Giants and Myths Milestones on the Road to Partition - Part 8
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA

In a broader sense, the tug of war between the Congress and the League was a struggle between the old landed aristocracy and the emerging money lending class. The landed aristocracy had inherited their holdings as jagirs from the Moguls and the succeeding nawabs. These established landowners and the large farmers had come under pressure from the tax collectors appointed by the British East India Company under the so-called reforms of 1793.

Each collector was required to remit a fixed amount per acre to the British irrespective of the yield on the land. In lean times, the farmers could not pay the fixed tax and had to borrow money from the usurious moneylenders to pay the tax collector. Defaults were common and the farmers and the landowners often lost their land to the tax collectors or the moneylenders.

A substantial percentage of landowners in UP were Muslim while the moneylenders were predominantly Hindu. Some of the moneylenders, the Marwaris from Gujarat, had become entrepreneurs and had joined the ranks of the emerging industrialists. The Congress party drew its financial backing from these industrialists while its voter base was primarily Hindu in spite of its broad national appeal. The Muslim League, on the other hand, represented the interest of the land-owning class, and tended to champion their cause. The voter base of the League was almost exclusively Muslim.

Just as the power struggle between the landed gentry and the emerging merchant class in Cromwell’s England determined the evolution of English politics, the struggle between the Muslim landowners and the Hindu moneylenders determined the shape of politics in twentieth century India. Whereas in England this struggle shifted political power from the landed class to the merchants, in India there was a divorce between the two. The landed class, the nawabs and the estate holders, backed Jinnah and opted for Pakistan. The founders of the Muslim League in 1906, Nawab Viqar ul Mulk, Nawab Salimullah Khan, Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah, all belonged to old, established landed aristocracy. The moneylenders, merchants and the emerging industrialists such as the Birlas backed Gandhi and stayed in India.

Religion was the surface wave generated by this underlying power struggle between the old guard and new guard. The draft from this wave sucked in the masses and carried them to the holocaust accompanying partition. It is this underlying struggle that explains the opposition of the League to the land reforms introduced by the Congress party in 1937 in northern India. The land reforms hit hard at the Muslim landed gentry. The underlying struggle also explains the opposition of the Congress to the tax proposals advanced by Liaquat Ali Khan as the finance minister in the brief Congress-League coalition ministry in 1946. The taxation proposals hit hard at the Hindu merchant class and were vehemently denounced by their supporters in the Congress party. The price for the divorce was paid by the illiterate masses of India, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh alike.

The Congress ministries in the provinces resigned in protest against the unilateral declaration of war by the viceroy. The Muslim League, the Scheduled Caste Federation and the Justice Party of Tamil Nadu who had perceived Congress rule as oppressive, rejoiced and observed December 22, 1939 as “youm e najat” (deliverance day). The Congress party had a chance to show its metal as a national party and demonstrate its sensitivity to the minorities. In this attempt, it failed. The Muslims and the Scheduled Castes saw Congress rule as political tyranny. Even some of the British observers described the rule of Congress ministries as “a rising tide of political Hinduism”.

While the major political parties jockeyed for position and argued among themselves the flames of war spread to Asia and the Pacific. In December 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States. Hitler formed an alliance with Japan. The United States, in turn, declared war on Japan and Germany. The Japanese made rapid advances in the Pacific, capturing the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina and Burma. By April 1942 they were on India’s doorstep.

The Japanese thrust left the Indian leadership in a quandary. Their responses were predictably mixed. Nehru, Patel and Azad had their sympathies with the allies. But they desired that India’s participation in the war be one of free choice, not one dictated by the British. Gandhi was against armed resistance and wanted non-violent resistance and non-cooperation to contain the Japanese thrust. Jinnah supported the British war effort in the hope that the support would pay off political dividends.

With the Japanese probing Indian defenses in the eastern state of Assam, Gandhi felt it was an opportune time to force the British to concede India’s freedom. Under his direction the Congress launched the Quit India movement. The goal was a non-violent, non-cooperation confrontation with the Raj to force an immediate transfer of power from the British to the Indians. The Muslim League did not overtly endorse the Quit India movement but did passively support it.

The British were in no mood to cede power in the midst of a war which at that time was going badly for them. Their response was to arrest the Congress leaders and a large number of Congress activists. After the arrests, there were violent demonstrations in the major cities which were put down with the help of Indian police and the army which was still loyal to the British. Nehru, Azad, Patel and other senior members of the Congress leadership spent the next three-and-a-half years in the Ahmednagar prison in the Deccan. Gandhi was interned in the Agha Khan palace in Poona. In 1944 he started a fast in prison. His health deteriorated. The British, fearful of a backlash in case he died in prison, released him in 1944.

The resignation of the Congress provincial ministries in 1939 and the arrest of Congress leadership in 1942 was a boon to the Muslim League.

Jinnah supported the British war effort and used the interregnum to consolidate the mass base for the League especially in the crucial provinces of the Punjab and Bengal. When the Congress leadership finally emerged from prison in 1945, India had changed. The British were exhausted. The League had grown to be a national organization claiming to represent all the Muslims of the subcontinent. There was widespread discontent in the country fueled by wartime scarcity, famine and British arrogance. (To be continued)


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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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