Kabir alerted me to this on Facebook, “No, Mughals didn’t loot India. They made us rich.”
Let us examine India’s economic status prior to its becoming a British colony.
The Cambridge historian Angus Maddison writes in his book, Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-economic History, that while India had the largest economy till 1000 AD (with a GDP share of 28.9 per cent in 1000AD) there was no economic growth. It was during the 1000 AD-1500 AD that India began to see a economic growth with its highest (20.9 per cent GDP growth rate) being under the Mughals. In the 18th century, India had overtaken China as the largest economy in the world.
The changing share of world GDP 1600–1870 (in million 1990 international $)
Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy, Paris: OECD, 2001, p. 261, Table B-18
In 2016, on a PPP adjusted basis, India’s was 7.2 per cent of the world GDP.In 1952, India’s GDP was 3.8 per cent. “Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, “the brightest jewel in the British Crown” was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income,” former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh once said.
Since it’s established now that the Mughals did not take away money, let’s talk of what they invested in. They invested in infrastructure, in building great monuments which are a local and tourist draw generating crores of rupees annually.
Historian and scholar Audrey Truschke (not a Pakistani or a Muslim, so let’s actually engage with her argument please):
“Hindu nationalists often fail to grasp the purposes of historical study. History is not supposed to be a glory story where you only show the bits favorable to your own political viewpoint and cut out the rest. That’s propaganda. History, in contrast, attempts to summarise and explain key moments, ideas, people, and trends in the past, regardless of whether we think these things were “good” or “bad.”
Mughal history has things to say to modern Indians, however, and here is where the Hindu Right begins to quake in its boots. Mughal history complicates Indian identities in many ways, such as by offering alternative visions of what it meant to be Hindu. In the Mughal past, we find Hindus who helped the Mughals. Brahmins like Birbal served as advisors to Akbar, and some Rajputs fought vehemently to expand the Mughal Empire.
Some Hindus even seemed to like the Mughals or at least became enmeshed in the Mughal cultural world. For instance, the little-known Sanskrit poet Ishvaradasa praised Aurangzeb’s tax policies as just. The two most famous Sanskrit intellectuals of the seventeenth century, Kavindracarya Sarasvati and Jagannatha Panditaraja, both accepted patronage, including financial payments, from Shah Jahan’s court. Kavindra taught Sanskrit and Hindi texts such as the Yoga Vasishtha to members of the Mughal royal family, and Panditaraja pursued a love affair with a Muslim woman (to the chagrin of some of his contemporaries).
What kind of Hindus were these men? They were certainly little like the khaki-clad foot-soldiers of the RSS or the zealous youth of the Hindu Yuva Vahini who appear more interested in killing Muslims than working for them. People like Ishvaradasa and Kavindracarya did not even call themselves “Hindu,” for this Perso-Arabic term was still primarily used by non-Hindus in the seventeenth century.
Mughal history underscores the newness of some ideas propagated by the Hindu Right. Hindu nationalists want to believe in “Akhand Bharat” for which great heroes like Maharana Pratap and Shivaji fought. The problem is, this idea of Bharat is false. Maharana Pratap (as he is more commonly known among historians) fought at Haldighati in 1576 against another Rajput, Raja Man Singh, who led the Mughal forces. Shivaji allied with Muslim kings – including the Mughals – on and off throughout his life.”
https://www.dailyo.in/politics/mughal-history-mughalsarai-hindu-right-rss-hindutva/story/1/18955.html
Too many Indians (and Pakistanis) lack a knowledge of history or historical methods. The Hindutvadis hate the Mughals and label them “invaders” and “colonialists” (displaying a total lack of knowledge of what the term “colonialism” actually means). The Islamists in Pakistan despise anything that happened before Muhammad Bin Qasim’s arrival in Sindh. Both groups are really messed up. Too much engineering and CS education. Send your kids to study History and Sociology. Perhaps some sense will return to the subcontinent then.
Pakistani history is really messed up – there is only Mughal & Hejazi history. Creates a huge complex tbf
I had to take Pak Studies one semester when I was at LUMS (didn’t take it before that cause I went to school in the US). It starts with the Indus Valley Civilization which we treat as proto-Pakistani, then skips to MBQ, then skips to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, the British Raj and then Partition.
The whole period between the IVC and MBQ is skipped because it is the “Hindu Period” and it makes us very uncomfortable as a country. I agree with you it is messed up.
For what it’s worth, the whole Buddhist Gandhara civilization was in what is today KPK. Pakistan would be much better off if we owned all this history.
Since the Mughal Question is the existential Crux of BP – Paradise Found: The Nearly Forgotten Universe of Mughal Persian Poetry – https://thewire.in/214948/paradise-found-nearly-forgotten-universe-mughal-persian-poetry/
“Existential Crux”–I quite like that 🙂
https://twitter.com/pseudoerasmus/status/890495958424973312
gdp is not same as living standards
https://twitter.com/pseudoerasmus/status/874818240563863557
” Mughal India was probably one of the most extractive regimes in history ”
Also, stupid error that one shouldnt compare gdp as living standards.
https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/837077222091546624 How extractive?. Parents sold their young sons to become eunuchs , had their testicles crushed for being unable to pay off debts.
Let me put this clearly, one oxford is worth more than entire mughal empire & any other empire and all trillions of monuments like qutub minar,taj mahal and other such crap. They were worse than worthless considering how extractive the taxation was. So next time u see the taj mahal, u should see how pathetic the emperor was.
Europe was well on its way ahead of India.
Leonardo da Vinci was contemporary of Babur
1452-1519, 1483 – 1530
Copernicus was contemporary of Humayun
1473-1543 , 1508- 1556
Galileo Galilei was contemporary of Akbar
1564-1642 ,1542-1605
Francis Bacon was contemporary of Jahangir
1561-1626,1569 – 1627
Descartes was contemporary of Shah Jahan
1596-1650, 1592 -1666
Newton was a contemporary of Aurangzeb
1643- 1727, 1618-1707
The only people who came close to working out the ideas of calculus was in kerala by Madhava and his school and the other place with something along lines of chemical industry was also in India.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-origins-of-chemical-industry/3008292.article
Madhava of Sangamagrama, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhava_of_Sangamagrama
So, what the fuck were mughals good for?
OK, the Mughals were not big on science. Point taken.
But they contributed enormously to North India’s art and culture.
If you don’t value that, it’s your problem. Take it up with Rana Safvi.
Bharata Bharatavanshi, history is nuanced. I think the article and Kabir’s comments are not inaccurate, just incomplete and therefore partly misleading.
Some Mughals were good. Some were bad. Many books can be written about this.
Real per capita GDP matters.
Kabir, many others (including myself) believe that the Indus Valley Civilization is part of the Sanathana Dharma (Hindu) civilization.
Shivaji was not anti Sufi, anti twelver, or even anti Mughal per say. He served his people and protected his people from Aurangzeb. Shivaji allied with muslims against Aurangzeb.
Many battles in history were between large alliances where muslims were divided on both sides.
Title was,” mughals didnt loot India” . Answer to that is NO. From the limited data available, mughals were among the worst extractive regimes. GDP comparisons are not intelligible if one doesnt consider population, Indian economy will now pass over UK economy, no one will compare England & India in their right minds. As for art and culture. @Kabir, it is on u to show that there wouldnt be any without mughals, If one consider designs of toilets as art as many do nowadays, then I dont know what “contribution” means. The comparison on science with Europe is to accuse mughals of retarding Indian growth. That is what science & math tells us. Math, science/ chemistry matters, mughals were at best funding some schools of logic that had divorced themselves from science . In other words, worse than worthless, they were a retarding force overall, Also, India had fallen behind British much earlier than congress style tharoor arguments. Infact had fallen behind on agriculture . As for History being nuanced. Ofcourse History is nuanced. But the nuances are in battle with each other as well!!! History has a direction, this direction requires categories for classification which further themselves and exert pressure by the very fact that they are different categories.
The point is the wealth of India was recycled back into India; Barbour didn’t build his palaces in Samarkand.
The roots of the European Enlightenment, Renaissance & Industrial Revolution are more complex. The Americas & their “ghost acres” may have contributed to the European lift-off (post 1492 that is).
In Asia it seems that Large Roman-sized Empires were the norm rather than the exception as in Europe.
Loot of peasants by the powerful is still loot. Again, please dont use flawed arguments of a politician (tharoor). If the rich looted the poor and spent in on themselves and few other classes of people, It would still consider as loot!!!!. Infact such a society would be considered as perverse and hopelessly backward.
Argument of Taking it to samarkand is meaningless. Infact if it was used to help poor elsewhere, That actually would be an ameliorative argument at least to some degree. Also, they had no navy to transfer the loot either easily and continuously over long periods of time. so it is meaningless argument altogether. @AnAn The british atleast spend the money on their poor, improved technology, helped foster Industrial development & innovation and those technologies are reaching us even now. A big improvement over mughals from whom none of this could even in principle be expected.
Zachary Latif, the Mughal empire sent large transfers to Afghanistan from the rest of the empire (or foreign aid). But since Afghanistan was then a part of India, that does not negate your point. Afghanistan still receives large transfers from India (and China, Russia, Japan, America, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia) today and I think Afghanistan needs far more foreign aid than she is getting.
The English also didn’t send large transfers of income from India to England except for the two world wars.
“European Enlightenment, Renaissance & Industrial Revolution” were significantly inspired by Eastern technology and Eastern philosophy.
Hindustani Classical Music would not exist without the Mughals. You would just have Carnatic. Kathak Dance wouldn’t exist without the Mughals. Thumri wouldn’t exist without Wajid Ali Shah. Case closed.
This level of dismissiveness about art and culture is amazing. Science is good but it’s not the end all and be all of everything.
Spoken like a true Humanities scholar; my wife & I have the same discussions (Science vs. humanities) and I end up making the same point lol
Bharata Bharatavanshi I would agree with you that Mughal economic policy, education policy and policies on product development/process innovation were sub-optimal at best. Which is why I am super critical of the English coming to India.
This said I am a Dara Shikoh/Jahanara Begum fan.
Which is why I am “NOT” super critical of the English coming to India.
You can believe what you like, but in Pakistan and specifically in Pak Studies, the IVC is treated as a proto-Pakistani civilization. Moenjodaro and Harrapa are in present-day Pakistan. There is a lot of talk about “Indus man” vs. “Ganges man” (a lot of this is quite stupid). Aitizaz Ahsan of the “liberal” PPP even wrote a book called “The Indus Saga” or something like that. I haven’t read it, so have no idea what its actually about.
Indus man is a ridiculous, shameful & racist concept; it was the Muhajirs of the Ganges who gifted Pakistan her High Culture.
It was Ganges man who created Pakistan & Indus Man who broke it apart. The wonderful Punjabi & Pathans of GCHQ who drove East Pakistan out of the Union.
Indus man ideology is insulting & racist; the way Muhajirs have been treated by Pakistan is reflective of that. Sometimes
I think Karachi should go its own way as a gift to the people who created & sacrificed for Pakistan.
It would be more correct to say that the High Culture developed in Delhi and Lucknow, long before Pakistan or the Muhajirs even existed.
Which is not to say that the areas which are today Pakistan did not have their own indigenous culture (Baba Fareed, Bulleh Shah, Shah Hossain).
Yes and Pakistan was created precisely to protect that High Culture.
If Pakistan was only about Islam then by all rights the language should have been Arabic or even Persian; Urdu was chosen as a symbolic nod to the Glories of the Ganges..
Urdu was chosen because the social base of the Pakistan Movement was the landowners of UP. That and Quaid-e-Azam thought it was THE language of all of South Asia’s Muslims. The people of East Pakistan didn’t agree. I don’t know why he thought they would.
Karachi should probably be separated from Sindh purely for administrative reasons. It is a city of 20 million. But the Sindhis aren’t going to lose their best city without a fight, which is why this is not going to happen.
Shivaji letter to Jai Singh.
7. This is not the time for fighting between ourselves since a grave danger faces the Hindus.
48. Our children, our country, our wealth, our God, our temples and our holy Worshippers,
49. Are all in danger of existence owing to his machinations and the utmost limit of pain that can be borne, has been reached.
50. If the work goes on like this for some time, there will not remain a vestige of ourselves on earth.
51. It is a matter of supreme wonder that a handful of Mussalmans should establish supremacy over this vast country.
52. This supremacy is not due to any valour on their part; see if thou hast eyes to see…
The most strenuous efforts should be made at this time to protect Hindus, Hindusthan, and the Hindu religion…
63. So that I may rain shower of swords from the thundering clouds of my army on the Mussalmans;
64. So that from one end of the Deccan to the other, I may wash out the name and very vestige of Mahomadanism.
https://archive.org/stream/DeliverranceOrTheEscapeOfShivajiTheGreatFromAgra#page/n289/mode/2up
via @spatel
Bharata Bharatavanshi, I don’t agree with this letter and think Shivaji mispoke. The problem was not muslims, but Islamists. There are many muslims (Sufis for example) that are very much part of Bharat. Any group that spends a lot of time in Bharat will over time become Indianized and the same was happening to Indian muslims.
I suspect that by “mohamadanism” Shivaji might have meant Islamist rather than muslim. And in this spirit, may God bless Shivaji. Shivaji caused Aurangzeb to live in the Deccan the last 25 years of his life and focus on the Marathas. This saved countless twelver, sixer, Sufi, Hindu and Sikh lives. Aurangzeb was forced to be nicer to non Islamist muslims and nonmuslims outside the Deccan than he otherwise would have been; since Aurangzeb was too busy fighting in the Deccan.
wrong, shivaji also demolished churches and killed xtian fathers accused of stealing boys and force converting them. Shivaji understood that british werent here for benign reasosn, they too were for conquest, so was aurangzeb, who actually defeated one british invasion attempt of some place & corrected his earlier mistake of trusting navy with sidis and wanted to build imperial navy. He was no fool ( This comes from some article I studied about 5-10 yrs back ). Shivaji/marathas suspected that british were also here to impose their opinions (religions).
“I don’t agree with this letter and think Shivaji mispoke. ” .
Let me put it to u like this. say a group of people exist called A. A is sum of x & y. A=x+y. Say x are simple minded people, Y are supremacist bigots trying to expand themselves. Now u have group B. people in B assume only small percentage of A (y) are bad. But over period of time A will keep expanding due to this small y over B. The only way to stop (y) is to put pressure on A as a whole to change so that y wont have an easy life. Otherwise everyone in A are silent supporters of supremacist attitudes of y. so, ur opinion is unwittingly supportive of supremacist bigots.
Simple analogy is, not all pakistanis are terrorists, but boy do pakistanis give much freedom & support to terrorists.
Bharata Bharatavanshi, we think differently. Please see:
http://www.brownpundits.com/?s=nonmuslims
The only solution is for nonmuslims to help muslims achieve freedom of art, dance, music, song, poetry, speech, thought, intuition and feeling. And then encourage dialogue, protecting those who engage in dialogue. This is how extremism dies. The 1400 year islamic civil war has lasted too long. Too many muslims and nonmuslims have suffered because of it. It is time to end it.
I have seen estimates that over 100 million muslims have died in the 1400 civil war. At the very least many tens of millions of muslims have died in the muslim civil war. This is a terrible human tragedy.
Many great Sufi masters have worked closely with Sanathana Dharma masters. How are they different?
many sufis were themselves jihadis. again, i will not burden myself to bring all the evidence, read.
Many who claim to be Sufis might not really be Sufis.
Including this Jihadi Barelvi nominal “Sufi”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumtaz_Qadri
The assassination of Punjabi Governor Salmaan Taseer was completely wrong.
I am talking about real Sufis. I am also not talking about Sufis militarily allying with Islamists for specific battles. The Marathas and Sadashivrao Bhau should not have allied with Salafi Islamists at Panipat. Nonmuslims have a long history of backing Islamists against muslims, which is why they lost the Third Battle of Panipat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Battle_of_Panipat
@Kabir, it is on u to show that there wouldnt be any without mughals ?, again, u are assuming there would be no alternative culture of any value without mughals, Jazz music is modern, classical western music is also great, various kinds of dances exist across the world. Salsa is great, better than kathak!. One might very well be better off importing some of them. Again, pizza is great too. So is Aloo, comes from south america along with red pepper. I think the food culture has improved far better post colonialism than before. And considering arts are about entertainment & aesthetics , I think they would be consumed from across the world.
The point is that the flow of Indian wealth went to Britain ..
Zachary Latif, there weren’t large transfers from British India to England except for the two world wars.
The de facto transfers that some count are the salaries of Anglo Indians who worked in British India, including in the judicial system, Indian Army, Indian Police, Indian Imperial Service (now called IAS), Indian Railways, Indian Post, Indian civil society (Indian business, Indian education, Indian churches, Indian clubs, Karachi stock market, Bombay stock market, Indian papers, etc.). Some also include the investment income English investors earned from Indian investments. Do you consider this Indian wealth flowing to Britain?
What was the wealth doing?.Was it being put to productive use?. it was merely used by the noble classes for their own pleasure extracted from the backs of the peasants, “the farmers would work with weapons by their side and little fortresses of mud etc, when tax collectors would come, they would fire on them, while their wives stood behind them with spears, giving it to them while they prepared the ammunition and gave back the guns. ” . An anecdotal story of the times. The farmers were taxed at 50% of the harvest, which again was very high.
“There are signs that Indian income distribution was significantly more unequal (and so popular consumption more limited) than it was in China, Japan, or western Europe. A study of Mogul land taxes for 1647 finds that 445 families received 61.5 percent of all revenues, which were about 50 percent of gross agricultural output, and that roughly one-quarter of the revenue flow to those families represented actual personal income. (The rest was consumed in various expenses of office.) [526] If this is accurate, these 445 families— presumably less than .002 percent of the population—would have received an income from their offices alone equal to 7.5 percent of total agricultural output, or perhaps 6 percent of the society’s total income! [527] An estimate based on Shireen Moosvi’s reconstructions for 1595 [528] is similar: it suggests that 1,671 Mughal nobles would have had a net personal income from their claims on government revenue alone equal to about 7 percent of total empire-wide output.”
https://pseudoerasmus.com/2014/10/01/inequality-possibility-frontier/
In west, The flow of money was into productive enterprises that improved the poorer lot in Britain etc and helped foster technology that has later on helped poorer countries improve very fast inspite of the fact that many are pathetic in governance since de colonization even now.
Arts can be consumed from across the world. That’s cool.
If you don’t value the beauty of Hindustani Classical Music and Kathak, I have nothing to say to you. You simply demonstrate your absolute lack of good taste.
I am trained in Hindustani Classical Vocal as well as Western Classical Vocal. You really aren’t going to win with me on this topic.
one really cant win arguments on artistic taste , one can only point to alternatives that have come to exist to cater to the audience, this goes to show there is no evidence that other things couldnt have come in absence of mughal contribution to arts. And the primary argument of mughals and loot has been dealt with already.
Other things could have come in the absence of Mughal contribution to the arts. But the Mughals did contribute the arts and what we have is beautiful.
This is fine. we agree
Moral of the story, mughals were among the most extractive regimes , they were a retarding force with regards to science, entertainment & arts have improved,yes improved across the board with options from various parts of the world competing for our attention. Food culture has massively increased, especially so if one were vegetarian. Literature has massively increased as well, new media as well. History is nuanced but those nuances are often at war with each other!!!. I literally see people plucking at the straws.
I think we must be careful in not attributing everything in the world to the Mughals. Perso-Arabic people came to India in many ways, and migration to India from the Middle East goes back to the Parsis fleeing Iran, and continued in the form of artisans, musicians and noble families moving to India for various reasons.
Only the architecture can really be specifically be attributed to their tastes. They had direct control on how that money was spent, and their choices mattered a lot.
The Mughal family happened to be ruling at the time, but it could have well been the Ahmed family or the Singh family. The results of the India-Middle East interaction would have been as productive, just like the India-Europe one has been and still is.
Khayal was invented at the court of Muhammad Shah Rangila. No Muhammad Shah, you would still only have Dhrupad. Kathak was invented by Wajid Ali Shah. Without him, we would only have the Hindu Bharatanatyam.
Do not minimize the contributions of the Mughals. They transformed North India’s High Culture. I don’t know about the South so I’m not going to comment on that.
Wajid Ali Shah was not a Mughal. He was Shia in fact.
And seriously, Bharatnatyam in UP ? In 1850 ? Thats the biggest LOL in a long time.
But anyways, I know you understand that art forms evolve in complex ways. I am not minimizing anybody’s contributions, only pointing out that India and Perso-Arabic cultures started interacting long before the Mughals.
What does Wajid Ali Shah’s sect have to do with anything? Why bring up something so pointless?
Wajid Ali Shah invented Kathak. There would be no Indo-Islamic dance forms without him.
It is because of the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate that Indo-Islamic culture exists. Without that, there would be only Hindu culture. If you’re OK with that, that’s on you. I personally think we contributed a lot to Hindustan. And you and the Hindu Right want to erase us from your narrative. You are just as bad as those Pakistanis who want to erase the pre-Islamic past.
I thought we were talking about Mughals, who were a Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic origin.
In any case, I am sure that with your leftist and proletarian sympathies, you would much rather attribute art forms like Kathak to the toiling peasants and soldiers who provided the surplus for Wajid Ali to dabble in dance. They were overwhelmingly Hindu btw.
You should stop condescending to Kabir.
If you knew anything about Mughal history; you would know that many of their mothers were Shi’ite (Akbar & Aurangzeb; Jehangir & Shah Jehan’s wives) and Hindu.
To quibble over who was Sunni & who was Shi’ite is obscuring the larger point about the worth and value of the Indo-Muslim heritage, which of course Kabir & I are partisans of..
Who said I have proletarian sympathies?
I am a huge fan of the Mughals and of aristocracy. Of people who are actually cultured and who know about art, music and poetry. Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions. Just putting all the cards on the table.
But I agree with Zach. That comment was obnoxious and uncalled for.
GDP in PPP terms should be used only in per capita terms to compare living standard of an individual. When comparing economies, one should stick to real GDP.
PPP GDP is real GDP. Economists sometimes denote this as:
Y = Y(A, L, K); where A = technology, L = Labor, K= Tools or Capital Stock.
Yp where (p = prices) is nominal GDP based on exchange rates.
A or technology is the key to living standards over time and real per capita GDP. India’s A was not managed well by the Mughals, interim disinintigration/chaos/civil war, England, or post independence India until 1991, some would say 1985.
Technology is also called total factor productivity (the US Labor Department publishes an estimate of this they call “multifactor productivity), product development, process innovation. This is the most interesting subject for most economists . . . the secret sauce of income and wealth.
In Bharat, Tantra means technology. Tantra uses Yantra (machine) and mantra to complete action.
@AnAn “Many who claim to be Sufis might not really be Sufis.” “I am talking about real Sufis.”, It is not my job to bring all the information to u to debunk ur misplaced notions, shouldnt you actually try to debunk your notions once in a while. I look for information that tries to debunk me of such notions.
“one must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year…one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book ? Jews and Christians, typically] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked. A woman and her child taken into slavery should not be separated…One may cut down their trees…One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide…they may steal as much food as they need. ” Al gazhali, considered one of the greatest sufis ever.
U can be a sufi and also be bigoted. sufi mysticism is a thing borrowed from earlier people of arabia, neo platonists & Advaita /buddhism + Islamic theology /points of view.
https://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=8451.0;
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=UPJuMZrUH-YC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=al+ghazali+jihad+once+a+year&source=bl&ots=cE9zGq60vq&sig=FfhcPL6_B7FQikKfx8I1BswG9kM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUn_Oryt_ZAhUeSY8KHXMwD80Q6AEIaTAG#v=onepage&q=al%20ghazali%20jihad%20once%20a%20year&f=false
Zachary, this piece is economically sloppy. Per capita economic growth during a millenia of muslim rule was I believe almost zero. Ditto with English rule and early post independence India. This suggests deep incompetence.
Sure the Mughals were better than their predecessors (Delhi Sultanate was awful). Their tax, regulatory, law and order policies caused a one time technological improvement in India. The ability to have reliable predictable postal, financial, transportation, communication, taxation, regulatory, judicial systems across such a wide territory leads to freer trade and large one off economic gains.
In economics there are crimes of commission and crimes of omission. Through omission Mughal economic policy resulted in far lower living standards and productivity/technology than should have happened.
India was better governed before muslim rule (which came to western historic India during the time of Umar and Uthman).
There is no excuse for Umar’s destruction of almost all technology, art, literature, history, libraries in Iran. Many Sanathana Dharma records were destroyed in Umar’s purge. The world is much poorer for it. Iran was an open architecture, freedom of religion, freedom of thought empire. Many of their citizens were Sanathana Dharmis.
We are not talking about Iran..
Where is the evidence Iran was Hindu?
The Iranian empire 630 AD versus modern Iran. Iran was a plural, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-religious empire. Many of their citizens were what might now be considered Hindus. Many were Zorastrians and from other faiths. Zorastrianism is related to Hinduism too.
The Sassanians were Zoroastrian bigots.
Obviously I adore them but let’s call them for what they were.
The point is that Hinduism met Islam in a big way under Umar and Uthman.
[…] http://www.brownpundits.com/2018/03/08/no-mughals-didnt-loot-india-they-made-us-rich/#comment-5282 […]