The answer is the first one. The British replaced the Mughal empire. The Mughal (or Mogul) Empire ruled most of India and Pakistan in the 16th and 17th centuries.It centralized Islam in South Asia, and spread Muslim (and particularly Persian) arts and culture as well as the faith around their territory. In the last decades of the seventeenth century Aurangzeb invaded the Hindu kingdoms in central and southern India, conquering a lot of the territory and taking many slaves.Under him, the Mughal empire reached the highest point of its military power, but the rule was unstable. This was partly because of the hostility that his intolerance and taxation created in the population, but also because the empire had become too big to be successfully governed. The Muslim Governer of Hydrabad in southern India rebelled and established a separate state; he also reintroduced religious tolerance for the Hindus in the Muslim state.The Hindu kingdoms also fought back, often supported by the French and the British, who utilized them to tighten their grip on the sub-continent.The establishment of a Hindu Marathi Empire in southern India separated the Mughal state to the south. The Mughal city of Calcutta became controlled by the east India company in 1696 and, in the decades that followed, Europeans and European - backed Hindu princes conquered most of the Mughal territory. Aurangzeb's extremism caused Mughal territory and creativity to dry up and the Empire went into decline. The Mughal Emperors that followed Aurangzeb effectively became British or French puppets. The last Mughal Emperor was deposed by the British in 1858.<span> </span>
