A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith
T.W. Arnold Ma. C.I.F
Professor Of Arabic, University Of London, University College. Written in 1896, revised in 1913
Rearranged by Dr. A.S. Hashim
| Conversion to Islam in various regions of India #2 |
Missionaries in Bengal:
It is in Bengal, however, that the Muslim missionaries in India have achieved their greatest success, as far as numbers are concerned. A Muslim kingdom was first founded here at the end of the twelfth century by Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji, who conquered Bihar and Bengal and made Gaur the capital of the latter province. The long continuance of the Muslim rule would naturally assist the spread of Islam, and though the Hindu rule was restored for ten years under the tolerant Raja Kans, whose rule is said to have been popular with his Muslim subjects,[84] his son, Jatmall, renounced the Hindu religion and became a Muslim .
After his fathers death in 1414 he called together all the officers of the state and announced his intention of embracing Islam, and proclaimed that if the chiefs would not permit him to ascend the throne, he was ready to give it up to his brother; whereupon they declared that they would accept him as their king, whatever religion he might adopt.
Accordingly, several learned men of the Muslim faith were summoned to witness the Raja renounce the Hindu religion and publicly profess his acceptance of Islam: he took the name of Jalal al-Din Muhammad Shah, and according to tradition numerous conversions were made during his reign.[85]
Conversions, however, often took place at other times under pressure from the Muslim government. The Rajas of Kharagpur were originally Hindus, and became Muslims because, having been defeated by one of Akbars generals, they were only allowed to retain the family estates on the condition that they embraced Islam.
The Hindu ancestor of the family of Asad Ali Khan, in Chittagong, was deprived of his caste by being forced to smell beef and had perforce to become a Muslim, and several other instances of the same kind might be quoted.[87]
Murshid Quli Khan (son of a converted Brahman), who was made governor of Bengal by the Emperor Aurangzeb at the beginning of the eighteenth century, enforced a law that any official or landlord, who failed to pay the revenue, that was due or was unable to make good the loss, should with his wife and children be compelled to become Muslims.
Further, it was the common law that any Hindu who forfeited his caste by a breach of regulations could only be reinstated by the Muslim government; if the government refused to interfere, the outcast had no means of regaining his position in the social system of the Hindus, and would probably find no resource but to become a Muslim .[88]
The Afghan adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have been active in the work of proselytizing, for besides the children that they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam.[89] But it is not in the ancient centers of the Muslim government that the Muslims of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.[90]
- The similarity of manners between these low-caste Hindus and the followers of the Prophet,
- and the caste distinctions which they still retain,
- as well as their physical likeness,
- all bear the same testimony and identify the Bengal Muslims with the aboriginal tribes of the country.
- Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muslim invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigor after its triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest distress and degradation.
But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were welcomed with open arms by the original people and the low castes on the very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan rulers.
| “To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high.
It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in its sight to a despised and neglected population. The initiatory rite rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population. Compulsory conversions are occasionally recorded. But it was not to force that Islam owed its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu community, a free entrance into a new social organization.”[91] |
The existence in Bengal of definite missionary efforts is said to be attested by certain legends of the zeal of private individuals on behalf of their religion, and the graves of some of these missionaries are still honored, and are annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.[92] One of the earliest of these was Sheikh Jalal al-Din Tabrizi, who died in a.d. 1244. He was a pupil of the great saint, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi. In the course of his missionary journeys he visited Bengal, where a shrine to which is attached a rich endowment was erected in his honor, the real site of his tomb being unknown. [93]
In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable revival of the Muslim religion in Bengal, and several sects that owe their origin to the influence of the Wahhabi reformation, have sent their missionaries through the province purging out the remnants of Hindu superstitions, awakening religious zeal and spreading the faith among unbelievers.[94]
Some account still remains to be given of Muslim missionaries who have labored in parts of India other than those mentioned above. One of the earliest of these is Sheikh Ismail, one of the most famous of the Sayyids of Bukhari, distinguished alike for his secular and religious learning; he is said to have been the first Muslim missionary who preached the faith of Islam in the city of Lahore, whither he came in the year a.d. 1005. Crowds flocked to listen to his sermons, and the number of his converts swelled rapidly day by day, and it is said that no unbeliever ever came into personal contact with him without being converted to the faith of Islam.[95]
The conversion of the inhabitants of the western plains of the Panjab is said to have been effected through the preaching of Baha al-Ḥaqq of Multan[96] and Baba Farid al-Din of Pakpattan, who flourished about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries.[97] A biographer of the latter saint gives a list of sixteen tribes who were won over to Islam through his preaching, but unfortunately provides us with no details of this work of conversion.[98]
- Of immense importance in the history of Islam in India was the arrival in that country of Sayyid Jalal al-Din, who is said to have been born at Bukhara in 1199. He settled in Uch, now in the Bahawalpur territory, in 1244, and converted numbers of persons in the neighborhood to Islam; he died in 1291, and his descendants, many of whom are also revered as saints, have remained as guardians of his shrine up to the present day and form the centre of a widespread religious influence. His grandson, Sayyid Aḥmad Kabir, known as Makhdum-i-Jahaniyan, is credited with having effected the conversion of several tribes in the Punjab.[100] About a mile to the east of Uch is situated the shrine of Ḥasan Kabir al-Din, son of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Din, who was a contemporary of Jalal-al-Din; both father and son are said to have made many converts, and such was the influence attributed to Ḥasan Kabir al-Din that it was said as soon as his glance fell upon any Hindu, the latter would accept Islam.[101]
- In more recent years there have been abundant witnesses for Islam seeking to spread this faith in India—and with very considerable success; the second half of the nineteenth century especially witnessed a great revival of missionary activity, the number of annual conversions being variously estimated at ten, fifty, one hundred and six hundred thousand.[103] But it is difficult to obtain accurate information on account of the peculiarly individualistic character of Muslim missionary work and the absence of any central organization or of anything in the way of missionary reports, and the success that attends the labors of Muslim preachers is sometimes much exaggerated, e. g. in the Panjab a certain Haji Muhammad is said to have converted as many as 200,000 Hindus,[104] and a mawlavi in Bangalore boasted that in five years he had made as many as 1000 converts in this city and its suburbs.
- But that there are Muslim missionaries engaged in active and successful propagandist labors is undoubted, and the following examples are typical of the period referred to.
- Many Muslim preachers have adopted the methods of Christian missionaries, such as street preaching, tract distribution, and other agencies.
- In many of the large cities of India, Muslim preachers may be found daily expounding the teachings of Islam in some principal thoroughfare.
In Bangalore this practice is very general, and one of these preachers, who was the imam of the mosque about the year 1890, was so popular that he was even sometimes invited to preach by Hindus: he preached in the market-place, and in the course of seven or eight years gained forty-two converts.
In Bombay a Muslim missionary preaches almost daily near the chief market of the city, and in Calcutta there are several preaching-stations that are kept constantly supplied. Among the converts are occasionally to be found some Europeans, mostly persons in indigent circumstances; the mass, however, are Hindus.[109]
Some of the numerous Anjumans that have of recent years sprung up in the chief centers of Muslim life in India, include among their objects the sending of missionaries to preach in the bazaars; such are the Anjuman Ḥimayat-i-Islam of Lahore, and the Anjuman Ḥami Islam of Ajmir. These particular Anjumans appoint paid agents, but much of the work of preaching in the bazaars is performed by persons who are engaged in some trade or business during the working hours of the day and devote their leisure time in the evenings to this pious work.
Some preachers too turn their attention rather to the strengthening of the foundation already laid, and Endeavour to rid their ignorant co-religionists of their Hindu superstitions, and instill in them a purer form of faith, such efforts being in many cases the continuation of earlier missionary activity.
In recent years, however, there has been, speaking generally, a movement noticeable among the Indian Muslims towards a religious life more strictly in accordance with the laws of Islam. The influence of the Christian mission schools has also been very great in stimulating among some Muslims of the younger generation a study of their own religion and in bringing about a consequent awakening of religious zeal. Indeed, the spread of education generally, has led to a more intelligent grasp of religious principles and to an increase of religious teachers in outlying and hitherto neglected districts.
This missionary movement of reform (from whatever cause it may originate), may be observed in very different parts of India. In the eastern districts of the Panjab, for example, after the Mutiny, a great religious revival took place. Preachers traveled far and wide through the country, calling upon believers to abandon their idolatrous practices and expounding the true tenets of the faith. Now, in consequence, most villages, in which Muslims own any considerable portion, have a mosque, while the grosser and more open idolatries are being discontinued.[110]
In Rajputana also, the Hindu tribes who have been from time to time converted to Islam in the rural districts, are now becoming more orthodox and regular in their religious observances, and are abandoning the ancient customs which hitherto they had observed in common with their idolatrous neighbors. The Merats, for example, now follow the orthodox Muslim form of marriage instead of the Hindu ritual they formerly observed, and have abjured the flesh of the wild boar.[111]
A similar revival in Bengal has already been spoken of above.
Such movements and the efforts of individual missionaries are, however, quite inadequate to explain the rapid increase of the Muslims of India, and one is naturally led to inquire what are the causes other than the normal increase of population,[112] which add so enormously to their numbers. The answer is to be found in the social conditions of life among Hindus.
- The insults and contempt heaped upon the lower castes of Hindus by their co-religionists,
- and the impassable obstacles placed in the way of any member of these castes desiring to better his condition,
- show up in striking contrast the benefits of a religious system which has no outcasts,
- and gives free scope for the indulgence of any ambition.
In Bengal, for example, the weavers of cotton piece-goods, who are looked upon as vile by their Hindu co-religionists, embrace Islam in large numbers to escape from the low position to which they are otherwise degraded.[113] A very remarkable instance of a similar kind occurs in the history of the north-eastern part of the same province. Here in the year 1550 the original tribe of the Kocch established a dynasty under their great leader, Haju; in the reign of his grandson, when the higher classes in the state were received into the pale of Hinduism,[114] the mass of the people finding themselves despised as outcasts, became Muslims.[115]
The escape that Islam offers to Hindus from the oppression of the higher castes was strikingly illustrated in Tinnevelli at the close of the nineteenth century:
| A very low caste, the Shanars, had in recent years become prosperous and many of them had built fine houses;
they asserted that they had the right to worship in temples, from which they had hitherto been excluded. A riot ensued, in the course of which the Shanars suffered badly at the hands of Hindus of a higher caste, and they took refuge in the pale of Islam. Six hundred Shanars in one village became Muslims in one day, and their example was quickly followed in other places.[116] |
Similar instances might be given from other parts of India:
- A Hindu who has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move, would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the social scale to that from which he has been banished.
- Such a change of religion might well be accompanied with sincere conviction, but men also who might be profoundly indifferent to the number or names of the deities they were called upon to worship, would feel very keenly the social ostracism entailed by their loss of caste, and become Muslim without any religious feelings at all. The influence of the study of Muslim literature also, and the habitual contact with Muslim society, must often make itself insensibly felt. Among the Rajput princes of the nineteenth century in Rajputana and Bundelkhand, such tendencies towards Islamism were to be observed,[117]
- tendencies which, had the Mughal empire lasted, would probably have led to their ultimate conversion.
- They not only respected Muslim saints, but had Muslim tutors for their sons; they also had their food killed in accordance with the regulations laid down by the Muslim law, and joined in the Muslim festivals dressed as faqirs, and praying like true believers. On the other hand, it has been conjectured that the present position of affairs, under a government perfectly impartial in matters religious, is much more likely to promote conversions among the Hindus generally than was the case under the rule of the Muslim kingdoms, when Hinduism gained union and strength from the constant struggle with an aggressive enemy.[118]
- Hindus, too, often flock in large numbers to the tombs of Muslim saints on the day appointed to commemorate them, and a childless father, with the feeling that prompts a polytheist to leave no God unaddressed, will present his petition to the God of the Muslims, and if children are born to him, apparently in answer to this prayer, the whole family will in such a case (and examples are not infrequent) embrace Islam.[119]
- Love for a Muslim woman is occasionally the cause of the conversion of a Hindu, since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an unbeliever is absolutely forbidden by the Muslim law. Hindu children, if adopted by wealthy Muslims, would be brought up in the religion of their new parents; and a Hindu wife, married to a follower of the Prophet, would be likely to adopt the faith of her husband.[120] As the contrary process can rarely take place, the number of Muslims is bound to increase in proportion to that of the Hindus.
- Hindus, who for some reason or other have been driven out of their caste; the poor who have become the recipients of Muslim charity, or women and children who have been protected when their parents have died or deserted them—(such cases would naturally be frequent in times of famine)—form a continuous though small stream of additions from the Hindus.[121]
- There are often local circumstances favorable to the growth of Islam; for example, it has been pointed out[122] that in the villages of the Terai, in which the number of Hindus and Muslims happen to be equally balanced, any increase in the predominance of the Muslims is invariably followed by disputes about the killing of cows and other practices offensive to Hindu feeling. The Hindus gradually move away from the village, leaving behind of their creed only the Chamar ploughman in the service of the Muslim peasants. These latter eventually adopt the religion of their masters, not from any conviction of its truth, but from the inconvenience their isolation entails.
- Some striking instances of conversions from the lower castes of Hindus are also found in the agricultural districts of Oudh. Although the Muslims of this province form only .one-tenth of the whole population, still the small groups of Muslim cultivators form scattered centers of revolt against the degrading oppression to which their religion hopelessly consigns these lower castes.”[123]
- The advantages Islam holds out to such classes as the Koris and Chamars, who stand at the lowest level of Hindu society, and the deliverance which conversion to Islam brings them, may be best understood from the following passage descriptive of their social condition as Hindus.[124]
| “The lowest depth of misery and degradation is reached by the Koris and Chamars, the weavers and leather-cutters to the rest.
Many of these in the northern districts are actually bond-slaves, having hardly ever the spirit to avail themselves of the remedy offered by our courts, and descend with their children from generation to generation as the value of an old purchase. They hold the plough for the Brahman or Chhattri master, whose pride of caste forbids him to touch it, and live with the pigs, less unclean than themselves, in separate quarters apart from the rest of the village. Always on the verge of starvation, their lean, black, and ill-formed figures, their stupid faces, and their repulsively filthy habits reflect the wretched destiny which condemns them to be lower than the beast among their fellow-men, and yet that they are far from incapable of improvement is proved by the active and useful stable servants drawn from among them, who receive good pay and live well under European masters. A change of religion is the only means of escape open to them, and they have little reason to be faithful to their present creed.” |
It is this absence of class prejudices which constitutes the real strength of Islam in India, and enables it to win so many converts from Hinduism.
Kashmir, Tibet and Islam
Some account remains to be given of the spread of Islam in Kashmir and thence beyond the borders of India into Tibet. Of all the provinces and states of India (with the exception of Sind) Kashmir contains the largest number of Muslims (namely 70 per cent.) in proportion to the whole population; but unfortunately historical facts that should explain the existence in this state of so many Muslims, almost entirely of Hindu or Tibetan origin, are very scanty. But all the evidence leads us to attribute it on the whole to a long-continued missionary movement inaugurated and carried out mainly by faqirs and dervishes, among whom were Ismailian preachers sent from Alamut.[125]
It is difficult to say when this Islamising influence first made itself felt in the country. The first Muslim king of Kashmir, Ṣadr al-Din, is said to have owed his conversion to a certain Darwesh Bulbul Shah in the early part of the fourteenth century. This saint was the only religious teacher who could satisfy his craving for religious truth when, dissatisfied with his own Hindu faith, he looked for a more acceptable form of doctrine.
Towards the end of the same century (in 1388) the progress of Islam was most materially furthered by the advent of Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a fugitive from his native city of Hamadan in Persia, where he had incurred the wrath of Timur. He was accompanied by 700 Sayyids, who established hermitages all over the country and by their influence appear to have assured the acceptance of the new religion.
Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a missionary, by name Mir Shams al-Din, belonging to a Shi’a sect, came from Iraq, and, with the aid of his disciples, won over a large number of converts in Kashmir.
When under Akbar, Kashmir became a province of the Mughal empire, the Muslim influence was naturally strengthened and many men of learning came into the country.
In the reign of Aurangzeb, the Rajput Raja of Kishtwar was converted by the miracles of a certain Sayyid Shah Farid al-Din and his conversion seems to have been followed by that of the majority of his subjects, and along the route which the Mughal emperors took on their progresses into Kashmir we still find Rajas who are the descendants of Muslimized Rajputs.[128]
To the north and north-east of Kashmir, the provinces of Baltistan and Ladakh are inhabited by a mixed Tibetan race, among whom Islam has been firmly established for several centuries, but the date and manner of its introduction is unknown.
The Muslims of Baltistan tell of four brothers who came from Khurasan and brought about a revival of the faith, but appear to have no tradition regarding the earliest propagandists.[129]
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century Islam appeared to be making progress, but this tendency was counteracted by the encouragement which Maharaja Ranbir Singh gave to the followers of the Buddhist faith. In Ladakh there are a number of half-castes, called Arghons,[130] born of Tibetan mothers and Muslim fathers, traders who have come to Leh and persuaded the Tibetan women they marry to accept Islam.
These Arghons are all Muslims and, like their fathers, marry Tibetan wives; they are said to be increasing in numbers more rapidly than the pure Tibetan stock.[131]
Islam has also been carried into Tibet Proper by Kashmiri merchants. Settlements of such merchants are to be found in all the chief cities of Tibet; they marry Tibetan wives, who often adopt the religion of their husbands; and there are now said to be as many as 2000 Muslim families in Lhasa.[132] Islam has made its way into Tibet also from Yunnan,[133] and at Su-ching, on the border of the Sze-chwan province and Tibet, converts are being won from among the Tibetan inhabitants.[134] Muslim influences are also said to have come from Persia[135] and from Turkestan.[136]
