as the
paramount power with which they had a contractual relationship
guaranteed by an Act of Parliament. The princes could appoint as
their heir anyone they deemed fit, maintained their own security
forces, spies, district managements, criminal justice systems, and
financial administrations. They could not be arbitrarily liquidated by
the Government of India, however bad their administration, paid no
taxes to the center or provinces, were not subjected to audits, and their
territories could not be confiscated. The princely states were organized
in a status-hierarchy, received honors, titles and rewards from the center,
and were an integral part of the ceremony and pomp of the British Raj.
After the 1876 Imperial Titles Act, the princely states recognized the
British monarch as emperor,14 and after the 1919 constitutional reforms,
a separate chamber, bearing a transparent resemblance to the House of
Lords in England, was constituted for the princes. It is a measure of the
British achievement that between 1858 and 1947, very few princely state
rebelled against the government, conspired with foreign powers, waged
war upon a fellow feudatory,15 or faced large-scale punitive military
about 700,000 square miles. In the early 1930s, the former had a population of
340,000,000, whereas the latter had a population of 80,000,000.
14 Queen Victoria became the first Queen-Empress in 1877.
15 That is not to say that there were no tensions between the princely states. The
Maharaja of Patiala, for example, once raided a neighboring state to capture a
woman for his harem. Tukoji Rao Puar III of Dewas Senior was almost poisoned

interventions by the center. A comparison with the Timurid, Turkish,

or Hindu empires, all of which devoted a considerable portion of their
time and resources crushing revolts by feudatories, goes wholly in the
British Empire’s favor. The Government of India stands apart as the
only sovereign entity to have succeeded in evolving a stable, reciprocal,
and quasi-moral relationship with its feudatories through the mutual
limitation of prerogatives.
Enforcing these mutual limitations was not an easy task. In 1925,
for instance, the Maharaja of Indore, one of the three great Maratha
states, attempted to force his affections upon a dancing girl called
Mumtaz Begum, who responded to these majestic advances by jumping
off the Maharaja’s private train and fleeing to Bombay.16 There, Mumtaz
Begum attracted a rich merchant, but, while taking a drive with him,
was ambushed, the man was killed, and she was saved from abduction
by the arrival of two Indian army officers. The assailants, it turned out,
were led by the Maharaja of Indore’s police chief. The Maharaja was
presented with two options. He could either abdicate in favor of his son
or face an official inquiry. The Maharaja abdicated.
In 1941, the Prince of Rewa was suspended pending an inquiry into
the murder of his subjects and spying on the resident but, as the charges
could not be proved, he was restored. The prince used to transfer funds
from the public treasury to his private account in London and by the
end of WWII some six million pounds sterling had been transferred
thus. On his deathbed, the prince sent for a British political officer, to
whom he dictated and entrusted his will. The official, who was puzzled
by the prince’s actions given his open contempt for the British, asked
why, he, of all people, was given such a sensitive and symbolic task. To
this the prince “said simply that he could not trust anyone else to carry
it out.”17
In 1870, a new Maharaja ascended the throne of Baroda upon the
death of his brother who, incidentally, had kept him in prison, spent
millions on gifts, and enjoyed watching drugged men armed with claws
fight to the death.18 The new ruler threw his predecessor’s favorites in
jail and had them slowly tortured to death by feeding them nothing but
by his stepmother and his wife took to the hills to wage a guerrilla campaign
against him.
16 John Lord, The Maharajas (New York: Random House, 1971), 61-62.
17 Ibid., 62-63.
18 Ibid., 134-135.

saltwater and pepper, had public officials seize the wives and daughters
of notables, farmed out taxes to his favorites, and confiscated all land
and personal property.19 Resistors were dragged by elephants through
the streets and, if they survived the ordeal, the elephants were made to
crush their heads.20 In 1873, the Maharaja was investigated for attempting
to poison the British resident but secured an acquittal, though two years
later he was removed for corruption and misgovernment.21
At the northern extremity of the subcontinent lies Kashmir, which
was ruled from 1846 to 1947 by a Dogra Rajput dynasty. Of Maharaja
Gulab Singh, the first of this line, Josef Korbel22 writes:
The internal affairs were left to the authority of the Maharaja,

and his oppressive measures were followed vigilantly,
though benevolently, by the viceroy[’s] representative at his
court, a resident. The Maharaja was flattered by the exalted
title of His Highness…his pleasures included gold, polo,
tennis, and hunting, he delighted in extravagant parties,
maintained expensive stables, and in all ways indulged
himself with extravagant pomp and luxury. Not the least of
his idle pleasures was his persecution of the Muslims, and
to his underlings he gave his blessing for their slaughter.23
Once, the Maharaja, while touring his lands, was impressed by some
convicts working on the construction of a bridge and stopped to ask
them a few questions. One of them, in particular, was especially favored
by the Maharaja and on being praised asked for a pardon. The Maharaja,
upon learning that the man had been sentenced to imprisonment
with hard labor for killing a young girl for her jewelry, ordered the
convict sawed, while still alive, into four pieces, one for each corner
of his kingdom, to remind the people of the fate that awaited child
19 Ibid., 135-136.
20 Ibid., 136.
21 Ibid.
22 A Czechoslovakian diplomat, official of the United Nations, and Chairman
of the UN Commission on Demarcation for Kashmir, he was sent to India and
Pakistan in 1948 by the UN Security Council to mediate. Korbel was Madeline
Albright’s (Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State during his second term) father.
23 Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954;
reprint, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 14.

murderers.24 The point here is not that child murderers deserve a better
fate than being sawed alive, but that the Maharaja could arbitrarily inflict
such barbaric punishments. The Maharaja’s arbitrariness was reflected
in the state police, which ruled “mercilessly”, and threw people in jail
without trial, even for “minor offences”.25 Killing a cow remained a
capital offence for Muslims well into the 1920s.26 Little good can be said
about a culture of power that gives bovines more rights than people.
Of the revenue of Jammu and Kashmir, estimated at twenty-
five million rupees in 1933-34,27 merely three million six hundred
thousand rupees “were spent on public health, agriculture, industries,
roads, irrigation, and education” combined.28 Not to be outdone, the
Maharaja of Patiala, whose state’s revenues were estimated at fifteen
million rupees in 1933-34,29 ate fifty pounds of food a day, maintained
a personal establishment of three thousand five hundred servants,
stables for five hundred horses, one hundred and twenty cars inclusive
of twenty-seven Rolls-Royces, and a harem of three hundred and fifty
women.30 The bill for this hedonism amounted to about six-tenths of
the Patiala State’s revenues.31 The Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, had
two hundred concubines, reputed to be one of the richest men in the
world, and, was a billionaire, in dollars, by some reckonings. One of the
nizam’s favorite indulgences was the confiscation of luxury cars owned
by his subjects. Upon receiving word of a new arrival, he would send
a chauffeur with a message asking the owner if the nizam could take a
drive in the car - this was a request no vehicle owner could refuse. Once
the car had been extorted, it was driven to the palace garage and kept
there for good. About two hundred luxury cars were confiscated in this
manner.32
The princely states, however, performed several important functions
for the British Empire in India. One particularly useful function was
that these states employed and enriched many Indians who were not
likely to rise to high positions in British India and thus acted as safety-
24 Ibid., 14-15.
25 Ibid., 15.
26 Ibid.
27 The India Office List for 1935 (London: Harrisons and Sons Ltd., 1935), 156.
28 Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, 16.
29 The India Office List for 1935, 158.
30 Lord, The Maharajas, 159.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 81.

valves. Sirdar Diler Jang Abdul Hak (1853-1896), for example, the son
of a petty chieftain, joined the Bombay police, where he distinguished
himself by capturing a dangerous dacoit, and was rewarded with a CIE.33
From there, Abdul Hak, joined the Hyderabad state-service and was
sent by the Nizam to England “to obtain an alteration in the guarantee”
on the state railways.34 His mission was successful, he was rewarded
with a mining monopoly, from which he made a handsome personal
profit, but in 1888, fell from the Nizam’s favor, and was dismissed from
service.35 Another relevant example is that of Sir Aiyar (1845-1901), who
rose from being a translator in the collector’s office at Calicut, to the
diwani of Mysore in 1883. He served in this capacity for seventeen years
and was given a four hundred thousand rupees bonus on his retirement
for meritorious services, which included turning Mysore’s debt of three
million rupees into a surplus of nearly eighteen million rupees.36 In spite
of his accomplishments, and the many honors he received, Aiyar was
unpopular within Mysore for preferring “outsiders” for government
posts over native-born subjects.37
Another major advantage for the British was that over large parts of
the subcontinent relatively indigenous elites like the Rajputs, Marathas,
or Sikhs, continued to rule. Not only were these tracts kept relatively
insulated from nationalist agitation, but the depravity, incompetence,
and arbitrariness, of many ruling princes and chieftains, served as
testaments to the moral and intellectual superiority of British rule in
the subcontinent. Furthermore, the princes generously contributed to
the British war effort in both world wars and undermined the Indian
National Congress’s (INC) claim to represent the entire subcontinent.
Within British India, the post-1857 policy to cultivate local elites
and incorporate them into the power structure of the Raj represented
a significant departure from the period of Company rule. Perhaps
the most instructive example of the about-turn is found during the
governor-generalship of Sir John Lawrence.38 Before the 1857 revolt,
33 Order of the Indian Empire.
34 C. E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publica-
tions, 1985), 1.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 9.
37 Ibid.
38 John Lawrence served as Viceroy and Governor-General of India from 1863 to
1869. He was the only commoner to rise to this position after 1857. The rest
of the viceroys were peers (i.e. Lords). His disagreement with his elder brother,

John Lawrence regarded the native potentates as parasites whose

revenue assignments should be gradually resumed by the state. Henry
Lawrence, however, saw in the chieftains and service-nobility of the
Punjab powerful allies who, if given a chance, would help establish British
rule more securely than any number of grasping peasant proprietors.
Dalhousie, then governor-general, sided with John and approved of
policies to slowly bring about the extinction of the “parasites.”
In 1857, with the Bengal Army in revolt, the British were forced
to turn to the chieftains and notables of the Punjab for help, and, in
1860, twenty-five chieftains were granted administrative powers and
could decide revenue and criminal cases in which the disputed amount
or claimed damages amounted to less than three hundred rupees.39 The
position of Honorary Magistrate, which was accompanied by much
tedious work, became a mark of elite status, and was greatly sought
after.40 More importantly, after 1857, the annual value of jagirs granted in
perpetuity rose by nearly nine-tenths and the law of primogeniture was
introduced to keep them intact.41 John Lawrence, once the harbinger of
doom for the chieftains, personally presided “over two imperial durbars
at which the new alliance between the British and the chieftains was
publicly and symbolically affirmed.”42 One of the principal demands of
the chieftains was that a college be founded for the education of their
sons. This demand was met in 1886 with the foundation of Aitchison
College, Lahore, by Viceroy the Earl of Dufferin. Reconciliation was
also effected with the taluqdars43 of Oudh, of whom Sir Syed wrote “I
will not say that to crush the Talookdars was an unjust measure, but it
was one of the chief causes of the rebellion.”44
Between 1920 and 1947, the British revived and reformed village
panchayats and councils throughout the directly administered territories.
These bodies were charged with municipal and judicial duties, popularly
elected,45 and earned income principally from fines,46 not self-taxation.
Henry Lawrence, over the correct policy towards the chieftains and former
service-nobility of the Punjab has been discussed in Chapter 8.
40 Ibid., 211.
41 Ibid., 214.
42 Ibid., 215.
43 Holders of tax-farms for villages.
44 Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, 30.
45 Except in the United Provinces.
46 Marc Galantier, Law and Society in Modern India, ed., Rajeev Bhavan, (Delhi:

They were assisted by the competent and apolitical bureaucracy of the

Raj in the performance of their functions. The panchayats allowed village
headmen to play a relatively constructive role and reduced the economic
cost and complexity of the legal system. In Bengal, where the tradition
of village government was weak even by the subcontinent’s standards,
panchayats disposed of one hundred and twenty thousand cases in 1929,
and one hundred and seventy-four thousand cases in 1937.47 In the
United Provinces, panchayats dealt with nearly one hundred and twenty-
three thousand cases in 1925, more than ninety thousand cases in 1931,
and nearly seventy thousand cases in 1937.48
Important as the princes, chieftains, landlords, and village headmen
were to the British Raj, at the apex of the power pyramid stood the
officers of the All-India, Provincial, and Central, services. The All-
India Services (AIS) included the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the Indian
Police Service (IPS), the Forest Service, Engineers, the Medical Service,
the Educational Service, the Agricultural Service, and the Veterinary
Service. The officers of the AIS were appointed by the Secretary of
State for India, recruited through competitive examinations, and
received additional training after joining service. As of January 1933,
the AIS comprised three thousand four hundred and twenty-eight
officers including one thousand two hundred and twenty-seven Indians.
The ICS was the largest service with nearly thirteen hundred officers,
followed by the IPS, which had six hundred and sixty-seven, and the
Engineers, who were nearly six hundred strong. The Provincial Services
were “almost entirely Indian in composition”, covered “the whole
field of provincial civil administration in the middle grades”,49 and
were recruited by the provinces through a combination of competitive
examinations, quotas, and nominations. The Central Services included
the Indian Railways, the Indian Posts and Telegraph Service, and the
Imperial Customs Service, and its officers were directly appointed by
the central government. No officer could be dismissed from service,
demoted, or otherwise penalized “without formal notice of charge
and the opportunity of defending himself.”50 Officers had the right to
Oxford University Press, 1988), 58-59.
47 Ibid., 59.
48 Ibid.
I (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1934), 174.
50 Ibid., 176.

compensation, could complain directly to the governor or governor-

general, and appeal to the secretary of state if censured, punished, or
dismissed from service.51
The ICS was the backbone and cognitive center of the British Raj. Its
members, the Victorians tried to ensure, would constitute “the ultimate
academic elite, impartial, incorruptible, omniscient”.52 The numerical
strength of the ICS varied from one thousand to one thousand five
hundred and its members were called Civilians. Together,
… [they] ruled more than 300,000,000 Indians; a fifth of the

human race …each Civilian penetrated every corner of his
subjects’ lives, because the ICS directed all the activities of
the Anglo-Indian state. They collected the revenue, allocated
rights in land, relieved famines, improved agriculture, built
public works, suppressed revolts, drafted laws, investigated
crimes, judged lawsuits, inspected municipalities, schools,
hospitals, cooperatives – the list is endless. The long lines
of petitioners, choking their verandahs and waiting patiently
outside their tents, paid tribute to their power.53
Twenty-five years’ service netted an annual pension of one thousand

pounds, though the pay scales fixed in 1858 were for the most part
the same in 1947.54 Governors were comparable to “the poorer peers”
in their lifestyles, and senior bureaucrats earned “as much or more
than a senior judge in England”.55 Those that took the competitive
examinations were, mostly, middle or upper middle class university
graduates “whose prospects at home were modest.”56
A good university education served the candidates well if they
made it to the ICS, for a solid grounding in political science, philosophy,
history, and economics, was necessary to survive the rigors and intricacies
of the “art of noting”.57 Policy debates within the Government of
India generated minutes hundreds of pages long which, in many cases,
51 Ibid., 177.
53 Clive Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service
(London: Hambeldon Press, 1993), 3.
54 Ibid., 5.
55 Ibid.
57 Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes, 6.

approximated in complexity, sweep, and historical understanding, the

discourses of philosophes rather than exchanges among bureaucrats. The
ICS was, without doubt, the most literary and educated administrative
service to ever rule a continental bureaucratic empire. The intellectual
and moral qualities of this bureaucracy enabled it to formulate and
execute policies through an autonomous institutional process that
allowed for open conflict of opinion and encouraged solutions based
on reasoned argument. The compilation and editing of gazetteers for
each district, for example, helped preserve the wisdom gleaned from
experience from the erosion inevitably caused by regular transfers and
rotations.58
The members of the ICS were conscious of the historical fact that
for “centuries India had been governed by irresponsible officials”59 and
consequently lacked the capacity for self-government and self-taxation.
Experiments with local bodies such as district boards, municipalities, and
the like, consistently ran into problems because “elected members were
often reluctant to increase local taxation or to enforce its collection”,
“embezzlement increased”, and the local bodies became dependent on
handouts from above.60 In the absence of these traditions, it was a logical
response to the historical experience of governance of the subcontinent
to make the district collectors responsible for financial administration,
which, historically, has been synonymous with land revenue.61 Budgeting
and auditing, in their modern forms, were introduced in India by James
Wilson, the founder of the Economist, and the first Finance Member
of the Supreme Council of India.62 Wilson introduced the income tax,
paper currency, and “remodeled the whole system of Indian finance and
accounts” in his nine months as the finance member.63
58 Parveen Shaukat Ali, Pillars of British Imperialism: A Case Study of Sir Alfred
Lyall 1873-1903 (Lahore: Aziz Publishers, 1976), 16-17.
59 Ibid., 50.
912. The percentage of the total revenues of district boards received from the
provincial governments rose from nine in 1895-96 to forty-two percent in
1920-21.
61 The share of land revenue has varied from two-thirds to nine-tenths of total
state revenues in the subcontinent.
62 Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography, 456.
63 Ibid., 456-457. He served from November 29, 1859 to August 11, 1860, fell ill
during the monsoon, and died in India. Modern budgeting, by drawing up list
of government revenues and committing it to set expenditures in advance, re-
duces the level of arbitrariness in allocations and increases the level of financial

The nature of economic growth in the subcontinent, however,

began to undergo a substantial change under British rule. Economic
expansion in continental bureaucratic empires is normally quantitative,
horizontal, and driven by a combination of population growth and the
nature of the state, between the two of which the surplus is consumed.
The British Raj in India presided over lateral economic expansion
through increasing the share of irrigated land from one-twentieth to
about one-fourth of the cultivated area and building thousands of
miles of canals, railways, roads, and bridges. Alongside these changes,
however, a more fundamental qualitative change also took place in the
Indian economy that caused the share of land revenue in total revenue
to decline. In 1933, during the height of the global economic depression
that devastated industries, trade, and services, land revenue in British
India, which went to finance the provincial governments, amounted
to about twenty-six and a half million pounds out of total government
revenues of nearly one hundred and seventeen million pounds.64
Customs, on the other hand, yielded nearly thirty-eight million pounds
while income tax accounted for nearly thirteen million pounds.65
The most striking feature of the financial administration of the
Raj is the low ratio of taxes to the GNP. In pre-British India, this
proportion varied between eighteen and thirty percent of GNP and,
as the bulk of the revenues were spent on maintaining the ruling elites’
lifestyle and a vast coercive apparatus, little was saved or reinvested.66
The Raj’s tax policy, in contrast, was “particularly timid.”67 On average,
excepting periods of war, the revenues of the Raj varied between five
and nine percent of GNP, with military expenditure consuming some
accountability. As discussed in Chapter 7, the English Parliament insisted that

the King submit to an account of his revenues and expenditures. The financial
accountability of the sovereign was a major issue until the 1688 revolution and
the triumph of the State of Laws. Across the English Channel, in France, how-
ever, successive kings refused to submit to a budget as it implied the acknowl-
edgement of limitations on royal power.
I, 160. In 1932-33, land revenue accounted for 22.66% of total revenue. All
told, the provinces collected about forty-five percent of total revenues, while
the center collected about fifty-five percent.
65 Ibid. In 1932-33, Customs accounted for 32.27% of total revenue, while in-
come tax accounted for 11.05% of total revenue.
927.
67 Ibid., 928.

two to three percent of GNP.68 The cost of collecting taxes fell from
sixteen percent of total expenditure in 1871-72, to four percent in 1946-
47.69 One consequence of a low-taxing predictable government, which
protected private property, was the phenomenal rise in institutionalized
saving. India had eight banks in 1870, holding one hundred and twenty-
five million rupees, fifty-six banks in 1913, holding nearly a billion
rupees and seven hundred banks in 1946, holding nearly twelve billion
rupees.70
The subcontinent was still agrarian in the sense that the vast
majority of its people derived their livelihoods from agriculture, but,
the bulk of state revenues were now generated by taxes on trade,
income, and manufacturing. This revolution in political economy had
been brought about through the introduction of private property and
the rule of law, not organized violence and mass liquidations, and was
slowly but steadily rendering the agro-centric financial administration
of the Raj redundant. In 1946-47, land revenue accounted for a mere
seven percent of total revenue, while income tax generated thirty-seven
percent, and customs twenty-two percent.71
As time went by, the administrative structure of the Anglo-Indian
state underwent specialization. A young assistant commissioner began
his career with the study of languages, laws, and procedures, and
was appointed to oversee a territory that had anywhere between two
hundred and fifty thousand and a million residents.72 His tasks ranged
from inspecting infrastructure and attesting documents to supervising
the financial administration and the criminal justice system.73 “Sooner
or later”, however, a choice would have to be made between “the
executive line” or the “political, judicial, secretariat and a dozen odd
branches.”74 The ICS, however, retained its preeminence as an elite
administrative corps whose members often gained important posts in
68 Ibid., 931.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., 775.
71 Ibid., 929.
72 Philip Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, vol 2, The Guardians (Norwich:
Jarrold and Sons Ltd., 1965), 85.
73 In the non-regulation provinces the district commissioner’s power to punish
criminals were unlimited while in regulation provinces they were limited to
maximum of seven years imprisonment. By the late 1870s, however, even the
Punjab and Oudh, were made regulation provinces.
74 Ibid.

other departments. Even in the 1930s, the heads of the opium and salt
department, the postal service, and the Inspector-General for forests,
were all drawn from the ICS.75
By the early twentieth century, the “growth of routine business” was
“remorseless”, new departments “usurped” the district officers’ powers,
and the “proliferation of set procedures” drew a progressively larger
portion of “decision-making into the provincial secretariat”.76 The cost,
both moral and material, of administering the land revenue increased as
rules and regulations became more complicated and the powers of the
executive diminished. In the nineteenth century, the combination of
fixed payments and the penalty of “forfeiture” in case of default created
an environment in which “money virtually paid itself into the district
treasuries”.77 In the twentieth century, the introduction of exemptions,
remissions, suspensions, and the like, “turned every collection into a
battle between officials making complicated calculations with unreliable
statistics and representatives of the peasants anxious to build up a rural
following”.78 Default, which used to be “a source of shame” turned into
“a badge of pride” that proclaimed the defaulter’s ability “to defy” and
defraud “the sarkar”.79
A considerably more dangerous, and difficult to control, arm of
the sarkar was the police. The first measures to create a recognizably
“modern police force” were taken by Sir Charles Napier in Sindh,
following its annexation in 1843.80 There, the Baluchi amirs used to
be “a law unto themselves”, while the “kardars or indigenous district
magistrates…possessed in fact, though not in theory, the power of life
and death” and were almost as oppressive as their Baluchi overlords.81
Napier realized that the maintenance of law and order required that
a civil police force autonomous of both the military and the district
executive and answerable to the Chief Commissioner in his capacity
as the representative of the Government of India be constituted.82 By
75 Ibid., 90.
77 Ibid., 56.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid. Sarkar means state or sovereign.
80 Percival Griffiths, To Guard my People: The History of the Indian Police (Lon-
don: Ernest Benn Limited, 1971), 67.
81 Ibid., 68.
82 Ibid., 68-69. Napier served in Ireland, and drew a parallel with the challenge
of preserving law and order in the India. In Ireland, a layer of Anglican soldiers

1859, Sindh had a “complete police network” comprising two hundred

and forty-five thanas (stations) that worked in cooperation with village
headmen but, as the police had no magisterial powers, it was confined
to apprehending criminals and investigating crimes.83
The twenty-nine directly administered districts of the Punjab were
also organized on the Sindh pattern. In 1859, the military police were
absorbed into the civil, and a hierarchy of European police lieutenants
at the district level, and police captains at the divisional level, were
appointed to supervise the kotwals and villages.84 Even in Oudh, which
was annexed in 1856, became a major center of the 1857 revolt, and
endured a breakdown of law and order so severe “that no serious
pretence of administering justice had been made for several generations”,
the police became a purely civilian outfit by 1859.85
The Torture Commission Report of April 1855 of the Madras
Presidency was a landmark in the history of the criminal justice system
in the subcontinent. It outraged the commissioners by revealing the
regularity with which “harrowing…forms of torture” were used “to
elicit confessions”.86 The Report urged the Government of India to
appoint more European officers as each officer was responsible for too
many people spread over too much territory to retain control over the
activities of their Indian subordinates. The British were the only rulers
of the subcontinent to regard torture as an instrument that must not
be used, at least not as a matter of routine, by the state. In continental
bureaucratic empires, however, the use of torture is an integral part of
the criminal justice system and a natural consequence of the delegation
of arbitrary powers to subordinates by an omnipotent executive.87
Torture serves the purpose of producing persons willing to admit to
and administrators kept control of a turbulent, unstable, and hostile society,
through a level of severity rarely seen in the British administration of India. A
strong, autonomous, police force was, to Napier, the key to the maintenance of
peace in India.
83 Ibid., 70.
84 Ibid., 76.
85 Ibid., 76-77.
86 Ibid., 80.
87 The judicial system in France was “inquisitorial”, “operated in private,” and re-
lied extensively on “the use of torture,” the purpose being not “to discover and
establish the facts” but “confirm guilt.” Ian Davidson, Voltaire in Exile: The Last
Years, 1753 – 78 (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), 149. There were two levels
of tortures, ordinary and extraordinary, that could be applied with or without a
doctor present. Ibid.

committing crimes with a minimum of investigative effort and expense

by the authorities. By having these unfortunates, many of whom may
actually be guilty of the crimes they have confessed to, publicly punished,
through mutilation, flogging, or execution, a deterrent effect is created
while the ruler and his servants can continue to deceive themselves into
believing that they have provided the masses with justice.
Governor-General Canning raised the pay of inspectors, appointed
superintendents of police in each district, and constituted the Indian
Police Commission in 1860, which included four members of the
ICS. The outcomes of the first Police Commission’s deliberation were
the 1861 Police Act, which brought into effect Macaulay’s Indian
Penal Code, and the formalization of the hierarchy of inspector-
generals, superintendents, and inspectors, still in place in much of
the subcontinent to this day. The 1861 Police Act was extended from
province to province until, by the commencement of the twentieth
century, it was in force throughout British India. In 1893, competitive
examinations for the police service were held for the first time and the
policy of luring military officers through monetary incentives into joining
the police became redundant. Each province henceforth indicated the
number of assistant superintendents of police (ASPs) it required every
year and the same would be recruited directly through the competitive
examinations held in London. Within the police, seniority depended on
the successful completion of departmental tests whereas “the course of
study and system of training” were determined by “local governments
under the general control of the Government of India”.88
The Police Commission of 1902-3, which comprised five
Europeans, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, and Srinivara Raghawa
Aiyangar (the former diwan of Baroda), subjected the performance of
the police to a searching review.89 The commission’s report exposed
deficiencies in recruitment, training, numerical strength, remuneration,
and the village police, and criticized the excessive interference in police
matters by district commissioners. The strongest complaints were
directed against the Indian constables, who were poorly paid, received
only rudimentary training, and had many opportunities to indulge in
oppression and extortion.90 It was found that much “unjustified faith
88 Ibid., 86.
89 Anandswarup Gupta, The Police in British India: 1861-1947 (New Delhi: Con-
cept Publishing Company, 1979), 199.
90 Ibid., 203.

had been reposed in the Village Police” and this instrument was
“totally ineffective, inefficient, and unreliable as a body of auxiliary
police.”91 The commission “condemned” the system of nominations
and recommended a compulsory two-year study course at an English
university for all officers92 and better education for constables and
inspectors. Other problems arose from the Indian Evidence Act of
1872,93 which rendered null and void confessions extracted under duress94
and placed the burden of proof “entirely on the prosecution”.95
The need for such laws was pressing. In the 1860s, for example,
sub-inspector Narain Tuvari stopped a number of burglars and secured
a string of convictions because the accused made full confessions and
led the police to places where the stolen goods were hidden.96 The judge
became suspicious and informed the inspector-general that he believed
the confessions to have been extracted under torture, but when the self-
confessed thieves were examined, no signs of torture could be found.97
Many months later, a constable upset for not receiving his share of the
credit for Narain’s successes, revealed that the confessions were extracted
by subjecting the accused to asphyxiation by drowning to avoid leaving
any marks.98 After the passage of the Evidence Act, suspects began
claiming that they had been tortured in order to retract confessions
made under normal conditions and there was an “astonishing growth of
perjury”.99 A related problem was that half “the crimes reported to the
police” were “fabrications” meant “to get someone else into trouble or
to provide an alibi or defense for some anticipated countercharge”.100
In 1905, it was decided that constables should be locals, receive
training at special schools in each province, and be better remunerated.
Sub-inspectors were henceforth recruited directly, and prominent natives
were offered the position of deputy superintendent, and could rise to
91 Ibid., 207.
92 Griffiths, To Guard my People, 99.
93 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), was the Law Member when the
Indian Evidence Act was passed. His niece on his younger brother’s side was
the renowned writer Virginia Wolf. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography,
402.
94 Gupta, The Police in British India, 59
95 Ibid., 62.
97 Ibid., 153-154
98 Ibid., 154.
99 Gupta, The Police in British India, 74.
100 Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, vol 2, The Guardians, 52.

the post of superintendent. By 1916, Bengal had one inspector-general

(IG), five deputy inspector-generals (DIGs), forty-eight superintendents
(SPs), forty-nine assistant superintendents (ASPs), twenty-three deputy
superintendents (DSPs), two hundred and thirty-nine inspectors, one
thousand six hundred and twelve sub-inspectors (SIs), fifty sergeants,
two thousand three hundred and fifty-six head constables, and more
than seventeen thousand constables. In the Punjab, the total strength
of the police was twenty-one thousand, with twenty-nine district forces
organized into Eastern, Western, and Central, zonal forces of ten districts
each. Each zone was placed under a deputy inspector-general, a fourth
DIG was in charge of the provincial Criminal Investigation Department
(CID), while the Crime Branch, Special Branch, and Railway Police each
had an assistant inspector-general (AIG). Each district was divided into
police station zones, which, in rural areas, covered about two hundred
and fifty square miles each, and operated in concert with local notables
and village watchmen.
The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Special Branch were the covert
arms of the internal security apparatus of the British Raj. The IB had
evolved from the Thagi and Dakaiti Department, which was founded in
1835 to stop the ritual murders of travelers by the thugs, a cult devoted to
Kali, the Hindu goddess of death. Since the thugs were highly secretive
and often acted with the cooperation of local notables, with whom they
shared their plunder, witnesses were too terrified to come forward, and
the courts, by trying to apply “British standards of evidence and proof”
often acquitted even “notorious thugs”.101 In order to bring the thugs to
justice, it was necessary to infiltrate their organization with undercover
operatives, gather intelligence, and catch them in the act. Once this was
accomplished, some of the thugs would be offered clemency in exchange
for their help in capturing more of their kind. The Thagi and Dakaiti
Department represented “the first systematic and coordinated approach
to the detection of large-scale organized crime” and as late as the 1940s
“the office of the Intelligence Bureau in Simla was known to rickshaw
wallahs as the Thagi Daftar and the memory of a great British success
in suppressing an odious crime was thus kept alive in the speech of
humble folk.”102
The Intelligence Bureau and Special Branch also countered
102 Ibid., 121.

terrorism, kept a close watch on local notables and provincial

politicians, and maintained detailed records of the activities of those
under surveillance. These institutions also helped coordinate police
investigations in different parts of the country through intelligence
sharing. The importance of reliable intelligence and a web of informants
grew exponentially after the 1905 partition of Bengal, which was bitterly
opposed by Hindus, some of whom turned to violence.
The other major component of the criminal justice system was the
judiciary. Understandably, it was not until after the 1935 India Act that
constitutional issues began to be seriously taken up by the judiciary,
which, however, dealt with civil and criminal cases, proved conducive
to the growth of a class of lawyers, and reduced the level of arbitrariness
inherent in the governance of a continental bureaucratic empire. The
judges were well paid, enjoyed security of tenure, and did not hesitate to
give decisions contrary to the interests of the executive:
The judiciary saw themselves as champions of liberty

protecting the individual against the executive, so they gave
judgments against district officers in civil suits. Conservative
notables were shocked when Indian munsifs countermanded
the orders of the head of the district.103
In criminal cases:
The courts demanded conclusive proof and acquitted guilty

men on technicalities…An indignant deputy commissioner
complained that he had charged twenty-seven patwaris with
accepting bribes. Only six of them were convicted and all
six got off on appeal.104
The judiciary’s task, however, was made inordinately more complicated

by the socio-cultural context upon which it tried to apply rational
standards of law, justice and procedure:
Policemen framed innocent victims, clerks forged entries in

the records of rights in land, doctors rigged post-mortems,
104 Ibid.

munsifs took presents from both sides. Moon105 reckoned

that ninety percent of the evidence he recorded was false…
Competition over jobs divided the staff of every tehsil into
hostile camps prepared to go to any lengths to discredit
their opponents.106
The creation of an autonomous “hierarchy of courts, staffed by

professionals, organized bureaucratically and employing rational
procedures” within a “unified nationwide modern legal system”,107 for
all its shortcomings – and there were many – had positive consequences
for the culture of power of the subcontinent. The rules of evidence,
for instance, rendered customary law ineffective for much of it was
unwritten “and therefore difficult to prove in court.”108 Another step
towards the de-theocratization of law was completed in 1860-61
when court-appointed Muslim and Hindu clerics employed “to select
and interpret the relevant portions of Hindu and Muslim law for the
English judges” were phased out.109 In their place came a new class of
professional lawyers:
…crucial agents for the expression of local and parochial

interests at the same time that they rephrase these interests
in terms of official norms. Thus the modern legal system
provides both the personnel and the techniques for carrying
on public business in a way that is nationally intelligible
and free of dependence on particularly religious or local
authority. It thus provides one requisite for organizing
Indian society into a modern nation-state.110
Lawyers have the distinction of being forced to come into continuous

contact with the state apparatus without, however, being a part of it.
Their theoretic knowledge of the law combined with an understanding
of its practical manifestations places them in a position uniquely suited
105 Sir Penderel Moon, author of The British Conquest and Dominion of India,
considered a progressive and an advocate of self-government for India.
107 Galantier, Law and Society in Modern India, 15.
108 Ibid., 23.
109 Ibid., 24.
110 Ibid., 28.

to lead opposition to the state. They are, in effect, civil society’s frontline
troops, and it is no mere coincidence that of the subcontinent’s political
leaders and freedom fighters, including Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Motilal
Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohandas Gandhi, every third or fourth
name one comes across has a law background. Although it may seem
odd to cite the proportion of lawyers in a population as an indicator of
progress, the fact remains that, in 1952, India had one lawyer for every
four thousand nine hundred and twenty people, while France, in 1958,
had one lawyer to five thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine people,
and Japan, in 1960, had one lawyer for every fourteen thousand three
hundred and fifty-four people.111
Civil society cannot exist in any meaningful manner in an omnipotent
continental bureaucratic empire whose rulers regard all opposition, or
even a pause in adulation, as treasonable, and undermine the institution
of private property. Civil society in the subcontinent came into existence
as a direct consequence of conscious efforts by the British to limit the
powers of the state, introduce the rule of law and private property,
create autonomous institutions within the state structure, and facilitate
and encourage the creation of such institutions in society.112
The 1861 India Act expanded the legislative and executive councils
and opened them to sittings by the public, with the result “that most of
the additional members were only too willing to play to the gallery and
show off their independence” while,
The service members, usually men at the end of their career

with nothing further to look forward to, were not interested
in pleasing the Governor-General; and the judges, so far
from being judicially-minded, soon proved to be strongly
partisan, unashamedly voicing the grievances and prejudices
of the European community.113
111 Ibid., 27.

112 Of continental bureaucratic empires, India has one of the oldest civil societ-
ies, which emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Russia and much of Eastern
Europe did not have a comparable set of autonomous institutions until the late
1980s and China still appears to be decades away allowing lawful opposition or
tolerating autonomous institutions though the introduction of private property
post-1978 is a significant first step on what promises to be a long and hard
journey.

The governor-general could refuse assent but did not have the power
to overrule the legislative or executive councils, was answerable to the
home authorities for his actions, and subject to restraints unprecedented
in the subcontinent’s history. The India Office List for 1935 states in its
section on leaves of absences:
…no grant from Indian revenues will be made to the ex-

Governor-General for his homeward journey from Suez…
Except as declared in the above Rule, Government will
make no arrangements for, and will defray none of the
expenses connected with, the conveyance or passage of a
Governor-General, his family, or suite, from India.114
Canning, on more than one occasion, had to defend his prerogatives

against an interfering secretary of state, whereas, as early as 1867,
Dadabhai Naoroji’s East India Association appealed directly to
London for a deliberate policy of recruiting natives to the covenanted
services, and, in 1870, the rules were relaxed to allow the appointment
of Indians to higher offices without going through the competitive
examinations. By 1867, Indians already held about half of the thirteen
thousand public sector jobs that paid more than nine hundred rupees
a year.115 One complaint voiced by the Calcutta Review in 1884 was that
the recruitment policy for the police allowed the lower castes to “get
the best appointments”116 and they were abusing their new powers to
victimize high-caste persons.
In the 1870s, district advisory committees to the district magistrate
comprising prominent residents were created, and the reforms
introduced by Lord Mayo in 1870 required provinces to pay a portion
of growing government expenditure and recognized the need for
organizing local self-government. It was hoped that local residents
would, in exchange for representation, raise additional taxes to build
roads and finance primary education. In Bengal, arguably the most
politically conscious province, Indian members opposed the levying
of additional taxes for the construction of both primary schools and
roads.117 The compromise arrived at was that additional taxes would
114 The India Office List for 1935, 410.
116 Gupta, The Police in British India, 96-97.
117 H. H. Dodwell, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 6, The Indian Em-

be levied only for the construction of roads, leaving primary education

without state support.118 By 1882, all of British India had local
governments comprising “nominated district committees, consisting
both of officials and private persons.”119 These committees, however,
derived their “vitality” from the district officer and instead of relieving
him of some of his duties added to his workload.120 The basic problem
was that the area supervised by district committees was too large for the
nominees to handle effectively by themselves.
In 1882, to remedy this major defect, Governor-General Ripon
introduced sub-divisional committees with elected chairmen to assist
and advise the district administration. Superior coordination committees
were also created to coordinate the district and sub-divisional boards.
The idea was to ensure the participation of prominent locals in the
administration and improvement of their immediate surroundings.
The implementation of the 1882 reforms was left to the provincial
governments, which adapted them to suit local conditions. Thus, in the
Central Provinces, the sub-divisional boards were built over panchayats, the
village headmen served as the electorate, and the chairmen were elected
non-officials.121 In the Madras Presidency, the primary committees were
the village panchayats, whereas Bombay adopted the election system of
the Central Provinces but retained officials as chairmen.122 In Bengal,
the system of district boards controlled by magistrates continued after
proposals for the introduction of sub-divisional boards were torpedoed
in 1885 by the secretary of state for India as it was felt that the new
committees would reduce administrative efficiency.123 Overall, apathy
prevailed:
…these bodies showed little enthusiasm for any attempts

to increase their incomes from those sources which were
under their own control, such as public ferries, cattle-
pounds, tolls etc. The greater part of their funds came
pire 1858-1919 with Additional Chapters 1919-1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1932; reprint, New Delhi: S. Chand & Company (Pvt) Ltd.,
1987), 518.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid., 519.
122 Ibid., 520.
123 Ibid., 521.

from local cesses assessed and realized by government

officials.124
The problem was that to the landowners and local notables who found
their way into these boards “voting, public service and grants-in-aid
were words that conveyed no meaning.”125 The authorities, however,
persisted in their efforts to overcome the pervasive apathy that prevailed
in society and, with varying degrees of success, infused new life into
panchayats, created village self-governments, built peasant cooperatives,
and expanded the powers of district boards. In the rural areas, the
results of these attempts to make autonomous institutions grow in the
subcontinent’s soil had, on occasion, darkly paradoxical results:
Opposition to the ruler in the traditional systems of India,

whether Hindu or Muslim, is a crime and a much more
serious crime than gang-robbery. No one could understand
why the English had suddenly become tolerant of one form
of crime, and it occurred to some people that it might be
worth an experiment or two in other kinds.126
On other occasions, the results were far more ominous. Sir Malcolm
Lyall Darling,127 a leading advocate of reaching out to Indians at a
personal and moral level, had his “faith in human nature smashed”
when he found that “peasant officers looted the societies they were
supposed to cherish.”128
In the urban areas, the British enjoyed greater success. One major
reason for this was that the three major cities of Calcutta, Madras,
and Bombay, had long been governed through municipal bodies that
raised their own taxes and met the costs of administration. Each
city had numerous lawyers, merchants, and European settlers, and
successfully prevented the extension of the collector-magistrate system
of administration to their territory even in the immediate aftermath
of the 1857 revolt.129 The European residents objected to this system
124 Ibid., 522.
125 Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, vol 2, The Guardians, 71.
126 Ibid., 247.
127 Indian Civil Service, retired 1940.
129 The resident Europeans were successful in convincing the government against

as it gave judicial powers to servants of the executive and turned the

district officer into an omnipotent sub-sovereign and thus contradicted
the principle of the separation of powers. In Bombay, by 1872, the
municipal corporation comprised sixty-four members, half of whom
were elected by ratepayers. The town council was a permanent committee
of the corporation and audited the city accounts on a weekly basis. In
Calcutta, some two-thirds of the seventy-two members of the municipal
corporation were elected by ratepayers, whereas in Madras half of the
thirty-two members were elected. The principles upon which these
governing bodies stood were that the executive, whether commissioner
or president, retained a wide area of discretion but was subject and
answerable to the corporation for finance.130 In the district towns:
The start of municipal institutions was…of diverse origin

and of varying procedure. Only in Bengal could they be
said to be a development of that in the presidency towns,
where their power of taxation and the interference of the
government were strictly limited by law. On the other hand,
in the Punjab, Central Provinces, and Bombay, municipal
laws were vague, there were no legal limits to taxation, and
the local government had complete powers of control.
Midway between these two cases came the towns in Madras,
where taxes were prescribed and moderate limits imposed
on taxation. It is noteworthy that municipal life flourished
most in the second group, as the form of administration by
a government official who consulted the leading people was
a natural and liberal growth from the rule of the kotwal.131
Even after the increase in the proportion of elected members for

municipal bodies from one half to three-fourths mandated by the 1882
reforms, people, except in Bengal and Madras, generally preferred to
elect the district officer chairman.132 Thus, efforts to introduce self-
the extension of the system prevalent elsewhere in India. The police was also
raised and maintained separately for the three presidency towns.
130 Dodwell, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 6, The Indian Empire 1858-
1919 with Additional Chapters 1919-1969, 528.
131 Ibid., 533.
132 Ibid., 535. In the Punjab, for example, of the eighty-three towns that could
elect their own chairman in 1915, just ten chose non-officials.

governments in the major cities, towns, and rural areas, produced

a quasi-participatory system “rather akin to that on the continent of
Europe” but “not like that in England”133 that handled a limited number
of affairs in cooperation with government officials.134
The superior educational facilities available in the larger towns
and cities135 also contributed substantially to the creation of civil
society institutions.136 There were more than six thousand Indians in
Anglophone institutions of higher learning and more than two hundred
thousand in secondary schools in the 1870s, and Calcutta alone was
publishing more than a thousand scientific and literary works a year.137
More than one hundred and fifty newspapers in Indian languages
representing a diversity of opinion were in circulation by 1883.138 In
the latter-half of the nineteenth century, however, the most effective
and vocal opposition to the Government of India came from the tiny
European settler-community, not the Indians.139 The conflict between
the state and the settlers was not new. The East India Company had
warned Parliament as early as 1801 that a class of European settlers
would abuse the natives, clamor for special treatment, and prove a
constant source of embarrassment.
Lord Ripon arrived in 1880 to assume the governor-generalship. By
then, there were two thousand and twelve Indians to one thousand one
hundred and ninety-seven Europeans in the un-covenanted executive
and judicial services,140 and a handful had entered the covenanted ICS.
The 1870 India Act empowered the government to elevate Indians to
133 Ibid., 517.
134 Such as the maintenance of local hospitals, schools, roads, and sanitation. The
larger cities, like Lahore, also elected mayors.
135 In most district towns there were one Muslim, two Hindu, and one Sikh,
schools run by non-government organizations and subsidized by grants-in-aid
by the state. Up to the degree level, about two-thirds of the costs were borne by
the non-government organizations and the authorities.
136 It is, however, inaccurate to maintain that education by itself generates a mo-
mentum for the creation of civil society. There are many countries with under-
developed or even non-existent civil societies, including Russia, China, Iran,
and many Middle Eastern states, that have surpassed India in the fields of edu-
cation and human development.
138 Edwin Hirschmann, White Mutiny: The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India and the Gen-
esis of the Indian National Congress (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1980),
21-22.
139 Seventy thousand to ninety thousand in number.
140 Hirschmann, White Mutiny, 6.

the covenanted services without an examination if they demonstrated

exceptional ability. On February 1, 1883, C. P. Ilbert, a member of
the legislative council, introduced a bill, with Ripon’s support, that
“extended the authority of a few Indian officials – experienced judges
and magistrates – by giving them criminal jurisdiction over resident
Europeans.”141 Lord Ripon was a “patrician radical”142 who had raised
concerns in the European settler-community of his “nigger-loving” ways
by his repeal of Lytton’s stifling Vernacular Press Act. A technological
development, which circumscribed Ripon’s discretion and enabled those
hostile to his policies to coordinate their activities, was the laying of the
Red Sea Cable, which allowed for instant communication between India
and England.
On February 28, 1883, between three thousand and five thousand
Europeans assembled peacefully but noisily, in protest at Calcutta
Town Hall, across the street from Ripon’s official residence.143 On
March 10, in Rangoon, one thousand Europeans assembled at Ripon
Hall, two days later, at Lahore, five hundred gathered at Lawrence
Hall.144 On March 9, the Indian Daily News advised Ripon to resign
and go home.145 Ripon, however, did not have the protestors trampled
by elephants, torn to pieces by lions, impaled on stakes, or have their
tongues pulled out. Instead, he waited for senior civil servants to submit
their opinions, and heard the counter-petition organized by the British
Indian Association, the Mohammedan Literary Society, the National
Mohammedan Association, the East Bengal Association, and the
Vakeel’s Association,146 in favor of the Ilbert Bill. The opinions of the
civil servants consulted varied considerably. The only outright rejection
of the bill came from the chief commissioner of Coorg, while “Aitchison
in the Punjab favored a bolder measure: appointments based entirely on
personal qualification, without any restriction of race or service.”147
The Ilbert Bill crisis ended in compromise on December 22,
1883, and it was passed in January 1884. Native judges and magistrates
could try resident Europeans provided the jury constituted was half
141 Ibid., 2-3.

142 Ibid., 15.
143 Ibid., 63.
144 Ibid., 85.
145 Ibid., 77.
146 Vakeel means legal guardian, pleader, or lawyer, in Urdu.
147 Hirschmann, White Mutiny, 26..

European, though Section 446, which allowed judicial officers to hand

out punishments of less than six-months imprisonment or fines up to
two thousand rupees at their discretion for petty offences, remained
intact.148 The lessons of this episode were not lost on Indians. They
had seen how a small group of settlers had generated pressure through
peaceful and lawful means in order to secure their vested interests
and compelled the sarkar to compromise. The Indians had put up a
reasonably good show by organizing opposition to the settlers’ demands,
but were inexperienced and lacked the countrywide networking that the
settlers appeared to posses. “Indian leaders”, however, had observed
"the activities of the European and Anglo-Indian Defense Association
and the impact which it made” and “more and more voices called for a
national association of Indians”.149
In December 1885, under the presidency of Allan Octavian Hume,
a former Secretary in Calcutta’s agricultural department, seventy-two
delegates assembled for the first Indian National Congress. The only
language that all the delegates spoke was English. The Congress raised
issues that affected the interests of the educated urban upper class.
These included the extension of the 1793 Permanent Settlement of
Bengal to all other parts of India, the complete separation of executive
and judicial powers in the districts, 150 and the nullification of all laws
that allowed the government to arrest people on the suspicion of anti-
state activities. Two important early victories for the Congress and its
allies in the Liberal Party in England were the Indian Councils Act of
1892, which expanded councils and allowed indirect elections, and the
holding of the competitive examinations for the covenanted services
simultaneously in India and England.
These changes, however, ran counter to the interests of the
Indian Muslim community, which lacked the educational and material
148 Ibid., 253.

149 Ibid., 283.
150 The Government of India had been advised that many of the problems in the
criminal justice system were due to the union of the functions of collector and
magistrate at the district level. In 1856, orders were given for the separation of
the collectorship from the magistracy but the outbreak of revolt prevented their
implementation. It was also found that by divesting the collector of judicial
powers his ability to generate revenue was somewhat compromised. Such a
separation of powers also ran counter to the subcontinent’s experience of rule
by omnipotent sub-sovereigns and the debate over how much power the district
officer should posses dated from the governor-generalship of Lord Cornwallis.

wherewithal to survive an open competition with the Hindus for both

public and private sector jobs. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan served on the
Viceroy’s Legislative Council from 1878 to 1882, and took initiatives
such as the establishment of the Mohammedan Civil Service Fund
Association and the Mohammedan Association of Aligarh in 1883, and
the Mohammedan Educational Conference in 1886.151 Sir Syed also
launched the Aligarh Movement to establish a Muslim university to
impart modern education to his community.152 In 1888, he founded
the Patriotic Association in Aligarh, which comprised nobles and other
elites who shared his apprehensions with regard to the Congress and its
aims and objectives. Islamic societies organized protest meetings against
the Congress throughout British India and Sir Syed managed to win the
support of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Benares. It
was not, however, until 1906, following the partition of Bengal, that the
Muslim elite organized itself into a political party and formed the All-
India Muslim League (AIML). The autonomous institutions within the
state structure and local bodies, ranging from municipal corporations
to sub-divisional boards, combined with the civil society organizations
and political parties formed by Indians, were the initial steps to the
development of legal democracy.
After 1906, the rate of advance along this trajectory accelerated
due to increased political consciousness among Indians, and a growing
realization within the Government of India and the United Kingdom
that changed circumstances merited new and bold initiatives. The 1909
Minto-Morely reforms expanded councils and held elections under
separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus. The 1919 Montague-
Chelmsford reforms introduced “diarchy” in the provinces and
created legislative assemblies153 with elected leaders. The 1935 India
151 For a comprehensive treatment of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s achievements and
political thought, see Altaf Hussain Hali, Hayat-i-Javed, trans. David J. Mathews
(Panipat: n.p. 1902; reprint, Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1994).
152 Sir Syed understood that the acquisition of knowledge in the vernaculars and
English was the key to securing jobs in both private and public sector institu-
tions and worked tirelessly to convince the Muslims of the need to do so.
153 The Central Legislative Assembly was constituted under the 1919 reforms, and
began functioning in 1921. It regularly criticized the government’s policies on
issues such as defense and taxation, though it did not have the power to over-
rule the executive or take charge of any portfolios. The provincial legislatures
received control of education, health, agriculture, and control of taxation on all
items reserved for the generation of revenue for the provinces (land tax, excise
duties, fines etc.).

Act increased the size of the electorate, gave more power to provincial
legislatures, and made possible the formation of a federation.154 Diarchy
was now introduced at the center with the governor-general responsible
for foreign affairs, defense, and the tribal areas. A ten-member council
of ministers formed a federal cabinet responsible for the administration
of all departments other than those reserved for the governor-general
who was required to consult the ministers even when exercising his
discretionary powers.155 At the provincial level, the governors presided
over cabinet meetings, appointed the members of the provincial public
services commissions, controlled the police, could veto bills, and had
the power, under Section 93, to suspend the constitution and dismiss
the ministry. About six-tenths of the budget was under popular control
and there were no reserved departments answerable to the governor.
In practice, the constitutional reforms fell, as they so often do,
short of expectations. Malcolm Darling’s “experiences as a returning
officer made him wonder whether India was ready for elections” and
merit mention:
Impersonation was rife, intimidation was commonplace,

treating was universal. He had to disallow one-fifths of the
votes in an election in Lahore…156
…members of the legislative assembly recouped the cost

of their elections by selling their support to the highest
bidders. Party managers handed out junior ministries,
government jobs, honorary magistrates and land grants in
the canal colonies before each vote of confidence…treated
reasoned argument as a waste of time…157
Harkishenlal, the Punjab’s first minister of agriculture after the 1919

reforms, kept the wartime ban on wheat exports in force to depress
the price of wheat because he owned four flour mills and “had a vested
154 In 1919, the franchise was extended to seven million Indians, or about three
percent of British India’s population, on property qualifications. After 1935,
the property qualifications were lowered and the franchise extended to more
than thirty million Indians, including about seven million women.
155 The advice of the cabinet was non-binding, and the executive could issue ordi-
nances that stayed in effect for six months.
157 Ibid., 186.

interest in paying the cultivators as little as possible for their crops.”158

Throughout British India, the internal discipline of the apparatus
declined once the native civil servants realized that promotions could
be better secured by currying favor with elected representatives.
The Congress, after nearly twenty years of agitation and trying
to wreck the system from without, participated in the 1937 elections,
secured majorities in six provinces and emerged as the single largest
party in two more provinces.159 In order to circumvent the governor’s
control and render his input redundant, Congress ministers adopted
the tactic of meeting separately before cabinet meetings, and deciding
all issues. The governors were thus confronted with a take it or
leave it proposition in the cabinet meetings with the Congressmen
in attendance carrying their resignation letters with them in case the
governors still insisted on exercising their constitutional prerogatives.160
Even Gandhi, in 1939, “conceded that the Governors played their
part well”, and were constructive and helpful towards the Congress
ministries.161 The Congress party members, however, “openly interfered
with the magistrates and judges” and alienated minorities.162 Syed
Mehmud, a prominent Muslim member of Congress “criticized the
Congress Ministers as being full of provincialism, caste prejudices
and revivalism”.163 Particularly galling for Muslims were the flying of
Congress flags “over public institutions”164 and forcing Muslim children
to sing Bande-Mataram, at government schools.165 Powers were abused
by Congress ministers to favor their relatives and supporters with the
patronage at their disposal, victimize their political opponents, and left
opposition parties no choice but to agitate unconstructively.166 Even for
158 Ibid., 58.

159 In Assam Congress won 35/108 seats, in Bengal 54/250, in Bihar 95/152, in
Bombay 88/175, in the Central Provinces 71/112, in Madras 159/215, in the
NWFP 19/50, in Orissa 36/60, in the Punjab 18/175, in Sind 8/60, and in the
United Provinces 133/228.
160 Dodwell, ed., The Cambridge History of India, vol 6, The Indian Empire 1858-
1919 with Additional Chapters 1919-1969, 654.
161 Ibid., 653.
162 Uma Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism: The Emergence of the Demand
for India’s Partition 1928-1940 (New Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1977),
126.
163 Ibid.
164 Ibid., 145.
165 Ibid., 124.
166 The Muslim League, which secured 110/482 seats reserved for Muslims, of-

educated, propertied, Indians, who indulged in the rhetoric of civil rights

and responsible government borrowed from the British, considerations
such as state morality and conflict of interest lost meaning once they
were given a chance to exercise power.
The historical significance of the constitutional reform process is
not compromised by operational difficulties and deficiencies, for, while
the Bolsheviks sent millions of their own people to gulags, Germans
came to believe that Jews and Slavs, among others, were subhuman,
and ideocratic arbitrary rule in the form of modern totalitarianism took
hold of much of the civilized world, the subcontinent staggered and
groped towards legal democracy. Hitler’s main critique of the British
was that “they were too self-critical and too lenient towards their subject
peoples” and, in 1937, the Nazi Fuhrer advised Lord Halifax,167 the British
Foreign Secretary, that the correct way to handle Indian nationalism and
demands for independence, was to “Shoot Gandhi, and if that does not
suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members
of Congress; and if that does not suffice, shoot two hundred and so on
until order is established.”168
The British did not heed the Fuhrer’s advice,169 spared no effort to
fered to form a coalition with the Congress. The Congress rejected this pro-
posal.
167 Better known in the subcontinent as Lord Irwin, the viceroy who welcomed
Gandhi to the Vice-regal palace and entered into an understanding referred to
as the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. This pact secured a suspension of civil disobedience
in exchange for the Congress’s participation in the Round Table Conference
of 1932. Gandhi also criticized Lord Irwin for drawing a salary of twenty-one
thousand rupees a month, a sum that he thought was too high for a poor coun-
try like India to pay. Evidently, the fact that the British Viceroy was the lowest
paid supreme executive in the subcontinent’s history was lost on Gandhi.
169 The British Empire’s demise was greatly accelerated by the immense strain of
fighting, and ultimately defeating, the Nazi’s Thousand Year Reich, Mussolini’s
New Rome, and Hirohito’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As regards
Nazism, Eric Hobsbawm, reflecting upon his schooling in Germany in the early
1930s, states: “The bulk of secondary students were almost certainly on the
right, though – as in my own school – not necessarily on the National So-
cialist right. Among the university students support for Hitler was notoriously
strong.” Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London:
AllenLane the Penguin Press, 2002), 70. That Germany was a more a educated
society than Britain found acknowledgment in the prejudice prevalent at Cam-
bridge University in the 1930s that “…higher degrees such as Ph.D.s…were
regarded at best as a German peculiarity…” Ibid., 104. The costs of defeating
fascism included more than fifty million dead and the devastation of much of
Eurasia’s industrial and agricultural heartland. Ultimately, in spite of the tre-

keep Gandhi alive during his days in prison, and Congress, the principal
advocate of complete and immediate independence, whose members
regularly, and in retrospect strangely, proclaimed that the Raj had ruined
India in every imaginable way, took power in two-thirds of British India
following the 1937 elections.170 The debate that preceded the 1935 India
Act and elections the following year began in 1927 and involved every
major party and community in its deliberations. The Joint Committee
on Indian Constitutional Reform for 1933-34 submitted that differences
in cultures of power had to be taken into consideration:
…the strength of the Mogul Empire depended essentially

upon the personal qualities of its ruling House, and when
the succession of great Emperors failed, its collapse
inevitably followed…The interests of the subject races
were made subservient to the ambitions, and often to the
caprices, of the monarch…171
…British rule gradually, with the aid and cooperation of

many Indians, created a new and stable polity. Peace and
order were re-established, the relations of the Indian states
with the Crown were finally determined, and the rule of law
made effective throughout the whole of British India…172
We have emphasized the magnitude of the British

achievement in India because it is this very achievement
that has created the problem which we have been
commissioned by Parliament to consider. By transforming
British India into a single unitary State, it has engendered
mendous price paid, man triumphed over superman. Exploring the relationship
between cultures of power and international relations, however, is beyond the
scope of the present inquiry and merits exclusive consideration.
170 When the Second World War erupted in September 1939, the Congress minis-
tries resigned for not being consulted prior to the declaration of war by Britain.
Gandhi urged the democracies to resist the Axis powers through non-violent
means. Subhas Chandra Bose fled to Berlin and actually sought to gain Indian
independence by collaborating with Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. The Mus-
lims, however, celebrated the resignation of the Congress ministries and ob-
served a day of deliverance.
I, 3.
172 Ibid., 4.

among Indians a sense of political unity. By giving that

State a Government disinterested enough to play the part
of an impartial arbiter, and powerful enough to control the
disruptive forces generated by religious, racial and linguistic
diversity, it has fostered the first beginnings, at least, of
a sense of nationality, transcending those divisions. By
establishing conditions in which the performance of the
fundamental functions of government…has come to be
too easily accepted as a matter of course, it has set Indians
free to turn their mind to other things, and in particular
to the broader political and economic interests of their
country. Finally, by directing their attention towards the
object lessons of British constitutional history and by
accustoming the Indian student of government to express
his political ideas in the English language, it has favored the
growth of a body of opinion inspired by two familiar British
conceptions; that good government is not an acceptable
substitute for self-government, and that the only form
of self-government worthy of the name is government
through Ministers responsible to an elected Legislature…173
Responsible government…is not an automatic device which

can be manufactured to specification…The student of
government who assumes that British constitutional theory
can be applied at will in any country misses the fact that
it could not be successfully applied even in Great Britain
if it were not modified in a hundred ways by unwritten
laws and tacit conventions…a technique which the British
people have thus painfully developed in the course of many
generations is not to be acquired by other communities in
the twinkling of an eye; nor, when acquired, is it likely to
take the same form as in Great Britain, but rather to be
moulded in its course of development by social conditions
and national aptitudes….174
173 Ibid., 4-5.

174 Ibid., 6-7. The terms “unwritten laws”, “tacit conventions”, “national apti-
tudes”, and “social conditions” essentially refer to different aspects of the cul-
ture of power.

The report went on to observe that of the four essential prerequisites for
parliamentary government, which were the acceptance of the principle
of majority rule, the willingness of minorities to accept decisions, the
existence of large political parties divided by policy differences, and a
“mobile body of public opinion” cognizant of political developments
but free to change its loyalties come election time, “none” existed in the
subcontinent.175 While the Joint Committee had “no wish to underrate the
legislative function”, it was compelled by the subcontinent’s historical
experience of governance to recognize that “the executive function
is…of overriding importance.”176 The preservation of the institutional
autonomy of the police arm of the executive, one of the main pillars
upon which the tranquility of the country rested, was imperative:
The qualities most essential in a police force, discipline,

impartiality, and confidence in its officers, are precisely those
which would be most quickly undermined by any suspicion
of political influence or pressure exercised from above; and
it would be disastrous if in any Province the police force…
were to be sacrificed to the exigencies of a party to appease
the political supporters of a Minister…Our aim is to ensure
that the internal organization and discipline of the Police
continue to be regulated by the Inspector-General, and
to protect both him and the Ministers themselves from
political pressure in this vital field.177
Of no less importance was the protection of the intelligence apparatus,

which comprised the Intelligence Bureau, Criminal Investigation
Department, and Special Branch, though the Joint Committee tactfully
added that “the difficulty arises, not because Indian Ministers are likely
to demand or disclose the names of informants or agents, but because
the informants or agents themselves would not feel secure that their
identity might not be revealed.”178
An autonomous police force complemented “a competent and
independent Civil Service” that comprised experienced administrators
“secure in their positions during good behavior”, able and willing to
175 Ibid., 11.
176 Ibid., 13.
177 Ibid., 50-51.
178 Ibid., 53.

advise “successive Ministries”, and ready to implement the policies of

the government.179 Without a civil service built on the principles of merit
and safe from political interference, “responsible government” could
not hope “to be successful in practical working”.180 This realization lay
at the heart of British efforts, since 1919, to Indianize the covenanted
services and entrust recruitment to autonomous public service
commissions operating in accordance with set procedures, and applying
reasonably high standards of merit, which, however, through quotas
and concessions, provided opportunities to members of disadvantaged
communities.
With reference to the judiciary, the Joint Committee observed
that once a Federal Court was established, the judges had to be secure
from arbitrary removal.181 As control of the High Courts rested with
the provincial governments, it was imperative that judges be protected
“from criticism in the legislatures of their conduct in the discharge
of their duties.”182 For the subordinate judiciary, which dealt with the
bulk of litigation, it was “no less important, perhaps indeed even more
important, that their independence should be placed beyond question.”183
The High Courts and public service commissions, not elected ministers,
must retain control of the promotions and transfers of the subordinate
judiciary, district judges, and native munsifs.184 Furthermore, the
autonomy of the Audits and Accounts, under the Auditor-General,
must be preserved to ensure financial accountability within the state-
structure.185 When all was said and done, however, “The Indians must
be given the opportunity of purchasing their own experience.”186
One institution that is conspicuous by its absence from the
subcontinent’s historical experience of governance from the
establishment of British paramountcy to the transfer of power to
the constituent assemblies of India and Pakistan, in August 1947, is
the military. In most continental bureaucratic empires, the executive
concentrates in its own hands control of the army, which, in turn,
provides the officers with political clout and many opportunities
179 Ibid., 173.
180 Ibid.
181 Ibid., 193.
182 Ibid., 201.
183 Ibid.
184 Ibid., 202.
185 Ibid., 236.
186 Ibid., 65.

for personal enrichment. The extensive economic controls of the

Arthashastra state, and the policies of successive autocrats from Balban
to Ranjit Singh, all serve to confirm that from the earliest known times
the exercise of power in the subcontinent was built around a military-
patronage complex, which consumed, in absolute terms, the bulk of
revenues, and assured an intensely political role for the army.
The size of the standing military establishment is also normally very
large in continental bureaucratic empires. Thus, the Ancient Nandas
were reputed to field an army two hundred thousand strong, the
Mauryas, maintained an army four hundred thousand strong, the Delhi
Sultanate, at its height, may have had three hundred thousand troops,
the Timurid military, if Abu’l Fazl is to be believed, numbered more
than four million.187
The British Indian Army, about two hundred and fifty thousand
strong during peacetime, was relative to population, territory, and
economic resources, quite small. The main recruiting grounds were the
plains of North India as after 1857 it was deemed necessary that:
Soldiers should be of the warrior or at least cultivator class,

if Hindu, and their social equivalent, if Muslims – but not
of too high caste. Brahmins had been prominent in the
Mutiny, and their diet and prejudices made difficulties on
active service. The ideal soldier was the sturdy independent
yeoman farmer, be he Rajput, Jat, Sikh, or Muslim.188
The events of 1857-58 were “recalled on appropriate anniversaries

and reunions” and “depicted in photographs and drawings in officers’
messes”.189 For the overwhelming majority of “Indian regiments”, the
1857 revolt was like “Waterloo” or the Peninsular War “to British
regiments”.190 In general, the units that comprised “the post-1857 army
were either those who had remained loyal during the Mutiny, or those
who had been raised to suppress it.”191
187 The elite corps of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and matchlock men, however,
numbered between 250,000 to 500,000. Even Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Empire,
which was confined to the Punjab and Kashmir, fielded about 80,000 troops.
188 Charles Chevenix Trench, The Indian Army and the King’s Enemies 1900-47
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 11.
189 Ibid., 12.
190 Ibid.
191 Ibid.

At the company level, the army was organized by caste or class

while regiments incorporated a number of different communities.
This policy fostered friendly competition, created a sense of loyalty to
the regiment, and made the army much easier to control. The lingua
franca of this rainbow army, “in which the soldiers spoke at least nine
languages and the officers a tenth” was Urdu “written in Roman script
for use with Morse code”.192 The English language “was never used” in
“official matters between officers and men in Indian regiments”.193
There were twelve British officers per battalion and most of them
were from public school, upper-middle class backgrounds.194 Sandhurst
graduates generally preferred to go into the Indian army as it offered
greater opportunities for adventure, advancement, and glory. In 1913,
for example, twenty out of twenty-five Sandhurst graduates, opted for
service in the India.195 At the highest level, the separate commanders-
in-chief for Bombay and Madras were merged into a single command
in 1895. Peacetime military expenditure consumed no more than one-
third of government revenues.
The British Indian Army was as intensely apolitical as the military
systems of earlier imperial and sub-imperial states, were political. Its
officers, from the commander-in-chief downwards, never contemplated
or attempted to seize power and, unless called upon to assist the civil
authorities restore order, remained in their barracks, cantonments, and
garrisons. With the exception of the Foreign and Political Department,
and the Indian Police Service until 1893, military officers did not exercise
administrative power or colonize and dominate the civilian bureaucracy,
both characteristics contrasting sharply with the fusion of military and
administrative roles under Turkish and Timurid rule. The subservience
to the directives of the Government of India was not, however, a one-
way street. The executive did not interfere in the promotions, transfers,
and inductions, and the officers and men were kept insulated, as a
matter of policy, from politics. This insulation became harder to sustain
after the founding of the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, on
December 10, 1932, which facilitated the entrance of educated middle-
class Indians into the officer corps. However, the new recruits did not
prove seditious or act as a fifth column swayed by Congress propaganda
192 Ibid., 15.
193 Ibid.
194 Ibid., 25.
195 Ibid.

and, when war was proclaimed in 1939, performed admirably as the

officers of the largest volunteer army in history.196 Of the Indian National
Army (INA) raised by the Japanese from Indian prisoners of war, and
led by Subhas Chandra Bose, it was estimated that nine-tenths of
the soldiers joined only to get back home or were duped by the false
information fed to them by their captors.197
The ideocratic complex of the British Empire in India also
manifested considerable divergence from earlier, contemporary, or
even later, continental bureaucratic empires. Religion as an instrument
of legitimization was, after 1857, decidedly out of favor and, by the
1880s, “most British officials had reverted to the habit of their
predecessors of the 1820s in regarding missionaries as, at best; absurd,
at worst subversive.”198 Providing natives with rational education in the
vernaculars and English created a bourgeoisie that ultimately opposed
the Raj in an Anglicized idiom through constitutional means and
agitation. The subcontinent’s enlightenment produced collaborators
with the British in the short-term and replacements for the British in the
long-term. Racialism was also impractical given that the British lacked
the demographic base upon which a structurally racist order, like that of
the Timurids, Turks, or Aryans, could be built. Interestingly, the British
appear to be the only rulers of the subcontinent to have expended
much intellectual effort on trying “to justify to themselves their rule
over India”199 and in regarding racism, long an integral part of life in the
subcontinent, as something bad. For all earlier rulers, conquest was the
mark of divine sanction, and provided all the justification required to do
as they pleased with their subjects.
One conception of India was that “it could become something of
a laboratory for the creation of a liberal administrative state, and from
there its elements – whether a state sponsored education, the codification
196 The Indian Army grew from 189,000 in 1939, to 2.5 million in 1945. The of-
ficer corps expanded from 1000 to 15,740, during the same period. Eight mil-
lion men were mobilized for war-related functions, five million were employed
in the war industries, and an additional one million joined the Indian Railways.
Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974), 495, 511.
The 1946 mutiny in the Indian navy, was, however, a sign that Indian officers
would not remain indefinitely content with British rule.
197 Ibid., 516.
199 Thomas R. Metcalf, The New Cambridge History of India: Ideologies of the Raj
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17.

of law, or a competitively chosen bureaucracy – could make their way

back to England.200 Such reforms made the apparatus more predictable,
limited its discretionary powers, “and so did away with the willfulness,
and by extension the immorality, that marked despotism”.201 Taken
together with secularism and the encouragement of “free intellectual
inquiry”, the reforms lent credibility to the British perception of their
rule “as benign, disinterested, and impartial”.202
The belief in the progressive nature of British rule was complemented
by the cultivation of “voluntary collaborators”,203 an impressive system of
honors, and the revival of the Indian tradition of durbars and aesthetic
extravagance. In the 1860s, a Mutiny Memorial Hall was built in Madras,
and the Lawrence and Montgomery halls were built in Lahore.204 In 1911,
the capital was shifted from the mercantile metropolis of Calcutta to New
Delhi, the architects of which “had no doubt that their objective was
to build a symbol of British power that would match the achievements
of the Mughals.”205 The viceroy’s official residence206 covered four and a
half acres, employed six thousand servants, and included four hundred
gardens.207 The viceroy’s train was a white-colored, twelve-coach marvel,
“more splendid” than the Russian Czar’s railcar.208 Although the viceroy
did not own his residences or transports and was, like the gardeners at
the Delhi palace, a salaried employee of the Government of India, his
possession of such luxurious assets did indeed express the paramountcy
of British India.
The British also believed that their subjects were extremely desirous
of titles, honors, and awards. The Most Exalted Order of the Star of
India was introduced in 1861 and was followed, in 1878, by the Most
Eminent Order of the Indian Empire and the Imperial Order of the
Crown, and in 1917, by the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The number of knights bachelor rose from two hundred and thirty
in 1885, to seven hundred, in 1914, while the strength of the Order
of the British Empire, which was open to “all” subjects regardless of
200 Ibid., 29.
201 Ibid., 37.
202 Ibid., 40.
203 Cannadine, Ornamentalism, 124.
204 Metcalf, The New Cambridge History of India: Ideologies of the Raj, 51.
206 Now President House or Rashtrapati Bhavan in India.
208 Cannadine, Ornamentalism, 56.

gender, status, or race, rose from twenty-two thousand in 1919 to thirty

thousand in 1938.209 The honors system “tied together the dominions
of settlement, the Indian Empire, and the tropical colonies into one
integrated, ordered, titular, transracial hierarchy that no other empire
could rival.”210 The pomp and pageantry of the Raj also manifested itself
in “the traditional rituals of princely installation, local durbars and
municipal addresses.”211 Broadly speaking, the British sought to project
their Raj as both a progressive enterprise and the upholder of the
traditional Indian order.
The tension between the progressive and conservative elements of
the British Raj was, in many respects, symptomatic of the contradictions
inherent in trying to govern a land and people whose culture of power,
historical experience of governance, geography, social structure,
economic base, and religious sentiments, militated, often violently,
against the introduction of norms derived from the Anglo-Saxon State
of Laws. These norms, of course, had been modified considerably in the
process of introduction in response to the subcontinent’s conditions
even prior to the 1857 revolt.
The British governed through a bureaucracy distributed over
geographic subunits or through Indian intermediaries such as maharajas,
nawabs, and chieftains. In the areas ruled by the princes, the pattern
of ideocratic arbitrary rule characteristic of the subcontinent’s culture
of power continued virtually unchanged. On occasion, when a ruler
committed intolerable excesses, he would be forced to abdicate in favor
of a son or relative. That all princely states recognized the Government
of India as the paramount power made for a relationship that was
remarkably stable by the subcontinent’s standards. Some of the princes,
such as the Maharaja of Mysore, used the security of life, limb, and
property, provided by the government to bring about constitutional
reforms within his state.212 The Nizam of Hyderabad, historically a rival
of the rulers of Mysore, separated the judicial from the executive in
his capital city of Hyderabad. Most, however, were content to live in
luxury and leave the actual running of their states to their servants
and favorites. Local notables, once reviled, were incorporated into the
209 Ibid., 93-94.
210 Ibid., 90.
211 Ibid., 46.
212 The constitutional reforms were accompanied by an impressive program of
electrification.

power structure, granted lands, and protected from the encroachment

of the mercantile classes through the introduction of legal procedures
that regulated property transfers.
The executive-centric mode of district administration continued
with important modifications. The police was constituted as an
autonomous and civil institution. The court system expanded and
checked the executive’s powers. A determined effort was made to
recruit Indians to the un-covenanted services, and, after 1919, to the
covenanted services as well. There emerged autonomous private and
social sector institutions that varied from local bar associations and
cooperatives to national conventions and political parties, which could,
and did, lawfully challenge the state, and each other, through petitions,
assemblies, and litigation. In time, these pioneers gave rise to larger and
more assertive entities, such as the Indian National Congress, the All-
India Muslim League, and the Unionist Party, who sought and gained
a share of power after the introduction of constitutional reforms in
1909.
The move towards democracy raised as many, if not more, questions
as it answered. The Indians elected to power in the provincial legislatures
did not behave in a manner compatible with the efficient and impartial
performance of the state’s core functions. Their responses to acquiring
a share of power indicated that even a political class chosen by an
electorate restricted by property and educational qualifications, saw the
state as a source of patronage, personal enrichment, and an instrument
to be used against political rivals, rather than an autonomous complex
of institutions worthy of enlightened and compassionate direction for
the greater good. Experience, it was hoped, would gradually enable the
Indian leadership to appreciate the operational imperatives of popular
government, understand that rationality in the exercise of power is both
desirable and context-specific, and realize that the mode of governance
developed by the British for the subcontinent was a synthesis, not an
alien imposition.
The synthesis was profoundly influenced by the culture of power
of the Anglo-Saxons coming into contact with the need for a powerful
executive in continental bureaucratic empires. The British tried to merge
their experience of a state as an impersonal collective of autonomous
institutions based on rationally derived laws, and the subcontinent’s
experience of the state as a personalized, arbitrary unit comprising

servile instruments commanded by an omnipotent master ruling over

a mass of autarkic, sub-political, village communities, through military
force and allusions to divine sanction. The outcome, in British India,
was a state constituted as an impersonal entity, comprising autonomous
institutions, such as the ICS, IPS, judiciary, Customs Service and the
like, presided over by a powerful, though hardly omnipotent, executive,
who served a limited term of office. The institutional integrity of the Raj,
relative to its predecessors, can be gauged by the fact that between 1857
and 1947, the governor-generalship peacefully changed hands twenty-
one times. The contrast with earlier empires, where most successions
were accompanied by war, and a couple of rapid successions sent the
state tottering to its fall, could not be greater.
A similar contrast is evident in the relations between state and society.
The institution of private property remained secure, and numerous non-
government organizations, movements, pressure groups, newspapers,
associations, and political parties, emerged and challenged the state.
The state responded through constitutional reforms, conferences,
concessions, Indianizing the services, and cracking down when protests
or disturbances threatened to undermine the ability of the state to
maintain order and collect taxes.213
A point of convergence between the British Empire in India and
the imperial systems it succeeded was that the district administration was
dominated by collector-magistrates from the ICS. The commissioners
were, indeed, quite powerful, and possessed a wide range of discretion,
even after the advent of district and sub-divisional boards and the
extension of the court system. The British were aware of the dangers of
granting judicial powers to the district collector and the system would
probably have been phased out much sooner had the 1857 revolt not
occurred. There also existed tension between the superintendents of
213 It is in the context of the breakdown of law and order that the British response
to disturbances must be viewed. Amritsar, in 1919, for example, had fallen
under mob rule several days prior to the dispatch of troops to restore order,
which they did with ruthlessness that provoked outrage not only within India,
but also in Britain. In 1942, during the “Quit India” movement organized by
the Congress, which turned into violent agitation against the state at a critical
juncture in the Second World War, the British authorities responded with mass
arrests and incarcerations of tens of thousands of activists and Congress leaders.
There are other important instances, such as the Moplah uprising of 1921, and
the Peshawar disturbances of 1931, in which the British made excessive use of
violence to restore the writ of the state.

police and the district magistrates, though the rivalry was never even
remotely as vicious or dangerous as those within the Timurid, Turkish, or
Hindu bureaucracies. The commissioner system provided a semblance
of personal rule intelligible to simple peasants but was rather offensive
to educated Indians reared on a diet of British constitutional theory.
The British Empire in India bequeathed to its successors a state
structure that upheld private property, was imbued with a secular
outlook, comprised autonomous institutions, tolerated dissent, and
was governed by rational laws, procedures, and codes. This exceptional
continental bureaucratic empire had also experimented with popular
sovereignty, acquired many of the trappings of a legal democracy,
and vigorously insulated the military from politics. As its final act, this
empire divided itself into the two dominions of India and Pakistan.
The constituent assemblies of India and Pakistan both appeared to
have formally accepted the State of Laws as the model best suited
for the peace and prosperity of their peoples. Their leaderships were
westernized, educated, and, for the most part, from the upper classes.
Yet, no sooner was control transferred, the culture of power of the
subcontinent, contained by generations of conscious effort by the
British, reasserted itself with a vengeance in Pakistan, and, more subtly,
though no less surely, in India, the larger and more stable of the two
dominions.

CHAPTER X
THE CULTURE OF POWER AND

THE GOVERNANCE OF INDIA SINCE 1947
I t was perhaps inevitable that an empire acquired in a fit of

absentmindedness would be peremptorily jettisoned. This
opportunistic abandonment, now grandly titled the “Transfer of
Power”, was in part made possible by the formation of a Labor
government in Britain under Clement Attlee in 1945. That said, even
if Churchill had been voted into power for a second consecutive term
and a conservative government committed to the preservation of the
empire through pragmatic compromises had won the 1945 elections,
the British, at best, could have hoped to hang on for a generation.
Labor, however, lacked the intellectual or moral stamina required to
stay engaged in the subcontinent and commit the necessary resources
for a reasonably orderly transition to complete self-government. Lord
Pethick-Lawrence, the new Secretary of State for India, was a “gentle
and manifestly well-meaning intellectual” who “effusively admired”
Gandhi.1 Sir Stafford Cripps was himself quite fond of his socialist “old
friends in Congress”,2 had “been busy mending his fences”3 with them,
and “did everything he could to ensure Mountbatten’s success”.4 Attlee
and his cohorts wanted out of India but did not give themselves, or
1 Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps (London: Allen
Lane the Penguin Press, 2002), 397. Cripps was a wealthy man by background
– one of countless Marxists, including Friedrich Engels, whose ideological su-
perstructure had very little to do his class or economic base.
2 Ibid., 393.
3 Ibid., 399.
4 Ibid., 470.

the Indian parties, time to resolve the exceedingly complex communal

tangle. As the executive-will faltered, the political parties armed their
members and formed paramilitary organizations. By June 1947, the
Muslim League had mobilized nearly a hundred and forty thousand
national guards, the Congress and its allies could muster about one
hundred thousand, while the Hindu fundamentalists had armed more
than one hundred and ninety thousand.5 The revision of the date for
independence from June 1948 to August 15, 1947, made it almost certain
that these legions of armed men would be afforded an opportunity to
operate in an administrative vacuum.
Under the tremendous pressures generated by partition and
independence,6 the steel frame of the Raj bent but did not break. In
India, order had been restored within a year of independence in nearly
all parts of the country, and its constituent assembly, in 1950, after about
four years in session, completed the task of formulating a constitution
for the new state. This constitution incorporated the British values of
“democracy, pluralism, secularism, and, in the best sense of the word,
liberalism.”7 Here was a continental bureaucratic empire determined
to govern a large part of the subcontinent whose people were divided
into thousands of sub-castes, spoke hundreds of dialects, and professed
nearly a dozen major faiths, in the manner of the State of Laws. In
many important respects, the Indian experiment with democracy has
been a success. Thanks in great measure to the Election Commission,
elections have been held with regularity and produced changes in
the composition of provincial and federal legislatures reasonably
reflective of public opinion. The Anglo-Saxon tradition of keeping the
military insulated from politics has survived practically unaltered since
1947.8 The judiciary is substantially independent at the higher levels;
5 B. B. Misra, The Indian Political Parties: An Historical Analysis of Political
Behavior up to 1947 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 611-612.
6 It is generally accepted that about ten million were displaced and hundreds
of thousands were killed. A war broke out between India and Pakistan over
Kashmir in 1948. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fundamentalist on Janu-
ary 30, 1948, Pakistan’s founder and first Governor-General, Mohammed Ali
Jinnah passed away on September 11, 1948, Sardar Patel, the only serious alter-
native to Nehru in Congress, died in 1950, and Pakistan’s first prime minister,
Liaqat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951.
7 A. G. Noorani, Citizens’ Rights, Judges and State Accountability (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 1.
8 Armed services chiefs serve standard three-year terms with no extensions. The
seniority principle is strictly adhered to and political interference in promotions

The Culture of Power and the Governance of India Since 1947 | 239
the constitution has remained in effect for all but two years since its
adoption.9 There exist thousands of autonomous institutions that
lawfully challenge government directives and policies, and the press
enjoys freedom comparable to several western countries. Furthermore,
in urban areas with populations greater than half a million that have
attained a suitable level of development, the criminal justice system has
been reconstituted on the Calcutta, Bombay and Madras model with the
commissioners deprived of all magisterial powers. Admirable as these
achievements are, Indian legal democracy has not substantively altered
the manner in which power is exercised by the ruling classes. It has
merely altered the forms that the culture of power of the subcontinent
takes, and delayed by a few generations open reversion to ideocratic
arbitrary rule.
It must be borne in mind that the Constituent Assembly that drafted
the Indian constitution was elected by a franchise limited by property
qualifications to about fourteen percent of the adult population. In the
course of the debate on the nature of the electorate, Jawaharlal Nehru10
“brushed aside” objections to universal adult franchise.11 His cousin, the
civil servant B. K. Nehru, observed that one of the consequences of the
decision to grant universal adult franchise was that the representatives
elected to legislatures since 1951 have generally lacked the ability to
comprehend Anglo-Saxon state morality or appreciate “what the
position of the permanent civil service is in a modern state.”12 Another
unintended result was that the financial cost of campaigning in elections
increased while the drastic reduction in the proportion of educated and
propertied voters going to the polls reduced the quality of debate, made
it much easier for politicians to evade accountability, ignore policy
issues, and use their new powers arbitrarily.
The first and greatest casualty of the arbitrary exercise of power
by elected representatives was the institutional autonomy of the
civil service. Civil servants who resisted the unlawful and irrational
demands of politicians were, and are, suspended, transferred, and
is minimal. There were rumors of a possible coup attempt in the mid-1970s but
nothing came of them.
9 The Emergency of 1975-77.
10 India’s first prime minister, he served from 1947 until his death in 1964.
11 Mark Tully and Zareer Masani, From Raj to Rajiv: 40 Years of Indian Indepen-
dence (London: BBC Books, 1988), 24.
12 Ibid.

denied promotion. Many of those that do manage to get ahead do so

through servility, not on account of their intellectual or moral qualities,
thus perpetuating spinelessness at the higher levels, which, in turn,
demoralizes subordinates:
The esprit de corps of the civil service had been undermined...

When young men and women enter the civil service, they are
competent, correct and enthusiastic... Unfortunately, they
do not get the support they need from their disillusioned
seniors... If their seniors in the headquarters of the State
Governments stood by them, they would be able to resist
political pressures. All too often, the senior members of
government services do not resist the politicians’ demands
to transfer uncooperative officers.13
Then again, the senior members of the bureaucracy themselves did

not fare any better. As Madhav Godbole, the Union Home Secretary
who sought early retirement in 1993 in response to political pressure
rather than being packed-off to some non-post following the razing of
the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 by Hindu fanatics, writes in his
memoirs:
I had to relinquish the post of Chairman, Maharashtra State

Electricity Board, for resisting the pressures of the then
minister in the award of contracts; I had been hounded in
the past by the ‘all-powerful Ambanis’14; I had proceeded
on long leave from the post of Principal Finance Secretary,
Maharashtra, when the Sharad Pawar government took the
decision to scrap the zero-base budgeting; I had been shifted
from the Petroleum Ministry…again under the pressure
from the Ambanis and also from Chimanbhai Patel, the
then Chief Minister of Gujarat…The three months of
13 Ibid., 49.
14 In connection with securing a sales-tax deferral for the Reliance Group’s fiber
processing plant at Planyanga. Agreeing to this request would have entailed the
loss of one billion rupees to the state exchequer and it had been reported that
the actual capacity of the plant was much larger than the declared capacity.
Cajoling and bribes were followed by threatening phone calls and death threats.
Madhav Godbole, Unfinished Innings: Recollections and Reflections of a Civil
Servant (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1996), 170.

vilification15 since the Ayodhya debacle had finally taken its

toll. I decided to seek premature retirement and to proceed
on leave from the very next day.16
Demoralization produced by the inability to resist the arbitrariness of

politicians is complemented by vast increases in the size of the lower
and middle orders of the bureaucracy and the collapse of the purchasing
power of public sector salaries. The number of government employees
rose from four million in 1953 to some sixteen million in 1983.17 In
2003, after about fourteen years of economic liberalization, nineteen
million persons “out of a total organized wage-earning workforce” of
about twenty-seven million, were government employees.18 By 1977, the
purchasing power of the salaries of senior officials, who are responsible
for supervising and directing the apparatus, had fallen to one-fifth
of 1947 values.19 As the pay scale lost real value and the number of
government employees expanded beyond the ability of the officers to
exercise control, the bureaucracy was entrusted with productive assets
ranging from rock quarries and handlooms to nationalized banks and
large industrial units. Add to this mix incessant political pressure on the
civil service to abuse its powers and it is inevitable that corruption will
spread from the lower and middle levels to the senior levels. Once the
integrity of the officer corps of the civil service is compromised the state
is bound to start failing in the performance of its core and elaborated
functions, for a single corrupt and incompetent officer inflicts more
damage than hundreds of forgetful clerks, slothful peons, greedy traffic
police constables or other members of the bureaucratic underclass.20
The collapse of civil service morale and the decline in the intellectual
and moral qualities of its officers coupled with the absence of a rational
directing impulse from above has had a highly adverse impact on the
15 Orchestrated by Rajesh Pilot, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs.
16 Godbole, Unfinished Innings, 4.
17 Paul R. Brass, The New Cambridge History of India: The Politics of India since
Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 53.
18 Rajesh Tandon and Ranita Mohanty, eds., Does Civil Society Matter? Gover-
nance in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Sage, 2003), 83.
19 Tully, Raj to Rajiv, 51.
20 The members of this class are often driven to small-scale corruption and petty
harassment due to their economic plight, which is often intolerable. The numer-
ical strength of this class also makes adequate supervision, even by a competent
and committed officer corps, difficult. Should the officer corps itself become
dishonest and indifferent, the lower grades spin out of control.

financial administration of India. The proportion of direct taxes fell

from nearly forty percent of the total revenue in 1948-49 to about
sixteen percent in 1974-75.21 This trend has not shown signs of reversal
but the share of direct taxes in total revenue appears to have stabilized
in the sixteen to twenty percent range, notwithstanding the economic
liberalization measures of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ratio
of taxes to GDP is also extremely low, especially for a representative
government that is required by the constitution to establish a welfare
state and was governed by the ostensibly social-democratic Congress
Party for all but three of the first fifty years of independence. At present,
the center collects taxes equal to about one-tenth of GDP, half of which
are spent on paying interest on debt, with the rest going to defense
and administration. It is, therefore, not surprising that the center and
provinces are running up deficits in the eight to ten percent range and
the debt-to-GDP ratio stood at nearly eighty percent in early 2004.
Exacerbating the contradictions imposed on the financial
administration of India by self-government without self-taxation are
corruption and fraud. During the first twenty-five years of independence,22
according to “conservative official estimates”, the amount that escaped
the tax net rose from about half a billion rupees to nearly forty-five
billion rupees.23 A generation later, corruption is “endemic” and widely
perceived to be a “ubiquitous feature” of India’s “governance”.24 Tax
officials, by threatening people with over-assessment, secure bribes
and then under-assess the same income. The large industrial groups,
in collusion with politicians and tax-officials, made a mockery of the
socialistic controls implemented by Nehru after 1951, and effectively
turned their own country into a captive market from which excessive
profits at the expense of the consumer were derived. One favorite
method of engineering distortions was to purchase “import licenses in
the name of firms and individuals” that did not exist, while another was
to “obtain licenses for amounts much larger than they actually were”.25
Bribery is endemic and the socialist controls and rhetoric were handy
21 Alternatively, the share of indirect taxes rose from about sixty to eighty-four
percent during the same period. David Shelbourne, An Eye to India: The Un-
masking of a Tyranny (Suffolk: Penguin Books, 1977), 428.
22 1947-1972
23 Dilip Hiro, Inside India Today (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 32.
24 Tandon and Mohanty, eds., Does Civil Society Matter?, 93.
25 Hiro, Inside India Today, 35.

for justifying seizures of private property and assets and terrorizing

businessmen:
…the jungle of laws, regulations and controls that sprang

up in the name of socialism undoubtedly gave it a bad
name and provided a happy hunting-ground for corrupt
politicians and bureaucrats. One example is that of an
Indian industrialist who says there are no less than thirteen
government inspectors who can close his factory down.
None are apparently interested in inspecting the safety,
quality, pollution levels, or whatever else they are supposed
to inspect. All that they are interested is in collecting their
pay-offs.26
Another example is that of the rock quarries some fifteen miles from
Delhi, that were seized by the government under pressure from social
workers campaigning for the workers’ rights. Once the quarries had
been seized, however, the government proved unable to run them and
“so they have been handed back to the contractors. It is not the workers
who have benefited from the nationalization, but the officials. They
now have greater power over the contractors, so they demand greater
rewards”.27 This excess pales in contrast to the seizure of fourteen banks
by the state in 1969 on Indira Gandhi’s orders during the height of her
struggle against Morarji Desai in order to present the dispute as one of
policy rather than ego.28 The political leadership itself spends lavishly
on elections and looks upon such expenditures to be recouped from
the dispensation of patronage in the event of victory. Consequently,
“irrespective of which party wins, the nature and quality of political
leadership remain largely the same and the people end up being the
losers.”29
The arbitrariness and injustice of the financial administrative
machinery is complemented by the excesses committed on a regular
basis by the police, often with the connivance of higher authorities
and politicians. One common practice is to levy a protection tax on
26 Tully, Raj to Rajiv, 33.
27 Ibid., 65.
28 Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, served as prime minister from
1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984.
29 Tandon and Mohanty, eds., Does Civil Society Matter?, 93-94.

shopkeepers, small businessmen, service providers30 and beggars,

by threatening them with violence. The police demand bribes for
performing routine work, and murders, kidnapping, and arson, can be
arranged in exchange for money. In the 1970s, in the United Provinces,
for example, “hundreds of beautiful girls were abducted” for the
pleasure of Chief Minister Bahuguna and his supporters.31 In Haryana,
during the same period, the sister-in-law of Chief Minister Bansilal was
in charge of the female ward of the central jail. She mercilessly exploited
the women under her charge or did not bother to show up for work at
all.32 The senior officers dared not stop her because of her relationship
with the chief minister. On one occasion, she nearly beat a prisoner to
death for possessing a literacy manual.33 The prisoner was hospitalized
for three weeks. After she returned, however, her tormentor elevated
her to the position of supervisor, which completely turned the poor
girl’s head who:
Dreaming of the power she would now have over

everybody…began to show an aspect of herself about
which all the women, and the matrons too, had long since
warned us…the spite and vindictiveness which she now
displayed were a revelation. Sita laughed at our disbelief
and dismay. "What did I tell you?" she said. "They’re all the
same. Each one of them will bite the hand that feeds them
without hesitation if they think it is to their advantage. I’ve
lived with them for twenty years and I know what I am
talking about".34
Where the police “are themselves the most dangerous and disorderly
forces in the country” and rendered “pliable and responsive” to political
30 Ranging from taxi-drivers to prostitutes

31 Arun Gandhi, ed., The Morarji Papers: Fall of the Janata Government (New
Delhi: Vision Books, 1983), 132. There was also an established prostitution
racket involving senior officials and politicians that involved offering girls in
state-owned educational institutions an improvement of their grades in ex-
change for sexual favors.
32 Primila Lewis, Reason Wounded: A Personal Account of India’s Emergency (La-
hore: Vanguard Books Ltd., 1979), 113.
33 Ibid., 119.
34 Ibid., 142.

interference,35 law and order will break down. N. A. Palkhivala36 wrote

in the Illustrated Weekly of India on April 17, 1977, that “Fear, born of
terror, was more acute – particularly among the innocent – during the
twenty months of the Emergency than it was during the two centuries
of British rule”.37 Five years later, Palkhivala observed, in the Illustrated
Weekly on November 21, 1982, that:
Not since the abolition of thuggery by Lord William

Bentinck in the 1830s has violence characterized our
national life on a scale so widespread and so unchecked as
today…life is too easy for the criminals and too difficult for
law-abiding citizens.38
The law and order situation continued to deteriorate and towards the end
of the 1990s “more than 200 out of 535 districts” were “experiencing
insurgency, ethnic conflict, extremism, caste-clashes, and other crises”
while “In many areas the police themselves have become co-opted
by criminals, who wield considerable political influence”39 and “there
is increasing lawlessness and anarchy in most parts of the country.”40
During British rule, laws enacted to restrict liberties in the interests of
public order generated intense opposition and “It was taken for granted
that the governments in free India…would not emulate” the British.41
This belief has been proven false for, not only were repressive laws
maintained but those pertaining to the accountability of the state and its
officials before the law “…were rendered more illiberal.”42 It remains
a matter of “shame” that “after independence a Law Commission and
a Parliament felt that ‘in the circumstance prevailing in India’” state
officials needed “a far larger measure of protection…than was required
35 Brass, The New Cambridge History of India: The Politics of India since Indepen-
dence, 56-57.
36 Senior Advocate, Indian Supreme Court, Tagore Professor of Law at Calcutta
University, Indian ambassador to the United States 1977-79, Honorary Member
of the Academy of Political Science, New York.
37 N. A. Palkhivala, We, the People (Bombay: Strand Book Stall, 1988), 34.
38 Ibid., 3.
39 Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington D.C.: Brookings Insti-
tute Press, 2001), 116.
41 Noorani, Citizens’ Rights, Judges and State Accountability, 3.
42 Ibid., 120.

even by foreign rulers.”43 Combined with repressive laws, the Indian state
has sought to bring the spiraling levels of mismanagement, corruption,
and disorder, through greater material investment in the police.
The irony is that the numerical strength of the police and its
firepower has increased dramatically since independence. The former
rose from about four hundred and sixty-eight thousand to more than
nine hundred thousand in 198144 and presently stands at about two
million.45 The armed component of the police force, which is given
basic infantry training, increased from fifteen percent of the total
strength in 1950 to about fifty-six percent in 1970.46 The central reserve
police, created in 1949 with one battalion, increased to sixty battalions
by 1973.47 In spite of these measures, the army was called out to assist
civil power four hundred and seventy-six times between 1951 and 1970,
and three hundred and sixty-nine times between 1980 and 1990.48
One of these interventions, conducted in 1984, was codenamed
Operation Bluestar, and entailed storming the Golden Temple at
Amritsar in order to dislodge Sikh insurgents.49 The significance of this
episode is not derived from the exceeding incompetence and brutality
with which the insurgents were put down.50 Nor was it extraordinary that
thousands of Sikh soldiers, outraged by the Indian army’s operations,
mutinied and more than a hundred of them were killed in the process.51
What does shed light on the inherent oppression of the subcontinent’s
culture of power is that following Indira Gandhi’s assassination on
October 31, 1984, by her Sikh bodyguards a countrywide pogrom was
organized by the ruling Congress party:
43 Ibid., 123.
44 Brass, The New Cambridge History of India: The Politics of India since Indepen-
dence, 55.
45 This puts the ratio of police officers to population at roughly two per thou-
sand.
46 Hiro, Inside India, 205.
47 Ibid.
48 Javed Hassan, India: A Study in Profile (Rawalpindi: Services Book Club,
1990), 176.
49 The Golden Temple is the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Amritsar is a ma-
jor urban center in the Indian Punjab, about an hour’s drive from Lahore, the
capital of Pakistani Punjab.
50 An estimated three thousand civilians and insurgents were killed in the op-
eration in addition to about seven hundred Indian soldiers. Kuldip Nayar and
Khushwant Singh, Tragedy of Punjab: Operation Bluestar and After (New Delhi:
Vision Books Pvt., Ltd., 1984), 108-9.
51 Ibid. About one in twelve Indian soldiers is a Sikh.

The pattern was similar all over; the people living on the
periphery of society as well as habitation, led or instigated
by local Congress (I) men, looting property and then
setting fire to it and even killing or burning the owners
and occupants. In Delhi, the worst affected city, there was
virtually no law and order for three days….52
One institution that has done better than most in containing

the arbitrariness of executive power and taken a public stand against
excesses committed by the state apparatus is the higher judiciary.
Almost immediately after independence, the judiciary ruled “in favor
of the traditional landlords who had fallen out of favor with the ruling
Congress” and stood to have their properties confiscated in the name
of scientific socialism.53 Nehru, for his part, “chastised the courts for
standing in the way of socialism”54 and drew distinctions between those
judges committed to upholding the directive principles, which could
be interpreted to allow arbitrariness in order to attain socialistic goals,
against those who gave priority to maintaining the fundamental rights
of individuals.55 On April, 24, 1973, seven supreme court justices ruled
in the Kevananda Bharati case that Parliament could not “alter or destroy
the basic structure or framework of the Constitution” regardless of the
size of the government’s majority.56 The right of the Indian Supreme
Court to exercise judicial review is more important than in presidential
systems because in a parliamentary democracy the prime minister and his
allies are almost certain to command a majority in the central legislature.
However, the rapid increase in the volume of litigation handled by
the courts has put them under immense pressure. Between 1977 and
1983, for example, the number of cases pending in High Courts rose
from nearly six hundred thousand to “more than one million”, while
the Supreme Court’s backlog stood at nearly one hundred and forty
thousand at the end of 1983.57 At present, there are more than thirty
52 Ibid., 181. Estimates of the number killed range from the hundreds to more
than ten thousand.
53 Marc Galantier, Law and Society in Modern India, ed., Rajeev Bhavan, (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1988), xxii.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., xxvi.
56 Palkhivala, We, the People, 296.
57 Ibid., 298.

million cases pending before Indian courts “and most people have lost
faith in the capacity of the justice system to resolve disputes in time or
to punish culprits.”58
The rise in litigation reflects the mass of legislation and regulations
that have been enacted since independence. It is estimated between
1947 and 1967, one thousand six hundred “statues”, one hundred
“regulations”, one hundred “presidential acts”, and one hundred
and fifty “ordinances” were passed, most on executive direction.59 In
addition, five thousand or so rules and directives were issued annually
by “government departments” during the same period.60 The snail’s
pace and technicalities of the court system also help explain why
a police force, whose institutional autonomy is daily undermined by
elected politicians, and whose service conditions have deteriorated
since independence, finds it easier to administer vigilante justice than
properly investigate cases and send them for prosecution.61 Another
complication is that at present the Indian state is itself “the biggest
litigant” while “the entire scheme by the framers of the constitution
to ensure proper appointments to the judiciary has been reduced to
a farce.”62 The resulting “Demoralization breeds corruption and other
judicial vices such as favouritism.”63 At the highest levels the judiciary
has failed to rule decisively on issues vital to the integrity of the Indian

59 Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative
and Historical Perspective (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publication by arrangement
with the Cambridge University Press, 1995), 47.
60 Ibid., 47-48.
61 Speaking at a police conference on June 10, 1981, the British Home Secretary,
William Whitelaw, elucidated important aspects of the Anglo-Saxon culture of
power and State of Laws: “I think…that it is highly desirable that the enforce-
ment of the criminal law should not be subject to political control or influences.
As Home Secretary, I cannot give direction to chief constables on operational
matters…. I do not believe that the majority of people in this country would
welcome or would tolerate the situation in which local or national politicians
could direct the police operations or influence decisions on who should be
prosecuted.” Noorani, Citizens’ Rights, Judges and State Accountability, 135.
Noorani observes “The law in India is no different from that in Britain. What
is different is the actual set-up which is brazenly violative of the law.” Ibid.,
136. The “set up” refers to the broad category of responses to the state and
the exercise of authority that comprise cultures of power. Laws can be changed
overnight. Cultures of power change, if at all, at a glacial rate.
62 Ibid., 18-19.
63 Ibid., 71.

State of Laws, such as secularism,64 and police accountability for torture

and custodial deaths.65
The Emergency of 1975-77 damaged the reputation of the
Supreme Court as the upholder of individual liberties and fundamental
rights against executive overstretch. Out of a bench of five judges only
one, Justice H. R. Khanna, dissented against the decision to suspend
habeas corpus.66 Incidentally, the declaration of emergency in 1975 was
precipitated by the Allahabad High Court’s conviction of Indira Gandhi
for electoral malpractices, including the use of government assets in
her 1970 election campaign. Once emergency was declared, the court
reversed its decision. After the emergency was lifted, and Indira Gandhi
voted out of power in 1977, the new Janata Party government under
Morarji Desai tried to bring the former incumbent to justice. Special
courts were constituted to try Indira for corruption and a reference was
filed challenging her dismissal of nine provincial governments. Neither
the corruption charges nor the reference could be made to stick, the
proceedings turned into a cruel farce, the Janata government itself
disintegrated into its component parties, and Indira emerged from this
episode a martyr and was swept back into power in 1980.
Far more dangerous than any backlog of cases is the apparent
inability of the courts, police, and investigating agencies to get a handle
on corruption. Most Indians believe their politicians, civil servants,
landlords, and successful businessmen, to be corrupt. Yet, between
1950 and 1975, not one minister was brought to justice. Bribery is often
done openly and without any understanding or fear of the law, which
is treated with impunity and contempt by the ruling classes. In August
1970, for example, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s younger son, was
granted a license to manufacture fifty thousand small cars a year (the
Maruti) that were to be marketed by the government for six thousand
rupees each. The site selected for the project was in Gurgaon, in the
province of Haryana, where the “notoriously corrupt, arrogant, and
vindictive” Chief Minister Bansilal, who later rose to the position of
minister for defense, “had placed himself and the whole of Haryana,
which he ruled like a despot, at the service of the personal needs of
the Prime Minister and her son.”67 A one hundred and seventy million
64 Ibid., 56, 68.
65 Ibid., 126-127.
66 Palkhivala, We, the People, 354.
67 Lewis, Reason Wounded, 113.

rupees investment was approved within a week by the Punjab National

Bank, the Central Bank of India, and the Industrial Finance Corporation,
without any security. About one thousand five hundred farmers were
strong-armed into selling their land at one-fifth of its market value to
make way for India’s rising son and his wonder of scientific socialism.
Sanjay never got around to producing a single unit and, in 1975, with
the projected per unit cost having spiraled upwards to about twenty-five
thousand rupees, he turned his attention to population control and slum
clearance. The resultant program of “forced vasectomies” and urban
renewal “targeted the poor and lowly, leading the wits to comment that
having failed to get rid of poverty68 the Congress had taken to getting
rid of the poor”.69
While the “pervasiveness of corruption in India is a well-established
and often reiterated fact”70 it is one of the most important “symptoms
of the collapse of the institutions of governance that are supposed
to manage the relationship between citizens and the state”.71 Not
surprisingly, “corruption in the private sector is as deep as that in the
public sector”72 and feeds off the arbitrariness of the political leadership,
financial administration, and criminal justice system. Amongst the more
telling effects of corruption is its ability to render the writ of the state
ineffective and brings about consequences diametrically opposed to
policy objectives. Nearly fifteen years since the process of process of
economic liberalization began it is being asserted that “Deregulation
has made almost no impact at the district and village level” while “In
many ways, the poor actually subsidize the rich.”73 Equally alarming is the
growing “social acceptability of corruption”, stringent provisions in
the Indian Penal Code and the 1998 Prevention of Corruption Act
notwithstanding.74
Politicians treat government assets and funds, and the possessions
of ordinary Indians, as if they were personal property. In 2003, Mayawati,
the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, on her forty-eighth birthday,
declared it an annual official function and spent thirteen and a half
68 The 1970 campaign slogan was “Eliminate Poverty”.

69 Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, 76.
71 Ibid., 150.
72 Ibid., 147.
73 Ibid., 149. Emphasis in original.
74 Ibid., 151-152.

million rupees from the province’s contingency funds, on its celebration.

Official transport, security, and personnel were commandeered for the
function. Later that year, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi,75 the
elected rulers of Bihar, celebrated the wedding of their daughter. In
order to provide transport for the wedding procession, Laloo Prasad’s
henchmen confiscated forty-five luxury cars from showrooms in the
provincial capital.76 To provide bedding and furniture for the wedding,
one hundred sofa sets and other items were seized from shops. To
provide gift clothes, seven hundred thousand rupees worth of fabric
were confiscated from Raymonds’ outlets alone. To provide sweets and
dry fruits, bakers and vendors were compelled to hand over tens of
thousands of rupees worth of their stocks. Before the Tatas, one of
India’s leading business and industrial families, lodged a First Incident
Report with the police, they first locked down their showrooms and
evacuated their employees to Calcutta for fear of reprisal.77 It appears
that B. K. Nehru’s understanding of his people has proven better than
Jawaharlal Nehru’s, for, both Laloo Prasad Yadav, and Mayawati, style
themselves deliverers of the downtrodden from upper-caste oppression.
Their actions demonstrate that being of the people, and being for the
people, are not naturally compatible. Ordinary Indians can easily justify
their excesses by pointing out that their leaders - political, bureaucratic,
and entrepreneurial – have, with few exceptions, gotten ahead by looting
and defrauding the state and its citizens.
The Congress had undergone changes for the worse under Indira
Gandhi, and its leaders sorely lacked the intellectual and moral qualities
necessary for ensuring even a tolerable level of quality in governance.
Indira, unlike Nehru, did not tolerate dissent. Lacking her father’s
stature or ability, she destroyed the autonomous political process within
Congress, packed it with “hand picked protégés”,78 and,
During the Emergency even the pretence of democratic

functioning was given up and her favorite son and heir
75 An illiterate mother of nine. When she first became Chief Minister, she swore
in a cabinet with seventy-five ministers.
76 Patna, the ancient capital of the Mauryas.
77 Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are amongst India’s poorest and most
lawless states
78 Khalid Mahmud, Indian Political Scene, 1989: Main Contenders for Power (Is-
lamabad: Institute of Regional Studies, 1989), 32.

apparent, Sanjay, ran the party apparatus like a mafia boss,

hiring and firing people and distributing patronage without
any reference to the formal organizational structure.79
The presidency of Congress “became not only a non-elective but

also a hereditary institution”80 and the organization came to be
characterized by “arbitrary decision-making, corruption, opportunism,
and encouragement of incompetent sycophants.”81 While Sanjay lived,
he was “the most important extra-constitutional center of power” and
even chief ministers could only secure appointments with Indira through
him.82 Indira Gandhi had also created the Research and Analysis Wing
(RAW) in the Union Cabinet Secretariat in 1967, placed it under her
direct supervision, and took for herself the power to make appointments
and recruit new personnel – tasks that should have come under the
purview of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). RAW was
designed as an instrument in Indira Gandhi’s arsenal “available for
whatever purpose she thought fit”, and it was “more active gathering
intelligence at home than abroad.”83
Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s eldest son, who stayed away from politics until
his mother’s assassination in 198484 entered the arena with a clean image,
as he had never exercised power before. Rajiv began an anti-corruption
drive and pledged to shake up Congress. Within months, however, Rajiv
found himself defending socialism, allegations of corruption emerged
against his own government, and V.P. Singh, the minister in charge of
the much vaunted anti-corruption drive, resigned complaining that the
prime minister was not serious about the accountability process.
The electoral process is characterized by “massive rigging by
impersonation, booth-capturing and various other malpractices”, the
“electoral rolls are notoriously flawed all over the country”, the voter
identity cards, upon which ten billion rupees were spent, have yet to be
made mandatory.85 Political parties nominate “Notorious criminals and
rapaciously corrupt persons…for public office with impunity”,86 and
79 Ibid., 33.
80 Ibid., 34.
81 Ibid., 36.
82 Godbole, Unfinished Innings, 105.
83 Ibid., 91.
84 Sanjay Gandhi died in an air crash in 1980.
86 Ibid.

“function as closed oligarchies and personal fiefdoms”.87

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, a right-wing party
inspired by Hindu revivalism and intimately linked to the fundamentalist
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)88 began to stake an increasingly
convincing claim to being the national alternative to Congress. This was
the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP), founded in 1980. In the 1984 national
elections, the BJP won two seats. In 1989, the BJP won eighty-five, in
1991 one hundred and twenty, in 1996 one hundred and sixty-one, and
in 1998 one hundred and eighty seats. The BJP’s share of the popular
vote more than tripled from about seven and a half percent in 1984 to
nearly twenty-six percent in 1998.89 The growth of the RSS has also
been phenomenal. In 1977, it had six thousand branches, in 1983 about
nineteen thousand branches and seven hundred thousand volunteers,
and in 2000 forty-five thousand branches, thirteen thousand educational
institutions, one million seven hundred thousand students and seventy-
five thousand teachers.90
As early as March 1944, the Home Department of the Government
of India described the RSS as an organization that “concentrated on the
formation of a militant body on fascist lines.”91 This evaluation is shared
by many:
“The RSS line is very clear. It is a supra-party, paramilitary

organization which wants to take over the state and the
nation and establish an authoritarian regime in the manner
of the Nazi Leaders”, wrote the ideologue and leader of
the Janata Party, Madhu Limaye, in an article in Sunday on
10 June 1979…Limaye was only echoing something which
Gandhi had said long ago. According to his secretary
Pyarelal, Gandhi had described the RSS as a “communal
body with a totalitarian outlook” and compared them to
the Nazis and fascists.92
87 Ibid., 109.
88 Founded in 1925.
89 A. G. Noorani, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (New Delhi: Left-
Word Books, 2000), 9.
90 Ibid., 12.
91 Ibid., 26.
92 M. J. Akbar, India: The Siege Within, Challenges to a Nation’s Unity (Suffolk:
Penguin Books Ltd., 1985), 305.

The Hindutva ideology espoused by the BJP and RSS is based upon an
uncompromising cultural nationalism, calls for the creation of a Hindu
State (rashtra), the nullification of the existing constitutional order,
autarky, the establishment of an empire stretching from the Khyber Pass
to Rangoon, and no tolerance for minorities and other communities or
points of view. Though leading members of BJP think tanks, like Balbir
K. Punj, who is also a member of the Rajy Sabha, assert that “India is
a secular and vibrant democracy because it is essentially Hindu”,93 The
ultimate objective of the Hindu revivalists is to establish an omnipotent,
centralized, state, where the rulers and their appointed servants are
legitimized by divine sanction. In other words, ideocratic arbitrary rule.
The desire to revert to a Hindu rashtra is sustained by “A paranoid,
pathological kind of Islamophobia” combined with an intense
“sense of inferiority”94 vis-à-vis both Islam and the West. The Hindu
revivalists overcompensate by seeking to indoctrinate others, through
their impressive network of schools and cultural organizations, in the
“Hindutva notion of India’s incomparably glorious” ancient past.95 The
ideological father of the RSS, Golwalkar, “was notoriously fascinated
by Nazism and Italian fascism and directly praised Hitler’s view of
racial purity”.96 Hindutva’s unimaginative and recycled version of
social Darwinism, has found an audience amongst “India’s globalizing
middle-classes” that “are seceding from, and turning against, the
mass of the people” who they treat with “horrendous callousness”.97
Globalization, consumerism, and the information technology boom,
have combined to produce an elite that “is strongly drawn to the culture
of authoritarianism” and obsessed with force and coercion:98
The Bajrang Dal functions like the modern-day equivalent

of storm-troopers and used physical violence to intimidate
opponents. Bajrang Dal goons and ruffians periodically
93 Balbir K. Punj, “Hindu Rashtra,” South Asian Journal (October-December
2003), 12.
94 Praful Bidwai, “A Critique of Hindutva,” South Asian Journal (October-Decem-
ber 2003), 20.
95 Ibid., 30. Never mind that the Hindus themselves had little interest in their
own history and the task of bringing Ancient India above the historical horizon
fell upon the British.
96 Ibid., 21.
97 Ibid., 30.
98 Ibid.

smash public property and burn churches and mosques,

as happened in Orissa, where an Australian missionary and
his two young sons were burnt alive in 2001. This is just
when Prime Minister Vajpayee was calling for a “national
debate” on religious conversion.99
Another interesting case study of what Hindutva means in practice

can be found in the province of Gujarat on India’s west coast, which
has been ruled by the BJP since 1998. This province, with fifty million
people, is home to five percent of India’s population but generates
about twelve percent of the country’s industrial output.100 Gujarat has
a very prominent and cosmopolitan mercantile elite with centuries of
trading experience and is the ancestral home of both India’s Mahatma
and Pakistan’s founder and Quaid-i-Azam.101 Gujarat is India’s most
industrialized province102 and has averaged an economic growth rate of
nearly nine percent a year since the early 1990s.103 More than six-tenths of
the population is literate, life expectancy stands at sixty-three years, and
the infant mortality rate, at sixty-three per thousand, is good by regional
standards.104 Today, however:
…the land of Gujarat is known for housing some of the

most dedicated communal arsonists, and there are signs in
the form of painted graffiti and billboards which announce
that this is a Hindu rashtra…105
…A clear and incontrovertible marker of this culture of
political authoritarianism is the staging of state spectacles,
whereby theatrical and dramatic public demonstrations of
authoritarian power [are] displayed.106
The former Chief Minister of Gujarat, Kehubhai Patel, for instance,

99 Ibid., 26.
100 Ghanshyam Shah, Mario Rutten, and Hein Streefkerk, eds., Development and
Deprivation in Gujarat (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002), 37.
101 Mahatma Gandhi and Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
102 Shah, Rutten, and Streefkerk, eds., Development and Deprivation in Gujarat,
40.
103 Ibid., 37.
104 Ibid., 50-51.
105 Ibid., 59.
106 Ibid., 62.

attended an RSS camp, dressed in RSS uniform, standing besides L. K.

Advani.107 The massacre of thousands of Gujarati Muslims in February
2002 by the RSS in association with the provincial government, drew
a poignant response from Khushwant Singh, one of India’s leading
novelists, critics, and political commentators:
These are dark times for India. The carnage in Gujarat,

Bapu Gandhi’s home state, in early 2002 and the subsequent
landslide victory of Narendra Modi in the elections will
spell disaster for our country. The fascist agenda of Hindu
fanatics is unlike anything we have experienced in our
modern history…Far from becoming mahaan (great),
India is going to the dogs, and unless a miracle saves us,
the country will break up. It will not be Pakistan or any
other foreign power that will destroy us; we will commit
hara-kiri.108
An equally sobering thought is the possibility of “despotism by

invitation” motivated by the increasingly “desperate quest for order”:
As the propertied and educated middle and upper classes,

which have a great stake in peace and order, become
disenchanted with the governance process, they are coming
to the dangerous conclusion that freedom and democracy
are synonymous with chaos and anarchy. Most of the
urban middle classes have already become votaries of some
form of authoritarianism that can bring order and peace, at
whatever cost - the threat of dictatorship does not lie in a
possible coup d’état but may creep into the system with the
acquiescence of the middle and upper classes.109
Apparently, India’s public mind is shrinking:
The malign upper-caste orientation of Hindutva, and

its utility as an instrument of domination not just of
107 Ibid. Advani has served as the BJP-led government’s Union Home Minister and
is presently the deputy prime minister.
108 Khushwant Singh, The End of India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2003), 3-4.

religious minorities but all underprivileged groups, finds its

highest expression in what might be called the Golwakar
Programme, outlined by the RSS’s most important
ideologue. The Golwakar Programme consists in
systematically assaulting modern-liberal ideas, weakening
and undermining all democratic institutions, and using
coercion to disenfranchise the minorities politically so as to
turn them into second-class citizens without any rights.
The Gujarat pogrom of 2002, in which 2,000 Muslims were

massacred with state complicity under BJP Chief Minister
Narendra Modi, shows the extent to which the Hindutva
forces can go in implementing the Golwalkar Programme.
The Vajpayee government has shamelessly colluded with
Modi and shielded him in a variety of unseemly ways. This
not only proved the secularists’ contention that Vajpayee’s
image as a “soft” leader or half-liberal is totally deceptive:
he is as steeped in Hindutva’s toxic ideology and communal
politics as anyone else. It also showed that Hindutva
remains the most serious and deadly menace to democracy
in India.110
The Hindu revivalist challenge involves more than cosmetic
changes in the ideocratic complex of the Indian state, which, until
recently, was characterized by a mixture of socialism, secularism,
Gandhian philosophy, and a vociferous commitment to democracy and
social reform. This, “the common but debased rhetoric of power”111 of
the Congress party is giving way to a new set of ideological certainties
equally “grounded in illusion”112 but rendered far more dangerous for
the State of Laws due to the fact that in their use of Hindu idiom they
tap into the emotional basis of Indian civilization. As Al-Beruni’s Kitab-
ul-Hind made clear nearly a thousand years ago, the objective of the
subcontinent’s oldest intellectual tradition is to help the educated elite
avoid contact with reality. That the New Cambridge History of India devotes
an entire volume to “argue that caste has been for many centuries a
real and active part of Indian life, and not just a self-serving orientalist
110 Bidwai, “A Critique of Hindutva,” South Asian Journal, 31.

111 Shelbourne, An Eye to India, 94.
112 Ibid., 101.

fiction”113 is one indication that the state of mind described by Al-

Beruni is not only alive and well, but has become sufficiently aggressive
and self-confident to intimidate Western scholars.114 In the absence of
a reality check from outside, a splendid edifice of rhetoric has been
erected, which, if it were one’s principal source of information, would
make it seem that the Congress was the center of British India’s political
universe, that the caste system was produced by the machinations of the
Raj, the Timurid Emperor Akbar was a great liberal-secular-nationalist,
or that the Mauryan Empire was the original socialist utopia. Perhaps
the greatest indicator of the extent to which the Indian elite is wrapped
up in a world of make-believe is,
Mohandas Gandhi…he looked at India as no Indian was

able to; his vision was direct, and this directness was, and is,
revolutionary. He sees exactly what the visitor sees; he does
not ignore the obvious…He sees the Indian callousness,
the Indian refusal to see…he looks down to the roots of
the static decayed society. And the picture of India which
comes out of his writings and exhortations over more than
thirty years still holds: this is the measure of his failure…115
…It is as if, in England, Florence Nightingale had become
a saint, honored by statues everywhere, her name on every
lip; and the hospitals had remained as she had described
them.116
The ideocratic complex of the Indian state, which is extraordinarily
elaborate and multi-faceted, is, in effect, a grand attempt to justify
“Inaction” through loudly “proclaimed function.”117
The ability of the Indian state to perform even its core functions
113 Susan Bayly, The New Cambridge History of India: Caste, Society and Politics
from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 3.
114 Kautilya’s Arthashastra, compiled around 300 BC makes is abundantly clear
that caste existed and was incorporated into the criminal justice system and
the financial administration. For example, Brahmins were exempt from certain
taxes and could not be given capital punishment, while the lower castes were
subject to harsher fines and higher taxes. Villages were populated, by state di-
rective, to ensure that each was dominated by a single caste and economically
self-sufficient. See Chapters I, II, and III, for details.
115 V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness (London: Pelican Books, 1968), 73.
116 Ibid., 80.
117 Ibid., 81.

has been increasingly compromised by the reassertion of the culture

of power of the subcontinent since independence. Indian politicians
are arbitrary, corrupt, incompetent, driven to self-aggrandizement and
devoid of that minimum of enlightened self-interest necessary for the
discharge of their duties as elected representatives. The survival of
India’s legal democracy appears to have more to do with the institutional
and intellectual inheritance from the British Raj than the competence
of the indigenous ruling classes of politicians, big businessmen, and
bureaucrats.
The behavioral pattern of these classes manifests a level of
arbitrariness incompatible with the survival of the institutions upon
which the governance of India depends. These institutions, instead of
being consciously nurtured and strengthened, were, and are, derisively
categorized as relics of the British colonial legacy, a steel frame
possessed of a vision limited to the maintenance of law and order
and the collection of taxes rendered obsolete by the new sophistries
of the age of development paradigms. Thus, there was a failure at the
highest level to understand that the British, far from teaching India
bureaucracy and authoritarianism, had learnt how to contain the two
and reduce the level of arbitrariness inherent in the exercise of state-
power in continental bureaucratic empires. This was done by recasting
the state as a complex of autonomous institutions governed by rational
laws, in contradistinction to the subcontinent’s tradition of governance
through servile instruments dependent on the ruler’s will. Of course, the
responses accumulated by Indians over thousands of years could not be
miraculously changed or wished away. They could only be reformed
with patience and persistence derived from rational thought.
The post-independence leadership’s perception of the state,
however, was based upon a sub-rational and empirically unsound grasp
of the historical experience of governance, and rapidly gave in to the
subcontinent’s culture of power. Instead of protecting private property,
the state undermined that institution under the cover of socialist rhetoric.
The civil service was reduced through arbitrary transfers, promotions,
and suspensions, to servility. The police suffered a similar fate, and
became criminalized, and politicized. The financial administration,
instead of being empowered by self-government to make tax collection
more progressive, became increasingly reliant on indirect taxation,
thus reversing the positive trends evident under British rule. India’s

much touted democracy, now in its sixth decade, does not rest on the
foundation of self-taxation, and shows no inclination of ever doing so.
The judiciary, though it has performed reasonably well in rearguard
actions, cannot be expected to escape the general institutional decay
and, thus, single-handedly bring about a reversal in fortunes. Even the
military, if state failure persists, may be drawn into the political vortex.
The legislatures, provincial and central, far from being India’s salvation,
are the major cause of system-wide deterioration. Their failure to have
a meaningful impact on the manner in which power is exercised is
underscored by the fact that Hindu revivalism is seeping into the state
structure through the electoral process. This revival is a symptom and a
cause of the inability of the Indian leadership to exercise power through
the state rationally, lawfully, and with due respect for institutions.
India is trapped in a crisis from which there is no real escape. The
culture of power and historical experience of governance both militate
in favor of Hindu revivalism and the rebirth of an Arthashastra state.
This outcome terrifies minorities, leftists, liberals, and many political
parties including the Congress, which headed the opposition to the BJP-
led government and presently forms the government at the center. The
groups ranged in opposition, however, are only marginally less irrational
than the Hindu revivalists. The Congress, having governed India for
about forty-seven years, has done more than any other group to render
the state ineffective, corrupt, and incapable of rational comprehension,
and thus paved the way for the open reassertion of the subcontinent’s
culture of power.
The point to be understood is that when some Indian politicians
abduct girls to satisfy their carnal appetites, arbitrarily transfer civil
servants, use state funds to finance lavish expenditure on their birthdays,
seize the assets of their people, otherwise abuse their power to enrich
their personal connections, or use religion for political purposes, they
do not really believe that they are doing wrong. As far are they are
concerned, like Timurid mansabdars or Hindu princes, the part of the
country over which they wield power is a personal estate. The civil
servants are their personal servants. The people are their personal
subjects. State and private property is their personal property. If they
win the election, then it is taken as a sign of divine favor solicited by
doing homage to gurus and filing nomination papers on the auspicious
date determined by astrologers.

The idea that the country is not a vast personal estate, over which
power is gained by divine sanction and sustained by personal servants
operating servile instruments, is imported from the British. Barring a
dramatic realization amongst the parties and groups in opposition to
the BJP-RSS axis that their struggle is, above all else, against their own
culture of power, it appears that ideocratic arbitrary rule either in the
form of a Hindu rashtra or some other shape, is condemned to triumph,
and the State of Laws is doomed to collapse.118
118 The BJP does not have to secure a clear majority of the popular vote to com-
mand a two-thirds majority in the central legislature. Congress, for example,
has never secured more than 48.1% of the popular vote, although it enjoyed
two-thirds majorities in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1971, and 1984.

CHAPTER XI
THE CULTURE OF POWER AND

THE GOVERNANCE OF PAKISTAN SINCE 1947
O n August 11, 1947, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah

addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan as its president
and the governor-general designate. This address spelled out the historic
significance of the emergence of Pakistan, the powers of the constituent
assembly, major socioeconomic problems such as black marketeering
and corruption, containing “nepotism and jobbery”, aspirations for a
great future, and the relationship between the state and religion:1
The first and the foremost thing that I would like to

emphasize is this - remember that you are now a Sovereign
legislative body and you have got all the powers. It,
therefore, places on you the gravest responsibility as to how
you should take your decisions…You will no doubt agree
with me that the first duty of a Government is to maintain
law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs
of its subjects are fully protected by the State.
1 Mohammed Ali Jinnah, “Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of
Pakistan”, Karachi, August 11, 1947. Two days later, at a banquet for Viceroy
Mountbatten at Karachi, Jinnah acknowledged the imminent attainment of self-
government for India and Pakistan as the outcome of “the deep concern and
definite objective of the British nation”. In “pursuit of that policy since the
days of Macaulay there never was any question about the principle, but there
remained always the question of how and when”. The tone and content of
Jinnah’s speeches and statements are rational, substantially reflect his ground-
ing in liberal political thought and practice, and, in dealing with real problems
confronted by the state, are refreshingly un-ideocratic.

…everyone of you, no matter to what community he

belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the
past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first,
second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights,
privileges, and obligations…
We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of

time all these angularities of the majority and minority
communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim
community, because even as regards Muslims you have
Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among
the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also
Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish. Indeed if you ask
me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India
to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we
would have been free people long long ago. No power can
hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million
souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and
even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its
hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore,
we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free
to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques
or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan.
You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has
nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know,
history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago,
were much worse than those prevailing in India today...
We are starting with this fundamental principle that we
are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people
of England in course of time had to face the realities of
the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and
burdens placed upon them by the government of their
country and they went through that fire step by step.
Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics
and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every
man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they
are all members of the Nation.
Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal

The Culture of Power and the Governance of Pakistan | 265
and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease
to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not
in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of
each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the
State.
Jinnah, as his authoritative address to the Constituent Assembly of

Pakistan makes clear, hoped that Pakistan would improve and strengthen
the embryonic legal democracy inherited from the British, establish the
supremacy of parliament, and protect permanent institutions of state
from the arbitrariness of the government. The State of Laws, as the
reference to British history indicates, could only survive if it refrained
from identifying its authority with divine sanction or ideological
certainties.
Jinnah’s untimely death on September 11, 1948, deprived Pakistan
of the one leader who had the intellectual capacity, moral authority,
and intuitive grasp of Anglo-Saxon state morality, to lead it towards a
durable rationally derived constitutional order. Developments such as
Indian progress in constitution making, Liaquat Ali Khan and many
Muslim League leaders’ lack of a sound provincial political base in
West Pakistan, pressure from the ulema, the language controversy in
East Bengal, and a tense international climate, all played a role in the
formulation and timing of the Objectives Resolution on March 12,
1949.
When the Objectives Resolution was passed, Maulana Maudoodi
and many leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) were under arrest for
declaring that the war in Kashmir was not a Jihad.2 Liaquat Ali Khan
“…equated opposition to the Muslim League with opposition to
Pakistan itself, and made it clear publicly that he would not tolerate the
existence of an opposition party as long as he lived.”3 In February 1949,
the Jamaat held a session at Dhaka attended by ten thousand people and
demanded the establishment of an Islamic State.4
Compare the text of the Objectives Resolution to Jinnah’s August
11, 1947, address to the Constituent Assembly and it becomes clear why
the former represents a major step in the direction of the traditionalist
2 Allen McGrath, The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy (Karachi: Oxford
3 Ibid., 67.
4 Ibid., 68.

vision of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan’s reiteration of the standard apology

that Islam, in theory, does not have priesthood and so cannot lead to
theocracy did little to assuage the fears of minorities that the Objectives
Resolution had opened the door to the theocratization of the state. Sris
Chandra Chattopadhya (E. Bengal, Congress) warned that:
The State must respect all religions: no smiling face for

one and askance look to the other. The State religion is
a dangerous principle. Previous instances are sufficient to
warn us not to repeat the blunder…What I hear in this
Resolution is not the voice of the great creator of Pakistan
– the Quaid-i-Azam…but of the ulemas of the land…this
resolution in its present form epitomizes that spirit of
reaction…But I feel it is useless bewailing before you, it is
useless reasoning with you. You show yourselves incapable
of the humility that either victory or religion ought to
generate…I wish you saw reason.5
Just as the Congress leadership in India justified its assault on the

institution of private property through socialist rhetoric, the Muslim
League manifested its subconscious desire for reversion to ideocratic
arbitrary rule by undermining the secular orientation and structure of
the state inherited from the British.
Perhaps the most important institution bequeathed to Pakistan was
the civil service. In 1947, out of the one hundred and one Muslim officers
in the ICS and IPS, ninety-five opted for Pakistan. Fifty British officers
and eleven Muslim war-service candidates brought the total strength
of the central administrative officer corps to about one hundred and
sixty. Of these, six were sent on diplomatic assignments and fifteen
constituted the higher judiciary. In terms of experience, about half had
less than ten years of service, and only twenty were more than forty
years old. Even if the one hundred and thirty Muslim officers in the
provincial services are included, the total strength of Pakistan’s higher
administrative cadres in its early years stood, at generous estimate, at
approximately two hundred and ninety.6
5 Constituent Assembly Debates 12 March, 1949 (Karachi: Government Publica-
tion, 1949), 90-94.
6 The premature nature of the transfer of power was underlined by the fact that
British officers continued to head the Establishment Division of the Govern-

Partition plunged the Punjab into chaos, the central government

records due to be transferred from New Delhi to Karachi were, in many
cases, destroyed en route, millions of refugees poured into and out of
Pakistan, and war broke out with India over Kashmir. Between 1947
and 1951, the bureaucracy, British and Muslim officers alike, worked
with manic determination to restore law and order and the financial
administration. Indeed, “to have constructed a nation for several
years with about fifty experienced government officials of reasonable
maturity in policy-making positions is a singular tribute to both the
British administrative heritage and Muslim perseverance.”7
The institutional integrity of the bureaucracy could not, however,
last without political leadership sufficiently enlightened to understand
that it was responsible for giving direction to an impersonal state ruled
through Anglo-Saxon norms of law and rationality as opposed to a
whimsically run personal estate. The bureaucracy was “assaulted by the
demands for patronage by the politicians”, non-compliant officers were
subjected to arbitrary transfers that “could be so frequent as to nearly
ruin the personal finances of an officer”,8 and nearly half of the civil
service officers found themselves transferred within a year.9 Insult was
added to injury when the civil service was “denounced by politicians
as being responsible for almost whatever complaint the public had
registered and thus excoriated by the people for being too aloof and too
British in their ways.”10 Neither the people nor their relatively wealthy
and westernized elected representatives understood the immense
difficulty of applying both the rule of law and meritocracy to a socio-
cultural context dominated by sub-rational loyalties of caste, kinship,
sect, tribe, and the like:
…the official must not only be physically detached but

must exaggerate the drama of his detachment. To be close
to the people is to place oneself in a web from which
there is no escape. In a society so full of intrigue, of tribal
ment of Pakistan from 1947 to 1961 whereas the Civil Services Academy was
headed by British officers for its first nine years.
7 Joseph La Palombara, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development, Public Bu-
reaucracy and Judiciary in Pakistan by Ralph Braibanti (Princeton: Princeton
8 Ibid., 385.
9 Ibid., 399.
10 Ibid., 385.

animosity, of vengeance, and of incredible biradri pressures

for favoritism, the mere posture of familiarity inevitably
creates a reputation for partiality which leads to actual
partiality…11
The rapid promotions to fill higher level posts in the first decade
of Pakistan’s independence, growing political interference, and the
expansion of functions, undermined prospects for the cultivation of
moral relationships based on demonstrable competence between
superiors and subordinates within the bureaucratic hierarchy:
The confidence of officers, which had stemmed from

certainty of knowledge and skill, was destroyed, and refuge
was sought in the use of artificial status barriers as a means
of wielding authority…esteem and respect for officers by
subordinates deteriorated and was replaced by resentment,
animosity, and, in some instances, hostility.12
The esprit de corps of the bureaucracy was further damaged in 1959,

when Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military ruler,13 arbitrarily dismissed
some thirteen hundred civil servants. Yahya Khan, Pakistan’s second
military dictator,14 began his rule with the dismissal of more than three
hundred civil servants. Not to be outdone in arbitrariness, Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Pakistan,
dismissed over one thousand three hundred civil servants, and instituted
a system of lateral entry whereby he could directly appoint personal
11 Ibid., 394.
12 Ibid., 387.
13 Ayub Khan Ruled from 1958 to 1969. Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, one of Pak-
istan’s senior public servants, reflects: “If I am asked to summarize the experi-
ence and insights developed during my career spanning over twenty-five years,
I would say that I have seen the erosion of the bureaucratic structure in Pakistan
from very close quarters. This started in Ayub Khan’s days when…the politi-
cization of public services started. Professionalism, competence, and honesty,
which where the hallmark of the British system, started giving way to cronyism,
pliability, and dishonesty – both intellectual and financial. This was more true in
the case of senior officers, who would go to any length to please their superiors
in order to remain near the seat of power.” Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui, Towards
Good Governance (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 11.
14 1969-1971.

supporters and partisans to positions within the bureaucracy.15 These

“new entrants were doubtlessly aware that they owed their positions
to the Bhutto regime”16 while the 1973 constitution did away with “the
safeguards civil servants had enjoyed under previous constitutions
relating to their terms of service, tenures, rights and privileges.”17
General Zia-ul-Haq, who overthrew Bhutto in July 1977 and ruled until
August 1988, did not begin his reign with a purge of the bureaucracy
and allowed most senior officers to stay in their posts for three to five
year periods. He did, however, convert the lateral entry system into a
quota for the induction of military officers into the civil bureaucracy
– a policy that continues to the present day. The restoration of
democracy in 1988 further accelerated the decay of Pakistan’s civil
service. Benazir Bhutto’s first government created a Placement Bureau
operating under the Prime Minister’s Secretariat in order to circumvent
induction procedures for the public services. The Placement Bureau’s
“arbitrary actions generated a lot of resentment within the bureaucracy”
and personnel management under successive democratically elected
governments became synonymous with “the often senseless removal
of officers from their positions and placing them for long periods as
Officer’s on Special Duty” (OSD).18 Elected politicians receive “quotas
for jobs” which they fill and thus contribute greatly to the levels of
bureaucratic “delinquency, incompetence, and, of course, pliability.”19
These politicians are normally surrounded by “a clique of corrupt
courtiers” characteristic of “a medieval ruling culture” in which the
state is perceived as an instrument to be used in service of “a network
of patronage” to secure votes and influence in what is truly a “clannish”
15 The “Lateral recruits were put in the unenviable position of being placed in an
organization where colleagues, for the most part, were suspicious, if not hostile,
to their presence; and where they had little, if any, prior experience.” Charles
Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1987),
141. Posts were created specially for lateral entrants, and, the Review Board of
1978 found that the irregularities committed included “the selection of candi-
dates who had failed the written examination….” Ibid., 145.
16 Anwar H. Syed, The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Honk Kong:
The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1992), 136.
17 Ibid., 138.
18 Mushahid Hussain and Akmal Hussain, Pakistan: Problems of Governance (La-
hore: Vanguard Books, 1993), 19. An Officer on Special Duty is one who has
not been assigned any post.
19 Siddiqui, Towards Good Governance, 37.

electoral system.20 General Musharraf, Pakistan’s fourth military ruler,

whose coup was precipitated on October 12, 1999, by Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif’s attempt to arbitrarily dismiss and replace him with a
member of his own kinship group, has launched an all-out offensive
against the civil service by mandating the creation of elected local
governments in control of district management.
The ability of the bureaucracy to withstand the administrative auto-
genocide that has characterized the behavior of successive executives
has been further eroded by the precipitous decline in the intellectual and
moral qualities of those recruited to the public services. Recruitment
through annual competitive exams is a process that assumes the best and
brightest will seek employment as officers of the state. This basic premise,
to be rational, requires that employment in the state service be more, or
as, secure, satisfying, and remunerative, than comparable positions in
the private and social sectors. In the decades since independence each
of these prerequisites for a successful passive recruitment policy have
been undermined.21
Pakistani civil servants are as, if not more, vulnerable to arbitrary
changes in their status, are regularly subjected to social and political
pressures to either abuse their powers or be abused themselves scarcely
fathomable to senior management in other sectors, and are often
treated by their superiors as if they are personal servants. Promotions,
too rapid in the 1940s and 1950s, are now too slow to provide junior
officers with even a nominal sense of moral satisfaction with their career
choice. The purchasing power of public sector salaries has collapsed as
dramatically in Pakistan as it has elsewhere in the subcontinent. This
collapse in the purchasing power of salaries has been accompanied by
the steady medievalization of the entire remuneration package with
the state rewarding its employees progressively more in kind rather
20 Ibid.
21 Nearly two decades ago, Charles Kennedy observed of the reforms undertaken
by Bhutto: “…the administrative reforms have further eroded the perception
that choosing a career in administration is a valid career choice. No longer are
the ‘best and brightest’ in Pakistan preparing for a career in the CSP/DMG.
Rather, their attention is being drawn to the professions or to business. Indeed
the shift in prestige towards the financial cadres may be part of this phenom-
enon. This depletion of the gene pool of public servants in Pakistan is likely to
have a long-term negative effect on all aspects of administration in Pakistan.”
Charles Kennedy, Bureaucracy in Pakistan, 224.

than in cash.22 At present, Pakistan’s one hundred senior most civil

servants draw a combined total of four hundred million rupees per year
as remuneration. This amounts to some four million rupees each per
year. Yet, of this amount, take-home salaries are no more than about
five hundred thousand rupees per year. The rest of the remuneration
comprises one or two chauffer driven cars with high or unlimited petrol
ceilings, free medical coverage, telephone facilities, subsidized utility
costs, and official residences that, while often dilapidated, are located
in prime residential areas in which house rents for private citizens and
foreigners can vary from six hundred thousand rupees a year to as much
as three or four million rupees. While salaries in the state service are not
commensurate with the power and responsibility reposed in the officer
corps, they are particularly abysmal at the base of the bureaucratic
pyramid. New entrants can expect about one hundred and twenty
thousand rupees a year for a six days working week.
Not surprisingly, Pakistan’s best and brightest, for the past forty-
five years, have gone into the development sector generously patronized
by the United States and its allies, become economic planners, joined
international agencies and bureaucracies, or simply closed shop and
migrated to the West. The bureaucratic elite itself actively discourages
its offspring from entering state service – a clear indication that it has
lost faith in the ability of the system to avert failure. The “virtual collapse
of academic standards at colleges and universities” within Pakistan and
the inability to impart “high-quality in-service training”23 are the final
components of the downward spiral. The institutions that do exist, such
as the Civil Services Academy, the Administrative Staff College, and
the National Institutes of Public Administration, do not have sufficient
22 Even medieval and ancient rulers demonstrated a preference for paying their
servants in cash rather than in kind. The Arthasashtra State, Sher Shah Suri, and
the Timurids, were inclined towards cash salaries though this was not always
economically feasible. The British relied extensively on monetary compensa-
tion for their officers, who, though paid far less than their medieval or ancient
equivalents, earned respectable upper middle-class salaries. For reasons of secu-
rity and administrative convenience, the British maintained official residences
for civil servants. The trend in favor of paying government servants in cash
rather than in kind was reversed in Pakistan by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Interest-
ingly, the Pakistani State could save a great deal of money if it paid its officers
competitive cash salaries. The one hundred senior most civil servants, for ex-
ample, if each paid monthly salaries of Rs. 200,000, or Rs. 2.4 million per year,
would draw a combined total of Rs. 240 million per year.
23 Hussain, Pakistan: Problems of Governance, 11.

well-developed permanent faculties and promote the culture of rote

learning. Good officers regard these courses as basically unproductive,
indeed, a waste of time and resources.
The financial administration of the Pakistani state has undergone
changes. The ratio of taxes to GNP rose from thirteen percent in
the early 1960s to nearly twenty percent in the early 1990s, though,
subsequently, over a decade of elected governments, the ratio reverted
to the eleven to fifteen percent range. Land revenue, as a proportion of
total revenue, fell from four percent in 1950 to less than one percent in
the late 1980s, while the cost of collecting taxes fell from three percent
in the early 1950s to about one percent in the late 1970s. The share of
income tax in total revenues, which rose from about one-tenth to one-
third between the early 1950s and late 1970s, has since fallen below
one-fifth. At present, about one in a hundred Pakistanis, inclusive of
government servants, pay income tax. Provincial governments and the
newly created local governments, are both dependent upon handouts
from the center, which, in turn, derives the bulk of its revenues from
indirect taxes that are changed arbitrarily in response to directives from
international creditors and financial institutions. These taxes fall heaviest
upon the poor, whose ranks, incidentally, have swelled from less than
one-fifth of the population in 1988, to about two-fifths in 2004.
Tax evasion is rife, the tax machinery victimizes honest businessmen
and citizens willing to disclose their actual income, and bribery is
endemic. Tax collection in Pakistan is widely perceived to be steeped
in corruption, inefficiency, and arbitrariness. The Director-General
Inspection of Income Tax, in his report to the Central Board of Revenue
(CBR) in July 2000, pointed out that fraud is committed by department
officials by not reporting the amount of taxes owed and by sending fake
demand notices to taxpayers. The mass confiscations and seizures of
private capital, industries, and banks, by the state in the 1970s, in the
name of socialism, placed bureaucrats in control of productive assets
and did incalculable harm to the entrepreneurial capacity of Pakistan’s
private sector. The banking sector, only now beginning to recover
from nationalization and the massive bad debts run up under political
and bureaucratic pressure, continues to be haunted by Zia’s legacy of
Islamization and the possibility that interest might be abolished. A
relatively recent example of executive arbitrariness followed the May
1998 nuclear tests when about eleven billion dollars worth of foreign

exchange holdings in Pakistani banks were arbitrarily frozen. Those

affected were not the rich or well-connected, but hundreds of thousands
of ordinary citizens from the middle-class, and families of Pakistani
migrant workers dependent on remittances.
Against the arbitrariness of the subcontinent’s culture of power,
there is little that the office of the Auditor-General of Pakistan (AGP)
can do, except point out such irregularities as do occur. Between 1973
and 2001, the powers of the auditor-general were determined, on paper,
by the Pakistan Audits and Account Order of 1973. As of July 1, 2001, a
new ordinance, decreed by General Musharraf, came into effect. Under
the original order and its replacement, the auditor-general remains
beholden to the executive. For the fiscal year 2000/2001, before the
new ordinance went into effect, the auditor-general disclosed that of
the fifty-two billion rupees worth of irregularities detected, about three
billion rupees were recovered by the financial administration. For the
fiscal year 2001/2002, after the new ordinance went into effect, the
auditor-general disclosed that some seventeen billion rupees worth of
irregularities were detected in public sector owned enterprises.
The collapsing executive and financial administrations are joined
by a criminal justice system that is predatory, slow, and corrupt. Since
independence, police organization, training, and regulations, have not
been responsive to demographic, economic, and social, changes.24 The
police remains, to this day, a servant of the executive and successive
24 Azhar Hassan Nadeem provides a useful “Historical Overview of Law and

Order in Pakistan.” From 1947 to 1958 the new state dealt with tremendous
challenges such as mass migration and widespread communal violence. The
most stable period in terms of law and order and the effectiveness of the state
was from 1958 to 1965. After this spell of stability, escalating political violence
and large-scale breakdowns of law and order from 1965 to 1971 eventually
contributed decisively to the break-up of the country. From 1972 to 1977 state
ownership of economic assets expanded and the levels of corruption and politi-
cal disorder, marked by widespread abuse of the police for political purposes,
further undermined law and order. Between 1977 and 1988, under General
Zia-ul-Haq’s iron rule, Pakistan found “Relative stability” sustained by “The
fear of arbitrary punishments.” During the third period of democratic rule,
1988 to 1999, “The will to bring criminals to book no longer existed due to
political patronage”, the public’s residual regard for the rule of law collapsed,
the state was “administered by the whims and idiosyncrasies” of elected repre-
sentatives, and the increasing reliance on extra judicial murders by the police
“brutalized the criminals who would resort to violence whenever challenged by
the police.” Azhar Hassan Nadeem, Pakistan: The Political Economy of Law-
lessness (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 71-77.

leaders have not shown any inclination towards taking the steps necessary
to ensure its autonomous functioning. The inability of the criminal
justice system to discharge its functions with tolerable efficiency is
highlighted by the fact that, in 1986, six out of ten prisoners in Pakistani
jails, were held pending trial, many of them on the basis of fraudulent
first incident reports (FIRs). The theocratization of laws in Pakistan
since the late 1970s has enhanced the discretion of the police, made it
possible for them to become even more intrusive, and threw the legal
system into confusion not seen for more than a century.
The abuse of power by the police, and its use by successive rulers
to victimize and pressurize opponents, though damaging, does not
represent a philosophical challenge to the State of Laws, and can be
addressed through administrative reforms. No amount of procedural
changes, however, can redress the fundamental imbalance produced by
the inability of the higher judiciary to resist attempts by the executive
to exercise power arbitrarily. On October 24, 1953, Governor-General
Ghulam Mohammed dismissed the provincial governments, declared a
state of emergency, and dissolved the First Constituent Assembly a mere
three days before it was due to begin the final debate on the Constitution
Bill. This arbitrary and unlawful act “was generally acclaimed in both
wings” and congratulatory messages addressed to Ghulam Mohammed
“poured in by the hundreds and continued to be published in the
newspapers well into the second week of November.”25
During this emergency, the four provinces of West Pakistan
were arbitrarily merged into a single unit, which entered into effect in
1955. The Governor-General’s actions were challenged in the Sindh
High Court, which, to its credit, ruled against the dissolution. On
appeal, however, Supreme Court Justice Muhammad Munir, not only
upheld the Governor-General’s actions but declared that acts of the
state which are not lawful are rendered lawful by necessity. After the
1958 military takeover, the Supreme Court again invoked the doctrine
of necessity and declared coups to be a juristic and legal means for
25 Inamur Rehman, Public Opinion and Political Development in Pakistan 1947-

1958 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 151. Many political leaders
had challenged the “democratic legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly” after
the Muslim League lost provincial elections in East Bengal that same year. Ibid.,
140. It was not until 1958 that people realized that the Supreme Court, by le-
gitimizing the governor-general’s illegal actions, had dealt a mortal blow to the
State of Laws in Pakistan.

effecting constitutional change. In 1977, and again in 1999, the Supreme

Court validated the overthrow of the constitutional order. Thus, on
each occasion that the judiciary was confronted with the reality of
executive arbitrariness its behavior was comparable to that of judicial
officers in ancient and medieval times. From the behavior of even the
first generation of Pakistan’s judiciary, which had a far more intense
westernization experience than subsequent generations, it is possible to
infer that resisting “usurpers is not part of our culture nor in accordance
with the best tradition of our society.”26 Pakistanis, “who groan under
the heels of an arbitrary and corrupt leadership must accept their share
of responsibility in the matter, for it is a pain in no small measure self-
inflicted.”27
The Report of the Committee for the Study of Corruption, 1986, reveals the
extent to which relations between the rulers and the ruled had, forty years
since independence, reverted to the pattern characteristic of ideocratic
arbitrary rule. Seventy-three percent of the respondents in the survey
conducted by the Committee as part of its field research, asserted that
ordinary people cannot secure their “legitimate rights” without offering
bribes or using their personal connections.28 A mere eight percent
thought police reforms to be the key to reducing corruption, about
five percent trusted the members of parliament, and three percent the
political parties, to take effective initiatives in this regard.29 Forty-three
percent stated they would turn to the police for help “in the event of a
personal grievance” – the rest preferred to suffer silently or seek redress
through other means.30 More alarmingly, half said that they would
not report anti-state activities to the authorities, seventy-five percent
believed that the rulers “place themselves above the law”, and forty-
six percent maintained that taxes collected are misappropriated.31 An
overwhelming eighty-eight percent of respondents regarded corruption
as either “unavoidable” or the “smart” thing to do if one wanted to
26 Roedad Khan, Pakistan: A Dream Gone Sour (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
1997), 42.
27 Report of the Committee for the Study of Corruption, 1986 (Islamabad: Cabinet
Secretariat, Establishment Division, 1986), 3.
The Chairman of this committee was M. Aslam Hayat and its members were
Col. Retd. M. Qayyum, Zafar Iqbal Rathore and Sikander Jamali.
28 Ibid., 27.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 34.
31 Ibid.

get ahead in life.32 The attitude of the rulers towards the decline of
the state and the role of corruption in this process can be gauged by
the fact that out of the nine hundred and twenty-seven questionnaires
sent to ministers, advisers, senators, and members of the national and
provincial assemblies, a total of fifteen responses were received, while,
in the interviews with public representatives, it was found that “the
majority of them were long on talk and short on clarity.”33
The Committee observed that citizens responded to the ruling
class through “Apathy, despondency, resignation and flight” and had
become alienated.34 The Pakistani polity has experienced a catastrophic
loss of “faith” in its “law makers” and “law-enforcing agencies”,35 and
its constituents have withdrawn into a world of make-believe:
We are afraid to face the truth about ourselves; we are

ingenious in our rationalization of the lies that we tell, so
that we may not fall in our own self-esteem… Our leaders
lie on a grand scale; the rest of us lie, some more some less,
within the radius of our humbler stations in life…We cover
truth with falsehood and knowingly conceal the truth, not
only at the individual level but also at the institutional level…
Even our highest court of justice has repeatedly failed to
uphold the truth, calling semantic sophistry to the aid of
moral self-deceit: in 1955, legitimizing the overthrow of the
then Constituent Assembly by the then Governor-General;
in 1958, raising a coup to the status of a “revolution”; in
1972, exhibiting a spasm of conscience on the last day of
that martial law; in 1977, falling back on the “doctrine of
necessity”….36
The Pakistani group mind would be at peace with itself,
if it could come to terms with its own smallness and seek
greatness where greatness truly lies.37
The combination of “semantic sophistry” and “self-deceit”, often made

32 Ibid., 60.
33 Ibid., 38.
34 Ibid., 35.
35 Ibid., 68.
36 Ibid., 68-69.
37 Ibid., 71.

lucrative by development assistance, has compromised the ability of the

ruling class to think rationally about its problems and obtain workable
solutions.38 The discourse, the Committee asserts, stands paralyzed
between that “thoughtlessness” of “emancipated liberals who seek
the instant growth of coniferous forests in sub-tropical soil” and the
“heedlessness” of “die-hard conservatives”.39
The basic cause of the crisis of the state and its numerous
manifestations, which includes corruption, is identified as the “arbitrary
culture of power” and the concomitant “misuse of the power
and authority vested in the government”.40 The tendency towards
arbitrariness and excess is conditioned by the cultural context and
historical predispositions:
…in certain cultures rulers view power as a personal

acquisition and prerogative unrelated to decision-making
in the interest of the people. On their part, the people
see power as residing in the person of high officials and
not in their offices or state institutions. In such a milieu,
leaders capture power through force or charisma and then
manipulate the organs of the state to perpetuate their hold
on power.41
The Committee contrasted the governance of the Timurids with that

of the British Empire in India, and made the connection that after
independence, “the thin British veneer” rubbed off and both masters
and subjects regressed “to the original structure of our group mind and
group behavior”42 – that is, ideocratic arbitrary rule. Civilian and military
rulers alike undermined the autonomy of the legislature, civil service,
taxation, public service commissions, judiciary, and police, rendering
38 During periods of rapprochement with the United States, such as the during
the Ayub Khan era, “Herds of Pakistani officials were transported to the United
States for training at American institutions or for visiting business or govern-
mental installations. The promotion of a Pakistani officer to a higher rank was
assured once an American ‘expert’ would put in a word of praise in the ears of
a Pakistani minister, a governor or president.” Mubashir Hasan, The Mirage of
Power: An Inquiry into the Bhutto Years, 1971-1977 (Karachi: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000), 28.
39 Report of the Committee for the Study of Corruption, 1986, 71-A.
40 Ibid., 76-77.
41 Ibid., 95.
42 Ibid., 83-84.

the institutions of state “insecure”, “servile”, and “corrupt”.43 Neither

military coups nor popular rebellions directed against overbearing or
faltering executives produced improvement in the state’s behavior. If
anything, these extreme measures resulted in the ascendancy of leaders
even more arbitrary, capricious, incompetent, and irrational, than their
predecessors.
Thus, President Iskander Mirza, the constitutional head of state
under the 1956 constitution, himself abrogated the constitution, declared
martial law, and dissolved the assemblies, rather than hold elections which
would have probably resulted in a defeat for his political supporters. It
simply did not occur to the aesthetically westernized president that his
personal desire for power did not take precedence over the survival of
the State of Laws or that by abrogating the constitution and calling in
the military he had destroyed the basis for his own authority. Indeed,
Iskander Mirza “chose to make an excessive and arbitrary use of his
powers” and paid for it with the loss of those powers.44
Within three weeks Iskander Mirza was overthrown by his army
chief, the Sandhurst-trained Ayub Khan, who proceeded to attempt
to reconstruct Pakistan on the Gaullist model.45 Ayub Khan, however,
was no Charles de Gaulle. His decade of development was raised on
the intellectual diet provided by the Harvard Advisory Group, Bureau
of National Reconstruction (BNR), dozens of commissions on reform
and restructuring. It witnessed the creation of a class of supine basic
democrats, purges of the civil service, manhandling of political parties, and
a host of other measures, which proved either destructive or ephemeral,
if not both, because they were instruments imposed arbitrarily by an
executive desperate to guarantee his omnipotence and legitimize his
usurpation. When a combination of popular revolt, growing systemic
crises, and loss of support within the military, compelled Ayub Khan to
step down, he handed over power to General Yahya Khan, who “was a
43 Ibid., 87.
44 M. Asghar Khan, We’ve Learnt Nothing from History: Pakistan Politics and
Military Power (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 11.
45 Asghar Khan, who was then chief of the Pakistan Air Force, went to see the
former president and his wife off into exile, recollects: “They were sitting on
a sofa and a junior army officer was occupying and adjacent chair with his legs
stretched out on the table in front of the former president.” Ibid., 96. This kind
of behavior “typified the dangers inherent in the involvement of the armed
forces in politics” for they are “both by experience and by temperament” the
“least suited for this role.” Ibid.

true hedonist and believed that the art of life was to crowd in as much
enjoyment as possible into each moment”, “used to describe himself as a
part-time president”,46 and did not grasp the dangers of holding elections
without parity for East and West Pakistan. The elections of 1970, far
from solving Pakistan’s problems, led to civil war, an Indian invasion,
and the break up of Pakistan, as the Bengali Awami League had won a
majority in the National Assembly on a program that would have turned
Pakistan into a loose confederation – demands that the West Pakistani
leadership was prepared to use violence to resist. In a sense, democracy
had its revenge upon the Pakistani leadership and state, doing to them
in 1970-71 what they had done to it between 1958-70.
Following the secession of East Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the
leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), came to power in what was
left of the country. Notwithstanding the drafting and implementation
of a new constitution, which went into effect in 1973, the same pattern
soon reasserted itself. Bhutto created a Federal Security Force answerable
to him alone and used it to terrorize his political opponents even for
petty affronts. More than fourteen thousand five hundred Pakistanis
employed in the public sector migrated abroad between 1972 and 1977.47
Sir Morrice James, a British High Commissioner to Pakistan, presciently
sized up Bhutto:
Bhutto as an adult had in him a tendency to harbor

resentments, a temperamental leaning towards excess, and
a streak of cruelty…
I believe that at heart he lacked a sense of the dignity and
value of other people…I sensed in him a ruthlessness and a
capacity for ill-doing which went beyond what is natural…
Despite his gifts I judged that one day Bhutto would
destroy himself… In 1965, I so reported in one of my last
dispatches from Pakistan as British High Commissioner. I
wrote by way of clinching the point that Bhutto was born
to be hanged.48
46 Khan, Pakistan: A Dream Gone Sour, 59.
47 R. A. Mughal, “Manpower Export from Pakistan: Trends, Strategy and Goals”.
Paper presented at the National Seminar on the State of Migration and Multi-
culturalism in Pakistan, June 2003.
48 Sir Morrice James, Pakistan Chronicle, with a Prologue and Concluding Chap-
ter by Peter Lyton (London: Hurst and Company, 1993), 73-75.

The Committee for the Study of Corruption provides a more panoramic

view of Bhutto’s impact on Pakistan, for “Behind a façade of democracy
it was authoritarian rule at its worst: capricious, tyrannical, Machiavellian”
that sought to establish its “transcendental control over various sectors
of the economy through its indiscriminate policy of nationalization.”49
In 1977, Bhutto was ousted from power by a combination of popular
agitation and a coup by his handpicked army chief, General Zia-ul-Haq.
Bhutto was put on trial for conspiracy to murder and hanged in April
1979.
General Zia’s eleven years in power witnessed the Pakistani State
undertake a deliberate policy of medievalism. Once more, the state and
its servants were subjected to arbitrary changes in organization and
outlook designed to meet the political requirements of the executive,
the “institutions which create and sustain democratic governance in
a modern state were subjected to continuous, even if not systematic,
attrition”,50 and the military’s colonization of the civil administration
accelerated. Following Zia’s death in a mysterious air crash in August
1988, elections were held on party basis and, until General Musharraf’s
coup in October 1999, four elected governments ruled in succession.
None completed their term. All inflicted further damage on the ability
of the state to function, treating civil servants like personal retainers,
persecuting political opponents, and indulging in such atrocities
as storming the Supreme Court, squandering billions of dollars in
corruption and mismanagement, making it illegal for members of their
own parties to criticize government policies and actions, and allowing
close relatives to interfere in government affairs.
When General Musharraf took over, the overwhelming majority
remained indifferent, many heaved a sigh of relief, and a few even
distributed sweets. Since then, an uneasy calm punctuated by intensifying
breakdowns of order, has fallen over Pakistan. The ability of the state
to perform its core functions continues to deteriorate, the district
administration has been thrown into chaos by the local government
reforms instituted by National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) set up by
Musharraf, the colonization of the civil administration by the military
is now generating immense resentment. That Prime Minister Jamali
49 Report of the Committee for the Study of Corruption, 1986, 89.
50 Ibid., 90.

expressed, on February 12, 2004, at the National Defence College, the

view that Pakistan has become irrelevant to the people, and that all its
institutions have let the people down, indicates that there is awareness at
the highest level that something is profoundly wrong with the exercise
of power in Pakistan.
That the Baseline Survey 2002 National Report, which was based on
input from fifty-seven thousand households in all of Pakistan’s ninety-
seven districts, for instance, found that less than only one fourth of the
respondents “would contact the police for a problem of personal safety
or a threat to property” verifies Jamali’s perceptions.51 This expression,
however, is not founded upon the realization that it is the “arbitrary
culture of power among the ruling elite” that “destroys social solidarity,
promotes internal chaos, invites external aggression” and “awaits its
own Nemesis” by promoting “intellectual inertia”, “civic indifference”,
and “dread of the rational”.52
The failure of national integration in Pakistan is in part due to its
gravitation towards ideocratic arbitrary rule. The center has repeatedly
attempted to govern Pakistan as if it were a unitary quasi-imperial state
and identified criticism of federal policies with treason.53 The ostensibly
federal 1973 Constitution exhibited “none of the known features of
either a parliamentary democracy or a federation” and “made the Prime
Minister omnipotent in relation to the President and the National
Assembly”.54 The Constitution “created a unique federation, in the
sense that it does not contain any Provincial List of subjects on which
the provinces would have exclusive control”.55 Provinces were further
hamstrung by the fact that they collected a paltry thirteen percent
“of the total revenues” and, therefore, had to depend upon “federal
grants” and awards.56 The Senate, which comprised an equal number
of representatives from each province, was marginalized by its inability
51 A. Cockcroft, N. Anderson, K. Omer, et. al., “Social Audit of Governance and

Delivery of Public Services: Base Line 2002 National Report”. Paper Presented
at Conference on State of Social Sciences and Humanities: Current Scenario
and Emerging Trends, December, 2003.
52 Report of the Committee for the Study of Corruption, 1986, 95.
53 For a comprehensive treatment of the behavior of the center towards the prov-
inces and regional groups, see Zafar Iqbal Rathore, Failure of National Integra-
tion or Regionalism in Pakistan (Islamabad: National Defence College, 1984).
54 Ibid., 83.
55 Ibid., 84.
56 Ibid., 85.

to prevent bills approved by the lower house from becoming law.57

Thus, the great consensus document of Pakistan’s troubled history
is ideally suited to rule by an omnipotent executive and his personal
supporters and partisans behind a façade of constitutional and electoral
ritual. During the four years in which the 1973 Constitution remained
in effect in its original form, the center, far from being restrained in
the conduct of relations with the provinces, felt empowered to become
even more arbitrary and intrusive, which led to “bitter conflict” between
the center and provinces that stemmed from the latter’s fear of further
“encroachment” by the former.58
Regime instability and arbitrariness notwithstanding, the ideocratic
complex of the Pakistani State has two principal components. The first
comprises those ideas and institutions that are generally carried over
from one regime to another. The second comprises a significant area
within which successive regimes have carried out modifications to suit
their interests. Under the first category fall Jinnah, Islam and Islamic
ideology. Under the second falls the rhetoric of development.
Jinnah is to Pakistan what Gandhi is to India. Jinnah’s portraits and
photographs can be found in nearly every classroom and government
office. His statements adorn foundation stones, walls and displays from
one end of Pakistan to the other, are regularly broadcast on state owned
television channels, and can be purchased in compiled and edited
formats from most bookstores. Every year, the government spends
millions on special programs and functions to commemorate his life and
achievements. The bureaucratic intelligentsia has produced volumes of
tedious and repetitive hagiographic literature about Jinnah. His name
adorns markets, roads, schools, hospitals, and universities. No political
speech, or college debate competition, is considered complete unless it
contains ample references to Jinnah and expresses contrition for having
failed to live up to his example. And yet, Jinnah’s vision of a Pakistani
State of Laws governed by a sovereign parliament in a manner consistent
with British state morality remains as, if not more, distant today than it
was when Pakistan’s founder addressed its first Constituent Assembly
on August 11, 1947.
Islam and Islamic ideology are also key components of Pakistan’s
ideocratic complex. Successive rulers used Islam as an instrument
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 83.

to achieve mass-mobilization in a heterogeneous society. In nearly

all cases, the use of Islam has been cynical and subordinate to the
attainment of legitimacy for the ruler in question. Thus, the socialistic
Pakistan People’s Party won its majority under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
by campaigning for “Islamic Socialism”, and, in 1973, declared the
Ahmedis non-Muslims.59 General Zia manipulated religion in a manner
that ancient and medieval rulers would readily understand. Islam was
used to justify and legitimize military rule and provide the executive
with divine sanction and education was reoriented towards the creation
of an Islamic crusader society.60 Between 1988 and 1999, the controversy
over the Shariat Bill and the role of Islam in the state intensified, as did
sectarianism, lawlessness, and human rights abuses. Had a military coup
not occurred in 1999 and had the Shariat Bill passed, Pakistan would
have regressed to rule by an omnipotent executive legitimized by divine
sanction. Even General Musharraf, is obliged to keep repeating the
mantra that Pakistan is to be a moderate, tolerant, progressive, Islamic
State, without, however, elaborating how such an entity can be created
when the writ of the government does not even run in large parts of
Islamabad, the federal capital.
The rhetoric of religiosity is matched by the rhetoric of development.
Ayub Khan justified dictatorship and the expansion of the arbitrary
powers of the executive during his decade long rule with the use of the
American idiom of development.61 Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the state
59 Towards the end of his rule, Bhutto attempted to woo conservatives through the
prohibition of alcohol and gambling.
60 This was done with generous financial assistance from the United States and its
allies in the pursuit of turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam.
61 The rhetoric, however, masked the steady erosion of the autonomy of business-
es and associations in Pakistan: “Although modern business associations were at
first largely free of government control and regulation, this too came to an end
with the Ayub era. Under a government reorganization scheme adopted in 1958
and given legal effect by an ordinance in 1961, the government secured total
power over the recognition and regulation of all associations in Pakistan repre-
senting trade and industry. Any organization not recognized by the government
was illegal.” Furthermore, the Directorate of Trade Organizations possessed
sweeping arbitrary powers over the internal management and functioning of
business associations which included the power to appoint administrators if it
was unsatisfied with the performance of these associations. Together with the
“…almost habitual use of Section 144 to control political activity,” the Ayub
regime relentlessly, and, ultimately, recklessly, pursued self-aggrandizement.
Stanley A. Kochanek, Interest Groups and Development: Business and Politics
in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford Univesity Press, 1983), 70-71.

greatly expanded its control over the economy, educational institutions,

and undermined the autonomous functioning of the bureaucracy under
the cover of socialist and populist rhetoric. General Zia-ul-Haq, though
he initiated a half-hearted privatization program, expanded the arbitrary
power of the state through Islamization of both the economy and
society and sought to use the same device to legitimize his rule. Since
the mid-1980s, the catchwords have been “restructuring”, “human
development”, “empowerment”, and “globalization”. Today’s educated
Pakistanis, like the earlier generation, have taken to repeating the latest
clichés, which, in turn, render the recipients of this ready-made wisdom,
incapable of thinking rationally about Pakistan’s problems. The most
successful of the Pakistan’s twelve thousand registered NGOs are those
that receive direct foreign funding62 and offer salaries that the public
sector has little hope of matching.
It is evident that Pakistan is a poorly managed continental
bureaucratic state. It is located on a continental landmass, has a large
standing army, a servile and obstructive bureaucracy, and a predatory
class of politicians. The executive, civilian or military, has always
demonstrated an unhealthy interest in the affairs of the bureaucratic
management. The relationship between the rulers and the ruled (not to
mention amongst themselves) is adversarial, riven by insincerity, and
prone to generating political uncertainty and economic insecurity. This
relationship is, above all, a symptom of the subcontinent’s culture of
power.
Pakistan’s historical experience of governance is distinguished from
that of other more successful and rational continental bureaucratic
empires by conspicuous and self-defeating arbitrariness. The impropriety,
viciousness, partisanship, sycophancy, and the self-aggrandizing manner
in which successive governments and their proponents have conducted
themselves are the practical manifestations of these two distinguishing
features. Democracy, legal or participatory, cannot subsist, let alone
thrive, in an environment characterized by such arbitrariness. Political
leaders, regardless of their backgrounds, do not appear to grasp of any
of these concepts and persist in viewing the state as a personal estate.
The inevitable query that the preceding discussion raises is
“What is the solution?” The most realistic response is that given the
62 Estimates vary, but Pakistan may well have over fifty thousand unregistered
NGOs.

advanced stage of deterioration of the intellectual and moral capacity

of the political, military, and bureaucratic leadership, the best possible
solutions cannot be implemented because they require the rulers to
reduce their discretionary powers, contain arbitrariness in the day-
to-day management of the apparatus, and make a determined effort
to conform to Anglo-Saxon state morality.63 These changes require
confronting and containing the subcontinent’s culture of power, the
reassertion of which is most complete in Pakistan, as evidenced by the
country’s repeated relapse into ideocratic arbitrary rule. Pakistan’s status
quo is “oriented near anarchy”64 while the institutions responsible for
the maintenance of order are in desperate need of reform:
No one realized “the phenomenon of change” in society

e.g. urbanization, communications and mobility. This
society has undergone more changes in the last 50 years
than in the previous two thousand years. We have always
looked for “clever”, tactical solutions based on subjective
make-believe facts, rather than wise, strategic long term
solutions based on enlightened self-interest. This resulted
in the perpetuation of an out-moded system, without applying
ourselves to improving the quality of the state apparatus, specially
the qualifications for induction, training, equipment, salaries and
the privileges, and their numbers etc. Actually we did worse, we
massively subverted this out-moded system by large scale
arbitrary interference…
Briefly speaking we have a Criminal Justice System…
staffed mostly by people who are generally recruited,
trained, promoted and posted without any reference to
merit, and almost entirely by their subservience to people
in power. It is imperative that we take steps to improve the quality
of the police personnel. Therefore, the first and basic reform which is
necessary is to insulate the management of the police from the arbitrary
63 “Admittedly, the framework which the [British] bequeathed to us was sound.
Minus its imperial trappings, it could have been modified and adapted to con-
form to the requirements of an independent, democratic country. Instead of
finding an alternative, it was gradually converted into a medieval administra-
tion.” Siddiqui, Towards Good Governance, 33.
64 Zafar Iqbal Rathore, Chairman of the Focal Group on Police Reform, “State
and Order”. Paper presented to the Interior Minister, Lt. General Moinuddin
Haider, February 2000.

interference of the powerful members of the executive. This can be done

by creating a neutral body of eminent persons to manage the police.
This body will also undertake accountability of the police. Since
the Second World War this has been successfully done in
almost all the countries of North America, Western Europe
and Japan. The modalities of establishing these neutral
bodies, depends on the legal and institutional conditions
of different countries…but the objective is the same, -
insulate the police management from arbitrary interference
from the powerful members of the executive…
…As the state of order has nearly collapsed throughout
the society, some areas being more affected than others,
instead of trying for sustained improvement, we seem to
panic, to react by promising huge funds and powers to
individuals and departments who promise to rid us of this
nightmare. This solution has neither worked before nor is
it likely to work now.65
Rathore’s proposal is readily extendable to the rest of the bureaucracy,

which can also be placed under the control of neutral bodies comprising
eminent and respected citizens. Doing so, however, would require the
central executive and political leadership to understand that they must
relinquish their power to abuse the bureaucracy and greatly reduce
the patronage potential of elected representatives, if the state is to
be rehabilitated. Such a realization is probably beyond the ability of
Pakistan’s rulers, or their advisers, who keep them afloat on clouds of
optimism, to assimilate, let alone act on.
65 Rathore, “State and Order”. Emphases Original.

CONCLUSION
G overnance is arguably the most demanding of all avenues of human

endeavor. Countries that manage to accumulate and utilize the
intellectual and moral resources necessary for the relatively equitable,
predictable, and benign exercise of power by the state have a greater
chance of providing for their peoples’ dignity, liberty, security, and
prosperity. Countries that prove unwilling or unable to reduce the level
of excess and arbitrariness in the exercise of power by the state are far
less likely to achieve a sustainable order compatible with the long-term
interests of their peoples. The fact that only a small number of states,
both past and present, have succeeded in achieving sustainable good
governance is one of the clearest indications of the difficulties inherent
in the exercise of power.
These difficulties are particularly acute in continental bureaucratic
empires, which, though the dominant variant of state organization in
history, are exceptionally vulnerable to failure in the absence of effective
executive authority. The origins of this vulnerability lie in the geography,
climate, the historical experience of governance of these states, and
manifests itself in a culture of power dominated by the arbitrariness
of an omnipotent ruler and his appointed servants. The country so
governed is treated by the ruler as if it were his personal estate; the
civil servants and military officers are personal servants, if not actually
slaves, of the executive, who is also, as the universal landlord, the only
individual with property rights. This form of arbitrary rule is normally
backed up by an ideocratic complex sustained by an official priesthood
or religion and a bureaucratic intelligentsia that provides the ruler with
divine sanction and continuous adulation. A wise ruler in a continental
bureaucratic empire is one who realizes that the efficient management
of his dominion is better secured through a systematic legal framework

implemented by his appointed servants. The rules and regulations thus

ordained are not open to question and cannot be lawfully challenged.
They can, however, be changed arbitrarily by the executive. Those
components of religious laws and traditions that do not limit the ruler’s
power are often enforced in order to lend credence to claims of divine
sanction, which, in turn, renders it impossible to lawfully oppose the
ruler. Continental bureaucratic empires often possess highly elaborate
procedures and regulations comprising a mass of arbitrary decrees and
customary practices, many of which may conflict in letter and spirit
with each other. However, the arbitrary power of the executive and the
concomitant insecurity of all else within the realm remain unaltered.
In the history of the subcontinent, continental bureaucratic empires
took shape during two major periods. The first possibility is that in or
around 2250 BC a centralized state with its core located between the
cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro emerged and brought the other
cities of its civilization under its control. The sheer size of the Harappan
civilization, its extraordinary aesthetic uniformity, demonstrable
expertise in hydraulic management and production, and some evidence
of violent expansion, if taken together, point to the growth of a
continental bureaucratic empire possessed of the ability to organize,
deploy, and centrally direct, manpower and natural resources on a scale
similar to its contemporary Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia. So long
as the writing of the Harappan civilization remains un-deciphered, any
understanding of its culture of power necessarily rests on educated
guesses. The nature of the interaction between the Aryan tribes that
began migrating into the subcontinent in the eighteenth century BC and
the “dark hued ones” they encountered and gradually displaced is also
open to speculation. If the Harappan civilization had descended into
chaos or fragmented prior to the Aryan migration then it is unlikely that
the latter would have imbibed its culture of power.
The second possibility is that after migrating into the Indo-
Gangetic heartland the Aryans were compelled by geography and
climate to settle down and develop a hydraulic civilization of their own.
These efforts culminated in the formation of continental bureaucratic
empires in what is today the Indian province of Bihar in the sixth and
fifth centuries BC. These monarchical despotisms eventually defeated
the tribal republics and nomads and emerged as the most militarily and
economically successful states. That the Aryan colonization of Greece

Conclusion | 289
in the second millennium BC1 resulted in the creation of numerous

city-states centered on small valleys governed by constitutions ranging
from Athens’s mercantile-democracy to Sparta’s militaristic-egalitarian
republic, furnishes further evidence of the linkages between cultures
of power, state formation, and the natural environment. The rise of
Magadha and the birth of the Maurya Empire ushered a pattern of state
behavior that remained constant until the advent of the British Empire
in India.
The Mauryas built an empire that spanned almost the entire
subcontinent. The administration of this sprawling imperium was
entrusted to a class of magistrates, collectors, superintendents, military
officers, and spies, organized into a bureaucratic hierarchy, drawing
fixed salaries, distributed in provinces, districts, sub-districts, and
villages, and subject to regular rotation. The emperor was all-powerful
and could promote, transfer, dismiss, or liquidate any of his officers if
he so desired. Rising or falling in the hierarchy depended on how well
the aspirants did at the initial tests and the confidential reports received
by their superiors. Spies, clandestine agents, and reporters embedded in
the apparatus communicated information directly to the center, which
relied upon them to assess the performance and integrity of officers.
Legions of spies were employed across villages, trading posts, rest
houses, and urban settlements, disguised as, among others, ascetics,
merchants, and barkeepers, to closely watch the ruled. Continuous and
often intrusive surveillance was necessitated by the dominance of the
state over landed property, trade, manufacturing, and even recreation.
The Arthashastra State was undoubtedly a continental bureaucratic
empire. The ruler and his appointed servants comprised the ruling class.
The king was supreme to the point of being practically unlimited in his
prerogatives, and was legitimized by an ideocratic complex that included
divine sanction and a bureaucratic intelligentsia. The state dominated
the economy and social life, which were both regulated by elaborate
rules and regulations implemented by a centralized bureaucracy. The
state was the major employer and wealth that did not flow directly from
its patronage was perceived to be a potential threat to its omnipotence.
The Magadhan State methodically established a failed society divided
into state-controlled, sub-political, autarkic, village communities bereft
of the capacity for cumulative change and indifferent to the fate of
1 Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit share a common origin.

higher political institutions that they could neither lawfully challenge nor
successfully coerce. The apathy of the ruled matched the arbitrariness
of the rulers and this pattern of state-society relations was spread over
almost the entire subcontinent by Maurya rule.
When the Maurya Empire disintegrated in the second century BC,
the probable result was the creation of many omnipotent continental
bureaucratic empires at war with each other. Executive arbitrariness
by a single dominant and relatively structured center was replaced
by anarchy and competition between many failed or failing states
extracting resources from failed societies. In the fourth century AD, the
Gupta dynasty emerged in the former core area of the Maurya Empire,
successfully restored order and the financial administration, and brought
about an end to geopolitical pluralism. The expansion and consolidation
of the Gupta Empire was accompanied by much violence. In order
to restore the writ of the state the petty princes and warlords had to
be crushed. What is known about the Gupta Empire indicates that it
was built and operated along the lines of the Arthashastra State. The
decline and eclipse of the Gupta Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries
ushered in a new age of disorder that lasted until the advent of the Delhi
Sultanate in the thirteenth century.
The terms “sultanate” and “sultan” are synonymous with military
despotism and arbitrary rule. The humiliation visited upon the Hindus
by the Turks did increase the level of apathy the ruled felt towards
the state although the chaotic conditions of the subcontinent and
the arbitrariness of its Hindu rulers ensured that the increase was
marginal. The Turks had acquired the culture of power of Persia
and implemented its political and administrative traditions in the
subcontinent. The commonalities between the cultures of power of
Persia and the subcontinent were both numerous and substantive. In
both cases, the executive was omnipotent, the universal proprietor,
legitimized by divine sanction, and ruled through a class of appointed
servants organized in a bureaucratic hierarchy. The differences pertain
to the organization of this hierarchy. The sultan, as the leader of a newly
established colonial minority did not appoint a commander-in-chief
for the military. He filled official positions with his slaves and the new
arrivals from other parts of the Muslim world, and adopted the Persian
principle of four major ministries plus additional departments. The
Mauryas, in contrast, appointed a permanent commander-in-chief, and

Conclusion | 291
organized the state into more than thirty departments These changes
were not necessarily for the better, and under the Turks, the culture
of power of the subcontinent apparently became more praetorian and
arbitrary.
One is compelled to say “apparently” because the Delhi Sultanate
has left a written record that furnishes historians with empirical data
that can be readily applied to state behavior under the Mauryas and
Guptas who, for all their imagined grandeur, have left meager textual
residues. Many of the reforms instituted by the Delhi Sultanate to
make its writ effective, such as market controls, a system of reporters,
the extensive use of spies, and the maintenance of a large salaried
military establishment, are also to be found in the Arthashastra. The
mass confiscations of property, assassinations, wasteful expenditure,
corruption, repeated rebellions, absence of moral relationships, pervasive
suspicion, torture, brutality, and routine arbitrariness in decision-making
and administration found in the annals of the Delhi Sultanate are
probably characteristic of the exercise of state power under the Mauryas
and Guptas. Unfortunately, for the reputation of the Turks, enough of
their written record has survived to establish a correlation between the
structures of the continental bureaucratic empire they established and
the historical experience of governance it produced.
The Timurids proved even more adept than the Sultans of Delhi at
building and operating a continental bureaucratic empire. Once again,
an omnipotent executive legitimized by divine sanction, exercised
universal proprietorship, and ruled through a class of appointed
servants. The Timurid Empire generated millions of documents and
scores of important histories and administrative manuals from which a
clear picture of the culture of power of the subcontinent in its theoretic
and practical manifestations emerges. The emperor was the supreme
authority over an estate that included all the people and property within
its boundaries. As it was physically impossible for the emperor to
personally manage the entire estate, he shared parts of it in exchange for
military and administrative service with his officers who were promoted,
transferred, demoted, or liquidated at the emperor’s command. No
means of lawful opposition existed and an already atomized society
was left with two options: submit unconditionally or face destruction.
Apathy and village autarky, combined with a heterogeneous ruling class
of Caucasian settlers that lacked local roots, meant that so long as the

executive was competent rebellions and conspiracies, though numerous,

were isolated and overcome.
The emperor also suffered from the atomization produced by
the omnipotence of the executive authority. Moral relationships,
even within the royal family, were almost impossible to cultivate due
to the arbitrariness with which official and personal status could be
changed. Titles, honors, pensions, and salaries, depended entirely upon
the imperial will. No officer owned the share of the emperor’s estate
conferred upon him for his maintenance while in service. Upon death
or dismissal, the emperor seized all assets and kept for himself as much
as he pleased. The resulting insecurity drove officers to corruption,
which, in turn, also furnished the emperor with a suitable moral pretext
to seize their assets. The next stage on the spiral of arbitrariness was
represented by the abusive treatment meted out to the ruled by an
insecure class of officers. Merchants lived in dread of confiscation and
extortion, artisans of the whip, and peasants of death and enslavement.
In this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, productive investments were
minimal while concealment, evasion, and flight, were rampant. The gold
and silver pouring into the subcontinent was dissipated by conspicuous
consumption and militarism, or buried under the ground.
The experience of Timurid rule helps confirm that in continental
bureaucratic empires there are no autonomous institutions within the
state structure. There exist only instruments, the effectiveness of which
is determined by the intellectual and moral qualities of the supreme
executive and his appointed servants. Sustaining the effectiveness of
these instruments requires a great deal of personal supervision by the
emperor, which, given the opportunities for pleasure-taking available to
him, require a great deal of character to resist. Many monarchs succumbed
to the pleasures of the harem and rested content by delegating control
of the administration to a vizier or elite advisor. This arrangement
works out only if both the person entrusted with exercising power in
the emperor’s name and the emperor himself, have overwhelmingly
sound reasons for not turning against one another. The relationship
between Emperor Jahangir, a great hedonist and aesthete, and his wife,
Empress Nur Jahan, who ruled in his name, is an important example of
a sustainable, though by no means trouble-free, cohabitation. Most of
the time, however, such arrangements end in the death, imprisonment,
or exile of either the emperor or his trusted associate. The elaborate

Conclusion | 293
written records of the Timurid Empire and the more modest textual
remains of the Delhi Sultanate, provide ample illustration of Kautilya’s
warning to those who seek proximity to an omnipotent ruler that the
attainment of this desire is comparable to being thrown into a fire. Fires,
after all, are beautiful only from a safe distance.
It followed that the best motivation for the bureaucracy was
fear of the emperor’s proximity. This fear was inculcated through an
elaborate network of agents, reporters, spies, and subversives, deployed
throughout the Timurid Empire. “Crafty old women” were enlisted
to report on the household expenditures of subjects. Inns spied upon
travelers, reporters operating in conjunction with the imperial postal and
courier system conveyed information about the working of government
departments and events in the localities. Spies spied on the reporters
and each other to guard against collusion with local officials, traitors,
and malcontents. Officials spied on each other to win the favors of
governors, diwans, or the emperor himself. Governors and diwans also
spied upon each other for imperial favor. The Timurids and Sultans of
Delhi did as Kautilya advises and conveyed the impression of executive
omniscience. The price that this effort extracted was that the apparatus
became mired in an ocean of conspiracies and intrigues that undermined
morale, increased insecurity, and probably precipitated a great many
unnecessary rebellions. The historical literature from the pre-British
period generally emphasizes the importance of obedience and loyalty
to the person of the king and is devoid of references to either freedoms
or rights. The rulers are portrayed as perfect in every respect while those
who write about them appear devoid of the desire to explain the causes
of important occurrences, such as rebellions, which indicates aversion to
the pursuit of objective understanding. This, however, is not particularly
surprising as such pursuits could produce tragic consequences for the
thinker.2
The absence of autonomous state institutions, the heterogeneity
of the service-nobility, and the latent hostility and mutual suspicions
of the subject classes, ensured that once the succession of competent
despots failed, the Timurid Empire fell apart. The total collapse of law
2 Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Causes of the Indian Revolt appears to be the first at-
tempt by a subject to inform the central government of the reasons for policy
failures and rebellions. Sir Syed was, of course, addressing the Government of
India and the British Parliament, and expected them to rationally consider his
analysis of the situation.

and order, and financial administration, took about thirty years. Bahadur
Shah I died in 1712, and by 1713, the imperial throne became a tool in
the hands of invidious elements. By 1721, the central government was
rendered ineffective and the empire began to rapidly disintegrate. By
the 1740s, the military capacity of the Timurid Empire was reduced to
inconsequence.
As the subcontinent collapsed into a crisis of state and wars of
Timurid imperial succession erupted, European powers, trading
peacefully since the early sixteenth century, were drawn into the
conflagration. Though numerically inferior, the Europeans commanded
the seas and, thanks to Dupleix, established their dominance on land
by the mid-eighteenth century by raising armies of Indian sepoys
trained in European military technique. The French and British allied
with rival Indian potentates and locked horns by both proxy and direct
confrontation. This struggle was also reflective of the cultures of power
of France and Britain. The French East India Company was government-
owned and staffed by servants of the state. Its profits benefited the king.
The English East India Company was privately owned and operated. It
used profits derived from trade to enrich its investors and buy support
from the British Parliament. Its officers were private persons seeking
fame and fortune through free, though hardly fair, enterprise.
The divergent natures of the French and British trading companies
were produced by their respective historical experiences of governance.
In the seventeenth century, France emerged as a centralized bureaucratic
state ruled by a class of appointed servants beholden to the monarch.
Autonomous state institutions such as the Estates-General and parlements
were either discarded or confined to a sub-political role. The lavishness
of the royal court at Versailles approximated oriental courts while the
feudal aristocracy became living ornaments, or drifted into pensioned
vegetation on their lands in the French countryside. The sources of the
French king’s growing powers were in many respects different from
that of continental bureaucratic empires outside Europe. Bureaucratic
centralization in France was made possible by gunpowder, printing,
alliance with rich merchants, the pressure of military and economic
competition with rival European powers, the skillful manipulation of
class antagonisms between feudal lords and peasants, and the expansion
of state control over education. The French king, however, was not
even in theory omnipotent. His directives were in fact challenged by

Conclusion | 295
lawyers and local parlements, the state was neither the universal landlord
nor actively hostile to capital accumulation and investment, and there
existed a growing nucleus of individuals committed to the reform of the
state. The model that many enlightened Frenchmen had in mind was
not a democratic republic but a constitutional monarchy like England’s.
Montesquieu and Voltaire, among others, believed that the British
experience provided the best remedy to the arbitrariness and confusion
of the French state. In Britain, the French found a moderate regime -
a State of Laws constituted as a complex of autonomous institutions
that checked and balanced each other. This State of Laws had evolved
over centuries and suffered many setbacks but managed to defeat, by
the late-seventeenth century, the alternatives of feudal anarchy, absolute
monarchy, and Puritan theocracy.
The triumph of the State of Laws in Britain ranks as one of the
most significant developments in history precisely because British
imperialism spread the norms of a moderate government, the rule of
law, private property, and the secular state, across the globe. Britain’s
victory over France in both the Americas and the subcontinent in the
1760s entrusted it with the governance of foreign population that had
different, if not antithetical, cultures of power. Quebec and Bengal, for
example, had long been ruled in the manner of continental bureaucratic
empires and lacked the capacity for self-government and self-taxation
central to the culture of power of the British and their dominions of
settlement. The debate concerning the optimal administrative system
for the conquered territories in the subcontinent produced a variety
of views. Old hands like Clive and Hastings held that the British
should keep their interference with the subcontinent’s tradition of
arbitrary rule to the minimum level consistent with its effectiveness.
The Whigs asserted that arbitrary rule by despots and their appointed
officials was the principal cause of misery and backwardness. The
law of the ruler had to be replaced by the rule of law, the universal
proprietorship of the executive by private property, and personal
rule through servants and instruments by impersonal government
through autonomous institutions. The utilitarian school argued for
an accommodation between the theory of the State of Laws and the
realities of the subcontinent. Evangelicals advocated the conversion of
the subcontinent to Christianity as the solution to its problems.
Over decades, there emerged from this debate a bureaucratic state

comprising autonomous institutions, protective of private property, and

committed to the establishment of the rule of law. The British came to
understand that in continental bureaucratic empires the quality of the
bureaucracy was the major determinant of the effectiveness and equity
with which the state performed its core functions of law and order and
financial administration. By the 1830s, there was also a realization that
the Anglo-Indian state would have to take on a set of additional functions
ranging from railways to education in order for the subcontinent to
achieve a semblance of progress. This was necessary because centuries
of ideocratic arbitrary rule had destroyed Indian society’s internal
capacity for cumulative change. Change, some hoped, would ultimately
lead to self-government through autonomous institutions. The British
thus set themselves the task to nurture and adapt the modalities of the
State of Laws to the situation of the subcontinent.
Actually doing so was quite problematic. Perhaps the greatest of the
problems was the position of the collector-magistrate as sub-sovereign
at the district level. The existence of these commissioners, who
combined executive, financial, and judicial functions in their persons,
did great violence to British ideals of justice derived from their own
historical experience. Although, by the 1880s, the judicial powers of
commissioners were regulated in all provinces while the steady growth
of provincial secretariats and court system steadily reduced their sphere
of discretion, the fact remained, as the British themselves admitted,
that the system remained structurally prone to arbitrariness. This
arbitrariness was kept under control by a recruitment system based on
competitive examinations, the educational level of the district officers,
their security of tenure and service, and the high level of predictability
and dialogue involved within the apparatus for policy and decision-
making. The difficulty was that reducing the discretionary powers of the
commissioners damaged their effectiveness for people lost respect for
the sarkar if its representative did not punish criminals and defaulters
on the spot or immediately redress their grievances. The ruled, over
centuries, had become accustomed to arbitrariness and intolerance for
criticism by the state. Their reactions were geared to dealing with either
an erratic and omnipotent executive, or an equally unpredictable though
impotent ruler who left the ruled at the mercy of his subordinates by
losing control over them. The former inspired terror, apathy, and
servility. The latter inspired terror, apathy, and rebellion. Caste, kinship,

Conclusion | 297
ethnicity, and religious hatreds and passions could only be kept in

check by a strong executive presence at the local level. The British soon
learned that this presence had to evoke awe and cultivate a sense of
aloofness to be effective in an intrigue-ridden atmosphere dominated
by sub-rational jealousies and suspicions. The unintelligibility of the
institutional structure of the State of Laws, the turbulence of Indian
society, the 1857 rebellion, and the culture of power of the subcontinent,
made the complete separation of executive and judicial functions in all
but the most developed areas3 impracticable.
Efforts to reduce the level of apathy felt by the people for the state,
especially through a measure of public participation, were also pursued.
A variety of institutions ranging from district advisory boards and
municipalities, to central and provincial councils and legislatures were
introduced. These institutions enhanced the level of public participation,
contributed to the emergence of a political class, a limited measure of
democracy, and demands for self-government. Prominent Indians could
make a career out of criticizing the government and reach municipal,
local, provincial, and central, corporations, councils, and legislatures
rather than the chopping block, gibbet, or exile, as was nearly always
the case under earlier rulers. The expansion of the public mind and the
increasing vociferousness of demands for self-government were heavy
on rhetoric, short on substance, and placed the British in what proved
to be an insoluble quandary.
The ability of continental bureaucratic empires to perform their core
functions traditionally depended upon the sagacity and perseverance of
the ruler and his appointed servants. Even at the best of times, however,
personal government was barely adequate to meet the needs of the state.
The British, by reconstituting the continental bureaucratic empires they
conquered as complexes of autonomous institutions governed by law
and operated by bureaucracies recruited through merit, changed the
nature of state power in significant ways. This reform process led to the
introduction of a representative system of government, which, though
it made for greater public participation, also threatened to subvert the
autonomy of the institutions upon which bureaucratic states must rely
to maintain law and order and collect taxes, because the culture of
power of elected representatives remained essentially indigenous.
The result was that as more power was given to Indians, corruption
3 Calcutta, Bombay, Madras.

and arbitrariness increased while the ability of British officials to

control their Indian subordinates declined. This deterioration was not
complemented by improvements in other areas for Indian representatives,
be they on district boards or the legislatures, proved unable to tax their
own constituents and supporters. There were also warnings that Indian
politicians, even if many of them were wealthy landlords, merchants,
and lawyers, educated in England and elected by a limited franchise of
propertied and educated individuals, did not understand that the State of
Laws, in order to survive and grow in Indian soil, required autonomous
bureaucratic institutions and a commitment to self-taxation. Public
participation would become a farce and a danger to the stability of
the country if the civil, police, taxation, and judicial services suffered
loss of autonomy and became instruments of patronage subservient to
individual politicians and parties. Measures had to be taken to safeguard
against the possibility that democracy would lead to the destruction of
the idea and practice of the State of Laws as adapted to the historical
realities of the subcontinent, and reversion to ideocratic arbitrary rule
by individuals who treated the country, with its wealth, institutions, and
people, as if it were a vast personal estate.
Beyond restricting the size of the electorate through property
qualifications, there was little that could be done, in legal or administrative
terms, to improve the quality of the political class through means other
than allowing them time to accumulate experience. Over generations,
it was hoped, this class would become sufficiently motivated and
committed to public service to render democracy credible and viable.
During the teething period, it was imperative that the bureaucracy
continued to perform its functions with efficiency and without fear or
favor. Thus, recruitment was entrusted to public service commissions
and a deliberate program of Indianization for the civil service was
launched. The objective of this policy was to create a civil service staffed
by Indians willing and able to uphold Anglo-Saxon state morality as
India proceeded towards self-government. Movement towards self-
government, however, was greatly accelerated by the two World Wars
and global economic depression, which served to undermine the British
capacity for imperial control and management.4
4 What contemporary advocates of the Americans constituting an imperial au-
thority like that of the British Empire to preserve stability and create order in
parts of the world where states are failing do not consider is that the British and,
to a lesser extent, French, empires, by spreading modernity and norms derived

Conclusion | 299
When independence came in 1947, the policy of Indianization

was far from complete. Partition dealt another blow to prospects for
continuity by plunging India and Pakistan into communal violence, war,
and a massive refugee crisis. However, these early difficulties were either
overcome or temporarily contained and, by 1950, the Indian constitution
was ready for implementation. Pakistan and India did not inherit from
the British a vibrant, fully functional, parliamentary democracy. They
inherited an embryonic legal democracy and a more rational, predictable,
and less arbitrary variant of the continental bureaucratic empire that had
the potential to adapt to representative institutions though it did not
require them to function smoothly. The inheritance, in other words,
reflected the adaptation of the State of Laws to the realities of the
subcontinent.
The survival of Indian democracy until now with only one serious
interruption at the center, in the mid-1970s, though several in the
provinces, owes a great deal to the fact that the structure of the continental
bureaucratic state evolved by the British has not as yet been overtly
undermined and rejected by the political leadership. Behind the rituals
and rhetoric of the State of Laws, which the Indians manipulate with
great deftness, the autonomous institutions that needed to be preserved
and strengthened have, instead, been undermined by the arbitrariness
and incompetence of the political class. Elected representatives behaved
as if their constituencies and portfolios were personal estates and public
servants their household domestics. There are Indian bureaucrats who
struggle against the remorselessly unenlightened and arbitrary exercise
of power by their political and administrative bosses. Even these few,
however, do not realize that their defiance is not merely directed towards
errant politicians and morally flexible, yet intellectually rigid, colleagues,
but is, in fact, a clash between the cultures of power of the subcontinent
and the Anglo-Saxons.
At present, it is Indian democracy’s illusion of success that is
steadily leading the state towards collapse. The phenomenal rise of the
information technology sector, the glamour of the Indian film industry,
the high profile of its expatriate community, and recent efforts to flex
military muscle, have obscured the terrible reality of a collapsing state.
from the Enlightenment, created a world in which formal transnational oceanic

empires cannot exist.

In large parts of India law and order has ceased to exist, people have
lost faith in the criminal justice system, the financial administration is
arbitrary and capricious, and Indian self-government is not based even
on the pretence of self-taxation. Corruption has compromised the
integrity of all state institutions, and there has been a steady decline in
the intellectual and moral qualities of both the political leadership and
the bureaucracy.
What is striking about the deterioration is that it has taken place
in the context of a political stability almost unheard of outside of
Western Europe and North America. For nearly fifty years, India
was governed by the Congress Party, an ostensibly secular center-left
organization, which, on several occasions secured a two-thirds majority.
The Congress, however, is the personal estate of the Nehru-Gandhis
and is, for all necessary intents and purposes, a dynastic concern. The
BJP and RSS, which espouse the ideology of the Hindu rashtra, have
experienced power at the center and are likely to do so again. Should
Hindu revivalism succeed as a political force then India will be set to
revert to the ideocratic arbitrary rule that has been the bane of the
subcontinent’s culture of power. After six decades, Indian democracy
offers the “sovereign people” a choice between electoral dynasticism
in the form of Congress and electoral communalism in the form of the
BJP and its allies.
In Pakistan, of course, the levels of arbitrariness, mismanagement,
and irrationalism, already approximate that of ideocratic arbitrary
rule. There, the executive, both civilian and military, has overtly and
effectively undermined the lawful autonomy of institutions. Reduced
to its basics, the problem that afflicts the Pakistani State is its persistent
inability to exercise power in a manner compatible with the dispensation
of its core (law and order, taxation) and elaborated (health, education,
welfare, etc.) functions. This failure is principally a manifestation of the
intellectual and moral inadequacies of the relatively westernized elite
of modernist Muslims that has ruled Pakistan since independence.
The failure of this elite to exercise power with rationality, compassion,
and regard for justice, eroded its legitimacy and rendered attractive the
promises of fundamentalists to turn Pakistan into an Islamic Utopia.5
5 The ability of Pakistan’s educated elite to think rationally has been further dis-
torted by the American connection as for the past two generations the most suc-
cessful have been those most adept at manipulating the latest idiom emerging
from the United States.

Conclusion | 301
The reason why there is very little hope of halting or reversing

the drift towards ideocratic arbitrary rule is that the educated elite of
the subcontinent has lost the will to think rationally about the crisis of
state or its own problems. The most popular arguments propounded
by educated circles rest on a variety of catch-phrases such as “colonial-
legacy”, “grassroots mobilization”, “praetorian control”, “civil-military
bureaucracy”, “participatory governance”, “empowerment”, “civil-
society”, “Westernization”, “personalization”, “jettison the mould”,
“go the Chinese way”, “globalization”, and so on and so forth. Many of
these clichés are generously supported by aid money from the United
States.
The most recent vogue is that of promoting “good governance”
through providing non-government organizations, development
organizations, and civil society organizations, with funds and training
to develop participatory institutions and procedures. Several years,
countless seminars at fine hotels, hundreds of thousands of pages, and
hundreds of millions of dollars down the line, this latest panacea will be
abandoned and replaced by an equally sub-rational program of action
without, however, having done anything to alter the fortunes of the
state or its people. That the West itself appears to be regressing into
pre-Enlightenment irrationality masquerading as “post-modernism”
and New Age panaceas6 is no comfort and could further undermine
the ability of the subcontinent’s educated elite to comprehend its
predicament. The post-colonial elites did not, and do not, realize that the
maintenance of law and order and financial administration, particularly
in continental bureaucratic empires, required a bureaucracy staffed by
persons of high intellectual and moral caliber.
A handful of developing states, concentrated in East Asia, have
succeeded in attaining economic take-off. Most, however, find
themselves unable to perform their core functions or deliver on the
development front. These two failures are, of course, intimately linked.
Private investors are less likely to commit to projects in a country that
does not hesitate to arbitrarily seize savings or capital. Money spent on
health and education is more likely to be embezzled or misappropriated
if the financial administration has become ineffective and corrupt. The
wealthy and educated are more likely to migrate if they perceive that
6 Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of
Modern Delusions (London: The Fourth Estate, 2004).

they may be extorted by the state or subjected to arbitrariness. People

are more likely to take the law into their hands, or meekly submit to
crimes, if they see that the integrity of the criminal justice system has
been compromised.
The historical experience of governance of the subcontinent is
replete with examples of ideocratic arbitrary rule, failed states, and
failed societies. As the subcontinent drifts towards these alternatives,
it behooves its leaders to understand the central role of the culture of
power in causing them to govern arbitrarily as if they were masters of
personal estates, and appreciate, in the interests of their own survival,
the historical link between the intellectual and moral qualities of civil
servants and the executive, and the quality of governance in continental
bureaucratic empires.

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INDEX
A All-India Services 201

Allahabad inscription 57
A. G. Noorani 238, 253 Allahvardi Khan 162, 163
Abbasid 65, 66, 71, 82 Allan Octavian Hume 220
Abdullah Sultanpuri 108 America IX, 8, 60, 141, 157, 158, 167,
Abdul Wahab 108 286, 300, 311
Abdun Nabi Khan 114 American X, XI, 10, 157, 158, 162, 166,
Abu’l Fazl 89, 90, 91, 114, 119, 229, 167, 170, 277, 283, 300
303 Americas 142, 295
Abul Hasan 114 amirs 66, 206
Achaemenid Empire 30 Amir Timur 88, 89, 90, 91, 92
Adolf Hitler 155 Amritsar 235, 246
Afghans 92, 102, 120, 121, 176, 184 Ancient India 14, 21, 23, 26, 30, 31, 33,
Africa IX, 74, 77, 80, 81, 83, 85, 121, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 49,
154, 303 51, 52, 56, 58, 254, 308, 310
Agnimitra 52 Anglo-Norman 128
Agra 111, 181 Anglo-Saxon X, 8, 10, 87, 127, 128,
Ain-i-Akbari 14, 15, 103 155, 156, 233, 238, 239, 248,
Ajatashatru 32 265, 267, 285, 298
Akbar 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, Anglo-Saxon State of Laws 233
100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 108, Anglo-Sikh wars 186
109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 118, Anglo-Timurid war 160
119, 120, 253, 258 Antiochus I 48
Akkadian Empire 27, 288 Antonine 5
Al-Beruni 67, 70, 184, 257, 258 Arab 16, 17, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 82,
Alauddin Khalji 74, 75, 76, 78, 82, 86, 307
97 Arab Empire 16, 17, 66
Albion 123, 124, 152 Arabs XIII, 13, 16, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67,
Alexander the Great 31, 35, 47 69, 71
Alexis de Tocqueville 8, 10 aristocracies 7, 60
Alfred the Great 127 aristocracy 16, 127, 133, 139, 154, 157,
Aligarh 221 294
All-India Muslim League 221, 234 aristocratic 7, 134

Ariyaruk 69 Bank of England XI

Arthasastra 15, 21, 36, 37, 38, 40, 44, Barmarkid XI
289, 290, 291 Baroda 195, 196, 208
Arthashastra 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, Barrington Moore 15
42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 106, Battuta 195, 196, 208
229, 258, 260, 304 Benazir Bhutto 269
Aryans 28, 29, 30, 44, 232, 288 Bengal 31, 35, 53, 54, 58, 74, 84, 93,
Asad Khan 109 97, 103, 115, 158, 160, 162, 163,
Asaf Khan 110 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169,
Ashoka 35, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 58, 92, 174, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181,
109 183, 184, 187, 191, 200, 201,
Asiatic Society of Bengal 103, 168, 183, 210, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219,
184, 304, 308 220, 221, 223, 265, 266, 274,
assistant inspector-general (AIG 210 295, 304, 308
Assyria 4 Bengal Army 191, 200
Assyrian 63 Bertrand Russell 2
Athar Ali 14 Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) 253
Athenian 7 Bihar 31, 48, 53, 97, 100, 116, 162, 163,
Athens 289 165, 167, 223, 251, 288
auditor-general 87, 273 Bimbisara 32
Audits and Accounts 228 Bindusara 48
Aurungzeb 14, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, Bir Singh Deo Bundela 111
100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, Blanning 13, 76, 151, 153, 305
109, 111, 112, 113, 115, 117, Bokhara 66
118, 119, 120, 121, 160, 168, Bolsheviks 224
304 Bombay 160, 167, 177, 178, 181, 183,
Austria 153, 154 196, 199, 215, 217, 223, 230,
autonomous institutions 3, 6, 18, 45, 239, 245, 297, 309
87, 120, 121, 187, 194, 213, 216, Bourbon 154
221, 235, 236, 239, 259, 292, Brahma 30
295, 296, 297, 299 Brahmin 46, 50
Awami League 279 Brahmins 42, 45, 46, 64, 80, 168, 170,
Ayub Khan 268, 277, 278, 279, 283 184, 229, 258, 264
Azhar Hassan Nadeem 273 British XIV, 1, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 18, 33,
Aztec 60 35, 46, 93, 150, 152, 153, 154,
157, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165,
B 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172,
B. K. Nehru 239, 251 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179,
Babur 88, 91, 92 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186,
Babylonian Empire 88, 91, 92 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193,
Bactrian Bactria 88, 91, 92 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199,
Bahram Khan 118 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205,
Balban 88, 91, 92 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212,
Baluchistan IX, XI 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219,
221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226,

Index | 315
227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, Celtic 124

233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 245, Central Asia IX, 95
248, 254, 258, 259, 260, 261, Central Services 201
263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271, Chalukyas 59
277, 279, 282, 285, 289, 293, Chandernagore 162, 163
294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, Chandra Gupta I 53
304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, Chandra Gupta II 53, 54
310 Chandragupta Maurya 173
Buddhism 6, 32, 45, 49, 55 Charles de Secondat, Baron of Montes-
Buddhist 54, 59 quieu 1
Buddhists 45 Charles I 142, 145, 148
Budha Gupta 54 Charles II 148
Bureaucracy IX Charles Mansel 186
bureaucracy X, 8, 10, 11, 17, 28, 34, 37, Charles Napier 184, 206
46, 49, 66, 77, 87, 107, 127, 145, Charles Travelyan 180, 181
165, 187, 188, 194, 201, 203, chaudari 106
231, 232, 233, 240, 241, 259, Chauvery 52
267, 268, 269, 270, 283, 284, Chenab 106
286, 289, 293, 294, 296, 298, Chera 52
300, 301 Chief Justice 137, 143, 170
bureaucratic X, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, China 4, 5, 6, 7, 51, 54, 59, 60, 66, 89,
12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 28, 37, 40, 44, 213, 218, 306
48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, Chinese 4, 6, 7, 54, 59, 87, 118, 184,
71, 76, 77, 79, 81, 86, 87, 93, 97, 301
98, 106, 110, 112, 117, 119, 121, Chisti 80
126, 127, 140, 143, 153, 154, Claudius 124
155, 157, 166, 167, 178, 186, Clement Attlee 237
187, 188, 189, 203, 204, 207, Common Law 127, 132, 140, 148, 156,
211, 213, 229, 231, 235, 236, 167, 170, 177
238, 241, 251, 259, 268, 269, Commons 137, 138, 141, 144, 145, 147,
271, 272, 282, 284, 287, 288, 148, 149, 150, 151, 166, 170
289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295, Continental Bureaucratic Empire 3
296, 297, 298, 299, 301, 302 continental bureaucratic empire 4, 11,
Buxar 165 16, 18, 28, 48, 55, 63, 106, 126,
Byzantines 16, 67 189, 203, 211, 213, 236, 238,
287, 288, 289, 291, 299
C continental bureaucratic state X, 4,
C. P. Ilbert 219 284, 299
Calcutta 14, 103, 160, 161, 162, 163, Cornwallis 172, 173, 174, 175, 178,
164, 167, 168, 175, 180, 181, 179, 180, 187, 189, 221
214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 232, Cornwallis (1786-1793) 172
239, 245, 251, 297, 303, 304 Criminal Investigation Department
Cardinal Wolsey 140 (CID) 210
Catherine of Aragon 140 culture VIII, X, XI, XII, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18,

19, 21, 25, 30, 45, 48, 56, 57, 58, diwan-i-ala 91
63, 70, 71, 85, 99, 103, 110, 115, Dogra Rajput 197
117, 120, 123, 125, 132, 154,
156, 157, 168, 169, 172, 178, E
182, 183, 184, 187, 189, 198, East Bengal 53, 219, 265, 274
212, 227, 233, 235, 236, 239, East India Company 18, 158, 159, 218,
246, 248, 254, 255, 259, 260, 294
261, 269, 272, 273, 275, 277, East Pakistan 279
281, 284, 285, 287, 288, 290, Edmund Burke 171
291, 295, 297, 300, 302 Edward Gibbon 5
culture of power VIII, X, XI, XII, 1, Edward I 136
2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Edward II 136
16, 18, 19, 21, 45, 48, 56, 58, 63, Edward III 136, 137
71, 85, 99, 103, 110, 117, 120, Egypt IX, 4, 16, 26, 27, 28, 66, 71, 89,
123, 125, 132, 154, 156, 157, 90, 125
169, 172, 178, 182, 183, 187, Elam 26
189, 198, 212, 227, 233, 235, Elamites 22
236, 239, 246, 248, 259, 260, Elizabeth I 141
261, 273, 277, 281, 284, 285, Emergency 239, 244, 245, 249, 251,
287, 288, 290, 291, 295, 297, 304
300, 302 English 8, 16, 18, 102, 121, 123, 124,
cultures XI, 10, 13, 16, 87, 155, 167, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132,
189, 191, 225, 248, 277, 289, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139,
290, 294, 295, 299 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146,
D 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154,
155, 156, 159, 160, 162, 166,
D. D. Kosambi 14 167, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177,
Dahir 64 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183,
Dalhousie 186, 187, 189, 200 192, 204, 209, 212, 216, 220,
Dalit-Bahujans 30 221, 226, 230, 231, 294, 305,
Darius 30 306, 311
Darling 216, 222 Enlightenment 176, 187, 194, 299, 301
Daulat Khan 115 Europe X, 7, 8, 13, 57, 77, 90, 118, 121,
Delhi 14, 15, 16, 22, 30, 36, 37, 64, 66, 135, 144, 157, 173, 213, 218,
68, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 286, 294, 300, 305, 306, 311
82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, European 5, 9, 12, 77, 113, 121, 124,
95, 97, 103, 161, 165, 172, 180, 154, 162, 169, 176, 182, 185,
183, 193, 201, 208, 215, 218, 187, 189, 194, 207, 214, 217,
221, 223, 229, 232, 233, 238, 218, 219, 220, 294, 306
240, 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, Evidence Act of 1872 209
253, 255, 256, 267, 290, 291,
293, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, F
308, 309, 310, 311 Fa-Hsien 54, 56
diwan 91, 97, 98, 164, 208 faujdars 101, 102

Index | 317
Federal Security Force 279 Gupta

feudal 7, 8, 60, 90, 131, 132, 134, 139, Guptas VII, 1, 14, 16, 45, 52, 53, 54,
155, 294, 295 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 74, 80, 86,
feudalism IX, 128 208, 209, 214, 290, 307
Firdausi 67 Gwalior 111, 195
firman 160, 161
Firuz Shah 74 H
Foreign and Political Department 195, Habsburg 76
231 Hafiz Mohammed Amin Khan 117
Forest Charter 133, 136 Hajjaj bin Yousuf 64
France 8, 9, 10, 13, 107, 129, 131, 132, Harappan
136, 137, 138, 142, 146, 152, Harappa 1, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
153, 154, 155, 162, 167, 204, 28, 29, 288, 309
207, 213, 294, 295, 305 harkaras 105
Francis Drake 142 Harkishenlal 223
Francis Wilford 184 Harsha 59, 74
François Bernier 15, 99, 173 Haryana 244, 249
G Haryanka 32
Hecataeus 31
Ganges 33, 52, 59, 74 Henry II 128, 130, 134, 156
Gaul 124 Henry III 133, 135
George Kennan 10 Henry IV 138
Germany 11, 127, 155, 225 Henry Lawrence 186, 200
Ghaznavid 71 Henry V 138
Ghaznavids 17, 67, 69, 73 Henry VI 138
Ghiyas Beg 115 Henry VII
Ghorid Henry VIII 138
Ghorids 73 Henry VII 139
Ghulam Mohammed 274 Henry VIII 140, 141, 142, 143
Goth Hindu
Goths 126 Hindus
governance X, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16, Hinduism 17, 21, 29, 56, 60, 65, 70,
18, 29, 53, 57, 71, 72, 87, 106, 78, 79, 99, 100, 114, 162, 163,
155, 158, 164, 171, 178, 184, 167, 168, 170, 179, 187, 189,
186, 203, 211, 227, 229, 233, 191, 192, 196, 210, 212, 216,
235, 242, 250, 251, 256, 259, 218, 229, 236, 238, 240, 253,
260, 277, 280, 284, 287, 291, 254, 255, 256, 257, 260, 261,
294, 295, 301, 302 264, 290, 300, 309
Greek Hindutva 254, 255, 256, 257, 305
Greeks 30, 61, 173, 184, 289 historical experience of governance 2,
Gujarat XI, 22, 23, 52, 53, 74, 84, 93, 6, 7, 10, 11, 18, 57, 71, 87, 106,
102, 116, 117, 240, 255, 256, 155, 158, 178, 203, 227, 229,
257, 310 233, 259, 260, 284, 287, 291,
Gulab Singh 197 302

Holt Mackenzie 179 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214,

Homa Katouzian 5 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220,
House of Commons 137, 148, 166, 170 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226,
House of Lords 195 227, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233,
Hsiuen-tsang 56, 59 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239,
Humayun 91, 92, 94, 118 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246,
Huns 51, 54, 55, 59 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253,
Hyderabad 114, 195, 198, 199, 221, 234 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259,
260, 261, 263, 264, 266, 267,
I 277, 282, 289, 293, 294, 298,
Iberia 65 299, 300, 304, 305, 306, 307,
Ibrahim Lodhi 77, 91 308, 309, 310, 311, 312
ideocratic 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, 36, India Act 1784 171
56, 67, 80, 85, 109, 189, 191, India Act 1861 213
224, 231, 233, 239, 254, 257, India Act 1935 211, 222, 225
258, 261, 263, 266, 275, 277, Indian Army 196, 230, 246
281, 282, 285, 287, 289, 296, Indian Civil Service (ICS) 201
298, 300, 301, 302 Indian Councils Act of 1892 221
ideocratic arbitrary rule 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, Indian National Congress 13, 199, 218,
16, 17, 18, 85, 191, 224, 233, 220, 234, 307
239, 254, 261, 266, 275, 277, Indian Penal Code 181, 182, 208, 250
281, 285, 296, 298, 300, 301, Indian Police Service 201, 231
302 Indira Gandhi 243, 246, 249, 251, 252
Ideocratic Complex 6 Indo-Gangetic plain 72, 74, 93, 95, 96,
Iltutmish 73, 74, 81 101, 121
Imperial Titles 195 Indus XIII, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
Inayat Khan 15, 95, 100, 101, 104, 112, 30, 31, 33, 64, 74, 303, 304, 311
113 Indus Civilization 24, 25, 311
India Indus River Valley 22
Indian IX, XI, XIV, 1, 4, 9, 10, 13, Intelligence Bureau (IB) 210
14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, iqta 75, 94
26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, Iran IX, 4, 5, 94, 95, 107, 218, 307
35, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, Iraq 4, 89
51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, Ireland 127, 138, 148, 155, 207
60, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76, Islamabad III, IV, VII, VIII, IX, XI,
77, 78, 80, 82, 84, 87, 88, 89, 95, XII, 111, 251, 275, 281, 283,
97, 99, 110, 112, 116, 125, 142, 305, 308
157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, Islam Shah 97
165, 168, 170, 171, 172, 174, Ispahan 91
175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, Italy 4, 7, 125
181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, Itimad Khan 107
187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, J
195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200,
201, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, Jacques Necker 152

Index | 319
jagir 94, 119 kotwal 97, 218

jagirdar 97, 100, 119 Kumara Gupta I 54
Jahanara 112 Kushana 51
Jahangir 92, 93, 98, 102, 103, 106, 110,
111, 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, L
160, 292 Lahore 2, 14, 25, 67, 69, 70, 74, 84, 89,
Jaloka 45 95, 97, 98, 101, 108, 110, 115,
Jamaat-i-Islami 265 116, 186, 199, 200, 203, 218,
James I 142, 143 219, 222, 232, 244, 246, 248,
James II 149 269, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308,
James Wilson 203 310, 311, 312
Jammu and Kashmir 198 Laloo Prasad Yadav 251
Japan 4, 213, 286 Lancaster 138
Jats 106, 120, 185 Latin America IX
Jawaharlal Nehru 213, 239, 243, 251 Legal Democracy 10
Jaxartes 51 Liaquat Ali Khan 265, 266
Jhelum 106 Licchavi 53
John Keay 14, 159 London 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17,
John Lawrence 186, 187, 200 21, 31, 32, 55, 63, 65, 74, 77, 84,
John of Gaunt 138 99, 108, 123, 124, 132, 133, 134,
John Shore 172, 175 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142,
John Stuart Mill 189 145, 147, 150, 151, 153, 154,
Joint Committee on Indian Constitu- 157, 159, 160, 162, 166, 167,
tional Reform for 1933 14, 225 171, 196, 198, 201, 202, 206,
Josef Korbel 197 208, 214, 225, 230, 231, 237,
Joseph II 76 239, 242, 258, 279, 301, 303,
Julius Caesar 124, 125, 126 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309,
K 310, 311
lords 7, 97, 99, 107, 114, 127, 131, 134,
Kabul 31, 93, 96, 102 135, 138, 139, 148, 155, 294
Kalibangan 22, 23, 24, 28 Louis XIV 153, 157, 173
Kalidasa 52
Kalinga 47, 48, 49 M
Kanauj 45, 59 M. Asghar Khan 278
Kandahar 31, 35, 93, 102 Madhav Godbole 240
Kanishka 51 Madras 52, 160, 167, 176, 177, 178,
Karl Wittfogel 3, 13, 21 179, 181, 207, 215, 217, 218,
Karnataka 35, 59 223, 230, 232, 239, 297
Kashmir 45, 93, 98, 185, 195, 197, 198, Magadha 31, 32, 35, 52, 58, 289
229, 238, 265, 267, 308 Magna Charta 7, 132, 133, 134, 136,
Khafi Khan 15, 94, 96, 102, 107, 108, 155
109, 119 Mahabharata 29
Khurasan 64, 70 Mahapadma Nanda 32
Khushwant Singh 246, 256, 309 Maharaja of Indore 196

Mahatma Gandhi 255 Nicholas I 9

Mahmud of Ghazni 67, 85 Norman 128, 131, 155
mansab 119, 160 North-West Frontier Province XI
Mansur Ahmad VII
Mao 7, 310 O
Marquis de Custine 10, 308 Objectives Resolution 265, 266
Mathura 111, 114 Octavian 126, 220
Maurya 1, 14, 15, 16, 45, 48, 52, 58, Orissa 31, 59, 93, 162, 163, 167, 223,
59, 60, 74, 78, 80, 85, 116, 173, 255
289, 290 Ottoman Empire 17, 77, 93, 94, 306,
Maximilian I 76 307
Mayawati 250, 251 Ottomans 17, 89, 311
Megasthenes 31, 33, 34, 58, 173 Oudh 53, 74, 165, 171, 184, 200, 205,
Mesoamerica 3, 4 207
Mesopotamia 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 71, 288 Oxford 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 22, 23, 73,
Middle East IX, 17, 154 77, 132, 144, 172, 183, 185, 194,
Mir Jafar 163, 164 197, 201, 238, 247, 265, 268,
Mir Kasim 164, 165 269, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278,
Mirza Yar Ali 96, 119 283, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308,
Mithradates II 51 309, 310, 311
Mohammed Ali Jinnah 213, 238, 255, Oxus 22, 25, 66
263
Mohammed bin Qasim 64, 65 P
Mohammed Malik VII
Mohandas Gandhi 213, 258 Pakistan IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XIV,
Mohenjodaro 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 288 1, 4, 13, 15, 25, 197, 229, 236,
Montague-Chelmsford reforms 222 238, 255, 256, 263, 264, 265,
Morarji Desai 243, 249 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271,
Mountbatten 237, 263 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278,
Mughal 14, 46, 88, 92, 94, 95, 96, 100, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284,
109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 285, 286, 299, 300, 301, 304,
279, 304 307, 308, 309
Muhammad Reza Khan 165 Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 279
Muhammed Shah Tughluq 85 Pallavas 52
Multan 77, 83 panchayat 40, 106
Muqtadir 71 Pandyas 52
Mysore 195, 199, 234 Panipat 91, 121, 221, 307
Parliament 11, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,
N 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145,
146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 154,
N. A. Palkhivala 245 155, 156, 157, 166, 167, 171,
Nanda 31, 32, 33, 35 188, 195, 204, 219, 226, 245,
Nand Kumar 169, 170 247, 293, 294
Nawaz Sharif 270 Pataliputra 31, 33, 45, 49, 53
Nazi 155, 224, 253 Patiala 196, 198

Index | 321
Permanent Settlement of 1793 173 207, 210, 217, 218, 220, 223,
Persepolis 30 229, 246, 250, 267, 308, 309,
Persia 17, 57, 71, 89, 95, 102, 103, 125, 312
290 Puru Gupta 54
Peshawar 102, 185, 236 Pushyamitra 45, 52, 54
peshkash 115 Pushyamitra Shunga 45
Pethick-Lawrence 237
Philip Francis 167, 169 Q
Picts 127 Qazi 69, 79, 80, 106, 108, 109
Plantagenet 128 Qazi Sherazi 69
Plassey 158, 163 Qin 6, 7
Police Act 1861 208 Quaid-i-Azam VII, IX, XI, 255, 263,
Police Commission 208 266, 304
Pondicherry 164 Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858,
power VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, 1, 2, 3, 4, 192
5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Quintus Curtius 32
16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 28, 35, 36, 40, Quit India 235
45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57, 58, quriltay 89, 90
59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71,
76, 79, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, R
95, 97, 99, 103, 107, 110, 112,
116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, Rabri Devi 251
124, 125, 128, 132, 133, 134, Rajgir 31
135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142, Rajiv Gandhi 252, 253
144, 145, 149, 150, 151, 153, Rajputs 21, 55, 60, 92, 95, 97, 111, 113,
154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 161, 176, 199
162, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, Ranjit Singh 185, 229, 303
175, 176, 178, 179, 182, 183, Regulating Act of 1773 166
185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, Republic 7, 125, 307
194, 195, 198, 199, 201, 202, Richard II 137, 138
204, 205, 206, 212, 214, 217, Richard the Lion Heart 130
220, 222, 224, 225, 227, 229, Robert Clive 163
230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, Robert Walpole 150, 155
236, 237, 239, 241, 243, 244, Roman Empire 4, 5, 55, 76, 124, 126,
246, 247, 248, 249, 252, 255, 306
256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 264, Roman Republic 7
267, 268, 270, 271, 273, 274, Russia IX, 9, 10, 153, 213, 218, 308,
277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 283, 310
284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, ryotwari 177, 179
290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 297, S
298, 299, 300, 302
President Musharraf XI Safavid Persia 102
Prussia 9, 153 Samanid 66
Punjab XI, 31, 67, 69, 71, 115, 184, Samarkand 66, 89
185, 186, 187, 193, 200, 205, Samudra Gupta 53, 56

Sanjay Gandhi 249, 252 subcontinent VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, 1,

Saqi Mustad Khan 103, 105, 107, 108, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
111, 113, 114, 115, 117 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31,
Sardinia 125 35, 45, 60, 65, 71, 72, 73, 88, 89,
Sargon I 27 91, 92, 93, 95, 99, 110, 116, 120,
Satnami 103 121, 123, 154, 158, 159, 161,
Saxon X, 8, 10, 87, 127, 128, 131, 155, 162, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171,
156, 233, 238, 239, 248, 265, 172, 174, 178, 182, 183, 186,
267, 285, 298 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194,
Sayyid 87, 107, 108 197, 199, 201, 203, 204, 205,
Scotland 123, 127, 142, 146, 147, 148 207, 208, 212, 213, 214, 216,
Scylax 30 220, 224, 227, 229, 231, 232,
Seleucid 48 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238,
Seleucus Nikator 31 239, 246, 257, 259, 260, 270,
Seljuk 68 273, 284, 285, 288, 289, 290,
Senate 125, 126, 281 291, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297,
Shah Alam 92, 165 298, 299, 300, 301, 302
Shahjahan 15, 92, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, Subuktagin 67
103, 104, 112, 120, 303 Suhrawardi Sufis 80
Shaik Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) 67 Sui XI
Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi 110 Sulla 125
Shaista Khan 115, 116 Sultanate 71, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 83,
Shakas 51 84, 85, 87, 88, 229, 290, 291,
Sher Shah Suri 92, 97, 101, 271 293, 307
Shihabbudin Ghori 73 Sumer 23, 26
Shitab Rai 165 Surat 112, 116, 160, 161, 167
Sicily 125 Syed Ahmed Khan 14, 191, 221, 293
Sikandar Hayat VII, VIII, XII Syed Mehmud 223
Sikandar Lodhi 81
Sikhs 106, 120, 185, 186, 193, 199, 308 T
Simla 211 Taj Mahal 116
Simon de Montfort 135 Talpoor Ameers 184
Sindh 23, 64, 83, 184, 185, 206, 207, Tang 6, 66
274 Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui 268
Siraj-ud-daula 162, 163, 164 Taxila 51
Skanda Gupta 54 the British Raj 18, 195, 201, 202, 210,
South Asian X, 13, 111, 254, 257, 305, 233, 259
309, 310 the East India Company 18, 159
South East Asia IX The National Debt 149
South Sea Bubble 150 the Netherlands 7, 149, 152, 155
Spain 8, 64, 142, 146, 154 the Nizam of Hyderabad 221
Special Branch 210, 211, 228 the Soviet Union 12, 59, 283
Stafford Cripps 237, 305 The State of Laws 7, 149, 156, 157, 265
Stephen Cohen XI Thomas Babbington Macaulay 181
Stuart 142, 146, 149, 189

Index | 323
Thomas Beckett 129, 195, 196, 208 Vernacular Press Act 219
Thomas Cromwell 147 Vikings 127
Thomas Munro 176 Virji Vora 116, 117
Thomas Roe 102 Vishnugupta Chankya (Kautilya) 31
Tibet 96 vizier 17, 68, 69, 77, 82, 87, 109, 185,
Timurid VIII, 1, 14, 15, 17, 18, 88, 89, 292
91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, Voltaire 18, 157, 158, 183, 207, 295,
100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 305, 306, 310
106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 116,
117, 118, 120, 121, 141, 159, W
160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 170, Wales 148
173, 188, 191, 196, 229, 231, Walid 64, 65
236, 258, 260, 291, 292, 293, Wellesley 172, 175, 177
294 West Pakistan 265, 274, 279
Timurid Empire VIII, 14, 15, 17, 18, Whig 149, 150, 175
89, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 102, William, the Duke of Normandy 128
104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, William Bentinck 179, 245
113, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, William Hawkins 160
159, 160, 161, 170, 173, 188, William Jones 168, 183
291, 293, 294 William of Orange 149
Torture Commission 207 William Whitelaw 248
Tudor 139, 141 Winston S. Churchill 16
Tughril Khan 84 Wu-Sun 51
Turan 94
Turk 66 Y
Turkasa 61
Turkic 1 Yahya Khan 268, 278
Yamin-ud-Daula 95, 116
U Yemen 63
Yueh-chi 51
ulema 80, 81, 93, 110, 265 Yusufzai 102
Umayyad 64, 71
Ur-Nammu 27 Z
Uruk 27
Uttar Pradesh 31, 48, 250, 251 Zafar Iqbal Rathore VII, VIII, IX, 281,
285
V zamindar 100, 101, 105, 106, 168, 176
Zia-ul-Haq 269, 273, 280, 284
Vakatakas 52, 54 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 268, 269, 271, 283
Veda 29

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Inquiry Book Edited Final.

indd I 3/24/2008 3:24:56 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd III 3/24/2008 3:25:01 PM

First published in Pakistan in 2006 by Alhamra Publishing

Published by Shafiq Naz

Printed and bound in Pakistan by

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd IV 3/24/2008 3:25:01 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd V 3/24/2008 3:25:01 PM

T he present volume is the product of a research effort conducted

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd VII 3/24/2008 3:25:02 PM

My parents, Kamran and Nuzhat Niaz, went beyond the call of

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd VIII 3/24/2008 3:25:02 PM

I n the subcontinent, the Middle East, Central Asia, Russia, Africa,

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd IX 3/24/2008 3:25:02 PM

smokescreens derived from equally sub-rational American, Marxist, or

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec16:X 3/24/2008 3:25:02 PM

faith in the equality and alterability of human nature. The result of

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec1:XI 3/24/2008 3:25:02 PM

M.Phil. program I intended to write about the culture of power of the

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec1:XII 3/24/2008 3:25:03 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec1:XIII 3/24/2008 3:25:03 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec1:XIV 3/24/2008 3:25:03 PM

T he two basic functions of the state are the maintenance of order

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:1 3/24/2008 3:25:03 PM

who suffer the consequences of its exercise, or are otherwise

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:2 3/24/2008 3:25:03 PM

of power is the aggregate of the behavior of all individuals and

5 Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:3 3/24/2008 3:25:04 PM

and is not Euro-centric, that can be used to describe a centralized

6 The terms continental bureaucratic empire and continental bureaucratic state

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:4 3/24/2008 3:25:04 PM

of other continental states fell somewhere between these three

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:5 3/24/2008 3:25:04 PM

would quickly consign the state apparatus to disintegration. A

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:6 3/24/2008 3:25:04 PM

former, in most cases, to live in a world of make-believe.12

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:7 3/24/2008 3:25:04 PM

stand out, is the vastly superior scale and durability of their

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:8 3/24/2008 3:25:05 PM

is that at the advent of the British Empire in India in 1757, the

15 Of Russia under Nicholas I (1825-1855): “The emperor surrounded himself

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:9 3/24/2008 3:25:05 PM

of the British Empire in India without first comprehending the

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:10 3/24/2008 3:25:05 PM

apparatus finds itself in conflict with politicians seeking to use

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:11 3/24/2008 3:25:05 PM

leadership, and even civil society. Indeed, in order to understand the

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:12 3/24/2008 3:25:06 PM

executive to treat the entire country as if it were his personal estate,

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:13 3/24/2008 3:25:06 PM

the Maurya Empire is concerned or even Harappa, Wittfogel’s argument

22 John Keay, India: A History (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:14 3/24/2008 3:25:06 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:15 3/24/2008 3:25:06 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:16 3/24/2008 3:25:07 PM

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:17 3/24/2008 3:25:07 PM

consolidation, and its expansion, and provides some of the clearest

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:18 3/24/2008 3:25:07 PM

The Conclusion summarizes the preceding discussion, and indicates

Inquiry Book Edited Final.indd Sec2:19 3/24/2008 3:25:07 PM

THE FIRST RAJ: