Analysing Anti-Congressism

7/31/2019 Analysing Anti-Congressism

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Anti-Congressism

ByAnil Nauriya

[For all its rhetoric, Hindutva cannot afford to give up on the concept ofnationhood that the freedom movement led by the Congress fostered. To give itup would set the country aflame, as happened last year in Gujarat.]

FOR AROUND 36 years, India has had strong intermittent currents of anti-Congressism. Two main types of anti-Congressism sometimes get entwined.One type is historical anti-Congressism. This consists in diminishing, denying ordecrying the historical role of the Congress in its various aspects. Another type iscontemporary political anti-Congressism. This is geared primarily to excluding theCongress, for contemporary reasons, from the centres of political power in India.

Ram Manohar Lohia's anti-Congress activism was a post-independencephenomenon primarily of the second type. It was one of the few varieties of anti-Congressism that was not strongly entwined with historical anti-Congressism.The causes for historical and contemporary anti-Congressism are oftenscrutinised. But anti-Congressism has itself not been sufficiently scrutinised. And,particularly in the case of historical anti-Congressism, there have been fewattempts within the traditions sponsoring these tendencies to define the possiblelimits to the phenomena.The Congress itself has been neglectful of its history. Even on contemporaryissues, its own leaders have come uncritically to internalise the narratives of itsopponents. Thus, the Congress leaders were convinced that the Gujarat election

could not be fought unless the campaign was placed in the hands of former BJPmen. In considering the limits upon anti-Congressism, it is necessary to bear inmind that Congress history and the formation of the Indian nation are interlinkedin a way in which nation formation and no other party is or can be linked.Historical anti-Congressism itself has had many varieties. There are, forexample, the anti-Congressism of Hindutva, the Muslim League, the Ambedkaritesection of the Dalits as well as the anti-Congressism of the pre-independenceCPI. Most important, there was in addition the anti-Congressism of the colonialstate and of the imperial apparatus. These varieties often intersect incontemporary writings. Thus British anti-Congressism, for example, sought topresent the historical anti-Congress trends among the Dalits and Muslims as

being the only trends within these sections that are worthy of note.The historical anti-Congressism of Hindutva is built around a few talking points.One such point circulated by the RSS among its cadres involves a selectiveportrayal of the Khilafat issue of the 1920s. There is a tendency for manyvarieties of anti-Congressism erroneously to refer to the non-cooperationmovement of 1920-22 interchangeably with the Khilafat movement. The non-cooperation movement, led by the Congress, was based on three issues: ThePunjab wrongs (1919), the demand for `swaraj' and support for the Muslim


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grievances related to Khilafat. And the last, it is well to remember in the currentcontext of the United States' attack on Iraq, involved not simply the question ofthe Caliphate but the impropriety of Indian troops being used against countriestowards which India had no animosity.Hindutva anti-Congressism attacks the Congress on Khilafat, but some leading

Hindutva figures were part of or supported this movement. B.S Moonje of theHindu Mahasabha was a signatory to the October 1921 manifesto, which calledfor non-cooperation with the British. Hedgewar, who later founded the RSS, wasarrested in 1920 for his participation in the movement. Subhas Chandra Bose,who Hindutva spokesmen seek to appropriate, approved of the Khilafat issuebeing raised as part of the movement. His only objection, by hindsight, was anorganisational one. For all its rhetoric, Hindutva cannot afford to give up on theconcept of nationhood that the freedom movement led by the Congress fostered.To give it up would set the country aflame, as happened last year in Gujarat. Therealisation will dawn on the BJP, in the interests of its own-self-preservation, thatto abandon Indian nationhood for Hindu nationhood would be not only a moral

disaster, for which it may not care, but also an economic one, which it cannotignore.The Muslim League too attacked the Congress. But there were certain Congressprogrammes on which it discreetly withheld criticism. The `khadi' programme wasone of them. Thousands of Muslim spinners, weavers and artisans benefitedfrom it. No movement for freedom had ever been able to put together a majorprogramme of this kind even before it attained power. The Frontier Gandhi, Khan

Abdul Ghaffar Khan, speaking at the Bombay Congress session in 1934 abouthis tour of rural Bengal, observed that where the `khadi' programme hadreached, it had brought an awakening and enabled people to get at least onemeal a day. Again, with independence, it was the Congress that enabled the

Muslim community, which, as Maulana Azad pointed out, had been left in thelurch by separatist politics, to overcome the trauma of Partition and seek aconfident future in India.In contemporary writings, it is the communist Left which energetically seeks toown secularism. Its activities in this direction are creditable. Yet, the secularpolity in India owes its existence to the Congress. It is not a gift of the pre-independence CPI or of the Muslim League. Post-1947 League-oriented writingssought to discredit the historical Congress so as to vindicate the Pakistanmovement. Spilled over in the Indian context, such writings were dysfunctional.Pakistan vindication and the establishment of a secular state in India were twodistinct projects. The first project required the discrediting of the very movementwhich had attempted to guarantee a fair dispensation for Muslims in independentIndia. The Congress was targeted also in the historiography of the pre-independence CPI. Yet it is through participation in the Congress movementsthat communist leaders reached the peasantry. Although in the 1940s, the CPI,along with Anglocentricism, tended at the very least to equate the Congress withthe Muslim League, the contrast between the land reforms conducted in Indiaand Pakistan is tell-tale.The same goes for Dalit politics. The space for growth of Dalit power in India


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was, in many ways, the product of Congress movements and Congress rule. Themovements against untouchability, carried out at an all-India level, created thesocial atmosphere that made further change possible. Every other Congress MPin the first three Lok Sabhas had cut his teeth in activities of the Harijan SevakSangh or other programmes of related social reform. It was only in independent

India that untouchability was abolished and its practice made an offence. Thiscreated an atmosphere, which made it possible for Dalits to make a bid forpolitical power in the country's most populous State. Generations of Dalitsrecognised this role of the Congress. That is why they participated in theCongress-led struggles, went to jail for it and, in most of India, especially outsideMaharashtra, continued to support it for several decades after independence.Significantly, the BSP has repeatedly come to power in Uttar Pradesh not on thebasis of the separate electorate that the British sought to provide, but on thecomposite electorate system for which the foundations were jointly agreed to byGandhi and B. R. Ambedkar in 1932 and put into final shape by the Constitutiondrafted under the stewardship of Ambedkar.

Denial of the Congress role has led a section of Dalits to deny their own historyand for a section of, largely Anglocentric, scholarship to connive in this denial. Itis necessary for Dalits to reclaim this history, for it is theirs too. The varioustraditions of anti-Congressism may have their claims to validity. But it is well forthe Congress and also all Indian varieties of anti-Congressism to recognise thatthere are limits to this tendency.

[ Published in The Hindu , March 28, 2003,

http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003032801431000.htm ]
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003032801431000.htmhttp://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003032801431000.htm

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Analysing Anti-Congressism