Modern European and Muslim explanations of conversion to Islam in South Asia: A preliminary survey of the literature

Abstract

Even among Muslims, the growth of Muslim population in South Asia excited little attention before the later 19th century when the British—Indian administration began to number the population of the Indian Empire according to declared or imputed religious allegiance. In medieval times, Muslim rulers and their aides, Muslim historians and literati, although often mindful that in “South Asia” they lived among a predominantly non-Muslim population, did not conceive the stability of Muslim dynastic rule or the continuation of political and financial advantages for Muslim élites, to be related to or dependent upon the size of the aggregate of those who would deem themselves as, and be regarded by others to be, Muslims. The very few references, over a period of 500 or 600 years, in the religious literature to “conversions” suggest in their contexts and perhaps in their very rarity, that the Muslim religious did not postulate the quality and strength of man's response in South Asia to the call of Islam to be proportionate to the numbers of those calling themselves, or called by others, Muslims.