By asking Muslims to vote only for co-religionists in elections, Owaisi has renewed an old debate which has the potential to lead to a national crisis
On June 25, Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen declared that henceforth Muslims should only vote for Muslim candidates in elections. Separate electorates, first introduced by the Morley-Minto Reforms in 1909, amounted to the same thing. This, as we shall see, opened the window to Partition, as was recorded by historian KM Panikkar. This repetition of a 20th century demand has enormous potential for a national crisis.
The Indian National Congress was conceived by a British retired bureaucrat, Allan Octavian Hume and was, hence, inaugurated in 1885 with non-communal intentions. There were no elections and no vote banks in those days. It was, therefore, possible to meet, discuss public problems and generally compliment the British Government. The first tremor was felt when Badruddin Tyabji became the Congress chief (1887) and Syed Ahmad Khan cautioned the Muslims to not join the Congress as it was essentially a Hindu party. He went on to reiterate what he had declared at lucknow and a year later in 1888 at Meerut that the Hindus and Muslims were separate nations. Sir Syed’s articulations had two effects. The Congress became sensitive to the two communities being distinct; religion began ceasing to be essentially a personal matter. It also had a public significance.
Second, a quiet ferment began among the upper echelons of Muslims which eventually led 35 eminences led by Sir Aga Khan in October 1906, to call on Viceroy lord Minto with a petition of three demands. One, that Muslims should be given reservations in Government jobs. Two, in any elections, local or Provincial, there should be separate electorates. Third, the Aligarh Muslim University should be recognised as an Islamic institution, although incidentally, the land was donated by a Hindu Raja, Mahendra Pratap and all expenses were met by the Government.
This last demand was rejected while the first two were implemented in the Government of India Act of 1909. In December 1906, the All India Muslim league was set up at Dacca. There was no sound and fury nor any great public reaction but nevertheless, the divide had been sown, making it gradually difficult for politicians to remain blindly neutral between the Muslim pull and the Hindu non-pull. The Congress initially tried to remain indifferent but inevitably, before long, began to respond to the Muslim sensitivity to maintain its national posture. The Hindus began meeting in groups and soon a Punjab Hindu Sabha was formed in 1907 which expanded into the Hindu Mahasabha in 1915. This was followed by the establishment of a Hindu Sangathan in 1921-1922. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. These were the reactions to the Muslim league coming into being and the implicit sympathy it received from the British rulers.
The league was purely a religious-political party which caused anxiety among Hindus especially because Mahatma Gandhi declared on his visit to riot-hit Malabar that the Moplas were doing their duty by Islam. In 1919, the Khilafat movement was launched to retain the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph of Sunni Islam. It was exclusively a Muslim-Sunni cause; Muhammad Ali Jinnah did not support it but Gandhiji headed the committee to steer the movement.
In 1921, he launched the non-cooperation movement against the British and told the Muslim community that success against the foreign rulers would also result in the Caliph attaining victory. This mix-up created a great deal of confusion amongst common Muslims. Soon, upon the violence at Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh, he called off the agitation against the British. The incidental message to the Muslims was that Khilafat would also be lost. All hell broke loose in the Malabar in 1921; it was the Mopla genocide which in-turn led to riots in many parts of the country for years to come. Again, as a reaction, the RSS was founded.
Dr BR Ambedkar, in his book, Thoughts On Pakistan (Thacker & Co), commented lucidly that the Congress had failed to realise two things. First, it failed to realise was that there is a difference between appeasement and settlement; and that the difference is a significant one. Appeasement means buying off the aggressor by conniving in his acts of murder, rape, arson, and loot against innocent people who, for the moment, happen to be the victims of his displeasure. On the other hand, settlement means laying down the bounds which neither party to it can transgress. little wonder, the next 25 years witnessed a virtual civil war between Hindus and Muslims. The medium of this war was intermittent rioting. The second thing the Congress failed to realise was that the policy of concessions increased Muslim aggressiveness and, worse, many Muslims interpreted these concessions as a sign of defeatism on the part of the Hindus.
(The writer is a well-knowncolumnist and an author)
(To be continued)
