The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c11.s2.1

c11.s2.1

For nearly three centuries after the advent of the Arabs our country enjoyed immunity from foreign invasions. This long freedom from foreign interference produced a feeling in the minds of our people and rulers that India could never be threatened by a foreign power. Eternal vigilance, which is said to be the price of freedom, not only slackened but almost reached the vanishing point. Our rulers neglected their armies. They failed to fortify our northwestern frontier and to make an effective arrangement for the defence of the hilly passes through which foreign armies could enter the country. Side by side with this, our people failed to keep in touch with the new military tactics and with the newly invented systems of warfare. Secondly, for the selfsame reason, the people lost almost completely the sense of patriotism and national ardour, which develops under the stimulus of danger from abroad. That was not an age of territorial patriotism; but whatever patriotism there was, disappeared owing to a false sense of security. Thirdly, a kind of narrowmindedness became the characteristic of our people from the eighth to the eleventh centuries of the Christian era. They believed that they were a chosen people and all other people were unfit to be associated with them. The famous scholar Al Beruni, who came to our country in the trains of Sultan Mahmud Ghazni and studied Sanskrit language and Hindu religion and thought, had to note with surprise that “the Hindus believed that there is no country like theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.” He adds that the ancestors of the Hindus “were not so narrowminded as the present (eleventh century) generation.” He was also struck by the fact that the Hindus did “not desire that a thing which has once been polluted should be purified and thus recovered.”