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While these social and religious reform movements
were taking place in the urban, western-educated, Hindu middle-class
society, the Muslim social and religious reform movements
were unfolding in the countryside amongst the peasantry. The
ideas of these movements may be traced back to Shah Waliullah
(1703-62) of Delhi, who had called for a puritanic reform
of Indian Islam, but in Bengal the movements took the form
of a peasant revolt. The first such movement was led by Syed
Nisar Ali (1782-1831), better known as Titumeer, who organized
the peasants as a distinct militant group. Reacting to the
potential danger of letting the peasants get organized, the
local landlord, who was a Hindu, took such steps as would
lead to a disbanding of the organization. In the ensuing clash
that took a communal color, the administration came out in
support of the landlord, and finally crushed the movement
through military action.
A similar one known as the Faraizi movement
was organized among the peasants and artisans of East Bengal
by Haji Shariatullah (1780-1840), who was said to have had
a following of 12,000 men in 1837. He declared that India,
under the British, was a land of the infidel, but did not
call for a holy war against them. His son, Muhsinuddin Ahmad,
alias Dudu Miyan (1819-60), who took the leadership from his
father, declared that all land belonged to God and no landlord
had any right to levy taxes on those who tilled it. Again,
a combination of landlords, indigo-planters, and the administration
finally saw the doom of the movement.
It is undoubted that in their religious outlook,
these movements were not far-sighted, but their social and
economic views had a potential force of creativity that was
not allowed to flower. The fact that the peasants were organized
and threw up their own leadership was of great significance.
It cannot, however, be denied that the movements sharply demarcated
the boundaries between a Muslim and a non-Muslim, or, for
that matter, between a Muslim belonging to the movement and
a Muslim who was not. This was just another episode the tradition
of resorting to religion for the solution of problems, which
was the archaic practice, with instances even occurring in
recent history.
The revolt that distinguished itself as being
based on purely economic issues, and having nothing to do
with religious persuasions, was the Indigo Revolt of 1860,
directed against European planters whose exploitation had
pushed the peasants to the wall. A surprising aspect of this
revolt was the support it enlisted from the Bengali intelligentsia,
who had otherwise shown no interest in the earlier peasant
movements. The Indigo Revolt elicited much support from a
Bengali journalist, whose speeches and writings made a definite
contribution to its cause. It also inspired a playwright to
produce the ..nost popular play of the time, which in turn
contributed a great deal to the nationalist movement in Bengal.
All the time religious ideas seemed to be
overtaking economic and political issues. The work of the
European Orientalists, whose footsteps were followed by Bengali
scholars, had re-awakened the image of ancient India as a
land of great charm and achievements. The pride in India's
past meant a pride in Hindu India to the intelligentsia. Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa (1836-86), a poor Brahmin having no formal education,
ushered in a new wave of revivalism by a simple and emotional
interpretation of the Hindu faith. His disciple, Swami Vivekananda
(1862-1902), supplied the intellectual basis of Hindu revivalism
and declared the need of a spiritual conquest of the West
by Hindu India.
The modernist Muslim leaders of Bengal, Abdul
Luteef (1828-93) and Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928), in their
turn, stressed the separate identity and tradition of the
Muslim. To them the issue of obtaining greater access to education
was of the same importance as was the question of female emancipation
to Hindu social reformers. Abdul Luteef, a high government
official, made special efforts for the spread of western education
among the Muslims of Bengal, who were lagging behind the Hindus
in this respect, and thus obtaining a lower share of government
jobs which were made to appear very covetable. Ameer Ali,
who later became a member of the Privy Council, was well known
for his liberal interpretation of Islam. Both of them wrote
exclusively in English, one for the benefit of the government
hierarchy, the other for that of the western readers. The
parallel development of Hindu and Muslim revivalism, which
proved stronger than the efforts at forging unity between
the two communities, had well known political consequences.
The eventual consequences were also affected by development
which took place in the twentieth century, when Bengal politics
were engulfed by the currents of the all-India political scene.
Until that time, however, Bengal had given
the lead to endogenous political activism in India. Bengal
was politically more articulate than any other province of
India, perhaps due to the fact that English education was
first imparted here, and that a middle class grew up earlier.
The ideas of nationalism and political freedom were learnt
not from experiences of life but from English textbooks. The
blessings of British rule were, therefore, time and again
recounted, and political leaders imbued with Victorian liberalism
appealed to the good sense of the rulers for allowing the
Indians more participation in the political process. The aim
was set at constitutional development after the British model,
and the demise of colonial rule was demanded much later.
Bengal contributed a great deal to this political
process. The politics of "associations" had appeared
in Bengal in the 1840s. The India League founded by Sisir
Kumar Ghosh (1840-1911), the Indian Association founded by
Surendranath Banarjee (1848-1925), and the National Mahomedan
Association founded by Ameer Ali preceded the Indian National
Congress (1885). From Ghosh and Banarjee to C. R. Das (1870-1925)
and Subhaschandra Bose (1897-1945), Bengal had produced a
number of great political figures, and when radicalism appeared
in politics, it was echoed more distinctly by the youth of
Bengal who chose the path of violence in the early years of
this century.
By the time the phase of radicalism showed
its face, political appeals were being made to the masses
in the language they were traditionally used to - the parlance
of religion. The image of the country as a mother goddess
became popular and the Gita became the handbook of the revolutionaries,
which could hardly appeal to the Muslims. Given the late growth
of the middle class in that community, their interest was
expectedly different from that of their Hindu counterparts.
A separate bargaining counter for the Muslims was now founded
in the Muslim League (1906).
The economic interests of classes became
clouded by the collective emotional upsurge against colonial
rule. The leadership generally came from the upper and middle
class gentry who had better mastered the language of western
political ideas and movements. The political process and movements
also imparted education to the working class. Consequently,
the development took place in the present century of the Communist
Party and of peasant organizations and trade unions which
put forward economic demands of exploited interest groups.
A tangible outcome of this trend was seen in the 1940s in
the Tebhaga movement of the Bengal peasantry, based on the
demand for a greater share of output for the actual tiller
of the land.
The foremost vehicle of intellectual creativity,
however, was literature. It will be unjustified to overlook
the contributions made by writers trained in the endogenous
tradition who favourably responded to the changing situation,
but individuals who brought revolutionary change were the
English-educated writers, such as Michael Madhusudan Dutt
(1824-73) and Bankimchandra ChatterJee (1838-94), who turned
to Bengali only after their English writings were met with
a limited appreciation.
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