RAJA NARENDRANATH’S ADDRESS

IF there was a lurking suspicion in any quarter that the movement for the elevation of Hindus was in any manner or degree either directed against any other community or incompatible with the wider movement for the elevation of the nation as a whole, the thoughtful and deeply interesting address of Raja Narendranath as Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Punjab Hindu Conference will, we hope, effectively remove it. The Raja is nothing if not a typical, thoroughly representative Hindu and, by general admission, one of the most distinguished leaders of the community in this province; and yet in the whole address, there is not a word which is aggressively communal or to which any true nationalist can take exception. Studiously sober and restrained in the presentation of the Hindu case and the statement of those grievances under which Hindus in this province labour, the address is from first to last an earnest, anxious and vigorous plea for Hindu-Muslim unity, while as regards the Sikhs, the only other community that counts in this province, the Raja is absolutely unwilling to look upon them as anything else than part and parcel of his own community. Of course, the Raja is not among those who think that it is enough merely to express a pious wish for unity to be an accomplished fact. In his opinion, “Let there be unity and there was unity” is not the rule of existence for communal relations, and he makes definite and concrete suggestions for the achievement of that universally desired object.