Making of Religious and Linguistic Identities

Religious Identities

• A major type of sectional consciousness bred and often directly fostered by

colonialism was religious division-Hindu and Muslim 'communalism'.
• Clear thinking on this very complex subject has been hindered considerably by
the development in the twentieth century of two opposite stereotypes the
communalist assumption of Hindus and Muslims as homogeneous and
inevitably hostile entities, two 'nations' ever since medieval times; and the
nationalist countermyth of a golden age of perfect amity broken solely by British
divide-and-rule.
• Both stereotypes assume kinds of country-wide integration and uniformity
almost certainly impossible prior to the development of communications and
economic connections in the second half of the nineteenth century.
• Indian nationalism and Hindu and Muslim communalism are in fact both
essentially modern phenomena.
• Instances of local conflicts between Hindus and Muslims may certainly be
found occasionally in past centuries, just as there are numerous instances of
Shia-Sunni clashes and caste quarrels.
• But communal riots do seem to have been significantly rare down to the 1880s.
• Thus in 1944 Coupland, a scholar with clear imperialist affiliations who surely
had no reason to underplay the issue (he even declared that the Hindu-Muslim
problem was 'the cause of the continuance of British rule'), found one major
instance at Benares in 1809 (where Hindus are said to have destroyed 50
mosques), and the next big outbreak only in 1871-72, followed by a series of
riots from 1885 onwards. (R. Coupland, Constitutional Problem in India, p. 29)
• That communalism in a large measure sprang from elite conflicts over jobs and
political favours has long been a truism, and scholars have generally
concentrated on this level alone.
• Thus Francis Robinson's very detailed work on U.P. Muslims frankly excludes
mass riots from its purview through its focus on 'elite groups concerned in
making polities'.
• While the potentially communal dimensions of the Pabna riots or the Moplah
outbreaks were not developed in our period perhaps because of the absence as
yet of a separatist intelligentsia leadership in Bengal or Malabar- Hindu and
Muslim elites were much more evenly balanced in the United Provinces and the
 Punjab, and it was in this region that riots were becoming increasingly common
from the 1880s onwards.
• Socio-economic tensions might have been ultimately responsible in part.
• Thus Hindu peasants faced Muslim talukdars and landlords in large parts of
Awadh and the Aligarh- Bulandshah region, urban Muslim concentrations in U.P.
towns mainly consisted of artisans, shopkeepers and petty traders while most
big merchants and bankers were Hindus, while in the Punjab Hindu traders and
money- lenders easily became unpopular among Muslim peasants.
• But the riots themselves usually occurred over issues quite far removed from
economic grievances.
• In a movement only just beginning to be explored, a rash of rioting over cow-
slaughter spread over much of northern India.
• Gerald Barrier mentions 15 major riots of this type in the Punjab between 1883
and 1891, and such disturbances reached their climax in eastern U.P and Bihar
between 1888 and 1893, the districts worst affected being Ballia, Benares,
Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Arrah, Saran, Gaya and Patna.
• Serious riots occurred also in Bombay city and a number of Maharashtrian
towns between 1893 and 1895.
• A Gujarati mill-owner had organized a cow-protection society in Bombay in
1893,
• Tilak:
→ while an additional aggravating factor was Tilak's reorganization of the
Ganapati festival on a sarvajanik or community basis.
→ Songs written for Ganapati Utsavas
→ Songs urged Hindus to boycott the Muharram,
→ in which they had freely participated before (the reformist journal Sudharak
even commented in 1898 that Muharram had been much more of a national
festival than Ganapati),
→ and some of them were openly inflammatory: "What boon has Allah
conferred upon you/That you have become Mussalmans today? Do not be
friendly to a religion which is alien.... The cow is our mother, do not forget
her.”
• In the industrial suburbs of Calcutta
→ the first recorded riot took place in May 1891,
→ followed by disturbances at Titagarh and Garden Reach during Bakr-Id in
1896
→ and the large-scale Talla riot in north Calcutta in 1897.
Linguistic Identities

• India is a multilingual country and the saying of Bharatendu Harischandra “Hindi,

Hindu and Hindustan” is really a tough job to be achieved.
• But in 19th century by strengthening the languages and giving power in it, a distinct
linguistic identity appeared in many parts of India which in turn sketched a new
nation and reinforced community identities.
• In 19th century India the languages which were considered as an elite class
languages are Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.
• But the real fight in northern part of India was between Hindi and Urdu languages.
Hindi and Urdu languages began to be associated with Hindu and Muslim religion.
• Hindi movement was started in north India in early 19th century against the
preference given to Urdu language by the Government.
• In 1835, Urdu became the official language instead of Persian, in the court of north
India.
• They argued that Urdu script had foreign origins and major portion of north Indian
people uses Hindi.
• They were worried, if Urdu is given preference than the Hindu youths might be
converted in semi-Muslim.
• While the Muslims argued that Urdu originated in India and though its scripts are
foreign but even the rural people spoke Urdu easily.
• They thought that by giving preference to Hindi language with Nagari script by the
Government there are chances of conversion of Muslim youths into Hinduism.
• Hence, conversion of religion from one to another became a major factor behind the
language movement in north India.
• The movement was accelerated after 1857 when Hindu nationalism emerged in
north India and Hindi educated youths opted for government jobs and other
facilities.
• “Hindi, Hindu and Hindustan” became the slogan of Hindi movement.
• Arya Samaj went one step further and demanded Hindi to be the national language.
• The organisations like Nagari Pracharini Sabha in Banaras encourage Hindi language
and attempted to standardize it.
• Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of Allahabad worked to remove Persian and Arabic words
from Hindi and include Sanskrit terms in it.
• Contrariwise, the Muslim elites of northern India tried to highlight Urdu language by
incorporating more and more Arabic and Persian words in it
• As a result of this language movement, from 1850 onwards, the government
recognized Hindi and Lada as separate subjects in schools at lower levels of
education and in the year 1882 and 1883, Hindi became the language of the lower
courts in the Central Province and Bihar.
• The linguistic passion was not continued only among the Hindi and Urdu loving
people but it also spread among the Bengalis, Tamils, Maharashtrians, and
Punjabis.
• In Bengal once again religion played a major role behind linguistic identity Persian
and Arabic words began to be incorporated in Bengali sentences and as a result a
new Musselman Bangla emerged in the vernacular literature.
• Contrariwise, the Bengali Hindu educated scholars accelerated the pace of
reoperating Sanskrit words in Bengali and remove those Persian words from it,
though both sections use the same script.
• In Punjab, the conflict was on the use of Persian and Gurumukhi scripts Though later
the Sikhs swing over to Gurumukhi.
• In 19th century Madras Presidency, Tamil devotion transformed the language into a
primary site of attachment, love and loyalty.
• Tamil language was promoted by various linguistic organizations like South Indian
Tamil Association and Dravidian Languages Association and Tamil emerged as an
autonomous subject in schooling system of education.
• The religious and linguistic identities in the 19th century India smoothen the way for
developing nationalistic sentiments particularly Hindu nationalistic opinions.
• Hindu nationalism once again recharged and restructured on the issues of its own
religious and linguistic identities.
• For Muslims, it was just an effort to revive of their own power and prestige which
they lost due to colonial rule.
• Also in latter half of the 19th century, competition for government jobs, employment
and other administrative benefits, paved the way towards separate identities