200 Modem Islam in India
nationalism. They now not only criticized, but actively,
even violently, opposed the government. Moreover, these
advanced groups were now predominantly Hindu not only
in composition but also in ideology. They developed a
fervent and very romantic nationalism. It was bitterly
anti-Western; and, being a bourgeois movement, it drew
its inspiration from a romanticized past. (Just as the Hindu
middle classes, developing earlier, had earlier produced in
the Brahmo Samaj their parallel to Sir Sayyid's universalist
movement; so now they produced, again earlier, in the
Arya Samaj and its fellows, tneir parallel to aggressive
Islamic * liberalism \ Politically, the parallel is between the
Bengal radicalism and the later Khilafat movement.)
A glamorous picture of ancient Hindu society was
painted. Religious movements, for instance those of Daya-
nanda, Ramkrishna, Vivekananda, rose and flourished;
they became important parts, and in some ways the most
obvious parts, of nationalism. A representative leader of
the movement, B. G. Tilak, was politically progressive,
socially reactionary; he first entered politics to oppose with
vehemence the Age of Consent Bill, and he organized the
Cow Protection Society. Tinged with mysticism, the move-
ment revelled in religious enthusiasm : it was aggressively
and exuberantly Hindu.
For a long while it was hardly anti-Muslim; just as the
Khilafat movement later, aggressively and exuberantly
Muslim, was not anti-Hindu. None the less the intensity
of Hinduism involved distinguished it effectively along com-
munal lines. This was especially true in the minds of those
middle-class Muslims who were still undeveloped enough to
disapprove of its anti-British 'extremism' in any case. Then
in 1905 the movement reached its climax with Lord Curzon's
communalist Partition of Bengal. This piece of imperialist
strategy was explosive to Indian nationalism: the resent-
ment that it provoked, and the violent opposition, were
fiery. The pro-British Muslims, on the other hand, were
pleased; and the question became a Hindu-Muslim issue—
as had been planned. The nationalist ardour, already Hindu,