For some unknown reason, history was not taught in my school (St. Patrick's), so I used to borrow history books from a friend studying in another school. I was fascinated by Mughal history, but in those days history was written by Indian Hindus who hated Muslims, so the books were obviously biased.
Recently I've read "The Anarchy" by William Darlymple who is a Briton living in Delhi. I read it on the recommendation of my late friend Abid Shaikh. Nowadays I'm reading another of his books ("The last Mughal"), and I'm struck by how similar were the conditions of Muslims in 1857 to the present. There was the same chaos, disturbances, lack of law and order that we find in Pakistan and Afghanistan today. Someone once said if the British had not come to India, it would have been a much richer country. I beg to disagree. Indians (both Muslims and Hindus) had been fighting among themselves before the British arrived. Mind you, Muslims were at war with other Muslims, while Hindus were also killing each other. This would have continued if the Europeans had stayed away from the subcontinent.
The Mughals had already lost their clout more than a century before the collapse of their empire. Reading the events that led to the downfall of the empire in 1857 makes you realize that Muslims have not changed much since those days. The British took advantage of the disunity among Indians and gradually took over the whole country, just as India dismembered Pakistan because our powerful people didn't want a Bengali to be the prime minister of the country.
I would urge all my friends and relatives to make their children read our history (I know that most people of my age haven't got the time to read nowadays, with all those Whattsapp videos they get daily). Making the children and grandchildren aware of what happened in the past will make them understand why Muslims are in such a bad state today.
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