[The following text is Aditya Mukherjee’s presidential address at the 82nd session of Indian History Congress (IHC), conducted from December 28-30, 2023, at Kakatiya University, in Warangal, Telangana. Mukherjee, who was earlier with the Jawaharlal Nehru University, in his presidential address, spoke about the IHC’s role in the promotion of scientific, secular and anti-imperialist history over the past 85 years. This is the second part of a long speech. The subsequent parts will be carried in the coming issues of Janata Weekly.]

Nehru and the Idea of India

We may ask ourselves the question that if Jawaharlal Nehru was such an evil and incompetent person as the communal/colonial right makes him out to be, why did the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, choose him as his successor and not his other brilliant comrades like C. Rajagopalachari or Sardar Patel?

In a speech at the AICC meeting at Wardha on 15 June 1942 Gandhiji declared:

“…Somebody suggested that Pandit Jawaharlal and I were estranged. This is baseless…. You cannot divide water by repeatedly striking it with a stick. It is just as difficult to divide us. I have always said that not Rajaji, nor Sardar Vallabhbhai but Jawahar will be my successor…. When I am gone…he will speak my language too…. Even if this does not happen, I would at least die with this faith”.[45]

Why did Gandhiji have such tremendous faith in Jawaharlal Nehru? One can surmise at least two reasons.

First, Jawaharlal Nehru quintessentially represented and fought for all the core values of the Indian freedom struggle which have in short been called ‘The Idea of India’. These core values were in brief: 1) Sovereignty, i.e., India will be independent and self-reliant, and oppose imperialist domination globally; 2) Democracy, i.e., India will be a democratic country with adult franchise and with equal rights to all citizens, irrespective of their caste, class, language, gender, region or ethnicity; 3) Secularism, i.e., people belonging to different religious faiths will have equal rights in the country. India will not be a majoritarian Hindu state. Secularism and democracy were seen as coterminous, one could not exist without the other. The term secular-democracy was often used conjointly, just as communalism was with loyalism; 4) Pro-poor orientation. Beginning from the early nationalists like Dadabhai Naoroji whose book was titled ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India’ to Gandhiji turning the face of the country towards the poor, the Daridranarayan, to the revolutionaries, socialists and communists — all were agreed on a pro-poor orientation even if there was no consensus on socialism or communism. 5) Modern scientific outlook was to be propagated (what Nehru called the scientific temper), overcoming obscurantism and blind faith.

It must be noted that there was a consensus among the entire spectrum of the Indian national movement on these core values whatever may have been their other differences. From the early nationalists like Naoroji, Ranade and Gokhale, to Tilak and C.R. Das, to Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries, to Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel, Subhash Bose, the socialists like Acharya Narendra Dev and Jaiprakash Narain and communists like EMS Namboodiripad, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and P.C. Joshi, all agreed on the above core values of the idea of India. Only the loyalists and the communalists of all hues were opposed to them.

Not only did Jawaharlal Nehru fight for these values during the freedom struggle but he played a stellar role in implementing these ideas in the new born state after independence. Gandhiji perhaps anticipated this capacity of Nehru in choosing him as his successor. In fact, the burden of implementing these ideas fell largely on Nehru’s shoulders with the Mahatma being murdered by a Hindu communalist within six months of India gaining Independence and Sardar Patel passing away in 1950. Nehru performed this task with great élan and imagination as India’s first Prime Minister for about 17 years.

It is on Nehru’s role after Independence in implementing the five core values of the ‘Idea of India’ that I will focus on today. It is necessary to do so as each element of the Idea of India is deeply threatened today.

When we evaluate Nehru’s role in implementing the Idea of India after independence, we must remind ourselves of what economists call the ‘initial conditions’ from which he had to start, to get an idea of the gigantic task ahead of him at independence. The poet Rabindranath Tagore, shortly before his death, had graphically anticipated the condition of India at the end of British rule. He said:

“The wheels of fate will someday compel the English to give up their Indian empire. What kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth will they leave behind them.”[46]

The ‘mud and filth left behind’ was a famine-ridden country (three million perished in a man-made famine just four years before independence), where per capita income and foodgrains output was actually shrinking annually for the past three decades before independence, where average life expectancy at independence was a shocking low of about 30 years, 84 per cent of all Indians and 92 per cent women were illiterate. On top of all this, the British left the country deeply divided on religious lines, with millions dead and rendered homeless in a communal carnage that happened under colonial tutelage.[47]

It was a gigantic task indeed to lift India out of this misery following the path laid down by our freedom fighters in their imagination of independent India. It is to Nehru’s credit that he evolved a multi-pronged strategy to lift India out of this morass, which in fact became an example for numerous other countries which gained independence from colonial rule.

I will seek to outline how Nehru undertook this stupendous and in many respects historically unique task of creating a modern democratic nation state in a plural society left deeply divided through the active collusion of the colonial state; of promoting modern industrialization within the parameters of democracy in a backward and colonially structured economy; of finding the balance between growth and equity in an impoverished, famine-ridden country; of empowering the people and yet expecting them to tighten their belt for the sake of the nation as a whole; of promoting the highest level of scientific education, a field left barren by colonialism; in short, of un-structuring colonialism and bringing in rapid economic development but doing it consensually, without the use of force, keeping what has been called the “Nehruvian consensus” intact in the critical formative years of the nation. A Herculean effort was needed to achieve this complex task and Jawaharlal Nehru rose to the occasion putting everything he had into this effort, in the process leaving behind a legacy not only for the Indian people but for all the peoples of the world oppressed by colonialism who were striving to liberate themselves of their past, but in a humane and democratic manner.

The Communal Challenge

The secular vision of the Idea of India was severely threatened at the point of the very birth of the independent Indian nation state, as it is threatened today. Much can be learnt from how this threat was dealt with by our nationalist leaders. The communal challenge in my opinion being the most important challenge before our country today, I shall discuss this aspect in somewhat greater detail than the other aspects of the Idea of India that are being challenged.

The period 1946 to 1952, from the time Jawaharlal Nehru took over as the head of the Interim government till he, as Prime Minister, led independent India into its first general election, was the phase when the secular ‘Idea of India’ was tested against the most overwhelming odds. Independence was accompanied by the partition of the country and widespread religious communal violence. It was a holocaust-like situation where an estimated 500,000 were killed and millions were turned homeless (nearly 6 million refugees poured into India) in a spate of communal hatred and violence. The result was one of the largest transfers of populations in human history in a short span of just a few years. In the midst of all this, the tallest leader of the fledgling Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the nation, was felled by an assassin’s bullet, an assassin who was put up to challenge the very ‘Idea of India’ the Mahatma had lived and died for. In this atmosphere of hatred and violence, guiding India to its first democratic general election based on complete adult franchise appeared to be a nearly impossible task. But Jawaharlal Nehru took the challenge head on and with indomitable energy saw India through its worst ever crisis at its very moment of birth as a new nation. It was, in the words of an Indian historian in a recent study, his “finest hour”.[48]

A spiral of religious sectarian violence engulfed India in the run-up to Independence and Partition. It began with the Great Calcutta Killings as a result of Muslim League’s call for Direct Action in August 1946, barely a month before the Interim Government led by Nehru was set up in September by the British as a prelude to the handing over of power. The very next month, in October, large scale violence erupted in Noakhali, a remote district of Bengal with the Muslim League government that ruled the province doing little to stop it. As a reaction to the violence against Hindus in Calcutta and Noakhali, large scale violence against Muslims broke out in neighbouring Bihar, spreading like wildfire, for the first time in rural areas.

Gandhiji immediately rushed to the villages of Noakhali on 6 November 1946 to take on the most difficult task of trying to contain communal violence with a hostile Muslim League government in power in the province. At a time when perhaps one of the most important events of world history, the preparation for transfer of power from the British Empire to a free India, a transfer which was followed by colonial empires collapsing in most parts of the world, the top leader of the Indian national movement which ousted the British, spent four months, till 4 March 1947, walking on village paths and sleeping in huts in hamlets in this virtually unreachable, remote corner of India. This was the time when the complex negotiations for the transfer of power were under way! This showed the utmost importance Gandhiji placed on fighting communalism. Nehru on his part rushed to Bihar, and between 4 to 9 November 1946, along with virtually the entire top leadership of the Congress Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Maulana Azad, Acharya Kripalani, Jayaprakash Narayan, Anugraha Narain Sinha and many others toured the affected areas, determined to stop the violence immediately. “One by one, he (Nehru) brandished all the weapons in his armoury, the coercive power of the state, the prestige and ideals of the freedom struggle, the prestige and reverence for Gandhiji, his own personal prestige, and much else”[49] to bring things under control. He put his own life at stake and declared immediately on reaching Bihar:

“I will stand in the way of Hindu-Muslim riots. Members of both the communities will have to tread over my dead body before they can strike at each other”.[50]

By the 8th of November things were under control in Bihar.

Independence came with hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into East Punjab and Delhi and large-scale violence ensued in this region. On his Independence Day speech from the Ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi on 16th August 1947, Nehru made it clear that communal strife will not be tolerated and that India will be a secular state and not the mirror image of Pakistan, a Hindu state. He declared:

“The first charge of the Government will be to establish and maintain peace and tranquillity in the land and to ruthlessly suppress communal strife…. It is wrong to suggest that in this country there would be the rule of a particular religion or sect. All who owe allegiance to the flag will enjoy equal rights of citizenship, irrespective of caste and creed”.[51]

The very next day he was in Punjab and in the first few weeks after independence he was more in Punjab than in Delhi. Again, in a broadcast to the nation on the 19th of August 1947, he asserted in no uncertain terms:

“Our state is not a communal state but a democratic state in which every citizen has equal rights. The Government is determined to protect these rights”.[52]

Barely had the communal situation come under control that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. Nehru was very clear that “this assassination was not the act of just one individual or even a small group… behind him lay a widespread organization” and he made it clear that the organization he was referring to was the RSS.[53] In fact he saw it as an effort to change the very nature of the Indian state by seizing power. In his letter to the Chief Ministers on 5 February 1948 he did not mince his words:

“It would appear that a deliberate coup d’etat was planned involving the killing of several persons and the promotion of general disorder to enable the particular group concerned to seize power. The conspiracy appears to have been a fairly widespread one, spreading to some of the states”.[54]

It was a threat to the very ‘idea of India’ as a secular country and Nehru was not about to let it succeed. With the full support of his Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel, he banned the RSS and put 25,000 of its activists in jail. Even when the ban on the RSS was removed in July 1949, after it gave written assurances that henceforth it would function only as a cultural organization and have nothing to do with politics, he warned the chief ministers of the fascist nature of the RSS and the threat of their renewing their activities.[55]

Nehru’s commitment to the secular ideal and his prescient understanding of the grave nature of the threat from the communal fascist forces is evident from the manner in which he converted the first general elections of 1951–52 into a virtual referendum on what was to be the nature of the Indian state. Was it going to be a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a mirror image of ‘Muslim Pakistan’, or a secular-democratic Indian state? He made the fight against the communal political groups his central objective and campaigned relentlessly for realizing the secular vision of the Indian national movement. “He travelled nearly 40,000 kilometers and addressed an estimated thirty-five million people or one-tenth of India’s population. The result was that in a peaceful fair election held within years of the holocaust like situation and extreme arousal of communal frenzy, the communal parties, the Hindu Mahasabha, the newly formed Jana Sangh, and the Ram Rajya Parishad won between them only 10 Lok Sabha seats in a house of 489, and polled less than six per cent of the vote”.[56] It was a stunning achievement and a fitting tribute to the Indian national movement. Communalism was pushed back for decades.

Now that 75 years later we are again in a similar situation and are bewildered regarding how to combat the communal threat to the survival of secular democracy in India, let us look back and see what our tallest leaders, Gandhiji and Nehru, did in a similar situation. Their frontal attack on the communal forces and the vision they represented, treating it as the topmost priority to save the Idea of India; their standing openly and bravely with the minorities in independent India, the Muslims particularly, as they were the chief targets of the communalists; their refusal to compromise on this question for short term electoral gains to be garnered from an already communalised people, as happens today; their understanding that without secularism there could not be any democracy in India to the detriment of the entire Indian people, are some of the lessons we can learn.

There are several other lessons we can learn from Nehru who was among the first in India to evolve a complex and scientific understanding of communalism, which had to be the first step if one wished to combat it. As he put it, “The oft repeated appeal for Hindu-Muslim unity, useful as it no doubt is, seemed to me singularly inane, unless some effort was made to understand the causes of the disunity”. In a section called ‘Communalism and Reaction’ in his Autobiography written during1934–35 [57] and in several other writings and speeches which I shall cite separately, Nehru explores the issue of communalism with great complexity. I will briefly highlight some of the important generalisations he made from which we can learn even today.

Studying the rise of communalism in India, Nehru is very clear that it was a modern phenomenon, not a left over the medieval past; it did not, for instance, originate with the arrival of Islam in India. He saw communalism clearly as a product of the colonial period with active connivance of the colonial state; “the British Government … throws its sheltering wings over a useful ally”.[58] In fact he traces the origin and growth of communalism with amazing finesse anticipating what was confirmed by much scholarly work that has emerged since.[59] He traces the role of British policy “since the rising of 1857 … of preventing the Hindu and Muslim from acting together, and of playing off one community against the other”.[60] He shows how a number of factors such as the initial heavy discrimination by the British against Muslims after the 1857 uprising, seeing them as more dangerous, the lagging behind of Muslims (as compared to Hindus) in modern education, in social reform, in evolving a modern intelligentsia and a Muslim bourgeoisie and particularly lagging behind in government employment, created a fertile ground for the evolution of a certain kind of Muslim politics. A politics, much aided by the colonial government, where an elite, princely, landed section of the Muslims led by Syed Ahmad Khan, Aga Khan, etc., offered loyalty to the colonial government and opposition to the democratic urges of the emerging Indian national movement against the colonial government. In return the colonial government granted ‘favours’ to the ‘Muslims’ as a community. These seeds of communalism sown by British connivance were to grow among other communities over time. He saw that while the communalist, whether Hindu or Muslim, spoke in the name of the community, it actually did not represent the masses of any community but was backed by the vested interests, the feudal aristocracy, landlords, princes and moneylenders who feared the political changes which Indian nationalism ushered in, and supported the government.[61] In regions where different economic categories or classes belonged to different religions, the economic conflict “was given a communal colouring”.

After independence, in 1952, Nehru added the capitalists among the vested interests supporting communal formations. He said, “behind the façade of religion, vested interests, particularly the Zamindars and the capitalists, were fighting against the economic policies of the Congress”.[62] Till independence the capitalists had, by and large, aligned with the national movement and not the communal loyalists.[63] With land reforms pushed vigorously after independence by Nehru, overtime the back of the Zamindari forces was broken. As Nehru said in October 1951, “jagirdari and zamindari system must go from India….The Hindu Mahasabha, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sevak Sangh or the Jan Sangh may thrive on the funds they get from them but there is no power in the world which can perpetuate the system”.[64] Today we witness the crony capitalists performing this role of backing communal forces through funds and control over media on an infinitely larger scale.

Nehru perceptively argued that communalists had nothing to do with religion or with culture and were “singularly devoid of all ethics and morality” though “they talk bravely of past culture”. He also noted that though the communalists “call…themselves non-political” they “as a matter fact function politically and their demands are political”.[65] Only their politics was reactionary and anti-national.

Nehru had realised very early on that his hope that with the British gone communalism would disappear proved to be unfounded. In the 1930s, he had argued: “Communalism is essentially a hunt for favour from a third party — the foreign power…. Delete the foreign power and communal arguments and demands fall to the ground”.[66] As we saw above, following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the RSS was banned and around 25,000 RSS activists were put in jail. However, once the ban was lifted, roughly a year and a half later, in July 1949, and prisoners released, the RSS resumed its ideological offensive. Jawaharlal Nehru repeatedly warned against the dangerous implications of this. In his letters to the Chief Ministers of provinces, he said, “the whole mentality of the R.S.S. is a fascist mentality. Therefore, their activities have to be closely watched”.[67] He was very clear and repeatedly said that there was no space for complacency after the spectacular defeat of the communal forces in the first general election. Writing to the Presidents of the Provincial Congress Committees, he said in 1952:

“One good thing that has emerged from these elections is our straight fight and success against communalism. That success is significant and heartening. But it is by no means a complete success and we have to be wary about this”.[68]

Nehru thought that the first election taught another significant lesson that there was no percentage in compromising with communalism. A very important lesson in today’s context in India. He said:

“We have seen at last that we need not be afraid of communalism and we need not compromise with it as many Congressman did for fear of consequences. Where we fight it in a straight and honest way, we win. Where we compromise with it, we lose”.[69]

As early as the 1930s, Nehru had rejected the warning by friends that his highly critical “attitude towards communal organisations will result in antagonizing many people against” him. He said “in politics people are very careful of what they say and do not say lest they offend some group or individual and lose support” but then he was “yet to learn the ways of politicians” and “remain a silent witness” when the nation was in danger.[70] He therefore refused to compromise and outright condemned the communal organisations. An AICC resolution drafted by him in March 1952 read:

“The AICC expresses its deep gratification at the overwhelming response of the electorate” to the Congress policy of opposing communalism. “This response, however, must not lead Congressman…to think that the danger from communal tendencies is wholly over. Communal and separatist tendencies still exist …and have to be constantly watched and combated, whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or other….the AICC declares that there should be no alliance, cooperation or understanding, explicit or implicit, between the Congress and any organization which is essentially communal in character or working”.[71]

In the decades following Nehru this advice was unfortunately forgotten. In a society already communalized to a considerable extent, the logic of electoral politics led even secular parties of all hues, to compromise and resort, in varying degrees, to short cuts to popular mobilization, by appealing to or allying with parties that appealed to the existing communal consciousness rather than attempting the relatively difficult and long-term task of altering that consciousness.

Nehru led by example in combating the communal forces by both constantly critiquing communal ideology and using state power when needed to do so. He declared on Gandhiji’s birth anniversary on 2 October 1951: “no quarter would be given” to the communal forces and “as far as he was concerned, he would fight communalism till the last breath of his life both inside and if need be outside the Government”. Hearing of the communalists talk of Hindu Rashtra in Delhi and threaten the Muslims to vacate their houses for the incoming refugees and asking them to go to Pakistan, Nehru warned:

“if any person raises his hand against another person on basis of religion, all the resources at the command of the Government will be used to put him down with an iron hand”.[72]

Aware of the critical role played by the police officials and the district administration in preventing or abetting communal disturbances including riots, Nehru asked his chief ministers not to accept any excuses “and put a black mark in the record of every district officer when a communal incident takes place and to inform him of this”.[73]

Communal ideology also had to be combatted. Nehru no longer believed, as he did in the 1930s, that once the real economic issues were brought before the masses, the “communal problem will fade into the background for the masses will be far more interested in filling their hungry stomachs…”[74] He argued in October 1951, “we must put an end to both conscious and unconscious communal thought in India. There can be no compromise with that….Only then can we realise true freedom and make progress”.[75] He added, “no amount of economic policies and development projects would be of any use if the people were divided”.[76]

As India’s recent history shows, the hope that economic development or growth of economistic class struggles would by itself lead to the erosion of communalism, has been repeatedly belied. Communalism has often spread in economically developed areas and people suffering from hunger have often turned to communalism and communal parties and not necessarily class struggle.

Emphasising the critical importance of an ideological battle to challenge the communal onslaught, Nehru tells his chief ministers shortly after independence, when the RSS threat was still very strong: “Those who are impelled by a faith in a cause can seldom be crushed by superior force. They can only be defeated by higher idealism as well as a vision and a capacity to work for the cause that represents these objectives”.[77]

Nehru spoke very strongly against the spreading of hate ideology and advocated strong measures against it even if it involved curbing the freedom of the press. While he believed that “every human being has the right to express his opinion even if it is a criticism against me” and did not “like the idea of suppressing freedom of expression of newspapers, even if their views are wrong”, yet he made an exception. In a long speech delivered from the Ramlila Ground in Delhi on 23 September 1956, shortly before the second general election, Nehru talked of “the Hindu Mahasabha, Jana Sangh, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Muslim organisations which have now taken the place of the Muslim League and if it is possible for such a thing to happen, are even worse than the Muslim League” who “rake up religious emotions and incite trouble”. In this context he said:

“I have been deeply perturbed…by the way some newspapers incite violence and spread false rumours and outright lies. Therefore I have reached the conclusion that the newspapers which spread communal hatred and violence should be controlled. I am all in favour of freedom of every kind but if that freedom means rioting and inflaming the people or snatching away the others’ freedom or spreading hatred, then they should be prevented by law and dealt with strictly…. We shall not allow communal violence or hatred to be spread, whether it is the Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs or Christians who indulge in such activities…. I am going to suggest to my …Home Minister, Shri Govind Ballabh Pant…a law be passed as soon as possible because this situation cannot be tolerated any longer that the newspapers should deliberately spread lies and rumours and create enmity and make money out of all this, instead of being punished.”[78]

What a contrast between Nehru as Prime Minister taking such a stand and the current situation where the press and the visual media is playing a much worse role and the police and administration often colluding with the communal forces under the benign gaze of the state if not its active encouragement! In fact perhaps the most important factor in the survival and reassertion of the communal forces in India was the fact that the secular forces failed to undertake any sustained ideological work to combat communal ideology, nor were they able to use state power to firmly contain the communal forces. The Hindu communalists led by the RSS as well as minority Sikh and Muslim communalists continued their propaganda, including in the education system. Claiming to be only a ‘cultural’ organisation, the RSS continued spreading their divisive hate ideology, proving Nehru’s belief right that the communalists say one thing but do the opposite in practice. The divisive hate ideology was spread through propaganda in the RSS shakhas, rumours, newspapers, pamphlets and through a network of educational institutions called the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, the first of which was started in 1952 in the presence of the RSS Chief M.S. Golwalkar. (The RSS presence in this sensitive sphere has grown phenomenally in the decades after Nehru, particularly when it had access to state power such as during 1977–79, 1999–2004 and 2014 onwards, with its organization looking after education, the Vidya Bharati, in its official website claiming that in 2022–23 it had 12,065 formal schools with 31,58,658 students and 7,797 non-formal schools with 1,88, 334 students. It also claimed a reach in 92 per cent of the districts in India!)[79]

Nothing substantial was done by secular political parties to counter such harmful propaganda through either state action or sustained anti communal ideological work at the ground level. The honourable exception was the effort made in the 1960s through the NCERT to bring to our school children scientific and secular texts free from communal and colonial prejudices. The tallest of India’s historians[80] and other social scientists were persuaded to write textbooks for school children, which remained popular for decades thereafter for their outstanding quality. However, even this effort was gradually snuffed out by the growing communal forces, using state power whenever they got access to it.[81]

Ultimately, during the NDA regime led by the BJP (1999–2004), these texts were removed and replaced with another set of books. Such was the poor quality of the books and the communal bias in them that the Indian History Congress was constrained to bring out a book in 2003 called History in the New NCERT Textbooks: A Report and an Index of Errors. The report concluded: “Often the errors are apparently mere products of ignorance; but as often they stem from an anxiety to present History with a very strong chauvinistic and communal bias. The textbooks draw heavily on the kind of propaganda that the so called Sangh Parivar publications have been projecting for quite some time”.[82]

More shocking was what happened after the communal forces, particularly after 1999, acquired state power at the national level to rapidly spread communalism through the education system and other means which led to one of the worst pogroms in Indian history since independence, (Gujarat, 2002). The secular forces led by the Congress came back to power with the slogan of secularizing education, of ‘de-Talibanising’ education, and in the ten long years that they were in power from 2004 to 2014, unfortunately not enough was done on this front. The NCERT textbooks brought out during the BJP regime (1999–2004) were replaced with secular and scientific texts written by a wide range of eminent scholars from all over the country. However, no effort was made to prevent virulently communal texts such as those brought out by the RSS[83] from being continued to be taught in large number of RSS schools. Their record in being able to use state power to bring to book those complicit in the Gujarat tragedy was equally dismal.

A few more important lessons to be learnt from Nehru on the issue of communalism.

Nehru since the 1930s made a subtle distinction between minority and majority communalism. Nehru was empathetic to the minority condition and their fears when he said, “Honest communalism is fear; false communalism is reaction. To some extent this fear is justified, or is at least understandable, in a minority community. We see this fear overshadowing the communal sky in India as a whole so far as Muslims are concerned; we see it as an equally potent force in the Punjab and Sind so far as the Hindus are concerned, and in the Punjab, the Sikhs”. The colonial state he said stoked these fears and pulled the minority communalists towards loyalism.

While criticising minority communalism, Nehru felt that there was the need to allay the fears of the minority by the majority rather than exacerbate these fears. “A special responsibility does attach to the Hindus in India both because they are the majority community and because economically and educationally they are more advanced”. The founding fathers of the Indian national movement and that of the Indian National Congress since its inception had adopted this approach. The Hindu communalists then, as they do now, saw this as a policy of ‘appeasement’ of the minorities and adopted a stance which worsened matters. As Nehru put it: “The (Hindu) Mahasabha, instead of discharging that responsibility, has acted in a manner which has undoubtedly increased the communalism of the Muslims and made them distrust the Hindus all the more. The only way it has tried to meet their communalism is by its own variety of communalism”. Nehru then goes on to make the classic statement which should be the mantra of all secularists:

“One communalism does not end the other; each feeds on the other and both fatten”.[84]

In fact he also pointed out very early in the 1930s the phenomenon that while “the Hindu and the Muslim communalists attack each other in public they cooperate in the Assembly and elsewhere in helping Government to pass reactionary measures.”[85] This phenomenon has continued over the decades till today. After all the chief enemy of the communal forces is the secular forces as they question their raison d’etre while the communalism of the other helps them grow even more or “fatten”.

While understanding the ‘fears’ that help the growth of minority communalism, it did not lead Nehru to be soft towards, leave alone support, minority communalism. When he was “chided for not blaming Muslim communalists” while making a strong critique of Hindu communalism of the Hindu Sabha in a speech delivered at the Banaras Hindu University on 12 November 1933, at the invitation of the Vice Chancellor, Madan Mohan Malaviya (who incidentally was one of the early leaders of the Sabha), Nehru made a very important point: the need to critique the communalism of the audience one is addressing. He said “it would have been entirely out of place for me, speaking to a Hindu audience, to draw attention to Muslim communalists and reactionaries. It would have been preaching to the converted as the average Hindu is well aware of them. It is far more difficult to see one’s own fault than to see the failing of others”.[86] The critiquing of communalism of the other community than the one being addressed is easy and can even amount to pandering to the communalism of the audience. An important lesson even today.

Nehru, in fact, was as critical of minority communalism as of majority communalism; he believed that “there is no essential difference between the two”.[87] He had no hesitation in describing Muslim League leaders and Muslim communalists as loyalists, “definitely anti-national and political reactionaries of the worst kind”.[88] A lesson to be learnt here as there has been a tendency in the years after independence of certain secular forces to exhibit a softness towards minority communalism, or towards parties that took support of minority communalists, often on the plea that they were relatively backward or were being discriminated against by the majority community. This tendency was exhibited even by sections of the Left. This was a major factor in enabling the majority communalists to extend their influence. A heavy price was paid for ignoring the sage advice given by Jawaharlal Nehru referred to earlier, that “one communalism does not end the other; each feeds on the other and both fatten”. Softness towards minority communalism made the growth of majority communalism much easier.

Interestingly, in contrast to the Hindu communal critique of Nehru being soft on minority communalism and appeasing them, Nehru and the Indian nationalist leadership was also accused of the opposite. Somewhat in line with the colonial position, they were accused of not being sensitive to and accommodating minority/Muslim demands, such as the separate electorates, and hence pushing the country towards a bloody partition. This old view has been repeated recently, by some Eurocentric Marxists like Perry Anderson,[89] and surprisingly by an admirer and fine scholar of Nehru in many other aspects, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, whom I have referred to appreciatively above. He says, “The possibility that the fear of the minority against majoritarianism may be real doesn’t occur to Nehru”. Also, he sees the nationalist critique of minority identity politics in a “communal/national binary” as problematic and says it has “an anti-minoritarian streak … that can be termed secular majoritarianism”. He says “To pit communalism against nationalism is a Nehruvian error”. Bhattacharjee grossly misreads the ideology and the actual history of Indian national movement when he sees the nationalists as seeing only minority identity politics as ‘communal’, emerging “surreptitiously” from a “majoritarian reluctance to share power”.[90]

The tallest leaders of the Indian national movement led by Gandhiji and Nehru put their lives at stake to protect minority rights, enable the religious minorities to have equal citizenship rights in the Indian republic, but refused to do so by pandering to minority identity politics as it would stand against the whole republican idea of citizenship. It is an absolute canard to describe the Indian nationalist position as “secular majoritarianism” with “an anti-minoritarian streak (since the late 1920s)”, as Bhattacharjee does. The national movement was correct in erecting a “communal/national” binary. Communal politics by definition broke up the ‘nation’ in a multi-religious country. That is why the colonial state constantly encouraged and supported communalism of all varieties and it is a historical fact that the communal forces who did politics of religious identity, whether they be of minority or majority, allied with the colonial state and saw the Congress which spoke of a nation where religion would not determine politics as the chief enemy. Empowering politics based on religion was the colonial project and could not be that of the nationalists and ought not be that of such a fine scholar of Nehru as Bhattacharjee, or Eurocentric Marxists like Perry Anderson.

Apart from completely missing Nehru’s subtle understanding of minority fears while opposing minority communalism (discussed above), the portrayal of Nehru as ‘Majoritarian’ is a total travesty. The Hindu majoritarians would not have wished him dead if it were so. In fact a more ardent critic of majoritarian, Hindu communalism in India would be difficult to find. In 1933 he said:

“The policy of the Hindu Mahasabha…is one of cooperation with the foreign government so that, by abasing themselves before it, might get a few crumbs. This is a betrayal of the freedom struggle, denial of every vestige of nationalism, suppressive of every manly instinct in the Hindus …. Anything more degrading, reactionary, anti-national, anti-progressive and harmful than the policy of the Hindu Mahasabha is difficult to imagine”.[91]

So much for Nehru’s so called ‘secular majoritarian’ streak.

It is also to be noted that Nehru was also among the first to emphasize that majority communalism easily “masquerades under a nationalist cloak”.[92] Minority communalism on the other hand “grew and fed itself …on separatism”.[93] He said “It must be remembered that the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a closer resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of the minority…. ‘Hindu Nationalism’…is but another name for communalism”.[94] Nehru, therefore, categorically reiterates that Hindu communal organisations may call themselves nationalist but are in reality “anti-national and reactionary”.[95]

The current type of masculine, aggressive, alpha-male nationalism that is being paraded around by the Hindutva forces was squarely characterised by Nehru and the Indian national movement as ‘anti national’. It is important to remind ourselves of this as there has been a gradual ceding of the nationalist space by the secular forces which has contributed a great deal to enabling communalists, who were pro-colonial and thereby played an anti-national role when the Indian people were struggling for freedom, to successfully masquerade today as the real nationalists and garner the tremendous mass appeal that the nationalist sentiment commands. The very acceptance of the self-description of the majority communalists as ‘Hindu Nationalists’ was a grave error. During the entire national movement for independence, they were called communalists, not Hindu nationalists, as it was so obviously a contradiction in terms; by restricting nation to the Hindus, the others were left out, thus dividing the nation itself. But the phrase gained currency among foreign journalists, commentators and academics writing for foreign audiences unfamiliar with the meaning of the term ‘communalism’ as used in the Indian context and is now unfortunately routinely used by Indian analysts and journalists.

The secular forces have made it easier for the communalists to occupy the nationalist space by themselves neglecting, critiquing and even ridiculing, the national liberation struggle and its tallest leaders. The condemning of Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel, Tilak, Aurobindo as communal or semi-communal, with a ‘majoritarian’ streak, the branding of the national movement as bourgeois, and its leaders as agents of the bourgeoise if not of imperialism itself, or as upper caste leaders fighting for their prescriptive groups rather than representing the people of the country, etc., was done by secular ideologues, including from the Left, such as most recently by Perry Anderson.[96] The need, on the other hand, was to first own up the ancestry and the great legacy of the Indian national movement, one of the most powerful national liberation struggles in the world, and then, standing on its shoulder, build upon it by making advances, going beyond the breakthroughs made by that struggle. Its rejection simply made it easy for the communalists to appropriate its legacy. Witness the attempt to appropriate Gandhi, Patel, Tilak, Aurobindo, Bhagat Singh, Subhash Bose, etc., by the majoritarian communal forces while each one of them were deeply secular. Nehru was spared this ignominy, perhaps as he was seen as too sharp a critic of communalism to be appropriated.

Finally, a major contribution of Nehru was to repeatedly warn of the fascist nature of communalism. As Bipan Chandra wrote: “Nehru was…the first to see communalism as a form of fascism. Before 1947, he saw the close resemblance between the post-1937 Muslim League and fascism both in terms of methods, techniques of hatred and violence, organization and style of leadership and in terms of language and ideology. After 1947, he began to apply this understanding to Hindu and Sikh communalism, especially to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)”.[97] In December 1947, a few months before the assassination of the Mahatma, Nehru as Prime Minister warned the Chief Ministers: “We have a great deal of evidence to show the RSS is an organization which is in the nature of a private army and which is definitely proceeding on the strictest Nazi lines, even following the technique of organization”.[98] Even after the ban on the RSS following Gandhiji’s murder was lifted, in 1949, following a written assurance that they would not engage in politics and remain only a cultural organization, Nehru warned the Chief Ministers: “Reports reach us that the RSS is again resuming some of its activities…. But it must always be remembered that the whole mentality of the RSS is a fascist mentality. Therefore, their activities have to be closely watched”.[99] He warned:

“Communalism bears a striking resemblance to the various forms of fascism that we have seen in other counties. It is in fact the Indian version of fascism…. It plays upon the basest instincts of man.”[100]

On another occasion he said, “Communalism was diametrically opposed to democracy and usually relied on Nazi and Fascist methods”.[101] In a public speech in Delhi on 2 October 1951, while warning against the various aspects of communalism, he said, “communalism….I call it by another name—fascism”, by following this path “ultimately the result would be similar to what happened to Hitler and fascism in Europe. I do not want India to follow that terrible path”.[102]

Despite all these early warnings what we are witnessing is the playing out of the fascist threat in India. Having acquired governmental power with an absolute majority, the Hindu communalists find that India is still not a Hindu state or Hindu Rashtra. The effort therefore now is to change the character of the Indian state from a secular state to a Hindu state. This involves not only acquiring governmental power, but also changing the character of all the state apparatuses and changing the mindset of the people, of civil society at large. All of them had to be communalized. This in turn involved control over the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, media, the education system and containment of free speech and civil liberties. It also involved the withdrawal of the civil rights of the religious minorities and shutting out their voices as well as of those who tried to speak up for them. All this could not be achieved without use of coercion and force and even violence. The regime therefore began to take on a fascist character, or as Prabhat Patnaik put it “Fascism arrives in camouflage”.[103]

In a very recent article for The Guardian, Jason Stanley, philosopher at Yale University and the author of the celebrated work, How Fascism Works,[104] makes a scathing critique of the current situation in India. A brief extract is in order:

“The hallmarks of fascism are everywhere. School textbooks are being rewritten to reinforce the fake history behind BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda. Topics like the theory of evolution and the periodic table have been replaced with traditional Hindu theories, and academics have been silenced for calling out the BJP’s election malpractices. The government has weaponized education in the manner typical of fascist regimes …. There are other clear indications of India’s slide towards fascism. On press freedom, India ranks 161st out of 180 countries, sandwiched between Venezuela (at 159) and Russia (at 164)…. India’s minorities face lynchings and the bulldozing of their homes, among other abuses. Ten percent of the world’s Muslims live in India, over 200 million in all; as Gregory Stanton, the founder and director of Genocide Watch, has warned in a US congressional briefing, we are seeing in India the beginning of what would be by far the largest genocide in history”.[105]

The bulldozer appears to have become the frightening imagery as well as the reality of punishing the minorities. The most recent ‘bulldozing’ of the minorities was done right next to the capital, Delhi, in August 2023, following a deliberately provoked conflict in the Mewat region.[106] The Punjab and Haryana High Court was constrained to take suo moto action intervening against the reported targeted bulldozing of properties of the Muslim minority saying the issue arises “whether the buildings belonging to a particular community are being brought down under the guise of law and order problem and an exercise of ethnic cleansing is being conducted by the state”.[107]

Faced with a similar communal upheaval, Nehru had some advice for the way ahead from which we may learn. A winning of an election, arrest of a few and banning of certain organisations may be a first step ahead but was not going to be enough. Addressing lakhs of people shortly after the murder of the Mahatma by a communalist, he said: “The Government have arrested some persons and put them in jails and have declared two or three organisations unlawful. If by these actions …it is thought that the whole thing is over then people are mistaken. We have to uproot this despicable communalism. It must be obliterated from this land so that it may not take roots again. This poison has … permeated the land”.[108]

This poison had to be fought, as we saw above, not only with “superior force” but a “higher idealism”. The ‘higher idealism’ Nehru and the leaders of his time offered was a humane, inclusive nationalism and socialism.

Notes

45. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 76, pp. 389–90. The imagery used by Gandhiji for futile attempts to divide is very applicable to the current effort by the communal forces to constantly try to denigrate our freedom struggle by trying to point out differences between our national heroes like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose, Bhagat Singh, etc.

46. Quoted in Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, India Since Independence, Penguin, 2008, p. 23.

47. For an analysis of the colonial situation before independence and the structural break made after independence under Nehru’s guidance, see Aditya Mukherjee, ‘Return of the Colonial in Indian Economic History: The Last Phase of Colonialism in India,’ Presidential Address, 68th session of the Indian History Congress, (Modern India), 2007 reproduced as Chapter 1 in Aditya Mukherjee, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India, Delhi, 2022.

48. See Mridula Mukherjee, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru’s Finest Hour: The Struggle for a Secular India’, Studies in People’s History, Vol. 1 (2), 2014, and Mridula Mukherjee, “Communal Threat and Secular Resistance: From Noakhali to Gujarat”, Presidential Address (Modern India), Indian History Congress, Malda, February 2011, for a detailed discussion on how the Indian nationalists led by Nehru and Gandhiji met the communal challenge in this period. This section relies heavily on the above two works. See also, Sucheta Mahajan, Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India, New Delhi, 2000 and Rakesh Batabyal, Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, New Delhi, 2005.

49. Mridula Mukherjee, “Jawaharlal Nehru’s Finest Hour”….

50. Speech at Biharsharif, 4 November 1946, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (hereafter SWJN), 2nd Series, Vol. 1, New Delhi, 1984, p. 57.

51. SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol. 4, p. 2.

52. SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol. 4, p. 9.

53. Jawaharlal Nehru: Letters to Chief Ministers (hereafter LCM,) 5 Feb. 1948, New Delhi, 1985, Vol. 1, p. 56.

54. Ibid., p. 57

55. LCM, 20 July 1949 and 1 Aug. 1949,Vol. 1, pp. 412–13, 428.

56. Mridula Mukherjee, see f.n. 49 above.

57. Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, New Delhi, 1980 (first published 1936), pp. 458–72. The quotation in the previous sentence is from p. 60.

58. Statement to the Press, 5 January 1934, SWJN, 1st Series, Vol. 6, 1974, p. 182.

59. For example, W.C. Smith, Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis, Victor Gollancz, London, 1946, Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Delhi, 1975 and a classic, comprehensive analytical work on the subject by Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, Vikas, New Delhi, 1984 (Har-Anand, New Delhi, 3rd revised edition, 2008).

60. Autobiography, p. 460.

61. Autobiography, pp. 460–67.

62. The Statesman, 17 January 1952, quoted in N.L. Gupta, ed., Nehru on Communalism, Sampradayikta Virodhi Committee, New Delhi, p. 239. Emphasis mine.

63. See Aditya Mukherjee, Imperialism, Nationalism and the Making of the Indian Capitalist Class: 1920-1947, New Delhi, 2002, new edition in Penguin, forthcoming. See also, Aditya Mukherjee, “Imperialism, nationalism and the Nation State” ch. 6. in Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India, for a gradual shift in the capitalist class position after independence.

64. Nehru’s speech in Delhi on 2 October 1951, SWJN, 2nd series, Vol. 16, pt. II, pp. 115–16.

65. SWJN, 1st Series, Vol. 6, p. 183.

66. Jawaharlal Nehru, Recent Writings and Essays, Allahabad, 1937 extract in N.L. Gupta, ed., Nehru and Communalism, New Delhi, 1965, p. 26.

67. LCM, 1 August 1949, Vol. 1, p. 428, emphasis mine. See Mridula Mukherjee, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru’s Finest Hour? The Struggle for a Secular India’, Studies in People’s History, Vol. 1 (2), 2014 and Aditya Mukherjee, ‘Inclusive Democracy and People’s Empowerment: The Legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru’, EPW, Vol. 50, No. 16, 18 April 2015.

68. 8 February 1952, SWJN, 1995,Vol. 17, 2nd series, p. 133.

69. Ibid..

70. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Hindu and Muslim Communalism”, The Tribune, 30 November 1933, SWJN, Vol. 6, Series 1, p. 171.

71. SWJN, 1995, Vol. 17, 2nd Series, p. 144.

72. Nehru’s speech on 2 October 1951, ‘Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi’, SWJN, 1994, Vol. 16, Pt. II, pp. 102–19 and as reported in the Statesman, 3 October 1951, quoted in N.L. Gupta, “Nehru and Communalism”, pp. 224–28.

73. LCM, Vol. II, p. 213.

74. N.L. Gupta,“Nehru and Communalism”, pp. 29–30.

75. The Statesman, 19 October 1951, quoted in Ibid., p. 232.

76. The Statesman, 24 November 1951, quoted in Ibid., p. 234.

77. 4 June 1949, LCM, Vol. 1, p. 372.

78. SWJN, 2005, Vol. 35, 2nd Series, pp. 3–24, particularly pp. 12, 16–17 and 23.

79. https://vidyabharti.net/status-work-session-2022-23-glance

Vidya Bharati official website accessed on 10 September 2023 at 10.20 pm.

80. Reputed historians like R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and Arjun Dev wrote textbooks for children from class VI to XII.

81. See for a description of this process, Aditya Mukherjee, et.al., RSS School Texts …. and Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee, “Weaponising History: The Hindutva Communal Project”, The Wire, 10 April 2023, https://m.thewire.in/article/history/weaponising-history-the-hindu-communal-project

82. Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal and Aditya Mukherjee, History in the New NCERT Textbooks: A Report and Index of Errors, Approved and published by the Executive Committee of the Indian History Congress, Kolkata, 2003.

83. Aditya Mukherjee, et al., RSS School Texts ….

84. Nehru’s article “Hindu and Muslim Communalism”, The Tribune, 30 November 1933, SWJN, 1974,Vol. 6, 1st series, pp. 164-165, 168-169. All the quotations in the last three paras are from here.

85. Autobiography, p. 468.

86. SWJN, Vol. 6, 1st series, pp. 162–63.

87. SWJN, Vol. 6, 1st series, p. 165.

88. Ibid., p. 163.

89. See my critique of Perry Anderson in chapter 13, “Challenges to the Social Sciences in the Twenty-First Century: Perspectives from the Global South” in Aditya Mukherjee, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India.

90. All quotations are from the chapter titled ‘The Citizen and the Secular State Business’ in Bhattacharjee, Nehru and the Spirit of India, particularly pp. 86–112, see also pp. 90–91, 96, and 110. For a detailed analysis of Bhattacharjee’s book and the similarities with Perry Anderson in a false understanding of the Indian national movement and Nehru, see my review of his book in The Wire https://m.thewire.in/article/books/a-relook-at-jawaharlal-nehru

91. This he said at the Banaras Hindu University in the presence of Madan Mohan Malaviya, a leading figure of the Hindu Mahasabha, on 12 November 1933. No pandering to the audience. SWJN,1974, Vol. VI, pp. 157–58.

92. Autobiography, p. 467.

93. The Statesman, 19 October 1951, quoted in N.L. Gupta, Nehru and Communalism, p. 229.

94. SWJN, 1st series, Vol. 6, pp. 165–66.

95. Ibid., p. 162.

96. Anderson, The Indian Ideology. See also, Chs. 6, 8 and 13 in Aditya Mukherjee, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India for other such critiques of Indian nationalism.

97. Writings of Bipan Chandra, p. 130. See also, Mridula Mukherjee, “Jawaharlal Nehru’s Finest Hour? The Struggle for a Secular India”, Studies in People’s History, Vol.1 (2), 2014.

98. LCM, 7 December 1947, Vol. 1, p. 10.

99. LCM, 1 August 1949, Vol. 1, p. 428.

100. The Statesman, 19 October 1951, quoted in Nehru and Communalism, p. 231. See also, S. Gopal. Mainstream, 12 November 1988 and Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vol. 1, Delhi, 1975

101. Wardha, 13 march 1948, SWJN, 1987, 2nd series, Vol. 5, p. 75.

102. SWJN, 2nd Series, Vol. 16, Pt. II, p.118.

103. Prabhat Patnaik, The Telegraph Online, 15 August 2022, http://www.telegraphindia.com/india/fascism-arrives-in-camouflage-says-prabhat patnaik/cid/1880205 accessed on 1 December 2023 at 9.14 pm and Prabhat Patnaik, “The Fascism of our Times”, Social Scientist, Vol. 21, Nos. 3/4, March-April 1993. See also, Chaitanya Krishna, ed., Fascism in India: Faces Fangs and Facts, Manak, New Delhi, 2003.

104. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, New York, 2018.

105. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/08/biden-india-modi-g20- autocrat The Guardian, 8 September 2023, Accessed on 8 September 2023, 10.05 pm. See also https://scroll.in/article/1055943/arundhati-roy-the-dismantling-of-democracy-in-india-will-affect-the-whole-world where Arundhati Roy, like Stanley is reminding how democracy in India is a public good for the whole world which cannot be allowed to wither away.

106. The Telegraph, 6 August 2023.

107. The Indian Express, The Hindu and The Times of India, 8 August 2023.

https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/punjab-haryana-high-court-asks-on-nuh demolition-drive-whether-buildings-belonging-to-particular-community-brought down-as-exercise-of-ethnic-cleansing-234623,

accessed on 9 August 2023, 7.50 pm.

108. Jullunder, 24 February 1948, SWJN, 1987, 2nd Series, Vol. 5, p. 65.

(Courtesy: The Wire.)