Which statement is incorrect?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 4:
The question asks to identify the statement that is *incorrect* in its assertion or attribution. Option 4 is the incorrect statement primarily because of the misattribution of the quote. The powerful comparison of communalism and colonialism as twin enemies—"Communalism is as big an enemy of this country, as colonialism is. I will not distinguish between these two..."—is a famous and often-cited statement made by **Jawaharlal Nehru**, not Lala Lajpat Rai. Nehru consistently viewed communalism as a fascist ideology and a colonialist tool used to divide the national movement, linking its destructive potential to that of foreign rule. Since the statement is incorrectly assigned to Lala Lajpat Rai, it contains a factual error in attribution, making it the incorrect statement among the choices and consequently the correct answer to the MCQ.

The incorrect option is 1:
This statement from historian Bipan Chandra is correct and aligns with the widely accepted academic definition of communalism. According to this school of thought, communalism is a modern, political phenomenon based on an *ideology* of mutually exclusive religious interests, which was absent in the ancient and medieval periods. While religious bigotry, suppression, and oppression by rulers did occur historically, politics in the pre-modern era were not organized primarily along communal lines for mass mobilization, thus differentiating pre-modern religious conflict from modern communalism.

The incorrect option is 2:
This statement, also from Bipan Chandra, correctly represents a key tenet of modern Indian historiography. Communalism, as a specific political ideology and movement, is viewed as an ideological construct of the colonial period. It is argued that the British policy of 'Divide and Rule,' coupled with economic stagnation and the introduction of limited, separate-electorate based political reforms, created the conditions for communal competition, proving that communalism was a modern, colonial-era phenomenon.

The incorrect option is 3:
This statement by scholar Asghar Ali Engineer is conceptually correct and vital for understanding the topic. Religious consciousness simply means a person is devout and follows their faith and rituals. Communal consciousness, on the other hand, is the political misuse of religious identity. It transforms the feeling of belonging to a religious group into a political tool where the secular interests of that group are perceived to be in conflict with the interests of another, politicizing religious difference into antagonism.