On Jizya: The Truth That Revisionists Like Ruchika Sharma Won’t Admit

In her recent piece in The Indian Express, historian Ruchika Sharma takes aim at the revised NCERT Class VIII history textbook, contending, among other things, that it misrepresents the historical institution of jizya, the tax levied on non-Muslims in medieval India.

Her objections warrant closer scrutiny, for they reflect complete dismissal of an uncomfortably voluminous record of written testimony, not by contemporary polemicists, but by the very chroniclers and jurists of the periods in question.

Dr Sharma confidently assures her readers that there is no evidence in any “primary source” linking jizya with attempts to convert non-Muslims to Islam.

One is tempted to ask: what precisely is a discriminatory tax for, if not to create pressure toward conformity? Must one now shuffle through primary sources to state the obvious that people move toward the path of least resistance when the alternative is a persistent and humiliating burden?

Still, let us indulge this challenge to the historical record.

Jadunath Sarkar, a historian whose place in Indian historiography is secured not by YouTube metrics but by decades of patient archival scholarship, had already addressed this matter a century ago.

In History of Aurangzib, Volume III, page 274, Sarkar notes that the “officially avowed policy” in reimposing jizya was “to increase the number of Muslims by putting pressure on the Hindus.”

This was no conjecture. Sarkar knew something which Dr Sharma does not. In a word, history. He cites the Persian chronicles Maasir-i-Alamgiri and Mirat-i-Ahmedi, which attribute to Aurangzeb a clear motive: to “spread the law of Islam and overthrow infidel practices.”

Modern revisionism has tried to sanitise this history, often by reframing jizya as a mere fee for exemption from military service, a formula appealing in its neutrality.

Alas, Sarkar gently and definitively refutes this line: “The theory of some modern writers that the jaziya was only commutation money paid for exemption from military service, is not borne out by history, for it was as late as 10th May 1855 that ‘the jaziya as a tax on the free exercise of religion was replaced by a tax for exemption from military service’ even in European Turkey.”

Islamic jurisprudence itself, so frequently called as witness in such debates, offers little relief to these denials. Ibn Kathir, one of the most widely studied Qur’anic commentators, asserts in his tafsir that the payment of jizya is “a sign of kufr and disgrace,” its collection intended to humiliate non-believers as a mark of submission. He cites relevant passages and explains how infidels ought to be “disgraced, humiliated and belittled.”

Columbia University’s N. P. Aghnides, in his seminal work Muhammadan Theories of Finance, notes the etymological origin of the word from jaza (also related to saza in Persian-Hindi use), meaning “recompense or punishment.”

Elaborate descriptions are debated among leading Islamic authorities on how jizya is to be collected. What should the form of humiliation be?

Whether the dhimmi should be “seized by the collar” and “vigorously shaken” or whether he should be seized “by his beard” and his face be slapped “on both sides.” Whether he should be allowed to send a proxy, in which case the object of jizyah would be defeated, namely humiliation.

As early as the 14th century, Ziauddin Barani, in Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, records Alauddin Khilji consulting his Kazi on the status of Hindus. He was told that Hindus were to be so subordinate that if the revenue officer hurled dirt in their mouths, they ought to receive it gratefully, for this confirmed their position.

He also informed that only Imam Hanifa out of the four great Sunni Imams had assented to the imposition of the jizya (poll tax) on Hindus. Others allow no other alternative but “Death or Islam.”

Nor is this phenomenon restricted to clerical theory. Muhammad bin Qasim, on entering Brahmanabad, exempted converts from slavery and jizya, while obliging others to pay. Firoz Shah Tughlaq, in his own Futuhat-i-Firoz Shahi, boasts that multitudes of Hindus embraced Islam after he incentivised them with exemption from jizya. Such incentives are not proof of mercy but are evidence of intent.

Khafi Khan, writing of the protests over Aurangzeb's reimposition of the tax, records that dissenters were trampled under elephants. This was not the outcry of men wishing to serve in uniform, as Dr Sharma might suggest. It was resistance to an unmistakably suppressive policy.

Kanzu-l Mahfuz, a lesser-known yet revealing source, records with disturbing clarity Aurangzeb’s belief that jizya would hasten “the suppression of idolatry” and “the honouring of Islam.”

The weight of these sources is cumulative. No one testimony need establish the entire case. Collectively, however, they render indisputable the basic proposition: jizya was neither a tax like any other, nor was it imposed void of social and religious purpose.

Its political utility cannot be separated from its psychological function, as a form of humiliation and pressure that held out the promise of relief through conversion.

Perhaps it is precisely because most Muslims today reject these medieval doctrines outright that the insistence on whitewashing them rings so hollow. The past loses none of its horror by being acknowledged. It is only ignorance that grows when we deny it.

Dr Sharma asserts that the textbook discourages critical thinking. But can there be any critical engagement with history that begins by denying evidence as abundant and unambiguous as this? There is no virtue in amnesia, intellectual or national.

The young deserve better than a history curated for emotional comfort. They deserve truth, not because it flatters, but precisely because it often does not.