This is one of those reviews that is so well-executed that I almost don't want to read the actual book because it may not actually live up to the quality of the review.
> The description in the review drives home how when the British arrived, India was about a third of world GDP, Britain, not so much.
India's GDP share was much higher before the invading Mughal invasion started so they were part of the problem. See Angus Madison's historical list of the ten largest countries by GDP.
I hope you enjoyed hijacking a thread about Shah Jahan for your silly Hindu nationalist goals of spreading doubts about Muslim rule. I'm sorry but no matter how much you do that, Shah Jahan will not stop being a historic figure.
Am I contesting the historicity of Shah Jahan? On contrary, I am contesting the statement of the article which tries to portray that India was made rich by Mughals.
Silliness actually lies in your knee jerk reaction.
Both senior and junior Habibs are known to whitewash the Islamic invasion and paint a rosy picture of their rule. Their body of work is full of their own biases. Most of the time they fail to provide the primary sources.
What they do not explain this:
Let's assume invaders(Muslims and Christians) came from outside, attacked, raped,killed only to make India a prosperous nation. But why they failed to do it to their native place?
Who in their right mind would believe this fiction propagated by the apologists?
Why a Marxist would need to defend Muslim invasions?
He is one of the many charlatans who posed as Marxist only to advance their agenda of Muslim glorification.
There are many such examples. Famous script writer Javed Akhtar propagated his faith,degraded other faiths and yet declared himself an atheist. How convenient?
Shah Jahan was the 3rd Mughal Emperor and one of the 4 great Mughal rulers. At the time the Mughal empire was much wealthier than England, though Europeans had been in India for a long time now. Arguing over what GDP means doesn't really matter for setting the context of Shah Jahan's empire. It's not like contemporaries at the time had a precise method of measuring these things either.
The Prime Minister makes the speech. Plus nobody would regard the Red Fort as the nominal seat of Indian Power. The vast majority of Indians would only think of the fort as the site of the Prime Minister's speech, if at all.
I've posted this elsewhere, but not only is historical GDP hard to measure, if we are going by consumer spending, societies that developed Capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries would dwarf the GDP of every other society in the world. One reason that the British were so successful in colonizing other countries is that the scale of production became so vast, crops so cheap, that food prices shot down and population began to boom: they literally had to export people.
And for all that, London, at the height of British power, had pollution so bad that it was unlivable, in the colder months the smog could choke you out it was so dense. Because they had people living in such close conditions, hygiene was non-existent, and only the rich were able to avoid the putrid underbelly of the working-class city. Well, I happen to know of some other cities with booming populations at the beginnings of industrial capitalism that may have the same problems...I don't live in India myself, but I would say most Indians would be happy if the GDP was cut in half, if they could have clean air and drinking water. But if its all about GDP, then I guess the British are in many ways responsible for lowering the overall "GDP" of 18th century South Asian countries (there was no India until the British showed up, and even before partition it was just called "Hindustan"). But the great industries of India today, and the conditions of working people, that has nothing to do with the British, even though it matters far more than how some Raj lived 300 years ago.
For those who don't know, the Aryan Invasion/Colonisation Theory has been thoroughly debunked; and is almost universally understood to be a fabrication of the British to justify their extractive exploitation of India. Any historical text written in the last few decades covering ancient India will attest to this.
Today, it is referred to only by racists and colonialism apologists. jim_inont seems to be one.
