Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c23: XVI. Summing Up

Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c23

Language: English

XVI. Summing Up

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India is, and always has been, a highly populated country. Today India and Pakistan have about 18 per cent, or almost a fifth of the world's population. They have more people than all of Europe exclusive of Russia, and almost as many as in the continents of Arica, North America, and South America combined. At least three out of every four persons in the British Empire before partition were Indians.¹

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¹ Kingsley Davis, *op. cit.* (1, n. 9), p. 17.

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Similar was the position in earlier centuries. Muhammad Sharif Hanafi, the author of *Majalis-us-Salatin*, writing in early seventeenth century (A.D. 1628), says "that the whole country of Hindustan... is known to form one-fourth of the inhabited world, and reckoned as largest of all the countries."² Hanafi's information or impression was not wide off the actual position.

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² E and D, VII, pp. 137-38.

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We have referred to Lach Tables at many places. The first Table contains 'some relevant population figures for seventeenth century Europe' based on the tables of M. Humbler, H. Bunle, and F. Boverat, *La Population de la France, Son evolution et ses perspectives* (Paris, 1950 ?), pp. 22-23, and M. Reinhard, *Historie de la population mondiale* (Paris, 1949). This Table (to which have been added our own estimates for India) is as follows :

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Table 13

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*Showing comparative population estimates of India, Europe and the World*

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| Date | World | Europe | Our Estimates for India |
| 1650 | 465,000,000 | 100,000,000³ | 150,000,000 |
| 1750 | 660,000,000 | ,000 | 172,500,000 |
| 1800 | 840,000,000 | 175,000,000 | 170,000,000 |
| 1950 | 2,350,000,000 | 540,000,000 | 430,000,000 |
| | | | (India and Pakistan) |

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³ Alex A.M. Carr-Saunders, *The World Population* (New York, 1936), pp. 29-32. According to Colin Clark, however, the population of Europe (minus Russia?) was 83.4 million in 1600 and 90 million in 1650. Clark, *op. cit.* (III, n. 4), p. 64.

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It may be noticed that Europe between 1650 and 1800 had a population of about one-fifth the world's total; India's population proportion was probably higher during this period because population of Europe rose at a high rate only after the Industrial Revolution. For the same reason estimates for earlies centuries for India are also not high; only India's population registered constant rise and fall. But it remained high.

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There were a large number of factors contributing to the high rate of population growth in medieval India. At present Asia's rate of growth is higher than the world rate and that by about one-third.⁴ The same appears to be true for the medieval times. Among the Hindus it was a social obligation to marry and almost a religious duty to have progeny. Muslim religious law sanctioned multi-marriages. Women's level of culture was low and of education almost nil. Their one function and ambition was to produce children. "Family planning" was not known to the medieval world; in India the craze for children, particularly male children was "the more the merrier". It was customary with presents to marry off their children at an early age, sometimes even while they were mere infants. Akbar's orders, fixing the minimum marriageable age for girls at fourteen and for boys at sixteen⁵, speak for themselves.

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⁴ Jatindra Mohan Datta, "A Re-examination of Moreland's Estimate of Population of India at the Death of Akbar", *op. cit.* (I, n. 10), p. 168.

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⁵ Badaoni, *op. cit.* (II, n. 40), II, p. 306.

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The hot climate of the country helped in the growth of population. A pitiless sun is a natural germicide. Foreign travellers testify to the fact that India was not vulnerable to disease which wipped off whole populations in Europe.⁶ It is also on record that Indians, especially those who were vegetarians, lived for long.⁷ Fresh air, hot and healthy climate, physical work and availability of food at cheap rates were assets to promotion of good health in medieval times. Unhealthy surroundings and accidents concomitant with modern mechanized industrialization and fast transport were then not known.

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⁶ It is exceedingly significant that Megasthenes in the ancient times and Nicolo Conti in the fifteenth century are impressed by the fact that Indians are comparatively free from diseases. What Conti writes is interesting. He says that "pestilence is unknown among the Indians; neither are they exposed to those diseases which carry off the population in our countries: *the consequence is that the number of these people exceeds belief....*" *Major, India in the Fifteenth Century*, op. cit. (VI, n. 7), p. 32.

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⁷ Ibn Battuta, *op. cit.* (I, n. 1), p. 161.

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In Akbar's times, we find a deliberate effort also made to give peace and protection to agrarian population. Such a policy, initiated in Sher Shah's time and continued in Akbar's, was bound to produce good results on population. Two centuries earlier when Firoz Tughlaq had undertaken measures to help the tillers of the soil, Shams Siraj Afif had not failed to notice a rise in the country's population.

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But if there was accelerated population growth, there were also forces pulling in the opposite direction. In Europe in the sixteenth century population was checked by malnutrition and disease. Half of all babies born died in the first year; in India female infanticide added to high infant mortality. Life expectancy in Europe was 48 to 66 years in rich countries; 30 to 40 years in poor. In India birth rate was high, death rate was high and life expectancy low.⁸ Wars and famines and pestilences were common in medieval times. The devastating effects of war were aggravated by the customs of Jauhar and Sati.⁹ In Jauhar not only women but also children used to be burnt or put to the sword on a large scale.¹⁰ About famines we hear throughout the medieval times. The country depended almost entirely on monsoon for its food production, and "it is the irregularity of monsoon that has made India a land of famine."¹¹ Similarly when any contagious disease broke out, there were hardly any means to check it, and it always took a heavy toll. Medieval times were not a healthy period from the point of hygiene and sanitation. Rural habitations and suburban dwellings were yet mere hovels, flimsy structures, easy victims to accidental conflagration and contagious disease. In such a situation population growth could only be restrained. The present day population explosion is due mainly to the advancement in medical science promoting longevity.

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⁸ Also Lach, *op. cit.* (V, n. 24), I, pp. 432-33.

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⁹ "We have from Fedrici's pen one of the fullest and most authoritative accounts of the...practice of Sati prepared in the sixteenth century", because the house in which he lived was located near the gate through which, after the Battle of Talikota, women passed on their way to be burnt.

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¹⁰ For example G.N. Sharma, *Mewar and the Mughal Emperors*, op. cit., M.S. No. 797, pp. 76-78 for the North and Nuniz in Sewell, *op. cit.* (fn. p. 20), p. 262 ff. for the South.

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¹¹ Dambuy, *op. cit.*, f. n. 9, p. 11.

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The harem system, so common in the medieval elite society, was also a great check in the over-growth of population. Multi-marriages, say having three or four wives, meant many children in the family, but not in a large harem. Let it be explained with the help of an example. Khan-i-Jahan Maqbul, the Prime Minister of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, had 2,000 women in his harem. Now if each one of these two thousand would have been married separately to two thousand men, they would have produced a large number of children of which a few thousand would have surely survived. But being in the possession of one man, they did not add as many to the population as otherwise they would have done. Besides, possession of a large number of women by one man would have deprived many others from obtaining wives, because there is no evidence to show that in medieval India the number of women was larger than that of men. Therefore, because of the harem system, many men would have perforce remained bachelors and some made eunuchs to serve in the seraglios, adding no numbers to the population. In harem, sex was probably secondary, intrigue the primary activity. From the time of Shah Turkan to that of Roshan Ara there are references to one woman being the 'political' rival of another, and removal of the opponent by poison was not uncommon. Also, since the first-born had greater legitimacy to succession, his mother ever tried to see that the other wives aborted.¹²

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¹² Tavernier, *op. cit.* (VII, n. 29), I, p. 393

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However, when a balance is struck, it is almost certain that deaths were fewer than births and India's population had a natural tendency to grow. There were no doubt many checks on the overgrowth of numbers, but the India of medieval times was known for its large population.

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So far as Muslim population is concerned, its growth in medieval India was constant. While it was only about A.D. 1000 that Islam did really get introduced in India, the population of Muslims in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent was no less than 100 million around 1950.¹³ In the medieval times, India was under Muslim rule, or at least large portions of the country were controlled by a succession of Muslim dynasties. Political authority is always in a position of vantage to enlist supporters, and religions have spread in many places and at many times the world over through the interest and effort of the ruling power. But the picture of conversions which swelled Muslim numbers so quickly is too hazy to reconstruct. It is said that Hindu caste system, proselytizing activity of Sufi saints, contact with Muslim traders and merchants, job opportunities in Muslim civil and military establishments, resulted in 'group conversions' of Hindus. These are reasonable suppositions, although documentary evidence on these is little. The only reason of conversion repeatedly mentioned in medieval Persian chronicles is that Muslim conquerors and rulers converted men, women and children either by naked force or by putting upon them economic and other kinds of pressures. However, as M. Mujeeb points out "the risks involved in a policy of conversion by force should not be underrated."¹⁴ Be that as it may; one fact is patently clear. The vast majority of Muslims of India (and Pakistan) are converts from indigenous elements, and the 'two nation theory' has no historical basis.

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¹³ Indian and Pakistani Census Reports for 1951. Also Davis, *op cit.* (I, n 9), p. 191. Today every seventh man in the world is a Muslim. Their total in 1950 was 365 million. H.W. Hazard, *Atlas of Islamic History* (Princeton, 1954), p. 5. Titus, *op. cit.* (IX, n. 11), p 1

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¹⁴ M. Mujeeb, *op. cit.* (X, n. 24), p. 22.

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In northern India Muslim population rose gradually after A.D.

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1000. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as well as in the seventeenth, especially under Aurangzeb, its rise was at an accelerated pace and throughout the country. In most regions where Muslims were found in good numbers by the year 1500, their population, by and large, went to growing in later centuries too. But surprisingly enough in some of these regions it actually fell. This was due as much to the tenacity of the Hindu social order which "lapped away at any intrusive system as the sea laps away at a sand bank",¹⁵ as to the new challenge of competition from Christian proselytizers. In other parts of the country also the Muslims could not make such headway. This situation has continued right up to modern times. A comparison of some figures of 1941 census, given in the following Table, would bear this out.

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¹⁵ Davis, *op. cit.* T. n. 94, p. 195.

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Table 14

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*Showing Regional Distribution of Muslim Population in 1941.*¹⁶

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¹⁶ Adapted from the Table given in 'Distribution of Muslims in the Population of India' by P.C. Mahalanobis in *Sankhya* (The Indian Journal of Statistics), Vol. VII, August 1945, pp. 429-34.

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| Provinces and States | Population | Percentage Muslims | Percentage Hindus | Percentage Others |
| A | | | | |
| Baluchistan | 501,000 | 87.6 | 8.8 | 3.6 |
| N.W. Frontier | 3,038,000 | 91.8 | 5.9 | 2.3 |
| Sind | 4,535,000 | 70.7 | 27.1 | 2.2 |
| Punjab | 28,418,000 | 57.1 | 26.6 | 5.1 |
| Kashmir | 4,022,000 | 76.4 | 20.1 | 3.5 |
| Bengal | 60,307,000 | 54.7 | 41.6 | 3.7 |
| B | | | | |
| U.P. | 55,023,000 | 15.3 | 83.2 | 1.5 |
| Bihar | 36,341,000 | 13.0 | 73.0 | 14.0 |
| Orissa, | 8,728,300 | 1.7 | 78.3 | 20.0 |
| C.P. & Berar | 16,814,000 | 4.7 | 76.9 | 18.4 |

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| C | | | | |
| Travancore (Malabar) | 6,070,000 | 7.7 | 58.4 | 34.4 |
| Cochin | 1,423,000 | 7.7 | 63.0 | 29.3 |
| Gujarat | 1,457,000 | 3.9 | 52.4 | 43.7 |

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| D | | | | |
| *Banaras* | 451,000 | 8.4 | 90.7 | 0.9 |
| Rampur | 477,000 | 49.3 | 49.9 | 0.8 |

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It will be observed that in Group A the regions which had a large Muslim population about the end of the fifteenth century, became Muslim-majority areas as years went by. In Group B regions the Muslims were in lesser numbers and continued to remain so. Group C is interesting. In the fifteenth century, the western coast region had a large Muslim population, but from the sixteenth century onwards Portuguese traders began to oust Muslim merchants and Portuguese and other Christian missions outstripped Muslims in proselytizing activity (many Muslims themselves becoming Christians), so that in years to come Muslim numbers fell. Group D illustrates the fact that in a princely state under British rule, if the ruler was a Hindu, proselytization to Islam did not find encouragement. If he was a Muslim, the number of Muslims grew.

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In modern times too in the sub-continent as a whole at no census have the Muslim numbers failed to improve, or the Hindu failed to lose. This phenomenon has been attributed, besides proselytization, to polygamy, remarriage of widows, and higher fecundity among the Muslims.¹⁷ Datta also mentions factors such as "*Pax Brittanica* and their (Muslims') occupying more fertile lands in the Eastern Bengal and the canal irrigated lands in Western Punjab and Sindh",¹⁸ and Davis thinks it to be due to the Hindus having taken to western education and secularism with alacrity as against the general backwardness of the Muslims.¹⁹ But in the medieval as in modern India, the Muslims have remained a clear minority as is seen in the following diagram.