According to renowned historian and writer Sohail Hashmi, the British divided the Indian society with religion. Such was the impression left on our minds by the British rulers, says Hashmi, Indians can no longer “understand history from any other perspective”.
Hashmi, speaking to Karwan-e-Mohabbat — a civil society initiative for peace and justice led by of activists, writers and journalists — as part of an interview series, “Tathya”, explained how the British gave a sectarian colour to Indian history. Hashmi said, “Rulers came from Central Asia and Turkey around the end of the 11th century or the beginning of the 12th century and settled here — the British termed that entire stretch as the Islamic period. It was not an Islamic regime.”
“In the entire period, there was no Sharia law. As for the Hindu kings, for instance, Shivaji had many Muslims in his army; many of his officials were Muslims. The battles between the two kings were never because of religion, but they presented it that way,” he added.
The historian lamented that the British created “the foundation of the divide”. He also, however, noted that it is the “success” of the British and “our failure” that even after 70 years of Independence, we still categorise our culture using terms like Hindu period, Muslim period and British period.
Hashmi asserted that if we categorise a period of history based on the religion of the ruler, then instead of the British period, it should be referred to as the Christian period.
“When they divided architecture, they divided it into Hindu architecture, Muslim architecture and European architecture. They didn’t call the third type as Christian architecture. They divided the languages as the language of Hindus and language of Muslims.”
The historian underlined that the British did not practice this divide and rule policy anywhere else in the world. “They divided our food practices, our clothes, and even our music. They presented their rule, their regime as secular calling it British and not Christian,” Hashmi added.
The term “Hindu”, according to Hashmi, was never a form of identification in the pre-British era. “They divided the entirety of Indian history before them based on sectarian lines. If you go through the documents before 1880, you will find that no one identified themselves as Hindu. The British created these categories after conducting their first census. People used to identify themselves as Naam Devi, Reh Das, Kabir Panthi and Nanak Panthi. They used to identify themselves as Naam Dev followers. They called themselves worshippers of Shakti and the worshippers of Shiva. They would call themselves Vaishnava. The British clubbed them all and created the term ‘Hindu’. This term was coined by the British,” he said.
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