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Two-Nation theory and riots

Two-Nation theory and riots

Author: Prafull Goradia
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 1, 2002

Hardly a year passes without a Hindu-Muslim riot in some part of the country or the other. Until Independence, the common perception was that the British policy of divide and rule led to riots. When, however, Nehruvian secularism prevailed across the country, there was little change. The Left government in Kerala could not prevent rioting on the streets of Mattancherry at Kochi. Nor could the DMK prevent communal clashes in Coimbatore or Chennai. Neither was the BJP able to avert the recent trouble in Gujarat.

Evidently, the cause of Hindu-Muslim riots lies much deeper than governmental authority or the law and order machinery. Are they a symptom of the virus called the Two-Nation theory? If so, it is necessary to be aware that this theory did not begin with Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah or with the Muslim league's Pakistan Resolution at Lahore on March 23, 1940. Nor was Chaudhri Rahmat Ali, studying at Cambridge University in 1933, the author of this theory. His credit is confined to innovating the name "Pakistan".

While presiding over the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930, the famous poet, Muhammad Iqbal, had said: "Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is perfectly justified." And later, "The formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims."

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, in his early years, edited an Urdu journal called Al Hilal. When someone asked him as to which political party should Indian Muslims join, he replied: "Mussalmans need not join any party. They are the ones who for centuries made the world join their party and follow their path. They constitute the Party of God or Hizbullah." Azad's message was clear that all the Muslims were special and, evidently, no non-Muslim could be a member of Hizbullah or the Party of God.

Thus, what comes through Maulana's writings is that Islam is a complete prescription, where religion, society, politics and life are all intertwined. Hinduism, on the other hand, is very different. It is not a religion in the Judaic sense. Moving back to the 19th century, from 1887, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan of the Aligarh Muslim University fame, had begun to stress that the Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations in India. (page 265 of Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment by Prof Aziz Ahmad, Oxford University Press, 2000). Some years earlier, Prof Ameer Ali, who had founded the Central National Muhammedan Association in Calcutta, had expressed similar views, according to Aziz Ahmad.

Quite uncannily, the first recorded Hindu-Muslim riot took place in 1893 simultaneously at Bombay and Azamgarh. Although, it was several decades before Sir Sayyid made his statements or before the riots began, the turning point in the Hindu-Muslim equation took place in 1858 when the Great Rebellion or the sepoy mutiny was suppressed. The end of the mutiny signified to the Muslims, at home as well as overseas, that the sun had set on Dar-ul Islam. Until Bahadur Shah Zafar was acknowledged the emperor of India, it was presumed that the writ of the shariat ran all over the subcontinent. As it were, overnight after the mutiny, India began to be perceived by the Muslims as a Dar-ul harb, or a land of strife, instead of being the land of the faithful.

Until the advent of the British, signaled by the battle of Plassey in 1757, the greater part of India was ruled by sultans rather than rajas. Although the Muslim population across the subcontinent did not exceed 10 per cent, the community was looked upon as that of the rulers. The Hindus were the subjects or the riyaya. The equation then was between the ruler and his subject rather than one between rivals. The new rulers from England downgraded the Muslims to a subject people and therefore comparable in status to the Hindus. Something hard to swallow for a people who had ruled India for centuries.

The question is, does not the same bitterness come through in every riot? Whatever else may have happened in Gujarat, do not forget that the riot was inaugurated at Godhra when 58 karsevaks were burnt alive on 27 February 2002. It is uncanny that although five decades have passed since the British ceased to rule India, no Hindu-Christian riot has taken place. The Christians have never considered themselves as a separate.

Whether the Hindu-Muslim riot, in any way, is a throw back on this mission, is a subject for sociologists to investigate. But whether a riot can be looked upon as a mini-jihad? In order to ensure that the Two-Nation theory was implemented by vivisecting the country, the Muslim League passed the Direct Action resolution in July 1946, as a result of which Hindu-Muslim riots started with the Great Calcutta killings on 16th of the following month.

Not that research has not been undertaken by many scholars of Islam in India. For example, P Hardy, in his work Islam in Medieval India (New York, 1958) observed that Islam, "had introduced into the heart of an essentially Hindu India a new, and in the event, unassimilable interpretation of the meaning and end of life - the Muslim."
 


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