The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

by Abraham Eraly

  However, despite the sharp socio-religious segregation between Hindus and Muslims, there was some amount of interaction between the two communities in towns, and they did have some influence on each other. But these influences were mostly superficial, and were confined to a few small groups. The most obvious instance of this was that the Hindu political elite in North India gradually took to the Turkish mode of dress and adopted some Turkish social practices, and the Turks in turn adopted certain practices of the Hindu aristocracy. And in religion, the mystic movements in both religions did exert some influence on each other.

  On the whole, Muslim rule did not make any notable difference in the lives of the vast majority of Indians, and hardly anything changed in Hindu society because of Muslim influence. Nor did anything change in Muslim society consequent of its interaction with Hindu society, except that the Hindu converts to Islam carried some of their traditional practices with them into Islamic society. For the most part, the two communities remained sharply divided and incompatible. They coexisted, but did not interact.

  There were some curious internal paradoxes in both Hindu and Muslim socio-religious systems. Islam as a religion was adamantine in character and was generally impervious to external influences, but Islamic society was open and fluid, into which people of any race or clan or social background could enter on becoming Muslims, and play any role according to their interest and ability, without being restricted to any birth-determined roles. The values and practices of Hindu religion and society were the exact reverse of this. Hinduism was a fluid, diversified and ever-changing religion, open to various external influences, but Hindu society was adamantine in character, which had place only for those who were born as Hindus, and in which a person born into a particular caste could not ever change his caste and social status, and was bound to the occupation of that caste, whatever be his interest and ability.

  There were however some exceptions in these matters, in Hindu as well as Muslim society. Thus, even though Muslim society in theory was an open and egalitarian society, which had no social divisions based on race or clan or birth, in practice it had divisions based on these factors. On the other hand, Hindu society, despite its seeming rigidity and imperviousness, was in fact a porous society, and it had over the centuries absorbed numerous foreign people and non-Aryan local tribes and their cults into it. This however was not done by performing any rite, as in the case of the conversions of outsiders into Islam or Christianity, but through a process of osmosis, by which outsiders and their cults inconspicuously, and without any formal process, seeped into Hindu society over several centuries.

  But this was a process of community transition, not of individuals. Normally it was impossible for any outsider individual to enter Hindu society, for Hinduism has no conversion rites to admit non-Hindus into its fold. To be a Hindu one has to be born a Hindu. But in this too, as in nearly everything else in the ever-rigid-ever-flexible Hindu society, there were exceptions, though rare, by which elaborate rites were performed to induct non-Hindu rajas, chieftains and other important persons into Hindu society at appropriate social levels. This process involved the fabrication, through the connivance of colluding priests, of a myth that the conversion seeker belonged to a family that had originally been a Hindu, but had lost its religion and caste because of its deviant practices, and that he could be therefore restored to his family’s original religion and caste through certain purification ceremonies.

  ISLAM AND HINDUISM were totally antipodal in religion and society. Nevertheless the attitude of the Muslim rulers in India towards their Hindu subjects was in most cases accommodative rather than suppressive. It necessarily had to be so, for pragmatic reasons. From the purely religious point of view, the sultans had to do what they could to fetter or eradicate Hinduism, and thus promote Islam, but from the practical point of view they needed to patronise Hindus, for they could not possibly govern their Indian kingdoms without the services of Hindus, as they did not have the requisite administrative organisation or personnel, or the local knowledge, to do that. The sultans therefore treated Hindus as zimmis, protected non-Muslims, by which Hindus were allowed, though with some restrictions, to maintain their social customs and observe their religious practices; they were even allowed to perform rites which were abominable to orthodox Muslims, such as sati, and animal and human sacrifices.

  In the early history of Islam, the zimmi privilege was accorded only to Jews and Christians, while the followers of other religions were required to become Muslims or be exterminated. But when Islam expanded beyond Arabia, its homeland, the zimmi privilege was, for various practical reasons, extended to the people of other religions as well, including Hindus. In India, the sheer vastness of the non-Muslim population made it in any case physically impossible to extirpate them. Furthermore, Hindus were the primary economically productive people of the land, particularly in agriculture, so to massacre them, or even to oppress them beyond endurance, would have been counterproductive for the sultans, for that would have been to uproot the very plants that nourished them.

  Hindus were treated as second class citizens in Muslim states, but as citizens nevertheless. They had their own rights. The discriminatory treatment that Hindus received at the hands of Muslim rulers would not have troubled them much, for most Indian communities were subject to worse discrimination in their own rigidly hierarchal caste society. For most Hindus, Muslims would have seemed like just another segment in their own labyrinthine society. Hindus and Muslims did live separately; but then so did the different Hindu castes. Even in the matter of jizya, not many Hindus would have felt it as a particularly discriminative tax, for Muslims also had to pay a community tax, zakat. Besides, jizya was usually imposed on individuals only in towns, while in villages it was imposed as a collective tax.

  ON THE WHOLE the life of the vast majority of the common people under Muslim rule in India remained the same as what it was before the Muslim invasion. This was mainly because the impact of Muslim rule was largely confined to towns, while most Indians lived in villages where there were hardly any Muslims. Even in towns, where there was a fair amount of interaction between Hindus and Muslims, the treatment of Hindus by the sultans, even by the most bigoted of them, would not have been anywhere near as ruthless as described by Muslim chroniclers seeking to eulogise their kings. To most Indians, the sultans would not have seemed any more oppressive than their own rajas. Whether it was a raja or a sultan who ruled over them made little difference in the generally wretched life of the common people in India.

  Muslim courtier chroniclers, most of whom were hyper-orthodox, generally tended to gloatingly exaggerate the severity of the persecution of Hindus by sultans, which they considered as a most praiseworthy act. Thus Barani, while lauding the slaughter of Hindus by Mahmud Ghazni, wished that the sultan had campaigned in India once more, and had ‘brought under his sword all the Brahmins of Hind who … are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and the strength of idolaters … [and had] cut off the heads of two hundred or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs.’ Similarly, Barani exaggeratedly lauded Ala-ud-din for his oppression of Hindus, stating ‘that by the last decade of his reign the submission and obedience of the Hindus had become an established fact. Such a submission on the part of the Hindus has neither been seen before nor will be witnessed hereafter.’ Reality, though harsh, was not quite so harsh.

  Curiously, while the Muslim intelligentsia was generally aggressive in its attitude towards Hinduism, the Hindu intelligentsia was entirely passive in its response to the establishment of the Muslim rule in India. There is hardly any mention of the Turkish conquest of India in the Sanskrit works of the early middle ages. This was perhaps because the preoccupation of the Hindu intelligentsia was with transcendental matters. The general attitude of fatalism among Indians—that whatever happens is fated to happen—also no doubt contributed to the apathetic attitude of Indians to the circumstances of their life. And this was one of the major factors that
enabled a small group of Turko-Afghans to rule over an infinitely larger number of Indians for several centuries without any major resistance.

  The general attitude of Muslims, the masters, towards Hindus, the subjects, was of scorn. And there was, inevitably, a good amount of persecution of Hindus by the sultans, though it was nothing comparable to what it could have been, given the totally antithetical nature of the two socio-religious systems. Very many Hindu temples were demolished by the sultans, and their idols smashed or defiled. Ostentatious Hindu religious celebrations were forbidden in Muslim states. And there were several instances of the general massacre of Hindus by the sultans. Some of these acts were revoltingly savage, such as the mass slaughter of Hindu men, women and children by a mid-fourteenth century sultan of Madurai, which was excoriated even by Ibn Battuta, a fellow Muslim. ‘This,’ commented Battuta, ‘was a hideous thing such as I have never seen being indulged in by any king.’ But such acts of savagery were random, not systematic, and they seem to have been motivated more by the need to terrorise a conquered people into servility, than by religious fervour, though religious fervour was also undeniably present.

  FORTUNATELY, THE ANTI-HINDU venom was more on the tongues of Muslim clerics and chroniclers than on the swords of the sultans. Except in a few rare instances, Hindus were not oppressed beyond endurance in Muslim kingdoms. This is evident from the fact that a very large number of Hindus served in the government and the army of Muslim states. Most of the service providers in Muslim states—merchants, craftsmen, moneylenders, and so on—were also no doubt Hindus. And nearly all the farmers in India were Hindus.

  Hindus generally had no compunction about serving under sultans in any capacity, even as soldiers and captains in the battles of the sultans against rajas. Many of the top officers of even the hyper-orthodox Mughal emperor Aurangzeb were Hindus. Equally, many Muslims served in the army and administration of Hindu kingdoms. In that freewheeling political environment rajas often allied with sultans, even in the battles of sultans against fellow rajas, and sultans often allied with rajas, even the battles of rajas against fellow sultans.

  In the personal life of the sultans also there were some curious intercultural and interreligious influences and practices. The sultans, despite their professed orthodoxy, sometimes even sought the counsels of Hindu and Jain sages. According to Jain sources, Ala-ud-din Khalji used to hold discussions with Jain sages, and he is said to have once specially summoned Jain sage Acharya Mahasena from Karnataka to Delhi for consultations. Muhammad Tughluq is also known to have had Jain counsellors; and he, according to Battuta, used to consort with Hindu yogis. Some of the sultans were exceptionally liberal in their treatment of Hindus—Ala-ud-din Husain Shah, the early sixteenth century sultan of Bengal, for instance, is said to have been so benevolent in his treatment of all his subjects, irrespective of their religion, that local Hindu poets eulogised him as Arjuna or Krishna, Hindu mythical heroes.

  SUCH LIBERAL TREATMENT of Hindus by sultans was odious to orthodox Muslims, for Islam was traditionally an aggressively proselytising religion, which had little tolerance for the people of other religions, and had in its early history forcefully converted a large number of people into the religion. But such conversions were rare in India. The practice however varied from sultan to sultan. The Tughluqs, Muhammad and Firuz, are known to have coerced the families of some defeated rajas to become Muslims. But the primary concern of most sultans was to preserve and expand their power, and they had hardly any inclination to work as missionaries.

  There were however a good number of voluntary converts to Islam from low caste and outcaste Hindu communities, and this went on all through the medieval period. It was a great advantage for this class of Hindus to become Muslims, for conversion opened up unprecedented career and social advancement opportunities for them, which they would never have had in Hindu society. As Muslims they could occupy any position that they merited by their abilities, and thus move up in society, free from the caste bond that confined them to a particular social niche and profession. Not surprisingly, many of the underclass conversions to Islam were mass conversions, following community or clan decisions.

  Apart from low caste and outcaste Hindus, many traders, craftsmen and other service providers also found it to be a temporal advantage for them to become Muslims, as that widened their business opportunities, as most of their affluent customers were now Muslims. A few upper class Hindus also voluntarily became Muslims, thereby to gain various socio-political and material advantages. There are said to have been even a few instances of men becoming Muslims because of their conviction of the superiority of Islam over Hinduism as a religion

  Despite all this, even at the close of the eighteenth century, after six centuries of dominant Muslim rule in India, the region around Delhi, the core area of Muslim power in India, had only around 14 per cent Muslims in its population. However, in some other regions of the subcontinent, particularly in the western and eastern flanks of the Indo-Gangetic Plain—the regions that in the twentieth century became Pakistan and Bangladesh—Muslims constituted a much larger part of the local population, presumably because of the mass conversion to Islam of tribal people in those mountainous regions. The proportion of Muslim population in the subcontinent increased over the next century and half, because of the higher birth-rate in the community, so that by the end of the British rule in 1947 they formed about a quarter of the subcontinent’s population.

  INDIA IN MEDIEVAL times was already a densely populated land, compared to the other regions of the world. ‘This country is so well-populated that it is impossible in a reasonable space to convey an idea of it,’ notes Razzak. Moreover, the population profile of India was highly complex, because of the racial, linguistic, social, cultural, religious and sectarian diversity of Indians, resulting from the socio-cultural-religious developments within the country, as well as from the migration of very many different races into India over the millennia.

  Migrants continued to pour into India during the medieval period; indeed, the Delhi sultans eagerly sought fresh migrants from Central Asia, to swell the Muslim population in India, so that Muslims in India would not get totally submersed in the vast sea of native Indians. The sultans also needed migrants to strengthen their army and administration with fresh recruits. And Central Asians on their part were eager to migrate to India, because of the legends about its fabulous wealth, and the grand career opportunities offered to them by Indian rulers. They also saw India as a safe haven for them to escape to, from the Mongol flood that was at this time raging through their homeland.

  Hindu society, because of its polymorphic nature, was generally quite tolerant of the beliefs and practices of other religions, just as it was tolerant of the beliefs and practices of the diverse sects and castes within its own society. But the tolerance of Hindu society was tolerance by segregation; it was in fact a form of intolerance. Any community was free to live in any way it liked, but none was allowed to intrude into the life of other communities. This meant that Hindu society, despite its broad attitude of tolerance, was a highly discriminatory, inequitable and intolerant society, which sharply and unalterably segregated people by religion, sect and caste, and treated each group differently.

  However, the Hindu caste segregation involved no overt oppression, as it was birth determined, and was not the result of any deliberate social action by any group. Though segregation itself was an oppressive practice, the underclasses did not generally feel oppressed, but passively accepted the circumstances of their life, as the natural and inevitable outcome of the transmigratory process, the conditions of their life being foreordained by their acts in their previous lives. Besides, the pervasive fatalistic attitude of the Indians of that age made them limply accept the conditions of their life, whatever those conditions were, and not struggle against them, as they believed that those conditions were inexorably fated. The social ethos of medieval India was thus a peculiar mixture of tolerance and intolerance. This was eviden
t as much in the relationship of Hinduism with other religions, as in the relationship between the various sects and castes within Hindu society.

  Because of these factors, the traditional Indian society had been, for very many centuries before the Turkish invasion, an exceptionally peaceful and harmonious society, despite its numerous caste divisions and harshly exploitative character. Though there were occasionally some social conflicts here and there in the subcontinent, they were usually minor and transient. There are no records of any serious and enduring inter-caste rivalries or clashes in pre-modern India. Nor were there any major inter-sectarian, inter-religious or inter-racial conflicts in India during this entire period. In all this, India was like no other country in the world.

  And, paradoxical though it might seem, Hindu India’s social diversity was the basis of its social cohesion and efficiency, for the divergent groups and castes in India, though they were rigidly segregated from each other socially, were tightly integrated with each other in their functions, with each caste, from the highest to the lowest, including the outcastes, providing a distinct and indispensable service in society. All the castes belonged together as the integral organs of one social entity, each caste occupying a specific social niche and performing a specific socio-economic function, like the different organs and limbs of a living being. And this enabled the caste society, despite its diversity and appalling inequity, to function efficiently and peacefully for very many centuries. The caste society was a cooperative society, not a competitive society. The diverse castes in it were not adversaries, but co-operators. And together they all constituted one cohesive society.