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The Politics of Indian Secularism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Prakash Chandra Upadhyaya
Prakash Chandra Upadhyaya
Affiliation:
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi
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Extract

Indian newspapers and academic journals assault their readers with stories of large-scale communal violence and of the communalization of India's political institutions. These stories are frequently accompanied by pious editorials which enact the well-known Indian ritual of paying lip-service to the concept of ‘secularism’. Secularism is one question on which intellectuals have made common cause with social workers and politicians, joining them in meetings and seminars, even participating in the peace marches which are commonly organized in the aftermath of communal riots. There have even been occasions in which individuals who are known to have been involved, directly or otherwise, in communal battles, have participated in these rites of secularism.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 1992 , pp. 815 - 853
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 An example of this is the Congress (Indira) (henceforth Congress (I)) strategy of assuaging Sikh feelings by participating in peace marches in Delhi after the anti-Sikh riots of November 1984. Congress leaders and activists are widely believed to have been involved in the violence that followed Mrs Gandhi's assassination. See the report of the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Who Are The Guilty? (Delhi, 1984);Google ScholarThe Report of the Citizens Commission, Delhi, 31 October to 4 November, 1984 (Delhi, 1984);Google Scholar and Chakravarti, Uma and Haksar, Nandita (eds), Delhi Riots (Delhi, 1987).Google Scholar

2 This has been argued convincingly by Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India 1885–1947 (Delhi, 1983);Google ScholarPatnaik, Prabhat, ‘Imperialism and the Growth of Indian Capitalism’, in Sutcliff, B. and Owen, R., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1982);Google ScholarChatterjee, Partha, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Delhi, 1986);Google ScholarGuha, Ranajit, ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, in Guha, Ranajit (ed.), Subaltern Studies I (Delhi, 1982), and by the same author,Google Scholar‘Dominance without Hegemony and its Historiography’, in Guha, Ranajit (ed.), Subaltern Studies VI (Delhi, 1989).Google Scholar

3 Lord Kimberly, for instance, responded to nationalist demands for a more representative government by dismissing the possibility of a democratically united India. He argued that ‘the notion of parliamentary representation in so vast a country, almost as large as Europe, containing so large a number of different races, is one of the wildest imaginations that ever entered the minds of men’. Cited in SirCoupland, Reginald, The Indian Problem, 1833–1935 (Oxford, 1968), 26. It was not only British administrators who took this view. Even John Stuart Mill, who championed representative institutions and liberalism in the West, considered representative democracy to be ‘absolutely out of the question’ as far as India was concerned. See Macaulay's speech in the House of Commons, 10 July 1983, as cited inGoogle ScholarDutt, R. Palme, India Today (London, 1940), 425.Google Scholar

4 For details of the British orientalist construction of traditional India, see Washbrook, D. A., ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies 15, 3 (1983);Google ScholarSaid, Edward, Orientalism (London, 1987);Google ScholarDuncan, J.Derrett, M., Religion, Law and the State in India (London, 1968), 225–73;Google ScholarFuller, C. J., ‘British India or Traditional India? an Anthropological Question’, Ethnos 42 (1977);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Inden, Ronald, Imagining India (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar

5 The Indian nationalist vision of India appears, therefore, to have drawn heavily on the British orientalist tradition. This was equally, if not more, true of the Muslim separatists' two-nation theory and the Hindu militants' ‘Hindu Rashtra philosophy’, which not only accepted the British argument that India was a communally divided society, but also that its communities were mutually irreconcilable. This is one important sense in which majoritarianism is distinct from communalism.

6 This point has been developed by the author in an earlier paper. See Prakash Chandra Upadhyaya, ‘The Politics of Indian Secularism: Its Practitioners, Defenders and Critics’, Occasional Papers on Perspectives in Indian Development, XI, January 1990, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.Google Scholar

7 ‘Statist secularism’ has been the focus of criticism by Ashis Nandy in several recent articles. See, for instance, ‘The Political Culture of the Indian State’, Daedalus 118, 4 (Fall 1989);Google Scholar‘The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance’, Alternatives XIII, 2 (04 1988);Google Scholar‘Culture, State, and the Rediscovery of Indian Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly XIX, 49 (8 12 1984); and ‘An Anti-Secularist Manifesto’, Seminar (October 1985).Google Scholar

8 Manoranjan Mohanty, for instance, argues for a democratic transformation through secularism, but suggests, in my view mistakenly, that ‘hegemonic secularism’ prevails in India. See his article, ‘Secularism: Hegemonic or Democratic’, Economic and Political Weekly XXIV, 22 (3 June 1989).Google Scholar

9 The Mandal Commission Report lists as many as 3,743 communities as ‘backward’, a figure that amounts to 52% of India's total population. Their representation in Government employment in the Class I, Class II and Class III–IV categories stands at 4.69%, 10.63% and 24.40%. Choudhury, Kameshwar, ‘Reservation for OBCs: Hardly An Abrupt Decision’, Economic and Political Weekly XXV, 35–6 (1–8 09 1990), 1930. The Commission, however, recommended only 27% reservation for the backward castes–just over half of what their numbers merit–so as not to contravene the Supreme Court ruling of 1963 that reservation cannot in any circumstances exceed 50%. (The Scheduled Caste quota stands at 22.5%; the Mandal Commission's recommendations, if implemented, will take the total percentage of reservations to 49.5%.)Google Scholar

10 Ram Vilas Paswan, the Minister for Labour and Welfare under the V. P. Singh Government, for instance, argued that ‘Reservation has existed in our country since the foundation of caste. Have not the upper castes [enjoyed] reservation in education, performing religious rites and other fields?’ Times of India, 8 September 1990. For details about reservation and agitation against it in the past, see Yagnik, Achyut and Bhatt, Anil, ‘The Anti-Reservation Problem in Gujarat’, South Asia Bulletin IV, 1 (Spring 1984), and Kameshwar Choudhury, ‘Reservation for OBCs’.Google Scholar

11 In this cause, large numbers of high caste students, mostly from lower middle class families, came forward to sacrifice their lives by setting themselves ablaze. In this hideous war, they found a spokesman in Arun Shourie, who, in an editorial, urged them not to let their agitation die down. Girilal Jain also joined them in demanding the ouster of V. P. Singh. See Balagopal, K., ‘This Anti-Mandal Mania’, Economic and Political Weekly XXV, 40 (6 10 1990). This was the position that was generally adopted by the Indian media on the issue. See ‘The New Reservation Policy: Apartheid Indian Style’, Cover story, India Today, 15 September 1990; and Swapan Dasgupta, ‘Invoking Ram to fight Mandal’, Sunday Times of India, 14 October 1990.Google Scholar

12 A Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Haryana thus declared that ‘the only dichotomy in Indian society is that between haves and have-nots’. Cited in Balagopal, ‘This Anti-Mandal Mania’, 2231.

13 The two arguments are, of course, contradictory. Class-based reservations would undoubtedly have the same effect on merit and efficiency that caste-based reservations are expected to have.

14 In 1966, one observer, for instance, described what he calls ‘dominant’ nationalism in the following way: ‘The dominant ruling group at the centre tried to establish a fake “unity of the nation” by denying the right of every nationality and social group to have equality of opportunity and status in a democratic set up…. The so-called “struggle between nationalism and fissiparous forces”–the struggle in the name of which the leaders of the ruling party are trying to beat the opposition forces into submission–is a fake “struggle”. It is the means through which the dominant section of the bourgeoisie is trying to maintain its domination not only over the working people but even sections of their own class. The slogan of “national” unity is thus a weapon with which the dominant monopoly group tried to bring their competitors into submission’. Namboodripad, E. M. S., cited in Francine Frankel, India's Political Economy: The Gradual Revolution (Princeton, 1978), 343.Google Scholar

15 Hasan, Mushirul, ‘In Search of Integration and Identity, Indian Muslims Since Independence’, Economic and Political Weekly XXIII, 45–7 (Special Number, 11 1988), 2469.Google Scholar

16 India Today, 15 May 1985, 5.

17 India Today, 15 January 1990, 34. Of these, 3,000 died in the last three years of the decade alone. Mushirul Hasan, ‘In Search of Integration and Identity’, 2469.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid. For further details, see Kumar, Promode,‘Communal Violence and Repression’, Mainstream, 5 09 1987.Google Scholar

20 Census of India, 1981, Pt IIA, 350–459.

21 India Today, 31 October 1989, 16.

22 Ibid.

23 Javeed Alam, for instance, has demonstrated that the extremism of the Akalis and the politics of the Congress in Punjab veered around economic issues. See his article, ‘The Political Implications of Economic Contradictions in Punjab’, Social Scientist 161, 15 (10 October 1986).Google Scholar

24 India Today, 15 October 1990, 18.

25 The Sunday Times of India, 14 October 1990. See Advani's interview with Swapan Dasgupta.Google Scholar

26 Swapan Dasgupta, ‘Invoking Ram to Fight Mandal’, in ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is evidently preparing to extend the Ayodhya campaign indefinitely. One of its leaders recently announced that ‘Earlier we wanted only three [holy sites of Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi] but now…we have decided that we will demolish 3,000 mosques…’. Ashok Singhal, cited in The Guardian, 6 November 1990.Google Scholar

29 Das, Veena, ‘Difference and Division as Designs for Life’, in Borden, Carla M. (ed.), Contemporary India: Essays on the Uses of Tradition (Delhi, 1986), 46.Google Scholar

30 See, for instance, Nandy, Ashis, ‘The Politics of Secularism’ and ‘Culture, State Rediscovery’, and by the same author, ‘The Political Culture of the Indian State’, in Daedalus 118, 4 (Fall 1989), and ‘Cultural Frames of Social Transformation: A Credo’, in Alternatives XII (1987).Google Scholar

31 See Das, Veena, ‘Difference and Division as Designs for Life’.Google Scholar

32 Madan, T. N., ‘Secularism in its Place’, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 4 (1987),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by the same author, ‘Religion in India’, Daedalus 118, 4 (Fall 1989).Google Scholar

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34 Even Rajni Kothari, who once understood the communal divide in terms of the erosion of the democratic foundations of the Indian state, characterized by the instrumentalization and commercialization of religion through number-game and vote-bank strategies and based upon ‘middle class’ capitalism, now argues for ‘both the recovery of the Indianness of India (as against the dominance of alien structures and ideologies) and the inclusion of those who have been excluded by both tradition and modernity’. See Kothari, Rajni, ‘Will the State Wither Away?’, The Illustrated Weekly of India 8 07 1984;Google Scholar‘The Great Divide’, The Illustrated Weekly of India, 1 09 1985;Google Scholar and ‘The Indian Enterprise Today’, in Daedalus 118, 4 (Fall 1989), 66.Google Scholar

35 See Ashis Nandy, ‘The Politics of Secularism’, 117, 179, and ‘The Political Culture of the Indian State’, 4. Interestingly, anti-elitist arguments similar to Nandy's are sometimes espoused by leaders whose politics he would otherwise denounce. Thus, L. K. Advani responded to criticism of his rath-yatra project by declaring that ‘the elite has failed to grasp this resurgence’ of popular Hindu enthusiasm for liberating Lord Ram. ‘Liberating Ram to Fight Mandal’, The Sunday Times of India, 14 October 1990.Google Scholar

36 Nandy, Ashis, ‘The Politics of Secularism’, 179, 185, 190, 192.Google Scholar

37 ibid., 180. Nandy legitimizes his own position by constructing an ‘anti-secular’ Gandhi in his own image. We are told, for instance, that Gandhi was ‘an arch antisecularist’, whose ‘religious tolerance came from his anti-secularism’. ibid., 192. This paper, on the contrary, will argue that Gandhi best articulated the philosophy of majoritarianism, which was neither truly secular nor anti-secular.

38 Thus, since Independence, and particularly in the 1980s, the policy of the Communist parties has been determined to a great extent by the strategy of isolating the Hindu right wing, and particularly the BJP (earlier the Jana Sangha), while opposing the ruling Congress party. This was evident in their electoral strategy in 1989, and in their support for the minority Janata Dal government on the Ayodhya issue, when they backed the hard-line stance of Mulayam Singh Yadav (known to his detractors as ‘Mullah Khan’) against the militant Hindu campaign.Google Scholar

39 For clear statements of this view, see Singh, Randhir, ‘Theorising Communalism: A Fragmentary Note in the Marxist Mode’, in Economic and Political Weekly XXIII, 3 (23 07 1988),Google Scholar and Khan, S., ‘Towards a Marxist Understanding of Secularism: Some Preliminary Speculations’, Economic and Political Weekly XXII, 10 (7 03 1987).Google Scholar

40 It is widely believed that Gandhi's last six-day fast was a protest against the overtly communal policies of Patel. ‘You are not the same Sardar I once knew’, he is said to have remarked during the fast. See Brown, Judith, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (London, 1989), 380,Google Scholar and Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India, 438, fn. 2.Google Scholar

41 The taming of Nehru began in the 1930s, soon after his socialist sympathies became evident. The Thakurdas Papers provide fascinating glimpses both of the processes by which Nehru was brought to heel, and of the political maturity of certain Indian capitalists in allowing Gandhi to do their work for them. Thus, for instance, when in May 1936, twenty-one leading industrialists issued a statement denouncing the socialism of the Congress under Nehru's Presidentship, G. D. Birla chided them, saying ‘We are all against socialism’, but that ‘it looks very crude for a man of property to say that he is opposed to expropriation.’ He advised them instead to ‘let those who have given up property say what you want to say’. He was able to inform them that ‘Mahatmaji had kept his promises…Jawaharlal's speech was thrown into the wastepaper basket… things are moving in the right direction…’. See Chandra, Bipan, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Capitalist Class, 1936’, in his Nationalism and Colonialism in India (Delhi, 1979), 187, 191, 192, 193, 195.Google Scholar

42 Cited by Punjabi, Kewalram Lalchand, The Indomitable Sardar: A Political Biography of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Bombay, 1962), 131.Google Scholar

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44 Congress Bulletin, September–October 1949, 15. The RSS preferred, however, to stay outside the Congress. But its leader, Gowalkar, was willing to do business with Patel from outside the Government, particularly to cooperate in fighting communism. He wrote, ‘If you with government power and we with the organised cultural force combined, we can eliminate this menace, [communism]. I am intensely worried at the wave of that foreign “ism” which is sweeping our neighbouring countries.’ Gowalkar to Patel, 24 September 1948. Justice on Trial, 23–6.Google Scholar

45 Nehru took the view that ‘honest communalism is fear, false communalism is political reaction’. Gopal, S., ‘Nehru and Minorities’, Economic and Political Weekly XIII, 45–7 (Special Number, 11 1988), 2465.Google Scholar

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48 Gopal thus suggests that under Nehruvian secularism, ‘the minorities would be given the fullest assurance, not of jobs and seats in assemblies, but that their culture and traditions would be safe’. ibid., 2463.

49 Nehru believed that ‘by virtue of numbers and in other ways, [the majority community] is the dominant community and it is its responsibility not to use its position in any way which might prejudice our secular ideals’. Nehru's letter to PCC Presidents, 5 August 1954, in his Letters to PCC Presidents (New Delhi, 1955), 19–20.Google Scholar

50 Jaya Prakash Narayan's movement against Mrs Gandhi's regime relied heavily upon RSS cadres. See Fox, Richard, ‘Gandhian Socialism and Hindu Nationalism: Cultural Domination and the World System’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics XXV, 3 (11 1983), 238–41,Google Scholar and by the same author, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston, 1989), 212–14.Google Scholar Also see Anderson, Walter K. and Damle, Shridhar D., Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism (London, 1987), 211–13. Narayan in a speech to RSS cadres at Patna once appealed to them to ‘fulfil’ his ‘dream’, and defended criticism by declaring that ‘if Jana Sangha is fascist, then I, too, am a fascist’.Google ScholarNarayan, Jaya Prakash, May You Fulfill My Dream (English translation of a speech delivered at an RSS training camp in Patna, 3 November 1977) (Bangalore, 1979), 5; Mainstream, 15 March 1975, 6.Google Scholar

51 The Janata Party was formed out of a coalition of opposition parties, which included the Bharatiya Lok Dal, the Jana Sangh, the Congress (O), the Socialist Party and the Congress Socialist Party.

52 These were Romila Thapar's Medieval India, Bipan Chandra, Amalesh Tripathi and Barun De's Modern India, Bipan Chandra's Freedom Struggle and Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra's Communalism and the Writing of Indian Histoy. In an anomymous note, these books were accused of being part of a conspiracy by ‘Communists and Fellow Travellers’, and Morarji Desai asked his Education Minister, Pratap Chander Chunder to withdraw them. See Anamika, , ‘Shades of Macarthism’, in Economic and Political Weekly XII, 38 (17 09 1977), 37–8.Google Scholar

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54 Rudolph, and Rudolph, , In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago, 1987), 546, fn. 24.Google Scholar

55 See Akbar, M. J., India: The Siege Within (Harmondsworth, 1985);Google ScholarTully, Mark and Jacob, Satish, Amritsar, Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle (New Delhi, 1985);Google Scholar and Gupta, Dipankar, ‘The Communalizing of Punjab, 1980–85’, Economic and Political Weekly XX, 28 (13 07 1985), 1185–90.Google Scholar

56 The adoption of Hindustani might have allowed Urdu to continue to flourish both as a spoken and written language.

57 Narayan, Jayaprakash, ‘A Plea for the Reconstruction of the Indian Polity’, in Prasad, Bimal (ed.), A Revolutionary Quest (Delhi, 1980), 217.Google Scholar

58 Thus, for instance, the Santal leader, Jitu Santal, died while attempting to ‘recapture’ a mosque with the encouragement of the local Swarajist leader of the shuddhi movement. Sarkar, Tanika, ‘Jitu Santal's Movement in Malda, 1924–32: A Study in Tribal Protest’, in Guha, Ranajit, Subaltern Studies IV (Delhi, 1985). It has recently been demonstrated that lower caste groups were mobilized in a similar fashion to fight for the ‘Hindu community’ during the rioting that preceded and accompanied the Partition of India.Google Scholar See Chatterji, Joya, ‘Communal Politics and the Partition of Bengal, 1932–1947’, University of Cambridge, Ph.D. dissertation, 1990, 209–23.Google Scholar

59 See, for example, Hashmi, Tajul Islam, ‘The Communalisation of Class Struggle: East Bengal Peasantry, 1923–29’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 25, 2 (1988);CrossRefGoogle ScholarChatterjee, Partha, ‘Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal’, Subaltern Studies I (New Delhi, 1986);Google ScholarSarkar, Tanika, ‘Communal Riots in Bengal’, in Hasan, Mushirul (ed.), Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India (New Delhi, 1985);Google Scholar and Das, Suranjan, ‘Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947’, University of Oxford, D.Phil. thesis, 1987.Google Scholar

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63 ibid.

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69 Thus, for instance, Gandhi remained away in Rajkot for the entire duration of the Tripuri Congress of 1939, during which Subhas Bose was removed from the leadership of the all-India Congress Committee, allowing Rajendra Prasad and his Working Committee colleagues to take upon themselves the unpleasant task of openly confronting Bose and his left-wing supporters. See Gordon, Leonard, Bengal: the Nationalist Movement 1876–1940 (New York, 1974),Google Scholar and Bandopadhyay, Gitasree, Constraints in Bengal Politics, 1921–41, Gandhian Leadership (Calcutta, 1984).Google Scholar

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91 ibid., 15, fn. 43.

92 Thus, even, perhaps, contrary to the wishes of the author, who is otherwise well known for his critique of Hindu communal politics, this interpretation of the nationalist movement breeds majoritarian assumptions.

93 For an account of the Congress attitude towards Muslims, see Hasan, Mushirul, ‘The Muslim Mass Contacts Campaign: Analyses of a Strategy of Political Mobilization’, in Sisson, Richard and Wolpert, Stanley (eds), Congress and Indian Nationalism, The Pre-Independence Phase (Delhi, 1988), 215.Google Scholar

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98 For a statement of the pluralist democratic theory upon which this construction draws, see Dahl, R. D., Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971),Google Scholar and by the same author, Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956) and ‘Pluralism Revisited’, in Comparative Politics 10, 2 (1978).Google Scholar See also Truman, D. B., The Government Process (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

99 See, for example, the accounts of Congress politics in McLane, ‘The Early Congress’; Bayly, C. A., Local Roots of Indian Politics, Allahabad 1880–1920 (Oxford, 1975);Google ScholarYang, Anand, ‘Sacred Symbols and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the “Anti-Cow Killing” Riot of 1893’, Comparative Studies in Histoy and Society 22, 4 (1980);Google ScholarPandey, Gyanendra, The Ascendancy of the Congress in the Uttar Pradesh 1926–34, A Study of Imperfect Mobilization (Oxford, 1988); and Joya Chatterji, ‘Communal Politics and the Partition of Bengal’.Google Scholar

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110 This point is diametrically opposed to the arguments put forward by the ‘antisecularists’, who make the case for the establishment of a traditional communitarian state, who defend not only the politics of community but also traditions such as sati. See, by Nandy, Ashis, ‘The Politics of Secularism’; ‘The Sociology of Sati’, Indian Express, 5 10 1987; ‘The Human Factor’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 17 January 1988; ‘Sati in Kaliyuga’, Economic and Political Weekly, 17 September 1988;Google Scholar and by Das, Veena, ‘Strange Response’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 28 February 1988, and ‘Difference and Division as a Design for Life’.Google Scholar

111 The Chairman of the Ram Janamabhoomi Mukti Sangharsh Smiti (‘The Front for the Liberation of the Birthplace of Ram’), Mahant Avaidyanath, declared that nothing but a war with Pakistan would stop the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Times of India, 24 April 1990.Google Scholar

112 India Today, 31 May 1986, 38.Google Scholar

113 The Shilanyas campaign in Uttar Pradesh claimed 708 lives in the latter half of 1989, and the riots in Bhagalpur alone resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people, most of whom were Muslims. India Today, 15 October 1989, 24. Also, see Abdi, S. N. M., ‘When Darkness Fell’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 26 11 1989,Google Scholar and Upadhyaya, Ramesh, ‘Bhagalpur's Holocaust’, in Frontline, 11–24 11 1989.Google Scholar

114 This slogan refers to the Hindu militants' demand that like in Ayodhya, mosques in Kashi and Mathura be destroyed and Hindu temples established in their stead.

115 The presidential address of W. C. Bonnerji at the first session of the Congress. Cited in Besant, Annie, How India Wrought for Freedom: The Story of the Indian National Congress told from Official Records (Madras, 1915), 7.Google Scholar

116 Rao, M. V. Raman, The Development of the Congress Constitution (New Delhi, 1958), 2.Google Scholar

117 McLane, , ‘The Early Congress’, 57.Google Scholar

118 Whenever the Congress leadership proposed any communal compromise which was likely to jeopardize the interests of powerful Hindu groups, they did not hesitate to abandon the Congress for openly communal Hindu organizations, so as to pressurize the Congress to rethink its policies. As a result, the Congress was often forced to adopt positions that were similar to those of the Hindu parties. In Bengal, for instance, in 1937, when the Bengal Congress under the leadership of Sarat Bose adopted a ‘left-populist’ mass-contact initiative as the basis of a secular programme, the party lost the support of Hindu zamindars and businessmen to the emerging Hindu Mahasabha, and was forced to abandon the initiative and compete with the Mahasabha to regain its traditional constituency. For a detailed analysis of this process, see Joya Chatterji, ‘Communal Politics in Bengal’.Google Scholar

119 Times of India, 9 November 1989.Google Scholar

120 See Gordon, Richard, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, in Modern Asian Studies IX, 2 (1975),Google Scholar and Prakash, Indra, A Review of the History and work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement (Delhi, 1938).Google Scholar