History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s5.21

v3.c33.s5.21

To sum up, we think that Gibbon is right when he says that Mahmud was one of the greatest kings of the world. He was an intrepid soldier and a consummate commander, a lover of justice and a patron of learned men, a sovereign who laboured for the peace and prosperity of his people and strove to extend education and commerce. As a man, Mahmud was a person of strict discipline and was not by nature cruel or avaricious; but was temperate and generous. He was also highly religious and of pure rigid faith. The great and perhaps solitary blemish in his character was, according to our view, his bigotted intolerance. By this defect he was not only led to plunder temples and rifle idols but even to destroy them and forcibly convert people in the conquered territories. Firm faith in, and zeal for, one's own religion is not inconsistent with respect for the religious beliefs and sacred edifices of other peoples. For this reason Mahmud, in our view, ranks lower than Akbar in the list of great kings and can certainly not compare with Shivaji who was as zealous as Mahmud in his own faith yet was tolerant enough to spare the sacred structures of Islam and to honour its holy men. This spot on Mahmud's character is indeed so great, that it does not disappear in the multitude of his good qualities like the spot on the moon in her rays (Kalidāsa), but like poverty mars his many merits (unnamed poet). The plundering of towns and temples may be excusable from the stand-point of international ethics, and may be forgotten but the forcible conversion of people can not be justified or excused from the higher view-point of humanity and can never be forgotten. The reasonable interpretation of the Koran does not countenance the forcible conversion of people, as even the learned in the Koran have lately declared. And Abu Bakr had declared that conquered people should be permitted to retain their religion on payment of a capital tax. Yet religious fanaticism impelled Mahmud not only to destroy temples and idols, but to forcibly convert hundreds and thousands of Hindus in the conquered territories. It can not be denied that man has the most sacred and inviolable right to worship God in the manner he chooses and from this higher stand-point of humanity one can not too strongly condemn the forcible conversion of conquered people. In the present progress of civilization, one may even condemn peaceful but active propaganda for the spread of religion and time will soon arrive when nations will realise the utility and even the necessity of stopping all missionary or other efforts for the conversion of people by force, fraud or favour. But force especially, at all times, must be condemned as infringing the most precious right of man and we are constrained to look upon the bigotted intolerance of Mahmud which led him to forcibly convert thousands of Hindus as a great blemish on the otherwise high character of this great Mahomedan king.