Why did I.H. Qureshi choose to trace the history of Pakistan back to Muhammad Bin Qasim, who might be rolling over in his grave at the exaggerated role that he never signed up for, when he could have stayed in the relevant century?
Going through the revisionist version of history, one wonders if the whole nation crept into historical dementia at some point or deliberately chose to skip over events that didn’t work well for their identity crisis. Because even a basic course on Islamic history can clear beyond doubt that the only ‘Muslim’ thing about the Muslim invasion of South Asia was to hunt down the rival Muslim factions who were saved from Umayyad wrath by Raja Dahir, the villain Hindu in the saga of our textbook battles.
The blatant distortion of the historical narrative served well the dictators who were faced with the dilemma of welding an ethnically and linguistically diverse population into unified whole, with Islam as the only converging point. Hussain Haqqani rightly credits the notion of an ideological state to Ayub Khan in whose regime curricula and textbooks were standardised, perpetuating a version of history that tied Pakistan’s emergence to the arrival of Muslims in the subcontinent, overlooking the reality that it was actually the result of a disagreement over the postcolonial Indian constitution.
And thus began the tales of glorified Muslim leaders arriving in the subcontinent to save people from Hindu despots and shower their benevolence on Indian soil.
Only that they were mere tales. Far from reality.
Islamic history is marked with civil disputes and internal strife after Prophet’s death that led to extreme bloodshed in the holiest of places and yet every student gasps in disbelief while coming across books that deal with those wars largely because they were kept immune in school from such history. By the end of 7th century, while Yezid 1 ruled the Islamic Caliphate from Syria, Abdullah bin Zubair had himself declared as Caliph back in Hijaz.
Having two rival caliphs was nothing new in this time of Islamic history and Yezid attempted a siege of Mecca to quell the forces of the House of Prophet, which caused great damage to Kaaba and other sacred edifices. So far, we’re only discussing the usual affairs of the seventh century. The contradiction comes with the second siege of Mecca under Caliph Abdul Malik bin Merwan, who trusted none other than our revered national hero, Hajjaj bin Yousaf, to wreak havoc in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina while making the inhabitants suffer from rigorous famine and destruction. After getting rid of Abdullah, the governor of Hijaz oppressed the surviving companions of prophet with ferocious and intolerable cruelty.
Several historical records mention the rape of women in mass numbers by Syrian forces. Prophet’s family and the Alids were prime targets who had to leave Hijaz for safety, many seeking refuge in other regions while some ended in Sindh where Raja Dahir, being the trading partner of the royal house of Hashemites back in time, welcomed them. Of course, our mard-e- momin didn’t like the support of rival rebels by the Hindu ruler. He sent several letters to Raja Dahir to return his prisoners which Dahir refused. Hajjaj known for his cruelty was furious and organised an army led by his son-in-law Muhammad bin Qasim.
Although refraining from a monocausal explanation of the invasion of Sindh, I’ll still like to focus on the aspect of Caliphate’s dismal of Dahir at his refusal to hand over the rebels back to the Empire.
One wonders how a person whose achievements include destroying the holy cities and propelling prophet’s family out of Hijaz became the textbook hero of a nation that refuses to tolerate a single word of disrespect for Muhammad. And how come the person who gave refuge to them is still a Hindu tyrant whose fall we ought to celebrate as the victory of Islam?
Either the whole nation was put on anesthesia before teaching them history or the grand historical narrative of our country was drafted by an AI bot.
One can easily find themselves lost among the missing links and sharp disconnects in the popular historical reconstruction of the Muslim rule in India which begins with Muhammad Bin Qasim’s invasion in 712 and then fast forwards three centuries later to Mahmud of Ghaznawi’s Indian conquests. The pick and choose method seems intentional to serve the state policy of Islamic ideology and hatred for India.
Since history is a complex affair and no event happens in isolation, the establishment of Muslim rule in the subcontinent was not due to the abrupt religious zeal of Bin Qasim or Hajjaj, as we’ve already discussed their real motives, but a complex and protracted process stretching over centuries. Neither did Bin Qasim’s invasion establish Muslim rule nor did he ‘spread’ any Islam in the conquered region as power and empire building often trump the religious identity and the 17-year-old hero was wrapped and stitched in oxen hides, sent to Syria, which resulted in his death en route from suffocation. The reason for this fate was the wrath of new Caliph, Suleyman who despised the generals and officials close to Hajjaj and Caliph Walid.
In a very cunning manner, our identity has been shaped by the early rulers which mostly were never democratically elected and were aware of the contradictions lying at the foundations of the newly formed state. Devastated by confusion and turmoil, a single identity had to be thrust upon people to ensure their loyalties to the state. To offer a divine touch, history of Pakistan was traced back to the first invasion of India by a Muslim and the history of Caliphate offered as a prelude to the country’s creation.
And yet, missing links and gaps are so apparent that a historian, not seething with patriotic bluster and heeding to Ibn Khaldun’s warning of abstaining from the common desire to gain favour of those of high ranks, can easily pin point historical fallacies in state-sponsored history as Islam didn’t ‘emerge’ in India with the coming of Bin Qasim rather Arab traders, mainly from the Arabian Peninsula, established trade networks with the western coast of India as early as the 7th century CE. These traders brought Islam to the region through their commercial interactions and cultural exchanges. Later expeditions around Makran and Qalat established Muslim rule in those areas
Unlike the popular narrative in our textbooks of the spread of Islam and Muslim rule, Muslim rulers in Sindh, Multan and Gujrat did not exercise absolute authority, since, in the words of modern historians, the ‘sovereignty was shared by different layers of kingly authority’. The Arabs abstained from centralising power in their hands and allowed the natives considerable share in power.
The history being fed to the nation for more than more than 70 years has been shaped to fit a specific narrative, presenting a heavily Islamised picture and an exaggerated Muslim identity of South Asian Muslims to justify the creation of Pakistan. This idea bases itself on the notion of a civilisational divide between monolithic Hindu and Muslim identities, which simply did not exist. It was never about the two binaries or the so-called Hindu-Muslim conflict because the most famous commander Tilak in Mahmud Ghaznavi’s army was a Hindu and the myth of the destruction of temples in the name of religion can be countered with Richard Eaton’s classic study of temple desecrations which shows that in almost all cases where Hindu temples were ransacked, it was for political or economic reasons since Hindu emperors used temples as their treasury.
One can only lament the stupidity and stubbornness of a nation that chose to erase the rich heritage and history in favour of a false religious identity that appears outrightly contradictory and ahistorical on deep scrutiny.
The writer is a feminist activist and specialises in South Asian History at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad.
