Taxation Under the Mughals

This chapter covers the history of taxation from the Mughal dynastic era (1526–1858) in India. There are many scholarly studies on taxation during Mughal rule over three centuries from which a summary of impositions and conclusions therefrom may be drawn. The chapter takes up the third and sixth emperors, Akbar, the most effective, and his great-grandson Aurangzeb, the most controversial. For the Mughals, taxation was perceived as the monarch’s reward for governance and the protection of their subjects. Land comprised the main tax base, along with a few other taxes including import and export duties, and tributes from states controlled by the Mughals. Indian history emphasizes the imposition of jizya, a progressive income tax on non-Muslims with an exemption for minimum wagers. Akbar was uncomfortable with religious segregation and abolished it. Aurangzeb reinstated it. Nevertheless, beyond jizya, Mughal revenue administrations have a lot to offer to a scholar of taxation. As the empire declined, however, regional governors assumed self-governance and diminished revenue transfers to the emperor and, with the rise of the British East India Company, the right to trade in salt, opium, tobacco and betel nut without paying customs duties was transferred to them by the 1720s.