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 member 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)
