today we stand against the reckless vanity of imperial megalomania. The motion before us is clear: This House regrets Akbar’s heavy investment in monumental construction. We are not here to debate the aesthetics of stone; we are here to condemn a state policy that extracted the final grains of wheat from starving farmers to build non-productive monumental vanity projects."

But what is the point of empowering an economy when your empire is yet to collapse? Taking an example of Fatehpur Shikri, when it was abandoned just after 14 years, the city was being in construction for 8 years and then only after 14 years it was abandoned. Another example, taking off the capital shifting all the way to Lahore because of water failures that caused droughts all throughout the city. That is the reason why Akbar was wrong in building these temples and he should have instead empowered the economy and used it to build public services and infrastructure instead of just monuments.

But that also took away people from their jobs. For example, a lot of masons, laborers and engineers had to move all the way across the region and had to build these grand monuments instead of actually focusing on other things to build and empowering the market. A lot of resources as well were taken from these people such as food, wood and so much more just to build these temples. That is also a reason why it happened. Another reason for this is when these grand monuments were built, a lot of these people actually got injured and even lost their lives and were separated from their family who were living all the way across the country. So tell me, were we really employing people or were we just taking their jobs?