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The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c10: 4. Causes of the Fall of the Hindu States in Early Medieval Age

The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c10

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4. Causes of the Fall of the Hindu States in Early Medieval Age

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The history of the resistance offered by the Hindu States of north-western India against the mighty Arab and Turkish invaders from Central Asia and of the causes of their eventual fall has not yet been studied in correct perspective. No modern writer has made a scientific study to analyse on a comprehensive basis the causes of our final defeat and loss of independence at the hands of the Islamic races from the north-west. Owing to our eventual failure to stem the tide of Islamic invasions, it has been presumed that our political, social and military organisations must have been rotten to crumble at the touch of the virile invading forces. Modern European writers have sedulously built up the theory that as a race the Hindus were and are inferior in fighting qualities to the Central Asian Arabs, Turks and other Islamic peoples, and this in their opinion was the principal cause of the downfall of the Hindu States in medieval age. Lane-Poole, for example, remarks, “To the contrast of union and disunion, north and south, race and climate, was added the zeal of the Moslem and the greed of the robber.”¹ Vincent A. Smith, an equally acknowledged authority, writes that the invaders were superior fighters, as they came from the cold climate of the north, were eaters of meat and were inured to warfare.² This theory is based on an uncritical acceptance of the probably biased accounts of medieval Muslim writers, so prone to magnify the exploits of their compatriots and minimise those of their adversaries, and seems to give an undue consideration to the later debacle of the times of Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad of Ghur utterly ignoring the earlier three and a half centuries’ magnificent resistance offered by the Hindus of Sindh, Afghanistan and the Panjab. And a debacle, it must not be forgotten, was inevitable in the wake of demoralisation that set in as a result of three hundred and fifty years’ (636 A.D.–997 A.D.) warfare and confusion against a succession of ever-recurring fresh waves of invaders.

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¹ Stanley Lane-Poole, *Medieval India*.

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² V. A. Smith, *The Oxford History of India*.

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How fallacious the theory is, can be seen from the fact that the Arabs, who were the first among the Islamic races to conquer an Indian province, Sindh, were the conquerors of many countries of Asia, Africa and Europe which included Egypt and other countries of North Africa and Portugal, Spain and the southern half of France—countries situated in the colder regions far north of Arabia, the inhabitants of which were as much, if not more, eaters of meat and accustomed to warfare. It is also worthy of note that the Arabs completely vanquished the most ferocious races of Central Asia, such as the Mongols, Uzbeks and the Turks—the ancestors of heaven-born generals like Changiz Khan and Timur—races that were reckoned for centuries the best fighters in the whole of Asia and far superior to the Arabs in military qualities, horsemanship and ferocity. It was these Turks who after their conversion to Islam succeeded in conquering the Hindu kingdoms of Kabul and Zabul in Afghanistan and the kingdom of the Panjab which the Arabs had failed to subdue. A section of these very Turks, known as the Ottoman Turks, conquered in the fifteenth century the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital Constantinople and all the countries of the Balkan peninsula in Eastern Europe and threatened Vienna, the capital of Austria. These Eastern people dominated south-eastern Europe for over two hundred years, and inspite of more than three centuries' best efforts on the part of some of the powerful European nations, they could not be driven out of Europe. And today the descendants of the world conquerors of the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. are at the mercy of a less virile race, a handful of Jews of the tiny Israel, surrounded though it is by the very people who carried the message of prophet Muhammad to three continents of the world. In this country the short-sized Marathas, who were despised in northern India in the time of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb (17th century), became an object of terror to the proud, tall and well-built Mughals and ferocious Pathans so much so that Muslim chroniclers of the 18th and 19th centuries, like Ghulam Ali, Murtaza Husain and others not only paid tribute to Maratha daring but also openly avowed that ten Maratha soldiers were more than a match for twenty Pathan stalwarts. Examples can be multiplied, but these are enough to demolish the theory of race superiority and the belief that military talent is measured in terms of size and bulk. Moreover, the Indian soldier has been superb through the ages. In the World War I and II he fought in many theatres in Asia, Africa and Europe and not only covered himself with glory but elicited unstinted praise from European commanders and statesmen who saw his exploits. His ancestors of the medieval age, who were free and fought for a national cause, could not have been inferior.

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In the second place, if seen in the context of the contemporary world history, it would be realised that no people in any part of the world offered such a prolonged and tough and successful resistance to the aggression of the Arabs and the Turks as did the Hindus of the medieval age. Whereas many countries of Asia, Africa and Europe succumbed to the Arab onslaught, each after a few years’ resistance, Sindh yielded only after nearly seventy-five years’ struggle, Hindu Afghanistan fought for two hundred and twenty years and the Panjab for one hundred and fifty-six years. For example, Syria, which was the first country to face the Arab aggression, fell within a year (635-636 A.D.) and after the surrender of Damascus, its capital, “other towns fell like ninepins before the conquerors.” Iraq fell without fighting⁴ in 637 A.D. The whole of the mighty Persian Empire was annexed within five years of the famous battle of Cadesia fought in 1637 A.D., that is, it was conquered in “about a decade,”⁵ in all. The year 643 A.D. brought the Arabs to the borders of India.⁶ A whirl-wind campaign led to the conquest of the entire Central Asia, inhabited by the ferocious Turks, Turkomans, Uzbeks and Mongols, in eight years (642-650 A.D.). All the countries of North Africa were conquered and occupied between 639 and 709 A.D. In the ancient land of Egypt the story was the same as elsewhere—a rout, a siege and the cry of victory. Babylon was taken in this manner, and Alexandria was captured within a year.⁷ In 711 A.D. Tariq, the Berber general of Musa, landed at Gibralter and on July 19 of the same year defeated Roderick, king of Spain, who disappeared altogether. “After this decisive victory the march of the Moslems through Spain almost amounted to a promenadet.” Within the short space of seven years the conquest of the (Iberian) peninsula, one of the fairest and largest provinces of medieval Europe, was effected. “The conquerors were there to stay—for centuries at least.” In about a dozen years’ spasmodic operations the southern half of France was subdued. The Arab expansion in Europe received its first check at the battle of Tours and Poiters where the Muslim leader Abdar Rahman was defeated by Charles the Martel in October 732 A.D.¹⁰

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³ Philip K. Hitti, *The Arabs*, p. 49.

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⁴ *Ibid.*

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⁵ *Ibid*, p. 50.

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⁶ *Ibid.*

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⁷ *Ibid*, p. 52.

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⁸ *Ibid*, p. 65.

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⁹ *Ibid*, p. 67.

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¹⁰ Philip K. Hitti, *The Arabs*, p. 71.

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Thirdly, the value and extent of the success of the Indian resistance against the Muslim invaders can be appreciated from the fact that whereas the Arabs, and to a lesser degree the Turks, completely exterminated the religion, the culture and the way of life of the peoples whom they subjugated, they failed in absorbing us and blotting out our religion and culture or even in bringing about a break between us and our ancestors. In fact, we influenced the Muslim invaders more than they influenced us. Titus is right when he says, "Hinduism has wrought a far greater change in Islam than Islam has wrought in Hinduism which still continues to pursue the even tenor of its way with a complacency and confidence that are amazing."¹¹

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¹¹ Titus, *Indian Islam*.

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Fourthly, even after the fall of Sindh and Hindu Afghanistan which opened the flood gates of, first, the Arab and then the Turkish invasions, the Arabs failed to conquer permanently an inch of our territory beyond Sindh and Multan and the Turks had to put up one hundred and fifty years' (870-1026 A.D.) fighting before they could conquer and occupy the Panjab. Counting from 1175, the year of the first invasion of Muhammad of Ghur, to the death of Ala-ud-din Khalji (1316), it took the Turks another century and a half to conquer Northern India minus Kashmir, and Assam and Orissa, and even then the conquest was not effective, many patches of extensive territories remaining interspersed here and there. It is a matter of common knowledge that Rajasthan was never effectually conquered in the medieval age, and that throughout the Sultanate period (1206-1526) annual expeditions had to be undertaken into the Doab, the region between the Ganga and the Yamuna, to collect tribute from the zamindars.¹²

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¹² Minhaj-us-Siraj, *Tabqat-i-Nasiri*; Barani, *Tarikh-i-Firozshahi*; *Elliot and Dowson*, Vols. II-IV.

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The causes of our defeat must, therefore, be sought somewhere else. A nation's greatest enemy, says Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the doyen of Indian historians, is within, not without. Internal factors consequently take the first place. Unfortunately, north-western India, including Hindu Afghanistan and part of Sindh, was even before the 7th century A.D. isolated from the rest of the country, as the parts beyond the Indus were looked upon by the conservative elements of our society as ‘border-lands’ inhabited by ‘barbarians’.¹³ There was in those regions, particularly in Afghanistan, a great intermixture of races, and Indo-Greeks, Indo-Parthians, Kushans and Huns, who in course of time embraced Hinduism and had become one with the native Hindu population. This being repugnant to the rising conservatism in the country, the rest of India took little interest in the affairs of these people who could expect no help or sympathy from their countrymen and had to depend upon themselves and face the enemy single-handed. Secondly, after the extinction of the Mauryan Empire there was no such thing as the defence of the frontiers of India by the united might and resources of the Indian people, because our north-west frontiers and all other frontiers were the frontiers of small independent kingdoms. There was no central government for the whole of India or even for the whole of Northern India, which could think and act for the country as a whole. The kingdoms of Sindh, Kabul and Zabul, though ruled by brave monarchs and inhabited by warlike people, encountered superior forces backed by the might and resources of the biggest and most powerful empire of the age, with their slender manpower and financial strength. The other Indian states were interested in these wars as their neighbours’ wars and not their own. Obviously, Hindu Afghanistan or Sindh could not under these circumstances carry on an unequal contest for an indefinitely long period.

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¹³ Thomas Watters, *On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India*, Vol. I, p. 180.

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Thirdly, the country during the period experienced a Brahmanical reaction that produced three-fold effects on its fortune. In the first place, under the stress of this movement Brahman ministers overthrew their Kshatriya and Sudra masters, usurped their thrones and set themselves up as rulers, which brought about a kind of political revolution and instability. Lallya (also known as Kallar), the Brahman minister of the Kshatriya king Lagaturman of Kabul, deposed and imprisoned his sovereign and seized his kingdom in 870 A.D. (256 A.H.) at a time when his country was faced with a first class external crisis on account of the aggressions of Saffarid Yaqub ibn Layth.¹⁴ Within a year of his usurpation Lallya was driven out of Kabul by Yaqub, and Afghanistan, which had for centuries been the north-western part of India, was lost once for all. In Sindh, while the Arab raids were in progress, the Brahman minister Chach deposed and slew his Sudra master Sahasi Rai II, married his widowed queen and set himself up as ruler¹⁵ about 700 A.D. Chach’s son Dahir had to pay the price of his father’s usurpation. In 712 A.D. he was defeated and killed by the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim and Sindh was for ever lost to Hindu India. In the second place, the rise of orthodox Hinduism alienated the Buddhist population in the country and quite a large number of them, at least in Sindh, not only became indifferent towards the ruling family but even went over to the side of the Arab invaders and rendered them material assistance against their king and country.¹⁶

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¹⁴ *Kitab-ul-Hind* of Al Beruni (English trans. by Sachau), Vol. II, pp. 10-13.

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¹⁵ *Chach-nama*; also R. C. Majumdar’s *The Classical Age*, p. 165.

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¹⁶ The movement seems to have been widespread and begun earlier than the period. Gohilya or Guhil who was of Nagar Brahman parentage had seized Chittor from King Man Mori and set himself up as King in the 6th century A.D.

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Moreover, inasmuch as religious orthodoxy and ritualism run counter to the simplicity of the poor, the lower orders of our society felt a widening gulf between them and their new rulers who pursued a suicidal policy of social and religious exclusion. The Jats and Meds in Sindh felt so much oppressed that like Buddhists they joined Muhammad bin Qasim against Dahir. The political result, therefore, of the Brahmanical orthodoxy was the destruction of that social solidarity the presence of which is reckoned as the best guarantee of the preservation of political independence.

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Fourthly, the people of north India as a whole seem to have suffered from an unprecedented moral and sexual degeneration, which must have greatly impaired their strength as fighters. Obscene images in the outer walls of our temples, such as at Konarak, Khajuraho and many other places, including even at Puri, Chittor and Udaipur, inspite of a philosophical justification, must have brought about corruption and degeneration.

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Fifthly, in the later days of their struggle with the foreign invaders, the Hindus of Afghanistan and Sindh had the ill-luck to have to fight simultaneously on two fronts. In the early days of Kia-pi-shi’s clash with the Arabs, Kashmir was on friendly terms with the Shahis of Kabul. Lalitaditya Muktapida (c. 713-750 A.D.) of Kashmir had an alliance with the Shahi ruler, because his frontier too was subjected to Arab raids. This wise policy was given up by Lalitaditya's successors, Shankaravarman especially, which compelled the rulers of Kabul to denude their troops from their western front for the defence of their dominion from the grasping ruler of Kashmir, and minimised their power of resistance against the Muslims.

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Finally, the mistakes of policy and strategy and those of detail committed in the course of fighting cannot be lightly brushed aside, as they contributed greatly to deciding the fate of the country. For example, the ignorance of the governments of Afghanistan and Sindh about the warlike ambition and activities of the Arabs and their failure to take adequate steps in time for the defence of the country cannot be easily accounted for. Dahir foolishly sent no reinforcement to Debal and other towns of Sindh and allowed these to be individually isolated and conquered. He made no attempt to attack Muhammad bin Qasim, while the latter lay encamped for two months on the bank of the Indus, paralysed by sickness among his horses, and pinned his faith on a single pitched battle.

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As regards the general causes, one must admit that, though in no way braver than the Indian troops, the Arab and Turkish armies were better fighting forces on account of their complete equality and social solidarity. Islam had swept away all distinctions of caste and race and given a cohesion to the various races of Central Asia and knit them together into a homogeneous unit. They were, moreover, free from the evil of drink, as the early Muslims religiously obeyed the Quranic injunction which forbade wine. The result was that the invading forces displayed an unexampled unity of purpose and effort, which were not possible for Indian troops, divided as they were by caste, religion and diverse social practices.

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Secondly, the invaders were mostly well-mounted archers and their horses and arms gave them indisputable military superiority over our troops. The Arabian horses were proverbial in history, and Turkoman horses were even better. "The Turkoman horse is the noblest in the whole of Central Asia," says the *Cambridge Medieval History*, "and surpasses all other breeds in speed, endurance, intelligence, faithfulness and a marvellous sense of locality. The Turkoman horse is tall, with a long narrow body, long thin legs and neck......On their predatory expeditions the Turkomans often cover 650 miles in the waterless desert in five days . . . . . They owe their power to the training of thousands of years in the endless steppes and deserts, and to the continual plundering raids which demanded the utmost endurance and privation of which horse and rider were capable.”¹⁷ The Turks, whose homeland lay just south of that of the Turkomans, were only a little less hardy and were mounted on fleet Turkoman and Arab horses. “The Turks were so famous for the speed and vigour of their cavalry charges,” writes Sir Jadunath Sarkar, “that in the Asiatic world the phrase Turk-sawar (i.e., Turkish horseman) became a general name for the richly accoutred, superbly mounted dashing cavalry of any race.”¹⁸ The weapons of the rank and file of the invaders were a composite bow of two pieces joined together by a metal band which discharged deadly arrows to a range of 80 to 100 paces and “which pierced cuirass and shield with ease,” and long spears. The Turkish nobles and their horses were clad in armour and fought with bows and arrows and spears. Both were also equipped with long sharp swords.

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¹⁷ *Cambridge Medieval History*, Vol. I, p. 331.

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¹⁸ *Hindustan Standard* (Sunday Edition), 7th March, 1954.

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Thirdly, leaving individual cases apart, there was perhaps generally speaking better generalship on the enemy side inasmuch as larger forces always call for greater skill in leadership and organisational capacity of a higher order than smaller armies which were at the disposal of the rulers of Sindh, Kabul, Zabul and the Panjab. In fact they could not afford to maintain larger armies on account of their limited resources in men and money and had, therefore, fewer opportunities of developing generalship of a high order.

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Fourthly, our leaders and commanders had failed to keep pace with the development of tactics that had been taking place in Asia even before the birth of Islam and were perfected by Arab and Turkish converts to Islam. These tactics consisted in employing mounted archers as light troopers for harassing and bewildering the enemy and causing confusion in his ranks by archery fire, and then charging with armoured heavy cavalry. The squadrons of the invading army were divided into five divisions, namely, right wing, centre, left wing, advance guard and reserve, and used to be drawn up in the form of a crescent. The enemy would not attempt to come close or make a general or frontal attack; but large bodies of the enemy mounted archers would hover round and ply their arrows against the Indian army that was posted in a long formation and divided only into three parts, right wing, centre and left wing. The enemy would late in the day steal round the wings and would molest the fighting Indian army from round behind. In the moment of its confusion the Turkish horses would pour a cloud of arrows and the horns of the crescent would enclose the Indian rear.

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Fifthly, whereas the Rajputs prided themselves on their swordsmanship and looked upon the battle as a tournament to display their skill and chivalry, the Arabs and the Turks fought to win and believed that everything was fair in war. The former were also averse to taking advantage of the enemy's weakness and to resort to feints and manoeuvres in which the Arabs and Turks were adepts.

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Sixthly, both Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad of Ghur, the former on a much larger scale than the latter, made use of shock tactics to dishearten and demoralise the Indian troops and people. With lightning rapidity they would swoop down upon our fair cities and devastate the land with fire and sword. These tactics were repeated times out of number and so much frightened the people that they began thinking that Mahmud's troops were invincible. Therefore, political and military demoralisation set in, and people wrongly began believing that resistance against the Turkish hordes was useless. It was this feeling that paralysed our society in that age. Finally, the Arabs and the Turks were inspired by a great religious enthusiasm which made them feel and believe that God had made them His instrument in purging the world of idolatry and making it safe for Islam. Our people had no such inspiring ideology to sustain them, except the defence of their country and religion which gave them power to resist and not to carry war into the enemy's country. Mere physical strength and military weapons do not constitute the total equipment of an army. An inspiring ideology is as essential as military training and equipment.

Cites (4)