friends noted in casual commentary that the choice of attire was deliberate and politically motivated. Yet although Muslim men may not wear dhoti, Hindu men-all the men in Basantibala's front room, for instance-do wear lungi for working or lounging. Sartorial differentiation, while significant, is not absolute.
Often people commented on the importance of being able to tell the affiliation of a stranger. “My identity as a Muslim was quite visible,” Altaf told us. “I wore this long kurta [knee-length shirt] and toupee [cap] and beard.” But identification is often not so easy. “I cannot find a Muslim or a Hindu out by what they wear,” as the religious man quoted above complained.
Among women, too, distinctions are common but not universal. Some Muslim women observe purdah, wearing the characteristic robes and face masks in public. The veil is limited to Muslim women, so its presence is a clear statement. Its absence, however, is not; many Muslim Bengali women move freely outdoors dressed in sarees. Similarly, a vermilion mark in the part of a woman's hair tells you definitively she is Hindu, but since only married women wear it, its absence does not prove a woman is not Hindu. And some modern married Hindu women eschew the vermilion mark, so its absence is no longer even a conclusive sign of marital status among Hindus. East Bengali women of both communities are likely to wear costumes common among Pakistani women, or women in the western regions of India, where the Moghul Empire was centered in its later years. Kurta, salwar, and kameez, a loose-fitting tunic, baggy pants, and flowing scarf, are common both in the countryside and among modern city women.
Although in theory costumes identify religious affiliation, in fact dress is often influenced by class and function as well. Peasant women, for instance, often wear sarees without blouses, but Basantibala would not present herself to us blouseless, for it is improper to her station. Some among the younger women working in the Majumdar inner courtyard, however, wore no blouse, for comfort while doing domestic work in hot weather.
Many details of daily life are more alike across community lines than different. All Bengalis' diet relies on rice, fish, and lentils; preparations may vary slightly, but often don't. But Hindu and Muslim women concoct distinctly different sweets, and they revel in those differences and respect each other's contributions. It is hard to distinguish a Muslim cultivator's homestead from a Hindu's, except by specifically religious signifiers such as altars. Relationships among both Muslim and Hindu family members are characterized by norms of generational and gender hierarchy, with decision-making dominated by elders and with men clearly ascendant.
Yet on the gender front important differences derive from religious practice, too. Islamic polygamy (now limited to two wives per Muslim man) combines with ease of divorce to disadvantage women decidedly. Muslim women, more influenced by rules of purdah to begin with (although many do not observe it, and some Hindu women, especially upper-class ones, are effectively confined to the home by tradition as well), are vulnerable to abuses from which Hindu women have greater (albeit not adequate) social protection.
People tend to socialize within religious boundaries. Everyone had stories of inter-religious friendships, yet such relationships were noteworthy as exceptions. Neighborhoods are organized by community. When a Muslim family moved into a Hindu neighborhood recently, their arrival was heartily resented. “They are so loud,” said the Hindu woman next door. “They quarrel and yell at each other, so we get no peace.” It is a stereotype that Muslims are more combative at home, one that would not stand up to detailed investigation, but this woman drew on it to express her social discomfort over her new neighbors' proximity.
Underlying overt cultures and religious practices are personal habits that give people a meaningful sense of distinction, such practices as standing versus squatting to urinate. Hindus bathe midday before their major meal, Muslims may bathe any time it is convenient. While all Bengalis share many cultural attributes, these matters of personal habit are very influential. They cause people to “feel” their identities on a noncognitive level, and when people have contact within the other community it is often these details on which they comment most profoundly.
Nationalism and Partition
Through all such details of differentiation there nonetheless was created by British rule a strong impetus for unity. The two themes, of shared and competing interests, run richly through the experience of nationalist protest. It is perhaps a popular Western misconception of European colonialism in India that its rule went unchallenged for two hundred years. In fact, direct rule was established only after a serious rebellion in 1857 of Indian troops against the British army in which they were employed. The Indian National Congress, parent organization to resistance against imperial domination, was founded in 1885, and from the beginning of the twentieth century the British were faced with militant opposition.
At first, the Congress remained politely upper-class. In Bengal, though, other, more militant forces were brewing, especially in the eastern parts of the province. In 1905 Lord Curzon, then governorgeneral of India, partitioned Bengal into two provinces. Overtly, his reasoning was administrative; the existing united province included an enormous area, part of it non-Bengali-speaking. But in fact the motivation was political. “Bengal united is a power,” wrote the home secretary. “Bengal divided will pull several different ways…one of our main objects is to split up and thereby to weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.”18
When the division came, it reflected the lines of religious community. East Bengal was formed of Muslim-majority districts, combined with Assam and Burma; West Bengal contained the Hindu-majority areas, with Orissa and other Hindi-speaking regions. The eastern districts were especially mistrusted, “a hotbed of the purely Bengali movement, unfriendly if not seditious in character and dominating the whole tone of Bengal administration”19
Partition evoked the first mass-based revolt. Called the Swadeshi (or Homeland) movement, it used the tactic of boycotting everything British: goods, education, offices, courts. Most students and officeholders, however, were Hindus, since the Muslims had eschewed British-tainted institutions from the start. But in East Bengal many merchants were Muslims. To refuse to purchase, indeed often to burn, British-made goods economically disadvantaged those shopkeepers. Muslims, moreover, appreciated Partition, because it gave them far greater access to power in East Bengal than they had had in Hindu-dominated united Bengal. It was a fact not lost upon subsequent historians that the first massive uprising against the British contained within it such powerful elements of hostility between Muslims and Hindus. “Divide and rule” could not have been more blatant. The British revoked Partition in 1911, but they had succeeded in heightening bitter rivalry between the communities.
Paradoxically, the first national campaign to challenge British rule was built on the cornerstone of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Congress was largely a Hindu organization, because at first it excluded all who were not English-educated and sought merely to negotiate more respect and privileges from the foreign rulers. With the introduction of Gandhi to leadership in the early 1910s, however, the Congress determined to move into the public domain. Gandhi set about building a controversial alliance with an Islamic movement called Khilafat. An international campaign was under way to restore the caliph, head of the Muslim world, to power in the aftermath of the destruction of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and Khilafat was its Indian arm, led by two dynamic brothers named Ali.20
Despite this auspicious early alliance, relations between Hindu and Muslim nationalists grew increasingly stormy. The Congress movement had notable Muslim leaders-Abul Kalam Azad, for instance, who was president of the organization during the final negotiations with the British-but many Muslims resented and resisted the Congress and eventually organized an independent movement under the aegis of the Muslim League. Although the League's agenda was the protection of Muslims' rights during the process of dismantling the Empire, only late in the struggle, in 1940, was the demand raised for a separate Muslim state.
It succeeded. Seven years later, when the
