‘Cheek by jowl’: education as a bridge between Muslims and the British in colonial India

Abstract

Muslims’ education in British India is treated in the literature as something encompassing resistance, reaction, and hence emancipation from putatively exploitative British policies. This article focuses on the patterns of Muslims’ emergent knowledge traditions in British India in response to the British government's involvement in the educational matters of the Indian subcontinent. Data findings reveal that Indian Muslims’ responses to the growing trend towards ‘modern’ education in the Indian subcontinent evolved gradually through discursive interactions leading to divergent reformist tendencies in favour of or against adopting Western education. The British government's decision to make ‘special’ arrangements for Muslims’ educational uplift had left legacies of mutual admiration, fear, and sometimes resentment between Muslims and the British government in the subcontinent. Amid ambivalent relations between the British and Muslims, it was not difficult to find apt illustrations of what Francis Robinson calls a ‘cheek by jowl’ relationship.