Vol. 8 · pages 296–300

CHAPTER XII NATIONAL FRUSTRATION I Suppose an Indian was asked, what is the highest destiny you wish for your country, what would be his answer ? The question is important, and the answer cannot but he instructive. There can be no doubt that other things being equal, a hundred per cent Indian, proud of his country, would say, “An integral and independent India is my ideal of India’s destiny”. It will be equally true to say that unless this destiny was accepted by both Hindus as well as Muslims, the ideal can only convey a pious wish, and can never take a concrete form. Is it only a pious wish of some or is it a goal to be persued by all ? So far as profession of political aims goes, all parties seem to be in agreement inasmuch as all of them have declared that the goal of India’s political evolution is independence. The Congress was the first to announce that its aim was to achieve political independence for India. In its Madras session, held in December 1927, the creed of the Congress was defined in a special resolution to the effect that the goal of the Indian people* was complete national independence. The Hindu Maha Sabha until 1932 was content to have Responsible Government as the goal of India’s political evolution. It made no change in its political creed till 1937 when in its session held at Ahmedabad it declared that the Hindu Maha Sabha believed in “Poorna Swaraj” i.e., absolute independence for India. The Muslim League declared its political creed in 1912 to be the establishment of Responsible Government in India. In 1937 it made a similar advance by changing its creed * The creed of the Congress was not changed at Madras. It was changed at the Lahore session of the Congress by a resolution passed on 31st December 1929. In the Madras session only a resolution in favour of independence was passed. In the Calcutta session of the Congress held in December 1928 both Mr. Gandhi and the President of the Congress declared themselves willing to accept Dominion Status if it was offered by the British Government by midnight of 31st December 1929.

272 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES from Responsible Government to Independence and thereby brought itself in line with the Congress and the Hindu Maha Sabha. The independence defined by the three political bodies means freedom from British Imperialism. But an agreement on freedom from the yoke of British Imperialism is not enough. There must be an agreement upon maintaining an independent India. For this, there must be an agreement that India shall not only be free and independent of the British but that her freedom and independence shall be maintained as against any other foreign power. Indeed, the obligation to maintain her freedom is more important than merely winning freedom from the British. But on this more important obligation there does not seem to be the same unanimity. At any rate, the attitude of the Muslims on this point has not been very assuring. It is obvious from the numerous utterances of Muslim leaders that they do not accept the obligation to maintain India’s freedom. I give below two such utterances. In a meeting held in Lahore in 1925 Dr. Kitchlew said* :— “The Congress was lifeless till the Khilafat Committee put life in it. When the Khilafat Committee joined it, it did in one year what the Hindu Congress had not done in 40 years. The Congress also did the work of uplifting the seven crores of untouchables. This was purely a work for the Hindus, and yet the money of the Congress was spent on it. Mine and my Musalman brethren’s money was spent on it like water. But the brave Musalmans did not mind. Then why should the Hindus quarrel with us when we Musalmans take up the Tanzim work and spend on it money that belongs neither to the Hindus nor to the Congress ? “ If we remove British rule from this country and establish Swaraj, and if the Afghans or other Muslims invade India, then we Muslims will oppose them and sacrifice all our sons in order to save the country from the invasion. But one thing I shall declare plainly. Listen, my dear Hindu brothers, listen very attentively ! If you put obstacles in the path of our Tanzim movement, and do not give us our rights, we shall make common cause with Afghanistan or some other Musalman power and establish our rule in this country.” Maulana Azad Sobhani in his speech† made on the 27th January 1939 at Sylhet expressed sentiments which are worthy of * “Through Indian Eyes”. Times of India dated 14-3-25. †The Bengali version of the speech appeared in the Anand Bazar Patrika. The English version of it given here is a translation made for me by the Editor of the Hindustan Standard.

273PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION attention. In reply to the question of a Maulana, Maulana Azad Sobhani said:— “If there is any eminent leader in India who is in favour of driving out the English from this country, then I am that leader. In spite of this I want that there should be no fight with the English on behalf of the Muslim League. Our big fight is with the 22 crores of our Hindu enemies, who constitute the majority. Only 4½ crores of Englishmen have practically swallowed the whole world by becoming powerful. And if these 22 crores of Hindus who are equally advanced in learning, intelligence and wealth as in numbers, if they become powerful, then these Hindus will swallow Muslim India and gradually even Egypt, Turkey, Kabul, Mecca, Medina and other Muslim principalities, like Yajuj-Majuj (it is so mentioned in Koran that before the destruction of the world, they will appear on the earth and will devour whatever they will find). “ The English are gradually becoming weak....... they will go away from India in the near future. So if we do not fight the greatest enemies of Islam, the Hindus, from now on and make them weak, then they will not only establish Ramrajya in India but also gradually spread all over the world. It depends on the 9 crores of Indian Muslims either to strengthen or to weaken them (the Hindus). So it is the essential duty of every devout Muslim to fight on by joining the Muslim League so that the Hindus may not be established here and a Muslim rule may be established in India as soon as the English depart. “Though the English are the enemies of the Muslims, yet for the present our fight is not with the English. At first we have to come to some understanding with the Hindus through the Muslim League. Then we shall be easily able to drive out the Engilsh and establish Muslim rule in India. “Be careful! Don’t fall into the trap of Congress Maulvis; because the Muslim world is never safe in the hands of 22 crores of Hindu enemies.” According to the summary of the speech given by the correspondent of the Anand Bazar Patrika Maulana Azad Sobhani then narrated various imaginary incidents of oppressions on Muslims in Congress provinces. “He said that when the Congress accepted ministry after the introduction of Provincial Autonomy, he felt that Muslim interests were not safe in the hands of the Hindu-dominated Congress; but the Hindu leaders felt indifferently and so he left the Congress and joined the League. What he had feared has been put in reality by the Congress ministers. This forestalling of the future is called politics. He was, therefore, a great politician. He was again thinking that before India became independent some sort of understanding had to be arrived at with

274 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES the Hindus either by force or in a friendly way. Otherwise, the Hindus, who had been the slaves of the Muslims for 700 years, would ensalve the Muslims.” The Hindus are aware of what is passing in the mind of the Muslims and dread the possibility of Muslims using independence to enslave them. As a result Hindus are lukewarm towards making independence as the goal of India’s political evolution. These are not the fears of those who are not qualified to judge. On the contrary, the Hindus who have expressed their apprehensions as to the wisdom of heading for independence are those who are eminently qualified by their contact with Muslim leaders to express an opinion. Mrs. Annie Besant says* :— “Another serious question arises with regard to the Muhammadans of India. If the relation between Muslims and Hindus were as it was in the Lucknow days, this question would not be so urgent, though it would even then have almost certainly arisen, sooner or later, in an Independent India. 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 Hindus who defended their motherland against the foe: we have been forced to see that the primary allegiance of Musalmans is to Islamic countries, not to our motherland; we have learned that their dearest hope is to establish the ‘ Kingdom of God’, not God as Father of the world, loving all his creatures, but as a God seen through Musalman spectacles resembling in his command through one of the prophets, as to the treatment of unbeliever—the Mosaic JEHOVA of the early Hebrews, when they were fighting as did the early Muslims, for freedom to follow the religion given to them by their prophet. The world has gone beyond such socalled 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 *The Future of Indian Politics, pp. 301-305.

275PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION allegiance is outside the nation and they cannot, while they hold the views proclaimed by Maulanas Mahomed Ali 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 Indian’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 Islam—those in ‘British India’ being helped by the Muslims in Indian States—and would establish Musalman rule. We had thought that Indian Musalmans were loyal to their motherland, and indeed, we still hope that some of the educated class might strive to prevent such a Musalman rising; but they are too few for effective resistance and would be murdered as apostates. Malabar has taught us what Islamic rule still means, and we do not want to see another specimen of the ‘Khilafat Raj’ in India. How much sympathy with the Moplas is felt by Muslims outside Malabar has been proved by the defence raised for them by their fellow believers, and by Mr. Gandhi himself, who stated that they had acted as they believed that religion taught them to act I fear that that is true; but there is no place in a civilised 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 in its gaols. 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. Their place is in countries sharing their opinions, where they can still use such arguments against any who differ from them—as indeed, Persia and with the Parsis long ago, and the Bahaists in our own time. In fact, Muslim sects are not safe in a country ruled by orthodox Muslims. British rule in India has protected the freedom of all sects: Shiahs, Sunnis, Sufis, Bahaists live in safety under her sceptre, although it cannot protect any of them from social ostracism, where it is in a minority. Musalmans are more free under British rule, than in countries where there are Muslim rulers. In thinking of an Independent India, the menace of Muhammadan rule has to be considered.” Similar fear was expressed by Lala Lajpatrai in a letter* to Mr. C. R. Das:— “There is one point more which has been troubling me very much of late and one which I want you to think carefully and that is the question of Hindu-Mohamadan unity. I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think, it is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming *Quoted in Life of Savarkar by Indra Prakash.