Turks rule India

Turks Rule India 

Debi Prasad Choudhary 

Antalya, Turkey, 02/07/2026 

 

Ruins of Apollo Temple in Side near Antalya

Our conference organizers generously took us to visit the ancient Pamphylian town of Side near Antalya. The city of Side is situated on the Mediterranean Sea sore. In one end of the town facing the sea there is a ruin of huge temple in which the God Apollo was worshiped. The temple was built about 150 AD in Roman style. The God Apollo and his twin sister Artemis were conceived by Greeks and later adopted by Romans and others. These Gods were most beautiful a human can imagine, they were with various functions that human need to prosper that include healing, prophecy, music, poetry, and archery. These figures dominated human imagination for many years and perhaps gradually disappeared after the modern religions of Christianity and Islam appeared. Now the temples are all in ruins and serve as tourist attractions. Nobody seriously thinks of their existence, except for academic purposes. The first mission to moon was named after Apollo and now the second mission is named after Artemis. The ancient city of Side is in a beautiful location. Sea facing, excellent climate and there must have been abundant food in ancient times. Yet more than a thousand years ago, several well-to-do members of this society chose to come to India and settle there.. I started wondering why that happened. Different tribes from Turkistan came to India and ruled from 1206 to 1414 AD1. I also asked myself why people from my land did not consider moving. I am talking about my people in Odisha about 1000 to 1500 years ago. Our location is also sea sore; they also build huge temples. They were also rich and went to perform trade to long distances eastward. But I never considered moving for good.  

The people here in the bank of Meditation Sea and Bay of Bangla had many things in common materially. They were rich, travelled large distances. One considered always coming back and the other did not. So, I decided to stretch my imagination to analyze their intellectual capability. The material Infront of me is the God they perceived. The infamous Deepak Chopra says to Cruel Epstein that “God is a construct. Cute girls are real”. This pathetic statement is true for those who think of God as an object that can transfer wealth from the destitute and miserable individuals to these cruel and clever ones. These are the people in words of Srimad Bhagawat Gita: अनेकचित्तविभ्रान्ता मोहजालसमावृता: | प्रसक्ता: कामभोगेषु पतन्ति नरकेऽशुचौ || 16:16 Possessed and led astray by such imaginings, enveloped in a mesh of delusion, and addicted to the gratification of sensuous pleasures, they descend to the murkiest hell. So, thinking of God is not easy, it quickly leads to delusion and even if many may follow such individuals, they are empty and miserable within.  

So, what my people in Odisha thought of God those days for which they build a gigantic temple in Puri? The temple in Puri that we see today was completed in 11th century AD when Turks came to settle in Delhi area. My people received something called “Brahama Padartha” the divine material and piece of wood many many years before the construction of the grand temple. They imagined building a figure to Brahma Padartha and worship. They must have considered several attributes of God, His face, His hands and his activities. In the end they concluded “Na Ti” Not This – the great statement of Vedas. They gave up. The result is the Figure of Sri Jaganath four figures that we have been celebrating for centuries – none stop with the same vigor. Sri Jaganath is everything that any human can perceive in any part of the world. He is male, He is female, He is big and He is small. My ancestors did not pretend that they can imagine God and His attributes. They were happy that God is with them and preserved in all adverse conditions for thousands of years, many times at the cost of their lives. 

I am grateful that they thought about God correctly and never considered to leave the place. 

And building temples is not enough, what lives in them matters. 

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The Turks came to India after the Arabs. They were very strong in their physique, expert in war fare and dedicated to Islam. In India the Turkish rule was started by the Slave dynasty King named Qutubuddin-Aibak in the year 1206 A.D. He was born in a high family of Turkistan. His main aim was to establish a separate entitle of the Turkish empire free from the politics of Central Asia. This dynasty continued to rule upto 1287 A.D., by Ghiasuddin Balban. Later another Turkish tribe, the Khilji dynasty ruled India from 1292 A.D. to 1320 A.D. The Khiljis were replaced by the Tughluqs. The Tughluqs ruled from 1320 A.D. to 1414 A.D., from Delhi. They were also a mixed race from Turks and Jats. Ghias-us-din Tughluq was the founder of the Tughluq dynasty in India.