Socio-economic transitions in Bengal and their impacts on Muslims, 1700-1800

Abstract

The world-leading socio-economic sphere of Islamicate Bengal was systematically destroyed from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards, particularly from the 1760s when the English East India Company intensified its eradication of Islamic governance. This study adopts a doctrinal method to analyse the transitions of the socio-economic development of the Bengal and its impacts on the Muslims of the region in the century. Various prominent research conducted on Bengal’s political, economic, and social history is analysed to explore socio-economic transformation and its impacts on Muslims in eighteenth-century Bengal. The research work maintains that the inertia of traditional Muslim elites and the revenue reformation policies of Murshid Quli Khan facilitated a new ruling elite to emerge who licensed the British traders and encouraged their ambitious assumption of suzerainty over Bengal. This enabled the side-lining of Muslims and fostering friendly relationships with the neo-ruling Hindu elite, who were awarded political power, economic resources, and education. This research demonstrates that the colonisers plundered the state treasury and destroyed a glorious economy; expelled Muslim administrators from the executive, civil, and judiciary branches of the government; promoted Hindu personnel, thereby exacerbating communal tensions; and imported an alien socio-economic, educational, and governance system from Britain, thereby strengthening British colonial rule and entrenching the suppression of Muslims. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that the continuous growth of wealth and its proper allocation would drive a nation to the highway of prosperity only when good governance is ensured, and many of the same problems continue to endure in modern South Asian society, preventing the equitable and universally beneficent socio-economic development of the region.