1

WORDS THAT WOUND*: ARCHIVING HATE IN THE MAKING OF HINDU

AND MUSLIM PUBLICS IN BOMBAY

If hate is understood as an operative function that extends outwards, how can it be

recognized in its most simple form? This paper is a preliminary attempt to describe some

of the contours of hate literature by focusing on the discursive relations between Hindus

and Muslims in Mumbai (Bombay until 1994). My argument is that the plots, actions and

narrative situations described in this literature do not remain fixed within the discursive

boundaries of a particular text. Rather, there is a multiplication effect as stories about

these books are carried into conversations, become subjects of political speeches, and are

transformed into political actions of protest and sectarian slogans. This multiplication

forms the bedrock of riot speech and is the linguistic counterpart of practices of violence

between Hindus and Muslims. It is not uncommon to see that even after the events

around the publication of a particular book, exhibition or cartoon have lost their

immediate salience, they can reappear in new contexts. This dispersion and multiplicity,

both spatial and temporal, is characteristic of the hate literature that I examine. What is

marked in this literature is the conflation of the identities of Muslim and Pakistani and the

simultaneous expression of anxieties about nationalism and masculinity.

A second theme of the paper argues that hate literature is anchored to forms of regulation

by the state, which even when remaining religiously neutral has to address the question of

political passions and their potential for creating ‘disorder’. The particular mode by

which the state regulates what it deems as dangerous affect is that of censorship.1 The

* The first part of the title of this paper – Words that Wound – is drawn from an edited book by Mari Matsuda, Richard Delgado et. al.: Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment. That title suggests a combination of linguistic and physical vocabularies, with Matsuda arguing that language parallels the infliction of physical pain and injury. Racial invective, she says, is like receiving a slap in the face. In this paper I track the discursive production of hate between Hindus and Muslims, routed through the censoring authority of the state. The playing out of hate is conditioned by ‘affect’, a term that points us to the conditions of possibility of emotions as much as to their actual expressions. 1 Deleuze and Guattari (1994: 167, 173) separate affect from affections. This separation is the transition from one state to another, discursively from one mode of story telling to

2

multiplicity of hate literature in time and space and its potential to generate passions that

would lead to disorder, means that the state has to use the notion of ‘Emergency Powers’

to suppress any threat to it.2 Here, the act of censorship creates the potential for

generating publics divided along sectarian and eventually national lines – the Muslim-

Pakistani, on the one side and the Hindu nationalist, on the other. In turn, these publics

relate to the state through the notion of an emergency. The typical scenario is that with

the publication of a particular book, picture or cartoon, or the performance of a film or

play, a Hindu or Muslim group organizes around the potential of such publications or

performances, to argue that religious sensibilities have been hurt. The group demands that

state authorities censor the publication or performance. In the process a particular kind of

seeing or viewing public is created, defined primarily through affect. On the face of it, the

laws that curtail hate literature appear to follow its production – this literature is already

offensive and various civil groups appeal to the regulatory agencies of the state. This

appears to be the case of those texts, written in the vernacular, which insert quotations in

English, orienting themselves to the censoring authority of the state. In this sense,

censorship is a way of producing such literature, establishing in advance what will and

will not be acceptable public discourse. For example, when the author of Vishwasghat

inserts quotations in English in a Gujarati text he is writing within a terrain that is

mapped by the laws on censorship. These laws lead to, what Butler calls, a ‘foreclosure’

(1997:138) by which she means that the subject emerges in the circumscribed domain of

the speakable. But how do we explain the address to the state censor? Texts such as

Vishwasghat and Rangila Rasool, pamphlets such as Khooni Cawnpur Uraf Bahadur

another. Transitions involve a ‘bloc of sensations’ (ibid.: 167) that are monumental. The monument does not commemorate the past – as memory or history – but is a present bloc of sensations preserved in fabulation. I look at fabulation, not as providing us with the resources of fantasy, or even the capacity of telling lies, as much as showing us how the discursivity of hate is generated. 2 In colonial India, The Indian Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931 was reformulated with reference to an article published in the Urdu and English newspaper, the Muslim. Clauses (d) and (h) of Section 4(1) of the Act were invoked to show how certain sentences and words were liable to cause injury. See Home Department (Political) File 82/1933. I will discuss the application of colonial law later in the paper.

3

Aurat and the editorials of Samna3 do not cohere with the prefabricated space of law. It is

almost as if they infiltrate the law, mapping in the process the ruses of different interests

and desires. They circulate, overflow and drift over an imposed terrain, even as they use

as their material the vocabularies of established language.

The hate literature that I will be considering is in two parts. The first, dated roughly from

1920-1940 is found in the Maharashtra State archives in Bombay. I will deal with that

literature that came to the gaze of colonial censors.4 The second series of publications that

I read refer to various editorials and articles in the Samna, the mouthpiece of the Shiv

Sena. The Shiv Sena supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray, wrote most of these articles. In

reflecting on the Bombay riots of 1992-93, these pieces were written during the course of

the violence in the city.5 I begin with the articles in the Samna, but before reading them I

suggest that the long history of discursive hatred between Hindus and Muslims in

Bombay has a specific contemporary resonance.

In reading the 1920s together with the 1990s I wish to show that hate literature occurs at

a particular conjuncture in a way that it becomes difficult to separate the two dates. By

this I mean that the force of this literature lies in its ability to break from its immediate

material contexts. In part this literature works through an encoded memory and in part it

depends on a repetition that is linked to injury. For this reason, the two dates – 1920-1940 3 These texts and editorials will be discussed in the course of the paper. Briefly, Vishwasghat (Breach of Faith, 1927) was a text in Gujarati, authored by Harishankar Joshi and was printed in Bombay. Rangila Rasool (Colourful Prophet, 1928) was a text in Marathi, authored by Balwant Kolhatkar. The title evoked the more infamous Rangila Rasool printed in the Punjab in 1924. Khooni Cawnpore Uraf Bahadur Aurat (Bloody Cawmpore Alias Brave Woman, 1927) was published in Lucknow but circulated in Bombay. Its author Ibrahim Abrar often performed portions of the text in public spaces in Bombay. Samna (confrontation) is a daily newspaper written in Marathi and is the mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena, a political party that combines nativism with Hindu nationalism. 4 Several important affective dimensions marked the discourse strategies of this literature. Of these, interweaving the voices of textual authorities and the relaters’ moral agenda affectively charged the recreations of one’s own and others’ writings. 5 The Bombay riots began on 7 December 1992 and continued until the third week of January 1993. For a discussion of this violence see Hanson (2001), Chatterji and Mehta (2007).

4

and 1990s – are a series of interlocking presents and pasts.6 Time here is not a succession

of points on which the various ‘nows’ are invented. We find a circulation between the

past and the present. The Samna articles, written in 1992, drew on the past, but in turn

gave a renewed sense of life to the partition of India in 1947. These articles recreated the

emotive force of the partition by envisioning the Muslim as an illegitimate citizen who

wished to turn Bombay into Pakistan. Not coincidentally, the figure of the traitorous,

oversexed and marauding Muslim was presented in a series of genres in the 1920s,

ranging from scholarly literature to cartoon strips, from popular calendars to picture

postcards. From the writings of various Muslim authors, the Hindu was imaged as effete,

effeminate and sly. Samna induced the imagery of the Muslim in almost mythic terms

and simultaneously tried to recuperate a representation of the Hindu as masculine and

martial. This imagery drew from a vast reservoir of representations of Hindus and

Muslims from at least the 1920s. Read together, we find a ‘discursive contemporaniety’

that highlights the ‘presentness’ of hate.7 In this present, the figure of Pakistan inhabiting

Bombay supplies a rich imagination of an antinational public. Affect here unfolds in its

action upon or through texts that become pregnant with the potential of violence. The

emotions linked to affect are not merely statements of anger, vengeance and hatred. They

are equally about ideals of masculinity and love for the nation.

The Muslim-Pakistani and the Nation in the Samna: An editorial in the Daily Samna

(11 Jan 1993) reflected on the ongoing Bombay riots of 1992-93: The Muslims in Hindustan are behaving as a part of Pakistan. There are two

nations existing in this country…If such orders [of police firing on riotous

crowds] were given on 6 January, then the killing of Hindus in the mini-Pakistan

of Bombay would have been stopped. True rioters and traitors would have been

killed… Our prophecy has come true. A Muslim whichever country he belongs to, 6 Shyrock (1997:280) in his study of how history has been made in the context of segmentary politics in Jordan attempts this task. He shows how a politician, claiming descent from the Prophet, invoked Muhammad’s rise to authority to further his interests and to protect himself from imitation. 7 The phrase is taken from Foucault (1994:89). Here he reads text not so much to establish origins or detail their internal coherence, as to show how authors who talk of the present, belong to it.

5

whichever position he occupies is first a Muslim. Nation is of secondary

importance to him.

This nation had to be reclaimed from the Muslim:

Why is the Sena attacking Muslims?

Thackeray: They are not prepared to accept the rule of this land. They don’t want

to accept birth control. They want to implement the Sharia in my motherland. Yes

this is the Hindu’s motherland. (Interview in Time magazine. 25 January, 1993)

The Samna articles evoked the nation as being corrupted by the polluted Muslim.8 The

address to pollution required not balance or payment or the establishing of harmony, but

cleansing. This cleansing referred of course to the forced, but necessary excision of

Pakistan from inside Bombay. Here, the pair of Muslim and Pakistan stood as an obstacle

in the path of the realization of the nation. The rhetorical figure of the Muslim-Pakistani

became an object of impurity, contaminated with treachery and the worship of an alien

god whose signs of divinity lay not only in its powers to corrupt the nation, but also to

steal and plunder that which it lacked.

8 These articles were written in Marathi. In presenting an English translation I have used reference from the Criminal Writ Petition (No. 465 of 1993, D/-23/26-9-1994. In Criminal Law Journal, 1995: 1316-1331) of Joseph Bain D’Souza and another versus the State of Maharashtra and Others. The petition was filed under sections 153A, 153B in the Bombay High Court presided over by Justices CR Majithia and ML Dudhat. In addition I have looked at the Srikrishna Commission of Enquiry on the Bombay riots and bomb blasts of 1992-93. I also had some of the editorials translated and cross-referenced. In the Bombay High Court the petition was dismissed on the grounds that Bal Thackeray did not mean to offend the entire Muslim community, but only those Muslims who were anti-national. It held that the articles ‘would not fall under the mischief of Ss. 153A and 153B’. Deposing before the Srikrishna Commission in 1994, the additional commissioner of police, Deshmukh said, ‘of a total of 24 cases under Section 153 A, for which Government sanction is needed, filed against Thackeray since 1984, 16 could not be proceeded with as the Government did not grant sanction for prosecution’. In 6 cases sanction was obtained and charge sheets were filed in criminal courts in Bombay, but the state government withdrew these cases on August 28 and October 18 1996. The Deputy Secretary (Home, Special) gave three reasons for the withdrawal: ‘(a) inexpediency of the prosecution for reasons of state; (b) to further broaden public justice and public order; (c) interests of administration of justice would not be served’.

6

Describing its participation in the Bombay riots of 1992-93, an editorial article in the

Samna (January 23, 1993, the birthday of Balasaheb Thackeray) said,

In this war we and our Samna fought like men…Fire flares from every word and

letter. Shiv Sena, Hindutva and Samna together form a triveni sangam (the

confluence of three sacred rivers in Hindu opinion: Ganga, Jamuna and the

mythical Saraswati). We have prepared one generation, a generation on fire.

Samna’s job is to keep it smoldering. The Hindus who woke up on December 6

(the day the Babri Mosque was razed) should not be allowed to become embers

again. We must burn like torches, and in the forest fire that ensues, the traitors

will be burnt to ashes.

The theme of fire as a cleansing ritual found repeated mention in Samna editorials:

The fires in the yagna (sacrifice) are still burning and these fires are being fed by

the bodies of the Hindus…The horizon is clouded by the curses of the dead

children and the youth. The volcano is still erupting lava… Hindutva is like a

flash of lightening and anyone trying to hold it will burn. The fire that this

lightening has caused is something that this country will be indebted to forever…

You have set to fire many pyres of these little children. But do you have the

power to control the embers? (Burning Pyre, Samna 14 January 1993).

These articles generated a type of writing which led into a ritual that epitomized a world

of fantasy. This fantasy had three main themes: the hunt for the Muslim-Pakistani and

revenge against those politicians who pandered to him (specifically Sharad Pawar, then

Minister of Defence in the Central Government and sworn opponent of the Shiv Sena);

the cleansing purity of fire by which Pakistan was to be expelled from Bombay; the

sentimental fecundity of regeneration and rebirth. The coexistence and interaction of

these three themes points to the mythic structure of the Samna articles. The hunt for the

Muslim-Pakistani was instrumental to regeneration and through the use of fire the nation

would acquire the power to bring about a rebirth. But why should expiation have been a

necessary condition to bring about a second birth? An editorial written a day before the

demolition of the Babri mosque said, ‘They (Muslims) behave as if Babur was the father

7

of the country…who is this minority community? The Muslim traitors who have

partitioned this country and have not even allowed us to breathe ever since then’

(‘Towards Ayodhaya’, 5 December 1992). The Shiv Sainik was urged to march to

Ayodhaya to fight the traitor since the existence of the country was in peril. The fight was

about ‘those extinguished lamps of our culture that we wish to rekindle’. In this fight,

‘the Sariyu River had once turned red with the blood of the Ram Bhakts (disciples of the

God Ram) and it is going to happen again with the blood of the Kar Sevaks (religious

work as worship). Prepare for this martyrdom for the sake of the future of the country’

(ibid.).

Two days after the Babri mosque was demolished and when Bombay was wracked by

communal violence, the Samna in an editorial, ‘Crush the Traitors’ (Samna 8 December

1992), said,

Muslims must draw a lesson from the demolition, and stop the poison spewing

from them for the non-existent Babri. Otherwise they will meet the same fate as

Babri domes … Masjids have become the storehouses of illegal arms…Those

Muslims who criticize the demolition should not stay here for a second. Those

Muslims who come out on the roads, destroy temples … are traitors. There is no

option but to crush them with whatever weapons we can lay hands on.

A day later (Samna, 9 December 1992), after the arrests of Mr. L.K. Advani and Mr.

Ashok Singhal,9 an editorial called ‘Stay Awake’, opined,

By arresting the commanders the battle begun at Ayodhaya’s Kurukshetra will not

stop… Narasimha Rao (then Prime Minister of India) expressed regret over the

demolition of the Babri Masjid. Not a word was said about the hundreds of

temples destroyed by Muslims. Is this a nation or a musafirkhana (wayside inn)?

Streams of treason and poison have been flowing through the mohallas

(neighborhoods) of this country. These mohallas are inhabited by fanatical

Muslims, they are loyal to Pakistan. Riots break out whenever Muslims dominate.

They stop once they begin to get beaten. The same thing is happening today. 9 Mr. Advani and Mr. Singhal are members of Hindu organizations. After the destruction of the Babri mosque they were placed under arrest for criminal conspiracy.

8

Pakistan has manufactured seven bombs. But the bomb made in Hindustan with

Pakistan’s blessings is more dangerous. Now Pakistan need not cross the borders

to attack India. 25 crore Muslims loyal to Pakistan will stage an insurrection. This

is one of the 7 bombs Pakistan has placed in Hindustan. Hindus, this is your last

chance. This is your nation. Armed Muslims and police can’t injure your religion.

These articles implied a process of disavowal and inversion. Disavowal here was a

radical contest of the nation and the possibility of a new horizon that opened up in its

place. Disavowal may be plotted in three steps - the Muslim-Pakistani was polluted and

inside Bombay10; the Shiv Sainik was the cleansing agent11; cleansing secured an ideal

that was suspended in fantasy.12 But what we also find here is a curious inversion. Far

from suggesting that the Shiv Sainik had corrupted the nation, it was the nation itself,

embodied in the figure of law, that needed to atone for its vice of harboring the Muslim-

Pakistani.

It is not in the hands of the Court to decide whether the land in Ayodhaya had a

temple first or a masjid according to Clause 143 of the Constitution…(Nani

Palkhiwala, an eminent lawyer and Constitutional expert) says that the Supreme

Court is not equipped to make this decision in terms of experience or

knowledge…Issues that need to be solved with the help of history are never

10 ‘The areas like Bhendi Bazar, Null Bazar, Dongri, Pydhonie and Mahim Dargah, which we refer to as mini-Pakistan, were the same areas where these terrorists and rioters bared their weapons…If the army had conducted surprise raids in these mini-Pakistanis they would have discovered the large cachet of arms that has come into the country from Pakistan and Bangladesh’ (Samna, ‘Situation is Normal’ 8 January 1993). 11 ‘When the Shiv Sainik reaches the battlefield (Ayodhaya) with this fervor even the staunchest opponent of the temple will quake with fear. He wasn’t born to only sing ‘bhajans’ and ‘kirtans’ (hymns and religious songs). The Shiv Sainik will be honoured in Ayodhaya…His experience on the battlefield will only lend to this dharma yudh (holy war) (Samna, ‘Toward Ayodhaya’ 5 December 1992). 12 ‘The erection of the Ram Mandir (temple) is equivalent to the upliftment of the country. This temple in Ayodhaya is a symbol of loyalty and Hindutva. The citizen is now faced with the question as to whether he wants the country to be associated with Sri Ram or with the marauder Babur. The Karseva which commences with the erection of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhaya on 6 December is of utmost importance. It is the fight which will determine the future because not only is the safety of the country in peril but her very existence’ Samna, ‘Toward Ayodhaya’, 5 December 1992).

9

solved by a Supreme Court…The responsibility of passing a judgment on the

opinions of the citizens, their faith, history or matter related to the Puranic age

cannot be placed with the government (‘A Handful of Faith’, Samna 1 January

1993).

The function of these types of writings was not to so much to describe the condition of

the nation as to arrive at another conception of the nation that was capable of containing

the violence and excesses of the former. In this second nation the movement would be

from the histories of law to the imagined communities of Hindu warriors incarnated in

the Shiv Sena, from transience to permanence, strangeness to familiarity. This movement

was plotted in two distinct ways. First, the genealogy of this nation was most powerful

when formulated as an inner lineage in which the Hindu was placed outside the norms of

historical evidence and against written law. The inversion placed the Muslim-Pakistani –

the foreigner, the alien – within the Constitution and he was imaged through a form of

words that drew him as evil, unclean, terrorist, murderer and inside the nation. In

rhetorical terms, the image of the Muslim-Pakistani was contrasted to the Shiv Sainik (as

synecdoche of the Hindu). In the time of the riots, the Shiv Sainik could not avoid the

implication of an outside space (Pakistan) that was disordered, seditious and corrupting.

The problem was that this external space was folded into Bombay and its inhabitants used

the law of the courts where the law of the Hindu nation should have taken place.13 In a

second move, the Samna articles made obvious reference to a territorial dispute (the

temple in Ayodhaya, certain neighborhoods in Bombay as being the territory of

Pakistan), but the image of Pakistan also acted as a mirror in which was reflected the

13 The insistence of Pakistan in Bombay was an uncanny presence in the colonial archive. Reflecting on a speech delivered by Sir Currimbhoy at Kesarbagh on the occasion of the observance of Pakistan Day the Matrubhumi (27 March 1941) said, ‘The dreams entertained by Sir Currimbhoy are … to become a king… having suzerainty over Hindus – twenty two crores of Hindus in India. A person like Sir Currimbhoy who is indifferent to the world may not perhaps be aware of the fact that the downfall of the [Mughal] Empire, based on the foundations of treachery and fraud, was brought about by the puff of a brave person like Shivaji who was known to be a Hindu, but the world is fully conversant with the same (Home Dept. (special). File 844-L1-VIII (3). 1941).

10

possibility of a nation state conceived around a Hindu national belonging and

temporality.

In a direct way the Samna editorials were concerned with the demolition of the Babri

mosque, the reinvigoration of the Hindu nation and the casting of the Muslim (usually

male) as foreign to it. But if we focus on the affect that characterized them, it is possible

to argue that these writings functioned as a palimpsest to the extent that they participated

in different yet overlapping discursive registers. The first register named the Muslim as

an object of hate; second, hate was mimetically represented through the figure of Pakistan

and linked to revenge; third, the writings intersected with state law and demanded

retribution; fourth, these writings were not the fevered imagination of a single author, but

were and are part of a moralizing discourse by which Hindus and Muslims have been

able to cast the other as the enemy. I turn now to discussing the various ways in which

the enemy was materialized. I do this by examining how the colonial censors referenced

records of hate and established procedures to deal with them.

Archiving Hate: The archive in which hate literature is found was both the constitutive

content and physical presence of law. As content, the law on hate productions spanned a

wide spectrum – Section 9 of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867; Section

99A, 153A, 153B of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898; the Seditious Meetings Act,

1907; the Indian Press Act, 1910; Clause (h) Section 4 (1) of the Indian Press

(Emergency Powers) Act, 1931; Sub-rule (1) of rule 56 of Defence of India Rules.14 As

the place of law, the archive collected and classified an equally impressive range of

documents – Muride Shaitan and the Sword and the Quran, books in Gujarati by Narayan

Vasanji Thakkar (1928, Gujarati News Printing Press, Bombay); Rangila Rasul, a book

in Marathi by Achut Balwant Kolhatkar (1929, Dandekar Brothers, Bombay);

Aryasamskriticha Utkarshapakarsha, a book in Marathi by Mahadevshasttri Divekar

(1940, Lokasangraha Press, Poona); an illustrated Marathi comic of 1922 published at

14 There were other laws that were deployed to regulate hate productions. My concern is not so much to provide a straight narrative of such laws as to see them in their relationship to affect.

11

Sarasvati Mudranalaya, Bombay; Radd-e-Hindu, a book in Urdu written in Gujarati

characters (1927, Husain Mirza, Bombay), an Urdu pamphlet, Khooni Cawnpore Uraf

Bahadur Aurat, written by Muhammad Ibrahim Abrar (1927), published in Lucknow but

with a circulation in Bombay. In addition, songs, poems, picture postcards and a vast

number of newspaper articles fell within the space of regulation.15 In this rule the archive

functioned as the provider and preserver of its own subject matter. Consequently, the

archive was the locus from where power is exercised.

The archive was also the public depository of normative laws, showing features of a

public and private face. Issues connected with the enforcement of various laws were

interspersed with documents that were marked confidential. The latter were characterized

by in-house debates on whether a particular publication, or public meeting, was

objectionable and the feasibility of applying relevant laws. Four different institutions of

the colonial government were involved in this exercise and there seemed to be set

patterns on how particular publications, especially those written in the vernacular, could

come up for review. Typically, the office of the Commissioner of Police would receive a

written complaint by a civic association composed of either Hindus or Muslims,

objecting to a particular publication. The publication was then sent to the office of the

Oriental Translator to the Government for its precise rendition into English.

Occasionally, more than one translation was provided. The Remembrancer of Legal

Affairs, who suggested the application of relevant laws, commented upon the relevant

translation. The judicial department, in consultation with the Chief Secretary (Home,

Special) debated the laws and if necessary the opinion of the Advocate General was

solicited. In case the publication was banned the Government issued a formal notification

and authorized the Commissioner of Police to take necessary action, such as enforcing a

financial penalty or arresting the offender.16 This pattern suggests that archivization

15 This list is just a sample. There were many more publications. 16 Colonial censors were efficiently active in proscribing a sea of publications. A Judicial Department file (1546/1912) listed the publications, some two hundred in all that were proscribed under the Indian Press Act 1910. The list was completed till the end of May, 1912. The file mentioned the name of the publication, the province(s) where proscribed and the particulars of each writing These publications included mela (festival) songs,

12

produced as much as it recorded the event. By this I mean that while particular

publications were removed from circulation, they were preserved for matters of

governance. In this sense, the archive could never be a closed structure. It opened out to

the future.

We see this opening out most clearly in the case of the Samna articles and their review in

the Bombay High Court under Sections 153A and 153B.17 It is not merely that these

articles were subject to the application of identical laws (Sections 153A, 153B), but that

they also based themselves on a view that publics were to be understood as bundles of

affect. Archival power, it is true, points us to the sovereignty of the state, but only as a

terminal form.18 It also shows how, in regulating hate productions, power relations and

strategies were formed in the interplay of different institutions. In colonial India the

regulation of hate speech flowed from itemizing and preserving subversive documents by

comparison and contrasts, while in the case of the Samna articles, the system of

classification was utilized as an increasingly flexible system of control, in which the

meaning of particular documents was determined with utilitarian ends. In altering

taxonomic categories, legal judgments in the case of the Samna articles reasserted the

omniscience of colonial law (such as 99A, 153A and B). In both Indias public documents

dealing with the regulation of hate allow us to plot the sources of its teleology in the

expressed motives of communalists, colonial bureaucrats and others.

ballads, journals such as Bande Mataram, Indian Sociologist (the latter prohibited under the Sea Custom’s Act, 1907) and photographs. A curious case was a photograph entitled ‘Rashtra Purusha (National Heroes)’, published in Nasik by S.D. Mohan Singh, whose name figured at the base of the photograph as ‘Devi Singh Mohan Singh, Bidiseller’. From this cornucopia I will abstract those publications that deal with hate between Hindus and Muslims. 17 Earlier, in 1968 and 1982 the Bombay High Court adjudicated on similar hate productions and banned them under Sections 99A and 153A. 18 Ann Stoler, for example, argues that colonial archives are monuments of power, based on systems of exclusion and silence and colonial documents, reflecting the supremacy of reason, are able to achieve concordance between competing native accounts. In this way, too, the colonial archive reproduces the power of the state (Stoler 2002:97), just as it is its prime technology of rule.

13

Intemperate Publics and Communal Animosities: Given that hate literature is located

within the archive, in what ways was it framed by colonial administrators? Colonial

administrators explained Hindu-Muslim relations through the concept of communalism.

Early 20th century communalism, in their opinion, was informed by the

shuddhi/sangathan (purity/unity) movement, on the one side, and tabligh/tanzim

(preaching/community), on the other. On this opinion there is a remarkable convergence

between colonial administrators and historians of India.19 This communalism lead to the

partition of 1947 and subsequent violence between Hindus and Muslims has been traced

to this defining concept.

From the colonial administrator’s point of view the one influential tract that invigorated

the shuddhi/sangathan movement was Swami Shraddhanand’s Hindu Sangathan –

Saviour of the Dying Race (1926). This tract led to a spate of publications that

crystallized the divide between Hindus and Muslims, but also provoked a series of

interventions by the colonial state in prohibiting them. To counter Hindu extinction

Shraddhanand proposed sangathan as a way of revitalizing Hindu society. Sangathan

aimed to reclaim half-converted Hindus and any Muslims to the Hindu fold and to harden

the Hindu for militant action by drill and physical culture (Hardy 1972:208). For

Shraddhanand, the present tyranny of Brahminist orthodoxy was aided by violent

conversions practiced by Muslim conquerors and Christian missionaries (Bhatt: 64).

Whatever the larger political implications of Hindu sangathan,20 this text more than any

other, provided grist for the hate mill. In its evocation of the grandeur of Aryan

civilization it allowed various authors (Hindus and Muslims) to break the opposition of

real time and deferred time, actuality and simulation, the living and the non-living.

19 See Chetan Bhatt (2001), Ayesha Jalal (2001), Sanjay Joshi (2001), Lise McKean (1996), Sumit Sarkar (2002). The list is not exhaustive. It would require a separate paper to elaborate the content of this communalism. Here I will indicate some of its features as they refer to the Bombay Presidency and as they appear in official colonial documents. 20 The yoking of the discourse of nationalism and demography, of biopolitics and cultural revival, are the obvious political fallouts. From a different view, if this text has a future it is not only because it promised a renewed life, but because its messianic thrust shows the power of the virtual.

14

The Hindu conversion movement led to a Muslim response. By 1923 Saifuddin Kitchlew,

a Muslim congressman from the Punjab, established the Jamiat-i-Tanzim. Initially

intended to serve as a vehicle for Muslim participation in the nationalist movement, the

tanzim played a prominent part in arguing for separate electorates and ensuring provincial

dominance of Muslims in Punjab. The tanzim advocated the material advancement of

Muslims by establishing Muslim banks and credit societies. Its main thrust, however, was

a call to faith and the forced conversion of Hindus. Both the colonial state and various

publications took the shuddhi and tanzim movements as their backdrop.

A booklet – Hindu-Moslem Tension - prepared in 1928 by the administration21 discussed

five causes for the antagonism between Hindus and Muslims in the Presidency: appeals

to fanaticism; the shuddhi and sangathan movements and the Muslim riposte in tabligh

and tanzim; incidents such as the ‘Rangila Rasool’ case in other parts of India; the growth

of education among Muslims; the demand for a share of appointment in public services.

Of these, the appeals to fanaticism and the shuddhi/sangathan movements were the most

important. ‘The object of sangathan is the consolidation and defence of the Hindus, while

tanzim includes similar objectives on behalf of Muhammadanism’ (ibid.:2). Much of the

activity of conversion occurred in tandem with the publication of various articles in the

Press, pamphlets and books.

To curb the menace of fanaticism, the government in 1924 issued a general warning

against ‘intemperate writings and speeches tending to inflame communal animosities’

(ibid.:13). In September 1924 the government passed a new section – 295-A, Indian

Penal Code. In the same year ten warnings were administered to ‘editors, printers and

publishers in respect of scurrilous articles and pamphlets inciting communal hatred; five

such warnings [are] administered in 1925, and twelve in 1926’ (ibid.:1). Furthermore,

‘the public is warned that while the Governor in Council does not wish to interfere in any

way with reasoned discussion, he will be compelled if the campaign [of scurrilous

writing] does not cease forthwith to use all the powers vested in him by law to guard the

feelings and religious susceptibilities of all sections of the public of the Presidency’ 21 See Home Department (Political), File S257/1928

15

(ibid.). A Press note of 1924 marked out, if not defined, the field of hate literature: ‘…the

Governor in Council cannot neglect the possibility that a campaign of wild accusations,

of vulgar and even obscene abuse and of incitement to meet force with force may lead to

outbreaks of bloodshed and murder such as have occurred in other parts of India.. A

perusal of these articles and pamphlets leads to only one conclusion, that the writers are

deliberately and in full consciousness of what they are doing endeavoring to stir up

religious hatred between the two great communities of India.’22 It may be that the

category of hate literature was an empty one, to be made over in the colonialist image of

itself as standing above native society. If this image was transported through the

procedures of colonial governmentality, it was equally part of a discourse on the principle

of rational communication as the basis of organizing a polity. The Press note yoked

together colonial governmentality and the rational principles of consensual discourse.

Sometimes emergency provisions were invoked to ban particular publications. This ban

created a boundary of law, an inside and outside, in declaring a state of exception. In this

connection section, 295A, Indian Penal code strengthened the government’s hands and

temporarily ended writings and speeches of a ‘more scurrilous nature’ (ibid.: 13). While

local officers were urged to uphold customary and common law rights regarding disputes

between Hindus and Muslims, taking into consideration local custom and sentiment,

sometimes these rights were suspended by orders under the emergency powers. The net

affect was the formulation of the Indian Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931 and an

extended debate on a proposed legislation to secure reports of speeches delivered at

public meetings held on private premises and the employing of the provisions of the

Seditious Meeting Act, 1911. The force of such laws and the Press note cited above

constituted the teleological conclusion of hate literature as understood in the colonial

archive.

By 1928, the law on hate speech was crystallized further. This law followed from the

appellate judgment passed by the High Court of Lahore in what is known as the Rangila

22 In Home Dept. (Pol.) 1928/84. Statutory Commission – A note on the Press, Newspapers and Books and Periodicals.

16

Rasool case.23 Rangila Rasool was the title of a satirical pamphlet written in 1924

containing derogatory references to Islam and commenting at length on the sexual life of

the Prophet. The publisher was prosecuted under Section 153A, Indian Penal Code and

convicted by the Sessions court, Lahore in 1924. The case came up for revision before

Justice Dilip Singh of the Lahore High Court, who held that though the pamphlet was

intentionally offensive and wounding to the religious feelings of Muslims, Section 153A

could not stop polemics against deceased religious leaders. Nor would the pamphlet

necessarily promote feelings of enmity and hatred between Hindus and Muslims. In

September 1927, one Alam Din fatally stabbed Rajpal, the author of Rangila Rasool.24 In

1928, the Dandekar Brothers Publishing House in Bombay printed a book written by

Balwant Kolhatkar entitled Rangila Rasool. Following a series of complaints by Muslim

civic associations in the Presidency the book came up before colonial censors.

The Oriental Translator to the Government mentioned that the Marathi Rangila Rasool

was about the life of the Hindu God Krishna and had no references to Islam. It was a

playful, even well written text, but the use of the term ‘Rasool’ for Krishna could not be

sustained. Accordingly, the colonial state asked the author and the publisher to remove

the word ‘Rasool’ from wherever it appeared in the text. After lengthy legal petitions,

Kolhatkar was forced to withdraw the book from circulation. The reason provided by the

Advocate General was that certain words carried with them the power to wound. The use

of the term ‘Rasool, given its troubled history, was one such. We might say that for the

Advocate General the saying of the word was the doing of an insult. These sorts of terms 23 In Home Department (Special) 1893-60, J-58, 143 K (b). 1928 24 Following the Rangila Rasool case judgment, a range of articles, particularly in the Punjab, attacked and vilified Prophet Muhammad. An Arya Samaj magazine of Amritsar, the Risala Vartman published an article ‘A Trip to Hell’ which depicted Muhammad with his wives suffering the ‘tortures of the damned’. The Punjab Government prosecuted the author under Section 153 A IPC (Home Special 1893-60: Rangila Rasul, Excerpt of Report prepared by the Indian Statutory Commission on Hindu-Muslim Relations). About the same time, Justice Dalal of the Allahabad High Court in a case similar to the Rangila Rasool, known as the Vichatar Jiwan Case, provided an entirely different ruling from that of Justice Dilip Singh. He was not prepared to make the ‘nice distinction’ between a book that may hurt the feelings of Muslims and one that may cause feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes of His Majesty’s Subjects (Home Department (Special) 1893-60, J-58, 143 K(b). 1928).

17

were to be proscribed under Section 153A and B, Indian Penal Code. Put in another way,

words that led to consequential nonverbal acts were not in themselves harmful, but those

that carried insult in a way that the audience understood carried the burden of hate

literature.

Masculinity, Women and Ressentiment: I have suggested that the colonial category of

hate has much more contemporary salience than simply enhancing our understanding of

colonial situations. As a circuit of ideas on and about particular groups of people, hate

literature steps across various boundaries – of religion, masculinity and the nation and

puts them together through a series of affects. I will briefly outline some of the themes

involved in this circuitry.

Vishwasghat (Breach of Faith, 1927), a text in Gujarati, authored by Harishankar Joshi of

Surat and printed at the Bharat Printing Press in Bombay was twice translated into

English by the Oriental Translator to the colonial Government and came up for

proscription. The text argued that Muslims had committed a ‘breach of faith’ against

Hindus in particular and the world at large. But the really objectionable and troubling

passages for the censors were the quotations in English. Invoking Washington Irving’s

Life of Mohammed, the text quoted, ’The moment Mohammed proclaimed the religion of

the sword, and gave the predatory Arabs a taste of foreign plunder, the moment he was

launched in a career of conquest, which carried him forward with its own irresistible

impulse’ (pp. 19-20).25 Likewise Elphinston’s History of India was summoned to say,

‘Such was the nation that gave birth to the false Prophet whose doctrines have so long

and so powerfully influenced a vast portion of the human race. But whatever may have

been the reality of his zeal and even the spirit of his doctrines, the spirit of intolerance in

25 The book circulated in Bombay and came to the notice of colonial censors after the Young Muslim Association of Bombay objected to its contents. Objections were also raised by the Momin Anjuman-e-Islam (The Society of Believers) of Surat and Bombay, the Naarae-Tawhid, the Hamdard (2 August 1929), Insaf (2 August 1929), Din (5 August 1929) Urdu newspapers with a circulation in Ahmedabad and Bombay and the issue was raised in the Legislative Council of Bombay Presidency by Khan Saheb A.M. Mansuri, a councilor representing Ahmedabad and Surat cities. See Home Department (Political). File 64/ 1928-29.

18

which it was preached, and the bigotry and bloodshed which it engendered and

perpetuated must place its author among the worst enemies of mankind’ (pp. 24-25).

From here Vishwasghat considered Mohammed’s overriding sexual appetite and again

used Washington Irving to establish its argument. Its author Harishankar Joshi yoked this

desire – to kill ‘kaffirs’, to demolish their temples, to burn books, to utilize their women –

to his sense of moral outrage. Vishwasghat was proscribed in Baroda state, but the

Presidency could not find ‘sufficient grounds’ for banning the book. In quoting western

writers on Islam and linking their opinions to his sense of propriety, Joshi shows to us the

heteroglossic character of hate discourse.

In 1927, the year when Vishwasghat was published, various booklets written by Muslim

authors came to the notice of the colonial censor. The Mazhab-ka-Danka (the Drum of

Faith), published by Nur Mohammad Usman of Pydhonie, Bombay, was an Urdu poem

written in Gujarati characters.26 Like Vishwasghat it used religious imagery in mobilizing

hatred.

I declare that the Swami [Shraddhanand] is dead and gone; and let us show you

where he is lodged at present. A person who meets his death without reciting the

Kaleema can never enter Paradise.

Since the time the infidels have made hell their home, the Aryas have begun

frequenting that place. O God! Let the Arya soldiers reach there as early as

possible, (for) their command (i.e. Shraddhanand) has already left…

We shall make them recite the Kaleema of the faith of the Prophet, and shall

convert the Aryas into Muhammadans.

Together, Vishwasghat and Mazhab Ka Danka seemed to be texts full of history and

emotional intensity. In this they bear an uncanny similarity with the Samna articles. For

the censors, terms such as ‘infidel’, ‘hell’, ‘sexual appetite’, created possibilities for

intense affects. It was to the historico-religious dimension, to grand themes, that these

authors invested their affects – something as large as the motherland had to be at stake,

and their preoccupation with iconic figures, Muhammad, Shraddhanand, Shivaji and 26 See Home Department (Political). File 42/1928

19

others, implied the negation of the small, the close-at-hand. This was clearly marked in a

Marathi leaflet published in Bombay and Poona on 2 August 1927.27 The first two lines

were a refrain:

Come taking the ochre colored Bhagwa Zenda (flag)

Let us lower the pride of the landa (circumcised)

We shall change the circumcised Jackal

We shall plant the zenda on Delhi

Alas Brothers what is this state of ours

The country is calling out

Loving brothers I pray at your feet.

Take up the stone, let us lower the pride of the landa…

Of which whore is he born, unexpectedly of black family…

You vile sala, you Delhiwala, O goat with beard,

Khwaja Nizami, Hasan harami28

You will lose your nose and mouth…

Repeat the words, O brave Shivaji Maharaj, may I always get to your feet. Shri

Shiva the simple.

Take the ochre colored banner on your head; if not we will lower your pride.

Three days later (5 August 1927), the Khabardar, a Marathi weekly with a circulation in

Bombay and Karad, published the following:

Safa Maidan Kardenge (We Will Clear the Ground)

No tyrant can harm even our hair. Whoever raises his hand against us we shall

make him lifeless. Taking the name of Ali we shall upset the table of infidelity

(Kufr) and will make the enemy of our religion a man of faith. Do not fight us, O

bania. Let us marry your daughters; we will keep them in our harems. (Home

Department (Political). File 260/ 1927.

27 In Home Department (Political). File 297/ 1927 28 The reference was to Khwaja Hasan Nizami, the priest of the Nizamuddin mosque in Delhi. He was particularly active in petitioning colonial authorities on hate literature.

20

Common to these quotes was a strong undercurrent of sexuality. It seemed to be the way

of men to keep silent about their private women in their public writings. Instead, the

enemy was made feminine, or at any rate emasculated. The complex of the women struck

a sensitive note in both Hindu and Muslim authors. At stake was the purity and integrity

of his woman (sister, wife, mother, motherland). We are confronted with a remarkable

phenomenon here. In their comments about women and prostitutes in particular, Hindu

and Muslim male writers were able to find some common ground. Their shared

‘maleness’ seemed to be the soundest basis for overcoming otherwise unbridgeable

religious and political differences.

A Home Department File of 1928 showed how the motif of the prostitute occurred in the

Press. An anonymous contribution headed, ‘Brothels of Two Musalmans of Karhad’ (25

May 1928) appeared in the Savadhan, a Marathi weekly published in Bombay and Satara

District.29 The File attached accompanying comments by an anonymous correspondent

under the pseudonym ‘Shaikh Chilli’, published in the Musalman and Khabardar (7 and

8 June 1928) Urdu newspapers with a circulation in Bombay. In the Savadhan the

‘Karhadkar’ wrote, ‘Just as several padris (Christian priests) use young girls as baits

because young Hindus do not formerly get converted merely by means of lies, a similar

attempt is being made by some idiotic Muslims in the Satara District…These persons on

seeing some young, handsome and rich Hindu, unscrupulously ask him to win their

daughters!.. But what is that to these bastards? All that they care for is that a Hindu

should embrace Islam!’ The response in the Musalman and Khabardar, swift and brutal,

said,

I understand from a Brahmin informant that the Brahmin community is now going

to get merged into Brahma by remaining bachelors. That will leave Brahmin girls

on hand, they too will undertake ashuddhi (impurity). These goods will specially

fall to the share of Christians and Muslims alone and the holy conch of those

marriages will be blown through the two brothels, Sangram and Savadhan… O

young Musalmans, this is a grand occasion for you, instead of for priests and the

barbers. Take off, therefore, your trousers and go on (ibid.). 29 In Home Department (Political). File 219/1928

21

In the attempt to construct masculinity by asserting religious community, both Hindus

and Muslims imagined the other religion’s woman as sexually available or worthy of

domesticating. Mazhab ka Danka (Drum of Faith,) contained a number of poems that

came to the notice of colonial censors.30 Poem IV developed on this theme of the Hindu

woman:

The fairy-faced sweethearts are not controlled by you; and when you make us

apostates, there is something held in view by you…

If you have got any barren sweetheart in your mind, then send her to the stud of

the Musalmans.

By our Islamism we shall certainly produce a son; and we shall show that even

dried up branches can fructify.

Much the same view of women appeared in serious literature. In 1916 the Maharashtra

Jnanakosha Mandal commissioned Dr. Shridhar Katkar to write a Marathi

Encyclopaedia. The work, all of 18 volumes was completed by 1928. Under Muhammad

Katkar said, ‘the Prophet of Islam permitted his followers to marry more wives than one

and to indulge in prostitution to their heart’s content. Muslims are clearly ordered in the

Quran to fight with non-Muslims without showing them the least kindness and mercy

until they embrace Islam. Yet the Arab woman is something gentle and wild, destructive

and merciful, a flower, a witch, a bronze goddess. She must be rescued from Islam’. The

Arab woman here was plastered over with patriarchal fantasies, providing the raw

material for a better society of the future.31

If Hindu and Muslim authors were united in their view of women, they also expressed a

common ressentiment. Ressentiment here was not simply the moralizing revenge of the

weak as weak., but was a reaction in the face of a hostile external world. This reaction

was both gendered and uttered in the mode of a lament. Khooni Cawnpore Uraf Bahadur

30 Home Department (Political). File 42/1928. 31 The Encyclopaedia invited the attention of a number of Muslim civic associations. In response, Shridhar Katkar said that his views of Muhammad were based on the account of a Western expert, Prof. Margoliouth and since these comments were untrustworthy, future editions of the Encyclopaedia would withdraw the comments (Home Department (Political), File 114/1926).

22

Aurat (Bloody Cawnpore Alias Brave Woman, 1927) was a 28-page story of a pious,

beautiful girl, called Jamila, who was an accomplished swordswoman.32 During riots in

the city of Kanpur her three older brothers and father were killed in the marketplace. A

group of Hindus entered her house and killed her mother and youngest brother. The text

highlights the conversation between Jamila and the Hindus:

Jamila: Beware you impotent cowards. Do not step forward. Let me with my

sword first cut this lathi (wooden stick), which has sucked the blood of my

innocent mother.

A Scoundrel: We do not wish to kill you. You are exceedingly beautiful and

hence you should become a Hindu and live a life of luxury…

Jamila: Come in front of me so that I may teach you about the holy formula (‘God

is One’) of Islam and that you may be able to see the manifestation of God.

After chanting the takbir (Allah-o-Akbar – God is Great) Jamila took revenge by killing

the Hindus. Armed with her sword, called Zulfiqar (the name of the sword of Ali) she left

her house and walked to the mosque that was being destroyed. Jamila entered the

mosque, killed all the Hindus, found her dead family members and buried them. In her

journey from her house to the mosque she removed her veil, walked upright and looked

the attackers in the eye. The front cover of the text carried an image of Jamila, an image

that was drawn from a combination of symbols of Hindu Goddesses in this case Durga

and Kali (see Figure 1). Here, Jamila was dressed in a sari, her hair was not knotted. In

one hand she carried the head of a male, while the other held a sword. Eventually,

overcome with fatigue Jamila was martyred in the mosque. Before dying she raised her

hands in prayer and said, ‘O God, I am anyhow grateful to you. How could I arrange for

the burial of my aged mother and innocent brother? Of course I am grateful to you that

you have consumed them in fire’. Ressentiment in the text was accompanied by two

competing ideas of violence. The first, the descriptive account, represented the personal

element – it directed and described the personal violence of the attacker as sadist as well

as his individual tastes; the second account (of Jamila taking revenge) represented the

impersonal element, identifying violence with reason, with a terrifying demonstration,

capable of subordinating the first account. In this second account we are no longer in the 32 In Home Department (Political). File 130/1931

23

presence of the torturer, catching hold of Jamila and enjoying her. It is almost as if we are

dealing with Jamila in search of a torturer, establishing a contractual relationship with

him. If the first violence was a kind of possession, the second was an alliance. Common

to both of them was the idea of retribution.

Figure 1

Khooni Cawnpore Uraf Bahadur Aurat

The theme of the woman becoming masculine and fighting criminals was echoed in a

number of pamphlets that appeared in Bombay – both Hindu and Muslim women were

urged to take to weapons to protect their honor, to fight the enemy, but also their inherent

weak nature. This revenge could be achieved only if women become men. Ressentiment

was part of this picture to the extent that in these stories the spirit of vengeance survived

24

the impact of a greater and more real violence. Ressentiment was a left over of the

violence and the pamphlets suggested that women must be the bearers of ressentiment.

Also, ressentiment flourished in a world where real vengeance would be enacted by men.

From reading these stories together it is possible to show that ressentiment functioned as

an underlying affective unit that colored intentionality. Initially we find a desire for the

values that were possessed by others and as borne by certain goods. Second, there was a

sense of inadequacy in attaining what was so deeply desired. Feelings of hatred and

revenge, anger, rage and spite were expressed. Third, ideas of injustice and envy took

root. Fourth, the sense of injustice combined with a persistent but thwarted desire due to

weakness and finitude made one angry. Fifth, combined with a hatred for the bearer of

such values a sense of superiority was expressed. This sense of superiority led to a

devaluation of the values that one desired and enhanced a sense of self-worth. The person

of ressentiment relived the desires and feelings that began and ended with self-worth.

Mazhab ka Danka and Khooni Cawnpore explicitly expressed this sense of superiority.

Underlying the feeling of ressentiment was a fear and hatred of the enemy, one who had

been cast through religious symbols.33 For Hindu authors, subjection was found in the

combination of religion and terror. A case in point was a collection of songs called Anath

Bhajnavali (Hymns of the Orphans) published in Gujarati in 1911 that came up before

colonial censors. The songs appealed to rich Hindus to help the Nadiad orphanage. In

song 20 the orphans were made to say: ‘Our parents who cherished us are no more, and

have left us to the wicked butcher. Famine, his representatives, Christians and Moslems

has got to our necks’34. Similarly, song 33 said: ‘To eat us alive the Quran and the Bible

are hissing; to drink our blood famine and plague are gnashing their teeth’ (ibid.). The

past greatness and prosperity of India were invoked: ‘Great kings used to fall at the feet

of Brahmin sages, but we their progeny are in great distress…Their ancestors were

33 In his discussion of the theological enemy, Anidjar (2003:7) says that the foe is marked by a double genitive: he might be one who actively hates God, or he might be one who is subjected to God’s hate. The ambivalence between these two meanings leads to the permanent possibility of war between God and a part of humanity and links the issue of war and enmity to law and subjection (ibid.). 34 Judicial Department 1909-1920, File 234/1930.

25

Kshatriya heroes, rulers of great states but alas! Their progeny are seen going helplessly

from place to place’ (ibid.).

The Home Department considered closing the Printing Press that published Anath

Bhajnavali under Sections 124 A and 152 A of the Indian Penal Code, sections that

considered articles that attack the government (152 A) and written documents directly

aimed against disturbing public peace (124A). The opinion of the Remembrancer of

Legal Affairs (RLA) was sought. The RLA opined that 152 A was inapplicable since

there was only an indirect attack on Government (reference to Christians as cow killers).

Section 124 A was also inapplicable since there was no likelihood of disturbing public

tranquility. Moreover, ‘it is not enough that one uses words calculated to produce racial

ill feeling. What is required is that one should actively encourage such feelings by the use

of words chosen for that purpose’ (ibid.). Eventually, the text was proscribed, though no

action was taken against the printing press. In April 1913 the colonial government issued

a formal notification under Section 12 of the Indian Press Act, 1910 declaring that Anath

Bhajnavali be forfeited to His Majesty. The notice said that the publication contained

words that were likely to bring into hatred or contempt certain classes or sections of His

Majesty’s subjects. In addition, the keepers of the printing press were fined Rs. 3000.

Khooni Cawnpore, Anath Bhajnavali, Mazhab ka Danka and a number of other

productions made claims to retribution, driven as they were by malice, spite and envy –

characteristics of ressentiment.35 Morality and legality were conflated in a sense of

grievance. This grievance could be directed either to the colonial state or her subjects. In

either case, the state took recourse to law. 35 Michael Moore in the ‘Moral Worth of Retribution’ argues that unlike in the Nietzchean view of ressentiment, retribution must be grounded in the rational and good emotion of guilt, which he says is an emotion rooted in correct moral judgment. Malice and spite, contrarily, point us toward moral error. In punishing the offenders of these articles, it does not seem to me that colonial authorities are driven by any sense of guilt. Instead, as Nasser Hussain (2003: 66) argues, colonial rule of law is maintained through legal procedure that allows the moral claims of legality to coexist with the political claims of government.

26

Publics, Law and Affect: Traced from the colonial archive till the 1990s, we find that

writings of this sort have been entangled with the state, specifically with laws that deal

with incitement to religious hatred. We can isolate at least two different ways in which

the relationship between governance and hate writing has unfolded. On the one side, the

state administration, (both colonial and republican), through the force of law, attempted

to use its leverage over the public sphere to stifle dissent. On the other side, such

writings were addressed to and circulated within ‘insurgent publics’.36 The circulation of

hate dealt with a form of public expression that was written and literate, but also included

other forms, such as cartoons, picture post-cards, public speeches, ballads and songs and

theatrical enactments.37 Figure 2 is an example of such circulation.

In April 1934 following complaints by the office of Khwaja Hasan Nizam, Dargah

Nizamuddin Auliya, Delhi to the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, 5,300 copies of the

postcard (Figure 2) were confiscated. The office of Hasan Nizami stated that the

postcards were published by the Joshi Press, Bazargate Street, Fort, Bombay. They

contained ‘verses from the Holy Quran on one side, while on the other they had photos of

prostitutes’. Further, the cards were deliberately published for the sake of injuring the

feelings of the Muslims and for insulting the Holy Quran. The Commissioner of police

was urged to discipline the publisher, ‘or a breach of peace would be the inevitable result’ 36 See the articles by Boyle (1992) and Ryan (1992). Alternately, we may have something like the emergence of subaltern ‘counter-publics’ in Fraser’s (1992) use of the term. I have tried to argue that these insurgent/counter publics were in a relation of antagonism with other counter publics. From the colonial administrators point of view law had to mediate the relationship between antagonist counter publics. These publics incorporated personal and impersonal address in their discursive practices, an argument that is made by Warner (2002). In her analysis of caste disputes in 19th century South India, Pamela Price suggests that English-language speaking Indians formed political groups similar to those influential in 18th and 19th century Europe. Such publics were mobilized to influence governmental policy beyond its local ramifications. This fully developed political public was co-terminus with the emergence of a centralized state that, in its formulation of policies, directed its attention to a population, rather than caste groups. The result was the creation of publics through the procedures of law. What is missed out in this analysis is that such publics were also formed through a conscious and intricate manipulation of religious symbols as they related to law. 37 The idea of the public proposed here comes close to that developed by Appadurai and Breckenridge (1995: 1-20). For them public expression includes body representations in arts, dance and so on. More importantly, the ‘public’ is both consumer and agent in these forms, and is characterized by reflexive self-expression.

27

(Home Department (special) File No. 1742/1934). After interrogating the Joshi brothers,

who were selling the postcards, the Commissioner of Police stated that Mr. GB Joshi, the

keeper of the Press had no intention of offending the religious sentiments of the Muslims

and that he was selling the postcards as a matter of business. Given the Commissioner’s

comments no legal action was contemplated (ibid.).

28

FIGURE 2

Crucially, this circulation showed how the public was made in a mixture of sensations

that both bound together diverse linguistic groups and separated Hindus from Muslims.

The intersection of law with public expression alerts us to the way the public was

conceived. This conception itself arose from the attempts of the colonial government to

police public speeches delivered in ‘private’ premises. Policing here involved not merely

the surveillance of public speeches, but also the taking of notes in the presence of a

29

witness. The history of this legislation can be traced from 1907. In 1942, following the

meaning of public meetings held in private premises, the colonial government declared,

‘In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-rule (1) of rule 56 of the Defence of India

Rules, the Government of Bombay is pleased to impose the following condition upon the

holding of public meetings in the Province of Bombay, namely, that police officers shall

be permitted to attend the meetings for the purpose of taking reports of the

proceedings’38. In this order, any meeting which was open to the public, regardless of

whether it was held in private premises, was deemed to be a ‘public meeting’, Underlying

this order was the vexed issue of dealing with public speeches delivered in premises such

as mosques and community halls that both inflamed religious hatred and opposed

colonial rule of law. The inability of colonial law and public speeches to meet on

common legal ground marked the discursive disparity between jurisdictional and political

feasibilities.39 In the process, incitement to communal violence and sedition against the

state were conflated. I will briefly reflect on two meetings that are found in the colonial

archive.

On 15 April 1925, Hakim Taj Mahomed spoke in the Mirzapur Masjid in Ahmedabad in

the presence of three hundred Muslims. The audience also included two constables who

made ‘mental notes’ of what was said at the time. Their report was submitted to the sub-

inspector of police, from which he submitted and prepared the English report. After

dwelling at length on the life of Muhammad, the Hakim said,

The kaffirs of India make allegations against the Prophet of Islam and you

Musalmans tolerate it…Either you go away from this country or break the head of

kaffirs. They compose drama of your old man and call you to see it…I do not tell

you a lie, but a resolution has been passed by the Hindu Maha Sabha to destroy

eight crores of Musalmans. You should also prepare your children in the same

38 File 751 (1)/ 1939-46. Home Department (special). Sub: Reports of Speeches 39 Sara Suleri identifies these disparities as the ‘essential alegality’ and ‘radical obsolescence [of law] in colonial discourse, i.e., the failure of colonial regimes to legitimize themselves in the legal precedent of either Western colonizer or Oriental colonized’. (The Rhetoric of English India. 1992: 55-56).

30

way and prepare them for the occasion (File 355 (25) D. Home (Special) 1923-

26).40

On February 13, 14, 15 and 16, 1927, Maulvi Abdul Majid Fidui delivered a series of

public lectures in Broach city (present day Gujarat) attended by more than 250 Muslims

on each occasion, Fidui submitted the character of Hindu gods – Brahma, Krishna and

Rama – to derisory treatment.

A disgraceful incident has been given in the Hindu religion that Brahma

committed sexual intercourse with his own daughter, Sarasvati. This is the kind of

God they have. It is also written in their religious books that there was a goddess

who rubbed her hands and got a son. She asked him to enjoy her. He refused so

she burnt him… Then she rubbed her hands a third time and the son that was born

this time carried out her wishes…They say the Muslims marry the daughters of

their own maternal uncles – but what is this?... They even allow their wives to go

to another person when they are sick (ibid.).

The district Superintendent of Police, Broach reported that Fidui had been under

surveillance since April 1926, when in speeches delivered in Ahmedabad, he referred to

the Calcutta riots and threatened the Arya Samajists.41 The Home Department considered

applying Section 107 (Cr.PC) against Fidui. Section 107 was specifically intended to

prevent a person from committing a direct breach of peace or disturbing ‘public

tranquility’. Under this section the likelihood of such breach or disturbance had to be

imminent. Fidui’s speeches, according to the RLA, could not be considered as lying under

this section since it was difficult to establish whether subsequent speeches would lead to

a breach of peace (ibid.). The RLA advised that Fidui be prosecuted under Section 109

40 It was not possible to successfully prosecute Taj Mohamed as no written notes of the speech were taken. While a verbatim report was not regarded as a sine qua non for proceedings under Section 108, I.P.C., the oral evidence had to be corroborated by an independent witness. This did not occur. 41 A native of Moradabad in the United Provinces, Fidui went to Delhi in 1921 and joined the Khilafat movement. In Delhi he was recognized as a fluent speaker and a zealous Khilafat agent. He had since joined the Tabligh movement and became a member of the Anjuman Tabligh-e-Islam as a special preacher. He was said to be a man of loose character and commanded little respect in Delhi (ibid.).

31

(Cr.PC) and if necessary under Section 144. Section 153 A, Indian Penal Code, which

allowed for prosecution for speeches already made, could not be applied in the present

instance because of a lack of corroborating evidence supplied by members of the hearing

public.

Earlier in October 1925, Section 153 A, IPC was employed to prosecute Mohammad

Yasin an itinerant preacher and a native of the Hyderabad State, who had been visiting

and holding meetings in Sholapur. In the opinion of the District Magistrate of Sholapur

his speeches had directly provoked a riot between Hindus and Muslims in October 42 The

preacher made eight speeches between 17 October 1925 and 27 October 1925. The riot

occurred a day later. Evidence concerning the contents of the Yasin’s speeches was

collected by twelve police personnel – including testimonies in Marathi of twelve Hindu

witnesses. All the accounts mentioned that more than a thousand people had gathered to

hear the preacher’s discourse, the main thrust of which was the playing of music by

Hindus before the mosques. The accounts also uniformly quoted one line mentioned by

the preacher: die for your religion but do not give in to the idolaters. The testimony of

Bhagwan Seshagir Degaonkar, a lawyer by profession and Brahmin by caste, stated the

following:

…Then the Moulvi (maulana) said addressing the Musalmans, ‘You are in such a

degraded (literally low) condition because you don’t act according to your

religion. I wish for the unity of Hindus and Musalmans. But if anyone obstructs us

in our prayer we cannot tolerate it. In religious matters we shall kill if occasion

arrives, or be killed, but we shall not give in…’ Then the speaker briefly narrated

the account of the riot that took place in the last Muharram. It was a cowardly

action of the Hindus to deceive the Musalmans after making them believe it was

safe to take the procession by a certain road. If there is any strength in the Hindus

let them come face-to-face and fight with us… This time whatever may be the

result, but “magar yad rakho, miya marna magar budh parastako har nahi jana”

(i.e., miyan bear in mind, better die but do not yield to idol worshippers) (ibid.).

42 See File 355 (25) E/1925. Home Department (special).

32

The letter of the District Magistrate, Sholapur to the Secretary to Government, Bombay

stated that the preacher was an ‘irresponsible and venomous speaker’ who tried his ‘very

hardest to provoke a violent outbreak on the day of the riot’ (ibid.). The DM argued that

it was essential to prevent the delivery of such inflammatory speeches in the future and

rather than institute preventive action, substantive prosecution would be more

satisfactory. However, the evidence available was not considered satisfactory since it was

impossible to obtain ‘independent Mohammedan testimony’ (ibid.). In December 1925

Muhammad Yasin was deported under the Foreigners Act, III of 1864, ‘owing to a

number of lectures that he delivered at different places in Sholapur City immediately

before the riot that occurred there on the 28th October last. These lectures, particularly the

one on the night before the riot, were calculated to arouse enmity between the Hindus and

the Muhammadans, and were in fact one of the chief causes of the rioting’ (ibid.).

These ‘venomous’ speeches in public spaces, those delivered in mosques, the circulation

of picture postcards and the profusion of pamphlets, show that the public occupied

multiple discursive arenas. In part these arenas were oriented against the laws on

censorship, but also against other competing publics organized on sectarian lines. Legal

authority was challenged at the level of styles of political behavior and norms of public

speech, while the address to competing sectarian publics was premised on exclusion. The

key element in the formation of such publics was the elaboration of a series of affects,

built around hate, love of the nation and the availability of women of the other religion.

Colonial censors, in responding to such discourses passed the Indian Press (Emergency

Powers) Act, 1931. Clauses (d) and (h) of Section 4 (1) of the Press Act were amended to

include the address to such hate writings. Clause (d) proscribed statements that referred to

intercommunal relationships, while clause (h) censored accounts that impugned the state.

The Emergency Powers Act was formulated with reference to an article headed ‘Terrible

Communal Disturbances in Ramgadh, which appeared in the issue of the Muslim (17

September 1932).43

Under clause (d) the following statements were grouped together: 43 In Home Department (Political) 1933. File 82

33

Everybody knows that the Durbar of Sikar (a Princely state in Rajasthan) had

played a game of fraud, treachery and deception with the Musalmans, and not

only has he not fulfilled a single promise given to the Musalmans but he has also

on the contrary patted the badmash (criminal) Hindus on the back and instigated

them’… When the Musalmans went with a bier to the burial ground in order to

bury the martyr the Hindu eunuchs took advantage of that opportunity and entered

once again the house of the Musalmans and began to make attacks upon the

helpless women and innocent children (ibid.).

Under clause (h), the following statements were proscribed:

Not a single person among the Hindus has been killed or wounded. The corpses of

the Muslim martyrs remained in possession of the police for three days. These

martyrs are asking for revenge. In order to please the Hindus the police showered

oppression only upon the Muslims and arrested only Musalmans. All the

Musalmans in Ramgadh have been greatly harassed by these unbearable atrocities

and have become ready to make hijrat (to migrate)… In fresh news from

Ramgadh it is stated that Hindu goondas (criminals) are making murderous

attacks upon Musalmans… A number of women have been spoilt. The Hindu

officers also, blinded by arrogance, are raining down oppression upon the

Musalmans and arresting only the Musalmans instead of the Hindus (ibid.).

A similar economy of affect came up for review in the Bombay High Court in reference

to the Samna articles.44 The petitioners (Joseph Bain D’Souza and others) highlighted

parts of various articles written by Balasaheb Thackeray that emphasized the affective

nature of the Muslim-Pakistani: ‘Municipal Deputy Commissioner Mr. Khairnar risked

his life to use the bulldozer in Bhendi Bazar which has become a haven of Pakistani

infiltrators and anti-national Muslims. Moulvis and mullahs have corrupted Bhendi

Bazar…’ (CLJ:1321). The Honorable judges found, on reading the article in its entirety,

that there was ‘nothing by which ill-will, spite or hatred against the Muslim community

as a whole is expressed’ (ibid.). Their response was identical in reference to another

statement: ‘The fanatical traitors have launched an ugly dance of death. Loyal citizens of 44 See Criminal Law Journal, 1995: 1316-1331.

34

India have sacrificed their lives in this fire which has been spreading fast. In the mohallas

inhabited by fanatics which we call “mini Pakistan” were the centres where the cruelty

and treachery of traitors caused havoc’ (ibid.:1325). Quite apart from the role that self-

deception played in the writing and reading of these articles, one may say that the

criminal law on hate literature institutionalizes feelings of anger and resentment towards

those it thinks are wrong doers. In its eyes, Bal Thackeray was certainly not a wrong

doer. Instead, the attempt of the judgment was to make the passions raised by these

articles more coherent, more perspicacious: ‘Taking the experience from the past events

[the riots of 1992-93], both the communities have started forgetting the ill-feelings,

thereby creating communal harmony and leading life as part of the mainstream of this

country…therefore it is not desirable to reopen old wounds’ (ibid:1330). What the

judgment refused to acknowledge was the discursive violence that was utilized to

willfully misrepresent and thereby de-legitimate Muslim publics. In advising Muslim

publics to be part of the mainstream, the judgment implicitly recognized their insurgent

character.

In this paper I have argued that the passions on which such literature stood (and one

might say, continues to stand) revealed the promise built in hatred. By this I do not mean

merely that hatred has a future, but also that it has a limitless ability of provoking new

rounds of discussion and conflict. In speaking of the promise of hate in this paper, I mean

first that hate literature and all its related motifs (hyper-masculinity, love of the nation)

pointed to a promise that had to be kept: the nation had to be secured for its true heirs.

Second, the argumentative thrust and rhetorical procedures of this literature were

obsessed by a de-positioned address, addressor and addressee. Authors, readers and

listeners were marked by an offense that moved across temporal boundaries. This was

done by drawing on the resources of the religious. In this sense, it was almost as if this

literature signaled an apocalyptic sensibility inscribed in Hindu-Muslim relations, but one

always leavened by law. Once colored by law, this literature became a figure for political

decision and simultaneously a decision that defied the political. Nothing exemplifies this

better than the figure of the Muslim-Pakistani, a figure both inside and outside the nation.

35

REFERENCES CITED

Official Documents and Newspapers

Criminal Law Journal. 1995: 1316-1331

Daily Samna. 5 December 1992; 8 December 1992; 9 December 1992; 1 January 1993; 8

January 1993; 11 January 1993; 19 January; 23 January 1993

Srikrishna, Hon. Justice B.N. 1998: Report of the Srikrishna Commission Appointed For

Inquiry into the Riots at Mumbai, During December 1992 and January 1993. Vols. I and

II

Time Magazine. 25 January 1993

Home Department (Political) 1926: File 114

Home Department (Political) 1927: File 297

Home Department (Political) 1927: File 260

Home Department (Political) 1928: File 219

Home Department (Political) 1928-34: Statutory Commission: A Note on the Press,

Newspapers and Books and Periodicals

Home Department (Political) 1928: File 1893-60, J-58, K(b) {Punjabi Rangila Rasool]

Home Department (Political) 1929: File 2528 [Marathi Rangila Rasool]

Home Department (Political) 1928: File 42 [Mazhab ka Danka]

36

Home Department (Political) 1928-29: File 64 [Vishwasghat]

Home Department (Political) 1931: File 130

Home Department (Political) 1933: File 82

Home Department (Special) 1893-1940: Excerpt of Report Prepared by the Indian

Statutory Commission on Hindu-Muslim Relations

Home Department (Special) 1923-26: File 355 (25) D

Home Department (Special) 1925: File 355 (25) E

Home Department (Special) 1928: File S 257 – Hindu-Muslim Tension

Home Department (Special) 1934: File 1742

Home Department (Special) 1939-46: File 751 (1)

Home Department (Special) 1941: File 844 – LI – VIII (3)

Judicial Department 1909-1920: File 234/1930

Other Books

Anidjar, Gil 2003: The Jew, The Arab: A History of the Enemy. California: Stanford

University Press

37

Appadurai, Arjun and Carol Breckenridge 1995: ‘Public Modernity in India’. In Carol

Breckenridge (ed.): Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World.

(Pp.27-55). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Bhatt, Chetan 2001: Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths. London:

Berg Publications

Boyle, Harry C. 1992: ‘The Pragmatic End of Popular Politics’. In Craig Calhoun (ed.):

Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press

Butler, Judith 1997: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London and New

York: Routledge

Chatterji, Roma and Deepak Mehta 2007: Living With Violence: An Anthropology of

Events and Everyday Life. Delhi: Routledge

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari 1994: What is Philosophy? Trans. Graham Burchell

and Hugh Tomlinson. London: Verso

Foucault, Michel 1994: ‘The Art of Telling the Truth’. Trans. Alan Sheridan. In Michael

Kelly (ed.): Critique and Power: Reading the Foucault/Habermas Debate. Cambridge:

MIT Press

Fraser, Nancy 1993: ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of

Actually Existing Democracy’. In Bruce Robbins (ed.): The Phantom Public Sphere.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Hardy, Peter 1972: The Muslims of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Hanson, Thomas Blom 2001: Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial

Bombay. Princeton: Princeton University Press

38

Jalal, Ayesha 2001: Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian

Islam since 1850. London and New York: Routledge

Joshi, Sanjay 2001: Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North

India. Delhi: Oxford University Press

Matsuda, Mari, Charles R. Lawrence, Richard Delgado and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

1993: Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First

Amendment. Boulder: Westview Press

McKean, Lise 1996: Divine Experience: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Moore, Michael 1987: ‘The Moral Worth of Retribution’. In Ferdinand Schoeman (ed.):

Responsibility, Character and the Emotions (179-219). Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Price, Pamela 2000: ‘Acting in Public versus Forming a Public: Conflict Processing and

Political Mobilization in 19th Century India’. In Kenneth E. Yandell and John J. Paul

(eds.): Religion and Public Culture: Encounters and Identities in Modern South Asia

(pp.27-55). Surrey: Curzon Press

Ryan, Mary P. 1992: ‘Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in Nineteenth-

Century America’. In Craig Calhoun (ed.): Habermas and the Public Sphere.

Cambridge:MIT Press (259-288)

Sarkar, Sumit 2002: Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu

Fundamentalism, History. Indiana University Press

Shraddhanand, Swami 1926: Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of a Dying Race. Delhi: Arjun

39

Shyrock, Andrew 1997: Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History

and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press

Stoler, Ann Laura 2002: Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance. Archival

Science, Vol. 2, No.1-2 (March 2002). Pp. 87-109

Suleri, Sara 1992: The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Warner, Michael 2002: Publics and Counterpublics. Public Culture, Vol. 14, 1 (Dec.

2002)