6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Any discussion on the historical legacy and communalism inevitably begins with the question of periodisation. The widely used periodi-sation which has been current in historical writing since the early nineteenth century is that of dividing Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim and British periods. This is a reflection of a British perception of Indian history and has its genesis in the writing of James Mill who in his History of British India, periodised Indian history in terms of the Hindu civilisation, the Muslim civilisation and the British period. This periodisation was based on a very superficial knowledge of Indian history. It is interesting that it was never seriously questioned by historians until, in recent years, Marxist historians argued that it was both incorrect and inadequate. Nationalist historians earlier in this century, when they saw that this periodisation was providing a base for a communal interpretation of history, sought to change it. But all that they did was to change the nomenclature to Ancient, Medieval and Modem (borrowed entirely from European history). The crucial fact of periodisation, namely the reason why a certain period ends and a new one begins, was left unchanged. Thus the Ancient period ended with the coming of the Muslims and the Medieval period with the coming of the British. In this kind of periodisation, colonial historiography emphasised the separateness of each period based on dynastic change. It came in very useful to communal ideologies arguing that this separateness was innate to Indian society and that it began with the coming of the Muslims to India, terminating the 'glorious' earlier period of Hindu rule. Separateness also encouraged the notion of distinct religious communities which were projected as the units of Indian society for political and socio-legal purposes. This resulted in monocausal explanations of medieval history, where the relations between the Hindus and the [Muslims, assumed to be generally hostile, were seen as the dominant factor. The Hindu community was said to include the Buddhists, the Jainas and the Sikhs, as does the definition of Hindu in the Indian Constitution. That these latter groups had different belief systems and a distinctly different ecclesiastical structure did not come in the way of their being labelled as Hindu. All pre-Islamic indigenous religious movements were seen as part of Hinduism. Interestingly this was virtually the same definition as that given many centuries ago by Arab writers who referred to al'hind, and to the people living there, i.e., beyond the Indus, as Hindus. Later the term came to be extended to religious usage and was used for all those who were not either Muslims or Christians. The notion of majority and minority communities is of course a modem, nineteenth century notion, based on the idea of numbers and of representation. The majority and minority character is with reference to the numbers following a particular religion. The notion of a religious community as the primary sodal unit prevents the possibility of other