When in 1492 CE the newly powerful Catholic kings of Counter-Reformation in Spain defeated Muhammad XI (or Boabdil to the Spanish) the last Moorish Muslim Sultan of the Iberian Peninsula, the eight hundred years old Islamic rule and influence in Spain and Portugal came to an end.
In 711 CE, Muslim forces of Umayyad Caliphate invaded Spain from North Africa and in eight years conquered the Iberian Peninsula comprising present-day Spain and Portugal. It became one of the great Muslim civilisations; reaching its summit with the independent Umayyad caliphate of Cordova in the tenth century. Muslim rule declined after that and ended in 1492 when Granada was lost to Christian Catholic Force mentioned above.
In the case of India, the first Muslim invasion occurred in 712 CE when Umayyad General Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh by defeating and killing Hindu Brahmin King Dahir in the Battle of Aror on the bank of river Indus. The Arab-occupied Sind and adjacent Punjab remained so for next three centuries, as all further Arab intrusions were repelled by local Hindu Kings.
Then between 1001 and 1027 CE there were seventeen devastating attacks by Turkic Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (Afghanistan) on the Northern Indian sub-continent. However, each time, he went back to Afghanistan with his pillage and tens of thousands of Hindu slaves from India. Those were the days of Dukhtar-e Hindustan Nilam-e Do Dinar.
After two hundred years of Ghazni, another Afghan Turkic Sultan Muhammad Ghori attacked India seventeen times but was defeated each time by the local Hindu kings led by Prithvi Raj Chauhan until in 1192 CE when Ghori defeated and killed Prithvi Raj in the second battle of Tarain. Muhammad Ghori was the first Muslim Sultan to initiate Muslim rule in India which got formalized in the form of Delhi Sultanate under his Slave General Qutub Uddin Aibek in 1206 CE.
Though both Spain and India experienced their first Muslim invasion in the same time in 711 CE and 712 CE respectively, Muslims could run over and capture almost the whole of Iberian Peninsula in the next eight years. But in the case of India, Muslims faced stiff resistance from local Hindu Kings for the next five hundred years before they could establish a small Delhi-centric Sultanate only as late as in 1206 CE.
The Umayyad dynasty ruled Spain from 711 CE to 1031 CE. By 719 CE, the extent of Islamic Spain under Umayyad Caliphate became greatest, covering the whole of Iberian Peninsula except a small northern strip. This Islamic empire was known as Al Andalus. After 1031 CE, multiple North African Muslim moors ruled the ever-shrinking size of Islamic Spain. In 1238 CE, an Arab dynasty (Nasrid) took over Granada, the remaining small southern Spanish Islamic kingdom. It was the last frontier of Islam that fell to Christian Reconquista in 1492 CE.
In 1492 CE when Spain was cleared of Muslim rule and influence, the Lodhi dynasty of Delhi Sultanate was ruling a large part of the North, East and West Indian sub-continent. Delhi Sultanate succumbed to Mughal onslaught led by Babur, another Muslim warrior, from Afghanistan in 1526 CE. Mughals ruled a large part of Indian sub-continent officially up to 1857 CE, but after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 CE, it started crumbling down fast. For all practical purposes, India was under a central Muslim rule for 500 years from 1206 CE to 1707 CE.
After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 CE, Maratha, Sikh, Sultanat-e-Khudadad (Mysore), Nizam and a few more local rulers ruled major parts of India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the British winning in Plassey during 1757, hundreds of big and small principalities grew up in different parts of India at the behest of the British. At last, the British took over the control of the whole of India formally in 1857 CE.
The Christians were no idle onlookers of Islamic conquest of their countries in Iberian Peninsula from the beginning. While rejuvenated Roman Catholic Christians started a sustained Crusade (Christian Holy War) against Islamic occupiers of Spain within a decade of Umayyad conquest of Spain, it took them about 800 years to drive out the last moor from the soil of Spain (The Moor’s Last Sigh).
During Muslim rule in India an estimated 80 million of Hindus were killed, millions were converted and tens of thousands were enslaved and sent to Afghanistan and other Central Asian slave markets. But, unlike Spain, Hindus in India never had any concept of driving out Muslims from India. Hindu concept of Dharma-Yudh, which is somewhat like Crusade, is very local in nature and extent. Once won, it does not push the defeated enemy to extinction or expulsion.
After the Reconquista, Christians of Spain made Christianity its state religion and erased Islam from state administration, policies and social dynamics. The converted local Muslims were all reconverted to Christianity. Though Christian Spain did not destroy the Islamic structures, those went into the mental backyard of the people. Unlike India, Christian Spain was never laudatory about its Islamic past.
In the case of India, the destiny took a totally different path. When the British left India in 1947, British India was divided into Hindu-ruled India and Muslim-ruled Pakistan. This dichotomy was the foundational basis of Two Nation Theory. However, ninety percent of Muslims, who fought for Islamic Pakistan but fell on the Indian side, did not migrate to Pakistan and stayed back in India.
Except Dr B R Ambedkar, no other non-Muslim member of the Constituent Assembly of independent India had any understanding about Islam. They did not know that as per Islamic teaching, Muslims have to have only contempt for Hindu Kafir. They also overlooked that in 1945-46 election of British India, Muslims voted en masse for the cause of their community and there was no reason that they would change this community behavior in Independent India. Thus Muslims, as per Islam, have no regard for democracy and secularism. They have been using these two primary attributes of Indian Constitution as cover for peddling Islamism in India since its independence.
While Islam became the state religion of Pakistan (and later of Bangladesh too), India did not have any state religion. Followers of all religions were given equal rights to practice, preach and promote their respective religion. Later in 1976 India was made a confirmed secular country. This contradiction was the root cause of failure of Liaquat-Nehru Pact of 1950. India observed the said Pact in letter and spirit, but Pakistan refused to practice the Pact from the beginning. Hindus were constantly being persecuted and driven out from Pakistan (and later from Bangladesh too) in a sustained manner. On the other hand, Muslim population in India, under the protection of the Congress government, kept on increasing by leaps and bounds.
Reconversion of local converted Muslims to Hinduism was never considered by the government of independent India in its wildest dream. On the contrary, Muslims of India were encouraged to preach, practice and promote Islam freely. Unfortunately, Hindus of Pakistan (and later of Bangladesh also) were treated as Kafir with extremely limited religious freedom and rampant socio-economic discrimination.
Thus, Hindu-majority India, unlike Christian Spain, neither expelled foreign Muslim ruling class from India nor reconverted the local Muslim-converts to Hinduism. It also did not go for complete exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations between Pakistan and India after 1947. It continued to rot in a very peculiar and fraudulent Islamic cobweb of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb and praise and pride of Islamic history with a delusional secularism.
Historically secularism has been the antithesis of Islam since its origin 1400 years back in the Arabian desert. Thus, Hindu-majority India finds itself in the Islamic trap again after seventy-five years of independence from the British. A big proportion of educated Indian Muslims is peddling Political Islam in India under the protection of its secular Constitution.
Stone pelting, rioting, arson and Sar Tan Se Juda, which are Sunnah of prophet, have become commonplace in India today. Love Jihad, Land Jihad, Population Jihad, Halal Jihad, Mazar Jihad, Namaz Jihad, Azan Jihad, Waqf Jihad and promotion of Islamic symbolism are used as tools to propagate Islamism in India. India has its own chapter of Al Qaeda, ISIS and other Pakistani and Bangladeshi Islamic terrorist organizations. The local militant Islamic organization Popular Front of India (PFI) has declared to make India an Islamic country by 2047 CE.
Had Charles Dickens written this article, he would probably have started with the opening line “It was the best of times for Spain, it is the worst of times for India”.
