The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926Author(s): Richard GordonSource: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1975), pp. 145-203Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311959 .Accessed: 20/03/2011 22:47

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Modern Asian Studies, 9, 2 (I975), pp. I45-203. Printed in Great Britain.

The Hind?l Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926

RICHARD GORDON

University of Oxford

IN I926, when it contested the general elections to the Imperial and Provincial Legislatures for the first time, the Indian National Congress was embroiled in a protracted struggle between rival factions for control of the Congress organisation. Electoral rivalries exacerbated existing factionalism and highlighted the often contradictory aims, methods and interests pursued by competing groups within the loose framework of the nationalist movement. If the non-cooperation cam- paign of I920-2I had witnessed a national awakening and initiated a more aggressive phase in the history of Indian nationalism, the unity imposed upon the Congress proved fragile and temporary. The curious alliance of forces which had adhered to the Congress in the more confi- dent days of the movement and which were mixed so promiscuously with the survivors of the old Congress, exposed the organisation and its leadership to greater strain in sustaining the united front once the impulse of the agitation had subsided and provincial, regional and sectarian forces began to re-assert themselves with a vengeance. The price of a tenuous unity in I920 was increased competition and dis- ruption within the Congress throughout the decade; a whirlpool of differences which, to many contemporaries in the thick of events, threatened to overwhelm it.

The particular form assumed by the electoral battles of I926 followed from the ascendancy of a particular faction within the Congress. In September I925 the political work of the Congress, for the purposes of running the elections and supervising work in the Legislatures, was entrusted formally to the Swarajya Party, a separate and distinct wing of the Congress. The Swarajya Party was launched in December I922 in opposition to the Gandhian boycott of the Legislative Councils. The revisionism implicit in the council entry programme led to the emergence of a rival faction, the 'No-change' Party, which was opposed to any tinkering with the programme laid down by Gandhi before his arrest in March I922. Gandhi's departure eased the way for a full trial of strength between the two factions, which had existed from the be-

I45

I46 RICHARD GORDON

ginning of the non-cooperation movement but which had been united temporarily under Gandhi's leadership, largely under the impetus of the Khilafat agitation.l Securing the suspension of the boycott, the Swarajists contested the general elections of I 9X3, though without official Congress endorsement. In the legislative sphere the party sought to promote a constitutional crisis by a policy of deadlock and obstruction, a policy which was inspired partly by the success of the Sinn Fein in Ireland. By superior organisation, a better endowed war-chest, and with a more 'popular' programme the Swarajists had) by I925, carried the Congress and committed it to contesting the general elections in the following year.2 If, however, the Swarajya Party had prevailed, even the fasade of unity eluded its grasp in the hour of victory. With the approach of the elections in I926 the Swarajist hegemony was challenged on a number of fronts. As their opposition had been eroded gradually and as the principle of contesting elections had been vindicated to some extent, the 'No-change' Party clamoured for repre- sentation on the Congress ticket. Never a solid or coherent faction, the Swarajya Party was split from top to bottom with the formation of the Responsive Co-operation Party which claimed greater provincial autonomy within the party organisation and within the Congress. Alignments were complicated, further, by the efforts of groups, alien- ated or marooned politically by the non-cooperation movement in I920, to regain a foothold in the Congress. These groups allied with Swarajist dissidents and anti-Swarajists to form the Independent Congress Party. Struggling to quash revolt in its own ranks and to ward off the attacks of others, the Swarajya Party failed to contain the drift of Muslims from the party, and more generally, from the Congress, towards separate electoral organisation. If the Swarajya Party emerged somewhat battered from these assaults upon its position, the opposition was forced to provide for its own electoral needs independent of the Congress organisation. The failure of all attempts at compromise led the opposition to seek alliances and to promote electoral understandings with political associations which offered viable alternatives to the Congress and whose own interests inclined them to intervene in the elections. In north India the All-India Hindu Mahasabha was of special significance. The Mahasabha opposed the majority of endorsed

1 Soung Indaa, I4 July I920, Quoted in rhe Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi XVIII, (Ahmadabad, I965), pp. 4I-3.

2 'The Party was no longer a wing of the Congress, a protestant wing,-a minority receiving concessions or a bare majority anxious to take the rest with it. It was the Congress itself. (My italics). B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, rhe History of the Indian Jfifational Congress, I, (Bombay, I946), p. 288.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I47

Congress candidates and worked in close harness with the Independent Congress Party led by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai.

The revival of the Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim political associa- tions after I923, in the wake of heightened communal tension, has led many historians to depict the politics of the middle twenties as rudder- less, adrift in a sea of communal chaos.3 Recent discussions of the I926

elections in the United Provinces and Bengal have sought to explain party formations as the outcome of these communal rivalries and an- tagonisms, exploited by interested politicians and fanned by comulunal associations.4 The Congress has been seen as championing the ideal of secular nationalism against the communallsts whose public stances were tainted by their sectional, religious or separatist origins.5 Com- munalism, as a political appeal based upon the claims of community, religion or caste, was admittedly an obvious and important factor in Indian politics, but there has been little attempt to analyse the nature of communal movements and the electoral support upon which these movements were based.6 In a society where the influence of religious and social norms was so pervasive it is misleading to exaggerate the importance of communal catch-cries and to assume that any particular political body enjoyed a monopoly of nationalism. The political implications of communalism were far more complex. The groups working in close co-operation with the communal associations, no less than the Congress in its Swarajist guise, represented a confused medley of interests. What appeared as political programmes or party appeals reflected the effiorts of interested politicians or groups to conserve or advance their own welfare, frequently at no more than a provincial or

3 R. Coupland, The Constitutional Problem in India, Pt I, 'The Indian Problem, I883-I935 (Madras, I945), pp. 72-6

4 P. D. Reeves, 'The Landlords' Response to Political Change in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, India I92I-37', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, I963, p. 2I I; J. H. Broomfield, Elite Confict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley and Los Angeles, I968), pp. 270-8I.

5 The Congress tradition of secularism has been linked particularly with the for- tunes of the Nehru family. B. R. Nanda, 7Che Nehrus (London, I965) . In addition to their secularism, howevers the Nehrus were known for their pro-Muslim sentiment.

6 Broomfield, for example, simplifies the communal tussle in Bengal by ignoring the existence of rival Muslim parties competing with Sir Abdur Rahim's Bengal Moslem Party for the allegiance of the Muslims of Bengal. The Independent Muslim Party and the National Muslim Party (the latter, controlled by Fazl ul-Haq, was allied to the Congress) were distinct parties, while there were a number of personal factions loosely grouped as Independents. The differences between these groups were, presumably, as important as any supposed communal unity. Broomfield, Elite Confict, pp. 278-8I.

I48 RICHARD GORDON

regional level. In wooing the electorate7 politicians were able to exploit a range of prejudices, and thus often artificially stressed diSerences of caste, religion, language and regional loyalties for electoral purposes. The relationship between the causes politicians were prepared to espouse and their immediate or even long-term political objectives was by no means as direct or as obvious as historians are inclined to infer. The Swarajya Party was as eager as its opponents, who couched their political demands openly in the name of religion, to enlist the support of communal movements.8 Moreover, the claim of the Swarajya Party to be the sole guardian of nationalism propaganda made political fact through party control of the Congress organisation and funds -was as suspect as the pretensions of the communal associations to represent the interests of entire communities. If nationalism and communalism were ideologies, they were also founded upon considera- tions of strategy and tactics. Just as nationalism was a desirable posture in all-India politics, communalism oSered an eff^ective platform for provincial dissidence. This paper examines one aspect of the alleged antagonism between Hindu communalism and Indian nationalism: the relations between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress between I9I5 and I926. As the Mahasabha was largely a north Indian organisation during these years, attention has been focused on the United Provinces and, to a less extent, on the Punjab.

The growth of the Mahasabha has been attributed frequently to Ccommunalism rampant' in the I g20s.g The riots of I 92 I-23 were accompanied by the resurgence of the Mahasabha and led to new initiatives within it, but the Mahasabha represented a well-established tradition and interest in north Indian politics. A political platform based upon the Hindu unity movement had long been an objective when the All-India Hindu Mahasabha was formally founded at Hard- war in April IgIs.10 There had been numerous efforts in the latter half of the nineteenth and in the first decade of the twentieth centuries

7 No systematic analysis has yet been done on the composition of the electorate under the I 9 I 9 constitution. The major source is still the Franchise Committee Report of I9I9, but newspapers do remedy some of the deficiencies.

8 Communalism comprehended a wide variety of movements apart from the more specifically religious nationalism of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. For a discussion of caste and nationality, see L. I. and S. H. Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition, Political Development in India (Chicago and London, I967), pp. 64-87.

gJ. Nehru, An Autobiograthy (London, I949), p. I34; Ram Gopal, Indian Muslims: A Political History, I85&I947 (Bombay, I959), p. I62.

lo The origins of the Hindu Mahasabha have never been studied adequately. Conventional accounts stress the period after I920. D. E. Smith, India as a Secular State (Princeton, I963).

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I49

to unite the various Hindu movements on a common platform. Initially, these Hindu sabhas were local in origin but they were to extend grad- ually to a regional and inter-provincial network.1l Religious and cul- tural revivalism provided some of the earliest examples of association and organisation in north India. Prominent were the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma Sabhas, the two major streams of religious revivalism, 12 associations for caste reform, societies for promoting Hindi and Nagri and bodies to protect cows. Many of these organisa- tions were transitory and ephemeral. The movements passed through alternate phases of growth and quiescence. Though they lacked strict organisational coherence in the early years these movements were responsible for the further development of existing social and com- mercial links and connexions between groups and individuals in the leading cities of north India. With overlapping membership and con- tinuity through their most active workers they created a general framework for the later growth of more direct forms of political organi- sation, for the Mahasabha and the Congress alike.

Although local Hindu sabhas had flourished at times in Allahabad, Benares and Cawnpore before I9I5, efforts to amalgamate these bodies on a provincial basis had not survived long. With the foundation of the Hindu University Society in I 9 I 2 these sabhas were drawn together, new sabhas were formed, and-informal contacts were established in other provinces.13 As an educational society with fairly specific aims-the Society was not the broadly-based political platform desired by the apostles of Hindu unity. In the Punjab, however, a Provincial Hindu Sabha had been formed in I907) on ground prepared by the Lahore Hindu Sabha, to safeguard the interests of the Hindu minority in the proposed constitutional reforms. 14 Representing an exposed, if in- fluential minority, the Punjab Hindu Sabha became the driving force behind attempts to form an all-India body of Hindus. Following the

11 C. H. Heimsath, Indian Aationatism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton, I964),

pp. 276-308.

12 For an account of the origins of the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma move- ment and for a comparison of their theologies, see J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religzous Movements in India (Delhi, I 967), pp. I 0 I -29 and pp. 3 I 6-23 .

13V. A. Sundaram (ed.), Benares Hindu University, I905-I935 (Benares, I936)

pp. 90-I. The Society first met at Delhi in December I9I I and in January I9I2 was incorporated as a society under Act XXI of I860 with head-quarters at Allahabad. See also Bhagwan Das, 'Hindu University Genesis', The Leader, 24 April I9I6.

14 N. G. Barrier, 'The Arya Samaj and Congress Politics in the Punjab I894-I908S,

ournat of Asian Studies, XXVI, No. 3 (May I967), p. 376. In I909 the Punjab Govern- ment contemplated extending orElcial recognition to the Hindu Sabha and other communal bodies. Home Poll. A, August I909, I82-84, p. 295, National Archives of India) New Delhi [N.A.I.].

I50 RICHARD GORDON

introduction of the Government of India Act of I 909 and the formation of the Muslim League, a move was made at the annual session of the Congress at Allahabad in I9IO.15 A committee was set up with Lala Baij Nath, an Agarwala banker and rais of Cawnpore and a president of the Vaish Conference, as president to draw up a constitution. But nothirlg came of the scheme. It was as a result of resolutions passed at the fifth Punjab Hindu Conference at Ambala and the sixth Conference at Ferozepore, that the first All-India Conference of Hindus was sum- moned at Hardwar in April I9I5 in conjunction with the Kumbh Parwa.16 The All-India Hindu Mahasabha was founded with head- quarters at Dehra Dun, the home of the first secretary, Pt. Deva Ratan Sarma.17 Provincial Hindu Sabhas were subsequently formed in the U.P., with head-quarters at Allahabad, in December IgIs18 in Bombay city, where the annual conference was held in December I 9 I 5,19 and in Bihar.20

In its Srst phas@, before I922, the Hindu Mahasabha was not an all- India organisation in any real sense, either in the extent of its organisa- tion or in the scope of its activities. It was, at most, an inter-provincial organisation linking Hindu movements in the U.P. and the Punjab. As its conferences were held in corljunction with the annual Congress, it attracted casual platform support from other provinces but the

15 '. . . the great majority of the so-called leaders of Upper India, specially those of the Punjab, had worked themselves to a high pitch . . .'. Motilal Nehru toJawaharlal Nehru, 6 January 19II, Nehru Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum, New Delhi [NM.M.].

16 Speech by Rampal Singh, Bais Rajput taluqdar of Kurri Sidhauli, Rae Bareli, Chairman of the Reception Committee, Hindu Mahasabha Conference, Lucknow, December I 9 I 6. The Leader, 3 I December I 9 I 6. The Mahasabha officially recognised this conference as its first annual conference.

17 In October I9I5 the offices were shifted to Delhi but in I9I6 they were again removed to Dehra Dun. Government of the U.P. to Government of Indian Home Department, I0 December I924, in 'The Communal Situation', Home Poll., File I40

of 1925, N.A.I. 18 A Committee was formed to elect delegates to the All-India Hindu Mahasabha

(2onference later in the month. The committee included: Rampal Singh, President, Pt. Jagat Narayan, and G. N. Misra from Lucknow; Sapru, (2hintamani, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Munshi Iswar Saran, Sunder Lal Dave, Motilal Nehru Lala G;rdhari Lal Agarwala, Rama Kant Malaviya, secretary, and Lala Ram Charan Das from Allahabad; Moti (2hand Gupta and Munshi Mahadeo Prasad from Benares; Lala Sukhbir Sinha from MuzaSarnagar; Lala Bishambhar Nath of Cawnpore and Hriday Nath Kunzru of Agra. The Leader, 24 December I9I5.

19 The Bombay city branch was allied to the Hindu Missionary Society, a small and unimportant body rlm by M. R. Jayakar and K. Natarajan, which claimed only 55

paid up members in I923. Bombay Chronzcle, 30 July I923.

20 The Bihar Hindu Sabha, founded some years before I9I5 was aEliated as the provincial branch. fhe Leader:, 3 I December I 9 I 6.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I5I

more prominent workers of the Mahasabha, with their connexions with the religious and cultural revivalist movements of Hindustan, gave the Mahasabha a distinctly north Indian flavour. The Bombay and Bihar branches were not active, while in the more advanced centres of political activity, in Madras, Bombay and Bengal, it was politely ignored.21 The distinction between secular political association and involvement in religious or caste movements was vague, if it had any meaning. Moreover, such a distinction was of small consequence in a political context dominated exclusively by Hindus. Even more so than the Congress, the Mahasabha was an amorphous and straggling organisation, with a very locse all-India structure. The informality which characterised the Mahasabha was reinforced by the series of interlocking movements upon which it was based. Continuity was still preserved through the activities of individual members and their links with these movements which were renewed at the annual con- ferences. The Mahasabha secured a vague semblance of unity by advocating the adoption of Hindi and Nagri, cow-protection and Hindu uplift, issues upon which there was some possibility of securing unanimity. Controversial questions aSecting the social and ritual observances of Hindus were eschewed. When a Hindu Sabha had been formed at Benares in March I9I4 its declared aim was to act as 'a unifying agency, to furnish a common platform for Hindus', leaving 'religious and socio-religious controversies to Arya Samajes, Sanatan Dharma sabhas and social conferences.'22

Predominantly urban in character, the Mahasabha was concentrated in the larger trading cities of north India) particularly in Allahabad, Cawnpore, Benares, Lucknow and Lahore. In its urban bias it con- formed to the existing pattern of provincial politics. Local Hindu Sabhas were indistinguishable from the District Associations,23 the

21 Motilal Nehru had canvassed support among the Bengalis in I9IO, with some success, to oppose attempts to form a Hindu Mahasabha. Motilal Nehru toJawaharlal Nehru, 6 January I9I I, Nehru Papers, N.M.M.

22 The Leader, I O March I 9 I 4. Writing in I 9 I 7, Sir James Meston, the Lieutenant Governor ofthe IJ.P., concluded that these social and religious movementsn with few exceptions, 'assumed very little of a political character.' Minute, 24 October I9I7,

Home Public A, May I 9 I 8, 568-98, N.A.I. 23 The Cawnpore District Association illustrates how local associations were

inter-connected. Lala Bishambhar Nath, an Agarwala banker and rais, was president of the Association in I9I5, president of the District Hindu Sabha, ex-president of the Vaishya Conference, president of the U.P. Chamber of Commerce of Cawnpore, a leading member. of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha, a member of the U.P. Hindu Sabha, the Congress and the Legislative Council, and a patron of all public activities. Dr. Muratilal Rohtgi, a Vaish medical practitioner, held office, at various timesn in the Congress, the Hindu Sabha and the Arya Samaj, and was a vice-president of

I52 RICHARD GORDON

hub of public life in the larger cities, and watchdogs over local govern- ment elections. As the Municipal and District Boards formed electorates to the Provincial Legislative Council, local activities were drawn loosely together at the provincial level. The small groups of professionals, mainly lawyers, and the urban banking and landholding raises, which dominated the public life of the cities, also controlled the elective ele- ment in the Provincial Legislative Council through their commanding position in local government. The members of the Executive Committee of the U.P. H;ndu Sabha,24 elected in December I9I5, individually and collectively, represented almost the whole range of Hindu public life in the province. It was almost a stranglehold. Of twenty-four mem- bers of the committee, fourteen were members of the Legislatures: twelve of the Provincial and two of the Imperial Legislative Councils.2s The committee brought onto a common platform members of the rich banking and landholding families of the trading cities, the leading professional figures in the province and two taluqdars of Oudh. The committee contained twelve lawyers, three zamindars who were also lawyers, six commercial and landed magnates, of whom one was also a vakil, two taluqdars and one journalist. Of the twenty-four members, therefore, only two could be said to have been dependent entirely upon a landed income, while the majority were professional and commercial men who all had an interest in land.26 Three of the commercial mag- nates belonged to the three biggest banking houses in the province, Prag Narayan Bhargava of Lucknow, Lala Bishambhar Nath of Cawnpore and Moti Chand Gupta of Benares.27 Among the lawyers were men reputed to be earning the largest incomes at the High Court Bar, particularly Sunder Lal Dave and Motilal Nehru, while in C.Y. Chintamani, the editor of The Leader of Allahabad, the committee had one of the leading English journalists in the province. Just as there the District Association. A third member of the Association was Lala Anand Swarup, a Kayasth lawyer and an ofEce-holder in the Congressn the Hindu Sabha and the Arya Samaj. A member of the Legislative Council, he was also influential in bar circles and attended the Kayastha Conference. All were active in local government and a number of educational trusts and charities.

24 See Table I for detailed backgrounci of members of the Committee. 25 Of the I 2 members of the Provincial Council, I I were elected and I, T. B. Sapru

was nominated. Malaviya and Rampal Singh were the members of the Imperial Council. EIome Public D, June I9I3, 40, N.A.I.

26 Many of those classilSed as lawyers, such as Sapru, Gokaran Nath Misraz and Brijnandan Prasad, held small zamindaris.

27 Prag ffiarayan Bhargava, Obituary, The Leader, 5 January and I9 January I9I 7; Distrist Gazetteer Cawntore, XIX, (Allahabad, I909); Moti Chand Gupta was described by Government as 'the most important man in Benares after the Maharaja'. Home Public, File 6X3 of I925, p. IXI, N.A.I.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRE-SS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I53

TABLE I Members of the Executive Committee of the U.P. Hindu Sabha, I9I5, by caste and occupation

Rae Bareli Allahabad Benares

Muzaffarnagar

Benares

Allahabad Lucknow Jhansi

Lucknow

Cawnpore

Partabgarh Allahabad

Lucknow

Allahabad

Allahabad Allahabad Allahabad Allahabad Fyzabad

Gorakhpur Moradabad Agra Allahabad Allahabad

Rampal Singh Gokul Prasad Moti Chand Gupta

Lala Sukhbir Sinha

Mahadeo Prasad

Tej Bahadur Sapru Jagat Narayan Mulla Shanker Sahai

Prag Narayan Bhargava

Lala Bishambhar Nath

Raja of Partabgarh Ram Charan Das

Gokaran Nath Misra

Lala Girdhari Lal

Rama Kant Malaviya Sunder Lal Dave Madan Mohan Malaviya Motilal Nehru Balak Ram

Narsingh Prasad Brijnandan Prasad Hriday Nath Kunzru C. Y. Chintamani Iswar Saran

Bais Rajput Kayasth Agarwal

Khattri

Kayasth

Kashmiri Brahmin Kashmiri Brahmin Kayasth

Bhargava

Agarwal

Rajput Khattri

Kanyakubya Brahmin Agarwal

Malavi Brahmin Nagar Brahmin Malavii Brahmin Kashmiri Brahmin Kayasth

Kayasth Khattri Kashmiri Brahmin Telegu Brahmin Kayasth

taluqdar lawyer banker and zamindar banker and zamindar lawyer and zamindar lawyer lawyer lawyer and zamindar banker and zamindar banker and zamindar taluqdar banker and zamindar lawyer

lawyer and banker lawyer lawyer lawyer lawyer lawyer and zamindar lawyer lawyer lawyer journalist lawyer

was a pronounced urban bias, so also there was a regional imbalance. Eighteen members were drawn from six of the principal cities in the province, of which Allahabad alone accounted for ten, while only three members came from the Western Divisions of Meerut, Agra and Rohilkhand. The members were, moreover, drawn almost exclusively from the service and trading castes; six Kayasthas, seven Vaish, nine Brahmins and two Rajputs.28

28 Of the Brahmins, 4 were Kashmiris, 2 Malavis, I Gujarati Nagar, I Telegu and I Kanyakubya, the majority recent immigrants to the province. The Vaish were divided into 3 Agarwals, 3 Khattris and I Bhargava.

I54 RICHARD GORDON

A brief survey of the affiliations of members of the Hindu Sabha committee reveals, further, how this small, well-knit, group dominated provincial politics. At least ten had been members of the H;ndu University Society Executive Committee and the University Deputa- tion,29 while in I9I6, SiX were members of the Council of the Benares Hindu University.30 Seven were listed as patrons and members of the Benares Nagari Pracharini Sabha.31 Several of the Kayasths and Vaish were prominent in caste conferences and in the administration of caste schools and charities. Bishambhar Nath and Lala Sukhbir Sinha were ex-presidents of the Vaish Conference while Moti Chand Gupta was to preside in I 9 I 6. Munshi Gokul Prasad was the president of the Kay- astha Pathshala of Allahabad. The religious affiliations of members, however, indicated important differences. The committee was balanced delicately between the followers of Sanatan Dharma and those who were associated with the U.P. Social Conference. The division of opinion on social reform questions mirrored the distinctions between the professional and commercial groups on the committee. Eight members, including all the banking magnates, were prominent patrons of the Sanatan Dharma movement, while the professional elements were more identified with the Social Conference. A notable exception was Rampal Singh, 'an enlightened Taluqdar of Oudh' who had presided at the U.P. Social Conference in I908 and the Indian Social Conference in IgIo.32 Not one member of the committee has been identified as belonging to the Arya Samaj. Finally, a majority were members of the Congress and seven members attended the annual Congress at Bombay in I9I5.33

To a large extent the Mahasabha was the creation of the educated 'middle class' leaders of the cities of eastern U.P., the same men who had been the pioneers of the Congress. So the Hindu Sabha and the Congress had much in common. However, important differences remained. The Hindu Mahasabha was supported by movements which had never been associated formally with the Congress. Some Congress- men might, in an individual capacity, have been pillars of caste associations, religious movements, language societies or cow-protection

29 Sundaram (ed.), Benares Hindu University, pp. 90-I.

30 The Leader, I 6 August I 9 I 6.

31 Ehe Leader, IO August I9I6. Founded in I893 the society claimed to have I,228

members in I9I6, of whom 948 were outside Benares. 32 7Che Leader, I6 August I9I6. Rampal Singh was later president of the British

India Association of Oudh. 33 Delegates list for the U.P., Report of the Proceedings of the 30th Indian J%ational

Congress, Bombay, I9I5 (Bombay, I9I6).

MAiIASABiIA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I55

bodies, but, in the case of the Mahasabha, these organisations elected delegates directly to its conferences.34 Further, the Congress was able, in balancing all-India interests, to avoid religious controversies, but the Mahasabha was from the beginning unable to reconcile the conflicting interests of the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma movement. If, as a quasi-social reform organisation, the Mahasabha provided a com- mon meeting-ground for the educated professional classes and the rich banking and landed raises, it failed to bridge the gap between the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma movement. Swami Shradhan- anda was present at Hardwar in April I 9 I 5 and spoke in support of the Mahasabha, but on the whole Aryas had little to do with the Mahasa- bha.35 Aryas were certainly active in the Punjab and locally within the U.P., but the U.P. Provincial Sabha and the all-India Mahasabha had closer links with the Sanatan Dharma movement.36 In I9I5 the Maharaja of Darbhanga tried to resuscitate the Sanatan Dharma movement and an All-India Sanatan Dharma Sammelan was formed in conjunction with the Mahasabha at Hardwar.37 Within the U.P., the Hindu Sabha was strongest in the eastern districts and Oudh, the centre of orthodox Brahminical Hinduism. The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal,38 the only consistently active association mrithin the Sanatan Dharma movement, had its base at Benares, and it was in the east of the province that Arya preaching had been effectively resisted. In contrast, the strength of the Arya Samaj lay in the Meerut and Rohilkhand Divisions of the west. Socially the Samaj had been most successful among the Kayasths the smaller Vaish and the agricultural castes, particularly the Rajputs,39 the groups which made up the

34 Ne Leader, I 8 March I 9 I 7. 35Barrier7ournal of Asian Studies, XXVI, No. 3, p. 379, argues that the Aryas

dominated the pan-Hindu political movement in I909. Howevera the attempt to form an all-India body in I9IO failed; by I9I5 the Aryas appear to have lost their influence in the movement.

36 The most important secretary and organiser in the Mahasabha was Pt. Deva :Ratan Sarma a Punjabi Brahmin of I)ehra Dun. Sarma was a propaganda worker for the Sanatan Dharrna movement. The Leader, IO June I9I4.

37 The Sammelan met in I 9 I 6, and again in I 9 I 7 at Lahore. In I 9 I 7 it was amalga- mated with the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal of Benares. The Secretary was Pt. Din Dayal Sarma, the founder and first secretary of the Mahamandal. fhe Leader, 25 February I9I6 and I I April I9I7.

38 Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements, pp. 3IS23, and CShort Note on the Shri Bharat Dharma Mahamandal Benares' (The Great All-India Association of the Orthodox Hindus), Home Poll., File 3I3 of I925, N.A.I. The Society was patronised by Darbhanga and other landed gentry but the principal movers in the society after I9I5, Swamis Gayanand and Dayanand, were suspected of sedition by Government.

39 For an analysis by caste of the Arya community between I9I I and I93I, see Gensus of Indza I93I, U.P., XVIII, Pt I (Aliahabad, I933), 500.

I56 RICHARD GORDON

urban intelligentsia of cities such as Meerut, Bareilly and Moradabad. The Samaj had never been associated with the Theosophical Central Hindu College at Benares or with the Hindu University movement.40 The most conspicuous supporter of the Mahasabha in the western districts was Lala Sukhbir Sinha, a Khattri banker and zamindar of MuzaSarnagar, who, as an avid cow-protectionist, a patron of the Sanatan Dharma movement, an ex-president of the Vaish Conference and a propagandist for the preservation of ayurvedic medecine,41 had more in common with the commercial and landed magnates in the east of the province. The Arya Samaj retained a separate and distinct organisation with its own network of contacts and influence. The links between the Mahasabha and the Sanatan Dharma movement, however, were little more than the result of informal and personal connexions. Neither was the creature of the other. The Sanatan Dharma movement was jealous of its own independence and it frequently advocated causes which brought it into conflict with the political wing of the Mahasabha. It envisaged a more positive political role to stem the tide of social reform; by entering the Legislatures, it hoped to axe all legislation interfering with varnashram dharma, the four cardinal caste distinc- tions of Hinduism, and to secure separate representation for orthodox Hindus.42

The establishment of the U.P. Hindu Sabha in I 9 I 5 in the shadow of of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha represented the high-water mark in the politics of the old order. As a carefully balanced political platform, it unified the commercial, landowning magnates and the more successful professional and service classes of the larger cities and district towns who, between them, dominated the institutions of local government and the elective element in the provincial legislature. However, the growth of organised political activity among the Muslims, pressing for increased representation in local and provincial government, provoked a crisis in U.P. politics and disturbed the settled pattern of political activity. The agitation sparked off by the Jehangirabad Amendment to the U.P. Municipalities Bill of March I9I6 was superseded rapidly by the more vital considerations of further constitutional advance, which

40 Sundaram (ed.), Berzares Hindu University, pp. 90-I. Pt. Din Dayal Sarma, of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, toured with Malaviya on the Hindu University deputation and the bulk of the privately donated funds to the university were from patrons of the Sanatan Dharma movement.

41 Sukhbir Sinha presided at the session of the Mahasabha at Lucknow in December I9I6.

42 Minute by Sir James Meston, 24 October I9I 7, Home Public A, May I9I8,

568%8, N.A.I.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I926 I57

were to dominate the proceedings of the joint session of the Muslim League and the Congress at Lucknow in December I9I6. Between I9I6 and I920 the pace of U.P. politics quickened, leading to a re- shuffling of political groupings. The Congress discarded old allies and won new adherents, while the Hindu Sabha became increasingly isolated and ineSective.

The concession of separate and increased representation to Muslims in the U.P. Municipalities Act of I9I6 posed a direct threat to the Hindu political leadership. As the electorates to the provincial council were constituted from local government bodies, it threatened to under- mine the 'already unsatisfactory' representation of the urban classes in the legislature and to reverse the achievements of several decades.43 A spate of local protest meetings and the boycott of the Municipal Boards in four districts,44 were followed up by a Special Conference of the U.P. Hindu Sabha at Benares in August I9I6. With notable exceptions, Hindu leaders from twenty-three districts attended the conference.45 The absentees, including Motilal Nehru, Sapru and Munshi Mahadeo Prasad of Benares, belonged mainly to the secular, pro-Muslim, groups of Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasths, who had been party to the Jehangirabad Amendment and who had assisted in piloting the Bill through the Legislative Council. Motilal Nehru's sneering references to the agitation earned an angry rebuke from The Leader and from the platform of the Special Conference.46 The pro- Muslim group were, however, in a decided minority and at the tenth U.P. Provincial Political Conference at Jhansi in October a resolution was passed condemning communal representation in principle and its excessive application in the Municipalities Bill.47 The involvement of the Provincial Congress led to a counter-oSensive by local branches of the Muslim League.48 The agitation led by the Hindu Sabha, was, however, eclipsed by developments at the all-India level. They culmin- ated in the Lucknow Pact of I9I6, which conceded the principle of communal representation. In a Congress dominated by :Bengal and Bombay, both anxious to secure a united front with the Muslim League,

43 The Leader, 24 August I9I6. For a comparison of the constitution of Municipal and District Boards and the adverse effect upon Hindu representation see tables in The Leader, I I and 2 2 September I 9 I 6.

44 Allahabad, Rae Bareli, Unao and Azamgarh. The Leader, I 6 August I 9 I 6.

45 List of delegates, The Leader, 24 August I9I6. Several Kayasths and Kashmiri Brahmins attended the Conference but they were not influential or important.

46 Ibid. 47 The Leader, I I October, I9I6.

48 See report of a meeting of the Moradabad Muslim League organised by Mahomed Yakub. The Leader, 28 September I 9 I 6.

I58 RICHARD GORDON

the interests of the Hindus of the U.P. and the Punjab received scant attention. At the joint sessions of the Congress and the League in December I9I6 at Lucknow, the Mahasabhas repeated attempts to gain representation at the joint sittings of the committees failed.49 The Mahasabha protested strongly against the large concessions to the Muslims. While Punjab Muslims received only nine-tenths of what they would have received on a strict population basis, they were for the first time granted separate electorates. In the U.P. Muslims, who constituted fourteen per cent of the population, were alloted thirty per cent of the seats in the provincial Legislative C:ouncil.50 The Muslim claims were again supported by the group of Kashmiri Brahmins and Kayasths which had connived at the Jehangirabad Amendment.sl No politician of any standing was prepared to rally the Mahasabha against the League-Congress scheme. Even Malaviya was not prepared to prejudice his position in the Congress by appearing to oppose, un- compromisingly) the terms of the pact.52

Outmanoeuvred at Lucknow in I9I6, the Mahasabha was unable to survive once Congress began to move towards more advanced political activity. The prospect of contesting elections to the Legislatures reconstituted on an enlarged franchise and territorial constituencies required new initiatives in organisation capable of building support in new areas and at new social levels. The internment of Mrs. Besant in I9I7 enabled the advanced party to push forward the Home Rule -agitation and to extend it to the villages and among the urban wage- earning and working classes. It was the question of village agitation, and not passive resistance) which precipitated the open break between the richer trading and landed groups and the educated classes) and which split the educated. The old leadership) the political core of the Mahasabha, was divided into three broad factions: the moderates who defected in I9I8 to form the Liberal Party) the centre party led by Malaviya, and the advanced party uneasily restrained by Motilal Nehru. By August I9I8 Motilal Nehru was the only politician of any

49 Home Poll. Dl January I9I7 45 N.A.I. - 50 On condition that their community interests were safeguarded by separate and liberal representation in certain of the Councils, the League accepted direct election on a territorial basis. The Muslims were not to vote in the general constituencies. 'Communal Representation in the Legislatures and Local Bodies', EIome Special, File 24 of I928, N.A.I.

51 The Muslims asked for 33+ per cent. Malaviya argued for 25 per cent. The compromise figure of 30 per cent was settled on, at the suggestion of Sapru. U.P. Fortnightly report for the second half of December I9I6, Home Poll, D, January I9I7 45, NA*I-

52 Ibid.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I59

real standing in the province to join with the advanced party.53 If the Nehrus provided the link with the younger party of the Muslim League, the Malaviya group was responsible for organising the peasant agita- tion. Largely under Malaviya's inspiration a campaign was conducted in I9I8 to get peasant delegates to attend the Delhi Congressa over which Malaviya was to preside. Meetings of peasants were held at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad when the U.P. Kisan Sabha was formed.54 The Malaviya group, which included Purshottamdas Tandon, Gauri Shankar Misra and Siva Prasad Gupta,s5 combined with the more advanced party to eject the moderates from the Provincial Congress Committee. At the annual Provincial Conference at Lucknow in August the moderates lost control of the Congress. Strenuous efforts were made to pack the conference with peasant delegates, while the Home Rule Leagues and the Muslim Leagues were invited specially-to elect dele- gates.56 The factions remaining within the P.C.C. assumed a more concrete form in I9I9 when the Home Rule movement split into the Tilak and Besant groups. Alignments were complicated further by the appeal of Gandhi's passive resistance movement. While Motilal Nehru inclined towards Tilak, Malaviya remained 'stoutly pro-Besant',s7 retaining his links with the Theosophical school of politicians, with whom he had many past connexions, in the Central Hindu College and the University movement. By November I 9 I 9 the Executive Committee of the U.P. Congress contairled elements from both fac- tionsn58 but the Khilafat agitation and non-cooperation were) in I920n

53 Home Poll, D, August I9I8 28, N.A.I. 54 Appealing for funds in June I9I9, Malaviya claimed that the Kisan Association

had 450 branches with 3,500 members in the U.P., the Punjab and Bihar. However, the movement appears to have been centred particularly in Allahabad District. C.I.D. Report, 2 February I920, EIome Poll. D, February I920, 75, N.A.I.

55 This group, centred in Allahabad, was particularly involved with EIindi propa- ganda and journalism. Tandon, former editor of Malaviya's AbAudhya, was the founder and prime organiser of the EIindi Sahitya Sammelan and the Provincial Hindi Conference. S.P. Gupta, a cousin of Moti Chand Gupta and a partner in the family banking concerns, helped finance the EIindi movement.

56The use of the Muslim Leagues makes nonsense of the communal-secular distinction. Home Poll. D, September I9I8, 40, N.A.I.

57 EIome Poll. X, March I 9 I 9, I 7, N.A.I. 58 Executive Committee for I920 elected in November I9I9. The Leader, 28

November I9I9. The Malaviya and Nehru families of Allahabad and the Misra family of Lucknow together accounted for I0 of the 24 members of the Committee with 2, 5 and 3 members respectively. With 6 members the Kashmiri Brahmins (K. N. Katju made the sixth), were the largest caste group, followed by the Kayasths with 4, Kanyakubya Brahmins 4, Bengalis 3, Muslims 2, Malavi Brahmins 2, Khattris, Agarwals and Rajputs I. The Congress was still controlled by a narrow and exclusive group centred in Allahabad, Lucknow and Benares.

I60 RICHARD GORDON

to drive the final wedge between them, ensuring victory for the group led by Motilal Nehru. With the successive defeats of the Liberals and the Malaviya faction, the political wing of the Mahasabha had pract- ically disappeared from the Congress.

As the political front of the Mahasabha was disintegrating, the movement was undermined from within. Between I 9 I 2 and I 9 I 5 the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma movement had ostentatiously made up their past differences to promote a joint campaign of cow- protection.59 The Mahasabha had been founded at a time when there was little overt antagonism between the two movements. However, in I9I7 a virulent religious controversy flared up over the Inter-Caste Marriage Bill) moved by V. J. Patel in the Imperial Legislative Council, validating marriages contracted between castes of different varnas. The Maharaja of Darbhanga and Pt. Din Dayal Sarma campaigned through- out north India, rallying the Sanatan Dharma movement. The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal organised meetings to protest against the Bill and Varnashram Leagues were formed to canvass at the elections to the Legislature.60 The Arya leaders, especially Swami Shradhananda, demonstrated in support of the Bill and all branches of the Samaj were instructed to publicise the legislation.6l Politically, the movements pulled in opposite directions. At a Sanatan Dharma Conference in Delhi in March I920 the Maharaja of Darbhanga urged all Sanatan Dharma sabhas to run orthodox candidates at the elections later in the year.62 While the Sanatan Dharma movement was losing influence in Congress circles with the decline of Malaviya, the Arya leaders, Swami Shradhananda and Pt. Rambhuj Dutt Chaudhuri, led the Samaj into a more political role by co-operating with the Congress.63 Religious controversy, reinforced by the different social bases of the two movements, channelled them into diSerent and opposed political

59 'Note on the Anti Cow Killing Agitation in the U.P., I9I3-I6s, Home Poll. D, November I9I6n 52, N.A.I. The report comments that the movement passed from the individual enthusiast to the political leaders and the press. Malaviya was reported to have lectured on the subject.

60 Moti Chand Gupta was president of the All-India Varnashram League which was located in Benares. rhe Leader, I 5 November I 9 I 9.

61 Statement by the U.P. Arya Pritinidhi Sabha, 7Rhe Leader, 20 November I920.

62Aryas clashed with the orthodox when Darbhanga refused to permit Swami Shradhananda to address the meeting. The Leader, I4 March I920.

63 Baij Nath Mithal, an Arya from Meerut, lamented the neglect of the religious function of the Samaj. When it is allowed that local Arya leaders 'are also engaged in nearly all the other activities of the town, municipal, educational, social and politi- cal, you can very realise [siG] the situation the Samaj must find itself in.' rhe Leader, I 5 April I g20. See also U.P.C.I.D. Report, e3 June I 9 I 9, Home Poll. D, June I 9 I 9,

70I04, p. 37, N.A.I.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I6I

stances. By absorbing itself in Congress politics in the Punjab and the western U.P., the Arya Samaj weakened the alliance between the U.P. and the Punjab, which had been the basic factor making possible the formation of the all-India body in I9I5. With small hopes of power under the new Government of India Act of I9I9, the Punjab Hindus and especially the Aryas turned towards the Congress, hoping that an all-India alliance might compensate for their provincial weakness. With the revival of Congress activity, the Punjab Hindu Sabha lapsed into insignificance, and was reduced to trying to promote Hindu interests through a close understanding with Government.64 Gandhi's incursions into north India hastened the collapse of the old style of politics which had been the special mark of the Mahasabha. His lead in the formation of the All-India Cow Protection Conference and the One Script and One Language Conference diverted much of the support that the Mahasabha had received from the Hindi and cow- protection movements.65 The language question had become so prominent that the Amritsar Congress of I9I9 was described as 'a combination of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and the Urdu Confer- ence.'66 Finally, when the Punjab Congress leaders advocated the boycott of the elections to the new Legislative Councils in June I920,

Gandhi seized the opportunity. By coupling the 'Punjab wrong' with the Khilafat agitation he was able to pick up sufficient support to carry the Special Session of the Congress at Calcutta in September I920 into the non-cooperation movement.

The political collapse of the Mahasabha between I9I7 and I920

served to emphasise the dramatic growth of the Muslim movements and the influence which the Central Khilafat Committee wielded in Congress circles. In his concluding speech as president of the Special Session of the Congress at Calcutta, Lala Lajpat Rai referred pointedly to the religious objectives of the Khilafat agitation. He added that he

64 Narendra Nath, secretary, Punjab Hindu Salzha, to Secretary, Home Depart- ment, Government of India, 4 April I 9 I 9, Home Public B, October I 9 I 9, I I 2-I 3, p. I. Narendra Nath to S.P. O'Donnell, Secretary, Reforms OSice, 30 March I920,

Reforms Office B, April I920) Franchise I04) p. 2, N.A.I. 65 Gandhi had been fostering support in north India since his return to India. In

I 9 I 5 he spoke at Hardwar in support of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha. In Decem- ber I 9 I 6 he presided at the First All-India One Language and One Script Conference at Lucknow. In April I9I9 he became president of a subcommittee of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, to popularise Hindi in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies. He was particularly successful among the Marwari communities in north India. The Marwari Agarwala Conference in I9 I 9 donated Rs. 50.0001- for the spread of Hindi. Home Poll., File I40 of I925, N.A.I.; The Leader, 6January I9I7, 24 April I9I9 and I 6 June I 920.

66 Ehe Leader, 8 January I920.

I62 RICHARD GORDON

'was a little sorry that Mr. Gandhi in his wisdom should have con- sidered it necessary and proper in a way to tack the Indian National Congress to the Central Khilafat Committee.'67 However, the Mahasa- bha was by no means the only body to succumb. The Home Rule Leagues, the old Presidency associations and the Muslim League met a similar fate. In I920 Gandhi had used the Khilafat organisation to secure the return of delegates pledged to support his programme, but this was to be the last occasion when use was made of the provision in the old Congress constitution which allowed associations sharing the aims of the Congress to be included in the Congress electorate.68 In future, battles for control of the organisation were to be fought by groups organised as wings within the Congress. The tightening of the Congress organisation smashed the close and informal connexions between the Hindu sabhas, the district associations and the district Congress committees. The streamlining of the provincial Congress executive ands the rationalisation of the branch structure supplanted the loose and informal style of politics which had prevailed before Ig20.69 With the movement split over non-cooperation with its various elements pulling in opposite directions and with local organisation in disarray, none of the Mahasabha leaders could rally their rank and Sle. Between I920 and I922 the Mahasabha ceased to function formally, but the leadership, while yielding to the seemingly irresistible progress of non-cooperation, held aloof from the movement. If Bombay was the treasury, north India was the power-house of the Khilafat movement. The religious fervour excited by the agitation fanned animosities which had been increasing steadily since I9I7.70 E5orts to paper over the cracks in the communal alliance failed to disguise the religious nature of the political crisis among the Muslims. The entry of the ulama into politics, the loose talk of a holy war and the manifestly Pan-Islamic aims of many Khilafat leaders led Hindus to fear a revived and aggressive Islam. The preaching of the ulaman 67 rimes of India, I I September I920. A correspondent in 7Che Leader was more specific: 'In fact, as the Lalaji remarked, what the Central Khilafat Committee has done to-day the Hindu Sabha might do tomorrow.' Ehe Leader, I7 September I920. 68 Article XX, Electorates and Delegates, as amended at the 30th Indian National Congress, Bombay I9I5, M. V. Ramana Rao, Development of the Congress Constitution (New Delhi, I 958), pp. 29-30. 69 See Gopal Krishna, 'The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, IgI8-Ig23', Journal of Asian Studies, XXV No. 3 (May I966), ppv 4I3-3°* 70 The immediate cause of the riots in October I9I7 was the coincidence of the Dusehra and Mohurrum festivals. See Home Poll. D, November I9I7, 30, p. I4, and January I9I8, I, p. I3, N.A.I.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS) I 9 I 5-I 926 I63

ostensibly directed towards rousing the Muslim masses) drifted imper- ceptibly into efforts to convert the unbelievers. The uprising of the Moplahs in Malabar in August I92I, tactlessly whitewashed by the Gentral Khilafat Committee, confirmed Hindu fears that the Khilafat -agitation was being used covertly to expand the frontiers of Islam.7l For months the Hindu press in north India was obsessed with the forced conversions and with the means of reclaiming their lost brethren. The full horror of the rebellion was made more immediate through the distribution of newsreels in the commercial cinema.72 Even before the outbreak of the Moplah rebellion, the non-cooperation movement had failed to make any striking progress among the Hindus of north India. In an eCort to draw Hindus into the boycott of the visit of the Prince of Wales in the autumn of I92I, Swami Shradhananda tried to revive the Mahasabha by organising cow-protection propaganda. Failing to carry a Special Hindu Gonference at Brindaban in August, largely owing to the opposition of Malaviya and Pt. Din Dayal Sarma,73 Shradhananda, as president of the Gauraksha Sabha, and certain Congress leaders, convened a more efficiently stage-managed con- ference at Delhi in November. A resolution was passed, supported-in the open conference by Motilal Nehru and G. R. Das, calling upon all Hindus to non-cooperate with the 'cow-killing British Government.' A committee of sadhus and pandits was formed to issue a religious decree, similar in intent to the fatwa of the ulama, invoking religious sanctions against co-operators.74 In mounting a cow-protection cam- paign, however, the Gongress leaders simply underlined their growing difficulties in maintaining the united front with the Khilafat Committee

71 Almost immediately after the revolt the Arya Samaj began to organise recon- version. In February I923 the emphasis in reeonversion shifted from the Moplah converts to the reclamation of eonverts in north India. Both the Arya Samaj and the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal of Benares began to counter the missionary activities of the ulama with organised eampaigns. See The Leader 28 October I92I and 7 September I923. See also 'Communal Disorders', Home Speeial, File 4 of I927,

pp. 2-I7, N.A.I. 72 The Leader 7 September I923.

73 A resolution supporting non-eooperation was passed by the conferenee but withdrawn when Malaviya and Sarma appealed for its repeal. Hindu, I September I92I .

74 The Leader, g November I92I. See also Bombay Chronicle, I6 November I92I.

Cow-proteetion propagandists had been aetive in the non-eooperation movement since I920. The annual sessions of the Cow Conferenee, held in eonjunction with the Con- gress, attempted to seeure the inelusion of eow-protection in the Congress programme. The reluetanee of Muslim divines to prohibit eow-slaughter increased ill-feeling between the two eommunities. The eampaign of I 92 I was directed against the supply of beef to troops in Burma. See Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 August I920, and Bombay Chronicle, 7 June I 92 I .

I64 RI C HA RD G O RD O N

which was prepared neither to moderate its communal demands nor to merge its organisation with the Congress.75 The prominence which religious issues assumed and the reassertion of communal jealousies weakened the liaison and strengthened the position of the politicians who had co-operated with government in I920 and entered the Legis- lative Councils to work the reforms. The Mahasabha leaders had, from the beginning of the non-cooperation movement, regarded the EIindu- Muslim union as superficial and ill-conceived. They saw the Khilafat agitation as a passing phenomenon, of no permanent value to the inter- ests of either community.76 Although Malaviya remained within the Gongress and withdrew from the elections in I920, he attacked non- cooperation as inimical to the long-term interests of the Hindu com- munity of north India. At Allahabad in October I920 he condemned the boycott of the schools and colleges as educational suicide. It would have been the height of folly to cut of much-needed government financial aid to expanding educational institutions such as the Benares Hindu University, of which Malaviya was appointed vice-chancellor in I 9 I 9. In the name of Islam, EIindu politicians were being asked to boycott the Legislative Gouncils, and thus sacrifice the achievements of years of political activity.77 With few exceptions, most of the political wing of the Mahasabha entered the Legislatures in I920, as Inde- pendents or in association with the Liberal Party.78 But the reforms in the Gongress organisation marooned the old party in the Councils without any electoral organisation in the constituencies.

The tendency of groupings in the Councils to form along communal lines, especially in the Punjab and Bengal, the two provinces with decisive Muslim majorities, helped to revive provincial and communal organisation and to demolish the non-cooperation front. Where Hindu and Muslim interests clashed) this division seemed more important than the dispute between the co-operators and the non-cooperators.

75 'Congress Week in Ahmedabad', Home Poll., File 46I of I92I, N.A.I. 76 'There is at present a wave of political unity, which in my opiniqn is superficial.

Hindu communal interests don't find many champions. Publicists of the present day are political workers and they hesitate to stand up for communal rights. But this is no reason for overlooking them.' Narendra Nath to S. P. O'Donnell) Reforms Commissioner, 30 March I920. Reforms Office Franchise B, April I920, I04, p. 2,

N.A.I. 77 1 he Leader, 8 ()ctober I 920.

78 Rampal Singh, Lala Sukhbir Sinha and Moti Chand Gupta were elected to the Council of State; Iswar Sarann Lala Girdhari Lal Agarwalan Pt. Radha Kishen Das, Lala Bishambhar Nath, Mahadeo Prasad, Suraj Baksh Singh and Pt. Sankata Prasad Bajpai to the Legislative Assembly; and Krishna Kant Malaviya, Hriday Nath Kunzru, Iqbal Narayan Gurtu, and Lala Anand Swarup to the Provincial Council.

BfAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 I65

The guerilla campaigns of political leaders in the provincial councils strained the loyalty of the many Congressmen who had been dragged unwillingly into the boycott of the Legislatures in I920. The-successes of the co-operators, in disposing of government patronage available to them through their control of the transferred departments, especially education andflocal government, and in consolidating electoral support, contrasted favourably with the glaring failure of the Congress to win any concessions from government after a year of sustained agitation. The presumed benefits of an India-wide agitation were remote compared with the immediate advantages to be gained by concentrating upon provincial politics. The decentralisation of power along provincial lines under the Government of India Act of I9I9 had intensified pro- vincial rivalries. With higher stakes, an enlarged franchise, and the prospect of further constitutional advance towards provincial autonomy, competition was sharpened and extended to groups which had, hitherto7 remained beyond the pale of conventional politics. In I920

Gandhi had succeeded in fashioning an all-India alliance of sorts, but, in the U.P. and the Punjab, the groups who had resisted his call most strongly were generally associated with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. Provincial dissidence in north India had its roots in communal politics and was strengthened by a scepticism about a political union with the Muslims. The old Mahasabha leaders kept their unity by working together in the Legislatures. As influential groups within the Congress began to advocate a policy of contesting the elections to the Legislative Councils in I 923) the question of electoral organisation became vital, both for the dissidents in the Congress and for the co-operators who faced the possibility of a Congress attack upon their position in the Legislatures. In all provinces there had been a swing towards contesting the local government elections, well before the susi3ension of civil disobedience in March I922. As non-cooperation began to collapse in I92X, the swing was even more marked. Indian politics was returning to its old moorings, to political activity in the Legislatures and in local government. In north India the revival of electoral politics was accompanied by the progressive deterioration of relations between the Hindu and Muslim communities. The crop of riots, which broke out in I 922 and I 9X3, helped to revive the Mahasabha and other communal bodies. But behind this apparent split into two solid communal blocs what was taking place was a re-alignment of factions and groups, freed from the artificial restraints of Gandhian discipline. The collapse of the Congress front was sudden and dramatic, and the non-cooperation movement fell in ruins. Writing to Mahomed

I66 RICHARD GORDON

Ali, president of the I923 Session of the Congress, the secretary of the Delhi Provincial Congress Committee reported gloomily:79 The Bardoli resolution put the machinery much out of gear. The results which followed form a series of reverses suffered in all directions for a period of nearly eighteerl months The schools and panchayats had to be closed down, most of the sub-ofiices disappeared automatically, Volunteer Corps became demoralised and dwindled to a point of conspicuous insignificance, and the Provincial and District treasuries were exhausted. As the culmina- tion of our defeat communal dissensions and separatist organisations diverted the attention of the people to a form of activity least calculated to promote the spirit requisite for the achievement we had in view . . . it is taxing our patience and ingenuity inconceivably hard to keep up appearances.

The former Nationalists in Bengal and Maharashtra and the party in the U.P. led by Motilal Nehru were the first openly to raise the standard of revolt against the dictates of the Gandhian Congress. In December I92X, failing to carry the Gaya Congress, they formed the Swarajya Party, an organised wing within the Congress, to steer the Congress back to theXprinciples of the pre-Gandhian period and to work the reforms with the aim of securing greater, if not full provincial autonomy. From the beginning the party was an all-India coalition of dissidents who had been forced reluctantly to accept non-cooperation in I 920 and who sought greater provincial autonomy within the Congress organisation, to pursue policies more suited to the particular needs and circumstances of their provinces. Maharashtra had never been reconciled to the leadership of the Mahatma and had accepted the boycott of the Councils only on the understanding that they would be free to work for the revision of the- Congress programme.80 It is unlikely, however, that the Maharashtrian leaders would have achieved any revision of the Congress programme without the support of Bengal and the U.P. In important respects the Swarajya Party was the creation of Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das. They alone prevented the collapse of the Congress into mere provincial factionalism by constructing a well-disciplined, if short-lived, all-India organisation which, within the limits of the party, allowed the pursuit of purely provincial aims. If there were strong personal affinities between the two men,8l their working relationship was based also upon sound tactical considerations. Political necessity dictated a coalition with the Khilafat party if the 79 Asaf Ali to Mahomed Ali, I4 December I9232 Mahomed Ali Papers, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 80 Statement by N. C. Kelkar, Chitpavan Brahmirl journalist of Poona, resigning from the Maharashtra P.C.C., I I August I922. Hindu, 20 August I922. 81 Nehru, An Autobihy pp. I04-5.

MAHASASHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I67

Swarajya Party's policy of obstruction in the Councils was to succeed. In their attempt to secure Muslim support Das and Nehru delayed the formation of the party. In the face of impatience in Maharashtra and to a less extent in Madras, Das and Nehru temporised, hoping for a compromise with the 'No-change' Party acceptable to a majority of the Khilafat group. The Khilafatists held the balance between the two factions, and it was owing to their opposition that the Swarajists had been defeated at Gaya in December IgX.82 Throughout I923 the Swarajya Party, faced with the possibility of expulsion, manoeuvred to retain its position in the Congress and organised to ensure victory at the polls. In north India and Bengal, neither of these aims could be realised without the support of a section, at least, of the Muslim community. In Bengal Das was forced to make a pact with certain Muslim leaders,83 which settled the terms of communal representation in the Legislatures and the public services. The pact was to apply to Bengal alone, though Das attempted subsequently to secure official Congress approval. In Bengal, the Swarajya Party could win Muslim support only by making communal concessions which went beyond the provisions of the Lucknow Pact. The efforts of the Swarajist leaders to disband the Khilafat organisation and merge it with the Congress proved abortive84 and in the U.P., Bengal and the Punjab the Khilafat Committees retained their separate identity. By endorsing the fatwa of the ulama the Central Khilafat Committee made a joint Khilafat- Swarajya ticket at the elections in I923 impossible. Only in the U.P. and Bengal was the party able to nominate members of the Khilafat party on the Swarajist ticket. But even in these two provinces the electoral alliance was an informal one.

While working to maintain the Hindu-Muslim entente, the Swarajist leaders also made elaborate soundings among the Liberals and the Nationalists who had kept out of the non-cooperation movement. In February I 9X3 a meeting of Nationalists was convened in Calcutta in an attempt to bring back old colleagues into the party.85 In Aug-ust I923

Motilal Nehru met Chintamani in Benares to discuss the possibility

82 Report ofthe Gaya Congress, Home Poll. File I8 of I922, N.A.I. As a means of attracting Muslim support the name of the party was, initially, the Congress- Khilafat-Swarajya Party.

83 Das was reported to have concluded the pact with Sir Abdur Rahim at the house of Abdul Karim. Amrita Bazar Patrika, I 2 January I924.

84 In an interview in the Bej of Delhi in February I 924 Das stated that he and Abul Kalam Azad had been pressing for the amalgamation of the Khilafat organisation with the Congress, Cbut the Ali brothers did not agree'. The Leader, IO February I924.

85 Amrita Bazar Patrika, I 8 Februaw I 923 .

I68 RICHARD GORDON

of uniting the two parties.86 Both attempts proved unsuccessful as neither the Liberals in the U.P. nor the Independent Nationalists in Bengal-were prepared to subscribe to the Swarajya programme of obstruction. In western and southern India, however, where political alignments were dominat'ed by the rise of non-Brahmin movements, the party managed to draw the co-operators of I920 back into the party ranks. Quite a high proportion of the candidates nominated by the Swarajya party in Maharashtra and Madras at the elections in I923

were sitting members of the Legislative (]ouncils. At the elections the Swarajist fury in Maharashtra and Madras was directed against the non-Brahmin parties, while in Bengal and north India the Independents and the Liberals bore the brunt of the Swarajist attack.

The Swarajya Party not only represented particular groups in the diSerent provinces, but in certain provinces, especially the U.P., all it represented was a particular faction inside a group. In its early days, the U.P. Swarajya Party consisted of little more than Motilal Nehru and his own personal following and the young party of Muslim politicians who had been active in the Khilafat movement. The U.P. 'No-change' Party which, at the all-India level occupied the position of a centre party between the Swarajists and the orthodox Gandhians of Gujarat and Madras, was composed mainly of the group led by Purshottamdas Tandon and Shiva Prasad Gupta. T'he members of this last group were formerly followers of Malaviya and were the principal movers behind the Hindi Sahitya'Sammelan of Allahabad. From the beginning, Malaviya remained aloof from the Swarajya Party. Though he supported the suspension of the council boycott, Malaviya was active from I922 in trying to form' his own party in the Congress. He publicly declared his faith in non-cooperation and toured north India to eSect a reconciliation between the non-cooperation party and the old fIindu Sabha party which had contested the elections in Ig20.87 Moreover, at Gaya in December I922 Malaviya had begun the revival of the Hindu Mahasabha. His conversion to non-coopera- tion was a little too opportunistic. In the event, the rise of the Swarajya Party showed that his eSorts proved fruitless. At the elections in 1923 Malaviya stood as an Independent88 and publicly canvassed for several

86 7Che teadern 30 August I923.

87 Malaviya was concerned particularly to revive the old connexion between the Hindus of the U.P. and the Punjab. See, for example, H. D. Craik, Chief Secretary to the Government ofthe Punjab, to S. P. O'Donnell, Secretary to Home Department, Government of India, 20 April I922, Home Poll., File 86I of I922, p. I, N.A.I.

88 Malayiva later claimed that Das had offered him the post of president of the

MAEASABHA AND NATIONAL CONG1tESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I69

members of his old faction, Gurtu, Kunzru and Iswar Saran, against Swarajist nominees. In spite of Swarajist attempts to absorb other political groups in the U.P., the old lines of factional and communal cleavage persisted. The Khilafat organisation retained its separate identity. With few exceptionsn the Malaviya faction and the old Mahasabha group remained aloof from the Swarajya Party, turning in preference to the old connexions which had formed the basis of the HinduZunity movement before I920.

The Hindu Mahasabha met, for the first time since I9I9, in the Congress pandal at Gaya in December I922. In his presidential address Malaviya dwelt at length upon the disintegration of the Hindu com- munity3 the need for strong communal organisation and the revival of the Mahasabha; themes which were to become common in the following years. The conference passed resolutions establishing a Hindu Relief Committee to render financial assistance to the victirn.s of riots,89 the Hindu Raksha Mandal to organise local bodies to protect Hindu interests in communal riots, and an organising committee to establish Hindu Sabhas in all provinces.90 The conference reiterated its support for Hindi and cow-protection. Of more immediate political importance was a resolution calling upon all local bodies to prohibit the slaughter of cows within municipal and district limits. For the first time, the Mahasabha expressed concern for the depressed classes, including the untouchables, and urged religious leaders to give religious instruction to and to improve the sanitary and other social habits of these classes.91

Swarajya Party but, as he was then a follower of the Mahatma, he graciously de- clined. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 April I926.

89 The members of the Committee were: the Maharaja of Cossimbazar, a promi- nent member of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal of Benares and a patron of the Hindu University, from Bengal; Malaviya, Rampal Singh, Moti Chand Gupta and Lala Sukhbir Sinha from the U.P.; Lala Ram Saran Das and Narendra Nath from the Punjab; Dr. Moonje andJamnalal Bajaj, the leader of the orthodox Vaishnavite Marwaris and a president of the Sanatan Dharma Sammelan, from the C.P. With the exception of the last two, all these figures had been prominent in the Mahasabha before I 920. Hinda, I I January I 923.

oolbid. The provincial organisers were: Malaviya, Lala Sukhbir Sinha, Moti Chand Gupta and Pt. Deva Ratan Sarma from the U.P.; Swami Shradhananda, Pt. Neki Ram Sarma, Lala Hansraj, Dhar Singh, Alam Namdhar, Punjab; N. C. Kelkar and the Shankaracharya of Karvir, Maharashtra; G. S. Khaparde and Jam- nalal Bajaj, Berar; Dr. B. S. Moonje, C. P. Marath; Maharaja of Cossimbazar, Bengal; C. Vijayaraghavachariar, S. Satyamurthi, and A. Rangaswamy Iyengar Madras; D. Madhava Rao, Andhra; and K. Natarajan, Bombay city.

91 The resolution was cautiously worded to avoid unnecessary offence to orthodox opinion. Malaviya was careful to point out that the resolution 'did not force them to eat with them or to enter into marriage with them, but to recognize them as one of them, to love them, . . .'. Ibid.

I70 RICHARD GORD ON

The conference marked a new phase in the growth of the Hindu 1lnity movement in several important respects. While the old followers of the Mahasabha were responsible for its revival in I922, the organisa- tional plans outlined at Gaya were designed to extend the movement to an all-India level, to provinces which had, before 1920, shown no interest in the movement. The resolution on untouchability committed the Mahasabha to nothing in practice but it did indicate the growing interest of the Arya Samaj in the movement. Two leading members of the Samaj, Swami Shradhananda and Lala Hansraj, were appointed to the organising committee. But the Samaj continued to meet separa- tely from the Mahasabha, unlike the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal which held a conference in conjunction with the Mahasabha at Gaya.92

The meeting at Gaya was, however,, a preliminary to a larger gathering at Benares in August I923, the sixth Annual Conference of the All-India Mahasabha. While the new policies adopted by the Mahasabha began to assume a more definite shape, the conference also exposed the deep differences which divided the movement. The conference made more precise plans for expanding the Mahasabha by appointing nine subcommittees93 to organise provincial branches and local Hindu Sabhas. Further provision was made for the victims of communal riots and the organisation of the Hindu self-defence leagues, with an added appeal to youth to practise brahmacharya and gymnastics. The seventh resolution linked the learning of H;ndi with the regeneration of Hinduism, and members were urged to boycott dealers in cowhides and skins. By far the most important resolution, however, dealt with the question of shuddhi, the reclamation of converts to other religions, and the untouchables. The discussion in the conference in- volved an open clash between members of the Arya Samaj and the more strictly orthodox Brahmin pandits of Benares, for it raised directly issues of a controversial religious nature. By supporting the shuddhi campaign, begun by the Arya Samaj in I92I to reclaim Hindus con- verted forcibly to Islam by the Moplahs and later extended to Muslim converts in Agra District, the Mahasabha brought a more specifically religious emphasis to its platform.94 In assisting the missionary activities

92 Hinda, 4 January I 923. 93 Convenors were appointed to supervise the work of these subcommittees:

Rampal Singh and Durga Narayan Singh of Tirwa District Farrukhabad U.P.; Pt. Neki Ram Sarma, Delhi, the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province; Kunwar Chandkaran Sarda Ajmer, Malwa and Gujarat; Dr. Baij Nath Chaturvedi, Bengal and Assam; Swami Atma Swarup, Sind; and Dr. B. S. Moonje, the C.P. and Berar. Hindu, 30 August r 9X3.

94 The All-India Shuddhi Sabha was formed at Agra in February I923 following

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I7I

of the Arya Samaj the Mahasabha chose an issue which might unite the different strands in the movement, though it offended the rigidly orthodox.95 The religious fever generated by the Khilafat and non- cooperation movements and the outbreak of communal rioting en- couraged the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma movement to sink their differences in a common programme to counteract the missionary activiiies of the ulama among caste Hindus and untouchables. Further, renewed Christian rnissionary enterprise, especially among the un- touchables, provided an added incentive for joint action. In the open conference the shuddhi resoluiion was moved and seconded by two leading members of the Sanatan Dharma movement, Pt. Girdhar Sarma Sastri, principal of the Sanatan Dharma College of Lahore, and Swami Dayanand, secretary of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal of Benares. Though the shuddhi movement comprehended reclamation of caste Hindu converts and untouchables, separate resolutions were passed to distinguish the two. In spite of intense opposition from the orthodox who created pandemonium when he injudiciou$1y allowed a Chamar to address the conference from the platform, Malaviya succeeded in passing a resolution permitting untouchables to read in schools, to use wells, to enter temples and to sit on the carpet at public meetings. The shuddhi campaign was to be conducted by the All-India Shuddhi Sabha of the Arya Samaj, and responsibility for untouchable reform was entrusted to a subcommittee of Pandits working in con- sultation with the Working Committee of the Mahasabha. Very real differences remained. The session of the Sanatan Dharma Sammelan refused to allow a resolution on untouchability while a resolution permitting inter-dining between different Brahmin jathis was rejected out of hand.g6

The temporary ascendancy of the Arya Samaj in the Mahasabha was the result of particular and local conditions in the U.P. and re- flected the new political alignments which were to dominate the move- ment. The shuddhi movement was not a new phenomenon but in the post-Khilafat period it assumed a new importance.s7 Before the financial the campaign of the Aryas to reclaim the Moplah converts. The Leader, 7 September I923.

95 When the resolution was under discussion in the Subjects Committee the orthodox pandits 'broke into rage, extolling Brahmin supremacy.' Swami Shrad- hananda the most popular personality at the conference, came under attack from the orthodox as the destroyer of the Efindu religion. Hindu, 30 August I923.

96 The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal revived the Sammelan for the Benares Conference. Hindun 23 August I 923.

97 The Bharat Shuddhi Sabha was formed at Agra in I909 by Pt. Bhoj Dutt Sarman a leading PArya, who had founded a Shuddhi Sabha in Amritsar in I907 as

RICIIARD GORDON I72

collapse of non-cooperation, Arya preachers had urged the Samaj to be more attentive to its religious obligations and less concerned with politics.98 In the wake of the Malabar rebellion Swami Shradhananda turned to the problem of shuddhi and reclamation of untouchables. Throughout I922 he bargained with the Congress for Snancial aid to his schemes. He renounced his affiliation with the Congress and turned to the Mahasabha only when the Congress had refused to become involved in the movement.99 The initial success of the shuddhi move- ment can be traced to the support of the Kshatriya Upkarini Mahasa- bha, the movement for inter-clan unity among the Rajputs, and par- ticularly to the association of Rampal Singh and Raja Durga Narayan Singh of Tirwa with the movement.100 The Rajputs in Agra Division had been associated with the Shuddhi Sabha in I907, when a Rajput Shuddhi Sabha was affiliated to the Arya Samaj for the reconversion of Muslim Rajputs, particularly the Malkhanas. I01 In April I 923 Rajput leaders began a campaign among their caste fellows in support of the Arya shuddhi campaign, to re-admit the Malkhanas-into the caste. In July Rajputs from Agra and Oudh were elected to the exe- cutive committee of the Shuddhi Sabha.l02 Durga Narayan Singh presided at the U.P. Social Conference in August I923 which passed a resolution, moved by Rampal Singh) in support of shuddhi.103 Again, both were associated prominently with the shuddhi resolution passed by the conference of the Mahasabha at Benares. In later years the relationship between the Arya Samaj and the Kshatriya Upkarini Mahasabha was to become even more intimate. In I925 their annual conferences were held jointly at Muttra when Rampal Singh was a branch of the Arya Pritinidhi Sabha. The movement subsided and no mention of conversion was made when the Hindu Mahasabha was founded in I9I5. Home Poll., File I40 of I925, N.A.I.

98 Speech by Bhai Parmanand, I Ith All-India Arya Kumar (Youth) Conference Meerut, October I 92 I . 7<he Leader, 3 November I 92 I .

99 See correspondence between Swami Shradhananda and V. J. Patel, General Secretary, Indian National Congress, 23 May and 3June I922, File I0 of I922,

All-India Congress Committee papers, N.M.M. [A.I.C.C.]. 100 Rampal Singh and Durga Narayan Singh were appointed convenors of the

U.P. Organising Committee of the Mahasabha. 101 Between I907 and I9I0 the society claimed to have converted I,052 Muslim

Rajputs. Census of India I9II, U.P., p. I34, quoted in Lala Lajpat Rai, A History of the Arya Samaj (Calcutta, I 967), p. I 2 I .

102Hindu, 26July I923. Agra was an important centre ofthe Rajputs. The Ksha- triya Upkarini Sabha was founded in Agra in I887 by Thakur Umrao Singh of Kotla. The Association's newspaper, Rajput, waspublished at Agra. 7Che Leader, I5

February I9I4. In I923 the editor of the Rajput, Hanuman Singh Raghubansi of Agra, was a member ofthe Shuddhi Sabha executive. Hindu, 26July I923.

103 Hinduj, 30 August I 923.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I *73

elected president of the Shuddhi Sabha for the following year.l04 In other provinces, the lack of firm social roots prevented any real progress for the shuddhi movement, and by I925, outside the U.P., it was largely a spent force.105

Following the Benares Conference the Mahasabha was reorganised. The central organisation was remodelled and a Working Committee, with offices at the Benares Hindu University, was established. With Malaviya as president and Pt. Deva Ratan Sarma as general secretary, the key positions were occupied by men who had been the founders of the Mahasabha in I 9 I 5.106 For the -purposes of organisation, the Mahasabha divided India into twenty-three linguistic provinces on much the same pattern as Congress.107 The growth of the organisation was, however, sporadic and uneven; it was strongest where communal riots were fiercest. The number of provincial and local branches fluctuated and it is difficult to form an accurate assessment of the full extent of the organisation. In January I924 the secretary reported that the Mahasabha was confined still to the larger cities and that it had few provincial or local branches.108 In its organisation the Mahasabha showed the same tendency as it had in the period before I920. It did function at an all-India level but its provincial branches were rather loose and confined to the larger cities. By August I924 only nine provincial branches had been formed, of 362 affiliated local Hindu Sabhas, the Punjab and the U.P. together accounted for sixty per cent of the total, and if Bihar is added, eighty per cent.109 In contrast to the position before I920, the Mahasabha had extended its organisation

104 Ehe Leader, I 7 April I925.

105 The movement made little progress in the Punjab where communal rivalries were more clearly political in origin. See reports of Provincial Governments on 'The Communal Situation', Home Poll., File I40 of I925, N.A.I. Communal rioting, also, was less frequent and less widespread in the Punjab than in the U.P. Between I923

and I926, 8 serious riots occurred compared with I9 in the U.P. Home Special, attached statement on communal disorders, File 4 of I927, pp. I8-23, N.A.I.

106 Hindu, 30 August I923.

107 Madras city, Andhra, Kerala, Karnatak, Bombay city, Maharashtra, Gujarat- Kathiawar, Sind and Baluchistan, Bengal, Oudh, Agra, Punjab, Delhi, N.W.F.P., Ajmer and Rajputana, C. P. Marathi, C. P. Hindustani, Berar and Hyderabad, Central India, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Burma. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 January I924.

108 Ibid. 109 Provincial Sabhas had been formed in the Punjab, Sind, Oudh, Delhi, Bihar,

Rajputana, Bengal, Bombay city and Madras. Of the 362 local branches the U.P. claimed I60, the Punjab 65, Bihar 65, Bombay Presidency 22, Central Provinces I6,

Bengal II, Madras Presidency II, Burma 3, Rajputana 3, Assam, Central India, Kenya, South Africa, England and Mesopotamia, I each. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26

August I924. An Agra branch was formed in September I924, The Leader, I Septem- ber I924, and in Orissa in July I924, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 4July I924.

I74 R I C HA RD G O RD O N

to include the majority of provinces in British India, the native states and the scattered colonies of Indians overseas. But the strength of the movement was still centred in north India and its growth was most prominent in the Hindi-speaking areas, especially Delhi and Bihar. Of 968 paid-up delegates attending the annual conference at Benares in August t9X3, 56.7 per cent were from the U.P. alone, an unusually high proportion of provincial delegates for an all-India conference. Together, the U.P., the Punjab, Delhi and Bihar contributed 86.8 per cent of the delegates. Madras, Bombay and Bengal combined sent a mere 6.6 per cent of the delegates. In addition there were some 500 delegates admitted free of the delegate fee, mostly kisans, sadhus and Sanskrit scholars (a Sanskrit conference was held in the Mahasabha pandal), swelling the ranks of the U.P. delegates.ll° When the Maha- sabha held its eighth Annual Session at Calcutta in April I925 it was practically boycotted by the native Bengali population, 'both rank and file.'lll For, whatever constitution the Mahasabha claimed on paper it still attracted little more than casual support outside Hindustan. Moreover, informality was still the most important characteristic of the organisation. The Mahasabha electorate remained vague, drawing upon religious and caste associations as well as local Hindu Sabhas and the ad hoc committees formed specifically to elect delegates to congerenceS. 112

It was significant that, outside Hindustan, the Mahasabha had very little support. In Madras, Bengal and Maharashtra, the movement was not, nor did it attempt to be, a broadly based social and religious movement as it was in north India. In Maharashtra and the Central Provinces Marathi districts and Berar, the Hindu Sabhas were confined to the Mahratta Brahmins, who were mainly Chitpavans. N. C. Kelkar, the leader of the Swarajya Party in Maharashtra, which was also a predominantly Brahmin organisation, presided at the Congress session of the Mahasabha at Belgaum in I924. But, apart from the occasional appearance on its platform, most politicians in Maharashtra had nothing to do with the Mahasabha.ll3 Mahratta Brahmins in

11o U.P. 550 delegates, including I72 local men from Benares; Bihar I72; Punjab 94; Bengal 46; Delhi 25; Central Provinces 25; Rajputana and Deccan States X; Bombay I2; Madras 6; Assam ; Burma, Patiala, Dumraon, Sind, Travancore and the N.W.F.P., I each. Total 960. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 August I923.

lllTheLeaderoAprilIgxs

112 In I923 Shradhananda appealed to Sanatan Dharma Sabhas, Arya Samajes and caste associations, including the Rajput, Vaish, Khattri, Kurmi and Ahir Sabhas to elect delegates. Hindu, g August I923.

113 The Government of Bombay reported in I925 that there were only 8 branches of the Hindu Sabha in the Presidency; Bombay city I, Maharashtra 3 (Poona,

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 I75

Nagpur were more active) particularly B. S. Moonje, a Chitpavan doctor. As an immigrant community, the Brahmins in I924 and I925 supported the Hindu Sabha in preference to the C:ongress as a means of counteracting the non-Brahmin movement which had been winning control of local government bodies.ll4 In I925 Nagpur witnessed the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh out of which the militant Hindu movement was to develop but which belonged to a wholly different tradition to the Mahasabha in north India.ll5 In greater Maharashtra, the Mahasabha had become identified with the Brahmins in their rivalry with the non-Brahmins. But as Brahmins controlled the Congress through the Swarajya Party, the heir of the Tilak Swarajya Sanghas, there was little immediate need to sink their lot with the Mahasabha.ll6 Similarly, the Madras Hindi Sabha was composed largely of Tamil Brahmins threatened by the rise of the non-Brahmin Justice Party. The Swarajya Party leaders, S. Satya- murthi and A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, editor of the Tamil daily, Swadeshmitran, were the most active in the Hindu Sabha. But the Hindu Sabha, just as the Swarajya Party, was confined to Madras city. Organised to agitate against the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Bill by which the Justice Party planned to control temple properties and endowments,ll7 the Hindu Sabha was an unimportant body and was quietly ignored. Moreover, the Mahasabha refused to become entangled in the Brahmin versus non-Brahmin controversy in the south. Since Brahmins alone opposed the Religious Endowments Bill, the Mahasabha decided to remain neutral.ll8 Moreover, in Madras, as in Maharashtra, while Brahmins retained a controlling influence in the Provincial Congress, there was nothing to be gained by working through the Mahasabha.

The Bengal Hindu Sabha had more in common with its counterparts in Hindustan. It sheltered groups which had been ousted from the Congress in I920 and the 'No-change' Party which had lost control of the Congress to the Swarajya Party in I923. But the similarity ended there. The Bengal Hindu Sabha remained aloof from the alI-India (Poona, Sangli and Ratnagiri), Gujarat 2 (Kaira and Surat), Sind I (Hyderabad), and the Karnatak I (Belgaum). Home Poll., File I40 of I925, N.A.I.

114 Home Poll., File 25 of I924 and File I I2 of I925, N.A.I. 1ls J. A. Curran, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics, A Study of the R.S.S. (New York,

I95I). 116 The situation was to change in the I930S when non-Brahmins began to win

control of the Congress. The Mahratta Brahmins turned increasingly thereafter to a more militant Hinduism than had been characteristic of the Hindu Mahasabha.

117 Htndu 22 January I925.

118 Hindu 30 August I923.

I 76 RICHARD GORDON

movement which was identified with the up-country Hindu community of Calcutta, particularly the Marwari families of the Birlas and Khai- tans.ll9 The Hindu Sabha was founded in August I923, the same month the Swarajists gained control of the Provincial Congress. At first it contained a high proportion from among the up-country minorities in Calcutta, but by I925 their figures had dwindled. The native Bengalis came to dominate and were drawn from the Kayasth and Brahmin communities. 120 Some Nabasak, clean Sudra castes, elected delegates to Hindu Sabha Conferences, but none of the lower castes were represented on the Committee which was exclusively high- caste in composition.l2l The president ofthe Sabha in Ig24was Byomkes Chakravarti, the leader of the Independent Nationalists in the Legislative Council. A former colleague of C. R. Das, he was typical of the richer and well-established element of bhadralok society who opposed non- cooperation in I920 and rejected Swarajist overtures in I923. Chak- ravarti and his friends were figureheads in the Sabha; the real direction of the movement was in the hands of P. K. Ghose, the managing editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, and Yatindra Nath Chaudhuri, a zamindar of the Tahi Munshi family and an influential figure in Kayasth religious circles. 122 The Ghose family had a long association with religious movements in Bengal and were prominent in the Sanatan Dharma Mandal.l23 With the exception of Chakravarti, the Sabha failed to attract any important politicians, in spite of its opposition to the Swara- jists' Pact with the Muslims. It was not until I926 that the Hindu Sabha in Bengal became important politically. In that year Chakravarti formed the Responsive Co-operation Party and attempted to draw the Hindu Sabha into the fray to outmanoeuvre the Swarajists; but this move was opposed by Ghose and the more religiously inclined.

Although the Mahasabha had tried to cast its net wider, it remained essentially the platform of the Hindu unity movement in northern India. Its leaders after I 9X3 toad been founder-members in I 9 I 5, deeply committed to the religious and cultural movements of Hin- dustan. The Mahasabha's revival in I923 was the product of develop-

119 The Leader, xo April I925.

120 Vaidyas were noticeably absent from the Committee. Amrita Bazar Patrika, I 5 May I 924

121 Not a single member of the lower castes was sent as a delegate to the Benares Conference in August I 923. Amrita Bazar Patrika, I 5 August I 923.

122 Chaudhuri was a disciple of Mahatma Sisi Kumar Ghose, the father of P. K. Ghose and brother of Motilal Ghose, and a pillar of the Kayastha Sabha. Obituary, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 8 April Ig26.

123 Ghose was Secretary of the Sri Banga Dharma Mandal and a member of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal of Benares. Amrita Bazar Patrika, I4 August I924.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I77

ments in the Punjab and the U.P. Its new political front was linked with re-awakening of religious enthusiasm in reaction against Khilafat revivalism. Its emphasis upon strictly religious issues, in shuddhi and reclamation of untouchables, was both a retort to the Khilafat agitation and a response to the quickening pace of social reform within Hindu society. Though it had departed from its- former aim of avoiding religious controversy, the Mahasabha retained its character as a plat- form uniting a variety of movements. Work of a practical nature was carried out by the Arya Samaj, the Sanatan Dharma Sammelan, the Hindi societies, the caste associations and, above all, the Benares Hindu Ulliversity.l24 The Mahasabha was still a loose, straggling organisation. The emphasis upon Hindi as the language of a Hindu renaissance effectively limited the movement to the Hindi tracts. Whereas Hindi literary revivalism, by emphasising the deep-rooted antagonism between Hinduism and Islam, divided Hindustan, Marathi and Bengali had been powerful influences in moulding distinct regional identities. Another restriction lay in the nature of a religious movement which drew its inspiration from Hindustan; this could not heal diffierences between Brahmin and non-Brahmin in Madras and Maharashtra, where the Muslims were a negligible minority; at the same time it could not bridge the gulf which separated bhadralok society from the lower orders in Bengal.

Shuddhi represented a new tactical weapon in the armoury of the Mahasabha party in the U.P., designed to draw new groups into the movement, but it did not imply a radical change in the objectives of the group. In I9I8 Malaviya and his following in Allahabad had begun the semi-populist movement to the villages in anticipation of an extension of the franchise and the redrawing of electorates on a territorial basis. The kisan movement, in its early phase, had been a mixture of Hindi and religious revivalism, tempered by the more concrete aspirations of the more substantial proprietary peasant castes. Opposing non-cooperation in I920, Malaviya had argued that the Councils should not be boycotted since the kisans 'have been relying on the nationalists to redress their grievances in the Councils.'l25 At the elections his son, Pt. Rama Karst Malaviya, stood as a candidate of the U.P. Kisan Sabha in the kisan interest. The local kisan leader, Pt. Inder Narayan Dwivedi campalgned against the non-cooperation

124 'Malaviyaji evidently thinks that the Hindu University will save us, and he is devoting all the money and all the time for the University.' Lala Lajpat Rai to G. D. Birla, 30 December I923, Quoted in G. D. Birla, In the Shadow of the Mahatma, A Personal Memoir (Calcutta, I953), p. 20.

125 Ehe Leader, I 0 October I 920.

I 78 RICHARD GORDON

movement.l26 In December I920 the non-cooperation party led by the Nehrus, failed to wrest control of the Kisan Sabha from Malaviya and formed a rival association, the Oudh Kisan Sabha. The final showdown between the two groups came when several of Malaviya's followers, notably Purshottamdas Tandon, defected to non-cooperation and joined the Oudh Kisan Sabha.127 In I92I the U.P. Kisan Sabha began to work with the Liberal Party when the Oudh Rent (Amendment) Bill was brought before the Legislative Council.128 During the course of the non-cooperation movement the kisan agitation was deliberately dropped to avoid provoking rural disorder,129 though the U.P. Kisan Sabha, Malaviya's organisation, continued to function.130

In January I924 Sir William Marris announced in the U.P. Legis- lative Council the government's intention to reform the Agra Tenancy Act of I9OI. The Swarajya Party financed the formation of a revived U.P. Kisan Sabha in April I 924 and a conference was held in Allahabad in June, when Tandon was elected president.13l The Malaviya kisan organisation appears to have remained distinct and in September I924, when the Agra Provincial Hindu Sabha was formed, it was absorbed into the Hindu Sabha organisation as a kisan subcommittee. 132

Thereafter, the Hindu Sabha was to concentrate upon working through the caste associations directly, rather than attempting to organise the peasants independently. Between I924 and I926 agents of the Hindu Sabha, especially Rama Kant Malaviya and other members of the Malaviya clan, were in constant touch with caste bodies in an effort

126 Inder Narayan Dwivedi to editor, rhe Leader, 2I February I92I.

127 Rama Kant Malaviya was elected president and Dwivedi secretary of the U.P. Kisan Sabha. Motilal Nehru was president, Jawaharlal Nehru, Tandon and Gauri Shankar Misra, vice-presidents, and Kapil Deva Malaviya, secretary, o£ the Oudh Kisan Sabha. rhe Leader, I I January and I I February I92 I .

128 p. D. Reeves, 'The Politics of Order', ournal of Asian Studies, XXV, No. 2

(February I966), pp. 26I-74.

129 'After I920, however, the Non-co-operation movement was started and so knowingly the work of the Kisan Sabhas was slackened, for, if it was pushed on with the same vigour as at the commencement, there was the likelihood of the kisans and the landlords falling at each other's throats at the critical juncture when they wanted both to unite.' Speech by Purshottamdas Tandon, fAe Leader, Ix June I 9X4.

130 See Report of the Fifth Annual General Meeting, U. P. Kisan Sabha, I922. . . . . n . l ne Leaver, 4 xeDruary I922.

131 Report on the Activities of the U.P. Kisan Sangha, from the Secretary, Sangam Lal Agarwala (Swarajya Party M.L.C. and a cloth trader of Allahabad), IO Decem- ber I924, File 23 of I924, A.I.C.C.; fAeLeader, IXJune I924.

132 The members of the committee were, Rama Rant Malaviya, Krishna Kant Malaviya, Inder Narayan Dwivedi, A. P. Dube, and Sangam Lal, the Secretary of the U.P. Kisan Sabha. lGhe Leader:, I September I924.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 I79

to win support among the agricultural castes. The Gujar, Ahir, and Jat Conferences were persuaded to pass resolutions in support of shuddhi, Hindi, cow-protection and other items in the Mahasabha programme.133 Rampal Singh, president of the Oudh Hindu Sabha, his elder brother Thakur Hanuman Singh, and Durga Narayan Singh, president of the Agra Hindu Sabha, toured the districts forming Hindu Sabhas and used the plafforms of the U.P. Rajput Association and the Kshatriya Upkarini Mahasabha to enlist Rajputs in the Mahasabha.134 Malaviya, the president of the All-India Mahasabha, assiduously attended the Rajput and Jat Conferences.135 Both the shuddhi move- ment and the Swarajist U.P. Kisan Sabha136 were aspects of the same trend, the swing from the urban to the rural areas in the politics of the province. As rival and parallel movements neither chose to exploit differences between the kisans and the zamindars as both were directed by men who were themselves zamindars.137 While Malaviya sought to deepen the rural base of the Hindu unity movement, he retained the support of the larger landowners of Agra and Oudh and the banking and land-owning magnates of the larger cities. Before I 920 the Mahatabha had been almost exclusively urban with only marginal support in rural areas; after I 923 it was the other way round. There was, moreover, a decline in the number of the English-educated urban professional and service groups active in the movement.138

Before August I925 the Mahasabha had not adopted a specifically party stance in politics. Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai took care to emphasise that the Mahasabha was not intended to usurp the functions of the Congress. On no account were Hindus to give up the Congress; rather they should assist it.139 Since the Swarajya Party had no official

133 The Leader, I I January and 2I February I924,22 November I925.

134 fAe Leader, 22 November and 6 December I924, 23 February and I7 April I925, I7 April I926.

135 At the DelhiJat Conference in I926 Malaviya appeared on the platform in the company of Birdwood, the Commander-in-Chief. fAe Leader, 8 January I 926.

l36The Executive Committeeofthe Sabha contained I7 Swarajya Party M.L.C.s in I 925. The Leader, 24 January I 925.

137 The Secretary of the U.P. Kisan Sabha was more specific. 'The policy of the Sangha has been not to antagonise the zamindars by saying even one word against them, but to attack the Government in whose hands the zamindars are blindly playing.' Two members of the Swarajya Party refused to have anything to do with the organisation. Report on the Activities of the U.P. Kisan Sangha, IO December I924, File 23 of I924, A.I.C.C.

138 Malaviya referred to the distrust of the English-educated as early as I923,

adding that it 'grieved' him. Hindu, 30 August I923.

139 Speech by Lala Lajpat Rai, president, Eighth Annual Session All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Calcutta, April I925. Hindu, g April I925.

I80 RICHARD GORDON

standing inside the Congress organisation, the Mahasabha hoped to win an informal influence over the Congress from within. When the Mahasabha had been revived in I923, the Swarajist leaders, especially Motilal Nehru,140 publicly opposed it as they were anxious then about their electoral alliance with the Khilafat party. But the distinction between the Congress, the Swarajya Party and the Hindu Mahasabha was less clear to the rank and file. In the U.P. and the Punjab several members of the Swarajya Party were also active in the Mahasabha and on the executive committees of Hindu Sabhas. Largely owing to the intervention of Lala Lajpat Rai, the Punjab Hindu Sabha gave its unofficial blessing to the candidates selected by the Swarajya Party.14l Alignments at the district level were even more confused, the result of local factionalism rather than considerations of provincial or all-India interest.142 As provincial branches in the U.P. were weak, local sabhas tended to be preoccupied by purely local questions. A provincial branch was not formed in Agra until August I924 and its plans to hold a conference in I925 had to be dropped when they met with little response.143 However, uncertain distinctions between the Swarajya Party and the Mahasabha were made rather more clear in August I 925 when the Congress passed officially into the control of the Swarajya Party. The Mahasabha was now stranded in the Councils without an organised party following in the constituencies, while in the Congress it was threatened by the Swarajist ascendancy. The Congress was to contest the elections in the Swarajist interest.

It was difficult to maintain a united political front within the Mahasabha. Between I924 and I925 the movement was convulsed by religious controversies which threatened to split it from top to bottom once the Ayra Samaj and the Sanatan Dharma movement came to be involved in a struggle to control the Mahasabha platform. The shuddhi campaign had for a short while united the two movements but as the Aryas turned from the reclamation of Muslim converts to the re- clamation of untouchables) marriage reform and other controversial aspects of their programme, their diSerences became more pronounced.

140 Nehru opposed the revival of the Mahasabha at Lucknow in August I923. He criticised the Muslims for allowing the ulama too much latitude in politics which 'had spoiled the game of politics in no small measure.' The Leader, 27 August I923.

41 Home Poll., File 25 of I923, N.A.I. 142 In Benares, for example, the Swarajya Party, the Hindu Sabha and the Ksha- triya Sabha were virtually the same organisation. 'Often the Secretary of the

Kshatriya Sabha takes the chair at meetings of the Hindu Sabha.' Ehe Leader, 20 July I 925.

143 Ehe Leader, 5 November I925.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 9 2 6 I8I

In I925, when the Mahasabha set up a fund to collect five lakhs to subsidise reform among the untouchables, the Sanatan Dharma move- ment, resenting the Samaj's growing influence in Mahasabha circles, revolted.l44 The Punjab Sanatan Dharma Pritinidhi Sabha called on the Mahasabha to prohibit discussion of all religious subjects in its proceedings. Unless this was done, the Sanatan Dharma sabhas would go their own way.l45 The pattern of I9I8 was being repeated. The differences between the two movements over religion and the differing social and occupational background of their members pulled them politically in diSerent directions. At the Dayananda Centenary Cele- brations at Muttra in February I925 the Arya Samaj revived the Arya Swarajya Sammelan of I 920 for 'cultivating among the masses an organized interest in the country's politics befitting cooperation with the Indian National Congress.'l46 As for the Sanatan Dharma Sam- melan it returned to its old claim for the separate representation of orthodox Hindus in the Legislatures. Varnashram Leagues were revived to agitate against Dr. Gour's Inter-Caste Marriage Bill and the Hindu Religious Endowments Bill before the Legislative Assembly. In March I925 the U.P. Sanatan Dharma Sabha decided to nominate its own candidates at the next elections,l47 and in November the Punjab Sanatan Dharma Pritinidhi Sabha founded a league to protect the political interests of the orthodox.l48 The Akali agitation sparked of a contest for control of temple properties and endowments between the Aryas and the Sanatan Dharma supporters. In May I925 Dr. Gokul Chand Narang, president of the Punjab Hindu Conference at Amritsar, urged that temples be raided in order to finance the shuddhi and untouchable reform movements. 149 In retaliation, the Maharaja of Darbhanga toured the U.P. and the Punjab drumming up support for the orthodox cause, liberally financed by the Matadish Sammelan, a body of mahants and temple incumbents organised to protect their properties from the depredations of the Aryas and other politicians.l50 The drift towards separate political action by the two religious wings of the movement clashed with the larger political interests of the Maha- sabha leaders. In late I925, when the Punjab Hindu Sabha openly declared its intention of contesting the I926 elections, if possible, with the Mahasabha organisation behind lt, it became imperative to settle the religious controversy.

44 Hindu, I6 April I925. The revolt was led by Din Dayal Sarma. 145 The Leader, 6 May I925. 146 Ehe Leader, I6 February I925. 147 Ehe Leader, I I March I925. 148 Ehe Leader, 28 November I925.

149 Hindu, 4June I925. 150 Ehe LJeader, 6 November I925.

I82 RICHARD GORDON

In I9I5 the Punjab Hindu Sabha had been the driving force behind the formation of the Mahasabha. In I920, though the Hindu Sabha had been eclipsed, the Hindus in the Punjab were the first to see the advantages of an all-India agitation and advocated the boycott of the Councils. By I925 the pendulum had swung back. Attempts at ar- bitration by Swarajya Party leaders, in a series of paper pacts and protocols, failed to close the growing gap between the: Hindus and the Muslims in the Punjab-or to reconcile the claims of the Sikh minority. Rent with endemic factionalism the Punjab Congress drifted aimlessly, steadily losing ground to the Hindu Sabha which openly championed the interests of the Hindu minority. A Swarajya Party had been formed in the Punjab only after the intervention of Das and Nehru and it had never been distinct from the Congress. In January I925, with the support of Malaviya, the Hindu Sabha, fully aware that the non- cooperation movement had driven the Muslims into the open arms of government, adopted a policy of co-operation with government in the hope of safeguarding their minority status.lsl When the Congress blacklisted communal associations in September I925, there were large scale defections, including Lala Lajpat Rai and Dr. Kitchlew.152 In I924 the Mahasabha had made efforts to form an alliance between the Hindus and the Sikhs. Malaviya had insisted on widening the Hindu fold to include the Sikhs and his attempt to form an alliance with the Shiromani Gurdwara- Prabrandhak Committee at a meeting of the Mahasabha at Allahabad in January I924, during the Kumbh Mela, earned him a rebuke from the Sadhu Mahasabha for so blatantly introducing politics into a religious fair.l53 But an alliance between the Sikhs and the Hindus was impracticable and only temporary at best. On a question as vital to their interests as the Land Alienation Act the Hindus could not expect Sikh support. While the interests of the Hindus were urban, the Sikhs sided with rural interests. No political-party with all-India pretensions could hope for much success in the Punjab. The position was outlined clearly by Narendra Nath, president of the Punjab Hindu Sabha and president of the Mahasabha in I926:

In the Punjab there are parties more on communal than on political lines. Even the extreme Swarajist feels he is between the devil and the deep blue sea.... We want Swaraj, with justice to the Hindu minority.... I for one cannot join any political party unless that party undertakes to protect the just and legitimate rights of the Hindus of the Punjab. As a matter of fact 151 Home Poll., File II2 of I925, N.A.I. 152 Ibid. 153 Home PolI., File I40 of I925, N.A.I.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I83

that is the attitude of all the Hindus of the Punjab and that is why no political party takes root here.l54

As a once dominant minority the Hindus could not reconcile themselves to the subordinate status given to them by the reforms. The Mahasabha had originally been an alliance between Hindus in the Punjab and the U.P. whose interests were best served by a close understanding with their provincial governments. The revival of these connexions after I923 brought the Mahasabha back into politics, and the deeper the Mahasabha went into politics, the closer this alliance between the U.P. and the Punjab became.

Developments within the Swarajya Party helped the Mahasabha to intervene more actively in party politics. Swarajists had tried to make out that their programme of obstruction in the Councils was an exten- sion of the Gandhian programme of non-cooperation. But this con- tinuity was more apparent than real. It masked very real diSerences between the Swarajists and the Gandhians and between one Swarajist and another. The party was, in origin, an all-India coalition of pro- vincial dissidents. This was especially the case in Bengal and Mahara- shtra. These dissidents were anxious to regain the provincial autonomy they had enjoyed in the Congress before I920. When the Swarajya Party was formed in I922, the Maharashtra wing had insisted that provincial branches should have full autonomy over party policy. In January I923, N. C. Kelkar, the Chitpavan Brahmin leader of Poona, insisted that this autonomy of action should extend to the question of whether to accept oSce.lss The diSerences which arose over this question in October I925 when S. M. Tambe took office in the Central Provinces Government were present from the beginning and were crucial. The Poona leaders consistently argued that the party line should take account of special prorrincial circumstances. Unless it did so, they would be able to do nothing about the policy of the non-Brahmin ministers in the Bombay government, which was under- mining Brahmin interests in the public services. Their swing towards Reponsive Co-operation in I925 was a somewhat desperate attempt to safeguard their own interests by working with government. As the Government of Bombay caustically remarked: 'If they don't get their

54 Narendra Nath to Chintamani, 7 June I926, Chintamani Papers, N.M.M. 1ss '. . . the leaders of the party in each council may be trusted to do what is right

for them in their own circumstances regard being had to all things. Enacting a rigid code of conduct for all the provinces alike will expose the Council of the Swaraj Party to the charge of thoughtless over centralization in administrative affairs.' Hindu, I 3 January I 923.

I84 RICHARD GORDON

chance now, they'll never get it.'1s6 Similarly, the Bengal Swarajya Party drifted towards a policy of working the reforms. The failure of the Swarajya Party to deliver the goods and the rise of organised Muslim communal parties, especially the Bengal Moslem Party of Sir Abdur Rahin, undermined party discipline and gave an opening to those who were prepared to work the reforms.157

Thus it was clear that the dictates of the Swarajya Party found it particularly difiicult to impose a party line in those provinces where Swarajists had sufficient strength in the Councils to form Ministries. Moreover, the character of the all-India party had changed following the death of Das in June I925. The executive of the party158 came increasingly under the influence of the U.P. and Madras branches, the two provinces where the party had least chance of forming a Ministry. A series of protracted negotiations failed to reach a settlement between the central command and the dissidents in Maharashtra and Bengal who now defected to form the Responsive Co-operation Party, splitting the Swarajya Party from top to bottom.1s9 When the Swarajya Party captured the Congress, the central executive of the Party was able to offset the challenge of the Responsivists by allying itself with Congress provinces dominated by the 'No-change' Party, espe cially Andhra and Bihar. The split in the Swarajya Party set off a chain reaction. As it sought new allies inside the Congress there was a general reshuffling of alignments, a process in which the Mahasabha played a crucial part. Its entry into the electoral arena came at a time when the Swarajya Party had achieved official recognition as the dominant group in the Congress but was breaking up and taking on a new shape. In I920,

the Congress had been dominated by Gandhi and his Gujarati clique in Ahmadabad; in I925-26, in its Swarajist guise it had passed into the hands of the Nehru faction of Allahabad.

On 28 August I925 the Working Committee of the Mahasabha met at Simla and decided to make a tentative and cautious entry into the elections. A resolution was passed urging Hindus to oppose candidates who were likely to prejudice Hindu interests in the Councils. Local

156 Home Poll., File I I2 of I925, N.A.I. 157 Das's speech at the Bengal Provincial Conference at Faridpur in May I925

contained a delSnite plea for a policy similar in effiect to Responsive Co-operation. 158 With liberal powers to nominate and co-opt members of the executive, the

president was able to control it. Swarajya Party Constitution, Hindu, I March I923.

159 Nehru never had any intention of reaching a real settlement with the Respon- sivists. Writing of a Pact concluded between the two parties at Sabarmati in April I926 he said: 'A satisfactory settlement has been arrived at with the Responsivists. They wanted a toy and I have given it to them.' Motilal Nehru toJawaharlal Nehru, 22 April I926, Nehm Papers, N.M.M.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I85

Hindu Sabhas were permitted to contest local government elections but were not asked to select candidates for the Legislative Council elections.l60 The resolution was a declaration of intent, a guideline for future action. A week later the A.I.C.C. at Patna formally entrusted the Swarajya Party with the responsibility for conduciing the elections on behalf of the Congress. The party was not merged with the Congress but retained its distinct organisation. It was not until March I926 that the method for selecting Congress candidates was finally settled. In Delhi on I I March I926, the A.I.C.C. decided that in the selection of candidates for the Central and Provincial Councils, the Provincial Congress Committees should act in consultation with the Swarajya Party. In cases of dispute either body could appeal to the Working Committee whose decision was to be final.16l Two days later, at the Ninth Annual Session of the Mahasabha in Delhi, provincial Hindu Sabhas were authorised to take all proper steps 'which includes the running of its own candidates, where necessary, to safeguard Hindu interests.'l62 The Mahasabha itself would not nominate candidates but its provincial branches, in consultation with the Reforms Committee of the Mahasabha163 which was entrusted with the general supervision of the eleciions, could do so or could support candidates of other parties whom they liked.

The decision of the Mahasabha was essentially a compromise. It steered a middle and moderately conservative path between the ad- vocates of rapid social reform and those who favoured a militant political role. The compromise implied a victory for Malaviya and the old core of the Mahasabha from the U.P. and the Punjab, who wanted the Mahasabha to work for Hindu unity through a moderate political programme. Political considerations triumphed.164 Though there was an

160 rhe Leader, I 7 March I 926.

161 Hindu, I I March I926.

162 rhe Leader, I 7 March I926.

163 The Reforms Committee was appointed by the Mahasabha in December I924

to formulate a scheme for a future settlement of the representation of communities in the Legislatures. The members were: Chairman, Lala Lajpat Rai; Punjab, Narendra Nath and Lala Lajpat Rai; U.P., Rampal Singh, Chintamani and Lala Sukhbir Sinha; Bihar, Rajendra Prasad, Dwarka Nath and Kumar Ganganand Sinha; Bengal, Yatindra Nath Chaudhuri, Braj Kishore Chaudhuri; C.P., Aney and Moonje; Maharashtra, Kelkar and Karandikar; Madras, Satyamurthi; Andhra, T. Prakasam; Bombay, Jayakar and D. V. Belvi; Gujarat, I)r. S. B. Mehta; Sind, Jairamdas. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 January I 925.

164 Narendra Nath's presidential address pleaded for political unity. 'Let not the ship of Hindu consolidation be wrecked on squabbles as to the manner in which the cause of social reform has to be advanced. So far as the protection of our political rights is concerned Conservatives and Liberals are united. I may, therefore, ask the

I86 RICHARD GORDON

open clash between the Aryas and the Sanatan Dharma supporters on untouchability and widow re-marriage, an appropriately vague resolu- tion was passed to soothe the orthodox. It committed the Mahasabha to the principle of untouchable reclamation but not to its practice. The political leaders saw that neither the Arya Samaj nor the Sanatan Dharma Sabha could dominate the Makasabha without wrecking it. So their missionary activities were, in future, to be conducted from separate platforms independently of the Mahasabha.165 The compro- mise also was a rebuS to the more advanced social reformers led by Swami Shradhananda who resigned from the Working Committee. Several months later, when he saw the direction in which the Maha- sabha was going politically, he resigned altogether.166 Perhaps the most revealing statement at the Conference was by Motilal Nehru; 'There is no use concealing the fact' the statement read,167

'that the Indian National Congress is predominantly a Hindu organisation. It started and developed as such and whatever accession of strength it received from the Muslims from time to time is fast decreasing due to the revival of Indian Muslim organisations.'

In effect Nehru was saying what the Mahasabha had said since I923: that the Khilafat movement was a temporary phase in Indian politics and that the supposed Hindu-Muslim entente was practically a dead letter.

At the conclusion of the Mahasabha Conference in Delhi, Malaviya, at a public meeting, launched the Nationalist Party, the first of a series of parties he was to form during I9?6 and which was to reappear under diSerent names. The party was to be an organised wing within the Congress, and the programme outlined included the working of the reforms, the acceptance of office, and freedom to vote on communal issues.168 Between March and May Malaviya allied himself with the Responsivists in western India in order to come to a settlement with the Swarajya Party. At a meeting of the A.I.C.C. at Sabarmati in May he urged that a Special Congress should be held to adopt the rule that if a majority of the elected members of the Congress in the Legislatures held that the objects of the Congress would be best advanced by accep- ting office they should be permitted to do so, subject to the control of the Congress. As a means of packing the Congress with his own sup- porters, Malaviya suggested that the Congress constitution should be Mahasabha to pause before taking action which may drive our conservative friends from the political platform on which their:co-operation is needed.' Hindu, I8 March I926.

165 Hindu, 25 March I926. 166 Bombay Chronicle, 2 I September I926. 167 The Leader, I7 March I926. 168 rhe Leader, 27 March I926.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I87

amended to allow political associations sharing the aims of the Congress to elect delegates.l69 This was intended, presumably, to include the Hindu Sabhas. The Sabarmati talks proved inconclusive although the Swarajya subsequently acted decisively. The Provincial Congress Committees and the Swarajya Party branches, both controlled by the Responsivists, in Maharashtra, Berar and the C.P. Marathi were suspended. Ad hoc committees, controlled by local factions disposed favourably to the centre, were appointed to conduct the elections on behalf of the Working Committee. Further, although candidates for the Congress were to have been selected by the P.C.C.s acting in consulta- tion with the Swarajya Party, preference, where possible, was accorded to the nominees of the Swarajya Party.170 Malaviya's Nationalist Party was still-born and in May, upon his return from Sabarmati, he an- nounced that he had joined the Responsive Co-operation Party and was to tour north India with Kelkar forming a branch organisation.17l

Although a settlement on an all-India basis seemed remote, the Provincial Hindu Sabhas in the Punjab and the U.P. canvassed the possibility of a compromise with the Congress. The Punjab Congress was reluctant to select Hindu candidates unless they could run on a joint ticket with the Sikh League and the Khilafat Committee. Lala Lajpat Rai, the president of the Congress Elections Committee, was reported to favour an informal arrangement with the Hindu Sabha 'by which a certain number of our candidates will be allowed to stand and not opposed by them on the understanding that the rest of the candidates will be of their own choice.'172 The Congress was to con- centrate upon the Assembly elections without interfsering directly in tthe provincial elections. An alternative scheme, favoured by the re- mainder of the old Swarajya Party, was that the Congress could nominate a joint ticket of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, if a saving clause was inserted in the party programme allowing members freedom to vote on communal issues.173 The Hindu Sabha, however, laid down that it would accept a joint ticket only if the Congress could guarantee that forty per cent of all the Muslim and Sikh candidates would stand with the Congress. Since the Congress failed to secure sufficient Muslim candidates, the Hindu Sabha rejected its proposals. The Sabha argued that ten or twelve Hindu Congressmen could not carry out the

169 Ehe Leadern 7 May I926.

17Q Notes on the agenda of the Working Committee meeting for 4 July I926

prepared by Motilal Nehru, 27 June I926, File Gs7(iii) of I926, A.I.C.C. 71 Ehe LeadNer, g May I926.

72 K. Santanam to Motilal Nehru, 6 April I926, File G47 of I926, A.I.C.C. 73 Ibid.

I88 RICHARD GORDON

Congress mandate, and that by allying itself to the Congress the Hindu Sabha would-limit the scope of its usefulness to the Hindu community.174 On I May the Hindu Sabha decided to nominate candidates on its

. .

own behalf.175 This resolution was confirmed by the Working Com- mittee of the Mahasabha on IO May.176

Malaviya visited Lahore on 25 May when it was rumoured that an Independent Hindu Party was to be formed.177 However, in the first week of June Malaviya was still flirting with the Responsivists. Announcing the formation of the U.P. Responsive Co-operation Party, he let it be known that the Party would work in close 'co-operation and consultation' with the Indian National Party, Chintamani's refurbished Liberal Party.178 By the third week of June Malaviya had again changed his mind and withdrew from his hasty alliance with the Indian Nationalist Party. 179 While he remained indecisive on the all-India platform, Malaviya knew what he wanted in the U.P. Here he was angling for an understanding with the Swarajya Party. In the first week of June he suggested to Nehru through an intermediary, Bhagwan Das of Benares, a scheme whereby an election board con- sisting of about five people would select progressive candidates. Once elected, these candidates would act together in the Council on matters they deemed to be important. Nehru dismissed the scheme out of hand. 180

The Working Committee of the Mahasabha, and not its Reforms Committee) had assumed control of the election work. It had also become an exclusively north Indian preserve. The members who regularly attended the meetings of the Working Committee, Lala Ram Saran Das, Narendra Nath, Pt. Neki Ram Sarma, Pt. Deva Ratan Sarma, Rampal Singh and Malaviya, had all been associated with the leadership of the Mahasabha since its foundation in I9I5.181 On IO June the Working Committee ruled that the Congress reply to the

174 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 May I926. 175 Amrita Bazar Patrika, I8 May I926. 176 Ibid. 177 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 May I 926. 178 Malaviya was president and Krishna Kant Malaviya and Iswar Saran, secre-

taries. The Leader, g June I 926.

179 Rangaswamy Iyengar reported a conversation with K. Rama Iyengar, a close associate of Malaviya: 'He tells me that Malaviya has already begun to regret his having joined the National Party and he is anxious to keep himself attached to the Congress by whatever means possible.' A. Rangaswamy Iyengar to Motilal Nehru? I8 June I926, File Gs7(ii) of I926, A.I.C.C.

180 The Members of the Committee were to be Nehru, Malaviya, Rampal Singh, 'to manage the zamindars', and two Muslims nominated by Nehru. Bhagwan Das to Motilal Nehru, 2 June I926, File FI3 of I926, A.I.C.C. See also, Bhagwan Das to Motilal Nehru, I 7 June I926, Ibid.

181 Ehe Leader, Io june and 29 August I926.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I89

Mahasabha circular was unsatisfactory. For the first time the Maha- sabha committed itself definitely to participating in the elections. The provincial Sabhas were instructed to nominate their own candidates where necessary.182 In the first week of July Nehru considered that political alignments were still sufficiently fluid to enable the Congress to avoid definite action in regard to the Mahasabha.183 However, Nehru was prepared to wait and see. Throughout July and August he supported moves to capture the Bihar and U.P. Hindu Sabhas and get them to endorse the list of Congress candidates.- 'I cannot understand Malaviyaji's game', he wrote to a friend in the second week of July,184

and have not yet heard what he intends to do in the matter of the U.P. elections. The Behar Hindu Sabha has thrown him overboard and bodily accepted the whole list of candidates adopted by the Congress-Committee. . . . I am trying to get the U.P. section to follow the example of Behar and there is every hope of success.

Making use of a clause in the constitution of the Hindu Sabha, which allowed any group of twenty Hindus in the mofussil to send delegates, the Swarajya Party intended to swamp the annual conference of the Agra Hindu Sabha in support of an anti-Malaviya faction led by Ananda Prasad Dube, a Brahmin barrister of Allahabad.185 Though confident of a clear majority the Swarajists were outmanoeuvred at the last minute and the- Malaviya group, with Durga Narayan Singh as president, remained in control of the Hindu Sabha.186 In the Punjab

182 Two replies to the Mahasabha were drafted by Nehru. One restated the argu- ments that he had advanced at the Mahasabha Conference at Delhi in April, while the second stated that the Congress had made no decision in the matter. It is not clear which was sent, if either. File F24 of I926, A.I.C.C.

183 'It would be suicidal', Nehru wrote, 'to tackle the general communal question before the warring communities have declared for a definite policy.' Motilal Nehru to A. Rangaswamy Tyengar, 27 June I926, File Gs7(iii) of I926, A.I.C.C.

184 Motilal Nehru to Sri Prakasa, I2 July I926, File FI3 of I926, A.I.C.C. 185 Sitla Sahai to Motilal Nehru, I3JU1Y I926, File FI3 of I926, A.I.C.C. Dube was

not a member of the Swarajya Party and had been defeated by a Swarajist for the Allahabad Urban seat in Ig23.

186 'By the 27th of July we had got 200 members elected for the Provincial Hindu Sabha from diffierent districts.... All our members were duly invited to the Pro- vincial Committee meeting to be held on the I August I926. I had come to know from private source [sic] that the strength of the opposite party was between 80 and go on the 27thJuly I926, and that they had no suspicion that there was any move in the province to capture the Provincial Hindu Sabha. Pt. G. S. Misra happened to go to Mr Ananda Prasad Dube on the 28thJuly I926, who knowing him to be our man told him something of the scheme, which was revealed to Sardar Narmada Prasad Singh who became alert and began his work of dishonesty in right earnest. He sub- mitted a list of about IOO Provincial members from Allahabad district after 27thJuly I926 which included his servants, students of colleges of Allahabad and Hindu

RICHARD GORDON I90

the Congress continued to negotiate with the Hindu Sabha and every effiort was made to come to an agreement along the lines suggested originally by Lala Lajpat Rai.l87 In mid-July the Congress Working Committee endorsed the list of candidates selected by Dr. Satyapal and Lajpat Rai,l88 although, as an old Swarajist complained bitterly, the nominations 'severely left us out as if we were mere nothings.'l89

The Agra Provincial Hindu Sabha, at its annual conference in Allahabad on I August, formed an elections board to 'protect Hindu interests.'l90 The scope of the board was limited to supporting can(li- dates prepared to sign the Hindu Sabha pledge and no provision was made to nominate candidates.l9l A similar committee was organised by the Oudh Provincial Sabha which was, as far as possible, to work in consultation with its counterpart in Agra.l92 Candidates' applications for the support of the Hindu Sabhas were to be forwarded to the exe- cutive committees by 25 August when the Hindu Sabha was scheduled to meet.I93 Malaviya now made a final attempt to come to terms with the Swarajya Party. As a result of large-scale defections from the Swarajya Party and the return of old supporters such as Purshottamdas Tandon and G. S. Misra, who had gone over to the Nehrus in I920

during the non-cooperation movement, the Malaviya faction in the U.P. Congress had grown considerably. In the last week of August Malaviya succeeded in defeating the Nehru faction in the Provincial Congress Committee. With the casting vote of the president, ironically Hasrat Mohani, a resolution was passed calling on the Congress to

University and teachers of District Board schools and Hindu Sabha schools. He wired some I00 men from outside to come to the meeting . . . They were even then in a minority. Lastly, they decided to turn out our members on flimsy grounds.... In short only 50 of us could enter the hall as they did not know that they were our men.' Sitla Sahai to Motilal Nehru, 4 August I926, File FI3 of I926, A.I.C.C.

87 Girdhari Lal to Motilal Nehru, I I June I926, File Gs7(ii) of I926, A.I.C.C. 188 A. Rangaswamy Iyengar to Motilal Nehru, I4JUly I926, File Gs7(iii) of I926,

A.I.C.C. 189 Girdhari Lal to Sarojini Naidu, 30June I926, File Gs7(ii) of I926, A.I.C.C. 190 Committee: Rampal Singh and Mukat Behari Lal Bhargava, president and

secretary Oudh Hindu Sabha, Durga Narayan Singh, Malaviya, C. Y. Chintamani, Krishna Kant Malaviya, Sardar Narmada Prasad Singh, Bhagwat Sahai Bedar and Raghava Das, the last two were defectors from the Swarajya Party. The Leader, I I

August I926.

191 Letter from Krishna Kant Malaviya, Convenor of the Elections Board, The Leader, I 6 August I 926.

192 Committee: Rampal Singh, Mukat Behari Lal Bhargava, Raja Prithvipal Singh, Malaviya, Krishna Kant Malaviya, Hari Krishna Dhaon, Harish Chandra Bajpai, Sankata Prasad Bajpai and Ram Charan Vidyarthi. Ehe Leader, 25 August I926. Four were members of both committees.

193 The Leader, I6 August I926.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGR:ESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 I9I

abstain from the elections. Individual Congressmen were to be per- mitted to contest the elections but ttie (Congress was to do nothing officially.l94 A requisition was circulated signed by Lajpat Rai,l9s Pt. Neki Ram Sarma, secretary of the Mahasabha, Sardar Narmada Prasad Singh, secretary of the Agra Hindu Sabha, and Jagat Narayan Lal, secretary of the Bihar Hindu Sabha and a secretary of the Maha- sabha, among other Congressmen who were active in the Hindu Sabha, calling on the Congress to withdraw from the elections and to permit the various parties to contest the elections independently of it. The circular called for a Special Session of the A.I.C.C. to decide the issue.l96 If the Congress were to contest the clections Congressmen should be permitted a free vote on all communal issues such as communal representation, music before mosques, representation in the public services, and generally, matters considered to be communal by a majority of the elected members of either community. On 25 and 26

August, Lajpat Rai and Malaviya held discussions with Nehru in Simla. Malaviya was prepared to accept certain modifications to his policy of accepting office but Nehru again insisted that 'there was no question of accepting offices without some advance being made by the Government' and that he was in no way prepared to make any con- cessions to particular provinces.l97 Malaviya also suggested the for- mation of a new elections board to revise the lists of Congress nomin- ees.l98 The Working Committee of the Congress postponed considera- tion of the decision of the U.P. Provincial Congress and the circular requesting a meeting of the A.I.C.C., eSectively shelving the matter.l99 The Swarajists had rejected the final possibility for compromise. At a subsequent meeting on I2 September the Working Committee ruled on the question of eommunal voting. The resolution adopted was a restatement of the Congress resolution XIII passed at the Allahabad

194 Ehe Leader, 27 August I926.

195 Lajpat Rai had opposed the resolution on elections at the Delhi conference of

the Mahasabha in April. Upon his return from Europe in August he resigned from

the Swarajya Party to join the Hindu Sabha party. 196 Ehe Leader, 28 August I926.

197 Hindu, I6 September I926. Malaviya proposed that the members of the Council concerned should vote on the question whether the 'conditions for the acceptance of office are considered satisfactory'. The decision required the approval of a specially appointed central Committee of the Congress of not more than nine members. Ibid.

198 Malaviya suggested the following for the Committee: Motilal Nehru and S. Srinivasa Iyengar (Swarajya Party); Malaviya and Lajpat Rai (Hindu Sabha); Jayakar and B. Chakravarti (Responsive Co-operation Party); T. Prakasam and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu (Independent-No-change) . Of a committee of eight the Swarajya Party was to have two representatives only. Ibid.

199 The Leader, 2.9 August I926.

I92 RICHARD GORDON

Congress in I888; it was not sufiiciently permissive for the Mahasabha. The Mahasabha wanted communal issues to be determined by a vote of the community concerned; but the (:ongress now laid down that 'no bill, motion or amendment relating to any communal matter should be moved or discussed if a majority of three-fourths of the members of sny community aSected thereby in the legislatures are opposed...'.200 Though they had retained control of the Working Committee of the Congress the Swarajya Party were in a definite minority in the Punjab, and in the U.P. they had a bare majority, if not an actual minority.

With all possibility of a compromise with the Swarajya Party lost and having failed to break the Swarajist monopoly of the Congress Working Committee, Malaviya and Lajpat Rai announced the for- mation of the Independent Congress Party in the first week of Sep- tember.201 The Party was similar to the Nationalist Party Malaviya had launched in Delhi in March and which had been merged sub- sequently with the Responsive Co-operation Party. It was to be an organised wing of the Congress, similar to the old Swarajya Party. An elections board of three, Malaviya, Narendra Nath and Lala Lajpat Rai, was appointed to select candidates for the Assembly and the Provincial Councils, in consultation with the four branches of the party in the IJ-.P., the Punjab, Bihar and the C.P. Hindustani.202 The leading members of the Party were in fact the Mahasabha poli- ticiansa and the executives of the Hindu Sabhas and the Independent Gongress Party were practically identical. Malaviya's next move was to arrive at an electoral understanding with the Responsivists in western India and Bengal, the groups who since I923 had shown occasional interest in the proceedings of the Mahasabha but who had not made use of the Mahasabha for electoral purposes. A conference between the two parties was held in Simla on I I September and it was decided to form a joint parliamentary board to formulate a common programme and to select candidates. The Responsivists, however, did not take part in the proposed board and in the C.P. Marathi districtsa Berar, Maharashtra and Bengal, the party retained its separate organisation) though it declared itself ready to co-operate with the Independent

200 fhe Leader, I5 September I926. Resolution XIII, Allahabad, 26 December I888, quoted in Ramana Rao, Development of the Congress Constitution, p. 2.

201 The president was Lajpat Rai, general secretary, Malaviya, joint secretaries, E. Raghavendra Rao (C. P. Hindustani) and Lala Ram Prasad (Bihar). The Leader, I5 September I926.

202 These three men were the successive presidents of the Mahasabha: Malaviya, I923-24; Lajpat Rai, I925; and Narendra lVath, I926.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 I93

Congress Party.203 Liberated from the discipline of the Swarajya Party, the Responsivists, particularly in western India, were unlikely to sacriISce their provincial autonomy by joining a new all-India organisation. Moreover, there were good historical reasons against a union between the Responsivists and the Independents. The Inde- pendent Congress Party was concentrated in the U.P. and the Punjab with smaller branches in the C.P. Hindustani204 and Bihar,20s the old centre of the Hindu unity movement and the area where the movement was making most progress. The party did not extend beyond the Hindi-speaking tracts, while the Responsivists were con- centrated in greater Maharashtra and Bengal, the axis of the pre-Ig20 Congress. This geographical and linguistic pattern reflected the fact that the political preoccupations of the educationally advanced Presidencies and the more backward areas of northern India were diSerent.

At its meeting in Calcutta in June the Working Committee of the Congress had laid down that in selecting candidates for the Muslim constituencies 'the Provincial Executive of the Congress shall ordinarily give preference to those recommended by the Provincial Khilafat Committee.'206 The Jamiat ul-Ulama revoked the fatwa prohibiting Council entry. This meant that the provincial Khilafat committees in the Punjab and Bengal could now force the Central Committee to allow them provincial autonomy in the matter of elections.207 The Central Khilafat Committee reluctantly conceded provincial autonomy, but persisted in its suicidal course by endorsing the fatwa in all-India terms.208 However, neither in Bengal nor in the Punjab was

203 Co-operation does not appear to have extended beyond vague promises of mutual assistance at the elections. Hindu, I6 September I926.

204 A group led by Raghavendra Rao and Shyam Sunder Bhargava seceded from the Swarajya Party to ally with Malaviya. The party manifesto declared that 'an isolated pur$uit of that policy [obstruction] in a minor province is not likely to advance the objective of the Indian National Congress.' The Leader, 4 August I926. (My italics.)

20s Caste factionalism in Bihar led to the formation of a branch of the Independent Congress Party. The party was founded, on a visit by Malaviya, by groups who had failed to win Congress preselection, especially a group of Kayasths whose ascendancy within the Congress was under attack from the Bhumihars and Rajputs. Rajendra Prasad to Motilal Nehru, I4 October I926, File XI of I926, A.I.C.C. Bhinodanand Jha to A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, X June I926, File Gs(i) of I926, A.I.C.C.; Gaya Prasad Singh to A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, I October I926, File Gs7(iv) of I926,

A.I.C.C. 206 Motilal Nehru to A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, 25 June I926, File Gs7(ii) of I926,

A.I.C.C. 207 Ehe Leader, 2.3 April I 926.

208 Ibid. The Central Committee adopted a similar course to that of the Mahasabha.

I94 RICHARD GORDON

the Congress able to secure the support of the Khilafat Committees for a joint ticket. As in I923 the Punjab Committee nominated a separate Khilafat ticket, while in Bengal the Khilafat Committee coalesced with the Independent Muslim Party, a party closely iden- tified with the Suhrawardy family of Calcutta. Though there had been defections from the Swarajya Party in the U.P., the Congress managed to retain the support of a number of the Khilafat party who were nominated for seats in the Provincial and Imperial Councils.209 The Sikh League in the Punjab was permitted to select candidates for the Congress ticket, although such candidates were pledged to the League and not to the Congress.2l0 The Swarajist leadership, while prepared to allow Sikh and Muslim communal organisations to nominate candidates for the Congress ticket, were in no mood to concede the same right to the Hindu Mahasabha.2ll At the Ninth Annual Session of the Mahasabha at Delhi in March, Motilal Nehru had agreed that the Congress was and always had been, except during the brief period of non-cooperation, a predominantly Hindu organisation. 'The true remedy', he had suggested, 'lies in the Hindu Sabha as a body joining the Indian National Congress and thereby influencingthewhole programme of work in the Councils.'2l2 But, by refusing to call a Special Congress and to revise the Congress con- stitution, and by allowing Hindu Sabhas to elect delegates directly to Congress, the Swarajists practically excluded the Mahasabha from such influence. What then prevented the Hindu Mahasabha and the Swarajists from arriving at a satisfactory settlement ? Personal rivalries had much to do with it2l3 but the ostensible grounds of dis- agreement, communal voting in the Councils and the acceptance of Provincial Committees were allowed to support candidates 'already in the field' but these were not to be regarded as nominees of the Khilafat Committee. However, in the Punjab, a Khilafat Elections Board was formed to nominate its own candidates. The Leader, I4 August I926.

209 C. Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore, I96I), PP. 85-7. The candi- dates included Khaliquzzaman, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, T. A. K. Sherwani, Bashir Ahmed, Kalil Ahmed Khan, Yusuf Imam, Shaukat Ali and Maulvi Zahur ud-Din. Pioneer, 26 November, 2 December and + December I926.

210 Bombay Chronicle, 29 September I926. 211 A writer in Lajpat Rai's Urdu Bande Mataram drove the point home. 'But

even an ill-informed man knows very well that the Swaraj Party have, in reality, had no more hand in nominating Mahomedan and Sikh candidates than they have in nominating candidates for the Japanese Parliament.' Translated in the Pioneer, I2 November I926.

212 Ehe L8ader, I 7 March I926. 213 In the backwaters of Orissa party alignments were discussed in terms of 'the

personal inclination of leaders.' Bhubananda Das to Baghusati Mahapatra, President, Utkal P.C.C., I November I926 File G6I of I926, A.I.C.C.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 9 2 6 I95

office, concealed important differences in the nature of the grou-ps and interests which the two factions broadly represented. The per- sonal confrontation between Motilal Nehru and Malaviya,2l4 with their different backgrounds and political careers, uniquely sym- bolised the clash between the two factions.

In the Punjab the Independent Congress Party, as the party of the Hindu Sabha, had displaced the Congress as the major political body in the province.2l5 The paralysis of the Congress illustrated a well- established pattern in Hindu politics, the tendency of the Hindu minority to oscillate between support of the Congress and more direct communal organisation.2l6 The desire of the Punjab Hindu Sabha to preserve the advantages which the community had acquired llnder British rule and to safeguard their minority status by moving into a closer relationship with government, required a degree of provincial initiative which, taking into account its all-India purposes, the Swara- jist leadership was not prepared to concede. In the U.P., however, the Independent Congress Party was more tentative in its approaches to government and made its co-operation with government conditional.2l7 It steered a-middle course between the apparent intransigence of the Swarajya Party and the more moderate counsels of the Liberals. It was the creation of politicians such as Malaviya and Iswar Saran who had survived the I9I8 crisis over village agitation but who, unlike Motilal Nehru, had not kept clear of non-cooperation and the Khilafat agitation. Although the distinction between the Liberals and the Independents was blurred on the fringes and although there was some exchange of preferences, the two parties retained their separate electoral organisatiOns.2l8

Although the Independent Congress Party was the electoral front of the Mahasabha, the party candidates did not represent the various strands in the movement. Both the Arya Samaj and the Sanatan

214 See Motilal Nehru to Raja Indrajit Pratab Bahadur Sahi, I8 September Ig26, File IO of I926, A.I.C.C. Nehru was obsessed by the personal element, especially by Malaviya and G. D. Birla. See also Motilal Nehru to Sri Prakasa, I5 February I927,

Sri Prakasa Papers, N.M.M. 215 By I926 the Swarajya Party had collapsed and as there was little to be gained

by reviving it, election work in the Punjab was entrusted directly to the Congress executive. fAe Leader, 25 March I926. By October the P.C.C. was split so hopelessly that the committee decided to suspend all Congress work. Pioneer, 3 November I926.

216 Barrier, Journal of Asian Studies, XXVI, No. 3, p. 379.

217 See published accounts of the Malaviya-Nehru Negotiations, Hindu, I6 Sep- tember I926.

218 The Liberals had no organised campaign as such but Liberal candidates were prominently reported in the Ehe Leader.

I96 RICHARD GORDON

Dharma groups took their own line in the U.P., though in the Punjab they had sunk their differences in the interests of a common platform. 0f the thirty-one candidates nominated for the Provincial and Central Legislatures219 only two, Pt. Rahash Bihari Tewari of Lucknow and Thakur Mashal Singh of Hardoi, were deSnitely members of the Arya Samaj.220 Moreover, both stood in Oudh constituencies where the Samaj had made little progress. Again, with the exception of Malaviya whose loyalities were highly ambiguous, none of the candidates nominated was active in the Sanatan Dharma movement. In the western districts the Hindu Sabha failed to win the Arya Samaj from the Congress. Indeed, the Congress had at least five members of the Samaj among its candidates though three stood in constituencies in Oudh and the eastern divisions.221 While the Sanatan Dharma Sam- melan does not appear to have mounted an organised electoral cam- paign, local sabhas were active on their own account, independently of the Hindu Sabha.222 Graham has described the Independent (:ongress Party as a 'Hindu traditionalist party'.223 But, far from being tradi- tional in religious and social matters, the party took a middle position as it did in politics. Ritual and social orthodoxy were by no means synonymous. The party reflected that spectrum of opinion which favoured a moderate pace of social reform, distinct from the radicalism advocated by the more enthusiastic Aryas and the conservatism of the -orthodox. Five members of the Independent Congress Party were ex-presidents of the U.P. Social Conference and took part in caste reform movements for the fusion of sub-castes and the eradication of certain caste practices. The Independent Congress Party did not 219 Lists were published in The Leader, 20 September and I8 October I926. Twenty- five candidates were set up for the Council and six for the Assembly. The Oudh Hindu Sabha published a separate list which included some not endorsed by the party. The Leader, 20 October I 926. 220 The Lucknow elections were engrossed in caste factionalism. The Brahmins, the Hindu Sabha, and the Kayasths, Swarajya Party, had fought out the municipal elections in I925. Tewari, a Brahmin, was opposed by a Kayasth advocate. Ehe Leader, 7 December I925. Mashal Singh was, in addition, a worker for the Rajput Sabha. In I9I3 he had founded a Rajput school at Hardoi. Ehe Leader, I3 March I9I3.

221 Manjeet Singh, a Rajput trader of Dehra Dun; Lala Bishambhar Nath, a Vaish schoolmaster in the Arya school at Muzaffarnagar; Har Prasad Singh, a Rajput vakil of Banda; Lala Sita Ram, a Vaish lawyer and zamindar of Kheri; A. P. Dube, a Brahmin barrister of Allahabad. 222 The Shri Bhramavarta Sanatan Dharma Mandal of Cawnpore, one of the oldest and most important sabhas in the province nominated two independent candidates, both Khattri raises. The Leader, 25 September I926. 223 B. D. Graham, 'Syama Prasad Mukherjee and the Communalist Alternative', in D. A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (London, I968), p. 334.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 I97

represent tradition; but the Congress did not represent modernity. The Congress candidates were men of many- loyalties. Some were actively concerned in caste associations, as well as religious and cultural revivalist movements. Admittedly most Congress candidates

,.

were younger and less established, but differences in social and religious outlook between them and the Independents were of degree and not of kind.

Most of the Hindu Sabha candidates were landholders; as Reeves has observed, they constituted 'the largest groupofattachedlandholders' at the elections.224 In Oudh constituencies the Hindu Sabha was strong

-because taluqdars such as Rampal Singh) Raja Suraj Baksh Singh, Raja Biswanath Singh, and Rajeswar Bali supported it. In Agra province Durga Narayan Singh marshalled the landed gentry in the party interest. Many landowners were Congress candidates but, with few exceptions, they were middling zamindars, unable to compete either in wealth or influence with the landholders of the Independent Congress. Moreover, most of them supplemented their landed incomes through legal practice and other professional pursuits. Similarly, the lawyers attracted to the Swarajya Party were relatively obscure vakils from the district and mofussil courts, often struggling to earn an ade- quate income. The more successful lawyers, especially the advocates of the High Court bars, were to be found in the Liberal Party. Again, the Congress attracted the smaller traders and merchants,- the penurious Hindi journalists and vernacular school-teachers, the parvenus of provincial politics. Traders, journalists and teachers- were not absent from the Independent Congress, but they tended to be men of con- siderable public experience and reputation, of an older generation, more successful and more substantial than their Congress counterparts.

There were important diSerences between the two parties in caste background and occupation. The Congress nominated fifty-three candidates,225 compared with the thirty-one of the Independent Congress, and its ticket was more broadly based and more evenly balanced among all the politically-active castes. It included at least eight Muslim candidates. The largest caste group on the Congress ticket was the Kanyakubya Brahmin, whose members had become particularly politically conscious from I9I7 onwards. Moreover, these

224 Reeves, 'The Landlords' Response to Political Change', p. 220.

22s The U.P. Congress never published a full and final list of candidates, nor did a list ever reach the Working Committee. B. Raja Rao to A. Rangaswamy Iyengar, 8 February I927, File Gg of I927, A.I.C.C. This estimate is based upon references to party affiliations in various newspapers.

I98 RICHARD GORDON

Brahmins tended to be younger professional men. By contrast, the Rajputs and allied agricultural castes, including a sprinkling of Jats, Kurmis and Ahirs, were in the main substantial landowners and they predominated in the Independent Congress. Where the Brahmins supplemented meagre landed incomes from the law, teaching or jo-urrlalism, or were dependent entirely upon a profession, few of the landholders in the Independent Congress were engaged in a profession. The urban and professional colouring of the Congress was also revealed by the wide support it received from the trading castes, particularly Vaish of middling status; the smaller traders and merchants with professional interests, largely Agarwals. It did not include one membet of a well-established trading community such as the Khattris. In contrast, the Hindu Sabha received the support of the larger bankers and urban raises but had only three members of the Vaish communities among its- candidates. One of these, Ghanshyamdas Birla, was ars outsider to the province, and the support of the remaining two was for local and personal reasons.226

The caste of candidates is important in a number of ways. It tells us about the status of members within their own communities nd about their affiliations with caste associations. It also gives us an idea of the distribution of castes between the two parties. Several candidates and leading members of the Hindu Sabha Party, Rampal Singh, Hanuman Singh, Durga Narayan Singh, and Suraj Baksh Singh were the leading members of the Kshatriya Mahasabha and the move- ment of inter-clan unity among the Rajputs. The Kayasths belonged to the old Theosophical school of politics and represented the reigning faction in the Kayastha Pathshala of Allahabad, of which Munshi Iswar Saran was president in I926 and three other candidates were trustees. Attempts by the young party of the Congress to capture the Kshatriya Mahasabha in I923 and the Kayastha Conference in I924 failed.227 Control of the associations and the patronage at their disposal remained in the hands of the old party which adhered to the Hindu Sabha. The caste association of the Kanyakubya Brahmins, however, was more in

226 Birla, a Marwari industrialist of Calcutta, had old links with Malaviya through his interest in the EIindu University and the Hindi movement particularly, both of which he helped to finance. Kampta Prasad Kakkar, a Khattri barrister of Allaha- bad, was connected with the Malaviya clan in Allahabad local politics. Lala Prag Narayan, an Agarwal lawyer, millowner and banker, failed in several attempts to win an election to the Provincial Council and in local government, in I920, I923, I925. Moreover, he belonged to the faction in Agra led by Syed Ali Nabi, a Shia lawyer and zamindar. rhe Leader, I I November I920, I6 May I923, 6 May I925.

227 7Che Leader, 4January I923 and I4 May I924.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 92 6 I99

line with the Congress. In August I926n when the Swarajya Party attempted to capture the Agra Hindu Sabha) the Kanyakubya Brahmins canvassed in support of the faction led by Ananda Prasad Dube, a barrister of Allahabad and the president of the Provincial Kanyakubya Sammelan. In August Dube formed the Allahabad Kan- yakubya Sabha and in the elections he stood as a Congress candidate for the Allahabad urban seat against Kampta Prasad Kakkar, a Khattri barrister and the leader of a rival faction on the Allahabad Muni- cipal Board.228

The Independent Congress Party was a party of landowners but it would be misleading to view it as a party of the landowning interest. The common thread of interest linking the more important members of the party was a concern for educational progress in the province. The party preserved, relatively unimpaired, the complex network of connexions which had their origins in the Hindu University movement, the corner-stone of Hindu unity in north India. Malaviya, Rampal Singh, Munshi Iswar Saran, Pt. Iqbal Narayan Gurtu and Suraj Baksh- Singh, among others, had been founder members of the Hindu University Society in I9I2 or had toured with the Deputations, and had been active organising Hindu Sabhas, collecting funds, and popularising the idea of a Hindu University. In I926 these men were still active in the afEairs of the University, as administrators, teachers and patrons. Malaviya, apart from being involved in a wide range of political, social and cultural organisations was vice-chancellor of the University. Pt-. Iqbal Narayan Gurtu, a Kashmiri Brahmin zamindar and vakil of Cawnpore and the general secretary of the Theosophical Society, was a professor in the University. The members of the agricul- tural castes in the Independent Congress Party were active in promoting education among their clansmen. The awakening among the Rajputs and Jats, and to a lesser extent among the Kurmis, Ahirs and Gujars, all late arrivals in the race for education, increased the rivalry and competition between castes. The expansion of the electorate in local and provincial government heightened competition for the available government patronage and led to a rapid expansion in private educa- tional enterprise.229 The tactical emphasis upon shuddhi and Hindi in

228 Speaking at a Kanyakubya Conference at Cawnpore in I924 Dube claimed 'triumphant and liberal sectarianism to be the bedrock of an effective nationalism.' The Leader, I 5 February I924.

229 'Never was effort on the part of the various communities keener. Kshattriyas, Vaishyas and Jats are pouring money into school buildings.... primary education is now entirely in the hands of the Municipal and District Boards. With rare excep-

RICHARD GORDON 200

Mahasabha propaganda was calculated to appeal to those communities who were consolldating their sub-castes and who were, at the same time, turning increasingly towards the benefits of education. At great financial risk and by lowering its standards, Benares University expanded its intake to cope with the growing demand for higher education among the Hindi matriculates. University expansion etas a dominant issue throughout-the I920S. It was a major influence upon the decisions of Malaviya and his group who were associated, more continuously, with education than with politics. In I920 Malaviya had opposed non-cooperation largely in theinterests of educational progress and in I925, as the financial needs of the University became more pressing, he tried to move Congress from obstruction towards a closer relationship with government.230 As an educationist, Hindi journalist, publicist and political worker he had dedicated the best part of his life to improving the standard of Hindi literacy and Hindu education, the sine qua non of a regenerate Hinduism. If Malaviya was a unique personal symbol of the Hindu unity movement, the Benares Hindu University was the fulcrum upon which it rested, the concrete link between the loose strands of religious and cultural

* 1

revlvallsm.

Through the Hindu Sabha the Independent Congress Party drew upon these various movements. As a faction within the Congress, representing the re-united Malaviya group and particularly the Theoso- phical school of politicians, it exploited what were, essentially, a range of personal and informal connexions, the product of almost two gener- ations of public actvity in the province. The scale and extent of its operations during the elections indicated this fact. The party was concentrated in the eastern districts and Oudh. In the same way the Congress followed the lines of earlier political developments. Admit- tedly it mustered more candidates in the west of the province, especially through its connexion with the Arya Samaj. But the cities of Allahabad, Benares and Lucknow contnued to dominate the districts within- their immediate spheres of influence.23l Further, within these areas the Malaviya and Nehru families of Allahabad and the Misra family of Lucknow continued to exercise a determining control in organised

tions their only idea is to multiply schools whether decent teachers are forthcoming or not.' Marris to Reading, 8 September Ig24. Reading Papers, Vol. 26, Mss Eur. E238, India OEce Library, London.

230 Home Poll., File I87 of Ig26, N.A.I. 231 Excluding the Assembly, in the Meerut, Agra and Rohillihand Divisions, the

Congress nominated I5 candidates and the Independent Congress 7, of a possible 23.

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I 9 I 5-I 926 20I

political activity. Even in Congress, family rivalries persisted. But most Congress candidates were independent of them, and this high- lighted an important difference between the two parties. Whereas the Independent Congress Party was characterised by a wide range of informal and personal connexions in various public movements, the Swarajya Party groups were more dependent upon the more formal finance and organisation of the Congress.

Historians of India have been warned against concentrating too heavily upon the 'apparent conflicts between nationalism and im- perialism.'232 A similar conclusion can be drawn about the alleged antagonism between nationalism and communalism. In north India the Hindu Mahasabha and its precursors, no less than the Congress, helped on the growth of political association, and this brought into being a variety of loosely allied movements. Religious, cultural and social movements produced a political environment very different in character from that in the Presidencies.233 The early Hindu Sabhas, the Hindu University movement and its heir, the Hindu Mahasabha, played an important part in building the politics of the U.P. and in providing an organised framework for the rapid expansion of Congress activity after I920. Before I9I6 the U.P. Congress was little more than an electoral agency in an all-India alliance of the educated classes. There is no reason why it should have been otherwise. But if 'national politics' were construed narrowly this was not because political life was cramped by the pervasive influence of the Indo-Persian culture of the dominant landholding elite.234 On the contrary, moderation in Congress circles was a tactic well suited to the interests of the leadership in the U.P. As in other backward provinces, here politics were insepar- able from education, and educational interests could be largely satisfied within the existing framework of government. There was no need to expand the agitational role of the Congress. As the university movement had shown, interests were well served by associations outside Congress such as the Hindu University Society and the Hindu Sabhas. Certainly, the politicians moved prudently, but this was because they

232 Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, I968), p. 342.

233 Seal's emphasis upon the superficial nature of Congress politics before I920,

while it may be true of the Presidencies, does not apply to the U.P. where politics were far from being skin deep. Ibid., pp. 346-8.

234 Low (ed.), Soundings in South Asian History, pp. 6-I I. Low's emphasis is mis- placed. The professional middle classes, outside the small secular, pro-Muslim group of Kashmiris and Kayasths, were never subservient to a 'landlordist husk culture'. With the exception of the Liberals, English education was not a unifying factor in provincial politics.

202 RICHARD GORDON

saw moderation as the surest way of coaxing government into con- cessions. But the circumstances of the U.P. provided another reason for their not venturing into all-India politics upon too wide a scale. Through their links with the Mahasabha and its satellite movements, the Congress politicians had access to a wide range of public activities which were of burning importance at the local level, but which would not have been suitable for an all-India platform. Provincial interests and not subservience to a 'husk culture' determined the pattern of Congress politics in the U.P.

The growing demand of the younger Muslims for political recogni- tion, the ambitions of Hindi revivalists, and the reforms in the Govern- ment of India combined to draw the U.P. into the vortex of all-India politics. This broke up the established pattern of provincial politics, and when the Khilafat agitation plunged the U.P. Congress into the non-cooperation movement, this finally disrupted the settled relation- ship between the Congress and the Hindu unity movement. From a mere pressure group, the Congress was transformed into a political move- ment complex in its organisation and in the variety, number and geo- graphical distribution of the interests which it sought to influence and to reconcile. Resentful of the special status accorded to the Khilafat Committee in the councils of the Congress, the Mahasabha leaders mounted a counter-attack after I922 to save their interests from being sacrificed to a doubtful unity. Yet the political wing of the Mahasabha, led by Malaviya, was extremely reluctant to follow the way of the Liberals by severing completely its links with the Congress. The for- mation of the Independent Congress Party in I926 was the direct result of the Swarajist ascendancy within the Congress. By refusing to make concessions over provincial autonomy the Swarajists forced the Maha- sabha to look after its own electoral needs.

The decision of the Hindu Mahasabha to allow its provincial branches the discretion to contest the general elections in I926 was not simply a move calculated to exploit the high pitch of communal consciousness generated by the non-cooperation movement. It was part of a wider trend in Indian politics, a general reshuffling of political alignments which had been thrown into confusion in the preceding years. The attempt of Gandhi to impose a uniformity of programme upon the provinces, together with the shift in the balance of forces within the Congress led to revolt in many of the provinces once the non-cooperation alliance had broken down. Moreover, governmental decentralisation provided a pressing reason for challenging the all- India machine. Swarajist heresy was succeeded rapidly by Responsivist

MAHASABHA AND NATIONAL CONGRESS, I9I5-I926 203

and Independent dissent from Swarajist orthodoxy. But, where the former succeeded in capturing the C:ongress, the latter failed. It could not spread beyond its north Indian base, and even there its foundations were shaky. So the centre party during the pre-independence era was a failure. Its time was yet to come.