What is Gazwa-e-Hind & Why is it invoked?

While people of most other faiths strive to make the most of the gift of life, Muslim children are indoctrinated to believe that eradication of Kafirs in the Indian Subcontinent as outlined in the prophesized “Ghazwa-e-Hind”.

- B L Razdan





Hindus are prisoners of their perspective. They believe that like their ancient universal Puranic prayer: “Sarve bavantu sukhina, sarve santu niramayah, sarve badrani pashyantu, ma Kaschit dukh bhag bavet (May All become Happy; May All be Healthy; May All See what is Auspicious; May none suffer in any way)” or Vedic Mantra, “Aa no bhadra kritvo yantu vishwata (Let noble thoughts come to us from every side)”, people of other faiths too cherish such lofty and pious wishes for all. Sadly, however, that is not the case. There is lot of bigotry, barbarity, treachery, deceit, cunning and what you have, going around the world in the name of religion that the pious Hindu has been reduced to the status of a refugee in his own land, or whatever is left of it, like the peace loving Hindus of Kashmir.

Whereas all the revealed religions not native to the Indian soil have committed monumental atrocities, it is the Islamic barbarity that has been the cruelest. There’s a phrase that Muslim militant leaders all across the world have used against India for decades and that is: “Ghazwa-e-Hind” or a holy raid of India. It is based on a supposed utterance of Prophet Muhammad, which calls upon Muslims to rally behind Jesus after his resurrection in Jerusalem from where he will lead an attack on Rome and Christianity while destroying Europe, while sending an army towards India to destroy Hindus as a people and the eradication of Hinduism from India.

Ghazwa-e-Hind is a notorious prophecy that is mentioned in some so called "good" hadith predicting a great battle in India between Muslims and Hindus, resulting in a conquest by the Muslim warriors of the entire Indian sub-continent. The conquest will supposedly occur before the end-times and create an Islamic caliphate resembling the social order that existed at the time of Prophet Muhammad by imposing Islamic Sharia.

According to the prediction the final battle will supposedly start in Syria with the troops marching forward from Jerusalem to India. The warriors will supposedly destroy the land of Hind; possess its treasures and then the King of Jerusalem will use those treasures for the décor of Jerusalem. The troops will supposedly bring the Indian kings in front of the King of Jerusalem, who would order the troops to conquer all the area between the East and the West.

The prediction adds that armies carrying black flags will supposedly come from Khurasan, make India part of Khursan and no power would be able to stop them and India would become fully Islamic state. Later Allah would supposedly grant success to those warriors, as far as they would bring their kings by dragging them in chains. And Allah would forgive those warriors by the Blessing of this Great War. And when those Muslims would return, they would find Isa Ibn Maryam [Jesus] in Syria. Later, according to the prediction, the Anti-Christ would supposedly appear in India and try to rule the world. Isa ibn Maryam, i.e Jesus Christ would kill him and save the world.





Radical Islamists invoke this prediction to prophesize a great battle in India between true believers and non-believers before the end-times. The references in the Hadith to the Ghazwa-e-Hind (Battle of India) infuse South Asia with importance as a battleground the creation of an Islamic caliphate.

Imperatively, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) are vying with each other for recruitment on the South Asian subcontinent. As has been the case in other regions where radical Islamists have congregated (including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria), jihadi recruitment in the region covering Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is aided and abetted by competing claims of divine support.

The South Asian region has a long history with jihadi movements, dating back to the eighteenth century. During the 1980s, it became the battleground for hosting global jihad as part of the internationally-backed guerilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With American support, the radical Islamists entered Afghanistan through Pakistan and received advanced military training to fight the Soviets. The first generation of al-Qaeda commanders and ideologues were veterans of the anti-Soviet Afghan war. ISIS, too, has been influenced greatly by the so-called Arab-Afghans and their disciples. During the war against the Soviets and the ensuing Taliban rule, ancient prophecies of Khurasan – which includes modern Afghanistan – resurfaced to inspire jihadists and promise great heavenly rewards.

The immediate fall-out of the Afghan insurgency was that many of these radical elements returned to their home countries to conduct terrorist attacks. Also the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Pakistan-backed insurgency in Kashmir against India stoked jihadism in the region. Many an Indian youth were inspired to join the terrorist organizations to fight in Syria and elsewhere to help in the creation of the so-called Islamic Caliphate.

Muslim scholars in India have interpreted the Hadith and the prophecy variously; there being no unanimity among them. Whereas Maulana Mufti Mushtaq Tijarvi of Jamaat-i Islami India has suggested that the hadith is not genuine at all and it is just a fabrication intended to justify Qasim's invasion of the Indian subcontinent, others are inclined to believe that it indeed is in hadith, but that has already happened long ago in 600-700 CE when Mohammad bin Qasim attacked India. After that there have been a number of attacks on India from Central Asia by Muslim rulers, and India was under Muslim rule for a long time. Maulana Abdul Hamid Numani of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-i Hind opines that this Hadith was already fulfilled at the time of the Four Righteous Caliphs, when several companions of the Prophet came to India in order to spread Islam. Mufti Sajid Qasmi, professor at Dar ul-Uloom Deoband, believes that the Hadith might also refer to the invasion of Sindh by Arabs under Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century.

Not much credence need be given to the favourable interpretations by local Indian Maulanas, particularly to those belonging to Deobandhi school of thought for the simple reasons that they preach hardcore wahabism and it is they who initially prepared the fertile ground for militancy by sending its cadres to Kashmir. Even in other parts of India they use Mullas and Maulanas to surreptitiously preach puritanically exclusive Islam. Their interpretations, favourable as these may ostensibly seem, may be hiding the true intent and may also be aimed at lulling the majority community into complacence and, as has often been the case, later taking advantage of the same in furthering the interests of Islam. The excluvist brainwashing done in Madrasas in the name of imparting education is far from providing secular education and bears testimony to the Islamic designs against inclusive idea of India.





Muslims of 'Tamil Nadu Thowheedh Jamaath' organization hold placards and shout slogans as they protest against the Supreme Court verdict on a disputed religious site of Ayodhya, in Chennai on Nov. 18, 2019.

History of Islam is full of such practices inasmuch as according to the Islamic doctrine of “Taqiyya”, it is perfectly okay for a Muslim to indulge in lying, deceit, cheating, cunning, treachery, trickstry, bullying, sleight, killings, intimidation, use of force and what have you if it promotes islamisation in any which way one may think. One can clearly understand this concept from the speech made by Yasser Arafat at Johannesburg: "This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our Prophet Muhammad and Quraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and considered it "Sulha Dania" [a despicable truce]. But Muhammad had accepted it and we are accepting now this [Oslo] peace accord." It may be noted that Arafat was comparing the Oslo Accords with the Hudaybiyyah peace treaty - a 10-year truce agreed between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and the Quraish Tribe of Mecca. However, only two years later, Muhammad attacked and conquered Mecca.

Even assuming for a moment that the above favourable interpretations of Indian Islamic scholars are bonafide, the ground reality is that all Mullahs and Maulavis interacting with the Muslim masses, ignorant and uneducated as they are, propagate that murder, mayhem and even any heinous crime could be committed if it promotes islamisation. The curse of love jihad and several such insidious practices are offshoots of this clever and cunning ploy to work for the promotion of Islam. It may be reiterated that “Taqiyya” is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. One can, without any doubt, go so far as to say that the practice of “taqiyya” is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream. “Taqiyya” is very prevalent both in Islamic religion and politics, especially in the modern era.

Imperialism, colonialism and even Christianity in their heydays did commit crimes against humanity and eradication of entire peoples, but none wanted their own demise as a reward. While people of all other faiths strive to make the most of the gift of life, Muslim children are indoctrinated to believe that life begins after death, and that the earth is a mere transit lounge where the eradication of Hindus is a sacred duty of the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent as outlined in the prophesized “Ghazwa-e-Hind”.

In view of this, it is any day better to be over-careful than be even a whit careless with regard to what they preach and what they actually practice; for the costs involved will be catastrophic. If not confronted, the malady of Ghazwa-e-Hind is bound to erupt the way ISIS and al-Qaida did. And today even the most educated and liberal Islamic clerics dare not, if at all, denounce this path of barbarity bordering on lunacy.

(The author served in Indian Revenue Service and retired as Director General of Income Tax - Investigation)