THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.
The Muhammadan invasions of India and the foundation and growth of the
Muhammadan power in that country, have found many historians, both
among contemporary and later writers. But hitherto no one has attempted
to write a history of the spread of Islam in India, considered apart
from the military successes and administrative achievements of its
adherents. Indeed, to many, such a task must appear impossible. For
India has often been picked out as a typical instance of a country in
which Islam owes its existence and continuance in existence to the
settlement in it of foreign, conquering Muhammadan races, who have
transmitted their faith to their descendants, and only succeeded in
spreading it beyond their own circle by means of persecution and forced
conversions. Thus the missionary spirit of Islam is supposed to show
itself in its true light in the brutal massacres of Brahmans by Maḥmūd
of Ghaznạ̄, in the persecutions of Aurangzeb, the forcible circumcisions
effected by Ḥaydar ʻAlī, Tīpū Sulṭān and the like.
But among the sixty-six millions of Indian Musalmans there are vast
numbers of converts or descendants of converts, in whose conversion
force played no part and the only influences at work were the teaching
and persuasion of peaceful missionaries. This class of converts forms a
very distinct group by itself which can be distinguished from that of
the forcibly converted and the other heterogeneous elements of which
Muslim India is made up. The entire community may be roughly divided
into those of foreign race who brought their faith into the country
along with them, and those who have been converted from one of the
previous religions of the country under various inducements and at many
different periods of history. The foreign settlement consists of three
main bodies: first, and numerically the most important, are the
immigrants from across the north-west frontier, who are found chiefly
in Sind and the Panjāb; next come the descendants of the court and
armies of the various Muhammadan dynasties, mainly in Upper India and
to a much smaller extent in the Deccan; lastly, all along the west
coast are settlements probably of Arab descent, whose original founders
came to India by sea. [824] But the number of families of foreign
origin that actually settled in India is nowhere great except in the
Panjāb and its neighbourhood. More than half the Muslim population of
India has indeed assumed appellations of distinctly foreign races, such
as Shaykh, Beg, Khān, and even Sayyid, but the greater portion of them
are local converts or descendants of converts, who have taken the title
of the person of highest rank amongst those by whom they were converted
or have affiliated themselves to the aristocracy of Islam on even less
plausible grounds. [825] Of this latter section of the community—the
converted natives of the country—part no doubt owed their change of
religion to force and official pressure, but by far the majority of
them entered the pale of Islam of their own free will. The history of
the proselytising movements and the social influences that brought
about their conversion has hitherto received very little attention, and
most of the commonly accessible histories of the Muhammadans in India,
whether written by European or by native authors, are mere chronicles
of wars, campaigns and the achievements of princes, in which little
mention of the religious life of the time finds a place, unless it has
taken the form of fanaticism or intolerance. From the biographies of
the Muslim saints, however, and from local traditions, something may be
learned of the missionary work that was carried on quite independently
of the political life of the country. But before dealing with these it
is proposed to give an account of the official propagation of Islam and
of the part played by the Muhammadan rulers in the spread of their
faith.
From the fifteenth year after the death of the Prophet, when an Arab
expedition was sent into Sind, up to the eighteenth century, a series
of Muhammadan invaders, some founders of great empires, others mere
adventurers, poured into India from the north-west. While some came
only to plunder and retired laden with spoils, others remained to found
kingdoms that have had a lasting influence to the present day. But of
none of these do we learn that they were accompanied by any
missionaries or preachers. Not that they were indifferent to their
religion. To many of them, their invasion of India appeared in the
light of a holy war. Such was evidently the thought in the minds of
Maḥmūd of Ghaznạ̄ and Tīmūr. The latter, after his capture of Dehli,
writes as follows in his autobiography:—“I had been at Dehli fifteen
days, which time I passed in pleasure and enjoyment, holding royal
Courts and giving great feasts. I then reflected that I had come to
Hindustān to war against infidels, and my enterprise had been so
blessed that wherever I had gone I had been victorious. I had triumphed
over my adversaries, I had put to death some lacs of infidels and
idolaters, and I had stained my proselyting sword with the blood of the
enemies of the faith. Now this crowning victory had been won, and I
felt that I ought not to indulge in ease, but rather to exert myself in
warring against the infidels of Hindustān.” [826] Though he speaks much
of his “proselyting sword,” it seems, however, to have served no other
purpose than that of sending infidels to hell. Most of the Muslim
invaders seem to have acted in a very similar way; in the name of
Allāh, idols were thrown down, their priests put to the sword, and
their temples destroyed; while mosques were often erected in their
place. It is true that the offer of Islam was generally made to the
unbelieving Hindus before any attack was made upon them. [827] Fear
occasionally dictated a timely acceptance of such offers and led to
conversions which, in the earlier days of the Muhammadan invasion at
least, were generally short-lived and ceased to be effective after the
retreat of the invader. An illustration in point is furnished by the
story of Hardatta, a rāʼīs of Bulandshahr, whose submission to Maḥmūd
of Ghaznạ̄ is thus related in the history of that conqueror’s campaigns
written by his secretary. “At length (about A.D. 1019) he (i.e. Maḥmūd)
arrived at the fort of Barba, [828] in the country of Hardat, who was
one of the rāʼīs, that is “kings,” in the Hindī language. When Hardat
heard of this invasion by the protected warriors of God, who advanced
like the waves of the sea, with the angels around them on all sides, he
became greatly agitated, his steps trembled, and he feared for his
life, which was forfeited under the law of God. So he reflected that
his safety would best be secured by conforming to the religion of
Islam, since God’s sword was drawn from the scabbard, and the whip of
punishment was uplifted. He came forth, therefore, with ten thousand
men, who all proclaimed their anxiety for conversion and their
rejection of idols.” [829]
These new converts probably took the earliest opportunity of
apostatising presented to them by the retreat of the conqueror—a kind
of action which we find the early Muhammadan historians of India
continually complaining of. For when Quṭb al-Dīn Ībak attacked Baran in
1193, he was stoutly opposed by Chandrasen, the then Rājā, who was a
lineal descendant of Hardatta and whose very name betrays his Hindu
faith: nor do we hear of there being any Musalmans remaining under his
rule. [830]
But these conquerors would appear to have had very little of that “love
for souls” which animates the true missionary and which has achieved
such great conquests for Islam. The Khiljīs (1290–1320), the Tughlaqs
(1320–1412), and the Lodīs (1451–1526) were generally too busily
engaged in fighting to pay much regard to the interests of religion, or
else thought more of the exaction of tribute than of the work of
conversion. [831] Not that they were entirely lacking in religious
zeal: e.g. the Ghakkars, a barbarous people in the mountainous
districts of the North of the Panjāb, who gave the early invaders much
trouble, are said to have been converted through the influence of
Muḥammad Ghorī at the end of the twelfth century. Their chieftain had
been taken prisoner by the Muhammadan monarch, who induced him to
become a Musalman, and then confirming him in his title of chief of
this tribe, sent him back to convert his followers, many of whom having
little religion of their own were easily prevailed upon to embrace
Islam. [832] According to Ibn Baṭūṭah, the Khiljīs offered some
encouragement to conversion by making it a custom to have the new
convert presented to the sultan, who clad him in a robe of honour and
gave him a collar and bracelets of gold, of a value proportionate to
his rank. [833] But the monarchs of the earlier Muhammadan dynasties as
a rule evinced very little proselytising zeal, and it would be hard to
find a parallel in their history to the following passage from the
autobiography of Fīrūz Shāh Tughlaq (1351–1388): “I encouraged my
infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the Prophet, and I
proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Musalman
should be exempt from the jizyah, or poll tax. Information of this came
to the ears of the people at large and great numbers of Hindus
presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus
they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the
faith, were exonerated from the jizyah, and were favoured with presents
and honours.” [834]
As the Muhammadan power became consolidated, and particularly under the
Mughal dynasty, the religious influences of Islam naturally became more
permanent and persistent. These influences are certainly apparent in
the Hindu theistic movements that arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and Bishop Lefroy has conjectured that the positive
character of Muslim teaching attracted minds that were dissatisfied
with the vagueness and subjectivity of a Pantheistic system of thought.
“When Mohammedanism, with its strong grasp of the reality of the Divine
existence and, as flowing from this, of the absolutely fixed and
objective character of truth, came into conflict with the haziness of
Pantheistic thought and the subjectivity of its belief, it necessarily
followed, not only that it triumphed in the struggle, but also that it
came as a veritable tonic to the life and thought of Upper India,
quickening into a fresh and more vigorous life many minds which never
accepted for themselves its intellectual sway.” [835]
A powerful incentive to conversion was offered, when adherence to an
idolatrous system stood in the way of advancement at the Muhammadan
courts; and though a spirit of tolerance, which reached its culmination
under the eclectic Akbar, was very often shown towards Hinduism, and
respected even, for the most part, the state endowments of that
religion; [836] and though the dread of unpopularity and the desire of
conciliation dictated a policy of non-interference and deprecated such
deeds of violence and such outbursts of fanaticism as had characterised
the earlier period of invasion and triumph, still such motives of
self-interest gained many converts from Hinduism to the Muhammadan
faith. Many Rajputs became converts in this way, and their descendants
are to this day to be found among the landed aristocracy. The most
important perhaps among these is the Musalman branch of the great
Bachgoti clan, the head of which is the premier Muhammadan noble of
Oudh. According to one tradition, their ancestor Tilok Chand was taken
prisoner by the Emperor Bābar, and to regain his liberty adopted the
faith of Islam; [837] but another legend places his conversion in the
reign of Humāyūn. This prince having heard of the marvellous beauty of
Tilok Chand’s wife, had her carried off while she was at a fair. No
sooner, however, was she brought to him than his conscience smote him
and he sent for her husband. Tilok Chand had despaired of ever seeing
her again, and in gratitude he and his wife embraced the faith “which
taught such generous purity.” [838] These converted Rajputs are very
zealous in the practice of their religion, yet often betray their Hindu
origin in a very striking manner. In the district of Bulandshahr, for
example, a large Musalman family, which is known as the Lālkhānī
Paṭhāns, still (with some exceptions) retains its old Hindu titles and
family customs of marriage, while Hindu branches of the same clan still
exist side by side with it. [839] In the Mirzapur district, the
Gaharwār Rajputs, who are now Muslim, still retain in all domestic
matters Hindu laws and customs and prefix a Hindu honorific title to
their Muhammadan names. [840]
Official pressure is said never to have been more persistently brought
to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern
districts of the Panjāb, there are many cases in which the ancestor of
the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed
his religion in the reign of this zealot, “in order to save the land of
the village.” In Gurgaon, near Dehli, there is a Hindu family of Banyās
who still bear the title of Shaykh (which is commonly adopted by
converted Hindus), because one of the members of the family, whose line
is now extinct, became a convert in order to save the family property
from confiscation. [841] Many Rajput landowners, in the Cawnpore
district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason. [842] In
other cases the ancestor is said to have been carried as a prisoner or
hostage to Dehli, and there forcibly circumcised and converted. [843]
It should be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions
is family or local tradition, and no mention of such (as far as I have
been able to discover) is made in the historical accounts of
Aurangzeb’s reign. [844] It is established without doubt that forced
conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable
that Aurangzeb’s well-known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many
families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been
forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily
assignable cause. Similarly in the Deccan, Aurangzeb shares with Ḥaydar
ʻAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān (these being the best known of modern Muhammadan
rulers) the reputation of having forcibly converted sundry families and
sections of the population, whose conversion undoubtedly dates from a
much earlier period, from which no historical record of the
circumstances of the case has come down. [845]
Tīpū Sulṭān is probably the Muhammadan monarch who most systematically
engaged in the work of forcible conversion. In 1788 he issued the
following proclamation to the people of Malabar: “From the period of
the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a
turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your
rainy season, you have caused numbers of our warriors to taste the
draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you
must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues
like good subjects; and since it is the practice with you for one woman
to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters
unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in
adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of
the field, I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and
to be like the rest of mankind; and if you are disobedient to these
commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with
Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government.”
This proclamation stirred up a general revolt in Malabar, and early in
1789 Tīpū Sulṭān prepared to enforce his proclamation with an army of
more than twenty thousand men, and issued general orders that “every
being in the district without distinction should be honoured with
Islam, that the houses of such as fled to avoid that honour should be
burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that
all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to
effect their universal conversion.” Thousands of Hindus were
accordingly circumcised and made to eat beef; but by the end of 1790
the British army had destroyed the last remnant of Tīpū Sulṭān’s power
in Malabar, and this monarch himself perished early in 1799 at the
capture of Seringapatam. Most of the Brahmans and Nayars who had been
forcibly converted, subsequently disowned their new religion. [846]
How little was effected towards the spread of Islam by violence on the
part of the Muhammadan rulers may be judged from the fact that even in
the centres of the Muhammadan power, such as Dehli and Agra, the
Muhammadans in modern times in the former district hardly exceeded
one-tenth, and in the latter they did not form one-fourth of the
population. [847] A remarkable example of the worthlessness of forced
conversion is exhibited in the case of Bodh Mal, Raja of Majhauli, in
the district of Gorakhpur; he was arrested by Akbar in default of
revenue, carried to Dehli, and there converted to Islam, receiving the
name of Muḥammad Salīm. But on his return his wife refused to let him
into the ancestral castle, and, as apparently she had the sympathy of
his subjects on her side, she governed his territories during the
minority of his son Bhawāni Mal, so that the Hindu succession remained
undisturbed. [848] Until recently there were some strange survivals of
a similarly futile false conversion, noticeable in certain customs of a
Hindu sect called the Bishnois, the principal tenet of whose faith is
the renunciation of all Hindu deities, except Viṣṇu. They used recently
to bury their dead, instead of burning them, to adopt Ghulām Muḥammad
and other Muhammadan names, and use the Muslim form of salutation. They
explained their adoption of these Muhammadan customs by saying that
having once slain a Qāḍī, who had interfered with their rite of
widow-burning, they had compounded for the offence by embracing Islam.
They have now, however, renounced these practices in favour of Hindu
customs. [849]
But though some Muhammadan rulers may have been more successful in
forcing an acceptance of Islam on certain of their Hindu subjects than
in the last-mentioned cases, and whatever truth there may be in the
assertion [850] that “it is impossible even to approach the religious
side of the Mahomedan position in India without surveying first its
political aspect,” we undoubtedly find that Islam has gained its
greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places in
which its political power has been weakest, as in Southern India and
Eastern Bengal. Of such missionary movements it is now proposed to
essay some account, commencing with Southern India and the Deccan, then
after reviewing the history of Sind, Cutch and Gujarāt, passing to
Bengal, and finally noticing some missionaries whose work lay outside
the above geographical limits. Of several of the missionaries to be
referred to, little is recorded beyond their names and the sphere of
their labours; accordingly, in view of the general dearth of such
missionary annals, any available details have been given at length.
The first advent of Islam in South India dates as far back as the
eighth century, when a band of refugees, to whom the Mappillas trace
their descent, came from ʻIrāq and settled in the country. [851] The
trade in spices, ivory, gems, etc., between India and Europe, which for
many hundred years was conducted by the Arabs and Persians, caused a
continual stream of Muhammadan influence to flow in upon the west coast
of Southern India. From this constant influx of foreigners there
resulted a mixed population, half Hindu and half Arab or Persian, in
the trading centres along the coast. Very friendly relations appear to
have existed between these Muslim traders and the Hindu rulers, who
extended to them their protection and patronage in consideration of the
increased commercial activity and consequent prosperity of the country,
that resulted from their presence in it, [852] and no obstacles were
placed in the way of proselytising, the native converts receiving the
same consideration and respect as the foreign merchants, even though
before their conversion they had belonged to the lowest grades of
society. [853]
The traditionary account of the introduction of Islam into Malabar, as
given by a Muhammadan historian of the sixteenth century, represents
the first missionaries to have been a party of pilgrims on their way to
visit the foot-print of Adam in Ceylon; on their arrival at Cranganore
the Raja sent for them and the leader of the party, Shaykh Sharaf b.
Mālik, who was accompanied by his brother, Mālik b. Dīnār, and his
nephew, Mālik b. Ḥabīb, took the opportunity of expounding to him the
faith of Islam and the mission of Muḥammad, “and God caused the truth
of the Prophet’s teaching to enter into the king’s heart and he
believed therein; and his heart became filled with love for the Prophet
and he bade the Shaykh and companions come back to him again on their
return from their pilgrimage to Adam’s foot-print.” [854] On the return
of the pilgrims from Ceylon, the king secretly departed with them in a
ship bound for the coast of Arabia, leaving his kingdom in the hand of
viceroys. Here he remained for some time, and was just about to return
to his own country, with the intention of erecting mosques there and
spreading the faith of Islam, when he fell sick and died. On his
death-bed he solemnly enjoined on his companions not to abandon their
proposed missionary journey to Malabar, and to assist them in their
labours, he gave them letters of recommendation to his viceroys, at the
same time bidding them conceal the fact of his death. Armed with these
letters, Sharaf b. Mālik and his companions sailed for Cranganore,
where the king’s letter secured for them a kindly welcome and a grant
of land, on which they built a mosque. Mālik b. Dīnār decided to settle
there, but Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out on a missionary tour with the object
of building mosques throughout Malabar. “So Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out for
Quilon with his worldly goods and his wife and some of his children,
and he built a mosque there; then leaving his wife there, he went on to
Hīlī Mārāwī, [855] where he built a mosque”; and so the narrative
continues, giving a list of seven other places at which the missionary
erected mosques, finally returning to Cranganore. Later on, he visited
all these places again to pray in the mosque at each of them, and came
back “praising and giving thanks to God for the manifestation of the
faith of Islam in a land filled with unbelievers.” [856]
In spite of the circumstantial character of this narrative, there is no
evidence of its historicity. Popular belief puts the date of the events
recorded as far back as the lifetime of the Prophet; with a mild
scepticism Zayn al-Dīn thought that they could not have been earlier
than the third century of the Hijrah; [857] but there is no more
authority for the one date than for the other, or for the common
Mappilla tradition of the existence of the tomb of a Hindu king at
Zafār, on the coast of Arabia, bearing the inscription, “ʻAbd al-Raḥmān
al-Sāmirī, arrived A.H. 212, died A.H. 216”; [858] and the mosque at
Madāyi, said to have been founded by Mālik b. Dīnār, bears an
inscription commemorating its erection in A.D. 1124. [859]
But the legend certainly bears witness to the peaceful character of the
proselytising influences that were at work on the Malabar coast for
centuries. The agents in this work were chiefly Arab merchants, but Ibn
Baṭūṭah makes mention of several professed theologians from Arabia and
elsewhere, whom he met in various towns on the Malabar coast. [860] The
Zamorin of Calicut, who was one of the chief patrons of Arab trade, is
said to have encouraged conversion to Islam, in order to man the Arab
ships on which he depended for his aggrandisement, and to have ordered
that in every family of fishermen in his dominion one or more of the
male members should be brought up as Muhammadans. [861] At the
beginning of the sixteenth century the Mappillas were estimated to have
formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, spoke the same language
as the Hindus, and were only distinguished from them by their long
beards and peculiar head-dress. But for the arrival of the Portuguese,
the whole of this coast would have become Muhammadan, because of the
frequent conversions that took place and the powerful influence
exercised by the Muslim merchants from other parts of India, such as
Gujarāt and the Deccan, and from Arabia and Persia. [862]
But there would appear to be no record of the individuals who took part
in the propaganda, except in the case of the historian ʻAbd al-Razzāq,
who has himself left an account of his unsuccessful mission to the
court of the Zamorin of Calicut. He was sent on this mission in the
year 1441 by the Tīmūrid Shāh Rukh Bahādur, in response to an appeal
made by an ambassador who had been sent by the Zamorin of Calicut to
this monarch. The ambassador was himself a Musalman and represented to
the Sultan how excellent and meritorious an action it would be to send
a special envoy to the Zamorin, “to invite him to accept Islam in
accordance with the injunction ‘Summon thou to the ways of thy Lord
with wisdom and with kindly warning,’ [863] and open the bolt of
darkness and error that locked his benighted heart, and let the
splendour of the light of the faith and the brightness of the sun of
knowledge shine into the window of his soul.” ʻAbd al-Razzāq was chosen
for this task and after an adventurous journey reached Calicut, but
appears to have met with a cold reception, and after remaining there
for about six months abandoned his original purposes and made his way
back to Khurāsān, which he reached after an absence of three years.
[864]
Another community of Musalmans in Southern India, the Ravuttans, [865]
ascribe their conversion to the preaching of missionaries whose tombs
are held in veneration by them to the present day. The most famous of
these was Sayyid Nathar Shāh [866] (A.D. 969–1039) who after many
wanderings in Arabia, Persia and Northern India, settled down in
Trichinopoly, where he spent the remaining years of his life in prayer
and works of charity, and converted a large number of Hindus to the
faith of Islam; his tomb is much resorted to as a place of pilgrimage
and the Muhammadans re-named Trichinopoly Natharnagar, after the name
of their saint. [867] Sayyid Ibrāhīm Shahīd (said to have been born
about the middle of the twelfth century), whose tomb is at Ervadi, was
a militant hero who led an expedition into the Pandyan kingdom,
occupied the country for about twelve years, but was at length slain;
his son’s life was, however, spared in consideration of the beneficent
rule of his father, and a grant of land given to him, which his
descendants enjoy to the present day. The latest of these saints, Shāh
al-Ḥamīd (1532–1600), was born at Manikpur in Northern India, and spent
most of his life in visiting the holy shrines of Islam and in
missionary tours chiefly throughout Southern India; he finally settled
in Nagore, where the descendants of his adopted son are still in charge
of his tomb. [868]
Another group of Muhammadans in Southern India, the Dudekulas, who live
by cotton cleaning (as their name denotes) and by weaving coarse
fabrics, attribute their conversion to Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn, whose tomb
they revere at Penukonda. Legend says that he was originally a king of
Sīstān, who abdicated his throne in favour of his brother and became a
religious mendicant. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina,
he was bidden by the Prophet in a dream to go to India; here he met
Nathar Shāh, of Trichinopoly, and became his disciple and was sent by
him in company with 200 religious mendicants on a proselytising
mission. The legend goes on to say that they finally settled at
Penukonda in the vicinity of a Hindu temple, where their presence was
unwelcome to the Raja of the place, but instead of appealing to force
he applied several tests to discover whether the Muhammadan saint or
his own priest was the better qualified by sanctity to possess the
temple. As a final test, he had them both tied up in sacks filled with
lime and thrown into tanks. The Hindu priest never re-appeared, but
Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn asserted the superiority of his faith by being
miraculously transported to a hill outside the town. The Raja hereupon
became a Musalman, and his example was followed by a large number of
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and the temple was turned into a
mosque. [869]
The history of Islam in Southern India by no means always continued to
be of so peaceful a character, but it does not appear that the forcible
conversions of the Hindus and others to Islam which were perpetrated
when the Muhammadan power became paramount under Ḥaydar ʻAlī
(1767–1782) and Tīpū Sulṭān (1782–1799), can be paralleled in the
earlier history of this part of India. However this may be, there is no
reason to doubt that constant conversions by peaceful methods were made
to Islam from among the lower castes, [870] as is the case at the
present day when accessions to Islam from time to time occur from among
the Tiyans, who are said to form one of the most progressive
communities in India, the Mukkuvans or fisherman caste, as well as from
the Cherumans or agricultural labourers, and other serf castes, to whom
Islam brings deliverance from the disabilities attaching to the
outcasts of the Hindu social system; occasionally, also, converts are
drawn from among the Nayars and the native Christians. In Ponnani, the
residence of the spiritual head of the majority of the Muhammadans of
Malabar, there is an association entitled Minnat al-Islām Sabhā, where
converts are instructed in the tenets of their new faith and material
assistance rendered to those under instruction; the average number of
converts received in this institution in the course of the first three
years of the twentieth century, was 750. [871] So numerous have these
conversions from Hinduism been, that the tendency of the Muhammadans of
the west as well as the east coast of Southern India has been to
reversion to the Hindu or aboriginal type, and, except in the case of
some of the nobler families, they now in great part present all the
characteristics of an aboriginal people, with very little of the
original foreign blood in them. [872] In the western coast districts
the tyranny of caste intolerance is peculiarly oppressive; to give but
one instance, in Travancore certain of the lower castes may not come
nearer than seventy-four paces to a Brahman, and have to make a
grunting noise as they pass along the road, in order to give warning of
their approach. Similar instances might be abundantly multiplied. What
wonder, then, that the Musalman population is fast increasing through
conversion from these lower castes, who thereby free themselves from
such degrading oppression, and raise themselves and their descendants
in the social scale?
In fact the Mappillas on the west coast are said to be increasing so
considerably through accessions from the lower classes of Hindus, as to
render it possible that in a few years the whole of the lower races of
the west coast may become Muhammadans. [873]
It was most probably from Malabar that Islam crossed over to the
Laccadive and Maldive Islands, the population of which is now entirely
Muslim. The inhabitants of these islands owed their conversion to the
Arab and Persian merchants, who established themselves in the country,
intermarrying with the natives, and thus smoothing the way for the work
of active proselytism. The date of the conversion of the first
Muhammadan Sultan of the Maldive Islands, Aḥmad Shanūrāzah, [874] has
been conjectured to have occurred about A.D. 1200, but it is very
possible that the Muhammadan merchants had introduced their religion
into the island as much as three centuries before, and the process of
conversion must undoubtedly have been a gradual one. [875] No details,
however, have come down to us.
At Mālē, the seat of government, is found the tomb of Shaykh Yūsuf
Shams al-Dīn, a native of Tabrīz, in Persia, who is said to have been a
successful missionary of Islam in these islands. His tomb is still held
in great veneration, and always kept in good repair, and in the same
part of the island are buried some of his countrymen who came in search
of him, and remained in the Maldives until their death. [876]
The introduction of Islam into the neighbouring Laccadive Islands is
attributed to an Arab preacher, known to the islanders by the name of
Mumba Mulyaka; his tomb is still shown at Androth and as the present
qāḍī of that place claims to be twenty-sixth in descent from him, he
probably reached these islands some time in the twelfth century. [877]
The Deccan also was the scene of the successful labours of many Muslim
missionaries. It has already been pointed out that from very early
times Arab traders had visited the towns on the west coast; in the
tenth century we are told that the Arabs were settled in large numbers
in the towns of the Konkan, having intermarried with the women of the
country and living under their own laws and religion. [878] Under the
Muhammadan dynasties of the Bahmanid (1347–1490) and Bījāpūr
(1489–1686) kings, a fresh impulse was given to Arab immigration, and
with the trader and the soldier of fortune came the missionaries
seeking to make spiritual conquests in the cause of Islam, and win over
the unbelieving people of the country by their preaching and example,
for of forcible conversions we have no record under the early Deccan
dynasties, whose rule was characterised by a striking toleration. [879]
One of these Arab preachers, Pīr Mahābīr Khamdāyat, came as a
missionary to the Deccan as early as A.D. 1304, and among the
cultivating classes of Bījāpūr are to be found descendants of the Jains
who were converted by him. [880] About the close of the same century a
celebrated saint of Gulbarga, Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsūdarāz, [881]
converted a number of Hindus of the Poona district, and twenty years
later his labours were crowned with a like success in Belgaum. [882] At
Dahanu still reside the descendants of a relative of one of the
greatest saints of Islam, Sayyid ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī of Baghdād; he
came to Western India about the fifteenth century, and after making
many converts in the Konkan, died and was buried at Dahanu. [883] In
the district of Dharwar, there are large numbers of weavers whose
ancestors were converted by Hāshim Pīr Gujarātī, the religious teacher
of the Bījāpūr king, Ibrāhīm ʻĀdil Shāh II, about the close of the
sixteenth century. These men still regard the saint with special
reverence and pay great respect to his descendants. [884] The
descendants of another saint, Shāh Muḥammad Ṣādiq Sarmast Ḥusaynī, are
still found in Nasik; he is said to have been the most successful of
Muhammadan missionaries; having come from Medina in 1568, he travelled
over the greater part of Western India and finally settled at Nasik—in
which district another very successful Muslim missionary, Khwājah
Khunmir Ḥusaynī, had begun to labour about fifty years before. [885]
Two other Arab missionaries may be mentioned, the scene of whose
proselytising efforts was laid in the district of Belgaum, namely
Sayyid Muḥammad b. Sayyid ʻAlī and Sayyid ʻUmar ʻAydrūs Basheban. [886]
Another missionary movement may be said roughly to centre round the
city of Multan. [887] This in the early days of the Arab conquest was
one of the outposts of Islam, when Muḥammad b. Qāsim had established
Muhammadan supremacy over Sind (A.D. 714). During the three centuries
of Arab rule there were naturally many accessions to the faith of the
conquerors. Several Sindian princes responded to the invitation of the
Caliph ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz to embrace Islam. [888] The people of
Sāwandari—who submitted to Muḥammad b. Qāsim and had peace granted to
them on the condition that they would entertain the Musalmans and
furnish guides—are spoken of by al-Balādhurī (writing about a hundred
years later) as professing Islam in his time; and the despatches of the
conqueror frequently refer to the conversion of the unbelievers.
That these conversions were in the main voluntary, may be judged from
the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their
onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of
Brahmanābād, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were
allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the
Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following
his own religion, [889] and generally, where submission was made,
quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise
of their own creeds and laws.
During the troubles that befell the caliphate in the latter half of the
ninth century, Sind, neglected by the central government, came to be
divided among several petty princes, the most powerful of whom were the
Amīrs of Multan and Mansūra. Such disunion naturally weakened the
political power of the Musalmans, which had in fact begun to decline
earlier in the century. For in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842),
the Indians of Sindān [890] declared themselves independent, but they
spared the mosque, in which the Musalmans were allowed to perform their
devotions undisturbed. [891] The Muhammadans of Multan succeeded in
maintaining their political independence, and kept themselves from
being conquered by the neighbouring Hindu princes, by threatening, if
attacked, to destroy an idol which was held in great veneration by the
Hindus and was visited by pilgrims from the most distant parts. [892]
But in the hour of its political decay, Islam was still achieving
missionary successes. Al-Balādhurī [893] tells the following story of
the conversion of a king of ʻUsayfān, a country between Kashmīr and
Multan and Kābul. The people of this country worshipped an idol for
which they had built a temple. The son of the king fell sick, and he
desired the priests of the temple to pray to the idol for the recovery
of his son. They retired for a short time, and then returned saying:
“We have prayed and our supplications have been accepted.” But no long
time passed before the youth died. Then the king attacked the temple,
destroyed and broke in pieces the idol, and slew the priests. He
afterwards invited a party of Muhammadan traders, who made known to him
the unity of God; whereupon he believed in the unity and became a
Muslim. A similar missionary influence was doubtless exercised by the
numerous communities of Muslim merchants who carried their religion
with them into the infidel cities of Hindustan. Arab geographers of the
tenth and twelfth centuries mention the names of many such cities, both
on the coast and inland, where the Musalmans built their mosques, and
were safe under the protection of the native princes, who even granted
them the privilege of living under their own laws. [894] The Arab
merchants at this time formed the medium of commercial communication
between Sind and the neighbouring countries of India and the outside
world. They brought the produce of China and Ceylon to the sea-ports of
Sind and from there conveyed them by way of Multan to Turkistan and
Khurāsān. [895]
It would be strange if these traders, scattered about in the cities of
the unbelievers, failed to exhibit the same proselytising zeal as we
find in the Muhammadan trader elsewhere. To the influence of such
trading communities was most probably due the conversion of the Sammas,
who ruled over Sind from A.D. 1351 to 1521. While the reign of Nanda b.
Bābiniyyah of this dynasty is specially mentioned as one of such “peace
and security, that never was this prince called upon to ride forth to
battle, and never did a foe take the field against him,” [896] it is at
the same time described as being “remarkable for its justice and an
increase of Islam.” This increase could thus only have been brought
about by peaceful missionary methods. One of the most famous of these
missionaries was the celebrated saint, Sayyid Yūsuf al-Dīn, a
descendant of ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī, who was bidden in a dream to leave
Baghdād for India and convert its inhabitants to Islam. He came to Sind
in 1422 and after labouring there for ten years, he succeeded in
winning over to Islam 700 families of the Lohāna caste, who followed
the example of two of their number, by name Sundarjī and Hansrāj; these
men embraced Islam, after seeing some miracles performed by the saint,
and on their conversion received the names of Adamjī and Tāj Muḥammad
respectively. Under the leadership of the grandson of the former, these
people afterwards migrated to Cutch, where their numbers were increased
by converts from among the Cutch Lohānas. [897]
Sind was also the scene of the labours of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, an Ismāʻīlī
missionary, who was head of the Khojah sect about the year 1430. In
accordance with the principles of accommodation practised by this sect,
he took a Hindu name and made certain concessions to the religious
beliefs of the Hindus whose conversion he sought to achieve, and
introduced among them a book entitled Dasavatār in which ʻAlī was made
out to be the tenth Avatār or incarnation of Viṣṇu; this book has been
from the beginning the accepted scripture of the Khojah sect, and it is
always read by the bedside of the dying and periodically at many
festivals; it assumes the nine incarnations of Viṣṇu to be true as far
as they go, but to fall short of the perfect truth, and supplements
this imperfect Vaiṣṇav system by the cardinal doctrine of the
Ismāʻīlians, the incarnation and coming manifestation of ʻAlī. Further,
he made out Brahmā to be Muḥammad, Viṣṇu to be ʻAlī and Adam Siva. The
first of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn’s converts were won in the villages and towns
of Upper Sind: he preached also in Cutch and from these parts the
doctrines of this sect spread southwards through Gujarāt to Bombay; and
at the present day Khojah communities are to be found in almost all the
large trading towns of Western India and on the seaboard of the Indian
Ocean. [898]
Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn was not however the first of the Ismāʻīlian
missionaries who came into India. He was preceded by ʻAbd Allāh, a
missionary sent from Yaman about 1067; he is said to have been a man of
great learning, and is credited with the performance of many miracles,
whereby he convinced a large number of Hindus of the truth of his
religion. [899] The second Ismāʻīlī missionary, Nūr al-Dīn, generally
known by the Hindu name he adopted, Nūr Satāgar, was sent into India
from Alamūt, the stronghold of the Grand Master of the Ismāʻīlīs, and
reached Gujarāt in the reign of the Hindu king, Siddhā Rāj (A.D.
1094–1143). [900] He adopted a Hindu name but told the Muhammadans that
his real name was Sayyid Saʻādat; he is said to have converted the
Kanbīs, Khārwās and Korīs, low castes of Gujarāt. [901]
As Nūr Satāgar is revered as the first missionary of the Khojahs, so is
ʻAbd Allāh believed by some to have been the founder of the sect of the
Bohras, a large and important community of Shīʻahs, mainly of Hindu
origin, who are found in considerable numbers in the chief commercial
centres of the Bombay Presidency. But others ascribe the honour of
being the first Bohra missionary to Mullā ʻAlī, of whose proselytising
methods the following account is given by a Shīʻah historian: “As the
people of Gujarāt in those days were infidels and accepted as their
religious leader an old man whose teaching they blindly followed, Mullā
ʻAlī saw no alternative but to go to the old man and ask to become his
disciple, intending to set before him such convincing arguments that he
would become a Musalman, and afterwards to attempt the conversion of
others. He accordingly spent some years in the service of the old man,
and having learned the language of the people of the country, read
their books and acquired a knowledge of their sciences. Step by step he
unfolded to the enlightened mind of the old man the truth of the faith
of Islam and persuaded him to become a Musalman. After his conversion,
some of his disciples followed the old man’s example. Finally, the
chief minister of the king of that country became aware of the old
man’s conversion to Islam, and going to see him submitted to his
spiritual guidance and likewise became a Musalman. For a long time, the
old man, the minister and the rest of the converts to Islam, kept the
fact of their conversion concealed and through fear of the king always
took care to prevent it coming to his knowledge; but at length the king
received a report of the minister’s having adopted Islam and began to
make inquiries. One day, without giving previous notice, he went to the
minister’s house and found him bowing his head in prayer and was vexed
with him. The minister recognised the purpose of the king’s visit, and
realised that his displeasure had been excited by suspicions aroused by
his prayer, with its bowing and prostrations; but the guidance of God
and divine grace befitting the occasion, he said that he was making
these movements because he was watching a serpent in the corner of the
room. When the king turned towards the corner of the room, by divine
providence he saw a snake there, and accepted the minister’s excuse and
his mind was cleared of all suspicions. In the end the king also
secretly became a Musalman, but for reasons of state concealed his
change of mind; when however, the hour of his death drew near, he gave
orders that his body was not to be burnt, as is the custom of the
infidels. Subsequently to his decease, when Sulṭān Z̤afar, one of the
trusty nobles of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh, king of Dehlī, conquered Gujarāt,
some of the Sunnī nobles who accompanied him used arguments to make the
people join the Sunnī sect of the Muslim faith; so some of the Bohras
are Sunnīs, but the greater part remain true to their original faith.”
[902]
Several small groups of Musalmans in Cutch and Gujarāt trace their
conversion to Imām Shāh of Pīrāna, [903] who was actively engaged in
missionary work during the latter half of the fifteenth century. He is
said to have converted a large body of Hindu cultivators, by bringing
about a fall of rain after two seasons of scarcity. On another occasion
meeting a band of Hindu pilgrims passing through Pīrāna on their way to
Benares, he offered to take them there; they agreed and in a moment
were in the holy city, where they bathed in the Ganges and paid their
vows; they then awoke to find themselves still in Pīrāna and adopted
the faith of the saint who could perform such a miracle. He died in
1512 and his tomb in Pīrāna is still an object of pilgrimage for Hindus
as well as for Muhammadans. [904]
Many of the Cutch Musalmans that are of Hindu descent reverence as
their spiritual leader Dāwal Shāh Pīr, whose real name was Malik ʻAbd
al-Laṭīf, [905] the son of one of the nobles of Maḥmūd Bīgarah
(1459–1511), the famous monarch of the Muhammadan dynasty of Gujarāt,
to whose reign popular tradition assigns the date of the conversion of
many Hindus. [906]
It is in Bengal, however, that the Muhammadan missionaries in India
have achieved their greatest success, as far as numbers are concerned.
A Muhammadan kingdom was first founded here at the end of the twelfth
century by Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khiljī, who conquered Bihar and Bengal
and made Gaur the capital of the latter province. The long continuance
of the Muhammadan rule would naturally assist the spread of Islam, and
though the Hindu rule was restored for ten years under the tolerant
Rājā Kāns, whose rule is said to have been popular with his Muhammadan
subjects, [907] his son, Jatmall, renounced the Hindu religion and
became a Musalman. After his father’s death in 1414 he called together
all the officers of the state and announced his intention of embracing
Islam, and proclaimed that if the chiefs would not permit him to ascend
the throne, he was ready to give it up to his brother; whereupon they
declared that they would accept him as their king, whatever religion he
might adopt. Accordingly, several learned men of the Muslim faith were
summoned to witness the Raja renounce the Hindu religion and publicly
profess his acceptance of Islam: he took the name of Jalāl al-Dīn
Muḥammad Shāh, and according to tradition numerous conversions were
made during his reign. [908] Many of these were however due to force,
for his reign is signalised as being the only one in which any
wholesale persecution of the subject Hindus is recorded, during the
five centuries and a half of Muhammadan rule in Eastern Bengal. [909]
Conversions, however, often took place at other times under pressure
from the Muhammadan government. The Rajas of Kharagpur were originally
Hindus, and became Muhammadans because, having been defeated by one of
Akbar’s generals, they were only allowed to retain the family estates
on the condition that they embraced Islam. The Hindu ancestor of the
family of Asad ʻAlī Khān, in Chittagong, was deprived of his caste by
being forced to smell beef and had perforce to become a Muhammadan, and
several other instances of the same kind might be quoted. [910]
Murshid Qulī Khān (son of a converted Brahman), who was made governor
of Bengal by the Emperor Aurangzeb at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, enforced a law that any official or landlord, who failed to
pay the revenue that was due or was unable to make good the loss,
should with his wife and children be compelled to become Muhammadans.
Further, it was the common law that any Hindu who forfeited his caste
by a breach of regulations could only be reinstated by the Muhammadan
government; if the government refused to interfere, the outcast had no
means of regaining his position in the social system of the Hindus, and
would probably find no resource but to become a Musalman. [911]
The Afghān adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have
been active in the work of proselytising, for besides the children that
they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in
times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam. [912] But
it is not in the ancient centres of the Muhammadan government that the
Musalmans of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country
districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the
West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.
[913] The similarity of manners between these low-caste Hindus and the
followers of the Prophet, and the caste distinctions which they still
retain, as well as their physical likeness, all bear the same testimony
and identify the Bengal Musalmans with the aboriginal tribes of the
country. Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar
its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muhammadan
invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigour after its
triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its
influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the
Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest
distress and degradation. But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were
welcomed with open arms by the aborigines and the low castes on the
very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan
rulers. “To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and
low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high.
It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal
who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in
its sight to a despised and neglected population. The initiatory rite
rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity
true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest
alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of
supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population.
Compulsory conversions are occasionally recorded. But it was not to
force that Islam owed its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It
appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts
from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler
idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of
Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu
community, a free entrance into a new social organisation.” [914]
The existence in Bengal of definite missionary efforts is said to be
attested by certain legends of the zeal of private individuals on
behalf of their religion, and the graves of some of these missionaries
are still honoured, and are annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.
[915] One of the earliest of these was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī, who
died in A.D. 1244. He was a pupil of the great saint, Shihāb al-Dīn
Suhrawardī. In the course of his missionary journeys he visited Bengal,
where a shrine to which is attached a rich endowment was erected in his
honour, the real site of his tomb being unknown. Many miracles are
ascribed to him; among others, that he converted a Hindu milkman to
Islam by a single look. [916]
In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable revival of the
Muhammadan religion in Bengal, and several sects that owe their origin
to the influence of the Wahhābī reformation, have sent their
missionaries through the province purging out the remnants of Hindu
superstitions, awakening religious zeal and spreading the faith among
unbelievers. [917]
Some account still remains to be given of Muslim missionaries who have
laboured in parts of India other than those mentioned above. One of the
earliest of these is Shaykh Ismāʻīl, one of the most famous of the
Sayyids of Bukhārā, distinguished alike for his secular and religious
learning; he is said to have been the first Muslim missionary who
preached the faith of Islam in the city of Lahore, whither he came in
the year A.D. 1005. Crowds flocked to listen to his sermons, and the
number of his converts swelled rapidly day by day, and it is said that
no unbeliever ever came into personal contact with him without being
converted to the faith of Islam. [918]
The conversion of the inhabitants of the western plains of the Panjāb
is said to have been effected through the preaching of Bahā al-Ḥaqq of
Multan [919] and Bābā Farīd al-Dīn of Pakpattan, who flourished about
the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries.
[920] A biographer of the latter saint gives a list of sixteen tribes
who were won over to Islam through his preaching, but unfortunately
provides us with no details of this work of conversion. [921]
One of the most famous of the Muslim saints of India and a pioneer of
Islam in Rajputana was Khwājah Muʻīn al-Dīn Chishtī, who died in Ajmīr
in A.D. 1234. He was a native of Sajistān to the east of Persia, and is
said to have received his call to preach Islam to the unbelievers in
India while on a pilgrimage to Medina. Here the Prophet appeared to him
in a dream and thus addressed him: “The Almighty has entrusted the
country of India to thee. Go thither and settle in Ajmīr. By God’s
help, the faith of Islam shall, through thy piety and that of thy
followers, be spread in that land.” He obeyed the call and made his way
to Ajmīr which was then under Hindu rule and idolatry prevailed
throughout the land. Among the first of his converts here was a Yogī,
who was the spiritual preceptor of the Raja himself: gradually he
gathered around him a large body of disciples whom his teachings had
won from the ranks of infidelity, and his fame as a religious leader
became very widespread and attracted to Ajmīr great numbers of Hindus
whom he persuaded to embrace Islam. [922] On his way to Ajmīr he is
said to have converted as many as 700 persons in the city of Delhi.
Of immense importance in the history of Islam in India was the arrival
in that country of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn, who is said to have been born
at Bukhārā in 1199. He settled in Uch, now in the Bahawalpur territory,
in 1244, and converted numbers of persons in the neighbourhood to
Islam; he died in 1291, and his descendants, many of whom are also
revered as saints, have remained as guardians of his shrine up to the
present day and form the centre of a widespread religious influence.
His grandson, Sayyid Aḥmad Kabīr, known as Makhdūm-i-Jahāniyān, is
credited with having effected the conversion of several tribes in the
Punjab. [923] About a mile to the east of Uch is situated the shrine of
Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn, son of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn, who was a contemporary
of Jalāl-al-Dīn; both father and son are said to have made many
converts, and such was the influence attributed to Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn
that it was said as soon as his glance fell upon any Hindu, the latter
would accept Islam. [924]
Rather later in the same century, a native of Persian ʻIrāq, by name
Abū ʻAlī Qalandar, came into India and took up his residence at
Panipat, where he died at the ripe age of 100, in A.D. 1324. The Muslim
Rajputs of this city, numbering about 300 males, are descended from a
certain Amīr Singh who was converted by this saint. His tomb is still
held in honour and is visited by many pilgrims.
Another such was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn, a Persian who came into India
about the latter half of the fourteenth century and settled down at
Silhaṭ, in Lower Assam, in order to convert the people of these parts
to Islam. He achieved a great reputation as a holy man, and his
proselytising labours were crowned with eminent success. [925]
In more recent years there have been abundant witnesses for Islam
seeking to spread this faith in India—and with very considerable
success; the second half of the nineteenth century especially witnessed
a great revival of missionary activity, the number of annual
conversions being variously estimated at ten, fifty, one hundred and
six hundred thousand. [926] But it is difficult to obtain accurate
information on account of the peculiarly individualistic character of
Muslim missionary work and the absence of any central organisation or
of anything in the way of missionary reports, and the success that
attends the labours of Muslim preachers is sometimes much exaggerated,
e.g. in the Panjāb a certain Ḥājī Muḥammad is said to have converted as
many as 200,000 Hindus, [927] and a mawlavī in Bangalore boasted that
in five years he had made as many as 1000 converts in this city and its
suburbs. But that there are Muslim missionaries engaged in active and
successful propagandist labours is undoubted, and the following
examples are typical of the period referred to.
Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn Khān, an itinerant preacher, in the course of
several years converted 228 persons, residents of Bombay, Cawnpore,
Ajmīr, and other cities. Mawlavī Ḥasan ʻAlī converted twenty-five
persons, twelve in Poona, the rest in Ḥaydarabad and other parts of
India. [928] In the district of Khandesh, in the Bombay Presidency, the
preaching of the Qāḍī of Nasirabad, Sayyid Safdar ʻAlī, won over to
Islam a large body of artisans, who follow the trade of armourers or
blacksmiths. [929] A number of persons of the same trade, who form a
small community of about 200 souls in the district of Nasik, were
converted in a curious way about 1870. The Presbyterian missionaries of
Nasik had for a long time been trying to convert them from Hinduism,
and they were in a state of hesitation as to whether or not to embrace
Christianity when a Muhammadan faqīr from Bombay, who was well
acquainted with their habits of thought, expounded to them the
doctrines of Islam and succeeded in winning them over to that faith.
[930]
In Patiala, Mawlavī ʻUbayd Allāh, a converted Brahman of great
learning, proved himself to be a zealous preacher of Islam, and in
spite of the obstacles that were at first thrown in his way by his
relatives, achieved so great a success that his converts almost filled
an entire ward of the city. He wrote controversial works, which have
passed through several editions, directed against the Christian and
Hindu religions. In one of these books he thus speaks of his own
conversion: “I, Muḥammad ʻUbayd Allāh, the son of Munshi Koṭā Mal,
resident of Payal, in the Patiala State, declare that this poor man in
his childhood and during the lifetime of his father was held in the
bondage of idol-worship, but the mercy of God caught me by the hand and
drew me towards Islam, i.e. I came to know the excellence of Islam and
the deficiencies of Hinduism, and I accepted Islam heart and soul and
counted myself one of the servants of the Prophet of God (peace be upon
him!). At that time intelligence, which is the gift of God, suggested
to me that it was mere folly and laziness to blindly follow the customs
of one’s forefathers and be misled by them and not make researches into
matters of religion and faith, whereon depend our eternal bliss or
misery. With these thoughts I began to study the current faiths and
investigated each of them impartially. I thoroughly explored the Hindu
religion and conversed with learned Paṇḍits, gained a thorough
knowledge of the Christian faith, read the books of Islam and conversed
with learned men. In all of them I found errors and fallacies, with the
exception of Islam, the excellence of which became clearly manifest to
me; its leader, Muḥammad the Prophet, possesses such moral excellences
that no tongue can describe them, and he alone who knows the beliefs
and the liturgy, and the moral teachings and practice of this faith,
can fully realise them. Praise be to God! So excellent is this religion
that everything in it leads the soul to God. In short, by the grace of
God, the distinction between truth and falsehood became as clear to me
as night and day, darkness and light. But although my heart had long
been enlightened by the brightness of Islam and my mouth fragrant with
the profession of faith, yet my evil passions and Satan had bound me
with the fetters of the luxury and ease of this fleeting world, and I
was in evil case because of the outward observances of idolatry. At
length, the grace of God thus admonished me: ‘How long wilt thou keep
this priceless pearl hidden within the shell and this refreshing
perfume shut up in the casket? thou shouldest wear this pearl about thy
neck and profit by this perfume.’ Moreover the learned have declared
that to conceal one’s faith in Islam and retain the dress and habits of
infidels brings a man to Hell. So (God be praised!) on the ʻĪd al-Fiṭr
1264 the sun of my conversion emerged from its screen of clouds, and I
performed my devotions in public with my Muslim brethren.” [931]
Many Muhammadan preachers have adopted the methods of Christian
missionaries, such as street preaching, tract distribution, and other
agencies. In many of the large cities of India, Muslim preachers may be
found daily expounding the teachings of Islam in some principal
thoroughfare. In Bangalore this practice is very general, and one of
these preachers, who was the imām of the mosque about the year 1890,
was so popular that he was even sometimes invited to preach by Hindus:
he preached in the market-place, and in the course of seven or eight
years gained forty-two converts. In Bombay a Muhammadan missionary
preaches almost daily near the chief market of the city, and in
Calcutta there are several preaching-stations that are kept constantly
supplied. Among the converts are occasionally to be found some
Europeans, mostly persons in indigent circumstances; the mass, however,
are Hindus. [932] Some of the numerous Anjumans that have of recent
years sprung up in the chief centres of Musalman life in India, include
among their objects the sending of missionaries to preach in the
bazaars; such are the Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, and the
Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmīr. These particular Anjumans appoint paid
agents, but much of the work of preaching in the bazaars is performed
by persons who are engaged in some trade or business during the working
hours of the day and devote their leisure time in the evenings to this
pious work.
Much of the missionary zeal of the Indian Musalmans is directed towards
counteracting the anti-Islamic tendencies of the instruction given by
Christian missionaries and the preachers of the Ārya Samāj, and the
efforts made are thus defensive rather than directly proselytising.
Some preachers too turn their attention rather to the strengthening of
the foundation already laid, and endeavour to rid their ignorant
co-religionists of their Hindu superstitions, and instil in them a
purer form of faith, such efforts being in many cases the continuation
of earlier missionary activity. The work of conversion has indeed been
often very imperfect. Of many, nominally Muslims, it may be said that
they are half Hindus: they observe caste rules, they join in Hindu
festivals and practise numerous idolatrous ceremonies. In certain
districts also, e.g. in Mewāt and Gurgaon, large numbers of Muhammadans
may be found who know nothing of their religion but its name; they have
no mosques, nor do they observe the hours of prayer. This is especially
the case among the Muhammadans of the villages or in parts of the
country where they are isolated from the mass of believers; but in the
towns the presence of learned religious men tends, in great measure, to
counteract the influence of former superstitions, and makes for a purer
and more intelligent form of religious life. In recent years, however,
there has been, speaking generally, a movement noticeable among the
Indian Muslims towards a religious life more strictly in accordance
with the laws of Islam. The influence of the Christian mission schools
has also been very great in stimulating among some Muhammadans of the
younger generation a study of their own religion and in bringing about
a consequent awakening of religious zeal. Indeed, the spread of
education generally, has led to a more intelligent grasp of religious
principles and to an increase of religious teachers in outlying and
hitherto neglected districts. This missionary movement of reform (from
whatever cause it may originate), may be observed in very different
parts of India. In the eastern districts of the Panjāb, for example,
after the Mutiny, a great religious revival took place. Preachers
travelled far and wide through the country, calling upon believers to
abandon their idolatrous practices and expounding the true tenets of
the faith. Now, in consequence, most villages, in which Muhammadans own
any considerable portion, have a mosque, while the grosser and more
open idolatries are being discontinued. [933] In Rajputana also, the
Hindu tribes who have been from time to time converted to Islam in the
rural districts, are now becoming more orthodox and regular in their
religious observances, and are abandoning the ancient customs which
hitherto they had observed in common with their idolatrous neighbours.
The Merāts, for example, now follow the orthodox Muhammadan form of
marriage instead of the Hindu ritual they formerly observed, and have
abjured the flesh of the wild boar. [934] A similar revival in Bengal
has already been spoken of above.
Such movements and the efforts of individual missionaries are, however,
quite inadequate to explain the rapid increase of the Muhammadans of
India, and one is naturally led to inquire what are the causes other
than the normal increase of population, [935] which add so enormously
to their numbers. The answer is to be found in the social conditions of
life among Hindus. The insults and contempt heaped upon the lower
castes of Hindus by their co-religionists, and the impassable obstacles
placed in the way of any member of these castes desiring to better his
condition, show up in striking contrast the benefits of a religious
system which has no outcasts, and gives free scope for the indulgence
of any ambition. In Bengal, for example, the weavers of cotton
piece-goods, who are looked upon as vile by their Hindu
co-religionists, embrace Islam in large numbers to escape from the low
position to which they are otherwise degraded. [936] A very remarkable
instance of a similar kind occurs in the history of the north-eastern
part of the same province. Here in the year 1550 the aboriginal tribe
of the Kocch established a dynasty under their great leader, Haju; in
the reign of his grandson, when the higher classes in the state were
received into the pale of Hinduism, [937] the mass of the people
finding themselves despised as outcasts, became Muhammadans. [938]
The escape that Islam offers to Hindus from the oppression of the
higher castes was strikingly illustrated in Tinnevelli at the close of
the nineteenth century. A very low caste, the Shanars, had in recent
years become prosperous and many of them had built fine houses; they
asserted that they had the right to worship in temples, from which they
had hitherto been excluded. A riot ensued, in the course of which the
Shanars suffered badly at the hands of Hindus of a higher caste, and
they took refuge in the pale of Islam. Six hundred Shanars in one
village became Muslims in one day, and their example was quickly
followed in other places. [939]
Similar instances might be given from other parts of India. A Hindu who
has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his
relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move,
would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all
without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the
social scale to that from which he has been banished. Such a change of
religion might well be accompanied with sincere conviction, but men
also who might be profoundly indifferent to the number or names of the
deities they were called upon to worship, would feel very keenly the
social ostracism entailed by their loss of caste, and become Muhammadan
without any religious feelings at all. The influence of the study of
Muhammadan literature also, and the habitual contact with Muhammadan
society, must often make itself insensibly felt. Among the Rajput
princes of the nineteenth century in Rajputana and Bundelkhand, such
tendencies towards Islamism were to be observed, [940] tendencies
which, had the Mughal empire lasted, would probably have led to their
ultimate conversion. They not only respected Muhammadan saints, but had
Muhammadan tutors for their sons; they also had their food killed in
accordance with the regulations laid down by the Muhammadan law, and
joined in the Muhammadan festivals dressed as faqīrs, and praying like
true believers. On the other hand, it has been conjectured that the
present position of affairs, under a government perfectly impartial in
matters religious, is much more likely to promote conversions among the
Hindus generally than was the case under the rule of the Muhammadan
kingdoms, when Hinduism gained union and strength from the constant
struggle with an aggressive enemy. [941] Hindus, too, often flock in
large numbers to the tombs of Muslim saints on the day appointed to
commemorate them, and a childless father, with the feeling that prompts
a polytheist to leave no God unaddressed, will present his petition to
the God of the Muhammadans, and if children are born to him, apparently
in answer to this prayer, the whole family will in such a case (and
examples are not infrequent) embrace Islam. [942]
Love for a Muhammadan woman is occasionally the cause of the conversion
of a Hindu, since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an unbeliever is
absolutely forbidden by the Muslim law. Hindu children, if adopted by
wealthy Musalmans, would be brought up in the religion of their new
parents; and a Hindu wife, married to a follower of the Prophet, would
be likely to adopt the faith of her husband. [943] As the contrary
process can rarely take place, the number of Muhammadans is bound to
increase in proportion to that of the Hindus. Hindus, who for some
reason or other have been driven out of their caste; the poor who have
become the recipients of Muhammadan charity, or women and children who
have been protected when their parents have died or deserted them—(such
cases would naturally be frequent in times of famine)—form a continuous
though small stream of additions from the Hindus. [944] There are often
local circumstances favourable to the growth of Islam; for example, it
has been pointed out [945] that in the villages of the Terai, in which
the number of Hindus and Muhammadans happen to be equally balanced, any
increase in the predominance of the Muhammadans is invariably followed
by disputes about the killing of cows and other practices offensive to
Hindu feeling. The Hindus gradually move away from the village, leaving
behind of their creed only the Chamār ploughman in the service of the
Muhammadan peasants. These latter eventually adopt the religion of
their masters, not from any conviction of its truth, but from the
inconvenience their isolation entails.
Some striking instances of conversions from the lower castes of Hindus
are also found in the agricultural districts of Oudh. Although the
Muhammadans of this province form only one-tenth of the whole
population, still the small groups of Muhammadan cultivators form
“scattered centres of revolt against the degrading oppression to which
their religion hopelessly consigns these lower castes.” [946] The
advantages Islam holds out to such classes as the Korīs and Chamārs,
who stand at the lowest level of Hindu society, and the deliverance
which conversion to Islam brings them, may be best understood from the
following passage descriptive of their social condition as Hindus.
[947] “The lowest depth of misery and degradation is reached by the
Korīs and Chamārs, the weavers and leather-cutters to the rest. Many of
these in the northern districts are actually bond-slaves, having hardly
ever the spirit to avail themselves of the remedy offered by our
courts, and descend with their children from generation to generation
as the value of an old purchase. They hold the plough for the Brahman
or Chhattri master, whose pride of caste forbids him to touch it, and
live with the pigs, less unclean than themselves, in separate quarters
apart from the rest of the village. Always on the verge of starvation,
their lean, black, and ill-formed figures, their stupid faces, and
their repulsively filthy habits reflect the wretched destiny which
condemns them to be lower than the beast among their fellow-men, and
yet that they are far from incapable of improvement is proved by the
active and useful stable servants drawn from among them, who receive
good pay and live well under European masters. A change of religion is
the only means of escape open to them, and they have little reason to
be faithful to their present creed.”
It is this absence of class prejudices which constitutes the real
strength of Islam in India, and enables it to win so many converts from
Hinduism.
To complete this survey of Islam in India, some account still remains
to be given of the spread of this faith in Kashmīr and thence beyond
the borders of India into Tibet. Of all the provinces and states of
India (with the exception of Sind) Kashmīr contains the largest number
of Muhammadans (namely 70 per cent.) in proportion to the whole
population; but unfortunately historical facts that should explain the
existence in this state of so many Musalmans, almost entirely of Hindu
or Tibetan origin, are very scanty. But all the evidence leads us to
attribute it on the whole to a long-continued missionary movement
inaugurated and carried out mainly by faqīrs and dervishes, among whom
were Ismāʻīlian preachers sent from Alamūt. [948]
It is difficult to say when this Islamising influence first made itself
felt in the country. The first Muhammadan king of Kashmīr, Ṣadr al-Dīn,
[949] is said to have owed his conversion to a certain Darwesh Bulbul
Shāh in the early part of the fourteenth century. This saint was the
only religious teacher who could satisfy his craving for religious
truth when, dissatisfied with his own Hindu faith, he looked for a more
acceptable form of doctrine. Towards the end of the same century (in
1388) the progress of Islam was most materially furthered by the advent
of Sayyid ʻAlī Hamadānī, a fugitive from his native city of Hamadān in
Persia, where he had incurred the wrath of Tīmūr. He was accompanied by
700 Sayyids, who established hermitages all over the country and by
their influence appear to have assured the acceptance of the new
religion. Their advent appears, however, to have also stirred up
considerable fanaticism, as Sultan Sikandar (1393–1417) acquired the
name of Butshikan from his destruction of Hindu idols and temples, and
his prime minister, a converted Hindu, set on foot a fierce persecution
of the adherents of his old faith, but on his death toleration was
again made the rule of the kingdom. [950] Towards the close of the
fifteenth century, a missionary, by name Mīr Shams al-Dīn, belonging to
a Shīʻah sect, came from ʻIrāq, and, with the aid of his disciples, won
over a large number of converts in Kashmīr.
When under Akbar, Kashmīr became a province of the Mughal empire, the
Muhammadan influence was naturally strengthened and many men of
learning came into the country. In the reign of Aurangzeb, the Rajput
Raja of Kishtwar was converted by the miracles of a certain Sayyid Shāh
Farīd al-Dīn and his conversion seems to have been followed by that of
the majority of his subjects, and along the route which the Mughal
emperors took on their progresses into Kashmīr we still find Rajas who
are the descendants of Muhammadanised Rajputs. [951]
To the north and north-east of Kashmīr, the provinces of Baltistan and
Ladakh are inhabited by a mixed Tibetan race, among whom Islam has been
firmly established for several centuries, but the date and manner of
its introduction is unknown. The Muhammadans of Baltistan tell of four
brothers who came from Khurāsān and brought about a revival of the
faith, but appear to have no tradition regarding the earliest
propagandists. [952] Up to the middle of the nineteenth century Islam
appeared to be making progress, but this tendency was counteracted by
the encouragement which Maharaja Ranbir Singh gave to the followers of
the Buddhist faith. In Ladakh there are a number of half-castes, called
Arghons, [953] born of Tibetan mothers and Muhammadan fathers, traders
who have come to Leh and persuaded the Tibetan women they marry to
accept Islam. These Arghons are all Musalmans and, like their fathers,
marry Tibetan wives; they are said to be increasing in numbers more
rapidly than the pure Tibetan stock. [954] Islam has also been carried
into Tibet Proper by Kashmīrī merchants. Settlements of such merchants
are to be found in all the chief cities of Tibet; they marry Tibetan
wives, who often adopt the religion of their husbands; and there are
now said to be as many as 2000 Muhammadan families in Lhasa. [955]
Islam has made its way into Tibet also from Yunnan, [956] and at
Su-ching, on the border of the Sze-chwan province and Tibet, converts
are being won from among the Tibetan inhabitants. [957] Muhammadan
influences are also said to have come from Persia [958] and from
Turkestan. [959]