Around 1920 Aligarh historian Mohammed Habib launched a grand project to rewrite the history of the Indian religious conflict. The main points of his version of history are the following.Prof. Habib's specialization was the history of the Delhi Sultanate. Therefore he did write about what Elst sees only as "Indian religious conflict". But this was not part of a larger "grand project". From the prefaces to his essay on Mahmud of Ghazni, it is also clear that Prof. Habib meant mainly to criticise the image of Mahmud as a religious hero among certain Muslims, and not to defend him in any way: "There has recently grown up a tendency among some Musalmans of India to adore Mahmud as a saint, and to such a scientific evaluation of his work and his policy will appear very painful. There is only one thing I need say in my defence. Islam as a creed stands by the principles of the Quran and the `Life' of the Apostle. If Sultan Mahmud and his followers strayed from the `straight path' -- so much the worse for them. We want no idols." His first critics, therefore, were the self-same Muslims: "The book was hailed by a storm of criticism in the Urdu press. But as this criticism -- vindictive, bitter, hostile -- was based on a complete ignorance of the originals, I took no notice of it. I reprint the book as it was written."
Firstly, it was not all that serious. One cannot fail to notice that the Islamic chroniclers (including some rulers who wrote their own chronicles, like Teimur and Babar) have described the slaughter of Hindus, the abduction of their women and children, and the destruction of their places of worship most gleefully. But, according to Habib, these were merely exaggerations by court poets out to please their patrons. One wonders what it says about Islamic rulers that they felt flattered by the bloody details which the Muslims chroniclers of Hindu persecutions have left us. At any rate, Habib has never managed to underpin this convenient hypothesis with a single fact.Prof. Habib made no such claim. Again, it is best to quote him directly: "No honest historian should seek to hide, and no Musalman acquainted with his faith will try to justify, the wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army. Contemporary as well as later historians do not attempt to veil the nafarious acts but relate them with pride." He does say that much of what was written about Mahmud, was written hundreds of years after the fact, by a group seeking to legitimize itself by first canonizing Mahmud and then using him as a prior example setter.
Secondly, that percentage of atrocities on Hindus which Habib was prepared to admit as historical, is not to be attributed to the impact of Islam, but to other factors. Sometimes Islam was used as a justification post factum, but this was deceptive. In reality economic motives were at work. The Hindus amassed all their wealth in temples and therefore Muslim armies plundered these temples.Prof. Habib says this for the example of Mahmud of Ghazni. If he has made a more general claim to this effect, I have not been able to find it in his Collected Works. Which brings up the matter of Elst's method - one should note the lack of direct quotation or reference.
Thirdly, according to Habib there was also a racial factor: these Muslims were mostly Turks, savage riders from the steppes who would need several centuries before getting civilized by the wholesome influence of Islam. Their inborn barbarity cannot be attributed to the doctrines of Islam.Prof. Habib did talk about relatively "uncivilized" Turks, but this was in the context of their conflicts with the Persians. In his descriptions, these are not the Turks who made it to India - and further the first Muslim invaders of India were not Turks in any case. Phrases such as "inborn barbarity" seem quite foreign to Prof. Habib's world-view and writing style and are more likely a projection by Elst of his own weird classifications of peoples. Prof. Habib's argument is quite the opposite of what is presented here. He did not describe barbarians who were not yet soothed by Islam - but a sophisticated ruling class that perverted the ideals of Islam to its own ends.
Finally, the violence of the Islamic warriors was of minor importance in the establishment of Islam in India. What happened was not so much a conquest, but a shift in public opinion: when the urban working-class heard of Islam and realized it now had a choice between Hindu law (smrti) and Muslim law (shariat), it chose the latter.Prof. Habib did believe that the sword failed to win any significant number of converts to Islam. In his view, the sword-wielders were only out for gain in this world and were not interested in conversions. Nor does he believe they would have succeeded had they tried. He gives credit instead to the Sufis and such preachers who spread a more egalitarian version of Islam through the country.
Mohammed Habib's excise in history-rewriting cannot stand the test of historical criticism on any score. We can demonstrate this with the example of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi (997-1030), already mentioned, who carried out a number of devastating raids in Sindh, Gujrat and Punjab. This Ghaznavi was a Turk, certainly, but in many respects he was not a barbarian: he patronized arts and literature (including the great Persian poet Firdausi, who would end up in trouble because his patron suspected him of apostasy, and the Persian but Arabic-writing historian Albiruni) and was a fine calligraphist himself. The undeniable barbarity of his anti-Hindu campaigns cannot be attributed to his ethnic stock.Prof. Habib does not attribute Mahmud's behaviour to his being a Turk "barbarian", but (to the extent that background can be blamed) to the spirit of the `Persian Renaissance' and the subsequent submission of the Islamic ideal to the whims and desires of the rulers. To say Mahmud patronised Alberuni is a bit of a stretch - for Alberuni was a captive from one of Mahmud's western campaigns and, while he travelled in Mahmud's train, he enjoyed no special privileges. (his bitterness towards Mahmud is quite explicit in his Kitab-al-Hind.)
His massacres and acts of destruction were merely a replay of what the Arab Mohammed bin Qasim had wrought in Sindh in 712-15. He didn't care for material gain: he left rich mosques untouched, but poor Hindu temples met the same fate at his hands as the richer temples. He turned down a Hindu offer to give back a famous idol in exchange for a huge ransom: "I prefer to appear on Judgement Day as an idol-breaker rather than an idol-seller." The one explanation that covers all the relevant facts, is that he was driven to his barbarous acts by his ideological allegiance to Islam.Prof. Habib points to many significant differences between Mohammed Qasim and Mahmud. The former was interested in setting up a fair government and in obtaining the consent and approval of the local population. He dealt harshly with opposing soldiers but left the civil population alone.
It is not clear why Elst refers to mosques being left untouched. Mosques contain no riches - so this would be entirely in consonance with Prof. Habib's view of Mahmud as a grand looter. Further, there could not have been many mosques at this time in India, let alone "rich" ones. Perhaps he is referring to Mahmud's western campaigns. Prof. Habib's thesis is that Mahmud's desire was to expand his empire to the west, and the raids in the east were to provide finance as well as the mantle of a religious warrior. It is quite consistent with this that he would be more destructive in the east than the west.
The story of the ransom is likely a latter day fabrication by those seeking to enhance Mahmud's status as a religious hero - it makes little sense for Mahmud to be bargaining with those he has just utterly defeated. Further, there are accounts of other occasions when Mahmud left a town alone on receiving a ransom.
There is no record of his being welcomed by urban artisans as a liberator from the oppressive Hindu social system. On the contrary, his companion Albiruni testifies how all the Hindus had an inveterate aversion for all Muslims.No such claim is made for Mahmud by Prof. Habib. Let us quote him again: "It was inevitable that the Hindus should consider Islam a deviation from the truth when its followers deviated so deplorably from the path of rectitude and justice. A people is not conciliated by being robbed of all that 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 of its victorious method for reforming the morals of a prosperous but erratic world . . . the policy of Mahmud secured the rejection of Islam without a hearing. "
The contention that Hindus stored their riches in temples is completely plucked out of thin air (though some of the richer temples contained golden statues, which were temple property): it is one among many ad hoc hypotheses which make Habib's theory a methodologically indefensible construction. In fact, Habib is proclaining a grand conspiracy theory: all the hundreds of Islamic authors who declared unanimously that what they reported was a war of Islam against Infidelity, would all have co-ordinated one single fake scenario to deceive us.Even in present times, temples are recipients of considerable donations. Certainly, the writers of the time describe the temples as sources of immense wealth. Prof. Habib gives the following quote about Mahmud's sacking of Somnath:`Not a hundredth part of the gold and precious stones he obtained from Somnath were to be found in the treasury of any king of Hindustan.'
This is not to say that the entire report which the Muslim chroniclers have left us, should be accepted at face value. For instance, writers like Ghaznavi's contemporary Utbi give the impression that the raids on, and ultimate conquest of Hindustan were a walk-over. Closer study of all the source material shows that the Muslim armies had a very tough time in India. From Muslim chronicles one only gets a faint glimpse of the intensity with which the Hindus kept on offering resistance, and of the precariousness of the Muslim grip on Hindistan through the Muslim period. The Muslim chroniclers have not been caught in the act of lying very often, but some of them distort the proportions of victory and defeat a bit. This is quite common among partisan historians everywhere, and a modern historian knows how to take such minor distortions into account.This is not news. Prof. Habib gives many occasions where Mahmud had a close escape or a narrow victory (including the siege of Somnath). As for Utbi, he was Mahmud's secretary, so his behaviour is to be expected. Even so, he could hardly have given the impression that the conquest of Hindustan was a walkover as this conquest had not taken place in his time. One wonders, though, at Elst's claim of the superior judgement of modern historians in taking "minor distortions into account". He gives no methodology for doing this. Nor has he shown any evidence of it in these writings.
The unanimous and entirely coherent testimony that the wars in Hindustan were religious wars of Muslims against Kafirs is a different matter altogether: denying this testimony is not a matter of small adjustments, but of replacing the well-attested historical facts with their diametrical opposite.
Habib tried to absolve the ideology (Islam) of the undeniable facts of persecution and massacre of the Pagans by blaming individuals (the Muslims). The sources however point to the opposite state of affairs: Muslim fanatics were merely faithful executors of Quranic injunctions. Not the Muslims are guilty, but Islam.On the contrary, Prof. Habib drew a careful distinction between the original Islamic ideal, and the corrupted version adopted by the Muslim invaders and ruling classes in India. He spared no effort in taking the latter to task, while espousing the former as a worthy ideal.
Elst's distinction: "Not the Muslims are guilty, but Islam", is a perplexing one. What does this mean in practice? Is the religion of Islam to be tried and convicted but its followers left in peace? It is clear this cannot be. His distinction therefore is mere sophistry.
To summarise, it is clear that Elst's case against Prof. Habib rests mainly on a wholesale fabrication of his views and arguments - these are distorted till they become less feasible, and then attacked using rather questionable "facts". Why does Elst need to take recourse to such tactics? It would suggest an attempt to hide the weaknesses and gaps in his own arguments, by shifting attention to the ones he has constructed in his opponent's.
