The Creation of a Communal Ethos in Colonial Punjab A Study of Proscribed Literature, 1920s and 30s

<strong>Centre for Historical Studies School of Social Sciences</strong> a Lecture <strong>The Creation of a Communal Ethos in Colonial Punjab A Study of Proscribed Literature, 1920s and 30s</strong> <strong>Richa Raj</strong> Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi <strong>10th February 2016</strong> Communalism, a word much prevalent in the public discourse today, has had varied meanings and expressions within its colonial and post-colonial contexts. It is the expression of economic and political grievances of the concerned subjects and uses religious idioms as modes of their galvanization. In its extreme form, it takes recourse to communal rhetoric, vilifying the 'other' and ultimately leading to the sharpening of community identities. A study of the communal literature proscribed by the colonial government of Punjab in the 1920s and 1930s brings to light how communal tension was created by the publication and circulation of inflammatory publications. The fact that these were inexpensive makes us believe that these were easily available for mass consumption and did manage to influence adversely certain sections of the concerned communities. The production of such polemical pamphlets, often reformist in content but communal in tone, when combined with the electoral politics of the times, carried the potential of creating a communal ethos ultimately leading to a significant polarization in the province of colonial Punjab. An example is the tension fuelled by the controversy surrounding the pamphlet entitled, Rangila Rasul, a product of the reformist zeal of an Arya Samajist, and attempts to gain political mileage from the controversy by the leaders of the 'other' community, in this case the Khilafatists and the Ahmadis. At the administrative level, the vague, rather 'retrospect' policies of the colonial government betrayed its conciliatory nature, in that the government often acted only when a complaint was lodged and interpreted Section 193A of the Indian Penal Code related to communal ill will according to expediency. This made the establishment of harmony among the various religious communities in a heated political environment a far-fetched idea. Richa Raj is Assistant Professor at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She is the recipient of a PhD degree from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.