Re-evaluating Muslim Politics in the United Provinces

Any analysis of the changes in UP Muslim politics in the aftermath of the 1937 elections would be inadequate without foregrounding the Congress party's campaign of Muslim ‘mass contacts’ and the ML's retaliatory initiative in response. The ML's success in repulsing the Congress political challenge was after all crucial in the process of its own revival and emergence as a major political party. Existing analyses of UP Muslim politics in the aftermath of the 1937 elections have largely ignored the contested question of Muslim mass contacts. Instead, they have laid emphasis upon either the long-term Muslim alienation from the Congress or focused on the controversy over ministry-making and the acrimonious campaigns initiated by the ML against the subsequent policies of the Congress government.Footnote ⁶

The only exception in this regard is the important essay on the Congress MMCP by Mushirul Hasan. Discounting the argument about long-term Muslim alienation from the Congress, Hasan argues that this process became marked only after the 1937 elections. For Hasan, the crucial reason behind this tragic outcome was the withdrawal of the MMCP by the Congress party. He pointedly notes that the MMCP was wound up after two successful years as a consequence of right wing pressures within the Congress. The Congress right wing was fearful of a Muslim influx into the party and a consequent Nehru-Socialist-Muslim domination over the Congress organization. The programme was therefore starved of funds, there was apathy towards it, and at many places the Hindu Mahasabhaites in the Congress subverted the programme.Footnote ⁷ Hasan contends that the right wing also took active measures to keep the Muslims out of Provincial and District Congress Committees and worked against Congress Muslims in the elections, as evidenced in the cases of Nisar Sherwani in Bundelkhand and Saifuddin Kitchlew in Amritsar. As Hasan ruefully concludes,

While sections of the Congress right wing may indeed have been uncomfortable with the programme, Hasan's argument about a successful MMCP being subverted by the Congress right wing is unconvincing, given the lack of evidence of any concerted effort by the right wing to scuttle the MMCP.Footnote ⁹ Besides, it needs to be noted that the programme ended in failure. Any attempt therefore to understand the failure of the Congress campaign and the ML's success, instead, must involve a detailed examination of the nature of the propaganda offensives launched by both parties in their quest for the hearts and minds of the UP Muslims. In this regard, the two campaigns held up different concepts of the Qaum which became the focus of furious debates in the Muslim community. We must indeed turn to these contending definitions of the Qaum that were offered by the two campaigns and the context within which the contest between them was played out.Footnote ¹⁰

The Congress Left wing, Muslim Mass Contacts and the New Definition of the Qaum

The Congress programme of ‘mass contacts’ reflected the ideological orientation of the left wing under Nehru and its rising assertiveness within the party. In the aftermath of the party's overwhelming success in the 1937 elections, which underlined its reputation as India's premier nationalist organization, Nehru was strongly opposed to the Congress entering the new assemblies or accepting offices. Nehru feared that such a move would infect the party with an effete reformist mentality and lock the organization in a collaborative enterprise with the British Raj. Instead, he wanted to utilize the momentum gained by the election campaign to continue mobilization of the masses with the object of preparing them for a decisive confrontation with the Raj. As the Congress remained deadlocked on these questions, Nehru insisted that keeping up the revolutionary momentum outside the legislatures was far more important than Congress representatives assuming office. The programme of mass contacts, under which peasants, workers, Muslims and other groups would be mobilized, emanated from this line of thinking.

Muslim mass-contact campaigns were specifically aimed at increasing the Congress party's popularity among Muslims. In the UP itself, all of its nine candidates contesting Muslim seats were unsuccessful in the 1937 elections. Nehru however refused to believe that the Muslims were not with the Congress, as throughout the election campaign he had come across Muslim voters asking him for directions on how to cast their votes.Footnote ¹¹ He was convinced that the Congress would have done better if it had put up more Muslim candidates or campaigned harder in the Muslim constituencies. Nevertheless, Nehru declared that the elections had awakened the Muslim masses and that they were looking for ‘the right leadership and direction’. The time had come to cast aside the older tactic of pacts and agreements with a ‘reactionary’ Muslim leadership and instead to reach out to the masses directly.Footnote ¹²

When asked to explain how he planned to make millions of Muslims rally behind the Congress party, Nehru declared that he would do so by approaching them as ‘non-Muslims, i.e., approach them with the economic issue. . . . My appeal will not be to the top leaders but to the masses with whom the economic reality is bound to prevail.Footnote ¹³’ As Nehru explained, the communal problem was essentially a ‘conflict between upper middle class Hindus and Muslims for jobs and power under the new constitution’. It had no connection with the masses, for not a single communal demand made any reference to them. Communal demands referred only to ‘seats in the legislature or to the various kinds of jobs which might be available in the future’.Footnote ¹⁴ The masses themselves were not in the least bothered by the communal question. All they desired was economic relief from their crushing poverty, and in pursuit of this they were agitating for political freedom.Footnote ¹⁵Dal-bhat was described by Nehru as the primary question confronting Hindu and Muslim masses alike. It was the one issue on which Hindus and Muslims could set aside their past antagonisms and unite to fight against British imperialism.

A separate department was set up at the party headquarters at Anand Bhavan in Allahabad under Nehru's lieutenant, Kunwar Mohammed Ashraf, in order to run the campaign. Among Ashraf's colleagues at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office were Z.A. Ahmed, who was in charge of the Economic Affairs cell, and Sajjad Zaheer, who was a member of the team but with no specific responsibilities. All three were communists who were active in the Congress Socialist party.Footnote ¹⁶ The campaign itself primarily involved organizing public meetings in order to enroll Muslims into the Congress, and most importantly, starting a new Urdu newsweekly, Hindustan, to deliver the Congress message to the Muslims.Footnote ¹⁷ The message was replete with slogans demanding land for the landless, security of tenure for peasant proprietors, employment for the unemployed, fair wages for workers, Hindu Muslim unity, besides criticism of the zamindars and ‘toadies of the Raj’.

Following Nehru's class analysis of the communal problem, the MMCP put forth a class-based definition of the Qaum that the Congress wanted to welcome into its fold, namely, that of Muslim peasants and workers. This new definition also involved a significant challenge to existing ideas of Muslim community with its own distinctive culture or politics. Thus, in an essay, ‘Congress Membership and the Question of Muslim Culture’, K.M. Ashraf denied that there was anything like a ‘Muslim culture’ that could be identified with 70 million Muslims in India.Footnote ¹⁸ A great majority of Indian Muslims, Ashraf argued, had their culture and origin among the Hindus. The culture of these neo-Muslims who formed 85% of the country's Muslim population was thus different from what was popularly known as ‘Muslim culture’.

Muslim culture, Ashraf further explained, was a category that changed according to historical contexts. In pre-British times it was the culture of the Badshahs, while today it was the culture of feudal elites, a microscopic minority who claimed descent from the Arabs. The culture of the Badshahs, he noted approvingly, was marked by great internal diversity and openness, there being no rigid uniformity among the Muslims at that time. Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Tartari were all languages of the Muslims. High class Muslims delighted in wearing Western, Eastern, Roman, and Indian clothes, and, in matters of faith, doctrine, and devotion, there was great diversity among them. Thus, Shias, Sunnis, and Kharijites had their own set of beliefs, rituals and practices. And yet, Ashraf emphasized, this historical diversity had never threatened the Muslims and was indeed a symbol and source of their strength.

In contrast, the ‘Muslim culture’ of the current feudal elites represented by Sir Syed's school was so feeble, that it felt threatened if someone wore a Gandhi cap or a few Hindus began to propagate Hindi. As Ashraf sharply commented, ‘If you don't wear a particular type of dress or don't speak high flown Urdu, it becomes difficult for you to be seen as a proper Muslim. The truth is that pure and minted (taksali) Muslims are those fortunate people who were raised in the atmosphere of Delhi or Lucknow, or if they wear the dresses of Deoband or the Firangi Mahalis.’Footnote ¹⁹ This culture therefore stressed a stifling uniformity and rigidity which Ashraf saw as related to its emergence under the shadow of the colonial education system. It had no organic connection with the earlier genuine traditions which had received a death blow in 1857, and all that remained now in the name of Muslim culture were dead traditions.Footnote ²⁰

Ashraf was thus quite unsentimental in asking for the abandonment of both these ‘dead’ versions of Muslim culture, and their replacement by a new culture which would serve the demands of the Qaum in this day and age. This new culture would be forged in the crucible of struggle against British imperialism and its indigenous support structures, primarily led by the middle and the working classes. This was because the middle class was plagued by unemployment, while the condition of the masses had become truly wretched under British rule. In this context, Ashraf viewed the Muslim middle and working classes as possessing far greater revolutionary potential than any other social group because of their greater material and cultural impoverishment under British rule.Footnote ²¹ A revolutionary vanguard would provide the lead in the production of this new culture and Ashraf and his comrades saw themselves as part of this group. As Ashraf wrote, ‘We are today engaged in constructing a new and living tamaddun. Our political and social struggle is a prelude to this new tamaddun.Footnote ²²’

This new culture, however, was not a totally new invention. A composite culture had been shared by common Hindus and Muslims in the times of the Badshahs.Footnote ²³ What was needed was its reinvention in the light of current demands. The MMCP stalwarts therefore pioneered a number of initiatives in this regard, the most important being the effort to develop and popularize Hindustani. This was the language of the masses in north India, the meeting ground between Hindi and Urdu.Footnote ²⁴ The task at hand was to develop this language, right from its basic primer to its literary canon. The Progressive Writers Association primarily arose to meet the latter demand. The manifesto of the Association clearly stated that its aim was to produce literature which was concerned with the basic problems of the masses: hunger, poverty, social backwardness and political subjection. The declared task of literature was the arousal of critical spirit, and the examination of existing institutions and customs in the light of reason.Footnote ²⁵ This clearly signalled the progressives’ repudiation of older communal identities based on religion, and their espousal of new social identities grounded on rational class interests. As Rafi Ahmad Kidwai noted, Shaukat Ali and Jinnah needed to understand that they were not addressing the India of the 1920s. Old divisions were fast disappearing and were being replaced by class communities.Footnote ²⁶

The difficulty in using the term ‘Muslim’ in the cultural sense was extended by Ashraf to the field of politics.Footnote ²⁷ He argued that there was a fundamental contradiction between the so-called leaders of the Muslim community who were compradors allied to feudal and reactionary vested interests, and the Muslim workers and peasants who were opposed to these interests. As Ashraf noted, ‘I do not subscribe to the belief that Musalmans can be united on the basis of a common political belief. Politics is essentially dictated by class interests and every effort to obscure class differentiation will result in the suppression of class elements.’Footnote ²⁸ Pointedly referring to the ML, he declared that its leaders had not played a progressive role and that it was evident as to which side they would take during the new round of mass struggle.Footnote ²⁹ He observed that the ML leadership had a ‘false’ view of politics. They had led Muslims to believe ‘through poetry, false history, and through many other such influences’ that they could on their own, achieve freedom for India besides building up a strong and disciplined community. These two objectives, Ashraf fervently believed, could only be achieved by their joining the Congress. In doing so, the Muslims would be uniting with

In this context, Ashraf sought to calm Muslim fears about the Congress being a Hindu organization. He declared that the dominant impression of the Congress as being dominated by a Hindu mentality was due to the presence in the party of a capitalist class, whose mentality was indeed communal. It was this class which brought discredit to the Congress as a whole and gave it the appearance of a Hindu organization.Footnote ³¹ The Congress could be purged of its Hindu and reactionary outlook only with the advent of radicalized Muslim masses into its fold. Along with their Hindu counterparts already in the Congress, they could take over the party organization and overthrow the rule of capitalists, reactionaries and right wingers. Such a move would also destroy Muslim reactionary leadership, which had arrogated to itself the leadership of the Muslim Qaum. The resulting political revolution would bring an end to old-style politics of pacts and agreements between self-styled leaders of religious communities geared towards dividing the spoils of office.

Ashraf therefore appealed to the Muslim masses to join the Congress in large numbers on the side of the progressives.Footnote ³² Their participation in its activities would alter the priorities of the Congress in the right direction and also provide the right channel for their revolutionary energies, as it had during the Khilafat Movement. Furthermore, it would give the Muslim masses a better leverage in negotiating safeguards for religious and cultural rights. The MMCP was thus not simply a programme to attract the Muslim masses into the Congress but was an attempt to change the very face of Indian politics by anchoring it in a new socialist, secular foundation.

The ML's Response to the Congress Challenge

The MMCP was a frontal attack upon the ML, since Nehru had characterized it as ‘a group of Muslims, no doubt highly estimable persons, but functioning in the higher regions of the upper middle classes and having no contacts with Muslim masses and few even with the Muslim lower middle class’.Footnote ³³ Jinnah himself was castigated as an ‘elitist’ and a ‘reactionary’ by the organizers of the UP Muslim Congressmen Conference that met in Allahabad in March 1937.Footnote ³⁴ An alarmed Sir Muhammad Iqbal, pleaded with Jinnah to summon an all-India Muslim convention to take on Nehru's challenge.

Jinnah issued a warning to the Muslims: ‘Do not be led away by the cries of Hunger and Dal Bhat. You must remember that nobody in the world can solve the fundamental economic, financial and social problems of a country overnight.Footnote ³⁶ ‘He appealed to the Muslims instead to join the ML ‘and make it a strong and really representative parliament of Muslim India, a body that may speak with unchallenged authority on behalf of the 80 million Muslims of this subcontinent’.Footnote ³⁷

The AIML urgently instituted a series of changes in its organizational structure, declared goals, and ideology in order to meet the Congress challenge. The charge was led by the UP men. A committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Nawab Ismail Khan to devise a new organizational blueprint with the intent of remaking the ML into a mass-based party.Footnote ³⁸ Here the committee borrowed several leaves from the Congress book. Under the new party constitution, Town and Tehsil Leagues were designated as the primary units of the ML organization. These units would elect District Leagues which in turn would elect provincial Leagues. The provincial Leagues were to elect the Council of the AIML besides sending nominations for the election of the party President. A significant recommendation called for abolishing the position of permanent President in order to underline the ML's new democratic culture. The party membership fee was now fixed at two annas, below the Congress party fee of four annas as part of this new drive to shed the ML's image as an organization of Nawabs and landlords. The committee also suggested revisions to the constitution of the ML to bolster its anti-imperialist credentials. The ML's declared goal now was the ‘attainment of the status of a free and independent country for India by all legitimate means with a democratic form of government in which the rights and interests of the Musalmans were protected by adequate and effective constitutional safeguards’.Footnote ³⁹ With these changes in its party structure and declared goals, the ML now appeared no less radical or anti-imperialist than the Congress.

In the UP itself, the UPML next chalked out an ambitious plan of mass contact. At the suggestion of Khaliquzzaman, it was decided that all the 27 ML members of the UP Legislative Assembly would raise Rs 100 each from their respective constituencies while each provincial working committee member would contribute Rs. 30 over the next three months for carrying out propaganda among the Muslim masses.Footnote ⁴⁰ Another committee was set up with the ambitious task of enrolling 25% of the adult Muslim population in UP as ML members over the next three months.Footnote ⁴¹

The UPML began its propaganda offensive against the MMCP by bitterly criticizing it as an attempt to break the solidarity of the Muslim community, using the strength of the Congress organization, its financial muscle, and significant backing by its provincial governments. In contrast, it pointed out that the Congress had made extensive efforts to preserve the solidarity of the Hindu community during the crisis created by the Communal Award a few years earlier. Gandhi's fast unto death and the subsequent Poona Pact with Ambedkar, were pointedly referred to by Nawab Ismail Khan, the UPML President, in his exchange with Nehru:

Next, the leading protagonists of the MMCP were vituperated by the ML. Ashraf was labeled as a godless communist and a traitor. The ML's line of attack had a telling effect. Ashraf's notoriety can be gauged from the fact that local Congress units fighting by-elections for Muslim seats soon beseeched the high command not to send him for electioneering, given his unpopularity in the Muslim constituencies.Footnote ⁴³ A debate at the AMU's students union between Ashraf and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, editor of the Zamindar newspaper, ended in fisticuffs, in which Ashraf was assaulted.Footnote ⁴⁴

However, it is the ideological response to the MMCP that proved to be the most potent weapon in the UPML's armoury. One of the prominent campaigners for the ML in the UP was the Raja of MahmudabadFootnote ⁴⁵ who decried the Congress party's refusal to recognize the existence of the Muslim community and to work with its accredited leaders for ‘national advancement’. As he noted, ‘We have over and over again assured our fellow countrymen that in any fight for freedom we are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with them but we do not wish to lose our identity as Muslims. Warning Muslims to ‘counteract efforts made in interested quarters to divide the community amongst themselves’, he offered Islam as a total ideology which had answers to all the problems of modern society.Footnote ⁴⁶ For Mahmudabad, Islam was the greatest emancipatory creed the world had ever known. Muslims were deeply desirous of political liberty because their ‘religion teaches them liberty without which they cannot truly live.’Footnote ⁴⁷ Islam was also socially emancipatory since it sought to break down the barriers of class, color and race. All Muslims, whether belonging to the masses or to the higher classes, were brothers.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, Mahmudabad declared that Muslims wanted liberty not only for the country but also for their own community and therefore outlined the ML's programme for the Muslims.

If the MMCP offered the Muslim masses a fully-fledged socialist programme, Mahmudabad offered them a vision of Islamic socialism.Footnote ⁴⁹ He asserted that the Prophet had in fact inaugurated the oldest socialist creed in the world 1300 years ago. The Prophet had been an orphan and a poor ‘commission agent’. He also knew that the majority in the world was poor and Islam was thus quintessentially, the religion of the poor. The socialism that the Prophet inaugurated through Islam, aimed to reduce social disparities and ensure that every individual had a comfortable existence.Footnote ⁵⁰ Mahmudabad further argued that the current disparities between rich and poor were due to the greed of capitalists, who had denigrated the message of Islam to such an extent that time had come for a jihad against poverty. Stalin too, Mahmudabad remarked, was compelled to take the path of socialism that Islam had inaugurated. However, there was a fundamental difference between socialism and Islam. While Islam was based on ijtima, socialism was not based on any such popular consent of the community. But more importantly, socialism was a result of mere intellectual enquiry and had nothing to do with the heart. Islam however represented both the heart and the mind and hence it would be enduring.Footnote ⁵¹ An ML supporter summed up the critique of Congress socialism by remarking that when the slogan, ‘Workers of the world unite was raised, nobody has a problem. However when the slogan Muslims of the world unite, was raised, everybody has a problem!’Footnote ⁵²

Mahmudabad was the main mover of the socio-economic resolution of the ML at the 1937 Lucknow ML session. The resolution was progressive and far-reaching. For the industrial labour force it sought minimum wages, regulated work hours, and hygienic housing conditions. It also favoured state assistance for cottage and small-scale industries. The resolution's stance against ‘Hindu capitalists’ was evident from the plea for the establishment of an industrial development board for the development of industries and elimination of middlemen.Footnote ⁵³ For the peasants it sought reduction of rural and urban debt, abolition of usury, security of tenure, fixation of fair rents, and abolition of forced labour. Mahmudabad also borrowed a leaf from Gandhian constructive programs, advising Muslims to wear garha cloth woven by Muslim weaversFootnote ⁵⁴, enforce picketing of liquor and toddy shopsFootnote ⁵⁵, and join the Muslim League National Guard to participate in social work among the Muslim massesFootnote ⁵⁶.

The contrasting fortunes of the Congress and of the ML, and the fate of their respective campaigns to mobilize Muslim support, were reflected in a series of by-elections that were held for Muslim constituencies in the UP during 1937 and 1938. The first election in Bahraich was won unopposed by Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, the Congress candidate, as the UPML refused to put up a candidate against him.Footnote ⁵⁷ The next election was held in the shadow of the Congress party's MMCP, for the Orai-Jhansi-Hamirpur Muslim rural seat in Bundelkhand, and saw a bitter fight between the Congress and the ML. Here the ML candidate emerged victorious. The Congress defeat however did not dishearten Nehru since the Congress did creditably, leading in two rural segments of the constituency, with the ML taking the lone, more densely-populated, urban segment.Footnote ⁵⁸ It only strengthened Nehru's belief that the MMCP was working among the masses in the rural areas.

The next election at Bijnor was a crucial contest. It was held against the backdrop of the assumption of power by a Congress ministry in Lucknow and a full blooded attempt through the MMCP to mobilize the Muslims outside the legislature. The contest would decide the fate of Hafiz Mohammad Ibrahim, the ML ‘renegade’, who had resigned from the seat that he had won on a ML ticket a few months earlier. Ibrahim was seeking re-election on a Congress ticket after becoming a minister in the government. The election was seen as a test of which way the wind was blowing, and this time the Congress won hands down. The result led to an even greater bitterness between the two sides as the ML accused Congress of using official machinery to put pressure on the voters. The decisive victory also sent shockwaves through ML circles.Footnote ⁵⁹ Ibrahim's ML opponent in the Bijnor by-election resigned his party membership and became a four-anna member of the Congress.Footnote ⁶⁰ A triumphant Nehru reported the decisive victory to the AICC session in Calcutta as signaling the gathering of all anti-colonial forces under the Congress banner. With the rubber tied at 1–1, Congress and ML workers began fanning into Moradabad, Saharanpur and Bulandshahr for the next three by-elections. These were decisively won by the ML and came as a serious blow to the Congress. The losses were particularly unsettling for the Congress since all three by-elections had been held in Muslim rural constituencies in which the Muslims were believed to be sympathetic to the Congress, in contrast to the urban areas, which were widely seen as ML strongholds. Nehru himself campaigned intensively in all these constituencies during the by-elections. The campaign on the ML side was carried out by leaders such as the Shaukat Ali, Mahmudabad, Nawab Ismail Khan as well as a number of local ML functionaries in the districts, though Jinnah himself did not campaign in a single by-election.

The ML as an organization registered an impressive growth in the UP following these election victories. By January 1938, it had 300,000 Muslim members on its rolls compared with the 100,000 Muslims registered as Congress members.Footnote ⁶¹ An emboldened ML now initiated a blistering attack on the policies of the Congress government. Protests were launched against Gandhi's Wardha scheme of education, Vande Mataram as the national song, the tricolor as the national flag, and the UP government's alleged support for Hindi over Urdu. The UPML also rallied Muslims over the Palestine issue as well as the Arya Samaj's Hyderabad agitationFootnote ⁶². The Pant government was assailed for the increase in the incidence of communal riots and the UPML hammered home the point that Muslim lives and property were in greater danger than ever before since the government was partial to the Hindus.Footnote ⁶³ The ML also mounted a legal defence of Muslims arrested in cases of communal rioting in different parts of the UP.Footnote ⁶⁴ Finally, the Congress was criticized as a ‘toady’ of the Raj, given the close co-operation between Congress governments and the Governors in the provinces.

By the middle of September 1938, the Congress party's MMCP had virtually collapsed and the programme's office at party headquarters was formally shut down.Footnote ⁶⁵ The MMCP stalwarts who had valiantly opposed the ML were now anxious for talks leading to a settlement.Footnote ⁶⁶ The ML had finally emerged as the dominant voice of the Muslim community in the UP.Footnote ⁶⁷ But just when it appeared that the ML was sitting pretty, the solidity of the party's support-base was seriously called into question in the ensuing Madhe Sahaba agitation. This agitation became a troublesome issue by the autumn of 1938 in Lucknow, but assumed ominous proportions by the summer of 1939, as rioting between Shias and Sunnis spread from the capital to other parts of the UP. The problem threatened to assume all-India proportions as it began to drag in partisans from all over India.

The Madhe Sahaba Agitation and the Limits of the Muslim League's Political Mobilization

The problem between the Lucknow Shias and Sunnis began in 1905 over annual Tazia processions during Muharram to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain at Karbala.Footnote ⁶⁸ Till that year, Shias and Sunnis went together in common processions, taking their Tazias to one main ‘Karbala’ in a place called Talkatora, where they were buried. Over the next few years temporary fairs sprang up in the areas adjoining the road to the ‘Karbala’ on the three main days of the Tazia processions, namely, Ashra or the tenth day of Muharram and the anniversary of Karbala; Chhelum or the fortieth day thereafter; and the 21^st day of Ramzan, the anniversary of Imam Ali's birth. As the Government's Gazette noted about these fairs, ‘Shops and booths came to be set up and there were amusements such as swings and merry go rounds. It appears further that women of the town had begun not only to frequent the route of the tazias but to set up tents on the fairground where they received visitors.Footnote ⁶⁹’

The Shias took exception to these practices which they felt denigrated the solemnity of these religious occasions which were predominantly for mourning. They therefore petitioned the Lucknow District Magistrate to check these practices and to disallow anything which went against the character of these occasions. In response, stringent rules sympathetic to Shia demands were put into place for the Ashra procession of 1906 by the Lucknow District administration. The Sunnis objected to the new rules claiming that unlike the Shias, they regarded the processions as celebrations in honour of an Islamic hero and not as occasions for mourning. The dispute between the two sides was temporarily settled in 1906 with the Lucknow district administration granting a separate site for Sunnis to bury their Karbala.

The Sunnis however were now determined to give their processions a character that was distinct to that of the Shia processions. Verses at the time known as Charyari were recited during the Sunni processions. These verses were in praise of the first four Caliphs who were portrayed as friends of the Prophet as well as friends of each other. Since some of these verses ‘were positively objectionable in that they contained abuse of Shias and of their beliefs’, their recitation was found provocative by the Shias.Footnote ⁷⁰ The Shias retaliated by reciting Tabarra or abuse of the first three Caliphs in their own processions, since they saw them as usurpers who were hostile to the rightful Caliph Ali and his family. These developments marked a watershed in the social relations between these two sects of Islam in the UP. Serious riots broke out in 1907 and 1908 in Lucknow due to the recitation of Charyari and Tabarra by Sunni and Shia processions respectively.

Responding to these developments, in 1908, the provincial government set up a committee headed by T.C. Piggott, an ICS officer, who was asked to examine the whole issue, assess the claims of both parties, and to make recommendations. The Piggott committee concluded that the recitation of Charyari verses in an organized way, and converting Tazia processions into Charyari processions, was an ‘innovation’ since 1906. Such social innovations were deemed to be at the root of civil disturbances in a combustible religious society like India, and the British, in their keenness to maintain law and order, actively discouraged them. Not surprisingly, the Piggott committee recommended prohibiting the recitation of Charyari verses along the ‘route of any tazia, alam or other Mohammadan procession or in the hearing of such a procession’ on three days of the year—Ashra, Chhelum and the 21^st day of Ramzan.

On the question of the utterance of these verses on other days of the year, it was decided to leave the matter to ‘the operations of ordinary law’. This meant that deliberately offensive recitations of Charyari verses by individuals could still be punished by the law at all times of the year. However, an absolute ban on Charyari was not imposed, as the Sunnis were deemed to possess the right to express the ‘distinguishing doctrines of their faith’. Thus, Sunnis could be granted permission to utter these verses under strict regulation in a circumscribed area on particular days of the year so as not to offend the Shias or cause a law and order problem. The Shia plea that the recitation of these verses be banned throughout the year was disallowed.

In addition, the committee also made a distinction between Charyari and Tabarra and declared that they could not be placed on the same footing. It adjudicated that while Charyari primarily involved praise of the companions of the Prophet, Tabarra primarily involved abuse against the first three Caliphs, with the intent of hurting Sunni religious sensibilities. The recitation of Tabarra was therefore deemed unlawful at all times of the year under any conditions. The Piggott committee thus sought to balance the claims of both the communities, but not surprisingly, it succeeded in pleasing neither of them.

The Sunnis were the first to express their dissatisfaction with these recommendations, which, they claimed, curtailed their freedom to express their fundamental religious beliefs. They decided to confront the government after it accepted the recommendations of the Piggott committee. Thus, in 1909, Sunnis deliberately flouted government orders disallowing Charyari during Muharram which led to arrests and prosecution. The chastened Lucknow Sunnis now decided to take the lawful route. In 1911, they applied to the Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow for permission to take out a Charyari procession which was denied as it was feared that it could lead to riots. A second application was made in 1912 to the Lieutenant Governor, Sir James Meston, but this too ended in failure. Orders were henceforth issued every year as a matter of routine by the government, disallowing public recitation of Charyari in any organized manner. The Sunnis therefore desisted from taking out any Charyari processions.

The problem broke out with renewed vigour in 1936 on Ashra day when two Sunnis disobeyed orders and publicly recited Charyari in the city centre of Lucknow. They were arrested and prosecuted, but then on Chhelum day more Sunnis took part in reciting Charyari and fourteen were arrested. This led to a new agitation by the Lucknow Sunnis in favour of reciting these verses publicly, which came to be known as Madhe Sahaba (Praises of the Companions of the Prophet). The Sunnis now proposed to take out a procession on Barawafat, the Prophet's birthday on 3^rd June, 1936 during which Madhe Sahaba verses would be recited. This was prohibited by the Lucknow Police Commissioner in anticipation of violence. The Sunnis however had a procession without permission on 12 June 1936, reciting verses from the Quran containing praises of the companions of the Prophet without any reference to their names.

This led Shias to believe that Madhe Sahaba had been recited and they retaliated by publicly reciting Tabarra. The Sunnis deepened the conflict by taking out processions every Friday reciting Madhe Sahaba in deliberate defiance of official orders prohibiting such processions. A spate of arrests and prosecutions followed leading to a considerable law and order problem in Lucknow over the next few months. Towards the winter of 1936, both sides turned to the government to resolve the dispute by presenting memorials and making their respective cases on the issue, and a series of negotiations ensued between the three parties. These negotiations however failed to break the deadlock and the government therefore appointed yet another committee, headed by Justice Allsop of the Allahabad High Court, to review the situation.

The Allsop committee, which began its proceedings in April 1937, was asked to decide upon two questions. First, whether the principles and policy laid down in the Government Resolution of 7^th January 1909 following the Piggott committee report, required any modification, and second, whether the practices adopted by the Lucknow district administration, vis-à-vis the Sunnis, for maintaining law and order needed to be changed. The Allsop committee submitted its report to the government by June 1937 and endorsed the recommendations of the Piggott committee to maintain the status quo.

This could hardly be expected to assuage the Sunnis, and the government, reluctant to offend the majority in the Muslim community, accordingly delayed the publication of the Allsop report. Instead, it sought to bring about a compromise between Shias and Sunnis through the mediation of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.Footnote ⁷¹ However, with these negotiations not making much headway, and with the Sunnis threatening an agitation for the publication of the report, the government finally published it in March 1938, along with a resolution accepting the report's findings.

The Sunni response, as expected, was an outright rejection of the decisions of the Allsop committee and condemnation of the resolution of the government. Maulana Zafarul Mulk and Maulana Abdul Shakur, the two main leaders of the Madhe Sahaba movement, told a public meeting in Lucknow in late April 1938 that a meeting of 26 eminent ulema had decided that recitation of Madhe Sahaba could not be restricted for even a single day since it was a fundamental religious right. Zafarul Mulk declared that he had sent a notice to the government that the Sunnis would launch civil disobedience in case it did not reconsider its decision. The next day on Chhelum, there was an incident at Patanala, a narrow lane in Lucknow, housing the Dar al Muballaghin, a Sunni religious institution run by Maulana Abdul Shakur. Brickbats were thrown at a Shia Tazia procession passing in front of the institution and the consequent riot saw ten people being killed and several dozen injured.

The government arrested Abdul Shakur and Zafarul Mulk in order to control the situation, but this outraged Sunnis in other parts of the UP as the issue began to spill out of the confines of Lucknow. Shops were shut for two full days in Lucknow, big public meetings were held in Barabanki, Bareily, Bahraich, Faizabad, Bijnor, Saharanpur, Ghazipur, Agra and Azamgarh, and a general strike was observed in Sultanpur district.Footnote ⁷² The two Maulanas were subsequently released by the government as it issued fresh invitations to both parties to attend negotiations. The next several months however saw a buildup in tension as both Shias and Sunnis prepared for a showdown. On the Sunni side, the Anjuman Tahaffuz-e-Namus Sahaba was formed to co-ordinate civil disobedience. On the Shia side, the Anjuman Tanzimul Momineen emerged as the premier organization, along with a Fauj Abbasia, or volunteer corps, for self-defence.

The Muslim League Dilemma

The ML saw the Shia-Sunni schism as a serious threat since it undermined the idea that the Muslims were an undivided, religious and political community. But what was particularly embarrassing for the ML was the fact that partisans on both sides of the conflict were beyond its control, thus bringing into question the party's claim to being ‘the authoritative and sole representative organization of the Muslims’. Furthermore, the ML faced the prospect of splintering on this issue as district units in the UP began to manifest splits along Shia-Sunni lines.Footnote ⁷³ The ML's problems were compounded by the fact that while the Sunnis comprised the overwhelming majority of the UP Muslims, the leadership had a number of Shia landlords in important leadership positions such as the Raja of Mahmudabad, the Raja of Salempur, and the Raja of Pirpur. Jinnah himself was a Shia. The ML initially decided to maintain a policy of strict neutrality on the Madhe Sahaba issue, like the Congress had done in the case of the Communal Award, but this failed to please either group. It therefore changed tack and started to make specific initiatives towards both sects to stem the alarming breakdown of Muslim unity and to recoup its own political base.

The Muslim League and the Shias

The Shias were hostile towards the ML since they saw its neutrality on the issue as a sign of its Sunni sympathies. The Shias bluntly accused the party of hypocrisy on minority issues. As Nawab S.M. Ismail, a Shia ML member of the Legislative Council from the neighbouring state of Bihar, wrote to Jinnah, ‘The AIML who [sic] speaks in the name of the minority [Muslim] community and also speaks of the tyranny of the Hindu majority ought with its naked eyes to see and to realize the tyranny of the Muslim majority over the Muslim minority.’Footnote ⁷⁴ Ismail further reminded Jinnah, that as a Shia himself, he needed to protect the religious rights of his brethren.

The Anjuman Tanzimul Momineen, the main Shia organization formed under the guidance of Shia mujtahids, therefore condemned the ML as a Sunni organizationFootnote ⁷⁵ and asked Shias to join the Congress.Footnote ⁷⁶ The Anjuman's executive committee passed a further resolution denying the ML's right to represent Shias and stated that any ML-Government agreement over Madhe Sahaba would not be binding on them.Footnote ⁷⁷ The Anjuman also reached out for Hindu support by expressing itself in favour of cow protection.Footnote ⁷⁸ Hindu presence in Shia mosques became a regular feature and in Kanpur the Shias circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘What is Tabarra’, among the Hindus.Footnote ⁷⁹ Finally, in what was a humiliating slap on the face for the ML, a deputation of Shia leaders made a trip to Wardha to petition Gandhi on the matter. Not only was the ML's position as the authoritative organization of the Muslims being challenged, but also the Congress was being approached as a forum for appeal by one of the parties in the conflict.

The ML attempted to assuage an angry Shia community with a range of strategies. It first approached the Shias through the issue of Palestine, hoping to tap into the rich vein of sentiment for fellow oppressed Muslims in the wider Islamic world which had paid handsome dividends during the Khilafat agitation. The Anjuman Tanzimul Momineen was therefore persuaded by the ML to participate in its Palestine Day processions on 26^th August 1938. On this occasion the Shia band joining the ML procession in Lucknow comprised 400 men carrying lathis and another fifty volunteers of the Fauj Abbasia carrying dummy rifles.

This Anjuman's participation in an ML-sponsored rally brought swift condemnation from within the Shia community. Critics contended that the Shias could not take part in such meetings or processions unless the ML promised to stand by and support them in their conflict with the Sunnis. To stanch the flow of criticism, the Anjuman responded by promising not to co-operate with the ML until the latter reformed its current policy, which was detrimental to Shia interests. The Shias were obviously placing a price on their support and forcing the ML to raise its bids.

The ML responded by withdrawing its candidate against Syed Ali Zaheer for the Allahabad-Jaunpur Muslim seat to the UP legislative Assembly in a by-election held in January 1939. This was on the grounds that he was a Shia and the ML wanted to make a concession to the Shia community. Syed Ali Zaheer's sympathies with the Congress were well known. The son of Sir Wazir Hasan, a prominent Congress member, Zaheer had resigned from the ML soon after its Lucknow session in October 1937 after denouncing Jinnah for his ‘negative policy’ and the ML for its ‘anti-national’ position. Syed Ali Zaheer won the seat unopposed and went on to become a vocal defender of Shia rights as the agitation progressed, totally ignoring the ML. The importance of the ML's gesture may be gauged from the fact that this was the first time the party had not contested a Muslim seat after the Congress had assumed office in the UP. Elections were occasions for the ML to bolster its credentials as the sole representative organization of the Muslims, and a concession of this kind was therefore the high price that it was willing to pay to avert a meltdown in UP Muslim politics.

The Muslim League and the Sunnis

The greater threat for the ML arose from the fact that its Sunni flank was rendered vulnerable by the Madhe Sahaba movement. In the first place, the main Sunni leaders of the movement were independent and not amenable to the ML's control. Zafarul Mulk and Abdul Shakur were suspicious of ML's intentions, given the fact that Shias such as Mahmudabad, Salempur, and Pirpur were top ranking UP ML leaders. Thus, at a Sunni public meeting called by Zafarul Mulk and Abdul Shakur, the ML representative who got up to declare support for civil disobedience against the government orders prohibiting Madhe Sahaba processions, was heckled and told to sit down as ‘nobody had faith in the ML on the matter’.Footnote ⁸⁰

Secondly, anti-ML Muslim political parties aligned with the Congress such as the Ahrar party became extremely active throughout 1938 and 1939, in trying to attract the Sunnis support. The Ahrars had considerable success in gaining adherents, especially in the Agra division of the UP. The Ahrars fished in troubled waters by hiring Kharijites to utter Tabarra against Imam Ali in many places. This led to a riot between Shias and Sunnis in Rae Bareli.Footnote ⁸¹

Thirdly, influential Sunni ulema, at the forefront of the Madhe Sahaba agitation, were firm supporters of the Congress. Thus, Hussain Ahmad Madni, Principal of the Deoband school and a prominent Congress supporter, declared that recitation of the Madhe Sahaba was a fundamental religious right and openly advised Sunnis to carry on a peaceful struggle till their demands were fully met.Footnote ⁸² Furthermore, the ulema of Firangi Mahal and Fargania, two important religious seminaries with ML sympathies, backed the movement by issuing a joint manifesto in which they stated that under no circumstances could the abuse of their Caliphs be tolerated and asked the government to stop any recitation of Tabarra.Footnote ⁸³ What was perhaps more alarming for the ML was the fact that Zafarul Mulk had participated as a delegate at the AICC annual session at Haripura in 1938. Zafarul Mulk was also supposed to have spent a considerable amount of time with Gandhi at the Wardha Ashram.

Matters were made worse for the ML by the fact that Sunnis in Lucknow showed themselves to be as keen as the Shias to enlist Hindu sympathy. Thus, when a dead pig was found in Lucknow's Nadan Mahal mosque, the Sunnis claimed that this was not the work of the Hindus but an underhand Shia tactic in order to cause a Sunni-Hindu riot and weaken the Madhe Sahaba movement.Footnote ⁸⁴ The ML's efforts to attract Sunnis to their camp in Lucknow were also rebuffed. Thus, when the party organized a meeting in Lucknow to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Caliph Omar, it was disrupted by hecklers in the crowd who accused it of being in ‘cahoots’ with the Shias, leading ‘to some loss of prestige’ for the ML among the local Sunnis.Footnote ⁸⁵

The ML sought to keep its Sunni base intact by stressing the need for Muslim unity. In this regard, it skillfully utilized issues affecting Muslims in their localities, along with issues impinging upon them at the provincial and national level, with some success. At ML meetings in Kanpur and Barabanki it was alleged that the Congress furtively stoked Shia Sunni riots in order to sow divisions within the Qaum, since the MMCP had failed.Footnote ⁸⁶ In Muzaffarnagar, the lack of Muslims in the local Gram Sudhaar committee and dismissal of Muslim sub-inspectors for their participation in a strike, were cited as instances of government vindictiveness towards the Muslims.Footnote ⁸⁷ In Kanpur it was alleged that Hindus were aiming to setup Ram Raj and treat Muslims as ‘worse than Untouchables’.Footnote ⁸⁸ At Badayun, the ML alleged that Sampurnanand, the Education Minister, had declared Sanskrit as India's national language.Footnote ⁸⁹ At Fatehpur, local ML members accused the local District Board of financing Hindu schools to the exclusion of Muslim institutions. It was also alleged that Muslim boys had been prohibited from saying their prayers at the Government School.Footnote ⁹⁰ In Benares, Gandhi's charkha and khadi were portrayed as having thrown ‘four and half crore Muslim weavers out of work’.Footnote ⁹¹ The ML organized memorials all over the UP on the first anniversary of Tanda firings by the police to avert a communal riot, in which several Muslims were killed.Footnote ⁹² The ML also criticized the Congress’ Tenancy Bill in the legislature alleging that the contemplated changes would affect Muslim Warasat law. It declared that Muslims could never accept the Tenancy Bill as it was based on Hindu law. On the issue of Palestine, the ML alleged that the British government and the Congress had entered a conspiracy according to which the British government would give Congress a free hand to oppress the Indian Muslims, if it did not interfere with British repression of the Palestinian Arabs.Footnote ⁹³ Schemes for Pakistan were also commended by ML speakers in a few places.Footnote ⁹⁴ Finally, the ML continued its relentless campaign against the Congress on the familiar issues of communal riots in UP, the threat to Muslim lives and property, Vande Mataram, the Wardha scheme of education, and discrimination against Urdu.

In spite of this vigorous campaign there appears to have been a slight dip in the enthusiasm for the ML among the UP Muslims, as the party's annual session held in December 1938 at Patna failed to evoke much response in the UP. As Sir Harry Haig, the UP Governor wrote to the Viceroy,

The Crescendo of the Madhe Sahaba Movement

The Shia-Sunni tensions peaked in the spring of 1939 as Sunnis piled pressure on the government for permission to recite Madhe Sahaba during Muharram. They were incensed that even though the right to publicly recite Madhe Sahaba had been acknowledged by the government through two official communiqués, permission had been withheld on the grounds of a worsening law-and-order situation. Zafarul Mulk and Abdul Shakur now restarted the Sunni civil disobedience movement by reciting Madhe Sahaba with their followers, and were consequently arrested in Lucknow. Zafarul Mulk also printed and circulated an appeal to Sunnis all over India to support the movement. In response, Sunni bands began to pour into Lucknow from different parts of the UP, other provinces in British India, as well as the native states. By the beginning of April 1939, interest in Madhe Sahaba agitation was reported from 22 out of the 48 districts in the UP.Footnote ⁹⁶

The government responded by granting Sunnis permission to have a Madhe Sahaba procession during Barawafat. This was seen as a major Sunni victory since it broke a 30-year practice of not allowing processions where Madhe Sahaba would be recited. The event passed off peacefully due to heavy police bandobust but Shia resentment at such a major concession only increased tensions. An open letter to the Mahatma published in the Shia newspaper, The Moonlight, reflected their resentment at the government's capitulation.

The government's refusal to grant corresponding rights to recite Tabarra was attacked as a patent lack of equity or justice. An editorial in The Moonlight sought to refute the idea that Madhe Sahaba was harmless while Tabarra was abuse, as was being put out by Sunni propagandists. ‘The root meaning of Tabarra’, it noted, was ‘staying aloof’, while with regard to the three Caliphs it meant that the Shias did not recognize them as spiritual leaders. Tabarra was an article of faith with the Shias, and a number of traditions could be quoted to prove that it was enjoined upon them. Madhe Sahaba by contrast, the editorial pointed out, was neither an article of faith with the Sunnis nor was it enjoined upon them by any tradition. It was in fact biddat or ‘innovation’. Tabarra was similar to Lanat or the calling of imprecations. No Muslim could call Lanat abuse. As the editorial noted,

To therefore term Tabarra as ‘abuse’ was ‘nothing short of an abuse of Islam, an abuse of the Quran and the abuse of Mohammedan law’.Footnote ⁹⁹Tabarra was further acclaimed as an example of Shia use of rational analysis and critical judgment. The Sunnis by contrast, it was pointed out, were prevented from the use of rational judgment and critique of the Caliphs as it was forbidden to them under the doctrine of Kaffe-Lisan, or the shutting of one's mouth. The Shias, the paper suggested, could not be expected to ‘remain blind and dumb where the Companions of the Prophet were concerned’. Finally, the Shia right to criticize the caliphs was defended on the grounds that ‘there was no defamation of the dead in criminal law’. It was argued that, if such were the case, no history could ever be written. Criticizing the Congress government for upholding Hanafi notions of justice instead of the law of the land, the editorial defiantly concluded that, ‘if one community has the right of calling unrighteous men the benefactors of humanity, then the other community has the right of calling a spade a spade and thus save its ignorant masses from being taken by the Madhe Sahaba propaganda.’Footnote ¹⁰⁰

As the Shia agitation gained momentum, prominent Shia figures in the UP now began to court arrest by reciting Tabarra. These included Syed Ali Zaheer, the newly elected MLA from Allahabad-Jaunpur, the Princes of the royal family of Awadh, the son of Maulana Nasir, a respected Shia mujtahid, and the brothers of both the Rajas of Salempur and Pirpur. It was believed that Maulana Nasir himself, besides top ranking ML leaders such as Mahmudabad and Pirpur, would together court arrest, a development that could have a ‘very bad effect on the League’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Furthermore, purdah ladies among the Shias threatened to court arrest in an effort to embarrass the government.

More importantly, the Tabarra agitation attracted attention from other parts of India as Shias across the country sought to express solidarity with their UP counterparts who were numerically dwarfed by the Sunnis. Shia bands came into Lucknow from the districts of Darbhanga, Monghyr, Saran, Patna, and Chapra in Bihar, from Bombay city, Poona, and Bhusawal in Bombay province, from Panipat, Karnal Ambala, Jalandhar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Sialkot, Multan, Ferozepur, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, and Ludhiana in the Punjab, from Kohat and Bankash in NWFP, from the provinces of Assam and Bengal, and finally from the capital Delhi. They also came from the native states of Kashmir, Gwalior, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Bahawalpur, Rampur, and Malerkotla. Several hundred Shias courted arrest every week during the months of April and May 1939.Footnote ¹⁰²

As the Tabarra agitation spread, attracting volunteers from different parts of India, its control slipped into the hands of the Punjabi Shias, who, as Haig pointed out, were not as inclined to conduct the agitation in the ‘gentlemanly manner of the Lucknow Shias’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Public functions of government ministers such as G.B. Pant and Vijayalakshmi Pandit were disrupted, and filthy abuse heaped upon them by Punjabi Shias. A parliamentary secretary, Gopinath Srivastava, while visiting Agra jail to enquire into conditions under which prisoners were being held, was abused and assaulted by Shia prisoners.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The jails in UP were already full to capacity and overflowing as several thousands from both sides courted arrest. The government now began to plan on setting up jail-camps to handle the ever increasing volume of detentions. The UP government also approached the Punjab and NWFP governments to stop the departure of Shia bands headed for the UP and these requests were readily granted. In late March 1939, 4,000 Shias and 15,000 Sunnis brickbatted each other near the Asafuddaula Imambara in Lucknow but a major riot, which may have resulted in heavy casualties, was averted by the police firing several volleys into the air. In the following month, Sunni demonstrators stormed into the legislative assembly in Lucknow by breaking through the police barrier and disrupting its proceedings, seriously embarrassing the government.

If the UP government was deeply concerned about the deteriorating law and order situation, the ML watched the political scene with a mixture of apprehension and helplessness as the conflict spread not only to other districts of the UP but also involved Shias and Sunnis from different parts of India. The UP ML leadership now implored Jinnah to make a decisive intervention. Some members of the ML's Allahabad unit sent a plea to Jinnah to go on a fast unto death, like Mahatma Gandhi, in order to force Shias and Sunnis to come to a settlement.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ A desperate Mahmudabad, Pirpur and Ismail Khan, telegraphed Jinnah with a fervent message: ‘For God's sake come. Critical moment for Muslims.’Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Similarly urgent messages were sent to Jinnah from other parts of the country.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Jinnah, however, refused to take a stand on the issue or come to Lucknow. This was because as Sir Raza Ali wrote, ‘If the League took cognizance of the matter and if its decision failed to find the acceptance of the Sunnis and Shias of Lucknow, it would deal a death blow at the League [sic].’Footnote ¹⁰⁸ However, Raza Ali also feared that unless UP ML leaders intervened at least in their ‘personal capacity’, the Muslim community would ‘split into two parties on sectarian grounds which will paralyze our political activities for many years to come’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Jinnah however threatened to expel any ML member who dared to intervene in the matter and make the ML a party in the conflict.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Khaliquzzaman, the ML party leader in the UP assembly echoed Jinnah's views stating that ‘the League had kept itself aloof and did not take any initiative in order to settle the matter, and would maintain the same attitude to the problem.’Footnote ¹¹¹ This stand invited ridicule coming from an organization that styled itself as the sole and authoritative representative of the Indian Muslims. As Haig wrote to the Viceroy in Delhi,

Mahmudabad tried to intervene in the dispute in his ‘personal capacity’ but could not make much headway. The Nizam of Hyderabad, the ruler of the largest native state, was alarmed enough with the existing state of affairs to send a telegram to the Viceroy. The Nizam expressed fears that the problem, ‘If not taken in hand, quickly, may lead to many complications or also it is possible that it will not be limited to one place only but may become an all India question later on.’Footnote ¹¹³ The Nizam beseeched the Viceroy to use his influence to resolve the matter which he saw as having the same potential as the Kanpur mosque affair.Footnote ¹¹⁴ With Jinnah refusing to intervene, 22 prominent Muslim leaders belonging to all political parties, including ML Premiers Sikandar Hayat Khan and Fazlul Haq, met at Simla and issued an appeal to Shias and Sunnis to renounce Madhe Sahaba and Tabarra in order to pave the way for an honorable settlement.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Maulana Abul Kalam Azad issued a similar statement, but these appeals were derisively rejected by Zafarul Mulk who responded stating that,

By the middle of the summer though, as Harry Haig the Governor of UP wrote to the Viceroy, fatigue was beginning to set in on all sides, raising hopes of a settlement. However, as Haig added,

The Khaksar Intervention and the Final Denouement

The Shia-Sunni conflict, and the ML's failure to resolve the dispute, created a vacuum in the Muslim political leadership which aspiring contenders were attracted to fill. It led to an active intervention by the Khaksar party led by the mercurial Allama Mashraqi. The dispute was seen by Mashraqi as an opportunity to build up his standing as an important Muslim leader who had ended a fratricidal conflict among the Muslims. The Khaksars, a significant presence in the Punjab, had over the past year been building their organization in many districts of the UP with their headquarters located in Bahraich. They publicized their ideology through their press organ the Al-Islah. The Khaksars caught the public eye across the UP with their uniforms, their military style parades through cities and carrying special spades with exaggerated blades known as belchas.

Mashraqi was initially anxious to portray himself as someone with whom the government could do business. Telegrams were sent to the UP government offering to help them resolve the issue. If the UP government failed, he promised that his Khaksars would forcefully end the problem.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Mashraqi threatened to assassinate both Shia and Sunni leaders if they did not come to an agreement by a certain date, and justified his plans in terms of the tenets of the Quran. The Khaksars also openly expressed their disdain for Gandhian non-violence and declared their preference for violence as a political weapon to achieve their goals.

The government's lukewarm response to his offer to solve the Shia-Sunni problem failed to amuse the Khaksar leader. Mashraqi now declared that the UP government was an enemy of the Muslims and keen to keep the Shia-Sunni dispute alive. He therefore exhorted his Khaksars to fight the UP government with violence. Mashraqi next ordered a large contingent of Khaksars from Punjab and a section from Sind known as ‘Janbaz’ force to arrive in Lucknow. The people of Lucknow were then treated to the spectacle of the public flogging of the Lucknow Khaksar leader Wahiduddin Haider on Mashriqi's orders. His crime lay in complying with the Lucknow Deputy Commissioner's orders forbidding the carrying of belchas by the Khaksars, besides forbidding a fire cracker reception for the Janbaz contingent. This act was in violation of a Khaksar pledge that in case of a conflict between the orders of a government official and a Khaksar officer, the latter had always to be obeyed by the party members. In late August, the Khaksar dictator himself arrived in Lucknow and delivered a series of inflammatory speeches at public meetings. Ahrars who raised cries of opposition at these meetings were manhandled away. The editor of an Ahrar newspaper which had published articles criticizing the Khaksars and Mashraqi was threatened, and a newsboy was beaten up.

Khaksar violence at many places in the UP left the government with no option but to arrest Mashraqi. This surprised the Khaksar leader who had not expected the government to adopt such a tough posture, especially since it was cautious in dealing with Sunni or Shia extremists and appeared weak and tired. A deflated Mashraqi began to negotiate with the government and offered to go back to the Punjab, if it would provide a special train for himself and his Khaksars. The UP government refused, unwilling to elevate his standing through any special measures. Finally, a compromise deal was struck by which the government agreed to buy tickets for the Khaksars on a regular train and send them out of the UP. However, on the day of their departure, the Khaksars who had boarded the train, got off according to a pre-arranged bugle signal, just as it was about to depart from Lucknow railway station. This led to pandemonium at the railway station and caused considerable irritation to the government. The next day, though, a chastened Mashraqi signed an undertaking to go back to the Punjab with his followers and not to return to Lucknow for a period of one year. Mashraqi was therefore released and immediately put on a train for the Punjab. But it was now the mercurial dictator's turn to repeat the antics employed by his followers a few days earlier. At Malihabad, just outside Lucknow, the train's communication chord was pulled to force it to a stop. Mashraqi got off the train and then got into another train bound back towards Lucknow. On being informed that he would be re-arrested by the police in Lucknow, Mashraqi got off the train and set off for the neighbouring town of Sandila. There he was joined by a party of Khaksars from Lucknow, and together they travelled without railway tickets to Delhi.

From Delhi, Mashraqi started a campaign of ‘abusive vilification’ of the UP government stating that he had never signed any undertaking and charged the government with forgery. By the middle of September, Mashraqi started again for Lucknow in order to retrieve his reputation that had been tainted by his somewhat inglorious exit on the previous occasion. The train was stopped again at Malihabad, this time by the government authorities, and Mashraqi was warned that he would be arrested. He was given the option of going back to the Punjab, but this was rejected by the Khaksar leader who was keen on becoming a martyr. He was promptly arrested and sentenced to one month simple imprisonment for causing public disorder. This led to a Khaksar influx into the UP from the Punjab.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The Khaksars resorted to considerable violence against the police in resisting arrest in many places and in an incident in Bulandshahr district in western UP, a number of Khaksars were killed by police gunfire. The turn of events attracted considerable support and sympathy for the Khaksars from the UP Muslims.Footnote ¹²⁰

The forceful repression of the Khaksars by the UP government and the imprisonment of Mashriqi, combined with the eccentric and inconsistent efforts by the Khaksars, now opened a window of opportunity for the ML to reassert itself in UP Muslim politics. The ML tried to ride on the wave of Muslim resentment against government repression. Eminent UP ML figures such as Sir Ziauddin Ahmad, Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, interceded on Mashraqi's behalf, with the UP government. The ML legislature party demanded Mashraqi's release from prison and expressed sympathy with the Khaksars on the floor of the UP assembly. Jinnah, along with Liaquat Ali Khan, visited a Khaksar camp in Delhi to express ML's sympathies with their movement and condemned the repression unleashed upon them. At this juncture, the onset of World War II in Europe transformed the political landscape in India. Shortly afterwards, in late October, Congress ministries all over India resigned in protest against India being dragged into the War by Britain without the consent of the Indians themselves. The crisis was a tremendous blessing to the ML and could not have come at a more appropriate time. The Congress high command now sought unity between different political groups in India in order to present a joint Indian response to the British government. Keen to get the Muslims on board, the Congress turned again to Jinnah.

The Khaksar issue in the UP was a major point of discussion in the meetings between Nehru and Jinnah. Jinnah demanded and was supplied with relevant documents relating to the Khaksars by Rafi Kidwai, the Home Minister in the UP government. Nehru seemed hopeful of a joint Congress-ML front after what he considered were extremely fruitful talks with Jinnah over several hours in late November. However, the ML leader surprised the Congress with his call to the Muslims of the ‘minority provinces’ to celebrate a Day of Deliverance on 22 December, 1939. It could be argued that one of the reasons for Jinnah's call was his attempt at again rallying the Qaum in the ML's putative bastion in the UP, wracked as it had been by internecine the Shia-Sunni conflict over the past several months. The Day of Deliverance however passed off uneventfully in the UP. Nehru reported to Gandhi that,

The new Governor of the UP, Sir Maurice Hallett, concurred with this judgment. As he wrote to the Viceroy,