A History of India, Third Edition

THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

solidarity of the Christians was lacking among the Hindus. The various
strands of Neo-Hinduism showed different tendencies—some aimed at a
universalism embracing all nations and religions of the world; others were
eagerly reconstructing a national tradition so as to achieve a solidarity
based on a glorious past. This solidarity traditionalism became a major
feature of Indian nationalism—and as it was based on Hindu traditions, it
excluded the Muslims.
The Muslims were suspicious of this Neo-Hinduism and even distrusted
its profession of religious universalism. The emphasis on the equality of all
religions was seen as a particularly subtle threat to Islamic identity. But
while such trends among the educated Hindu elite were merely suspect to
the Muslims, more popular movements of Hindu solidarity—such as the
cow-protection movement in northern India—were positively resented by
them as a direct attack on their own religious practices, which included
cow-slaughter at certain religious festivals. The Hindi-Urdu controversy in
northern India added additional fuel to the fire of communal conflict. The
Hindus asked only for equal recognition of their language—Hindi, written
in Devanagari script—as a language permitted in the courts of law, where
so far Urdu written in Nastaliq script had prevailed; the Muslims, however,
resented this as a challenge to Urdu and identified this linguistic advantage
more and more with their existence as a religious community. Even
illiterate Muslims whose language hardly differed from that of their Hindu
neighbours could be called upon to defend Urdu for the sake of their
Islamic identity.

A new generation of Liberal nationalists

Liberal nationalists of the educated elite revived vocal political activity in the
1870s. They belonged to a new generation for whom the Mutiny of 1857
was only a vague childhood memory, whereas their experience in England—
where many of them had gone for higher studies—had stirred their political
consciousness. The old and long dormant associations of the 1850s were
now superseded by new organisations of a more vigorous kind. Chief among
them were the Indian Association established in Calcutta in 1876 and the
Poona Sarvajanik Sabha which was founded in 1870. Mahadev Govind
Ranade, the young judge posted in Pune in 1871, emerged as the leading
spirit of the Sarvajanik Sabha. Surendranath Banerjea was the mentor of the
Indian Association and led an all-India campaign for a better representation
of Indians in the Indian civil service. Banerjea was one of the first Indians
ever to be admitted to this service, although he had been summarily
dismissed from it for some minor mistake. The age limit for admission to the
service had also been deliberately reduced from 21 to 19 years of age, thus
only Indians who were sent to attend school in England by their parents
could ever hope to qualify for admission at all.