Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c22.s3.20

c22.s3.20

Conversions of high caste Hindus were also few. Hindu religion and philosophy were ancient, vast and deep, and Hindu intellectuals, intelligentia and high castes were proud and even vain, as Alberuni points out, of a highly developed philosophy of their own. It was therefore no easy matter to induce them to convert.²¹ It is true that prospects of employment under Muslim government would have provided some incentive for conversion even to high-caste people, and a few instances of conversion for acquring economic and status benefits are on record.²² But in the early medieval period job opportunities being not unlimited and high offices being monopolised by Turks, or Muslims of foreign extraction, infiltration of and competition by Hindu converts in government service was resented. Cases of Imad-ud-din Rayhan, Nasiruddin Khusrau and Ain-ul-Mulk Multani are instances in point. They are talked of with contempt by the Turkish ruling class. Minhaj Jurjani asserts, rather bluntly, that 'Turks of pure lineage and Tajiks of noble birth could not tolerate (Imad-ud-din of)...the tribes of Hind to rule over them'.²³ Thus the attitude of the foreign-extraction Muslims repeatedly expressed in the diatribe of Muslim chroniclers who usually call them "low born" would have discouraged Hindus to convert even for the allurement of jobs. In the Mughal period Hindus began to be appointed to high posts but for getting these there was no need to convert. Under Aurangzeb some high status people converted to Islam. Manucci states that three Rajas embraced Islam against promises and temptations offered by Aurangzeb, but later they regretted their conversion and remained unhappy²⁴, because Hindu converts to Islam commanded little respect.²⁵ Needless to add that lower Hindu castes could not get equality with the other Muslims in the "democratic" Muslim social order. They carried their caste and social status with them even after their conversion and high class Muslims would not mix or even eat with them if modern practices are any indication for the medieval.²⁶