What were the Measures taken by the Mughal Rulers to Ensure Integrity of Empire?

What were the Measures taken by the Mughal Rulers to Ensure Integrity of Empire?

The predecessors of Akbar did not think it safe to create a unit of administration as large as a province on account of the fear that the Governor of a province might become too powerful. However, when Akbar created provinces, he guarded against the possibilities of the Governors becoming too powerful.

He made the Governor and Diwan independent of each other and thus a check on each other. As both of them had to take their order directly from the capital, they could act as a check on each other.

Moreover, the military forces stationed in a province had to look to the Bakshi for the payment of their salaries and for almost every other matter connected with their prospects in the services. His representatives accompanied every expedition and supplied, in their capacity as news-writers, an independent account of the affairs. Combining in himself the office of the provincial news-writer and the Bakshi, its holder could acts as another check on an ambitious Governor. Akbar also did not allow vested interest to develop.

He transferred the Governors from one province to another and did not keep a Governor for long in one place to harbour rebellious designs. The Emperor also frequently moved from one province to another, sometimes on a military mission and sometimes on an administrative tour. Those tours reminded his officials and his subjects that there was a “live” king above them.

Another measure adopted by Akbar was that he preferred to pay his soldiers, minor officials and even the highest officials in cash and through his own agents, the Bakshis. Old types of jagirs where the officials in charge had to collect the taxes, pay their own staff and the soldiers stationed there and also pay a fixed sum to the treasury, were no longer granted. A jagirdar was merely given the authority to collect a specified amount of his dues from his jagir, the income of which was otherwise settled by the Diwan.

Under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, the custom of appointing a Governor to hold charge of more than one province destroyed some of the safeguards. The absence of Aurangzeb for more than a quarter of a century from the North upset everything. Payments by assignments increased and sometimes office-holders discovered that they had been cheated as they could not collect the amount due to them from their jagirs.