Before British rule in India, Shari’a (Islamic law) courts co-existed with non-Islamic courts and village councils. But while Shari’a courts recognised religious differences, they did not draw rigid boundaries between communities. This meant that Hindus could use Sharia courts, and they did so regularly. The courts of Gujarat in the seventeenth century regularly saw Hindu merchants and Brahmins invoking the Shari’a in business transactions. Hindu women often used Islamic law on family matters.
This changed under the rule of the British East India Company, which transformed religious law into state law. This meant that the British codified separate legal systems for Hindus and Muslims, viewing them as different nations and races. Hindus were real Indians, the British thought, while Muslims were a conquering race. This was not how Hindus and Muslims experienced reality.
The British saw religious identities as racial identities. For European race scientists, Hindus and Muslims had different physical features. Mar Paterson, founder of the Calcutta Phrenological Society, said that with the “light of the Gospel… Hindoos in British India will change in cerebral organisation”. He thought that Muslims showed signs of “overbearing insolence, superstition and sensuality”. In 1868 a British production called The People of India included a picture of a Muslim labourer. Its caption read: “His features are peculiarly Mahomedan… [and] exemplify in a strong manner the obstinacy, sensuality, ignorance and bigotry of his class. It is hardly possible, perhaps, to conceive features more essentially repulsive.”
Suggesting Muslims had their own racial, physical and behavioural characteristics supported the British view that Muslims were not real Indians like Hindus were. Muslims were then cast as foreign oppressors.
Bibliography
Richard Eaton, India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765 (2019)
Durba Ghosh, ‘Who Counts as ‘Native’?: Gender, Race, and Subjectivity in Colonial India’, The Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 6:3 (Winter, 2005)
Shruti Kapila, ‘Race Matters: Orientalism and Religion, India and Beyond c. 1770-1880’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 42, Issue 3 (April 2007)
Rachel Sturman, The Government of Social Life in Colonial India: Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women’s Rights (2012)
