The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c15.6

c15.6

Treatment of the Hindus. The question, however, may be asked whether this attitude of benevolence embraced all the subjects of the sultan without distinction of creed and class. Did it, in particular, include the Hindus? Neither isolated acts of tolerance and benevolence nor spasmodic instances of persecution should be allowed to obscure the general course of state policy. The only way of arriving at the truth is to examine the statements of monarchs and political writers regarding the policy to be followed in the treatment of the Hindus; in the light of this information alone will it be possible to view the various incidents in their proper perspective. Another important consideration is that the chroniclers write for effect; their audience is the rest of the Islamic world. At this particular period the Persian speaking part of the Muslim world happened to be under the grinding tyranny of infidel, uncivilized Mongols; hence the chroniclers saw an excellent opportunity for display by telling the down-trodden Muslims in other lands how powerful the Faithful were in India. This propagandist tendency in the average Muslim chronicler of our period should be constantly kept in view in spite of the fact that it over-shoots the mark and loses its effect. "The rhapsodies of Muslim historians . . . might delude us into the belief that the early Muslim occupation of northern India was one prolonged holy war waged for the extirpation of idolatry and the propagation of Islam," says Sir Wolseley Haig, "had we not proof that this cannot have been the case."¹ The sultans were conscious of the need of reconciling the people even at the time of the conquest.²