Summary of the benefits of Mughul Rule

Before we turn to the Afghans, we must sum up comments on the Mughuls. The Mughuls were generally solicitous for the welfare of the country and its people. The visits of emperors to the valley stimulated its trade and encouraged its industries. The Mughul empire, suggests Mr. W.C. Smith, was allied to the middle class, and during its most flourishing period it had middle class commerce as a secondary and very important basis of income, its primary basis being land. It appears that copper mines were worked during Jahangir’s time in Kashmir, and the Emperor made a grant of these mines to a private individual to be worked. Jahangir is, perhaps, the pioneer in opening up, as it were, the tourist trade of the valley. During the entire period of one hundred and sixty-six years, in which Kashmir was under the Mughuls, there are, out of 63 governors, only six instances of high-handed treatment of the Kashmiris. Sir Jadu Nath Sarkar mentions the following six gifts of the Mughul empire to India :

(1) The uniform administrative type throughout the Subas.

(2) One Official language.

(3) one uniform system of Coinage.

(4) An all-India cadre of higher public services, the officers being transferred from province every three or four years.

(5) The frequent march of large armies from province to province, and

(6) Deputation of inspecting officers from the central capita.

To these may be added the fact that the patronage of, and interest in, art shown by Mughul rulers in India is unparalleled in any cultural history of humanity in the world.

Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, each in, turn made it his summer resort. “Truly,” exclaimed Jahangir, “this is the paradise of which priests have prophesied and poets sung.” For nearly a century and a half, these four great Emperors came, from far-away Delhi and Agra, in stately progress across the Pir Panjal, with glittering retinues and splendid state, with escorts and audiences, tributes and forced labour, from the dusty glamour of an Indian court to the cool and quiet of a Kashmir summer. And Jahangir, when stricken with his fatal illness, knowing that his hour was near, turned to this one spot of all his wide Indian dominions, and died at Behramgul, almost within sight of his beloved and favorite land. Fourteen summers he had spent in the Kashmir valley, coming in with the blossoming of the lilac and the wild iris in the spring, and setting out back towards the plains of India when the saffron flowers had bloomed in the autumn.”

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