ABSTRACT
The 1946 riots that took place in the wake of Partition politics were a haunting memory for the Muslim communities of Bihar, infl uencing all aspects of their life, including their electoral/political behaviour. Besides caste-based formations like the Momin Conference, Rayeen Conference, Mansuri Conference, and also the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind ( JUH) and its formidable and enduring branch, Imarat-e-Shariah, many others remained consistently opposed to both British colonialism and the territorial separatism of the Muslim League. The Sufi Khanqahs of Bihar, like the Khanqah-e-Rahmaniya (Munger) and Khanqah-e-Mujibiya (Phulwarisharif, Patna) stridently opposed the League’s politics, and consistently remained in alliance with the Congress-led anti-colonial struggle. Sir T. Rutherford, the then governor of Bihar (1946), said, ‘The Muslims who constituted 14 per cent of the population were not very strong supporters of Mr Jinnah’.1 This was further substantiated by the Chief Minister Shri Krishna Sinha (1887-1961), who said that,
the minorities have confi dence in the Congress … non-League Muslim candidates had obtained 25 per cent of the Muslim votes [in 1946] and more nationalists would have been returned if it had not been for the violent attitude of the League.2
