Indian Muslims: Who Are They c6.1

c6.1

A year before the dawn of the fifteenth century, Timur had claimed to have invaded Hindustan to destroy its infidels and idolators.¹ In the year 1400 India was predominantly Hindu; Muslims comprised less than 2 per cent of the population. The country south of the Krishna River right up to Cape Camorin formed the Vijayanagar empire and it was Hindu. On the west coast, the strip between Goa in the south to Chaul and (future) Bombay in the north was in the hands of independent Hindu rulers. In the Bahmani kingdom conversions and immigration were swelling Muslim numbers. But the whole of Central India with Rajasthan to the west and Gondwana to the east was Hindu. East U.P., Bihar and Orissa were also Hindu. Only in Baluchistan, portion of the Punjab west of the River Ravi, Sind and Bengal there were good number of Muslims, but there too the Hindus were in majority. In the heart of the Sultanate - the eastern Punjab, Delhi and its outlying regions, and western U.P. - Gujarat, and Malwa, Muslim numbers were rising but were not yet large. Timur might have made his declaration merely as a champion of Islam, and yet he was not wrong in his assessment of the Hindu population of India.