Rise of communalism India refers to the political hardening of Hindu and Muslim identities under British colonial rule into competing, mutually exclusive communities. What began as theological and soc...
Rise of communalism India refers to the political hardening of Hindu and Muslim identities under British colonial rule into competing, mutually exclusive communities. What began as theological and social differences was systematically converted by colonial policies, economic competition, and organised religious mobilisation into a political antagonism that culminated in the Partition of 1947.
What Were the Historical Roots of Communalism in Colonial India?
Communalism was not a natural outgrowth of India's religious diversity. It was produced by specific colonial conditions. The British census from 1872 onwards classified Indians primarily by religion, transforming faith from a personal matter into a fixed administrative and eventually political category. Once the colonial state began enumerating Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs as distinct blocs, competition for government posts, educational grants, and political seats inevitably became communalised.
The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 formalised communal politics by introducing separate electorates: Muslim voters could only elect Muslim representatives. This institutionalised the idea that Muslims possessed interests fundamentally different from those of Hindus. The educated middle class — the primary competitors for limited colonial opportunities — became the social base of communal mobilisation on both sides.
The Urdu-Hindi controversy of 1867, when the colonial government of the North-Western Provinces replaced Urdu written in the Persian script with Hindi in Devanagari as the official court language, became an early flashpoint. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan read this as evidence that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist politically — language had become a communal marker. The cow protection movements of the 1880s and 1890s, organised through Gaurakshini Sabhas (Cow Protection Societies), further sharpened tensions by making a Hindu religious practice a direct political confrontation with Muslim communities.
Which Organisations Shaped Early Hindu and Muslim Communal Identities?
The rise of communalism was actively organised through religious and socio-political associations that drew community boundaries and mobilised followers around them.
Hindu Communal Organisations
- Arya Samaj (1875): Founded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the Arya Samaj championed a reformed Hinduism rooted in the Vedas. Its Shuddhi (purification/reconversion) movement sought to bring back those who had converted to Islam or Christianity. Muslim communities perceived this as aggressive, provoking a counter-mobilisation and entrenching communal rivalries.
- Hindu Mahasabha (1915): A more explicitly political organisation that sought to represent Hindu communal interests in the legislative arena, growing increasingly assertive through the 1920s and 1930s.
- Savarkar's Hindutva (1923): V.D. Savarkar's pamphlet Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? defined Hindus as those for whom India is both pitribhumi (fatherland) and punyabhumi (holy land) — implicitly excluding Muslims and Christians. This Hindu Rashtra concept became the foundational text of Hindu communal nationalism.
Muslim Communal Organisations
- Deoband School (1867): Established in the aftermath of 1857, the Darul Uloom Deoband sought to preserve Islamic learning under colonial rule and reinforced a distinct Muslim religious identity that resisted both Western liberalism and Hindu reform movements.
- Aligarh Movement (Sir Syed Ahmed Khan): Sir Syed founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh (1875) to educate Muslims in modern sciences, but also argued that Hindus and Muslims were two distinct nations with separate interests and discouraged Muslims from joining the Indian National Congress. His movement educated a Muslim professional class that later led the All India Muslim League.
- All India Muslim League (1906): Founded at Dhaka with British encouragement, the AIML became the primary vehicle for Muslim communal politics. It successfully lobbied for separate electorates and, under Jinnah's leadership after 1937, formally adopted the Two-Nation Theory.
How Did Local Riots and Competing Movements Deepen Communal Divisions in the 1920s?
The 1920s proved decisive in hardening communal identities. The Moplah Rebellion of 1921 in Malabar — in which Muslim peasants revolted against Hindu landlords amid agrarian grievances — was reported in the communal press as an anti-Hindu massacre, inflaming sentiments across the country far beyond Kerala. After the collapse of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements in 1922, the brief phase of Hindu-Muslim cooperation gave way to a wave of communal violence: riots erupted in Multan, Nagpur, and Amritsar (1923–24) and across several cities in 1927–28.
These conflicts were not spontaneous outbursts. The Arya Samaj's Shuddhi reconversion campaigns were countered by the Tabligh (propagation) and Tanzim (organisation) movements on the Muslim side, which sought to consolidate Muslim identity and halt conversions. Each community's mobilisation confirmed the other's anxieties, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of competitive communalism. Communal newspapers and pamphlets turned local incidents into community-wide grievances, making reconciliation harder with each successive riot.
How Did Modern Representative Politics Enable the Spread of Communalism?
The expansion of representative government under the Government of India Acts (1909, 1919, 1935) made communalism structurally advantageous for political leaders. As more legislative seats, local government positions, and reserved government posts were allocated along communal lines, politicians on both sides had strong incentives to define, consolidate, and enlarge their communal constituencies. The question of who speaks for whom — central to any representative system — became inseparable from religious identity.
The Two-Nation Theory was assembled gradually: from Sir Syed Ahmed Khan's political arguments in the 1880s, through Savarkar's cultural nationalism (1923), to Jinnah's formal adoption of it after the 1937 provincial elections demonstrated Congress dominance. Each phase of representative politics ratcheted communalism tighter. The failure of Congress-League cooperation after 1937 — when the Congress refused to share power in the United Provinces — proved the critical turning point, pushing communal politics toward the demand for Pakistan and Partition in 1947.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is communalism in the context of Indian history?
Communalism is the political ideology that treats religious communities — Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs — as distinct and competing political units with irreconcilable interests. In colonial India, it transformed social and theological differences into organised political antagonism, ultimately driving the Partition of 1947.
How did British colonial policies contribute to the rise of communalism in India?
British colonial administration enumerated Indians by religion in the census, institutionalised competition for government posts along communal lines, and introduced separate electorates under the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909). These policies turned religion into a fixed political category and structurally incentivised communal mobilisation by both Hindu and Muslim elites.
What role did Sir Syed Ahmed Khan play in the development of the Two-Nation Theory?
Sir Syed argued that Hindus and Muslims were two distinct nations with incompatible political interests and discouraged Muslim participation in the Indian National Congress. His Aligarh Movement educated a Muslim professional class that later led the All India Muslim League, and his arguments provided the earliest intellectual foundations for the Two-Nation Theory developed further by Savarkar and Jinnah.
What was Savarkar's Hindutva and why is it significant for understanding communalism?
Savarkar's Hindutva (1923) defined Hindu identity in ethnic-cultural terms, arguing that India is the fatherland and holy land only of Hindus — a definition that implicitly excluded Muslims and Christians. It provided the ideological basis for the Hindu Rashtra concept and directly counterposed a Hindu national identity against a Muslim one, accelerating communal polarisation in the 1920s and beyond.
Why did Hindu-Muslim relations deteriorate sharply in the 1920s?
The collapse of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements (1922) ended a brief phase of Hindu-Muslim unity. Subsequent communal riots (1923–24, 1927–28), the communal interpretation of the Moplah Rebellion, competing Shuddhi-Tabligh-Tanzim mobilisations, and sensationalist communal press coverage entrenched mutual fear and distrust, making cross-community political solidarity increasingly difficult through the 1930s and 1940s.
Sources and Further Reading
According to IGNOU's BHIC-134 (History of India from c. 1707 to 1950), Unit 19, "Communalism and Partition," the rise of communalism must be understood as a product of colonial modernity rather than primordial religious hatred. The colonial census, separate electorates, and economic competition within a constrained colonial economy provided the structural conditions; communal organisations and ideologues converted those conditions into political identities. The IGNOU course situates the Aligarh Movement, the Deoband tradition, the Shuddhi-Tabligh controversies, and the gradual development of the Two-Nation Theory within the broader trajectory of India's freedom struggle. Students are further directed to Bipan Chandra's Communalism in Modern India and Mushirul Hasan's India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilisation for extended historiographical engagement.