Hindu-Muslim Historical Differences: from ancient past to early modern era
Throughout history, India has been conquered and ruled by many dynasties and empires. Hegel called India “an abject of desire”. It is land that carries ancient, wonderful and brutal history with it. The name Hindu originated from the Sanskrit word “Sindhu”, which was proclaimed as “Hindu” in Persian. That is someone who lives near the Indus River. There is no clear evidence when this term aroused, or conversely, Indian civilization is as old as these words? Similarly, the term “India” and “Indian” are essentially Greek, Roman, and English translations of old Persian terminology.
However, when some local labourers excavated the land near Larkana, they unknowingly discovered magnificent old pottery. Those elegant clay pots were evidence of an ancient city buried beneath the dirt they stood on. When they dug more, doubt became clear. Unexpectedly, after this discovery in 1922, the age of the Indian subcontinent stretched by a millennium and a half. Archaeological investigations in the Indus Valley region uncovered the remains of a spectacular civilization, with two urban centres at Harappa and Moen-jo-Daro.
History, on the other hand, is rarely as straightforward as it appears to be. In 1875, the first All India census was conducted, which revealed startling disparities in colonial perception. The vast majority of so-called “Hindus” (a term coined by Colonial State after the 1875 census) were confused when questioned about their religion. The reason is that “Hindus” did not utilize a single phrase to characterize their faith. The term “Hindu” began to link with adherents of a particular faith under colonial rule. In the past people whom we today call “Hindu” used to refer to themselves by their Gods, like Vishnu Bhakt or Shiva Bhakt or Sadhu. To cut a long tale short, a regional identity that encompassed numerous faiths, beliefs, cultures, ethnicities, languages, and geographies became a political-religious identity of a subset of those people under British Colonial Rule.
Soon after, certain critical aspects of Pre-Colonial Indian society underwent a dramatic change. It not only changed the course of history but also the mere society — that once was a humble cradle to diversity, tolerance and love. The colonial administration re-wrote the history of India in an absolute ignorant and orientalist way. The first constructive approach to collect and combine the history of the sub-continent was by John Mill; an orientalist who never visited India. He addressed Indian history in three parts: the Ancient Indian Period, the Muslim Period, and the Modern Period (British Period). The fundamental problem with this concept is that it is based on flawed assumptions as well as an absence of geographical understanding and demographical knowledge.
Since the Muslim Period of the subcontinent happened to coincide with mediaeval times in Europe (the dark age of Europe), a false semblance of barbarism in all elements of society in the subcontinent was established.
Colonial State embellished history with racist and nationalist elements to rationalize the notion of Hindus being a natural and indigenous part of the Indian subcontinent. But this was not the case. Empires of the past were not representative of any religion, faith, region or not even their people.
No nation on earth can proclaim to be a scion of an ancient civilization. The notion of sovereignty was the most basic distinction that anchored the social lives of individuals living in different empires of the past. Past empires were dynastic empires. The monarch and his queen control the power dynamics and sovereignty of the empire, as well as the fate of all kingdoms and people that live there. People in those empires had no representation in the upper echelons of government. It was supposed to be a divine right of kings. However, contemporary nations, or more specifically modern nation-states, incorporate a very profound and sophisticated concept of civilian sovereignty. It emphasizes that, unlike previous empires, people have absolute control over a state. They have the freedom to pick who will govern them and perhaps influence the course of the country.
In Urdu, kings call their people “Rayah”, which translates to subjects. People residing in those empires were, therefore, subject and beholden to their emperors, who had substantial control over their lives than anybody else. Asoka and Akbar may have been great kings of the sub-continent, and their subjects may have been relatively happy and affluent. However, the empires of Asoka and Akbar were not founded on popular sovereignty. No one could have imagined such a thing back then. The people were subjects of the emperor, whom they considered being the sovereign.
The one-to-one correlation between contemporary and ancient citizenry corrupted the impression of truth and the fragrance of reality. The entire fabric of Indian society was warped by fuelled nationalism with an inappropriate history when interfaith peace and a heterogeneous social structure was an elementary and deep-rooted feature of it. And that is the tragedy of nationalism — it cannot flourish in the utter lack of history.
Meanwhile, the Muslim period started when the Makran coast in north-western India was conquered in 644, at the end of Umar’s caliphate; the first wave of Arab political expansion reached the subcontinent. Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in 712, he established the eastern frontier of early Islam. As a result, in at least one part of north-western India, the Islamic belief in one God and Muhammad as the final prophet took root relatively early. However, Arab traders began to settle on the western coast of India in the ninth century, but they were primarily concerned with profit and did not seek to convert significant numbers of people to Islam.
During the ninth century, Indian trade becomes indispensable in the Islamic World. India’s prosperity gain attention in the region and prompted a series of invasions by notable Muslim rulers and leaders; most prominently Mahmud Ghaznavi in 997 and Muhammad Ghori in 1192. It was the prosperity of India and relative economic decline of Central and West Asia. These military campaigns were led to assist the financial and economic means of their political and imperial ambitions.
Turkish, Persian, and Afghan invasions of northern India from the eleventh century onwards infused the creation of an Indo-Islamic culture with Turko-Persian texture. The roots of such mode of developing Indo-Islamic accommodation can be traced back to before the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. Lahore was the first centre of Persianized Indo-Islamic culture until Delhi rose to political prominence and became a virtual replica of Persia’s old Sassanid court.
During the rise and fall of the Delhi Sultanate, Northern India developed a distinct Indo-Islamic culture. The nobility, artisans, and peasants were the three principal strata of society. Turkish, Afghan, Persian, and Arab immigrants made up the majority of the nobility, albeit not entirely. The great majority of Muslim artisans and peasants were lower-caste Hindus who were intrigued by Islam because of its egalitarian allure.
Muslims ruled parts of India for many centuries. Even though Persian remained the Sultanate’s court language. The congruence between language and region was delineated in India between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Urdu (meaning “camp language”), which borrowed freely from Hindavi syntax and grammar as well as Persian and Arabic vocabulary, only became a lingua franca in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Our conventional concept of language, with its associations to geography and population, is a product of colonialism. Under colonial rule, Muslims were considered invaders because all foreign invaders (Arabs, Turks, Afghans, and Central Asians) were essentially Muslim by faith. Persian, along with Urdu, tended to be categorized with Muslim elements, or more psychologically as invaders’ elements, whilst Sanskrit and Hindi acquired an intrinsic part of Hindu identity. Under the same tent, Islam was an invader’s religion, whereas Hinduism is an aboriginal and antique religion. This approach activates a defence mechanism in an individual as well as a herd instinct in a population.
Historically, this was not the case. Hindus and Muslims coexisted in the same vicinity for generations. Rajputs even served in Akbar’s court. Their women used to marry Muslims. The underlying explanation is that religion and faith are not correlated with geography, language, or culture. Although religion has certain societal dimensions — it is primarily a relationship between man and God. This is the most core premise of all religions.
Generations are affected by the integration of region and religion. Its repercussions may still be felt in the South Asian area today. Historically, both Hindus and Muslims have undergone significant changes that could never have been envisaged in the past. Those developments are commodities of British Colonial Rule and its avaricious policies. These historical developments have brought South Asia to the brink of catastrophe.
References
Bose, S., & Jalal, A. (2004). MODERN SOUTH ASIA: History, Culture, Political Economy (second). Oxford University Press.
Metcalf, B. D., & Metcalf, T. R. (2006). A Concise History of Modern India (third). Cambridge University Press.
