Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- India: British Provinces and Native States
- 1 Political India
- 2 The Political Arithmetic of the Presidencies
- 3 The Rewards of Education
- 4 The Policies of the Rulers
- 5 The Politics of the Associations
- 6 The Politics of Union
- 7 The Muslim Breakaway
- 8 Perspectives
- Appendices
- Glossary
- Biographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- India: British Provinces and Native States
- 1 Political India
- 2 The Political Arithmetic of the Presidencies
- 3 The Rewards of Education
- 4 The Policies of the Rulers
- 5 The Politics of the Associations
- 6 The Politics of Union
- 7 The Muslim Breakaway
- 8 Perspectives
- Appendices
- Glossary
- Biographical Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Muslims in India differed from the Hindus in being part of an oecumenical community stretching from Morocco to Chinese Turkestan. Since the end of the eighteenth century Islam had been hammered by the blows of European expansion, and at its very heart and centre, the Sultan of Turkey had become the Sick Man of Europe, his bed surrounded by quack doctors and hopeful heirs. Throughout the world the community had been thrust into a crisis that was both political and religious. Wherever Muslim rule had been overthrown, the Faithful lived uneasily under the foreign yoke. Doctrinally it was difficult for them to combine their faith with obedience to infidel masters, as the Dutch, the Russians and the French discovered in the course of the century. At the same time the shock of deprivation had thrown Islam into a religious crisis. On the one hand it provoked the spread of a powerful reformation which claimed that decline had followed from the corruption of priests and other academics. In Africa and Arabia, Muslim dissenters called the community to arms, preaching the need to return to the pristine purity of scripture and to rescue Islam from its enemies. On the other hand there were those who saw the need for coming to terms with the west and adapting its technical skills to their own purposes. In this move towards western education they faced formidable difficulties, since they would have to unsettle both the content and the control of traditional education.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Emergence of Indian NationalismCompetition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, pp. 298 - 340Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1968