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

Islamic Jihadeconomic exploitation. The Hindus of prosperous of India were begging at the doors of Muslims as early as inthe reign of Alauddin Khalji (1296–1316), just nine decades after the founding of Islamic rule in Delhi.The British occupation later brought some kind of relief to the savagery, destruction and plunderwrought by Muslim invaders and rulers upon India’s non-Muslims. The British rule, however, did notattenuate the economic misery of Indians to any significant extent. The British rule was based on a policy ofeconomic exploitation, aimed at generating revenue for the British treasury. Javier Cuenca Esteban estimatesthat the ‘net financial transfers from India to Britain reached a peak of £1,014,000 annually in 1784–1792before declining to £477,000 in 1808–1815.’ 652 The British did not engage in plundering the households,temples etc. as did the Muslim rulers, but they imposed high taxes on India’s farmers. Taxes were high, aboutone-third of the produce. This was the same rate on paper charged by Sultan Alauddin Khilji, who indeedcharged 50 percent in order to reduce the peasantry to extreme poverty for preventing disaffection andrebellion amongst Hindus. Taxation became the worst under Muhammad Tughlaq (1325–51) reducing thepeasantry to extreme poverty and beggary; in the Mughal reign, taxes could reach as high as three quarters insome areas.Under the British, the situation was badly worsened by the homegrown zamindars, the tax-collectorsfor the Raj; they charged another one-third for their own keeping. This was mindless, because, the Britishinvested a good part of the revenues in education, healthcare, development of infrastructures and running thestate-machinery, but the amount collected by the zamindars was entirely for their own keeping. However, theBritish must take as much responsibility for their failure to regulate those policies of the zamindars. TheBritish also forced the peasants to change cultivation from food-crops to cash-crops: indigo, jute, cotton, andtea etc., useful for the booming industries in Britain. As a result, the production of food-crops for localconsumption reduced. The British traders also flooded India’s market with cheaper industrial products fromBritain, causing a decline of the archaic indigenous industries; this caused further economic hardships to alarge number of people. All these factors caused hardships to Indians under the British rule. However, onemust take into consideration that the archaic industry of India was going to collapse anyway as the world wasirreversibly changing to capitalist industrialization.The British occupation of India undoubtedly came at a much less brutality and bloodbath. They,nonetheless, committed their share of brutality mainly in the course of the Sepoy Mutiny (1857–58). TheBritish atrocity in the Sepoy Mutiny was gory; but atrocities were committed by both sides. The Britishbecame more brutal after the cruel betrayal of Nana Sahib at Cawnpore (Kanpur). On 5 July 1857, some 210British women and children, left in Nana’s custody, were butchered, hacked to pieces and thrown down thewell. 653 The mutineers also slaughtered innocent children and raped the white women in Lucknow. Theseincidents of cold-blooded murder of innocent women and children and rapes enraged the British, including thepublic in Britain. The British soldiers committed shameful, disproportionate atrocities in revenge on themutineers. However, the unarmed civilian population, particularly the women and children, a prime target forenslavement by Muslim invaders and rulers, rarely suffered British cruelties. In the course of theindependence movement, British atrocities were minimal; the Jalianwala Bagh massacre was the majorincidence, killing a few hundred people.Undoubtedly, the Islamic rule in India was much more devastating and debilitating than the Britishone. But defying all logic and reason, Muslims as well as non-Muslim secular-Marxists of the subcontinentsee the advent of Islam in India as a great blessing, while the British rule as the greatest curse. Islam allegedlybrought, they say, equality, justice, emancipation, art, culture, architecture, and prosperity, in which India652. Clingingsmith D & Williamson JG (2005) India’s Deindustrialization in the 18th and 19th Centuries, HarvardUniversity, p. 9653. Nehru (1989), p. 414; also Indian Rebellion of 1857, Wikipedia;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857197