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PAKISTAN : BREAK-UP OF UNITY
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invaded India 17 times. He was followed by Mahommad Ghori who began his career as an invader in 1173. He was killed in 1206. For thirty years had Muhammad of Ghazni ravaged India and for thirty years Mahommad Ghori harried the same country in the same way. Then followed the incursions of the Moghul hordes of Chenghiz Khan. They first came in 1221. They then only wintered on the border of India but did not enter it. Twenty years after, they marched on Lahore and sacked it. Of their in roads, the most terrible was under Taimur in
- Then comes on the scene a new invader in the person of Babar who invaded India in 1526. The invasions of India did not stop with that of Babar. There occurred two more invasions. In 1738 Nadirshah’s invading host swept over the Punjab like a flooded river “ furious as the ocean ”. He was followed by Ahmadshah Abdalli who invaded India in 1761, smashed the forces of the Mahrattas at Panipat and crushed for ever the attempt of the Hindus to gain the ground which they had lost to their Muslim invaders.
These Muslim invasions were not undertaken merely out of lust for loot or conquest. There was another object behind them. The expedition against Sind by Mahommad bin Qasim was of a punitive character and was undertaken to punish Raja. Dahir of Sind who had refused to make restitution for the seizure of an Arab ship at Debul, one of the sea-port towns of Sind. But, there is no doubt that striking a blow at the idolatry and polytheism of Hindus and establishing Islam in India was also one of the aims of this expedition. In one of his despatches to Hajjaj, Mahommad bin Qasim is quoted to have said :
“The nephew of Raja Dahir, his warriors and principal officers have been dispatched, and the infidels converted to Islam or destroyed. Instead of idol-temples, mosques and other places of worship have been created, the Kutbah is read, the call to prayers is raised, so that devotions are performed at stated hours. The Takbir and praise to the Almighty God are offered every morning and evening.”*
After receiving the above despatch, which had been forwarded with the head of the Raja, Hajjaj sent the following reply to his general :
“Except that you give protection to all, great and small alike, make no difference between enemy and friend. God, says, ‘Give no quarter to infidels but cut their throats’. Then know that this is the command of the
- Indian Islam by Dr. Titus, p. 10.