I was born in Central London. My family moved to a West London Suburb just before the Second World War. We moved to the countryside to avoid the blitz. At the end of hostilities, we returned home where I attended a small Private School. I was taught English language and Literature by Vernon Scannell, a famous British author and poet. At sixteen I worked as a laboratory technician in a London chemical company. A post in a laboratory in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, followed. Motor cycling to the capital three hundred miles away enabled me to get a girlfriend. The loneliness of my Lowveld situation together with pursuit by the Rhodesian army encouraged me to obtain a student place at Cape Town University. Short of money a laboratory post followed in a dynamite factory in Johannesburg. The sexual overtures of my female inductor distracted me, resulting in a visit to the chief chemist. I returned to my London parental home by hitchhiking across Africa and Europe in 1960 with a Jewish tailor. I failed my British medical for compulsory military service. A London post in Overseas Surveys enabled me to write about overpopulation in Africa. This helped me to win an interview at Cambridge University. I finally got a degree from London University while working in the laboratories there, followed by two more degrees and teaching certificates. As a result, I taught and lectured. I later became a local government ecologist.
1. Introduction: the medieval legacy
2. The effects of British rule on Muslims before 1857
3. 1857 and its aftermath
4. Muslims come to terms with British India as Muslims
5. Muslims move towards political community 1871-1901
6. Muslims acquire a constitutional identity and enter all-India politics
7. Religion enters politics 1910-24
8. The period of frustration 1924-35
9. The two partitions: of British India and of the Muslim community
