Mughal Power, the Sikhs and Other Local Groups in the Punjab

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the regional administration problems encountered by the Mughals in Punjab during 1707-15. A major failure of the Mughals in the region was their inability to deal with the Sikh problem. The period saw the resurgence of the Sikh uprisings directed against the Mughal state. The Sikhs viewed the Mughal state as the source of all tyranny, since it not only had the largest share in the social surplus but also legitimized and sustained the existing power-structure in the locality. The Sikh movement challenged the Mughal authority and significantly eroded it during the four phases of struggle under the leadership of Banda Bahadur. The Sikhs posed challenges by posing alternative concepts of rule and rulers, by integrating several Jat and Jat Sikh zamindars and gaining strength from the overt and covert resistance of hill chiefs against Mughal power. However, the support base of the Sikhs withered away over a period of time. The khatris and the non-Jat zamindars aligned with the Mughals due to their political and economic interests. The local magnates too gravitated towards the more distant power of the Mughals. Some of the hill chiefs too sided with the Mughals. While the Mughal power had regained some ground and although Banda Bahadur, the formidable Sikh leader of the early-eighteenth century was captured and slain in 1715 along with 700 other Sikhs, Sikh hostility continued to erode the foundations of Mughal power until the province was in total disarray in the middle of the eighteenth century.