British Policy Towards Hindus | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

The British approach against Hindus was giuded by the reality that the majority of Hindus may be a strong force, whether as a friend or an enemy.1 This is brought out by the general alarm displayed at the end of the nineteenth century by officials as the unrest of cow safety spread. In comparison, Hindus were regarded as separated by caste and sect and, accordingly, not as dangerous as the more unified Muslims as a 'group.' They would be absorbed into a 'culture' by promoting Hindu communalism and would thus serve a function contrary to that of separation and law. Consequently, the British used the Muslim League as their principal instrument against the National Congress and not the Hindu Mahasabha. Similarly, parts of Sikh communalism appeared to be anti-imperialist owing to the legacy of the Akali Movement and were hence granted little protection. Fair support for Hindu communalism was therefore incompatible with active support for Muslim communalism and the total exercise of the strategy of separation and law. Similarly, during the second decade of the twentieth century, the government moved against the younger Muslim representatives because their democratic ideals were no different from those of the Congress, even though they appeared to be collective. In other terms, it was only because it was very compliant that communalism had to be sponsored. While one of the main Muslim community demands would have been fulfilled by immediately ensuring that the bulk of the voters would be Muslims in Bengal and Panjab, the government also refused to expand the franchise to all adults but that would also have forced the communal leaders to win mass support and strengthened the mass base of the Congress in all, particularly the H And in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, a schizophrenic stance against pan-Islamism was adopted by colonial authorities and statesmen. On the one side, they decided to use it as part of India's divide and rule scheme and their changing tactic of winning over West Asian and North African regimes by pretending to be Islam 's friends on the other side, they were mortally afraid of their future mass base and their anti-imperialist inclination. This all placed their Hindus agenda into practice.