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The Mughal Empire, self-designated as the Gurkani (from the Persian word Gūrkāniyān, meaning "son-in-law"), was founded in the 16th century after Babur, a conqueror from Central Asia and one of Tamerlane's direct descendants, prevailed over the last sultan of Delhi and established his own state in the Indus-Ganges valley. Even though it was founded as a Turko-Mongol state, the ruling dynasty was quick to assimilate into the Hindustani language, even if they retained their Sunni faith and the Persian language in court. Powered by the adaptation of gunpowder weaponry, cannons and modernized tactics, the Mughals eventually went on to unite the entire subcontinent under their rule, and the completion of this unification, even including the Tamils and Ceylon, was what marked the 18th century in India.

Far from Europe, separated from the rest of the world by oceans, deserts and the world's tallest mountain range, the Mughal Empire was not affected by the Great German Revolution nor the Revolutionary Wars - however, it maintained continuous contact with one "European" nation, this being the Ottoman Empire. And this contact was not diplomatic nor economic, but rather marked by over a century of wars and conflicts over the domination of the Muslim world, and especially Persia. Despite it's vast population and economy, the Mughals found themselves having to face off against an extremely tough rival - the Ottoman armies were hardened by battle, disciplined and competent, and they possessed more modern technology, and only luck and manpower allowed the Gurkani to hold their own for so long. The Empire had lost Baluchistan twice in this period, only to reconquer it later, and in one instance, in 1751, the Ottomans even reached the Indus Valley, only stopped from taking over the region thanks to a successful defense of Lahore.

While this century of competition was brutal, bloody and tough to endure, it triggered something in the mindset of the Mughal Empire - the need to change. In the past, the Gurkani followed a similar mentality to Ming China - lacking any major opposition to their economic and military superiority, it began to see itself as the center of the world, surrounded by weak, poor, almost barbaric states that were of no interest to the Emperor, but the appearance of the Ottomans and the challenge to Mughal hegemony that they put up shattered that belief. The first blossoms of a reforming India appeared in the very beginning of the 18th century with Emperor Bahadur Shah II, whose reign marked the beginning of the Indian Enlightenment. Trade ties with Europeans, like the Portuguese and the French, were restored, and Bahadur wished to apply the innovations of the Europeans in his nation's army and society. He encouraged education and established the subcontinent's first institution of higher learning, similar to Western universities, in Delhi. His death in 1709 did not stop this process. Later emperors continued to encourage science and education, and dividends were already arriving - in the mid 18th century, scholars standardized the Urdu language, making it easier to use for both commoners and literature, while a homegrown educated officer corps enabled the victory at the Battle of Lahore in 1751 and the subsequent reconquest of Baluchistan.

The first hints of industrialization in India arrived at the tail end of the 18th century, when the first water-powered loom was constructed and put into motion in East Bengal. Indian industrialization started out slow, mostly because due to the lack of a sufficient power source like coal, which at the time was quite rare in the Empire, but soon, the rising industrialist and entrepreneur class turned to water power. Thousands of rivers, including many of the world's largest like Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, provided a clean and never-ending source of energy, and water mills were quick to become common sight across the nation. This drew the ire of the local Hindu population, which saw Ganges as their most sacred river and were fiercely opposed to it being surrounded with mills and factories, and they appealed to the Emperor, who, in 1809, banned all usage of water power in the river Ganges. As such, most of the industry from the region moved to the East, especially along Brahmaputra and Meghna, in Bengal, which rapidly became the industrial heartland of the Mughal Empire.

Much like in France, the backbone of the Industrial Revolution in India was textile. Even before the 18th century, India was the world's biggest supplier of textile production, and industrialization further increased the nation's share in this industry. Eventually, the process moved on to other fields, including steel production, industrial machines, other types of heavy industry, as well as timber and food processing, and myriads of other activities. The old artisan style economy was being slowly replaced by an industrial society built on manufacturing and mass production, and even though the efficiency of Indian factories was much weaker than what you would see in Europe, the vast population that the Empire had to employ meant that they would still rise to become one of the world's leaders in industrial capacity by the end of the 19th century.

However, not all was sunshine and rainbows in the Mughal Empire - far from it. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution was followed by the development of political thought in India, and people started to question the state of the society as a whole - after all, if India could adopt Westerner technology, surely it should also adopt their social and political structure as well, right? Increased connectivity with the Western world meant that more and more young Indians travelled to Europe or North Vespucia to acquire an education, and the societies they would see there would often result in a culture shock - the Westerners do not have rigid castes, even a commoner can become wealthy through hard work, and the rulers are elected through the will of the people rather than dynastic succession! Many would return back to their homeland and begin to agitate for reforming the Indian system in a similar style to France or the VFS. Even thought the monarchy remained absolute and the government often cracked down on these "radicals", underground Republican and Constitutionalist movements began to form, hoping to one day see the creation of a democratic India.

The Indian subcontinent was never a stable system - it was quite literally populated with thousands of nationalities, each with their own distinct languages and cultures. Even the religion that unified them all, Hinduism, had so many regional variations that it was hard to say whether all of India even followed a single religion at all. In addition, Islam had existed alongside Hinduism for centuries, even replacing it as the primary religion in many places, and while the Muslim emperors treaded a careful line of religious tolerance, tensions between the two faiths were starting to build up. That's not even to speak about the caste system, the varna - a rigid societal system, divided into the four classes - brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas, shudras and the ones without caste, the untouchables. These four classes did not disappear during Mughal rule, and the wealth differences created by the Industrial Revolution only deepened the valley between the upper and the lower class. This massive division between all layers of society created a fertile ground for the spread of Unitarianism - Theodor Weber's utopian ideology calling for the formation of a perfect, classless society with all differences between individuals torn down to create a world where the entire society works at it's maximum efficiency. Indian Unitarianism was a slightly twisted version of Weber's original ideas, calling for the eradication of the Varna, mandated state atheism to take down both Hinduism and Islam, and the destruction of the Mughal Empire through a revolution, reorganizing it into a unitary "paternal" state, which would have the potential to become a world power, and become a transitional stage to the envisioned united world society.

The Mughal Empire was only taking it's first steps on the world stage, but it had already reached far. Perhaps an interesting factoid arrived in 1869 - thanks to more modern medicine and a population boom due to industrialism, India had surpassed China to become the world's most populous state. There was a long path left for the Akhand Gurkani, but only Allah, or maybe Vishnu, knows what their future will be.

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The next chapter will be called "The Crescent Sets"