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In 1906 the All-India Muslim League (Muslim
League) met in Dhaka for the first time. The Muslim League
used the occasion to declare its support for the partition of
Bengal and to proclaim its mission as a "political association
to protect and advance the political rights and interests of
the Mussalmans of India." The Muslim League initially
professed its loyalty to the British government and its
condemnation of the swadeshi movement. It was of an
altogether different nature from Congress. Congress claimed to
fight for only secular goals that represented Indian national
aspirations regardless of religious community. Yet despite its
neutral stance on religion, Congress encountered opposition
from some leaders in the Muslim community who objected to
participation in Congress on the grounds that the party was
Hindu dominated. The Muslim League strictly represented only
the interests of the Muslim community. Both parties originally
were elitist, composed of intellectuals and the middle class,
and lacked a mass following until after 1930. The Muslim
League looked to the British for protection of Muslim minority
rights and insisted on guarantees for Muslim minority rights
as the price of its participation with Congress in the
nationalist movement. In 1916 the two parties signed the
Congress-Muslim League Pact (often referred to as the Luckhnow
Pact), a joint platform and call for national independence.
The essence of the alliance was the endorsement by the Muslim
League of demands for democratization in representation;
Indianization of administration and racial equality throughout
India in return for acceptance by the Congress of separate
communal electorates (Muslims voted for and were represented
by Muslims, Sikhs voted for and were represented by Sikhs,
while the remainder of the population was termed "general" and
included mostly Hindus); a reserved quota of legislative seats
for Muslims; and the Muslim League's right to review any
social legislation affecting Muslims. The Lucknow Pact was a
high-water mark of unity in the nationalist cause, but it also
endorsed a scheme that engendered communal rather than
national identity. The plan for separate electorates for
Muslims, first put into law by the Indian Councils Act of
1909, was further strengthened and expanded by the India Act
of 1919 (the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms).
World War I had a profound impact on the
nationalist movement in India. Congress enthusiastically
supported the war effort in the hope that Britain would reward
Indian loyalty with political concessions, perhaps
independence, after the war. The Muslim League was more
ambivalent. Part of this ambivalence had to do with the
concerns expressed by Muslim writers over the fate of Turkey.
The Balkan wars, the Italo-Turkish War, and World War I were
depicted in India as a confrontation between Islam and Western
imperialism. Because the sultan of Turkey claimed to be the
caliph (khalifa; literally, successor of the Prophet)
and therefore spiritual leader of the Islamic community, many
Muslims felt fervently that the dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire presaged the destruction of the last great Islamic
power. Muslims in India also were alarmed over reports that
the Allied Powers contemplated placing some of the holy places
of Islam under non-Muslim jurisdiction. In 1920 the Khilafat
Movement was launched in response to the news of the
dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The Khilafat Movement
combined Indian nationalism and pan-Islamic sentiment with
strong anti-British overtones.
For several years the Khilafat Movement
replaced the Muslim League as the major focus of Muslim
activism. An agreement between the leaders of the movement and
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948), the
leading figure in Congress, resulted in the joint advocacy of
self-rule for India on the one hand and agitation for the
protection of Islamic holy places and the restoration of the
caliph of Turkey on the other hand. The Khilafat Movement
coincided with the inception of Gandhi's call for satyagraha
(truth force), a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience to
British rule. The fusion of these two movements was short
lived, briefly giving the illusion of unity to India's
nationalist agitation.
In 1922 the Hindu-Muslim accord suffered a
double blow when their non cooperation movement miscarried and
the Khilafat Movement foundered. The outbreak of rioting,
which had communal aspects in a number of places, caused
Gandhi to call off the joint non cooperation movement. The
Khilafat Movement lost its purpose when the postwar Turkish
nationalists under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (later
known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) abolished the sultanate,
proclaimed Turkey a secular republic, abolished the religious
office of the caliph, and sent the last of the Ottoman ruling
family into exile.
After the eclipse of the Hindu-Muslim
accord, the spirit of communal unity was never reestablished
in the subcontinent. Congress took an uncompromising stand on
the territorial integrity of any proposed post partition
India, downplaying communal differences and seriously
underestimating the intensity of Muslim minority fears that
were to strengthen the influence and power of the Muslim
League. As late as 1938 Gandhi's deputy, Jawaharlal Nehru
(1889-1964), said, "There is no religious or cultural problem
in India. What is called the religious or communal problem is
really a dispute among upper-class people for a division of
the spoils of office or a representation in a legislature."
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, however, the fiery leader of the
untouchables (referred to in Gandhian terminology as harijan--"children
of God") described the twenty years following 1920 as "Civil
War between Hindus and Muslims, interrupted by brief intervals
of armed peace." |
