The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Preface

Had India been completely converted to Muhammadanism during the thousand years of Muslim conquest and rule, its people would have taken pride in the victories and achievements of Islam and even organised panIslamic movements and Islamic revolutions. Conversely, had India possessed the determination of countries like France and Spain to repulse the Muslims for good, its people would have forgotten about Islam and its rule. But while India could not be completely conquered or Islamized, the Hindus did not lose their ancient religious and cultural moorings. In short, while Muslims with all their armed might proved to be great conquerors, rulers and proselytizers, Indians or Hindus, with all their weaknesses, proved to be great survivors. India never became an Islamic country. Its ethos remained Hindu while Muslims also continued to live here retaining their distinctive religious and social system. It is against this background that an assessment of the legacy of Muslim rule in India has been attempted.

Source-materials on such a vast area of study are varied and scattered. What we possess is a series of glimpses furnished by Persian chroniclers, foreign visitors and indigenous writers who noted what appeared to them of interest. It is not an easy task, on the basis of these sources, to reconstruct an integrated picture of the medieval scenario spanning almost a millennium, beginning with the establishment of Muslim rule. The task becomes more difficult when the scenario converges on the modem age with its pre- and post-Partition politics and slogans of the two-nation theory, secularism, national integration and minority rights. Consequently, some generalisations, repetitions and reiterations have inevitably crept into what is otherwise a work of historical research. For this the author craves the indulgence of the reader.

10 January 1992

K. L. Lal

Abbreviations used in references

Afif : Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi by Shama Siraj Afif

Ain : Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, trans. by H. Blochmann

Akbar Nama : Akbar Nama by Abul Fazl, trans. by H. Beveridge

Babur Nama : Memoirs of Babur, trans. by Ms. A. Beveridge

Badaoni : Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by Abdul Qadir Badaoni

Barani : Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi by Ziyauddin Barani

Bernier : Travels in the Mogul Empire by Francois Bernier

C.H.I. : Cambridge History of India

E and D : History of India as told by its own Historians by Henry Elliot and John Dowson

Farishtah : Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi or Tarikh-i-Farishtah by Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Farishtah

Foster : Early Travels in India, edited by William Foster

Ibn Battuta : Rehla of Ibn Battuta, trans. by Mahdi Husain

Khafi Khan : Mutakhab-ul-Lubab by Khafi Khan

Lahori : Badshah Nama by Abdul Hamid Lahori

Manucci : Storia do Mogor by Niccolao Manucci

Pelsaert : Jahangir’s India by Francisco Pelsaert

P.I.H.C. : Proceedings of the Indian History Congress

J.A.S.B. : Journal of the (Royal) Asiatic Society of Bengal

J.R.A.S. : Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain

Chapter 1

The Medieval Age

‘If royalty did not exist, the storm of strife would never subside, nor selfish ambition disappear.’‘

Abul Fazl

Muslim rule in India coincides with what is known as the Middle Ages in Europe. The term Middle Ages or the Medieval Age is applied loosely to that period in history which lies between the ancient and modern civilizations. In Europe the period is supposed to have begun in the fifth century when the Western Roman Empire fell and ended in the fifteenth century with the emanation of Renaissance in Italy, Reformation in Germany, the discovery of America by Columbus, the invention of Printing Press by Guttenberg, and the taking of Constantinople by the Turks from the Byzantine (or the Eastern Roman) Empire. In brief the period of Middle Ages extends from C.E. 600 to 1500.

Curiously enough the Middle Age in Europe synchronises exactly with what we call the medieval period in Indian history. The seventh century saw the end of the last great Hindu kingdom of Harshvardhana, the rise of Islam in Arabia and its introduction into India. In C. 1500 the Mughal conqueror Babur started mounting his campaigns. And since these foreign Muslim invaders and rulers had come not only to acquire dominions and extend territories, but also to spread the religion of Islam, war and religion became the two main currents of medieval Indian Muslim history.

Kingship

War is the work of kings turned conquerors or conquerors turned kings. Therefore it was necessary for the medieval monarch to be autocratic, religious minded and one who could conquer, rule and subserve the interest of religion. Such was the idea about the king in medieval times, both in the West and the East.

The beginnings of the institution of kingship are obscure. Anatole France attempts to trace it in his Penguin Island, a readable satire on (British) history and society. That is more or less what he writes: Early in the beginning of civilization, the people’s primary concern was provision of security against depredations of robbers and ravages of wild animals. So they assembled at a place to find a remedy to this problem. They put their heads together and arrived at a consensus. They will raise a team of security guards who will work under the command of a superior. These will be paid from contributions made by the people. As the assembled were still deliberating on the issue, a strong, well-built young man stood up. He declared he would collect the said contributions (later called taxes), and in return provide security. Noticing his physical prowess and threatening demeanour they all nodded their assent. Nobody dared protest. And so the king was born.

In whatever manner and at whatever time the king was born, he was, in the Middle Ages, personally a strong warrior, adept at horsemanship, often without a peer in strength. He gathered a strong army, collected taxes and contributions and was surrounded by fawning counsellors. They bestowed upon him attributes of divinity, upon his subjects those of devilry, thus making his presence in the world a sort of a benediction necessary for the good of mankind. Once man was declared to be bad and the king full of virtues, there was hardly any difficulty for political philosophy and religion to recommend strict control of the people by the king.

There were thus monarchs both in the West and the East and in both autocracy reigned supreme. Still in the West they could wrest a Magna Carta from the king as early as in 1215 C.E. and produce thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesqueue and Bentham who helped change the concept of kingship in course of time. But in the East, especially in Islam, a rigid, narrow and limited scriptural education could, parrot-like, repeat only one political theory-Man was nasty, brutish and short and must be kept suppressed.

In the Siyasat Nama, Nizm-ul-Mulk Tusi stressed that since the kings were divinely appointed, ‘they must always keep the subjects in such a position that they know their stations and never remove the ring of servitude from their ears.‘[1] Alberuni, Fakhr-i-Mudabbir, Amir Khusrau, Ziyauddin Barani and Shams Siraj Afif repeat the same idea.[2] As Fakhr-i-Mudabbir puts it, ‘if there were no kings, men would devour one another.‘[3] Even the liberal Allama Abul Fazl could not think beyond this: ‘If royalty did not exist, the storm of strife would never subside, nor selfish ambition disappear. Mankind (is) under the burden of lawlessness and lust ‘[4] ‘The glitter of gems and gold in the Taj Mahal or the Peacock Throne,’ writes Jadunath Sarkar, ‘ought not to blind us to the fact that in Mughal India, man was considered vile;-the mass of the people had no economic liberty, no indefeasible right to justice or personal freedom, when their oppressor was a noble or high official or landowner; political rights were not dreamt of The Government was in effect despotism tempered by revolution or fear of revolution.‘[5] Consequently, medieval Muslim political opinion could recommend only repression of man and glorification of king.

The king was divinely ordained. Abul Fazl says that ‘No dignity is higher in the eyes of God than royalty Royalty is a light emanating from God, and a ray from the sun, the illuminator of the universe.‘[6]

Kingship thus became the most general and permanent of institutions of medieval Muslim world. In theory Islam claims to stand for equality of men, in practice it encourages slavery among Muslims and imposes an inferior status on non-Muslim. In theory Islam does not recognize Kingship; in practice Muslims have been the greatest empire builders. Muhammadans themselves were impressed with the concept of power and glamour associated with monarchy. The idea of despotism, of concentration of power, penetrated medieval mind with facility. Obedience to the ruler was advocated as a religious duty. The ruler was to live and also enable people to live according to the Qur’anic laws.[7] In public life, the Muslim monarch was enjoined to discharge a host of civil, military and religious duties. The Sultan was enjoined to do justice, to levy taxes according to the Islamic law, and to appoint honest and efficient officers ‘so that the laws of the Shariat might be enforced through them.‘[8] At times, he was to enact Zawabits (regulations) to suit particular situations, but while doing so, he could not transgress the Shariat nor ‘alter the Qur’anic law!‘[9] His military duties were to defend Muslim territories, and to keep his army well equipped for conquest and extension of the territories of Islam.[10] The religious duty of a Muslim monarch consisted in helping the indigent and those learned in the Islamic law. He was to prohibit what was not permitted by the Shara. The duty of propagating Islam and carrying on Jihad mainly devolved on him.[11] Jihad was at once an individual and a general religious duty.[12] According to a contemporary Alim, if the Sultan was unable to extirpate infidelity, ‘he must at least keep the enemies of God and His Prophet dishonoured and humiliated.’[13] It must be said to his credit that the Muslim Sultan, by and large, worked according to these injunctions, and sometimes achieved commendable success in his exertions in all these spheres.

As said earlier, there were autocratic monarchs both in the West and the East. Still in the West there appeared a number of liberal political philosophers who helped to change the concept of kingship in course of time. But Muslims could not think on such lines, so that when in England they executed their king after a long Civil War (1641-49), in India Shahjahan, a contemporary of Charles I ruled as an autocrat in a ‘golden age’. Even so autocracy took time to go even in Europe and there was no check on the powers of the king in the Middle Ages, except for the institution of feudalism.

Feudalism

Feudalism was a very prominent institution of the Middle Ages. It was prevalent both in Europe as well as in India, although there were many differences between the two systems. In Europe feudalism gathered strength on the decline of the Western Roman Empire. After Charlemagne (800-814) in particular, there was rapid decline in the monarchical power throughout Europe, and governments failed to perform their primary duty of protecting their peoples. The class of people who needed protection the most was the petty landowner. In the earliest times the lands were free whether these were held by ordinary freeman or a noble. In the absence of strong monarchy, the possessor of the free land, threatened or oppressed by powerful neighbours, sought refuge in submitting to some lord, and in the case of a lord to some more powerful lord. In the bargain he surrendered his land. For, when he begged for protection, the lord said: ‘I can protect (only) my own land.’ The poor man was thus forced to surrender the ownership of his land to his powerful and rich neighbour, receiving it back in fief as a vassal. (The word feudalism itself is derived from the French feodalite meaning faithfulness). His children were left without any claim on that land. He was also obliged to render service to his superior lord. In return he was promised protection in his lifetime by his lord. The origins of feudalism are thus to be traced to the necessity of the people seeking protection, and exploitation by those who provided it.

Conditions were not the same everywhere, but the system was based on contract or compact between lord and tenant, determining all rights and obligations between the two. The vassal was obliged to render military service, take his cases only to his own lord and submit to the decisions of the lord’s court, and pay certain aids to the lord in times of need, like free gifts or ‘benevolences’, aids at the marriage of the chiefs daughter, some tax when the chief was in trouble or as ransom to redeem his person from prison. These aids varied according to local customs and were often extorted unreasonably.

On the other hand, for providing security to the vassal, it became common for a chief or lord to have a retinue of bodyguards composed of valiant youths who were furnished by the chief with arms and provisions and who in turn devoted themselves to his service. These ‘companions’ received no pay except their arms, horses and provisions. With these companions or troops the lords also conquered lands, and gave certain portions of it to their attendants to enjoy for life. These estates were called beneficia or fiefs, because they were only lent to their possessors, to revert after death to their grantor, who immediately gave them to another of his servants on the same terms. As the son commonly esteemed it his duty, or was forced by necessity, to devote his arms to the lord in whose service his father had lived, he usually received his father’s fief, or rather he was invested with it anew. By the usage of centuries this custom became hereditary. A fief rendered vacant by the death of the holder was taken possession of by his son, on the sole condition of paying homage to the feudal superior.

In the feudal system, therefore, the vassal and the lord benefited from one another, although the latter much more, at the cost of the king. Junior vassals could become powerful and rise in hierarchy to become sub-lords or even great lords. They could have their own subordinate vassals in sub-infeudation. Kingly power, as always, continued to exist, but under feudalism it was widely diffused. The privileges the lords enjoyed often comprised the right of coining money, raising armies and waging private wars, exemption from public tributes and freedom from legislative control.[14] Sometimes the kings had to make virtue of necessity even to the extent of granting titles and administrative fiefs to Counts etc. to be administered by them. But the struggle between royalty and nobility (as in England under William the Norman), continued. Of course, and ultimately, it ended in the power of the lords sinking before that of the king.

In India feudalism did not usher in that spirit of civil liberty which characterised the constitutional history of medieval England. Here the king remained supreme whether among the Turks or the Mughals, and the assignments of conquered lands were granted by him to lords, soldiers or commoners or his own relatives as salary or reward in consideration of distinguished military service in the form of iqtas or jagirs_[15], sometimes even on a hereditary basis, but they were not wrested from him. This system was bureaucratic. There was also a parallel feudalistic organisation but the possessor of land remained subservient to the king. It was based on personal relationship. The vassals were given _jagirs and assignments primarily because of blood and kinship. On the other hand, the practice of permitting vanquished princes to retain their kingdoms as vassals, or making allotment of territories to brothers and relatives of the king, or giving assignments to particular families of nobles, learned men and theologians as reward or pension were feudalistic in nature. Some feudatories would raise their own army, collect taxes and customary dues, pay tributes, and rally round the standard of their overlord or king with their military contingents when called upon to do so. But the assignee had no right of coining money. (In fact, coining of money was considered as a signal of rebellion.) He maintained his own troops but he had no right of waging private war.[16] He could only increase his influence by entering into matrimonial alliances with powerful neighbours or the royal family. In the Sultanate and the Mughal empire the feudal system was more bureaucratic than feudalistic, in fact it was bureaucratic throughout.[17] Here the feudal nobility was a military aristocracy which incidentally owned land, rather than a landed aristocracy which occasionally had to defend Royal lands and property by military means but at other times lived quietly.

But there were also many points of similarity between Indian and European feudalism. In India Nazrana was offered to the lord or king when an estate or jagir was bestowed upon the heir of the deceased lord (Tika), like the feudal relief in Europe. As in Europe, here too the practice of escheat was widely prevalent. Aids, gifts or benevolences were common to both. These consisted of offerings at the ascension of the king to the throne, his weighment ceremony, on important festivals, cash and gifts at the marriage of the chief’s daughter or son, gifts or a tax when the chief was in trouble. In India the king always stood at the top of the regime. Feudal institutions are apt to flourish in a state which lacks centralised administration. The vastness of India makes it a veritable subcontinent, and the ruler’s position was naturally different in each kingdom or region according to local condition found there. But there was a central authority too. The idea of a strong monarch was inseparable from Muslim psyche and Turco-Mongol political theory. In India, under Muslim rule, great importance was attached to the sacrosanct nature of the king’s person. The Indian system arose from certain social and moral forces rather than from sheer political necessity as in Europe, and that is why it survived throughout the medieval period.

Whatever its merits and demerits, Indian feudalism recognised division of society into people great and small, strong and weak, haves and have-nots. Nobles were not equal to nobles; there were great Khans and petty Amirs. Men were not equal to men; some were masters, others their slaves. Women were not equal to men; they were subservient to men and considered to be their property. Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the Medieval Age was the belief and acceptance of the ‘fact’ that men are not born equal, or at least they could not be recognised as such.

Feudalism in Europe gradually disappeared with the coming of Renaissance and Reformation, and formation of nation-states. In India phenomena such as these did not occur. There was nothing like a Renaissance in medieval India. There could be no reformation either, because ‘innovation’ in religious matters is taboo in Islam. Some Muslim monarchs were disillusioned with the state of religion and the power of the Ulama (religious scholars).[18] Thai is why, probably, Alauddin Khalji (C.E. 1296-1316) contemplated ‘founding’ a new religion,[19] Muhammad Tughlaq (1325-51) was credited with similar intentions; and Akbar (1556-1605) actually established the Din-i-Ilahi. Muslims feared that Alauddin’s ‘new religion must be quite different from the Muhammadan faith, and that its enforcement would entail slaughter of a large number of Musalmans’.[20] He was dissuaded by his loyal counsellors from pursuing his project. All the same it is significant that Alauddin Khalji and Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar did think of some sort of ‘Reformation’ in Islam, but the former was scared into abandoning the idea and the latter contented himself by just organising a sort of brotherhood of like-minded thinkers.[21] Such endeavours, strictly prohibited in Islam, could hardly affect India’s Muslim feudalistic society.

Europe in the middle ages too lived under a Roman Catholic imperium. Its unity was theological, while its divisions were feudal. After Renaissance the unity of the theological imperium was shattered and so were the old divisions. European societies, after centuries of theological and territorial wars, learnt to aggregate around a new category of the nation-state. In India Muslim theological imperium never came to an end, nor persistent resistance to it. Hence, the idea of a secular nation-state never found a ground here.

Among other chief agencies that overthrew the feudal system were the rise of cities, scouring of the oceans for Commercial Revolution and the spread of knowledge, scientific knowledge in particular. In India there was urbanisation under Muslim rule, but it has been grossly exaggerated.[22] India had large urban centres before the arrival of Muslims. Arab geographers become rapturous when describing the greatness of India’s cities-both in extent and in demography-on the eve of Muslim conquest and immigration.[23] During his sojourn in India Ibn Battuta visited seventy-five cities, towns and ports.[24] Under Muslim rule many old cities were given Muslim names. Thus Akbarabad (Agra), Islamabad (Mathura), Shahjahanabad (Delhi) and Hyderabad (Golkunda) were not entirely new built cities, but old populated places that were given new Islamic names, mostly after the ruling kings. Giving new names to old cities was not an extension of urbanisation as such, although it must be conceded that Muslims loved city life and encouraged qasba like settlements. Urbanisation in Europe gave impetus to industry and personal property and founded a new set of power cluster-the middle class. The rise of this new class, with its wealth and industrial importance, contributed more than anything else to social and political development in Europe before which the feudal relations of society almost gradually crumbled. The rise and spread of this class in India and its impact on society remained minimal and rather imperceptible. Edward Terry noted that it was not safe for merchants and tradesmen in towns and cities, ‘so to appear, lest they should be used as filled sponges.’[25] Moreland on the testimony of Bernier and others, arrives at the conclusion that in India the number of middle class people was small and they found it safe to wear ‘the garb of indigence.’[26] Europe broke the shackles of feudalism by embarking upon Commercial Revolution and took to the seas for the same. The Mughals in India fared miserably on water. Even the great emperor Akbar had to purchase permission of the Portuguese for his relatives to visit places of Islamic pilgrimage. Throughout medieval India there was little change in the field of scientific learning and thought.

Religious Wars

Like feudalism, inter- and intra- religious wars too were a very prominent feature of the medieval age. There were two great Semetic religions, Judaism and Christianity, already in existence when Islam was born. Most of the world religions like Vedic Hinduism (C. 2000-1500 B.C.), Judaism (C. 1500 B.C.), Zoroastrianism (C. 1000 B.C.), Jainism and Buddhism (C. 600 B.C.), Confucianism (C. 500 B.C.) and Christianity had already come into being before Islam appeared on the scene in the seventh century. All these religions, especially Hinduism, had evolved through its various schools a very highly developed philosophy. Jainism and Buddhism had said almost the last word on ethics. So that not much was left for later religions to contribute to religious philosophy and thought. So far as rituals and mythology are concerned, these abounded in all religions and the mythology of neighbouring Judaic and Christian creeds was freely incorporated by Islam in its religion, so that Moses became Musa; Jesus, Isa; Soloman, Sulaiman; Joseph, Yusuf; Jacob, Yaqub; Abraham, Ibrahim; Mary, Mariam; and so on. But to assert its own identity, rules were made suiting the requirements of Muslims imitating or forbidding Jewish and Christian practices.[27]

Muhammad was born in Arabia in 569 and died in 632. In 622 he had to migrate from Mecca to Medina (called hijrat) and this year forms the first year of the Muslim calendar (Hijri). Islam got much of its mythology and rituals from Judaism and Christianity, but instead of coming closer to them it confronted them. From the very beginning Islam believed in aggression as an instrument of expansion, and so ‘spreading with the rapidity of an electric current from its power-house in Mecca, it flashed into Syria, it traversed the whole breadth of north Africa; and then, leaping the Straits of Gibraltar it ran to the Gates of the Pyrenees’.[28] Such unparalleled feats of success were one day bound to be challenged by the vanquished. As a result Christians and Muslims entered into a long-drawn struggle. The immediate cause of the conflict was the capture of Jerusalem by the Seljuq Turks in 1070 and the defeat of the Byzantine forces at Manzikart in Asia Minor in 1071. For the next two centuries (1093-1291) the Christian nations fought wars of religion or Crusades against Muslims for whom too these wars meant the holy Jihad.

Christianity thus found a powerful rival in Islam because the aim of both has been to convert the world to their systems. In competition, Islam had certain advantages. If because of its late arrival, there was any problem about obtaining followers, it was solved by the simple method of just forcing the people to accept it. Starting from Arabia, Islam pushed its religious and political frontiers through armed might. The chain of its early military successes helped establish its credentials and authority. It was also made more attractive than Christianity by polygamy, license of concubinage and frenzied bigotry.[29] It sought outward expansion but developed no true theory of peaceful co-existence. For example, it framed unlimited rules about the treatment to be accorded to non-Muslims in an Islamic state, but nowhere are there norms laid down about the behaviour of Muslims if they happen to live as a minority in a non-Muslim majority state. Its tactic of violence also proved to be its greatest weakness. In the course of Islamic history, Muslims have been found to be as eager to fight among themselves as against others.

The Crusades (so called because Christian warriors wore the sign of cross), were carried on by European nations from the end of the eleventh century till the latter half of the thirteenth century for the conquest of Palestine. The antagonism of the Christian and Muhammadan nations had been intensified by the possession of Holy Land by the Turks and their treatment of the Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these wars, the pious, the adventurous, and the greedy flocked under the standards of both sides. The first crusade was inspired by Peter the Hermit in 1093, and no less than eight bloody wars were fought with great feats of adventure, heroism and killings. In the last crusade the Sultan of Egypt captured Acre in 1291 and put an end to the kingdom founded by the Crusaders. Despite their want of success, the European nations by their joint enterprises became more connected with each other and ultimately stamped out any Muslim influence in Western Europe. But the most fruitful element in the crusades was the entry of the West into the East. There was a constant conflict and permanent contact between Christianity and Islam.

In this contact both sides lost and gained by turns, both culturally and demographically, for both strove for expansion through arms and proselytization. The successors of Saladin, who defeated the Christians in the last crusade, were divided by dissensions. By the grace of those disenssions the Latins survived. A new militant Muhammadanism arose with the Mameluke Sultans of Egypt who seized the throne of Cairo in 1250. However, shortly afterwards there was a setback to Muslim power when the Caliph of Baghdad was killed by the Mongols in 1258. On the other hand, the prospect of a great mass conversion of the Mongols, which would have linked a Christian Asia to a Christian Europe and reduced Islam to a small faith, also dwindled and disappeared. ‘The (Mongol) Khanates of Persia turned to Muhammadanism in 1316; by the middle of the fourteenth century Central Asia had gone the same way; in 1368-70 the native dynasty of Mings was on the throne and closing China to foreigners; and the end was a recession of Christianity and an extension of Islam which assumed all the greater dimensions with the growth of the power of the Ottoman Turks But a new hope dawned for the undefeated West; and this new hope was to bring one of the greatest revolutions of history. If the land was shut, why should Christianity not take to the sea? Why should it not navigate to the East, take Muhammadanism in the rear, and as it were, win Jerusalem a tergo? This was the thought of the great navigators, who wore the cross on their breasts and believed in all sincerity that they were labouring in the cause of the recovery of the Holy Land, and if Columbus found the Caribbean Islands instead of Cathay, at any rate we may say that the Spaniards who entered into his labours won a continent for Christianity, and that the West, in ways in which it had never dreamed, at last established the balance in its favour.’[30]

Crusades saved Western civilization in the Middle Ages. ‘They saved it from any self-centred localism; they gave it breadth-and a vision.’ On the other hand, Muslim victories made Muslim vision narrow and myopic. So that today Christians are larger in numbers and technologically and militarily more advanced than Muhammadans. As these lines are being written (August 1990), their armies and ships are spreading all over the West Asian region beginning with Saudi Arabia.

To return to the medieval period. Religious wars between Christians and Muhammadans alone did not account for killings on a large scale. The Christians also fought bloody and long-drawn wars among themselves. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), for instance, decimated one-fifth population of the region affected by it. Then there was the Inquisition. Inquisition was a court or tribunal established by the Roman Catholic Church in the twelfth century for the examination and punishment of heretics. England never introduced it, Italy and France had only a taste of it. But in Spain it became firmly established towards the end of the fifteenth century. It is computed that there were in Spain above 20,000 officers of the Inquisition, called familiars, who served as spies and informers. Imprisonment, often for life, scourging, and the loss of property, were the punishments to which the penitent was subjected. When sentence of death was pronounced against the accused, burning the heretic in public was ordered as ‘the church never polluted herself with blood’. The number of victims of the Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to 1808 amounted to 341,021. Of these nearly 32,000 were burned at the stake.[31]

Islam outstripped Christianity in contributing to large-scale killings in wars waged for religion or persecution of heretics. Each human being has an idea or image of God in his mind. Consequently, there can be as many Gods as there are human beings. Even ‘according to one outstanding Sufi, the paths by which its followers seek God are in number as the souls of men.’[32] In view of this it is presumptuous to claim that there is only one God or there are many Gods or there is no God at all. And yet in the name of One God, and at that ‘Merciful and Compassionate’, what cruelties have not been committed in the history of Islam? Arabia was converted during the life-time of Muhammad. Immediately after the death of Muhammad, to borrow the rhetoric of Edward Gibbon, ‘in the ten years of the administration of (Caliph) Omar (634-644) the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred moschs (mosques) for the exercise of the religion of Muhammad.’[33] In these unparalleled feats the number of the killed cannot be computed. Since many pages in this book will be devoted to Muslim exertions in their endeavour to spread Islam in India we may feel contented here to state that in this scenario religion and religious wars became the very soul of thought, action and oppression in the Middle Ages.

Censorship

Middle Ages is also known as Dark Ages. It is so called because there were restrictions placed on the freedom of thought and any aberrations were punished as ‘heresy’. Any idea away from the traditional was looked upon with suspicion. New conceptions or knowledge gathered on the basis of new experiments was taboo if it came into conflict with the Church or contravened the Christian scriptures. This restriction on any new notions made the period a dark age. But it required constant monitoring of people’s thoughts and actions. The invention of printing and the rapid diffusion of opinion by means of books, induced the governments in all western countries to assume certain powers of supervision and regulation with regard to printed matter. The popes were the first to institute a regular censorship (1515) and inquisitors were required to examine all works before they were printed. Only one example would suffice to illustrate the position. Nicholas Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473: he taught mathematics at Rome in 1500 and died in Germany in 1543. He researched on the shape of the Earth, and concluded that the Sun was the centre round which Earth and other planets revolved. In his De Orbium Celestium Revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs) he even measured the diameter and circumference of the Earth fairly accurately. But the Church believed the Earth to be flat, and the fear of Inquisition discouraged Copernicus from publishing his ‘outrageous’ researches till about the close of his life, for the Church could do little harm to a man about to die. Even so, his book was forbidden to