Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c2.1

v1.c2.1

The birth of the New India in which we live was preceded by the death of a political and social order under which the millions of this country had been nurtured for two centuries and a half and which had done great things for them. The Mughal Empire, established in 1556, had united much of the Indian continent under one sceptre, given it a uniform civilisation whose conquering light had penetrated beyond the bounds of that empire, and on the whole promoted the general happiness of the people in a degree unapproached except in the mythical past. It broke the isolation of the provinces and the barrier between India and the outer world, and thus took the first step necessary for the modernisation of India and the growth of an Indian nationality in some distant future. The achievements of that empire under four great sovereigns have been the worthy themes of the historians of Akbar and Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzib. But the exhaustion of this civilising force with the consequent ruin of this country has hitherto repelled historians, probably because of the dismal nature of the subject which presents no spectacle calculated to elevate the human mind or warm the human bosom.