Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology
Chapter 898 - 898: Post War Developments (narrative)

12th October 1672

It has been nearly two months since the war in the Middle East ended and the Ottomans retreated. The land area of the Kingdom of Persia remains unchanged; however, the land area of the Kingdom of Lalishsthan increased by 4 to 5 times after gaining Azerbaijan, Karabakh, Shirvan, and Diyarbakır. The efforts to rebuild the destroyed cities and to integrate the new land into the Kingdom's territory are underway.

Fortunately for the Kingdom of Lalishtan, they hadn't gained any land when the Ottoman Empire abandoned the Far East, so they didn't need to spend much on buying grain and other supplies like the Persians did. Over the past decade, they had built up a stockpile of money, merit, and resources. This was further boosted during the war when Agni was in danger, and even more so in the final war against the Ottomans, especially after they captured Diyarbakır almost entirely on their own. As a result, they now had plenty of leftover money, resources, and merits to spare.

And that's exactly what Ezidi Serwan did.

He used all the money and merits they had in the treasury, and bought advanced equipment from the Bharatiya Empire, lots of grains, cement, iron, steel, employed top construction companies from Bharath to help with infra development, employed two complete regiments of the Alliance Army to be stationed in the Kingdom of Lalishtan until they can fully take control of the new territories, settle the new population, and make sure that no riots or infiltration from ottoman empire were happening.

Ezidi Serwan, who for the last 10 to 11 years was in the role of a general and more recently commander of a legion in the alliance army, completely switched over to his position as a Monarch and implemented rapid reforms into the new territory.

The first thing he did was put the captured prisoners of war to use. He immediately began infrastructural projects to rebuild the fortress cities of Azerbaijan, Karabakh, Shirvan, and Diyarbakır—stronger than before and impenetrable to the Ottomans. Next, he ordered the construction of standardised roads from Mosul, the kingdom's capital, to all major cities, aiming for rapid mobilisation capabilities similar to those of the Bharatiya Empire.

He also introduced five years of compulsory education for all children aged 5 to 9, passed a language bill making ancient Kurdish the only official language, and, most importantly, established a naturalisation test. All new citizens were required to speak fluent ancient Kurdish, write their name and signature in it within two years of arrival, and adopt a New Testament belief system—be it Islam, Christianity, or any of its branches.

When Vijay got wind of such drastic reforms and initiatives, he was quite surprised, but it was more of a pleasant surprise than anything else. He didn't expect King Ezidi Serwan to understand his advantage so well. In the current situation, anyone might think that Lalishthan's advantage is its large land that has been occupied in the war, along with its resources, or the large amount of population that could act as free labour, but according to Vijay, it is actually its small size. Adding up all the population in the current Lalishtan, even including the Muslims, Kurds, and Yezidis, the population wouldn't cross 8 million, and that is putting it generously.

It is the small population that gives them an advantage. Unlike the Kingdom of Persia, where the population has already crossed 20 million, forcing the Atashban Royal family to weigh every decision carefully or risk severe consequences, Lalishtan carries no such burden. It has only three ethnic groups, two of which share common roots. The low population allows Ezidi Serwan to push through reforms quickly, one after another. Even if a policy goes wrong, it can be corrected immediately with minimal losses, something not possible in the Persian Kingdom.

In many ways, Lalishtan's current situation is similar to how the Vijayanagara Empire was when Vijay started out. Unfortunately, its expansion has been nearly cut off due to its geographical position.

Overall, the Yezidis have gained a lot, especially with the resolute reforms implemented by Ezidi Serwan. Apart from the ease of implementation, a lot of future troubles have also been avoided.

Right now, most of the population of Lalishtan could be considered victims of war. Before the Ottomans left the two territories, they thoroughly looted all the local landlords and nobles, who were either killed or went together with the Ottomans, leaving nothing behind, leaving the civilians in panic. So when the Kingdom of Lalishtan claimed sovereignty over the lands and took up the responsibility, the restless people calmed down, especially the people who had to be rescued from the clutches of the Ottomans. They were very thankful to the people from the Kingdom of Lalishtan and were willing to do anything for it.

Such a situation made a lot of people forget that when all 8 million population of the Kingdom of Lalishtan is considered, less than 45% population was of the Yezidis. And that was after adding the Yezidis who were rescued from the clutches of the Ottoman Empire. Most of the population was still Muslim and Kurdish. They wouldn't dare to cause any trouble now, since the warmth of the dead bodies in various streets is yet to cool down, but what about in the future? Will the majority of Muslims allow the Yezidis to ride on their heads?

Thankfully, bringing out strict language and religious policies and correcting the problems while the wound is still hot, the problem was solved for the most part.

The reforms of Ezidi Serwan continued. He expanded the schooling system, formulated a judicial system based on the Bharatiya Empire's judicial framework, appointed soldiers who had participated in the battle as police officers in all the conquered cities, patrolling the streets with weapons in their hands, and only then did he start to deal with the resources obtained.

The Ottomans did not leave anything of value behind before they retreated from the two regions, but the wealth of Diyarbakır was mostly intact, which was extremely helpful to him to fund his ambitious plan of integration. For the remaining shortfall of nearly 163 million Varaha, he contacted the Bharatiya Empire and started selling all the mineral rights. The mining companies in the Bharatiya Empire were more than happy to obtain mineral rights at a high cost. Maybe they would have hesitated before the invention of the Kesari steam engine, since they already had a lot of mines under their control in several parts of the world, but with the invention of the steam engine, the minerals once again became a hot commodity.

Not to mention, Ezidi Serwan even sold the oil extraction rights from the world's oldest and the most oil-producing Baku oil well to the Raya Petroleum for an impressive sum of 23 million Varaha, leasing the oil-producing area to the company for 50 years, as well as obtaining 5% royalties from the derivatives of crude oil made in Baku.

Finally, he signed a deal with the Bharatiya Military to allow for the Bharatiya military to construct five Vajragarbha military bases, where the Empire's troops are allowed to be stationed at the border with the Ottoman Empire, paying only 40% operational costs of the military base for the foreseeable future.

Some people who had read about the way the king of Lalishtan is developing his country in various newspapers of the Empire had criticised him for being short-sighted, but Vijay had a completely different opinion on it. Being in a place where your direct neighbour is the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire that has gone mad, currently employing nearly 2 million troops, anyone would be worried. So he knew how important it is to integrate the nation as soon as possible.

Not to mention, if a little bit of future interest could be sacrificed to set up solid infrastructure for the nation quickly, it would be worth it.

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Unexpectedly, the actions of the Lalishsthan Monarch seemed to have stimulated the Queen of Persia, Roxana Atashban a lot, and she quickened the implementation of the initiative she brought forward nearly a year ago. She started it by firing a large number of useless bureaucrats managing villages from the time of the Ottoman Empire, and in their place, she appointed young and well-read Persian youth.

Unlike Ezidi Serwan, her actions received immediate backlash. The remote villages in the east immediately rebelled and started riots, questioning the authority and authenticity of the so-called Persian Kingdom. They started to spread the word that it was heretics on the throne, and all of God's children had to stand together and resist the oppression.

Sadly, this completely angered Roxana Atashban. She realised her mistake of not solving the problem immediately due to the fear of losses.

She started a purge, eliminating whoever came against her, arresting whoever participated in the riots, turning them into labourers, and finally, she came up with a stricter language policy, educational policy, integration policy, and finally, religious donations policy.

The last policy caught Vijay by surprise. Basically, what the donation policy of the Persian code of law means is that no form of monetary donation will be made to any religious cause, be it an Abrahamic religion or a Dharmic religion. Only prescribed things like food, clothes, public education, scholarships, and other similar things are allowed.

As for who will decide what is prescribed, it is naturally the royal family.

Vijay fell into deep thought about whether he should implement something similar in the Bharatiya Empire, because he remembered in his last life that faith was more of a business than anything else, where adding the income of the top ten temples in India could match or surpass some of the states' GDP.

Not to mention, money was the main driving force behind the expansion of religion. During independence in 1947, there were only 88 madrasas reported in India. But by 2006, that number had shot up to over 500,000—and that was just the legal, government-registered ones. Smaller madrasas attached to mosques weren't even counted. The actual number could easily be in the millions. Naturally, running such a vast network required funding, and that money came from interested parties overseas.

In one notable example, the Saudis donated over 250,000,000 US dollars to build mosques and religious institutes, along with bringing 25,000 clergy to India.

The same goes for churches. Although Christianity still remains relatively small in India, it is only relative to the scale of the entire nation, and compared with individual states, some of the states have been completely dominated by Christianity. The most famous example is America funding churches in Nepal to convert people into Christianity, various donors funding over 166 million dollars to churches in Tamil Nadu to increase the number of Christians, and several million in undisclosed amounts for Kerala and the Northeast.

Putting the worries of a future that is unlikely to happen aside, it is actually a net positive for society if an economy like the temple economy prospers in India, which, if being completely honest, it already is, since with most of the people in the empire getting out of poverty and stepping into the middle class and higher middle class, they travel more, and the number one destination for any family is the famous temples, especially the temples in amazing scenic destinations.

Looking at the pros and cons, Vijay finally decided that he would have to adopt a hybrid approach, where in some ways, showing off how much money you have donated to the temple and what you have donated should be curbed, and in other ways, the temple should remain positive on society.

Just when he was in contemplation, Bhaskaracharya came in with a news...

To Be completed...