Richard Eaton is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. Eaton's books include India's Islamic Traditions 711-1750: Themes in Indian History, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier (1204-1760)
and Sufis of Bijapur (1300-1700): Social Rules of Sufis in Medieval India
. The following interview was conducted via email.Most of your books deal with the history of Islam’s growth as a religion in the Indian sub-continent. What drew you towards the history of the Indian subcontinent with an emphasis on the advent of Islam?I was drawn to the study of South Asia because of a three-week overland trip that two friends and I had made in the summer of 1963. That trip took me from Iran through Baluchistan, Karachi, Bombay, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Benares, Delhi, Lahore, Peshawar, Kabul, and back to Iran. The trip also made me aware of the enormous influence that Persianate and Islamic culture had in South Asia. Yet that influence was very uneven. So I set myself to the task of understanding, and explaining, why Persianate and Muslim cultures had penetrated so deeply in some parts of South Asia, but not others. Had I not already spent a year in Iran and learned Persian before making that journey, these questions would never have occurred to me.
Your phenomenal work The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204-1760 shows that Islam was neither "a religion of the sword" nor "a religion of social liberation" in India. Tell us something particularly about this illuminating aspect of your research.Before formulating my own thinking about Islamization in Bengal, I had already read extensively about the subject and was familiar with the conventional explanations. But none of them made much sense to me, mainly because they failed to account for the very different receptions that Islam had in the eastern and western portions of the delta, respectively. For example, Sufis are frequently identified as agents of “conversion” in eastern Bengal, yet there were just as many Sufis in western Bengal, too. Moreover, if the “religion of the sword” and “religion of social liberation” had been operative at all (which they weren’t), they should logically have been more relevant for the western rather than the eastern delta. All of this convinced me that everything had to be re-thought and that a fresh start was needed.
How was The Rise of Islam received among readers? Have you faced any criticism? Have your findings been opposed or challenged by historians?As measured by the two prizes it won – from the Association for Asian Studies and the Middle East Studies Association -- Rise of Islam enjoyed a generally favorable reception. But of course, all books face criticism. Some readers objected to my use of “Turk” when referring to Muslims in the book’s earlier chapters – a criticism that is partially valid. “Turk” is an ethnic term (not, of course, a national one in the period covered by the book), since it merely refers to people whose first language was Turkish. But over time, descendants of the delta’s Turkish settlers gradually stopped using Turkish, even in their households, where Bengali gradually overtook their use of Turkish. So it is true that some of the people I called “Turks” had probably ceased using Turkish by the 15th or 16th century.
Once on the throne, he took extraordinary steps respecting his relationship to his adopted religion – restoring the Islamic confession to his coins and even claiming to be Caliph himself. Yet at the same time, he vigorously patronized Bengali culture, in both his coinage and his architecture. This is why I find him to be one of the more fascinating figures in Bengali history.
Others have objected that the mosques appearing in the 15th and 16th centuries, in Map 2(c), were more evenly distributed across the delta than I claimed to be the case. But a glance at that map (p. 26) reveals, I think, a distinct concentration of mosques along the western corridor of the Old Ganges. But these are relatively minor objections.
What are your findings on negotiated confession to Islam vis-a-vis Sultan Jadu Jalal al-Din Muhammad?Sultan Jadu Jalal al-Din Muhammad’s own acceptance of Islam appears to have been related to the terms by which Raja Ganesh negotiated his son’s rise to the throne as sultan. Once on the throne, he took extraordinary steps respecting his relationship to his adopted religion – restoring the Islamic confession to his coins and even claiming to be Caliph himself. Yet at the same time, he vigorously patronized Bengali culture, in both his coinage and his architecture. This is why I find him to be one of the more fascinating figures in Bengali history.
We heard that you had visited the Sundarbans during your research. Did your field visits there offer you any extra insight into your core findings?Actually, I never visited the Sundarbans while conducting my research in Bangladesh. At that time I got only as close as Bagerhat. But this last December, I did have the pleasure of spending about a week in the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans with a group of Bangladeshi friends. That trip acquainted me with the very different type of vegetation found in the salt-water stretches of that forest, in contrast to that of the delta’s central, northern and eastern regions. This clearly had implications for the extension of wet-rice agriculture, which requires fresh water. So my visit made me aware of the geographical limits to the diffusion of wet-rice agriculture in the delta’s southernmost regions.
Audity Falguni is a fiction writer and translator from English into Bengali. 
