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Theory of Historical Structures: The Case of the Partition of India

Sanjoy Banerjee

International Studies Association

March 18-22, 1998

The historical-structural approach

There has been considerable movement in the social sciences toward historical-structural approaches. These have entered into international relations and political science prominently through the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, Cardoso and Faletto, Theda Skocpol, Robert Cox, and others. A substantial metatheoretical literature has emerged in international relations examining the relationship between agency and structure. There is also a poststructuralist position arguing that history is radically undecid able since structure is both necessary and impossible. This paper will present a theory of historical structures and an empirical demonstration of the theory with the case of the political process that led to the partition of the British Indian empire int o India and Pakistan.

Agents and structures in international studies

The most focused nonrealist theorizing on structures in international society has taken place in the literature on the "agent-structure problem" in international relations theory (Wendt 1987; Dessler 1989; Carlsnaes 1992). These works have focused atte ntion on what agents and structures in international society are. The discussion has focused on ontology, on what the fundamental objects and relations in international society are and what should be viewed as of second order - as derivative of the fundam ental objects and relations. The main idea in this literature is that a good theory of international relations should give equal ontological status to agents and structures, and that neither is wholly independent or wholly derivative of the other.

The agent-structure discussion is rooted in the idea of structuration advanced by Giddens (1979; 1984), Bourdieu (1990), and others. Structurationist theories, especially that of Giddens, are not falsifiable scientific theories, but rather meta-theorie s, philosophical criteria about what a proper scientific theory should look like (Wendt 1987:355). The structurationist work of Wendt (1987; 1992) and Dessler (1989) remains meta-theoretical.

International structures are conceived by many as fixtures constraining the actions of states and other agents. Indeed the very word "structure" suggests the metaphor of a rigid physical frame. This is an extension of the misconception of structures in social theory. Giddens writes

there can be no doubt about how 'structure' is usually understood by ... the vast majority of social analysts - as some kind of patterning of social relations or social phenomena. This is often naively conceived in terms of visual imagery, akin to the skeleton or morphology of an organism or the girders of a building. Such conceptions are closely connected to the dualism of subject and social object: of constraint on the free initiative of the independently constituted subject (Giddens, 1984:16).

Giddens' last point applies to international theory as well. Waltz (1979) conceives of structure as an external constraint on the free initiative of states which are constituted independently of the structure. Historical structures are often perceived by person living in them as the way things are, as unchangeable facts of life. Of course more sophisticated understandings of historical structures have emerged in the social sciences as well as in societies. Yet elements of the physical metaphor have rem ained in many understandings.

David Dessler (1989) contrasts the conceptions of structure in Waltz (1979) with that in structurationist theory. He attributes to Waltz a "positional" ontology. The fundamental objects are states, and through their "coaction" there "emerges" as struct ure, as a second-order object, which constrains state action. For Waltz (1979), the policies and interaction of states are unit-level phenomena, and the level of system, or structure, is defined by the distribution of capabilities among states, and by the anarchical nature of the system and functional similarity of states within the system. Structure, for Waltz is strictly an unintended byproduct of state capabilities and interaction. It is a constraint on the actions of states which are ontologically pri or to the structure.

Dessler offers "transformational" ontology as an alternative to the positional. Dessler adopts Giddens' formula of social structures as rules and resources. The latter are equated with what Waltz calls capabilities. It is the rules that differentiate D essler's ontology from Waltz's. Dessler (1989:454-458) divides rules into the constitutive and regulative types. The former are conventions of diplomatic communication and signaling and the latter comprise international law and tacit regimes of sanctioned conduct. In Dessler's conception, many resources are possessed exclusively by states, but rules are shared among states and serve to enable and constrain their interaction. Critically, Dessler regards rules as subject to reproduction or transformation by state actions. He writes (1989:452) "all social action presupposes social structure, and vice versa." That is, neither structure nor action exists independently of or prior to the other. Hence structure and action, as well as actors, are ontologically c oequal in Dessler's metatheory.

Dessler claims several points of superiority for his model. He shows that Waltz himself relies on the operation of rules of international structure (458-460), but fails to acknowledge them explicitly is his theory. Further, for Waltz rules are strictly unintended outcomes of state behavior and not subject to deliberate action to change or preserve them. In a transformational model, such rules may be objects of deliberate action. While Waltz is forced by his ontology to exclude alliances and pacts from the realm of structure as they are intentional products, Dessler can recognize them as "sedimented deposits that become conditions of subsequent interaction" (462).

Giddens (1979:66) draws a distinction between social structure and social system. A social system for Giddens is a network of reproduced practices among agents. Social structures according to Giddens, consisting of rules and resources, are properties o f social systems. Giddens give explicit ontological priority to social systems over social structures. Yet curiously, Giddens provides little discussion about social systems, and that lacuna is inherited by the international structurationist writers. Dess ler (1989), for example, focuses on rules and resources in his meta-theory, but has little to say about practices. Doty (1997), writing in a poststructuralist vein, draws attention to the ontological importance of practices and to the limitations of the a gent-structure dichotomy. It is precisely through the focus on the practices in a structure that the processes of its reproduction and evolution can be revealed. The account of historical structures I present below focuses on practices and the actions the y comprise.

Ashley (1989) and Doty (1997) have developed the notion that actions, practices, and history as a whole is undecidable. For Ashley (1989), structures and practices are logically incompatible, yet require each other. I do not wish to argue that actions , practices, or history are wholly decidable, I do not think they are. At the same time, the internal structure of action gives rise to structures and structuration is ways that will be specified below. I do not contend that given a set of persons and a p eriod of history, only one chronology of their actions and only one historical structural interpretation is possible. In that sense, history is not wholly decidable. However, the theory developed here does contradict a large number of widely circulated in terpretations of particular histories. Perhaps the best a social theory can do is regulate debates among many rival interpretations of history, privileging some and marginalizing others.

The literature on structures is divided into two parts. One part is the historical literature such as that of Wallerstein, Cardoso and Faletto, and Skocpol. These works interpret history masterfully using historical structural methods, finding enduring structures and recurring processes of structural change, but do little explicit theorizing about historical structures. A second literature is the structurationist metatheoretical studies cited above. The theories have weakly specified empirical referent s. This paper, developing a theory of historical structures from the concepts of actions an their records, seeks to reconcile rigorous theory and rich historiography.

Structurationist theory recognizes that structures must reproduce themselves through agents to endure. However it offers no clear method to trace the processes of reproduction of structures through agency. The model I advance here does offer such a met hod.

A historical-structural model

A theory of historical structures

The theory interprets action chronologies as evolutionary histories. The data for this theory is a chronology of actions. Chronologies are inevitably incomplete, but criteria of adequacy are given. Certain details must be recorded about each action, in cluding who the most direct actor and most direct target was. Sequences of actions, linked internally, are chained together as practices, and their myriad direct actors are assimilated into a few agents. Each practice is enacted by some agent toward some agent. In this way, a matrix of practices between agents is generated. The theory then examines the relations of constitutive interdependence among practices and agents, how each is caused to endure by others. The processes of reproduction of the practice s and agents are traced. Such self-reproducing collections of agents and practices are called historical structures. The differential reproduction of structures and substructures yields uneven frequency of repetition among various practices and uneven rat es of empowerment of agents. Such trends of uneven growth persist until the structure is beset by a crisis. The crisis may be brought on by obstacles external to the specified structure or by internal imbalances. In a crisis, some practices halt, causing their dependent practices to halt, and this radiation brings much of the structure to a halt. Agents may also disintegrate in crises. Eventually, new practices emerge and support each other, and their agents endure. The dynamic here is analogous to that T homas Kuhn (1962) attributed to scientific paradigms.

We begin by defining actions and making some assumptions about them. A social action makes a demand upon target actors and is based on precedents of some successful prior actions. The demand becomes commonly known to the actor and target due to communi cation or convention. An action is considered successful by an actor to the extent target actors later comply with the demand. An action may make demands on multiple target actors and obtain compliant reactions from some and defiant reactions from others. An actor, individual or collective, commits an action on the basis of precedent. The actor must draw an analogy between the contemplated action and some past successful action before committing it. A practice is a historical sequence of actions in which each action is based on precedents earlier in the sequence.

Further, each action uses some preceding actions in specific ways. An action may use materials created by predecessors, refer to previous communications, or use previous institutional acts. For example, the Congress took the action of initiating the Mu slim Mass Contact Program in United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) in 1937 after its election victory there. The action involved mainly Muslim Congress activists speaking to ordinary Muslims and trying to persuade them to support the Congress (Hasan 1993). This action used the results of previous Congress actions of recruiting Muslim activists. The record of each action in the chronology

The data of a historical structural analysis is a chronology of actions – events data with some non-standard variables. The record of each action must specify the actor, the action, target actors, demands, actions used, and precedents. The assumption o f this theory is that such action records can be generated with minimal controversy in segments of history otherwise subject to rival interpretations. The description in an action record is highly concrete. There is no attempt to fit these action records into a coherent historical narrative. Most often, controversy exists at the level of historical narratives. Of course, some events remain shrouded in controversy. An example of a small segment of such a chronology is given in Table 1. An adequate chronolo gy is one where each action after the first few has precedents within the chronology, and where the demands of each action are complied with or defied by subsequent actions. This issue will be addressed below.

Table 1: Sample chronology April-July 1937

Date Actor Target Action Demand Actions used Precedent
22 April Nehru, secularists in Congress Muslim voters, masses Muslim mass contact program (MMCP) Members participate in MMCP; Muslims support Congress Muslim activists join Congress Hindu voters: strong support to Congress
April 1937-1939 Congress right wing Congress starves MMCP of funds (hidden) Congress leadership acquiesce in member autonomy C. Hindu-tinged appeal; weak Muslim support of Congress
26 April Jinnah Muslims criticizes MMCP as intended to weaken Muslims criticizes MMCP as intended to weaken Muslims Muslims reject Congress
15-16 May Congress Muslims hold Allahbad conference to win Muslim support Muslims attend early small gains in Muslim support Muslims (section)
15-16 May Congress Congress attend Allahbad conferece Re cognition as Muslims supporting Congress Congress: secular appeal to Muslims earlier Muslim support to Congress
July ML Muslims exclusive appeal in speeches Muslims rej ect Congress Muslims: early support to ML
July Congress Muslims weak appeal Muslims support Congre ss Limited resources released by Congress communalists

Some subsequences from the chronology of actions are practices. We must ask what we need to know about a subsequence of actions to consider it a practice. We are looking not for a sequence of actions that have something in common that we as observers c an identify. Rather the actors of a later action in the practice draw an analogy between some preceding actions in the practice and the later action. Actors' perceptions that preceding actions in the practice have succeeded reinforce the practice. Also, t he actors should be aligned into a single agent. An example of a segment of a practice is given in Table 2.

Table 2: A segment of a practice

Date Actor Target Action Demand Actions used Precedent
July 1937 ML members Muslims exclusive appeal in Bundelkhand bye-election elite support for campaign
15-18 Oct. 1937 ML members Muslims opens campaign for mass support cites Muslim voters' support Bundelkhand victory
28 April-14 May, 1938 Jinnah Congress; Muslims demand to be sole representative of Muslims < /td> cites expanded mass support earlier Muslim nationalist appeals
22 Dec., 1939 Jinnah Muslims call "deliverance day" to celebrate Congress resignations mass organization of League spreads call earlier Muslim nationalist appeals

The four actions in Table 2 occurred during 1937-39. The Muslim League repeatedly made Muslim nationalist appeals in the minority regions. The appeals were successful in this period, Muslims came to support the League in large numbers in the minority r egions. The first major success was in July of 1937 in a bye-election in the town of Bundelkhand in United Provinces. Encouraged by the victory, the League opened a campaign for mass Muslim support in October, having been an elite organization previously. The subsequent rapid growth in membership emboldened the League by the next year to campaign to be recognized as the sole representative of Indian Muslims. When Congress resigned from office in United Provinces in December of 1939, refusing to cooperate in an involuntary war effort of the British empire, the League called on Muslims to celebrate "Deliverance Day," as the end of Congress tyranny over Muslims. This sequence of actions, each serving as a successful precedent for its successor, formed a segm ent of the practice of promoting Muslim nationalism.

A directed practice is intended by the agent to elicit or avert some reaction from the target agent. That is to say, groups in a structure consciously interact with each other. A practice is a chain of successful actions, hence its continuity is not au tomatic. Practices depend on each other for their actions' success. Each practice depends on others for the conditions of its possibility and for the fulfillment of its actions' demands - its purpose. Each practice uses the materials, meanings, or institu tional conditions produced by other practices. Further, practices are reinforced by the agent's perception of other practices. To the extent that a practice is accompanied by the practices sought by the agent, the first practice is reinforced.

The identification of collective agents is one of the key challenges in a historical structural analysis. International agents may be states. Alliances, international organizations, intranational and transnational social movements, social classes and e conomic networks, and ethnic groups are also examples of international agents. There is often controversy among observers about the boundaries of agents. One must begin with the distinction of actors and agents. The data of a historical structural analysi s specifies the direct actors of actions. The direct actors may include a wide variety of individuals and small groups. Yet a coherent historical structural analysis can incorporate only a few agents, at most six or seven. The assimilation of actors into agents and of actions into practices, as well as the specification of the practices of agents must be done in a consistent way. Agents are groups that have self-constituting practices. These are practices that organize the group, empower it, and different iate it from other groups.

Historical structures are composed of enduring group agents and recurring directed practices among them. Giddens defines social systems as "reproduced relations between actors or collectivities, organized as regular social practices" (Giddens 1979:66). The term historical structures as used here fits Giddens' "social systems," not his "social structures." Every agent in the structure may have some interaction with every other agent, including self-organizing and self-differentiating practices. A struct ure may be represented, at the behavioral level, as a matrix of directed practices among group agents, as in Table 3. A heuristic benefit of this matrix representation of historical practices is that is encourages a comprehensive survey of the practices a mong a set of interacting agents.

Table 3: Matrix of directed practices among groups Group A Group B Group C Group D Group A Self-constituting practices of A Practice of A toward B Practice of A toward C Practice of A toward D Group B >Practice of B toward A Self-constituting practices of B Practice of B toward C Practice of B toward D

Group A Group C Practice of C toward A Practice of C toward B Self-constituting practices of C Practice of C toward D

Group A Group D Practice of D toward A Practice of D toward B Practice of D toward C Self-constituting practices of D

A major benefit of this matrix representation of practices is that is helps to explain the recurrence, transformation, or collapse of the practices. Social practices are enabled and motivated by other social practices. Where one practice is dependent o n another, the mechanisms of dependence can be specified. These dependence relations may form a cycle or a complex of cycles. When such looping emerges, the practices in the cycle reproduce themselves. They collectively and selectively cause themselves to recur. The demonstration of such cycles of social causality among practices in a structural matrix is the key to the explanation of the continuity of a historical structure and the differential reproduction of practices. The rise and fall of practices du e to such a reproducing structure is a process of evolution by natural selection. Some practices are caused to expand and spread, other are caused to diminish by the array of practices as a whole. The matrix representation also explains the endurance and demise of agents. The self-constituting practices, as well as the other practices of agents must be reinforced for the agent to be reinforced. A self-reproducing historical structure also generates a network of common knowledge among participating agents and actors. This common knowledge refers of the demands in actions and to compliance with or defiance of those demands in reactions. Through communication and repeated interaction, actors and targets in the structure gain common knowledge of action demand s and of whether particular reactions comply with or defy those demands.

The differential reproduction of practices - where some practices are strongly reinforced, others weakly, and others not at all - leaves what Dessler calls "sedimented deposits." There are trends of uneven growth and decline of practices and substructu res that flow from the uneven frequency of repetition of practices in the matrix. Some practices remain stable while others are transformed. These trends may be unequal economic growth among states, arms races at the expense of other state expenditures, u neven income growth among social classes or ethnic groups, the growth of ideological or social movements, or any of a wide variety of other social trends. Such uneven growth yields changes of proportions among substructures. Historical analysis is frequen tly concerned with such trends, and the matrix of directed practices helps to explain them.

The historical-structural approach views history as a succession of structures punctuated by crises. Since each practice depends on others for its own reinforcement and repetition, it can halt if practices on which it depends halt. In this way, the obs truction of a few critical practices can cause the cessation of practices to radiate through much of a historical structure. This process of practices collapsing like a house of cards is labeled a crisis here. In the aftermath of a crisis, it is possible for a new structure to emerge and reproduce. The dynamic here is analogous to that Thomas Kuhn (1962) attributes to scientific paradigms. In that case, a paradigm goes through a period of normal science where new discoveries support the core assumptions o f the paradigm. Eventually, there is an accumulation of anomalies and a crisis of explanation, which sets the stage for revolutionary science and the emergence of a new paradigm.

The approach to historical structures here has a different ontology altogether from the structurationist approach. We must distinguish causal from descriptive ontology. At the causal level, individual actions and actors, recurring practices and cohesiv e agents, self-reproducing structures, and evolutionary histories are all ontologically coequal, since none can emerge without the others. At the descriptive level, there is a hierarchy. It is possible to describe actions without reference to whole practi ces, only a few precedents need be cited. Further, action descriptions refer to actors and targets and common knowledge of demands and responses between them. These are also limited descriptions which do not require knowledge of whole structures or practi ces. Actors themselves have knowledge of all theoretically specified features of an action, and they are often unaware of recurring practices or self-reproducing structures. At the second level of description, there are practices and agents. These must be described in terms of actions and actors, yet each practice and agent can be described without reference to whole self-reproducing structures. And the description of structures requires the description of practices and agents. In this way, there is a hie rarchical ontology of description.

The example of the partition of India: 1937-46

An example of a historical structure is the proto-international society of the British Indian empire in its last decade. An excellent historiography of that period has emerged that admits to the framework proposed here (Hasan 1993, Singh 1987, Jalal 19 85, Chandra 1984). The structure can be understood as an interaction among six agents: the Congress, the British, the Muslim League, the enfranchised Muslims in provinces where Muslims were an majority, enfranchised Muslims in provinces where Muslims were a minority, Hindu communalists, and enfranchised Hindus. The specification of agents, especially the last three, is of course approximate. The ethnic group agents undertook the actions to be attributed to them only as a dominant tendency within the group .

The partition of the structure into these seven agents is based on the actors in the actions and practices delineated below. Actors acted on the basis of successful precedents committed by other actors aligned with them within the same agent. The data here is organized as practices, no chronology is given.

Uneven growth: The fundamental trend of 1937-46 in the Partition process was the growth of the Muslim League's support among enfranchised Muslims. Other important trends were the decline of British power and the growing belief throughout India in the i mminence of Britain's exit, and the growing power of the Congress. The period began with a crushing defeat of the League in the colonial elections of 1937. In these elections about 30% of the adult population was enfranchised, and there were separate elec torates for Hindus and Muslims. The League received less than 5% of Muslim votes cast throughout India. By 1946, the League had gained the support of 75% of Muslim voters. In contrast, support for Congress among enfranchised Muslims stagnated during 1937- 46. The purpose of this analysis is to understand the structural processes that led to that growth, to understand the differential reproduction of practices which engendered that growth.

The growth of Muslim League influence took place in steps after the debacle of 1937. The party won all bye-elections it contested in Muslim constituencies after 1937. It made agreements with Muslim leaders in Bengal and Punjab. In 1938, Gandhi began to debate Jinnah, thus restoring some of his status in the all-India level lost a year earlier. In 1938, Congress governments bowed to Muslim League-led pressure and restricted the display of its party flag as the national flag, and restricted the singing o f a patriotic song with anti-Muslim implications, Bandemataram, in public occasions (Singh 1987:37-38). After the outbreak of war, the Muslim League took a stand of unconditional support for Britain and was rewarded with the British recognition of a Leagu e veto in future constitutional arrangements. The 1942 Cripps Mission proposed Muslim provinces a right to opt out of any future Indian union. Communal tensions rose after the announcement of this proposal. In 1944, Gandhi and the conservative Congress le ader Rajagopalachari accepted a version of the Pakistan scheme. Confidential colonial documents reveal that during the war, the British consciously sought to manipulate Congress by favoring the Muslim League (Singh 1987).

Britain emerged from the Second World War economically devastated, and elected a Labor government committed to ending the empire in India. This accelerated expectations of the imminent demise of the British Indian empire. Elections in India under restr icted franchise and communal electorates were set for March of 1946. The Muslim League campaigned on one issue alone - the creation of Pakistan. Muslim clergy from throughout northern India came over to the League and threatened Muslims who failed to vote for the League with excommunication, entailing exclusion of Muslim cemeteries and from mass prayer at mosques (Singh 1987:134). League propaganda in Punjab (whose western part now contains the majority of Pakistanis) explicitly equated its Muslim opponen ts in the Unionist Party with infidels. In the provincial elections of 1946, the Muslim League won 75% of the six million Muslim votes cast in India (Jalal 1985:172). It won all Muslim seats in Bombay, Madras, and Orissa provinces (all now in India), and overwhelming majorities of Muslim seats in all provinces except North West Frontier Province (now in Pakistan), where it won 17 out of 38 (Ahmad 1985:178). The enfranchised Indian Muslims clearly embraced the concept of Pakistan.

There were several practices contributing to the growth of the Muslim League. The first and foremost was of course the nature and consistency of Muslim League appeals to Indian Muslims. The message was that the Muslims were a nation apart from other In dians and had the right to a state of their own, and that they should not have to live, for the first time in history, as a minority in a state dominated by Hindus. Muslim leaders in Bengal and Punjab did not wholly accept this thesis, but nor did they re ject it. After 1937, they made accommodations where Jinnah would represent Muslim interests at the all-India level while they would run their own provinces. These accommodations lent credibility to Jinnah's claim to be the sole representative of Indian Mu slims. The League's two-nation theory rested in part on social exclusionary practices in both communities against the other. Under the influence of Syed Ahmad Khan in the nineteenth century, a social movement of Islamicization among Indian Muslims develop ed. The purpose was to abandon aspects of their rituals and daily life deemed Hindu and Indian to embrace a symbolic order reflecting the Arab, Persian, and Turkish antecedents of Islam in India. The Hindu lower middle class and orthodox upper castes prac ticed ritual untouchability, mainly against the Hindu lower castes, but also against Muslims.

In the late 1930s Muslims in the minority provinces did not, as a group, adopt any clear political affiliation. They shunned Congress, but did not embrace the League, electing independent candidates in 1937. Congress reciprocated Muslim disinterest by pursuing Muslim support half-heartedly. Further, Congress itself at several points negotiated with Jinnah over their respective relations with Muslims, rather than aggressively and directly pursuing Muslim mass support. This enhanced Jinnah's credibility as the sole spokesman for Indian Muslims. Socially influential sections among both Hindus and Muslims conducted social exclusionary practices toward the other community. Lower middle class and orthodox upper caste Hindus on a large scale practiced untouch ability toward Muslims. Elaborate rituals to avoid physical contact were established. In the late nineteenth century, the Muslim leader Syed Ahmad Khan began to advocate Muslim social reform based on Islamicization and modernization. The former tendency e ntailed a reconfiguration of the ritual and symbolic order in daily life to abandon the remaining Hindu rituals among converted Muslims and move more fully to an Islamic symbolic order derived from the Middle East.

Finally, the British, over decades, sought to sharpen religious differences in India to obstruct the emergence of a united independence movement and created various institutional forms to that end (Chandra 1984:237-289). Most critical was the separate electorate for Muslims, which diminished the tendency toward inter-communal coalitions in the colonial election set-up.

Matrix of directed practices (1937-46): Since there are seven groups, there are forty-nine possible cells of directed practices. I shall describe only cells in reproduction cycles.

Congress ( Muslim League: The Congress initially took a dismissive approach to the League. It refused to allow the League into a coalition in United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). The Congress government in UP curtailed, but did not eliminate the dispr oportionate economic and administrative privileges the Muslim elite had enjoyed for the preceding decades (Brennan 1993). At several points in the period Congress leaders, including Gandhi and Nehru, negotiated with League leaders with the aim of moderati ng League demands for a separate Muslim polity. In 1938, Nehru and Gandhi held discussions with Jinnah seeking to counter his accusations that Congress policy was "exclusively Hindu" (Singh 1987:25). It continued to reject Jinnah's demand for recognition as the sole representative of all Indian Muslims. Direct interaction between the two parties went into hiatus after the start of the Second World War in 1939 as Congress leaders came under arrest. An indirect debate between Jinnah and Gandhi continued thr oughout the entire 1937-47 period in speeches and publications (Merriam 1980). In 1944 Gandhi and the conservative Congressman Rajagopalachari held talks with Jinnah which appeared to concede some version of Pakistan. Their probable aim was to expose the violent divisions of Punjab and Bengal the plan for Pakistan would entail, and thereby to dissuade Indian Muslim from pursuing it (Singh 1987:109-110). However, the Rajagopalachari-Gandhi offer was for partition after independence and Jinnah wanted it bef orehand (Merriam 1980:97). The former retained their insistence and talks broke down.

Reinforcement came from three Congress perceptions. First, Congress was gaining overwhelming support from Hindus and a margin of support from Muslims. Second, League demands were fundamentally contrary to Congress' message. Third, the League was gainin g support within the upper strata of Muslim society, and could not be dismissed.

Congress ( Majority Muslims: There was limited interaction between Congress and Muslim political forces in Punjab, and more intense interaction in Bengal. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the most prominent Congress Muslim, was assigned the role of liaison wit h the Muslim majority provinces. He was unable to sway Nehru and the Congress leadership to make a strong alliance with the pro-British but inter-communal Unionist Party in Punjab (Azad 1988). The principal difference between Congress and the dominant Mus lim parties in these provinces was on the question of British rule. Congress opposed it and the Unionists in Punjab and the Muslim-led ruling coalition in Bengal favored it. Also especially in Bengal, Congress, was closely aligned with the interests of th e Hindu landowners as opposed to the largely Muslim poorer classes. The Congress practice of aligning with Hindu upper class interests in Muslim majority regions was reinforced by its receipt of the bulk of its support there from Hindus.

Congress ( Minority Muslims: The Congress party did contain some prominent Muslim leaders, but their support among minority Muslims was weak. In the 1937 elections, when Congress did extremely well overall, it won only one of the 64 Muslim seats in Un ited Provinces. After those elections Congress launched the Muslim Mass Contact Program to build its ties especially with northern Indian Muslims, but that was pursued half-heartedly and failed by mid-1939 (Singh 1987:39-40). Congress provincial governmen ts maintained basically secular policies during 1937-39, in spite of Muslim League charges to the contrary. During the war, the Congress leadership spent much time in prisons, and contact with minority Muslims dwindled.

Congress ( Hindus: Congress sought to mobilize a multi-caste coalition of Hindus and it rejected orthodox Brahminical conceptions of Hinduism. Gandhi was a leader in reconstructing a more liberal form of Hindu social thought, while Nehru articulated a nonreligious political rhetoric. Nonetheless, the Congress rhetoric did contain some symbols, such as Gandhi's term ram rajya (rule according to Ram's ideal) and the 19th century song with anti-Muslim references Bandemataram, which Muslim Leaguers present ed as evidence of Congress' exclusively Hindu stance.

In Bengal, Congress received and pursued Hindu votes. They did not support land reform measures that would have hurt Hindu landed interests.

British self-empowering practices: The British ran the Indian empire with a minuscule number of white British personnel. Their method was to recruit Indians. But to prevent the Indians from uniting against them, they employed a strategy to keep the Ind ians divided. India itself had many social divisions pre-dating the colonial period, and the British simply worked to intensify some of these. A series of British officials, from the period following the 1857 Indian revolt to Winston Churchill as Prime Mi nister explicitly said that Hindu-Muslim divisions served the British interest (Chandra 1984:244-245fn). In the twentieth century, the colonial administrator, through a series of official statements and institutional acts, promoted the notion that Indian Muslims constituted a separate political community from the Hindus, recognizing explicitly at several point that this served the perpetuation of the empire (Chandra 1984:260-286). Seeking to placate and limit the growing independence movement in the early twentieth century, in 1920 Britain introduced the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. The principal content of these was to create an election system with limited suffrage and separate electorates for Muslims, caste Hindus, and Depressed Classes. The system ensu red that politicians belonging to one of these groups could only seek votes from voters of their own group. It relieved parties of the need to form intergroup local coalitions to win seats in the weak colonial legislatures. It remained possible for partie s to nominate candidates from all groups, but it also created an institutionalized opportunity for sectarian parties. This system was retained until the end of the colonial period.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, the British moved swiftly to promote the Muslim League, which was still quite weak, as a counterweight to Congress. Within months they gave unprecedented recognition to the League as a representative of Muslim interest s. These policies were consciously intended to manipulate Congress and prevent the consolidation of the movement for a united independent India.

British institutional reforms and divide-and-rule policies had multiple targets. They are listed here as imperial self-organizing practices, but could be placed in other categories. The divide and rule policies were reinforced by the growing communal d ivisions within India and the willingness of the Muslim League to appeal to British authority to attain their goals.

British ( Muslim League: Throughout this period, the colonial authorities consistently assured the survival of the Muslim League on occasions when it neared extinction for want of popular support. They artificially elevated the League into the position of the major representative for Muslim interests at the all-India level during periods when they did not enjoy concomitant popular support. Their goal was to keep India politically divided so they could maintain colonial power. British officials repeated ly cited Hindu-Muslim disunity as a reason for prolonging the empire. During the war, the British moved to form closer ties with the League. At the same time, they blocked League efforts to undermine the independence of the solidly pro-British Unionist Pa rty in Punjab. Britain's limited support for the was reinforced by the League's willingness to support Britain the war and in its actions against the Congress-led independence movement.

British ( majority Muslims: The separate electorates in the colonial election system were in part a British response to the demands of Muslim leaders in Punjab (Page 1982). The British heavily recruited Punjabi Muslims, as well as other Punjabis, into the colonial army. They designated various groups of Punjabis and others ethnic groups favored for recruitment "martial races." Before 1946, the dominant parties in Punjab and Bengal were relatively loyal to the British, and the British were relatively so licitous to their political demands, especially for Punjab. In Bengal, British responses to the 1943 Bengal Famine, which took 3 million lives, mostly Muslim, combined acts of deliberate exacerbation, prevention of aid from other parts of India and the wo rld, and negligence.

Muslim League ( British: The League persistently sought to dissuade the British from agreeing to Congress demands to leave India as a single democratic state. It insisted on recognition of its role as the sole legitimate representative of Indian Muslim s. It encouraged British moves that facilitated communal separation and partition. At the same time, the League limited its wartime collaboration with the British.

Muslim League ( Hindus: Once Congress governments began to function in 1937, the League began to deliberately instigate communal incidents. Declassified colonial records reveal that the British recorded such incidents (Singh 1987:37-39). The League too k a strongly negative stance toward Hindus as a group. Its propaganda projected Hindus through negative stereotypes and exaggerated the paucity of social connections between Hindus and Muslims. Where Hindus were in the minority, it sought to exclude them from ruling coalitions.

Muslim League ( majority Muslims: From the perspective of the present, what is surprising about this relationships is its weakness. The Muslim League held very little sway in the regions that were to become Pakistan prior to 1946. Bengal colonial polit ics was dominated by independents and intercommunal parties. Punjab was dominated by the intercommunal Unionist Party. The pact between Jinnah and Unionist leader Sikander Hayat Khan in 1937 shaped this relationship. The two agreed that Jinnah would repre sent Muslim interests at the all-India level and the Unionists would run Punjab without interference from the All-India Muslim League. Sikander's successor Khizar H. K. Tiwana had a conflictual relationship with the League, and in the 1946 election was as sociated in League propaganda with the rule of the infidels. The North-West Frontier Province supported the Congress in 1937, and the League won no seats in Sind. Jinnah at points did press Muslim politicians in Bengal and Punjab to reject coalitions with Hindus and to maintain exclusively Muslim alliances.

In the 1940s the League mobilized the pirs (Sufi Muslim holy men) of Punjab to pressure the Muslim Punjabis to support the League (Talbott 1993; Gilmartin 1993). It also gained significant communist support in 1944 in overcoming landlord resistance in rural Punjab to the League. Appealing to post-war discontent, the League was able to win Punjab away from the Unionist Party.

Muslim League ( minority Muslims: It was among the politicized and educated elite strata of the minority Muslims that the League had its early successes. Its leaders were from this group. The League drew its ideology from the communalism established at the Aligarh Muslim University in UP and from the poet Iqbal. The primary activity of the League toward the enfranchised minority Muslims was to exhort them to fear the prospect of democracy under a Hindu majority and to ask for their support for a series of schemes for special protection of Muslims. The schemes began with demands for coequal representation in undivided India with the more numerous Hindus, and ended with a separate state in the Muslim majority regions.

Majority Muslims ( Congress: Congress received little support from majority Muslims except in NWFP. There were occasional flirtations between Muslim political leaders in Bengal and Punjab and the Congress, but no enduring link was established. The Unio nists in Punjab and Muslim-dominated parties in Bengal did not align with the Congress-led independence movement. Majority Muslims' rejection of Congress appeals was reinforced by their antipathy to all-India centralization and by Congress support for Hin du upper class interests in the Muslim-majority regions.

Majority Muslims ( British: The ruling Unionists in Punjab and the Haq government in Bengal gave strong support to the British during the war. Punjabi Muslims, along with other Punjabis, were more inclined to join the British Indian Army than people in most other provinces. The Punjab Unionists demanded the maintenance of separate electorates, for that supported Muslim rule in Punjab and undermined the potential of a Hindu- or Sikh-led coalition ruling with support from a section of Muslims (Page 1982) . These practices in Punjab were reinforced by the strong recruitment of Punjabis into the imperial army.

Majority Muslims ( Muslim League: After 1937, the majority Muslims sought to limit League influence in their regions and to maintain the right to coalesce with provincial non-Muslims to keep political and social stability. But after the end of the war, as the departure of the British became certain, there was a swing toward the Muslim League. This swing was strongly promoted, especially in Punjab, by the religious establishment. The League won all the Muslim majority provinces in 1946 except NWFP. The swing of support toward the League was reinforced by Hindu antagonism and violence against Muslims in the minority regions.

Majority Muslims ( Hindus: The majority Muslims ruled Bengal and Punjab in coalition with Hindus, and in the latter, Sikhs. During the tenure of these coalitions, social relations were peaceful and cooperative between the communities. However, as suppo rt increased for the Muslim League communal tensions rose in Punjab and Bengal. There was large-scale violence during the partition.

Minority Muslims ( Congress: The attitudes toward Congress among enfranchised minority Muslims turned from indifference and modest support to hostility during 1937-47. In the 1937 provincial elections, only one of the 64 Muslim members of the UP assemb ly was from Congress (Jalal 1985:32). There was little hostility to Congress in these elections, and the party had Muslim supporters.

Following the 1937 elections, some sections of Muslim society extended support to the Congress. The most crucial was a group of clerics, the Jamayat al-Ulama, which has formed in the 1920s. It called on Indian Muslims to join with Hindus and Congress i n the struggle for independence (Hasan 1993:144-145). Urban Muslims did respond positively at the initial stages to Congress' Muslim Mass Contact Campaign (Hasan 1993: 147-148). However, this wave of support did not expand to the rural areas and the Musl im peasantry, largely due to the limited nature of Congress efforts.

Lance Brennan (1993) shows that between the turn of the century until 1937, Muslim elites in UP had strengthened their economic and political position. They wielded disproportionate political, administrative, and economic power in the province. The res ults of the elections led to a sudden decline of that position. Congress gained an absolute majority in the elections and did not invite the Muslim League into a coalition on terms acceptable to the latter. There had been some informal cooperation betwee n Congress and the League prior to the elections. The Congress government in UP that took power after the elections maintained the disproportionate role of Muslims within the administration, but by a lesser margin. The Muslim elite found its position tran sformed from a privileged stratum in a fragmented hierarchical society, to a politically dependent minority in a society with a strong majority consensus. Further, there were important symbolic changes introduced by the Congress government. The Muslim eli te began to complain about these changes. By the middle of 1939, the Muslim elites of UP had abandoned the strategy of making bargains with Congress and Hindus, and had embraced the wholly separatist line of the Muslim League (Brennan 1993:355). The growi ng rapport between Hindus and the Congress leadership provided the strongest reinforcement of Muslim minority separatism and disenchantment with the Congress..

Minority Muslims ( Muslim League: While the AIML was drawn from mainly this group, as a whole it initially gave only lukewarm support to the League. Muslim political organization on the eve of the 1937 provincial elections was localized and fragmented. In the 1937 elections, in United Provinces - the province with the largest Muslim minority population - the Muslim League won 43% of Muslim seats in a multi-sided contest for those seats. In Bihar and Central Provinces (now Madhya Pradesh), it won none o f the Muslim seats. In Bombay province (now Maharashtra and Gujarat) it did relatively well with 51% of Muslim seats. In Bengal and Punjab by contrast, it won 31% and 1%, respectively, of Muslim seats (Jalal 1985:32). After that election, Muslim support f or the League grew rapidly, giving a string of bye-election victories to the latter in Muslim constituencies. The enfranchised minority Muslims embraced the League's message that Muslims formed a separate nation from Hindus. This trend was reinforced by g rowing Hindu political consolidation under the Congress banner, and by the growth of Hindu-Muslim hostility.

Minority Muslims ( Hindus: The general ambivalence and political paralysis of the minority Muslims was present in relations with Hindus. There was no large-scale antagonism toward Hindus. Sporadic rioting was a fringe phenomenon. There was of course pr ofound economic interdependence between the two groups. At the same time, political cooperation between the two was low to the point that the British recognized and exploited the lacuna. The social separation between minority Muslims and Hindus was partly maintained by a cultural movement among Indian Muslims that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The vast majority of Indian Muslims were descended from converted Hindus, and many retained Hindu rituals and customs. The Islamicization movement critici zed such practices and demanded adherence to Arab ritual (Malik 1980:41-47). Islamic concepts of bid'a (impious innovation), ajam (beyond Arabia), and sunna (trodden path) were deployed to achieve cultural and social separation of Muslims and Hindus. By t he 1930s, the Hindus and Muslims in northern India had grown relatively separate in non-economic spheres of life.

Muslims competed with Hindus in the minority areas for land and political power. In UP, the Muslim elite held a disproportionate role in society, guaranteed by British administration. After 1937, that role began to decline, leading to growing resentmen t among the Muslim elites toward the ascendant Hindus. Supporters of the Nizam of Hyderabad resisted rising Hindu assertion violently.

Hindus ( Congress: Hindus gave strong support to the Congress. The right-wing Hindu Mahasabha had only marginal support. However Chandra (1984:141-157) demonstrates that sections of Hindus in Congress were ambivalent on the question of secularism. Over all, the Gandhian social reform ideology found acceptance in Hindu society, and that enabled its political consolidation.

Hindus ( minority Muslims: Social relations between Hindus and Muslims formed a complex pattern. Among the rural masses and the urban professional classes there was considerable intermixing in daily activity, however there was little intermarriage. Amo ng the urban Hindu lower middle class and orthodox upper caste Hindus, adherence to rigid codes of untouchability led them to practice rituals of exclusion upon Muslims. This primarily involved the refusal to eat food or drink water that had been touched by Muslims and others deemed untouchable (Chandra 1984:194-201). While Gandhi and other nationalist leaders strongly opposed untouchability, the process of social reform remained stunted in the pre-independence period. At the political level, through the support of the avowedly secular Congress, Hindus sought to win support from the minority Muslims.

After 1937 Hindus had a limited willingness to accept a disproportionate Muslim role in economic and administration. Manifestations of this ranged from UP Chief Minister Pant's admonition to Muslims to limit their demands to retain a disproportionate r ole (Brennan 1993) to the agitation of Hindu Telegus in Hyderabad against their Muslim communalist prince (Talbot, 1993).

As the Pakistan demand gathered momentum in the minority areas, tensions between Hindus and Muslims rose, and Hindu antagonism toward minority Muslims was reinforced.

Hindu communalists ( Congress: Hindu communalists played a substantial role in local Congress organizations. Hasan (1993) attributes the failure of Congress' Muslim Mass Contact Programme in 1939 principally to the obstruction by Hindu communalists in the local Congress organizations. Communalists and sympathizers in the Congress took a series of actions to recruit more communalists and to limit the role of Muslims in the party (Hasan. 1993).

The directed practices above are displayed in a matrix in Figure 4.

Table 4: Matrix of practices between agents leading to the Partition of India

1937-46 Muslim League Congress British Minority Muslims Majority Muslims Hindus
Muslim League seek aid, independence; limited support to empire during war pursue, promote Muslim nationalism accommodate, then pursue othering practices, create communal incidents
Congress try to marginalize; negotiate with; deny exclusive Muslim representation pursue weakly oppose economic interests pursue, support class interests
British give support; grant special status arres t, contain internal discourse of divide and rule recruit into colonial army
Minority Muslims -'37: spurn '37-'46: support -'37 spurn, '37-'46: oppose social exclusion; condescension; limited hostility
Majority Muslims '37-'46: accommodate; '46: embrace strong support to empire '37-'46: accommodation; '46-: hostility
Hindus strong support limited deference some hostility Hindu communalists infiltrate; limit Muslim role hostility

Reproduction: One can identify some causal cycles among the practices described above. These ensembles of practices collectively caused themselves to recur and led with each iteration to the growth of the Muslim League's influence. I shall discuss four cycles, each of which is causally connected to other practices and cycles of practices. This list of four is not exhaustive, however, it does elucidate the main processes at work in the historical structure that led to the partition of the Indian subcont inent.

The first cycle involved the interactions among the minority Muslims, the League, Congress, and the Hindus. The enfranchised minority Muslim's spurning of Congress and their opposition to its Hindu communal tinge encouraged the League to sustain its co mmunal campaign in the minority provinces even after the defeat of 1937. "After 1937, the Muslim League was to use this Hindu communal tinge to mount a powerful political and ideological offensive against the Congress and Congress ministries and to mobili ze the Muslim masses and middle classes" (Chandra 1984:147).

To aid its pursuit of minority Muslims, the League turned to aggressive anti-Hindu rhetoric. Most prominent was the propagation of negative stereotypes of Hindus as a group. The League sought to gain Muslim support by inducing them to reject all Hindus as political coalition partners. The League's pursuit of minority Muslim support, combined with its projection anti-Hindu stereotypes, served to persuade minority Muslims to increase their support to the League.

League propaganda against Hindus provoked reactions among Hindus, and led to growing expressions and hostility and concomitant actions against minority Muslims. An interesting account of this process in the United Provinces from a personal viewpoint is given by I. M. Qureshi, who later became vice-chancellor of the University of Karachi.

And Hindu hostility against minority Muslims provoked them to take a more suspicious view of Hindus in general, and the Congress specifically. This last link completes a causal cycle. This first cycle is displayed in Figure 3.2.

The second cycle covers the same groups as the first and overlaps with it. The minority Muslims' spurning of Congress led, by default, to a disproportionately Hindu Congress and to its Hindu communal tinge. The Congress appeal to Hindus thus sustained its communal tinge. This of course directly provoked continued Muslim spurning of Congress. But it also had a more circuitous impact.

The Hindu communal tinge within the Congress movement weakened the secularizing social impact of the movement and sustained Hindu social exclusionary practices toward Muslims. And this, as shown in the first cycle, perpetuated the minority Muslims' spu rning of Congress. The second cycle is displayed in Figure 3.3.

The third cycle is a complex of subcycles. The first subcycle is a reciprocal relation between the British and the League. The former propped up the latter after the 1937 debacle, bringing it into negotiations on the future of India as a coequal partne r of Congress. In turn, the League accepted British war policy without conditions on withdrawal from India, and indeed, sought to prevent premature withdrawal - until the League could secure its post-colonial position.

British tacit support of the Muslim League enhanced the ability of the latter to pursue the support of minority Muslims. Indeed, while Congress leaders were imprisoned during the war, the League had a monopoly of access. Through this link, the third cy cle fed into the first.

Another subcycle of the third cycle was a two-way causal relation between the majority Muslim support of the British and the latter's imperial strategy of maintaining separate electorates. As Page (1982) observes, the Punjabi Muslims had a special inte rest in separate electorates. They were a bare majority in their province and needed such a scheme to rule out a provincial majority coalition of non-Muslims and a small section of Muslims. Since the British heavily recruited Punjabi Muslims as a "martial race" into their colonial army, they were especially solicitous of their concerns, and that reinforced the imperial strategy of separate electorates. In turn, the Punjabi Muslims supported British rule longer and more intensely than any other large regio nal group. This was motivated by the imperial strategy of separate electorates and constrained Indian participation in the central colonial legislature in New Delhi. The imperial strategy of separate electorates helped the British to prop up the Muslim Le ague in the minority provinces. This last link connects the British-Punjabi subcycle to the British-League subcycle. The third cycle of practices is now complete, it is displayed in Figure 3.4.

We can discern a fourth reproducing cycle of practices involving Congress, Hindus in the regions with a Muslim majority, the majority Muslims, and the League. Hindus in Bengal and Punjab pressed Congress to support their economic interests, and having few other followers in these regions Congress did so (Jalal, 1985). The majority Muslims spurned the Congress and rejected the latter's demands for a strong Indian central government. That practice was supported by the majority Muslim's accommodation with the Muslim League, most notably in the Sikander-Jinnah pact. From the majority Muslim perspective, autonomy was served by supporting the League at the all-India level thereby keeping Congress away from the levers of power in Delhi.

The majority Muslims' utilization of the League at the all-India level gave the latter greater legitimacy to expand its mass base in Bengal and Punjab. The Muslim League pursued support in the majority regions independently of the established local Mus lim parties. By 1944, the League was strong enough to challenge the local parties directly, and of course crushed them in Bengal, Punjab, and Sind in the 1946 provincial elections.

The League's pursuit of the majority Muslims, and its rising influence among them, persuaded, pressured, and enabled the latter to continue rejecting the Congress and opposing its demands for a strong post-colonial center. This fourth cycle of practice s is illustrated in Figure 3.5.

A fifth cycle of practices involved the three political actors: the Congress, the League, and the British. The Congress rejected the League's claim to represent Indian Muslims and opposed British colonialism. The first of these practices provoked the L eague to support British rule provisionally, and to give the empire support during the Second World War. The second provoked the British to promulgate postwar plans giving special status to the League and to Indian Muslims at large. Each of these two prac tices hardened Congress opposition to the two and reinforced the concomitant practices.

Partition as a structural process: The example of the partition of the British Indian empire illustrates the interplay between uneven growth, directed practices, and reproduction within a historical structure. The central idea is that uneven growth of practices and substructures is an evolutionary process due to the differential reproduction of an array of directed practices, the recurrence of the array of practices is due to their reproduction via cycles of social causality among the practices, and th ese reproducing cycles are supported, and can eventually be undermined by the uneven growth of substructures. A historical structure is an evolutionary process. The account given above elaborates the notion of "structuration." Evolution - stabilizing or d estabilizing - is inherent in the functioning and thus the existence of historical structures.

Conclusion

Historical structures reproduce themselves, unevenly, and thereby evolve. The criterion of good historical explanation that flows from this realization is that the perpetuation or cessation of practices needs to be explained. It is causally inadequate to say that one set of practices persisted, and thus so did a second set. The persistence of all practices needs to be explained, and can only be explained by the support of other persistent practices. The specific relations of support among practices mus t be elucidated. The causal closure of a historical structure must be demonstrated.

The purpose of the theory developed here is to enhance the falsifiability and theoretical transparency of structural interpretations. It is hoped that action chronologies are more falsifiable and less controversial than accounts of agents, practices, a nd structures without reference to action chronologies. By grounding structural interpretations in actions chronologies, a measure of falsifiability is achieved.

Bibliography