Decline of the Mughal Empire — Complete UPSC Notes

1. The Empire at Aurangzeb's Death (1707)

When Aurangzeb died at Ahmadnagar on 3 March 1707 at age 88, the Mughal Empire was, on paper, at its maximum territorial extent — from Kabul in the north-west to Tanjore in the south, from Kathiawar in the west to Chittagong in the east. Roughly 3.2 million sq km, with a population of about 150 million and a treasury still functioning. Yet within forty years (by Nadir Shah's invasion of 1739), the empire would be a shadow; within fifty-four (Panipat III, 1761), it would be a name without substance.

1.1 The Paradox of 1707

This is the central paradox UPSC loves: an empire visibly grand yet internally hollow. Aurangzeb's reign (1658–1707) achieved territorial maximum but at ruinous cost. The empire that he handed over had:

• An over-stretched military tied down for 27 years in the Deccan (1681–1707).
• A bankrupt treasury — the Deccan campaigns drained roughly Rs 10 crore over two decades.
• A jagirdari system in crisis — too many mansabdars, too few paying jagirs.
• A politically alienated nobility — Rajput, Sikh, Jat, Maratha, and Bundela revolts simmering.
• A weakened ideological base — religious policies had eroded the Akbar-era consensus of sulh-i-kul.

2. Aurangzeb's Policies — Seeds of Decline

Historians since Jadunath Sarkar have located the structural origins of decline in Aurangzeb's own policies. The case is not that he caused the decline single-handedly — Satish Chandra and others have qualified this — but that he accelerated structural strains that the empire could not absorb.

2.1 The Deccan Ulcer (1681–1707)

Aurangzeb's 27-year personal campaign in the Deccan against the Bijapur and Golconda Sultanates and the Marathas is often called his "Deccan ulcer" (a phrase from Jadunath Sarkar). He annexed Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687, then spent twenty years chasing Marathas through the Western Ghats. The capital was effectively at Aurangabad for decades, leaving the north under-administered.

• The army of occupation reached an unprecedented size, requiring vast jagirs.
• Newly conquered Deccani nobles (Deccanis and Marathas) were inducted as mansabdars — swelling the establishment beyond fiscal capacity.
• The Marathas were never crushed; after Sambhaji's execution (1689), Rajaram and then Tarabai sustained guerrilla resistance.

2.2 Religious Policies

Aurangzeb reversed the syncretic Akbar–Jahangir–Shah Jahan tradition:

• 1668–69: Re-imposition of restrictions on Hindu festivals; demolition of select temples (Vishvanath at Banaras, Keshava Deva at Mathura, Somnath again).
• 1679: Re-imposition of jizya on non-Muslims (abolished by Akbar in 1564).
• 1675: Execution of the ninth Sikh Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, at Delhi — converted Sikhism into a militant political force; Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa in 1699.
• Restrictions on Hindu officials' privileges (riding palanquins, etc.) and on the construction of new temples.

2.3 Alienation of the Rajputs

The Akbar-era Rajput alliance — the bedrock of Mughal stability for a century — was shattered by Aurangzeb's interference in the Marwar succession after Raja Jaswant Singh's death (1678). The annexation of Marwar and Mewar provoked a Rajput War (1679–81). Raja Ajit Singh's resistance never fully ended; Marwar and Mewar reverted to de facto independence under Bahadur Shah I.

2.4 New Political Adversaries

• Jats (around Mathura) — Gokula's revolt 1669, Rajaram's 1685, Churaman's consolidation around 1700.
• Satnamis (Narnaul) — 1672 peasant revolt brutally suppressed.
• Sikhs — militarisation under Guru Gobind Singh; Banda Bahadur's revolt (1708–15) was the immediate consequence.
• Marathas — Shivaji's coronation (1674) created an alternative pole of sovereignty that Aurangzeb's Deccan war failed to extinguish.

3. War of Succession 1707–09

Aurangzeb left three surviving sons — Muazzam (Bahadur Shah), Azam Shah, and Kam Bakhsh. He had divided the empire among them in his will, but Mughal practice did not permit partition; the throne was contested by arms.

Both wars were short but expensive. Bahadur Shah I had to buy support with promotions and grants of jagirs — initiating the inflation of mansabs and the dilution of jagir value that would haunt successor regimes. The norm was set: every Mughal succession after 1707 would be a war of succession, weakening central authority each time.

4. Bahadur Shah I (1707–12) — The Last "Shadow of God"

Bahadur Shah I (Muazzam, also called Shah Alam I), aged 64 at accession, was the last Mughal who personally commanded armies, made policy, and exercised real authority. His five-year reign was a calculated retreat from his father's confrontational politics.

4.1 Conciliation Policy

• Restored Marwar to Ajit Singh and Mewar to Amar Singh II; conferred high mansabs on Rajput chiefs.
• Made peace overtures to Shahu (Shivaji's grandson, released from Mughal custody 1707) — granted him Maratha sardeshmukhi rights in the Deccan.
• Recognised Kam Bakhsh's son and granted titles to defeated Deccani nobles.

4.2 Sikh War & Banda Bahadur

Banda Singh Bahadur, deputed by Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708), launched a major rebellion in Punjab — capturing Sirhind (1710) and proclaiming Sikh sovereignty in the foothills. Bahadur Shah I personally led the campaign against him; the war was unfinished at his death in 1712. Banda was finally captured and executed in 1715–16 under Farrukhsiyar.

4.3 Why "Shah-i-Bekhabar"?

Contemporary observer Khafi Khan disparagingly called him "Shah-i-Bekhabar" (the heedless king) for what looked like indecision. The label is misleading — modern historians read Bahadur Shah's conciliation as strategic, given the empire's exhaustion. But his death in February 1712 triggered another war of succession and the rapid erosion that followed.

5. Jahandar Shah (1712–13) & the Rise of the Sayyid Brothers

Bahadur Shah I's four sons fought a furious succession war (1712). The eldest, Jahandar Shah, won — with the crucial backing of Zulfiqar Khan, the powerful Iranian noble who became wazir. Jahandar's reign lasted barely eleven months and is remembered for two structural shifts:

5.1 Izaradari System

Zulfiqar Khan introduced Izaradari (revenue farming) as a substitute for direct collection. The state auctioned the right to collect revenue from a district to the highest bidder (the izaradar), who recouped his bid by squeezing peasants. Short-term cash for the treasury; long-term ruin for the agrarian base. This is the single most important fiscal change after Aurangzeb.

5.2 The Sayyid Brothers Emerge

Jahandar Shah's nephew Farrukhsiyar, then governor of Bengal, marched on Delhi with the support of two Barha Sayyid brothers — Sayyid Abdullah Khan and Sayyid Husain Ali Khan. At the Battle of Agra (10 January 1713), Jahandar was defeated, captured, and strangled. Farrukhsiyar was crowned; the Sayyid Brothers became wazir and mir bakhshi respectively. The era of the kingmakers had begun.

6. Farrukhsiyar (1713–19) — The Puppet

Farrukhsiyar's six-year reign is significant for three things:

6.1 The Farrukhsiyar Firman of 1717 — the EIC's "Magna Carta"

The famous firman granted the English East India Company duty-free trade in Bengal in exchange for an annual payment of Rs 3,000 — secured after the English mission led by John Surman cured the emperor of a painful disease (the surgeon was William Hamilton). This firman was the launching pad of Company power in Bengal and a structural cause of the Battle of Plassey (1757). Covered in detail in Modern Topic 01.

6.2 Execution of Banda Bahadur (1716)

Captured at Gurdas Nangal (1715) after a long siege, Banda was paraded through Delhi and executed in 1716 along with hundreds of followers. The Sikhs went into a long underground phase, re-emerging as the misls under Abdali's invasions.

6.3 The Final Coup (1719)

Farrukhsiyar tried repeatedly to free himself from the Sayyid Brothers — even allying with their rivals. In February 1719, the Sayyids brought a Maratha contingent under Balaji Vishwanath to Delhi (the first time a Maratha army entered Delhi as a deciding force), blinded and imprisoned Farrukhsiyar, and later strangled him. This is the moment many historians mark as the real end of effective Mughal sovereignty.

7. Muhammad Shah "Rangila" (1719–48) — Empire Disintegrates

The longest Later Mughal reign (29 years) and the most consequential. Muhammad Shah — nicknamed "Rangila" (the Colourful) for his patronage of music, poetry, and pleasure — engineered the elimination of the Sayyid Brothers (Husain Ali assassinated 1720, Abdullah Khan defeated and killed 1722) with the help of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, the Mughal governor of Deccan.

7.1 The Nizam Walks Away (1724)

Nizam-ul-Mulk briefly served as Muhammad Shah's wazir (1722–24) but, frustrated by court intrigue, returned to the Deccan in 1724 and established the Asaf Jahi (Hyderabad) dynasty — the first major independent Mughal successor state. This is the symbolic moment of imperial fragmentation: a sitting wazir resigning to found his own kingdom.

7.2 Cascade of Regional Independence

7.3 Maratha Northern Drives

Under Peshwas Bajirao I (1720–40) and Balaji Bajirao (1740–61), the Marathas surged northward, extracting chauth and sardeshmukhi from Malwa, Gujarat, Bundelkhand, and ultimately Delhi itself. Bajirao I's lightning campaigns reached the outskirts of Delhi (1737). By 1751, Malwa was effectively Maratha; by 1758, the Marathas held Punjab as far as Attock.

8. Nadir Shah's Invasion 1739 — The Defining Shock

Nadir Shah (the Persian conqueror, called the "Napoleon of Persia") invaded India in 1738–39 — and the speed and ease of his victory exposed the Mughal Empire as a hollow shell.

8.1 The Karnal Disaster (24 February 1739)

The two armies met at Karnal, north of Delhi. Nadir's roughly 55,000-strong cavalry, hardened by Central Asian campaigns and armed with mounted swivel-guns (zamburaks), routed Muhammad Shah's much larger but disorganised force in barely three hours. The Mughal wazir Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Awadh governor Saadat Khan, and the emperor personally surrendered.

8.2 The Sack of Delhi (March 1739)

Nadir entered Delhi on 20 March 1739. A scuffle led to a general massacre — modern estimates put the killed between 20,000 and 30,000 in a single day. He occupied Delhi for 57 days. When he left:

• The Peacock Throne (Takht-i-Tawus) — Shah Jahan's masterpiece — was carted to Persia.
• The Koh-i-Noor and the Darya-i-Noor diamonds were taken.
• Estimated loot: Rs 70 crore in cash, jewels, plate, and goods (some estimates go higher).
• Territory west of the Indus (Kabul, Sindh up to the Indus) was ceded to Persia.
• Three years' worth of land revenue was suspended in north India to allow recovery — a fiscal catastrophe.

9. Ahmad Shah Abdali — Repeated Invasions (1748–1767)

After Nadir Shah's assassination in 1747, his Afghan general Ahmad Shah Abdali (also Ahmad Shah Durrani) became king of Afghanistan. Between 1748 and 1767 he invaded India eight times, exploiting Mughal weakness in the Punjab.

9.1 The Najib-ud-Daulah Pivot

Abdali's installation of the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daulah as imperial paymaster (mir bakhshi) in Delhi after the 1757 invasion is critical. Najib became the local Afghan party in the imperial court, and it was he who invited Abdali back for the showdown with the Marathas at Panipat.

10. The Third Battle of Panipat — 14 January 1761

The Third Battle of Panipat is the single most consequential battle of 18th-century India — not for who won, but for who lost: it neutralised the Maratha bid for pan-Indian power at precisely the moment the East India Company was consolidating Bengal after Plassey (1757) and on the eve of Buxar (1764).

10.1 Background

The Marathas under the Peshwa Balaji Bajirao had reached Attock by 1758; their northern adventures alarmed the Afghans, the Rohillas, and the wazir of Awadh. The coalition formed:

• Afghan-Indian alliance: Ahmad Shah Abdali + Najib-ud-Daulah (Rohilla) + Shuja-ud-Daulah (Awadh).
• Maratha side: Sadashivrao Bhau (commander), Vishwasrao (the Peshwa's son), Ibrahim Khan Gardi (artillery), Malharrao Holkar, Mahadji Scindia. Rajputs and Jats were alienated by Maratha exactions and stayed neutral.

10.2 The Battle

Fought on the plains of Panipat (Haryana) on 14 January 1761. After a long stand-off and a logistical siege that starved the Marathas, the assault on 14 January was initially favourable to the Marathas, but the death of Vishwasrao broke morale; the disciplined Afghan cavalry counter-charged and the Maratha lines collapsed.

10.3 Losses & Consequences

• Maratha dead: roughly 40,000 to 75,000 (estimates vary widely). The cream of the Maratha leadership — Sadashivrao Bhau, Vishwasrao, Ibrahim Khan Gardi, Jankoji Scindia — was killed.
• The Peshwa Balaji Bajirao died of shock in June 1761.
• The Maratha bid for an Indian empire was checked; the Confederacy fragmented into the Holkar, Scindia, Bhonsle, and Gaekwad blocks.
• Abdali withdrew (his army mutinied for pay; he could not occupy Delhi).
• The Sikh misls, neither defeated nor exhausted, rose to dominate Punjab in the Maratha–Afghan vacuum.
• The English East India Company — a small Bengal trader in 1757 — became the only intact organised force in subcontinental politics.

11. Later Mughals 1748–1857 — The Fading Line

The post-Muhammad Shah emperors were figureheads, increasingly under the protection of whoever held Delhi (Rohillas, Marathas, Najib-ud-Daulah's grandson Ghulam Qadir, and finally the British from 1803).

12. Causes of Decline — (a) Religious & Political Alienation

From the Jadunath Sarkar tradition: Aurangzeb's religious policies and Rajput War alienated the very social groups (Rajputs, Hindu zamindars, Marathas, Sikhs, Jats) whose collaboration had been the foundation of Mughal power. The Akbar formula of sulh-i-kul was abandoned without a viable alternative.

• Re-imposition of jizya (1679) — political signalling more than fiscal weight, but symbolically corrosive.
• Execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur — created the militant Khalsa.
• Rajput War — destroyed the Mughal-Rajput alliance.
• Deccan ulcer — Maratha consolidation under Shahu became unstoppable.

Caveat: Modern scholarship (Athar Ali, Audrey Truschke, Munis Faruqui) shows Aurangzeb appointed more Hindus than any predecessor and that his religious actions were politically targeted. Use this as one cause among several, not the master cause.

13. Causes of Decline — (b) The Jagirdari & Mansabdari Crisis

This is the most decisive structural cause, identified by Satish Chandra (Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1959) and M. Athar Ali (The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, 1966).

13.1 The Mechanism

• Mansab inflation: Aurangzeb inducted Deccani and Maratha nobles, swelling the mansab pool from about 8,000 under Shah Jahan to over 14,500 by 1707.
• Jagir shortage (be-jagiri): The land available to assign as jagirs (paibaqi) did not expand at the same rate, because the productive lands stayed concentrated in the north while the new mansabdars came from the south.
• Gap between jama and hasil: The assessed revenue (jama) on paper was far higher than the actually collected revenue (hasil) — often a 30–50 per cent gap by the early 18th century.
• Result: Jagirdars over-collected during their short tenure, brutalised peasants, neglected investment in land — all of which damaged the agrarian base.

13.2 Why It Mattered

The jagirdari system was the empire's pay-and-command system. When it broke, the empire could neither pay its nobles nor command them. The result was the rise of revenue farming (Izaradari from 1712), independent regional warlords (Hyderabad, Awadh, Bengal), and the de-coupling of the provincial economies from imperial Delhi.

14. Causes of Decline — (c) Agrarian Crisis & Zamindar Revolts

Irfan Habib (The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1963; revised 1999) located the decline in over-exploitation of the peasantry. The Mughal land revenue demand was set at roughly one-third to one-half of the produce. As the jagirdari crisis intensified, the demand rose, peasants fled the land or revolted, and zamindars (the rural intermediaries) became the leaders of resistance.

14.1 Major Zamindar/Peasant Revolts (1669–1705)

14.2 Habib's Reading

These revolts are not unrelated local mutinies; they are the agrarian symptom of a single fiscal crisis. The Mughal land revenue system, which had functioned well under Akbar-Shah Jahan, broke down because (i) the land's productive surplus could not sustain the inflated mansab establishment, and (ii) the zamindars — who had collaborated with the state — now turned against it.

15. Causes of Decline — (d) Military Decline

• Technological obsolescence: No adoption of the European flintlock musket, mobile field artillery, or platoon-volley fire. Mughal cavalry still relied on the matchlock and the heavy charge — both outdated by 1740. Karnal (1739) was the cost of this obsolescence.
• Compositional drift: The cavalry contingents (tabinan) that mansabdars were supposed to maintain were under-strength; the chehra-and-dagh (descriptive roll and horse-branding) system collapsed in enforcement.
• No standing army: The Mughal army was a federation of mansabdar contingents. When mansabdari decayed, the army decayed with it.
• Loss of artillery superiority: Compare with the EIC's reorganisation under Clive and the disciplined sepoy battalions at Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764). The qualitative gap was unbridgeable by 1770.

16. Causes of Decline — (e) Economic Decline

• Shift of trade: Maritime trade in Bengal, Surat, Coromandel was increasingly controlled by European companies. The internal caravan and riverine trade that the Mughals had taxed atrophied.
• Drain of bullion: Bullion was now flowing into European Company hands.
• Banker withdrawal: Karen Leonard's "Great Firm" thesis (The "Great Firm" Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire, 1979) argues that the great indigenous banking houses (Jagat Seths of Murshidabad, Manik Chand, etc.) withdrew political credit support from the Mughal state and transferred it to regional powers and the EIC. Once the bankers shifted, the empire could not finance its armies. The Jagat Seths' role in financing Mir Jafar at Plassey (1757) is the most famous example.
• Karkhana decay: Imperial workshops producing luxury goods declined with the court's reduced revenues, depriving urban artisans of patronage.

17. Causes of Decline — (f) Successors & Court Factions

The Later Mughals were, with the exception of Bahadur Shah I, weak men placed on the throne by factions of the nobility. The court split into four well-defined factions, and each war of succession deepened the split:

No emperor after Bahadur Shah I could rise above these factions. Each emperor depended on one faction to gain the throne and was destroyed when the next faction allied with the next prince.

18. Causes of Decline — (g) External Invasions & Rise of Regional Powers

• Nadir Shah (1739) — financial bankruptcy + military demonstration of weakness.
• Abdali (1748–67) — chronic bleeding of Punjab + the Panipat showdown that destroyed both Marathas and Mughals as Indian powers.
• Maratha advance — reduced the Mughal empire to a Delhi rump even before Panipat.
• Sikh misls — absorbed Punjab post-Abdali.
• EIC in Bengal — Plassey (1757), Buxar (1764), Diwani (1765) ended the eastern provinces' contribution to imperial finance.

External and internal causes are intertwined: the empire would have survived Nadir Shah alone, or Abdali alone, or the Marathas alone, or the EIC alone. The simultaneity is what proved fatal.

19. Historiography of Mughal Decline

This section is critical for Mains. Knowing the historiographical positions adds analytical depth.

20. Mughal Decline & the Rise of British Power

The two processes — Mughal collapse and EIC ascendancy — are not parallel; they are causally linked. The Company's rise was made possible by the political vacuum that the Mughal collapse left behind. Five linkages:

1. Bengal Diwani (1765) — Buxar (1764) defeated the combined forces of Mir Qasim (Bengal), Shuja-ud-Daulah (Awadh), and Shah Alam II (Mughal Emperor). The treaty of Allahabad converted the Mughal emperor into the EIC's pensioner and gave the Company the legal status of Mughal diwan in three provinces.
2. Subsidiary Alliance (Wellesley 1798) — exploited successor-state insecurity. Awadh, Hyderabad, the Marathas, etc., signed treaties because they had no Mughal protector to fall back on.
3. Doctrine of Lapse (Dalhousie 1848) — used Mughal-era succession ambiguities to annex Satara, Jhansi, Nagpur.
4. Panipat III aftermath (1761) — the only organised pan-Indian alternative (the Maratha Confederacy) was crippled at the precise moment Plassey (1757) had given the EIC Bengal.
5. 1857 — the Revolt rallied around Bahadur Shah II precisely because the Mughal name retained symbolic legitimacy long after the empire's substance had gone. The British answer (trial and exile, 1858) ended the Mughal Empire formally — 150 years after Aurangzeb's death.

21. Previous Year Questions — UPSC Mains & Prelims

Prelims-style

Mains-style (GS Paper 1)