6 - Muslims acquire a constitutional identity and enter all-India politics

Summary

Indian Muslims formally entered politics and acquired, in the grant of separate electorates under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, a separate constitutional identity, as the outcome of the actions of a Viceroy who had come to India believing that he could end all Indian political activity and deny all Indians, not merely Muslims, any constitutional identity. George Nathaniel Gurzon (1859–1925) came to India in 1898 to rule her as though she were a dominion of packages rather than a dominion of men. Efficiency in administration and state action to improve the lot of the voiceless millions, fondly believed – or pretended – to be Britain's ‘bloc vote’ in India, would expose the frivolity of the loquacious babus for all, including themselves, to see. Politics would be seen to be the luxury of the comfortable minority. There would be no need to balance and rule; the silent majority would be kept politically torpid and made sleekly content by a policy of ‘development’ under a benevolent autocracy.

But Curzon left political India raw and smarting, more inflamed than at any time since 1857, and with a bomb-throwing underground movement active in Bengal. The British need to play politics, to balance between the various communities and classes in India, had been made more exigent than before. It was necessary to appease educated India, but educated India was not all educated in the same way, was not all at the same stage of instruction, and did not all share the same interests. Different prizes might have to be handed out to different classes.