of the Hindus is irreconcilable with any scheme of abiding fraternisation with other communities. There can be no reciprocity of fellow-feeling even – in regard to the fundamental principles of social association.
In its details the Hindu social order is simply a menace to freedom, unity and peace. The three thousand and off castes and the larger number of sub-castes into which the Hindus are irretrievably divided keep nearly ninety-five per cent of the Hindus in perpetual disgrace and permanently condemned to an inferior social status. People of the lowest castes are worse than slaves. The Hindus are not a free people compared with other civilised people of the world. There are millions of Hindus themselves to whom it is a shame and a disaster to have to belong to the Hindu fold. Every child born in Hindu society is at the very moment and by the very fact of its birth and ‘ without any other consideration whatsoever permanently branded with a caste-label and a caste-status which make it contemptible in the eyes of all self-respecting men and women. Neither the Muslims nor any other community will willingly agree to live in equal partnership with the Hindus, much less to put themselves in a position to be dominated by them so long as the Hindu social system is determined by the rules of caste. The Hindus have no ideal of social unification for themselves or for others. They stand for inequality, disunion, and segregation of caste from caste and of the entire Hindu society from the rest of the world.
Present Political Outlooks. The present political outlook of the two communities, vitiated by the reckless ‘propaganda of some of their leaders is not helpful to the cause of either Hindu-Muslim rapprochement or Indian independence. The Muslims, with honorable exceptions, seem to be incapable of conceiving a political state. Religious books and religious teachers are still their highest authority in this world and in the next. An Islamic confederacy appears to be their loftiest ideal of state organisation. The Indian Muslims have not realized that the days of Khilafats and theocracies are gone and the world would not tolerate a revival of those disastrous regimes. They have yet to learn to think its terms of a political, economic or social state. The entire world has a right to oppose and suppress any move to establish a theocracy of religious fanaticism and the rule of so-called sacred books and dead teachers in preference to the rule of human intelligence and the growing consciousness of human unity. The Muslims in other parts of the world have changed or are changing. In India, they are trying to revive the ghosts of the past. Their present move to establish an independent sovereign Muslim State in India with hopes of linking it up with the Muslim Countries outside in a world confederacy of Muslims is a menace to world peace and freedom and will be so viewed by all.
Let every God-fearing Musalrnan ponder over the following warning uttered by that great soul, Mrs. Annie Besant:
“But since the Khilafat agitation, things have changed and it has been one of the many injuries inflicted on India by the encouragement of the Khilafat crusade, that the inner Muslim feeling of hatred against “unbelievers” has sprung up naked and unashamed as in the years gone by. We have seen revived as guide in practical politics the old Muslim religion of the sword, we have seen the dragging out of centuries of forgetfulness the old exclusiveness, claiming the Jazirut-Arab, the Island of Arabia, as a holy land which may not be trodden by the polluting foot of a non-Muslim. We have heard Muslim leaders declare that if the Afghans invaded India, they would join their fellow believers and would slay the Hindus who defended their motherland against the foe; we have been forced to see that the primary allegiance of the Musalmans is to Islamic countries not to our mother land. The world has gone beyond such so-leaned theocracies, in which God’s commands are given through a man. The claim now put forward by Musalman leaders that they must obey the laws of their particular Prophet above the laws of the State in which they live is subversive of civic order and the stability of the State; it makes them bad citizens for their centre of allegiance is outside the Nation and they cannot, while they hold the views proclaimed by Maulana Mohamed All and Shaukat Ali, to name the most prominent of these Muslim leaders, be trusted by their fellow citizens. If India were independent the Muslim part of the population—for the ignorant masses would follow those who appealed to them in the name of their Prophet would become an immediate peril to India’s freedom. Allying themselves with Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia, Iraq, Arabia, Turkey and Egypt and with such of the tribes of Central Asia who are Musalmans, they would rise to. place India under the rule of Islani—those in British India being helped by the Musalmans in Indian States—and would establish Musalman rule . . . there is no place in a civilized.
I land for people who believe that their religion teaches them to murder,’ rob, rape, burn or drive away out of the country those who refuse to apostatise from their ancestral faiths, except in its schools under surveillance, or r in its ‘ goals. The Thugs believed that their particular form of God commanded them to strangle people—especially travellers with money . . Such laws of God cannot be allowed to override the laws of a civilised country, and people living in the twentieth century must either educate people who hold these Middle Age views or else exile them.”*
The Hindu cry of Hindustan is as misguided and suicidal as that of the Pakistan. We have no Buddhistan or Christistan or Islamistan anywhere. The utter foolishness of this agitation is echoed in the cries of Sikhistan, Dravidastan, Harijanstan and similar schemes for splitting up the country and the peoples into religious and social nations which are being propagated as a direct reaction to the Hindustan move. These fantastic proposals are opposed to the very idea of a political state. They serve only to rouse the passions of the multitude and emphasize their antagonisms. The Hindu politicians have no useful programme of Hindu unity. They defiantly refuse to consider such programmes because they know that they will have to come face to face with the social and religious injustices and exploitations which are a 1A:rorse form of slavery than any political domination. The Hindu politicians have not the zeal for the revolutionary changes without which the Hindus cannot become a free people, nor have they the courage to oppose the / orthodox Hindu imperialists, nor do they want to tell the exploited Hindu masses that they have no hopes of emancipation in the near future. The only other course open to them is to frighten the Hindus into activity and some sort of unity by holding out threats of Muslim oppression and destruction of Hindu religion and culture. They have no worth-while ideal of substantial freedom and democracy. Until recently the satanic British Imperialism was the ghost employed by the politicians to rally the Hindus for the political struggle. That was found to be insufficient. Many millions of Hindus refused to be hoodwinked. The Harijans preferred British Imperialism to Hindu slavery. The non-Brahmans saw in these manoeuvres a repetition of the old story of the Hindu imperialists striving to set up Varnashrama Raj. Hence many Hindus continued to be sceptical and unenthusiastic about political independence. When the Muslims, in their pardonable disgust of the incorrigible disunion and weaknesses of the Hindus, openly demanded separation from them, the Hindu Imperialists rushed to the front and used the occasion to excite and frighten the Hindus to unite against the Muslims. Hindustan is their bombastic retort to Pakistan.
For many centuries the Hindus have not known what true freedom or self-respect or national spirit is. Ever since the castes became their established social order, they have lived tinder an imperialistic regime in which a handful of superior men always monopolized power, wealth, enlightenment, religion and freedom, and used these advantages to suppress and exploit the Hindu masses. That arrangement has continued in spite of the British rule. The Hindus have as yet no ideal of a free people and a free nation according to modern notions. The replacement of British Imperialism by Hindu Imperialism is their highest ambition.
Let us examine the nationalist politicians. Have they done anything more than the Hindu Imperialists? They want a united India and yet they are for splitting up the country into distinct cultural provinces and linguistic areas. Many of them have already agreed to exclude the citizens of one province from the services and even educational facilities of other provinces. Even the Universities are to be moulded by the culture and linguistic prejudices of the provinces. In fact, the nationalists started the cry of separate cultures and languages and separate political divisions, corresponding to them, before the Muslims took it up. The national spirit in &Inca-don was expressed not in founding a national University but a Hindu University, which served to provoke the communal rivalry of the Muslims and induced them to establish their Muslim University. Has the Hindu University done any good to the Hindus at least? Has it helped to bring a more reasonable attitude into Hindu society and religion, or to remove their outstanding injustices, or to unite the Hindu peoples, or to redeem the down-trodden classes from their degradation and slavery? Or has it simply emphasised the traditional imperialistic aspirations of the Hindu Masters and stimulated rival feelings among the Muslims? Nationalism has yet to discover an inspiring programme of unification and freedom.
To crown these incredible failures, the nationalists come out with their arrogant assumption and loud proclamation that India, which means Hindu India, is a unique country, has a unique culture and religion, has a unique past unequalled in the history of the world and a unique race of extraordinary men and women with ideals social, religious, political and economic which are also unique. Our self-conceited patriots would have nothing of the wicked modern civilization. They will solve all problems in a unique way and, ;i what is more, will save the world too in an equally unique manner. Instead of encouraging ideas of freedom, democracy and human brotherhood, the national spirit has fostered eccentric notions of the uniqueness of the past, uniqueness of the present and uniqueness of the future and antagonised not only the Muslims but the entire thinking world by the ridiculous audacity of the claims. The descendants of those who produced the Vedas and the Upanishads have gone to all parts of the globe and set up great states and civilizations. The missionaries of Buddhism who made India great in the past, have abandoned this unfortunate country and founded prosperous communities and religions in the East and the West. The present generation of Hindus have no special claim to any of the great things of the past. They have rejected their great teachers and their teachings and their lofty culture and religion, and adopted the false civilization of caste and priestcraft, and brought about the downfall of the country. Even to-day they are passionately clinging to these untruths and iniquities. Even in their slavery, they are advocating imperialism and Varnashrama Raj. The Hindus including the nationalists have yet to learn that they are no better than the rest of humanity and in some respects are worse. They have to humble themselves in order to learn from others, work with others and march with others as fellow-sinners and fellow-pilgrims groping towards light and peace.
A free and united Hindu people alone can expect co-operation and respect from the Muslims. Without emancipating the Hindus India cannot be free. Without nationalizing Hindu life India cannot be a nation. The Indian problem, which affects the well-being of zoo million human beings cannot be solved on a Hindu or a Muslim basis or on the two together. It is a world problem and should be approached from a world standpoint along lines which lead to world unity and peace. It should be viewed as an integral part of a New World Order and tackled with the cooperation of those nations of the world who are for freedom, justice and brotherhood.
