the further shores of partition ethnic cleansing in rajasthan 1947

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The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947Author(s): Ian CoplandSource: Past and Present, No. 160, (Aug., 1998), pp. 203-239Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/651110Accessed: 15/08/2008 17:05

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THE FURTHER SHORES OF PARTITION: ETHNIC CLEANSING IN RAJASTHAN 1947

Probably the most significant development in Indian politics since Independence, the dramatic rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has excited intense debate (and not a little anxiety) among scholarly observers of the South Asian scene. At the heart of this debate is the question of 'why'. Why are Indian voters turning away from the Congress (which, at least during Jawaharalal Nehru's premiership was known for its commitment to tolerance and secularism) and embracing a party which purports to stand for the 'core values' of 'India's age-old culture',l and which talks menacingly o? taking steps to defend the country's Hindurva (Hindu-ness) against external aggression and internal subversion?

Of course, opinion is divided. Some explanations for the BJP's success focus on the party's structure and performance. For example, it is argued that the party has benefited from having a highly centralized, almost despotic, high command; that it has been well served at the regional level by astute, adaptive leaders such as Rajasthan's Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, and at the local level by its close association with grass-roots organizations such as the nativist Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS)2 and the revivalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP); and that it has shown great flair in finding innovative ways to sell its policies to the electorate.3 Other explanations emphasize, rather, the role of unsettling developments in Indian society during the 1980s, such as the Mandal Commission's recommendation for a substantial reservation of places in colleges and the bureaucracy for the

1 Statement by BJP National Executive, Oct. 1985; quoted in Yogendra Malik and V. B. Singh, Hindu Nationalism in India: The Rise of the Bharatiya 3tanata Party (New Delhi, 1995), 75.

2 The RSS itself grew substantially during the lifetime of the BJP. By 1977, at the end of the Emergency, the RSS had been reduced to 11,000 branches; by 1994, it boasted 30,000: ibid., 155.

3 This talent was typified by President L. K. Advani's 1990 cross-country 'pilgrimage' in a Toyota truck decked out as an Aryan chariot. To the crowds who collected at the roadside to watch Advani's cavalcade pass, the spectacle identified the BJP with an ancient and glorious Hindu past.

204 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 160 so-called Backward Castes, the mass conversion to Islam of over 1,000 'untouchables' in Tamilnadu, the Muslim revolt in Kashmir, and the Congressite programme of economic liberaliz- ation. The BJP's chauvinist, anti-transnational stance, it is suggested, has a lot of attractlon to voters facing an uncertain future. Others again stress contingent factors such as the steady decline since the 1970s of the once-dominant Congress, which has opened up a strategic space at the centre for emergent parties like the BJP to fill.4

Nevertheless, there is one notion that cuts across the spectrum of opinion: put simply, it is that the rise of the BJP has a lot to do with the mounting frequency and ferocity of clashes between members of India's major religious communities. As many com- mentators have remarked, the BJP did not perform dazzlingly in its first four years of operational life, from 1980 to 1984; in particular, its showing at the 1984 polls was disappointing. This led to a change of leadership and a new, overtly Hindu-centred strategy, which by 1989 had narrowed into a campaign to reclaim the alleged site of the god-king Rama's birthplace at Ayodhya. On 6 December 1992, this campaign reached fruition when BJP and VHP workers tore down, brick by brick, the mosque which the Mughals had erected over the site in the sixteenth century, and laid the foundations for a new Ram temple. Coincidentally, and arguably as a direct consequence of the Ayodhya campaign, the BJP's national vote-share in the 1989 elections went up by 4 per cent (7.4-11.5 per cent), enough to secure it eighty-five seats in the Lok Sabha (Table 1). But there is more. While Hindu- Muslim 'communal' riots had been on the increase for some time, 1989 saw a spectacular jump. Towns which had never had a major riot before exploded into violence. The death toll rose by 4 The analysis in the preceding paragraphs is drawn from Gopal, Anatomy of a Confrontation: Ayodhya and the Rise of Communal Politics in India (London, 1994); Malik and Singh, Hindu Nationalism in India; Munini Chatterjee, 'The BJP: Political Mobilization for Hindutva', South Asia Bull., xiv (1994); Shekhar Gupta, 'The Gathering Storm', in Marshall M. Bouton and Philip Oldenburg (eds.), India Briefing, 1990 (Boulder, 1990); Hamish McDonald, 'Saffron Nationalism', Far Eastern Econ. Rev., 11 Mar. 1993, 22; Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, 'Ayodhya and the Hindu Resurgence', Religion, xxiv (1994); Ashis Nandy et al., Creating a Nationality: The Ramianmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self (Delhi, 1995); Peter Reeves and John McGuire, 'Ayodhya, the BJP and Hindutva: An Interpretation', South Asia, new ser., xvii (1994); Amatya Sen, 'The Threat to Secular India', New York Rev., 8 Apr. 1993; Ian A. Talbot, 'Politics and Religion in Contemporary India', in George Moyser (ed.), Politics and Religion in the Modern World (London, 1991); B. P. R. Vithal, 'Roots of Hindu Fundamentalism', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 20-7 Feb. 1993.

205 ETHNIC CLEANSING IN RAJASTHAN

TABLE 1 BJS/BJP LOK SABHA SEATS 1952-1991*

Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar India 1952 - 1 - - 3 1957 - - 2 - 4 1963 3 1 7 - 14 1967 10 3 12 1 35 1971 11 4 4 2 22 1984 - - - - 2 1989 27 13 8 8 85 1991 12 12 50 5 119

* Sources: David Butler, Ashok Lahiri and Prannoy Roy, India Decides: Elections, 1952-1991, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1991), 98-9; Yogendra Malik and V. B. Singh, Hindu Nationalism in India: The Rise of the Bharatiya 3tanata Party (New Delhi, 1995), 186-7; India Today, 15 July 1991, 42.

TABLE 2 BJS/BJP LOK SABHA PERCENTAGE VOTE SHARE 1952-1991*

Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar All- India

average 1952 4.9 3.0 7.3 0.4 3.1 1957 14.0 11.1 14.8 0.1 5.9 1962 17.9 9.3 17.7 2.3 6.4 1967 26.6 10.3 22.2 11.1 9.4 1971 33.6 12.4 12.3 12.1 7.4 1984 30.0 23.7 6.4 6.9 7.4 1989 39.7 29.6 7.6 13.0 11.5 1991 41.9 40.9 33.0 16.0 19.9 * Sources: Butler, Lahiri and Roy, India Decides, 98-9; Ashis Nandy et al., Creating a Nationality: The Ramianmabhumi Movement and Fear of the Self (Delhi, 1995), 73, 75; Malik and Singh, Hindu Nationalism, 186-7; India Today, 15 July 1991, 42.

500 over the previous year. Early in 1993, immediately following the VHP's 'triumph' at Ayodhya, upwards of 3,000 Indians perished in the worst communal riots since Independence. Did the BJP, avowedly a Hindu communal party,5 benefit electorally from the atavistic passions stirred up by these outbreaks of social violence? Most BJP-watchers have no doubt. Shekhar Gupta writes that 1989 marked, 'the beginning of a dangerous [new] phase in which

5 In fairness, it should be noted that the BJP has always denied the charge that it caters only for Hindus or that it wants to get rid of the Muslims. In its defence, it points to the fact that it has Muslim members and that exit polls suggest that in some constituencies the party has attracted Muslim votes. But the impression given out by the party's propaganda is quite different.

206 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 160

religion had come to be accepted as part of electoral politics'.6 Jogendra Yadav notes that the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has consistently done well in constituencies containing a relatively high proportion of Muslims, where the communal factor is arguably of major concern to Hindu voters.7 Shail Mayaram shows how the polarization of the 1989 election campaign laid the ground for riots in Jaipur.8 Observing that Karnataka 'has become highly communally sensitive since the BJP made a serious bid to expand its political base in the state', Ali Asghar Engineer concludes that 'often communal violence is used to increase one's electoral appeal'.9

However, while the BJP literature indicates that there is a definite connection between communalism and politicization, the precise nature of that connection remains obscure. For one thing, BJP rule at state level has not always led to an upsurge of rioting. During the twenty months of V. P. Singh's Congress government in Uttar Pradesh, from 1980 to 1982, there were ten riots; during the fourteen-month tenure of the Kalyan Singh's BJP ministry, just one. 10 Conversely, communal riots do not necessarily translate into BJP seats. Against expectations, the BJP vote in Uttar Pradesh in 1993 went down, confirming exit polls which showed that Ayodhya was not the major issue with most voters.ll For another, it is hard to sort out what is cause and what effect. Do riots assist in the process of politicization, or does politicization promote communal antagonism (the view favoured by most scholars of communalism in the colonial period)?l2 Last, but not least, communalism as an explanation of the BJP's success does

6 Gupta, 'Gathering Storm', 25. 7 Jogendra Yadav, 'Political Change in North India: Interpreting Assembly Election

Results', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 18 Dec. 1993. Yadav cites an exit poll taken after the 1993 Rajasthan Vindhan Sabha elections which suggested that the BJP picked up over 70 per cent of the Hindu vote in constituencies with a Muslim population of 20 per cent or more.

8 Shail Mayaram, 'Communal Violence in Jaipur', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 13-20 Nov. 1993, 2529.

9 Ali Asghar Engineer, 'Communalism and Communal Violence in 1995', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 23 Dec. 1995, 3268; also his 'Communalism and Communal Violence, 1994', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 4 Feb. 1995, 250.

0 Malik and Singh, Hindu Nationalism in India, 220. Yadav, 'Political Change in North India', 2774.

12 For example, Bipan Chandra writes: 'Communalism was a modern phenomenon that arose . . . as a consequence of the emergence of modern politics . . . based on the creation and mobilization of public opinion': Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India (Delhi, 1984), 8.

ETHNIC CLEANSING IN RAJASTHAN

TABLE 3 BJS/BJP VINDHAN SABHA SEATS 1952-1995*

207

Madhya Pradesh

10

41 78 48 60 58

219 116

Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar India

8

6 15 22

8 32 39 85 95

_ 24 - 46 3 116

26 268 25 167 21 148 16 180 39 761 40C 754

1952 1957 1962 1967 1972 1980 1985 1990

1993

2

17 49 98 61a

11

16 223b

177

a. 1974 b. 1991 c. 1995

* Sources: V. B. Singh and Shankar Bose, State Elections in India: Data Handbook on Vidhan Sabha Elections (New Delhi, 1987); Malik and Singh, Hindu Nationalism, 209; India Today, 15 June 1989, 49; 15 Dec. 1989, 42, 46, 57; 31 Mar. 1990, 41; 15 July 1991, 49-51, 55; 15 Dec. 1993, 38; 15 Nov. 1994, 40; 31 Dec. 1994, 47; Econ. Polit. Weekly, 18 Dec. 1993, 2768-9, 2771; 12 Mar. 1994, 635; Frontline, 19 Nov. 1993, 26-7, 36, 40; 24 Mar. 1995, 41-7; 5 May 1995, 37-8, 42; Organiser, 19 Dec. 1993, 3; 26 Mar. 1995, 7.

TABLE 4 BJS/BJP VINDHAN SABHA PERCENTAGE VOTE SHARE 1952-1995*

Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar All- India

average

1952 1957 1962 1967 1972 1980 1985 1990

1993

3.6 9.8

16.7 28.3 28.7 30.7 32.4 39.2

5.9 5.4 9.2

11.7 12.2 18.6 21.2 25.2 39.5

6.5 9.8

16.5 21.7 17. la 10.8

9.9

11.6 33.4

1.2 1.2 2.8

16.4 11.7

8.4 7.5

11.0

n.a.

3.1

2.2 5.0

9.1

10.6 10.0

11.3 15.1

26. 3b

a. 1974 b. 1993-5 39.0

*Sources: Singh and Bose, State Elections in India; Nandy et al., Creating a Nationality, 73-74; Malik and Singh, Hindu Nationalism, 182-4, 209; India Today 15 June 1989, 49; 15 Dec. 1989, 42, 46, 57; 31 Mar. 1990, 41; 15 July 1991, 49-51 55; 15 Dec. 1993, 38; 15 Nov. 1994, 40; 31 Dec. 1994, 47; Econ. Polit. Weekly, 18 Dec. 1993, 2768-9, 2771; 12 Mar. 1994, 635; Frontline, 19 Nov. 1993, 26-7, 36, 40 24 Mar. 1995, 41-7; 5 May 1995, 37-8, 42; Organiser, 19 Dec. 1993, 3- 26 Mar. 1995, 7.

208 NUMBER 160 PAST AND PRESENT

not sit easily with what the electoral data reveals about the regional configuration of the party's support base.

As is well known, the BJP remains largely a party of North India of the 'Hindi heartland'. This is usually explained, as the term suggests, in terms of the diversity of the country's regional culture. It is suggested, for instance, that the BJP is less popular in the South because it is identified with the project to impose a standard national language Hindi on the country, and because its neo-Hindu ideology is built around the cult-figure of Rama, who is associated (at least in the Tulsidas Ramayana) with an Aryan/Brahminic subjugation of a 'Dravidian' South. Conversely, and more importantly for our purposes, it is assumed that the party flourishes in the North because that is the region with the greatest concentration of Muslims and, therefore, the region with the highest frequency of communal riots. 13 Not only do these hypotheses remain to be fully tested, but they overlook the fact that the BJP's success rate zvithin the Hindi belt has varied considerably. As Tables 1-4 make clear, the BJP, like its predecessor the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), has always struggled in Haryana and Bihar, while its vote-share in Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh has fluctuated. On the other hand, since 1951-2 the BJS and the BJP have scored consistently well in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. For instance, in the 1996 Lok Sabha poll the BJP gained vote shares in these states of 41 and 42 per cent respectively, compared to an all-India average of 19.9 per cent. This represented their best ever performance.l4 Likewise, the BJS's best result was also achieved in Madhya Pradesh 78 seats and 28.3 per cent of the vote in the 1967 Vidhan Sabha poll. The problem here is that neither of these states has a notable history of Hindu-Muslim conflict. Certainly, Jaipur exploded in November 1989; but over the whole post-colonial period, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh rank quite low on the Home Ministry's 'riot table'. Madhya Pradesh comes in a moderate seventh; as for Rajasthan, apart from the flare-up in 1989, the

13 One of the few recent articles to explore the geography of the BJP's electoral support is Russell Hocking, 'The Potential for BJP Expansion: Ideology, Politics and Regional Appeal-The Lessons of Jharkhand', South Ssia, new ser., xvii (1994).

14 Except for the 43.5 per cent they achieved in the Delhi poll of 1993. Delhi, too, has been a fertile field for the BJS/BJP, but the capital city electorate is a special one in many ways, not least in the fact that it includes many descendants of refugees displaced in the 1947 Partition.

ETHNIC CLEANSING IN RAJASTHAN 209

TABLE 5 COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN SELECTED INDIAN STATES 1962/3-1986/7*

1962/3 1966/7 1970/1 1978/9 1986/7

A B A B A B A B A B

Andhra Pradesh 12 - 582 13 34 - 59 - 82 17 Assam 49 14 25 1 56 - 27 - 23 8 Bihar 27 2 679 197 145 - 77 - 171 74 Gujarat 24 1 4 - 47 - 48 - 288 205 Jammu and

Kashmir - - - - 1 - 2 - 24 2 Kerala 1 3 6 2 19 - 21 - 52 5 Madhya Pradesh 12 2 37 5 65 - 34 - 90 25 Maharashtra 47 11 411 38 199 - 29 - 164 76 Rajasthan 2 - 46 1 23 - 14 - 50 5 Uttar Pradesh 43 12 176 26 91 - 91 - 168 193 West Bengal 110 24 51 11 90 - 39 - 146 47

India 349 72 2,035 295 842 401 534 368 1,475 801

A: number of incidents B: number of deaths

*Sources: Gopal Krishna, 'Communal Violence in India: A Study of Communal Disturbances in Delhi', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 12 Jan. 1985, 64, 71; Muslim India, lxxvi (1989), 419; Asghar Ali Engineer (ed.), Communal Riots in Post-Independence India (Bombay, 1984), 54-5.

state since 1950 has been comparatively riot-free (Table 5).15 On the face of it, the 'fundamentalist' BJS/BJP would seem to have prospered in a region with little history of communal conflict. Either the communalism theory is flawed, or we are missing an important piece of the puzzle. This article plumps for the latter explanation. It argues that, at least in the case of Rajasthan, the Home Ministry's figures obscure a significant historical legacy dating from the colonial era, when Rajasthan was a cluster of dynastic monarchies 'princely states', in the parlance of the period.

II

Most writing on the history of communalism in South Asia has looked at the question from the perspective of British India; very few scholars have ventured beyond the confines of the provinces

15 Contrary to predictions, the violence which racked the state in 1989-90 did not become endemic: see Engineer, 'Communalism and Communal Violence, 1994', 245-50; also his 'Communalism and Communal Violence in 1995', 3267-9.


and provincial paradigms.l6 Since the 600-odd princely states collectively comprised one-third of the territory of the subcontinent and two-fifths of its populatzon, this represents a significant gap in our knowledge. What is more, it raises the possibility that the conventional explanations for the growth of communalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being based on incomplete data, are conceptually flawed. As has already been remarked, it is widely believed that communalism in British India was stimu- lated by the introduction between the 1880s and 1930s of representative and then quasi-responsible government, which 'set the stage for [the] mobilization of caste, communal and other [sec- tional] interestsa in the pursuit of the bounty of ministerial patronage.l7 Alternatively, the rise of communalism has been linked to the dynamic forces of modernization the world market, the interventionist bureaucratic state, print capitalism which transformed both the way people in India envisaged their world and showed them new ways to master it,l8 to British attempts to steer a course between religious neutrality and securing the civil rights of minorities,lg or, more crudely, to imperial policies of 'divide and rule'.20 If these theories are even partially correct, where do they leave the Indian states that lay outside the purview of British Indian law and administration, had no representative institutions to speak of until the 1940s and, for the most part, lagged signific-

16 Recently, Dick Kooiman has demonstrated the benefits that can be derived from comparative work. Kooiman focuses on the oft-repeated claim that the British policy of separate electorates for minorities promoted communalism. He shows that communal feeling developed in Baroda and Travancore despite the fact that these states had no separate arrangements for minority groups. Dick Kooiman, 'Communalism and Indian Princely States: A Comparison with British India', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 26 Aug. 1995

17 G. R. Thursby, Hindll-Muslim Relations in British kdia: A Study of Controversy, Conflict and Communal Movements in British India, 1923-1928 (Leiden, 1975), 124.

18 See, for example, Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, 34-50; Thursby, Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India) 34-70, 106-8; Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley, 1989), 95-6, 290-8; Barbara Daly Metcalf, sImagining Community: Polemical Debates in Colonial India', in Kenneth W. Jones (ed.), Religious Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian Languages (Albany, 1992), 230-2; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in North India (Delhi, 1992D, 16-17.

19 One of the best statements of this thesis remains Gerald N. Barrier, 'The Punjab Government and Communal Politics, 1870-1908', Yl Asian Studies, xxvii (1968).

20 For example, Durga Das, India From Curzon to Nehra arzd After (London, 19699.


antly behind the provinces in industrial development, urbaniza- tion, and literacy?2l

Moreover, the princely states were not just pale reflections of British India, but polities of a quite different order monarchies ruled by sons of the soil. The princes, by definition, were practising Hindus and Muslims. Their rule had religious sanction.22 As heads of state, they were expected not only to give lavishly to temples and mosques, but also to oversee certain public rituals: for example, during calendrical festivals such as Dasehra, in early October (which celebrates conjointly the goddess Durga's defeat of the buffalo-demon Mahishu and the start of Rama's crusade to rescue his betrothed, Sita, from the clutches of the demon- king, Ravana). In the eyes of many of their subjects, they were demigods in their own right. Did this princely culture of patronage (arguably, the antithesis of British Indian secularism) render the states more or less susceptible to communalism?

Clearly, darbari culture the culture of the princely courts had the potential to become communal (which is why the states came to be seen, in the 1940s, as a fertile field for recruitment by the Hindu Mahasabha, lineal ancestor of the BJP). However, for much of the colonial period this potential lay dormant, eclipsed by another enduring Indian tradition that of syncret- ism. Recently Christopher Bayly has suggested, with respect to the Indian kingdoms of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that most rulers of the time 'insisted not upon the exclus- iveness but on the primacy (or merely the equality) of their form of worship'.23 Outwardly, at least, this pluralistic polity was still operative in many states a hundred years later. Every year in Gwalior the Hindu maharaja rode at the head of the tazia proces-

21 Of course, among 600 states there were exceptions: states like Baroda which were in advance of the provinces in education and social reform, and Mysore and Travancore, which for a time kept pace with them in terms of political reform, but they were few and far between. On the relative backwardness of the states vis a vis British India, see Edward S. Haynes, 'Comparative Industrial Development in l9th and 20th Century India: Alwar State and Gurgaon District', South Asia, new ser., iii (1980); Bjorn Hettne, The Political Economy of Indirect Rule: Mysore, 1881-1947 (New Delhi, 1978); William L. Richter, 'Electoral Patterns in Post-Princely India', in Jagdish N. Bhagwati et al. (eds.), Electoral Politics in the Indian States: Three Disadvantaged Sectors (Delhi, 1965).

22 For an interesting discussion of the religious rituals associated with succession and enthronement in Hindu states, see Adrian C. Mayer, 'The King's Two Thrones', Man, xx (1985).

23 Christopher Bayly, 'The Pre-History of "Communalism": Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860', Mod. Asian Studies, xix (1985), 186.


sion which marked the end of the Muslim festival of Mohurrum. The Jaipur government patronized Mohurrum as well as the tomb of the Sufi saint Mu'in al-din Chishti at Ajmer. In 1930, the Sikh maharaja of Kapurthala spent ?30,000 on the construction of a mosque in his capital. In 1939, the nizam of Hyderabad endowed a chair at the Benares Hindu University.24 Similarly, contrary to the British belief that Indians were incurably nepot- istic, the princes did not always assign the top bureaucratic jobs to their co-religionists. Many 'Hindu' states had Muslim prime ministers. Indeed, in princely Bundelkhand, Arthur Lothian informs us, the chief executive officer 'was most generally a Muslim'.25 In 1947, the chief minister of Gwalior, M. A. Sreenivasan, opined that Indian kings had a duty to be 'impartial and gracious'.26 The above examples would suggest that he was right.

Of course, all of these generalizations need much more empir- ical testing; at the moment, the evidence we possess about the way the princely courts functioned is rather scanty and we probably know less about the religious side of darbari government than we do about its other aspects. Nevertheless, if I am broadly correct in supposing that princely India constituted a distinct political formation, and that the forces of modernization were weaker there than in British India, it follows that the states should have experienced fewer outbreaks of communal violence. To what extent does this hypothesis mesh with the evidence?

Accurate data about communal riots in the princely states is extremely hard to get, with crucial Indian Ministry of States files on the subject still closed to researchers. However, I have managed to piece together enough information from the Indian Statutory (Simon) Commission report, the press and other sources to draw a broad statistical picture for the period 1920-40 (sum-

24 Tazias are wooden and paper models of the tombs of Imam Husain and his family. Son of the fourth Khalif, Ali, Husain was martyred at the battle of Karbala (Iraq) in 680. After being carried through the streets in funereal procession, the tazias are 'buried', replicating Husain's burial. See Hilton Brown, The White Sahibs in India (London, n.d.), 125; Mayaram, 'Communal Violence in Jaipur', 2525; M. A. Sreenivasan, Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me (New Delhi, 1991), 221; Times, 30 Apr. 1930, 3 Nov. 1939.

25 Arthur Cunningham Lothian, Kingdoms of Yesterday (London, 1951), 50. In the early 1930s, at least six major Hindu and Sikh states Mysore, Travancore, Kapurthala, Datia and Jhalawar had Muslim prime ministers, and in another Gwalior a Muslim headed the council of regency.

26 Sreenivasan, Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me, 221.


TABLE 6 HINDU-MUSLIM COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN INDIA 1920-1940*

Incidents Killed Injured

P S P S P S

0 1 - - - - 1 + - 12 - 72 + -

1924 23 2 83 5 849 26 1 189 - 1,948 -

- 975 155 - 347 3

,726 130 1934 6 4 16 21 80 71

1 78 - 685 - 89 203

1940 5 3 5 3 20 33 Totals 258 45 1,962 129 16,549 910

P: provinces S: states

*Sources: Sir John Simon [Chairman], Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, Cmd. 3568-g (London, 1930); Times [London], 1920-40.

marized in Table 6). It is, of course, incomplete. Many small affrays simply did not get reported; people injured in riots were sometimes not hospitalized and therefore not counted; the police had a vested interest in minimizing casualty figures.27 Conversely, the figures given here have been inflated by the inclusion of rioters shot by police an accounting practice I would defend, but which others may think unwarranted. Yet, even allowing a wide margin for error, the evidence seems open to only one interpretation. According to the 1941 census, the population of the princely states was 93.2m., that of the provinces 258.8m. On that basis, one would expect the provinces to have suffered about two-and-three-quarter times more carnage as a result of communal conflict than the states. In fact, depending upon whether deaths or injuries are counted, they suffered between fifteen and eighteen times more. While the states were certainly not, as their rulers frequently boasted, 'free' from communalism,28 they do

27 For instance, the Hindu-Muslim riots which occurred in Bombay in January 1956 were reported as causing the deaths of 75 persons; unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 300: Herbert Feldman, 'The Communal Problem in the Indo- Pakistan Subcontinent: Some Current Implications', Pacific Affairs, xlii (1969), 146-7.

28 See, for example, the speech by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner at Lallgarh Palace, 1 Jan. 1932, in the British Library, London, India Office Records (hereafter Brit. Lib., IOR), L/P&S/13/603; address by Nawab Hamidullah Khan to the Bhopal Legislative Council, Sept. 1930; Times, 18 Sept. 1930.


seem to have experienced, overall, much less of its violent mani-

festations than 'British' India. However, two important qualifications need to be made to this

overall assessment. First, the processes of 'communalization' did

not affect all parts of princely India to the same extent. Some

centres Gulbarga, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Indore, Baroda,

Jaipur, Ajmer and Srinagar appear to have been much more

prone to communal conflict than others. All of the above experi-

enced at least two major riots between 1920 and 1940. Secondly,

after about 1929 the gap between incidents of communal violence

in the provinces and the states, while still large, begins to narrow,

to the point that around 1933 something like parity is achieved

for the first time (Table 6). The picture appears to have been

changing; and that, indeed, is how it seemed to many contempor-

aries. In a speech to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1934,

C. S. Ranga Iyer declared:

The communal trouble is spreading ... The time has come when the

communal holocaust must be confined to the Indian States, the time has

come when both the Hindu and Muslim newspapers must be prevented

from blowing communalism into British India. (Hear! Hear!) There was

a time when our politicians like Gokhale rightly used to take pride in

Indian States being free from communalism which was a vice in British

India . . . But the table appears to have been turned.29

This trend culminated in the Partition riots of 1947, when several

princely states, notably in the Punjab but also in other parts of

the country, including Rajasthan, experienced communal violence

on a scale similar to the worst affected provinces. Thus, the task

of writing the history of communalism in princely India involves

negotiating three broad questions: why did the princely states

overall enjoy a qualified freedom from the scourge of Hindu-

Muslim conflict? why did the states' immunity begin to break

down in the last decades of the colonial era? and why did this

happen in some states earlier and more completely than in others?

What can we learn from the case of Rajasthan? Until 1947, the political agency of Rajputana (as Rajasthan was

then known) was for the most part, like the rest of princely India,

riot-free. Even Jaipur, which had a history of sporadic outbreaks

going back to the 1920s, 'enjoyed a well-earned reputation for

29 Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), eminent Congress politician of 'moderate'

persuasion; Indian Legislative Assembly Debates, iv, 4, 5 Apr. 1934.


. . . communal peace'.30 But in 1947, on the eve of the transfer of power, two neighbouring states on the eastern marches of the agency Alwar and Bharatpur broke with tradition. Incensed by reports of communal killings in the Punjab and alarmed by rumours of pro-Pakistan activities closer to home, Hindus in Alwar and Bharatpur unleashed a pogrom against their Muslim neighbours in June 1947. Whole villages were razed; scores of mosques desecrated; thousands killed or forced on pain of death to convert to Hinduism; and many more thousands were forced to flee for their lives. Naturally, we cannot be precise (conditions at the time did not permit accurate reporting), but there are indications that during the first seven or eight months of 1947 as many as 30,000 Muslims in Alwar and Bharatpur may have been killed, and up to 20,000 forcibly converted.3l More certain are the figures for refugees. By August 1947, about 100,000 had fled Alwar and Bharatpur for the relative safety of the neighbouring Punjab district of Gurgaon.32 Most never returned, preferring to take their chances in Pakistan. Under agreements negotiated in 1948 with the government of India, their lands were assigned to about 60,000 Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab. As a result, the demographic character of the two states was irrevoc- ably altered. Alwar's prime minister, N. B. Khare, exaggerated when he claimed later that the state during 1947-8 'became non-

30 Robert W. Stern, The Cat and the Lion: ffaipur State in the British Raj (Leiden, 1988), 276.

31 According to the Prime Minister of Alwar, N. B. Khare, 15,000 Muslims were killed and 50,000 converted: see N. B. Khare, My Political Memoirs: or Autobiography (Nagpur, 1959), 331; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter NMML), oral hist. transcript 230, interview between Khare and H. D. Sharma, New Delhi, 16 July 1967. On the other hand, the Chief Commissioner, Ajmer, claimed that '30,000 were killed' in Bharatpur alone; but this estimate is suspect, since it forms part of the Indian government's case against the Bharatpur ruler: Ministry of States, 'Framing of Charges against the Maharaja of Bharatpur'; cited in Shail Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in Mewat', in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds.), Subaltern Studies, x, Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1996), 149. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru later put the death toll at 'about 11,000', which seems too conservative: 'Nehru to C. Rajagopalachari, Delhi, 13 July 1948', in Selected Works of 3tawaharlal Nehru, ed. Sarvepalli Gopal, 2nd ser., 21 vols. to date (Delhi, 1988), vii, 39. For a British view, see 'Political Agent Jaipur to Secretary to Crown Representative Lord Louis Mountbatten, 7 Aug. 1947', in Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power, ed. Nicholas Mansergh, 12 vols. (London, 1983), xii, 571.

32 'Vallabhbhai Patel, States Minister, Govt of India, to N. B. Khare, Alwar, 7 Aug. 1947', in Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945-50, ed. Durga Das, 9 vols. (Ahmedabad, 1973-5), v, 378.


Muslim',33 but not much. In 1941, Muslims made up 27 per cent of Alwar's population and 19 per cent of Bharatpur's; ten years later, they comprised in the order of 6 per cent. This represented a net loss of 115,000 Muslims more allowing for some small natural increase between 1948 and 1951.34 Here we have, not just a 'communal' episode, but something arguably far worse: a case of systematic 'ethnic cleansing'. To repeat: although 1947-8 was a time of heightened communal tension everywhere in the subcontinent, in Rajputana violence was mostly confined to Alwar and Bharatpur.35 This bears out the generalization offered above, namely that communalism was not endemic to princely India at large, but was rather specific to certain states and towns. However, it begs the question of why these two states proved, in the regional context, exceptions to the rule.

III Several factors made Alwar and Bharatpur especially vulnerable to the spread of communalism. One was geography. Although the princely states were politically and legally separate from British India, they were not immune from the penetration of provincial doctrines and sentiments; and states which were con- tiguous to the provinces were especially susceptible to these cross- border currents. Situated on the eastern edge of Raputana, Alwar and Bharatpur were among this littoral group. Moreover, sharing borders with Punjab and the United Provinces (as Uttar Pradesh was then known), they were exposed to influences from a region which, by the early years of the twentieth century, had become a major arena of Hindu-Muslim conflict.36 Among these influences, the Punjabi-based Hindu evangelical organization, the Arya Samaj, was pre-eminent. During the 1920s

33NMML, oral hist. transcript 230, interview with H. D. Sharma, Nagpur, 16 July 1967. 34 Census of India, 1941, xxiv, 2, 156-7, 164; Census of India, 1951, x, I-B, 285. By 1951, Alwar and Bharatpur were part of the new Rajasthan state, but they retained virtually the same boundaries. One of the interesting things revealed in the census figures is a rapid rise in the Sikh population of the two states/districts. In 1941, there were just a few hundred Sikhs; by 1951, nearly 14,000 all refugees. 35 As Mayaram notes, minor clashes also occurred in several other places including Deoli, Nasirabad, Udaipur and Chittor: Mayaram, 'Communal Violence in Jaipur', 2538 n. But only one of these riots at Ajmer early in 1948 was serious. 36 Thursby, Hindu-lkluslim Relations in British India, 150-3.


the Samaj significantly expanded its membership in Rajputana.37 More importantly, its solicitude for Hindus 'lost' to Islam introduced a new spirit of religious competition to the region. In 1923, for example, Bharatpur was invaded by Arya Samajists intent on reconverting the Malkana Rajputs, who had embraced Islam several centuries previously as part of an accommodation with Mughal power. The success of the campaign (which was tacitly supported by the maharaja and his darbar) attracted the attention of Muslims in Delhi.38 Within a month, a party of Muslim preachers was hard at work endeavouring to reclaim the lapsed Muslim Malkanas. Significantly, Bharatpuri Muslims resented this intervention. As one Mir Altaf Hussain, speaking on behalf of the local Anjuman Islamia, put it: 'We know how to manage our own affairs more efficiently than outsiders'.39 Nevertheless, the reconversion campaign left its mark. Afterwards Bharatpuris started to re-think their mental world hitherto shaped mainly by parochial considerations of kinship and territory in ways that emphasized religious identity and wider communal boundaries.

A second factor was demography. As noted above, Alwar and Bharatpur were atypical of Rajputana, and indeed of princely India at large, in being home to a sizeable population of Muslims (over a quarter of a million in 1931). This translated into a Muslim minority in these two states of something like a quarter, well in excess of the 15 per cent that Gopal Krishna deems the threshold proportion for open communal conflict.40

What is more, the Alwar and Bharatpur Muslims were cohes-

37 The number of practising Samajists in the Agency went up from just over 3,000 in 1921 to well over 11,000 in 1931. One of the biggest increases was registered in Bharatpur. Census of India, 1931, xxvii, 114. On the Samaj's growth in Jaipur, see Stern, Cat and the Lion, 276.

38Aligarh Gaz., 4 May 1923; Hitaishi [Calcutta], 22 June 1923; Mirza Bashir-uddin Mahmud Ahmad, Qadian, to Maharaja of Bharatpur, Bharatpur, Aug. 1923: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1430 (1); Times, 31 July 1924; note by F. V. Wylie, Jaipur, 23 May 1936: Brit. Lib., IOR Rll/1/2828.

39 Note on Muslim deputation which met the Maharaja of Bharatpur on 2 June 1924: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1570. On the reconversion campaign among the Malkanas: note by Political Secretary, Bharatpur, 23 July 1923: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1430 (1); Times, 31 July 1924.

40 The exact figures were 26.2 per cent for Alwar and 19.2 per cent for Bharatpur; only Jaisalmer with 29 per cent had a higher proportion of Muslims: Census of India, 1931, xxvii, 114, Appx: Provincial Tables I and III, 176, 202-3. See also Gopal Krishna, 'Communal Violence in India: A Study of Communal Disturbances in Delhi', Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 12 Jan. 1985, 65.


ive, assertive and resourceful. Mostly rural dwellers, and heavily concentrated in particular localities, over 90 per cent belonged to the Meo caste, a community noted for its clannishness, history of defying authority and tradition of military service with the Indian Army, but also for its vigorous culture of self-help and self-improvement through education.4l Again, while the religious life of the Meos was far from orthodox and still bore conspicuous traces of the community's idolatrous Hindu past,42 during the 1920s their identity as Muslims was reinforced through the influence of the tabligh (education) campaign of the itinerant mission- ary, Maulana Ilyas (1886-1944), who encouraged the Meos to give up their syncretic practices, recite the profession of faith in proper form, say their prayers regularly and spread the message of the Prophet.43 Here was a Muslim population with a martial tradition, a developed sense of community and a growing senti- mental attachment to Islamic values: in short, a Muslim population ripe for political mobilization.

Thirdly, the Alwar and Bharatpur darbars espoused a style of governance that was in some ways, arguably, an aberration from the princely norm. For one thing, both were ruled by extremely pious maharajas. Despite, or perhaps because of, his relatively low Jat caste, Maharaja Kishen Singh of Bharatpur (ruled 1900-28) cultivated an ostentatious orthodoxy in public as well as private life, refusing to eat with Europeans, spending lavishly on donations to temples and charities, and championing the Arya Samajist reconversion movement. 'If any body can be proud of protecting cows', commented one Arya newspaper, 'it is

41 Thanks in part to the efforts of an eccentric British district officer, Frank Lugard Brayne, the Meos by the 1920s had their own high school at Nuh in Gurgaon; by 1931, educational uplift had raised the literacy level among Meo males to one in ten, an unusually high figure for Indian peasant societies at that time. One of the many ways the Meo community manifested its solidarity was in paying subscriptions to support the Nuh school. See Majid Siddiqi, 'History and Society in a Popular Rebellion: Mewat, 1920-1933', Comparative Studies in Society and Hist., xxviii (1986), 448-50.

42 For examples, see Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence', 129.

43 I. S. Marwah, 'Tabligh Movement among the Meos of Mewat', in M. S. A. Rao (ed.), Social Movements in India, 2 vols. (Delhi, 1979), ii; and Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Delhi, 1996), 128. Mayaram, though, is sceptical of claims that the tabligh campaign wrought a religious transforma- tion among the Meos, citing letters from Ilyas in the late 1920s that speak of his despair at their entrenched irreligiosity: personal communication with the author, 5 Aug. 1997.


Bharatpur'.44 And Maharaja Jey Singh of Alwar (ruled 1892-1937) was no different. Like Bharatpur, he was obsessive about taboos. He would not sit on leather, could not abide the presence of dogs, and wore silk gloves to avoid the polluting touch of other hands. On formal occasions he sported a specially designed hat which supposedly replicated that worn by the god- king Rama in Ayodhya. A stalwart opponent of intercaste mar- riages, he was for a time president of the ultra-orthodox Sanatan Dharma Sabha. Indeed, towards the end of his life, Jey Singh became something of a Hindu ascetic: in April 1933, he returned from a pilgrimage to Banaras clad wholly in coarse saffron, shoe- less and clutching a bowl filled with Ganges water which he proceeded to carry, on foot, through the streets of his capital.45

For another, while neither ruler seems to have been personally bigoted towards Muslims,46 their administrations discriminated against them in various ways. In Bharatpur, regulations against the opening of 'unauthorized' schools and the collection of subscriptions were used to restrict Islamic education. The public service, from the executive council downwards, was dominated by Hindus and Arya Samajists. Processions by Muslims and Jains were prohibited in the capital; and Muslim missionaries suffered police harassment.47 In Alwar, the situation was worse. The

44 Bharat Veer [Bharatpur], 6 Dec. 1927; Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1772. For expendit- ure on religious charities, see budget figures, fos. 1,928-9 in Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3731. Of course, it was also in the maharaja's material interest to stand forth as a champion of Hinduism. Bharatpur's prosperity hinged to a considerable extent on the pilgrimage traffic to Deeg (gateway to Krishna's Brindaban) and to the annual fair associated with the gaumukh (cow-mouth) temple.

45 George Ogilvie, Agent to the Governor General, Raiputana, to Sir Charles Watson, Political Secretary, Govt of India, Mount Abu, 23 Apr. 1933: Brit. Lib., Lothian Collection, file 6.

46 Alwar, for instance, was a close friend of Shaukat Ali, a leading Congress politician, and the Aga Khan, temporal head of the Ishmaili Muslim sect.

47 Secretary to the Ahmadiyya Khalifa, Qadian, to Sir John Thompson, Political Secretary, Govt of India, Simla, 19 June 1923: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1430 (1); Siyasat [Lahore], 26 Jan. 1933: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2362; note enclosed in Zia-uddin Ahmed to Sir George Ogilvie, Agent to the Governor-General (hereafter AGG) Rajputana, Ajmer, 15 Jan. 1934: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2553; for memo by 'The Muslims of Bharatpur' (1935), also note by Sir Cyril Hancock, Administrator Bharatpur, 11-12 Feb. 1936: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2681; Sir George Ogilvie, AGG Rajputana, to Sir Bertrand Glancy, Political Secretary, Govt of India, Delhi, 11 Jan. 1936: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2828; K. P. S. Menon, Prime Minister Bharatpur, to J. H. Thompson, Political Agent Eastern Rajputana, 26 Dec. 1941: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3749. The extent of discrimination should not, however, be exaggerated. With the exception of processions in Bharatpur City, there was freedom of worship: Friday was observed as a public holiday; Muslims in the state forces were compelled to 'attend to their prayers'; and stone was provided from state-owned quarries free of charge for the

(cont. on p. 220)


darbar persistently refused to allow new mosques to be built and on several occasions fined congregations who attempted to refur- bish existing ones without permission. By the early 1930s, at least four Muslim religious buildings, including the important Shahi Jama Masjid in Alwar City, had been converted to other uses by the government. Although the literate Muslims in the towns wrote in Urdu, the sole medium of instruction in state schools was Hindi; Urdu was merely an optional subject. Yet the opening of private Urdu schools was discouraged. In the public service, too, use of Hindi was mandatory. And in the police and military departments the wearing of beards (more commonplace among Muslims) was forbidden. Not surprisingly, these rules resulted in the Muslim community being grossly under-represented in the bureaucracy.48 Alwar and Bharatpur were later forced to discon- tinue some of these discriminatory practices by the British. However, while these changes created an appearance of even- handedness, they made little difference to the basic cultural ori- entation of the two darbars fixed during the reigns of Jey and Kishen Singh. Until the end of the colonial era, Alwar and Bharatpur remained, at the highest governmental level, bastions of Hindtva.

A fourth factor in the denouement of 1947 in Alwar and Bharatpur was the Meo revolt of 1932. As remarked above, the princely states in the early twentieth century exhibited few overt signs of Hindu-Muslim antagonism. Alwar and Bharatpur were no exception. Prior to the 1930s the two states experienced no communal riots. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that at the village level Muslims in Alwar and Bharatpur had 'always lived amicably with Hindus'.49 But this peaceful co-existence (if that is what it was) came to an abrupt end during the Mohurrum celebrations in Alwar City in May 1932, when a Muslim procession led by the Anjuman-i-Khadim-ul-Islam collided with a crowd of Saivite Hindu Chamars inaugurating a new caste-temple. At least three persons were killed and over forty injured (most (n. 47 cont. ) construction of mosques. See note on Muslim deputation which met Maharaja of Bharatpur on 2 June 1924: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/1570.

48 Muslims in 1932 held just 109 of the 1,916 gazetted posts in the Alwar public service, that is just over 9 per cent, or about half what they were entitled to on a population basis: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2325, resume of grievances of Alwar Muslims, appendix to Political Department notes, Mar. 1933.

49 Note by George Wingate, Delhi, 12 Jan. 1933, on interview with Subedar-Major Sardar Mohammad Khan: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2325.


of them Muslims) in the ensuing riot. This, in turn, precipitated a mass exodus of Muslims from the capital and other places in Alwar to British India, and a visible stirring among the Meos, who, though not directly involved in the foregoing events, apparently saw in them a sign that darbari authority was weakening.50 When, on 14 November, a party of revenue officers entered Dharmkar village in Tijara district to collect the half-yearly tax payment due on the rabi crop, they were attacked and beaten. In retaliation, Alwar officials burned the village. For the long- suffering Meos it was one atrocity too many. They refused to pay any more tax until there was a proper inquiry. Meanwhile, expecting the worst, they dug fortifications, cut down trees to impede the passage of the darbar's forces, sent their women and children across the border into Gurgaon District and levied subscriptions for a war fund. By December 1932, some seventy villages populated by about 80,000 Meos were in open rebellion.Sl

Triggered by a stupid act of repression, but rooted in fiscal injustices compounded by famine and agricultural depression, the Alwar rebellion was not, at first, overtly communal in character. However, the ostentatious aloofness of Hindu peasant castes such as the Ahirs and the Gujars, the aggressively pro-darbari posture of most of the local Hindu merchants,52 the growing support given to the Meo cause by representative Muslim organizations

50 Times, 2 Aug., 6 June 1932; Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2363, Political Department memo, [?] Feb. 1933; Siddiqi, 'History and Society in a Popular Rebellion', 445-6; Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a M2lslim Identity (Delhi, 1997), 72-3. Mayaram offers persuasive evidence against Siddiqi's view that Meos in the nearby villages came out in support of the urban Muslims, but perhaps underrates the impact of the crisis on the volatile political situation in the countryside.

51 C. Garbett, Chief Secretary Punjab, to George Wingate, Deputy Secretary, Political Department, Govt of India, Delhi, 26 Nov. 1932; also note by Sir George Ogilvie, Ajmer, 1 Dec. 1932, both in Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2314. The no-tax campaign soon spread across the border into Bharatpur, where agrarian conditions were similar. In January 1933, Meos in Papra village refused to permit the rabi inspection to be carried out. Other villages followed suit. The campaign was crushed in June with British military aid, though bloodlessly. See S. C. Mishra, 'Agitation by the Meo Peasantry in Bharatpur in 1933: A Study of its Circumstances and Nature', Quart. Rev. Hist. Studies, xxiii (1983).

52 The Hindu merchants resented the Meos' standover tactics in the matter of 'subscriptions'; they were also fearful for their safety. During January, hundreds fled Tijara and other Meo centres for the security of Alwar City. Hindu support for the darbar was made all the more galling to the Meos by the severity of the government's reprisals, culminating in a fierce encounter at Govindgarh on 7-8 January, in which upwards of thirty Muslims were killed by fire from Lewis guns. See Maharaja Jey Singh to Sir Charles Watson, Political Secretary, Govt of India, Alwar, 26 Dec. 1932: Brit. Lib., IOR R/111/2324; Times, 5, 9, 10 Jan. 1933.


in British India and the propagandist activities of Alwar officials gradually lent it a communal edge. Relations between the communities soured. Meos boycotted Hindu moneylenders; Hindu shop- keepers refused to supply Muslim customers; several Hindu temples were desecrated. In May, there was a major riot at Tijara.s3 But for British military intervention at the maharaja's request, early in 1933, the situation might well have degenerated into outright civil war.

Yet British intervention did not really settle the communal problem in Alwar; on the contrary, it compounded it. Before agreeing to come to Jey Singh's aid, the government of India imposed strenuous conditions: total control in the disaffected areas; the appointment of an Indian Civil Service officer as prime minister; the right to make such administrative changes as seemed necessary to alleviate the causes of the Meo insurgency. In the event, the imperial knife cut deep. Hundreds of courtiers, palace servants and favourites dependant upon the maharaja's gift were cut from the darbari payroll as an economy measure; dozens of officials were dismissed on the grounds of corruption; civil and criminal procedure codes were introduced, modelled on those in force in British India; new tenancy laws were enacted to protect the peasantry from arbitrary eviction; the land-revenue demand was reduced by a quarter; and some eighty new schools were opened in the Meo districts. In May 1933, the maharaja himself was forced to step down and go into indefinite exile. Many Alwar Hindus, particularly those close to the darbar, were personally disadvantaged by these changes; many others felt humiliated by what they saw as an imperial witch-hunt against 'their' ruler. At a public meeting in the Jagganath Temple in April 1933, a speaker declared: 'unless the pro-Muslim policy is given up, every Hindu will lay down his life in the service of his community'. The crowd, estimated at 6,000, cheered him lustily.54 At this stage the Hindus were still clearly focusing their ire on the meddling

53 Some of these incidents, such as the disfiguring of an image in a chhatri near a well in Ramgarh, may have been carried out covertly by darbari officials as a means of whipping up Hindu support for the maharaja's government; the effect was the same. In the Tijara riot, two Muslims died and seventeen other Muslims and Hindus were injured. A. W. Ibbotson, Senior Civil Officer Alwar, to Sir Charles Watson, Political Secretary, Govt of India, 2, 3, 4 Feb. 1933: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2331; also Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2368, press communique, 8 May 1933.

54 Dev Raj, Hindu Nawajivak Samaj, Alwar, to B. S. Moonje, Poona, 13 Apr. 1933: NMML, B. S. Moonje Papers, subject file 33.


British, but as the dust settled more and more came to the conclusion that the blame for their problems really lay with the refractory Meos.

For the Meos, however, the events of 1932-3 represented a triumph of daring. Albeit with a little British assistance, they had taken on the Alwar darbar and humbled it. In the process, they had ridded themselves of a clutch of hated officials, obtained firm title to their lands and guarantees of greater access to education, and secured a significant tax break (the economic benefits of which were further enhanced after 1932 by a succession of good agricultural seasons).55 Not surprisingly, the Meos emerged from this experience prouder and more confident in themselves as a community. In 1935, they gave notice of this by coming together to establish an Alwar branch of the All-India Meo Panchayat (Council). Fatefully, though, the enhanced self-assurance of the Mewati Muslims in the aftermath of the 1932 rebellion was not tempered by restraint or discretion. Both in Alwar and Bharatpur they became more demanding of the government, complaining of the impact that the newly introduced civil procedure code had on them, of the slow progress of Muslim recruitment into the public service, of the continuing links of senior officials in the two darbars with Hindu organizations like the Arya Samaj and of the persistence of bureaucratic restraints on Muslim education.56 Similarly, they also began to adopt a more aggressive stance in respect of religious processions and contested religious sites. During Mohurrum 1937, Muslims in several towns refused to accept police and Hindu assurances over the passage of tazias, while in Behror the Muslims insisted on routing their procession past a long-disused mosque which had recently been converted, with the permission of the authorities, into a Hindu temple dedic- ated to the god Bhaironji. The stand-off in Alwar City resulted 55 Brit. Lib., Indian Political Service Coll. 12, memoir by Sir Cyril Hancock (1969). 56 Actually, some progress had been made. By 1937, out of 2,210 cadre posts in the Alwar public service, a quarter were held by Muslims, a number which nearly matched their proportion of the population according to the 1931 census. But the figure was inflated by the inclusion of about fifty loaned officers. Moreover, the Meos did not trust the census figures, believing that many of their number had been incorrectly recorded as Hindus because of their Hindu-sounding surnames. See Statesman [Calcutta], 2 Aug. 1935; Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2930, memorial by 'Deputation of Alwar Meos', presented to F. V. Wylie, Resident Jaipur, 3 Mar. 1937. For Bharatpur, see Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2681, memo by Muslims of Bharatpur (1935).


in the tazias not being interred, as required by ritual, for several tense days; in Behror, it resulted in a full-blooded riot, in the course of which fifteen people were shot dead by the police.S7 'The Muhammadans', opined a worried British resident, 'are in a decidedly restless condition'.58 Yet that point could just as well have been made about the other community. If the Behror Muslims were spoiling for a fight, so were the Hindus. But for the decision of the local Hindu leaders to hold a 'Bhaironji fair' during Mohurrum (something they, too, had never done before),59 there probably would have been no stand-off over the tazia procession in the first place. Similarly, had a Hindu mob not tried to stage a provocative flag march through the Muslim quarter of Jogwala Chowk, there would have been no police firing. On both sides of the communal divide, a spirit of confrontation had taken root.

Last, but not least, the peculiar character of Alwar and Bharatpur was shaped by their leaders' exposure to extended periods of British tutelage. Long an embarrassment to the government of India because of his outspoken support for the national- istic Arya Samaj, Kishen Singh was deposed in 1929. As the heir apparent, Brijendra Singh, was still a minor, New Delhi exercised its right as paramount power to take over the administration of Bharatpur until the young man came of age. In the event, health and other problems delayed the hand-over of full powers until 1944. Then, as noted above, a few years later the imperial government also effectively took over the management of Alwar. Originally the arrangement was supposed to terminate with Jey Singh's death; however, his successor, Maharaja Tej Singhji (ruled 1937-48), having been raised in obscurity in Jaipur, was considered insufficiently educated and experienced to cope unaided with 57 C G. Prior, prime minister Alwar, to F. V. Wylie, Resident Jaipur, Alwar, 25 Mar., 26 Apr. 1937; Wylie to AGG Rajputana, Mount Abu, 10 June 1937; Behror [Firing] Inquiry Rept, 18 May 1937: all in Brit. Lib*, IOR R/1/1/2935 (1); 'A Word to the Hindus', anonymous pamphlet published by the Mahasabha Central Office [?1937]: NMML, Hindu Mahasabha Papers M-3. According to evidence given to the inquiry by Nazim Diwan Chand Sawhney, the trouble over tazias in Alwar, Behror, Barrod, Rajgarh and other towns had 'only started in the last three years'.

58 Sir George Ogilvie to Sir Charles Watson, Political Secretary, Govt of India, 24 Mar. 1937: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2930. 59 One of the main purposes of the fair was to raise money for the new Bhaironji Temple, which was nearing completion on the site of the former mosque. The latter, the so-called Akbari Masjid, had been unceremoniously demolished, apparently with the approval of the district authorities, in 1936. The episode anticipates, in many ways, the infamous Babri Masjid demolition at Ayodhya.


the state's multifarious difficulties. Therefore, British supervision was continued. As in the case of Bharatpur, restrictions on the maharaja's powers remained in place until the early 1940s.

Invariably, British interregnums in the princely states were periods of hectic indoctrination and reform: Alwar and Bharatpur in the 1930s were no exception. Yet in several ways the British management of Alwar and Bharatpur led to outcomes unforeseen and unintended, outcomes which would have serious con- sequences for communal relations in these states. In the first place, imperial intervention brought an influx of loaned officers from the provinces (fifty-six in Alwar alone). Evidence suggests that these men were generally more communally minded than the locals they displaced, and that, in some cases, they took the opportunity of their secondment to introduce the communal gospel to a new congregation. For instance, persistent communalism in the Meo tracts of Alwar where the British had vigorously pursued a 'policy of replacing Hindu officials with Muslims'60 was attributed by Francis Wylie, an acute observer, to the loaned officers inculcating 'a contumacious attitude amongst His Highness's Muslim subjects'.6l

Again, while the British did not think twice about imposing administrative reforms on states under their supervision, they were wary about interfering in matters of religious or cultural policy, or, for that matter, with the public activities of religious organizations. Ironically, this well-meant laissez-faire approach allowed Alwar and Bharatpur to become fertile fields for the interplay of religious rivalries.

Finally, and most importantly, subjection to ten years and more of British tutelage not only failed to turn young Alwar and Bharatpur into the kind of rulers the British wanted, but also seems to have left the two princes with serious psychological scars. Although Bharatpur's Brijendra Singh was, on the face of it, a perfect candidate for imperial indoctrination, being only

60 Note by Liaison Of ficer Alwar, 1 1 Apr. 1933: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2368. 61 After the Behror shooting, Prior, the British prime minister of Alwar, interviewed

the local officials responsible. He found the district officer, Diwan Chand Sawhney, a former junior official from the Punjab; the magistrate, twenty-seven-year-old Saiyyid Hashmat Hussain, an officer on loan from the North-West Frontier Province; and the police inspector, Faiazuddin, from the United Provinces, all 'decidedly communal'. This reading is confirmed, in Sawney's case, by his very partisan testimony to the inquiry: C. G. Prior to F. V. Wylie, Alwar, 26 Apr. 1937; testimony of Nazim Diwan Chand Sawhney, encl. in above; Wylie to AGG Rajputana, Mount Abu, 19 June 1937: Brit. Lib., IOR R/ 1/1/2935 ( 1).


eleven years of age at the time of his father's deposition, neither the ministrations of a hand-picked tutor from the political department nor three years at exclusive schools in England and Switzerland succeeded in ironing out the flaws in his character. He grew up sickly, indolent and intensely conceited, once remarking to one of his courtiers: 'I must have committed some very slight sin in my previous incarnation for instead of remaining God I have been sent back a Maharaja'.62 Installed on the throne in 1939, he spurned all advice, treated his subordinates like an oversized prep-school bully and had indiscreet homosexual affairs with members of the household infantry. With every passing year he became more 'bitterly anti-British'.63 By 1940, New Delhi was seriously contemplating his removal.64 Tej Singhji of Alwar did not turn out much better. Asked for a report in 1941, Wylie wrote of him: 'His Highness . . . has acquired a very good opinion of himself . . . [but] he is petty-minded, greedy both for money and power and a prig'.65 Later, Jawaharlal Nehru (not, admit- tedly, an unbiased witness) dubbed him 'a paranoiac'.66 Moreover, despite (or perhaps because of ) the considerable efforts made to Anglicize them, the two men grew up to be pious Hindus, outwardly at least no less orthodox than their legendary predecessors.67 Both showed early signs of having a strong commitment to Hindurva.

In the ordinary course of events, the British would probably have kept Alwar and Bharatpur permanently on a tight rein. But by the mid-1940s the Raj was in retreat; independence was imminent. Swallowing their misgivings, the political department

62J Thompson, Resident Jaipur, to Maj. A. A. Russell, Secretary to Resident Rajputana, Mount Abu, 16 Sept. 1940: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3500.

63 Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3500, transcript of observations by Col. Sampat Singh, General Member of Council, Bharatpur, in conversation with Conrad Corfield, Resident Rajputana, 1 Sept. 1940; note by J. Thompson, 14 Apr. 1942: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3770.

64 Unsigned Political Department note, Simla, 19 Sept. 1940: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3550.

65Note by F. V. Wylie (for the viceroy), Simla, 21 May 1941: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/113764.

66 Note by Lord Ismay on talk with Jawaharlal Nehru, Simla, 3 Oct. 1947: Brit. Lib., Mountbatten Coll. 90.

67 There is some evidence that Bharatpur's Hinduism may have been more ritualistic than spiritualistic, but Alwar's devotion appears to have been wholly sincere. On Bharatpur's antics during Holi, see K. P. S. Menon, Prime Minister Bharatpur, to A. A. Russell, Political Agent Eastern Rajputana, 7-10 Mar. 1942: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/3770. On Alwar's orthodoxy, see Lord Wavell to King George VI, Mar. 1946: Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/4425.


in 1943 removed the last of the restrictions on Tej Singhji and, the following year, those on Brijendra Singh, leaving these two vain, petulant and ambitious rulers not only masters of their own fates but also those of countless others.

To sum up: the singular geography and demography of Alwar and Bharatpur and their especially traumatic political history in the late colonial period made them uniquely prone, among Rajputana states, to outbreaks of Hindu-Muslim communal violence. However, communal conflict in Alwar and Bharatpur would never have reached the level it did in 1947 if a further factor had not come into play. This the trigger factor was the growing penetration of the two states during the 1940s by external forces and agencies.

IV

Mindful of the political advantages of maintaining the states as pristine monarchies, untainted by the twin 'viruses' of democracy and nationalism, the British during the interwar period put a lot of effort into ensuring that the 'two Indias' remained, as far as possible, separate. Using their paramount powers and legal instru- ments such as the Princes' Protection Act (1922), they strove to erect a cordon sanitaire around the territories of their dynastic allies. But the cordon was never wholly effective; and in the 1930s it began to collapse.

The first significant breach was made in Kashmir, which in 1931 was penetrated by cadres belonging to the Majlis-i-Ahrar of Lahore and the Ahmadiyya sect of Qadian in support of a protest movement launched by the Muslims of Srinagar.68 At once, militant Hindus laid plans for 'a suitable reply'.69 Within the year, the Hindu Mahasabha had published a scathing expose of 'Muslim misrule' in Bhopal; by 1933, counter-agitations were in full force in the Punjab princely states of Loharu and Bahawalpur. Meanwhile, however, another challenge to Hindu hegemony had emerged in Alwar. Inundated by telegrams from

68 See Ian Copland, 'Islam and Political Mobilization in Kashmir, 1931-34', Pacific Affairs, liv (1981).

69 Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/2234, transcript of speech by Bakhshi Sohan Lal to the Hindu Riyasati Hitesh Sammelan, Lahore, 28 Dec. 1931. See also the resolutions of the joint meeting of the Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu members of the CLA, 7 Nov. 1931: NMML, B. S. Moonje Papers, subject file 21.


frightened Hindus and by clandestine appeals for assistance from Jey Singh, the Mahasabha saw the Alwar crisis as a golden opportunity to expand its influence in an arena where neither the Congress nor the Muslim League yet had a significant stake; accordingly, the party sent its secretary, Ganpat Rai, to investi- gate. It held an Alwar Day and hosted a conference at Rewari to focus attention on Meo 'atrocities'. It protested vigorously against the maharaja's expulsion. It collected subscriptions and distrib- uted the money 'amongst the Hindu sufferers of Alwar'. Soon after Ganpat Rai's arrival, the first Hindu Sabha branch in Rajputana was founded.70 However, in the late 1930s, the Mahasabha temporarily forgot about the states while it concentrated on other matters such as the 1937 provincial elections. When the princely strategy was revived and given a new twist by V. D. Savarkar, who believed that the princes were 'embodi- ments of Hindu pride and Hindu achievements' and the states 'centres of organized military, administrative and political Hindu strength',7l the party was hampered in building on its bridgehead in Alwar (and branching out into Bharatpur) by the continuing control exercised by the British over the states' respective governments.

Thus, while the Mahasabha and elements within the Alwar and Bharatpur darbars appear to have maintained fairly continuous clandestine contact throughout the imperial interregnum, it was only after 1943 that the party was able to capitalize fully on the groundwork it had laid in 1933. Nevertheless, it managed over the following four years to establish a significant presence in these states, both in the villages and in the higher echelons of government. This growth was capped in April 1947 by the appointment of N. B. Khare, a former premier of the Central Provinces who had moved into the orbit of the Mahasabha after a confrontation with the Congress high command in 1939, as prime minister of

70 Ganpat Rai to B. S. Moonje, Poona, 15 Jan., 4 Feb. 1933: NMML, B. S. Moonje Papers, subject file 33; Rai to Moonje, Poona, 10 July 1933: NMML, B. S. Moonje Papers, subject file 34; also NMML, oral history transcript 330, 81, interview with Ganpat Rai, New Delhi, July 1974; Times of India [Bombay], 26 May 1933.

71 V. D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan A Collection of the Presidential Speeches (Bombay, 1949), quoted in Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, 95 n. Savarkar was president of the Mahasabha from 1937 to 1943. As such, he was closely supported by another party stalwart, B. S. Moonje. See speech by Moonje to South Kanara Hindu District Conference, Udipi, 3-4 June 1944, in NMML, Hindu Mahasabha Papers C-48.


Alwar.72 Within weeks of his arrival, Khare had talked the erratic Tej Singhji out of a bizarre plan to ally Alwar with Pakistan and arranged for the maharaja to underwrite a Mahasabha conference of Hindu 'Princes and People' at Delhi in July 1947 to 'consider the future' of India after the transfer of power.73

But the Hindu Mahasabha was not the only provincial organization to make inroads into Alwar and Bharatpur during these years. Close on its heels came the Nagpur-based Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), which shared the Mahasabha's broad goals with regard to Hindutva but differed with it over means, the RSS believing that grass-roots organization by well-trained cadres imbued with rigorous self-discipline was likely to achieve much more for Hindus than political rhetoric at the hustings. Khare, with his Nagpur links, was again a key intermediary; however, the patronage of Brijendra Singh seems to have been the decisive factor behind the rapid rise of RSS membership in Bharatpur. As we have seen, Brijendra Singh was conspicuously devout; as a Jat, he belonged to a caste which valorized martial virtues. On both counts, he found the RSS programme compel- ling. He encouraged his subjects to join and provided facilities through the army for RSS training camps. In 1946, he allegedly hosted an all-India conference of RSS senior cadres which was addressed by the organization's supreme leader, M. S. Golwalkar.74 By 1947, reports were reaching New Delhi of RSS 'gangsterism ... flourishing under the patronage of the [Bharatpur] Government'.75

Another political intruder during the 1940s was the All-India Muslim League. Like the Congress, the League in the interwar period eschewed political work in the states, preferring to concen- trate on the provinces where Muslims were thicker on the ground.

72 Khare notes in his memoirs that the post was offered to him, on the maharaja's behalf, by Pandit Harikar Sharma, a prominent activist of the Hindu Mahasabha whose brother, Pandit Maulichandra Sharma, went on to be president of the BJS: Khare, My Political Memoirs, 294.

73 NMML, Hindu Mahasabha Papers C-156, circular letter under B. S. Moonje's signature dated 14 July 1947. The conference was called off at the last minute, partly because Tej Singhji fell ill.

74 Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence', 134. 75 NMML, All-India States Peoples' Conference (hereafter AISPC) Papers, pt 1,

file 15, report on visit to Bharatpur by Dwarkanath Kachru, General Secretary, All- India States Peoples' Conference, 20 Jan. 1947. See also 'Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Patel, Delhi, 28 Jan. 1948', in Selected Works of 3rawaharlu1 Nehru, ed. Gopal, 2nd ser., v, 30.


However, the success of the Congress and Arya Samaj agitations in Muslim-ruled Hyderabad in 1938-9 shook the party out of its lethargy. Despite the ambiguous position of the states in the Pakistan scheme, which talked of a Muslim homeland made up of the 'six provinces', and League president Mohammad Ali Jinnah's reluctance to sanction anything that could embarrass the Muslim rulers, membership grew steadily during the later years of the war, especially in states within or adjacent to the six provinces. One was Alwar. From a base of 80 in 1940, membership of the Alwar branch rose to about 150 in 1944 and 566 in 1947, tiny numbers compared to the 20,000 claimed for Jaipur,76 but enough to give the League a significant political presence and, perhaps more importantly, a local outlet for its propaganda on the theme of 'national patriotism' in support of Pakistan.77 In Bharatpur, the League did not make such progress, possibly because of the entrenched position there of the Anjuman-i-Islam, which had always disliked outsiders telling it what to believe. Formally, the League was not constituted there until May 1946. But League agents were active none the less, and they brought a similar message: the Muslims of Bharatpur must organize in their defence. 'Unless and until you remove their own weaknesses and differences', declared S. Mohsin Jaffrey, addressing a gathering at the Jama Masjid, 'you can have no respect in the eyes of the world . . . You must become a united and well-organized body'. More particularly, Jaffrey urged the Bharatpur Anjuman to broaden its appeal to the Meos. Mewat, he forecast prophetically, had the potential to become 'the cornerstone' of Muslim power in Rajasthan.78 Although the Meos proved irritatingly resistant many, it seems, found the notion of 'joining Pakistan' incompre- hensible79 the League's millenarian message made them restless

76 The figures come from the fortnightly residency reports which were based partly on darbari estimates and partly on membership claims of League branch officers: Brit. Lib., IOR R/2/150/123. Jaipur was far and away the capital of the League in Rajputana, but Alwar appears to have been the next most important centre.

77Brit. Lib., IOR R/2/150/123, transcript of speech by Alwar Muslim League spokesman at meeting in the Jama Masjid, 4 June 1944; fortnightly report for Raiputana for period ending 30 June 1944.

78 Brit. Lib., IOR Rl/1/14191, proceedings of general meeting at the Jama Masjid Bharatpur, S May 1944.

79Mayaram emphasizes the Left-Congressite links of many of the senior Meo leaders, such as Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf, but one suspects that most Meos were no more anxious to be part of a Congress Raj than they were to join Pakistan: Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence', 131-2.


and sharpened their sense of shared political identity. Significantly, the later years of the war witnessed a renewed upsurge of Meo militancy, symbolized by a short-lived tax revolt in Kishengarh district in March 1946 and an unprovoked assault in September on a party of pilgrims visiting a Hindu shrine at Dholibub.80

Finally, the 1940s saw a substantial growth in both states of local organizations linked, through the All-India States Peoples' Conference, to the Indian National Congress. These praja mandals, as they were called, began life as a by-product of the 1938 Congress-backed campaign for responsible government in the states and were, for the most part, forced underground during the wave of repression that followed. But by 1946 most restrictions on political activity in the states had been lifted. This was partly an acknowledgement of the power which Congress now exercised over the waning British Raj in New Delhi. But it was also a considered political gamble. Ever optimistic, the darbars hoped, by making some strategic concessions on civil rights and political representation, to persuade the praja mandal leaders to hold off on their demand for responsible government. Curiously, the ploy had some success, especially in central India; however, in Alwar and Bharatpur, the bourgeois politicians refused to be bought off. The Bharatpur Praja Parishad boycotted gerryman- dered elections and the Alwar Rajya Praja Mandal launched in August 1946 a campaign of demonstrations and strikes designed ultimately to topple the maharaja's government.8l

By the 1940s Alwar and Bharatpur were simmering cauldrons of communal rivalry and popular discontent, of inchoate millenar- ial hopes and thwarted political ambitions. Early in 1947 this volatile mix exploded. But who or what lit the fuse?

The exact chronology of the 1947 ethnic cleansing episode in Alwar and Bharatpur, and the precise role in it of some groups and individuals remains unclear. A close reading of the available evidence (supplemented by some imaginative reading between the lines) suggests the following scenario. In 1946, facing mount-

80 Brit. Lib., IOR R/1/1/4488, fortnightly report for Rajputana for period ending 30 June 1946; Alwar State Gaz. Extraordinary, 4 Apr., 25 Sept. 1946: Brit. Lib., IOR R/2/139165.

81 NMML, AISPC Papers, pt 1, file 2, press release by Bolanath Master, Secretary, Alwar Rajya Praja Mandal, 30 Aug. 1946; Hindustan Times, 30 Aug. 1946; Sayyed Muttalabi, General Secretary, Mewat Conference, 'Note on the Situation in Bharatpur State', Gurgaon, 14 June 1947: NMML, AISPC, pt 1, file 15.


ing popular pressure for constitutional change, the Alwar and Bharatpur darbars cast around for support in other quarters. They turned, on the one hand to the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, on the other to communities such as the Rajputs and Jats who were by and large anti-Congress, or at least not on good terms with the urban middle-class politicians who controlled the praja mandals. Then, as British paramountcy was wound down in advance of withdrawal from the subcontinent, this strategy of rallying the landed interests in opposition to the bourgeois- nationalist praja mandals turned into a much more ambitious and extravagant scheme to entrench monarchical rule in northern India through the establishment of a 'separate' Rajput/Jat province. Although the plan itself remained chimerical, rumours about it leaked out, encouraged by a spate of bombastic speeches at the annual conference of the Jat Mahasabha held under Brijendra Singh's patronage in March 1947. Whipped up by their leaders, Jats and Ahirs began attacking Meo villages in Gurgaon district. By the end of the month the violence had spilled over the border into Alwar.82

Meanwhile, at a succession of caste councils over the winter of 1945-6, speakers such as the socialist historian Mohammad Ashraf (once, ironically, a protege of Maharaja Jey Singh), Punjab MLA Choudhuri Mehtab Khan and barrister Mohammad Yunus Khan called for the formation of a new Mewati province compris- ing the Meo areas of the United Provinces, Punjab, Alwar and Bharatpur. The implication was that they planned to carve out their independent state by force, under cover of the turmoil that was expected to descend on north India in the aftermath of the British withdrawal. This was tantamount to a unilateral declara- tion of secession. Moreover, in early 1947, the conventional wisdom was that the whole of the Punjab would go to Pakistan. If this expectation held, there would be nothing, in theory, to stop Meostan from joining Pakistan. On both counts, the Alwar and Bharatpur darbars were determined to nip the scheme in the bud.83

82 Muttalabi, 'Note on the Situation in Bharatpur State': NMML, AISPC, pt 1, file 15; Tribune [Lahore], 7 May 1947.

83Memoir by Judicial Minister, Alwar, [1947?], quoted in Khare, My Political Memoirs, 328-9; ibid., 300; N. B. Khare to Manilal Doshi, 13 Aug. 1947: NMML, Khare Papers, file 165. This interpretation was later upheld by investigations by Sardar Patel's States Ministry and the CID. The second Meo revolt, Patel concluded, was 'inspired by League leaders who had done extensive propaganda for it and had

(cont. on p. 233)


Separating 'aggressors' from 'victims' in this context is difficult, perhaps even pointless. Both sides were culpable. Nevertheless, if there was a starting point, it was probably the Jat/Ahir attack of March 1947. This, catching the Muslims off guard, caused them to accelerate their plans for a separate Meostan. What happened next can be interpreted either as a popular backlash by the Alwar and Bharatpur Hindus, who 'forgot their differences and united to meet the attacks on the Meo Musssalmans',84 or as a premeditated act of communal vengeance by a majority against a vulnerable minority. Either way, there is no disputing that a leading role was played in this war of 'resistance' by the Alwar and Bharatpur armed forces, or that the military's activities were condoned, encouraged and perhaps even co-ordinated by their respective governments. As a former Alwar Army captain told Shail Mayaram in 1993:

I was the ADC to HH Tej Singh. We were with the RSS. It had been decided to clear the state of Muslims. The orders came from [the Congress Home Minister] Sardar [Vallabhbhai] Patel. He spoke to HH on the hot line. The killings of Hindus at Noakhali [in Bengal] and Punjab had to be avenged. We called it the 'Clearing Up campaign'(safaya) All the Meos from Firozepur Jhirka down were to be cleared and sent to Pakistan [and] their lands taken over ....B5

Alwars N. B. Khare, who during this period doubled as an informal political adviser to the maharaja of Bharatpur, was later subjected to a government of India investigation for having ordered his soldiers to wipe out the Meos en masse, and for having paid contractors to demolish their mosques. Although exonerated of these crimes for lack of hard evidence) he was clearly a major architect of the Meo pogrom. Another was Brijendra Singh's brother, who, if the Indian CID are to be believed, personally commanded a military squad which carried out 'dacoities [armed robberies] and looting' in the Meo areas. A third may have been Bharatpur himself, though he too was subsequently cleared of criminal wrongdoing.86 fn. 83 cont.1

arranged for the supply of arms, ammunition etc.'. See 'Sardar Patel to Rajendra Prasad, 24 June 1948', in Dr Pajendra Prasad: Correspondence and Select Documents, ed. Valmiki Choudhary, 10 vols. (New Delhi, 1988), ix, 152.

84Memoir by Judicial Minister, Alwar, [1947?]; quoted in Khare, My Political Memoirs, 331. This was also the Mahasabha line. In the absence of protection from the government of India, Hindus and Sikhs had 'retaliated' in Cself-preservation'. See speech by V. D. Sarvakar, quoted in the Hindustan Times, 8 Oct. 1947.

85 Cited in Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence', 139. 86 Muttalabi, 'Note on the Situation in Bharatpur State': NMML, AISPC, pt l, file

15; 'Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Patel, Delhi, 4 Nov. 1947', in Sardar Patel's Correspondence, ed. Das, V7 380. Khare's denials are interesting. They were often

(cont. on p. 234)


To be sure, the darbars and their Hindu 'defenders' were not the only perpetrators of atrocities. Once the Meo revolt got going it was prosecuted with fanaticism and ferocity. For a short time, it even looked as if it might prevail. Zindoli village in Mundawar district, Mubarakpur village in Ramgad district, Ismailpur village in Kishengarh district and Bahadarpur village in Alwar district were looted and burned; the town of Tijara was sacked and many of its Hindu citizens slaughtered; a Jain temple was looted; and the main Hindu temple at Prithvipura was defiled by the killing of a cow and the sprinkling of its blood over the image of the deity.87 But these crimes, though serious enough, were vastly overshadowed by what the governmental forces and their civilian allies accomplished by way of revenge once they had recaptured the military advantage. 88 As noted earlier, perhaps 30,000 Muslims perished in this orchestrated bloodletting What needs to be stressed again is the way that this licensed campaign of mayhem transformed the face of Alwar and Bharatpur society. By the end of 1947 only a handful of Muslims remained in Mewat, mostly in the larger towns. As the Judicial Minister of Alwar noted smugly at the end of 1947: 'the Meo problem . . . has been solved'.89

This leaves us with the question of motivation. The darbari position, as put to the government of India's inquiry, was that there was no motive, that the wholesale extermination, reconversion and expulsion of Muslims from Alwar and Bharatpur that (n. 86 cont.)

evasive and flippant. Questioned by Patel about the Alwar darbar's support for the forced conversion of Muslims, he laughingly replied: 'I am not concerned with this conversion. If they get an inspiration from above, how can I help it?'. A similar conversation took place with Congress President Maulana Azad about mosques. See Khare, My Political Memoirs, 303-4, 318. The CID apparently knew who the contractors were and what they were paid, but the government was unable to prove that the contracts were not, as Khare said, merely for the purpose of removing debr

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