COMMUNALISM DURING FREEDOM STRUGGLE: HISTORY AND IMPACT
COMMUNALISM: THE CONCEPT AND STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA
The term ‘communalism’ is derived from the word ‘commune’. Commune means a community of people that has come together intentionally. They live together; have common interests, beliefs and values. Sometimes they also share property, possessions, resources, income, assets and even work. Therefore, in simple terms, communalism can be defined as a system of ideas and beliefs that promotes the interests of a particular community. It becomes dangerous when it is used for political gains, especially when religion is used as a tool to achieve certain political goals. Then it becomes a complex phenomenon in the form of a socio-political ideology. As a political ideology communalism includes the elements of religious prejudices and stereotypes and belief in the superiority of one’s religion over the other religions. It breeds intolerance and disrespect towards the members of other religious communities.
Generally speaking, communalism is a theory which says that a society is divided into a number of small, independent communes and the state is just a confederation of these communes. Sometimes, it keeps the community interests above the interests of the individual suggesting that the best way to serve the interests of the individual is through the interests of the community. But this notion takes a negative turn when people start promoting the interests of one community over another. In this situation communalism becomes an ideology believing that the people of different religions have different interests in political and economic matters, regardless of whether they belong to the same nation or province. In modern India, communalism promoted violence and did much harm by dividing the country and its people on the basis of religion and ethnicity.
Communalism can be best defined in the Indian context by studying its history and development during the freedom struggle. According to the renowned historian Bipan Chandra, communalism passed through three key stages and each stage provides its own definition of communalism. The first stage developed during the last quarter of the 19th century. It emerged with the view that followers of a religion in the whole of India have in common not only their religion and religious interests but also some political, economic, social and cultural interests. This view led to the notion that in India, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians form distinct communities and the Indian nation is formed by these distinct communities. These communities have their own leaders, for example, Hindu leaders and Muslim leaders, who defend and fight for the interests of their communities. Unfortunately many nationalists accepted and began to use the terminology of religion based communities even when they did not accept its basic communal content. Thus they talked and wrote about Hindu community and Muslim community.
Communalism entered the second stage in the beginning of the 20th century. In this stage, communalism proper made an appearance. The communalists now argued that followers of a religion have, as a community, some interests separate from those of the followers of other religions; that is, many of the economic and political interests of the followers of different religions diverge and are sometimes opposite. At the same time, the communalists agreed that Indians, belonging to different religions, also have many common economic and political interests, especially against the colonial rulers. These communalists were called the liberal communalists. They accepted that Hindus and Muslims have common interests, but as communities, they also have additional and separate interests of their own. According to the liberal communalists, once the separate communal interests of Hindus and Muslims are recognised and settled through mutual compromise, they as Indians can and should fight together for political freedom and economic development.
The third stage of communalism started developing in India from 1937 onwards. It was the stage of extreme communalism. Now the secular interests of the followers of different religions were not only seen as different, but also mutually incompatible, totally antagonistic and hostile. What was good for Hindus was bad for Muslims and vice-versa. Hindus and Muslims could never form one nation or live together as equals and fellow-citizens there was nothing in common to unite them. Thus was born the two-nation theory in its two communal versions. According to the Muslim League and M. A. Jinnah, Hindus and Muslims in India formed two different nations because they followed two different religions. The two must form two separate nation-states because their interests clashed totally. According to the Hindu communal version of V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar, Hindus alone formed or constituted the Indian nation. Muslims were not a part of this nation, and they should, therefore, live in India not as equal citizens but on the sufferance of Hindus and as perpetual foreigners. As is clear, there was no difference between the Hindu and Muslim communalists’ conception of the nation or citizenship and they both in effect adopted a two-nation theory. The two communalists now talked the language of animosity and warfare towards the followers of the other religions. They spread hatred among the people and cultivated feelings of violence.
THE RISE AND GROWTH OF COMMUNALISM: HOW AND WHY?
It is correct that religion was an important part of people’s lives and they sometimes quarrelled over it. But the claim that communalism was a remnant of the medieval period is not true. There is hardly any evidence regarding existence of communal ideology or communal politics before the second half of the nineteenth century. Communalism is certainly a modern phenomenon. It was an outcome of the modern politics based on popular participation and mobilisation. Communalism had its roots in British conquest of India and the colonial socio-economic and political structure. It developed due to transformation of religious consciousness into communal consciousness in some parts of the country and among some sections of the people. New entities began to emerge in a haphazard manner without the death of the old, pre-modern identities.
Modern political consciousness developed late among the Muslims masses in comparison to the Hindus and Parsis. This factor became an important reason in the success of the British policy of ‘Divide and Rule’ and manipulation of Muslim masses by their feudal leaders. Until the 1870s the British supported the Hindus as it suited their imperial interest in the back drop of Muslim rule in large parts of the country. The early British economic and educational policies benefited the Hindus more than the Muslims. Hindus and Muslims had fought together against the British rulers during the Revolt of 1857. The British officials considered the Muslims as the main conspirators in this revolt. The Wahabi movement confirmed their suspicion and the British government adopted a deliberate policy of suppression against the Muslims.
The seeds of communalism were sowed in India in the eighteenth century by Shah Waliullah (1702-62), a premier Sunni theologian and the leader of Wahabi movement. The rapid decline of Mughal Empire after the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739, and the establishment of British power, alarmed him. Therefore, he proposed a theory of distance for the preservation of Islam. He recognized that the majority of Indian Muslims were converts from Hinduism. He feared a lapse into Hindu practices among Indian Muslims in the absence of the religious leadership that had been preserved by the Mughal political power. He suggested that Islam could survive in India only if Muslims maintained physical, ideological and emotional distance from Hindus. Shah Waliullah’s seminary continued to play a vital role in the shaping of the north Indian Muslim mind in the nineteenth century. His successors Shah Abdul Aziz and Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi gave a political colour to Waliullah’s thoughts and the Wahabi movement. They declared India a land of Qafirs (dar-ul-Harb) and aimed at carving out a homeland for the Muslims (dar-ul-Islam). Initially, this movement was directed against Sikhs in Punjab but it was moulded against the British when they annexed Punjab in 1849. It was finally suppressed by the British military in the 1870s. Barelvi gave a call for jihad which began in 1825 and continued long after his death in 1831. Mistrust of Hindus, fundamental to the theory of distance, became the catechism of Muslim politics when it sought to find its place in the emerging polity of British rule in the early twentieth century.
There was a change in British attitude towards the Muslims from the 1870s onwards. The Hindus were politically more advanced than the Muslims and they demanded a larger share for Indians in higher services. They also started agitating for political rights and introduction of the representative government. Thus, the Hindus began to be perceived as a greater threat than the Muslims to the stability of British rule in India. The emergence of national consciousness among Indians became a noticeable phenomenon in post-revolt years. The rise of the nationalist movement became an additional cause of concern for the British statesmen about the safety and stability of their empire in India. It was under these circumstances that the British policy started changing towards the two communities. Theodore Beck, the first British principal of the Muhammedan-Anglo Oriental College (Aligarh) played an important role in bringing change in the official attitude towards the Muslims. To check the growth of a national consciousness, the Britishers started encouraging communal and separatist tendencies in Indian politics. They started projecting themselves as ‘champions’ of the Muslims. The communal and separatist trend of thinking grew among the Muslims due to late intellectual awakening and the relative backwardness of the Muslims in education, trade and industry. It created a condition of insecurity and too much reliance on religion and traditionalism. Such a situation allowed the reactionary big landlords to maintain their influence over the Muslim masses.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan played an important role in the rise of the separatist tendency along communal lines. He began as an advocate of a united Indian nation and preached Hindu-Muslim unity. Later, he changed his views and declared that the political interests of Hindus and Muslims were different and even divergent. Thus, he laid the foundations of Muslim communalism in 1880s. He started asking Muslims to show complete loyalty to British rule. Under the British influence he adopted an anti-Congress and pro-British approach. Now he started expressing the fear that in any system of election the Hindu majority community would override the Muslim community. It led to the emergence of Hindu phobia and had a deep impact on all subsequent Muslim political thinking. Therefore, he began dissuade the Muslims from Badruddin Tyabji’s appeal to join the Indian National Congress.
The economic backwardness was a consequence of colonial underdevelopment which also contributed to the rise of communalism. Due to the lack of modern industrial development, unemployment was an acute problem in India, especially for the educated. There was, in consequence, an intense competition for existing jobs. Many people thought of short-sighted and short-term remedies as communal, provincial or caste reservation in jobs. Due to the lack of modern education the Muslims could not enter into government service or other professions. As India was a backward colony, there were very few opportunities of employment for its people. The British administrators took advantage of Muslim apprehensions and tried to create a wedge between the two largest communities i.e. Hindus and Muslims. The English principles of the M. A. O. College succeeded in keeping away the Aligarh Movement and the Muslims away from the mainstream of India’s political life. Sayyid Ahmad Khan formed the United Indian Patriotic Association to counter the Congress and keep the Muslims away from it. It resonate the theory of distance proposed by Shah Waliullah and the Wahabi Movement.
Sir Sayyid and others raised the demand for special treatment for the Muslims in the matter of government service. They declared that if the educated Muslims remained loyal to the British, the latter would reward them with government jobs and other special favours. Some loyalist Hindus and Parsis too tried to argue in this manner, but they remained a small minority. Bombay was the only province where the Muslims had taken to commerce and education quite early; and there the National Congress included in its ranks such brilliant Muslims as Badruddin Tyabji, R.M. Sayani and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Jawaharlal Nehru summed up this situation as a difference of a generation or more in the development of the Hindu and the Muslim middle classes. This difference continued to show itself in many directions, political, economic, and other. It is this lag which produced a psychology of fear among the Muslims.
The British writers on Indian history and many Indian scholars adopted a communal approach towards the study of Indian history. They described the ancient period of Indian history as the Hindu period and the medieval period as the Muslim period. They failed to bring out the fact that ancient and medieval politics in India, as politics everywhere else, were based on economic and political interests and not on religious considerations. Rulers as well as rebels used religious appeals as an outer colouring to disguise the play of material interests and ambitions. Moreover, the British and communal historians attacked the notion of a composite culture in India. The Hindu communal view of history also relied on the myth that Indian society and culture had reached great heights in the ancient period from which they fell into permanent and continuous decay during the medieval period because of Muslim rule. It acted as a barrier against communal harmony. The communal view of history was also spread through poetry, drama, historical novels, short stories, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and oral means.
The speeches and writings of some of the militant nationalists had a strong religious Hindu tinge. They emphasised ancient Indian culture to the exclusion of medieval Indian culture. Tilak propagated the Shivaji and Ganapati festivals, Aurobindo Ghose presented a concept of India as mother and nationalism as a religion, and the revolutionary nationalists took oaths before the goddess Kali. Such practices could hardly appeal to the Muslims. This does not mean that militant nationalists were anti-Muslim or communal but it allowed the clever British and pro-British elements to poison the Muslim minds. As a result, most of the educated Muslims either kept away from the rising nationalist movement or became hostile to it. The Hindu tinge created ideological openings for Hindu communalism and also encouraged the spread of a Muslim tinge among Muslim nationalists. The phenomena of Muslim separatism became clearly visible immediately after the partition of Bengal in 1905. The Hindu revivalistic tinge during the Swadeshi movement and the British propaganda in favour of the partition played a key role in it.
The separatist tendencies among a section of the Muslims reached a climax in 1906 with the formation of All India Muslim League under the leadership of Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dhaka, and Nawab Moshin-ul-Mulk. It was formed as a loyalist and communal political organisation which never criticised colonialism, supported the partition of Bengal and demanded special safeguards for the Muslims in government services. Later, it put forward and secured the demand for separate electorates. Thus, while the National Congress was taking up anti-imperialist economic and political issues, the Muslim League and its reactionary leaders preached that the interests of Muslims were different from those of Hindus. The Muslim League’s political activities were directed not against the foreign rulers, but against Hindus and the National Congress. The League soon became an important instrument in the British hands to be used against the rising nationalist movement and to keep the emerging Muslim intelligentsia away from the national movement.
The Hindu Mahasabha was formed in 1915. It never became a very strong organization as modern secular intelligentsia and the middle class had a greater influence among the Hindus. But it certainly stoked communal sentiments by opposing the anti-imperialistic politics of the Congress and asking Hindus to placate the British government in their fight against Muslims. At the same time the Congress allowed the resurgence of communal politics in future by accepting the separate electorates for Muslims in the form of the Lucknow Pact in 1916. The attempt to forge Hindu-Muslim unity proved to be a tacit recognition of communal politics.
Khilafat Movement emerged as a significant Islamic movement in India in early 1920s. It was even supported by Gandhi and Nehru, who related it with the Non Cooperation Movement. It facilitated the revival of Muslim League and its separatist politics as well as the Hindu Mahasabha and its agenda of a Hindu Rashtra. Jinnah had warned Gandhi about the dangers of mixing religion with politics, and indulging Muslim mullah firebrands. But Gandhi did not pay attention to his advice and became the first non-Muslim to be given leadership of a jihad.
The situation got out of hand when the Nehru Report recommended joint electorates instead of separate electorates. It was rejected by Jinnah and the League and Jinnah came up with his own 14 points which remained the basis of communal agenda of the Muslim League from here onwards till the partition of India. The Muslim participation remained quite low in the Civil Disobedience Movement. But Congress still tried to negotiate with the Muslim League and by doing so which not only gave legitimacy to the League politics and undermined the role of secular, nationalist Muslims but also hindered a full-fledged attack on communalism. It also prompted the other communities like the Hindus and Sikhs to demand similar concessions. As a result even when the Congress boycotted two out of the three round table conferences, the communalists attended all of them. The Communal Award was announced in August 1932 by the British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald which accepted all the 14 points containing communal demands.
Some scholars believed that existence of several religions in India was a major factor in the growth of communalism. Here, a distinction needs to be made between religion as a belief system and the ideology of a religion-based socio-political identity in the form of communalism. Religion is not the cause of communalism, nor is communalism inspired by religion. Religion comes into communalism to the extent that it serves politics arising in non-religious spheres. Communalism has been rightly described as political trade in religion. From 1928 onwards the League parted the ways with the Congress and communalism reached a point of no return. The mass popularity of the Congress made the Muslim League feel increasingly sidelined especially after the elections of 1937. The League not only started projecting itself as the sole representative of the Muslim community under British support but soon transformed itself into a mass force! Religion was used, after 1937, as a mobilising factor by the communalists.
The year 1937 proved to be a turning point in the history of Muslim communalism. As the League could garner only 4.8% of the total Muslim votes in the election to provincial legislatures, it became unsecure. Thus to expand its popular base it raised the slogan of “Islam in danger” and an apparent threat of Hindu Raj to create a fear among Muslims. It succeeded in its agenda and put forward the demand for a separate nation called Pakistan for Muslims in 1940. The situation became worse when the Hindu Mahasabha vilified the Muslims and condemned the congress for supporting them. It stated that the nation belonged to Hindus alone and the Muslims should find their own home or should remain obedient to them.
After the outbreak of Second World War, the position of Muslim League was further strengthened as Viceroy Linlithgow constantly promoted the Muslim League and used it to counter the Congress. The Cripps Mission (1942) provided legitimacy to the idea of Pakistan through the provision of provincial autonomy. The Rajagopalachari formula (1944) for Congress-League cooperation tacitly accepted the League’s demand for Pakistan and the Desai-Liaqat Pact establishes a sort of parity between the Congress and the League. All these developments had far reaching consequences. It provided some sort of veto power to Jinnah and the League and the Shimla Conference (1945) that was organized to discuss the Wavell Plan failed as the British would not support any political solution that was unacceptable to the League. The final blow came in the form of Cabinet Mission (1946) which rejected the demand for Pakistan but proposed the grouping of British provinces into three sections on the basis of religion to appease the Muslim League.
The League finding itself into a vulnerable position gave the call of Direct Action on 16th August 1946 and resorted to communal violence. Finding no alternative the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee made a declaration on 20th February 1946 that the British government would leave India and transfer power in responsible hands latest by June 1948. Mountbatten arrived as the new Viceroy in March 1947 and after negotiating with the leaders of all the major political parties he came up with a Plan of Partition of India on 3rd June 1947 which was executed by the British parliament in the form of the Indian Independence Act, 1947. The communal violence created the fear of a civil war and finally it led to the birth of the two dominions of India and Pakistan.
SUMMING UP
It must be understood that communalism neither signifies religion nor patriotism rather it is the misuse of religion and communal sentiments to achieve political goals. Both the Hindu Communalism and Muslim Communalism displayed some common features. For example, both of them catered to the interests of the dominant or elite members of their respective communities like the landlords and king. They received support from the British government and favoured it. Both demanded a separate nation for their communities as a whole and strongly opposed the Indian National Congress. They relied on the politics of hatred for each other and strongly opposed democratic ethics. Both the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha deliberately did not allow the members of lower classes to participate in their activity. Thus, there were three main aspects which lead to the partition of India which includes the British policy of 'Divide and Rule', Muslim Communalism i.e. the Muslim League representing elite Muslim leaders, zamindars and Nawabs, and Hindu Communalism i.e. Hindu Mahasabha or RSS representing Hindu leaders, Brahmins, and money lenders etc.
Another dimension that needs to be explored is that the indisputable stature of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a master of the endgame, has led to notion that Pakistan emerged out of resolution passed in March 1940 at the Muslim league session in Lahore. The reality is more complicated. Pakistan emerged out of a fear of the future and pride in the past, but this fear began as a mood of anguish set in among the Muslim elite during the long decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century. Pakistan emerged as a successor state to the Mughal Empire, the culmination of a journey that began as a search for ‘Muslim space’ in a post-Muslim dispensation, nurtured by a sense of insecurity among the elite Muslim sections that a demographic minority would not be able to protect either itself or its faith unless it established cultural and political distance from an overwhelming majority Hindu presence. Muslims, who had lived in India for centuries with a superiority complex, suddenly found themselves into a doubtful situation of an inferiority complex which became self-perpetuating with every challenge that came up during different phases of the colonial rule.