Conversion of Muslims to Hinduism after independance in the Indian subcontinent

Deleted member 94680

If by well you mean successful there are many campaign that lead to large portion of populations converting

Safavid Iran,Spain during the 1400s and 1500s ,Roman empire under Theodosius I, Devshirme, etc...

All of those are marked by mass death and campaigns of significant violence. Geopolitically, it can be argued the Safavid conversions were a mistake as it made Iran an “other” and reduced possible allies. Spain? Yeah, that worked out well, really smooth the way they got rid of aaaaalll the Jews. I mean, you don’t hear of the Inquisition being used as a metaphor for brutal ignorance or bureaucratic murder at all do you? The Theodosius one I’m no expert, but you can argue it wasn’t forced conversion, more banning of public expression of paganism. Also, hardly effective or “ending well”.

Islam, generally...well, it didn't end well but it did end Muslim...

In many places, not all, and accompanied by violence. Not ending well. Anything that results in hundreds and thousands of death, I tend to put in the “not ending well” column, FYI.

Not fond of forced conversion obviously but a very recent case is East-Timor where Indonesia forced the people there to convert to a monotheistic religion, what used to be an area full of traditional religions is now one of the most Catholic countries in the world.

Fair point. But Indonesia is Muslim and East Timor Catholic. Also, still violent and opposed (at least initially) by the people being converted.


There's already precedent for forced conversion of Indian Muslims to Hinduism during the Mughal empire. In fact, conversion of Muslims to Hinduism was so prevalent that the Mughal government had to place legal protections upon the Muslim community, not that they did much. Of course, the situation is different than post-independence India and probably less conducive to conversion, but it shows that it's been done.

Yeah, Mughal Empire is kind of out of the timeframe I’m thinking of. Also, once again, violent.

the conversion of the saxons by Charlemagne?

Pretty voluntary in the most part and for socio-economic gain by and large. Also, too far back historically to be considered.
 
All I can really think of is Brahmo Samaj, a Hindu-Unitarian syncretic sect centred around Bengal and founded in the early nineteenth century, being promoted by the British on the basis that it is similar to a Christian denomination. Muslims at least respected Brahmoists - Ram Mohan Roy, its founder, was the Mughal ambassador to Britain, for instance. If Brahmoists are specially selected for the civil service, I can imagine some Bengali Muslims at least nominally converting to Hinduism.
 
It seems that historically conversions from monotheistic religions do not happen. Many of the examples given were conversions to Islam. There are certainly many examples of so-called conversions to Christianity that led to syncretic belief. Many indigenous Americans were "converted", but they still viewed Christianity through the lens of their traditional religion. (There's a Canadian Christmas carol that mentions 'Gitchi Manitou' as God the Father, sending his son to the world...) I don't think Islam allows such leeway. The Shahada is very clear on the nature of God and the identity of his Prophet. That isn't a belief you can renounce for worldly gain.

IIRC, under certain circumstances, particularly in Shia Islam, it is acceptable for a Muslim to pretend to renounce Islam -- that is, to conceal their true beliefs -- in order to save their life (taqiyya). This only applies when Muslims are persecuted or killed; you can't invoke the principle to get a better job. From the Wikipedia article on taqiyya: "Al-Tabari explains that concealing one's faith is only justified if the person is in mortal danger, and even then martyrdom is considered a noble alternative."

Some of the other examples given were conversions within a religion, such as Orthodox-Catholic. A Muslim could perhaps make a legitimate transition from Sunni to Shia or vice versa, because they would continue to believe in the shahada. But a conversion from Islam, which requires renouncing either or both of the beliefs covered by the shahada, is a very difficult transition to make.

Overall, an alien space bat appearing in the form of Shiva or Ganesh might be cause enough for a Muslim to reconsider their faith -- but they could also consider it a test, and maintain their faith in the shahada even in spite of said alien space bat. The only situation where I can imagine a conversion working is if people were born into a different religion and forced to covert to Islam (in which case many people would be only pretending to believe), and then forced to convert to something else (which also might be a pretended belief).

Interestingly, the transition from Hinduism to Islam is entirely plausible.
 
IIRC, under certain circumstances, particularly in Shia Islam, it is acceptable for a Muslim to pretend to renounce Islam -- that is, to conceal their true beliefs -- in order to save their life (taqiyya). This only applies when Muslims are persecuted or killed; you can't invoke the principle to get a better job. From the Wikipedia article on taqiyya: "Al-Tabari explains that concealing one's faith is only justified if the person is in mortal danger, and even then martyrdom is considered a noble alternative."

The issue with this is that you are assuming every Muslim is such a firm believer of this. Especially in India with its many syncretisms, and especially in Bengal, which didn't see the same religion-laced conflicts as the Deccan or most of North India (Bengal saw the Bangladesh Liberation War, but that was more of a Punjabi-Bengali conflict than a religious one, and the Muslim nutjobs leading Pakistan killed both Hindus and Muslims indiscriminately) and only saw a Muslim religious revival later in the nineteenth century than what I projected, many Muslims would be perfectly willing to convert. It definitely wouldn't be a massive shift in Bengali demographics, but the idea of converting to Brahmo Samaj - which is also an anti-idolatric and monotheist religion in a sense more than the Hindu "the gods are all one" belief - certainly isn't a stretch. IOTL, many Brits appreciated Brahmo Samaj as introducing some non-"pagan" stuff into Hinduism, though some priests were a little angry that it stole their thunder, so the idea of Britain introducing it as mandatory for members of the civil service in Bengal certainly isn't a radical idea.
 
The issue with this is that you are assuming every Muslim is such a firm believer of this. Especially in India with its many syncretisms, and especially in Bengal, which didn't see the same religion-laced conflicts as the Deccan or most of North India (Bengal saw the Bangladesh Liberation War, but that was more of a Punjabi-Bengali conflict than a religious one, and the Muslim nutjobs leading Pakistan killed both Hindus and Muslims indiscriminately) and only saw a Muslim religious revival later in the nineteenth century than what I projected, many Muslims would be perfectly willing to convert. It definitely wouldn't be a massive shift in Bengali demographics, but the idea of converting to Brahmo Samaj - which is also an anti-idolatric and monotheist religion in a sense more than the Hindu "the gods are all one" belief - certainly isn't a stretch. IOTL, many Brits appreciated Brahmo Samaj as introducing some non-"pagan" stuff into Hinduism, though some priests were a little angry that it stole their thunder, so the idea of Britain introducing it as mandatory for members of the civil service in Bengal certainly isn't a radical idea.

I might be biased by my personal experiences -- the Muslims I've met and known have all been quite serious about being true believers. So I have trouble imagining a syncretic religion with Islamic aspects. You've pointed out historical examples of (perhaps not all that serious) Muslims converting to Hinduism, so it must be possible. I vaguely recall a documentary about Punjab (about Punjabi food, to be more specific) where several of the people interviewed appeared to have syncretic beliefs. The "rules" of Islam don't allow this, but perhaps, in the real world, it is possible to mix Islam and another faith. Perhaps the Christian parallel that I noted is not so much different than Islam. That is, a polytheist can often relate to a certain figure as God the Father, to another figure as the Son, to another figure the Virgin Mary, and so on.
 
I might be biased by my personal experiences -- the Muslims I've met and known have all been quite serious about being true believers. So I have trouble imagining a syncretic religion with Islamic aspects.

That's exactly what Sikhism is, as well as Satpanth, Kabir Panth, and a bunch of Bhakti sects. For instance, the Guru Granth Sahib includes texts from Sufi Muslim mystics like Sheikh Farid, and many Sikh ideas like firm monotheism, anti-idolatry, and egalitarianism sound very Muslim to me.
 
It's documented by historians. Quote from Muslim Civilization in India by S.M. Ikram, shamelessly stolen from @Indicus :...

Thanks very much for the reference. Conversions to Sikhism do not surprise me; Sikhism seeks converts, and is "downstream" of Islam. It has some formal organization, which makes conversion a recognizable procedure.

But I still wonder at the "conversions to Hinduism". The devil is in the details, and I would still like to know exactly what "Muslim nobles, Mirza Salih and Mirza Haider" did when they converted. For one thing, I would like to know what caste, if any, they were considered to belong to afterwards. Presumably they stopped attending prayer services at mosques; what did they do instead? And did they publically disclaim belief in the Koran, and the prophetic status of Mohammed?

I know what a Christian does... But what does a Hindu do? And how does a "convert" join in?
 
I didn't realize Hinduism is the type of religion someone can convert to. Is there an organized priestly class to interpret/ enforce a standard Hindu doctrine along the lines of muslim ulema or the vatican?
 
I didn't realize Hinduism is the type of religion someone can convert to.
Conversion to Hinduism was not uncommon historically, there was a large Hindu sphere in Southeast Asia before the spread of Islam due to traditional (unsurprising) links with the Indian subcontinent. Not to mention the spread of Hinduism on the subcontinent itself. However, these were admittedly rather different cases than converting Muslims.

I vaguely recall a documentary about Punjab (about Punjabi food, to be more specific) where several of the people interviewed appeared to have syncretic beliefs.
This was probably Sikhism, which is indeed a syncretic faith between Islam and Hinduism and has had a certain degree of success, though nothing nearly on the scale of Islam or Hinduism.
 
This is fairly ASB. There's firstly zero precedent for forced, mass conversions in any state since the 20th Century. And there's absolutely no political faction in any plausible version of 20th Century India that favored this. You could plausibly get forced expulsions / population transfers, which some small proportion might avoid via conversion. That's the agenda that some on the Hindu Right would have pushed. But even that is extremely hard to plausibly imagine, given what political leaders and movements of the independence period favored.
Im am not sure but. Many communist countries forced people to "convert" to communism aswell as to abandon religion, does that count?
 
The issue with this is that you are assuming every Muslim is such a firm believer of this. Especially in India with its many syncretisms, and especially in Bengal, which didn't see the same religion-laced conflicts as the Deccan or most of North India (Bengal saw the Bangladesh Liberation War, but that was more of a Punjabi-Bengali conflict than a religious one, and the Muslim nutjobs leading Pakistan killed both Hindus and Muslims indiscriminately) and only saw a Muslim religious revival later in the nineteenth century than what I projected, many Muslims would be perfectly willing to convert. It definitely wouldn't be a massive shift in Bengali demographics, but the idea of converting to Brahmo Samaj - which is also an anti-idolatric and monotheist religion in a sense more than the Hindu "the gods are all one" belief - certainly isn't a stretch. IOTL, many Brits appreciated Brahmo Samaj as introducing some non-"pagan" stuff into Hinduism, though some priests were a little angry that it stole their thunder, so the idea of Britain introducing it as mandatory for members of the civil service in Bengal certainly isn't a radical idea.
Could Hinduism or Brahmoism gain prominence in Bangladesh following the Bangladeshi independance war?
 
Could Hinduism or Brahmoism gain prominence in Bangladesh following the Bangladeshi independance war?

No.

Bangladesh was secular, but nobody was trying to push mass conversions to Hinduism or Brahmo Samaj.

The issue I have with the questions in this thread is that--like a lot of other threads that don't have to do with the US or UK--they propose things that are completely implausible within these countries' modern histories. It's like asking if a millennial cult could overtake Britain, or if a Trotskyite Revolution could occur in the United States. To posit a state-driven, mass conversion of Muslims to Hinduism in India post-1900 is ASB because no plausible Indian rulers or movement or any historical faction was pushing for this.
 
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This is fairly ASB. There's firstly zero precedent for forced, mass conversions in any state since the 20th Century.

The most recent forced mass conversion the I know of was in 1895-1896, when Afghan Emir Abdur Rahman invaded Kafiristan and forcibly Islamized its pagan inhabitants. Kafiristan, now called Nuristan, is in NE Afghanistan. Its former name derived from its people being pagans, "kafirs" in Islamic discourse. Kipling's famous short story "The Man Who Would Be King", set in pagan Kafiristan, was published in 1888.
 
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