The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s4: Censorship
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s4
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- English
Censorship
c5.s4.1
Middle Ages is also known as Dark Ages. It is so called because there were restrictions placed on the freedom of thought and any aberrations were punished as heresy. Any idea away from the traditional was looked upon with suspicion. New conceptions or knowledge gathered on the basis of new experiments was taboo if it came into conflict with the Church or contravened the Christian scriptures. This restriction on any new notions made the period a dark age. But it required constant monitoring of peoples thoughts and actions. The invention of printing and the rapid diffusion of opinion by means of books, induced the governments in all western countries to assume certain powers of supervision and regulation with regard to printed matter. The popes were the first to institute a regular censorship (1515) and inquisitors were required to examine all works before they were printed. Only one example would suffice to illustrate the position. Nicholas Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473: he taught mathematics at Rome in 1500 and died in Germany in 1543. He researched on the shape of the Earth, and concluded that the Sun was the centre round which Earth and other planets revolved. In his *De Orbium Celestium Revolutionibus* (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs) he even measured the diameter and circumference of the Earth fairly accurately. But the Church believed the Earth to be flat, and the fear of Inquisition discouraged Copernicus from publishing his outrageous researches till about the close of his life, for the Church could do little harm to a man about to die. Even so, his book was forbidden to the Roman Catholics for long. The Inquisition freely used torture to extort confession; heretics were broken on the wheel, or burnt at stake on cross-roads on Sundays for punishment as well as an example for others.
c5.s4.2
In the medieval India under Muslim rule there was no printing press and no research of the type done by Copernicus. The need for censorship arose because Islam forbade any innovation in the thought and personal behaviour of Muslims. Beware of novel affairs, said Muhammad, for surely all innovation is error. What was not contained in the Quran or Hadis was considered as innovation and discouraged. That is why Muslim learning in India remained orthodox, repetitive and stereotyped. Free thought and research in science and technology were ruled out. Fundamentalist writers like Khwaja Baqi Billah (1563-1603), Shaikh Ahmad Sarhindi (1564-1624) and Shah Waliullah (1702-1763) were considered as champion thinkers.
c5.s4.3
As Muslims must live in accordance with a set of rules and a code of conduct, there was an official Censor of Public Morals and Religion called *Muhtasib*. It was his duty to see that Muslims did not absent themselves from public prayers, that no one was found drunk in public places, that liquors or drugs were not sold openly. He possessed arbitrary power of intervention and could enter the houses of wrong-doers to bring them to book. Sir Alexander Burnes relates that he saw persons publicly scourged because they had slept during prayer-time and smoked on Friday.³⁴ I. H. Qureshi writes, It was soon discovered that people situated as the Muslims were in India could not be allowed to grow lax in their ethical and spiritual conduct without endangering the very existence of the Sultanate.³⁵ Hurriedly converted, half-trained, Indian Muslims were prone to reverting to their original faith which was full of freedom. Therefore, all the sultans were very strict about enforcing Islamic behaviour on Muslims through the agency of Muhtasibs. Balban, Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq were known for their severity in this regard. Muhammad bin Tughlaq regarded wilful neglect of prayers a heinous crime and inflicted severe chastisement on transgressors.³⁶ Women too were not spared; Firoz Shah and Sikandar Lodi in particular forbade women from going on pilgrimage to the tombs of saints.³⁷ The Department of Censor of Public Morals was known as *hisbah*.³⁸
c5.s4.4
Non-Muslims suffered even more because of censorial regulations. Tradition divided them into seven kinds of offenders like unbelievers, infidels, hypocrites, polytheists etc. who are destined to go to seven kinds of hell from the mild *Jahannum* to the hottest region of hell called *Hawiyah*, a bottomless pit of scorching fire. A strict watch was kept on their thought and expression. They were to dress differently from the Muslims, they could not worship their gods in public and they could not claim that their religion was as good as Islam. A case which culminated in the execution of a Brahmin may be quoted in some detail as an example.
c5.s4.5
A report was brought to the Sultan (Firoz Tughlaq 1351-88) that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (*Zunar dar*) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that the people of the city, both Musalmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. This Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (*muhrak*), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. (These women were surely newly converted and had not been able to completely cut themselves off from their original faith). An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought in the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges, doctors, and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musalman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on the top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book (Shams Siraj Afif) was present at the *darbar* and witnessed the execution the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees.³⁹
c5.s4.6
The above detailed description gives the idea of burning at stake under Muslim rule. Else similar cases of executions are many. During the reign of Firoz himself the Hindu governor of Uchch was killed. He was falsely accused of expressing affirmation in Islam and then recanting.⁴⁰ In the time of Sikandar Lodi (1489-1517) a Brahman of Kaner in Sambhal was similarly punished with death for committing the crime of declaring as much as that Islam was true, but his own religion was also true.⁴¹