Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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The Muslims, however, spread over the whole of the country, and
came to stay permanently as a separate religious and cultural identity.
As already seen, the cleavage between the Hindus and the Muslims
was irreconcilable, because it was based on basic religious, cultural
and social differences. This anti-Malecha hatred became revived with a
redoubled force. It served as a cohesive force to unite people who were
opposed to the Muslims, for a common hatred shared by a people binds them.
Bismark engineered conflict with France to make the Germans a nation.
This is how, it appears, the foundation of Hindu groupconsciousness
or what may be for convenience called nationalism,
came to be laid. In its genesis and in its content. It was, for all practical
purposes, essentially anti-Muslim. This group-consciousness became
almost synonymous with the word Muslim. This group consciousness
became more broad-based and deeper then the hitherto vague and
feeble feelings of ones, which the pride in the Aryan culture had earlier
provided. The way the Muslim invaders massacred innocent Hindus
and desecrated all that they held sacred — their temples, idols, etc.,
— made this consciousness very widespread. For, people on a mass
scale, who were attached sentimentally to these, came to hate the
invaders. The anti-Muslim feeling, the obverse side of Hindu groupconsciousness,
sank deeper in their minds because the Hindus could
not match the Muslims in the battle-field and pay them back in their
own coin. They could simply brood on the wrongs suffered by them
and nurse this hostile feeling only inwardly. The hatred felt by a weak
party sinks very deep. This anti-Muslim feeling became permanent
because the focus of its attention remained permanent.
Brahmanism would not accept a foreigner in its fold, nor take
back one of its own who had once been converted to Islam, even
though forcibly. The Islamic penalty for an apostate was death.
Therefore, the assimilation of Muslims in Hindu fold was ruled out.
The Muslim practice of Shariat did not content itself with the
acceptance by outsides of its purely spiritual and social ideals. More
than that, it made the exclusive allegiance to the authority of the
Prophet and Koran a primary obligation. The intensity of the belief
with which proselytization to be Islamic fold was regarded as a religious
duty, and the fanatical zeal with which this duty was pursued, made
matters worse.