The State of Kerala recently witnessed what many would call an odd political moment. In the middle of the bustle of preparations for the State Assembly elections, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala, Sobha Surendran, recently extended an invitation to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) to join the National Democratic Alliance fold, with a rider — this was provided the IUML shed its ‘communal’ policies.
A communal ecosystem
But viewed from a historical perspective, such a proposal is not outlandish. Prof. Bipan Chandra in his Communalism in Modern India has identified three species of communalism, namely communal nationalism, liberal communalism and extreme communalism or fascist communalism. In a concluding paragraph, he observes: “Communal nationalism fed liberal and extreme communalism and made it difficult to carry on political struggle against them... They, in turn, constantly generated communal nationalism within the nationalist ranks. Similarly, the logic of liberal communalism inexorably led to extreme communalism.” This process clearly exposes the symbiotic relationship between the three species of communalism. The BJP may belong to the species of extreme communalism, and the IUML to liberal communalism. But to maintain the communal ecosystem, both parties need each other.
If one goes back in time, to colonial India, the All-India Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha were the major communal players. The IUML and the BJP are the direct descendants of these two parties, respectively. Both Savarkar and Jinnah were arch enemies on stage since they catered to two separate vote banks. But offstage, the common thread for both parties was anti-Congressism. “Pragmatic politics” made them odd bed-fellows to fill the vacuum created by the Congress following the “Do or Die” cry of the Quit India movement.
The colonial era
A media article titled ‘Hindu Mahasabha with Muslim League’, is illuminating. It says: Both the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha opposed the Quit India movement and preferred to join hands with the British under the garb of the ‘pragmatic politics’. Even when most of the Congress leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad were in jail, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the second in command of the Hindu Mahasabha, with the blessings of Savarkar, had joined the Fazlul Haq ministry in Bengal as the Finance Minister in 1941 and remained in the ministry of the mover of the Pakistan Resolution for nearly 11 months. It was the same personage who launched the Jan Sangh, the precursor to the BJP in October 1951 with the blessings of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second Sarsangh chalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The article mentioned above continues: Savarkar defended this strange hybridisation in his presidential speech to the Kanpur session of the Hindu Mahasabha, in the following words: In practical politics also, the Mahasabha knows that we must advance through reasonable compromises. Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running [a] coalition Government. The case of Bengal is well known... Wild Leaguers, whom even the Congress with all its submissiveness could not placate, grew quite reasonably compromising and sociable as soon as they came in contact with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Coalition Government, under the premiership of Mr. Fazlul Huq and the able leadership of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the communities (https://bit.ly/3rQGozZ).”
Politics of the north
The article has more to say. It says, the Sindh Assembly was first to pass the Pakistan Resolution moved by G.M. Sayed in 1943 when the Province had a coalition government with diametrically opposite political forces, i.e. the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. The Hindu Mahasabha members walked out and the three Hindu Mahasabha Ministers voted against the resolution; but the resolution was passed 24 versus 3 in the Sindh Assembly on March 3, 1943. Even after passing the Pakistan resolution, none of the three Hindu Mahasabha Ministers resigned from the Ministry headed by Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah of the Muslim League. They were Rao Saheb Gokaldas Mewaldas, Dr. Hemandas R. Wadhwan and Lolumal R. Motwani.
In the provincial elections held in 1937 in the North West Frontier Province, the media article adds, the Congress won the majority of the seats in the Provincial Assembly. In 1939, when the Congress Ministry headed by Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan resigned, Sardar Aurangzeb Khan of the Muslim League with the support of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Akalis formed the coalition government. Mehr Chand Khanna of the Hindu Mahasabha was the Finance Minister. Even in Punjab, says the article, there were serious efforts to have the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha coalition government installed. Both Savarkar and Dr. B.S. Moonje were very much active for the same. Jinnah had declared that the Hindu Mahasabha was to have a coalition government with the Muslim League as Savarkar and Dr. B.S. Moonje had directed to form a coalition government with the Muslim League “if it was inevitable”. Here too,the article, ‘Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha in Coalitions’, by Dr. Hari Desai, and published in the Asian Voice (September 25, 2017), is illuminating.
The All India Muslim League-Hindu Mahasabha alliance during the Quit India movement was the dark side of the tragedy of Partition. In the present context, one wonders what the proposal in Kerala could portend.
Faisal C.K. is an independent researcher
