Origin of communalism

IN the Indian Daily Mail of Bombay, Mahomed Ali has found strong supporters of his theory that the responsibility for communalism in India does not rest with the Muslims but with the Hindus. Commenting upon that part of Lala Lajpat Rai’s presidential address at the recent Bombay Hindu Conference in which the Punjab leader discussed the origin of communalism in this country, our contemporary says that the statement that the Muslims are responsible for the existence of communalism in India is historically wrong, and that it was the Hindu leaders who, by raising the cry of “Hindus in danger” in 1905 in connection with the partition of Bengal brought communalism into being. The Indian Daily Mail is an infant in journalism, but not its editor, who is one of the oldest, most experienced and most widely respected of all Indian journalists. When such a man makes himself responsible for such a statement, it is impossible for those who consider it wholly and absolutely wrong to entirely ignore it. With the doubtful exception of the non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi, there has been no political movement in India during the last half a century so prolific of literature as the anti-partition movement. The number of speeches, newspaper articles, essays, poems and songs and last but not least memorials and representations made by public bodies and the resolutions adopted by public meetings, which the agitation produced, would run into many volumes. It is impossible to say that in none of these cases was the cry “Hindus in danger” ever raised.