known to some as ‘the mutiny’). In an independent India, Muslims should advance on merit. But there was equally a danger that democracy could deepen the discrimination, or even make it permanent. Hindu voters outnumbered Muslims by two to one in India. With religion emerging as the organising force of politics, Muslims worried about being permanently marginalised. The British Raj, the fear went, would become the Hindu Raj. The nominally secular Congress Party often employed the symbols of Hindu spirituality in the cause of nationalist politics.
