NCERT Solutions for Class 7 History Chapter 10 - Eighteenth Century Political Formations

The offices held by Sa’adat Khan were subadari, faujdari and diwani.

 (a) Aurangzeb fought a protracted war in the Deccan.

(b) Umara and jagirdars constituted powerful sections of the Mughal administration.

(c) Asaf Jah founded the Hyderabad state in 1724.

(d) The founder of the Awadh state was Burhan-ul-mulk-Sa’adat Khan.

(a) False

(b) False

(c) True

(d) True

The Nawabs of Awadh and Bengal tried to do away with the jagirdari system to decrease Mughal influence in the regions by reducing the number of officeholders (jagirdars) appointed by the Mughals. They also reduced the size of jagirs, and appointed their own loyal servants to vacant positions. The accounts of jagirdars were checked to prevent cheating, and the revenues of all districts were reassessed by officials appointed by Nawab’s court. In an effort to reduce the Mughal influence in Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan transferred all Mughal jagirdars to Orissa and ordered a major reassessment of the revenues of Bengal. Revenue was collected in cash with great strictness from all zamindars. As a result, many zamindars had to borrow money from bankers and moneylenders.

The organisation of the Sikhs into a political community during the seventeenth century helped in regional state-building in Punjab. Several battles were fought by Guru Gobind Singh against the Rajput and Mughal rulers, both before and after the institution of the Khalsa in 1699. Under a number of able leaders in the eighteenth century, the Sikhs organised themselves into a number of bands called jathas, and later on, misls. Their combined forces were known as the grand army (dal khalsa). Guru Gobind Singh inspired the Khalsa with the belief that their destiny was to rule (raj karega khalsa). Their well-knit organisation enabled them to put up a successful resistance to the Mughal governors first and then to Ahmad Shah Abdali, who had seized the rich province of the Punjab and the Sarkar of Sirhind from the Mughals. The Sikh territories in the late eighteenth century extended from the Indus to the Jamuna, but they were divided under different rulers. One of them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, reunited these groups and established his capital at Lahore in 1799.

The Marathas wanted to expand beyond the Deccan in order to decrease the Mughal influence. Between 1720 and 1761, the Maratha Empire expanded. By the 1720s, they seized Malwa and Gujarat from the Mughals, and by the 1730s, the Maratha King was recognised as the overlord of the entire Deccan peninsula.

Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, the founder of Hyderabad state (1724-1748), was one of the most powerful members of the court of the Mughal Emperor Farrukh Siyar. Taking subsequent advantage of the turmoil in the Deccan and the competition amongst the court nobility, he gathered power in his hands and became the actual ruler of that region. Asaf Jah brought skilled soldiers and administrators from northern India who welcomed the new opportunities in the south. He appointed mansabdars and granted jagirs. Although he was still a servant of the Mughal Emperor, he ruled quite independently without seeking any direction from Delhi or facing any interference.