The Mahatma’s verdict

IF the public has had to wait for a long time for Mahatma Gandhi’s verdict on the Kohat tragedy, it has the satisfaction at last of finding its patience amply rewarded. The latest issue of Young India contains a long and exhaustive review of the series of incidents connected with the tragedy, so far as it was possible for any man to make such a review at this distance of time and without having been on the spot. The impression which the review leaves on one’s mind is that the Mahatma has gone into the whole matter not only in that spirit of justice and impartiality which one naturally expects from him in such cases but with that thoroughness which is one of the principal characteristics of his mind, but of which during the last four years of “hurry” there was unhappily not sufficient evidence in all his speeches and writings. To us it is a matter of genuine, if melancholy, satisfaction that on most vital points, the Mahatma’s verdict is identical with the conclusions which we ourselves thought it our duty to record in these columns when the Government of India’s resolution on the subject was published. In the first place, he finds that the offending poem, which he makes no attempt to defend, was only the immediate cause of the trouble, and that its real cause was the great tension that existed between the two communities. Secondly, as regards this immediate cause itself, his finding is that the Mussalmans ought to have been satisfied with the written apology of the Sanatan Dharma Sabha and their offer to remove the offensive poem from the pamphlet.