Author: Sidharth Mishra
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September, 4, 06
After the end of the First World War (1917),
Congress took to playing to the tune of Muslim communalists. Unfortunately
even the emergence of a charismatic and widely respected Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi at the helm of the leadership could not prevail upon the party to keep
its focus on a nationalist anti-imperialist struggle. Gandhi to an extent
is held guilty by some historians for allowing pan-Islamism to enter the Indian
struggle.
Defining communalism, celebrated historian
KM Ashraf said communalism was 'Mazhab ki siyasi dukandari' (political trade
in religion).
Pan-Islamic movements of post World War period, Khilafat in its Indian avtar,
largely rose out of the fear that the Muslim elite could face a similar fate
in the colonial countries as the Ottoman emperor faced following the defeat
of Turkey. Bipan Chandra writes in Freedom Struggle, "Caliph was looked
upon by large sections of Muslims as their religious head. They felt that
any weakening of the Caliph's position would adversely affect the position
of the Muslims in other countries which were under the imperialist denomination.
The result was birth of Khilafat Movement."
Evaluating the contribution of Khilafat, there
is an understanding that the movement at best was Mohammed Ali's and Shaukat
Ali's Mazhab ki siyasi dukan. If one needed further evidence, here is one.
While joining Gandhi's non-cooperation, the Ali brothers gave a call, "that
Muslims should not serve the British Indian Army."
A red-faced Congress gave it a national facade.
First 50 members of All India Congress Committee issued a similar declaration
but on a more secular line - that no Indian should serve a government, which
degraded India socially, economically and politically. Later, the Congress
Working Committee issued a similar statement.
The Ali brothers were arrested for sedition. They were released in the early
part of 1920s, by which time the Khilafat issue was dead as the Caliph had
been overthrown by a popular uprising led by Mustafa Kamal Pasha. He abolished
the Caliphate and separated state from religion.
Unfortunately in India, with the Congress
associating itself with the Khilafist cause, politics came to be inextricably
associated with religion. The demands of Muslim orthodoxy and Congress' policy
of appeasement turned into a major debate on the issue of Vande Mataram, which
had by then established itself as an Indian nationalists' ode to the Motherland.
It had become a practice to sing the song
at the start of Congress sessions ever since it met in Varanasi in 1905. In
1923 at Kakinada, the first virulent opposition to Vande Mataram arose from
Mohammed Ali, who was felicitated at the session after his release from incarceration.
Thereafter it was to become an integral part of 'Muslim grievance'.
Mohammed Ali's opposition to Vande Mataram would not have been the lone evidence
to get the epithet of 'communal' from left-of-centre historians. Later, Jinnah
in 1937 was to ask for abandoning both the national flag and the national
song in his discussions with Jawaharlal Nehru. Thankfully the Congress Working
Committee with Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Bose on board managed to salvage
the situation by adopting the first two stanzas of the song, which in fact
was written as a hymn much before Bankim wrote his novel Anandamath on the
'sanyasi' uprising.
Jinnah's agenda made it abundantly clear that
in his perception Indian Nationhood was not Muslim inclusive. The Muslim League's
demand for a separate Muslim nation became strident with time. Congress with
its policy of appeasement had lost the sinews to oppose it. Thus, the partition
of the Indian Nation in 1947.
