Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s3.13

c9.s3.13

Conversions of high caste Hindus were also few. Hindu religion and philosophy were ancient, vast and deep, and Hindu intellectuals. intelligentsia and high castes were proud, as Alberuni points out, of a highly developed philosophy of their own. He writes that The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs. no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.²³ It was no easy matter to induce such people to convert.²⁴ It is true that prospects of employment under Muslim government would have provided some incentive for conversion even to high caste people, and a few instances of conversion for acquiring economic and status benefits are on record.²⁵ But in the early medieval period job opportunities being limited and high offices being monopolised by Turks or Muslims of foreign extraction, infiltration of and competition by Hindu converts in government service was resented. Cases of Imad-ud-din Rahyan, Nasiruddin Khusrau and Ain-ul-Mulk Multani are instances in point. They are referred to with contempt by the Turkish ruling class. Minhaj Jurjani asserts, rather bluntly, that Turks of pure lineage and Tajiks of noble birth could not tolerate (Imad-ud-din of) the tribes of Hind to rule over them.²⁶ Thus the attitude of the foreign-extraction Muslims repeatedly expressed in the diatribe of Muslim chroniclers who usually call them low born would have discouraged Hindus to convert even for the allurement of jobs.