Maulana's political diary shows he was linked to the Bengal Pact (1923) of Swarajya party led by C.R. Das which proclaimed equity for the majority population in Bengal- Bengali Muslims. But it was felled by the Kolkata Babu led Bengal Congress opposition. He had also joined Gandhi's Swaraj movement but left which had morphed partly into the Khelafat movement. He had some links to radical groups too.

Thus, he was not averse to multi-faith community politics though the minority elite leaders were not keen as events show. The class factor became clear when these movements exposed the elite leadership objectives. It was against the interest of the marginalized who the Maualna represented. This was nothing personal to individuals but historical class formations as the post-collaboration elite all over in India and Bengal in particular suddenly faced which were on the surface based on faith based identity markers but was fundamentally class interest and conflict driven.

So when he joined the Muslim League in 1930, he had gone through a process of exploring various political options to locate his space which would be friendly to peasant interests of the kind he was most linked.

Bhashani's Muslim League

The decision to join Bengal Muslim League is significant because Bengal Muslim league's constituency was dominated by East Bengal Muslim majority peasantry which was also Bhashani's natural constituency. His politics was one based on promoting livelihood seeking of the peasantry and challenging the obstacles to that. This was the core of his political identity.

This party had many flaws including a central leadership which was against Bengal Muslim League and its peasant supporters. Its Kolkata leadership - Suhrawardy - was an unreliable ally and a powerful lobby within Bengal Muslim League led by the Dhaka Nawab family was also anti-Bengali peasantry and close to Jinnah or central North Indian leadership.

However, the majority of the BML were from peasant and elite intermediary spaces. It's they who gave the structure and not only shielded it from the All-India Muslim League (AIML) power exertion but through the elections of 1937 showed that even formal political power in Bengal belonged to rural voters and their immediate intermediaries, the majority population group.

Fazlul Haq - another intermediary between the elite and peasantry - was like Suhrawardy, trifle undependable, a man of political opportunism later on. He had begun as a peasant based middle class politician but his conflict with Jinnah's ML forced him/made him a competitor within Bengal of BML. He thus had to resort to alliances to politically survive or flourish. He sometimes won as in 1937 but also lost as in 1946.

After the 1937 elections, Haq had approached the Congress Party to form a coalition Government but was turned down. So he went to BML to form a coalition and become the Chief Minister. Later he left and joined hands with Hindu Mahasabha to form a new government in 1943.

This was seen by his voters as a betrayal because Hindu Mahasabha was radically anti-Muslim hence anti-peasant majority voters in Bengal. And his voters were entirely Muslim. Hence his fate was sealed in the election of 1946 and his party was totally routed.

Peasantry and babu politics

East Bengal had gained sub-state status (1905 -Partition of Bengal) - which was lost in the face of the Kolkata babu led Swadeshi movement. But this trend of politics continued and Bengal was rapidly moving towards a full state seeking. It's significant that the identity though superficially all-Bengal was largely East Bengal. The Assam phase was more illustrative of this point.

A livelihood seeking peasant does not abide by conventional/formal legality. He barely lives in the world of regulations of the formal state and law as his existence is in the informal space. That is also why given an opportunity he participates in resistance which becomes a contest of formality. The Assam migration, often breaking norms, rules and guidelines reflects that.

For the peasantry, life is measured by access to food and not competition for jobs. However, when an aspirant or established elite also feel marginalized and experience a common threat they form alliances. This can happen between two competing groups of elites, against each other and internally within the Margin or the Centre. However, the elite and the peasant have their own separate histories of experience at all levels including conflicts and act accordingly.

The Assam indicators and the making of Bhashani

The Assam phase is significant for understanding the Maulana because several histories blended to produce this historical identity. He was a champion of the poorest - the agro-migrants- who were the most marginalized population segment of them all. The second identity was territorial; the poor were almost overwhelmingly from East Bengal. The sub-state to full state transition was on at that time and social identities were defining the process. Finally, all were Muslims who were also poor.

These identities converged representing the major trends which were together becoming the comprehensive identity- the historical identity of Bangladesh.

The significance of the Assam phase is that while at one level it was political - even a party led - and the Maualana was by then a ML member, the social content of the movement was more traditional in nature. This was the point when the conflict spectrum widened to go beyond the usual contest of the peasants with the agro-capitalist structure of colonialism - zamindar and its constituent politics; the Kolkata babu led political economy. It became a direct confrontation between the elite and the poor over the issue of livelihood and ultimately state making that had a long historical background.

The Peasantry: Class and social identity and Bhashani

The identity indicators and the conflict space were significant. It was describing both the process and outcome of the historical pauperization of the East Bengal peasantry, evicted by poverty to become migrant workers. It was also the narrative of their struggle away from their traditional territorial reality -Bengal/East Bengal. By leading this struggle, Bhashani embodies the historical process of the social content merging into politics in every space where the peasant lives.

The peasantry as the contestant of the formal power structure is the constant in Bengal history going back to the days of Fakir-Sanyyasi and the Faraizi down to the Assam agitation. The peasant is the historical victim but also the historical contestant of the colonial structure as is confirmed here.

What is also true is the rise of the peasant intermediary as a historical force based on class conflict and Centre-Margin conflict. In other words, the rural, socio-economic space becomes a "sub-state "entity that works together and is closer as an identity that is based on historical experiences of the "peasant" which is wider than the conventionally used term of the sharecropper.

Unlike previous leaderships, Bhashani didn't belong to the ousted elite but was never elite but a member of the rural middle class, it was closer to the later trends of -post 1857- peasant resistances where the leadership was often with peasant leaders not members of the religious fraternity. It was also fundamentally different from the Krishak Praja Party of Fazlul Haq also which was much more about using the peasantry to become competitors with the other elite.

The Maulana's belief structure wasn't very different from the earlier peasant resistances but he was independent of religious institutionalism. He also had new goals that reflected new enemies. Hence the Assam phase was the final stage of anti-colonial struggle of the peasants before the post 1947 state seeking struggle began.

It was also part of the wider state seeking politics of East Bengal which, given the constituency, was inevitable. This river of state seeking had several streams and Bhashani represented one which directly flowed from the peasantry. It was in confrontation with the colonial state. This was why the Congress and its allies were so anxious and so harsh with Bhashani.

He confronted the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-East Bengal politics which had coalesced into one. The peasant contestant was therefore clearly visible and partly explains why Bhashani was so anti-Indian all through his life and why India also had serious problems with him.

Maulana Bhashani in Assam represents the farthest point of the traditional peasant resistance legacy. He himself became a direct spokesperson of the peasant class and was thus able to protect the movement better. Although a member of BML, he was much into social activism and this turned into a more practical political movement when he mobilized crowds for the Sylhet Referendum vote which led to accession of Sylhet to Pakistan. It was what may epitomize how peasant struggles merge with state seeking quests.

It was in doing so that the social activist politics of Maulana Bhashani became close to the Kolkata based Bengal Muslim League politics of full state seeking. In the post 1947 scenario, it was natural that the rebellious social resistance stream and the middle class intermediary stream rooted in the middle peasantry ultimately led to the transition of Bengal Muslim League to Awami Muslim League in 1949. It was led by Maulana Bhashani as all the historical streams bubbling for long began to gather for the final storm.