Comparisons are odious. They are more so when done with motives or intentions that are not so honourable. Drawing parallels from history comes in handy for various good and bad reasons.
They serve purposes either way. However, as “those who forget history are condemned to live by it”, there is advantage in taking positive lessons from history. But the problem is, we always try to interpret and narrate history as it suits us, resulting in misinterpretations, falsehood and calculated distortions. The pitfall arises because we externalise our own present experiences by projecting it in the past according to our predilections and prejudices. An attempt is therefore made here, not to rewrite history, not to provide alibi for various injustices of the past, but to flag one issue, namely looking at the past with a detached perspective.
The past social formations were not free from conflicts or strife. On the contrary, the maxim, ‘might is right’ was more prevalent. Power literally flowed from the sword. There used be constant violent struggle for power among the shatraps and nobles that made life miserable for the common populace. Then there were adventurers and fortune seekers who wrought havoc wherever they went. But the point that is sought to be made here is that the sectarian and communal divide was not so universal and wide spread as in modern times. The conflict was mainly limited to military campaigns against adversaries, court intrigues and fratricidal wars among clansmen seeking the royal throne, and less to do with the common populace. It is this kind of framework that eludes our understanding and evaluation of the past.
The formal history writing that began under the British patronage, by singing eulogies for their ‘civilising mission’ and ‘white man’s burden’, tried to offer justification for the forced seizure of the country through deceit and war. That necessarily also meant writing disparagingly about every sphere of Indian past, and demonising the bygone era, making the contrast look much more glaring. Unfortunately, the same methodology in history writing continued to be followed by many Indian scholars of subsequent generations who took it upon themselves to twist the historical analyses further to align it with their respective predispositions. This projection of the modern-day consciousness (communalism) into the past was useful to posit particular political stance and gather support for the cause one was espousing. This helped in promoting and facilitating both types of communalism in colonial India.
Fact is that there was never any major communal conflagration in the pre-British India. Exceptions apart, the Turko-Afghan and Mughal rulers realised the impossibility of ruling the country without the support of the Indian ruling classes who were not their co-religionists. This trend became visible in the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire as the ruling nobility had a wide ethnic spread and was drawn from various clans from Central Asia and the Indian ruling classes. This was similarly followed in the Bahmani kingdom, or later the southern kingdoms of Mysore, Hyderabad etc. None of these can be called theological rules. They were neither claimed to be Islamic regimes.
The monarchy in medieval India was essentially militarist which gradually learnt the statecraft — examples, theory of Kingship of Balban, Price Control Mechanism and huge standing army of Alauddin Khilji, shifting of capital and other measures of Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, administrative reforms of Sher Shah, Sulh-e-kul, mansabdari system of Akbar and several other things. Nowhere the historical records throw any evidence of medieval kings propagating any particular religion at the level of the state despite the nobility being predominantly Turko-Afghan and Mughal. On the other hand, there was a distinct non-Islamic flavour to the court etiquettes — non-Arabic in origin that was abhorrent to the more fundamentalist fringe — a deeply Persian influence. Even the sources of royal revenue were declared by some medieval religious scholars to be un-Islamic.
We had another vibrant intellectual strand that was very catholic in its approach — the eclectic Sufi movement — which appealed to the masses irrespective of their religious beliefs and captured their imagination, and promoted understanding and tolerance for each other. Their discourses and narration were free from dogma and laid emphasis on simplicity, charity, devotion and piety. The rich and the poor got equal treatment at these khanqahs of Sufi saints. The teachings of Nizamuddin Aulia and the lyrics of Amir Khusro had huge mass appeal during their lifetime itself.
Two more points need special mention here: first, all these central Asian, Turkish and Afghan soldiers of fortune who occupied the throne of Delhi cumulatively for over 600 years adopted this land as their home, were born, lived and died here, unlike from Metcalfe and Clive to Dalhousie and lord Mountbatten. Secondly, from 1707 when Aurangzeb died, to 1857 when the last Mughal was deposed, their rule had increasingly reduced in size and stature, practically confined to the Red Fort, but the government was still run in his name, and more significantly, despite there being many king-makers, none of the successors to the throne during this long period of 150 years was anybody but a Mughal. That was the conclusive social and political sanction. The march of sepoys from Meerut to Delhi and declaration of Bahadur Shah Zafar as their undisputed leader was the ultimate pointer in that direction.