Muslims, Nationalism and The Partition (1946 Provincial Elections in India)

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About the Book

In 1946, elections held in eleven Provinces of British India, were crucial in deciding the political destiny of South Asia. Election results not only pro-vided constitutional answer to the question: Unity of India or Partition, but also hinted at the problems that the people of this region would face after Independence.

India in 1946 was facing serious economic problems. Despite this elect-ions were held under limited franchise. Most of the people, particularly, women and lower class, had no voting rights. The post-War freedom movement, and workers' and peasants' movements were, in a sense, the expression of the will of the disenfranchised people. Elections were con-tested in the arena where the constitutional system and the people's movement crossed each other.

In many parts of the world the political system which was formed immediately after the Second World War collapsed in the 1990s. India is one of a few countries in Asia where parliamentary system has survived despite occasional threats. This work tries to grasp the meaning of the 1946 Provincial Elections under historical background, and considers their relevance to the present age.

About the Author

Sho Kuwajima is Professor Emeritus of South Asian Studies, Osaka University of Foreign Studies. He studied at the Indian School of Inter-national Studies in 1962-6, and was Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research in 1988-90.

He is the author of The Mutiny in Singapore: War, Anti-War and the War for India's Independence (2006), Muslims, Nation and the World: Life and Thought of Abul Hashim, Leader of the Bengal Muslim League (2015) and Peasants and Peasant Leaders in Contemporary History: A Case of Bihar in India (2017). He also translated Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Kisan Sabha ke Sansmaran (in Hindi) into Japanese (2002). Besides these, he has also edited Life, Freedom and War: Twentieth Century South Asia (2010).

Preface

On 10 April 1946, the first post-War General Election was held in Japan on the basis of universal adult franchise.

I have some unforgettable recollections of those days. A few months after the end of the Second World War, the American Army marched through the main street of our small town near Tokyo and occupied it for some time. With a few of my primary school classmates, I observed this scene without uttering many words. We were overwhelmed and felt uneasy with the creaking sound of the American tanks which drove over this rural town. We were forced to realize that the War had ended.

Only recently, I found out that Jawaharlal Nehru had said in a Press Conference on 13 November 1945 that no Indian Army should he sent to any territory, not even to Japan, to humiliate anybody. Yet at that time I could not imagine what had happened in Asia where the Japanese Army had been active during the War.

Another scene lingers in my memory. Most probably it is related to the campaign for the General Election of 1946 in Japan. On our way back from school, we were passing through the same street, when an elderly candidate was making his speech, the only listeners were a few of us who had not reached the age of voting. In the elections of 1946 the size of each constituency was much larger than today, and the candidate may well have been a stranger to this rather closed area. Nevertheless, it was a really desolate scene, even if not totally unusual in the post-War days. This candidate himself was uncertain about the future of Japan, and of course, about his own future too.

The General Election of Japan in 1946 was held under the extreme strain of post-War political crisis, unstable rehabilitation, food scarcity and inflation. On the polling day many voters preferred food to vote, and caught suburban trains early morning to get rice or other food-stuffs in rural areas. That year, after the May Day celebration (revived - after 11 years), another May Day demanding 'More Food to the People' was called on 19 May. In the confusion, the preparation of electoral roll was defective, and the names of 256,988 voters were not registered. Though this number was less than 1 per cent of the total qualified persons, omissions reached 10.8 per cent in Kagoshima Ken (Prefecture) in southern Japan. In Nagano Ken, one village headman accused of negligence of his duties committed suicide. The most painful fact was that the people of Okinawa Ken were deprived of their franchise on the grounds that administrative rights over Okinawa had not been transferred back to Japan. Parliamentary democracy began in Japan with the denial of voting rights to a substantial part of the country which suffered most in the last war.

Introduction

The Second World War was one in which the people of the world were involved. Both the combatants and 'the people behind the war' were affected, and South Asia was no exception. Even the remote mountain land of Nepal sent no less then 200,000 sons to the war front and faced a decline in production, leading to nation-wide shortages and inflation.

In India the Quit India movement spread on an unprecedented scale and protested against the policy of the British War-time Government which was reluctant to concede any substantial part of the civil and military administration to the Indian side during the War. In Bihar, one of the centres of the movement, both rural and urban lower classes of the people joined. On 12 August 1942 in Patna the rickshaw ikka chalanewale (rickshaw and horse carriage pullers) and others who knew politics to the extent that they recognized the British as the enemy, played a prominent part in the banal (general strike). Few heroic descriptions of the Quit India movement refer to this incident which was recorded in the autobiography of Rahul Sankrityayan, a man of letters, Buddhist scholar, Marxist historian and peasant leader. He was critical of the movement as a whole from the standpoint of the 'People's War' theory. Participation of the urban lower classes meant that their movement was also an expression of protest against high prices and shortages of food and daily goods caused by the War.

In 1943 famine covered many parts of Bengal (presently Bangladesh and West Bengal of India). This famine was 'man-made', and basically the results of the War and colonial rule. From the later half of 1943 many 'paupers' came to Calcutta from the suburban areas in search of food and died on the streets.

**Contents and Sample Pages**