Communal Geographies: Space, Identity and Electoral Constituency in Colonial North India

Abstract

The Indian Councils Act, 1909, the Government of India Act, 1919, and the Government of India Act, 1935, defined political space—an arena of political negotiations through electoral representation—along religious lines. The most crucial aspect of these legislative-institutional developments was the definition and delimitation of ‘communal-territorial constituencies’, and franchisee qualifications. This specific colonial form of representative politics, which was debated, negotiated and translated by the religio-political elite in the arena of local politics, produced a communal notion of space. Thus, each of the localities, wards, cities and regions at large were officially demarcated into Muhammadan, General/Hindu, Sikh and Indian-Christian electoral constituencies. The paper explores the intricacies of this process and the complex question of ‘representation’ during the period of the national movement. It argues that this official demarcation of social groups and localities into political constituencies produced a complex configuration of identity and space, which had multiple manifestations with extended franchise. It established electoral representation as a mode to make legitimate claims and counterclaims over space.

Keywords:

• Communal-geographies
• communalisation
• constituency
• elections
• enumeration
• homeland
• identity
• political representation

Acknowledgements

This paper is an outcome of my ongoing book project on the ‘idea of constituency’. I am also grateful to the reviewers for their constructive comments. My special thanks to Professor David Gilmartin for his elaborate feedback and suggestions. His interventions helped shape the main arguments of the paper. I would also like to thank Professor Stephen Legg and Professor Charu Gupta, the guest editors of this special issue, for their critical comments and constant support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Quoted from Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 1803–1930: Society, Government and Urban Growth (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981): 214.

2. Report of the Indian Delimitation Committee, Vol. I (Simla: Government of India Press, 1936).

3. Nazima Parveen, ‘The Making of Muslim Ilaqe’, Seminar, no. 663 (2014), accessed December 7, 2023, http://www.india-seminar.com/2014/663/663_nazima_parveen.htm.

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5. David Gilmartin, ‘Election Law and the “People” in Colonial and Postcolonial India’, in From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition, ed. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007): 55–89; David Gilmartin and Robert Moog, ‘Introduction to “Election Law in India”’, Election Law Journal 11, no. 2 (2012): 136–48.

6. David Gilmartin, ‘A Magnificent Gift: Muslim Nationalism and the Election Process in Colonial Punjab’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 3 (1998): 415–36.

7. Delhi was a part of the Punjab Province until 1912. The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh was renamed as United Provinces in 1937.

8. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-History of “Communalism”: Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 2 (1985): 177–203; G. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992); Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India: The New Cambridge History of India, III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Gilmartin, ‘Magnificent Gift’; William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘Foreshadowing Quit India: The Congress in Uttar Pradesh 1939–1941’, in Mapping Histories: Essays Presented to Ravinder Kumar, ed. Neera Chandhok (London: Anthem Press, 2000): 226–27.

9. Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

10. Nazima Parveen, Contested Homelands: Politics of Space and Identity (Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2021).

11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

12. Parveen, Contested Homelands.

13. Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 10–15.

14. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998): 25–28.

15. Abhay V. Datar, Political Representation in India: Ideas and Contestations, 1908–1951 (Delhi: Bloomsbury, 1921): 1–15.

16. R. Coupland, The Indian Problem: Report on the Constitutional Problem in India, 1833–1935 (London: Oxford University Press, 1944): 20.

17. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993): 16–18.

18. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Neeti Nair, ‘Partition and Minority Rights in Punjabi Hindu Debates, 1920–47’, Economic & Political Weekly 46, no. 52 (2011): 61–69.

19. Gilmartin and Moog, ‘Introduction’, 136–48; David Gilmartin, ‘Voting, Religion, and the People’s Sovereignty in Late Colonial India’, in Religious Interactions in Modern India, ed. Martin Fuchs and Vasudha Dalmia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019): 305–35.

20. Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 157–59.

21. Parveen, Contested Homeland, 25–45.

22. Coupland, Indian Problem, 22.

23. Francis Robinson, ‘Municipal Government and Muslim Separatism in the United Provinces, 1883 to 1916’, Modern Asian Studies 7, no. 3 (1973): 389–441.

24. Robinson, ‘Municipal Government’, 392–95.

25. Coupland, Indian Problem, 22.

26. C.H. Philips, ed., The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858 to 1947, Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); Coupland, Indian Problem; William Gould, Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); R.J. Moore, Liberalism and Indian Politics, 1872–1922 (London: Edward Arnold, 1966).

27. This was due to the provision of separate electorate extended to different ‘interest groups’ after each reform. For details see: Government of India Act 1919 and Government of India Act, 1935.

28. Nair, ‘Partition and Minority Rights’, 61–69.

29. Report of Indian Delimitation Committee, Vol. I (Simla: Government of India Press, 1936): 59–60.

30. Robinson, ‘Municipal Government’, 440.

31. Ibid., 411–13.

32. Quoted from Ibid., 412.

33. Report of Indian Delimitation Committee: Proposals for the Delimitation of Constituencies in the Provincial and Central Legislature, Vol. II (Simla, Government of India Press, 1936): 142.

34. ‘Classification of Sikh, Brahmos, Arya Samajists, Buddhist and Jains … and Instructions for Enumerating Sikhs in Census’, F- 45/2/31-Pub/home, 1931, NAI, Delhi.

35. Ibid.

36. Articles published in The Tribune and Hindu Herald, dated November 13 and 14, 1930; F- 45/2/31-Pub/home, 1931, NAI, Delhi.

37. F- 45/2/31-Pub/home, 1931, NAI, Delhi.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. F-1/75/35/-Pub/home, NAI, Delhi.

42. ‘Question in the Legislative Assembly by Bhai Parman and Regarding Communal Safeguards….and Naming of Hindu Constituency as “General”’, Ibid.

43. Section 291(b), The Government of India Act, 1935.

44. Report of Indian Delimitation Committee, Vol. I, 11.

45. Ibid., 15.

46. Ibid., 61.

47. Ibid., 44.

48. Ibid., 54.

49. Ibid., 130.

50. Parveen, Contested Homelands.

51. F-74/3/40-Home/Poll, NAI, Delhi.

52. F-270/31-Home/pub, 1931; F-74/3/40 – Home/Poll, NAI, Delhi.

53. F-74/3/40-Home/Poll, NAI, Delhi.

54. ‘Question of the Action To Be Taken against Volunteers Organised to Obstruct the Election Proceedings’, F-119/33-Poll/home, 1933, NAI, Delhi.

55. F-119/33-Poll/home, 1933, NAI, Delhi.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Walter Andersen, ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—II: Who Represents the Hindus?’, Economic & Political Weekly 7, no. 12 (1972): 633–40.

59. FR, Delhi, June 1940, F.-18/6/1940-Home/Poll.–(I), NAI.

60. Intelligence Bureau Report, F.-71/39-Home/Poll(I), NAI; FR, Delhi, April, F.-18/4/39-Home/Poll(I).

61. F-119/33-Poll/home, 1933, NAI, Delhi.

62. Parveen, Contested Homeland, 50–65.

63. Parveen, ‘Making of Muslim Ilaqe’, 47–48; see also Stephen Legg, ‘A Pre-Partitioned City? Anti-Colonial and Communal Mohallas in Inter-War Delhi’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 42, no. 1 (2019): 170–87, DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2019.1554472; Ali Raza and Franziska Roy, ‘Paramilitary Organisations in Interwar India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2015): 671–89, DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2015.1079958.

64. Delhi, September 1940, F.- 18/9/40-Home/Poll.–(I); Delhi, March 1943, F.- 28/3/43 – Home/Poll.–(I), NAI, Delhi.

65. F- 74/3/40-Home/Poll, NAI, Delhi.

66. Ibid.

67. Parveen, Contested Homelands, 50–65.

68. FR UP, April 1940, F.-18/6/1940-Home/Poll.–(I), NAI.

69. Parveen, Contested Homelands, 50–65; Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, 138–44; see also Neeti Nair, Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); Gurharpal Singh, Sikh Nationalism: From a Dominant Minority to an Ethno-Religious Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

70. F-18/1/1937- Home/Poll (i), 1937.

71. F-101/45-Home/Poll (i), 1945, NAI, Delhi.

72. Ibid.

73. Nair, Changing Homelands; Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 191–265.

74. Gilmartin, ‘Magnificent Gift’, 421.

75. Papiya Ghosh, Community and Nation: Essays on Identity and Politics in Eastern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008): 134–65; Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy, ed., Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).

76. F-52/10/36-Home/Poll, 1936, NAI, Delhi.

77. Indian Delimitation Committee, Vol. I, 55.

78. Ibid.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by the School of History, Krea University, Andhra Pradesh, India, under the SIAS Postdoctoral Fellowship program, 2021–23.