The indus saga, p.34
The Indus Saga, page 34
That should not imply that Muslims were any the kinder to their women, or any the better in the treatment of their own lower castes or classes. If there was no ‘Sati’, there was always killing of women ‘for honour’, trading them as the price for ending feuds, and the sale of the girl-child disguised in child marriage. High class Muslims also shunned, and still shun, eating food or drinking water out of utensils used by the lower classes. But they continued to style themselves as egalitarian in contrast to Hindu casteism.
After AD 1192, for a continuous period of about five hundred years, Muslims ruled most of northern India. Hindus, including the exclusive brahmins and the proud kshatriyas, were their subjects. The highest positions the Hindu elite could aspire to were those of confidants and courtiers of Muslim kings and emperors. At best, they could hope to become semi-autonomous but, nevertheless, subject feudatories. Nor could the iconoclasm of Islam, personified in the form of the Sultan of Ghazni, be readily forgotten by Hindu minds. That had been the highpoint of the clash of the two communities. We have already noticed Romila Thapar’s most vivid and elaborate account of the frenzied destruction of Somnath and its lasting imprint upon the Hindu mind.2 But the sacking of the temples in the time of Feroze Shah and later by Aurangzeb was intended both to augment the decreasing revenues of impoverished states in a decadent feudal system as well as to prevent the allegedly conspiratorial potential of anti-government congregations. The declining empires had none of the permissive and liberal confidence of Alauddin Khilji or Akbar.
II. The mixing of the two communities
It would, however, be a distortion of history merely to highlight the differences that existed between the two communities. Even though the fundamentalists on both sides of the divide may not like to admit it, the fact remains that the two communities had coexisted harmoniously for several centuries. Hindu ministers had served in Muslim courts and vice versa. Often, Hindu and Muslim feudatories had formed alliances. At least at the level of the ruling elite, the Delhi kings and Mughal emperors had practised inter-marriage, and Alauddin Khilji, Akbar and Jahangir had all taken Hindu Rajput princesses for wives and queens. In fact, the Mughal system was substantially dependent upon the support of the Rajput princedoms.
Prior to the Delhi Sultanate, firm contacts between the two religions began along the coastal regions. A narrow strip of land along the peninsular coastline of India had been initiated in Islam by Arab traders and seamen. Since the fall of Rome, the Arabs had been the richest intermediary traders between the East and the West. On their journeys across the seas, they colonized small coastal areas, such as Malabar, on the peninsular coastline. But their sights were focused only on maritime trading routes. They made no effort whatsoever to penetrate inland and they had a very limited effect upon the mainland.
The sole early Muslim invasion, that of Muhammad Bin Qasim,3 was also not aimed at territorial conquest. Its main purpose was the protection of maritime traffic in trade and pilgrims. The Rashtrakatas and Pratiharas, the neighbouring and successive regional dynasties, were thus able to successfully resist any extensive Arab advance. The suzerainty of the Ummayyads and the Abbasids over Sindh lasted only about one hundred and forty years. And since Sindh was at the periphery of the Islamic empire, their hold was weak and intermittent. Islam could therefore not be established on a very large scale anywhere in the subcontinent by direct Arab impact. By the time the Central Asian Muslim kings began their incursions upon Indus, more than a century had passed since Arab suzerainty upon the southern reaches of the Indus had been terminated. Even the Muslim pockets that remained had shed Arab ways and customs. Their Islam drew more from Indus than from the Arab culture. They had also learnt to coexist in a multi-religious environment with people of other persuasions.
When vast and stable Muslim states and empires were finally established, communal harmony continued to remain the norm. Most of the rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal dynasty (excepting Feroze Shah and Aurangzeb) strove to maintain a balance between the two communities.4 Recently Professor R. Nath5 has authenticated a will of the first Mughal emperor, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babar, in which the imperial testator counselled his son that it was ‘incumbent that religious bigotries should be wiped off the tablet of the heart, and justice meted out to each religion according to its tenets . . . The temples and places of worship of whatever religion under the royal authority may not be desecrated.’
Babar’s grandson, Jalaluddin Akbar went much further. He took Hindu princesses as his wives. In 1563, he abolished the tax levied on all Hindus visiting their shrines and temples. The next year he abolished Jazya, a special tax that was levied exclusively on non-Muslims. In doing so, Akbar was, in fact, bestowing upon them an equality of citizenship. The emperor employed non-Muslims in high positions of state and the army. At the height of his power Akbar also devised and tried to introduce a new religious doctrine, the Din-e-Ilahi, which sought to fuse the two major religions, Islam and Hinduism, in a new blend of precepts and practices.
Although he went much further than all the others, Akbar’s was not a complete and novel departure from the tradition of his predecessor kings. The Muslim kings of Delhi and the Muslim emperors of the Mughal dynasty had always needed the support of the martial confederacy of Hindu Rajputs. In fact, countless Hindus were retained as generals and feudatories,6 while Jazya had, at all times, remained only a very minor source of state revenue, even though an overwhelming majority of subjects qualified for this imposition. Even where this tax was imposed, it was confined to artisans and the urban population, implicitly exempting both the rural elite (the military retainers) and the already over-taxed peasantry.
While the armies of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire derived substantial strength from recruits marshalled by Hindu feudatories, even the lesser dynasties frequently entered into inter-communal alliances.
In 1751, Nawab Wazir Safdar Jang of Awadh sacked the Muslim principality of Rohilkhand and the entire Rohilla country, with the aid of the Maratha army of Malhar Rao Holkar,7 Mahadji Scindia8 and the Jat troops of Raja Suraj Mal.9 In 1757, an enlightened Hindu, Diwan Ram Narain, had supported the brave Nawab Sirajuddaula in the battlefield of Plassey. The Muslim Nawab had been betrayed by his most trusted Muslim general, Mir Jaffar. It was Ram Narain, the Hindu noble, who mourned the defeat and death of the Muslim ruler, in words that have moved the hearts of many:
GHAZALAN TUM TOA WAQIF HO, KAHO MAJNOON KAY MARNAY KEE
DIWANA MARR GAYA AAKHIR KO, WEERANON PAY KYA GUZRI
O gazelles, since you know, tell us how did love die?
He died at last, and then what happened to the wastelands?
Upon hearing of the humiliation and blinding of the Muslim emperor Shah Alam at the hands of a Muslim chieftain (Ghulam Kadir Rohilla),10 it was the Maratha chief, Scindia, who ordered his general, Rana Khan, to rescue the blinded Muslim emperor from the clutches of his persecutor. On the Delhi fort being surrounded by the Maratha troops, the Rohilla fled to Meerut, taking with him all the princes of royal blood as hostages. He was pursued, taken, and then put to death. More than a dozen Muslim princes and an equal number of Muslim princesses were beholden to a Maratha Hindu army for their release.
In 1857, both the communities together entered a life-and-death battle against the British in the uprising of that year. It had been triggered off by the greased cartridges that had incensed soldiers of both communities to rebel at the Meerut garrison in May that year. Hindu and Muslim soldiers were equally outraged by the procedure required to load the new Enfield rifles. As the patriots galloped the forty miles to Delhi, the population of that town and the Awadh peasantry that rose to welcome them drew from both communities.
While most of the princes, both Muslim and Hindu, either sided with the British or maintained a significant neutrality,11 the name of Lakshmi Bai, the attractive, twenty year old Rani of Jhansi who bravely led her cavalry to her defeat and death cannot be omitted from the ranks of the Indian heroes of the independence struggle against the farangees.12 Nor can the valour of Nana Sahib and his guerrilla commander, Tantia Tope be denied. They took up arms at a time that their people, the Marathas, were actually exhausted, and continued their resistance well into 1858, even after Delhi with its Muslim king, had fallen to the British.
The Hindus and the Muslims were fighting together for the posterity of a feeble Muslim emperor. The emperor himself recognized this contribution of both the communities. The proclamation issued by him on 27 August 1857, before his final defeat and capture in September, began: ‘It is well known to all, that in this age the people of Hindoostan, both Hindoos and Mohammedans, are being ruined under the tyranny and oppression of the infidel and treacherous English. It is therefore the bounden duty of all the wealthy people of India . . . to stake their lives and property for the well being of the public.’13 (Emphasis added.) Though the proclamation did not evoke much response among the ‘wealthy people’, it did indicate that for the emperor the Christians, but not the Hindus, were ‘infidels.’
The uprising of 1857 demonstrated that the Hindu-Muslim peasantry and the middle classes had common interests, and were willing to fight side by side to protect them. It also established the common concerns of the Hindu-Muslim aristocracy. The divide manifested itself on class and geographical (or regional) lines, not on the basis of any communal differences.
III. Coexistence at all levels
Muslim kings and emperors had married Hindu princesses.14 The imperial court had adopted many Hindu practices, including the association of divinity with kingship, a concept entirely alien to Islam. Mughal emperors had assumed the exalted and flattering title of Zille-e-Ilahi - literally, the shadow of God - implying, of course, His appointee, or delegate. Many Muslim kings and emperors of Delhi enthusiastically participated in such Hindu festivals as Holi, Dussehra and Diwali. Some other festivals, like Basant and Baisakhi, were seasonal festivals, celebrated by all communities.
As is evident from the common celebration of several festivals at a popular level, the mixing of the two communities was not confined to the imperial and feudal elite. It was equally obvious at lower levels even if prominence to this circumstance has not been allowed by historians more concerned with dynastic fortunes and palace rituals than with the common man. The fact is that the migration of Muslims into India had definitely been limited. There was never any mass migration into Indus or India along with the Central Asian soldiers. The armies of the Turks, the Afghans and the Mughals were accompanied only by the usual crop of camp-followers and retinue. The consolidation of Muslim governments in India did, no doubt, induce some Muslim traders from Central Asia to create outposts in Indus and India, and several artisans and architects to migrate. Arab traders had also built settlements along the peninsular coastline, particularly around the ports of Broach (near present-day Mumbai) and Malabar. But all these ‘aliens’ together formed only a fraction of the Muslim population in India.
The vast majority of Indian Muslims were converts from Hinduism, especially from the lower castes. By conversion, they expected to shed their inferior status. Once a decision was taken, the tendency was for entire communities to convert at once. But when a class of artisans thus converted to Islam, there was no immediate and sudden change in the lifestyle or status of the converts. The artisans, for their own survival, had to continue to practise the same craft which they were experts in, and which they had inherited from their forefathers. The practices of the trade, the mode of living, the standard of life and the social status underwent little change. Weavers, for instance, are one such community that by and large converted to Islam en masse. Yet their status, in the all-pervading caste-order (that unfortunately remained the back-drop of all Indian social activity at the popular level, whether Hindu or Muslim) remained as low as it was when they were Hindus.
Because the artisans were organized in ‘craft-castes’, the caste distinction continued even after conversion, particularly in terms of social relations and inter-marriages.15 The process of conversion was itself slow and gradual. The majority, with no real prospect of an instant change in status, remained Hindu even under long centuries of Muslim rulers. This in itself contributed towards assimilation of the two communities as there was no sudden break with the past or with the contemporary local environment.
It may be difficult for us to conceive today how the two communities, although distinct in essential aspects, learnt to coexist at all levels at the time that the Mughal empire, already past its prime, was heading towards its decline. The inter-communal marriages among the royalty and princely families levelled some inhibitions. People participated freely in each other’s rituals and communal celebrations. A common form of literary expression and a common literary heritage had developed. Though inititially derived from Persian traditions, buth (idol), buthkada (the temple), mae (wine), maekhana or maekada (the wine shop), had become idyllic images of the Urdu and the vernacular works of Muslim poets, even when these were abhorrent in the eyes of the Islamic orthodoxy. Literature had fused many images and absorbed them in its soft, fertile soil. See, for instance, how the images of buth, kufr and khuda merge, with the full play of poetic licence in a pluralistic Hindu Muslim society:
LAA-AY USS BUT KO ILTIJA KAR KAY
KUFR TOOTA KHUDA KHUDA KAR KAY
After pleadings, the idol (beloved) came along,
The heathen’s will was broken, thank god.
The syncretics, the Sufis, and the Bhakti16 saints also played an important part in forging links and developing the spirit of coexistence between the two communities. Their message spanned several centuries, and it was consistent and unwavering: they pleaded for harmony. In moving verse, they spread the message of communal tolerance. They focused on, identified and derided the agents of conflict. By their practice and verse, they demonstrated the virtues of peaceful coexistence. They targeted the fundamentalists, decried intolerance and dogma, and preached the love of man. They were essentially advocates of the dignity of man and communal harmony. To the Sufis, man was the supreme creation, to be defended regardless of religion, creed or caste. In this belief they were boldly iconoclastic.
MASJID DHA DAY, MANDIR DHA DAY
DHA DAY JO KUJ DHAINDA
IK BANDAY DA DIL NA DHA-EEN
SOHNA RABB DILAAN WICH REHNDA
Pull down the mosque, and pull down the temple,17
Pull down eveything that can be pulled down,
But do not pull down the heart of a man,
For God lives in the hearts of men.
Communal coexistence did, of course, break down at times; there was occasional conflict, sometimes quite gory. But the periods of harmonious coexistence were always far more extended than the times of conflict. Also, the conflict would be confined to geographically specific and limited areas. It merely highlighted the fact that while the two communites might indeed be two different nations they could yet always coexist in peace. Quite often the disputes were extra-communal.
But though communal harmony and cooperation held for more than a century after it, the most significantly divisive event, perhaps in the entire history of Indus and India, was the Battle of Plassey (1757). It ushered in some notable new players; and a new power. In thus doing its effects continue to be felt to this day.
To the Battle of Plassey, therefore, we must revert.
IV. The divide after Plassey
The one hundred and ninety years between Plassey (1757) and Partition (1947) eroded all the factors that had contributed towards peaceful communal coexistence. They made way for active and intense hostility between the two major religious communities of India.
It is not being simplistically suggested that this corrosion of the spirit of communal coexistence was the result merely of any conscious ‘divide and rule’ policy of the new rulers. The policy did also play its part. But the divide was never artificial. It was indeed tangible and real. It was too much a product of the inevitability of circumstances to go unnoticed; and it had its roots less in religious differences and more in the differing circumstances of class, profession, calling, means of livelihood, status and perceptions.
Traditionally, Muslims had either been rulers or workmen: the invading migrants had ruled; the caste-converts had been lowly artisans or peasants. Although there were many proud and powerful feudal dynasties of Hindu princes and maharajas, the broad masses of Hindus had continued to pursue the professions of business, accounts and book-keeping. They filled the ranks of the merchant class.
As the British tradesmen found their first decisive foothold in the subcontinent at Plassey (1757), Hindu merchants easily integrated into their system. The British and the merchants (mostly Hindus) accordingly became partners. But the imperialists had to defeat Muslim rulers of Bengal and later of Bihar (1764) to gain power. The British and the Muslims became adversaries. The very objects and purposes of the Raj thus also made adversaries of the two Indian communities.
Hindu merchants soon began to play a complementary role to British commercial and industrial expansion in India, a role for which they had a natural facility. They took to commerce and industry as well as to participation in the administration, albeit in subordinate positions, from the very early days when the British set foot in Bengal. This taking to commerce and industry by Hindu entrepreneurs in an imperial system was to set about a momentum of its own. By the turn of the century they were establishing factories and mills. The twentieth century saw a widespread and truly national Hindu bourgeoisie, straining to break out of unjust and uneconomical imperial controls, which were restricting its growth while preserving British monopolies.
The Muslims, by contrast, had always looked down upon such vocations as trading, moneylending and book-keeping. The Muslim aristocracy was not forward-looking. It had been feudal and land-oriented. It could fall into debt to the Hindu moneylender but looked down upon his profession as unworthy of its own sons. The caste system, which had by now assumed easily discernible classifications along occupational lines, was also instrumental in preventing inter-trade or inter-occupational mobility. For a Muslim feudatory to take to trading was a preposterous idea.18 While the Arab traders had for centuries undertaken commercial transactions and continued with the prevalent trade practices, the more puritanical Turks and Afghans were somewhat inhibited by the Islamic injunction prohibiting usury. This again restrained Indian Muslims (other than the coastal Arabs and the itinerant Pathans) from taking to trade.
