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Number of words: 321 However, Punjab’s record on communalism was perhaps the worst in India. Just before the elections of 1923, when people like C.R. Das, Nehru, Azad and Sarojini Naidu visited the province, (in March 1923) they found the situation virtually beyond control. It has to be understood that there was an inbuilt conflict … Read more

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 … Read more

Number of words: 836 We have earlier, though very briefly, considered these two great but incompatible Indians, both born of Kathiawari trading communities but not endowed with much other similarities. One was devoutly and expressly Hindu, the other but a casual votary of Islam. One shaped religion to his political ends; the other shunned it … Read more

Number of words: 232 In 1915 and 1916, when the UP Municipal Bill was introduced the provincial interests were fully aroused, for this Bill proposed a large-scale devolution of power to the municipalities, thus sharpening communally-oriented demands, for it seemed to the aspirants that the power of municipal patronage was now within their grasp. Inevitably, … Read more

Number of words: 222 By 1914, Jinnah’s reputation as an all-India leader had been fully established. Tilak, having completed his sentence of imprisonment, was back in India from Mandalay, and Gandhi was also then on his way back to India. At this juncture, what lay before Jinnah was the stupendous challenge of not only attaining … Read more

Number of words: 406 In October of that year, 1906, he took a more serious and assertive political step. He went on to question the very representative status of the delegation led by Agha Khan to the viceroy. 32 He was of the view that the Congress represented the Muslims no less, in fact, was … Read more

Number of words: 109 As I recall (from reading Martin Green’s book titled Gandhi: New Age Revolutionary ) both Jinnah and Gandhi sought to be in the good graces of Sarojini Naidu. I believe Jinnah and Sarojini Naidu overlapped in England. Jinnah tried his hand in theatre and may have thought of an acting career. … Read more

Number of words: 1,228 Comparing Gandhi and Jinnah is an extremely complex exercise but important for they were, or rather became, the two foci of the freedom movement. Gandhi was doubtless of a very different mould, but he too, like Jinnah, had gained eminence and successfully transited from his Kathiawari origins to become a London … Read more

Number of words: 220 This device of the communal electorates served its purpose so well, in the manner devised that a decade later we find a successor secretary of state for India, Montagu, and the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, placing on record their observation: ‘Division by creeds and classes means the creation of political camps organised … Read more

Number of words: 231 It is this one single step, acknowledged and encouraged by Minto, among of course, various other factors, which we examine in subsequent chapters that contributed to a ‘separation’ mentality. And indisputably this rejection of personal enfranchisement and acceptance of the device of reservation, based on religion, finally moved the Muslim political … Read more