In December, 1916, a political body called the All-India Muslim League united with the Indian National Congress already mentioned, in proclaiming the identity of Muhammadan and Hindu interests, and in asserting their common desire for Swaraj.
The white light of the Moplah uprising remained yet veiled on the knees of the future, but at the joint act of the two organizations, the Muhammadans' instinct of self-preservation, far and wide over India, took alarm. So that when, in the autumn of 1917, Mr. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, sat in Delhi to receive from Indian interests their views on the subject of his proposed Reforms, association after association came forward to deplore or to repudiate the act of the All-India Muslim League; and the language they used was simple enough. Said the United Provinces Muslim Defence Association:[1]
[1. Addresses Presented in India to His Excellency the Viceroy and the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, London, 1918, p. 10. ]
...any large measure of self-government which might curtail the moderating and adjusting influence of the British Government could be nothing short of a cataclysm.
Said the Indian Muslim Association of Bengal:[2]
[2. Ibid, p. 30.]
In the existing backward condition of the majority of Hindus and Muslims, with their divergent creeds, castes, institutions and clashing interests, the differences which separate the Hindu from the Muslim cannot but be reflected in their dealings and relations with each other...No careful observer will be deluded by the deceptive unanimity of the National Congress and the Muslim League...
The Indian Muslim Association...does not agree to the wisdom of any catastrophic changes likely to weaken the permanance and stability of British rule in India, upon the broad foundations of which rest all our hopes and aspirations of constitutional and administrative progress.
Said the Association to Safeguard the Muslim Interests in the Province of Bihar and Orissa:[3]
[3. Addresses Presented in India to His Excellency the Viceroy and the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, p. 40.]
We cannot deprecate too strongly the want of foresight displayed by some of our co-religionists in endorsing in their entirety, the views and claims of the Congress. Already there is strong tendency visible in certain quarters to oppress and terrorise the Musalmans and ignore...their interests. The guiding principle of the English rule up to now has always been to administer the affairs of Indian Empire with impartiality in the presence of diverse religions and nationalities of which it is composed...
The South India Islamia League[4] presented a plea in which they reminded Mr. Montagu that, being a minority community, they
...realise the value of the British Government in holding the scales even between different classes in this country...[and] are opposed to any scheme of political reconstruction which tends to undermine the authority of British Government in India, but are strongly in favour of gradual progressive political development.
[4. Ibid., pp. 62-3.]
The Muttialpet Muslim Anjuman, a Muhammadan educational society of Madras, implored Mr. Montagu to stay his reforming hand:[5]
[5. Ibid., p. 63.]
The Britisher alone can hold the scales even between the various communities. Whenever our interests collide with those of other communities, it is to him we look up as the embodiment of justice and fair play. Whatever reforms may be introduced, we trust that nothing will be done to undermine the authority of the British Government in India.
The Muhammadans of the Bombay Presidency presented an anxious appeal which read in part:[6]
[6. Ibid., pp. 78-9.]
It is freely asserted that in no distant future the English bureaucracy will disappear and an Indian majority in the Councils will take its place. Whatever may have been the defects of that much abused bureaucracy in the past, it must be admitted that it has had one redeeming merit, viz., that of holding the balance even as between the two principal communities in India, and thus protecting the weak against the strong.
But in view of the nature of Muhammadan thought, a more ominous weight lay in a simpler pronouncement. The Ulema is the body of official interpreters of the Koran which, on occasion of doubt, delivers decisions that guide the Muslim world. The solemn verdict of the Ulema of Madras, now laid before the British Secretary of State for India, was expressed in three closely similar dicta, one of which follows:[7]
[7. Addresses Presented ïn India to His Excellency the Viceroy and the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, pp. 63-4.]
"Verily, Polytheists are unclean." In case the British Gov-ernment were to hand over the administration, as desired by the Hindus, it would be contrary to the Sacred Law of Musulmans to live under them, Polytheists.
Saiyid Muhi-ud-din
Trustee of the endowments of the Amir-un-Nisa. Begum Sahiba Mosque
One who is forgiven!
The comparative numbers of the Hindu and the Muhammadan element in the major provinces of British India may be seen from the following table:[8]
[8. Statistical Abstract for British India, from 1914-15 to 1923-24, pp. 14-5]
Province Hindus Muhammadans
Madras 88.64 6.71
Bombay 76.58 19.74
Bengal 43.27 53.99
United Provinces 85.09 14.28
Bihar and Orissa 82.84 10.85
Central Provinces and Berar 83.54 4.05
Assam 54.34 28.96
Punjab 31.80 55.33
North-West Frontier Province 6.66 91.62
Now, in view of the militant character developed in any people by the Islamic faith, it appears that British India's Muhammadan factor, even where it is weakest, is strong enough to make trouble. Always an international rather than a nationalist, all over India the Muhammadan is saying today: "We are foreigners, conquerors, fighting men. What if our numbers are small! Is it numbers, or men, that count? When the British go, we shall rule India. Therefore it behooves us quickly to gain such ground as we can."
The Hindu, on his side, wittingly misses no step to consolidate his own position. And so wherever choice rests in Indian hands, every office must be filled, every decision taken, every appropriation spent, on religious communal lines, while the other side fights it, tooth and nail, and the actual merits of the matter concerned disappear from the picture.
Heavily as this condition in all directions handicaps the public service, nowhere is its influence more stultifying than in the judiciary. Always an eager litigant, the Indian finds in his religious quarrels endless occasions for appeal to law. But, if the case must be tried before an Indian judge, one side or the other is in despair. For, though he were, in fact, a miracle of rectitude, he is expected to lean, in his verdict, to the side of his own creed, and nothing can persuade the litigant of the other faith that he will not do so.
The bench of India has been and is graced by some native judges of irreproachable probity. Yet the Indian is traditionally used to the judge who accepts a fee from either side in advance of the trial, feeling that probity is sufficiently served if, after the verdict, the fee of the loser is returned. Bought witnesses are also a matter of course; you may see them today squatting before the court house waiting to be hired. "Theoretically I know it is irregular," said one western-educated barrister of Madras, "but practically I cannot leave that advantage entirely in my opponent's hands-It is our custom."
But when the matter of the Hindu-Muslim conflict enters in, all else as a rule gives way. "How shall any judge decide against his gods?" moans the unfortunate. "And does he not hold court in the midst of my enemies? Take me, therefore, before an English judge, who cares naught for these matters but will give me upright judgment, though I be right or wrong."
A freakish case was that of an old, experienced Mu-hammadan District Magistrate of the United Provinces before whom, last year, were brought certain police officers of his district. These men had grossly failed in their duty during certain religious riots, entailing thereby the death of several persons. They richly deserved a severe sentence. But they were Hindus. Therefore the judge, fearing the accusation of religious animosity, let them off with a sentence so light as to amount to an unjust award and an offense against the public service.
More usual is the spirit illustrated in another incident, which occurred in February, 1926. An old Mu-hammadan assistant engineer who had long served in the Irrigation Department under a British superior, suddenly found himself taking orders from a Hindu. This young man, just out of college and full of new ideas, set himself to worry his senior, baiting and pin-pricking till his victim could bear no more.
So, accompanied by his son, the old Muslim sought out a major British official, asking for counsel.
"Sahib, can't you help my father? Surely it is a shame, after all his years of service, to treat him so! " exclaimed the son, at the end of the story.
But the Briton could not resist his opportunity. "Mahmoud," said he. "You have always wanted swaraj. You see, in this, what swaraj does to you. How do you feel about it?"
"Aha!" replied the youngster. "But I've got a Deputy Collectorship now. I take office shortly, and when I do, God help the Hindus I get my hands on!"
The Muslim comprises but a bare quarter of the population of British India. But that percentage is growing. His gains indicate both superior fecundity and superior vitality. His brain is not quick, but he has often a gift of horse sense. He is beginning to see that he must go to school. Granted time, opportunity and a sense of security, he may wipe out his handicaps and fit himself for full participation in the administration of the country. Thrown into the arena today, he would see but one recourse--the sword.
And it should never for a moment be forgotten that when the Muslims of India draw the sword, it will not be as an isolated body but as the advance line of an energy now banked up, like the waters of a brimming reservoir, by the Frontier Defense of the Army.
A glance at the map shows a strip of territory some three hundred and fifty miles long by from twenty to fifty miles wide, lying along the northern boundary of the Punjab. This strip is the North-West Frontier Province. Beyond it lies a parallel strip of similar dimensions, tribal territory occupied by independent Mu-hammadan clans, superb fighters whose sole business, since time began, has been the business of raiding. Behind this, again, lies Muhammadan Afghanistan and Muhammadan Asia, a huge primeval engine always to be swung as one great hammer by the call to loot and a Holy War.
To release that force needs at any moment but a word. Its ceaseless pressure along the thin steel line of the frontier, its tenseness, its snapping, stinging electric current, is scarcely realizable until one sees and feels it for one's self.
Few Hindu politicians do realize it. "The Afghan has kept off us these many long years. Why should he come through now? Bah! It is a child's bogey!" they say with dull eyes, as unaware of their own life-long protected state and how it is brought about as the oyster on its sea-bed is unaware of the hurricanes that blow.
The North-West Frontier Province, 95 per cent. Muhammadan, lies today quiet and contented with its government, a buffer state between, on the one hand, the rich, part-Hindu Punjab and the vast soft Hindu South, and on the other hand, the hungry Muslim fighting hordes whose fingers twitch and whose mouths water to be at them. The contentment of the North-West Frontier Province with things as they are is invaluable to the peace of India.
I talked with many leading men of that province. All seemed of one mind in the matter. Here, therefore, are the exact words of a single representative--a mountain-bred man of Persian ancestry some generations back--big, lean, hawk-nosed, hawk-eyed, leader of many, sententious until his subject snatched the bridle from his tongue:
"The whole province is satisfied now and desires no change. As for those little folk of the South, we have never called them men. There is far more difference between us and them than between us and the British. If the British withdraw, immediate hell will follow, in the first days of which the Bengali and all his tribe will be removed from the earth. I can account for a few, myself, with much pleasure. Cooperation between the British and us is our one course. They have given us roads, telephones, good water where no water was before, peace, justice, a revenue from trade made possible only by their protection, safety for our families, care for our sick and schools for our children. None of these things did we have till they came. I ask you, is it likely we shall throw them all away because a coward and a sneak and our own inherited enemy calls for 'boycott,' and 'non-cooperation'? Nothing was ever gained and much lost by that stupid 'non-cooperation.' India is a big country and needs all our united strength can do for it. Muslims and British and even Hindus. But without the British no Hindus will remain in India except such as we keep for slaves."
On December 26, 1925, over eight years after the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League proclaimed their united demand for the self-government of India, the former, or Hindu body, assembled for its annual session. Its president, this time a woman, a product of European life and education, opened the proceedings with an address that deplored the
...sharp and importunate sense of aloofness on the part of my Muslim brothers, which, to the profound alarm and resentment of the Hindu community, manifests itself in a growing and insistent demand for separate and preferential rights and privileges in academic, official, civic and political circles of life.
A few days later the All-India Muslim League convened. And the address of its president, Sir Abdur Rahim, coming as a tacit reply to the earlier pronouncement, was so clean-hewn as to constitute a landmark in Indian history. It repays study at length.[9]
[9. Sir Abdur Rahim's address was published in pamphlet form by Karim Bux Brothers, Calcutta.]
Hindus and Mussalmans are not two religious sects like the Protestants and Catholics in England but form two distinct communities or peoples...Their respective attitudes towards life, their distinctive culture, civilisation and social habits, their traditions and history no less than their religion, divide them so completely that the fact that they have lived in the same country for nearly a thousand years has contributed hardly anything to their fusion into a nation.
Referring to recent Hindu movements set on foot to proselyte Mussalmans, and to train Hindus in the arts of self-defense, the speaker said:
The Muslims regard these movements...as the most serious challenge to their religion which they ever had to meet not even excepting the Christian crusades whose main objective was to wrest back from the Muslims some places sacred to both...In fact, some of the Hindu leaders have talked publicly of driving out the Muslims from India as the Spaniards expelled the Moors from Spain...We shall, undoubtedly be a big mouthful for our friends to swallow...
Any of us Indian Mussulmans travelling, for instance in Afghanistan, Persia, Central Asia, among Chinese Muslims, Arabs, Turks...would at once be made at home and would not find anything...to which we are not accustomed. On the contrary, in India,...we find ourselves in all social matters total aliens when we cross the street and enter that part of town where our fellow Hindu townsmen live...
It is not true that we Muslims would not like to see a self-governing India provided the Government...is made as much responsible to the Muslims as to the Hindu..., Otherwise, all vague generalities such as swaraj, or commonwealth of India, or home-rule for India have no attraction for us...But as a first step we must...definitely check the baneful activities of those Hindu politicians who under the protection of Englishmen's bayonets and taking advantage of their tolerance and patience are sowing trouble in the land to attain swaraj, the full implications of which they do not understand and would never face...
The real solution of the problem...is to bring about a state of things in which the conditions of life of the entire population--Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians, the peasants, labourers and Hindu untouchables--will be so improved economically and intellectually and the political power so distributed in the general population, that domination by a class of monopolists and intelligensia, will have disappeared and with that all strife between the different communities.
It has been my lot to be in daily contact with educated Englishmen, for nigh upon 35 years as practising barrister, as Judge,...and last of all as Member of the Executive Council of Bengal...
I wish to acknowledge without reserve that I found that I had much to learn from my English colleagues at every stage of my career...I have also been associated with many eminent countrymen of mine in the discharge of public duties and I believe they will admit that most of the progressive measures were originated by the initiative of Englishmen...In the Government, I cannot recall even a single occasion when there was agreement on any question among us Indians that our opinion was disregarded...I have not known any one who has seriously suggested that the people of this country left solely to themselves would be able at present to set up a government of their own and maintain it against outside attacks...It is best for us all to recognise frankly that the presence of the English people...is justified by necessity...England owes a great moral debt to India and the only way she can discharge that debt is by taking all possible measures to help her to become self-reliant and strong.
The best men of England recognise this obligation...I do not know whether the revolutionaries have any political programme; if they have, they have not divulged it. Their immediate objective, apparently, is to overthrow the British regime, and with it the entire present system of Government, We can, however, dismiss the revolutionaries because there is not the least possible chance of their success.
We Muslims whose history for 1300 years and more has been one of constant struggles and wars, spreading over Asia, Africa and Europe, cannot but regard as extremely foolish and insane the men who think that by throwing a few bombs now and then, or shooting one or two Englishmen from behind, or by rasing and looting the houses of unsuspecting and defenceless Indian villagers and by killing and torturing them, they are going to shake the foundations of British power in India...We Muslims cannot regard boys or men suffering from hysteria as serious politicians and the fact is significant thst not a single Muslim has joined them...
Political measures are not the sole means of building up a nation. At present we have not even a vernacular name for the people of India including Hindus, Muslims and others, nor a common language...It is neither by the English alone nor by the Hindus or the Mussalmans acting singly, but by the earnest and united efforts of all that the 300 millions of India's population can be led to a higher destiny.
Sir Abdur Rahim's plain words brought down a storm of accusation from the Hindu leaders and their press, while the rancor between the two camps grew stronger.
Meantime, grim potentialities were beginning to be dimly perceived. The Calcutta Riots broke out. By midsummer, 1926, thirty-one murderous explosions had occurred since the beginning of the year, some with heavy casualties.[10] It was already evident that both sides, Muslim and Hindu, were becoming sobered by the situation into which their mutual fears had brought them. The old Gandhi-ist accusation that the secret hand of Britain bred their dissensions still found its mouthpieces; but these, commonly, were of the irresponsible firebrand type who had no stake in the country save such as might best be served under cover of smoke. Thinking men of either party saw the untena-bility of the idea and began, however reluctantly, to declare the need of a strong and impartial suzerain to give them security in the advantages already in their possession; advantages which, they now saw clearly enough, had their roots in the British presence and would be drowned in blood on the day that presence was withdrawn.
[10. For the list, see Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. VIII, Augu*t 18, 1926, p. 12.]
The Summer Session of the Indian Legislative Assembly met in a mood to talk reason. Said Maulvi Muhammad Yakub, a Muhammadan member, speaking on the twenty-fourth day of August:[11]
[11. Ibid., August 24, 1926, pp. 280-3.]
I do not agree with those who think that the Government have a hand in fomenting communal riots and communal feelings. I also do not think that the Government of India have ever shown partiality towards any community in dealing with communal matters.
There can be no two opinions that communal bitterness...has now assumed an all-India importance...
Sir, we are fed up with these communal frictions, and the situation has become so very difficult that we cannot enjoy our home life happily, nor do our festivals bring any joy to us...Is not the time ripe,...when we should ask the Government to come forward and help us, since we could not solve the question ourselves?
A few months earlier such words could scarcely have been spoken on that floor without rousing a flurry of rebuttal. Today not a voice opposed them. Instead rose that king-pillar of orthodox Hinduism, our old friend the Dewan Bahadur T. Rangachariar of Madras, not to rail at an "alien government," not to accuse it of clumsy or arrogant interference in Indian affairs, but to acknowledge that[12]
[12. Legislative Assembly Debates, August 24, 1925, pp. 283-4.]
...facts are facts, and they have to be faced by us like men...I admire the sincere spirit in which my Honourable friend Maulvi Muhammed Yakub has come forward. He feels the soreness of this disgraceful position...and I feel it likewise. I am glad, and the whole country is glad, that His Excellency Lord Irwin has taken it up in right earnest...We cannot achieve the results which we have at heart without the co-operation of all people, official and non-official alike. I want a majority of the people whose hearts are really bent upon changing the situation.
The doctrine of non-cooperation with the established Power led nowhere, as all now see. The mystic doctrine of spiritual war, a war of "soul-force," that uses the language of hate while protesting theories of love, had logically and insistently projected itself upon the material plane in the form of the slaughter of men. The inability of individuals to subordinate personal, family or clan interests and to hold together for team-work, had been demonstrated. And the fact had been driven home to the hilt that neither Hindu nor Muhamma-dan could think in terms of the whole people.
For the moment, some of them see it. Can they hold the vision? To have seen it at all marks gain.