This country was divided into many small states ruled by many petty kings who were waging a war against each other. The country was rich with its natural resources. But was weakened by the petty quarells of of petty kings and also by the caste-struggle.
Six to seven hundred years before Europeans came to this the country as merchants this country was invaded by muslim rules from Afghanistan, Iran and Turky. The kings of north India fought effectively the invasions but could not resist the invasiuon for a long because of their petty politics of religion and caste. One good example of such an invasion is that of Ghajani Mohammed. He invaded this country several times and He was defeated 16 times and he came to loot the Somantaha temple known for its wealth.In his 17th attempt he had brought a very small army and he made a surprise attack on the temple.There were many people in the temple, mostly poojaris and watchmen. Their number was many times more than the invaders They could not fight the invaders and they went inside the temple to pray to Lord Somanatha and did maha-abhishekha. When the invaders entered the temple they butchered the poojaris and they started looting the temple.But to their dismey they could not find the wealth inside the temple. It was all hidden somewhere in the temple which was known to some people only. One of the local people showed the place where gold and other valuable things were hidden when he was promissed half of the loot and half of the Raj/state by the looters. They carried all that loot and also shot down the fellow who showed the hidden place as they would not trust him because he had betrayed his own people and the temple.
Knowing the weaknesses of the then rulers and the weakness of the people of the country there were many invasions after that and ultimately Muslim invaders won and started ruling this country defeating all Hindu kings one by one. They started converting the Hindus to Islam. Once a Hindu is converted into some other faith the local peo0ple could not take him back into their fold by reconversion. This weakness of the Hindus helped th muslims to spread their religion.
When the whole country was alsmost under muslim rule when Europeans(British, French, Portugese and the Dutch came to this country as merchants and Britishers slowly built up their empire displacing/cutting the other Europeans and Muslim rulers to their size.Muslims including Tippu of Mysore failed to rule this country because their religious fanatisism and forced conversion of the local people into Islam.
British understood this point well and it is well described in the letter written byDobayi the priest/padri to his friends in France by Masti venkatesha ayyengar(Basavaraj kalgudi) in the text bood prescribed for 6th. semister studentsw.
