Writing in 1871, the Bengal civilian, W. W. Hunter (1840–1900), described ‘the Musalmans’ as ‘in all respects…a race ruined under British rule’. Ignoring his caveat that his remarks applied only to lower Bengal, most historians have not only accepted his judgement as valid for that region but have also extended it to depict the fate of Muslims throughout British India. Certainly British rule ruined the office-holding Muslim aristocrat of lower Bengal, but not all at once. British rule, or rather British manufactures, also ruined the Muslim weaver of Dacca, but not all at once. For other Muslims, in the Panjab for example, British rule brought security; for some in Bombay who were engaged in shipping it brought wealth; for some in British service in the North-Western Provinces, the centre of Mughal culture, it brought more land. The only generalisation possible is that gradually the British changed the form and style of success in Indian society from the military to the commercial. In so far as Muslims were left by the decline of the Mughal empire in a position to become capitalists, they could prosper just as non-Muslims could prosper.

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, THE MUGHAL DYNASTY AND THE MUSLIM OFFICE-HOLDING CLASSES

For the many Muslims who wanted to preserve their illusions, the establishment of British supremacy in India wrought changes more real than apparent. Looking back over the period after the death of Aurangzib, the Mughal aristocracy could see that they had shared power to their increasing disadvantage with plebians – Marathas, Jats and indeed Afghan adventurers.