Using Religion as a Weapon

In the last blog, we discussed how Pakistan, and Bangladesh were historically Hindu nations. In this blog we will focus on what transpired over the last 1400 years that changed the religious landscape of the sub-continent from one that was predominantly Hindu to one that Hindu and Muslim. Some of the people who converted became Muslims out of their free will, but the majority were forcibly converted, and this is especially true for Northern India which was the gateway to any invaders from Afghanistan, The Middle East, Central Asia, and Persia. 
Since this conversion altered the population distribution over time its impact was increasingly obvious in other spheres of influence such as politics, government, and military. Eventually, this led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971.                                                       

Therefore, it is important to understand the brief chronology of these invasions before understanding the formation of Pakistan and Bangladesh. We have mostly borrowed from the excellent work of Eminent Indian Constitutionalist Dr. Ambedkar (“Pakistan - Or – The -Partition of India”). Dr. Ambedkar was born in the Dalit community (also known as Untouchables) and embraced Buddhism to escape the horrors of caste that was very common in India at that time. Dr. Ambedkar was educated in some of the best universities in India, America, and the U.K (Master’s degree from the University of Mumbai, Ph.D. from Columbia University, and D. Sc from the London School of Economics) and was first Minister of Law and Justice after India’s independence. For his service to the nation, he was posthumously awarded India’s highest civilian award – Bharat Ratna.   Ambedkar’s work itself is based upon the following historians:
1. Information related to Muhammad Bin Qasim is based upon the works of Dr. Titus (an American scholar who lived in India to promote unity among different faiths)                                                                                                                                                                                2. Information related to Muhammad of Ghazni - is based upon the works of Abu Husain Utbi, noted Persian statesman and scholar (Died 982 AD), and Lane Poole a British Archaeologist (1854-1931)
3. Information related to Muhammad of Ghori - is based upon the works of Hasan Nizami noted Persian statesman and scholar (Died 982 AD) and Dr. Titus.
4. Information related to Muhammad Bakhtyar Khilji - is based upon Tabaquat – i- Nasiri (elaborate of history of the Islamic world, written in Persian)
5. Information related to Qutb al-Din Aibak and Firoz Khan - is based upon the works of Dr. Titus.
6. Information related to Shah Jahan - is recorded in Badshah – Namah (Official history of Shah Jahan written in Persian) 
7. Information related to Aurangzeb - is recorded in MaaSir-l–Alamgir (Official history of Aurangzeb written in Persian) 
8. Information related to the Taxation of Hindus and enslavement of Hindus came from Dr. Titus and various other Persian sources.

Religion as a Weapon

Throughout history, a few individuals have used religion as a weapon to conquer, kill and subjugate people to promote their agenda and expand their commercial, and geographical boundaries. In some cases, the subjugation was subtle and involved less bloodshed, such as the colonization of India by the British. But in the majority of the cases, it was bloody.

Hitler used religion as a tool to slaughter 6 million Jews, the Buddhists in Srilanka are committing atrocities against the Tamils (Tamils who are Hindus and Muslims), in Kosovo (the Srebrenica massacre) it was the Christians who killed the Muslims, and it was the Hindus who killed the Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat riots. In India, the invaders who claimed to be Muslims used their version of religion as a tool to conquer India and slaughter and enslave the Hindus, and converted a lot of them to Islam, against their free will.

The atrocities committed deeply affected the native Indian culture, especially in Northern India, although Hinduism as a religion survived. Thousands of temples were destroyed, and millions of Hindus who refused to convert were enslaved and often were taken to faraway lands such as Afghanistan and Central Asia. In a way, these atrocities were quite like what the Native Americans endured in the USA with the European settlers.