Discuss the Factors Responsible for the Growth of

Communalism in India from the late nineteenth century to 1935

Introduction
Bipan Chandra has defined communalism as “the belief that because a group of people
follow a particular religion, they have common social, political and economic interests.”
According to him, there are three basic elements/phases of the communal ideology. These
are:

1. The notion of socio-political communities defined entirely by their religion as the

fundamental unit of social organisation rather than class or linguistic-cultural units; this in
turn gives rise to the idea of the larger corporate interests of the community.

2. This leads to second phase i.e. the development of the belief that various religious
communities have dissimilar and divergent interests which are mutually exclusive.

3. This in turn leads to the belief that these mutually exclusive interests are entirely
incompatible and antagonistic in nature and thus these units can have absolutely no interests
in common with each other.

Chandra has described communalism as a product of ‘false consciousness’. According to

him, because a religious community doesn’t possess any overarching interests in the secular
domains because of various internal divisions on the basis of economic condition or language
or culture, the idea of the ‘defence of the community’s interests’ is not just a sectarian or
narrow view of the society, it is, categorically and unequivocally, the wrong view of the
social conditions, and all political action based on this is also, by extension, wrong.
Nationalism on the other hand, in his conception represents the ‘true consciousness’ of the
Indian populace, based on the correct view of the society, which represented the struggle
against colonialism and also accounted for the ‘real’ differences or divergences in the Indian
society based on language, culture, class etc.

This strict dichotomy between communalism and nationalism was also supported by
Gyanendra Pandey. Discussing the unique semantic implications of the term in the
specifically Indian context, he argues that communalism is a form of colonialist knowledge,
standing for the “puerile and the primitive”, highlighting the essence of the Indian society for
the colonialists: its religious bigotry and its fundamentally irrational character, “inborn and
endemic” among the natives, who needed a strong, impartial hand to govern them. Thus, for
him the colonial construction of communalism was an instrument to essentialise the Indian
society and deny the residents any form of agency or even consciousness.

While the widespread usage of the term, according to him, can be traced back to the debates
surrounding the Morley-Minto reforms and the Montague-Chelmsford reforms, where the
participants freely used terms such as ‘communal feeling’ and ‘communal representation’,
the real usage of this term in the specifically Indian sense began only in the 1920s, prior to
which the popular conception of the Indian society had been as an aggregate of different
religious communities, each with a different culture and history. 1920s onwards, there was a
shift towards an individualist, citizen-oriented view of the Indian nation rather than the
previous communitarian view. Those who continued to adhere to the former view became the
communalists and those who adopted the latter view became the nationalists. Thus, his
conception emphasises on the shared genealogy and the fundamental differences between
communalism and nationalism. Indeed, according to him, the concept of ‘communalism’ was
moulded into its fully developed Indian form by the nationalists by the repeated use in order
to expose its reactionary, narrow and opportunistic nature.

The revisionist view on the communal problem in modern India, articulated by scholars such
as Ayesha Jalal has sought to challenge the various concepts and ideas that have been taken
for granted in conventional historiography. Thus, she has rejected the ‘communal-national’
binary as stated by the nationalist and subaltern historians because according to her it blurs
the overlap between the “materialistic and the spiritual domains” and the “colonial public
and the indigenous private spheres.” She also rejects communalism as a negative term which
delegitimizes and brands as inaccurate all forms of articulations of cultural differences
against an inclusive and homogenising nationalism. Thus, she has sought to replace the
offending term with “communitarianism”. She also questions the idea of “Muslim
separatism” which had for long held currency among historians as a contradiction in terms,
given that the larger Indian nationalism itself was in a state of flux and in the process of
being forged through debate and negotiation. To her, what has hitherto been branded as
Muslim separatism was in fact voices seeking a place in the emerging nationalist discourse
and trying to accommodate their sense of cultural difference with the larger idea of
Nationhood, and the stigmatisation of these legitimate efforts as ‘communalism’ played a
critical role in the bringing about the alienation of Muslims. Thus, for her, even the
supposedly inclusive nationalism can be exclusive because of its inability get rid of religious
majoritarianism which had conditioned it.

Furthermore, she has argued against the traditional perception of a unified ‘Muslim’
approach to politics or the idea that Islam somehow pre-determined their secular interests,
asserting that these ideas are based on literal readings of Islamic normative theory which
believed in the brotherhood of the believers, which hardly translated to the practical realm.
Rather, they were divided on a wide range of issues, religious and secular and displayed as
much individualism as the followers of any other religion. Though, there were various
figures who practiced the politics of religious difference, their actions cannot be entirely
comprehended through the narrow viewfinder of the communal-national binary. Asim Roy
has also spoken against this natural tendency among historians to “essentialise and
homogenise Islam” and has called for greater emphasis to be placed on the differences and
diversity among the Muslims.

Thus we see that a variety of interpretations were advanced regarding

communalism/communitarianism and its dimensions in Modern India over the past several
decades. Similarly, various reasons have been advanced in an effort to understand its origins
and growth. This essay shall look at the various theories in detail.

I
According to Bipan Chandra, the growth of communalism in modern India was a result of
the emergence of modern politics, based on the people and thus dependent upon the
conditioning and the mobilisation of the public opinion and public participation, which stood
in stark contrast to the pre-colonial era based on autocracy where the only expression of
public opinion was to found in the form of violent antidisestablishmentarian rebellions.

This new politics of mobilisation of large sections of the populace to gain attention of the
policymakers of the colonial state forged wider links and loyalties among the people and thus
led to the adoption of new “uniting principles” which cut across a large community.
According to him, a populace that was still at the nascent stage of political consciousness
continued to define themselves along pre-modern lines of caste, locality, religion etc in an
effort to make overarching linkages to develop “new identities and ideologies”. In this state
of political ideological flux, religious consciousness was transformed into communal
consciousness, albeit only in certain sections of the population in the absence of the full
development of national or class consciousness, which to substantial degree was a result of
the failure of the nationalist leadership to broadcast their views properly and unite them in
the anti imperial struggle.

II
Chandra has also argued that communalism was the by-product of the colonial character of
the Indian economy and its severely stunted development, which resulted in economic
stagnation, which in turn made possible the division and radicalisation of the society,
especially among the middle classes.
The absence of the proper development of industries, education, health services in this view
had a particularly significant impact on the urban middle classes, which didn’t possess the
option of falling back on land cultivation. This stagnation resulted in intense competition for
the available resources and employment opportunities in fields such as law, health services,
education, trade, and government jobs. Particularly significant in this regard was the highly
skewed nature of the pre-independence era job market, with the main avenue for employment
being government service in fields such as education, health, administration etc. Thus, as late
as 1951 over 3.3 million people in India were employed by the government and only 1.2
million were engaged in various factories and manufacturing units.

Apart from the micro-level manoeuvres such as nepotism and bribery, the middle classes
increasingly began to resort to identity based mobilisation along the lines of caste, region and
most importantly, religion in an effort to rally support behind their cause and to enhance their
chances to succeed. This discontent was then manipulated by the ‘representatives’ of the
religious communities to secure concessions from the colonial state, which in turn supplied
legitimacy to communal politics and created an even wider base for it. This phenomenon
only grew as time passed and education spread to the well off sections of the peasantry, thus
extending the pool of job-seekers to the rural areas. These youths, streaming into the urban
areas then resorted to communal reservations to secure employment, thereby expanding the
reach of communalism to the rural areas, where it was hitherto unknown.

Thus, the significant imbalance made communal and casteist politics an excellent instrument
for pressurising the government into granting concessions such as reservations and
nominations. Such politics was also used to secure political positions such as seats in
legislatures and municipal bodies.

This view has also found support from scholars such as Ayesha Jalal, who cited instances
such as the Hindi-Urdu language debate, which was subsequently converted from a cultural
to a communitarian issue, the origins of which can be found among the jobless youths who
were looking to influence the colonial language policy in their favour to make getting
government employment easier for them.

III
Apart from this, communalism resulted from the distortion of conflicts between different
religious groups, which found their origins in purely secular or non-religious factors such as
economic exploitation and oppression, and giving them a religious spin. Such distortion was
made possible by the peculiarities of the Indian social development, where religion and
social/class distinctions happened to coincide. Thus, often, the Hindus would be the
moneylenders or the landowners, while their debtors or tenants happened to be Muslims.
Conflicts between these groups were often portrayed as religious rather than socio-economic
in nature. This distortion could be brought about by communal politicians, who used such
instances to try to manipulate public opinion in his favour. One example of this is the
uprising of the predominantly Muslim Moplah peasantry against their Hindu landlords,
inspired purely by economic aims, which broke out soon after the decline of the Khilafat-
Non Cooperation movement, which had seen unprecedented displays of Hindu-Muslim
unity, and was thus portrayed by the Hindu communal groups as the stab in the back for the
Hindu community, while the Muslim communal groups portrayed it as just comeuppance for
the harsh treatment meted out by the Hindu landowners to the Muslim peasantry.

At other times, it may be the observer in the form of the journalist, the historian or the
official who supplies the communal colour to the social conflict as a result of their conscious
or unconscious bias. Thus, Gyanendra Pandey has cited the example of the colonial
historiography of the Banaras riots of 1809 and the factual discrepancies that crept in over
the course of the century and how, even the bare facts of the outbreak were highly coloured
with prejudices and biases of the recorders. Thus the site of outbreak of the riots shifted from
the outskirts of the city to the heart of the city, the casualties rose from twenty to several
hundred, and the causes of conflict changed from the pollution to Lat Bhairav temple to
dispute over Muharram Processions to the construction of a mosque near the Vishwanatha
temple. This reductionist and essentialist approach to social conflict, which sought to distil
everything into religious disputes, voided of all other significance played a very significant
role in the later development of the colonialist narrative of continuous religious tension
among Indians which was later co-opted by the communalists.

IV
Various scholars, such as R P Dutt, W C Smith, John Mclane and more recently, Bipan
Chandra have also argued that Communalism emerged as the weapon of the economically
and politically reactionary upper classes such as the semi-feudal landlords, merchants,
moneylenders etc, who sought to use it to divert and distort political struggles and prevent
the masses from unifying along class/national lines and to turn them away from their real
socio-economic interests. Thus, according to them, the ‘rational upper-classes’ whipped up
communal fury among the ‘ignorant’ peasant masses, which were entirely secular in their
original consciousness and even tending towards unity along national lines, for their narrow
economic ends, and also actively manipulated middle classes to achieve their goals. One
major example of this as cited by Chandra was the that of Punjab, where the big Muslim
landlords tried to protect their own economic interests by using communal propaganda to
divert the anger of the small Muslim cultivators against the Hindu traders and moneylenders.

However, Gyanendra Pandey has challenged this notion, arguing that this sharp dichotomy
maintained between the elite and the mass mentalities and their forms of politics only works
to substitute the colonial ideas of the “irrationality of the orient” and replaces it with a
“universal bourgeois rationality” i.e. the fixed and unflinching pursuit of one’s own self
interest above all else, which in his opinion is equally ahistorical in nature and glosses over
the specificities of historical consciousness in a specific time and place such as solidarity,
status, sense of honour, in other words all human elements of the phenomenon and reduce it
to mechanical paradigm. Moreover, he has criticised this approach as being essentialist in
nature, ultimately placing too much faith in the general “stupidity” of the people who get
manoeuvred into taking the same action over and over again, and ultimately, “wishing away”
the real, lived experiences of the populace under discussion.

V
A substantial part of the blame for the origins and the growth of communalism in modern
India has also been allocated to the pronounced Hindu influence on the Nationalist thought
and forms of propaganda by a diverse array of scholars ranging from Bipan Chandra to
Ayesha Jalal. This was noticeable especially in the early 1900s, when many extremists
actively drew upon and employed Hindu religious motifs and idioms to broadcast their
message and to mobilise larger numbers of people. Thus, Bal Gangadhar Tilak used festivals
celebrating Shivaji and Ganapati to indoctrinate the masses with the nationalist creed, while
the struggle to halt the proposed partition of Bengal started with ceremonial dips in the river
Ganges. Indeed, C.A Bayly has highlighted the close relationship between the early attempts
of the Congress to spread nationalism and the “Hindu Sectional Groups” such as the Prayag
Hindu Samaj and the Madhya Hindu Samaj, and how nationalism in the early twentieth
century had a remarkably conservative and revivalist strain especially in the United
Provinces. Thus, according to Pandey, Indian nationalism, for much of its nascent period was
forced to wear two faces fro “tactical reasons”: the modernist one, based on ideas from
Europe and the “dharmic” one, derived from the pre-colonial culture of India. This two-faced
attitude did much to alienate the educated and politically conscious Muslims from the
emerging Nationalist discourse.

Apart from this, the communal tone of literature being published in various vernacular
languages which were aimed to generate national consciousness also served to vitiate Hindu-
Muslim harmony. A notable example of this would be that of Anand Math by Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee, which portrayed Muslim rulers and officials as tyrants and autocrats.
This, along with other such texts being published around this time generated bitterness and
resentment, especially among the literate Muslims. Indeed, Ayesha Jalal has highlighted their
highly negative reception of the works of Bankim Chandra and other nationalist authors who
adopted a similar tone. This invocation of religious symbology and the couching of
Nationalism in explicitly communal terms, especially at such a critical moment when
national consciousness was in its nascent form made notion of the Congress as the party of
Hindus alone easily credible for the politically active Muslims.

According to Pandey, the 1920s saw a shift in the Congress perceptions regarding religion,
and sought to relegate it to the private sphere. Thus leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and
Gandhi pushed for a secular view of the nation, standing for the larger overarching interests
of the nation rather than narrow sectional interests based on religion. Thus, a communal-
national binary was created, with the stigmatisation of the former as reactionary and
opportunists, thereby closing the door for any articulation of different identities and ending
effectively all possibilities of rapprochement with the Muslim League or any other such
communal organisation. Such a declaration, coming at a time when religion had infected
practically all aspects of public life, did much to alienate the more religiously inclined
sections of the population, especially the Muslims, for whom such articulations of secularism
smacked of rank hypocrisy, seeing how the Congress itself had actively drawn upon Hindu
symbolism to mobilise the masses in its earlier phases. Thus, such statements, according to
Ayesha Jalal, scarcely assuaged the Muslim fears of Hindu bigotry and seemed to them like
“exclusion by obfuscation”.

VI
Connected to this is Chandra’s argument that it was a highly perverted and distorted reading
of history which contributed to the development and spread of communal consciousness in
India and formed the “backbone of its ideology”. The first step in perpetrating this distorted
view of history was taken by James Mill in the 19th century in his History of British India,
wherein, in his effort to highlight the religiosity of India referred to the ancient period as the
“Hindu Era” and the medieval era as the “Muslim Era”. This religiously informed paradigm
was subsequently adopted by other British and Indian historians, and as a result, the teaching
as well as the dissemination of history at a popular level all came to defined from a
communal perspective, which in turn indoctrinated the youth in this ideology from an early
age, thus fostering its growth and spread. Such an interpretation of history also gained
currency through dramas, historical romances and through private discussions.

Such ideas, as Pandey has highlighted could also be internalised by the supposedly liberal
and progressive intellectuals. Thus, he has shown how scholars and lawyers such as RC Dutt
and BN Dar categorically blamed the Muslim rule for the downfall of the Hindus, and the
need for unity among them to decisively throw out the British.

Thus, according to Chandra, a very clear and false dichotomy was established between the
Muslims, who were bracketed as the tyrannous rulers, who had converted large numbers of
Hindus to Islam by force, and the Hindus as the oppressed masses, thereby reducing history,
especially medieval history to a single, unbroken story of conflict between the two groups.
Furthermore, the Hindu communalist propaganda also portrayed the ancient era in India as a
putative ‘Golden Age’, which turned into a period of decline and decay with the coming of
the Muslim sultans, while Muslims communalist organisations derived upon the centuries of
‘Muslim rule’ over India to claim superior right to its rulership over India, thus creating
divisions among the communities.

VII
Bipan Chandra and others have also sought to highlight the role played by the British policy
of “Divide and Rule”. According to him, the British deliberately sought to promote
dissension and enfissure the Indian society in an effort to counter the rising tide of
Nationalism. Thus, they sought to portray communalism as the defence of minority rights
against majoritatianism and indeed, the disunity among Hindus and the Muslims constituted
one of the principal planks to justify continued colonial rule in India.

Chandra has identified several elements which constituted this policy of Divide and Rule,
such as: the privileging of religion based communities as the basic socio-political units into
which India was divided, and their acceptance that they posed distinct and antagonistic
interests, thereby negating the conception of India as a composed of individual citizens; by
granting official patronage to communal institutions and by readily accepting the demands of
communal organisations, especially Muslim groups, thus granting them with legitimacy and
strengthening them, instances of which include the establishment of separate electorates in
1909, the Communal Award of 1932, the absolute veto granted to Muslim League in all
matters of British political engagement with the Indians, especially during the Second World
War and by accepting various communalists as the respective spokesmen of their
communities, thus seeking to belie the Nationalist claims of speaking for the entire nation;
the lackadaisical attitude displayed in curbing riots and exceptional tolerance shown to
communal press, especially in contrast to the attitude displayed against the Nationalist press
and overall passivity in the face of growing support base and virulence of communalism.

Scholars have also highlighted various other facets of the British policy which played a role
in generating and fostering communalism. Thus, Ayesha Jalal has criticised the colonial
policy of privileging religion above all other markers of identity and defining India as an
“aggregate of different religions” along with the ‘rationalist’ and ‘scientific’ insistence on
classifying the society along the lines of majority and minority, which according to her gave
rise to politics of identity, emphasising on the differences rather than similarities among the
people who happened to belong to different religions. Thus, the members of the majority and
of the minority vigorously pushed for the claims of their respective religious “communities”
and this emerging dialectic played a critical role in communitarian identity formation. These
differences only grew with the extension of the elective principal and franchise, as it created
further incentive to focus on narrow sectarian politics to gain popular support. After a point,
even the action of appointing a person to a public office began to be seen, not as rewarding
merit, but as an extension of the policy of balancing the various interests of the communities.
Thus, in fields such as government appointment, Muslims were seen as the victims of the
intrigues of the Hindus, and claims were made about how Hindus were physiognomically
unfit for government appointments.

Gyanendra Pandey has also emphasised upon the role played by the colonial census officials
in the consolidation of religious identities in India. According to him, their drives of
classification of every facet of the society into clear-cut quantities pushed the Hindu and
Muslim lower caste communities, which had hitherto maintained a very syncretic and mixed
form of religious practice to aspire to a “purer” status within their respective religions, which
in turn prompted a purge of all perceived foreign elements, thereby creating more sharply
divided communities, more aware of the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

He has also argued that the privileging of religion by the colonial state did much to give rise
to the idea of long existing religious communities which served as the basic units of the
society and needed education and protection to thrive and prosper. According to him, in an
age when “political leaders were supposed to service the country and the community”, any
leader who professed to represent any religious community would have to do everything
possible to safeguard its interests, which in turn led to division and competition among the
‘leaders’ of the various religious communities, which further fostered communal division.

A similar argument has also been propounded by Asim Roy who has argued that the
Orientalist scholarship, with its knowledge of India rooted firmly in various normative
religious texts did much to perpetrate the idea of distinct religious communities with
competing interests. This was later built upon by Colonial officials who had a reductionist
and essentialist approach towards Islam, such as W. W. Hunter, who spoke of the “nation of
Musalmans”. This approach was later co-opted by Muslim and subsequently Hindu
communalists who claimed to speak for the entire community.

VIII
Another point that has been highlighted by Bipan Chandra and elaborated upon by
Gyanendra Pandey is regarding the role played by religious reformers and revivalists who
spoke against syncretistic practices and the reverence offered to various sufi saints such as
Ghazi Mian in Western Bihar and the “Panch Pir”, worshipped in Eastern U.P. by people of
all religious denominations, especially among the lower castes. Thus, by the 1900s, the
Wahabi preachers began to spread their influence among the Julaha community of weavers
in places such as Mhow, Mubarakpur etc and thus, the pressure upon them to become ‘pure
Muslims’, according to Pandey increased. Their proselytisation and pamphleteering led to a
general rise of Islamic consciousness among the Muslim populace, creating a general
impetus towards “Ashrafisation” i.e. assumption of distinctly Arabic names, harsher
enforcement of the Sharia, purging their religious practices of all ‘unislamic’ elements and
overall adoption of various practices which had previously been confined to the upper classes
in an effort to become ‘pure Muslims’ and thus gain similar social status as the Ashraf
classes.

This process also played out among the Hindus as well, especially with the emergence of
Cow Protection as a significant issue from the 1880s onwards, spearheaded by the Arya
Samaj. Thus, there was an emergence of several Gaurakshini Sabhas, first in Punjab and then
in other parts of North and Central India. The movement lasted for the next several decades,
and was spread through propaganda at large religious gatherings and cattle fairs. The
movement was marked with significant social outreach and considerable militancy and often
assumed the form of Hindu-Muslim riots, which scarred the relations between the two
communities significantly. The leadership of the movement was comprised of Rajputs,
Brahman and Bhumihar men: the “true-blue Zamindari castes of the Bhojpur region” and
their leadership of the movement can very well be interpreted as an effort not just to recover
“Hindu Prestige”, but also as a Zamindari attempt to assert status and dominance over the
larger Hindu ‘community’. However, the leadership of the movement was also comprised of
the less privileged sections of the society such as the Ahirs and the Gwalas, who, according
to Pandey were the “marginally clean castes [aspiring to full] cleanness” by highlighting
their own staunch religiosity and hardliner attitude on an “issue of grave religious concern”.

IX
Scholars such as Ayesha Jalal have sought to highlight the role played by the fledgeling press
and publications industry in shaping and spreading the notions of communitarian identity.
According to her, it was the dialogue between the colonial state and the various Indian
communities, trying to project their religious identities for political ends through print, which
“injected the element of ideological differentiation among the populace”. Thus, the
conception of Muslims, as a distinct community with distinct set of interests was vigorously
pursued by its various newspapers, motivated by the aims of countering the claims of the
Hindus and two influence the colonial policy, and a similar plan of action was also followed
by the Hindu press.

Apart from this, she has also argued that newspapers played a critical role in developing a
representation of “the collective quality of events based on artificial perspectives of
homogeneity and connectedness”, thus leading to the formation of the notion of overarching
communities outside the locality level and in this way performed their part in the process on
identity construction and propagation of communitarian ideas, for the relationship between
the press and newspapers, already tainted with a religious bias and specific instances of
tensions in various towns and villages in various parts of the province or the country, which
often took the form of sensationalist coverage of various conflicts over social spaces
resulting from religious revivalist activities such as cow protection movements or music
before mosques, led to religious polarisation, and regardless of the low circulation of these
newspapers, the message did spread through word of mouth and ended up poisoning the
communitarian relations in the relatively harmonious regions.

X
The exclusionary views of the activists demanding the adoption of Hindi language in the
Nagari script as an official language by the colonial government, according to Jalal also
played a major role in creating a specific link between language and identity which had
scarcely existed before, especially for the “besieged” urduphonic Muslim minority.

According to her, the origins of this linguistic conflict can be traced back to the development
of parallel systems of vernacular education in the North West Provinces and the Punjab,
where the schools teaching Hindi-Nagari accounted for 62% of the total student strength,
while Urdu-Persian, which was an official language for transacting business as recognised by
the colonial state, accounted only for 35%. Thus, far more students graduated in Hindi than
could reasonably expect to find state employment. Another contributing factor was the
“footloose” population of Bengalis who had spread across various provinces in search for
government employment and who thought that because Hindi-Nagari was closer to their own
language, they would find securing employment far more easier if it was one of the official
languages.

On the other side of the trenches, the ‘National Muhammadan Association’ functioning from
Calcutta sent a Memorial to the Provincial Government, speaking against the introduction of
Hindi as a language of functioning in the lower courts of Bihar, which according to them was
tantamount to expelling Muslims from government jobs, seeing as they were already reeling
under the sudden decision of the government to transact the business of upper government
entirely in English. This memorial also found support among the Ashraf classes in Punjab,
who played the minority card and claimed backwardness in government employment.

This issue launched a verbal war among the different factions through the means of the
newspapers, which actively invoked the linguistic affiliations of the different religious
communities in an effort to influence the colonial state and the Indian opinion. Thus, the
state was accused of favouring the Muslims by trying to stifle Hindi and force a foreign
language upon the Hindus by the Hindu press, while the Muslim press arrogantly talked of
the absorption of Hindi in the Persian script and the complete abolition of Nagari.
As time progressed, the linguistic issue was appropriated for more radically communitarian
issues and finally became an “appendage” to communitarian politics, “taken from the domain
of culture and to the churning maelstrom of politics”, where it was a no holds barred fight,
and thus contributed to the widening of the communitarian breach.

XI
Apart from these general factors that can be held responsible for the development of
communalism in Modern India, various political events and the topical reactions generated
by them also played a major role in the growth of religious conflict.

One of the most significant events in Indian constitutional history, the Indian Councils Act of
1909 or the Morley-Minto reforms have also been blamed for the rise of communalism in
India, seeing as they were the progenitors of the infamous “separate electorates” which made
special provisions for representations of Muslims through constituencies where only
Muslims would be allowed to compete and given the franchise. This way, the colonial state
hoped to prop the upper class Muslim community as a barrier against the Nationalist
movement and call into question the credentials of the Congress to represent the whole of
India, and thus legitimised Communal politics. These separate electorates were preserved
and expanded under the Government of India Act of 1919 and the Communal Award of
1932, which created further incentive for politicians to appeal to narrow sectarian interests
and practice nepotism in appointments to public offices, which militated against communal
harmony.

Another major political even which gave rise to much communal disharmony was the decline
of the Khilafat-Non Cooperation movement. Gandhi’s incorporation of the Khilafat
movement into the larger nationalist struggle in order to develop Hindu-Muslim unity went a
great way in developing rapport between the two communities. However, by 1922, the
movement was bogged down by internal divisions and while the Non-Cooperation
movement was halted after the Chauri-Chaura incident, the Khilafat movement too
eventually came to an ignominious end with the formal abolition of the Caliphate in 1924.
However, a major side-effect of the movement was the strengthening of Muslim identity as
the overzealous ulema who were pressed into service during the movement made ample
usage of religious imagery to mobilise the Muslim masses, which led to radicalisation and
communal tensions, which were further heightened by the outbreak of riots in Malabar and
East Bengal, though born out of economic and social reasons, involving Hindus and
Muslims. This vitiated the communal harmony considerably and precipitated a counter-
mobilisation of the Hindus. Thus, the Arya Samaj commenced militant Shuddhi and
Sangathan campaigns to ‘purify’ and organise the Hindu community. The Muslims in turn
responded with Tanzim and Tabligh campaigns to spread the message of Islam among the
masses and to organise the community of believers against the ‘other’. The Hindu
Mahasabha also saw a considerable revival during this period, playing a major role in
undercutting the support for the Khilafat-Swaraj Party alliance and swept the Municipal
elections in 1925. Its actions also led to riots in Allahabad and Lucknow. Its sympathisers in
the Congress also played a major role in torpedoing the efforts made by Jinnah and the
Muslim league to renegotiate the Lucknow Pact, which had formed the basis for an
understanding between the two parties.

Apart from this, another notable development was the upsurge against the all-white Simon
Commission, which prompted the liberal elements from the Congress and the Muslim
League to come together to formulate a constitutional framework of India when it gained
Dominion status. Thus, a committee was assembled under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal
Nehru. The most significant aspect of this report for our study is its abortive attempt to
resolve the Communal problem and the responses that it evoked from various factions in
Indian politics. The provisions of the report stated that Separate Electorates would be
withdrawn in favour of Joint Electorates with reservations for the minorities, 1/3 Muslim
representation for the Muslims in the Central Legislature and proportional representation in
the Punjab and Bengal assemblies and the creation of three new Muslim majority provinces.
The offer, presented at the December Session of the League in 1927 prompted a split
between the Jinnah faction and the Muhammad Shafi factions. Hindu communalist pressure
from Punjab and Maharashtra, which had found the idea of the creation of new Muslim
majority provinces and weighted representation in Punjab and Bengal intolerable, forced the
Congress to retreat, and Jinnah’s demands for a compromise at an all-parties meeting in
Calcutta in 1928 was rejected by the Hindu Mahasabha. Ultimately, the Shafi and Jinnah
factions united and Jinnah published his famous fourteen points in 1929, reiterating his
demand for the separate electorates.

Conclusion
Thus we saw the various factors that have been held responsible for the emergence of
Communalism in Modern India. As is evident, it was a highly diverse and complex set of
circumstances that birthed communalism in India and various historians have presented their
views about them. The phenomenon developed over a long period of time, beginning from
the late nineteenth century, and reaching maturity by 1940s, and eventually leading to the
partition, and was a result of both, internal flaws and active British encouragement through
the “Divide and Rule” policy.

Works Cited
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Chandra, Bipan et al. India's Struggle for Independence . New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1989.

Hasan, Mushirul & Roy, Asim (eds.). Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History
and Politics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Jalal, Ayesha. Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam Since
1850. New York: Routledge Press, 2001.

Pandey, Gyanendra. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1997.

Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India: 1885-1947. New Delhi: Macmillan Press, 1989.