alt Hacker NewsThere were several great famines during the Mughal reign in India, for example, Peter Mundy, the English merchant and traveller, describes the great famine of Deccan and Gujrat. The Mughal rule was brutal. The European travellers have written about the plight of the farmers who rebelled due to excessive taxation despite the fear of punishment. The Mughals built towers of severed heads outside each village and even they were not able to quell the rebellion, such was the state of affairs. So I'd say the assumption you're making isn't true.
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dyauspitr • today at 4:19 PM
Mughal rule in India was very inconsistent depending on the ruler in power at the time. There was a huge variety in quality of governance from Akbar to Aurangzeb.
The British were shocked when the 1857 rebellion sought to restore the last Mughal emperor. It was then they decided to resort to a revisionist history of the Mughal rule in India, to deliberately create animosity in the Hindus and Muslims (which is still lapped up by the right-). By further careful grooming of select right-wing Hindus and right-wing muslims leaders in India, the British were successful in preventing the Indians from politically uniting against the British Raj (divide and rule policy) and managed to extend their rule over us for nearly a century more, and in partitioning the country when they left.
Mughal emperors in India were for the most part, secular, and they nurtured an egalitarian society (without disturbing the discriminatory Hindu caste structure so as to not intrude on Hindu religious beliefs) who used India's wealth to empower its growth and made it one of the richest empires in the world (during its time). Art, music and culture was especially patronised by them. Of course, they weren't perfect. Their "brutality" (during war or when suppressing a rebellion) was at par to any empire or kingdom of their time, in India or abroad. For example, Shivaji's (a Hindu ruler revered by the Hindu-right) army used to ransack Hindu temples too (which was again something common for its time in India, and not unique to Islamic invaders) in the Mysore kingdom that then had a Muslim ruler (Tipu Sultan - a ruler who, like his father, incidentally also served as an inspiration for the American revolutionaries in their fight again the British - https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-... and https://scroll.in/global/970265/how-tipu-sultan-and-haidar-a...). Islamic style raids (amongst other tactics) which Shivaji was famous for, was something he learnt from a Deccan muslim ruler (who was an African and a slave who rose to become a king in India - https://indianexpress.com/article/research/malik-ambar-auran... !).