ISLAM IN INDIA

India is the seventh largest country in the world, and the second largest in Asia. Before the advent of Muslims, the country was fragmented into small warring states and there was no concept of Indian nationalism. The Muslim rulers, especially the Mughals, unified the country and gave it a central administration. They called the country Hind and Hindustan, i.e. a country of the Hindus (non-Muslims). The name 'India', a distortion of Hind, was given to her by the British rulers. Before the establishment of Muslim rule, there was no history of India. People of particular locality recorded some events of certain rulers vaguely. The Muslims took special care to record historical events and appointed historians to do that job. The British administration reconstructed their accounts and gave the Hindus a history of the distinct past not without their self interest to play one community against the other.

Even before the life of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) in the 600s, Arab traders were in contact with India. Merchants would regularly sail to the west coast of India to trade goods such as spices, gold, and African goods. Naturally, when the Arabs began to convert to Islam, they carried their new religion to the shores of India. The first mosque of India, the Cheraman Juma Masjid, was built in 629 (during the life of Prophet Muhammad) in Kerala, by the first Muslim from India, Cheraman Perumal Bhaskara Ravi Varma. Through continued trade between Arab Muslims and Indians, Islam continued to spread in coastal Indian cities and towns, both through immigration and conversion.

The first great expansion of Islam into India came during the Umayyad Dynasty of caliphs, who were based in Damascus. In 711, the Umayyads appointed a young 17 year old man from Ta’if to extend Umayyad control into Sindh: Muhammad bin Qasim.

While some claim that Islam’s huge population in India is a result of violence and forced conversion, the evidence does not back up this idea at all. Although Muslim leaders replaced Hindu kings in most areas, society was left as is. Stories of forced conversion are very few and often not credible enough to warrant academic discussion.