What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized?
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  What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized?
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Author Topic: What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized?  (Read 1901 times)
Blue3
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« on: January 10, 2022, 05:52:25 PM »

What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized, unlike most of the world?
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PSOL
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« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2022, 10:37:25 PM »

Having entrenched political bodies against such a change that could meaningfully defend their turf for centuries.
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Blue3
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« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2022, 12:24:18 PM »

Having entrenched political bodies against such a change that could meaningfully defend their turf for centuries.
I don't think so. India was ruled by the Muslim Mughal Emperors for centuries. And the Chinese dynasties weren't always strong, and their native religions weren't evangelical religions themselves.
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PSOL
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« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2022, 12:33:59 PM »

Having entrenched political bodies against such a change that could meaningfully defend their turf for centuries.
I don't think so. India was ruled by the Muslim Mughal Emperors for centuries. And the Chinese dynasties weren't always strong, and their native religions weren't evangelical religions themselves.
The local Hindu leaders managed to have autonomy and due to their numbers and the diversity of religious thought survive these centuries while resisting the central government. Same in China.
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Blue3
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« Reply #4 on: January 14, 2022, 12:41:27 PM »

Having entrenched political bodies against such a change that could meaningfully defend their turf for centuries.
I don't think so. India was ruled by the Muslim Mughal Emperors for centuries. And the Chinese dynasties weren't always strong, and their native religions weren't evangelical religions themselves.
The local Hindu leaders managed to have autonomy and due to their numbers and the diversity of religious thought survive these centuries while resisting the central government. Same in China.
And this just didn't exist anywhere else in the world, that was Christianized/Islamicized?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2022, 12:52:51 PM »

Tell me you know nothing of the history of India without telling me that you know nothing of the history of India.
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PSOL
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« Reply #6 on: January 14, 2022, 02:44:33 PM »

Tell me you know nothing of the history of India without telling me that you know nothing of the history of India.
This post tells no one not a thing about anything. Care to expand further?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #7 on: January 14, 2022, 03:35:33 PM »

Tell me you know nothing of the history of India without telling me that you know nothing of the history of India.
This post tells no one not a thing about anything. Care to expand further?

Approximately how many Muslims are there in the Subcontinent and what has been the general cultural impact of Islam on it since the Middle Ages?
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Beet
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« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2022, 04:47:40 PM »

A better question is, why did so much of the world adopt two religions that originated in a very concentrated part of it? Perhaps because one of them is actually (roughly) true and is favored by the Hand of God.
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Blue3
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« Reply #9 on: January 14, 2022, 08:02:38 PM »

Tell me you know nothing of the history of India without telling me that you know nothing of the history of India.
I've lived in India.

It obviously has Muslim influences (and to some extent Christian influences, especially in Goa).

But India was not Islamicized/Christianized in the same way Europe/Americas/Russia/Australia/NorthAfrica/MiddleEast were.
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PSOL
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« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2022, 08:26:49 PM »

Tell me you know nothing of the history of India without telling me that you know nothing of the history of India.
This post tells no one not a thing about anything. Care to expand further?

Approximately how many Muslims are there in the Subcontinent and what has been the general cultural impact of Islam on it since the Middle Ages?
I and this thread is asking you this question
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2022, 08:53:13 PM »

I and this thread is asking you this question

To which I responded with a rhetorical question, because this is very much in the territory of 'extremely basic knowledge'. There are approximately half a billion Muslims living in the Subcontinent, incidentally; about a third of all Muslims on Earth.
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Blue3
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« Reply #12 on: January 14, 2022, 09:23:15 PM »

I and this thread is asking you this question

To which I responded with a rhetorical question, because this is very much in the territory of 'extremely basic knowledge'. There are approximately half a billion Muslims living in the Subcontinent, incidentally; about a third of all Muslims on Earth.
And yet India is not Islamicized. Why?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2022, 09:54:01 PM »

And yet India is not Islamicized. Why?

What do you even mean by that? Most of the Subcontinent operated under Islamic law of one form or another from the Middle Ages until the Maratha rebellions and the rise of the East India Company in the 18th century. During this period Islamic cultural and political supremacy was absolute: it even shaped modern Hinduism to a considerable extent.* Large parts also ended up with Muslim-majority populations: they are not in the modern Republic of India because they were hived off during Partition (which I presume you've heard of) to create Pakistan.

*The divergent character of Hinduism in the south of India (parts of which were always out of reach for the various Islamic empires or which were only ruled by them for brief periods) and elsewhere is often noted and, well, this is the reason for that.
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Blue3
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« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2022, 10:44:44 PM »

It’s rather self-explanatory, but I’ll explain to make it clearer for you. The majority of India did not convert to Islam, it was just localized mostly to the parts that became Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not even close to the entire country. Why wasn’t India “Islamicized” like Iran/Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Central Asia, North Africa, etc?
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« Reply #15 on: January 15, 2022, 07:58:27 AM »

Essentially a lack of interest from the Turkic states that made up the ruling dynasties, who preferred to patronage and ally with certain Hindu sects; that Hinduism is a fairly decentralised faith which can survive relatively unmolested without kingly patronage (something which can not be said for the lingering remnants of Buddhism in the subcontinent) the persistence of the caste structure and the fact that India was never under any complete Islamic control, even at peak Mughal.

As for Christianity, the Brits main priorities were cash and stability, not God.
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« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2022, 03:17:16 PM »

It’s rather self-explanatory, but I’ll explain to make it clearer for you. The majority of India did not convert to Islam, it was just localized mostly to the parts that became Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not even close to the entire country. Why wasn’t India “Islamicized” like Iran/Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Central Asia, North Africa, etc?

The politically correct answer is that like Medieval China, Medieval India was already too old and too populous of a civilization to have its indigenous religious traditions and social order completely uprooted by Islam (or Christianity, in the case of Medieval China).

Quote
I would instead submit that we’re well on our way to a tri-polar world where all those 20th and early 21st-century foes actually collapse into a single sphere characterized more by its deeply intertwined roots than tiny distinctions among its branches. Instead, the greatest contrasts I foresee the world grappling with in decades to come include the deep differences among the two cultural giants who effectively sat out the global 20th century. And not just each of their distinct contrasts with the West.

“The West and the Rest” has an irresistible ring, but when you get down to it, the incommensurability of Indian culture to that of China yawns just as unfathomably, or more so than that between the West and either Asian giant. For my money, the irreconcilable cultural poles the remaining century will bring into focus are these three ancient traditions: the broader Abrahamic West, the Chinese sphere and the Indian one.

We live in a globalized world. But our hyperconnected landscape has notably not produced a flat homogeneity of values. India, China and the West, which encompasses Christian Europe and the Muslim Near East, continue to serve as distinct and unique cores of human civilization. These three great pillars of human tradition reflect profoundly different values and orientations in their elite cultures. We have pragmatic China, philosophical India and a broader West threading a path between the two. Most remaining civilizations can easily be understood as both derivative and a synthesis of these traditions. Latin America is broadly Western, with indigenous American and African elements. Southeast Asian nations balance Indian, Chinese, Islamic and indigenous influences.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #17 on: January 17, 2022, 05:03:34 AM »

Muslim states dominated the subcontinent from what, ~1200 to ~1750? Over the same length of time of about 600 years from conquest Egypt had only very recently lost its Christian majority and there were still large religious minorities in the Levant and Iran. Really though Hindustan was a very large and decentralised country and Muslim rulers generally cut deals for support with local Hindu elites like the Rajputs or Brahmin administrators. And it's reasonable to venture that they were reluctant to convert to Islam because their social status was mediated through caste: going from proud Brahmin to ordinary Muslim (who would still be ethnically below and separated from the Turco-Persian Islamic elite) was not a very attractive proposition.

As for China, social advancement was through the imperial examination system based on memorising the Confucian classics. So converting to Islam or Christianity would get you nowhere. Matteo Ricci tried to convert mandarins at the court and only had limited success by introducing them to Euclid and western astronomy.
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2022, 11:40:01 AM »

The really high preexisting population density vs. the rest of the world seems like the obvious answer?
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #19 on: February 07, 2022, 11:02:40 PM »

Having entrenched political bodies against such a change that could meaningfully defend their turf for centuries.
I don't think so. India was ruled by the Muslim Mughal Emperors for centuries. And the Chinese dynasties weren't always strong, and their native religions weren't evangelical religions themselves.
The local Hindu leaders managed to have autonomy and due to their numbers and the diversity of religious thought survive these centuries while resisting the central government. Same in China.

Yeah, no ruling power over any part of "India" has ever successfully supplanted Hindu aristocracy.  There is a massive difference between the Spanish completely wiping out indigenous elites in the Americas and the relative freedom of expression awarded to India over the centuries, as far as the effect it has on the long term cultural shifts.
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khuzifenq
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« Reply #20 on: February 08, 2022, 11:36:59 PM »

The local Hindu leaders managed to have autonomy and due to their numbers and the diversity of religious thought survive these centuries while resisting the central government. Same in China.

Yeah, no ruling power over any part of "India" has ever successfully supplanted Hindu aristocracy.  There is a massive difference between the Spanish completely wiping out indigenous elites in the Americas and the relative freedom of expression awarded to India over the centuries, as far as the effect it has on the long term cultural shifts.

And there are very important reasons for this "relative freedom of expression".

The really high preexisting population density vs. the rest of the world seems like the obvious answer?
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gerritcole
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« Reply #21 on: February 10, 2022, 09:55:34 AM »

It’s rather self-explanatory, but I’ll explain to make it clearer for you. The majority of India did not convert to Islam, it was just localized mostly to the parts that became Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not even close to the entire country. Why wasn’t India “Islamicized” like Iran/Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Central Asia, North Africa, etc?

The politically correct answer is that like Medieval China, Medieval India was already too old and too populous of a civilization to have its indigenous religious traditions and social order completely uprooted by Islam (or Christianity, in the case of Medieval China).


What is the politically incorrect answer? Also, couldnt i say that zoroastrian persia was as grand and old of a civ as china/india and yet it was Islamized
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laddicus finch
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« Reply #22 on: February 10, 2022, 02:35:05 PM »

I'll answer for India (based on an admittedly foreign understanding) because that's the one I know more about:

1. India is huge. If you combine the populations of the entire Arab League, Iran, and Turkey (essentially the places that saw the most thorough Islamicization), you're still at less than half of India's. Granted these are based on modern figures, but it would have been impossible to assimilate Indians in any way. In fact, not even Indian-origin empires like the Mauryas and Guptas were able to assert any homogeneity in India.

2. India did get Islamicized, in part. Pakistan and Bangladesh are results of this, and India itself has 195 million Muslims today. And the influence of Islamic rule affected Hinduism and Hindu societies too - but they have largely maintained their character.

3. Most of India never had a wholesale, top-down imposition of Muslim rule the way other ancient, non-Islamic civilizations like Persia had. The only Muslim empire that was able to seriously assert its authority over most of India were the Mughals, who were known for running a very decentralized government that delegated many powers to local rulers, most of whom were Hindu.

4. The Mughals also didn't crack down on the preservation of Hindu traditions and literature in any serious way. There were limited instances of destroying temples and idolatry, but on the whole, the preservation of Hinduism was ensured by local rulers and Brahmin (high-caste) scholars.

5. The Mughals themselves (partly) assimilated into India. The Urdu language emerged from this - originally the Mughals spoke Persian, but eventually switched to Urdu, which is an Persianized version of the Hindi dialect spoken in Delhi (the Sanskrit-heavy version of this went on to become standard Hindi). This is only one example, but imposing Persian and Islamic norms was not tenable in a massive society which already had an ancient and deeply held tradition.

The British did even less to Christianize India. They did encourage missionaries, and the impact of this is most visible in South India and Sri Lanka. But for the most part, like the Mughals, they delegated a lot of power to local warlords and Brahmins.
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khuzifenq
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« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2022, 02:47:25 PM »

It’s rather self-explanatory, but I’ll explain to make it clearer for you. The majority of India did not convert to Islam, it was just localized mostly to the parts that became Pakistan and Bangladesh. Not even close to the entire country. Why wasn’t India “Islamicized” like Iran/Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Central Asia, North Africa, etc?

The politically correct answer is that like Medieval China, Medieval India was already too old and too populous of a civilization to have its indigenous religious traditions and social order completely uprooted by Islam (or Christianity, in the case of Medieval China).


What is the politically incorrect answer? Also, couldnt i say that zoroastrian persia was as grand and old of a civ as china/india and yet it was Islamized

It would probably be a Leipforsaken cocktail of Hindutva talking points, CCP propaganda, and BIPOCel keyboard warriors rambling about "yt fragility".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population#By_world_region

The real answer has do to with how much of the world's population was concentrated in India and China 1000 to 2000 years ago. China alone had something like 25%, the Indian subcontinent had 25-30%. All of Europe and West Asia combined had only 20-23%.

This is basically why Muslim conquerors from West and Central Asia were never able to impose "wholesale, top-down Muslim" rule throughout South Asia as laddicus finch put it, and had to delegate many powers to local rulers.
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laddicus finch
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« Reply #24 on: February 10, 2022, 04:57:13 PM »

Slightly off-topic, but interesting nonetheless: many scholars have argued that caste emerged as an institution of Hindu society under Muslim and Christian rule. The British did not create the caste system, this is a common misconception. Caste is as old as India. But before Muslim and especially British rule, the system was a lot less rigid, and far from homogenized. But in the absence of effective local government, and under the rule of an aloof and ultimately foreign ruling class, high-caste Hindus emphasized traditions like caste as a means of preserving social order. The British Raj was happy to systematize and enforce this by law, because they were smart rulers - they knew that maintaining order in their empire by manipulating indigenous concepts would be more effective than sending redcoats to every little village and enforcing their laws at gunpoint.
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