Excerpts: Contesting Colonialism and Separatism: Muslims of

Muzaffarpur since 1857
April 29, 2014 by Zafar Anjum Excerpts: Contesting Colonialism and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur
since 1857 
Excerpts: Contesting Colonialism
and Separatis...
The following has been excerpted from
Mohammad Sajjad's Contesting Colonialism
and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur since
1857  published by&nbs...

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The following has been excerpted from Mohammad Sajjad’s Contesting Colonialism
and Separatism: Muslims of Muzaffarpur since 1857  published by Primus (Ratnasagar): Delhi
2014, pp. xviii+265.
This monographic account on the Muslim communities of Muzaffarpur in north Bihar explores its history
(1857-2012),  the socio-political behaviour, economic conditions and negotiation for share in power-
structure, in three segments: (a) political evolution of the locality during the colonial era explaining the
sub-regional socio-political setting; (b) their  participation  in  the  Congress-led movements till the
1930s,  (and tells largely untold story of Muslim resistance to League’s communal politics of territorial
separatism despite their grievances against and alienation from the Congress during 1937–47); and (c)
the post-independence experiences and political behaviour (their anxieties, problems and prospects) in 
continuity with the one in colonial era characterized more by inclusive politics of communitarian
collaborations and less by conflicts and exclusivism.
This is a mix of history from a local standpoint and also a local history, describing the broader events of
the Indian politics in the context of the local political system as it evolved, and the participation as well as
location of the Muslim communities in those events and processes. Inter-community cooperation and
harmony prevailed over the divisive politics even during the most vitiated atmosphere of 1946–7.
It analyzes Muslim adjustment in the post-partition days, their engagement with the evolving secular
democracy, seeking educational upliftment, and political empowerment through language politics (rather
than insisting on the politics of religious identity) while not confining their politics only to sectional issues
or groups. It also looks at the growing assertion of subordinated Muslim communities, and delineates
fault-lines within the leaderships of the Muslim communities.  
This study attempts to explore the social features, political behaviour and economic conditions of the
Muslims and the way the Muslims of this locality were negotiating for their share in the power-structure.
Also, what are or were their anxieties, problems and prospects in this regard? The monograph attempts
to enquire as to whether or not the localities mirror the regional and all-India setting. The regional and
local studies would enable not only a ‘greater approximation to reality but also a more searching
analysis’.
Major historical developments in the colonial period put forward challenges to the people of this area,
and they, in particular, the Muslims, responded to these challenges in a conspicuous manner. For
example, compared to the upsurge of 1857 in Meerut, the people of the district of Muzaffarpur combined
the popular upsurge with those of sepoys (like Waris Ali, the policeman then posted at Baruraj) in a more
significant manner. Peasantry participated in it much more visibly. The movement for modern education
started by Muslims like Syed Imdad Ali (d. August 1886), the then Sadr Amin (subordinate Judge) and a
local zamindar, Syed Md. Taqi, incorporated many non-Muslims in a much bigger way, compared to the
Aligarh Movement of Syed Ahmad (1817–98). In fact, of the three vice presidents of the Bihar Scientific
Society, two were non-Muslims, viz., Shiv Prasanna Singh, the Hardi zamindar, and Bhupati Roy.
Moreover, its chain of residential Anglo-Vernacular schools for modern education spread in rural areas
too. The Urdu fortnightly, Akhbar-ul-Akhyar, of the Scientific Society was edited by Ajodhya Parasad
Bahaar. In 1871 the Scientific Society established Collegiate School, and in 1899, a College, which
endures as one of the premier colleges of Bihar, now named after Langat Singh (1850-1912).
The three biggest mass movements of the anti-colonial struggle (the Non-Cooperation Movement, the
Civil Disobedience movement, 1930-34, and the Quit India movement, 1942), said to have brought,
‘mass politics, indigenous languages, popular participants, counter symbols and counter authority to play
an unprecedented role’, witnessed large participation of Muslims. It, therefore, calls into question the
findings of a considerable number of historical works that have contended a relative aloofness among
Muslims in the Civil Disobedience and the Quit India movements. Nationalist leaders like the Aijazi
brothers (Maghfur and Manzur Aijazis), Shafi Daudi (1875–1949), and many more lawyers, along with
other members of the modern-educated middle class, theological scholars (aligned in one way or the
other with the Deoband inspired Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind, Imarat-e-Shariah, etc.), vernacular intelligentsia, and
other public intellectuals, contested British colonialism as well as the Muslim League’s territorial
separatism, regardless of their inconsistent and at times uneasy relationship with the Congress.
While the Hindi-Urdu conflict polarized the two communities (the Hindus and the Muslims) in colonial
north India, the Muslims of Muzaffarpur, responded to this challenge rather creatively. Hafiz Rahmatullah
Ahqar (d. 1927), in 1914, founded the Urdu Sahityik Sabha, to promote good relations between the two
linguistic communities. He organized poetic assemblies, lectures, discussions, etc., that witnessed
participation by the intelligentsia of both Urdu and Hindi-speaking communities. The first official
utterance against Urdu was made at Muzaffarpur, by George Campbell (1871-4), the then Lieutenant
Governor of Bengal, while addressing a public gathering, on the foundation of the College/Collegiate (7
November 1871) of the Bihar Scientific Society.
It was Muzaffarpur, from where the movement for Khari Boli/Devanagari Hindi was started by Ayodhya
Prasad Khatri (1857-1905) of Muzaffarpur, who published his Khari Boli ka Padya in 1887, giving rise to
pro-Hindi/anti-Urdu movements like the Nagri Pracharini Sabha (Benares 1893) and Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan (Allahabad 1910). The provincial branch of the Sammelan was founded by, among many
others, Lateef Husain ‘Natwar’ and Pir Muhammad Munis (1882–1949); and Muzaffarpur was probably
the only place which was the venue of the annual session of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, being presided
over by a Muslim, Pir Muhammad Munis, in 1919. His regular writing in Hindi, for Ganesh Shankar
Vidyarthi’s Hindi daily Pratap(Kanpur), nationalized the cause of the suffering peasants of Champaran
and ‘enlightened’ Mahatma Gandhi to make a historic intervention. On the other hand, Ram Prasad
Khosla ‘Naashaad’, a professor of History, in the GBB (L.S.) College of Muzaffarpur, was the President
of the Urdu literary society, ‘Bazm-e-Sukhan’, of the college, during the 1920s; and Awadh Bihari Singh
was a famous professor of Persian and Urdu.
From the 1920s onwards, like the rest of India, this area experienced communal riots. The Arya
Samajists, Cow protectors backed by landed elites and trading communities, Sanatan Dharm Sabhas,
Shudhi-Sangathan, and Tableegh-Tanzeem movements brought about communal riots and therefore
political polarizations in electoral domains too. Leaders like Lal Lajpat Rai addressed public meetings
contributing to such polarizations, and at many places the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha
overlapped. It resulted into distinct marginalization of Muslims from the structures and processes of
power. Muzaffarpur, however, remained relatively free from such violence in 1946–7. The Benibad riots
(September 1946) was probably the only one that broke out during those tumultuous days. Contrary to
general perception among academics (including the study by Stephen Henningham), the Muslims of
Tirhut/ Muzaffarpur did not stay aloof from the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930–4. Their
participation in it was significant, despite the fact that by this time, Bhumihar-Rajput domination as well
as factionalism within the Congress had also become sharper. In the early decades of the twentieth
century, Muslims played significant roles in building up and developing the local unit of the Congress
(which gradually also worked towards creating misgivings). This monograph therefore contests both the
‘primordialist’ as well as the ‘instrumentalist’ theories of Muslim separatism. Instead, this study offers us
alternative reasons (rather than mere communal separatism of the Muslim League) for India’s Partition
in 1947, besides telling a story of Muslim resistance to communal separatist politics. The Muslims of
Muzaffarpur resisted the communal separatist politics of the Muslim League during 1940–7. Maghfur
Aijazi (1900–66) formed All India Jamhoor Muslim League (1940–7) to contest the Muslim League’s territorial
separatism. With such mobilizations, this locality remained largely free from the communal frenzy in
1946–7, as a result of which no large-scale migration of Muslims to the new nation, ‘Khuda Ki Basti  or the
God’s own land’, took place. These legacies had their own impact on the inter-community relations and
also on the politics in India past independence. By no means does this monograph intend to suggest
that there was no space for divisive politics among the Muslim communities of this part of India. It only
attempts at telling an untold story of Muslim resistance to the League’s separatist politics, and that the
cultural and political trend of communal harmony was a more visible and consistent historical
phenomenon of this locality.
In 1937, under provincial autonomy, the Muslim Independent Party (MIP) being the second largest, had
formed its ministry (April-July 1937), as the single largest party, the Congress had refused to form
demanding some assurances. The MIP with its agrarian concerns as well religio-cultural concerns of
Muslims was overall a pro-Congress and anti-Muslim League political formation. The Congress refused
to go for coalition with them, and after forming its ministry replacing MIP in July 1937, it failed to control
some communal riots, failed to punish the rioters, many of whom were local Congressmen; many cases
of anti-Muslim discriminations in education, employment, etc., came about. This alienated the Muslims
from the Congress; the Muslim League made a rapid rise after 1938. Concurrently, the majoritarian
communal chauvinist organization, RSS also made its rapid rise in Muzaffarpur as also in rest of Bihar.
In the 1946 elections, the Congress refused to extend financial and political help to those pro Congress
Muslim organizations which were resisting the League’s separatist enterprise.
It is probably one of the few places in independent India where the Muslim political leadership displayed
a progressive outlook, rather than mobilizing people along emotive/religious, or exclusionary lines. Yet, it
is quite intriguing that their share in political power has undergone a noticeable decline. Does it place
some challenges before India’s secular, plural democracy? Is it that the contemporary situation of
Muslim minorities in India have something to do with the way they engage(d) themselves with the
colonial state and the nationalist movement? It is this question which has probably given birth to this
monograph. In short, reasons for the contemporary problems of this region of South Asia are attempted/
sought to be understood by studying its colonial past.
In this story of Muslims’ adjustment in the post-partition days, and their engagement with the pluralist
society and evolving secular democracy the book has attempted to understand the impact of the kind of
politics pursued by the Muslim communities in colonial period. The extension of this study to the post-
independence period is an effort to seek answer to a question as to why could not this locality throw up
[Muslim] political leaders of some stature, despite having thrown such leaders like Waris Ali in the
movement of 1857, Imdad Ali for the movement for modern education in post-1857, Shafi Daudi and the
Aijazis during the National Movement. The Aijazis provided leadership to the ‘baffled’ community through
inclusive politics, and sought educational uplift and political empowerment of the Muslims through
language politics (rather than insisting on the politics of religious identity) while not confining the politics
only to sectional issues/groups in a secular democracy which was evolving in the new nation. However
unlike the landed Congress politicians of Bhumihar-Rajput, Brahman, Kayastha the Muslim counterparts
didn’t develop a linear network of patronage nor did they open up schools, colleges which could have
served many purposes-providing jobs to the fellow castes/communities in those educational institutions
to be taken over by the provincial government besides the same employees could have acted as
electoral-political resource persons and ‘poll-booth managers’ as well. In the 1990s, the social base of
the power elites started changing. Thus, growing assertion of Ajlaf   (historically subordinated
communitiies of Muslims) emerged to challenge the hegemony of the Ashraf (upper caste Muslims).
Consequently, Laloo regime came which was failing to check the growth of communalism per se,
notwithstanding the fact that Laloo-Rabri regime’s greatest achievement was supposed to be firm
handling of communal riots, which fetched them very substantial, almost exclusive, Muslim votes. This
was called secularism. But this regime had willful neglect of governance (in fact active patronage to
gangsters), and also of even the basic developmental works like roads, public health, education, etc.,
besides deep involvement in corruption. These regressive developments posed an important question
before the Indian polity and also before the political individuals/groups who claimed to be speaking for
the Muslims. The questions they confronted were:
(i) What is the meaning of secularism? Do the Muslims (like any other citizen) need something more,
besides protection of their life and property during communal riots or during any other form of the failure
of law and order? (ii) While demanding prevention of communal riots how could they struggle for their
genuine or concrete empowerment?
The last chapter (11) is an account of social change in a village of the district which has been added to
put the (micro) history of Muslim engagement with politics in colonial and sovereign India in the
perspective of, and in keeping with, the overall argument in the narrative running through the
monograph.
This account further affirms the point that throughout the narrative ordinary Muslims of this village in
hinterlands were equally opposed to the two-nation theory; and the communal divisive politics was
weaker than the politics of communitarian cooperation and harmony. Besides, various strands along
caste-based and maslak-based differentiations are also emerging in this village quite perceptibly, as it is
evolving in the rest of South Asia, and even beyond, particularly among the diaspora of the South Asian
Muslims. Besides, emergence of a Muslim criminal with active social support in the name of political
empowerment has also been brought out in the narrative, demonstrating how grass root democracy and
devolution of power to the local people and the desire of a religious minority relegated to the margins of
the political process indeed extract a strange price—particularly in the State of Bihar! This ominous
phenomenon may or may not be specific to this particular village, but, ‘the marriage of local power . . .
with formal democracy is [often] mediated by crime’. This was the time when the political managers of
the state were making flamboyant claim of being ‘secular’ by virtue of having prevented religious
violence almost firmly, because of which huge chunk of the Muslim minorities invariably voted almost en
bloc to the ruling political party, making it electorally invincible for a long time. But simultaneously the
regime was found actively encouraging gangsters, was an utter failure in governance and crime control
(and was arrogantly dismissive of paying attention to road construction, public health, education,
electricity, etc.). This [willful] lackadaisical policing and criminal justice administration had given rise to
criminals on a large scale whereby the politically protected gangsters turned legislators had become sort
of role models for the unemployed youth. Against which only a majoritarian political formation in coalition
with a regional, essentially casteist outfit, seemed to be raising voices in the midst of silence of other
;non communal’ forces or their collusion with the ruling regional outfit. Further, this kind of ‘secularism’
gave way to political rise and expansion of majoritarianism in the political space so much so that it could
get enough number of legislators to become a ruling coalition in 2005. Micro-narrative of social change
in a village makes this picture of historical process relatively much clearer to the readers.
The chapters on post-independence period narrate the story of success and unfinished agenda of
India’s nation-building by the secular democratic state and also by a pluralist society. In this process it
also takes into account the fault-lines within the political leadership of the Muslim communities, whereas
rest of the account underlines the saga of the Muslim minority in overthrowing the colonial rule, where
their participation was far more than what the proportion of their population could possibly suggest. It
therefore derives that the story of the political participation of the Muslim communities in modern India is
much less a story of isolation, separatism, exclusivism, antagonism, segregation; it is more a story of
intermingling, cooperation, harmony, inclusivism, unity, consensus, and so on.
Mohammad Sajjad is Assistant Professor at the Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University
(India), where he teaches late-colonial and post-independence Indian History. Earlier, he taught History at Jamia
Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Having obtained a doctorate on the  politics of Muslim communities in Bihar, he has
published essays in several well-known  academic journals. He also writes columns for  Rediff.com. His forthcoming
book is titled, Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours (Routledge, 2014).