muslim resistance to communal separatism and colonialism in bihar

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Muslim resistance to communal separatism and colonialism in Bihar: nationalist politics of the Bihar MuslimsMohammad Sajjada a

Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India Available online: 08 Dec 2010

To cite this article: Mohammad Sajjad (2010): Muslim resistance to communal separatism and colonialism in Bihar: nationalist politics of the Bihar Muslims, South Asian History and Culture, 2:1, 16-36 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2011.531601

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South Asian History and Culture Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2011, 1636

Muslim resistance to communal separatism and colonialism in Bihar: nationalist politics of the Bihar MuslimsMohammad Sajjad*Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India This article explores the issue of community and nation-making in a relatively less explored region of colonial India, Bihar. Although engaging with the existing literature on the theme, it looks into new sources including those in Urdu. The exploration nds that considerably large sections of Muslims were rmly and consistently opposed to the communal separatist politics of the Muslim League in the last days of the empire. Their adherence was to the principle of composite nationalism (muttahidah qaumiyat) and was articulated through the Imarat-e-Shariah and the Muslim Independent Party (MIP), whose essential ideological afliation was with the Congress. This afliation was manifested most clearly during and after the Congress ministry (19371939). The Muslim Leagues victory in 1946 elections of Bihar was far from inevitable. The Rajendra Prasad Papers, Urdu sources, besides other archival accounts, however, clearly suggest that the Congress refused to extend necessary cooperation to those Muslim leaders/political formations (religious/secular and biradri based, most of them belonging to the Congress itself) which were opposed to the idea of communal separatism. Rising assertion of the majoritarian communalism of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha/RSS and the considerable communalization of the lower strata of the Congress was no less signicant factor, which is amply testied by the archival documents (like intelligence reports and ofcial correspondences) of 1940s. Keywords: Bihar; Muslim politics; anti-colonial struggle; communalism; majoritarian nationalism

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Introduction The historiography of Indias partition is conned mainly to three provinces of British India, namely Punjab, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. This has had much to do with the (mis) perception that Partition was a Muslim affair rather than a Muslim League affair. However, historically speaking, the policies and programmes of the Muslim League alone have not guided the political behaviour of Indian Muslims. At the same time, the failings of the Congress in shaping the responses of the Muslims have often been ignored. The role of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha has also been explored inadequately. An allinclusive study of Partition will, therefore, have to equally undertake explorations at two levels. First, the role of majoritarian communalism articulated not only through organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha but also manifested by the Congress (notwithstanding its anti-communal ideological commitments).1 Second, regarding the political behaviour of the Muslims, a clear distinction has to be made between the politics of territorial separatism

*Email: [email protected] 1947-2498 print/ISSN 1947-2501 online 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531601 http://www.informaworld.com

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and the demanding of adequate/proportionate representation in the power structure. With this aim, this article explores the political responses of the Muslims to colonialism and nationalism in Bihar. It will argue that the Muslim demand for adequate representation in power structures may have produced instances of communal tension, but was not necessarily linked to a demand for territorial separatism. Political evolution of Muslims and their response to colonial modernity in Bihar There are a number of studies on the politics of Muslim separatism. Of these, Francis Robinsons essay Islam and Muslim Separatism contends that the Muslims have certain primordial instincts which direct them towards separatism, that they are an innately separate political entity and that there are always some symbols in their cultural storehouse which are used for political mobilization and separatism. This, according to him, was the reason why even western educated politicians like Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar and M.A. Jinnah slipped into religious nationalism, demanding a homeland for the ummah. According to Robinson, even prior to the formation of a Muslim middle class and even before this class began competing with the Hindus for government employment and other privileges, elements of separatism existed among the Indian Muslims.2 Farzana Shaikh, on the other hand, has argued that the Muslim demand for communal separatist representation emanated from the Islamic ideology of not accepting to be represented by a non-Muslim, as well as from a sense of historical superiority, grounded in Mughal values.3 Among other scholars, Paul R. Brass relies on the theory of elite manipulation and argues that Muslim separatism originated as an ideology of the upper class and elite (landlords and lawyer politicians), who attempted to preserve their social privileges from the Hindus.4 None of these scholars therefore take note of the communitys espousal of muttahidah qaumiyat or mushtarka wataniyat (composite nationalism) and the anti-colonial and collaborative positions (with the Congress) taken by Deoband, Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), Imarate-Shariah (Patna), Momin Conference, Shia Political Conference, Rayeen Conference, Mansoori Conference and so on. Contrary to such formulations as available in the existing scholarship on Muslim politics, Bihar offers the historian a different perspective. As early as 1836, Shah Kabiruddin of Sasaram khanqah had appealed to the Governor General of India for providing modern education in English in the madrasa associated with the khanqah where Hindus and Muslims both received their primary education.5 The rst literary society called Anjumane-Islamia was established at Arrah (headquarters of the district of Shahabad) in August 1866. The chief patrons included non-Muslims like Babu Surajmal besides Muslims like Waris Ali Khan and Khuda Bakhsh Khan. The society was open for both the communities.6 Syed Imdad Alis Bihar Scientic Society, Muzaffarpur, founded in May 1868, had 500 members including an overwhelming number of Hindus. Its fortnightly journal in Urdu, Akhbarul-Akhyar, was edited by a Hindu, Babu Ajodhya Prasad Bahar. The society had many branches and a chain of schools even in the villages of the district of Muzaffarpur and elsewhere. The network was funded by a number of Hindu zamindars. It later developed into collegiate school and subsequently, in 1899, it was handed over to Langat Singh of the Bhumihar Brahman Sabha who developed it to the premier college of modern education in north Bihar.7 Similarly, in Patna, Zubdatul Madaris, Bihar Literary Society (1873), Bihar Association (1871), Bihar Upkar Sabha (1876) were all open to both communities. In March 1884, Shamsul Ulema Mohammad Hasan founded Mohammadan Anglo Arabic School. It brought out gazetteers in Urdu and English and had many Hindu students on its


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rolls. Syed Sharfuddin (18561921) established a darul ulum at Bankipur (Patna) on the Deoband pattern. The point can therefore be brought home that the movement for education in Bihar was one arena where the Muslims did not show a particularist or exclusivist orientation, and contrary to Brass formulation, the more traditional social segments operated in collaboration with others in their goal towards a more modern education. When Hindi in the Nagri script was introduced as the court language in Bihar in January 1881, both Hindus (particularly Kayasthas) and Muslims unitedly opposed it.8 In the Patna College as well as in other schools, not less than 23% of the total students were Muslims whereas their total population was only 13%.9 It was no wonder then that when Sir Syed Ahmad Khan advised the Muslims to stay away from the Congress to avoid another conict with the colonial masters after 1857 and to concentrate on modern education, the educated Muslim elites of Bihar explicitly declared that they would go along with the Congress. The foremost voice representing this idea came from Syed Sharfuddin. At the Allahabad session of the Indian National Congress in 1888, he led the Bihar delegates. Wazir Ali Khan of Gaya also accompanied him. At the Allahabad session, Sharfuddin declared, I am proud to say we have here amongst us more than 200 Muslims. I hope that at least in my province of Bihar the Muslims have the fullest sympathy with the objects of the National Congress.10 Similarly, a large section of the Ulema was associated with the Congress from the very beginning.11 In 1899, Afaq Khan set up Boys Association at Darbhanga to popularize the Congress programmes in the region. The Bihar Provincial Congress Committee held its rst meeting at the Sonepur fair, which was chaired by Sarfaraz Hussain Khan, and of the six delegates, two were Muslims, namely Hasan Imam and Najmul Hoda. Ali Imam was elected the president of the Bihar Provincial Congress at Patna in 1908. At the Madras session of the Congress, he spoke on the matter of civil liberties and demanded repeal of the Deportation Regulation. Maulana Shibli Nomani vehemently criticized the Muslim League whereas Mazharul Haq, Sarfaraz Hussain Khan, Ali Imam, Hasan Imam and so on brought the Leagues provincial branch nearer the Congress. Due to the overwhelming presence of nationalist Muslims in the Bihar Provincial Muslim League, it was kept out of the agitation for the separate electorate.12 In fact, the Bihar Congress, during its early phase, was dominated by the Muslims rather than the Hindus. Most prominent of them were Nawab Sohrab Jung, Syed Wilayat Ali Khan, Syed Fazal Imam and Wazir during its initial phase. Syed Imdad Imam, Syed Amir Husain (1864 1910), Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (18841953), Khuda Bakhsh Khan (18421908), Syed Sharfuddin (18561921), Salahuddin Khuda Bakhsh (18751931), Mazharul Haq (1866 1931), S.M. Fakhruddin (18681931), Khwaja Md. Noor (18781936), S. Ali Imam (18691932), S. Hasan Imam (18711933), Sir Sultan Ahmad (18801963), S.M. Zubair (18841930), S.M. Umair (18941978), Sha Daudi (18751949), Abdul Qaiyum Ansari (19051974), Manzoor Aijazi (19131969) and Maghfoor Aijazi (19001967) were other leading gures. Here it should be reiterated that Instrumentalist thesis of Paul R. Brass and Anil Seals explanation regarding the Muslim Breakaway13 fail to explain the case of Bihar, where, like Uttar Pradesh, the Muslims were far ahead of the Hindus in education and jobs. However, unlike the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, the Muslims of Bihar, by and large, did not chart an exclusivist or antagonistic course from that of the Hindus, either in establishing their educational institutions or in taking up a position against colonial rule. At the same time, in the case of Bihar, we cannot make a rigid distinction between traditionalists and modernists because the Muslim leaders there maintained a more syncretic



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approach. Signicantly, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Bihar, even the champions of modern education like Noorul Hoda and Khuda Bakhsh Khan (18421908) remained concerned about religio-cultural traditions. Hence, they revived the old madrasas and opened up new ones. In fact regarding education, there was not a great deal of conict between the traditionalists and modernists. Each remained committed to both systems of education, and this blend of tradition and modernity might possibly have helped check the growth of separatism. These institutions produced many leaders. Shri Krishna Sahay (First Indian member of the Governors Executive Council of Bihar), Dr. Sachidanand Sinha, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Alakh Kumar Sinha, Narayan Babu (First Inspector General of Police, Bihar) and many other luminaries got their primary education at such AngloUrdu/Persian madrasas.14 It is also instructive to note here that next only to the Bengalis, the Muslims in Bihar dominated in public employment and the medical and legal professions. Consequently, in the movement for the separation of Bihar from the Bengal, the Muslims were at the forefront.15 In 1905, when the Swadeshi movement was launched against Curzons partition of Bengal, the leadership of the movement adopted certain mobilizational symbols and methods, which alienated the Muslims giving way to the rise and growth of communalism. Bihar, on the other hand, presented a different picture of HinduMuslim relations. Here, although there was competition between the educationally advanced Bengalis, who were Hindus (who dominated the government jobs in Bihar also), and the Muslims, this contest was not expressed in religio-communitarian, particularist/separatist overtones. The contrast with Bengal is striking, where the bhadralok (high-caste Hindus of Bengal), afraid of losing their hegemony, ensured as much delay as possible in the establishment of the University of Dhaka. As A.K. Biswas puts it:even after annulment of partition (of Bengal) in 1911, the high caste Hindus ensured as much delay as possible in the establishment of the University at Dhaka which was one of the essential conditions for undoing the partition of Bengal . . . the high priests of nationalism, or swadeshi were frenzied over the prospect of the loss of their hegemony over the Muslims and the lower castes in Eastern Bengal. By mixing religion with politics, the upper castes made swadeshi an exclusively Hindu, that too a religious affair and precluded the participation of the Muslims and the low castes in the agitation which in any case lacked mass support and base.16

In Bihar, on the other hand, the positivity in HinduMuslim relations had reached such a high watermark that at the third session of the Bihar Provincial Congress (Muzaffarpur, 1910), when Deep Narayan Singh, in his presidential address, proposed the extending of the principle of separate electorate to the Hindus in areas where they were the minority, the Muslim delegates, who were as much as half of the total delegates, supported this proposal enthusiastically.17 The Biharee of 20 May 1910 observed that it was difcult to nd any other province where such an exemplary collaboration between the political life of Hindus and Muslims existed and that it was an example worthy of being emulated by the rest of the country. Simultaneously, it was none other than Mazharul Haq (18661931) and Hasan Imam (18711933) who opposed the extension of the system of separate electorate to the Muslims in the local bodies. Mazharul Haq said, I shall sacrice ten thousand principles and ten thousand separate electorates simply with one object, namely, to bring the two communities together in order that they may work hand in hand.18 Freedom ghter, activist and writer, Taqi Raheem is emphatic about the role played by Mazharul Haq in the Lucknow Pact of 1916.19 According to him, Haq was most instrumental in bringing the League out of loyalist politics and close to the Congress. Haq had already presided over the League session of 1915 in Bombay. Here his presidential address was

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much more daringly patriotic and anti-colonial than that of any other address of a Congress session thus far. In this session of the League, the Congress had sent a delegation on a goodwill mission, consisting of Lord Sinha, S.N. Banerji, Madan Mohan Malviya, Annie Besant and above all Gandhiji. Here, to develop a better understanding between the League and the Congress and also to work out the constitutional reforms, the League appointed a committee in which as many as nine people were from Bihar. They were Ali Imam (18691932), Mazharul Haq, Maulvi Fakhruddin, an advocate (18681931), Nawab Sarfaraz Hussain Khan, Maulvi Ahmad Hussain, advocate from Muzaffarpur, Maulvi Akhtar Hussain, also advocate from Muzaffarpur, Syed Mahmud and Barrister Syed Md. Naim of Bhagalpur. It is intriguing therefore that although the Bihar leadership so successfully arrived at a better political understanding between the communities in 1916, in the subsequent period, the region suffered from one of the most consequential communal riots in the history of the time. This was the Shahabad riots of 1917.


Political unity and social divide: HinduMuslim relations, 19171937 According to Papiya Ghosh,20 the Shahabad riots very decisively polarized the texture of Bihar politics. This riot was mainly on the issue of cow slaughter. Ever since the 1880s, organizations like Gaurakshini Sabha, Sanatan Dharma Sabha, Hindu sabhas and Arya Samajs had started proliferating in Bihar. After 1908, the Gwala movement also emerged.21 Since 1893, communal riots also became frequent occurrences. The Shahabad riots, however, surpassed the intensity of all previous riots. In October 1917, enquiry into the riots started. Mazharul Haq put together the report of the Bihar Congress and the League, which dismissed the details of the mosques deled, women raped and in particular of women throwing themselves into wells to escape rape. Apparently, this was to avert the accentuation of the crisis and communal tensions. In the tenth session of the All India Muslim League (1917), Hindu leaders were condemned and at its special session, it condemned the Bihar Muslim League for grossly neglecting the aftermath of the riots. In fact, to avoid any communal polarization, Hasan Imam (Chairman of the joint meeting of Bihar Provincial Congress Committee, Bihar Provincial Association and the provincial branch of the Muslim League) had preferred not to mention the riots and had conned himself on the follow-up details of the Lucknow Pact and its application to Bihar. In Papiya Ghoshs words, This not surprisingly alienated the Muslims. Gandhi, then deep into the Champaran Satyagraha, explained his inability to move to Shahabad . . . His message to the Hindus was that they were to try to stop the daily wholesale slaughter of cows. . . .22 Consequently, the Muslim League leaders came under increasing pressure to break with the Congress. In a series of hugely attended meetings organized by the Muslims from all classes, the leadership was thoroughly rejected by the community, which strongly denounced the politics of Hasan Imam, Mazharul Haq, Safaraz H. Khan and Jinnah. Simultaneously, the Gaurakshini movements went on gaining momentum. Communal tension further increased due to the Shudhi movement in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly after 1923, when the focus was on converting the Malkana Muslim Rajputs back to Hinduism. Conversions were mostly in the Shahabad area. At the same time, the issue of the conversion of Hindus in Malabar and the Multan riots became recurrent issues even in the speeches of Rajendra Prasad and Shri Krishna Sinha, and Sinha was associated with the Hindu Mahasabha for several years. Retrospectively, therefore, Syed Mahmud was to say that after 1923 the Muslims turned increasingly towards intransigent leaders in the face of the Shudhi movement and the Congress could not be accepted as a secular body as


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it had a tendency to combine communalism in culture with nationalism in politics.23 The Khilafat Committees inaction over the Shudhi issue added to the resentment among the Muslims.24 After the Lucknow Pact (1916), the most important political development was the Champaran Satyagrah. As early as in 1914, Khan Bahadur Fakhruddin, from the platform of the Bihar Provincial Conference, had moved a resolution pressing the government to institute an enquiry into the conictual relation between the European planters and the ryots of Tirhut, whose grievances, he said, were genuine.25 It is a lesser known fact of history that Peer Md. Moonis was one of the most prominent leaders who had organized and mobilized the peasantry of Champaran. A teacher in the Bettiah Guru Training School, his service was terminated due to his anti-colonial activities. Moonis was a regular columnist in the Hindi daily Pratap, Kanpur, and was counted amongst the leading Hindi journalists of the day. The then S.D.O. of Bettiah, W.H. Louis, called him a connecting link between the educated class and the ryots.26 It was none other than Moonis who led the delegation that met Gandhiji in Lucknow in 1916.27 Other important Muslim leaders who organized the peasants were Shaikh Gulab and Adalat Hussain.28 Hasan Imam gave nancial assistance to Gandhiji when he came to Champaran. For the following years, the enthusiastic participation of the Muslims in the Noncooperation and Khilafat movements is too well known to be repeated here. However, there are some signicant developments, which are worth mentioning in the context of Bihar. The Bihar Provincial Congress Committee ratied the Nagpur resolution of 1920 and appointed several district committees. Sha Daudi for Muzaffarpur, Maulvi Zakaria Hashmi for Saran and Shah Md. Zubair for Monghyr were appointed to popularize the Non-cooperation programme in the respective districts. In Arrah, it was Mahfuz Alam. Government educational institutions were boycotted and the Bihar Vidyapeeth was set up with Mazharul Haq as the Chancellor. Abdul Bari (18821947), a Socialist leaning Congressman and a famous leader of workers, joined it as a teacher. Sha Daudi made the arrangement for the examination of the students. In the National Council of Education for Bihar, Masher Haq, Sha Daudi, Nazir Ahmad, Qazi Abdul Wadood, Qazi Ahmad Hussain, S.M. Zubair and Maulvi Wirasat Rasul were included. Sha Daudi and the Aijazi brothers of Muzaffarpur were extremely successful in forming panchayats to adjudicate the cases of villagers as the courts were boycotted. Daudi himself had given up a very lucrative practice in the Muzaffarpur court. Due to the remarkable organizing capacity of Daudi and the Aijazi brothers, the Tirhut Division had become a danger zone in ofcial circles. Here, the Congress machinery was at its highest efciency. The volunteer corps organized by Daudi and the Aijazis became a serious concern for the government. On 30 October 1921, Daudis house at Muzaffarpur was raided by the police, because it was the headquarters of the Central Board of Control for the National Volunteer Corps/Sewa Samitis.29 Yet, the period of 19251928 witnessed a widening divide between the Hindus and the Muslims. The municipal and the District Board elections of 19241925, says Kamta Chaubey, left a legacy of bad blood between the two communities in Bihar. In these elections, several important Congress Muslims lost, namely Hadi Hussain, Sha Daudi and others. The former was a candidate for vice president of the Gaya District Board and the latter was a candidate for chairman of the Muzaffarpur District Board. Both of them were extremely prominent Congressmen yet they were not voted for by the Hindu Congressmen. It was all the more distressing because Daudi was defeated by a European planter Danby, who evidently secured a good number of votes from the Hindu Congressmen. This breach of trust made Daudi suspicious of Hindus and the Congress.


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This was the decade when the Arya Samajs Shudhi movement was also very active in Bihar. Even more telling was the defeat of no less a person than Mazharul Haq in the elections of the Bihar Legislative Council. Haq, in utter disgust, retired from politics. He retired at a time when he was needed the most to contain the monster of communalism. Maulana Azad wrote a letter (dated 20 August 1926), persuading him to accept the presidency of the Congress (for the Guwahati session, 1926) but he did not relent. Nevertheless, he, along with Daudi, toured the whole of Bihar to work for communal harmony in the midst of recurrent riots.30 The Bihar Provincial Conference of 1925 was presided over by S.M. Zubair and the district conference of Banka was presided by Daudi to popularize khadi.31 In many villages like Kapasi, Muslim women were seen engaged in weaving and spinning,32 and despite worsening communal relations, no important Congress Muslim leader took recourse to the doctrine of separatism. Rather, in a special meeting in the Anjuman Islamia Hall, Patna, on 8 May 1927, they decided for joint electorates rather than separate electorates. The hall was packed to its capacity, with Ali Imam, Fakhruddin, Sarfaraz H. Khan, Daudi, Khan Bahadur M. Ismail, Syed Abdul Aziz being the notable participants.33 Muslim politics in Bihar, up until at least 1928, says Kamta Chaubey, was liberal, noncommunal and nationalist to the core and opposed to the principle of separate electorates. It was due to the inuence of a group of committed nationalist leaders from Bihar that even the Bihar Muslim League remained ideologically close to the Congress. According to Shashi Shekhar Jha, [A] Notable feature of the Bihar Muslim League was the absence of communal character . . . perhaps the leadership of Mazharul Haq and other eminent Muslims as also the natures of political activities were responsible for it.34 On 20 March 1927, Muslims had a meeting in Delhi where Daudi, S.M. Zubair and other leaders were present. They had experienced the limitations of separate electorates. Hence, they were pressing against the separate electorates but simultaneously demanding the reservation of seats for minorities in the legislature. S.M. Zubair had already emphasized this point in the provincial conference of the Congress at Purulia in 1926.35 The Muslims gave up the demand of separate electorates for which Jinnah and Iyengar also played an instrumental role. It was a gesture of the Muslims, which according to Taqi Raheem had impressed even the Hindu Mahasabha leaders like Moonje, Kelkar, Jayakar and Aney, and it was ratied by the AICC at Bombay in May 1927. It is evident therefore that the ssures created in the HinduMuslim relationship during the elections of 19241926 had been redeemed to an extent, thanks to Daudi and Zubair. This went a long way in presenting a formidable united opposition against the all-white Simon commission. On 30 January 1928, under Daudis presidentship, a conference was held at the Anjuman Islamia Hall, Patna, where it was resolved to put a stiff resistance against the Simon commission. In Muzaffarpurs Jama Masjid, Daudi delivered a stirring speech to mobilize people against the commission. He himself led a demonstration of students in Patna. Nevertheless, the M.L. Nehru Report was seen as unsatisfactory by a section of the Muslim leadership. They had insisted on demands like a one-third reservation of seats for Muslims, federation with complete provincial autonomy and creation of Sind province out of Bombay, which were denied. Sha Daudi and Maulana Sajjad (died 1940) were most critical of the report. They called a meeting in Patna in December 1928, but it was to no avail. Shah Muhammad Umair, retrospectively, subjected his party (the Congress) to severe criticism by saying that in exchange of the joint electorate, conceding one-third of the seats of the central assembly would not have been a bad bargain. While writing his autobiography in the Hazaribagh Jail during 19421944, he further commented that



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it particularly unjustied on the part of the Congress to not accommodate the Muslim Leagues demand, when it had conceded reserved seats to the Harijans after the Poona Pact (1932).36 The Congress denial of reserved seats to the Muslims propelled Daudis retirement from politics, which was indeed a big loss for the Congress as he was one of the greatest leaders of Bihar. Mazharul Haq had already retired from politics (and subsequently died in 1931). This was a time when the Hindu Mahasabha leaders were increasing their inuence in the Congress, and the share of Muslims in the politics of the Bihar Congress had started to decline visibly. It was being taken over by the upper-caste Hindus, mostly Bhumihars and Rajputs. In fact, the rise of the Bhumihars in education, politics and bureaucracy is a subject that remains to be fully explored and elaborated. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (died 1950) was the rst leader to start organizing the Bhumihars and was associated with the Bhumihar Brahman Sabha (founded in 1889 at Patna by the Raja of Benaras, among many others). However, he subsequently gave up addressing caste issues of the Bhumihars and engaged himself in the politics of peasant radicalism. Later, Sir Ganesh Dutt Singh (18681943) emerged as their leader, who remained loyal to the Raj, entered the reformed Legislative Council and occupied inuential portfolios of education and local self-government.37 This position helped him distribute patronage to his castebrethren. Later, this patronage was extended to the Bhumihars by Shri Krishna Sinha, who occupied the premiership/chief ministership of Bihar during 19371939 and then during 19461967. Despite their grudges against the Congress, Muslim leaders like Syed Mahmud (1889 1971), S.M. Zubair and Abdul Bari (died 1947) had remained with the party. Abdul Bari gained much popularity among the workers in Jamshedpur during the 1920s and 1930s. S. Mahmud came in to ll the gap created by Daudi and Haq. In 1930, at Lahore, Mahmud was elected General Secretary of the AICC. The Maulanas Sajjad, Nuruddin Bihari, Usman Ghani, Abdul Wahab Darbhangwi, Abdul Wadud were active within the Congress and during the Civil Disobedience Movement. Seeing their popularity and mobilizing capacity, they were put behind the bars. Their anti-League position remained consistent and, in March 1929, they set up the All India Muslim Nationalist Party. By July 1930, its provincial branch was opened in Bihar with Maulana Sajjad as its president. Overwhelming participation of the Muslims (in the Civil Disobedience Movement) in Saran, Champaran and Muzaffarpur was due mainly to Syed Mahmuds organizational ability, and in Jamshedpur, Shahabad and Patna it was due to Abdul Bari. In these years, all these districts had a number of inuential Muslim leaders associated with the Congress.38 Taqi Raheem says that as the Bihar Muslims, in the hope of ghting colonialism, had given up the demand for separate electorates, their demand for reservation of one-third of the total seats in the central assembly for the Muslims (under joint electorate) should have been conceded as it was done in the case of Harijans with the Poona Pact of 1932. [It may be noted that the McDonald Award under the scheme of separate electorate had offered only 72 reserved seats to the Harijans in the central assembly, but after the Gandhi Ambedkar (Poona) Pact of 1932, as many as 147 seats were reserved for them in exchange of the Harijans giving up separate electorate.] However, the Congress, under the pressure of Hindu Mahasabha, failed to accommodate this demand, which added to the Muslims woes against the Congress. Unfortunately, this was the time when two great leaders in Bihar, Hasan Imam and Ali Imam, passed away. The situation made it increasingly more difcult for the nationalist leaders like Syed Mahmud, Abdul Bari and S.M. Umair to keep the Muslims with the Congress. This was the backdrop against which the elections of 1937 came to be held.


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Denying share of power to the Muslims, 1937 Many Muslims, though having grievances against the Congress, did not switch over to the League and instead formed a nationalist party, the Muslim Independent Party (MIP), which was ideologically akin to the Congress. It was led by Maulana Sajjad of Imarat-e-Shariah, a legal and spiritual institution that was set up in Phulwari Sharif, Patna, in 1921 for the implementation of the shariat (Islamic law) and had a formidable mass base even in the remotest villages.39 In the 1937 elections, the Congress and the MIP contested elections with seat adjustments. The MIP won 15 out of 40 reserved seats and the Congress won 5 seats. The League was unable to secure any seats. Such ideological afnity and electoral adjustment gave rise to an impression in the public mind that the Congress and MIP would jointly form the government in Bihar. The Congress, however, reneged on the tacit understanding, giving a rude shock to the Muslims. The Congress, on the issue of Governors discretion, initially refused to form the ministry.40 Accordingly, the MIP, being the second largest party, formed its ministry (for about 120 days during AprilJuly 1937), though making it clear that it would give way to a new ministry as soon as the Congress reconsidered its decision. However, there took place a sort of Hindu backlash against the MIP, whereby, according to Taqi Raheem, even the Socialists were embittered by the fact of the MIPs formation of the interim ministry.41 Raheems account indicated the growth of misgivings among the Muslims so far as their perception of the Hindu political class was concerned. At about the same time, the Advocate General of Bihar, Sir Sultan (18801963), was replaced with Baldev Sahay. Sir Sultan had been the only Muslim Advocate General in India, and his removal proved to be another step in the growing apprehension among the Muslims. Yet another cause of disaffection was the preference given to Shri Krishna Sinha (by the Congress) over Syed Mahmud for the Premiership of Bihar.42 As the share of the Muslims in the organizing and building of the Bihar Congress had been signicant, they had expected proportionate share in the power structure. The reluctance of the Congress to give proportionate power to the Muslims was the major reason for the growth of the Bihar branch of the Muslim League, which until 1937 was almost non-functional. In his study, Jawaid Ahmad43 has named the increased Shudhi campaign of the Arya Samaj for creating communal tensions in Bihar. According to him:[T]here was a good prospect of HinduMuslim rapprochement in Bihar. The Bihar Congress was in a position to curb separatist euphoria and communal instinct by projecting the Congress Muslims to the forefront of the movement but the Bihar Congress intoxicated with electoral politics and unwilling to share power with the Muslims, failed to bring the prospect of Hindu Muslim amity to a reality.

The Congress denial of power-sharing proved fatal. The League could exaggerate and magnify the grievances of the Muslims. However, contrary to the claims of the apologists of the Congress, the grievances were not completely unfounded and hence cannot be ruled out summarily. There may be reasons to look at the Pirpur and Shareef Reports (these were the enquiry reports of the Muslim League about excesses committed or discrimination perpetrated against Muslims by the Congress ministries during 19371939) with some doubt as they were made use of by the League as an instrument to alienate the Muslims away from the Congress, but the one written by the consistently anti-League Imarat-e-Shariahs Maulana Sajjad cannot be dismissed as baseless. The Jamiatul Ulemae-Hind, Imarat-e-Shariah and MIP had started with supporting the Congress, had opposed the League and had expected to have a share in governance. But in 1939, Sajjad had to reach


25

the inevitable conclusion that the Congress was communalist to the core. He wrote a 22-page-long letter to the Congress High Command cataloguing the grievances of the Muslims against the Congress ministry. This letter was written after the Congress resigned from the ministry in 1939 and was supposedly meant for the Congress to do a self examination of its failings and errors.44 Mushirul Hasan, in his paper on the Muslim Mass Contact Programme of the Congress ministry (19371939), clearly says, within two years of its launching, the Mass Contacts Campaign ran into serious trouble not so much due to the Muslim Leagues opposition or the lack of Muslim support, but because of Congress own reluctance to pursue it with any vigour or sense of purpose.45 In the early 1939 it was scrapped, as it was only a brainchild of Nehru. Most of the inuential Congress leaders remained either opposed to or unenthusiastic about it. Shah Muhammad Umairs remarks corroborate it: In fact, right since very beginning, the Congress was considering the existence of the nationalist Muslims as a dead body (laasha-e-be jaan) . . . and by the time wisdom dawned upon it that only through this [Muslim Mass Contact] Programme could it strengthen the nationalist Muslims, all the organs of the Mass Contact had withered away.46 The Congress right wing came out with the bitter criticism against its Muslim Mass Contact Programme, with the outcome that Abul Kalam Azads pamphlet, Congress and Musalmans, could not be distributed on the lame excuse of lack of funds. B.S. Moonje proposed to Bhai Parmanand and Raja Narendra that all the Hindu Mahasabhites should join the Congress to counter the effect of Muslim inux into the partys organizational structure. His indictment of the Congress was also an indication of the Mahasabhite hold on the district units of the Congress, and Mushirul Hasan concludes: Congress own position regarding Communal activities of its members remained dangerously vague.47 Despite such differences, however, a fairly large section of the Muslim leadership remained committed to the idea of a composite nationalism and consistently opposed to the League. Syed Mahmud, Abdul Bari, Jameel Mazhari (the famous Urdu poet) and a host of popular mass leaders were still with the Congress. Jameel Mazhari (died 1982) was the publicity ofcer of the Congress ministry of Bihar. When it resigned in 1939, Mazhari also resigned.48 In November 1940, Maulana Sajjad, the great nationalist leader who had exercised political and religious inuence on the Muslims, passed away. This weakened the Muslim politics of composite nationalism at a time when the Leagues separatism was becoming rapidly strident. At this time, Abdul Qaiyum Ansari had emerged on the political rmament as a promising leader of tremendous popularity. He was the leader of the Momin Conference.49 Apart from him, Syed Mahmud, Abdul Bari, Comrade Ali Ashraf, Manzar Rizvi (leader of the working class in Dalmianagar), Maghfoor Ahmad Aijazi and his elder brother Manzoor Aijazi (Muzaffarpur) were active leaders. A large number of Muslims were engaged in the anti-colonial struggles during the Second World War under the inuence of these leaders. Ali Ashraf, Peerzada Syed Shah Sulaiman and Chaudhry Abul Hasnat of Arrah went to jail for their erce anti-colonial activities. Majlis-e-Ahrar, Momin Conference, Rayeen Conference, Shia Political Conference, Mansoori Conference were quite popular among the relevant groups and were vehemently opposed to the League. It is to be noted that although Abdul Qaiyum Ansari (1905 1974) of the Momin Conference subjected the Muslim League to criticism for being a party of the upper-caste feudal elites, he never said anything against the Congress which had the similar class base. On 14 April 1940, Maulana Sajjad refuted the Pakistan resolution of the Muslim League.50 On 19 April 1940, some of the Congressmen observed Hindustan Day against the Leagues observances of Pakistan Day at several places. In


26

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July 1940, at a village of Bhagalpur, a famous journalist of Purnea, Syed Abdullah (of the All India Azad Muslim Conference), convened a meeting of Muslims opposed to the League.51 In that meeting, the League and Jinnah were subjected to most severe criticism. The issues of an English daily of Patna, The Searchlight (3 January30 April 1940), edited by Murli Manohar Prasad, a Congressman, give reports about frequent meetings of the Momin Conference, Rayeen Conference, Shia Conference in several districts of Bihar where they had vehemently opposed the two-nation theory. The Azad Conference meetings, repudiating Jinnah and his two-nation theory, continued in several district towns and even villages, in the following years, particularly in 1942.52 It alarmed the Muslim League, but to counter the anti-League propaganda, there was no leader of required stature in Bihar. It, therefore, sent K. Nazimuddin from Bengal, who convened a Pakistan Meeting on 29 April 1944 at Jamui, Monghyr. According to an ofcial report, The attempted reorganization of the Muslim League . . . however [was] not making much progress in the province. The local Shias [were] (however) very critical of the Pakistan Scheme which they describe(d) as fraud.53 At the same time, the activities of the RSS were also on the rise in Bihar. On 15 August 1943, Savarkar had told in a conference at Nagpur, the RSS Headquarter, We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations, and B.S. Moonje, in the same conference had noted, let our proportion in the army be increased and every problem will be automatically solved.54 Earlier on 26 March 1939, Savarkar, in his address to the eighth session of the Hindu Mahasabha, at Monghyr, had said, Congress was manned and managed by Hindus who . . . (have), now fallen in wrong track by complete adherence to the Muslim vagaries and that Hindustan belonged to Hindus and none other than the Hindus would rule it. He also referred to Nazi Germany by saying, Mahasabha is as much national as the National Government in Germany, and lambasted the Congress for giving meaningless concessions to minorities. He further declared that all branches of the Bengal Hindu Sabha be instructed to establish gymnasiums in every village to introduce lathi, dagger play and to hold physical tournaments periodically and promote physical training among women.55 In the subsequent session of the Bihar Hindu Sabha, S.P. Mukherji, in his presidential address, said, one of the tasks of the Hindu Mahasabha will be to build up a national militia.56 Intelligence reports57 warned that the organizational proliferation of the RSS had gained an alarming pace, intruding into the educational institutions and recruiting students and teachers, indulging in lathi (stick) drills with use of certain uniform and performance of exercises of a military nature, particularly since October 1943. Its branches were spread across 11 districts lying in the northern half of the province along the Ganges, besides 30 other mofussil branches. These activities had continued in deance of the administrative prohibition. Prof. Diwakar, the general secretary of the provincial wing of the RSS, also visited Monghyr and Sasaram in April 1944 mobilizing gatherings of the students, with a view to revitalizing local activities.58 These developments were felt to be a danger to the law and order which warranted the Government of India to issue a general instruction to all the provinces, If any Provincial government considers it necessary in the interest of law and order to proceed openly against RSS, it should not hesitate to do so. . . .59 It is also to be noted that although the administrative measures taken against the RSS were much stringent in the Punjab, Central Provinces, Ajmer, Marwar, in Bihar no such measures were taken,60 even though the high ofcers of the security and intelligence agencies of the government of Bihar were asking to do so, in view of the fact that many military deserters, dismissed/discharged police personnel were joining the private armies of the communal political organizations, most notably the RSS.61



27

The lower units of the Congress and Hindu Mahasabha/RSS were almost synonymous; they identied the League and other Muslim constituencies as synonymous/ interchangeable entities. This overlap of the Mahasabha and the Congress was corroborated by the Hindu Mahasabha itself, when it was declared, the Hindu Mahasabhites should not look upon the Congress as untouchables and that the Hindus were the mainstay of the Congress, and if they were weak the Congress would also be weak.62 This stance of the lower Congressmen alienated the Muslims, with communal tension and riots looming large. Growing communal polarization after 1937, rapid rise of the Hindu Mahasbha/RSS and the Muslim League caused communal riots more frequently in several towns of Bihar, either on the issue of Mahabiri Jhanda processions or on cow slaughter. In 1940, after the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League (which was construed as demanding Indias partition along HinduMuslim lines) the religious tension was even more palpable. As a consequence of this communal polarization, hereafter, the Jamiatul Ulema, Imarat-e-Shariah, Congress Muslims all suffered a denite erosion of their mass base. However, leaders like Comrade Ali Ashraf had an abiding inuence and the Communists in general were gaining much popularity among the Muslims. It was this section of the Muslim leadership which helped in containing the Muslim alienation to a considerable extent after 1942. Therefore, during the Quit India Movement, fairly large sections of the Muslims remained with the national movement. Many of the participants are alive and still live in the same areas.63 K.K. Datta gives a long list of such Muslim freedom ghters who had been in the forefront of the movement. The noteworthy point here is that even when the Muslims were disillusioned with the Congress and even when very few of them were actually at the forefront of the party, Muslim participation in the activities of the party remained signicant.64 Taqi Raheem thus expressed his dismay to see that almost all Hindu historians and intellectuals, in order to cover up the faults of their leaders, keep saying that it was the Muslims of Bihar and UP who divided the country and created Pakistan.65 The most serious impact on the Congress Muslim support base, however, came during and after the elections of 1946. (The elections for the central Assembly were held in OctoberNovember 1945, and those for the provincial assembly were held in February March 1946.) In these elections the Congress resorted to every kind of means to defeat the League, including extending support to pro-British candidates, and creating sectarian divides among Muslims. At this time, even Maulana Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-eIslami (1941), opposed the Leagues demand of Pakistan, even though it was for his own narrow interests. In other words, when the League went to the elections, it stood by itself. Yet, it was able to win 34 out of 40 Muslim seats in Bihar. The nationalist Muslim organizations lost most of the seats in the elections of 1946, largely because of a resources crunch and less because of the Leagues popularity. According to a contemporary source, The nationalist Muslim bodies had scarce resources; the Momins and the Jamiatul Ulama were poor communities.66 The Muslim leaders of the District Congress Committees had started demanding that at least Rs. 10,000 had to be allocated for every Muslim seat to win.67 The nationalist Muslim organizations demanded an assurance from the Congress regarding the appointment of Muslim teachers in primary schools but Rajendra Prasad (who had important say within the Congress particularly with reference to Bihar) refused to assure anything except religious freedom. This gesture of the Congress leadership created differences amongst the nationalist Muslims affecting the prospects of the Congress in the elections of 1946. The Congress also refused to come out with a joint manifesto, although it did form the Nationalist Muslim Board. As a result, the campaign for the election remained confused and uncoordinated as later confessed by Rajendra Prasad himself.68


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Nevertheless, mere electoral victory of the League did not make the idea of Partition welcome to all Muslims. The Muslims of Bihar continued contesting the League and its two-nation theory regardless of their disenchantment with the Congress. In Muzaffarpur, the Aijazi brothers along with others campaigned from house to house on bicycles in 1946 1947. Maghfoor Aijazi had set up the All India Jamhoor Muslim League, in 1940, to oppose Jinnahs scheme of Pakistan. He had been active, since 1940, to oppose Jinnahs Pakistan (notwithstanding his disillusionment with the Congress, which he had joined in 1920 and built it up so assiduously).69 Maulvi Ahmad Ghafoor and Sayeedul Haq of Darbhanga, Fazlur Rahman of Patna, Qazi Md. Husain of Gaya, Haz Md. Sani of Bettiah, Qazi Md. Ilyas of Begusarai, Md. Noor of Purnea and Isa Rizwi of Sheikhpura were still active in the Congress. In Siwan, Abdul Ghafoor of the Forward Block (future chief minister of the Congressled government in Bihar) and Zawar Husain of AISF (future vice chancellor of Bihar University, Muzaffarpur) were active and popular mass leaders working for the Congress candidates. Maulana Shah Mohiuddin, sajjada nashin of Khanqah-e-Mujibiya, Phulwari Shareef, had great spiritual inuence on the Muslims of Bihar. He had people with him such as Abdus Samad Rahmani, Usman Ghani and Ahmad Husain who campaigned for the Congress. However, the greatest help came from Qaiyum Ansaris Momin Conference. Of the six Muslim seats won by the Congress in 1946, ve were of the Momin Conference and the sixth (Syed Mahmud) was won largely with the Momin Conferences support. Among the Socialists, Abul Hayat Chand Kazmi, Ahad Fatmi and Razi Azimabadi put up an effective resistance to the League. Manzar Rizwi, Ali Ashraf and S. Habeeb Ali Amjad dominated the Communist Party in Bihar and effectively inuenced public opinion against the League. The riots of October 1946 (after the elections, when the Congress had formed its ministry on 16 April 1946), however, became the turning point in Bihars nationalist politics.70 The riots across Bihar broke out after a strike (hartal) in Patna against the Noakhali riots. On 25 October, Anti-Noakhali Day was observed, at a meeting organized by Jagat Narayan Lal, the districts leading Congressman. (It should be noted here that Jagat Narayan Lal was one of the leaders who took the initiative for the Shudhi campaign in the 1920s and was a member of both Hindu Mahasabha and the Congress.) On 26 October, various Muslim villages were attacked, and the rioting spread to other districts.71 The Raj, the Congress and the League give different estimates of total casualties differing from 6 to 50,000. There were instances of women jumping into wells to save themselves from being raped. The sheer size of the violent mobs created panic. Congress workers while visiting the affected areas in Chapra came across mobs consisting of close to 50,000 people.72 To add fuel to the re, accounts of the East Bengal happenings from the Calcutta press were republished in the local press with additional inammatory comments. On 25 October, Anti-Noakhali Day, a Hindu procession consisting of important Congress leaders paraded through the streets of Gaya holding the portraits of Gandhi and Nehru and shouting slogans such as Noakhali ka badla le kar rahenge and Hindustan Hinduon ka nahin kisi ke baap ka (We shall take revenge of the Noakhali killings and Hindustan belongs only to the Hindus and not to somebody elses father).73 Taqi Raheem, an eyewitness, also recalls that in the consequent meeting the Congress leaders including K.B. Sahay and Murli Manohar Prasad (the editor of the pro-Congress/nationalist English daily, The Searchlight) delivered extremely inammatory speeches and provoked the crowd.74 Of the riots which started from Chapra on 26 October 1946, one of the most fatal was that of Biharshareef.75 For a long time, Biharshareef had been the educational, cultural, religious and spiritual centre of the Muslims and had given the national movement leaders



29


like Maulana Sajjad, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (18841953) and Dr. A. Rahman. This riot, therefore, greatly affected the Muslims of Bihar. According to ofcial records, This riot had convinced them that if power is transferred to the Congress then the Muslims wouldnt have even the right to assemble and protest for their legitimate democratic rights.76 The then viceroy Wavell also testied the complicity of the Congress in the riots. He noted that like Uttar Pradesh, the lower strata of the Congress did the planning of the outbreaks of the riots and they [the riots] were undoubtedly organized and organized very thoroughly by supporters of the Congress.77 This was corroborated when some Congressmen confessed before Gandhi to having taken part in the riots.78 On his part, Jawaharlal Nehru also admitted that some Congressmen with inclinations towards the Hindu Mahasabha were involved in these riots.79 Such developments gave much space to the discourses of the League which alleged that relief works were being obstructed at the instance of the Congress-led administration. The League attempted to simulate the exodus of the refugees to Bengal and to collect and concoct blackmailing material against the Bihar Government.80 The migration continued even after the leader of the Bihar Muslim League, Abdul Aziz, advised against it. Papiya Ghosh therefore noted:It is the implications of the disillusionment among Muslim supporters of the Congress that provide an insight into the visible resolve to migrate from Bihar. . . . For example, when the Secretary of the Telmar Congress Committee refused to take shelter in the house of the nearby Khusraupur zamindar household of the Hussains, he was condent that no one would touch a Congress Muslim. Not long after, he was killed along with 16 members of his family. The Momins were among the worst sufferers, in Biharsharif despite the fact that they had been supporters of the Congress. They alleged that many people high up in the Congress had taken part in the riot.81

Ghosh therefore argues that During the 1946 riot in particular the abducting Hindu, reinforced by the Hindu Raj of the Congress, became a major factor in transforming Pakistan into an imminent inevitability.82 After the 1946 riot, the disaffection and alienation of Muslims rendered even the most inuential and popular nationalist organizations like the Imarat-e-Shariah ineffective during the last 5 months of colonial rule. They had all along championed the cause of muttahidah qaumiyat (composite nationalism) in conformity with the Congress, whereas the Congress had, by that time, come to embrace the two-nation theory. This complete turnaround by the Congress left the Imarat-e-Shariah in confusion about its course of action. The assassination of Abdul Bari on 28 March 1947 by a local constable created further distrust between the Hindus and Muslims. Prof. Abdul Bari was then the president of the provincial Congress. The clarication that the assassination was accidental and not communally motivated came much later, that is, after independence. We therefore see that in Bihar, where the Muslim communities strongly favoured the idea of composite nationalism and opposed separatism, the two-nation theory had the support of the communalized lower strata of the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj. The Bihar Provincial Muslim League (BPML), on the other hand, though weak had charted out a course entirely different from that of the All India Muslim League, to the effect that though they were not opposed to the two-nation theory per se they did oppose Pakistan. In the face of the riots of 1946, they, in April 1947, demanded an independent homeland within Bihar itself. They asked what will happen to the ve million Muslims of Bihar, who . . . are surrounded by a hostile majority all over the province83 and stated that their salvation lay only in having a homeland of their own within the province of Bihar where they could develop socially, politically and economically. The

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reason for such a demand, given by the BPML General Secretary, Jafar Imam, was that both the Congress-led administration in Bihar and the common cadres of the Congress were complicit in the massacre of the Muslims of Bihar in 1946.84 It therefore becomes quite clear that the tilt towards separatist politics took place largely because of the communalization in the wake of the 1946 riots rather than due to the ideological appeal of the Muslim League and the idea of Pakistan. In fact Syed Abdul Aziz, the leader of Bihar Muslim League, kept persuading the Muslims not to migrate from Bihar. As for the Congress, its refusal to incorporate the Muslims in the power structure in a judicious proportion and its lower units being dominated by the Hindu Mahasabhites led to its alienation of most of the nationalist Muslim leaders. Yet, some like Syed Mahmud expressed their sense of betrayal many years thereafter. Despite all their grievances none of them went over to the League. They remained rmly committed to the composite or united nationalism and kept contesting the two-nation theory till the very end.85 Shah Muhammad Umair, the Congress leader, lambasted the Ailaan-e-Pakistan of the Muslim League (Lahore session, 1940) as khaufnaak aur gustakhana qadam (dreaded and outrageous step). Simultaneously, he also bemoaned the Muslim dilemma by recalling an Urdu couplet:Khudawanda yeh terey saadaah lauh bandey kidhar jaayen Ke sultani bhi aiyaari hai darweshi bhi aiyaari.86 (Oh God where should these simpletons go When being both master and slave are perdy.)

Conclusion Bihar offers new challenges to the historians of modern India (dealing particularly with nationalism, communalism and separatism in Bihar, which still remains a broadly unexplored area). Deeper explorations into the dynamics of Bihar politics will surely explode many a myth dominant in the existing historiography. It is important to understand that although the meta-narratives of Congress nationalism need to be challenged anyways, there is also a need to realize that these meta-narratives, which rely on high-own ideas, such as the Congress socialism and secularism, often had absolutely no meaning at the provincial and local levels. Thus, there existed a vast disparity between the political principles and rhetoric voiced by the national Congress leadership and the operation of the Congress units at the district and mofussil level. A study of nationalist politics in Bihar may also help us understand the assertions of the marginalized social groups/castes/biradris of Muslims, who had become involved in the processes of democracy during the colonial period. It may explain why the composition of Muslim leadership of post-Independence Bihar has been relatively less feudal, almost non-conservative and relatively more connected to the masses.87 The Bihar Muslims history of democratic participation ensured the success of the movement for making Urdu the second ofcial language in independent India. It created employment avenues in government ofces, which considerably contributed (particularly since 1980s) to the emergence of a sizeable middle class among Muslims, this despite the fact that Bihar does fall among the most backward provinces of India in socioeconomic terms.88 In addition, such explorations may also help us understand the quest of Muslims for intra-community democratization in Bihar, where the assertion of marginalized social groups/castes/biradris of the Muslims had started during the colonial period.89 Often referring to their roles in ghting British imperialism as well as in resisting the Muslim Leagues separatism, various communities of the lower-caste Muslims (Pasmanda


31

Biradris) of Bihar (more notably the Momins/Ansaris, Mansooris, Quraishis and Idrisis) and the popular religious organizations like the Imarat-e-Shariah re-organized and took recourse to constitutional democratic methods of mobilization and agitation in the postcolonial India. It helped them gain their own space in the structures of power in Bihar, as compared to the Muslim communities of the adjacent provinces of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.90 On account of such mobilizations, 37 out of a total of 41 castes of the Muslims of Bihar have been enlisted as backward communities and have secured reservations (positive discrimination/afrmative action) in public employment, and in rural and urban local bodies, and preferential treatment in the welfare schemes of the government. AcknowledgementsI am thankful to Prof. Mushirul Hasan (JMI, New Delhi), Dr. Amir Ali (JNU, New Delhi), Kathinka Sinha Kerkhoff (ADRI, Ranchi), Prof. R.K. Trivedi (AMU, Aligarh), Prof. Ayesha Jalal, Dr. Rizwan Qaiser and Mr. Naved Masood for their comments and suggestions. Prof. Farhat Hasans suggestions (particularly to explore Deoband inspired groups/institutions in Bihar) have also been of immense help. The late Prof. Papiya Ghosh (19532006) had extended all help. Finally, I am grateful to the two anonymous referees who reviewed the article for SAHC.


Notes1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. For communal orientations of the leaders of the provincial and district units of the UP Congress see Gould, Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy and for that of Bengal, see Chatterji, Bengal Divided. Robinson, Islam and Muslim Separatism: A Historiographical Debate. Shaikh, Community and Consensus in Islam, 235. Brass, Muslim Separatism in United Provinces, 16786. Imam, Role of Muslims in the National Movement, 1920. Jha, Origin and Development of Cultural Institutions in Bihar. Sajjad, Sir Syeds Movement for Modern Education in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, 18197; also see Sinha, Syed Imdad Ali Khan. The HindiUrdu dispute in colonial Bihar is an under-explored subject; even Christopher R. King has not delved much into Bihar. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi Mein Bihar ke Musalmanon ka Hissa, 99. Report of the Indian National Congress, 1888, 128, cited in Chaubey, Muslims and Freedom Movement in India, 11. Imam, Role of Muslims in the National Movement, 27. Sinha, Hindustan Review, 110. This view argues that rather than social cleavages being the determining factor in political mobilization, it was the activity of elites, who used these cleavages as an instrument for political mobilization. Brass, Muslim Separatism in United Provinces; Seal, Emergence of Indian Nationalism. Sajjad, Resisting British Colonialism and Communal Separatism, 1718; also see Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 100. See Chaudhury, Creation of Modern Bihar; Ashraf, The Muslim Elite; Chaubey, Muslims and Freedom Movement in India. Biswas, Paradox of Anti Partition Agitation and Swadeshi Movement of Bengal 1905, 3857. Chaubey, Muslims and Freedom Movement in India. Ahmad and Jha, Mazharul Haq, 12. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi. Ghosh, Community Questions and Bihar Politics 191723. Gwala, also called Ahir, is a caste falling in the shudra category of the fourfold division of Hindu society. They are known for living by rearing cattle and milking cows. Inspired by the Hindu revivalist movement of the Arya Samaj (its founder Dayanand Saraswati vehemently denied existence of caste hierarchy in the early Vedic age), they organized themselves to

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

32

M. Sajjaddemand Kshatriya status and started wearing the sacred thread called janeu. This movement of the Gwalas, for Kshatriya status, is also known as Janeu Andolan. See Chaudhry and Shrikant, Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke Kuch Aayam, 7083; and Jha, Lower Caste Peasants and Upper Caste Zamindars in Bihar, 5505. Ghosh, Community Questions, 199. Mahmud, HinduMuslim Cultural Accord. Ghosh, Community Questions, 207. Bihar Herald, April 25, 1914. Chaudhry and Shrikant, Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke Kuch Aayam, 38. Acharya Shivapujan Sahay, Peer Md. Moonis: Vyakti aur Kriti, 79, cited in Chaudhry and Shrikant, Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke Kuch Aayam, 38. Also see Shrikant, Peer Muhammad Munis. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 158. Chaubey, Muslims and Freedom Movement in India, 151; Sha Daudi Papers and Maghfur A. Aijazi Papers, NMML, New Delhi. I am thankful to the Daudi and Aijazi Memorial Committees of Muzaffarpur for their papers. Also see my essay on Sha Daudi in Jamia Urdu Quarterly. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 2589. Desai, Gandhiji in Indian Villages, 23283. Gandhi, Young India, 19241926. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi. Jha, Political Elite in Bihar, 11231. Siddiqi, Maimaar-e-Qaum, Shah Mohammad Zubair. Umair, Talaash-e-Manzil, 915. See Benipuri, Mujhe Yaad Hai. For a brief prole of Ganesh Dutt, see Sinha, Some Eminent Bihar Contemporaries. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 288. Ghosh notes that from the 1920s onwards and particularly during the Civil Disobedience Movement of early 1930s, the Congress could widen its base among the Bhumihars, Rajputs and several intermediate and low castes but that the Muslims in general kept aloof from the movement and in certain places were positively hostile to Congress mobilization efforts, The Civil Disobedience Movement in Bihar, 1778. Although not disagreeing with her explanation about the tension between the Muslims and the Congress, it is difcult to agree that the Muslims in general kept aloof from the Congress in 1930 1934. Her own sources in the very same book and her other essays and other works discussed here testify that, compared to the adjacent provinces, participation of Bihar Muslims in the Congress was considerably high. See Sajjad, Bihar Muslims Response to the Two-Nation Theory, 194047. Also see Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi. See Rahmani, Taareekh-e-Imarat and Miftahi, Imarat-e-Shariah: Deeni Jiddo Johad Ka Raushan Baab. Also see Ghosh, Muttahidah Qaumiyat in Aqalliat Bihar: The Imarat-eShariah, 192147, 120. The Congress insisted that it would form the ministry only after an assurance from the governor that he would not use his special/discretionary powers. The deadlock in Bihar continued from April to July 1937; till then the MIP, the second largest party, formed its ministry under Md. Yunus, making it clear that it would give way to the Congress, once it decided to accept ofce. The plea of the MIP was that the Act of 1935 itself provided for governors special powers, and the very fact that the Congress contested elections on the basis of the act was evidence of the Congress acceptance of the condition (governors special powers). Some Urdu sources indicate that the MIP wished to form a coalition ministry with the Congress, which was not acceptable for the latter even in July 1937. See Rehmani, Maulana [Sajjad] aur Majaalis-e-Qanoon Saaz, 13951. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi. Azad, India Wins Freedom, 167. Ahmad, British Experiment of Responsible Government, 237. AICC Papers. No. G-42/1939. Hasan, The Muslim Mass Contact Campaign, 153. Umair, Talaash-e-Manzil, 25. Hasan (ed.), Indias Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, 1539. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 385.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.


30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

South Asian History and Culture49. 50. 51.

33

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

See Ansari, CongressMomin Relation. This refutation appeared in Naqeeb, an organ of the Imarat-e-Shariah, with the title, Muslim India aur Hindu India ki Scheme par ek aham Tabserah on April 14, 1940. The All India Azad (or Independent) Muslim Conference was rst convened in April 1940 by Maulana Azad and other Congress leaders. In his address to the Conference, Maulana Azad, the then President of the Congress, put forward proposals for overcoming the constitutional deadlock and challenged the Muslim Leagues claim to represent the Muslims of India. On 28 April 1940, the conference passed a resolution which included a declaration beginning: India, with its geographical and political boundaries, is an indivisible whole and as such it is the common homeland of all citizens, irrespective of race or religion, who are joint owners of its resources. Mansergh, The Transfer of Power, 293. Ibid. Fortnightly report for the second half of April 1944, File No. 18/4/44-Home Political (I), National Archives of India (NAI). The Hindu, August 17, 1943. Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement, 62. Ibid., 112. For more details on the rapid rise of the Hindu Mahasabha during 19371947, see Ralhan (ed.), Hindu Mahasabha, vol. 1, 33942, 418, 4317 and vol. 2, 571, 724, 74953. Also see Wadhwa, Hindu Mahasabha, 192847. File No. 28/3/43-Home Political-(I) NAI; and File No. 18/2/44 Home Political-(I), NAI. Fortnightly report for the second half of April 1944, File No. 18/4/44-Home Political (I), National Archives of India (NAI). File No. 28/3/44-Home Political, dated 21/04/1944. File No. 28/3/43, Home Political (I), NAI. DIG-CID, Bihar, July 22, 1944, Government of Bihar Pol. (Spl.) File No. 558/44, Bihar State Archives (BSA). Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement, 195. I have interviewed more than a dozen of such people in the villages of Muzaffarpur and the surrounding districts. See Datta, Freedom Movement in Bihar, 36, 58, 64137. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 432. Rajendra Prasad to Sardar Patel, November 7, 1945. Rajendra Prasad Papers No. 7-5/45-6. Abul Nasr Abdul Baes to Rajendra Prasad. Rajendra Prasad Papers No: 7-5/45-6. Also see Mahajan, Independence and Partition, 215. Mahajan, Independence and Partition, 217. Interview with Asghar Aijazi, son of Maghfoor Aijazi, Muzaffarpur, in December 2000. Also see my essay on Maghfur Aijazis life in Tahzibul Akhlaq. See Ghosh, The 1946 Riot and the Exodus of Bihari Muslims to Dhaka. For details of the riots, see Tucker, Indias Partition and Human Debasement, 18094. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 63247. Pyarelal obtained details from various issues of English dailies like The Searchlight and The Statesman of OctoberNovember 1946. Also see Damodaran, Broken Promises, Chapter 6, and Ghosh, The 1946 Riot. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 636. CID SB 40/1946 cited by Ghosh, The 1946 Riot. Also see Aajiz, Abhi Sun Lo Mujh Se, 93. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 5212, also see Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, Chapters XXV, XXVI. Damodaran, Broken Promises, 34156. Raheem, Tehreek-e-Azadi, 4023. Mansergh, The Transfer of Power, 13940. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 627. Nehru to Patel, November 5, 1946, in Gopal (ed.), SWJN (Second series), 64. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 64950. Ghosh, The 1946 Riot, 282. Ghosh, The Virile and the Chaste in Community and Nation Making, 82, 91. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 681. Ghosh, Partitions Biharis, 235. Also see Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi, 6812. Such impressions are also expressed by the Congress leader Shah Mohammad Umair in his Urdu autobiography Talaash-e-Manzil. Ibid., 26.


3487.

M. SajjadThis is in sharp contrast with Uttar Pradesh where the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu was and is a private efdom of a particular family . . . [it] is less a pressure group than an extension of Congress itself or at least the extension of a particular Congress [parliamentarian] MP, Hayatullah Ansari. See Sonntag, The Political Saliency of Language in Bihar and UP, 6. Also see Hasan, Quest for Power. For details, see Sajjad, Post Colonial Bihar Muslims. Ghosh, Enumerating for Social Justice. Also see Ghosh, Partitions Biharis. See Sajjad, Post Colonial Bihar Muslims.

88. 89. 90.

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