Hindu-Muslim question

ONE of the most hopeful features of the present situation is that the tendency, which for upwards of three years had been in the ascendant among “men of light” in the country, to seek a solution to burning national problems in pious generalities, is now almost wholly a thing of the past. One hears less and less even of that appeal to self-sacrifice and self-effacement which, with some of the greatest of our leaders, served as a serious attempt to grapple with issues which could only be properly dealt with on the basis of the satisfaction of interests. The latest illustration of the increasing popularity of the better and more effective method is the leading article in the current issue of Young India in which Mahatma Gandhi seeks to answer a critic who describes the often-repeated statement that the Mussalmans are in a minority in India as an absurd shibboleth, on the ground that the Hindus are divided into far too many classes and castes and that the Muslims are stronger numerically than any of these classes and castes. “The writer forgets,” says the Mahatma in his reply, “that the claim is that of all Mussalmans against all Hindus. The latter cannot both have the cake and eat it. Though divided among themselves, the Hindus do present a more or less united front not only to the Mussalmans but to all non-Hindus, even as the Mussalmans, though divided among themselves, present a united front to all non-Muslims. We shall never solve the question by ignoring facts or rearranging them to suit our plans. The fact is that the Mussalmans are seven crore in number against 22 crore Hindus.”