One of the biggest challenges before the Indian republic is how to manage relations between Hindus and Muslims. This dispute preceded the formation of India; indeed, was instrumental in the bloody partition of the country into India and Pakistan, and, perhaps, has an even older prehistory, going back to the Muslim conquest of North India at the end of the twelfth century. Is it fair to call it Muslim conquest, which has religious overtones, rather than an Arab, Turkish, Afghan, Persian, Central Asian or Moghul conquest, as the case may have been? The answer to this question depends partly on how the conquerors saw themselves, how the conquered saw them and what historians have to say in the matter.

The first mosque in Delhi was called the Quwaat-ul-Islam, or ‘the might of Islam’ mosque. It was built on the ruins of dozens of Hindu and Jain shrines, destroyed by the conquerors. The tallest minaret in the world, the Qutub Minar, was started by Qutub-ud-Din Aibak, the man who defeated the Hindu king, Prithviraj Chauhan, to found the Delhi Sultanate, the first of many Muslim kingdoms in India. India was by no means the first foreign land conquered by Islamic armies. So what happened here followed an older pattern. In Andalusia, for example, a similar destruction of existing churches took place to build the great Mesquita in Cordoba. Victorious Islamic armies, in this case, Arab–Berber hordes, also built victory towers.