Undoing good work

WITH his unfortunate speech at Patna, of which a telegraphic report appeared in these columns yesterday, Dr Kitchlew has in a very considerable measure undone the good work done by his recent utterances. It is a wholly one-sided speech, reminding one more of the days when Dr Kitchlew, like several other Muslim leaders of note, had after rendering an important service to the country become for a time a pure communalist, than of the days of the Bengal tour when he appears to have once again recovered that spirit of nationalism which found such effective expression in his public activities during the Satyagraha campaign. Undoubtedly, the passionate appeal for Hindu-Muslim unity was there, but not only was it deliberately thrust into the background, but it was unaccompanied by that which alone could make such appeals of value a spirit of equal fairness to both communities. There are three statements in the speech, to which strong exception will be taken not only by all Hindu nationalists but by all impartial and dispassionate students of contemporary history. One is that while his own Tanzeem is all that is good and noble, “the Sangathan movement, as started by Pandit Malaviya and others, had done much harm to the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity and was responsible for creating the present tension.” It is impossible to think of a statement more completely at variance with known facts. Who does not know that judged by every conceivable test, the Sangathan stands on exactly the same footing as Tanzeem, with this difference that the ball of communalism was set rolling, not by the Sangathanists, but by co-religionists of the Tanzeemists?