WAR OVER MUSIC: THE RIOTS OF 1926 IN BENGAL 39 with Hindus was sought more at the economic plane.4 However the clarity of this perspective that reversed the priorities of the preceding wave of mass nationalism, was not so evident in other spheres. The organisational overlap between the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha itself encouraged a wide spectrum of political positions, which could all claim to be equally nationalist. Thus Satin Sen in March 1926 led the anti-Union Board agitation at Laukati, Barisal with a dominantly Muslim following. By the end of August that year he had taken recourse to satyagraha on the music before mosque issue. For the Muslims this new sense of separate political identity was even more unstable, especially since they did not organisationally inherit the comfortable discourse of Hindu nationalism. Muslim politicians spanned at one end the pro-British Sir Abdur Rahim and his Bengal Muslim Party, and at the other, the Swarajya Party. A leader like H.S. Suhrawardy who in 1925 was berating Muslims for not being arrested under Regulation III,5 who was at the beginning of the April Riots helping out in pacification campaigns,6 had by the middle of the year so identified himself with communal incitement that the government even considered externing him.7 Even in this abbreviated representation of the political instability of the mid-twenties, it is clear that moves towards a clarification and consolidation of the communal worldview is energised by the riots. This itself gestures at the peculiar importance that events have to play in the formation of communal discourses. It must be remembered that besides organisational amorphousness, communal mobilisation was not sparked off by centralised slogans such as 'Swaraj in one year' or the restoration of the Khilafat. On the other hand, the purpo-siveness of political direction seems to emerge from the events themselves, especially riots. While Amrita Bazar Patrika in 1923 located the Malabar riots and Multan outrages on Hindu images as the principal factors behind the revival of the Sangathan movement,8 the Malkana conversions were regarded by some as the negative inspiration for the Tanzim organisation formed in 1925.9 Further, riots themselves created the specificities of a national issue. Noting the new and distinctive character of the mid-twenties riots, Haig, Secretary, Government of India, wrote; 'Disputes which in the old days would arise largely from special local and temporary causes and could often be solved by a little goodwill on the part of the local people now tend to crystallise all over India into irreconcilable claims of principle which do not admit of any compromise.'10 I will deal later with the aspect of irreconcilability suggested by Haig. Before that, I will discuss another productive aspect of riots, that is, in fuelling other riots. Riots were commemorated as images, which either singly or strung together, became incantations that gestured at the need for revenge or self-congratulation. A Red Sheet that had been appearing after the outbreak of the April Riots exhorted: 'The incidents of Kohat, Saharanpore, Ludhiana, Meerut,