How has the situation changed with the Muslim invasions?

1. How has the situation changed with the Muslim invasions? • Muslim Arab invasions from the 8th century onwards • Main Muslim penetration in India from the 10th century by Turko-afghan invaders • Sultanate of Delhi founded in 1206 • Mughal empire founded in 1526 (lasted till 1858)

2. The impact of Muslim power has an impact at the political and administrative levels • Muslims create for the first time an all-India administrative framework, a division in provinces, districts and villages, partly for military needs and partly for fiscal use • Muslims introduce a land registration system for the first time in India history

3. All these innovations would later be taken up by the British colonial power • However the Muslims did not change the socio-political system • The caste system survived, the jatis kept playing basically the same roles as before. The only difference being that the Muslims would sometimes become the new “dominant caste”

4. The basic reasons: • The structures of the Muslim-Indian States were similar to that of the Hindu States • They were both decentralized • There was a separation between political power (the sultan) and religious authority (the ulama/the sufi saint) which recalled the relationship between king and brahman in Hindu tradition • The society of the Turko-afghan Muslim invaders was also hierarchical, therefore the Indian hierarchical system was not unfamiliar

5. In fact due to the interaction between Muslims and Hindus, Islamic society in India became even more hierarchical that it was at the beginning and it even adapted to the caste system • Muslims tended to create a sort of “caste-like” structure in which the “nobles” where the groups that were supposed to have an arab or central asian origin, in opposition to the local converts

6. Complementarity: • the Muslims having political power was the most important thing; while for the Hindus religious authority was more important, therefore hindu castes would collaborate with Muslim states • The Muslim civilization was fundamentally urban, while the hindu was mainly rural

7. At popular level, phenomena of religious syncretism grew out of the encounter between sufis and bhakti holy men • Conversions from hinduism to islam • The growth of a indo-muslim civilization was encouraged by Muslims rulers, especially during the Mughal empire (1526-1858) in order to make their rule in India more stable

8. This said, at the level of the “high culture”, the two civilizations remained different and there was never a complete fusion • During the British colonial rule, the competion between the two communities for jobs and education would then create a larger gap between Muslims and Hindus

9. The emergence of British rule: from commercial power to political-military power • The East India Company (1600) • Plassey, 1757 • Paramount power, 1818 • The Mutiny of 1857 and the abolition of the Company

10. The attitude of the British towards Indian society: two phases • The early phase was dominated by commercial interests: the British did not interfere with Indian customs • The second phase (when the Company becomes a political power), the idea of the moral duty to reform Indian society

11. This idea would become one important aspect of the legitimating ideology of the “British Raj”: bringing civilization to India (the white man’s burden) • Studying the ancient texts of Indian literature, the British were also convinced that India had collapsed to a state of corruption and chaos, which made her weak • Therefore the British felt their moral duty to restore the greatness of Indian past

12. In order to do that, obviously education would play an important role • The debate between Orientalists and Anglicists • The victory of the latter: the 1835 Minute on education (Lord Macaulay) and its consequences • The main impact of British rule: the introduction of modern education and the creation of a westernized elite

13. Other effects of British rule: knowledge as power • Gazetteers, Survey and Reports (colonial anthropology) • The census (1871) and its consequences on the caste system: Indian society as composed of separate groups

14. This would become the new imperial ideology after 1858: being a centre for a divided society which, otherwise, would have collapsed into chaos • The public representation of imperial India: the 1877 darbar • The British and the need to build a new idea of India and a new legitimation of power after the disappearance of the Mughal empire