Match the correct pairs of punishment and forms of punishment in the Mughal Judicial System.
Column 'A' (Punishment)
a. Hadd
b. Tazir
c. Qisas
d. Tashir
Column 'B' (Forms of Punishment)
i. Tit for Tat

Question

Match the correct pairs of punishment and forms of punishment in the Mughal Judicial System.
Column 'A' (Punishment)
a. Hadd
b. Tazir
c. Qisas
d. Tashir
Column 'B' (Forms of Punishment)
i. Tit for Tat
ii. Defamation, to expose to disgrace
iii. Warning, admonish or banishment
iv. Death penalty, amputation

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3): statement a – iv, b – iii, c – i, d – ii. Mughal criminal law worked with categories drawn from Islamic jurisprudence, and each carried its own logic of punishment. Hadd covered offences classed as crimes against God or against public order in the strictest sense, and its punishments were fixed rather than discretionary — the death penalty or amputation — so statement a pairs with iv. Tazir was the residual, discretionary category: offences not covered by hadd or qisas, left to the judge's own judgement, with penalties ranging from a warning or admonition up to banishment depending on the offence and the judge's assessment — so statement b pairs with iii. Qisas governed wilful killing and serious bodily harm, and its guiding principle was strict reciprocity — life for life, limb for limb, literally 'tit for tat' — with the option for the victim's family to accept monetary compensation (diya) instead, so statement c pairs with i. Tashir was public shaming, designed to expose the offender to disgrace before the community — historically including being paraded through the streets — matching the description 'defamation, to expose to disgrace', so statement d pairs with ii.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Sends Hadd to 'warning, admonish or banishment' (iii) and Tazir to 'tit for tat' (i), which reverses the defining feature of each category: Hadd is precisely the fixed, severe category (death penalty or amputation), not the flexible, lenient one, and Tazir is precisely the discretionary category rather than the strict-reciprocity one that belongs to Qisas. It also misplaces Qisas at iv, the fixed-severity slot that belongs to Hadd. Three of the four pairs invert the actual logic of the system.  (b) Gets Tazir and Qisas right (b – iii, c – i) but swaps Hadd and Tashir: it sends Hadd to 'defamation, to expose to disgrace' (ii) and Tashir to 'death penalty, amputation' (iv). Hadd's fixed, severe punishments are its defining feature and cannot be replaced with mere public shaming, while Tashir, by definition a punishment of exposure and disgrace rather than physical penalty, cannot be equated with death or amputation. Two correct pairs make this option look close, but the remaining two are exactly reversed.  (d) Repeats the same Hadd/Tazir inversion as option (1) — Hadd sent to the lenient category (iii), Tazir to the strict-reciprocity category (i) — and additionally sends Qisas to 'defamation, to expose to disgrace' (ii) and Tashir to 'death penalty, amputation' (iv). Qisas's defining principle is reciprocal retribution for killing or bodily harm, not public shaming, and Tashir is shaming, not capital or corporal punishment — every one of the four pairs is displaced from its correct partner.

Concept: The Mughal judicial system, like other Islamicate legal systems of the period, organised criminal offences into distinct categories according to whose right the offence was seen to violate and how much discretion the judge (qazi) had in fixing the punishment. Hadd offences were treated as violations of a fixed, divinely sanctioned boundary and so carried fixed, severe punishments; Qisas offences were violations of a private individual's body or life and were remedied by strict reciprocity, tempered by the possibility of monetary settlement; Tazir was the flexible residual category covering everything else, left to judicial discretion; and Tashir was a public, reputational punishment used to shame an offender before the community rather than to injure the body.

State PCS 2025 Q10 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q10 — History PYQ with Answer