The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c10.19

c10.19

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.