A saga of banditry and loot in India’s Musalman rule

History often uses exaggeration and hyperbole to tell a tale. We don’t really know history. We just know the version that survived. The version that someone allowed to survive. Dr Shadab Ahmed’s forthcoming book “The Despicable Musalman”, slated to release this month, boldly debunks the tours de force of the Islamic plunderers and thieves, who after their megalomaniac plundering, banditry, ransacking, rapine, bloodshed and militancy, settled into the heart of Hindustan to establish the Delhi Sultanate, Provincial Sultanates and the Timurid Ghenghsid Mughal Empire.

“The Despicable Musalman” is the record of the collision between two races, the Turks and the Hindus. These races were the representatives of two disparate creeds - Islam and Brahmanism. In the tenth and eleventh centuries of the contemporary Christian era, the Turks invaded India from the North-West, overcame the Hindu martial soldiery, conquered the greater part of Hindustan and pushed southwards into the Deccan and Peninsular India. They converted millions of Hindus to their own faith, but neither could they extirpate the core Hindu element of Brahmanism nor break up the Sanatana Dharmas varna and jati dominated caste system. The successive Musalman rulers of India - Sultans, Kaisars, Khans, Shahinshahs, Jahanpanahs and Alampanahs - often inquisitively yielded to the charm of Hinduism. Some espoused so near to Hinduism that they all but lost their religion, others burgeoned so intolerantly to Hinduism that they all but lost their sultanates and empires.

Dr Ahmed in this book actuates and punctuates the accounts of the notable Occidental and Oriental authors and historians of Islam, East India Company’s and British Raj’s historiansand linguists who devoted their life to comprehend and decipher the explosive rise of Islam and the proliferation of the Musalman Brotherhood, the court poets, philosophers, attendants and companions of the Indo-Persian-Turkish royal courts, emirates and kingdoms from the banks of the Jaxartes River to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the observations of foreign travellers ranging from the Maghrebis, Berber Arabs to the Jesuit missionaries and Portuguese Admirals. The passages taken from Turkish, Persian and Arabic are translated/transliterated into vernacular English which will help the readers understand why the explosive rise of Islam as a neo-tribal religion from the Arabian deserts reached cultic proportions and displaced established religious ideologies and philosophies in Arabian Peninsula, Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Transoxiana, Iberian Peninsula, Hispania, Africa and Europe.

Dr Ahmed’s book critically examines what led to the rise of Islam in the Arabian subcontinent and how the “Warriors of Faith” were schooled for the conquest of Indian subcontinent, in addition to analysing why no centralised effort was made by the Indian Raos, Ranas, Rajas, Maharajas and Maharajadhirajas to unitedly expel the invaders and plunders, leading to the establishment of a permanent Turko-Afghan Sultanate at Delhi, the heart of Hindustan. This book takes on various megalomaniac and queer personalities from the Indo-Persian Sultanates and Central Asian Empires, expounding their vicissitudes and vacillations which shaped up most of the medieval policies of India, some of which continues hitherto. This book trailblazes several important military and civil moments along with divine metaphysical prognostications which oscillated and crystallized empires and dynasties in India, right until the advent of the French, Portuguese, Italians, Levant Company, English East India Company and the British Raj.

Noteworthy mention must be made for the condensed biographies of the prominent Musalman and Pagan despots, autocrats, monarchs and sovereigns, which Dr Ahmed has brilliantly put forth utilizing authoritative sources from the same time period. Overall, this book succulently covers the entire period of the Musalman invasion and rule in India, substantially in a chronological manner which will enable the reader to understand the politico-cultural and social context of that period.