HINDU-MUSLIM CONFERENCE

CR Das, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Pandit Motilal Nehru have issued a joint statement regarding the conference held at Lahore with a view to remove communal differences in Punjab. A perusal of the statement unmistakably impresses the reader with its impartiality, and we have no hesitation in saying that no other five persons of the eminence of the signatories to the statement could have been found, who could approach the momentous question entrusted to them with more earnestness, larger breadth of vision, or greater impartiality. When such eminent leaders, whose splendid sacrifices and unflinching earnestness in the national cause have endeared them to the whole country, are compelled to admit that in spite of their trying their best for three weeks to explore all possible avenues leading to the restoration of good feeling they have not met with a satisfactory measure of success, we cannot but deplore the uncompromising attitude of those whose unpatriotic obduracy was responsible for the failure. The leaders said that on arrival in the province they found that the relations between the Hindus and the Mussalmans, both educated and uneducated, were so strained that each community as a whole had practically arrayed itself in an armed camp against the other. The statement’s first part is unfortunately true enough, but things are happily not so bad as one would infer from the latter part. We still believe that the heart of every Punjabi, be he a Hindu, a Mussalman or a Sikh, is sound; and if the artificial barriers that are sought to be raised between them are removed and those whose interest it is to keep up communal strife and bitterness could be persuaded to suspend their disruptive activities, it would not be long before the old feelings of amity and goodwill can be restored.

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