Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s3.11

c9.s3.11

There is also recorded contemporary evidence of the unwillingness of the backward people to voluntarily convert to Islam. Mahmud of Ghazni used to convert people by force, but his contemporary Alberuni (eleventh century) nowhere mentions voluntary conversions of Hindus. Writing about the backward class Hindus called Govis (now called Paraiyar) Marco Polo (thirteenth century) says: Nothing on earth would induce them to enter the place where Messer St. Thomas is - I mean where his body lies Indeed, were even twenty or thirty men to lay hold of these Govis and to try to hold them in the place where the Body of the Blessed Apostle of Jesus Christ lies buried they could not do it.²⁰ This is the testimony about the South. About North, Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya (fourteenth century) at many places admits that Hindus do not embrace Islam, and that the heart of these people is not changed through sermord.²¹ In the seventeenth century Manucci wrote that the backward caste people were proud of their caste and were reluctant to convert.²² Caste gave them freedom and dignity of the kind which no other system did.