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The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c26.s2: The Hindus

The Sultanate of Delhi, 711–1526 A.D. c26.s2

Language
English

Contents

The Hindus

Condition

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The Hindus formed the vast majority of the population. Their numerical strength, in those days, could not have been less than 95 per cent of the population of the country. As before the advent of the Turks, they were rulers and in possession of the entire country, they held most of the land even during the Sultanate period. There were many well-to-do chiefs among them. The lower branches of administration, specially the department of revenue and finance, were manned by them. The *khuts*, *chaudharis* and *muqaddams* were all Hindus. The principal merchants, businessmen and traders as well as petty shopkeepers were mostly Hindus. They had almost monopolised the banking and money-lending professions. Multani traders and money-lenders are referred to in the contemporary chronicles. They lent money even to high Turkish officers and nobles. Hindu *banjaras* were attached to the armies, as, there being no regular commissariat arrangements, the provisions to the troops were supplied by these hereditary nomad merchants. A very considerable section among the Hindus was that of the agriculturists. Many must have followed the various professions, such as, teaching, medicine and the like. Brahmans, generally, must have devoted their time to studies and to administering to the religious needs of the people.

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The Turkish process of conquest and subjugation of the country, being co-extensive with the period of its rule, lasted for over 350 years, during which lakhs of Hindus were killed, and lakhs were massacred after wars, and lakhs of their women and children were converted and sold as slaves. Timur, for instance, in one day massacred one lakh of Hindu prisoners on the eve of his battle with Mahmud Tughluq. In no period of our history—not even in early or later British—was there such a wanton destruction of human life as during the 325 years of Turko-Afghan rule. Besides, the Turkish conquests deprived a considerable number of the upper and middle class Hindus of employment in state service, civil and military, which must have brought about a revolution in our society causing hardship to countless families. Politically and socially, the Hindus, as a people, had to suffer deeply during this period. Not only were they deprived of their position as rulers, ministers, governors and commanders of troops, but were also treated contemptuously. The Turkish Sultans and their principal followers sought their brides from well-to-do Hindu families and compelled the proud chiefs to part with their daughters. In accordance with the Muslim law, the Hindu girls were first deprived of their religion, converted to Islam, and then married. All this served as a perpetual humiliation to the proud Hindus who honestly believed, and not merely as a reaction caused by their defeat and degradation, that the newcomers were inferior to them in culture, in religion, in race and, above all, in matters of purity of conduct and morals and ways of life. The political and economic hardships, to which they were subjected by the conquerors, did not inflict upon them so much misery as the humiliating treatment, religious persecution and, above all, invasion on their family honour.

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The Hindu society was caste-ridden. The Turkish rule compelled the Hindus to make the caste rules more rigorous than they were in free India. Owing to the Turkish hobby of seeking beautiful Hindu girls for wives, child-marriage became common. Seclusion of women became a general practice in the upper and middle class Hindu families. Widow remarriage was unthinkable in that age except among low caste people. Except in well-to-do families there seems to have been very little of female education. Elementary education for boys was, however, universal. In every village there was a school where reading, writing and arithmetic were taught. Some kind of military training must have also been in vogue. As it was beyond the strength of the Turkish government to disarm the Hindu population, the latter successfully made their own arrangements for the protection and defence of their villages. The Hindus were devoted to their religion. Though the intellectuals among them believed in the unity of God, a majority worshipped images.

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People believed in superstition and had great faith in astrology, palmistry, magic and sorcery. Their moral and sexual character was very high. Loans taken were almost invariably repaid. If the debtor failed to pay, his son or grandson considered it his obligation to pay it back with interest. On the whole, the standard of individual honesty and purity of conduct was fairly high.

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Of late it has become a fashion with a certain class of our modern writers to endeavour to show that the condition of the Hindus during the Turkish rule was good. One writer¹ has gone to the extent of saying that they were happier under Turkish rule than they had been for a long time under their own indigenous rulers. Doubtful epigraphic evidence has been produced in support of this new-fangled theory. If one or two instances of a Hindu here and there entertaining a favourable opinion about a particular Turkish ruler could be cited, there can be produced a thousand instances of ill-treatment and persecution from the pages of the Muslim historians themselves. Similarly, an attempt has been made to show that State service was open to the Hindus and that some of them were employed on fairly high posts; but when one examines the annals of the period, one fails to see a single Hindu enjoying the post of a governor or a minister or a secretary or even the post of a district officer or the head of a *pargana*. The Hindu *khuts*, *chaudharis* and *muqaddams* were hereditary revenue officers in the local areas without whose co-operation the administration could not be carried on. Inspite of a thorough search, two modern biographers of the liberal minded Muhammad bin Tughluq have not been able to find any other Hindu than one Ratan holding the position of importance during his reign.

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But the consequence resulting from the appointment of even one Hindu officer would throw lurid light on the narrowness and intolerance of the ruling oligarchy as well as of the Muslim population as a whole rather than establish the liberal character of the administration. Ratan’s appointment to Sindh—not as governor, as Dr. Mahdi Husain says, but as a revenue officer—gave a rude shock to the arrogant Muslim population of the province. The notables among them hatched a conspiracy against him and brought about his murder. The first and the last Hindu notable to find a place at the court of Delhi, during the Sultanate period, was one Sidhapala who had come to importance not because the court's policy was to patronise Hindu nobility but because Sidhapala's character was in keeping with that of the Turkish nobility, specially that of the *wazir* who was on the look-out for an ally to bring about the murder of his royal patron. Moreover, the Sultanate was then on its last legs. It was unthinkable for a Hindu occupying even a fourth-rate place at the court under any of the Khalji and Tughluq rulers. The employment of the Hindus in the armies of the Sultans, whether as soldiers or as petty officers, proves nothing, as they were employed as mercenaries, like the troops of other nationalities, as early as the time of Mahmud of Ghazni. If the Hindus were in possession of most of the land it was so because it could not be helped.

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No medieval government, however powerful, could have succeeded in dispossessing such a large and powerful community as the Hindu of its lands. The confidence of our ancestors is reflected in the medieval proverb: "Land is not a carpet that a foreigner or a Sultan will roll it up and take away on his shoulders." It is a pity that most of the Muslim writers refuse to appreciate the sentiments and sufferings of the indigenous population under the foreign rule. The wearer alone knows where the shoe pinches. Besides unimpeachable contemporary evidence, we have unbroken tradition coming down from hundreds of years that the Turkish rule was oppressive. At the time of a natural calamity the Hindu public used to cry out in agony: "Both God and Turk are after us." One can easily understand these sentiments, for religion and family honour—two of the dearest human possessions—were not safe during the Turkish rule. Years ago the author had several opportunities of hearing the comparison made by our rural people between the Turkish and the British rule. The British rule, according to them, was bad because it exploited the people economically; the Turkish rule was worse as it made unbecoming inroads on the people's religion and honour.

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¹ Dr. I. H. Qureshi; also Dr. Mahdi Husain.