The Gurkaniyan thing was true for Babur but I don’t think it was the case for later Mughals. The poet Ghalib, who was the emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s contempo

The Gurkaniyan thing was true for Babur but I don’t think it was the case for later Mughals. The poet Ghalib, who was the emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s contemporary, considered himself a descendant of the aristocracy and referred to himself as a “Mughal baccha” in a well-known quote (sourced from his letters, I believe).