. It was the Revolt of 1857, where the British Ruler
found themselves on backfoot, they adopted the policy of "Divide and Rule" and differentiated
the communities on communal lives particularly Hindu and Muslim. It was one of the main
reasons that the British rulers undertook the first census in Colonial India in the year 1872. The
census of 1872 articulated the cleavages of minority and majority and created communal
consciousness in the early 20th century The policy of divide and rule led to the division of
Bengal in 1905 was a unique example of fomenting communalism. Communal perception was
again perpetrated through the political instrument of separate electorates, wherein religious
minorities were given separate seats in the legislative bodies according to their proportion of
population in the provinces. This widened the prevailing communal antagonism in the country.
Mahatma Gandhi struggled hard to bring back the spirit of brotherhood.
Muharram procession, Bombay, Mumbai, India. Islam, Muslim.
How the ruling British police caused riots in 1880's Bombay during Muharam procession as part of their divide and rule policy :-
Before the rise of Ganpati processions, Mumbai was better known
for its Muharram processions’ in which not only the Shi’i Muslims,
but also the Sunni Muslims as well as the Hindus participated. In
this landscape, the Muharram ritual constituted an intensive inter-
action and tension between diverse ethnic and religious groups
encountering each other and the colonial authorities in Bombay.
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immersed, appropriating the symbolic funeral with the Hindu idea of
funeral. Taboot means coffin and is a symbolic coffin that is carried
through the processions. The most noticeable Indian invention in
Muharram rituals is the ta’zyeh,6 the replica of Hussein’s dome, which
is also carried through the Muharram processions.
Figure 1: The immersion:
A Muharram procession arriving
at the shore of the Back Bay at Bombay,1878
This
procession was the greatest festival of Bombay during the nineteenth
century and Birdwood (1915) described it as the most picturesque
event of South Asia during the late nineteenth century. As mentioned,
the predominant atmosphere of the processions was not about ex-
pressing sorrow, it was a rather light-hearted and joyful festival. The
following narration well depicts the atmosphere of the processions
Although there
was no serious tension during the late 1870s and 1880s,10 the primary
interest of the police was to enforce the Muharram regulations, to keep
the so-called public order. In doing so, the police started segregating
communities from each other during Muharram. For example, the
police were present in greater force near the assembly places of the
Shi’i or Iranians sects in the native town for the purposes of rigidly
excluding the Sunnis from those places ("The Mohurrum" Jan 15,
1878: 2). The marginalisation policy was unfolded in other ways as
well, when Hindus were excluded from the ritual.
Many reports describe the participation of Hindus of lower orders
who acted as man-tigers, fools, and hordes that created a striking
contrast between them and Muslim participants (Figure 2). Gradually,
some letters and articles argued for excluding Hindus from the
processions to keep this noisy ritual quiet. They usually argued that
the most mischief was caused by “these classes of people who play the
part of tigers, pretend [… who] give the greatest amount of trouble
both to our over-worked energetic police and the public” (“The
Mohorrum Festival” Aug 27, 1889: 4; also see “Mohurrum and and
Gunputtee” Aug 31, 1889: 5).
The explosive growth of Bombay during the late nineteenth century
generated a constant change in the socio-religious and political land-
scape of the city. The peaceful commemoration of Ashura during the
1880s ended with the riot of 1893, a riot between Hindus and Muslims
that sparked during Muharram. The riot was the most serious riot of
Bombay during the nineteenth century and it has been extensively
documented by numerous official reports
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336
Bombay Commissioner of Police, argued that the riot was a conse-
quence of the Hindu nationalist movement led by the press owner,
publicist and early Hindu nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Edwardes,
the then Commissioner of Police, argued that the movement was
initially anti-British, but Tilak widened his movement to be against
Muslims as well (Edwardes 1923: 104-5). The 1893 riot did not
interrupt the Muharram processions; however the riot caused a shift in
the regulations. In 1895, the Commissioner of Police announced: ‘The
license will be granted to Mahomedans only’ (“The Police and the
Mohurrum” June 25, 1895: 3), and refused to grant the license to the
Hindus
Looted premises following riots Bombay (Mumbai) India c.1890's
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