BOOK REVIEW

october 19, 2013 vol xlviii no 42 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
36
Communalism and the Intelligentsia in Bihar,
1870-1930: Shaping Caste, Community and
Nationhood by Hitendra Patel (New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan), 2011; pp x+253, Rs 645.
Other Than This and/or That
Sudhir Chandra
T
his book has been with me for
more than a year. Obligation to
the commissioning journal and to
the books author and publisher usually
gets me to do a timely review. This time,
though, I have needed a reminder to be
nally, and rather reluctantly, induced
to do the job. The reluctance may seem
unjustied once I have explained its rea-
sons. Should that happen, the review
would not be a wasted effort.
When I was asked if I would like to
review this book, its title was enough to
make me agree. Having sought, over
the years, to understand the kind of
consciousness that began to emerge in
colonial India and subsumed within it a
complex phenomenon that we pos-
sessing the dubious advantage of hind-
sight tend to untangle in terms of
binary categories like nationalism and
communalism, my instinct was to see
how the phenomenon had been seen
within a specic regional context. But
once the book was with me, and I had
eagerly read it, I was faced with a
d ilemma. Should I write a review that
will require me to focus on the larger
i ssues of understanding and writing,
i nstead of concentrating on the book
i tself? Whatever the value of that exer-
cise, it might mean injustice to a well-
meaning and hard-working scholar who
is entitled to expect a more direct
e ngagement with his maiden research
monograph. The editors reminder
decided it for me.
How Self-Aware?
As I write, I am reminded of my rst
review for EPW. An unsolicited review
of K K Azizs The Making of Pakistan:
A Study in Nationalism, it appeared
more than 40 years ago. I recall the
r eview because one of the points it made
was that reading Azizs book and dis-
cerning in it his prejudices as a P akistani
scholar had taught me to be alert to the
prejudices of Indian scholars. Reading
Hitendra Patels book I am alerted, yet
again, to a basic issue of cognition: How
self-aware are we of our own modes of
making sense of things?
Taking communalism and nation-
alism as the two key categories that,
in common with the rest of the Hindi-
speaking world, dened the newly
emerging vernacular intelligentsia in
colonial Bihar, the book shows the
simul taneous development of the two
ideologies from 1870 to 1930. It traces
that development in six chapters and
over 200 pages before concluding:
that communal Hindu ideological utterances
in northern India of the 1920s had a direct
link with the new consciousness of the intel-
ligentsia of the previous fty years at least
since the 1870s. The intelligentsia of the
same period is credited as the creator of na-
tionalism which came with a new conscious-
ness that had been spreading largely through
the efforts of the intelligentsia. This may be
a correct assessment but it can be suggested
that this new consciousness created not only
nationalism but also communalism. As the
history of nationalism and communalism ex-
isted side by side and their discourses often
overlapped, it was difcult to have a clear-
cut-distinction between the exponents of
composite nationalism of the Indian National
Congress variety and the communal na-
tionalism of the Hindu Mahasabha variety
till the 1920s. Even after that, there existed,
at least at the level of expectation an asso-
ciation between Hindu communal organiza-
tions and the Congress Hindus.
This is the essence derived from a sus-
tained effort to frame into a stable mean-
ingful narrative, and in the Manichean
language of the social sciences, a uid,
evolving and elusive phenomenon. An
intrinsically indivisive phenomenon is
here made sense of by being broken into
discrete categories. Something that is es-
sentially internal consciousness is seen
in terms of its outward manifestations.
Unlike in literature, this is roughly the
only legitimate way to go about it in the
social sciences. That, however, is not the
problem. In any case, even while ques-
tioning the reigning disciplinary proto-
cols, social scientists are unlikely to ever
have either complete escape from the
BOOK REVIEW
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 19, 2013 vol xlviii no 42
37
prevailing methodological constraints
or the imagination to turn that escape to
creative use. The problem really lies in
the mode of performing the operation.
Problematic Assumptions
Following the dominant academic trend,
nationalism and communalism are
chosen in this book, too, as the two key
manifestations in terms of which the pri-
mary phenomenon of consciousness is
sought to be understood. Both nationalism
and communalism are familiar historical
forces. Constitutive of that familiarity, in
Indian historiographic wisdom as well as
the belief structure of at least the Hindi
intelligentsia, are two essential assump-
tions. First, a relationship of irreconcila-
bility is believed to exist between nation-
alism and communalism. Second, nation-
alism is valorised as against communalism,
which is believed to be intrinsically dirty
and dangerous. Notice, for example, the
following: It would be interesting to
probe into the various layers of the con-
sciousness of the Hindi intelligentsia.
Was the virus of communalism lurking
behind their national positions? (p 14).
Besides being a virus, communalism is
also described as false ideology and
false consciousness. Nationalism remains
above board.
Once the pattern for understanding
and analysis is so xed, and the mani-
festations of the emerging consciousness
are, from its very inception, branded as
national and communal, the narrative is
foretold. Consequently, following those
who have already mapped the pattern
for India as a whole and for certain spe-
cic regions, nationalism and commu-
nalism are predictably described as de-
veloping concurrently in pre-1920 Bihar
as well.
To see it this way is variously problem-
atic. Assuming, for the sake of argument,
the reasonability of naming as nationalism
and communalism the manifestations in
terms of which consciousness is to be
understood, to see the two as just con-
current or coexistent is to miss altogether
the intractability of consciousness. For,
nationalism and communalism were
interfused inextricably into that con-
sciousness. To say that consciousness
created not only nationalism but also
nationalism and communalism is to fail
to recognise their interpenetration.
The language of not only but also is
the language of separation and binaries.
What is to be understood is a conscious-
ness which, for quite a while in the
course of its emergence, could have had
no idea of the categorical distinctions in
terms of which the inheritors of that
consciousness are now, anachronisti-
cally, trying to dene and understand it.
The way to understand it can neither be
to say that it was simultaneously national
and communal nor to debate whether it
was one or the other.
The challenge for scholarship is to be
able to grasp that consciousness without
the vitiating extrapolation of extraneous
categories. It is a formidable challenge,
and success may continue to elude.
Understanding Consciousness
Hitendra Patel may be surprised, even
feel betrayed, by my response. I am one
of the scholars he has cited to support
his thesis. However, the two versions of
a 1980 paper of mine that he frequently
cites have received from me a no less
critical response and rejection. This was
done in a published auto-critique (1984)
and, further, in an entire book (1992)
that focuses on literature in a number of
Indian languages in order to understand
the kind of consciousness that emerged
as a result of the colonial mediation, and
has continued into our own day.
It is possible, indeed likely, that even
if he had read my subsequent writings
on the subject, Patel may have remained
unconvinced by my revised position.
Custom, as Pascal tells us, is our na-
ture. Growing up getting unself-
consciously accustomed to thinking and
speaking in the language of nationalism
and communalism, we nd it hard, if not
senseless, to try other modes of appre-
hension. But having discovered, through
sustained research over the years, the
inapplicability of this and other pairs of
binary categories for historical under-
standing in general, and for understand-
ing consciousness in particular, I can
only respond the way I now am.
In seeking to understand the con-
sciousness of our colonised forebears,
we seek, whether we know it or not, to
understand ourselves as well. The past
that our colonised forebears inhabited
is a past with which we remain so
intimately linked that it becomes our
present. Seeing our immediate present
as a logical extension of the past that
was our forebears present, we start pro-
jecting this present back onto that past.
That identication is what makes possi-
ble a formulation like this one: One of
our ndings is that the intelligentsia
which emerged in Bihar articulated
their own ideas about nationalism in a
manner which could also be interpreted
as communalism (p 227).
Interpreted as communalism by
whom? On what grounds? Could those
intelligent forebears of ours, whom we
in our wisdom believe to have so articu-
lated their ideas about nationalism as to
render it the same as communalism,
have seen it this way? If yes, what sort of
intelligence and political sense did they
possess? If not, and our interpretation
rests on what we see as the underlying
assumptions and implications of their
consciously articulated ideas, what sort
of understanding of communalism is it
that prompts such an interpretation?
Let alone the relatively less sophisti-
cated anonymous intelligentsia of Bihar,
even the stalwarts of what in my view
without adequate empirical basis has
been called economic-secular as op-
posed to cultural-religious nationalism,
personages like Ranade, Romesh Dutt
and Gopal Krishna Gokhale can be
shown to have been Hindu in a way that
could be interpreted as communal. Hav-
ing written at length on the subject, I
shall not rehearse that argument here. It
should sufce to point to the unself-
conscious play of anachronism that,
tracing latter-day developments back in
time, makes such a teleological inter-
pretation so natural and irresistible.
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BOOK REVIEW
october 19, 2013 vol xlviii no 42 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
38
What, prima facie, may not seem so
natural or irresistible on the contrary is
the acceptance by Patel of the category
of Hindu nationalism. He tells us:
In their [intelligentsias] concerns, which are
shown in their writings and social activities,
scholars have found that Hindu nationalism,
communalism and Indian nationalism coex-
isted. The writings of the intelligentsia could
very easily be read as examples of Hindu
national consciousness, but they could also
be interpreted as communal elements (p 2).
What he does not tell us, though, is
how Hindu nationalism is separate, and
separated, from communalism. Like his
acceptance of the binary relationship be-
tween nationalism and communalism,
his ready use of Hindu nationalism also
follows a respectable academic trend. I
know that not one but several national-
isms emerged in India during the decades
of colonial awakening. I am even per-
suaded, borrowing the phrase from the
great nationalist Surendranath B anerjeas
autobiography, A Nation in Making, that
contemporary India is actually a nation(s)
in making. Yet, Hindu nationalism dees
comprehension. It is an oxymoron. An
oxymoron not simply in terms of some
abstract normative assumptions, but in
terms of the very claims that are made
on behalf of what is projected, and
being increasingly accepted, as Hindu
nationalism.
The big challenge for those interested
in understanding a phenomenon like
consciousness, even ideology which is
what Communalism and the Intelligentsia
in Bihar attempts is to be able to deal
with the ambiguities, contradictions, par-
adoxes, uncertainties, the unconscious of
the conscious, and similar known and
unknown messy constants of the human
condition. For all our need to know, and
for the belief that we do, human lives, in-
dividual no less than collective includ-
ing the lives of the enquiring selves are
always already an internally inconsistent
whole. But the framework imagined for
making sense of the inconsistent whole
must be internally consistent. There is
something wrong if the imagined order is
fraught with ambi guities and contradic-
tions; and worse if it is unaware of its
ambiguities and contradictions.
There is also something wrong if the
scholar fails to provide the readers the
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pleasure of reading irrespective of
likely agreements or otherwise a work
which exudes the air of being immersed
in its subject. Nothing mars that pleas-
ure than simple factual errors. To be
told, for instance, that Maithilisharan
Guptas Bharat Bharati is a collection
of poems (p 140) makes one wonder if
anyone who had so much as glanced
through the work could have made such
a statement. Or that Hindi Hindu Hin-
dustan is attri buted to Pratapnarayan
Misra and not written by him (p 13);
that Bhudeb Mukherjee was Director
of Education (p 89); that Bengal had a
Governor General (p 195); that some
districts in Bihar already had branches
of the Indian Association in 1851, more
than two decades before that great pre-
cursor of the Indian National Congress
had come into being; such errors pro-
duce a cumulative wariness about
trusting the works larger, especially
debatable, claims.
Sudhir Chandra (chandra.sudhir@gmail.com)
is a noted historian and literary critic based in
New Delhi.