The post-independence era in South Asia has witnessed an increasing sectarian and communal divide. It is important to think of a time in our collective history when there were possibilities of co-living and co-existence based on respect for religious difference along with shared values of equality and human dignity.The life and times of Dr. Kunwar Muhammad Ashraf who belonged to a Rajput Muslim family from the Alwar region are worth looking into. Some of his relatives were practicing Hindus and those who were Muslims respected older traditions of Chathris, and so his community was called “adh–barya”, half Muslim and half Hindu.It is this syncretic and co-lived experience, a part of Ashraf’s family heritage, that may have culturally influenced his political model of co-existence between different religious communities in British India.In the second and final instalment of this two-part series, we look at how Ashraf struggled for Hindu-Muslim unity at great personal cost. His is an example that needs to be remembered and emulated in these divisive and troubled times. Read part one here.§Soon after the War began, the alliance between Congress and CPI started to be tested. Both parties initially labelled the war as anti-imperialist and were not eager to support the effort, yet CPI in its communiques argued that the time had come for a national revolution and to intensify all efforts toward the achievement of National Freedom. Encouraged by their expanded work among the workers and peasants in the 1930s, a more confident CPI argued for working within Congress Committees to create antiwar sentiments among the Congress workers and the population so that the country moved toward a mass insurrection. In the March 1940 Ramgarh session of INC, the CPI’s statement put forward the policy of the “proletarian path”. This entailed a general strike in major industries, along with a country-wide no-rent and no-tax policy. The next phase of this program would lead to an armed insurrection and attacks on military, police and government installations. The Gandhian oriented Congress with its continued policy of non-violence were clearly against this policy, yet K.M Ashraf and V.D. Chitale, the two communist delegates to the session pushed for its acceptance. The CPI at this juncture was intent on launching an immediate armed struggle against the British. This somewhat radical line which was started by a series of strikes in the textile sector, led to a drastic response from the British, resulting in most of CPI’s first and second tier leadership being detained in the notorious Deoli Concentration Camp (about 450 Communist Party members were arrested). As a member of CPI leadership, by early 1941, Ashraf was also imprisoned there. By early to mid-1940s the Communist Party had also started to rethink the issue of Muslim separatism being put forward by the newly invigorated Muslim League. Under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the All-India Muslim League (AIML) passed the Pakistan Resolution at its annual session in March 1940 in Lahore. The Resolution argued that no constitutional plan for India’s freedom would be acceptable to the Muslims unless those geographically contiguous areas that had a Muslim majority population in the north-western and eastern parts of British India were given the status of independent states where the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign. This became the basis of the policy for Muslim self-determination or separatism (depending on which political side one belonged to). In response to this shift in Muslim politics, Ashraf (representing the CPI) in his statements as early as 1940, had started to hint at the nationalities question, which would be developed later as a major policy agenda. According to the Communists, the linguistic and religious diversity of India had brought forward two major issues at this juncture in Indian politics. One was the Hindu- Muslim divide and the other was the linguistic-states problem. Was India one nation or were Hindu and Muslims separate nations and similarly did Bengalis or Tamils deserve different or autonomous states? Following the emergent CPI position, in June of 1940, Ashraf (while still a member of All-India Congress Committee) noted that he did not agree with Muslim League’s resolution on Pakistan, however, he held INC as being responsible for the rise of separatist aspirations among the Muslims. This, he said resulted from the Congress conceiving of a future self-government on reactionary Hindu principles. He put Congress in parity with Muslim League as a reactionary and communal organization and deemed it incapable of leading the Indian revolution. While he rejected, in this statement, the idea of Muslim self-determination (or self-determination on grounds of any religious identity), he did not reject the idea of self-determination perse and wanted it to be used in pursuit of mobilising backward masses in different communities for an anti-imperialist struggle. His statement suggested that CPI had started to shift its alliance with INC. As the CPI decided to speed up the struggle to overthrow the British Raj, they also took the fight to the student movement. In the December of 1940 session of the All-India Student Federation (AISF) in Nagpur, the organisation split on the question of Gandhi’s “Individual Satyagarah” campaign. AISF’s progressive faction headed by Ashraf and Hiren Mukherjee (both of CPI) argued that the Gandhian position was one of British appeasement. Ashraf’s earlier argument on self-determination became even clearer at this juncture as at the meeting he accused the Congress of failing to resolve the communal problem and proposed that an independent India would be a federation of regional states. However, the CPI’s more overt support of the ‘Muslim Question’ came in the aftermath of its policy of openly opposing the All-India Congress and their Quit India Movement. Considering itself as representing Indian national sentiment, the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) met in August 1942 in Bombay (Mumbai) under the leadership of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, passed a resolution to oppose the British government’s war effort and asked for immediate independence prior to extending India’s support as a sovereign nation. On 8 August, at a public meeting, Mohandas Gandhi called for nonviolent civil disobedience to force the British to quit India. The British responded with widespread arrests of the Congress leadership which led to strikes and disturbances (at times violent) in different parts of the country, leading to further repression and arrests of thousands of Congress workers.Although all communist members of the AICC voted against the resolution, it was passed by an overwhelming majority. The CPI vote was reflective of how by 1942, primarily due to the invasion of the Soviet Union by German forces, it had reversed its earlier line on the World War and moved from calling it an ‘Imperialist War’ to a ‘People’s War’. It now linked itself to the international drive against Germany’s fascist regime. The CPI, going against nationalist trends and breaking its alliance with Congress, had called for a national front in the anti-fascist war, even if this meant collaborating with the British for the course of the war. This led to the unbanning of the Party and the release of the leaders. Ashraf was also released in 1943, but due to the hardships in the prison and the effects of a prolonged hunger strike his health had suffered. Once the CPI leadership was released and keeping in mind the nationalist sentiment (Congress), the CPI also started a national unity campaign to bring all political forces closer to its own anti-fascist position. Within this tactical framework it periodically condemned the British for their imprisonment of nationalist leaders yet also urged the Congress leadership to collaborate with the Muslim League and accept it as the representative voice of India’s Muslim population. In September 1942 the CPI held an enlarged plenary meeting of its Central Committee. Influenced by Ashraf’s earlier formulation on self-determination a senior member of the Party, G.M. Adhikari, presented the resolution on Pakistan and Indian national unity. As suggested above, the CPI leadership was primarily nationalist and had until the early 1940s thought of the Muslim question as a British ploy to weaken the national movement through a divide-and-rule policy. While this sentiment is echoed in Adhikari’s argument, his presentation (hinted at by Ashraf in 1940) was also a break from the past. For the first time his analysis sought to take the question of India not as a cultural whole, but as constituting various cultures, language groups, and national sentiments. The challenge for the CPI was how to be sensitive to the question of diversity and yet not allow the break-up of the country. In this larger context, Adhikari placed Muslim nationalism as a reflection of the uneven bourgeois development of the Muslim masses in British India. Conflating religious identity with nationalist rhetoric, he argued that the Muslims, as a more undeveloped and economically weaker national group, have reasons to fear the more dominant and developed national groups such as Hindus. He goes on to assert that conditions should be created so that more advanced groups should aid the more backward ones to quickly move towards their levels. This would eventually lead to a free and democratic India where no nationality would oppress another, and each group would have equal rights to all democratic freedoms.Hence, for the CPI the slogan for Pakistan was understood as a call for self-determination and democracy for all nationalities. Clearly, the right of self-determination came with the right of sovereignty, equality and the right to secession. Yet, on the one hand the right to secede was acknowledged; while on the other secession was deemed undesirable until a certain level of social development was achieved. The resolution in the end was clear that the right to separation need not necessarily lead to the actual act so long as all nationalities are guaranteed free and equal rights and the mutual suspicion of dominance of one group over another is removed. In 1944 in a paper published by P. C. Joshi, the General Secretary of the Party. He affirmed that the Indian National Congress was the greatest national organisation of the country for uniting the various patriotic elements. Yet he also spelled out the CPI’s position on Muslim self-determination and urged the Congress leadership to follow suit. The Communist Party, he wrote stood for the democratic right of self-determination and secession of different nationalities and ethnic groups, including Muslims. Following this argument, the Communist Party’s manifesto for the 1945–1946 elections demanded immediate independence and transfer of power not only to two governments (India and Pakistan), but to 17 interim ‘sovereign’ national assemblies that corresponded to the different nationalities that had been defined by the Party in 1942. Furthermore, Joshi argued that all contiguous areas where Muslims were a majority should be given sovereign rights to form elected Constituent Assemblies through a pre-independence adult franchise of each region’s inhabitants. Such independent representative bodies could then through a majority vote either retain a good neighbourly relationship with the Indian Union while remaining a separate state or join the Union while insisting on the utmost autonomy.Looking at various archival documents and correspondence, Ashraf with his deep knowledge of Muslim history, culture and politics was a major influence on CPI’s various positions on the Muslim question throughout the 1940s as they were partly linked to its developing sensitivity to the emergent language and region-based politics in India. It can also be analysed that his own work in INC’s Muslim Contact Cell had convinced him that CPI could gain a foothold among Muslim masses, as its close working within the Indian National Congress had aided its gaining popularity among nationalists. Indeed, until the mid-1940s the CPI may have believed that by accepting the demand for an independent Pakistan it could allay fears of Hindu persecution and bring the Muslims together with Hindus for a joint struggle against a common colonial power. He put forward his anti-imperialist position in his writings in Communist periodicals in the 1940s. His published pieces in Qaumi Jang (the Urdu CPI paper) discuss the international situation and the rising anti-colonial forces in the Middle East and in the Arab world, while also reporting on different marginalized Muslim communities of British India (Baluch, Mopla and Meo). Further, Ashraf in is reports on Muslim League’s politics urged the Party to not only create avenues of dialogue with INC, but to imagine a future Pakistan in which the masses would not be dominated by landowners, industrialists and the merchant class. In an article commemorating one of his mentors, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, he reminds the Muslims of India to follow the Maulana’s path who had led the entire country out of the politics of compromise into an arena of anti-colonial and democratic struggle. However, by late 1946 the CPI had started to change its position on the partition of British India. P.C. Joshi, CPI’s secretary general, in a Party document affirmed the right of self-determination of different nationalities yet put forward the argument of the voluntary association of various autonomous territories rather than Partition as the final goal. It argued that the future Constituent Assembly would bring together delegates of all national units (linguistic, cultural, homogenous territories) that sought to form a single union. To be sure, the CPI was critical of both the Congress and the Muslim League for accepting the partition plan. Eventually although the CPI finally accepted the creation of Pakistan by arguing for the division of the party (in 1948) itself. However, the deep suspicion of Muslim League politics and the agony over British India’s division was the overwhelming sentiment that was shared by most party workers of all religions and ethnicities. §The violence during the partition of British India did not spare the Mewat area. The harmony and co-existence that was the hallmark of the Meo palbandi system was breached during the months of August and September of 1947 when unexpected communal riots broke out. The suspicion by Meo leaders was on the Hindu right-wing. However, initially there was very little violent response by the Meo community, as historically they were not accustomed to fight on religious grounds (Muslims versus Hindus). Within this atmosphere, rumors circulated that Ashraf was organizing Meos to create a “mini-Pakistan” in the Mewat area and mobilising a large group of Muslims in the region. Based on the policy of self-determination based on linguistic and ethnic identities, Ashraf and Syed Mutalabi (now his trusted friend) in 1942 had indeed put forward the idea of a province that included the Mewat and adjoining areas (not dissimilar to the creation of new provinces in post-independence India). Closer to independence this idea included the abolition of the Princely states (especially of Alwar and Bharatpur). The Maharajas of these two states, and their right-wing allies used the idea of the “Pal Province” to instigate communal riots and to break the Hindu-Muslim unity that been guaranteed through ages by the palbandi process; a community consisting of historically mixed religious heritage was being forced to leave. To stop this raging violence Ashraf took help from Gandhi and requested him to travel to the area to curtail the exodus of Meos from their ancestral land (many being driven by the pressures to leave by the Congress leaders in the region). Many Meo victims of the violence were put in camps near Delhi (especially the Sohna Camp) and were forced to leave for Pakistan. Gandhi did visit the Mewat region and appealed to the government to stop the forceful dislocation of the Meo, claiming them to be the backbone of India. Ashraf at this juncture (December 1947) started to edit a daily newspaper, Naya Daur (supported by CPI) whose aim was to fight against the scourge of communal riots engulfing the newly independent state. In his editorials he wrote about the anti-Muslim crimes committed by those linked to the state machinery and demanded that the perpetrators of violence should be brought to justice. The Naya Daur office was itself attacked by a mob in the Darya Ganj area in Delhi and Ashraf and his associates had to be relocated to the Jamia Masjid neighbourhood. In return, Ashraf was accused by the police of instigating communal violence and case was made to arrest Syed Mutalabi and him. It was decided that both travel to Pakistan for some time. By mid-1948, Nehru had decided to crack down on all communist activities and many CPI members, due to the radical leftward shift in CPI politics under the influence of the then secretary general B.T. Ranadive, were in hiding. Despite the partition of British India, the intelligence service (which until recently worked under the same umbrella) shared information about people they deemed dangerous. Hence, Ashraf’s name was sent to the Pakistan intelligence services as someone wanted as member of the Communist Party (he was member of the central committee from 1942-48) and there was also the additional charge of spreading communal violence. §Ashraf had a brief and difficult time when he reached Karachi by ship. He was already not well. Soon after his arrival he was taken into custody by the authorities from a friend’s home (most probably Zakaullah Khan) where he was recuperating, and was detained at Karachi Central Jail. While in prison, his health condition further deteriorated. His then wife, Mary Phyliss Ashraf, who was a lecturer in Allahabad University rushed to Pakistan to assist him. There were two charges against him, first being that he was an Indian and the second that he was a communist. Both charges perhaps could not have held up in court. However, the government of Pakistan only agreed to release Ashraf on the condition that he left the country. At this juncture, the government of India did not give him permission to return. The only option for him was to leave for the UK as a British subject. While in UK his health remained unwell, but he put himself through a gruelling routine of conducting research at the British Library on archives related to his area of expertise, medieval India – especially rare Persian documents. After spending five years in UK (1949-1954), years of extreme economic hardship, he finally returned to India as a British subject with a six-month visa. On arrival he requested Maulana Azad, his mentor and friend, to assist him in staying in India. At the expiry of his visa, no action was taken. Ashraf spent two years in Kashmir working on a state history project of the region and was subsequently appointed as visiting professor of Medieval History at Kirori Mal College at the University of Delhi. In 1960, his contract at Kirori Mal College not renewed, he travelled to Humboldt University in East Berlin to conduct research and take a position as visiting professor of Medieval Indian History. In his late writings, Ashraf reflected on the 1940s and on CPI’s stance on self-determination and the support for Pakistan. He was critical of this earlier position and thought of the division of British India due to the communalist politics propagated by the British. However, he did maintain that to fight colonial imperialism, CPI’s policy (and his own) of bringing Jinnah and Gandhi together and to give due respect to Muslim League’s emerging popularity among Muslims, some concessions had to be given to their demand for a separate region. These reflections aside, due to failing health and his economic circumstances, Ashraf focused on his research and writing in the 1950s. His presidential address to the medieval section of the Indian History Congress in 1960 at Aligarh expanded on his cumulative research of the past decade. Following a materialist perspective, his argument was to question the biases that had crept into the rendition of South Asian history due to, in his words, imperialist scholarship. This dangerous trend had led to “divide and rule” strategies, resulting in divisions and violence in the sub-continent. The task (and responsibility) for him, and other intellectuals, was to formulate an alternative approach to writing history, which nevertheless took the archives and sources seriously (along with the learning of different languages) and to create a new analysis to counter colonial infused scholarship. For example, he took the case of Indian Medieval History, distortions in which were partly to blame, according to Ashraf, for the communal conflicts. This has major echoes for today. Developing on his earlier dissertation work, he basically put forward, in a historical materialist mode, an argument for rethinking the periodisation of Indian history, outside the emphasis laid by the European scholars, and place the Sultanate and Mughal period as a new stage in the development of Indian history. He also wanted scholars to focus on popular movements and peasant revolts during this period; his argument being that we need to see these revolts as a beginning of struggles for social change from below, even though they may have not achieved complete ascendancy. Also read: Why Is History So Controversial in Today’s India? Romila Thapar and Namit Arora ExplainAshraf’s youth and early middle age was dedicated to struggle for the freedom of his country from imperialist yoke and for equal rights and social justice for the masses. He bore all kinds of suffering, deprivations and imprisonment, along with many comrades and fellow activists. However, after the colonial rule ended, Ashraf found himself stateless and exiled in London, without income and with very little social support while his health was failing. Yet he persevered and continued to write and teach in Delhi and then in Berlin. During his time in Germany, he used the opportunity to look at Persian manuscripts at the German State Library and started developing his thesis on the influence of nomadic groups of Central Asia on the development of feudalism in India. For this he also traveled to the Soviet Union, visiting archives in Moscow and at Tashkent. Ashraf’s close relatives were practicing Hindus (including his paternal aunt), who inculcated in him with sense of co-existence among various religions in harmony and mutual respect. He brought his personal history into the realm of his own politics, standing against communal hatred and discrimination at all levels. Even in his own work, as a Marxist historian, he saw the Sultanate and Mughal period as the next stage in the development of Indian society, in continuity with the previous Hindu rulers, whether Guptas or the Rajputs – all part of South Asia’s own deep past and history. Throughout his life, Ashraf fought for the rights of the marginalised, the downtrodden and for minority communities. This continued with his defence of Muslim culture and heritage in post-Independence India. A scholar of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, who wrote poetry, short stories and plays, Ashraf passed away due to a heart attack at the age of 59 in East Berlin on June 7, 1962. He is buried at the Cemetery of the Socialists in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, where he lies with the likes of Rosa Luxemburg and others who fought for democratic rights, against fascism and for socialism. Kamran Asdar Ali teaches anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin.The essay is based on Ashraf’s publications in Urdu and English, the Horst Kruger Archives at ZMO, Berlin and the AICC papers at the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya (Prime Ministers’ Museum), New Delhi.The author wants to thank Alisher Karabeav (ZMO Library, Berlin), Dr. Razak Khan (Freie University, Berlin) and Ananya Iyengar (St. Stephens College, Delhi).