2. Another false assumption is that Muslim rule in the medieval period extending to several centuries was foreign rule and that the Sultans kept India enslaved for centuries. The truth is that as and when the foreign Muslim invaders chose to settle down in India as their adopted home, rather than depart, laden with gold and women, for the home of their origin, hardly and difference remained between the Sultans and the Kshatriya Rajas of the Hindu period in their style of functioning and role in the then monarchical and extremely hierarchical Indian society. The monarch, be he Hindu or Muslim, was the legitimate and almost exclusive centre of power and decision making, and he brooked no rivals. The apparatus of the nobility, the religious scholars or priests performed advisory functions only and did not exercise any effective power. The idea that Muslim conquest had turned India into a land of Islam (dar ul Islam) under the jurisdiction of the Khalifa was a pure political fiction and a paper position. The cardinal regulative principle of the Muslim rulers was non-interference in the purely religious matters of Hindus and Muslims alike. The advent of the so called Muslim rule meant, in reality, merely a shift in the personal religious allegiance of the sovereigns without any corresponding structural change in society, part from power relations among the upper Hindu classes. In short, Hindu and Muslim sovereigns alike fought over territory, made and broke alliances cutting across religious lines, caused loss of life and property, made prisoners of war, occasionally maltreated the vanquished foe and their women, or desecrated places of worship. ‘Sutee’ and ‘jauhar’ were practiced as much before as after the advent of Muslims in medieval India. The right approach, therefore, is not to make sweeping charges of temple destruction or misdeeds against women, but to examine specific instances of the destruction of temples or shrines, in the context of the full facts, as far as they could reliably be ascertained after the lapse of several centuries. It must be kept in mind that the Hindu Pantheon and its centers have waxed and waned in importance during the passage of the centuries, and they have been subject to the ravages of time quite apart from deliberate destruction by any human agency. We must also determine the significance of the fact that Muslim rulers (including Aurangzeb himself) endowed several Hindu temples in different parts of the country.

3. Another false assumption is that the Hindu rulers or populace waged protracted bloody wars against the hated invaders in the name of religion or race. In fact, the fortunes of wars (that were fought with great personal valor on both sides) were rather quickly decided because of the superior military tactics of the Muslims. The Muslim rulers also achieved moral legitimacy in a surprisingly short time. This happened because of two main reasons. First, Hindu religious thought and ethos are conceptually permissive though rigid in regard to caste distinctions and social observances. The personal religious convictions of the Muslim rulers, thus, did not stand in the way of their gaining legitimacy in the eyes of the common Hindus, so long as the Sultans did not disturb the Hindu social system. Second, the then enlightened Hindu leaders soon came to appreciate that the Muslims, at that point of time, had become the political and cultural leaders at the world stage. The Hindu populace, specially the deprived and the depressed among them, gravitated to the simple ethical monotheism of Islam, its message of social equality and the promise of greater vertical mobility. It is significant that their descendants still constitute the overwhelming majority (approx. 90%) of the Muslim population in the Indian subcontinent. The view that fanatical Sultans or mullahs had spread Islam in India at the point of the sword was a myth that had gained currency years back in some misinformed Western quarters. But the propounders of this myth have themselves repudiated it in the light of objective history. Some Indian intellectual and educated circles are now misinterpreting the forward looking historical vision of the enlightened and perceptive Hindu leadership in medieval India as a betrayal of Hindu ideals and values. They attribute the liberal Hindu response to cowardice or internal disunity or both. This assumption is bound to produce a sense of guilt and inferiority in the Hindu psyche and to make Hindus hostile and defensively aggressive against the present generation of Muslims.

4. Another false assumption is that what was prescribed by a section of the Ulema in the medieval period must have actually been the case. Some Ulema and others, for example, had interpreted some Quranic texts to the effect that the Islamic ethos prohibited close and friendly relations between Muslims and the unbelievers. Eliot and Dowson, in their English version of contemporary Persian writings, have gone out of their way to point out such views. Unfortunately, some eminent Indian scholars, (including Jadunath Sarkar and Majumdar) have fallen into the trap of drawing factual conclusions form prescriptive writings of a section of the Ulema. The fact of the matter is that the Sultans and the Muslim nobles, with only a few exceptions, followed their own lights and patronized and befriended able and loyal persons, Hindu and Muslim alike. The Sufi saints, also with a few known exceptions, preached and practiced universal love and brotherhood. The impact of Sufis on both Hindus and Muslims was far stronger that that of the Ulema.