The Congress and Hindu Sangathan

ON another page of this newspaper will be found a long letter from Bhai Parmanand. Under ordinary circumstances, we should let a letter like this speak for itself, but in the present case, it has such an obvious bearing upon some of the most pressing problems in the country generally and in our own province in particular that silence on our part is not only likely to be misunderstood but perhaps to do actual harm. So far as the letter is an expression of the disappointment which many Hindus, both in this province and others, feel with the policy of the Congress in matters affecting Hindu-Muslim relations, we are in complete sympathy with the writer. We have, indeed, again and again expressed the same feeling ourselves, and find no reason to complain that a Hindu leader of acknowledged position and status like Bhai Parmanand expresses this feeling in stronger and more emphatic words. When, however, the writer tells us that “the Congress has outlived its usefulness” and that “the Hindus will be ill-advised to waste their money and energy by keeping up a mere show which can practically serve no useful purpose, unless a radical change takes place in its working and policy,” we naturally part company with him. By all means let us concentrate our efforts on improving the working and policy of the Congress, but to say that it is a mere show which serves no useful purpose is to utter language of obvious extravagance. The position of Bhai Parmanand is summed up in the concluding words: “For us even Swaraj is the means and self-preservation is the end. Self-preservation must precede Swaraj.”