72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST with the result that they were quickly replaced by the more adaptable Hindus in the courts and several branches of the civil service. The author, except occasionally, has not carefully analyzed how this alleged impoverishment of the Muslims necessarily produced separatist feelings. He stresses the factor of religious composition of the zamindars and the peasantry. While the zamindars were mostly Hindus the peasants were predominantly Muslims. An analysis of the land system of Bengal leads io the conclusion that "the feeling of separatism was founded on a solid ground ... As most of the zamindars of east Bengal were upper caste Hindus and most of the cultivators were Muslims and Namasudras, the relations of landlords and tenants easily got a communal or caste complexion". As regards the role of the other developments, the main suggestion seems to be that in the context of the increasing material success of the Hindus, the Muslims were becoming increasingly conscious of their backwardness, and consequently of the separateness of their economic interests. This gradually led very, many Muslims to feel that the politics of the Hindus, as evident in the activities of the Indian National Congress, might not do them any good. Inequality Reform and 'thought9 movements of various types among the Muslims strengthened the separatist feelings which a specific economic situation thus tended to produce. The Wahhabi and Farai^i movements, initially insisting on the restoration of the pristine purity of Islam and the removal ofun-Islamic influences, and gradually developing (under the leadership of the Faraizis) a distinct economic programme of resisting the tyrannies of zamindars and indigo planters, constituted a distinct type.3 The separatist implications of these movements, as noted later, were only indirect, though they undoubtedly "inspired the Muslims of rural Bengal with new ideas", and "helped much to remove the depression in which the Muslims had fallen, especially in political and economic matters". A second type of movement had far stronger separatist undertones from the very beginning. This stressed the distinctiveness of the racial stock to which the Bengal Muslims belonged, and aimed at demonstrating that they were descendants from immigrant up-country Muslims and not converts from low-caste Hindus, as a widespread view about the origins of the Bengal Muslims had it. A third type of movement, secular in character and motivation, at least initially, aimed at making the Muslims aware of the supreme benefits of English education, to which the Muslims had largely been indifferent for long. Receiving English education, the leaders of the movement argued, would on the one hand open up before the Muslims employment opportunities of various kinds, and would on the other go a long way towards breaking the hold of obscurantist Ulemas on the Muslim masses of Bengal, thus making them more adaptable to changes and eager for innovations. However, with time "far from contributing to secular