But these conquerors would appear to have had very little of that “love for souls” which animates the true missionary and which has achieved such great conquests for Islam. The K͟hiljīs (1290–1320), the Tug͟hlaqs (1320–1412), and the Lodīs (1451–1526) were generally too busily engaged in fighting to pay much regard to the interests of religion, or else thought more of the exaction of tribute than of the work of conversion.[8] Not that they were entirely lacking [[258]]in religious zeal: e.g. the Ghakkars, a barbarous people in the mountainous districts of the North of the Panjāb, who gave the early invaders much trouble, are said to have been converted through the influence of Muḥammad Ghorī at the end of the twelfth century. Their chieftain had been taken prisoner by the Muhammadan monarch, who induced him to become a Musalman, and then confirming him in his title of chief of this tribe, sent him back to convert his followers, many of whom having little religion of their own were easily prevailed upon to embrace Islam.[9] According to Ibn Baṭūṭah, the K͟hiljīs offered some encouragement to conversion by making it a custom to have the new convert presented to the sultan, who clad him in a robe of honour and gave him a collar and bracelets of gold, of a value proportionate to his rank.[10] But the monarchs of the earlier Muhammadan dynasties as a rule evinced very little proselytising zeal, and it would be hard to find a parallel in their history to the following passage from the autobiography of Fīrūz Shāh Tug͟hlaq (1351–1388): “I encouraged my infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the Prophet, and I proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Musalman should be exempt from the jizyah, or poll tax. Information of this came to the ears of the people at large and great numbers of Hindus presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the faith, were exonerated from the jizyah, and were favoured with presents and honours.”[11]
As the Muhammadan power became consolidated, and particularly under the Mug͟hal dynasty, the religious influences of Islam naturally became more permanent and persistent. These influences are certainly apparent in the Hindu [[259]]theistic movements that arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Bishop Lefroy has conjectured that the positive character of Muslim teaching attracted minds that were dissatisfied with the vagueness and subjectivity of a Pantheistic system of thought. “When Mohammedanism, with its strong grasp of the reality of the Divine existence and, as flowing from this, of the absolutely fixed and objective character of truth, came into conflict with the haziness of Pantheistic thought and the subjectivity of its belief, it necessarily followed, not only that it triumphed in the struggle, but also that it came as a veritable tonic to the life and thought of Upper India, quickening into a fresh and more vigorous life many minds which never accepted for themselves its intellectual sway.”[12]
A powerful incentive to conversion was offered, when adherence to an idolatrous system stood in the way of advancement at the Muhammadan courts; and though a spirit of tolerance, which reached its culmination under the eclectic Akbar, was very often shown towards Hinduism, and respected even, for the most part, the state endowments of that religion;[13] and though the dread of unpopularity and the desire of conciliation dictated a policy of non-interference and deprecated such deeds of violence and such outbursts of fanaticism as had characterised the earlier period of invasion and triumph, still such motives of self-interest gained many converts from Hinduism to the Muhammadan faith. Many Rajputs became converts in this way, and their descendants are to this day to be found among the landed aristocracy. The most important perhaps among these is the Musalman branch of the great Bachgoti clan, the head of which is the premier Muhammadan noble of Oudh. According to one tradition, their ancestor Tilok Chand was taken prisoner by the Emperor Bābar, and to regain his liberty adopted the faith of Islam;[14] but another legend places his conversion in the reign of Humāyūn. This prince having heard of the marvellous beauty of Tilok Chand’s wife, had her carried off while she was at a fair. No sooner, however, was she [[260]]brought to him than his conscience smote him and he sent for her husband. Tilok Chand had despaired of ever seeing her again, and in gratitude he and his wife embraced the faith “which taught such generous purity.”[15] These converted Rajputs are very zealous in the practice of their religion, yet often betray their Hindu origin in a very striking manner. In the district of Bulandshahr, for example, a large Musalman family, which is known as the Lālk͟hānī Paṭhāns, still (with some exceptions) retains its old Hindu titles and family customs of marriage, while Hindu branches of the same clan still exist side by side with it.[16] In the Mirzapur district, the Gaharwār Rajputs, who are now Muslim, still retain in all domestic matters Hindu laws and customs and prefix a Hindu honorific title to their Muhammadan names.[17]
Official pressure is said never to have been more persistently brought to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern districts of the Panjāb, there are many cases in which the ancestor of the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed his religion in the reign of this zealot, “in order to save the land of the village.” In Gurgaon, near Dehli, there is a Hindu family of Banyās who still bear the title of Shayk͟h (which is commonly adopted by converted Hindus), because one of the members of the family, whose line is now extinct, became a convert in order to save the family property from confiscation.[18] Many Rajput landowners, in the Cawnpore district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason.[19] In [[261]]other cases the ancestor is said to have been carried as a prisoner or hostage to Dehli, and there forcibly circumcised and converted.[20] It should be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions is family or local tradition, and no mention of such (as far as I have been able to discover) is made in the historical accounts of Aurangzeb’s reign.[21] It is established without doubt that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable that Aurangzeb’s well-known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily assignable cause. Similarly in the Deccan, Aurangzeb shares with Ḥaydar ʻAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān (these being the best known of modern Muhammadan rulers) the reputation of having forcibly converted sundry families and sections of the population, whose conversion undoubtedly dates from a much earlier period, from which no historical record of the circumstances of the case has come down.[22]
Tīpū Sulṭān is probably the Muhammadan monarch who most systematically engaged in the work of forcible conversion. In 1788 he issued the following proclamation to the people of Malabar: “From the period of the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your rainy season, you have caused numbers of our warriors to taste the draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues like good subjects; and since it is the practice with you for one woman to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of the field, I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and to be like the rest of mankind; [[262]]and if you are disobedient to these commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government.” This proclamation stirred up a general revolt in Malabar, and early in 1789 Tīpū Sulṭān prepared to enforce his proclamation with an army of more than twenty thousand men, and issued general orders that “every being in the district without distinction should be honoured with Islam, that the houses of such as fled to avoid that honour should be burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to effect their universal conversion.” Thousands of Hindus were accordingly circumcised and made to eat beef; but by the end of 1790 the British army had destroyed the last remnant of Tīpū Sulṭān’s power in Malabar, and this monarch himself perished early in 1799 at the capture of Seringapatam. Most of the Brahmans and Nayars who had been forcibly converted, subsequently disowned their new religion.[23]
How little was effected towards the spread of Islam by violence on the part of the Muhammadan rulers may be judged from the fact that even in the centres of the Muhammadan power, such as Dehli and Agra, the Muhammadans in modern times in the former district hardly exceeded one-tenth, and in the latter they did not form one-fourth of the population.[24] A remarkable example of the worthlessness of forced conversion is exhibited in the case of Bodh Mal, Raja of Majhauli, in the district of Gorakhpur; he was arrested by Akbar in default of revenue, carried to Dehli, and there converted to Islam, receiving the name of Muḥammad Salīm. But on his return his wife refused to let him into the ancestral castle, and, as apparently she had the sympathy of his subjects on her side, she governed his territories during the minority of his son Bhawāni Mal, so that the Hindu succession remained undisturbed.[25] Until recently there were some strange survivals of a similarly futile false conversion, noticeable in certain customs of a [[263]]Hindu sect called the Bishnois, the principal tenet of whose faith is the renunciation of all Hindu deities, except Viṣṇu. They used recently to bury their dead, instead of burning them, to adopt G͟hulām Muḥammad and other Muhammadan names, and use the Muslim form of salutation. They explained their adoption of these Muhammadan customs by saying that having once slain a Qāḍī, who had interfered with their rite of widow-burning, they had compounded for the offence by embracing Islam. They have now, however, renounced these practices in favour of Hindu customs.[26]
But though some Muhammadan rulers may have been more successful in forcing an acceptance of Islam on certain of their Hindu subjects than in the last-mentioned cases, and whatever truth there may be in the assertion[27] that “it is impossible even to approach the religious side of the Mahomedan position in India without surveying first its political aspect,” we undoubtedly find that Islam has gained its greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places in which its political power has been weakest, as in Southern India and Eastern Bengal. Of such missionary movements it is now proposed to essay some account, commencing with Southern India and the Deccan, then after reviewing the history of Sind, Cutch and Gujarāt, passing to Bengal, and finally noticing some missionaries whose work lay outside the above geographical limits. Of several of the missionaries to be referred to, little is recorded beyond their names and the sphere of their labours; accordingly, in view of the general dearth of such missionary annals, any available details have been given at length.
The first advent of Islam in South India dates as far back as the eighth century, when a band of refugees, to whom the Mappillas trace their descent, came from ʻIrāq and settled in the country.[28] The trade in spices, ivory, gems, etc., between India and Europe, which for many hundred years was conducted by the Arabs and Persians, caused a continual stream of Muhammadan influence to flow in upon the west coast of Southern India. From this constant influx [[264]]of foreigners there resulted a mixed population, half Hindu and half Arab or Persian, in the trading centres along the coast. Very friendly relations appear to have existed between these Muslim traders and the Hindu rulers, who extended to them their protection and patronage in consideration of the increased commercial activity and consequent prosperity of the country, that resulted from their presence in it,[29] and no obstacles were placed in the way of proselytising, the native converts receiving the same consideration and respect as the foreign merchants, even though before their conversion they had belonged to the lowest grades of society.[30]
The traditionary account of the introduction of Islam into Malabar, as given by a Muhammadan historian of the sixteenth century, represents the first missionaries to have been a party of pilgrims on their way to visit the foot-print of Adam in Ceylon; on their arrival at Cranganore the Raja sent for them and the leader of the party, Shayk͟h Sharaf b. Mālik, who was accompanied by his brother, Mālik b. Dīnār, and his nephew, Mālik b. Ḥabīb, took the opportunity of expounding to him the faith of Islam and the mission of Muḥammad, “and God caused the truth of the Prophet’s teaching to enter into the king’s heart and he believed therein; and his heart became filled with love for the Prophet and he bade the Shayk͟h and companions come back to him again on their return from their pilgrimage to Adam’s foot-print.”[31] On the return of the pilgrims from Ceylon, the king secretly departed with them in a ship bound for the coast of Arabia, leaving his kingdom in the hand of viceroys. Here he remained for some time, and was just about to return to his own country, with the intention of erecting mosques there and spreading the faith of Islam, when he fell sick and died. On his death-bed he solemnly enjoined on his companions not to abandon their proposed missionary journey to Malabar, and to assist them in their labours, he gave them letters of recommendation to his viceroys, at the same time bidding them conceal the fact of his death. Armed with these letters, Sharaf b. Mālik [[265]]and his companions sailed for Cranganore, where the king’s letter secured for them a kindly welcome and a grant of land, on which they built a mosque. Mālik b. Dīnār decided to settle there, but Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out on a missionary tour with the object of building mosques throughout Malabar. “So Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out for Quilon with his worldly goods and his wife and some of his children, and he built a mosque there; then leaving his wife there, he went on to Hīlī Mārāwī,[32] where he built a mosque”; and so the narrative continues, giving a list of seven other places at which the missionary erected mosques, finally returning to Cranganore. Later on, he visited all these places again to pray in the mosque at each of them, and came back “praising and giving thanks to God for the manifestation of the faith of Islam in a land filled with unbelievers.”[33]
In spite of the circumstantial character of this narrative, there is no evidence of its historicity. Popular belief puts the date of the events recorded as far back as the lifetime of the Prophet; with a mild scepticism Zayn al-Dīn thought that they could not have been earlier than the third century of the Hijrah;[34] but there is no more authority for the one date than for the other, or for the common Mappilla tradition of the existence of the tomb of a Hindu king at Zafār, on the coast of Arabia, bearing the inscription, “ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sāmirī, arrived A.H. 212, died A.H. 216”;[35] and the mosque at Madāyi, said to have been founded by Mālik b. Dīnār, bears an inscription commemorating its erection in A.D. 1124.[36]