Myth and Reality (The Struggle for Freedom in India, 1945-1947)

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The dawn of freedom over India in August 1947, after a long and bitter struggle against British imperialism, was one of the seminal developments of the twentieth century. Small wonder, then, that this struggle has aroused substantial scholarly interest over the past four decades. Yet, despite the enormous body of literature upon the manner in which India won freedom, at the same time as the subcontinent was partitioned into two sovereign states, various facets of this historical phenomenon still emain unexplored.

To stimulate new scholarly research upon the struggle for freedom in India, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library thought it appropriate to organize a symposium at which social scientists and humanists could collectively take a look at the recent past, not only for antequarian reasons, but also to illumine the present.

The essays incorporated in this volume were presented by some distinguished scholars at the aforementioned symposium which was held between 13 and 17 February 1984. 1 am deeply indebted to these scholars for thier ready co-operation, and for the care they have taken in revising thier contributions. Their prose style, plus the spelling of proper nouns and Indian terms, as well as the manner of giving notes and references, have generally been retained in their essays as reproduced here.

I am grateful to Professor Ravinder Kumar, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, for asking me to participate in the symposium, and inviting me, as a gracious gesture to a fellow scholar, to edit its proceedings a responsibility which ke himself could have shouldered with greast case, and, of course, with greater ability. He also very kindly accepted my request to write an Introduction to this book.

Tam very thankful, indeed, to my friend, Dr. Hari Dev Sharma, again of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, for all his help and counsel at every phase of publishing this book, from the finalisation of the press-copy to the diverse stages of printing.

The emergence of India as a sovereign state in 1947 was one of the crucial events of the 20th century. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a substantial body of historical writing has appeared over the past four decades on different facets of this development. Some of these writings focus upon the conflict between British imperialism and Indian nationalism at the national, regional or local level(s). Others, touch upon the quality of social cleavages and political cohesion within Indian society, more particularly as they pertain to the emergence of Pakistan, or the integration of the Princely States in the Indian Union. Others, yet again, explore the changing locus of social and economic power within Indian society, and raise issues concerning the dominance of the rich and the propertied within the alliance of classes and communities that went into the making of a national movement of truly epic proportions. All told, therefore, the literature on the liberation movement is comprehensive in the questions which it poses; wide ranging in the ideological vision which informs it; and conflicting in the insights which it offers. Perhaps the time is now opportune to review this literature and cull out of such a review an overall understanding of the manner whereby the people of India liberated themselves from British rule.

A striking feature of the historical literature on the liberation movement in South Asia is the articulation of three distinctive national viewpoints by the scholars who have contributed to it. This should occasion no surprise: for historical scholarship inevitably reflects national viewpoints and national aspirations. There is little reason to believe that scholars within a national polity necessarily agree with each other on questions of focus and interpretation.

Nevertheless, even the differences in perception within a national scholarly community belong to a common universe of discourse .As against this, historical explanations offered by scholars drawn from different countries seldom lead to conclusions which offer a common ground for a dialogue.

Since historical literature on the recent past emanating from Pakistan is known least of all, it may be profitable to commence our review by examining the insights which it offers pertaining to the retreat of British imperialism from South Asia, and the emergence of two (and, later, three) national polities in the region. Perhaps the basic framework of "nationalist" historiography in Pakistan was laid down by the officially sponsored series entitled History of the Freedom Movement) (hereinafter referred to as Freedom Movement in Pakistan). The initial contributions to this series deal with the position of Muslim communities in India in the 19th century, when British rule was firmly established over the subcontinent. The historians of Pakistan have argued that different sections of Muslim society were, at this juncture, totally un- reconciled to the Pax Britannica : the aristocracy and the landed gentry, since they had suffered displacement as the ruling classes; the religious intelligentsia, because of the umbilical cord which tied it to the latter; the artisan and weaving communities, because imperialism brought with it deindustrialisation and a diminution in their social status; and the peasantry in the north-west and the north-east, since alien rule had resulted in its impoverishment. Although Muslim hostility to British rule was not expressed.

in substantial movements of revolt-with the conspicuous exception of the Uprising of 1857-it nevertheless manifested itself in a variety of fragmented and populist movements, like the Wahabi movement, or the agitation of Titu Mir, or the Faraizi upsurge, which convulsed society in the 19th century.

Since Muslim communities were by and large hostile to the Pax Britannica, the contributors to the Freedom Movement in Pakistan have further argued that, towards the close of the 19th century, two distinct trends were discernible within Islam in India. Several prominent Muslims, drawn from liberal elements within the landed gentry, attempted to transform the religious vision of their coreligionists with the objective of modernising the community.

In contrast to this, the religious intelligentsia of slam sought to generate an overarching solidarity between different sections of Muslim India, with the objective of undermining British rule. The Pan-Islamic movement generated by the religious intelligentsia gained substantial strength, not only among the landed, the commercial and the professional classes, but also among the artisans and the peasantry. By the second decade of the 20th century, this trend gave birth to a militant upsurge, whose leaders joined hands with Hindu nationalists in an attempt to dislodge British rule over the subcontinent. However, so Pakistani scholars believe, the non-cooperation movement, in which the Muslims made sacrifices wholly out of proportion to their demographic strength, was a chastening experience for Muslim India.

There was a genuine danger of Muslim interests being subordinated to the interests of the dominant Hindu community. Hence the bitterness in relations between Hindus and Muslims which characterized the political scene in the aftermath of the non-cooperation movement. The experience of an alliance with the Hindus during 1919-22, served as a warning to the Muslim leadership and the Muslim masses, that they would have to fashion their political destiny separately from Hindu India, if the vision of the good life, as decreed by Islam, was to be realized. The definition of a distinctive political identity stimulated a sharp debate within the Muslim intelligentsia in the late 1930s, and this debate culminated in the adoption of the demand for a separate homeland, i.e., Pakistan, by the Muslim League in 1940.

Thereafter, the vision of Pakistan was communicated to the elite no less than to the popular classes within a remarkably short span of time. Small wonder, then, so it is spelt out in the Freedom Movement in Pakistan, that when the British Government declared its decision to pull out of the sub- continent after the Second World War, it faced a distinctive Islamic nationalism which was no less robust than the nationalism of the Indian National Congress. The British were obliged to acknowledge the strength of Muslim sentiment for a separate homeland; and as a result of this, Pakistan came into existence in August 1947, The overall perspective spelt out in the Freedom Movement in Pakistan (I shall comment upon its historical validity later) provides, even today, the context within which Pakistani scholarship approaches the recent history of the subcontinent. For instance, despite his liberal (bordering on the radical) preconceptions, a scholar like Khalid B. Sayeed portrays a casual chain of events in Pakistan: The Formative Phase which does not question the frame- work sketched out above.? Nor do any of the scholarly studies which are available question the basic thesis advanced in the Freedom Movement in Pakistan. What Pakistani scholars have accomplished, however, is the detailed exposition of the trends spelt out in the official historiography. The manner in which the Muslim League won the support of the elite and popular Muslim classes, in the Punjab and in Bengal, during the 1940s, is the subject of a number of explorations. In the case of the Punjab, fascinating light has been thrown on the networks of influence, controlled by the landed gentry, or by religious leaders, which were the basis of popular support for the Muslim League. Similarly, the tension between a predominantly Hindu rural gentry (linked to the Congress) and the Muslim peasantry of Bengal enabled the League to draw into its embrace the poorer agrarian classes in that region. Equally illuminating are scholarly studies which dwell upon the 19th century, and focus attention upon subterranean movements of protests among artisans and the lowly rural classes. While none of this literature challenges the perspective of the Freedom Movement in Pakistan, very recently scholars have explored the character of popular Islam in Bengal prior to 1947; and in doing so, they have highlighted the crystallisation of a distinctive identity, which was Bengali and Islamic in equal proportions.

The growth of such a consciousness in the late 19th century, particularly among the rural classes, explains cleavages between Hindu and Muslim Bengal just as much as it also explains the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971.

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