58-59

एक दुखी परिवार –  58

Marital alliances and moughal harems

Why did not any Mughal Royal go for a Christian, Sikh, Parsi or Jain queen? 

Surely their harems had women from different religions and also foreigners. 

Only that the Hindu queens came out of Rajput royal alliances, is a fact that requires analysis which may lead to an astonishing inference that the Mughals did not stay in power merely by its gun power. It was their systematically executed strategy that worked. The strategy involved marital alliances that won a fool proof loyalty of the Rajputana kingdoms , one against the other.

The link offers an insight.

http://creative.sulekha.com/mughal-kings-and-hindu-wives_554450_blog

एक दुखी परिवार –  59

Moughals in British India

When it comes to comparing the Indian slavery under the Mughals and under the British, the logic that has been advanced is that the mughals became Indians, whereas the British maintained their separate identity as Britishers.

The logic advanced for the Mughals and against the British, hides a converse logic, that the British did not commit sacrilege on the honour of Indian women , contrary to what the Mughals did. The Mughal emperors used marital alliances and Mughal harems as a political strategy to ensure the loyalty of the fragmented Hindu kingdoms, especially Rajputana which the Britishers  abstained from. 

It was not that Mughals got mixed up into the Indian populace. The position was contrary. It grotesquely mughalised the Indian populace , by systematically carried out marital alliances and through an obnoxious mechanism called harem management. Was this not worse than conversion? Whereas conversion implies shifting of belief system but the mechanism followed by the Mughals was indeed ignoble. It created completely a new but loyal breed. That loyalty was pegged toward the empire. It was this loyalty which came to Akbar's avail against the mite of Maharana Pratap. It will simply be imbecile to presume that it were the Mughals imported from any outlandish territories to conquer Rajputana. It were the dissident commanders whose loyalty Akbar down below the line had won by the above acts of sacrilege that brought ultimate success to the Mughals. 

It was not the case of the Mughals becoming thick and thin with the local populace. It was a case of the large local populace getting systematically mughalised by the exercise of marital alliances and concubine management at every level of governance . These despised practices , on the one hand necessitated Sati pratha , whereas on the other hand gained respectability  because the empire bestowed special privileges, status and emoluments for the class that fell or that volunteered to fall in its tentacles .

Harems were obnoxious to  the Hindu pride which gave rise to sati system, but as Mughals succeeded in formulating its strategies in that regard, harems subsequently became a coveted status in which official status accompanied , to balance the repugnance occasioned   by a concomitant    image , that of a royal concubine.

These alliances and harems were so numerous over a vast span of a century or two, at every level of governance from where power stemmed to travel upwards up to the monarch. 

This big factor has been overlooked from the standpoint of the resultant demography .

Think. Who fought against Maharana pratap ? Mughals, out and out? No. The contingent that sent the Maharana in exile, included even those whose loyalty had been ensured by the Mughals by means of the above said alliances and stratagems of the mechanism of harems and alliances resulting therefrom. 

It were these devices by which the Hindu populace had been mughalised even without forcing any religious conversions. This is what is admired as religious tolerance, oblivious of its cost factor in terms of honour and pride which suffered systematic subrogation intended at subservience to the Mughal empire.

Britishers' benevolence by means of abstention against interference with the honour and pride of women, led to maintenance of moral distance . The fact that the British did not mix up at the cost of indian's honour, is thus deprecated in comparison to the way Mughals conducted themselves . 

Historians as analysts have distorted these projections, keeping in mind objectives of the freedom struggle, in which a critical stand as a matter of factly against the Mughals and admiration of the Britishers, would have proved counter productive. 

No one would, therefore, mention with admiration that  they created the railways, they bought in education and various reforms and systems , but as and when it is mentioned, it is argued that even that was not due to any goodwill or kindness . These things helped them rule a troublesome nation more easily.

(Cont.     .)