In the year 1025 CE, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni launched a raid on India from his home in what is today eastern Afghanistan. The Sultan and his men attacked Somnath, a temple and place of pilgrimage in Gujarat. They besieged the temple and looted it.
But the historian Richard Eaton points out that the Sanskrit inscriptions of Hindus at the time neglected to mention the raid. They saw nothing unusual or momentous about it. They certainly did not view it in terms of a grand Islamic conquest. This was because attacks on the temple by Hindu rulers in nearby Malwa were extremely common.
What this shows is that our historical narratives are useless if we neglect to take into account the views of people at the time. What many today look back upon as an important Muslim attack on Hinduism was seen by Hindus at the time as just another raid.
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni’s actions certainly did not represent the norm for Muslim interactions with India.
In Kerala, in South India, Islam was first spread not by invaders but by travellers and traders. One king, Cheruman Perumal, decided to travel to Arabia to meet the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). He died on the journey.
In Calicut, the Hindu ruler was so impressed by Muslim seafarers that he told every fisherman to bring up one of their sons as a Muslim to join his Muslim navy.
It is misleading to reduce the story of Islam in India to one of invaders. Most Indian Muslims are the descendants of Indians who converted by choice to Islam.
Bibliography
Richard Eaton, India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 (2019)
Shashi Tharoor, The Struggle for India’s Soul: Nationalism and the Fate of Democracy (2021)
