एक दुखी परिवार –  57

British India

What happened to the moughals?

After arrival of the East India Company?

arrival of the East India Company in the region led to the administrative designation of some geographically, culturally, economically and historically diverse areas, which had never shared a common political identity. The Rajputana Agency was the name given.

This was a significant identifier, being modified later to Rajputana Province, lasting until the renaming to Rajasthan in 1949.

While compiling data on British India, one may encounter a serious omission.

It is well known how the citadel of the Mughal Empire was shattered and was shrunk to a small city of Delhi, which too got finally devoured by the British.

But one question never struck the historians, perhaps, or may be, it was intentionally suppressed, for a reason which is obvious.

That question is, what happened to the moughals  , as a clan, that fought so many battles and conquered vast territories, across and even beyond the present day India?

The term Moughal and Muslim are quite distinguishable.

Akbar was a Mughal but his wife Who was the mother of his successor Jahangir was a Rajput.

Salima was his  other wife apart from Ruqaiya, who was of the most exalted lineage, being a Timurid through her mother's side and thus, a granddaughter of Emperor Babur in the maternal line. But it was an irony of fate that it was Akbar's Rajput consort who gave to the empire Akbar's successor, Jahangir.

But Jahangir down to the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah “Zafar", are cited in the historical demography, as belonging to the Mughal lineage.

The point here is not to raise a non issue pertaining to the Mughal lineage, but to raise a very simple question. What happened to the lineage in the British era.

The question is not limited to the lineage of the Emperors who held Hindustan under there slavery for two centuries. The question elicits much more than that.

(Cont.   .)