Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s4.24

v4.c47.s4.24

Their education, or more correctly their lack of it, and rigid social usages made them unfit to face the changed world when European civilisation burst upon India. Their bards or *chārans*, whose poems used to throw Tod into ecstacy, only helped to ruin the Rajput kings and nobles by inflaming their pride of family or clan and antipathy to other races of Hindustan and even other Rajput clans than their own. These false bardic poems blinded their Rajas and common people alike to the true lessons of history. The universal habit of opium-eating made them incapable of sustained exertion and debased their brains permanently.