76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
zamindars were mostly Hindus. They evidently ignored how the affluent Muslim jotedars or Muslim zamindars were equally tyrannical to the Muslim peasants.
Imperialism
A study of Muslim separatism remains incomplete if it stops short at merely describing some roots of separatist feelings, and fails to show how such feelings eventually crystallized into a well-defined political faith ^ince the problem of Muslim separatism became a vital social and political issue only after this transformation had taken place. In fact Indian society was ridden with divisive forces other than Muslim separatism. The point needs to be stressed in view of the fact that separatist feelings
-did not necessarily lead to separatist politics. In Bengal, for instance, despite the existence of separatist feelings^, the Muslims, at least initially, did participate in the Swadeshi movement on a considerable scale, though very many of them gradually dissociated themselves from the movement. Here the imperialist policy becomes one of the decisive forces and it is
-essential to investigate when and at what points the interests of some sections of Muslims tended to converge with those of imperialism.
BINAY BHUSHAN CHAUDHURI
1 For instance see W W Hunter, The Indian Musalmans (first published in 1871), and W C Smith, Modern Islam in India, a Social Analysis, London 1946: also A Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge, Calcutta 1974,Ch 5; A Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism^ Cambridge 1971, Ch 7; Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement, New Delhi 1973, Ch 8; and A Bagchi, Private Investment in India, 1900-1939, Cambridge 1972, Ch 14, section 3.
'2 The appendices are particularly valuable.
8 For this see Muin-ud-Din Ahmed Khan, Fara'idi Movement (mongraph), Karachi 1965.
4 S Sarkar. op. cit., p 414.
^ "Even in the heyday of Muslim rule most of the well-to-do and literate inhabitants of east Bengal were not Muslims, but Hindus of the higher castes; the imposition of British rule strengthened, and did not create, their hold upon administration and the land", A Seal, op. cit., p 301.
6 Miun-ud—Din Khan, "Geography of the Fara'idi Movement" op. cit., Ch 9.
rf7 "For the ashraf of Calcutta, the poor peasants of east Bengal were merely so many statistics computed to point out their'own plight5'. A Seal, op. cif.yp 339. For the point that the Muslims, economically and socially, were far from a homogeneous group, and that despite the egalitarian teachings of Islam ^the Muslim society was in a certain sense ridden with 'castes^, see the book reviewed, pp 25-27.
•8 S Sarkar, op. cit., pp 454-55.