Indian Muslims - Who are They

by K.S. Lal, Kishori Saran Lal

The book studies the growth of the Muslim population during the time of Mahmud of Ghazni, during the Delhi Sultanate and during the Mughal Empire.

Genres: History, Islam, Nonfiction, Politics, India

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Ashish Iyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book talks about how Muslim invaders invades Bharat. By Bharat i mean Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Book is backed with reference and well documented. There are various factors have contributed to the growth of Muslim population in India-invading armies with their retinues, constant recruitment of soldiers from across the borders, red-carpet welcome extended to immigrants from Muslim countries, forcible conversions, proselytization by means of pressures and temptations, large-scale forced marriage with Hindu women. Hindu women were kidnapped for Muslim harem where they can served for their pleasures. Hindu children were taken away and converted them to joined Muslim army and some men were forcibly made into eunuch. Jaziyah tax was imposed was imposed on Hindus for not being Muslims. Dr. K.S. Lal has documented in some fullness how the continued wars of conquest waged by the Islamic invaders ensured a constant supply of Hindu prisoners of war who were sold and resold as slaves and who eventually ended up by feeding the Muslim population. Dr. Lal examines in some detail and refutes conclusively the oft-repeated theory that the Hindu caste system was responsible for conversions to Islam. He points out that the countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa had no caste system and yet they succumbed completely to the onslaught of Islam.

These kind of books you will hardly find in school, college or academic studies because pseudo secular and communist don't want you read these books instead they will distort the history. The author of this book Kishori Saran Lal is amazing, he write books with facts and reference. No nonsense. I cant even imagine the amount of research author has done. I am not surprised why these kind of books are not in main stream or even famous. Read this book know what ancestors went through.

Must read.

[Ashish Iyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for 2nd time. I was looking some references/ sources. Kishori Saran Lal is someone you can easily rely on. He is not like those left historians who distort our histories in the name of appeasement and called them genuine work.

My review is given below incase you want to read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Ajaey Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-researched and must-read book. It will change many of the most common perceptions (spread by the Left and/or internalized by the Hindu society for the sake of convenience). Hats off to Voice of India team.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting account on Indian Muslims. Kishori Saran Lal is someone we can rely on.

[Lasic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting views. This is what i was looking for.

[Subhrajyoti Parida · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by Prof. K S Lal is undoubtedly reliable and quite convincing while revealing the real factors that contributed to beginning of conversion of Hindus to Islamic faith and growth of the Muslim population in India since the invasion of Sindh by the barbaric Mohd Bin Qasim till advent of Europeans.

Author, vide countless authentic contemporary sources, has been able to conclude that :-
1. Islam is nothing but chiefly a Proselytising faith, believing firmly in increasing their number by hook or crook.
2. Conversion of Hindus happened chiefly due to fear of death, slavery and dishonour, to save from economic burdens levied by the fanatic Islamic rulers
3. Conversion also accelerated through financial and business temptations.
4. Unlike propagandised by leftist historians, so called tyranny of Hindu caste system never led to conversions, which has been so assertively proven in this book by solid arguments and evidences from contemporary Islamic and other chronicles.
5.Hindus of all castes (including the lowest of all) took pride in their profession and caste, and hence were often reluctant to embrace Islam. In fact, it was caste system which protected Hindus from ready conversion.

Overall, a must read if you want to unlearn the bogus history taught by leftist academia and explore the true history without appeasing any particular community in the name of pseudoscience secularism.

[Shivansh · Rating 5 out of 5]

South Asia ke Converted suaro Ki sachai Hai iss book me zaroor padiye.
Jai Hindu Rashtra 🚩🚩

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Indian Muslims - Who are They
Author: Kishori Sharan Lal
Publisher: ‎ Voice of India (1 January 2004)
Language: ‎ English
Item Weight: ‎ 259 g
Country of Origin‏: India
Price: 160/-

The title of this book is tad misrepresentative. As also is the summation of the author regarding the acknowledged objective of this tome.

K. S. Lal says that this book limits its scholarship to processes of how Indian Muslims came into being and how they have grown in numbers to form the principal minority in India. This book is a study only in the demography of Indian Muslims….

Well, he only speaks half the truth.

Why half baked?

Do you know what this book really teaches you?

It teaches you that on a study in-depth, on the growth of Muslim population, you’d be hit by the fact that as against the crisscross design of growth and decrease of the general population in the medieval period, Muslim population shows only a continuous rise. Another is that despite centuries of effort in the field of evangelization, India has been converted only but partly.

This proves that contrary to the speedy amendment of some West Asian countries, Islam received a positive check in India.

Into the following chapters is this book divided…. Mark the divisions well –

**Chapter 1- Early Muslims

**Chapter 2- Rise of Muslims under the Sultanate -- Muslim Immigration; Conversions; Proselytization Activity of the Government; Voluntary Conversions; Muslim Losses; Natural Growth of Muslim Population; Indian Muslims around C.E. 1400, 37

**Chapter 3- Proselytization in Provincial Muslim Kingdoms The Sultanate - The Punjab, Sind and U.P. 45; Kashmir; Gujarat; Malwa; The Deccan; The Malabar Coast; Bengal

**Chapter 4- Growth under the Mughals

**Chapter 5- Factors Contributing to the Growth of Muslim Population Coversions; Immigration; Polygamy; Higher Facundity; Lesser Losses

**Chapter 6- Factors which Checked Islamization of India; Vastness of the country; Hindu 'Protestant' Movements; Caste System; Akbar's Regulations; Christian Missionaries; Muslim Cult of Violence

**Epilogue

The reader of this book gets to know that, while countries like Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia and Syria yielded to the ambush of Islam and converted en masse, the blade of Islam was dampened in India.

This check provided incitement and eagerness to some Muslim conquerors and rulers to take to the task of evangelization with great passion and seriousness.

Their exertions and achievements find repeated mention in official and non-official chronicles. Sometimes, besides comprehensive facts, actual data and figures in this regard are also available.

All this information is very obliging in approximating Muslim numbers as they grew from almost a cryptograph.

By the year 1000 of the Christian Era the extreme north-western parts of India, in the trans-Indus region, had become introduced to Islam.

As early as C.E. 664, consequent upon an assault of Kabul and its vicinities (which then formed part of India), by Abdur Rahman, a few thousand inhabitants are reported to have been converted to Islam.

Subuktagin also fought against the Hindus and converted some of them. But all these events took place in the trans-Indus region, and we may, consequently, agree with Lanepoole in saying that in CE. 1000 there were no Muslims in northern India east of the Indus.

This tome tells you among a host of other things that that the sword of Islam was blunted in India. Islam had spread in Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Africa and even parts of Europe with a bang.

Within a hundred years of the death of the Prophet this remarkable achievement had been attained through the instrument of Jihad.

It appeared as if there was no stopping the Islamic landslide on the Globe, both to the east and the the west of the land of its birth - Arabia. But in contradiction of all optimisms and prospects, Islam received a check in a most unforeseen quarter Hindustan, a - country believed to be alienated by caste, dithering by oppositions and uninterested to conformism in religious faith.

Persistent efforts were made to Islamize India but to no avail.

At various points of time it was passionately hoped by Muslims that all the Hindus would be converted to Islam. The Arab invasion of Sind saw lot of evangelization, but such adaptations proved to be temporary.

300 years later Mahmud of Ghazni's efforts raised fresh hopes. He promised the Khalifa that he would convert the country through his annual expeditions. He did his worst.

Alberuni says, "Mahmud completely made derelict the affluence of the country, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust dispersed in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people."

But just wait awhile … No. the Hindus did not become a tale of old. They remained entrenched in their country, so that when Timur invaded India at the end of the 14th century, the inhabitants of India were found by him to be cheifly "polytheists and infidels".

"My primary purpose in the invasion of Hindustan," said he, "is to lead an excursion against the infidels that, according to the law of Muhammad (upon whom and his family be the blessings and peace of God), we may transform to the true faith the people of that country, and purify the land itself from the filth of infidelity and polytheism; and that we may overthrow their temples and idols and become ghaziz and mujahids before God."

He did his worst, and again the Hindus regained their position in the course of time.

After one and a quarter century of this, when Babur invaded Hindustan, he found that "Most of the inhabitants of Hindustan are pagans. They call a pagan a Hindu... All artisans, wage- earners and officials are Hindu."

As late as the end of the 17th century, Francois Bernier also found Hindustan "a country containing hundreds of Gentiles to one Mogol, or even to one Mahometan."

Even when Alamgir Aurangzeb from within and Nadir Shah and Abdali from without, determined to strike a final blow for Islamization of Indian population, they could not decimate the Hindus. In such a desparate situation Indian Muslims could only wistfully remember the days of Subuktigin and Mahmud of Ghazni.

Muhammad Aslam in his ‘Farhat-un-Nazirin’ says that during the Third Battle of Panipat (1761), "about ninety thousand persons, male and female, were taken prisoners, and obtained the eternal happiness by embracing the Muhammadan faith. Indeed, never was such splendid victory achieved from the time of Amir Mahmud Subuktigin..."

So, all through the medieval period, Foreign and Indian Muslims strove hard to make India a Muslim country by converting and eliminating the Hindus.

They killed and converted, and converted and killed by turns.

In the earlier centuries of their presence here, the picture was sombre indeed. Turkish rule was established in northern India at the beginning of the 13th century. Within 15 years of Muhammad Ghori's occupation of Delhi, the Turks rapidly conquered most of the major cities of northern India.

Their lightening success, as described by contemporary chroniclers, entailed great loss of life. Qutbuddin Aibak's conquests during the life-time of his master and later on in the capacity of king (c.1200- 1210) included Gwalior, parts of Bundelkhand, Ajmer, Ranthambhor, Anhilwara, as well a parts of U.P. and Malwa.

In Nahrwala alone 50,000 persons were killed during Aibak's campaign. No wonder, he earned the nickname of killer of lacs. Bakhtiyar Khalji marched through Bihar into Bengal and massacred people in both the regions.

During his expedition to Gwalior Iltutmish (1210-36) massacred 700 persons besides those killed in the battle on both sides. His atttacks on Malwa (Vidisha and Ujjain) were met with stiff resistance and were accom- pained by great loss of life. He is also credited with killing 12,000 Khokhars (Gakkhars) during Aibak's reign.

The successors of Iltutmish (Raziyah, Bahram, etc.) too fought and killed zealously.

Now, despite such killings, the Hindus could not be eliminated or reduced to a minority.

Despite violent conversions, India could not be Islamised.

How did it happen?

Alberuni has solved this riddle. "They (the Hindus)," says he, "differ from us in religion... There is very little disputing about theological topics among themselves; at the most they fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or their property on religious controvery."

On the contrary "in all manners and usages they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us...and as to declare us to be devil's breed and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper," so that "they call all foreigners as mleccha, i.e. impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because therby they think, they would be polluted... They are not allowed to recieve anybody who does not belong to them, even if he wished it, or was inclined to their religion."

Briefly, the Hindus believed in passive disscussions about religious matters. They believed in freedom of religious thought and developed spirituality.

They hated those who killed in the name of religion and they shunned those who believed in conversions.

That is how the Hindu succeeded over violent conversions; that is how customarily the Hindu won against stout and belligerent adversaries.

The evidence of this lies in Mughal emperor Babur's testimony. "Compared with our countries," writes he when he had settled in India, "(Hindustan) is a different world... once the water of Sind is crossed, everything is in the Hindustan way (tariq) - land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom."

And to repeat his words, "Most of the citizens of Hindsutan are pagans; they call a pagan a Hindu."

And this after centuries of Muslim effort at changing the ‘dar-ul-harb’ into ‘dar-ul-Islam’!

The situation has never changed, to the punishing dissatisfaction of the Indian Muslims.

Consequently, more than anything else the striving of the Indian Muslims is to increase their numbers. The decadal census figures from 1881 to 1941 show a relentless rise in Muslim numbers.

Thus even in modern times at no census have the Muslim numbers failed to improve, or the Hindu failed to lose.

This phenomenon has been attributed besides vigorous proselytization, to polygamy, remarriage of widows, and higher fecundity among the Muslims.

Let us close our discussion now.

Do you know that contemporary sociologists are of the opinion that one of the chief reasons for Hindu perpetuation is due to the fact of Hindus having taken to western education with rapidity as against the general backwardness of the Muslims?

The perseverance of the Muslims on their Personal Law, their foot-dragging to Family Planning, their pacts of freedoms with political parties at the time of elections in particular, and their receiving millions of Petro-Dollars to help in proselytizing events all point to their yearning and fortitude to grow in numbers and Islamize Bharatvarsha.

Their utmost mortification is that in spite of their finest efforts for more than 1000 years, they have ever remained a minority in India.

Consequently, just as they have resigned themselves to the irregular circumstances of their conversion, if they could also learn to live as a minority with India's tolerant, forbearing, accepting Hindu majority, there will be peace for them and for all.

Read this 150 odd page tome. Try translating it.

There are hundreds of bright scholars amongst you who can do the same.

Take shares out of this tome and dispense them as pamphlets.

You’d be doing a service to your Bharatbhumi.

[SUBRATA DATTA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Professor Kishori Sharan Lal (1920 – 2002) has written extensively on the Islamic period of Indian history.

The present book deals with Islamic demography in India.

The small, 160-page book contains a lot of information about the advent of Islam and its spread in India. The rise of Muslim population over the centuries has been dealt with.

According to Lal, a good number of factors have contributed to the growth of Muslim population. Conversion, more forced than voluntary, is most important among them. He rubbishes the idea that lower-caste Hindus, being oppressed in the caste-ridden society, opted for a more socially democratic Islamic culture. Conversion was effected more at the end of the sword than by persuasion.

Indian Muslim is clearly a labour of love. Lal has referred to his sources on all the pages. Pretty impressive is the bibliography at the end of the book.

It can be profitably read for an understanding of the growth of Muslim population in India.

[Nitin Solanki]

Short and important introductory document on the subject.

[yoursbibliophilic · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Indian Muslims: Who Are They by K.S. Lal, deconstructs popular myths and politically motivated narratives that have long clouded public understanding of Indian Muslims. Lal discusses how Indian Muslims have often been portrayed as descendants of foreign invaders, a narrative that has led to political alienation and social suspicion are actually Hindu, Buddhist converts who took up new religion by force. Lal unlike his other historians (Romila Thapar, Habbib, Elton), focuses on historical and statistical data perform empirical inquiry into the origins and growth of the Muslim population in India. He clearly sets the narrative by stating, “We shall confine our study to processes of how Indian Muslims came into being and how they have grown in numbers to form the largest minority in India.  Ours is a study only in the demography of Indian Muslims.”( Loc:19)

Lal estimates the Muslim populations in India which began as negligible around 1000 CE and grew steadily over the centuries. Early contacts included raids (636 CE) and appeals for conversion (717 CE), but major growth occurred between 1200–1400, reaching about 3.2 million (1.85% of the population). By 1600, Muslims numbered around 15 million (1:9 ratio), and by 1800, about 25 million (14–15%). By the mid-19th century, they formed 16% of the population, showing consistent proportional growth over time. However, in the last chapter he concludes that despite sustained efforts at forcible conversion, India resisted widespread Islamisation due to the deep-rooted cultural and religious insularity of Hindu society.