THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULE(i.e. the Sanskrit alphabet) as an official language in the Urdu-dominated
courts of law (where proceedings were recorded in Persian characters), as
well as campaigns for the protection of the sacred cow from the Muslim
butcher, merged into a general stream of Hindu nationalism in the late
nineteenth century. This development greatly alarmed the Muslims and
gave rise to communal conflicts.
The British had certainly not created these conflicts, but they took
advantage of them in line with the old maxim ‘divide and rule’. After the
Mutiny they had not trusted the Muslims; indeed, there was a suspicion of
a Muslim conspiracy which seemed to be confirmed by the role which the
Great Mughal was made to play at that time. Towards the end of the
nineteenth century this British attitude changed as it became clear that the
Muslim minority would look to the British for the protection of its
interests against the Hindu majority. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was a
prominent member of the Urdu-educated administrative elite and rose to
eminence in British service. He contributed a great deal to this new image
of the Muslims as modern loyalists who were no longer sulking because the
British had put an end to Muslim rule in India. He established a Muslim
college at Aligarh, near Agra, which was designed to impart Western
education to Muslims while at the same time emphasising their Islamic
identity. This college, later called Aligarh Muslim University, became an
ideological centre whose influence radiated far beyond the province in
which it was established. Challenged by the foundation of a Muslim
university, the Hindus soon made a move to start a Hindu university which
was eventually established at Benares (Varanasi) and became a major
centre of Western education. The reflection of the impact of Western
education as introduced by the British in terms of the establishment of two
sectarian universities in the United Provinces was characteristic of the
political and cultural situation in that part of India.
The Madras Presidency: limitations of the British impactIn the Dravidian South these Northern problems and conflicts did not exist.
There were only a few Muslims, mostly traders, in the South and there was
also no self-conscious Neo-Hinduism. Traditional Indian life was less
affected here by the British impact than elsewhere. The districts were huge
units in the South, much larger than most districts in the North, and
consequently the British district officer and his small staff could hardly make
any significant impression. This fact was in striking contrast with the
administrative ideology of the Madras Presidency, which had inherited a
tradition of a very stern and direct revenue administration from its
immediate predecessors. The Madras civil servant accordingly grew up in the
ryotwari tradition of dealing directly with the peasantry. Although this was
the dominant tradition, however, nearly one-third of the Madras Presidency