Communalism & the growth of the Muslim League
The genesis and growth of communalism and the Muslim League from 1906 to 1947, charting the road from separate electorates to the Pakistan demand.
Defining communalism
Communalism, in the Indian context, is the ideology that Indians of the same religion share identical secular—political and economic—interests that diverge fundamentally from those of adherents of other faiths. Bipan Chandra periodised it in three stages: (1) the belief in a common religious community having common secular interests; (2) the assertion that the secular interests of Hindus and Muslims are mutually different; and (3) the extreme stage holding those interests to be mutually hostile and irreconcilable—the ideological basis of the two-nation theory.
Roots in colonial policy and socio-economic change
Communalism was not a survival of the medieval past but a modern phenomenon born of colonial conditions. The Revolt of 1857, fought by Hindus and Muslims jointly, frightened the British into a deliberate policy of divide and rule, hardened after the rise of the Congress in 1885. W.W. Hunter's The Indian Musalmans (1871) and Syed Ahmad Khan's loyalist Aligarh Movement steered Muslim elites away from the Congress; Khan's 1888 speeches at Meerut and Lucknow opposed competitive examinations and representative government as Hindu-majority devices.
The uneven spread of modern education and the relative economic backwardness of the Muslim middle class created competition for limited government jobs and professional openings, which communal leaders interpreted in religious terms. The colonial construction of a communal view of Indian history—James Mill's periodisation into 'Hindu', 'Muslim' and 'British' periods—supplied the intellectual scaffolding.
The Simla Deputation and the founding of the League
On 1 October 1906 a deputation of 35 Muslim notables led by the Aga Khan met Viceroy Lord Minto at Simla and demanded separate representation weighted beyond their numbers. Minto's encouraging reply was later described by his wife as 'nothing less than the pulling back of sixty millions of people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition'. On 30 December 1906 the All-India Muslim League was founded at Dacca under the leadership of Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk and others. Its aims were loyalty to the British, protection of Muslim political rights, and prevention of hostility towards other communities.
The demand bore fruit in the Indian Councils Act 1909 (Morley-Minto Reforms), which conceded separate electorates for Muslims—the single most consequential institutionalisation of communalism in modern Indian politics. Henceforth Muslims voted as a separate electorate for reserved seats, embedding religious identity in the constitutional structure. The principle was extended to other groups in the Government of India Act 1919 (Montagu-Chelmsford) and entrenched by the Communal Award of 1932.
