Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c17.s7: The Malabar Coast
Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c17.s7
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The Malabar Coast
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In Malabar, Muslim population increased considerably during the period of fourteenth-fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. In Quilon, the pearl fishery was monopolized by the Muslims who were there in large numbers. Such was their strength and influence that, although the ruler of Quilon and his armed retainers were always close by the city, the real arbiters of justice in local affairs seemed to be the wealthy "Moors" who ran the fishery.⁶³ Both Barbosa and Barros talk of the large number of Muhammadans, both foreign and indigenous, in Malabar. The foreigners included Arabs, Persians, Gujaratis, Khurasanis and Deccanis. The local ones were called Moplahs. They were mostly Sunnis, lived in cities and made their living by trade. They comprised about 20 per cent of the total population.⁶⁴ Barbosa contends that they were so numerous that the advent of the Portuguese alone prevented Malabar from becoming "a Moorish state."⁶⁵ A letter from Goa of the year 1568 asserts that "the Malabar nation is Muslim, and they are almost all pirates and hostile to the Christians."⁶⁶
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⁶³ Barbosa, *op. cit* (VI, n. 17), II, pp. 122-23.
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⁶⁴ W. Logan, *Malabar* (Madras, 1951), I, p. 199. Also Lach, 368-69, on the impression of Barbosa and Barros
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⁶⁵ Barbosa, II, p. 74.
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⁶⁶ Lach, *op. cit.* (V, n. 24), I, p. 447.
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Thus the rise of Muslim population through conversions was rather rapid in the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century. But proselytization to Islam received some check in the sixteenth century due to a number of factors. One was the work of the Bhakta religious reformers of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. The aim of these reformers may not have been to stop conversions to Islam or to reconvert people to Hinduism. but as will be seen at a later stage, their message and work did help check conversions to Islam.
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Moreover, the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) gradually removed all modes of pressures which used to compel people to become Musalmans. In 1562 he abolished the custom of enslaving helpless people in times of war ; it was mostly such captives who used to be converted to Islam by their Muslim captors and masters. In 1564 he abolished the Jiziyah : Firoz Tughlaq is witness to the fact that its strict enforcement brought many converts to Islam. Earlier in 1563 he had abolished the Pilgrim Tax on the Hindus. Thus in Akbar's time conversion to Islam by force, through enslavement, or economic pressure seems to have been restricted. Hindus could get high jobs as Hindus : conversion was not necessary to obtain them. Akbar even permitted such Hindus as had been forcibly converted to Islam to return to their original faith. Although contemporary accounts are silent on the numbers that went back to Hinduism as a result of this permission, yet it would be correct to presume that Akbar removed obstructions in a practice which was probably prevalent.
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The arrival of the Portuguese also provided a check and a challenge to Muslim proselytizing endeavour. They had captured Goa, Daman and Diu in the early years of the sixteenth century. In their triumphal entry into Goa (A.D. 1510), "the clergymen were fore the largest number of conversions probably took place under the Turks and the Afghans who ruled between c. 1300 and 1556. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Muslim rule also spread in all parts of the country either under the central authority of Delhi or under independent Muhammadan kings. Consequently, the largest number of conversions in India took place during this period.
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There is one contemporary source which gives precise information about the proportion of Muslims in the total population, but it is not reliable. In the *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi*,⁸¹ an autobiographical memoir, Akbar's son and successor Jahangir is claimed to have written that on one occasion in a conversation with his father, Akbar is reported to have said : "My dear child......with all of God's creatures, I am at peace ; why should I permit myself, under any consideration, to be the cause of molestation or aggression to any one ? Besides, are not five parts in six of mankind either Hindus or aliens to the faith ; and were I to be governed by motives of the kind suggested in your inquiry, what alternative can I have but to put them all to death ? I have thought it therefore my wisest plan to let these men alone."⁸²
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⁸¹ "Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir, written by himself, and translated from a Persian Manuscript" by Major David Price (London, 1829), p. 15. Calcutta Edition (Bangabasi Press, 1906) pp. 21-22. This work, according to Sir Henry Elliot, does not comprise the real *Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri* or *Memoirs of Jahangir*. He also points out a number of exaggerations in which the *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi* indulges (E and D, VI, pp. 256-264), and adds that "some parts at least...must be ranked in the same class" as fiction. (E and D, VI, p. 257). Dr. Beni Prasad, writing on the *Tarkikh-i-Salim Shahi* says : "The name of the author is unknown. On several points it is fuller than the genuine memoirs. But the work as a whole is a fabrication". (*History of Jahangir*, *op. cit.* (VII, n. 1), pp. 387-88.
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⁸² *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi* (Calcutta Edition), pp. 21-22.
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Jahangir is supposed to have repeated this ratio at another place. "Of the whole population of Hindustan it is notorious that five parts in six are composed of Hindus, the adorers of images, and the whole concerns of trade and manufacture......are entirely under the management of these classes. Were it, therefore, ever so much my desire to convert them to the true faith, it would be impossible, otherwise than through excision of millions of men...but the massacre of a whole people can never be any business of mine.'"⁸³
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⁸³ *Ibid*., p
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These statements, attributed to Jahangir, about the proportion of Muslim population could not have been easily brushed aside but for the fact that they appear to be obviously wrong. From what we know of Akbar and Jahangir, such anti-Hindu sentiments and statements cannot be attributed to them. Whosoever be the writer of the *Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi*, he cannot delude us because, as will be seen later, Muslims were not one-sixth of the Hindu population even as late as the year 1800.
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We have, therefore, only one choice left to arrive at a tentative percentage of Muslims in A.D. 1600. It is by calculating on the earlier basis, keeping in view the periods when there was a rapid growth of Muslim numbers and when it was not so rapid. If during the period of acceleration the Muslim population became double in sixty to seventy years' time, then the 3.2 million estimated for the year 1400 would have become 6.4 in 1470 and 12.8 in 1530. Thereafter, because of the Bhakti movement and Akbar's policies, there would have been a brake put on this accelerated growth, and by 1600 Muslim numbers may not have risen beyond 15 million. In that year the total population of India has been estimated at 140 millions. Muslims would have formed about one-ninth to one-tenth of India's total population.