Indian Muslims: Who Are They c6.3

c6.3

To keep themselves in power, the Saiyyad and Lodi Sultans of Delhi (1414-1526) went on inviting Afghans from beyond the Indus to help them stay in power. Consequently, a large number of Afghan leaders and men came into India like ants and locusts and helped in the rise of Muslim population.² All these factors helped in swelling the ranks of Muslims. In this context it is worth remembering that this period was, it appears, marked by feverish Muslim proselytization even outside India. All the European visitors to India like Nicolo Conti, Athnasius Nikitin and Santo Stefano were compelled to convert to Islam on their way to India.³ In India itself, according to Barbosa, the sultans of Delhi had made life extremely difficult for the non-Muslims.⁴ Many of the northern Hindus, especially the Yogis, unwilling to stay under the power of the Moors, became wanderers.⁵ Thus like the fourteenth century, the fifteenth also was a century of rapid rise of Muslim numbers through immigration and conversion. In this chapter, therefore, we shall cursorily go through the history of these kingdoms of India which were ruled by Muslim kings, and see how Muslim number grew there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.