(Kanwal Bharti)
(English translation from original Hindi: SR Darapuri I.P.S.(Retd)
(Samajweekly) Bhagat Singh’s article titled ‘Communal riots and their treatment’ was published in ‘Kirti’ in June 1928. In the introduction to this article, the editorial note reads, ‘After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, the British government intensified the politics of communal division. As a result of this, terrible Hindu-Muslim riots took place in Kohat in 1924. After this, a long debate took place on communal riots in the national political consciousness. Everyone felt the need to end them, but the Congress leaders tried to stop the riots by getting the Hindu-Muslim leaders to write a peace agreement. Bhagat Singh wrote this article presenting the ideas of the revolutionary movement for a definite solution to this problem.’
We will come to Bhagat Singh’s article later. First, let us understand what the communal problem is? Often it is seen and understood as Hindu-Muslim riots or religious fundamentalism. Intellectuals try to understand it in the two-nation theory. Actually, Hindus and Muslims are not at the root of the communal problem. It is also a Hindu-Sikh problem, a Hindu-Christian problem and a Hindu-Dalit problem. The communal problem should not be understood from the point of view of the two-nation theory either, because many nationalities of language and region etc. are also associated with it. The latest example is the riots in Manipur, which was not a riot between Hindus and Muslims.
Then what is the communal problem? It is not difficult to define it. If it has to be said in the fewest words, then it is the name of the dictatorship of the communal majority. It means that if any community considers it its divine right to rule over the minorities based on majority (not political, but social majority), then its name is communalism.
Why and how did the communal problem arise? Often the Brahmin historians of India, whether they are right-wing or left-wing, blame the British that their policy of divide and rule made Hindus and Muslims fight in India. This allegation is not correct. There is never a division between two privileged classes or communities. Division occurs where one class or community is privileged, and the other class or community has very few rights, or none. Division always occurs between the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited, and the prosperous and the deprived. This division, that is, discontent, is the cause of communal riots. The British neither created the deprived classes and communities, nor divided the society. All these already existed in India.
Here, I would like to present the picture of the division of Indian society from the context of Dr. Ambedkar, which he gave in his written evidence before the Southborough Franchise Committee in 1919. He said that the division of society on communal basis which is generally present in the minds of people is of this form: (1) Hindus, (2) Muslims, (3) Christians, (4) Parsis, and (5) Jews. Among these, except Hindus, the rest of the communities have complete freedom of mutual social interaction. But this cannot be said about Hindus, because they are members of a caste before being Hindus; and there is no complete freedom of social interaction between every caste. From the point of view of social contact and behaviour, there are two groups of Hindus: the Touchable and the Untouchable. The untouchable is a completely excluded community or class among the Hindus. Thus, the actual division of Indian society is as follows: (1) Touchable Hindus, (2) Untouchable Hindus, (3) Muslims, (4) Christians, (5) Parsis, and, (6) Jews. This division cannot be ignored even today. A member of the Southborough Franchise Committee. M. Hailey, accepting this, had written that ‘Untouchables are those people who have been deprived of civil rights. Due to this, Untouchable people are not recruited in government jobs.’ Now let us discuss a little about how communal hatred arose in this social division? Now I keep untouchables away from this discussion, and focus it only on Hindu-Muslim communities. The Indian Councils Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1892. In this Act, the government accepted the principle of ‘unanimous representation.’ This was the principle of nominating representatives. Under this Act, Muslims were given entry in the Legislative Assemblies through a separate electoral system. After this, their demands in politics kept increasing. The reason for this was that Muslims wanted protection of their civil interests from the government. Because the emphasis of the Hindus was on the rule of the majority class. They were neither in agreement with the rule of unanimity, nor were they ready to provide constitutional protection to the minorities. Ambedkar has written that Hindu leaders were not ready to accept any limitation regarding the rule of the majority class. Hindus considered the principle of rule of the majority class so sacred that they did not like its violation. Hindus have been accepting and believing this till date, even though it is an autocratic principle. According to Ambedkar, this is not a political majority, but a communal majority. Political majority keeps changing, it is not permanent, but communal majority is permanent and is kept permanent. But this permanent majority of Hindus is also an illusory majority, because in this majority they include untouchables, primitive tribes, backward castes and tribals, whose interests they always oppose. If these communities are removed, it will not take long for their political majority to become a minority.
This autocratic principle of majority rule is the real root of communal riots in India. This principle establishes the rule of Hindus, and especially Brahmins. The Kohat riots mentioned in the introduction of Bhagat Singh’s article took place in 1924 in the city of Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province of British India between 9 and 11 September. According to records, in June 1924, Sardar Makhan Singh’s son eloped with a Muslim girl. This matter was given a communal colour. Hindus propagated it as a forced conversion. The fire of the riot was ignited by the aggressive fanatical propaganda of the Arya Samaj. Hindus and Sikhs were economically dominant in the region. Provincial Commissioner H. Dean blamed the Arya Samaj for fuelling religious animosity. This was the situation when the Hindus and Sikhs in Kohat numbered 8,000 and the Muslims constituted 19,000 of their population. One reason for this was that with the turn of the century, waves of religious-political consciousness had grown in Kohat, and with the Indian nationalist movement being overwhelmingly Hindu, Muslims in the subcontinent had sought religion-based avenues for political aspirations. The Kohat case was directly related to the love between a young man and woman of two communities. But the Hindus found peace only after shedding the blood of many innocents by making it a case of love jihad. This majority rule never cared about human blood before, nor does it care now. It only cares about maintaining the dominance of Hinduism over the minorities, no matter how much human blood must be shed for this. In Bhagat Singh’s article, it is mentioned that the politics of communal division done by the British government led to Hindu-Muslim riots in Kohat in 1924, but it is not mentioned that the riots were instigated by Hindu leaders by giving a religious colour to a love story. The politics of communal division had no role in it. In his article, Bhagat Singh has also not criticized the so-called sacred principle of the rule of the majority of Hindus, which is the main reason for Hindu-Muslim riots and hatred in India.
After the Kohat riots of 1924, in 1925, Lala Hardayal had issued the ‘political will’ of Hindus, which laid the foundation of Hindu Raj in India. There is no mention of this in Bhagat Singh’s article, although the article was written in 1928. Lala Hardayal’s political will was like this—
‘I declare that the future of Hindu community, Hindustan, and Punjab rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu organization, (2) Hindu rule, (3) purification of Muslims, and (4) purification and victory over Afghanistan and the border areas. Until the Hindu community does not accomplish these four things, the security of our future generations will always remain in danger and the security of the Hindu community will become impossible. Just as there is Hinduism in Nepal, similarly Hinduism should be established in Afghanistan and our border areas, otherwise, it will be futile to get Swaraj.’
In this political will, purification and victory over Afghanistan and the border areas means to clean the Muslims from there. Weren’t the seeds of communal riots sown in this political will? If Hindus had not accepted the madness of majority (Hindu) rule and had believed in co-existence, would India have been divided, would Afghanistan and border areas have been separated from us, and would the question of communal riots have arisen? If Hindus do not realize their madness even today, then it means only one thing that they do not believe in democracy. But Hindus do not consider the opposition to partition among Muslims as madness, but consider it their right under majority. What happened was that at the time of Southborough Franchise Committee, there was no rule of adult franchise. On the contrary, people had the right to vote based on education and property. From this point of view, Dalits, tribals and backward castes were out of the field of franchise, because they did not have both education and property. In terms of education and property, voters were made up of upper caste Hindus and Muslims only. Upper caste Hindus had education and property, so voters were also more among upper caste Hindus, and among them too, Brahmin voters were the highest. Still, Hindus played the game of being a majority to get more representation, which they were not, and wanted to give the least number of seats to Muslims. This was the real fight.
Now we enter Bhagat Singh’s writings, and see what solution he had to stop communal riots. He has listed two reasons for communal riots: religion and wealth. About religion, he writes, ‘Just being a Sikh or a Hindu was enough for a person to be killed by Muslims and similarly being a Muslim was enough reason to take his life. When the situation is like this, only God is the master of Hindustan.’ Though it is a phrase, it still seems strange for an atheist Bhagat Singh to leave the future of Hindustan to God.
Bhagat Singh further attacks religion-
‘These religions have ruined the boat of Hindustan. And it is not known when these religious riots will stop haunting India. These riots have defamed India in the eyes of the world. And we have seen that everyone is swept away by this flow of superstition. There is only a rare Hindu, Muslim or Sikh who keeps his mind cool, the rest of these name-callers of religion, to maintain the prestige of their religion, take sticks, swords and knives in their hands and kill each other by breaking heads. The rest, some are hanged and some are thrown into jails. After so much bloodshed, the British government’s baton rains on these religious people and then the worm in their minds comes to its senses.’
Here Bhagat Singh has raised the question of religious fanaticism and has rightly reprimanded those who shed each other’s blood in the name of religion. Further, he has also condemned the role of religious leaders and newspapers in fuelling the riots. His criticism of fanatical journalism is noteworthy even today—
‘The real duty of newspapers was to educate, remove narrow-mindedness from people, remove communal feelings, promote mutual harmony and create a common nationality of India; but they have made their main duty to spread ignorance, propagate narrow-mindedness, create communalism, instigate fights and destroy the common nationality of India. This is the reason that on thinking about the present condition of India, tears of blood start flowing from the eyes and the question arises in the heart that what will happen to India?’
These views of Bhagat Singh on journalism of a hundred years ago are 100% correct for today’s journalism as well. Today TV-journalism has also joined it, and both together are working to spread religious narrow-mindedness and communal hatred. But at its core is the principle of majority rule, which considers India as the land of Hindus, and does not have a sense of co-existence towards non-Hindus.
Bhagat Singh has rightly rejected religion. But in a religious country like India, where people believe in mullahs and pundits more than science; and people here go on religious pilgrimages even by taking loans, and a country where even scientists believe in religious rituals, it is not easy to reject religion. In such a situation, religion is the cause of the problem, but rejecting it is not the solution to the problem. Then what is the solution to the problem? The solution is democracy. Democracy means that no minority class or community should be deprived of its legal rights, their interests should be protected and they should not be made to feel that they are second-class citizens. Ambedkar is not wrong in saying that religion is also a means of attaining power in India. And if the supremacy of religion is recognised even in democracy, then neither freedom can be maintained nor the principle of equality can be applied. This is what is happening today. Majoritarianism in the name of religion does not follow democracy after gaining power, but makes the violation of the legal rights of all non-dwij and all non-Hindus the modus operandi of its rule. Then when discontent arises among the non-dwij and non-Hindus, and they demonstrate on the streets for their rights, police force is used to crush it, and riots are instigated with full planning. Manipur is also an example of this.
Bhagat Singh, while emphasising on separating religion from politics, says –
‘The martyrs of 1914-15 had separated religion from politics. They believed that religion is a personal matter of a person, no one else has any interference in it. Nor should it be brought into politics because it does not allow the whole world to work together. … At this time some Indian leaders have also come into the field, who want to separate religion from politics. This is also a good solution to end the conflict and we support it. If religion is separated, then we can all come together on politics. We may remain separate in religions.
This thought of Bhagat Singh is still important in solving the communal dispute. I wish it was possible to separate religion from politics. But what happened? The constitution-makers accepted India as a secular state, but the first President of independent India, breaking the law of secularism, washed the feet of 101 Brahmins and drank their Charanamrit and established Hindu identity as the identity of India. On top of that, Congress introduced Brahmin rule in democracy by making a Brahmin the first Chief Minister of all states (not even a non-Brahmin as an exception). The Brahmin-system of Congress started working from 1947 itself to make India a Hindu state by declaring Pakistan a Muslim state on the basis of religion. It formed Ramlila committees in every district of the Hindi belt, got the Ramcharitmanas recited regularly in the morning on All India Radio, and started a new practice called ‘Kirtan’ (religious performance), which became so widespread by the seventies that Hindus started singing kirtan in every household. Whereas the truth is that the partition of India was not based on religion, but due to the politics of unjust partition. Muslims had understood that in the politics of majoritarianism of Hindus, Muslims can never become Prime Minister or Chief Minister in India. Therefore, the creation of Pakistan was in their interest. And Bhagat Singh himself has admitted in another article that ‘Aayats and Mantras were being recited from the Congress platform. In those days, no person lagging behind in religion was considered good. As a result, narrow-mindedness started increasing.’ In another article, Bhagat Singh writes that except Jawaharlal Nehru, no leader had socialist and secular views, not even Subhash Chandra Bose, who called for a return to the Vedas.
In Bhagat Singh’s view, the second reason for communal riots is economic. He has explained it in this way –
‘If we search for the root of these communal riots, we find the reason to be economic. During the days of non-cooperation, leaders and journalists made many sacrifices. Their economic condition had deteriorated. When the non-cooperation movement slowed down, there was a kind of distrust in the leaders, due to which the businesses of many communal leaders of today were ruined. This is one of the three main principles of Karl Marx. Due to this reason, organizations like Tabligh, Tanzeem, Shuddhi etc. started and due to this reason today we are in such a bad condition, which is indescribable.’
This economic reason of Bhagat Singh is beyond understanding. For the Untouchables, the Tabligh of the Muslims and the Shuddhi movement of the Hindus were political; as has been said above, they were efforts to increase their own numbers. They cannot be considered as the reason for the riots, because there was no government ban on the Untouchables becoming Muslims or Christians, so those conversions were not illegal. Bhagat Singh further emphasizes the economic reason and says—
‘If there is any cure for all riots, it can only be by improving the economic condition of India, because the economic condition of the common people of India is so bad that one person can get another person humiliated by giving him a penny. In hunger and misery, man puts all principles aside. It is true that a dying man will do anything.’
This argument that hunger can make a man do anything is not acceptable. This is such an accusation on the poor, which is easily made. But there is no truth in it. No poor person takes part in riots because he is hungry, and can do anything in the desire of food. A poor person plays a role in a riot only when he is filled with the ideology of hatred against a religion or community. He takes part in a riot not because of poverty but because of the ideology of hatred. But it is true that the ideology of hatred is easily filled in the poor because they are illiterate or less educated and do not have any awareness.
But like every socialist, Bhagat Singh’s emphasis was not on social reform but on economic reform. He further wrote –
‘But in the present situation, economic reform is difficult because the government is foreign and it does not allow the condition of the people to improve. That is why people should go after it with all their might and should not take a sigh of relief until the government is changed.’
What kind of idea was this of Bhagat Singh? If the government had changed in 1928 itself, when Bhagat Singh wrote this article, would economic reform have taken place? All the poor would have got employment and all the landless would have got land? And who would have done all this? If the British government had gone, whose government would have been formed? Would the workers form the government or the Hindu-Muslim national leaders who were only fighting for Swaraj and had no ability to build Swaraj? Would the Hindus who did not allow the Untouchables to climb the platform of their wells, give them education and employment? Ambedkar had said that if freedom means the destruction of the dominance that one person has over another, then certainly economic reform is the only reform that should be done. He asked the socialists whether they could bring about economic reforms without reforming the social system? It seems that the socialists of India never thought about this question.
Bhagat Singh’s statement that people needed to change the British government for economic reforms raises many questions. For example, he did not think about the question that people cannot participate in any such revolution until they are sure that they will not be cheated and discriminated against after the revolution; or what was the guarantee that the Swaraj government that comes after the change of government will also implement economic reforms? Often Marxist thinkers who consider the theory of class struggle a sacred principle do not think about this question at all. Therefore, Bhagat Singh also did not think about it. He further wrote –
‘Class-consciousness is needed to stop people from fighting among themselves. The poor working class and farmers should be clearly told that your real enemies are the capitalists, so you should stay away from their tricks and should not do anything that falls into their hands. All the poor people of the world, irrespective of their caste, colour, religion or nation, have the same rights. It is in your best interest that you unite by eliminating the differences of religion, colour, race, nationality and country and try to take the power of the government in your hands. You will not suffer any loss in these efforts, someday your chains will be broken and you will get economic freedom.’
This idea of Marxists is really beautiful for the poor and the workers. But it is only beautiful, not the reality. This idea is based on the belief that there are only two classes, the poor and the rich, or the owners and the workers. This belief itself is wrong. In the words of Ambedkar, this is as big a lie as believing that there is an economic man, or an enlightened or logical man, who exists in all classes. Caste was an obstacle to workers unity even in Bhagat Singh’s time, and it is so even today. Can there be workers unity without eliminating caste? Can it be said that the proletariat of India, apart from the rich and the poor, does not believe in caste discrimination? Did Bhagat Singh not know that the caste system had suppressed a class of workers and proletariat? Can workers’ unity be established by suppressing a class of workers? If not, then how is revolution against capitalism possible? Ambedkar clearly said that in order to organize workers in one category, the Brahminism present in them will have to be destroyed first.
But Bhagat Singh confirms his opinion by giving the example of Russia. For example –
‘Those who know the history of Russia know that similar conditions prevailed there during the time of the Tsar, there were many communities there too, who used to fight with each other. But since the day the workers’ rule has come there, the whole map has changed. There are no riots there now. Now everyone is considered a human being there, not a ‘religious person’. The economic condition of the people during the time of the Tsar was very bad, that is why all the riots used to happen. But now the economic condition of the Russians has improved and they have developed class-consciousness, so there is no news of any riot there.’ Not only Bhagat Singh, all Marxists sing the praises of the Russian revolution and dream of implementing it in India, which is never possible. Like a classic Marxist, Bhagat Singh was either cut off from the Indian context or did not want to understand it. He did not want to understand that there was no caste system in Russia, the people there did not consider their poverty to be the result of God or fate or the result of past life. But the minds of the poor and working class of India have been filled with the thoughts of fate and the results of past life by the Brahmins. They were kept illiterate so that they remain followers of this line. Not only this, hierarchies of high and low were also created among them based on caste. Can class-consciousness come in the proletariat society in this social structure created by the Brahmins? Will the Brahmin ruling class like such economic reforms which bring equality in the society? Without fighting Brahminism, one can only dream of economic revolution, as Bhagat Singh dreamed, and as many Marxists are dreaming today. And the dream never becomes a reality. Unless the war against Brahminism is fought, neither social reform nor economic reform can take place in this country.
