British colonial rule in India is often blamed for “divide and ruleDivide and Rule Full Description:A colonial strategy of governance aimed at maintaining power by creating or exploiting divisions among subject populations. In India, this involved institutionalizing religious differences in the census, electorates, and army recruitment to prevent a unified anti-colonial front. Divide and Rule describes the British policy of playing different communities against one another. By introducing separate electorates (where Muslims voted only for Muslims and Hindus for Hindus), the colonial state ensured that politicians had to appeal to narrow religious identities rather than broad national interests. Critical Perspective:This policy did not merely exploit existing tensions; it manufactured them. Before British rule, identities were fluid and overlapping. The colonial state’s obsession with categorization “froze” these identities into rigid, antagonistic blocs. Partition can be seen as the logical endpoint of this administrative strategy—the ultimate success of a policy designed to make unity impossible.
Read more” tactics that hardened religious identities and set Hindus and Muslims at odds.  Indeed, some commentators argue that “the creation and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy”.  To assess this claim, it is important to examine concrete policies and practices of the Raj.  Over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British officials carried out detailed censuses, framed separate electoral systems, and codified laws along religious lines – while their schools and official narratives often treated Hindus and Muslims as distinct, opposing communities.  This article reviews these political and cultural strategies, drawing on historical sources and scholarship.  It shows that colonial institutions did tend to classify Indians by religion and encouraged communal forms of representation, even as pre‑colonial Hindu-Muslim relations and modern nationalist movements also influenced the rise of communal identity.

Census and the Communal Classification of Populations

One of the earliest tools of the colonial state was the population census.  Beginning in 1872, British administrators carried out systematic enumerations and explicitly recorded religion for every person .  These census campaigns were touted as scientific surveys, but scholars like Bernard Cohn and Peter Gottschalk have noted their political character.  They “significantly influenced the social and spatial demarcations within India that exist today” .  Peter Gottschalk observes that what were initially mere “classifications of convenience” for bureaucrats – categories like Hindu, Muslim, caste, language – became “contested identities” as Indians themselves adopted these labels .  In other words, the act of categorizing people by religion helped people think of themselves more rigidly as “Hindu” or “Muslim.”

Crispin Bates writes that the later Raj censuses were “more sophisticated attempts at social engineering” .  The officials themselves often claimed ignorance of local customs and saw the census as a tool to manage populations.  For example, Denzil Ibbetson – a chief census officer in Punjab – candidly admitted: “Our ignorance of the customs and beliefs of the people… involves a distinct loss of administrative power to ourselves.” .  The 1901 Census Commissioner H. H. Risley famously described caste (and implicitly communal identity) as “the cement that holds together the myriad units of Indian society” .  Anthropologist Nicholas Dirks later argued that colonial ethnography like Risley’s “render[ed] [Indian nationalism] communal” and “left a bloody legacy” in South Asia .

Even prominent historians concede that these categories shaped identity.  One study notes that the British “constructed” Hindu and Muslim communities via the first systematic census in 1871 .  By treating religion as a fixed census category, the state helped freeze fluid social practices into communal boxes.  As census data became an “authoritative representation of the social body,” it offered both colonial officials and Indian leaders a new framework for thinking about community .  For example, if a village had 60% “Hindus” and 40% “Muslims” on paper, politicians and activists could treat it as a community divided along religious lines.  Over decades this statistical habit of mind – classifying people as Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc. – undeniably contributed to sharper group identities.

Yet historians also stress continuity with earlier times.  Muslim and Hindu identities were not invented in 1871.  As one scholar observes, “Hindu and Muslim identities [showed] a clear sense of difference… long before British rule” .  Muslim communities and Hindu communities had coexisted (and at times clashed) for centuries.  In fact, fourteenth-century traveler Ibn Battuta recorded that in Mangalore, “war frequently breaks out between [Muslims] and the (Hindu) inhabitants of the town” , long before the British arrived.  Similarly, scholars note that large-scale communal riots occurred in India well before 1857.  What the census did was provide a new, state-backed way of counting and naming communities, which crystallized these identities in the modern political era .

Separate Electorates and Political Representation

British political reforms in the early 1900s introduced communal representation – another major colonial policy with deep communal implications.  In the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 (the Indian Councils Act), the British granted Muslims separate electorates for the first time.  This meant certain legislative seats were reserved for Muslims, and only Muslim voters could choose those representatives.  In practice, nationalist Congress candidates lost seats to Muslim League candidates, and the very existence of communal electorates marked religion as the basis for politics.  As one commentator explains, once limited voting was grudgingly allowed, “the British created separate communal electorates, so that Muslim voters could vote for Muslim candidates for Muslim seats.  The seeds of division were sown” .  Lord Elphinstone himself (Viceroy in 1858) had written after 1857: “Divide et impera was an old Roman maxim, and it shall be ours.”   The new separate elections were part of that ethos.

Over the next decades, communal representation expanded.  The 1919 and 1935 Government of India Acts extended separate electorates to various provinces and other groups (e.g. Sikhs and sometimes lower castes).  From the British perspective, separate electorates were a way to secure minority support and curb majority politics.  Indeed, colonial officials thought Hindus and Muslims would never unite against them if each community had its own political channels.  Even critics of colonialism acknowledge the divisive effect.  A recent analysis notes: “policies – like the introduction of separate Hindu and Muslim electorates – undoubtedly promoted Hindu-Muslim violence” .  In other words, while communal violence had complex causes, the electoral system created by the British concretely institutionalized communal divisions on the political map.

Many nationalist leaders decried this system.  By 1937–1939, the Congress had voluntarily boycotted elections to protest separate electorates, but the practice persisted.  In the final war-time assemblies, the British even exploited Muslim resentment of Congress by appointing Muslim League members to office when Congress ministers resigned .  As World War II turned into Quit India protests, the British replaced Congress governments with Muslim League nominees, granting them patronage they had not won through popular vote .  Such actions deepened the perception that Muslims were being favored politically.  The Muslim League’s own propaganda (e.g. “Pakistan or perish” posters in its 1946 demonstrations) portrayed British constitutional arrangements as validating Muslims’ claim to a distinct nation .

In sum, colonial electoral policies explicitly recognized “Hindu” and “Muslim” as political communities.  They encouraged Muslim leaders to campaign on a communal platform and reinforced Muslim leaders’ fears that a united India would be dominated by Hindus.  This divide-and-rule strategy meant British-supported institutions frequently treated Indians as separate nations within one empire, rather than as one polity, fueling mutual mistrust.  (As one retrospective notes, by 1945 “Divide et impera had worked too well: [it] ensured a united India could not survive without the British” .)

Legal Codes and Communal Categories

The British also maintained separate legal systems in the realm of personal law – that is, marriage, inheritance, religious endowments, etc.  Rather than imposing a uniform civil code, colonial judges often applied distinct Anglo-Hindu and Anglo-Mohammadan law, interpreting Hindu scriptures for Hindus and Islamic law (Sharia) for Muslims.  A legal historian notes: “The British therefore chose to administer separate systems of personal law and the trend was never reversed” .  In practice, this meant family and succession laws differed depending on one’s recorded religion.

Some reforms did overlap.  For example, the British banned the practice of sati (widow immolation) and limited child marriage – changes enforced for both Hindus and Muslims – on grounds of ‘humanitarian’ social reform .  But overall, communal identity determined many legal outcomes: a child’s religion decided which school of law applied.  For Muslims, a landmark act in 1937 (the Shariat Act) affirmed the applicability of Muslim law in most areas.  These separate legal categories entrenched the idea of two normative communities.  Even today, India’s personal-law system retains this legacy (with Hindu personal law and Muslim personal law still distinct), a continuation of colonial policy.

At higher levels of justice, the British did impose secular laws for crime and civil procedure.  The famous 1860 Penal Code and 1872 Evidence Act applied to all.  But even here, communal politics intervened at times.  New laws (or their administration) sometimes favored one community: for example, police often viewed cow slaughter as a provocative Muslim act and curbed it in the late colonial period, angering Muslims.  Conversely, British officials sometimes conceded to Hindu demands on cow slaughter rules to appease majority sentiment.  Such legal choices reinforced religious sensibilities on both sides.

Language Policy and the Communalization of Script

On cultural lines, colonial policy helped entrench linguistic and script differences along communal lines – especially in North India.  Under Company rule, Persian had been the court language.  In 1837 British authorities replaced Persian with Urdu (written in Persian script) in many North Indian provinces .  Later, as nationalist sentiments grew, some Hindus advocated replacing Urdu with Hindi (written in Devanagari script) in schools and administration.  Over the late 19th century this Hindi–Urdu controversy became increasingly communalized: Urdu was seen as the language of Muslims and Hindi of Hindus.

Crucially, this association of language with religion was not automatic or ancient, but partly a colonial construct.  As one analyst notes, “the association of Hindi and Urdu with religious identity did not emerge until the latter part of the 19th century” .  Even during early Company rule, Hindus and Muslims studied both scripts side by side.  It was colonial-era educational policy and nationalist movements that cast the two registers as belonging to separate faiths.  As Outlook magazine explains, colonial ideologues wove a narrative of a “pure” original Hindu tongue that had been “corrupted” by Persian and Arabic loanwords after Muslim conquest .  This discourse, found in some colonial textbooks and linguistic scholarship, suggested Hindi was the ancient Hindu language and Urdu its derivative “Muslim” form.

In administrative practice, the British often treated Urdu and Hindi as tied to communal electorates and schools.  Separate education departments and examinations arose: for example, the North-West Provinces in the 1890s had distinct syllabi for Hindi (for Hindus) and Urdu (for Muslims).  Indian nationalists like Tilak and Agarkar then took up the Hindi cause as a Hindu cultural movement, while leaders like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan promoted Urdu-medium education for Muslims.  In sum, colonial schooling and official language policy encouraged Indians to link script and vernacular with religion.  This gave an enduring flavor to language debates: today, even removing “Urdu” from a town’s signage can spark communal protest, a legacy of colonial-era classifications.

Education, Textbooks, and Historical Narrative

British colonialism also reshaped schooling and history education, with communal implications.  Missionary and government schools spread Western-style education, but often with separate institutions for Hindus and Muslims.  Christians sometimes ran Madrasas for Muslims or pathshalas for Hindus, each teaching moral lessons from their own religious traditions.  These parallel school systems meant that young Hindus and Muslims often grew up in silos.

Furthermore, the content of colonial textbooks could stoke communal feelings.  Early history textbooks in British India often depicted medieval conflicts through a communal lens.  Hindu uprisings and Mughal campaigns were sometimes framed as Hindus versus “Muslim rulers,” glossing over the pluralistic aspects of the past.  One contemporary complaint in the 1870s condemned an Urdu textbook for needlessly “inflaming the animosity of the Hindus against the Muhammadans by dilating on wrongs inflicted upon them” .  (The British Board of Education at times had to moderate such textbooks under pressure from both communities.)  In practice, many young Indians absorbed colonial-era narratives of history in which invaders were cast as Muslim and their defeats as Hindu triumphs.

At higher levels, universities also became hotbeds of communal education.  For instance, Sir Syed’s Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (later Aligarh Muslim University) was founded with British support partly to give Muslims modern education – but it also encouraged a Muslim identity distinct from Congress’s Hindu-dominated institutions.  On the Hindu side, movements like the Arya Samaj established schools that stressed a Hindu nationalist curriculum.  Over time, history education itself became a battlefield.  By the 1930s, activists on both sides published alternative textbooks: Muslim League patronized writers who emphasized Muslim contributions, while Hindu nationalist historians rewrote India’s past as a “Hindu golden age” interrupted by Muslim conquest.  These trends had roots in colonial policies that had separated communities in education and treated them as monolithic blocs.  (Today’s disputes over school syllabi echo some of these old divides.)

Historiographical Perspectives

Modern historians debate how much of India’s communalismCommunalism Full Description:Communalism refers to the politicization of religious identity. In the context of the Raj, it was not an ancient hatred re-emerging, but a modern political phenomenon nurtured by the colonial state. By creating separate electorates and recognizing communities rather than individuals, the British administration institutionalized religious division. Critical Perspective:The rise of communalism distracted from the anti-colonial struggle against the British. It allowed political leaders to mobilize support through fear and exclusion, transforming religious difference into a zero-sum game for political power. This toxic dynamic culminated in the horrific inter-religious violence that accompanied Partition. was a colonial product.  As noted, identities had pre-colonial antecedents , but the British certainly instituted new structures.  Many nationalist and postcolonial scholars argue that divide-and-rule was a deliberate colonial strategy.  Sir Syed and others explicitly pressed for separate electorates, which were later conceded by British officials.  Bal Gangadhar Tilak and subsequent Congress leaders often charged that Britain pitted religious communities against each other.  The slogan “Divide et impera” became shorthand for blaming the Raj.

At the same time, recent scholarship urges nuance.  Ajay Verghese has pointed out that princely statesPrincely States Full Description:Princely States were relics of a feudal order preserved by the British Empire to secure loyalty and stability across the subcontinent. Numbering in the hundreds, they ranged from vast kingdoms to tiny estates. As the British departed, the “doctrine of paramountcy” lapsed, theoretically returning sovereignty to these rulers. Critical Perspective:The integration of these states was far from peaceful. It involved intense diplomatic coercion and military intervention. The existence of these states complicated the map of the new nations, and the contested accession of specific states (most notably Kashmir) created geopolitical flashpoints that remain unresolved, illustrating how colonial structures continued to haunt the region long after the colonizers left. (not under direct British rule) often saw even more religious riots than British provinces , suggesting factors beyond the Raj.  In fact, the rise of sectarian violence in the late 19th century coincided with both colonial policies and with indigenous religious revivals and urban crowding .  Still, even cautious historians admit British policies played a role.  Verghese concludes flatly that “there were many policies – like the introduction of separate Hindu and Muslim electorates – that undoubtedly promoted Hindu-Muslim violence” .  Likewise, Census Commissioner H. H. Risley’s own categories – caste, tribe, and religion – turned social practices into law-backed identity tags.

Primary sources from the period also reflect this mindset.  In an 1858 despatch Lord Elphinstone gloomily wrote that the British would adopt divide and rule after seeing unity in the 1857 Revolt. Indian leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah came to claim that the colonial context justified a separate Muslim nation.  Conversely, other leaders like Gandhi blamed British communal policies for sowing distrust.  Neither side ignores the British legacy: it is widely acknowledged that colonial governance, through censuses, elections, and separate institutions, helped make religion the primary axis of Indian politics.

Conclusion

British colonial rule in India undeniably left behind a legacy of communal consciousness.  Through its policies the Raj helped turn fluid local identities into rigid religious communities.  By systematically classifying people by religion in the census, partitioning legislatures by sect, and legitimizing separate laws and schools, the British gave organizational form to Hindu and Muslim identities.  As historian Ashutosh Varshney puts it, while communal tensions long predated 1870, colonial interventions “absolutely” entrenched them through institutions like separate electorates .

That said, colonialism was not the sole cause of communalism – pre-existing cultural differences and modern nationalist mobilizations also played vital roles.  As the evidence shows, many Hindus and Muslims felt distinct from each other even under earlier regimes .  But it is clear that British rule amplified these divides.  The Empire’s administrative convenience often meant treating Indian society as a patchwork of warring communities.  By codifying religion as a public category, encouraging separate political organizations, and framing history in communal terms, the British Raj helped create the image of Hindus and Muslims as monolithic groups.

In the end, the “divide and rule” charge is only partly an oversimplification.  Colonial policies indeed constructed and widened communal identities in significant ways, even if they did not single-handedly create them from nothing.  For modern South Asia, the outcome was profound: a shared subcontinental history became contested territory, and partition in 1947 was the tragic epilogue.  After seventy years, India’s robust pluralist democracy demonstrates that these divisions can be overcome, but the colonial legacy of categorizing communities by faith – and the conflicts it helped inflame – remains a clear chapter of history .

Further Reading on Empire and Identity Formation

Census, Community and Nation — Demonstrates how bureaucracy reinforced manufactured identities.

Who Spoke for India’s Muslims? — Tracks how political claims evolved within a fractured communal landscape.

Partition and the Provincial Lens — Looks at how these identities became flashpoints of violence in Bengal and Punjab