The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an expansion of several political forums open to Indian participation. The press, in terms of newspapers, books and pamphlets, was one. In this period, the number of publications in English and the vernacular languages greatly increased. As the public controversy on endowments grew, more ink flowed.

Political and social associations also took up the debate. Such organizations were founded on several different constituencies. Some, for example the Oudh Landholder's Association, drew on particular regional or class interests. Others, like the Anjuman-i Islam of Bombay, added a religious dimension to the mix. Most of them did not have solid political platforms. Their membership was often factionalized and the personal rivalries of leaders often expressed themselves in the founding of competing groups.

India's British rulers provided a third new forum when they slowly extended their subjects' involvement in legislative bodies. Viceroys and provincial governors accepted, sometimes reluctantly, larger numbers of Indians on their councils. Princes, merchants, landowners and lawyers became fledgling legislators.

Indeed, lawyers took a leading role in all these forms of political activity. Drawing on their experience in the courts, they used legal categories to define the issue of Muslim endowments. They shaped political discourse on that and other matters with an eye to the way the courts defined and resolved problems. As in the courtroom, religious law and the community which supposedly lived by it became the focus of discussion.