The Kohat settlement
We have now before us both the terms of the settlement arrived at between leading Hindus and Mahomedans of Kohat with regard to the deplorable happenings at that place and a statement supplied to us by one of the Hindu signatories of the circumstances under which the negotiations that had broken off at Peshawar were reopened at Kohat. Without expressing any opinion for the present upon the settlement itself, from the point of view of either justice or equity, we consider it our duty to say at once that a comparison of the present terms with those which the Hindu refugees were prepared to accept at the Peshawar meeting does not show that there is any material difference between the two. Here and there, the wording is different, but as far as we have been able to see, the new words are by no means either more derogatory to the Hindus or more damaging to the Hindu cause than the old ones. It cannot, therefore, be said with justice that the Hindu signatories to the agreement have acted in a manner contrary to the wishes of the general body of the refugees. Since the agreement was signed, many of the leading Hindu and Sikh refugees at Rawalpindi have, in the presence of a distinguished public man, admitted that the present terms are substantially identical with those which they were prepared to accept in December, and that in the circumstances of the case, they are not unsatisfactory.
