MUSLIM FERTILITY IN INDIA-A MICRO-STUDY

Description

Communalism’ is a product of British policy of divide and rule’ in colonial India. British historiography in India in the early nineteenth century was largely influenced by the Utilitarians and the Evangelists Schools of England. British administrators-cum-historians posted in India were generally the products of Cambridge University where the teaching faculty was dominated by these schools of thought. Among the Utilitarians, James Mill was the most distinguished name in terms of influencing Indian historical thinking. Keeping in view the British imperial interest in India, in 1817 Mill published his History of British India, a lengthy work divided into three major periods: Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization and the British period and gave the first two periods a communal look and thereby indirectly suggesting that like the Britishers, the Hindus and Muslims also belonged to separate nationalities. Both Hindus and Muslims were declared non-political and lacking in a secular outlook. Hindu culture was described as backward, inimical to progress and irrational. The book was equally critical of the Muslims.