Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t5.2

c4.s2.t5.2

An objection is sometimes made, not without reason, that a picture of social life coming more or less exclusively from Muslim and other sources will fail to do justice to Hindu society or paint it in sympathetic and vivid colours. I have found no occasion to agree with the observation inasmuch as it implies that the Muslim historian or man of letters purposely misrepresented the facts of Hindu social life. There was no cultural conflict between the Muslims and the Hindus. In fact the cultural forces were rapidly leading to a complete fusion between the two, so that there was hardly any room for such discrimination. The development of historical literature had a very long and healthy tradition among the Muslims and the examples of intellectual honesty are to be found even among conspicuously dogmatic persons, for instance, Ziya-ud-din Barani and Abdul Qadir Buda'uni. With Amir Khusrau and Malik Muhammad Jaisi we enter on a very different and a more or less national outlook. On the other hand, if there were any Hindu scholars, they lived in the seclusion of a few intellectual centres like Kashmir or Benares and were completely isolated from the main currents of social life. It is further to be doubted if they inherited proper cultural traditions or even right attitudes of mind to make good historians.