Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s2.2

c9.s2.2

But the Hindus could not have liked being converted by conquerors and rulers by force. In fact, as seen in Sind after the return of Muhammad bin Qasim and in Karnataka after the death of Tipu Sultan, many Hindus, who were converted to Islam, returned to their former faith on the first opportunity. Harihar and Bukka, converted to Islam by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, reverted to Hinduism and founded the kingdom of Vijayanagar to resist the expansion of Muslim power in the South. Although any return of converts to the Hindu fold was frowned upon by the Muslim rulers, and some Brahmins encouraging converts to return to Hinduism were put to death by Firoz Tughlaq and Sikandar Lodi,³ yet there did exist some mechanism which facilitated return of converted Hindus back into their old religion. Else, with what actually happened in medieval times, Hindus would have been completely submerged under the onslaught of unmitigated proselytization. The Hindus did not believe in converting others to their faith, but the tenacity of the Hindu social order lapped away at any instrusive system as the sea laps away at a sand bank.⁴ Yet in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular there were conversions on such large scale throughout the country, that for once the bleeding soul of the Hindus rose in revolt.⁵ The Bhakti saints were the leaders of the Hindu protestant movement.⁶