Jawaharlal’s contempt was based both on his distaste for communal bigotry (he often condemned the Hindu Mahasabha, the principal political vehicle of Hindu chauvinism, in the same breath) and his political judgement. The latter was borne out by the 1937 election results. Under the British provisions for separate communal electorates, 7,319,445 votes were cast by Muslim voters for Muslim candidates; only 4.4 per cent of these, 321,772, went to the Muslim League. In other words the League had been overwhelmingly repudiated by the very community in whose name it claimed to speak. Instead Muslim
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