Number of words: 433

The Hindu–Muslim unity witnessed during the Khilafat agitation of 1920-21 did not last long. With the Khalifa abolished and the NonCooperation Movement called off by Gandhi, the common front against the British soon crumbled. The Montford reforms, brought to the Indian polity through the Act of 1919— diarchy being its main feature, ushered an era of electoral political competition, however limited the electorate and even if at the district and the provincial level only. With these reforms came separate electorates, the two communities— Hindus and Muslims—were now brought, in what can only be termed as democratic competition, and this over and above existing social abrasions. Despite impressive attempts by several political personalities in both the parties that spirit of cooperation of the 1920–21 period between Hindus and Muslims could not be revived.

Differences over petty matters often became issues of violent discord, like playing music before mosques, holding tazia processions or killing of cows during Id, and such, easily descended into communal violence and killings. There were, for example, serious communal clashes in 1923, in Multan and Amritsar. A communal movement, Tanzeem and Tabligh, was thereafter started by the Muslims, to organise the community as virile warriors. In reaction the Hindu Mahasabha, too, sought to strengthen the Hindus, and the Sangathan movement was the answer to that search promoting physical culture. Swami Shraddhananda, started the Shuddhi (purification) movement, attempting to bring back within the Hindu fold such as had converted to Islam earlier, like for example, the Malkana Rajputs. These developments, the ‘Sangathan’ and ‘Shuddhi’ were, predictably, denounced by the Muslims, the movements causing serious rift between the two communities.

The Hindu Mahasabha also sought to strengthen the Hindus by admitting the depressed classes to the rights and privileges of the higher classes. The Muslims suspected that the object of the removal of untouchability was not the absorbing of these communities into Hindu society, but to use them as auxiliaries. This, too, then added to the list of suspicious activities in the minds of the Muslims. A competitive manifestation of zeal, for conversion and re-conversion was then witnessed amongst both Muslims and Hindus. Witnessing these dangerous trends, Mohammed Ali Jauhar in his 1923 presidential address of the League observed: ‘My belief is that both sides are working with an eye much more on the next decennial census than on heaven… and I frankly confess that it is on such occasions that I sigh for the days when our fore-fathers settled things by cutting heads rather than [through] counting them.’

Excerpted from Page 115-116 of ‘Jinnah: India-Partition Independence’ by Jaswant Singh