Pranab Mukherjee’s Aligarh Detour May Explain His Pointless Discourse in Nagpur

I have fond childhood memories of Nagpur –  of oranges, street-side chinch bulai jungal jalebi, the Ambazari Lake, the Seminary Hills, Bishop Cotton School... The list is endless. I recoil anytime Nagpur gets less than favourable press.

Pranab Mukherjee got Nagpur a great deal of press earlier this month. The focus, however, was not on Nagpur. It was on the Hindu Right, Mukherjee himself and on Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the father of the communal Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). A year ago, Mukherjee did the favours to another city: Aligarh. At the Aligarh Muslim University, he had delivered the commemoration address on the 200th birth anniversary celebrations of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, another towering son of India.

Some commentators have timely dwelled on Hedgewar and the resurgent influence of his thoughts and activism. Fewer, however, have simultaneously cast light on Syed Ahmed Khan, even though Khan, like Hedgewar, has had an outsized influence on the course of India’s modern history. It is just as timely to briefly cast a light on Syed Ahmed Khan’s influence, not because his thoughts have resurfaced with any force (it has not) but because it has laid an enduring foundation for doubting the nationalism of Muslims in India.

One Country, Two Nations

Khan was a government employee during the 1857 freedom struggle. He rose to prominence soon after 1857 for his publication, Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind. The publication was translated into English as Causes of the Indian Revolt, by Sir Auckland Colvin, the Lt. Governor of North West Frontier Province and Oudh (Colvin, incidentally, founded Lucknow’s Colvin Taluqdars’ College, another school of which I have fond memories). In it (as translated by Colvin), Khan wrote:

“Most men, I believe, agree in thinking that it is highly conducive to the welfare and prosperity of Government – indeed is essential to its stability – that the people should have a voice in its councils. It is from the voice of the people only that Government can learn whether its projects are likely to be well received. The voice of the people can alone check errors in the bud and warn us of dangers before they burst upon and destroy us. A needle may dam the gushing rivulet: an elephant must turn aside from the swollen torrent. This voice, however, can never be heard, and this security never acquired, unless the people are allowed a share in the consultations of Government. The men who have ruled India should never have forgotten that they were here in the position of foreigners—that they differed from its natives in religion, in customs, in habits of life and of thought.”

He further noted:

“…I maintain that the maintenance of friendly relations between the governors and the governed is far more necessary than between individuals: private friendships only affect a few, friendship and good feeling between a Government and its subjects affect a nation. As in private friendships two persons are united by the bond of a common friendship, so also should a Government and its people be knit together in like manner... Government has not cultivated the friendship of its people, as was its duty to do.”

In the pamphlet, Khan also argued against British efforts at imparting Christian education aimed at religious conversion of the poor and the depressed among the Indians. Further, he criticised British revenue policies on land previously regarded as non-taxable.
His bold and forceful pamphlet was hotly debated in the British parliament before it and Khan came to be accorded respect. It paved the way, among other things, for opening India’s civil services and the legislative council to select Indians and to government’s distancing itself from efforts at religious conversion.

Syed Ahmed Khan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In the pamphlet, Khan noted that there were “no grounds for supposing that the Mohammedans had for a long time been conspiring or plotting” against the British.” He added: “The English Government does not interfere with the Mohammedans in the practice of their religion. For this sole reason it is impossible that the idea of religious crusade should have been entertained.” His observations have been interpreted to mean that he cast the Hindus as mutineers.

Khan was an ardent advocate for education and founded many institutions, including the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, later named the Aligarh Muslim University. He was knighted in 1989, a year before Hedgewar was born.

That same year, Sir Khan delivered a fateful speech at Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. In that speech, he advanced a theory that continues to have a profound effect on how Muslims in India are viewed by the Hindu Right. He proclaimed that Muslims were a separate nation within India. One country, two nations, he said. One, a nation of Islam, and the other, a nation of all others, collectively called Hindus. This was the first time that such a view was publicly voiced – that the interests of India’s Muslims were separate from those of the Hindus. An excerpt from his 1888 speech is worth quoting:

“You know, gentlemen, that from a long time, our friends, the Bengalis have shown very warm feelings on political matters. Three years ago they founded a very big assembly, with its sittings in various places, and they have given it the name “National Congress.” We and our nation gave no thought to the matter…Our Mohammedan nation has hitherto sat silent…. I do not think the Bengali politics useful for my brother Musalmans…We ought to unite with who we can unite.”

Khan then went on to talk about the British rulers:

“No Mohammedan can say that the English are not “people of the Book.” [The British were Christians]. No Mohammedan can deny this: that God has said that no people of other religions can be friends of Mohammedans except the Christians...At this time our nation is in bad state as regards education and wealth, but God has given us the light of religion, and the Koran is present for our guidance, which has ordained them and us to be friends. Now God has made them rulers over us. Therefore, we should cultivate friendship with them, and should adopt that method by which their rule may remain permanent and firm in India and may not pass into the hands of the Bengalis. ..We do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the people of the Book…Therefore, the method we ought to adopt is this: that we should hold ourselves aloof from the political uproar and reflect on our condition, that we are behind them in education and are deficient in wealth.”

In the next 20 years, the British government became sympathetic to greater participation of native people in the governance of India. In 1906, eighty five rich and influential Muslims met in Dacca, capital of present day Bangladesh, and formed their first political organisation – the Muslim League. Their meeting was chaired by Mushtaq Hussain, a noble from Uttar Pradesh. His opening remarks were:

“Gentlemen, that which has drawn us here today is not a need which has only now been felt by us. When the National Congress was founded in India, the need had even then been felt, and the late Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, to whose foresight and statesmanship Musalmans should always be grateful, had made great endeavors to impress upon Musalmans the belief that their safety and prosperity lay in their keeping aloof from the Congress.”

He went on to say that in order to protect and advance the political rights of the Musalmans, it was necessary to form “our own separate” political organisation. He said:

“The Musalmans are only a fifth in number as compared with the total population of the country, and it is manifest that if at any remote period, the British Government ceases to exist in India, then the rule of India will pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four times as large as ourselves… And to prevent the realisation of such aspirations, the Musalmans cannot find better and surer means than to congregate under the banner of Great Britain, and to devote their lives and prosperity in its protection.”

The take-away from this survey is that Muslim political stirrings in modern day India began on the premise that democracy would result in a dominating minority becoming a dominated minority. And as such, continued British rule was preferable.

Separation of Church and State

It is argued that in the Muslim view of the world, the separation of spiritual and temporal is not as in modern-day liberal democracies, where the state and the church are neatly separated. This was most eloquently expressed by the great Muslim poet, scholar, and political leader, Mohammad Iqbal. In a speech delivered to the Muslim League in 1930, he said:

“Europe uncritically accepted the duality of spirit and matter…This mistaken separation of spiritual and temporal has largely influenced European religious and political thought. It has resulted in the total exclusion of Christianity from the life of European States. The result is a set of mutually ill-adjusted states dominated by interests that are not human, but national.”

He went on to ask:

“Is religion a private affair?...The question becomes of special importance in India where the Muslims happen to be a minority... The nature of the Prophet’s religious experience…is …creative of a social order. Its…civic significance cannot be belittled merely because [the] origin is revelation. The religious idea of Islam…is organically related to the social order which it has created. Therefore the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principles of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim.”

In other words, Islam was a separate nation by itself, and the spiritual and the temporal was one single whole. Iqbal went on to say:

“The Muslims demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified… The Hindu thinks that separate electorates are contrary to the spirit of true nationalism because he understands the word “nation” to mean a kind of universal amalgamation in which no communal entity ought to retain its private individuality. Such a state of things, however, does not exist. India is a land of racial and religious variety…We are 70 million, and far more homogenous than any other people in India. Indeed, the Muslims of India are the only Indian people who can fitly be described as a nation in the modern sense of the word… In the words of the Quran, “Hold fast to yourself; no one who erreth can hurt you, provided you are well-guided.”

Thus got nurtured the idea of one country, two nations.

The Voice of Reason

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of the most respected leaders of the Indian National Congress and perhaps its longest-serving president, in his book, India Wins Freedom, says that there were three phases in the development of the Muslim League, the political organisation that founded Pakistan.

The first phase was of being loyal to the British. The second was to derive from the British special benefits for the Muslims following political concessions extracted by the Congress through mass political agitations. The prime example of special benefits was the idea of “separate electorates.” In 1909, soon after it was formed, the Muslim League persuaded the British to reserve seats in various levels of government for the Muslims. Only Muslims could occupy those seats and only Muslims could elect members to it. The seats reserved were in excess of their relative proportion in the population. Thus, 25% of the seats were reserved in the Imperial Executive Council of the Viceroy of India. It was a glowing example of the British policy of divide and rule.

Partition took place on communal lines. Photo of partition refugees. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The third phase was the phase led by Quaid-a-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. According to the Maulana, Jinnah reasoned that if independent India were a democracy, as it would be, the Muslims would be a minority. Thus, representation in proportion to relative population would not work. He, therefore, sought to negotiate for equal representation of Muslims at various levels of government. Thus, if the executive council of the Viceroy – which was the highest executive body in pre-independence India – comprised 14 members, it must (according to Jinnah) have at least seven Muslims. Furthermore, he argued that the Muslim League alone should have the authority to nominate Muslim members to the council, and that the Congress could not nominate any Muslim. The Congress, however, always thought of itself as a national party representing all peoples and faiths. The idea that Muslims alone could nominate Muslims was unacceptable to it. Moreover, its then president was Maulana Azad, himself a staunch Muslim.

One need not go here into the politics of the creation of Pakistan and the partition of India. It is a separate subject altogether. Suffice to note here that what followed was the partition of India. The partition was one of the largest and most rapid migrations in human history – an estimated 14.5 million people migrated within four years: about 7.3 million moved from each country to the other. It has been estimated that about 2.2 million people were killed, gone missing or unaccounted for during the partition. It took place on communal lines. Muslim majority parts of India in the North-West and the North-East collectively became Pakistan. At that time, India’s population was about 387 million people. Of these, about 57 million citizens became part of Pakistan. About 45 million Muslims, however, chose to remain in India. Even after more than seven decades, the scars of partition remain sore and continue to torment the Muslims of India, both politically and socially.

In orchestrating the partition of India with help from the British, the Muslim League’s single-minded concern was that in a democracy, the Muslims would be a minority and, therefore, condemned to perpetual domination by the Hindus, politically and otherwise. Ironically, partition worsened the lot of the Muslims that remained in India. It made them numerically even less and, therefore, politically weaker.

Equally important, the idea that Muslims were a nation unto themselves – supranational, even when within the country of India – have made India’s Muslims a perpetual and often mistaken target of Hindu nationalists.

Former president Pranab Mukherjee with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at an RSS event on June 7, 2018. Credit: PTI

Bumbling from Aligarh to Nagpur

Some commentators have read much in Pranab Mukherjee’s Nagpur visit. There he had called Hedgewar a “great son of India.” At AMU, a year earlier, he had called Sir Syed Ahmed Khan “a truly visionary leader of India,” and “a voice of reason” who was “far ahead of his times.” Each of Khan and Hedgewar were towering sons of India in their own right. Many may, however, debate the appropriateness of those laudatory descriptions. After all, each preferred British servitude to freedom if freedom meant a secular India. Yet, all would agree that not one of the laudatory phrases that Mukerjee employed to eulogise Khan or Hedgewar could be applied to Mukherjee himself.

The visit to Nagpur was likely Mukherjee’s bumbling way to be even-handed between the Hindu and Muslim Right. Why he chose to do so on their terms is for him to answer. In any event, his bumbling is probably of a piece with his insignificant persona. He never had a mass following, the times when he was India’s first citizen will never be written up in glorious terms, and it is doubtful that his laborious speech changed the hearts of those sitting before him in Nagpur. What matters, however, is us bumbling in the vicious world views espoused by some of the misguided inheritors of the legacy of Syed Ahmed and Hedgewar.

On June 7, when Mukherjee made his Nagpur appearance, could he have used the occasion to rouse his listeners to join him in commemorating another event: one that occurred 125 years ago on June 7, 1893 at a remote station in South Africa when a short, thin and struggling Indian lawyer had been contemptuously thrown out of a train for riding first class on a first-class ticket?

Jaipat Singh Jain practices law in New York.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.