During the early medieval period there was a fair amount of activity in miniature painting in India, mostly by Jains in their palm leaf manuscripts. These paintings were however mostly formulaic, and can hardly be described as works of art. In them, the faces of persons—always drawn in profile, but two-eyed, with the second eye protruding right out of the face at a right-angle—were all of a type and had little individuality in them. Several Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts of the period also had similar drab miniature illustrations.
But book illustrations underwent a major change by around the fifteenth century, because of the use of paper for writing texts. Paper, because of its larger size and smoother surface than palm leaf, allowed freer scope for painting illustrations, and this led to a great improvement in the quality of text illustrations, as Mughal and Rajasthani miniatures show. And some of the manuscript books made at this time were in themselves, as books, major works of art, their pages illuminated with gold, and adorned with floral, calligraphic and abstract designs, apart from having miniature illustrations.
SOME OF THE Delhi sultans, particularly Firuz Tughluq, were ardent conservationists. Firuz had to his credit transporting, with scrupulous care, two Asoka pillars from their original sites in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, and installing them in Delhi with equal care. ‘Quantities of … silk cotton were placed around the column, and when the earth at its base was removed, it fell gently over the bed prepared for it,’ reports Afif, a courtier-historian of Firuz. ‘The cotton was then removed by degrees, and after some days the pillar lay safe upon the ground. When the foundations of the pillar were examined, a large square stone was found as its base, which was also taken out. The pillar was then encased from top to bottom in reeds and raw skins, so that no damage would occur to it. A carriage, with forty-two wheels, was constructed … and after great labour and difficulty the pillar was raised on to the carriage. A strong rope was fastened to each wheel [of the carriage], and 200 men pulled at each of these ropes. By the simultaneous exertions of so many thousand men the carriage was moved, and was brought to the banks of the Yamuna. Here the Sultan came to meet it. A number of large boats had been collected, some of which could carry 5,000 and 7,000 mans of grain, and the least of them 2,000 mans. The column was very ingeniously transferred to these boats, and then taken to Firuzabad, where it was landed and conveyed into the kushk with infinite labour and skill.’
The pillar was then gradually, over several days, raised to an erect position, and its base properly embedded. ‘After it was raised, some ornamental friezes of black and white stone were placed round [it] … and over these … was raised a gilded copper cupola … The height of the obelisk was thirty-two gaz; eight gaz was sunk in the pedestal, and twenty-four gaz visible. On the base of the obelisk there were engraved several lines of writing in Hindi characters. Many Brahmins and Hindu devotees were invited to read them, but no one was able. It is said that certain infidel Hindus interpreted them as stating that no one should be able to remove the obelisk from its place till there should arise in the later day a Muslim king named Sultan Firuz …’4
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The Breath of All Breath
The socio-cultural profile of India changed radically with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Never before in its millenniums-long history had India faced a civilizational challenge as potent and irreconcilable as that of Turco-Afghans, and never before had it failed to absorb invaders and migrants smoothly into its society and culture. Although there had been several radical transformations in Indian civilization over the millenniums, all these arose out of India’s internal evolutionary processes, not out of external imposition, as it happened during the Sultanate period.
One of the most fundamental of these internal changes in Indian civilization took place in the late classical age, the period immediately preceding the Turkish invasion of India. This involved the collapse of India’s commercial economy, the consequent decay of its towns, and the virtual disappearance of its urban lifestyle and culture. In a parallel and related development, Hinduism, which had remained dormant in the background of India’s cultural landscape for very many centuries—ever since Buddhism and Jainism rose to subcontinental dominance in the last quarter of the first millennium BCE—now surged up like a mountainous tidal wave, and swept across the subcontinent, overwhelming Buddhism and Jainism and reducing them to the status of minor religions in India.
Hinduism then became the religion of India. But Hinduism itself had over the centuries become totally transformed from its Vedic and Upanishadic formulations, and had turned into a virtually new religion, Puranic Hinduism, a polymorphic religion unlike any other religion in the world. In fact, it was hardly a religion in the common sense of the word, but a loose conglomeration of the diverse and often contradictory creeds of India’s diverse people and their diverse socio-cultural makeup.
These socio-religious transformations in India rarely involved any conflict or violence. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were fraternal religions, and though they had several irreconcilable differences between them, they generally coexisted in peace with each other, and did not have the kind of adversarial or violent relationship that usually characterised the relationship between the other major religions of the premodern world.
This amiability was evident even in the relationship of Indian religions with the religions of the several foreign races that entered India over the centuries. In fact, Hinduism itself was a foreign religion, brought into India from Central Asia by invading Aryans around the middle of the second millennium BCE, which then, over time, smoothly absorbed into itself the pre-existing Dravidian culture and religion of the subcontinent. Similarly, all the subsequent migrants and invaders who entered India in premedieval times also brought with them their own traditional socio-religious systems, but these too over the centuries blended smoothly and indistinguishably into the existing Indian socio-religious milieu.
There were however a few small groups of migrant foreigners, mostly traders from Central Asia and Middle East, who, unlike most other migrant people who entered India, retained their ancestral socio-religious identity, and even won some local converts into their religion. This was how Judaism (brought into India by Jewish traders in the first millennium BCE), Christianity (introduced into Kerala by an apostle of Christ in the mid-first century CE), Islam (brought into India by Arab traders soon after the founding of the religion in Arabia), and finally Zoroastrianism (brought by Persian migrants around the eleventh century CE) took root in India. The introduction of these foreign religions into India, and the settlement of their devotees there, created no notable tension or conflict in India. These diverse people and their diverse religions mostly coexisted in harmony with the local people and their religions.
THIS AMICABLE SOCIO-RELIGIOUS scene in India changed altogether in the early medieval period, with establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Unlike all the previous migrants and invaders, who had over the centuries merged smoothly into Indian society, Turks retained their distinct identity all through, and remained virtually as aliens in India throughout the over three-century long history of the Delhi Sultanate.
The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate altogether changed the religious scene in India as never before, for Islam, as the religion of the conquerors, assumed an aggressive posture against Indian religions, the religions of the subjects. The most evident and immediate adverse effect of this antagonism was on Buddhism. Buddhism, even in its atrophied state at this time, had a prominent presence in early medieval India, because of its large monasteries, stupas and educational institutions, and these drew Turks to them, who vandalised or destroyed several of them, sometimes, as in the case of Nalanda, mistaking the walled Buddhist universities to be enemy forts. They also butchered very many Buddhist monks, who were easily identifiable because of their distinctive saffron dress and shaven heads. In consequence of all this Buddhism virtually disappeared from India in early medieval times.
Turks were equally virulent tow
ards Hinduism, but it survived without any critical damage because of its pervasiveness all over the subcontinent, as well as because of its polymorphic nature, without any nucleus, the destruction of which would have fatally damaged the religion. But there would never be any real harmony, or even any notable mutual influence between Hinduism and Islam, because they were diametrically opposite to each other in every respect. While Islam was monotheistic, Hinduism was polytheistic; while Islamic society was egalitarian and had no hereditary social divisions, Hindu society was hierarchic and divided into many hereditary castes which occupied different rungs in society and performed diverse and exclusive functions in society; while Muslims feasted on beef, Hindus venerated the cow and regarded cow slaughter and eating beef as most heinous sins.
Further, while Islam was a mono-layered and relatively immutable religion, Hinduism was a multi-layered religion which was forever in flux; and while Islam was an aggressive, proselytising religion, which was intolerant of other religions, Hinduism was a passive, non-proselytising religion, which could tolerantly coexist with any other religion, or any number of other religions. But while Hindu religion was inclusive, Hindu society was exclusive, into which one could enter only by being born into it. In contrast to this, Islam was exclusive in religion, but inclusive in its society, into which anyone could enter at any stratum by becoming a Muslim. It is significant that Hinduism, unlike Islam, had no provision at all for religious conversions; one could be a Hindu only by being born a Hindu. Further, the lifestyle and social customs and practices of the followers of the two religions—such as their succession laws, disposal of the dead, mode of dining, even their style of greeting—were all entirely different from each other. There was nothing at all common between Islam and Hinduism in any notable matter.
‘They (Hindus) totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa …,’ comments al-Biruni. ‘All their fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them—against all foreigners. They call them mleccha, i.e. impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby, they think, they would be polluted … In all manners and usages they differ from us as to such a degree as to frighten their children with us … [They] declare us to be of the devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper.’
This view of al-Biruni, though factual, is one-sided. The irreconcilability between Hindu and Muslim civilisations was due as much to the attitudes and values of Muslims as of Hindus. In fact, the adamantine nature of Islam was in a way more responsible for this. Islam, even though it had a few rival sects in it, was essentially a rock-hard, monolithic religion, which did not have the malleability to modify itself under the influence of other religions and cultures. Indeed, according to one interpretation of Islamic cannon, if a Muslim became an apostate or adopted deviant religious practices, he could be executed by any Muslim without any legal formality.
In sharp contrast to Islam, Hinduism was an infinitely malleable, variegated, ever-changing religion. It had no inviolable core beliefs and practices, so it could companionably accommodate within it any number of contradictory beliefs and practices. It could be anything to anybody. Even though people of different sects and castes remained strictly segregated from each other in Hindu society, they all belonged to one religion. The rigidity of Hinduism was more of society than of religion. Indeed, Hinduism, left to itself, could have possibly accommodated Islamic beliefs and practices within itself, as it had done with innumerable Indian tribal cults, as well as with the cults of numerous migrants and invaders, all through its long history. Hinduism could do that without ceasing to be Hinduism. But Islam could not in any way accommodate Hinduism within its fold without altogether ceasing to be Islam.
The rigidity of Islamic civilisation was however only in religious beliefs and practices. In social and cultural matters Muslims were fairly open—Arabs, for instance, were greatly influenced by Greek civilisation; similarly Turks were greatly influenced by Persian civilisation. But Muslims were not quite so receptive to Hindu influence, partly because of the total contrariness of Hindu and Muslim civilisations, and also because the main preoccupation of the Turkish rulers in India was with their political survival, they being a tiny community precariously afloat in a vast and turbulent sea of aliens. Besides, Turks, as rulers, tended to scorn the culture of Hindus, their subjects.
Because of these fundamental differences, not only was there no synthesis of Hinduism and Islam, the two did not even have any major influence on each other, despite their several centuries long coexistence in India. They accommodated each other, but neither changed under the influence of the other.
Arabs had, in the early history of Islam, wiped out several local creeds as they swept from their homeland across the Eurasian continent and North Africa, and they had converted to Islam a large number of people in those lands, often by force. But they could not do that in India, because of the complexity and diversity of Indian society and religion, and the vastness of the Indian population. Islam could neither absorb nor exterminate Hinduism. Nor could Hinduism absorb or exterminate Islam. They had to coexist.
There were however a few kings and nobles in both these communities who were open to the cultural and religious influence of the other community. And there were a few Muslim scholars, such as al-Biruni and Amir Khusrav, who applied themselves earnestly and sympathetically to the study of the religion and culture of Hindus. Equally, there were a few Hindu scholars who studied the religion and culture of Muslims. At another level, many upper class Indians, particularly in North India, learned Persian and adopted the Persian dress and lifestyle, as the means for advancing their careers in the service of Muslim rulers. But these were all peripheral developments, and they did not lead to any notable change in either community.
STRANGELY, DESPITE THE total contrariness of Hinduism and Islam, there does not seem to have been any major communal clashes between the followers of the two religions in the medieval period. Presumably this was mainly because of the passive and accommodative nature of Hindu society and the general attitude of fatalism among Hindus; but partly it was also because Muslims mostly lived in towns, while Hindus mostly lived in villages. Though many temples were destroyed by the sultans during this period, and a large number of Hindus were slaughtered by them or were forcefully converted to Islam, these were mostly incidental to military campaigns, and were not very much different from what happened in the battles between Hindu kingdoms. For instance, during the wars between Cholas and Chalukyas in the eleventh century, Cholas, according to a Chalukya inscription, ‘plundered the entire country, slaughtered women, children and Brahmins,’ and carried away Brahmin girls and gave them in marriage to men of other castes.
Though the actions of Muslim armies were usually far more violent than that of Hindu armies—necessarily so, as they were in an alien country—they were not entirely dissimilar, and they do not seem to have had any serious adverse effect on the general Hindu-Muslim communal relationship. In normal times there was a fair amount of accommodativeness in the relationship between the two communities, and in the treatment that the rulers belonging to one religion meted out to their subjects of the other religion. ‘The king allows such freedom that every man may come and go and live according to his own creed, without suffering any annoyance … whether he is a Christian, Jew, Moor or Heathen,’ states Portuguese traveller Barbosa about what he observed in Vijayanagar in the sixteenth century. Hindus and Muslims mostly lived in peace with each other in medieval times. And they continued to do so with rare exceptions till the mid-twentieth century, when the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan on the eve of the departure of the British rulers from the region led to unprecedented communal bloodbath.
There is no indication that Indians at any level were unduly perturbed by the establishment of the Turkish rule in
India. In the view of the Hindu ruling class, Turks were just another contender for political power in India, like the many other contenders for power in the subcontinent. They were not viewed as aliens. As for the Hindu common people, it did not at all trouble them to live under Muslim kings—for them, the change of their rulers was a far away event that had virtually no bearing on their lives. Nor was there much social interaction between the common people of the two communities, as they generally lived physically separated from each other, Muslims being mostly urbanites and Hindus mostly villagers.
The general attitude of Hindus towards Muslims was to treat them as just another element in the highly variegated Indian society. This was quite in character with the history of Hinduism, which had made very many similar adjustments over the millennia, right from the beginning of its history, the Aryan migration into India. Over the centuries, as Aryans spread out in India, they absorbed into their religion many of the diverse sects and deities of the indigenous people; similarly, they also absorbed into it the cults of the many invaders and migrants who later entered India. Hinduism thus became an incredibly complex religion over the centuries, and its pantheon became fantastically multifarious.
It could not have been therefore any major problem for Hindus to be accommodative towards Islam. Indeed, it was not unusual for Hindus to revere Muslim sages or to offer devotions at Muslim shrines, just as they did at the shrines of the deities of different Hindu sects. For them Allah was just another deity, who had to be propitiated, or from whom favours could be sought. A classic example of the liberal attitude of Hinduism towards Islam was the decision of the administrators of the temple of Somnath in Gujarat to donate to a Muslim trader a plot of land close to the temple to build a mosque there—this, despite the fact that the temple had been desecrated and destroyed by Mahmud Ghazni just a few centuries earlier, the memory of which would have been still fresh in the minds of the local people.
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate Page 55
