Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History [1 ed.] 0415671655, 9780415671651

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ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY

Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930 Constructing nation and history Prabhu Bapu

Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930

Hindu nationalism has emerged as a political ideology represented by the Hindu Mahasabha. This book explores the campaign for Hindu unity and organisation in the context of the Hindu–Muslim conflict in colonial north India in the early twentieth century. The book explains that the Mahasabha articulated Hindu nationalist ideology as a means of constructing a distinct Hindu political identity and unity among the Hindus in conflict with the Muslims in the country. It looks at the Mahasabha’s ambivalence with the Indian National Congress due to an extreme ideological opposition, and goes on to argue that the Mahasabha had its ideological focus on an anti-Muslim antagonism rather than the anti-British struggle for India’s independence, adding to the difficulties in the negotiations on Hindu– Muslim representation in the country. The book suggests that the Mahasabha had a limited class and regional base and was unable to generate much in the way of a mass movement of its own, but developed a quasi-military wing, besides its involvement in a number of popular campaigns. Bridging the gap in Indian historiography by focusing on the development and evolution of Hindu nationalism in its formative period, this book is a useful study for students and scholars of Asian Studies and Political History. Prabhu Bapu was educated at the London School of Economics, UK, and has a doctorate in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.

Routledge studies in South Asian history

1 The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India Edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison 2 Decolonization in South Asia Meanings of freedom in post-independence West Bengal, 1947–52 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay 3 Historiography and Writing Postcolonial India Naheem Jabbar 4 Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities The England-returned Sumita Mukherjee 5 Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal Symptoms of Empire Ishita Pande 6 Radical Politics in Colonial Punjab Governance and sedition Shalini Sharma 7 The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India Exploring transgressions, contests and diversities Biswamoy Pati 8 The State and Governance in India The congress ideal William F. Kuracina 9 Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and the Making of India Rebecca Brown

10 Gender and Radical Politics in India Magic moments of Naxalbari (1967–1975) Mallarika Sinha Roy 11 Bureaucracy, Community and Influence in India Society and the state, 1930s–1960s William Gould 12 A History of State and Religion in India Ian Copland, Ian Mabbett, Asim Roy, Kate Brittlebank and Adam Bowles 13 Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930 Constructing nation and history Prabhu Bapu

Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930 Constructing nation and history

Prabhu Bapu

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Prabhu Bapu The right of Prabhu Bapu to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bapu, Prabhu. Hindu Mahasabha in colonial North India, 1915–1930: constructing nation and history / Prabhu Bapu. p. cm. – (Routledge studies in South Asian history) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hindutva–India–Uttar Pradesh–History. 2. Hinduism and politics– India–Uttar Pradesh. 3. Uttar Pradesh (India)–Politics and government. 4. Nationalism–Religious aspects–Hinduism. 5. Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha–History. 6. Hinduism–Relations–Islam. 7. Islam–Relations– Hinduism. I. Title. DS485.U6B38 2012 322'.10954209041–dc23 2012003480 ISBN: 978-0-415-67165-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-10574-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

Acknowledgements Note on translation and references Abbreviations Glossary 1 Introduction

ix xi xii xiii 1

PART I

Hindu nationalism

9

2 The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha Hindu Sabha movement 12 Hindu Mahasabha’s formation 18 Organisation and structure 23 Conclusion 24

11

3 Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership Urban and high caste roots 26 Mahasabha and Congress ties 34 Conclusion 42

26

PART II

Sangathan ideology 4 Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus Sangathan movement 47 Caste hierarchy 54 Conclusion 59

45 47

viii Contents 5 Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture Hindu ‘self ’ and Islamic ‘non-self ’ 62 A ‘Hindu fatherland’ 67 Hindu rashtra 75 Conclusion 77

61

6 Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ Ideal of ‘Hindu masculinity’ 79 Muslims – the ‘historical enemy’ 84 Conclusion 91

79

7 The militarisation of Hindu society Hindu militarisation 93 Mahasabha and RSS Nexus 97 Radicalisation of militarisation 101 Conclusion 104

93

8 Gandhi and Hindu Mahasabhaites Gandhi’s religion 105 Arya Samaj 108 Gandhi and Savarkar conflict 109 Conclusion 120

105

9 Nagari and cow – the symbols of a ‘Hindu nation’ Hindu campaign for Nagari 121 Cow protection movement 128 Conclusion 133

121

PART III

Hindu nation

135

10 Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation Muslim representation 137 Jinnah’s Delhi proposals 141 Round table conferences 147 Conclusion 150

137

11 Conclusion

151

Notes Bibliography Index

154 223 238

Acknowledgements

This work is the revised version a doctoral dissertation submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in November 2009. It’s theme has been inspired by Sir Christopher Bayly: the Hindu Mahasabha project came up in one of my informal meetings with him on a foggy winter evening at the British Library, London, in 2000. It revisits the Hindutva assumption that the Hindu–Muslim divide in colonial India was deeply rooted in the country’s social and political history, an issue of debate that is bound to dominate the academia for decades to come. This thesis has taken years to write, and I owe a great debt to my teacher and Orientalist-Professor Peter Robb. Professor Robb is my most important audience and critic: he has been a patient and generous supervisor and a great editor throughout. The chapters have gone through many drafts at various stages and kept changing in detail and argument until the thesis rolled out in September 2009. If there is one reader to whom this work is addressed as my first audience, it is to Professor Robb as a social historian. I am grateful to the thesis examiners – Dr Joya Chatterji, Reader, History of Modern South Asia, Trinity College, University of Cambridge; and Professor Francis Robinson, Visiting Professor of the Islamic World, Brasenose College, University of Oxford. They offered valuable suggestions and detailed comments on the chapters; and I remain deeply grateful to them. Source material for this work has been collected in Lucknow, New Delhi, and London. However, there is a vacuum of data on the Hindu Mahasabha due to the missing of many documents, particularly in Lucknow; and the assembling of evidence on Mahasabha activities and campaigns in the United Provinces has been extremely difficult. Many documents that could have established a clearer picture of the Mahasabha’s programmes are not available in the archives and libraries of Delhi and London. A few records do exist; and some part of the evidence has been acquired from newspapers at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [NMML], New Delhi; the National Archives of India [NAI], New Delhi; and the Oriental and India Office Library, London. The writings of Hindu Mahasabha leaders – Swami Shraddhananda, Bhai Parmanand, and V.D. Savarkar – and the collected works of M.K. Gandhi have been studied in depth. In addition, the private papers of M.M. Malviya, B.S. Moonje, V.D. Savarkar, and M.R. Jayakar have been a major help in constructing a theory of the Mahasabha’s ideology.

x

Acknowledgements

More important, the timing of the thesis has been fortuitously advantageous to me: many new works on Hindu nationalism have been launched in the 2000s. I owe a great debt to the research institutions in London. In particular, I am grateful to SOAS Library, London; the British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, London; and the Oriental and India Office Collections [IOL], London. This work has become an obsessive and consuming passion of my years in London. I gratefully acknowledge the respect and kindness, the dedication and generosity with which the Indian community in London has supported my research – a support that inspires in me pleasant memories and emotions. I could not get a fellowship at the university. Mr Ramesh Desai, chairman, and Mr Anil Pota, secretary, Friends of India Society, London, organised an appeal in the Indian community to back my PhD registration at the University of London; and their support is of inestimable value. Mr Jagdish M. Rajpara and Mr Mukund Bhatt, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, showed great energy and determination in supporting me over the tuition fee: I am forever grateful to them. I am extremely grateful to Dr Ghiyasuddin Siddhiqui, chairman, Muslim Parliament, Hammersmith, London, who was most kind and generous in taking an initiative to pay part of the tuition fee. Dr Jesdev Singh Rai, director, Sikh Human Rights Group, London, has paid part of the fee; and Mr Jog Raj Ahir and Mr G.P.S. Bhatia, president and former president, Shri Guru Ravidas Sabha, Southall, London, have shown strong commitment to this research: I owe my extreme gratitude to their invaluable support. I am overwhelmed by the commitment shown by Mr Ranjit Singh, OBE, chairman, Guru Nanank Chair Trust, London, who sent part of the tuition fee on the basis of a solitary phone call by me; and I am deeply grateful to him. I remain grateful to Mr Akbar Shiraji, deputy managing director, Noon Products Ltd, Middlesex, London, who has paid part of the tuition fee. I deeply value the affectionate support and true service given to me by Mr Jagjiwan Singh, president, Mr Mohan Singh Nayyar, general secretary, and Mr Piara Singh Aulakh, executive committee member, Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Hounslow, London. Two Sikh gurdwaras have given extraordinary support to this research, and they are holy institutions to me. Mr Himmat Singh Sohi, president, Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Southall, London, has sponsored a substantial part of my tuition fee. Mr Sohi’s unequalled commitment inspires deep emotions in me. The late Amolak Singh, chairman, and Mr Sarup Singh Mahon, secretary, Gurdwara Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jetha [UK], Hounslow, London, have supported me with solicitous care and affection in the early stages of the thesis. Mr Sarup Singh’s leadership and influence guided the way for me during my hard, dark days in London. My nephew M. Ganesh has shown great resolve in supporting my research; and I owe my gratitude to him. My children – Abhinav and Mira – have given me perhaps the strongest emotional strength and sense of security: I dedicate this book to them.

Note on translation and references

Hindi phrases and words have been translated in the text and some words included in the glossary. The text does not have diacritical marks. The names of organisations, castes, deities, etc., have not been italicised. The spellings and names of places are standardised: Banaras for Benaras, Allahabad for Prayag, Kanpur for Cawnpur, and Mathura for Muttra are used in the text, except when they appear in quotes, or in the actual title of a newspaper – or an organisation. All references to archival unpublished documents state file number, followed by year, other details, department and location. For a few tracts, the name of the publisher as well as the number of copies published has been given in footnotes, where relevant to the text.

Abbreviations

AICC Dept. EPW GAD Home Poll IESHR IOL JAS Judl MAS NAI NMML NNR NWP&O PAI SH UP UPSA

All India Congress Committee Department Economic and Political Weekly General Administration Department Home [Political] Department Indian Economic and Social History Review India Office Library and Records, London Journal of Asian Studies Judicial Modern Asian Studies National Archives of India, New Delhi Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi Native Newspaper Reports of UP The North Western Provinces and Oudh [the United Provinces] Police Abstracts of Intelligence, UP Government Studies in History The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh [later known as Uttar Pradesh] Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow

Glossary

Adarsh ideal Agarwal Hindu trading caste of north India Ahimsa non-violence Ahir non-elite Hindu peasant-pastoral caste of north India, also known as Yadav, sometimes associated with milk trade akashvani heavenly announcement akhara gymnasium, or club, for wrestling and physical culture andolan movement Arya Samaj activist Hindu revival association founded in 1875 ashlil obscene, indecent ashram refuge – stage of one’s life atmaraksha self-defence badmash rascal, bad character Bais jati of Rajputs in Awadh Bania caste associated with commerce, trade, or moneylending bhajan devotional song bhakti religious devotion emphasising adoration of personified Hindu deities bhangi sweeper Bharat Mata Mother India boli dialect, language, speech brahmacharya male celibacy and chastity Brahman the highest Hindu caste in the fourfold varna scheme, known for priestly traditions Chamar a major untouchable caste of north India, associated with leather work chutki pinch – a system of contribution used in the cow protection movements of north India crore unit of ten million dangal wrestling tournament dargah Muslim saint’s tomb dharma religion, moral order dharmashastra body or code of precepts having religious sanction as a Hindu law

xiv

Glossary

dhoti yards of cloth worn by men as lower garment dhunia cotton carder durzi tailor fakir Muslim mendicant farman injunction, or order gau mata mother cow gaubhakshak cow killer gauraksha cow protection gaurakshini sabha cow protection society gaushala home for cattle ghat landing or bathing place at a riverside: some ghats have religious significance for Hindus ghazal a song of metrical type on an amatory theme ghee clarified butter goonda scoundrel, evil character hakim doctor havan oblation with fire and ghee Hindu Mahasabha all-India Hindu body founded in 1915 Hindutva politics of Hindu identity: the term had been popularised since the 1920s by Hindu campaigners Holi prominent Hindu festival of colour held in spring janani janmabhumi motherland jat important Hindu agricultural caste of north India jati basic unit of Hindu caste, a subcaste division johari jeweller kabir a type of ‘indecent’ song sung at the Holi festival kaccha uncooked food kaccheri court, public office kahani story kal chakra epoch, wheel of time kaliyug in Hindu mythology the fourth and most degenerate age of human history Kalwar Hindu caste of liquor distillers: some became traders and landowners katha sacred tale, legend Kayastha Hindu caste of north India – mainly with administrative and scribal traditions Khatri Hindu caste of north India with trade and scribal tradition kori weaver kshatriya Hindu upper caste – just below the Brahmin in the fourfold varna scheme – with kingly and warrior traditions Kurmi Hindu peasant caste of eastern Gangetic plain lathi bamboo staff mahant head of a Hindu religious trust mandir Hindu temple matri bhasha mother tongue

Glossary

xv

maulvi Muslim religious teacher mazar tomb, or shrine, of a Muslim saint mela fair, large gathering mleccha non-Hindu, barbarian – often used for Muslims mofussil suburban mohalla urban residential locality and neighbourhood Muharram chief Shia Muslim festival of mourning for martyred leaders of Islam nautanki a type of folk-drama in north India nikah Muslim marriage pagri turban – a mark of distinction paigamber prophet panchayat court of arbitrators in a village – usually consisting of community’s five elected elders panda Hindu ritual specialist, usually applying to those of Banaras pandit Brahmin with knowledge of Hindu scriptures – used often by upper castes, learned Hindus as a suffix to their names pir local Muslim deity, or Sufi saint prabhati kirtan morning group singing of hymns pracharak propagandist, promulgator prakrti nature Purana collection of Hindu sacred texts, dating from the first millennium AD rahasya secret rais nobility, rich Rajput Hindu military and landowning caste of north India roza Muslim fasting during the month of Ramazan sabha an association, or society sadhu ascetic sahitya literature samaj society, organisation sangathan organisation – consolidation of Hindus in defence of ‘Hindu’ interests sangit dramatic performance with song, music saraf gold or silver merchant – loosely applied to Hindu traders sewa samiti service organisation shakti activated power and energy – endowing deities, especially goddesses shastra a body of knowledge and writings, usually of Hindu scriptures shuddhi purification; Hindu movement in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reclaim those who had converted from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity shudra lowest Hindu caste in the fourfold varna scheme, with labouring traditions swadeshi self-help; manufactured and belonging to one’s own country; swadeshi movement was to ban importation of foreign goods to India swaraj self-rule, freedom

xvi

Glossary

swayamsevak volunteer tabligh a movement seeking conversions to Islam tahsil revenue sub-division of a district tazim call for Muslim organisation to promote education and unity among Muslims tapasya religious austerity, ascetic fervour or practice tazia models of the tombs of Shia imams Hasan and Husain carried in procession in the Muharram festival Teli Hindu oil-presser caste updeshak counsellor, mentor vaid ayurvedic doctor – an Indian medical system Vaishnava a sect and cult with a tradition to worship the Hindu deity Vishinu Vaishya a caste third in the Hindu fourfold varna scheme, usually involved in trade vakil a senior legal practitioner or pleader, lawyer Veda India’s most ancient Hindu classical religious scripture, compiled in c.2000 BC yavana foreigner, barbarian – often used for Muslims

1

Introduction

Nationalism in India was an acutely contested and contradictory terrain, with divergent religious and communitarian impulses exerting pressure on the incipient nation in the early twentieth century.1 The crucial dichotomy which shaped the debate on Indian nationalism was that of secular versus cultural nationalism, both of which claimed sovereignty and formed the background against which the process of imagining of the Indian nation as a historical entity had occurred.2 Secular nationalism guided the Indian National Congress’s drive for a united front of all communities in India’s struggle for freedom from Britain as the ‘ruling ideology’.3 The Congress’s universalist narrative, positing ‘unity in diversity’ as the essence of Indian nationhood, evoked the image of a nation as ‘neutral’ in religious affairs.4 Its construction of a secular Indian identity signified an equality of all communities and creeds [sarvadharma samabhava] and a spirit of accommodation among them.5 This position was in contrast to the colonial view that the basic unit of Indian society was the community defined by religion, and that India’s religious differences were ‘irreconcilable’.6 In claiming to transcend religious differences, the Congress represented itself as a ‘truly nationalist movement to confront colonialism and meet its criticisms –to make India “better” ’.7 However, to Indian nationalism posited in opposition to colonialism, the real difficulty was with cultural nationalism, Muslim and Hindu, which gave rise to an alternative counter-hegemonic – anti-Congress and antisecular – discourse in the country.8 The debate on Indian nationalism has been advanced over the past few decades through the exploration of the social and political dimensions of the rival paradigms – the Muslim League’s ‘two-nation’ theory and the Congress’s ‘secular nationalist’ creed – which largely offered an explanation for the partition of Indian subcontinent.9 This work revisits the ‘great divide’ by exploring the third dimension of partition: the politics of Hindu nationalism. It seeks to explain the long silence on the history of Hindu nationalism, which has been marginalised as ‘subordinate’ or ‘separate’ in the narratives of the larger issue of India’s freedom struggle. It explores the ideological development of Hindutva, which arose in a specific historical context from efforts based on the evocation of a classical ‘Hindu past’ in the early twentieth century.10 It focuses on the emergence and evolution of Hindutva narrative as part of a particular historical

2

Introduction

trajectory articulated by the Hindu Mahasabha in the context of the growing Hindu–Muslim conflict, more so as a counterweight to the Muslim League’s theory of a separate ‘Muslim nation’, in north India.11 The reconstruction of the Mahasabha’s political programmes and activities centring on ‘Hindu unity’ and organisation forms an integral part of this project. This study aims to examine what Hindu nationalism signified at the time of the Mahasabha’s formation, how it conflicted with the Congress’s secular regime of power and democracy, and why it continued to be so deeply inflected with a ‘Hindu’ idiom. It argues that Hindutva discourse was established in a particular historical moment, making possible the articulation of new categories of a ‘Hindu identity’ and politics in north India. The central thesis of this study is that the Mahasabha launched a campaign for a distinct Hindu ‘political identity’ and unity in a conflict with the Islamic ‘other’, and that the party had its ideological focus on an anti-Muslim antagonism rather than an anti-British struggle in the mobilisation for India’s freedom. This project aims to uncover the lost tracks to a negotiated unity which may have prevented India’s partition by exploring the construction of Hindu nationalism – which referred to the ‘prejudice’ dividing Hindus and Muslims and was seen in opposition to the Congress’s ‘secular nationalism’.12 Hindutva – a cultural vocabulary on the construction of a political vision of India as a ‘Hindu nation’ – was the expression of a communitarian ‘Hindu identity’, which receded from the Congress’s ideal of an ‘inclusionary nationalism’ and shifted towards an apparently exclusionary politics.13 It represented a religiously informed cultural identity and politics, laying an emphasis on the aspects of Indian tradition and history rooted in a ‘Hindu’ idiom, challenging the theory of ‘one nation’ and ‘undivided sovereignty’ advocated by the Congress.14 In Hindutva theory, territory, race, and culture were cohesively articulated as the basis of a ‘Hindu nation’.15 Crucially, it represented a Hindu cultural divide which was not negotiable or amenable to accommodation, disproving the histories of a ‘composite culture’ or ‘assimilation’ in India.16 The United Provinces, comprising the North Western Provinces and Oudh, was the largest Muslim minority province of India in the colonial period, occupying about one-sixteenth of British India – an area of 105,000 square miles.17 By 1900, its population numbered 44,107,869 – the second largest provincial population after Bengal [one-fifth of British India’s total population]. Thirtyeight million were Hindus, and over seven million, or 14.5 per cent, Muslims.18 It was a relic of Muslim rule in north India and a home turf of the Muslim elite, which had fostered a distinctively Muslim culture and politics.19 Politically, the UP was India’s most dominant region and the key province that had been a pivot in the Muslim League’s political projection of the ‘two nation’ theory and the ‘Pakistan’ plan in the 1940s.20 This study’s main focus will be on the provincial stage, in particular the UP – the political nerve centre of Indian nationalism.21 In the first section on ‘Hindu nationalism’, the opening chapter examines the emergence of a ‘Hindu unity’ movement in the Punjab in the early twentieth century, analysing the beginnings of an urban, upper-caste Hindu politics and

Introduction

3 22

consciousness, which constituted the ideological basis of Hindu nationalism. Hindu organisations in the Punjab advocated an exclusive form of ‘Hindu politics’ and made efforts for national ‘regeneration’, a drive that eventually led to the establishment of the Punjab Hindu Sabha in 1909 and the All-India Hindu Mahasabha in the UP in 1915.23 The Mahasabha’s formation was predicated on the new arenas of conflict and competition between Hindus and Muslims, resulting from the colonial state’s census enumeration and electoral politics introduced in the country.24 The state’s institution of separate electorates under the Morley– Minto reforms of 1909 in its search for potential loyal and conservative allies in Indian society had resulted in the creation of a separate Muslim electoral category in its own right, triggering the propaganda by Hindu publicists that became so prominent in the Mahasabha’s birth.25 The Mahasabha’s Hindu-oriented discourse and its emphasis on Hindu tradition and culture as the basis of a national political order had effectively resulted from its perceived need to combat Muslim ‘domination and influence’ in the state’s networks of collaboration in the early twentieth century.26 Chapter 3 studies the nature and composition of socio-economic classes, which became crucial for the emergence of the Hindu Mahasabha movement in the UP in the early 1900s. The Mahasabha had originated with the active patronage and influence of social groups which were once the patrons of the Congress, even though it heavily depended on the support of landed and aristocratic groups, business classes, and urban traders in the province.27 This study suggests that the Mahasabha was an elite-led organisation like the pre-Gandhian Congress, but that its reliance on the power of the aristocracy and notables with attendant conservatism and factionalism hampered its development as a mass organisation. The Mahasabha was conspicuously absent in the Congress’s anticolonial mass struggles and failed to attract mass support in north India.28 However, there was a marked ambiguity of relations between the Congress and the Mahasabha due to the existence of informal associations and nexus in the UP in the 1920s and 1930s, a key issue explored in this work. It is argued that even though the Congress’s image at the all-India level remained secular, its associations with the Hindu Sabhas had persisted in informal forms in terms of the personnel and programmes in the towns and districts of the UP until the Mahasabha was blacklisted as a ‘communal organisation’ in 1938.29 The Mahasabha had emerged as a fully fledged political party under V.D. Savarkar’s leadership since the late 1930s, making vigorous efforts to develop as the political challenger of the Congress.30 In strategy, its plan was to consistently distinguish its Hinduoriented goals from the Congress’s national programmes on the basis that it was the sole legitimate organisation to represent the Hindu community in India.31 In the second section on ‘sangathan ideology’, Chapter 4 explains that a grassroots movement – sangathan [Hindu unity and oganisation] – came into existence in the aftermath of the Moplah massacres and the Khilafat movement in the 1920s, representing an aggressive and militant anti-Muslim mobilisation in north India.32 The basis of sangathan narrative was a ‘unified’ Hindu society, emphasising community rather than hierarchy, and unity rather than division –

4

Introduction

all presumed to create a monolithic Hindu community in opposition to the Islamic ‘other’.33 The Hindu Mahasabha relied on various means to create a ‘unified’ Hindu society – particularly shuddhi [ritual purification] organised through the Arya Samaj’s networks, untouchable integration, and caste uplift programmes – in the UP.34 This study reveals that there were several conflicts and divisions in Hindu society due to the institutional pervasiveness of the caste [varna] hierarchy, which had yielded itself as an instrument of ‘upper caste’ hegemony.35 The campaign for a ‘Hindu homogeneity’, which the ‘Hindu identity’ politics treated as fundamental, was not a natural but a constructed form of closure, as untouchable integration and lower caste uplift were not fully accommodated due to a sanatanist [orthodox Hindu] resistance and blacklash.36 The Mahasabha’s programme of ‘Hindu unity’ and consolidation was driven in part by an apparent reconciliation of caste tensions, but more fundamentally a need to combat the ‘Muslim other’, resulting in the recurrent outbreak of riots in the UP in the 1920s and 1930s.37 Chapter 5 discusses the Hindu Mahasabha’s articulation of militant nationalism firmly set within the framework of the ideas and writings of V.D. Savarkar – the ideological father of Hindutva – demonstrating a shift from anti-British themes to an anti-Muslim antagonism in India.38 Hindutva – or political Hinduism – became a foundational doctrine devoted to explicating the ideological contours of a ‘Hindu nation’ [Hindu rashtra].39 Hindutva represented an ethnic conception of India as a nation based on territory, race [ethnicity], and culture, which was to be both a fatherland [pitribhumi] and a holy land [punybhumi] for one to be defined as a ‘Hindu’.40 It viewed India as originally the ‘land of Aryans’, rooted in Hindu culture and tradition.41 The primal patronymic, ‘Hindu’, was fundamentally antagonised in history through a conflict with the Islamic ‘other’, the ‘enemy’ of the Indian nation being not the British, but Muslims.42 Hindutva articulated a ‘Hindu identity’ based on a cultural difference, which was denied by the Congress’s ideal of a singular ‘secular nationalism’.43 It rejected the Congress’s vision of a territorial Indian nation in favour of a ‘Hindu nation’ based on a Hindu majority rule by situating Muslims outside the nation. To Hindutva, India was culturally defined as a nation, not a ‘territorial nation’.44 This work suggests that Hindutva was firmly based on a conception of Hindu majoritarian rights counterposed against the potential rights of the minorities – Muslims and Christians – who were to be assimilated by their allegiance to Hindu culture. An anti-Muslim hostility was central to Hindutva narrative, which became profoundly aggressive and militaristic under Savarkar’s presidentship of the Mahasabha in the late 1930s.45 Chapter 6 reveals that in the UP, Hindu publicists – comprising a disparate variety of reformers, revivalists, Arya Samajists, and sanatan dharm [orthodox Hindu] ideologues – initiated an ideological campaign against Islam and the Muslim ‘other’ in north India in the early twentieth century.46 The campaign of anti-Muslim hostility, which had become the basis of sangathan narrative, was accelerated in the 1920s, resulting in recurrent conflicts over cow slaughter, Hindu processional music outside mosques, etc., in the towns of the UP.47 There

Introduction

5

were aggressive displays of strength at Hindu festivals with the increasing participation of the lower castes in the public arenas, aiding the militant expression of Hinduism based on Hindu ‘prowess and strength’.48 The UP witnessed the most serious cases of communitarian rioting in the entire colonial period, with 91 Hindu–Muslim clashes reported in the province from 1923 to 1927.49 Sangathan questioned the need for a Muslim alliance in the struggle for India’s freedom, urging the exclusion of Muslims from the anti-colonial mobilisation.50 Propaganda campaigns against the ‘abductions and conversions’ of Hindu women by Muslims provided occasions for the articulations of ‘Hindu unity’ and mobilisation in avowed hostility against Muslims in the towns of the UP.51 Sangathan’s anti-Muslim narrative contributed in part to the persistence of the sectarian conflict in north India throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 7 focuses on the Hindu Mahasabha’s programme of militarisation – which was based on an exclusivist need to combat the ‘Muslim threat’ through the promotion of the values of ‘Hindu valour and masculinity’ in India.52 The growing realisation about the imminent assumption of power by the Indian parties after British departure made the Mahasabha launch a militarisation drive in order to counter Muslims, particularly in the event of an internal disorder in the country.53 The militarisation of Hindus targeted Muslims much more than the British as the ‘enemy within’, making the former the object of violence in the UP during the colonial period.54 Chapter 8 argues that Hindutva clashed with Gandhi’s doctrines of ahimsa [non-violence] and Hindu–Muslim unity, which had constituted the basis of the Congress’s struggle for India’s freedom.55 Evidently, the twin ideals were attacked as being instrumental for the ‘effeminising’ of Indians and India’s ‘surrender’ to Islamic ‘attacks and violence’, leading to Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu Mahasabha activist.56 In ideological terms, Hindutva had centred chiefly on the refutation of ahimsa, justifying a conflict with the Congress’s non-violent non-cooperation movement against British rule in India.57 Chapter 9 explains that the Nagari and cow protection movements, which had been widespread in north India since the 1860s and 1870s, were effectively appropriated by the Hindu Mahasabha in its ‘Hindu unity’ discourse. The Nagari campaign was at the heart of the Mahasabha’s narrative as part of a mobilisation for national ‘renewal and regeneration’ in a conflict with the Muslim elite, resulting in an attack on Urdu which had remained the official vernacular of colonial administration in the UP until 1900.58 The movement for the promotion of the Hindi language and literature became a significant means of contestation against the dominance of Persian-Urdu in the province.59 In addition, the cow protection movement centring on the cow as a ‘sacred symbol’, which had been started by the Arya Samaj in the late nineteenth century, was adopted by the Mahasabha, demonstrating a regional, cross-caste Hindu mobilisation in the province.60 The cow agitation was inflected with an ‘upper-caste’ idiom, representing an avenue for the articulation of local grievances in ways that were both anti-colonial and anti-Muslim, more so the latter.61 This study emphasises that the working of a

6

Introduction

Hindu consciousness through the narratives of Nagari and the cow was used as a source of political mobilisation, becoming the basis of the Mahasabha’s ideological hostility against Muslims in the 1920s and 1930s. In the final section on ‘Hindu nationalism’, Chapter 10 examines the debates on the issue of political safeguards for Muslims in India’s legislatures, which became crucial for India to emerge as ‘one nation’.62 The campaign for reservations to Muslims had held sway since the 1900s, representing the possibilities of imagining a way for Muslim existence within a ‘united India’. The Hindu Mahasabha had consistently opposed the Muslim League’s demands for concessions, claiming that the reservations undermined India’s national ‘unity and integrity’.63 This study reveals that the Mahasabha’s discourse predicated on the ‘rule of a majority’, defined as ‘Hindu’, as well as its resistance to the Muslim demands was one of the principal reasons for the breakdown of negotiations on power sharing in India in the 1920s and 1930s. The Mahasabha contested the Congress’s formulation of an ‘inclusionary’ Indian nation on the basis that there was an imperative need for creating a majority rule based ‘on one man, one vote’, which in turn implied a Hindu ‘majority rule’.64 Its discourse of representation was articulated with the definitions of a democratic majority, viewed broadly as ‘Hindu’: Hindus must have a cultural and political primacy in shaping ‘India’s destiny’.65 The Mahasabha imposed a social closure on the basis of a cultural difference and antipathy towards Muslims, seeking to preserve a Hindu majaritarianism and a centralised state to the exclusion of Muslims in India.66 The Congress’s efforts for Hindu–Muslim representation as part of its initiative for a new constitution for India collapsed in 1928, followed by the failure of the round table conferences in England in 1930–1931, deepening the crisis which contributed in part to the Muslim League’s plan for ‘Pakistan’ in the 1940s.67 In the debates on ethnicity and sectarianism in India,68 there are three important theories which offer an interpretation of what made the Hindu–Muslim conflict emerge as a major force of political cleavage in north India. First, in the ‘instrumentalist’ analysis, Muslim separatism was not ‘pre-ordained’, but a result of the conscious manipulation of the symbols of ‘Muslim identity’ as well as religious and cultural issues by the Muslim elite groups, which had led a drive to secure a preferential treatment in reaction to electoral politics in competition with Hindus in north India.69 Second, in the ‘primordialist’ assertion, which was also the view of the leaders of Muslim separatism, Hindus and Muslims had constituted by the nineteenth century distinct civilisations with long-standing cultural differences and were destined to develop into separate nations once modern politics and self-governing institutions developed in the towns and districts of north India.70 Third, in nationalist historiography, it was the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the colonial state which created the sectarian cleavage through the recognition of the religious community as a fundamental organising principle of the political system, casting Indian society into two distinct religious communities by denying the existence of solidarities and common interests between Hindus and Muslims in India.71 Crucially, this study makes an intervention, explaining the development of the Hindu–Muslim communitarian divide through an analy-

Introduction

7

sis of the ideological discourse of Hindutva, which was perhaps the most influential progenitor of the ‘two-nation’ theory before its launch by the Muslim League in 1940. It locates Indian historiography within the larger framework of Hindu nationalism through an examination of the development and evolution of a ‘Hindu identity’ and politics and Hindutva’s emergence as a political force, which repudiated the Congress’s ‘one-nation’ theory in the 1920s and 1930s.72 This study investigates the development of Hindu nationalist narrative on ‘Hindu unity’ and consolidation, tracing its growth to the social and political struggles of the Hindu community in the context of its contestations with Muslims and the colonial state in the Punjab and later the UP in the early 1900s. It offers an enquiry into the debate on the communitarian discourse of citizenship rights and contested sovereignty evolved by Hindutva through the exclusion of Muslims from the Indian nation as well as the articulation of a ‘Hindu nation’ premised on a Hindu majoritarian rule. The study’s purpose is to draw the links between all-India nationalism and Hindu nationalism – the twin dialectics in modern South Asian history – in the early twentieth century.73

PART I

Hindu nationalism

2

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha

Indian nationalism was not a homogenous entity and had diverse roots and varied character, containing competing yet overlapping conceptions of sovereignty and identity in the early twentieth century.1 It represented both secularism and cultural nationalism, the latter drawing upon overwhelmingly religious ideals and a ‘cultural’ content, ‘Hindu’, reinterpreted and reconfigured in an imagined ideal of the emerging nation.2 The most significant aspect of the ‘cultural idiom’ was Hindu nationalist ideology articulated by the Hindu Mahasabha as a political movement in north India.3 The Mahasabha’s discourse drew largely upon the communitarian conception of identity and sovereignty in contrast to the Indian National Congress’s secular idiom, a homogenising ‘inclusionary’ nationalism that accommodated religiously informed cultural identities through a negotiated concord on national sovereignty in India.4 The Mahasabha’s exclusionary vision of communitarian identity and majoritarianism incorporated the assertion of sovereignty based on a cultural difference through religious faith, seeking to construct a ‘Hindu nation’ on the basis of a homogeneous culture; and the explicit acceptance of ‘Hinduness’ as the essence of India’s nationhood implied the assimilation of other religions into Hindu culture.5 This chapter examines the historical background to the rise of a community consciousness around ‘Hindu identity’, charting the development and evolution of Hindu nationalism which culminated in the foundation of the Mahasabha. It argues that this process was central to the definition and codification of Hindu nationalist discourse, a trajectory that had vital consequences for an emerging narrative of contested sovereignty in the Indian ‘nation’, ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’, leading to the construction of the political notion of a Hindu ‘majoritarian rule’ in the country. Hindu nationalism emerged in north India as the ideology of Hindus who required representation in colonial politics, constructing a conception of communitarian politics based on the cultural ideal of a nation and aligning the notion of India with a ‘Hindu identity’.6 It articulated a new course of politics, redefining a vision of Hindu cultural distinctiveness – ‘unity’, ‘progress’, and a common ‘cultural heritage’ – as the basis of the Indian nation.7 It incorporated the ideals of swadeshi [self-help] and service for national ‘regeneration’ in a contestation against colonial rule, which had deprived Indians of freedom.8 Ideologically, Hindu nationalism drew upon the politics of Hindu revival articulated by

12

Hindu nationalism

Balwantrao Gangadhar Tilak [1856–1920], the leader of the Congress’s ‘extremist’ group, whose adoration was central to the Hindu Mahasabha.9 Tilak’s ‘extremist’ ideological position presented a challenge to the ‘moderate’ Congress’s politics of constitutional gradualism, advocating an unequivocal demand for India’s freedom through a revolutionary upheaval, an ideal shared by Hindu nationalism.10 A powerful movement of Hindu resurgence and orthodoxy gained prominence by mounting a sustained assault on the Congress.11 The conflict arising from the Congress’s politics of ‘mendicancy’ and its failure to enlist mass support as the basis of India’s freedom in the pre-Gandhian period gave an impetus to the development of Hindu nationalist sentiments among India’s religious and political sections outside the Congress and its configuration of politics.12 Hindu nationalism retained an ambiguous yet important relationship with the ideals of Indian nationalism, even though it had remained outside the Congress-led nationalist struggle in the country.13 It carried a potential for an anti-imperialist resistance and protest, viewing the freedom movement as crucial, yet an insufficient solution to India’s problems.14 The end of British rule would be of little use if the Indian nation was not based on ‘Hindu values’; reform had to come from within the ‘Hindu tradition’.15 It put a belief in the ‘greatness of India’, asserting the superiority of Hindu values and indigenous knowledge over those of the west in an anti-colonial contestation.16 From a defence of ‘past glories’ through a criticism of the policies of the colonial state to an assertion of the inherent superiority of Hindu culture, Hindu nationalist narrative had evolved an anti-imperialist critique that was ‘Hindu’ in idiom, excluding Muslims.17 In the pre-1920s formulations, ‘Hindu-leaning’ Indian nationalism did not demarcate Muslims as exterior to the Indian nation, but within it.18 However, after the 1920s, Hindu nationalism began to articulate a ‘homogenous, unified’ India, characterised by a confrontation against the Islamic ‘other’ as an ‘aggressor’ and a primary ‘threat’ in India, situating Muslims outside the nation.19

Hindu Sabha movement The Hindu Sabha movement developed in the dominant Hindu commercial and religious culture of the Punjab, aiming to provide a collective defence of the ‘socio-political interests’ of Hindus vis-à-vis Muslims in the early twentieth century.20 The province, the ‘sword arm’ of the British empire and a ‘germ cell’ of Hindu nationalism, was the centre of a virulent manifestation of Hindu–Muslim communitarian rivalries and contending narratives of identity, reconciled within the imperatives of Indian unity.21 It was the locus of the region’s complex socio-religious currents, mainly the Arya Samaj and sanatan dharm [orthodox Hinduism], which had largely determined the territorial expression of a ‘Hindu nation’ in terms of a Hindu communitarian identity.22 The Hindu Sabha movement was led by the Punjabi Hindu elite, especially members of the Arya Samaj, which had articulated an explicitly ‘Hindu politics’ on the basis of ‘national glory’ and the protection of the broader Hindu community.23 The elite, a predominantly urban constituency, was dominant in trade and commerce, holding a

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 13 hierarchy of identities, including santan dharm and a ‘Hindu unity’ drive, in contrast to the all-encompassing secular creed of the Congress.24 It showed little enthusiasm for the Congress and abandoned national politics in preference to provincial causes – a process revealed by a decline of Punjabi delegations to the Congress over the years: 30 in 1901, zero in 1902, and five in 1903.25 The decline of the Congress organisation saw a surge in the mushrooming of local Hindu Sabhas or Hindu Raksha Sabhas, which had adopted communitarian solidarity and social reform as a means of protecting Hindu interests in the province.26 The Hindu elite felt a continual ‘threat’ and ‘insecurity’ due to British ‘hostility’, the rapid expansion of the Muslim League, and the ‘pro-British activities’ of Sayyid Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh elite that advocated policy of nonparticipation in the Congress and stolid loyalty to the British in the province.27 In addition, the Land Alienation Act of 1901 had tightened curbs on the sale, ownership and mortgaging of land, reducing the economic power of urban Hindus.28 The discontent resulting from a sharp increase in the water rates on the land irrigated by Bari Doab canal and the proposed land colonisation Bill that strengthened government control in the Chenab area had united urban and rural Hindus in opposition to the government by early 1907.29 The Hindu Sabha movement was an outcome of the growing need to unify the Hindu community and ‘regenerate’ Hinduism in view of the government ‘hostility’ and a perceived ‘threat’ from Muslims and organised Islam in the Punjab.30 Separate electorates The political context for the development of a Hindu communitarian narrative in the Punjab was set in part by the colonial state whose strategy, while pursuing reform for the introduction of self-government in India, lay in creating allies in stable sections of society to offset the destabilising effects of the nationalist agitation and militancy.31 The Muslim League’s policy of sustained loyalty and the predominance within it of the loyalist Aligarh elite had encouraged the state to consider seriously the Muslim demand for separate representation.32 The demand that an exclusive Muslim representation guaranteed a ‘substantive consensus’ [ijma] of Muslims as a community had become a persistent feature in the campaign for separate electorates in north India by the early 1900s.33 In December 1896 the Indian Defence Association, founded by Sayyid Ahamad Khan, had called for the existing system of elective representation to be replaced by the institution of separate Muslim electorates. It opposed the principle of a ‘majority rule’ in India, or the ‘western’ elective representation of territorial constituencies that had promoted predominantly ‘Hindu interests’.34 The final sanction of the ‘Muslim consensus’, it was contended, did not lie in numerical configurations or a ‘majority rule’, but the charismatic community predicated on the notions of ‘Islamic solidarity’.35 The demand for separate Muslim electorates was formally mooted in the Simla Memorial of 1 October 1906, which defended the exclusive right of the Muslim community to elect Muslim representatives as an imperative measure of government protection due to its ‘minority’ status in relation to

14

Hindu nationalism

Hindus.36 In 1907 the London Committee of the All-India Muslim League led by Syed Ameer Ali, through a petition to Secretary of State for India Sir John Morley, represented Muslims in terms of their ‘political and historical importance’ as a basis for the claim to ‘additional representation’.37 In March 1908, the Muslim League formalised the demand, calling for an end to Muslim ‘mandatories’ accountable to non-Muslim constituencies and emphasised the urgency of securing really ‘representative Muslims’ accountable to exclusively Muslim electorates.38 In 1909 the Morley–Minto reforms took the momentous step of conceding separate electorates to Muslims in electoral politics at all levels of representation – which had opened new arenas of competition and community division, yet negated popular representation in India.39 Under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the government granted separate electorates and ‘weightage’ for Muslims in provincial legislative councils throughout India, ‘satisfying Muhmmadan claims to be represented in proportion not merely to their numbers, but also to their political and historical importance’.40 Seats gained through separate electorates would comprise the majority of Muslim seats; and anything gained in general electorates and nomination would be supplementary – the ‘weightage’.41 In October 1909 the government declared that the ‘special representation of Muhammadans was only claimed and only conceded on the ground that so important a minority required protection’.42 The extension of separate electorates to most elective institutions, which apparently betrayed the state’s ‘alliance’ with Muslims, had intensified the prospect of an increasing scramble for power along religious lines in the country.43 Hindu publicists asserted that the representation for Muslims in the legislative councils in greater proportion than their numerical strength was a classic expression of Britain’s ‘divide and rule’ policy and an assault on the ‘rights of Hindus’ as a majority.44 Shadi Lal, Hindu Sabha general secretary, voiced extreme concern through a petition to Viceroy Lord Minto in April 1909, pointing out that separate electorates implied favouritism to the Muslim community, which in the Punjab accounted for a majority of the population.45 The ‘Hindu community humbly submits,’ he protested, that the claim of ‘excessive representation’ to the Muslim community on the basis of its ‘historical and political importance’ was opposed to the principles of ‘justice and fair play’.46 The Hindu Sabha movement in the Punjab was a direct response to the fears that Muslims as a minority would become a hegemonic force due to their access to state patronage in an imperial system of collaboration under the council reforms Act of 1909.47 ‘Declining’ Hindu numbers A crucial rationale for the emergence of a ‘Hindu politics’ was the colonial state’s census enumeration introduced in 1871, which had an enormous significance for the birth of the Hindu Sabha movement in the Punjab.48 The state’s principle of enumeration based on the privileging of religion had demarcated the main lines of division between Hindus and Muslims, as the representative institutions gave importance to communities defined by religion and assessed by

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 15 demographic weight in the localities and provinces of India.49 The British initially assisted this process by treating Muslims as a ‘minority’ community for the purposes of distribution of educational grants and government appointments.50 In the Punjab, Hindus began to realise the dangers of a ‘declining population’ as evident in the census returns due to ‘conversions’ to Islam and Christianity.51 The census revealed a steady ‘decline’ of the Hindu population in the province – from 43.8 per cent in 1891 to 36.3 per cent in 1911 against an increase in the Christian and Muslim population.52 The rapid demographic growth of Muslims relative to Hindus had proved alarming, triggering claims that Hindus would ‘cease to exist in 700 years’.53 The 1911 census revealed that since 1901, 40,000 Hindus had been converted to Islam, and 120,000 to Christianity.54 The ‘declining Hindu’ scare was first raised by census commissioner H.H. Risley in 1901, who wondered if the figures of the last census could be regarded in any sense the ‘forerunner of an Islamic or Christian revival which will threaten the citadel of Hinduism . . . or will Hinduism hold its own in the future as it has done through the long ages of the past [?]’.55 The main factor was ‘natural growth, and . . . this largely depends on strength of Mussalmans, who, as is well known, are more prolific than Hindus’.56 The notion that numbers, demographic majorities and minorities were directly related to power in colonial politics had become a marked feature in the construction of a Hindu communitarian narrative, exerting a profound impact on the formulations of a ‘Hindu identity’ in the Punjab.57 The Muslim deputation to the Viceroy in 1906 disputed the notion of a ‘Hindu majority’, claiming that not all included in this category could be classified as ‘Hindu’.58 In 1910 India’s census commissioner E.A. Gait, in a circular, proposed ahead of the 1911 census an exclusion from the ‘Hindu’ category of the lower castes and tribals who did not worship the ‘great Hindu gods’ or were subjected to untouchability and ‘pollution’ taboos.59 The circular threatened to reduce the number of officially recorded ‘Hindus’ by rejecting the ‘Hinduness’ of the untouchables and lower castes and reclassifying them as ‘non-Hindus’.60 There was a storm of Hindu protest, strengthening a broad alignment for ‘unity and consolidation’.61 Arya Samajists and Sanatana Dharm Sabhas in the Punjab feared an ‘amputation of part of the Hindu numerical strength’ and adopt resolutions, declaring the untouchables to be their ‘kith and kin’.62 Lajpat Rai attacked the British policy, explaining that it aimed to ‘thin the Hindu numbers’ in order to make them ‘politically impotent’.63 Crucially, the Hindu outcry and high caste protests did not focus on a caste reform, but contained an argument of ‘Hindu unity’ in spite of the institutional existence of varna [caste] inequality.64 The Gait circular was withdrawn in 1912, but the apprehensions it triggered were potent enough to strengthen Hindu anxieties about the ‘declining’ numbers.65 The Hindu demographic strength had proved an important factor, helping to strengthen the emerging narrative of ‘Hindu identity’ and consolidation in the Punjab.66 The census was at the heart of significant Hindu literature produced during the early twentieth century.67 In June 1909 U.N. Mukherji’s essay was serialised in Surendranath Banerjea’s Bengalee entitled ‘A Dying Race’ and later published as

16

Hindu nationalism

an influential pamphlet – Hindus: A Dying Race.68 It portrayed a grim picture of the future of the Hindu community through a selective use of the census data and projections on a biological ‘Hindu extinction’ within the next 420 years due to a relative increase in the Muslim and Christian population.69 Mukherji predicted the decline of Hindus as a community through conversions and the rapid growth rates of ‘virile, energetic and united’ Muslims.70 Swami Shraddhananda [1857–1926], an Arya Samajist and a key founder of the Hindu sangathan movement in the 1920s, borrowed the idea of Hindus as a ‘dying race’ from U.N. Mukherji, reiterating that the conversions by ‘violence, force and fraud’ of the Muslim conquerors and Christian missionaries were largely the reason for an imminent threat of ‘Hindu extinction’.71 However, Hinduism had shown a resilience in the face of the ‘corrupt and dishonest’ methods of conversion perpetrated by Islamic and Christian proselytisers over the centuries.72 He proposed sangathan, a ‘strategic organisation’ of Hindu society, as a solution to the crisis of a Hindu ‘numerical decline’.73 The anxiety over Hindu numbers accompanied by alarming Muslim growth rates was in part crucial to the narrative on the construction of a monolithic Hindu community, which had become an important endeavour of Hindu publicists in the Punjab.74 Hindu Sahaik Sabhas A broad unity on the basis of an emerging Hindu consciousness had gained momentum in the Punjab since the 1900s, where the Arya Samaj shaped the ‘first blueprint’ of Hindu nationalism.75 The formation of the All-India Muslim League in December 1906 triggered a competing ‘Hindu unity’ narrative, strengthening the notion that ‘Hindu interests’ needed representation in colonial politics.76 A series of Hindu Sahaik Sabhas were established through the initiatives of local Arya Samajs in the cities of the Punjab.77 Ram Bhaj Datta, an Arya Samajist of the College faction, founded a Hindu Sahaiak Sabha in Lahore in 1906 in protest against the government’s ‘pro-Muslim bias’, calling for the development of a ‘Hindu politics’.78 A Hindu Sabha was formed in Lahore on 4 August 1906 by prominent Arya Samaj and Hindu sanatanist [orthodox] leaders: Lala Lajpat Rai, Shadi Lal, Harkrishna Lal, Raja Narendra Nath, Ram Saran Das, Ruchi Ram Sahini, Ram Bhaj Datta, and Lala Hans Raj. Its main objective was to improve the ‘moral, intellectual and material conditions’ of Hindus.79 A provincial Hindu Sabha was formed in Lahore in 1907 to safeguard the interests of Hindus, showing a vigorous action on issues concerning Hindus.80 The Hindu Sabhas retained religious and social objectives, focusing on ‘Hindu unity’ and ‘renewal’.81 They did not have a crystallised ideology, but fulfilled religious and social roles by promoting ‘self-help and mutual co-operation’ in the Hindu community, even though they swore loyalty to the British.82 Sections of the educated Hindu elite embraced the Sabhas, for the Congress had not addressed their dilemmas and anxieties in the years before the First World War.83 One prominent influence behind the birth of the Hindu Sabha movement in the Punjab was Rai Bahadur Lal Chand [1852–1912], a prominent Arya Samajist

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 17 84

and a judge in Lahore. Lal Chand wrote in 1909 a series of 15 articles in the Punjabee of Lahore, the newspaper founded by Lajpat Rai, under the title ‘Self Abnegation in Politics’, which was published as Self-Abnegation in Politics in 1938.85 Lal Chand’s thesis represented a Hindu version of the ‘two-nation’ theory, anticipating much of Hindutva discourse on the ‘political rights’ of Hindus and their ‘plight’ in colonial India.86 He attacked the attitude of Hindus towards politics as one of ‘self-denial’ which allowed the claims of Muslims to take the ‘precedence’, separate electorates being an ‘apotheosis of surrender’ by Hindus.87 Hindus, he explained, were weak and divided in view of British ‘hostility’ and ‘opposition’ by Muslims; ‘Hindu nationality’ and ‘Hindu sentiments’ were being obliterated, ‘if not pushed out of existence’.88 Lal Chand put the blame for the loss of ‘Hindu self-assertion’ on the Congress, an organisation that ‘makes the Hindu forget that he is a Hindu and tends to swamp this communal individuality into an Indian ideal, making him break with all his past traditions and past glory’.89 The Congress’s ideal of a composite nationhood, he argued, was ‘erroneous’ and had become unrealistic under the declared ‘hostile attitude’ of Muslims. Any concessions by Hindus to ‘Muslim separatism’ would end in a failure.90 Hindu unity and political action alone would, he asserted, save the community and bring about a ‘reconciliation’ with Muslims.91 ‘My own belief,’ he declared, ‘is that if we succeed in establishing a strong independent Hindu organisation, the Muslims would in course of time join us in making common demand for redress of common grievances.’92 Lal Chand favoured a ‘Hindu politics’ as an alternative to the Congress’s national politics, proposing the substitution of Hindu Sabhas for Congress committees and of the Hindu press for the Congress press as a basis for the protection of ‘Hindu interests’.93 ‘The point I wish to urge,’ he went on, ‘is that patriotism ought to be communal and not merely geographical.’94 ‘The idea is to love everything owned by the community. It may be religion, it may be a tract of country, or it may be a phase of civilization . . .’95 Lal Chand’s work laid the foundation for a ‘Hindu politics’, setting a pattern for the strengthening of the Hindu Sabha movement as a powerful symbol of Hindu unity and cohesiveness in the Punjab.96 Punjab Hindu Sabha The most significant event in the development of an exclusionary Hindu communitarian politics was the formation of the Punjab Hindu Sabha in 1909.97 The Sabha was formed around a nucleus of Arya Samajists – Lala Lajpat Rai, Lal Chand, and Shadi Lal – who were the first ‘political exponents’ of Hindu nationalism in the Punjab.98 M.M. Malaviya presided over the Hindu Sabha’s first session in Lahore in October 1909, which stated that it was ‘not sectarian, but an all-embracing movement’ with an aim to safeguard the ‘interests of the entire Hindu community’.99 Its ideology was determined in part by Arya Samajist nationalism, drawing upon a pride in India’s Vedic ‘golden’ age and ‘ancient Hinduism’, even though sanatan dharm had become dominant in the articulation of a coherent image of ‘Hindu unity’ projected by the Sabha.100 The Sabha

18

Hindu nationalism

functioned as a pressure group through petitions to the provincial and central governments on various issues affecting the Hindu community and demanded ‘safeguards’ for Hindus in the province.101 However, it swore loyalty to the British and rarely carried its activities to the masses.102 The Hindu Sabha sought to demonstrate Hindu unity by organising the first Punjab provincial Hindu conference in 1909.103 The conference, which opened in Lahore on 21 and 22 October 1909, was attended by nearly 3,000 leaders and notables drawn from the Punjab, the United Provinces, and north India.104 It stated its mission as one of Hindu ‘consolidation and homogenisation’, urging different sections of the Hindu community to promote national unity.105 Lal Chand, chairman of the reception committee, expressed an anxiety over the ‘numerical decline’ of Hindus, emphasising the need to strengthen the relative position of Hindus vis-à-vis Muslims in India. ‘Numbers,’ he explained, ‘carry great weight in this age and help materially in deciding the fate of any struggle.’106 Lajpat Rai, in his speech to the conference, urged the need to strengthen the sentiment of Hindu ‘nationality and unity’, reiterating that Hindus, a ‘distinct and separate nation’, needed to unite and organise in order to defend themselves in view of the rapid expansion of the Muslim League and the continued government ‘hostility’.107 The conference criticised the Congress for its ‘failure’ to defend ‘Hindu interests’, calling for the promotion of a ‘Hindu-centred politics’.108 It urged the establishment of Hindu Sabhas all over the country and proposed the organisation of an annual all-India Hindu conference.109 The resolutions passed by the conference were largely consensual: the promotion of Sanskrit and Hindi, cow protection, the popularisation of Hindu scriptures and literature, and the development of Hindu Ayurvedic medicine.110 However, no change was urged in the status of the untouchables and lower castes due to sanatani apprehensions over a caste reform.111 ‘All that is needed,’ Lal Chand explained, ‘is to advocate the interests of the community at large and the moment we realise this germinal idea, this sacred obligation . . . all self-imposed differences and schisms will vanish away like chaff.’112 The need for consensus and unity became prominent in the Hindu Sabha’s movement, which had competed with the Congress in attracting the support of the educated Hindu classes in north India.113 The Sabha proposed the establishment of a broad all-India Hindu organisation, which would strengthen a ‘Hindu politics’ to secure benefits for the Hindu community at the provincial and local levels.114 As part of its plan, it held five Punjab Hindu conferences from 1909 to 1914, with the first conference being organised in Lahore in 1909.115 The Sabha expressed the need to achieve India’s freedom, leading the drive for the formation of an all-India Hindu Sabha.116

Hindu Mahasabha’s formation The formation of an all-India Hindu Sabha was largely an outcome of the development of a broader Hindu communitarian consciousness existing in the Punjab in the early twentieth century. The dream of a national Hindu organisation found

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 19 adherents in the UP, the nerve centre of Hindu consciousness, where an increased awareness of ‘Hindu interests’ had developed due to the prevalence of santan dharm ideology and Arya Samaj influence.117 The province was dominated by the ecclesiastical centres of Hinduism – Ayodhya, Hardwar, Mathura, Allahabad, and Banaras – as well as the influence of upper castes – 10 per cent of them being Brahmans.118 The upper castes formed a large number of sanatan dharm associations and educational institutions through their hold over land, administration and trade in the province.119 By the 1900s, powerful Hindu mercantile classes had emerged and Hindu corporate towns flourished in the province; and the changes provided the context for Hindu revival and reform as evident in the proliferation of religious festivals and celebrations in the public arena, contributing to the growth of a ‘cohesive’ sense of the Hindu community.120 In the forefront of religious and cultural revivalism were the Arya Samaj and sanatan dharm organisations like the Hindu Samaj of Allahabad, the Bharat Dharm Mahamandal, and the Sanatana Dharma Sabha, which had emerged in the eastern districts of Allahabad and the Bhojpuri region.121 A variety of Hindu organisations had developed in the UP in the context of a deepening involvement in the projects of Hindu ‘renewal’ and ‘improvement’ in this period.122 A Hindu-oriented elite had been actively involved in the development of the Hindu Sabha movement in the UP since the early 1900s. The key figure in the Hindu Sabha movement was Madan Mohan Malaviya [1861–1946], the Bharat Dharma Mahamandala’s publicist and a prime mover in the Hindu University Society.123 He started the Hindu Samaj [Hindu Society] in Allahabad in 1880 to promote Hindu institutions, such as the local Magh Mela whose idolatry was criticised by Christian missionaries.124 The foundation of the Hindu University Society in 1912 helped to draw together local Hindu Sabhas, which had been formed in Allahabad, Banaras, and Kanpur.125 The Hindu Sabhas championed Nagari and cow protection, provoking an agitation by Hindu publicists. However, efforts to unify and strengthen the Sabhas on a provincial basis had not survived for long.126 A formal move to form an all-India Hindu Sabha was made at the annual session of the Congress in Allahabad in 1910.127 A committee was set up with Lala Baij Nath, an Agarwala banker and president of the UP Vaish Conference, as president to draw up a constitution. Little progress had ensued, however.128 A meeting of Hindu leaders in Allahabad took the initial step of organising an allIndia Hindu Sabha in 1910, which could not become operational due to a ‘factional strife’.129 The Punjab Hindu Sabha, at its fifth session held in Ambala on 7 and 8 December 1913, had eventually passed a resolution to create an all-India Hindu Sabha. ‘This Conference,’ it declared, ‘is strongly of opinion that in order to deliberate upon measures for safeguarding the interests of the Hindu Community throughout India and elsewhere it is highly desirable that a General Conference of Hindus of India be held at Hardwar on the occasion of the Kumbh in 1915, and it requests the following gentlemen to make necessary arrangements for the purpose.’130 Hindu leaders from all parts of the country, 26 in total, were nominated to the Hindu Sabha committee. Office-bearers were appointed, and a

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budget of Rs2,000 was passed for the proposed Sabha. But for ‘one reason or another the formation of the office and other measures contemplated in the . . . proceedings remained in abeyance’.131 Little progress had been made on the formation of an all-India Hindu Sabha until the first decade of the 1900s.132 Nonetheless, the Punjab Hindu Sabha relaunched its plan to form the allIndia Hindu Sabha.133 It reaffirmed the resolution of the Ambala conference at its sixth session held in Ferozepur at the end of 1914, at which ‘the venerable Rai Saheb Lala Murlidhar . . . of Umbala presided’.134 In early 1915, Lala Sukhbir Sinha, general secretary of the planned Hindu Sabha, sent a circular to prominent Hindu leaders, planning the preparatory sessions of the all-India Hindu Sabha to be held in Hardwar on 13 February 1915, on 17 February in Lucknow, and on 27 February in Delhi.135 In April 1915, the All-India Conference of Hindus was convened during the Kumbh Mela in Hardwar, where the Sarvadeshak Hindu Sabha – the All-India Hindu Sabha – was founded as a ‘grand front’ with a ‘flourish of trumpets’ and pledges to represent the Hindu community.136 Gandhi and Swami Shraddhananda, both present at the Kumbh Mela conference, were strongly supportive about the formation of the Hindu Sabha.137 Maharaja Munindra Chandra Nandi of Kasimbazar, president of the conference, declared the Sabha’s loyalty to the British. ‘As Hindus,’ he explained, ‘we are loyal to the King-Emperor and the government by virtue of our religion and our prayers are rising day and night to the Most High for the victory of British and of our Allies.’138 The Hindu Sabha laid particular stress on ‘Hindu solidarity’ and the need for ‘social reform’ without identifying itself with any ‘particular sect or sects’ of the Hindu community.139 A reference to Hindu ‘political interests’ was made in the Sabha’s constitution in passing in the sixth and last clause of the ‘Aims’.140 A subjects committee defined the goals of the Hindu Sabha thus: i ii iii iv v

vi

to promote greater ‘union and solidarity’ of the Hindus as one organic whole; to promote education among members of the Hindu community; to ameliorate and improve the condition of all classes of the Hindu community; to protect and promote Hindu interests ‘whenever and wherever it may be necessary’; to promote good feelings between the Hindus and other communities in India and to act in a friendly way with them and in ‘loyal co-operation’ with the government; and generally to take steps for promoting ‘religious, moral, educational, social and political interests’ of the community.141

However, the Hindu Sabha lacked a radical programme of social reform and scrupulously avoided discussion on political questions, even though it pledged to develop a greater ‘unity and homogeneity’ of Hindus on consensual issues: Nagari, cow protection, etc.142 It remained strictly loyal to the British.143 Swami

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 21 Shraddhananda was critical about the exceedingly ‘loyal, pro-British’ position taken by the Sabha, asserting that it was ‘run by those Hindus in whose estimation every invader who snatched the Government of a country from its people was God personified’.144 The Sabha sought to consolidate its position as a representative of Hindus rather than risk an outright confrontation or hostility with the state, or being labelled as ‘anti-British’.145 Non-cooperation movement The Congress launched the Non-cooperation-Khilafat movement in 1919–1920 following a successful mobilisation against the Rowlatt Act of 1919 which had attempted to make permanent the wartime restrictions on civil rights, including the detention without trial for minor offences such as the possession of seditious tracts.146 Gandhi integrated the goals of the Non-cooperation movement with the Khilafat issue designed to prevent the allied dismemberment of Turkey, the Caliphate of Islam, after the First World War. Hindus, he explained, would support Muslims in their quest to retain the Khilafat and prevent the ‘dismemberment of the empire of the Khalifa against the dictates of the Islamic law’.147 ‘The Muslims and Hindus of India,’ he declared, ‘were not only united over the question of the Khilafat, but also on all political questions relating to their motherland – India.’148 The khilafat, he emphasised, was an ‘opportunity for . . . Hindus to prove faithful to the Muhammadans and to bridge the gap that once existed between the two communities’.149 Non-cooperation involved the boycott of British goods and institutions – chiefly the legislative councils, the courts, and colleges – as part of an all-India strategy of the Congress.150 During the greater part of Non-cooperation, the Hindu Sabha ceased to function formally, having met in an annual session just once in 1919.151 In April 1921, the Sabha met at its sixth session under the presidentship of Munindra Chandra Nandi in Hardwar, re-christening itself as the All-India Hindu Mahasabha [Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha] on the Congress model.152 It amended its constitution to replace the ‘loyalty’ clause with a clause committing the organisation to a ‘united and self-governing’ Indian nation.153 It convened a special session presided over by Lajpat Rai in Delhi on 6–7 November 1921, endorsing Noncooperation and swadeshi [self-help] as a central plank of its programme.154 In this period, the Mahasabha broadly represented the politics of moderate Indian nationalism and shadowed the Congress by adopting the goal of achieving India’s freedom, but did not venture into non-constitutional or mass politics.155 M.M. Malaviya, president of the Mahasabha, re-launched the organisation effectively on a firmer ideological basis at its Gaya session in December 1922, unveiling sangathan [Hindu unity and organisation] as its primary aim for the attainment of freedom.156 The Mahasabha’s Banaras session in 1923 marked the emergence of a militant Hindu nationalist discourse, committing the party to a collective defence of the socio-political interests of Hindus and a ‘strong and unified’ Hindu community.157 Sangathan had since evolved into a defining narrative of the Mahasabha in which the hostile ‘other’ of the Indian nation was not the British, but

22

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Muslims.158 The Mahasabha reinforced an overarching, all-embracing ideal of ‘Hindu unity’ based on an anti-Muslim hostility in the 1920s and 1930s.159 However, there were serious misgivings and scepticism within the Hindu Mahasabha over the extent of its support to Non-cooperation, coupled with the massive strains of building a mass support for the struggle for which it had little commitment.160 The Mahasabha had remained ambivalent over the Congress’s struggle relating to the renunciation of titles, boycott of the reformed councils, and resignations from government service.161 Lajpat Rai opposed Non-cooperation as ‘impractical’, urging that the provinces should not be bound by the boycott of the councils.162 Raja Rampal Singh rejected the movement, putting faith in sangathan’s commitment to Hindu interests as a ‘higher patriotism towards which humanity has been gaining strength in this country’.163 M.M. Malaviya, while remaining within the Congress, first withdrew from the elections of 1920, yet solidly opposed all stages of Non-cooperation, developing a successful political career in the legislatures from 1923 onwards.164 He expressed his dismay that Gandhi was ‘leading the Muhammadans’ and attacked Non-cooperation as ‘inimical’ to the ‘long-term interests’ of the Hindu community in India.165 He condemned the boycott of the schools and colleges as an ‘educational suicide’, arguing that it would be the ‘height of folly to cut off much-needed government financial aid to expanding educational institutions’.166 In the name of Islam, he protested, Hindu politicians were being asked to boycott the legislative councils and ‘sacrifice the achievements of years of political activity’.167 Most of Malaviya’s ‘Hindu wing’ – Gauri Shankar Misra, Siva Prasad Gupta, Iqbal Narayan Gurtu, H.N. Kunzru, and Iswar Saran – entered the UP Legislative Council in the November–December 1920 elections as independents or in association with the Liberal Party in a defiance to Non-cooperation.168 Malaviya’s supporters affiliated to the UP Kisan Sabha, the Sewa Samiti, and the radical Kayastha Pathshala of Allahabad – prominently Ranjit Singh of Allahabad, Narayan Prasad Asthana and Prag Narayan of Agra, Jugal Kishore of Gorakhpur, and Awadh Bihari Lal of Oudh – had boycotted Non-cooperation.169 Krishna Kant Malaviya, Malaviya’s nephew and staunch follower in Allahabad, urged the delegates to ‘vote against Non-cooperation’ at the Nagpur session of the Congress in December 1920.170 B.S. Moonje and M.R. Jayakar opposed Gandhi’s move on council boycott and refused to resign from the legislatures.171 N.C. Kelkar was not reconciled to Noncooperation, explaining that it was ‘Mr Gandhi himself who is on trial. We do not say this in a spirit victimizing Mr Gandhi but only for pointing out the quarter in which the centre of gravity of the responsibility lies.’172 Raja Narendra Nath, Punjab Hindu Sabha secretary, contested the Punjab Legislative Council elections in 1920 in the midst of the Congress’s boycott call, asserting that the Congress had been ‘indifferent’ towards Hindu interests, and that the Hindu–Muslim unity achieved during Non-cooperation was ‘superficial’.173 In particular, the Mahasabha had a strong incentive to work the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms devolving considerable powers to legislative councils in the provinces, which were viewed as the ‘bastions of power’.174 Ideologically, the Mahasabha distanced itself from the Congress’s creed of composite nationalism and saw little worth in

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 23 a union with Muslims, asserting that the nationalist vision of unity was ‘illconceived’ and an ‘idle and futile’ dream.175 It viewed the unravelling of Noncooperation as a ‘transitory phenomenon’, even though the period 1919–1922 had represented the heyday of Hindu–Muslim unity in the anti-colonial struggle in the country.176 The powerful anti-British sentiment that drove Non-cooperation was overlooked, or denied.177 In the political atmosphere of the early 1920s, the establishment of powerful Muslim organisations and the resultant Islamic fervour evident during the Khilafat movement was in part instrumental in the Mahasabha’s plan for a larger mobilisation of Hindus as a defensive politics in north India.178

Organisation and structure In the formative period, the Hindu Mahasabha was not an all-India organisation in terms of the extent of its organisation, or the range of its activities. It was an ‘amorphous and straggling organization’ with a loose all-India structure.179 Its constituency remained vague, drawing upon caste associations, religious movements, language societies, and local Hindu Sabhas, which had elected delegates to its conferences.180 Hindus above 18 years of age could become members of the party by paying individually five annas per annum.181 The Mahasabha’s growth was most prominent in the Hindi tracts of north India – the UP, the Punjab, Delhi, and Bihar. Of the 960 paid-up delegates attending the Mahasabha’s session in Banaras in August 1923, north India [the UP, the Punjab, Delhi, and Bihar] contributed 86.8 per cent of the delegates; Madras, Bombay, and Bengal combined sent a mere 6.6 per cent of the delegates.182 The prominent workers of the Mahasabha with their links to religious and cultural movements gave the Mahasabha a distinctly north Indian character in the 1920s and 1930s.183 The Hindu Mahasabha was supported by a desultory and skeletal framework as an organisation at the all-India level.184 It had its first headquarters located in Dehradun [Hardwar], the home town of Pandit Deva Ratan Sharma, its first secretary.185 In October 1915 the party offices were shifted to Delhi, but moved back to Dehradun in 1916. In 1925 Lala Lajpat Rai shifted the party headquarters to Delhi during his presidentship, where they have remained ever since.186 The Mahasabha appointed 13 vice-presidents, including three Shankarachayas, in 1915; Lala Sukhbir Sinha became general secretary, assisted by four secretaries and 50 councillors representing the provinces of India.187 Provincial Hindu Sabhas were subsequently formed in the UP with the headquarters in Allahabad in December 1915, Bombay city, and in Bihar.188 The leaders who had been active in nationalist politics took control of the Mahasabha’s organisation at the national and provincial levels in India.189 The Hindu Mahasabha demonstrated a new focus and determined action through its organisational restructuring following its revival in 1922–1923.190 The party’s Gaya session in 1922 created an organising committee with an aim to establish Hindu Sabhas in all the provinces, extending the party organisation

24

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to the village level in the country.191 A working committee modelled on the Congress pattern was established with its offices at Benares Hindu University.192 For the purposes of organisation, the Mahasabha divided India into 23 linguistic provinces on much the same pattern as the Congress.193 The provincial Hindu Sabhas were formed in the Punjab, Sind, Delhi, Bihar, Rajputana, Bengal, Bombay city, and Madras.194 By August 1924 nine provincial branches had been established; and a provincial Hindu Sabha was formed in Agra in September 1924.195 By the end of 1926, the party had established 362 Hindu Sabhas all over India, having founded 130 new branches in 1926 alone.196 Of the 362 local Hindu Sabhas, the UP comprised 160 Hindu Sabhas, the Punjab 65, Bihar 65, Bombay presidency 22, Central Provinces 16, Bengal 11, Madras presidency 11, Burma three, Rajputana three, Assam, Kenya, South Africa, England, and Mesopotamia one each.197 In the UP, the Mahasabha was strongest in eastern districts and Oudh – the centre of orthodox Brahmanical Hinduism. In the western districts, the most prominent Mahasabha leader was Lala Sukhbir Sinha, a Khatri banker, a zamindar of Muzaffarnagar, and a patron of the sanatan dharm movement.198 The Hindu Sabhas were concentrated mostly in the larger cities of the UP – Allahabad [the nucleus of M.M. Malaviya’s activity], Banaras [Hindu University], Lucknow [the centre of Hindi–Nagari movement], Kanpur, and Agra.199 In Bombay presidency, the party branch was mostly inactive; and there was not much response to the organisation in Madras.200 In Maharashtra and the Central Provinces – Marathi districts and Berar – the Hindu Sabhas were dominated by Maratha Brahmans, mainly Chitpavans and B.G. Tilak’s former lieutenants.201 In Bengal, the Mahasabha was effectively re-launched years later in 1939 by V.D. Savarkar, with Shyam Prasad Mookherjee as its president.202 The Mahasabha’s growth in the provinces was sporadic and uneven with little local-level coordination and planning, even though it was strongest where riots were fiercest in north India.203

Conclusion In the early twentieth century, Hindu nationalism emerged as an established feature of politics in north India, with its ideology represented in an institutional form by the Hindu Mahasabha.204 The Hindu Sabha movement had originated in the Punjab, the Arya Samajist stronghold, on an explicitly Hindu nationalist agenda, culminating in the establishment of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha in the UP in 1915.205 The Mahasabha campaigned over overriding Hindu issues, such as Nagari and cow protection; and its mobilisation had crucial consequences for the manner in which sangathan narrative became the sole referent of a ‘Hindu politics’.206 The party experienced a political decline between 1919 and 1922 under the impact of the Non-cooperation movement, which had sought to define Hindus and Muslims as partners in India’s anti-colonial struggle.207 The Mahasabha mostly stayed out of the Congress’s anti-colonial movement; and its ambiguity over Indian nationalism persisted, negating a confrontation with the British.208 Its political rhetoric revealed a divergence from the Congress’s

The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 25 struggle, creating a ‘nationalist’ political programme in which an opposition to British rule played little part.209 After its re-launch in 1922, the Mahasabha aligned a ‘Hindu unity’ with a national unity, articulating an aggressive Hindu self-strengthening and assertion as part of sangathan.210 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, its discourse had centred on a stridently anti-Muslim hostility, viewing the presence of Muslims as the main obstacle to the creation of a homogeneous ‘Hindu nation’ in India.211 Organisationally, the Mahasabha had remained largely a north Indian venture and was scarcely organised outside the Hindi-speaking areas of the UP, the Punjab, and Bihar in this period.212

3

Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership

The Hindu Mahasabha’s origins were located in the internal history of north India, mainly the United Provinces, where a ‘Hindu identity’ was constructed and given a political expression in the early twentieth century.1 At its grassroots, the Mahasabha, which had sought to address typically middle class concerns, was made up of the Hindu social classes with divergent aspirations, many of which had little to do with Indian nationalism.2 The party systematically sought the support of the urban professional intelligentsia, business groups, and powerful landed classes, besides strengthening an active alliance with Hindu ruling princes in north India.3 It had a close association with Hindu revivalist groups – the sanatan dharm movement and the Arya Samaj – which had been active for some time before its emergence.4 The party’s social roots had determined a structure of elite-led politics that hampered its ability to attract mass support, leading to its early decline.5 The Mahasabha developed an alternative narrative to the Indian National Congress’s secular idiom, rejecting the latter’s universalist nationalism and aligning the Hindu community with the ‘Indian nation’.6 This chapter explores the Mahasabha’s social base as well as the structure of its leadership in the towns and districts of the UP, revisiting the extent of its relations with the Congress and their breakdown in the 1930s. The period 1920–1930 proved critical for the ways in which the Hindu community and a Hindu politics had emerged in north India.

Urban and high caste roots The Hindu Mahasabha was largely but not exclusively urban in character, being concentrated in the largest trading cities of the UP – Allahabad, Kanpur, Banaras, and Lucknow.7 It drew its support from politically organised and articulate urban Hindu groups. Eighteen members of the UP Hindu Sabha executive committee, elected in December 1915, were drawn from six of the principal cities in the UP, of which Allahabad alone accounted for ten as a key recruiting ground, while three members came from the western divisions of Meerut, Agra, and Rohilkhand.8 Admittedly, the Mahasabha succeeded in attracting support from among the Congress’s traditional supporters – chiefly ‘English-educated lawyers and smaller gentry, with a fair sprinkling of commercial and professional classes’ – who had been disappointed by the latter’s failure to protect Hindu interests in

Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership

27

9

the government and legislature of the UP. The moderate Congress had offered little immediate relief to the disadvantaged elements of Indian society.10 The issues articulated by the Mahasabha – employment in government services, the ‘oppression’ of Hindus, the protection of ‘Hindu interests’, etc. – had worried the urban middle classes, who were disillusioned by the lack of ‘effective remedies’ from the Congress.11 The Hindu classes who supported the Mahasabha were mostly Brahmans, Banias, Agarwals, and Vaishya groups.12 A closely-knit and highly organised group of ‘Brahman politicians’, whom Lieutenant-Governor James Meston in 1917 termed the ‘main characteristic’ of UP political life, had largely contributed to the growth of the Mahasabha.13 The UP Hindu Sabha committee included nine Brahmans – four Kashmiris, two Malavis, one Gujarati Nagar, one Telugu, and one Kanyakubya.14 The Hindu groups embraced the Mahasabha because its campaign had appealed to the notion of ‘Hindu unity’ and the ‘welfare’ of the Hindu community as a whole.15 The urban Hindu gentry, which maintained local ‘power and status’, had become the hardline supporter of the Mahasabha in the towns and districts of the UP.16 Traders and bankers In the Hindi-speaking areas of north India, members of the wealthy families of indigenous bankers and traders played an active part in the Hindu Mahasabha movement.17 By the first decades of the twentieth century, the merchants and traders had become the driving force behind the increasingly ‘purist’ or ‘reformist’ Hindu religious and social initiatives in north India.18 In particular, rich commercial men and bankers with strong urban interests in the west UP and the Doab had strengthened public activities relating to Hindu revivalism and vigorously supported the Mahasabha in the 1920s.19 The Mahasabha allied itself with north Indian commercial and industrial classes during the years after the First World War. The commercial magnates who had supported the Mahasabha belonged to the three biggest banking houses in the province – Prag Narayan Bhargava of Lucknow, Lala Bishambhar Nath of Kanpur, and Moti Chand Gupta of Banaras.20 The UP Hindu Sabha committee included six Kayasthas, seven Vaish, and two Rajputs. The Vaish were divided into three Agarwals, three Khatris, and one Bhargava.21 Of the 24 members of the committee, only two depended on landed income, while the majority were commercial and professional men.22 In Allahabad, the Hindu Samaj and the People’s Association representing alliances between urban monied interests and their connections among professional men within a Hindu context were directly involved in the early phase of the Mahasabha.23 Lala Ram Charan Das, a Khatri banker and treasurer of the UP Congress Committee, was the wealthiest of the local magnates in the city and a close associate of M.M. Malaviya and the Hindu Sabha group.24 Das had been intimately involved with all the movements for the educational and political uplift of the Hindu community, including the Allahabad Hindu Boarding House and the Banaras Hindu University, which had been the preserve and power base of the Malaviya family.25 The Tandons, the major bankers in the UP,

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Hindu nationalism

were patrons for the foundation of the Bharti Bhawan Library, Allahabad, which was championed by Malaviya.26 Banaras banking houses, including the Jagath Seth family, had founded the Sanatan Dharma Sabhas, which sent delegates to the Mahasabha’s sessions.27 The Lakshman Das family of Mathura and the Nihal Chand family of Muzaffarnagar supported the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan [founded in Allahabad in 1911] and the Nagri Pracharini Sabha, strengthening the Nagari movement of the Mahasabha.28 In north India, the big business was the first to switch its allegiance from the Congress to the Mahasabha in the 1920s and 1930s. Sir Jwala Prasad Srivastava, a Kanpur industrialist who was president of the UP Hindu Sabha in 1942 and served on the Viceroy’s Executive Council, explained: ‘After the Congress assumption of office in UP in 1937, the leading industrialists – all I think Hindu – got together and decided to finance Jinnah and the Muslim League [sic] and also the Mahasabha.’29 Several business and banking houses believed that paying a ‘premium’ to the Mahasabha would provide a ‘better insurance’ to them.30 Evidently, Seth Jugal Kishore Birla of Calcutta, whose family had in the past bankrolled Congress campaigns, topped the list of donors who financed the Mahasabha.31 Ghanshyamdas Birla made donations towards the costs of the election campaign of Malaviya’s Independent Congress Party in 1926, besides giving funds for the Mahasabha’s untouchable uplift drive and its propagation of the Nehru Report in 1928–1929.32 Seth Bansidhar Jalan, Badridas Goenka, Radhakisen Kanodia, and Khaitan and Company of Calcutta made generous contributions to the Mahasabha.33 The Mahasabha was able to attract money in a relatively short period, as sections of Hindu businessmen earlier sympatheitic to the Congress had begun to shift their loyalties to the party by the 1930s.34 Socially, the Mahasabha’s conservative character was to an extent an outcome of the patronage received from commercial and banking magnates in north India.35 A small group of urban professionals dominated the Hindu Mahasabha, many of its leading personalities being lawyers. Of the 24 members of the UP Hindu Sabha committee, 16 were lawyers by profession, including Gokul Prasad, Mahadeo Prasad, Rama Kant Malaviya, and Iswar Saran.36 The committee comprised three zamindars who were lawyers, six commercial and landed magnates, of whom one was a vakil [lawyer], two taluqdars, and one a journalist.37 Sardar Bahadur Johari, an advocate of Allahabad, was president of the UP Hindu Sabha; and Wati Vishnu Swarup, a lawyer, was the leader of the Bijnor Hindu Sabha.38 Ram Mohan Lal, an advocate of Moradabad, and Rai Bahadur Vikramjit Singh, a lawyer of Kanpur, were the leading lights of the Mahasabha movement.39 Gokaran Nath Misra and Brijnandan Prasad were lawyer-politicians associated with the Mahasabha, even though they had held small zamindaris.40 Most lawyers supporting the Mahasabha and its sangathan movement belonged to the upper castes, usually Kayastha or Brahman. Among such lawyers were men reputed to be earning the largest incomes at the High Court Bar in Allahabad, particularly Sir Sundar Lal Dave – primarily an educationist.41 They and a few others in the Congress were close friends and attended dinner parties ‘at homes’ in Allahabad.42 Journalists and teachers associated with the Mahasabha were significantly men of

Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership

29

considerable public experience and reputation, of an older generation. C.Y. Chintamani, editor of the Leader and a member the UP Hindu Sabha committee, became minister for education and exercised enormous control in the allocation of funds to the localities in the UP.43 M.M. Malaviya was sceptical about the professionals and referred to the ‘distrust of the English-educated elite’, pointing out that such attitude ‘grieved’ him.44 Crucially, the Mahasabha’s overwhelming and active support came from the group of middle class professionals, mostly lawyers, in the UP.45 The Hindu Mahasabha followed the existing pattern of elite politics, with its leaders maintaining ties to several organisations across the UP. Local Hindu Sabhas were indistinguishable from district associations, which were the ‘hub of public life’ in the larger cities and watchdogs over local government elections and smaller mofussil bodies.46 At least ten members of the UP Hindu Sabha committee had been members of the Hindu University Society executive committee and the University Deputation in 1916, while six were members of the council of the Banaras Hindu University.47 Seven were listed as patrons and members of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Banaras.48 M.M. Malaviya, Pandit Deva Ratan Sharma, Raja Sir Rampal Singh, and Lala Ram Saran Das, the Mahasabha’s founding leaders, were influential men active in local government and a number of associations, religious bodies, and educational trusts.49 Fourteen members of the UP Hindu Sabha committee were members of the legislatures, 12 of the provincial and two of the Imperial Legislative Assembly: Malaviya and Rampal Singh were the members of the Imperial Assembly. Of the 12 Hindu Sabha members in the UP Legislative Council, 11 were elected and one, T.B. Sapru, was nominated.50 The Hindu elites associated with the Mahasabha were linked to alliances with political and social organisations and religious institutions in the province. Lala Bishambhar Nath, an Agarwala banker and rais, was president of the Kanpur Hindu Sabha in 1915, president of the Kanpur District Association, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Kanpur, and a leading member of the Sanatan Dharm Sabha and the Legislative Council.51 Dr Muralilal Rohtagi, a Vaish medical practitioner, held office at various times in the Congress, the Hindu Sabha, and the Arya Samaj and was a vice-president of the Kanpur District Association.52 Lala Anand Swarup, a Kayasth lawyer, was a member of the Legislative Council and an office-holder in the Kanpur association, the Congress, the Hindu Sabha, and the Arya Samaj.53 Mahasabha leader Lala Sukhbir Sinha was expresident of the Vaish Conference, while Moti Chand Gupta, a Mahasabha man, was its president in 1916.54 Munshi Gokul Prasad, a Mahasabhaite, was president of the Kayastha Pathshala, Allahabad.55 The Mahasabha’s leaders and patrons with their diverse affiliations between them had dominated the provincial legislature as well as various social, political and commercial organisations in the UP.56 Rural base The Hindu Mahasabha had gained marginal support in the rural areas by the early 1920s, showing a marked expansion in the mofussil following its revival in

30

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1923. M.M. Malaviya sought to expand the party’s rural base and established the UP Kisan Sabha, a front organisation of the farmers, in 1918.57 He urged peasants, a potential source of strength for the party, to be ‘fearless, united and follow dharm’ [righteousness]; and meetings of the peasants were held at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in 1918.58 The Kisan Sabha was subsequently absorbed into the party organisation as a kisan sub-committee in September 1924.59 However, the Mahasabha’s programmes rarely featured the organisation of peasants over issues such as the decline of agricultural incomes or the land tax.60 It did not have the peasant base which the Congress had in the UP’s rural heartland – where the peasants had come to occupy a centre stage in the nationalist struggle, providing a symbolic identification with the Indian ‘nation’.61 The Mahasabha shifted to a strategy of working through caste associations rather than attempt to organise the peasants in the rural UP. Between 1924 and 1926, the party organisers were in constant touch with caste organisations, with M.M. Malaviya assiduously attending the Rajput and Jat conferences in an effort to win support.62 The Gujar and Ahir conferences were persuaded to pass resolutions in support of shuddhi [purification], Hindi, and cow protection – the issues championed by the Mahasabha.63 Raja Rampal Singh, Oudh Hindu Sabha president, his brother Thakur Hanuman Singh, and Durga Narayan Singh, president of the Agra Hindu Sabha, toured the districts of the UP to form Hindu Sabhas; they used the platforms of the UP Rajput Association and the Kshatriya Upkarini Sabha to enlist support for the Mahasabha.64 The Mahasabha’s organisational activity represented some swing of support in the rural areas from the mid-1920s onwards.65 Nonetheless, the Hindu Mahasabha could not create a representative organisation or expand its branch structure in the rural areas or adapt itself to local power structures in the UP.66 The Montagu–Chelmsford reforms shifted the political battle back into the provincial arena, giving the vote to a broad range of substantial rural interests; of the 46 million people in the UP in 1921, 89 per cent lived in the rural areas.67 The Government of India Act of 1919 gave the provinces a much larger measure of autonomy through enlarged provincial councils, making provision for a substantial elected majority and the devolution of control over departments such as local self-government, education, health, and agriculture to the provinces under ‘diarchy’, thus increasing competition for power at the provincial level.68 In the formulation of the 1919 Act, the government deliberately kept the number of urban seats at a minimum.69 In the UP Legislative Council, of the 123 members, 100 were elected [30 from Muslim constituencies] and 23 nominated. Of the 100 members, the government proposed that there should be 70 elected seats in general electorates, of which only 10 were to be for urban interests.70 The majority of the constituencies drawn up across 48 districts in the UP had included predominantly the rural areas – where the district was the key territorial unit for political prties.71 The reforms extended the franchise beyond the canvassing power of urban politicians in the province, representing an increase in the electorate of nearly 1.3 million voters in 1920 and of 1.6 million voters in 1926.72 The fallout of the predominantly rural character of the

Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership

31

electorate under the 1919 Act was that the Mahasabha with its urban moorings had suffered a political disadvantage; it had no effective organisational structure or canvassing machinery to mobilise the electorate in the mofussil areas of the UP in the post-Montford period.73 Landed aristocracy In the districts of the UP, the Hindu Mahasabha was increasingly supported by large landowning magnates as well as taluqdars [landed class].74 After the revolt of 1857 the British made settlements with taluqdars as the ‘aristocratic pillars’ of crown rule, returning all of the state lands to them in perpetuity in the three regions of the UP – the Northwestern Provinces and Oudh, Banaras, and Agra.75 The Cornwallis formula of permanent settlement was applied to the entire province; and in October 1859 Viceroy Lord Canning conferred special property rights [sanads] upon the assembled taluqdars at a darbar [court] held in Lucknow.76 The taludars were added to princes as the staunch allies of British rule – an aristocratic group that would prevent a ‘broader alienation’ of north Indian society.77 The policy – the ‘Oudh system’ – laid stress on the social predominance and political importance of the taluqdars who were introduced in 1877 as the ‘natural rulers’ by Lieutenant-Governor William Charles Benett, the ‘champion of Oudh policy’.78 The taulqdars numbered 272, of them 76 being Muslims, and held two-thirds of revenue divisions, paying nearly one-sixth of the total land revenue of the UP.79 In the 1920s, they held 38 per cent of the seats in the municipal boards of the province.80 The taulqdari elite was immensely powerful due to a jurisdiction it had retained over criminal, civil and revenue suits, exercising an effective role as an ally of the government and the ‘aristocratic basis’ of administration in the UP.81 The access to power and patronage acquired through the agency of the taluqdars had remained the dominant element in the Hindu Mahasabha’s strategy of an alliance with the landed classes in the UP. In Oudh with Lucknow as its centre, the Mahasabha was strong because taluqdars such as Rampal Sir Singh of Kurri Sidhauli and Raja Biswanath Singh were its active patrons.82 Raja Suraj Baksh Singh of Kasmanda and Nihal Singh were Rampal Singh’s lieutenants and Mahasabhaites themselves.83 Thakur Hanuman Singh, the older brother of Rampal Singh and a member of the Legislative Council since 1921, was a notable leader of the Mahasabha.84 Two taluqdars of Oudh, Rajeshwar Bali [Bara Banki] and Rajendra Singh, were members of the UP Hindu Sabha committee in 1915–1916.85 Rajeshwar Bali had the support of officials and Hindu landlords in the Legislative Council and became minister for education and public health in early 1924.86 Rai Thakur Mahal Singh Bahadur, Oudh zamindar, and Thakur Jagannath Bakhsh Singh of Rae Bareli were thought to be ‘wholehearted on [Hindu] communal questions’.87 In the Agra region, Raja Durga Narayan Singh of Tirwa, and Kunwar Rajendra Singh, son of Tikra taluqdar, were influential Mahasabhaites in their own right.88 Most mofussil zamindars had once been key supporters of the Congress, but changed the strategy to back

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the Mahasabha on the basis that the latter promised to defend their landed interests in a more determined fashion from the 1920s onwards.89 During the economic difficulties of the 1929 Depression, which had seriously affected the landed groups in north India, many older taluqdars disavowed sympathy with the Congress, seen as a direct threat to landlords due to its civil disobedience movement, particularly ‘no-rent’ campaigns, and retreated to a safer ground in support for the government, or the Mahasabha.90 A steady landlord support for the Mahasabha, referred to as the ‘anti-Congress’ movement, had resulted in the party acquiring a strong presence of landholding and aristocratic membership, a factor that explains why it was attached to political moderation and conservatism.91 Politically, several big Hindu zamindars in the mofussil areas took up the cause of the Mahasabha, constituting the largest group of attached landholders on the ticket of sangathan [Hindu unity] at elections in the UP during the1920 and 1930s.92 Hindu princely states The Hindu Mahasabha sought the support of powerful Hindu ruling princes and Nepal in a new alignment of allies as part of a drive to expand its base.93 About two-thirds of pre-1947 India was directly administered by the British, and the remaining third covered by the princely states which were invariably loyal to the Crown.94 Viceroy Lord Lytton reiterated the keystone of crown policy which had taken a firm hold since the 1858 Government of India Act that ‘if we have with us the Princes, we shall have with us the people’.95 The Mahasabha rallied to a political alliance with the Hindu states, particularly after Bhai Parmanand’s election as president in 1933, by deriving its strategy from the Muslim League which had been extending its support to Muslim princes.96 It launched a systematic campaign to persuade the Hindu princes to take a ‘lively interest in the affairs’ of the party and issued invitations to the princes to preside at Mahasabha functions.97 Sympathetic notables such as Virendra Shah, Raja of Jagmanpur, UP, were deployed to help integrate other chiefs into the Mahasabha fold.98 The Mahasabha adopted a policy of ‘standing by the Hindu states’, most of which were the active collaborators of the British, rejecting the Congress’s charge that the states were an ‘unnecessary burden’ – or the ‘creatures of British imperialism’.99 B.S. Moonje praised the Hindu princes as a set of ‘real leaders’, embodying ‘manly virtues’ and ‘commanding armies’.100 He urged ‘all Hindus to respect and love their Hindu Princes as embodiments of Hindu pride and . . . achievements’. The Hindu ruler, he explained, was a ‘representative of the Hindu Raj of the past’ who incorporated in himself ‘all [the] traditions of dignity, suffering and fighting for maintaining the Hindu Raj against foreign aggressors’.101 Moonje himself had benefited from the influence and financial support of Laxmanrao Raje Bhonsle, the heir to the old Nagpur state, and of an important landowner, M.G. Chitnavis.102 V.D. Savarkar hailed the Hindu states as the ‘bedrock of Hindu power’ in Indian subcontinent and defended their despotic powers, describing them as the ‘citadels of organized Hindu power’.103 He lauded

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Mysore, Travancore, Oudh, and Baroda as the examples of ‘progressive Hindu states’.104 The Mahasabha’s main objective was to end the growing influence of the Congress in the Hindu states, which were viewed as potential territories for the establishment of a ‘Hindu Raj’ in India.105 Strategically, the Hindu Mahasabha aimed to receive a great deal of patronage from the Hindu states in terms of material support and resources.106 The states maintained military and police forces and controlled ‘vast territories and revenues’ across the country.107 When the Mahasabha needed the funds, ‘the princes came forward’.108 Alwar provided the Hindu Mahasabha with office space on Canning Lane, New Delhi.109 Bikaner gave Rs10,000 in 1929 to the party to set up a Hindu Service Society in memory of Lajpat Rai, and another Rs5,000 in 1931 towards the expenses at the round table conference, London, 1931.110 Indore donated Rs25,000 to Moonje’s scheme for a Hindu military school, and the Maratha rulers ‘paid up’ when approached.111 Idar contributed Rs12,000 a year to the ‘propaganda work’ of the Hindu Mahasabha.112 Crucially, under the scheme of an all-India federation proposed in the India Act of 1935 which conferred on the states a disproportionate representation in the federal legislature, the princes would acquire considerable legislative and executive power in any future government.113 The Mahasabha’s chief assumption was that an association with the princess would confer on it much needed support in the form of access to political power.114 The Hindu states for their part responded positively to the Mahasabha’s overtures as a means of security because when the transfer of power came to India they would have the Mahasabha as their ‘ally to protect the princely interests’.115 The Mahasabha actively supported the princely demand that the states should be allowed to exist even after the transfer of power as separate entities within an Indian federation.116 British intelligence admitted that the ‘Mahasabha leaders succeeded in making a good impression’ on the rulers, as the party had no policy to restrict the ‘princely independence’.117 Inevitably, the political sympathies of Patiala, Baroda, and Bharatpur clearly lay with the Mahasabha.118 Tej Singhji of Alwar, Brijendra Singh of Bharatpur, and ‘George’ Jayaji Rao Scindia of Gwalior were among the rulers in north India who had developed a close working relationship with the party.119 However, the Hindu states, notorious for corruption and misrule, had granted unfettered privileges and governmental perks to Hindus – most of which denied to Muslims, reflecting the ‘Hindu majoritarian’ principle actively promoted by the Mahasabha.120 The polity of the Hindu states in particular had become far too overtly anti-Muslim due to the Mahasabha’s sangathanist influence and mobilisation in the 1920s and 1930s.121 Sanatan Dharm ideology Ideologically, the Hindu Mahasabha was dominated by the followers of sanatan dharm [orthodox Hinduism], even though it also represented the Arya Samaj and professional elements associated with the more progressive and reformist UP Social Conference.122 The religious affiliations of most Mahasabha patrons and

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leaders showed a pronounced bias to sanatan dharm ideology, which sought to promote orthodox causes and resisted social reform.123 Eighteen members of the UP Hindu Sabha committee were prominent patrons of sanatan dharm.124 The Mahasabha’s secretary – Pandit Deva Ratan Sharma, a Punjabi Brahman of Dehradun – had been a propaganda worker for sanatan dharm in the past.125 The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal was the most active sanatan dharm association with its base in Banaras, eastern UP.126 The Maharaja of Darbhanga, a Mahasabha leader himself, formed the All-India Sanatan Dharma Sammelan in Hardwar in 1915.127 At a Sanatan Dharma Sammelan conference in Delhi in March 1920, he urged all Sanatan Dharm Sabhas to support orthodox candidates at the elections to the UP Legislative Council due later that year in the hope of sabotaging legislation interfering with Hindu social issues.128 Nonetheless, the Arya Samaj, which was in a conflict with sanatan dharm, had increasingly battled to influence and determine the emergent anti-Muslim sangathan activism, echoing a vision of the organisation of the Hindu community on the ideal of the Vedic ‘golden’ age.129 Its strength lay in Meerut and Rohilkhand divisions of the western UP, being patronised by the Kayasths and the Vaish and agricultural castes.130 M.M. Malaviya regarded the Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj not merely as ‘members of the same family but as two brothers holding different and even opposing views on some aspects of religion, but united in their faith in and devotion to [India’s] ancient religion and civilisation’.131 The Samaj put a sustained pressure on the Mahasabha for a progressive social reform – caste reform, widow remarriage, etc.132 However, it was countered by sanatan dharm organisations, chiefly the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal [founded in 1902], which had rallied to the defence of traditional Hinduism and attacked legislative moves by the British to interfere in Hindu practices, preferring a ‘reform from within the Hindu trdition’.133 The Mahasabha could not successfully reconcile the conflicting discourses of the Arya Samaj and sanatan dharm, even though it mostly upheld the religious orthodoxy.134 Admittedly, the Hindu orthodoxy had exerted a revivalist and conservative influence on the Mahasabha whose social radicalism was in effect hampered, more so due to the relative predominance of sanatan dharm in its ranks.135

Mahasabha and Congress ties The Hindu Mahasabha was the most significant ideological ‘other’ of the Congress, contesting the latter’s secular nationalism in favour a homogenous, unified ‘Hindu nation’ on the basis that the ‘spirit of India’ was ‘Hindu’.136 It was an external factor and subsidiary to the Congress’s struggle for India’s independence, exercising little real influence on the conduct of the nationalist movement.137 It was in a conflict with the Congress in whose discourse the pre-eminent view of Indian nationalism was that of an inclusionary anti-colonial struggle, crowned by the ideal of a ‘single nation’.138 In the early twentieth century, however, the Mahasabha’s political distinction from the Congress had been quite vague, as both organisations were not seen to be antagonistic to each other at the

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social base in the localities. The boundaries between a secular imagination of the nation and a more sectarian vision of it as constituted by religious communities were ‘blurred and overlapping’.140 In a political context dominated by Hindus, there was little distinction between a ‘secular’ political association and an involvement in ‘religious’ or ‘caste’ organisations’ in north India.141 Political leaders combined Congress membership with sectarian associations or religious organisations by working at multiple levels – town, district, and province – across the religious divide; they performed political functions in the Congress and social and cultural work in the Mahasabha, with the nexus and associations persisting in the UP in the 1920s and 1930s.142 In the UP, the Congress and the local Hindu Sabhas were ‘interlocked’, assumedly benefiting from the relationship, until the end of the 1930s.143 The early Mahasabha was not a political party in its own right and decisively tied to its links with the Congress and often described as a ‘pressure group’ within the latter; it was controlled by M.M. Malaviya, the leader of the ‘Hindu wing’ of the Congress.144 A strong advocacy of India’s need to end British rule was central to the Mahasabha and the Congress, both urging ‘self-rule’ and the struggled for an ‘undivided’ India.145 Several leaders connected with the Congress – prominently Gokaran Nath Misra, Iqbal Narayn Gurtu, Hriday Nath Kunzru, Gauri Shankar Misra, Shivprasad Gupta, and Iswar Saran – had been involved in the Mahasabha movement in the UP.146 Conversely, a majority of the incipient UP Hindu Sabha committee members had been associated with the Congress; seven members attended the Congress session in Bombay in 1915.147 In August 1923, the Mahasabha was relaunched by M.M. Malaviya at its Banaras session, attended by prominent Congressmen – Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Purushottam Das Tandon, Bhagwan Das, and Ghanshyam Das Birla.148 In 1924 Malaviya presided over the Mahasabha’s session held at the Congress venue in Belgaum, which was attended by Gandhi, Muhammad and Shaukat Ali, and Motilal Nehru.149 Sections of the Mahasabha leaders had held a dual membership, working for the protection of Hindu interests within the Congress; and the solidarities of the community conflated the interests of the ‘Hindu community’ with those of the ‘Indian nation’.150 The prestige associated with the Congress, the growing sentiment of ‘national unity’, and the secure sources of financing were powerful attractions which made local Hindu Sabhas and their front-rank leaders retain associations with the Congress in the UP.151 Neki Ram Sharma, Hindu Mahasabha secretary, claimed that the Mahasabha had not been created as a ‘rival’ to the Congress, but to facilitate the ‘establishment of swaraj’ [freedom] in India.152 The UP Hindu Sabha clique – led by Raja Maheshwar Dayal Seth, J.P. Srivastava, and Krishna Gurtu Narain – which had proposed to set up an ‘All-India Hindu League’ to revive the Mahasabha’s political activities, attempted to forge an alliance with the Congress organisations and conducted a propaganda for the latter in the province.153 K.M. Ashraf, a Congress socialist, protested that influential Mahasabhaites were allowed to occupy ‘responsible positions’ in the Congress organisations and permitted to join the Congress reception committees in Agra, Oudh, Aligarh, Badaun, and Bundelkhand, UP.154

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Paradoxically, the factor that had worried the Mahasabha was the ‘preponderance’ of Muslims in the Congress; and B.S. Moonje suggested that all the Mahasabhaites should join the Congress as a ‘prophylactic’ against the Muslim ‘contamination and influx’.155 The inability of the UP Congress to overcome the Mahasabha cadres pointed to the presence of a ‘Hindu idiom’ among the party ranks; and Congress radicalism co-existed with the elements of ‘Hindu politics’.156 Congress leaders retained less formal associations with the Mahasabha, believing that the Congress worked as the main political organisation, whereas the Hindu Sabhas dealt with the ‘social and cultural’ issues of Indian society.157 The UP Congress group, led by Raja Bahadur of Tiloi and Pandit Jyoti Shankar Dikshit, had retained its association with the Mahasabha until the early 1930s.158 Several members of the Congress were active on the executive committees of the Hindu Sabhas in the province.159 The two-way traffic between the Mahasabha and the Congress gave a deeper and complex dimension to Hindu political postures; and both parties maintained informal contacts and nexus in the towns and districts of the UP throughout the 1920s and 1930s.160 The Hindu Mahasabha had retained a strong association with the Hindu ‘right wing’ of the Congress in the UP.161 In Banaras city, the Congress-Swaraj Party and the Hindu Sabha were virtually the ‘same organisation’.162 The city Hindu Sabha had kept an affiliation with Dharm Deo Shastri, a Congress leader.163 Sri Prakash, a dominant figure in the Banaras Congress, associated himself with Hindu sangathan in the early 1930s.164 Purushottam Das Tandon, a patron of the Arya Samaj, was a supporter of the movements associated with Hindu revivalism, urging the promotion of ‘Sanskritised Hindi’ in India.165 Sampurnanand, the first Congress ‘dictator’ of Banaras, maintained close Hindu Sabha connections and was involved in the organisation of a Hindu Sabha meeting to mobilise support for Gandhi’s harijan campaign in October 1932.166 He showed an admiration for the ‘ideals of the Arya Samaj’ and persistently championed the causes of ‘Hindi versus Urdu’ and ‘Hindu social reform’, depicting India as an ‘Aryan nation’ – faced with the ‘threats of Islam and Christianity’.167 In Kanpur the local Hindu Sabha’s membership was drawn from urban middle-class educated supporters, who were not merely members of the Congress but patrons of many religious and cultural movements.168 In 1926 Dr Murarilal Rohatgi and other Congress leaders of Kanpur city joined the Hindu Sabha in an effort to gain control of it, even though they were critical of its ‘ideology and objectives’.169 After the Kanpur riot in 1930, witness statements pointed to a covert relationship between the city Hindu Sabha and the local Congress bodies, leading to the Muslim League’s charge that the Congress was under the ‘thumb of Hindu Maha Sabhaites’.170 There were accusations in the Urdu press that local Congressmen had worked in an alliance with the Mahasabha to oust Muslims from the ‘positions of power’ in the UP.171 The organised ‘legal attack’ on mosques in Kanpur district, the ‘harassment and impoverishment’ of Muslims in the UP towns, and the ‘exclusion of Muslims’ from power were termed ‘deliberate’ and communally inspired and linked to a ‘suppression’ by Mahasabhaites.172 In Allahabad, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, a Congress leader, was a protégé of Malaviya and a

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member of the UP Hindu Sabha committee. In the city, Narmada Prasad Singh, general secretary of the Agra Hindu Sabha in 1925–1926, was a wellknown Congressman, a member of the UP Congress Committee in 1925–1926, and a leader of the Malaviya group in the Allahabad Congress in 1926 and 1927.174 In many instances, the Hindu Sabhas and the Congress right-wing had shared resources and personnel in the towns of the UP, their active organisational overlap continuing well into the late 1930s.175 At the national level, the Hindu Mahasabha had evolved itself as an ‘alternative platform’ for anti-Gandhi Congressmen to express an ideology of nationalism and regional loyalties steeped in a ‘Hindu idiom’.176 A substantial section of the Congress’s old guard had shifted to the Mahasabha in the UP, the Central Provinces, and Maharashtra by in the 1930s.177 Lajpat Rai, an ‘extremist’ leader, resigned from the Congress in 1924 in protest at Gandhi’s strategy of mixing ‘religion with politics’ during the Khilafat agitation, upholding the right of Hindus to pursue sangathan, while being part of the nationalist movement.178 Rai had remained in the vanguard of sangathan politics, working together with M.M. Malaviya at the helm of the Mahasabha until his death in Lahore in 1928.179 Swami Shraddhananda, a prominent sangathan pioneer, had been associated with the Congress before joining the Mahasabha in the 1920s.180 K.B. Hedgewar, who became Mahasabha general secretary before founding the RSS in 1925, had at first been in Congress politics and elected to the Central Provinces Congress Committee as its joint secretary; he quit the Congress over its support for the Khilafat movement in 1920–1921.181 T. Prakasham, later Congress chief minister of Andhra, and Jairamdas Daulatram, Congress leader in Maharashtra, had been involved in the Mahasabha’s activities and programmes in the 1920s and 1930s.182 The Hindu revivalist rhetoric in defence of Hindu society was closely identified with the nationalist vision of B.G. Tilak, the pre-eminent Congress ‘extremist’, and deployed against the Gandhian Congress.183 The Congressmen who had been Tilak’s close associates largely took control of the Mahasabha organisation in north India in the 1920s and 1930s.184 The most prominent of the Tilakites were: B.S. Moonje [1872–1948], the leading figure in the Central Provinces Congress; Madhao Shrihari Aney [1880–1968], an influential Congress politician of the Berar; Narsimha Chintaman Kelkar [1872–1947], the Congress legislator in Poona; and Mukund Ramrao Jayakar [1873–1959], the CongressSwarajist Party leader in Bombay.185 They were inspired by the political activism of Tilak, his 1905 clarion call to self-rule [‘Swaraj is my birthright and I will have it’], his belief in the compatibility of social reform with nationalist agitation, and his assertive revolutionary tradition.186 The middle-ranking Tilakites – Lakshman B. Bhopatkar, Chandragupta Vedalankar, Ganpat Rai, and Indra Prakash – had once been Congressmen before becoming the Mahasabha hardliners.187 To the Tilakites, most of whom were ‘one-issue’ Hindu politicians focusing on India’s national ‘regeneration’ through Hindu unity, national schools, or cow protection, the Mahasabha had served as a means of challenging the Gandhian Congress.188 There had been a distinct opposition to Gandhi form the Hindu right due to his alliance with the Muslim elites and his support for the

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Khilafat issue during the Non-cooperation movement.189 Evidently, several prominent Congressmen became important leaders in the Mahasabha organisation after the party had been re-launched in the 1920s.190 Sangathan hardliners By the late 1920s, the Hindu Mahasabha had developed an outright opposition to the Congress as part of an ideological radicalisation under the leadership of sangathan hardliners.191 M.M. Malaviya [1861–1948], a Congressman since 1886, became president of the all-India Congress in 1909 and 1918 and was simultaneously the pioneering leader of the Mahasabha and its president in the period 1922–1924.192 He controlled the Mahasabha organisation along with Lajpat Rai in the period 1923–1925, focusing on constitutional reforms in India.193 He was sympathetic to the Congress, believing that it was the sole organisation powerful enough to lead an anti-colonial struggle against British rule, and that the Mahasabha should be a forum for expressing the problems of the Hindu community.194 Lajpat Rai [1865–1928], Mahasabha president in 1925–1926, similarly argued that Hindus were not to give up the Congress, which had to be supported in its anti-colonial movement.195 However, Malaviya and Rai – the moderates – were distrusted by the hardliners as leaders more in the ‘pocket’ of the Congress.196 The sangathan hardliners – Raja Narendra Nath, B.S. Moonje, N.C. Kelkar, and Bhai Parmanand – captured the Mahasabha organisation on an explicitly political agenda in challenge to the Congress, effectively marginalising Malaviya and Lajpat Rai.197 They demanded an increased political role for the Mahasabha and justified sangathan’s plan for a Hindu majoritatian state in India.198 In a new agenda, the Mahasabha began to work effectively as an all-India political organisation in opposition to the Congress, which had led the country to the ‘brink of a ruin by sacrificing Hindu interests in pursuit of Hindu–Muslim unity’.199 Raja Narendra Nath called for a vigorous assertion of ‘Hindu interests’, explaining that the Mahasabha ‘cannot refrain from devoting serious thought to the consideration of those [Hindu] interests simply out of fear that such a course . . . may delay the achievement of the goal of Swaraj.’200 The radical Mahasabha started the process of establishing itself as a political rival to the Congress in elections to the central legislature and provincial councils in India.201 The Hindu Mahasabha’s overt sangathan militancy converged into a strong anti-Congress political opposition, as the party had launched itself more openly and fully into elections in order to capture the electorate on a vote for Hindu sangathan.202 The 1926 elections to the Legislative Councils and the central legislature witnessed a political realignment against the Congress in north India.203 The Mahasabha’s working committee decided on 10 May 1926 to undertake the election work and authorised the provincial Hindu Sabhas to take all proper steps, which included the ‘running of its own candidates, where necessary, to safeguard Hindu interests’.204 The provincial Hindu Sabhas nominated candidates in consultation with the Mahasabha’s reforms committee, or supported the candidates of other parties who were sympathetic to sangathan.205 M.M. Malaviya, Lajpat Rai

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and the Tilakites were all united in a coalition against the Swaraj Party, which had been formed by Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das in 1923 in order to overthrow the Montford constitution through non-cooperation from within the councils and undertaken the responsibility to conduct the 1926 elections on behalf of the Congress.206 Malaviya launched the Independent Congress Party [ICP] in association with Lajpat Rai in September 1926 to further the aims of the radical Hindu sangathan.207 The ICP was the electoral front of the Mahasabha, carrying the representation of commercial and landed notables in north India.208 Its programme included the working of the reforms [responsive co-operation], the acceptance of office, and a freedom to vote on sectarian issues in the central legislature.209 In the UP, the protection of ‘Hindu interests’ dominated the elections in which Hindu sectarian issues had become central to the campaign of Malaviya, who used the poll battle as a means of undermining Motilal Nehru’s credibility and defeating the Swaraj Party.210 The Swaraj Party launched the campaign with the clear avowal of a secular policy in India, arguing that the rights and interests of Hindus and Muslims were identical, and that the Congress stood for the complete freedom and protection of all the communities.211 In the end, the Congress-Swaraj Party was defeated in the 1926 elections and lost ground almost everywhere in north India, suffering such heavy losses that Motilal Nehru spoke of a ‘disaster’ and a ‘veritable rout’ and seriously considered ‘retiring from politics’. ‘Publicly,’ he explained, ‘I was denounced as an anti-Hindu and pro-Mohammedan . . . I have been fully denounced as a beef-eater and destroyer of cows, an opponent of prohibition, of music before mosques.’212 The protection of ‘Hindu interests’ was the principal campaign issue, which had worked against the Congress-Swarajist efforts to woo Muslims.213 ‘Swarajism’, it was claimed, had become synonymous with the ‘betrayal of just and legitimate Hindu interests’ in the country.214 The sectarian propaganda of the 1920s and the outbreak of riots took a heavy toll on the Congress-Swaraj Party’s electoral chances in the UP, the Central Provinces, and the Bombay Presidency.215 In the UP, the Swarajists lost seats to the ICP, winning only 16 seats in 1926 – compared with 31 in 1923; Motilal Nehru was routed by Malaviya in Oudh.216 The ICP on the whole performed well in the elections, as the majority of the elected council members were those who had contested on the ticket of sangathan with the active support of the Mahasabha.217 The hardening of sangathan narrative and its anti-Congress hostility eventually set the stage for the transformation of the Hindu Mahasabha into a political party and a challenger of the Congress.218 B.S. Moonje initiated a more militant approach and rejected Congress politics during his presidentship of the Mahasabha in the period 1927–1933, largely withdrawing the party from the mass nationalist struggles launched by the Congress.219 Moonje explained: Due to the Congress mentality, a misguided tendency towards generosity . . . has created obstacles in the path of Hindu life and progress. . . . Faced with the British bureaucracy’s promotion of Muslims on the one hand, and with the Congress’ conciliatory and yielding mentality on the other, the Hindu race is being strangled to death.220

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Under the leadership of Bhai Parmanand [1874–1948], the Mahasabha’s programme was radically oriented to the promotion of ‘Hindu unity’ and ‘Hindu politics’ in India.221 Parmanand, who had succeeded Moonje as party president at the Ajmer session in October 1933, called for the establishment of a ‘Hindu state’, emphasising that the party ought to break with the Congress in its programmes and politics.222 In his sangathan programme, India was to be a ‘Hindu nation’ with ‘one language, one religion, and one culture’.223 He urged Hindus to suspend the ‘struggle for freedom and all other activities for five years’ in order to strengthen the organisation of Hindus in India.224 ‘Let us,’ he stressed, ‘protect our rights and stand against . . . the National Congress.’225 He demanded that the Mahasabha contest elections as a separate party with its own sangathan candidates and become a true political party in the country, for it was the only hope for the ‘salvation’ of the Hindu community. ‘I think,’ he explained, ‘the most important weapon which could be of service to us [Hindus] in this work is the capturing of the Legislative Assembly and Councils.’226 However, Parmanand’s dream of making the Mahasabha a political party potent enough to challenge the Congress was far from a success, as it had not yet become a fully developed organisation; there had been little progress on the recruitment front.227 The party did not participate in the 1930 civil disobedience movement as an organisation – a position that tarnished its national image in India.228 The Mahasabha’s opposition to political radicalism had resulted in its isolation from the Congress’s struggles at a time when India entered the most turbulent phase of nationalist politics in the 1920s and 1930s.229 The existing institutional overlap between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Congress, if informal, had declined completely by the late 1930s.230 The elections of 1937 resulted in sweeping victories for the Congress in several regions of India, with fully elective ministries installed in the provinces for the first time.231 The Congress’s success in the provinces that were once considered the ‘Hindu strongholds’ challenged the Mahasabha’s claim to be the ‘sole representative’ of Hindu interests, making it appear as ‘politically irrelevant’ in India.232 The election defeat established that the Mahasabha had little influence among the masses, as it had a narrow political base, while the support from the masses was ‘limited and sporadic’.233 The Hindu Sabhas in the UP began to detach themselves from the Congress, condemning the UP ministry for its ‘pro-Muslim’ policy; and there were a series of complaints about the deliberate suppression of ‘Hindu rights’ by the government, particularly in Farrukabad and Mathura.234 The final break-up came when the Congress working committee, through a historic resolution of 16 December 1938, blacklisted the Mahasabha and the Muslim League as ‘communal organisations’ and banned Congress members from holding a ‘dual membership’ with a communal body.235 The Congress subsequently tightened its organisation, ending the ‘loose and informal connexions’ between the district Congress committees and the Hindu Sabhas in north India.236 The Mahasabha protested, declaring that ‘it is the only national organisation in the country’, and that ‘there is no other national politics than that of the Hindu Mahasabha for the country as a whole and for the Hindus particularly’.237 The break-up was

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obviously inevitable because the Congress no longer needed the Mahasabha’s support electorally, a policy that had resulted in a definite Mahasabha programme to move away from the Congress.238 Savarkarite Mahasabha The Hindu Mahasabha formally transformed itself into a fully fledged political party under V.D. Savarkar’s leadership in the late 1930s.239 Savarkar, who succeeded Bhai Parmanand as party president in 1937, had made the institutional difference between the Mahasabha and the Congress extremely radical, providing a philosophy and charisma to the organisation.240 The Mahasabha’s power base shifted from the UP and the Punjab to central India, especially Bombay presidency.241 It acquired a more centralised decision-making process controlled by the president, its overall programme being dominated by Savarkar’s advocacy of a Hindu rashtra [nation].242 Savarkar’s ideological goal centred on the transformation of the Mahasabha into a credible political challenger of the Congress at the all-India level.243 ‘The Mahasabha,’ he explained, ‘is not in the main a Hindu-Dharma Sabha but is pre-eminently a Hindu Rashtra Sabha and is a panHindu organisation shaping the destiny of the Hindu Nation in all its social, political and cultural aspects.’244 He urged Hindu sangathanists to capture power wherever possible – municipal boards, legislatures, provincial and central governments – in order to supplant the Congress in the political arena.245 The Mahasabha adopted a new constitution in 1938, pledging to protect ‘Hindu interests’ in not merely ‘religious’ but ‘political spheres’.246 Savarkar explained that all the Hindu organisations should unite under the banner of the Mahasabha, which consciously carried the motto of protecting ‘Hindu interests’ in the country.247 This union would, he asserted, help the Mahasabha maintain a central fund at its disposal as well as the press, which would enable it to continue its determined fight against the ‘pseudo-nationalists [Congress] and Muslims’.248 In an appeal to Hindus, he urged a strong resistance to the ‘unstable’ policies and programmes of Gandhi and the Congress in the country.249 ‘Prepare the Hindu electorate,’ he stressed, ‘to the utmost measure possible to vote only for those Hindu Sangathanists who openly pledged to safeguard Hindu interests’ and not the Congress.250 Savarkar’s plan to carve out a political constituency and ensure electoral support for the Mahasabha had represented a crucial sangathanist challenge to the Congress’s claim to political supremacy in India.251 However, Savakar’s ambitious vision fell far short of transforming the Mahasabha into a political party potent enough to challenge the Congress.252 The Mahasabha could not build an organisational network such as the Congress had acquired under Gandhi’s leadership during the 1920s.253 There was a failure to create an effective party organisation at the grassroots, or broaden its appeal in the country because of its domination by the conservative elites and the aristocracy.254 There was no realistic prospect of the party securing a majority through elections in the provinces in the immediate future.255 The Mahasabha had remained inflexible in its sangathan narrative and was oriented towards a Hindu

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brand of politics, failing to be truly represented in the elective institutions of India during the 1930s.256 The ideologies and programmes of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Congress were in a deep divide and conflict, despite all the weight of expediency and political calculation to maintain an informal association between them in the 1920s and 1930s.257 The Mahasabha’s ideology was markedly different from the Congress’s goal of secularism and its principles of freedom by constitutional advance.258 The party demanded a religiously defined ‘Hindu state’ much in the same pattern as the Muslim League’s ‘Pakistan’ plan and started to see the Congress as an enemy of the nation due to the latter’s alleged ‘pro-Muslim’ bias and ‘appeasement’ of Muslims.259 The Congress’s nationalist programme bore a distinct stamp of Gandhi’s ideology based on ahimsa [non-violence] and Hindu– Muslim unity, which clashed with the Mahasaba’s search for a Hindu ‘political constituency’ in India.260 The Mahasabha rejected the Congress’s ideal of secular nationalism based on the equality of religions and creeds and sought to capture the Hindu sentiment for the cause of a ‘Hindu nation’ based on sangathan.261 The Congress’s emphatic assertion of an inclusionary Indian nation, the separation of religion and politics and the ideal of equal citizenship became illegitimate to the Mahasabha whose sangathan narrative had intersected with the emerging conception of a ‘Hindu nation’, ideologically appropriated by the votaries of Hindutva.262

Conclusion The Hindu Mahasabha drew its social roots from the traditional Hindu middle classes – Brahmans, Agarwals, and Vaishya groups – in the large cities and towns of north India, predominantly the UP.263 It was an elitist party, relying on the support of urban banking and commercial magnates who constituted the chief source of its resources.264 To a large extent, it was dominated by the Hindu gentry as well as professional and service classes, including small-town pleaders [lawyers] and journalists.265 Rich taluqdars and landlords, a conservative bulwark against the nationalist struggle, proved critical for its organisational strength and political mobilisation in the UP.266 The party maintained an alliance with Hindu ruling princes, among whom it recruited its supporters.267 However, the Mahasabha as an organisation was not equipped in the Montford era to focus on the rural constituencies that now had the vote.268 After the introduction of an overwhelmingly rural electorate and the extension of the electoral franchise under the 1919 Act, the party with its reliance on an urban and aristocratic support could not survive the power struggle; it did not break through to the classes below the commercial and landed classes, nor could it create a mass base in the rural UP.269 It did not become truly represented in elective institutions due to its limited organisational growth and expansion in north India. It remained an elite organisation and conservative in character with no agitational methods, demonstrating extreme hostility to the radical turn which the mass politics had taken under Gandhi’s leadership in the 1920s and 1930s.270

Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership

43

Crucially, the Mahasabha had maintained an informal association and nexus with the Congress due to the existing pattern of loose and informal style of politics in the UP.271 The overlapping membership and association created a conducive climate in which both parties strengthened and reinforced each other in the province.272 The Mahasabha’s association with the Congress had persisted in more informal forms throughout the 1920s and early 1930s until it was blacklisted by the latter as a ‘communal’ party in 1938.273 The Mahasabha came under the control of the sangathan hardliners, making an unequivocal effort to be a rival to the Congress as a political party.274 It ended its association with the Congress and became a fully fledged political party under the leadership of V.D. Savarkar, who had advocated an overt and militant Hindu nationalism.275 Savarkar’s advocacy of a Hindu rashtra had become central to the Mahasabha’s discourse, resulting in the breakdown of its ties to the Congress.276 The ideal of ‘national unity’ based on the construction of a ‘Hindu nation’ had emerged at the centre of the Mahasabha’s ideology, clashing with the Congress’s secularism as well as its inclusionary nationalism predicated on non-violence and Hindu–Muslim unity in India.277

PART II

Sangathan ideology

4

Sangathan The unity and organisation of Hindus

In the early twentieth century, efforts to unify the Hindu community became aggressive and militant due to the emergence of Hindu nationalist narrative, signifying a sense of religious and political identity among Hindus in north India.1 The core feature of Hindu nationalist discourse was sangathan [Hindu unity and organisation], which had developed largely due to the unprecedented upsurge of sectarian rioting across northern India following the collapse of the Noncooperation-Khilafat movement in the period 1919–1921.2 The United Provinces witnessed a greater number of riots in this period than any other province of British India.3 The violence became the context and rationale for the development and articulation of sangathan narrative by the Hindu Mahasabha, which had acquired a radical orientation dwelling on the ‘weakness’ of Hindus and the need for a stronger, more assertive ‘unified’ Hindu community in conflict with Muslims.4 The sangathan movement aimed to promote the ‘self-assertion’ of Hindus by a united action against what was perceived as an ‘onslaught’ and ‘historical oppression’ by Muslims.5 Its key political ideas included the belief that Hindus constituted of themselves a ‘nation’, that Hinduism was under a threat of ‘extermination’, that Muslims were ‘treacherous’ and had ‘extra-territorial designs’, and that there was an imperative need to militarise Hindus in India. It rejected the view that sectarianism in India was a product of British rule in preference to the view of a ‘thousand-year war’ due to ‘Muslim aggression’.6 A projected need for the protection of Hindus from the ‘aggression and violence’ of Muslims was at the heart of sangathan and its unitary nationalism.7 This chapter examines the conscious articulation and evolution of sangathan narrative, which developed through an intermittent process due to an extensive propaganda launched by the Mahasabha in north India in the 1920 and 1930s.

Sangathan movement The term ‘sangathan’ is derived from the Sanskrit root sam, ‘together’, and gath, to ‘form or mould’, meaning ‘organisation, formation, constitution’ – or an ‘organised system, or society’.8 A sangathanist vision had first dominated the Punjab Hindu Sabha’s conference in Lahore in 1909, which laid the foundation for a new ‘Hindu unity’ movement in north India.9 At the All-India Hindu

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Sabha’s session in Delhi in 1918, Raja Sir Rampal Singh echoed a sangathanist ideal, explaining that ‘we [Hindus] are disorganised and disunited. It is for the Hindu Sabha to organise and unite the scattered atoms of our Community and to devise means for the amelioration of the whole, so that we might rise again to the same pinnacle of glory and civilisation which our forefathers had attained’.10 It is not clear when the appeals for ‘Hindu unity’ crystallised and resulted in a narrative of sangathan, which was first proposed by M.M. Malaviya during the Indian National Congress’s inquiry into the Multan riot in September 1922.11 The riot prompted a series of appeals for ‘Hindu unity’; and Hindi vernacular newspapers and magazines in the UP emphasised the need for a Hindu consolidation in this period.12 The riot, ‘deplorable as it is’, it was asserted, ‘has a lesson for its victims. Organise yourself [Hindus]. Evolve unity in your own ranks. Develop strength, develop character.’13 Hindus were urged to unite, as they had as a community to ‘inspire respect before they can have unity on reasonable and equal terms with the Muslims’.14 ‘All our sufferings,’ declared the Abhyudaya, ‘will cease the day Hindu society is organised.’15 ‘Far-seeing Hindu leaders have for long fought against the communal spirit of the Mahommedans, but their efforts have been of no avail. . . . Their [Hindus] first duty, in their own interests, is that they should organise’.16 ‘The protection of the Hindu community,’ it was argued, ‘is the most important question at present. . . . We have to search for new ways to make the Hindu community powerful’.17 ‘If the Hindus are well organised, no community will venture to perpetrate atrocities on them.’18 Swami Shraddhananda [1856–1926], who had articulated the ideal of ‘Hindu unity’ forcefully for the first time, viewed sangathan as an ‘attribute of Aryan society’ – a ‘facet of the Vedic golden age’.19 Hindus, he explained, had undergone a steady decline since the Vedic period due to the perversion of the varna [caste] system, the proliferation of castes and untouchability, idol worship, etc.; and the deviation from the ‘Aryan ideals’ led to a decline and decadence of the ‘Hindu nation’, followed by an interlude of Muslim rule.20 He proposed the building of Hindu rashtra mandirs [national temples] in every town and major city of India as a first step towards the creation of sangathan.21 The temples, in which the map of India would replace the image of the deity, were to regenerate Hindu society with a ‘social and religious cohesion’ which it lacked in comparison with Muslims – the ‘adversaries’.22 To Shraddhananda, the construction of a ‘Hindu nation’ needed the implementation of the sangathan agenda, which he defined as a movement to ‘resuscitate the ancient glory of the Aryan civilisation and combat degeneration and social disunity’ in Hindu society.23 The crystallisation of sangathan as a distinct Hindu nationalist narrative had occurred by the early 1920s when V.D. Savarkar’s founding text Hindutva [1923] propounded political Hindutva, initiating the first steps towards the unity and consolidation of Hindus as a ‘nation’.24 The Hindu Mahasabha was re-launched in 1923, adopting sangathan as the chief ideal of a ‘Hindu nation’, besides promoting the activities of religious organisations such as the Arya Samaj in the UP.25 Sangathan gathered an explicit force as a cornerstone of the desired Hindu unity and strength, giving a powerful thrust in the direction of Hindutva nationalism in north India in the 1920s.26

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 49 Moplah riots Sangathan emerged at the centre of a social and political crisis in north India in the early 1920s due to the outbreak of the Malabar crisis, which revived the image of ‘Hindus under a siege’.27 The Moplah revolt of Muslim peasants against their predominantly Hindu landlords in Malabar in August 1921 – a result of both Hindu ‘landlord oppression’ and the perception of ‘Islam in danger’ – triggered a self-conscious ‘Hindu predicament’.28 The revolt, resulting in the murder of over 600 Hindus, became significant due to its association with ‘Islamic conversions’, dealing a decisive blow to the Non-cooperation movement.29 The Arya Samaj’s Pratinidhi Sabha undertook the reclamation of between 2,500 and 3,000 Hindu converts through shuddhi [ritual purification] under the leadership of Pandit Rishi Ram, guided by the fourth-century text Devalasmriti, in Malabar.30 The forced conversions of Hindus had unified large segments of Hindu public opinion, revealing the evident ‘oppression and disunity’ of Hinduism.31 B.S. Moonje [1872–1948], who headed the Nagpur commission on the Malabar riots, claimed that the ‘chronic disunity and weakness’ of Hindus was exposed in the face of an organised Muslim ‘unity and violence’.32 Hindus, he explained, were divided by caste [varna] which had created ‘so many water-tight compartments, each having a social culture and life of its own, that there is hardly any association between them in the wider field of social activities. . . . The Mahomedans, on the other hand, are one organic community, religiously well-organised.’33 Muslims grew in ‘numbers, strength, material welfare and solidarity’, but Hindus were hastening towards ‘disintegration’.34 Moonje argued that India had lost seven crores of Hindus to Islam and Christianity over the past 900 years through conversions; others reckoned the figure to be millions, but some argued that all the Muslims living in India were ‘Hindu apostates’, or the casualties of ‘Islamic proselytisation’.35 He proposed the settlement of ‘war-like races, such as the Marathas, Rajputs, Sikhs, etc., in Malabar which alone, I think, can solve the Moplah terrorism over meek and helpless Hindus’.36 He appealed to Hindus to resist the ‘aggressiveness’ of Muslims and match their ‘virility’ through a communitarian organisation and unity.37 The Moplah crisis signified the loss of ‘Hindu strength’ in view of conversions by Muslims, driving the popular opinion to argue for Hindu consolidation in order to protect and extend the Hindu religion.38 The depiction of Muslims as a ‘community united by religion’ had offered an opening to threat perceptions about ‘Islamic violence’, bringing urgency to attempts to unify the Hindu community in north India.39 The Hindu Mahasabha laid the foundation of sangathan at its Gaya session in December 1922, emphasising the need to unify all elements of the Hindu community and defend them from ‘Muslim attacks and violence’.40 M.M. Malaviya, in his presidential speech, emphasised the need for sangathan, explaining that Hindus were ‘weak and degenerate’ as never before, and that there was an imperative need to organise the community.41 Hindu–Muslim unity was possible, he explained, if ‘each should feel the other is strong enough to ward off successfully

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unjust attacks. . . . If the Hindus make themselves strong and the rowdy section[s] among the Mahomedans are convinced they could not safely rob and dishonour Hindus, unity would be established on a stable basis.’42 Malaviya urged the establishment of an all-India Hindu relief fund to help riot victims, appealing to Hindus to work for ‘national unity’ and ‘self-preservation’. The Mahasabha proposed the formation of Hindu Sabhas right down to the village level in India in order to protect Hindus from ‘Muslim violence’.43 It had acquired a new dynamism by incorporating sangathan as an integral part of Hindu nationalist narrative in avowed hostility to Muslims since the 1920s. Shuddhi Sangathan gathered force in view of the threat of conversions from Hindu society, with shuddhi being revived as a ritual of decisive importance for reclaiming Hindu converts from Islam and Christianity.44 The Hindu Mahasabha became explicit in its ideological support for shuddhi, strengthening its drive to combat conversions in India.45 At its Banaras session in 1923, Swami Shraddhananda, party vice-president, moved two resolutions, linking shuddhi to the need for the development of the sangathan movement. The first resolution dealt specifically with Malkana Rajputs of the western UP, and the second one more generally with shuddhi as a process of conversion from other religions, calling for the ‘acceptance by the whole Hindu community of converts’ regardless of which sect had performed shuddhi rites.46 The Mahasabha adopted the first resolution, stating that the Malkanas ‘should be taken back into the Hindu fold in the castes to which they originally belonged’.47 On the second resolution, it declared at its special session on 4 February 1924: ‘Any non-Hindu was welcome to enter the fold of Hinduism, though he could not be taken into any caste.’48 Shuddhi was to be conducted by the All-India Shuddhi Sabha of the Arya Samaj and actively supported by the Mahasabha.49 The Mahasabha amended its constitution at its Nasik session in February 1924, incorporating shuddhi among its ‘aims and objects’.50 Admittedly, it resolved its differences with sanatani [orthodox] Hindus over shuddhi, which was viewed as a ‘regenerating force’ in order to maximise the ‘Hindu potentialities of moral and ritual purity, physical strength, numerical increase and political power’.51 M.M. Malaviya, who had forged the Mahasabha’s alliance with the Arya Samaj, linked shuddhi to sangathan’s efforts to reverse the perceived decline of Hindu numbers.52 Hindu society, he explained, was ‘physically, socially and morally feeble’. There was a ‘low birth rate and a high death rate’. ‘When now we are so badly treated with a numerical strength of 22 crores,’ he argued, ‘what would be our condition in future with a much reduced Hindu population if we allow this rate of conversion from Hinduism and do not allow reconversion into Hinduism?’53 The Mahasabha accepted as ‘lawful’ the reconversion and reintegration of Hindu apostates from Islam and Christianity into Hinduism, traditionally a non-proselytising religion, through shuddhi, which represented a campaign to preserve the ‘social and political strength’ of the Hindu community in India.54

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 51 In the UP, the Arya Samaj launched a determined campaign to convert Malkana Rajputs, who had earlier been proselytised into Islam, in the 1920s.55 The Malkana Rajputs claiming descent from the Jadun Rajput caste were neoMuslims scattered over a large number of villages in Mathura, Agra, Etah and Mainpuri districts of the western UP.56 They had become Muslims during the Mughal period, having been converted to Islam in return for the state’s land grants: the term ‘Malkana’ derived from ‘milkayat’ – or ‘ownership of land’.57 In February 1923, the Bharatiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha was established with its headquarters in Agra with Shraddhananda as its president;58 and more than 30,000 Malkana Rajputs were claimed to have been converted and rehabilitated as ‘kshatriyas’ until the end of 1923.59 The Hindu Sabhas carried out some conversions through shuddhi, but most of the conversions were undertaken by the Arya Samaj, the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha, and the Kshatriya Upakarini Sabha.60 In the conversion of the Malkanas, the Arya Samaj centred its drive on the termination of Islamic customs: the burial of the dead, nikah, the visiting of dargahs [Muslim shrines], circumcision, etc.61 Invariably, shuddhi became an important symbol of sangathan with the active support of orthodox Hindu groups and confronted Islam far too decisively, creating a discord at the social base. Muslims initiated a campaign of Islamic consolidation through tabligh [propaganda] and tanzim [organisation] in the UP in 1922–1923.62 Shuddhi was viewed as a pillar of Hindu consolidation against the threat of conversions, becoming a key initiative to reverse the damage done by Islamic and Christian proselytisation across the centuries in India.63 Integration of untouchables Sangathan carried a strong element of social critique, expressing a positive and constructive search for nation-building through the correction of ‘internal failings’ and ‘corruption’ in India.64 It demanded a ‘unified’ Hindu community, a necessity that moved the Hindu Mahasabha into the position of a radical caste reform.65 By far the most ambitious project launched by the Mahasabha in the 1920s was the attempt to forge a greater Hindu political community by uniting the disparate castes and tribes of the ‘Hindu family’ into a single ‘homogeneous’ entity.66 The Mahasabha aimed to create a monolithic ‘Hindu identity’, underplaying diverse caste identities in its discourse of sangathan.67 However, the crucial dilemma was the incorporation of antyajas [untouchables and tribals] – a category of outcastes outside the varna [caste] hierarchy.68 They constituted the panchama [fifth ‘estate’], posing a threat to the hierarchically conceived varnashrama dharma [caste order] – the ‘nobility and purity’ of the upper castes.69 The Mahasabha underlined the need for solidarity among the different castes of Hindus and amended its constitution at its Hardwar session in April 1921, formally adding the ‘lower castes’ to its definition of a ‘Hindu’.70 By the late 1920s, it had advocated programmes for untouchable uplift and the removal of caste barriers, as social inequalities and poverty largely resulted in the conversion of the lower castes to Islam and Christanity.71 There were many emotional appeals

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in support of untouchable uplift in this period.72 The Leader strongly pleaded for the uplift of the untouchables, appealing for a ‘vyavastha [decree] from sanatanist [orthodox Hindu] pandits of recognised eminence’ in favour of the removal of untouchability.73 The upper-caste Hindus were urged to ‘immediately bring lower castes within Hindu fold’; otherwise the latter were becoming Muslims.74 The ‘decline’ of the Hindu numbers was blamed on the ‘carelessness of the Hindu jati [race]’ and its ‘abhorrence’ of the lower castes.75 The popular emphasis was on untouchable integration, as a ‘cohesive’ Hindu community had become central to Hindu ‘solidarity and strength’ in the country.76 The protection of Hindu rights and interests in the struggle for power under the colonial reforms had in part strengthened the drive for untouchable integration in India.77 The numerical strength of religious communities played a decisive role in determining the allocation of seats in India’s legislatures. The 1919 Montagu–Chelmsford reforms brought into a sharp focus the issue of the relative numbers of various religious groups, recognising the principle of representation on the basis of communities and classes in the legislatures.78 M.R. Jayakar explained: ‘Now that the Montagu-Chelmsford Report has put a value on each individual . . . [i]f a single Hindu be taken out of his religious faith owing to causes which have nothing to do with religious change of mind – we resent that conversion.’79 ‘Democracy,’ B.S. Moonje argued, ‘means a government which is based on the counting of heads. In India . . . the Moslem heads and the Christian heads are yearly increasing in numbers and are hopefully aspiring to swallow up the majority community of the Hindus or to reduce it to a minority community.’80 The untouchables numbering over 60 million proved critical to possible Hindu gains, if integrated into Hindu society, in terms of the greater share of provincial power in India.81 The heavy interlinkage between community representation based on religious/caste affiliations and the colonial reforms had substantially shaped sangathan narrative on untouchable integration, aiming to enlarge and strengthen Hindu political gains.82 The Hindu Mahasabha put the abolition of untouchability at the heart of sangathan as part of the reform of Hindu society in the 1920 and 1930s.83 At its Banaras session in August 1923, Swami Shraddhananda called in a resolution for practical measures as a ‘prelude to the assimilation of the untouchables into the great body of the Aryan fraternity’.84 ‘The question of uprooting the curse of untouchability, he explained, ‘was the “sine qua non” of Nationality in India’.85 The task of Hindu sangathan could not become a reality if serious steps were not taken towards the abolition of ‘caste barriers’ and a full integration of the untouchables.86 The Mahasabha voted in favour of Shraddhananda’s resolution, calling for the access of the untouchables to roads, schools, wells, and temples in India.87 However, six months later at the Mahasabha’s session held at the Kumbh in Allahabad in January 1924, the sanatanists [orthodox Hindus] passed a second resolution on the caste system, largely nullifying Shraddhananda’s resolution. The Allahabad resolution stated that it was ‘against the scriptures and the tradition to give the untouchables the sacred thread [yagyopavit], to teach them the Vedas or to inter-dine with them’. In the interests of unity, it emphasised, ‘Hindu

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 53 workers would give up these items of social reform’.88 Owing to a strong opposition from the Arya Samaj, the resolution was amended, reading: ‘As the giving of “Yagyopavit” to untouchables, interdining with them and teaching them Vedas was opposed to the Scriptures according to very large body of Hindus, i.e. the Sanatanists, these activities should not be carried on in the name of the Mahasabha.’89 Most shuddhi rites conducted by the Arya Samaj for the purification and integration of the untouchables would not be recognised by the Mahasabha.90 The resolution implied a victory for the old core of the Mahasabha – particularly its patrons and leaders representing the orthodox milieu of Brahmans, landlords, and princes who were alienated by the caste reform.91 Shraddhananda was deeply agonised over the sanatanist backlash and resigned from the Mahasabha in 1926.92 Caste, an integral part of the Hindu ‘class system’ related by birth through endogamous groups [jatis], sat uneasily with the representations of a ‘homogeneous’ Hindu community as propagated by the Mahasabha.93 The programme of untouchable integration remained at the centre of the Hindu Mahasabha’s sangathan narrative, more so in its efforts to make Hindus socially and politically strong in India. At the Mahasabha’s session in Nasik in February 1924, Dr Kurtkoti explained: ‘If in these hard times Hindus do not take seriously in hand this holy work of “conversion” and prevent their brethren from embracing alien faiths through mistaken views, I say here as I stand that within ten decades you shall find no Hindu on the surface of this earth.’94 The best way to prevent conversions, he pointed out, was to remove ‘social disabilities’ on the ‘depressed classes’ – the untouchables.95 At a special session held in Belgaum in December 1924, the Mahasabha had declared that its chief focus would be on the removal of untouchability, with M.M. Malaviya explaining that Hindus should oppose caste disabilities out of a ‘sense of duty to their brethren Untouchables’.96 The Mahasabha’s Belgaum session amended its constitution, incorporating a broader definition of ‘Hinduism’ that recognised all those professing a faith indigenous to India as ‘Hindu’: Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs were deemed as integral to Hinduism.97 At the Mahasabha’s session in 1926, Dr Choithram Gidwani of Sind launched an appeal for the removal of the ‘blot of untouchability’, as Islamic and Christian missionaries had exploited the ‘weaknesses’ of the Hindu social system.98 At the Jabalpur session on 8 April 1928, the party reaffirmed its opposition to caste disabilities, passing a resolution on the removal of untouchability. N.C. Kelkar, in his presidential address, insisted that India must remove untouchability in order to justify its claim to swaraj [freedom].99 At the Akola session in Maharashtra in August 1931, the Mahasabha invited the aboriginals to take on caste Hindu names and register their caste as ‘kshatriya’ [warrior caste] in the census.100 By the early 1930s, the Mahasabha’s approach had signified a new dynamism, reinforcing a reformist resolve to end untouchability and build one ‘Hindu nation’ or ‘jati’ in India.101 Admittedly, the Hindu Mahasabha responded with extreme alarm to the threat of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar [1891–1956], the untouchable leader of the Mahars [Maharashtra], that he would lead the untouchables out of Hinduism.102 Ambedkar, who had received an MA from Columbia University, New York, and

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a doctorate at the London School of Economics, urged the untouchables to renounce Hinduism, as it had no doctrinal impulse for a ‘caste reform’.103 He attacked Hinduism as the ‘greatest obstacle to Hindu unity’, for it was ‘incompatible with a social union’ and created an ‘eagerness to separate’ in a caste division.104 Hinduism was responsible for the ‘degradation’ of the untouchables, who were no more than chandalas [outcastes] under a ‘Hindu domination’.105 In a speech to the Depressed Classes Conference in Yeola, a weaving town in Nasik district of eastern Maharashtra, on 13 October 1935, Ambedkar declared: ‘it was not my fault that I was born an untouchable . . . I am determined that I will not die a Hindu.’106 In an article entitled Away from Hinduism, he explained: ‘That Hinduism is inconsistent with the self-respect and honour of the Untouchables is the strongest ground which justifies the conversion of the Untouchables to another and nobler faith.’107 In his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ speech, he pointed to the prejudice and hostility caste Hindus had shown to the untouchables in an ‘unjust society’. He protested: ‘They hate me. To them I am a snake in their garden.’108 Ambedkar called for the rejection of the shatras [Hindu treatises], which justified the caste system and subordinated the ‘human powers to the crippling social rules in a closed community’ – a system that was ‘resistant to reform and kills public spirit’.109 Ambedkar’s conversion threat had created a major ideological crisis for the Mahasabha. B.S. Moonje entered into formal negotiations with Ambedkar to end the conversion threat and tried to ensure that if Ambedkar must convert, he should become either a Sikh or a Buddhist but on no account a Muslim or a Christian, which had an ‘alien origin’.110 The Mahasabha’s seventeenth session, held in Poona in December 1935, was mostly devoted to countering Ambedkar’s threat.111 The party adopted a resolution moved by Dr Kurtkoti, calling for the ‘eradication of untouchability’ and reaffirming the Mahasabha’s ‘previous resolutions for giving equal access to all Hindus to all public amenities irrespective of their caste or creed’.112 Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, Maharashtra, with 50,000 of his followers as a political protest in 1938 anyway.113 In December 1938, the Mahasabha amended its constitution at its Nagpur session under V.D. Savarkar’s presidentship, declaring that its main objective was to ‘remove untouchability’ and generally to ‘ameliorate and improve the condition of the so-called depressed classes amongst Hindus’.114 In March 1939, Savarkar formally launched the Mahasabha’s untouchable uplift programme, underlining the importance the party placed on ‘Hindu unity’. At a public meeting in Monghyr in Bengal, he received five Santal [tribal] boys into the Hindu community.115 In the interwar period 1939–1945, the Mahasabha’s sessions routinely passed resolutions, calling for the removal of disabilities on the untouchables.116 The party as a protagonist of ‘Hindu unity’ gave strong support to its leaders and local organisations to dedicate themselves for untouchable integration as part of sangathan in India.117

Caste hierarchy The Hindu Mahasabha’s discursive attitude towards caste was ambivalent, divided and strategically shifting, compounded by its upper caste character,

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 55 118

however. Ideologically, it did not represent a radical critique of the varna [caste] hierarchy or reject it, but sought to improve the status of the untouchables within it.119 Its caste ambivalence exposed the limitations of sangathan’s drive, raising the issues of power, control, and exploitation.120 In the UP, the Aryas pushed for the shuddhi of the untouchables in order to transform them into a ‘pure caste’ within Hinduism as part of sangathan, but failed to break with Hindu society, or alter the existing social patterns.121 The dilemma created by shuddhi in determining the social position of the ‘purified untouchables’ was compounded, as the Arya brotherhood [biradari] created as a new social system was still tied to a caste-based Hindu society.122 Shuddhi had scarcely succeeded in raising the status of the untouchables or cultivating their identity as ‘Hindu’ due to an attack from the Hindu right.123 High-born Hindus expressed deep hostility and consternation over shuddhi, as it had challenged the existing caste structure, deeming untouchable assimilation as a high risk of ‘impurity’.124 Intimidation and occasional physical violence mostly typified the upper caste resistance when the purified untouchables had asserted the prerogatives of the ‘newly-claimed status’.125 In many areas of the rural UP, entry into temples was accorded ‘wherever possible according to maryada’ [social custom]; the untouchables were entitled to a separate well in every settlement but not access to the others; and provisions were made for the education of the untouchables in mixed schools but not in those of Brahmans only.126 In 1921 at Ujhyani village in Badaun district, a group of Chamars [untouchables] had been dissuaded from converting to Islam by being admitted to the village well; however, after this symbolic gesture, the wells were purified with Ganges water.127 There were limitations to untouchable integration: teaching the Vedas or wearing the sacred thread was deemed as ‘hostile to shastras [Hindu treatises] and lokmaryada [social custom]’.128 Instead, caste uplift was restricted to increasing the awareness of ‘cleanliness and purity’ and spreading ‘education’ among the untouchables.129 Sanatanists urged a restraint on the zeal of ‘caste-breakers’ in Hindu society, highlighting the sense of an undivided ‘Aryan past’ and the glory of a united ‘Hindu nation’.130 The Sanathan Dharm Sabha protested that the Arya Samaj’s reformist efforts were weakening the Hindu feelings of ‘nationality and national sympathy’ in India.131 Din Dayal Sharma, secretary of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, explained that the chief antagonism over untouchable uplift was that the Samaj did not to follow shastric [canonical] injunctions in making the proposed reforms.132 He called for the need to protect varnashrama dharma [caste hierarchy] and the defence of Hinduism from critics both within the Hindu community and outside of it.133 Evidently, sangathan’s model of organising Hindu society on the principles of untouchable integration was in a crisis due to social conservatism, internal contradictions and complexities, as it had threatened the traditional varna hierarchy in India. Nonetheless, sangathan’s ideal of creating an all-encompassing ‘homogenous’ Hindu community was based on unifying factors such as an adherence to the sanctity of caste and the Manusmriti – the ancient Hindu law code that sanctified the varna hierarchy.134 M.M. Malaviya, an important figure in initiating caste uplift programmes in the UP, accepted the validity of the varnashrama

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dharma [caste hierarchy], even while opposing the exclusion of the untouchables from public places, temples, etc.135 A firm believer in the efficacy of varna, he supported limited reforms concerning untouchability. ‘You may,’ he explained, ‘follow restrictions about food, you may not want to eat with your untouchable brothers, but you should consider them your brothers in social interaction.’136 The untouchables should be given religious consecration, involving diksha [initiation] and sanskar [purification/reform]. A person thus consecrated would become ‘pure and religious’ and ‘cease to be called and treated as an untouchable’.137 In particular, he advised the untouchables to acquire proper ‘religious instruction’ in Hinduism and become ‘useful members’ of Hindu society.138 He attached great importance to primary education as a sine qua non of ‘efficiency and progress’, as it would solve the problem of ‘ignorance, untouchability and communal bitterness, etc’.139 In Malaviya’s vision, the varna system was not to be altered, however: Hindu society was perfectly ordered according to the four varnas, its ‘building blocks’.140 Untouchable uplift was intended to work within the acceptable framework of varna, or ‘sanskritisation’, which meant that the lower castes were encouraged to adopt the ritual practices of the twice-born [Brahmans].141 Inevitably, sangathan held a firm belief in the inherent goodness and harmony of the ancient Hindu society based on a positive appraisal of the original varnas in India.142 Sangathan’s representation of a ‘Hindu nation’ based on a ‘cohesive’ Hindu community underplayed deeper conflicts of the caste hierarchy. In his analysis of the boundaries of Hinduism, V.D. Savarkar, himself a Chitpavan Brahman, defended the caste system as one founded on the hierarchically conceived purity and nobility of the upper castes – the ‘Vedic–Aryan blood’.143 He rejected the stigma of hierarchical caste oppression through the overriding commonality of ‘Hindu blood’, viewing the untouchables as an integral part of Hindutva. ‘Santals, Kolis, Bhils, Panchamas, Namashudras and other such tribes and classes’, he explained, were ‘more emphatically Hindu than the so-called Aryans’, even though they practised a ‘primitive religion’.144 They ‘inherit the Hindu blood and the Hindu culture . . . and this Sindhusthan is as emphatically the land of their forefathers as of those of the so-called Aryans’.145 Savarkar urged the need for the removal of untouchability as a core feature of sangathan, campaigning for the opening of public places, temples, etc, for the lower castes.146 However, there were strong limits to sangathan: it did not propose a rejection of the Brahmanical authority.147 Savarkar supported B.R. Ambedkar’s movement against untouchability, but remained ambivalent on the exploitation of the untouchables by the upper castes.148 He criticised the burning of the Manusmriti by Ambedkar in 1927, which he said did not help in securing basic ‘human rights’ to the untouchables.149 He made a veiled threat to the lower caste movements, warning those who in a ‘suicidal fit . . . dare to disown the name Hindu will find to their cost that in doing so they have cut themselves off from the very source of our racial Life and Strength’.150 Sangathan was based on an adherence to the caste hierarchy and the binding together of Hindus through ‘common blood’, even though varna’s internal divisions were potentially disruptive to Hindu ‘homogeneity’.151

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 57 Crucially, sangathan envisioned a unified Hindu society as one that existed within the traditional system of institutional varna hierarchy.152 B.S. Moonje, a Deshastha Brahman, believed that it was important to bring about a total union and solidarity of the four Hindu castes [chaturvarnas] rather than a complete eradication of the caste system, which was ‘not detrimental’ to ‘Hindu unity’.153 He proposed the creation of a unified Hinduism on the basis of ‘common blood’ relations by promoting intermarriages between various sub-groups [gotras]. ‘A real organic unity among the four sections of Hindu society’, he explained, could be brought about through the Vedic marriage custom [paddhati] of anuloma and pratiloma – where the man’s caste was superior to that of his wife and vice versa – as provided in Dharmashastras [Hindu canonical texts].154 In effect, Moonje’s narrative sought to preserve the varna hierarchy in an amended form through intermarriages as a major pillar of Hindu society, echoing a strong justification of caste as interpreted in the Manusmrithi.155 Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar [1906–1973], Hindutva’s key ideologue, praised varna as the ‘best social system’ – a ‘great institution’ that served Hindu society as ‘a bulwark against Islam’, rejecting the charge that it was ‘exploitative’.156 Caste, he explained, helped to preserve Hindu identity against mlecchas or ‘aliens/ barbarians’ – those ‘who are born beyond the pale of the caste system . . . not Aryan, or Hindu and do not subscribe to the social laws dictated by the Hindu religion and culture’.157 The evident reason why the ‘Hindu nation’ [jati] had survived all through its long history was the existence of the caste system, which made Hindus ‘strong and well organised’. ‘A good country. . . . Nation . . .,’ he argued, ‘should have all four classes of society as conceived by Hindu Religion.’158 However, Golwalkar decried the ‘curse of untouchability’, calling for Hindus to uplift their ‘neglected brethren’.159 The untouchables and tribals were indeed Hindus, he stressed, even though they had no knowledge of Hinduism as a religion. The ‘fault does not lie with them but with the Hindus’, who had a responsibility to teach them the ‘traditions and customs’ of the Hindu community.160 In Golwalkar’s vision, Hindu unity was determined by a concern to remove untouchability, yet the varna-vyavastha [caste order] – or the ‘natural order’ with its underlying notions of purity and pollution – was to be preserved.161 In the public sphere, the existence of an ideally harmonious varna [caste] system provided a highly significant instance of the hierarchies of sangathan narrative. Sangathan’s caste ambivalence emerged from its contrasting portraits as exclusively upper caste in its appeal and representations on one hand, and claims that it aimed to eradicate caste inequities on the other. First, sangathan’s egalitarian sub-discourse criticised and challenged inequalities between castes, viewing caste as a threat to the ‘integrity’ of the ‘Hindu nation’ and a rationale for the conversions of the lower castes to Islam and Christianity. ‘Social uplift’ and ‘national unity’ were presented as an antidote to internal divisions among Hindus.162 However, the second sub-discourse of sangathan was organicist and hierarchical: the varnashrama [system of four castes] was a reflection of the ‘natural law’, corresponding to a cosmic and natural order that could guarantee social harmony because every section of Hindu society constituted a ‘living

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limb’ of an organic system – based on a hierarchical ‘division of labour’.163 Sangathan’s vision of an ideal Hindu society was based on the varna hierarchy – in which different castes served complementary functions integral to Hinduism.164 Its aspiration to create a ‘cohesive’ Hindu community was that of a ‘higher tradition’, bearing the marks of a Brahmanical and high caste domination.165 It revealed an extreme hostility to the lower caste movements and their ‘antiBrahman ideology’, which were ‘divisive and disruptive’ to Hinduism.166 It represented no visible interest in the amelioration of the social conditions of the untouchables, far less a mass mobilisation against ‘caste oppression’.167 Sangathan’s elitism was revealed by the structure and organisation of the Hindu Mahasabha, which was predominantly a high caste, middle class preserve of Brahmans with its historical roots created in high caste affinities and patronage.168 By the end of the 1930s, untouchable integration that sangathan required as central to a ‘homogeneous’ Hindu jati [community/nation] had scarcely found a consensus; and the majority in the sangathan front upheld the varna system as the ideal form of Hindu societal organisation in India.169 Adi Hindu movement In the early twentieth century, there were occupational opportunities in the public and private spheres for the untouchables moving into the towns of the UP, but access to education, better living facilities, and a diversified employment were still largely barred.170 In this period of economic and social backwardness, the untouchables turned to devotional sects inspired by the medieval bhakti sants [saints], who had preached an egalitarian society as a means of ‘salvation’ or ‘self-assertion’.171 By the 1920s, an anti-Vedic ideology had gained popularity among the mass of the untouchables, who showed little interest in the upper-caste reform movements in north India. In the UP, the Adi Hindu movement, the political expression of a bhakti revival among urban untouchables, mounted a comprehensive critique of the Hindu religion and history.172 In search of a new ideology to repudiate Vedic Hinduism based on caste, Adi Hindu ideologues – particularly Swami Acchutanand [1879–1933] and Ram Charan [1888–1938] – drew upon bhakti ideals and argued that Aryan invaders had forcibly imposed Vedic Hinduism on the original inhabitants of India, Adi Hindus, and that ‘bhakti’ was their religion.173 In 1924, local Adi Hindu Sabhas were organised in Kanpur, Lucknow, Banaras, and Allahabad to spread the message of Adi Hinduism.174 In Adi Hindu theory, the Aryan invaders had subjugated and imposed Vedic Hinduism on the original Indians [Adi Hindus] and deprived them of their bhakti religion, which was ‘original and egalitarian’ and practised prior to the advent of the Aryans.175 Adi Hindu narrative rejected Hinduism with its institutional caste system as an ‘unethical’ social creation of the Aryans, articulating a strong denial of religious rituals and ceremonies prescribed by the higher castes for the untouchables in Hindu society.176 The political impact of the Adi Hindu movement was sporadic and limited in the towns of the UP. Adi Hindu narrative found application in reforms spearheaded by various untouchable caste panchayats led by prominent leaders such

Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 59 as Ram Charan and Shiv Dayal Singh Chaurasia in the UP from the 1920s onwards.177 In 1928 during the visit of the Simon commission, Adi Hindu leaders led by the Adi Hindu Depressed Classes Association [1925] resolved to give evidence to the commission with a view to securing rights for the untouchables in the province.178 The association put forward demands for separate political rights as well as government jobs and entry to schools and colleges for the untouchables. It demanded a preferential treatment, access to education, better employment, and a voice in representative institutions for the untouchable classes.179 In 1930–1931 during the round table conferences, all the Adi Hindu organisations in the UP campaigned to rally support for separate electorates to the untouchables.180 Large public meetings were held in Kanpur and Allahabad, where Adi Hindu leaders Swami Acchutanand and Shyam Lal delivered speeches, including an intense criticism of the Congress and Gandhi, in defence of separate electorates to the untouchables.181 Across the UP, the untouchables pursued the issues of social and economic opportunities for themselves and focused on a critique of not colonialism but ‘caste oppression’.182 Adi Hindu narrative represented the radical edge of untouchable consciousness in contestation against varna, pointing to the existence of ‘oppression’ and ‘injustice’ as structural to caste, which had become crucial to norms and customs governing Hindu society.183

Conclusion In the early 1920s, the perceived threat of a ‘united and well-organised’ Muslim militancy against Hindus as evident in the Moplah conversions and post-Khilafat riots produced the sangathan movement – a significant force in Hindu nationalist ideology.184 Sangathan, a drive for unity and strength through the consolidation of the Hindu community, became an articulated movement by building on the organisational base provided by the Hindu Mahasabha.185 It was characterised by defensive arguments about Hinduism in danger of ‘extinction’ in view of the conversions carried out by Islam and Christianity in India.186 The Mahasabha made shuddhi an integral part of sangathan, designed to reconvert Hindu converts from Islam and Christianity to Hindu society.187 Shuddhi targeted mostly Islam, setting a hardening pattern for Hindu mobilisation against Muslims.188 Crucially, sangathan was marked by a new urgency to widen and unify the Hindu community undertaken chiefly through untouchable integration.189 The recognition of the need to bolster the political strength of the Hindu community was in part a reason for the new-found assertiveness and enthusiasm to improve the social status of the untouchables.190 However, untouchable integration had remained a partial and unfulfilled reform, as it hardly found a consensus in the face of orthodox Hindu resistance.191 The Mahasabha’s appropriation of a ‘cohesive’ Hinduism was less than complete, as the persistence of the varna system created in the dominant symbols of purity and pollution had dealt a blow to its notion of India as a ‘unified’ Hindu community.192 Sangathan’s ambivalence was reflected in the coexistence of an ‘anti-caste’ rhetoric on one hand and the

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‘organicist’ conception of Hindu society on the other.193 Its appeals for untouchable uplift markedly had an anti-Muslim hostility.194 The caste hierarchy was tied to the ‘homogeneity’ of the Hindu community from within so as to maximise the differences with Muslims – the real ‘enemies’.195 The construction of a unified Hindu political community based on untouchable uplift as a crucial element of sangathan needed for its sustenance the notion of Muslims as an existential ‘threat’; and the anti-Muslim hostility was actualised in the recurrent outbreak of riots in the UP during the 1920s and 1930s.

5

Hindutva A nation of Hindu race and culture

The notion of a Hindu rashtra [nation] – India as a ‘Hindu nation’, the land of Hindus – was first articulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar [1883–1966] in his theoretical work Hindutva, an ideological text which provided a cultural justification for Hindu nationalism.1 Hindutva was Savarkar’s seed text which signified perhaps the first attempt to embody the ideology of a ‘Hindu nation’ and became the ideological basis of the Hindu Mahasabha, which had adopted it as a ‘long-term statement of objectives’ since the late 1920s.2 The doctrines and theorisation of the Mahasabha were coherently defined and articulated in the 1930s, as Savarkar’s work had been read. Savarkar’s key aim was to provide a comprehensive definition of what constituted Hindutva [Hinduness], or ‘Hindu identity’, which was far too political and less theological as a doctrine.3 Hindutva signified primarily a political movement, defining a Hindu as one to whom India was both a ‘fatherland’ and a ‘holyland’. This definition, if religious, was one significant component of Hindutva; and as important were criteria based on territory, race, and culture.4 The pride in ancient India as the ‘land of Aryans’ coupled with a cultural nationalism as a goal towards the reform of the country was at the centre of Hindutva.5 What was left out of Hindutva as a political scheme was the issue of how political representation was to be shared by different religious communities other than Hindus, or the related notions of citizenship. For, it excluded the minorities – Muslims and Christians – from the Indian nation because of the diverse nature of their faiths, which were coextensive with their ‘cultural identities’.6 It equated India with a ‘Hindu nation’, ensuring the primacy of the cultural and political identity and interests of Hindus in the country.7 This chapter explores Hindutva’s discursive content, its construction of history, and the problems it posed for a united ‘one nation’ of India – particularly the multiple narratives of hatred against Muslims and Christians, and the interconnections between India’s contested sovereignty and the exclusionary notion of a ‘Hindu identity’ fostered by Hindutva. V.D. Savarkar– a Hindu, a Chitpavan Brahman of Maharashtra ancestry, and an ideologue – invented the overarching Hindutva ideology during the antiBritish struggle of the early 1920s – a period which had signified a radical departure in his career, revealing a seminal shift from an anti-British revolutionary to an anti-Muslim Hindutva crusader.8 To him, Muslims replaced the British as the

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‘enemy’ of the Indian nation, which was vulnerable due to a ‘conflict’ arising from Islam and pan-Islamism.9 A lawyer, a poet and a historian of extraordinary passion and complex historical worldview, Savarkar did his initial writing of Hindutva in the Andamans from 1910 until 1922, as he had been sentenced to transportation for life in the murder trial of A.M.T. Jackson; and it was put into a final shape in Ratnagiri jail in 1923.10 Savarkar, a non-religious man and a practising atheist himself, defined Hindutva by explicitly denying the role of religion in determining a ‘Hindu nationhood’.11 Religion, he explained, was only one attribute of ‘Hinduness’ or ‘Hindu identity’ and ‘not even the most important one’.12 Hindutva was ‘not concerned with dogmas and religious practices associated with Hinduism’, but embraced ‘all departments of thought and activity of the whole being of our Hindu race’.13 Religion, if it entered in the Hindutva construct, was important for its cultural connotations: ‘Hinduness’ was conceived as co-extensive with ‘Indianness’.14 Hindutva was in a conflict with the nationalist discourse of Aurobindo Ghose and M.K. Gandhi, which held that Hinduism was an ‘eternal’ or ‘universal’ religion – the sanatana dharma, and that it was an all-embracing social system subsuming diverse creeds and cultures inhabiting the geographical space of India.15 Hindutva did not share this expansive nationalist vision of Hinduism, which was ‘pluralistic’ and ‘all-inclusive’, conceiving of all religions as paths to a ‘common goal’.16 It contested the nationalist notion of a ‘singular Indian nation’, one containing many divergent creeds. As a political ideology, Hindutva negated the doctrine of India’s composite nationhood based on religious pluralism and instead centred on the articulation of a ‘Hindu nationhood’, attempting to create a homogeneous Hindu community in view of the perceived threat of the ‘other’ – Muslims and Christians.17

Hindu ‘self ’ and Islamic ‘non-self ’ Hindutva constructs a narrative of Hindu nationalism that is highly conscious of history and derives its entire raison d’être from its self-perception as being located at an important juncture in history. In a narrative of India’s past, it presents a ‘cultural model’ of history by subdividing the past into three historical sub-narratives: first, a ‘golden age’ of the distant past [Vedic and post-Vedic era] characterised by social harmony; second, a dark age of ‘foreign invasions’ [Muslim and later British] rife with political corruption as evident in the 1947 partition; and third, a new age of national ‘revival and rejuvenation’, in which Hindu nationalists had a crucial role to play.18 In its construction of history, the existence of the Indian/Hindu nation drawing upon the Aryan past was prominent, besides being influential in shaping a ‘historical consciousness’.19 There was never any Aryan ‘invasion’ or ‘conquest’ of India. ‘Aryavarta’, the land of Aryans, had existed since time immemorial well before the Persian and Afghan conquests.20 M.S. Golwalkar, the second RSS sarsanghchalak [supreme dictator] and an influential Hindutva ideologue who drove a sangathanist transformation, rejected the ‘Aryan invasion’ theory. He explained: ‘[W]e Hindus came into this

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 63 land from nowhere, but are indigenous children of the soil always, from times immemorial and are natural masters of the country.’21 It seemed as if ‘we never were uncivilized’, and ‘the Vedas, the most ancient literature extant to da[te], embodies ideas too noble, except for a highly organised and cultured people to express’.22 Vedic society, the ‘apex of progress’, had remained in its pristine purity in the ancient times, but was distorted by the arrival of foreign rulers, suffering a ‘cultural turmoil’ and a ‘conflict’.23 The image of an ancient Hindu society advanced in spiritual and scientific matters as well as politically powerful and culturally superior to other cultures emerged forcefully in Hindutva narrative.24 In Hindutva’s ‘cultural model’ of history, the history of India, ‘our history’, was the history of Hindus. Hindus belonged to a common ‘national community’ [jati], which provided unity on the basis of a bond established with the ‘Vedic ancestors’: the Vedic Aryans were India’s ‘ancestors’.25 Hindutva invoked two terms to delineate the larger Hindu community which it aspired to create: jati, which indicated a common cultural identity, and rashtra, which meant a ‘nation’ in a political sense. Community and nation overlapped, as the all-important tie was the one that linked the imagined Hindu community to the ‘Aryan ancestors’.26 The motif of the ‘Aryan age’, the ancient Hindu civilisation, acquired a historical foundation, being reflected in the Vedas, the epics, and the shastras [Hindu law canons] of the Aryan jati.27 Savarkar explained: [L]ong before the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had built their magnificent civilization, the holy waters of the Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling columns of the scented sacrificial smokes and the valets resounding the chants of Vedic hymns – the spiritual fervour that animated their souls. The adventurous valour that propelled their intrepid enterprises, the sublime h[e]ights to which their thoughts rose . . . all these had marked them out as a people . . . of a great an[d] enduring civilization.28 The ‘long chapter in India’s history’, a primordialist construction, was defined by ‘peace and plenty’, ‘greatness and happiness’ for all.29 Ancient India had been ruled by the Aryan race for millions of years, giving ‘birth to the entire civilized world’.30 The construction of a mythic, ‘golden’, Hindu Vedic past was a recurrent theme to Hindutva; and the historical legacy of Indian tradition was the ancient ‘Hindu civilisation’ – which was the single source of Indian nationalism.31 In discussing the issues of content, history and agency in India’s struggle for existence, the basic question was that of the ‘Islamic other’. Hindutva portrayed the ‘golden’ Vedic age as the ‘life of a great race and a history’, confronting ‘Islam and its attacks as well as betrayals’ against India on the basis of rigid ‘self ’/‘other’ distinctions.32 It was from the Afghan high route of the Khyber Pass that Islam’s major invasions were launched into India at the end of the tenth century.33 Islam, the history of a ‘foreign conquest’, constituted a primary definition of the ‘non-self ’ in a binary opposition to the Hindu ‘self ’, both sharing an

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antagonistic relation, followed by the English and Christianity.34 Hindutva distinguished the Hindu ‘self ’ from the ‘Islamic other’ as classical, mutually exclusive categories, revealing an extreme hostility to Muslims.35 It framed historical questions and answers, the first question concerning the onset of decadence: how could India, the great ‘Aryan civilisation’, be invaded and subjugated by Muslim attackers – Afghans, Turks, and Persians? The ‘first degeneration of the Hindu nation’, Savarkar explained, had occurred with the expansion of Buddhism and its propagation of the ideals of ‘non-violence [ahimsa], righteousness, and toleration’ – which ‘strangled India’.36 It was the Buddhist formulas of ‘non-violence’ and ‘universalism’ that allowed the ‘invasion of India by Huns and Shakas’, who were superior in ‘fire and sword’.37 Ashoka, who reigned from 269 to 232 BC, had consolidated and expanded the Mauryan empire in north India through expeditions for the first eight years of his rule. After the invasion of the frontier tribal kingdom of Kalinga, he narrated in the longest of his edicts of ‘how many people were slain, how many more died, and how many others were taken captive’ in the war.38 He converted to Buddhism in the tenth year of his reign; and the Maurayan administration officially abandoned its policy of conquest in favour of the advocacy of ‘non-violence and peace’.39 The Marathas and the Rajputs all fought valiantly to re-establish the empire of the Aryans, Savarkar argued, but when Ashoka converted to Buddhism, the ‘martial prowess [that] mainly guided the administration of the magnificent empire of Chandragupta lost its vitality and Hindu India did not recover its manhood for centuries’.40 The fanatical embrace of non-violence by Buddhism had no power that could efficiently challenge the Muslim invader and the force of ‘fire and steel’;41 and ‘nations and civilizations fell in heaps before the sword of Islam’.42 Hindutva held the Buddhist creed of ahimsa, if conceptualised as part of the Hindu tradition, responsible for the ‘decline and degeneration’ of India in the ancient times.43 In the construction of foreign invasions as the ‘other’ of India, Hindutva focused solely on Islam as the ‘enemy’ – an entity and a force antithetical to Hindus. After five centuries of political fragmentation that had prevailed since the collapse of Mauryan suzerainty, the ‘golden age’ was established by the imperial Guptas over all of north India in AD 320.44 The reunification of north India under the imperial Guptas [c. AD 320–550] represented a classical prototype of the ‘Hindu state’, with new popular forms of Hinduism emerging, besides monuments of temple art and Sanskrit literature.45 The identity of a ‘Hindu nationhood’ was reasserted based on a demarcation between the Aryans and the mlecchas [aliens/barbarians].46 However, the classical age came to an end with the invasions by a series of Central Asian and Persian Turks and Afghans [Shakas, Kushans, and Hunas] that removed India’s northwest from indigenous control; and the downward spiral continued under the Mughals and British colonialism.47 The Aryans had been a jati, a nation-community, Savarkar explained, yet they did not become a rashtra, a nation, until they encountered the ‘other’ – Islam. In a series of historical shifts, a ‘Hindu identity’ was forged across centuries in a continuing process of violent struggles against Islam and the Muslim invaders in India.48

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 65 The past invariably provided a significant symbolic and ideological repertoire to Hindutva. From the Islamic invasion of India emerged a defining watershed: Mahmud [the ‘sword of Islam’] of Ghazni [AD 971–1030] led no fewer than 17 bloody raids into India starting in AD 997, smashing countless Hindu temple idols, which he viewed as ‘abominations to Allah’.49 Thanesar, Mathura, Kanauj, Nagarkot, and the Kathiwar temple city of Somnath were singled out as targets to be razed by Mahmud.50 The Ghaznavids were the first in a series of TurkoAfghan Muslims to invade north India and shatter the autonomous Hindu power, initially in the Punjab, then further south and east.51 ‘At last,’ Savarkar explained, ‘she [India] was rudely awakened on the day when Mohmad of Ghazni crossed the Indus, the frontier line of Sindhusthan, and invaded her.’52 ‘That day, the conflict of life and death began. Nothing makes Self conscious of itself so much as conflict with the non-self. Nothing can weld peoples into a nation . . . as . . . a common foe.’53 Savarkar reflected: ‘Never had Sindhusthan a better chance and a more powerful stimulus to be herself forged into an indivisible whole as on that dire day, when the great iconoclast crossed the Indus.’54 The ghastly conflict had continued ‘from year to year, decade to decade, century to century’ until such time as Shivaji established a Hindu Empire, a Hindu-Pad-Padshahi, in western India.55 The blame was attributed to ‘internal disunity’, a ‘lack of organisation’, and the absence of a ‘unified national consciousness’ for the conquest of India by Mahmud.56 When the ‘first real invasions of murdering hordes of Mussalman free-booters occurred,’ Golwalkar explained, ‘they found the nation divided against itself and incapable of stemming the tide of devastation they brought in their wake’.57 Internal hatred, discord, and jealousy were ‘our enemies, preventing Hindus from ris[ing] uncompromisingly, heroically as one man against all the machinations of the Muslims’.58 The raids into the Punjab during AD 1001–1027 by Mahmud of Ghazni, the rise of the Delhi Sultanate in north India in the twelfth century, and the establishment of Mughal rule in AD 1526 had decisively influenced the course of India’s history over the centuries. In the context of the Muslim invasions of India, one question of history was paramount: was India, a weakened nation, defeated totally? Crucially, Hindutva constructed a Hindu cultural vocabulary of resistance to the Muslim invasions, viewing the Muslim period as a history of ‘resistance’ by the Indian nation for nearly a thousand years: India’s defeat was ‘never complete’.59 The Islamic conquests and conversions were not followed by the adoption of the sharia [Islamic law] due to the prevalence of native custom and religious and social practices in north India.60 Politically, the Muslim victory was ‘not total’. The early poem Prithviraja-raso of Chanbardai recounted the battles of the early 1190s between Mohammed of Ghur and the Gahadavara ruler Jayachandra in an alliance with the Rajput Chauhan king Prithviraj III.61 Iltutmish struggled hard against the rulers of Malwa, and Babar against the Hindu kings of Ranthambor, Malwa, and Kalinjar.62 The battles of the Maratha king Shivaji against Aurangzeb’s general Afzal Khan in the mid-1600s were the instances of a ‘Hindu resistance’ against ‘Muslim tyranny’. Sikh leader Teg Bahadur’s resistance and death at the hands

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of Aurangzeb as well as Guru Gobind Singh’s battles against the Mughal governors were the struggles that aimed to defend the ‘Hindu religion’ [dharm]’ against the ‘attacks of Islam’.63 The wars constituted an integral whole based on the defence of the Indian nation by Hindus [Sikhs, Marathas, and Jats], resulting in the overthrow of Muslim rule.64 In the ‘national war’ that went on for centuries, victory would have belonged to India if the British had not intervened.65 The assessment of a deeply troubled past and its explanation through a narrative of struggles, more so the native resistance to the Muslim invasions, spanning across centuries became integral to Hindutva’s reconstructive project focusing on India’s medieval period.66 In Hindutva’s ‘cultural model’ of history, ‘Hindu unity’ had been the key to India’s ‘self-determination’ in the ancient Vedic period as well as the medieval and modern times. Savarkar explained that a ‘Hindu consciousness’ found its expression in the seventeenth century in the empire of Shivaji [AD 1627–1680], the torchbearer of the ‘golden age’ of Hinduism, and then in the Maratha confederation.67 Shivaji, the legendary warrior-king and founder of the Maratha state, overthrew the Muslim rulers and established swaraj [freedom] in western India – a pioneering act of ‘Hindu self-assertion’ in the face of ‘Muslim domination’.68 Under the Maratha confederacy, the forces of Hindudom entered Delhi triumphantly in AD 1761 and ‘the Moslem throne and crown lay hammered at the feet of Bhau and Vishvas’; and the establishment of Hindu-Pad-Padashahi [Hindu Empire] was an instance of Hindus regaining a sense of ‘freedom and selfpossession’ against Muslim rule.69 The battles against the Muslim invaders comprised a Hindu history and demonstrated the struggle of an ‘oppressed nation’ against Islam.70 History progressed in a cyclical fashion – with periods of ‘foreign domination’ and ‘Hindu self-assertion’ succeeding one another.71 In the whole period from the tenth century to the early nineteenth century, Hindutva focused on a ‘single, monumental war’ between Hindus and the Muslim invaders and tyrants; but India’s unity and nationalism had remained intact all through history.72 The Muslim invasions became a narrative theme, usually the result of a series of dreadful religious wars as well as the struggles of Hindus against the Muslim conquerers.73 Savarkar explained that the conflict with the Arabs, the Turks, the Persians, and the Mughals had defined a ‘Hindu identity’ and constituted Hindus into a ‘nation’.74 The struggle was ‘monstrously unequal’ because India was pitted against nearly all of Islam in Asia.75 While all other civilisations conquered by Islam were destroyed, ‘Hindu India’ had resisted ‘Islamic rule’.76 ‘But here for the first time,’ Savarkar stressed, ‘the sword succeeded in striking but not killing. . . . Vitality of the victim proved stronger than the vitality of the victor.’77 Hindus fought under the banner of Hindutva, transcending the barriers of caste and creed. ‘All castes, creeds and denominations suffered as Hindus and triumphed as Hindus’, permeated by Hindutva.78 In the course of the conflict, he claimed, ‘our people became intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and we were welded into a nation to an extent unknown in our history’.79 Even though the Aryans had been a jati, a nation-community, Savarkar argued, they did not become a rashtra, a nation state, until they encountered the Muslim invaders –

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 67 the ‘Islamic other’. Only through a confrontation with the Islamic ‘non-self ’ could the ‘resurrection, renaissance and rejuvenation’ of a ‘Hindu nation’ become a historical reality.80 What brought about a ‘Hindu unity’ was the presence of the ‘enemy’ – Muslims.81 The antagonistic presence in India of Muslims was integral to Hindutva’s imagination of a ‘Hindu identity’.82 The Muslim rulers were the most important in the league of foreign invaders, and British rule was a prelude to ‘national resurgence’: both were ‘alien’ and served as an ideological repertoire of the ‘otherness’ against which Hindutva nationalism defined itself.83 The foreign invasions provided an explanatory power and a rationale to Hindutva’s narrative of successive historical stages in that the Mughal dynasty and British colonialism had constituted a logic that aided the construction of an exclusive, self-assertive ‘Hindu identity’ in transition to the emergence of a powerful unified ‘Indian nation’.84

A ‘Hindu fatherland’ In Hindutva theory, India was defined primarily as an ethnic community and a nation possessing first a territory and then sharing a unity of Hindu race and culture. India’s three great attributes of geographical unity, racial unity and a common culture originated from the mythical reconstruction of its Vedic ‘golden age’.85 The first attribute of India as a ‘Hindu nation’ was the ‘sacred territory’ of Aryavarta – the land of Aryans.86 Hindus were pre-eminently the descendants of the ‘intrepid Aryans who made India their home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banks of the Indus’, a river which was the western border of Hindusthan.87 To Hindutva, the Aryan theory was central in that Hindus had descended from the Aryans who had settled at the dawn of history along the Sapta Sindhu – the River Indus.88 The word Hindu was a Persian mispronunciation of the term ‘Sindhu’, the river beyond which lay ‘Hindustan’ – the land of Hindus – and used successively by the Achaemenids, the Greeks, and the Muslims to denote the population living along the River Indus.89 Hindu was not appropriated by the Aryans who bore this designation, nor did they use it themselves until the medieval period; and it later became an ethno-geographic term, meaning ‘Indian’.90 The story of Indian history began where Indic civilisation itself had emerged – the River Indus; and the Indus culture flourished as a great urban civilisation along the banks of the Indus more than four thousand years ago.91 The word Sindhu, Savarkar explained, ‘does not only mean the Indus but also the Sea – which girdles the southern peninsula’.92 The ‘whole continental country’ girdled by the River Sindhu and the Sindhu, another name for the seas surrounding peninsular India, was ‘our whole Motherland’ – a ‘cohesive geographical unit’, a ‘nation’.93 This land, he emphasised, was ruled by the Aryans, who had been the progenitors of a great ‘Hindu nation’ in the ancient times.94 India emerged as a ‘Hindu nation’ out of the Vedic past; and the motif of the Aryan age, the original ‘golden age’, acquired a historical foundation in Hindutva narrative, with territory and ethnic unity being ‘inseparable’.95

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To Hindutva, the importance of territorial location as the signifier of a religious/cultural identity was underscored by the demarcation of national boundaries that separated Sindhustan – the land between the River Indus and the Indian Ocean – from mlechhastan, configured as ‘Islamic’. Mlecchastan represented the domicile land of foreigners [Huns, Shakhas, Afghans, and Persians] and lay outside the Aryan geographical boundaries.96 The Aryans, ‘noble Hindu warriors’, had inhabited Sindhustan, which later became known as ‘Hindustan’.97 Historically, Savarkar wrote, it was the infusion of Aryan blood, ideas and culture that provided the basis of a ‘Hindu race and nation’ originating in the Sindhu, the Indus.98 ‘The same Hindu people have built the life-values, ideals and culture of this country and, therefore, their nationhood is self-evident.’99 The identity of religion [Hinduism] was conflated with the identity of the country [India]: the two were different but not mutually irreconcilable.100 Religious identity [Hinduism] as the marker of a race [Hindus] took a concrete historical form in recognising the territory as the sole principle of ‘political solidarity’.101 In Hindutva theory, the most fundamental criterion determining India’s nationhood apart from the territory was the inheritance of ‘Hindu blood’.102 Savarkar introduced the notion of a race for the identification of Hindus, representing ‘common blood’ as the basis of the Indian nation.103 The term he used for a ‘race’ was jati. ‘The Hindus,’ he explained, ‘are not only a Nation but also a race – jati . . . a race determined by a common origin and possessing common blood.’104 The mixing of the blood of the Aryans and the people they encountered gave rise to the Vedic–Hindu civilisation; and all Hindus had in their veins the ‘blood of the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus’.105 Savarkar emphasised: ‘We feel that the same ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and Chaitanya . . . courses throughout Hindudom from vein to vein, pulsates from heart to heart.’106 Hindus were racially undifferentiated and a discrete ‘racial unit’: beyond the Hindu community’s differences of caste or sect there was an invisible bond of ‘common blood’.107 A ‘racial unity’ underlay the social diversity of Hindus. No people in the world, Savarkar stated, ‘can more justly claim to get recognised as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews’.108 Sanctioned ‘intermarriages’ – the system of anuloma and pratiloma [regular and inverse] alliances – had proliferated through the union of different castes; but all the castes were bound by the same blood, the ‘Hindu race’.109 The blood manifested itself as an effective structure in which Hindus would claim their racial affiliation to the ‘Aryan ancestors’ and hence to all Hindus in the country. There existed, Golwalkar explained, the ‘Hindu blood’ in which the living reality of Hindu society had been experienced and Hindu ‘unity ingrained . . . from our very birth’.110 ‘[T]he conviction of our true nationhood,’ he argued, ‘has been ingrained in our blood since hoary times. Even to this day this conviction is there in the heart of every son of its soil. . . . We are intrinsically one, transcending all superficial barriers of distance, creed or sect.’111 Hindus as a community incorporated the ‘depths of thought and activity of the whole being of the Hindu race’.112 Golwalkar declared: ‘Race spirit calls, National consciousness blazes forth and we Hindus . . . set our teeth in grim

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 69 determination to wipe out the opposing forces.’113 The nation had a ‘national soul’ [chiti]. ‘The word is chiti . . . it is the innate nature of a group . . . which is inborn and not the result of historical circumstances. . . . Chiti determines the direction in which the nation is to advance culturally.’114 The racial [jati] category of the nation had to conflate and accommodate all Hindu groups, who had to feel the affinity of a shared parentage [gotra]: there were four varnas [castes], but one jati – ‘Hindu’.115 The notion of ‘common blood’ as the basis of the Hindu race was a significant component of Hindutva’s postulate for the identification of Hindus as a ‘nation’ – the Indian nation.116 However, Hindutva used the concept of race as the category of a homogeneous ethnic nation – a ‘Hindu nation’ – not as a eugenic racism of exclusion or extermination. It was concerned with the social, hierarchical unity of Hindu society, not a biological racism.117 In India, the varna [caste] system had been integrative and assimilative; and insofar as the caste hierarchy represented a system of gradation based on ritual purity, every ‘alien’ [mleccha] group could find a place in it – at a subordinate rank below Brahmans.118 Hinduism of the pre-modern period was not a uniform monolithic religion, but a juxtaposition of flexible religious sects. It recognised the existence of mlecchas [aliens/barbarians], who attracted discrimination not on the basis of ethnic criteria but because they did not conform to the Vedic rituals.119 The frontier between the Aryans and the mlecchas was relatively an open one; and the successive invaders such as the Greeks, the Shakas, and the Huns found themselves classed as Kshatriyas [warriors] by accepting the ritual practices and authority of Brahmans.120 Hindutva did not represent eugenics based on ‘racial purity and hygiene’, according to which certain groups of people – aliens/barbarians – were inferior to members of the ‘pure’ Aryan nation and ought to be exterminated – a policy that resulted in the extermination of Jews as an integral pillar of the Nazi doctrine in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.121 Instead, it reflected India’s social system by not totally excluding Muslims and Christians – the crucial repertoires of the ‘otherness’ – from Hindu society, who could be integrated, provided they paid allegiance to ‘Hindu culture’.122 Hindu society was based on the ‘domination of the upper castes’, not the racism of a biological kind, with Muslims and Christians being urged to integrate into Hindu society by renouncing their ‘alien culture’.123 One significant discursive content of the Hindu ‘self ’ and the Muslim/Christian ‘other’ was conceptualised in assimilative terms, allowing for the possibility of a cultural transformation. Hindutva advocated the principle of an underlying ‘Hindu essence’ that had remained unaffected by previous religious conversions to Islam and Christianity – a notion central to its ideology of the reconversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism.124 Muslims and Christians were constructed as ‘original’ Hindus converted to an ‘alien faith’ through ‘coercion’; and previous conversions to Islam and Christianity were portrayed as having entailed only superficial changes that had left the underlying ‘Hindu essence’, or ‘race spirit’ intact.125 The primordial Hindu ‘race spirit’ had survived all the shocks of centuries of ‘conversion’, in effect remaining ‘innate’.126 Savarkar argued that

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Muslims and Christians could redeem themselves by choosing to reject their conversion and return to Hinduism.127 ‘Hence dear Brethren,’ he declared, ‘most of you [Muslims/Christians] were Hindus once and just because you have changed your religion you cannot become foreigners – call yourself proudly Kshatriyas’.128 He continued: Does not the blood in your veins, Oh brother, of our common forefathers cry aloud with the recollections of the dear old ties from which they were so cruelly snatched away at the point of sword? Then come yet back to the fold of your brothers and sisters who with arms extended are standing at the open gate to welcome you – their long lost kith and kin.129 Golwalkar reaffirmed it as ‘our duty to call these our forlorn brothers suffering under religious slavery for centuries, back to their ancestral home . . . in the course of time they will realise they too were once Hindus, that it is their duty to be loyal to this land.’130 He postulated that the acceptance of other faiths had been a characteristically Hindu trait and an altogether ‘unique contribution of our culture to the world thought’.131 Even though the structural conflict between the Hindu ‘self ’ and the Muslim/Christian ‘other’ was irreconcilable, the consolidation of Hindu society needed the transformation or assimilation of the ‘other’ into the national Hindu ‘self: it was a preliminary stage that could enable Hindus to absorb Muslims and Christians – the descendants of non-Aryan invaders – into the ‘national culture’.132 Hindutva was intolerant of the religious/cultural ‘otherness’ and demanded its full assimilation – through a religious conversion or cultural integration. In its professed anti-Islamic and anti-Christian stance, its exclusivist constructions of the national Hindu ‘self ’ portrayed the oppositional ‘other’ as ‘people . . . who, while living here, work against the honour and traditions of the country and insult our national heroes and objects of national veneration’.133 It advocated the permanent exclusion or enforced assimilation of the ‘other’ [Muslims and Christians] into the ‘national race’ as the only alternative to an exclusion or subjugation.134 Golwalkar explained: Mere common residence in a particular territory cannot forge a unified national society. . . . The newcomers should bring about a total metamorphosis in their life-attitudes and take a rebirth . . . in that ancient national lineage. . . . Muslims and Christians here should give up their present foreign mental complexion and merge in the common stream of our national life.135 He went on: ‘[T]hose, who fall outside . . . can have no place in the national life, unless they abandon their differences, and completely merge themselves in the National Race.’136 If Muslims and Christians chose to remain as ‘aliens’, he warned, they could only occupy a position of inferiority – ‘wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment – not even citizen’s rights’.137

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 71 Culturally, linguistically, they must become one with the National race . . . in short, they must be ‘Naturalised’ . . . [and] assimilated in the Nation wholly . . . [they] must . . . adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion.138 Hindutva’s theory of cultural assimilation did not find favour with Muslims or Christians as a logic of coerced category, nor did it succeed as a political programme in India. The national and cultural categories that Hindutva constructed and appropriated in the service of its identity politics stood in an antagonistic and exclusivist opposition to a series of ‘others’, not all of whom were of a religious kind.139 Golwalkar identified three types of ‘internal threats’: Muslims, Christians, and communists. The ‘Hindu nation’ based on a tolerant sanatan dharm [orthodox Hinduism] was divided into ‘invading, violent Muslims’ and ‘antinational Christians’ as well as ‘destructive communists’.140 Islam, Christianity and communism [and, to a lesser extent, British imperialism] provided ideological categories against which the ‘Hindu nation’ was contrasted and defined. Golwalkar claimed that it was Muslims, Christians, and communists who made India an ‘internally divided and unorganised nation’.141 Communism was considered as both an internal and external threat and destructive of India’s ‘national integrity and culture’.142 Hindutva drew an unnegotiable boundary between the Hindu ‘self ’ and the communist ‘other’. A ‘person can either be a Hindu or a Communist. He cannot be both.’143 An antagonistic view was taken regarding all westerners/secularists or ‘foreign isms’ – whose ‘corrupting selfishness’ and ‘materialism’ were portrayed as diametrically opposed to the postulated Hindu ideals of ‘social harmony and spirituality’ – the primordial ‘Hindu civilisation’.144 A political or intellectual colonisation was rejected as an ‘antithesis’ of ‘Hindu tradition and culture’.145 The Hindutva version of a radical cultural nationalism was based on the logic of an irreconcilable and permanent difference, viewing a homogenised ‘Hindu nation’ locked in a perpetual struggle with the ‘Muslim/Christian/communist enemy’.146 Hindutva reflected negative evaluations and outright condemnations of all transformations of the Hindu ‘self ’ into the ‘other’ – religious conversions to Islam/Christianity or the adoption of western ideologies – which added strength to the ‘enemy’ and posed a definitive danger to the ‘Hindu nation’. Conversions led to a loss of love and devotion for the nation and resulted in the converts’ ‘mental merging’ with ‘aggressors’.147 Golwalkar attacked conversions to Islam or Christianity in unequivocal terms as a ‘traitorous attitude’. ‘Together with the change in their faith’, he argued, gone are [sic] the spirit of love . . . for the nation. . . . They [converts] have . . . developed a feeling of identification with the enemies. . . . They look to some foreign lands as their holy places. . . . [T]hey have cut off all their ancestral national moorings.148

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Attempts to ‘recast our life-pattern in the mould of foreign ways of life’, he emphasised, posed a serious threat to the ‘Hindu nation’ and, as a consequence, ‘if anybody cherishes extra-territorial loyalties, we call him a traitor’.149 Conversely, the transformation of the ‘other’ into the Hindu ‘self ’ was crucial to Hindutva’s ‘man-making’ process and its mission of ‘national rejuvenation’.150 Hindutva showed a discursive evaluation of the ‘self ’ as positive and the ‘other’ as negative and threatening; a positive structural value was ascribed to the Hindu ‘self ’ in its opposition to the negativeness of invading, proselytising, or corrupting ‘others’.151 The crucial defining feature of Hindutva, besides territory and race, was a common culture and civilisation [sanskriti], the search for India’s cultural ancestry and its historical roots offering a justification to the narrative of the Hindu jati [community/nation].152 Savarkar explained that nationality did not depend so much on a common geographical territory as on the ‘unity of race and culture’. In the formation of nations, he stated, ‘religious, racial, cultural and historical affinities counted immensely more than territorial unity’.153 ‘The Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common fatherland . . . but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization – our Hindu culture . . . sanskriti’.154 India was united by an overarching cultural ideal based on shared spiritual roots and the discipline of a dharma [social custom].155 Its ‘homogeneous’ culture was primarily religious; and Hinduism gave Hindus a cultural uniformity – a culture that had inherited the ideals the Aryans, defining the collective history of the Hindu community and transforming it into a ‘nationality’ in India.156 Golwalkar explained: ‘We are . . . the enlightened people. . . . We built a great civilisation . . . and an [sic] unique social order. We had brought into actual life almost everything that was beneficial to mankind.’157 The civilisation shared by Hindus comprised history, literature and arts, laws, customs, festivals, and rituals. The different places of pilgrimage in India constituted the ‘common inheritance’ of the Hindu race, a cultural heritage strengthened by the presence of Sanskrit – ‘our mother tongue’.158 Sanskrit was ‘the real mother-tongue of our race’ in accordance with the classical Brahmanical texts – ‘the tongue in which the mothers of our race spoke and which has given birth to all our present tongues’.159 The culture of national origin, a crucial element of Indian’s nationhood, was based on historical and cultural continuities with the ancient traditions of India – a common culture.160 In a free India, Savarkar explained, there could only be ‘one Hindu culture’ defining rituals and social roles, in which different communities/castes coexisted in a hierarchical relationship.161 The Indian nation was coterminous with the Hindu community [ jati] as a ‘cultural group’.162 The construction of a homogeneous ‘Hindu nation’ based on a common culture and history – a cultural unity – was at the heart of ideological Hindutva.163 Hindutva held a powerful critique of the western model of the ‘territorial’ nation-state. It emphasised the ‘racial and cultural unity’ of Hindus as the basis of the Indian nation and rejected the western ‘territorial nation’ as championed by the Indian National Congress – a ‘composite nation’ of all communities living as

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 73 equals within the British India realm.164 The Indian nation, Savarkar argued, was culturally defined and based on culture – not the territory alone. ‘Our ancient and sublime cultural values of life,’ he emphasised, ‘form its [India’s] life-breath. And it is only an intense rejuvenation of the spirit of our culture that can give us the true vision of our national life’.165 Golwalkar rejected as an ‘absurdity’ the notion of a ‘territorial nation’, which made residence in a given territory a necessary and sufficient criterion for one to be ‘part of the nation’.166 Golwalkar's ethnic conception of the nation was defined by the famous five ‘unities’ – geographical, racial, religious, cultural and linguistic.167 All the five ‘unities’ – territory, race, religion, culture, and language – were viewed as the defining characteristics of a ‘Hindu nation’ because ‘in the destruction of any one . . . the Nation itself experiences extinction’.168 Theorising an exclusivist cultural nationalism as opposed to territorial nationalism, Golwalkar explained that ‘only the Hindu has been living here as the child of the soil’, that ‘it was given to the great sons of this soil alone to see and realise God in His full effulgence’, and that ‘in this land of ours, Bharat, the national life is of the Hindu people. In short, this is the Hindu nation.’169 ‘In this context,’ he went on, ‘our “Nation” . . . always must mean the Hindu Nation and nought else [sic].’170 The Congress’s theory of territorial nationalism, he argued, did not recognise that ‘here was already a full fledged ancient nation of the Hindus’, and Muslims and Christians were there as ‘invaders’. In pursuit of the ‘phantom of unity’, ‘the Congress denied the essential reality of India as a Hindu nation’, and the time had come to ‘enlighten the people on the need for building a Hindu nation rather than a secular state on the western model’.171 It was a ‘historical fact, Golwalkar insisted, that it was the “scheming Britisher” who, in order to perpetuate his stranglehold over our country, planted in our minds perverted notions of [territorial] nationhood’.172 Hindutva was diametrically contrary to the Congress’s vision of a ‘territorial nation’, which accommodated religiously informed cultural differences within a discourse of a unified nation and equitable citizenship rights: India instead was a ‘cultural nation’.173 Finally, Savarkar defined ‘who is a Hindu’, a definition that had radically influenced and shaped the political discourse of the Hindu Mahasabha since the 1920s.174 He defined a Hindu as a person who was Indian by ethnicity, national allegiance, and religious affiliation. The criteria required a three-fold relationship to India: a relationship of blood ties, of national allegiance, and of affiliation to a faith that claimed India as its ‘holyland’ [punya bhumi].175 A Hindu was ‘a person’, Savarkar explained, ‘who regards this land of Bharatavarsha’ extending from the Indus to the Seas, as ‘his Fatherland [pitribhu] as well as his Holyland [punyabhu] or the cradle land of his religion’.176 The definition was territorial [the ‘land between the Indus and the Seas’], genealogical [‘fatherland’], and religious [‘holyland’].177 It was fundamental to Hindutva that a Hindu was necessarily a person of Indian ethnic and national origin.178 The first requisite of Hindutva was citizenship by parental descent [of Hindu parents] within the territory of India. However, this was not a sufficient condition, for the term Hindu signified more than a geographical territory. The crucial test was two-fold – India was both a fatherland [pitribhumi] and a holy land

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[punyabhumi].179 ‘To every Hindu’, Savarkar stated, ‘from the Santal to the Sadhu . . . this Sindhusthan is at once a Pitribhu and a Punyabhu – a fatherland and a holyland.’180 The soil and the tie of a common ‘holyland’ proved stronger as the chief elements integral to being a ‘Hindu’ and constituted the basis of ‘Indian nationality’.181 The ideological category of a ‘Hindu’ as defined by the criteria of regarding India as both a national territory and a sacred space implied an equally welldefined non-Hindu ‘other’ – Indians practising religions of non-Indic origin, or ethnic groups who regarded India as either a ‘fatherland’ or a ‘holyland’ but not both. India’s Muslims and Christians fell into a category of the ‘other’ that did not venerate India as a ‘holyland’ and could not be incorporated into Hindutva.182 It was not merely that Islam and Christianity were of non-Indic origin; but crucially, they did not identify with ‘Hindu culture’, despite sharing the territory and race with Hindus.183 They belonged to an alien cultural tradition: their heroes, places of worship, and fairs and festivals had little in common with ‘Hindu culture’.184 Savarkar explained: For though Hindusthan is to them [Muslims and Christians] a Fatherland as to any other Hindu, yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. . . . Their love is divided.185 The Islamic ‘other’ owing a religious allegiance to Arabia and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina derived its malevolent energy from a ‘divided loyalty’. ‘Look at Mohammedans,’ Savarkar argued, ‘the Mecca to them is a sterner reality than Delhi or Agra. Some of them do not make any secret of being bound to sacrifice all India if that be to the glory of Islam’.186 Golwalkar declared: ‘Hindus, whatever their denominations of caste or sect, formed a single society and the Muslims and Christians belonged to an altogether alien and even hostile camp.’187 ‘Hindu society,’ he stated, ‘should be the single point of devotion for all of us . . . those who do not love Rama . . . must be considered as ten million times an enemy.’188 ‘There are no gradations in patriotism’, for ‘real devotion can never be half way’.189 Muslims and Christians excluded from Hindutva had to seek incorporation through assimilation/conversion, or opt for separation.190 The syncretic communities like the Muslim Bohras and Khojas of Gujarat were originally Hindu castes who had converted to Islam between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, but had to be excluded from a ‘Hindu nation’. And so, too, were Parsis and Jews: India was not their ‘holyland’.191 Hindutva proved to be ‘internally homogenising’ and ‘externally antagonistic’, disallowing ‘Hinduness’ to non-Indian converts to Hinduism who were not Indian by nationality or ethnicity.192 Foreign religions and traditions were beyond the purview of Indian nationhood.193 In Hindutva narrative, the Hindu religion [dharm], or Hinduism, included the Vedic tradition as well as other traditions and philosophies of Indic origin.194 Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism were part of the total inheritance of Indic origin

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 75 which was integral to Hinduism, for India was the land of their ‘birth and revelation’.195 The religion of the majority of Hindus, Savarkar explained, could be termed sanatana dharma [orthodox Hinduism], while the remaining Hindus could continue to call themselves by such names as Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, or Arya Samajists.196 The heterodox communities were all Hindu and equally well within their rights to reject the authority of dharmashastras [Hindu canonical texts].197 ‘Diversities in the path of devotion,’ Golwalkar explained, ‘did not mean division in society. All were indivisible organs of one common dharma [religion] which held [Hindu] society together’.198 To Hindutva, the faiths born in India were incorporated within one monolithic cultural construct – Hinduism, and those coming from outside – Islam and Christianity – were excluded as of ‘foreign’ origin.199

Hindu rashtra The central theme of Hindutva was the creation of a Hindu rashtra [nation]: the rashtra meant not merely a state but an exclusive ‘Hindu society’.200 Savarkar explained that the Indian state was a ‘Hindu nation’ based on the principle of ‘one man one vote’ and the ‘rule of the majority’.201 Hindus were the overwhelming majority in India; and there could be ‘no conflict’ between their communitarian and national duties, which in turn were identifiable with the ‘best interests’ of the ‘Hindu nation’.202 He claimed that India’s independence was inextricably linked to the ‘independence of our [Hindu] people, our race, our nation’.203 ‘India must be a Hindu land reserved for Hindus’ – who were the ‘bedrock’ on which an independent state had to be built.204 The foundation of the future Indian polity was to be provided by Hindus ‘whose interests, history and aspirations are most closely bound up with the land and who thus provide the real foundation to the structure of the national state’.205 The Indian state, Savarkar emphasised, must be established under the ‘Hindu flag’. ‘This dream, he continued, ‘would be realized during this or coming generation. If it is not realized, I may be styled a day-dreamer, but if it comes true, I would stand forth as its prophet.’206 Hindutva’s core belief was that Hindus constituted the nation and had to be ‘masters’ in India, necessitating the establishment of a ‘Hindu majority rule’; and Muslims and Christians were ‘communities’ – the unequal status being reflected in the political system.207 Politically, Hindutva defined India as a ‘nation primarily for Hindus’; and the minorities would have the rights to political representation and citizenship commensurate with their numerical strength in the country.208 The Hindu Mahasabha resolved in 1936 that ‘all the alien faiths must be made to understand that Hindusthan is primarily for the Hindus’, and that ‘the Hindus live for the preservation and development of the Aryan culture and the Hindu Dharma’.209 In India, the ‘national race, religion and language ought to be that of the Hindus’.210 The Mahasabha adopted a revised constitution at its Ahmedabad session in December 1937, declaring its aim as ‘the maintenance, protection and promotion of the Hindu race, Hindu culture and Hindu

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civilisation and advancement and glory of Hindu Rashtra, and . . . to attain Purna Swaraj, i.e. absolute political independence for Hindustan by legitimate means’.211 The existence of non-Hindu minorities posed an obstacle to Hindutva’s dream of a homogeneous ‘Hindu nation’, nonetheless.212 Hindutva failed to amplify its narrative on democracy and could not negotiate an alternative form of Indian nationalism, one which went beyond the majoritarian rule and projected a vision of equal citizenship rights irrespective of cultural differences in India.213 It couched the merits of exclusionary communitarianism in the idioms of absorption into Hindu culture, which signified the self-projection of a Hindu majority state, violating minority rights or justifying an aggression against the minorities.214 In ideological terms, the concept of a ‘historical enemy’ – Muslims – was implicit in Hindutva, which had originated from a deep-rooted hostility against Islam that subscribed to a non-territorial conception of nationality.215 In particular, Hindutva’s vision of Bharatvarsha [India] based on a territorial ‘Hindu homeland’ was at variance with the Muslim aspiration that sought strength and solidarity based on the creation of a united Muslim qaum [community] and ummah [brotherhood].216 To Hindutva, Hindus and Muslims were two different racial types locked in a historical conflict, compounded by the impossibility of a peaceful coexistence. In its anti-Islamic tirade, it attacked Muslims as ‘vicious destroyers’ and a source of the ‘degradation’ of Hindu culture.217 Savarkar rejected the view that the political strife between Hindus and Muslims in India was the result of British policies, arguing that it had arisen instead mainly as a reaction to ‘Islamic occupation’.218 All the sectarian conflicts, he explained, ‘are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and Moslems’.219 He termed Muslims ‘antiHindu, anti-Indian’ – too closely tied to ‘extra-territorial’ loyalties to play a role in the building of the new Indian nation.220 Muslims, he argued, were responsible for creating ‘obstacles’ in the path of achieving independence for India and did not co-operate with Hindus. It was Hindu sangathanists alone who had been in the ‘vanguard’ of the anti-British struggle for India’s independence.221 In a public message to Muslims, Savarkar asserted: ‘If you come, with you; if you don’t without you; and if you oppose, in spite of you the Hindus will continue to fight for their national freedom.’222 ‘The Hindus,’ he declared, ‘are at war at once with the Moslems on the one hand and the British on the other.’ ‘India cannot be assumed today to be a . . . homogeneous nation. . . . There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India . . . the Hindu [sic] and the Moslems.’223 Savarkar emphasised: ‘I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two-nation theory. We, Hindus, are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.’224 Golwalkar explained: ‘We, Hindus, are at war at once with the Moslems . . . and [the] British. The Moslems . . . take themselves to be the conquering invaders and grasp for power.’225 ‘Partition . . .,’ he went on, ‘meant an acknowledgement that the Muslims formed a distinct and antagonistic national community . . . won for itself a distinct state by vivisection of the country in which they had originally come as invaders and where they had been trying to settle down as conquerors.’226 A deep hostility to Islam had determined

Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 77 and structured the narrative of Hindutva, emerging as its core feature throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The embryonic ‘two-nation theory’ envisaged in Hindutva narrative during the 1920s was formally launched 14 years later by the Muslim League in its Lahore Resolution of 1940 on the basis that India’s Muslims were a ‘separate nation’.227 In giving a territorial expression to the Muslim assertion of nationhood, Mohammed Ali Jinnah explained that the cultural distinctiveness of Islam constituted the rationale for a separate nation-state of ‘Pakistan’.228 He asserted that there were two nations in India, Hindu and Muslim, demanding the creation of two essentially ‘sovereign states’, Pakistan and Hindustan. The Muslimmajority areas in north-west and north-east India as well as parts of the Punjab and Bengal constituted the battleground for ‘Pakistan’.229 The differences between Hindus and Muslims in India, Jinnah contended, were not merely religious, but entirely different ways of life and thought. The two communities were ‘distinct peoples, with different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures, and histories’.230 ‘Islam and Hinduism’, he argued, ‘are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are in fact different and distinct social orders. . . . [T]hey belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions’.231 Jinnah claimed that it was for more than a thousand years that the bulk of Muslims in India had lived in ‘a different world, in a different society, in a different philosophy and a different faith’.232 As such, it was inconceivable that Muslims could live as a ‘minority’ in a ‘Hindudominated’ India as a nation. Rather, they must have a state of their own in which they would ‘establish their own constitution and make their own laws’.233 In insisting on an absolute national status for Muslims who were entitled to a separate and sovereign state, Jinnah contended that India was a geographical and, at best, an administrative rather than a political unity: India’s sovereignty was ‘divisible and negotiable’.234 The threat of a contested sovereignty was in a deep conflict with the Congress’s theory of a ‘composite nation’ based on an indivisible and non-negotiable sovereignty for ‘one nation’ – India.235 Paradoxically, India to Hindutva was a ‘one nation’, too – a ‘Hindu nation’ – on the basis that it was the ‘sacred land of Hindus’ who had to ‘acquire discipline in order to maintain their ancient culture and civilisation’: India belonged to Hindus.236

Conclusion V.D. Savarkar discovered Hindutva, a fusion of ‘Hindu identity’ and nationalism, as a study of the threatening ‘other’, Muslims, in the early 1920s when an anti-colonial struggle had been launched in India. Not a believer in God but a rationalist himself, he wrote Hindutva – articulating the claim that Hindus constituted a ‘nation’ that had originated from the ‘Vedic past’.237 The Aryans who had settled along the River Indus at the dawn of history in the Vedic age formed a ‘nation’, embodied in Hindus.238 A conflict within Indian society had resulted from a decadence that was ascribed to the Muslim invasions of India in the tenth century. The ‘Hindu identity’ was formed through a conflict with the ‘non-self ’:

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Islam.239 Hindus and Muslims were mutually exclusive and antagonistic categories, constituting the binary ‘self ’ and ‘non-self ’/‘other’.240 India’s history became an endlessly repeated tale of ‘aggression’ by the Muslim conquerors and a ‘resistance’ by Hindus.241 The conflict with Islam had defined ‘Hindu identity’ and constituted Hindus into a ‘nation’.242 The ‘enemies’ of India were Muslims, Christians, and communists – whose inclusion in the nation was premised on their assimilation to ‘Hindu culture’ and their acceptance of the social and political centrality of Hindu interests.243 To Hindutva, Indian nationality or nationhood did not depend so much on the territory as on the ‘unity of race and culture’.244 The territorial concept of the Indian nation as championed by the Congress was explicitly rejected, as India was culturally defined as a ‘nation’.245 Hindutva defined a ‘Hindu’ as one who inherited the blood of the race of the Vedic-Aryan forefathers and who claimed its culture as one’s own, with India becoming both a ‘fatherland’ and a ‘holyland’.246 The non-Hindu minorities – Muslims and Christians – could not be incorporated into the Indian nation, as India was not their ‘holyland’.247 India was envisaged as a Hindu rashtra to be governed by a ‘Hindu majority’.248 With its exclusionary construction of a ‘Hindu nation’, Hindutva furthered a discourse about the Muslim ‘other’ as the ‘enemy’ of the Indian nation.249 There were several structural strands inherent in Hindutva narrative, which articulated an extremely radical and exclusivist ‘Hindu majoritarian state’, in effect becoming an apologia for the ‘two-nation’ theory of the 1940s.250

6

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’

The Hindu Mahasabha showed an ideological commitment to strengthen the Hindu community through sangathan [Hindu unity], which was viewed as a means of national ‘regeneration’ in the face of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘emasculation’ perpetrated by the British on Indians in the early twentieth century.1 Sangathan narrative was pervaded by the representation of ‘masculinity’ and ‘physical strength’ as the chief ideals of a ‘Hindu nation’ in resistance to the colonial prejudice that Indians were ‘cowardly’ and ‘weak’.2 It configured ‘Hindu masculinity’ by emphasising the martial prowess, physical strength and patriotic fervour of Hindus as a defence against the image of the ‘powerful’ British in India.3 Nonetheless, the emphasis on ‘Hindu masculinity’ was not merely a resistance to British rule, but a product of the new and changing context – the conflict with Muslims.4 The Mahasabha’s ideology was driven in part by an urge to overcome the perceived weakness by expunging the ‘Muslim other’; and its hostility was far more deeply entrenched against Muslims, the ‘enemy within’, than the British.5 It carried out a hostile propaganda, homogenising and stigmatising Muslims as a ‘historical enemy’ of the Indian nation.6 This chapter analyses the process by which national ‘regeneration’ through ‘Hindu masculinity’ and militancy became a central symbol of sangathan narrative and was transformed into an anti-Muslim propaganda in the United Provinces in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ideal of ‘Hindu masculinity’ The ideal of ‘Hindu masculinity’ was anchored within the Hindu Mahasabha’s vision of a ‘Hindu nation’, remaining central to its interpretation of sangathan narrative.7 Sangathan’s ideal of masculinity stressed ‘physical strength’ as an essential element in rebuilding the Indian nation.8 A strong body was the precondition for a healthy nation; and the ideal Indian male was represented as a ‘virile, physically strong and ardent nationalist’.9 The notion of freedom as well as swadeshi [self-help] was embedded within the context of ‘manliness’ – defined by physical strength, martial prowess, athleticism, and chivalry.10 To sangathan, the nation and ‘manliness’ reinforced each other, placing the muscular body at the centre of nation-building.11 The recuperation of masculinity lay at the heart

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of a quest for ‘national strength’ in the face of oppressive British rule and its stereotypes, which conflated the ‘effeminacy’ of Indians and a lack of ‘martial prowess’.12 The British criticised Indians for being ‘physically weak, morally soft, effeminate, and lacking in Victorian masculinity’.13 The ‘effeminacy’ of Indians was defined by the trait of feeble bodies – a result of little vigorous exercise, an excessive bookishness, a propensity for mercantile occupations – which supported deceit, manipulation, and dishonesty and betrayed a lack of patriotism.14 The physical organisation of a Hindu, proclaimed T.B. Macaulay, ‘is feeble even to effeminacy. . . . His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movement languid.’15 The Indian ‘racial inferiority’ was linked to the traits of passivity, uncontrolled sexuality, emotionality, and physical weakness, all deriving from the country’s ‘tropical climate’.16 The state drafted the newly defined ‘martial races’ into its reorganised armies after the revolt of 1857 in order to combat ‘weak elements’ in the Indian military, revealing an explicit racism embedded in the British gendered vision of India.17 It constructed the ‘martial races’ – a distinction shared by the Marathas, the Sikhs, the Pathans, the Jats, and the Rajputs – in terms of a ‘masculine, aggressive and virile’ image in contrast to the ‘non-martial’ ones – the ‘effete’ Bengali or the mercantile vaishya [trader] – who were barred from the army.18 In hierarchies constructed by the imperial project in opposition to the ‘effeminate’ colonial ‘other’, British rule in India was shaped by the typology of hegemonic masculinity based on ‘Christian manliness’, drawing upon traits such as military heroism, discipline, and martial prowess.19 The British image of Indians as ‘effeminate’ and ‘effete’ had triggered the nationalist response from various leaders and reformers, who sought to reinvigorate the Indian nation through the revival of interest in the muscular body, physical culture, wrestling, and athleticism.20 Physical culture and discipline offered a utopian vision of nationalism that made the body, the masculine physique, the primary object of India’s struggle to combat the colonial state and it bias of ‘Christian manliness,’ which had offered an apologia for English rule in India.21 The nationalist debate on manliness sought to resist colonial ‘effeminisation’, emphasising patriotism and military courage as potent traits in nationbuilding.22 In nationalist vision, Indians were to become ‘brave, self-confident, able-bodied and strong citizens’ in order to create a healthy and dynamic nation of ‘self-rule’.23 The driving sentiment behind the nationalist urge was patriotic, the past heroism being recalled or invented to inspire the Indian nation.24 In the construction of India’s past, nationalist narrative offered the stories of Kashtriya and Rajput valour and of national resistance to Muslim and British rule in search of ‘historical heroes’.25 One of the most common Vedic prayers invoked was for ‘manly, heroic [vira] sons’, who were needed not merely to ‘care for the herds, but bring honour to the fathers and tribes’ in a battle.26 The ideal of hegemonic masculinity ordering the intersections of gender/armed masculinity and the nation was central to nationalist narrative, which had become the proponent of a ‘strong nation’ in India.27 Sangathan narrative appropriated the reformist nationalist discourse in a drive to build India’s national ‘renewal’, envisioning an ancient, virile, unified

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 81 Hindu community striving to eradicate the country’s past ‘humiliations’ inflicted by the British.28 The ‘warrior soldier’ and the ‘warrior monk’ were two dominant representations of ‘Hindu masculinity’ as a potent metaphor that expressed a strong and powerful Indian nation in an anti-colonial contestation.29 The ideals of masculinity and male bodies determined sangathan narrative, establishing a link between the nation and hegemonic masculinity in various cultural milieus – a vision that provided a powerful self-representation based on an ideological cohesion of Hindus around a ‘martial, muscular’ ideal.30 A ‘self-controlled, healthy and strong nation’ would have the necessary moral fibre for self-rule; and athletic rhetoric and metaphors were used to portray an image of the state as ‘fit, virile and heroic’.31 Sangathan repeatedly asked Hindus to avenge past humiliation, regain courage and become warriors as a proud ‘Indian race’.32 Its notion of a resurgent ‘Hindu nation’ based on the principles of physical training had valued the building of muscular youth movements as a front line for swaraj [freedom] in India.33 Shuddhi was interpreted in terms of ‘masculine power’ – power for both the Hindu community and the nation, emphasising the need to draw in Rajputs associated with the culture of ‘kshatriya prowess’.34 The writings and tracts of the early twentieth century in the UP aimed primarily to inculcate a spirit of national pride and heroic history among the Hindu classes, constructing a past of ‘Hindu masculinity’.35 ‘The protection of [the] Hindu community,’ it was argued, ‘is the most important question at present. . . . We have to stop producing emasculated and weak Hindus. . . . We have to search for new ways to make the Hindu community powerful’.36 In ‘physique’, stated the Madhuri, ‘the Hindus are second to none . . . the physique of Hindus from the Punjab even matches those of Europeans’.37 An appeal for volunteers in 1923 urged that the ‘first requisite is that Hindu boys should be good athletes and not puny bone bags’.38 During the Janmasthami festival in 1925, the Hindu press in the UP published articles in all the special numbers, urging military spirit among Hindus; symbolic references in this model included Lord Rama and Hanuman of the Ramayana, who represented the evident ideal of ‘masculinity’.39 Krishna’s teachings to Arjun asking him to murder his kinsmen mercilessly were specially stressed.40 A speech reportedly made by Guru Gobind Singh was published, exhorting Hindus to bear arms and fight against the Muslim rulers.41 The ideal Hindu character was portrayed as ‘courageous’ and ‘strong’ – willing to fight for India’s freedom.42 The heroic Rajputs and the Sikhs became the common ancestors of Hindus, particularly in a celebration of national resistance to British rule.43 Maharana Pratap, Raja Chattrasaal, and Amar Singh Rahtore – who had resisted the Mughal armies – became the icons of a chivalrous ‘Hindu past’.44 Shivaji and the Marathas captured Hindu nationalist imagination as the models of a ‘militant, aggressive’ Indian nation, embodying selfless activism and heroism in the cause of freedom.45 Sangathan constructed an oppositional masculine identity, one built with Hindu symbols and icons, to resist the ‘effeminisation’ of Indians and the British rejection of Indian demands for self-rule, drawing upon indigenous martial traditions, heroes and values of militarism.46

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The Hindu Mahasabha’s sangathan project emphasised ‘virility’ and ‘masculinity’ as the chief ideals of a ‘Hindu nation’.47 It actively promoted the ideal of defence of ‘community and nation’, reinforcing notions about a ‘Hindu nation’ built on ‘physical strength’.48 Swami Shraddhananda advocated the necessity of physical culture as part of sangathan in an attempt to create a ‘fighting class’ among Hindus.49 He proclaimed the virtues of eating meat and prescribed a diet rich in meat for the development of ‘military skills’ and ‘physical valour’.50 Early marriages and conception, he explained, led to physically weak children in India – hence a ‘source of weakness’ for the Hindu race. In contrast to the conventional lower minimum age for Hindu marriage, he urged the application of Swami Dayananda’s prescription of 25 years for males and 16 years for females in order to produce ‘strong men’ in India.51 The Hindu community was to be a community of ‘militant and masculine’ men built in the image of ‘kshatriya’ values.52 B.S. Moonje explained that Hindus must acquire masculine virtues and aggressiveness, which they had lost through ‘colonial subjugation’ in India.53 V.D. Savarkar evoked the vision of ‘masculine Hinduism’ – an ‘aggressive and violent’ faith – and of the Indian nation as an Aryan ‘warrior culture’ marked by ‘political virility’ and ‘martial prowess’, attacking the colonial critique of Indian ‘effeminacy’ – the lack of a ‘martial spirit’ or the absence of ‘patriotism’.54 Hindus were a ‘martial race’, he emphasised, with a history of great men who had shown the path of ‘manliness’ in the face of Muslim and British aggression.55 The British conquest could be explained by the degeneration of a once powerful and mature ‘masculine Hinduism’, which had reached its zenith during Maratha rule under Shivaji but was vanquished due to ‘adverse circumstances’.56 A strong, unified, militarised ‘Hindu nation’ would imminently awaken to realise her ‘martial spirit’ and reassert herself.57 ‘It is in this spirit,’ Savarkar declared, ‘that I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race. . . . Let . . . our Hindu Nation shall prove again as unconquerable’.58 M.S. Golwalkar asserted that ‘Hindus, grown weak, must become strong again if they are to protect their women, their property and their rights’. The world understood ‘nothing but the language of strength’; the ‘true dharma’ [religion] was the ‘kshatra [warrior] dharma’.59 To sangathan, ‘strength’ was a decisive category, potent enough to make Hindus virile and help correct the instances of ‘slight, injury, or persecution’ inflicted by the British.60 The ideal state of nationhood, implicitly a ‘Hindu nation’, could be realised through the cultivation of strength, physical and spiritual; and masculinity was seen as ‘immutable and natural’.61 In the Mahasabha’s construction of a nation, the emphasis on physical strength linked rejuvenated masculinity to weapons and violence, equating the revitalisation of the Indian nation with the resurrection of an imagined ‘past masculinity’.62 Akharas In the 1920s and 1930s, Hindu nationalism became explicitly linked to physical training practised through akharas [wrestling gymnasiums], which had promoted

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 83 body building in order to create ‘strong and heroic’ men in India.63 Physical fitness, an essential element of masculinity, was promoted by stick and sword exercises together with wrestling.64 In the UP, Hindu organisations and mercantile notables had made financial donations for the establishment of akharas as a form of expression of ‘Hindu power’.65 The akharas proliferated in Banaras, Gorakhpur, and Lucknow as the centres of physical culture, wrestling, sword and club wielding, and lathi [staff] fighting.66 An estimated 13 Hindu akharas staged displays of arms and drills with 300 participants in the towns of the UP in late 1923.67 About ‘150 Hindus in nine akharas learnt swordsmanship and wrestling in Allahabad in one week’ in 1923.68 Over 5,000 were involved in the display of swordsmanship in Allahabad in 1924.69 The akharas placed primacy on celibacy [brahmacharya] – a practice which aimed to develop and maintain power [shakti] in semen and enhance ‘masculine strength’.70 They became the basic units of mobilisation for a collective action by Hindu volunteer corps – the Bhimsen Dal, the Abhimanyu Dal, and the Mahabir Dal – which had emerged in the towns of the UP, particularly Banaras and Kanpur.71 Popular self-assertion by the lower castes [shudras] in the akharas and their active participation in festivals imparted a ‘martial and militant’ image to Hinduism.72 The akharas were often in conflict with the state and suspected by the British as ‘dangerous societies’, which hatched ‘plots’ and had as their object the ‘corruption of youth and spread of revolutionary ideas’.73 Neighbourhood akhara-based conflicts overlapped with local Hindu–Muslim rivalries over jobs or land; the akharas at times became the basis for gangs to operate during the clashes of violence as revealed by the implication of akhara members in the Kanpur riot of 1931.74 Crucially, the akharas were implicitly viewed as the centres of ‘revitalisation’ and ‘salvation’ for Hindu society, emphasising physical culture as a means of promoting the values of citizenship and self-development for a strong Indian nation.75 The Hindu Mahasabha adopted the akharas as the centres of building Hindu ‘strength and power’, defining the aspects of physical culture in the framework of sangathan narrative.76 It drew its drive for akhara promotion from the Indian National Congress, which had pioneered prabhat pheris [drills in groups held each morning] – the earliest form of nationalist mobilisation – in order to strengthen the Indian nation physically and spiritually in the freedom struggle.77 At the centre of the Mahasabha’s discourse lay the programme of wrestling and gymnastics, which were practised in the akharas with an emphasis on the glorification of India’s military and religious heroes and ‘selfless service’ to the nation.78 The organisation of the akharas and physical fitness troupes was among the most popular activities undertaken by the local Hindu Sabhas in the UP.79 The formation of akharas and armed volunteer armies was defended as a vital means of building India’s ‘national strength’.80 M.M. Malaviya proposed a programme to establish akharas and local volunteer corps in order to protect Hindus during riots in the country.81 At the Mahasabha’s Banaras session in 1923, he urged the building of a small Hanuman temple and an akhara in every village and mohalla [urban quarter] of India.82 He viewed wrestling as a means of ‘national reform’, insisting that Hindus should ‘establish akharas, listen to the

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Mahabharat and the Ramayan and learn to become fighters’ in India’s struggle for freedom.83 The Mahasabha proposed to establish an All India Central Athletic Association, which would ‘organise competitions and plan measures for improving the health of the youth of the country’.84 It resolved that samaj sewak dals [community service corps] were to be formed on the model of akharas in every village and town for the ‘social service of the Hindu community and its protection’ when necessary.85 Lajpat Rai made the formation of akharas an integral part of the sangathan project as Mahasabha president in 1925.86 In the UP, the Hindu Sabhas propagated Hindu unity and consolidation, urging physical fitness and military training in the cause of India’s freedom.87 The UP Hindu Sabha had established the Lajpat physical training camp in Ghazipur; and the Agra Hindu Sabha planned to form physical training centres under the guidance of Harihar Rao Deshpande in different parts of the province in the early 1920s.88 In 1928 N.C. Kelkar proposed that Hanuman be regarded as the presiding deity of Hindus, and that the Mahasabha encourage the formation of local sports clubs and gymnasiums in order to revive the strength of Hindus in the country.89 Evidently, the new constitution adopted by the Mahasabha at its Ahmedabad session in December 1937 had pledged to ‘improve the physique of Hindus and promote martial spirit’ by establishing military schools and volunteer corps in India.90 The Mahasabha emphasised military valour and training as an integral part of sangathan, urging Hindus to whip up military enthusiasm for the promotion of Hindu strength and power in India.91

Muslims – the ‘historical enemy’ The Hindu Mahasabha’s discourse on building masculinity as well as physical strength as a path to India’s national ‘renewal’ had become an expression of not merely resistance to British rule, but a perceived need for defence against the Muslim ‘other’.92 Islam was the ‘enemy’; the ‘other’ of the Indian nation was not the British but Muslims.93 Sangathan was situated in a conflict with Islam, assiduously promoting an exclusionary ‘Hindu self ’ defined in opposition to the Muslim ‘other’.94 The Mahasabha advocated the construction of an exclusionary, strong, warlike and unified nation as separate from the Islamic ‘other’, conflating the denunciations of ‘weakness and cowardice’ of Hindus with the images of ‘cruel’ and ‘demonic’ Muslims.95 Hindu organisations increasingly campaigned to create a self-image of the Hindu community being at war over the ‘aggression and rapacity’ of Muslims – the ‘enemy within’ – in the UP in the 1920s.96 Hindus were urged to develop ‘physical strength’ so as to protect their temples and women from the ‘insults they are subject to every day’ by Muslims.97 Hindus gave in too easily, it was argued, so that Muslim rowdies [thugs] could ‘oppress’ them.98 Pandit Devaratan Sharma, Mahasabha general secretary, explained that Hindus had physically and numerically degenerated and could not resist Muslims physically; they were in turn ‘dying in greater numbers due to physical liquidation’ in riots, as evident particularly in Kohat, Saharanpur and Malabar.99 B.S. Moonje explained that Hindus had to organise themselves to ‘defend their

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 85 country – if not with swords then at least with lathis’ – against Muslims.100 Muslims had the ‘virile vigilance with which they protect their racial interests . . . which, alas, is visibly lacking in the present-day Hindu race’.101 Moonje attributed ‘Muslim virility, their readiness to kill and to be killed’ to the diet of meat and the Islamic practice of sacrifice, urging the rehabilitation of the ‘Vedic institution of yajnathag’ [animal sacrifice] that would accustom a Hindu to the sight of spilling blood and killing.102 The aim was to remove ‘docility and mildness’ from the temper of Hindus and prepare them to counter the ‘aggressiveness’ of Muslims.103 The basis of ‘our free and prosperous national life,’ M.S. Golwalkar emphasised, ‘is invincible national strength . . . that will strike terror into the hearts of aggressive powers’.104 Military-style training was central to the protection of the Hindu community, which could not become strong unless it was ‘fanatical’ enough to ‘confront Muslims effectively’.105 Evidently, the Mahasabha’s celebration of ‘manliness’ and ‘physical strength’ expressed in the ties of the larger Hindu community through sangathan had manifested itself in the recurrent outbreak of anti-Muslim riots and violence in the UP.106 Sangathan’s anti-Muslim hostility had deepened and spread to social and political issues through a multiplicity of narratives by the 1920s and 1930s.107 The unity of the Indian nation was feared to be under a threat due to the ‘moral and social degeneracy’ of Muslims.108 M.M. Malaviya explained that in every instance Muslims were the ‘aggressors’, and Hindus the victims of ‘horrible inhumanities’. The culprits of violence were not ‘good and gentle Mohammedans’, but ‘rogues, vagabonds and bad elements’ of Muslim society.109 The most striking expression of the Hindu ‘moral decline’, he stressed, was the failure of Hindus to defend their own religion and their reluctance to lay down their lives for ‘Hindu dharm’ [religion] against ‘Muslim attacks’.110 B.S. Moonje asserted that the fight for freedom was against not merely the British but Muslims, the ‘internal aggressors’ – a continuation of the struggle which had been initiated by Prithviraj Chauhan when the ‘Hindu Raj, culture, and religion was [sic] first assailed under the Muslim impact’.111 Hindus, he argued, should not act on the ‘law of love’ in their relations with Muslims, but convert ‘Hindustan into a Hindu home’.112 Swami Shraddhananda portrayed Islam as a religion of ‘murder, theft, slavery, and perverse sexual acts’, emphasising that Hindus should not participate in Muslim religious festivals, venerate Muslim pirs [saints], or visit Muslim shrines.113 The chief task of ‘national survival’ depended on the education of Hindus in the Hindu religion in order to counter the ‘threat of Islam’.114 V.D. Savarkar explained that the centuries of ‘cultural, religious and national antagonism’ lay in perpetuity between Hindus and Muslims in India.115 Muslims, he claimed, would not be loyal to India due to their ‘perfidy and fanaticism’ and had a ‘secret urge goading them to transform India into a Moslem state’.116 M.S. Golwalkar explained that Muslims had come to India as ‘invaders’, but ‘could not be driven out and remained a separate entity . . . [they] ruled as foreigners in this land’.117 They were an ‘internal threat’ and had schemed for the ‘enslavement of India’ for more than a millennium; and Islam was a ‘disruptive force’ in India.118 India was a ‘land of warfare’, Bhai Parmanand argued, as Muslims, the

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‘old enemies’, were bound by a religious duty to ‘convert Hindus’ to Islam.119 All the Muslims living in India, Ashutosh Lahiry, Hindu Mahasabha general secretary, declared, were not ‘true nationals’.120 Hindus had to resist the ‘aggressive policy’ of Muslims, ‘otherwise they would be ruined’.121 The Khilafat movement was portrayed as an act of ‘Muslim betrayal’, a proof of the ‘extra-national loyalties’ of Muslims who had the designs of ‘domination’ over Hindus in India.122 The ‘homogeneous’ Hindu community threatened from within by the presence of the Muslim ‘other’ had become a consistent political imagery in sangathan narrative.123 The development of an anti-Muslim hostility constituted a significant aspect of the formation of Hindu identity, with the stigmatisation of Muslims as an ‘internal enemy’ becoming central to sangathan narrative.124 A large body of Hindu propaganda portrayed Muslims as ‘fanatical and sinister’, determined to ‘desecrate Hindu religion and culture’ in India.125 Islam, born in Saudi Arabia in c. AD 622, was termed a ‘religion of slaughter’, of both animals and men, motivated by ‘brutality and sensuality’.126 It was ‘born of violence’ and would remain tied to a ‘religious warfare’, resulting in the ‘slaughter, forced conversion, enslavement and destruction’ of non-Muslims.127 Beneath the sanctioned brutality of a ‘holy war’ lay the concept of an ‘infidel’ – a person beyond the realm of Islam who ought to be ‘exterminated’.128 The Quran was charged with ‘bigotry’, and the Prophet Muhammad [c. AD 570–632] condemned as a ‘sensualist, a pleasure-seeker and a cheat’.129 Muslims were identified with ‘aggression’, being ‘bigots’ themselves incapable of receiving new ideas due to ‘superstition and prejudice’.130 They had inherited a doctrinal ‘inflexibility and fanaticism’ associated with Islam and had a propensity to ‘violence, secrecy and dominance’.131 A ‘residence of 2,000 years in India’, it was argued, had not succeeded in ‘divest[ing] Mahommedans of that prejudice and unkindness’, which were a ‘bar to all fellowship’ among the cultures.132 In contrast, the Hindu mind was characterised by a ‘spirit of . . . generosity, toleration . . . and love for all life’.133 Muslims, it was asserted, had caused the ‘ruin and destruction’ of Hindus as evident in the Kohat [NWFP] riots of 1924 when the latter were forced to ‘embrace Islam’.134 In a competing exclusionary nationalism, sangathan was ardently nationalist and revivalist, portraying Islam as an ‘alien faith’.135 Islam, an ‘occupying force’, was viewed as the history of a ‘foreign conquest’, its heritage remaining ‘external’ to the all-embracing ‘Hindu culture’ of India.136 In the UP Hindu publicists led a campaign, stigmatising Muslims as ‘cruel and prejudiced zealots’, bent upon spreading Islam through ‘force and aggression’.137 Diwan Chand, principal of Dayanand Arya Vedic College, Kanpur, attacked the ‘narrow-mindedness’ of Muslims, asserting that ‘real progress’ was impossible so long as their social customs were controlled by ‘religious beliefs’.138 Pandit Atmaram, from Aligarh, argued that Muslims were ‘responsible for the slaughter of cows’, and that they should be ‘turn[ed] . . . out of India’. The ‘beards and moustaches of the Muhammadans should be pulled and . . . their houses and shops . . . set one fire’. Hindus should ‘overcome the Muhammadans’.139 Mahasha Krishen, the proprietor of the Pratap, declared that Hindus

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 87 ‘could not ignore their rights in their fight for freedom’, and that ‘peace in the country would only be attained when other religions had been absorbed in Hinduism’.140 Aryavarta [the land of Aryans] belonged to Hindus, and Muslims were like ‘unwelcome guests in the land’.141 The Aryas would, it was asserted, ‘spread their religion all over the country and in time . . . convert the people of Mecca’.142 ‘Butchers will become cowherds’, ‘shuddhi will save the cows’, and ‘those who shouted Allah-o-Akbar will one day worship Ram and Krishan’.143 Muslim publicists Zafar Ali Khan and Khwajah Hasan Nizami, it was stated, would ‘cut off their beards and wear the Hindu tuft of hair’.144 It was declared that if not for the services rendered by the Arya Samamj, ‘cows would have disappeared and the “muck-eaters” would have preponderated everywhere’; the ‘kalma would have replaced the Gayatri’.145 The Aryas condemned all forms of Islam, urging that Muslims should be either expelled from India or converted to Aryanism.146 The publications of Vichitra Jivan and Rangila Rasul in 1923–1924, the Arya caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, had resulted in court disputes, unleashing a fierce campaign against Muslim ‘intolerance’ and ‘bigotry’.147 Swami Shraddhananda was assassinated in Delhi on 23 December 1926 by Abdur Rashid of Bulandshehar, who was hailed as a ghazi [holy warrior] in the Muslim press.148 The assassination grew into a fearful plot and stirred the Aryas to call for all Hindus to unite against attacks on the ‘Vedic religion’.149 Arya Samaj leaders Badrishah and Bhairo Singh were murdered in Bahraich and Mount Abu in an organised ‘Muslim conspiracy’ in 1927.150 The Aryan Conference in November 1927 asked the UP government to unearth the conspiracy behind the ‘murders’ of the Hindu leaders and initiate action against ‘Muslim threats’.151 An image of the ‘violence and immorality’ of Muslims – ‘wicked and ill-natured’ themselves – was actively portrayed in the propaganda of Hindu publicists, reinforcing sangathanist notions about ‘Muslim atrocities on Hindus’, their ‘historical treachery and oppression’ in India.152 History acquired a new narrative unity as a contested site in sangathan discourse, becoming a powerful idiom in the construction of Hindu identity.153 A recurrent motif of historical reading was ‘Muslim despotism’ as typified by the view that Islam was ‘intolerant’, and that its ‘aggression’ had begun with the Prophet Mohammad himself.154 Sangathan identified ancient India as a nation of ‘peace and dignity’, and medieval history as a narrative of a painful and problematic past – full of ‘decadence, defeat, division, and subjection’.155 It echoed the theory of a medieval decline that Muslim rule in India was a period of ‘despotism and anarchy’ resulting in the ‘misery and enslavement’ of Hindus over the centuries.156 The Central Asian armies of Timur [Tamerlane] swooped down through the Afghan passes to plunder the Punjab and in 1398 entered Delhi itself. The death and plunder of Delhi by Timur’s forces left ‘towers built high with the heads and ravaged bodies of Hindus’.157 More than a century later, Timur’s great grandson, Babur, returned to found the Mughal dynasty, providing a blueprint for ‘fanaticism and aggression’ as an archetypal Muslim.158 Babar’s grandson, Jalalud-din Muhammad Akbar [1542–1605], captured the entire north of India in the battle of Panipat on 5 November 1556 and established the Mughal empire, which

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was greater than that of either the Mauryas or the British.159 Mughal rule became a symbol of ‘power, cruelty, ferocity, and brutality’ throughout the seventeenth century.160 Aurangzeb was ‘a butcher of Hindus and had destroyed Hindu temples’ in order to build mosques, being an ‘anti-Hindu zealot’ himself.161 The Muslim rulers had carried out a systematic destruction of ‘Hindu religion and national honour, demolishing Hindu temples and places of pilgrimage and converting Hindus to Islam at the point of sword’.162 The ‘wounds in the heart’ were kept ‘green by the sight of a mosque’ that stood beside the sacred temple of Vishwanath in Varanasi, UP.163 The period of the Delhi Sultanate was a dreadful catalogue of ‘violence and oppression’ perpetrated on Hindus; ‘Sekandar [Sikander Lodi] destroyed temples’ and practised ‘plunder and religious fanaticism’.164 The entire Muslim period was categorised as the ‘dark age of unrelieved tyranny’, during which Hindu society and culture had suffered a ‘terrible fall’ – a fall into the depths of ‘slavery and foreign subjection’.165 It was a period of ‘evil, of denationalization of Hindus and of a great conflict’.166 The underlying ‘Islamic essence’ that played a constant role throughout history, M.S. Golwalkar explained, was the ‘same old tale of Islamic invasion . . . Massacres, devastation, destruction . . . violating all sacred places . . . and forced conversion . . . ever went in hand with the spread of Islam.’167 The ‘tyranny and destructiveness’ of the Muslim rulers resulting in attacks on Hindu society did not represent any efflorescence of a ‘composite culture’, or a ‘cultural synthesis’ as popularly believed. The bhakti movement, it was asserted, represented a cultural resistance to disarm Islam with a message that equality before God was as much part of Hinduism as it was of Islam, but not an attempt at ‘synthesis’.168 Historically, the ‘chaos and disruption’ of Muslim despotism in India had become a justification for British intervention and conquest in the eighteenth century.169 Compared with the ‘ruthless and oppressive’ Muslim tyrants who had perpetrated a ‘genocide of Hindus’, British rule with its ‘stability and order’ was ‘providential’ in its design, bringing about ‘liberation, peace and prosperity’ – a construction that denied the association of British rule with the ‘economic exploitation’ of India.170 National history predicated on the notions of ‘Muslim brutality’ was appropriated into sangathan narrative as a historical trope through a sectarian approach that had played a considerable part in the cultural or religious stigmatisation of Muslims, echoing a denunciatory attitude towards Islam.171 Sangathan questioned whether Hindu–Muslim unity was possible or desirable, stressing the need to exclude Muslims from India’s freedom struggle.172 Unity with Muslims was ruled out on the basis that the Islamic identification with the millat [supra-territorial Muslim community] bound by the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad had given Muslims a sense of ‘nationality’ [asabiyyat], as they ‘regard themselves as a separate nation and . . . [seek] special rights and privileges’.173 Islamic ‘universalism’ as well as its ‘extra-territorial allegiance’ was seen as ‘incompatible’ with ‘Indian nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ in India.174 Islam generated ‘unpatriotic’ ‘feelings’ among Muslims towards India as an ‘adopted homeland’, the affinity with the holy lands of the Arabian Peninsula being a bar to the notion of a common nationalism or a ‘participatory

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 89 175

citizenship’. The task of Hindu revival and liberation was interrupted by the British conquest, which had been made possible by the ‘co-operation’ of Muslims.176 Muslims ‘did not participate in the freedom struggle’; and Hindu– Muslim unity was ‘no longer necessary’ for the attainment of freedom.177 V.D. Savarkar declared that the Muslim community had become a ‘sincere supporter’ of the British, and that Islam as well as the Muslims was an ‘enemy’ of Indian nationalism.178 Lajpat Rai charged that Islamic sectarianism was instrumental in ‘Muslim co-operation’ with the British, and that the ‘opposition to self-rule’ of Sayyid Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh elite had become characteristically ‘antiHindu and pro-government’.179 The freedom movement had been frustrated and defeated due to the ‘separatist politics’ of the Muslim community, which had not accepted ‘our concept of India’ and was itself ‘not Indian’.180 Muslims, Bhai Parmanand explained, stood in the way of India’s united struggle against British rule due to their ‘separatist demands and conspiracies’, as they had ‘supported and sided with the British’.181 N.C. Kelkar insisted that Hindus wished not merely to attain ‘political freedom’ for India, but demanded to have their ‘proper share of it. . . . Swaraj will not be worth having if we . . . purchase it . . . [at] the loss of Hinduism itself.’182 Sangathan appropriated Indian nationalism as a Hindu ‘essence and virtue’, for nationalist awareness and patriotic sentiments were born of a ‘higher sensibility’, a ‘higher culture’ – possessed by Hindus alone.183 Muslims could not be awakened to the nationalist cause, as nationalism was ‘foreign’ to their ‘essential nature’.184 Sangathan denied the possibility of Muslim participation in India’s freedom struggle on the basis that Muslims could not be true ‘national citizens’ of the country.185 ‘Abductions’ of Hindu women In sangathan theory, the strength of Muslims was linked to ‘virility’ and ‘sensuality’ with all its negative connotations of ‘lust, lechery and debauchery’, casting the Hindu woman’s vulnerability and anxiety in terms of the presence of the hostile ‘other’.186 In the UP there was an organised campaign by Hindu publicists and Arya Samajists in the 1920s and 1930s about the ‘rape, abduction and kidnapping’ of Hindu women and children by Muslims and their ‘conversion’ to Islam; and fears were expressed about the protection of the domestic space, female honour and children.187 M.M. Malviya explained that the British had instigated Muslims to attack Hindus, claiming that the history of ‘abductions’ had begun since the 1906 Jamalpur riots in Bengal.188 In the UP, the rumours of kidnappings were widely reported in Agra, Pilibhit, Meerut and Unao between 1923 and 1927.189 Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s Urdu pamphlet Dae-i-Islam was linked to a conspiracy to ‘kidnap Hindu women and children’ as part of a plan to ‘convert one crore of Hindus to Islam’.190 At the annual anniversary meeting of the Arya Samaj in Moradabad in 1923, Murali Lal of Bulandshahr urged that every Hindu girl keep a dagger so that no Muslim could ‘dishonour’ her.191 The Hindu woman was not to limit herself to ‘self-protection’, but actually ‘commit violence’ by herself.192 The Meerut Hindu Sabha held a meeting in June 1924

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attended by some 2,000 to discuss the means of countering an ‘organised campaign by Muslims to kidnap and forcibly convert Hindu women’.193 The secretary of the Allahabad Hindu Sabha warned in July 1925 against the kidnapping activities of ‘Muslim goondas’ in the towns and villages of the UP.194 Hindus were urged not to allow their women and children to have any relations or dealings with Muslim traders, teachers and servants.195 Inevitably, a special connection was established between Hindu widows and Muslims, triggering fears that Hindu wombs were producing ‘Muslim progeny’ in India.196 Large numbers of Hindu widows, a sangathanist tract stated, were now ‘entering the homes of yavanas and mlecchas [Muslims], producing children for them and increasing their numbers’.197 ‘Our sexually unsatisfied widows especially are prone to Muslim hands and by producing Muslim children they increase their numbers and spell disaster for the Hindus’.198 The Hindu taboo against widow-marriage was attacked as a medieval practice that led to the ‘elopements’ of Hindu widows with Muslims, resulting in the ‘decline of the Hindu numbers’.199 Swami Shraddhananda proposed that all child widows be allowed to remarry, besides providing various remedies for unconsummated marriages and widowhood.200 The ‘abductions’ and ‘elopements’ evoked a centuries-long image of the ‘sexually powerful’ Muslim male and ‘Muslim debauchery’, revealing the vulnerability of the Hindu community in India.201 To sangathan, the values of womanhood – modesty, chastity, and moral purity – were inflected by a symbolic association with ‘Mother India’; and the woman as a heroic mother, a chaste wife, and a celibate warrior intersected the landscape of a ‘Hindu nation’.202 Woman symbolised national honour; any act like rape that defiled and violated her body became a political weapon aimed at destroying the Muslim ‘other’.203 An emphasis on the chastity of women and the control of female sexuality in Hindu society, particularly during the times of social turmoil, was viewed as a form of resistance to an outside world defined by the presence of the Muslim ‘other’.204 Hindu processional music Hindu revivalism became an aggressive force in the 1920s and 1930s, helping to consolidate sangathan narrative in the UP.205 Hindu festivals and celebrations sponsored by powerful Hindu mercantile classes and local notables had become increasingly strident and warlike in display, providing the context for Hindu revival in the ‘public arena’.206 Common participation in religious festivals and organisational activities brought diverse groups, particularly the lower castes [shudras], into the public arena and presented an image of the ‘martial prowess’ of Hinduism vis-à-vis Muslims.207 The lower caste participation in the festivals was a means of demonstrating the wider ‘Hindu unity’ and ‘physical prowess’ that set Hindus against Muslims in a perpetual combat.208 The ethos and celebration of festivals frequently became the arena for riots, targeting Muslim groups, in the towns of the UP.209 The dispute about music before mosques and the routes of religious processions was one of the principal reasons of the sectarian discord in the province in this period.210 The issue was whether Hindu processional music

Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 91 could be played outside mosques during the hours of namaz [Muslim prayer].211 The state’s avowed policy of ‘religious neutrality’ as stated in Queen Victoria’s proclamation of August 1858 was at variance with its search for ‘collaborators’ and ‘social control’; and religion became vital in the state’s political purposes, resulting in constant official intervention in religious and cultural disputes.212 In October 1924 quarrels over Hindu religious processions were followed by a riot during Ramlila in Allahabad, killing 12 people.213 The holding of a Muslim prayer [namaz] at Aminabad Park, Lucknow, resulted in a major riot in the city in 1924.214 The UP Hindu Sabha controlled by M.M. Malaviya had opposed any restrictions on Hindu religious processions, refusing to be bound by the decisions of the Delhi unity conference in 1924, which had reached agreement on the question of Hindu processional music.215 Repeated calls by the Muslim leaders – Maulana Vilayat Husain, Zahur Ahmad, and Badruddin – for a ‘five–ten minute’ break in music during evening prayers as a ‘compromise’ were rejected.216 In 1926 the Hindu Sabha attacked the UP government’s orders stopping music outside mosques in Allahabad, Lucknow, and Mussorie as an ‘unscientific and inequitable’ policy.217 The government was accused of ‘partiality’ to Muslims, who were allowed to ‘observe Moharram and Bakr-Id joyfully’.218 In March 1927 the UP government passed two orders, which were to be enforced in the absence of a clear evidence as to the existing practice: [1] that processions with music would not pass mosques, temples and churches during the hours of public worship; [2] and that in case of disputes whether a building came within the above categories, it would be referred to the district officer for a decision.219 However, the Hindu Sabha condemned the orders on the basis that Muslim opposition was not based on real ‘religious feelings’, but an outcome of a ‘communal fervour’.220 The demand for the stoppage of music on the basis of the shariat was attacked as ‘dangerous’ and ‘reprehensible’ – an ‘imposition’ on nonMuslims.221 The playing of Hindu processional music had often resulted in the display of ‘Hindu strength’, using the spectre of Muslim ‘strength and aggressiveness’ as a legitimising factor.222 The inflammatory propaganda of sangathanists over the issue of music deepened an anti-Muslim campaign, contributing to the outbreak of riots in the towns of the UP in the 1920s and 1930s.223

Conclusion In the early twentieth century, India became a realm where the British notions of ‘manliness’ and ‘masculinity’ were inextricably linked to imperial conquest and expansion. The British had categorised Indians as the effeminate ‘other’ by using a gender hierarchy rooted in ‘Christian manliness’, which was characterised by ‘martial prowess’ and ‘muscular strength’.224 The Indian nationalist elite resisted colonial categorisation by forging an oppositional armed ‘masculinity’ intersected with the idea of the nation, disseminating a discourse that had centred on enacting an aggressive defence of the national community.225 The concern for national ‘regeneration’ informed much of the nationalist narrative, which had prompted a search for a glorious ‘national past’.226 The masculinising project of

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the Indian nation asserted the ideal of India’s ‘martial prowess’ and ‘physical strength’ as a dynamic model of resistance to British rule, constructing a narrative based on the hegemonic masculinity of icons and historical figures from the indigenous tradition.227 Sangathan provided an ideological cohesion and selfrepresentation of Hindus by drawing upon the nationalist narrative of masculinity – a ‘martial, muscular’ creed – as the chief ideal of a ‘Hindu nation’.228 In opposition to the image of an ‘emasculated and effeminate’ Indian created by the British, it constructed ‘masculine Hinduism’, which had configured manhood by emphasising ‘martial prowess’, ‘physical strength’ and ‘patriotism’.229 To sangathan, India was to be energised by ‘masculine Hinduism’, which signified martial prowess, military strength, and unquestioning patriotism to the nation.230 The Hindu Mahasabha stressed masculine virtues and the recovery of the martial heritage of Hindus as the basis of sangathan’s project for a strong ‘Hindu nation’.231 It adopted the akharas as part of the sangathan programme, stressing the need to make the Hindu body vigorously ‘masculine’ and ‘virile’ embodying the national integrity and strength of India.232 However, the Mahasabha’s fundamentally Hindu characterisation of physical strength conceived to rejuvenate the Indian nation had taken shape in defence against not merely the British but Muslims.233 The battle was waged far more stridently in contestation against Muslims, seen as ‘warlike and fanatical’, than British rule.234 To sangathan, Hinduism and Islam were the ‘mutually exclusive’ religious categories locked in a battle, being closely tied in with the explanations of conflicts and antagonism in India.235 It denounced the notion of Hindu–Muslim unity as the essential basis of India’s struggle for freedom.236 It focused on the Muslim male, depicting him as a ‘rapist’, an ‘abductor’, and an ‘immediate threat’ to Hindu society.237 The Hindu community was mobilised over the ‘abductions’ of Hindu women – a campaign visualised as an effort to reinvigorate Hindu society and family; violence against Muslims became a necessary condition of redeeming Hindu ‘male honour’.238 Crucially, Hindu festivals became the occasions for militant Hindu resurgence, demonstrating hostility against Muslims in the towns of the UP in this period.239 In particular, the Muslim grievances over Hindu processional music outside mosques had become a thorny issue, defying a settlement due to sangathanist resistance and propaganda.240 To sangathan, Muslims had become a common element of ‘danger’ to Hindus, more so in view of an intensifying anti-Islamic campaign, in the towns of the UP by the 1920s and 1930s.241

7

The militarisation of Hindu society

The Hindu Mahasabha had transformed itself as the most successful and articulate institutional voice of Hindutva by the 1930s, attempting to define and defend a ‘Hindu nation’ with military training. Hindutva was not merely a means of Hinduising the polity but of ‘militarising Hindus’ in India.1 The Mahasabha launched a militarisation programme in order to create an assertive militant Hindu community as part of sangathan narrative in the late 1920s.2 The new emphasis on the need to strengthen and militarise Hindu society dominated its ideology as the basis of a Hindu ‘political identity’.3 The Mahasabha’s militaristic policy became radicalised under V.D. Savarkar’s leadership in the late 1930s, deepening an anti-Muslim orientation in view of the wider sectarian propaganda in north India.4 In Hindutva narrative, only the Mahasabha could fight for India’s freedom, a notion that shaped its vision of the military reorganisation of Hindu society in the country.5 This chapter explores the Mahasabha’s militarisation project, which was fundamental to its conception of the emergence of a ‘Hindu nation’ based on military power in India.

Hindu militarisation The Hindu Mahasabha was inspired by a sangathanist goal to unify and strengthen Hindus and resurrect a ‘Hindu nation’, demonstrating the ethic of militarism in its communitarian narrative.6 Its objective was to build a strong ‘nation of Hindus’ – a ‘moral integration’ in which no other elements came between the nation and the community.7 It relied on the organisation of Hindu society through service to the people as part of a narrative on national ‘renewal’ and ‘reorganisation’.8 The Mahasabha’s militarisation programme was pioneered by Dr Balkrishna Shivram Moonje [1872–1948], a sangathanist intellectual, who had worked in the Boer War, South Africa, as an officer in the medical corps before returning to join India’s nationalist politics in the 1910s.9 He was B.G. Tilak’s most trusted political associate in the Indian National Congress in Marathi districts of the Central Provinces [CP].10 He later became an influential anti-Gandhi critic, launching the Nagpur Hindu Sabha in 1923 and subsequently the Hindu Sabhas in all the three parts of the CP to counter the influence of the Gandhian Congress.11 Moonje had retained a close association with the royal

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family of Bhonsles, Nagpur, in whose armies his forefathers had served.12 In the Central Legislative Assembly in the 1920s he demanded that a greater number of Indians should be given military training and recruited in India’s defence services, stressing the need to ‘Indianise’ the army.13 In 1926 the Skeen committee validated Moonje’s demand, proposing a ‘substantial and progressive Indianisation’ of the army based on an increase in places for Indians at the Royal Military Academy [RMA], Sandhurst, England, from 10 to 20 in 1928 and the addition of four places for Indians each year until 1933. The army would be ‘half-Indianised by 1952’!14 Moonje’s militarisation programme was influenced in part by Italian fascism, which had strengthened his goal towards the military training of Hindus in India.15 He visited important military schools in Italy as part of his Europe tour after attending the first round table conference in London from 12 November 1929 to 19 January 1930.16 He visited the Military College, the Central Military School of Physical Education, and the Balilla and Avanguardist organisations in Rome in March 1931.17 The Balilla institutions organised the military training and fascist indoctrination of boys from the age of 6 up to 18.18 In his meeting with Mussolini on 19 March 1931 in Rome, Moonje revealed the Hindu Mahasabha’s commitment to the introduction of militarisation in India. ‘During the British Domination of the last 150 years,’ he explained, ‘Indians have been waived away from the military profession but India now desires to prepare herself for undertaking the responsibility for her own defence and I am working for it.’19 Moonje’s central aim was to demonstrate ‘Hindu strength’ on the model of the Italian fascist movement by introducing militarisation in India.20 His worldview as well as ideology was determined by an extreme fixation for war and militarism, which had become definitive of sangathan narrative.21 In the early 1930s, Moonje initiated a military reorganisation of Hindu society by creating Hindu paramilitary organisations and youth movements in Maharashtra, western India.22 He worked for the foundation of aeroclubs and rifle clubs in the province under the auspices of the Hindu Mahasabha.23 He founded the Central Hindu Military Education Society in the Hindu pilgrimage city of Nasik built on the River Darna, Maharashtra, in 1935, which had aimed to train Hindu youths in the ‘science and art of personal and national defence’.24 He subsequently started the Bhonsle Military School in Nasik in June 1937, which was inaugurated by the Scindias of Gwalior in March 1938.25 The Bhonsles, after whom the school was named, were the first to contribute the funds, as were the Holkars of Indore, the Gaekwads of Baroda, and the Maratha states of Dewas and Dhar.26 The Bhonsle Military School, dedicated to instilling in its cadets the power of ‘military knowledge’, aimed to impart physical and martial education to Hindu youths based on ‘recruitment from all the provinces of India’; it exists today as the Bhonsle Military Academy.27 As the Mahasabha’s working president in the period 1927–1933, Moonje demonstrated a strong commitment to the introduction of military education by mobilising support for the scheme.28 The militant idiom became gradually embedded in the Mahasabha’s programme, focusing on ‘Hindu identity’ and ‘political dominance’ in India.29

The militarisation of Hindu society 95 The Hindu Mahasabha’s militarisation programme was intensified as an ideological doctrine under the leadership of V. D. Savarkar in the late 1930s.30 The anti-imperialist thrust of India’s freedom struggle and the revolutionary phase in Maharashtra’s history had a deep impact on Savarkar.31 A major influence on his thinking was the writings of B.G. Tilak and S.M. Paranjpe, both revolutionary nationalists who had theorised a fierce critique of British rule in India. Tilak, an icon of popular Hindu consciousness and, like Savarkar, a Chitpavan Brahman from Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, had legitimised the use of violence in the antiBritish struggle, celebrating ‘armed aggression’, initiated for ‘public welfare’, as an ‘ethical’ creed.32 In the Srimad Bhagavadgita-Rahasya [The Secret Meaning of the Bhagavad Gita], or Karma Yoga Shastra, written by him in Marathi in 1915, Tilak read the Gita in political and activist terms, giving prominence to the doctrine of activism [karma yoga] which had become a rallying cry for Indians to fight the British by violence, if necessary, as a means of freedom.33 The Gita Rahasya essentially reiterated the ethical relativism propounded by Tilak, justifying violence as a means of ‘social action’ for ‘public welfare’ if pursued for a higher ‘national goal’.34 An architect of anti-British political agitation and a foremost exponent of violence, Tilak was far too radical in his critique of British rule, rejecting the gradualist political advance and ‘mendicant’ methods of the Congress in the struggle for India’s freedom.35 He was sentenced to six years’ transportation in Mandalay jail, Burma, following a trial in July 1908 for ‘sedition’ and ‘revolutionary acts’ against the state, as his writings in the Kesari had allegedly led to the assassination of Walter Charles Rand, Poona plague commissioner, by Damodar Chapekar, a follower of Tilak, in July 1897.36 Tilak’s deportation and incarceration made him a political martyr in the eyes of nationalists, who had invested him with a new title ‘Lokamanya’ [revered by people].37 Savarkar, a Tilakite himself, adopted a political culture that combined nationalism with violence in the same vein as his mentor, putting faith in the efficacy of an armed revolution against the state.38 Dr Shivram Mahadev Paranjpe, a fiery opponent of British rule, editor of the extremist Marathi newspaper Kal [founded in 1898] and Tilak’s chief lieutenant, also exerted a profound influence on Savarkar.39 Paranjpe’s nationalist narrative hardened into an antiIslamic construct, claiming that when Mahamud of Ghazni had invaded India, the Indian nation became ‘weak’ and suffered a ‘social and political decline’, that the people were ‘converted from Hinduism to Islam’, and that Hinduism was the most ‘ancient and greatest religion’ in the world.40 The narrative of national pride evident in Paranjpe’s historical works focusing on the battles of the Marathas against the Mughals lay at the heart of Savarkar’s discourse on revolutionary nationalism.41 A firm believer in revolutionary insurrection against British rule, Savarkar was committed to the nationalist cause by advocating sedition, armed methods, and political assassination in India.42 In the 1880s and 1890s, new revolutionary societies – or melas – were organised in Maharashtra to rally support for the overthrow of the state through an armed rebellion.43 The societies had centred mostly in Poona and Nasik, functioning as the militant arms of Tilak’s anti-colonial crusade.44 Tilak’s links to the

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secret societies harbouring the notions of violence in hostility against the British had a deep impact on Savarkar.45 Savarkar and his older brother Ganesh Savarkar started the Mitra Mela, an underground revolutionary organisation, in Nasik in 1903, which had held meetings where members read the biographies of Shivaji and Ramdas and debated the means of attaining freedom for India.46 The Mitra Mela was active until June 1906 when Vinayak Savarkar left for England to study for barristership at Gray’s Inn, London; and it later became the Abhinav Bharat, or Young India Society – a title borrowed from Giuseppe Mazzini’s ‘Young Italy’ [Giovane Italia] movement.47 The Abhinav Bharat, dedicated to reviving Hindu pride and overthrowing British rule, discussed in its meetings ‘how the English could be driven out of India. . . . The means suggested were the collection of arms, killing Englishmen by arms or bombs . . . and not to mind the loss of fifteen natives if only one Englishman was killed.’48 Evidently, the intense anti-British activism propagated by the Abhinav Bharat had made it an immensely popular organisation among extremist nationalists, who regarded it as a revolutionary model for emulation in the struggle for India’s freedom.49 During his years in London, Savarkar had continued the revolutionary propaganda and activities against British rule in India.50 He drew his violent nationalism in part from Giuseppe Mazzini [1805–1872], the revolutionary icon of national liberation, who had developed the tactics of secret societies and guerrilla warfare in Italy.51 Savarkar’s revolutionary propaganda eventually led to the assassination of Lt. Col. Sir William Curzon-Wyllie, aide-de-camp at the India Office, London, by his follower Madanlal Dhingra in 1909.52 A.M.T. Jackson, district magistrate of Nasik, was later assassinated by Anant Laxman Kanhare, 17, an arts student, in Aurangabad in December 1909.53 The murder of Jackson revealed a much larger ‘revolutionary conspiracy’ linked to the Abhinav Bharat, which had ‘advocated, prepared for, and conspired to bring about an armed rebellion or revolution and . . . to overthrow the Government by criminal force or show of criminal force’ in India.54 The masterminds of the conspiracy were identified as the Savarkar brothers.55 In his confession to the trial court, Chutterbhuj Jhaverbhai Amin, of India House, London, admitted that Savarkar had instructed him to pack a parcel containing 20 Browning automatic pistols, plus ammunition during his travel to India from London in 1908; one of these pistols had been used in Jackson’s murder.56 Savarkar was charged in the Jackson murder trial and sentenced to transportation for life; he was imprisoned in the Cellular Jail of the Andaman Islands in 1910 and denied the barristership at Gray’s Inn, London.57 He appealed for clemency – first in 1911 and then again in 1913.58 He was finally released unconditionally in 1937 after 27 years in jail and did not participate in any anti-British agitation thereafter, transforming himself from a revolutionary nationalist to a staunch proponent of Hindutva.59 For the greater part of his life, Savarkar had been in the vanguard of a revolutionary campaign to end British rule in India, reiterating the necessity of an armed resistance and military methods – a doctrine that significantly contributed to the ideological development of militarism as a central tenet of the Hindu Mahasabha in the 1930s and 1940s.60

The militarisation of Hindu society 97 The militarisation drive had remained at the heart of sangathan narrative since Savarkar became the president in 1937 of the Hindu Mahasabha – an organisation dedicated to the political mobilisation of Hindus for a ‘ Hindu rashtra’ [nation].61 Savarkar viewed military power as the foremost goal of a ‘Hindu nation’: it was ‘steel and gun-powder’ that decided the destinies of nations.62 The organised state power was identified to be ‘martial and administrative’, with militarisation forming the essential basis of the state.63 Two military corps – the Hindu Swayam Sewak Dal and the Hindu Women’s Protection Corps – were organised during Savarkar’s presidentship in Nagpur in 1937, which had adopted military-style training in parts of Maharashtra.64 The aim was to create Hindu militancy and defend Hindus from ‘external and internal threats’ in India’s provinces.65 In 1939 the Mahasabha established a national militia, a uniformed youth corps, which had emphasised physical and military training for the ‘defence of Hindus’ in the country.66 B.S. Moonje declared at a meeting in Pune on 8 October 1939: ‘I have the pleasure in bringing to your notice a resolution of the Hindu Mahasabha for the organisation of the Hindu Militia in the country for the purpose of taking part in the defence of India both from external and internal aggression’.67 The Hindu Militia, known as the Ram Sena [Army of Ram], was inaugurated, despite British restrictions against military and paramilitary organisations, in Poona on 17 March 1940; Moonje was appointed its president for five years.68 Mahasabha secretarygeneral J.P. Verma later directed the Ram Sena’s operations, succeeded after his untimely death in July 1940 by V.G. Deshpande.69 The provincial Hindu Sabhas were instructed to enrol volunteers for the organisation of the Sena, which had pledged loyalty to the British and sought government support for the defence of ‘Hindu interests’ in anticipation of riots.70 Nonetheless, the Mahasabha’s most organised paramilitary organisation which had eventually eclipsed the Ram Sena was the Hindu Rashtra Dal; it was formed under the leadership of Nathuram Godse, a staunch loyalist of Savarkar, in Poona in 1942.71 The Rashtra Dal received the support of the ‘Tilakites’, labelled by the British as the ‘Kesari group’; it planned to assist the Mahasabha in its fight for the protection of the ‘Hindu religion and culture’ in the country.72 Crucially, the Mahasabha’s militarisation drive aimed to counter the ‘threat of Muslims’ through the organisation of Hindu militias, particularly during riots; and its core belief was that the attainment of an akhand Hindustan [united India] was possible only if Hindus were armed to fight for India’s freedom.73

Mahasabha and RSS Nexus The Hindu Mahasabha’s militarisation narrative was most clearly revealed in its close relations with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [National Volunteer Corps] – the RSS. The two organisations overlapped in ideology due to an affinity and common commitment to the establishment of a strong and powerful ‘Hindu nation’.74 A ‘major influence’ on the thinking of Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar [1889–1940], revered as the founding father of the RSS, was a ‘handwritten manuscript of. . . . Savarkar’s Hindutva which advanced the thesis that

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the Hindus are a nation’.75 ‘One of the early visitors to Savarkar in Ratnagiri was the great founder of the RSS. . . . The interview took place in [March] 1925 at Shirgaon, a village on the outskirts of Ratnagiri.’76 Before starting the RSS, Hedgewar had a ‘long discussion with Savarkar over the faith, form and future of the organization’.77 The RSS, which had a vision to infuse the Hindu community with new physical strength through military training, was established on the Vijaya Dashmi day in 1925 in Nagpur by Hedgewar.78 The inaugural meeting was attended by Dr B.S. Moonje, Dr L.V. Paranjpe, Dr B.B. Tholkar, and Ganesh Savarkar – all Tilakites and Mahasabhaites; and it focused on the ‘weakness’ of existing Hindu organisations and the role of Hindus in combating ‘Muslim violence’ in India.79 Hedgewar explained that the struggle against British colonialism lacked a ‘sense of moral purpose and Hindu nationalism’, and that the Indian National Congress had ‘no positive vision of a Hindu nation. . . . It is therefore the duty of every Hindu to do his best to consolidate Hindu society.’80 The RSS aimed to re-create a ‘nation ruled by Hindus’ by building a numerically small but devoted and efficient organisation of patriotic men who could provide leadership to the Hindu community in India.81 The RSS sought to impart a martial, masculine accent to the spiritual ideals of a good and virtuous behaviour [samskaras] as well as an ideological training [baudhik] through shakhas [branches] in north India.82 Hedgewar looked to akharas [wrestling gymnasiums] as a source to rally some of his first recruits in shakhas. ‘Go to the akharas,’ he said, ‘but come to the shakhas also.’83 He introduced the shakhas as the permanent units of the RSS first in Nagpur city in May 1926 and later in the villages and towns of Maharashtra.84 The shakhas were the centres dedicated to moulding swayamsevaks [RSS cadres] with a spirit of ‘devotion to the nation’.85 They aimed to teach Hindu men the ideals of ‘manliness’ necessary for the creation of ‘true patriotism’: discipline, martial prowess, and loyalty to the nation imagined as ‘Mother India’.86 To Hedgewar, a ‘total revolution of the Hindu attitudes, thought-processes and behaviour’ was required.87 ‘After all,’ M.S. Golwalkar explained, ‘nations stand only upon the solid foundation of their organized strength. . . . Then, what are the qualities required of individuals who will form the living limbs of such an organized strength? . . . The first thing is invincible physical strength’.88 The shakhas endeavoured to create new men – ‘patriotic selfless individuals loyal to the Hindu nation’ – who were physically well trained, manly, courageous, selfdisciplined and capable of organising Hindus in India.89 They concentrated on ‘physical exercise and cultivation of the mind’, besides acting as the ‘building blocks’ of RSS expansion in the country.90 The Sangh’s principle was that ‘only a purification of the self can deliver the ultimate national fullness’.91 Swayamsevaks, referred to as ‘Hedgewar’s volunteers’, took a life oath initiated in 1928 to consecrate themselves to the RSS with the ‘whole body, heart, and money, for in it lies the betterment of Hindus and the country’; and the ‘Hindu nation’ was viewed as the ‘living God’.92 The outcome of such character-building, Golwalkar emphasised, was a ‘dynamic devotion’ and ‘readiness to sacrifice our all for the protection of the freedom and honour of India. . . . Hindu society, whole and

The militarisation of Hindu society 99 integrated, should therefore be the single point of devotion for all of us.’93 In effect, the RSS had transformed itself as a cohesive and disciplined body of swayamsevaks and workers on the basis that they would have a ‘broad influence’ on many areas of Hindu national life in India.94 By the 1920s and 1930s, a fundamental Hindu characterisation of ‘physical culture’ by the RSS had largely shaped the formation of armed volunteer groups, which were defined in the framework of Hindu nationalism, in Maharashtra.95 The shakhas focused on practices such as discussion, exercise and communal eating, but accepted no knowledge of a swayamsevak’s ‘caste’ background.96 ‘[T]oday’, Hedgewar declared, ‘we have only one varna and jati, that is Hindu.’97 The discourse of the shakhas remained an effective method of disseminating the image of a robust ‘Hindu nation’, focusing on discipline and patriotism built through a militaristic training.98 Crucially, the RSS emphasised the need for an organised and united India represented by its valorisation of strength, martial power, and national glory – a notion that resulted in an open ‘hostility’ against Muslims.99 The Sangh was, Golwalkar explained, a ‘Hindu military organisation’ and could ‘meet and crush Muslim aggressors’.100 An ‘utmost secrecy’ was needed so that Muslims, the ‘enemies’ of the Sangh, could not gauge the organisation’s ‘physical strength’.101 In effect, the Sangh represented a more determined organisational effort to rise in self-defence against ‘Muslim threats’ to Hindu ‘life and property’ – with a commitment to create a ‘Hidu nation’ firmly rooted in a militaristic ideology.102 The Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS belonged to the same political milieu and militaristic background of the 1920s. The icons of Shivaji, the bhagwa dhwaj [saffron flag], and Shivaji’s guru Ramdas were prominent in the rituals of both organisations, suggesting a strong ‘militaristic tradition’.103 Shivaji, the Maratha hero, valued ‘strength and force’, believing that true religion could flourish only when the Muslim rulers were driven out of Maharashtra.104 Ramdas popularised the idiom of Maharashtra dharma, interpreted as a call to return to the ancient Vedic ‘golden’ age’.105 The bhagwa dhwaj – the ‘true guru’ to which Hedgewar demanded that obeisance be paid – rather than the tricolour was regarded as the true ‘national flag’ of India.106 ‘Gerva [saffron] Flag,’ Savarkar explained, ’shall be the Flag of the Hindu Nation. With its Om, the Swastik and the Sword, it appeals to the sentiments cherished by our race since the Vaidik days.’107 Historical figures such as Maharana Pratap and K.B. Hedgewar were portrayed as the ‘ideal Hindus’ who had realised the ultimate unity of the ‘Hindu nation’ and served as role models for Hindu ‘reawakening and renewal’.108 ‘Doctor Keshav Baliram Hedgewar’, Golwalkar explained, ‘burned like a steady lamp in the cause of the motherland . . . I feel it my proud privilege to worship him as my ideal. The worship of such a soul . . . becomes the worship of the ideal itself ’.’109 The Mahasabha and the RSS were centralised command structures, controlled respectively by the president and the sarsanghchalak [supreme dictator] who had wielded all the powers.110 The top leadership was not open to a democratic election, but appointed – revealing an authoritarian institutional secrecy which concealed internal workings and conflicts in order to project an image of ‘Hindu

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unity’.111 The British did not consider these organisations as ‘adversaries’ or proscribe them, as they had shown a clear disavowal of the Congress’s anti-colonial struggle and abstained from the Non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements in India.112 To them, the ideal of militant Hindu nationalism became central as part of a vision to propagate India as a ‘Hindu nation’ by constructing a ‘defensible and militaristic’ Hindu community.113 There was an organisational unity and ideological consensus between the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS.114 The RSS maintained an institutional affinity and continuity with the Mahasabha as a parallel Hindu movement, drawing support from the latter for its expansion and development in north India.115 In addition to the patronage of M.M. Malaviya, stated the British secret service, the RSS ‘owe[d] its growth to Dr Moonje and his journeys in the UP region’.116 B.S. Moonje, celebrated by the RSS as ‘Dharmaveer’ [hero in a religious struggle], had a prominent role in the formation of the RSS, being one of its five founding members and Hedgewar’ mentor. To Moonje, Hedgewar was perhaps the most loyal follower in Nagpur politics in the 1920s.117 When the Hindu Sabha was organised in Nagpur in 1923 under the presidentship of Raja Laxmanrao Bhonsle of Nagpur, Moonje became its vice-president and Hedgewar the secretary.118 As Mahasabha president, Moonje had played a crucial role in organising the RSS shakhas in Maharashtra and the Central Provinces, even though the organisation’s structure was the result of Hedgewar’s ‘vision and leadership’.119 Moonje explained: Our institution, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr Hedgewar is of . . . kind, though quite independently conceived. I shall spend the rest of my life developing and extending this institution of Dr Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra and other provinces.120 Admittedly, Moonje was instrumental in the expansion of the RSS as a ‘nationwide organisation’ in India, reinforcing a deeper commitment to militarisation discourse.121 The RSS’s links to the Mahasabha had served to introduce it into fairly ‘wider and militant circles’ in the Hindi-speaking areas of north India by the 1920s and 1930s.122 Ganesh Savarkar had brought the RSS in touch with Mahasabha activists in Delhi and Banaras; and the influence of the Savarkar family enabled the Sangh’s expansion among the upper castes of western Maharashtra.123 Padam Raj Jain, Mahasabha general secretary, helped Vasant Rao Oke establish an RSS shakha in the Mahasabha headquarters in Delhi in 1936.124 In particular, the RSS attracted new patrons due to its association with the Mahasabha, some of them being Hindu princes and rulers, as it had served as a counterweight to Muslim paramilitary groups in north India.125 The RSS was linked to the Hindu Mahasabha through membership and leadership, even though it remained independent of it.126 Officials in the Home Department noted that the RSS was the ‘volunteer organisation of the Hindu Mahasabha’.127 Sections of the RSS activists were office-holders in the Mahasabha and vice versa; and a dual membership was common.128 An early indication

The militarisation of Hindu society 101 of the nexus was the career of Nathuram Godse – who joined the RSS in 1930 and became a prominent organiser of the Sangh. He left the RSS for the Mahasabha two years later because Hedgewar had refused to make the RSS a ‘political organisation’.129 Lacking in trained youth power, the Mahasabha was anxious to get the support of the RSS cadres. It passed a resolution at its Delhi session in 1932, officially recognising the RSS as the only ‘militant and well-disciplined force of Hindus’ and encouraging provincial Hindu Sabhas to support its expansion and assist in making it a ‘strong organisation of Hindus’ in India.130 In 1937 groups of RSS militants gathered at public meetings to celebrate Savarkar’s release from jail.131 During the RSS officers’ training camp held in Pune on 27–29 May 1943, which was attended by M.S. Golwalkar, Ganesh Savarkar, and B.S. Moonje, Savarkar expressed his admiration for the ‘display of march and drills by swayamsevaks in great numbers’. He was ‘proud’, he declared, ‘to see the branches of the Sangh spread throughout India during his visits to various places’.132 Savarkar instructed Hindu Sabhas throughout India to observe a day of mourning for Hedgewar, who died on 30 June 1942.133 Savarkar died in 1966; and an honour guard of 2,000 RSS workers attended his funeral procession in Bombay.134 The RSS stayed outside political campaigns, insisting that it was strictly a ‘cultural organisation’ concerned with the ‘reorganisation and renewal’ of a ‘Hindu nation’ through character building; but the Mahasabha, a political party, was interested in the ‘role of the state’.135 Nonetheless, both organisations shared an ideological affinity based on Hindu unity and militancy, being committed to the militarisation of Hindus in India.136

Radicalisation of militarisation The Hindu Mahasabha’s militarisation programme had become radicalised by the late 1930s, particularly during the Second World War. In the wake of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 and the subsequent statement of Viceroy Lord Linlithgow unilaterally committing India to the war, the Congress’s provincial governments resigned en masse in protest at the war effort.137 In contrast, the Muslim League declared support for Britain and celebrated the Congress withdrawal from the government as a ‘day of deliverance’.138 The Mahasabha adopted a policy of ‘responsive co-operation’ with the British in order to secure ‘Hindu interests’ under a ‘dominion’ status, anticipating that Britain would make the war the occasion inter alia to ‘militarise Hindus and Indianise the army in entirety’.139 Savarkar renewed the militarisation drive as a declaration of the reliability of the ‘Hindu race’ in a situation of war.140 ‘His Majesty’s Government,’ he explained, ‘must now turn to the Hindus and work with their support . . . now that our interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for [Hindusthan] and Great Britain to be friends; and the old antagonism was no longer necessary.’141 If Hindus helped Britain militarily, he stressed, they would be doing service to ‘Hindudom’ – to ‘defend our hearths in an internal anti-Hindu anarchy’.142 Savarkar justified co-operation with the British on the ‘nationalist grounds and in the interests of the country’, even

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though the government’s overall strategy was to create a counterweight to the nationalist struggle and isolate the Congress in the country.143 The Hindu Mahasabha through its policy of co-operation had justified India’s participation in British military activities.144 It declared in September 1939 that the provincial and district Hindu Sabhas would undertake the task of forming Hindu Sainikikaran Mandals [Hindu military boards] across the country.145 Regional ‘militarisation boards’ were formed under the leadership of V.D. Savarkar, Ganesh Savarkar, B.S. Moonje, and N.C. Chatterjee.146 The militarisation drive was extended into the rural areas, particularly those inhabited by the ‘martial races’.147 At the Mahasabha’s Calcutta session in December 1939, Savarkar asked all universities, colleges, and schools to make ‘military training compulsory to students’ and ‘secure entry into military forces for your youths in any and every way’ in the country.148 At the Mahasabha’s session in Madura in December 1940, he outlined the party’s policy of ‘militarising Hinduism’, encouraging Hindu men to join various branches of the British armed forces en masse.149 He urged the Viceroy to appoint Mahasabhaites to the advisory councils of the government and the war committees in India.150 On his 59th birthday, celebrated in conjunction with a Militarisation Week in 1941, Savarkar launched the Mahasabha’s rallying cry: ‘Hinduise all politics and militarise all Hindudom’.151 Sections of the Mahasabhaites had become members of the war committees set up by the government in the United Provinces, Bengal, and the Bombay Presidency.152 The Mahasabha’s enlistment in the regular army ran parallel to the growth of militias in north India.153 Intelligence reports expressed an alarm about a sudden increase in the two volunteer organisations – the Ram Sena and the Hindu Rashtra Dal – of the Mahasabha.154 Crucially, the Mahasabha was ‘building up its armed volunteer forces numbering around 100,000 members’ and had links to other ‘Hindu groups which possessed firearms’.155 Ahead of the outbreak of violence, the party was following a ‘more militant and active policy’ by organising the Hindu Rashtra Dal in the rural and urban areas of the UP and the Punjab.156 Evidently, there was a growing evidence of Hindus relying on ‘extremist elements’ of the Mahasabha and the RSS.157 The Mahasabha used the RSS as its strike force in its underground activities, with the Sangh cadres ‘committing arson and murder’, mainly in the UP and Punjab.158 The UP, which had witnessed the rapid growth and militant sessions of the Mahasabha, faced a ‘communal anarchy unless very strong . . . immediate action is taken to restrain the activities of volunteer bodies’.159 Throughout the war period, it was evident that the Mahasabha had shown a strong determination to arm Hindus in a vigorous anti-Muslim confrontation in north India.160 The war period seemed to offer the Hindu Mahasabha a chance of much greater importance within any constitutional negotiations that might take place involving the British and the Muslim League in India.161 The Mahasabha hoped to conduct whatever Indian national activities that lay within its scope and hence assume the ‘leadership of all political parties’ in the country.162 B.S. Moonje wrote to the Viceroy assuring him of the Mahasabha’s co-operation and soliciting the favour of the government. ‘Hindustan’, he explained, ‘ is the one stable

The militarisation of Hindu society 103 factor in its choice of its allies for its permanent safety and prosperity. . . . Thus, Hindustan and Britain are allied together in unshakeable bond of union for long years to come.’163 Between ‘the two communities,’ he emphasised, the ‘Hindu Mahasabha . . . will be in a position to give immensely large help in men, material and intellect than the Muslim League can hope to do’.164 Moonje advised the Viceroy not to be deceived by the party’s ‘status and importance’ from the mere fact that it did not fare well at the ballot box.165 Savarkar assured Viceroy Lord Linlithgow: ‘No help the Moslems have given or can ever give to the Government can ever outweigh the help which the Government has already received and is sure to receive in future from Hindudom as a whole in India.’166 The Mahasabha’s cooperation aimed to establish its hold at the national level and capture the political stage from the Congress as a viable political party in the country.167 During the war period, it focused on a drive to fight the ‘internal enemies’ – the Congress and Muslims – rather than the British whom it wanted to succeed.168 In its programme, Hindu sectional interests received the priority, not the anti-colonial struggle.169 The Mahasabha vigorously rejected the Congress’s claim to represent all Indians, claiming that it should be recognised by the British as the sole legitimate party representing the whole Hindu population of India.170 Moonje wondered ‘if, in the mutually antagonistic and clashing ideologies, the Charka [the Congress] were to come into conflict with the Rifle [the Mahasabha]!’171 In the wake of the Congress’s Quit India Resolution on 8 August 1942, Savarkar instructed Hindu Sabhaites who happened to be ‘members of municipalities, local bodies, legislatures or those serving in the army . . . to stick to their posts’ across the country.172 The Mahasabha boycotted the Quit India movement, even though its rank and file had sympathised with the Congress’s struggle.173 However, the Mahasabha could not overtake the Congress which had remained the most popular party in the country, despite its drive to negotiate with the British for its representation on various government councils.174 The British interest in the party had proved transitory, as its poor performance in the 1937 elections strengthened its rejection by the officials who refused to acknowledge its political claims.175 At the Simla Conference in June 1945, new Viceroy Lord Wavell invited the Congress besides the Muslim League but not the Mahasabha for negotiations on power sharing on the basis that it was the Congress which had largely represented the country.176 In the face of a hostile attitude by the government, the Mahasabha continued to favour militarisation; there was little enthusiasm within the party for an anti-British confrontation because of its limited social base in north India.177 Evidently, one outcome of the militarisation policy was that the Mahasabha had tried to secure British favour by further moderating its position on India’s freedom and distancing itself from the Congress’s nationalist struggle.178 The Hindu Mahasabha’s militarisation programme revealed an aggressive hostility against Muslims, including a threat of ‘civil war’ against them.179 It was in part motivated by a plan to increase the number of Hindus in the military, which would eventually help combat Muslims – the ‘real enemies’ – in the country.180 Muslims, Savarkar stated, had tacitly declared a ‘war on Hindustan’

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and were likely to ‘sabotage the state from within as well as attack from outside’. He explained: ‘To forestall and counteract this Islamite peril our state must raise a mighty force exclusively constituted by Hindus alone, must open arms and munitions factories exclusively manned by Hindus alone and mobilize everything on a war scale.’181 Volunteer armies, he emphasised, were necessary for the protection of Hindus against the ‘hostile activities’ of Muslim volunteer groups, such as the Muslim National Guards.182 Hindus, Moonje argued, lived under ‘two dominions’, the ‘political domination of the British based on their strongest of machine guns and the domination of Mahomedans based on their aggressive mentality. . . . We shall have to fight both the government and the Moslems.’183 The Mahasabha justified militarisation on the basis that Hindus had to prepare for an eventual ‘struggle for power’ with Muslims when the British finally departed from India.184 Ganpat Rai, Mahasabha secretary-general, explained: ‘What the Hindus require at this juncture is a regular army, when communal riots break out in the cities of India, Hindus cry out for rescue force’.185 Military preparedness was needed in the event of an ‘internal disorder’ in the country.186 The Mahasabha’s militarisation drive ran parallel to its anti-Muslim orientation, evoking fears about the ‘treachery and conspiracies’ of Muslims against Hindus in India.187

Conclusion The Hindu Mahasabha began its transition to a profoundly militant Hindutva nationalism fixated on militarisation theory and severity in the late 1920s. The militarisation policy became the dominant motif of sangathan narrative, aiming to consolidate Hindus into a unified and militant ‘Hindu nation’.188 Parallel to the growth of the Mahasabha, the RSS had emerged as a strong Hindu nationalist organisation by the 1920s, inheriting most of its ideology from Hindutva.189 The Sangh’s paramilitary style reflected an attempt to introduce a drive for ‘physical strength’ and ‘militarism’ in Hindu society.190 The Mahasabha perceived the RSS as the embryo of a ‘Hindu army’, even though the latter showed its divergence by abandoning its involvement in politics.191 The Mahasabha aimed to capture power as a fully fledged political party, whereas the RSS was more concerned with the socio-political aspects of building a ‘Hindu nation’.192 The Mahasabha’s militarisation programme had become extremely radicalised under the leadership of Savarkar by the 1930s, intensifying the process of militaristic training involving collaboration with the British during the Second World War.193 Its struggle was for its acceptance as the main ‘representative party’ of Hindus in India in a conflict with the Congress.194 The fear of an ‘internal enemy’ was persistent in the Mahasabha’s narrative, which focused on the fight against the Congress and Muslims rather than the British.195 The successful organisation of militarisation helped to sharpen and crystallise sangathan narrative by targeting Muslims – the ‘antagonists’ – in the country.196 The Mahasabha’s programme stressed the importance of ‘national strength’ through militarisation and became extremely crucial in the development and evolution of sangathan discourse that had focused on a resurgent ‘Hindu nation’ in the 1920s and 1930s.197

8

Gandhi and Hindu Mahasabhaites

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [1869–1948] gained an unprecedented authority over the Indian National Congress through a complex process that had brought him into a conflict with the Hindu Mahasabha and its elite politics in the 1920s and 1930s. The Mahasabha’s old style of politics had collapsed since Gandhi’s emergence as the leader of the Congress’s mass campaigns in India following the Khilafat-Non-cooperation movement in 1919–1921.1 The Congress was transformed into a mass organisation and strove to attract a wider cross-section of the population to its fold, diverting much of the support that the Mahasabha had received from the Hindu classes.2 Gandhi’s leadership presented a radical challenge to the Mahasabha’s definition of nationalism – a vision of the Indian nation that excluded Muslims – by emphasising on an ‘inclusive’ Indian nation based on the coexistence of diverse creeds and religions.3 Gandhi advanced an alternative to Hindutva, articulating the Hindu tradition of religious pluralism which envisioned religious diversity – a plurality of ‘expressions of truth’.4 His ideals of ahimsa [non-violence] and Hindu–Muslim unity constituted the basis of a struggle for India’s freedom, conflicting with the Mahasabha’s discourse of a majoritarian ‘Hindu nation’ based on military power.5 Gandhi’s dominance of the national-level politics, having proclaimed the ‘secular’ to be sacred, had blunted the Mahasabha’s leadership, which led a drive to make India a ‘Hindu’ state and resisted Gandhian nationalist struggles most virulently in the country.6 This chapter examines Gandhi’s dialogue and conflict with the Mahasabha over the methods of freedom struggle and the nature of the future nation-state that was to emerge in India in the early twentieth century.

Gandhi’s religion Gandhi tried to grapple with the enigma of Hinduism, which had represented his ‘strongest bond’ and a ‘great influence’ on his life.7 His understanding of Hinduism was largely based on ‘reading and reflection’, yet remained ‘shallow and abstract’, offering an insight into one of the most distinctive doctrines of Vedanta – the doctrine of ‘religious pluralism’, or sarva dharma samabhava [equality of religions].8 Gandhi read Vivekananda’s Rajayoga, M.N. Dwivedi’s two commentaries on the Yoga Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita – the principal scripture that had

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deeply influenced him on the principle of aparigraha [non-possession] and renunciation.9 He described Hindus as that branch of Aryans who had migrated to the trans-Indus region of India.10 ‘A thousand years ago,’ he explained, ‘the army of Ghazni invaded India in order to spread Islam. Hindu idols were broken and the invasions carried as far as Somnath. . . . Thus we have seen how there have been three assaults [sic] on Hinduism, coming from Islam and then Christianity, but on the whole it came out of them unscathed.’11 Gandhi identified Hinduism with the sanatana dharma, the ‘eternal’ or ‘universal religion’ which underlay all religions, comprising the Vedic tradition based on the ‘equality of religions’.12 He defined Hinduism as the ‘most tolerant of all religions known to me’ in which nonviolence found the ‘highest expression and application’. ‘Its freedom from dogma,’ he explained, ‘. . . gives the votary the largest scope for self-expression. Not being an exclusive religion, it enables the followers of that faith not merely to respect all the other religions, but . . . to admire and assimilate whatever may be good in the other faiths.’13 Hinduism ‘is as broad as the Universe and takes in its fold all that is good in this world’, and ‘what of substance . . . contained in any other religion is always to be found in it’.14 Hinduism to Gandhi signified pluralism and nonviolence, representing the best impulses of its classical texts, besides being ‘inclusive’, ‘tolerant’ and productive of ‘diversity’.15 It became the model for spiritual humanism that drew upon the best of all religions, looking beyond the narrow limits of ethnicity and nationality.16 Gandhi claimed that he was a sanatani [orthodox] Hindu – a Vaishnavite Hindu, a Hindu grounded in the ancient and traditional beliefs and values of Hinduism. ‘I am a Hindu,’ he confessed, ‘not merely because I was born in the Hindu fold, but I am one by conviction and choice. . . . As I know it [Hinduism] and interpret it, it gives me all the solace I need both here and hereafter.’17 He declared: ‘I have been born a Hindu and I shall die a Hindu, a Sanatani Hindu. If there is salvation for me, it must be as a Hindu.’18 He had little interest in the outer forms of Hinduism, its rituals, or pilgrimages.19 Placing reason above the scripture as authoritative and relying on an ‘inner voice’ – the ‘still, small voice that must always be the final arbiter’, Gandhi represented a tradition of modernity and reform within Hinduism.20 Yet how significant was being a ‘Hindu’ in the self-definition of the personal identity of Gandhi? Gandhi’s existence as a ‘Hindu’ did not inhibit him from interacting closely with the teachings of other religions: he showed respect to all faiths.21 He did not regard Buddhism or Jainism as separate from Hinduism.22 Buddhism, he explained, arose in India not as a new religion, but a ‘reform of Hinduism’.23 ‘He [Buddha] taught Hinduism not to take, but to give life. True sacrifice was not of others, but of self.’24 The three Buddhist vows of chastity [brahmacharya], non-violence [ahimsa], and poverty [aparigraha], which became integral to the Hindu tradition of piety, were adopted by Gandhi.25 He shared the Buddhist doctrine of ‘impermanence’: there was ‘no permanent, enduring self ’, or a finality26 He followed the final words uttered by Buddha before his death in c.483 BC in Kusinagar at the age of 80: ‘You must be your own lamps, be your own refuges. Take refuge in nothing outside yourselves.

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Hold firm to the truth.’ Gandhi later adopted Buddha’s famous hand gesture of blessing of reassurance, the ‘forget fear’ gesture [abhaya mudra], as one of his favourite symbols.28 Throughout his life, he taught Buddha’s message of nonviolence, moderation, and love for all creatures.29 To Gandhi, Jainism – the ‘most logical of all faiths’ – with its approach to the multiplicity of religious and philosophical perspectives was strikingly in harmony with Hinduism, being part of the Indic tradition.30 Vardhamana Mahavira [c. 540–468 BC], the founder of Jainsim, advocated and practised the vow of self-torture and death by starvation as the surest path to ‘salvation’, himself starving to death 13 years after he had taken the vow.31 Gandhi revived the fast-unto-death doctrine as a political weapon more than 2,000 years after Mahavira’s ‘suicide’.32 Gandhi found in Rajchandra Mehta [Raychandbhai], a Jain jeweller, a poet, and a saint, great support and spiritual guidance.33 His pluralistic model of truth drew primarily upon the doctrines of relativity developed by the Jain philosophy. The Jain doctrine of anekantavada [theory of complexity of reality], in combination with the doctrine of nyayavada [theory of perspectives] and the doctrine of syadavada [theory of relative truth, or ‘many-sidedness of reality’], expounded a tradition of tolerance; and Gandhi discovered in these doctrines a way of evolving a deeper harmony or complementarity underlying seemingly ‘incompatible’ religious claims.34 He adopted the Jain tradition’s strong commitment to ahimsa [non-violence]; and outside of Jainism there was scarcely any religious tradition except Buddhism that made non-violence the corner-stone of Gandhi’s ethical universe.35 To Gandhi, Jainism had emerged from within the Indic tradition, and its followers were part of the same broad Hindu religious universe.36 Gandhi established the ‘unity of all religions’ by discovering their core truths and grafting them inwardly onto his own ‘pluralistic’ vision of truth.37 He was positive about Islam, the key doctrine of which was the ‘spirit of equality’ for all, its belief being that God did not beget and was not begotten, and that the Prophet Mohammad was the ‘messenger of Allah’.38 He had read Shibli Numani’s biographies of Muslim heroes, books of Hadith, and Amir Ali’s works on Islamic history.39 He admired the Koran’s stress on ‘self-surrender’, returning ‘good for evil’, the need for ‘renunciation’ as well as the Prophet Mohammad’s ‘fasts and prayers’ based on a heart, which was open to the ‘still small voice’.40 Gandhi considered Islam a young religion, ‘still . . . in the making’ and ‘still groping for its great secret’.41 Crucially, he gave his life for a ‘lifelong aspiration’ for Hindu– Muslim unity through his assassination in the aftermath of India’s partition.42 Gandhi believed that Christianity had a considerable influence in India, as it pointed out some of the most ‘glaring defects’ of Hinduism.43 ‘The spirit of the Sermon on the Mount,’ he reflected, ‘competes almost on equal terms with the Bhagavad Gita for the domination of my heart.’44 He had a deep reflection on the Christian belief that an immortal soul existed, that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, and that God was love.45 However, he became highly critical about the doctrine that outside of the Christian faith there was no ‘salvation’, and that all non-Christians were doomed to spend ‘eternity in hell’.46 He

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rejected the exclusivism underlying Christian proselytising activity – the ‘irreligious gamble’ for converts.47 Gandhi’s religion, which brought him face to face with his Maker, was inclusive and tolerant; being a good Hindu and having respect for other religions – Islam or Christianity – were not contradictory; and interdependence as well as organic unity was the basis of the ethics of ahimsa.48

Arya Samaj Gandhi courted Hindu nationalist organisations during his turbulent years in South Africa, his association with the Arya Samaj being perhaps his earliest to develop with a Hindu body.49 The Samaj, founded in 1875, was based on a radical reformist programme, contributing significantly to the development of Hindu nationalism through a dissemination of propaganda in north India.50 The first Hindu leader with whom Gandhi had come into contact was Bhai Parmanand, a prominent Arya Samajist and later Hindu Mahasabha president.51 In 1905, Bhai Parmanand visited South Africa as an Arya Samaj missionary.52 Gandhi praised Parmanand’s ‘learning and vigor’, but criticised his ‘anti-Muslim’ sectarianism, urging him to promote education, not a missionary work in Africa.53 He described the Arya Samaj as ‘a body that has done most useful and practical work apart from its religious doctrines’, lauding its ‘patriotism’. The Samaj, Gandhi explained, ‘does not represent any established orthodox religion of India’, but was still a ‘cult struggling for existence and catering for converts’.54 All through his life, Gandhi did not permit conversions or an anti-Islamic propaganda, as Muslims had been the backbone of his satyagraha [non-cooperation] struggles in the Transvaal, Natal [South Africa], and later India.55 After his return to India in 1915, he attended an Arya Samaj conference in Surat and performed the opening ceremony of its new temple there in 1916.56 He admired Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the ‘adored founder of the Arya Samaj’, as a ‘rare man’, acknowledging that ‘I have come under his influence’.57 Dayananda was a ‘grand, lofty and fearless character of impeccable chastity’, who had advocated a ‘revival of Hinduism’ as it existed in the Vedic times and rejected the ‘accretions of Hinduism’.58 However, Gandhi stressed, Dayananda’s main work, Satyarth Prakash, misrepresented Hinduism to a high degree. ‘He [Dayananda] has tried to make narrow one of the most tolerant and liberal of the faiths [Hinduism] on the face of the earth.’59 He attacked the Arya Samaj over conversions, insisting that the Aryas could do better work if they reformed themselves and did not enter into a ‘violent controversy’ to gain conversions in India.60 An Arya ‘preacher is never so happy as when he is reviling other religions’, which did ‘more harm than good’.61 Nonetheless, Gandhi showed special respect for the Samaj, yet rejected its missionary approach as well as its belligerence and sectarianism directed against Islam and Christianity in India.62 Hindu Mahasabha ties Gandhi entered the formal arenas of politics at a crucial juncture of nationalist struggle in Indian history, the stormy 1920s, and managed to rally a significant

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number of Hindu Mahasabhaites behind him. He attended the inaugural meeting of the All-India Hindu Sabha in Hardwar in April 1915 and spoke strongly in support of it.64 His passionate speech made an impact on Swami Shraddhananda, who had collected funds for Gandhi’s work while the latter was in South Africa.65 Shraddhananda threw his support behind Gandhi in the 1919 Non-cooperation movement because the latter’s politics was imbued with a ‘spirit of religion’.66 He was a central figure in the 1919 anti-Rowlatt satyagraha and often portrayed as a unique symbol of Hindu–Muslim unity because of his preaching of ‘national unity’ at the Jama Masjid, Delhi.67 Gandhi admired Shraddhananda’s educational work, but was critical of his aggressive sangathan [Hindu unity] programme, which had an ‘unjustifiable ambition of bringing all Muslims into the Aryan fold and exacerbated Hindu–Muslim tensions’.68 After Shraddhananda’s assassination in 1926, Gandhi wrote several times in praise of his ‘bravery and unselfish service’, appealing to Hindus and Muslims to purge ‘mutual hatred and calumny’ in the country.69 Gandhi’s association was amicable and positively complementary, bordering on admiration, with Lajpat Rai and M.M. Malaviya, the key figures in the pre-Savarkarite Mahasabha. He rejected the charge that ‘Lalaji and Malaviyaji are sworn enemies of Islam’, explaining that ‘the Muslim press used foul language against these patriots’.70 ‘His [Lajpat Rai’s] desire to purify and strengthen Hinduism,’ he emphasised, ‘must not be confounded with hatred of Mussalmans or Islam. He was sincerely desirous of promoting and achieving Hindu–Muslim unity.’71 Gandhi hailed Malaviya as his ‘elder brother’, a ‘great leader’ of India and a ‘patriarch of Hinduism’.72 ‘Hatred’ was ‘alien to Malaviya . . . [he] and I are temperamentally different, but love each other like brothers.’73 ‘My Mussalman friends,’ Gandhi declared, ‘have always belittled my faith in his [Malaviya’s] bona fides and nationalism as against communalism. I have never been able to suspect either even where I have not been able to share his views on Hindu–Muslim questions.’74 Malaviya had remained Gandhi’s trusted ally for his entire life, even though his unyielding ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ was blamed in part for the collapse of the Congress’s initiative on Muslim demands for political safeguards in India.75

Gandhi and Savarkar conflict Gandhi had a hostile and traumatic relationship with V.D. Savarkar, who had an ‘eternal conflict’ with the former over the methods of struggle for India’s freedom.76 Gandhi, a Barrister-at-Law graduate of the prestigious Inner Temple, London [1888–1891], leading a South African Indian deputation to England, met Savarkar for the first time in London on Sunday, 21 October 1906.77 He held long discussions on the efficacy of revolutionary methods with Savarkar, Shyamji Krishnavarma [1857–1930], the founder of India Home Rule, London, and other radical students at India House in north London.78 Gandhi seemed to be a ‘liberal imperialist’, believing that England and India were to stay joined in the Empire, which had an ‘admirable effect of English civilization’ on India. London, the ‘centre of the power’ and the ‘capital of the

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greatest empire’, he mused, was ‘transforming India’.79 Savarkar, 22, a law student at Gray’s Inn, London, believed in revolutionary nationalism based on the legitimacy of ‘armed insurrection’ and ‘militarism’ as part of a struggle to end British rule in India.80 The India House radicals led by Savarkar fervently believed that India was to attain freedom from Britain only through violence, including ‘terrorism and assassination’.81 Gandhi labelled the India House radicals as the ‘moderns’ and ‘extremists’, but admitted that they were ‘earnest spirits possessing a high degree of morality, great intellectual ability and lofty self-sacrifices’.82 Evidently, there was a deep conflict and chasm in the worldview and ideology of Gandhi and Savarkar over the methods and means of attaining independence for India.83 Gandhi had a closer confrontation with Savarkar during his second visit to London in 1909.84 He ‘accepted unhesitatingly’, as he put it in a letter to Henry Polak, a request to speak as the chief guest at a subscription dinner at India House on the Vijayadashami day – Dasara.85 On 24 October 1909, he presided over a Dasara Sammelan meeting attended by 125 students celebrating the 1857 revolt – the ‘first war of independence’ – at India House, where Savarkar spoke; and the Ramayana was the theme of celebrations.86 ‘Hindus,’ Savarkar argued, ‘are the heart of Hindustan. . . . Nevertheless, just as the beauty of the rainbow is not impaired but enhanced by its varied hues, so also Hindustan will appear all the more beautiful across the sky of the future by assimilating all that is best in the Muslim, Parsi, Jewish and other civilizations.’87 Lord Rama, he stressed, had established his ideal kingdom only after slaying Ravan, the symbol of ‘oppression and injustice’, and non-violence would be ineffectual without ‘physical force’.88 Reporting the Vijayadashami celebrations in the Indian Opinion of 27 November 1909, Gandhi referred to Savarkar as a ‘revolutionary’, noting that he had delivered a ‘spirited speech on the great excellence of the Ramayana’.89 He expressed an alarm, however, that most Indians he had met in London believed in violence.90 He explained: I have met practically no one who believes that India can ever become free without resort to violence . . . I have endeavoured specially to come into contact with the so-called extremists. . . . One of them came to me with a view to convince me that . . . nothing but the use of violence, covert or open or both, was likely to bring about redress.91 Gandhi argued that violence and an armed route to India’s independence advocated by Savarkar and the India House radicals stood little chance of success against the apparatus of the British.92 Admittedly, Savarkar rejected Gandhi’s method of ‘passive resistance’ as ‘humiliating’, yet admired his struggle in the Transvaal, South Africa, as a unique instance of a ‘sustained campaign’ carried out against British rule.93 The conflict between Gandhi and Savarkar over the methods to achieve India’s independence had persisted for the whole of their lives. Gandhi presented ahimsa [non-violence] as an answer to violence and projected it as a defining principle, claiming that it was through its adoption that

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India would be liberated. India, he explained, would never gain true swaraj [freedom] by violent means.95 ‘Do you not tremble,’ he wondered, ‘to think of freeing India by assassination? . . . Whom do you suppose to free by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it’.96 He conceived the doctrine of satyagraha [truth-force/soul-force], which had originated from ‘passive resistance’, as a movement of political protest, as a ‘non-violent non-cooperation’ employed to convince an adversary of the truth in consonance with the ‘highest law’ of being of one’s cause.97 Satyagraha was not merely a ‘method of securing rights by personal suffering’ but a ‘speciality of India’.98 Gandhi viewed ahimsa as the ‘essence of Hinduism’ to which his own commitment would remain unaffected even ‘if I suddenly discovered that the religious books . . . bore a different interpretation’.99 The ‘most distinctive and largest contribution,’ he stressed, ‘of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. It has given a definite basis to the history of the country for the last three thousand years and over’.100 In Gandhi’s vision, ahimsa and satyagraha were situated as ‘pathways’ to a ‘moral regeneration’ of India – or an ‘atmashuddhi’ [purification of soul] of the nation.101 Savarkar, a votary of revolutionary nationalism, denounced Gandhi’s doctrine of ahimsa, however.102 He was influenced in part by Herbert Spencer, a philosopher and a naturalist, whose theory was that ‘absolute non-resistance or absolute non-violence hurts both altruism and egotism’.103 Savarkar viewed Gandhi as a significant, if ‘misguided’, adversary in the struggle for India’s freedom – in which the doctrine of non-violence was a ‘weak-kneed response’, for ‘resistance to aggression in all possible and practicable ways is not only justifiable but imperative’.104 ‘No masses’, he argued, ‘can ever stand against the organized military strength of a government for a long time.’105 The belief in ‘absolute non-violence,’ he emphasised, ‘condemning all armed resistance even to aggression evinces no mahatmaic saintliness but a monomaniacal senselessness’.106 Savarkar declared: ‘We denounce the doctrine of absolute non-violence. . . . Relative non-violence is our creed and therefore, we worship the arms as the symbols of the Shakti, the Kali . . . “Hail to Thee Sword”.’107 The abandonment of arms, he explained, was inimical to all ‘public good’, risking the destruction of ‘virtue and dharm’ [righteousness] at the hands of the ‘wicked’.108 Only power, authority and the strength of arms could bring about a ‘genuine ahimsa’ in India.109 There could be ‘no substitute for force to achieve complete freedom’.110 The teaching of Gandhi’s satygaraha, he stressed, sought to ‘kill the very martial instinct of the Hindu race and had succeeded to an alarming extent in doing so’.111 Savarkar deplored the ‘adverse results’ of satyagraha in the Chauri Chaura and Jallianwala Bagh crises, claiming that its aim was to ‘pacify the killers, tyrants and aggressors’.112 On account of ahimsa, he went on, the ‘glorious struggle for national freedom which had lasted one thousand years was shamelessly surrendered in the 30 years of Gandhi’s leadership’, and Hindus were forced to accept the ‘unchallenged domination of the aggressor’ – Muslims and the British.113 A believer in violence as a weapon of political action, Savarkar asserted that ‘justifiable aggression’ defined individual or collective morality, and that the ethical premise of violence

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represented a dynamic hostility and aggression as the legitimate means of ending British rule in India.114 Savarkar imagined of the tradition of violent nationalism as having its roots in the Bhagavad Gita, which was the source from which Gandhi drew his doctrine of ahimsa.115 The ‘moral theory advocated by the Gita,’ Gandhi believed, ‘rules out violence’.116 However, Savarkar explained that the central teaching of the Gita was Krishna’s explication of the ‘discipline of action’ [karma yoga] as a path to ‘salvation’ that taught himsa [violence] not ahimsa, and that ‘military organisation’ was an integral part of the Hindu tradition.117 Savarkar’s belief in armed revolution was influenced in part by B.G. Tilak and his advocacy of karmayoga [path of action], an apologia for anti-British political activism.118 Tilak argued that the divergent sects of India could unite to form a mighty nation if they followed the ‘original principles’ of the Hindu tradition as stated in the scriptures, chiefly the Gita.119 The Gita affirmed the doctrine of four spiritual disciplines [yogas] as Hinduism’s paths to salvation/liberation [moksha] – karma yoga [path of action], jnana yoga [path of devotion and realisation], bhakti yoga [theistic devotionalism], and raja yoga [classical path of meditation as outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra].120 Tilak put primacy on action or activism [karma] as the central tenet of the Gita, explaining that Krishna’s exhortation to Arjuna to fight should be taken as a rallying cry for Hindus to ‘fight the British by violence, if necessary, in order to regain political supremacy’.121 Tilak’s own version of karma yoga denounced Gandhi’s doctrine of ahimsa and its syncretism. Gandhi confessed: ‘My method is not Tilak’s method.’122 Savarkar shared Tilak’s rejection of ahimsa, viewing military strength as a necessary attribute of India if Hindus were to be welded into a ‘nation’.123 His narrative was the result of a deep reflection on Gandhi’s non-violence, which had ‘surrendered to the anti-national demands of Muslim reactionaries’.124 It was his ‘righteous duty’, he believed, to ‘remove ruthlessly the web of Gandhism that had choked the political life of Hindustan’.125 Crucially, Savarkar articulated by far the most explicit and virulent critique of Gandhi’s ahimsa throughout the 1930s and 1940s.126 Gandhi was diametrically opposite to Savarkar over the shape of the nation that was to emerge in India, representing a ‘universalist’ vision of nationalism. As a transitional leader and a centrist politician, he focused on Hinduism’s ‘universalistic’ impulse, a ‘pluralistic’ tradition not tied to ‘one religion’, or a ‘cultural particularity’.127 Gandhi refused to accept Hinduism as a singular religious basis to India.128 ‘In reality,’ he explained, ‘there are as many religions as there are individuals. . . . In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms . . . nor has it been so in India.’129 An ‘exclusivist and triumphalist’ understanding of religion was deeply inadequate to the message of tolerance and peaceful co-existence proclaimed in the teachings of Hinduism.130 To him, the ideal of religious pluralism conceived of diversity not in terms of competition, but complementarity; it was Hinduism’s ‘greatest gift’ from which all religions could benefit.131 Hinduism was the most ‘inclusive religion’, Gandhi believed, and represented a cultural system that had evolved over thousands of years, assimilating new influences throughout its history.132 But, he claimed, this

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was no less true of Muslims and Christians. Islam may have originated in Arabia, but those who converted to Islam were of the same cultural, ethnic and racial stock as Hindus.134 ‘Indian culture is therefore Indian. It is neither Hindu, Islamic nor any other, wholly. It is a fusion of all.’135 The construction of a pluralistic model of society was compatible with Hinduism.136 Gandhi theorised religious pluralism on the basis of the Gita in which Sri Krishna claimed the validity of diverse paths to ‘salvation’: ‘Just as human beings approach me, so I receive them. All paths, Partha, lead to me.’137 Religions, Gandhi explained, were many paths to a common destination, or expressions of different, yet complementary, facets of ‘truth’; and they were ‘different roads converging upon the same point.’138 ‘I believe,’ he continued, ‘in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.’139 As pluralism was most adequate to the reality of religious diversity, Gandhi’s prayer meetings were not held in temples, but under the open sky by including recitations from the Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist scriptures.140 In Gandhi’s belief, Hinduism as a religious doctrine could not provide the basis for India’s national identity.141 The politics of identity in India would be structured around decidedly non-religious considerations; India was a multi-religious society based on the coexistence of different creeds and faiths, representing ‘unity in diversity’.142 Gandhi articulated the theory of ‘one nation’ most powerfully, with religious pluralism forming the basis of his vision of secular nationalism in that no single religion was to be identified with the state or be promoted by it in India.143 He spoke of absorbing Muslims, Christians, and others into one ‘indivisible nation’: such absorption or assimilation transcended the realities of religious identities, yet did not subordinate the minorities to Hindus.144 It moved in the direction of a ‘spiritual unity’, meaning a ‘brotherhood’ or a ‘confederation of communities’ – a confederation dedicated to the ‘non-violent pursuit of truth’.145 Tolerance was a celebration of diversity – of the richness of alternative ways of religious believing and existence – between diverse creeds and faiths in India.146 Differences between Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi explained, were a result of the divisive effects of colonial rule in India. Conflicts over cow protection and music before mosques could be settled with love and goodwill on both sides through a mode of mitrata [friendship].147 Hindus and Muslims should remain true to their own faiths, making India a ‘federation of faiths’ – a view that echoed the belief: ‘Clash like the waves, but still remain one sea.’148 To Gandhi, Hindu–Muslim unity was a prerequisite of freedom. ‘I have no doubt,’ he declared, ‘that one who is an enemy of the Muslims is also an enemy of India.’149 In the proper strengthening of a ‘Muslim bond’ lay the ‘realization of Swaraj’.150 In 1919–1921 he presided over the All-India Khilafat Committee founded to defend the Khalifa of Turkey – an issue that lay at the heart of a movement articulated as the first national satyagraha in India.151 India was not to be described as a ‘Hindu nation’ whether socially or culturally.152 Gandhi wrote to the Hindu Mahasabha secretary in 1927 objecting to the use of the national flag on Hindu temples. ‘For the service of India,’ he explained, ‘Mussalmans, Jews, Christians should be Indians, even as Hindus should be Indians.’153 True national unity or

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union was imperative for India’s freedom; and Muslim identity and rights were intrinsically connected to the temporal sovereignty of India.154 Gandhi rejected the militancy and anti-Muslim rhetoric of Hindu Mahasabhaites as ‘vicious’.155 ‘Those Hindus,’ he contended, ‘who like Dr Moonje and Shri Savarkar believe in the doctrine of the sword may seek to keep the Mussalmams under Hindu domination. I do not represent that section. I represent the Congress.’156 The Congress, he went on, wanted independence not for itself or Hindus alone but for ‘all the forty crores of the Indian people’.157 The pluralistic vision of India was not connected with attempts to assert the superiority of Hinduism over other religions; and democracy was not restricted to a ‘majoritarian rule’.158 Gandhi articulated the vision of an ‘inclusive’ Indian nation based on equal citizenship rights for diverse creeds and religions in the country.159 However, Savarkar’s restrictive Hindu nationalism, which separated ‘us’ [Hindus] from ‘them’ [Muslims] – or the ‘self ’ from the ‘other’ – had defined India within Hindu markers, articulating the demand for a ‘political supremacy’ of Hindus in a state that acquired ‘exclusionary’ overtones – a Hindu rashtra [nation].160 Savarkar believed that India was a ‘Hindu state’, proclaiming the claims of national exclusion based on ‘Hindu supremacy’.161 In effect, the religious minorities would have to respectfully acknowledge ‘Hindu dominance’.162 Savarkar defined freedom as a ‘political independence’ of Hindus, insisting that the notion of a ‘territorial nation’ was woefully inadequate for India’s future.163 India once had territorial independence under Aurangzeb, he emphasised, but it meant ‘death for Hindus’.164 Savarkar declared: ‘To the Hindus independence of Hindustan can only be worth having if that insures their Hindutva – their religious, racial and cultural identity.’165 ‘To us Hindus, Hindustan and India mean one and the same thing.’166 The Congress’s ideal of a ‘territorial nation’ was acceptable if it meant that there would be no special provisions for the minorities – Muslims and Christians.167 Savarkar asserted that Hindus must be given their due share as a majority, and that Muslims and Christians would have to accept the ‘cultural and political dominance’ of Hindus in the country.168 He rejected Gandhi’s doctrine of ‘religious co-existence’ in favour of an assimilation of Islam and Christianity into a single ‘cultural community’ – Hindus.169 India was to be a ‘Hindu state’ in which all citizens viewed the nation as their ‘fatherland’ and ‘holyland’.170 Savarkar’s advocacy of a ‘Hindu nation’ clashed with Gandhi’s ‘inclusive’ Indian nation, reflecting a conflict between Hinduism as a paramount pluralistic tradition and Hinduism as politics in assertions of ‘Hindu identity’.171 The confrontation marked a wide rift, revealing a fundamental and irreconcilable divide between Indian nationalism and political Hinduism as competing narratives in late colonial India.172 Opposition of Sangathanists Gandhi, a consistently pluralistic Hindu thinker, was a committed Hindu and a nationalist, but not a Hindu nationalist: he did not identify India in an exclusive way with Hinduism.173 Deeply rooted in a universalist and pluralist conception

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of Hinduism, he had differences with the Hindu Mahasabha which were ‘intractable and irreconcilable’.174 He shared the Mahasabha’s goal of organising and strengthening the Hindu community as a cultural entity, but differed on crucial issues – untouchability and shuddhi. Gandhi’s denunciation of untouchability and appeal for a caste reform had brought him closer to Mahasabhaites, but he was different in that he did not favour the communal arithmetic to boost the Hindu numbers.175 The abolition of untouchability, he explained, was an ‘indispensable condition’ for the attainment of freedom, being directed towards the ‘moral transformation’ of caste Hindus and their need for ‘repentance’.176 ‘A rigidly orthodox Hindu [myself],’ he emphasised, ‘I believe that the Hindu Shastras [treatises] have no place for untouchability of the type practised now . . . [and] the moment I am convinced that untouchability is an essential element of Hindu religion, I would immediately renounce my religion.’177 Caste distinctions had fossilised and led to the exploitation of the untouchables, he pointed out, appealing for a transformed ‘Hindu conscience’ in India.178 Gandhi insisted that all talents should be held in a trust, and that all should be subject to the ‘law of bread-labour and do their own scavenging’.179 The untouchables must not be considered as falling ‘outside Hinduism’, but treated as ‘respectable members’ of Hindu society.180 However, the Mahasabha rejected the strategy of making Hinduism more ‘tolerable and humanistic’ through a reform of the caste hierarchy.181 It believed in a compact, closed Hindu society based on the varna [caste] system as part of a mobilisation to construct a monolithic Hindu community in opposition to Muslims, reinforcing a ‘hierarchical’ oppression in India.182 Gandhi’s trenchant critique had centred on the Hindu Mahasabha’s shuddhi [purification] movement, which was a means of reclaiming the Hindu edge in the colonial numbers game through a conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism.183 Gandhi condemned the Mahasabha’s aim to link India’s freedom to Hindu strength through shuddhi, or the maximisation of the numerical-political strength of Hindus.184 He argued that proselytism was alien to the spirit of Hinduism, and that the real shuddhi should consist in ‘each one trying to arrive at perfection in his or her own faith’.185 It must be a ‘conversion of heart’ within one’s own tradition [atma parivartan], and not a conversion across the religious divide [dharmantar].186 The work of shuddhi and conversions would result in a ‘communal division’.187 ‘For my part,’ he asserted, ‘I still remain unconvinced about the necessity of the shuddhi movement. . . . And I question its use in this age of growing toleration and enlightenment’.188 The Mahasabha denounced Gandhi’s views on conversions as ‘misconceived’, however, asserting that he was wrong to believe that shuddhi formed no part of Hinduism.189 N.C. Kelkar reiterated that Hindus had ‘no claim to get swaraj so long as they do not obtain all their rights . . . and fulfil the object of shuddhi and sangathan’.190 To the Mahasabha, the representation of the Indian nation on the basis of Hindu culture could be enforced through religious conversions, and shuddhi was a prerequisite for the country’s freedom.191 It viewed the ideal of India’s ‘renewal’ based on the construction of ‘Hindu unity’ through shuddhi as a prerequisite for ‘nationbuilding’.192

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Ahimsa and Hindu–Muslim unity Sangathan rejected the Gandhian principles of ahimsa and Hindu–Muslim unity to be the basis of India’s struggle for freedom throughout the 1920s and 1930s. As a synthesis and consolidation of Hindutva discourse, it represented the Hindu nationalist and politically violent narrative of a distinct Tilakite variety that differed strikingly from the Gandhian tradition of ahimsa.193 It deemed the doctrine of ahimsa as antithetical to the ‘national interests’ of Hindus, who needed to arm themselves in order to fight against ‘foreign enemies’ – Muslims and the British.194 ‘Non-violence,’ it was argued, is the highest religion. This teaching is, however, unknown in the Vedas, the philosophies, the Upanishads and all other books anterior to the Mahabharata. . . . To refrain from punishing malignant enemies and allow tyrants to do whatever they like is, however, tantamount to committing serious violence. The Vedas permit us to kill our enemies, both human beings and animals.195 Between a ‘policy of appeasement or abject surrender and a policy of resistance even to the extent of last ditch and last drop of blood, Hindus will prefer the latter’.196 Sangathanists claimed that the ‘sermon of ahimsa emasculates the Hindu nation. We have to follow the teachings of Lord Krishna.’197 ‘As a result of following non-violence’, it was asserted, ‘Hindus have become so forbearing and non-violent that they remain passive even at the sight of their women being assaulted, houses being looted and burnt’.198 Ahimsa was believed to have spelled India’s ‘humiliation’, becoming an impediment in the fulfilment of a martial, forward-thrusting and aggressive ‘Hindu nation’.199 Sangathan rejected any sanction for ahimsa in the Hindu tradition and attacked Gandhi for meeting Muslim ‘aggression’ with non-violence, urging Hindus to take up arms in defence of their religion and culture in the country.200 Sangathan asserted the primacy of kshatriya [warrior] values in opposition to ahimsa as part of a drive to reinvent the Vedic ‘golden’ age.201 Strength as well as manliness was representative of kshatriya values and military endeavours, being antithetical to ahimsa.202 India’s ‘real tradition’, it was stated, was ‘that of the kshatriyas’, and the doctrine of non-violence with its emphasis on devotion and renunciation would ‘destroy the nation’.203 B.S. Moonje attacked Gandhi’s ahimsa as a form of ‘renunciation and cowardice’, insisting that a martial ethos not ahimsa should be introduced among Hindus in India.204 Speaking on the occasion of ‘Til Sankranti’ celebrations in Nagpur on 1 January 1933, he favoured ‘offence’ rather than ‘defence’ and advocated a policy of ‘strike first’. The readiness of the Hindu community had to be demonstrated in ‘self-defence’ so that Hindus were not taken unawares as happened in the Multan and Saharanpur riots.205 ‘In our religion violence in the defence of one’s rights is not condemned,’ he explained, urging an end to the ‘un-Vedic principle of ahimsa’.206 Moonje declared: ‘Hindu Mahasabha wants independence but does not believe that it can be achieved through non-violence. It therefore wants to organise

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violence on the most up-to-date western scientific lines’. Lajpat Rai rejected ahimsa, claiming that the doctrine was ‘a gangrene that poisons the system’, and that it was ‘lawful to resort to violence in defence of one’s own self, family and nation’.208 Bhai Parmanand explained that the theory of non-violence preached by Gandhi and accepted by the Congress was against the ‘culture, tradition and history’ of Hindus.209 N.C. Kelkar – twice Mahasabha president [Jabalpur 1928 and Delhi 1932] who had promoted an anti-Gandhi propaganda through the Kesari [Marathi] and the Mahratta [English], Tilak’s newspapers started in 1881 of which he was editor and trustee at different times – stated that Gandhi’s policy of non-violence and satyagraha proved ‘useless in the longer run’ in India. Ahimsa had ‘failed’, he insisted, as it was not merely inconsistent with the ‘dream of independence’, but made a mockery of ‘anti-imperialist politics’, particularly when it took neutral positions on the fate of heroes like Bhagat Singh.210 ‘When 1921 drew to a close, Gandhi’s promise to the nation of sawaraj [through ahimsa] within a year [had] remained unfulfilled.’211 Shyama Prasad Mookherjee asserted that military training among Hindus was needed to counter the ‘unity and solidarity’ of Muslims, claiming that he believed in violence not to ‘attack or enslave’ others, but acquire ‘Hindu rights’.212 M.S. Golwalkar explained: The foremost task before us . . . is the moulding of . . . a . . . disciplined and virile national manhood. . . . Let all persons physically fit be ready for military service. And let their mothers bless and send forth their sons at this hour of trial.213 Hindus should be able to ‘defend themselves’ in times of crisis, it was stressed, and the image of a non-violent and unworldly Hindu promoted by Gandhi was a ‘myth’.214 The Hindu Outlook, the Hindu Mahasabha’s mouthpiece, praised the military brutality of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco – the European dictators – throughout the 1930s and 1940s.215 Sangathanists argued that the experiment in nation-building was almost ‘undone by ahimsa’, which was in a conflict with the interests of ‘masculine Hindus’ whose ‘vitality’ and ‘manhood’ it sapped.216 Sangathan drew on the ideals of valour, strength and ‘masculine’ Hinduism – all intersecting with the discourse of militarism as a dominant metaphor in an effort to create a strong ‘Hindu nation’.217 It favoured a self-reliant and militant Hindu community of ‘kshatriya virtues’, expressing contempt for the image of a nonviolent, tolerant and peaceful Hindu as preached by Gandhi.218 Sangathan’s ethic of militarism and violence as a core ideological element dominated the speech of Nathuram Vinayak Godse [1910–1949] in Gandhi’s murder trial at the Red Fort in 1948, echoing a strong repudiation of ahimsa.219 Godse, Hindu Mahasabha secretary, Poona, and a member of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha Committee, assassinated Gandhi at 5 p.m. on Friday, 30 January 1948.220 In his trial speech, he claimed that Gandhi’s non-violence consisted in enduring the ‘blows of the aggressor [Muslims] without showing any resistance either by weapon or by physical force’, and that it had led the nation

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towards a ‘ruin and enslavement’.221 Non-violence ‘led Hindus to lose the will to fight against enemies’, both Muslims and the British, in ‘self-defence’.222 ‘I firmly believed,’ he stated, ‘that the teaching of absolute Ahimsa, as advocated by Gandhiji, would ultimately result in the emasculation of the Hindu community and thus make the community incapable of resisting the aggression or inroads of other communities, especially the Muslims.’223 Godse rejected ahimsa on the basis that India needed to become a ‘modern nation’, ‘practical, able to retaliate, and powerful with armed forces’.224 Hindus, he insisted, would have to redeem their ‘masculinity’ by fighting and defeating Muslims and the British.225 He looked to Savarkar not Gandhi as the true ‘leader of Hindus’ in India – his own guru and a principal inspiration.226 ‘Millions of Hindu Sangathanists,’ he confessed, ‘looked up to him [Savarkar] as the chosen hero, as the ablest and most faithful advocate of the Hindu cause. I too was one of them.’227 Along with Godse, six other men – Narayan Apte, Gopal Godse, Vishnu Karkareh, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Ramchandra Badge, and Dr Dattatray Parchure – charged in Gandhi’s murder trial were all sangathanists deeply loyal to Savarkar, deriding Gandhi as a ‘traitor’ to the cause of Hinduism.228 All the evidence, ‘incontrovertible’ though, pointed to ‘one inescapable conclusion’ that Savarkar, the seventh man charged in the trial, had a ‘role in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi’, even though he was acquitted.229 Godse’s Hindu Rashtra Dal was a semi-volunteer organisation that aimed to propagate an ‘unalloyed Savarkarism’ in hostility to ahimsa;230 and his Marathi-language newspaper Agrani – later relaunched as the Hindu Rashtra – was violently anti-Gandhian, articulating the Savarkarite belief that Gandhism was ‘emasculating’ Hindus through ahimsa.231 Gandhi posed a threat to sangathan and its political culture of violent Hindu nationalism based on militarism through his rejection of violence and his consistent emphasis on pacifism.232 To sangathan, ahimsa as a doctrine with a claim to preach tolerance through an ability to coexist with rival faiths like Islam – of which the Muslim League prided itself as a vehicle in the midst of the 1947 divide – discredited Gandhi’s claim to represent Hindus or be in command of the nationalist struggle in India: he became a ‘renegade’ of Hinduism.233 Gandhi’s strident anti-colonialism was based on his belief that India’s freedom lay in Hindu–Muslim unity.234 To the Hindu Mahasabha, however, the doctrine of Hindu–Muslim unity was the ‘single greatest obstacle in building a strong and militaristic Hindu nation’.235 The notion of a ‘true union’ was denounced, as it was impossible to reconcile the religious beliefs and customs of the two fundamentally ‘divergent faiths’ – Hinduism and Islam.236 Hindus would ‘suffer a great loss by such a union’, it was claimed, for once the British left India, Muslims would call the ‘aid of Kabul, Persia and Turkey and annihilate the Hindus’.237 The Mahasabha’s goal to unify and protect the Hindu community from the ‘Muslim threat’ was driven in part by B.G. Tilak’s nationalist ideology – rooted in the Hindu tradition.238 In Tilak’s vision, India was the land of Aryans whose religion was Hinduism, and India by right belonged to Hindus.239 Tilak through his social conservatism and revivalist discourse closed the space

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between ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’, for the Hindu dharm [religion] became the historical, philosophical and social basis of Indian nationality.240 His alignment of India with ‘Hindu’ through a re-reading of ancient history served as the foundation for the Mahasabha – to which India was essentially a ‘Hindu nation’ ‘betrayed and oppressed’ by Muslims.241 Sangathan viewed the prospects for freedom as inconsistent with the goal of Hindu–Muslim unity, stressing the need to exclude Muslims from India’s freedom struggle.242 Gandhi’s doctrine of Hindu–Muslim unity as a prerequisite for India’s freedom came under a fierce attack from Hindu Mahasabahites. V.D. Savarkar blamed Gandhi for ‘selling India’ to Muslims and attacked his ideal of unity as a ‘pipe dream’.243 Swami Shraddhananda conceded that Hindu–Muslim unity was a precondition for India’s freedom.244 But, he argued, the Congress had lost that opportunity by pandering to Muslims through its outright condemnation of shuddhi and sangathan, which represented a quest for the ‘religious rights and uplift’ of Hindus.245 B.S. Moonje claimed that Gandhi’s life-long mission of achieving Hindu–Muslim unity was thoroughly ‘impracticable’, appealing to Gandhi to give up his ‘pro-Muslim’ mentality. Indeed, he continued, the Congress’s ‘favouritism’ towards Muslims had resulted from an ‘unnecessary attachment to the charkha [symbol of Indian nationalism] and non-violence’.246 Moonje declared: ‘Congress believes that Swaraj can’t be achieved without the cooperation of the Muslims. We believe that when time will come, we can win Swaraj even in spite of the Muslim opposition.’247 M.R. Jayakar asserted that Gandhi had ‘aimed at a most artificial and unreal unity between Hindus and Muslims’ and awakened ‘sentiments and impulses in the latter community which, like Frankenstein, it is now very difficult to allay’.248 M.S. Golwalkar explained: Those who have declared ‘No Swaraj without Hindu–Muslim Unity’ have . . . perpetrated the greatest treason on our society. They have committed the most heinous sin of killing the life-spirit of a great and ancient people. . . . If the Hindus unite, they are strong enough to do it [win freedom] alone.249 Gandhi was accused of showing ‘partiality’ towards Muslims by not discouraging the revival of the Muslim League and the Khilafat committees in the country in the 1920s and 1930s.250 The Congress’s goal of cross-communitarian unity and its ‘pandering to Muslims’, it was claimed, had destroyed the opportunity for building an Indian nation with the values of uncompromising ‘militant Hinduism’.251 The consolidation of the Hindu community was the ‘true means of achieving swaraj’ in India, it was argued, and the nation could be served by ‘first looking into the practical ways of strengthening the Hindu community, not Hindu–Muslim unity’.252 Gandhi was seen as a ‘pro-Muslim zealot’ responsible for instigating Muslim ‘obscurantism and bigotry’ – a ‘Hindu-hater’, a ‘Muslimlover’, and an ‘enemy’.253 The Mahasabha’s central objective was to organise and strengthen Hindus, ‘first to overcome Mohammedans and finally to oust the British’ from India.254

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Conclusion Gandhi accepted Hinduism as his religion on the basis of its ‘tolerance and peace’, linking it to ahimsa and satyagraha. He viewed the satyagraha as the legitimate basis of national struggle for India’s freedom.255 He was in an ideological conflict with the Hindu Mahasabha’s ideology and its ideologue V.D. Savarkar over the methods of attaining freedom for India. The doctrine of ahimsa was a direct challenge to Savarkar’s revolutionary nationalism based on violence, which had constituted a greater part of his drive for the country’s independence.256 Savarkar believed that India could never become free without resort to violence, and that ahimsa deprived India of all its ‘masculinity and strength’.257 The dialogue and hostility between Gandhi and Savarkar over the efficacy of revolutionary methods in the struggle for India’s independence and the nature of the future Indian nation had continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s.258 Gandhi did not accept the Hindu religion as the basis of Indian nationality, for a pluralistic approach to ‘religious practice and expressions of truth’ was seen to be a natural corollary of Hinduism, which confirmed the validity of ‘religious diversity’.259 ‘All religions,’ in Gandhi’s belief, ‘are equal.’260 Gandhi’s vision of India was not a ‘Hindu nation’ but a secular state, which included diverse races and creeds – Hindus and Muslims – existing on the basis of equal citizenship rights.261 The Mahasabha, on the contrary, envisioned a ‘Hindu nation’ in which the interests of the minorities, Muslims and Christians, were subordinate to Hindus.262 Gandhi’s core belief was that ahimsa and Hindu– Muslim unity were essential to secure freedom for India.263 The Mahasabha was explicitly hostile to the twin Gandhian doctrines, which had coalesced as strategies in the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements against British rule in the country.264 Gandhi’s universalist and reformist Hinduism as well as his ‘inclusive’ Indian nation did was in an irreconcilable conflict with the Mahasabha and sangathanists who could not manoeuvre in politics, leading to his assassination in 1948.265

9

Nagari and cow The symbols of a ‘Hindu nation’

The campaign to establish Hindi as the court and administrative language in the United Provinces was at the centre of a debate about the ‘progress and reform’ of the country and a significant feature of Hindu revivalism in the early twentieth century.1 Language, script and religious community constituted a spectrum, helping to solidify attempts to project Hindi, a fusion of Sanskrit origins and Hindu culture, as the symbol of a ‘Hindu identity’.2 The Hindu Mahasabha appropriated the agitation for Nagari as the basis of a distinctive Hindu communitarian identity and heritage in its sangathan narrative, campaigning to establish Hindi as the ‘national language’ of India in a conflict with Urdu and the Muslim elite in north India.3 Similarly, cow protection constituted the basis for the articulation of a self-aware modern ‘Hindu identity’ and consciousness in north India.4 The Mahasabha adopted and assimilated the cow protection movement, which had emerged since the late nineteenth century with the active role of Hindu publicists and organisations, in its sangathan discourse, imagining of a ‘Hindu nation’ through the metaphor of the cow as a ‘sacred symbol’.5 Cow protection became an important element of sangathan, which had represented the cow’s affiliation to the harmony of Indian culture and tradition as the rationale for the assertion of a ‘Hindu identity’ in an explicit antagonism to Muslims.6 This chapter aims to explore the historical context and process in which the issues of Nagari and cow protection were integrated into sangathan narrative as the symbols of a ‘Hindu nation’ and became crucial to a drive for the unity and consolidation of Hindus in north India in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hindu campaign for Nagari In the late nineteenth century, the Hindi movement, in part a product of Hindu revivalism, exerted a powerful influence as part of a campaign to introduce Nagari as the official mode of the courts and administration in the UP – the core of the ‘Hindi heartland’.7 The UP was an area previously under the rule of the Mughals and the successor states to which Persian had been the court language for over two centuries between 1526 and 1761.8 Since the annexation of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh [NWP&O] in 1805, the British had retained Persian as the language of administration and the educational system in the

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province.9 In 1837 India’s Governor-General in Council introduced Urdu to replace Persian as the language of the courts and administration in the UP.10 The conflict began in the late 1860s in the eastern cities of Banaras and Allahabad, which had seen a gathering ‘momentum of opinion’ in favour of Hindi – a sentiment viewed by colonial officials as the expression of a ‘patriotic feeling on the part of the Hindoos’ against Urdu.11 The raison d’être of the campaign for Hindi in the Banaras-Allahabad region was the dissatisfaction with the colonial administrative policy based on Urdu, which had evoked a specific view of history – a view of Hindu society’s ‘moral decline’ under a ‘foreign influence’.12 Crucially, Nagari was in a wider usage than Urdu in the general population as revealed by the correspondence from 1796 to 1820 between the officials of the East India Company and diverse writers in north India.13 Urdu was a literary vernacular used in ‘public societies, courts and offices’, not a spoken language of the masses.14 The supporters of Hindi submitted 118 memorials from the cities and towns of the UP to the education commission headed by Sir William Hunter in 1882, which in its report of 1883 had declined to deal with the language controversy, however.15 The conflict was determined by the notions of Hindu communitarian interests and the fears of a ‘threat’ to Hindu culture due to the pre-eminence of Urdu as the language of administration in transition to colonial rule in India.16 The Nagari–Urdu conflict represented a competition between the old service elites and the new groups for jobs and status in the UP.17 The colonial decree to privilege Urdu as the language of administration had ensured the monopoly of the Muslim service gentry and the Hindu elites – Kashmiri Brahmans, Kayasths, and Khatris – over a limited job market of the colonial state, placing many educated Hindus at a serious disadvantage.18 A shift to Hindi as the official language would, it was stressed, greatly benefit Hindu aspirants educated in Hindi-Sanskrit in state employment.19 Urdu, a prerequisite for government jobs, had displaced Hindi as the core language in the schools.20 By 1872, no less than 22,074 students had been learning Urdu, Persian, or Arabic, whereas only 4,959 students opted for Hindi or Sanskrit.21 In the decade 1881–1891, there were 4,380 books published in Urdu, 2,793 in Hindi, 1,022 in Persian, 531 in English, 462 in Sanskrit, and 414 in Arabic.22 Indeed, so rapid was the growth of Urdu that by 1863 out of 23 newspapers published in the UP, 17 were in Urdu and only four in Hindi.23 Urdu perpetuated a gender-based dichotomy in educational skills, with Hindu women scarcely learning Urdu in the Persian script.24 Teaching in the Nagari script, the mother tongue of the people, it was asserted, would boost primary education, which was in a crisis due to an ‘inappropriate’ medium of instruction.25 The nexus between language and the colonial educational policy which determined employment prospects had accounted for the configuration of Hindi as the language of a ‘Hindu identity’ in the province.26 The Hindi–Urdu divide reflected a conflict of cultural self-assertion, with contestations over language and script reinforcing a communitarian narrative in the UP.27 The Nagari lobby attacked Urdu as a ‘spurious offspring of Hindi in a Persian guise’, reminding one of the ‘centuries of enslavement’ by Muslim rule

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in India. It attributed Urdu’s popularity in the province wholly to government patronage, accusing the British of insidiously trying to ‘smother and stifle’ Hindi by imposing a script [Persian] that was almost as ‘foreign to the people as English’.29 Raja Shivaprasad Singh [1823–1895], an influential official, a compiler of textbooks and a prominent advocate of Hindi who started the Benares Akhbar paper in Nagari, explained that the official encouragement given to the study of Urdu and Persian in the province was ‘crippling the study of Hindi’ and the development of ‘primary education’, and that Hindi had been the language of the country before the ‘Muslim invasions’ of India.30 The British language policy, he emphasised, ‘thrusts a Semitic element into the bosoms of Hindus and alienates them from their Aryan speech . . . which is now trying to turn all the Hindus into semi-Muhammadans and destroy our Hindu nationality’.31 Bharatendu Harishchandra [1850–1885], a leading literary figure of Banaras, strongly criticised the British patronage of Urdu, reiterating the ‘autonomous, preMuslim’ existence of Hindi in north India.32 He called on the ‘Arya brotherhood’ to unite in the cause of Hindi and propagate it for official use in the courts and administration of the UP.33 Urdu and the Persian script, it was claimed, had a ‘foreign’ origin and facilitated the use of ‘incomprehensible’ Arabic and Persian words, making court documents ‘illegible’ and encouraging ‘forgery and fraud’.34 Urdu’s ‘immorality’ took several forms, its script leading to a great deal of ‘fraud’ in society and the government.35 Urdu corrupted Hindus, it was argued, and led them astray from their own ‘religious and cultural heritage’ into a ‘dark era of Muslim misrule and tyranny’.36 The common refrain was that the teaching of Persianised Urdu tended to ‘degenerate’ Hindus, and that Hindi was a personification of ‘Hindu culture’ and a ‘national pride’, possessing an ‘antiquity, naturalness and Indianness’ superior to Urdu.37 The campaign for Nagari found institutional support in the Arya Samaj, which had upheld Hindi as the aryabhasha [language of Aryans].38 In the Samaj’s programme of organising a reformed Hindu society, the development of a lingua franca of Hindus took an important role.39 The fifth of the 28 basic rules of the Samaj established Hindi as its public language: ‘In the main centre there will be several books in Sanskrit and in Aryabhasha.’40 Dayananda Saraswati, the Samaj founder, was a great scholar of Sanskrit, which he had used for his discourse until he met Keshub Chandra Sen, the Brahmo Samaj leader, in Calcutta in 1872. Sen gave Dayananda the inspiration to use Hindi as a medium for the propagation of religious and social reform in India.41 Two years later, Dayananda gave his first lecture in Hindi in Banaras – in which ‘hundreds of words, and even sentences still came out in Sanskrit’.42 He spoke in Hindi to reach an audience of middle-class Hindus – a ‘different audience, educated nonBrahmans’.43 ‘If you want freedom,’ Dayananda exhorted, ‘you must have your language.’44 He translated the Vedas into Hindi – an act termed by Lajpat Rai the ‘boldest act’ of his life.45 Sangathanists hailed Dayananda as the ‘first Hindu leader’ who had given a conscious and definite expression to the view that Hindi should be the ‘national language’ of India and admired his Satyartha Prakash [Light of Truth] for its use of ‘simple and untainted’ Hindi.46 The Arya Samaj

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was the major force behind the Nagari propaganda, seeking to transform Hindi from a spoken language into a ‘high vernacular’ of administration, education and public discourse in north India.47 The propaganda in support of Hindi was one of the main aims of local Hindu Sabhas, which had mushroomed in the towns of the UP by the late nineteenth century.48 The Prayag Hindu Samaj [1880] and the Madhya Hindu Samaj [1884] of Allahabad, both founded by M.M. Malaviya, had emerged as pioneering institutions in the campaign for Nagari.49 Malaviya, known for bilingualism with a proficiency in English, was the first professional ‘Hindi politician’ to use Hindi as the language of politics and journalism in the province by promoting Nagari through the shortlived Hindi political daily Hindosthan, which was launched by Raja Rampal Singh of Kalakankar, Allahabad, in 1883.50 Hindi was one significant element of his politics which aimed to unite Hindus through the Hindu Sabhas, cow protection societies, and newspapers in the province.51 The Hindu Sabhas urged the government to substitute Nagari for Persian in the courts and offices of the UP, as the introduction of Hindi would lead to a ‘simpler style’ closer to the language of the people.52 In the aftermath of the UP government’s resolution passed by LieutenantGovernor Sir Anthony MacDonnell on 18 April 1900, Nagari was given equal status alongside Urdu in the courts and administration of the province.53 To the Nagari lobby, it was mostly a ‘symbolic victory’, however: proceedings and orders continued to be written in Persianised Urdu for the next four decades.54 By the early twentieth century, the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of Allahabad [1910] and the Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Banaras [1893] had led the drive for the promotion of Nagari by launching a campaign to strengthen the work of missionaries and textbook writers in Hindi across the UP.55 The notion of Hindi as a distinct cultural symbol identifiable with Hindu interests was actively propagated by the Hindi vernacular press and the publications market in the province.56 An influential section of the Hindu middle class had emerged, focusing on the advancement of Hindi by fashioning a new collective ‘Hindu identity’.57 A process of cultural homogenisation had occurred, inducing a new and broader sense of the Hindu community and a movement for the popularisation of Hindi as the language of the ‘nation’.58 In view of the growing support for Hindi among intellectuals and its politicisation in the midst of Congress nationalism, a strong consensus had emerged in the ranks of nationalist leaders, particularly M.K. Gandhi and B.G. Tilak, that Hindi was the language of the people and the ‘national language’ [rashtra bhasha] of India.59 The reversal of values that Gandhi’s ideology advocated – the centrality of the common people and the emphasis on an ‘Indianness’ versus a ‘foreign language’ – and the nativity and ordinariness of Nagari placed Hindi closer to the ‘true nation’ and gave it an advantage as an idiom of communication for the masses in the country.60 Hindi – language of community and nation A basic constituent of sangathan narrative was the establishment of Hindi as a public idiom, based on the central importance of Nagari in the construction of a

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‘Hindu identity’ and the accommodation of ‘national aspirations’. The Punjab Hindu Sabha conference, convened in Lahore in October 1909, had first passed a resolution to promote Hindi and Sanskrit, emphasising the need to re-write the history of the ‘Hindu period’ with a view to reinforcing the ‘cultural unity’ of Hindus in India.62 Lal Chand explained that Persian and Urdu were ‘alien to the genius’ of the people, making an appeal for the development of ‘Hindi and indigenous literature’ in the country.63 ‘Thousands and tens of thousands of Hindus’, he emphasised, ‘who ought to be familiar with the truths of the Upanishads and Bhagavat Gita, were irretrievably committed to the knowledge of Urdu.’64 Swami Shraddhananda urged the introduction of a uniform Devanagari script as a ‘vital necessity’ for the defence of Hindu interests in India.65 Lajpat Rai supported the development of a Sanskritised form of Hindi, explaining that Nagari should be introduced in the UP, while the Persian script might be used in the courts and schools of Sindh, the Punjab, and the North-West Frontier Province.66 To sangathan, the ideal of ‘one country, one language’ promoted a new consciousness of Hindi as a ‘community marker’.67 The Hindu Mahasabha appropriated the principle of Hindi as the language of the Hindu jati [community/nation], drawing its strength from the late nineteenth-century history and propaganda of the Nagari movement in north India.68 Sangathan shared the nationalist imagery in which language as well as literature had become a means to define and communicate the agenda of ‘national renewal’ and ‘regeneration’, hailing Nagari as the ‘national script’ of India.69 In Hindutva theory, the primacy of territory, a common race or blood, and the unity of culture and language constituted the main tenets of a ‘Hindu nation’.70 The paramount attribute of a nation, V.D. Savarkar explained, was the coherence and unity of a language, first Sanskrit and later Hindi, which was the carrier of the ‘cultural essence’ of India.71 Hindus, who constituted the Indian nation, were the ‘original inhabitants and sole creators of its society and culture’.72 The growth of the national language was but an ‘outward expression of this inward unity of our national life’.73 Hindi, Savarkar continued, was an ‘ancient language’, which had mirrored the nation’s ‘cultural and religious’ identity; and its use was a ‘duty and a service’ to the nation.74 Hindi’s fate was shown to mirror that of the ‘Hindu nation’ – ‘united, fallen and now resurgent’.75 Nagari was inextricably woven into the ‘all-round life of the Hindu race’ and became an ingredient of great importance in India’s history; it was a symbol of the mythologised ‘Hindu past’ – ‘original Hinduism’.76 The Indian nation found expression in Hindi literature, a cultural symbol linked to the writing of its ‘national history’.77 In the context of the Hindi and Urdu divide, Nagari was viewed as the bearer of the peculiar values of ‘Indian tradition’ and a means to unite the whole ‘Hindu’ population.78 To sangathan, the Nagari script reflected the ‘ancient traditions’ of Hindus – their culture, religion, and history; and Hindi became the symbol of Hindu nationalism – all broadly envisaged in the slogan ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’, signifying the expression of a ‘Hindu consciousness’ in India.79 To sangathan, Hindi’s claim to be the national language of India was central as an ideological construct, serving as means to create a ‘national community’.80

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The ancestry of Hindi as an aryabhasha with a potential to communicate with the entire ‘multilingual’ country and hold it together was viewed as a ‘historical necessity’ and an outcome of the ‘nationalist sentiments’ of Hindus.81 Regional and linguistic diversities were countered through Hindi’s role as a ‘unifying and homogenising’ force.82 Savarkar viewed Hindi as the ‘richest and most cultured’ of all the ancient languages, and Nagari, the script of the ‘Hindu scriptures’, as phonetically by far the ‘most perfect’ in the world.83 Long before either the English or even the Moslems stepped into India, he explained, Hindi in its general form had already come to occupy the position of a ‘national tongue’, representing the ‘inner life’ of the nation.84 Hindi was the language used by the ‘Hindu pilgrim, the tradesman, the tourist, the soldier, the pandit [priest]’ in the country.85 It provided a basis to re-compact Indians educated in regional vernaculars into a ‘homogeneous’ Hindu community, establishing a common bond to a ‘Hindu identity’.86 In India, M.S. Golwalkar emphasised, every province had its own language; yet Hindi provided a ‘linguistic unity’ across the nation. ‘Sanskrit . . . is common to all from the Himalayas to . . . [the] South’.87 Hindi, the direct descendant of Sanskrit, was potent enough to communicate with the entire, multilingual nation.88 Apart from a ‘couple of languages of Madras [sic]’, all Indian languages had originated from Sanskrit.89 To sangathan, the provincial languages in India would grow and flourish in an ‘affinity and relationship’ with Hindi.90 The projection of Hindi as the ‘national language’ was determined by a process of ‘internal cohesion’, whereby Hindi appropriated the space of the vernacular languages – Brajbhasha, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, etc., – which were regarded as ‘not autonomous’ in tradition, but ‘deviations’ from sanatan dharm [orthodox Hinduism].91 As the ‘national language’ of India, Hindi was to attain its rightful place in the system of education, providing a basis for the historical vision of the Hindu jati [nation].92 In sangathan theory, Hindi’s ‘territorial communication’ as well as its ‘homogenisation’ was viewed as a strong source of the ‘national solidarity’ of Hindus and a bond of Hindu ‘cultural identity’ in India.93 The Hindu Mahasabha emphasised the Aryan ‘Hindu identity’, demarcating Hindi as an aryabhasha from Urdu, the language of Muslims.94 Sangathan’s propagation of Hindi as the ‘national language’ of India involved an attack on Urdu, which was stigmatised as an ‘alien implant’ on Indian soil and a ‘threat’ to Nagari.95 Persian-Urdu, a symbol of Muslim cultural identity, was rejected as ‘alien’ to Hindu culture; and its position was not ‘natural’ but an outcome of a political privilege – Muslim rule, which had lost its ‘historical rationale’.96 Urdu’s status as the official language in colonial administration rendered it unsuitable for a role in India’s freedom struggle; and Persian-Urdu was ‘unacceptable’ and ‘not . . . suitable for adoption as a language of public discourse’ in the country.97 The Muslim conquest of India had obstructed ‘Hindi’s progress’, it was contended, but Hindi’s ‘superiority’ as well as ‘resilience’ was proved by the fact that Muslim rulers, too, had to learn it in order to govern the country.98 The end of Muslim rule marked the beginning of Hindi’s ‘hegemony’.99 To sangathan, the assertion of ‘Hindi’s supremacy’ necessitated the removal of Urdu and Persian characters from Hindi lexicon and their replacement with Sanskrit

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words. Savarkar rejected any attempts of ‘Mahommedan zealots’ to thrust on the Hindus the Persian script.101 ‘We must not,’ he explained, ‘allow the influx of alien words into our language without . . . testing their necessity.’ ‘But as mother-tongue and national language, it [Urdu] had no place in Hindu culture’.102 ‘It is our bounden duty,’ he went on, ‘to oust out . . . all unnecessary alien words whether Arabic or English from every Hindu tongue, whether provincial or dialectical.’103 To sangathan, an exclusively Indian language and literature, an offshoot of Sanskrit and Prakrit, could be derived by systematically excluding the alien vocabulary, mainly Persian-Urdu, as well as all the literary production of Muslim writers in the country.104 The purity of the Hindi language was emphasised as the purity of ‘Hindu culture’ with a view to forming a high standard of Hindi as a language of modern, civilised, literary expression.105 By privileging Nagari over alien words and making ‘Sanskrit words’ the rule, attempts were made to standardise Hindi in order to make it fit for ‘discussing public matters, for creating literature, and for representing the Hindu jati’.106 Sangathan stressed Hindi’s ‘independent progress’ and ‘cultural separateness’ from the Perso-Urdu tradition on the basis that Hindi was the ‘language of the people’ and of Hindu religiosity in a contestation against Urdu, which was the language of a ‘debauched and tyrannical’ Muslim elite, or English, the language of an ‘oppressive’ colonial rule.107 The Indian nation was culturally ‘homogeneous’, Hindi expressing ‘Indianness’ in the image of ‘Hindu culture’.108 A dichotomy between Hindi and Urdu was established in the public sphere; Hindi gained autonomy, while Urdu was excluded as the language of a ‘foreign’ Muslim heritage.109 The Hindu Mahasabha launched a drive for the ‘Sanskrit Nistha’ Hindi, aiming for the self-definition of Hindi, which implied a process of Nagari’s separation from Urdu, its standardisation and historicisation.110 The claim of an absolute autonomy for Hindi was reinforced by the creation of vocabulary and grammatical features, which were different from Persian-Urdu.111 The selfdefinition of Hindi against Urdu drew rigid linguistic boundaries, based on an aggressive ‘Hindi-Hindu’ cultural policy.112 Sangathan pressed the need for a standard Hindi vernacular to be used as the public language of the Indian nation, disowning any affinity to the hybrid ‘Hindusthani’ proposed under Gandhi’s Wardha scheme.113 It denounced Gandhi’s appeal for the re-merging of Hindi and Urdu into ‘Hindustani’ – a fusion of Persian-Arabic, Sanskrit, and Hindi – as a common language of the masses in the country.114 The Mahasabha attacked ‘Hindustani’ as a ‘linguistic monstrosity’, a ‘language of the bazaar’, which could not fulfil the requirements of a state language.115 Only Sanskritic Hindi, it asserted, could become India’s ‘national language’.116 The support for ‘Hindustani’ among the Hindi literati, if any, was scarce, Prem Chand being the only major writer to support it.117 The two powerful institutions campaigning for the promotion of Hindi – the Nagri Pracharini Sabha and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan – had vigorously opposed ‘Hindustani’.118 In sangathan narrative, the severance of a historical and cultural link with Urdu and the Indo-Persian cultural tradition was paramount, demarcating Hindi sharply from the ‘alien’ which Urdu had come to represent in India.119

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By the early decades of the twentieth century, Urdu had lost the dominance as the language of administration and education in the UP – the province which had nurtured it as a virtual lingua franca.120 Sangathanists demanded a ‘Hindi-only’ policy in the province, dealing a blow to the cultural supremacy of the Urduspeaking Muslim elite.121 Hindi had begun edging out Urdu since the 1900s, reinforcing its claim as the ‘national language’ of India, even though it was to remain as a competing vernacular below English.122 By the 1920s and 1930s, the Hindi literary sphere had expanded significantly due to the spread of Hindi vernacular education and a marked growth in the press, compared with the previous decades.123 The expansion of education into the countryside, where Nagari was taught in the vernacular schools, combined with the campaign of Hindu revivalists had resulted in the development of Hindi literature, which competed with Urdu in the towns and districts of the province.124 By 1925 Urdu books had amounted to one-sixth of Hindi publications and even decreased in absolute numbers.125 There were over 33 Hindi vernacular newspapers in the UP with a total circulation of 7,509, pointing to the growing popularity of the Devanagari script.126 Prem Chand, north India’s leading novelist, found it difficult to get Urdu publishers for his books and shifted to writing in Hindi.127 The declining position of Urdu was a reflection of the end of the dominance of Persian-Urdu writing and the rise of a burgeoning Hindu literary class in the province.128 The exclusionary ideals implicit in the sangathan campaign had made the identity of Urdu controversial, accelerating the emergence of Hindi as the language of a ‘Hindu identity’ in north India.129

Cow protection movement Cow protection had been a central pillar of the Hindu reform movements in north India since the late nineteenth century.130 The issue of cow slaughter, a result of Islamic social practice, rose to prominence in the 1890s when cow protection societies [Gaurakshini Sabhas] had become the feature of a broader Hindu nationalist agenda in the country.131 In the Satyartha Prakash [‘The Light of Truth’] published in 1875 and a later pamphlet Gokarunanidhi [‘Ocean of Mercy of the Cow’] written in 1880, Dayananda Saraswati linked the protection of cows to his critique of Hindu society and attacks on the beef-eating British and Muslims, making an appeal to Hindus to devote themselves to cow protection.132 He used the networks of the Arya Samaj to disseminate an imagery of the cow as the ‘mother of the nation’ and included cow protection among the practices needed to strengthen India.133 There was, he explained, a pressing need to combat ‘malnutrition’ and ‘physical degeneration’ brought about by a scarcity of milk in the country; for this he blamed cow slaughter, calling for its ‘immediate end’.134 A ban on all animal slaughter, he emphasised, was an ‘ethical’ ideal.135 Dayananda established his first gaushala [cattle sanctuary] in Rewari in 1879, followed by the formation of a cow protection society in Agra in 1881.136 In 1882, a year before his death, he formed the Gaurakshini Sabha [cow protection society] in Calcutta in cooperation with the Maharaja of Banaras to seek all-India

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Hindu involvement in an agitation to prevent cow killing. Eventually, the Society for the Preservation of Horned Cattle was established in Bombay in 1887 and engaged in the building of gaushalas [cattle sanctuaries] in Gujarati and Marathi areas.138 Petitioners produced appeals and memorials addressed to colonial officials, urging that cow slaughter be prohibited on the grounds of ‘public health’.139 Cow slaughter, particularly since the advent of Muslim and British rule, it was argued, had devastated India’s economy and resulted in the under-nourishment of its vegetarian population, besides causing a ‘grievous attack’ on the Hindu religion.140 Protecting cattle from slaughter protected and improved ‘agriculture’.141 The petitioners strove to present the societies as ‘philanthropic’ and in no way ‘political’ for fear of their being banned as ‘seditious’ in north India.142 Hindus had invariably been in a conflict with Muslims over the sacrifice of cows at Baqr-Id festival in north India, even though it was disputed whether cow sacrifice was essential to the Muslim religious ritual.143 In 1886 a cow protection agitation had spread to the UP when the Allahabad High Court declared that a cow was not an ‘object within the meaning of section 295 of the Penal Code’, ruling that Muslims who slaughtered cows could not be held guilty of incitement to ‘religious violence’.144 In protest, three cow protection organisations were formed in Allahabad and an extensive network of cow protection bodies created in the eastern UP.145 By the 1890s cow protection societies had spread to the eastern UP, followed by an outbreak of riots at Azamgarh, Ballia, and Mhow in the province in 1893.146 By the early 1900s, colonial officials had held the Arya Samaj responsible for cow protection agitation in the eastern UP.147 The cow protection agitation was seen as a ‘platform on which all classes of Hindu society could unite’, largely supported by the ‘great trading and banking houses . . . along with some classes of landowners’.148 The patrons of cow protection societies – Hindu princes, zamindars, merchants and rural-based notables – constituted the social elite which had become prominent in the leadership of local networks coordinating cow protection agitation in parts of the UP.149 In the UP, cow slaughter signified simultaneously the ‘illegitimacy’ of British rule and the ‘threat’ of Muslims to Hindu society: both were ‘targeted’.150 Hindu publicists first made appeals to the British to curb cow killing by Muslims, and the riots were almost all anti-Muslim before they had become anti-British.151 The British policy in regard to Indian religion and cultural concerns was one of strict ‘neutrality’.152 However, colonial officials did intervene in cow protection disputes as a means of establishing the ‘local custom’, sparking ‘Hindu reprisals’.153 The government feared that cow protection provided a ‘common platform on which all Hindus could unite’, and that the objective, as of the Congress, was the ‘overthrow of English rule’ from India.154 The cow protection agitations invariably resulted in a resistance to all forms of colonial intervention in Hindu practices, reviving regularly as a way of opposition and dissent against British rule.155 Admittedly, cow protection represented a form of disloyalty to the British, even though it was ostensibly directed against Muslims.156 The cow protection movement had its biggest impact in the towns of the UP, where nearly two-fifths of the population was Muslim.157 It appealed alike to

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orthodox, traditionalistic and reformist Hindus, with the cow providing a popularly revered symbol that could be mobilised in the name of a putative ‘Hindu community’.158 Cow protection centred on the tenets of high-caste Hinduism: vegetarianism, temperance, and the norms of purity and pollution.159 The untouchables and lower castes, most of whom ate beef, participated in the cow protection campaigns, making a shift in their self-conception as ‘Hindus’ in an alignment with the ‘upper-caste’ idiom.160 By the early twentieth century, Muslims had been in a weaker position in the face of campaigns by militant Hindus over cow slaughter in the towns of the west UP and Doab, where Hindu revivalism was strong.161 In particular, the cow protection agitations were largely influenced by the anti-Muslim sentiments as evident in the village campaigns of the Gaurakshini Sabhas in the UP.162 There was a build-up of anti-Muslim tension over cow slaughter in many villages of the eastern UP in 1915 and 1916.163 Before the outbreak of riots in Shahabad [Bihar] in 1917, the Gaurakshini Sabhas had distributed patias [chain letters] in the villages, urging Hindus to take direct action against cow slaughter, which eventually resulted in physical attacks on Muslims and their property.164 In Rasra tahsil of Gorakhpur district, Muslims ‘did not observe Muharram’ in 1918 due to an ‘aggressive attitude’ of Hindus over cow slaughter.165 A serious riot broke out at Kattarpur village, Hardwar, during Bakr-Id in September 1918; with the ‘burnt-out corpses of 30 Muslim males, 10 females and seven children [i.e., 47 in all]’ were recovered after the violence.166 In 1926 four separate riots had occurred over cow slaughter in Allahabad, Fatehpur and Barabanki districts.167 To prevent cow sacrifice at Bakr Id, Muslims were subjected to boycott and compelled by Hindu groups to sign agreements [ikrarnamas] promising not to kill cows in the towns of the province.168 A form of social and physical coercion was deployed against Hindus, who had sold cattle to Muslims; in Gorakhpur, Naths, Banjaras and Chamars [untouchables] were especially targeted.169 A language of ‘purity, civilisation, and religion’ was deployed, and the ‘demonic’ character of the Muslim butcher highlighted; and an anti-Muslim identification was a marked feature in almost all the riots in the UP in the 1920s and 1930s.170 Cow – mother of ‘Hindu nation’ The Hindu Mahasabha adopted the cow protection campaign as part of sangathan narrative with one major effect, targeting initially the British and then most prominently Muslims in north India.171 The Delhi session of the Hindu Sabha, presided over by Raja Rampal Singh on 26–28 December 1918, had passed a formal resolution for the first time against cow slaughter in the country.172 The Sabha urged the Congress to pass a resolution banning cow slaughter, stressing the economic necessity of increased agricultural productivity as the rationale.173 However, the Congress refused to incorporate cow protection in its programme as the basis of an anti-British struggle, ruling out the option of trading Hindu support with the Muslim renunciation of cow slaughter during the Non-cooperation-Khilafat movement of 1919–1921.174 Gandhi condemned the

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protectionists’ calls for an end to the Muslim slaughter of cows in return for Hindu support.175 ‘The Hindus’ participation in the Khilafat,’ he explained, ‘is the greatest and the best movement for cow protection.’176 ‘As soon as the Muslims realize that for their sake the Hindus are ready to lay down their lives, they will desist from cow slaughter.177 The conservative Muslim press insisted that cow protection should not be made a condition for unity, and that Muslims could not be expected to give up what was ‘enjoined by Islam’.178 To the Mahasabha, the cow had emerged as a symbol of ‘Hindu unity’ in a drive to promote sangathan through the defence of Hindu religious practices in the country.179 In the early 1920s, the Hindu Mahasabha focused chiefly on the state’s failure to fulfil the Hindu demands for cow protection in north India.180 At its Banaras session in October 1921, it criticised the government for not bringing in legislation for the prevention of cow slaughter, demanding the import of beef for the army in the country.181 At the Gaya session held under the leadership of M.M. Malaviya in 1922, the party had launched an appeal against the slaughter of cows for the military and the export of beef to other countries, resolving on ‘noncooperation’ against British rule until cow slaughter ended.182 The sangathanist propaganda highlighted the magnitude of the government’s ‘cruelty’, linking it to the ‘destruction of cattle’.183 Lala Sukhbir Sinha, leader of the UP Hindu Sabha, stated in April 1921: ‘There are 70,000 British troops in India and 7,000 tons of beef are [sic] supplied to them in one year.’184 Colonial rule was viewed as a threat to the ‘stability and natural order’ of Hindu society.185 Popular Hindu associations promoting Brahmanical ideals and vegetarianism highlighted the ‘decadence’ of British rule, which had perpetrated ‘meat-eating’ and forms of ‘consumption’.186 Overwhelmingly, though, the cow imagery proved important in mobilising the Hindu community in the context of slaughter in which the state was viewed to be ‘complicit and illegitimate’.187 The degree to which the sacredness of the cow was affirmed had signified a judgment of the ‘moral character’ of the state and the ‘stability’ of Hindu society in India.188 By the late 1920s, Hindu revivalism, especially the claims to ban cow slaughter, had strengthened the battle lines, targeting Muslims as never before.189 The Hindu Mahasabha imparted a definite sangathanist appeal to the ‘cow symbol’, making a departure from its exclusive anti-British hostility.190 It incorporated cow protection, a resistance to the ‘accretion of non-Hindu beliefs and practices’, in sangathan narrative, revealing an extreme anti-Muslim antagonism.191 Hindu publicists condemned cow slaughter as an outcome of the ‘evil practices’ of Muslims; and the Hindu religion as well as culture was seen to be ‘vitiated’ by not merely the British but Muslims.192 Muslims were accused of deliberately wounding ‘Hindu sentiments’ by publicly slaughtering kine.193 The ‘outrageous practice’, it was asserted, had been going on ever since the Muslim rulers set their ‘thorny foot on this holy land’. They had not only ‘increased the suffering of Hindus’, but ‘dispossessed them of their chief wealth’, the cow.194 M.S. Golwalkar explained that cow slaughter had begun since the coming of the ‘foreign invaders [Muslims]. . . . They took to various types of barbarism such as conversion, demolishing [of] our temples and . . . cow slaughter.’195 ‘Islam indulged in

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jihad [holy war],’ Pandit Lekh Ram, an Arya Samajist, emphasised, and ‘Hindus were converted to Islam forcibly, temples demolished, and cows slaughtered.’196 In view of the widespread prevalence of ritual slaughter at Bakr-Id in north India, sangathanists aggressively targeted Islam, urging Hindus to protect the cows from the ‘threat’ of Muslims, the ‘enemy’ of the Indian nation. In sangathan narrative, the cow was linked to the building of a ‘strong nation’ – a nation of Hindu men who had grown ‘weak and poor’ for lack of milk.197 The life-giving, pure quality of cow milk was associated with the ‘purity and strength’ of the nation.198 The decline in the physical strength of Hindus and an increase in child mortality were linked to the ‘decline of cows’; and the ‘indiscriminate slaughter’ of cows was interpreted as a ‘grave injury’ caused to agriculture and ‘national health’.199 In appeals to ban cow killing in towns like Mathura and Ayodhya, religious and emotional arguments were extensively deployed.200 Kriparam Mishra, general secretary of the Garhwal Radha-Krishna Gaushala, Mathura, explained: Today our mother cow is being slain by the infidels in innumerable numbers. . . . Our helplessness, mental weakness and physical impotency [sic] is explicitly telling us that among the many reasons for such changes, the main one is the decline of cow wealth.201 Sangathan defended cow protection as a powerful factor in creating the ‘physical strength’ of the Hindu community.202 Bhai Parmanand urged cow protection as an essential part of sangathan’s drive to promote the ‘strength and welfare’ of a ‘Hindu nation’. K.B. Hedgewar fiercely opposed any harm to the cow, which was needed for ‘national well-being’.203 To sangathan, the cow, which gave sanctity to family, community and nation, had become the symbol of a strong ‘Hindu nation’; and its utility was paramount in producing ‘brave and strong’ men who could defend the country.204 The ‘sacred cow’ was associated with Hindu patriarchy and conceptions of the ‘female body’.205 The nation was envisaged as a ‘mother figure’, the warriors protecting it being ‘brave men’.206 The ‘sacred cow’ was a metaphor for Hindu society and the nation, the cow becoming a ‘proto-nation’ – the mother of a ‘Hindu nation’.207 The cow’s body was invested with the divine and became more sacred than the real, the ‘physical, birth-giving mother’; and its sacredness meant ‘inviolability, non-slaughterability’, with the Aryan race being called upon to protect her.208 The evocation of the nation as a ‘mother’ was symbolised by the cow, turning cow killing into a ‘matricide’.209 Crucially, the sacred object to be protected was a ‘feminine’ figure – the cow, the abducted woman, and the motherland.210 An image of the mother as an archetypical ‘victim’, which in turn was linked to the ideas of ‘female bodies’ and ‘national honour’, was a persistent metaphor in sangathanist iconography.211 Women were viewed as the victims and symbols of ‘national honour’ and in need of protection; and they would enter the national landscape as wives supporting warriors and as heroic mothers nurturing future warrior-soldiers.212 The nation as the woman or the cow intersected

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sangathan narrative through socially constructed ideas of honour to be protected by brave citizen-warriors.213 In sangathan’s narrative of the nation as the ‘mother’, the cow became a symbol of ‘fragility and vulnerability’ – linked to fears about the ‘strength and integrity’ of a ‘Hindu nation’ in a perpetual conflict and struggle with Muslims.

Conclusion In the early twentieth century, Nagari and the cow emerged as the rallying symbols, constituting the basis of a ‘Hindu nation’ in the articulation of sangathan narrative.214 The Nagari campaign had first begun as a movement to replace Persian with Hindi in the courts and administration of the UP by the late nineteenth century.215 Nagari became the chief basis of the Hindu elite’s attempts to redefine language for a communitarian consciousness in avowed hostility against Urdu and the Muslim gentry in the province.216 The Hindu Mahasabha adopted the Nagari movement, which had been started by Hindi intellectuals and fostered by the Arya Samaj and Hindi institutions, as an issue of ‘Hindu identity’ and cultural nationalism by centring its attack on Urdu.217 Hindi was projected as the language of the national and cultural descendants of ancient Hindus and the mother tongue of the masses with an ‘Aryan ancestry’.218 The strong support for Nagari as well as an attack on Urdu’s predominance became an integral element of sangathan narrative, strengthening the Mahasabha’s drive for the creation of Hindi as the ‘national language’ of India.219 Urdu was viewed as a symbol of the Muslim elite’s ‘cultural dominance’ and a legacy ‘Muslim tyranny’ in India.220 Sangathan favoured an autonomous and independent progress of Hindi, insisting on its ‘cultural separateness’ from the Perso-Urdu tradition.221 By the late 1920s, the sangathanist campaign had accelerated the transformation of Hindi from a spoken language into a dialect of political and educational communication, more so with Congress nationalist support, dealing a blow to the dominance of Urdu writing in the UP.222 In a parallel development, the Mahasabha appropriated in its sangathan narrative the long-existing movement for cow protection, which had been launched by the Arya Samaj since the late nineteenth century in north India.223 In the 1920s, the cow became a key issue in sangathan’s programme for the creation of a ‘Hindu nation’ in intense hostility and antagonism against Muslims.224 The struggle to restore the sanctity of the cow and the linking of cow protection to the ‘strength and integrity’ of the nation were central to the narrative on the construction of a ‘Hindu nation’.225 The cow emerged as a metaphor for a strong and powerful ‘nation’, helping to homogenise Hindu society in a conflict with Muslims.226 The Mahasabha represented the cow as the ‘mother’ of a ‘Hindu nation’ – targeting Muslims more vigorously than the British in its campaigns in the UP during the 1920s and 1930s.227

PART III

Hindu nation

10 Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation

The Indian National Congress made concerted efforts to negotiate a settlement on Hindu–Muslim representation as the basis of a renewed struggle for Indai’s independence from Britain in the early decades of the twentieth century.1 The Hindu Mahasabha questioned the Congress’s legitimacy to negotiate on behalf of Hindus, claiming that it and not the Congress was the principal spokesman of the Hindu community.2 It rejected separate electorates for Muslims and proposed joint electorates and a ‘majoritarian rule’ – a political system strongly opposed by the Muslim elite.3 The 1928 Nehru report, which accepted joint electorates as the basis of a settlement, was rejected by the Muslim parties; and the round table conferences on Hindu–Muslim representation held in London in 1930–1931 had failed to break the impasse in the country.4 This chapter examines the Mahasabha’s resistance to the Muslim demands for political safeguards and its campaign for a permanent Hindu ‘majority rule’, analysing the irreconcilability of the Muslim demands that had deepened the crisis over power sharing in the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the Mahasabha’s role in the breakdown of negotiations on the Muslim demands for concessions in India’s legislatures, an issue that eventually led to the Muslim League’s ‘Pakistan’ plan in the 1940s.

Muslim representation British rule in India was based on a strategy to win the collaboration of a wide range of native notables, rural and urban, and religious communities.5 In taking a new direction, the state granted separate electorates for Muslims, besides ‘weightage’, in the provincial legislative councils under the Indian Councils Act of 1909 – the Minto–Morley reforms.6 Separate electorates introduced the notion of the Muslim community as a unit of political representation, which had become a rationale for the British to meet the Muslim anxieties about the threat of electoral marginalisation in a majoritarian ‘Hindu state’.7 In the British calculation, the reforms were intended to secure the loyalty of Muslims through its elite and effectively break the Congress’s nationalist struggle in the country.8 The grouping of Muslims into a political category was a watershed event with disastrous implications for the Congress’s vision of an ‘inclusionary’ nationalism in India.9 The Congress nationalists attacked the ‘unfairness’ of separate electorates and

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the ‘weightage’, expressing a grave concern over the resultant sectarian cleavage between Hindus and Muslims and threat to the unity of the Indian nation.10 In the United Provinces, the home territory of the Muslim League and for long the heartland of Muslim separatism, the Muslim elite had gained most from separate electorates and ‘weightage’ in the provincial Legislative Council, adversely affecting the political sphere of Hindu politicians.11 Hindu publicists attacked separate electorates as a threat to reduce the influence of ‘lawyer politicians’, fearing adverse effects on the representation of Hindus in the council.12 M.M. Malaviya deplored that separate electorates tended to set one religion against the other and reduced the non-official majority provided in the 1909 Act to a ‘farce’.13 Four out of the 20 elective seats in the UP council went to Muslims as of right after 1909, he pointed out, even though they were only 14.5 per cent of the population in the province.14 Muslims were sure to secure two more seats from the general electorates; and two non-official appointed members were also to be Muslims, which ensured that out of the 26 non-official members, eight were to be Muslim – a factor that risked combining official members and conservatives to defeat controversial amendments in the council.15 To Hindu publicists, separate electorates threatened crippling effects on provincial politics with a potential to heighten conflicts and sharply define the religious divide in the towns and districts of the UP.16 Siginificantly, ‘weighted’ representation for Muslims was introduced in the municipal boards of the UP under the UP Municipalities Act of 1916.17 Under the Act, separate representation was extended to municipalities with the ‘weightage’ of up to three-tenths for the minorities, according a disproportionately larger representation of 38.5 per cent to Muslims in the towns of the UP.18 The Muslim groups taking power under the Act had controlled not merely the posts of the subordinate bureaucracy but civil institutions which supported the overall networks of local influence in the towns.19 Congress leaders, mainly Motilal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jagat Narain Mulla, and Ishwar Saran, had backed the Act as part of the Congress’s initiative to secure Muslim support for a united alliance against the British.20 The new Act created a deep discontent among Hindu publicists, driving them into a vigorous opposition over the ‘grievous injustice’ to non-Muslims.21 It had a potential risk to reduce Hindus to a minority on the municipal boards, seriously affecting the overall Hindu representation in the UP council and the central legislature.22 To the Hindu right, the Act had become a rallying cry in its agitation against separate electorates to Muslims across the UP. M.M. Malaviya and C.Y. Chintamani led an agitation against the Act in Allahabad; and the stir was supported by Hindu Sabha men – Babu Bhagwan Das, Sundar Lal, Rai Bahadur Anand Swarup, and Lala Sukhbir Sinha, ‘who’, T.B. Sapru told a friend, ‘every now and again reminds me that the Municipal Act has “ruined” [he uses no other word] the Hindus’.23 A protest meeting, attended by nearly 6,000 Hindus, was held in Allahabad on 16 July 1916, where Malaviya condemned separate electorates and supported the ‘one man, one vote’ system, which favoured a ‘Hindu majority’.24 Twelve Hindu members of the Allahabad Municipal Board and all the Hindu members of

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 139 Lucknow municipality resigned in July 1916.25 Similarly, Hindu members in Bijnor municipality resigned, while those in Unao, Ayodhya and Etawah district boards threatened to quit in protest.26 The UP Hindu Sabha, at its Banaras conference held on 20 August 1916 under the presidentship of Raja Sir Rampal Singh, had strongly attacked the municipalities Act and rejected separate electorates altogether.27 The All-India Hindu Sabha in December 1916 condemned the Act as the Congress’s ‘sell out’ to Muslims, urging Hindus to boycott the Congress, which had failed to protect ‘Hindu rights’ against the Muslim demands.28 An ‘alliance’, it was feared, had existed between the British and Muslims as part of a strategy to limit the ‘political power’ of the Hindu community.29 Admittedly, the Hindu right was apprehensive about the negative implications of a decline in Hindu representation in the municipal councils and district boards of the UP under the 1916 Act.30 Lucknow Pact In a historic act of reappraisal and reconciliation, the moderate Congress formally conceded separate electorates to Muslims under the Lucknow Pact of 1916 as the basis of new constitutional arrangements after having consistently opposed them since 1909.31 The moderate stalwarts – Motilal Nehru and Tej Bahadur Sapru – persuaded the Congress to adopt separate electorates in the interests of securing a ‘common front’ for freedom in India.32 Under the pact which the Congress had concluded with the Muslim League as part of an initiative led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, and B.G. Tilak, separate electorates were conceded to Muslims [21 per cent of the population against 68 per cent Hindus in Indian subcontinent], besides a ‘weightage’ of seats in excess of their population in areas where they were in a minority in the country.33 Muslims were accorded a ‘weightage’ in the Hindu majority provinces of the UP, Bihar, Bombay, Madras, and the Central Provinces. In the UP, Muslims [14.5 per cent of the population] were given 30 per cent of the seats in the Legislative Council.34 In Bihar and Orissa [10.9 per cent of the population], Muslims were to receive 25 per cent of the seats, in the Central Provinces [4.4 per cent] 15 per cent of the seats, in Bombay [19.8 per cent] 33.3 per cent of the seats, and in Madras [6.7 per cent] 15 per cent of the seats.35 The Muslim League in turn gave up its claim to legislative majorities in the Punjab and Bengal: Muslims received 45.1 per cent of the seats [54.8 per cent of population] in the Punjab, and 40 per cent in Bengal [52.7 per cent].36 No bill affecting a community could be passed by a legislature if three-quarter of that community’s legislators opposed it – a safeguard given to Muslims in Hindu-majority provinces.37 The pact provided that one-third of the elected members in the central legislature should be Muslims elected by separate electorates.38 It proposed a ‘dominion’ status for India, demanding that India be granted a representative government elected on a ‘broader franchise’.39 The Congress viewed the pact as a ‘reasonable price’ to pay for Muslim cooperation in the larger goal of securing self-government in India.40 Admittedly, the pact’s true significance lay in the formal recognition of

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the Muslim League as the authoritative spokesman of Muslims or, as M.A. Jinnah put it, the ‘chief representative of Muslim India’, reinforcing a distinct ‘Muslim entity’ whose representation was deemed to be the League’s ‘exclusive responsibility’ in the country.41 The pact’s scheme of representation, implemented in substance by the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms,42 had signified a decisive step towards the articulation of a common nationalist programme for India’s freedom.43 However, the Hindu Mahasabha condemned the Lucknow Pact as a ‘surrender’ by the Congress, opposing separate electorates and ‘weightage’ granted to Muslims in the country.44 It rejected the terms of the pact as a ‘betrayal’, attacking the principle that substituted Muslim majorities in the Punjab and Bengal with ‘weighted’ representation for Muslim in the minority provinces.45 The Mahasabha, at its third conference held in Lucknow in 1916, had expressed a strong opposition to the Muslim League, rejecting its claim as an equal partner in shaping the future of the country.46 V.P. Madhav Rao, in his presidential address, charged that the concessions made to Muslims by the Congress were at the expense of ‘Hindu interests’, and that the Mahasabha and not the Congress should negotiate on behalf of Hindus. The Mahasabha’s objective, he explained, was to ‘educate the public mind on the evils likely to follow from recognition of this principle [separate electorates] and giving effect to it in the coming reforms’.47 Lajpat Rai repudiated the pact as a ‘negation of nationalism’ on the basis that separate electorates would deal a ‘severe blow’ to India’s nationhood.48 In a circular to prominent Hindus of the provinces in India, he condemned the Congress’s role in negotiating the pact, urging them to make the Mahasabha their ‘political mouthpiece’ in the struggle for India’s freedom.49 Bhai Parmanand condemned the pact as a ‘sectarian curse’, reiterating that separate electorates resulted in an ‘injustice’ to the ‘legitimate rights’ of Hindus.50 In the UP, the discontent over the Lucknow Pact was most acute among the Hindu right, as Muslims were far too advanced in the administration and economy of the province, which contained the best educated and most articulate leaders of all-India Muslim politics.51 By 1911 Muslims had held 41.94 per cent of all the uncovenanted service posts in the province – 44 per cent of deputy collectors, 38 per cent of superintendents of police, 50 per cent of vets, and 52 per cent of constables.52 The UP Hindu Sabha rejected the pact, opposing the reduction in Hindu representation resulting from the ‘weightage’ conceded to Muslims.53 The Hindu Sabhas of Allahabad, Banaras and Kanpur denounced ‘excessive representation’ given to Muslims under the pact.54 In ideological terms, the Mahasabha represented an electoral policy based on ‘one man, one vote’, rejecting separate electorates in entirety.55 By the 1920s, the Congress had launched the ‘national demand’ for a representative government, which shaped the nationalist agenda in India.56 The demand, stated by Motilal Nehru in February 1924, was not for a full responsible government in ‘a bundle’ but the recognition of India’s right to ‘selfdetermination’ based on a constitution.57 It demanded the revision of the 1919 Act with a view to establishing a full responsible government and a round table

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 141 conference to frame a constitution, accompanied by its enactment by parliament.58 The official response to the demand was the appointment of an ‘allwhite’ commission under Sir John Simon in November 1927, which was charged with the task of evolving a constitution to grant a full ‘dominion’ status to India.59 The Congress protested that Britain had acted contrary to the national will and urged all the parties in the country to boycott the seven-man commission, which had no Indian representative.60 The Muslim League boycotted the commission, and so, too, did the other nationalist parties.61 The Hindu Mahasabha, at its Madras session in December 1927, decided to follow the Congress’s policy of boycott in protest against the government’s ‘pro-Muslim policy’ based on ‘imperial considerations’.62 The prospect of a new stage of constitutional reforms reopened the possibility of forging a common national front, as the different strands of political opinion had come together in an outcry against the Simon Commission.63 Intense negotiations took place among the parties on Hindu–Muslim representation, for an agreement was required to be incorporated into a new constitution for India.64

Jinnah’s Delhi proposals In the negotiations leading up to a draft constitution for India in the late 1920s, the All-India Muslim League sought to achieve for Muslims in India the goals of political representation that had been set by the Aligarh elite.65 Mohammed Ali Jinnah [1876–1948] helped draft the ‘Delhi Muslim proposals’ on behalf of the League in early 1927, which offered to give up separate electorates – a keystone of Muslim constitutional politics since 1909 – in favour of joint electorates if four demands could be guaranteed. The demands were: one-third Muslim representation in the central legislature; the reservation of seats in proportion to population in the provincial legislatures, including the Punjab and Bengal, in addition to ‘weightage’; the creation of a new Muslim-majority province of Sind; and the extension of the 1909 reforms to the North-West Frontier Province [NWFP] and Baluchistan, raising both to the same administrative status as the other fully fledged provinces.66 The League’s plan was to expand the number of Muslimmajority provinces to five [the Punjab, Bengal, Sind, the NWFP, and Baluchistan] so as to be in a ‘position to avenge any attacks on Muhammadans’ in provinces where Hindus were in a majority.67 In a press statement on 29 March 1927, Jinnah, the future quaid, declared that the ‘four proposals’ had to be accepted or rejected in toto.68 Muslims, he explained, ‘should be made to feel that they are secure and safe-guarded against any act of oppression on the part of the majority’ during the transitional stage towards the development of a national government.69 The Congress accepted all the Delhi proposals at its Calcutta session on 26 December 1927, giving full assurance that the legitimate Muslim interests would be secured by the ‘reservation of seats in joint electorates on the basis of population in the provinces and the central legislature’. It agreed to the elevation of the NWFP and Baluchistan to the full status of governor’s provinces and the creation of linguistic provinces, including Sind.70 The Muslim League’s

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proposals signalled a drive for a rapprochement with the Congress, paving the way for a new constitution for India.71 However, the Hindu Mahasabha rejected the Delhi proposals in toto. At its session held in Patna in April 1927 under the presidentship of B.S. Moonje, the Mahasabha had categorically demanded the abolition of ‘weightage’ in Muslimminority provinces and condemned the proposals to create legislative majorities in the Punjab and Bengal.72 ‘In no circumstance . . .,’ it emphasised, ‘shall there be any reservation of seats in favour of any majority community.’73 The Mahasabha rejected the separation of Sind, the Muslim-majority region, from Bombay presidency, as it would create an ‘Islamic empire from Angora [sic] to Karachi’. Baluchistan and the NWFP were ‘too backward’ for the 1909 reforms, and the time was ‘not ripe for the consideration of such plan’.74 Moonje warned the Congress that it should confine itself to ratifying agreements negotiated by leaders of the communities. ‘I have to request you [Congress] on behalf of the Hindu Mahasabha,’ he explained, to confine your resolutions at present only to what has been mutually accepted by the Hindus and the Moslem leaders . . . if the Congress were to adopt any resolutions concerning these details before the differences on them are reconciled, the Congress may not only fail in achieving its object but I am afraid undesirable complications may arise.75 Muslims faced a threat of boycott, he warned, if they did not prove subservient to Hindus. ‘Leave the Muslims severely alone,’ he counselled, so they might ‘realize their folly, and in dejection . . . throw themselves at our feet’.76 The Mahasabha put forward counter-proposals, demanding constitutional safeguards for the representation of Hindus in India. On 21 April 1927, M.M. Malaviya proposed four demands: joint electorates for all legislatures throughout the country; the reservation of seats on population basis in the legislatures; safeguards for the protection of religious and quasi-religious rights; and the issue of the re-distribution of provinces on linguistic and other criteria to be left open for future consideration.77 He proposed elections to elective bodies on the basis of joint electorates, besides seeking a uniform franchise, which would secure the ‘political leverage’ of Hindus in India.78 The Mahasabha rejected any reconciliation with the Muslim League over the Delhi proposals, hardening the rift on representation in India.79 Nonetheless, the Congress negotiated an amended version of Jinnah’s Delhi proposals. At the All-India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay on 15 May 1927, a truce – the ‘Delhi–Bombay compromise’ – was adopted: reforms for the NWFP became conditional on the provision of a suitable judiciary, and the separation of Sind conditional on the separation of Andhra.80 The Mahasabha condemned the Congress truce, however. B.S. Moonje clarified the Mahasabha’s protest, dissenting from the ‘Delhi–Bombay compromise’ ‘clause by clause’, declining to accept the terms set for the separation of Sind from Bombay presidency and urging the Hindu Sabhas in the country to oppose the Congress’s resolution on the Delhi proposals.81 In the Mahasabha’s programme, provinces were

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 143 not to be reorganised to produce statutory religious majorities, more so of Muslims, while the residuary powers lay with the centre in India.82 All-Parties Conference In 1928 the Congress convened an All-Parties Conference as part of its efforts to resolve the deepening crisis over Hindu–Muslim representation and draft a constitution for India. The conference – attended by the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Liberal Party, and the Muslim League – was the nationalist answer to the claim made by conservative Secretary of State for India Lord Birkenhead that India was solely ‘reliant on British rule’, incapable of devising a constitution for herself.83 It opened in Delhi on 12 February 1928 and reconvened again in Bombay in May 1928.84 In all the conference meetings, the Mahasabha categorically rejected the reservation of seats for the Muslim majority in the Punjab and Bengal.85 It resisted the creation of new Muslim provinces as a price for securing joint electorates and rejected the Congress resolution on Sind.86 B.S. Moonje, M.R. Jayakar, and N.C. Kelkar issued a manifesto, condemning the attempts to ‘constitute new provinces in India in which a particular community [Muslims] is in a majority’.87 In view of the Mahasabha’s opposition, the Muslim League decided to boycott all the subsequent meetings of the conference planned in 1928.88 Motilal Nehru expressed an alarm over the ‘hostile’ role of the Mahasabha, blaming it for the ‘failure’ of the conference meetings.89 The negotiations faced a threat of deadlock over almost all the substantive issues of concessions to Muslims, deepening the Congress’s dilemma in evolving a formula on power sharing in India.90 Nehru constitution In the row over Muslim safeguards, the All-Parties Conference appointed a committee to settle all issues relating to representation as part of its plan to draft a new constitution for India.91 Motilal Nehru, who was appointed the committee chairman with Jawaharlal as secretary, emphasised the need for achieving a unanimous formula, as ‘an agreed report would be a strong weapon to carry on a campaign in the country against the Government’.92 ‘The support of the Hindu Maha Sabha,’ he explained, ‘is most essential, specially as there is no knowing how the Muslim opinion will finally shape itself ’.93 However, at the committee’s session held in Lucknow in August 1928, the Mahasabha’s opposition to the Muslim demands had proved insurmountable – particularly over the reservation of one-third of seats to Muslims in the central legislature and the separation of Sind.94 To the Mahasabha, the Muslim demands, ‘sectarian’ in nature, were ought to be opposed as ‘injurious’ to Hindu interests in the country.95 The Nehru constitution, unveiled on 15 August 1928, had introduced joint electorates, removing separate electorates and ‘weightage’ for Muslims.96 It offered Muslims reservations in provinces where they were in a minority, but rejected the reservation of seats for the Muslim majority in the Punjab and

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Bengal.97 The constitution restricted the Muslim quota in the central legislature to a fourth [25 per cent] instead of a third [33 per cent] as demanded by the Muslim League, denying Muslims a share of power which would ensure them a status virtually equal to Hindus at the centre.98 It rejected the demand for the creation of Sind as a separate province on the basis that the reorganisation of states would take place on linguistic grounds and, in the case of Sind, when it was deemed to be a financially ‘viable proposition’.99 It stated its goal as a ‘dominion’ status not full independence, proposing an Indian federation based on a unitary government at the centre with all departments of the central government – defence, finance, foreign affairs, and relations with Indian states – made responsible to Indian legislatures, while residual powers lay with the centre.100 Evidently, the Nehru scheme demonstrated how intractable the problem of Hindu–Muslim power sharing had become in all-India terms.101 In the negotiations on the ratification of the Nehru constitution, the National All-Parties Convention, held in Lucknow on 28 August 1928, had unanimously approved the scheme, resolving that India should have a responsible government, a ‘government in which the executive should be responsible to a popularly elected legislature’ – a status no lower than that of a ‘self-governing dominion’.102 The convention opened its second session in Calcutta on 28 December 1928, where M.A. Jinnah on behalf of the Muslim League offered to endorse the Nehru report, inclusive of joint electorates, if fundamental amendments were made. They were one-third of the seats reserved for Muslims at the centre, reserved seats for Muslims in the Punjab and Bengal until an adult suffrage was established, the immediate creation of Sind, and the vesting of residual powers in the provinces.103 Jinnah’s demands met with a hostile opposition from the Hindu Mahasabha, which bitterly attacked the demand for 33 per cent of the seats in the central legislature and rejected the demand for the reservation of seats for the Muslim majority in the Punjab and Bengal as ‘irrelevant’.104 ‘We do not,’ it explained, ‘contemplate any such contingency.’105 The claim for the separation of Sind, and the demand that the residuary powers be vested with the provinces were rejected.106 By far the most trenchant opposition came from M.R. Jayakar, Mahasabha working committee member, who condemned Jinnah’s demands as ‘incompatible’ with a ‘national constitution’. If one word was changed in the Nehru report, he warned, the Mahasabha would withdraw its support to it. ‘If you accede to Mr Jinnah’s demands,’ he went on, ‘the report will be torn to pieces and will be rejected by important communities who have now accepted it as the final word in the matter.’107 Inevitably, the Calcutta convention rejected Jinnah’s offer.108 Jinnah, in an interview with the Associated Press, blamed the Mahasabha for the failure of negotiations on Muslim representation, terming December 1928 the ‘parting of the ways’ for Muslims.109 He called for Muslim ‘unity and solidarity’, explaining that Muslims could protect their ‘rights and interests’ as a community against a permanent ‘Hindu majority’ only through a ‘struggle and organisation’ in India.110 The debate on Muslim safeguards had become highly contested, as there were fears on how far the reservations for Muslims would protect the ‘unity and integrity’ of the Indian nation.111

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 145 The Nehru constitution failed to satisfy the majority of Muslim parties and their leaders in India, who rejected it as a ‘Hindu document’ – a ‘Hindu ploy’ designed to establish a ‘Hindu Raj’ under British protection in the country.112 The Muslim opposition to the report grew in volume and intensity, with calls demanding the retention of separate electorates and ‘weightage’ for Muslims.113 The maintenance of separate electorates was demanded as a ‘political necessity’, as without them the ‘Mahasabhaite mentality of the Hindus cannot be countered’.114 Joint electorates would mean a ‘Muslim disintegration’ and a ‘legalised tyranny of numbers’, for Muslims elected from such electorates would be ‘tools in the hands of Hindus’.115 Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, a member of the UP Legislative Council, feared that Muslim candidates would fail to get elected in the legislatures through joint electorates, which had large numbers of non-Muslim voters.116 Shaukat Ali, the elder of the Ali Brothers and president of the UP Congress Committee [UPCC], blamed Motilal Nehru for making concessions to the Hindu Mahasabha and denounced Muslim leaders, especially M.A. Ansari, who had supported Nehru, calling them the ‘Congress stooges’.117 Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Congress Khilafatist, rejected the Nehru report as a ‘mere scrap of paper meant to compromise ignorant people’, protesting against the ‘poor treatment’ meted out to Muslims in the negotiations.118 Ataullah Shah Bukhari, a Deobandi leader, denounced the report and rejected any ‘conciliatory attitude’ towards Hindus, deprecating the ‘attitude of Malaviya, Moonje and Gandhi who never advised their co-religionists to play fair with Muhammadans’.119 Crucially, the All India Muslim Conference, organised by Fazl-i-Husain in Delhi on 31 December 1928, had declared a decisive rejection of the report, adopting an ‘irreducible minimum of six demands: separate electorates, statutory Muslim majorities, “weightage” for the Muslim minority, a “federal system with complete autonomy” and “residuary powers vested in the states” ’.120 It revived the demand for ‘one third’ of the seats for Muslims at the centre as well as the grant of the ‘state status to Sind, the NWFP, and Baluchistan’.121 The large majority of Muslims were adamantly opposed to the Nehru scheme for a political advance at the centre, dealing a blow to the prospects of unity in India.122 However, the Hindu Mahasabha was jubilant over the Nehru report, hailing it as a ‘bold, outspoken and fearless exposition of the national demand’, for the privileged position of Hindus had been retained in India’s legislatures under the provisions of the new constitution.123 At an emergency meeting presided over by B.S. Moonje in Simla on 26 December 1928, it accepted through a unanimous resolution the recommendations of the report, terming it an ‘epoch-making constitution’.124 It was euphoric on the abolition of separate electorates and ‘weightage’ for Muslims in India. ‘Personally,’ M.R. Jayakar explained, ‘I am inclined to agree with the Nehru Committee’s Report not perhaps as an ideal arrangement, yet on the whole being more beneficial to the Hindus than any scheme so far suggested on the Congress side.’125 M.M. Malaviya welcomed the report, giving full support to its proposals.126 Lajpat Rai urged his followers to accept the report, endorsing its verdict on joint electorates, even though he declared in October 1928, shortly before his death, that if Muslims persisted in seeking to

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amend the report, ‘Hindus will be perfectly justified’ to rescind their support.127 Ramanand Chatterjee asserted that if Muslims did not accept the Nehru report, Hindus would then return to ‘pure nationalism’, meaning that there would be ‘no reservation of seats’ for Muslims anywhere in India.128 The Mahasabha’s immediate plan was to stop any further negotiations on the Nehru report. At its Surat session on 30 April 1929, a motion moved by B.S. Moonje and seconded by Bhai Parmanand threatened to withdraw the party’s support to the report if any changes were made in it.129 Moonje declared that if M.A. Jinnah any moment consented to accept the Nehru constitution, the Mahasabha would be prepared to do so. ‘The situation,’ he explained, ‘therefore, is entirely in the hands of our Muslim brothers. . . . If the Muslims are pleased to give up their narrow communalism and accept the Nehru Report, I am sure the Hindu Mahasabha will respond suitably.’130 The Mahasabha claimed to stand uncompromisingly by the report, insisting that it should not be altered by one ‘jot’, or ‘title’.131 In it’s belief, Muslims would eventually come to accept the Nehru report as the ‘second best’ constitution for India.132 By early 1929 Jinnah had drafted the Fourteen Points as part of the Muslim League’s programme, which formed the basis of a settlement on joint electorates in India. The Fourteen Points, unveiled on 3 March 1929, had reiterated the old demands on the provision for a federal constitution and provincial autonomy, but reintroduced the demand for separate electorates for Muslims.133 The League’s plan centred on an exclusive Muslim representation in India: the creation of seats to be allotted to Muslims in the legislatures through the retention of separate electorates, besides evolving autonomous provinces in which Muslims would have ‘weighted’ representation.134 The Congress rejected the Fourteen Points as ‘preposterous’, for little would remain of ‘India’s unity’ if progressive concessions were made to Muslims.135 In the League’ theory, Muslims were a permanently defined, distinct social category that enabled it to claim a parity of status and representation vis-à-vis Hindus in India.136 The League’s demands – four in 1927, six in 1928 and 14 in 1929 – had deepened the predicament of the Congress, which failed to break the political stalemate in the country.137 Gandhi was keen on reaching a settlement on Hindu–Muslim representation and asked the Congress to stick to its pledge on the reservation of seats for Muslims until an alternative formula was devised in the country.138 Motilal Nehru urged Gandhi to make the Hindu Mahasabha agree to the main Muslim demands so that the entire Nehru scheme would be adopted by the Muslim League.139 But this could not be achieved. Gandhi wrote to Motilal Nehru: ‘How that can be done or whether it should be done, you know best. My mind is in a whirl in this matter. The atmosphere is too foggy for me to see clearly.’140 At the Jamiat-ul-Ulema conference in Delhi on 2 March 1931, Gandhi declared: ‘As a Congressman and as a Hindu, I say that I wish to give the Muslims what they want. I do not wish to act like a Bania. I wish to leave everything to the honour of the Muslims. I would like you to put down whatever you want on a blank sheet of paper and I shall agree to it.’141 He urged the Congress to concede whatever Muslims wanted as a price of securing a ‘united nation’ in India.142 Gandhi’s views had remained unheeded: he had ‘no

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 147 alternative but to wait on God’ for a solution.143 Evidently, there were apprehensions in the Mahasabha that Gandhi would fall a victim to the ‘intrigues of Muslims’ under M.A. Jinnah’s leadership and accept their demands.144 At an emergency meeting on 23 March 1931, the Mahasabha discussed the threat contained in Gandhi’s conciliatory speeches and asserted that it had no intention of following Gandhi’s unilateral ‘gesture of generosity’. If Gandhi yielded to Muslims, it warned, he would lose the entire ‘Hindu support’ in the country.145 B.S. Moonje wrote to Gandhi urging him not to agree to any concessions in order to conciliate Muslims, which would be a ‘plunge into darkness’. He explained: ‘If you want to find a radical solution of the Hindu–Muslim relation so far as the public administration of the country is concerned, I think there could be no safer position than that taken by the Hindu Mahasabha which is one of pure unalloyed nationalism. . . . [I]f the Musalmans cannot trust and remain in the Congress and give up their separatist mentality, let us leave them alone’.146 M.R. Jayakar urged Gandhi not to yield to the Muslim demands, warning that ‘[m]y purpose in writing this letter to you is to make you acquainted with the apprehensions of a very large body of the Hindus that any attempt at this time to vary the solution of the Hindu–Muslim question adopted in the Nehru Committee’s Report is fraught with the far-reaching consequences’.147 Hindu leaders from the Punjab and Sind, in a joint conference held in Lahore in May 1931 under B.S. Moonje’s presidentship, had conveyed their ‘misgivings and fears’ to Gandhi, asserting that they would not conciliate Muslims at the expense of ‘Hindu interests’.148 A deputation of the Mahasabha led by Bhai Parmanand had met Gandhi in Delhi and warned that if he gave to concessions to Muslims, the Mahasabha would oppose him ‘tooth and nail’ in the country.149 The Mahasabha’s strategy aimed to ‘restrain Gandhi’ from giving concessions to Muslims on political safeguards.150 In the end, the Congress abandoned the Nehru constitution and decided not to accept any settlement on representation without the concurrence of Muslims in the country.151 The Congress’s failure to achieve unity in 1928 was to prove irreversible, resulting in the abandonment of an initiative for agreement on Hindu–Muslim representation until partition in 1947.152

Round table conferences The problem of Hindu–Muslim representation in India, including the issues of federation and safeguards for the minorities, was finally taken up for arbitration through a series of round table conferences in England. The first round table conference was held in London from 12 November 1930 to 19 January 1931.153 It comprised 89 members: 16 from the three British parties, one from each of the 20 native states, and 53 members from the Indian parties, including the Hindu Mahasabha [B.S. Moonje and M.R. Jayakar], the Liberals [T.B. Sapru and C.Y. Chintamani], the depressed classes [B.R. Ambedkar and Rao Bahadur Srinivasan], the Muslims [the Aga Khan, M.A. Jinnah, Muhammad Shafi, and Fazl-ul-Haq], the Sikhs [Sardar Ujjal Singh], and the Indian Christians [K.T. Paul].154 The Congress, which had launched the civil disobedience movement in India, boycotted the conference – which collapsed, nonetheless.155

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The second round table conference, beginning in September 1931, differed significantly from the first, this time with the Congress represented and Gandhi participating as its ‘sole representative’.156 The Congress’s position was that ‘except for the Sikhs and the Muslims, for historical reasons no other communities should be recognised as separate political entities’.157 The other communities – Christians and Anglo-Indians – were excluded from the ‘minority’ status.158 Gandhi presented the ‘Congress formula’ at the conference, echoing the 1916 Lucknow Pact that had made a commitment to separate electorates for Muslims in India. ‘Now,’ he explained, ‘it [is] a point of honour . . . not to recede from the position.’159 In an open support to the Muslim demands, he declared: ‘I will surrender to the Muslims. Hindus form the majority and as such I will laddle [sic] out with generous hands, I will be satisfied with what is left behind.’160 The ‘Congress formula’ stated that joint electorates should form the basis of representation in the future constitution, and that seats should be reserved in the central and provincial legislatures for Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in any province where they were less than 25 per cent of the population, with the right to contest additional seats. It rejected the reservation of seats for the Muslim majority in the Punjab and Bengal, but offered to constitute Sind into a separate province if the province was to bear its ‘financial costs’.161 The Hindu Mahasabha denounced the ‘Congress formula’ as ‘unacceptable’, expressing its loss of faith in the ‘credibility’ of the Congress to negotiate a settlement on representation.162 B.S. Moonje explained that the Mahasabha’s main objective was to protect Hindu interests from ‘Muslim domination’, warning that Hindus would not make any concessions to Muslims unless the latter backed the demand for India’s ‘dominion’ status.163 To the Mahasabha, partition could perhaps be the price for forcing a Hindu ‘majoritarian rule’ in India.164 The Muslim League rejected the ‘Congress formula’ as more ‘harmful and destructive’ than the Nehru constitution on representation in India.165 In the negotiations in London, Mian Fazl-i-Husain [1877–1936], who had a preeminent position in the collaborative networks of the colonial state, directed the League to secure a weak federal centre and autonomous constituent units in order to counter the potential threat of a permanent ‘Hindu rule’ at the centre.166 Under Husian’s ‘Punjab thesis’, the constituent units of the federation were to receive full autonomy, with the provinces created on an equal footing with the Indian states and given all the residuary powers as well as the ‘right of secession’ from India.167 The League’s emphasis on the ‘grouping’ of provinces, particularly the Muslim-majority provinces in the north-west, in a weak federation was consistent with the rejection of a Congress-dominated all-India federation in which Muslims would be a ‘perpetual minority’.168 In particular, the League demanded the retention of separate electorates, secure Muslim majorities in the Punjab and Bengal, the creation of Sind province, and the elevation of the NWFP to the status of a governor’s province.169 If the Congress was ‘not willing to recognise the Muslim demands’, Shaukat Ali warned, ‘they [Muslims] would ask the Government to satisfy them and make the peace’.170 In effect, the League had held tightly on to its demand for constitutional safeguards, which established much of the structure of the ‘Pakistan’ plan.171 The demand was unacceptable to

Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 149 the Congress’s vision of an ‘inclusionary’ nationalism in India, resulting in the collapse of the ‘Congress formula’.172 Gandhi confessed to British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald that ‘it is with deep sorrow and deep humiliation that I have to announce utter failure on my part to secure an agreed solution of the communal question through informal conversations among and with the representatives of different groups.’ The failure was temporary, however. He continued: ‘I have not a shadow of a doubt that the iceberg of communal differences will melt under the warmth of the sun of freedom.’173 The collapse of the second round table conference effectively ended the possibility of the Indian parties arriving at a formula on Hindu–Muslim representation, despite Gandhi’s efforts at a ‘blank sheet’.174 In a final arbitration, Britain had unveiled the Communal Award, ensuring provincial autonomy in India as envisioned in Fazl-i-Husain’s ‘Punjab thesis’.175 The award announced by Ramsay MacDonald on 16 August 1932 was the result of Britain’s policy to divide power in the provinces among the ‘rival communities and social groups’ which, in its view, constituted Indian society.176 It preserved separate electorates, granting them to the Muslims, the Sikhs, the Europeans, the Christians, and the depressed classes, but restricted the franchise to the moneyed classes, in particular landlords.177 It granted substantial powers to the provinces and guaranteed Muslims not merely separate electorates but more seats than any other community in the Punjab and Bengal: Muslims received 49 per cent of the reserved seats in the Punjab, and 48 per cent in Bengal.178 The Congress vociferously opposed the award, and so did the Hindu Mahasabha, even though the Muslim League accepted it.179 The day after the declaration of the award, 18 August 1932, Gandhi wrote to MacDonald declaring his decision to undertake a perpetual ‘fast unto death’, demanding the withdrawal of the scheme for separate electorates for the depressed classes.180 The outcome was the Poona Pact under which representatives of the depressed classes would be elected by the general electorate under a common franchise in India – a triumph for the Congress’s ‘inclusionary’ nationalism.181 In the negotiations on Hindu–Muslim representation, the central problem lay in the inability to determine the position of Muslims in the Indian nation. The Hindu Mahasabha insisted that reservations and legislative safeguards for Muslims would fragment the unity of the nation, reiterating the idea of a ‘democratic majority’, which in effect meant ‘Hindu’.182 Its notion of democracy was based on a Hindu ‘majority rule’, posing a threat to wreck any constitutional agreement conciliating the Muslim demands for political safeguards in India’s legislatures.183 The Mahasabha’s campaign put extreme pressure on the Congress, complicating the latter’s bargaining position and its manoeuvrability on future power sharing between Hindus and Muslims.184 The conflict was in part an outcome of the irreconcilability of the Muslim demands, which had come full circle. The Congress had faced difficulties as it strove to win Muslim support for the nationalist movement, but remained unsuccessful in accommodating Muslim claims under its secular plan.185 The Muslim League, despite a narrow base of support and a weak organisational structure, presented Muslims as a separate

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political category, challenging the Congress’s claim to represent entire India and seize sovereignty at the unitary centre.186 The Congress’s two outstanding principles – its claim to represent all communities and its commitment to the territorial unity of India – were not shared by the Mahasabha, too.187 The Mahasabha’s opposition to the Muslim demands proved to be a central factor, deepening the crisis throughout the period of negotiations in the 1920s and 1930s. A decade later, in March 1940, the Muslim League under M.A. Jinnah’s leadership called in a resolution, if ambiguous in its particulars, for an independent Muslim state of ‘Pakistan’, shaping the emerging discourse on a contested sovereignty and partition in India.188

Conclusion India witnessed a political conflict on representation due to the grant of separate electorates to Muslims, a safeguard demanded by the Aligarh elite, under the Morley-Minto reforms in the early 1900s.189 The Congress accepted separate electorates and ‘weightage’ for Muslims under the 1916 Lucknow Pact as part of its efforts to enlist Muslim support for the nationalist struggle in India.190 The Hindu Mahasabha rejected the pact and demanded its abrogation, disputing the Congress’s claim to represent the Hindu community. It reiterated its insistence on unconditional joint electorates as its core principle and supported the ‘one-man one-vote’ system, which favoured a Hindu ‘majority rule’.191 In the negotiations leading up to the draft of the 1928 Nehru report, the Congress and the Muslim League had come close to an agreement based on joint electorates, but were unable to bridge differences over the Punjab and Bengal and the percentage of Muslim seats in the central legislature.192 The collapse of unity in 1928 marked the end of the Congress’s last initiative for a settlement on Hindu–Muslim power sharing in India.193 At the 1931 round table conference in London, Gandhi made an offer as part of the ‘Congress formula’ to accept a substantial part of the Muslim demands, provided Muslims endorsed the demand of freedom and agreed to a referendum on the possibility of joint electorates when the new constitution came into operation.194 The ‘Congress formula’ failed to win Muslim support, resulting in the collapse of the multi-party negotiations in England.195 The Mahasabha sought to overturn Gandhi’s initiative and took a formidably tough position against safeguards to Muslims in India’s legislatures.196 The fallout which attended the Mahasabha’s hostile campaign was the Congress’s inability to surmount the opposition to the Muslim demands, which had remained inflexible and irreconcilable throughout the period of negotiations, deepening the crisis on a path to the Muslim League’s ‘Pakistan’ plan launched in 1940.197 The lack of the advocacy of a ‘single nation’ – the Congress’s goal which was imperfectly pursued due to a loss of political courage – was the underlying problem in the negotiations on power sharing in India.198 The Congress strove yet failed to accommodate the Hindu–Muslim communitarian narratives contesting sovereignty within the emerging ideal of the Indian nation, based on its homogenising vision of ‘inclusionary’ nationalism and a unified ‘one nation’.199

11 Conclusion

The ideological edifice of the Indian nation rested on the problem of negotiating unresolved tensions and contestations centring on a binary opposition between secular and cultural nationalism in the early twentieth century.1 The Indian National Congress’s inclusionary nationalist paradigm represented a monolithic concept of ‘secular sovereignty’, which had denied the existence of multiple identities and cultures, a complex legacy of India from its pre-colonial past, by seeking to accommodate communitarian differences within the framework of a ‘unified nation’.2 However, Hindu nationalism had emerged as a persistent feature of political life in north India, since the 1920s, developing an alternative political culture to the dominant ‘secular idiom’ of the Congress.3 Hindu nationalism, which had developed in the context of issues centring on the representation of Hindus in colonial politics, was first formulated by the middle class Hindu elites in the Punjab against the backdrop of constitutional reforms, particularly separate electorates introduced by the state in 1909.4 The Hindu Mahasabha, the institutional voice of Hindu nationalism, was founded as an ideological representative of a Hindu politics in 1915 in the United Provinces, a province which had become the crucible of India’s anti-colonial movement.5 The Mahasabha launched a movement for ‘Hindu unity’ and consolidation, inheriting its ideology from the late nineteenth-century revivalism developed by the Arya Samaj and the sanatan dharm [orthodox Hinduism] movement in north India.6 A central theme of this study has been the development and evolution of Hindutva narrative, which expressed extreme hostility and conflict with the Congress’s secular nationalism in India. In particular, its exclusionary overtones as a political discourse made a departure from the Congress’s vision of an ‘inclusionary nationalism’ and equal citizenship, which was predicated on the separation of religion from politics.7 Ideologically, Hindutva signified the primacy of race and culture as the integral features of a ‘Hindu nation’ in a conflict with the Congress’s conception of a territorial Indian nation, viewing India as a ‘cultural nation’, in which the social and political interests of Hindus were paramount.8 The Congress’s theory of a ‘territorial nation’ in which all religious communities lived in equality was attacked as antithetical to India – in which ‘Hindu culture and tradition’ had become predominant.9 Hindutva gave primacy to a ‘Hindu identity’ and politics and, like the Muslim League, rejected the inclusive and

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universalist view of nationalism advocated by the Congress.10 It clashed with the Congress’s doctrines of non-violence and Hindu–Muslim unity, which had constituted the legitimate modus operandi of the struggle against British rule in India.11 Inevitably, the Hindu Mahasabha, the institutional force of Hidutva, failed to join the Congress’s anti-colonial struggles, or launch a mass movement in the country.12 The party’s narrow social base and uneven organisational spread in geographical terms challenged its claim to be the principal representative of Hindus in the country.13 To Hindutva, there was an ideological separation and opposition of the categories of the Hindu ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ – Muslims and Christians. In particular, it was rooted in a fundamental mistrust, bordering on the hatred, of Islam.14 At the heart of its discourse was the promotion of sangathan – the assertion of ‘Hindu unity’ and organisation as the principal ideal of a ‘Hindu nation’ in opposition to Muslims.15 Hindutva expressed a deep-rooted hostility against Islam and Muslims, echoing an ethnic conception of India as the ‘sacred territory’ of Aryavarta: the land of Aryans.16 Muslims and Christians did not constitute the nation, but were communities whose ‘Indianness’ was difficult for Hindutva to assimilate.17 Hindutva defined a ‘Hindu’ as one who had a Hindu parental descent within the geographical limits of India, which was to be both a ‘fatherland’ [pitrubhumi] and a ‘holyland’ [punyabhumi].18 To Hindutva, the ‘Hindu majority’ embodied the Indian nation, whereas the religious minorities – Muslims and Christians – were ‘un-Indian’ and ‘outsiders’ who ought to show an adherence to and assimilation of Hindu culture, which was the ‘national culture’ of India.19 Sangathan, the chief ideological component of Hindutva, articulated the ‘homogeneous’ and ‘pure’ elements of Hindu culture as well as the rationale of a unified Hindu community as a means of consolidating Hindu society in response to the spectre of Muslim ‘strength and cohesion’.20 Muslims were portrayed as a ‘unified political force’ and a ‘threat’ due to their ‘pan-Islamism’ and ‘aggressiveness’ – all viewed in opposition to Hindus.21 The conscious articulation of sangathan, including the Malkana shuddhi [purification] campaign in the western UP, was based on a drive for Hindu ‘unity and consolidation’ and intimately linked to the ascendance of the Hindu Mahasabha as a political force in north India in the 1920s and 1930s.22 Hindu publicists attempted to project ‘Hindu unity’ and ‘coherence’ by integrating the untouchables and lower castes into Hindu society, as caste oppression and disunity had resulted in conversions to Islam or Christianity over the centuries in India.23 However, the projection of a ‘Hindu homogeneity’ stood in a conflict with the caste [varna] hierarchy, failing to overcome the realities of Brahmanical orthodoxy and upper caste hegemony.24 The path to sangathan as well as the idealised vision of Hindu society was based on a defence of the varna system: caste was perceived as essential to Hindu identity as the marker of Hindu demarcation/differentiation from mlecchas [foreigners/barbarians] – Muslims.25 Crucially, the integration of the untouchables and lower castes had become sangathan’s rationale for a ‘Hindu cohesiveness’, in effect revealing extreme hostility against Muslims.26

Conclusion

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The ideological fallout of the Hindu Mahasabha’s sangathan narrative as well as its drive for the militarisation of Hindus, its movement for Nagari and cow protection, and its fundamental conflict with the Gandian nationalist struggles was a battle to explicitly set out the connection between Hindutva and the Indian nation or an alignment between India and a ‘Hindu nation’ based on a Hindu ‘majority rule’ in the country. In the crucial multi-party negotiations of the 1920s and 1930s on constitution-making, the Mahasabha resisted the Muslim demands for reservations in the legislatures of India.27 In particular, the Muslim League’s demands included the ‘weightage’ for Muslims in minority provinces, statutory majorities in the Punjab and Bengal, one third of the seats in the central legislature, and the creation of Muslim-majority Sind province.28 However, the Mahasabha’s formidable opposition to the League’s demands complicated the Congress’s all-India bargaining position, leading in part to the collapse of negotiations for a settlement on representation in 1928 and later at the round table conferences in England in 1930–1931.29 The sangathanist crusade for a Hindu ‘majoritarian rule’ at the centre and its anti-Muslim antagonism became central to the Mahasabha’s movement for the construction of a ‘Hindu nation’, based on the centrality of Hindu ‘culture and religion’ in India.30 The Mahasabha’s assertion of a religiously informed ‘cultural identity’ and its politics of ‘contested sovereignty’ posed the single biggest challenge to the Congress’s vision of an inclusionary nationalism and a unified ‘one nation’ in India.31 As the politics of communitarian identities, Hindu and Muslim, converged and exploded in the decisive decade of the 1930s, the Congress’s hopes for a negotiated unity as well as its right to ‘indivisible sovereignty’ in India collapsed, contributing in part to the Muslim League’s movement for the territorial sovereignty of a Muslim nation [ummah] as embodied in the ‘Pakistan’ plan of 1940.32

Notes

1 Introduction 1 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, pp. 18–19. 2 Christian Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, p. 231. 3 Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, New Haven [USA], 2002, pp. 171–6. 4 R. Suntharalingam, Indian National Congress: An Historical Analysis, New Delhi, 1983, pp. 90–1, 119. 5 Prakash Chandra Upadhyaya, ‘The Politics of Indian Secularism’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4, 1992, pp. 815–53. 6 Ravindra Kumar, Essays in the Social History of Modern India, Delhi, 1983, pp. 31–3. 7 Peter Robb, Empire, Identity, and India: Liberalism, Modernity, and Nation, Oxford, 2007, p. 56. 8 Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, pp. 93–4. 9 Suntharalingam, Indian National Congress, pp. 81–2. 10 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Delhi, 1994, pp. 73–4. 11 Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, pp. 145–203. 12 G. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi, 1990, p. 210. 13 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 233. 14 A. Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 9–11. 15 V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, New Delhi, 2003, p. 92. 16 Jyotirmaya Sharma, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 103; Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 54. 17 The United Provinces was known at first as the Ceded and Conquered Provinces. The British acquired the Banaras region in 1775 and the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1801 and 1803. The Ceded and Conquered Provinces were renamed the Upper Provinces in 1809. In 1822 it became the Western provinces. Banaras and the Western Provinces, together with later additions in Garhwal and Bundelkhand, became in 1836 the North-Western Provinces under the control of a lieutenant-governor. Oudh was annexed in 1856 and separately administered by a chief commissioner until 1877 when the North-Western Provinces and Oudh were joined together under a single

Notes

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

155

lieutenant-governor. In 1902 the NWP&O was renamed the ‘United Provinces of Agra and Oudh’. The province was renamed the United Provinces in 1937 and Uttar Pradesh in 1950. O.H.K. Spate and A.T.A. Learmouth, India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography, London, 1967, pp. 545–6. A.C. Turner, Census of India, 1931: United Provinces of Agra and Awadh Part I – Report, Allahabad, 1932, p. 7. Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1993, p. 11. Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims since Independence, London, 1997, pp. 75–6. William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 1, 3. C. Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, Nos. 12–13, 20–26 March 1993, pp. 517–24; idem, Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 528. Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Two Sanatan Dharma Leaders and Swami Vivekananda: A Comparison’, in William Radice [ed.], Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism, Delhi, 1998, pp. 224–43. Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 43. Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p., 1926, pp. 43–4; Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950, Ranikhet, 2007, pp. 113–17. John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 49–50. Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party, Pennsylvania, 1969, p. 51. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 34–5. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 181–2. V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992, pp. 147–8. V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangamaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 6, Delhi, 2003, p. 115. Zavos, The Emergence, pp. 56–7. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 47–8. Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Acts of Appropriation: Non Brahmin Radicals and the Congress in Early Twentieth-Century Maharashtra’, in M. Shepperdson and C. Simmons [eds], The Indian National Congress and the Political Economy of India 1885–1985, Avebury, 1988, pp. 102–46. Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab, Berkeley,New Delhi, 1989, p. 308. Hugh F. Owen, ‘The Non-Brahman Movements and the Transformation of the Congress, 1912–1922’, in J. Masselos [ed.], Struggling and Ruling: The Indian National Congress, 1885–1985, London, 1987. Heinrich von Stietencron, ‘Religious Configurations in Pre-Muslim India and the Modern Concept of Hinduism’, in Vasudha Dalmia and H. von Stietencron [eds], Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, New Delhi, 1995, p. 51. Ellen E. MacDonald, ‘The Growth of Religious Consciousness in Maharashtra’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 5, No. 3, September 1968, p. 232. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 67. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 92. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 6–7. M.S Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1947, pp. 113–14.

156 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70

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M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000, p. 117. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 572–3. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 102–3. Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India, Delhi, 2001, pp. 63–4. ‘Legislative Assembly Resolutions: 24 August 1926 and 1 September 1926, Regarding the Regulation of Religious Festivals’, IOR: L/P&J/6/1921, p. 467, IOL; Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, Princeton, 1988, p. 51. S.B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley, 1989, p. 101; Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 130–74. ‘Statement of communal riots in the UP between 1922 and 1927’, IOR: L/P&J/6/1928, p. 383, IOL. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, p. 176. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, p. 322. Henrik Berglund, Hindu Nationalism and Democracy, Delhi, 2004, pp. 129–31. Walter K. Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II: Who Represents the Hindus?’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 12, 18 March 1972, pp. 667–8. Susan B.C. Devalle, ‘Social Identities, Hindu Fundamentalism, and Politics in India’, in D.N. Lorenzen, Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action, New York, 1995, p. 316. Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 17. Manohar Malgaonkar, The Men Who Killed Gandhi, Madras, 1978, pp. 112–13. C. Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi: Hindu Nationaism and Political Violence’, in Denis Vidal, Gilles Tarabout, and Eric Meyer [eds], Violence/Non-violence: Some Hindu Perspectives, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 299–324. Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenthcentury North India, Bombay, 1994, p. 87. F. Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 3–7. Freitag, Collective Action and Community, p. 117. Peter Robb, ‘The Challenge of Gau Mata: British Policy and Religious Change in India, 1880–1916’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1986, pp. 285–319, p. 293. Uma Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism: The Emergence of the Demand for India’s Partition, 1928–40, New Delhi, 1977, pp. 141–5. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 259. R.J. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, 1917–1940, Oxford, 1974, pp. 103–4. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 11. Graham, Bruce, D., Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Cambridge, 1990, p. 77. Anil Chandra Banerjee [ed.], The Constitutional History of India, Vol. 3, Delhi, 1977, pp. 239–41. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-History of “Communalism”? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1985, pp. 177–203; John R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress, Princeton, 1977, p. 279; Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 155–79. P. Brass, ‘Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia’, in David Taylor and M. Yapp [eds], Political Identity in South Asia, London, 1979, pp. 79–81. Francis Robinson, ‘The Congress and the Muslims’, in Paul R. Brass and Francis Robinson [eds], Indian National Congress and Indian Society, 1885–1985: Ideology,

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Social Structure, and Political Dominance, Delhi, 1987, pp. 162–5, 170; idem, ‘Nation Formation: The Brass Thesis and Muslim Separatism’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3, November 1977, pp. 215–34. 71 Bishan Narain Dar, Collected Speeches and Writings of Pt. Bishan Narain Dar, Vol. 1, Lucknow, 1921, pp. 51–7. 72 Ram Lal Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 33. 73 John R. McLane, ‘The Early Congress, Hindu Populism and Wider Society’, in R. Sisson and S. Wolpert [eds], The Congress and Indian Nationalism: The PreIndependence Phase, New Delhi, 1988, pp. 109–10; Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 9.

2 The origins and evolution of Hindu Mahasabha 1 Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 1873 to 1930, Bombay, 1976, pp. 119–20; T.N. Madan, ‘Secularism in its Place’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4, 1987, p. 674. 2 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Delhi, 1994, p. 75. 3 R. Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, pp. 145–203: p. 151. 4 Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, pp. 140–1. 5 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, p. 17. 6 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 19, 21; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 123. 7 Bruce D. Graham, ‘The Congress and Hindu Nationalism’, in D.A. Low [ed.], The Indian National Congress: Centenary Hindsights, Oxford, 1988, pp. 169–71; Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, Delhi, 1987, p. 100. 8 Christophe Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Delhi, 2007, p. 11; Omvedt, Cultural Revolt, p. 121. 9 Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, pp. 4–5. 10 Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988, pp. 167–8. 11 Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, pp. 133–4. 12 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 173–4. 13 David Washbrook, ‘Law, State and Agarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1981, p. 121; Zavos, Emergence, pp. 8–9. 14 Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 41. 15 Zavos, Emergence, pp. 39–41. 16 C. Jaffrelot, ‘The Genesis and Development of Hindu Nationalism in the Punjab: from the Arya Samaj to the Hindu Sabha [1875–1910]’, Indo-British Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1993, pp. 3–39. 17 Omvedt, Cultural Revolt, p. 124. 18 Home Poll., B, File No. 32–41, November 1909, NAI; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 252, 260. 19 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, p. 2; Peter Heehs, Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian History, New Delhi, 1998, p. 117. 20 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 149–50; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 18–19. 21 Tribune, Lahore, 5 September 1901, IOR: L/R/5/185, File No. 31, 1901, p. 550, IOL.

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22 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 41–2; John Zavos, Emergence, p. 100. 23 N.G. Barrier, ‘The Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in the Punjab, 1894–1908’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, May 1967, pp. 37–9; Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 21. 24 Akhbar-i-Am, Lahore, 15 January 1901, IOR: L/R/5/185, File No. 7, p. 38; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 280–1. 25 N.G. Barrier, ‘Punjab Politics and the Disturbances of 1907’, PhD Dissertation, Duke University, 1966, pp. 49, 53; idem, ‘Arya Samaj and Congress Politics’, p. 379. Only two delegates attended the first Congress session in Bombay in 1885: Pandit Murli Dhar, a pleader from Ambala, and Shiv Narayan Agnihotri. Jones, Arya Dharm, p. 253. 26 Punjab Observer, Lahore, 7 August 1901, IOR: L/R/5/185, File No. 19, 1901, p. 497, IOL; Tribune, 4 August 1904, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML; Swami Shraddhanand, Inside Congress, New Delhi, 1984, pp. 24–5. 27 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 19 June 1877, IOR: L/R/5/54, File No. 21, 1877, p. 701, 1877, IOL; Tribune, 23 January 1904, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML; Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916–1928, New Delhi, 1991, p. 53. 28 Khalsa Gazette, Lahore, 28 January 1901, IOR: L/R/5/185, File No. 9, 1909, p. 78; Barrier, ‘Arya Samaj and Congress Politics’, p. 56; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 268–9. 29 Punjabi, Lahore, 1 July 1909, IOR: L/R/5/190, File No. 15, 1909, pp. 619–20; N.G. Barrier, The Punjab Alienation of Land Bill of 1900, Durham, 1966, pp. 49–71; idem, ‘The Punjab Disturbances of 1907: The Response of the British Government in India to Agrarian Unrest’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1967, pp. 353–83. 30 Tribune, 7 February 1907, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 65–6. 31 Home Poll., Part A, Proceedings 29–31 December 1909, NAI; F. Shaikh, Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India 186–1947, Cambridge, 1989, p. 111; Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History 1890–1950, Ranikhet, 2007, pp. 114–17. 32 Matiur Rahman, From Consultation to Confrontation: A Study of the Muslim League in British Indian Politics, 1906–1912, London, 1970, p. 38; Francis Robinson, ‘The Congress and the Muslims’, in Paul R. Brass and F. Robinson [eds], The Indian National Congress and Indian Society, 1885–1985: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Dominance, Delhi, 1987, pp. 176–7. 33 Z.H. Zaidi, ‘Aspects of the Development of Muslim League Policy, 1937–1947’, C.H. Philips and Mary Doren Wainwright [eds], The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935–1947, London, 1970, p. 254. 34 Francis Robinson, ‘Islam and Muslim Separatism’, in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp [eds], Political Identity in South Asia, London, 1979, pp. 78–81; Shaikh, Community and Consensus, p. 119. 35 Note by W. Lee Warner, 18 April 1907, John Morley Papers, MSS. EUR. D. 573, Vol. 32, IOL; S.A. Wolpert, Morley and India 1906–1910, Berkeley, 1967, pp. 185–200. 36 Address of the Simla Deputation, enclosed in Lord Minto’s note to John Morley, 4 October 1906, John Morley Papers, Vol. 9, Paragraphs 8, 10, 11, 12, IOL; A.M. Zaidi [ed.], Evolution of Muslim Political Thought in India: From Syed to the Emergence of Jinnah, Vol. 1, New Delhi, 1975, p. 42. 37 P. Hardy, The Muslims of British India, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 154–8. 38 Sayyid Ali Imam’s comments while moving the third resolution of the All India Muslim League, 31 December 1908, in Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada [ed.], Foundations of Pakistan: All-India Muslim League Documents 1906–1947, Vol. 1, Karachi, 1990, p. 61; Sir Alfred Lyall’s memo to John Morley, 15 February 1909, John Morley Papers, MSS. EUR. D. 573, Vol. 49, p. 167, IOL. 39 S.R. Wasti, Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement, 1905 to 1910, Oxford, 1964, pp. 167–8.

Notes

159

40 Lord Minto’s letter to Sir John Morley, dated 8 February 1909, Morley Papers, Vol. 33, p. 178, IOL. 41 Lord Minto’s memo to John Morley, 6 January 1910, John Morley papers, Vol. 23, p. 183; A.M. Zaidi [ed.], Evolution of Muslim Political Thought in India: Parting of the Ways, Vol. 3, New Delhi, 1977, p. 686. 42 Confidential note on the New Legislative Councils, Appendix ii on Muhammdan Representation, John Morley Papers, MSS. EUR. D. 573, Vol. 34, p. 173, IOL. 43 C.H. Philips [ed.], The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947: Select Documents, Vol. 4, London 1962, p. 86; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1993 [1974], pp. 145–7, 153. 44 Akhbar-i-Am, Lahore, 26 May 1909, IOR: L/R/5/190, File No. 20, 1909, p. 497, IOL; M.N. Das, India under Morley and Minto, London, 1964, pp. 99–101. 45 Hindus were in a minority in the Punjab, comprising 40.7 per cent of the population against 51.3 per cent Muslims and 7.5 per cent Sikhs [1881 census]. The Census of India 1881: Punjab Census Report, Calcutta, 1882, p. 77. 46 The Memoranda of the Hindu Sabha, Home Dept [Political Part A], Proceedings No. 29–31 and 50–3, December 1909, NAI. 47 Paisa Akhbar, Lahore, 21 December 1909, IOR: L/R/5/190, File No. 43, 1909, p. 6; Prakash, A Review, p. 12. 48 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Religious Identity and the Indian Census’, in N.G. Barrier [ed.], The Census in British India: New Perspectives, Delhi, 1980, pp. 73–101. 49 Census of India, 1911, UP, Vol. 15, Part I, Allahabad, 1912, pp. 109–10. 50 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, London, 1996, pp. 114–38. 51 Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge, 2001, p. 204; Jones, ‘Religious Identity’, p. 87. 52 Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 201–2; idem, ‘Religious Identity’, pp. 97–8. 53 Statement of S.P. O’Donnell, Census Commissioner, Government of India, The Census of India 1891, Bengal, Vol. 3, Calcutta, 1892, p. 146. 54 The Census of India 1911: Punjab Census Report, Calcutta, 1912, p. 99. 55 H.H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary, Calcutta, 1981 [1891], p. 384. 56 L.S.S. O’Malley, The Census of India 1911: Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Sikkim, Vol. 5, Part I, Calcutta, 1912, p. 63. 57 Lucy Carroll, ‘Colonial Perceptions of Indian Society and the Emergence of Caste[s] Associations’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, February 1978, pp. 233–50. 58 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Religious Identity and the Indian Census’, in N.G. Barrier [ed.], The Census in British India: New Perspectives, Delhi, 1980, p. 92. 59 The Tribune of Lahore published the Gait circular in November 1910: ‘The Census Returns of Hindus’, The Tribune, November 12, 1910, Microfilm, NMML. 60 E.A. Gait’s Notes of 31 May and 14 June 1911: E.A. Gait, The Census of India 1911: Report, Vol. I, Part I, Calcutta, 1912, pp. 115, 121. 61 Tribune, 1 December 1910, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML; Papia Chakravarty, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment: Bengal 1909–1935, Calcutta, 1992, pp. 72–91. 62 Tribune, 9 December 1910, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML; P.K. Datta, ‘ “Dying Hindus”: Production of Hindu Communal Common Sense in Early Twentieth-Century Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 25, 19 June 1993, pp. 1305–19: p. 1306. 63 Lajpat Rai, The Arya Samaj: An Aaccount of its Origins, Doctrines and Activities, with a Biographical Sketch of the Founder, Delhi, 1967, pp. 124–5. 64 Sumit Sarkar, Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History, Bloomington [USA], 2002, pp. 81–2.

160

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65 Jaffrelot, ‘Genesis and Development of Hindu Nationalism’, pp. 3–40; Zavos, Emergence, p. 123. 66 Harald Fischer-Tine, ‘ “Kindly Elders of the Hindu Biradri”: The Arya Samaj’s Struggle for Influence and its Effect on Hindu–Muslim Relations, 1880–1925’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India, New Delhi, 2000, p. 126. 67 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘The Negative Component of Hindu Consciousness’, IndoBritish Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, September 1993, p. 63. 68 U.N. Mukherji, Hindus: A Dying Race, Calcutta, 1909, pp. 19–21. 69 Mukherji, Hindus, pp. 27–8. 70 U.N. Mukherji, Hinduism and the Coming Census: Christianity and Hinduism, Calcutta, 1911, p. 16. 71 Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p. 1926, pp. 79–80, 91. 72 J.T.F Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes, Delhi, 1981, pp. 131–4, 151–2. 73 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 127. 74 P.K. Datta, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth-Century Bengal, New Delhi, 1999, ch. 1; idem, ‘Dying Hindus’, pp. 1305–19. 75 N.G. Barrier, ‘The Punjab Government and Communal Politics, 1870–1900’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, May 1968, pp. 523–39. 76 Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 149–51. 77 Home Poll., GOI, June 1911, File No. B 1–3, Weekly Report, 11 April 1911 NAI. 78 K.L. Tuteja and O.P. Grewal, ‘Emergence of Hindu Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Punjab’, Social Scientist, Vol. 20, Nos. 7–8, July–August 1992, pp. 11–12. 79 The Tribune, 6 August 1906, p. 1; 24 August 1906, p. 3; 23 December 1906, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 80 Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952, pp. 15–17; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 261–94. 81 Indra Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha: Its Contribution to Indian Politics, New Delhi, 1966, pp. 40–5; Barrier, ‘Arya Samaj and Congress Politics’, p. 381. 82 The Tribune, 28 January 1908, p. 6; 20 March 1908, p. 4; Microfilm, NMML; B. Cleghorn, ‘Religion and Politics: The Leadership of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha: Punjab and Maharashtra, 1920–1939’, in B.N. Pandey [ed.], Leadership in South Asia, New Delhi, 1977, pp. 391–2. 83 Tuteja and Grewal, ‘Hindu Communal Ideology’, pp. 15–17; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 194, 316. 84 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 22; Prakash, A Review, p. 34. 85 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation in Politics, Lahore, 1938, pp. 2–3. 86 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, pp. 33, 100–3. 87 Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, Nos. 12–13, March 20–26, 1993, p. 519. 88 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 118. 89 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 121. 90 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 109. 91 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 123. 92 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, pp. 122–4. 93 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 99. 94 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, pp. 100–3. 95 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 103. 96 Hindustan, Lahore, 26 March 1909; 23 April 1909; 22 May and 10 July 1909, IOR: L/R/5/190, File No. 29, 1909, pp. 383, 289–90, 495, 704–5, IOL.

Notes

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97 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 11. 98 Home Poll A, August 1909, 182–184, p. 295, NAI. 99 S.L. Gupta, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Socio-political Study, Allahabad, 1987, pp. 139–40; Praksh, A Review, p. 13. 100 Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism’, pp. 26–33; Barrier, ‘Arya Samaj and Congress Politics’, pp. 378–9. 101 The Memoranda of Hindu Sabha, Home Department [Political Part A], Proceedings No. 29–31, 50–53, December 1909, NAI. 102 Home Department [Political Part B] Proceedings No. 69–70, April 1910, NAI. 103 The Punjabee, 28 August 1909, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML; The Tribune, 21 October 1909, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. 104 The president of the conference was Protul Chander Chatterji, former Punjab High Court judge, Bengali vice-chancellor of the Punjab University and a patron of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha. The Punjabee, Special Conference Issue, 26 October 1909, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. 105 The Punjabee, 25 September 1909, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 239–40. 106 The Punjabee, Special Conference Issue, 23 October 1909, Microfilm, NMML. 107 Lajpat Rai’s speech to the Hindu conference, October 1909, cited in S. Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement: A Documentary Study of the Ideas and Policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939–1945, Jodhpur, 1996, pp. 13, 27–8. 108 The Punjabee, 30 October 1909, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 109 The Tribune, 26 October 1909, p. 2; The Punjabee, 30 October 1909, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. 110 The Tribune, 27 October 1909, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. 111 The Tribune, 26, p. 2, and 27 October 1909, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 112 The Punjabee, Special Conference Issue, 23 October 1909, Microfilm, NMML. 113 The Punjabee, 14 October 1909, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. 114 Jones, Arya Dharm, p. 287; Tuteja and Grewal, ‘Hindu Communal Ideology’, p. 13. 115 Home Poll., B, File No. 110–117, 21 October 1909, NAI; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 219–20. 116 The Tribune, 17 Tribune 1913, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML; Keith Alexander Meadowcroft, ‘ “From Hindu–Muslim Unity” to Hindu Raj: The Evolution of the AllIndia Hindu Mahasabha 1922–1939’, Unpublished Masters Dissertation, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada, 1995, p. 18. 117 S. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 77–8. 118 Freitag, Collective Action, p. 197. 119 Robinson, Separatism, p. 10. 120 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhartendu Harishchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras, Delhi, 1999, pp. 50–145; C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 71–81. 121 J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, Delhi, 1981, pp. 101–29, 316–23; Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism’, p. 317. 122 C.A. Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad 1880–1920, Oxford, 1975, p. 147. 123 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 131; Freitag, Collective Action, p. 199. 124 S. Chaturvedi, Madan Mohan Malaviya, New Delhi, 1988, p. 12. 125 Bhagwan Das, ‘Hindu University Genesis’, The Leader, 24 April 1916, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; V.A. Sundaram, [ed.], Benares Hindu University 1905–1915, Benares, 1936, pp. 90–1. 126 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 148. 127 Gupta, Malaviya, pp. 193–5.

162 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165

Notes Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 149. Prakash, A Review, p. 17. Cited in Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 107. Shradhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 107–8. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 109. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 155. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 110. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 108. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 106. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 145–204. Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 12. M.R. Jayakar, The Story of My Life 1922–1925, Vol. 2, Bombay, 1959, pp. 113–14; Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 109–10. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 111. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 118. The Tribune, 12 April 1915, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. Home Poll., B, File No. 49, March 1916; Home Poll., B, File No. 52, April 1916; Home Poll., B, File No. 53, May 1916, NAI. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 114. Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism: The Ideology and Program of the Hindu Mahasabha’, in Robert D. Baird [ed.], Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005, p. 247; B.D. Graham, ‘Shyam Prasad Mookherjee and the Communist Alternative’, in D.A. Low [ed.], Soundings in Modern South Asian History, London, 1968, p. 334. Ravindra Kumar [ed.], Essays in Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919, Oxford, 1971, pp. 21–3. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, New Delhi, 1999, p. 149. Cited in B.R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, Delhi, 1989, p. 51. Cited in Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 221. Minault, Khilafat Movement, pp. 109–10. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 114; Prakash, A Review, p. 22. Prakash, A Review, pp. 163–8. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 116. The Tribune, 9 November 1921, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 61. M.M. Malaviya was the Mahasabha president from 1922 to 1925. Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, NAI; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’ p. 170. H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register 1922, Vol. II, Calcutta, 1923, pp. 941–3; D. Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control, 1920–1932, Delhi, 1999, pp. 74–84. ‘Aims and objectives of the Hindu Maha Sabha’, The Tribune, 27 July and 3 August 1923, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 129–30. Letter from Jamnadas Dwarakadas, Bombay Chronicle, 7 June 1920, p. 3, cited in Richard Gordon, ‘Non-cooperation and Council Entry, 1919 to 1920’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1973, p. 151. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 145. The Leader, 11 September 1920, p. 3; The Leader, 17 September 1920, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. Home Poll., B, File No. 51, April 1918, NAI. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 33. Malaviya’s lecture, ‘The Present Situation’, The Leader, 3, 6, 7 October 1920, Microfilm, NMML.

Notes

163

166 The Leader, 4 February 1922, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 167 Malaviya’s speech, Allahabad 10 October, 1920, The Leader, 10 October 1920, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 168 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 33. Rampal Singh, Sukhbir Sinha, and Moti Chand Gupta were elected to the central Council of States; Iswar Saran, Girdhari Lal Agarwala, Radha Kishen Das, Bishambhar Nath, Mahadeo Prasad, Suraj Baksh Singh, and Sankata Prasad Bajpai to the central Legislative Assembly; and K.K. Malaviya, H.N. Kunzru, Iqbal Narayan Gurtu, and Anand Swarup to the UP Legislative Council. Leader, 4 February 1921, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 169 Iswar Saran’s letter to The Leader, 30 September 1920, p. 1, Microfilm, NMML. 170 The Leader, 27 December 1920, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 171 R.L. Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 75. 172 N.C. Kelkar, ‘The N.C.O. Resolution’, Mahratta, 19 September 1920, cited in Gordon, ‘Non-cooperation’, p. 153. 173 Narendra Nath’s letter to S.P. O’Donnell, Reforms Commissioner, dated 30 March 1920, Home Poll., B, File No. 104, April 1920, p. 2, NAI. 174 Peter Robb, The Government of India and Reform: Policies Towards Politics and the Constitution, 1916–1921, Oxford, 1976, pp. 105–6; Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 11–12. 175 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 47–8; Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 143. 176 Lajpat Rai’s presidential speech to the Indian National Congress’s Special Session, Calcutta, December 1920, Times of India, 11 September 1920, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML; Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 250–304; Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 174. 177 G. Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization, Delhi, 1978, pp. 109–10; Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 178. 178 Pandey, Construction, pp. 210–12. 179 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 151. 180 Hindu, 9 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. Prakash, A Review, p. 15. 181 The Leader, 31 December 1916, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 145. 182 UP 550 delegates; Bihar 172; Punjab 94; Bengal 46; Delhi 25; CP 25; RajputanaDeccan 22; Bombay 12; Madras 6; Assam 2; Burma, Patiala, Dumraon, Sind, Travancore and NWFP, 1 each. Total 960. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 156. 183 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 153. 184 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 154; Prakash, A Review, p. 15. 185 Government of UP to Government of India, Home Department, 10 December 1924, ‘The Communal Situation’, Home Poll., File No. 140, 1925, NAI. 186 Bhai Parmanand, Mahasabha president, built the Hindu Mahasabha Bhawan, the party’s headquarters on Reading Road, New Delhi, in 1933–34. Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 14. 187 The Leader, 24 December 1915, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 188 Home Poll., B, File No. 50, March 1917, NAI; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 150. The Mahasabha’s Bombay branch was allied to the Hindu Missionary Society run by M.R. Jayakar and K. Natarajan, which claimed only 55 paid-up members in 1923. Bombay Chronicle, 30 July 1923, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. 189 Prakash, A Review, pp. 41–5; idem, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 16–17. 190 Home Poll., B, File No. 51, April 1918, NAI; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 166. 191 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 119. 192 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 23. 193 Confidential note on ‘Communal Friction in the United Provinces, 1924’, Police Abstracts of Intellegence [PAI], Lucknow, No. 18, 12 May 1923. 194 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 155.

164

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195 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 160–1. 196 A Hindu Sabha was established in Sind under the leadership of Jairamdas Daulat Ram, president of the Bombay Hindu Sabha. Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 26. 197 The Leader, 1 September 1924, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 198 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 164. 199 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 147; Dalmia, Nationalization, pp. 50–145. 200 Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, pp. 71–2. 201 Home Poll., File 25 of 1924 and File 112 of 1925, NAI. The Government of Bombay reported in 1925 that there were eight branches of the Hindu Sabha in the presidency: Bombay City 1, Maharashtra 3 [Poona, Sangli and Ratnagiri], Gujarat 2 [Kaira and Surat], Sind 1 [Hyderabad], and Karnatak 1 [Belgaum]. Home Poll., File 140 of 1925, NAI. 202 V.D. Savarkar launched the Hindu Mahasabha in Calcutta on 27 December 1939. Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s letter to Secretry of State for India Lord Zetland, dated 23 January 1940, Zetland Collection, IOR: MSS Eur D/609/19, IOL. 203 Walter Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II: Who Represents the Hindus?’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 7, No. 12, 18 March 1972, pp. 633–40: p. 637. 204 Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘The Idea of Hindu Race in the Writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the 1920s and 1930s: A Concept Between Two Cultures’, in Peter Robb [ed.], The Concept of Race in South Asia, Delhi, 1997, p. 331. 205 Prakash, A Review, pp. 15–16; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 150. 206 Prakash, A Review, p. 183; Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 143–4. 207 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 165–6. 208 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, pp. 137–8. 209 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 180. 210 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 141; 211 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 634. 212 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 169–70.

3 Hindu Mahasabha’s social base and leadership 1 C.A. Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics in Northern India’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1973, pp. 349–88. 2 Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 101. 3 Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, pp. 156–7. 4 Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party, Pennsylvania, 1969, pp. 41–3. 5 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism: The Ideology and Program of the Hindu Mahasabha’, in Robert D. Baird [ed.], Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 259–61. 6 Christphe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, pp. 47–8. 7 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 161. 8 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 157–9. 9 S.R. Mehrotra, ‘Early Organisation of the Indian National Congress, 1885–1920’, India Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4, 1966, p. 337; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 161. 10 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 263. 11 The Leader, 5 January 1917, p. 4, Microfilm, NAI; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 163.

Notes 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

165

Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 267. Cited in Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 155. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 165. Extract from a fortnightly report from H.C.A. Conybeare, Commisioner, Meerut, 20 May 1907, Home Poll. D, August 1907, NAI. Note by Sir Auckland Colvin on provincial councils, 11 June 1889, Home Public A, August 1892, 237–52, NAI. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Small Town and Islamic Gentry in North India: The Case of Kara’, in K. Ballhatchet and J. Harrison [eds], The City in South Asia: Pre-modern and Modern, London, 1980, pp. 20–4. C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 429–30; Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge, 2001, p. 37. C.A. Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad, 1880–1920, Oxford, 1975, pp. 19–46; idem, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, pp. 449–57; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 167. Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harishchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras, Delhi, 1999, pp. 87–8. Home Public, File 623, 1925, p. 121, NAI. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 149. Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1993, p. 66. C.A. Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics in Northern India’, in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal [eds], Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 31, 43. Advocate, Lucknow, 20 January 1907, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics’, p. 347. S.B. Freitag, ‘State and Community: Symbolic Popular Protest in Banaras’s Public Arenas’, in S.B. Freitag [ed.], Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Peformance, and Environment, 1800–1980, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 8, 27; J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, Delhi, 1981, p. 163. Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics’, pp. 345–6. Cited in Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947, Basingstoke [UK], 1989, p. 358. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, p. 143. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 136–7. G.D. Birla, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: A Personal Memoir, Calcutta, 1953, p. 164 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 137. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 269. Sarkar, Modern India, p. 356. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, pp. 271–2. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 151. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 153. Sri Bharat Mahamandal Directory, Benaras, 1930, p. 50. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 154. Bayly, Local Roots, pp. 58–9. Motilal Nehru’s letter to John Morley, Secretary of State, dated 26 April 1907, IOR: UP J &P, 1544/1907, IOL. Bayly, Local Roots, p. 51. The Leader, 10 June, p. 3; 29 August 1926, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. Bayly, Local Roots, p. 63. The Leader, 16 August 1916, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML; Bayly, Local Roots, pp. 61–3.

166

Notes

47 V.A. Sundaram [ed.], Benares Hindu University 1916–1942, Benares, 1942, pp. 90–1. 48 The Leader, 10 August 1916, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. 49 Bayly, Local Roots, pp. 67. 50 Home Public D, June 1913, File No. 40, NAI; Bayly, Local Roots, p. 217. 51 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 127. 52 Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics’, p. 349. 53 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 129. 54 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 168–9, 171. 55 Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics’, p. 351. 56 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 171. 57 Letter of H.D. Craik, Chief Secretary, Government of the Punjab, to S.P. O’Donnell, Secretary, Home Department, Government of India, dated 20 April 1922, Home Poll., File No. 861,1922, p. 1, NAI. 58 CID Report, 2 February 1920, Home Poll., D, February 1920, 75, NAI; Bayly, Local Roots, p. 129. 59 Rama Kant Malaviya was president and Inder Narayan Dwivedi, secretary, of the UP Kisan Sabha. The members of the Mahasabha kisan sub-committee were: Rama Kant Malaviya, Krishna Kant Malaviya, I.N. Dwivedi, A.P. Dube, and Sangam Lal. The Leader, 1 September 1924, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 60 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 170. 61 Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics’, pp. 39–41. 62 The Leader, 8 January 1926, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 63 The Leader, 11 January, 1924, p. 3; 21 February 1924, p. 3; 22 November 1924, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. 64 The Leader, 22 November, 1924, p. 2; 6 December 1924, 4, Microfilm, NMML. 65 The Leader, 23 February, 1925, p. 4; 17 April 1925, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 66 Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, pp. 147–8. 67 Census of India, 1921: United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Volume XVI, Part I – Report, Allahabad, 1923, p. 38. 68 G. Pandey, The Asecendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization, Delhi, 1978, p. 24. 69 P. Robb, The Government of India and Reform: Policies towards Politics and the Constitution, 1916–1921, Oxford, 1976, p. 87. 70 David Page, The Partition Omnibus: Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control 1920–32, New Delhi, 2002, p. 35. 71 Page, Partition Omnibus, pp. 30–1. 72 Robb, Government of India, p. 112; Page, Partition Omnibus, p. 32. 73 Ayesha Jalal and Anl Seal, ‘Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics Between the Wars’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1981, pp. 415–54. 74 GOI Home Poll., 443/1930, Extract from an ‘Agent’s Report’, 1 November 1930, NAI. 75 Pandey, Asecendancy, pp. 113–15. 76 Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, p. 249. 77 S.H. Butler, Oudh Policy: The Policy of Sympathy, Allahabad, 1906, p. 11. 78 Butler, Oudh Policy, pp. iii, 13. 79 Minuteby Harcourt Butler, 1 December 1918, GAD, 1918, 423, UPSA; Francis Robinson, ‘The Re-emergence of Lucknow as a Major Political Centre, 1899–early 1920s’, in Violette Graff [ed.], Lucknow: Memories of a City, New Delhi, 2002, p. 197. 80 Calculated from statements showing the occupation of members of municipal boards [incomplete: returns for Nagina, Najibabad, Fatehpur, Jhansi, Lalitpur and Mau Ranipur missing], Municipal, 1908, 594 D, UPSA.

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167

81 Alfred Lyall, UP Lieutenant-Governor [1882–1887], to Primrose, Private Secretary to the Viceroy, 8 July 1882, Lyall Papers, 63 D, IOL. 82 The Leader, 12 September 1923, p. 3; 28 September 1923, p. 5; 1 October 1923, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML; Peter Reeves, Landlords and Governments in Uttar Pradesh: A Study of their Relations until Zamindari Abolition, Bombay, 1991, p. 119. 83 The Leader, 5 July 1928, p. 9; 16 July 1928, p. 11; 22 September 1928, p. 8; 1 October 1928, p. 12, Microfilm, NMML. 84 The Leader, 14 September 1923, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML; Butler, Oudh Policy, p. 37. 85 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 157; Reeves, Landlords and Governments, p. 123. 86 The Leader, 25 May 1924, p. 9, Microfilm, NMML; Reeves, Landlords and Governments, p. 121. 87 The Leader, 9 February 1924, p. 10; 25 February 1924, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML. 88 The Leader, 20 August 1923; 17 October 1923, p. 3; 28 October 1923, p. 3; 14 November 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Butler, Oudh Policy, p. 35. 89 David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control, 1920–1932, Delhi, 1999, p. 53; Butler, Oudh Policy, p. 39. 90 M.K. Gandhi’s letter to Malcolm Hailey, dated 23 May 1931, Hailey Papers, Mss. Eur. E220/20; M.K. Gandhi, ‘To the UP Kisans’, Young India, reproduced, The Leader, 3 June 1931, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML; B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 1, New Delhi, 1969, p. 357. 91 Reports of landlord meetings: The Leader, 29 April 1932, p. 10; 17 June 1932, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Sir Malcolm Haliey, ‘Note for Sir H. Haig, 31 August 1934’, Hailey Papers, Mss. Eur. E 220/29. 92 The Leader, 27 February 1928, p. 11; 31 March 1928, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML; Sir Malcolm Hailey’s letter to G. De Montmorency, Govt. of Punjab, 12 October 1928, Haley Papers, Mss Eur E 220/14, IOL. 93 Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Indian Nationalist Movement, Chicago, 1996, pp. 154–5, 206, 94 Ram Lal Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 149. 95 Lytton to the Queen, 4 May 1876, cited in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858–1905, Cambridge, 1965, p. 114. 96 Ian Copland, ‘Crucibles of Hindutva? V.D. Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Indian Princely States’, in John McGuire and Ian Copland [eds], Hindu Nationalism and Governance, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 258–60; S. Mathur, Hindu Revivsalism and the Indian National Movement: A Documentary Study of the Ideals and Policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939–45, Jodhpur, 1996, p. 215. 97 B.S. Moonje’s circular letter to Hindu rulers dated 10 December 1938, M.S. Aney Papers, File No. 7, NMML; Savarkar’s presidential address to the 22nd annual session of the Hindu Mahasabha in Madura, 1940, Jayakar Papers, File No. 709, NAI. 98 Letter of President, Datia Prajamandal, to Pattabhi Sitaramayya, dated 3 March 1948, AISPC [All-India State Peoples’ Conference], Pt. I, File No. 43, 1939–48, NMML. 99 ‘Secret Report’, Home Dept., Intelligence Bureau, 2 April 1942, Home Poll., 222/42, NAI; V.D. Savarkar’s letter to the Maharaja of Jaipur, dated 19 July 1944, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, C-39, NMML. 100 B.S. Moonje’s speech to Baroda Hindu Sabha conference, 30 April 1944, N.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1944, Vol. I, Calcutta, 1945, January–June, p. 204. 101 B.S. Moonje’s speech to South Kanara Dist. Hindu Conference, Udipi, 3 June 1944, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, C-48, NMML. 102 Laxmanrao Bhonsle of Nagpur was president of the eighth session of the All India Hindu Mahasabha held in Poona in 1924. Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 43; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 32–3.

168

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103 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to the Maharaja of Jaipur, datd 19 July 1944, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, C-39, NMML; V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 6, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 353–4. 104 V.D. Savarkar’s inaugural speech, All-India States’ Hindu Conference, Baroda, 23 April 1945, The Times of India, 23–24 April 1945, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 105 B.S. Moonje’s speech to Baroda Hindu Conference, 1944. The Times of India, 3 May 1944, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Dhwaja: Sword is the Symbol of Abhyudaya and Kundalini is the Symbol of Nihshreyas, Bombay, N.d, p. 118. 106 Ian Copland, The Indian Princes in the End-Game of Empire 1917–1947, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 71–3. 107 Draft copy enclosed in V.D. Savarkar to M.R. Jayakar, 5 November 1940, Jayakar Papers, 709. 108 Copland, Indian Princes, p. 67. 109 Copland, Indian Princes, pp. 75–6. 110 Testimony of Ganpat Rai, Oral History Transcript 330, p. 81, NMML 111 Copland, Indian Princes, p. 79. 112 Letter of Dewan, Idar, to secretary, Hindu Mahasabha, dated 2 May 1940, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, C-27, NMML. 113 Hindu Mahasabha’s resolution passed at the 19th session, Ahmedabad, 1 January 1937, N.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1937, Pt. II, July–December, Calcutta, 1938, p. 422. 114 Copland, Indian Princes, pp. 77–8. 115 B.S. Moonje’s letter to B.N. De, Chief Minister, Sangli, dated 13 February 1938, Moonje Papers, File No. 47, NMML. 116 Weekly report from the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Home Dept., GOI, 18 October 1941, IOR: L/P&J/12/483, IOL. 117 Secret report, Home Dept., Intelligence Bureau, dated 2 April 1942, Home Poll., 222/42, NAI. 118 Note by A.C. Lothian, Resident, Rajputana, dated 18 February 1940, IOR: L/P&S/13/1406, IOL. 119 Letter of Col. G.T. Fisher, Resident, Gwalior, to Political Secretary, Government of India, dated 18 August 1937, IOR: R/1/1/2947, IOL. 120 Letter of Mohammad Akran Ansari, advocate and member, Praja Sabha, Gwalior, to Abdul Rab Nishtar, 8 December 1946, IOR: R/1/1/4509, IOL; R.G. Iyengar, Superintendent, Eastern Rajputana States, to MOS, 11 February 1948, RCO, Rajasthan, 83-P/48, NAI. 121 The Muslims were less in princely states than in British India, comprising 13.4 per cent of the population of the states in 1931. 122 The Leader, 16 August 1916, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 123 ‘Short Note on the Shri Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, Benares’, Home Poll., File 313 of 1925, NAI. 124 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 59–61. 125 Zavos, Emergence, p. 63. 126 Minute by Sir James Meston, 24 October 1917, Home Public A, May 1918, 568–98, NAI. 127 The Leader, 25 February 1916, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. 128 The Leader, 14 March 1920, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. 129 Jeff Weintraub and Krishna Kumar [eds], Public and Private in Thought and Practice, Chicago, 1997, pp. 38, 182. 130 Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements, pp. 216–23 131 Cited in S.L. Gupta, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Socio-political Study, Allahabad, 1987, pp. 298–9. 132 C.H. Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform, Princeton, 1964,

Notes

133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167

169

pp. 317–21; Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements, pp. 186–7; Baxter, Jana Sangh, pp. 17, 37–9. Statement by the UP Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, The Leader, 20 November 1920, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharma: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 152–75. UPCID Report, 23 June 1919, Home Poll. D, June 1919, 701–4, p. 37, NAI; Bayly, Local Roots, pp. 91–3. N. G. Barrier, ‘The Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in the Punjab 1894–1908’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1971, p. 379. K.L. Tuteja, ‘The Punjab Hindu Sabha and Communal Politics, 1906–1923’, in Indu Banga [ed.], Five Punjab Centuries, New Delhi, 1997, p. 133; R. Suntharalingam, Indian National Congress: An Historical Analysis, New Delhi, 1983, pp. 90–1, 119. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 287–8; Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, p. 163. Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, pp. 262–3. Bayly, Local Roots, p. 121; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 79–80. Bayly, Local Roots, pp. 129–31. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 151. William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 157–9; Baily, Local Roots, p. 144. Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940, London, 1974, p. 33. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 145–203. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 91. Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 155–7. Report of the Proceedings of the 30th Indian National Congress, 1915, Bombay 1916, p. 10. The Leader, 22 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 152–3. Baxter, Jana Sangh, p. 14. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 219–20. Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 10 May 1947, Vol. lxix, No. 19, p. 231. The Tribune, 24 July 1923, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. ‘UP Hindu Sangathan Committee’, 12 October 1940, All-India Hindu Mahasabha Papers, File No. P-13/1940, NMML. K.M. Ashraf ’s letter to Mahavir Tyagi, dated 5 March 1938, AICC Papers, B-9, 1938, NMML. Henrik Berglund, Hindu Nationalism and Democracy, Delhi, 2004, pp. 63–4; Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 108. Siyasat, Lahore, 17 April 1931, IOR: IOR: L/P&J/7/75, File No. 27, 1931, p. 333, IOL. The statement of Satyapal, Congress Leader from the Punjab, The Tribune, 13 October 1926, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. Home Poll., File 25 of 1923, NAI; Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 246. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 279. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 228. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 232–3. The Leader, 20 July 1925, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML. Police Abstracts of Intelligence [PAI], Lucknow, UP, 4 March 1933. The Leader, Allahabad, 8 August 1923, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 271. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 178. The Leader, Allahabad, 23 October 1932, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML.

170

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168 Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, pp. 192–3. 169 Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 192. 170 ‘Evidence of Zafarul Mulk’, Commission of Inquiry Report on the Cawnpore Riot of 1931’, ‘Evidence’, IOR: L/P&J/7/75, 1931, p. 592, IOL. 171 Siyasat, Lahore, 17 April 1931, cited in Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 341. 172 Testimony of Syed Zakir Ali, 4 May 1930, ‘Evidence’, IOR: L/P&J/7/75, 1931, p. 592, IOL. 173 Pandey, Ascendancy, p. 125; Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, p. 223. 174 Abhyudaya, 23 November 1929, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 175 Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 229. 176 Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, Delhi, 1952, pp. 54–5. 177 Anil Seal, ‘Imerialism and Nationalism in India’, in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal [eds], Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870–1940, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 25–7. 178 Lajpat Rai’s presidential speech at 8th All India Hindu Mahasabha in Calcutta, 1925. Cited in Madhuri, III, pt. 2, 3, March 1925, pp. 131–3, NAI. 179 V.C. Joshi [ed.], Lala Lajpat Rai: Writings and Speeches, 1920–1928, Vol. 2, Delhi, 1966, p. 27. 180 Swami Shraddhananda, Inside Congress, New Delhi, 1984, pp. 23–4. 181 Narayan Hari Palkar, Dr B.K. Hedgewar, Poona, 1964, pp. 79, 104. 182 Bruce Cleghorn, ‘Religion and Politics: The Leadership of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha – Punjab and Maharashtra, 1920–1939’, in B.N. Pandey [ed.], Leadership in South Asia, New Delhi, 1977, p. 411. 183 Richard R. Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975, pp. 181–2. 184 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, pp. 23, 38. 185 Cleghorn, ‘Religion and Politics’, p. 409. 186 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, pp. 190–1. 187 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, p. 213. 188 M.R. Jayakar, The Story of My Life, 1922–1925, Vol. 1, Bombay, 1959, p. 378. 189 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 180–91. 190 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 233. 191 Jayakar Papers: File 436, Items 262, 264, 267 and 272, NMML. 192 The Leader, 27 August 1923, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. 193 The Leader, 4 February 1922, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 194 Malaviya presided over the Hindu Mahasabha session in Patna in 1935 for the last time: he died on 12 November 1946. 195 Speech by Lala Lajpat Rai, president, Eighth Annual Session, All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Calcutta, April 1925. Joshi [ed.], Lala Lajpat Rai, Vol. 2, p. 257. 196 B.S. Moonje’s letter to M.R. Jayakar, dated 8 January 1930, File No. 436, Jayakar Papers, NMML. 197 ‘Proceedings of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee, Delhi, on the 9th, 10th,and 11th May 1926’, Jayakar papers, File No. 435, NMML. 198 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 178–9. 199 Prakash, A Review, p. 21. 200 Raja Narendra Nath’s presidential address, ‘Proceedings of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, Delhi, on the 9th, 10th,and 11th May 1926’, Jayakar papers, File No. 435, Items 259, 261, NMML. 201 Cleghorn, ‘Religion and Politics’, p. 407. 202 Keith Alexander Meadowcroft, ‘ “From Hindu–Muslim Unity” to Hindu Raj: The Evolution of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha 1922–1939’, Unpublished Masters Dissertation, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada, 1995, pp. 71–2. 203 Cleghorn, ‘Religion and Politics’, p. 403.

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204 Letter of Krishna Kant Malaviya, Convenor of the Election Board, The Leader, 16 August 1926, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. The Mahasabha’s working committee members were: M.M. Malaviya, Deva Ratan Sharma, Rampal Singh, Narendra Nath, Lala Ram Saran Das, and Neki Ram Sharma. Prakash, A Review, pp. 21–2. 205 The Mahasabha reforms committee comprised: Punjab – Narendra Nath and Lajpat Rai; UP – Rampal Singh, C.Y. Chintamani, and Sukhbir Sinha; Bihar – Rajendra Prasad, Dwarka Nath, and Kumar Ganganand Sinha; Bengal – Yatindra Nath Chaudhuri and Braj Kishore Chaudhrui; CP – M.S. Aney and B.S. Moonje; Maharashtra – N.C. Kelkar and Karandikar; Madras – Satyamurthi; Andhra – T. Prakasam; Bombay – M.R. Jayakar and D.V. Belvi; Gujarat – Dr S.B. Mehta; Sind – Jairamdas. The Leader, 14 May 1926, p. 6; 15 May 1926, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML; AICC Papers, File F24 of 1926, NMML. 206 Motilal Nehru’s letters to Jawaharlal Nehru, March–September 1926, Vol. XII; AICC G-57/ [IV], Pt. I/1926, NMML. 207 The Leader, 27 March 1926, p. 3; 4 August 1926, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 208 Home Poll., File 112 of 1925, NAI; Hindu, 11 March 1926, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. 209 GI Home Poll., H2/X/1926: UP FR I November 1926; The Leader, 28 February, 1926, p. 7; 27 March 1926, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. 210 Home Poll., 112/1925, UP Fortnightly Report I, September 1925, NAI; GI Home Poll., UP FR June–September 1926, 112/IV/1926, NAI. 211 AICC Papers, File No. 21/ Part 2, 1926, NMML; Home Poll., 1926, File No. 26, NAI; Motilal Nehru’s statement to press, 10 December 1926, ‘Statements’, Motilal Nehru Papers, NMML. 212 Motilal Nehru’s letter to Jawaharlal, dated 2 December 1926, cited in Jawaharlal Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 49–50, 52. 213 Motilal Nehru’s telegram to the manager, Aj, Benares, 26 November 1926, p. 5; File No. 10/1926, AICC Papers, NMML. 214 The Leader, 19 April 1926, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML; Motilal Nehru’s letter to Raja Indrajit Pratab Bahadur Sahai, dated 18 September 1926, File 10 of 1926, AICC Papers; Motilal Nehru’s letter to Sri Prakasa, dated 15 February 1927, Sri Prakasa Papers, NMML. 215 Gaya Prasad Singh’s letter to A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, dated 1 October 1926, File G57[IV] of 1926, AICC Papers, NMML. 216 The Leader, 28 August 1926, p. 4; 15 September 1926, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML 217 Letter of Secretary, GI Home [Public], to Secretary, Public and Judicial Department, dated 20 January 1927, IOR: L/P&J/6/267/1927, IOL. 218 The Leader, 7 April 1926, p. 7; 12 May 1926, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML; Prakash, A Review, pp. 53–4. 219 Prakash, A Review, p. 57. 220 Cited in Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 136. 221 Indra Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha: Its Contribution to Indian Politics, New Delhi, 1966, pp. 36–44. 222 Tribune, Lahore, 4 January 1931, IOR: L/P&J/6/267, File No. 5, 1931, p. 15, IOL. 223 Meadowcroft, ‘ “From Hindu–Muslim Unity” to Hindu Raj’, pp. 76–7. 224 Bhai Parmanand’s Presidential Address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Ajmere, December 1933, cited in Prakash, A Review, p. 134. 225 N.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1926, Vol. 1, Calcutta, 1927, p. 401; Jayakar Papers, File 435, Item 141, NMML. 226 Cited in Prakash, A Review, p. 135. 227 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, pp. 256–7. 228 B.S. Moonje’s letter to M.R. Jayakar, enclosed wire sent to Gandhi, dated 20 April 1930, File No. 63, Moonje Papers NMML; Judith Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: The Mahatma in Indian Politics, 1928–34, Cambridge, 1977, p. 150.

172

Notes

229 Walter Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II: Who Represents the Hindus?’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 12, 18 March 1972, p. 635. 230 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 97. 231 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 641. 232 In the 1937 elections, the Hindu Mahasabha was mostly defeated: it won 11 seats in the UP and the Punjab, two in Bengal, one in Bihar, one in the Central Provinces, four in Sind, and one in Bombay. The Congress got a majority in six out of eleven provinces, including the UP, the CP, Madras, Bihar, and Orissa. Home Poll., FR, Punjab, File No. 18/2/1937, NAI. 233 Home Poll., FR, UP, File No. 18/10/1936; Paul R. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh, Berkeley, 1965, p. 229. 234 PAI, 29 April, 20 May 1939; Mushirul Hasan [ed.], India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, Delhi, 1993, p. 13. 235 Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 162; Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, p. 125. 236 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 121. 237 Resolution passed at 20th All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Nagpur, 30 December 1938, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, 1938–39, File No. 50, NMML. 238 Praksh, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 91; Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 634. 239 Savarkar’s letter to Indra Prakash, dated 18 February 1940, File C 26, AIHMS, NMML, New Delhi. 240 V.D. Savarkar, beginning his leadership in 1937 at Ahmedabad session, was elected president of the Mahasabha for seven consecutive years: Nagpur, 1938; Calcutta, 1939; Madurai, 1940; Bhagalpur, 1941; Kanpur, 1942; and Amritsar, 1943. Baxter, Jana Sangh, pp. 20–1. 241 Nandini Gondhalekar and Sanjoy Bhattacharya, ‘The All India Hindu Mahasabha and the End of British Rule in India, 1939–1947’, Social Scientist, Vol. 27, Nos. 7–8, July–August 1999, pp. 49–66. 242 V.D. Savarkar’s speech, Poona, 15 January 1961: V.D. Savarkar, Thus Spoke the Prophet! Warnings that were Overlooked: A Collection of Writings and Speeches of Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1952, p. 13. 243 Report of Deputy Director General of Police CID, H.E.H. Nizam’s Government, Hyderabad, 14 April 1938. IOR: R/1/1/3089, IOL. 244 V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Address, 19th All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Ahmedabad, 1937: Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 283. 245 All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Nagpur, December 1938: Report of Chief Secretary, Central Provinces, December 1938, IOR: L/P&J/8/683, IOL. 246 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992, pp. 59–60. 247 V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Address, 21st All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Calcutta, 28 December 1939. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, pp. 388–9. 248 Savarkar’s Presidential Address, 20th All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Nagpur, 1938: Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 341. 249 Savarkar’s Presidential Address, 21st Hindu Mahasabha Session, Calcutta, 1939: Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 344. 250 V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Address, All India Hindu Mahasabha’s session, Madura, 1940: Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, pp. 395–6. 251 V.D. Savarkar, Historic Statements, Bombay, 1967, pp. 21–2. 252 Bruce Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 27–8. 253 Jose Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists of Modern India: A Critical Study of the Intellectual Geneology of Hindutva, Jaipur, 2006, p. 124; Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 635.

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254 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 637; Graham, Hindu Nationalism, p. 21. 255 Graham, Hindu Nationalism, p. 13. 256 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 33. 257 Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 238; Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists, pp. 152–3. 258 Graham, Hindu Nationalism, p. 97. 259 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 137–41. 260 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 633. 261 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 109. 262 Gondhalekar and Bhattacharya, ‘All India Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 49. 263 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 163. 264 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 136. 265 Baxter, Jana Sangh, p. 42. 266 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, pp. 266–7. 267 Copland, ‘Crucibles of Hindutva?’, p. 261. 268 Page, Partition Omnibus, pp. 37–8. 269 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 158. 270 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, p. 645. 271 Gopal Krishna, ‘The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918–1923’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, May 1966, p. 425; Bayly, Local Roots, p. 153. 272 Gould, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 182–3. 273 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 159–61. 274 Gondhalekar and Bhattacharya, ‘All India Hindu Mahasabha’, pp. 55–6. 275 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 355. 276 Graham, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 71–2. 277 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 99–100.

4 Sangathan – the unity and organisation of Hindus 1 Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Hindus and Others: The Militant Hindu Construction’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 26, No. 52, 28 December 1991, p. 2998. 2 G. Pandey, ‘Which of Us are Hindus?’, in G. Pandey [ed.], Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, New Delhi, 1993, p. 244. 3 Riots broke out in Agra, Shahjahanpur, Saharanpur, Etawah, Fatehgarh, and Mainpuri in 1923; Lucknow, Meerut, and Muzaffarnagar in 1924; Aligarh in 1925; and Allahabad in 1926. ‘Statement of communal riots in the UP between 1922 and 1927’, IOR L/PJ/6/1890, File No. 15, 1927, p. 5, IOL; Prabhu N. Bapu, ‘Hindu– Muslim Conflict and British Policy in United Provinces 1920–1929’, South Asia History Seminar, SOAS, University of London, October 2004, pp. 2–3. 4 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 144–5; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi, 2006 [1990], pp. 233–5; Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 220–48. 5 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, p. 19. 6 Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 43; Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, pp. 77–8. 7 Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, NAI; Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and

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9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28

Notes the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, pp. 145–203. Heinrich von Stietencron, ‘Religious Configurations in Pre-Muslim India and the Modern Concept of Hinduism’, in Vasudha Dalmia and H. von Stietencron [eds], Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 79–81; D. Gould, ‘Organised Hinduism: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Fundamentalisms Observed, Vol. 1, Chicago, 1994 [1991], p. 533. Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952 [1938], pp. 5–13. Raja Rampal Singh’s Presidential Address, All India Hindu Sabha session, Delhi, 1918, cited in Prakash, A Review, p. 86. Prakashh, A Review, p. 25. Interview with Kishem Chandra Sumen [born in Meerut], an Arya Samajist and writer, by Hari Dev Sharma on 17 September 1971, Oral History Transcript, No. 210, pp. 12–15, NMML. The Hindi newspapers and magazines which supported sangathan were: the Vartman [Kanpur], the Leader [Allahabad], and the Abhyudaya, a leading newspaper in Allahabad owned by the Malaviya family, the Vikram, and the Madhuri. File No. 25, June 1923, Home Poll., NAI. Vedic Magazine, Lahore, September 1922, Punjab Press Abstracts, 1922, No. 40, p. 81, IOL. The Leader, Allahabad, editorial, 2 April, 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. Abhyudaya, 21 October 1922, p. 2, Microfilm, NMML. Cited in Charu Gupta, ‘Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: Shuddhi and Sangathan Movements in UP in the 1920s’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No. 13, 28 March 1998, p. 729. Ayodhya Prasad Goyaliya ‘Das’, Sangathan ka Bigul, Delhi, 1926, p. 22, cited in Charu Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality and the “Other”: Gender and Hindu Identity in Uttar Pradesh, 1880s–1930s’, PhD Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2000, p. 136. Kartavya [Etawah, weekly, editor: Rikeshwar N. Raina, 25, 900 copies], 21 August 1922, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 14, 1922, p. 4, IOL. Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p., 1926, p. 78. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 78, 94, 140–1. The Hindu temples [mandirs] were to be devoted to ‘the worship of the three mother-spirits – Gau-mata [Mother Cow], Saraswati-mata [Mother Saraswati – the goddess of learning], and Bhoomi-mata [Mother Earth]’. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 140. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 22–3. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 95. Jose Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists of Modern India: A Critical Study of the Intellectual Geneology of Hindutva, Jaipur, 2006, p. 123. Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization, Delhi, 1978, pp. 115–27; David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control, 1920–1932, Delhi, 1999 [1982], pp. 74–84; Prakash, A Review, pp. 25–31. Chief Secretary, UP Government, to Secretary, Government of India, Home Department, 2 January 1925, Home Poll., GOI, File No. 206/1926, NAI. G.R. Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928, Leiden, 1975, p. 164. R.L. Hardgrave Jr., ‘The Mappilla Rebellion 1921: Peasant Revolt in Malabar’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1977, pp. 91–9.

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29 K.N. Panikkar, Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1836–1921, Delhi, 1989, pp. 179–82. 30 The Devala Smriti, a Sanskrit document, codified conditions for the reintegration into Hinduism of Hindu converts from Islam. Zavos, The Emergence, p. 201. 31 Home Poll., File No. 241/XII, 1921, p. 7, NAI; S. Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947, Madras, 1983, rept. Delhi, 1986, pp. 216–17; C. Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, Nos. 12–13, 20–26 March 1993, pp. 520–21; Prakash, A Review, p. 30 32 B.S. Moonje, ‘Forcible Conversions in Malabar – Dr Moonje’s Report’, Nagpur, 4 August 1923, Moonje Papers, File No. 13, 1923, NMML. 33 Moonje, ‘Forcible Conversions in Malabar’, Moonje Papers, File No. 13, NMML. 34 Moonje, ‘Forcible Conversions in Malabar’, Moonje Papers, File No. 13, NMML. 35 R.K. Ghai, Shuddhi Movement in India: A Study of its Socio-political Dimensions, Delhi, 1990, p. 43. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 97. 36 B.S. Moonje, ‘Forcible Conversions in Malabar’, Moonje Papers, File No. 13, 1923, NMML. 37 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 97. 38 K. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India III.1: Socio-Religious Reform Movements in Briish India, Cambridge, 1994 [1989], p. 194; Ghai, Shuddhi Movement, p. 87. 39 Ghai, Shuddhi Movement in India, pp. 67–8. 40 All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Banaras, 19 August 1923, The Leader, 8 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 41 S.L. Gupta, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Socio-political Study, Allahabad, 1987 [1978], p. 297. 42 M.M. Malaviya’s Presidential Address, All India Hindu Mahasabha session, Gaya, 1922, cited in Gupta, Malaviya, pp. 299–300. 43 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism: The Ideology and Program of the Hindu Mahasabha’, in Robert D. Baird, Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005 [2001], p. 248. 44 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 61. 45 Ghai, Shuddhi Movement in India, pp. 93–4; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 65. 46 Shraddhananda’s speech, All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Banaras, 19 August 1923, cited in Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 253. The Leader, 8 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 47 The Leader, 24 August 1923, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML. 48 The Leader, 8 February 1924, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 49 Varta [Kanpur, weekly, editor: Pandit Raja Ram, 28, cir: 1,000 copies], 21 August 1923, IOR L/R/5/97, File No. 15, 1923, p. 2; Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘The Genesis and Development of Hindu Nationalism in the Punjab: from the Arya Samaj to the Hindu Sabha [1875–1910]’, Indo-British Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1993, p. 17. 50 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 170; Gupta, Malaviya, pp. 259, 289–9. 51 Home Poll., File No., 6/IX/1924; File No. 140/1925. 52 Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 170. 53 Gupta, Malaviya, pp. 298–9. 54 Kenneth Jones, ‘The Arya Samaj in British India, 1875–1947’, in Robert Baird [ed.], Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005 [2001], pp. 27–54; Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 113 55 Home Poll., File 140/1925, NAI; Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, pp. 161–2. 56 Home Poll., File No. 6/IX, 1924, p. 19, NAI; Zavos, The Emergence, p. 202. 57 The Census of India, 1911, UP, Vol. XV, Part I, Allahabad, 1912, p. 118; Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 120. 58 The Leader, 11 March 1923, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML; Home Poll., File 140, 1925, NAI. 59 Vartman, 1 August 1925, IOR L/R/5/98, File No. 30, 1925, pp. 2–3.

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60 Yoginder Sikand and Manjari Katju, ‘Mass Conversions to Hinduism among Indian Muslims’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29, No. 34, 20 August 1994, pp. 2214–18. 61 Confidential note on ‘Communal Friction in the United Provinces, 1924’, by Assistant to Deputy Inspector General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department, UP File No. 140/1925, Home Poll., GOI, NAI. 62 Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab, Berkeley, 1976, rept. New Delhi, 1989, pp. 150–1, 167; R.K. Ghai, ‘Tabligh and Shuddhi Movements in the Nineteen Twenties in the Punjab’, Past and Present, Vol. 20, Part I, April 1986, pp. 217–25. 63 The Leader, Allahabad, 2 August 1923, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML; J.F. Seunarine, Reconversion to Hinduism through Shuddhi, Madras, 1977, pp. 85–6. 64 ‘Hinduom ka hras’, Madhuri, I pt 2, 4 April 1923, p. 271, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 31, 1923, p. 417, IOL. 65 Christophe Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, Delhi, 2007, p. 81 66 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 191–2. 67 Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, p. 153. 68 Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, pp. 41–2. 69 Kenneth Jones, ‘The Negative Component of Hindu Consciousness’, Indo-British Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, September 1993, pp. 57–72. The Purusha Sukta contains the first mention of the four varnas, or ‘classes’ of Hindu society; and the Manudharmashastra [the Manusmriti] sanctions caste hierarchy. 70 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 192–3; Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, p. 161. 71 Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, p. 141. 72 The Arya Mitra, a Hindi weekly published from Agra, served as the organ of the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, campaigning for untouchable uplift. Home Poll. F. 204/ IV/25, 1925, NAI. 73 The Leader, 2 April 1923, p. 7; 18 August 1923, p. 5, Microfilm, NMML. 74 Sukhnandan Prasad Dube, Chauchut ka Bhut, Lucknow, 1933, cited in Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India, Delhi, 2001, p. 323. 75 Madhuri, April 1923, p. 469, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 33, 1923, p. 378, IOL. 76 Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, p. 147. 77 Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, p. 78; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 214–15. 78 Peter Robb, The Government of India and Reform: Policies Towards Politics and the Constitution, 1916–1921, Oxford, 1976, pp. 55, 58. 79 Jayakar Papers, Home Poll., 1294, File 437, NAI. 80 Prakash, A Review, pp. 10–11. 81 Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford, 2006, p. 160. 82 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 193. 83 J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes, Delhi, 1981, p. 135. 84 The Leader, 8 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 85 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 89. 86 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 136. 87 The Leader, 25 August 1923, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 88 The Leader, 8 February 1924, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML. 89 Home Poll., File No. 66/VI/1924, NAI; Satish Kumar Sharma, ‘Shuddhi: A Case Study of Role of a Religious Movement in the Status Improvement of Untouchables’, Indian Journal of Social Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, April 1983, pp. 70–7. 90 Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda, pp. 141–2. 91 Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, London, 1970, rept. Delhi, 1998, pp. 139–41.

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92 Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda, p. 156. 93 Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 253; Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, pp. 109–10. 94 Dr Kurtakoti’s Presidential Address, All India Hindu Mahasabha session, Nasik, February 1924, cited in Prakash, A Review, p. 90. 95 Prakash, A Review, p. 91. 96 M.M. Malaviya’s Presidential Address, all India Hindu Mahasabha session, Belagaum, 1924, cited in Sitaram Chaturvedi, Madan Mohan Malaviya, New Delhi, 1972, p. 131. 97 Tribune, 30 August 1923, p. 6, Microfilm, NMML; Jayakar Papers, File 478, Item 130, NMML; V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, New Delhi, 2003, p. 95. 98 H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1926, Vol. I, Calcutta, 1927, January– June, p. 401; Prakash, A Review, p. 97. 99 N.C. Kelkar’s Presidential Address, All India Hindu Mahasbha session, Jabalpur, 8 April 1928, cited Prakash, A Review, p. 164. 100 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 194; Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 254. 101 V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 6, Poona, 1964, rept. New Delhi, 2003, p. 283; Prakash, A Review, p. 171. 102 H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1935, Vol. 2, Calcutta, 1936, July– December, p. 30. 103 D. Keer, Dr Ambedkar: Life and Mission, Bombay, 1971, pp. 168–7. 104 B.R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Bombay, 1945, p. 187. 105 Valerian Rodrigues, The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar, New Delhi, 2002, p. 225. 106 Cited in Rodrigues, Essential Writings, p. 224. 107 Cited in Rodrigues, Essential Writings, p. 229. 108 Cited in B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: An Undelivered Speech [Ed. Mulk Raj Anand], New Delhi, 1990, p. 30. 109 Rodrigues, Essential Writings, pp. 228, 272. 110 B.S. Moonje’s entry for 7 June 1936, Moonje’s Diary, Manuscripts, NMML, New Delhi; Keith Meadowcroft, ‘The All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Untouchable Politics, and ‘‘Denationalising’’ Conversions: The Moonje–Ambedkar Pact’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1, April 2006, p. 19. 111 B.S. Moonje’s entry for 5 February 1936, Moonj’se Diary, Manuscripts, NMML. 112 All-India Hindu Mahasabha: 17th Session Poona, December 1935: Full Text of Resolutions, Jayakar Papers, File 65, NAI. 113 Buddha’s biography written by K.A. Keluskar was given to Ambedkar’s as a prize at high school; and he was deeply impressed by Budhha’s compassion and efforts for the welfare of the oppressed. Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religious Pluralism Revisited, New Delhi, 2005, p. 203. 114 ‘The Hindu Mahasabha [Registered under Act XXI of 1860]: Constitution, Objects and Rules’, NMML, New Delhi; Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 283. 115 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 195. 116 Meadowcroft, ‘All-India Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 19. 117 Prakash, A Review, pp. 72–3; Meadowcroft, ‘All-India Hindu Mahasabha’, p. 28. 118 Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, 1999, p. 121. 119 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 198–9. 120 Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, pp. 219–20; Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 173. 121 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 116, 134; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 125.

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122 Indra’, ‘Hindu sangathan ka adhar’, Madhuri, II, pt. 2, 6, July 1924, pp. 355–6; Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 228. 123 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 293–4. 124 Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, pp. 13–14. 125 Jones, Arya Dharm, p. 308. 126 Madhuri, II, pt. 2, 1, February 1994, pp. 141–2, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 33, 1923, p. 371, IOL. 127 Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, New Delhi, 2002, p. 232. 128 SPPAI, 16 June 1923, Vol. XLII, No. 23, p. 189; Gordon, ‘Hindu Mahaabha’, p. 181. 129 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 232. 130 Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge, 2001, p. 157; J.T.F. Jordens, ‘Hindu Religious and Social Reform in British India’, in A.L. Basham [ed.], A Cultural History of India, Oxford, 1975, p. 380. The shuddhi rituals included the ceremonies of tonsure [mundan], fire sacrifice [hom], investiture of the sacred thread, and instruction in the sacred gayatri mantra. Ghai, Shuddhi Movement, pp. 48–9. 131 J.T.F. Jordens, ‘Reconversion to Hinduism: the Shuddhi of the Arya Samaj’, in G.A. Oddie [ed.], Religion in South Asia: Religious Conversion and Revival in South Asia in Medieval and Modern Times, Delhi, 1977, p. 155. 132 Walter Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II: Who Represents the Hindus?’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 12,18 March 1972, p. 634. 133 Jones, Socio-religious Reform Movements, p. 79. 134 Jordens, ‘Reconversion to Hinduism’, pp. 159–60. 135 Gupta, Malaviya, p. 333. 136 Cited in Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 347. 137 Gupta, Malaviya, p. 334. 138 Gupta, Malaviya, p. 296. 139 Gupta, Malaviya, p. 359. 140 M.N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India, Berkeley, 1968, rept. Delhi, 1972, p. 7. 141 Susan Bayly, ‘Hindu Modernisers and the “Public” Arena: Indigenous Critiques of Caste in Colonial India’, in William Radice [ed.], Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism, Delhi, 1998, pp. 159–60. 142 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 295. 143 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 28. 144 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 120–1. 145 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 98–9; Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 77. 146 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992 [1949], pp. 37, 89. 147 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 90. 148 Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago, 1996, pp. 84–5; Keer, Dr Ambedkar, p. 130. 149 Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988 [1966], pp. 477. 150 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 116. 151 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi, 1997, pp. 251–2. 152 Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. 368. 153 Mahratta, 16 September 1923, cited in Richard R. Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975, p. 189. 154 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Dr Kurtkoti, 14 February 1923, File No. LP-14, Moonje Papers, NMML.

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155 B.S. Moonje’s letter to V.D. Shastri, 20 February 1923, File No. LP-14; Moonje’s letter to Swami Shraddhananda, 17 June 1923, File No. LP-16, Moonje Papers, NMML. 156 M.S. Golwalkar’s interview, Organiser, Vol. 22, No. 29, 8 March 1969, pp. 1–2. 157 M.S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1939, 4th edition 1947, p. 62. 158 Golwalkar, We, p. 62. 159 M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000 [1966], pp. 358–70. 160 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 471. 161 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 45; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 117. 162 Christian Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, pp. 138–9. 163 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 142–3. 164 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 134. 165 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 137–8. 166 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 397. 167 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 133. 168 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 53–4. 169 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 137. 170 Nandini Gooptu, ‘The Political Culture of the Urban Poor: The United Provinces between the Two World Wars’, PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1991, p. 97. 171 Gooptu, ‘Political Culture of the Urban Poor’, pp. 99–100. 172 Susan Bayly, ‘Caste and “Race” in the Colonial Ethnography of India’, in P. Robb [ed.], The Concept of Race in South Asia, Delhi, 1995, pp. 164–5. 173 Police Abstracts of Intelligence [PAI], Lucknow, UP, No. 15, 21 April 1928; Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, pp. 157–8. 174 An Adi Hindu Samaj was formed in Lucknow in 1919, the Adi Hindu Mahasabha in Kanpur in 1923, and a similar organisation in Allahabad in the 1920s. Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, pp. 159–60. 175 Bayly, ‘Caste and “Race” in Colonial Ethnography’, pp. 217–18. 176 Bayly, ‘Caste and “Race” in Colonial Ethnography’, p. 169. 177 Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, p. 157. 178 PAI, No. 21, 2 June 1928; No. 33, 25 August 1928. 179 Interview with the Deputation from Depressed Classes, UP, Lucknow, 6 December 1928, Indian Statutory Commission, 1928, Vol. XVI, Part I, p. 362. 180 PAI, No. 43, 31 August 1931; Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, p. 163. 181 PAI, No. 40, 8 October 1932; No. 46, 21 November 1931; No. 38, 24 September 1932. 182 PAI, No. 39, 3 October 1931; No. 44, 7 November 1931. 183 Bayly, ‘Caste and “Race” in Colonial Ethnography’, p. 171. 184 Pandey, ‘Hindus and Others’, pp. 2996–7; Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, p. 159. 185 Vartman, 21 September 1923, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 15, 1923, p. 281, IOL. 186 The Leader, 22 October 1923, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 21, 1923, p. 263, IOL. 187 Report on the Administration of UP, 1923–24, Allahabad, 1925, p. 91; ‘Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published in UP, 1924’, Home Poll., File No. 204/IV, 25,1925, NAI. 188 Jones, Arya Dharm, p. 308; Bayly, ‘Caste and “Race” in Colonial Ethnography’, p. 175. 189 Gyan Shakti, 5 Febuary 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 5, 1927, pp. 314–15, IOL. 190 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 137. 191 At the Central Provinces conference of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1927, Waman Rao Ghorpade, a Mahar leader, moved a resolution, calling for the abolition of castes. Lajpat Rai, who chaired the conference, persuaded Ghorpade to withdraw the

180

192 193 194 195

Notes resolution, ‘as it is against the present policy of the Hindu Mahasabha, though the conference has full sympathy with the resolution’. B.S. Moonje’s Diary, 4 April 1927, Reel No. 1, Microfilm, Moonje Papers, NMML. Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, p. 78. Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 141. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Indian Nationalism and the Politics of Hindutva’, in David Ludden [ed.], Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, Philadelphia, 1996, p. 288. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 13, 31.

5 Hindutva – a nation of Hindu race and culture 1 V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, New Delhi, 2003 [1st edition Nagpur, 1923; Poona, 4th edition, 1949], p. 23. 2 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, p. 177. 3 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, p. 25. 4 Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 99. 5 John Zavos, ‘The Shapes of Hindu Nationalism’, in Catherine Adeney and Lawrence Saez [eds], Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism, London, 2005, p. 39. 6 Christophe Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, New Delhi, 2007, p. 85. 7 C. Jaffrelot, ‘The Idea of Hindu Race in the Writings of Hindu Nationalist Ideologues in the 1920s and 1930s: A Concept Between Two Cultures’, in Peter Robb [ed.], The Concept of Race in South Asia, Delhi, 1997 [1995], p. 333. 8 V.D. Savarkar, An Echo from the Andamans: Letters Written by Barrister Savarkar to his Brother Dr. Savarkar, Nagpur, 1928, cited in idem, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 4, Poona, 1964, rept. New Delhi, 2003, p. 281. 9 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 115–16. 10 Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988 [1966], pp. 52–3. 11 Savarkar stated in his will that after his death his body should be cremated in an electric crematorium without religious ceremonies. Jyotirmaya Sharma, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 172. 12 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. iv, 81. 13 V.D. Savarkar’s presidential address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha session, Ahmedabad, 1937: V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, Bombay, 1992 [1949], p. 10. 14 Sharma, Hindutva, p. 93; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 73–4. 15 Daniel Gould, ‘Organised Hinduism: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Fundamentalisms Observed, Vol. 1, Chicago, 1994 [1991], pp. 531–93. 16 Jeffery D. Long, A Vision of Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, London, 2007, pp. 25–6. 17 T.C.A. Raghavan, ‘Origins and Development of Hindu Mahasabha Ideology: The Call of V.D. Savarkar and Bhai Parmanand’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 18, No. 15, 9 April 1983, p. 597. 18 Christian Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, p. 115. 19 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 19. 20 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 21; Gould, ‘Organised Hinduism’, p. 647.

Notes

181

21 M.S. Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1947, p. 13. 22 Golwalkar, We, p. 8. 23 David Frawley, Hinduism: The Eternal Tradition – Sanatana Dhrma, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 51–3. 24 M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000 [1966], pp. 5, 11; idem, Golwalkar, We, p. 13. 25 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 5; Sharma, Hindutva, pp. 31–2 26 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 47–8; Gould, ‘Organised Hinduism’, p. 663. 27 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 6; Frawley, Hinduism, p. 63. 28 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 4. 29 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 33. 30 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 64. 31 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 51; Frawley, Hinduism, pp. 67–8. 32 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 39. 33 Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, pp. 110–11. 34 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 9–10, 17–18. 35 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, pp. 121–3. 36 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 16; idem, Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, pp. 149–87. 37 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 12–13, 20; idem, Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, pp. 149–87. 38 Wolpert, A New History, p. 62. 39 Wolpert, A New History, p. 62. 40 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 51. 41 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 18. 42 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 35. 43 V.D. Savarkar, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, Bombay, 1985 [1949], 51. 44 Wolpert, A New History, p. 70. 45 Wolpert, A New History, p. 71. 46 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 34; idem, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 443–4. 47 Wolpert, A New History, p. 107. 48 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 15. 49 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 34; idem, Six Glorious Epochs, p. 69. 50 Wolpert, A New History, p. 121. 51 Wolpert, A New History, pp. 87–8. 52 Wolpert, A New History, p. 111. 53 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 32. 54 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 33. 55 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 32, 35. 56 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 447–8. 57 Golwalkar, We, p. 14. 58 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 206. 59 V.D. Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence 1857, Bombay, 8th edn. 1970 [1947], p. 542. 60 David Gilmartin, Customary Law and Shariat in British Punjab’, in Katherine P. Ewing [ed.], Shariat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam, Berkeley, 1988, pp. 43–62. 61 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 91. 62 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 91. 63 Teg Bahadur was the ninth guru, and Guru Gobind Singh the tenth guru of Sikhism. Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 90. 64 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu-Pad-Padshahi Or A Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra, 4th edition New Delhi, 1971 [Bombay, 1925], p. 196; Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 45–6. 95.

182

Notes

65 Prof. ‘Indra’, ‘Prachin bharat mem rajnitik svadhinta’, Part 2, Madhuri, V, pt. 1, 3 October 1926, pp. 182, 326. 66 Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, 1999, p. 19. 67 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 51; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 5. 68 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 67; Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 185. 69 Savarkar, Hindu-Pad-Padshahi, pp. 21–2. 70 V.D. Savarkar, Mazhi Janmathep, Bombay, 1950 [1924], pp. 278–81, cited in Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 79. 71 Savarkar, Hindu-Pad-Padshahi, p. 21. 72 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 97. 73 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 35. 74 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 65; idem, Hindu-Pad-Padshahi, pp. 45–6. 95. 75 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 45. 76 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, p. 451; idem, Savarka, Hindutva, p. 27. 77 Savarka, Hindutva, p. 37. 78 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 28, 44. 79 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 45. 80 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 28; Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, p. 27. 81 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 69; Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 41. 82 Savarkar, Six Gorious Epochs, pp. 79–80. 83 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 34–6. 84 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 81; Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 133–4. 85 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 84. 86 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 29. 87 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 4–5. 88 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 82. 89 R.E. Frykenberg, ‘The Emergence of Modern Hinduism as a Concept and an Institution: A Reappraisal with Special Reference to South India’, in G.D. Sontheimer and H. Kulke [eds], Hinduism Reconsidered, New Delhi, 1989, p. 30. 90 Romila Thapar, ‘Syndicated Moksha?’,Seminar, No. 313, September 1985, p. 17; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 130–1. 91 Wolpert, A History of India, pp. 11–13. 92 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 20. 93 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 20. 94 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 3–9. 95 Savarkar, Samgra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 20–1; Savarkar, HinduPad-Padshahi, pp. 246–7, 281. 96 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 139–40. 97 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 47–8; idem, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 179. 98 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 87–8. 99 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 9. 100 Frawley, Hinduism, p. 59, 101 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 43; Frawley, Hinduism, p. 97. 102 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 56–7. 103 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 68–9, 102. 104 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 53. 105 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 119. 106 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 89–90. 107 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 73.

Notes 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

183

Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 90. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 85. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 48, 118. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 127. 162. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 4. Golwalkar, We, p. 18. Deendayal Upaddhyaya, Integral Humanism, New Delhi, 1970, pp. 47, 51. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 118. Savrakar, Hindutva, pp. 86, 90. Jaffrelot, ‘Idea of Hindu Race’, pp. 339–40. Romila Thapar, A History of India, New Delhi, 1978 [Harmondsworth, 1970], pp. 165–73. Aloka Parasher, ‘Attitudes Towards the Mleccha in Early Northern India – up to c. A.D. 600’, The Indian Historical Review, Vol. 9, Nos. 1–2, July 1982–January 1983, pp. 1–30; Vasudha Dalmia, ‘ “The Only Real Religion of the Hindus”: Vaishnava Self-representation in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Vasudha Dalmia and H. von Stietencron [eds], Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, New Delhi, 1995, p. 176. Romila Thapar, ‘Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1989, p. 216. Michael R. Rose, Darwin’s Spectre: Evolutionary Biology in Modern World, Princeton, 2000, p. 143. Jaffrelot, ‘Idea of Hindu Race’, pp. 342–5. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 30–2. Karner, The Thought World, pp. 126–7. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 152. Golwalkar, Bunchof Thoughts, p. 75. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 94. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 120. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 93. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 131, 321. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 27. Golwalkar, We, p. 54. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 128. Golwalkar, We, p. 53. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 129. Golwalkar, We, p. 53. Golwalkar, We, p. 53. Golwalkar, We, pp. 53–4, 56. Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 128–9. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 91–2. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 15–16. Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 133. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 53. Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 9. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 16. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 113. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 127. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 128. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 392. Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 137–8. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 397; Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 122–3. Sharma, Hindutva, p. 123; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 84.

184 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201

Notes Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 58. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 74. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 65; Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 174, 195. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 61–2. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 47. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 59–60, 62–3. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 64. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 104. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 74. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 179. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 26. V.D. Savarkar’s ‘Presidential Address – 20th Session of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, Nagpur, 1938’, Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 56. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 45; Golwalkar, We, pp. 23–34. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 136–43. Golwalkar, We, p. 23. Golwalkar, We, p. 35. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 85, 124–6. Golwalkar, We, p. 2. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 182. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 164. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 135. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 68–9. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 115–16; Sharma, Hindutva, p. 103. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 95. Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, New Haven [USA], 2002 [2000], p. 176. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 176. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 138; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 113. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 110. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 113. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 100. Sharma, Hindutva, p. 109; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 98, 105. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 121–2; Sharma, Hindutva, p. 111. V.D. Savarkar, ‘Presidential Address – 19th Session of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, Karnavati, Ahmedabad, 30 December 1937’, Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 14–15; Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 81–2. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 92. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 100–1. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 210. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 120. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 395. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 57. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 113. Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley, 1998 [1994], p. 105; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 24–5. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 103. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 61, 81. Frawley, Hinduism, p. 189. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 67. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 68; idem, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 112–13. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 102. Sharma, Hindutva, p. 117; Frawley, Hinduism, pp. 123–4. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 17. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 22.

Notes 202 203 204 205 206 207

208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239

185

Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 5. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 16. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 14, 55. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 87; idem, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 22 Cited in Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 556. Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, pp. 259–60; Jose Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists of Modern India: A Critical Study of the Intellectual Genealogy of Hindutva, Jaipur, 2006, p. 122. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 54. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 63–4. Dr Kurtkoti’s presidential address, 18th All-India Hindu Mahasabha session, Lahore, 21 October 1936. Home Poll., FR, Punjab, File No. 18/10/1936, NAI; Prakash, A Review, p. 142. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 55–7. V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Dhwaja: Sword is the Symbol of Abhyudaya and Kundalini is the Symbol of Nihshreyas, Bombay, N.d., pp. 32–3. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 299. Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952 [1938], p. 151; Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 111. A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection, Delhi, 2002, p. 25; Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 38. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva, p. 79. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 429–30. Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 90; Sharma, Hindutva, p. 128. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 26. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 49. Ainslie T. Embree, ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [ed.], Accounting for Fundamentlisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Chicago, 2004, p. 632. V.D. Savarkar’s statement of 9 February 1937, New Delhi, File C 73, AIHMS, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, NMML. Savarkar, Hindu rashtra Darshan, p. 20. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 24. Golwalkar, We, p. 19. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 432. A. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985, p. 157. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 538. Wavell to Pethic-Lawrence, 12 March 1947, TP, ix, p. 926. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 269. Muhammad ali Jinnah’s Presidential Address at the All-India Muslim League, Lahore Session, 23 March 1940, in Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad [ed.], Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, Lahore, 1947, p. 153. Cited in Ahmad [ed.], Some Recent Speeches, p. 154. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 158. Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 161. Jala, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 271–2. Lala Hardayal, a Hindu Mahasabhite, advised Indians to become ‘one nation’, which in effect was ‘Hindu’ in culture. Cited in Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 268, 500. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, pp. 121–2. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 6–7. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 25.

186 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250

Notes Van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, p. 105. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 11; Savarkar, Six Glorious Epochs, pp. 121–35. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 53. V.D. Savarkar’s speech on 29 July 1939, Pune, cited in Marzia Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January 2000, p. 223. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 28. Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 58–9. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 92, Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 95. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 126–7. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 71. Karner, The Thought World, pp. 144–6.

6 Masculine ‘Hindu nation’ and the Muslim ‘other’ 1 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992 [1949], pp. 117–18. 2 Chandkaran Sharda, ‘Hindu Jati ki Durdasha ke Karan aur uske Nivaran ke Upaye’, Madhuri, Vol. 3, Nos. 1, 2, September 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1924, pp. 5–6, IOL. 3 G.R. Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928, Leiden, 1975, p. 158. 4 Thomas Blom Hansen, ‘Recuperating Masculinity’, Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1996, pp. 137–72. 5 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, pp. 35–6. 6 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 37. 7 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 43–4. 8 Ainslie T. Embree, ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’, in M.E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Chicago, 2004, p. 627. 9 Paola Bacchetta, ‘Hindu Nationalist Women as Ideologues: The “Sangh”, the “Samiti” and their Differential Concepts of the Hindu Nation’, in C. Jaffrelot [ed.], Sangh Parivr: A Reader, New Delhi, 2005, p. 128. 10 Hansen, ‘Recuperating Masculinity’, p. 139. 11 Embree, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’, p. 629. 12 Joseph S. Alter, ‘Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 53, No. 1, February 1994, pp. 45–66. 13 Sikata Banerjee, Make Me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism in India, Albany, 2005, p. 25; Goerge MacMunn, The Martial Races of India, London, 1933, p. 13. 14 Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Manchester, 1995, pp. 37–9. 15 Cited in Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940, London, 1974, p. 6. 16 Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, pp. 51–5. 17 MacMunn, Martial Races, p. 33. 18 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition:

Notes

19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45

187

Political Development in India, Chicago, 1967, pp. 162–7; Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, p. 31. Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, p. 249; Herbert H. Risley, The People of India, London, 1915, p. 21. Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, pp. 51–2; Hansen, ‘Recuperating Masculinity’, pp. 141–2. Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, p. 67. Indira Chowdhury Sengupta, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal, Delhi, 1998, p. 59. Gandhi advocated physical fitness and applauded wrestling ideals – ‘manliness, virility, and a strong physique’ – needed for a ‘strong nation’. M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG], New Delhi, 1988, Vol. 18, p. 505; Vol. 24, p. 118. Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 160–1. William R. Pinch, Peasants and Monks in British India, Berkeley, 1996, pp. 81–114; Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 160. Cited in Wolpert, A New History, p. 28. Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism, Pennsylvania, 2000, p. 139; idem, ‘Celibacy, Sexuality’, p. 74. Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 75. V.D. Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence 1857, New Delhi, 1980 [Bombay, 1947], p. 64; Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, pp. 72–3; Charu Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality and the “Other”: Gender and Hindu Identity in Uttar Pradesh, 1880s–1930s’, PhD Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2000, p. 131. Joseph S. Alter, ‘Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28. No. 3, 1994, pp. 557–88: p. 559; Sengupta, Frail Hero, p. 61. V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 5, New Delhi, 2003, p. 230. Gould, William, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 73–4. Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952 [1938], pp. 14–15. Charu Gupta, ‘Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: Shuddhi and Sangathan Movements in UP in the 1920s’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No. 13, 28 March 1998, p. 727. Swami Satyadev Paribrajak, Sangathan ka Bigul, Dehradun, 1926, 3rd edn, p. i, cited in Gupta, ‘Articulating Hindu Masculinity’, p. 729. Madhuri, November 1926, p. 579, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 18, 1926, p. 5, IOL. Cited in Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, p. 169. Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, pp. 11–13; Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 75. Hamdam, 22 August 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 33, 1925, p. 3, IOL. Pratap, Kanpur, 22 August 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 33, 1925, p. 3, IOL. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 130; idem, Indian War of Independence, p. 35. Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India, Cambridge, 2001, p. 225; idem, ‘The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twentieth-Century UP’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1997, pp. 130–74: p. 135. Sudipto Kaviraj, ‘Imaginary History’, Occasional papers in History and Society, 2nd Series, No. 7, NMML, 1988, pp. 16–17. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 389.

188 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Notes D. Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988 [1966], pp. 135–6. Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, p. 130. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 229. Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p., 1926, p. 141. C. Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, Nos. 12–13, 20–26 March 1993, p. 520. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 46–8. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 93. B.S. Moonje’s letter to Maharajah Scindia, dated 23 April 1932, Moonje Papers, Microfilm, Reel No. 7; B.S. Moonje’s letter to Raja Ichalkarang, dated 18 May 1936, Moonje Papers, Microfilm, Reel No. 11, NMML. V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Address, ‘Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha 20th Session’, Nagpur, 1938. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 104. V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 25–6; idem, Indian War of Independence, p. 179. Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, p. 181. V.D. Savarkar, Hindu-Pad-Paddashahi Or A Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra, New Delhi, 1971, p. 288. V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Address, ‘Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha 22nd Session’, Madurai, 1940: Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 154. M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000 [1966], pp. 377–8. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Hindus and Others: The Militant Hindu Construction’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 26, No. 52, 28 December 1991, p. 3004; Partha Catterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse, London, 1986, pp. 91–105. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 65–6. Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, New Delhi, 1987, p. 11. Joseph S. Alter, The Wrestler’s Body: Identity and Ideology in North India, Berkeley, 1992, rept. New Delhi, 1997, pp. 73–5. Alter, Wrestler’s Body, p. 75. S. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 16–17, 91–3, 122. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 235. PAI, No. 40, 20 October 1923; No. 41, 27 October 1923. Alter, Wrestler’s Body, p. 72. Alter, Wrestler’s Body, p. 73. Joseph S. Alter, ‘The Celibate Wrestler: Sexual Chaos, Embodied Balance and Competitive Politics in North India’, in Patricia Uberoi [ed.], Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, New Delhi, 1996, pp. 109–31. Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986, Princeton, 1988, pp. 118–19. PAI, No. 35, 8 September 1923; PAI, No. 36, 15 September 1923. C.H. Pratt, Deputy Inspector General, [Banaras Range], File No. 243, Home Poll., 1915, NAI. ‘Evidence taken before the Commission of Enquiry on the Communal Outbreak of Cawnpore, 1931’ [‘Evidence’], IOR: L/P&J 7/75, 1931, IOL. Nandini Gooptu, ‘The Political Culture of the Urban Poor: The United Provinces between the Two World Wars’, PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1991, p. 122; Alter, Wrestler’s Body, pp. 77–8. Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism: The Ideology and Program of the Hindu Mahasabha’, in Robert D. Baird [ed.], Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005 [2001], p. 246.

Notes 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

189

Alter, Wrestler’s Body, p. 17. Gupta, ‘Articulating Hindu Masculinity’, p, 730. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 119. Kartavya [Etawah, weekly, editor: R.N. Raina, 25, 900 copies], 21 August 1922, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 14, 1922, p. 4. M.M. Malaviya’s presidential address, All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Gaya, 1922, cited in Jones, ‘Politicized Hinduism’, p. 248. S.L. Gupta, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Socio-political Study, Allahabad, 1987 [1978], pp. 355–8. Madan Mohan Malaviya’s speech, Gorakhpur, UP, 21 January 1927. Najat, 22 January 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 3, 1927, p. 2, IOL. Gupta, Malaviya, p. 363. The Leader, 24 August 1923; Home Poll., File 198/1924; Home Poll., File 140/1925, NAI. Home Poll., GOI, File No. 140/1925, NAI; Prakash, A Review, p. 168. Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 75; Prakash, A Review, p. 167. ‘Note on the Volunteer Movement in the United Provinces’, P. Biggane, 5 November 1920; ‘Note on the Volunteer Movement in the United Provinces’, S. O’Connor, 27 May 1922, UPSA; Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization, Delhi, 1978, pp. 126–7. Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 73; Ram Lal Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 132; Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 155. Stuart Corbridge and John Harris, Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy, Cambridge, 2000, p. 185. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, pp. 391–3. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Delhi, 1994 [Princeton, 1993], p. 115; Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 137. Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley, 1998 [1994], p. 105; Christine Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, p. 88. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 129. Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, 1968, p. 209; Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality, p. 147; Gupta, Malaviya, pp. 195–200, 326. Madhuri, November 1926, p. 579, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 18, 1926, p. 5, IOL. Sudha, October 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 2, 1927, p. 1, IOL. Pandit Devaratan Sharma’s speech at Ultadinghee, Calcutta, April 1925: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 7 April 1925, p. 4, Microfilm, NMML. B.S. Moonje’s Presidential address to the Punjab Hindu Young Men Sammelan meeting, Jallianwalla Bagh, 1929, Moonje Papers, 1929, NMML. The Maratha, 18 June 1922, cited in C. Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi: Hindu Nationalism and Political Violence’, in Denis Vidal, Gilles Tarabout, and Eric Meyer [eds], Violence/Non-violence: Some Hindu Perspectives, New Delhi, 2003, p. 306. B.S. Moonje, ‘Forcible Conversions in Malabar’, Moonje Papers, 1923, NMML. Home Poll., File No. 88/1933, RSS, Extract from the Weekly Report of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, 1933, p. 13, NAI. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thouhts, p. 237. Interview with Gokulchand Narang, Punjab Hindu Mahasabha leader, 13 February 1967, Oral Archives, NMML, Delhi. Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, p. 309.

190

Notes

107 Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations, pp. 62–7. 108 Henrik Berglund, Hindu Nationalism and Democracy, Delhi, 2004, p. 64. 109 M.M. Malaviya’s presidential address to All-India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Banaras, 19 August 1923, H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1923, Vol. 2, July–December, Calcutta, 1924, p. 131. 110 Cited in Gupta, Malaviya, p. 99. 111 B.S. Moonje’s letter to M.R. Jayakar, dated 3 May 1929, Moonje Diaries [1], NMML. 112 B.S. Moonje’s letter N.C. Kelkar, dated 5 July 1937, Moonje Papers, File No. 51, 1939, NMML. 113 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 117–19, 121. 114 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 138. 115 V.D. Savarkar’s statement, no date, cited in Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago, 1996, p. 80. 116 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 53, 89. 117 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 138. 118 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 184, 219–23. 119 Bhai Parmanand, Hindu Sangathan [Trans. by Lal Chand Dhawan], Lahore, 1936, p. 68. 120 Cited in Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 109. 121 L.B. Bhopatkar’s Presidential Address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Gorakhpur Session, December 1946, Moonje Papers, File No. 74, NMML. 122 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 178. 123 Keith Alexander Meadowcroft, ‘ “From Hindu–Muslim Unity” to Hindu Raj: The Evolution of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha 1922–1939’, Unpublished Masters Dissertation, Concordia University, Quebec, Canada, 1995 124 Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousnes in 19th-Century Punjab, New Delhi, 1989 [Berkeley, 1976], pp. 36, 54. 125 Anti-Islamic polemical tracts, mostly of the Arya Samaj, included: Yavnon ka Ghor Atyachar, Munh Tor, Jarput, Lal Jhandi, Tarani Shuddhi, Malaksh Tor, and Islam ka Bhanda Phut Gaya. Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, p. 23, NAI. 126 Arya Mitra, 26 June 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 25, 1926, p. 2, IOL. 127 Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, The Light of Truth: Swami Dayananda’s Satyarth Prakash, Allahabad, 1956, p. 97. 128 Nasim-i-Agra, 20 November 1880, IOR: L/R/5/57, File No. 19, 1880, p. 720. 129 Cited in Harald Fischer-Tine, ‘ “Kindly Elders of the Hindu Biradri”: The Arya Samaj’s Struggle for Influence and its Effect on Hindu–Muslim Relations, 1880–1925’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India, New Delhi, 2000, p. 109. 130 Majma-ul-Bahrain, Ludhiana, 14 October 1871, IOR: L/R/5/48, File No. 41, 1871, p. 626; Majma-ul-Bahrain, Ludhiana, 14 October 1871, IOR: L/R/5/48, File No. 40, 1871, p. 626, IOL. 131 Paisa Akhbar, Lahore, 20 March 1897, IOR: L/R/5/181, File No. 21, 1897, pp. 207–8, IOL. 132 Bharat Jiwan, Benares, 6 September 1886, Prayag Mitra, Allahabad, 18 September 1886, IOR: L/R/5/63, File No. 23, 1886, pp. 432, 634, 672, IOL; W.W. Hunter, The Indian Musalmans, London, 1871, rept. Delhi, 1969, pp. 143–4. 133 Benares Akhbar, 15 February 1872, IOR: L/R/5/49, File No. 9, 1872, pp. 192–3; Benares Akhbar, 30 April 1874, IOR: L/R/51, File No. 13, 1874, p. 179, IOL. 134 Bharat Jiwan, 27 September 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 38, 1924, p. 2. 135 Mitra Vilas, Lahore, 6 September 1880, IOR: L/R/5/57, File No. 11, 1880, p. 617; Mohan Chandrika, No. 6, 6 September 1880, IOR: L/R/5/57, File No. 21, 1880, p. 662, IOL. 136 Partha Chatterjee, ‘History and the Nationalization of Hinduism’, in Vasudha

Notes

137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147

148

149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

191

Dalmia and Heinrich Steitencron [eds], Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, New Delhi, 1995, 103–29: p. 109; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 2nd edn, 1993 [1974], p. 13. Arya Mitra, 13 June 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 23, 1925, p. 2, IOL. Cited in Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 298. Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 20 April 1929, Vol. lI, No. 16, p. 211. SPPAI, 28 December 1929, Vol. li, No. 51, p. 785; Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 315. Anand, 19 March 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 11, 1927, p. 3, IOL Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 314–15. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 298. Sada-i-Muslim, 15 August 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1925, p. 3, IOL. SPPAI, 7 January 1928, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 1. Hindustani, 23 May 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 20, 1925, p. 2, IOL. Rangila Rasul [Merry Prophet], written by Rajpal, was first published in Urdu in Lahore in May 1924. Home Poll., File No. 10/50/1927; The Leader, 25 June 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 25, 1927, p. 1. Vichitra Jivan [Strange Life] was written in Hindi by Kalicharan Sharma, an Arya Samaj preacher, and published in Agra in November 1923. H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1926, Vol. 2, Calcutta, 1927, July–December, pp. 335–56. Kennet W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India III.1: Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India, Cambridge, 1994 [1989], p. 101. Arya Mitra, 6 August 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 31, 1927, p. 3, IOL; Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 193–4. Arya Samachar, 2 July 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 26, 1927, p. 4, IOL. Arya Mitra, 4 June 1927, IOR; L/R/5/98, File No. 22, 1927, p. 1, IOL. Vartman [Kanpur], 21 September 1923, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 4, 1923, p. 5, IOL. Sudhir Chandra, ‘Communal Consciousness in Late 19th Century Hindi Literature’, in Mushirul Hasan [ed.], Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Delhi, 1981, p. 178. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 219. Chatterjee, ‘History and Nationalization’, pp. 111, 127. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 133; Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, p. 101. Wolpert, A New History, p. 123. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 213. Wolpert, A New History, pp. 130–3. Sudhir Chandra, The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India, Delhi, 1992, pp. 31–73. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Imagining a Hindu Nation: Hindu and Muslim in Bankimchandra’s Later Writings’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 29. No. 39, 24 September 1994, p. 2553. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 209. Maithilsharan Gupta, Bharat-bharti, Vartman khand, stanzas 243–7, p. 91, cited in Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, New Delhi, 2002, p. 189. Bhavishya, 15 August 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1925, p. 1, IOL. Jones, New Cambridge History III.1, p. 101; Chandra, ‘Communal Consciousness’, pp. 180–1. M.S. Golwalkar, We, p. 66; Prakash, A Review, p. 4. M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our Natiohood Defined, Nagpur, 1947, p. 25. G. Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford, 2006, p. 145.

192

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169 Bharat Bandhu, Aligarh Hindi-English weekly, 9 June 1879, IOR: L/R/5/56, File No. 23, 1879, p. 460, IOL; Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, New Delhi, 1987 [1984], pp. 209–36; Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, pp. 95, 101; 170 Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, Delhi, 1962, pp. 19–31. 171 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 173; Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 37–8. 172 M.R. Jayakar, The Story of My Life, 1922–1925, Vol. 2, Bombay, 1959, p. 630. 173 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 154. 174 Jayakar, Story of My Life, Vol. 2, p. 627. 175 Jayakar, Story of My Life, Vol. 2, p. 627. 176 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 177–201. 177 Abhyudaya, 9 May 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 18, 1925, p. 4, IOL; Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, GOI, NAI. 178 V.D. Savarkar, ‘The Rise, Fall and Destruction of Muslim Theocracy’, in Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, p. 503. 179 V.C. Joshi [ed.], Lala Lajpat Rai: Writings and Speeches, 1920–1928, Vol. 2, Delhi, 1966, pp. 196, 213. 180 Lala Lajpat Rai, ‘On the Hindu–Muslim Problem’, in Ravindra Kumar [ed.], Selected Documents of Lala Lajpat Rai, 1906–1928, Vol. 3, pp. 162, 201. 181 Bhai Parmanand, The Story of My Life [Trans. by N. Sunder Iyer and Lal Chand Dhawan], Lahore, 1938, rept. New Delhi, 1982, p. 36. 182 N.C. Kelkar’s presidential speech, All-India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Jabalpur, December 1925, H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1925, Vol. 2, July– December, Calcutta, 1924, p. 351. 183 Sarkar, ‘Imagining a Hindu Nation’, p. 2555. 184 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 178. 185 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 179. 186 Jasodhara Bagchi, ‘Representing Nationalism: Ideology of Motherhood in Colonial Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 25, Nos. 42–3, 20–27 October 1990, p. WS 67. 187 Hindustani, 2 July 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 27, 1924, p. 2, IOL. 188 M.M. Malaviya’s presidential address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Banaras, 1923. Home Poll., File No. 66/VI/1924, NAI; H.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1923, Vol. 2, July–December, Calcutta, 1924, pp. 130–1. 189 Arya Mitra, 31 May 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 21, 1924, p. 3, IOL; Gupta, ‘Obscenity and Sexuality’, p. 144. 190 Arya Patra, 2 July 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 27, 1924, p. 4, IOL. 191 Gupta, ‘Obscenity and Sexuality’’, p. 143. 192 Bagchi, ‘Representing Nationalism’, p. 69. 193 PAI, Lucknow, No. 25, 28 June 1924, p. 204. 194 Arya Patra, 8 August 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 31, 1925, p. 3, IOL. 195 Hindu women venerated Muslim saints’ shrines because it was believed they had miraculous powers, especially cures for infertility. W. Crooke, ‘Notes on Some Muhammadan Saints and Shrines in the United Provinces’, Indian Antiquary,Vol. 53, 1924, pp. 97–9. 196 Vir Bharat Talwar, ‘Feminist Consciousness in Women’s Journals in Hindi: 1910–20’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid [eds], Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi, 1989, p. 217. 197 Cited in Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, p. 306. 198 Mannan Dwivedi, Humara Bhishan Haas, Kanpur, 1924, 3rd edn, 2,000 copies, pp. 1, 26, 35, cited in Gupta, Sexuality, p. 310. 199 Pratap, 2 July 1924 IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 27, 1924, p. 5; IOL; Tanika Sarkar, ‘Scandal in High Places: Discourses on Chaste Hindu Woman in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Meenakshi Thapan [ed.], Embodiment: Essays on Gender and Identity, Delhi, 1997, pp. 35–73.

Notes

193

200 J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes, Delhi, 1981, pp. 140–3; Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 46–8. 201 Arya Mitra, 14 August 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1926, p. 1, IOL; Tanika Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation: A Historical Trajectory for Hindu Identity Politics’, in Patricia Jeffry and Amrita Basu, Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, London, 1998, pp. 101–2. 202 Shiva S. Dua, Society and Culture in Northern India 1850–1900, Delhi, 1985, pp. 63–7; Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation’, pp. 98–9. 203 Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation’, p. 103. 204 Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation’, pp. 89–104. Shiva S. Dua, Society and Culture in Northern India 1850–1900, Delhi, 1985, pp. 63–74. 205 C.A. Bayly, ‘Patrons and Politics in Northern India’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1973, pp. 387–8. 206 S.B. Freitag, ‘State and Community: Symbolic Popular Protest in Banaras’s Public Arenas’, in S.B. Freitag [ed.], Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Performance and Environment, 1800–1980, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 198, 223. 207 Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, pp. 167–9; Freitag, Collective Action, pp. 199, 201. 208 Gooptu, Politics of Urban Poor, p. 197; Freitag, ‘State and Community’, p. 225. 209 Home Poll., File No. 249/X, 1924, NAI; John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, p. 150. 210 Abhyudaya, Allahabad, 23 March 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 10, 1918, p. 2, IOL; Chief Secretary, UP, to Secretary, GOI, Home Dept., Letter No. 1355-Z, 23 September 1924, File No. 249/X/1924, Home Poll., GOI, NAI. 211 The Leader, 22 May 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 20, 1926, p. 4; Bharat Dharm, 14 December 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 31, 1925, p. 3, IOL. 212 Katherine H. Prior, ‘The British Administration of Hinduism in North India, 1780–1900’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1990, pp. 68–73. 213 The Allahabad Disturbances of 1924’, IOR: L/P&J/6, File No. 4043, 1924, pp. 1, 5, IOL; Report by H.S. Crosthwaite, District Magistrate, Allahabad, on the proceedings of a joint Hindu–Muslim committee held at the Collector’s house on Saturday, 5 September 1925, UP GAD 680/1925, UPSA, Lucknow, UP. 214 Confidential note on ‘Communal Friction in the United Provinces, 1924’, CID, UP, Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, NAI; Arti, 11 October 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 40, 1924, p. 4, IOL. 215 Smith, Commissioner, Allahabad, to Sir Alexander Muddiman, Chief Secretary, UP, 14 September 1925, UP GAD File No. 680/1925, Box No. 371, UPSA. 216 Letter of H.S. Crosthwaite, District Magistrate, Allahabad, to Sir Alexander Muddiman, dated 7 September 1925, Home Poll., 680/1925, NAI; Indian Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1925, p. 2, IOL. 217 Note on music outside mosques by H.S. Crosthwaite, District Magistrate, Allahabad, 23 May 1926, UP GAD 246/1926; Signal, 24 April 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 17, 1926, p. 3; Surya, 29 May 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 21, 1926, p. 6, IOL. 218 M.M. Malaviya to Private Secretary to Governor, UP, telegram, 5 October 1926, UP GAD 613/1926, UPSA; Abhyudaya, 5 June 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 22, 1926, p. 3; The Leader, 11 September 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 36, 1926, p. 5, IOL. 219 A History of the Hindu–Muslim Problem in India [Report of the Cawnpore Riot Enquiry Committee], 1932, IOR: L/PJ/7/75, p. 222, IOL. 220 Abhyudaya, 9 April 1927, IOR L/R/5/98, File No. 14, 1927, p. 4, IOL; Letter of H.S. Crosthwaite, District Magistrate, Allahabad, to Sir Alexander Muddiman, dated 7 September 1925, Home Poll., 680/1925, NAI; Indian Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1925, p. 2, IOL. 221 The Leader, 22 May 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 20, 1926, p. 4; Aj, 26 June 1926,

194

222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232

233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241

Notes IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 25, 1926, pp. 4–5; Abhyudaya, 24 July 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 29, 1926, p. 3, IOL. Confidential Note on Music in Ramlila by H. Crosthwaite, DM, Allahabad, 28 October 1926, File No. 613/1926, Box No. 473, GAD, UP, UPSA. V.D. Savarkar, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, Bombay, 1985 [1949], p. 121. Banerjee, Make Me a Man!, p. 79. Hansen, ‘Recuperating Masculinity’, pp. 141–3. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 161. Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, p. 63. Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality’, p. 133. Savarkar, Indian War of Independence, p. 61. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 5, p. 231. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 117. Joseph S. Alter, ‘The Body of One Colour: Indian Wrestling, the Indian State and Utopian Somatics’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1993, pp. 49–72; John Rosselli, ‘The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, Past and Present, Vol. 86, February 1980, pp. 122–3. Home Poll., File No. 206/1926, p. 14, NAI; Koenrad Elst, Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, New Delhi, 1992, p. 136. Van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, p. 105. Anand, 12 November 1927, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 45, 1927, pp. 4–5, IOL. Vartman, 21 September 1923, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 4, 1923, p. 5, IOL. Home Poll., File No. 140/1925, NAI; Abhaya, 15 August, 1925, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 31, 1925, p. 3, IOL. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 97. Confidential Note on Music in Ramlila, by H.S. Crosthwaite, DM, Allahabad, 28 October 1926, File No. 613/1926, Box No. 473, UP GAD, UPSA. ‘Evidence taken before the Commission of Enquiry on the Communal Outbreak of Cawnpore, 1931’ [‘Evidence’], IOR: L/P&J 7/75, 1931, p. 137, IOL. Written statement of Raghuber Dayal Bhatta, 22 April 1931, ‘Kanpur Enquiry Report’, IOR: L/PJ/7/75, pp. 108–11, IOL.

7 The militarisation of Hindu society 1 Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952 [1938], p. 151. 2 Christphe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special refrence to Central India], London, 1996, p. 17. 3 Prakash, A Review, pp. 157–8. 4 Henrik Berglund, Hindu Nationalism and Democracy, Delhi, 2004, pp. 67–8. 5 Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and “Hindu” Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 52. 6 B.V. Deshpande and S.R. Ramaswamy, Dr Hedgewar – The Epoch Maker: A Biography, Bangalore, 1981, p. 119. 7 Ainslie T. Embree, ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Chicago, 2004, p. 619. 8 Christian Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, p. 187. 9 Deshpande and Ramaswamy, Dr Hedgewar, p. 119.

Notes

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10 D.E.U. Baker, Changing Political Leadership in an Indian Province: The Central Provinces and Berar, 1919–1939, Delhi, 1979, p. 16. 11 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Chand Karan Sarda, dated 14 November 1923, File No. LP-18, Moonje Papers, NMML. 12 B.S. Moonje’s father told him: ‘I should never forget that my bones belong to the . . . Bhonsle. I feel I must honour the tradition of military service which I had inherited from my grand-father.’ B.S. Moonje’s letter, dated 6 January 1935, Microfilm, Reel No. 10, Moonje Papers, NMML. 13 The Mahratta, April 12, 1931, ‘Dr B S Moonje on Round Table Conference’: Special interview to The Mahratta, paragraph entitled ‘National Militia’, cited in M.N. Ghatate, ‘Dr B S Moonje: Tour of European Countries’, in N.G. Dixit [ed.], Dharmaveer Dr. B.S. Moonje Commeomoration Volume: Birth Centenary Celebrations 1872–1972, Nagpur, 1972, p. 68. 14 C.H. Philips [ed.], The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947: Select Documents, Vol. 4, London, 1962, pp. 531–2. 15 Marzia Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January 2000, pp. 218–19. 16 Moonje Papers, File No. 23, 1934–36, Microfilm, Reel No. 1, NMML. 17 Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, pp. 226–7. 18 Ghatate, ‘Dr B.S. Moonje’, pp. 68–9. 19 Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, p. 220. 20 M.B. Niyogy, ‘Dharmaveer Dr. Balakrishna Shivram Moonje’, in Dixit [ed.], Dharmaveer, pp. 59–60. 21 Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, p. 221. 22 Moonje Papes, File No. 3/1939, NMML. 23 Niyogy, ‘Dharmaveer’, p. 63. 24 Moonje Papers, File No. 24, 1932–36, NMML. 25 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Appasahib Kelkar, dated 25 February 1936, Microfilm, Reel No. 10, Moonje Papers, NMML. 26 B.S. Moonje’s letter to N.C. Kelkar, dated 10 April 1936, Microfilm, Reel No. 11, Moonje Papers, NMML. 27 Home Poll., File No. 4–37, I, 1937, NAI. 28 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 18–19. 29 Berglund, Hindu Nationalism, p. 72. 30 Christphe Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi: Hindu Nationalism and Political Violence’, in D. Vidal, G. Tarabout, and E. Meyer [eds], Violence/Non-violence: Some Hindu Perspectives, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 299–324. 31 V.D. Savarkar, Veer Savarkar’s ‘Whirl-Wind Propaganda’ [Statements, Messages and Extracts from the President’s Diary of his Propagandistic Years: Interviews from December 1937 to October 1941], Bombay, 1941, p. 51. 32 Stanley Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India, Berkeley, 1977 [1962], pp. 259, 262–3; Mark J. Harvey, ‘The Secular as Sacred? – The Religio-political Rationalization of B.G. Tilak’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1986, pp. 321–31: p. 321. 33 B.G. Tilak, Srimad Bhagavad Gita-Rahasya, or Karma Yoga Shastra, Poona, 1915 [first Marathi edition], English edition, 1935, cited in Philip H. Ashby, Modern Trends in Hinduism, New York, 1974, pp. 96–7. 34 Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, p. 97. 35 D. McKenzie Brown, ‘The Philosophy of Bal Gangadhar Tilak: Karma vs Jnana in the Gita Rahasya’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, February 1958, pp. 203–4. 36 ‘Trial of Mr Tilak, Editor of Kesari Newspaper: Conviction and sentence for sedition – Appeal to Crown’, IOR: L/P&J/6/877, File No. 2436, 1908, IOL. 37 Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, pp. 121–5. 38 Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988 [1966], pp. 107–8.

196

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39 Richard R. Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975, p. 96. 40 Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950, Ranikhet, 2007, p. 89; Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, p. 81. 41 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 143. 42 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 146–9. 43 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, p. 45. 44 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, pp. 46–7. 45 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 151. 46 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 131. 47 ‘From the Judgement of the Savarkar Case: Trial and Conviction and Question of Extradition at the Hague’: IOR: L/P&J/6/1060, File No. 359, 1911, IOL. 48 Statement of Chutterbhuj Amin: IOR: ‘L/P&J/6/978, File No. 4762, 1909, IOL. 49 Harindra Srivastava, Five Stormy Years: Savarkar in London, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 3, 13–14. 50 Home Department [Political], Procedings for the Year 1910, IOR: L/P&J/9454, 1 April 1910, File No. 847, p. 8713, IOL. 51 Savarkar’s first published work – Joseph Mazzini Yanche Atmacharitr va Rajkaran [Autobiography and Politics of Giuseppe Mazzini] – summarised the political teachings of Mazzini in a 26-page introduction [Prastavna]. Jyotirmay Sharma, Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 154. 52 Enrico Fasana Trieste, ‘From Hindutva to Hindu Rashtra: The Social and Political Thought of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar [1883–1966]’, 1994, p. 21. 53 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 153–4; Srivastava, Five Stormy Years, pp. 137–8. 54 ‘From the Judgement of the Savarkar Case: Trial and Conviction and Question of Extradition at The Hague’: IOR: L/P&J/6/1069, File No. 778, 1911, IOL. 55 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 149. 56 ‘Assassination of Mr Jackson: Discovery of Conspiracy at Nasik’: IOR: L/P&J/6/978, File No. 4762, 1909, IOL. 57 IOR: L/P&J/6/1077, File No. 1131, 1911, IOL. 58 J. Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists of Modern India: A Critical Study of the Intellectual Geneology of Hindutva, Jaipur, 2006, p. 118. 59 D.D. Pattanaik, Hindu Nationalism in India, Vol. 2, New Delhi, 1998, p. 71; Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 164. 60 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Pad-Padashahi or A Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra, New Delhi, 1971, p. 31. 61 Anderson and Damle, 1987, p. 36. 62 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992 [1949], p. 152. 63 Ram Lal Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 207. 64 V.D. Savarkar, Historic Statements [Eds. S.S. Savarkar and G.M. Joshi], Bombay, 1967, p. 260. 65 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 113. 66 B.S. Moonje’s letter to K.B. Hedgewar, dated 18 October 1939, Moonje Papers, File No. 51, 1939, NMML. 67 B.S. Moonje’s circular letter of 27 September 1939, Moonje Papers, File No. 51, 1939, NMML. 68 ‘Hindu Militia’ [Ram Sena]’, File No. 91, M.G. Chitnavis Papers, NMML. 69 V.G. Deshpande, ‘Brief Life Sketch of Late Mr. J.P. Verma’, File No. 91, M.G. Chitnavis Papers, NMML. 70 Mahratta, 16 February 1940, cited in Walter Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh I: Early Concerns’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 11, 11 March 1972, p. 595.

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71 Walter K. Anderson and Sridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, New Delhi, 1987, pp. 43–4. 72 Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, pp. 209–10. 73 Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 26 February 1944, Vol. lxvi, No. 9, p. 124. 74 D.E.U. Baker, ‘The Muslim Concern for Security: The Central Provinces and Berar, 1919–1947’, in Mushirul Hasan [ed.], Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 237–9. 75 Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, p. 33. 76 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 174–5. 77 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh I’, p. 591. 78 D.R. Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 59–60. 79 Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, ‘RSS: Ideology, Organization, and Training’, in C. Jaffrelot [ed.], The Sangh Parivar: A Reader, New Delhi, 2005, p. 24. 80 Cited in Pralay Kanungo, RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgwar to Sudarshan, Delhi, 2002, p. 68. 81 Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, p. 65. 82 Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, 1999, p. 93. 83 Interview with Nana Deshmukh, RSS leader fom Akola, Maharashtra, 25 February 1994, New Delhi, cited in Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 38. 84 J.A. Curran, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the RSS, New Delhi, 1951, pp. 12, 33–4. 85 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 182. 86 Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 101. 87 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 332. 88 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 66. 89 Anderson, ‘Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh I’, p. 589. 90 Antony Copley, ‘Debating Indian Nationalism and Hindu Religious Belief ’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and Sampraday, New Delhi, 2003, p. 12. 91 Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 212. 92 Anderson, ‘Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh I’, p. 593. 93 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 91, 120. 94 Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar, and Sambuddha Sen, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right, Delhi, 1993, p. 16. 95 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 24–5. 96 Curran, Militant Hinduism, pp. 63–4. 97 Cited in Karner, Hindu Nationalism, p. 139. 98 Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, p. 48. 99 Basu and Sarkar et al., Khaki Shorts, p. 33. 100 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thouhts, p. 361. 101 Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘The RSS: A Hindu Nationalist Sect’, in C. Jaffrelot [ed.], The Sangh Parivar: A Reader, New Delhi, 2005, p. 53. 102 Curran, Militant Hinduism, pp. 93–4. 103 Jaffrelot, ‘The RSS’, p. 58; Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, p. 36. 104 Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, p. 41. 105 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, p. 15. 106 Ramananda Chatterjee, Hindu Mahasabha president, first unfurled the saffron flag as a Hindu symbol in Surat in 1929; and it was adopted by the Mahasabha as the flag of the ‘Hindu nation’ in Lahore in 1936. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 106. 107 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 106. 108 Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, pp. 85–6.

198 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

Notes Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 423. Anderson and Damle, Brotherhood, p. 88. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 45. Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, New Delhi, 1987 [1984], p. 118; Basu and Sarkar et al., Khakhi Shorts, p. 20. Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, Nos. 12–13, 20–26 March 1993, p. 521. K.R. Malkani, The RSS Story, New Delhi, 1980, p. 25. Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 94. ‘Note on the Volunteer Movement in India prepared by the Intelligence Bureau – 28 September 1940’, IOR: L/P&J/17, File No. C81, 1940. Narayan Hari Palkar, Dr K.B. Hedgewar [Translated from Marathi by Mrinalini Dhavale], Poona, 1964, pp. 36, 41, 59, 117. Moonje’s Diary 1927: entries on 4 May, 4 June, 11 June, 13 June, Reel 1, Microfilm, Moonje Papers, NMML. Malkani, The RSS Story, pp. 69–70. Moonje Papers, Microfilm, Diary, Reel No. 2, 1932–1936, NMML. Palkar, Dr K.B. Hedgewar, p. 117. Hansen, Saffron Wave, pp. 92–5. Padam Raj Jain’s letter to V.D. Savarkar, dated 29 November 1936, Savarkar Papers, Reel No. 4, File No. 1, NMML. Padam Raj Jain’s letter to V.D. Savarkar, dated 27 July 1936, Microfilm, Reel No. 3, File No. 1, Savarkar Papers, NMML. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi, Part I, New Delhi, 1966, pp. 242–3. Malkani, RSS Story, pp. 47–8. Home Poll., I, File 18-4-42, 1938, NAI. J.D. Malekar’s letter to Phadnis, dated 7 November 1938, Savarkar Papers, File No. 4 [March–December 1938], NMML. Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago, 1996, p. 70. The All-India Hindu Mahasabha’s statement, 5 December 1938, Savarkar Files, NMML. Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 40–2. Cited in Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, p. 228. A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection, Delhi, 2002, p. 91. McKean, Divine Enterprise, p. 94. K.B. Hedgewar’s letter [No. 5 of 1929] to Paramarth, dated 2 August 1929; Hedgewar’s letter [No. 51 of 1932] to Bhaiya Saheb Tatade, dated 2 December 1932, Moonje Papers, NMML. Anderson, ‘Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh I’, pp. 597–8. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 2, Bombay, 1946, rept. Delhi, 1969, pp. 466–7. Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 101. V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Viceroy, dated 19 August 1940, Savarkar Files, NMML. V.D. Savarkar’s letter to the Viceroy, dated 12 October 1941, IOR: L/P&J/8/863, IOL. Lord Linlithgow’s letter to Leopold Amery, Secretary of State for India, dated 7 October 1939, and the report of the meeting in postscript on 9 October 1939: IOR: MSS Eur. File No. 125/8, 1939, IOL. ‘Statement of V.D. Savarkar Regarding Hindu Militarisation’, 7 October 1941: IOR: L/P&J/8/683, IOL.

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143 Savarkar’s presidential address to Hindu Mahasabha session, Calcutta, December 1939: V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 6, New Delhi, 2003, p. 383. 144 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, pp. 191–2. 145 Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee meeting, Dadar, Bombay, 10 September 1939: File No. C 30, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, NMML. 146 Weekly Report from the Director of Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India, Simla, 22 June 1940, File 230/35, No. 24, IOR: L/P&J/12/482, IOL. 147 William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge, 2004, p. 248. 148 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, pp. 383–4. 149 V.D. Savarkar’s Presidential Speech, 22nd Session of All India Hindu Mahasabha, Madura, 1940: File No. C 26, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, NMML. 150 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Viceroy, dated 19 August 1940, Savarkar Files, NMML. 151 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, pp. 385–6. 152 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Viceroy, dated 15 July 1940, Microfilm, Reel No. 6, Savarkar Papers, NMML. 153 Report on volunteer movements, 4 November 1941, Police CID, Box 82, File No. 1240/1941, UPSA. 154 ‘Internal Situation in India’, Top Secret, M.I. Ext. 170, 15 December 1945, WO/208/761A, Public Record Office [PRO], London; ‘Report on the Volunteer Movement in India’, Part II, File No. 117C-81 V, IOR: L/P&J/8/678, IOL. 155 ‘Volunteer Organizations Part I’, File No. 117 C-81 V, IOR: L/P&J/8/678, IOL. 156 Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 8 March 1947, Vol. lxix, No. 10, p. 103. 157 SPPAI, 31 May 1947, Vol. lxix, No. 22, p. 271. 158 SPPAI, 24 May 1947, Vol. lxix, No. 21, p. 264. 159 Report of Intelligence Bureau for October 1946, published by CID, File No. 112/C2, IOR: L/PO/10/24, IOL. 160 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Viceroy, dated 1 July 1940, Microfilm, Reel No. 6, Savarkar Papers, NMML. 161 B.S. Moonje’s letter to S.P. Mookherjee, dated 18 March 1947, File No. 97, S.P. Mookherjee Papers, II-IV, NMML. 162 Prakash, A Review, p. 183. 163 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Viceroy, dated 26 September 1940, IOR: L/P&J/8/683, File 117/D-1, 1940, IOL. 164 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Viceroy, dated 25 September 1940, Savarkar Files, NMML. 165 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Viceroy, 3 October 1940, IOR: L/P&J/8/683, IOL. 166 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Viceroy, dated 12 September 1940, Reel No. 6, File No. 13, Savarkar Papes, NMML. 167 Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 115–16. 168 Walter Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II: Who Represents the Hindus?’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 12, 18 March 1972, p. 635. 169 Tanika Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation: A Historical Trajectory for Hindu Identity and Politics’, in Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu [eds], Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicised Religion in South Asia, London, 1998, p. 95. 170 Cited in McKean, Divine Enterprise, p. 71. 171 Moonje Papers, Circular Letter of 27 September 1939, File No. 51, 1939; Moonje Papers, File No. 3, 1939, pp. 98–9, NMML. 172 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 266. 173 N.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1942, Vol. 2, July–December, p. 30.

200

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174 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 144–5. 175 Extract from a secret letter, dated 5 January 1946, IOR: L/P&J/5/167, IOL 176 ‘Review of the Political Situation: Consequences on the Failure of the Simla Conference’, IOR: L/P&J/R/3/1/106, IOL; Nandini Gondhalekar and Sanjoy Bhattacharya, ‘The All India Hindu Mahasabha and the End of British Rule in India, 1939–1947’, Social Scientist, Vol. 27, Nos. 7–8, July–August 1999, p. 66. 177 Rai Bahadur Kunwar Guru Narain’s letter to Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, dated 27 August 1945, Savarkar Files, NMML. 178 Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, pp. 637–8. 179 Savarkar’s speech, 25 April 1941: Savarkar, Veer Savarkar’s ‘Whirl-Wind Propaganda’, p. 368. 180 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to B.S. Moonje, dated 28 September 1940, Microfilm, Reel No. 6, NMML. 181 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar, Vol. 6, pp. 552–3. 182 Gwilym Beckerlegge, ‘Saffron and Seva: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Appropriation of Swami Vivekananda’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and Sampraday, New Delhi, 2003, p. 40. 183 Moonje Papers, File No. 51, 1939, NMML. 184 Joseph Burke’s letter to Curson, dated 6 November 1945, IOR: L/P&J/8/683, IOL. 185 Ganpat Rai’s letter to B.S. Moonje, dated 3 April 1939, Microfilm, Reel No. 4, File No. 8, Savarkar Papers, NMML. 186 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Mr Sinha, dated 18 December 1923, Moonje Dossier [26], Moonje Diaries, NMML. 187 B.S. Moonje’s letter to H. Seth, dated 25 March 1940, File No. 26, Moonje Papers, NMML. 188 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, pp. 639–40. 189 Zavos, John, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 81–2. 190 Hansen, Saffron Wave, p. 43. 191 Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, p. 79. 192 Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 675. 193 Report from the Director of Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India, 22 June 1940, File 230/35, No. 24, IOR: L/P&J/12/482, IOL, 194 Field Marshal Viscount Wavell’s private and secret letter to Leopold Amery, Secretary of State for India, dated 1 July 1945, IOR: L/PO/10/22, p. 1182, IOL. 195 Moonje Papers, Microfilm, Diary, Reel No. 2, 1932–1936, NMML. 196 Report of Intelligence Bureau, dated 13 January 1940, IOR: L/P&J/12/482, IOL. 197 Anderson, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh II’, pp. 642–3.

8 Gandhi and Hindu Mahasabhaites 1 UP Fortnightly Report [FR] I July, I August and I September 1923, GI Home Poll., 25/1923, NAI. 2 The Leader, 16 June 1920, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML; Home Poll., File No. 140, 1925, NAI. 3 D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, New Dehi, 1969, Vol. 1, p. 73. 4 Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi, Oxford, 1997, p. 45. 5 Jeffery D. Long, A Vision of Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, London, 2007, p. 29. 6 Judith M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, Oxford, 1994 [1985], pp. 119, 213–14. 7 Tendulkar, Mahatmai, Vol. 1, p. 63.

Notes

201

8 Parekh, Gandhi, p. 5. 9 M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG], 100 volumes, New Delhi, 1958–94, Vol. 39, p. 211. 10 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 368. 11 Gandhi’s speech at the Theosophical Society, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1905: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 368. 12 Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 59, 173. 13 M.K. Gandhi, ‘Why I am a Hindu’, Young India, 21 Ocober 1927, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 23, p. 20. 14 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 34, p. 24 15 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, p. 516. 16 Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 57. 17 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 53, p. 396. 18 Gandhi’s speech at Gurukul Anniversary, 20 March 1916: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 15, p. 203. 19 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 16, p. 161; CWMG, Vol. 35, p. 10. 20 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 8, p. 112; Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi, New Delhi, 1974, p. 85. 21 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 263; CWMG, Vol. 24, 105; Stephen Hay, ‘Between Two Worlds: Gandhi’s First Impressions of British Culture’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1969, pp. 305–19: p. 308. 22 Young India, 20 October 1927, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 35, pp. 166–7. 23 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 67, p. 59. 24 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 24, p. 85; CWMG, Vol. 35, p. 312. 25 Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, 2009, pp. 49–50. 26 Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 27, 46. 27 Wolpert, A New History, p. 52. 28 Wolpert, A New History, p. 86. 29 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 49, pp. 327–8. 30 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 24, p. 105; CWMG, Vol. 34, p. 24. 31 Wolpert, A New History, pp. 52–3. 32 Wolpert, A New History, pp. 53–4. 33 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 39, p. 22; J.T.F. Jordens, Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl, Basingstoke, 1998, p. 108. 34 Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 46. 35 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 23, p. 20. 36 Anthony J. Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony, Cambridge, 2006, p. 109. 37 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 19, p. 522. 38 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 376. 39 Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religiois Pluralism Revisted, New Delhi, 2005, p. 147. 40 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 377; Chatterjee, Gandh, p. 148. 41 Cited in Rudrangshu Mukherjee [ed.], The Penguin Gandhi Reader, New Delhi, 1993, p. 211. 42 Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, London, 1983, pp. 137–8. 43 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 407. 44 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 8, p. 220. 45 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 4, p. 411; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 55. 46 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 8, p. 35; Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, p. 41. 47 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 8, p. 231; Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, pp. 21–35. 48 Antony Copley, Gandhi: Against the Tide, Oxford, 1987, p. 65. 49 Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, pp. 77–8. 50 J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, Delhi, 1967, pp. 116–23

202 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Notes Copley, Gandhi, pp. 67–8. James D. Hunt, Gandhi in London, New Delhi, 1978, pp. 65–7, 95. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 5, p. 48. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 5, p. 48. Henry S.L. Polak, M.K. Gandhi: A Sketch of his Life and Work, Madras, 1918, p. 32. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 47. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 51. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 52; J.T.F. Jordens, Dayananda Saraswati: His Life and Ideas, Delhi, 1978, pp. 1–23; Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, The Light of Truth: Swami Dayananda’s Satyartha Prakah, Allahabad, 1956, p. 125. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, pp. 52–3. Gandhi’s speech at Arya Samaj Annual Celebrations, Surat, 2 January 1916: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 15, p. 124. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, pp. 56–7. M.K. Gandhi, ‘Hindu–Muslim Tension – Its Cause and Cure’, idem, CWMG, Vol. 24, pp. 237–9, 264–6; Kenneth Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19thCentury Punjab, Berkeley, 1976, rept. New Delhi, 1989, p. 32. David Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time and Ours: The Global Legacy of his Ideas, London, 2003, pp. 163–4. Richard Gordon, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1975, p. 161. J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes, Delhi, 1981, pp. 92–3. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda, p. 107. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda, pp. 61, 109. Gandhi’s speech at Gurukul Anniversary, 20 March 1916: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 15, p. 207. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 32, pp. 451, 459–62; Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, p. 172. Gandhi’s speech at the Gauhati session of the Congress in December 1926: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 32, p. 460. Young India, 29 May 1924, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 52. Gandhi’s speech at Hindi Sammelan, Bombay, 19 April 1919: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 17, p. 445. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 52. Gandhi’s speech on the Congress’s resolution over cow slaughter, 1927: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 35, p. 436. Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, p. 175. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, pp. 501–2. Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 48–9. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 503; Indulal Yagnik, Shyamji Krishnavarma: Life and Times of an Indian Revolutionary, Bombay, 1950, pp. 56–119. Hunt, Gandhi in London, p. 38. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 511. Hunt, Gandhi in London, p. 53. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 508. Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, p. 181. D. Keer, Mahatma Gandhi: Political Saint and Unarmed Prophet, Bombay, 1973, p. 165. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 504. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 506. Cited in Rajmohan Gandhi, The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi, New Delhi, 1995, p. 148. R. Gandhi, The Good Boatman, pp. 148–9. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 499; Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, London, 1969, pp. 206–7.

Notes

203

90 M.K. Gandhi’s letter to G.K. Gokhale, 11 November 1909: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, pp. 531–2. 91 Gandhi’s leter to Lord Ampthill, former governor of Madras, dated 30 October 1909: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 9, pp. 508–10. 92 David Arnold, Gandhi, London, 2001, p. 65. 93 R. Gandhi, Good Boatman, pp. 149–50. 94 Ronald Neufeldt, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and Gandhi’, in Harold Coward [ed.], Indian Critiques of Gandhi, Albany [USA], 2003, p. 42. 95 M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, Ahmedabad, 1910, rept. Delhi, 1996, p. 51. 96 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 53. 97 M.K. Gandhi, Young India, 30 March and 29 June 1921, cited in D. Rothermund, ‘Constitutional Reforms versus National Agitation in India, 1900–1950’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 34, 1961–2, p. 511. 98 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 2nd edn, Ahmedabad, 1929, 2nd edn, 1940, p. 49. 99 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 13, pp. 296–7. 100 Cited Bikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition, and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse, New Delhi, 1989, p. 162. 101 Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 1, Oxford, 1987, p. 455. 102 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992 [1949], p. 149. 103 Cited in Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford, 2001, p. 103. 104 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 154, 161. 105 Cited in Harindra Srivastava, Five Stormy Years: Savarkar in London, New Delhi, 2002 [1983], p. 66. 106 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 154. 107 Savarkar, Hindu Rashttra Darrshan, p. 201. 108 V.D. Savarkar, Historic Statements [Eds. S.S. Savarkar and G.M. Joshi], Bombay, 1967, pp. 64–5. 109 V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Writings of Swatantrya Veer V.D. Savarkar, Vol. 4, Poona, 1964, rept. New Delhi, 2003, pp. 150–1. 110 Savarkar’s speech on ‘Direct Action’, 24 June 1941: Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 217. 111 V.D. Savarkar’s letter to Gandhi, dated 8 February 1906, cited in Srivastava, Five Stormy Years, pp. 64–5; Savarkarr, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 204. 112 Savarkar, Hindu Rashttra Darrshan, p. 201. 113 V.D. Savarkar, Presidential Address at the 22 Session of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, Madura, 1940: Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 141. 114 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 219–20. 115 C. Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi: Hindu Nationalism and Political Violence’, in D. Vidal, G. Tarabout, and E. Meyer [eds], Violence/Non-violence: Some Hindu Perspectives, Delhi, 2003, pp. 299–300. 116 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 32, p. 102. 117 Jaffrelot, ‘Opposing Gandhi’, pp. 321–2. 118 Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950, Ranikhet, 2007, pp. 81–2. 119 Mark J. Harvey, ‘The Secular as Sacred? – The Religio-political Rationalization of B.G. Tilak’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2 1986, p. 321. 120 Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 96, 116–17. 121 Harvey, ‘The Secular as Sacred?’ pp. 321–2.

204

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122 Cited in Dhananjay Keer, Lokamanya Tilak: Father of the Indian Freedom Struggle, Bombay, 1969, p. 425. 123 Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988 [1966], p. 172. 124 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 161. 125 Cited in Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. xx, 162. 126 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 21–2. 127 Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, p. 119. 128 Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought, p. 123. 129 M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, [ed. Anthony J. Parel], Cambridge, 1997, p. 53. 130 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, 251; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 62. 131 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 263; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 26–7. 132 Anthony J. Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 110–11. 133 Jordens, Gandhi’s Religion, pp. 149–53. 134 Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination, Basingstoke, 1989, pp. 178–91. 135 M.K. Gandhi, ‘The Lion Cloth’, Young India, 30 April 1931, idem, CWMG, Vol. 52, pp. 8–9. 136 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, pp. 291–3. 137 Cited in Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 109. 138 Cited in Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 61. 139 Cited in Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 114. 140 B.R. Nanda, In Search of Gandhi: Essays and Reflections, New Delhi, 2002, p. 31. 141 Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy, p. 108; Nanda, In Search of Gandhi, p. 29. 142 M.K. Gandhi, ‘Hinduism’, Young India, 6 October 1921, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 24, pp. 373–4. 143 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 19, p. 522; CWMG, Vol. 23, p. 20. 144 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 384; Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, p. 179. 145 Jordens, Gandhi’s Religion, pp. 149–53. 146 Stanley A. Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford, 2001, p. 85. 147 G. Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford, 2006, pp. 177–81. 148 Urdu poet Akbar Allahabadi’s words, cited in Ralph Russell, The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History, London, 1992, p. 164. 149 Gandhi’s speech at Prayer Meeting, 20 January 1948: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 90, p. 464. 150 Gandhi’s letter to Mahomed Ali, dated 18 November 1918: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 15, p. 64. 151 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 159; Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, New York, 1982, rept. New Delhi, 1999, pp. 71–125. 152 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 74, p. 350. 153 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 38, p. 232. 154 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 38, p. 219. 155 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 167. 156 Gandhi’s speech to the All-India Congress Committee, Bombay, 8 August 1942, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 76, p. 389. 157 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 76, p. 166. 158 Gandhi, CWMG, 31, p. 126; Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 121. 159 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 171; Chatterjee, Gandhi, pp. 162–9. 160 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 119–20, 127–8. 161 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 431.

Notes 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201

205

Long, A Vision of Hinduism, pp. 176–7. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, p. 225. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, p. 179. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 17. Cited in Jose Kuruvachira, Hindu Nationalists of Modern India: A Critical Study of the Intellectual Geneology of Hindutva, Jaipur, 2006, p. 124. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 61–2. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 18. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 4, p. 181. V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? New Delhi, 2003, p. 92. Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 179. Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, pp. 187–8. Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy, p. 91. Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, p. 171. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 179. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 28, p. 56. Gandhi’s speech at Bardoli Taluka Conference, 29 January 1922: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, p. 373. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, p. 377. Chatterjee, Gandhi, pp. 205–10. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 14, pp. 73–4. M.K. Gandhi’s letter to B.S. Moonje, dated 14 May 1927, Gandhi Papers, NMML. Hardiman, Gandhi in his Time, pp. 193. Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 2 February 1929, Vol. LI, No. 5, p. 51. Ravi Kant Mishra, ‘Contending Visions of Hinduism: Dayanand, Gandhi, Savarkar’, Unpublished MPhil Dissertation, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2001, pp. 51, 53. Gandhi’s letter to B.S. Moonje, 14 May 1927: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 33, pp. 322, 324. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 56, p. 167. M.K. Gandhi, Communal Unity, Ahmedabad, 1949, pp. 56–7. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 32, p. 515. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special refrence to Central India], London, 1996, p. 35. N.C. Kelkar’s Presidential Address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha’s eleventh session, Jabalpur, 8 April 1928: Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1928, Vol. 1, January– June, pp. 424–7. William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 132–3. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 36. A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection, Delhi, 2002, p. 102. Richard R. Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’ Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975, p. 51. Arya Jagat, 26 September 1924, cited in G.R. Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928, Leiden, 1975, p. 170. L.B. Bhopatkar’s Presidential Address, All-India Hindu Mahasabha’s 31st session, Gorakhpur, December 1946: Moonje Papers, File No. 74, NMML. Sudharak, 27 September 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32/1924, p. 327, IOL. Bhavishya, 31 May 1925, p. 7, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 25, 1925, p. 436, IOL. Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 25. Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, 1996, p. 46. Lise McKean, Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago, 1996, p. 80.

206

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202 Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokmanya’, pp. 10–11. 203 W. Anderson, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh III: Participation in Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 7, No. 13, 25 March 1972, p. 675. 204 ‘Preface to the Scheme of Central Hindu Military Society and Its Military School’, File No. 25, 1935, Moonje Papers, NMML. 205 Moonje Papers, File No. LP-22, 1933, NMML. 206 Tribune, 9 November 1927, in Jayakar Papers, File No. 741, NAI. 207 B.S. Moonje’s letter to M.K. Gandhi, dated 10 September 1945, Miscellanious Section, Moonje Papers, NMML. 208 Ravindra Kumar [ed.], Selected Documents of Lala Lajpat Rai, 1906–1928, Vol. 3, New Delhi, 1992, p. 184. 209 Bhai Parmanand’s statement: Proceedings of Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee’s Meeting, Bombay, 10 September 1939: Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 427. 210 Cited in Nandini Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism and ‘‘Hindu’’ Politics: Maharashtra and the Hindu Mahasabha, 1920–1948’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999, p. 35. 211 Cited in Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, pp. 35–6. 212 Cited in Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, p. 426. 213 M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000 [1966], p. 291. 214 Statement of M.V. Joshi, RSS leader, cited in Partha Sarathi Gupta [ed.], Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1943–1944, Vol. 3, Delhi, 1997, p. 347. 215 M. Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January 2000, p. 226. 216 Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, 229. 217 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, pp. 39–40. 218 Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up’, p. 231. 219 Gondhalekar, ‘Indian Nationalism’, p. 147. 220 Wolpert, A New History, pp. 297–8. 221 Nathuram Godse, May It Please Your Honour: Statement of Nathuram Godse, Pune, 1977, rept. Delhi, 1989, p. 42. 222 Godse, May It Please Your Honour, p. 41. 223 Godse, May It Please Your Honour, p. 42. 224 Godse, May It Please Your Honour, p. 43. 225 Godse, May It Please Your Honour, p. 41. 226 Manohar Malgonkar, The Men Who Killed Gandhi, Madras, 1978, p. 83. 227 Godse, May It Please Your Honour, p. 48. 228 Malgonkar, Men Who Killed Gandhi, pp. 121–3. 229 Justice Jivan Lal Kapur’s Commision of Inquiry Report: Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi, Part II, Delhi, 1970, pp. 37–9. 230 Justice Jivan Lal Kapur’s Commision of Inquiry Report, p. 69. 231 Malgonkar, Men Who Killed Gandhi, pp. 19–38. 232 Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture, Delhi, 1990 [1980], p. 78. 233 Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, p. 79. 234 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 431. 235 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 31. 236 Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya, Vol. 6, p. 433. 237 Punjab Samachar, Lahore, 24 July 1897, IOR: L/R/5/181, File No. 37, 1897, p. 655, IOL. 238 Cashman,The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, p. 75; Stanley Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India, Berkeley, 1977, p. 53.

Notes 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265

207

Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, pp. 67–9. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, p. 85; Cashman, Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’, p. 75. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale, p. 86. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 29. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darashan, p. 27. Swami Shraddhananda, Inside Congress, Bombay, 1946, rept. New Delhi, 1984, p. 71. Shraddhananda, Inside Congress, p. 75. Moonje Papers, File No. 67, 1940, p. 6, NMML. Moonje Papers, File No. 67, 1940, pp. 6–7, NMML. M.R. Jayakar, The Story of My Life, 1922–1925, Vol. 2, Bombay, 1959, p. 130. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, p. 150. B.S. Moonje’s presss statement, dated 18 May 1946: File No. 97, Moonje Papers, NMML. Special Punjab Police Abstracts of Intelligence [SPPAI], 23 June 1923, Vol. XLII, No. 24, pp. 196–7. Gyan Shakti, 2 July 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 27, p. 373, 1924. Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 240–1. M.S. Golwalkar’s statement to an RSS camp in 1944: ‘Note on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh training camps held in various provinces during the months of May and June 1944 – dated 29.7.1944’, Home Poll., I, File No. 28/3/43, NAI. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 30. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 74, pp. 9, 75. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 201. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 20, pp. 104–5. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, pp. 94–5. Cited in Long, A Vision of Hinduism, p. 99. M.K. Gandhi’s letter to P.G.K. Menon, dated 13 April 1926: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 30, pp. 226–7. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 169–70. Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 9–11, 47. Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 247–8. Malgonkar, Men Who Killed Gandhi, pp. 133–4; Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, p. 93.

9 Nagari and cow – the symbols of a ‘Hindu nation’ 1 Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harishchandra and Ninettenth-century Banaras, Delhi, 1999, pp. 123–4. 2 Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 119–20; Krishna Kumar, ‘Hindu Revivalism and Education in North-Central India’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education, Chicago, 1993, pp. 536–57. John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 85–7. 3 Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952, p. 143; Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1974, p. 69. 4 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 85–7. 5 Anand A. Yang, ‘Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the “Anti-Cow Killing” Riot of 1893’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 1980, pp. 582–7.

208

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6 Zavos, Emergence, pp. 81–3. 7 Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, New Delhi, 2002, p. 20; Dalmia, Nationalization, pp. 192–3, 205. 8 G.A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 1, Calcutta, 1927, pp. 158–68; Robinson, Separatism, p. 74. 9 Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindu Movement in Nineteenth-century North India, Bombay, 1994, p. 49. 10 Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 325–6. The beginnings of the process of Urdu formation are dated to the Ghaznavid occupation of the Punjab in the twelfth century. Traditionally associated with the military camps established by Mahmud Ghaznavi and Muhammad Ghauri, Urdu in Turkish essentially meant an ‘army camp’. Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 39–41. 11 Statement of the NWP&O Government, 1 April 1870. IOR: V/23/129, 1870, pp. 234–5, IOL; Francesca Orsini, ‘The Hindi Public Sphere: 1920–1940’, PhD Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1997, p. 217. 12 Amrit Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi, Delhi, 1984, pp. 91–2; Diana L. Eck, Banaras: City of Light, London, 1983, pp. 4–5; King, One Language, pp. 50–3. 13 Statement of the pro-Hindi Delhi Literary Society, in Ghulam Husain Zulfiqar [ed.], Select Documents on National Language, Vol. 1, Pat 1 [Report 1882], Islamabad, 1985, p. 62; A.L. Basham, The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims, London, 1967, pp. 165, 200. 14 Muir Gazette, Meerut [Urdu-Nagari], 7 May 1869, IOR: L/R/5/47, File No. 19, 1869, pp. 226–7, IOL. 15 Education Commission Report by the North-Westen Provinces and Oudh Provincial Committee, with Evidence Taken before the Committee, and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission, Calcutta, 1884, pp. 390–1. 16 ‘Vernacular Education in India – No. 2’, paper by Deena Nauth Gungooly of Etawah, dated 2 February 1868, enclosed in M. Kempson, Director of Public Instruction, NWP&O, to Secretary to Government NWP&O, 24 July 1868, NWP&O GAD, December 1868, IOL; Richard G. Fox, From Zamindar to Ballot Box: Community Change in North Indian Market Town, New York, 1969, pp. 112–13. 17 King, One Language Two Scripts, pp. 111–16; Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 57. 18 In 1886–1887, Muslims, Kayasths and Rajputs held 76 per cent of the posts in the uncovenanted civil service of the UP. Robinson, Separatism, p. 31. 19 The Vaishya Conference [est. 1891] and the Kayastha Conference [est. 1887] submitted a memorandum in favour of Nagari to NWP&O Governor Anthony MacDonnell in 1889. 20 Report by M. Kempson, director of public instruction, NWP&O, 12 February 1870. IOR: V/23/129, pp. 234–7, IOL. 21 M.M. Malaviya, Court Character and Primary Education in the North-West Provinces and Oudh, Allahabad, 1897, pp. 20, 28. 22 NWP&O GAD, August 1880, IOR: V/28/135, pp. 397–8, IOL. 23 ‘Report on the Native Press for the year 1870’, IOR: V/23/129, 315, 1870, pp. 237, IOL; Awadh Akhbar, Lucknow, 27 January 1869, IOR: L/R/5/46, File No. 5, 1869, p. 64. 24 Evidence of Ms M. Rose Greenfield, Ludhiana, to the Hunter Commission, 1882, Zulfiqar [ed.], Select Documents, Vol. I, pp. 20–2; Madhu Kishwar, ‘Arya Samaj and Women’s Education: Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jalandhar’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 21, No. 17, WS-9, 26 April 1986, p. 24.

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25 The memorial submitted by Hindu residents of Lahore, Zulfiqar [ed.], Select Documents, Vol. 1, pp. 72–5. 26 Krishna Kumar, ‘Quest for Self-Identity: Cultural Consciousness and Education in Hindi Region, 1880–1950’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 25, No. 23, 9 June 1990, pp. 1247–55. 27 Christopher R. King, ‘Forging a New Linguistic Identity: The Hindi Movement in Banaras, 1868–1914’, in Sandria B. Freitag, Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Performance, and Environment 1800–1980, Berkeley, 1990, p. 179. 28 Paul R. Brass, ‘Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia’, in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp [eds], Political Identity in South Asia, London, 1979, p. 57; King, ‘Forging a New Linguistic Identity’, p. 179. 29 Harish Chandra’s Magazine, Anglo-Hindi monthly, Benares, November 1874. IOR: L/R/5/51, File No. 40, 1874, pp. 72–3, IOL. 30 Shivaprasad, Memorandum: Court Characters in the Upper Provinces of India, Benares, 1868, p. 4. 31 Shivaprasad, Memorandum, pp. 5–6. 32 Sudhir Chandra, ‘Communal Consciousness in Late 19th Century Hindi Literature’, in Mushirul Hasan [ed.], Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Delhi, 1981, pp. 180–95. 33 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 125. 34 ‘Memorial Presented to Government in 1873 Praying for the Restoration of Nagri Characters in Courts and Public Offices’ to Sir William Muir, Lt.-Governor, NorthWestern Provinces, in Malaviya, Court Character, Appendix, pp. 74–5. 35 Pandit Gauri Datta, Nagari aur Urdu ka Svang [‘The Melodrama of Nagari and Urdu’], Meerut, N.d. p. 11, cited in Charu Gupta, ‘Obscenity, Sexuality and the “Other”: Gender and Hindu Identity in Uttar Pradesh, 1880s–1930s’, PhD Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2000, p. 119. 36 Sohan Prasad, Hindi aur Urdu ki Larai [‘A Quarrel between Hindi and Urdu’], Gorakhpur, 1886, cited in Christopher R. King, ‘Images of Virtue and Vice: The Hindi-Urdu Controversy in Two Nineteenth-century Hindi Plays’, in Kenneth W. Jones [ed.], Religious Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian Languages, Albany, 1992, pp. 124–47. 37 The Hardoi Union Club’s memorial presented to the Hunter commission, 1882: Education Commission Report, p. 543; Jagat Samachar, Meerut [Nagari], 19 April 1869, IOR: L/R/5/46, File No. 17, 1869, p. 198; Benares Akhbar, 26 October 1876, IOR: L/R/5/53, 1876, File No. 34, 1876, p. 612, IOL. 38 Benares Gazette, 17 July 1871, IOR: L/R/5/48, File No. 28, 1871, p. 413, IOL; J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, New York, 1924, p. 108. 39 Kenneth W. Jones, ‘Communalism in the Punjab: the Arya Samaj Contribution’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, November 1968, pp. 47–50. 40 Cited in Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 112. 41 J.T.F. Jordens, Dayananda Sarasswati: His Life and Ideas, New Delhi, 1998, p. 129. 42 Jordens, Dayananda Sarasswati, pp. 129–30. 43 Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 34–5. 44 Cited in Jordens, Dayananda Sarasswati, p. 133. V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992, p. 108. 45 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 227. 46 Arya Mitra, Agra, weekly, 7 February 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 9, 1916, p. 835, IOL; V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992, p. 108.

210

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47 Home Poll. Deposit, April 1912, File No. 4, NAI; Krishna Kumar, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas, London, 2005, p. 12. 48 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 121. 49 C.A. Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad, 1880–1920, Oxford, 1975, p. 105. 50 Bayly, Local Roots, p. 104. 51 S. Chaturvedi, Madan Mohan Malaviya, New Delhi, 1988, pp. 1–3. 52 Avadhbasi, Lucknow, 4 April 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 16, p. 291, IOL; Malaviya, Court Character, pp. 40–55. Malaviya founded the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan [Society for Hindi Literature] in Allahabad in 1910. Bayly, Local Roots, p. 106. 53 NWP&O Gen. Admn. Deptt., October 1900, pp. 117–18, NAI; Macdonnel to Elgin, 27 June 1896, Elgin Papers [68]; Macdonnell to Curzon, 18 May 1900, Curzon Papers [201], IOL. 54 Arya Mitra, Agra, 27 April 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 26, 1916, p. 360; Abhyudaya, Allahabad, 9 November 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 46, 1918, p. 71, IOL. 55 Abhyudaya, Allahabad, 6 July 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 23, 1918, p. 473, IOL; Naresh Prasad Bhokta, ‘Marginalization of Popular Languages and Growth of Sectarian Education in Colonial India’, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya [ed.], The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on Education in India, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 201–17. 56 Nandi Bhatia, ‘Twentieth Century Hindi Literature’, in Nalini Natarajan [ed.], Handbook of Twentieth Century Literature of India, Westport, 1996, p. 137; Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India, Delhi, 2001, p. 39; King, One Language, pp. 165–6. 57 Anand, Lucknow, 14 January 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 3, 1918, p. 60, IOL. 58 Veda Prakash, Meerut, April 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 20, 1918, p. 361; Arya Mitra, Agra, 6 June 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 24, 1918, p. 407, IOL; Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 239; Bhatia, ‘Twentieth Century Hindi Literature’, p. 137 59 Gandhi’s speech at Common Language Conference, Lucknow, 29 December 1916: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 13, p. 321. 60 Gandhi’s speech at Banaras Hindu University, 6 February 1916: M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG], 100 volumes, New Delhi, 1958–1994: Vol. 13, pp. 210–16. 61 Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p., 1926, p. 117. 62 The resolution of the Punjab Hindu Sabha conference, Lahore, 21–22 October 1909. The Tribune, 21 October 1909, IOR: L/R/5/56, File No. 36, 1909, p. 291, IOL. 63 R.B. Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation in Politics, Lahore, 1938, p. 35. 64 Lal Chand, Self-Abnegation, p. 39. 65 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 138. 66 Cawnpore Gazette, 1 May 1918. IOR: L/R/5/94, 1918, File No. 19, p. 329, IOL. 67 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 8–10, 51. 68 Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party, Pennsylvania, 1969, p. 14. 69 Prakash, A Review, p. 144. 70 Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, 1999, p. 78. 71 V.D. Savarkar’s presidential speech to Mahasabha’s 21st session, Calcutta in 1939: Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 107. 72 M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1947, p. 18. 73 V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 33–4. 74 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 35. 75 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 131. 76 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 110; Golwalkar, We, p. 27.

Notes

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77 M.P. Dwivedi, ‘Desvyapak bhasa’, Sarasvati, November 1903. IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 46, 1903, p. 490; V.N. Tiwari, ‘Sahitya aur rashtriyta’, pt. 2, Sammelan Patrika, Vol. 10, May–June 1918, pp. 220–3, cited in Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 147. 78 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 51. 79 Golwalkar, We, p. 22; Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 1119. 80 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 43. 81 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 42. 82 Golwalkar, We, p. 51. 83 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 108. 84 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 107. 85 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 107. 86 Golwalkar, We, p. 41. 87 Golwalkar, We, p. 43. 88 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 107. 89 Lajjaram Mehta, ‘Bharatvarsha ki rashtrabhasha’, Madhuri, IV, Pt. 2, 5, June 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 25, 1926, p. 620, IOL. 90 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 106, 110. 91 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 221. 92 D. Keer, Veer Savarkar, Bombay, 1988, pp. 161, 172; Golwalkar, We, pp. 47–8. 93 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 119; Keer, Savarkar, p. 171. 94 Golwalkar, We, p. 63. 95 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 132. 96 M.P. Dwivedi, ‘Kya Hindi nam ki koi bhasha nahim?’, Sarasvati, December 1903, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 48, 1903, p. 707, IOL. 97 Sampurnanand’s speech to the Kashi Nagri Pracharini Sabha in August 1938, cited in Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 235–6. 98 Keer, Veer Savarkar, pp. 172–3. 99 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 133. 100 Keer, Veer Savarkar, p. 174. 101 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 101. 102 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 109. 103 V.D. Savarkar’s presidential speech to Mahasabha’s 21st session, Calcutta, 1939: Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 108. 104 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 149. 105 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 105. 106 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 57. 107 Keer, Savarkar, p. 173. 108 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 111. 109 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 223. 110 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, pp. 118–19 111 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 148. 112 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 115. 113 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 113. 114 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, pp. 115–16. 115 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 108. 116 Savarkar, Hindu Rahtra Darshan, p. 119. 117 David Arnold, Gandhi, London, 2001, p. 113; Kumar, ‘Hindu Revivalism’, p. 547. 118 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, pp. 97–8. 119 King, ‘Forging a New Linguistic Identity’, pp. 121–2. 120 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 61. 121 King, ‘Forging a New Linguistic Identity’, p. 127. 122 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 163. 123 Dalmia, Nationalization, p. 167. 124 King, One Language, pp. 229–30.

212

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125 King, One Language, pp. 38–9; 43–5. 126 Report on the Administration of UP, 1923–24, Allahabad, 1924, p. 91. 127 Madan Gopal, Munshi Premchand: A Literary Biography, London, 1964, pp. 100–12. 128 King, One Language, pp. 38–9, 43–5. 129 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 129. 130 Anthony Parel, ‘The Political Symbolism of the Cow in India’, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, November 1969, p. 181. 131 John R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress, Princeton, 1977, pp. 273, 326–7. 132 Jordens, Dayananda Saraswati, pp. 220–2. 133 Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements, p. 111. 134 Jones, Arya Dharm, p. 32. 135 Dayananda Saraswati, Satyarth Prakash: The Light of Truth, translated by Ganga Prasad Upadhyaya, Allahabad, 1956, pp. 77–8; idem, Gokarunanidhi: Ocean of Mercy for the Cow, translated by Rai Bahadur Ratan Lal, Delhi, 1996, p. 19. 136 Parel, ‘Political Symbolism’, p. 183. 137 G.R. Thursby, Hindu–Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928, Leiden, 1975, pp. 85–8. 138 Bombay CID, SAPI, 14 November 1891 and 5 November 1892, cited in Richard Cashman, The Myth of the ‘Lokamanya’: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975, p. 67. 139 Chief Secretary, NWP&O, to Chief Secretary, Government of India, Home Dept., 28 August 1893, Home Public, IOR: L/P&J/365, File No. 169, November 1893, p. 5. 140 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilization [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, pp. 17, 67. 141 ‘Note on the Cow-Protection Agitation’, IOR: L/P&J/365, File No. 84, 1894, p. 3, IOL. 142 Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India III.1: Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 90–4. 143 Kavivachan Sudha, Benares, 3 January 1881, IOR: L/R/5/58, File No. 4, 1881, p. 631, IO; Robinson, Separatism, pp. 77–8, 285. 144 Jones, New Cambridge History III.1, pp. 93–4. 145 Jones, New Cambridge History III.1, p. 97. 146 ‘Note on the Cow Protection Agitation in the Gorakhpur District’, Home Public A, December 1893, Nos. 212–213, NAI; Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Rallying Round the Cow: Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpur Region, c.1888–1917’, in Ranajit Guha [ed.], Subaltern Studies II – Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi, 1983, pp. 89–95. 147 ‘Information about Communal Riots during last 10–15 Years’, IOR: L/P&J/7/132, 1917, pp. 43–61, IOL; Home Poll. Deposit, April 1912, File No. 4, NAI. 148 Note on the organisation of the gauraksha [sic] sabha, Judicial and Public Papers, 1894, Vol. 367, p. 257, IOL; ‘Note on the Anti-Cow Killing Agitation in the UP, 1913–16’, Home Poll., D, November 1916, NAI. 149 Aj, Banaras, 11 January 1921, IOR: L/R/5/96, File No. 3, 1921, p. 36. 150 Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley, 1998, pp. 65–91. 151 Peter Robb, ‘The Challenge of Gau Mata: British Policy and Religious Change in India, 1880–1916’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1986, pp. 285–319: pp. 297–8. 152 Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Delhi, 1982, p. 27.

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153 K. Prior, ‘Making History: The State’s Intervention in Urban Religious Disputes in the North Western Provinces in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1993, pp. 191–203; Pandey, ‘Rallying Round the Cow’, pp. 91–3. 154 Robb, ‘Challenge of Gau Mata’, p. 292. 155 McLane, Indian Nationalism, p. 299. 156 ‘Note on the Agitation Against Cow Killing’, 24 January 1894, L/P&J/3/96, 1894, File No. 257, IOL. 157 S. Freitag, ‘Sacred Symbol as Mobilizing Ideology: The North Indian Search for a ‘‘Hindu’’ Community’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 1980, p. 606. 158 Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 148–76. 159 Freitag, Collective Action, pp. 163–5. 160 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi, 2006, p. 180. 161 ‘Note on the Anti Cow Killing Agitation in the UP, 1913–16’, Home Poll. D, November 1916, p. 52, NAI; Francis Robinson, ‘Municipal Government and Muslim Separatism in the United Provinces, 1883–1916’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1973, p. 412. 162 Home Poll., Proceedings of the Home Department, Political A, 13 December 1913, Nos. 1–4, p. 43; Home Poll., File No. B 88–91 and B 78, December 1912; Home Poll., File No. A 1–4, December 1913, NAI. 163 Abhyudaya, 4 February 1915, IOR: L/R/5/90, File No. 6, 1915, p. 123, IOL. 164 Peter Robb, ‘10 Officilas and Non-officials as Leaders in Popular Agitations: Shahabad 1917 and other Conspiracies’, in B.N. Pandey [ed.], Leadership in South Asia, New Delhi, 1977, pp. 195–7. 165 Mashriq, Gorakhpur, 28 November 1918, IOR: l/R/5/94, File No. 1918, 49, p. 712, IOL. 166 Al-Khalil, Bijnor, 1 October 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 41, 1918, p. 624, IOL. 167 ‘Statement of Communal Riots in the UP, 1922–1927’, IOR: L/P&J/6/1890, IOL. 168 Home Poll., File No. B 88–91, November–December 1912, p. 17, NAI. 169 Home Public A 210–213, December 1893, NAI; ‘Note [by Hoey] on the Cowprotection Agitation in the Gorakhpur District’, IOR, L/P&J/6/365, File 55 for 1894, pp. 2–4, IOL. 170 Anand, 10 July 1926, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 27, 1926, p. 3, IOL; Pandey, ‘Rallying Around the Cow’, p. 93. 171 Indian Daily Telegraph, 23 August 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 32, 1924, p. 3, IOL. 172 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 107. 173 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 109. 174 AICC Papers, File No. 12/1922, pp. 29–31, NMML; McLane, Indian Nationalism, pp. 280, 404–5; 175 Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 121–47. 176 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 20, p. 192. 177 Gandhi’s ‘Speech at Public Meeting, Vadtal’, 6 December 1921: Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 19, p. 254; A.M. Zaidi [ed.], Evolution of Muslim Political Thought in India, Vol. II: Sectarian Nationalism and Khilafat, New Delhi, 1975, p. 217. 178 Al Bureed, Kanpur, 7 June 1922, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 21, 1922, p. 3, IOL. 179 McLane, Indian Nationalism, pp. 275, 280, 282–4. 180 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947, Basingstke, 1989, p. 60. 181 Oudh Akhbar, 11 November 1921, IOR: L/R/5/96, File No. 47, 1921, p. 482, IOL. 182 M.M. Malaviya’s presidential address to All-India Mahasabha’s Gaya session,

214

183 184 185

186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211

Notes 30 December 1922, cited in D.D. Pattanaik, Hindu Nationalism in India, Vol. 3, New Delhi, 1998, p. 125. Speech of Anand Prakash, 14 April 1921, ‘Anti Cow-killing Movement in UP’, 1920, GAD Box 138 File No. 214/1921, UPSA. Speech of Lala Sukhbir Sinha, 10 April1921: ‘Anti Cow-killing Movement in UP’, 1920, GAD Box 138File 214/1921, UPSA. Therese O’Toole, ‘Secularising the Sacred Cow: The Relationship between Religious Reform and Hindu Nationalism’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and Sampraday, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 89–90. Pratap [Kanpur, weekly, editor: G.S. Vidyarthi], 4 December 1920, IOR L/R/5/95, File No. 50, 1920, p. 487, IOL. Gould, Hindu Nationalism, p. 79. ‘Report on Azamgarh’, by H.E.L.P. Dupernex, Officiating Magistrate of Azamgarh, to Commissioner, Gorakhpur Division, 1894, IOR: L/P&J/6/365, File No. 55, 1894, p. 9. Oudh Akhbar, Lucknow, 13 July 1922, IOR: L/R/5/97, File No. 27, 1922, p. 3, IOL. Pattanaik, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 175–6. The Leader, 23 August 1924, IOR: L/R/5/98, File No. 33, 1924, p. 3, IOL. Anjuman-i-Hind, Lucknow, 27 June 1868, IOR: L/R/5/45, File No. 19, 1868, pp. 336–7, IOL; Pattanaik, Hindu Nationalism, Vol. 3, p. 125. O’Toole, ‘Secularising Sacred Cow’, p. 90. O’Toole, ‘Secularising Sacred Cow’, p. 91. M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000, p. 648. Lekh Ram, A Treatise on Waging War, or the Foundation of Muhammedan Religion, Lahore, 1892, cited in O’Toole, ‘Secularizing Sacred Cow’, p. 92. Speech of Anand Prakash, 14 April 1921, ‘Anti Cow-killing Movement in UP’, 1920, GAD Box 138 File 214/1921, UPSA. ‘Anti cow-killing movement in UP’, GAD Box 138 File No. 214/1921, UPSA. Pratap, Kanpur, 14 January 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, 1918, p. 59, IOL; Pandey, Construction, p. 185. C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India, New Delhi, 2001, p. 115. Home Poll., File No. A 71–73, January 1912; File No. B 86–104, February 1912; File No. B 7–13, May 1912, NAI. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, p. 138. Pattanaik, Hindu Nationalism, Vol. 3, p. 127. Achalram Maharaj, Hindu Dharma Rahasya, Agra, 1939, p. 255. Poem on the cover of Gaudharma Prakash, 1, 5, December 1886; Home Poll., File No. A 71–73, January 1912, p. 11, NAI. Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 131–3. Christopher Pinney, ‘Indian Magical Realism: Notes on Popular Visual Culture’, in Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash and Susie Tharu [eds], Subaltern Studies X: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi, 1999, pp. 221–4, 230–3. Home Poll 71–73, January 1912, A, p. 19, NAI. Dinkar Prakash, June 1888, IOR: L/P&J/365, File No. 84, 1894, p. 419; Home Public, File No. A 210–213, Dec. 1893, p. 3, NAI. Charu Gupta, ‘The Icon of Mother in Late Colonial North India: “Bharat Mata”, “Matri Bhasha” and “Gau Mata”, Economic and Political Weekly, 24 November 2001, pp. 2261–5. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Woman, Community, and Nation: A Historical Trajectory for Hindu Identity Politics’, in Patricia Jeffry and Amrita Basu, Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, London, 1998, pp. 89–104.

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215

212 Tanika Sarkar, Nationalist Iconography: Image of Women in Nineteenth Century Bengali Literature’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 22. No. 47, 21 November 1987, p. 2012. 213 Gupta, ‘Icon of Mother’, p. 2263. 214 Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan, pp. 114, 123, 142. 215 Report by M. Kempson, 12 February 1870. IOR: L/P&J/V/23/129, 1870, pp. 31, 33, IOL. 216 Orsini, Hindi Public Sphere, p. 21. 217 Brass, Language, Religion, p. 159. 218 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 108–9. 219 Sarkar, ‘Nationalist Iconography’, p. 2013. 220 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 111–13. 221 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, pp. 117–19. 222 Sammelan Patrika, V, 2, October–November 1917. IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 43, 1917, p. 41, IOL. 223 Pratap, Kanpur, 14 January 1918, IOR: L/R/5/94, File No. 5, 1918, p. 59, IOL. 224 Bhavishya, Allahabad, 7 August 1920, IOR: L/R/5/95, File No. 31, 1920, p. 262, IOL. 225 All-India Congress Committee Papers, File No. 1/1919, Pt II, p. 519, NMML. 226 Jones, Arya Dharm, pp. 51–3. 227 Gupta, ‘Icon of Mother’, p. 2263.

10 Sangathanist plan for Hindu majority nation 1 R.J. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity 1917–1940, Oxford, 1974, pp. 16–17. 2 Uma Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism: The Emergence of the Demand for India’s Partition, 1928–40, New Delhi, 1977, pp. 41–3, 127. 3 Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, London, 2000, p. 291. 4 Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916–1928, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 193–4. 5 Viceroy Lord Minto assured Secretary of State for India John Morley: ‘We have much to gain politically by our goodwill to Mussulman enlightenment.’ Lord Minto to Sir John Morley, 29 July 1908, cited in Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1993, p. 167. 6 S.S. Pirzada [ed.], Foundations of Pakistan: All-India Muslim League Documents 1906–1947, Vol. I, Karachi, 1990, p. 129. 7 C.H. Philips [ed.], The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858–1947: Select Documents, Vol. 4, London 1962, p. 83. 8 S.R. Wasti, Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement, 1905 to 1910, Oxford, 1964, pp. 129–31; Pirzada, Foundations of Pakistan, Vol. 1, pp. 32, 77, 177, 256, 280–1. 9 Report of the 25th Indian National Congress Session, Calcutta, 1909, Calcutta, 1910, p. 47; Mushirul Hasan, ‘Communalism in the Provinces: A Case Study of Bengal and the Punjab 1922–1926’, in Mushirul Hasan [ed.], Communal and PanIslamic Trends in Colonial India, New Delhi, 1981, pp. 269–72. 10 G.K. Gokhale’s letter to W. Wedderburn, 3 December 1909, File No. 203, Part II, No. 159, Gokhale Papers, NAI; B.N. Dar’s Presidential Address, India National Congress Session, Calcutta, 1911: Bishan Narain Dar, Collected Speeches and Writings of Pt. Bishan Narain Dar, Vol. 1 [Editor: H.L. Chatterjee], Lucknow, 1921, p. 325. 11 Home Education, Municipal A, April 1914, File No. 22–31, pp. 47–8, NAI.

216

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12 Home Public ‘A’, August 1909, File No. 182–4, October 1909, pp. 44–8, 51–5, NAI. 13 M.M. Malaviya’s Presidential Address, Report of the 25th Indian National Congress Session, 1909, p. 31. 14 M.M. Malaviya’s letter to G.K. Gokhale, dated 4 March 1909, Gokhale Papers, NAI. 15 Oudh Akhbar, Lucknow, 23 July 1915, IOR: L/R/5/90, File No. 31, 1915, p. 753, IOL. 16 Report of the 26th Indian National Congress Session, Bombay, 1910, Calcutta, 1911, p. 84; Abhyudaya, Allahabad, 29 March 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 11, 1916, p. 322, IOL. 17 Letter of Sir James Meston, Lieutenant Governor of UP, to Secretary, Legislative Department, Government of India, dated 21 March 1916, Home Public ‘B’, September 1916, File No. 70–2, NAI. 18 Proceedings of the Council of His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Assembled for the Purpose of Making Laws and Regulations, 1916, Allahabad, 1917, p. 218; UP Municipal, File No. 230 E, 1916, UPSA; Home Poll., April 1916, No. 19, p. 7, NAI; The Leader, Allahabad, 29 March 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, 1916, File No. 11, 1916, pp. 272–3. 19 Report on the Administration of the N.-W. Provinces for the year 1868–69, Allahabad, 1870, p. 50; Advocate, Lucknow, 30 March 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 11, 1916, p. 273, IOL; Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India c.1850–1950, Cambridge, 1998, p. 181. 20 Francis Robinson, ‘Municipal Government and Muslim Separatism in the United Provinces, 1883–1916’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1973, pp. 428–41. 21 Pratap, Kanpur, 17 April 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 17, 1916, p. 342; Anand, Lucknow, 22 April 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 17, 1916, p. 362. 22 Abhyudaya, 22 July 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, 1916, File No. 31, 1916, p. 695, IOL. 23 Home Poll., FR, UP, June 1916, File No. 25, 1916, NAI; T.B. Sapru’s letter to Sita Ram, dated 10 August 1916, Sita Ram Papers, NAI. 24 The Leader, 19 July 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 31, 1916, p. 691; Abhyudaya, 3 August 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 21, 1916, p. 329, IOL. 25 UP Proceedings of the Municipal Department, File No. RB 81, Block, 1916, UPSA. 26 Saddharm Pracharak [Bijnor], 1 July 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 31, 1916, p. 612; C.A. Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad, 1880–1920, Oxford, 1975, p. 205. 27 Letter of H.V. Lovett, D.M., Lucknow, to James Meston, dated 27 August 1916, Meston Papers, MSS. Eur. F. 136, Vol. IV, IOL. 28 All India Hindu Sabha’s Session, Lucknow, 27–28 Decmber 1916, The Leader, 30 December 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 47, 1916, p. 821. 29 Home Poll., Dep. June 1916, No. 25, NAI; Abhyudaya, 24 June 1916, IOR: L/R/5/91, File No. 29, 1916, p. 580, IOL. 30 Extract from the diary of the SP, Cawnpore, 8 April 1916, Municipal 1916, File No. 230 E. No. 70, UPSA. 31 Hugh F. Owen, ‘Negotiating the Lucknow Pact’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, May 1972, pp. 563–5. 32 Home Poll., ‘D’, 2 August 1917, File No. 25, UP, NAI; Abhyudaya, 3 December 1916, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 21, 1916, p. 329, IOL. 33 Home Poll., January 1916, File No. 540, NAI. 34 UP Government, GAD, 1917, File No. 140, UPSA. 35 Home Poll., FR, UP, 6 January 1917, File No. 540, NAI. 36 Home Poll B, November 1916, File No. 452–53, NAI. 37 Weekly report of the Director of Central Intelligence, 25 November 1916, Home Poll. B, November 1916, File No. 452–53, NAI.

Notes

217

38 Home Poll., FR, UP, 6 January 1917, File No. 540, NAI. 39 Letter of Sir James Meston, Lt. Governor of UP, to Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy, dated 11 January 1917, Chelmsford Papers, IOR: MSS. Eur. E. 264, Vol. 28, IOL. 40 Report of the 31st Indian National Congress Session, Lucknow, 1916, Allahabad, 1917, p. 70; B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 1, New Delhi, 1969, pp. 202–3. 41 Jinnah’s speech at the League’s Lucknow session on 1 January 1916, Pirzada [ed.], Foundations of Pakistan, Vol. 1, p. 354; F. Shaikh, Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947, Cambridge, 1989, p. 170. 42 Peter Robb, The Government of India and Reform: Policies towards Politics and the Constitution, 1916–1921, Oxford, 1976, pp. 81–3. 43 Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, 1918, Part VIII, London, 1919, pp. 256–7, 307–10. 44 The Leader, 6 January 1917, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 5, 1917, p. 11. 45 Letter of Deva Ratan Sharma, Secretary, All-India Hindu Sabha, to Mrs A. Besant, dated 28 December 1917, cited Owen, ‘Negotiating Lucknow Pact’, p. 561. 46 All-India Hindu Sabha’s Session, Lucknow, 25 December 1916, Home Poll., January 1917, Deposit 42, p. 44, NAI. 47 Home Poll., FR, UP, February 1917, File No. 26, NAI. 48 LalaLajpat Rai, ‘On the Hindu–Muslim Problem’, in Ravindra Kumar [ed.], Selected Documents of Lala Lajpat Rai, 1906–1928, Vol. 3, New Delhi, 1992, pp. 149–56. 49 Purushothamdas Thakurdas Papers, 40: Circular letter, 13 December 1924, NMML. 50 Bhai Parmanand, The Story of My Life, New Delhi, 1982, p. 168. 51 Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 115–16, 118. 52 Census of India, 1911: United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Vol. 13, Part II, Table XV, Part C, Allahabad, 1911, pp. 550–61; Secretary to NWP&O Government, to Secretary to Government of India, Home, Revenue, Agriculture, 5 July 1911, NWP&O GAD, April 1912, IOL. 53 Home Poll., D, March 1916; File No. 49, NAI; The Leader, Allahabad, Lucknow, 14 March 1911, IOR: L/R/5/59, File No. 11, 1911, p. 236, IOL. 54 The Leader, 6 January 1917, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 5, 1917, p. 11; Anand, 8 January 1917, IOR: L/R/5/92, File No. 5, 1917, pp. 26–7, IOL. 55 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Gandhi, dated 5 August 1929, File No. 437, B.S. Moonjwe Papers, NMML. 56 David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control, 1920–1932, Delhi, 1999, pp. 32–3. 57 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 18. 58 Robb, Government of India and Reform, pp. 135–6. 59 R.J. Moore, ‘The Making of India’s Paper Federation, 1927–1935’, in C.H. Philips and Mary Doren Wainwright [eds], The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives, 1935–1947, London, 1970, pp. 54–76. 60 S.R. Bakshi, Simon Commission and Indian Nationalism, Delhi, 1977, pp. 31–5. 61 Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, p. 94; Page, Prelude to Partition, pp. 150–7. 62 Home Poll., UP FR February 1928, File No. 130/1929, NAI; Home Poll., File No. 32/1927, UP FR, NAI. 63 The Simon Commission, in its 1928 report, recommended the continuation of separate electorates with ‘weightage’ in the provincial legislatures. Report of the Indian Statutory Commission Recommendations, 1928, Vol. 2, London, 1930, pp. 33–4, 44–8. 64 Bakshi, Simon Commission, pp. 44–5. 65 Farzana Shaikh, ‘Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial India: The

218

66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

Notes Making of Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1986, pp. 539–57: pp. 539–41. S.S. Pirzada [ed.], Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah’s Correspondence, Karachi, 1966, p. 445. Sind, now part of Pakistan, was occupied by the British and became part of Bombay presidency in 1843. David Cheesman, Landlord Power and Rural Indebtedness in Colonial Sind, 1865–1901, London, 1997, pp. 35–6. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 299. Pirzada [ed.], Jinnah’s Correspondence, p. 449. Cited in Stanley A. Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, New York, 1984, pp. 44–5. Report of the Indian National Congress, Forty-second Session, Madras, 1927, Calcutta, 1928, p. 61. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, p. 267. Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, p. 47. Proceedings of the 10th All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, Patna, 16–18 April 1927, New Delhi, 1927, p. 16. Proceedings of 10th All India Hindu Mahasabha Session, p. 17. Cited in Indra Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha: Its Contribution to Indian Politics, New Delhi, 1966, p. 61. Cited in N.G. Dixit [ed.], Dharmaveer Dr. B.S. Moonje Commemoration Volume: Birth Centenary Celebrations 1872–1972, Nagpur, 1972, pp. 130–1. Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 69. Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, Delhi, 1952, p. 104. Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, pp. 47–8. Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, pp. 51–3. Jayakar Papers, File No. 436, Item 91, NMML. Prakash, A Review, pp. 109–10. Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 47. Anil Chandra Banerjee [ed.], The Constitutional History of India, Vol. 3, Delhi, 1977, pp. 215–16. Prakash, A Review, p. 121; Page, Prelude to Partition, pp. 147–8. Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics, p. 271. The Leader, 13 February 1928, p. 7, Microfilm, NMML. Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 49–50. Motilal Nehru’s letter to Purshottamdas, dated 23 May 1928, Motilal Nehru Papers [G-1], File No. 58, p. 47, NMML. Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, pp. 68–9; Prakash, A Review, p. 137. The ten-member Nehru committee was formed in Bombay on 19 May 1928. Its members were: Sir Ali Imam and Shuaib Qureshi [Muslim group]; M.R. Jayakar and M.S. Aney [Hindu Mahasabha]; Sardar Mangal Singh [Sikh League]; Tej Bahadur Sapru [Liberals]; G.R. Pradhan [non-Brahmans]; M.M. Joshi [trade unions]; and Subhash Chandra Bose [Bengal]. Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 219–20. Motilal Nehru’s letter to Gandhi, dated 11 June 1928, Motilal Nehru Papers [G-I], File No. 51, p. 42, NMML. Motilal Nehru’s letter to M.S. Aney, dated 18 August 1928, M.S. Aney Papers, NMML. Shuaib Qureshi’s letter to Motilal Nehru, dated 2 July 1928, Motilal Nehru papers [G-1], File No. 59, p. 21, NMML. M.R. Jayakar’s letter to M.M. Malaviya, dated 31 July 1929, File No. 436, Jayakar Papers, NMML. All Parties Conference 1928: Report of the Committee appointed by the Conference to determine the principles of the Constitution together with a proceeding of the Lucknow Conference, Allahabad, 1928, p. 47.

Notes

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97 All Parties Conference 1928, p. 49; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 240–1; 98 All Parties Conference 1928, p. 50; Page, Prelude to Partition, pp. 158–9. 99 All Parties Conference 1928, p. 51; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 65. 100 All Parties Conference 1928, pp. 23–4, 52, 55; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, pp. 50–1. 101 The Calcutta Congress in December 1928 accepted the Nehru report’s ‘dominion status’ objective, provided the British granted it by 1929. M.K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG], Vol. 38, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 283–96. 102 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 36, 61; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 63. 103 The Proceedings of All Parties National Convention, Allahabad, 1928, pp. 13, 73–4. 104 Proceedings of All Parties National Convention, pp. 83–5; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, p. 247. 105 Proceedings of All Parties National Convention, pp. 78–79, 86. 106 Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, p. 250. 107 Proceedings of All Parties National Convention, pp. 86, 89. 108 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 67–8. 109 Jinnah’s interview with Associated Press, 29 December 1928, Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad [ed.], Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, Lahore, 1947, pp. 30–1. Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 245–7. 110 Ahmad [ed.], Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, pp. 87–8. 111 Page, Prelude to Partition, pp. 176–7; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 68. 112 Medina, 14 April 1928, IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 23, 1928, p. 237, IOL. 113 Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, pp. 89–90. 114 Nizam-i-Alam, 1 September 1928, IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 37, 1928, p. 328, IOL. 115 Mohamed Ali’s press statement, Medina, 14 April 1928, IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 18, 1928, p. 473, IOL. 116 Al Khalil, 25 August 1928, IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 29, 1928, p. 387, IOL. 117 Home Poll., File No. 1/1928, FR, Delhi, 1 September 1928, NAI. 118 Medina, 23 May 1928, IOR: L/R/5/99, File No. 25, 1928, p. 371, IOL. 119 Home Poll., GOI, 25/1928, FR, Punjab, 1 September 1928, NAI. 120 K.K. Aziz [ed.], The All India Muslim Conference, 1928–1935: A Documentary Record, Karachi, 1972, p. 46. 121 Philips [ed.], Evolution of India and Pakistan, Vol. 4, p. 234; Aziz [ed.], All India Muslim Conference, pp. 55–6. 122 Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985, p. 110. 123 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 343. 124 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 87; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 97. 125 M.R. Jayakar’s letter to N.C. Kelkar, dated 28 August 1928, File No. 442, Jayakar Papers, NMML. 126 Home Poll., FR Punjab, 30 August 1928, NAI. 127 Lajpat Rai’s letter to Motilal Nehru, n.d. File No. 108 [Supplementary], AICC Papers, NMML. 128 R. Chatterjee, Presidential Address to 12th session of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, 30 March 1929, Surat. The Leader, Allahabad, 1 April 1929, p. 12, Microfilm, NMML. 129 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, p. 89. 130 N.N. Mitra [ed.], Indian Annual Register, 1929, Vol. 1, January–June, p. 359. 131 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 91–2. 132 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 342. 133 Pirzada [ed.], Jinnah’s Correspondence, p. 443; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 245–7.

220

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134 Fazl-i-Husain to Sir Malcolm Hailey, 22 September 1928, Hailey Collection, MS EUR. E220/23, IOL. 135 Page, Prelude to Partition, p. 200; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 87. 136 Philips and Wainwright [eds], Partition of India, pp. 257–9. 137 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 87; Page, Prelude to Partition, p. 203. 138 Gandhi’s letter to Motilal Nehru, dated 23 August 1929, Motilal Nehru Papers, NMML; Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, p. 232. 139 Motilal Nehru’s letter to, dated 19 September 1929; Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 26, pp. 235–6. 140 Gandhi’s letter to Motilal Nehru, dated 26 December 1929, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 27, p. 242. 141 The Times of India, 3 March 1931, p. 3, Microfilm, NMML. 142 Gandhi’s speech to a public meeting in Delhi, 7 March 1931, Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 46, p. 269. 143 Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 46, p. 274. 144 Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 119. 145 Hindu Mahasabha working Committee’s statement, dated 23 March 1931, AICC Papers, File No. G-85/1931, NMML. 146 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Gandhi, dated 5 August 1929, Jayakar Papers, File No. 437, NMML. 147 M.R. Jayakar’s letter to Gandhi, dated 23 August 1929, Jayakar Papers, Reel 57, File No. 407, Part I, Item 83, NAI. 148 Ram Lal Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, 1928–1947, New Delhi, 1999, p. 82. 149 Home Poll., File No. 18/6/1931, NAI; Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, pp. 83–4. 150 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 101–3. 151 Congress Working Committee’s resolution on ‘Communal Problem’, 1929, File No. G-37/1929, AICC Papers, NMML. 152 Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, p. 97; Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 121. 153 Philips [ed.], Evolution of India and Pakistan, Vol. 4, pp. 269–70. 154 Sir Maurice Gwyer and A. Appadorai [eds], Speeches and Documents on the Indian Constitution, 1921–47, Vol. 1, Bombay, 1957, p. 227. 155 Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950, Ranikhet, 2007, pp. 173–4; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 117–18. 156 Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 272–3; Wadhwa, Hindu Maha Sabha, p. 107. 157 Indian Round Table Conference [Second Session], 7 September 1931 to 1 December 1931, Proceedings of Federal Structure Committee and Minorities Committee, London, 1932, pp. 509–11. 158 Tejani, Indian Secularism, p. 175; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, p. 276. 159 Indian Round Table Conference [Second Session], Proceedings, 13 September 1931, pp. 517–18. 160 Round Table Conference, London, 2–3 October 1931, B.S. Moonje’s Diaries and Letter Pads, Reel 1, NMML. 161 Gwyer and Appadorai [eds], Indian Constitution, Vol. 1, p. 251. 162 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Padmaraj Jain, dated 19 August 1931, File No. 63, Moonje Papers, NMML. 163 B.S. Moonje’s statement in London, 14 November 1930, File No. 63, Moonje Papers, NMML. 164 Prakashi, A Review, p. 127; idem, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 94–5. 165 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 340. 166 Fazl-i-Husain’s letter to Shafaat Ahmad Khan, dated 2 November 1931, cited in Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad [ed.], Historic Documents of the Muslim Freedom Movement, Lahore, 1970, p. 284.

Notes

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167 Ayesha Jalal and Anil Seal, ‘Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics Between the Wars’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1981, pp. 436–8. 168 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 125–6. 169 Jalal and Seal, ‘Alternative to Partition’, p. 435. 170 Indian Round Table Conference [Second Session], Proceedings, 18 September 1931, p. 528. 171 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 341; Jalal and Seal, ‘Alternative to Partition’, p. 439. 172 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 123; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, p. 278. 173 Indian Round Table Conference [Second Session], Proceedings, ninth sitting, 8 October 1931, p. 530. 174 Tejani, Indian Secularism, pp. 177–9; Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, p. 279. 175 Jalal and Seal, ‘Alternative to Partition’, p. 441; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 120. 176 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 18–19; idem, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge, 2007, p. 12. 177 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 121; Tejani, Indian Secularism, p. 181. 178 ‘General Appreciation of the Communal Award’, statement of the Prime Minister, Para 7, Home Poll., File No. 41, 1932, NAI. 179 B.R. Tomlinson, The Indian National Congress and the Raj, 1929–1942: The Penultimate Phase, London, 1976, p. 19. 180 M.K. Gandhi’s letter to Ramsay MacDonald, dated 18 August 1932. Gandhi, CWMG, Vol. 50, pp. 383–4. 181 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 127–8; Tejani, Indian Secularism, p. 183. 182 B.S. Moonje’s letter to Raja Narendra Nath, dated 25 June 1929, Jayakar Papers, File No. 436, NMML. 183 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 347. 184 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 178. 185 Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, pp. 122–3; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 135. 186 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 349–50. 187 M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000, p. 152; Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 129–30. 188 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 137. 189 Page, Prelude to Partition, pp. 39–40. 190 Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, pp. 123–4. 191 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, pp. 337–8. 192 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 61. 193 Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism, p. 127. 194 Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, p. 131. 195 Banerjee [ed.], Constitutional History, Vol. 3, pp. 285–6. 196 Letter of Padamraj Jain to B.S. Moonje, dated 12 April 1931, File No. 21-VI, Hindu Mahasabha Papers, NMML. 197 Jalal, Sole Spokesman, pp. 138–9. 198 Prakash, Hindu Mahasabha, pp. 71–2; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity, pp. 19–20. 199 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 453.

11 Conclusion 1 Christian Karner, The Thought World of Hindu Nationalism: Analysing a Political Ideology, New York, 2006, p. 233.

222

Notes

2 Jeffery D. Long, A Vision of Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, London, 2007, pp. 35–6, 101. 3 Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation [with special reference to Central India], London, 1996, p. 25. 4 John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, Delhi, 2000, pp. 63–4. 5 Indra Prakash, A Review of the History and Work of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Sangathan Movement, New Delhi, 1952, pp. 15–16. 6 V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? , New Delhi, 2003, p. 5. 7 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 67–8. 8 Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 75–6. 9 M.S. Golwalkar Bunch of Thoughts, Bangalore, 2000, p. 165. 10 Savarkar, Hindutva, p. 58. 11 Antony Copley, ‘Debating Indian Nationalism and Hindu Religious Belief ’, in Antony Copley [ed.], Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and Sampraday, New Delhi, 2003, p. 6; G. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 210–11. 12 Kenneth W., Jones ‘Politicized Hinduism: The Ideology and Program of the Hindu Mahasabha’, in Robert D. Baird [ed.], Religion in Modern India, New Delhi, 2005, p. 249. 13 Bruce, D. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 47–8. 14 V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan: A Collection of the Presidential Speeches Delivered from the Hindu Mahasabha Platform, 1938–1941, Bombay, 1992, pp. 27, 71. 15 Zavos, Emergence, pp. 167, 176. 16 Daniel Gould, ‘Organised Hinduism: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby [eds], Fundamentalisms Observed, Vol. 1, Chicago, 1994, p. 647; Savarkar, Hindutva, pp. 21, 33. 17 Karner, Hindu Nationalism, pp. 101–3. 18 Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p. 101; idem, Hindutva, p. 92. 19 M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur, 1947, pp. 47–8. 20 Swami Shraddhanand, Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, N.p., 1926, pp. 29–31. 21 C. Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism: A Reader, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 15–16. 22 Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization, Delhi, 1978, p. 117; Zavos, Emergence, p. 67. 23 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 161–8. 24 Zavos, Emergence, pp. 127–8; Jaffrelot [ed.], Hindu Nationalism, p. 115. 25 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 45. 26 Zavos, Emergence, p. 149; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 13, 522. 27 Paul R. Brass, ‘Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia’, in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp [eds], Political Identity in South Asia, London, 1979, pp. 58–63. 28 A. Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 13–14. 29 Uma Kaura, Muslims and Indian Nationalism: The Emergence of the Demand for India’s Partition, 1928–40, New Delhi, 1977, pp. 137–8. 30 Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 6–7, 19. 31 Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 209–11. 32 Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p. 511.

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Index

abductions 5, 89–90, 92 abhaya mudra 107 Abhimanyu Dal 83 Abhinav Bharat 95 Abhyudaya 48 Acchutanand, Swami 58 Adi Hindu 58–9 Adi Hindu Depressed Classes Association 59 Adi Hindu movement 58–9 Adi Hinduism 58 adult suffrage 144 Afghan conquests 62 Afghans 64 Agra 26, 35, 51, 89, 128 Agra Hindu Sabha 84 ahimsa 42, 64, 106–8, 110–12, 116–17, 120 Ahmad, Zahur 91 Ajmer 39 Akbar, Jalal-ud-din Muhammad 87 akharas 82–3 Akhila Bharat Hindu Mahasabha 21 Ali Brothers 145 Ali, Amir 107 Ali, Mohammad 35 Ali, Shaukat 35, 145, 148 Ali, Syed Ameer 13 Aligarh 35 Aligarh elite 13, 89, 141, 150 All India Conference of Hindus 20 All India Congress Committee 142 All India Hindu Mahasabha 117 All India Hindu Mahasabha Committee 117 All India Hindu Sabha 20, 109 All India Khilafat Committee 113 All India Muslim Conference 145 All India Muslim League 141 All Parties Conference 143 Allah 107 Allahabad 19, 26, 35, 52, 59, 91, 122, 124, 129, 138, 140 Allahabad Municipal Board 138 all-India federation 148 Alwar 33 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji 53–4, 56, 147

Amin, Chutterbhuj Jhaverbhai 96 ancient India 63 ancient traditions of Hindus 125 Andamans 62 Andhra 142 anekantavada 107 Aney, M.S. 37 Anglo-Indians 148 Ansari, M.A. 145 anti-British hostility 131 anti-British struggle 61, 130 anti-colonial movement 95, 151–2 anti-Gandhi propaganda 117 anti-imperialist politics 117 anti-Muslim antagonism 131 anti-Muslim hostility 4, 85–6, 152 antyajas 51 anuloma 57, 68 aparigraha 105–6 Apte, Narayan 118 Arabic 122, 127 Arabs 66 armed volunteer forces 102 Arya brotherhood 123 Arya Samaj 4, 11, 15, 17, 19, 33–4, 48–9, 50–1, 55, 87, 107, 123, 128–9, 132–3, 151 aryabhasha 123, 126 Aryan age 63, 67 Aryan ancestry 133 Aryan blood 68 Aryan civilisation 48, 64 Aryan Conference 87 Aryan ideals 48 Aryan invaders 70 ‘Aryan invasion’ theory 62 Aryan jati 63 Aryan race 63 Aryan speech 123 Aryanism 87 Aryans 58, 61–2, 64, 67–9, 87, 106 Aryas 108 Aryavarta 62, 87 Ashoka 64 Ashraf, K.M. 35

Index Associated Press 144 Asthana, Narayan Prasad 22 atma parivartan 115 Atmaram, Pandit 86 atmashuddhi 111 Aurangabad 96 Aurangzeb 65, 88 Avanguardist organisations 94 Ayodhya 19, 132, 139 Azamgarh 129 Babar 65, 87 Badaun 35, 55 Badge, Digambar Ramchandra 118 Badruddin 91 Bahadur, Raj of Tiloi 36 Bahadur, Teg 65 Bakr-Id 91, 130 Bali, Rajeshwar 31 Balilla institutions 94 Ballia 129 Baluchistan 141–2, 145 Banaras 21, 23, 83, 122–3, 139–40 Banaras session of Mahasabha 35, 50, 131 Banerjee, Surendranath 15 Bania 146 Banjaras 130 Barabanki 130 Baroda 33 baudhik 98 Belgaum session of Mahasabha 53 Benett, William Charles 31 Bengal 2, 24, 139, 141–4, 148–9, 150, 153 Bengalee 15 Besant, Annie 139 Bhagavad Gita 95, 105, 107, 112–13, 125 bhagwa dwaj 99 bhakti 58, 88 bhakti yoga 112 Bharat Dharma Mahamandal 19, 34, 55 Bharatiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha 51 Bharatpur 33 Bharatvarsha 76 Bhargava, Prag Narayan 27 Bharti Bhawan Library 28 Bhau 66 Bhimsen Dal 83 Bhonsle Military Academy 94 Bhonsle Miltary School 94 Bhonsle, Raja Laxmanrao 32, 100 Bhonsles 94 Bhopatkar, Lakshman B. 37 Bihar 23, 130, 139 Bijnor 139 Bikaner 33 biradari 55 Birkenhead, Lord 143 Birla, Ghanshyamdas 28, 35 Birla, Seth Jugal Kishore 28 Bohras 74

239

Bombay 23, 129, 139, 143 Bombay presidency 24, 142 brahmachary 83, 106 Brahman ideology 58 Brahmanical 56, 58 Brahmans 53, 58, 69 Brahmin politicians 27 Brahmo Samaj 123 Britain 110, 137, 141 British 80, 92, 100–1, 118–19, 123, 133, 138–9 British colonialism 98 British conquest 82 British parties 147 British policy 129 British protection 145 British rule 12, 79–80, 88, 95–6, 110, 120, 129, 131, 143, 152 Buddha 68, 106–7 Buddhism 54, 64, 106 Buddhists 53, 75 Bukhari, Ataullah Shah 145 Bulandshehar 87 Bundelkhand 35 Calcutta 123, 128, 144 Calcutta convention 144 Calcutta session of Congress141 Calcutta session of Mahasabha 102 Caliphate of Islam 21 Canning, Lord 31 caste 48, 53–4, 57–8, 69, 115 caste distinctions 115 caste hierarchy 54–5, 60, 115, 152 caste oppression 115 caste reform 15, 18, 115 Census of India 15 central legislature 143, 153 Central Provinces 24, 93, 100, 139 Chaitanya 68 Chamars 55, 130 Chand, Diwan 86 Chand, Nihal 28 Chand, Prem 127–8 Chand, Rai Bahadur Lal 16–17, 18, 125 Chandragupta 64 Charan, Ram 58 charka 103 Chatterjee, N.C. 102 Chatterjee, Ramanand 146 chaturvarnas 57 Chauhan, Prithviraj 85 Chaurasia, Shiv Dayal Singh 59 Chauri Chaura 111 Chattrasaal 81 child widows 90 Chintamani, C.Y. 29, 138, 147 chiti 69 Chitnavis, M.G. 32 Chitpavan Brahman 56, 61, 95 Christian ‘manliness’ 80

240

Index

Christianity 50–1, 57, 59, 64, 69, 71, 106–7 Christians 15, 61, 70, 75, 148–9, 152 citizenship rights 7, 11 civil disobedience 32, 120, 147 civil war 103 colonial administration 121–2 colonial officials 122, 129 colonial politics 11, 151 colonial rule 122, 127, 131 colonial state 122, 148 colonialism 1 common blood 125 common franchise 149 common race 125 Communal Award 149 Communist 70 Congress formula 148, 150 Congress Khilafatists 145 Congress leaders 138 Congress nationalists 137 constitution for India 141–2, 145–6, 148, 153 constitutional reforms 151 constitutional safeguards 148 contested sovereignty 7, 150, 153 conversions 5, 49, 115 converts 108 Cornwallis formula 31 cow 87, 129, 132–3 cow killing 129, 132 cow protection 5, 121, 128, 130–1 cow protection agitation 129–30 cow protection societies 124 cow slaughter 128–9, 130–2 cultural identity 115, 125, 153 ‘cultural model’ of history 63, 66 ‘cultural nation’ 151 cultural nationalism 1, 151 cultural unity 125 Curzon-Wyllie, Sir William 96 Dae-i-Islam 89 Das, Babu Bhagwan 35, 138 Das, C.R. 39 Das, Lakshman [Mathura] 28 Das, Lala Ram Charan 27 Das, Ram Sharan 16 Dasara 110 Datta, Ram Bhaj 16 Daulatram, Jairamdas 37 Dave, Sir Sundar Lal 28 Dehradun 23 Delhi 23, 100, 143, 145–7 Delhi Muslim proposals 141–2 Delhi session of Hindu Sabha 48, 130 Delhi Sultanate 65, 88 Delhi-Bombay compromise 141 democracy 149 Deoband 145 Depressed Class League ‘depressed class’ politics

depressed classes 54, 147, 149 Deshpande, Harihar Rao 84 Deshpande, V.G. 97 Devalasmriti 49 Dewas 94 Dhar 94 dharma 72, 82, 111 dharmantar 115 dharmashastras 57, 75 Dharmaveer 100 Dikshit, Jyoti Shankar 36 divide and rule policy 6 Doab 130 dominion status 139, 144 Dwivedi, M.N. 105 ‘dying race’ 15 eastern UP 129 education commission 122 educational system 121 elite politics 105 ‘enemy within’ 84 ‘enemy’ of Indian nation 132 England 94, 96, 109, 147 English 122, 127 English civilisation 109 English rule 129 equal citizenship 120, 150–1 equality of religions 106 Etawah 139 eugenic s 69 Europeans 149 Farrukabad 40 ‘fast unto death’ 149 Fatehpur 130 fatherland 72 federal constitution 146 female bodies 132 First round table conference 147 foreign influence 122 foreign language 124 Fourteen Points 146 freedom struggle 84, 89, 95, 116, 119–20, 126 Gaekwads of Baroda 94 Gait Circular 15 Gait, E.A. 15 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 20–1, 22, 35, 62, 105–20, 124, 127, 130, 145–8 Gandhi’s murder trial 117 Gandhi’s offer 149 Gandhian Congress 93 Gaurakshini Sabha 128, 130 gaushala 128–9 Gaya session of Mahasabha 21, 23, 49, 131 Gayatri 87 general electorate 138, 149 Ghaznavids 65 Ghazni, Mahmud 65, 95, 106

Index Ghose, Aurobindo 62 Gidwani, Choithram 53 Gita 95 Gita Rahasya 95 Godse, Gopal 118 Godse, Nathuram Vinayak 97, 101, 117–18 Goenka, Badridas 28 Gokarunanidhi 128 ‘golden age’ 62, 67 Golwalkar, Madhav Sadashiv 57, 62, 68, 70–5, 82, 85, 88, 98–9, 101, 117, 119, 126, 131 Gorakhpur 83, 130 gotra 69 Government of India Act 1858 32 Gray’s inn 96, 110 ‘grouping of provinces’ 148 Gujarat 129 Gupta, Moti Chand 27 Gupta, Shiva Prasad 22 Guptas, imperial 64 Gurtu, Iqbal Narayan 22, 35 Gwalior 33 Hanuman 81 Haq, Fazl-ul 147 Hardwar 20, 109 Hardwar session of Mahasabha 51 Harishchandra, Bharatendu 123 Hedgewar, Keshav Baliram 37, 97–9, 101, 132 Hedgewar’s volunteers 98 high-caste Hinduism 130 himsa 112 Hindi 121–2, 124–7, 133 Hindi intellectuals 133 Hindi literary class 128 Hindi literary sphere 128 Hindi literati 127 ‘Hindi only’ policy 128 Hindi Sahitya Sammelan 28, 124, 127 Hindi vernacular newspapers 128 Hindi’s hegemony 126 Hindi’s superiority 126 Hindu ‘document’ 145 Hindu ‘rule’ 148 Hindu ‘self’ 63, 70, 84 Hindu ‘self-assertion’ 66 Hindu 11, 15, 67, 105, 115 Hindu apostates 50 Hindu blood 68 Hindu character81 Hindu civilisation 63, 68, 70 Hindu classes 81 Hindu community 47–8, 59–60, 62–3, 68, 72, 82, 84, 86, 100, 115, 118–19, 126, 130, 137, 139, 150, 152 Hindu conscience 115 Hindu consciousness 66, 95, 121, 124 Hindu consolidation 151 Hindu cultural identity 126

241

Hindu culture 3, 11, 68, 70, 74, 86, 121–3, 126–7, 151–3 Hindu dharm 66, 75, 85, 119 Hindu dominance 114 Hindu elite 12, 133 Hindu essence 89 Hindu family 51 Hindu fatherland 67 Hindu female sexuality 90 Hindu festivals 90, 92 Hindu history 66 Hindu homogeneity 4, 60, 152 Hindu identity 1, 4, 11, 15, 51, 61, 64, 67, 121, 124–5, 128, 133, 151 Hindu idiom 2 Hindu idols 106 Hindu interests 20, 125, 140, 148 Hindu jati 52, 58, 125, 127 Hindu Mahasabha 2, 11, 21, 47–8, 50, 54, 59, 75, 79, 82–3, 86, 92–4, 96–9, 101–2, 104, 109, 115–18, 118–21, 125, 127, 130–1, 137, 140–3, 146–8, 151, 153 Hindu Mahasabhaites 109, 114–15 Hindu-majority provinces 139 Hindu majority 138, 144 Hindu majority rule 6, 11, 137, 149–50, 152–3 Hindu martial prowess 90 Hindu masculinity 5, 117, 120 Hindu masculinity 79, 81 Hindu men 132 Hindu middle class 124 Hindu militarisation 93–6 Hindu Militia 97 Hindu movement 121 Hindu nation 2, 4, 11, 57, 67, 69, 76–7, 79, 82, 90, 92–3, 97–8, 101, 114–17, 119–21, 125, 132–3, 151–2 Hindu nationalism 1, 3, 7, 11, 62, 67, 82, 99–100, 107, 114, 118, 125, 151 Hindu nationalist discourse 47 Hindu nationalist narrative 50 Hindu nationalist organisations 107 Hindu nationality 17, 123 Hindu nationhood 62 Hindu numbers 16, 52, 90, 115 Hindu organisations 83–4 Hindu Outlook 117 Hindu past 81 Hindu period 125 Hindu politicians 138 Hindu politics 2, 12, 151 Hindu population 15 Hindu power 84 Hindu princely states 32–3 Hindu princes 100 Hindu processional music 90–1 Hindu publicists 3, 14, 86, 89, 129, 138, 152 Hindu race 68, 82 Hindu Raj 85, 145 Hindu Raksha Sabhas 13

242

Index

Hindu rashtra 61, 75, 97, 114 Hindu Rashtra Dal 97, 118 Hindu rashtra mandirs 48 Hindu Rashtra Sabha 41 Hindu reform movements 128 Hindu religion 57, 74, 131 Hindu religiosity 127 Hindu religious practices 131 Hindu religious processions 90–1 Hindu representation 138, 151 Hindu revival 11, 89 Hindu revivalism 121 Hindu revivalists 128 Hindu right 138–9 Hindu rights 140, 153 Hindu Sabha committee 26 Hindu Sabha movement 12, 14 Hindu Sabhas 12–13, 18, 40, 51, 101–2, 124, 140 Hindu Samaj 19, 27 Hindu sangathan 39, 92 Hindu sangathanists 117–18 Hindu scriptures 126 Hindu sentiments 131 Hindu Service Society 33 Hindu shastras 115 Hindu society 4, 60, 63, 68, 88, 90, 93, 98, 115, 122–3, 128–9, 131–2, 152 Hindu state 114 Hindu strength 83–4, 91, 94 Hindu Swayam Sevak Dal 97 Hindu temples 88 Hindu tongue 127 Hindu tradition 12, 64, 112, 117, 151 Hindu unity 2, 47–8, 66, 67, 90, 131, 151–2 Hindu valour 5 Hindu values 12 Hindu Vedic past 63 Hindu virtue 89 Hindu widow-marriage 90 Hindu widows 90 Hindu wife 90 Hindu woman 89–90, 132 Hindu wombs 90 Hindu Women’s Protection Corps 97 Hindudom 101 Hinduism 13, 49–50, 54, 58–9, 69–70, 75, 105, 109, 112, 118, 120 Hindu-Muslim power sharing 144 Hindu-Muslim representation 137, 141, 143, 146–7, 149 Hindu-Muslim rivalries 83 Hindu-Muslim unity 42, 49, 88–9, 107, 113, 116, 119–20, 152 Hinduness 11, 61–2 Hindu-Pad-Padshahi 65–6 Hindus 48, 55, 59, 63, 68, 81–2, 87, 98, 101, 104, 106, 113, 117, 121, 123–4, 129, 132, 137–8, 142, 144, 147–8, 152

Hindustan 103, 110, 114 Hindustani 127 Hindutva 1, 4, 7, 42, 48, 63–4, 66, 72, 74, 93, 96, 104–5, 151–2 Hindutva 48, 61–2, 97 Hindutva narrative 3, 67, 151 Hindutva theory 67–8, 125 ‘historical enemy’ 76, 79, 84 history of India 63 holyland 74 homogensing force 126 Huns 64, 69 Hunter, Sir William 122 Husain, Maulana Vilayat 91 Husian, Mian Fazl-i, 145, 148–9 Idar 33 Iltutmish 65 Inclusionary nationalism 137, 149, 151 Independent Congress Party 39 India Home Rule 109 India House 110 India’s freedom 93, 96 India’s independence 110, 137 India’s legislatures 137, 144–5 India’s nationhood 140 Indian Christians 147 Indian Councils Act of 1909 14, 137 Indian culture 113, 127, 129 Indian Defence Association 13 Indian federation 144 Indian language 127 Indian literature 127 Indian nation 65, 68, 72–3, 79, 81–2, 105, 119, 127, 132, 144, 150–1 Indian National Congress 1, 12, 17, 32, 34–5, 41, 72, 83, 93, 98, 101, 103, 105, 114, 117, 119, 129–30, 137, 139, 141, 142–3, 145–8, 149, 150–3 Indian nationalism 1, 12, 63, 89 Indian Opinion 110 Indian parties 147 Indian race 81 Indian religion 129 Indian tradition 63 Indianisation of army 94 Indianness 62, 123–4 Indic tradition 107 ‘indivisible sovereignty’ 153 Indo-Persian cultural tradition 127 Indore 33 Indus 67 instrumentalist analysis 6 Islam 50–1, 55, 59, 63–4, 66, 68, 70, 74, 84, 86, 106–7, 109, 113, 118, 129, 131–2, 152 Islamic ‘other’ 64 Islamic invasion 88 Islamic social practice 128 Islamic solidarity 13 Iswar Saran 22, 28, 138

Index Jabalpur session of Mahasabha 53, 117 Jackson murder trial 96 Jackson, A.M.T. 62, 96 Jain, Padam Raj 100 Jainism 107 Jains 53, 75 Jalan, Seth Bansidhar 28 Jallianwala Bagh 111 Jama Masjid 109 Jamiat-ul-Ulema 146 jati 63, 68, 72, 99 Jats 66 Jayakar, M.R. 22, 37, 52, 143–5, 147 jihad 132 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 76–8, 139–40, 141, 144, 146–7 Jinnah’s demands 144 Jinnah’s offer 144 Johari, Sardar Bahadur 28 joint electorates 137, 143–5, 148, 150 Kal 95 Kalakankar 124 Kalinga 64 Kaliyug Kalma 87 kalwars Kanhare, Anant Laxman 96 Kanodia, Radhakisen 28 Kanpur 36, 59, 140 Kanpur District Association 29 Kanpur Hindu Sabha 36 Kanpur riot 36, 83 Karachi 142 Karkareh, Vishnu 118 karma yoga 95, 112 Karma Yoga Shastra 95 Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha Kashmiri Brahmans 122 Kathiawar 65 Kattarpur 130 Kayastha Pathshala 22 kayasths 122 Kelkar, N.C. 22, 37–8, 84, 89, 115, 117, 143 Kesari 95, 117 ‘Kesari group’ 97 Khan, Afzal 65 Khan, Aga 147 Khan, Shafa’at Ahmad 145 Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmed 12, 89 Khan, Zafar Ali 87 Khatris 122 Khilafat 3, 131 Khilafat committees 119 Khilafat movement 21, 23, 86, 105 Khojas 74 Khyber Pass 63 kidnappings 90 Kishor, Jugal 22 Kitchlew, Saifuddin 145

Kohat 84, 87 Koran 107 Krishen, Mahasha 86 Krishna, Lord 81, 112 Krishnavarma, Shyamji 109 kshatriya 53, 70, 80, 116–17 kshatriya values 117 Kshatriya Upakarini Sabha 51 Kumbh 19, 52 Kumbh Mela 20 Kunzru, Hriday Nath 22, 35 Kurtkoti 53 Kushans 64 Kusinagar 106 Lahiry, Ashutosh 86 Lahore 18, 47, 125 Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi Lal, Awadh Bihari 22 Lal, Harkrishna 16 Lal, Murari 89 Lal, Ram Mohan 28 Lal, Shadi 14, 16–17 Lal, Shyam 59 Lal, Sundar 138 language of community 124 language of nation 124 language of people 124 lathi 83 lawyer politicians 138 Leader 52 legislative councils 137 Liberals 147 linguistic unity 126 Linlithgow, Lord 101, 102 Lodi, Sikander 88 Lokamanya 95 lokmaryada 55 London 96, 109, 147, 150 Lucknow 83, 91, 140, 144, 148, 150 Lucknow municipality 139 Lucknow pact 139–40 Lytton, Lord 32 Macaulay, T.B. 80 MacDonald, Anthony 124 MacDonald, Ramsay 149 Madhuri 81 Madhya Hindu Samaj 124 Madras 23, 139 Madras session of Mahasabha 141 Madura session of Mahasabha 102 Mahabharat 84, 116 Mahabir Dal 83 Mahamedans 49–50 Maharaja of Banaras 128 Maharaja of Darbhanga 34 Maharashtra 24, 54, 61, 94–5, 99–100 Maharashtra dharma 99 Mahavira, Vardhamama 68, 107

243

244

Index

Mahommedan ‘zealots’ 127 Mahratta 117 majoritarian rule 114, 137 Malabar 49, 84 Malabar riots 49 Malaviya, Krishna Kant 22 Malaviya, Madan Mohan 17, 21–2, 24, 27, 29–30, 34, 38, 48–9, 55–6, 83, 89, 91, 100, 124, 131, 138, 142, 145 Malaviya, Rama Kant 28 Malkana Rajputs 50–1, 152 Malwa 65 Mandalay 95 Manusmriti 55–6 Maratha confederation 66 Maratha rule 82 Maratha state 66, 94 Marathas 64, 95 Marathi areas 129 Marathi districts 93 masculine Hinduism 82, 92, 117 Mathura 40, 132 Mauryan empire 64 Mazzini, Giuseppe 96 Mecca 74, 86 Meerut 26, 89 Meerut Hindu Sabha 89 Mehta, Rajchandra 107 melas 95 Meston, James 27 Mhow 129 militarisation boards 102 militarisation programme 5, 93, 97, 103 militarism 110 military training 84, 93–4, 102 milkayat 51 minorities 138, 147 Minto, Lord 14 Minto-Morley reforms 137 Mishra, Gauri Shankar 22, 35 Mishra, Gokaran Nath 28, 35 Mishra, Kruparam 132 Mitra Mela 96 mitrata 113 mleccha 69 mlechhastan 68 Mohammad, Prophet 86–8, 107 Mohammedans 74, 85, 119 Mohurram 91 moksha 112 Monghyr 54 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms 22, 30, 52, 140 Mookherjee, Shyam Prasad 24, 117 Moonje, Balkrishna Shivram 22, 32, 37–9, 49, 52, 54, 56, 82, 84, 93–5, 97–8, 101–4, 114, 116, 119, 142–3, 145–7 Moplah revolt 3, 48 ‘moral decline’ 122 Morley Sir John 14 Morley–Minto reforms 3, 14, 150

Mughal dynasty 67 Mughal empire 88 Mughal rule 65, 88 Mughals 95 Muhammadans 86, 141, 145 Mukherji, U,N.15–16 Mulla, Jagat Narain 138 Multan riot 48, 116 municipal boards 138 Municipalities Act 138 Muralidhar, Rai Saheb Lala 20 Muslim ‘aggressiveness’ 49 Muslim ‘aggressors’ 99 Muslim ‘attackers’ 64 Muslim ‘attacks’ 49 Muslim ‘betrayal’ 86 Muslim ‘conspiracy’ 87 Muslim ‘despotism’ 87–8 Muslim ‘disintegration’ 145 Muslim ‘domination’ 148 Muslim ‘goondas’ 90 Muslim ‘other’ 12, 79, 90 Muslim ‘strength’ 91, 152 Muslim ‘threat’ 118 Muslim ‘tyranny’ 133 Muslim ‘violence’ 49 Muslim ‘virility’85 Muslim butcher 130 Muslim community 89 Muslim consensus 13 Muslim constituencies 14 Muslim cultural identity 126 Muslim culture 2, 124–5 Muslim demands 137, 139, 143, 147–8, 150, 153 Muslim deputation 15 Muslim elite 2, 121, 128, 137 Muslim groups 138 Muslim identity 114 Muslim invaders 66 Muslim invasions 65–6 Muslim leaders 145 Muslim League 6, 7, 14, 32, 101, 118–19, 138–40, 142, 144, 146, 148–9, 150–1, 153 Muslim majority 143–4, 148 Muslim minority 145 Muslim mosques 90 Muslim namaz 91 Muslim nation 153 Muslim opinion 143 Muslim opposition 145 Muslim parties 137, 144 Muslim pirs 85 Muslim population 15 Muslim press 109, 131 Muslim progeny 90 Muslim quota 144 Muslim representation 13–14, 139–41, 145–6 Muslim rule 87–8, 122, 126, 129 Muslim rulers 88, 126, 131

Index Muslim safeguards 6, 143–4 Muslim separatism 138 Muslim service gentry 122 Muslim solidarity 144 Muslim state 150 Muslim tyrants 88 Muslim unity 144 Muslim volunteer groups 104 Muslim-majority region 142 Muslim-minority provinces 142–3, 153 Muslims 47, 49, 51, 59, 61, 64, 70–1, 75, 85, 87–9, 103, 105, 108–9, 118–19, 126, 128–9, 130–3, 137–40, 141–9, 150–2 Mussorie 91 Nagari 5, 121–7, 128, 133 Nagari lobby 122 Nagari movement 122–3, 125, 132–3 Nagari Pracharini Sabha 28, 124, 127 Nagari propaganda 124, 132 Nagpur 94, 97–8, 100, 116 Nagpur Hindu Sabha 93 Nagpur session of Mahasabha 54 Nanak 68 Nandi, Maharaja Munindra Chandra 20–1 Narain, Krishna Gurtu 35 Narayan, Prag 22 Nasik 54, 94–5, 96 Nasik session of Mahasabha 53 Nath, Lala Baij 19 Nath, Lala Bishambhar 27, 29 Nath, Raja Narendra 16, 38 Naths 130 nation 72 national ‘revival 62 National All Parties Convention 144 national aspirations 125 national citizens 89 national community 63, 125 ‘national demand’ 140, 145 national health 132 national honour 132 national identity 113 national interests of Hindus 116 national language 121, 124, 126–8, 133 national language of India 123 national race 70, 75 national sentiments 126 national tongue 126 nationalism 1–2, 80, 147 nationalist historiography 6 nationalist struggle 137, 150 nationality 11 nation-building 79–80 Nehru committee 143 Nehru committee report 147 Nehru constitution 143–4, 146 Nehru report 137, 144–7, 150 Nehru, Jawaharlal 35, 143 Nehru, Motilal 39, 138, 140, 143, 145–6

245

Nizami, Khwajah Hasan 87, 89 Non-co-operation 111, 120 Non-cooperation movement 21–2, 24, 120, 130 non-violence 64, 106–7, 111–12, 116–18, 152 No-rent campaigns 32 north India 108, 121, 123, 128, 130–1, 151 North-West Frontier Province [NWFP] 125, 141–2, 145, 148 Numan, Shibli 107 nyayavada 107 Oke, Vasant Rao 100 ‘one country’ 125 ‘one language’ 125 ‘one man, one vote’ system 150 ‘one nation’ theory 7 orthodox Hindus 130 Oudh 35, 121 Oudh system 31 Pahwa, Madanlal 118 Pakistan 150 ‘Pakistan’ plan 42, 137, 149–50, 153 panchama 51 Panipat 87 pan-Islamism 152 Paranjpe, L.V. 98 Paranjpe, Shivram Mahadev 95 Parchure, Dattatray 118 Parmanand, Bhai 39, 85, 89, 107, 117, 132, 140, 146–7 ‘parting of ways’ for Muslims 144 partition 62, 76, 148 Patanjali 112 Patiala 33 patias 130 Patna session of Hindu Mahasabha 142 patriotism 92 Paul, K.T. 147 People’s Association 27 permanent settlement 31 Persian 5, 62, 121–5 Persian script 122, 127 Persians 64, 66 Persian-Urdu 126 Persian-Urdu writing 128 Perso-Urdu tradition 127, 133 physical culture 99 physical valour 82 Pilibhit 89 pitribhumi 4, 72, 152 pluralism 106 pluralistic model of society 107, 113 Polak, Henry 110 policy of co-operation 102 political leverage 142 political representation 141 political safeguards 147 Poona 95, 97, 117 Poona pact 149

246

Index

Poona session of Mahasabha 54 prabhat pheris 83 Prakash, Indra 37 Prakasham, T. 37 Prasad, Brijnandan 28 Prasad, Mahadeo 28 Prasad, Munshi Gokul 28–9 Pratap 86 Pratap, Maharana 81, 99 pratiloma 57, 68 Pratinidhi Sabha 49 Prayag Hindu Samaj 124 primacy of race and culture 151 primordialist analysis 6 Prithviraj-raso 65 proselytisation 51, 107 proselytism 115 provincial autonomy 146 Punjab 3, 12, 14, 23, 102, 125, 139, 141–4, 148–9, 150, 153 Punjab Hindu Sabha 19, 23, 47, 125 Punjab Land Alienation Act 13 ‘Punjab thesis’ 148–9 punyabhumi 4, 72, 152 quaid 141 Queen Victoria’s proclamation 91 Quit India movement 103 Quran 86 race 68, 151 Rai, Ganpat 37, 104 Rai, Lajpat 15–16, 17–18, 21–2, 23, 37–8, 89, 109, 117, 123, 125, 140, 145 Raj, Lala Hans 16 raja yoga 112 Rajput 64, 80 Rajputana 24 Ram Sena 97 Ram, Pandit Lekh 132 Rama, Lord 81 Ramayana 84, 110 Ramdas 99 Ramlila 91 Rand, Charles Walter 95 Rangila Rasul 87 Ranthambor 65 Rao, V.P. Madhav 140 Rashid, Abdur 87 rashtra 63–4 rashtra bhasha 124 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] 62, 97–101 Rasra 130 Ratnagiri 95, 98 religion 62, 151 religious community 121 religious identity 125 religious minorities 143 religious pluralism 105, 113

religious ritual 129 ‘renegade’ of Hinduism 118 residuary powers 144 revolt of 1857 80 revolutionary nationalism 110, 120 revolutionary propaganda 96 revolutionary societies 95 Rewari 128 riots 4, 5, 90–1 Rishi Ram, Pandit 49 Rohilkhand 26 Rohtagi, Murarilal 29, 36 Round table conferences 137, 147, 150 Rowlatt Act of 1919 21 Rowlatt satyagraha 109 RSS activists 100 RSS cadres 98, 101 Saharanpur 84, 116 Sahini, Ruchi Ram 16 Sainikikaran Mandals 102 salvation 107 Sampurnanand 36 samskaras 98 sanatan dharm 4, 12, 17, 19, 34, 62, 75, 106, 126, 151 Sanatan Dharma Sabha 15, 19, 34, 55 Sanatan Dharma Sammelan 34 sanatani 106 sanatani Hindus 50 sanatanist 4, 52, 55 sangathan 3, 5, 16, 21, 41–2, 47–9, 50–2, 54, 56–9, 79–81, 85–7, 89, 93, 104, 109, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 124–7, 131, 152–3 sangathan campaign 128, 131 sangathan movement 47, 93 sangathan narrative 52, 80, 94, 97, 124, 130, 132–3 sangathan theory 89, 126 sangathanist iconography 132 sangathanists 55, 62, 114, 120, 123, 127–8, 132 sangathist intellectual 93 Sangh 99, 101 Sankranti 116 Sanskrit 122–3, 125–6 Sanskritic Hindi 127 sanskritisation 56 Santal 54 Sapru, Tej Bahadur 29, 36, 138, 147 Saraswati, Dayananda 82, 108, 123, 128 saravadharma samabhava 105 sarsanghchalak 62, 99 Sarvadeshak Hindu Sabha 20 satyagraha 111, 113, 120 Savarkar, Ganesh 96, 98, 100, 102 Savarkar, V.D. 4, 24, 32, 41, 48, 54, 56, 61, 63–5, 66–8, 73–7, 82, 89, 93, 95–8, 102, 109–12, 114, 118, 120, 125, 127 Savarkarite Mahasabha 41–2 Scindia, ‘George’ Jayaji Rao 33

Index Scindias of Gwalior 94 Second round table conference 148–9 sectarian cleavage 138 secular nationalism 1, 2, 151 secular sovereignty 151 self-abnegation 17 self-governing dominion 144 self-government 139 Sen, Keshub Chandra 123 separate electorates 13, 137–9, 140–1, 143–6, 148–9, 150–1 Sermon on the Mount 107 Servants of the People Society service to nation 125 Seth, Jagath 28 Seth, Maheshwar Dayal 35 Sewa Samiti 22 Shafi, Muhammad 147 Shah, Virendra 32 Shahabad 130 Shakas 64, 69 shakhas 98–100 shakti 83 Sharma, Deva Ratan 23, 29, 34, 84 Sharma, Din Dayal 55 Sharma, Neki Ram 35 Shastri, Dharm Deo 36 Shirgaon 98 Shivaji 65–6, 81, 99 Shraddhananda, Swami 16, 20, 37, 48, 50, 52–3, 82, 85, 87, 119, 125 shuddhi 4, 49–50, 55, 59, 81, 115 shudras 90 Sikhs 53, 66, 75, 148–9 Simla 145 Simla Conference 103 Simla Memorial 13 Simon Commission 141 Simon, Sir John 141 Sind 24, 125, 141–2, 143–5, 148, 153 Sindhu River 67 Sindusthan 65, 68, 74 Singh, Brijendra of Bharatpur 33 Singh, Durga Narayan 30–1 Singh, Guru Gobind 81 Singh, Kunwar Rajendra 31 Singh, Narmada Prasad 37 Singh, Nihal 31 Singh, Raja Bishwanath 31 Singh, Raja Shivaprasad 123 Singh, Raja Sir Rampal 29, 31, 48, 124, 130, 139 Singh, Ranjit 22 Singh, Sardgar Ujjal 147 Singh, Suraj Baksh 31 Singh, Thakur Hanuman 30 Singh, Vikramjit 28 Singhji, Teji of Alwar 33 ‘single nation’ 150 Sinha, Sukhbir 20, 23–4, 29, 131, 138

247

social groups 149 Society for Preservation of Horned Cattle 129 Somnath106 South Africa 108–9, 110 sovereignty 150 Srinivasan, Rao Bahadur 147 Srivastava, Sir Jwala Prasad 28 Surat 146 swadeshi 11, 79 swaraj 89, 113, 117, 119 Swaraj Party 39 Swarup, Rai Bahadur Anand 29, 138 Swarup, Wati Vishnu 28 swayamsevak 98, 101 syadavada 107 tabligh 51 taluqdars 31 Tandon, Purushottam Das 35–6 tanzim 51 temperance 130 territorial Indian nation 4, 114, 151 territory 125 Tholkar, B.B. 98 Tilak, Balwantrao Gangadhar 12, 24, 37, 93, 95, 112, 117–18, 124, 139 Tilakites 97 Timur 87 tolerance 107 tribals 57 Turks 64, 66 ‘two-nation’ theory 17, 76–8 Ujhyani 55 ummah 153 Unao 89, 139 unified ‘one nation’ 151, 153 uniform franchise 142 uniformed youth corps 97 unitary centre 150 United Provinces (UP) 2, 47, 51, 55, 59, 79, 83, 86, 89, 102, 121, 124, 130, 138–9, 151 unity of nation 149 untouchability 52, 115 untouchable assimilation 52 untouchable integration 53, 59, 152 untouchable uplift 51, 56, 60 untouchables 51, 54, 57–8, 115, 152 UP Congress Committee [UPCC] 145 UP government 91, 124 UP Hindu Sabha 84, 91, 131, 138, 140 UP Kisan Sabha 22, 30 UP Legislative Council 30, 138 UP Municipalities Act of 1916 138 UP Social Conference 33 UP Vaish Conference 19 Upanishads 116, 125 upper caste reforms 58 upper castes 4, 5, 55, 57 Urdu 121–2, 127–8, 133

248

Index

varna 4, 15, 48, 51, 56, 69, 115, 152 varna hierarchy 55 varnashrama 57 varnashrama dharma 51, 55 Vedalankar, Chandragupta 37 Vedanta 105 Vedas 53, 55, 63, 116, 123 Vedic ‘golden’ age 17, 34, 48, 116 Vedic 62, 85 Vedic age 63 Vedic ancestors 63 Vedic fathers 68 Vedic Hinduism 58 Vedic Hindus 63 Vedic hymns 63 Vedic ideology 58 Vedic marriage 57 Vedic period 48, 66 Vedic society 63 Vedic tradition 74, 106 Vedic-Aryan blood 56 Vedic-Hindu civilisation 68 vegetarianism 130 Verma, J.P. 97

vernacular press 124 Vichitra Jivan 87 Vijaya Dashmi 98, 110 violence 95–6 violent nationalism 112 vira 80 Vishvas 66 Vivekananda 105 vyavastha 52 Wardha scheme of education 127 warrior monk 81 warrior soldier 81 Wavell, Lord 103 weightage for Muslims 14, 137–9, 142–3, 145–6, 153 yagyopavit 52 yajnathag 85 Yeola 54 Yoga Sutra 105, 112 yogas 112 zamindars 31, 129