Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / Aurangzeb's Famine Tax: The Grain That Never Grew
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about Aurangzeb's wars — the Deccan campaigns, the Marathas, the Sikhs. But there's something that underpins all of that: the economy. How do you feed an empire that's constantly at war? And what happens when the land itself stops producing? Luna: You're talking about the famine, right? I know there was a big one early in his reign. Lucas: Exactly. The famine of 1660 — just two years after Aurangzeb took the throne. It hit the Deccan and parts of northern India. The maasir i alamgiri, the official court chronicle, describes it as a time when 'the price of grain rose so high that the poor could not afford even a single meal.' But what's really striking is Aurangzeb's response. He didn't just try to relieve the famine — he imposed a new tax on it. Luna: A new tax during a famine? That seems... counterintuitive. Lucas: It does. The tax was called the abwab i galla — literally 'the cess on grain.' The idea was to raise revenue to buy grain from other regions and import it to the affected areas. In theory, it was meant to fund relief. In practice, it was an additional burden on already starving peasants. The qanungos — the local revenue officials — were tasked with collecting it, and they had to assess how much grain each village produced. But in a famine, there was no grain to assess. Luna: So they were taxing nothing, essentially. Lucas: Worse — they were taxing the expectation of grain. The maasir i alamgiri says that in some districts, the abwab i galla was collected even where crops had completely failed. And the revenue went straight to the imperial treasury, not back into relief. The European traveler Niccolao Manucci, who was in India at the time, wrote that 'the poor people were forced to sell their children and their cattle to pay the tax.' François Bernier, another traveler, described fields of skeletons — people who had died of starvation while trying to flee. Luna: That's horrific. Did anyone push back? Lucas: Some zamindars — the local landed elites — refused to collect the tax, or they quietly waived it in their own territories. But the imperial administration was relentless. Aurangzeb himself was known for his personal austerity — he lived frugally, even sewing his own caps. But his fiscal policies were harsh. He saw the abwab i galla as a legitimate way to fund the state's needs, even in crisis. And this wasn't unique to him — Mughal emperors had imposed emergency taxes before. But the scale of the 1660 famine, and the persistence of the tax, made it a symbol of extraction. Luna: It reminds me of something we discussed in the jizya episode — how a tax can become a political symbol, even beyond its economic impact. Lucas: Exactly. The abwab i galla was never just about grain. It was about the relationship between the emperor and his subjects. And that relationship was fraying. Peasants who couldn't pay fled their lands, which meant less cultivation the next year, which meant less revenue, which meant more pressure to collect. It's a cycle that contributed to the long-term decline of the Mughal economy, especially in the Deccan where the wars were most intense. Luna: And you know, speaking of cycles of support — this show itself runs on listener support. If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, and if these conversations about South Asia have added something to your day, consider helping us keep it ad-free. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that goes a long way for a show like this. Lucas: Yeah, absolutely. So back to the famine tax — the abwab i galla wasn't the only such measure. Aurangzeb also experimented with price controls on grain, and he set up state-run granaries in some cities. But these efforts were uneven. The granaries, for instance, were often empty because the grain had already been sold to merchants. And the price controls led to black markets. So the empire's response was a mix of genuine intervention and fiscal desperation. Luna: What about the long-term impact? Did the abwab i galla continue after the famine? Lucas: It did. The tax remained on the books for decades, though it evolved. In some regions, it became a regular surcharge on land revenue. In others, it was collected only during droughts. But the principle — that the state had the right to tax even in times of scarcity — was established. And that set a precedent that later Mughal rulers, and even the British, would follow. When the British East India Company imposed its own grain taxes in the 18th century, they were building on a Mughal foundation. Luna: So Aurangzeb's famine tax didn't just affect his reign — it shaped colonial policy too. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes these details so important. It's not just a story of one bad harvest. It's about how an empire thinks about resources, about obligation, about survival. The maasir i alamgiri records that in 1661, Aurangzeb issued a decree that no tax collector could seize a peasant's plow or his seed grain. That sounds compassionate, but it also tells you how bad things had gotten — that such a decree was necessary. The plow and the seed were the only things left. Luna: It's a window into a world where the line between survival and collapse was very thin. Lucas: And where the emperor, for all his piety and personal discipline, couldn't always control what his tax collectors did in his name. The maasir i alamgiri is a court chronicle, so it tends to portray Aurangzeb as benevolent. But the accounts of Manucci and Bernier give us a different picture — of officials who demanded payment at swordpoint, of villages abandoned, of roads lined with the dead. That's the reality behind the marble and the jali screens. Luna: It humanizes the empire in a grim way. Lucas: It does. And it reminds us that empires are not just built on battles and treaties — they're built on grain, on taxes, on the backs of peasants who never get a chapter in the history books. The abwab i galla is one of those small, forgotten policies that actually tells us more about the Mughal Empire than any siege or coronation. Luna: I'll never look at a grain tax the same way again. Lucas: And maybe that's the point. Next time, we'll look at another layer of Mughal fiscal policy — the zamindari system itself, and how it evolved under Aurangzeb.