Sir, what you're posting is absolute rubbish and I totally disagree with it. Sounds like you're reading an imperialist orientalist pamphlet printed in the 18th century on the Moghuls.
Moghuls united the whole sub-continent, further established trade routes, invested in science and technology, economy and trade of the Sub-Continent to such that it accounted for approx 30% of the world trade, compared to less than 5% today. Heck...they were Monarchs and Kings, customs and traditions and rawayat were entirely different and you cannot judge them using political tools of today. They became stagnant and incompentent and therefore lost to British, thats part of cycle of history, rise and fall of empires. It would be highly dishonest and inappropriate to judge them, they were far better muslims than what we are today. God knows. Moghuls amongst others should be part of our curriculum however they should not be taken out.
I knew that the reply would contain at least some sort of reference to me getting these opinions from colonial books but frankly this is my opinion based on a lot of study.
Moving on, would you care to elaborate what great wonders in science and technology did the Mughals achieve? I'm guessing Galileo, Fourier and Newton didn't work in Fatehpur Sikri.
Architecture and Civil Engineering is their sole legacy and they didn't break much ground rather they beautified it. The aesthetics of their structures, I never doubted; but is there a point to building a tomb for your dead deer when you never opened a center of education and/or learning for the public.
As for trade, let me elaborate the point using the example of this region's biggest export back then, cotton:-
By the late eighteenth century, India was still the biggest cotton exporter in the world. Under slave labor, US cotton flourished but it was when Eli Whitney came up with Cotton Gin that they were able to move the plantations away from the coasts as well and within three decades US cotton was ruling the world. There was hardly a 15% gain in cotton production in India during an entire period of 60 years and production remained stagnant. While we can contend that the rise of US cotton it was because of slave labor and protection from labor market risk (and agricultural subsidies today), the fact of the matter is that innovation had died in this area long ago. Tradition was so entrenched that anybody trying to create something new might as well be signing his own financial death. There was no reward for taking an initiative. The Industrial Revolution is based almost exclusively on innovation and entrepreneurship (not to neglect colonial exploitation but there won't have been any big army of rubber slaves in Congo if Dunlop hadn't come up with the inflatable tire --> hence innovation sparked revolution which required exploitation). As for trade value, at one time in history Belgian Congo exported more than half of the world's rubber and African countries exported so much Ivory that the supply crossed the demand. The Europeans came and changed trade patterns according to their needs like they did in all colonies. They came for the raw materials and they got them from these areas. Direct trade with Britian grew while local trade routes were destroyed. The way millions of people paved way for only a handful of Britishers to rule over them is shameful. Africans were very far behind our civilization when colonials came. They weren't building Taj Mahals or Fatehpur Sikris or any other big buildings. If the Mughals had been anything more than drunken money wasting monarchs, they would have invested in defense and education. An India that was far ahead of other countries that were colonized was won over by the British.
Mughals didn't just lose because they became incompetent. Did the British beat them using their own army? Or was it a local one? You chose not to reply to my point about Britishers propagating the idea of the "martial race" and using it to build up their armies of whom they perceived to be less intelligent and easily purchasable people.They got soldiers from the plains of Punjab and across Eastern India. They beat the local rulers using locals. The "Khan Bahadur"s and the civil/military oligarchy which was rewarded by the eve important land grants saluted the Union Jack on August 13, 1947 and the Green and White on August 14, 1947. Nothing changed, the servants of the colonials became our masters. Colonial hangups in the form of nonadoption of local languages as primary forms of communication to keep the masses at bay, uninformed and exercising control by controlling information is visible to this day. Language is just a tool of communication, but English was used solely to control masses that were illiterate.
You're tlaking about their influence on textbooks, Heck....the Queen's face is still printed on the pound and canadian/australian dollars, and also in the books and thier propaganda machine never stops praising them in curriculum, yet no one raises questions and points fingers over it? Wonder why?
Because these things are civilizational values that are propagated by the state authorities and continued to next generations.
I was not talking about influence on text books rather their portrayals. Akbar is solely demonized because he was the liberal one and Din e Ilahi doesn't corroborate with the idea of the "Muslim Ruler". Aurangzeb is glorified far beyond what he was. Tell somebody that the story of the cap stitcher is just a myth, and the answer you'll get is that Aurangzeb was demonized by the British for he was a religious man and the British wanted to destroy Islam. Mahmud of Ghazni is portrayed as a liberator of the poor and the list goes on. Cooked up stories define the common narrative passed down. Naseem Hijazi fiction novels add to the textbook problem.
Queen on the notes isn't the same topic. Also, as I said earlier comparison with European and/or any other history is unnecessary and pointless. There is no such thing as comparative morality or comparative ethics. Barbarians should be portrayed as barbarians not as liberators. Tyrants and dictators better be demonized. Mughlas better be told in a breath of shame rather than glorification for the state of affairs of the common man inside the Mughal Empire throughout their rule was abysmal.
not one is left.. poor india..
thanks to the crap UK culture but PAKISTAN the situation is not like that.
