HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY

WE can think of no true-hearted son or daughter of Punjab who does not whole-heartedly share the regret of Pandit Moti Lal Nehru and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu that the differences between Hindus and Mahomedans in this Province should have reached a point where the intervention of all-India leaders in our domestic affairs has become an absolute necessity. Whether the necessity would have been as great as it is if Punjab’s own leaders had not been snatched away from her, is perhaps a different question. It is no coincidence that on each of the two occasions during the last four years on which outside intervention in our affairs has become necessary, the ground for such intervention should have been prepared by the removal of the Punjab’s own leaders. But it must be confessed that while there was nothing in the first occasion to cause any feeling in us except that of regret, the second must fill the heart of every patriotic Punjabi with a sense of shame and humiliation. Then it was the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy alone which was responsible for the sorry pass to which affairs in the Province had come. Today, the people themselves must largely share the blame. We do not forget the suggestion that has been made in some quarters that for the Hindu-Mussalman differences of today as for every other evil in the land, the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy alone is responsible. But not being inclined to raise either injustice or self-deception to the pedestal of religion, this is a view which we must emphatically repudiate. Undoubtedly, the bureaucracy has its responsibility. It is impossible to deny that the evil that has today spread its poisonous roots on all sides could easily have been nipped in the bud by the exhibition of a little firmness and farsighted statesmanship by Lords Minto and Morley.

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