JOIN USIn his book, ‘The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate’, Abraham Eraly revisits one of the most violent chapters in Indian history marred by bloodshed and internal feud, writes M K Chandra Bose
The Turkish invasion changed little except the replacement of Indian ruling elite with foreign ones.
The alien rule made no difference to the lives of the common people, the majority of whom lived in villages.
The ramifications of the new invasion took long to sink in.
These new set of foreigners who followed Islam stood apart refusing to get absorbed in the Indian society.
The two communities co-existed but there was hardly any social interaction. Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) epitomised the dichotomy in full measure.
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate gives a fascinating, comprehensive account of the troubled times marked by tyrannical rule, constant upheaval, frequent wars and unspeakable savagery.
Abraham Eraly weaves an engrossing story of rulers, brilliant and despotic, eccentric and bigoted, palace intrigues, assassinations and plunder.
The Age of Wrath is the third in the series of Eraly’s four-volume history of pre-modern India.
The reader gets a feel of the times with paranoid sultans ever looking over their shoulders for an impending plot.
Assassination of kings by his close relatives was common. Many of the Delhi sultans blinded, imprisoned or executed their brothers to ward off any threat to their power.
Natural succession to the throne was rare in the Sultanate.
The 300 years of Delhi Sultanate saw five dynasties (Slave, Khilji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodi) and 33 sultans.
A few of them reigned for just a few days as they were toppled by usurpers. Eraly calls the illiterate Alauddin Khilji (1296-1316) the greatest among them.
He was an astute administrator whose economic reforms like market intervention were far ahead of his time.
It was under Firuz Tughlaq that the Sultanate “was the closest that any government in medieval India came to being a welfare state”.
But corruption was all pervasive from the highest to the lowest level.
The Sultanate reached its zenith during the reign of Muhammad Tuglaq (1326-1351), when the kingdom covered almost all of the sub-continent, except Kerala and Kashmir.
The most erudite of the sultans, he had grandiose plans to transform his kingdom. But he lacked pragmatism and patience to implement his schemes.
Tuglaq’s dreams turned nightmarish, making his reign the most turbulent in Delhi Sultanate.
The frustration drove him to extremes, making him sadistic and inflicting savage punishments to anyone who came in his way.
He is described as a blood-thirsty tyrant who had no hesitation in slaughtering people indiscriminately, plundering and devastating their land.
The horrendous level he would descend to was exemplified in an incident involving a cousin who was suspected of hatching a plot against the sultan.
The prince was flayed alive and his flesh cooked with rice and force-fed to his wife and children.
In a milieu of perpetual insecurity, law of the jungle prevailed.
The rulers, obsessed with the preservation of their power, employed brutal ways but bothered little about people’s welfare.
Brigands and criminal tribes had a free run. When sultans acted, it was only to exterminate whole tribes.
They used religion to subserve their power.
The age was marked by shocking social and economic disparity. In medieval India, women enjoyed very low social standing with polygamy and sexual promiscuity all-pervasive.
How small armies of invaders like Mahmud Ghazni managed to defeat Indian rajas repeatedly, despite their massive strength of troops and vast resources, has baffled historians.
Eraly states that Indian armies lacked regimental discipline and good training.
Huge concentration of ill-trained troops became unwieldy and they fled in the face of determined assault by invaders.
Elephants employed in the battle field had dubious value as the animals often ran amok. Another factor was that sense of nationalism was non-existent.
Ever-feuding rajas never thought of putting up a united fight against foreign rulers.
Catchy anecdotes and excellent portraits like those of Malik Kafur, the eunuch who usurped the throne, Raziya Sultana, the only woman ruler of the Sultanate, whose infatuation for an Abyssinian led to her downfall, Balban, who restored the dignity of the throne, Timur, who considered his invasion of India as ‘expedition against infidels’, make the work endearing.
The period of Timur’s conquest is termed “the most devastating six months in Indian history.”
The author mentions he was handicapped by the absence of Indian sources on the history of early medieval India.
The main sources of information are the one-sided accounts of Arab, Persian and Turkish chroniclers such as Al-biruni, Ibn Battuta and Ziauddin Barani.
It is more than a chronicle of events.
But he has done an impressive job with the enlightening volume that enhances our understanding of the dark age in Indian history and why India easily fell under foreign rule.
The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate
Abraham Eraly
Penguin
2014,
pp 448
Rs. 699