Rakesh Batabyal. Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, 1943-1947. London: ousand Oaks, 2005.

428
pp. $97.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7619-3335-9.
Reviewed by Anirudh Deshpande (Motilal Nehru College (E), University of Delhi)
Published on H-Asia (July, 2007)
Colonial Cousins: Communalism and Nationalism in Modern India
For readers unfamiliar with the terms in which
modern Indian history is usually wrien, communalism
should be described before the review of the book is presented. e word communalism obviously comes from
community and communal which may mean entirely different things to people in the West. e closest parallels
of communalism in India are racism and anti-Semitism,
etc. in the West; while in India communalism makes a
person prefer a certain communal identity over other secular identities. In many parts of the West a position of
racial superiority is assumed by many individuals and social groups over people of non-European extraction. In
both instances religious or race identities are internalized and displayed by individuals who believe in myths,
which constitute an ideology. e modern systematic
articulation of such myths is called communal ideology
in the Indian sub-continent. Selective history, carefully
constructed memories of injustices, a variety of myths,
the role of the state, and violence in multiple forms are
the foundations of communalism. Social exclusion and
communal violence ranging from carefully organized riots by political formations to pogroms, such as the one
witnessed in Gujarat in 2002, are integral to communalism in India. Readers who have not read much of Indian history but are well versed in European and American history can easily understand Indian communalism
with reference to similar developments in the context
of many European and American countries. Although
there is another form in which communalism manifests
itself in India, called casteism, communalism in general
refers to religious communalism. India, like most other
countries, has a history of religious conict going back to
the ancient period, but communalism refers to a modern
consolidation of religious groups and identities and the
politicization of religious organization and conict which
began during the colonial period, especially in the nineteenth century. While Indians contend with communalism in their everyday lives, it must be remembered that

the development of the two nation theory leading to the

creation of Pakistan on the basis of a mythical and monolithic Muslim nation in 1947 and the growth of Hindutva
in the 1980s and 1990s were the most important achievements of communalism in twentieth-century India. e
book under review should be read in this context of communalism in modern and contemporay India.
is book narrates the rise of communalism in Bengal in the short term and tries to dene communalism
as an ideology. roughout the volume both Muslim
and Hindu communalism is theorized in opposition to
a secular Indian nationalism of which the Indian National Congress (in Rakesh Batabyals view) appears as
the greatest exponent. Politics in Bengal during the 1940s
came to be inuenced by the Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha, and the Communists at the expense of an ineective Congress which, mainly due to the rise of Subhas Bose, had split into the pro- and anti-Bose factions.
While communalism is dened as an ideology, nationalism in the colonial period cannot be dened easily as its
opposite. e author has conceived the entire project on
the basis of drawing a neat line of demarcation between
communalism and nationalism. e book gives us a good
idea of what communalism meant in Bengal during the
1940s, which was dominated by the Great Famine of 1943
and conditions arising from the Second World War. But
it does not say much about nationalism as an ideology.
Since the volume eschews a long-term perspective on
nationalism and its complex relationship with communalism, it fails to answer some important questions. For
instance, was Indian nationalism something much more
than a striving for national unity against imperialism?What were its long-term weaknesses which created the
space for the growth of communal ideologies and the two
nation theory in India? Why did communalism replace
nationalism as the stronger force of the two in peoples
lives during the 1940s? is volume is not designed to
answer these questions, important as they are in the con1

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text of rising communalism in India during the last quarter of the nineteenth and rst half of the twentieth centuries. Instead, aer repeatedly underlining Congresss
helplessness in the face of growing communal frenzy in
Bengal in a chapter on the Noakhali riots, the author deects the readers aention to Gandhis highly personalized and greatly publicized struggle against communal
violence.
Towards the end of the volume, in chapter 8, Gandhis
only too well-known sojourn in Noakhali is highlighted
in an aempt to capture the Mahatmas rather touching
nest hour. is is done to oer an alternative to the
communalization of popular psyche in India. However,
as the facts marshaled by Batabyal inadvertently tell us,
by 1946 Gandhi was a spent force in Indian politics. Although his moral message would live on in a tiny section of inspired Indians, the somewhat baing and illconceived it India movement of 1942 and his recognition of Jinnah as the most important representative of
Indian Muslims in 1944 most certainly helped the rise of
communalism in India in the 1940s. ese are the important facts informing the rise of Jinnah and the demand for
Pakistan which readers can easily glean from Batabyals
meticulous research. But the problem of dealing with
Gandhis approach to the communal question remains
unaddressed. According to this reviewer the distinction
between Gandhi as a person and Gandhi as the unquestioned moral leader of the Congress is more important to
the historian. It is nobodys argument that Gandhi did
not oppose communalism as best as he could within the
limits of his world view. Unfortunately for the people
of Bengal and many other parts of India, which suered
the consequences of partition this kind of moral opposition, in the absence of an organized cadre based ght
against communalism, simply was not enough to save
them from the horrors of communal hatred and violence.
Aer the die was cast and partition became a ground reality, Gandhi emerged as a symbol of peace. His removal of
himself from the ideological site of partition could do little to address the causes of communalism in India. Indeed
his moral leadership of the Congress nationalist movement had also undoubtedly contributed to it. Ultimately
he could neither arrest the decline of secular nationalism
nor take the majority of the Congress with him.
Ironically, in his nest hour Gandhi had already become irrelevant to the vast majority of Indians (and Pakistanis, it may always be added as an aerthought) in
1946-47. it India in 1942 and the sterile belated talks
with Jinnah in 1944 were Gandhis individual decisions.
Was there any point in virtually conceding Pakistan and
denying the two nation theory at the same time? e

it India resolution, it is well known, did not have the

support of all Congressmen and ended up removing the
Congress from the center stage of Indian politics during the war, while the talks with the sole spokesman
ended up enhancing Jinnahs stature and legitimizing his
communal claims even amongst several Muslims who
could still be called Congress supporters in 1944. Both instances demonstrated serious aws in a movement over
which a single and oen momentarily ill-informed patriarch had so much inuence. In the ultimate analysis Gandhis moral authority could neither substitute nor
overcome the collective failure of the Congress leadership in dealing with the communal question.
Coming to Bengal it is not dicult to observe that
Gandhi was instrumental in geing Bose ousted from the
Congress and thereby mortally wounding it. A Congress
in disarray, or whatever remained of it aer the important leaders had been jailed in 1942, was hardly in a position to combat the kind of communalism which began to
sweep the Bengal social landscape from 1943 onwards.
e book presents an excellent survey of how the absence of viable alternatives helped communalism grow
in Bengal during the 1940s. e colonial state, Muslim
League, and Hindu Mahasabha are rightly implicated in
the growth of the communal project. At this time the interests of Moscow guided the Communists and even they
upheld the claims of the Muslim League.
Important as these ndings are, the volume fails to
address some important questions. It does not tell us why
the Congress was not a force to reckon with among the
masses of Bengal in the 1940s. Why was the peasantry
of Bengal alienated from the Congress that had organized mass anti-imperialist movements across the country in 1905, 1921-22 and 1930-32? Unless the story of
this mass alienation from the Congress in Bengal is recounted, it is impossible to fully comprehend how the
Muslim League emerged as the most important party of
the Bengali Muslims in the space of a few years. If peasant unrest was ultimately articulated in communal ideology, as the author concedes in a short conclusion (p. 383),
why did the Congress fail to address and utilize this unrest in the 1930s and 1940s ? e election results of 1946
in Bengal (p.218) only expressed the communal polarization of the Bengalis which took place during the Second
World Warthe Congress polled only 0.5 percent of Muslim votes in comparison with the League which got 89.6
percent of Muslim votes. Pakistan had been created. Obviously, given the developments during the war years,
by 1946 all memories of class and communal solidarity
against the colonial power were forgoen in Bengal (p.
383). e fact that communalism grew and secular na2

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tionalism declined in Indian politics increasingly since

the 1920s is not given due importance in this volume because of the authors Le-Nationalist paradigm.
e book comprises nine chapters including the short
conclusion. e long and comprehensive introduction,
which is kept outside the chapterization scheme, is called
Communalism and Historiography. It comprises the
most problematic part of the book raising important theoretical questions regarding the various historical approaches to communalism. e Colonial-Cambridge,
Marxist, and Post-Modernist perspectives on communalism in India have been commented upon in the introduction. However, upon carefully reading the introduction,
this reviewer was le wondering whether Indian communalism is a product of modernity or an outcome of insucient modernization. A pre-history of communalism
going back to the early nineteenth century certainly exists but there was no communalism, as we know it from
the colonial times onwards, in pre-colonial India. What
explains the absence of communal riots in Mughal India
despite the other conicts which raged in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries? Obviously communities, provided they existed as we perceive them today, pursued
politics dierently in pre-colonial India. Both accommodation and exclusion of regional elites was practiced at
the imperial Mughal court in Agra, but the frictions and
politics of the Mughal era did not create communalism.
At the same time communalism has thrived even as
India has modernized decade aer decade since 1947. No
maer how you perceive it one thing seems to be clear
economic modernization and modernity (or westernization) does not spell the end of communalism. Indeed,
as Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and Gujarat in
our times demonstrate, modernization does not preclude
communalism. It oen comes hand in glove with myths
which are normally associated with a pre-modern societies. A critical study of Indias anti-colonial freedom
struggle shows that communalism and nationalism grew
together in the rst half of the twentieth century. Both
derived legitimacy from the process of modernity ushered into India by the various structures of British colonialism. e question is why and how were these two
supposedly dierent political phenomena related? Despite favoring a line which articially separates nationalism and communalism in India, the author concedes
that nationalism failed to accommodate communalism
in modern India (pp. 58-59). Did this happen because
the epistemological link between nationalism and communalism was strong enough to overcome the compulsions of national unity against the foreigner? Or, did the
Congress brand of nationalism fail because it did not sat-

isfy the socio-economic aspirations of the majority of Indians who were marginalized, poor and illiterate? ese
questions remain open in this otherwise well researched
thesis.
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 survey politics in Bengal in the
context of the famine of 1943 and the Second World War.
Chapter 4 presents an analysis of political trends in 194546 and examines the build up to the communal frenzy
which swept Bengal in the laer half of 1946. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 zoom in on the well documented Calcua
killings and Noakhali-Tippera Riots. en comes the alternative to communalism in a chapter on Gandhis battle against communal hatred in Noakhali followed by the
conclusion. e book makes for easy reading and parts
of it dealing with the famine and riots are quite interesting. However the admirable eorts of the author are
somewhat marred by his taking potshots at other Indian
historians who also have laudable contributions to their
credit. For instance chapter 5 on the Calcua Riots begins
with an unnecessary aack on Ranajit Guha, the wellknown founder of the Subaltern School of Indian historiography (pp. 237-238). While it is true that subaltern
historians have focused their energies on popular movements which oen took a violent turn in colonial India
they do not seem to have justied communal violence
which occurred between various subaltern groups. It is
indeed dicult to agree with Batabyal when, with reference to Guhas position, he writes the following: Violence of such magnitude cannot be simply reduced to the
manifestation of an assumption of emancipation of the
oppressed (p. 238). Is all violence reduced to emancipatory violence in the subaltern scheme of things? is reviewer does not think so. Mass participation in the communal project and the violence integral to it occurs because of the internalization of elite communal ideology
by the masses. is is dierent from a subaltern consciousness which develops against elite domination and
hegemony.
Guha is not the only one at the receiving end. Another example is Sudhir Kakar, the famous Indian psychoanalyst, who is criticized for not displaying much intellectual force is his understanding of communal conict. is act of sniping, apparently caused by an unpardonable failure of Kakar to describe religious conict
as communal conict, is followed by a quote from his
Colours of Violence (1996) which makes perfect sense to
me: Together with religious selood, the I-ness of religious identity, we have a second track of We-ness which
is the experience of being part of a community of believers (p. 51). at is precisely how individual consciousness grows into collective and ultimately communal con3

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sciousness. French historians would call this the process

of mentality formation. I nd nothing wrong in Kakars
assertion, especially since no ideology is free of psychological aspects. Is religion itself not a product of human
psychological desires? Why a social being aracted to an
ideology is oen a psychological question which may be
informed by other reasons like economics as well. You do
not have to be an expert to perceive that deep seated fears
of the other and various pathological feelings underline the appeal and popularity of communalism. But to
aempt a denition of communalism foremost as an ideology, as Batabyal is trying to do, by excluding psychoanalysis from the explanatory framework appears to be
an act of deliberate shortsightedness. Such beliling of
well-informed and sociologically enriching perspectives
can have unfortunate theoretical consequences. Scoring
needless points does lead to a lopsided understanding of
the hegemonic hold which the communalists developed
over the people of Bengal (p. 260). Since the psychological connection between hegemonic hold and individuals subscribing to the communal ideology is precluded

from the books paradigm, holding the masses largely responsible for the communal violence of 1946 is a short
step away. Hence the chapter on the Calcua Riots contains the following revealing sentences: At the same
time, however, to repose the burden on Suhrawardy and
the League, and on the other hand to blame the Congress
leadership for uering irresponsible statements or being
eager to arrive at a compromise with the colonial authorities, leads one to the fallacy of ignoring the culpability
of the communalised masses of people, who alone could
commit acts of such communal depredations (emphasis
in original, p. 259).
Alone? Can the communalised masses act alone ?Is communal mass violence autonomous? Readers more
aware of the concept of hegemony than this reviewer can
answer these questions on their own. As far as the book
is concerned, the brilliant descriptions of violence it contains clearly mention the role of local leadership (not to
speak of the Muslim Leagues Direct Action Day call and
a colonial state unable and unwilling to preserve peace)
in the spread of violence.

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Citation: Anirudh Deshpande. Review of Batabyal, Rakesh, Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali,
1943-1947. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. July, 2007.
URL: hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13458
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