In the Mughal Empire, there was no systematic attempt to force Islam onto non-Muslims. Religious difference was seen as a fact of life. And far from trying to suppress local religious practices or intervening to shape religion, the Mughals established a system of legal pluralism.
This meant that the Shari’a, Islamic law, functioned as common law, but cases involving non-Muslims were usually decided by councils based on local custom. And many Hindus, particularly women, frequented Islamic courts. These courts acknowledged religious differences but did not exclude Hindus from using them.
Above all, the Mughals were concerned with maintaining the Empire’s social order. What they wanted was loyalty, so they targeted any religious group that seemed to threaten imperial authority.
Consider Sikhism. It was tolerated by the Mughals until the Sikhs expressed political ambitions that seemed to threaten the Emperor’s authority. The Emperor Jahangir had Guru Arjan arrested and brutally tortured to death in 1606.
Another example is a millenial Shi’a movement in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, whose leader claimed he was Imam Mahdi, the messiah for the end times. The movement was condemned as a threat to public order and was forced out of the city.
Rather than representing Mughal religious fanaticism, these examples were about order and power, which the Empire prioritised.
There were multiple bases for Mughal tolerance. It was practical because India was so diverse, but it was also deemed compatible with the Islamic vision of conquest. The first caliph of Islam, Abu Bakr, had commanded his generals to give conquered peoples ‘assurances and to let them live according to their laws’. In India, Hanafi jurists (the Hanafi school of jurisprudence was dominant in Indian Islam) had long ago ruled that the Qur’anic category of ‘People of the Book’ included Hindus.
There was also a complex interaction between Islam and Hinduism in India. The shrines of Sufi saints were regularly visited by Hindus as well as Muslims, while in Kerala the hilltop shrine to the Hindu Lord Ayyappa was accompanied by a shrine to his Muslim friend, Vavar Swami. Some of the syncretism that emerged, of course, went beyond the boundaries of Islamic orthodoxy.
At the elite level, Muslims were deeply curious about Hinduism. The Mughal prince Dara Shukoh, son of Shah Jahan and brother of Aurangzeb, was a great scholar of Islam. He translated the Bhagavad Gita into Persian, and had countless Sanskrit texts translated too. High-caste Hindus in turn read Persian literature and even sent their children to madrasahs, Islamic schools, to be educated.
The story of Indo-Muslim civilisation is, at its heart, a story of interaction and exchange between Muslims and Hindus.
Avik Chanda, Dara Shukoh: The Man Who Would Be King (2019)
Vasudha Dalmia and Munis D. Fariqui, eds. Religious Interactions in Mughal India (2014)
Richard Eaton, India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 (2019)
Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (2018)
Ira Mukhoty, Akbar: The Great Mughal (2020)
Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (2006)
Shashi Tharoor, The Struggle for India’s Soul: Nationalism and the Fate of Democracy (2021)
Audrey Truschke, The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule (2021)
