Birth, Spread and Characteristics of Indian Communalism

At a Glance

• Appeared Towards the end of the nineteenth century
• Three stages Communal nationalism; liberal communalism; extreme communalism
• Key causes Colonial backwardness, divide and rule, distorted history, reform and militant nationalism
• Nature A modern phenomenon, not an ancient hatred
• Exam link UPSC Prelims, Modern History: Post-War Scenario, Cabinet Mission and Communalism

Where Does It Fit?

This is the seventh topic of the category on the post-war scenario, the Cabinet Mission and communalism. The previous topic covered the interim government and the riots of 1946. This topic explains what Indian communalism was and why it grew. The next topic traces the Simla Deputation; Muslim League founded After 1937 League turned to extreme…">evolution of the two-nation theory. Previous topic: Interim Government and the Communal Violence of 1946.

What Is Communalism?

With the rise of nationalism, communalism appeared around the end of the nineteenth century. It proved a huge threat to the unity of the Indian people and the national movement, and its legacy continues. Communalism, more accurately sectarianism, is an ideology that gives more importance to one’s own ethnic or religious group than to the wider society, and in India it evolved through three broad stages.

There is nothing unique about Indian communalism; it resulted from conditions that have produced similar phenomena and ideologies elsewhere, such as Fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland and the Christian-Muslim conflict in Lebanon. Bypassing basic economic interests, communalists claim to protect interests that do not necessarily exist.

How Did Communalism Arise as a Modern Phenomenon?

Communalism is a modern phenomenon, rooted in the modern social, economic and political colonial structure and arising from modern politics based on mass mobilisation and popular participation. Modern politics required people to have wider links and loyalties and to form identities, which involved the spread of modern ideas of nation, class and cultural-linguistic identity. In India, religious consciousness was turned into communal consciousness in some parts and among some sections.

• Its social roots lay in the rising middle classes who promoted imaginary communal interests to further their own economic interests, so that communalism was, according to the Left, a bourgeois question par excellence.
• Communalists were backed by the colonial administration, through which colonialists widened their social base.
• Socio-economic distinctions often coincided with religious ones, and the vested interests gave class contradictions a communal colour after the fact.
• Conservative and reactionary social elements supported communalism.
• Religiosity itself was not communalism, but in a country with poor education and little awareness of the outside world, religion could and did become a vehicle of communalism.

Communalism grew in modern institutions where new identities were emerging haphazardly while old, pre-modern identities had not faded, and the clash of this dichotomy gave rise to the ideology.

What Were the Socio-Economic Reasons?

Religion did not in fact dictate the economic and political interests of Hindus and Muslims. A community of Hindus and Muslims together differed from another community of Hindus and Muslims by language, culture, caste, status, food, dress and customs. Socially and culturally the Hindu and Muslim masses had developed common ways of life, so that a Bengali Muslim has more in common with a Bengali Hindu than with a Punjabi Muslim, and both were victims of British exploitation.

Modern Western and scientific ideas were not absorbed by Muslim intellectuals, who remained traditional, and even when modern education spread among Muslims, the share of the educated remained far lower than among Hindus, Parsis or Christians. Muslims also lagged in trade and industry. With few educated persons and few men of trade and industry among the Muslims, it was easy for reactionary big landlords and the richer classes to wield influence over the Muslim masses. Landlords, Hindu or Muslim, supported British rule for their own interest, but among Hindus modern intellectuals and the rising commercial and industrial class had taken the leadership from landlords.

Educated Muslims found few opportunities in business or the professions and looked for government jobs. British officials and loyalist Muslim leaders incited them against educated Hindus. Syed Ahmad Khan and others asked for special treatment for Muslims in government service and told Muslims that loyalty to the British would be rewarded with jobs and favours; some loyalist Hindus and Parsis used similar arguments but were few. Colonial underdevelopment meant acute unemployment, especially among the educated, and intense competition for existing jobs, which gave scope to short-sighted demands for job reservations on communal, provincial or caste lines, and to appeals to communal and later caste and provincial feelings. Nehru is quoted in The Discovery of India as saying that a difference of a generation or more in the development of the Hindu and Muslim middle classes produced a psychology of fear among Muslims.

What Was British Divide and Rule?

After the Wahabi and 1857 revolts, Muslims were generally regarded with suspicion and subjected to repression and discrimination, and English education undermined Arabic and Persian learning, adding to their economic backwardness and exclusion from service. After the 1870s, with signs of Indian nationalism and the politicisation of the educated middle classes, the government reversed its policy and decided to rally Muslims behind it through concessions, favours and reservations, using them against nationalist forces. It used persons such as Syed Ahmad Khan to counter the Congress: though broadminded and reformist at first, he later backed the colonial government, urged Muslims to stay away from the Congress and spoke of separate Hindu and Muslim interests. The Aligarh Movement is in Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh Movement.

How Did History Writing and Reform Movements Contribute?

The communal interpretation of Indian history was first suggested by imperialist historians and later taken up by some chauvinist Indian historians. It presented the ancient period as the Hindu period and the medieval period, with Turk, Afghan and Mughal rule, as the Muslim period, and exaggerated the conflicts of medieval ruling classes into Hindu-Muslim conflicts. It ignored that politics in all times rested on economic and political interests and not on religion. The British and communal historians had reason to deny a composite culture, while the Hindu communal view held that Indian society reached ideal heights in the ancient period and decayed under Muslim rule, refusing to see how economy, technology, religion, arts and society were enriched in the medieval period. Gandhi said that communal harmony could not be permanently established while distorted versions of history were taught in textbooks.

Reform movements such as the Wahabi movement among Muslims and Shuddhi among Hindus, with militant overtones, made religion more open to communalism, and reforms were sometimes seen as insulating one community from another.

What Was the Effect of Militant Nationalism and the Reaction of the Majority?

Early nationalists made conscious efforts to remove minority fears. Dadabhai Naoroji, presiding over the second Congress session of 1886, said the Congress would not raise socio-religious questions, and in 1889 the Congress resolved not to take up any issue opposed by Muslims. With militant nationalism, a distinct Hindu tinge appeared: Tilak’s Ganapati and Shivaji festivals and anti-cow-slaughter campaigns created suspicion; Aurobindo’s vision of an Aryanised world, the dips in the Ganga in the Swadeshi movement and oath-taking before goddesses in revolutionary activity were unlikely to attract Muslims. The communal element in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and the Khilafat agitation of 1920-22 was too visible to be insignificant. Some Congressmen felt the Khilafat issue was not really nationalistic, since the fight was about the Caliph and holy places and not the economic and political results of imperialism, and in the longer term it encouraged looking at political questions from a religious point of view. The early period is in Surat Split, 1907 and Lucknow Session of 1916 and the Lucknow Pact.

Minority communalism met a reaction from the majority. From the 1870s some Hindu zamindars, moneylenders and professionals began to express anti-Muslim feelings, claiming that the British had freed the land from Muslim tyranny, and the cause of Hindi was given a communal colour by calling Urdu the language of Muslims, which was not historically quite correct. The Punjab Hindu Sabha was founded in 1909 by U.N. Mukherji and Lal Chand, the All-India Hindu Mahasabha held its first session in April 1915 with the Maharaja of Kasim Bazar as president, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was founded in 1925. Hindu communalism was not a strong force for long, since the modern secular intelligentsia and middle class among Hindus had greater influence, but among Muslims the communal elements, landlords, traditional religious leaders and bureaucrats, had much influence. The competing versions of communal tendencies deterred any effective counter-offensive. As an analytical point, the account stresses that communalism was a product of modern politics and colonial conditions, which is why it is described as something that grew with the development of mass politics, not as a continuation of an old hatred. The development of the League’s political demand is in Evolution of the Two-Nation Theory.

Why Is This Topic Important?

• Stages of communalism The three stages are a favourite definition question
• Causes A stock Mains topic with many dimensions
• Divide and rule Links with British policy

What Came Next?

The next topic traces the evolution of the two-nation theory from 1887 to 1940. Next topic: Evolution of the Two-Nation Theory.

Key People and Terms

• Communalism Placing the interests of one’s religious group above society’s
• Communal nationalism The notion that co-religionists share all interests
• Liberal communalism The notion that different religions mean different secular interests
• Extreme communalism The notion that the interests are incompatible
• Shuddhi Reconversion movement among Hindus
• Punjab Hindu Sabha Founded in 1909

Exam Corner

Mains Angle

Questions ask about the causes of communalism. These points add depth.

• Stages Three steps of communal thought
• Colonial role Concessions and divide and rule
• Social roots Unemployment, backwardness and middle classes