Mahmud’s Bitter Legacy

Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin: A Study, from which the following column is extracted, is a 1927 publication brought out by the Aligarh Muslim University, where Mohammad Habib was Professor of History and Politics. Habib´s book deals with the Muslim world of the tenth century and the career of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. I am not aware that I have been inspired by any sympathy or antipathy towards the great conqueror, Prof Habib wrote in his preface..No honest historian should seek to hide, and no Mussalman acquainted with his faith will try to justify, the wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavide army. Contemporary as well as later historians do not attempt to veil the nefarious acts but relate them with pride. It is easy to twist one´s conscience; and we know only too well how easy it is to find a religious justification for what people wish to do from worldly motives..Islam sanctioned neither the vandalism nor the plundering motives of the invader; no principle known to the Shariat justified the uncalled-for attack on Hindu princes who had done Mahmud and his subjects no harm; the shameless destruction of places of worship is condemned by the law of every creed. And yet Islam, though it was not an inspiring motive, could be utilised as a posteriori justification of what had been done..It was not difficult to mistake the spoliation of non-Muslim populations for a service to Islam, and persons to whom the argument was addressed found it too much in consonance with the promptings of their own passions to examine it critically. So the precepts of the Quran were misinterpreted or ignored and the tolerant policy of the Second Caliph was cast aside, in order that Mahmud and his myrmidons might be able to plunder Hindu temples with a clear and untroubled conscience..It is a situation to make one pause. With a new faith everything depends on its method of presentation. It will be welcomed if it appears as a message of hope, and hated if it wears the mask of brutal terrorism. Islam as a world-force is to be judged by the life of the Prophet and the policy of the Second Caliph. Its early successes were really due to its character as a revolutionary force against religions that had lost their hold on the minds of the people and against social and political systems that were grinding down the lower classes. Under such circumstances the victory of Islam was considered by the conquered population as something intrinsically desirable; it ended the regime of an aristocratic priesthood and a decrepit monarchy, while the doctrine of equality, first preached in the eastern world, opened a career to the talent of the depressed masses and resulted in a wholesale conversion of the populations of Arabia, Syria, Persia and Iraq..Now Hinduism with its intense and living faith was something quite unlike the Zoroastrianism of Persia and the Christianity of Asia Minor, which had so easily succumbed before the invader; it suffered from no deep-seated internal disease and a peculiarity of the national character of the Hindus, ´deeply seated in them and manifest to everybody,1 was their intense satisfaction and pride in their customs. "They believe," says Alberuni*, "that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited and stolid. According to their belief, there is no country on earth but theirs, no other race of men but theirs, and no created beings besides them have any knowledge or science whatsoever…" People with this insularity of outlook were not likely to lend their ears to a new message. But the policy of Mahmud secured the rejection of Islam without a hearing..A religion is naturally judged by the character of those who believe in it; their faults and virtues are supposed to be the effect of their creed. It was inevitable that the Hindus should consider Islam a deviation from truth when its followers deviated so deplorably from the path of rectitude and justice. A people is not conciliated by being robbed of all it holds most dear, nor will it love a faith that comes to it in the guise of plundering armies and leaves devastated fields and ruined cities as monuments to its victorious method of reforming the morals of a prosperous but erratic world.."They came, burnt, killed, plundered, captured— and went away" was a Persian´s description of the Mongol invasion of his country; it would not be an inappropriate summary of Mahmud´s achievement in Hindustan. It was not thus that the Prophet had preached Islam in Arabia; and no one need be surprised that the career of the conquering Ghaznavide created a burning hatred for the new faith in the Hindu mind and blocked its progress more effectually than armies and forts. "Mahmud," says the observant Alberuni, "utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed those wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate hatred for all Muslims…"."The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones!" Mahmud´s work, whatever it might have been, was swept off fifteen years after his death by the Hindu Revival. East of Lahore no trace of the Mussalmans remained; and Mahmud´s victories, while they failed to shake the moral confidence of Hinduism, won an everlasting infamy for his faith..Two centuries later men, who differed from Mahmud as widely as two human beings can possible differ, once more brought Islam to the land. But times had changed. The arrogance of the Mussalmans had disappeared with the conquest of Ajam by the Mongolian hordes. The spirit of the Persian Renaissance had blossomed and died, and the New Mysticism, with its cosmopolitan tendencies and doctrine which did not essentially differ from what the Hindu rishis had taught in ancient days, made possible that exchange of ideas between men of the two creeds which Alberuni had longed for in vain..Instead of the veterans who had crossed the frontier in search of their winter spoils there came a host of refugees from the burning villages of Central Asia longing for a spot where they could lay their heads in peace and casting aside all hopes of returning to the land of their birth. The serpent had reappeared but without its poisonous fangs..The intellectual history of medieval India begins with the advent of Shaikh Moinuddin of Ajmere and its political history with the accession of Sultan Alauddin Khilji; the two features which distinguish it from preceding generations are the mystic propaganda started by the Chishti Saint and the administrative and economic measures inaugurated by the revolutionary Emperor..With the proper history of our country Mahmud has nothing to do. But we have inherited from him the most bitter drop in our cup.[i].*Alberuni was an Arab renaissance scholar who translated a number of Sanskrit texts into Arabic and was the first to introduce the Bhagwad Gita to the Islamic world. His celebrated work on India, Kitabul Hind, was written in 1030 A.D.