the mughals discover australia

Midnight-Blue766 · Dec 21, 2011

XanXar said:
besides akbar no mughal ruler was THAT tolerant, in fact some were somewhat fundementalist plus were talking mid to late 1500s here not the 1700s

The thing was that no Mughal ruler was intolerant to the point (or too pragmatic to realise the drawbacks) of being willing to deporting half their country. Also, Akbar happened have been ruling India during the late 1500s.

According to the BBC article on the Mughals, at least Babur and Jahangir were religiously tolerant.

CandyDragon · Dec 21, 2011

President Lenin said:
The thing was that no Mughal ruler was intolerant to the point of deporting half their country.

I'd say more than half their country.

XanXar · Dec 21, 2011

CandyDragon said:
I'd say more than half their country.

the idea was to exile the hindus in high aristocracy and replace them with muslims,
once then they could conquer tamil nadu and depending on the situation possibly the portugese

Pachac · Dec 21, 2011

Not even Aurangzeb was crazy enough to replace half his aristocracy.

XanXar · Dec 21, 2011

ImmortalImpi said:
Not even Aurangzeb was crazy enough to replace half his aristocracy.

just the ones surrounding tamil nadu

LSCatilina · Dec 21, 2011

Err...The religious intolerence, critically regarding Islamic code have its limits : taxes.

If you was not a Muslim, you pay far more taxes, you have far more charges. It is a huge source of wealth that would be exiled, and only some rulers (considered as wacko by his people and scholars) did this.
Right after, their sucessor stopped this nosense.

eliphas8 · Dec 21, 2011

LSCatilina said:
Err...The religious intolerence, critically regarding Islamic code have its limits : taxes.

If you was not a Muslim, you pay far more taxes, you have far more charges. It is a huge source of wealth that would be exiled, and only some rulers (considered as wacko by his people and scholars) did this.
Right after, their sucessor stopped this nosense.

Really when applied properly the Jizya shouldnt even be charging any more than what most Muslims are supposed to give to help the poor. It was the intollerant rulers who charged exorbidant Jizya.

Laurentia · Dec 21, 2011

jayel said:
Work on your spelling, grammar and capitalization

This is coming from someone who's missing a period at the end of his sentence.

If you're going to be an asshole about this stuff, don't make yourself seem hypocritical.

Badshah · Dec 21, 2011

Perhaps Australia becomes some sort of settler colony for the adventurous, but really, I can see how the Mughals might be tempted to ship their prisoners there, as the land is barren and punishing enough, and it is what happened OTL.

LSCatilina · Dec 21, 2011

eliphas8 said:
Really when applied properly the Jizya shouldnt even be charging any more than what most Muslims are supposed to give to help the poor. It was the intollerant rulers who charged exorbidant Jizya.

Jizya was, since the beggining, not applied properly. It was not regarding intolerence or bad rulers. It was related how much it could benefit to the income.

The rulers that have applied the coranic and hadit prescriptions for Jizya are the msot rare thing in the all universe. And when they was one, his lieges and governor played at the most popular game in the Islamic world : do not care about this nonsense.

Tyr · Dec 21, 2011

If they tried to exile Hindus the Hindus would fight. And its very likely they would hold in at least some areas.
Even if the muslims do win...well the Hindus could always just put on a show of being muslim until a more reasonable ruler comes along when they revert.
Or, if they really must be exiled, a more reasonable place for them to go would be Thailand or Malaysia or the like, somewhere they can lick their wounds and plot about reconquering India. Whilst living in decent comfort and civilization

Flocculencio · Dec 21, 2011

CandyDragon said:
They could be unloaded, if one REALLY wanted to do so, in Southern India, which was generally either not under Mughal control, or weakly under Mughal control. However, I don't see why they would want to get rid of the Hindus enough to go to Australia to dump 'em off.

No they couldn't. It's a totally different cultural region. The locals aren't going to be very happy.

Flocculencio · Dec 21, 2011

eliphas8 said:
That seems like something they would do, if they had an excuse and the ability the Mughals would have loved to be able to throw a large group of Hindu's out.

<facepalm>

The Mughals were in general still a Muslim minority ruling a Hindu majority. A whole lot of their advisors and aristocrats were Hindu.

LSCatilina · Dec 21, 2011

Flocculencio said:
<facepalm>

The Mughals were in general still a Muslim minority ruling a Hindu majority. A whole lot of their advisors and aristocrats were Hindu.

Anyway, isn't the minority they couldn't bear weren't the Sikhs?

atreides · Dec 21, 2011

The Spanish, when they discovered America, spend something like three decades struggling in a few outposts in the Caribbean. They returned there instead of forgetting about the place because Columbus found some gold and exotica, and after both were either exhausted or otherwise limited they were already committed to stay, 'cos they couldn't "uncolonize", yet few people wanted to go there. It was only after word of the Aztec's gold got out that people rushed to America in any significant numbers (and, for a variety of reason, never were that many).

So you can have a few outposts in Australia, for say religious refugees, or political exiles, or what have you. But the jump to a substantial presence needs a powerful inducement, and I don't see any, in that timeframe. You need some "bait" even for a temporary settlement.

St. Andrew · Dec 21, 2011

Yes, Koalas regularly go on killing sprees down here....

Best not to mention the wombats...

The southern parts of Western Australia are quite clement but they are a fair old hike from the Mughal stomping grounds. WA does have ludicrous amounts of mineral resources but they are generally located away from the coast and in fairly unpleasant places.

Cook · Dec 22, 2011

The coast of northern Australia from the Kimberly region to Arnhem Land was known to the Javanese and other Indonesians prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the Archipelago; fisherman would sail down there annually for centuries. It was an extremely valuable fishing area.

There is gold and diamonds in the Kimberly, but that’s like landing at Dover and saying there is gold somewhere in England.

XanXar said:
doesnt western australia have a lot of iron...

mowque said:
No, too deep and not worth much...

It is actually abundant on the surface and in coastal regions in some areas. But the demand is not high enough to sail all the way from India to Western Australia and back for it. And refining Iron Ore requires coal in larger quantities than the Iron Ore; there are no coal deposits in the North West of Australia. The regions with surface Iron Ore are some of the most inhospitable in the country by the way.

XanXar · Dec 22, 2011

alright then. the mughal threaten important hindu aristocracy to convert, they do ( but are still crypto-hindus).
they conquer the tamils finaly, once then he deports all tamil prisoners of war and ruler to australia.
after that he begins to send people from the overpopulated area of bengal to see if australia is colonisable.
when he hears it is not he decides to use as a prison.

XanXar · Dec 22, 2011

well thanks all now i can use this in my upcoming tl.

jayel · Dec 22, 2011

XanXar said:
alright then. the mughal threaten important hindu aristocracy to convert, they do ( but are still crypto-hindus).
they conquer the tamils finaly, once then he deports all tamil prisoners of war and ruler to australia.
after that he begins to send people from the overpopulated area of bengal to see if australia is colonisable.
when he hears it is not he decides to use as a prison.

In that time and society I don't think they were big on deporting people. Killing them yes, deporting them no.