chhitter khaan joggeya

[shaheediyan]

So, the Mughals weren't responsible for corrupting 'age' old Indian devotional song and dance traditions by taking them and their practitioners to their brothels?

They didn't destroy numerous non-Muslim places of worship and all their inhabitants?

They didn't enslave and trade millions of Indian men, women and children over their centuries of rule?

They didn't forcefully convert untold numbers of Hindus?

They weren't responsible for religious persecution and discrimination?

No, not all the Mughals were collectivelly responsible, but these things happened under the collective Mughal rule - which you have sought to generalise with your stupid conversation with your so 'clever' mate.

[Morghe Sahar]

Shaheediyan wrote:

"So, the Mughals weren't responsible for corrupting 'age' old Indian devotional song and dance traditions by taking them and their practitioners to their brothels?

They didn't destroy numerous non-Muslim places of worship and all their inhabitants?

They didn't enslave and trade millions of Indian men, women and children over their centuries of rule?

They didn't forcefully convert untold numbers of Hindus?

They weren't responsible for religious persecution and discrimination?

No, not all the Mughals were collectivelly responsible, but these things happened under the collective Mughal rule - which you have sought to generalise with your stupid conversation with your so 'clever' mate."

Did the Mughals declare one race to be superior to all others? No

Did the Mughals try to exterminate a whole racial group in an industrial fashion? No

Did the Mughals found their national programme on "blood and land" and the notion of Volk? No

The Mughals were not National Socialists. That the Mughal rulers, like most Indian rulers, commited atrocities is not something I would deny. But to always focuss on the Mughals as an isolated brutal incident I feel the need to emphacize the fact they were not more cruel than other Indian rulers. I could tell you about Shaiva kings in Southern India publicly executing Jain monks. India didn't need the Mughals to come up with slavery so please spare us the usual "the Mughals were so cruel".

As for discrimination I am sorry but apart from Aurangzeb, the Mughal administration had always employed many non-Muslims.The very fact that Nand Lal Goya was in Bahadur Shah's service nulifies your point. I didn't know the Mughals had an official policy of building brothels...because that's actually haram. So brothels didn't exist in India before the Mughals. Is it just me or don't the Shastras declare deshi musicians to be low castes on equal footing with prostitutes?

It is true that Aurangzeb destroyed some Mandirs, but it's also true that Hindus continued to pay hommage to Sri Ram inside the Babri Masjid as Jesuit reports of the century prove. Can't Indian Muslims also pay hommage to someone many of them believe to have been an Indian pre-Islamic prophet?

Yes the Mughals, like many other Indian rulers committed crimes, and some may have been cruel, but they were not Nazis because they didn't follow national socialism. I am just fed up of hearing people use the words "Fascist" and "Nazi" for just anyone they dislike.

Now some facts:

On jizya:

It is true that jizya was lifted during the reign of Akbar and Jahangir and that Aurangzeb later reinstated this. Before I delve into the subject of Aurangzeb’s jizya tax, or taxing the non-Muslims, it is worthwhile to point out that jizya is nothing more than a war tax which was collected only from able-bodied young non-Muslim male citizens living in a Muslim country who did not want to volunteer for the defense of the country. That is, no such tax was collected from non-Muslims who volunteered to defend the country. This tax was not collected from women, and neither from immature males nor from disabled or old male citizens. For payment of such taxes, it became incumbent upon the Muslim government to protect the life, property and wealth of its non-Muslim citizens. If for any reason the government failed to protect its citizens, especially during a war, the taxable amount was returned.

It should be pointed out here that the zakaat (2.5% of savings) and ‘ushr (10% of agricultural products) were collected from all Muslims, who owned some wealth (beyond a certain minimum, called nisab). They also paid sadaqah, fitrah and khums. None of these were collected from any non-Muslim. As a matter of fact, the per capita collection from Muslims was several fold that of non-Muslims.

Forced Conversions:

Islam clearly says that there is no compulsion in religion and indeed most Mughal emperors respected that. I am not saying that isolated cases didn't exist but the fact is the overwhelming majority of Muslims in India converted out of choice and this fact has been clearly established by great scholars of Indian Islam like Dr Annemarie Schimmel. Had the Mughals wanted to convert the whole of India to Islam they would have done so. But they didn't.

Tolerance:

It is true that some Mughal emperors showed little tolerance for specific minorities whom they perceived as political threats. It is true that Aurangzeb forbade SHi'as their processions (a measure the Iranian regime would not have disapproved of given that those prcessions go hand in hand with self flagelation with blades).On the other hand...how could Aurangzeb appoint a Hindu as his military commander-in-chief?During Aurangzeb’s long reign of fifty years, many Hindus, notably Jaswant Singh, Raja Rajrup, Kabir Singh, Arghanath Singh, Prem Dev Singh, Dilip Roy, and Rasik Lal Crory, held very high administrative positions. Two of the highest ranked generals in Aurangzeb’s administration, Jaswant Singh and Jaya Singh, were Hindus. Other notable Hindu generals who commanded a garrison of two to five thousand soldiers were Raja Vim Singh of Udaypur, Indra Singh, Achalaji and Arjuji. One wonders if Aurangzeb was hostile to Hindus, why would he position all these Hindus to high positions of authority, especially in the military, who could have mutinied against him and removed him from his throne?

Most Hindus like Akbar over Aurangzeb for his multi-ethnic court where Hindus were favored. Historian Shri Sharma states that while Emperor Akbar had fourteen Hindu Mansabdars (high officials) in his court, Aurangzeb actually had 148 Hindu high officials in his court. But this fact is somewhat less known.

Yes Aurangzeb may have destroyed temples. But how do you explain that a stone inscription in the historic Balaji or Vishnu Temple, located north of Chitrakut Balaghat, still shows that it was commissioned by the Emperor himself? The proof of Aurangzeb’s land grant for famous Hindu religious sites in Kasi, Varanasi can easily be verified from the deed records extant at those sites. If Aurangzeb had the intention of demolishing temples to make way for mosques, there would not have been a single temple standing erect in India. On the contrary, Aurangzeb donated huge estates for use as temple sites and support thereof in Benares, Kashmir and elsewhere. The official documentations for these land grants are still extant.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that Mughals were angels. But you should maybe stop reading Amar Chitra Katha and get some proper academic studies on the Mughal rule. It's way more complex than you and Brikramjit think it is.

Don't forget that the land of your holiest shrine was donated by a Mughal emperor, Mohammad Jalalodimn Akbar.

When Bikramjit talks about ingratitude he should maybe look in the mirror first.

[BuddhaDal]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6244126.stm

[Malwe Da Sher]

Bahadur while in Iran are you doing anything to help children from being killed by the state?

[Morghe Sahar]

BudhaDal and Malwe da Sher you never stop amazing me. You have some of your top shaheeds in your history, sons of Gobind Singh, who were teenagers when they fought in battle and got killed and then you act like crying cheerleaders over the executions of teenagers involved in criminal offenses like murder, rape and drug trafic. You guys need to be consistent with your logic. If teenagers are old enough to do ghor savari and fight in Dal Panth then they are also old enough to decide that murder, rape and drug trafic are crimes and suffer the consequences of their actions. Simple as that. Unless of course you wish to declare rapists, murderers and drug dealers to be innocent victims...

If at 13 you're old enough to fight and die for the Panth

[Morghe Sahar]

the you're old enough to be executed for crimes like murder, rape and drug dealing.

[DTF]

BudhaDal and Malwe da Sher you never stop amazing me. You have some of your top shaheeds in your history, sons of Gobind Singh, who were teenagers when they fought in battle and got killed and then you act like crying cheerleaders over the executions of teenagers involved in criminal offenses like murder, rape and drug trafic. You guys need to be consistent with your logic. If teenagers are old enough to do ghor savari and fight in Dal Panth then they are also old enough to decide that murder, rape and drug trafic are crimes and suffer the consequences of their actions. Simple as that. Unless of course you wish to declare rapists, murderers and drug dealers to be innocent victims...

If at 13 you're old enough to fight and die for the Panth

Show some respect for Dashmesh Pita when addressing them. You once considered yourself to be their dog, and now you can't even show them basic respect.

[tonyhp32]

Morghe,

Iraq has 60 to 70% of Shia so it does matter. Coming from someone whose community makes up 2 % of India's population I am bit surprised at you "majority" argument.

The Shia population comment was to with the comment about Islam not wishing to take over the world. It was nothing to do with the Iraq situation.

Then let them kill each other if they so wish, what does it have to do with America? How would you feel if I came to your house and start "sorting out" your problems. Sovereign state, ever heard that expression?

Equating the blood bath in Iraq with a domestic situation is a bit naive. Even the UN can dispense with the sovereignity of a state if that state has indulged in violations of human rights on all or a section of their population. Kosovo comes to mind.

The Mughals were not National Socialists. That the Mughal rulers, like most Indian rulers, commited atrocities is not something I would deny. But to always focuss on the Mughals as an isolated brutal incident I feel the need to emphacize the fact they were not more cruel than other Indian rulers. I could tell you about Shaiva kings in Southern India publicly executing Jain monks. India didn't need the Mughals to come up with slavery so please spare us the usual "the Mughals were so cruel".

As for discrimination I am sorry but apart from Aurangzeb, the Mughal administration had always employed many non-Muslims.The very fact that Nand Lal Goya was in Bahadur Shah's service nulifies your point. I didn't know the Mughals had an official policy of building brothels...because that's actually haram. So brothels didn't exist in India before the Mughals. Is it just me or don't the Shastras declare deshi musicians to be low castes on equal footing with prostitutes?

I think you shown your extreme naivette here. Muslim conquerors have always had to rely on the adminstrative skills of the people they conquered. In The Middle East after the Arab conquest Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews were used as civil administrators in various posts due to their experience in these fields. The Arabs were after coming from a backward desert society and could never match the adminstrative skills of either the Byzantine or the Persians. The same was the case of the Turks when they invaded India. The initial impulse was loot of the infidels as instructed by the Quran and hadiths. These raids which are similar to the caravan raids Mohammed undertook against the Meccan pagans went on for hundreds of years. You might want to look up the meaning of the words 'Hindu Kush' Later when it came to taking control of certain areas of the country then they needed to have adminstrators from amongst the Hindus. It is not easy to take on an entire subcontinent even with the savagery that Islam exhibits in Jihad with such a large population. Like the Normans in England, the Turks in India also stayed in the walled cities. They launched Jihad attacks against Hindu kingdoms and destroyed Mandirs with impunity. They used Sufi Khankahs as a means of keeping tabs on the rural Hindu population. The literature of that time is replete with mentions of how many pyramids of Hindu skulls so and so Muslim ruler left during his rule and how many Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam.

When Babar invaded he also needed Hindu administrators. Without co-operation from some Hindus any Muslim rule of India would have been a failure. No doubt had Hitler successfully invaded England in 1940 he would have found thousands of quislings amongst the English to do his dirty work. I also have no doubt that if ever Islam takes over Portugal a person such as you would be all too willing and available to help in the administration process, perhaps even helping in the collection of the Jizya from your non-Muslim family members!

It is true that Aurangzeb destroyed some Mandirs, but it's also true that Hindus continued to pay hommage to Sri Ram inside the Babri Masjid as Jesuit reports of the century prove. Can't Indian Muslims also pay hommage to someone many of them believe to have been an Indian pre-Islamic prophet?

So Aurangzeb only destroyed the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and built a Mosque over is because he wanted to give Muslims a chance to pay homage to Ram who in your revisionist view of Islam was a pre-Islamic prophet!

One wonder why you were never hired by the Indian government to explain your touchy feely views to the BJP and perhaps they would never had torn down the Babri mosque?

Yes the Mughals, like many other Indian rulers committed crimes, and some may have been cruel, but they were not Nazis because they didn't follow national socialism. I am just fed up of hearing people use the words "Fascist" and "Nazi" for just anyone they dislike.

As opposed to your use of the word 'Islamophobia' to anyone who doesn't share your view of Islam?

On jizya:

It is true that jizya was lifted during the reign of Akbar and Jahangir and that Aurangzeb later reinstated this. Before I delve into the subject of Aurangzeb’s jizya tax, or taxing the non-Muslims, it is worthwhile to point out that jizya is nothing more than a war tax which was collected only from able-bodied young non-Muslim male citizens living in a Muslim country who did not want to volunteer for the defense of the country. That is, no such tax was collected from non-Muslims who volunteered to defend the country. This tax was not collected from women, and neither from immature males nor from disabled or old male citizens. For payment of such taxes, it became incumbent upon the Muslim government to protect the life, property and wealth of its non-Muslim citizens. If for any reason the government failed to protect its citizens, especially during a war, the taxable amount was returned.

It should be pointed out here that the zakaat (2.5% of savings) and ‘ushr (10% of agricultural products) were collected from all Muslims, who owned some wealth (beyond a certain minimum, called nisab). They also paid sadaqah, fitrah and khums. None of these were collected from any non-Muslim. As a matter of fact, the per capita collection from Muslims was several fold that of non-Muslims.

A case of having your cake and eating it. Don't the Islamic scholars use the excuse of loss of state revenue as the defence that forcible conversion to Islam did not take place in the middle east? Surely if non-Muslim paid much less that Muslims then the incentive is for Muslims to convert out of Islam? You need to research your defence of Jizya better. Far form it being a modest form of taxation, it was a form of humiliation. Weren't the non-Muslims to receive two slaps after having paid the Jizya? Why is it that Feroz Shah Tughlak mades announcements that any Hindu converting would not have to pay Jizya and why did thousands convert due to this announcement?

As for it being a tax in lieu of military service, surely the Dhimmi contract forbids the carrying of arms by non-Muslims so in the Indian context this makes no sense. Only the Rajputs with their kingdoms could supply armed men for military service to the Mughals. As many scholars have stated there has never been a case when the Mughal emperor has ever called upon ALL Muslim able bodied males to take military service even in the case of a national emergency, so where does that explanation of Jizya being in lieu of military service come from? Jizya is a tax on non-Muslims which is a payment from them to continue in their system of 'unbelief'. The military service theory is a revisionism certainly in the Indian context.

Btw here is a quote from your new found homeland about the collection of Jizya from Parsis which shows how far removed the Jizya is from your idealistic interpretation of it-;

Upon the annual collection of the tax the scenes presented at the homes of those who were unable to pay it were most terrible to witness. Unheard of cruelties were practiced in the vain attempt to extort money from those who had none for even their own wants. Some, to save themselves from torture, and as the last resort, gave up their religion and embraced the faith of Mohommed, when they were relieved from the payment of the tax. Others, who would not violate their conscience, abandoned individuals, even when they escaped had always to leave their wives and children behind them (History of the Parsis by Dosabhai Framji Karaka, published by Cosmo Publication, Div. of Genesis Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi).

Forced Conversions:

Islam clearly says that there is no compulsion in religion and indeed most Mughal emperors respected that. I am not saying that isolated cases didn't exist but the fact is the overwhelming majority of Muslims in India converted out of choice and this fact has been clearly established by great scholars of Indian Islam like Dr Annemarie Schimmel. Had the Mughals wanted to convert the whole of India to Islam they would have done so. But they didn't.

Isolated cases! Really you are the master of the understatement! Schimmel's word is a sanitised history of Islam in India. Her way of looking at events can be understood from her remarks about Sikander Lodhi. After remarking on how his advisor had a hard time to prevent him massacring Hindus who had gathered for a festival and writing that Lodhi had destroyed the Krishna temple at Mathura and distributed idols to be used as weights by Muslim butchers..she writes

Yet it was during this time that a greater number of Hindus started to learn Persian!

Wow what a great achievement! Her level of scholarship can be gauged from her statement that Kabir was from Punjab!

As for Aurangzeb, apart from Sarkar in the 1920s not much research has been done on him. Apparently when some scholars wanted to scan the documents of the Bikaner archives for his farmans ordering the destruction of Hindu temples, they were told that no one had asked for them in the last 50 years! History in India is in the hands of those who want to deny the past in order to maintain their hold through the use of secular and leftist ideas. Aurangzeb may have ordered the building on a Mandir, does this mean that we should then overlook the fact that he destroyed dozens of them? What is the background of his commissioning it?

Your attempt to ascribe the destruction of the temples to insurrections or conquest of new areas is also incorrect.

The Lord Cherisher of the faith learnt that in the provinces of Tatta, Multan, and especially at Benaras, the Brahmin misbelievers used to teach their false books in their established schools, and that admirers and students both Hindu and Muslim, used to come from great distances to these misguided men in order to acquire this vile learning. His majesty, eager to establish Islam, issues orders to the governors of all the provinces TO DEMOLISH THE SCHOOLS AND TEMPLES OF THE INFIDELS and with utmost urgency put down the teaching and the public practice of the religion of these misbelievers..

Were not Thatta in Sindh and Banaras in UP part of his Empire?

[BuddhaDal]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oi2iTMcPgoo

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6lFNx3n0MNM

The rapist got lashes, the victim, a 16 year old victim was hung:

Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh (1988 - August 15, 2004) was a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was executed in Iran after being sentenced to death by an Iranian religious judge, Haji Rezai, for allegedly having committed "acts incompatible with chastity": She was repeatedly raped throughout her childhood and is something of a feminist icon for her courage in arguing in court that the perpetrator of rape should be punished, not the victim. She was publicly executed. Under Sharia's law she had no rights as she was over 9 and female. Atefeh's rapist was also convicted of adultary.He received 98 lashes.

Judge Haji Rezai, who was also the local mullah, prosecutor and head of the city administration, personally obtained permission from Iran's Supreme Court to execute her, and put the noose around her neck himself before she was hoisted on a crane jib arm to her death.

Atefeh lost her mother in a car accident. Her father was a drug addict. At the age of 13, a 51 year old former government agent started molesting her. On the night of her wedding to a boy who loved her, she was taken by the authorites and soon after executed without knowledge of her family.

There are at least 81 other children facing execution in Iran. Sign the petition to stop child execution in Iran. Visit: www.stopchildexecutions.com.

Voice Of America ( VOA ) , Persian News Network ( PNN ) : Elham Sataki

Reality.... people in Iran want to live without the religious police breathing down their necks, and hate the theocracy they live in.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQHz0acSrs

[shaheediyan]

Rehabilitation - re-education.... wa'zat!

I pray you're not so unforgiving if your future children are ever caught up in bad company or scenarios which are beyond their control. Children deserve compassion.

On the previous topic, here is some Wiki on slavery with a good list of resources for anyone interested in investigating further:

Late Medieval period : 1200 CE to 1800 CE

Slavery begins to appear in explicit and extensive reference in surviving historical records following the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century. Many chroniclers claim that his campaign of 1024 in which he sacked Ajmer, Nehrwala, Kathiawar, and Somnath was particularly successful in garnering more than 100,000 Hindu slaves for the Muslim general.

The gradual arrival and entrenchment of various Turko-Afghan and Arabic leaders professing Islam took place over nearly 800 years, from the 7th century to the 15th century. During this period, existing sects of Islam (Shias, Sunnis, Ismailis) fought with each other as well as with pre-existing Indian regimes for political and military control of North India. This resulted not only in non-Muslims but also the newly converted Indians, (if considered a heretic Muslim faction) being targets for slaughter and enslavement. The penetration of Islam into the south and far east of the subcontinent appears to be rather slow compared to the rapid collapse of Central Asia, Near East, North Africa and Spain before advancing Muslim forces (roughly half a century compared to 800 years from the first Arab raids in Sindh, 711 to the Battle of Talikota, 1565). This indicates stiff resistance to the progress of Islam with the majority of the population remaining unconverted, and beyond enslavement. The central regions were not conquered until late Sultanate period, and the final penetration into the Deccan Plateau had to wait till the 16th century. Muslim rulers had to compromise with local non-Muslim chiefs, and in each period of Turko-Afghan and Mughal rule, we find significant collaboration between non-Muslim and Muslim elite, especially in regions far away from the centres of Muslim military power.[25]

The minority status of Muslim rulers perhaps led to periodic attempts at coercive measures as a punitive and preemptive terror tactic to keep the majority subject communities under control, with the Delhi Sultanate and its replacement under Babur trying to effectively turn areas under their close proximity and direct military control in India into Dar-ul-Islam (where Islamic law and custom was common). Slavery was an acceptable part of this custom and the enslavement of non-Muslims or kaffirs (non-believers) was specifically mentioned and encouraged numerous times in the core Islamic texts including the Quran, the four principal Hadiths, and supported also by the Sunnah of Muhammad, whose activities as regards enslavement of opponents, dissidents, and the conquered is documented by works such as Sirah Rasul Allah (first known extant biography of Muhammad).[26] The core texts also contain passages that support claims for automatic annulment of marriages of captive women, or their immediate redistribution as "righthand possessions" among the winning army, or sexual enjoyment of these captives in the presence of their husbands or family. In this sense, Islam could be cited by the ruling elite and their retainers itself as justification and recommendations for enslavement of non-Muslims under their military subjugation. Slave markets existed in most major towns in India, especially those where Muslims formed a large minority or majority such as Delhi.

One writer notes that "Mohammad Ghori needed a large number of slaves for his campaigns in India and for administration in and outside India. During his time, Lahore and Delhi rose to be prime centres of slave trade and the Sultan used to purchase slaves in bulk."[27]

Qutb Minar remains one important example of the use of slave labor to erect monuments under Muslim rule. It is located in a small village called Mehrauli in South Delhi. It was built by Qutb-ud-din Aybak of the Slave Dynasty, who took possession of Delhi in 1206. It is one of the first monuments built by a Muslim ruler in India.

[edit] Slavery under Arabic and Turko-Afghan adventurers

Probably the greatest factors contributing to the increased supply of Indian slaves for export to markets in Central Asia in this period were the military conquests and tax revenue policies of the Muslim rulers in the subcontinent. The early Arab invaders of Sindh in the 700's, the armies of the Umayyad commander Muhammad bin Qasim, are reported to have enslaved tens of thousands of Indian prisoners, including both soldiers and civilians.[28][29] According to the Persian historian Firishta, after the Ghaznavid capture of Thanesar (c. 1014), "the army of Islam brought to Ghazna about 200,000 captives, and much wealth, so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, no soldier of the camp being without wealth, or without many slaves", and that, subsequently Sultan Ibrahim’s raid into the Multan area of northwestern India yielded 100,000 captives.

Levi notes that these figures cannot be entirely dismissed as exaggerations since they appear to be supported by the reports of contemporary observers. In the early 11th century Tarikh al-Yamini, the Arab historian Al-Utbi recorded that in 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Peshawar and Waihand, "in the midst of the land of Hindustan", and captured some 100,000 youths.[30][31] Later, following his twelfth expedition into India in 1018-19, Mahmud is reported to have returned to with such a large number of slaves that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each. This unusually low price made, according to Al-Utbi, "merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of (Central Asia), Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery". Elliot and Dowson refers to "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women".[32][33][34] Later, during the Delhi Sultanate period (1206–1555), references to the abundant availability of low-priced Indian slaves abound. Levi attributes this primarily to the vast human resources of India, compared to its neighbours to the north and west (Mughal Indian population being approximately 12 to 20 times that of Turan and Iran at the end of 16th century).[35] Many of these Indian slaves were reserved for use in the subcontinent, but their availability in substantial numbers greatly contributed to their affordability, which likewise increased their demand in international markets.

[edit] Slavery under the Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate

The revenue system of the Delhi Sultanate produced a considerable proportion of the Indian slave population as these rulers, and their subordinate shiqadars, ordered their armies to abduct large numbers of Hindus as a means of extracting revenue.[36][37] While those communities that were loyal to the Sultan and regularly paid their taxes were often excused from this practice, taxes were commonly extracted from other, less loyal groups in the form of slaves. Thus, according to Barani, the Shamsi "slave-king" Balban (r. 1266-87) ordered his shiqadars in Awadh to enslave those peoples resistant to his authority, implying those who refused to supply him with tax revenue.[38] Sultan Alauddin Khilji (r. 1296-1316) is similarly reported to have legalized the enslavement of those who defaulted on their revenue payments.[39] This policy continued during the Mughal era.[40][41][42][43][44] An even greater number of people were enslaved as a part of the efforts of the Delhi Sultans to finance their expansion into new territories.[45] For example, while he himself was still a military slave of the Ghurid Sultan Muizz u-Din, Qutb-ud-din Aybak (r. 1206-10 as the first of the Shamsi slave-kings) invaded Gujarat in 1197 and placed some 20,000 people in bondage. Roughly six years later, he enslaved an additional 50,000 people during his conquest of Kalinjar. Later in the 13th century, Balban's campaign in Ranthambore, reportedly defeated the Hindu army and yielded "captives beyond computation".[46][47] Levi finds reasonable K. S. Lal's assertion that the forcible enslavement of Indians due to military expansion "gained momentum" under the Khilji and Tughluq dynasties, as being supported by available figures.[48][49] Zia uddin Barani suggested that Sultan Alauddin Khilji owned 50,000 slave-boys, in addition to 70,000 construction slaves. Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq is said to have owned 180,000 slaves, roughly 12,000 of whom were skilled artisans.[50][51][52][53][54][55] A significant proportion of slaves owned by the Sultans were likely to have been military slaves and not labourers or domestics. However earlier traditions of maintaining a mixed army comprising both Hindu soldiers and Turkic slave-soldiers (ghilman, mamluks) from Central Asia, were disrupted by the rise of the Mongol Empire reducing the inflow of mamluks. This intensified demands by the Delhi Sultans on local Indian populations to satisfy their need for both military and domestic slaves. The Khaljis even sold thousands of captured Mongol soldiers within India.[56][57][58]

[edit] Export of Indian slaves to international markets

Alongside Buddhist Oirats, Christian Russians, non-Sunni Afghans, and the predominantly Shia Iranians, Hindu slaves were an important component of the highly active slave markets of medieval and early modern Central Asia. The all pervasive nature of slavery in this period in Central Asia is shown by the 17th century records of one Juybari Sheikh, a Naqshbandi Sufi leader, (the Sufis appear to have a representation in standard modern historical texts in India, as a very liberal, humane, tolerant and integrative interpretation of Islam) owning over 500 slaves, forty of whom were specialists in pottery production while the others were engaged in agricultural work.[59] High demand for skilled slaves, and India's larger and more advanced textile industry and agricultural production, architecture, demonstrated to its neighbours that skilled labour was abundant in the subcontinent leading to enslavement and export of large number of skilled labour, following successful invasions.[60] After sacking Delhi, Timur enslaved several thousand skilled artisans, presenting many of these slaves to his subordinate elite, although reserving the masons for use in the construction of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand.[61] Young female slaves fetched higher market price than skilled construction slaves, sometimes by 150%.[62] Because of their identification in Muslim societies as kafirs, "non-believers", Hindus were especially in demand in the early modern Central Asian slave markets, with Indian Hindu slaves specially mentioned in waqafnamas, and archives and even being owned by Turkic pastoral groups.[63]

[edit] Slavery under the first five Mughal Badshahs

The Mughals started their slave trade by preying on fellow Muslims in their bid for expansion into India through the Afghan provinces in North-West India. An Afghan chieftain belonging to the Kakar clan pleaded to Sultan Taj Khan Karrani: “At our backs are Mughal armies that capture and enslave members of the Afghan race. You also are an Afghan. Therefore it is necessary that we come under your protection.†[64]

Most extensive records of the Mughal Badsha’s interest in the slave trade is available for Shah Jahan (1630 C.E. - 1658 C.E.). The fact of Shah Jahan being the son of a Hindu princess, Jagat Gosain (a wife of Jehangir), and the grandson of another Hindu Rajput princess, Jodhabai (an influential wife of Akbar and mother of Jehangir), illustrates that the Mughals pursued slave trade and enslavement of Hindus as a matter of state policy without any consideration to kinship and other consideration. Shah Jahan's style of organizing enslavement campaigns is illustrative of the Mughal strategy to rally religious and political forces behind what essentially was a move for acquisition of valuable human and biological resources. For example, in 1632 Shah Jahan ordered all recently constructed or partially-constructed Hindu temples, Christian churches obliterated. Seventy-six temples were destroyed in Benares, and Christian churches at Agra and Lahore were demolished and ten thousand inhabitants were executed by being "blown up with powder, drowned in water or burnt by fire". As a result of this campaign, four thousand were taken captive to Agra where they were tortured to try to convert them to Islam. Only a few apostatised; the remainder were trampled to death by elephants, except for the younger women who went to harems.[65][66]

Abd Allah Khan Firuz Jang, an Uzbek noble at the Mughal court during the 1620s and 1630s, was appointed to the position of governor of the regions of Kalpi and Kher and, in the process of subjugating the local rebels, ``beheaded the leaders and enslaved their women, daughters and children, who were more than 2 lacks [200,000] in number.[67]

When Shah Shuja was appointed as governor of Kabul he carried on a ruthless war in the Hindu territory beyond Indus. Most of the women burnt themselves to death to save their honour. Those captured were distributed among Muslim Mansabdars.[68][69] Under Shah Jahan, peasants were compelled to sell their women and children to meet their revenue requirements. The peasants were carried off to various markets and fairs to be sold with their poor unhappy wives carrying their small children crying and lamenting. According to Qaznivi, Shah Jahan had decreed they should be sold to Muslim lords.[70] The Augustinian missionary Fray Sebastiao Manrique, who was in Bengal in 1629–30 and again in 1640, remarked on the ability of the shiqdār—a Mughal officer responsible for executive matters in the pargana, the smallest territorial unit of imperial administration to collect the revenue demand, by force if necessary, and even to enslave peasants should they default in their payments.[71]

A survey of a relatively small, restricted sample of seventy-seven letters regarding the manumission or sale of slaves in the Majmua-i-wathaiq reveals that slaves of Indian origin (Hindi al-asal) accounted for over 58 per cent of those whose region of origin is mentioned. Khutut-i-mamhura bemahr-i qadat-i Bukhara, a smaller collection of judicial documents from early eighteenth-century Bukhara includes several letters of manumission with over half of these letters referring to slaves ``of Indian origin. Even in the model of a legal letter of manumission written by the chief qazi for his assistant to follow, the example used is of a slave ``of Indian origin. [72]

It is to be noted that sections of Indian society, such as the Gakhars, actively participated and profited from the slave trade involving Indians. This is consistent with evidences of collaboration by sections of the Hindu elite and merchant communities with Turko-Afghan Mughal military adventurers and rulers.

Levi is of the opinion the supply of Indian slaves for export dwindled as the Mughal Empire weakened, decentralized and its military expansion came to an end. The degeneration of the Mughal empire coincided with the increasing general exclusion of slaves from the tax-revenue systemsof the successor states and the growing commercial and cultural separation of India and its neighbours to the north and west under the British Raj.

^ = starts from 25

^ "The sultans and their Hindu subjects" in Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate,

^ Gustav Weil, Das Leben Mohammeds nach Mohammed ibn Ishak, bearbeitet von Abd Malik ibn Hischam (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler'schen Buchh. 1864), 2 volumes.; Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad. Apostle of Allah (London: The Folio Society 1964), 177 pages. A translation by Edward Rehatsek (Hungary 1819 - Mumbai [bombay] 1891); Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ishaq's "Sirat Rasul Allah", with introduction [xiii-xliii] and notes (Oxford University 1955), xlvii + 815 pages

^ www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020720/windows/slice.htm

^ Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, tr., The Chachnamah, an Ancient History of Sind, 1900, reprint (Delhi, 1979), pp. 154, 163. This thirteenth-century source claims to be a Persian translation of an (apparently lost) eighth century Arabic manuscript detailing the Islamic conquests of Sind.

^ Andre Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, Seventh to Eleventh Centuries (Leiden,1990)

^ Muhammad Qasim Firishta, Tarikh-i-Firishta (Lucknow, 1864).

^ Andre Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th-13th Centuries (Leiden, 1997)

^ Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Utbi, Tarikh al-Yamini (Delhi, 1847), tr. by James Reynolds, The Kitab-i-Yamini (London, 1858)

^ Wink, Al-Hind, II

^ Henry M. Elliot and John Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 vols (London, 1867-77), II

^ Dale, Indian Merchants

^ Raychaudhuri and Habib, The Cambridge Economic History of India, I

^ Kidwai, "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics"

^ Zia ud-Din Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, edited by Saiyid Ahmad Khan, W. N. Lees and Kabiruddin, Bib. Ind. (Calcutta, 1860-62),

^ Zia ud-Din Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, edited by Saiyid Ahmad Khan, W. N. Lees and Kabiruddin, Bib. Ind. (Calcutta, 1860-62),

^ Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India 1653-1708, 4 vols, translated by W. Irvine (London,1907-8), II

^ Sebastian Manrique, Travels of Frey Sebastian Manrique, 2 vols, translated by Eckford Luard (London, 1906), II

^ Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656–1668, revised by Vincent Smith (Oxford, 1934)

^ Kidwai, "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics",

^ Lal, Slavery in India

^ The sultans and their Hindu subjects' in Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate,

^ Minhaj us-Siraj Jurjani, Tabaqat-i Nasiri, translated by H. G. Raverty, 2 vols (New Delhi, 1970), I,

^ Lal, Slavery in India

^ Levi

^ Lal, Slavery in India

^ Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

^ Shams-i Siraj Tarikh-i-Fruz Shahi, Bib. Ind. (Calcutta, 1890)

^ Kidwai, "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics",

^ Lal, Slavery in India

^ Vincent A. Smith, Oxford History of India, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1961),

^ Raychaudhuri and Habib, The Cambridge Economic History of India, I

^ Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate,

^ Kidwai, "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics"

^ Barani, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

^ Muhammad Talib, Malab al-alibn, Oriental Studies Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan , Ms. No. 80, fols 117a-18a.

^ Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge, 1999), See also Indian textile industry in Scott Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900 (Leiden, 2002)

^ Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989); Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds, The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 1, (Hyderabad, 1984); Surendra Gopal, `Indians in Central Asia, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', Presidential Address, Medieval India Section of the Indian History Congress, New Delhi, February 1992 (Patna, 1992)

^ E. K. Meyendorff, Puteshestvie iz Orenburga v Bukharu, Russian translation by N. A. Khalin (Moscow, 1975),

^ Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate

^ Khwajah Ni‘mat Allah, Tārīkh-i-Khān Jahānī wa makhzan-i-Afghānī, ed. S. M. Imam al-Din (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan Publication No. 4, 1960), 1: 411.

^ Badshah Nama, Qazinivi

^ Badshah Nama, Abdul Hamid Lahori

^ Francisco Pelsaert, A Dutch Chronicle of Mughal India, translated and edited by Brij Narain and Sri Ram Sharma (Lahore, 1978), p. 48.

^ Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India 1653-1708, 4 vols, translated by W. Irvine (London,1907-8), II

^ Sebastian Manrique, Travels of Frey Sebastian Manrique, 2 vols, translated by Eckford Luard (London, 1906), II,

^ Badshah Nama, Qazinivi

^ Sebastian Manrique, Travels of Frey Sebastian Manrique, 2 vols, translated by Eckford Luard (London, 1906), II,

^ Said Ali ibn Said Muhammad Bukhari, Khutut-i mamhura bemahr-i qadaah-i Bukhara, OSIASRU, Ms. No. 8586/II. For bibliographic information, see Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii Nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, 11 vols (Tashkent, 1952-85).

[Mithar]

Here's an example from closer home. In 1971 Bangladesh was liberated by the Indian army. Lakhs of Bengalis were murdered by their fellow Muslim Pakistanis. India invaded to liberate them and had no territorial ambitions to take over any part of Bangladesh and spent millions of dollars to liberate them. Do you think that any of these Bangladeshis are grateful? Nope, in 1985 they had the nerve to ban the entry of Sikhs into that country, the same Sikhs who had sacrificed to save them from the Pakistani army. Now Bangladesh is a Jihadi haven and probably more dangerous than Pakistan.

Tony is right about this point. The fact that India with it's Sikh dominated army literally liberated Bangladesh without expecting anything in return, you would expect them to be grateful to India. Instead they are now killing Indian soldiers on the border and persecuting their minorities especially the Hindu minority.

It seems they would have been better off living under Pakistani rule.

[Morghe Sahar]

Guru Gobind Singh section 13 of Bachitar Natak:

"The successors of both Baba (Nanak) and Babur were created by God Himself. Recognise the former as the spiritual king and the later as the temporal king. Those who do not deliver the Guru's money, the successors of Babur shall seize and take away from them forcibly. They will be greatly punished and their houses will be plundered."

Seems the 10th master didn't have a problem with Mughal rule after all...

to Budhadal: the Atefeh is being reviewed for irregularities in the decision. And no the majority of the population is with the regime.

to Shaheediyan: no need to quote all these sources I know fully well that slavery was practiced in Islamic lands as it was in India before Islam as well.

to Tony: In Iran Christians and Jews do military service like all other citizens and don't pay jizya and their families proudly show the pictures of their martyrs who died defending Iran against Iraq and the West.

[Matheen]

Guru Gobind Singh section 13 of Bachitar Natak:

"The successors of both Baba (Nanak) and Babur were created by God Himself. Recognise the former as the spiritual king and the later as the temporal king. Those who do not deliver the Guru's money, the successors of Babur shall seize and take away from them forcibly. They will be greatly punished and their houses will be plundered."

Yaar, did you translate that yourself? That's not what it means at all.