- Do you agree with the view that the advent of the Turks was an ‘Islamic Intrusion’ into Indian history? How does the literature of the period represent this cultural encounter?
The period from 1000 to 1200 AD was a period of tremendous political change in Central and West Asia. With the end of the ninth century, the power of the Abbasid Caliphate was waning and actual political power passed to the military commanders and governors of the Caliphate in Central Asia. The most striking feature of the developments in Central Asia at this time was the rise of a number of small states founded by Turkish slaves or mamluks who had emerged as military commanders and administrators under the government of the Caliphate. The earliest of these Turkish states was founded by one Sabuktigin, in the region of Ghazni. Under Sabuktigin’s son Sultan Mahmud, Ghazni became a major player in Central Asian politics. With the rise of Ghazni in the 10th century, there was a movement towards establishing Turko-Persian hegemony all across Central Asia and Mahmud launched a series of ambitious campaigns to extend his control over the region. Naturally, these campaigns could only be carried out at considerable financial expense and it was at this time that the pressure of the Turks on the north-western frontier of India came to be felt. Under Mahmud, the Turks launched several raids into India which reached as far as Kanauj, Gwalior and Baran. However a Turkish empire was not established in India under Mahmud. This was the work of another Turkish invader—Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam of the Turko-Persian state of Ghur. Muizzuddin Ghuri as he is better known succeeded in establishing himself in Lahore and then proceeded to engage the Rajput rulers who controlled North India in battle. Despite several setbacks including defeat at the hands of local rulers, most prominently, Prithviraja Chauhan in the Battle of Tarain (1191), he was successful in conquering large parts of North India, including Delhi which was then held by the Tomars, a local Rajput dynasty.
The advent of the Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries AD is often seen as an ‘Islamic Intrusion’ into Indian history. The arrival of the Turks, it is contended, inaugurates the ‘Muslim Era’ of Indian history and the beginning of the confrontation between Hinduism and Islam—two monolithic religions. It is pertinent here to note, as K.A. Nizami does in his work ‘Aspects of Religion and Politics in India in the 13th Century’ that the arrival of Islam in India dates to the early 8th century with the Arab conquest of Sindh under Muhammad Qasim. Further, trading links with the Arabs and the establishment of Arab trading colonies in India also date from well before the Turkish invasions of the 11th century. To equate the Turkish invasions with an Islamic intrusion therefore is historically inaccurate. This tendency in traditional historiography arises from the colonialist historiographical construct of the periodization of Indian history into 3 periods—Hindu, Muslim and British. This construct, advanced by scholars such as J.S. Mill, H.M. Elliott and John Dowson, carries with it the implicit assumption that there existed in Indian society two distinctive and segregated civilizations—the Hindu and the Muslim which were in conflict with each other. The early medieval period was presented as a time when a Muslim civilization became dominant after a period of intense conflict, ushering in an era when the ‘Hindu culture’ of India was suppressed, with temple desecrations, forcible conversions, prohibitions against processions, worship, ablutions, etc. The motive in this representation of Indian history was the legitimization of English rule and its ‘civilizing effect’.
The characterization of the Turkish invasions as an ‘Islamic intrusion’ therefore rides upon two assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that the Turkish invaders were identified on the basis of their religion and that their actions in establishing their control over the subcontinent were dominated by religious considerations. The second is that there existed, and indeed, has existed from the beginning of time, a distinct and clearly identifiable all-inclusive ‘Hindu’ identity.
IDENTITIES: ‘MUSLIM’ AND ‘HINDU’
In her article ‘The Tyranny of Labels’, Romila Thapar examines the ways in which the Turkish invaders were perceived by the indigenous population of the subcontinent. She draws attention to the fact that the term ‘Muslim’ was not immediately used to designate the Arabs, Turks, Afghans and others. The terms used instead are ‘Yavana’, ‘Saka’, ‘mleccha’, ‘Tajika’ or ‘Turuska’. These were existing categories which were used to designate foreigners which appear to have been revived to identify the Turks. It is significant that none of these categories possessed religious connotations. The term ‘Yavana’ for instance was used initially for the Greeks and subsequently for all those who originated from the Indo-Iranian borderlands. It appears that the Yavanas were even included in the caste structure as degenerate ksatriyas, although they are often referred to disapprovingly for they appear to have excited the hostility of the brahmanas for upsetting brahmanical norms and not performing the rituals expected of a ruler. The term Yavana is frequently used for Turks and Afghans in an ethnic or geographic sense, indicating that while they were undoubtedly alien, there existed an identity and status for them in the existing system. The term ‘Saka’, similarly was used initially for the Scythians who were a people from Central Asia and again is a reference to the geographical origins of the Turks and Afghans. The same seems to be the case with the term ‘Turuska’. The term ‘mleccha’ means ‘barbarian’ and was applied as a sign of social and cultural difference. This was a generic category which consisted of all social groups who did not adhere to brahmanical norms. The Hellenistic dynasties of the North West in the second century BC (the true ‘Yavanas’ or Ionians) for instance were also classified as mlecchas.
Clearly religion does not seem to have been the basis of identifying Turks, Afghans and Arabs—by placing these groups in the existing categories of foreigners and aliens, the distinctiveness of these groups as Muslims is effectively erased. Further, the association of these terms with the Turks implies that they were provided with historical links to groups from the North West and Central Asia with whom the Indians were already familiar.
In her article ‘Imagined Religious Communities’ Thapar tackles the question of the existence of a monolithic Hindu community and of a clearly defined Hindu identity. She notes that the idea of a Hindu community is a comparatively recent construction. At the time of the Turkish invasions there could not be said to have existed any notion of a ‘Hindu’ community against which one could juxtapose the Turks as ‘Muslim’. The Hindu identity postulated by Hindu communalists to have existed in the past invariably attempts to classify different and divergent religious traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism, the Vedic and sruti traditions, Tantricism, Bhakti, the Sakta sects and numerous local cults such as that of Jagannatha in Orissa under a single construct. Thus, it is asserted that there existed amongst the Brahmanas as much as amongst the Buddhists, Jainas, Vaisnava and Saiva Bhaktas, and all adherents of local cults in India the consciousness of belonging to a single religious system—a suggestion which is preposterous given the religious milieu of early medieval India. The motive in this according to Thapar is to claim legitimacy from the past for the Hindu communal ideology. Thus great pains are taken to deny the existence of multiple communities with different belief systems in India prior to the advent of the Turks, and by extension of Islam. The notion of a single unified Hindu community and faith system the tenets of which are fundamentally different from those of Islam or Christianity is central to the historical construction of a ‘Hindu’ ancient period which comes to an abrupt end with the Turkish invasions—an ‘Islamic intrusion’.
The use of the term ‘Hindu’ in the period of our study also demands inquiry. The use of this term in the court chronicles of the Sultans to designate the indigenous population has been used to justify the existence of a Hindu identity and a cohesive Hindu community in the 12th and 13th centuries. The term ‘Hindu’ was initially used to refer to the inhabitants of the area around the river Indus or ‘Sindhu’ and was later extended to the entire subcontinent. The term ‘Hindu’ in the sense that it was used, some might argue upto even the 15th century and certainly in the court chronicles of the Sultans was as ‘inhabitants of India’. It does not imply the existence of a unified religious consciousness. Among Muslims, it was used to refer to the inhabitants of India rather than those who held non-Islamic religious beliefs. ‘Hindu’ came to be used as a religious designation much later.
As Cynthia Talbot argues, the very fact that the Turkish invaders who are perceived as ‘the Other’ are never identified as Muslim indicates, as negative evidence, that ‘Hindu’ was not a religious category.
CULTURAL ENCOUNTER IN A FRONTIER SETTING
Although Hindu and Muslim identities cannot be said to have become the basis of the formation of religious communities, this is not to say that a sense of religious self-identity did not exist. The confrontation with the Turks seems to have intensified and sharpened self-identities. The process of cultural interaction and mutual exchange between the two groups therefore needs to be seen in a frontier setting where perceptions of the Self and of the ‘Other’ influenced the formation of ethnic and religious identities.
It is significant that unlike earlier groups to migrate into the Indian subcontinent, the Turks retained their distinctive religious cultural and linguistic practices, derived from the high culture of a Persianised Islamic civilization. The presence of the Turks therefore played a major role in heightening Indian society’s sense of self. This was to lead to the use of religious rhetoric on both sides. On the part of the Turkish invaders, the language was Islamic while the epics and the symbolism of the struggle against the subversion of the social order and the defence of dharma provided the rhetoric of the Indian rulers.
It is in this context that Sheldon Pollock traces the rise of the cult of Rama. Pollock asserts that prior to the advent of the Turks there are few signs of a temple cult centred on Rama. Interpreting the Ramayana as an epic of ‘divinization’ on the one hand and ‘demonization’ on the other, he suggests that its language and metaphors could easily be appropriated in the rhetoric that sought to legitimize the rule of indigenous kings and portray the Turks as evil barbarians on the other. According to Pollock, the ethic of the ideal ruler and the defender of the social order embodied in Rama was appropriated to legitimize the rule of kings who fought the invaders. The Turks were invariably presented in this rhetoric as rakshasas and barbarians who represented the chaos of the Kali age. It was therefore the perfect vehicle for the demonization of aliens and for exhorting the faithful to struggle against them for the sake of social order.
However, it is important to study this demonization in the context of a frontier setting. Cynthia Talbot adduces inscriptional evidence to prove that the anti-Muslim rhetoric is typically a product of military conflict. She studies the Vilasa Grant of Prolaya Nayaka, the ruler who rises to prominence in Andhra after the Turks extinguish the rule of the Kakatiya dynasty. Here the Turks are portrayed as demons who destroy temples, confiscate tax-exempt villages, force brahmanas to abandon their sacrifices and drink wine, eat beef and kill brahmanas. The focus is on the glorification of the last Kakatiya king, Prataparudra as an upholder of the social order and on the legitimization of Prolaya Nayaka as his true successor. Talbot contrasts this anti-Turk polemic with references to Muslim kings and polities from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries where they figure only as mighty warriors and typical foes rather than as enemies of the social order. This polemic however is revived at the time of the sacking of the Vijaynagara capital by a confederacy of Muslim states. In the intervening period there is not only tolerance of the Muslim rulers but even collaboration and an attitude of mutual admiration and emulation. Thus Telugu poets were patronized at the court of the Qutb Shahi ruler and Muslim expertise in military and administrative affairs was acknowledged and adopted by rival Hindu polities like the Vijayanagara empire.
Thus Talbot proves that an attitude of intolerance and hostility was not natural to the cultural encounter between the Turks and the indigenous people, but simply a product of military confrontation and the attempt of Indian rulers to project themselves as defenders of the social order, emulating Rama.
Rhetoric of a similar nature on the Turkish side is found in the glorification of Mahmud of Ghazni and his portrayal as the archetypal Islamic ruler. In the writings of Zia-ud-din Barani and Fakhr ud-din ‘Isami, Mahmud is depicted as the exemplar of the Islamic warrior ethic. The establishment of Islam in an alien land and the ending of polytheism and idolatry is stressed. Mahmud is glorified by ‘Isami for the destruction of ‘idol houses’ and subjugating the infidels. The elevation of Mahmud to such a status, Richard Davis argues, was related to his attack on the Somanatha temple in Gujarat in 1026. Davis asserts that Somanatha was believed by the Turkish invaders to be both the preeminent religious image in India, but also its political centre. All sorts of supernatural powers were attributed to the image and the temple was believed to be the world-centre of idolatry and polytheism, a counter-Mecca of sorts. While the conventional explanation of Mahmud’s attack on Somanatha is its economic prosperity, the religious rhetoric that accompanied the attack transformed what was simply an act of plunder into a religious duty.
This brings us to the contentious issue of temple desecration. The systematic demolition and desecration of temples begins, Richard Eaton argues, with the establishment of Turkish rule in India. Prior to this, all Turkish raids in the subcontinent were carried out with the purpose of accumulating wealth. Thus incidents of attacks on temples were fewer for only the wealthier religious centres were attacked. This fact notwithstanding, instances of temple desecration even in this early phase were presented by writers such as Abu Nasr ‘Utbi as religious acts against idolatry. Although these were little more than predatory raids, they were invariably presented by chroniclers at the Ghaznavid court as instances of religious conversion. With the establishment of Ghurid power in India however, according to Eaton the purpose of temple desecration is altered. It must be noted here that the conventional view of temple desecration at the time of the Turkish campaigns, represented by the writings of scholars such as K.A. Nizami and Muhammad Habibullah is that it was a standard aspect of medieval warfare and should not be seen in the Islamic context of opposition to idolatry. These scholars contend that at an attack on religious centres was an important part of warfare even between ‘Hindu’ states. Eaton goes further than this to assert the existence of close relationship between temples and political institutions. The central icon of a temple in early medieval Indian states was believed to be the state deity from whom the ruling dynasty derived its legitimacy. The deity was understood to have a special relationship with the geographical area of the state—the area was its domain and the deity was the rashtra-devata or the state deity. The sovereignty of the ruler therefore was shared with the deity and legitimized by it. Temples that possessed such political significance were routinely attacked at times of military conquest well before the advent of the Turks. In the early tenth century the temple of Kalapriya patronized by the Pratiharas was destroyed by the Rashtrakuta monarch Indra III. That this tradition and the need to sever the links of the ruling dynasty with the deity that was the source of its power rather than the ‘theology of iconoclasm’ peculiar to Islam was the reason for temple desecration by the Turks is indicated by the fact that temples that were politically irrelevant do not seem to have been desecrated. Richard Davis, with his emphasis on the projection of the central image as an animate being who directly exercised control over his realm and was conceived as a living divine entity, gives us another insight into the motives of selective temple desecration.
The literary sources of the period provide us with ample evidence of the nature of the cultural encounter between the two sides. Aziz Ahmed classes the literature of the period into two paired genres—Islamic “epics of conquest” and Hindu “epics of resistance”. Ahmed observes that as the former was written in Persian in the tradition of the panegyrics of the Ghaznavid court and addressed to a Muslim audience while the latter was written in Hindi and other Indian vernaculars and addressed a Hindu audience, the two genres developed separately and in complete ignorance of each other. Despite this as Ahmed argues in his essay “Epic and Counter Epic in Medieval India”, they help in understanding historical attitudes and the challenge of Turkish supremacy and the response to it.
The Muslim epic, represented by the writings of Amir Khusrau, Hasan Nizami and Isami stresses the destiny of Turkish warriors to subjugate India. In Khusrau’s Khaza’in al-futuh, the demolition of temples and the massacre of the Rajputs at Chittor is recounted in great detail. Isami’s Futuh al-Salatin as mentioned earlier glorifies Mahmud of Ghazni and emphasizes the superiority of the Turk. A recurrent motif is that of a war waged to defend a Muslim woman’s honour. The theme of conquest is also played out in tales of courtly love (such as Khusrau’s Ishiqa) where the hero who is invariably Muslim wins over a Hindu heroine, asserting in Ahmed’s own words “the conqueror’s right not only to love but also to be loved”. The Muslim epic of conquest therefore is concerned not only with military victory but also with social acceptance in the subcontinent.
The Hindu epic on the other hand emphasizes Hindu resistance to the Turkish invasions and reflects the psychology behind it. It is significant that these ‘counter epics’ are composed not by the Brahmins but from the popular tradition of bardic poetry. These epics portray the advent of the Turks as a time of the dissolution of social order typical of the Kali Yuga where the mlecchas overrun and defile the Aryavarta, subverting social customs and destroying the privileges of the Brahmins. These epics revolve around tales of Prithviraja Chauhan as a hero of the Rajput people. One of these ‘epic cycles’ is the Prithvi Raja Raso’ attributed Chand Bardai, Prithviraja’s minister. The anti-Muslim epic of this work goes beyond the single historical event of the Second Battle of Tarain and weaves into its narrative tales of heroic resistance over several centuries which are anachronistically placed in the context of the Ghurid invasions. The other epic of Prithviraja, the Prithviraja Vijaya narrates the acts of oppression of the Turkish invaders. Another significant Hindu counter epic is the unhistorical legend of Raja Hammir Dev’s battle against Alauddin Khalji.
Like the other literature in the counter-epic genre it focuses on the chivalry and heroism of Rajput warriors in their struggle against the Turks. The theme of resistance is also reflected off the battlefield where Hindu women are expected to reject offers of marriage from the Muslim ruler and prefer self-immolation. This brings out the issue of cultural boundaries in a situation where different groups of elites compete for power.
In Aziz Ahmed’s ‘epics’ and ‘counter epics’, as nowhere else, the cultural encounter with the Turks is brought out in all its complexities and subtleties.