The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c8.s4.21

c8.s4.21

It may be summarized in conclusion that the nature of the Turco-Mughal state in India was theocratic and military. The scope of the state activity was narrow and limited. Generally speaking it discharged two main functions - the maintenance of law and order according to Islamic norms, and the collection of revenue. In the medieval period both these functions meant suppression of the people. Consequently, throughout the medieval period the administration was army-oriented. It was not a secular state, nor was it a welfare state except for some vested Muslim interests. No attempt was made to build up a national state in the name of a broad-based system working as a protective umbrella for all sections of the people. It is a hypothetical belief that foreign Muslims who came as invaders and conquerors but stayed on in India, made India their home and merged with the local people. They did not prove different from those conquerors (like Mahmud Ghaznavi, Timur or Nadir Shah) who did not stay on and went back. For, instead of integrating themselves with the mainstream of Indian national tradition, it was their endeavour to keep a separate identity. To quote from Beni Prasad: By the fifteenth century the age of systematic persecution was past but the policy of toleration was the outcome of sheer necessity; it was the *sine qua non* of the very existence of the government.¹⁸⁶ Else the Semitic conception of the state is that of a theocracy.¹⁸⁷