ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE MUGHALS

ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE MUGHALS

The Mughal administrative system was in the nature of a military rule and was necessarily a centralised despotism. It was the Perso-Arabic system in Indian setting. The Mughal government was called a Kaghzi Raj or paper government, as a large number of books had to be main­tained. The emperor was the fountain of all honours, source of all administrative power and the dispenser of supreme justice, implying that the Mughal emperors did not regard the Khalifa as their formal overlord. But they were not despots as they kept the interest of the people uppermost in their mind.

The Mughal nobility was a heterogeneous body, com­posed of diverse elements like Turks; Tartars, Persians, and Indians and therefore it could not organise itself as a powerful baronial class. It was further not hereditary but purely official in character.

The entire kingdom was divided into suba or pranta, suba into sarkar, Sarkar into pargana and the pargana into villages.

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