Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s6: Muslim Cult of Violence

Indian Muslims: Who Are They c9.s6

Language
English

Muslim Cult of Violence

c9.s6.1

It was not only because of Hindu and Christian attitudes and actions that rise of Muslim population received a check; aggression and violence which was their natural trait even remained directed against themselves too. Of the ten Sultans of the so-called Slave Dynasty (1206-1290), at least six were deposed, poisoned or murdered. In each such case many Muslim lives were lost. Many dynasties changed during the Sultanate period. With every change of dynasty, scions of Muslim royalty, nobility and commoners were killed with abandon. The Khalji royal family was completely liquidated in 1320. The princes and slaves of the Tughlaqs were systematically massacred after the death of Firoz Tughlaq in 1388. Sword was the ultimate arbiter in Muslim political life. Writing about the warfare among the states into which Bahmani kingdom had been divided, Nuniz says: There is little faith among the Moors and they bite one another like dogs, and like to see one after the other destroyed.⁵¹ Mughal princes rebelled and more often than not fought pitched battles with parents. Shahjahan waded through blood to the throne. Aurangzeb killed all his brothers with great loss of Muslim lives. After his death in 1707, centrifugal forces were let loose in northern India. The Mughal princes got busy in wars of succession, and in one battle alone, fought between Shah Alam and Azam Tara, one hundred and eighty thousand horsemen lay dead, without speaking of the infantry or the elephants.⁵² Too much violence and aggressiveness on the part of the Muslims turned out to be a death-wish. As if killings among themselves were not enough, they invited the enmity of Jats, Sikhs and Marathas which resulted in great Muslim losses. They all directed their wrath against Delhi. It is significant that the chief gateway of every Maratha fortress is Delhi Gate.⁵³ Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali killed their co-religionists without compunction.

c9.s6.2

The surest evidence of the decline of Muslim Population in the eighteenth century is to be found in the decline of the three Capitals of the Muslim empire - Lahore, Delhi and Agra.

c9.s6.3

Lahore was ever very populous. Monserrate and Finch had written about its large population late in the sixteenth century. According to Sujan Rai in the time of Shahjahan its population increased daily.⁵⁴ To Bernier Delhi (in 1663) was as great as Paris in beauty, extent and inhabitants.⁵⁵ Sujan Rai enumerates people of almost all nationalities as living in Delhi.⁵⁶ Fatehpur Sikri had been gradually abandoned after 1585 and most of its inhabitants seem to have shifted to Agra, so that Coryat (1612-17) found it larger than Rome. Manrique, who visited Agra in 1640, estimated its population at 660,000 inhabitants, besides the large number of strangers who continually fill ninety caravanserais and other private houses.⁵⁷ Thus the population of Agra rose from over two lacs at the close of the sixteenth century to about seven lacs by the middle of the seventeenth century. And this was the position after the plague of 1616-24 had earlier devastated the city. In the seventeenth century the population of Sikri-Agra-Sikandara had probably touched the million mark.⁵⁸

c9.s6.4

But internal wars and external invasions, had a devastating effect on Muslim population. W. Francklin, who travelled through the major parts of northern India between 1793 and 1796,⁵⁹ and wrote an eye-witness account of Delhi, says that ever since the massacre of Nadir Shah, Delhi was but very thinly populated. About the close of the eighteenth century, when he wrote, the Bazars of Delhi are at present but indifferently furnished, and the population of late years miserably reduced.⁶⁰ The population of the cities of the Punjab was decimated by the invasions of Abdali. No wonder that in the eighteenth century no foreign or Indian writer compares the population of prestigious Muslim cities with those of London, Paris, Rome, Constantinople or Cairo.

c9.s6.5

¹ Davis, *op. cit.*, p.191.

c9.s6.6

² Blochmann, A Chapter from Muhammadan History in *The Calcutta Review*, No. civ. 1871 cited in Bernier, p.40 n.

c9.s6.7

³ Afif, *op. cit.*, pp. 379-81. Dorn, *Makhzan-i-Afghani*, (London, 1829), pp.65-66. Ferishtah, op. cit., I, p.182. Also Lal, *Twilight, op. cit.*, p.191.

c9.s6.8

⁴ K. Davis, *op. cit.*, p.195.

c9.s6.9

Footnotes:

c9.s6.10

⁵ *Indian Heritage*, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Vol. I (Bombay, 1955), p. 227.

c9.s6.11

⁶ Kabir declared : I have come to save the devotees. I was sent here because the world was seen in misery. Tara Chand, *op. cit.*, pp. 150-151.

c9.s6.12

⁷ G.H. Westcott, *Kabir and the Kabir Panth* (Cawnpore, 1907), p. 118. The contrast, observes Ahmad Shah, of Kabirs intimate Hindu thought, writings and ritual with the purely superficial knowledge of Moslem belief revealed in the Bijak is too striking to be ignored. Ahmad Shah, *Bijak of Kabir* (Hamirpur, 1917), p. 40.

c9.s6.13

⁸ Tara Chand, *op. cit.*, pp. 182, 185.

c9.s6.14

⁹ *Ibid*, pp. 179, 181.

c9.s6.15

¹⁰ Aziz Ahmad, *op. cit.*, p. 146.

c9.s6.16

¹¹ Dorn, *History of the Afghans*, I, 65; Ferishtah, I, 182.

c9.s6.17

¹² S.A.A. Rizvi, *op. cit.*, pp. 57-58.

c9.s6.18

¹³ M.G. Ranade, *Rise of the Maratha Power* (Publications Division, Delhi, 1961), p. 75.

c9.s6.19

¹⁴ D.C. Sen, *Chaitanya and His Age* (Calcutta, 1922), p. 14. Abdul Karim, *op. cit.*, *Social History of the Muslims in Bengal*, pp. 150, 202-204. M.T. Kennedy, *The Chaitanya Movement* (Calcutta, 1925), p. 213. Tara Chand, *op. cit.*, p. 219. D.C. Sen, *History of Bengali Literature*, pp. 228-29. *Indian Heritage*, *op. cit.*, I. p. 249.

c9.s6.20

¹⁵ Manucci, *op. cit.*, II, p. 119. Khafi Khan, *op. cit.*, II, pp. 115-18.

c9.s6.21

¹⁶ Abdul Majid Khan, *Research about Muslim Aristocracy, op. cit.*, pp.23-25.

c9.s6.22

¹⁷ Alberuni, *op. cit.*, I, pp.101-102.

c9.s6.23

¹⁸ Complied from the Census Report of India, 1931, Vol. 18 (United Provinces), Part 2.

c9.s6.24

¹⁹ H.H. Risley. *The Tribes and Castes of Bengal*, Bengal Secretariat Press, (Calcutta, 1891).

c9.s6.25

²⁰ H. Yule and H. Cordier, *Ser Marco Polo*, 2 vols. (New York, 1903), II, p.341.

c9.s6.26

²¹ Amir Hasan Sijzi, *Fawaid-ul-Fuad* (Delhi, 1865), pp. 150, 195-97.

c9.s6.27

²² Manucci, *op. cit.*, III, p.173. Also II, p.238.

c9.s6.28

²³ Alberuni, I, p.22.

c9.s6.29

²⁴ See the way of Raja Man Singhs refusal to convert in M. Mujeeb, *op. cit.*, p.360.

c9.s6.30

²⁵ Sadharan of Thaneshwar married his sister to Firoz Tughlaq, accompanied him to Delhi, and later became Wajahat-ul-Mulk (distinguished man of the State). Sikandar bin Muhammad, *Mirat-i-Sikandari* (Bombay, 1308 H), pp.5-8. Also S.C.Misra, *Rise of Muslim Power in Gujarat*, pp.137-39, and Mahdi Husain, *Tughlaq Dynasty*, p. 408.

c9.s6.31

²⁶ Minhaj, Raverty, *op. cit.*, p .829

c9.s6.32

²⁷ Manucci, *op. cit.*, II, p.436.

c9.s6.33

²⁸ *Ibid.*, p.451.

c9.s6.34

²⁹ A.K. Nazmul Karim, Muslim Social Classes in East Pakistan, *op. cit.*, pp.120-130,138-143.

c9.s6.35

Also E.A. Gait, *Census of India Report*, 1901, VI, pp.439-442, and *Ibid.* II, p.544.

c9.s6.36

³⁰ Also Titus, *op. cit.*, pp.⁴⁰, 41, 87, 99, 103, 106.

c9.s6.37

⁴⁰ Rao, *op. cit.*, p.31.

c9.s6.38

³¹ Adopted from the Table prepared by Kingsley Davis, *op. cit.*, p.165, complied from Census of India Report, 1931, Vol.18 (United Provinces), part 2.

c9.s6.39

³² S.R. Sharma, *The Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors*, p.21.

c9.s6.40

³³ Du Jarric, *Akbar and the Jesuits*, pp.152-59. Oral orders for the abolition of this practice were given much earlier.

c9.s6.41

See Du Jarric, pp. 28, 30, 67, 70, 87, 92.

c9.s6.42

³⁴ R.P. Tripathi, *Some Aspects of Muslim Administration*, p.318.

c9.s6.43

³⁵ *Akbar Nama*, II, p.190.

c9.s6.44

Smith, *op. cit.*, pp. 47-48.

c9.s6.45

³⁶ Badaoni, *op. cit.*, 11, 317.

c9.s6.46

³⁷ Du Jarric. *op. cit.*, p.75.

c9.s6.47

³⁸ R.P. Rao, *Portuguese Rule in Goa*, p.34.

c9.s6.48

³⁹ T.B. Cunha, *Goas Freedom Struggle*, p.11.

c9.s6.49

⁴¹ *Ibid.*, p.42.

c9.s6.50

⁴² *Ibid.*, p.44.

c9.s6.51

⁴³ Lach, *Asia in the Making of Europe*, I, pp. 264, 265, 271.

c9.s6.52

⁴⁴ Henrique to Loyola from Bombay, October 31, 1548. J. Wicki (ed.) *Documenta Indica* (Rome, 1960), III, p.599, cited in Lach, I, p.443.

c9.s6.53

⁴⁵ Lach, I, pp.239,487.

c9.s6.54

⁴⁶ Rao, *op. cit.*, p.29.

c9.s6.55

⁴⁷ Lach, *op. cit.*, I, p.370, on the authority of Danvers.

c9.s6.56

⁴⁸ Smith, *op. cit.*, pp.189-190, 209-210.

c9.s6.57

⁴⁹ Barbosa, *op. cit.*, II, p.78.

c9.s6.58

⁵⁰ *Ibid.*, p.74.

c9.s6.59

⁵¹ Cited in Robert Sewell, *A Forgotten Empire*, Publication Division (Delhi, 1962), p.326. Also H.K. Sherwani, *The Bahamanis of the Deccan* (Hyderabad, n.d.) p.51.

c9.s6.60

⁵² Manucci, *op. cit.*, IV, p.403.

c9.s6.61

⁵³ C.H.I. IV, p.397.

c9.s6.62

⁵⁴ Sujan Rai, *Khulasat-ul-Tawarikh*, ed. Zafar Hasan (Delhi, 1918), p.81. Also Thevenot, *Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri*, ed. S.N. Sen, (New Delhi, 1949). p.85, and Manucci, *op. cit.*, II, p.186.

c9.s6.63

⁵⁵ Bernier, *op. cit.*, p.282.

c9.s6.64

⁵⁶ *Khulasat-ul-Tawarikh*, *op. cit.*, p.5.

c9.s6.65

⁵⁷ Manrique, *op. cit.*, II, p.151.

c9.s6.66

⁵⁸ In comparison the population of London in 1593-95 was 152,479 and in 1666, 460, 000 (*Ency. Brit.* XI Ed., XVI, p.965). The population of Paris in 1590 has been estimated at 200,000 and under Louis XIV (d. 1715) at 492, 600 (*Modern Cyclopaedia*, London, 1901, VI, p.305.). Shahajahan probably transferred the capital to Delhi from Agra (1649) because of too much congestion in the latter. *Arch. Sur. Rep.* 1911-12, p.2, and contemporary authorities cited therein.

c9.s6.67

⁵⁹ W. Francklin, *The History of the Reign of the Shah-Aulum*, (Allahabad, 1915: First published 1798), Preface, p.i.

c9.s6.68

⁶⁰ *Ibid.*, pp.199-200.

Cites (6)