A Brief History of the Early Origins of the Conflict Between Islam and India
One of the most revealing areas of early Islamic history was its actions in present-day India. The contrast of Indic religions like Buddhism and Hinduism with Islam during the Muslim expansion into South Asia in the 10th to 12th centuries reveals the foundations of conflicts we see played out around the world today, namely between Pakistan and India. Understanding the past is the first step to solving the issues the world faces today. The early entrance of Islam into South Asia reveals the source of the tensions facing Pakistan and India today. Although Pakistan would not emerge as a nation until centuries later with the exit of the British from India, it is important to see that that conflict was not created in a void, but was rather a direct continuation of ancient, but extremely influential Islamic empirical past.
Indic religions by nature have nothing to do with laws or the state, while in Islam, the two cannot be separated. Muslims will not follow any other system than that of Allah, and anytime man’s law is considered sovereign, it becomes a denial of God. These fundamental differences between the two religions had tremendous implications for the ancient conflict between the Islamic Empire and India that began as early as the 10th century BCE and ended only with colonization by the British. It is through the eyes of these distinct religious differences that the nature and processes of both distinct sides can be understood. The nature of early Islamic expansion into India can be seen as a continuation of the power and hegemony it held since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The process of Islamic expansion into India up to the formation of the Delhi Sultanate can best be described simply as colonialism. In India at the time of Islamic expansion, the nature of political formation at the time was based on its civil society, and as a direct result of this Indian direct rule, the Islamic Empire was at the same time aided and hindered in its progress into South Asia.
Both the nature and process of Islamic expansion are constantly intertwined, and must be analyzed as such. Muslims did not immerse themselves in the culture or the languages of the peoples that they conquered and brought into their empire. The populace was to be simply used as a means for financing the empire. Taxation, not identification, was the primary goal. This can be seen early in the development of the Islamic Empire. The fact that Islam was founded as a monotheistic religion implies that any other culture or religion is consequently wrong in their own beliefs. There was no room for an untaxed tolerance of other religions- tolerance came at a certain price. In addition, the initial function of the Caliph was to spread Islam to the rest of the world. In that there was only one universal law, it was necessary to take over all other governments and states. Nothing could be more against Islam than people across the world living under other sets of laws that were not from the one and only God. It was from this that the idea of Jihad emerged, and still can be seen today. Up until this time, power was pursued in polities, but with Jihad, it was the spread of the one truth of Islam that was pursued. Religion and war come together in the birth of Islam, and nomadic Bedouins begin to rule nations.
Looking at the early people of the Bedouin nomads can also do much to explain the nature and process of Islamic expansion into India. Bedouins did not have enough property to collect any taxes, nor was there agriculture. As a result, there was no division of labor or social stratification. As a result of this, there was no idea of a state or a government. The Prophet Muhammad would bring together the ideas of state, politics, law, and religion when he arrived on the scene. However, the Bedouins still did not have a form of revenue collection, and as a result it became clear that there was a need for a state to exist. Now the Muslims raided the Byzantine and Greek Empires with ferocity, bringing back vast sums of wealth for their fledgling state. They also turned and took over states that already existed, such as the Persia and Syria. The concept of another nation to Muslims was always something that was external- to be taken over from the outside of Islamic society, never integrated. For example, when Syria was conquered, they remained on the outside, setting up “Garrison Cities” (forts) to collect taxes. The Muslims left the Syrian bureaucracy entirely alone, content to simply collect revenue which they would send off to Medina. In the beginning, Muslims were not initially interested in converting the populations that they conquered. They could not tax converted populations at the rates that they could tax the infidel. Islam continued to take over nations, but was not accountable at all to the people they conquered. Revolts occurred all over the Empire at various times, showing that this was indeed not an integrated society, but rather one that was to collect taxes alone. This nature and process defined Islamic expansion into India.
Another integral aspect to the nature and process of Islamic expansion is that of patronage. Although most of the conquered populations were not allowed to convert to Islam for taxation purposes, a very select few were given the privilege. A servant could get very close to a Bedouin master, and after many years, the Arab would convert them. These client-servant converts became known as Mawali. These were not large scale conversions taking place, but the converted Muslim slaves would become integral in years to come. These Mawali would one day become the intellectuals of the Arab World, and from this point on, the Bedouins were never the most important scholars of faith in their own kingdoms. The client’s intellectual creativity would always exist to please their Muslim masters, and a social hierarchy was thus created. Throughout expansion, local cultures and histories were erased in the path of Muslim Empire. Anything that represented the past was a threat to Islam, and therefore it all had to go. Converted peoples that became Mawali began to wipe out the historical memories of their own original cultures that existed before Islam. Anything that came before the prophet was now disgraceful and unimportant.
Yet the conquering Arabs were internally conflicted as well- between their role as a Muslim and their role as a Bedouin. The former could not tolerate religious disobedience, while the latter desired the patronage and money of the conquered peoples. According to the Arab role as a Muslim, schools sprung up called Madrassa. In these schools, the figure of the Ulema emerges as a teacher of the law. The Ulema had jurisdiction over what was Islamic tradition and law. This Ulema figure would have a tremendous impact on the nature of Islamic expansion. They became the judges and the lawyers, running the most important legal institutions of the state. Arabs now moved into the direction of the law and religion, dominating the state as well. It was as Muslims dominated the state that the nature of their Islamic Empire began to truly change. Now Arab dominance became intellectual, cultural, legal, and linguistic. In the past it was just military might that ruled; now the Arabs took a role in both culture and history. The Islamic Empire became more cultural and less militaristic, all under the powerful influence of the Ulema.
Around this same time, soldiers from Central Asia moved into the Arab world, and were slowly recruited by Muslims. They became known as Mamluks, or slave-soldiers. The Caliphate became weak, and the Central-Asian nomads stepped into the Caliphs’ previous place of power. It would be these slave-soldiers that would eventually spread Islam into South Asia. Turkish nomads would bring Islam into an entirely new stage of existence.
In one sense, India’s political formation at this time only served to help the Muslim invaders. All of the important functions of the state had been taken over by the civil society itself. Any position, such as revenue collection, police force, army, or law, would be hereditary or customary. The state had basically nothing to do, and any function that it would theoretically serve was taken up by the populace naturally. As a result, the state lost its character as it is classically known today, and instead assumed other functions such as cultural activities like poetry and philosophical debates. The Indian state was entirely de-politicized at the time of the Islamic expansion. Kings and Emperors did not need an army either for the sake of tax collection, as the process was already self sufficient within the civil society. The political state did not relate to people in terms of power or force; a startling distinction from nations today. When a kingdom was conquered, the king was replaced and the people continued as they always had before. This nature of Indian political formation helped Islamic expansion.
However, this same detachment of Indian civil society from a typical ruling class also hindered Islamic expansion. War had become an end unto itself over the years, not a means to an end. A class of warriors called the Rajputs had emerged, which fought war for its own sake. For the Rajputs, any type of strategy and military tactic was considered a dishonorable way to fight. War became a religion of sorts, fought hand to hand with swords. The Rajputs never changed their tactics even after the Muslims invaded, and their persistence and sheer numbers were a large factor in Islam never becoming completely successful in India. India at the time of the Muslim invasion was split into territories ruled by the Rajput chieftains. The Rajputs fought battles with each other for glory, but the population and political side of society would remain pretty much the same. Life was not real, nor was death. This was a radically different society and political formation than the invading Muslims. Warfare, religion and society in India were entirely de-politicized, while to Muslims the three were tightly interwoven. The Indian civil society political formation helped Muslim invaders in the discontinuity of society, yet hindered Islamic expansion as they encountered the vast warrior class of Rajputs.
The two cultures and religions were set for a clash. When the Muslims first invaded, Hindus did not realize that their religion would be affected. They assumed that it would be just the same as other warriors attacking in the past. Their rulers would change, but their society would stay the same. Yet this was not to be. Muslims fought an ideological warfare, a Jihad in the name of the truth of the Koran. For the first time, Muslim warriors targeted the centers of culture in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Mass looting took place in the cities. Muslims slaughtered the Rajput warriors fighting against them, and issued edicts to either convert or be killed. With victories, Muslims continued their colonization. They erected more “Garrison Cities”, yet left the states intact. Again, they were only interested in collecting taxes from the surrounding Indian population. As a result, Islam as a religion did not spread throughout the conquered lands, and did not move beyond the Indus River because of the strength of the Rajputs. Muslim/Turkish slave-soldiers expanded into India, with the Ulema as their spiritual backers. The slaves held the power militarily, while the Ulema held hegemony over the empire- controlling culture and ideology. Around this same time, the Mongols and the Turks began to collide along the Afghan/Iranian border, which pushed the Turks back into Afghanistan. The Mongol attacks on the Islamic community lead to the establishment of the first Islamic Kingdom in Afghanistan. It was from here that the raids took place into India, and would culminate with formation of the Delhi Sultanate in 1250.
These history lessons have many lessons and parallels for the world as we see it today. The story of the rise of Islam as a political and military force in the 10th century is just as relevant to contemporary life as it was back then. In order to understand why there are such immense conflicts between Pakistan and India today, or Islam and the West for that matter, it is essential to understand some of the very early foundations of these conflicts. Much of what we see today in regards to the core of the Islam/West tensions, personified for example, by the Kashmir region, have the same fundamental causes as seen in the history of Indic religions and Islam in the 10th century. Islam’s roots of empirical ambition in India are deeply woven into the fabric of conflict that continues to exist between the two even today.
