Muslims and changing India.

This is a study dealing with British policy towards the
Indian Muslims. It is based entirely on the Home Political
and Confidential Records of the Government of India which
were not accessible to research scholars until recently. With
these records readily available, I have felt little need to rely
on, or quote from contemporary books which were either
written from memory or derived from secondary sources. By
consulting instead almost all the documents dealing with
Indian Muslims I have been able to examine at first hand in
this study the changes effected in the political, social, educa-
tional, religious and economic life of the Muslims in Modern
India.
An account of the Muslim League has been purposely
left out of this study because most of the relevant documents
have either been destroyed or are not available in India.
Nevertheless the present volume will prove useful in this respect
also, in so far as at least some of the chapters in it will persuade
historians to reconsider the work of the Muslim League in the
light of the new material that has emerged from records about
several other Muslim political parties which not only opposed
the Muslim League but threatened its very existence.
One main point that emerges from this study may be
emphasised here. The study as a whole reveals the British
view that, despite the overt support and encouragement given
to the Indian Muslims this community had proved itself
unable to excel or even compete with the other communities
in the country. Muslim backwardness in education, their
extra-territorial sympathies or Pan Islamic ideas.