Do you agree that the advent of the Turks was an Islamic intrusion into Indian history? How does the literature of the period represent this cultural encounter?
Romila Thapar, in her article Imagined Religious Communities describes Communalism in India as a sense of consciousness which draws upon an imaginary religious identity and uses this as a basis for political and social ideology. Such an ideology is of recent origin but uses history to justify the notion of community and therefore the communal identity as having existed since the early past. For such justification the propounders of this theory look to colonial historians such as Mill, Elliot and Dawson.
Elliot and Dawson In their work History of India as told by its own historians provide a selective narration of India’s past. Their work centers on proving the supposed “Muslim” era in Indian history to be a period of brutal, despotic rule. The purpose in doing so was to depict the British rule in India at that point as benevolent and beatific. They provide selective extracts of history to prove the legitimacy of their claims. Muhammad Habib once remarked on the pernicious effect of such Historical writing upon future generations saying, “The peaceful Indian Mussalman descended beyond doubt from “Hindu” ancestors, was dressed up in a garb of a foreign barbarian, as a breaker of temples and an eater of beef and declared to be a military colonist in the land where he had lived for about thirty or forty centuries.”
The issue of communalism and communal history came to the fore with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, since then a series of arguments have arisen over the status of Indian temples and mosques and the legitimacy of communal claims of two separate monolithic communities that have existed from medieval times.
We see the Turkish foray into Indian Territory commencing with the eleventh century the raids of Sabuktigin and then later with his famous son Mahmud of Ghazni. These raids seem to have been undertaken for purely material reasons. These rulers were based in Afghanistan and never sought permanent dominion in India. They looted cities and their richly endowed temples, loading themselves with movable wealth in order to finance their larger political schemes and objectives in Khurasan. Their army was permanent and professional. From the mid-eleventh century however Mahmud’s successors were cut off first by the Seljuqs and then by the Ghurids and became progressively more provincial and centered around the capital of Ghazni in Eastern Afghanistan with extensions into Punjab and the later Ghaznavid raids into Indian territory seem to have been more sporadic than those of Sabuktigin and Mahmud.
The Turkish Empire in India was established by Muizuddin Muhammad bin Sam of the Turko-Persian state of Ghur. Under Muhammad Ghuri the Turkish state was successful in establishing a permanent centre In India. The Ghurid conquerors and their Turkish slave generals established a new kind of state quite unlike that of the foreign based Ghaznavids. Aspiring to imperial dominion over the whole of north India, from a base in the Indo-Gangetic plain, the new Delhi Sultanate signaled the first attempt to build an indigenous Indo-Muslim State society in North India.
The Turkish Campaigns under the Ghaznavids and then later the Ghurids and the rule of the Sultanates that were established in India are looked upon by communal historians as the violent raids of blood thirsty warriors looking to tear apart the “Hindu” religion and replace it with the uncompromising and ruthless rule of Islam. In speaking of this ancient crusade like conflict between Hinduism and Islam communal historians pre-suppose the presence of two such monolithic communities from ancient times. They also presupposes the desire to destroy religion from reasons outside of those economic, political and military.
The idea of the existence of two monolithic religious communities from medieval times has been challenged by Romila Thapar in her articles, “Imagined religious communities” and “Tyranny of Labels”. She problematize the idea that there has always existed a well defined and historically evolved religion called Hinduism and a clearly defined “Hindu” community. In her case Thapar provides distinction between the multiple sects of “Hinduism” that existed at the time of the Turkish campaigns and describes the assimilation of these multiple sects under the general banner of Hinduism as a modern process. This modern ideal of Hinduism has had a heavy Brahmanical orientation. In fact the picture that emerges out of evidence from the early medieval period suggests the presence of two prevalent religious communities- Brahmans and Sramans. The presence of both these communities is verified by the edicts of the Mauryan king Asoka as well as by the travel accounts of travelers such as Megasthenes and Alberuni. The primary differences between the two groups lay in the acceptance or repudiation of rituals, the rigidity of the caste hierarchy, as well as the presence or absence of the idea of conversion. Another prominent sect of the time as elucidated by Thapar is that of the Saktas. This sect was opposed to the Brahmans. The essentials of Saktism are sometimes traced back to Harappan times.
The Brahmans emerge in the first millennium AD as the legitimizers of political authority and thus their status grows immensely due to this. Despite its high status though Brahmanism had to compromise with locally existing cults and thus we see the process of acculturation with these cults and we observe the assimilation of local deities and practices into Brahmanism. By the end of the first millennium AD, despite the greater control of Brahmanism we see the emergence of a more popular Puranic tradition. Puranic deities ousted ancient Vedic deities; Vishnu and Siva emerge as the preeminent gods. The thrust of the Puranic religion was on assimilation and accommodation. Thus a multitude of sects were incorporated into the religious hierarchy.
At the inception of the second millennium AD we witness the rise of the Bhakti movement, a broader term used to encompass a range of devotional sects that had emerged during this period. They drew on the Puranic tradition of Vaisnavism and Saivsim and also drew to a certain degree from the Sramanic cults. The opposition to the bhakti cult from the higher castes also helped the multitude of bhakti sects to inculcate a sense of community within themselves. However even such attempts at broader constitution were bound by limitations of distance ,caste and language and these acted as a deterrent to a single ,homogenous “Hindu” community.
The multiplicity of cults during this period of time is thus evident and such variety also leads to popular beliefs. As stated by Thapar, “if two sruti traditions are in conflict then both are held as law.” This flexibility in law and belief led to a greater privatization of religious belief in “Hinduism”; far more than was possible with other religions. Thus we see the assumed ““Hindu”” religion at this time as being an assimilation of a large number of sects. Moreover these sects did not develop into a unified entity. Thus what existed at this time was a range of sects and not a monolithic religion. Thus as described by Thapar: “The evolution of Hinduism is not a linear progression from founder trough an organizational system, with sects branching off.”
In fact the evolution of “Hinduism” as a distinct and monolithic religion begins through more contemporary sources: through Christian missionaries who saw the wide variety of sects in India under the singular banner of Hinduism; orientalist scholarship who were eager to fit the idea of a “Hindu”-community and use it as a known and verified model; the efforts of the Indian reform movements attempting to cleanse Indian religion and provide a more Semitic outline to it and also to the east India company whose efforts enabled the codification of “Hindu Law”.
In fact the first occurrence of the term “Hindu” is as a geographical nomenclature. The inscriptions of the frontier region of the Achaemenid empire refer to the frontier region of the Indus or Sindhu or Hin(n)dush. The more common occurrence of the term is in later Arabic inscriptions which do not refer to the cultural or social milieu of the term. Thus al-Hind was a geographical identity and “Hindus” were all the people that lived on this land. It was only much later that “Hindu” came to represent a term used to delineate members of another religion.
Thus the Turkish invaders of the tenth and eleventh centuries AD did not distinguish the population within India on the basis of its religious identity but looked on it rather as a broader constituent of a geographical and at best ethnic community, the community of Hind. Similarly the Indian population did no view the Turks as Muslims or “Musalmans”, these words are not immediate entrants into the Indian vocabulary. The Arabs , Turks and Afghans are referred to variously as Tajika, Yavana and Saka, Turuska and mleccha. These terms aim to identify the invaders as foreigners and associate them with previously established identities of the term foreigner. The use of these terms to designate the new groups that were entering the Indian sub continent has been dealt with in detail by Romila Thapar in her article “The Tyranny of Labels”.
Inscriptions in the eighth century refer to the Arabs as Tajikas which suggests a link to their being maritime traders. The Rastrakuta kings had appointed a Tajik as governor of the Sanjan area of the Thane district on the west coast, whose name s rendered Madhumati, thought to be the Sanskrit version of Muhammad since it is sometimes also rendered as Madhumada. He conquered the chiefs of the neighbouring harbors for the Rastrakutas and placed his officers in charge.
The term Yavana was initially used for the Greeks and then for anyone coming in from west Asia and finally for anyone coming in from the west. The Sanskrit term Yavana is derived from the west Asian term Yauna referring to the Ionian Greeks. The term as is evident was used in an ethnic and a geographic sense. For most people the Yavanas were simply another people but the Brahmanas initially bore animosity as the beliefs of the Yavanas posed a challenge to Brahmanical social framework and hierarchy. Perhaps this antagonism was emphasized by Alexander’s brutal attack on the Malloi and the resultant resentment against the Indo-Greek rulers. Despite this however the Yavanas were accepted as rulers though they were given the status of Vratya Kshatiryas, or kshatiryas of a degenerate order.
Turks and Afghans are referred to as Yavanas on multiple occasions. This was an indication of their being from the west and thus alien and yet not entirely alien since they were being associated with an identity that already existed in the system.
The term Saka, similarly was the Sanskrit term for the Scythians a group of people from central Asia who had ruled northern and western India around the Christian era. The reference to Turkish and afghan dynasties as Sakas suggests in Thapars words “a historical perception of place and people, a perception both of who the rulers were and how they might be fitted into the history of the ruled.” Another term Turuska, was originally a geographic and ethic name. Kalahana in his twelfth century history Rajatarangini, refers to the Kusanas as Turuskas. He wrtes despairinglyof the Kashmiri king Harshadeva ruling in the eleventh century who employed Turuska mercenaries- mainly horsemen, in campaigns against local rulers, even though the Turuskas were invading in Punjab. The activities of Harshdeva, looting temples in times of financial crisis lead kalahana to calling him a Turuska. But he adds that such activities are familiar from earlier times.
Another term used,and the most contentious of all the terms was the word mleccha. It has a history that goes back to around 800 BC.It is used in Vedic texts for those who could not speak Sanskrit properly. The use of the Sanskrit language was largely confined to the Upper classes. Mleccha gradually has the connotation of referring to those outside of the Varna fold. It is also used to point or ritual impurity. Its use for Muslims it has been argued signifies contempt or as more recently described the Demonization of Muslims. There is however marked ambivalence in the use of the term. As in a Sanskrit inscription of 1328 AD from the Raisina area of Delhi, reference is made to mleccha Sahavadina seizing Delhi. However he is praised for his great valour. We see the same ambiguity occurring in earlier texts. The mleccha is mentioned in the narrative section of the Mahabharata, which describes Vidura, the uncle of the Pandavas speaking in the language of the mlecchas– mlecchavaca– to a messenger. Thus the context of the term is varied though it was generally a social marker. Social markers are often forged by those who demarcate themselves decisively from others and this tends to be the characteristic of the upper levels of society. Thus term mleccha when used in the context of the Turks was meant to signify a social and cultural difference. This was a generic category which consisted of all social groups which did not abide by brahminical norms.
It is thus apparent that the Turkish campaigners in early meideival India were not pecieved as a “Muslim community” but rather as foreigner or aliens and moreover not as unfamiliar aliens, but those who were associated with some ancestry of outsiders.
Thus these identities of “Hindu” and Muslim appear to be colonialist constructs with no antecedents in India’s past. A large amount of scholarship dedicated to the subject feels emphatically that the roots of these identities lie within this contemporary colonial past. In fact Benedict Anderson argues for the role of technology in the creation of distinct communal identities and the impossibility of such invention before a certain level of development in technology. Cynthia Talbot in her work “Inscribing the other, Inscribing the self-”Hindu”-Muslim identities in Pre-colonial India”, argues that such identities could not have sprung up, out of nowhere.
Talbot argues that supra-local identities did exist in pre-colonial India and that these identities themselves were historically constructed and hence constantly in flux. Talbot argues that where the formation of the ““Hindu”” identity was in part from the earlier traditions, it was intensified by the prolonged confrontation between the “Hindu”’s and the Turks- Indic identity formed with the invasions of the Turks. She argues thus that greater interaction of these two communities forged the identities of Self and other.
However the understood identity of “the other” as we have seen from previous evidence as sighted by Thapar, is clearly an ethnic and a geographic identity and not a religious identity.Such an understanding of identities precludes the animosity that clearly existed between the two communities at that time. The question to be asked is: if religion was not the causal factor for the antagonism between the ““Hindu”” and the “Muslim” communities, then what was?
To answer this question Talbot looks to the Frontier Paradigm. The frontier is described as the line where two communities meet. Frontiers are zones of political instability and military strife and they emerge as the centers of the development of new ethnic identities.
The process of formation of new ethnic identities is called Ethnogenesis. This process of ethnogenesis is studied by Talbot through a focus on Andhra Pradesh between 1323 and 1650 CE. It emphasizes the period when the indigenous Andhra rulers are attacked by the Delhi sultanate and ends when the Muslim rulers establish dominance. Turcik Muslims invade north western India by 1000 CE and by the thirteenth century they begin to invade south India. Thus the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries witnesses the greatest interaction between indigenous People and the invading Turks.
This resulted in the feeling of threat for the “Hindu” community leading to the development of the identities of self and the other. Muslims began invading the peninsular region in 1296 and by 1325 had captured the empires of the Hosalyas, the Yadavas, the Kakatiyas and the Pandyas.
Such conflict and the regions of such conflict are described as frontier zones. Talbot further elucidates the nature of these frontier regions by describing the political situation in peninsula India. The ruling dynasties within the peninsula region in the fourteenth century include the Bahmani sultanates in the northwestern region- Adil Shahi kingdom of Bijapur and Qutub shahhi kingdom of Golconda had the most impact on Andhra and opposed to these sultanates was the Vijaynagara Empire which controlled most of the southern portion of the peninsula. The north eastern protion along the Orissa-Andhra border was controlled by two successive “Hindu” dynasties- The Gangas and the Gajapatis. The areas in between were hotly contested, with fluctuating boundaries. The political situation along these boundaries governs the light in which the Turks are looked upon by the more indigenous lineages. By the fifteenth century this situation of relative stability sees the Turks being depicted as political rivals, and not in the colours of barbaric Muslims. They are seen as political adversaries just as the Ceras, the Cholas and the Gajapati kings.
This change in attitude towards the Muslims has been delineated on the basis of changes in power into three phases by Phillip Wagoner: 1300- 1420- “Hindu” warrior elite on the defensive and anti-Turkish polemic was widespread; 1420-1565- the apex of the Vijaynagara empire sees the greater appreciation of Turkish culture; 1565- – the sacking of Vijaynagara empire by the Turks sees another period of defensive polemic. However by this time several aspects of material culture and administrative technique had been assimilated by the Turks. Inscriptional evidence supports the fact that the depiction of the Muslims varied according to the “Hindu” polities control over the Muslim power.
Thus the relative levels of military strife within the frontier region define the orientation the “othering” of an opposing community takes. The process of “othering” along the frontier region leads to what we recognize as signs of animosity between the two communities of “Muslim” and ““Hindu”” and it is this formation of separate identities that is termed ethnogenesis. This animosity along the frontier and the process of ethnogenesis has three apparent manifestations:
- Demonization of the Turks
- Desecration of temples and idols
- Literature during the period
DEMONIZATION OF THE TURKS
The Turks established political authority in Delhi in 1200 AD. According to Sheldon Pollock the threat felt by “Hindu” society due to this Muslim force during these initial centuries of interaction led to the political valorization of the Ramayana epic. Despite evidence pointing to the circulation of the story of the Ramayan in the previous millennium, the wide spread cult devoted to lord Ram began only in the eleventh century. Around 1000 AD there we witness the spread of the Rama temples and the frequent appropriation of Rama as the model for Royal behavior. Pollock believes that this is because Rama’s legendary battle against the forces of evil represented by Ravana’s demon hordes was a profound symbol for the Indian Kings beleaguered by Central Asian Muslim warriors entering the sub-continent in growing numbers. Pollock emphasizes the fact that the greater demonization of the Indo-Muslims occurred because of their unassimilating ways. They retained their distinctive religious and linguistic practices unlike previous invaders. Since in pollocks words the Ramayana epic was “profoundly and fundamentally a text of “othering” , it was a perfect vehichle for the demonization of the alien and dangerous newcomers.
Talbot in her focus on the Andhra inscriptions finds little evidence for Pollock’s Ramayana based demonization thesis, however she adduces the demonization of the Turks even the relative absence of references to Rama. She describes a negative reference to the Turks existing in Andhra after the violent events of 1323 AD when the Delhi Sultanate swept through the region and caused the collapse and demise of the Kakatiya royal dynasty. The Andhra warriors united under the Kakatiya banner had been fighting the Turks for the last twenty years.
The effects of these inscriptions on the indigenous psyche of the period is clearly reflected in the Vilasa Grant of Prolaya Nayaka, a copper plate grant written in Sanskrit and issued sometime after 1325 but before 1350 AD. The beginning of the grant praises the last Kakatiya king Prataprudra. The record then narrated the hostilities of between Prataparudra and Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq. The inscription describes the forces of evil as becoming ascendant after the death of Prataparudra. Proofs of the wicked nature of Muslim character are adduced- Brahmans being forced to quit sacrificial rites; “Hindu” temples being broken; tax exempt Brahman villages were captured and cultivators being deprived of produce. Talbot however describes these accusations as formulaic and reflections of an inherent Brahman anxiety that is clearly seen even in the Puranas where the foreign invaders of the period(3rd century BCE – 2Nd century CE) are depicted in similar terms. The accusations moreover only focus on the cruelties that Brahmans were subjected to and the machinations of the invaders against the other communities are only added as an afterthought. The Brahmans were primarily concerned with “othering” and erasing the identity the invading Muslims due to the threat to the established caste order and brahminical privilege. Talbot then goes on to site the “othering” of the Muslim through terms such as Yavana, Turuska and mleccha which have already been discussed in Romila Thapar’s argument.
She thus emphases the fact that such identities of “othering” and demonization occur primarily through contact between the two groups on a prolonged basis in a frontier setting. The demonization was thus, in Talbot’s words, “a product of the large scale destruction of socio political networks resulting in widespread uncertainty and feelings of crisis.” And moreover with the rapid change at the frontier new socio-politico groups are developing. Thus frontiers in this manner emerge as the prime setting for ethnogenesis.
Other products of this secular ethnogenesis include the destruction of temples and the Idols contained within it.
DESECRATION OF TEMPLES AND IDOLS
The prevalent communalist view that the sacking of the temples by the Turkish campaigners was part of a definitive anti-”Hindu” expedition and that the desecration of temples and idols was a purposeful and deliberate obliteration of “Hindu” identity has been challenged by Scholars such as Romila Thapar, Cynthia Talbot and Richard Eaton.
As stated clearly by Talbot, temple desecration was rampant only within the frontier regions. It was a product moreover of economic and political needs rather than the desire for religious negation. The invading Turkish warrior correctly associated the Temples that were spread across the Indian landscape to be associated with Polity and understood their legitimizing function in relation to the sultans. Thus their acts of sacking the temples, far from being religiously motivated were calculated attempts at upsetting the indigenous kings.
Richard Eaton Deals with the question of temple desecration in his article “Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim states”- which temples were desecrated, when and how and why and what this says about the relationship between politics and religion in a region. Eaton uses the example of a temple site at Malwa in Madhya Pradesh which according to Sita Ram Goel is a clear example of temple destruction. He evidences this based on an inscription at the temple dated 1455 which narrates in detail the destruction of the temple by Abdullah Shah Changal during the reign of Raja Bhoja a renounced Paramara king. Eaton emphasize that unlike Goel’s interpretation the text is not concerned with documenting an instance of temple destruction but rather with narrating and celebrating the career of Changal, the saint buried at Dhar. The narrative is written almost two centuries after the events it describes and aims to document in an embellished manner the establishment of the Muslim community in the Malwa region as is not meant to be read in the newspaper like fashion that Goel reads it.
Eaton goes on to describe how a Turkish invaders in order to establish themselves gained legitimacy through the patronage of a Sufi saint and also by the desecration of the temple providing legitimacy to the local monarch. Thus if a temple contained an idol that legitimized state authority- it had to be destroyed. Temples that were not identified as being instruments of legitimacy or temples that were abandoned having preempted the news of an attack were normally left unharmed. It is also essential to note, as Eaton has pointed out, that attacks on temples that were symbols of political power, by enemy kings are a common part of Indian history from the 6th century onwards..
In fact temple desecration was part of an established tradition of campaign in the Indian sub-continent. Eaton narrates examples of this. In 642 AD according to a local tradition, the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I, looted the image of Ganesha from the Chalukya temple of Vatapi. Fifty years later armies of the same Chalukyas invaded North India and brought back to the Deccan what appeared to be images of Ganga and Yamuna, looted from defeated powers there. In the eighth century A.D. the Pandyan King Simara Srivallabha also invaded Sri Lanka and took back to his capital a golden Buddha image that had been installed in the kingdoms Jewel palace. There are numerous instances of such capturing of idols in medieval Indian history. All instances of temple desecration occurred in situations where rulers of Indian states expanded into territory of non-muslim rulers. Thus it is clear that the Muslim rulers indulged in the practice of temple desecration bearing the preconceived notion that the desecration of a temple was a means of decoupling an opponent kings power.
Whatever form they took acts of temple desecration were aimed only at the king and his state diety and not at the people. In fact the Mughals took special effort to secure the support of the common people who created the material wealth upon which the edifice of the empire rested.
Once the region had been captured by the indo-Muslim state the temple remained unmolested in accordance with pragmatism and time-honored traditions. In fact we learn in 1326 that sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq appointed functionaries to repair a Siva temple. We see instances as in the case of the newly acceding sultan Sikandar Lodhi where Muslim jurists advise him saying that it was not lawful to ban the religious ritual in a temple that has been customary from ancient times.
Thus in understanding the practice of temple desecration it is essential to differentiate between the rhetoric and practice of Indo-Muslim state formation. Whereas the former is normally Dogmatic, conservative and rigid, the later tends to be pragmatic and non-ideological.
Temples were always political centers and centers where kingship was revitalized, established and contested. Moreover the central image in a temple had a special relationship with the king as well as with the localized religion in which it was placed. Thus we see a bonding between King, God, temple and land in the images placement within the temple. In short images in temples from the sixth century onwards were considered politically vulnerable. These images as we have seen earlier were carried away as trophies by the victor of the campaign.
R.W Davies understands the biographies of these images in terms of the manner in which they are interpreted by each individual community. He studies the element of life infused into these images by their ““Hindu”” worshippers and observes that once this element is infused the images come to be viewed in a variety of manners and these views have a series of repercussions that exercise themselves on the image: these include the theft of images, the disfiguration of images, transportation, buying and selling, repercussions that are far beyond the images themselves.
He understands the biographies of these images through the method followed by Igor Kopytoff. He describes Indian religious objects as objects whose identities are not fixed once fabricated, but instead keep changing with each progressive Cultural reinterpretation and with greater contact with human beings. Kopytoff’s biographical method and his idea of “interpretive communities” has been drawn from Stanely Fish, who the propounded the reader response theory. The reader response theory opposed to the formalistic idea of viewing objects if art through a predestinated literary interpretation. Reader response insists that a text develops through its interaction with the reader. – the objection to the reader response theory was its subjectivity- each reader will have his own interpretation- thus Fish propounds the theory of interpretive communities .He argues that similar communities will have similar interpretations of a text. These interpretive strategies are not inherent but learnt within particular social settings. The same interpretive communities are described by Davies as communities of response. The response to an object according to him is governed by the geographical and cultural frame in which the object is viewed and also by the geographical and cultural frame that each viewer brings to the viewing of the object, which he calls dispensation. Each interpretive communities while remaining heterogeneous on smaller more technical points will find unanimity in the basic philosophical ideas.
Davies uses the idea of community of response to describe the reaction of the ““Hindu” community” and the “Muslim Community to images in temples and thus interprets the reason for the Islamic desecration of apparently “Hindu” Deities. He ascribes the Islamic iconoclasm towards Indian Images as a a political product of campaign and similarly the “Hindu” defense of their own idols and the demonization of the Muslims by the “Hindu”s in response to the desecration of idols as an attempt of the Indian political elite to defend its suzerainty.
He expounds the interpretive strategies of each community through the rhetoric of epic and counter epic literature that emerges during this time.
EPIC AND COUNTER EPIC LITERATURE
The Turkish campaigns generate two lines of interpretation of the activities taking place. Both these have been described by Aziz Ahmad in his “Epic and counter epic in Medieval India”. The twokinds of literary traditions include the epic of conquest, written in Persian for a primarily Turkish audience and the epic of resistance written in Hindi or some other vernacular and written for a ““Hindu”” audience.
Ahmad observes that Indo-Muslim Epics of conquest emerge out of the panegyric written in the Ghaznawid court during the eleventh century. This developed in the works of Khusraw and Fakhr al-Din Isami and continued until the time of Muhammad Jan Qudsi, who composed the epic of conquest in Shah Jahan’s court. These epics emphasize not only the capture of Hindustan by the Muslim warriors but also the acceptance of these warriors in the new homeland. The romantic court epic (bazmiya) is interwoven with the war epic (razmiya). Thus the Muslim ruler is shown as being loved by the “Hindu” princess.
The “Hindu” epic of resistance on the other hand glorifies the heroism and defiance of Rajput warriors in their often doomed struggles. These accounts are often embellished. They too look at sexual crossing as a method to permeate cultural boundaries and project the Indian woman’s rejection of the other as a symbol of bravery.
Ahmad portrays these two epic writing traditions as growing out of two mutually exclusive religious, cultural and historical attitudes. He cautions his readers from reading into these accounts as factual and instead emphasizes that these are merely representations of a “historical attitude” and the attitude of elite courtiers at that. He also emphasizes the fact that these are not representative of the monoliths of ““Hindu” And Islam”.
Together these two traditions carry out a vigorous debate on the power and importance of “Hindu” religious images and temples
As the proliferation of these temples posed a challenge for Turkish warriors adopting an Islamic frame of values- Muslim epics portray their destruction as an important feature and symbol of conquest. The spread of Islam over the Indian culture is depicted as essential for the eviction of Satanism and evil
The Indian works on the other hand, describe not only the heroic defense of temples but the recovery and reappearance of images. The images as described to have pre-empted the danger to them and retreated into the forest, to return later when the danger has passed. The consecration of the image is usually coupled with the consecration of a new ruler within the region.
The paradigmatic moment in Indo-Muslim literature as far as the epic of conquest was concerned, according to R.W Davis, lies in the successful raid on the Somnatha temple,on the Suarashtra coast of present day Gujarat by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026. Archeological excavations by BK Thapar have clearly revealed that there was evidence of desecration of the temples and the numerous Siva Linga images within. Davis does not want to make an attempt at reconstructing the history of this incident but intends to observe the ways in which later literature viewed the Somnatha conquest as an archetypal encounter. Moreover they act, according to Davis as theological and political rhetoric constituting and affirming an orthodox Sunni community of response towards “Hindu” images by dramatizing and subverting the miraculous claims made on them by worshippers.
Muslim narrative tends to dramatize Somnatha (located in Saurashtra in modern day Gujarat) as being the centre of Hinduism. It is mentioned as Prabhasa in the Mahabharata and is mentioned as the place where the moon god soma recovers from a curse by bathing; later this is converted into a Siva shrine and is the soma legend transforms the temple into the centre for the moon the pay homage to Siva in order to recover his brilliance. In 950 A.D a Solanki ruler took over the region of Saurashtra and constructed the Somnatha temple as a symbol of his unflinching devotion to Siva and particularly to establish his dominance over the region.
There is however little mention of the temple as a centre of “Hindu” pilgrimage. It is not accorded the exclusivity, in “Hindu” scriptures of an important pilgrimage centre. Muslim accounts however, searching for an Indian equivalent of Mecca chose Somnatha and converted Mahmud’s conquest of the Somnatha temple into a synecdoche for the conquest of India.
Several Muslim accounts claimed Somnatha to be the lord of all idols: Ibn al Athir said, “ all the other idols held the position of deputies in Somnatha”; Abu sa id Gardizi observed , “the city is to the “Hindu”s as Mecca is to the Muslims”; Al Biruni who may have accompanied Mahmud in his conquest wrote that the temple received a large number of jugs of water from the Ganges and baskets of flowers brought in from Kashmir. They also stated that political rulers from all over India paid homage to the image. Somnatha was not only a preeminent religious image but also its political centre.
Isami describes the Somnatha idol as the last idol that survived Muhammad’s iconoclast purges. Then he correlates Mahmud with Muhammad’s purges as being the agent who completes Muhammad’s mission- to destroy the last vestige of idolatry. These epics anthropomorphized the object and also related Muhammad to the prophet’s quest.
As described by Hakim Sanai, “The K’aba and Somnatha were both made clean like the sky by Muhammad and Mahmud, While Muhammad threw out the idols from K’aba, Mahmud did the same at Somnatha through war .” Thus Mahmud completed the destruction of idols and carried out the prophet’s order.
This association of Mahmud of Ghazni with the prophet Muhammad was carried out by court chroniclers after Mahmud’s time who glorified Mahmud as the ideal Islamic ruler and the epitome of Sunni orthodoxy and set him as a model for all future rulers.
Farid-al din ‘Attar’s work further complicated the image of Ghazni. He both condemned and praised Mahmud . He condemned him for his pride and despotism and praised him for his iconoclasm, drawing parallels between these purges and the purges of Muhammad . Mahmud was a paradigm since he followed the greatest human paradigm. Attar also wrote of Mahmud’s romantic relationship with a slave girl- this and a subsequent elaboration through others poetry humanized the otherwise rigid figure of Ghazni.
Diya al-Din Barani served as a courtier to Muhammad Tughlaq for twenty seven years and was then imprisoned at age 69 when Firuz Shah became the new Sultan of Delhi in 1351. In anger he wrote bitter works of history (Fatawa i- Jahandari) that were filled with cranky political advice delivered through the literary mouth piece of Mahmud Ghazni. The essence of his work emphasized through the character of Ghazni, the importance of an Islamic overthrow on infidelity. It also chastised the ruler’s contemporary to its writing for not risking their power to dislodge the “Hindus”.
Fakhr al-Din Isami in the Bahami court of the Deccan composed the first literary of Muslim India – The Futuh- Salatin or Shah Namah-I Hind. He advanced Mahmud as an exemplary hero and as the first to capture and islamicize India and as the first to destroy idols. The destruction of idol-houses for Isami was a significant part of Islamic conquest in India. He too chastised later indo-Muslim rulers for their inability to carry out Barani’s policies
The writing of Isami set an important Historical precedent. Two centuries later Nizam al-Din Ahmad began the writing of history that was entirely focused on the Muslim conquest of India and did not expand its teleological frame to the history of the entire Islamic world. Nizam al-din who wrote at the height of Akbar’s reign described as writers after him, Ghazni’s conquest as the progenitoral conquest in the Muslim expedition into India.
The Islamic chroniclers also tended to look upon the “Hindu” belief in the miraculous powers of the diety with a certain element of derision and they satirized this belief in their stories. The miraculous powers of these deities feature in the “Hindu” epic of resistance where these idols of images once sacked are seen to rise again and reoccupy their old position. Such resurgence in normally marked as mentioned before by the consecration of a new Indian king within the region. The Somnatha idol did reappear but as the tradition at that time stated that Siva was not affected by the destruction of his idol and would retake his place in another idol- a new temple was constructed for this purpose by the solanki rulers Bhima and later Kumarapala. The message for the reconstruction of the temples(which had been destroyed as the result of kali-yuga and not as the result of a historically recorded process of conquest) was said to be carried by a learned Brahman called Bhava Brhspati. The new temple was reconstructed on a grand scale by Kumarapala- who wish to form imperial status coincided with Siva’s wish to have his Somnatha temple rebuilt. However the apparent age of kali continues and because of the importance accorded to it by the Islamic epics and by the grand reconstruction by the Solanki rulers, the temple was established as the centre of argument and controversy.
Thus we observe that the Islamic epic of conquest and the “Hindu” epic of resistance are merely used as ways in which to legitimize the political traditions of each respective culture and represent manners of representation of the “Turkish intrusion” by each community. These epics help us understand historical attitudes and the challenge of Turkish supremacy and the response to it.
Thus once we understand the motives behind this epic and counter epic literature as being largely glorification of the polity of the respective tradition one can comprehend their evolution in regions of strife, along frontiers.
The literature of this period becomes more a vehicle to justify the subjugation of one community or to display the brave recalcitrance of another. And like most other evidence available during this period cannot be taken at face value.
The history of the Turkish campaigns is thus not one of a holy war of monolithic religion trying to decimate another but rather a history of two separate cultures fighting each other. The understanding of religious difference and its emphasis grows along regions of military strife, along frontiers, and in Epic literature of the period looking to glorify its respective community and looking to religion as a convenient path. In understanding this history thus as put succinctly by Eaton it is important to distinguish between rhetoric and practice. It is important for us to understand the political and economic motives that underlie most of what is enacted during this period.