"But in areas controlled by the Muslim monarchs, Hindus had been turned into dumb driven cattle, always at the mercy of the meanest Muslim... Alauddin Khalji raised the land revenue to one-half of the gross produce. He imposed a grazing tax on all milch cattle and a house-tax... Hindus were so much impoverished that their wives had to work as servants in Muslim houses. Next came Alauddin’s market regulations which our secularists and the All India Radio have been hailing as “the first experiment in socialism in India’s history”. The peasants, who were Hindus, were ordered to sell their grains to the merchants at arbitrarily fixed prices. The merchants, who were also Hindus, were forced to sell this grain to the State, again at arbitrarily fixed prices which hardly left any margin of profit. There was so much grain stored in state godowns that Ibn Battutah who visited Delhi 18 years after Alauddin’s death, ate rice which had been procured during Alauddin’s reign. The Hindu merchants had to procure all sorts of merchandise from areas where there was no fixation of prices. But the prices at which they had to sell to the state were fixed without any reference to costs involved. And the merchants had to keep their wives and children as hostages at the capital to ensure that they brought regular supplies. This was expropriation, pure and simple, under conditions from which there was no escape except death."