ABSTRACT
The predominantly small landlord leadership of the Bihar Congress was broadly right wing in orientation, and between the 1920s and 1940s, worked on forging a united anti-imperialist front. Simultaneously, between the 1930s and 1940s, not only did the agrarian reform programme of the Bihar Congress fail to take off, the party also increasingly lost the support of the Muslim masses, despite its Muslim Mass Contact initiative: Rabita-e-Awam. After 1937, the only agonising by the Congress about mass contacts was with regard to Muslims. The 1937–39 Congress ministry years have been described as a ‘politically decisive period’, that saw both the alienation of the Muslims and the consolidation of the Muslim League in provinces such as Bihar, where Muslims comprised a minority of the population. A simultaneous overlapping membership straddled the Congress and the Kisan Sabha and cut into the support of the Congress among landed Muslims.
