More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Thus Punjabi became the ‘Sikh’ language, Urdu the ‘Muslim’ language, and Hindi the ‘Hindu’ language. Language was uprooted from ground-level and tied to religion rather than to the varied people who spoke it, or the tract where it was spoken.
Though we have unavoidably spoken of ‘Hindus’, ‘Muslims’ and ‘Sikhs’ in pre-British Punjab, we should
remember that classifying and counting people as Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs was a British idea to begin with. Before British officials started to record a Punjabi’s religion, the latter did not necessarily or primarily think of himself as a Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. If asked who or what he was, he might have mentioned his zaat or village before speaking of his religion.
Timur’s legacy on the subcontinent is of a different sort. Possessing both Turkic and Mongol blood and professing Islam, Timur created a Central Asian empire and is today a hero in his native Uzbekistan. However, during his 1398-99 attack on India he not only spelt death and devastation for the Indian Sultanate and the Hindu population of Delhi, he also destroyed much of whatever the Mongols had left of Punjab.
