Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

The pillar was then gradually, over several days, raised to an erect position, and its base properly embedded. ‘After it was raised, some ornamental friezes of black and white stone were placed round [it] … and over these … was raised a gilded copper cupola … The height of the obelisk was thirty-two gaz; eight gaz was sunk in the pedestal, and twenty-four gaz visible. On the base of the obelisk there were engraved several lines of writing in Hindi characters. Many Brahmins and Hindu devotees were invited to read them, but no one was able. It is said that certain infidel Hindus interpreted them as stating that no one should be able to remove the obelisk from its place till there should arise in the later day a Muslim king named Sultan Firuz …’ [14] See also Part V, Chapter 4

The socio-cultural profile of India changed radically with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Never before in its millenniums-long history had India faced a civilizational challenge as potent and irreconcilable as that of Turco-Afghans, and never before had it failed to absorb invaders and migrants smoothly into its society and culture. Although there had been several radical transformations in Indian civilization over the millenniums, all these arose out of India’s internal evolutionary processes, not out of external imposition, as it happened during the Sultanate period.

One of the most fundamental of these internal changes in Indian civilization took place in the late classical age, the period immediately preceding the Turkish invasion of India. This involved the collapse of India’s commercial economy, the consequent decay of its towns, and the virtual disappearance of its urban lifestyle and culture. In a parallel and related development, Hinduism, which had remained dormant in the background of India’s cultural landscape for very many centuries — ever since Buddhism and Jainism rose to subcontinental dominance in the last quarter of the first millennium BCE — now surged up like a mountainous tidal wave, and swept across the subcontinent, overwhelming Buddhism and Jainism and reducing them to the status of minor religions in India.

Hinduism then became the religion of India. But Hinduism itself had over the centuries become totally transformed from its Vedic and Upanishadic formulations, and had turned into a virtually new religion, Puranic Hinduism, a polymorphic religion unlike any other religion in the world. In fact, it was hardly a religion in the common sense of the word, but a loose conglomeration of the diverse and often contradictory creeds of India’s diverse people and their diverse socio-cultural makeup.

These socio-religious transformations in India rarely involved any conflict or violence. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were fraternal religions, and though they had several irreconcilable differences between them, they generally coexisted in peace with each other, and did not have the kind of adversarial or violent relationship that usually characterised the relationship between the other major religions of the premodern world.

This amiability was evident even in the relationship of Indian religions with the religions of the several foreign races that entered India over the centuries. In fact, Hinduism itself was a foreign religion, brought into India from Central Asia by invading Aryans around the middle of the second millennium BCE, which then, over time, smoothly absorbed into itself the pre-existing Dravidian culture and religion of the subcontinent. Similarly, all the subsequent migrants and invaders who entered India in premedieval times also brought with them their own traditional socio-religious systems, but these too over the centuries blended smoothly and indistinguishably into the existing Indian socio-religious milieu.

There were however a few small groups of migrant foreigners, mostly traders from Central Asia and Middle East, who, unlike most other migrant people who entered India, retained their ancestral socio-religious identity, and even won some local converts into their religion. This was how Judaism (brought into India by Jewish traders in the first millennium BCE), Christianity (introduced into Kerala by an apostle of Christ in the mid-first century CE), Islam (brought into India by Arab traders soon after the founding of the religion in Arabia), and finally Zoroastrianism (brought by Persian migrants around the eleventh century CE) took root in India. The introduction of these foreign religions into India, and the settlement of their devotees there, created no notable tension or conflict in India. These diverse people and their diverse religions mostly coexisted in harmony with the local people and their religions.

THIS AMICABLE SOCIO-RELIGIOUS scene in India changed altogether in the early medieval period, with establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Unlike all the previous migrants and invaders, who had over the centuries merged smoothly into Indian society, Turks retained their distinct identity all through, and remained virtually as aliens in India throughout the over three-century long history of the Delhi Sultanate.

The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate altogether changed the religious scene in India as never before, for Islam, as the religion of the conquerors, assumed an aggressive posture against Indian religions, the religions of the subjects. The most evident and immediate adverse effect of this antagonism was on Buddhism. Buddhism, even in its atrophied state at this time, had a prominent presence in early medieval India, because of its large monasteries, stupas and educational institutions, and these drew Turks to them, who vandalised or destroyed several of them, sometimes, as in the case of Nalanda, mistaking the walled Buddhist universities to be enemy forts. They also butchered very many Buddhist monks, who were easily identifiable because of their distinctive saffron dress and shaven heads. In consequence of all this Buddhism virtually disappeared from India in early medieval times.

Turks were equally virulent towards Hinduism, but it survived without any critical damage because of its pervasiveness all over the subcontinent, as well as because of its polymorphic nature, without any nucleus, the destruction of which would have fatally damaged the religion. But there would never be any real harmony, or even any notable mutual influence between Hinduism and Islam, because they were diametrically opposite to each other in every respect. While Islam was monotheistic, Hinduism was polytheistic; while Islamic society was egalitarian and had no hereditary social divisions, Hindu society was hierarchic and divided into many hereditary castes which occupied different rungs in society and performed diverse and exclusive functions in society; while Muslims feasted on beef, Hindus venerated the cow and regarded cow slaughter and eating beef as most heinous sins.

Further, while Islam was a mono-layered and relatively immutable religion, Hinduism was a multi-layered religion which was forever in flux; and while Islam was an aggressive, proselytising religion, which was intolerant of other religions, Hinduism was a passive, non-proselytising religion, which could tolerantly coexist with any other religion, or any number of other religions. But while Hindu religion was inclusive, Hindu society was exclusive, into which one could enter only by being born into it. In contrast to this, Islam was exclusive in religion, but inclusive in its society, into which anyone could enter at any stratum by becoming a Muslim. It is significant that Hinduism, unlike Islam, had no provision at all for religious conversions; one could be a Hindu only by being born a Hindu. Further, the lifestyle and social customs and practices of the followers of the two religions — such as their succession laws, disposal of the dead, mode of dining, even their style of greeting — were all entirely different from each other. There was nothing at all common between Islam and Hinduism in any notable matter.