BOOK. REVIEW 7& that some of,the Faraizi leaders showed, during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, pronounced anti-Hindu feelings need not necessarily be related to the first teachings of the Faraizis. In fact their pro-British attitude was also a later development. Prejudice The movement aiming at the refutation of the general notion about the origins of the Bengal Muslims also remained a largely elitist one, scarcely affecting the large mass of Muslim peasantry. Recent researches soon knocked away the foundations of the doctrine of 'foreign extraction^ of the Bengal Muslims, and the theory of 'purity of blood5. In fact, apart from some upper-class Muslims who sought to keep alive this doctrine, only a small section of affluent peasants took pride in giving themselves the airs of upper Indian Muslim aritocrats, and in carefully distinguishing themselves from the masses.7 Language constituted one of the chief barriers to communication between the Ashraf Muslims and the Muslim masses, the former insisting on the adoption of Urdu as the common language of the Muslims and the latter throughout ignoring the plea. The movement for popularizing English education among the Muslims was also similarly elitist. The separatist implications of the movement have been noted earlier. The beneficiaries of the movement, being naturally eager that the educated Hindus did not monopolize all the avail-able jobs, tended to feel that the agitation by Congress, representing mainly the Hindus would scarcely do them any good, and thus remained largely insulated from the mainstream of nationalist politics. A conflict between this group and the Ulemas and Maulavis, firmly entrenched in villages and dead against any innovation in the system of education that could threaten to undermine rheir position, was an inevitable one. It is striking that the educated Muslim elite, mostly an urban group, had scarcely any influence on the agitations of Muslim peasants against Hindu zamindars. The leadership in such agitations, particularly during the Swadeshi movement, was provided mainly by the Maulavis and Ulemas, and in some cases by affluent farmers (who understandably resented. the claim of zamindars to a share in their increased agricultural income), and also by some educated Muslims in the villages who felt bitter against die local Hindu zamindars who disdainfully rejected their claim to a new social status which they thought English education had given them.8 In fact ic was the powerful influence of the Ulemas over the masses that partly accounted for the fact that genuine and deep-rooted agrarian discontent, though associated with a long tradition of active peasant resistance^ did not lead to the formulation of any philosophy of a radical peasant movement. The attitude of the Ulemas to the complex question of agrarian relations was largely determined by their communal prejudices, and to them the primary evil of the land system was not that it permited a largely parasitical group of zamindars to appropriate a large agricultural surplus in the form of rent or of unpaid services by peasants, but that the