The Myth of Proselytizing in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga , Canada
According to historian Arnold Toyanbee, (Mankind and Mother Earth): 'In most periods of the history of the Indian subcontinent the Indians have felt more concern about religion than about politics and economics.' Truly, it was this monster that when aroused and invoked it tore apart the country in the twentieth century. The propaganda of religious conversion and iconoclasm by the Muslim rulers is one of those myths which had created a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims. Even today some people believe in such hearsay, although we do not find special mention of these facts in history books. Stray cases do exist, but on that basis it could not be generalized. .
In India, after over two thousand years of Aryan invasion, Islam was destined to change the course of history. The first Muslim team was dispatched to India in 644 A.D. on the instructions of Caliph Usman to enquire about the condition there. Facing an inhospitable environment in Sind its commander reported to the Caliph that "water is scarce, the fruits are poor, and the robbers are bold; if a few troops are sent they will be slain, if many, they will starve.” (Futuhu-l Buld’an of al’Bila’duri) . It was, therefore, after a long pause that in AD 711 a serious attempt was made to conquer Sindh. But the Arab conquerors did not show themselves up as anti-Hindu. Muhammad bin Qasim wrote to his superior and received the following reply: “As they have made submission and agreed to pay taxes to the Caliph, nothing more can be properly required from them. They have been taken under our protection, and we cannot in any way stretch out our hands upon their lives and property. Permission is given them to worship their gods. Nobody must be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion. They may live in their houses in whatever manner they like.” (Chach-nama)
The latter Muslims, the Turkish and the Mughals, too did not interfere with the faith, culture and traditions of the indigenous community, although they were not devoid of the pressure of theologians and fanatics, a breed thriving on hatred in every religion, regime and clime. Even as heinous a custom as Sati, was not abolished by them but by the British in 1829.
Romila Thapar, writes in A History of India, “Purely religious iconoclasm may be understandable in the raids of Mahmud, though even here the treasure was probably more attractive than the religious motive. But for a reigning king to decree the destruction of temples to earn religious merit would appear foolish in the extreme.”
As for conversion, Ranbir Vohra writes in The Making of India: "It is generally accepted that, except for a few areas such as Kashmir, the Muslim rulers did not follow any well-defined or widespread policy of conversion by force. In certain parts of the country, like Bengal and Punjab, where post-Buddhist Hinduism had not struck deep enough roots, Islam was accepted by outcaste and low-caste communities as an escape from their social bondage, or because it brought them material benefits from the new rulers. However, it appears that a significant number accepted Islam because of the popularity of the Sufi ‘saints.”
Even then, we cannot say that whatever Muslim population appears in the subcontinent today is solely due to conversion. India, with its reputation of gold and immense riches, and the prospects of civil and military positions under the Muslim rulers, was bound to attract people from the Muslim countries. The myth of conversion can also be viewed statistically. The religious structure of the population at the time of Partition in 1947, as well as of today in the sub-continent, shows the Muslims constituting only 25 per cent of the total. This comes from both conversion and immigration. If we safely divide this segment in two halves, or even assign 15% to the converted population, the figure would not seem significant keeping in view a thousand-year of Muslims rule. The fact that the Muslims have always been a minority community suggests that the Hindus were not in such desperate a plight as to seek conversion. Further, any pressure of proselytizing, would have generated social unrests, which we do not find recorded in history.
One should bear in mind that Islam was a new religion, and its followers were fully soaked with the spiritual zeal of their belief, that it was not the period of enlightenment, that it was the time of absolute monarchy, that the local public opinion did not count much, and that the international public opinion did not exist. In such a circumstance, and in a land where a segment of the followers of Hinduism was subjected to abuse and mistreatment under its own religious laws, and a land where its people, wanting a change, had themselves ventured on new religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, the ground was ripe for mass conversion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have totally wiped out old mythological and pagan religions from the regions where they operated, as Buddhism has done with Hinduism in the lands adjoining India. It was the liberalism of the Muslim rulers that has saved Hinduism from being wiped out completely from the only remaining country.
Religious tolerance has been the hallmark of the culture of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Setting aside the episodes of struggle for political power and even the ensuing brutalities at higher level, strife and agitation at ground level have been generally absent. In the Hindu period of history we find alternating periods of Hindu and Buddhist rulers, the conversion of the reigning monarchs to other religions, and a tolerant society living on peacefully. We also find records of grants of lands and jagirs by the rulers of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Sikh creeds to each other’s divines and shrines. The rulers have used religion, not for persecution, but as a tool to demonstrate tolerance.
It was the British administrators, turned historians, who dwelt mainly upon eulogizing their rule and helping to implement the British policy of dividing the nation into seemingly incompatible groups. Their writings presented the Muslim rule as oppressive, and their own as liberating, which have made such a deep impact on the minds of successive generations, that even today some of the local people are unable to free themselves from their unhealthy effects. The over-all picture that emerges thus from the pages of history is that the Indo-Pak subcontinent has never digressed from its tradition of tolerance. To put the blame of proselytizing is to sap the foundation of self-respect of the people, and to make a scar on the face of a beautiful history.
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