Excellent article. Thank you for sharing it.
In recent times, there has been ever growing distortion of history in India and I have read even couple of articles from your news outlets stating that books were being fudged and changed to accomodate a more suitable history. This will go a long way in corrupting the mindset of the people and will make any reasonable discussion impossible with them. We are already seeing results of it in recent times.
This and the power of the internet giving everyone an opinion as if they are historians from far and wide is making things more annoying and difficult.
Now mughals.
Babur conquered Delhi and indeed he wasted money on splendors during his short reign in Delhi but this could be due to the fact that his power center was in Kabul and Delhi and modern day India was his frontier. He did try consolidation and annexed Delhi into his empire but his short reign did not give him the time to do any significant development for modern day India and even more eastern modern day pakistan.
Hamayun spent his entire reign fighting for the throne against his brothers and sher shah suri. Although he paved the way for mughal consolidation by dividing Babur's empire amongst his sibling and keeping Punjab and Delhi for himself but constant wars and annexation of Punjab by his brother who ruled Kabul kept him preoccupied.
True mughal splendor and development happened by Akbar on the back of sher shah suri's works.
Quite frankly the mindset of mughals after babur was different bcz they had consolidate their power structure in the subcontinent rather than in Kabul or Samarkand. There are many development works in the subcontinent ranging from irrigation to road structure that has helped modern day India greatly.
First of all we all need to stop looking at history with the lenses of present. It will distort one's view and present a very biased view.
Secondly we must understand that at that time there were empires. Empires were states however unlike modern day states they were volatile and prone to changes. The rule in the past was that might is right and states grew through annexations so one can't say they had no right ruling these areas. They earned that right through annexations which was how that world worked. Same for mongols, same for British, same for Russians.
Thirdly that you can't look at history through the lenses of modern day India. Modern day India came to be in 1947. India has always been an area where several States and empires existed. Yes sometimes great conquerors annexed these empires to create grand empires like many other examples in the world. Of an entitiy be it British or the mughals or afghans or the Arabs invaded and looted an area then it doesn't mean they looted modern day india but those regions and states they invaded.
Babur was lavish and lived in splendor. To say he looted the wealth of modern day india is incorrect. He looted the lodhi state of Delhi, Punjab and Peshawar through his invasions if you want to say it like that. The states of Bengal, Kashmir, marwan, marwat and the southern empires were ineffected bcz their wealth was not looted bcz they were not conquered yet.
In the end, distortion does not help. The claim 400mil Hindus died. How did this claim come to be? Who wrote it? What authority did he exercise to write it?