Justice for Hindus and Muslims in Zia-Ul-Barani’s Vision of Governance

How does a ruler deliver justice in a society where the majority follows one religion and the ruling class follows another? This was the practical dilemma facing the Delhi Sultanate in the 14th century, and it sat at the heart of Ziauddin Barani’s political writing. Barani was the most influential political thinker of the Sultanate, serving in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and his ideas on justice reveal a thinker caught between religious ideals and the hard realities of governing a diverse population. His approach did not draw up separate legal codes for Hindus and Muslims. Instead, he anchored justice in the Shariat while quietly building in the flexibility that actual administration demanded. Understanding this tension tells us a great deal about how medieval states reconciled faith with statecraft.

Who was Barani and why does his idea of justice matter? 🔗

Ziauddin Barani (1283-1359) lived through the reigns of Alauddin Khalji, Muhammad bin Tughlaq, and Firuz Shah Tughlaq. He is best remembered for two works: the historical chronicle Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi and the political treatise Fatawa-i-Jahandari, written around 1357 as a set of nasihats (advices) addressed to Muslim kings. Scholars often place this treatise alongside Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Machiavelli’s The Prince because of its frank focus on the practical mechanics of power.

Barani is described as the thinker who championed the idea of political expediency in Islamic history. That single phrase captures why his theory of justice is so revealing. For Barani, justice was never a purely abstract virtue. It was tied directly to the survival and strength of the state. This makes his work a useful window into how rulers actually thought about law and fairness when governing a population that did not share the ruler’s faith.

Justice anchored in the Shariat 🔗

At the foundation of Barani’s thought sat the Shariat, the body of law derived from the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet. He regarded the enforcement of Islamic law as the Sultan’s most important religious duty. In his framework, the ideal ruler had to be noble-born, wise, just, and committed to upholding the Shariat. A ruler who governed according to it, Barani argued, would earn both divine approval and the loyalty of his subjects, creating a stable foundation for long-term rule.

Crucially, Barani’s vision of justice did not explicitly separate Hindu and Muslim laws into two parallel systems. There was no neatly codified “Hindu law” sitting beside “Muslim law” in his scheme. Justice was meant to flow from Shariat-based principles, with the Sultan acting as the guardian of that moral and legal order. He saw religion and politics as inseparable, and the Sultan’s legitimacy flowed precisely from his role as the defender of Islam.

Justice as a tool of statecraft 🔗

Here lies the first complication. Although justice held the central position among the qualities Barani demanded of a ruler, his understanding of it was tilted heavily towards the rich and powerful. Suppressing rebellious elites, recognising the rights of subjects, refraining from petty fault-finding, and not imposing burdens beyond what people could bear, these were the essential features of just rule he described. Yet the underlying purpose was consistent: consolidating the authority of the Muslim ruling class.

Barani also advised the Sultan on the balance between mercy and punishment. Punishment was reserved for the rebellious, cruel, and mischievous, while forgiveness was extended to those who repented their wrongs. This calibrated approach to justice was less about individual fairness and more about maintaining order and demonstrating royal authority.

The problem of a diverse population 🔗

The Delhi Sultanate faced an inescapable demographic fact. A small Muslim ruling class, concentrated in urban administrative centres, governed a vast Hindu population spread across the countryside. The Shariat alone could not realistically manage this reality. Three pressures, in particular, pushed against a rigid application of religious law.

First, monarchy itself sat uncomfortably with Islamic principles. Barani openly acknowledged that monarchy was philosophically anti-Shariat, yet he accepted it as a necessity of the age. Second, the economic basis of the Sultanate depended on revenue collection, which forced compromises with local landholders and aristocracy. Third, and most significantly, the enormous Hindu population of the rural areas could not be antagonised without jeopardising the security of the state.

This is why, despite Barani’s own orthodox leanings, the Sultanate’s ruling class adopted a comparatively liberal attitude towards Hindus, a flexibility that Barani himself complained about in his writings. Under Muhammad bin Tughlaq especially, Hindus were able to practise their religion openly, a development Barani recorded with visible disapproval. His theory of justice, in the end, emanated essentially from the perspective of the security of the state.

Zawabit: the pragmatic answer 🔗

To bridge the gap between religious ideals and administrative needs, Barani turned to a second category of law. He divided laws into two kinds. The Shariat represented the divine law of the Quran and the Prophet’s tradition. The Zawabit were state laws formulated by the monarch, in consultation with the nobility, to meet the new requirements that the Shariat could not address.

The Zawabit were Barani’s mechanism for handling a diverse population. He advised the formulation of these new laws precisely where, in changed circumstances, the Shariat was unable to serve the purpose of the state. Importantly, Barani was not advocating a free-for-all. He insisted that the Zawabit must remain fundamentally compatible with the basic principles of Islamic law, must take account of past and contemporary practices, and should be guided by moral principles rather than naked opportunism.

Resolving the grievances of the zimmi 🔗

What Barani envisaged through the Zawabit was an ideal body of law that could serve the needs of the state without offending any major section of either the nobility or the masses. Through these state laws, he sought to address the grievances of the zimmi, the term used for non-Muslim subjects, including Hindus, living under Muslim rule. In effect, the Zawabit allowed the state to deal with the customs and revenue arrangements of a non-Muslim majority in a way that pure Shariat could not have managed.

This dual structure reveals Barani’s central position. Unlike a rigid fundamentalist, he opted for moderation in practice. His only real test for adopting a particular law was the interest, security, and stability of the state. If protecting the state required deviating from Quranic law, the ruler should do so. For Barani, the end of strengthening the state justified the means.

The tension between principle and practice 🔗

This is where Barani becomes genuinely complex, and even contradictory. In his historical and personal writings, he expressed harsh hostility towards Hindus and lamented their prosperity under Muslim rule. Yet his actual prescriptions for governance accommodated a non-Muslim majority through the Zawabit. Some scholars resolve this by noting that his hostility was directed less at ordinary Hindus and more at the Hindu elite, whom he viewed as a potential threat to the Sultanate.

His justice, therefore, contained a built-in bias. It was tilted in favour of the rich and powerful and carried a clear contempt for the underprivileged, including low-born Muslims. Justice in Barani’s hands was, to a large extent, intended to serve the interests of the state and consolidate the position of the traditional Muslim aristocracy. Religion was used to unite the Muslim population and the ruling class, while the Zawabit managed the practical reality of governing everyone else.

Why the contradiction makes sense 🔗

The apparent contradiction dissolves once we recognise Barani’s priority. He was not primarily a theologian working out a fair distribution of rights across communities. He was a theorist of state power. Laxity in following the Shariat was tolerable to him as long as it did not threaten the stability of the state, but became unacceptable the moment it did. Justice for Hindus and Muslims alike was filtered through this single question: does it strengthen or weaken the Sultanate?

This pragmatism is also why his thought continues to interest students of governance. The challenge he wrestled with, balancing a foundational legal or constitutional framework against the practical demands of governing a plural society, is not unique to the 14th century. Modern democracies routinely balance constitutional principles against coalition politics, regional demands, and economic pressures. Barani’s framework of an idealistic religious law tempered by pragmatic state law offers an early and instructive example of how rulers navigate that tension.

What this tells us about Barani’s legacy 🔗

Barani’s treatment of justice for Hindus and Muslims shows a thinker who refused the simple options. He neither built a fully equal, secular system of law nor enforced an uncompromising religious code. He held the Shariat up as the ideal while creating the Zawabit as the escape valve that made governance possible. The result was a theory in which justice served the state first and religious principle second, even as religion supplied the language of legitimacy.

For all his orthodoxy and his documented prejudices, Barani earned lasting recognition as a foundational figure in Indian political thought. His distinction between divine law and state law, and his frank acknowledgement that the demands of statecraft could override religious purity, influenced later thinking on governance, including aspects of Mughal state ideology. He remains an enigmatic figure precisely because his ideals and his pragmatism pulled in opposite directions, and he was honest enough to let both appear on the page.

What do you think? Was Barani’s use of the Zawabit a genuine attempt at fair governance of a diverse society, or simply a sophisticated tool for preserving the power of the ruling elite? And how far should the “security of the state” be allowed to override foundational legal principles in any era, medieval or modern?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin_Barani
2. https://thebooknotes.in/zia-barani-good-sultan-and-ideal-polity/
3. https://politicalstudies.in/quiz/ziauddin-barani/.html
4. https://thebooknotes.in/barani-ugc-net-indian-political-thought/
5. https://www.e-ir.info/2014/02/11/the-delhi-sultanates-treatment-of-hindus/
6. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/university-of-delhi/indian-political-thought-i/unit-10-great/41123016