Purana

Purana

The Hindu Dissent - 11

The Hindu dissent~II

To emphasise their distinctiveness, the Muslims of Bengal evolved a new language with sprinklings of Urdu and Arabic words instead of the Sanskrit based language of the Hindu Bengalis and started preparing text books using that language by using their control on primary school education. Educational grants and scholarships were utilised to favour the Muslim students in particular to redress the imbalance in the progress of education among the two communities.

Chhanda Chatterjee | Kolkata | July 5, 2019 11:36 am

   

PHOTO: STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE

The Congress High Command at this time was busy trying to secure the unfettered control in the provincial ministries, where it had won an absolute majority i.e. the Hindu majority provinces, by staying away from ministry formation to pressurise the British into pruning the control given to the Governor over the working of these ministries in the Act of 1935.

In the process it lost the chance to combine with the Krishak Praja Party of Fazlul Huq and keep Muslim League out of power in the province. Congress attempts to woo the Muslims into the party’s fold through the Muslim mass contact programme rather exacerbated the dormant conflicts of the Hindus and the Muslims and roused the Muslim League into a vigorous defence of the interests of their own constituents with the full cooperation of the KPP. The communalization of the province had its roots in these complex developments and not in bhadralok contempt for their Muslim cohorts. The Muslim ashraf probably had no less contempt for their atrap co-religionists, but they were quick to grasp the implications of the extended franchise granted in the Act of 1935 to the lower rungs of Muslims, the increase in the number of rural constituencies for Legislative Assembly seats and the necessity for mobilising support in the Union Boards and District Boards from the rural Muslim voters concentrated in the districts of East Bengal. The Muslim mass contact programme of the Congress roused them to action and the leaders from ashraf background did not delay in approaching the atrap masses concentrated in the villages.

To emphasise their distinctiveness, the Muslims of Bengal evolved a new language with sprinklings of Urdu and Arabic words in stead of the Sanskrit based language of the Hindu Bengalis and started preparing text books using that language by using their control on primary school education. Educational grants and scholarships were utilised to favour the Muslim students in particular to redress the imbalance in the progress of education among the two communities. The Secondary Education Bill sought to liberate secondary education from the control of Calcutta University and wanted to vest it in a new Board where the nominees of the provincial government or ex-officio members would hold sway. The Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act sought to bring the Calcutta Corporation under the control of the Muslims through the introduction of a separate electorate for the Muslims. The ultimate aim of the Bill was to reserve jobs for the Muslims, which Fazlul Huq as Mayor had attempted but failed to achieve in 1935 through the intransigence of Congress councillors. The enforcement of the Communal ratio in the services and the embargo on the appointment of Hindus till the Hindu-Muslim ratio was brought at par also created a deep sense of frustration among the educated Hindus. Huq now became a captive in the hands of the Muslim League. All Huq’s oratorical skill was now directed to implementing the Muslim League agenda in every sphere of administration. This brought the clash of interests of the middle classes of the two communities in the open. Mohammad Shah has called it a ‘struggle within an elite group, between those in power (the dominant Hindus) and those seeking it (the nascent Muslim middle class). As Congress was not a communal organisation it could not speak in favour of Hindus in particular.

The non-committal attitude of the Congress brought the Hindu Mahasabha into action in the province. The Hindu Mahasabha president, Savarkar, started visiting Bengal since 1939 and held the All India Hindu Mahasabha session in Calcutta in December 1940. Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had left the Congress in 1939 following the party’s decision to quit office in protest against the British Government’s unilateral decision to involve India as a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the Ministries, offered his services to Savarkar. He toured the countryside along with BC Chatterjee and drew up a list of grievances after the manner of the cahiers de doleances, drawn up by the leaders of the Third Estate on the eve of the French Revolution and submit the report during the All India Hindu Mahasabha session in December 1940. Thus while the Muslim League started opening local offices all over the villages in East Bengal, officially announced the formation of the Muslim National Guard in the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1938 and started organising the Muslims from the mosques, the Hindu Mahasabha too took care that the Hindus of Bengal were not taken unawares. They organised gymnastic societies under the aegis of various organisations like the Arya Vir Dal, the Mahavir Dal, the Bharat Sevasram Sangha, the Hindu Mission and above all the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangha. Thus the ground was being prepared for a head-on collision between the two communities. Congress withdrawal from the provincial ministries in protest against the involvement of India in the Second World War by the Viceroy’s diktat spruced up the Muslim League’s sagging fortunes and Jinnah could manipulate the two heavyweight Premiers from two Muslim majority provinces, Sir Sikander Hyat Khan and Fazlul Huq into proposing and seconding the Lahore Resolution, which floated the idea of Pakistan for the first time.

The resolution proposed two ‘Independent States,’ one on the west and other on the east with contiguous territories. This was also the time when the Bengal Provincial Muslim League had been secretly working on a plan of a greater Bengal including the Bengali speaking areas of Singhbhum, Manbhum and Assam. The scheme known as the Bangasam scheme was expected to provide the Bengali Muslims with ample lebensraum for unfettered expansion.

Chief Minister Fazlul Huq’s sudden rift with Jinnah in September 1941 opened new vistas for a Hindu-Muslim understanding when the Krishak Praja Party headed by Fazlul Huq formed an alliance with its staunch rival, the Hindu Mahasabha, led by Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee. The latter, who had been dubbed as an ‘arch communalist’ by HarunOr-Rashid, a renowned historian from Bangladesh, had been given a clean chit on that count by Fazlul Huq, who had been in touch with Syama Prasad since his boyhood days in course of his legal articleship with Syama Prasad’s father, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee. The renowned KPP leader Abul Mansur Ahmad recounted Fazlul Huq’s statement in that respect in his well known reminiscences, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhor (p. 224). However, the poison of communalism had already invaded the Muslim pschyche in Bengal. Bengal had already experienced the terrible Dacca riots of 1941. Dacca city had become divided into two warring zones since then and the people of one community were always scared to trespass into the zone of another. They had become very sensitive on the questions of music before mosques or cow sacrifice during korbani. Police firing inside the Jame Masjid in Kishoreganj in Mymensingh on 24 October 1942, killing several people put matters beyond repair. People renamed the mosque ‘Shahidi mosque’ and blamed the Hindu District Magistrate Banerjee for it. Syama Prasad was already irritated with the Governor and the Viceroy on several counts. These were the years of the Second World War.

The Japanese were advancing fast towards India. Burma had already been taken. But the British lacked the resources to offer a vigorous resistance. They therefore decided to resort to a scorched earth policy in the coastal districts on the Burma border by removing all means of transport and all food from these districts. Medinipur district was the worst affected as it fell victim to an attack of cyclone in October 1942 and the District Magistrate delayed relief to punish the Congress rebels of the Quit India Movement. Syama Prasad realised that it was time for him to quit and submitted his resignation in November 1942.

The Hindu Dissent - 1

The Hindu dissent~I

The Communal Award of 1932 was not a big shot in the arm for the Bengal Muslims as is usually made out; if it reduced the Hindus to a statutory minority, it had also put a check on the percentage of the Muslims. The European Group was allowed an edge at their expense in order to keep them perpetually dependent on the Europeans for support.

Chhanda Chatterjee | Kolkata | July 4, 2019 2:46 am

   

PHOTO: STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE

Many of us in West Bengal are not aware of the long and tortuous chain of events that led to the carving out of this new state out of the erstwhile state of Bengal, which went into Pakistan. Had it not been for the tireless efforts of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the whole of Bengal would probably have slipped into East Pakistan. The partition of the province was not a thing which was to the liking of either Syama Prasad or the Hindu Mahasabha, the organization which he represented at this time. As late as the debates in the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 19 September 1946 following the gory incidents of August 1946, which go under the name of the Great Calcutta Killing, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the president of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, had been looking for “a plan which will enable the vast majority of Hindus and Muslims to live under circumstances which will give freedom and peace to the common man”. He wanted to scrap “the false and foolish idea of Pakistan or Islamic rule.”

During the 1940s, the Hindu Mahasabha had ardently propagated Akhand Hindusthan or the indivisibility of India. But in May 1947 the same Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee had written to the Viceroy that Hindus “must not be compelled to live within the Moslem State and the area where they predominate should be cut off.”It would be interesting to explain this turn around by analysing the political developments preceding this date under the dual scheme of provincial autonomy and the Communal Award of 1932 foisted on Bengal through British imperialist machinations.

The Hindus and the Muslims, the two dominant religious communities of Bengal had been living side by side for several centuries. One obvious reason for this might have been that the vast majority of the Bengali Muslims had not been taught to regard their Hindu counterparts as the “other,” as both the Hindu as well as the Muslim peasants were equally exploited by their rentier landlords in an evenhanded manner. That the economic divide in the East Bengal countryside between the Hindu landlords and their Muslim tenants coincided with their religious divide did not make much difference as Bengali Muslim society at this time was hopelessly differentiated between the ashraf and the atrap. Ashrafs were usually of Persian or Arabic origin, who had come to Bengal in the train of the Muslim conquerors or were posted by the ruling Muslim chiefs in Delhi with administrative assignments. They were usually Urdu-speaking and kept their atrap brethren at a distance. Ashrafs were often paid by jagirs for their administrative services. These estates were later converted into zamindaris. Most of them also enjoyed pompous designations like Raja, Nawab etc. and regarded the low caste peasants, whether Hindu or Muslim, with great contempt. British rule in Bengal did not immediately interfere with this social differentiation till about the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The widespread commercialization of agriculture which came in the wake of British rule brought about a new stratification among the peasants. A section of the peasantry, who could retain their hold over a part of their product after meeting their obligations to the zamindar and the moneylender, could often sell them at a profit. Thus emerged a handful of affluent cash crop cultivators among the peasantry from about this time. Some of them aspired after ashraf status and started sending their children to schools. With it was heralded the dawn of a community consciousness among the madrasa educated literati. Revivalist movements like the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya, the Wahabis, the Fara’idis and the Ta’aiyyunis created an impact exactly among these people. Although differing in details they all served to promote an Islamic identity among the Muslim peasantry and arrested their assimilation with the local inhabitants belonging to other belief systems.

According to the Fara’idi doctrine a fara’id was to observe the five fundamentals of Islam (bina’ al-Islam) like reading the Kalimah (the article of faith), offering namaz five times a day, fasting during ramzan, paying poor tax (zakat), and performing haj (pilgrimage to Mecca). The poor, however, were exempted from the last two. The Fara’idis tried to restore tawhid (belief in one God) and tried to stop unIslamic practices. They insisted that congregational prayers of Jum’ah and Id could not be held except in misr al jami (a city where the city lord or Amir and the Qazi orJudge were appointed by a Sultan, enjoying the sanction of Islamic law). All places other than that were dar-ul-harb, a country of the enemy. The pure way of life, they believed, would help them regain their political power and restore the dar ul Islam (rule of Islam). The Tariqah I Muhammadiah, propagated in Bengal by the Patna caliphs, Maulanas Inayet Ali (1794- 1858) and Wilayet Ali (1791-1835) succeeded in mobilizing a large number of recruits from the Bengal districts like 24 Parganas, Jessore, Faridpur, Pabna, Rajshahi, Malda and Bogra for the purpose of retrieving the holy land from the incursions of Sikh infidels on the Afghan border. This Tariqah movement was sometimes confused with Wahabbism of Shah Waliullah (1703-62) of Delhi. Maulana Karamat Ali’s Ta’aiyyuni movement too had the same goal of winning over the Muslims of Bengal from the mire of local customs. Although the Fara’idis did not support jihad, unlike the Wahabbis, yet ultimately they all converged in propagating jihad to rescue the converts from the evil contact of infidel religion. This urge for uniting against the infidels at one point helped to bridge the gap between the ashraf (elite) and the atrap (plebian) among the Muslims. During his non-cooperation movement of 1920, Gandhi therefore chose to make Khilafat one of the main issues to draw Muslim sympathy against the British. This, however, yielded a bitter crop of communal consciousness and resulted in fostering separatism among the Muslims. Mullas and maulavis from this time were given absolute freedom to talk about politics. The result was widespread communalization of politics.

Chittaranjan Das had rightly identified the sore point of the rising Bengali Muslim educated middle class as “essentially a struggle for power by the marginal sections of the educated classes of Bengal society”. The Bengal Pact of 1923 tried to address their long standing grievances about music before mosques, free performance of cow sacrifice during Eid and opportunities of employment by conceding a quota of 55 per cent of the available jobs. It was also agreed that appointment of Hindus would be put on hold for some time till the communal ratio in employment came at par. But the Cocanada Session of the Congress in December 1923 refused to abide by these guidelines as the swarajists were merely a handful. After Chittaranjan’s death his policies were thus thrown to the winds.

The Communal Award of 1932 was not a big shot in the arm for the Bengal Muslims as is usually made out; if it reduced the Hindus to a statutory minority, it had also put a check on the percentage of the Muslims. The European Group was allowed an edge at their expense in order to keep them perpetually dependent on the Europeans for support. For the Hindus the Poona Pact had done the maximum mischief by taking out a large chunk from their share. The Pact between Sir A H Ghuznavi, a member of the Central Legislative Assembly and an ex-minister of the Bengal Government under the diarchy, and the Maharaja of Burdwan in 1936 took note of all these factors when they agreed upon a 50/50 share. Fazlul Huq’s Krishak Praja Party tried not to lock horns in a bitter fight with the Congress in the countryside. Rather it tried to resolve the economic conflict between the Hindus and Muslims by abolishing the Permanent Settlement which had given such obnoxious powers to the zamindars on the cultivators. Its other agenda was to resist the intrusion of the Muslim League and its communal politics into the Bengal countryside. But the Congress High Command’s decision not to accept office and Sarat Bose’s priority to the release of detenus over the economic programme of the KPP wrecked the possibility of a Praja-Congress government.

Friday, June 21, 2019

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One man show

In long run, BJP’s dependence on PM Modi can hurt the party, contribute to erosion of federalism

Written by Christophe Jaffrelot, Shreyya Rajagopal |Updated: June 21, 2019 3:59:20 am

Christophe Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King's India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  He offers valuable insights on South Asian politics, particularly the methods and motivations of the Hindu right in India.

Shreyya Rajagopal is a student of International Development and Political Science specialising in South Asia and Latin America

 
 
 

Not only are most of the BJP candidates selected by Modi and Amit Shah, but they depend upon the duo after becoming MPs. (ANI)

The just-concluded Lok Sabha elections were won by Narendra Modi, not the BJP. This is evident from the exit poll conducted by Lokniti-CSDS, which shows that one-third of the BJP voters would have chosen a different party had Modi not been the PM candidate. This state of affairs — typical of the populist scenario spreading across the world — has major implications for the country’s institutions. It is resulting, for instance, in a presidentialisation of sorts of the political system at the expense of parliamentarianism.

For the BJP, it means that the party depends on one person more than ever before, like the Congress used to depend on Indira Gandhi in the 1970s-80s. Not only are most of the BJP candidates selected by Modi and Amit Shah, but they depend upon the duo after becoming MPs.

This transformation of a party which took pride in its collegial and democratic decision-making process is probably more damaging at the state-level, where the BJP faces a greater challenge from its opponents. The party has not won any significant state election in a year: In 2018, it could not win in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana; in 2019, so far, it has not managed to win in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. It’s true that in half of these states, the BJP was affected by the anti-incumbency factor but then, it could also not benefit from anti-incumbency in the other states.

Voters have become sophisticated: On the same polling day, they gave 38.4 per cent votes to the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidates but the party’s candidates to the Odisha assembly received only 32.5 per cent votes. This made it possible for Naveen Patnaik to get a fifth term. The Karnataka results are even more remarkable. The BJP swept the general elections, winning 25 out of 28 the Lok Sabha seats with 51.5 per cent of the valid votes. But the Congress won comfortably in most of the municipal corporations in cities where the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidates had registered remarkable victories. The Congress won 90 out of the 217 seats in the municipal councils of seven cities while the BJP managed only 56. The Congress won 322 out of the 714 seats in the 30 town municipal councils, while the BJP could get only 184. The BJP did better in the town panchayat elections, but out of a total of 1,361 declared seats in urban and rural localities, the Congress and JD(S) managed to win 562 and 202 respectively (56.1 per cent of the total seats in all) while the BJP secured 29 per cent of the seats only — 406.

All this shows that the Opposition may not win against Modi at the Centre, but it may do so against the BJP at the local and state levels — so, that is where it needs to close ranks. The forthcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra are a case in point. In Solapur, for example, the combined vote share of the Congress (33.78 per cent) and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi or the VBA (15.58 per cent) shows that a united Opposition could have challenged the BJP (48 per cent) in the Lok Sabha elections. The same holds true for Gadchiroli-Chimur and Nanded. The combined votes of the INC/NCP alliance and the VBA would have given the BJP very close competition in Yavatmal-Washim and Madha (with CPM support).

For the BJP, the fact that Modi is more popular than the party means that he will have to canvass for state assembly candidates as he did during his first term. This may be problematic for three reasons. First, this is time consuming given the number of elections India holds every year — hence the idea of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies is staging a comeback. Second, even then, a favourable result is not guaranteed. In 2017, for example, the BJP won Gujarat with only eight seats more than the majority, in spite of Modi spending many days in the state. Third, and more importantly, the more BJP relies upon its supremo to win state elections, the less it can preserve or even rebuild its state party apparatus behind a regional leader. This spiral of centralisation is transforming the BJP into a one man show, in much the same way it had precipitated the de-institutionalisation of the Congress under Indira Gandhi.

This trend will further erode federalism, a pillar of India’s democracy that has been under attack over the last five years. The centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) that Narendra Modi used to criticise when he was the Gujarat chief minister have gained momentum under his prime ministership. This trend will continue. For, according to the Lokniti-CSDS survey, the fact that the Swachh Bharat Mission and Ujjwala Yojna are associated with Modi contributed somewhat to his electoral success. The terms of reference of the Finance Commission mention that one of the criteria for the distribution of funds to the states will now be their “achievements in the implementation of flagship schemes of government of India”.

If centralisation of social programmes and personalisation of power go together, states may lose even more autonomy. Already, the GST is monitored by a council where the states have only two-thirds of the voting rights. The Centre, which owns the remaining rights, has presented this reform as a sign of its commitment to federalism. But many states have expressed reservations because a decision in the GST Council requires 75 per cent votes — in effect, this gives a veto power to the Centre, which can prevail by getting the support of only 19 states. Here, it must be also noted that these states could even be the small ones because in the GST Council each state has the same number of voting rights, irrespective of its population.

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Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London and Rajagopal is a student of International Development and Political Science specialising in South Asia and Latin America

क्राइस्टोफ जफ्फ्रेलोत और श्रेया राजगोपाल से बहुत मतभिन्नता नहीं प्रदर्शित की जा सकती कि आजकल मोदी भाजपा से अधिक बड़े हो गए हैं जो दीर्घकाल में पार्टी के स्वास्थ्य के लिए हितकर नहीं है| मैं उनलोगों की इस बचकानी बात से सहमत नहीं हूँ जो भारत में तानाशाही के आहट की आवाज़ सुनते हैं, दूर दूर तक इसकी कोई संभावना नहीं है| परन्तु भाजपा भी यदि वही गलती दुहराती है जो इंदिरा गाँधी ने किया था तो भाजपा का भी वही हाल हो सकता है जो अभी कांग्रेस का है| राज्य स्तर पर नेतृत्व को उभरने दें, ऊपर से नेता नहीं थोपें | ऊपर से थोपे नेता आपकी सब बात मानते चलेंगे, परन्तु वे दल के लिए कुछ नहीं कर पाएंगे|