Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c11.s2.4

c11.s2.4

Professor Habib betrays a rather unscholarly strain by encompassing in the one sentence quoted above the entire impact of 130 pages of my study (pp. 26 to 156) *Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India*. As I have said in the Preface of the book: "Any study of the population of the precensus times can be based only on estimates, and estimates by their very nature tend to be tentative" (p. vi). I claim no finality about my assessments of demographic quantification nor, I beg to submit, can Professor Habib. But he does not make any assessment at all; he merely challenges and criticises my conclusions - a very easy task! In my computation, however, sufficient historical evidence has been set forth for any demographic behaviour and on that basis I have arrived at the conclusion that the population of India in A.D. 1000 was about 200 million and in the year 1500 it was 170 million. However, Irfan Habib gives a twist to my observation on the decline of population by saying that "the sultans reduced the population of the country by over a third" (p. 2) which would mean that I have stated that the sultans deliberately killed people to reduce the population of India. I have shown in my book under reference that the population of India in the ancient period was large and prosperous, citing the authority of Greek writers, Chinese travellers and Arab geographers together with the conclusions arrived at by many modern writers (pp. 25-32). What happened to this huge population? It was decimated by Muslim invaders and invaders like Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, some of whom took pride in claiming that they had killed people by lakhs (hundreds of thousands). Their chroniclers have also credited them with tremendous achievements in this regard.¹⁸