Literate Communities of Mughal India

The question of urbanisation is a well debated topic. When we shift our focus from the formation of the urban spaces to those who inhabit these spaces, the study of the literate communities becomes very important. Literate  communities  mainly comprised of those people who possessed  some kind of a specialised literary knowledge. This knowledge could be in religious literature, vedic literature, brahmanical literature and so on. An analysis of these literate communities helps us in perceiving the early modern empires. It helps us in understanding the whole notion of an early modern empire in a much better way. These  empires were not just politically driven. Equally important was the role of the varoius knowledgeable communities and their networks. An empire was not just an empire of revenue but also of mind, information and knowledge. By tapping the knowlegde of these literate communities, the state was able to gather adequate information about the workings of the society and then use it for various purposes like the monopolisation of the revenue and so on. The early modern empires,therefore, managed to retain their control not just by violence or coercive measures but mainly by collecting information with the help of these knowledgeable communities. The various literate communities were also known as service gentry as their knowledge was in the service of the empire.

When we study these literate communities in detail, we get to deal with certain broad themes. Whether in this whole discussion of knowledgeable communities, does the caste or varna play any significant role? Were the pandits of Banaras producing the same kind of knowledge as the pandits of Maharashtra? Why was it necessary for the empire and the state to bother about the intra-pandit debate? What were the ritual entitlements of the kayasthas and were did they stand? In this essay, an attempt would be made to look into the various literate communities by taking into account these above mentioned themes.

Scholars like Edward Said believed that colonialism stood very special in the indian context as knowledge was power in the colonial period. According to him,early modern empires were militaristic and economically coercive. Colonial state was successful as it conflated knowledge and power. This kind of an understanding has been questioned.

 According to C.A Bayly, the indian rulers had long been concerned with good intelligence gathering. For them, surveillance was a vital aspect of the science of kingship. Their aim was not to create a police state.So the royal intelligence was heavily dependent upon the informal networks of knowledgeable people. The British were compelled to manipulate and master the information systems of their Hindu and Mughal predecessors. The indigenous agencies were modified, given new tasks and set to collecting different types of information from their predecessors. He argued that the pre-colonial rulers like the Mughals introduced a regular system of offical political reporting and a wide-ranging network of post-stages or dak chaukis under the recognised officials.Many words related to news and communication in hindi and bengali are of persian-arabic origin like khabr, ahkbar and so on. Under Akbar, every provincial and subdivisional headquarters had its “recorder s of events”. The waqai nigars were those who were mainly concerned with the revenue matters. And the waqai naviss were those who dealt with other matters. These officials noted down the happenings of the week and sent their reports to the Emperor by means of runners or harkaras. They were despatched under the charge of the head post master or daroga-i-dak. He was responsible for the safety of the royal letters and also for the correspondence of merchants, intelligentsia and the ordinary people. In the capital, an imperial newswriter recorded the court events. Various overlapping systems of watch and ward also brought news and information to the indo-muslim officials. This included the mace bearers,chaukidars,kotwals. The civil magistrate or the qazi, the chief cleric or the mufti played an important role in investigating,recording and alerting the authorities to various commercial, proprietory and moral issues.