Shahabuddin's Comments on Prof. Rajeev Bhargava's Article on History, Nation and Community

I have been enlightened by Prof. Rajeev Bhargava's article on History, Nation and Community in the Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January, 2000 is essentially an attempt to explain what went wrong with our Freedom Movement so that Independence was burdened with Partition. In his own words:

"Political parties failed the two communities ... The failure of political imagination was due first to the conception of nation and community shared by both parties and that assumed the necessity of thick commonalty for nationhood. Second, because this conception was influenced by and laden with specific emotions. Finally, because even political expediency was affected by the mechanism of wish fulfillment".

He argues that. failure to achieve the objective of living within a single unified state is to be explained not just by economic and religious causes but by a lack. Of :political imagination shaped as it was by distinct conceptions of nation and community, as by differing emotions.

Broadly I endorse his analysis with the difference that I see an inbuilt asymmetry in the pre-independence discourse: the Congress was torn between its genuine and legitimate aspirations to speak for the multi-religious India and the majoritarian pressures on it which identified the Nation with the Hindu community, which, in the fullness of time, would assimilate other religions, within the framework of a democratic nation-state. I wonder if this projection was cynical or hypocritical but the apprehensions of cultural submergence and religious assimilation generated in the Muslim mind, right from the beginning of the century, in stages redefined their notion of the term 'community', stage by stage, into an entity approximating a 'nation'. That is what led finally to the tragedy of the Partition which merely internationalised the communal question, without solving it.

With hindsight, it appears to be strange that the leadership of the two communities, whether speaking from the Congress or the League platform, did not see this inevitable direction of the drift and make timely course corrections in terms of reciprocal, convincing and acceptable, safeguards for Hindu minorities in Muslim majority provinces and Muslim minorities in Hindu- majority provinces and a federal structure which would vest residual powers in the provinces rather than in the Centre: I may add that both Hindu and Muslim leaders appear to have been driven by 'self-interest' oblivious of the end- game which would develop a dynamics of its own like a Greek Tragedy. To be fair, however, one must concede that while the Hindu leadership was denying the Muslim community their legitimate due, the Muslim leadership was asking for more than their due. One wishes that the Congress leaders - people like Gandhi, Nehru and Bose - kept above the Hindu-Muslim (League-Mahasabha) discourse so that they could act as a just and impartial arbitrator.

The Parting of Ways -Jinnah's Historic Letter to Gandhi, 1920

thank you for your kind suggestion offering me I to take my share 'in the new life that has opened up before the country'. If by 'new life' you mean your methods and your programme, I am afraid I cannot accept them; for I am fully convinced that it must lead to disaster. But the actual new life that has opened up before the country is that we are faced with a government that pays no heed to the grievances, feelings and sentiments of the people; that our own countrymen are divided; the Moderate Party is still going wrong; that your methods have already caused split and division in almost every institution that you have approached hitherto, and in the public life of the country not only amongst Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Hindus and Muslims and Muslims and even between fathers and sons. People generally are desperate all over the country and your extreme programme has for the moment struck the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means complete disorganisation and chaos. What the consequences of this may be, I shudder to contemplate; but I, for one, am convinced that the present policy of the government is the primary cause of it all and unless that cause is removed, the effects must continue. I have no voice or power to remove the cause; but at the same time I do not wish my countrymen to be dragged to the brink of a precipice in order to be shattered. The only way for the Nationalists is to unite and work for a programme which is universally acceptable for the early attainment of complete responsible government. Such a programme cannot be dictated by any single individual, but must have the approval and support of all the prominent Nationalist leaders in the country; and to achieve this end I am sure my colleagues and myself shall continue to work.