Back to first principles

IN a recent issue of Young India, Mahatma Gandhi tells us that Hindu-Muslim unity does not depend upon religious or political leaders but upon the enlightened selfishness of both communities. A profounder truth was never uttered, and it is a matter of sincere gratification that it has been uttered by the very man who more than any other in our time has hitherto appeared to look for a remedy for the present distressing state of disunity in the elimination of selfishness on the part of one of the two communities. Undoubtedly, enlightened selfishness is not the same thing as that crude form in which selfishness too often presents itself, but it belongs to the same ultimate category. In plainer English, what the Mahatma means is that Hindu-Muslim unity will then alone be an accomplished fact when the general body of the two communities will be convinced that their best and highest interests are inseparably bound up with it. But how is this conviction to be brought to them? It is a matter of common knowledge that in most parts of the country, Hindus and Muslims had for long years lived on terms of amity before the present disruptive movement began, and that even the occasional outbreaks of fanaticism on religious or socio-religious grounds had not materially interfered with the general course of peaceful life in the villages. Had that state of things continued to this day, the problem of today would merely have been one of ordinary evolution, of expanding local into provincial and national unity. But the fanaticism of religious leaders and the crude selfishness of political leaders have ended that chapter.