Rather later in the same century, a native of Persian ʻIrāq, by name Abū ʻAlī Qalandar, came into India and took up his residence at Panipat, where he died at the ripe age of 100, in A.D. 1324. The Muslim Rajputs of this city, numbering about 300 males, are descended from a certain Amīr Singh who was converted by this saint. His tomb is still held in honour and is visited by many pilgrims.
Another such was Shayk͟h Jalāl al-Dīn, a Persian who came into India about the latter half of the fourteenth century and settled down at Silhaṭ, in Lower Assam, in order to convert the people of these parts to Islam. He achieved a great reputation as a holy man, and his proselytising labours were crowned with eminent success.[102]
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 [[283]]organisation or of anything in the way of missionary reports, and the success that attends the labours of Muslim preachers is sometimes much exaggerated, e.g. in the Panjāb a certain Ḥājī Muḥammad is said to have converted as many as 200,000 Hindus,[104] and a mawlavī 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 labours is undoubted, and the following examples are typical of the period referred to.
Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn K͟hān, an itinerant preacher, in the course of several years converted 228 persons, residents of Bombay, Cawnpore, Ajmīr, and other cities. Mawlavī Ḥasan ʻAlī converted twenty-five persons, twelve in Poona, the rest in Ḥaydarabad and other parts of India.[105] In the district of Khandesh, in the Bombay Presidency, the preaching of the Qāḍī of Nasirabad, Sayyid Safdar ʻAlī, won over to Islam a large body of artisans, who follow the trade of [[284]]armourers or blacksmiths.[106] A number of persons of the same trade, who form a small community of about 200 souls in the district of Nasik, were converted in a curious way about 1870. The Presbyterian missionaries of Nasik had for a long time been trying to convert them from Hinduism, and they were in a state of hesitation as to whether or not to embrace Christianity when a Muhammadan faqīr from Bombay, who was well acquainted with their habits of thought, expounded to them the doctrines of Islam and succeeded in winning them over to that faith.[107]
In Patiala, Mawlavī ʻUbayd Allāh, a converted Brahman of great learning, proved himself to be a zealous preacher of Islam, and in spite of the obstacles that were at first thrown in his way by his relatives, achieved so great a success that his converts almost filled an entire ward of the city. He wrote controversial works, which have passed through several editions, directed against the Christian and Hindu religions. In one of these books he thus speaks of his own conversion: “I, Muḥammad ʻUbayd Allāh, the son of Munshi Koṭā Mal, resident of Payal, in the Patiala State, declare that this poor man in his childhood and during the lifetime of his father was held in the bondage of idol-worship, but the mercy of God caught me by the hand and drew me towards Islam, i.e. I came to know the excellence of Islam and the deficiencies of Hinduism, and I accepted Islam heart and soul and counted myself one of the servants of the Prophet of God (peace be upon him!). At that time intelligence, which is the gift of God, suggested to me that it was mere folly and laziness to blindly follow the customs of one’s forefathers and be misled by them and not make researches into matters of religion and faith, whereon depend our eternal bliss or misery. With these thoughts I began to study the current faiths and investigated each of them impartially. I thoroughly explored the Hindu religion and conversed with learned Paṇḍits, gained a thorough knowledge of the Christian faith, read the books of Islam and conversed with learned men. In all of them I found errors and fallacies, with the exception of Islam, the excellence of which became [[285]]clearly manifest to me; its leader, Muḥammad the Prophet, possesses such moral excellences that no tongue can describe them, and he alone who knows the beliefs and the liturgy, and the moral teachings and practice of this faith, can fully realise them. Praise be to God! So excellent is this religion that everything in it leads the soul to God. In short, by the grace of God, the distinction between truth and falsehood became as clear to me as night and day, darkness and light. But although my heart had long been enlightened by the brightness of Islam and my mouth fragrant with the profession of faith, yet my evil passions and Satan had bound me with the fetters of the luxury and ease of this fleeting world, and I was in evil case because of the outward observances of idolatry. At length, the grace of God thus admonished me: ‘How long wilt thou keep this priceless pearl hidden within the shell and this refreshing perfume shut up in the casket? thou shouldest wear this pearl about thy neck and profit by this perfume.’ Moreover the learned have declared that to conceal one’s faith in Islam and retain the dress and habits of infidels brings a man to Hell. So (God be praised!) on the ʻĪd al-Fiṭr 1264 the sun of my conversion emerged from its screen of clouds, and I performed my devotions in public with my Muslim brethren.”[108]
Many Muhammadan 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 imām 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 Muhammadan 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 [[286]]indigent circumstances; the mass, however, are Hindus.[109] Some of the numerous Anjumans that have of recent years sprung up in the chief centres of Musalman life in India, include among their objects the sending of missionaries to preach in the bazaars; such are the Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, and the Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmīr. 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.
Much of the missionary zeal of the Indian Musalmans is directed towards counteracting the anti-Islamic tendencies of the instruction given by Christian missionaries and the preachers of the Ārya Samāj, and the efforts made are thus defensive rather than directly proselytising. 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 instil in them a purer form of faith, such efforts being in many cases the continuation of earlier missionary activity. The work of conversion has indeed been often very imperfect. Of many, nominally Muslims, it may be said that they are half Hindus: they observe caste rules, they join in Hindu festivals and practise numerous idolatrous ceremonies. In certain districts also, e.g. in Mewāt and Gurgaon, large numbers of Muhammadans may be found who know nothing of their religion but its name; they have no mosques, nor do they observe the hours of prayer. This is especially the case among the Muhammadans of the villages or in parts of the country where they are isolated from the mass of believers; but in the towns the presence of learned religious men tends, in great measure, to counteract the influence of former superstitions, and makes for a purer and more intelligent form of religious life. In recent years, however, there has been, speaking generally, a movement noticeable among the Indian Muslims towards [[287]]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 Muhammadans 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 Panjāb, for example, after the Mutiny, a great religious revival took place. Preachers travelled 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 Muhammadans 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 neighbours. The Merāts, for example, now follow the orthodox Muhammadan 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 Muhammadans 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 [[288]]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 aboriginal 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 Muhammadans.[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 [[289]]deities they were called upon to worship, would feel very keenly the social ostracism entailed by their loss of caste, and become Muhammadan without any religious feelings at all. The influence of the study of Muhammadan literature also, and the habitual contact with Muhammadan 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 Mug͟hal empire lasted, would probably have led to their ultimate conversion. They not only respected Muhammadan saints, but had Muhammadan tutors for their sons; they also had their food killed in accordance with the regulations laid down by the Muhammadan law, and joined in the Muhammadan festivals dressed as faqīrs, 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 Muhammadan 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 Muhammadans, 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] [[290]]