‘Darweshi-o-inqilab maslak hai mera
Sufi momin hun, ishtiraki muslim’
(Asceticism and revolution is my creed
A Sufi believer, a communist Muslim, I do plead)
It can sometimes appear to be open season on the infallible icons of the Indian Subcontinent. We were already looking to recover from last week’s controversy over the right-wing Hindu nationalist attack on Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait at Aligarh Muslim University in India. Earlier this week Dr. Rauf Parekh ignited some controversy of his own, via his weekly column in Dawn. In his column on Maulana Hasrat Mohani, he has tried to insinuate that the Maulana’s association with communism was salutary at best, referring to ‘a strange blend of Islam and communism’; ‘this self-contradictory behaviour’ of attending both the Mathura festival which celebrated the birth of Krishna and performing several Hajj pilgrimages to Makkah. Then he goes on to mention the Maulana’s membership of the Congress and subsequently the Muslim League, and his ‘active membership’ of the Progressive Writers Association, but leaving out his long association with the Communist Party of India (CPI).
Therefore, one feels inclined to intervene to set the record straight, and not only because the 13th of May last week marked the 67th anniversary of the Maulana’s passing away. This short essay will be limited to being just an introduction to Maulana Hasrat Mohani’s (socialist) ideas and thoughts.
Maulana Hasrat Mohani was one of the founders of the CPI. In 1925, he inaugurated the Party’s first office in Kanpur and waved the red flag. When the first All-India Conference of the communists was held in Kanpur on 25-26 December 1925, Maulana Hasrat Mohani was the president of the Reception Committee. Some extracts from his welcome address are given below. In this address he had presented a proposal for a Soviet-style constitution for independent India:
“The Communist movement is a movement of peasants and workers. The Indian people generally agree with the principles and aims and objectives of this movement, but due to some misunderstandings, a few weak-hearted and easily-intimidated individuals become afraid of the very word ‘communism’. Although, these misunderstandings have been deliberately spread by capitalists and others who oppose Communism. For example, some people think that communism will necessarily take us towards bloodshed and terrorism. The reality of this inaccurate idea is just that we accept non-violence as and when the need for it arises, and like Mahatma Gandhi, do not admit it as some eternal and fixed principle. In the same manner, some people falsely accuse that communism and the conduct of ‘What is Yours is Mine’ is the same. The reality is that we divide property into two parts, meaning into personal property like a watch, umbrella, utensils, food, clothes, etc. and private property like land, factories, etc. The Communist principle only applies to private property, not to personal property.
The detailed program of our Party which resembles the Soviet Union will be presented in this conference for deliberation and approval. Our aims and objectives are as follows:
- To attain total independence or Swaraj by all reasonable means. After attaining independence, we will have to see that all those principles which are prevalent in the Soviet Republic should be issued here.
- To work for the freedom and prosperity of the peasants and workers even before Swaraj.
- To cooperate with all those parties which assist us in our aforementioned aims and objectives.
- To create public opinion in favour of communist principles so that these can be put in practice immediately after attaining Swaraj.
Our organisation is purely Indian. Here this clarification is necessary that the sphere of our party is not just limited to India. Our relations will generally be limited to just sympathy and ideological harmony with other comradely parties outside the country, especially the Third International. On this path, we are their fellow travelers, but not beholden to them. Neither can we give them practical help, nor do they extend us any financial assistance.
When the first All-India Conference of the communists was held in Kanpur on 25-26 December 1925, Maulana Hasrat Mohani was the president of the Reception Committee
Some ill-disposed individuals accuse communism of being a necessarily anti-religious movement. Although the truth of the matter is that in the matter of religion our attitude is extremely tolerant and generous. Every person who accepts our principles can join our party whether he is a Muslim or Hindu, Christian or Buddhist, atheist or devout. In other words, we accept all religions and also consider unbelief as a religion. Some of our Muslim leaders unnecessarily present communism as an opponent of Islam, although the reality is totally opposite. For example, Islam opposes capitalism even more forcefully that the communist ideas.”
(Indian Annual Register, Volume II, India, 1925, pp. 367-71)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani used to say, “I was initially a nationalist. In 1925, I abandoned this idea and adopted the principles of communism. Now I am a Communist.’ (Abdul Shakoor, Hasrat Mohani, Agra, 1944, p.23)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani wrote many articles in support of socialism in the journal Urdu-e-Mualla in 1938. For example, ‘What Does Socialism Want?’, ‘The Development of Russia’s New Generation’, ‘Pandit Nehru and Socialism’, ‘Socialism and Maulana Azad’ and ‘Islam and Socialism’.
Syed Sibte Hasan, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Pakistan, as if to answer the objections of Dr. Parekh today, summed up the Maulana’s person back in 1970 in the following words:
“Sometimes I think that Maulana Ehtishamul Haq Thanvi, Maulvi Maududi and other venerable sages of this tribe who cannot even bear to hear the name of socialism […] where were they in the period when Maulana Hasrat Mohani used to openly call himself a Muslim communist and publicly spoke in favour of communism? Despite this, neither the ulema of Deoband […] nor the muftis of Farangi Mahal gave a fatwa […] on him.
"This crusading man never weighed his conduct in the scales of profit and loss; nor reconciled the voice of his conscience with the compromises of time" (Sibte Hasan, writing about Hasrat Mohani)
Even then, I think if Maulana Hasrat Mohani was amongst us today, which group or party would he support, the conscience-selling mullahs who swear by the sacredness of private property and advocate feudalism and capitalism, or the socialists who fight for the rights of workers?
This crusading man never weighed his conduct in the scales of profit and loss; nor reconciled the voice of his conscience with the compromises of time. He neither had a house nor car, neither shares in factories nor shops and permits. His pocket was empty but his heart was generous…”
In fact, to lay to rest any debates on where precisely he stood, here is how Maulana Hasrat Mohani summed up his own politics:
‘Gandhi ki tarah baith ke kaatenge kyun charkha
Lenin ki tarah denge duniya ko hila hum’
(Why should we sit and spin yarn on the ‘charkha’ like Gandhi
Like Lenin we will shake the world)
Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently teaching in Lahore. He is also the president of the Progressive Writers Association in Lahore. His most recent work is an introduction to the reissued edition (HarperCollins India, 2016) of Abdullah Hussein’s classic novel ‘The Weary Generations’. He can be reached at razanaeem@hotmail.com