Prayer for MAHATMA GANDHI

MAULANA Mohamed Ali, President of the Congress, has issued a message to his countrymen, asking them to observe a day of national prayer for the speedy and complete recovery of Mahatma Gandhi. The suggestion is identical to that made by Lala Lajpat Rai in his telegram to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, except in one respect, namely that Rai wants this prayer to Heaven to be coupled with a demand addressed to the government for the Mahatma’s release. We don’t know what Maulana Ali and other non-co-operators of his school will think of this suggestion. No one can pretend not to see their difficulty in the matter. So far as representations to the government are concerned, they have burnt their boats, and they not unnaturally think that for them the only step that remains is to tell the government, if and when the time is ripe for it, that unless such and such action is taken they will resort to Civil Disobedience. Since Civil Disobedience is out of the question at the present time, they imagine that the best thing for them to do is not to say anything to the government at all. From a logical and purely party point of view, this is quite an intelligible position, but as we have said already, we do want the whole country, including the non-co-operators at one end and the officials at the other, to rise above all narrow points of view in this matter and to look at it from a point of view transcending nationality itself. Mahatma Gandhi is not merely a national but a human asset, and his release at the present time is demanded not merely in the interests of that national wellbeing which happens at this moment to be bound up with his health and his freedom, but of human wellbeing itself.

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