islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Islamic JihadNo doubt there was some resistance amongst Hindus to the British-initiated social and culturalreforms in India, but it was meek at best. Overall, the Hindus quickly understood that institutions of sati,female infanticide, child marriage, prohibition of widow marriage and caste system, which had lastedhundreds to thousands of years, were unconscionable ills of their society. Thuggees, the lawless ruffians,persistently roamed the streets of India throughout the period of Muslim rule, despite their killing andcapturing in hundreds of thousands by Muslim rulers. But under the British rule, they quickly understood thatthe age-old brutality was gone; they quickly returned to civilian life after the new rulers took civilizedmeasures to rein them. The relatively short period of British rule, lasting less than 100 to 190 years indifferent areas, had created a heightened degree of awareness amongst low-caste Hindus about their degradedsocial status and affronted dignity, opposed to what they deserved as respectable human beings. Thisawareness had become so strong that they, under Ambedkar’s leadership, even launched a campaign in the1940s for an independent state for themselves, free from upper-caste Hindus. 647 Some of those ills—femaleinfanticide, child-marriage, caste discrimination—still persist to some extent in Indian society; they are,however, legally banned and there is a universal understanding amongst all Indians that those are ethicallywrong. It is only about time, they will disappear.ISLAM’S IMPACT ON RELIGIOUS DEMOGRAPHICS: PAST & PRESENTThe conversion of the Hindus and other non-Muslims into Islam through terror, enslavement and coerciveeconomic compulsion during the Muslim rule has been addressed already. Undoubtedly, without the Britishinterference, the religious demography of the population in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India would havelooked very different from what it is today. The demographics of Muslim versus non-Muslim populations incountries like Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Turkey and Syria, where Europeancolonists exerted no or short-lived political power, would tell it all. One must take into account that even inthe course of 1947 Partition, a few million Hindus and Sikhs were forcibly converted to Islam.On the Muslim rulers’ failure to effectively Islamize India, despite their brutal and economicallycrushing measures, says Fernand Braudel, ‘India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman powerand its immense size.’ 648 Indeed, the Muslim invaders never really got a complete and effective hold over vastIndia, preventing its extensive Islamization. It was not anti-Islam resistance of the Hindus, and their love forIndian culture and religion alone that helped the Hindu civilization to survive. The Islamic sultanate wasfounded in India at a time when the Islamic power-house at Baghdad was in a state of decline; the politicalauthority had been split amongst regimes based in Baghdad, Egypt and Spain. Then, there came the Mongols,reducing Muslim powers in Central Asia and Baghdad to rubbles. The Muslim rulers of India also maintainedtheir relative independence from central Islamic powers, offering only loose allegiance to the caliphs ofBaghdad, Egypt and Samarkand. The absence of a strong central Islamic power when Muslim invaders cameto India was a handicap in exerting effective Muslim authority over vast India.Afghanistan was historically an integral province of India, which Sultan Mahmud brought underpermanent Muslim sovereignty in 1000 CE. The stamp of Islamic power has kept a firm hold overAfghanistan ever since, and one can see the change in Muslim versus non-Muslim demographics there. Thesame applies to Pakistan, where Muslim invaders set up the first Islamic colony and Islam has kept a stronghold over it ever since. According to a 1998 census, Pakistan is demographically 96.28 percent Muslim.647. Bandyopadhyay S (1998) Changing Borders, Shifting Loyalties: Religion, Caste and the Partition of Bengal in1947, Asian Studies Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, p. 4-5648. Braudel, p. 232195