How Akbar came to love books despite never learning to read (2019)

The British did not create the tensions between Muslims and Hindus in the Indian subcontinent. They papered over them for a long time but the big question of who’s going to be in charge once they left was not one they were in a position to dictate the answer to.

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/03/01/the-blood-on-brown...

> Since I am not Pakistani I did not know what the “Two-Nation Theory” (TNT) was before I ran the Brown Pundits weblog. Basically, this is the idea that the Indian subcontinent has within it two religious nations, the Hindu and Muslim. This is not a theological assertion as much as an ethno-sectarian one. The founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was not a devout Muslim. His personal mores were more that of an upper-class Brit (he enjoyed his whiskey). But, his ethnocultural identity was clearly that of an upper-class Muslim. As a lawyer, he defended a man who killed a Hindu who the man believed had blasphemed against Islam. Jinnah’s defense was motivated by his communal loyalty. Even if he himself was not pious, the offense was against the Muslim nation, and he stood with the Muslim nation.

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> If you had asked me at a younger age my unconsidered opinion would have been that India should have stayed united to avert the bloodiness of the partition, whose death toll is estimated from the hundreds of thousands to millions. But upon further reflection and thought, I think the TNT captures the essential fact that the Muslim upper-class of Northern India would never be able to reconcile itself well with secondary status within the state, and, with ~25% of the population being Muslim, would always have a huge vote bank so that they could not be ignored. Perhaps a confessional state with a divided balance of power such as Lebanon could have been attempted, but I doubt the Lebanese solution would scale to a polity which covered the whole Indian subcontinent. A more feasible scenario might be a confederation.

Its funny how you mentioned only India and Pakistan and completely forgot about Bangladesh. There were three entities that came out of that partition, not two. These tensions are mostly man-made and not even related to independence, its mostly about India's claim that the two countries should be united and the people living there are similar to them while on the other hand Pakistan claims, they are different, Factually speaking, the Western part of Pakistan is more similar to Afghanistan and Iran, the Northern to China and only the East has some similarities with Northern India, not even the whole. Then there is Kashmir, should we blame that on the poorly-managed independence too? What about the province of Hyderabad or cities of Junagadh? Did the rulers there wanted to join India? It's not a competition about who is tolerant or not, its more about how to play this tolerance game so that they can rule easily and sadly only the common man suffers.

Your point is very well taken.

Empire making and keeping is inherently violent, but the current trend seems to be trying to make the case that Hindu emperors achieved what they achieved with peace, rainbows and divine fairness (and some old Hindu science of flying machines, plastic surgery between humans and elephant heads. All lost because of outside invasion). Pushing this point of view has been the national agenda in the current political situation.

Thanks for your comment.

> In India's case, the whitewashing of Mughal rule was a necessity because there are still a substantial number of Muslims living in India ....

There are substantial level of German living in Germany, let's not teach them about Nazis? Interpreted other way you are advocating appeasement of people who already have superiority complex due to their religious beliefs.

History should be taught as it is? No lies. If Marathas were the aggressive towards Punjab and Bengal, teach it.

> I'm not sure of the answer .... ancestors.

How will you achieve that if you whitewash. Mature position requires understanding the past and then moving on.

> a substantial number of Muslims living in India, and painting their ancestors - the Mughals - as barbaric invaders.

I'd like a source for Mughal ancestry of Muslims. It looks like you're passing of opinion as facts here.

I hear what you are saying but don't agree that "let's brush it under carpet" approach would be a mature one. My assessment is that current religious problems in India exist because there was no closure on hindu-muslim issues which started with Mughals and ended with partition. No political or religious leader addressed this issue with genuine concern and acknowledgement of history. Instead, all (including Gandhi to current politicians) took ostrich approach to deny the rift with slogans of unity, while pressurizing Hindus to forget-and-forgive since it appeals more to Hindus. This eventually gave rise to "pseudo-secularism" in India which is essentially anti-Hindu but pro-Islam stance. It is my opinion that due to this, distrust between Hindus and Muslims still lingers on and always will. Better approach would have been a proper closure of all the violence, conversions, atrocities, etc of past and then focus on moving on. And finally, mature approach would have been to figure out what is proper closure?