The latest book by the Indian author Sunil Sharan is entitled India’s Muslims and Lessons for the West. The author has kindly supplied the text of his introduction to the book, which is reproduced below. The rest of the book provides a comprehensive overview of the (often bloody) relations between Indian Muslims and followers of other religions.

It also presents a history of Islam in Indian culture and politics, including a valuable account of the reign of Akbar the Great, the Third Mughal emperor. Akbar was remarkably tolerant of Hindus, which was not true of his successors, and Hinduism did not flourish again until it fell under the protection of the British in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi, 1939

India’s Muslims and Lessons for the West

by Sunil Sharan

Introduction

Although Arabs had started invading India at the beginning of the eighth century, they came to the subcontinent mainly to plunder, spread their Islamic faith, and then retreat. The Arabs converted the Central Asians to Islam, who in turn converted the Afghans. The Afghans were traditionally Hindus and had then become Buddhist. The Buddhas of Bamiyan, monumental statues of Gautama Buddha carved into the sides of a cliff in Afghanistan in the sixth century AD, were evidence of how much Buddhism had spread in Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed these statues in 2001.

The Afghans started invading the Indian Subcontinent, but it was not until circa 1200 AD that their rule was firmly established in Delhi. The Afghans had become fanatical Muslims by then. This time, though, the Muslims did not come to India just to loot and proselytize and then leave. They came to stay. The Afghans ruled India for three hundred consecutive years. No Hindu king could topple them. Ironically, they were toppled by another type of Muslims, Central Asians of Mongol descent, who came to be known as the Mughals. They defeated the Afghans in the early sixteenth century and quickly established their rule throughout India.

Unlike the Afghans, whose contribution to India has perhaps been lost with time, the Mughals contributed substantively to India in terms of architecture, language, and cuisine. The Afghans had been fervent proselytizers of Islam. During their rule, the Hindu population of India actually contracted. Some of this was due to conversion to Islam. But Hindus were so afraid that their daughters would be abducted by Muslims that they started killing them at birth. Before Muslims arrived in India, women in Hinduism were actually glorified. The practice of female infanticide continues in India today, albeit for different reasons than before, resulting in a lopsided population.

The Mughals for the most part were much more liberal than their Afghan counterparts. The third Great Mughal, Akbar, built the empire and enacted very conciliatory policies toward Hindus, for which he is applauded in India even today by the Hindus. The last Great Mughal, Aurangzeb, was an out and out bigot, who undid much of what his great grandfather Akbar had done.

Conversion to Islam in the six hundred years of Islamic rule in India from circa 1200 AD to circa 1800 AD took place in many ways. The sword, of course, was frequently employed. Hinduism had its caste system, with the soft underbelly being the untouchable caste. Islamists targeted the untouchables for conversion. They were the oppressed in Hinduism. When they joined the King’s own religion, they started tormenting their former oppressors. Much of the antagonism between Hindus and Muslims that exists in India today can be traced to this development.

Although Arabs converted the Central Asians and the Afghans, the language of the Muslim court in India was never Arabic. It was always Persian. Akbar in fact disliked Arabic so much that he had banned its use from his empire. Persian words were infused into Hindi and created the language Urdu. Although some label Urdu as the language of the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent, it is a language cherished by almost everyone, including by hard-core right-wing Hindus. I can speak Urdu fairly well, although I can’t read the script because it is in Persian form. Whenever I use an uncommon Persian word, my Hindu friends and relatives go gaga. My grandfather was born at the turn of the twentieth century, when British rule and English were firmly entrenched in India, but he read and wrote Persian fluently.

Persia was an immediate neighbor of India then. Since the times of the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, Persia has had tremendous influence over India. As Islamic rule became established in India, a steady stream of Persians migrated to India. The rulers, first the Afghans and then the Mughals, came to India without many women. In fact, Babur’s army only comprised about fifteen thousand soldiers, many of whom perished in the battlefield. The Islamic rulers felt the need to procreate. The first choice was with the Persians. The Islamic rulers avoided the Hindu untouchables who had converted to Islam like the plague. They much preferred to miscegenate with upper-caste Hindus. But the upper-caste Hindus were having none of that. That was when the sword, sometimes softened by inducements, was employed by the Islamists. The Hindu womb as the source for the procreation of Islam remains an incredibly touchy topic in India even today.

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