When Shah Alam (1788-1806) came back to Delhi under the protection of the British, his rule was confined to the Red Fort where he had to look after the large number of families of his predecessors.
By this time he had limited resources which were not enough to support the large number of his dependents, but as a Mughal emperor he was their guardian and it was his responsibility to meet their expenses. For example, when Marathas were in power, the emperor's grant was Rs17,000 per month while his total expenses were Rs45,000.
When Akbar Shah (1806-1837) succeeded to the throne, there were not enough resources to feed the members of the royal families. They had to live a life of poverty and misery.
In 1809, Governor General Wellesley fixed an allowance of Rs70,000 per month but even this was not sufficient to meet the growing demands of the dependents. At that time the only concern of the emperor was to get sufficient funds for keeping his court and those who were under his patronage. He had no political or administrative authority, since the East India Company had taken full control of the administration. He was the king only in name.
Akbar Shah tried to solve his financial problems and appointed Khawaja Farid as his wazir to find out other sources of income to control the financial crisis. The wazir adopted three methods to generate income. First, he reduced the allowances of the princes and begmaats or women of the royal families by 10 per cent.
Secondly, he closed some of the royal factories and sections of the royal kitchen. Thirdly, gold and copper from the ceiling of the Hall of Public Audience was taken away and used for minting coins to pay loans. On this, the people of Delhi commented that the silver of the ceiling was looted by Nadir Shah and gold and copper was taken away by Khawaja Farid. However, it was not a permanent solution. It provided relief only for the time being.
When Bahadur Shah (1837-1858) ascended the throne, he, throughout his rule, asked for more funds from the Company. He was getting Rs100,000 as a stipend. Interestingly the Mughal court called it tribute while the Company named it pension. There is a legal difference in the two terms tribute is paid to the superior power by the inferior power, while pension is given to a servant; this legal difference was the basis on which the Company charged Bahadur Shah as a traitor.
Financial problems greatly affected the life of the royal families. As a last resort, the king, his wives, and princes began to sell their jewellery and household things to meet the expenses. The Red Fort was plundered by the Marathas, Jats, Euhellas, Nadir Shah, and Ahmad Shah Abdali who not only took away the accumulated treasury of the Mughal rulers but also dug the walls and floors of the Fort in search of buried wealth. Ghulam Qadir Euhella did not even spare the books of the royal library and sold them in the markets.
As a result, royal families lived in poverty and deprivation. Two foreign women who visited the Red Fort and met the royal family depicted the pathetic condition of their life. Fanny Parks in Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of a Picturesque observed that the part of the palace where the royal family lived had lost all its past glory. The ceiling and the floor of the hall presented a melancholy look. Princess Hidayatun Nisa, instead of awarding a necklace of costly pearls, put a garland of flowers around her neck, just to follow the tradition of the great Mughals.
Another woman, Mrs Hassan Ali, a British woman who was married to a Muslim noble of Lukhnow writes in Observations of the Mussulmans of India “I was grieved to be obliged to accept the Queen's parting present of an embroidered scarf, because I knew her means are exceedingly limited compared with the demands upon her bounty; but I could not refuse that which was intended to do me honour at the risk of wounding those feelings I so greatly respected. A small ring of trifling value was placed by the Queen on my finger, as she remarked, 'to remind me of the giver'.”
Great Empires during their glorious days used to build great monuments in order to show their grandeur and glory.
When the empires declined and the rulers failed to maintain them because of financial problems, these splendid buildings started to deteriorate and tell the story of the rise and fall of the empires. The same happened in case of the Mughals. Shahjahanabad which was the dream city of Shahjahan and Delhi which had the palaces, gardens, forts, and tombs of the past generations, presented sad pictures in the last days of their rule.
It was observed by many foreign travellers. One of them was Reginald Heber who, in Narrative Journey through the upper provinces of India (1824-25), writes about the city of Delhi “From the gate of Agra to Humayun's tomb is a very awful scene of desolation, ruins after ruins, tombs after tombs, fragments of brick work, freestone granite and marble scattered everywhere over a soil naturally rocky and barren, without cultivation, except in one or two small spots, and without a single tree.”
The lesson of history here is that when the time of decline comes not only poor people but the ruling classes also suffer humiliation, poverty and misery.
