The Last Mughal and Indian Muslims

The thing that is the most striking about The Last Mughal, for me anyway, is that for the first time I got some perspective on why the Indian Muslim disappeared from public life. After a thousand years of being the ruling class in Northern India, they were, at best a marginal force in pre-independence India. What happened to them is a subtext of The Last Mughal. At the time of the Mutiny, Delhi was still a Mughal city, marginal to the British led power structure of the Raj, but still an important center of Mughal, and thus, Muslim power and culture. For six months during the Mutiny, the Mughal empire returned, but this was a Mughal empire that depended as much on Hindus as it did on Muslims. In a sense, it was the first sign of a nationalist India. Once the Mutiny was over, the British took a series of steps that left the Muslim population of India out in the cold.

1. For almost two years Delhi's muslims were excluded from the city! By the time they returned, they had lost control of business and property and, even in Delhi, the punjabi hindus were in ascendance. The economic and cultural impact on the muslim community was enormous.

2. They excluded muslims from the army. Read anything about the Mutiny in 19th century histories and you realize the extent to which the pre-mutiny Company army was drawn from the muslim population. It seems to me that at least 40 to 50% of the army was muslim. Post-mutiny, the army was drawn from the "martial races," the Sikhs and the Gurkhas, who also happened to be the main sources for the British army that fought the mutineers. The Sikhs were a part of British India by then, but the Gurkhas were the offering of an opportunistic Nepali king who joined the British when he had figured out who would win.

3. The creation of a Babu class that was mostly drawn from loyal Hindus and actively excluded muslims. The large recruitment of Sikhs, Gurkhas, and "Madrasis" in the army, and the creation of a loyal english speaking educated babu class, largely left muslims out of the two avenues of government service open to Indians, the army and the civil service.