Hakim Ajmal Khan’s statement

IT must be admitted that beyond certain general observations permeated by a true spirit of nationalism, there is nothing in the greater part of Hakim Ajmal Khan’s statement on the Delhi riots which can be said to be of immediate practical value. The one thing which the public is most anxious to know on the morrow of such happenings is, who or what was immediately and directly responsible for them? Where the happening is a communal one, the first question that is invariably asked is, which community was the aggressor in the case or was more to blame? Hakim Sahib’s statement scrupulously avoids answering the question. It has much, almost everything, to say about the “predisposing causes”, so far as those causes were general. They were “sectarian intrigues, narrow, selfish prejudices born and bred in a general atmosphere of mutual distrust and suspicion and of mischievous machinations of interested individuals and parties”. The evil, says the statement, had been in existence for long and was growing worse day by day, when Hakim Sahib, who had been away from Delhi since April on account of his daughter’s illness and his own bad health, visited the city during the last week of June. To quote from the statement, “I considered it my duty to warn the responsible leaders and workers of both communities that unless these objectionable and inflammatory publications were forthwith effectively curbed, a breach of the peace and the breaking of heads was inevitable. The warning, with all its serious implications and the advice offered, I am extremely grieved to say, was not listened to.”