Legacy of a Divided Nation

This book unfolds the recent history of over one hundred million Muslims living in India, details their fears and anxieties, delineates their main currents of thought and examines their responses to the socio-economic processes affecting the country as a whole. Legacy of a Divided Nation begins by describing the specific features of Indian Islam, the reconstruction of a specifically Muslim identity by the British and its legitimisation by the Indian nationalist movement, all of which are crucial in understanding the roots of India's Partition. Issues relating to the identity, integration and 'minority appeasement' of Indian Muslims are analysed within the wider context of Hindu-Muslim relations in the colonial period and in the secular trajectory plotted by lndia since l947. The effect of economic, legal and social change on the Muslim population also features strongly in the work, as do its patterns of political and religious allegiance and responses to the wave of anti-Muslim sentiment unleashed by India's Hindu nationalists, notably the BJP.