HIS 103: The Emergence of communal

Politics

Dr. M Humayun Kabir

Indian National Congress (INC) and Social Reforms in Hindu Society
• Allan Octavian Hume, a British civilian of liberal views, took a great deal of interest
in the creation of an organization in 1885, The Indian National Congress (INC)
which could mediate between the British Government, on the one hand, and the
educated classes of India, on the other.
• By the second quarter of the 19th century, cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras
had witnessed the emergence of an intelligentsia which aimed at the social and
cultural regeneration of India; and which also sought the crystallization of national
consciousness in a civilization of classical antiquity.
• This intelligentsia is best represented by Raja Rammohan Roy, who is widely
regarded as the initiator of a renaissance in Indian society. The intelligentsia grew in
numbers over the next few decades; and its social and political horizons widened
over this period.
• The intelligentsia, the landed gentry and men of business and commerce, also
organized local and regional associations which sought to reform Indian society at
the same time as they sought to undermine the British Raj.
INC and Social Reforms in Hindu Society
• Hume's role, therefore, lay in bringing together the local and regional
associations created by the elites within Indian society into a national
political formation.
• Outside the limited circle of the elite classes, stood the great majority of
the Indian people: the peasants in the villages; the artisans and (in
increasing numbers) the industrial workers in the towns and cities; and,
last but not the least, tribal communities which lived a precarious
livelihood on the fringes of rural society.
• These classes, although they were grossly exploited under the aegis of
British colonialism, were unable to articulate their social anguish against
the Raj.
• The history of India in the 19th century is marked by a number of
uprisings that suggest a popular movement against British imperialism
could draw upon the social anger of such classes to attain nationalist
objectives.
INC-inclusion of different social classes
• The first two decades after 1885, the leaders of the Congress were largely
engaged in promoting the interests of the elite classes which were drawn
into nationalist activities.
• Some of the leaders of the Congress, men like M.G. Ranade, Dadabhai
Naoroji and R.C. Dutt, conjured into existence a vision whose embrace
extended far beyond those social classes which were drawn directly into
its activity.
• The social character of the Congress underwent a seminal transformation
in the opening decade of the 20th century. The background to this
development was provided by men like Balgangadhar Tilak in Maharashtra
and Aurobindo Ghose in Bengal.
• Precisely at this juncture, the British Government created the basis of a
nationalist upsurge in India. In 1905 the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, set in
motion the partition of the Presidency of Bengal into smaller
administrative units.
INC and Swadeshi movement
• The leaders of the struggle also adopted objectives other than political
objectives. These leaders conceived of the regeneration of Indian society
through a Swadeshi movement, which would stimulate indigenous
entrepreneurship and national education at the same time as it evoked a
new sense of pride in the cultural identity of India.
• The swadeshi movement also created a split in the Congress at the Surat
session of 1907, where Extremists like Tilak parted company from
Moderates like Gokhale who were tied to methods of agitation which had
been shaped in the closing decades of the 19th century.
• Superficially speaking, the Congress was weakened as a result of the
cleavage which surfaced at the Surat session.
• After the passage of a few years, the Congress emerged as a more powerful
force, partly as a result of the new leadership which came to dominate its
ranks and partly also as a result of new classes which were drawn into the
national movement.
INC and the Role of Gandhi
• The outbreak of hostilities in 1914 prompted the leaders of the Congress to
extend support to the British Government in the defense of the Empire.
• To reinforce this claim, in 1916 the leaders of the Congress persuaded
prominent men in the Muslim League, who claimed to represent elite
Muslim opinion, to join them in presenting to the British Government
constitutional proposals seeking for India self-government within the British
Empire.
• However, the task of finally transforming the Congress into a mass party
was left to Mahatma Gandhi. In the course of resisting racial discrimination
in South Africa, Gandhi had developed a novel technique of agitation
resisting upon truth and non-violence.
• Gandhi passionately believed that the spiritual and the secular constituted a
common domain; and that the people of India were deeply attached to a
religious view of life, and would, therefore, respond instantly to a call for
political action resting upon the principles of Satyagraha and Ahimsa.
INC and the Role of Gandhi
• When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915, he discovered that the
middle classes stood squarely behind the Congress and the demand for political
autonomy.
• However, Gandhi soon realized that the desire for freedom was just as intense
among the popular classes, peasants, workers and tribals, as it was among the
middle classes.
• The opportunity for linking the anti-imperialism of the middle with that of the
popular classes presented itself in the spring of 1919, when the British
Government enacted a law which curtailed those liberties of person and speech
which constitute the bedrock of a civilized administration.
• Gandhi advised the people of India to stage a Satyagraha against the so-called
Rowlatt Act (Black Act), 1919. They responded to his call by holding
demonstrations which convulsed the country in an unprecedented manner.
• The British Government, in turn, repressed these demonstrations with a barbarity
which found its most unlovely expression in the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh (13
April, 1919, dead 1000, injured 1500 as mentioned by INC).
 INC and the Role of Gandhi
• The Rowlatt Satyagraha was followed by a number of nationwide agitations, in
the next three decades, which shook the edifice of the British Raj to its very
foundations.
• All over the country, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, the rich and the poor, the
bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, peasants workers and tribals, participated in
great numbers in the non-violent movements which the Mahatma organized in
order to win swaraj for India.
• The middle classes were drawn to the Gandhian agitations in the brief that
freedom would throw open for them new vistas of development.
• In this context, it is important to remember that the great Gandhian agitations
rested upon the support of diverse classes and communities, which did not
necessarily subscribe to common goals or entertain an identical vision about the
reordering of Indian society.
• Mahatma was highly successful in mobilizing the elite as the popular classes in a
crusade against imperialism.
 INC and the Role of Jawaharlal Nehru
• Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been attracted to Gandhi as a fiery young
idealist (moved by socialism) in 1919 believed that the national movement
in India, was part of a wider struggle of oppressed societies in Asia and
Africa.
• British imperialism, he further believed, was an outgrowth of capitalism,
and it relied upon the collaboration of powerful classes in India, like the
industrialists and the zamindars, to appropriate what was produced by the
lowly classes.
• A successful movement would need mobilization of the popular classes.
• This is how it can destroy the economic power of the exploiting classes at
the same time as it undermined British rule over India.
• The socialist vision disseminated by Jawaharlal Nehru brought about a
seminal transformation in the ideological flavor of the national movement.
 INC and the Role of Jawaharlal Nehru
• The intelligentsia, the working classes and the peasantry found his portrayal of the
struggle between imperialism and nationalism, and that between the exploiters and
the exploited within Indian society, closely related to their existential experience.
• This position rested upon the aspiration of the lowly classes for a life of material
dignity ; and it imposed upon the Congress the responsibility of bringing about a
social transformation at the same time as it struggled against imperialism.
• As a result of the popular support which leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru were able to muster for the Congress, the British Government
initiated a novel strategy for perpetuating its dominance over India.
• Through constitution which they framed in 1935, the British sought to entrust to the
nationalist leaders control over the provinces of the empire.
• British statesman soon realized, however, that they lacked the power to establish
enduring control over India, though it took them another world war, between 1939
and 1945, to do so.
Communal Politics
• An important feature of colonial India was the emergence of
communalism as a force that guided the destiny of the sub-continent
into a blood birth of two nations and inevitable partition of the Indian
subcontinent on communal lines.

• Communalism is basically an ideology which belief that because a group

of people follow a particular religion, therefore, naturally they attain
common social, political and economic interests. Communal riots are
only one consequence of the spread of this ideology.

• The roots of Communalism cannot be found in the medieval era rather

it is a modern phenomenon. It had its roots in the modern colonial
political structure.
Communal Politics
In Indian history, communalism grew in the following ways:

(1) Belief that people who follow the same religion has common
political, economic, cultural and social interests.

(2) Belief in a notion that in a multi-religious society like India, the

common interests of the followers of one religion are dissimilar and
divergent from the interests of the followers of another religion, and

(3) Belief that the interests of the followers of different religions or

different communities are seen to be mutually incompatible,
antagonistic and hostile.
Communal Politics
• The practice of communalism is based on the above principles which leads
to communal politics, communal violence and communal terrorism.
• We can trace stages of the growth of both moderate and extreme
communalism.
• Historian Bipin Chandra has divided the spread of communalism in Indian
sub-continent in two parts:
pre 1937, which was an era of liberal communalism
and
the post-1937 phase was that of extreme communalism.
• Communalism reached its high peak, when in 1940, Lahore resolution had
been adopted and a concept of separate Muslim state, Pakistan emerged.
Background of the Emergence of communal Politics
• During the revolt of 1857, Hindus and Muslims fought side by side and
were united in their purpose of defeating a common enemy. The British
noticed this unity and realized that their survival rested on being able to
keep the Indians divided. This realization led to the famous British
'Divide and Rule' policy.

• Religion was supposed to be one of the best factors to divide the

people. It is used as an influential mechanism to attain economic,
political and other social activities. British used religion as their weapon
to divide the strength which India had as a whole.
Religious map of India
Growth of Communalism and the formation of the separate
Muslim Identity

• Communalism became a major threat against the growth of nationalism

and the unity of Indians during the time of Swadeshi movement and later
half of our history.

• The formation of Muslim league in 1906 and the inactive role of the
Muslims, especially, from the eastern Bengal created distrust between the
two major religious groups in India, Hindu and Muslim.

• The establishment of Indian National Congress in 1885 spread the idea of

nationalism in India in its true sense.
 Growth of Communalism and the formation of the
separate Muslim Identity

• At the beginning the Indian National Congress developed as a liberal and

moderate political party.

• A considerable numbers of Muslims joined Congress at the very beginning of

its foundation, however, the number of Muslim participation in Congress
began to decrease when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a north Indian Muslim leader
started opposing Congress’s politics.
Growth of Communalism and the formation of the separate
Muslim Identity
• Syed Ahmed’s political thought can be viewed in two phases:
a) he appears to be a bold, liberal-minded and non-communal leader. During the
time of the Sepoy mutiny he supported the British side, as he believed that the
success of the sepoys would mean a return of medieval autocracy and feudalism.
b) he maintained that it was through British rule that the people of India would be
able to march toward modernization and the prospect of unprecedented
development in future.
• He also believed that the Hindus and the Muslims of the country
constituted in a real sense of one nation.
• In his words, ‘íf united, we could support each other—if not, the effect
of one community arraying itself against the other would tend to
destruction of both’'.
 Contributory Factors in the Growth of Communalism
• The discord between Hindu and Muslim had arisen chiefly because of political
rivalry and economic competition of the aristocratic sections of the both .

• Another reason was the impact of Hindu revivalist movement in the later part of
the 19th century when a section of Bengali Hindu educated class namely,
Bhadralok had begun to treat the Muslims in a pompous manner.

• The fear that the rise of educated middle class Muslim will challenge Hindu
hegemony that was prevailed in India due to the growth of western education
and nationalism and the reformation movement all over India. It was this feeling
which was largely responsible for the growth of communalism which embittered
the relationship the two communities.
 Muslim League and the Struggle for Autonomy
• The All-India Muslim League was formerly founded on 30 December 1906 by a group of big
zamindars, ex-bureaucrats and other upper class Muslims like the Aga Khan, the Nawab of
Dacca Salimullah and Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk with three main objectives:
a)To promote among Indian Muslims feelings of loyalty towards the British government.
b) To protect and advance the political and other rights of the Indian Muslims.
c) So far as possible, without prejudice to the objects (a) (b), to promote friendly relations between
Muslims and other communities of India.
• For about a decade after 1913, the Muslim League came under the influence of progressive
Muslim leaders like Maulana Mohammad Ali, Maulana Mazhar-ul-Haq, Syed Wazir Hussain,
Hasan Imam etc.
• The unity between the Congress and the League was brought about by the signing of the
Congress-League Pact, known popularly as the Lucknow Pact (1916) and both put forward
common political demands before the government.

• The Pact accepted separate electorates and reservation of seats for the minorities in the
legislatures. The Congress thus formally recognized communal politics in India.
 Two-Nation Theory
• The poet and the political thinker Mohammad Iqbal is thought to be the
originator of the idea of a separate Muslim state for the Indian Muslims
and is believed to have given the necessary emotional content to the
movement.
• In the All India Muslim league session held in Allahabad in 1930, he
declared that self government within the British empire or without the
British empire, the formation of a North-West Indian Muslim States
appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims.
• However, the idea of a separate homeland for Muslims to be called
Pakistan took a definite shape in the mind of a young under-graduate
at Cambridge, Rahmat Ali.
Two-Nation Theory and Pakistan Proposal
.
What is Two Nation Theory?
• According to Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s theory, Muslim and Hindus are two
different nationals and they cannot live under one sovereign state.
• He declared “they are (Hindus and Muslims) not religions in the strict sense
of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a
dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common
nationality”.
• “The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies,
social customs, and litterateurs.
• They neither intermarry nor inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to
two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and
conceptions.
What is Two Nation Theory?
• Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and
Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They
have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes.
• Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories
and defeats overlap.
• To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical
minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and
final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of
such a state.”
• In short, as Muslims we have our own distinctive outlook on life”.
• He further said that by all cannons of international laws, we are a nation.
Lahore Resolution
• In 1940 MOHAMMED ALI JINNAH called a general session(22-24 March) of the All India Muslim
League in Lahore to discuss the situation that had arisen due to the outbreak of the
Second World War and the Government of India joining the war without taking the
opinion of the Indian leaders, and also to analyse the reasons that led to the defeat of
the Muslim League in the general election of 1937 in the Muslim majority provinces.
• The Resolution was moved in the general session by Fazlul Huq on 23 March and was
supported by Choudhury Khaliquzzaman and other Muslim leaders. The Lahore
Resolution ran as follows:
“That geographically attached units are demarcated into regions which should be
constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in
which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and
Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute ‘independent states’
in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign”.
Lahore Resolution-Three Debates
• The Lahore Resolution has been a basis of three debates in the pre- and
post- independence periods.
• The first debate relates to the non-use of the name Pakistan in the
demand. The Hindu press and leaders were quick to describe the
resolution as the demand for the creation of Pakistan; some people began
to call it the Pakistan Resolution soon after the Lahore session of the
Muslim League.
• The second debate focuses on the use of certain terms in the Resolution.
These include “independent states” and that the constituent units will be
“autonomous and sovereign.”
• The third political debate relates to the post-independence period. Some
regional-nationalist leaders in Sindh and Baluchistan invoke the Lahore
Resolution for seeking maximum autonomy for provinces.
Amendment of Lahore Resolution
• After the Election of 1946, the Muslim League Legislators Convention
was held in Delhi on 7th April 1946 and amended the Lahore
Resolution of 1940.
• The amended Resolution was moved by Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy.
The Resolution was:
“That the zones comprising Bengal and Assam in the North-East and
the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan in the
North-West of India, namely, the Pakistan zones, where the Muslims
are in a dominant majority, be constituted into one sovereign
independent state and that an unequivocal undertaking be given to
implement the establishment of Pakistan without delay.”