Rakesh Batabyal. Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, 1943-1947.

Lond
on: Thousand Oaks, 2005. 428 pp. $97.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7619-3335-9.
Reviewed by Anirudh Deshpande (Motilal Nehru College (E), University of Delhi)
Published on H-Asia (July, 2007)
Colonial Cousins: Communalism and Nationalism in Modern India
For readers unfamiliar with the terms in which modern Indian history is usually
written, communalism should be described before the review of the book is presen
ted. The word communalism obviously comes from community and communal which may
mean entirely different things to people in the West. The closest parallels of c
ommunalism in India are racism and anti-Semitism, etc. in the West; while in Ind
ia communalism makes a person prefer a certain communal identity over other secu
lar identities. In many parts of the West a position of racial superiority is as
sumed by many individuals and social groups over people of non-European extracti
on. In both instances religious or race identities are internalized and displaye
d by individuals who believe in myths, which constitute an ideology. The modern
systematic articulation of such myths is called communal ideology in the Indian
sub-continent. Selective history, carefully constructed memories of injustices,
a variety of myths, the role of the state, and violence in multiple forms are th
e foundations of communalism. Social exclusion and communal violence ranging fro
m carefully organized riots by political formations to pogroms, such as the one
witnessed in Gujarat in 2002, are integral to communalism in India. Readers who
have not read much of Indian history but are well versed in European and America
n history can easily understand "Indian communalism" with reference to similar d
evelopments in the context of many European and American countries. Although the
re is another form in which communalism manifests itself in India, called "caste
ism," communalism in general refers to religious communalism. India, like most o
ther countries, has a history of religious conflict going back to the ancient pe
riod, but communalism refers to a modern consolidation of religious groups and i
dentities and the politicization of religious organization and conflict which be
gan during the colonial period, especially in the nineteenth century. While Indi
ans contend with communalism in their everyday lives, it must be remembered that
the development of the "two nation theory" leading to the creation of Pakistan
on the basis of a mythical and monolithic Muslim nation in 1947 and the growth o
f Hindutva in the 1980s and 1990s were the most important achievements of commun
alism in twentieth-century India. The book under review should be read in this c
ontext of communalism in modern and contemporay India.
This book narrates the rise of communalism in Bengal in the short term and tries
to define communalism as an ideology. Throughout the volume both Muslim and Hin
du communalism is theorized in opposition to a secular Indian nationalism of whi
ch the Indian National Congress (in Rakesh Batabyal's view) appears as the great
est exponent. Politics in Bengal during the 1940s came to be influenced by the M
uslim League, Hindu Mahasabha, and the Communists at the expense of an ineffecti
ve Congress which, mainly due to the rise of Subhas Bose, had split into the pro
- and anti-Bose factions. While communalism is defined as an ideology, nationali
sm in the colonial period cannot be defined easily as its opposite. The author h
as conceived the entire project on the basis of drawing a neat line of demarcati
on between communalism and nationalism. The book gives us a good idea of what co
mmunalism meant in Bengal during the 1940s, which was dominated by the Great Fam
ine of 1943 and conditions arising from the Second World War. But it does not sa
y much about nationalism as an ideology. Since the volume eschews a long-term pe
rspective on nationalism and its complex relationship with communalism, it fails
to answer some important questions. For instance, was Indian nationalism someth
ing much more than a striving for national unity against imperialism? What were
its long-term weaknesses which created the space for the growth of communal ideo
logies and the two nation theory in India? Why did communalism replace nationali
sm as the stronger force of the two in people's lives during the 1940s? This vol
ume is not designed to answer these questions, important as they are in the cont

ext of rising communalism in India during the last quarter of the nineteenth and
first half of the twentieth centuries. Instead, after repeatedly underlining Co
ngress's helplessness in the face of growing communal frenzy in Bengal in a chap
ter on the Noakhali riots, the author deflects the reader's attention to Gandhi'
s highly personalized and greatly publicized struggle against communal violence.
Towards the end of the volume, in chapter 8, Gandhi's only too well-known sojour
n in Noakhali is highlighted in an attempt to capture the Mahatma's rather touch
ing finest hour. This is done to offer an alternative to the communalization of
popular psyche in India. However, as the facts marshaled by Batabyal inadvertent
ly tell us, by 1946 Gandhi was a spent force in Indian politics. Although his mo
ral message would live on in a tiny section of inspired Indians, the somewhat ba
ffling and ill-conceived Quit India movement of 1942 and his recognition of Jinn
ah as the most important representative of Indian Muslims in 1944 most certainly
helped the rise of communalism in India in the 1940s. These are the important f
acts informing the rise of Jinnah and the demand for Pakistan which readers can
easily glean from Batabyal's meticulous research. But the problem of dealing wit
h Gandhi's approach to the communal question remains unaddressed. According to t
his reviewer the distinction between Gandhi as a person and Gandhi as the unques
tioned moral leader of the Congress is more important to the historian. It is no
body's argument that Gandhi did not oppose communalism as best as he could withi
n the limits of his world view. Unfortunately for the people of Bengal and many
other parts of India, which suffered the consequences of partition this kind of
moral opposition, in the absence of an organized cadre based fight against commu
nalism, simply was not enough to save them from the horrors of communal hatred a
nd violence. After the die was cast and partition became a ground reality, Gandh
i emerged as a symbol of peace. His removal of himself from the ideological site
of partition could do little to address the causes of communalism in India. Ind
eed his moral leadership of the Congress nationalist movement had also undoubted
ly contributed to it. Ultimately he could neither arrest the decline of secular
nationalism nor take the majority of the Congress with him.
Ironically, in his finest hour Gandhi had already become irrelevant to the vast
majority of Indians (and Pakistanis, it may always be added as an afterthought)
in 1946-47. Quit India in 1942 and the sterile belated talks with Jinnah in 1944
were Gandhi's individual decisions. Was there any point in virtually conceding
Pakistan and denying the two nation theory at the same time? The Quit India reso
lution, it is well known, did not have the support of all Congressmen and ended
up removing the Congress from the center stage of Indian politics during the war
, while the talks with the "sole spokesman" ended up enhancing Jinnah's stature
and legitimizing his communal claims even amongst several Muslims who could stil
l be called Congress supporters in 1944. Both instances demonstrated serious fla
ws in a movement over which a single and often momentarily ill-informed patriarc
h had so much influence. In the ultimate analysis Gandhi's moral authority could
neither substitute nor overcome the collective failure of the Congress leadersh
ip in dealing with the communal question.
Coming to Bengal it is not difficult to observe that Gandhi was instrumental in
getting Bose ousted from the Congress and thereby mortally wounding it. A Congre
ss in disarray, or whatever remained of it after the important leaders had been
jailed in 1942, was hardly in a position to combat the kind of communalism which
began to sweep the Bengal social landscape from 1943 onwards. The book presents
an excellent survey of how the absence of viable alternatives helped communalis
m grow in Bengal during the 1940s. The colonial state, Muslim League, and Hindu
Mahasabha are rightly implicated in the growth of the communal project. At this
time the interests of Moscow guided the Communists and even they upheld the clai
ms of the Muslim League.
Important as these findings are, the volume fails to address some important ques
tions. It does not tell us why the Congress was not a force to reckon with among

the masses of Bengal in the 1940s. Why was the peasantry of Bengal alienated fr
om the Congress that had organized mass anti-imperialist movements across the co
untry in 1905, 1921-22 and 1930-32? Unless the story of this mass alienation fro
m the Congress in Bengal is recounted, it is impossible to fully comprehend how
the Muslim League emerged as the most important party of the Bengali Muslims in
the space of a few years. If peasant unrest was ultimately articulated in commun
al ideology, as the author concedes in a short conclusion (p. 383), why did the
Congress fail to address and utilize this unrest in the 1930s and 1940s ? The el
ection results of 1946 in Bengal (p.218) only expressed the communal polarizatio
n of the Bengalis which took place during the Second World War--the Congress pol
led only 0.5 percent of Muslim votes in comparison with the League which got 89.
6 percent of Muslim votes. Pakistan had been created. Obviously, given the devel
opments during the war years, by 1946 all "memories of class and communal solida
rity against the colonial power were forgotten" in Bengal (p. 383). The fact tha
t communalism grew and secular nationalism declined in Indian politics increasin
gly since the 1920s is not given due importance in this volume because of the au
thor's Left-Nationalist paradigm.
The book comprises nine chapters including the short conclusion. The long and co
mprehensive introduction, which is kept outside the chapterization scheme, is ca
lled "Communalism and Historiography." It comprises the most problematic part of
the book raising important theoretical questions regarding the various historic
al approaches to communalism. The Colonial-Cambridge, Marxist, and Post-Modernis
t perspectives on communalism in India have been commented upon in the introduct
ion. However, upon carefully reading the introduction, this reviewer was left wo
ndering whether Indian communalism is a product of modernity or an outcome of in
sufficient modernization. A pre-history of communalism going back to the early n
ineteenth century certainly exists but there was no communalism, as we know it f
rom the colonial times onwards, in pre-colonial India. What explains the absence
of communal riots in Mughal India despite the other conflicts which raged in th
e seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Obviously communities, provided they exi
sted as we perceive them today, pursued politics differently in pre-colonial Ind
ia. Both accommodation and exclusion of regional elites was practiced at the imp
erial Mughal court in Agra, but the frictions and politics of the Mughal era did
not create communalism.
At the same time communalism has thrived even as India has modernized decade aft
er decade since 1947. No matter how you perceive it one thing seems to be clear-economic modernization and modernity (or westernization) does not spell the end
of communalism. Indeed, as Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and Gujarat in o
ur times demonstrate, modernization does not preclude communalism. It often come
s hand in glove with myths which are normally associated with a pre-modern socie
ties. A critical study of India's anti-colonial freedom struggle shows that comm
unalism and nationalism grew together in the first half of the twentieth century
. Both derived legitimacy from the process of modernity ushered into India by th
e various structures of British colonialism. The question is why and how were th
ese two supposedly different political phenomena related? Despite favoring a lin
e which artificially separates nationalism and communalism in India, the author
concedes that nationalism failed to accommodate communalism in modern India (pp.
58-59). Did this happen because the epistemological link between nationalism an
d communalism was strong enough to overcome the compulsions of national unity ag
ainst the foreigner? Or, did the Congress brand of nationalism fail because it d
id not satisfy the socio-economic aspirations of the majority of Indians who wer
e marginalized, poor and illiterate? These questions remain open in this otherwi
se well researched thesis.
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 survey politics in Bengal in the context of the famine of 1
943 and the Second World War. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of political trends
in 1945-46 and examines the build up to the communal frenzy which swept Bengal
in the latter half of 1946. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 zoom in on the well documented

Calcutta killings and Noakhali-Tippera Riots. Then comes the alternative to comm
unalism in a chapter on Gandhi's battle against communal hatred in Noakhali foll
owed by the conclusion. The book makes for easy reading and parts of it dealing
with the famine and riots are quite interesting. However the admirable efforts o
f the author are somewhat marred by his taking potshots at other Indian historia
ns who also have laudable contributions to their credit. For instance chapter 5
on the Calcutta Riots begins with an unnecessary attack on Ranajit Guha, the wel
l-known founder of the Subaltern School of Indian historiography (pp. 237-238).
While it is true that subaltern historians have focused their energies on popula
r movements which often took a violent turn in colonial India they do not seem t
o have justified communal violence which occurred between various subaltern grou
ps. It is indeed difficult to agree with Batabyal when, with reference to Guha's
position, he writes the following: "Violence of such magnitude cannot be simply
reduced to the manifestation of an assumption of emancipation of the oppressed"
(p. 238). Is all violence reduced to emancipatory violence in the subaltern sch
eme of things? This reviewer does not think so. Mass participation in the commun
al project and the violence integral to it occurs because of the internalization
of elite communal ideology by the masses. This is different from a subaltern co
nsciousness which develops against elite domination and hegemony.
Guha is not the only one at the receiving end. Another example is Sudhir Kakar,
the famous Indian psychoanalyst, who is criticized for not displaying "much inte
llectual force" is his understanding of communal conflict. This act of sniping,
apparently caused by an unpardonable failure of Kakar to describe religious conf
lict as communal conflict, is followed by a quote from his Colours of Violence (
1996) which makes perfect sense to me: "Together with religious selfhood, the 'I
-ness' of religious identity, we have a second track of 'We-ness' which is the e
xperience of being part of a community of believers" (p. 51). That is precisely
how individual consciousness grows into collective and ultimately communal consc
iousness. French historians would call this the process of mentality formation.
I find nothing wrong in Kakar's assertion, especially since no ideology is free
of psychological aspects. Is religion itself not a product of human psychologica
l desires? Why a social being attracted to an ideology is often a psychological
question which may be informed by other reasons like economics as well. You do n
ot have to be an expert to perceive that deep seated fears of the "other" and va
rious pathological feelings underline the appeal and popularity of communalism.
But to attempt a definition of communalism foremost as an ideology, as Batabyal
is trying to do, by excluding psychoanalysis from the explanatory framework appe
ars to be an act of deliberate shortsightedness. Such belittling of well-informe
d and sociologically enriching perspectives can have unfortunate theoretical con
sequences. Scoring needless points does lead to a lopsided understanding of the
"hegemonic hold" which the communalists developed over the people of Bengal (p.
260). Since the psychological connection between "hegemonic hold" and individual
s subscribing to the communal ideology is precluded from the book's paradigm, ho
lding the masses largely responsible for the communal violence of 1946 is a shor
t step away. Hence the chapter on the Calcutta Riots contains the following reve
aling sentences: "At the same time, however, to repose the burden on Suhrawardy
and the League, and on the other hand to blame the Congress leadership for utter
ing irresponsible statements or being eager to arrive at a compromise with the c
olonial authorities, leads one to the fallacy of ignoring the culpability of the
communalised masses of people, who alone could commit acts of such communal dep
redations" (emphasis in original, p. 259).
Alone? Can the communalised masses act alone ? Is communal mass violence autonom
ous? Readers more aware of the concept of hegemony than this reviewer can answer
these questions on their own. As far as the book is concerned, the brilliant de
scriptions of violence it contains clearly mention the role of local leadership
(not to speak of the Muslim League's Direct Action Day call and a colonial state
unable and unwilling to preserve peace) in the spread of violence.