After 1857: Aligarh and the Muslim League
After the failed uprising of 1857 ends Mughal rule, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's Aligarh movement and the new All-India Muslim League forge a modern Muslim political identity.
- Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India — David Lelyveld, Princeton University Press (1978)
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2014)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy — Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Routledge
In 1857 Indian soldiers of the East India Company rose in revolt, and for a few months the elderly Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar became the rebels’ figurehead. When the British retook Delhi they exiled him to Rangoon, ending the Mughal dynasty, and Britain took direct rule of India in 1858. Many British officials blamed Muslims in particular for the rising, and Delhi’s Muslim elite lost property, posts and prestige.
- Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy — Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Routledge
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, a Company judge who had stayed loyal, set out to rescue his community. He wrote a pamphlet on the causes of the revolt that criticised British policy, and argued that Muslims had to learn English and modern science while keeping their faith. In 1875 he founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, later Aligarh Muslim University.
- Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India — David Lelyveld, Princeton University Press (1978)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
Sir Syed was wary of the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, fearing that elections would leave Muslims, a minority, permanently outvoted. Disputes over whether Urdu or Hindi in Devanagari script should be used in government, and over cow protection, sharpened a sense of separate communities.
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2014)
- Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy — Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Routledge
In December 1906 Muslim notables met in Dhaka and founded the All-India Muslim League. The British granted separate electorates for Muslims in 1909, a decision Pakistanis see as recognition of Muslim distinctiveness and many Indians as “divide and rule”.
- The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics — Ayesha Jalal, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2014)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
Why it matters today
Pakistanis trace the "two-nation theory", the idea that India's Muslims were a nation in their own right, to this period. Aligarh's mix of faith, modern education and political caution shaped the elite that founded Pakistan, and Sir Syed is on every school syllabus.