Mughals - How Tyrannic And Oppressive

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Some interesting facts on the Jaipur Rajas from wiki. Apparently they worked under immense pressure and also suffered from Mughal persecution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_Singh_I

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In 1638 the fort of Kandahar was surrendered by its Persian commander, Ali Mardan Khan, to Shah Jahan. The emperor's son Shuja, accompanied by Jai Singh, was sent to take delivery of this important fort. To overawe the Persian Shah from interfering in this task, Shah Jahan assembled a 50,000 strong army in Kabul. On this occasion Jai Singh received the unique title of Mirza Raja from Shah Jahan, which had earlier been given to his great-grandfather Raja Man Singh I of Amber by Emperor Akbar.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In 1649 another blow knocked down Mughal prestige——Kandahar was recovered by Shah Abbas II. The Mughals twice attempted to eject the Persians from Kandahar under the command of Prince Aurangzeb (in 1649 and 1652)——on both occasions Raja Jai Singh was present as an army commander, but the attempts failed due to the lack of adequate artillery and poor marksmanship of the Mughal gunners.

A third grand attempt was made in 1653 under the command of Shah Jahan's oldest and favorite son Dara Shikoh, a deadly rival of Aurangzeb, and again Jai Singh was sent with this army. Prince Dara was knowledgeable in spiritual matters and was refreshingly secular in his outlook, but these noble qualities were marred by his military incompetence and his flattering and foolish advisers. Dara was particularly harsh on officers that had taken part in the earlier campaigns under Aurangzeb and repeatedly taunted Jai Singh for those failures. But when his own campaign ended with the same result, the Mughals finally gave up all attempts to recover Kandahar.

Dara continued his hostility towards Jai Singh on return to Agra——no promotions or awards were given to the veteran general for skilfully covering the army's retreat. Instead Jaswant Singh of the rival Rathor clan was made commander of 6000 and received the superlative title of Maharaja.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Unlike the previous Mughal generals, the Rajput chief's policy was not to crush Shivaji but to conciliate him. After capturing his main fort of Purandar Treaty of Purandar (1665) was signed, Jai Singh convinced Shivaji to come to terms and join him in an invasion of Bijapur, which would be beneficial for both sides. For this triumph Jai Singh, already the highest ranking general, received rich gifts in gold and silver——both his sons, Ram Singh and Kirat Singh, were raised in rank. The latter was serving under his father while the former was acting as his agent at the Mughal court...

<b>Unlike other generals who had failed in the Deccan, Jai Singh was punished harshly, partly because he was also held responsible for his son's actions at Agra, and partly because he was a Hindu. For the expenses of this campaign the Rajput general had received only 3 million rupees from Aurangzeb, and had spent 10 million rupees from the accumulated hoards in his ancestral kingdom. Not a pice of this money was compensated by his ungrateful master——probably the opportunity of ruining a leading Hindu chief was too tempting for Aurangzeb. Only two years after Jai Singh's demise Aurangzeb passed an order (1669) calling for the demolition of Hindu temples in the Mughal provinces</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsingh_I

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It happened to be the emperor's birthday and robes of honor were given to the high ranked nobles like the prime minister Jafer Khan and Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur (commander of 6000. But the highest ranking Mughal noble was Raja Jai Singh I, a commander of 7000). All this while Shivaji had been forgotten and was inwardly fretting in the back row of nobles. When he learnt that he had been made a commander of 5000 Shivaji cried out, "What! My little son was made a commander of 5000 (after the treaty of Purandar with Raja Jai Singh) without coming to court...am I after all these services (aiding in the invasion of Bijapur), and coming all the way to court, to get the same rank?"

On further enquiry he learnt that the noble in front of him was Rai Singh, also a commander of 5000 but of a higher grade, Shivaji exclaimed, "Rai Singh! A mere subordinate of Raja Jai Singh! Am I to be considered only equal to him?" His loud voice and angry gestures caused a minor commotion...Ram Singh came to him and tried to calm him down but the Maratha king wrenched his hand away and began walking away. Due to his agitated state he finally sat down near a pillar....when Aurangzeb enquired as to the cause Ram Singh diplomatically replied, "The tiger is a wild beast of the forest and feels oppressed by the heat in a place like this and has taken ill." Aurangzeb allowed him to be taken away to Ram Singh's camp.

For the next three days Shivaji refused to appear in court, returned the rank of nobility, and accused the Mughals of being faithless. Aurangzeb decided to kill or at least imprison him——whereupon Ram Singh told the emperor to first kill him and his Rajput soldiers, who were honor-bound by his father's oath to Shivaji, before even a hair of the Maratha's head was touched. Aurangzeb allowed Ram Singh to keep him in his care but only after the Rajput prince signed a bond (15 May) taking full responsibility for the Maratha king.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Since Shivaji had escaped from the midst of Ram Singh's camp, Aurangzeb's suspicion naturally fell on Ram Singh for the feat. Some Maratha Brahmins confessed under torture that Ram Singh had connived at Shivaji's escape to honor the oath taken by his father. Ram Singh's rank was reduced by 1000, his estates were taken away, and he was banished from the Mughal court. Nearly a year later the Kachwaha prince was permitted to enter the court and his estates were restored (March 1667).

Meanwhile, in the south, his father Jai Singh was also harshly punished for the failure of his Bijapur invasion——unlike the Muslim generals who had also failed but were always in Aurangzeb's favor. Weighed down by these losses and the removal of his son from an influential post, Raja Jai Singh breathed his last in August 1667. Ram Singh became the next Raja of Amber (10 September) with Aurangzeb putting the tika (paint mark) on his forehead. (This was the last occasion that this ceremony, started by the great Akbar as a means of honoring the leading Hindu Rajas, was performed. Aurangzeb eventually stopped this ceremony as a Hindu practice in his Islamic state.)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When in 1676 Ram Singh returned to Agra as commander of 5000, Aurangzeb was engrossed in the frontier wars with the Pashtun tribes. But on the petering out of that conflict a bigger storm arose, which was destined to overthrow the Mughal Empire. In 1679, taking advantage of Maharaja Jaswant Singh's death in Afghanistan, Aurangzeb occupied his Kingdom of Marwar and simultaneously imposed the jaziya tax on the non-Muslims. The earlier decree of 1669 on temple destruction was now openly enforced and extended into the Rajput territories like Marwar, Mewar, Shekhawati, Bundelkhand, and Malwa.

However an alliance of the Rajput clans, and the desertion of Aurangzeb's son Sultan Muhammad Akbar to the Rajputs and Marathas, completely altered the situation. The insurrection spread among the Bhatis, Hadas, Gaurs, and there was a danger that the Amber Kachwahas could join their subordinate clansmen the Shekhawats. So before leaving for the Deccan in 1681 Aurangzeb appointed Ram Singh and his clansmen to a military outpost in Afghanistan so that they couldn't influence events in Rajputana.

In any case Ram Singh did not have the forceful personality, military ability, or even influence among the Mughal nobility that the accomplished Jai Singh had always commanded. Any progress in his career had been marred by the machinations of the bigoted Aurangzeb who had first punished him unjustly and then denied him the full resources to fight in Assam. With such a weak ruler at the helm, Amber state had to stay loyal to the Mughals and attempt to regain its influential position through military service. But even this did not happen in the reign of Ram Singh or his immediate successor.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishan_Singh

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Raja Bishan Singh was thus the first ruler of Amber (since the days of the great Man Singh) to sit on the throne without any rank or status in the Mughal nobility. So when Aurangzeb recognized Bishan Singh as Raja (30 April, 1688), made him commander of 2500 (cavalry), and gave him a cash advance for their maintenance, it seemed that the Amber royal family had come out of its dark days. Unfortunately this restoration came with a harsh condition——Bishan Singh was commanded to uproot the Jat rebels in the Agra province or these grants would be revoked.

At this stage, while Aurangzeb was fighting in the Deccan Wars, North India was also covered by strife. The main rebellions were of the Rajputs in Rajasthan, Malwa, Gujarat, Bundelkhand——only the three weak states of Amber, Bundi, and Datia were in Mughal service, and were being used mostly against their own Hindu brethren by the cunning Aurangzeb. The other major rebellions were of the Sikhs in Punjab and the Jats in Agra.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_Singh_II

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When Jai Singh sat on the ancestral throne at Amber, he had barely enough resources to pay for the support of 1000 cavalry—this abysmal situation had arisen in the past 32 years, coinciding with the reign of the bigoted Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb....

The death of Aurangzeb (1707) at first only increased Jai Singh’s troubles. His patrons Bidar Bakht and his father Azam were on the losing side in the Mughal war of succession—the victorious Bahadur Shah continued Aurangzeb’s hostile and bigoted policy towards the Rajputs by attempting to occupy their lands. Sawai Jai Singh formed an alliance with the other Rajput states, which defeated and expelled the Mughals from Rajputana....

The Jats, like other Hindus and Sikhs, had been provoked into rebellion by the bigoted policies of Aurangzeb and the harshness of his local Muslim governors. While Aurangzeb was sinking deeper into the morass of his Deccan Wars, the Jats successfully overthrew the Mughal maladministration in Agra province. But in later years some Jat war bands began attacking and plundering civilians——their chief Churaman even sent 6000 of his soldiers to aid the later Mughals in their wars against the Rajput alliance (1708-10). Sawai Jai Singh could not tolerate such disturbances in his province and he attacked the Jat stronghold of Thun in 1722....

Jai Singh’s greatest achievement was the construction of Jaipur city, which later became the capital of the modern Indian state of Rajasthan. Construction of the new capital began as early as 1725 although it was in 1727 that the foundation stone was ceremonially laid, and by 1733 Jaipur officially replaced Amber as capital of the Kachawahas. Built on the ancient Hindu grid pattern, found in the archaeological ruins of 3000 BCE, it was designed by the Brahmin Vidyadhar who was educated in the ancient Sanskrit manuals (silpa-sutras) on city-panning and architecture. Merchants from all over India settled down in the relative safety of this rich city, protected by thick walls, and a garrison of 17,000 supported by adequate artillery.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->