The Longest August (11 page)

Jinnah, Scorned, Hits Back

Rebuffed, Jinnah described Congress ministries as the Hindu Raj, in which “Muslims can expect neither justice nor fair play.”
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With khadi-clad ministers in Gandhi caps almost monopolizing the seats of power in eight provincial capitals, it became increasingly difficult for ordinary Muslims as well as non-League Muslim politicians to disagree with Jinnah's assessment. Such was the case with Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, the Unionist chief minister of Punjab, and Huq in Bengal. Responding to friendly overtures from Jinnah, they decided to associate their parties with the League.

On the other side, unlike Gandhi, Nehru did not view fraught Hindu-Muslim relations as a major hindrance to achieving independence. According to him, the League's leadership, consisting of intellectual landlords and capitalists, was cooking up the problem of Hindu-Muslim disharmony, which did not exist at the popular level.
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Having spent time in Europe in 1936, which included a trip to Spain in support of the Republican regime in the civil war, Nehru had started to view politics in class terms, ignoring the different stages of economic development in India and in Europe. At the same time he could not overlook the stark fact that his party had contested only one-eighth of the Muslim seats and had an average of one Congress Muslim MLA in ten of the eleven provinces. To rectify this dismal reality, he initiated a program of mass contact with Muslims.

This led the League's leadership to redouble its earlier drive to create a popular base by recruiting members at the rock-bottom annual subscription of one-eighth of a rupee (two US cents).

Jinnah's pioneering appearance in a long coat and tight pajamas at the Muslim League's annual session in Lucknow in October 1937 was more than symbolic. It signaled the beginning of a new chapter in his political career. It rested on two pillars: opposition to the Congress Party and an uncompromising insistence that the League should be recognized as the only authoritative and representative organization of Indian Muslims.

In his speech he blasted the Congress Party for its hypocrisy, “having complete independence on your lips and the Government of India Act
1935 in your hands.” Summarizing the scenario under the Congress Raj, he said, “Hindi is to be the national language of all India, and the “Vande Mataram” [aka, “Bande Mataram”; Sanskrit: I bow to Mother] is to be the national song, and is to be forced upon all,” and “The Congress flag is to be obeyed and revered by all and sundry.” He then turned to possible Congress-League cooperation in the future. “Honorable settlement can only be achieved between equals, and unless the two parties learn to respect and fear each other, there is no solid ground for any settlement,” he declared. “Politics means power, and not relying only on cries of justice or fair play or good will.” He ended his speech with an appeal to Muslims to join the Muslim League “by hundreds and thousands.”
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At this conference Sir Sikandar decided to associate his Unionist Party with the Muslim League by agreeing to support the League on national issues while implementing the agenda of his own organization, open to non-Muslims (with Sir Chhotu Ram, a Hindu, being the party's deputy leader), in Punjab. Just before attending the League's session, Huq had found his position weakened when his party split, emboldening the Congress opposition. He therefore joined the League while heading his party's rump. To seal Huq's loyalty, Jinnah had him elected leader of the Bengal Muslim League.

Untroubled by factional politics that plagued Bengal and Punjab, Congress ministries removed restrictions on the press and released most political prisoners. They focused on uplifting rural life by improving irrigation, developing traditional crafts, promoting handspun and handwoven cloth while paying particular attention to mitigating the plight of Untouchables. Their reform of the land tenancy law benefited all tenant farmers, Hindu and Muslim. But since most of the sharecroppers were illiterate and lacked voting rights, the potential electoral gain for the party was minimal.

Voters living in urban areas felt the most impact. Here schools and colleges underwent change. The Congress ministries introduced the teaching of Hindi; adulation of Mahatma Gandhi; singing of “Vande Mataram,” which had been banned by the British Raj; and saluting the Congress flag in government-run educational institutions. These moves ran counter to the beliefs and feelings of Muslims, irrespective of their political leanings.

The six-stanza “Vande Mataram” was the most controversial. It appeared as a song sung by Hindu priests in
Ananda Math
(Bengali: Monastery of Bliss), a novel steeped in Hinduism written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1882. Its fourth stanza reads: “Thou art Durga, Lady
and Queen, / With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen, / Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned, / And the Muse a hundred-toned, / Pure and perfect without peer.”

From 1911 onward, Congress leaders had started promoting the poem as the national anthem for free India, the motherland. Over the years their enthusiastic Hindu followers transformed the concept of motherland into Mother India: a matronly goddess with bulging breasts, clad in a colorful sari, holding the tricolor of the Congress Party as if it were a trident held by a militant Hindu god, with a docile calf by her side and embellished with the halo traditionally associated with the goddesses Durga and Lakshmi. Gaudy posters of Mother India were printed by the thousand.

Seven years earlier, Muhammad Iqbal, then a college lecturer in Lahore, had published an anthem for India (Urdu:
Tiran-e Hind
),
Saare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan Hamara
(Urdu: Better Than the Entire World Is Our Hindustan), in the
Ittehad
(Unity) weekly. It was a moving, image-filled ode to the homeland in words that were part of everyday language in North India—a mixture of Urdu and Hindi, called Hindustani, rather than Urdu suffused with Persian words. This patriotic song came to symbolize opposition to the British Raj. Yet it was ignored by Congress leaders.

During the debate on the suitability of “Vande Mataram” as the national anthem for free India in 1937, Rabindranath Tagore in his letter to future Congress president Subash Chandra Bose wrote: “The core of
Vande Mataram
is a hymn to goddess Durga: this is so plain that there can be no debate about it. . . . No Mussalman [Muslim] can be expected patriotically to worship the ten-handed deity as ‘Swadesh' [Our Nation]. . . . Parliament is a place of union for all religious groups, and there the song cannot be appropriate.”
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In Islam, deifying or worshiping anyone or anything other than the One and Only (unseen) God constitutes
shirk
(Arabic: to share)—that is, practicing idolatry or polytheism. Congregational singing of “Vande Mataram” as part of the official protocol during the rule of Congress ministries was one of several points Jinnah broached in his correspondence with Nehru, as Congress president, in 1937–1938. He demanded that this practice be ended.

“It is true that the
Vande Mataram
song has been intimately associated with Indian nationalism for more than 30 years and numerous associations of sentiment and sacrifice have gathered around it,” replied Nehru. “During all these thirty or more years
Vande Mataram
was never
considered to have any religious significance and was treated as a national song in praise of India. Nor, to my knowledge, was any objection taken to it except on political grounds by the Government. When, however, some objections were raised, the Working Committee carefully considered the matter and ultimately recommended [in October 1937] that certain stanzas, which contain certain allegorical references, might not be used on national platforms or occasions. The two stanzas which have been recommended by the Working Committee for use as a national song have not a word or phrase which can offend anybody from any point of view.”
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Obviously, he and Jinnah were operating on different wavelengths.

As for the national language, Jinnah wanted Urdu to be accorded this status. Nehru pointed out that the policy of the Congress was to make Hindustani, as written both in (Sanskrit) Devnagri and (Persian) Urdu scripts, the national language, and that both scripts should be officially recognized, and the choice left to the people concerned. In practice, to teach Hindustani to a class of Hindu and Muslim pupils required a teacher well versed in two scripts. Such teachers did not exist. So Hindustani was taught in the Devnagri script only.

Within the Congress, Nehru represented the modern, secular trend. Yet he overlooked the conflation of the abstract concept of praise of the motherland into a Hindu goddess called Bharat Mata, and the origins of “Vande Mataram” in Goddess Durga, as pointed out by the nationalist poet-philosopher Tagore. On the other side in the Congress was Patel, a proto-Hindu nationalist with cordial relations with the communalist Hindu Mahasabha. Patel supervised the functioning of the Congress ministries—and did so with an iron rod.

The assuming of power by the Congress Party exposed the fault line between Hindu nationalists and secular nationalists within it. Secular nationalists perceived the anti-imperialist movement as aiming to end Britain's imperial rule and transform the enslaved India into a sovereign state. But Hindu nationalists, who took a longer view of India's history and formed a significant part of the Congress, regarded the party as the vehicle to end the subjugation that the Hindu majority had suffered since 1192, when the Afghan conquerors set up a sultanate in Delhi. Pre­eminent among the nationalists were Patel and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Indeed, Malaviya, who served as Congress president in 1909–1910 and 1918–1919, was elected president of the Hindu Mahasabha, an unambiguously Hindu nationalist organization, in 1922.

As for Jinnah, he did more than complain to Nehru in his correspondence. A committee chaired by the Muslim League leader Muhammad Mehdi of Pirpur published a document that among other points debunked Nehru's arguments. And, feeling the heat of the hyperactive Congress opposition in Bengal, Huq issued his report in mid-1939, titled “Muslim Sufferings Under Congress Rule.”

To the relief of the League's leaders, midway through their five-year tenure, Congress ministries resigned in the wake of the war in Europe.

Point of No Return

Exercising his authority as viceroy and commander in chief of India, Lord Linlithgow declared before the CLA on September 3, 1939, that India was at war with Nazi Germany following its invasion of Poland. He promulgated the draconian Defense of India Act 1939.

Protesting vehemently against the viceroy's unilateral decision, the CWC said that it would cooperate with Britain if a new national government was formed and promised India independence after the war. But, it added, first the viceroy must state the war's aims. Lord Linlithgow referred the CWC to the speech by the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. That, however, only referred to peace in Europe and an adjustment of international relations. The words “freedom” and “democracy” did not appear there or in the viceroy's statements. Therefore, on October 22, obeying the CWC's instruction, Congress ministries in eight provinces resigned. The viceroy imposed direct rule. This left the remaining three provincial cabinets intact.

In stark contrast, Jinnah urged Muslims to cooperate with the British Raj at this “critical and difficult juncture.” To poke the Congress in the eye, on December 2 he called on Muslims to observe December 22, a Friday, as the “Day of Deliverance” from the “oppression” of the “Hindu” ministries. He urged them to offer thanksgiving after the congregational prayer and hold public meetings. The widespread response by Muslims heartened him and his colleagues. The high point of the day was a rally in the Bhindi Bazaar (Muslim) neighborhood of Bombay, which was addressed not only by Jinnah but also by the Untouchables' leader, Bhimarao Ramji Ambedkar.

Responding to the dramatic events before and soon after the outbreak of the war, Gandhi ended his semiretirement from politics. The CWC
started conferring in Wardha to be near his ashram in Sevagram. Working with Nehru, Gandhi tried to persuade Jinnah to call off the observance of the Day of Deliverance. He pointed out that Nehru had agreed to a third-party review of the League's claims of the Congress Party's mistreatment of Muslims. In return Jinnah demanded that the Congress stop dealing with Muslims unaffiliated with the League. Nehru refused.

Gandhi and the CWC decided to show that the support the Congress enjoyed among Muslims was not insubstantial. At Gandhi's behest, the delegates at the annual session of the Congress in Ramgarh, Bihar, elected Maulana Abul Kalam Muhiyuddin Ahmed Azad president on March 18, 1940.
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Born of Indian parents in Mecca, he grew up in Calcutta. An Islamic scholar with a well-trimmed mustache and goatee, wearing a black astrakhan cap, he was a poet fluent in Urdu, Arabic, and Persian who had the distinction of being elected Congress president at the age of thirty-five, in 1923.

On March 23 the Muslim League session in Lahore adopted its landmark resolution. It said that since Muslims were “a nation by any definition,” the League demanded a constitution whereby “the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India, should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units will be autonomous and sovereign.”
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The resolution, proposed by Huq, was adopted unanimously.

Jinnah spelled out his two-nation theory:

It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders. . . . The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor inter-dine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their [perspectives] on life, and of life, are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and [have] different episode[s]. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent, and final destruction of any fabric that may be [so] built up for the government of such a state.
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