The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c18.s2.4

c18.s2.4

The only citizens of the early Turkish state in India were Muslims, notably Turkish Musalmans. The Hindus, who formed a vast majority of the population of the Sultanate of Delhi, were not accorded full rights of citizenship. The non-Muslims were called *zimmis*, that is, people living under guarantee or contract. When the Turks conquered our country, they offered, like other Muslim conquerors, three alternatives to the conquered people, namely, conversion to Islam, or death, or living like a subject and degraded people on payment of the *jizya*. A vast majority of the conquered people agreed to pay the *jizya*, and they were allowed to live. Several disabilities were imposed upon the *zimmis* who were discriminated against in matters of state employment, civic rights, justice and taxation. Learned Muslim divines (*ulema*), who were supposed to be the custodians of Islamic law, were particularly hostile to the subject people. Their policy aimed at reducing the Hindus to the position political fiction, these new and independent Muslim States recognised the Khalifa, at least in theory, to be their political and religious head or suzerain. They had the Khalifa’s name on their coins and in the *khutbas*. This fiction continued even after the Buddhist Hulagu, the great Mongol leader, had taken Baghdad and put the Khalifa to death in 1258. An uncle of the last Khalifa took refuge in Egypt, where he was recognised as the spiritual head by the Sultans of that country. The fiction, thus, continued till the last of the nominal Khalifas resigned his theoretical rights in favour of Sultan Sulaiman II of Constantinople in the sixteenth century.