Muslims ruled India for eight full centuries without the country embracing Islam, unlike neighbouring nations such as Indonesia and Singapore. Instead, India has become increasingly hostile to the presence of Muslims, due to the rise of an extremist political class that now dominates the country’s leadership.
According to writer and journalist Mahmoud Al Adam of Al Jazeera Net, this outcome is rooted in several factors, chief among them the reality that Muslims ruled India, but Islam did not. Muslim rulers were distant from the population and did not work to spread the religion.
Muslims entered India in the year 93 AH during the rule of Caliph Abd Al Malik ibn Marwan, led by Muhammad ibn Al Qasim Al Thaqafi. The conquest took only three years.
According to him, some argue that India’s vast size left it divided into regions, each governed by different religious practices, and many areas simply never encountered Islam.
Another major factor was the entrenched caste system, which governed India for centuries and prevented tens of millions of Indians from even considering Islam, due to the immense spiritual and material power held by Hindu religious elites.
Indian society is divided into four castes. At the top are the Brahmins, the Hindu priests and temple custodians, whom people believe were “created from the head of the deity”. Then come the Kshatriyas, the rulers, warriors and soldiers believed to be “created from the deity’s upper limbs”. Next are the Vaishyas, the traders and farmers thought to be “created from the deity’s thighs”. The Shudras form the caste of servants.
There is also an uncategorised social group, the “untouchables” (Dalits), believed by Hindus to be inhabited by evil spirits. As a result, they are not considered part of humanity and are assigned the “filthy labour” of society.
These millions were raised believing they were unfit for any form of belief, being “low castes incapable of ascending the ladder of faith”. Not even Islam was seen as accessible, because they assumed it too conformed to caste divisions.
Al Adam said he had hosted some of them in his home in India, recalling that they refused to sit on chairs and insisted on sitting on the floor, believing they did not deserve otherwise.
Exploiting Hindu Beliefs
India’s rulers exploited the tens of millions belonging to the lower castes, especially during elections when some politicians convinced them they were performing “sacred duties” and might one day rise in social rank.
This is not to overlook the role of British colonialism in freezing the spread of Islam. The British seized 600 thousand Islamic endowments across the country. But some Muslim rulers themselves reinforced Hinduism rather than countering it, and cooperated with elite traders and landowners to benefit from the lower castes, according to Al Adam.
Some Muslim rulers even attempted to invent a new religion in India to profit materially and commercially from the tens of millions who believed they were created solely to serve the upper castes.
Despite the multitude of religions in India, Hinduism remains the most deeply rooted and widespread. Dating back 5 thousand years, it is so complex that even its adherents cannot grasp all its details. Thousands of deities emerged from it, until “everything in this land ended up being worshipped”, Al Adam said.
Although these caste rules applied only to Hindus and not Christians, Muslims or Sikhs, a 2005 study commissioned by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded that Muslims’ political, educational and living conditions in India had fallen below those of the untouchables.
Marginalising Muslims
Jawaharlal Nehru, with British backing, entrenched the exclusion of Muslims immediately after the 1947 independence. Muslims numbered 100 million out of a population of 400 million, despite supporting him in the struggle against British rule and despite India’s nuclear scientist, the father of its atomic bomb, being a Muslim: A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Among the drivers of this segregation, which culminated in excluding Muslims from the Citizenship Law enacted in 2020, is the Hindu political class represented by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi. This class believes in ethnic purity, in the idea that India belongs exclusively to Hindus, and that Muslims should migrate to Pakistan, which was part of India before independence.
Al Adam argues that hostility to Muslims is not a Hindu idea, but one adopted by a dominant political-military class now embodied by Modi. This class has seized control of the Indian decision-making apparatus and has set about creating a Muslim underclass devoid of rights.
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