Nationalism in the Muslim community While the Congress was calling for swaraj in Calcutta, the Muslim League held its first meeting in Dacca. Though the Muslim minority portion of Indias population lagged behind the Hindu majority in uniting to articulate nationalist political demands, Islam had, since the founding of the Delhi sultanate in 1206, provided Indian Muslims with sufficient doctrinal mortar to unite them as a separate religious community. The era of effective Mughal rule (c. 1556–1707), moreover, gave Indias Muslims a sense of martial and administrative superiority to, as well as a sense of separation from, the Hindu majority. In 1857 the last of the Mughal emperors had served as a rallying symbol for many mutineers, and in the wake of the mutiny most Britons placed the burden of blame for its inception upon the Muslim community. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98), Indias greatest 19th-century Muslim leader, succeeded, in his Causes of the Indian Revolt (1873), in convincing many British officials that Hindus were primarily to blame for the mutiny. Sayyid had entered the companys service in 1838 and was the leader of Muslim Indias emulative mainstream of political reform. He visited Oxford in 1874 and returned to found the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University) at Aligarh in 1875. It was Indias first centre of Islamic and Western higher education, with instruction given in English and modeled on Oxford. Aligarh became the intellectual cradle of the Muslim League and Pakistan.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 05:02:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015