Unlike Europeans, the Mughals came to India as conquerors but remained as Indians not colonists. They subsumed their identity as well as the group’s identity with India and became inseparable from it, says professor Mukhia, giving rise to an enduring culture and history.
Most of the Mughals gone into marriage alliances with Indian rulers, especially Rajput. They appointed them to high posts and the Kachhwaha Rajput of Amber normally held the highest military posts in the Mughal army.
It was this sense of identification with the Mughal rulers that led the Indian sepoys who stood up in 1857 AD 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, coronating him as emperor of Hindustan and fighting under his banner.
From 16th century to 18th century, the Mughal kingdom 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.”
A painting in possession of the British Library painted by Spiridione Roma, 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.
Not only financially Mughal era made India rich culturally also as famous paintings, art forms, fairs, traditions, scripts, languages were added in Mughal Era. Mughal gave indian festival a new fervour sometime and some new festivals like Phoollwalon ki sair. An offshoot of culture is paandan.
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