Someone said that while the Taj Mahal is beautiful and all that, it is rather tragic that while the treasures and wealth of this country was being spent on a mausoleum, on a tribute to a dead queen, on a vanity project for an Emperor, in Europe, Oxford & Cambridge were being established.
I want to say that while he is right in his sentiment (in a way, because I think grandiose structures are something all civilizations build and I see nothing wrong in it at a particular level), the truth is even more disheartening. You see, Oxford was actually founded in 1096 and Cambridge, in 1209.
So, what was happening when Shah Jahan was busy building the Taj? Glad you asked. In Europe, Sir Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 based off partly on René Descartes’ Principia Philosophiae, published in 1644, 4 years before the Taj Mahal was opened for public viewing in 1648.
That’s how much catching up we have to do with the West. And it can only be done by pursuing the scientific and historical truth, not by hiding, obscuring, denying, and deleting history and science.
