History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c45.s4: §4. Necessary effects of Muslim conquest.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c45.s4
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§4. Necessary effects of Muslim conquest.
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The history of the world under Muslim rule illustrates how theology has repeatedly prevailed over political wisdom. The early Arab conquerors, notably in Sindh, followed the wise and profitable policy of leaving the shrines and religious practices of the non-Muslim population practically undisturbed. On the first capture of a city the inhabitants were called upon to accept Islam. If they agreed, they were given full rights with the conquerors; otherwise, by paying a compounding fee (*jaziya*), they secured the right of exercising their religion. The demolition of the chief temple in the captured city and the erection of a mosque on its site was an invariable incident of Muslim conquest. But there was at first no wanton or systematic iconoclasm. With the growth of the Muslim population, however, the long enjoyment of unchallenged power bred in them a spirit of intolerance and a love of persecution.* Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects. In addition to the poll-tax and public degradation in dress and demeanour imposed on them, the non-Muslims were subjected to various hopes and fears. Rewards in the form of money and public employment were offered to apostates from Hinduism. The leaders of Hindu religion and society were systematically repressed, to deprive the sect of spiritual instruction, and their religious gatherings and processions were forbidden in order to prevent the growth of solidarity and a sense of communal strength among them. No new temple was allowed to be built† nor any old one to be repaired, so that the total disappearance of all places of Hindu worship was to be merely a question of time. But even this delay, this slow operation of Time, was intolerable to many of the more fiery spirits of Islam, who tried to hasten the abolition of "infidelity" by anticipating the destructive hand of Time and forcibly pulling down temples.
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∗ Elliot, i. 469. The *zimmis* "may repair and even rebuild existing churches, but not erect new ones on new sites." (Encyclo., i. 959.) "The construction of places of worship in the Muslim territory is unlawful for them, unless within their own houses, but if churches and synagogues originally belonging to Christians and Jews be destroyed or fall to decay, they are at liberty to rebuild and repair them." (Hughes, 711.) "It has been settled according to Canon Law that no long standing temple should be demolished nor any new one allowed to be built" (Aurangzib's Benares *farman*, J.A.S.B., 1911, 689).
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† Firuz Shah Tughlaq destroyed all new idol-temples in Delhi and its environs, and "killed the leaders of infidelity and subjected the
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In this later age, particularly among the Turks, who were new converts to Islam and had all the fiery zeal of neophytes, the old Arab toleration of false faiths appeared sinful and the suppression of infidels, however accomplished, a supreme merit in the eyes of God. Outside their own realms, the destruction of temples and the slaughter of Hindus sanctified every war of aggression. Thus a frame of mind was produced in the Muslim community which habitually regarded plunder and homicide as the purest of human acts, as "exertion in the path of God." When Timur, for instance, was tempted by the report of the vast wealth of India to come and plunder it, he announced his aim to be "to overthrow their temples and idols and become ghazis and mujahids before God;...since the inhabitants are chiefly polytheists and infidels, and idolators and worshippers of the Sun, by the order of God and
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lower orders to stripes and chastisement, as a warning to all men that no zimmi could follow such wicked practices in a Muslim country." (Elliot, iii. 380-381.)
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His Prophet it is right for us to conquer them." (Elliot, iii. 396.) This motive sanctified all his massacres and outrages in the eyes of his fellow-believers. Again, in 1569, when a noble named Husain Khan went on a private predatory expedition into the Sewalik mountains on "hearing that the bricks of the temples were of silver and gold, and conceiving a desire for this and all other unguarded treasures, of which he had heard a lying report," the pious historian Al Badayuni (ii. 125) calls it a religious war. When Muhammad Adil Shah sent his armies to attack the Hindus of the Karnatak, whose only fault was their wealth, his Court historian designated this campaign of slaughter, rapine and outrage as the realization of a long cherished pious resolution. (Bas. Sal. 304.) The murder of infidels (*kafir-kushi*) is counted a merit in a Muslim. It is not necessary that he should tame his own passions or mortify his flesh; it is not necessary for him to grow a rich growth of spirituality. He has only to slay a certain class of his fellow-beings or plunder their lands and wealth, and this act in itself would raise his soul to heaven.*
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∗ When, in 1910, Boutros Pasha was murdered by an Egyptian Muhammadan for no personal provocation but for the political reason that he had presided over the court that sentenced the Denshawai villagers, and the guilt of the murderer was conclusively proved by evidence, the Chief Qazi of Egypt pronounced the judgment that according to Islam it is no crime for a Muslim to slay an unbeliever.
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A religion whose followers are taught to regard robbery and murder as a religious duty, is incompatible with the progress of mankind or with the peace of the world.