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In the time of the Mughal Empire before Europe industrialized, Indian development was equal to that of Europe. That is certain, and according to The New Cambridge History of India, "in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries India was, on most criteria, one of the advanced countries of the world". Yet, there is a distinct change in the eighteenth century, where Indian society falls behind that of Europe on all fronts except for rocketry and medicine. Rocketry didn't really help much, as Mysorean rockets, directly descended from Mughal rockets, were not very accurate, and so after British forces got over their shock from those rockets, the superior technology no longer made any difference to Mysorean fortunes. Medicine didn't help either, as being able to treat the diseases of one's subjects like anyone else can't really do much, and in that field, the British translated several Mughal medicinal manuscripts, thus nullifying India's superiority in medicine. Yet, by the time of the nineteenth century, India was doomed. Prince after prince fell to British rule and many became little more than useless puppets whose only role was to pretend to rule over their kingdom. Intellectually, India also stagnated. Under Mughal rule, leading Muslim poets such as Urfi Shirazi wrote such beautiful lines as, "The lamp of Somnath is [the same as] the fire at the Sinai". But later, this kind of poetry and tolerance died out, and it became little more than a memory.

So, was this decline inevitable?

My answer is that some sort of decline was inevitable, but it never needed to be a deep decline that India could have never gotten out of.

Perhaps the leading cause of India's decline was the untimely collapse of the Mughal Empire. In general, the stability it provided allowed for various leaps forward. Under the Mughals, India held contact with Europe - in terms of arts, various Mughal painters were clearly inspired by Renaissance movements, and Vincent Van Gogh is well-attested to have Mughal miniatures. If the Mughals still existed in the eighteenth century rather than disintegrating, European inventions would have travelled with trade to the strong, independent, Mughal Empire, strengthening it. Furthermore, the Mughal collapse caused India to fall apart into a mess of warring kingdoms, many of whom used European trading companies to win advantages over other states in return for monopolies. Naturally, European trading companies won influence over those kingdoms, thus "accidentally" conquering vast parts of India in the name of trade. If the Mughals still stood, many kingdoms would be vassals of the Mughal Emperor, while in the independent south, without the collapse, the situation in India would be more stable, meaning fewer wars between kingdoms, and thus less use of trading companies to win advantages over other kingdoms.

But I must conclude that, while the Mughals would have allowed for more stability, better contact with Europe, and less use of trading companies in the name of winning advantages over other kingdoms, there were several reasons India could have never met Europe in an industrial revolution. For one, Indian wages were too low. One reason industrialization happened as it did was because of high wages. In India, wages were much lower due to obvious reasons. And so, that impetus for industrialization is not there. Furthermore, the rivers of India were slow-moving and they often flooded. Thus, the water turbines that helped with European industrialization simply could not exist. What makes this all the while worse is that India actually has the coal needed for industrialization in Bengal, accessible by pre-industrial technology. It may even be used for heating in Bengal, and Newcomen engines may even be used to pump out water! But the jump from Newcomen engines to textile industry would not exist due to high wages and slow-moving rivers. And so, India could have only industrialized by copying Europe. No other way is possible here. And so, India would see a bit of a decline for sure, but it would not be the kind of decline that leads to colonialism, and the open attitude of the Mughal Empire means that European industry could be copied quite easily from traders once shown to be superior to pre-industrial ways. Perhaps an equivalence can be drawn to the Muslim empires, the main distinction being that India is further from European powers and does not have borders with various strong European states like Persia or the Ottoman Empire.
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