I believe the number 14 is associated with Lord Ram so this is a fortuitous comment (7, 14, 1,400). I have’t written as much since the Comments have been on fire so it becomes a little difficult to write on new topics but I’m 66 posts (65 after this one) from my 1,000th post on BP.
After the jump Omar’s interesting take on whether the Mughal’s were colonisers.
They were undeniably colonizers.
‘somebody’ downvoted your comment. I mean, what even is the controversy about this? They came from Uzbekistan, literally exported thousands of Indians as slaves, figured out it was far more lucrative to squat and rule kaffirs right here. It is what it is, without any retrospective ‘moral’ judgement.
Why do simple facts have to be denied?
It is laughable to split hairs over conquest versus colonization. First they conquered, then they colonized. Amazing that simple facts are being denied.
In that way, can we also call the Turkic tribes (Ottoman, Safavid, Timurid) colonizers of SE Europe, the Levant , Anatolia, and Persia in addition to Hindustan?
Many in these places may call them conquerors which is more apt than colonisers as much of the above empires political, economic and social base was in the areas they conquered not the places they came from.
+1
The conquest of what is modern day Turkey is written in infidel blood and slavery. The difference is that the infidel genocide was more successful. India….was simply way too populous to pull this off, and the roots of ‘Dharma’ too entrenched.
The genocide that have happened in modern day turkey have all happened in the last 200 years.
Outside of times of conquest, most of the converts to Islam are a result of assimilation to Turkish identity due to persistence of ottoman rule and those who rejected islam, and paid the jizya were largely left alone, as seen in the large population of christians and jews thst were present until the 20th century.
Slavery was a huge part of their success though.
+1
Yes I think that’s a stretch
A. They took the looted riches back to their native lands.
B. They took back slaves. Ref: Q’s comment on pay ten guna lagaan before we allow slaves across the hindukush 🙂
C. They deliberately changed the political, religious, economic landscape of the subcontinent for their own gain, not to mention the geography.
In summary, textbook colonization.
By this logic, the Sintastha/Andronovo Aryans were the biggest “colonizers of India. Infact they not just colonized Indians, they changed the genetic makeup of Indians through rape, imposed their religion (now known as the Hindu religion) and even their languages. Infact this dominance was so complete and so total, that within a few centuries, even the most rural of villages were speaking Aryan derived languages. Their descendants, not wanting to mix with the locals further and mix bloodlines, instituted the caste system that was so complete that it froze the genetics of tens of millions of people who for over 2,000 years.
In order to cope with these facts, Hindutva ideology tried to develop the ‘Out of India’ theory which does not paint their religion, language and culture as foriegn derived just like Islam. However modern genetics just confirmed what linguists knew a century ago.
Any attempt to portray Mughals as ”colonizer” along British lines is basically an attempt to try to portray Indian Muslims as ”outsiders” which sets the eventual justification for killing them, or worse – trying to make them into the new untouchable caste in their oppressive caste system.
Well the Mughals made it really easy to type cast themselves as outsiders when most of their upper crust were quite literally foreigners (Gokturks, Turks, Abyssianians, etc) who preferred foreign soldiers. Most of the Mughal nobility was of non-Indian origin with little to no Indian Muslim representation in their ranks. They were literally referred to as ‘Turks’ by the Marathas. The Mughals were clearly worse than the Brits in this case because the settler colonialism was much more obvious in comparison. Delhi was clearly a Muslim colonized city for example which affects it’s character even today. If a state was of a similar character to the Mughals today it would be an apartheid slave state worse than Pakistan or Apartheid South Africa.
erm worst than the British? seriously?