11-30-2005, 08:49 PM
BenAmi <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->1) originally (before colonising) what was the exact way the poms wanted to use the muslims of india against hindus<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Before colonizing (india) the question of using Muslims against Hindus did not arise. The general approach towards Islam was one of hostility based on their attempt to take over Europe in the 8th century and their long presence in the Spanish peninsula.
It was in 1857 that it dawned on the Brits that a unified Hindu Muslim populace spelled the deathknell of their presence in India. That plus the views of Wlliam Skawen Blunt (The Future of Islam) changed their overall perception of Islam and the role that they would assign the Muslims of India. To quote from Chapter 2 (Western studies of the Indic civilization) of our book again
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There is one other point to be made. The relationship between the Hindu and Muslim during the insurrection of 1857 was by and large amicable. Immediately after the quelling of the rebellion in 1857 and the initial orgy of recrimination and revenge against the Muslims of Delhi and other urban centers, the British realized that a unified India, with a harmonious relationship between Hindus and Muslims would make their job of holding on to their ill gotten gains and conquest, that much more difficult. There was also the tacit assumption that the educated Hindu was far from being as malleable and pliable as the inhabitants of some of their other possessions, or even the reputedly aggressive Muslim. The British from their long colonial experience quickly grasped a central piece of wisdom that a people with an ancient civilization are far less malleable to molding towards a new order Ergo, if there were no differences to be found, they would have to be manufactured. It was imperative that the cultural unity of the subcontinent be ridiculed and the differences accentuated. The plan to institutionalize a âdivide and ruleâ strategy was therefore executed with efficiency and a single-minded focus.
The completion of the 1881 census with the extensive enumeration of the Schedule of Castes and Tribes (when for the first time thousands of communities were arbitrarily classified as castes ) was the first step among many to diminish and trash the cultural unity of the subcontinent, and to replace her Puranic Itihasa (History) with one that was more consonant with the notion that there was no indigenous civilization in the Indian subcontinent.
Max Mueller (Friedrich Maximilian Mueller) was hired by Macaulay with the express intent of devaluing the Vedic tradition and to invent a chronology for the Vedas in order to dethrone them from their premier position as the source of Indic traditions. Max Mueller was a student of Roth, who was one of the first Germans to study the Vedas. Besides his teacher's stamp on him, Max Muller's interview with Lord Macaulay on the 28th December, 1855 A.D. also played a great part in his anti-Indian views. Max Mueller had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his diametrically opposite views and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a simple word : "I went back to Oxford", writes Max Mueller, "a sadder man and a wiser man."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What Max Mueller was alluding to was the fact that Macaulay was not so much interested in the content of the Vedas,as to use their contents to ridicule and denigrate them as the source of all wisdom and tradition in India. In Max Mueller hefound a willing tool who hence forward followed the dictates of his employer in order to retain his prestigious professorship at Oxford. That Macaulay succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because the average English educated Indian has never read the vedas and his views of the same are borrowed from English Historians.
The role of the Brits in embellishing the social stratification of the Indian society and creating hundreds of new castes overnight in 1881 (when for the first time a large number of communities were arbitrarily classified as castes) is a very interesting one and thereby hangs a tale in its own right, one that needs to be tackled in a separate thread.
Before colonizing (india) the question of using Muslims against Hindus did not arise. The general approach towards Islam was one of hostility based on their attempt to take over Europe in the 8th century and their long presence in the Spanish peninsula.
It was in 1857 that it dawned on the Brits that a unified Hindu Muslim populace spelled the deathknell of their presence in India. That plus the views of Wlliam Skawen Blunt (The Future of Islam) changed their overall perception of Islam and the role that they would assign the Muslims of India. To quote from Chapter 2 (Western studies of the Indic civilization) of our book again
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There is one other point to be made. The relationship between the Hindu and Muslim during the insurrection of 1857 was by and large amicable. Immediately after the quelling of the rebellion in 1857 and the initial orgy of recrimination and revenge against the Muslims of Delhi and other urban centers, the British realized that a unified India, with a harmonious relationship between Hindus and Muslims would make their job of holding on to their ill gotten gains and conquest, that much more difficult. There was also the tacit assumption that the educated Hindu was far from being as malleable and pliable as the inhabitants of some of their other possessions, or even the reputedly aggressive Muslim. The British from their long colonial experience quickly grasped a central piece of wisdom that a people with an ancient civilization are far less malleable to molding towards a new order Ergo, if there were no differences to be found, they would have to be manufactured. It was imperative that the cultural unity of the subcontinent be ridiculed and the differences accentuated. The plan to institutionalize a âdivide and ruleâ strategy was therefore executed with efficiency and a single-minded focus.
The completion of the 1881 census with the extensive enumeration of the Schedule of Castes and Tribes (when for the first time thousands of communities were arbitrarily classified as castes ) was the first step among many to diminish and trash the cultural unity of the subcontinent, and to replace her Puranic Itihasa (History) with one that was more consonant with the notion that there was no indigenous civilization in the Indian subcontinent.
Max Mueller (Friedrich Maximilian Mueller) was hired by Macaulay with the express intent of devaluing the Vedic tradition and to invent a chronology for the Vedas in order to dethrone them from their premier position as the source of Indic traditions. Max Mueller was a student of Roth, who was one of the first Germans to study the Vedas. Besides his teacher's stamp on him, Max Muller's interview with Lord Macaulay on the 28th December, 1855 A.D. also played a great part in his anti-Indian views. Max Mueller had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his diametrically opposite views and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a simple word : "I went back to Oxford", writes Max Mueller, "a sadder man and a wiser man."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What Max Mueller was alluding to was the fact that Macaulay was not so much interested in the content of the Vedas,as to use their contents to ridicule and denigrate them as the source of all wisdom and tradition in India. In Max Mueller hefound a willing tool who hence forward followed the dictates of his employer in order to retain his prestigious professorship at Oxford. That Macaulay succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because the average English educated Indian has never read the vedas and his views of the same are borrowed from English Historians.
The role of the Brits in embellishing the social stratification of the Indian society and creating hundreds of new castes overnight in 1881 (when for the first time a large number of communities were arbitrarily classified as castes) is a very interesting one and thereby hangs a tale in its own right, one that needs to be tackled in a separate thread.