The strength of the study is the quantity of evidence that Shah has brought forward to illustrate both the position of Bengali Muslims in education, jobs and local government and the changes which took place in this position during the period. Indeed, the scaffolding which holds up this aspect of this argument is in places overwhelming. A substantial amount of work has been done in the study in which others will want to quarry. In bringing forward this evidence Shah makes important contributions to the subject on several levels. There has, for instance, been no comparative analysis of what Hindu and Muslim periodical literature might tell us about the growth of communalism; this study presents such an analysis for the first time. Upto now we have not known when and why Bengali Muslims lost their faith in joint electorates; again this study explains this matter for the first time. The overall argument, moreover, although not particularly new one in the historiography for Muslim separatism in South Asia, has a degree of novelty in the context of Bengal especially in the detailed evidence which supports the analysis of the position of the Muslim ‘middle class’ in relation to the colonial state. …The overall impression left by the work is one of immense labour which could have been better leavened by thought. The study, based on a vast range of materials in English and Bengali, many used for the first time, makes important new contributions both of argument and of fact.
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