CHAPTERS FROM HISTORY: Politicization of Muslims: 1938-39
By Prof. Sharif al Mujahid
IN perspective, Lucknow (1937) witnessed the successful culmination of Jinnah’s untiring efforts to unite Muslims on one political platform; it also represented the first breakthrough in his attempts to mobilize the Muslims. Lucknow electrified and enthused the Muslim masses as never before: it also produced immediate results. Within three months, some 90 new branches were set up and about 100,000 new members enrolled in the United Provinces alone, and within two months some 40 branches were set up in the Punjab.
Within the next three years, the strength and composition of delegates to its annual sessions, its membership figures and the results of the by-elections indicated League’s spectacular growth under Jinnah’s astute leadership. So did the failure of the Congress’s Muslim mass contact campaign to pick up, despite the strenuous efforts of the Congress-oriented Jamiat and the Ahrars. The Congress could claim only (a maximum of) 100,000 Muslims (3.2 per cent) among its 3.2 million members in January 1938.
The League’s post-Lucknow (1937) growth was, however, not confined to, nor confirmed merely by, assembly or party membership figures, or attendance at its annual sessions and Provincial Conferences. It was also reflected, more importantly, in the extent and quantum of political mobilization at the ground level. And this was largely effected by a new kind of Muslim activism at the grass-root level which gave a new shape and structure and dimension to Muslim politicization.
In this venture, the League fortuitously found an ally in the Khaksar movement, which had spearheaded Muslim activism since the Shahidganj dispute (1935). Its founder, Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi (1888-1963), first established contact with Jinnah in 1935, initiating a process which gradually bound together the League and the Khaksars in reinforcing each other’s identity, in complementing each other, with the Khaksars primarily concentrating on religious and social affairs and the League on political matters, and in sharing common concerns such as the promotion of Muslim solidarity and welfare, and the quest for power.
Peshawar had become one of Khaksars’ nerve-centres, and at the League’s bidding they extended their activities into the Red Shirts’ strongholds, thus indirectly helping the League’s cause. Clad in khaki, armed with belchas, marching in military formation, and observing a disciplinary code religiously as no other volunteer group in India did, the Khaksars held salutation ceremonies at the League’s sessions and rallies, and their presence in strength gave a new, complementary dimension to them. Oft and anon, they clashed with the Ahrars who were utilized by the Congress in furthering its mass contact campaign, and the militant Khaksar presence at the League’s rallies kept at bay the Congress-sponsored trouble-makers. In August 1939, the Khaksars descended upon Lucknow in strength to “resolve” the Shia-Sunni trouble, allegedly fuelled by the Congress to divide the Muslims and rule over them. Here they skirmished with the Congress-Ahrar volunteers, and were challenged by the police and military authorities. The League, on its part, “projected the Khaksar intervention as a heroic struggle”, and rose to their defence.
The Congress which had consistently accused the League of enlisting support in the name of religion was, however, not averse to using religious or religious-oriented groups such as the Jamiat and the Ahrars, in its election and mass contact campaigns. Through them it had, asserted Nawab Ismail Khan (1886-1958), “done its best to exploit the religious sentiments of the ignorant masses in every conceivable manner”. In the circumstances, therefore, the Khaksars who could talk in religious, and deal in militant, terms proved to be the antidote to both the pro-Congress professional ulema and the aggressive Ahrars.
Meantime, through its new-forged links with the Khaksar movement, the League began to discover and develop “important channels of communication with the Muslim masses”. While the Khaksars were drawn into the political arena under the League’s influence, its close links with them facilitated its entry into the arena of grass-root activism. This was in part helped by the proliferation of the Mahasabha and Arya Samaj oriented organizations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hanuman Vyayam Mandal, Mahabir Dal, and the projected Hindu National Militias (or Ram Sena), besides the Mahasabha and Arya Samaj themselves, which, employed among others, “evocative military idiom”, glorified, “selectively and provocatively, aspects of Hindu tradition and mythology”, and indulged “in songs, and publishing leaflets and pictures, calculated to annoy the Mohammedans”.
This provoked the League to setup, although with some misgivings, the Muslim League National Guards (MLNG) at the provincial level, and soon enough it made spectacular gains on its own. With branches in 33 districts in the UP, and a strength of 10,000 in 1938, the MLNG had recruited 15,000 volunteers by mid-1939, and 18,500 by the year’s end. By late 1939 the MLNG, with its own cadres, emerged “as a strong and combative political force”, making accessible to the League the new channels of propaganda and communication down to the grass-root level, and building, in the process, the League as an “organization comparable to that of the Congress”, both at the hustings and on the streets. This development was crucial in the politicization of Muslims during 1938-39.
