The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (47 page)

FORTUNATELY, THE ANTI-HINDU venom was more on the tongues of Muslim clerics and chroniclers than on the swords of the sultans. Except in a few rare instances, Hindus were not oppressed beyond endurance in Muslim kingdoms. This is evident from the fact that a very large number of Hindus served in the government and the army of Muslim states. Most of the service providers in Muslim states—merchants, craftsmen, moneylenders, and so on—were also no doubt Hindus. And nearly all the farmers in India were Hindus.

Hindus generally had no compunction about serving under sultans in any capacity, even as soldiers and captains in the battles of the sultans against rajas. Many of the top officers of even the hyper-orthodox Mughal emperor Aurangzeb were Hindus. Equally, many Muslims served in the army and administration of Hindu kingdoms. In that freewheeling political environment rajas often allied with sultans, even in the battles of sultans against fellow rajas, and sultans often allied with rajas, even the battles of rajas against fellow sultans.

In the personal life of the sultans also there were some curious intercultural and interreligious influences and practices. The sultans, despite their professed orthodoxy, sometimes even sought the counsels of Hindu and Jain sages. According to Jain sources, Ala-ud-din Khalji used to hold discussions with Jain sages, and he is said to have once specially summoned Jain sage Acharya Mahasena from Karnataka to Delhi for consultations. Muhammad Tughluq is also known to have had Jain counsellors; and he, according to Battuta, used
to consort with Hindu yogis. Some of the sultans were exceptionally liberal in their treatment of Hindus—Ala-ud-din Husain Shah, the early sixteenth century sultan of Bengal, for instance, is said to have been so benevolent in his treatment of all his subjects, irrespective of their religion, that local Hindu poets eulogised him as Arjuna or Krishna, Hindu mythical heroes.

SUCH LIBERAL TREATMENT of Hindus by sultans was odious to orthodox Muslims, for Islam was traditionally an aggressively proselytising religion, which had little tolerance for the people of other religions, and had in its early history forcefully converted a large number of people into the religion. But such conversions were rare in India. The practice however varied from sultan to sultan. The Tughluqs, Muhammad and Firuz, are known to have coerced the families of some defeated rajas to become Muslims. But the primary concern of most sultans was to preserve and expand their power, and they had hardly any inclination to work as missionaries.

There were however a good number of voluntary converts to Islam from low caste and outcaste Hindu communities, and this went on all through the medieval period. It was a great advantage for this class of Hindus to become Muslims, for conversion opened up unprecedented career and social advancement opportunities for them, which they would never have had in Hindu society. As Muslims they could occupy any position that they merited by their abilities, and thus move up in society, free from the caste bond that confined them to a particular social niche and profession. Not surprisingly, many of the underclass conversions to Islam were mass conversions, following community or clan decisions.

Apart from low caste and outcaste Hindus, many traders, craftsmen and other service providers also found it to be a temporal advantage for them to become Muslims, as that widened their business opportunities, as most of their affluent customers were now Muslims. A few upper class Hindus also voluntarily became Muslims, thereby to gain various socio-political and material advantages. There are said to have been even a few instances of men becoming Muslims because of their conviction of the superiority of Islam over Hinduism as a religion

Despite all this, even at the close of the eighteenth century, after six centuries of dominant Muslim rule in India, the region around Delhi, the core area of Muslim power in India, had only around 14 per cent Muslims in its population. However, in some other regions of the subcontinent, particularly in the western and eastern flanks of the Indo-Gangetic Plain—the regions that in the twentieth century became Pakistan and Bangladesh—Muslims constituted a much larger part of the local population, presumably because of the mass conversion to Islam of tribal people in those mountainous regions.
The proportion of Muslim population in the subcontinent increased over the next century and half, because of the higher birth-rate in the community, so that by the end of the British rule in 1947 they formed about a quarter of the subcontinent’s population.

INDIA IN MEDIEVAL times was already a densely populated land, compared to the other regions of the world. ‘This country is so well-populated that it is impossible in a reasonable space to convey an idea of it,’ notes Razzak. Moreover, the population profile of India was highly complex, because of the racial, linguistic, social, cultural, religious and sectarian diversity of Indians, resulting from the socio-cultural-religious developments within the country, as well as from the migration of very many different races into India over the millennia.

Migrants continued to pour into India during the medieval period; indeed, the Delhi sultans eagerly sought fresh migrants from Central Asia, to swell the Muslim population in India, so that Muslims in India would not get totally submersed in the vast sea of native Indians. The sultans also needed migrants to strengthen their army and administration with fresh recruits. And Central Asians on their part were eager to migrate to India, because of the legends about its fabulous wealth, and the grand career opportunities offered to them by Indian rulers. They also saw India as a safe haven for them to escape to, from the Mongol flood that was at this time raging through their homeland.

Hindu society, because of its polymorphic nature, was generally quite tolerant of the beliefs and practices of other religions, just as it was tolerant of the beliefs and practices of the diverse sects and castes within its own society. But the tolerance of Hindu society was tolerance by segregation; it was in fact a form of intolerance. Any community was free to live in any way it liked, but none was allowed to intrude into the life of other communities. This meant that Hindu society, despite its broad attitude of tolerance, was a highly discriminatory, inequitable and intolerant society, which sharply and unalterably segregated people by religion, sect and caste, and treated each group differently.

However, the Hindu caste segregation involved no overt oppression, as it was birth determined, and was not the result of any deliberate social action by any group. Though segregation itself was an oppressive practice, the underclasses did not generally feel oppressed, but passively accepted the circumstances of their life, as the natural and inevitable outcome of the transmigratory process, the conditions of their life being foreordained by their acts in their previous lives. Besides, the pervasive fatalistic attitude of the Indians of that age made them limply accept the conditions of their life, whatever those conditions were, and not struggle against them, as they believed
that those conditions were inexorably fated. The social ethos of medieval India was thus a peculiar mixture of tolerance and intolerance. This was evident as much in the relationship of Hinduism with other religions, as in the relationship between the various sects and castes within Hindu society.

Because of these factors, the traditional Indian society had been, for very many centuries before the Turkish invasion, an exceptionally peaceful and harmonious society, despite its numerous caste divisions and harshly exploitative character. Though there were occasionally some social conflicts here and there in the subcontinent, they were usually minor and transient. There are no records of any serious and enduring inter-caste rivalries or clashes in pre-modern India. Nor were there any major inter-sectarian, inter-religious or inter-racial conflicts in India during this entire period. In all this, India was like no other country in the world.

And, paradoxical though it might seem, Hindu India’s social diversity was the basis of its social cohesion and efficiency, for the divergent groups and castes in India, though they were rigidly segregated from each other socially, were tightly integrated with each other in their functions, with each caste, from the highest to the lowest, including the outcastes, providing a distinct and indispensable service in society. All the castes belonged together as the integral organs of one social entity, each caste occupying a specific social niche and performing a specific socio-economic function, like the different organs and limbs of a living being. And this enabled the caste society, despite its diversity and appalling inequity, to function efficiently and peacefully for very many centuries. The caste society was a cooperative society, not a competitive society. The diverse castes in it were not adversaries, but co-operators. And together they all constituted one cohesive society.

UNFORTUNATELY, THE CASTE system had a serious negative aspect to it, which nullified most of its benefits—it was a singularly unjust system, and was dreadfully wasteful of human resources, for its division of labour was not based on the merit of individuals, but on their birth, so that men of low ability often had to perform high functions, while men of high ability often had to perform low functions. Moreover, the caste system kept society sedated, in a state of coma, precluding mutation and progress in Indian civilisation. Though all human societies all over the world, and all through history, had functional and hierarchic divisions, Indian society was unique in that its divisions were unalterably hereditary. An individual’s social function and status were solely dependent on his birth—not on his aptitude or ability—and they remained the same for his family from generation to generation over the centuries. Though there were a few minor deviations from this rule in history, the caste system
on the whole remained virtually the same for very many centuries, well into the twentieth century.

One would have thought that this iniquitous system would weaken over time and disintegrate, and that there would be revolts against the system by the underclasses. But it was the opposite of this that happened. Instead of weakening, the caste system became more rigid over time, and the social distance between the castes widened. This was largely because India had slid into the Dark Ages in the late classical period, consequent of the decline of its urban prosperity and the general ruralisation of Indian culture. The caste system was the ideal social system for the Dark Ages.

In that setting, the social dominance of Brahmins became absolutely unassailable. But their status was not based on wealth or power, but on their birth determined ritual ranking. But ritual ranking in Hindu society meant social ranking, so very many social privileges and material benefits went with the Brahmin rank.

Some of the privileges enjoyed by Brahmins were conceded to them even by Muslim rulers. Brahmins, for instance, usually paid little or no tax, even in Muslim kingdoms. And if any king or chieftain sought to impose dues on a Brahmin, he, according to Kosambi, ‘would threaten to spill his own blood, kill a child, burn alive some old woman of his family, or fast to death, the sin of which would fall on the head of the feudal lord.’ Brahmins were exempted even from jizya by most Delhi sultans, and when Firuz Tughluq imposed it on them, the Brahmins of Delhi and its environs took to mass fasting in protest and threatened to burn themselves to death at the walls of the royal palace. They withdrew their protest only when the amount of jizya demanded from them was reduced by the sultan, and the other Hindu castes offered to pay the tax on their behalf—Brahmins evidently had no objection to jizya being imposed on them, as long as Hindus of other castes would pay the tax on their behalf!

The social status of Brahmins was based on their ritual status and function. But with the passage of time, and the growth in Brahmin population, many Brahmins spread out into other fields of activity. Many of them took to providing financial services, as bankers and tax-farmers, or served as scribes or accountants, under Hindu as well Muslim rulers. Some even served as military commanders, mostly in the Vijayanagar army.

There were similar changes in the profession of some other Hindu communities also. And, even though these changes did not lead to any significant alteration in the status hierarchy of the caste society, they did alter the material conditions of the life of some castes, with some castes gaining and some losing advantages. The main losers were Kshatriyas, the elite Hindu politico-military caste, many of whom lost their power and privileges to
Turks. Though some Kshatriyas salvaged their material privileges by serving as the subordinates of sultans or their provincial governors, such service itself was considered an appalling degradation by orthodox Hindus. But what the Kshatriyas lost was power and wealth, not their social status within the caste society, which remained the same as before.

In material gains, artisans and traders were the main beneficiaries of the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, for there was a sharp revival of urban prosperity during this period, and that led to the resuscitation of the commercial economy which had been comatose in India for several centuries. Some of the low castes in Indian society, particularly the outcastes, also benefited from the establishment of the Turko-Afghan rule, for Muslims generally ignored caste distinctions, and treated the outcastes in the same manner as they treated the other members of Indian society. Indeed, some of the outcaste communities became Muslims en-masse, thereby instantly transforming their social status from that of the underclass to that of the upper-class.

THE ETHOS AND structure of Muslim society was entirely different from that of Hindu society. Muslim society was a brotherhood, and had no caste-like hereditary social divisions in it. There were functional and status divisions in it, but these were based on an individual’s ability and accomplishments, not on his birth. Anyone could rise to any position that he merited by his abilities.

This was the Islamic ideal. The reality of Muslim society did not quite match this egalitarian, merit-oriented ideal. There were social divisions in Muslim society based on race and clan and sect, and these played a key role in determining a person’s social status. For instance, Sayyids, persons of Prophet Muhammad’s lineage, enjoyed a birth-determined, caste-like high social status everywhere in the Muslim world, irrespective of their personal merit. Further, people of foreign origin (Persians, Arabs, Turks and Afghans) generally formed the upper class of the Muslim society in India, followed by converts from the Hindu upper castes. Persians in particular enjoyed a high social status in India, and they looked down on Turks; and Turks in turn looked down on Afghans and Mongols; and all looked down on low caste Hindu converts.