COMMUNALISM : A STUDY 47 modern times. And the class of Zamindars consisted exclusivelvof the Hindus during the entire Suitanatperiod and predominativ of them during the Mughal period.rndeecL.the terms 'Hindi?and 'Zammclar' were used synonymnu«ly by the contemporary historians. Thus the ruling class consisting of both the Hindus and the Muslims had its own compromises and conflicts which were often given the appearance of communal conflicts. One may recount here, by way of illustration, an incident of the reign of Sultan Muhammed bin Tughlaq. One Alt Shah Nathu had been appointed the administrator of a region from which he was to collect the revenue. Nathu, like other good administrators, embezzled large amounts of the revenue, a fact brought to the Sultan's notice by one Bharan, a Hindu. In consequence, Nathu was replaced by Bharan. Nathu, failing to dissuade the Sultan, revolted on the plea that he would not be ruled by an infidel. It would, however, not be correct to assume that even within the ruling class the Muslims comprised a very homogeneous section and the tensions existed only between the Hindus and the Muslims. On a rough count, the revolts of the Muslim nobles against the Muslim rulers outnumber the revolts of the Hindus by at least ten times. And the rulers nowhere showed any less zeal or ruthlessness in suppressing the revolts of the Muslims than those of the Hindus. The subject classes similarly consisted of the Hindus and the Muslims. It is historically false to suppose that all or even most of the Muslims belonged to the ruling class or that the rulling class was any less harsh in its attitude towards the common Muslims than towards the common Hindus. Zia-ud-din Barani, an extremely orthodox historian of the 14th century and a courtier of Muhammad Tughlaq, called the lower class Muslims dogs, pigs and bears and advised the Sultans to sternly order all teachers not to teach them anything more than the rules about prayers, fasting etc. He and his predecessor, Minhaj-ud-Siraj, who was the Qazi of the empire, never failed to refer to Hindu converts to Islam (such as Imad-ud-din, Raihan and Khusrau Khan) without adding some very obscene abuse just because they had risen to high positions. Significantly, while many of the court historians advised the Sultans to try to annihilate the Hindus (i.e. the Zamindars), they seldom demanded the conversion of Hindus to Islam. Indeed, the Muslim Iqtadars and the Hindu Zamindars, inspite of various conflicts between them within the ruling class, had much more in common with each other than with their respective lower class co-religionists. The third assumption underlying the argument under discussion is that the very raison d'etre of the medieval Indian State was the propagation of Islam through the demolition of the Hindu temples, the imposition of ja^ia and conversion of Hindus. For reasons of space it is not possible to go into a detailed examination of all these points. We shall, therefore, make only the following brief points besides stating that no systematic study has so far been