For one like each (by mutuals), I will offer a history hot take in this thread.

Ashoka the Emperor, while being a complicated figure, is massively overrated white his biggest crimes being whitewashed. He was a potential mass murderer and then there is also a story of Ashoka having a built a torture palace from which no one was allowed to come back alive.

I'll stop after 15 or so hot takes. Akbar was massively overrated too. Many of his administrative achievements were actually initiated & designed by Sher Shah Suri & Humayun. His biggest achievement was bringing Rajputs into Mughal orbit but even that was not fully his work.

Maratha Empire deserves more attention in our history books. Their story needs to be told because it shows how an erstwhile forgotten & downtrodden people strategically rose from being mere soldier-servants of Deccani Sultanates to eventually becoming South Asia's biggest power.

The real civilization that built our ancient world is not Greeks or Romans, it was Persians. They gave the ancient world its original taste of culture, literature, art, and the theories of politics. They are the ones who understood cosmopolitanism & developed trade routes.

If Aurangzeb hadn't come to power and instead Dara Shukoh had taken the throne, Mughal Empire would've crumbled much earlier because Dara was a self-obsessed fool with far lesser administrative capacity than his more stubborn brother.

Muhammad Shah Rangeela, one of the most infamous final Mughal Kings, was a tragic figure. He was a talented, artistic man born in the wrong time with the wrong people. Had he been born in the peak of Mughal Empire, he would've been better than dudes like Jahangir.

On that note, Jahangir was actually a pretty bad king. He was an alcoholic who also consumed drugs like normal people drink water. He just got lucky that his father had left behind a powerful, stable empire with competent officials & his wife Nur Jehan was a wonderful ruler too.

The only truly unproblematic successful ruler in South Asian history was Chandragupta Maurya. He literally thing everything right. Had he not united Hindustan when he did, we don't know how different history would've been. The rest of them fucked up in many ways.

Ibn-e-Battuta, the famed traveler of medieval world, most probably exaggerated many parts of Muhammad bin Tughlaq's era during his stay there for dramatic purposes. If MbQ was exactly as described, there is no way Battuta would've been able to stay for so long & then escape.

Alauddin Khilji is neither the villain some people claim him to be because the story of Padmavaat is mostly fake. He is also not the badass Mongol destroyer others think he is because, by his time, their peak had passed. Alauddin would probably have been smashed by peak Mongols.

Lahore is not a great ancient city it is often assumed to be. It doesn't even feature in the important places of Indus Plain like Taxila, Sialkot or Uch Sharif. Only Ghaznavid's put it on the map and even then, it wasn't until Jehangir's time that it becomes a worth city.

Partition was a mistake. But it was also inevitable and would've happened sooner or later because religious-based nationalism had started to take root and become a potent force by the mid 20th century. The biggest culprits in all this were the colonizers.

This isn't even a hot take tbh because by now you should know that Gandhi was a problematic af figure with creepy tendencies. And most of the actions he took were counter-productive for freedom. He was a mere symbol. It was him, and not Jinnah, who gave fire to communal politics.

OTOH, Nehru deserves to be read as an intellectual & a political theorist. His later actions (especially with regards to Kashmir) have rightfully tarred his legacy but it is still important to understand his vision for India. It provides a good comparison point to early Pakistan.

Julius Caesar's death was a good thing in the long-term. Because he was a still an old-school Roman who would've failed as a dictator. His death kickstarted the journey of Octavius who would later become Emperor Augustus, Rome's first emperor and also one of its best.

Nero is not the mad king or evil tyrant he is portrayed as. His upbringing was pretty messed up but in the context of his time, he did a good job and he was most definitely not playing any instrument when Rome burned. He actually took actions to ensure that people don't suffer.

Razia Sultana is not just the badass medieval queen she is portrayed to be, because just like her siblings she was also an unfortunate victim of the violent politics of the slave-generals who held control of first Delhi Sultanate.

The actual worst peak Mughal king was Shah Jahan, a narcissist who fancied himself as a divine being, a shameless kinslayer well beyond what was needed, wasted valuable resources on an impossible invasion in Central Asia. He also laid the seeds for the conflicts between his sons.

It is our misfortune that the powerful Han Dynasty of China failed to established contact with the Roman Empire despite sending an envoy there who couldn't go beyond the Persian Gulf. If they had, history would've been very different and much richer.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq was a pretty weird (& cruel) & complicated dude but he was essentially incoherent with his time. He was born in the wrong era. He was a strategic visionary and would've built a successful empire if he had lived in a later era.

Pakistan got lucky that Bahawalpur and the Western states like Kalat and Makran joined it, otherwise we would've been screwed big time both strategically and financially.