Fazlul Huq, Region and Religion in Bengal: The Forgotten Alternative of 1940-43 Author(s): Sana Aiyar Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 6 (Nov., 2008), pp. 1213-1249 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20488062 Accessed: 12-09-2016 13:47 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Asian Studies This content downloaded from 59.180.134.145 on Mon, 12 Sep 2016 13:47:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ModernAsian Studies 42,6 (2008)pp. 1213-1249. ?2007 Cambridge University Press doi: 10.101 7/S0026749X07003022 First published online 26July 2007 Fazlul Huq, Region and Religion in Bengal: The Forgotten Alternative of 1940-43 SANA AIYAR Department of History, Harvard University, Robinson Hall, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA 02 I3 8 USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract In the wake of the Government of India Act of 1935, provincial politics emerged as a challenge to the authority and legitimacy of all-India, centralised political parties. While the Congress and the Muslim League set up a binary opposition between secular and religious nationalism, provincial politicians refused to succumb to the singularity of either alternative. Partition historiography has been concerned with the interplay of national and communal ideologies in the 1940s, overshadowing this third trajectory of regional politics that was informed by provincial particularities. This article traces a short-lived alternative that emerged in Bengal between 1940 and 1943 under the premiership of Fazlul Huq. Huq produced a peculiar form of identity politics that appealed not only to religious sentiment but also to regional loyalty that cut across the religious divide. Significantly, he did so without resorting to secular claims. By challenging Jinnah's claim to being the sole spokesman of Muslims in India and highlighting the different concerns of a province with a Muslim majority, Huq reconciled the twin identities of religion and region within the same political paradigm, and foreshadowed the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. Introduction The emergence of Pakistan and India in 1947 has been studied within the context of the interplay of national and communal ideologies in the 1940s. Partition historiography has tended to focus on West Pakistan and Punjab. The narrative of nationalism in Bengal seems to end with the success of the Swadeshi movement and picks back up in 1946-47 with the Calcutta riots, as a story of communalism. The national and communal narratives of the partition of Bengal are studied within the same ideological framework as those for Punjab--seen as a result of the Muslim League demand for a separate homeland and the politics that surrounded the transfer of power at the centre. East Pakistan, oo026-749X/o8/$7.50+ $o. 10 1213 This content downloaded from 59.180.134.145 on Mon, 12 Sep 2016 13:47:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1 214 SANA AIYAR however, ended up being the experiment that failed. In 1971, it not only separated from its 'mother' nation, Pakistan, but also became an independent nation with ideologies diametrically opposed to the ones claimed for its legitimacy less than two decades earlier.' Regional and cultural identity superseded the religious claims of 1947 and asserted itself in the birth of a new post-colonial nation in the Indian subcontinent-Bangladesh. This was not a volte-face caused by a change of heart among the Bengali Muslims, but rather a continuation of the identity politics that had emerged in the wake of the Government of India Act of 1935. Historically, the climax of independence and parti tion had overrun these trends in provincial politics. In a revealing par allel, historiography has been preoccupied with events leading to the partition of India, thus overshadowing various dimensions of Bengali identity politics that had emerged in the early 1940s during the exper iment with provincial autonomy. AsJoya Chatterji notes, this decade, which saw 'so many squandered opportunities', awaits its historian.2 As a modest corrective to this historiographical oversight, this article studies the provincial politics of Bengal's forgotten years from 1940 to 1943. By focusing on the particularities of a province with a Muslim political majority, it challenges the assumption that Muslim identity was constructed as a linear progression towards a highly communal, exclusive and oppositional politics at an all-India level. It shows that the Muslim politicians of Bengal did not preclude regional or partisan alternatives to the kind of community solidarity led and dictated by the Muslim League with Jinnah as its sole spokesman. By appealing to both religious and regional identity, politicians made Bengal the playground for partisan groups to seek shifting alliances and come to power. Provincial politics not only emerged as a challenge to central politics but also became a contested ground where the politics of religion, region and nation were identified, challenged and reconciled at different moments. The central argument of this study is that between 1940 and 1943 provincial politicians in Bengal did not seek to prioritise either religion or region over one another. Instead, they produced a peculiar form of identity politics that appealed not only to religious sentiment in their consolidation of community solidarity 1 East Pakistan's rejection of religious nationalism has been noted by Partha Chatterjee, 'The Second Partition of Bengal', in Ranabir Samaddar (ed), Reflections on the Partition in the East, Delhi, India, 1997, pp. 35-58. 2 Joya Chatterji, 'The Decline, Revival and Fall of Bhadralok Influence in the 1940s: A Historiographie Review', in Sekhar Bandhyopadhyay (ed), Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography, Delhi, India, 2001, p. 297. This content downloaded from 59.180.134.145 on Mon, 12 Sep 2016 13:47:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FAZLUL HUQ, REGION AND RELIGION IN BENGAL 1215 but also to regional loyalty that cut across the religious divide. Most significantly, they achieved this without resorting to secular claims. The relationship between religious and regional or national identity had been presented as a paradoxical duality in Indian political discourse, which offered two possible alternatives--secular nationalism or religious communalism. This article studies a third alternative offered in Bengal in the early 1940s; an alternative that came to its logical conclusion in 1971 with the birth of Bangladesh. Between 1940 and 1943, two provincial ministries offered a reconciliation of the twin identities of region and religion within the same political paradigm. Fazlul Huq, the Bengal Premier, best epitomised the pluralistic identities that Bengali Muslims struggled to come to terms with in the 1940s. Neither the Nehruvian claims to secular politics, which prioritised the nation above any other regional or religious identity, nor Jinnah's 'communal' nationalist claims, which placed religious identity over pre-existing regional or national identity, suited the pluralism of Bengal. Huq's politics followed a third trajectory that sought to reconcile religious and regional identification within a political discourse that was not exclusionary. Huq, however, has been relegated to the footnotes of history, for his particular brand of politics does not conform to current understandings of provincial politics. Although he opposed Jinnah, he was not a secularist and believed completely in the idea of Pakistan. Although a Muslim leader, he constantly asserted his position as a Bengali Premier. Being neither a leader whose provincial imperative prevailed over a communal line as portrayed by Ayesha Jalal3 nor a mainstream communal leader envisioned by Mushirul Hasan,4 Huq has been difficult to categorise within these two recognised trends of identity politics. Historiograph ical work on Huq has thus tended to emphasise his inconsistencies without quite understanding his distinctive brand of politics. This article makes three main claims. Firstly, it suggests that the contested political arena of what has been termed by some historians as 'Muslim separatism' was challenged not only by politicians who presented themselves as secular but also by regional leaders who were 3 Ayeshajalal, 'Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia', in Sugata Bose and Ayeshajalal (eds), Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, Delhi, India, 1997, p. 90. 4 Mushirul Hasan refers to Huq as an unscrupulous politician who 'thought it fit not only to swim with the current of communalism but to revitalise it and even to perpetuate it', 'Communalism in the Provinces: A Case Study of Bengal and the Punjab, 1922-26', in Mushirul Hasan (ed), Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Delhi, India, 1981, p. 265. This content downloaded from 59.180.134.145 on Mon, 12 Sep 2016 13:47:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1216 SANA AIYAR part of the Muslim political discourse. Provincial leaders' challenges to national politicians have been studied in order to highlight the ideological differences between provincial and central politics. In contrast, this article examines the type of opposition faced by the Muslim leadership that had no ideological conflict with the politics of religiosity. Huq questioned the authority of the Muslim League leader as the sole spokesman for the Muslims by challengingJinnah's politics from within. He appeared as a third alternative in Bengal politics he made no secular, nationalist claims like the Congress nor was he willing to accept Jinnah's communal politics.