Over the millennia, from the Old Stone Age, or perhaps from an even earlier period, to well into late medieval times, many diverse races had debouched into India, as migrants or invaders, through the defiles in the Hindu Kush mountains on the north-west border of the subcontinent. These mountain passes were among the most active trans-continental migration routes of races in the premodern world. And nearly all the diverse people who entered India through these passes made India their homeland. The many different races in the subcontinent today are all migrants. None are natives.
The invasions of Turko-Afghans and Mughals into India in medieval times were the last of the major people movements into India, and they radically altered the socio-cultural profile of the country. Though India would later, in early modern times, come under the dominance of yet another foreign power, the British, that involved no notable alteration in the population profile of India, as there was hardly any migration of Englishmen into India. In contrast to this, both the Turko-Afghan and the Mughal invasions of India resulted in radical changes in the racial makeup of India, as those invasions led to large-scale migrations into India by Central Asian and the Middle Eastern Muslims, who saw India as a land of opportunity, and were drawn to it by the prospect of gaining wealth and power. Further, India was for many of them a safe haven into which to escape from the racial and political turmoil in their homeland.
The consequences of the invasion of India by Turko-Afghans were fundamentally different from those of all previous invaders—while all the people who previously entered India had eventually blended smoothly and indistinguishably into Indian society by adopting Indian religion, social customs, cultural values, and even local languages, this did not happen in the case of Turko-Afghans, because in all these matters the culture of Indians was totally antithetical to that of Turks.
Unlike polytheistic Hinduism, which could absorb into it any number of new deities, beliefs and practices, and had a society divided into numerous hereditary, hierarchal and exclusive castes, each of which had its specific profession, Islam was a monotheistic religion which, though it had some sectarian divisions in it, was essentially a cohesive religion with only one god and one basic set of beliefs and practices. And its society was egalitarian, without any birth determined, caste-like social divisions in it, so anyone from any racial, social or family background could take up any vocation in it, aspire to occupy any office, and gain any social status.
These socio-religious differences led to a sharp divergence in the attitudes of Muslims and Hindus towards each other. The Hindu attitude towards Muslims was similar to the tolerant-intolerant attitude of Hindu castes towards each other. Hindus had no objection to Muslims keeping to their beliefs and practices, just as they had no objection to the different castes and sects of Hindus keeping to their particular beliefs and practices. But they would not tolerate the intermixing of the two communities, just as they would not tolerate the intermixing of different castes. Similarly, though Hindus normally had no objection to serve under a Muslim employer, they would avoid all social interaction with him. Typical of this was the experience of Battuta in Kerala, about which he writes: ‘It is the custom of the infidels in the Mulaybar lands that no Muslim may enter their houses or eat from their vessels.’ For Hindus, particularly for high caste Hindus, Muslims were untouchables. Muslims had no such apartheidal prejudices. They did treat Hindus as second class citizens, but this was not an irreversible birth-determined status division, as in Hindu society, for even Hindus of the lowest of the low outcastes were, on being converted into Islam, treated as equals to everyone else in that society, and the personal status of an individual depended solely on his abilities and achievements, not on his birth. So a person who was on the bottom rung of Hindu society could rise to the highest rung of Muslim society.
BECAUSE OF THIS antithetical character of Hinduism and Islam, there was very little socio-cultural interaction or mutual influence between the two communities, despite their several centuries long coexistence in India. In fact Muslims and Hindus mostly lived physically separated from each other—while most Muslims lived in towns (serving the government as soldiers and civil servants, or engaged in various occupations, as artisans, merchants, and so on) the vast majority of Hindus lived in villages (mostly as farmers and farm-labourers). And even in towns, where the two communities coexisted, they lived in different wards of towns, as an extension of the traditional Hindu practice of different castes living in different parts of towns and villages.
However, despite the sharp socio-religious segregation between Hindus and Muslims, there was some amount of interaction between the two communities in towns, and they did have some influence on each other. But these influences were mostly superficial, and were confined to a few small groups. The most obvious instance of this was that the Hindu political elite in North India gradually took to the Turkish mode of dress and adopted some Turkish social practices, and the Turks in turn adopted certain practices of the Hindu aristocracy. And in religion, the mystic movements in both religions did exert some influence on each other.
On the whole, Muslim rule did not make any notable difference in the lives of the vast majority of Indians, and hardly anything changed in Hindu society because of Muslim influence. Nor did anything change in Muslim society consequent of its interaction with Hindu society, except that the Hindu converts to Islam carried some of their traditional practices with them into Islamic society. For the most part, the two communities remained sharply divided and incompatible. They coexisted, but did not interact.
There were some curious internal paradoxes in both Hindu and Muslim socio-religious systems. Islam as a religion was adamantine in character and was generally impervious to external influences, but Islamic society was open and fluid, into which people of any race or clan or social background could enter on becoming Muslims, and play any role according to their interest and ability, without being restricted to any birth-determined roles. The values and practices of Hindu religion and society were the exact reverse of this. Hinduism was a fluid, diversified and ever-changing religion, open to various external influences, but Hindu society was adamantine in character, which had place only for those who were born as Hindus, and in which a person born into a particular caste could not ever change his caste and social status, and was bound to the occupation of that caste, whatever be his interest and ability.
There were however some exceptions in these matters, in Hindu as well as Muslim society. Thus, even though Muslim society in theory was an open and egalitarian society, which had no social divisions based on race or clan or birth, in practice it had divisions based on these factors. On the other hand, Hindu society, despite its seeming rigidity and imperviousness, was in fact a porous society, and it had over the centuries absorbed numerous foreign people and non-Aryan local tribes and their cults into it. This however was not done by performing any rite, as in the case of the conversions of outsiders into Islam or Christianity, but through a process of osmosis, by which outsiders and their cults inconspicuously, and without any formal process, seeped into Hindu society over several centuries.
But this was a process of community transition, not of individuals. Normally it was impossible for any outsider individual to enter Hindu society, for Hinduism has no conversion rites to admit non-Hindus into its fold. To be a Hindu one has to be born a Hindu. But in this too, as in nearly everything else in the ever-rigid-ever-flexible Hindu society, there were exceptions, though rare, by which elaborate rites were performed to induct non-Hindu rajas, chieftains and other important persons into Hindu society at appropriate social levels. This process involved the fabrication, through the connivance of colluding priests, of a myth that the conversion seeker belonged to a family that had originally been a Hindu, but had lost its religion and caste because of its deviant practices, and that he could be therefore restored to his family’s original religion and caste through certain purification ceremonies.
ISLAM AND HINDUISM were totally antipodal in religion and society. Nevertheless the attitude of the Muslim rulers in India towards their Hindu subjects was in most cases accommodative rather than suppressive. It necessarily had to be so, for pragmatic reasons. From the purely religious point of view, the sultans had to do what they could to fetter or eradicate Hinduism, and thus promote Islam, but from the practical point of view they needed to patronise Hindus, for they could not possibly govern their Indian kingdoms without the services of Hindus, as they did not have the requisite administrative organisation or personnel, or the local knowledge, to do that. The sultans therefore treated Hindus as zimmis, protected non-Muslims, by which Hindus were allowed, though with some restrictions, to maintain their social customs and observe their religious practices; they were even allowed to perform rites which were abominable to orthodox Muslims, such as sati, and animal and human sacrifices.
In the early history of Islam, the zimmi privilege was accorded only to Jews and Christians, while the followers of other religions were required to become Muslims or be exterminated. But when Islam expanded beyond Arabia, its homeland, the zimmi privilege was, for various practical reasons, extended to the people of other religions as well, including Hindus. In India, the sheer vastness of the non-Muslim population made it in any case physically impossible to extirpate them. Furthermore, Hindus were the primary economically productive people of the land, particularly in agriculture, so to massacre them, or even to oppress them beyond endurance, would have been counterproductive for the sultans, for that would have been to uproot the very plants that nourished them.
Hindus were treated as second class citizens in Muslim states, but as citizens nevertheless. They had their own rights. The discriminatory treatment that Hindus received at the hands of Muslim rulers would not have troubled them much, for most Indian communities were subject to worse discrimination in their own rigidly hierarchal caste society. For most Hindus, Muslims would have seemed like just another segment in their own labyrinthine society. Hindus and Muslims did live separately; but then so did the different Hindu castes. Even in the matter of jizya, not many Hindus would have felt it as a particularly discriminative tax, for Muslims also had to pay a community tax, zakat. Besides, jizya was usually imposed on individuals only in towns, while in villages it was imposed as a collective tax.
ON THE WHOLE the life of the vast majority of the common people under Muslim rule in India remained the same as what it was before the Muslim invasion. This was mainly because the impact of Muslim rule was largely confined to towns, while most Indians lived in villages where there were hardly any Muslims. Even in towns, where there was a fair amount of interaction between Hindus and Muslims, the treatment of Hindus by the sultans, even by the most bigoted of them, would not have been anywhere near as ruthless as described by Muslim chroniclers seeking to eulogise their kings. To most Indians, the sultans would not have seemed any more oppressive than their own rajas. Whether it was a raja or a sultan who ruled over them made little difference in the generally wretched life of the common people in India.
Muslim courtier chroniclers, most of whom were hyper-orthodox, generally tended to gloatingly exaggerate the severity of the persecution of Hindus by sultans, which they considered as a most praiseworthy act. Thus Barani, while lauding the slaughter of Hindus by Mahmud Ghazni, wished that the sultan had campaigned in India once more, and had ‘brought under his sword all the Brahmins of Hind who . . . are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and the strength of idolaters . . . [and had] cut off the heads of two hundred or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs.’ Similarly, Barani exaggeratedly lauded Ala-ud-din for his oppression of Hindus, stating ‘that by the last decade of his reign the submission and obedience of the Hindus had become an established fact. Such a submission on the part of the Hindus has neither been seen before nor will be witnessed hereafter.’ Reality, though harsh, was not quite so harsh.
Curiously, while the Muslim intelligentsia was generally aggressive in its attitude towards Hinduism, the Hindu intelligentsia was entirely passive in its response to the establishment of the Muslim rule in India. There is hardly any mention of the Turkish conquest of India in the Sanskrit works of the early middle ages. This was perhaps because the preoccupation of the Hindu intelligentsia was with transcendental matters. The general attitude of fatalism among Indians—that whatever happens is fated to happen—also no doubt contributed to the apathetic attitude of Indians to the circumstances of their life. And this was one of the major factors that enabled a small group of Turko-Afghans to rule over an infinitely larger number of Indians for several centuries without any major resistance.
The general attitude of Muslims, the masters, towards Hindus, the subjects, was of scorn. And there was, inevitably, a good amount of persecution of Hindus by the sultans, though it was nothing comparable to what it could have been, given the totally antithetical nature of the two socio-religious systems. Very many Hindu temples were demolished by the sultans, and their idols smashed or defiled. Ostentatious Hindu religious celebrations were forbidden in Muslim states. And there were several instances of the general massacre of Hindus by the sultans. Some of these acts were revoltingly savage, such as the mass slaughter of Hindu men, women and children by a mid-fourteenth century sultan of Madurai, which was excoriated even by Ibn Battuta, a fellow Muslim. ‘This,’ commented Battuta, ‘was a hideous thing such as I have never seen being indulged in by any king.’ But such acts of savagery were random, not systematic, and they seem to have been motivated more by the need to terrorise a conquered people into servility, than by religious fervour, though religious fervour was also undeniably present.
FORTUNATELY, THE ANTI-HINDU venom was more on the tongues of Muslim clerics and chroniclers than on the swords of the sultans. Except in a few rare instances, Hindus were not oppressed beyond endurance in Muslim kingdoms. This is evident from the fact that a very large number of Hindus served in the government and the army of Muslim states. Most of the service providers in Muslim states—merchants, craftsmen, moneylenders, and so on— were also no doubt Hindus. And nearly all the farmers in India were Hindus.
Hindus generally had no compunction about serving under sultans in any capacity, even as soldiers and captains in the battles of the sultans against rajas. Many of the top officers of even the hyper-orthodox Mughal emperor Aurangzeb were Hindus. Equally, many Muslims served in the army and administration of Hindu kingdoms. In that freewheeling political environment rajas often allied with sultans, even in the battles of sultans against fellow rajas, and sultans often allied with rajas, even the battles of rajas against fellow sultans.
In the personal life of the sultans also there were some curious intercultural and interreligious influences and practices. The sultans, despite their professed orthodoxy, sometimes even sought the counsels of Hindu and Jain sages. According to Jain sources, Ala-ud-din Khalji used to hold discussions with Jain sages, and he is said to have once specially summoned Jain sage Acharya Mahasena from Karnataka to Delhi for consultations. Muhammad Tughluq is also known to have had Jain counsellors; and he, according to Battuta, used to consort with Hindu yogis. Some of the sultans were exceptionally liberal in their treatment of Hindus—Ala-ud-din Husain Shah, the early sixteenth century sultan of Bengal, for instance, is said to have been so benevolent in his treatment of all his subjects, irrespective of their religion, that local Hindu poets eulogised him as Arjuna or Krishna, Hindu mythical heroes.
SUCH LIBERAL TREATMENT of Hindus by sultans was odious to orthodox Muslims, for Islam was traditionally an aggressively proselytising religion, which had little tolerance for the people of other religions, and had in its early history forcefully converted a large number of people into the religion. But such conversions were rare in India. The practice however varied from sultan to sultan. The Tughluqs, Muhammad and Firuz, are known to have coerced the families of some defeated rajas to become Muslims. But the primary concern of most sultans was to preserve and expand their power, and they had hardly any inclination to work as missionaries.
There were however a good number of voluntary converts to Islam from low caste and outcaste Hindu communities, and this went on all through the medieval period. It was a great advantage for this class of Hindus to become Muslims, for conversion opened up unprecedented career and social advancement opportunities for them, which they would never have had in Hindu society. As Muslims they could occupy any position that they merited by their abilities, and thus move up in society, free from the caste bond that confined them to a particular social niche and profession. Not surprisingly, many of the underclass conversions to Islam were mass conversions, following community or clan decisions.
Apart from low caste and outcaste Hindus, many traders, craftsmen and other service providers also found it to be a temporal advantage for them to become Muslims, as that widened their business opportunities, as most of their affluent customers were now Muslims. A few upper class Hindus also voluntarily became Muslims, thereby to gain various socio-political and material advantages. There are said to have been even a few instances of men becoming Muslims because of their conviction of the superiority of Islam over Hinduism as a religion
Despite all this, even at the close of the eighteenth century, after six centuries of dominant Muslim rule in India, the region around Delhi, the core area of Muslim power in India, had only around 14 per cent Muslims in its population. However, in some other regions of the subcontinent, particularly in the western and eastern flanks of the Indo-Gangetic Plain—the regions that in the twentieth century became Pakistan and Bangladesh—Muslims constituted a much larger part of the local population, presumably because of the mass conversion to Islam of tribal people in those mountainous regions. The proportion of Muslim population in the subcontinent increased over the next century and half, because of the higher birth-rate in the community, so that by the end of the British rule in 1947 they formed about a quarter of the subcontinent’s population.
INDIA IN MEDIEVAL times was already a densely populated land, compared to the other regions of the world. ‘This country is so well-populated that it is impossible in a reasonable space to convey an idea of it,’ notes Razzak. Moreover, the population profile of India was highly complex, because of the racial, linguistic, social, cultural, religious and sectarian diversity of Indians, resulting from the socio-cultural-religious developments within the country, as well as from the migration of very many different races into India over the millennia.
Migrants continued to pour into India during the medieval period; indeed, the Delhi sultans eagerly sought fresh migrants from Central Asia, to swell the Muslim population in India, so that Muslims in India would not get totally submersed in the vast sea of native Indians. The sultans also needed migrants to strengthen their army and administration with fresh recruits. And Central Asians on their part were eager to migrate to India, because of the legends about its fabulous wealth, and the grand career opportunities offered to them by Indian rulers. They also saw India as a safe haven for them to escape to, from the Mongol flood that was at this time raging through their homeland.
Hindu society, because of its polymorphic nature, was generally quite tolerant of the beliefs and practices of other religions, just as it was tolerant of the beliefs and practices of the diverse sects and castes within its own society. But the tolerance of Hindu society was tolerance by segregation; it was in fact a form of intolerance. Any community was free to live in any way it liked, but none was allowed to intrude into the life of other communities. This meant that Hindu society, despite its broad attitude of tolerance, was a highly discriminatory, inequitable and intolerant society, which sharply and unalterably segregated people by religion, sect and caste, and treated each group differently.
However, the Hindu caste segregation involved no overt oppression, as it was birth determined, and was not the result of any deliberate social action by any group. Though segregation itself was an oppressive practice, the underclasses did not generally feel oppressed, but passively accepted the circumstances of their life, as the natural and inevitable outcome of the transmigratory process, the conditions of their life being foreordained by their acts in their previous lives. Besides, the pervasive fatalistic attitude of the Indians of that age made them limply accept the conditions of their life, whatever those conditions were, and not struggle against them, as they believed that those conditions were inexorably fated. The social ethos of medieval India was thus a peculiar mixture of tolerance and intolerance. This was evident as much in the relationship of Hinduism with other religions, as in the relationship between the various sects and castes within Hindu society.
Because of these factors, the traditional Indian society had been, for very many centuries before the Turkish invasion, an exceptionally peaceful and harmonious society, despite its numerous caste divisions and harshly exploitative character. Though there were occasionally some social conflicts here and there in the subcontinent, they were usually minor and transient. There are no records of any serious and enduring inter-caste rivalries or clashes in pre-modern India. Nor were there any major inter-sectarian, inter-religious or inter-racial conflicts in India during this entire period. In all this, India was like no other country in the world.
And, paradoxical though it might seem, Hindu India’s social diversity was the basis of its social cohesion and efficiency, for the divergent groups and castes in India, though they were rigidly segregated from each other socially, were tightly integrated with each other in their functions, with each caste, from the highest to the lowest, including the outcastes, providing a distinct and indispensable service in society. All the castes belonged together as the integral organs of one social entity, each caste occupying a specific social niche and performing a specific socio-economic function, like the different organs and limbs of a living being. And this enabled the caste society, despite its diversity and appalling inequity, to function efficiently and peacefully for very many centuries. The caste society was a cooperative society, not a competitive society. The diverse castes in it were not adversaries, but co-operators. And together they all constituted one cohesive society.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE CASTE system had a serious negative aspect to it, which nullified most of its benefits—it was a singularly unjust system, and was dreadfully wasteful of human resources, for its division of labour was not based on the merit of individuals, but on their birth, so that men of low ability often had to perform high functions, while men of high ability often had to perform low functions. Moreover, the caste system kept society sedated, in a state of coma, precluding mutation and progress in Indian civilisation. Though all human societies all over the world, and all through history, had functional and hierarchic divisions, Indian society was unique in that its divisions were unalterably hereditary. An individual’s social function and status were solely dependent on his birth—not on his aptitude or ability—and they remained the same for his family from generation to generation over the centuries. Though there were a few minor deviations from this rule in history, the caste system on the whole remained virtually the same for very many centuries, well into the twentieth century.
One would have thought that this iniquitous system would weaken over time and disintegrate, and that there would be revolts against the system by the underclasses. But it was the opposite of this that happened. Instead of weakening, the caste system became more rigid over time, and the social distance between the castes widened. This was largely because India had slid into the Dark Ages in the late classical period, consequent of the decline of its urban prosperity and the general ruralisation of Indian culture. The caste system was the ideal social system for the Dark Ages.
In that setting, the social dominance of Brahmins became absolutely unassailable. But their status was not based on wealth or power, but on their birth determined ritual ranking. But ritual ranking in Hindu society meant social ranking, so very many social privileges and material benefits went with the Brahmin rank.
Some of the privileges enjoyed by Brahmins were conceded to them even by Muslim rulers. Brahmins, for instance, usually paid little or no tax, even in Muslim kingdoms. And if any king or chieftain sought to impose dues on a Brahmin, he, according to Kosambi, ‘would threaten to spill his own blood, kill a child, burn alive some old woman of his family, or fast to death, the sin of which would fall on the head of the feudal lord.’ Brahmins were exempted even from jizya by most Delhi sultans, and when Firuz Tughluq imposed it on them, the Brahmins of Delhi and its environs took to mass fasting in protest and threatened to burn themselves to death at the walls of the royal palace. They withdrew their protest only when the amount of jizya demanded from them was reduced by the sultan, and the other Hindu castes offered to pay the tax on their behalf—Brahmins evidently had no objection to jizya being imposed on them, as long as Hindus of other castes would pay the tax on their behalf!
The social status of Brahmins was based on their ritual status and function. But with the passage of time, and the growth in Brahmin population, many Brahmins spread out into other fields of activity. Many of them took to providing financial services, as bankers and tax-farmers, or served as scribes or accountants, under Hindu as well Muslim rulers. Some even served as military commanders, mostly in the Vijayanagar army.
There were similar changes in the profession of some other Hindu communities also. And, even though these changes did not lead to any significant alteration in the status hierarchy of the caste society, they did alter the material conditions of the life of some castes, with some castes gaining and some losing advantages. The main losers were Kshatriyas, the elite Hindu politico-military caste, many of whom lost their power and privileges to Turks. Though some Kshatriyas salvaged their material privileges by serving as the subordinates of sultans or their provincial governors, such service itself was considered an appalling degradation by orthodox Hindus. But what the Kshatriyas lost was power and wealth, not their social status within the caste society, which remained the same as before.
In material gains, artisans and traders were the main beneficiaries of the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, for there was a sharp revival of urban prosperity during this period, and that led to the resuscitation of the commercial economy which had been comatose in India for several centuries. Some of the low castes in Indian society, particularly the outcastes, also benefited from the establishment of the Turko-Afghan rule, for Muslims generally ignored caste distinctions, and treated the outcastes in the same manner as they treated the other members of Indian society. Indeed, some of the outcaste communities became Muslims en-masse, thereby instantly transforming their social status from that of the underclass to that of the upper-class.
THE ETHOS AND structure of Muslim society was entirely different from that of Hindu society. Muslim society was a brotherhood, and had no caste-like hereditary social divisions in it. There were functional and status divisions in it, but these were based on an individual’s ability and accomplishments, not on his birth. Anyone could rise to any position that he merited by his abilities.
This was the Islamic ideal. The reality of Muslim society did not quite match this egalitarian, merit-oriented ideal. There were social divisions in Muslim society based on race and clan and sect, and these played a key role in determining a person’s social status. For instance, Sayyids, persons of Prophet Muhammad’s lineage, enjoyed a birth-determined, caste-like high social status everywhere in the Muslim world, irrespective of their personal merit. Further, people of foreign origin (Persians, Arabs, Turks and Afghans) generally formed the upper class of the Muslim society in India, followed by converts from the Hindu upper castes. Persians in particular enjoyed a high social status in India, and they looked down on Turks; and Turks in turn looked down on Afghans and Mongols; and all looked down on low caste Hindu converts.
Foreign Muslims ‘alone are capable of virtue, kindness, generosity, valour, good deeds, good works, truthfulness, keeping of promises . . . loyalty, clarity of vision, justice, equity, recognition of rights, gratitude for favours, and fear of god,’ states Barani, reflecting the stark social prejudice of upper class Muslims in medieval India. ‘They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government . . .’
Even among the Muslims of foreign origin, the early migrants and their children were held in lower esteem than the later migrants. According to Francois Bernier, a late-seventeenth-century French physician in India, the ‘children of the third and fourth generation, who have brown complexion . . . are held in much less respect than newcomers, and are seldom invested with official positions: they consider themselves happy, if permitted to serve as private soldiers in the infantry or cavalry.’
Converts from Hindu low castes and outcastes formed the bottom rung of Muslim society in India. The vast majority of Indian Muslims were in fact converts from low castes, and they mostly served as common soldiers, artisans and menials. These class distinctions were particularly important in arranging marriages. But inter-dining was not a taboo among Muslims, as it was among Hindus, though low-class menials were usually segregated.
These social divisions in the Muslim society in India were, however, porous, and over time there came about some amount of social coalescing among the various Muslim communities in India. The status of Indian converts to Islam began to improve from the late thirteenth century on, and in time a number of them rose to high positions in government. The classic case of this was the career of Malik Kafur—a Gujarati eunuch-slave, he rose to be the top general under Ala-ud-din Khalji, and even became, for a few months during the last phase of the life of the ailing sultan, the virtual ruler of the empire.
In time, a number of inter-community marriages took place at all levels of the Muslim society in India, and this led to a good amount of social levelling among Muslims in India. In a parallel development, Indian Muslims in high positions now took to fabricating elaborate genealogies to claim patrician foreign family backgrounds.
In addition to the social status divisions among Muslims in India, there were also some functional divisions in Muslim society, such as between those of military profession and those of civilian profession. The civilian professionals in turn were divided into those of administrative vocation and those of religious vocation. Religious leaders played a major role in Muslim polity, especially in the formulation of policies and laws, to ensure that these conformed to religious prescriptions. Unlike in Christianity, there were no ordained priests in Islam, no bishops, no pope. But there were religious leaders (imams) in Islam, who led the congregational prayers in mosques and at other gatherings of Muslims. Some of these religious leaders were highly influential, and the sultans could ignore their advice or ill-treat them only at their own peril.
THE MUSLIM ARISTOCRACY in medieval India mainly consisted of men in government service, whose status depended on the post they held. And the post they held depended on the will and pleasure of the sultan. Inevitably most of the royal officers lived in a state of perpetual anxiety about their future, and this was one of the determinants of their lifestyle, which was characterised by incredible extravagance, without any thought for the future—because they could not be certain that they, or their families, had a future.
Muslim nobles lived in palatial mansions, opulently furnished with tapestries and carpets imported from Central Asia, and provided with gold and silver tableware, as well as fine chinaware. They were usually deep in debt, living far beyond even their fabulous means—it was indeed considered prestigious for one to be heavily in debt, as proof of his profligacy. There was in any case no point in they saving anything for the future, for they could not bequeath their saved wealth to their progeny. This was because their wealth was derived from the estate assigned to them by the state to meet their official and personal expenses, so whatever wealth they saved from their estate after meeting these expenses belonged to the state.
Not only did the nobles pamper themselves opulently, but they were also equally extravagant in their charity, and in the gifts they gave to those who pleased them in any way. Says Abdullah, a late medieval chronicler, about Asad Khan, a high officer of Sikandar Lodi: ‘Whenever the cloth was spread before him at meal-times, he first filled large china plates with food, on which he placed great quantities of bread and pickles of every description, and on them a betel leaf, and on that a gold mohur, all of which he gave to beggars, and [only] then he began to eat.’ Once he gave to a needy relative a heap of gold pieces amounting to 70,000 tankas. Likewise, on several occasions he filled cups and bowls with gold and gave them away to whoever pleased him at the moment.
These were laudable benevolent acts. But what characterised the lifestyle of most nobles was their extravagant self-indulgence. Thus Dilawar Khan, another noble of Sikandar Lodi, everyday purchased 500 tankas worth of roses for his harem. According to Varthema, an early sixteenth century Italian traveller in India, many of the officers of the sultan of Bijapur ‘wear on the insteps of their shoes rubies and diamonds and other jewels; so you may imagine how many are worn on the fingers of the hand and on the ears.’
MEDIEVAL INDIAN SOCIETY, like medieval societies everywhere in the world, was characterised by shocking social and economic disparities, with the nobles living in incredible luxury and the common people living in abject poverty. This was true of Hindu as well as Muslim society. ‘The land is overstocked with people, but those in the country are very miserable, whilst the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury,’ observes Nikitin. ‘They are wont to be carried on their silver beds, preceded by some twenty chargers caparisoned in gold, and followed by 300 men on horseback and 500 on foot, and by horn-men, ten torchbearers and ten musicians.’
There is a good amount of information about the lifestyle of the upper classes in medieval India in the chronicles of the age, but there is hardly any information about the life of the common people. Circumstantial evidence shows that even when the common people had the means to live in comfort, they usually dared not to do so, for fear of attracting the attention of vulturous government officers and other predators. Besides, they were anxious to save for the contingency of any future adversity, which they feared was always around the corner. So they generally lived frugally, often well below their means. And what wealth they could save, they buried, usually in pits dug inside their houses. The buried treasure might not grow, but it would be at least safe, they felt, and it gave their owners a sense of security. According to Shahab-ud-din, ‘the inhabitants of India like to make money, and hoard it.’ This was their insurance against the uncertainties of life.
Nearly all the rulers of the early medieval India, rajas as well as sultans, were predators, concerned primarily with the preservation and expansion of their wealth and power, scarcely ever with the welfare of the people. They were all warlords. And if kings had no vital interest in the welfare of their people, the people had no vital interest in the welfare of their kings either. Whether their king was a Hindu or a Muslim, the common people had no sense of identity with him, and were indifferent to what happened to him, whether he rose or fell, or was killed.
This attitude of fatalism, which was pervasive in medieval India, was the reason why people’s rebellions were very rare in India, despite their inhuman oppression by the rulers. By and large people acquiesced with the conditions of their life, however harsh they might be. As Dubois, an early nineteenth century French missionary in India, would comment in another context, ‘The people of India have always been accustomed to bow their heads beneath the yoke of a cruel and oppressive despotism, and moreover, strange to say, have always displayed mere indifference towards those who have forced them to it. Little cared they whether the princes under whom they groaned were of their own country or from foreign lands. The frequent vicissitudes that befell those in power were hardly noticed by their subjects. Never did the fall of one of these despots cause the least regret; never did the elevation of another cause the least joy. Hard experience had taught Hindus to disregard not only the hope of better times but the fear of worse.’
A COMMON FEATURE OF premodern societies nearly everywhere in the world was slavery, and it was widespread in India too in medieval times. Slaves were an indispensable part of the household of affluent Indians in most parts of the subcontinent. Even some mystics kept slaves. As for nobles, most of them kept a large number of slaves, including many concubines. That was an essential part of their ostentatious lifestyle. Khan Jahan Maqbul, Firuz Tughluq’s vizier, for instance, is said to have maintained, according to Afif, as many as 2000 concubines! The largest number of slaves in medieval India was, predictably, in the service of the Delhi sultans, who employed them in various government departments and in the royal army, as well as in their personal service. The sultan’s personal attendants were all invariably slaves.
The number of slaves maintained by the Delhi sultans varied considerably from reign to reign, depending on the requirements of each sultan. The sultan who had the largest number of slaves was Firuz Tughluq, who is reported to have had as many as 180,000 slaves, and is said to have issued an order to his officers that the best of the captives they enslaved during military campaigns should be reserved for him. It was not however to pander to his personal vanity that Firuz kept so many slaves, but to give them training in crafts and to employ them in productive work, so that they became economic assets and contributed to the revenue of the state and the prosperity of the land.
Capturing people to enslave them was part of the spoils that sultans, officers and soldiers sought during military campaigns. For instance, Qutb-ud-din Aibak during his Gujarat campaign captured 20,000 people to be enslaved, and in his Kalinjar campaign he herded as many as 50,000 people into slavery. This was the usual practice of the sultans during their campaigns of conquest. They also enslaved captives during their punitive campaigns within the empire. Captured professionals too were enslaved, as Timur did during his Indian campaign, when he, according to the early fifteenth century Persian chronicler Yazdi, captured as slaves ‘several thousand artisans and professional people.’ Like invaders, marauders too often seized men, women and children, to sell them as slaves. Sometimes children were sold into slavery by their needy parents or by hostile relatives.
Slavery was prevalent in most ancient, medieval and early modern societies all over the world. It was common in India too from ancient times, but it had never been as widespread as it was during the early medieval period, when slave trade became an important part of the Indian economy. There was even a regular export of slaves from India during this period, but Firuz Tughluq forbade it, presumably because he himself wanted to accumulate a large number of slaves. All major cities in medieval India had slave markets, where slaves were sold like cattle; in Delhi, adequate availability of slaves in the market was maintained by regular fresh supplies, as Barani indicates.
The price of slaves, as of any other commodity, depended on the prevailing demand and supply equation in the market, as well on the quality of individual slaves. According to Battuta, rustic women captured during raids fetched only very low prices, because of their large numbers and crude ways. During the reign of Ala-ud-din Khalji the prices of various categories of slaves were fixed by the sultan himself, as part of his market regulations. On the whole slaves were quite cheap in Delhi; they were even cheaper in other Indian cities. According to Shahab-ud-din, ‘the value . . . of a young slave girl for domestic service does not exceed eight tankas’ in Delhi. More charming girls, those fit for concubinage, fetched fifteen tankas. However, some Indian slave-girls cost as much as ‘20,000 tankas, and even more . . . [for they] are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.’
THE POSITION OF slaves in Islamic society was quite different from what it was in most other societies. Muslims generally treated their slaves in the same manner as they treated their other servitors, and the position that a slave occupied, as well as the privileges he enjoyed, depended, as in the case of other servitors, on his aptitude and merit. On the whole, the life and career of a slave in Islamic society was not much different from what he could have had as a free man.
Slaves were of course bonded to their owners, so they had very little personal freedom. But talented and loyal slaves were usually rewarded by their masters by manumitting them. In some cases it was an advantage to be a slave, particularly to be the favourite slave of a sultan or a high official, for that opened up for the slave an avenue for rapid career advancement. A royal slave could even succeed his master on the throne, as indeed three slaves did in the Delhi Sultanate. The first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate—which ruled the empire for 84 years, from 1206 to 1290—is usually described as the Slave Dynasty, for all the ten rulers of the dynasty were either manumitted slaves or descendants of slaves.
Slaves served in a wide variety of occupations in early medieval India, in administration, army and economy, as well as in households. Royal bodyguards were invariably slaves, Ethiopians slaves being particularly favoured for that service. But very few of the royal slaves were for personal attendance on the sultan; rather, they were mostly treated like any other government staff and assigned to various official duties. This was particularly so in the case of the slaves of Firuz Tughluq, who took special care to treat them well and to employ them in various productive occupations, and thus turn them into economic assets of the state. ‘In all cases, provision was made for their support in a liberal manner,’ states Afif about Firuz’s treatment of his slaves. Sultans generally assigned responsible work to most of their slaves, though some slaves were also employed as entertainers or as menial workers in the royal household. During the reign of Kaiqubad, the last slave sultan, who was a heedless voluptuary, slave boys and girls were, according to Barani, given special training in music, dance, coquetry, and the erotic arts, for those were the primary interests of the sultan.
Slavery declined in the late Sultanate period, and became quite insignificant during the Mughal rule. Babur does not mention slaves at all in his autobiography. However, slavery did exist in India during the Mughal period, as European travellers noted, but their numbers were insignificant, and nearly all of them were domestic slaves. There were no state slaves under the Mughals.
WOMEN GENERALLY SUFFERED far more discrimination than slaves in medieval India, in all sections of society, but more so in upper caste Hindu society, though there were some commendable exceptions to this. Their life was confined to their family. They had no social role whatever. In fact, in medieval Hindu society their position was much worse than what it was in ancient India, where there were hardly any lifestyle restrictions on women, and they ate and drank whatever their men ate and drank. Ramayana, for instance, relates that Sita, the ultimate Hindu ideal of wifely propriety, drank wine in the company of Rama, her husband. But later the scene changed altogether, and Smriti rules of medieval India severely circumscribed the life of Hindu women, and ordained that a wife who drank liquor should be superseded, or even abandoned.
On the whole, women had very low social standing in medieval India. The only notable exception to this was in the matrilineal Nair society of Kerala, where women enjoyed a status equal to that of men. Also, among the poor all over India, women enjoyed a good amount of freedom, for their lives were too basic to be segregated into male and female domains. It was mainly the middleclass women who suffered most from social constraints.
Illiteracy was very common among medieval Indian women, and in some Hindu castes it was even considered shameful for respectable women to be literate. In upper class Muslim society, women had to observe purdah, and were secluded in the zenana, the female quarters of their home. They were not allowed to have any contact with any men other than the members of their immediate family. And when they appeared in public, they had to wear the burqa, a shapeless, sack-like outer garment that covered their entire body from head to foot, leaving only a narrow veiled opening over the eyes. Among the affluent, women travelled in closed litters. Even in mosques women were segregated from men. In some Islamic societies women were not even allowed into mosques, as Prophet Muhammad is said to have preferred women to pray at home. Affluent Hindus, particularly the political aristocracy in North India, in time adopted some of the Muslim social practices, such as sequestering their women, to gain social recognition by the Muslim ruling class.
Despite these various restrictions on the life of women in medieval India, women in royal and aristocratic families, in Hindu as well as Muslim society, generally led a good life, and enjoyed all the creature comforts available in that age. They also exercised a fair amount of influence on government and society from behind the curtain of the zenana, by acting through intermediaries. Sometimes they even took part in battles. Thus when Delhi was attacked by a rebel force when sultan Buhlul Lodi was away on a campaign, and there were only very few soldiers in the fort then, a number of women under the leadership of a woman, Bibi Matu, put on male attire and took up combat positions on the battlements of the fort, to scare away the attackers. Similarly, the concubine of a rebel noble in Sind—‘a strumpet who was indeed surpassingly beautiful’—took over the captaincy of the noble’s army when he fell in battle. She, according to Yadgar, ‘put on a suit of armour, bound round her waist a gilt quiver and, placing a helmet on her head, joined the army.’ The ultimate political status that any woman gained during the Sultanate period was by Raziya, who ascended the throne in Delhi on the death of her father, Sultan Iltutmish, and proved herself to be better than many sultans, in administration as well as in battle.
On the whole Muslim women, despite purdah, enjoyed higher status and greater freedom in society than most Hindu women. They could inherit property and obtain divorce, privileges that Hindu women did not have. In several Hindu communities, such as among the Rajputs, the birth of a girl child was considered a misfortune, and female infanticide was widespread, but Muslims did not have that practice.