Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c18.28

c18.28

Indeed, it appears that from about the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, conversions to Islam were not done on a very large scale. Bernier, who was in India towards the closing years of Shahjahan's and early years of Aurangzeb's reign found India a country of vast majority of Hindus. He even goes on to say: "The great Mogol is a foreigner in Hindoustan, he finds himself in a hostile country, or nearly so; a country containing hundreds of Gentiles to one Mogol, or even to one Mahometan."²¹ Being a foreigner, Bernier might not have been able to quite distinguish between Hindus and Muslims.²² In any case, as Beni Prasad points out, 'he (Bernier) wrote from mere observation and made no systematic calculation'.²³ Nevertheless, Bernier's impression is similar to the observations of men like Timur and Babur and many other foreign writers.²⁴ What is of importance about Bernier's assertion is that in spite of some conversions in the countryside, the demographic complexion of the society in which he lived and moved had not perhaps registered any appreciable change in the Hindu-Muslim proportion since the days of Babur.