DIVIDE AND RULE POLICY OF BRITISHERS-

he diversity of India offered British and other colonial powers an opportunity to divide and
rule. The major plank of this policy was to create a rift between the two largest religious
groups i.e. Hindus and Muslims. For this purpose they resorted to different techniques like
the misinterpretation of history, communal appeasement, language policies, etc. The creation
and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of
British imperial policy. Divide et impera was an old Roman maxim, and it shall be ours”,
wrote Lord Elphinstone post the revolt of 1857 and they practised Divide et impera till
our soils were drenched with Indian blood – Indian against Indian.
The British government used communalism to counter and weaken the growing national
movement and the welding of the Indian people into a nation. Hindu-Muslim disunity was
sighted as the reason for the continuation of the British rule. The Communalism which they
brought, then continued as a legacy even till today.
Britishers played politics of appeasement which can be seen now as well. They favoured
one community against the other in services and promotions.
When the elected ministries of the Indian National Congress quit office in protest against the
British declaring war against Germany on India’s behalf without consulting them, the British
thought little of appointing unelected Muslim Leaguers in their place and, in many cases,
assuming direct control of functions that had supposedly been devolved to Indians. They
openly helped the Muslim League take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to exercise
influence and patronage that their electoral support had not earned them and to build up
support while their principal opponents languished in jail.

This was all part of the policy of divide and rule, systematically promoting political divisions
between Hindus and Muslims, defined as the monolithic communities they had never been
before the British. Politics of appeasement- british did this and as a legacy, Political parties,
prompted by political considerations, take decisions, which promote communal violence.
Take the example of Shah Bano case. Muslims reacted aggressively against the Supreme
Court judgement which granted a Muslim divorcee, Shah Bano, maintenance in excess and in
protraction of the Shari'ah, which permits maintenance only for the iddah (three months post-
divorce) period.
The then Central government headed by Rajiv Gandhi overturned the judgement by passing
the Muslim Women's Act in early 1986.

n August 8, 1990, the VP Singh government at the Centre announced implementation of the
Mandal Commission report on job reservation to the SC/ST/OBC groups. Apprehending a
split in the BJP's Hindu vote bank, its president, LK Advani, announced a "Rath Yatra" on
August 23. His communal odyssey meandered from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in UP,
leaving a rash of riots in its wake.
This campaign led directly to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In
Mumbai alone, more than 800 people were killed in the subsequent December 1992 and
January 1993 riots.
A communal and distorted view of Indian history, particularly of the ancient and medieval
period, was also responsible for its growth. A beginning in this regard was made by the
British historian, James Mill in the early 19th century, who described the ancient period of
Indian history as the Hindu period and the medieval period as the Muslim period. Other
British and Indian historians followed him in this respect.
However, Jainism and Buddhism were ignored completely. The British also created ‘Hindi-
Urdu’ controversy which led to the establishment of Hindi as the language of Hindus and
Urdu as Muslim tongue.
in U.P, and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, they actively
encouraged the movement to replace Urdu as a court language by Hindi. In other
words, they tried to use even the legitamate demands of different sections of
Indian society t& create divisions among the Indian people.
These writers declared that all Muslims were rulers in the medieval period and all Hindus
ruled. Thus, the basic character of the polity in India was identified with religion. Hindu
communal view of history relied on the myth that Indian society and culture had reached
ideal heights in the ancient period and fell into permanent and continuous decay during the
medieval period because of the Muslim rule and domination. In turn the Muslim
communalism harked back to the 'golden age of Islamic achievement' in West Asia and
appealed to its heros, myths and cultural achievements. They tended to defend and glorify all
Muslim rulers, including religious bigots like Aurangzeb.
Hindu Tinge in nationalist thought and propaganda         

During the national movement, a strong religious element was introduced in nationalist
thought and propaganda. They tended to emphasise ancient Indian culture to the exclusion of
medieval Indian culture. Hindu idiom was introduced to its day-to day political agitation.
Thus Tilak used Ganesh puja and Shivaji festival to propagate nationalism; and the anti-
partition Bengal agitation was started with dips in the Ganges. Many prominent writers
including Bankim Chandra Chatterjea often referred Muslims as foreigners in their writings
Two nations theory-
All this culminated in their acceptance of two nations theory on whose lines partition of india
was based. Muslim League propounded two nations theory however, Britishers seeking an
opportunity in this too, actively accepted this and made sure this is implemented. The fact
that they left it upon the princely states to decide whether they wanted to be a apart of India,
Pakistan or remain independent makes it clear that the british, even on the verge of going,
didn’t wanted the process to be without any obstacles.
The British – terrorised by German bombing, demoralised by various defeats and large
numbers of their soldiers taken prisoner, shaken by the desertion of Indian soldiers and the
mutiny of Indian sailors, shivering in the record cold of the winter of 1945-46, crippled by
power cuts and factory closures resulting from a post-war coal shortage – were exhausted and
in no mood to focus on a distant Empire when their own needs at home were so pressing
Partition remains a picture , when rioting, rape and murder scarred the land, millions were
uprooted from their homes, and billions of rupees worth of property were damaged and
destroyed.
This has continued as a legacy because
There is no doubt about the fact that our most eminent politicians succeed on divisive speech.
And hate speech or a provocative speech is enough in our country to start communal
violence.
it was easy for the British officials and the
loyalist Muslim leaders to incite the educated Muslims against the educated
Hindus. Sayyid Ahmad Khan and others raised the demand for special
treatment for the Muslims in the matter of government service. They declared
that if the educated Muslims remained loyal to the British, the latter would
reward them with government jobs and other special favours. Some loyalist
Hindus and Parsees too tried to argue in this manner, but they remained a small
minority, The result was that while in the country as a whole, independent and
nationalist lawyers, journalists, students, merchants and industrialists were
becoming political leaders, among the Muslims loyalist landlords and retired
government servants still influenced political Qpinion. Bombay was the only
province where the Muslims had taken to commerce and education quite early;
and there the Nationalist Congress included in its ranks such brilliant Muslims
as Badruddin Tyabji, R.M. Sayani, A. Bhimji, and the young barrister
Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The economic backwardness of the country also contributed to the rise of
communalism. Due to the lack of modem industrial development; unemployment
was an acute problem in India, especially for the educated. There was in
consequence an intense competition for existing jobs. The farsighted Indians nagnosed the
disease and worked for an economic and political system in which
the country would develop economically and in which, therefore, employment
would be plentiful. Howevef, many others thought of such short-sighted and
short-term remedies as communal, provincial, or caste reservation in jobs. They
aroused communal and religious and later caste and provincial passions.
The politically immature people failed to
realise that their economic, educational, and cultural difficulties were the result of
common subjection to foreign rule and of economic backwardness and that only
through.common effort could they free their country, develop it economically, and
thus solve the underlying common problems, such as unemployment.

REBUTTALS-

 occasional instances of banning of cow killing, including interestingly by Muslim

rulers, from Akbar, destruction of mosques and temples and local quarrels over right
to street processions during Holi or Muharram. But these disputes did not constitute
‘communalism’.

Clearly, these conflicts are better understood as sectarian rather than

communal, because they were partial, local, issue-centric and as often intra-religious
as inter-religious, very different from how communalism appears today.

It is in this context that communalism acquired the meaning of being opposed to

national identity, of being against the secularization process, of being narrowly and
negatively attached to one’s own religions

When the British came to India, the Mughals were still ruling. And the British
unsurprisingly disguised their conquests as a war for the liberation of Hindus from
Muslim despotism and the setting up of, ironically, the rule of law. The rest is a well-
known story, with medieval India being painted by both the British and Indian
nationalists, as a dark age

The Satnami war against Aurangzeb at the borders of Delhi, despite being glossed
today as a conflict between a fanatic Muslim emperor and pious, hardworking Hindu
peasants, had equally to do with caste protest against aristocratic landlords and
peasant protest against state taxation. This in addition to the fact that the Satnamis
themselves practised mixed Hindu and Muslim rituals of devotion
politics. For this purpose
they decided to come out as 'champions‟ of the Muslims and to win over to their
side Muslim zamindars, landlords, and the newly educated. They also fostered
other divisions in Indian society. They promoted provincialism by talking of

Bengali domination. They tried to utilise the caste structure to turn the non-
brahmins against brahmins and the lower castes against the higher castes. 7n U.P,

and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, they actively
encouraged the movement to replace Urdu as a court language by Hindi. In other
words, they tried to use even the legitamate demands of different sections of
Indian society t& create divisions among the Indian people.

the Muslims had also lagged behind the

non-Muslims in this respect. Moreover, the Government had consciously
discriminated against the Muslims after 1858, holding them largely responsible
for the Revolt of 1857,