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

Propagation of Islam: By Force or Peacefully?Battutah and Emperor Babur witnessed amongst Hindus strongly hostile feelings toward Islam more than sixand eight centuries after Islam was implanted in India, so did Emperor Jahangir after nine centuries.What can be gleaned from this analysis is that the Hindus obviously failed to grasp the beauty ofIslam well into the dying days of Muslim rule in India; instead, they were hostile toward it. We will see(Chapter VI) that, within a century of founding the Muslim sultanate in Delhi in 1206, the Hindus—pauperized by extreme exploitation, namely the imposition of jizyah, kharaj and other kinds of oneroustaxes—started begging at the doors of Muslims. They could escape from this desperate situation simply byaccepting Islam, but they were not doing so. We will see the testimonies of Muslim chroniclers and Europeantravelers that, as late as in the seventeenth century, the Hindus were taking their wives and children to slavemarketsfor selling them to pay up the grinding taxes. Muslim officers were also forcibly carrying away thechildren of destitute Hindus for selling them for exacting taxes (see Chapter VII). Still, they were notconverting to Islam.The vast expanse of thick jungles, which existed all over India, had also provided a valuable defencefor the survival of Hindus as suggested by many Muslim historians and rulers. Ibn Battutah, traveling to Indiain the reign of Sultan Muhammad Shah Tughlaq (r. 1325–51) found near Multan, Hindu ‘rebels and warriors,who maintain themselves in the fastness of (inaccessible) mountains…’ On his journey with a convoy of theDelhi Sultan to China, Ibn Battutah found near Kol (Aligarh) that Hindu rebels who had taken refuge in "aninaccessible hill", from where they made frequent attacks on the Muslim-ruled territories. His convoyengaged in repelling one such rebel attack on a Muslim town, routing and killing them to the last man. 164 Thegreat Sufi scholar Amir Khasrau describes similar incidents in his Suh Nipher. In his memoir Mulfuzat-i-Timuri, barbarous invader Amir Timur (Tamerlane) records that he was warned by his nobles about thedefence of Indians, which ‘consists of woods and forests, and trees, which, interweaving stem with stem andbranch with branch, render it very difficult to penetrate into that country… the soldiery, and landholders, andprinces, and Rajas of that country inhabit in the fastness of those forests, and live there like wild beast.’ 165When Babur, the first Mughal ruler, invaded India in the 1520s, he noted of the survival strategy ofthe inhabitants that ‘in many parts of the plains thorny jungles grow,’ which provides good defence, behindwhich the people ‘become stubbornly rebellious.’ The defiant and successful strategy of hiding in jungles wasnoticed by Babur upon his arrival in Agra of which he wrote, ‘neither grain for ourselves nor corn for ourhorses was to be had. The villagers, out of hostility and hatred to us, had taken to thieving and highwayrobbery; there was no moving on the roads… All the inhabitants had run away (to jungles) in terror.’ 166These testimonies give us a good deal of idea about the continuous, determined resistance of Hindusagainst resented Muslim invaders and rulers of India. This will also help one comprehend how so manyHindus might have managed to survive the Muslim assaults in India spanning so many centuries. Indeed,Islamic chronicles on India is littered with examples of Indian rulers and their soldiers, rebels and commoners,under attack by Muslim invaders and rulers, frequently taking refuge in the inaccessible jungles andmountains to save their lives.Evidently, there was, amongst Hindus, strong resistance against and repugnance toward Islam; theytook refuge in inaccessible jungle and mountain hideouts to save lives, and to avoid capture and enslavementfor their conversion to Islam. Large numbers of peasants, refusing to pay exorbitant taxes to Muslim rulers,were leaving their farms to take refuge in jungles. Still, others were bearing the burden of crushing dhimmitaxes, rather than embracing Islam to get rid of the burden. After Aurangzeb reintroduced the humiliatingjizyah in 1679 (earlier abolished by enlightened Akbar, r. 1556–1605), a great multitude of Hindus from allwalks of life thronged to Delhi and laid a sit-in protest outside the royal palace. In order to disperse the164. Gibb HAR (2004) Ibn Battutah: Travels in Asia and Africa, D K Publishers, New Delhi, p. 190,215165. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. III, p. 395166. Lal (1999), p. 62–6370