The modern day problems are inherited from the colonial history of the region, and moving forward requires reckoning with this.
On the subcontinent, you’d have to go back a millennium, before the British, before the Mughals, and before the Sultanates, to get to institutions that are “indigenous.” Even if you could do that, those institutions would be wholly unfit to modern society.
The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day. The challenge is for people and societies to find a way through all these; integrating some, discarding some, fusing some, ignoring some, embracing some, etc.
In some ways, there have been successes, in other ways, the legacy of being submissive to Western foreign powers remains. It is for charting a path as a traumatized people.
That usage is incorrect as applied to the subcontinent. Before the British was the Mughals, who were foreign colonizers as well. Before that it's Muslim invaders going back to 1200.
> The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day.
That's just a way of saying that everything is a product of history, which is a truism. That's just as true of Europeans as anyone else. But again, if I'm a Bangladeshi, how is that actionable information?
The fact is, as others have pointed out, the invaders became the people in the case of Mughals and those before them; they are weaved into what it means to be part of the Subcontinent.
As a Bangladeshi, you can take this information and use it to change how you live your life. It is an attitude, that you do not always have to choose or chase after the Western or British way. That you can be educated and still bring your distinct customs into the workplace, decision making, professional life, etc. You as a people can usher your own institutions, for example educational institutions, without being an inferior copy of a European ideal. Why in some places is the foreign more reliable and trustworthy? Of course it speaks to the degradation and destruction of institutions. To move forward as a society one needs investment in native institutions.
During the colonial history and afterwards, the people of the Subcontinent had to learn their own history from the British, imagine that! Imagine how much was erased in the mind of a person raised to view themselves as colonial.
Is there some fundamental difference between what Muslim conquerors did to India in earlier centuries, and what British conquerors did to India in later ones?
People talk about the historical expansion of the European powers starting in the early modern period as if it was some radically different historical phenomenon from earlier episodes of imperialism/colonialism in human history (the Mongol Empire, the Islamic Caliphates, the Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, etc). No doubt there were certain differences – especially when it comes to scale – but was it fundamentally different in essence? In moral status?
> The fact is, as others have pointed out, the invaders became the people in the case of Mughals and those before them; they are weaved into what it means to be part of the Subcontinent.
If British rule had endured longer, could not that have become just as true of the British? And in a lot of ways – legal systems, political systems, education systems, the popularity of English (especially among the elites) – the British did "weave" themselves, and those weaves endure to this day.
Or, suppose that – much like how the Brazilian Empire became independent of Portugal in 1822 – 19th century Britain had fallen into civil war, and Prince Edward of Wales withdrew to Delhi, and declared himself Emperor of an independent India, albeit one where people of British ancestry remained in charge?
How much should our judgement of history turn on its vicissitudes?
Wikipedia’s article on “nationality” [0] defines it as follows:
> Nationality is a legal identification of a person in international law, establishing the person as a subject, a national, of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state against other states.
So, which sovereign state had jurisdiction over them? The Mughal Empire. Hence, their nationality was Mughal.
Colonialism involves looting the wealth of the colonies and shipping it overseas. The difference between Mughals and British is stark. Towards the end of peak Mughal rule India was the most prosperous country in the world. Towards the end of British rule India was one of the poorest countries in the world. Yes, these are extremely different to any other invasions in the world before 1500.
> s there some fundamental difference between what Muslim conquerors did to India in earlier centuries
Kinda like the Aryan conquerors who drove Dravidians down south and subjugated the native tribes - now referred to as "Adi"vasis (translation- the original inhabitants) and forced them to the bottom of the caste hierarchy?
Actually no, the Mughal conquest was very very different.
I'm not Indian.
> Colonialism involves looting the wealth of the colonies and shipping it overseas.
The word "colony" comes from Latin colonia – which is what the Romans called the settlements of retired soldiers they planted throughout their empire, to ensure conquered lands would remain under their control. The Romans were not the first to establish colonies – the Greeks, the Phoenicians, and the Egyptians had all done it before, and at the other end of Eurasia, Han China was doing the same thing around the same time. So, in the original sense, a colony involves not the extraction of resources, but the insertion of a new population–what the British did in North America and Oceania, and the Spanish and Portuguese did in much of Latin America.
The modern European "colonies" in Asia and Africa were different, in that they received few permanent European settlers–and hence were indeed much more extractive in focus–but extraction was hardly a new thing either. The city of Rome was fed by the extraction of Egypt's grain. Empires throughout history have been sustained through the plunder and oppressive taxation of conquered lands.
> Towards the end of peak Mughal rule India was the most prosperous country in the world. Towards the end of British rule India was one of the poorest countries in the world
The Mughals were the authors of their own decline. Aurangzeb plundered the empire to pay for his ruinous war against the Marathas, and the extravagant opulence of his court. He introduced discriminatory taxes against non-Muslims, which caused resentment among the Hindu majority, and sowed the seeds of later rebellions. His failure to ensure a clear successor left a legacy of civil war from which the empire never recovered.
No denying that the British Raj greatly mismanaged the economy–but so did the later Mughals. How is one inherently worse than the other?
And what difference did it make to millions of malnourished peasants, whether the taxes which oppressed them went to Delhi or to London?
> And what difference did it make to millions of malnourished peasants, whether the taxes which oppressed them went to Delhi or to London?
This is some kind of bizarre apologetics for colonialism. There is no evidence of economic mismanagement by later Mughals. You simply made up that shit. The kingdom split up and fell apart and India was dominated by the Maratha empire. Post Aurangzeb Mughals are of no real significance in Indian history or economics. I know you are just trying to move past the fact that Indias economic peak was under Aurangzeb, until the British pulverized the country. But if you are going to directly discard the actual data, what is the point of responding.
In the Mughal period Indian economic output was at its peak and ordinary peasants had similar economic outlook as their western counterparts. At the end of British rule indian peasants were several orders of magnitude poorer than their western counterparts. How on earth are you equating both situations? If you are not going to leave your absurd bias at the door, what's the point in engaging?
You also conveniently ignore 3000 years of rule by the Aryan derived minority upper castes on native lower castes. These apparently were glorious 2000 years for India, because the plight of the majority lower castes don't actually matter.
After the Buddhist empires, it was only during the Islamic empires that the lower castes weren't ritually forced into slavery and penury by "dharma" which was enforced as law. It is no coincidence that Indias economic peaks came under Buddhist and Islamic rule.
Under Upper caste rule Indians suffered a lot, however British colonialism was significantly worse. The economic data speaks for itself.
As an aside, Aurangzeb was the most austere Mughal emperor- This point is not relevant to the discussion, the fact that you made up a false point clearly shows that this is a fact free Ideological polemic from you. Even when the data directly contradicts everything you claim, you will remain unruffled.
> I'm not Indian.
I never claimed you were. But you have all the upper caste hindu right wing tropes down pat :) congratulations. Inspite of the fact that these gave been demonstrated to be fact free over and over again.
You’re the one doing that. But rolling back the clock 300 years before the British, but not 500 years before that before the Mughals and Sultans is quite indefensible.
> By indigenous I define it as the people of the region who settled there and became native to the land.
By that logic Americans are indigenous to the US but that’s not how we usually use the term. And Mughals weren’t that either. They were a foreign elite that conquered the subcontinent by force. Your average desi has very little Mughal ancestry.
> It’s a contrastive term for distinguishing from the British colonizers.
It’s a paper thin distinction.
> To move forward as a society one needs investment in native institutions
The irony is that Europe itself did quite the opposite. Their society has little connection to that of their Germanic ancestors. Instead it’s a synthesis of a middle eastern religion and Roman/Greek civil society and law.
The subjects of the Mughals adopted their religion, influenced by their culture, famous Mughal monuments like Taj Mahal dot the subcontinent, the legacy of sufism and emergence of Sikhism, all of these are their traces found in the substance of what it means to be Desi. Not all of these are shared by all people under the term Desi, for example the history of a person from Tamil Nadu will differ markedly from the history and view of someone from Punjab. But they are still part of the overarching sense of the Subcontinent. The Mughals and previous Sultans brought a new civilization that fused with the identity of the region over time.
Conversely, despite the British way being heavily influential in the Subcontinent and having had the most recent influence on the makeup of the countries there, nobody will mistake the Buckingham palace as having the same legacy as that of India. The British colonial era was clear in transferring wealth away from the region and the British did not consider India native to them. The Mughals came as conquerers, yes, but they became integrated into the culture they conquered. They also brought wealth to the region. Did the British Monarchs ever marry into the culture of their subjects like the Mughals did?
For the British, India was a profitable "Crown Jewel" but the mission was not to find the new land as a home. See how their presence in the region began as a trading company.
Contrast with the US where Native Americans were forced into reservations and their culture and language has little influence on most of the inhabitants of the US today. But the idea of the US also departs from a lot of ideas about nation, it is its own beast.