Indian Muslims: Who Are They c7.25

c7.25

Moreover, the Hindus - Jats, Marathas, Sikhs, and Rajputs - had gathered strength. By 1719 when the Faujdari of Surat was held by Raja Jai Singh and the Subedaris of Ahmedabad and Ajmer, including Jodhpur, by Ajit Singh, the two Rajas held all the country from thirty kos of Delhi to the shores of the sea at Surat.⁷³ The power of the Rajputs can be guaged from certain acts of Ajit Singh.⁷⁴ In the Punjab, Banda Bahadurs activities were continued by his successors until the Sikhs became masters of the Punjab, and they in place of permitting any further erosion of Hindu numbers, converted people to their own creed, sometimes by force.⁷⁵ The power of the Marathas already established in the South, began to be extended to the North, so that by the middle of the eighteenth century, Rustam Ali, who was compelled to travel from city to city in search of employment and subsistence, writes in his *Tarikh-i-Hind* (composed C.E. 1741-42) that from the day he left Shah Jahanabad (Delhi), and travelled through the country of idolatry, it was here (at Bhopal) only that he found Islam to be predominant.⁷⁶