Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

While jihad has been the subject of countless studies in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, scholarship on the topic has so far paid little attention to South Asian Islam and, more specifically, its place in South Asian history. Seeking to fill some gaps in the historiography, Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst examines the effects of the 1857 Rebellion (long taught in Britain as the 'Indian Mutiny') on debates about the issue of jihad during the British Raj. Morgenstein Fuerst shows that the Rebellion had lasting, pronounced effects on the understanding by their Indian subjects (whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh) of imperial rule by distant outsiders. For India's Muslims their interpretation of the Rebellion as jihad shaped subsequent discourses, definitions and codifications of Islam in the region. Morgenstein Fuerst concludes by demonstrating how these perceptions of jihad, contextualised within the framework of the 19th century Rebellion, continue to influence contemporary rhetoric about Islam and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.Drawing on extensive primary source analysis, this unique take on Islamic identities in South Asia will be invaluable to scholars working on British colonial history, India and the Raj, as well as to those studying Islam in the region and beyond.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. ~Will Durant, American historian Invaders and Infidels: From Sindh to Delhi: The 500-Year Journey of Islamic Invasions is a work of gripping history, which tells the story of the origins and trajectory of Islamic invasions into India. It begins with the first Muslim conquest and ends with Babur's invasion of Hindustan, spanning the period of the Delhi Sultanate which was in power for almost 320 years. This epochal story encompasses a vast sweep of events, which changed the history of India forever, and introduced it to an alien faith and a religious despotism such as the country had never experienced before. It comprises major and minor sagas of great heroism, untold savagery, stout resistance, brutal intrigues and epic tragedies. Embedded in this narrative are two major themes, largely overlooked in the inherited Indian historical and cultural memory. For more than three hundred years, alien Muslim invasions into India were largely fleeting, transitory and unstable. However, the lasting legacy of these Muslim invasions is the permanent destruction and disappearance of Classical India. Invaders and Infidels will fascinate anyone interested in the story of pre-Medieval India, a gateway era in the history of this ancient culture and civilisation.

Dr Hardy has attempted a general history of British India's Muslims with a deeper perspective. He shows how the interplay of memories of past Muslim supremacy, Islamic religious aspirations and modern Muslim social and economic anxieties with the political needs of the alien ruling power gradually fostered a separate Muslim politics. Dr Hardy argues (contrary to the usual view) that Muslims were able to take political initiatives because, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh, British rule before 1857 and even the events of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857-8 had not been economically disastrous for most of them. He stresses the force of religion in the growth of Muslim political separatism, showing how the 'modernists' kept the conversation among Muslims within Islamic postulates and underlining the role of the traditional scholars in heightening popular religious feeling. Regarding any sense of Muslim political unity and nationhood as an outcome of the period of British rule, Dr Hardy shows the limitations and frailty of that unity and nationhood by 1947.