Mahatma’s suggestions

WHEN we turn from the Mahatma’s analysis of the causes responsible for the present Hindu-Muslim tension to the remedies suggested by him, we are at once struck by their undue generality and their obvious inadequacy. Practically, the only remedy suggested by him is summed up in the word ‘non-violence’. To those who advocate a pact of some kind between the communities, he says that so far as religious matters are concerned, such matters as cow slaughter and the playing of music before mosques, there is no question of bargain and, therefore, a pact is no good, while as regards political matters, the restoration of mutual friendly feeling is a condition precedent to any effectual pact, necessary as the last undoubtedly is. “Are both parties,” he writes,” sincerely willing to accept the proposition that no disputes, religious or otherwise, should ever be decided by an appeal to force i.e. violence?” Where the parties are practically co-extensive, as they are in this case with the whole country, a question like this is, we must be permitted to say with all possible respect, nothing short of an absurdity. If the two communities as such were sincerely willing to accept the Mahatma’s proposition, the problem he is so anxious to solve would not exist at all. The fact that it does exist can only mean that there are large sections of the communities which so far are not “sincerely willing” to accept the Mahatma’s proposition; and the whole practical question in this case is how to make them willing. It is perhaps his consciousness of this fact that makes the Mahatma add:-“ I am convinced that the masses do not want to fight if the leaders do not.”