Logo

Synopsis This book, as the title indicates, is a study of the role of Bengal Muslims in the national political movements vis-a-vis the political communalism and separatism. The period studied in this book has received scant attention of the scholars, even though it provided a remarkable example of united struggle by the Muslims and Hindus against British Imperialism. In the morrow of the annulment of the partition of Bengal, the rising Bengali educated Muslim middle class imbued with nationalist ideas, promptly discredited the loyalist politics of their elitist elders. Helped by circumstances created by British policies at home and abroad, large majority of the Bengal Muslims were involved in the National Movement for self-government, Home rule and Swaraj in Bengal. They took part in anti-Rowlatt Act agitations (1918-19) and Non-Co-operation Movement (1920-22) wholeheartedly, suffered imprisonment, and casualties alongwith the Hindus, and later on played active role in strengthening the Swarajya party in Bengal under Deshbandhu C.R. Das. These facts were not seriously studied in any other book. The amazing sense of Hindu-Muslim political unity which developed in Bengal and grew in strength through Anti-Rowlatt Act Satyagraha, Khilafat Non-Co-operation movement and Swarajya party's legislative politics, was a grant experiment in national politics. This unity could well have been carried on in the later decades, according to the author, but for the dominant leadership who failed to appreciate the practical obstacles against the national unity and formulate secular political economic programmes. The importance of this book lies in the fact that it provides exhaustive and analytical discussion of the above facts.