AN AXIS OF HINDU MAHASABHA-RSS-JINNAH WERE
GUILTY OF PARTITION OF INDIA: A PEEP INTO CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS
HINDU NATIONALISTS AND NOT JINNAH PROPUNDED THE
TWO NATION THEORY
Long-long before the appearance of Muslim
advocates of the two-nation theory, Hindu nationalists had propounded this
idea. Muslim League practitioners of the Two-nation theory were late comers. In
fact, in this case, they borrowed heavily from the Hindutva school of thought.
BENGALI
BRAHMINS WERE THE FIRST TO VUSUALIZE INDIA AS A HINDU NATION
The ball was
set rolling by Hindu nationalists at the end of the 19th century in
Bengal. In fact Raj Narain Basu (1826–1899), the maternal grandfather of
Aurobindo Ghosh, and his close associate Nabha Gopal Mitra (1840-94) can be
called the co-fathers of Two-nation theory and Hindu nationalism in India. Basu
established a society for the promotion of national feelings among the educated
natives which in fact stood for preaching the superiority of Hinduism. He
organized meetings proclaiming that Hinduism despite its Casteism presented a
much higher social idealism than ever reached by the Christian or Islamic
civilization.
Basu not only
believed in the superiority of Hinduism over other religions but also was a
fervent believer in Casteism. He was the first person to conceive the idea of a
Maha Hindu Samiti (All India Hindu Association) and helped in the formation of
Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, a precursor of Hindu Mahasabha. He believed that
through this organization Hindus would be able to establish an Aryan nation in
India.[1]
He visualized a powerful Hindu nation not only overtaking India but the whole
world. He also saw,
"the
noble and puissant Hindu nation rousing herself after sleep and rushing
headlong towards progress with divine prowess. I see this rejuvenated nation
again illumining the world by her knowledge, spirituality and culture, and the
glory of Hindu nation again spreading over the whole world."[i]
Nabha
Gopal Mitra started organising an annual Hindu Mela (fête). It used to be a
gathering on the last day of every Bengali year and highlighted the Hindu
nature of all aspects of Hindu Bengali life and continued uninterrupted between
1867 and 1880. Mitra also started a National Society and a National Paper for
promoting unity and feelings of nationalism among Hindus. Mitra argued in his
paper that the Hindus positively formed a nation by themselves. According to
him,
“the
basis of national unity in India is the Hindu religion. Hindu nationality
embraces all the Hindus of India irrespective of their locality or language.”[ii]
R.
C. Majumdar, a keen observer of the rise of Hindu nationalism in Bengal, had no
difficulty in arriving at the truth that
“Nabha Gopal forestalled Jinnah’s theory of two
nations by more than half a century.”[iii] And
since then “consciously or unconsciously, the Hindu character was deeply
imprinted on nationalism all over India.”[iv]
ROLE OF ARYA
SAMAJISTS
The Arya Samaj
in northern India aggressively preached that Hindu and Muslim communities in
India were, in fact, two different nations. Bhai Parmanand (1876–1947), a
leading light of the Arya Samaj in northern India who was also a leader of both
Congress and Hindu Mahasabha, produced an enormous anti-Muslim literature which
stressed the fact that India was a land of Hindus and Muslims should be
relocated.
Long before V. D. Savarkar (1883-1966) and M. S.
Golwalkar (1906-73), who laid down elaborate theories of Hindu Rashtra allowing
no place for minorities, it was Bhai Parmanand who declared in the beginning of
the twentieth century that followers of Hinduism and Islam in India were two
different peoples because Muslims followed a religion which originated in Arab
lands. Parmanand specialized in writing popular literature in Urdu in which the
main emphasis would be on Hindus being true sons of India and Muslims as
outsiders.[1]As
early as 1908–9, Parmanand called for the total exchange of Hindu and Muslim
populations in two specific areas. According to his plan, elaborated in his
autobiography,
"The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and
the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of
the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of
India should go and settle in this territory."[v]
“long before Mohammad Ali Jinnah pronounced his
poisonous Two-nation theory in 1939 and demanded a ruinous partition of India
in 1940, the Mahasabha leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and Savarkar had openly
advocated this theory…”[vi]
In 1989, Lajpat Rai while writing on the theme
of the Indian National Congress in the Hindustan
Review declared that “Hindus are a nation in themselves because they
represent all their own.”[vii]
By 1924 he was
more articulate in summarizing his Two-nation theory. He wrote:
"Under my scheme the Muslims will
have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province of the North Western Frontier
(2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact
Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a
Province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly
understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India
into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India."[viii] [Italics as in
the original]
Lajpat Rai
proposed the partition of Punjab in the following words,
"I would suggest that a remedy should
be sought by which the Muslims might get a decisive majority without trampling
on the sensitiveness of the Hindus and the Sikhs. My uggestion is that the
Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces, the Western Punjab with a
large Muslim majority, to be a Muslim-governed Province; and the Eastern
Punjab, with a large Hindu-Sikh majority, to be a non-Muslim governed
province."[ix]
It may be noted
that Muslim flag-bearers of Two-nation theory had fair knowledge of theories
propounded by Lajpat Rai and others. However, instead of challenging this
anti-national and anti-Muslim theory, they simply copied it.
HINDU
NATIONALIST MOONJE, HAR DAYAL, SAVARKAR AND GOLWALKAR AS PROPHETS OF TWO-NATION
THEORY
Dr. B. S. Moonje was
another prominent Congress leader (who equally dabbled in organizing the Hindu
Mahasabha and later helped the RSS in its formation) who carried forward the
flag of Hindu Separatism long before Muslim League’s Pakistan resolution of
March 1940. While addressing the third session of the Oudh Hindu Mahasabha in
1923, he declared:
"Just
as England belongs to the English, France to the French, and Germany to the
Germans, India belongs to the Hindus. If Hindus get organized, they can humble
the English and their stooges, the Muslims…The Hindus henceforth create their
own world which will prosper through shuddhi [literally meaning
purification, the term was used for conversion of Muslims and Christians to
Hinduism]and sangathan [organization]."[x]
It was sheer
semi-illiteracy of Moonje that he presented England, France and Germany as
justification for India for Hindus. The English, the French and the German
identities had nothing to do with religions, these were secular identities of
the people living in those countries.
Lala Har Dayal
(1884–1938), a well-known name in the Ghadar Party circles, too, long
before the Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, not only
demanded the formation of a Hindu nation in India but also urged the conquest
and Hinduisation of Afghanistan. In a significant political statement in 1925,
which was published in the Pratap of Kanpur, he stated:
"I
declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab,
rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi
of Muslims, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the
Frontiers. So long as the Hindu Nation does not accomplish these four things,
the safety of our children and great grandchildren will be ever in danger, and
the safety of Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history,
and its institutions are homogenous. But the Mussalman and Christians are far
removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they
love Persian, Arab, and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes
foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two
religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part
of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam […] Just as there is
Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and
the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj."[xi]
All such ideas
of declaring India as a Hindu nation and excluding Muslims and Christians from
it were further crystallized by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his controversial
book Hindutva as early as 1923. Interestingly, he was allowed to write
this polarizing book despite being in the British jail. According to his
definition of the Hindu nation, Muslims and Christians remained out of this
nationhood because they did not assimilate into Hindu cultural heritage or
adopt Hindu religion. Savarkar decreed:
"Christians and Mohamedan [sic]
communities, who were but very recently Hindus and in majority of cases had
been at least in their first generation most willing denizens of their new
fold, claim though they might a common fatherland, and an almost pure Hindu
blood and parentage with us cannot be recognized as Hindus; as since their
adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu Sanskriti
[culture] as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit
altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero-worship
their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on-life, have
now ceased to be common with ours."[xii]
Savarkar, the
originator of the politics of Hindutva, later developed the most elaborate
Two-nation theory. The fact should not be missed that Muslim League passed its
Pakistan resolution in 1940 only but Savarkar, the great philosopher and guide
of RSS, propagated the Two-nation theory long before it. While delivering the
presidential address to the 19th session Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937,
Savarkar declared unequivocally,
"As it is, there are two antagonistic nations living
side by side in India. Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake
in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it
could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These our well-meaning but
unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are
impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But
the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed
down to us by centuries of cultural, religious and national antagonism between
the Hindus and Moslems. When time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot
suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose
and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant
facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and
homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main: the
Hindus and the Moslems, in India."[xiii]
According to
Rammanohar Lohia, a renowned freedom fighter and Socialist leader, the Hindutva
organizations through their high-pitch anti-Muslim propaganda prepared ground
for helping the Muslim League to gain popularity among the Muslims as saviour
of the community. He was unambiguous in holding that the Hindu communalist who
shouted loudest for Akand or united
Bharat,
“helped Britain and the Muslim League partition the country…They
did nothing whatever, to bring the Muslim close to the Hindu within a single
nation. They did almost everything to estrange them from each other. Such
estrangement is the root cause of partition.”[xiv]
Lohia, Rammanohar, Guilty Men of India’s Partition, BR
Publishing, Delhi, 2012, p. 2.]
The RSS, following into the
footsteps of Savarkar, rejected out rightly the idea that Hindus and Muslims
together constituted a nation. The English organ of the RSS, Organiser,
on the very eve of Independence (August 14, 1947) editorially chalked out its
concept of nation in the following words:
"Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by
false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and
future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that
in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must
be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up
of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations."
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a keen
researcher of the communal politics in pre-independence India, underlying the close
affinity and camaraderie between Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League on the issue
of the Two-nation theory wrote:
"Strange it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah
instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations
issue are in complete agreement about it. Both agree, not only agree but insist
that there are two nations in India—one the Muslim nation and the other Hindu
nation."[xv]
Ambedkar agonized by the evil designs of Savarkar regarding
the Two-nation theory and Hindutva rhetoric over it, wrote, as early as 1940,
that,
"Hindu nation will be enabled to occupy a predominant
position that is due to it and the Muslim nation made to live in the position
of subordinate co-operation with the Hindu nation".[xvi]
HINDU MAHASABHA LED BY
SAVARKAR RAN COALITION GOVERNMENTS WITH MUSLIM LEAGUE
The children of Hindu
nationalist, Savarkar ruling India presently are oblivious of the shocking fact
that Hindu Mahasabha led by Savarkar entered into alliances with the Muslim
League in order to break the united freedom struggle, specially, the 1942 Quit
India Movement against the British rulers. While delivering Presidential
address to the 24th session of Hindu Mahasabha at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1942, he
defended hobnobbing with the Muslim League 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 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 socialable 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 lead of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji,
functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the
communities. Moreover further events also proved demonstratively that the Hindu
Mahasabhaits endeavoured to capture the centres of political power only in the
public interests and not for the leaves and fishes of the office."[xvii]
Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League also formed a coalition
government in NWFP also.
Long before V. D. Savarkar
(1883-1966) and M. S. Golwalkar (1906-73), who laid down elaborate theories of
Hindu Rashtra allowing no place for minorities, it was Bhai
Parmanand who declared in the beginning of the twentieth century that followers
of Hinduism and Islam in India were two different peoples because Muslims
followed a religion which originated in Arab lands. Parmanand specialized in
writing popular literature in Urdu in which the main emphasis would be on
Hindus being true sons of India and Muslims as outsiders.
[i] Cited in
Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. I
(Calcutta: Firma KL Mukhpadhyay, 1971), 295–296.
[ii] Cited in Majumdar, R. C.,
Three Phases of India’s Struggle for Freedom (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1961), 8.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Parmanand, Bhai in pamphlet titled, ‘The
Hindu National Movement’, cited in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay: Government of
Maharashtra, 1990), 35–36, first Published
December 1940, Thackers Publishers, Bombay.
[vi] Noorani, A. G., ‘Parivar & Partition’,
Frontline, Chennai, August 22, 2014,
p. 52.
[vii] Ibid., 53.
[viii] Rai, Lala Lajpat, ‘Hindu-Muslim Problem
XI’, The Tribune, Lahore, December
14, 1924, p. 8.
[ix] Cited in A. G. Noorani,
‘Parivar & Partition’, Frontline,
Chennai, August 22, 1914, p. 54.
[x] Cited in Dhanki, J. S., Lala
Lajpat Rai and Indian Nationalism, S Publications, Jullundur, 1990, p. 378.
[xi] Cited in Ambedkar, B. R., Pakistan or
the Partition of India, Maharashtra Government, Bombay, 1990, p. 129.
[xii] Maratha [V. D. Savarkar], Hindutva,
VV Kelkar, Nagpur, 1923, p. 88.
[xiii] Samagar Savarkar Wangmaya
(Collected Works of Savarkar), Hindu Mahasabha,
Poona, 1963, p.296
[xiv] Lohia, Rammanohar, Guilty Men of India’s Partition, BR Publishing, Delhi, 2012, p. 2.
[xv] B. R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the
Partition of India, Govt. of Maharashtra, Bombay, 1990 [Reprint of 1940
edition], p. 142.
[xvi] Ibid., 143.
[xvii] Ibid,
pp. 479-480.
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