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Spread of Islam in Pre-Mughal Bengal

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Intellectual Discourse,1994, 1b1. 2, No.1, 41-55 SPREAD OF ISLAM IN PRE-MUGHAL BENGAL Abdullah AI-Ahsan* Abstract: Today'sMuslim-majority Bangladeshis surroundedby non-Muslim northern India in the westand BuddhistMynamar in the east. Many non-Muslim scholars have argued that force was applied in convertingindigenous Hindus, while a number of Muslim scholars have emphasisedthe migration of Muslims from other parts of India, as an explanation. Scholars have differences of opinion regarding the time when Bangladeshbecame a Muslim-majority area. This paper arguesthat the area constitutingBangladesh was a Buddhistmajority area before conversionto Islam, and that this conversionwas largely voluntary, through the preaching of sufis. Bengal had alreadybecome a Muslim-majority area when Mughals arrived there. Bangladeshtoday is geographicallya territory isolated from the rest of the Muslim world. It is isolatedfrom Pakistanand the Middle Eastto the west by the non-Muslim areasof India and from the Malay world to the east by Burma and Thailand. When and how did Bengal become a Muslim-majority territory? Why did this areabecome Muslim-majority region while the rest of northernand southernIndia failed to do so? This paper intends to addressthese questions. Modern historians disagreeon the questionsof when and how Islam spread in Bengal. For example,while a Hindu historian, R.C. Majum- dar, emphasizedthe role of forced conversion, a Muslim one, M.A. Rahim, points to the migration of Muslims from other parts of the world, along with the conversionof low-casteHindus, as the primary methods of Islamization in Bengal. This paperreviews the availableliterature on the subject. * Associate Professor, Departmentof History and Civilization, International Islamic University Malaysia. [42] ISLAM IN BENGAL It is almost impossibleto ascertainwhen Islam first appearedin Bengal and when Muslims came to constitute the majority of population in Bengal. A likely starting point for historical study is the records of the British East India Company. but some of these reports are far from reliable. The East India Companyat the beginning of its rule in Bengal misunderstoodthe population configurations.An English magistratein 1765 estimatedthat only one percentof the population wasMuslim.! In 1824 a census of Dhaka. the capital of presentBangladesh. revealed a very different distribution: there were 32.463 Muslims and 28.154 Hindus in the city.2This was a shockto Companyofficials. for they had not realized that Muslims constitutedthe majority of population in the city. The 1872 censusreport surprisedthe Companyofficials evenmore: it revealedthat Muslims in EasternBengal (presentBangladesh) consti- tuted more than seventypercent of the total population. Since the publi- cation of that report and others. officials and historianshave put forward theories of when and how the majority of the people of Bengalbecame Muslim. Although like many other parts of the Muslim world it is difficult to ascertainexactly whenMuslims becamea majority in Bengal. it is much less difficult to ascertainhow and why the people of the region acceptedIslam. It has already been noted that some historian have emphasizedthe migration of Muslims from other parts of the world as a major factor in the Islamization of the region. Although the role of migration cannotbe neglected. it is possibleto miss the centralissue of early modernBengal history if that r<?leis overemphasized.For example. Rahim speculates that as much as twenty-nine percentof the total Muslim population of Bengal is the result of migration.3 Above and beyond the difficulty of specifying the exact proportion of immigratnts behind the Muslim Bengali population of today.the questionwhy people migratedto Bengal remains unanswered. A number of factors are responsible for this migration. and amongthem surely a Muslim baseof population created by conversionis a major factor. The people of Bengalaccepted Islam to an extent not paralleled elsewhere in the subcontinent outside the territory of modern Pakistan. Did these convertscome from low-caste Hindu families. as has been suggested.or from some other social background?In order to addressthese questions it is necessaryto under- stand the pre-Islamic society of Bengal. Pre-Islamic Bengal The use of the term pre-Islamic to describe Bengalbefore the adventof Muslim dynasties in the early thirteenth century reflects our desire not INTELLECTUAL DISCOURSE [43] to prejudice the question of its religious and cultural character. One alternative is to use the term Hindu Bengal. Thus the History of Bengal PublicationCommittee of Dhaka University (in British India), under the editorship of R.C. Majumdar, divides the history of Bengal into three phases:the Hindu period, the Muslim period and the British period. By the term Hindu Bengal, the Committee implies that pre-Islamic Bengal was populated and ruled by Hindus.4The first volume of this history project which coversBengal from pre-historic times to the establishment of Muslim rule, depicts pre-Islamic Bengali society as a happy one in which all religions flourished in a 'spirit of catholicity.' The author of the essay on "Religion" in this volume, Probodh Chandra Baghchi, claims: As a matter of fact the religious life in India is marked... by a spirit of catholicity and mutual respectand understandingwhich is hardly compatible with deliberate persecution on sectarian grounds. The barriers betweenthe different religious sectswere fast coming down, and Buddhism as representedin the documentsof Pala period (750 -1095), wibi1s the new tendencyof eclecticism ...The Pala rulers, although great devoteesof Buddha, and promoters of the cause of Buddhism both in Bengal and Bihar, were also patrons of Brahman- ism.s This observationdoes not seemto be objective. In a society where religion was the primary tool for social organization, it seemsunlikely that two major and rival religions coexisted quite peacefully. This phenomenonneeds further investigation. The plain facts of political history make it clear that it is a mistake to depict pre-Islamic Bengalas a Hindu region. During the period prior to Muslim rule, Bengal was ruled by two dynastiesnamely, the Buddhist Pal dynasty(750-1095) and the BrahmanicSen dynasty (1095-1204). The priority of the Pal kings suggests,and we shall argue on other grounds, that most people in Bengal prior to Muslim rule were followers of Buddha and thus were not 'Hindu' or Brahmanic. Buddhist historical works recognizean important Buddhistpresence in Bengal in the centuries before the Pal dynasty. For example,we may consider the ancient story of the coming of Buddhism to Sri Lanka. A number of Buddhist works, including the reputableMahavamsa, record that a Buddhist prince named Vijoy Singha, who was the son of King Singha Bahu of Bengal, migratedto Sri Lanka in 543 B.C.E. (sic.) with sevenhundred followers and establishedhis kingdom there. Under the patronageof the Singha kings, Buddhismflourished in Sri Langka and [44] ISLAM IN BENGAL the island was named 'Singhal' after the dynasty.6 Without an organized anny of followers it would not have been possible for Vijoy Singha to lead an invasion on an island so remote from Bengal. The narration of the story in Buddhist works also suggests that the earliest Buddhist culture in Bengal was a literate one. However if this and related stories dating to the age of the Buddha himself are evaluated historically, they suggest that Buddhism came early to Bengal. Historians generally admit that the entire population of Bengal was either Buddhist or Jain at one time. Dinesh Chandra Sen suggests that, "Brahmanism could not thrive for many centuries amidst a people who were the pioneers of Buddhism. ,,7 On the other hand, historians are not sure when Brahmanism appeared in Bengal. Brahmanic orthodoxy was apparently worried about the Buddhist presence in Bengal. In the late first millennium B.C.E. the Brahmanic religious book Manu (ca. 100 B.C.) prohibited all followers from developing any contact with Bengal for fear of 'contamination'.s In the middle of the first millennium C.E. Brahmanism appears to have made its way to Bengal under the Gupta rulers (320 -650 C.E.), but there is no evidence to suggest the extent of Brahmanic influence in Bengal under the Guptas. Indeed the opposite may have happened: Buddhist from the west may have fled to Bengal to escape harsher Gupta persecution. It appears that the common people of Bengal continued to subscribe to Buddhism throughout the Gupta rule. We first hear the persecution of Buddhist commoners under the Brahmanic ruler Shashanka (d. 637) in the writings of the Chinese traveler Hsuan-Tsang (596 -664) who traveled to Bengal shortly after the death of Shashanka.9 It was this persecution perhaps which ultimately led to the end of Brahmanic rule in Bengal. The Buddhist Pal dynasty came into power in 750 C.E. The Pal dynasty was succeeded by the Sen dynasty in 1095; political conquest of Bengal by Muslims ended Sen rule in 1204. The five- hundred year period of the Pal and Sen dynasties is one of Brahmanic- Buddhist rivalry. The first three and a half centuries, under the Pal kings, was a period of relative religious toleration. Probodh Chandra Baghchi's statement on religious toleration in pre-Islamic Bengal, quoted earlier is relevant to this period. This tolerance perhaps reflects the strong Buddhist concept of forgiveness. As soon as the Brahmanic Sen dynasty came to power, it appears that it sought to eradicate Buddhism from the soil of Bengal.
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