Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c8.s3.18

c8.s3.18

This exposition of the Quranic injunctions happened to square so much with the steps which the Sultan had already taken, albeit totally in ignorance of the law, that he burst out into a laughter of approval of the Qazi's views and informed him with great gusto that "I have established laws... so that under the fears of my command they would all escape into a mouse hole; and now you tell me that it is inculcated in the Divine law that the Hindus should be made obedient and submissive in the extreme... Rest assured, that the Hindu will never be submissive and obedient to the Musalmans until he becomes destitute and impoverished..." So, as mentioned before, the Sultan made them destitute. Destitute to the extent that the peasants sometimes paid Kharaj by selling their wives and children.¹²⁸ It is one thing to raise taxes and be happy. But to gloat over the impoverishment of the Hindus, both by the kings and chroniclers, is because of the ideology which advocates degradation of non-Muslims. Barani is the first and probably the only Muslim chronicler in the fourteenth century to mention the sale of families for defraying land tax. As we shall see, in later centuries foreign travellers were so shocked at this inhuman cruelty that they mention the fact repeatedly. The sale of peasants meant that they were reduced to the position of bonded labourers as slaves for life. When they we're free (whatever the extent of their freedom), the government got 50 to 75 per cent of their produce. When they became bonded labourers the sultan got cent per cent of the produce earned by their exertions. Of course some coarse grain was given to them to keep them alive to continue to work in the fields.