First of all there is no such thing as the Muslim conquest of India. There were Arab, Persian or Turki invasions of India. The mother of Mahmud of Ghazni was herself a native of the ancient Indian Hindu kingdom of Zabulistan. Afghanistan was part of the political geography of India and the Arabs and Persians regarded Zabul as part of Hind. In fact right from classical ancient period, the western frontier of India was never restricted to the Sindhu river in near western India and Aria, Arachosia, Gedrosia and Drangiana were regarded as part of India by classical


authors like Pliny the Elder. According to Pliny the Elder, “Most geographers, in fact, do not look upon India as bounded by the river Indus, but add to it the four satrapies of the Gedrose, the Arachotë, the Aria, and the Paropamisadë, the River Cophes thus forming the extreme boundary of India. According to other writers, however, all these territories, are reckoned as belonging to the country of the Aria”! According to Romila Thapar, “Of the mercenaries, not an insubstantial number were Indians (obviously natives of Sistan ) and, presumably, Hindus. Indian soldiers under their commander, referred to as Suvendhary, remained loyal to Mahmud. They had their own commander, the sipasalar-i-Hinduwan, lived in their own quarter in Ghazni and continued with their religion. When the Turkish commander of the troops rebelled, the command was given to a Hindu, Tilak, and he is commended for his loyalty. Complaints are made about the severity with which Muslims and Christians were killed by Indian troops fighting for Mahmud in Seistan." During the period of Mahmud of Ghazni, much of the principality of Ghor was converted to Islam. The area was so remote that till the 11th century, it had remained a pagan enclave surrounded by Muslim principalities. It was converted to Islam in the early part of the 12th century after Mahmud raided it. According to Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani, Amir Suri was captured by Mahmud of Ghazni, made prisoner along with his son and taken to Ghazni, where Amir Suri died. Amir Suri was a great king and most of the territories of Ghor were in his possession. But as most of the inhabitants of Ghor had not yet embraced Islam, It was also the last stronghold of an ancient religion professed by the inhabitants when all their neighbors had become Muhammadan. In the 11th century AD Mahmud of Ghazni defeated the prince of Ghor Ibn–I-Suri, and made him prisoner in a severely contested engagement in the valley of Ahingaran. Ibn-I-Suri is identified a Hindu by the author, who has recorded his overthrow. The Ghurid dynasty was also an indigenous Indian dynasty and arose after the Hindu population of Ghor was converted to Islam and the people Islamised. At the time of the Arab invasion of India which commenced with the invasion of Sistan in 642 A.D., even the area of Afghanistan was an integral part of Hind. In the words of the Persian historian Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri, author of Kitab Futuh al-Buldan ("Book of the Conquests of the Lands") translated by Francis Clark Murgotten as "The Origins of the Islamic State”, “As for ibn-Samurah, he established his rule over everything between Zaranj and Kishsh of the land of al-Hind, and over that part of the region of the road of ar-Rukhkhaj which is between it and the province of ad-Dhawar”. ( The origins of the Islamic State, Part II (1924) page 143 by Murgotten, Francis Clark) The worship of the shrine of Zun which was prevalent in Seistan was also Hindu. In 653-4 AD, an army of around 6,000 Arabs were led by General Abdur Rahman bin Samara and they arrived to the shrine of Zoon in Zamindawar. It is reported that General Abdur Rahman "broke off a hand of the idol and plucked out the rubies which were its eyes in order to persuade the Marzbān of Sīstān of the god's worthlessness." The General explained to the Marzbān: "my intention was to show you that this idol can do neither any harm nor good." The ruler of Seistan or the Zunbils was Zunbil or Ratbil who was the King of al-Hind and ruled over the extensive area comprising Seistan, Zamindavar, Makran and the rest of Sindh. So there was no question of India being “across the border” from Ghazni or “descending into India” as stated in “The Moslem Conquest of India” from “Story of Civilization” by Will & Ariel Durant! In fact the political and cultural realm of Kashmir far transcended the present borders of Kashmir and extended to those areas in India to the west of Kashmir up to the area of Zabul and Zaranj in Sistan or Arachosia which according to Isidorus of Charax, the Parthians called “White India” . Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Bīrūnī , states in his book India that the coast of India begins with Tiz the capital of Makran. The city of Andrapolis named in the Acts, where Judas Thomas and Abbanes landed in India, has been identified as Sandaruck (one of the ancient Alexandrias) in Baluchistan.

In the great old holy city of Jerusalem in what is now the Republic of Palestine, there is a place called Al-Hindi Serai (Indian lodge or shrine), where presumably Baba Farid lived for many years in the early 13th century, almost 800 years ago. Fariduddin Masud was a great Sufi master who was born in 1175 at a village called Kothewal, 10 km from Multan in the Punjab region in the Near Western part of India.


The Balus had not yet entered Makran but had entered by the eleventh century. Baluchistan was inhabited by Indian communities loosely categorised as Zutt i.e. Jat and the whole of Baluchistan was predominantly non Persian. The Balus migrated from Kaman in northern or Northwestern Persia some time around the tenth century when they appeared in Kirman. Then under pressure from the Seljuks , these nomads they moved eastward and entered India across the Sarhad Range separating India from Persia into Baluchistan where they superimposed themselves upon the indigenous Indian Brahui population and also drove out the other Indian communities. In the 10 the century the Balus were present in Kirman and they infested the Great desert of Persia from their mountain fastness at Qufs. Muqadasi describes them as people with savage faces , evil hearts and neither morals nor manners. They were notorious for their cruelty and indulged in stoning their prisoners to death “as one would a snake , putting a man’s head on a boulder, and beating upon it, till it be crushed in”! Baluchistan is an integral part of India historically since time immemorial.

The fact is that the Muslim clergy in India is still comprised of persons with foreign ancestry and not comprised predominantly of persons who are of Indian ancestry. The Mughal invaders never really Indianised themselves and one of the reasons for the decline and fall of the Mughal Empire was because amongst the nobility, there were two distinct classes viz the Hindustani faction and the Mughal faction. The Mughal faction comprised those whose ancestry was either Irani and Turani and they detested and suspected the Hindustani Muslims and considered themselves superior racially and considered Indian Muslims to be inferior to them and there was a continual struggle for control of power and authority. The Hindustani Muslims comprised of inter alia the Sayyids of Barha, the Afghan nobles, and Khan-i-Dauran, whose ancestors came from Badakhshan in the far north of the India and other indigenous Indian Muslims whose ancestors had been Hindus. The foreign Muslims were arbitrarily called Mughals, but were really either Turani or Irani. The foreign nobles of diverse origin, were opposed as a class to the members of the Hindustani party and as colonizers had a vested interest to ensure that the Indian Muslims did not identify themselves with their brethren fellow Indians professing the Hindu faith lest the same would expose and isolate the Mughal faction and they patronized foreign cultural and religious terminology and vocabulary in order to further their imperialist ambitions. The same status quo continues to this date. The foreign Mughals interrupted the history of India. Had they not invaded, India’s beloved indigenous Lodi dynasty would have obviously eventually reunified the whole of the Sub-continent of India! In the present scenario, the predominant Muslim population in the sub-continent of India are descendants of Hindu converts and belong to the Indo-Aryan ethnicity. Once the predominant Muslim people of the sub-continent of India rediscover their Indo-Aryan ancestry, heritage and ethos, which are all extraneous to their profession of the faith of Islam and their religious beliefs, they will denounce the clergy comprised of persons of foreign ancestry and the Islamic clergy will be Indianised. The phenomenon will be something that will first happen in the sub-continent of India not in India but in Pakistan and when it happens, it will not be under duress or coercion but due to a renaissance and their rediscovery of their Indo-Aryan ancestry, heritage and ethos. .