Another excellent paper (thanks to @ucantbcrius) contextualizing Ilm Deen’s murder of Raj Pal. Urban Punjab, in 1920s, was a hotbed of communal tension, partly because British had introduced a sort of quota system that, the Hindus felt, privileged > zero.sci-hub.tw/5325/3b3b037b4…
> Muslims: “in 1886, under pressure from the educated Muslims, the government decided to review its policy of employment in the public service so as to bring about a balance between the Hindus & Muslims.“ Later due to the creation of a separate electorate pushed by Muslims: >
> the “Unionist Party led by an urban-based Muslim lawyer, Mian Fazl-i-Husain, dominated the provincial ministry after the first elections to the reformed councils in 1920... For many influential urban Hindus the experience of the Mont–Ford reforms based on the principle of >
> separate electorates seemed like the beginning of a ‘Muslim raj’ and every step taken by Fazl-i-Husain was interpreted as tilting the balance of advantage in favour of the Muslims.... By mid-1920s, apart from theological debates the Punjabi public sphere was rife with popular >
> inflammatory material in newspapers controlled by extremist sections of both the Hindu & Muslim communities.” Initially, Raj Pal was given a fine & 18 month imprisonment, but under appeal, Justice Kanwar Dalip Singh, found him not guilty, remarking, ‘It seems to me that that >
> section was intended to prevent persons from making attacks on a particular community as it exists at the present time and was not meant to stop polemics against deceased religious leaders however scurrilous and in bad taste such attacks might be.’” This “aggravated Muslim >
> resentment and the agitation was directed against the Punjab High Court demanding immediate dismissal of Dalip Singh. Speeches made in the mosques of Lahore assumed strong anti-Hindu & anti-High Court character. For example, Muhammad Amin, speaking at such a meeting organised >
> by the Khilafat Committee in the Badshahi Mosque stated that ‘in the Punjab the Hindus were encouraged to write scurrilous pamphlets because the Chief Justice was a Hindu’. Posters were issued by the Qadian Ahmadiyan Committe and the Punjab Khilafat Commitee exhorting Muslims >
> to observe a ‘High Court Day’ on 22 July.“ Maulana Mohamed Ali Jauhar, “thundered a warning, ‘all worldly relations between Muslims on the one hand and Khilafat Committee, Mahatma Gandhi, and even the government on the other hand (shall stand) terminated when the life and >
> soul of Islam is reviled’. Further, the incited gathering presided over
by the Maulana passed a resolution: The vast gathering of Muslim declares to the government with one voice that it should immediately shut the door now open for the destruction of law & order, ‘by having >
by the Maulana passed a resolution: The vast gathering of Muslim declares to the government with one voice that it should immediately shut the door now open for the destruction of law & order, ‘by having >
> the judgement immediately revised’. Any further delay in the matter will be an indicator that government wants to compel the Musalmans to take the law in their hands and such matters like this will precipitate a catastrophe which no forces on earth will be able to check.’ >
> The pamphlet also alarmed Mahatma Gandhi as he complained in a long article on Hindu–Muslim unity in Young India: ‘A friend has sent me a pamphlet called Rangila Rasul, written in Urdu.... I have asked myself what the motive possibly could be in writing or printing such a >
> book except to inflame passions.... The harm it can do is obvious.’ The resentment of sections of Muslims against the judgment, was further intensified with the publication of another offensive article entitled ‘Sair-i-Dozakh’ or ‘A Trip to Hell’ in the May issue of the >
> Risala Vartman magazine of Amritsar in 1927, wherein the Prophet was depicted as suffering torment in hell. The Punjab government immediately sanctioned the prosecution of the editor, publisher & printer of the magazine, and the author of the article, consequently sentencing >
> the author to one year imprisonment and Rs. 500 fine. “A systematic and well-organised campaign wherein Muslim shopkeepers restricted their clientele to Muslims and vice versa resulted...” A Qadyani poster in Urdu titled “Will those professors of the Prophet’s love not wake >
> up even now’, signed by Mirza Mahmud Ahmad, was placarded in Peshawar on behalf of the local Anjuman-i-Ahmadia.” This brings me to what I find, retrospectively, to be the most interesting part of this whole case. The community at the forefront at this time defending prophet >
> Muhammad against any sort of blasphemy was of Ahmadis. “The leadership in the agitation expressing Muslim opinion, in this case, came from two different sources: the Khilafatists and the Qadiani Ahmadis. The desire to be acknowledged as the ‘true’ champions of Islam led the >
> Ahmadis to acquire an aggressive, militant stance not only in terms of its polemical debates with the ulama, Hindu revivalists and Christian missionaries, but also in adopting conversion and proselytism as their main goals through which they were successfully able to win >
> converts from outside of the subcontinent. The agitation against Rangila Rasul led by them along with the Khiafatists in Lahore, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Gujranwala and Peshawar, through propaganda in mosques, public speeches and newspapers, such as the Muslim Opinion, seemed to >
> blur the distinctions between them as they were temporarily seen as upholding the cause of Islam.” Further, “it was only after the controversy generated by Rangila Rasul and Risala Vartman, and the immense discontent felt among sections of Muslims, that the government decided >
> to amend the law Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code. A new bill was, thus, drafted retrospectively which made it an offence ‘intentionally to insult or attempt to insult the religion, or outrage or attempt to outrage the religious feelings of any class.”
