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India of Mughal, Brit and Nehru

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The Mughal dynasty ruled India for 235 years from AD 1526 to AD 1761. The British East India Company and Britain ruled India for 190 years from AD 1757 to AD 1947. Both were invaders. While Mughals stayed back in India after their defeat in the hands of Marathas and then British East India Company, Brits went back to their Home following the independence of India in AD 1947.

In the case of Mughals, it was not any special love for India to remain here. They left their Home, in Ferghana of Eastern Uzbekistan, permanently when they got settled in their new kingdom of India. So, they had no Home to go back to. The period from AD 1526 to AD 1947 covers the late medieval and early modern periods of Indian histories. This total period of 421 years just preceded the formation of the present independent country of India and has a special significance to all Indians of today.

The narrative in independent India about Mughals and Brits is, by and large, good. Sometimes, the narrative even becomes acclamation. Is such development in the narrative due to the effect of Stockholm Syndrome or not, is a contentious issue. Both the Mughals and Brits were rulers of India who came from outside. And they ruled India for serving their interests. Both had exploited India. But such exploitations were subtle and over the decades and centuries.

In 16th century, during the beginning of the Mughal era, India’s GDP was about 25 percent of the world’s economy. But it dropped to 2 percent, when India got independence in 1947. Proper scientific estimation of drainage of India’s resources in Mughal time was not done. But, as per research-estimation, it is found that Britishers, during 190 years of their rule, drained about 45 trillion of Dollars from India in today’s valuation.

The most impressive element of the Mughal prowess was its innovation inthe use of gunpowder weapons. Their portable cannons could move across battlefields easily; their explosives could destroy city walls, and the elite Mughal infantry units could use their effective small arms to defend and expand the empire in India.

After about 1700 years of Mauryan Empire, the Mughals empire almost brought the entire Indian subcontinent under one domain, drawing the subcontinent’s regions together through enhanced overland and coastal administrative, trading and political networks. Besides military and political engagements, the Mughals had built their empire by making good use of India’s resources, developing its production capacity, and supporting a very rich Muslim-dominated trade system within the empire and in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean.

Developments in educational, economic, infrastructure and technological fields were insignificant in the Mughal era. Promotion of Islamic education got the utmost importance and foreign languages like Farsi and Arbi were liberally patronised. Tens of thousands of Mosques were constructed in every nook and corner of the Mughal empire. Persecution of Hindus, their conversion and destruction of Hindu temples were commonplace in Mughal period. Mughals also streamlined the land revenue system to extract a higher rate of taxes from the poor people.

A critical look shows that Mughals drained out huge amounts of India’s wealth in form of gift, presentation, allegiance-money and donation to Islamic Caliphates outside India and to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina on a regular basis. During the Mughal era, on an average, 15,000 pilgrims from the empire visited Mecca to perform Hajj every year.

According to a Mughal official, these pilgrims went on Hajj “at great public expense, with gold and goods and rich presents”. Mughal emperors sponsored the pilgrimage to “stand out as defenders of Islam”. This religious sponsorship began after Akbar conquered Gujarat in 1573 and the Mughal Empire got access to the port of Surat. An imperial edict proclaimed that “the traveling expenses of anybody who might intend to perform Hajj should be paid”.

Mughals are now more known for their grandly constructed forts, burial tombs, mosques and gardens in different parts of the empire, which were made important landmarks and tourist spots in independent India. Mughals are also credited for promoting the Islam centric Ganga Jamuni Tehzib during the second half of eighteenth century. It was a major attempt to romanticize and whitewash the cruel Islamization of India in the Mughal rule.

In comparison, Brits gave India numerous good things in the form of Western education, effective administrative structure, judiciary, formal revenue system, railway, postal service, telegraph, bridge and road, tea industry, school, college, university, medical and engineering college, job opportunity and modern democracy etc.

But, all such positive contributions of Brits had no intention of developing India. Those were done to increase their business interest in India and to create a class of Indians, who would be helping the British needs in India and enable them to continue exploitation of the country too. The benefits Indians got from above-mentioned developments were collateral. Besides, British rule also introduced Christian Missionaries for conversion activities which are still going on in the country. Brits were notorious for killing, torturing and imprisoning thousands of Indian freedom fighters.

Moreover, when Brits left India in 1947, they ensured the division of the country before transferring power. They left the present independent India a poor, illiterate and sharply divided society on the basis of caste, class and religion. Those social fault-lines were enhanced and used by the Brits to their fullest advantage during their rule. They also handed over the power, on 15 August 1947, to their Brown Indian counterparts to run independent India with a colonial mind-set.

This colonial mind-set, over the past seven decades, has led to the formation of Panch Makkar in India. This term was coined by The Jaipur Dialogues. The five constituents of Panch Makkar include: Mulla, Missionary, Marxist, Macaulay’s children and Media.

It is an informal conglomeration of five disruptive and anti-national groups of Indians. Its intent is to destabilize India from behind the façade of Secular Democracy. The gang of Panch Makkar wants to make India its conforming Client state. It also wants India to outsource its autonomy to the gang.

Communal disharmony between Hindus and Muslims of independent India was given a new utopian dimension by the ruling Congress Party led by Nehru by aligning with the Muslims. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, was extra-sensitive about Indian Muslims. He believed and said that it was the majority community of Hindus of India, who was to support the Islamic interests of Indian minority Muslims.

But it is not understood why Nehru accepted partition and creation of Islamic Pakistan through one of the worst bold baths of history? He (and Gandhi) could have handed over the political power of undivided India to Muslim League. That would have served the causes of minority Muslims best.

Even after the partition of British India in 1947, what was the fun in Nehru’s becoming the first Prime Minister of independent India with so much worry about minority Muslims? Maulana Azad or any other Muslim Congress leader could have been given that post. The Indian constitution could have reserved the posts of Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Home Minister for Muslims only. That way, Indian National Congress of Nehru could be spared of its perpetual anxiety about Indian Muslims.

The present Congress MP Sri Shashi Tharoor, who is neglected by Sonia Gandhi these days, says that he is an intellectual and not anti-Modi or anti-India. But Sri Tharoor remains a proponent of unreasonable Nehruvian leaning towards Indian Muslims. On the other hand, the newly elected Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and other leading Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and P Chidambaram are grossly pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu.

Taking the cue from the Congress, all the so-called Regional Secular(?) political parties of India like AAP, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, NCP, TRS, YSR Congress and TMC have started crying for Muslim causes and interests to serve the vote bank politics. Majority community of Indian Hindus is thus clueless, why did they get independence? 

But India has started turning around from AD 2014 to shake-off the impact of 488 years (AD 1526 to AD 2014) of exploitations and subjugations by Mughals, Brits and Indian Brown Sahibs, as well as, Islamic dominance in India. Gradually, but in a determined manner, present India is trying to reclaim its indigenous glory and heritage of benign Indic Civilization which is at least five thousand years old.

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