Who are the Meo Muslims of Mewat?

Recently, in the Nuh district of Haryana, the communal clashes broke out after a religious procession that took place on July 31. The Mewat region became the center of attention in all this. The region is spread across the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The Meo Muslim community resides in the Nuh district of Haryana. Let us get to know this community better.

Getting to know the Meos

The Meo community abides by syncretic traditions. They reside in a backward area. The name of the area comes from the term "Meo": Mewat. It includes Palwal, Gurgaon, Faridabad, and Nuh, along with the Bharatpur and Alwar districts of Rajasthan, along with a few regions of western Uttar Pradesh. This also includes Mathura.

Let's dig the history deeper

Chairman of the History Department of the Kurukshetra University and the Dean of the Social Sciences faculty, Professor SK Chahal stated that Mewat was actually one of the subahs (provinces) at the time of the reign of Emperor Akbar in India. Chahal stated that most historians are of the view that Meos were, since the very beginning, not Muslims. They gradually got converted to Islam in the 12th and 17th centuries by the Delhi Sultans.

It was in the early 13th century that the Delhi Sultanate commenced with the rule of the Khilji dynasty. It was in the middle of the 16th century when it collapsed. History says that Aurangzeb was the last Mughal to rule in the dynasty in the 18th century. However, it is said that their rule continued even further.

However, another section of history contradicts the concept and talks about a slower change. Professor Shail Mayaram, an official on the ethnic composition of the community expresses that the term conversion is actually a present-day concept. No large-scale full conversion had ever taken place.