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Henry Judd

Some Facts on ‘Enmity’ of Hindu and Moslem

(August 1942)

From Labor Action, Vol. 6 No. 34, 24 August 1942, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

Whenever the problem of India and the incessant demand of its 385,000,000 people for freedom arises, the Hindu-Moslem question is immediately brought in.

The argument runs as follows:

“We (the English) have India’s best interests at heart. We would like to see the country free, and standing on its own feet. But we don’t DARE to free India because of the Hindu and Moslem antagonism. Therefore, we the English people, must – in the name of common humanity – remain to prevent the outbreak of a Hindu-Moslem struggle. The fact that we continue to drain the country of its wealth and exploit its manpower (and, incidentally, now ask the Indians to prepare to scorch the earth of their country as the Japanese advance) is simply a coincidence. We are really remaining in India to prevent civil war between Hindu and Moslem.”

Thus speaks every spokesman and every newspaper of the United Nations.

A tissue of lies from start to finish! It is not true that the Hindu people and the Moslem people hate one another; that they are prepared to slaughter one another; that, therefore, the British must remain to prevent such a catastrophe. And we shall prove this.

What is the difference between a Moslem and a Hindu? Is it a racial difference, a color difference, a language difference?

Absolutely not! The difference between a Hindu and a Moslem is simply and solely a religious difference; a difference in religious beliefs, customs and practices. It is the same sort of difference as exists, let us say, between Catholics and Protestants, or Baptists and Lutherans in the United States. The Moslems (about one-third of the population) are not a separate and distinct race of people – as, for example, are the Negro people in America – they are a different religious community!

Hindus and Moslems live together, side; by side in communities; Hindu peasants and Moslem peasants work side by side; Hindu workers and Moslem workers are in the same factories. If anyone were to suggest that America should be divided between Catholics and Protestants and that these religious communities hate one another, we would say either that the man is crazy or a Ku Klux Klanner. This holds even more true for India. Hindus and Moslems speak the same language, depending on their geographic territory (it is more British propaganda to say that 200 or 300 languages are spoken in India – there are six basic languages used in the country); they face exactly the same political and economic problems (namely, to improve their conditions and to obtain the land stolen from them by their English rulers); they ALL live under the same primitive and poverty-stricken conditions.

Furthermore, there has been such an enormous racial intermixing during India’s thousands of years of history that there is no such thing as a racial group in India. Hindus and Moslems look alike, act alike and follow the same general traditions and customs; they differ only on religious questions. But what about the Indian Nationalist Congress? Isn’t that a Hindu organization? And doesn’t the Moslem League represent the Moslem people? The answer to these questions is NO.

The Congress is not a Hindu nor a religious organization of any kind. It is a POLITICAL organization standing on a POLITICAL program. It participates in political actions and elections. It has no religious program or customs and includes in its ranks members of every religious community in India (Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees, etc.) So do the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the United States, but that doesn’t make them religious groups.

What is wrong with the India National Congress is its limited political program. The Congress Party is dominated by the Indian capitalist class which fears to precipitate a social revolution and therefore does everything in its power to prevent the workers and peasants from going too far.
 

Why More Hindus

Naturally there are more Hindus than any other group in the Congress because Hindus are two-thirds of the population. But they are there because they are NATIONALISTS and fight for their country’s freedom, not because they are Hindus. There are also many Moslems in the organization. The president of the Congress (Azad) is a Moslem; the leader of the Congress Socialist Party (Meherally) is a Moslem. In the Northwest Frontier Province, which is 90 per cent Moslem, the Congress got 90 per cent of the votes at the last election!

But what about the Moslem League and its spokesman, Jinnah, the wealthy Bombay lawyer, who claims to speak in the name of the entire Moslem community and who threatens to precipitate civil war if the British withdraw from India?

1. The Moslem League is an organization of religious fanatics, English-bribed landlords and middle-class lawyers and intellectuals. Its prime function is precisely what it is doing now – creating confusion and providing an excellent “excuse” for the British to continue their unwanted and too-long occupation of India. The Moslem League has no mass support among the Moslem poor peasants and workers, whom it deliberately tries to stir up against their Hindu brothers in exactly the same manner as American bosses try to create antagonism between white, and black workers in America.
    
2. The Moslem League, has never dared participate in political action or elections because that would reveal instantly its lack of support. And, most significant of all, the Moslem League does not stand for a free and independent India. (How convenient for the British!)
    

Some Additional Facts

Here are some additional FACTS (not British propaganda) on the Hindu-Moslem question:

1. Hindus and Moslems live scattered all over the country, from North to South. To divide them geographically and territorially would be as impossible as to divide America territorially between Catholics and Protestants.
    
2. The first Moslem state in India was established in 1206. That is, the Moslems came to India over 700 years ago! Their racial and cultural mixing with the original inhabitants has been going on now for more than seven centuries.
    
3. Ninety per cent of all communal conflicts (Hindu-Moslem riots) take the form of an economic clash between peasants, money-lenders and landlords of different faiths. Thus, what is at bottom an economic and class struggle is described as a “religious” or Hindu-Moslem riot. The other 10 per cent are deliberately provoked by the English dictators in their traditional divide-and-rule policy (similar to Arabs versus Jews in Palestine).
    
4. The Moslem aristocracy of the Moslem League spends 75 per cent of its propaganda in attacking the nationalist objectives and the agrarian radicalism of the Congress Party.
   
   Hindu and Moslem workers and peasants have shown over and over again, in practice, that they recognize their REAL enemy – foreign imperialist rule.
   
   In Cawnpore, for example, it is reported, “the Moslem workers have joined the union and have defied all efforts to separate them from their Hindu comrades. Some time ago the communalists of the Moslem League tried to make a split in the union by bringing out a Moslem League green flag, but the workers pointed to their red flag and, said that the blood which had dyed it red was not communal or religious.” (Schiff, The Present Conditions of India,” page 174.)
   
   This is THEIR answer to the Hindu-Moslem question.
    
5. The cause of antagonism between middle-class Moslem intellectuals and Hindus is the limited number of jobs (civil service and government posts) available to educated Indians. The British seek to foster and deepen every petty quarrel between a Moslem and Hindu in exactly the same manner as a boss seeks to set workers of different faiths against one another in the shop.

In two weeks of the present struggle, although the British authorities have hinted over and over again that “communal riots” – that is, Hindu-Moslem strife – could be expected at any moment, they are unable to point to a single example yet! This doesn’t mean that they are not busy at work trying to stir up and create such incidents, but it proves the difficulty that even these criminal imperialists have in turning against one another people who have, in reality, a common enemy and a common objective.

 
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