The forcible conversion of Frontier Tribes by Aurangzeb is a well-known fact. “Popular Hindu and Sikh tradition ascribes mass conversions by force to… - K. S. Lal

Throughout the Muslim rule destruction of Hindu shrines and construction of mosques and other building from their materials and at their very sites went on as a normal practice. From the Quwwal-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi built out of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples in the twelfth century to the Taj-ul-Masajid built from hundreds of Hindu and Jain temples at Bhopal in the eighteenth century, the story is the same everywhere.

So that, in the Islamic state, Delhi was not the capital of the empire; it was Quwwat-ul-Islam. The king was not the ruler of the people; he was Amir-ul-Mauminin, “the conqueror of infidels and shelterer of Islam.” The army was not the royal army; it was Lashkar-i-Islam. The soldier was not a cavalry man or infantry man; he was Ahl-i-Jihad. The law of the state was not any secular or humanitarian law; it was Shariat, the law of Islam. The state was not an end in itself, like the Greek state, but a means of sub-serving the interests of Islam. Conquests were made, shrines were broken, captives were taken, converts were made - all in the name of Islam. The raison d’etre of the regime was to disseminate the Islamic faith.

During the reigns of Nasiruddin and Balban (1246-86) warfare for consolidation and expansion of Turkish dominions went on apace. Trailohyavarman, who ruled over Southern U.P., Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand, and is called ‘Dalaki va Malaki’ by Persian chroniclers, was defeated alter great slaughter (1248). In 1251, Gwalior, Chanderi, Narwar and Malwa were attacked. The Raja of Malwa alone had 5,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry and would have been defeated only after great loss of life. The inhabitants ofKaithal were given such severe punishment (1254) that they ‘might not fotgtt (the lesson) for the rest of their lutes’: In 1256 Ulugh' Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Saimur, and ‘so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described’. Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and ‘many of its valiant fighting men were sent to hell’. In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) ‘numberless Hindus perished under the merciless swords of the soldiers of Islam’. In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sward in Hariyana.