While most of them were in fact coerced into converting, a significant number, largely from the so-called lower castes, did jump the fence willingly, that's just a historical fact, my brother. We, or rather our ancestors, for the most part, weren't exactly fair to them.
Actually the fact is the opposite brother. The common belief that the lower caste converted en mass to abrahamics is a myth. Like a fake urban legend, it has been perpetuated & accepted as common knowledge by now. Bc this is exactly what they want us to think. N bc its easier to justify.
There was an extensive study that calculated what % of converts came from which caste in the entire India. It was limited to pre-1980 so it excludes recent converts.
I studied it a long time back n dont know if I can find it now. It focused mainly on the hindus whose ancestors converted in the islamic rule. That time period was different for each part of India. I. E. West India was dominated by muslims at a different time than eastern, southern etc.
The findings showed that by a large margin, converts came disproportionally from the high castes. Brahmins had the highest % of converts followed by kshatriyas. The least amount of converts came from lower classes. This is contrary to conventional wisdom but conventional wisdom is wrong. It makes sense if you think this way:
If yr a muzzie King who wants to convert a whole village, u will obviously target its leaders bc rest of the ppl will follow the leader. So they thought targeting brahmins will speed up conversion by the rest so maximum pressure was applied to them. Both carrot n stick. They were made to suffer the most atrocities while those brahmins who willingly converted got the carrot of having lucrative positions in the administration.
The Kshatriyas who converted were obviously losers of battle. Many entered into unequal taqyawadi pacts to buy temporary peace with the muzzies. Which they never kept but dumb dharmic Kshatriyas followed to the letter. For. ex my ancestors fought invaders for 3 centuries to hold afghanistan. After the tide turned against them, they made an agreement that they will move out to present NW India n their descendents will never raise weapons again. In return muzzies promised to not hurt the cows of the region ( bc we were sentimental n valued lives of innocent cows as much as ppl) & they agreed not to prostelyze n convert the local people.
As u can already guess, once we were defanged, they never kept their end of the bargain, made a festival of slaughtering cows n afgh is 99% muslim today. A minority of the community survives as hindus today within Indian borders.
Many Kshatriya castes have stories like this. A higher % of Kshatriyas ended up converting compared to Scs and OBCs.
On an absolute numbers basis, lower caste converts might be more but thats a given bc u r starting with a higher base line. If there r 80 Lower castes n if 20% of them convert, they have 16 converts.
If there r 20 brahmins n kshatriyas n if half of them convert u have 8 high caste converts. But on a percentage basis todays muzzies r more brahmin n kshatriya descendents rather than low caste converts.
All of our hindu ancestors till 20th century knew this reality of muzzie converts that they were mostly traitarous brahmins who sold out their dharma or defeated coward kshatriyas who chose conversion over veergati. That is y they were looked down upon n treated like outcasts by the hindu samaaj for many centuries. In a way, this was a good strategy as it discouraged further conversion by those who were border-line by attaching a cost to betraying your own people like social stigma. This knowledge is lost to current hindus bc we have lost our trans-generational information sharing mechanism n rely on fake histories n narratives written by psuedo-secular schools n media to learn our own history.
This strategy of stagmatizing converts worked to a large extent, until the british came. Bc if u look at subcontinental demographics it largely stayed constant at 20% muzzie pop from 15th to 19th centuries despite the many political changes. The large muzzie pop explosion from 20% in 19th century to 40% today was the work of british n Psuedo-secular Indian govt. They have done more to increase muzzie pop in last 150 years than muslim tyrants themselves could do in 1200 years.
There were periods in the medieval age when muzzie pop increased above 20% temporarily during periods of extreme cruelty ie. during aurangzeb or when myzzies conquered n converted a new part of india.
But a very important lesson here for hindus is this: Everytime those newly conquered myzzie land was taken back by hindu kings n held for a long enough time, nearly 100% of people converted back to hinduism if allowed by hindu kings. This point is not known by many current strategists n should b known. Parts of punjab n maharashtra that were taken back by sikhs n marathas witnessed a rapid decline in muzzie pop. This trend would have continued had the british n seculars not happened. Parts of the subcontinent that were never taken back by hindus. I.e. Sindh, east bengal continue to remain 100% muslim today.
Point here is that until recently, all the lost converts wanted to rejoin the thriving hindu society n it was unwillingless of hindus to take them back that kept them as muzzies. And not unwillingness of converts as it is today.
This is a reality today but one should not extrapolate current situation to the past. As it will give you wrong conclusions n wrong solutions. Point to note is if u can create favorable ground realities n give the right set of carrot n stick, all myzsie n xtian converts will come back. Today the hindu society is neither thriving nor there is any stigma to converting. Actually the opposite is true. There r many carrots to becoming a muzzie or xtian in the current social-economical scenario. On top of that, for past 70 years, secular govt had made hindus politically second class citizens. So y would anybody join a loosing side?
Let this be consolation to those who think we can never convert myzxies or xtians. We havent even begun to create the conditions necessary for this yet. We have a long way to go. In due time, this will happen. On the scale of 1 to 10 of carrots n sticks required for re-conversion, we are at .01 right now.
Many hindus on this forum, try to convert muzxies individually by having a discussion with them 2-3 times n get disheartened when they fail. They shouldnt. Think of how many times an average myzxie or xtian does the same thing to a hindu in his lifetime. They r taught from birth how to convert n defend against re-conversions, they have practiced this literally thousands of times growing up. While an average hindu who engages with them is probably talking about this topic 1st or 2nd time in his life, bc we are raised differently.
An average muztxan, like an amway sellsman has made the sales pitch thousands of times n succeeds only once or twice. They have a success rate for .001% n yet they dont get discouraged n continue. N here we have hindu nibbas giving up after their first or second try.
Keep heart Brother. Once we have our own house in order, we will go on the offensive n win. But we r in the initial stage of that process currently. There r many strategies that work in converting n bringing ppl in our fold. At individual level n at a community level. I will discuss those in a different thread in the future as it will become excessively long.
The above post may make brahmins n kshatriyas failures look shameful. Thats not my intent. Eventhough, pisslamization of our society was largely a result of failures of kshatriyas to adopt to changing conditions, there were many heroes sung & unsung who carried the flame n bc of them hindus were 80% of pop of the subcontinent as late as 19th century. One way of outside the box thinking by shivaji was to make every hindu a kshatriya n pass on war making knowledge to every commoner. So even if some xyz kshatriya royal dynasty lineage was destroyed by muzzies it was no loss n some other hindu could easily pick up from where other had lost.
Similarly many brahmins adopted by de-centralizing the hindu dharma n converting sanskrit cripture into easy to understand vernacular languages. Myzxies had targeted hindu, budhist, jain centers of society such as temples, universities to destroy centers of knowledge. Brahmins responded by having no significant central centers of knowledge n making hinduism a community based religion n by starting a large movement to pass n spread the knowledge to every commoner so the loss of a large center wouldnt be permanant loss. They preserved our history n dharma thru many difficulties.
During this period many bhakts rose up from all strata & castes of the society such as tulsidas, kabir, tukaram, mirabai etc who took the religion to the people in their homes rather than congregate at a large place n be an easy target of the muzxies.
All castes went thru turmoil during this period. Everybody was subjected to jaziya n partial legal treatment by myzzies. Yet we all stuck together. There were some low caste people who converted willingly but their numbers too little to make any difference in grand scheme of things. Many just wanted to avoid jaziya n b able to survive. Yet we owe a large degree of gratitude to "low caste" people bc by n large they stood by dharma and it is bc of them that India is a Hindu majority country today.
