Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects:
Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir
Mridu Rai
Paper | 2004 | $28.95
320 pp. | 5 x 8
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Disputed between India and Pakistan, Kashmir contains a large majority
of Muslims subject to the laws of a predominantly Hindu and
increasingly "Hinduized" India. How did religion and politics become
so enmeshed in defining the protest of Kashmir's Muslims against Hindu
rule? This book reaches beyond standard accounts that look to the 1947
partition of India for an explanation. Examining the 100-year period
before that landmark event, during which Kashmir was ruled by Hindu
Dogra kings under the aegis of the British, Mridu Rai highlights the
collusion that shaped a decisively Hindu sovereignty over a subject
Muslim populace. Focusing on authority, sovereignty, legitimacy, and
community rights, she explains how Kashmir's modern Muslim identity
emerged.
Rai shows how the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was formed as
the East India Company marched into India beginning in the late
eighteenth century. After the 1857 rebellion, outright annexation was
abandoned as the British Crown took over and princes were incorporated
into the imperial framework as junior partners. But, Rai argues,
scholarship on other regions of India has led to misconceptions about
colonialism, not least that a "hollowing of the crown" occurred
throughout as Brahman came to dominate over King. In Kashmir the Dogra
kings maintained firm control. They rode roughshod over the interests
of the vast majority of their Kashmiri Muslim subjects, planting the
seeds of a political movement that remains in thrall to a religiosity
thrust upon it for the past 150 years.
Review:
"Rai's contribution lies in the extremely thorough and painstaking
documentation that she provides when tracing the marginalization of
the native inhabitants of Kahmir, the chicanery of the British, and
the fecklessness of the Dogra rulers. Her account of the growth of
Muslim religio-political consciousness in the early part of the
twentieth century . . . unearths a wealth of detail. . . . Rai's book
is a useful one. Those interested in understanding the background of
the continuing tragedy in Kahmir will find much to consider in her
substantial account of the historical backdrop."--Sumit Ganguly,
Journal of Asian Studies
Endorsements:
"Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects is a brilliant work of historical
scholarship that will become indispensable reading for all those
interested in the modern history and politics of the subcontinent. It
a pioneering historical study of rights, religion, and regional
identity in Kashmir that could also inspire future studies on other
regions of the subcontinent."--Sugata Bose, Harvard University
"This is a major contribution to Kashmir studies and should set the
standard for the next generation of publications on Kashmir.
Challenging the existing literature, this work is heady and fresh--and
deserves attention."--Alexander Evans, King's College London and the
Royal Institute of International Affairs
"Mridu Rai's book reminds us powerfully of the crucial importance of
colonial history to the present. She is able to de-essentialize
religion and secularism in the Kashmir conflict, which is very useful
in light of India's secularist claims and the ways in which some
sociologists have theorized those claims. Carefully researched and
lucidly conceptualized and written, this book forwards an important
thesis on an important topic."--Peter van der Veer, University of
Amsterdam
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements x
Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1: Territorializing Sovereignity: The Dilemmas of Control and
Collaboration 18
CHAPTER 2: The Consolidation of Dogra Legitimacy in Kashmir: Hindu
Rulers and a Hindu State 80
CHAPTER 3: The Obligations of Rulers and the Rights of Subjects 128
CHAPTER 4: Contested Sites: Religious Shrines and the Archaeological
Mapping of Kashmiri Muslim Protest 183
CHAPTER 5: Political Mobilization in Kashmir: Religious and Regional
Identities 224
Conclusion 288
Glossary 298
Bibliography 305
Index 319
Book Review
Mridu Rai. Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the
History of Kashmir. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2004. Pp.
xi, 335. Cloth $65.00, paper $22.50.
Chitralekha Zutshi. Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity,
and the Making of Kashmir. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Pp. xvi, 359. $35.00.
Ever since the India-Pakistan near war of 2001–2002, we have been
subject to an incessant flow of words on the Kashmir conflict. Sadly,
this deluge has done little to enhance our knowledge of the subject.
Bar changing the odd adjectives, adding a little detail, or inserting
the views of the proverbial man on the street, little has been added
to Sumit Ganguly's Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Prospects of
Peace (1997) or Victoria Schofield's Kashmir in Conflict: India,
Pakistan, and the Unending War (2000). Two new histories have been
widely applauded for constituting a happy break with this dismal
tradition. Little attention has been paid, however, to the
considerable theoretical and empirical problems presented by Mridu
Rai's and Chitralekha Zutshi's books. 1
Both Rai and Zutshi deal with a critical period in the history
of Jammu and Kashmir: the century of Dogra monarchical rule that
preceded the independence of India and Pakistan, and the division of
the state between the two powers in the course of the war of 1947. It
was in this period that the welter of territories that constitute
modern Kashmir were welded together under a single power, a
consequence of Britain's handing over of the region to Maharaja Gulab
Singh, a prince who sided with the empire's war of conquest against
the Sikh kingdom of Lahore. Like the other semi-independent states of
princely India, Kashmir witnessed a constant struggle for influence
between the monarchy and the imperial government. It was to become the
site of a number of other contestations: of monarch against democrat;
of empire against nationalist; of Hindu against Muslim; of peasant
against landlord. 2
Rai sees this century as one in which a "Hindu State" was
formed, the consequence of the Dogra monarchy's search for legitimacy.
Lacking any real basis for its sovereignty over the peoples whose
destinies it now controlled, it responded by inventing a history in
which the Dogra dynasty represented both the Hindu faith and Rajput
martial tradition. Rai maps this process by carefully documenting the
Dogra monarchy's growing control of Hindu religious practice in
Kashmir, notably through state-controlled trusts. Since the state was
Hindu in character, Rai concludes, "religion and politics became
inextricably intertwined in defining and expressing the protest of
Kashmiri Muslims against their rulers" (pp. 16–17). 3
Zutshi arrives at similar conclusions, but with considerably
more attention to nuance and detail. Her study of the workings of
Dogra rule suggests the need for a careful examination of what, if
any, meaning the notion of a "Hindu state" may have actually had to
contemporaries. There was, Zutshi's narrative suggests, no unilinear
project of Hinduization under the Dogras; rather, there were complex
and fluid processes of collaboration and conflict among various
categories of elites, both Hindu and Muslim. Kashmir's small Brahmin
community, the Pandits, whom Rai sees as key collaborators of the
Dogra project, emerge at least one point in Zutshi's book as its most
bitter opponents. Notions of a homogeneous Kashmiri Muslim identity,
Zutshi's analysis suggests, need to be tempered by an understanding of
the working of caste, class, and ideology.
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/110.3/br_31.html
Customer Review
The Challenging Natures of Kashmir, May 25, 2007
By T. Dodge
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
"Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects" covers the macro historical, social,
religious, and political highlights in Kashmir from about 1840 to
1950. It is a fascinating view into a world far distant but fearfully
close as two modern nuclear armed adversaries seek domination over the
mystical lands of Kashmir. This is a book of essential preliminary
understandings to the current situation in the region and of the
volumes I have encountered is the best. I hope the author contemplates
another book dealing with the post 1947 era. For those seeking recent
political happenings, I suggest "Kashmir" by Sumantra Bose.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1TLIUMBUTBR1D
Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of
Kashmir
by Mridu Rai
maryum's review
excellent book!!! really worthwhile reading and very meticulous
research on the impact of colonialism on kashmir. one of the few books
that looks at the kashmiri conflict from the perspective of the
kashmiris and not as a pawn in an india-pakistan chess match.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/370620
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Mainstream Weekly
Mainstream, Vol XLV, No 38
Book Review: ’The Hindu-Muslim Divide : A Fresh Look by Amrik Singh’
Sunday 9 September 2007
[(BOOK REVIEW)]
The Hindu-Muslim Divide : A Fresh Look by Amrik Singh; Vitasta
Publishing Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; 2007; pp. XIV+238; Rs 345.
It is ironic that around the time we are celebrating 60 years of
India’s independence, the subject under discussion here is the Hindu-
Muslim divide, instead of it being harmony between members of
different communities in our free country. But one has to face the
facts and hence this discourse.
The author of the book under review, Dr Amrik Singh, starts it with a
painful note: “As generally recognised, the Hindu-Muslim divide has
existed in India for about thousand years. The partition of India into
India and Pakistan in 1947 was the latest instalment in this
longstanding dispute.” (p. 3) But soon he sounds a note of optimism:
“But one thing is clear that, despite signals to the contrary, the two
warring communities are nearer an understanding with each other than
ever before.” No convincing reason is provided for the optimistic
note, and the author goes further and adds that the situation is
likely to change in about half a century or more (what a satisfying
thought!), even though it is stated: “In these matters, no one can be
precise.”
It is not very easy to agree with the author’s assertion about the
thousand year old Hindu-Muslim divide. For, India is known for its
composite culture, and quite a good part of the last thousand years
have been known to be marked by considerable harmony with some
aberrations. But aberrations are at times unavoidable and even the
intra-community conflicts and divisive trends have been there in the
concerned groups. When the Pakistani leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
during the more fanatic phase of his political life (something the
author makes a reference to) had talked about a thousand year war, his
bravado had the future in mind.
One would, in fact, like to go back to much older times, than the last
thousand years. It may be pointed out that composite culture had been
the feature of India even before the beginning of the first century
AD. The contributing influences all these years had been the teachings
of Gautam Buddha, the Vedic and Vedantic ideals of tolerance and
spiritual values, the disarming qualities of the Sufi value and the
noble sentiments of the Bhakti movement, and, more recently, the
thoughts of personalities like Swami Vivekananda, Maulana Azad, Altaf
Husain Hali and those believing in secular ideals among other factors.
While the commingling of Sufi and Bhakti ideals is an extremely
cherished heritage of the past, the state of confrontation, in recent
times, one has to admit, between the campaign of Tableegh and Shuddhi
(mentioned by the author while stating the effort of Hinduism for
‘semitisation’) (p. 132) is a tragic episode in our saga of composite
culture : like a bad dream one would perhaps like to forget.
EVEN without agreeing fully with the basic statement of the author
with regard to a thousand year old divide one would like to praise him
for covering the subject of Hindu-Muslim divide in a very
comprehensive manner particularly in the recent past. Dr Amrik Singh
has covered the entire ground by recounting how the spirit of mutual
understanding and conciliation gave way to conflict between the
Muslims and Hindus. Much discussion is available about the factors
responsible for this conflict leading to the partition of the country
along with its independence, the roles of leaders of the two
communities during those traumatic years and, indeed, the shape this
conflict has taken in today’s India.
The book is in the form of notes on different subjects relevant to its
theme, probably written at different points of time. But it contains a
wealth of information on the nature and cause of the divide—the
machinations of the British rulers, the folly of partition, the
practice of separate electorates, and even the complexities of adult
franchise and a joint electorate, the polarisation between the two
communities, the present concept of Hindutva and many other factors
that the author has painstakingly gone into. The author has laid great
emphasis on the need for pluralism and for a policy “in the direction
of reducing the Hindu-Muslim divide and work towards what has been
described as pluralism,” as he puts it.
Dr Amrik Singh has given some very perceptive opinions of acknowledged
experts on Hinduism and Islam, some approvingly while others with his
note of critique. Consider the quote from the eminent historian, Prof.
M. Habib (whom he describes as the “tallest historian of medieval
India”):
A Hindu feels it is his duty to dislike those whom he has been taught
to consider the enemies of his religion and his ancestors; the Muslim,
lured into the false belief that he was once a member of a ruling
race, feels insufferably wronged by being relegated to the status of a
minority community. Fools both! Even if the Muslims eight centuries
ago were as bad as they were painted, would there be any sense in
holding the present generation responsible for their deeds? It is but
an imaginative tie that joins the modern Hindu with Harshvardhana or
Asoka, or the modern Muslim with Shahabuddin or Mahmud.
“That these words were written several years after the partition makes
them even more relevant than they would have been otherwise,” says Dr
Amrik Singh and every rightly. (p. 200) Members of both the
communities can gain from introspecting in the light of the late
historians’ observation.
At another place, the author quotes Girilal Jain who, according to
him, “apart from being a leading journalist, was a keen student of
Hinduism”: Unlike the Muslims, the Hindus do not possess a vision of
the future, which is rooted in the past for a variety of reasons, one
of them being that, unlike the Muslims, they have not been able to
invent a golden age which can be located in any kind of history and
that they cannot invent one. While, they would, if challenged, vaguely
own up all Indian history up to the beginning of the Muslim invasions
of north India in the 11th century, they do not identify themselves
with any particular period. Indeed, they have little sense of history.
So how can they have a golden age and how can a people without such a
sense engage in revivalism? What can they seek to revive? Hinduism is
an arbitrary imposition on a highly variegated civilisation, which is
truly oceanic in its range. Such a civilisation cannot be enclosed in
a narrow doctrine. It cannot have a central doctrine because in its
majestic sweep it takes up all that comes its way and adapts it to its
over-widening purpose, rejecting finally what is wholly alien and
cannot be accommodated at all. Attempts have been made to build
embankments around this ocean-like reality to give it a shape and
definition. But these have not succeeded. The spirit of India has
refused to be contained. To put it differently, Hinduism has refused
to be organised. By the same token, it has refused to be communalised.
(p. 135)
Amrik Singh reacts to Jain’s stipulations: “While it is true that
Hinduism has refused to be organised and it has refused to be
communalised, how is it that today we witness what Nehru once
described as ‘non-Muslim aggression among Muslims’?” The author says
that this phrase of Nehru occurs in one of his letters addressed to
the Chief Ministers after the police action in Hyderabad.
IN the context of the Hindutva philosophy, it would be relevant to
consider the following quote from the late K.R. Malkani who became
known as the Editor of the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, and an ideologue
of the Bharatiya Janata Party:
The Muslim Indian should realise that Hinduism is not a religion, but
a culture. That he is Muslim by religion but Hindu by culture. Let
Indonesia with its Muslim religion and native Hindu culture be the
model for the Muslim in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. (p. 138)
Malkani’s prescription is not possible, says Amrik Singh, either in
terms of physical or political considerations or in terms of their
historical evolution. “While Hinduism has a hoary tradition behind it,
the pre-Islamic traditions in Indonesia are not even clearly defined.”
Incidentally, at the time of writing this review a mammoth gathering
of Muslim men and women with hijab (about 100,000) including scholars
and religious leaders from different parts of the world, is
deliberating in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, in search of ways to
establish a single Muslim government in the Islamic world (on the
ideals of Khilafat-e-Islamia) largely at the initiative of a group of
Indonesian Muslims. But that is another story that needs to be
considered in its own context.
The author feels that the effort to remove the present divide has
largely to be on the part of the Congress party. The removal of the
divide is linked with economic and political development of the
country. He says, “The Congress—currently in power—owes it to the
Muslims to bring them at par with others and thereafter involve them
in the process of development, both economic and political. The
Congress also has the further obligation to help the Muslims to draw
abreast of others socially.” (p. 191)
The author says that in seeking to separate from India, they (the
Muslims) followed a path which culminated in the partition of India in
1947. In the ultimate analysis that was a mistake, which Jinnah and
those who followed him had made. “Since the kind of Islamic future
that the Muslims of the subcontinent had aspired for themselves is
running into problem, sooner or later the thinking of the Muslim world
will make them learn from experience and come to terms with the
changed reality. But when? It is difficult to answer this question,”
the author says.
The author is of the view that the solution to the Hindu-Muslim divide
is linked, to a great extent, with the normalisation of relations
between India and Pakistan. The problem in India cannot be isolated
from the problem in Pakistan. The triumph of fundamentalism will be
bad for Indian Muslims as well. An end to confrontation would help
remove the divide in India, he says.
What, according to the author, is the prospect of the Hindu-Muslim
divide disappearing?—one may ask. He talks very enthusiastically of an
Indian version of globalisation. This globalisation is the result of a
“new mix of policies”, that are going to help all Indians including
Muslims.
He states: What has made it easier for India to adjust to the changing
world relatively more easily is partly because Hinduism is more
adjustable to the logic of the contemporary idea of development. If
India succeeds in this experiment, as seems to be happening, the
Indian Muslims too can before long, become a part of this experiment.
Currently, they are somewhat estranged from the mainstream. (p. 225)
Dr Amrik Singh would want the Indian Government to push ahead
vigorously with the spread of education and the Indian Muslims to give
evidence of some “political initiative” and “political maturity”.
According to the author, the confrontation with the United States now
“...is partly coming in the way of the Islamic world breaking with her
past”. If the US were not so confrontationist, he says, things in the
Islamic world would to some extent start changing, “sooner than is
happening at the moment”. According to him, India’s role in this
context is “positive, if not also praiseworthy”. And, India’s version
of globalisation can prompt others, even those in the Islamic world,
to move in that direction.
Dr Amrik Singh feels that if what is stated above happens, the “Hindu-
Muslim divide in India will gradually weaken”. More than that, he
says, this would give rise to “a new era in world history in more than
one sense”. What happens in India, according to him, would be of
considerable historical significance. “Indeed, it can also prove to be
a development of a wider economic and cultural significance.” Amen!
The reviewer, a veteran journalist who worked for several years in
Mainstream, currently edits the periodical Alpjan.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article302.html
Mainstream Weekly
Mainstream, Vol XLVI No 28
Day One in Calcutta
Monday 30 June 2008, by From NC’s Writings
Ten years ago, in the afternoon of June 27, 1998, Nikhil Chakravartty
breathed his last. Remembering him after 10 years, we are reproducing
some of his finest reports, editorials and articles that appeared in
this journal and elsewhere over the last sixty years. We are also
reproducing the speech that our former President, K.R. Narayanan,
delivered while unveiling N.C.’s portrait at the Press Council of
India (New Delhi, February 28, 1999), and publishing several
reminiscences by those who knew him intimately.
The following report by Nikhil Chakravartty, the Calcutta
correspondent of People’s Age (published from Bombay), appeared in the
weekly’s August 24, 1947 issue (it was wired from Calcutta on August
17, 1947) under the following headlines : ‘End of a Nightmare and
Birth of New Dawn!’; ‘Calcutta Transformed by Spirit Of Independence’;
‘Hindus, Muslims Hug Each Other In Wild Joy—Tears Roll Down Where
Blood Once Soaked The Streets’.
Frenzy has overtaken Calcutta. It is a frenzy which no city in India
has ever felt through the long years of thraldom under the British.
When the clock struck midnight and Union Jacks were hauled down on
August 15, 1947, the city shook to her very foundations for a mad
frenzy overtook her 40 lakh citizens. Nothing like this has ever
happened before.
I have racked my brains for hours; I have looked up all despatches in
the Press; but still I find no adequate words to communicate the
unforgettable experience that has overwhelmed me in the last three
days. It is like a sudden bursting of a mighty dam: you hear a
deafening roar of water sweeping away everything in the flood. It
comes with a crushing suddenness and strikes with the strength of a
thousand giants.
That is how all of us in Calcutta have felt in the last few days—all
of us, old or young, man or woman, Hindu or Muslim, rich or poor. In
this mighty sweep of the flood none was spared. And the floods carried
off a lot of dirt and stigma of our slavery.
Calcutta is Reborn
ONE hundred and ninety years ago, it was from Calcutta that Clive set
out of conquer this land of ours and it was this city which was the
seat of all his vile intrigues that divided our ranks and brought
about our defeat. But today in the sweeping torrent of freedom all
that has been wiped away, and once again this beloved city of ours
stands out clean and full of radiance with the glow of lasting
brotherhood.
Everybody felt nervous about August 15. Weeks ahead authorities were
on tenterhooks; more police and military were being posted to ensure
peace. Ministers would not permit meetings in the open to celebrate
the transfer of power, afraid that the goondas might create trouble.
East Bengal Hindus were nervous that one little spark in Calcutta
might throw the entire province into the flames of a civil war;
Muslims were panicky that they might be finished off in Calcutta and
many had left the city.
Gandhiji had already moved his camp to one of the most affected areas—
Belliaghata—and cancelling his East Bengal trip, had decided to spend
a few days here with Suhrawardy. But even he was disturbed by rowdy
goondas, backed by communal groups, accusing him of being an enemy of
Hindus. News from the Punjab was bad. On the whole an uncanny fear
gripped everybody and the day of independence seemed like a deadline
for disturbances.
But how wrong were our calculations! With all our pretensions of
knowing our people, with all the prophecies and warnings, bans and
precautions, no one really knew how the people—common men and women
among both Hindus and Muslims—would come forward to celebrate August
15. It was this unknown factor, which in every turn of history is the
determining factor, that has made all the difference in our
calculations and the actual happenings on that day.
People’s preparations for the celebrations of the day went on briskly,
though imperceptibly. The demand for Tri-colours knew no bounds;
whatever be the material, whatever the make, every flag was literally
sold out. Even the poorest of the poor, coolie, scavenger or rickshaw-
puller, bought the Jhanda. In paras and mohallas boys and girls were
getting ready practising drills or formations, organising Prabhat
Pheris. Party differences, personal bickerings, etc. were forgotten.
Discordant voices there were, but they did not matter. Mahasabha first
raised the slogan of black flags, but then piped down and declared non-
participation. But all the prestige of Shyamaprosad could not make any
impression on the very people whom he had swayed during the Partition
campaign.
Forward Bloc and Tagorites also opposed the celebration on the ground
that real freedom was yet to be won. But despite the fact that
thousands of Bengali homes paid homage to Netaji that day hardly a
handful abstained from participation. Every school, factory, office,
every home—be it a mansion or a bustee—awaited the great day with
hearts full of jubilation.
As the zero hour approached, the city put on a changed appearance. On
the streets, people were busy putting up flags and decorating
frontage. Gates were set up at important crossings, bearing names of
our past titans like Ashoka or our martyrs in the freedom movement.
The atmosphere was tense; should there be a new round of stabbings or
shootings among brothers, or should there be return to peace and
normalcy?
All Barriers Broken
THE first spontaneous initiative for fraternisation came from Muslim
bustees and was immediately responded to by Hindu bustees. It was
Calcutta’s poor toilers, especially Muslims, who opened the floodgate,
and none could have dreamt of what actually took place.
Muslim boys clambered up at Chowringhee and shouted, “Hindu-Muslim ek
ho” and exhorted the driver to take them to Bhowanipore. But the
driver would not risk that and so they came up to the border only.
But then all of a sudden in the very storm-centres of most gruesome
rioting of the past year—Raja Bazar, Sealdah, Kalabagan, Colootolah,
Burra Bazar—Muslims and Hindus ran across the frontiers and hugged
each other in wild joy. Tears rolled down where once blood had soaked
the pavements. “Jai Hind”, “Vande Mataram”, “Allah-ho-Akbar” and above
all renting the sky “Hindu-Muslim ek ho”.
Curfews were ignored; men rushed out on the streets, danced, clasped
and lifted each other up. It was all like a sudden end of a nightmare,
the birth of a glorious dawn.
As midnight approached, crowds clustered round every radio set and
Jawaharlal’s ringing words sent a thrill round every audience,
“Appointed day has come —the day appointed by destiny..”
With the stroke of midnight, conch-shells blew in thousands, conch-
shells blown by our mothers and sisters from the innermost corners of
our homes—for the call of freedom has reached every nook and corner.
And with the conch-shells were heard the crack of rifles and bursting
of bombs and crackers. The very arms that were stored so long to kill
off brothers were being used to herald the coming of freedom.
A torchlight procession started in North Calcutta. Tram workers, in
all spontaneity, brought out a couple of trams crowded with Hindus to
the Nakhoda mosque and were feted by Muslims with food and drink. In
Burra Bazar, Muslims were treated the same way and all embraced one
another. Hardly anybody slept that night—the night choked with
passionate emotions welling up in so many ways.
As the morning came the city was already full of excitment and
pavements were thronged with people. Prabhat Pheris came out singing
songs of the national struggle. Boys and girls marched through the
streets with bands and bugles—bright and smart, free citizens of
tomorrow.
Flag salutations in every park, in every school and office. Buses
plied free, giving joy rides to thousands. Trams announced that all
their returns would be sent for relief. And they ran till late at
night along all mixed routes which were closed for the past year.
At the Government House, our own Government was to unfurl the
Tricolour, but invitees were confined to Burra Sahibs and officials,
the rich and elite, Ministers and Legislators. They came in big cars,
many with their wives dressed in all their fashionable clothes.
Government House—People’s Property
COMMON people, those that have made freedom possible, they too came in
thousands, but they were kept outside, beyond the huge iron gates. Why
must this be so? Why must this occasion be celebrated in the way the
White Sahibs have done so long?
I watched that crowd growing restless every minute and found among
them the very faces that you come across in the streets every day or
at the market or in your own home: babu, coolie, student, Professor,
young girl and shy wife—all jostling with each other, impatient at
being kept out. Sikh, Muslim, Bhayya and Bhadralok clamoured for the
gates to be opened and when that was not done, they themselves burst
into the spacious grounds and ran up towards the Governor’s stately
mansion.
The burst into the rooms much to the annoyance of the officials and
perhaps also of the marble busts of many of the White rulers that have
never been disturbed in their majesty.
For hours they thronged there, thousands over thousands of them,
shoving out many of the ICS bosses. But it would be a slander to say
that they were unruly. How little did they touch or damage? Had they
been unruly, as somebody had reported to Gandhiji, the whole place
would have been a wreck in no time.
They went there for they felt that it was one of their own leaders who
had been installed as their Governor. And when the annoyed officials
ran up to Rajaji to complain to him about the crowd swarming into the
rooms, C.R., it is reported, replied: “But what can I do? It is their
own property. How can I prevent them from seizing it?”
The sense of triumph, of pride that we have come to our own could be
seen in the faces that entered the portals of the Government House. It
is symptomatic of August 15 no doubt. For though there were
restrictions and curtailments to real freedom in the elaborate plans
the Dominion Status, the people—the common humanity that teems our land
—have taken this day to mean that that have won and no amount of
restrictions will bar the way, just as no policeman could stop the
surging crowd that broke into the Government House.
Outside, all over the city, houses seemed to have emptied out into the
streets, lorries came in hundreds, each packed precariously beyond
capacity; lorries packed with Hindus and Muslims, men and women.
Streets were blocked and the people themselves volunteered to control
traffic.
Rakhi Bandhan Again
LORRY-LOADS of Muslim National Guards crammed with Gandhi-capped young
Hindu boys shouted themselves hoarse “Jai Hind”, “Hindu-Muslim ek ho”.
Somebody in Bhowanipore waved a League flag under a Tri-colour. What a
sight and what a suspense. But the days of hate were over and all
shouted together, “Hindu-Muslim ek ho!”
A batch of Hindu ladies went to Park Circus to participate in the flag
hoisting. They tied rakhi (strings of brotherly solidarity made famous
during Swadeshi days) round the wrists of Muslim National Guards. And
the Muslim boys said, “May we be worthy brothers!”
Hindu families, quiet and timid Bhadralok families, came in hundreds
to visit Park Circus with their wives and children in tikka gharries
piled by Muslims. Muslims, well-to-do and poor, visited Burra Bazar,
and Ballygunge in endless streams. And this was going on all these
three days.
They are all going to paras or mohallas they had to leave or where
they had lost their near and dear ones. Today there is no area more
attractive and more crowded than the very spots where the worst
butcheries had taken place. As if to expiate for the sins of the last
one year, Hindus and Muslims of Calcutta vied with each other to
consecrate their city with a new creed of mighty brotherhood.
On the evening of August 16, one year back, I sent you a despatch
which could describe but inadequately the mad lust for fratricidal
blood that had overtaken Calcutta that day. To mark the anniversary of
that day I visited the crowded parts of Hindu Burra Bazar and the
Muslim Colootola where in this one year hardly anyone passed alive
when spotted by the opposite community. But this evening Muslims were
the guests of honour at Burra Bazar and Hindus, as they visited
Colootola, were drenched with rose-water and attar and greeted with
lusty cheers of “Jai Hind”.
On the very evening, at Park Circus, was held a huge meeting of Hindus
and Muslims. Suhrawardy, J.C. Gupta, MLA, and Bhowani Sen spoke. It
was here that Suhrawardy asked the Muslims to go and implore the
evicted Hindus to come back to Park Circus.
At Belliaghata, Gandhiji’s presence itself has brought back hundreds
of Muslim families who had to leave in terror of their lives only a
few weeks back. And Gandhiji’s prayer meetings are attended by an ever
increasing concourse of Hindus and Muslims—themselves living symbols
of Hindu-Muslim unity.
Reports from Bengal districts also prove that this remarkable upsurge
of solidarity was not confined to Calcutta alone. In Dacca, despite
panic, Hindus and Muslims jointly participated in the celebration of
Pakistan, and Muslim leaders themselves intervened in one case where
the Congress flag was lowered, and the flag was raised again.
Everywhere Hindus showed response by honouring the Pakistan flag.
Joint Hindu-Muslim demonstrations were the marked features of the
occasion.
Reports from Comilla, Kusthia, Dinajpore, Krishnanagore, Munshinganj,
Malda and Jessore, all show that August 15 had passed off in peace and
amity. Only local fracas were reported from Kanchrapara, but the great
and good tidings from Calcutta eased the situation there.
In this mighty flood of freedom and brotherhood there is yet the sense
of suspense, for it came with such an incredible suddenness and
magnitude that many think it is too good to last long. It is like
holding a precious glass dome in your hands while you are in suspense
that it might fall and break at any moment.
Spontaneous assertion of people’s will for freedom and brotherly
solidarity needs to be harnessed in lasting forms and that is where
our leaders will be tested in the coming weeks.
Whatever happens, August 15 will be cherished for Calcutta’s grand
celebration on the eve of the end of the dark night of slavery and the
dawn of freedom. Calcutta yesterday was the symbol of our servitude
and fratricidal hate. Calcutta today is the beacon-light for free
India, asserting that freedom once resurrected can never be curbed or
destroyed, for all our millions of Hindus and Muslims together are
ready to stand together as its proud sentinels.
(People’s Age, August 24, 1947)
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article801.html
Mainstream Weekly
VOL XLV No 21
1857 In Our History
Monday 14 May 2007, by P C Joshi *
[(The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Great Indian Revolt
of 1857 is being observed this month. Though the spark for the Revolt
was lit by Mangal Pandey at Barrackpore earlier the same year, the
Revolt actually began in May at Meerut: on May 6, 85 sepoys of the 3rd
Bengal Cavalry at Meerut refused to use the cartridge, the cause of
the rebellion—all of them were placed under arrest; on May 9 these
sepoys were brought to a general punishment parade at the Meerut
Parade Ground, sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment and stripped of
their uniforms. When the 11th and 12th Native Cavalry of the Bengal
Army assembled at the Parade Ground on May 10, they broke rank and
turned on the Commanding Officer Colonel Finnis who was shot dead—this
was the first incident of Revolt at Meerut; thereafter the sepoys
liberated the imprisoned sepoys, attacked the European Cantonment and
killed all the Europeans who could be found there. Then in conjunction
with the Roorkee sepoys, called to Meerut following the uprising, they
marched to Delhi where the first major incident took place on May 11
with the killing of Colonel Ripley.
We are carrying here excerpts from a seminal article “1857 In Our
History” by the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of
India, P.C. Joshi, whose birth centenary is being observed this year,
to mark the occasion. This article was presented at a symposium held
to observe the centenary of the 1857 Revolt in 1957; later it was
published alongwith other articles presented at the symposium in book
form (also edited by P.C. Joshi) by the People’s Publishing House, New
Delhi. —Editor)]
The few contemporary Indians who wrote on 1857 did so for the British.
The dominant British attitude is revealed in entitled, “The Bengali
Press, How to Deal with It”, published on August 9, 1896, in Pioneer,
a very influential British organ of the times:
We know how Englishmen within the memory of living men treated their
own newspaper writers… If a gentle and graceful writer forgot himself
so far as to call the Prince Regent ‘an Adonis of forty’ he got two
years’ ‘hard’. If a clergyman praised the French Revolution and
advocated Parliamentary reform and fair representation, he was
condemned to work in iron manacles, to wade in sludge among the vilest
criminals.
The writer advocated the infliction of the same punishment on an
Indian who dared to write on the Indian Mutiny of 1857.1
Indians thus had no say in this controversy but our rebel ancestors
with their heroic deeds and by shedding their warm blood had made
their contribution more eloquent than words....
It is inspiring to recall here what Marx thought of the 1857 national
uprising. As early as July 31, 1857, on the basis of Indian mail
carrying Delhi news up to June 17, he concluded his unsigned
newsletter to the New York Daily Tribune with these words:
By and by there will ooze out other facts able to convince even John
Bull himself that what he considers military mutiny is in truth a
national revolt.2
India’s historians may go on arguing and differing about the character
of the 1857 revolt but the mass of the Indian people have already
accepted it as the source-spring of our national movement. The hold of
the 1857 heritage on national thought is so great that even Dr R. C.
Majumdar concludes his study with the following words:
The outbreak of 1857 would surely go down in history as the first
great and direct challenge to the British rule in India, on an
extensive scale. As such it inspired the genuine national movement for
the freedom of India from British yoke which started half a century
later. The memory of 1857-58 sustained the later movement, infused
courage into the hearts of its fighters, furnished a historical basis
for the grim struggle, and gave it a moral stimulus, the value of
which it is impossible to exaggerate. The memory of the revolt of
1857, distorted but hallowed with sanctity, perhaps did more damage to
the cause of the British rule in India than the Revolt itself.3
The controversy whether the 1857-58 struggle was a sepoy revolt or a
national uprising can be resolved only by squarely posing and
truthfully analysing the character of the contestants on either side
and the nature of the issues—political, economic and ideological—
involved in this struggle. In short, a sound historical evaluation
demands that who was fighting whom and for what be correctly
stated....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE British conquest of India implied not only the imposition of alien
rule but, something worse still, a pitiless destruction of the
traditional Indian social order itself and disruption of its own
normal development towards a new order. Marx was the only thinker of
the period who studied this tragic phenomenon scientifically and
formulated the role of British imperialism in India in such a correct
manner that his conclusions were borne out by the subsequent
researches of Indian scholarship and they helped Indian patriots to
understand Indian reality better and give a progressive orientation to
Indian national thought.
As early as 1853 when the Indian situation was being debated in the
British Parliament on the occasion of the renewal of the East India
Company’s Charter, Marx stated in an article entitled “British Rule in
India”: All the civil wars, invasions, revolutions, conquests,
famines, strangely complex, rapid and destructive as the successive
action in Hindustan may appear, did not go deeper than its surface.
England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society,
without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing. This loss of his
old world, with no gain of a new one, imparts a particular kind of
melancholy to the present misery of the Hindu, and separates Hindustan
ruled by Britain, from all its ancient traditions, and from the whole
of its past history… It was the British intruder who broke up the
Indian handloom and destroyed the spinning wheel…British steam and
science uprooted over the whole surface of Hindustan, the union
between agriculture and manufacturing industry.4 ...
After the conquest of Bengal and eventually throughout India, the
method of enforced and unequal trade was used to loot India and this
led to its economic ruination. R. P. Dutt states how the situation
underwent a qualitative change after the British became the ruling
class in India, how methods of power could be increasingly used to
weight the balance of exchange and secure the maximum goods for the
minimum payment.5
By the end of 18th century and much more clearly by 1813-33, a shift
had come over British policy towards India. After a period of
primitive plunder and the systematic ruination of Indian trades and
crafts, the British bourgeoisie, with the completion of their
Industrial Revolution, began to use India as a dumping ground for its
industrial manufactures and, above all, textiles. Marx noted this
sharp shift, and, in one of his articles during 1853, wrote:
The whole character of trade was changed. Till 1813 India had been
chiefly an exporting country while it now became an importing one; and
in such quick progression, that already, in 1823, the rate of
exchange, which had generally been two-sixth per rupee sunk down to
two per rupee. India, the great workshop of cotton manufacture for the
world, since immemorial times, became now inundated with English
twists and cotton stuffs. After its own produce had been excluded from
England, or only accepted on the most cruel terms, British
manufactures were poured into it at a small or merely nominal duty, to
the ruin of native cotton fabric once so celebrated.6
The policy of the East India Company also annihilated the independent
merchant bourgeoisie as well as the artisans and craftsmen. Prof
Ramkrishna Mukherjee describes the process in the following words:
Along with thus turning the Indian artisans ‘out of this ‘temporal’
world’, as Marx remarked caustically, proceeded the liquidation of the
Indian merchant bourgeoisie. Monopolising Indian products for the
English meant that the Indian merchants could no longer survive. Only
those could maintain their profession who acquiesced in becoming
underlings of the Company or of its servants engaged in private inland
trade in India or of the private English merchants residing in India
for the same purpose. Otherwise, they had to find a new source of
livelihood. Not only were the Indian merchants prohibited from buying
commodities directly from the producers which were monopolised by the
English, but the agents of the Company and its servants forced such
goods on the Indian merchants at a price higher than the prevailing
one.7
By annihilating the independent merchant bourgeoisie, which to some
extent also fulfilled the role of the manufacturing bourgeoisie, the
monopolist East India Company destroyed that very important class in
Indian economy which could be their rival.
Another aspect of this phenomenon is noted and analysed by K. M.
Panikkar in the following words:
With the establishment of European trade centres in the main coastal
areas of India, there had developed a powerful Indian capitalist
class, closely associated with the foreign merchants, and deriving
great profits from trade with them… The Marwari millionaires of Bengal
have become the equivalent of the compradore classes of Shanghai of a
later period …The emergence of this powerful class, whose economic
interests were bound up with those of the foreign merchants and who
had an inherited hatred of Muslim rule, was a factor of fundamental
importance to the history of India and of Asia.8
These Indian agents of the Company and of the British merchants were
called gomasthas and bannias and played the role of sub-agents of
foreign capital and a pro-British role in the 1857 uprising.
How did intelligent Indians react to the above economic situation and
policies?
It is useful to quote Allamah Fazle Haq of Khayrabad, an eminent
Muslim scholar of the traditional school who took a leading part in
the 1857 revolt and was transported for life:
Having seized power they (the British) decided to bring under their
hold the various sections of the people by controlling eatables, by
taking possession of the ears of corn and grain and giving the
peasants and cultivators cash in lieu of their rights of farming.
Their object was not to allow the poor men and villagers a free hand
in buying and selling grains. By giving preference to their own
people, they wanted to control the cheapening or raising of the rates
so that the people of God might submit to their (Christian) policy of
monopoly, and their dependence on them (Christians) for their
requirements might force them to meet the purpose of the Christians
and their supporters, and their desire and ambitions which they had in
their hearts and the mischiefs and evils which they had concealed in
their minds.9
In the above background, the appeal of the manifesto issued by Bahadur
Shah on behalf of the insurgent centre at Delhi had its own
significance. The manifesto appealed in the following words to the
merchants: It is plain that the infidel and treacherous British
Government have monopolised the trade of all the fine and valuable
merchandise such as indigo, cloth and other articles of shipping,
leaving only the trade of trifles to the people and even in this they
are not allowed their shares of the profits, which they secure by
means of customs and stamp fees, etc., in money suits, so that the
people have merely a trade in name. Besides this, the profit of the
traders are taxed with postages, tolls, and subscriptions for schools,
etc. Notwithstanding all these concessions, the merchants are liable
to imprisonment and disgrace at the instance of complaint of a
worthless man. When the Badshahi Government is established all these
aforesaid fraudulent practices shall be dispensed with and the trade
of every article, without exception, both by land and water shall be
opened to the native merchants of India who will have the benefit of
the Government steam-vessels and steam carriages for the conveyance of
their merchandise gratis; and merchants having no capital of their own
shall be assisted from the public treasury. It is, therefore, the duty
of every merchant to take part in the war, and aid the Badshahi
Government with its men and money, either secretly or openly, as may
be consistent with its position or interest and forswear its
allegiance to the British Government.10...
The economic and political operation of the East India Company in
India led to a systematic squeezing of our national wealth which has
been described by India’s economic historians as the economic drain.
Let us examine this as it existed on the eve of the 1857 revolt.
There was the so-called Indian Debt, which was incurred by the Company
in order to consolidate its position in India and to spread its
influence further through expeditions and wars, and at the same time,
paying high dividends to share-holders in England, tributes to the
British Government since 1769 and bribes to the influential persons in
England.11
R. C. Dutt makes the following comments as regards the genesis and
mechanism of this Indian Debt:
A very popular error prevails in this country (England in 1903) that
the whole Indian Debt represents British capital sunk in the
development of India. It is shown in the body of this volume that this
is not the genesis of the Public Debt of India. When the East India
Company cessed to be the rulers of India in 1858, they had piled up an
Indian Debt of 70 millions. They had in the meantime drawn a tribute
from India, financially an unjust tribute, exceeding 150 million, not
calculating interest. They had also charged India with the cost of
Afghan wars, Chinese wars and other wars outside India. Equitably,
therefore, India owed nothing at the close of the Company’s rule; her
Public Debt was a myth; there was a considerable balance of over 108
millions in her favour out of the money that had been drawn from her.
12
Montgomery Martin, an Englishman with sympathy for the Indian people,
wrote as early as 1838:
This annual drain of £ 3,000,000 on British India amounted in 30 years
at 12 per cent (the usual Indian rate) compound interest to the
enormous sum of £ 723,997,917 sterling; or, at a low rate, as $
2,000,000 for 50 years, to £ 8,400,000,000 sterling! So constant and
accumulating a drain even on England would have soon impoverished her;
how severe then must be its effect on India, where the wages of a
labourer is from 2d. to 3d. a day?13....
Prof Ramkrishna Mukherjee goes even further and states:
A total picture of this tribute from India is seen to be even greater
than the figure mentioned by Martin in 1838. During the 24 years of
the last phase of the Company’s rule, from 1834-35 to 1857-58, even
though the years 1855, ’56 and ’57 showed a total import-surplus of £
6,436,345—(not because the foreign rulers had changed their policy,
but because some British capital flowed into India to build railway in
order to prepare her for exploitation by British industrial capital),—
the total tribute which was drained from India in the form of ‘home
charges’ and ‘excess of Indian exports’ amounted to the colossal
figure of £ 151,830,989. This works out at a yearly average of £
6,325,875, or roughly half the annual land revenue collections in this
period!14
The above was the grim reality, grimmer than any ever witnessed in the
whole course of India’s age-old historic development. As Marx stated,
there cannot, however, remain any doubt but the misery inflicted by
the British on Hindustan is of essentially different and infinitely
more intensive kind than Hindustan had to suffer before.15
The British, under the East India Company’s rule disrupted the whole
economic order of India, they turned the traditional land system topsy
turvy, they smashed the trades and manufactures of the land and
disrupted the relationship between these two sectors of the Indian
economy, systematically drained the wealth of our country to their
own, and destroyed the very springs of production of our economy.
Every class of Indian society suffered at this new spoliator’s hands.
The landlords were dispossessed and the peasants rendered paupers, the
merchant bourgeoisie of India liquidated as an independent class and
the artisans and craftsmen deprived of their productive professions.
Such unprecedented destruction of a whole economic order and of every
class within it could not but produce a great social upheaval and that
was the national uprising of 1857. The all-destructive British policy
produced a broad popular rebellion against its rule.
Within Indian society, however, those productive forces and classes
had not yet grown (in fact early British policy had itself destroyed
their first off-shoots) that could lead this revolution to victory.
The revolt of 1857 as also its failure were both historical
inevitabilities. But it also was a historical necessity, for after it
followed those modern developments..., from which emerged the modern
national liberation movement of the Indian people and those new social
forces which led it to victory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE religious factor played a big part in the revolt in 1857. The
British statesmen and chroniclers exaggerated and deliberately
misinterpreted the role played by this factor to prove their thesis
that the 1857 uprising was reactionary, revivalist and directed
against the progressive reforms that they were introducing in Indian
society. The early generation of English-educated Indian intellectuals
swallowed this imperialist thesis uncritically because they themselves
had suffered under the old reactionary religious influences. A true
historical outlook demands that we do not forget the historical stage
which Indian society had reached on the eve of 1857, the ideological
values which would be normal to this society and the ideological forms
in which the Indian people could formulate their aspirations....
It is abundantly clear... that the British rulers purely for their
imperialist motives were out for some decades preceding 1857 to
culturally denationalise India by the method of mass conversion to
Christianity. This was seen as a menacing danger by the mass of
Indians, irrespective of their viewpoint whether it was Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan or Bahadur Shah, whether it was the enlightened Bengali
intellectual in Calcutta or the Nana Saheb at Bithoor, by the mass of
sepoys both Hindu and Muslim. Thus when the religious factor played a
big role as it did in the struggle of 1857, it was as a part of the
national factor. The mass of Indians took up arms to defend their own
religions and they were fighting not only in defence of their religion
but to defend their way of life and their nationhood. Of course, there
were several reactionary features within Indian society but then the
only healthy way to change them was through the struggle of the Indian
people themselves.
This is not all. Our rebel ancestors used religion to advance the
revolutionary struggle. They did not let religion stupefy them. But
they used religion to get the strength to fight the Firinghis.
A proclamation was issued at Delhi with royal permission urging upon
the Hindus and Muslims to unite in the struggle in the name of their
respective religions.
To all Hindus and Mussalmans, citizens and servants of Hindustan,
officers of the army now at Delhi and at Meerut send greetings:—it is
well known that in these days all the English have entertained these
evil designs—first, to destroy the religion of the whole Hindustani
army and then to make the people by compulsion Christians. Therefore,
we, solely on account of our religion, have combined with the people
and have not spared alive one infidel, and have re-established the
Delhi dynasty on these terms. Hundreds of guns and a large amount of
treasure have fallen into our hands; therefore, it is fitting that
whoever of the soldiers and people dislike turning Christians should
unite with one heart, and, acting courageously, not leave the seed of
these infidels remaining.16
When the struggle in Oudh after the fall of Lucknow was on the
downgrade, and insurgents were heroically fighting defensive and
mostly losing battles, the captured sepoys used to be asked by the
British why they had joined the revolt. Their answer used to be:
The slaughter of the English is required by our religion. The end will
be the destruction of the English and all the sepoys—and then, God
knows!17
The Rajah of the Gond tribes was living as a pensioner of the British
at Nagpur. He had turned a traditional Sanskrit sthotra recited in
worshipping the devi into an anti-British hymn. The London Times of
October 31, 1857 gives the translation of the prayer: Shut the mouth
of the slanderers and Eat up backbiters, trample down the sinners,
You, “Satrusamgharika” (name of Devi, ‘destroyer of enemy’) Kill the
British, exterminate them, Matchundee. Let not the enemy escape, not
the wives and children Of such oh! Samgharika Show favour to Shanker;
support your slaves; Listen to the cry of religion. “Mathalka” eat up
the unclean, Make no delay, Now devour them, And that quickly, Ghor-
Mathalka.
During the siege of Delhi, British agents repeatedly tried to
transform the joint Hindu- Muslim struggle into a fratricidal Hindu-
Muslim civil war. Even as early as May 1857, British agents began
inciting the Muslims against the Hindus in the name of jihad and the
matter was brought before Bahadur Shah.
The king answered that such a jihad was quite impossible, and that
such an idea an act of extreme folly, for the majority of the Purbeah
soldiers were Hindus. Moreover, such an act could create internecine
war, and the result would be deplorable. It was fitting that sympathy
should exist among all classes… A deputation of Hindu officers arrived
to complain of the war against Hindus being preached. The king
replied: ‘The holy war is against the English; I have forbidden it
against the Hindus.’18
Thus did our rebel ancestors use religion to organise and conduct a
united revolutionary struggle against foreign domination. In the
historic conditon of 1857, the ideological form of the struggle could
not but assume religious forms. To expect anything else would be
unrealistic and unscientific.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE British text books on Indian history contained only the story of
the “atrocities of the mutineers,”—dishonouring of women, killing of
children and so on. The reality, however, was the opposite. Again, the
early generation of educated Indians like Savarkar and others began
exposing from British sources themselves the story of unprecedented
British atrocities against the Indian people. During the non-
cooperation movement of the twenties, the British terror during 1857
was related to Jallianwallabagh to rouse the people to struggle more
valiantly and unitedly than our ancestors had done during 1857.
Thereafter came Edward Thompson’s The Other Side of the Medal which
tried to put across the thesis that there were atrocities on both
sides which are best forgotten.
The question of questions is: can the two sides be put on the same
plane? Can the crimes committed by the enslavers of the people be
equated with some mistakes and excesses committed by the fighters for
freedom? The two cases are different....
If tales of Indian “terror” are largely mythical, British brutality
got even Lord Canning worried. On December 24, 1857, the following
Minute appears in the proceedings of the Governor-General-in-Council:
…the indiscriminate hanging, not only of persons of all shades of
guilt, but of those whose guilt was at the least very doubtful, and
the general burning and plunder of villages, whereby the innocent as
well as the guilty, without regard to age or sex, were
indiscriminately punished, and in some cases, sacrificed, had deeply
exasperated large communities not otherwise hostile to the government;
that the cessation of agriculture and consequent famine were
impending; …And lastly, that the proceedings of the officers of the
Government had given colour to the rumour…that the Government
meditated a general bloody persecution of Mohammedans and Hindus.19...
In the History of the Siege of Delhi, written by an officer who served
on active service, it is graphically described what the British
officers did on the way from Ambala to Delhi.
Hundreds of Indians were condemned to be hanged before a court-martial
in a short time, and they were most brutally and inhumanly tortured,
while scaffolds were being erected for them. The hair on their heads
were pulled by bunches, their bodies were pierced by bayonets and then
they were made to do that to avoid which they would think nothing of
death or torture—cows’ flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into
the mouth of the poor and harmless Hindu villagers.20
How the sepoy and the civilian, the guilty and the innocent alike were
butchered by the British victors after the capture of Lucknow is
described below by one of them:
at the time of the capture of Lucknow—a season of indiscriminate
massacre—such distinction was not made and the unfortunate who fell
into the hands of our troops was made short work of—sepoy or Qudh
villager it mattered not—no questions were asked; his skin was black,
and did not that suffice? A piece of rope and the branch of a tree or
a rifle bullet through his brain soon terminated the poor devil’s
existence.21
What happened in the countryside, between Banaras, Allahabad and
Kanpur during General Neill’s march through the area is described by
Kaye and Malleson in the following words:
Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts and amateur
executioners were not wanting to the occasion. One gentleman boasted
of the numbers he had finished off quite ‘in an artistic manner’, with
mango trees for gibbets and elephants as drops, the victims of this
wild justice being strung up, as though for past-time in ‘the form of
a figure of 8’.22...
Pandit Nehru has rightly stated the problem of race mania as it faced
our insurgent ancestors and faced us subsequently in the whole course
of our struggle for freedom.
We in India have known racialism in all its forms ever since the
commencement of British rule. The whole ideology of this rule was that
of the Herrenvolk and the master race, and the structure of Government
was based upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in
imperialism. There was no subterfuge about it; it was proclaimed in
unambiguous language by those in authority. More powerful than words
was the practice that accompanied them, and generation after
generation and year after year, India as a nation and Indians as
individuals were subjected to insult, humiliation, and contemptuous
treatment.23...
Our forefathers suffered and bled during 1857. Subsequent generations
kept up the struggle and went on making the needed sacrifice. If after
independence we forget our past experience and began to consider
British imperialism as our new friend instead of our traditional foe,
we will not be able to safeguard Indian independence nor discharge
India’s duty towards the struggling colonial peoples in Asia and
Africa...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN the broad historical perspective of India’s struggle against
British domination what needs being stressed is not the limitation and
narrowness of the 1857 uprising but its sweep, breadth and depth. The
1857 uprising stands sharply demarcated from all the earlier anti-
British wars of resistance fought on Indian soil.
The first is the sheer vastness of the area covered by the 1857
uprising and the still wider sympathy and solidarity it commanded. It
is admitted by all historians and chronicles, British and Indian
alike, that the 1857 national insurrection was the biggest ever anti-
British combine that had so far been massed in armed struggle against
British authority in India.
The second is the qualitative difference between this and all other
anti-British wars. In the earlier wars people of a single kingdom,
which very often coincided with a specific nationality, fought single-
handed. For example, the Bengalis alone fought at Plassey. The same in
the Karnatak and the Mysore and the Maratha, the Sikh and the Sind
wars. Earlier attempts at broader combinations had failed. But during
1857 people of various castes, tribes, nationalities, religions, who
had lived under different kingdoms rose together to end the British
rule. It was an unprecedented unity of the Indian people. Marx, the
most far-sighted thinker of the age, duly noted this new phenomenon.
Before this there had been mutinies in the Indian army but the present
revolt is distinguished by characteristic and fatal features. It is
the first time that the sepoy regiments have murdered their European
officers; that Musalmans and Hindus, renouncing their mutual
antipathies, have combined against the common masters; that
‘disturbances, beginning with the Hindus, have actually ended in
placing on the throne of Delhi a Mohammedan Emperor’; that the mutiny
has not been confined to a few localities.24
As it is important to stress the above positive aspect of the 1857
national uprising, it is equally important to state its negative
aspect and state which decisive areas and sections of the Indian
people did not join the national uprising and how some were even led
to supporting the British side. There were several factors involved
but let us examine the main, the national factor. The Gurkhas and the
Sikhs played a decisive role on the side of the British. The Nepal war
had been fought by the British with the help of the Hindustani Army.
Rana Jung Bahadur, who was centralising Nepal under Ranashahi, was
promised by the British a permanent subsidy and large tracts in Terai
and he brought his Gurkha soldiers down, in the name of revenge, for
subduing Oudh.
The Sikhs had their own historic memories against the Moghuls and
after initial hesitation the British were able to recruit the
unemployed soldiers of the Khalsa Army and the retainers of the Sikh
princes and sardars.
From the Marathas the heir of the Peshwas had risen in revolt but the
Maratha princes had their own rivalries and historic feuds both with
the Nizam in the South and the Moghuls in the North.
The Rajputana princes had their own historic memories of earlier
Moghul and later Maratha domination, besides their being under British
grip now.
These historic memories from the past of our feudal disunity kept the
people of large parts of the country paralysed and moved by their
feudal self-interest the Indian princes helped the British usurpers.
Nehru has put the whole position in very succinct words:
The revolt strained British rule to the utmost and it was ultimately
suppressed with Indian help.25
As it is true that the 1857 revolution was the biggest national
uprising against British rule, so it is equally true that the British
were able to suppress it by using Indians against indians. Divide and
rule was the traditional British policy and they used it with
devastating effect during 1857....
The peasant was anti-British but his outlook was confined within his
village, his political knowledge did not go beyond the affairs of the
kingdom in which he lived under his traditional Raja.
The political-ideological leadership of the country was yet in the
hands of the feudal ruling classes. They shared the general anti-
British sentiment but they feared their feudal rivals more. They were
a decaying class and their historic memories were only of the feudal
past of disunity and civil wars and the vision of a united independent
India could not dawn upon them.
Love of the country in those days meant love of one’s own homeland
ruled by one’s traditional ruler. The conception of India as our
common country had not yet emerged. Not only did the feudal historic
memories come in the way but the material foundations for it, the
railways, telegraph, a uniform system of modern education, etc., had
not yet been laid but had only begun.
The conception of India as common motherland grew later and the great
experience of 1857 rising helped it to grow. The London Times duly
noted the rise of this new phenomenon.
One of the great results that have flowed from the rebellion of
1857-58 has been to make inhabitants of every part of India acquainted
with each other. We have seen the tide of war rolling from Nepal to
the borders of Gujarat, from the deserts of Rajputana to the frontiers
of the Nizam’s territories, the same men over-running the whole land
of India and giving to their resistance, as it were, a national
character. The paltry interests of isolated States, the ignorance
which men of one petty principality have laboured under in considering
the habits and customs of the other principality—all this has
disappeared to make way for a more uniform appreciation of public
events throughout India. We may assume that in the rebellion of 1857,
no national spirit was roused, but we cannot deny that our efforts to
put it down have sown the seeds of a new plant and thus laid the
foundation for more energetic attempts on the part of the people in
the course of future years.26
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT was the aim of the insurgents, what sort of a political and
social order did they seek to establish in India? A sound
characterisation of the 1857 struggle depends upon the correct answer
to the above problem. For it will help to decide whether it was
reactionary or progressive.
It is amazing that there is virtual agreement on this question between
not only British and some eminent Indian historians but also some
foremost Indian political leaders.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has stated his opinion thus: Essentially it
was a feudal outburst, headed by feudal chiefs and their followers and
aided by the widespread anti-British sentiment… Not by fighting for a
lost cause, the feudal order, would freedom come.27
Dr Majumdar’s conclusion is: The miseries and bloodshed of 1857-58
were not the birthpangs of a freedom movement in India, but the dying
groans of an obsolete aristocracy and centrifugal feudalism of the
medieval age.28
Dr Sen, the official historian, improves upon and carries forward the
Prime Minister’s characterisation:
The English Government had imperceptibly effected a social revolution.
They had removed some of the disabilities of women, they had tried to
establish the equality of men in the eye of the law, they had
attempted to improve the lot of the peasant and the serf. The Mutiny
leaders would have set the clock back, they would have done away with
the new reforms, with the new order, and gone back to the good old
days when a commoner could not expect equal justice with the noble,
when the tenants were at the mercy of the talukdars, and when theft
was punished with mutilation. In short they wanted a counter-
revolution.29...
One can understand British statesmen and historians advancing the
thesis of the Old Man vs. the New, of their own role being progressive
and the insurgent cause reactionary, in sheer self-defence. But when
Indian leaders and historians repeat the same old British thesis the
least one can say is that they are mistaking the form for the
substance. It is true that the 1857 uprising was led by Indian feudals
(but not them alone!) and they were not the makers of events, nor sole
masters of India’s destiny. There were other social forces of the
common people in action during this struggle and they had brought new
factors and ideas into play. It is a pity Drs Majumdar and Sen and
Pandit Nehru have given no thought nor weight to them. If we study
them carefully and seriously, the conclusion is inescapable that
during the 1857 national uprising, the popular forces were active
enough, healthy in their aspirations and clear-headed enough in their
ideas to prevent a reactionary feudal restoration in India.
One of the great positive achievements of the 1857 uprising acclaimed
with justified pride by the Indian national movement has been the
noble attempt to forge, and sustained efforts to maintain, against
British machinations, Hindu-Muslim unity for the successful conduct of
the struggle.
Playing upon Hindu-Muslim differences had become so much a part of the
flesh and blood of the British representatives in India that Lord
Canning spontaneously began thinking, when the first signs of the
storm burst during May 1857, whether the Hindus or Muslims were behind
it? Kaye states the problem and the significance of the new situation
facing the British rulers: But, before the end of the month of April,
it must have been apparent to Lord Canning, that nothing was to be
hoped from that antagonism of Asiatic races which had even been
regarded as the main element of our strength and safety. Mohammedans
and Hindus were plainly united against us.30
The British officials, however, did not give up but persisted in the
policy of stirring Hindu- Muslim dissensions. “I shall watch for the
differences of feelings between the two communities,” wrote Sir Henry
Lawrence from Lucknow to Lord Canning in May 1857. The communal
antipathy, however, failed to develop; Aitchison ruefully admits:
In this instance, we could not play off the Mohammedaa against the
Hindu.31
The insurgent leaders were fully aware of this disruptive British
tactic. Allamah Fazle Haq, himself a Muslim revivalist, wrote: They
(the British) tried their utmost to break the revolutionary forces by
their tricks and deceptive devices, make ineffective the power of the
Mujahids and uproot them, and scatter and disrupt them…. No stone was
left unturned by them in this respect.32
The insurgent leaders consciously laid great stress on Hindu-Muslim
unity for the success of the struggle. Bahadur Shah, the sepoy
leaders, the learned Ulema and Shastris issued proclamations and
fatwas stressing that Hindu-Muslim unity was the call of the hour and
the duty of all. In all areas liberated from British rule the first
thing the insurgent leaders did was to ban cow-slaughter and enforce
it. In the highest political and military organ of insurgent
leadership Hindus and Muslims were represented in equal numbers.33
When Bahadur Shah found that he could not manage the affairs of state,
he wrote to the Hindu Rajas of Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Alwar that if
they would combine for the purpose (of annihilating the British) he
would willingly resign the Imperial power into their hands.34
An insurgent Sikh regiment in Delhi served under a Muslim commander.35
Such instances can be multiplied....
There is another very important aspect of this problem. Hindu-Muslim
unity was one of the important keys in deciding the fate of the issue.
The British side knew it and tried their hardest and best to disrupt
it. The Indian side also knew it and did their utmost to realise and
maintain it. But this by itself would be a static statement of the
problem. The better Hindu-Muslim unity was forged in the insurgent
camp, the longer the struggle could last; the longer the struggle
lasted, the more chances the popular forces got to come to the fore
and the more the ideological-political influence of feudal forces
became weakened; the more the feudal forces weakened the less chances
were left of a feudal restoration. Such is the dialectics of all
popular and national struggles. During the last phase of the struggle
in 1857-58, the feudal forces stood thoroughly exposed and weakened.
The popular forces were not yet powerful, conscious and organised
enough to overwhelm them and carry on the struggle to victory. What
actually took place was British victory and not feudal restoration.
When the modern national movement began in the next generation, the
glorious heritage of Hindu-Muslim unity was taken over from the 1857
struggle and the next two generations gave a more and more democratic
programme to the conception of Hindu-Muslim united front against
British domination.
The British side also learnt its lesson from this historic phenomenon.
Forrest in his Introduction to State Papers, 1857-58, states:
Among the many lessons the Indian Mutiny conveys to the historian,
none is of greater importance than the warning that it is possible to
have a revolution in which Brahmins and Sudras, Hindus and Mohammedans
could be united against us, and that it is not safe to suppose that
the peace and stability of our dominions, in any great measure,
depends on the continent being inhabited by different religious
systems…. The mutiny reminds us that our dominions rest on a thin
crust ever likely to be rent by titanic forces of social changes and
religious revolutions.36...
Inside the disintegrating feudal order that was India of those days,
new currents of democratic thought and practice were arising; they
were not yet powerful enough to break the old feudal ideological bonds
and overwhelm British authority; they were menacing enough to make the
real Indian feudals seek a new lease of life as a gift from the
British after beseeching due forgiveness for having joined the
insurgent cause.
The destruction of the ancient land system in India and the law on the
alienation of land stirred the whole countryside into action against
the government whose policies had made the old rural classes, from the
zamindars to the peasants, lose their lands to the new section of
merchants, moneylenders and the Company’s own officials, and which had
played havoc with the their life. The large-scale peasant
participation in the 1857 uprising gave it a solid mass basis and the
character of a popular revolt. The Indian peasants fulfilled their
patriotic duty during 1857.
Peasants joined as volunteers with the insurgent forces and, though
without military training, fought so heroically and well as to draw
tributes from the British themselves... At the battle of Miaganj,
between Lucknow and Kanpur, the British had to face an Indian
insurgent forces of 8000, of whom not more than a thousand were sepoys.
37 At Sultanpur, another battle was fought by the insurgents with
25,000 soldiers, 1,100 cavalry and 25 guns and of these only five
thousand were rebel sepoys!38 After the fall of Delhi, the British
concentrated upon Lucknow. As the British massed all their strength
against Lucknow so from the villagers of Oudh came armed, peasant
volunteers for the last ditch defence of their capital city. In the
words of Charles Ball, The whole country was swarming with armed
vagabonds hastening to Lucknow to meet their common doom and die in
the last grand struggle with the Firangis.39
After the fall of Bareilly and Lucknow, the insurgents fought on and
adopted guerilla tactics. Its pattern is contained in Khan Bahadur
Khan‘s General Order:
Do not attempt to meet the regular columns of the infidels because
they are superior to you in discipline, bandobast and have big guns
but watch their movements, guard all the ghats on the rivers,
intercept their communications, stop their supplies, cut their dak and
posts and keep constantly hanging about their camps, give them (the
Firinghis) no rest!40
Commenting on the above, Russell wrote in his Diary:
This general order bears marks of sagacity and points out the most
formidable war we would encounter.41
The heavy responsibility for carrying into practice the above line of
action and aiding the scattered insurgent forces to prolong the anti-
British war of resistance fell on the mass of the peasantry. All
contemporary British chronicles of the story of this war in
Rohilkhand, Bundelkhand, Oudh and Bihar contain numerous stories of
how the Indian peasantry loyally and devotedly carried out the behests
of the insurgent high command. Let us take only one example:
Even when the cause of the mutincers seemed to be failing, they
testified no good will, but withheld the information we wanted and
often misled us.42
In a national uprising that has failed, the role and contribution of
any class can best be estimated by the amount of sacrifice it makes.
Measured in these terms, the peasantry is at the top of the roll of
honour of the 1857 uprising. Holmes states:
The number of armed men, who succumbed in Oudh, was about 150,000, of
whom at least 35,000 were sepoys.43 ...
The rural population as a whole rose against the new land system
imposed over their heads by the British rulers. Secondly, that the
pattern of struggle was to eliminate the new landlords created under
the British regime, destroy their records, hound them out of villages
and seize their lands and attack all the symbols of British authority
especially the kutchery (law-court), the tehsil (revenue office) and
the thana (the police outpost). Thirdly, the base of the struggle was
the mass of the peasantry and the rural poor while the leadership was
in the hands of the landlords dispossessed under the British laws.
Fourthly, this pattern of struggle fitted into the general pattern of
the 1857 national uprising, the class struggle in the countryside was
directed not against the landlords as a whole but only against a
section of them, those who had been newly created by the British under
their laws and acted as their loyal political supporters, that is, it
was subordinated to the broad need of national unity against the
foreign usurper.
Talmiz Khaldun’s thesis that during this uprising “The Indian
peasantry was fighting desperately to free itself of foreign as well
as feudal bondage” and that “the mutiny ended as a peasant war against
indigenous landlordism and foreign imperialism” is thus an
exaggeration. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Indian
peasantry during this struggle decisively burst through the feudal
bonds either politically or economically to transform a broad-based
national uprising into a peasant war. On the other hand all the
evidence that is known is to the contrary....
The Indian peasants made a compromise with the traditional landlords
in the interests of the common struggle but the landlords became
terrified by this alliance when they saw it in the living form of a
revolutionary popular struggle. Gubbins, who had wide personal
experience of Oudh and other Eastern districts, states:
Much allowance should, no doubt, be made in considering the conduct of
the Indian gentry at this crisis, on account of their want of power to
resist the armed and organised enemy which had suddenly risen against
us. The enemy always treated with the utmost severity those among
their countrymen who were esteemed to be friends of the British cause.
Neither their lives nor their property were safe. Fear, therefore, no
doubt entered largely into the natives which induced many to desert us.
44
Narrow class interest and fear of the “armed and organised” masses,
whom the British rightly called “the enemy,” ultimately led the Indian
feudal gentry to desert the revolutionary struggle and seek terms with
the foreign rulers. The situation led to feudal treachery and
suppressoin of the national uprising, and not to the strengthening of
feudalism in the minds and the later movement of the Indian peasantry
and the people.
Dr R.C. Majumdar himself quotes the Supreme Government “Narrative of
Events” issued on September 12, 1857:
In consequence of the general nature of the rebellion and the
impossibility of identifying the majority of the rebels, the
Magistrate recommended the wholesale burning and destruction of all
villages proved to have sent men to take active part in the rebellion.
45
This is how the British understood the peasant contribution to the
1857 uprising. Could there be a restoration for the feudal order in
India on the shoulders of such a peasantry?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 1857 uprising is a historic landmark. It marks the end of a whole
historic phase and the beginning of a new one. On the British side it
finished the Company’s rule and led to direct government under the
British Crown. The period of rule of the merchant monopolists of the
East India Company ended and the dominance of the industrial
bourgeoisie of Britain in the affairs of India began. On the Indian
side, the revolt failed but the Indian people got that experience
which enabled them to build the modern Indian national movement on new
foundations and with new ideas, and the lessons of 1857 proved
inestimable. Both sides drew and applied their lessons from the 1857
experience in the subsequent period. The British were the victors,
they went into action soon; we were the vanquished, we took longer.
From their experience of the 1857 uprising the British rulers sharply
changed their policy towards the Indian feudal elements, and
discarding the old policy of attacking their interests, they adopted a
new policy of reconciling them as the main social base of their rule
in India. The Indian people from their experience of the Indian
feudals drew the lesson for the next phase of their movement that
their anti-British struggle to be successful must also be an anti-
feudal struggle. Those who were so far regarded by the Indian people
as their traditional leaders were now rightly considered as betrayers
of the 1857 uprising and the Indian puppets of the British power.
As regards the Indian princess, the policy of annexations was given
up. Queen Victoria in her Proclamation promised them:
We shall respect the rights, dignity and honour of native pricess as
our own. Very candidly Lord Canning in his Minute of April 30 noted:
The safety of our rule is increased and not diminished by the
maintenance of native chiefs well affected to us.
How the Indian national movement understood the post-1857 British
policy towards the princes is best reflected in Nehru’s Discovery of
India where he states that the retention of the native states was
designed to disrupt the unity of India,46 Indian princes playing the
role of Britain’s fifth column in India.47....
The Army was reorganised after the sepoy mutiny, which had set the
country aflame. The proportion of British troops was increased and
they were primarily used as an “army of occupation” to maintain
internal security while the Indian troops were organised and trained
for service abroad to subjugate Asian and African territories for
British imperialism. The artillery was taken away from the Indian
hands. All higher appointments were reserved for the British, an
Indian could not even get the King’s Commission nor get employment in
the Army headquarters except as a clerk in non-military work. The
Indian regiments were reorganised on the principle of divide and rule
and recruitment confined to the so-called martial races.
But in the long run nothing availed the British. The memory of the
sepoys’ role during 1857 never died not only in the memory of the
Indian people but also of the Indian armed forces. As the modern
national movement grew, it could not leave the Indian Army, however
“reorganised”, untouched. During the 1930 national struggle, the
Garhwali soldiers refused to fire at the Indian demonstrators at
Peshawar. During the post-war national upsurge after a series of
“mutinies” in the Indian Army and Air Force, the Royal Indian Navy
revolted on February 18, 1946 and the next day the British Prime
Minister announced the dispatch of the Cabinet Mission to India and
negotiations for the independence of India began.
The Indian administrative machine was reorganised as a colossal
bureaucratic machine with Indians employed only in subordinate
positions, all real power and responsibility resting in British hands.
The Queen’s Proclamation had promised that there would be no racial
discrimination against the Indians in employment in government
services. The reality, however, was different...
After 1857, politically, even Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had suggested that
Indians should be included in the Legislative Council to keep the
government in touch, with the people. In 1861 the Indian Councils Act
provided for the inclusion for legislative purposes of non-official
members. In 1862, three Indians were so nominated. These legislatures,
in which real power remained with the exclusive British Executive,
were used by patriotic Indian statesmen as tribunes of the Indian
people and to unmask British policies and thus aid the growth of the
national movement. The British tactic of divide and rule, however,
succeeded in another way. The institution of separate electorates for
the Muslims was the first expression of the poisonous two-nation
theory which ultimately resulted in the partition of the country at
the very time of gaining independence.
The British Government, which claimed credit for early social reform
measures like banning of sati, widow remarriage, etc., after the
experience of 1857 and its subsequent alliance with the Indian feudal
reaction became the opponent of all progressive social measures.
Hindu law was largely custom and as customs change, the law also was
applied in a different way. Indeed there was no provision of Hindu Law
which could not be changed by customs. The British replaced this
elastic customary law by judicial decisions based on the old texts and
these decisions became precedents which had to be rigidly followed…
Change could only come by positive legislation but the British
Government, which was the legislating authority, had no wish to
antagonise the conservative elements on whose support it counted. When
later some legislative powers were given to the partially elected
assemblies, every attempt to promote social reform legislation was
frowned upon by the authorities and sternly discouraged.48
The British Government thus became the defender of social reaction in
India, after 1857!
The British overlords had created an English educated Indian middle-
class to get cheap and efficient and denationalised Indian cadres for
the lower essential rungs of their administration.
Educated natives took no part in the sepoy mutiny: despite the charges
to the contrary, they heartily disapproved of the revolt and showed
themselves faithful and loyal to the British authorities throughout
the course of that crisis.49
The above is not wholly true. Dr Sen states: Even this small minority
(of modern educated Indians) were not unanimous in the support of the
Government. An educated Hindu of Bengal complained of ‘a hundred years
of unmitigated active tyranny unrelieved by any trait of generosity’.
“A century and more of intercourse between each other,” he adds, “has
not made the Hindus and the Englishman friends or even peaceful fellow
subjects.”50
Calcutta was the biggest centre of these modern educated Indians. They
were at the time themselves concentrating upon the struggle against
Hindu orthodoxy and the religious terms in which the cause of the
insurgents was clothed repelled them. Because of their historic origin
and the limitations of their political experience they wrongly
identified progress with British rule. They were not, however,
“faithful and loyal” in the sense Earl Granville imagined them to be,
servile to the British rulers. This was proved in the very next year
after the 1857-58 uprising was suppressed when the Bengali
intelligentsia stirred the whole of Bengal in solidarity with the
Indigo Revolt, with the peasants of Bengal and Bihar who were victims
of unimaginable oppression and exploitation of the British planters.
Again it was Surendranath Banerji who took the initiative to run an
all-India campaign against lowering the age for the ICS, which
patently went against the Indian candidates. Then came the campaigns
regarding the IIbert Bill and racial discrimination in courts and the
Vernacular Press Act and so on. As the new intelligentsia saw more and
more of India under the British Crown all their illusions about Queen
Victoria’s 1858 Proclamation being the Magna Carta of Indian liberties
gradually evaporated and they began to agitate for political reforms.
In 1882 the Grand Old Man of Indian nationalism, Dababhai Naoroji,
wrote: Hindus, Mohammedans and Parsees alike are asking whether the
British rule is to be a blessing or a curse...This is no longer a
secret, or a state of things not quite open to those of our rulers who
would see.51...
Even before 1857, From India a policy of imperial expansion was
planned and the British Government of India was set on the perilous
road of conquest and annexation in the East for the benefit of
Britain, but of course at the cost of the Indian tax-payer.52
Thus Malacca and Singapore were occupied, Burma conquered, Nepal and
Afghan wars conducted and the Persian war managed.
The age of the Empire, based on India, began after 1857. India now
became in fact no less than in name a British possession. The Indian
Empire was at this time a continental order, a political structure
based on India, and extending its authority from Aden to Hongkong.53
In this period, Afghanistan and Persia were made virtual British
protectorates, expeditions and missions were sent to Sinkiang and
Tibet in the North and the British position in South-East Asia and
China consolidated.
“The continental involved a subordinate participation of India”54 as
policemen, traders and usurers, and coolies in the plantations of
Britain’s growing colonies. Indian resources and manpower were thus
used not only to conquer but maintain and run Britain’s colonial
Empire.
This, however, was only one side of the picture. As part of winning
foreign support for the Indian uprising Azimullah Khan, Nana’s
representative, is reported to have built contacts with Russia and
Turkey. Rango Bapuji, the Satara representative, is also reported to
have worked with Azimullah. Bahadur Shah’s court claimed Persian
support. All this was in the old principle that Britain’s enemies are
our friends. But Britain was the colossus of that period, and the
feudal ruling circles of these countries could never be in any hurry
to come to the aid of the Indian revolt. They could at best exploit it
and await its outcome.
This was, however, not the attitude of democratic circles in these and
other countries... there was in all democratic circles of the
civilised world great sympathy for the Indian uprising. Great and
historic is the significance of the Chartist leaders’ solidarity with
the Indian national uprising. Modern British labour movement dates its
birth from the Chartists. Modern Indian national movement dates its
birth from the 1857 uprising. What a new fraternal vision emerges from
the memory that the British proletariat and the Indian people have
stood together ever since the beginning of their respective movements.
The Chinese date the birth of their modern anti-imperialist national
movement from the Taiping uprising as we date ours from the 1857
uprising. The Chinese paper (presented at the symposium on the
centenary of the 1857 Revolt) documents the hitherto unknown story
that the Chinese people responded sympathetically to the 1857 uprising
and the Indian sepoys deserted to the Taipings and fought shoulder to
shoulder with them against the common enemy. Marx noted the new
phenomenon that the revolt in the Anglo-Indian army has coincided with
a general disaffection exhibited against supremacy by the Great
Asiatic nations, the revolt of the Bengal Army being, beyond doubt,
intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars.55
Thus the great national uprising of 1857 laid the foundation for the
worldwide democratic solidarity with the Indian struggle in its next
phase and our new national movement built itself on healthy
internationalist traditions. For example, in the twenties, the Indian
national movement vigorously opposed the imperialist policies in the
Middle East and expressed solidarity with the Egyptian struggle under
Zaglul Pasha, in the thirties it expressed practical solidarity with
the Chinese people’s struggle against the Japanese invaders and the
worldwide anti-fascist movement and so on. It was thus no accident
that after the achievement of independence India emerged as a great
world power championing the cause of world peace and the liberation of
all subject nations....n
[*NOTES
1. Major B.D. Basn, Rise of The Christian Power in India, (1931), p.
953.
2. Marx, unsigned article, “The Indian Question”, New York Daily
Tribune, August 14, 1857.
3. Quoted by R.C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and Revolt of 1857, p.
278.
4. Marx, “The British Rule in India”, New York Daily Tribune, June 25,
1853.
5. R.P. Dutt, India Today, p. 98.
6. Marx, “The East India Company—Its History and Results”, New York
Daily Tribune, July 11, 1853.
7. Ramkrishna Mukherjee, The Rise and Fall of the East India Company,
p. 174.
8. K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance, p. 99.
9. Allamah Fazle Haq of Khayrabad, “The Story of the War of
Independence 1857-58”, Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society,
vol. V, pt. 1, January 1957, p. 29.
10. National Herald, May 10, 1957.
11. Mukherjee, op. cit., p. 223.
12. R.C. Dutt, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, p.
xv.
13. Montgomeny Martin, Eastern India, Introduction to vol. I.
14. Mukherjee, op. cit., pp. 224-25.
15. Marx, “The British Rule in India”, New York Daily Tribune, June
25, 1853.
16. Majumdar, op. cit., p. 229.
17. Charles Ball, Indian Mutiny, vol. II. p. 242.
18. Sir T. Metcalfe, Two Narratives of the Mutiny at Delhi, pp. 98-99.
19. Quoted by Edward Thompson, The Other Side of the Medal, pp. 73-74.
20. Quoted by Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, p. 134.
21. Majendie, Up Among the Pandies, pp. 195-96.
22. Kaye & Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 281.
23. Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 281.
24. Marx, unsigned article, New York Daily Tribune, July 15, 1857. 25.
Nehru, op. cit., p. 279.
26. Quoted by Savarkar, op. cit., pp. 534-35.
27. Nehru, op. cit., p. 279.
28. Majumdar, op. cit., p. 241.
29. S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty Seven, pp. 412-13.
30. John Williams Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War, vol. I, p. 565.
31. Quoted by Asoka Mehta, The Great Rebellion, p. 42.
32. Fazle Haq, op. cit., p. 33.
33. Vide Talmiz Khaldun’s paper “The Great Rebellion” presented at the
symposium held on the occasion of the centenary of the 1857 Revolt.
34. Metcalfe, op. cit., p. 220.
35. Ibid., Jeewanlal’s Diary, under date 26 August.
36. G.W. Forrest, op. cit., vol. II, p. 150.
37. On October 5, 1858. See Col. G.B. Malleson, Indian Mutiny of 1857,
Vol. III, p. 287.
38. On February 3, 1858. See Ibid., vol. II, p. 334.
39. Ball, op. cit., vol. II, p. 241.
40. Quoted by Asoka Mehta, op. cit., pp. 51-52. Also Savarkar, op.
cit., p. 444.
41. W.H. Russell, My Diary in India in the Year 1858-59, p. 276.
42. M.R. Gubbins, An Account of the Mutinies in Oudh, p. 53.
43. T.R. Holmes, History of the Seopy War, p. 506.
44. Gubbins, op. cit., p. 58.
45. Majumdar, op. cit., p. 217. 46. Nehru, op. cit., p. 284. 47.
Ibid., p. 268. 48. Nehru, op. cit., p. 285. 49. Earl Granville,
February 19, 1858, in the House of Lords in reply to the charges of
the President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough.
Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, CXL VIII, 1858, pp. 1728-29.
50. Quoted by Sen, op. cit., p. 29.
51. Dadabhai Naoroji, “The Condition of India”. Correspondence with
the Secretary of State for India, Journal of the East India Affairs,
XIV, 1882, pp. 171-172.
52. K. N. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance, p. 105.
53. Ibid., pp. 162-163.
54. Ibid., pp. 164-165.
55. Marx, unsigned article, New York Herald Tribune, July 15, 1857. *]
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article107.html
Mainstream Weekly
Mainstream, Vol XLVI No 41
Dissecting Anew Hindu-Muslim Ties And Partition
Wednesday 1 October 2008, by Amarendra Nath Banerjee
[(BOOK REVIEW)]
HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN A NEW PERSPECTIVE BY PANCHANAN SAHA
(FOREWORD BY DR ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER); BISWABIKSHA, KOLKATA; PP.
FORWORD +392; RS 300.
Hindu-Muslim relations are very much complicated—the knottiest problem
in Indian history. Since the advent of Islam in the Indian
subcontinent more than millennium years ago, India faced a powerful
challenge from a militant and vigorous religion with an egalitarian
appeal. India failed to stem the tide of the rapid spread of Islam due
to internal squabbles and degeneration of society. In the caste-ridden
Brahminical society the lower castes were denied proper human rights.
They were not only socially degraded but also economically exploited.
It is no wonder, therefore, that millions of them welcomed Islam as a
religion of deliverance and to gain human dignity. The theory of
social liberation seems to be right for substantial reasons in
Islamisation in India. Swami Vivekananda had rightly said:
The Mohammedan conquest of India came as a salvation to the
downtrodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have
become Mohammedan. It was not the sword that did it all. It would be
the height of madness to think that it was all the work of sword and
fire.
But it does not mean force was not at all applied in Islamisation.
However, the major role was played by the Sufi saints and Pirs in it.
Nevertheless, wholesale Islamisation did not take place in India like
Afghanistan, Persia and other countries perhaps due to the inherent
strength of the Hindu philosophy in spite of its many drawbacks.
The advent of Islam produced tremendous reactions in India. Hinduism
wanted to protect itself by going into its inner shells with stricter
caste rules and regulations. But this hardly helped in preventing the
egalitarian influence of Islam on Hindu society. The Bhakti movement
was its product.
But living hundreds of years side by side, eating the same grain from
the common fields, drinking the same water and inhaling the same air,
the Hindu and Muslim societies and religions underwent profound
changes. Islam of India today is not the same as what it was when it
arrived. Hinduism also could not remain the same. Both the religions
had influenced each other. There was some kind of assimilation between
the two in spite of frequent clashes and mutual hostility. But
unfortunately a composite Indian nation has failed to emerge
assimilating the two major religions in India due to various factors
which led ultimately to the partition of the country.
Dr Panchanan Saha’s new book, Hindu-Muslim Relations in a New
Perspective, is projected on a large canvas from the advent of Islam—
gradual Islamisation and its causes, conflict and assimilation,
sprouting of the seeds of separation by the conscious British policy
of divide-and-rule, Hindu-Muslim revivalism and the short-sighted
policy of the Indian political leaders which ultimately led to the
communal carnage and partition of India.
In the chapter, “Conflict and Assimilation”, Saha emphasises the role
played by the Sufi saints, Bhakti movement as well as attempts of the
Mughal Emperor, Akbar, and his great grandson, Dara Shiko, to help the
process of reconciliation between the Hindus and Muslims. But
unfortunately this process was not properly taken forward due to
various factors, particularly the emergence of Wahhabism and Hindu-
Muslim revivalism.
♦
IN his analysis Saha has been seldom swayed by emotion; rather he has
remained mostly faithful to rationalism. He holds that the causes of
spread of separatism among the Muslims of India are to be found in the
refusal of the already matured Hindu bourgeoisie in sharing power with
the newly emerging Muslim bourgeoisie. Muslim bourgeoisie developed
later due to their empathy to British rule and Western education.
Saha has sympathetically discussed the Fourteen Points of M.A. Jinnah
in this direction and the rejection of the Congress to share power
with the Muslim League in Uttar Pradesh after the elections of 1936
and to collaborate with Fazlul Haque in Bengal for forming a secular
Ministry. It seems class interest played a more decisivie role in
making this choice than the greater interest of the country.
There is a simplistic explanation of Hindu-Muslim cleavage by putting
the sole responsibility on the British policy of divide-and-rule. But
Saha appears to be correct when he cites Tagore—“The Satan cannot
enter unless there is a hole to get in.” Tagore believed that division
among Hindus and Muslims existed and the cunning British rulers
utilised it to prolong their rule.
In his last chapter, entitled “Was Partition Inescapable?”, Saha has
not traversed the beaten tracks of numerous scholars of partition. He
has used substantial Pakistani literature on partition to prove his
point.
There is an enigma why Gandhiji, in spite of opposing partition on the
basis of religion tooth and nail, ultimately accepted it as a fait
accompli. The Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, lamented that
they were thrown to the wolves. What went on behind-the-scenes is a
mystery to this day.
It seems that the Hindu big bourgeoisie wanted an unchallenged market
even in partitioned India. They seemed to think that a truncated
Pakistan would not be viable. Whatever the reasons, it is evident that
had the Indian leaders shown true sagacity and leadership free of
class or emotional bias, there might have been a Confederation of
India based on the Cabinet Mission’s Plan which the Congress initially
accepted but subsequently refused to do so for reasons that are
unknown. Hence it is not inappropriate to quote The Times of India:
It is legitimate to enquire who is responsible for this debacle. ….
the parties concerned, the Congress, the British Government and the
Muslim League, are all more or less responsible, although on the facts
set forth, the Congress should get the first prize.
One could have expected that such a serious book should have remained
free from printing and editorial errors.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article957.html
Mainstream Weekly
Mainstream, Vol XLVI, No 50
Hindu Terrorism: The Shock of Recognition
Wednesday 3 December 2008, by Badri Raina
Epigraph
“Underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you
treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself
but also for the greater good.”
(Obama in his interview about Religion given to Cathleen Falsani,
March 27, 2004; cf. to his mother’s teaching about the validity of
diverse faiths and the value of tolerance.)
I
So, now, India is home to “Hindu” terrorism. Departing from the more
usual banner-appelation, “Saffron Terror”, I wish the fact to be
registered that saffron is drawn from the stamin of a delicate and
indescribably pretty mauve flower grown exclusively in my home valley
of Kashmir, and exclusively by Muslims. My inherited memories of it
are thereby sweet and secular to the core. Also, saffron when used to
grace milk products, Biryani, or to brew the heavenly kehwa is a thing
of the gods truly.
It is only when it is coerced against the use of nature to colour
politics that it rages against the sin. Then, don’t we know, what
gruesome consequences begin?
I think it proper, therefore, to stick with the more direct and honest
description, “Hindu” terrorism, since, much against their grain, even
India’s premier TV channels are now bringing us news of “Hindu”
terrorism, so compelling the materials gathered by the investigating
agencies thus far. This despite the fact that in my view the term
“Hindu” trerrorism is as erroneous as the term “Muslim” terrorism.
Even though not a religious man myself, I am able to see that being
Hindu or Muslim by accident of birth has no necessary connect with how
one’s politics turns out to be in adult life. A plethora of specific
contexts and shaping histories are here provenly more to the point.
II
It was way back in 1923 that Savarkar, never a practising Hindu
(indeed a self-confessed atheist) had first understood that from this
benign term, “Hindu”, could be drawn the toxic racial concept
Hindutva, and made to serve a forthrightly fascist purpose. That
Brahminism had always been a socially toxic form of Hinduism was of
course an enabling prehistory to the new project.
He it was who established Abhinav Bharat in Pune (1904), that
theoretical hotbed of twice-born Brahminical casteism against which
low-caste social reformers such as Phule, Periyar, and Ambedkar were
to struggle their whole lives long.
Such casteism was made the instrument of communalist politics to serve
two major objectives: one, to overwhelm and negate the specific
cultural and material oppressions of the low-caste within the Hindu
Varna system , and two, to elevate the low-caste as a warrior of a
common “Hindutva” army against the chief common “enemy”, the Muslim.
Such an army has been seen to be needed to salvage the “real” nation
from this so-called common enemy who continues to be represented to
this day by the RSS and its hydra-headed “educational” front
organisations as an “invader” still bent on seeking to convert India
into an Islamic theocratic state.
Aided in these mythical fears and constructions by the British during
the crucial decades leading upto Independence, India’s majoritarian
fascists continue thus to keep at bay all consideration of secular
oppressions based entirely in the brutal social order of Capitalist
expropriation.
Savarkar thus counselled how a resurgent nation could result only if
“Hinduism was militarised, and the military Hinduised”.
Clearly enough, the serving Army Colonel, S.P. Purohit, and the other
retired Major, one Upadhyay, who the Mumbai ATS (Anti-Terrorist Squad)
tells us, are at the centre of the Malegaon terrorist blasts of
September 29, 2008, alongwith Sadhvi Pragya and the rogue-sadhu,
Amreetanand—and very possibly complicit in half-a dozen other blasts
as well—seem to have heeded Savarkar’s advice to the hilt.
Indeed, in his narco-test confessions, Colonel Purohit, sources have
told some TV channels (Times Now), admits to his guilt and justifies
his actions as retribution for what he thinks SIMI (Student’s Islamic
Movement of India) have been doing. He is understood to have further
indicated that the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand, nee Dayanand etc., has
been the kingpin and chief coordinator and devisor of several other
blasts carried out by this cell, including the blasts at the revered
Ajmer Dargah (Mausoleum of the 12th century Sufi saint, Chisti, which
to this day draws devotees across faiths the world-over), and at
Kanpur.
The ATS are now busy exploring the routes through which huge sums of
money have been brought into the country for such terrorist activity
as hawala transactions, and whether the RDX, suspected to be used in
the Malegaon blast, was procured by Colonel Purohit through Army
connections. It is to be noted that Purohit has been in Military
Intelligence, and serving in Jammu and Kashmir, where it is thought he
made contact with the rogue sadhu, Amreetanand.
(Indeed, as I write, news comes of the ATS claiming that Purohit
actually stole some 60 kilos of RDX which was in his custody while
doing duty at Deolali, and that in his narco-test confession he admits
to passing it on to one “Bhagwan” for use in the blast on the
Samjhauta Express train in February, 2007.)
Needless to say, that alongwith the courts, we will also require that
the ATS is actually able to obtain convictions rather than merely pile
on evidence which may not be admissible in law.
To return to the argument:
As I suggested in my last column, “Notions of the Nation” (Znet,
November 4), Hindutva militarism since the establishment of the Hindu
Mahasabha and the RSS has been inspired by the desire to emulate and
then better Muslim “aggressiveness” seen as a racial characteristic
that defined “Muslim” rule in India, and rendered Hindus “limp” and
“cowardly”.
Thus, if Savarkar established Abhinav Bharat, Dr Moonje, an avowed
Mussolini admirer who in turn inspired Dr Hedgewar to establish the
RSS on Vijay Dashmi of 1924 (victory day, denoting the liquidation of
the Dravidian Ravana by the Aryan Kshatriya warrior, Ram), established
the Bhondsala Military Academy at Indore (1937). It now transpires
that this academy has been playing host to the Bajrang Dal for
militarist training routines etc., and its Director, one Raikar, has
put in his papers. Unsurprisingly enough, both these institutions are
now under the scanner.
III
Over the last decade, terrorist blasts have occurred in India across a
wide variety of sites and in major cities and towns.
Many of these blasts have taken place outside mosques and known
Muslim- majority locations, as well outside cinema halls that were
thought to be showing movies inimical to Hindu glory.
Briefly, these sites are: cinemas in Thane and Vashi in Maharashtra,
Jalna, Purna, Parbhani, and Malegaon towns, again all in Maharashtra—
and all areas of high Muslim density, in Hyderabad outside a famous
old mosque, and in Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat.
Curiously, in the Surat episode, some sixteen odd bombs were found
placed along the main thoroughfare in tree branches, on house-tops, on
electric poles and so forth. Not one of them however exploded. This
was thought to be the result of defective switches. Curious
circumstance that; besides the wonder that Ahmedabad’s Muslims could
find such sprawling access to such strategic locations without Modi
knowing a thing.
Yet, regardless of where the blasts have taken place, almost without
exception the Pavlovian response of state agencies as well as, sad to
say, media channels has been invariably to point fingers of suspicion
and culpability towards one or the other “Islamic” outfit.
Often, young Muslims men have been rounded up in the scores and held
for days of brutal questioning without the least prima facie evidence.
Nearly in all such cases, however reluctantly, they have had to be let
off.
The most recent case is that of some fifteen young Muslims picked up
after the Hyderabad blasts. Tortured with electric shocks, they have
nevertheless been found to be innocent and let go.
Indeed, after the gruesome blasts in the Samjhauta Express—a train
service of reconciliation and confidence-building between India and
Pakistan—in which some 68 people were burnt to cinders, 45 of them
Pakistani citizens, fingers were immediately pointed towards the SIMI.
Yet, the ATS of Mumbai now suspects that this may also be the doing of
the “Hindu” terrorists in custody. These speculations have been raised
by the circumstance that the suitcases that held the bombs had Indore
labels on them.
Just as the ATS now suspects that more than half a dozen blasts (the
two at Malegaon, in 2006 and 2008, at the cinemas in Thane and Vashi,
at Jalna, at Purna, at Parbhani, provenly at Nanded and Kanpur) have
all been the handiwork of “Hindu” terror groups.
IV
For some years, reputed civil and human rights organisations, and
individual members of civil society that have included journalists,
judges, lawyers, writers, artists, teachers, students, and labour
organisations, besides organised Muslim fora and Left parties, have
been cautioning both state agencies and media conglomerates to:
• desist from the Pavlovian haste with which some one or other Muslim
group is immediately named and labelled literally within an hour of
the occurrence of a blast, thus contributing to the maligning of the
entire Muslim community;
• to consider the possibility that groups other than those involving
Muslims could be involved;
• to refrain from covering up prima facie evidence which points to
such possibilities; indeed, where such evidence seems conclusive, as
the complicity of the Bajrang Dal at Nanded and Kanpur;
• to ponder the question as to why Muslims should effect blasts within
their own localities or outside their mosques;
• to weigh the consequences for the Muslim psyche of the failure of
the state to prevent repeated pogroms against them, and to find or
punish the guilty; not to speak of active state connivance in those
pogroms (Moradabad, 198o; Nellie, 1983; Hashimpura, 1987; Bhagalpur,
1989; Mumbai, 1992-93; Gujarat, 2002, to cite just the more recent
ones);
• to permit transparency in the matter of police investigations with
due regard for the Constitutional rights of those held in custody—such
as visitation, access to legal defence, norms of the recording of
confession and other evidence etc.;
• to respect the obligatory presumption of innocence until anyone is
juridically found guilty;
Time and again these cautions and rightful prerogatives have been
trampled under foot.
Aided by the loud biases of the corporate media which have tended to
reflect the predilections both of free-market imperialism and
comprador urban middle class sentiments in India’s metropolitan towns,
India’s state agencies and that “all-knowing” species, the
Intellegence expert, who seems ever present to reinforce anti-Muslim
prejudice, have tended to feed massively into the politics of the
Hindu Right-wing.
For years on end, India’s chief malady has been sought to be seen to
reside in “Islamic” terrorism, and in the complicit refusal of the
secularists to allow draconian preventive laws to be brought back on
the books. Not in poverty, malnutrition, disease, absence of health
care or clean drinking water, or lack of steady work among the urban
poor, or the ousted tribals, disenfranchised farmers, chronic failure
of primary schooling and so forth among some 75 per cent of Indians.
And most of them belonging to the Muslim, Dalit, and Tribal
communities.
And to repeat for the nth time, this three-fourths of Indians able to
spend just or under Rupees Twenty a day, all according to the
governments’ own Arjun Sengupta Committee Report.
Not to speak of the venomous communalisation of the polity, the
alienation and ghettoisation of the minorities, and the state’s
failure or unwillingness to carry through schemes that could redress
these maladies.
As to new terror laws, the government of the day may protest that it
has all the laws it wants, and more; as well as the fact that the
worst terrorist attacks took place when laws like the dreaded POTA
(Prevention of Terrorism Act) was on the books during the tenure of
the NDA regime led by the ultra-”nationalist” BJP. Small dent is made
by any regime of empirically-founded facts, or fair-minded arguments
on the right-wing fascists and their fattened constituency.
V
Now, of course, a radically transformed milieu is unravelling.
Photos and videos are doing the rounds that show the “Hindu”
terrorists currently under investigation in close and intimate
proximity to top leaders of the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP as well.
Had POTA indeed been on the books today, such evidence would have
authorised the police to put them all behind bars on the charge of
associating with those under investigation for “terrorism”. And all
that without any recourse to bail either.
Predictably, nonetheless, after some days of dumbfounded
crestfallenness (remember that the main electoral plank of the BJP in
the elections now under way in several states and in the soon-to-be-
held parliamentary polls is the failure of the Congress to eradicate
“terrorism” because of its “minority appeasement” policies), the Right-
wing fascists are back to brazen form.
Even as the projected Prime Ministerial candidate, Advani (the high-
point of whose career remains the successful demolition of the Babri
mosque) seeks to strike a stance of caution, party hard-liners have
taken to peddling outrageous theories.
As a complement to the well-known Pavlovian hunch that “all terrorists
are Muslims”, we are now told by the likes of Rajnath Singh, the party
President, that “no Hindu can be a terrorist”, that is to say even
when he or she is found to be one.
This for the reason that what the ordinary man calls “terrorism” is in
fact “nationalism” where any Hindu be involved. Live and learn.
Other than that, it is both interesting and laughable that spokesmen
and women of the BJP are today reduced to gurgitating every single
argument that Muslims and civil rights organisations have to this day
voiced:
• presume innocence until found guilty;
• desist from the “political conspiracy” to malign a whole community;
• do not let enemies of the Hindu-right propagate fake evidence
against them, since all evidence against them must be fake in
principle;
• and most outlandishly, do not communalise terrorism; that from
India’s rank communalists who have done nothing but communalise
terrorism ever since we remember!
VI
Even as these new developments point to a potentially mortal combat
among “Hindu” and “Muslim” terror groups, I venture to think that the
situation also offers opportunities of far-reaching redressal for all
three axes that matter: the state and its agencies, the party-
political system, and the polity generally.
First off, if, as has been the case, the Congress’ secular credentials
have consistently been vitiated by, willy nilly, playing second-fiddle
to Hindu-communalist appeasement, the denuding of the Hindu-Right
offers it the opportunity of a lifetime to assert the supremacy of the
constitutional scheme of things, without fear or favour.
It is indeed a circumstance that can now help the Congress and other
secular parties to come down like a ton on communalism of all shades
that underpin the fatal subversion of the secular republic without the
need for apology.
In this endeavour, its greatest inspiration must come from two factors
on the Muslim side of the issue:
one, that over the last year every single major and influential Muslim
cultural and religious organisation has publicly, and repeatedly,
denounced through speech, act, and fatwa “terrorism” as un-Islamic and
a rightful candidate for punishment under law;
and, two, that without exception they have pleaded only and ever for
fair and just treatment at the hands of the authorised instruments of
state, both when victimised by pogroms and suspected as culprits; and
for credible pursuit of those that persecute them.
Not once has any Muslim organisation worth the name suggested that
Muslims have any claims that override the cosntitutional regime of
laws and procedures pertaining to all citizens of the Republic.
All that in stark contrast to the refusal, however camouflaged or
strategised, of the RSS and its affiliates to accept either the
secular Constitution or the notion of secular citizenship.
It is to be recalled that the RSS tactically acquiesced to
acknowledging the primacy of the national flag over its own saffron
one in 1949 as a quid pro quo to its release from the ban imposed on
it after Gandhi’s murder.
To this day it seeks to overthrow the Republic as constituted by law
and to replace it by a theocratic Hindu Rashtra wherein the
prerogatives of citizenship will be determined not by secular,
democratic equality but racial difference among Indians (all that
brutally codified in Golwalker’s two books, We, and Our Ntionhood
Defined; and, the later Bunch of Thoughts which explicitly designates
Muslims as the nations’s “Enemy Number One” in an exclusive chapter).
However Hindu cultural politics may have come to infect sections of
the fattened urbanites, the Congress must show the conviction that
none of these in this day and age would be willing to back what is
explicitly “terrorist” activity, indistinguishable from any other,
once the matter is proven.
This then is a fine moment to release a new energetic politics that
recharges the conviction and inspiration of the non-discriminatory
humanism that informed the leaders of the freedom movement, and thus
to disengage whatever popular base the Hindu-Right has built over the
years since the demolition of the Babri mosque from its fascist
leaderships and cadres.
Just as, in fact, many BJP supporters are busy thinking whether they
are indeed willing to carry their love of Muslim-haters quite to the
point where those other dreams of Indian super-powerdom are seriously
jeopardised by a war of competing terrorisms.
It is also a golden opportunity for the Congress-led UPA, should it
come back to power, to take a hard look at the communalist virus that
has infected law-enforcement agencies over the decades, and to make
bold to effect reforms of a far-reaching character, such as include
the recruitment of Muslims and other “minorities” in due proportion to
the forces, and not just among the lower ranks.
Speaking of the Army, some three per cent Muslims are today among its
ranks—some sixty years after Independence. And I won’t make a guess as
to how abysmal might in fact be its share among the officer core,
colonel and above. And wouldn’t I dearly like to take a peek into what
sort of Indian History is taught India’s future officers at Khada-
kvasla and Dehradun? Truly; and who does the teaching as well.
VII
As to the BJP: it has another opportunity as well, namely, to
reconstitute itself as a secular party on the Right, bearing full
allegiance to the Constitution in letter and spirit (remember now that
among other things on the street-level, the NDA regime led by the BJP
did constitute a Constitution Review Committee—an ominous enough move
that, thankfully, was duly aborted in course), and shunning once and
for all its enslavement to the RSS and its fascist vision of India,
its history, culture and state.
Failing to do so, the BJP may succeed in causing further mayhem; but
it is highly unlikely now to attain the sort of ascendance it seeks
through fair means and foul.
Most of all, the BJP must understand that the Muslims of India, and
Christians as well, have the inalienable right to live and work in the
country on the terms set by the Constitution, not by the RSS or the
Sangh Parivar.
And, conversely, that the BJP itself is as subject to those
constitutional stipulations as any another collective of Indians who
practice their beliefs and politics.
Let the BJP notice the epigraph chosen for this column; it comes from
the new President-elect of the one country that the BJP adores. Or
will it now, with a Black man at the helm?
A different voice floats from there.
Time for the BJP to change its langoti, and say “yes we can” also be
peaceable and law-abiding citizens of the Republic of India. And to
prize and protect its magnificent plurality like all sensible and
humane Indians.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1067.html
Mainstream Weekly
Mainstream, Vol. XLVII, No 34, August 8, 2009
Will RSS see the Ground Reality and join to Salve India‘s Core Values?
Sunday 16 August 2009, by Sailendra Nath Ghosh
Of late, the RSS has been accusing the BJP of inconsistency and also
of failure to convey the real meaning of Hindutva. The BJP has
certainly been inconsistent. It has been in two minds because like the
Congress, it, too, is preoccupied, not with any principle or any
concern for correct ideation, but with the slogan that can help it
capture power. But on the question of the real meaning of Hindutva, is
the RSS itself clear and consistent? It has a very large and committed
cadre. Why does it depend on the BJP to “convey the real meaning”? To
what extent has the RSS itself succeeded in conveying the supposedly
real meaning?
The RSS has been saying that anybody who regards India as his/her
motherland and a holy land is a Hindu and that the Indian Muslims are
Mohammadi Hindus and the Indian Christians are Isahi Hindus and so on.
Now, there is a large body of people who plainly call themselves
Hindus. They are not the followers of any one Prophet or of any one
Book. They have a large body of sacred books – the Vedas, the
Upanishads, the Geeta and Puranas. They venerate many Rishis and adore
some maryada-purushes like Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. How should they
be described? They cannot be called Ramiah Hindus or Krishnaiah
Hindus. They would not like to be called Sakti-ite Hindus, or Shivaite
or Vaishnavaite Hindus. Saktism, shaivism, and vaishnavism have got so
merged in their thinking that they are partly sakta, partly shaiva and
partly vaishnava. They worship all these principles as different
manifestations of the one Supreme Reality in differing circumstances.
If they are to be called “Sanatan dharmis” or in brief, “Sanatanis”,
why did the RSS not launch a movement insisting that the members of
the community, now plainly called Hindus, add a prefix “Sanatani” to
bring consistency? Not to do that would mean they would continue to
describe themselves as Hindus by religion, and again, as Hindus by
nationality. This becomes ridiculous.
Hinduism is no particular religion. It is a philosophy of religions.
The great nationalist leader, late Bipin Chandra Pal, described
Hinduism as a “confederal principle of co-existence of all religions”.
In deference to this spirit, the RSS had composed a verse in which the
names of pious Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Jains were included
as persons to be remembered and revered early every morning, before
beginning the day’s work.
Socio-Cultural Heritage got Degraded
IF this is Hinduism, how does Hindutva differ from it? The RSS’s
cryptic answer is, Hindutva is the concept of “geocultural
nationalism”. Implicitly, it says that long before India’s political
unification, India had achieved cultural unification from Jammu and
Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and from Arunachal and Meghalaya to Saurashtra
through the medium of two great epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, and the Geeta (which is truly a part of the Mahabharata).
These great works of the ancient Indians, then universally called
Hindus, had imparted values of parental love, filial duties, brotherly
love, unshakeable fidelity to the spouse, the monarch’s obedience to
the people’s wishes, the triumph of dharma over the mightiest wrong-
doer—that is, values to be cherished in perpetuity. Hence Hindutva is
value-orientation, the RSS claims. But can the RSS deny that during
the so-called Hindu period, caste hatred had taken firm roots as a
value? In ancient India, desertion of the wife for no fault of hers
also had become a tradition, as in the case of Sita. Murder of a
shudra for reading the Vedas was sanctioned by the social ethos.
Merit of Religio-Confederal Concept
THE RSS needs to accept that the ancient Hindus had, at a certain
stage, come to indulge in regressive social discrimination. The
obverse side of “geocultral nationalism” was socio-cultural dominance
of the higher castes and of the males among them. In the sphere of
philosophical concepts, however, the ancient Hindus were the most
liberal and the highest in cosmopolitanism (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam).
Hence if the RSS does not want to nurture caste inequality and gender
inequality, it should give up its “geo-cultural nationalism” (read the
socio-cultural concept) of Hindutva. If it seeks to promote the
philosophy of co-existence of all faiths, which is the ideal of
Hinduism, it should opt for the religio-confederal concept of
Hindustaniyat. The Muslims of this country have no problem with this,
because they have been traditionally describing themselves as
Hindustanis. The word Hindustan itself came from the verbiage of the
Iranians.
Four Cardinal Considerations
THE RSS needs to recognise four things. First, the usage of a word in
a restricted sense over centuries changes the original acceptation of
the word. Secondly, the Koran not only teaches the oneness of the
Creator. Its esoteric message is the unity of all of creation. The
bigots fail to see this. Hence, for ages, the raging controversy
within Islam, in the words of the eminent historian, the late Prof
Mohammad Habib, has been “between Wahdat-ul-wujud (God is everything)
and Wahdat-ush-shuhud (everything comes from God)”. Those who believe
in the former become attuned to tolerance, amicable relations between
all religious and racial communities and (Emperor) Akbar’s doctrine of
sulh-I-kul (Universal Religious Peace). The doctrine of Wahdat-ush-
shuhud led to the worship of external shariat (shariat-i-zahiri) and
communal hatred. (Vide Prof Habib’s Foreword to Dr S.A.A.Rizvi’s book
“Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries”)
From the above, it follows that the pious people in other faiths
should help in resolving the worldwide intra-Islamic controversy in
favour of the former. Declaration of the principle of confederal
principle in religion in India would largely help resolve Islam’s
global problem and be a powerful blow against bigotry, for world
peace.
Thirdly, India’s religio-philosophy’s contribution to Sufism in Islam,
and Islam’s contribution to spurring religious reform movements in
India constitute a glorious chapter in the world’s history. Historians
agree that the growth of Sufism in early Islam was inspired as much by
its internal urges as by the influences of Buddhism, the Vedanta and
the Hellenistic religions. Islam’s strident call to equality was
wedded to the Arabian nomadic tribes’ aggressive traits. It needed an
Indian response. This provided the spark for the religious reform
movements led by Ramananda, Kabir, Namdev, Tukaram, Guru Nanak and Sri
Chaitanya. To talk of inequitous socio-cultural Hindutva as the motto
is to belittle the fruitful intermingling of the religio-philosophical
thoughts of early Islam and its contemporary Hinduism.
Sharing is a positive value within Islam. Sharing the means of
sustenance is also an ideal of Hinduism so much so that Swami
Vivekananda had proclaimed that the “Hindu ideal is socialistic”.
Hence there is considerable convergence between the pristine Islamic
and Hindu spirituality.
Fourthly, all the ideals of love and selfless service which the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata had taught are getting eclipsed under the
influence of the now globally dominant commercialism, selfism, and cut-
throat competitivism in the name of efficiency. To restore ancient
India’s sublime values, we need a joint fight of all people against
the West’s consumerist and acquisitive philosophy of life and its
accompanying paradigm of development. The Biblical value of universal
love, the Koranic value of Raham and the Upanishadic teaching “love
others as you do yourself” can join together to beat back the narrow
self-centric modes of thought. For this also, the fascination for the
word “Hindutva” needs to be given up to salve the basic values.
Hinduism’s ideal is synthesis, ever higher synthesis. It requires
reconciliation by dissolving the sources of conflict in every
unfolding situation. Its ideal is integration of the heart and the
head (that is, emotion and intellect) of every individual; integration
of individuals with the society; integration of the communities by
elevation to newer peaks of harmonious existence. Its form of address
must, therefore, be such as has a psychological appeal to all people.
The language of negativism, or a language that has the flavour of bias
against any group is alien to the spirit of Hinduism. We need
inclusivism in letter and spirit.
Inclusivism is not an apologia for overlooking anybody’s hateful,
divisive or separatist trends. But to successfully fight separatism,
we must have a robust faith in the ultimate victory of the cause for
universal good and the preparedness to make sacrifices for it. Success
is assured if the approach is positive. Mere criticism/condemnation of
any trend without a pointer to the workable alternative serves only to
widen the gulf. It defeats the national purpose.
True, the virulent anti-Hindu, anti-Shia mujaddid movement in the 16th
century, the bigoted ulama’s secretive conspiracies against Emperor
Akbar’s policy of religious tolerance in the 16th century, the wave of
Wahabi Jihadism from Arabia in the 18th century, the ani-Hindu tirade
of the later-day incarnate of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in the late 19th
century and the mayhem for a separate homeland for the Muslims led by
the later-day incarnate of Mohammad Ali Jinnah were all abominations
and deserved condemnation. But the turning of the usually unruly
Pathans into the volunteers of non-violence led by the Frontier Gandhi
( Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) was an index of the wonder that communal
harmony and national unity could achieve.
Indian Muslims had no Pathological Separatism
IT must not be imagined that the Indian Muslims had always been under
separatist influence. It is well known that in undivided Punjab,
undivided Bengal and in Sind and the NWFP, and Balochistan, that is,
in the Muslim-majority States which were to constitute Pakistan later,
the Muslim League’s influence was meagre. In the elections to the
provincial legislatures and the Central Assembly in 1937, just a
decade before the Partition, the Muslim League had cut a sorry figure.
In Punjab, it contested only seven out of 84 Muslim reserved seats and
won only two. In Bengal, out of 117 Muslim reserved seats, it had won
only 38. In Sind out of 133 Muslim reserved seats, it had secured only
38. In the NWFP, the League was trounced. The League did not get even
a single seat in the Central Assembly. This showed the Muslims could
be mobilised for national purposes if the national leadership could
act wisely and avoid falling into traps.
True, a decade later the results were reversed. The Muslim League won
all the 30 reserved seats for Muslims in the Central Assembly and 428
seats out of 492 reserved seats for Muslims in provincial
legislatures. That happened because the elections were held in an
atmosphere in which no civilised country would ever allow an election
to take place. The ambience was vitiated by the British rulers’
intrigues, the Imams’ fatwas and false propaganda blitz that in the
event of Muslim League’s defeat, the Muslims would not be allowed to
congregate to offer prayers or to bury their dead and that the
madrasas would all be closed. The Indian National Congress, which had
the necessary moral resources and international prestige, could have
asked for postponement of the elections unless there was a stoppage of
the false propaganda and a calming down of the tempers. Moreover, it
should never have agreed to the elections— a virtual referendum —
being held on the basis of restricted franchise in which only 10 per
cent of the population had the right to vote!
Deadly Poison Mix of Ruling Party’s Pseudo-Secularism and RSS’
Hindutva
IN post-independence India, the ruling Congress party, in the name of
secularism, has been following a policy of appeasing the bigoted
Muslim clerics. Thereby it encouraged “minority aggressivism” and
further fuelled the communal fire. But Hindutvavad was no answer to
this. Instead of mitigating the communal fire, it only served to
corroborate Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s and later Jinnah’s thesis that the
Muslims and the Hindus were two separate nations. What was needed
instead was the pointer that concessions to the clerics were only a
cloak for neglect of the Muslim masses’ material, intellectual and
spiritual interests. Only Mahatma Gandhi’s kind of response could have
been effective. During his Noakhali tour, with his ever-present
declaration of Universal Love, he had challenged the communalist
leaders to show him where the Koran had enjoined the killing of people
of other faiths. Could the RSS challenge the communalists the way the
Mahatma did?
One only wishes that the Mahatma had shown the same grit by standing
steadfastly with Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in resisting
Partition.
Hinduism’s unique teaching is: “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”
Hinduism also teaches: “Love others as you do yourself.” “Love has the
power to heal.” The Biblical teaching, too, is Universal Love. The
Koran teaches Khuda’s Raham pervades the universe. Criticism by the
way of pointer to the error is essential. But criticism without
concern for the welfare of the wrong-doer is of no avail.
Half-hearted Compromise is no Solution
IN its latest meet, the BJP’s National Executive has tried to make a
compromise between the RSS’ clamour for Hindutva and many of the BJP
leaders’ belated realisation that the Hindutva slogan alienates not
only the Muslims, Christians and large sections of the Dalits, but
also the secular “caste-Hindus”. L.K. Advani’s middle-path declaration
that the party would not accept “any narrow, bigoted, anti-Muslim
interpretation of Hindutva” indicates it is unable to shed its
fascination for the word it has so long been pledged to. In fact, the
BJP would not be able to shed it until the the RSS realises how, by
sticking to this word, it is hampering national unity and also
defeating its own cherished values. This tightrope walking by the BJP
will not have the healing touch. This will not unify the people.
Clearly discarding Hindutva and accepting Hindustaniyat will not mean
any loss of face. This will rather show the courage to steer a change
propelled by the depth of patriotic fervour.
If the RSS and/or the BJP could drop Hindutva as its motto, it would
be able to challenge the Muslimist bigots more effectively. Like Dr
Rafiq Zakaria and in one voice with all truly secular people, it will
be able to tell the bigoted clerics:
During the British rule, you accepted the replacements of the Koranic
punishments by those which the then rulers had imposed in their civil
and criminal courts. At that time, you acquiesced in the banning of
the stoning of the adulterous to death, though this ban violated the
Koranic injunction. You paid interest on the loans taken from the
banks though it was prohibited by the Koran. Now, you raise a hue and
cry about carrying out some essential reforms in Muslim Personal Law
even though some Muslim countries have already enacted them. In
protest against the Supreme Court’s righteous verdict in the Shah Bano
case, you got enacted a law of maintenance which has thrown many
Muslim women divorcees to the streets. ‘Triple talaq at one go’ is
barbaric and against the spirit of the Koran; still you cling to it.
After it drops the outmoded Hindutva slogan, it would be able to mock
the shariat enthusiasts in the manner of Akbar Allahabadi: “The Shaikh
advised his followers, why do you travel by train when you could
travel on camel’s back?”
Writing on the Wall
MAYBE, all these pleas will fall flat in the RSS leadership’s ears. In
that case, the RSS should read the writing on the wall: the RSS will
break up or become moribund. Despite its claim of being a monolith
with no divergence of views among its members, the RSS will face a
grave existential crisis if it does not change its tune in keeping
with the times. There are already sufficient indications. In the1980s—
I forget the exact year—I was invited by Deendayal Research Institute,
headed by Nanaji Deshmukh, to give a series of lectures on my ideas of
environment and development. Lala Hansraj Gupta was in the chair. When
I came to say “Hinduism is no religion. It is a way of life”, I heard
an exclamation in endorsement: “Exactly. Those who talk of ‘Hindus,
Hindus’ but have no interest in the lives of Muslims are not genuine
Hindus.” The voice was Nanaji’s. I was pleasantly surprised because
Nanaji was a prominent RSS member and I did not expect this from an
RSS leader of his stature. Later I had many discussions with him, in
course of which I asked him: “Why don’t you tell your opinions to
Balasaheb Deoras?” He told me that he was writing down his viewpoints
but these would be published after his death. Presumably, he did not
want to annoy the RSS leadership for fear of their non-cooperation in
his other constructive activities at Gonda or Chitrakut.
I know some senior BJP leaders who would be happy if Hindutva is
dropped as the guiding principle. How long can the RSS keep such
people together under the banner of Hindutva? The slogan of Hindutva
does conjure up fear of “Hindu cultural domination” in the minds of
today’s non-Hindus, even if Hindu Rashtra is ruled out. Rationalising
has its limits.
If the RSS changes its archaic ideas and accepts Hindustaniyat as the
religio-confederal principle, it can play a much larger role on the
national horizon. During invasions by China and by Pakistan, its
volunteers played a very useful role in mobilising the people against
the invaders, and working as service providers to our military and
internal security forces. It also played a significant role in
regulating traffic and maintaining law and order even-handedly. In
recognition of this, the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri,
invited the RSS leadership to be a member of the National Security
Council. In times of violent attacks on the Sikhs following Indira
Gandhi’s assassination, it did laudable work in giving shelter and
succour to the Sikhs. Dr Hedgewar had links with Bengal’s legendary
revolutionary leader, Trailokya Nath Chakrabarty also known as
‘Maharaj’; and therefore, this nation’s hero, Subhas Chandra Bose, had
even thought of utilising the RSS’ organisational skill in raising a
nationalist volunteer force. During Jayaprakash Narayan’s anti-
corruption and anti-Emergency movements and Bihar flood relief, the
RSS had earned fulsome praise from JP.
Will the RSS let all this goodwill to be besmirched or lost by its
dogmatism and obsolete ideas? It needs to realise that its Hindutvavad
does stir up, among its unthinking followers—which is by far the
larger part—fanaticism, blind prejudices and hatred against all those
who now refuse to see themselves as “Hindus”. If the RSS did not
suffer from the Nelson’s eye syndrome, it would have seen that a large
section of the Dalits and even the Sikhs, who were once the vanguard
of saving the Hindus from forced conversion, do not now like to be
counted as Hindus.
The author is one of the country’s earliest environ-mentalists and a
social philosopher.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1571.html
Mainstream Weekly
VOL XLV No 01
Sachar Committee Report : A Review
Tuesday 24 April 2007, by Anees Chishti
The report of the High-Level Committee appointed by the Prime Minister
under the chairmanship of Justice Rajindar Sachar, retired Chief
Justice of the Delhi High Court, to study the ‘Social, Economic and
Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India’, has been a
subject of wide discussion in the press, among parliamentarians and
other politicians as well as in other informed sections of the
society.
The seven-member Committee had as its members eminent personalities
like Sayid Hamid, former Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim
University and currently Chancellor, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, Prof
T.K. Oommen, former Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and a
sociologist of world renown, among others. Dr. Abusaleh Shariff, Chief
Economist, National Council of Applied Economic Research, who is noted
for his perceptive research on various issues of national concern, was
the Member-Secretary. There was no woman member: surprising, as the
condition of women is very important for any survey of the social
scenario among the Muslims. And, the Committee has tried to look at
the predicament of the Muslim women in as good a manner as it could.
The Committee had several consultants from different disciplines and
had commissioned specialists on various aspects of the subject under
coverage to write papers for its use in its study of the complex
issues.
The Committee collected data from the various Censuses, the National
Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), banks and, of course, from the
Central and State Governments.
The members of the Committee visited different parts of the country to
assess the grassroots situation and grasp the realities by experience
rather than merely with the help of statistics brought to their desks
by investigators. The Committee tried to sift the perception of
members of the Muslim community (as well as of non-Muslims) and
understand the nature and magnitude of the community’s grievances, to
be able to judge the veracity or otherwise of the expressions of
negligence and deprivation.
Most of the grievances of the community are common knowledge and those
who have access to the Urdu press in different parts of the country
are fully aware of the endless stories of ‘woes’ and ‘miseries’ of the
community. But a systematic study of these grievances had to be made
and the Sachar Committee ventured to do that. We shall deal with the
grievances briefly later but, first, a review of the findings of the
Sachar Committee in different areas of its concern.
II
It would be appropriate to begin a survey of the Sachar Committee’s
findings with the fundamental issue of education. The literacy rate
for Muslims in 2001 was, according to the Committee’s findings, far
below the national average. The difference between the two rates was
greater in urban areas than in rural areas. For women, too, the gap
was greater in the urban areas.
When compared to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes the growth
in literacy for Muslims was lower than for the former. The female
urban enrolment in literacy ratio for the SCs/STs was 40 per cent in
1965 that rose to 83 per cent in 2001. The equivalent rate for Muslims—
that was considerably higher in 1965 (52 per cent)—recorded a figure
of 80 per cent, lower than the figure for the SCs / STs.
According to the Sachar Committee’s findings, 25 per cent of Muslim
children in the 6-14 age-group either never went to school or else
dropped out at some stage.
The disparity in Graduate Attainment Rates between Muslims and other
categories has been widening since the 1970s in urban and rural areas.
According to the Sachar Committee, only one out of 25 undergraduate
students and one out of 50 post-graduate students in ‘premier
colleges’ are Muslims. The percentage of graduates in poor households
pursuing post-graduate studies is significantly lower for Muslims:
Hindus General (29 per cent); SCs/STs (28 per cent); OBCs (23 per
cent); Muslims (16 per cent). The unemployment rate among Muslim
graduates is the highest among all Socio-Religious Categories (SRCs),
poor as well as non-poor.
In the midst of the widespread discussion about the role of madrasas
in the life of Muslims, it is interesting to note that only three per
cent of Muslim children go to madrasas.
Some figures of the Committee are very revealing, when the situation
of OBCs is considered. In education upto matriculation, graduation and
employment in the formal sector all OBCs lag behind in terms of the
all-India average. Muslim OBCs (that have been defined here a little
later) fall below the Hindu OBCs in all categories. And, General
Muslims fare the worst being behind both Hindu and Muslim OBCs.
An important cause for the low level of attainment of Muslims in
education is the dearth of facilities for teaching Urdu and other
subjects through the medium of Urdu (mother tongue) in lower classes,
the Committee points out. It cites the better examples of Karnataka
and Maharashtra in this context. These two States are much better
equipped with Urdu medium schools at the elementary level. Karnataka
has the additional feature of concurrent facilities for English medium
as well in a good number of schools, the Committee points out.
In an indirect reference to the utility of reservation, the Committee
says that the SCs/STs have reaped advantages of targeted government
and private efforts thereby pinpointing the importance of ‘affirmative
action’.
Employment
According to the findings of the Sachar Committee, Muslims have a
considerably lower representation in jobs in the government including
those in the Public Sector Undertakings compared to other SRCs.
According to these findings, in no State of the country the level of
Muslim employment is proportionate to their percentage in the
population.
It is pointed out that the situation of government jobs is the best in
Andhra Pradesh where a “fairly close” representation (in proportion to
the population) has been achieved. Other States with a better picture
of representation are: Karnataka (8.5 per cent job share in a
population proportion of 12.2 per cent); Gujarat (5.4 per cent against
9.1 per cent); Tamil Nadu (3.2 per cent against 5.6 per cent).
According to an analysis, in all other States, the percentage of
Muslims in government employment is half of their population
proportion. The highest percentage figure of government employment for
Muslims is in Assam (11.2 per cent) even though it is far less than
the State’s Muslim population (30.9 per cent).
The most glaring cases of Muslims’ deprivation in government jobs are
found in the States of West Bengal and Kerala where, according to
common perception, egalitarianism has been the cherished norm in all
walks of life. In West Bengal where almost 25 per cent population
practises the Muslim faith, their share in government jobs is a paltry
4.2 per cent. In Kerala the Muslim representation in government jobs
is 10.4 per cent, a figure that is short of half of their population
percentage. In Bihar and UP the percentages of Muslims in government
jobs are found to be less than a third of their population
percentages. Those governing these States need to monitor their
actions to bring the situation in conformity with their professed
objectives and claims.
There are some factors that need to be considered in view of the low
employment figures for Muslims on an all-India basis. The Sachar
Committee observes that the low aggregate work participation ratios
for Muslims are ‘essentially’ due to the much lower participation in
economic activity by the women of the community. Also, a large number
of Muslim women who are engaged in work do so from their homes rather
than in offices or factories. Their figure in this regard is 70 per
cent compared to the general figure of 51 per cent
There is a high share of Muslim workers in self-employment activity,
especially in urban areas and in the case of women, the Committee
points out. Whether this trend is due to compulsion or their non-
expectation for jobs in the government or non-government formal
sector, or due to their inclination for certain types of work that are
done best under a self-employment scheme, would be an important
subject for study. The fact has to be considered that Muslims in
regular jobs in urban areas are much lower in numbers compared to even
the SCs/STs. And, surprisingly, the Muslim regular workers get lower
daily earnings (salary) in public and private jobs compared to other
socio-religious categories, as the Committee points out.
The point that needs special notice is that, according to the
Committee’s findings, Muslim participation in professional and
management cadres is quite low. Their participation in security-
related activities (for example, in the Police services) is
considerably lower than their population share (four per cent
overall).
In the context of employment of Muslims at the level of the Central
Government, the Committee’s findings are very revealing. In the Civil
Services, Muslims are only three per cent in IAS, 1.8 per cent in IFS
and four per cent in IPS. (While the figures are shockingly low
compared to the population percentage, the fact also needs to be
considered that there were only 4.7 per cent Muslims among the
candidates at the Civil Services examinations in 2003-04. The figure
would be almost identical for other years.)
In the Railways, 4.5 per cent are Muslims and, significantly, ‘almost
all’ (98.7 per cent) are in low level positions. Are you listening,
Laloo Prasad Yadav?
Figures for other Departments are: Education 6.5 per cent, Home 7.3
per cent, Police Constables (for which no special educational
qualifications are required) six per cent.
Also to be considered is the finding that in the recent recruitments
by State Public Service Commissions, the employment of Muslims has
been as low as 2.1 per cent.
Minorities other than Muslims are not placed as delicately as the
Muslims. According to the Committee’s findings, 11 per cent of Group A
jobs are with minorities other than Muslims. Deprivation of Muslims in
the State judical set-up seems to be among the most worrying aspects
of their overall backwardness.
The data collected by the Committee in this sector are about all
levels of the officers and employees: Advocate Generals, District and
Sessions Judges, Additional District and Sessions Judges, Chief
Judicial Magistrates, Principal Judges, Munsifs, Public Prosecutors,
and Group A, B, C and D employees. The overall Muslim presence of 7.8
per cent in the area of judiciary in 12 States with high concentration
of Muslim population is considered very low by experts.
To come back to an old theme, in West Bengal with a Muslim population
of over 25 per cent, the figure of Muslims in ‘key positions’ in the
judiciary is only five per cent. In Assam with a Muslim population of
30.9 per cent, this figure is 9.4 per cent. Surprisingly, in Jammu and
Kashmir (where the Muslim population is 66.97 per cent), the
community’s share in the State judiciary is only 48.3 per cent. Andhra
Pradesh once again scores over other States in terms of equitable and
even more than equitable sharing of jobs: Muslims have a share of 12.4
per cent in the State judiciary against a population share of 9.2 per
cent.
Experts feel that for an inclusive democracy, an equitable share for
all sections of the society in the judiciary is essential: it creates
greater public confidence in the judicial process. It would be useful
to survey the situation in this regard in some other developing and
developed countries to be able to arrive at some remedial measures for
this crucial sector of decision-making.
Health and Population
Along with education and employment, health and population welfare are
the other areas that have to be assessed for estimating attainments of
any society. The Sachar Committee has done this exercise in a
comprehensive manner.
First, the overall population picture: According to the 2001 Census,
the Muslim population of India was 138 million (13.4 per cent of the
total population). This figure is estimated to have crossed the 150
million mark in 2006. According to the estimate cited by the
Committee, the share of the Muslim population would rise ‘somewhat’
and stabilise at just below 19 per cent in the next four decades (320
million Muslims in a total population of 1.7 billion). There are many
areas where the Muslim population is 50 per cent or more; and in nine
out of 593 districts (Lakshadweep and eight districts of Jammu and
Kashmir) the Muslim population is over 75 per cent.
On the positive side, the period 1991-2001 showed a decline in the
growth rate of Muslims in most States. According to the Committee’s
findings, the Muslim population shows an increasingly better sex ratio
compared to other Socio-Religious Categories. Infant mortality among
Muslims is slightly lower than the average. (It is beyond the
Committee’s understanding how Muslims should have a child survival
advantage despite lower levels of female schooling and economic
status.) Life expectancy in the community is slightly higher (by one
year) than the average, and this should again surprise many.
The Committee’s finding is important that the Muslim child has a
significantly greater risk of being underweight or stunted than is the
case with other Socio-Religious Categories: the risk of malnutrition
is also ‘slightly higher’ for Muslim children than for ‘Other Hindu’
children. This again seems to be a contradiction vis-à-vis the
reported child survival rate.
Economy
Related to the existing economic condition of Muslims is the issue of
providing legitimate support by state and private agencies for the
members of the community to improve their position. One would like to
examine the situation with regard to trends in the support system of
existing instruments. Banks have been seen as an important source of
credit to support citizens’ economic and commercial ventures. The
picture regarding bank loans to members of the minority is not bright,
according to the findings of the Sachar Committee. It says that the
share of Muslims in ‘amounts outstanding’ is only 4.7 per cent. This
figure is 6.5 per cent in the case of other minorities. Further, on an
average the amount outstanding per account for Muslims is about half
that of the other minorities and one-third of ‘others’.
The pity is that, according to the report, many areas of Muslim
concentration have been marked by many banks as ‘negative’ or ‘red’
zones where giving loans is not advisable. Something would, indeed,
have to be done to put an end to such blanket bans, particularly in
view of the Committee’s finding that very large numbers of Muslims are
engaged in self-employment ventures.
The Reserve Bank of India’s efforts at banking and credit facilities
under the Prime Minister’s 15-Point Programme for the welfare of
minorities have, according to the Committee’s findings, mainly
benefited minorities other than Muslims, thus “marginalising Muslims”.
Apart from the formal banking sector there are two other institutions
that are meant to extend loans to the disadvantaged for economic
ventures: the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation
(NMDFC) and National Backward Classes Finance and Development
Corporation (NBCFDC). For loans from the NMDFC, one has to obtain a
guarantee from the concerned State Government. According to the
Committee, this is the biggest hurdle in the processing of loan
applications. And members of minority communities are very adversely
affected due to this factor.
Poverty Factor
The Committee has found that substantially large proportion of Muslim
households in urban areas are in the less than Rs 500 expenditure
bracket. According to calculations mentioned in the Committee’s
report, using the Head Count Ratio (HCR), overall 22.7 per cent of
India’s population was poor in 2004-05. In absolute numbers, this
amounts to over 251 million people spread across India. The SCs/STs
together are the most poor with an HCR of 35 per cent followed by
Muslims who record the second highest incidence of poverty with 31 per
cent people below the poverty line. The H(indu)-General is the least
poor category with an HCR of only 8.7 per cent and the OBCs hold the
intermediary level HCR of 21 per cent, which is also close to the all-
India average.
The Committee has observed that the inequality is higher in urban
areas compared to rural areas in most States. It says that poverty
among Muslims is the highest in urban areas with an HCR of 38.4 per
cent. Significantly, the fall in poverty for Muslims, according to the
data provided to the Committee, has been “only modest during the
decade 1993-94 to 2004-05 in urban areas, whereas the decline in rural
areas has been substantial”. Poverty leads to neglect, or the other
way round: the Committee found a “significant inverse association”
between the proportion of Muslim population and educational and other
infrastructure in small villages. Areas of Muslim concentration are,
somehow, not well served with pucca approach roads and local bus
stops.
An analysis by the Committee showed a fall in the availability of
medical facilities with the rise in the proportion of Muslims,
especially in larger villages. A similar but sharper pattern can be
seen with respect to post/telegraph offices.
Affirmative Action
Under the existing constitutional provisions, affirmative action in
the form of reservation cannot be possible for the entire Muslim
community even though, according to the findings of the Sachar
Committee, the entire community has been left behind in terms of
education, employment and economic status. A way can be found to lift
a significant segment of the community’s population if social
stratification is defined and officially accepted within the Muslim
community. It could be done in case of Hindus, and subsequently for
Mazhabi Sikhs and neo-Buddhists in terms of caste demarcation. But it
would not be easy to have official acceptance of the caste principle.
The resistance against acceptance of social stratification on caste
lines among Muslims would come largely from the clerics and other
orthodox sections of the Muslim community itself which would be
adamant in its insistence that caste does not exist within the
community. This, even though the fact is that, whether one likes it or
not, the Muslim community is divided with caste demarcations almost on
the lines of the Hindus. A via media has to be found for a clearly
defined backward class like the OBCs among the majority community.
The Sachar Committee has talked of the issue of social stratification
among Muslims. It points out that the 1901 Census had listed 133
social groups, “wholly or partially Muslim”, in India. This
classification thus recognised the fact of social stratification in
the community. The Committee has identified different groups of
Muslims based on studies by sociologists. The community, according to
these studies, as mentioned by the Committee, is placed into
two broad categories , namely, ashraf and ajlaf. The former, meaning
‘noble’ (emphasis added), includes all Muslims of foreign blood and
converts from higher castes. While ajlaf, meaning ‘degraded’ (emphasis
added) or ‘unholy’, embraces the ‘ritually clean’ occupational groups
and low ranking converts. In Bihar, UP, Bengal, Sayyads, Sheikhs,
Moghuls and Pathans constitute the ashrafs, The ajlafs are carpenters,
artisans, painters, graziers, tanners, milkmen, etc. According to the
Census of 1901, the ajlaf category includes “the various classes of
converts who are known as Nao Muslim in Bihar and Nasya in Bengal. It
also includes various functional groups such as that of Jolaha or
weaver, Dhunia or cotton carder, Kulu or oil presser, Kunjra or
vegetable seller, Hajjam or barber, Darzi or tailor, and the like.”
The 1901 Census also recorded the presence of a third category called
Arzal: “It consists of the very lowest castes, such as Halalkhor,
Lalbegi, Abdal and Bedia.” The Committee has taken note of the fact
that the Presidential Order (1950), officially known as Constitutional
(Scheduled Caste) Order, 1950, restricts the Scheduled Caste status
only to Hindu groups having “unclean” occupations. Their non-Hindu
equivalents have been bracketed with the “middle caste converts” and
declared OBCs.
The Committee has noted that at least 82 different social groups among
Muslims were declared OBCs by the Mandal Commission (1980). Owing to
this declaration many Muslim social groups got reservation in
different parts of the country under the Backward Classes category.
Only two States, Kerala and Karnataka, have provided reservation to
the State’s entire Muslim population (minus the creamy layer). The
roots of this policy have to be traced to the colonial days.
In Karnataka (the erstwhile princely state of Mysore), affirmative
action started in 1874 (with 80 per cent posts in the Police
Department having been reserved for non-Brahmins, Muslims and Indian
Christians). In Karnataka today, all Muslims with income of less than
Rs 2 lakhs per annum enjoy four per cent reservation in jobs and
admission to institutions in the category of ‘More Backwards’. In
Kerala Muslims enjoy 12 per cent reservation, with some other
communities and social groups too being provided reservation.
Tamil Nadu, which had a tradition of reservation to Muslims since
1872, withdrew such reservation following independence. Currently even
though there is no reservation in the State on the basis of religion,
nearly 95 per cent Muslims have been provided reservation as Backward
Classes, according to the data provided by the State Government to the
Sachar Committee. Significantly enough, reservations in Tamil Nadu
stand at 69 per cent, much above the limit of 50 per cent fixed by the
Supreme Court. Looking at the state of public employment for OBCs the
Committee found that unemployment rates were the highest among Muslim
OBCs when compared to Hindu OBCs and Muslims General. In the formal
sector (government/PSUs), the share of Muslim OBCs was much lower than
those of Hindu OBCs and Muslims General.
At the workers’ level, the Committee estimated that out of every
hundred workers about eleven were Hindu OBCs, three were Muslims
General and only one was a Muslim OBC.
The Committee had divided public employment into six ‘agencies’ of the
Central Government including PSUs and universities. It found that the
Hindu OBCs were under-represented. But their under-representation was
less than that of Muslim OBCs in five out of the six agencies, less
than that of Muslims General in three out of the six agencies. In the
State services the Committee found that Muslim OBCs had a better share
at the Group A level, but their presence was insignificant at other
levels.
In the context of Muslim OBCs, the Committee concluded that the
abysmally low representation of Muslim OBCs suggests that the benefits
of entitlements meant for the Backward Classes are yet to reach them.
The Committee also concluded that “the conditions of Muslims General
are also lower than the Hindu-OBCs who have the benefits of
reservations”.
III
While the Sachar Committee has done a laudable job of assembling a
huge body of data and presenting it in an easily digestible manner, it
has not been as meticulous in formulating its recommendations. Perhaps
it was due to the fatigue after an enormous amount of legwork on a
national scale and the subsequent analysis of the compiled information
that its members had to do in about 15 months of actual work, coupled
with the desire of submitting its report rather urgently and the fact
that much of the information about its findings had already been
accessed by a section of the press. In view of the mind-boggling
findings and the very sensitive nature of the ground it was traversing
a very comprehensive matrix of recommendations should have been
presented by an able and competent panel blending experience and fresh
thinking. Unfortunately this could not be achieved by the Committee.
The most important recommendations of the Committee can be summarised
as under:
• Creation of a National Data Bank (NDB) where relevant data about
different socio-religious communities could be stored to facilitate
any study and subsequent action.
• Setting up of an autonomous Assessment and Monitoring Authority
(AMA) for a regular audit of the benefits of different programmes of
the government reaching the concerned communities or groups.
• Establishing an Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to examine and
analyse the grievances of deprived groups, the inspiration
understandably for it coming from the Race Relations Act, 1976 of the
United Kingdom that finds mention in the Committee’s recommendation.
• Exploring the idea of introducing some incentives to a ‘Diversity
Index’ in the realms of education, government, and private employment
and housing programmes. Special mention has been made of a possible
programme of incentives to colleges and institutions under the
University Grants Commission linked to diversity in the student
population.
• Evolving some sort of a ‘nomination’ procedure for enhancing the
levels of inclusiveness in governance.
• Certain measures like removal of anomalies in Reserved
Constituencies for General Elections against complaints of declaring
Muslim concentration areas as SC/ST reserved seats.
• Institutionalising evaluation procedures for textbooks, alternate
admission criteria in regular universities and autonomous colleges;
cost friendly reasonable hostel facilities for minority students as a
priority; making teacher training oriented to ideals of pluralism;
state-run Urdu medium schools for primary education in mother tongue;
ensuring appointment of experts from minority community on interview
panels and boards; linking madrasas with higher secondary schools
facilitating shift of students who might opt for a mainstream
education system after a few years; recognition of degrees from
madrasas for competitive examinations (a recommendation hard to find
acceptance in any section of concerned quarters); on the economic
front, provision of financial and other support to initiatives built
around occupations where Muslims are concentrated and that have growth
potential.
The above suggestions have given considerable food for thought with
regard to the panacea for deprivation of the Muslim community in
various spheres. But a more comprehensive and concrete programme
should have been suggested by the Committee.
This task could have been performed best by the able members of this
panel who had travelled far and wide and acquainted themselves with
the grassroots realities rather than leaving it for another possible
committee for a start from a scratch. This was essential to get action
initiated on the basis of its findings instead of letting this venture
too meet the fate of the earlier Gopal Singh Committee over two
decades ago that had similar findings (although it had a narrower
coverage than the Sachar Committee). Now it is for the Prime Minister
and his government to decide the future course of action to remedy the
situation regarding the travails of the Muslim community.
IV
Much of the Sachar Committee’s endeavour was in pursuance of the
perception among Muslims of utter neglect and apathy, and even
suspicion, towards the Muslim community on the part of governmental
agencies—right or wrong! An oft-repeated remark by many members of the
community was that Muslims carried a double burden of being labelled
as ‘anti-national’ and as being ‘appeased’ at the same time. Or,
whenever any act of violence or terror occurs Muslim boys are picked
up by the police. “Every bearded man is considered an ISI agent,” the
Committee has quoted someone as saying. It was also pointed out that
“social boycott of Muslims in certain parts of the country have forced
them to migrate from places where they lived for centuries.”
The Committee has also observed that identification of Urdu as a
Muslim language and its politicisation has complicated matters. A
worrying observation is that Muslims do not see education as
necessarily translating into formal employment. And, many a time
madrasas are the only educational option for Muslims.
On the economic front, the Committee observes that liberalisation of
the economy has resulted in displacement of Muslims from their
traditional occupations, thus depriving them of their livelihood.
The Committee has reported that there were many complaints of Muslims’
names missing from electoral rolls. It could not look into the
veracity or otherwise of this complaint. But what the Committee found
in case of complaints that a number of Muslim concentration Assembly
constituencies are declared as ‘reserved’ seats for the SCs
(deliberately?) should certainly worry those involved with the work of
delimitation of constituencies. Its analysis of reserved
constituencies for SCs in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal proved
that there was truth in the allegation of the members of the minority
community in this regard.
With the perception of Muslims not being quite favourable to official
agencies, the revelation of the findings of the Sachar Committee with
regard to over-representation of the community in the country’s
prisons, reported (before the submission of its report to the Prime
Minister) by The Indian Express, in its series of reports entitled
‘The Missing Muslim’, created a sensation. The Urdu press was on fire
and questions were asked why prisons were the only place where Muslims
were over-represented compared to all other communities and in some
cases their representation being much higher than their population
proportion.
In Maharashtra, the percentage of Muslim jail inmates in all
categories was found to be way above their share in the population
(share in population: 10.6 per cent; share in prison inmates: 17.5 per
cent). In Gujarat the position was: share in population: 9.06 per
cent; share in jail inmates: over 25 per cent). The situation was on
similar lines in other States too although the jail inmate share might
not be as bad in other States as in the States mentioned above.
Following the submission of the report to the Prime Minister, The
Indian Express reported that the data with regard to prisons were
edited out of the Sachar report, following the concern expressed on
these figures in different quarters. Some observers felt that the
prison figures should not have been omitted, as they would have given
a clear picture of some of the Muslim grievances with regard to the
more sensitive issues.
The remedy for the travails of the Muslim community can be found
largely by the community’s bolder initiatives in the field of
education that would empower them as nothing else would.
The government, on its part, seems to be ready for whatever remedial
measures can be adopted by its different agencies. The recent
initiative taken by the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, K. Rehman
Khan, to arrive at a consensus for action on an all-party basis,
through a conclave of Muslim MPs (including some from the Bharatiya
Janata Party, which has been very critical of the very appointment of
the Sachar Committee), seems to be a significant one. One only hopes
that such an initiative would have the support of the government and
some concrete steps would be taken without much delay.
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...and I am Sid Harth