Hunter's Indian Musalmans: a re-examination of its background

Abstract

Hunter's Indian Musalmans was completed in mid-June and published in mid-August of 1871. It consists of four chapters of which the first three are devoted to the so-called Indian Wahhābī movement and its aftermath, with particular reference to Bengal. The last chapter analyzes the Muslims' grievances and suggests some modification in the state system of education in order to attract them to it and make them more suitable for official employment, thereby weaning them away from the path of disloyalty. It is principally because of this last chapter that the book has been invested with a new significance in the context of later political developments in British India. Hunter has been regarded as the progenitor of Muslim separatism and has even been linked with a deliberate official policy of divide and rule.