SEMINAR ON COMMUNALISM: A REPORT 51 communalism and one had to understand the politics of the ruling class to combat it. In response to these observations and questions Romila Thapar agreed that what is fed into popular memory has to be analysed and certain stereotypes have to be shed. While replying to Tapesh Kumar Roy Choudhury she said that the concept of Sanatana Dharma has been popularised in the recent period. Earlier it existed in certain sects only. She reiterated that in her paper she was not speaking for the western approach but was speaking against it. Thus it was necessary to locate ideas and concepts in their context. Suranjan Das began his paper, 'Communal Violence in Twentieth Century Bengal: An Analytical Framework', with reference to aspects of continuity and change (in communalism) in Bengal, and emphasised the need to .differentiate religious and communal identities. He was of the opinion that viewing Muslim-Hindu antagonism in the political context alone is one-sided; the concept of community has to be examined in order to understand communalism. According to Das, communalism embodies a feeling of discrimination. Its boundaries were conceptualised by the British in the nineteenth century to secure allies. However, Das disagrees with the idea of the formation of definite Hindu and Muslim identities. Another important point relates to the use of certain symbols before communal riots, e.g. the issue of music before mosque in the 1920s in Bengal. Sometimes traditions help to establish a communal identity. At the same time it is necessary to differentiate between ethnicity and communalism. Ethnicity is normally the 'label for shared racial similarities and by the same definition racialism is bad ethnicity. By the same parameter ethnicity is secular but tends to merge into communalism. P.K. Dutta's paper began with the observation that the communal riots of the 1940s in Bengal drew their energy from the riots of the 1920s and 1930s. In Bengal, for the first time in 1926, took place a riot that was large in scale and had strategic consequences. Subsequently the world-view of people underwent a significant reorientation. 1926 lent a new political identity to Muslims and the nationalist Muslims began feeling uncomfortable. Such organisational amorphousness was not helped by the use of concepts like 'swaraj'. The historical legacies of events like the dismemberment of the Swaraj Party and of the Bengal Pact also shaped the new political identity and confirmed the notions of continuously embattled communities. The beginning of the 1920s had witnessed the emergence of Hindu-Muslim unity on the issue of khilafat. However the mid-1920s saw the organisation of the Hindu Mahasabha which reinforced the Hindu identity. This was difficult to handle for the Muslims since they were not organised politically like the Hindus. The communal mobilisation of the Muslims was provided by the event of the riot itself. The cause of the riot of 1926 was the issue of music before mosque.