Islam’s Peaceful Entry into India

Islam’s Peaceful Entry into India

1995 1-2 January-February 19-23 Islam’s Peaceful Entry into India (1518) In India, there is the widely held belief that the initial conversions to Islam was made by force. Yet, in no other country is there any oral legacy or written record of such happenings. It is only in India that it is repeatedly stressed that the local population was coerced by invaders into acceptance of Islam.

India’s conquerors, albeit Muslims, were hardly Islamic zealots. Mahmud Ghaznavi, Shahabuddin Ghauri, Babar etc. came to India for the sole purpose of acquiring wealth and power. Ergo, the accusation that they were out to propagate Islam by the sword immediately falls to the ground. Yet, despite the total absence of any historical record of forced conversions over a period of a thousand years, stories of brutality began to be concocted under British rule which were eagerly seized upon by Hindu pundits anxious to demonstrate – with the addition of fanciful details – that, if there were millions of neo-converts in India, it was not due to any special virtue of Islam, or to any particular shortcoming of Hinduism, but to the force resorted to by Muslim conquerors at the time of conversion.

Hindu writers were not the originators of this misinformation, but merely copyists of British writers, some of whose works advanced theories, which are now logically untenable.

The first such book on the spread of Islam in India, The Preaching of Islam, was written by Dr. T.W. Arnold in 1896, when he was Professor of Persian at the Aligarh Muslim University. Linguistically gifted, and with access to valuable source material, Professor Arnold wrote most competently on this subject. In the context of India being frequently branded as an area of forced conversion, he repeats the then current allegations of Mahmud Ghaznavi’s brutal massacre of Brahmans, Aurangzeb’s persecution and the forcible circumcision effected by Muhammad bin Qasim, Hayder Ali, Tipu Sultan, etc. But he largely dilutes the impression made by this information by producing historical evidence to show that such conversions were far fewer in number than is generally believed and often of an impermanent nature. His main contention is that “among sixty-six millions of Musalmans there are vast numbers of converts, or descendants of converts, in whose conversion force played no part and the only influences at work were the teaching and persuasion of peaceful missionaries” (p. 254).

Citing the true reasons for the rapid expansion of Islam, Professor Arnold writes: “Foremost among these is the simplicity of the Muslim creed, there is no god but God; Muhammad is the Apostle of God. Assent to these two simple doctrine is all that is demanded of the convert ... This simple creed demands no great trial of faith, arouses as a rule no particular intellectual difficulties and is within the compass of the meanest intelligence” (p. 413).

There were, of course, other inducements. ‘Rulers such as Khiljis and Tughlaqs encouraged their subject to embrace Islam by heaping gifts and honours upon them. Another powerful incentive to conversion was the access it gave to the court. Although by the time of Akbar, Hinduism had come to be respected and the policy of non-interference in religion was being strictly followed, Islam still gained many converts who were motivated by self-interest, viz. certain branches of the Rajput aristocracy. Other Muslim rulers were either too busy waging wars or too keen to exact tribute from non-Muslims to be interested in mass forcible conversions. In any case, such conversions when they did take place were generally short-lived, the new converts taking the earliest opportunity to renounce their new faith with the retreat of the conqueror.

However, when Muslim power became consolidated under the Mughal dynasty, Islam’s religious influence came to be more permanent and persistent. Bishop Leproy, in Mankind and the Church (London, 1907), extols the attraction of Muslim teaching for minds dissatisfied with the vagueness and subjectivity of a Pantheistic system of Thought (p. 286).

What struck Professor Arnold, as being most remarkable was that Islam had gained “its greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs” in times and places in which its political power had been weakest as in Southern India and East Bengal, and without any central organisation of missionary work as is found among the Christians. Although the history of Islam in, Southern India was not always peaceful, conversions by non-violent methods were regularly made to Islam from among the lower castes, to whom Islam brings deliverance from the disabilities attaching to the outcastes of the Hindu social system (p. 268). It had a permanent success in Lower Bengal, where “it brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu community, a free entrance into a new social organization (Sir W.W. Hunter: ‘The Religions of India,’ The Times, February 25, 1888).

Hindus were particularly attracted to the sufis and saints spread all over India, and flocked in large numbers to the tombs of Muslim saints. And often a childless father would present a petition to the God of the Muslims, and if children were born to him, apparently in answer to this prayer, the whole family would in such a case embrace Islam (Gazetteer of the N. W.P., vol. VI, pp. 64, 238).

Another book, which deals exhaustively with this subject, The Religious Quest of India, by Dr. Titus, lays emphasis on the injustices of the Muslim Kings. Although this is not the subject of this article, it must be discussed because of the degree to which this misapprehension has been exaggerated. These so-called injustices bear no relation to Islam, being simply the kind of measures resorted to by any ruler, local or foreign, in order to crush political opponents and establish his own rule. This was routine policy, and did not originate in Islamic philosophy.

Dr. Titus first chapter, ‘Forced Conversion,’ is based on incidents, which are either quite isolated or devoid of historical content, such as the forcible circumcision of the Brahmans of Debul by Muhammad ibn Qasim. The writer’s use of such expressions as ‘I assume’ ‘we may be sure,’ and ‘we are told’ in describing these incidents is a sure indication of their lack of authenticity. He is certainly not entitled to make such sweeping generalizations on the basis of slender evidences.

In a more balanced, and therefore more pertinent chapter, ‘Peaceful Penetration,’ he does acknowledge, however, that the majority of conversions took place by peaceful means, and like Professor Arnold, he also refers to the oppressive social conditions under which the low castes had been suffering in India. Any outcaste man, who wished to escape the insults and degradation imposed upon him by his social status, easily found a welcome freedom by accepting the benefit of a system of religion which has no outcastes, and which permits prince and sweeper to worship together in the house of God.

During the last fourteen hundred years, Islam has spread all over the world. It is worth noting that in no country is there any insistence that Islam was spread by the sword. It is only in India that this misconception has become engrained in the minds of the people. We have only to consider the case of Egypt to see just how erroneous this view is. In this ancient cradle of civilization, it took but a hundred years after the Muslim conquest for the majority of the inhabitants to embrace Islam. The Egyptologist, Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955), writes:

“The Egyptians were conquered not by the sword, but by the Koran” (A New Theory of Human Evolution, London, Watts & Co., 1950, p. 303).

When Muslim armies invaded other countries, they were confronted not by the general public but by the ruler’s army, whose duty it was to defend their king. Here the issue was not religious, but military. But once the king’s armed guard had been defeated, it was frequently found that the ordinary people, tired of their own rulers’ excesses, were already disaffected, and quite ready to embrace a new culture which guaranteed them equality, justice and freedom. As Professor Titus observes: “There can be no doubt that, during all the centuries of Islam in India, one of the very strongest assets has been the privilege of brotherhood, which it has held out freely to all who could come within the pale.” When the Indian people came into close contact with the Muslims, many were so impressed by Islamic values, that, without anyone brandishing swords at them, they opted to enter its fold.

As a nineteenth century French writer puts it: “The simplicity and the clearness of this teaching are certainly among the most obvious forces at work in the religious and the missionary activity of Islam ... A creed so precise, so stripped of all the theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding, might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvellous power of winning its way into the consciences of man” (Edouard Montet: LA Propagande Chretienne et ses adversiares Musulmans, pp. 17-18 (Paris, 1890).

(Farida Khanam)