What if the Mughals never came to the subcontinent?
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Answer:
India gained Independence in 1947 after a long struggle for freedom from British imperialism. Perhaps because of this, and the lack of historical knowledge and sense, we see all conquests as colonisation.
He goes on to say Mughals being seen as foreigners was never a point of discussion till quite recently, so well had they integrated and assimilated into the country they had made their own.
There was no reason for it either, since Akbar onwards, all Mughals were born in India with many having Rajput mothers and their “Indianness” was complete.
Babur had invaded India at the behest of Daulat Khan Lodi and won the kingdom of Delhi by defeating the forces of Ibrahim Khan Lodi at Panipat in 1526 AD. Thus he laid the foundation of the Mughal Empire.
Most Mughals contracted marriage alliances with Indian rulers, especially Rajputs. They appointed them to high posts, with the Kachhwaha Rajputs of Amber normally holding the highest military posts in the Mughal army.
It was this sense of a shared identity with the Mughal rulers that led the Indian sepoys who rose up in 1857 against the British East India Company in the first war of Indian Independence, to turn towards the aged, frail and powerless Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar — they coronated him as Emperor of Hindustan and decided to fight under his banner.
Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Mughal Empire was the richest and most powerful kingdom in the world and as French traveller Francois Bernier who came to India in the 17th century wrote, “Gold and silver come from every quarter of the globe to Hinduostan.”
This is hardly surprising considering that Sher Shah and the Mughals had encouraged trade by developing roads, river transport, sea routes, ports and abolishing many inland tolls and taxes.
Indian handicrafts were developed. There was a thriving export trade in manufactured goods such as cotton cloth, spices, Indigo, woollen and silk cloth, salt etc. Indian merchants trading on their own terms and taking only bullion as payment led Sir Thomas Roe to say, “Europe bleedeth to enrich Asia”.
This trade was traditionally in the hands of the Hindu merchant class who controlled the trade. In fact, Bernier wrote that Hindus possessed “almost exclusively the trade and wealth of the country”. Muslims, on the other hand, mainly held high administrative and military posts.
A very efficient system of administration set up by Akbar facilitated an environment of trade and commerce.
This led the East India Company to seek trade concessions from the Mughal Empire and eventually control and destroy it.
A very interesting painting in the possession of the British Library named "The East Offering Her Riches to Britannia" dated 1778 shows Britannia looking down on a kneeling India who is offering her crown surrounded by rubies and pearls. The advent of the famous drain of wealth from India started with the East India Company not the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals.
Edmund Burke was the first to use the phrase in the 1780s when he said, India had been "radically and irretrievably ruined" through the Company’s "continual drain" of wealth.
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 CE: 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 -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 in 1600-1870 (in million dollars)
(Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy, Paris: OECD, 2001, p. 261, Table B-18.)
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”, said former prime minister Manmohan Singh.
In 2016, on a PPP-adjusted basis, India’s was 7.2 per cent of the world GDP.
Since its established now that the Mughals did not take away money let’s talk of what they invested in. They invested in infrasturcture, in building great monuments which are a local and tourist draw generating crores of rupees annually. As per figures given by the ministry of culture in Lok Sabha, just the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan has an average annual ticket sale of more than Rs 21 crore. (Last year saw a drop in visitors to the Taj Mahal and figures stood at Rs 17.80 crore.)
The Qutub Complex generates more than Rs 10 crore in ticket sales, while Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb generate around Rs 6 crore each.
A beautiful new style known as Indo-Islamic architecture that imbibed the best of both sensibilities was born.
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