Again, I dont understand why you keep claiming that 'Indian subcontinent' is our 'home'. Is it because its called a subcontinent?
Because Indian subcontinent varies in extreme from part to part.
I said if you really wish to compare this, compare the size of the empires instead of their geographical location.
Another factor here is the population. Indian subcontinent is heavily populated, whereas Arab world si not. It was always a challenge to manage large populations, whereas Arab world has extensive very less inhabited deserts and thus were easier to control.
As a nationality, yes. India is recent.
I really dont have any idea about Arab empires. Was one King controlling all the Arab world, or whether there were different kings of different regions but all Muslim.
I really dont have much idea.
The mughal empire was the last Indian empire. That automatically means that they would have most impact.
The same way, British empire was the last empire which ruled India - and they have had even more of an influence on India.
I hope you understand the logic. Influence is maximum when it is most recent.
That said, you should know that 13% of India is Muslims.
That main tourist attractions of North India are of Mughal heritage. There are equally important attractions in West India, South India and East India which are not of Mughal Heritage.
The different empires ruled both North and South India in varying degrees. We never called it India then, we called it Bharatvarsha.
The reality is that they were FOREIGNERS. Intruders who conquered lands in what is now India. People of a totally different descent, religion, culture etc. You did not absorb them out of your free will but they absorbed you.
So we can say that if the British and French who stayed in some parts of the Arab world for a few decades could be claimed as local "Arabs" if they just married a few locals and absorbed their culture on us and made 20% of us Christians while committing massacres in the process.
Let me put it this way. Rome conquored Greece. Yet romans took up Greek culture with time.
The invaders were turkic, yet over time they became Indian more and more. They influenced India and India influenced them. They put down roots here.
They did. Only in North India. Mughal influence was limited in South India.
But the Hindus also committed attrocities on Budhists, the Sikhs on Hindus, the Budhists on Hindus.
Because there were studies that said that ancient North Indians came from Persia. They were called Aryans.
There are an equal number of studies that say this is not so.
What is important here is that I dont get how this is relevant or of significance in either case.[/quote]
Is the Indian subcontinent not the homeland of Indians and Indic people? Last time I checked that was the case. Just like the homeland of Arab people is the Middle East or West Asia.
Well, I already told you that the Muslim Arab Caliphates were way bigger than the whole Indian Subcontinent aside from being located on 3 different continents (Asia, Africa and Europe).
The Arab world is populated by nearly 400 million people. In 2050 the population is excepted to double. Europe, despite being nearly 3 times as big as India has a much smaller population. Was it easy to govern Europe - the most bloody place in the world history?
The Arab world was by no means easy to control due to climate, geography, the war like people inhabiting it and the enormous geographical distances. Well you have tropical areas in the arab world and moutnains that are covered in snow most of the year where you can ski. You have extremely fertile lands that gave birth to one of the oldest civilizations on earth and very harsh mountainous deserts/steppes.
The Indian subcontinent outside of the Himalaya regions is remarkably similar. Same type of tropical climate and similar landscapes.
Very few people live close to the mountains anyway compared to the lowlands. None cultures of worth were formed in the mountains either.
Well, my point. It is a recent nationality made up by hundreds of different ethnic groups that speak different languages. So if you want to compare the Arab world, largely made up by Arabs or people of a common Semitic background, you would need the Arab world to unite or all of West Asia to make a sane comparisons. Let alone comparing India with 1 Arab country in KSA. Makes no sense whatsoever! That was not you who made that comparison but other compatriots.
Caliphs controlled all of the Arab world for 600 years and for 800 years nominally from Cairo when the Mamluks ruled. One Ottoman Sultan, can't remember his name, proclaimed himself as Caliph in 1517 and from there one the title of Caliph was in the hands of the Ottomans, a originally nomadic Turkic family from Turkmenistan.
After that period the Arab world was either ruled by various sultanates, kingdoms, emirates, sheikdoms, as Imams such as one part of Yemen that was ruled by an Imam (religious and de facto leader) for 800 years. Some areas were nominally under Ottoman control (under the Caliph) but the areas where ruled by local rulers such as the Sharif of Makakh for example that was revered and respected by the Caliph and Sultan in Istanbul. Other areas of the Arab world were ruled by Pasha's and local rulers etc.
Since the times of Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates Arabs were never one body. The geographical distances are simply to big. I mean you have Morocco in the West near the Atlantic Ocean (located more western than any European country) and Oman in the East bordering the Arabian Sea, Syria in the north and Comoros in the Indian Ocean next to Madagascar. Impossible to control.
To make matters worse then the Middle East, as you already said yourself, was the center of the world for many millenniums and is bordering 3 continents. Europe is just next by. So the Arab world has been largely in turmoil for the last 500 years.
IN fact many blame the barbarian Mongols who sacked Baghdad in 1258 as the start of the troubles in not only the Arab world but whole Muslim world….
Siege of Baghdad (1258) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Why do you assume that. The reality is that the Middle East, despite being home to hundreds of ancient civilizations or cultures, have mostly been influenced by the recent ones.
Can you tell me what the nearly 4500 year old Dilmun civilization has had of any influence to modern day KSA. Or what about the Sumerians in Iraq. The Nabateans in Jordan etc.?
Is the case in India not what I wrote, that the Mughal Empire have left the biggest legacy of all the Empires aside from the "Hindu factor" that unites Indians of all regions?
How exactly have the British Empire had more influence on India than the "native empires". Other than constructing infrastructure, school system, English language, form of governance etc? Do the Indians feel British by any means? I doubt that.
13% or 20%. When a country has 1.2 BILLION people then just 10% is a HELL lot. I saw statistics of Indian Muslims being close to 20% of being that in the foreseeable future.
Correct and what is the most famous leftover in the World from India? Taj Mahal. Moghul right? Who, outside of the Subcontinent is familiar with some Hindu temples in West or East India? I am not and I would say that I am not an complete ignorant or your usual Joe when it comes to history. Does that not say a lot?
What about the influence of languages?
I agree with the mutual interest of the Mughals on Indians and the native "Indians" on the Mughal outsiders but we both know that this influence happened not from free will but due to force. In its core they were recent intruders hence many Indian Hindus dislike that part of Indian history? Is that also not correct? That much I know just from being on this forum.
Hence why I asked you if the hatred for Islam in India is not a legacy of the Mughals who from my memory committed many massacres on Indian Hindus?
Aryans did never come from Iran originally from Andronovo or more precise Central Asia. Also only a small part of Northern India were influenced by them from what I have read about.
But am I not right when I say that India is basically a confederation (new one) of several different former states that have varying degrees of relations?
I mean in India when you say that you are an Indian it says little other than where you were born and your nationality.
Is ethnic origin, language, tribe, family, geography, culture not more important when defying the culture of Indian x or y? I mean how can it be different when you have Indians living 3000 km apart from each other in completely different historical regions, climatic zones etc.?