The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.s1: Middle Class Behaviour
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.s1
- Language
- English
Middle Class Behaviour
c10.s1.1
In short, the poor style of living of the Hindu middle class of the medieval period made it rather invisible. Besides, it was very small in numbers. Traders, shopkeepers, jewellers, architects, all added up to a very small proportion of the population. With its small numbers, its influence was also limited. But the one chief characteristic of the middle classes was very much present in medieval India. In behaviour, the hall-mark of the middle classes is living with chin up, straight shoulder and chest thrown out, whether the income is less or more and whether it is categorized as lower, middle or upper middle class. The middle class has been found to be the custodian of societys undefined but ever increasing rights. It was so ever, in the medieval period. It was generally the spearhead of any protest movement. It was respected in society, comprised the respectable Citizens in the social milieu. One important identification of the middle classes is its representation of the peoples rights and its readiness to fight for such rights. This distinguishes them from the upper and lower classes.
c10.s1.2
Muslim middle classes in general and Muslim scholars in particular lived as a privileged community under Muslim government. It was their own government and, by and large, they were at peace with the establishment. But that did not always deter them from protesting injustice. The lower middle classes like artisans, soldiers and the bazar people could remonstrate in a more candid way. Two examples of such protests, one each from the Sultanate and the Mughal periods, would suffice to bring home the point. The Ilbari sultans (of the so-called Slave Dynasty) had ruled from Delhi for almost a hundred years (1206-1290). Therefore when Jalaluddin Khalji ousted the last Ilbari prince, the gentry, commoners and soldiers, rose in a body, poured out of the many gates of Delhi and assembled at the Badaon Gate to march and rescue the abducted boy-king Shamsuddin. Malik Fakhruddin, the Kotwal of Delhi, succeeded in suppressing the tumult, but so apprehensive became the new Khalji king of the peoples resentment that he did not venture to enter the city of Delhi for many months and made Kilughari the seat of his government.³¹
c10.s1.3
Bigger in nature was the protest lodged by the citizens of Delhi when the vanquished Prince Dara Shukoh was humiliated and later executed by Aurangzeb in 1658. Francois Bernier was present in Chandni Chowk and witnessed the event. He writes that the crowd assembled upon this disgraceful occasion was immense; and everywhere I saw the people weeping and lamenting the fate of Dara.³² In one of his letters Aurangzeb himself writes: The fate of Dara Shukoh excited the passions of the misguided citizens of Delhi. They wept in sympathy with him and pelted the loyal Malik Jiwan who had brought him to justice with pots full of urine and excreta. Royal troops went into action and according to Khafi Khan, several persons were knocked down and killed and many were wounded If the Kotwal had not come forward with his policemen, not one of Malik Jiwans followers would have escaped with life.³³
c10.s1.4
As a king, Muhammad bin Tughlaq was unpopular with the Ulama. Critical of his action, some of them used to write anonymous letters containing complaints and abuses for the Sultan. They would seal the letters writing on the cover By the head of His Majesty none except he should read the letter. These letters they used to throw into the council hall in the course of the night. When he (Md. Tughlaq) tore them open, he found abuses and scandals in the contents.³⁴ The art of drafting such letters in Persian was the speciality of the Ulama, and the king rightly became suspicious of this group of people. Ibn Battutas account of Muslim bloodshed³⁵ and the executions of the Ulama under his orders is of a piece with that of Isamis in *Futuh-us-Salatin*.³⁶ In short, thinkers, scholars, Ulama and Qazis, sometimes openly, at others discreetly, did not refrain from criticising the sultan and his policies.³⁷
c10.s1.5
There is an equally interesting example of such an independent protest in a seventeenth century work entitled *Tarikh-i-Salatin-i-Afghana* by Ahmad Yadgar. Writing about the strict rules of the Mughals about the law of escheat, and ruminating over the good old days of the Lodi rule, Ahmad Yadgar says: God be praised for endowing Sultan (Sikandar Lodi) with such a generous spirit (of permitting retention of any buried treasure discovered by someone). In these days (that is, of Mughal emperor Jahangir), if any one was to find even a few *tankahs*, our rulers would immediately pull down his house to examine every nook and corner for more.³⁸ If a seventeenth century chronicler could make bold to write in such a way under the very nose of the mighty Mughals, it only shows that the Muslim middle class did sometimes gather courage to ventilate public grievances. But such occassions were rare. As pointed out earlier, the Muslim educated elite, the Ulama and Mashaikh, cooperated with the Muslim regime under which they enjoyed a privileged position.