40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Ajmere, Cawnpur, Lucknow, Allahabad and Calcutta, must have been an ey-opener to Malvijayee that the Mussalmans are no lollipops. . .tn On the other hand, the rabidly Hindu communal newspaper Matwalla found its share of joy in the horror when it claimed on 15 May with reference to the greater violence shown by Hindus in the second phase of the April Riots: 'In spite of their endeavours the relish of Kohat and Delhi could not be found in Calcutta.'12 Evident in these incantations was the summarisation of riots in the names of the places they occur, a procedure which not only divested the motifs of revenge and celebration from the experience of horror, but also simultaneously implanted a sense of shared experience extending across the boundaries of province and locality. Finally the incantatory form in which these places are ordered suggests the idea of an extended and continuously embattled community. The idea of an extended sharing of experience across space was further crystallised by the music before mosque issue. All the major riots of Bengal in 1926, which included the ones in Calcutta, Kharagpur, Pabna and Dacca were sparked off by this issue, while in Patrakhali it was made a subject of protracted nationwide mobilisation by Satin Sen. This issue seemed to have had no immediate past. According to the Government of India's records there were no recorded conflicts on this issue from 1893 to 1922.13 However prior to this period there are two instances for which records are available. The first occurred in 1863 in front of the Hooghly Emambara14 and the other in 1882 in Salem, Madras Presidency.15 Needless to add, the representations of the affected parties cited customary and religious rights without any specific reference to precedents. Nor were there two precedents cited by any of the actors in the mid-twenties. In fact what marks the music before mosque issue is the unexpectedness of its mobilising power. This suggests not only the level of tension already present, but also the value of this issue in giving a specific shape to these conflicts. The music theme has a complicated role in Islamic history. Though the permissibility of music was contested by some Muslim theologians, its importance in Islamic history is certified by the encouragement given to music by the last two caliphs, and by Akbar's role in the development of Hindustani classical music, amongst other things. Ironically a Congress of Arabic Music was held in Cairo to identify the key elements of Islamic music in 1932, six years after my period.16 Further, while it was customary to stop music before certain important mosques such as the Hooghly Emambara,17 this was not a general rule. In fact there seems to be an implicit self-proclamation of the constructedness of this symbol. In many ways, it is reminiscent of the Korbani issue. The District Magistrate of Mymensingh in his report on the Jamalpore Riots of 1907 remarked exasperatedly that while Hindu zamindars objected to cow-slaughter on their holdings, there were no similar objections to Europeans consuming beef on their zamindari.18 In