Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c21.26

c21.26

The religious condition of Bengal too made people vulnerable to Muslim proselytization. The Pala rulers of Bengal were Buddhists and Buddhism, in spite of the damage caused to it by Bakhtiyar Khalji, remained prevalent in the land until at least the fourteenth century. The Senas were Hindus. They patronised Brahmins and Sanskrit. They were destroyed by Bakhtiyar, but not Hinduism. However, the excesses of the Brahmins were unpalatable to the people. Only one example may suffice to illustrate the situation. "To promote the cause of Brahmanism (the Senas) revived Brahmanic rituals with a vengeance, for the elaboration of which a great body of literature was produced under their patronage. Vallal Sen, father of Lakshman Sen, himself wrote the *Danasagar* (in A.D. 1170) which prescribed no less than 1375 varieties of ceremonial charity to Brahmans".¹⁷ There were other aspects of Bengal Hinduism which Dr. Ahmad Hasan Dani discusses at some length. He writes that even a casual observer like W.W. Hunter was fain to observe : "As Manu's artificial classification never passed in its integrity beyond the Middle Land to the north, west, or south, so to the east, where Lower Bengal begins, there caste as a fourfold classification ceases. In North Bihar, which adjoins the Lower Bengal, it is unknown ; and the population is divided, not into four castes of Manu, but into Aryans, non-Aryans, and mixed classes." This remark of Hunter is verifiable in the Census Report of 1901 in which the entire Hindu population was divided into seven classes for the sake of proper assessment, simply because the fourfold caste system was not operative in Bengal.¹⁸ Thus Brahmanical oppression, fluidity in caste (whose rigidity is said to have stood as a bulwark against proselytization in U.P.), and rivalry between Buddhism and Hinduism,¹⁹ more or less combined to create a situation for people's exposure to conversion.