In catering to the daily needs of [humans] we too often grossly neglect the cultural side, the delicate creations in word, song and colour in which the dreams of mankind find expression. The Conference must realize its responsibility in fostering creative work. It can encourage women artists and introduce them to the public. It can place their writings with publishers, articles with editors, it can organize concerts and exhibitions and help playwrights produce their plays. This would help release floods of creative streams and direct them into useful channels, thereby enriching the cultural wealth of our country, a wealth which can only be measured by the happiness it brings to them that give and them that receive.
Two happenings affecting women have considerably agitated the public mind—the re-employment of women in mines and the Bills emerging from the deliberations of the Rau Committee and now before the Central Assembly.2 The former, an act perpetrated in violation of an international agreement and intense national feeling, has raised such a storm of protest both in India and abroad as to bear ample testimony to its unpopularity. The Government arguments that no compulsion is applied and that wages have been increased, have no reality. Poverty drives people to any risks. The very fact that three annas a day is paid for surface work as against eight annas underground is explanation enough.3 The wage even after this grand increase is about Rs. 15 [per month], while the average in other industries in the neighbourhood is around Rs. 25 to 30. In addition, the general conditions are very bad, housing deplorable and inadequate. Although the agitation against this measure has been considerable, it has not been effective, and none of us can rest while it continues. The Women’s Conference, if it is to prove an effective instrument for safeguarding women’s interests, must get women out of the mines as speedily as possible.
All progressive elements in India have long dreamed of the establishment of a common national legal code, operating irrespective of caste or creed. It is as a step towards this that we welcome the codification of the Hindu Law undertaken by the Rau Committee, and not as an end in itself. I hope this attempt will fructify in the near future and give us the entire codification as a complete picture, instead of in bits and pieces which so easily lend themselves to distortion when isolated from the whole. The Conference has supported the Intestate Succession Bill in spite of its inadequate nature, because it seeks to give recognition to the principle of women’s right. It is regrettable that in the Marriage Bill the barriers of caste and gotra which have lost most of their significance in modern society, have not been overcome. The clause on monogamy is welcome though it would not serve the purpose without certain other changes which are envisaged. The Women’s Conference, along with other liberal sections of society, has always stood for the institution of marriage. The strong allegiance of women to this institution hardly needs reiteration, for it is proverbial … But all societies including the Hindu, have recognized the need for modification in its legal attitudes. Laws have had to change from time to time under changing conditions. Those who seek relaxation of a rigid marriage law or of a law that makes difference between the sexes in dispensing justice, do not do so on flimsy grounds but on a deep respect for and understanding of the function of law which is to enable harmonious living. Where it becomes a social injustice, the need for an adjustment has to be recognized by society as imperative …
Our insular peninsular outline has widened into the global, with an increasing awareness that we and the rest of the world are but part of a single sphere, that our destinies are inevitably linked, our paths interlocked. Therefore, world policies and events are as much our concern as our affairs are their responsibilities. War as much as peace reveals that the world cannot be divided into islands of freedom and slavery, that the present system of one people holding another down by armed might, no matter with what smooth explanations, leads ultimately to world enslavement by fear and violence, and to colossal human, material and moral destruction. Just as national freedom is but an extension of social freedom the Conference is fighting for, the establishment of the same principle all the world over is of equal interest to us. Until this present system is not only outlawed in principle but abolished in practice, all talk of peace and freedom becomes transitory and meaningless. For peace is not to be achieved by armed victories or by refusing to bear arms, but by the removal of the root causes: imperialism and colonial exploitation that menace peace. Today we witness the fantastic spectacle of big world-powers, claiming to fight for the larger freedom and greater happiness of mankind, feeling no sense of shame or humiliation in denying those very principles to millions of the people they still continue to exploit and dominate over.
It is not idle curiosity or cheap sentiment which shapes the question that haunts and harasses every diplomat like a family ghost: ‘What about India?’ We may well say ‘Everything,’ for while England continues to hold India in political and economic bondage, the United Nations do nothing short of perpetrating a colossal lie on humanity. India is more than a test, it is a symbol. It is the mirror in which the world sees the shape of things to be. Today we are witnessing the fantastic spectacle of two warring groups [i.e., the Allied and the Axis Powers], each assiduously claiming to fight for the larger freedom and greater happiness of mankind. It is towards a world which recognizes the right of every nation to determine and rule its own destiny but in a cooperative world order, that the women of India and of the world have to strive for, if humanity is ever to enjoy decency, peace and happiness, and world wars banished from amongst our seasonal pests.
Before closing, I should like to send my thoughts to those millions all over the world whose homes have been gripped by the plight of death and destruction, and whose spirits are lacerated by untold suffering, and offer them sincerest sympathies. In particular, my thoughts turn to the distressed areas within our own homeland and I take this opportunity to pay my humble tribute to the various organizations, volunteer corps and individuals who are so selflessly serving to alleviate suffering. I should like in particular to congratulate our Bengal branch for its splendid work in this terrible distress.4
The air is heavy with gloom, the sky rent with cries of pain. Civil liberties, one of the main planks of the Conference, are under perpetual assault. Shadows of suspicion and insincerity deepen and lengthen, blacking out those neon lights mankind had succeeded in lighting through the ages; a growing disregard for the common courtesies and human decencies and a ruthless flouting of popular feeling make a mockery of life. The continued detention of our valued and irreplaceable leaders and comrades5 who alone at the helm could transform the scene from despair to hope and weave order out of chaos, often dulls our spirit and stays our hand. But this very tragedy should in truth galvanise us into greater and mightier action, for our responsibility becomes doubly greater. There are some who turn to post-war reconstruction as an escape from the terrors of the present. Others believe that in large-scale industrialization lies the cure. Those who have faith in these patent pills have only to glance at some of the highly industrialized countries to note the havoc wrought out of priceless natural resources and marvellous technical opportunities. Hunger, unemployment, slums, human degradation, all bear eloquent testimony to this tragedy. It is not enough to produce more. It is more important to determine its basis and the principles that will guide the distribution; in short, who controls and directs the economy. We cannot surely subscribe to a system in which many produce but few enjoy the benefit, in which artificial scarcity is created by arbitrarily denying men the right to produce, and destroying natural wealth.
Women can have real freedom only in a society which will uphold the sanctity of life and the dignity of labour, a society which will give every child the fullest opportunities for development, enforce and practise those fundamental economic and social rights that entitle every individual to a decent life, the fruits of his or her labour, and the benefits of science and culture. To achieve this the Women’s Conference should ally itself with all the progressive forces in the country and
develop a vital identity with other oppressed sections of the society to pull its full weight on the side of progress in order to overcome reaction. Thus alone can it meet the present challenge and play an accredited role in the national regeneration of the country.
A Socialist View of the Communal Question
The next excerpt presents a socialist’s view of the growing divide between Hindus and Muslims in the 1940s. It argued that the solution to the conflict lay not in a separate Muslim homeland but in a model of economic growth that focused on the elimination of poverty.6
The larger communal tangle or triangle as it has also been called, is not a natural, political, or social phenomenon in this country. It is a device conceived and carried out by British imperialism to maintain itself in security in this vast land. As a matter of fact any of India’s major problems can only be posed and appraised against her colonial background—that is her retarded economy. Had India been able to industrialise in the course of her normal economic evolution, the fuel for the current raging conflagration could never have been provided. The real communal problem has under its thin veneer of religiosity a stark economic core.
Let us glance back at history. With the destruction of Indian indigenous industries, the [colonial] Government’s vast secretariat became the only job-offering agency … In the period immediately following the 1857 Indian War of Independence, the British definitely encouraged the Hindu element to supply the large army of clerical staff that it needed. This meant a rapid reorientation of the Hindu community by the swift creation of the nucleus of the present Indian middle class. The impact of the new English education and its influence on those who resorted to it, too, was swift and far-reaching. The newly growing middle class, faced with even a more rapidly growing scarcity of jobs, now cut off from the old rural and feudalized occupations, had … to turn to modern business and, where possible, industry.
The Muslims, who at the very start got left behind in this race … remained tied to their ancient feudal moorings a longer time. As the new middle-class which, thanks to the nature of the early British policy was predominantly Hindu, began from the early twentieth century to form the spearhead of the nationalist revolt, the British decided to reverse their old policy and now court the Muslims instead … So communal electorates, communal ratios in services, etc., were introduced for this purpose.
As greater and greater frustrations overtook the Hindu middle class with rising unemployment facing its educated youth, and as the budding industrialists kept forever coming up against the British commercial interests, the discontentment commenced flowing into the national tide from all sides, swelling it into a mighty flood. In this context the communal problem began to show up its political character more and more. Under a retarded national economy, opportunities were few and the rush on those few terrific. The British who had created the situation, now used it to pit one community against the other, ever widening the gulf between the two. But the logical national march towards freedom could not be arrested. The anti-British sentiment spread like wild-fire and the Muslim masses were soon caught in it too.
As the progressive and radical forces gather strength, proportionately the elements of reaction too muster strength to beat back the new challenge. In different countries it assumes different guises. But the commonest and most feasible is that of religion or of race. It would perhaps be more correct to say perversions of both. We have seen in recent years how in spite of the vast strides made by science and its dispassionate pursuit by objective minds, the very findings of anthropology and ethnology are perverted to reinforce brutal reactionary forces as in the case of the Nazi rule; the oppression of the coloured peoples in Asia and Africa; the discrimination against negroes in America and the Harijans in India; the widespread anti-Sem[i]tism in Europe …
Often these are availed of by a third interested party in order to bolster itself up. The British in India have all along played that role, putting community against community, religious groups against religious groups through bribery, favouritism, distribution of patronage and the like, successfully cutting across that gigantic national unity wrought by the 1857 revolution. In course of time these were followed by constitutional procedures to perpetuate further the growing cleavages, such as the introduction of communal electorates, communal composition of legislatures, communal ratios in appointment to offices, admission to educational and other institutions, sanctioning of grants; and a host of such equally unhealthy practices …
It is against this background that the role of the Muslim League gets clear, for ironically it was on [the] very anti-British and intense patriotic feeling of the Muslims and not on any religious sop, that the concept of Pakistan was founded. The Muslims wanted freedom as passionately as the Hindus. Mohamed Ali Jinnah was going to get it for them; only he told them that he wanted them to be free from not merely the British oppressors but the even worse Hindu exploiters. Here, like Hitler who used the weapon of Aryan purity and anti-Sem[i]tism to drive his people to frenzy, Jinnah used his clever idiom of a ‘Muslim nation’ as the driving force. The Muslim masses were economically and socially too backward and too ignorant to understand the true nature of the many problems that weighed them down … For Mr. Jinnah had realized only too well that the rising mass discontent could only be met by some concrete political factor, however distorted or perverted it be, and not mere empty religious shibboleths.
It is very important for us to remember that Pakistan has been raised on the hunger of the Muslim masses for freedom. At the same time Jinnah has been able to rally and keep tied to the League the younger intellectuals and the other growing middle-classes by getting Government favours, offices, posts distributed to them and preventing thereby their joining the nationalist movement.
The League has no record of any constructive work for the amelioration of the Muslim masses. The League ministries7 can take no credit for any such special services. The role of the League has been to aid the British directly or indirectly to enable them to continue their stranglehold and stall the freedom movement through deliberate obstruction of the nationalist tide. It is in the very nature of the League, constituted as its leadership is of big vested interests, that it cannot serve the Indian masses, be they Hindus or Muslims. Had the Congress from the earliest days countered this by courageously pursuing an economic programme for the masses and identified itself completely with the peasantry as against the landlords, it would have effectively undermined the League’s efforts at disruption, and the two-nation theory would have failed to find the soil in which to implant its poisonous stem. Unfortunately, the Congress failed to follow any such scientific line and the Muslim masses fell a prey to medievalism—fanatical, irrational religious fervour that can never have any reality in their day-to-day struggle.
The Hindu section on the other hand, partly through ignorance but more so because of the frustration caused partly by the absence of any positive programme of mass contact and social reconstruction work, and partly by the acute tension produced by the long delay in the attainment of power due to Britain’s reluctance to part with power, plunged deeper and more recklessly into a similar abyss of fanatical passions, unable and too ill-equipped to face the logic of a rapidly changing situation. It has however sought refuge in a demagogic past. It tries to cover the complex present with the veil of a vague past, tinting the harsh realities with illusive shades and the gross angles with sentimental contours, conjuring up in short by-gone ghosts to lend heroics to commonplace sentiments. Unfortunately as the aggressiveness of the Muslim League has advanced, proportionately has the lure of this Hindu mirage deepened, ensnaring in its meshes raw immature minds who, thwarted by an overpowering present, fill the imagination with past achievements, which at least for the fleeting moment give them a sense of security. This is how Nazism raised itself on the ruins of a prostrate Germany, feeding young and old alike on the rosy illusion of an all-conquering Aryan race. The Indian youth which is rapidly falling victim to similar antics, must be
ware of its dangers. India can neither save itself nor solve its problems by donning the faded armour of memories, however glorious they be. The menace of the present cannot be met by a reorientation to the past. Rather it is a bold and courageous reckoning up of the existing conditions and their appraisal which alone can steer us along the proper path.
The crux of the modern world problem is its illogical economic system … A society so blatantly based on violence and exploitation, where the majority is unable to secure, in spite of its hard industry, even bare minimum subsistence, and denied normal opportunities for cultivating its talents or giving expression to its creative urge, is the common enemy of [all] irrespective of caste, creed or religion. Similarly poverty is not the monopoly of any one particular community. It is common to all exploited people. For the exploiting elements, the landlords and capitalists are also distributed amongst every community. The exploitation of the masses by the vested interests is common to all sections. A Hindu landlord is no kinder to a Hindu kisan than a Muslim landlord to a Muslim kisan; nor does a Hindu or a Muslim employer pay any higher wages to his workers simply because they belong to his community … Employers demand the same hard hours of labour from their employees quite irrespective of the latter’s caste, creed or community. The Hindu landlords of Bihar have exploited their Hindu tenants even as the Muslim landlords of Sind have exploited their Muslim tenants. The class character is not altered or modified by religious or cultural factors—and that is really the inherent weakness of a communal movement. It can only thrive on the ignorance of the masses and must collapse before socially aware, understanding minds. Neither the Muslim nor the Hindu businessmen had any compunction in making fortunes out of the Bengal famine that destroyed millions of Muslims and Hindus alike. For when famine comes it laps up all communities like a hungry flame. The Muslims of Bengal died like flies in spite of a Muslim Ministry in power …