Comparison Between Muslim and British Rule in India

Comparison Between Muslim And British Rule In India
MUSLIM RULE VS BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.

In 1858, after the British invaded India, Queen Victoria was made to be the Empress of India.
The British Indian Empire consisted of two divisions: British India and the Native States or
Princely States. In the Princely States, the British did not directly rule over the states, but a
separate ruler would make sure that the places were still under their eyes. There were 565
Princely States when the Indian subcontinent became independent from Britain in August, 1947.
The British Empire was politically very strong. It made laws binding on the native people which,
of course, were acted upon very seriously. The British rulers were very dominant towards the
Indian people.
The British Empire brought many industrial developments into India. Although criticized, the
most popular East India Company was one of
the biggest silk and cotton industries at that
time. Railway services and new roads were
developed under the British rule. The economy
faced a decline under their rule. The British
Empire was never accepted by the native
Indians. The British Empire left India in 1947.
Summary:
1.Muslim rule followed in India for more than

200 years while British rule for nearly 100
years.
2.Muslim rule consisted of over 50 rulers from
various dynasties while the British had 20 viceroys at their time.
3.Muslim rule had religious intolerance towards all other religions while the British showed no
such inclinations.
4.The Muslim rulers made various cultural developments which still exist in the country while
British rule focused on industrial and trade developments.
5.The economy blossomed in the latter half of the Muslim rule while it declined under British
rule.
The effects of British rule on Muslims before 1857
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Writing in 1871, the Bengal civilian, W. W. Hunter (1840–
1900), described ‘the Muslims’ as ‘in all respects…a race
ruined under British rule’. Ignoring his caveat that his
remarks applied only to lower Bengal, most historians have
not only accepted his judgement as valid for that region but
have also extended it to depict the fate of Muslims
throughout British India. Certainly, British rule ruined the
office-holding Muslim aristocrat of lower Bengal, but not
all at once. British rule, or rather British manufactures, also
ruined the Muslim weaver of Dacca, but not all at once. For
other Muslims, in the Panjab for example, British rule
brought security; for some in Bombay who were engaged in shipping it brought wealth; for some
in British service in the North-Western Provinces, the center of Mughal culture, it brought more
land. The only generalization possible is that gradually the British changed the form and style of
success in Indian society from the military to the commercial. In so far as Muslims were left by
the decline of the Mughal empire in a position to become capitalists, they could prosper just as
non-Muslims could prosper.
THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, THE MUGHAL DYNASTY AND THE MUSLIM OFFICE-
HOLDING CLASSES
For the many Muslims who wanted to preserve their illusions, the establishment of British
supremacy in India wrought changes more real than apparent. Looking back over the period after
the death of Aurangzeb, the Mughal aristocracy could see that they had shared power to their
increasing disadvantage with plebians – Marathas, Juts and indeed Afghan adventurers.
BRITISH RULE AND HINDU-MUSLIM RIOTS IN INDIA: A

REASSESSMENT
India and Pakistan are countries that were born through violence. The partition of the Indian
subcontinent witnessed hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims killed during riots, ethnic
cleansings, and cross-border migrations. Since the 1980s, with the spectacular rise of Hindu
nationalism, riots have again become a recurring feature of Indian politics. All of this prompts
the question: what is the original cause of Hindu-
Muslim violence?
For many scholars, the simple answer lies in the

negative legacies of British colonialism. It was the
British that “constructed” modern Hindu and Muslim
identities through mechanisms like the first scientific
census of 1871. And it was the British that used a
“divide-and-rule” policy to drive apart religious
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communities, thereby promoting violence between them. In this post, however, I will argue that
this seemingly straightforward argument connecting British rule and modern communal riots is
problematic for three reasons.
First, what do we know about Hindu-Muslim conflict before the British? While many scholars in
the humanities have looked into precolonial religious identity and conflict, most social scientists
are content to focus solely on “modern” India. But India’s history did not start with the British.
Consider, for instance, the argument that Hindu and Muslim identities were constructed by
British administrators. The work of scholars of Indian religions like David Lorenzen and Andrew
Nicholson shows that there was a clear sense of difference between Hindu and Muslim
communities long before British rule. Similarly, Hindu-Muslim riots in India date back to
hundreds of years before any British official set foot on the subcontinent. In the fourteenth
century, the famed Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta wrote about the state of Hindu-Muslim
relations in the south Indian town of Mangalore:
“…war frequently breaks out between them (the Muslims) and the (Hindu) inhabitants of the
town; but the Sultan (the Hindu King) keeps them at peace because he needs the merchants.”
There are many riot-prone cities in India today—Mumbai, Ahmedabad—where Battuta’s

description still seems relevant.
Second, another vexing problem lies is determining whether or not colonialism simply coexisted
with the true factors that created violence. For instance, the increase in Hindu-Muslim violence
in the nineteenth century that was blamed on British rule coincided with the rise of revivalist
Hindu and Islamic religious movements, as well as increasing urbanization. As Sandria
Freitag has shown, new public spaces became intersecting sites for rival religious processions,
which then became a major source of communal rioting.
Third, while many scholars have argued that the British increased communal conflict, the
question is: compared to what? One way to isolate the effects of colonialism on Indian religious
violence is to take advantage of a unique feature of British rule on the subcontinent: colonial
administrators only governed three-fourths of the population of India. The other one-fourth (in
1901, more than 60 million people) lived in territories called “princely states” that remained
under the control of largely autonomous native kings. With the princely states, history has
furnished us with something like a “control group” to consider what India might have looked like
in the absence of British colonialism. In my book, I used comparisons of neighboring British
provinces and princely states (Jaipur and Ajmer in Rajasthan, and Malabar and Travancore in
Kerala) and find that in modern India, former princely states actually have more religious riots
than former provinces.
None of these points, it has to be noted, absolves the British for religious conflict in India. There
were many policies—like the introduction of separate Hindu and Muslim electorates—that
undoubtedly promoted Hindu-Muslim violence. But in order to understand the origins of India’s
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communal problem, we need a deeper historical perspective, one that does not start with
European influence. As Cynthia Mahmood has written, what we need is a “paradigm according
full weight to the long-term dialectic of communalism that is, unhappily, showing no signs of
abating.”
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Comparison Between Muslim And British Rule In India

MUSLIM RULE VS BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.

1.Muslim rule followed in India for more than

The effects of British rule on Muslims before 1857

BRITISH RULE AND HINDU-MUSLIM RIOTS IN INDIA: A

For many scholars, the simple answer lies in the

There are many riot-prone cities in India today—Mumbai, Ahmedabad—where Battuta’s

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