PAKISTAN & MODERN SOUTH ASIA

WEEK 8 – CHALLENGE AND RUPTURE

You will cut the bond decreed by Providence you are

that powerful, are you?
Your arrogance is such that you think you can destroy
and build us at your will, do you?
- Rabindranath Tagore
OVERVIEW OF IMAGINING INDIA
• The rise of Nationalism in sub- continent (transforming
desperate people into a collective body)
• Role of language in propagation of Nationalism.
• The origin of Indian National Congress in 1885 by W.C. Bonnerji(
to put the growing nationalist consciousness into a political
frame, for national unity).
• Two types of Nationalism – Moderate Nationalism (aristocrats
who aspire to become superior just like the ruling class – British)
& Subaltern Nationalism ( by peasant class, adhering to their
religion).
 KEY POINTS OF CHAPTER
• The first partition of Bengal
• Boycott and Swadeshi
• The Surat Split
• Radical Trends
• Muslim Politics
• Reforms and After
THE FIRST PARTITION OF BENGAL
What led to the partition of Bengal?
• Devastating Famine of Orissa in 1866 had made British
administration aware of the unwieldy size of Bengal. (division of
Bengal was being considered by British for quite a while).
• In 1897, Lushai Hills got transferred to Assam.
• Ongoing problem of Sambalpur, an Oriya speaking region in a
Hindi speaking province.
PARTITION OF BENGAL - 1905
• Bengal was divided into two
parts , East Bengal (Muslim
majority area) and West
Bengal (Hindu majority area)
by Lord Curzon on 16th
October 1905.
PARTITION OF BENGAL
• W.B Oldham, the commissioner of Chittagong division pointed
out the benefits of a new province that would unite the most
important part of Mohammedan population of Eastern India
and reduce the political threat Hindu minority in undivided
Bengal. This was justified on the basis on the census and surveys
by Risley and other British administrator.
• As per the surveys, the Muslims were in majority but they had
poor representation in education and profession.
• Statistics : 32.2% Muslim population in Bengal, and only 14.4%
enrolled in schools and 4% in colleges.
PARTITION OF BENGAL
• In reality, the partition of Bengal was culmination of series of
measures Lord Curzon had taken such as Calcutta
Municipal Act in 1899 and the Indian Universities Act of 1904
to curb the political aspirations of Congress and the
educated Indian members.
• And to weaken the Hindu Muslim unity.
INDIAN’S RESPONSE TO PARTITION –
SWADESHI MOVEMENT & BOYCOTT
• Government's disregard for the
petitions sent by Congress
leaders, eroded respect for
government authorities in the
eyes of the Congress.
• Famines and epidemics of
1890s had shaken the faith of
elites in British administration.
• Rising prices on account of
bad harvests had made life
difficult for the professional
middle class.
• Upon the announcement of the partition, a boycott of British
goods and institutions was accepted by Congress leaders as a
mode of struggle against partition.
• On appeal of Rabindranath Tagore and Ramendrasundar
Trivedi, Raksha Bandhan was observed – exchange of colored
wristlets as a symbol of brotherhood on the day of partition of
Bengal.
• Students, mostly Hindus from both parts of Bengal and some
Muslims of western Bengal took lead in spreading the boycott.
• Gopalkrishna Gokhale paid tribute to Bengal leaders in his
sentiments, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow”.
• Boycott of British textiles was the driving force of the boycott
movement as clothing articulated colonial power and authority
in the 19th century.
• To encourage large scale production and use of goods made in
India, the Tagore family took the lead.
• It was for the first the “Moderate” leaders were pushed to
background and constructive swadeshi was characterized by
Atmashakti ( self-reliance).
• Arya Samaj were also active in promoting self reliance in Punjab
along with Bande Matram movement of Madras.
• Thus, it is concluded that Swadeshi movement represented the
first systematic campaign in colonial India to enlist the masses
within the elite structure and organization of institutional
nationalism.
WAS SWADESHI MOVEMENT A
SUCCESS?
• A movement that started by insisting on the ‘Unity and
Brotherhood’ of Hindus and Muslims ended up worsening
relations between the two communities.
• It failed to contain the differences among leaders and breach
the socio-cultural and economic gap between the elite and
the masses.
• Increased use of religious symbolism, coercion and social
sanction alienated the masses, both Hindus and Muslims, of
rural Bengal.
• There was a turn to extremism and terrorism or militant
nationalism.
• From 1908-09, open samitis disappeared and ‘terroristic secret
societies’ took their place.
• There was a limited impact of the boycott which proved that the
movement was not taken up in different parts with equal zeal.
• Important figures like Tagore withdrew from the movement when
the tensions between Hindus and Muslims increased.
THE SURAT SPLIT
• Surat Split (1907) refers to the splitting of the Indian National
Congress into 'Moderates' and 'Extremists' after a violent clash
at the session. The divide between the moderates and the
radicals became very prominent when there was an open rift
between the two factions of the congress.
• During the session, Tilak and Arubindo Ghose challenged the
selection of Rashbehari Ghosh as the president of Congress.
They were supported by delegates from Bengal, Maharashtra,
Punjab and the Central Provinces.
• Radical leader Tilak was not even allowed to speak in the session and
the radicals created an uproar on this.
• As a result, the radicals were suspended from the congress for 9 years
for indiscipline. This became known as the ‘Historical Surat Split’.
• The moderate convention continued to meet till 1914 with declining
membership and enthusiasm, in what was called a ‘rump Congress’ by
one of it’s members.
• The Extremists were subdued by the arrest of many of it’s leaders.
RADICAL TRENDS
• Extremists had intimate links with cultural and religious
developments of late-nineteenth century that sought to
reinvigorate both Hinduism and it’s adherents.
• The youth of Bengal and those in other parts of the country
were impatient for rapid and striking results which could be
obtained through political extremism.
• The Extremist considered themselves to be the representative
of a ‘higher stage in Indian nationalism.
• They wanted to challenge the British authority in India and
setup parallel institutions outside the purview of the Raj.
• Real regeneration, they argued, was not possible without freedom.

• Bipin Pal offered a stringent critique of the ‘old patriotism’ in his ‘New
India’. He called it ‘abstract patriotism’ and stated that only radical
social and religious reactions have ‘cured’ them from this patriotism.

• Amales Tripathi succently summarizes the ideological bases of

Extremism.(Read the paragraph)
 MORE “EXTREMISM”…
• In late 1906, members of the Anushilan Samiti (Calcutta) made an
abortive attempt to kill the unpopular Lieutenant Governor of East
Bengal.
• Hemchandra Qanungo shot Mr Allen, a former District Magistrate in
Dacca in the back on 23 December was shot in the back.
• Their was a repoted burglary in the house of a wealthy man in Sibpur,
Howrah, on 3 April 1908, in which the owner was forced to surrender
money and ornaments of the value of 400 Euros.
• On 11 April 1908, a bomb exploded in the house of the mayor of
Chandernagore without injuring anyone.
• On the 30th of the same month, Kshudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki
threw a bomb into a carriage in Muzaffarpur in Bihar in an attempt to
kill the Presidency Magistrate Kingsford.
MUSLIM POLITICS
At the start of the 20th century Hindu-Muslim
relations worsened primarily because of the
following reasons:

• The
demographic peculiarity of eastern
Bengal.

• Thecolonial state’s active propaganda

that partition would be beneficial for
Muslims.
DEVELOPMENT OF A SENSE OF
COMMUNITY IN MUSLIMS OF INDIA:
• In 1881, the Muslims constituted around 19.7 % of India’s
population but they were by no means a homogenous
community.
• Europeans represented Islam as ‘static’ and ‘dogmatic’ and
associated Muslims with ‘backwardness’.
• The repeated evocation of the presence and influence of
pan-Islamism by colonial officers.
• But they were still far from a collective ‘Muslim Identity’
centered solely on Islam.
• The reforms by the colonial state deployed the diffused sense of
‘community’ in distinct ways in their efforts to give cohesion to a
Muslim collective.
• Unlike the Hindus, the Muslims did not have an intermediary group
of professionals who could bring the elite and the subordinate
people together.
• Lack of formal education was an important factor behind the
extremely low representation of Muslims in education and
government service. Only 5.4 % Muslims attended college in 1875
and only 1.5 % of them knew English. The notion of backwardness,
therefore, found easy acceptance among the elite who started
taking measures to deal with it.
• The measures to ‘Islamize’ Muslim culture made the lower groups
socially mobile and nurtured the growth of an Islamic sentiment.
• Muslim Efforts:
• The Anjuman-i-Islami (Mohammedan Association), the first Muslim organization
in Bengal founded in 1855.
• Abdul Latif Khan’s Mohammedan Literary Society (1863).
• Syed Amir Ali founded the Mohammedan Association in 1877.
• Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s exclusive stress on educational work.

• However, these were segregated efforts.

• The fuzzy sense of identity on religious lines was strengthened
by popular cultural activities sponsored by anjumans and
neighbourhood akharas, festival committees and several other
local bodies in north India.
• A flourishing literature in Urdu sustained by the regional press
further cemented the ‘religiously informed cultural identity’ in
the United Provinces and in Punjab.
• Religio-communal tensions were heightened by conflicts over
Hindu processions in the vicinity of mosques in 1870s and
1880s,cow protection in the 1890s and the Hindi–Urdu
controversy at the turn of the century.
• Congress’s support to Bharatendu Harishchandra during the
Hindi-Urdu controversy made it unpopular among the Muslims.
• The colonial government was quick to recognize the
advantage of winning ‘Muslim’ support in the face of the
growing nationalist struggle.
• A resolution of July 1885.
• All this culminated in the partition of Bengal.
MUSLIM LEAGUE:
• The Shimla Deputation of 1906 to the Viceroy Lord Minto,
projected Muslims as a separate community with distinct
political interests and asked for ‘minority rights’’.
• All India Muslim League—a separate political party for the
Muslims—was established in December 1906 in Dacca.
• It was to signify the ‘next stage of political life’ for the Muslims.
• The league expanded between 1907-1909.
MORLEY-MINTO REFORMS:
• The Indian Councils Act of 1909, better known as the Morley–Minto
Reforms, came as a concession after the intense repression leashed
on extremists and revolutionary terrorists.
• The Councils Act of 1909 provided for limited self-government by
increasing the number of Indians, initially allowed by the Councils
Act of 1861, who could be elected to the lower legislative councils.
• Indian members of councils at all levels were given some power to
discuss budgets, move resolutions and make amendments to
government-sponsored resolutions.
• The reforms, it is evident, were extremely limited in nature; they did
not satisfy any group of Indians.
• Although they testified to the success of the Muslim League in
gaining official recognition for the status of Muslims as an important
minority.
REVERSAL OF PARTITION OF BENGAL:
• The ‘fickleness’ of the British position on India’s Muslims found
expression in the government’s decision to annul the first
partition and reunite Bengal in 1911.
• The capital was moved from Calcutta to Delhi.
• The annulment of the partition brought the Moderates back
into prominence and baffled the Muslim League.
RIFT BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND BRITISH:
• Muslims were upset with Britain’s growing distance from Turkey
and its rapport with Russia, Turkey’s arch enemy.
• The Congress and the Muslim League met in Bombay in 1915
and in Lucknow in 1916. In Lucknow, the two decided to
demand elected majorities in all councils, an expansion of the
franchise and a separate electorate for Muslims.
• Mohammad Ali Jinnah played a major role in these
negotiations, and was instrumental, along with Tilak, in pulling
off the ‘Lucknow Pact’.
• This joint front of Indians in a situation of war forced the
government to announce fresh reforms.
THANK YOU