Hindu-Muslim unity

Lahore, Wednesday, September 24, 1924

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IT is obvious that the fast which the Mahatma has imposed upon himself has roused the great heart of India. From one end of the country to the other, there is a strong and unanimous feeling in all who have reached the stage of national self-consciousness and many who have not yet reached it that nothing should be left undone that could contribute to the solution of the Hindu-Muslim question and so restore peace to the Mahatma’s agonised heart. As might have been expected from the very nature of the case, this feeling has found particularly strong expression among our Muslim fellow countrymen. Along with such men as Hakim Ajmal Khan, Maulana Mahomed Ali and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose love of the country and the Mahatma is as well-known as their position in the public life of the country is eminent, and who were bound in any case to take a conspicuous part in this movement, even the average Mussalman seems to have been touched by the Mahatma’s penance as few other things could have touched him. The Mussalman seems to think that while this great act of self-sacrifice is a challenge to the patriotism of the whole country, it is particularly a challenge to his own patriotism. At Delhi, the Anjuman Islamia has adopted a resolution to recommend to its Working Committee to accept the Mahatma as the sole arbitrator in all disputes between Mussalmans and Hindus, and has also resolved to send a Mussalman deputation to the Mahatma to assure him that they would do everything in their power to bring cordial relations between the two communities and to request him to give up his fast.