Аннотация:This article explores the issue of community and nation-making in a relatively less explored region of colonial India, Bihar. Although engaging with the existing literature on the theme, it looks into new sources including those in Urdu. The exploration finds that considerably large sections of Muslims were firmly and consistently opposed to the communal separatist politics of the Muslim League in the last days of the empire. Their adherence was to the principle of composite nationalism (muttahidah qaumiyat) and was articulated through the Imarat-e-Shariah and the Muslim Independent Party (MIP), whose essential ideological affiliation was with the Congress. This affiliation was manifested most clearly during and after the Congress ministry (1937–1939). The Muslim League's victory in 1946 elections of Bihar was far from inevitable. The ‘Rajendra Prasad Papers’, Urdu sources, besides other archival accounts, however, clearly suggest that the Congress refused to extend necessary cooperation to those Muslim leaders/political formations (religious/secular and biradri based, most of them belonging to the Congress itself) which were opposed to the idea of communal separatism. Rising assertion of the majoritarian communalism of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha/RSS and the considerable communalization of the lower strata of the Congress was no less significant factor, which is amply testified by the archival documents (like intelligence reports and official correspondences) of 1940s.
