Abstract
Introduction
It has been almost two decades that the book From Pluralism to Separatism: Qasbas in Colonial Awadh got published and yet we see that the core argument stands not only relevant but also demands further investigation. Its writer, Mushirul Hasan, makes it clear that we must study pluralism in any society at any point in history so that we can understand what goes into the making of pluralism. The whole book has six major chapters: the first describes sociopolitical context of the qasbas; the second chapter describes Kidwai families in the Masauli qasba; the third one is on a taluqdar of Rudauli named Chaudhury Mohammad Ali; the fourth is a biographical sketch of three famous nationalist Muslims, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai; the fifth one describes the Awadh region when pluralism started giving way to separatism and the last chapter is on the affect of Partition on the qasbati lives. In all six chapters, we see that the subtext is to understand the importance of studying pluralism as a value in itself.
Methods and Theoretical Underpinnings
A few points need to be told beforehand. First, emphasis is laid on studying relationships and interactions over differences and distinctions. Hasan locates his pluralism within these interactions among different social groups and cultures. Second, for Hasan, this brand of pluralism is the hallmark of qasbas; neither the cities nor the villages had this much composite culture. We see Hindus celebrating Muslim festivals and writing Urdu literature. We see qasbati Muslims engaging with nationalism, socialism and sufism alongside maintaining their conservative feudal lifestyle. Paradoxes are treated more as norms than as aberrations in the actual lifeworld of the qasbatis. Third, this work assumes Islam as one of the many factors influencing pluralism of the Awadh region. ‘Politics shaped Islam quite as much as Islam shaped politics’. Fourth, Hasan delves deep into the personal and familial lives within qasbas during the Partition. This, in turn, critiques the simplistic models claiming it was merely a failure of Muslim and Hindu leadership or a moment of religious fanaticism. The micro-picture tells us that things were complicated and multilayered. Fifth, this book uses a lot of Urdu sources, archives both maintained by various public institutions as well as personal, some of the author’s own personal contacts for oral history and a small field visit to Rafi Ahmad Kidwai’s home town Masauli. And lastly, people lived and loved pluralism so much that they were not even conscious of it. This book makes that invisible visible.
Colonial History of Awadh Region
The book describes the sociopolitical setting of the Awadh region. The book mentions numerous towns that were interconnected with each other and with major cities like Lucknow and Allahabad. A few generic points must be made about the qasbas before we go to the details. First, qasbas were more a cultural hub than an administrative unit. This made qasbas distinct from parganas or tehsils. Qasbastis were self-conscious about their cultural superiority over cities when it came to literature, art, music, poetry and even local histories (tazkiras). This culture was Indo-Persian and of the landed gentry, like soldiers, administrators, scholars, theologians and Sufis. Second, class, religion, gender, sect and caste all played their co-operating and conflicting role in shaping the qasbati ethos. Third, no single factor can explain any social phenomena in the qasbas between 1850 and 1950 and this includes the influence of Islam. Communal harmony signified qasbas. People made their journey through the maze of individuality and community, spirituality and feudalism, liberal ideas and conservative practices. These all formed an amorphous form of life called qasbas. Finally, qasbati life lost out to the communal frenzy by the early 1940s which initially plagued only cities. However, one can sense the spirit of the work is to put pluralism as the long-term norm of the qasbas and separatism as merely an aberration.
Urdu Literati of Colonial Awadh
Urdu was not merely a language; it was a critical space for the exchange of ideas, the bonding of personalities and intermingling of diverse cultures. Urdu was the language of litterateurs and qasbati intelligentsia used it for poetry recitation and serious debates. One of the earliest organisation was Jalsa-e-Tehzib. Founded in 1868 in Lucknow, it had branches in Gonda and Sitapur and members from diverse social groups. It held discussions and lectures, maintained a library and published a monthly paper. A theatrical play, Inder Sabha, was written in 1851/2 by Saiyyid Agha Hasan ‘Amanat’ and became a landmark in the canon of library history.
With the encounter with the British came new words into the Urdu lexicon. We find Saiyyid Muhammad Azad explaining those in Nai Raushni ki Dictionary. In 1914, Niyaz Fatehpuri translated Tagore’s Geetanjali into Urdu. In 1933, Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) was founded. In 1936, the first volume of the quarterly journal New Indian Literature was published after a PWA conference in Lucknow’s Rifah e Aam Club. This was attended by a prominent Shia taluqdar of Rudauli Chaudhury Muhammad Ali and was organised by Sajjad Zaheer. Ch. Md. Ali’s friend Wilayat Ali Kidwai ‘Bambooque’ wrote mostly in English in Comrade and New Era and sometimes in Urdu in Maaloomat. Munshi Prem Chand’s (1884?–1936) short stories and novels were often in Urdu and got published under the title Soz-e watan.
Rudauli had its own jewels to boast of. It included Maulvi Muhammad Halim Ansari (1877–1939), an Arabic scholar and columnist in a Cairo based newspaper Al Hilal. Sandila town enjoyed the presence of Munshi Nawal Kishore, an aristocrat and Honorary Magistrate of Sandila in 1884. He published books like Gulistan-e Hind and Bustan-e Awadh in Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit from his own press in Lucknow and Sandila. His weekly newspaper, Awadh Akhbar, enjoyed the contributions from Lucknow-born Pandit Ratan Nath ‘Sarshar’ (1847/8–1902). Brij Narayan ‘Chakbast’ founded the Young Men’s Association in 1905.
Urdu united people so much that one cannot find sufficient evidence to claim people were consciously enacting pluralism. Friendship across communities was the norm. And perhaps that is why Urdu was attacked most bitterly for isolating Muslims and it was gradually erased after Partition.
Islam, Communism and Urdu Poetry
Urdu elites were serious about the plight of oppressed sections. These were not limited to writing poetries and newspaper columns but also policy interventions and personal undertakings. Ali Sardar Jafri claimed that the battle of Karbala (
A fresh wave of socialist ideas tinged, influenced and even dominated the life and work of many qasbasti intellectuals. Kafi Azmi, Hasrat Mohani, Majaz Lakhnavi and Ali Sardar Jafri were among the galaxies in the sky of ‘Islamic socialism’. Hasrat Mohani was the pen name of Saiyyid Fazlul Hasan (1878–1951). He got the Stalin Prize, went to the Soviet Union and met Joseph Stalin (1879–1953). Kaifi Azmi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Sajjad Zaheer, Syed Sibte Hasan and Wamiq Jaunpuri were the eye-turners in the Progressive Writers Movement. PWM had many Shia thinkers, an indication of Shias’ heterodox theological practices. Basti born and Aligarh educated Qazi Jalil Abbasi (b. 1912) participated in a demonstration in Lucknow University as the president of the Student’s Federation. He was arrested in 1940 and had the privileged company of detained like Ali Sardar Jafri, Ali Jawad Zaidi (b. 1920), Chetan Singh and Sajjad Zaheer’s elder brother Husain Zaheer. By the time of his release in 1941, he had been converted to communism. Even in Lucknow’s Nadwat al-ulama students started to read about poverty and colonial exploitation along with Quran and Hadis.
Nationalist Voices from the Qasbas
The Revolt of 1857 and Partition in 1947 were the two biggest events that shook qasbas of the United Provinces. The colonial economy before 1857 wrecked havoc on qasbas. Cheap European goods seriously damaged the local demand for indigenous products. Craftsmen bore the biggest brunt. Many left Awadh in search of employment. This created tension against the Britishers and 1857 became the triggering point. Those who revolted against the Britishers, like the Raja of Mahmudabad, had to face more wrath than those who simply surrendered. As the dust settled, qasbas started coming to terms with newer political scene. A new social hierarchy replaced the older one; some managed to keep stride, others lost out. Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s MAO College is one prominent example of this transition.
Urban north Indian Muslim elites followed Turkey’s resistance against the West closely. Print media had produced a form of collectiveness by the early twentieth century, as there were now publishing houses in Delhi, Aligarh and Lucknow. The Khalifat Movement might appear to be pan-Islamic, but had deep nationalist roots among the Muslim elites. There are a number of instances illustrated in the book that clearly make a compelling case for the presence of nationalist fervour among the qasbatis. Maulana Azad, Hasrat Mohani, Mohamed Ali and Zafar Ali Khan were crossing swords with colonisers through writings and speeches. Mazharul Haq, Bihar’s leading barrister, left his aristocratic lifestyle and became a Gandhian. His wife, from Bombay’s Tayabji family, donated four precious bangles to Gandhi ji. Many Muslim elites left their silk and muslin imports and donned coarse khaddar. Mushir Hosain Kidwai signed a manifesto in 1921 where Indians were asked to severe their connection with the British. This nationalist gusto overtook pan-Islamism in the early twentieth century, the book suggests.
From Pluralism to Separatism
One wonders how qasbati ethos slowly started declining from 1930 onward. Art, literature, poetry and other finer things of life all slowly deteriorated. The book alludes to the causes of this decline only indirectly and intermittently. The rise of Hindu communalism, failure of Congress to contain it, the inability of Congress to get the pulse of the nation, division among the landed gentry over the question of Hindu–Muslim and above all, the inability of all the stakeholders to envisage a nation where pluralism is the governing principle. These are the major points that the book made. We can have a glancing look at the two points: the rise of Hindu communalism and the failure of Congress to promote pluralism.
Arya Samaj started functioning actively from the 1860s and 1870s. After a decade, the cow protection movement was started in east UP (1880s) and later at the turn of the twentieth century Awadh faced the storm of the Nagri resolution (1900). In 1938, anti-Muslim riots occurred in Banaras and Allahabad. It was during this time that Muslim support for the Congress started declining and taluqdars started gravitating towards the Muslim League. By the 1940s, killings reached its zenith. In a fair held in Meerut district, a minor altercation between a Jat and a Muslim led to the killing of more than 500 Muslims. In 1945, Lucknow witnessed a rally by the RSS to oppose the appointment of a Muslim officer to the Lucknow Municipal Board. All these together got aggravated due to the Congress inability to sustain trust among the Muslims.
JL Nehru was firm about keeping religious harmony intact. Some of his supporters followed him; many others opposed his ideas hideously. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai lost in 1946; so did many of his Muslim colleagues in Congress. His brother, Shafi Ahmad Kidwai, lost the Allahabad Municipal Board election in 1944. It was alleged that some Congress leaders conspired to defeat him. Vallabhai Patel remained firm against all forms of pluralism, be it in favour of religious minorities (Muslims, Christians and Sikhs) or social minorities (Dalits, Adivasis and Hindu women). Conservative Hindu leaders like Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari, V Patel and JB Kripalani threatened to resign when Nehru proposed a socialist economy in 1936!
Inventing Boundaries: Case of Awadh and the United Provinces
The year 1950 was finally the moment when India got freedom from the British but it was divided into two. This was one of the largest movements in world history, adversely affecting Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus. Narrating this as a conflict between Hindus and Muslims would be simplistic. A lot of factors came into play and people gave multiple meanings to all their political events happening. What started as separatism from the 1930s finally succeeded in the 1940s and by the 1950s, Hindu communalism started to take roots. Just after Partition, anti-Muslim riots happened in the districts of Lucknow, Bara Banki and Banaras over cow-protection. Ayodhya, just seventy miles away from Bara Banki, was up in flames. It was rumoured that Lord Ram was born there and a temple must be built by demolishing a mosque. Patel remained staunchly against R. A. Kidwai, J. N. Nehru, Maulana Azad and B. R. Ambedkar. Nationalists like Muhammad Habib and Muhammad Mujeeb found themselves to be out of place in newly independent India. Minorities like Dalits, Sikhs and Muslims of the British India remained minorities of Independent India. Recent scholarly works show that Hindu communalism is one of the reasons for socioeconomic stagnation in north India.
Limitations
I would like to point out my few reservations about the book. First, Hasan delves more on Muslim separatism than on Hindu separatism. Second, Hasan claims qasbasti culture promoted pluralism without telling us the issue of conflicting interests of various groups. Third, the postcolonial assumption that political representation increases conflict among groups seems to be out of place. Representation is to increase diversity and reduce conflict. Finally, there is conspicuous absence of the mentioning of BR Ambedkar’s mission and vision. Congressmen who opposed JL Nehru, M Azad and RA Kidwai were also the leaders who opposed BR Ambedkar. It is in this context that one must read the text Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve it (1945) by BR Ambedkar. Despite all these, this book must be read by everyone who thinks that pluralism must not only be studied but also be promoted. Then, and now.