“And on the basis of criteria of this kind tribals were hacked off from Hindu society. One has but to read the descriptions of Animism which were relied upon to notice that they could well be describing a variety of Hindus.”

Source: Missionaries in India, 1994

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Arun Shourie 51
Indian journalist and politician 1941

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“It was only in the nineteenth century that Western Indologists and Christian missionaries separated the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs from the Hindus who, in their turn, were defined as only those subscribing to Brahmanical sects…. Nowhere in the voluminous Muslim chronicles do we find the natives of this country known by a name other than Hindu. There were some Jews, and Christians, and Zoroastrians settled here and there… The chronicles distinguish these communities from the Muslims on the one hand, and from the natives of this country on the other. It is only when they come to the natives that no more distinctions are noticed; all natives are identified as ahl-i-Hunûd-Hindu!… In all their narratives, all natives are attacked as Hindus, massacred as Hindus, plundered as Hindus, converted forcibly as Hindus, captured and sold in slave markets as Hindus, and subjected to all sorts of malice and molestation as Hindus. The Muslims never came to know, nor cared to know, as to which temple housed what idol. For them all temples were Hindu but-khãnas, to be desecrated or destroyed as such. They never bothered to distinguish the idol of one God or Goddess from that of another. All idols were broken or burnt by them as so many buts, or deposited in the royal treasury if made of precious metals, or strewn at the door-steps of the mosques if fashion from inferior stuff. In like manner, all priests and monks, no matter to what school or order they belonged, were for the Muslims so many “wicked Brahmans” to be slaughtered or molested as such. In short, the word “Hindu” acquired a religious connotation for the first time within the frontiers of this country. The credit for this turn-out goes to the Muslim conquerors. With the coming of Islam to this country all schools and sects of Sanãtana Dharma acquired a common denominator - Hindu!… Once again, it goes to the credit of the Muslim conquerors that the word “Hindu” acquired a national connotation within the borders of this country.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

“Muslim ‘community’ in India had remained sharply divided into two mutually exclusive segments throughout the centuries of Islamic invasions and rule over large parts of the country. On the one hand, there were the descendants of conquerors who came from outside or who identified themselves completely with the conquerors - the Arabs, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Afghans. They glorified themselves as the Ashrãf (high-born, noble) or Ahli-i-Daulat (ruling race) and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat (custodians of religion). On the other hand, there were converts from among the helpless Hindus who were looked down upon by the Ashrãf and described as the Ajlãf (low-born, ignoble) and Arzãl (mean, despicable) depending upon the Hindu castes from which the converts came. The converts were treated as Ahl-i-Murãd (servile people) who were expected to obey the Ahl-i-Daulat and Ahl-i-Sa‘adat abjectly. Shah Waliullah (1703-62) and his son Abdul Aziz (1746-1822) were the first to notice this situation and felt frightened that the comparatively small class of the Ashrãf was most likely to be drowned in the surrounding sea of Hindu Kafirs. … They had to turn to the neo-Muslims. The neo-Muslims, however, had little interest in waging wars for Islam. They had, therefore, to be fully Islamized, that is, alienated completely from their ancestral society and culture. That is why the Tabligh movement was started.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

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