The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate
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Authors: Abraham Eraly
Tags: #History, #Non-Fiction, #India, #Middle Ages
A History of the Delhi Sultanate
In the history which I am writing I will allow no partiality or prejudice to mingle.
—Baihaqi,
11th-century Ghaznavid chronicler
In most parts of my work I simply relate without commenting, unless there be a special reason for doing so.
—Al-Biruni
11th-century Ghaznavid chronicler
It is the duty of a historian … to have no hope of profit, no fear of injury, to show no partiality … or animosity …, to make no difference between friend and stranger, and to write nothing but with sincerity.
—Khafi Khan
17th-century Mughal chronicler
This book completes my four-volume study of the history of pre-modern India.
The four volumes in the set, all published by Penguin in India, are:
Gem in the Lotus
:
The Seeding of Indian Civilisation
;
The First Spring
:
The Golden Age of India
;
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate;
and
The Last Spring
:
The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals
.
The Last Spring
was later published as two paperback books:
Emperors of the Peacock Throne
and
The Mughal World
.
I hope to follow up this set with a summation book, to link India’s past with its present, and to examine the historical processes by which India became the kind of nation it is today.
As in my previous books, I have in this book tried to portray the life of the people in the past, rather than merely chronicle events.
Historians, according to Mughal chronicler Muhammad Hadi, are like ‘thirsty explorers in the desert.’ Often there is not enough water to quench their thirst. There is, for instance, very little data in primary sources on the socio-cultural history of early medieval India, or on the life of the common people. But the source books have a good amount of material on the life of kings, and that enlivens the history of the age with human drama.
Another major problem that we have with early medieval Indian history is that our main sources of information about it are the accounts given by Arab, Persian and Turkish chroniclers. These are inevitably one-sided, though they seldom deliberately falsify facts. We have virtually no Indian sources for the history of this age.
What matters it to us whether
Rama reigns or Ravana reigns?
—
A MEDIEVAL INDIAN SAYING
Challenge and Response
The inception of the second millennium
CE
marked the beginning of a radically new and transformative phase in the history of India, which would last nearly as long as the millennium itself. During virtually this entire period a good part of India was under the political and socio-cultural dominance of invaders, first under Turks, then under Mughals, and finally under Britishers.
These invaders were entirely unlike all the previous invaders of India. Although several other races had entered India over the millennia as invaders or migrants, in time they all had merged indistinguishably into the Indian socio-cultural milieu. This did not happen with Turks, Mughals or Britishers. Nor was there any significant general change in the life and culture of Indians under the influence of these invaders, except during the latter period of the British rule. Indians and these invaders coexisted, but they did not blend. They were like oil and water in the same pot.
The first phase of this millennial history of foreign rule in India began with the invasion of India by Turks and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. This development had a radically transmutative effect on the political makeup of India, the displacement of virtually the entire traditional ruling class of India by the invaders. More importantly, the Turkish invasion resulted in the superimposition of a wholly contradistinctive foreign civilisation over Indian civilisation.
Curiously, there was no awareness at all among medieval Indians, even among the ruling class, about the historic nature of the Turkish invasion. The lack of this awareness meant that there was no general, united opposition by the rulers or the people of India against Turks. Turks were not seen by Indians as
aliens, but as just another component in the ever roiling regional, racial, tribal, linguistic, socio-cultural, religious, sectarian and political diversity of India. So even while Turks were mopping up Hindu kingdoms one after the other, the rajas and their chieftains went on with their usual endless petty squabbles and battles among themselves, as if nothing whatever in their world had changed.
But everything in their world had in fact changed radically. Turks were entirely different from all the previous invaders of India, and Indians of this age were entirely different from what their forefathers had been in the previous age. India had absorbed all the pre-Turkish invaders and migrants into its society and culture because India was then, for a thousand years from around the middle of the first millennium
BCE
to around the middle of the first millennium
CE
, a marvellously vital and creative civilisation, which was far more advanced than the civilisations of most of the invaders and migrants. In dismal contrast to this, Indian civilisation at the time of the Turkish invasion was in an awfully decadent and comatose state, while Turks had a youthful, vibrant and advanced civilisation.
Besides, the socio-religious systems and culture of Indians and Turks were far too divergent from each other to have any transformative influence on each other. Basically, the problem was that Islam was too adamantine to be influenced by Hinduism, and Hinduism was too effete to respond creatively to Islam. There was no consonance at all between the two religions in any respect: while Islam was monotheistic, Hinduism was polytheistic; while Hinduism was a malleable, multilayered religion which was forever in flux, Islam was a monolayered and relatively immutable religion. And while Islam was an aggressive, proselytising religion, which was intolerant of other religions, Hinduism was a passive, non-proselytising religion, which could companionably coexist with any other religion, or any number of other religions. Similarly, while Hinduism was an inclusive religion, which could accommodate within it any number of diverse deities, beliefs and practices, and could be anything to anybody, Islam was an exclusive religion, which had only one god and one basic set of beliefs and practices.
Furthermore, while Islamic society was egalitarian and had no hereditary social divisions, Hindu society was rigidly hierarchic and was divided into many hereditary castes occupying different rungs in society and performing their allotted exclusive socio-economic functions. Likewise, while Hindu society was a closed society, and its caste divisions were hereditary, into which one could enter only by being born into it, Islamic society was an open society, into which anyone from any background could enter as an equal member on becoming a Muslim. And while Muslims feasted on beef, Hindus venerated the cow and regarded cow slaughter and beef eating as most heinous sins.
Basically, while Hindu society could have possibly accommodated Islamic religious beliefs and social practices within it by assigning to them particular religious and socio-cultural spaces, as it had done over the centuries with numerous Indian tribal cults and the cults of migrants and invaders, Muslim society could not possibly have accommodated Hindu religious beliefs and social practices within it without totally compromising its socio-religious identity—without ceasing to be Islam, in fact.
Because of this polarity between Hinduism and Islam in all matters, they exerted no significant influence on each other, except in the case of a few peripheral mystic sects in both religions. Yet, despite their total contrariety in every facet of life, Hindus and Muslims coexisted without any major conflict or communal violence for very many centuries.
The orthodox Muslim policy towards the people of other religions was to induce them to become Muslims, and to extirpate those who resisted conversion, sparing only Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, who were treated as zimmis, protected non-Muslims. But as Islam spread outside the Middle East, the concept of zimmis was, for various practical reasons, liberally interpreted to include in it people of other religions also. In the case of Hindus, Muslim rulers necessarily had to be accommodative towards them, for Hindus provided several indispensable services in the economy, government and army of the Muslim state. In any case it would have been physically impossible for Turks to exterminate Hindus, because of the vastness and diversity of the Hindu population.
INDIA IN PREMODERN times was often regarded by foreigners as a paradise on earth. Typically, Abdullah Wassaf, an early fourteenth century Persian writer, states:
It is asserted that paradise is in India,
Be not surprised because paradise itself
is not comparable to it.
This was a highly chimerical image of India, but not too different from the common premodern perception of India by foreigners. There was however another view of India by medieval foreigners, which, although it also saw India as a land of fabulous natural resources, regarded it as an uncongenial place to live in, because of its torrid climate. India, according to Khondamir, an early sixteenth century chronicler, ‘consumed the body as easily as flame melts a candle.’
That apprehension presumably was the reason why Mahmud Ghazni decided not to annex India and rule over it, even though he had the proven
military capability to do that. Similarly, Timur also decided against occupying India—although he swept through a good part of North India, plundering its wealth and slaughtering its people, he remained in India only for about six months, and quickly sped back to his home in Central Asia, heeding the advice of one his top nobles, who warned him: ‘If we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valour will diminish.’
These views about the debilitating effect of Indian climate were highly exaggerated, just as the contrary views about India as a paradise were highly exaggerated. But Indian climate did certainly have an enervating effect on its people, as is evident from the fact that all the invaders who settled in India were in turn, after a couple of centuries, defeated and displaced by fresh invaders—Arabs by Ghaznavids, Ghaznavids by Ghuris, Ghuris by Mughals, and Mughals by Persians and Britishers.
But why did some invaders choose to settle down in India, while others disdained to do so? The crucial factor in this seems to have been that the invaders who chose India as home were mostly those who had been driven out of their homeland—or were in imminent danger of being driven out—by their more aggressive neighbours. They were taking refuge in India as much as invading it.
These migrant invaders chose India presumably because they saw it as a soft target, and also because of its reputation for fabulous riches. But why did the medieval Indian kingdoms, many of them ruled by Rajputs renowned for their martial valour, succumb so abjectly to Turks, even though the armies of the rajas were invariably much larger than those of Turks? And then again why were Turks so easily routed by Mughals, and Mughals in turn by Persians and Britishers? Why did each new invader rout the previous invader? India had never in its several millenniums long history prevailed over invaders, except in a couple of minor cases. Why?
A reason that is commonly given for this is that there was no united stand by Indian kings against invaders. There could in fact be no such united stand by them, because, from the Indian point of view, there was no we/they divide between Indians and invaders. The Indian ruling class viewed Turks not as foreigners but as a component in the ever-shifting population conglomeration of India. And the establishment of the Turkish rule in India was seen by them as just an aspect of the normal political turmoil in India. As for the common people, it made virtually no difference in their lives whether rajas or sultans ruled over them.
There was no concept of India as a nation at this time. Indians did not look like one people or speak like one people—the language of the people of one
region of India was entirely unintelligible to the people of the other regions of India. And each of these regional groups was itself divided into several discrete socio-cultural groups based on caste and sect. India in medieval times was just a geographical region, like Europe, not a nation. At best India could be considered as a distinct civilisation, but in this too India was not much different from Europe. India was in fact even more fragmented than Europe, because of the innumerable sectarian and caste divisions among each of its regional people.
In any case, the lack of political unity is hardly a convincing reason for the dismal military performance of Indian kings against invaders, for many of the Indian kings had under their command greater resources in men and materials than the invaders. But what mattered in battles was not the numerical strength of the army, but its martial spirit and energy, and in this the Indian armies were inferior to the invading armies, perhaps because of the sweltering, debilitating climate of India.
The awareness of this adverse effect of Indian climate on people made some of the invaders conduct their campaigns into India only during the relatively cool months of the year. Mahmud Ghazni, for instance, conducted his raids into India mostly during the cool, rainless months between October and February; similarly, Timur took care to restrict his Indian campaign to the six months between September and March.
THE ONE APPARENT advantage that Indian kings had over invaders was that their armies were invariably much larger than those of the invaders. But this numerical advantage of the Indian armies was more than negated by the decisive superiority of the invaders in martial spirit, weaponry, regimental discipline, and innovative tactics. Indeed, the vast size of Indian armies often proved to be a disadvantage, as their size was mostly made up of ill-trained and ill-disciplined hordes who could not act effectively in concert.
In contrast, Turks had certain crucial military advantages over Indians. Their cavalry, which constituted their main military division, was far superior to the Indian cavalry in every respect, in men as well as in mounts. The Indian armies mainly depended on their elephant corps, but elephants, though forbidding in appearance and terrifying as they charged into the enemy ranks, were no match to the storming, whirling charge of the Turkish cavalry. Elephants were in fact quite often a menace to their own side, for when wounded in battle or otherwise frightened they ran pell-mell, causing great havoc in their own army.
More than all this, Turks as aggressors swooping down from the cool Afghan mountains had irresistible kinetic energy, while the Indian armies were mostly made up of plainsmen normally leading a sedentary life in an
enervating climate, and their posture, as defenders, was generally static. Psychologically too Indians were at a disadvantage, as they suffered from the victim syndrome, and were often sluggish in battle, unlike the spirited Turks. Moreover, the fatalistic value system of Indians inculcated in them a generally defeatist attitude. In contrast, Turks were energised by their religious fervour; they believed that they had the favour of god with them and were therefore invincible. And indeed they did prove to be invincible. Equally, they were energised by the irresistible lure of plunder.
A peculiarity of Indian history is that though India was repeatedly invaded by foreigners over the millennia, Indians themselves had never ventured out of the subcontinent for conquests, except for some transient, trade related naval campaigns into south-east Asia by Cholas during the classical age. Indians were always the conquered, never the conquerors. One reason for this could be that Indians had no compelling survival need to venture into other lands, as the subcontinent was mostly quite fertile, and it provided the people with all their basic requirements. Foreign conquest was therefore not a survival requirement for Indians.
Another reason why Indians never ventured out of the subcontinent was that geographically India is like a mammoth canyon, separated from the Eurasian landmass by the high mountains bordering it on the north, and from the rest of the world by the seas bordering its peninsula. This topography made it easy for invaders from the northern highlands to sweep down the mountains into India, but made it virtually impossible for Indians to clamber up the mountains and invade foreign lands. Nor could Indians in premodern times cross the seas to seek any major conquest, as the necessary seafaring facilities were not then available. An equally important reason—perhaps the most important reason—why Indians never ventured outside the subcontinent is that they were generally a rather torpid people, and did not have the energy or the spirit to go adventuring over the mountains or across the seas.