Sunday, December 16, 2001		Books

A Narrative of Communal Politics: Uttar Pradesh 1937-39
by Salil Misra. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 362. Rs 295.

THIS is second volume in the Sage Publications series on modern Indian history. Like the first volume, the editors and the author are all related to JNU. This study relates to an important phase of the independence movement which is regarded by some as decisive in the creation of Pakistan. Misra has taken pains in collecting and collating a mass of relevant facts and has taken recourse to a variety of sources. There was no dearth of material regarding the Congress and government views and actual events but the same was not the case with the memories of Muslim League leaders to get verification of events. Mishra is handicapped in this regard. It is to his credit that he asks most of the relevant questions even though some of them may not have any answer.

Nehru recognised the existence of only two parties — the British Empire and the National Movement — as relevant to the independence struggle. Nationalism was synonymous with the Congress. All others had to be part of either of the two or merely as diversionary irritants creating obstacles in the path. The Muslim League, on the other hand, came to regard itself as the sole representative of the Muslims and the guardian of their interests. Its other was the "Hindu" Congress and that made a triangle. This is countered in the discourse by pointing to the Hindu Mahasabha as the other of the Muslim League. This puts the Congress at the centre as the representative of nationalism with the other two sides relevant only to the extent of helping or retarding the independence struggle.

This is the paradigm adopted in this study. It is claimed that communalism is an independent force acutely conscious of its interests and not allied to the Congress or the British. It is not defined but is intended to mean the ideology of the preservation of a community’s interests. Its other is implicitly the national interest whose opposite is the empire. The symbol of the empire automatically makes communalism a pejorative term.The specificity of UP is that apart from being the decisive battlefield, it had a disproportionately large share of Muslim elite. About 40 per cent of Muslims lived in urban areas with a similar proportion of government jobs and only 14 per cent of the total population. Landlords were also largely Muslims.

The backgrounder locates the issue of separate identity in the lagged and differentiated modernisation of the two main communities before the advent of the Muslim League with the Muslims adopting two streams of loyalty with modernisation and sullenness towards the empire. Separate electorate, which the Congress opposed on principle but accepted in practice, aggravated it. The Lucknow Pact legitimised it. The Nehru report got aborted and elections were held in 1936 under separate electorate with much enlarged college with three main contestants in UP — the Congress, Muslim League and landlords under NAPA or as independents . The Congress won overwhelmingly from general, say Hindu, constituencies but got only one shared Muslim seat. The League, though not contesting all seats, established its claim as representative of Muslims. The Congress first declined to form a government in spite of a clear majority but did so later and inducted the mandatory one-third Muslim elements in the Cabinet by inducing one defector from League and winning one byelection. It did not invite the League to join the government though it was expected in many quarters.

Misra argues that there was no pre-election agreements. He also argues that the entire Congress party, including Azad, was against accommodating the League. This demolishes the argument that Nehru’s refusal to accommodate the League alienated it permanently and sowed the seeds of partition. Congress rule saw more communal riots, failure of its Muslim mass cantact programme and the consolidation of the Muslim League as the representative of Muslims. Psychologically, it made people see the possibility of independence in the near future.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 tell the story of the Muslim League, Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha respectively. The main focus is on the League story. Though identifying the loyalist and anti-British groups among the Muslims, this story revolves largely around Jinnah: his transformation from a constitutionalist to an agitator; from an anti-empire to a collaborationist; from a nationalist to a communalist and ultimately emerging as the sole spokesman of the Muslims. A good part of it is devoted to contesting the thesis of Ayesha Jalal that partition resulted from events on which everyone lost control and Jinnah never wanted partition. Misra argues that Jinnah was always aware of need of special protection of Muslim interests and he got these recognised in the joint session in Lucknow only exception being his opposition to the Khilafat movement. (He should have remembered Jinnah’s opposition to separate electorates also in 1909.) Constitutionalism became irrelevant in the context of national agitational politics by 1928 and since Jihhah’s Muslim politics could not be combined with it, he left India. He returned back convinced of the need of mass mobilisation through agitational politics and plunged himself in 1937 elections. Results were in no way encouraging and he realized the need for bringing all Muslims under one umbrella. This he achieved in the ensuing Lucknow session of the League. Most importantly, he made Sikander Hayat and Fazlul Huq premiers of Punjab and Bengal respectively, join the League. Misra has following to say about Sikander, "Components of landlordism, loyalism and quasi-communalism were intertwining elements in Sikander Hayat’s politics. Alliance with Hinnah consolidated the third element without damaging the first two in any way" This explanation would have hardly been acceptable to Chotu Ram. Real reason seems to have been Jinnah’s promise to keep off Punjab. Fazlul Huq was weakened by the refusal of Congress to support him in spite of his being a representative of tenants and having sizable support among Hindus. (This further proved perennial Congress problem of supporting one thing in principle and doing exactuly the opposite and trying to ride two horses together.) Thereafter there was no looking back for the Leauge which has also realised that it was better to depend on the Government which could actually deliver while Congress could only promise. Misra’s implicit feeling seems to be that after this, establishment of Pakistan was only a matter of time. He places no faith in federal solution of the problem.

The Muslim mass contact programme, a brainchild of Nehru, was a still born. This started with Nehru’s lament of neglect of Muslims in the past (confessing the Hindu character of Congress?). It involved contacting the Muslims through maulvis who had to be paid for their labours, unopposed election of able (acceptable?) Muslims to various bodies to ensure fair representation, voluntary financial support to Urdu media, conduct of Congress proceedings in Hindustani, and dissemination of Congress propaganda in Urdu etc. Largely the members of Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Hind and Ahrars manned it. It had highly communal tones even highlighting the charge of Jinnah eating the flesh of pig. It was bound to fail. No selfrespecting Muslim of whatever persuasion, could associate himself with it. Misra, however, quotes with approval the observation of Mashirul Hassan that the failure was caused by the right winger Congress Hindus who wanted to cut down the status of Nehru. This forgets the fact that Congress was Hindu dominated organisation and they had no need to cut Nehru to size. He was obviously ineffective.