The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c10.s3.4

c10.s3.4

Sant Kabir lived in U.P. from 1425 to about 1505, Guru Nanak in Punjab from 1469 to 1538 and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal from 1486 to 1534. During this period, particularly after the invasion of Timur (1399 C.E.), northern India was broken up into a number of independent Muslim kingdoms like Gujarat, Malwa, Jaunpur and Bengal while the Sultanate of Delhi was ruled by the Saiyyads and Lodis. Sikandar Lodi (1489-1517) revived the strength of the Sultanate and was the strongest and most fanatical ruler of the dynasty. Babur conquered Hindustan from 1526 to 1530 and Akbar ascended the throne in 1556. Thus from the beginning of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century (1400-1556), India witnessed terrible political upheavals resulting in large-scale massacres and conversions. The division of the country into small kingdoms rendered the task of the Muslim rulers easy in pressurising their Hindu subjects in their micro units into accepting Islam. The local Sultans and nobles, in order to control and demoralize the subject people, not only demolished their temples and imposed legal disabilities upon them but also confronted them with the choice between Islam and death - a phenomenon which had been going on since the days of Iltutmish in a rather haphazard manner. It is therefore necessary to cursorily go through this scenario to be able to make a correct appraisal of the services of these great saints, and their disciples and followers, in saving Hindu society from succumbing to Muslim proselytization.