Indian Muslims: Who Are They c5.s6.10

c5.s6.10

These professions were almost exclusively manned by backward classes neo-converts. Conversion to Islam did not change their status, and foreign Muslims looked down upon them. The foreigners especially were not prepared to treat them on equal terms at all. To add insult to injury, the chronicler Ziya Barani, a confirmed believer in the racial superiority of the so-called Turks and baseness of the Indian Muslims, recommends: Teachers of every kind are to be sternly ordered not to thrust precious stones down the throats of dogs that is, to the mean, the ignoble, the worthless. To shopkeepers and the low born they are to teach nothing more than the rules about prayer, fasting, religious charity and the Hajj pilgrimage along with some chapters of the Quran and some doctrines of the faith without which their religion cannot be correct and valid prayers are not possible. They are to be instructed in nothing more. They are not to be taught reading and writing for plenty of disorders arise owing to the skill of the low-born in knowledge⁹⁰ The low-born, who have been enrolled for practising the baser arts and the meaner professions, are capable only of vices⁹¹ Indeed all neo-Muslims were called by the generic but contemptuous term *julaha*. Surely all the converts could not have come from the weaver caste, but the word *julaha* became synonymous with the despised low-born Indian Muslim convert.