That was a beautiful clip summarising Aurangzeb's views on the nature of various ethnicities.
We usually take pride in "Sir kata sakte hai lekin sir jhuka sakte nahi" and he was making fun of that, lol.
Education of the masses was generally a very foreign thing, even to the West.
Till which period? Quoting from Wikipedia -
The rate of illiteracy decreased more rapidly in more populated areas and areas where there was mixture of religious schools. The literacy rate in England in the 1640s was around 30 percent for males, rising to 60 percent in the mid-18th century. In France, the rate of literacy in 1686-90 was around 29 percent for men and 14 percent for women, it increased to 48 percent for men and 27 percent for women.
Comparing to India we had 12% in 1947.
Nope. Greeks kept their education relatively sound and intact for their elite and proxies with Ottoman help (and non-interference for most part for sake of stability and cohesion). Just one example. There is no "gentle draw" pressure beyond certain point given the bulk of cultural inertia preceding it. Neutral education wont do it....even if somehow made pervasive institutionally past the elites.
That's a highly debatable part but I see it this way - most of the Indians who had served under the Mughals end up being Muslims, that's why we see a lot of Ms Rajputs in and around Delhi to this day, education needed not to be neutral - it was not in Europe, they could have added Islamic themes under it and the resistance of downtrodden is usually minimal - like we see in the missionary activities in tribals.
Japan was also actually largely an uneducated country of 95% peasantry just like any other too before Perry came knocking.
Till that point Japan was closed. Heck, they even traced and
burnt down the Christians till that point but when the Japan was opened forcefully, they immediately realised the need of change and abolished
danka system, patronised Shintoism, persecuted Buddhist dogmas - as a result Buddhism was reformed and later devolved into Zen Buddhism. Not only this, they continuously sent their men to Europe to learn their ways, India was much richer than this, what stopped us (collectively) to do this?
Its not really "stupidity". They were operating on "if it aint broke, dont fix" assumption of history.
India was a trade point that too very active one, François Bernier was a European physician to Mughals not the other way round, Mughals imported arms from England, not the other way round.
Despite these innovations, most soldiers used bows and arrows, the quality of sword manufacture was so poor that they preferred to use ones imported from England, and the operation of the cannons was entrusted not to Mughals but to European gunners. Other weapons used during the period included rockets, cauldrons of boiling oil, muskets and
manjaniqs (stone-throwing catapults).
A smart man would have deduced the need of change but maybe I am asking for too much.