Twilight of the Sultanate c14.s7.14

c14.s7.14

Indeed the few facts mentioned by the chroniclers about Sikandar's fanaticism are of the common type witnessed here and there throughout the Muslim rule in India. Besides, his acts of persecution were confined to those very regions of eastern and western Uttar Pradesh which had opposed the Sultanate relentlessly and for long, and the Sultan had retaliated with laying waste tracts from Kara to Dalmau, and the country around Kol and Dholpur. In other words his religious persecution was associated with political subjugation. Thus there does not seem to be anything extraordinary in the acts and policies of Sikandar Lodī. But, then, why does Nizāmuddīn Ahmad followed by most other chroniclers declare that "his (Sikandar's) bigotry in Islam was so great that in this regard he went beyond the bounds even of excess".¹⁷¹