FREEDOM MOVEMENT
Historian Tanika Sarkar on RSS's Role during Struggle for Freedom
Advani's rath yatras promised us a recurrent fare of spectacles. The last yatra built up a violent movement that did irreparable damage to Indian secularism and democracy, and also to Hinduism as we have always known it. If that had, indeed, been a tragedy, was this one a farce, a pathetic repetition of something that paid dividends earlier, but has now gone stale? What was, in any case, the purpose behind it, apart from a gesture towards the fiftieth year of freedom.
The immediate context is, obviously, a new bid to power. The first yatra, and the pogroms that followed in its wake, had brought the BJP within an inch of state power. The Indian electorate refused to fully or finally endorse a fascistic future.
Now, with another stint of political instability in the offing, it needs to turning its image of reckless violence and rabid majoritarianism into its opposite. It seeks to attain the looks of a calm, serene, statesmanlike, responsible guardian. It must wipe out the memories of its own past, eschew VHP demands for another round of violence over the Mathura Mosque. When a new image becomes necessary, what better order of historical memory to appropriate for itself at this moment than the gigantic mass movements of the freedom struggles?
Can the Sangh Parivar legitimately lay claims to those memories, or is the rath yatra yet another confidence trick? The RSS was founded in 1925, the Hindu Mahasabha a bit earlier. V.D. Savarkar, the ideological inspiration behind all forms of the Hindu Right, was certainly a heroic revolutionary terrorist.
Savarkar entirely broke with his past as a nationalist terrorist once he wrote his seminal tract on Hindutva and started a new ideological formation. Savarkar's career as a Hindutva ideologic began only after his life as nationalist revolutionary was over. There was no point of contact between the two phases.
The RSS was founded at Nagpur in 1925 with a handful of Brahmin youths, and for a long time, its social composition was exclusively upper caste and urban middle class - a characteristic that remains largely true even today. This was; however, a time went peasants, tribals, workers and the middle classes had come together in mass struggles against the colonial state. The narrow and privileged social base of the RSS was in marked contrast to that of the Congress as well as the fledgling Communist groups.
It was in even more of a striking contrast to the strategies of ideologues and leaders like Ambedkar or Periyar who were mobilising Dalits against social injustice. The RSS protested neither against social inequalities, nor against colonial rule. When India witnessed some of the largest mass movements in the history of the world. The RSS stayed away from every one of them. It took no part in the urban-centred demonstrations against the Simon Commission. It was nowhere on the scene during Civil Disobedience or Quit India Movements, nor did it form a part of the demonstrations against the Indian National Army Trials or the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in the mid-forties. The history of revolutionary terrorism passed it by entirely.
The kinship that it seeks with Bhagat Singh is quite fragrantly fictitious, for it did not demand his release even though this became an extremely live issue before his execution. Bhagat Singh had openly proclaimed himself to be a socialist and an atheist, and as such, must have been anathema to the RSS agenda. Hedgewar. The first sarsanghchalak of the Sangh, did, in his individual capacity, participate in civil disobedience (but) he underlined his decision that the RSS was in no way involved in his act of participation. Alone of all the major political forces and organizations, the Sangh has a track record that is entirely untainted by a single act of protest against colonialism.
The shakhas, throughout the turbulent years of anti-colonial movements, taught about "Muslim tyranny' to their cadres. They were silent about colonial rule Much has been made of the fact that the CPI stayed away from the Quit India Movement in 1942. So did the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha actually remained in the ministries, along with the Muslim League, even after the Congress quit them. At a time when the colonial authorities were paranoid about young Indians engaging in any form of physical training with arms, they put no obstacles in the way of the physical training programmes of the RSS. The Hindu Mahasabha got official support and financial help from senior bureaucrats when it started a military academy for Hindu youths. Throughout the colonial era, no member of the Hindu Right had to face a single act of repression from the colonial state, it’s alone a ban, which was the regular fare of the Congress and the CPI. The leniency was richly deserved, for the RSS did engage in violence many times against Muslims but it never raised a finger against the colonial masters. Such unbroken loyalty was unparalleled.
But anti-Muslim riots were frequent, adding to the spiral of hatred and vindictiveness. The RSS did its bit in promoting divisiveness between the two major religious communities, the tragic outcome of which was the Partition. The Muslim League was not alone in proclaiming the two-nation theory: the Hindu Mahasabha was equally an adherent. Having been an active partner in that history of divisiveness, it is strange that today the Sangh combine claims to represent national unity and integrity.
To the processes of nation making, whether through mass struggles, or through debates over democratic rights, the Hindu Right forces had precisely nothing to contribute. The historical record is clear and unambiguous. The rath yatra is sleight of hand that through sheer spectacular myth making aspires to turn this history into its exact opposite.
(Source: The Hindustan Times, 18 July, 1997)
The Father of the 'Other' Nation: A Review of Mitchell's Documentary on Jinnah
Christopher Mitchell's documentary, Mr Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan is an attempt to understand and 'uncomfortable father of the nation' who has been stereotyped in India as the main villain of the Partition. For once a discourse shorn of jingoism but plainspeak laced with nostalgia about this other Gujarati who also dominated the freedom struggle.
Mr Jinnah tries to set the historical and personal records straight by taking recourse to recollections by his friends, acquaintances, first ever interview of his daughter Dina Wadia and some rare footage which Christopher and the producer Sophia Swire, chanced upon the Pakistan National Archives.
There is, too, an undercurrent of guilt when the director says that "we've tried not to be prisoners of any school of history but attempted to free ourselves (read Britain) of many charges of partiality." Mr. Jinnah scores here. The film successfully highlights the man under the Savile Row suit - his fads, his foibles, his secular credentials, his liberal outlook as well as his weaker moments. Many little known facets of Jinnah's persona come to light be it the way he cried at the death of his wife Ratti or his special love for baked custard.
How many of us know that Jinnah was an accomplished actor'. When it comes to politics, however, Mr. Jinnah succeeds but partially. Christopher in his ... zeal to establish Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims has glossed over the warts of history which could have put Quaid-e-Azam and his politics in ambivalent light. Afterall, the story of Jinnah, a pucca westernised boxwallah with Dadabhai Nauroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale as his political mentors, and his subsequent transformation as the prime votary of a separate Muslim state was not as simply accomplished as (the film) makes it out to be. There were too many forces at work. By ignoring the most contentious of them, jumping through dates, events and personalities he seems to have arrived at a quick conclusion.
One understands the limitation of the medium and lack of sources, what surprises, however, is the way Christopher has ignored Indians who were active during that period and also knew Jinnah well important Muslim leaders like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Abdul Kalam Azad
The polarisation along communal lines had begun in the 1920s. During this time Jinnah was a Muslim Leaguer having joined the party in 1913, seven years after its foundation. Much has been made out of this affiliation but the same Jinnah had persuaded the League and the Congress in 1916 to agree upon a common scheme of reforms. His constant refrain was that he has been a "staunch Congressman and had no love for sectarian cries." Even during the 1920s, the period of Jinnah's marginalisation, he alone had the guts to talks openly against Gandhiji's Non-Cooperation Movement for the simple reason that the country was not prepared for it.
Again during 1927 it was Jinnah who at the cost of breakup within the League gave up the demand for separate electorates in favour of joint electorates with reserved seats for minorities. Listen to Jinnah: "We are all sons of this land, we have to live together. Believe me, there is no progress for India until the Musalmans and Hindus are united." Congress even accepted his offer in the Madras session that year but later under Hindu Mahasabha's pressure backtracked. A dejected Jinnah was back with breakaway League leader Mohamad Shafi calling this betrayal a final "parting of ways "and came up with his famous 14 points.
Back in London after this humiliating experience he resumed his practice with an office in King's Bench Walk and a house with an eight acre garden in Hempstead. Living with sister Fatima and daughter Dina, at times dealing in real estate, Jinnah was doing well for himself . Rehmat Ali's paper 'Now or Never' espousing the cause of Pakistan (acronym for Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan) came in 1933. According to one of the interviewees in the film when this was brought to Jinnah's notice he outrightly rejected the idea. This was a bad period for him politically.
Come '30s and Jinnah was slowly bouncing back, more aggressive than ever before. It was also the period when Jinnah's claim as the sole spokesman came under heavy fire. If in Punjab he had to face the ire of Sikandar Hayat Khan of the Unionist Party, in Bengal he met his match in Fazlul Haq of Krishak Samaj Party. In the United Provinces Congress enjoyed the support of Deoband Ulama and Ahrar Party. Christopher has cleverly blacked out these dissensions within the community. The film directly comes to the Lahore session of the League (1940) where the Pakistan resolution was passed more as a desperate exercise to gain a populist image within the community than anything else.
The arguments over the sequence of events can go on but the Pakistan magic seems to have really worked. This can be gauged from the fact that between 1937 and 1943 in the 60 byelections to the Muslim constituencies in various assemblies 47 were won by the League and only four by the Congress. 4.5 million or 75% of the Muslim vote at that time was polled by them. League's star was on the rise, so much so that in the central and provincial elections of 1945-46 the party won 460 out of 533 Muslim seats.
Jinnah became obstinate for Pakistan only after the failure of Cabinet Mission Plan. As mentioned earlier the film stands out while dealing with Jinnah the man. It was widely believed that Dina had fallen out with her father after marrying Neville Wadia, a Parsi industrialist ... But in a rare emotional outpouring she narrates how they patched up when she him after an attempt was made on his life. On the marital from Jinnah was never lucky. His first wife Emibhai died while he was still studying in England while the second Ruttie, a Parsi girls, many years youngers to him, died at the age of 29. Though not a happy marriage, Christopher has got an eyewitness saying how Jinnah cried for the first and the last time at her death.
