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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The children of the Mughal empire

The Mughal Empire has always fascinated me. What would India be without the Taj Mahal or Red Fort? It is the Taj Mahal that is India's wonder of the world and the most attractive tourist destination in the country. It is the Red Fort from which the Prime Minister of India addresses the nation every August 15th. These are also two of the greatest monuments of the Mughal period, windows into a time that the Mughal empire was perhaps the greatest on Earth.

Tales of Akbar and Birbal are an old time favourite. The Mughal emperors hold a certain grand aura about them that most other kings, queens, emperors and empresses of the world do not match up to (with the possible exceptions of Ashoka, Alexander the Great, Victoria and maybe a few more).

Notable Bollywood films like Mughal-e-Azam and more recently Jodha Akbar have captured the story of the greatest Mughal emperor Akbar in reasonable detail. The Mughals are a part of our history and of our modern day culture.

But what ever happened to them? We know that Bahadur Shah Zafar was the "last Mughal emperor" although the empire had been decaying for one and a half centuries before him. This is a link to an interesting story I found about the conditions that the last Mughal emperor's descendants are living in today. I thought you might find it interesting.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/31340-mughal-emperors-descendants-penniless