Indian Muslims: where have they gone wrong?

At what point in the last thousand years did Indian Muslims
become a minority? The question is obviously, rhetorical. Muslims have
never been in a majority on the Indian subcontinent; even before
partition they were less than 30% of the population. But did Indian
Muslims see themselves as a minority during the Mughal empire,
which was finally buried in the rubble of the uprising of 1857?
And even 90 years later, in 1947, did Hyderabad's Muslims see
themselves as a minority as long as the Nizam of Hyderabad had
sovereignty? No. A minority therefore is not a function of numbers,
but a definition of empowerment. As long as Muslims felt that
they were an important, and even decisive, element of the ruling
group they did not feel that they were a minority, a term that
implicitly condemns a community to the margins. Even a Badshah
that wobbled was better than no Badshah at all.

Muslims seized power in Delhi some 500 years after Muslims
came to India. The history of those first five centuries has been buried
under ignorance (understandable, for there are few records of that
period), indifference, and the depressing fact that history is
generally the record of kings and conquests.
The first Muslim armies arrived on the subcontinent in 711, in
the same year that Arabs entered Spain. But while there was an
earthquake in Europe whose tremors have not ceased, the Arab
invasion of India did not travel much beyond the sands of Sind.
Mahmud of Ghazni was a plundering meteor that devastated its route
map. It was not until the Turkish clans began to dominate the world
of Muslims that what is known as Muslim rule came to India. In the
west, Turkish regiments played a critical part in the reconquest of
Jerusalem under the leadership of the Kurd, Saladin, in 1187. By
1192, Saladin had defeated the third crusade, led by Richard II and
Francis I. In the east, that very year, Prithviraj fell to a successor of
Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori. But the Delhi Sultanate was established
by his Turki general Qutbuddin Aibak (once a slave of the Qazi of
Nishapur, before being purchased and freed by Ghori).

The portrait of the Indian Muslim is best drawn not by the hand
of kings but by the lines of poets. The work of four great Urdu
poets
is each a portrait of what might be called the swivel points of this
history: Amir Khusrau, Mirza Ghalib, Akbar Allahabadi and Sir
Muhammad Iqbal.
Khusrau (born in Patiyali in 1253, died in Delhi in 1325 in sorrow
at the death of his pir Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya) is the laughing sufi,
the poet who defined the identity of the Indian Muslim as both an
Indian and a Muslim. His deep devotion to Hazrat Nizamuddin was
a quality that merged seamlessly into the larger Indian consciousness.
geet and qawwali belonged to the genius of the land, and although
a Turk by descent, he proudly claimed that the music of India had
made him an Indian. This is important, and defines the relationship
between Muslims and the land they made their own: it was not the
sword that kept them in India, but the soil and the song. He consciously
rejected Persian and gloried in the images and words of India. “I am
an Indian Turk,” he said, "and my answers are in Hindwi.” Professor
M. Mujeeb notes in his seminal work The Indian Muslims: "In one of
his historical mathnawis, the Nuh Sipahr, or the Nine Skies. Khusrau
has devoted a whole section, The Third Sky, to the description and
praise of India and Indians. He likens India to Paradise, and shows
that because of its fruits, flowers and climate, it is better than any
other country.