INDIA: Jinnah Split

Where the low, bare limestone ridges of Sukkur, Sind slope like unkempt stairs down to the banks of the Indus, Indians who loudly object to fighting Germans in the name of Empire last week fought each other in the name of their various gods. Moslems, claiming the Manzilghaut (Government building) near the river as an ancient mosque site, besieged it, captured it, and threatened to hold it until nirvana-come. Whereupon Hindus swept the city, storming, looting, burning Moslem shops.

Before the Government could ferret out the Moslem sit-downers and enforce a curfew, six Moslems and five Hindus lay dead, 23 were injured. Once more His Majesty’s Indian subjects had shown themselves the most inharmonious group in the war-bound Empire.

Moslem-Hindu religious and social differences top the list of hindrances to Indian independence from British rule. Probably the most frequent and most telling answer Great Britain gives to demands for immediate dominion status is: “Once freed, India would destroy itself in civil war.” The rift divides India as permanently as the Mississippi divides the U. S.

Mohammedanism sets up one God, one Prophet; Hinduism worships a great pantheon of gods. Hindus worship images, and fill their temples with ikons, which offend Moslems deeply. Their mosques must depend on color, material, texture for their beauty, and all decoration is pure geometry. To the Moslem a pig is unclean, and by throwing in a slice of bacon, a Hindu can defile a whole mosque; but a Moslem eats and sacrifices cows, which are sacred to Hindus. Hinduism is passive ; Mohammedanism is proselytizing — which perhaps accounts for the fact that in most Moslem-Hindu clashes, Moslems usually seem to be the aggressors.

Socially, Indian Moslems are a solid, self-conscious minority group (just less than one-fourth of India’s population) ; Hindus are a loosely-bound, sect-split, caste-stratified majority (three-fourths).

Hindus are the wealthier group. In general, Hindus are landowners, capitalists, shopkeepers, professionals, employers ; Moslems are peasants, artisans, laborers.

In Bengal, where Hindus are only 43% of the population, they pay 85% of the taxes.

One of the main reasons for this difference is that usury, which accounts for far more profit in India than trade, is forbidden to Moslems by religious law.

Political leaders of both groups claim that their biggest aim is independence. The great Hindus, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, obviously work towards an India for Indians; but the leader of the Moslems usually thinks first about independence for Moslems and afterwards about independence for Indians. His name is Mahomed Ali Jinnah, and he is probably the greatest single force for disunity in all disunited India.

Jinnah’s own life has been a series of coat-turnings. He was born a Hindu, became a Moslem. He began his public life as an ardent Nationalist, later developed into a rank communalist (in favor of local elections according to religious majorities). Once a stanch supporter of the Indian National Congress party (for independence), he later became soul & body of the All-India Moslem League (for Moslems), of which he is permanent president. Tall, slim, aquiline of feature and grey of hair, an immaculate dresser, an adroit lawyer, reserved yet with plenty of charm behind the tap when he chooses to turn it on, he has the enthusiasm of a youngster at 63, and the air of a queen’s courtier in law courts.

Moslem Jinnah claims that he is a patriot. Close to his heart, he says, is Indian freedom from Britain. And yet his League was the one important political group to endorse the British White Paper of last month deferring dominion status until after the war. His reasons are partly political, partly religious. He is a minority-leader, who wants both to curry favor with Britain and to avoid a “freedom” in which Moslems are bound to worse enemies than the British.

Last week Mohandas Gandhi showed that he was determined to go ahead in his anti-British campaign without Moslem Jinnah’s support. He authorized a statement which even the bitterest Moslem would think reasonable: “If Britain fights for the maintenance of democracy, she must necessarily end imperialism in her own possessions and establish full democracy in India.”