Rise of Communalism in India: Tracing vestiges of the past

Rise of Communalism in India: Tracing vestiges of the past

Introduction:
To understand the condition of communally charged times we today live in we need to
trace our steps back as historians to the time when it all started. To ask the question if it
all started at the same time or is the communal atmosphere a culmination of various
processes that pull India apart. When did it become inevitable for muslims to have a
separate nation of their own and was that nation the true manifestation of dreams of
people who fought for it. Why would Ram Chandra Guha call independent India an
unnatural nation? What is so unnatural about it?

Here Ill try to make sense of the events that led to the freedom of united India into two
separate nations, divided on the lines of religious affiliations.

The elections of 1937:

It has been said that most of the communalists before 1937 operated within a liberal
framework, only after 1937 did the Hindu Mahasabha, the Muslim League and RSS
veered towards extreme or fascist communalism. The question arises of the reason of
this shift, which can be searched in the elections and results of elections of 1937. In 1936
All India Congress Committee decided to contest elections but left the decision of office
acceptance for later. While the Socialist Party members were averse to the acceptance of
office, the right wingers wanted Congress to accept office and form the ministries. While
office acceptance raised great expectations it also brought power to right wingers who
tried to rid congress of the clutches of socialists. And it was due to the pressure of these
right wingers that not a single muslim representation was there in these 1937 congress
ministries in 8 provinces. This became the basis of the idea of muslim Alienation by the
Congress, which had until now been subtly expressed in the absence of major muslim
participation in Civil Disobedience and Quit India Movement. Moreover it has been
noted that Congress and Hindu Mahasabha shared their cadres till the 1930s which
would have made muslims apprehensive of the actions of Congress.

Dismal performance of Muslim League in these elections in muslim majority areas of

Punjab and Bengal due to the presence of class based parties like Unionist Party and

Krishak Praja Party, led Muslim League to launch a mobilization plan on the lines of
religion. The passage of Shariat Application Act 1937 with spirited advocacy by Jinnah
in the Central Legislative Assembly provided a symbolic ideological basis for Muslim
Solidarity on a national scale, transcending all divisive internal political debates.

Thus we see that when protesting against Indias drawing into World War 2 the
Congress ministries resigned in 1939, Jinnah celebrated it as a Deliverance day.

The blurred idea of Pakistan:

In theory communalists, both majority and minority bank on the concept of a
homogenous identity of a community which overshadows all other identities. And it can
be said that the idea of the utopic land of Pakistan was to some extent an elite
manipulation of the masses, the intensity of emotions involved had more to do with the
political and economic anxieties of various classes than with a profound urge to create
an Islamic state. Pakistan was presented as a peasant utopia which would bring in
liberation for the Muslim peasantry from the hands of the Hindu zamindars and
moneylenders, here again the basic reason was of social and economic in character.

Moreover, it has been argued that Jinnahs stand though belligerent was still inclined
towards negotiation with Congress, his major public pronouncements in 1938 were a
model of communal moderation. In an article published on 19 th January 1940, he did
not refer to Hindus and Muslims carving out their separate destinies, but commented
ambiguously on two nations who both must share the governance of their common
motherland.
Thus it can be positively concluded here that the idea of Pakistan as a separate nation
sovereign in itself was not very clear, because viceroy Linlithgow could find no genuine
enthusiasm for Pakistan among the muslim Leaguers even in 1942, he concluded that
they would be content with Pakistan within some sort of a federation.

The Fateful Conference at Shimla:

Prior to the conference at Shimla that sealed the fate of the millions of muslims calling
themselves Indians, in 1944 there was a huge blunder on part of congress that was that
of the recognition of the demand of Pakistan as legitimate, where in April 1944 C.
Rajagopalachari had proposed a plebiscite of the adult Muslim Population in muslim
majority areas to assess if they wanted to join Pakistan and in July 1944 Gandhi

proposed talks with Jinnah on the Rajaji formula which amounted to an acceptance of
Pakistan demand. But the talks failed due to non-compliance of Jinnah.

Thus the British intervention in June 1945 to start negotiations led to the Shimla
conference, where Jinnah claimed for Muslim League the exclusive right to nominate all
the Muslim members in the cabinet of an entirely Indian executive council, with the
viceroy and commander-in-chief as the only British members. Congress, which then had
Abul Kalam Azad as the president, however, refused Jinnahs demand for that would
amount to an admission that Congress was a party only of the caste Hindus.

The misinterpretations of the cabinet mission of 1946:

Ayesha Jalal argued that at no point between 1940 and the arrival of Cabinet Mission in
1946 did either Jinnah or Muslim League ever coherently define the Pakistan demand.
But it was the very vagueness of the demand that made it an excellent instrument for a
muslim mass mobilisation campaign in the 1940s, where everyone could interpret it in
its own terms, where for peasants it was freedom from Hindu overlords , for the
corporates it meant ending of Hindu competition.

The cabinet mission arrived in India to discuss two issue:

1. The principles and procedures for the framing of a new constitution for granting
independence.
2. The formation of an interim government based on widest possible agreement
among Indian political parties.
But it was seen that the two political parties had become more intolerant about their
contradictory political agendas, with Muslim League Legislators Convention defining
Pakistan as a sovereign independent state consisting of the muslim majority provinces
and congress declaring that complete independence for united India as its demand.

After wide consultation across political spectrum a three tier structure of loose federal
government for the Union of India, including both the provinces and the princely states
was offered. Constitution would be settled for three levels of Union, Group and
Province, the provinces would have the right to opt out of any particular group but not
out of the Union. On July 6th, Muslim League accepted it on the assumption that the
basis and foundation of Pakistan was inherent in the plan. Congress announced
conditional approval to this on July 6th but on 10th of July it declared that congress
agreed to nothing else other than participation in the Constituent Assembly.

This event marks the shift of League from constitutional politics to agitational one. This
was the beginning of the frenzy and madness with which Partition is today remembered.

Conclusion:
Looking at the series of events that led to the ultimate division of a colony into two
nations we can conclude here that religious fervour was basically a cloak in the guise of
which many political and social ends were served by the people in position of power to
manipulate masses, not all the muslims of undivided India dreamt of a Pakistan. The
clever mixture of the propagation of terror and fear, the incapability of secularists, the
economic and social desperations and the political manoeuvring were some of the
reasons behind the creation of Pakistan but one can never truly find reasons for the
inhuman massacres that were associated with it. Violence was both the cause and
consequence of Partition and this Partition was to haunt Indian nation was a long
unending time.