It was kingdoms & Mughals & it was before Industrial revolution. Also, there was no concept of India as such before British as it was all kingdoms/dynasties.
Bharat certainly did. That is the correct term. India is the name the British gave us. If Bharat existed then so did India or Hindustan (another foreign name)
This notion that India did not exist and it was the Brits that created it is bunk.
Always glorifying past is not a good thing when reality says otherwise. India or more specifically Indian kingdoms fall was destined as they failed to grasp the importance of technology & industrial revolution.
The intent was to provide a benchmark which adds perspective. Won't Indians look at themselves differently if they realised that economically we were always at the top?
India was always a big market then, isn't it? So the topic title in reality is redundant and been so for over a millenia.
Also, your statement "Thanks to the stellar leadership in place since 2014" is also not entirely correct because the source of Indian economy's boost was 1991 economic reforms by P. V. Narasimha Rao govt in which Manmohan Singh was finance minister.
Why isn't it correct? the economy has grown since 2014 and weathered the pandemic and Ukraine conflict.
During this time it has also successfully fended off both adversaries. That requires confidence which was lacking in the previous govt. Acquiring that confidence requires working towards a goal which was on the back burner for much of the UPA's tenure. Confidence here just means the ability to handle escalation. And all that means is having enough ammo for artillery at a minimum to sustain a conflict over several weeks or months if need be.
We did nothing after 26/11 because we could not handle escalation with Pakistan of all countries. How pathetic. The 90s saw defence go for a toss thanks to the Bofors scandal. But changes were imperative during the UPA tenure which never came because of the fear of further scandals. The consensus on the board after 26/11 was a conflict would affect FDI. That is why no kinetic operations followed.
That is not the correct answer. At the time we could not talk about the correct answer in public for obvious reasons but the Paks deduced it and exploited it to the hilt. The answer is not a question of will or guts but simply ability. We lacked the ability. Soft state. Today we have enough ammo for all guns to last a month, or three months for 1/3 guns or six months for 1/6 guns. Therefore I do not see any possibility of major conflict on the horizon. Skirmishes here and there are possible but nothing more. This is just as well as we need at least two decades of peace with close to double-digit growth to regain our rightful place in this world.
Knowing & understanding are two entirely different things. You can give the same history book to 2 persons & one person will come up with "Mughals all bad, British all bad..." while other come up with "Mughals all good, British all good.." with the reality somewhere in between. We do need a change in education system to increase the understanding of ppl so they use their own brain & logical facts instead of relying on some leaders/ideology/political party narratives.
Foreign occupation is never a good thing. How many universities did the Mughals build during their rule? None. They destroyed many. This country had 14 by the time of the Mughal invasion. Khilji burned Nalanda down.
The British idea of education under Macaulay was to create an industrial scale supply of workers that would serve the empire which endures to this day. After independence, everything we've learnt in school comes from the monopoly of the left on the education sector particularly from the 70s onwards. Almost ten years into the Modi govt still not much has changed.
Very different to the way the ancients taught in this country. The guru shisha way. I was told this still continues in places like Shantiniketan.
This country's strength through the ages has been its ideas. And that can only come with the best teaching available which we had. This country had the best teachers in the world. That is where this Vishwaguru narrative comes from. Why else does Buddhism spread all over Asia to the extent? It did for the same reason Western culture is so prevalent today. The economy here was strong as were the ideas and people abroad could not get enough of it.
Unfortunately, that started to wilt over the centuries. We lost the ability to generate those ideas and went on auto pilot by which time cracks appeared and were exploited by the invaders.
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