Do you believe it was an empire under the Mughals? If so, what's changed?
For starters, India now has a representative democracy? Empire usually means a monarchy.
Also, for Indians, organizing into such a distributed state->central structure was the only way to survive after the British (an actual empire) had finished their colonial destruction. The Mughals violently acquired multiple regional monarchies, to be ruled by their monarchy.
> India now has a representative democracy
So did the Romans for 500 years
It really seems to me that you’re arguing in bad faith, by making facetious statements with very little substance. I suggest you read up a bit more about these countries and their systems before we continue further, I don’t see much to be gained from this thread. Cheers!
India is structured like the USA, a collection of states, with central and regional powers. But they are very much internally focused, and rarely venture into global politics. They don’t intend to colonize any other states, nor make any attempts at militarizing anything outside their borders.
I would find it hard to ever compare India to a British-like empire…