Presidential Address to the Hindu Mahasabha, Cawnpore

[p. 105] Delegates to and Members of the Hindu Mahasabha,

[p. 106] 1. You have really overwhelmed me with kindness in appreciating my services, quite limited though they are, so highly as to elect me in an unbroken succession for the sixth time to the Presidentship of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, the highest office of honour and duty which lies at the disposal of Hindudom today. If I too on my part do not shirk to accept this responsibility for the present, in spite of the most willing resignations tendered by me from time to time requesting you to relieve me of this post in view of my ailing health, it is only due to the fact that forces from outside the camp of the Hindu Mahasabha have actually been conspiring first to waylay the Mahasabha and then capture it by some crafty coup d’etat. Some of them try to browbeat it into submission, others are scheming to kill it with kindness and all of them want it to betray that Hindu ideology and those fundamental principles of independence and integrity of Hindusthan, the Holyland and Fatherland of we Hindus, which alone form both the charter and the vindication of its existence apart from and independent of the Congress, as the foremost representative organization of Hindudom as a whole. It is consequently the imperative duty of each and all of us Hindu Sanghatanists, on whom has fallen in this generation the duty to protect Hindudom and this Mahasabha, this holy shrine of our Hindu nation. To stand on guard at each of its gates and serve the post allotted to each with unswerving fidelity. It is this special emergency that has made me take up this post which you have all summoned me again to hold.

2. Before I proceed, I must first take a rapid review of some leading events which happened during this year in connection with the Hindu Mahasabha so as to enable us to realise more precisely where we stand today and what should be our immediate programme.

This year opened just when we were in the very thick of the Bhagalpur Civil Resistance Campaign. The most important aspect of the struggle which constitutes an abiding source of strength and self-confidence to our people is the fact that we Hindus could present a United Hindu Front and demonstrated beyond cavil or criticism that in spite of castes or creeds, sects and sections, Hindudom as a whole does still pulsate with a common National Being. That Pan-Hindu consciousness, which the Hindu Mahasabha has so long been striving to create, has at last become a living reality forceful and organized enough to resist and at times even to cow down the anti-Hindu forces, which held their sway unchallenged for such a long time in the past. From our esteemed leader Dr.Syama Prasad Mookerji down to those heroic souls, who laid their lives unknown to fame by name, thousands and thousands of Hindu Sanghatanists-Rajas and Raises, Millionaires and Millhands, Ex-ministers and M.L.A.’s, Sanatanists, Sikhs, Jains and Aryans-all rushed to Bhagalpur from every corner of India animated by the common urge to defend the honour of the pan-Hindu flag. The struggle was not restricted to Bhagalpur alone, but ultimately spread all over the six districts of Bihar which came under the ban and its shocks were felt throughout India. They faced lathi charges which were the order of the day. The armed mounted forces of the Government charged the processionists and civil resisters at various places trampling men, women and children under the hoofs of their horses. Organised firing was restored to in cities and towns and even villages. The Hindu civil resisters faced it all with unabated zeal in defending the honour of the Hindu colours and in winning the goal which was the objective at issue. There can be no exaggeration in proclaiming that the 23rd Session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Bhagalpur despite the Government ban proved to be the most momentous and the most successful one of all the annual Sessions held till then by any all-India organisation including the Congress in the modern history of India.

I shall be failing in my duty, if I as the President do not express on behalf of this Session our deepest gratitude to all those who took part in the Bhagalpur Dharma Yuddha as soldiers in the spirit of crusaders, although the Hindu Mahasabha has nothing else to offer to mark its appreciation of their services but the crown of thorns of martyrdom to those heroes, who laid down their lives in the struggle and their very wounds to those thousands of soldiers who were wounded as the ‘Iron Crosses’ they won.

[p. 107] The second aspect of the struggle which must be noted here is the fact that it was fought in defence of Hindu rights as Hindu rights and under the unalloyed Hindu colours. The Nizam Civil Resistance Movement and this Bhagalpur campaign wherein millions of Hindus rose in protest against the humiliation of the Hindu flag drove the last nail in the coffin of that Pseudo-Nationalism which kept dominating the Hindu mind for the last 30 years or so, had penalised any agitation to uphold any special rights of the Hindus as a ‘National’ sin, throttled the Hindu voice, suppressed the Hindu spirit, reduced the Hindus to political orphans in this land.

These struggles did also prove to all concerned that the Hindu Mahasabha was not only powerful enough to raise a mass movement of legitimate resistance on all-India scale in defence of Hindu rights but had a better tactical sense of timing them and conducting them strategically to an assured success.

3. Within a couple of months of the cessation of the Bhagalpur struggle, the All-India Committee of the Mahasabha was held in February in Lucknow and passed off successfully in spite of the riotous opposition staged by the Moslem there.

4. Then came the Cripps Mission at the end of March. The British Government had been for years feigning to believe that the Congress represented the Hindus, the Moslem League represented the Moslems and consequently the political equation followed inevitably that the Congress and the League together representative all India. But in the meanwhile the Hindu Mahasabha had established itself so firmly as a new political power in the land challenging both the Congress and the League, whenever Hindu interest demanded it, that the British Government had to recognise the Mahasabha, by the time Cripps Mission came, as one of the three outstanding All-India Organizations and as the foremost accredited representative body of Hindudom as a whole. To the Congress and many other parties and leaders, the Cripps scheme seemed at first sight sufficiently alluring to undertake a hopeful survey to discover confidently some oasis in that political Sahara. It was the Hindu Mahasabha alone which publicly declared just at the first glance of the scheme that Sir Stafford wanted really to play to the American gallery and carried on those endless negotiations with the Indian politicians just to make them play the tune he called. Not only that but the Mahasabha unerringly and immediately discerned and pointed out the cloven foot concealed under a heap of roses on which the scheme rally stood. It was the clause laying down the condition that the declaration of freedom of India could be made by Great Britain only if the Hindus admitted the principle that provinces should be allowed to have the right of self-determination by their own majority to secede from the Central Indian Government and even to set themselves up as States independent of it. This clause constituted a veritable dagger aimed at the heart of the integrity of Hindusthan as an indivisible Nation and a centralised State. The Hindu Mahasabha rejected it unceremoniously and in rejecting the clause, it had to reject the scheme in toto. While all other parties including the Congress had tacitly accepted the clause and swallowing that camel, kept straining at the gnats of portfolios here and there, this total rejection of the scheme by the Hindu Mahasabha centralised at a stroke the attention of the whole Nation in general and the Hindus in particular on the real point that mattered most,-while the independence of India was still floating in the hazy clouds of promises alone, the integrity of India was in imminent danger of being stabbed in the back. The lead that the Mahasabha gave by rejecting the scheme at a stroke on this issue was followed after some fuss of negotiations by almost all parties in the land under this or that excuse.

The Working Committee which was immediately held regarding the Cripps scheme reasserted in its resolution that in view of the rapid developments in the political situation in the world nothing short of an immediate and unconditional declaration of India’s [p. 108] independence could animate and enthuse the whole country to mobilise its full and willing fighting strength both in men and the materials to fight out the war which then would have been our own concern as truly as it was in the case of the British people.

5. It was necessary to demonstrate that the Hindu Sanghatanists world was solidly behind the Hindu Mahasabha on these two fundamental points which compelled the Mahasabha to reject the Cripps scheme. It was, therefore, decided that an anti-Pakistan day should be observed throughout India by the Hindus under the pan-Hindu colours on the 10th of May 1942, which being the anniversary of the National rising of 1857, had been annually celebrated by the Hindu Mahasabha as the Independence Day. Accordingly, this day was observed throughout India under the auspices of the Hindu Mahasabha with intense enthusiasm on an unprecedented scale. Jammu, Peshawar, Poona, Amritsar, Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow, Patna, Calcutta, Bombay, Nagpur down to Madras almost all capital cities and hundreds of towns and villages held innumerable meetings which were altogether attended on that evening by millions and millions of Hindus who took up a public pledge to support the Hindu Mahasabha and to stand by the two fundamental principles on which it has taken its stand, the independence and the integrity of Hindusthan. Although the Moslems were conducting without let or hindrance a pro-Pakistan campaign and men like Mr. Rajagopalachari were allowed to preach vivisection of Hindusthan as freely as they liked, an illegitimate and one-sided ban was placed on the anti-Pakistan demonstrations at places like Patna, Arrah and others on this all-India anti-Pakistan day. But the Hindu Mahasabhaits defied those unjust bans, took out their processions and held meetings even though hundreds of them got arrested for the only fault of asserting their basic civic rights. The determination with which Hindudom as a whole expressed on this day its uncompromising opposition to any scheme which involved the granting to the Provinces the right of secession, proved once more the strength of the hold the Hindu Mahasabha had come to exercise on Hindu mind and how it had thus established its right to represent genuine Hindi feeling far more correctly and effectively than the self-styled Indian National Congress could ever do.

6. The Congress, in the meanwhile, was rapidly on the other hand yielding to the pressure of the Moslems and had already got itself committed to the promise that it would not oppose the grant to provinces to secede if the Moslems insisted on it. As if the Moslems had not already insisted on it uncompromisingly enough to brow-beat the Congress itself into submission-Mr. Rajagopalachari in particular got simply possessed of the Pakistani spirit. He actually planned a triumphal tour to convert the benighted Hindus all over India to his new faith. He left Madras and selected his own presidency at the outset to infect with the Pakistani epidemic, but the Mahasabhaits were alert everywhere and gave him a hot chase throughout his tour from Madras to Bombay. Dharmaveer Dr. Moonje and Prof. Deshpande,-the indomitable champion of the Hindu cause who has only recently been arrested under the Defence of India Act,-were deputed to tour the Madras Presidency and there along with the veteran Hindu Mahasabhaits leader Dr. Varadrajalu Naidu, they dislodged Rajaji so completely from every platform that like the proverbial hare ‘whom hounds and horns pursue,’ even the redoubtable Rajaji, in spite of the obliging blessings and public sympathies of Gandhiji himself, had to return discomfited ‘back to the place from whence at first he flew.’ Since then he seems to have left the forum and taken to his table to busy himself with the more congenial task of issuing statements after statements to convince the benighted Hindus that the Moslem demands were just, the Pakistan was the key to Swaraj; two and two do not make four but five !

Just then the Congress had almost made it clear that it meant to start some kind of civil resistance movement, under the usual non-violent dictatorship of Gandhiji. The Hindusabhaits from all parts of India grew naturally anxious to know what attitude they should adopt towards this Congressite movement which was meant to order Great Britain straightway to ‘Quit India’ forthwith. Now, it was the duty of every Indian patriot and [p. 109] especially of a Hindu patriot to join a movement which had for its goal the absolute political independence of Hindusthan. But the question of timing and the ways and means were also of outstanding importance. Even leaving it all aside, the goal to be achieved by any movement was the question of questions which must be decided to begin with. You must know before you go to fight the objective for which you have to fight. The Congress had made it crystal clear by that time that it was ready to agree even to vivisect India as an organic and centralised State in order to placate the Moslems and to persuade them to join the movement. Then again ‘Quit India’ was not the only demand which they advanced; but inconsistently enough they added to it a rider which demanded of Great Britain that though the British should leave India yet they must retain their British forces and even the American forces behind to protect India against the axis powers invading her. In short, the war-cry of the Congress movement came to ‘Quit India but keep the British army here and the Americans to boot !!’ And the price of the movement for Indian Independence was the vivisection of Indian integrity !! Under such circumstances, it became quite necessary to clear up the issue before the Hindu Mahasabha got committed to any such movement, even though it was primarily meant for freedom of India which was the proclaimed demand of the Hindu Mahasabha itself on its own initiative. Consequently, I laid down the following conditions in my speech in a mammoth meeting in Poona on the Bajirao Maidan on the 2nd of August, the report of which was broadcast and published not only in the Indian press but by the foreign press also, before the A.I.C.C. met in Bombay.

The leading conditions were as follows :- (a) The Congress should guarantee the integrity of Hindusthan from the Indus to the Seas as an organic nation and an internal centralised State. (b) The Congress should, therefore, openly repudiate the granting of any right to the provinces to secede. (c) Representation in the legislatures, etc. should be in proportion to the population of the majority and the minorities. (d) Public services should go by merit alone. (e) That the Hindu Mahasabha should be recognized as the representative body of Hindudom and consequently no step should be taken affecting Hindu rights without its consultation and sanction. (f) All minorities should be given effective safeguards to protect their language, religion, culture, etc. but none of them should be allowed to create ‘a state within a state’ as the League of Nations put it, or to encroach upon the legitimate rights of the majority as defined above. (g) The residuary powers should be vested in the Central Government.

Had the Congress agreed to these conditions the Hindu Mahasabha could have considered whether to co-operate with it on any reasonable lines of action. These conditions were so indisputably national that ‘the Indian National Congress’ in fact ought to have been the first instead of the Hindu Mahasabha, to proclaim them if it was genuinely and justly representing the Indian Nation as a whole. But the Congress refused stubbornly to have anything to do with these conditions. Nay, in their resolution at Bombay, the A.I.C.C. actually declared that the residuary powers shall be vested in the Provincial Government instead of the Central, in addition to the concession the Congress had already made to the Pakistanees of the principle of provincial self-determination to secede. The climax came when Gandhiji, after being proclaimed as the de facto dictator of the Congress, wrote an authoritative letter to reassure Mr. Jinnah of his readiness to hand over the whole Government of India including the Indian States to the Moslem League. I quote the relevant passage from the letter itself :-

‘In all sincerity, let me explain it again that if the Moslem League co-operated with the Congress for immediate independence, subject of course to the provision that Independent India will permit the operations of the allied armies in order to check Axis aggression and thus to help China and Russia, the Congress will have no objection to the British Government transferring all the powers today exercises to the Moslem League on behalf of the whole of India including the so-called Indian India. [p. 110] The Congress will not only not obstruct any Government which the Moslem League may form on behalf of the people, but will even join the Government. This is meant in all seriousness and sincerity.’

• M. K. Gandhi

Comments are superfluous. The betrayal of Hindu rights or genuine Nationality could have gone no further. Such a letter would have been burnt in protest from thousand platforms throughout India by the enraged Hindu Sanghatanist world, had not restraining counsel prevailed in view of the patriotic objective at issue and had we not been passing through abnormal times. Were the Hindu Mahasabhaits deliberately to join a fight whose price and inevitable consequence was the vivisection of their own Motherland and Holyland ? Then again there were the tactical questions which were also of no less importance regarding the timing, the ways and the means and above all the effectiveness which we could depend upon on sane calculations. This was the crucial and fundamental issue which made the Mahasabhaits in general feel duty-bound not to identify themselves entirely with the Congress movement as it was then vaguely contemplated.

Since then, of course, the Congressites themselves have been disowning avowedly their connection with the present wave of violent disturbances passing over the country. Consequently we need not take upon ourselves the responsibility of labeling it all as a Congress movement and the question of joining it or otherwise does not arise at all so far as the point under discussion is concerned.

7. Then all of a sudden several hundreds of patriotic Congress leaders including Mahatma Gandhiji were arrested and later on a violent wave of popular discontent and governmental repression of it threw the whole country into turmoil. Today thousands of our Hindu brethren, Congressites and non-Congressites have already suffered or are suffering untold calamities from detention to death. They are all our kith and kin and our deepest sympathies cannot but go out to them in grateful appreciation of the fact that they have faced these sufferings from a patriotic motive or as the result of the patriotic struggle. Unscrupulous goondaism which is inevitably let loose in such great commotions cannot of course deserve any sympathy. But even the British Government or the British public could not but admit that the struggle was essentially the struggle of the people for the freedom of their country. If that be a guilt, then we have all been participating in it and are proud to be guilty of it.

8. But patriotism itself demands that it is a national duty of all of us Hindus to see to it that sympathy with patriotic sufferings must not be allowed to get the better of our judgement and drive us headlong and blindfolded on a path which we conscientiously believe to be detrimental to the best interest of our Hindu Nation. To make a common cause on a wrong issue or a line of action which is bound to lead to national disaster, simply to present a ‘United Front’ is not the essence of patriotism, but amounts to a betrayal of national duty. It will be well of those who criticise the Hindu Mahasabha either through indiscretion or impudence for not following the Congress rightly or wrongly for the sake of Unity and because the Congress was actuated by patriotic motives, would do well to remember that patriots also are no exception to the general rule that it is human to err. Those who sincerely think that a particular line of action is detrimental to the Nation and therefore reject it and choose to serve it in the ways and with the means they are convinced to be more effective under the given circumstances to realise a common ideal, cannot be deemed on that ground only as less patriotic that those who acted otherwise. It is regrettable, however, that forgetting this fact, the Congressite press day in and day out have been trying to bring the Hindu Mahasabha into disrepute. Their criticism when reasonable and decent could be met by reasons given above. But the larger part of the Congressite press and propaganda [p. 111] has thrown decency of criticism to the winds and is growing malicious and mad. In righteous defence of the Hindu Mahasabha such criticism must be challenged and checked. Some of these critics seem to be irritated at the thought that the leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha did not jump over the walls of the jail the very day Gandhiji and others were arrested for raising such a momentous cry as ‘Quit India but keep your army here.’ So far as the ‘Quit India’ is concerned, it is enough to point out that some of the outstanding Mahasabha leaders and followers today had been amongst those handful of revolutionists, who publicly raised the standard of Indian Independence for the first time in current History and rose in an armed revolt when Gandhiji and some of the present leaders of the Congress were singing Hallelujahs to the British Empire, extolling its blessings and thinking it their duty as loyal citizens and subjects of that Empire to take its side against Zulus and the Boer who were fighting for their freedom. When further on as a consequence of their revolutionary activities, these Hindusabhaits of today had some of them to stand under the shadow of the gallows and others were under-going the sentences of transportation for life, rotting in Andamanese dungeons for decades on decades if we reason as you do now, were not the present outstanding Congress leaders including Gandhiji ‘guilty’ for not making a common cause with the revolutionists merely for the sake of ‘United front’and for not seeking the gallows or getting themselves locked in the cellular jails in the Andamans ? Coming nearer, what have you to say regarding the Congress when it not only kept itself at a respectable distance from imprisonment but actually joined hands with the Nizam and took up a pledge ‘not to embarrass His Exalted Highness’ while thousands of Hindu Sanghatanists were carrying on a deadly struggle with the Nizam for the most legitimate rights of the Hindus and were facing lathi charges, imprisonment and tortures at the hands of the Nizam’s Government ? Far from sharing these sufferings with the Hindu Sanghatanists, were not the leaders and followers of the Congress strutting about as Ministers of provinces under the British Crown, some drawing fat pays, others rolling in the lap of luxury ? And what about Bhagalpur ? When for the defence of fundamental civil liberties of freedom of speech and freedom of association not less than one hundred thousand Hindu Sanghatanists carried on an active struggle with the Government of Bihar throughout the six districts which came under the ban, against all the forces which the Bihar Government could draw upon, firings, bayonetting, cavalry charges, not to speak of whippings, imprisonments etc.-did not the Congressites stand totally unconcerned and aloof without uttering a word of sympathy with the struggle for civic liberty which the Hindu Sanghatanists were carrying on against the foreign Government or of condemnation of that Government ?

If they try to explain and justify this conduct on the part of the Congressites as not due to want of public spirit or to a lack of courage but due to an honest difference of opinion on patriotic grounds as to the line of action and principles which the Congress had with the Hindu Mahasabhaits and consequently attempt to justify the Congress on not presenting a ‘United front’ at the cost of national good as Congressites interpreted it by joining the Hindu Mahasabha,-then they should have sense enough to perceive that their justification holds good in the case of the Hindu Mahasabha too because they too did not like to be dragged as moral slaves by whatever the Congress resolution decreed or movements demanded.

Similarly another argument which forms the stock-in-trade of the libellous criticism and propaganda of the Congressites with regard to the policy of the Hindu Mahasabha of occupying centres of political power, howsoever limited it be, springs back upon themselves and unlike the boomerang hits only themselves hard. The Hindu Mahasabha through its elected or supported representatives has now come to occupy responsible positions in political councils, committees, ministries, legislatures, municipalities and such other centres of political power and it is this fact which has pre-eminently contributed to the outstanding political importance which the Mahasabha and throughout India as never before. It is human that some of the unemployed Congressites should get irritated to find that so many of the ‘Jobs’ should have fallen into other hands and should make them accuse the Hindu [p. 112] Sanghatanists as mere ‘Job-hunters’. We pity them for their irritation. But we cannot excuse them for making a virtue of necessity and go about posing as so many suffering saints who never cared a fig for these very worldly and servile ‘Jobs’.

For, was it not only the other day that the Congress from one end of India to the other went on such ‘job-hunting’? They agreed to act as Ministers-not as Kings! but servilely enough as ministers-to the Governors, who in their turn were servants of the British Crown. They, who now accuse the Hindusabhaits as helping imperialism took oaths of allegiance to the British Imperial Crown, accepted salaries, invited whole troops of their followers and hangers-on to get the loaves and fishes of the Offices, posts and positions distributed only among themselves. They could do only those things which the Governors permitted at their pleasure in the last resort. They laboured under the constitution which they had pretended to despise. Whenever they failed to satisfy this or that section of public they either pointed out to the limitations under which they held office or they sallied out firing and delivering lathi charges on those of their countrymen who disobeyed them or picketed them. If anybody fasted at their doors in protest of their actions they told him bluntly, ‘You may lie there comfortably till you die, I must attend my office and do my duty as I choose.’ Did not Rajagopalachari himself, the foremost of those ministers, who ‘followed the Mahatma’, tell the world in blunt accents in general justification of the actions of the Congress Government that the first duty of the Government was to govern !

Do you condemn the Congress for this ‘job-hunting’ and rough-riding? Or do you justify all this as patriotic ? Do the Congressites explain it all away on the ground that larger public interest demanded that even under limitations the Constitution should be worked out to squeeze whatever public good you can get out of it ? If you say ‘yes’ to the latter, then in justifying yourselves you justify the Hindu Mahasabha too in its policy of capturing centres of political power, limited though it be to begin with and standing on that point of vantage, try to leap over and occupy more effective centres of power.

The Hindu Mahasabha holds that the leading principle of all practical politics is the policy of Responsive Co-operation. And in virtue of it, it believes that all those Hindu Sanghatanists who are working as Councillors, Ministers, Legislatures and conducting Municipal or any public bodies with a view to utilise those centres of Governmental power to safeguard and even promote the legitimate interests of the Hindus without, of course, encroaching on the legitimate interests of others, are rendering a highly patriotic service to our Nation. Knowing the limitations under which they work, the Mahasabha only expects them to do whatever good they can under the circumstances and if they do not fail to do that much it would thank them for having acquitted themselves well. The limitations are bound to get themselves limited step by step till they get altogether eliminated. The policy of responsive co-operation which covers the whole gamut of patriotic activities from unconditional co-operation right up to active and even armed resistance, will also keep adapting itself to the exigencies of the time, resources at our disposal and dictates of our national interest.

It must be remembered in this connection that if there be any ‘job-hunters’ it is precisely these penny-a-liners who betray such a low taste in their criticism of the Mahasabha and happen to conduct the majority of Congressite second rate sheets and owing to that very fact are within easy reach of the masses. The majority of them, we all know, have not suffered a scratch throughout their life in any patriotic movement and would write for any other party if but they are more sumptuously paid. Many of them are actually known to have done so. It becomes inevitable, therefore, in defence of the Hindu cause that from time to time they too must be shown their proper place.

[p. 113] But I shall do injustice to myself if I fail to make it clear that my criticism against this type of a Congressite does not and cannot mean that all Congressites are equally blind to reason or are deliberately bent on harming Hindu interest or on humiliating Hindu honour which Hindus as they themselves are, cannot but be their own interest and honour.

Nay, I know that many of these patriotic Congressite do actually appreciate the merits of the Hindu Mahasabha as well. Their racial pride as Hindus gets wounded whenever the Congress goes wrong and sacrifices the most legitimate Hindu interests and makes the Hindus undergo most cowardly surrenders. The very fact that thousands of the devoted workers and several all-India leaders, who have now rallied devotedly round the Pan-Hindu Standard had once been actively and prominently working in the Congress camp, is enough to bear out this truth that there are and must be thousands of Hindus in the Congress camp who cannot bear to see the Hindu cause anathematised by the Congress but who nevertheless have not yet got rid of the habitual reluctance to get out of the Congress rut and come openly out of it.

But this past experience makes me feel more or less confident that thousands of these of my Hindu brethren who are proud of their race, religion and this their Motherland of the Rishees and the Avatars, will have to leave the Congress before long through the very urge of their conscience and can find them but one path to go ahead in defence of Hindutva,-the path that leads to that Hindu Mahasabha Shrine.

9. As soon as Congress was removed from the political field as an open organization under the Governmental ban, the Hindu Mahasabha alone was left to take up the task of conducting whatever Indian National activities lay within its scope. For to call upon the Moslem League to lead any Indian National movement would have rightly enough been taken as an insult by it just as to call the Congress a Hindu body was perversely enough used to be taken by it as an insult. For, India to the Moslem League was but a sub-continent, no Nation at all. But the Hindu Mahasabha believes in an integral Indian Nation even more intensely than the ‘Indian National’ Congress itself. The first National point that required immediate attention at that time was to expose the hollowness of the British propaganda which wanted the world to believe that the Cripps scheme failed not so much owing to the unwillingness of the British to part with power as to the internecine conflicts of the Indian people. The Cripps scheme was held dazzling before the world as a veritable Magna Charta conferring on India all that could be offered to liberate a people from political slavery and pointing out to it, the British press and propaganda called upon the world to witness how higher constitutions bestowed upon peoples not politically developed enough to deserve them serve only to worsen their condition. The glorious Magna Charta which wanted to invest India with full freedom proved only an apple of discord. As soon as political power was offered to the Indians, instead of receiving it as a United Nation, they sprang at each other’s throat, community against community and their ancient civil feuds instead of being healed grew only fiercer. There was no United demand and had we not withdrawn that glorious Magna Charta in time, there would have broken up an immediate and bloody Civil War. Thus the British interpreted the episode to India and the world.

That there was and continues to be communal disunity in India need not be denied. Every country had to pass through such phases including England and America. But the fact that it was the real cause of the withdrawal of the Cripps scheme was a lie and it had to be nailed to the counter, because the British had almost succeeded in duping America and China and even a section in India. The American public and the press which were sympathetic to some extent before the Cripps Mission changed their tone and admitted that England had done all she could and in all sincerity in granting full political freedom to the Indians and that it was really the internal discord amongst the Indians themselves that was responsible for the failure of the scheme.

[p. 114] Above all in India itself the Congress and the majority of the Hindus in particular laboured under this supposition that if but we could produce as National demand, a United Scheme, then it will be simply impossible for England to refuse to grant it. That is why the Congress often and often went on its knees before the League. That is why so many all-party and non-party conferences had been held. It was necessary, therefore even to cure the Indians themselves from this self-deception that some strenuous effort on an all-India scale had to be made. It was also advisable to find out how far the various parties in India did really differ and whether on the two or three questions which concerned all alike some National demand could be framed. It was with this objective in view that the Hindu Mahasabha decided to enter into negotiations with all important political parties and personalities on the three outstanding demands which Hindu Mahasabha had already framed. The immediate declaration of Indian Independence; a National Government with full powers during the war with the exception of the Military portfolio so far as the operative part was concerned and the holding of a constitution-framing assembly as soon as the war ceased : formed the leading clauses in this demand.

A Special Committee was appointed to conduct these negotiations consisting of the President, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, Dr. Moonje, Barrister N.C. Chatterji, Raja Maheshwar Dayal Seth, Rai Bahadur Meherchand Khanna and Prof. Deshpande. The response that the Committee received from different parties and eminent persons was encouraging and spontaneous. Under the able lead of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji on whom fell the real burden of carrying the negotiations, the Committee succeeded in creating such a wave of enthusiasm all over India that the public attention was centred on this topic only. Representatives of the English, the American, and the Chinese press also took keen interest in the development and gave a prominent publicity in their countries to these efforts of the Mahasabha.

The result also was not quite incommensurate with the troubles taken by the distinguished members of the Hindu Mahasabha Committee and of those Indian organizations and leaders who co-operated with them. Firstly, it was full of significance from the constructive point of view. For, the Committee succeeded in producing a National demand on the most crucial issues referred to above which could not but convince everyone but those who found it inconvenient to get convinced that India as a Nation demanded with a united will and voice the declaration on the part of the British Parliament that she should be recognized here and now as an independent Nation. When the Hindu Mahasabha-the second great all-India Hindu organization to quote Lord Devonshire, the present Undersecretary of State for India,-with the foremost leaders of our Sikh brotherhood, the President of the Momin Conference, and other Moslem organizations, the President of the Christian Federation, the Nationalist League, the Liberal Federation, along with the then Provincial Ministers of Sind and Bengal and scores of other eminent politicians who had been legislatures and administrators and held most responsible positions in the Government,-have signed or supported the demand that it had every right to claim for itself and to be recognised as being nothing short of a National demand. When you add to it the fact that the Congress resolution too had more or less emphasized the very items, its national character becomes unassailed. If it even be pretended that such a demand also falls short of a national demand only because the League or some such section chose to remain aloof then no demand ever made by any nation could deserve to be called a national one.

It must be remembered that even the national plebiscites on the strength of whose demand the Canadian or the African or the American Federations were formed were not and could not be considered national or univocal on the sole ground that there was not a single citizen or single party opposed to them. Nay, the fact is that in all such national demands or plebiscites those who voted against them could also count their strength in thousands. A [p. 115] national demand must always mean the demand of overwhelming majority of citizen or parties forming those nations,-irrespective of the dissentient minorities.

When the Mahasabha succeeded in producing a definite demand signed by such an overwhelming majority it served to explode the British pretext and had a very salutary effect not only on that large section of Indians themselves but even on the Chinese, the American and the pro-British foreign press in general which had first acquitted the British to withholding freedom from India and believed that the chaotic disunity in India itself was really responsible for the withdrawal of the Cripps scheme. Many of them changed their opinion, saw through the game and came to the correct judgement that it was really the unwillingness on the part of Great Britain to let go her hold on India.

As the President of the Hindu Mahasabha, I forwarded this national demand by a cable to the British Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon’ble Mr.Winston Churchill. I received an acknowledgement from him in which the Prime Minister wrote that he noted with appreciation the endeavours of the Hindu Mahasabha to promote unity among the several elements in Indian life, but observed that they had not so far resulted in any specific and constructive proposals enjoying the support of all the major parties.

Comments need not be made on this reply as the question is already exhaustively dealt with above. Only one point needs to be touched. The only party in India worth mentioning as a major party that did not support the demand was the Moslem League,-not Moslems because we had large Moslem organizations signing the demand. If then, the failure, of the League to see eye to eye with all other parties in the land is to disqualify a demand from being national, then it only amounts to invest a fraction of a minority, with a power to veto the will of the overwhelming majority of the nation ! Of course, even the League must be knowing that the Prime Minister must have been talking with his tongue in his cheek when he referred to the League with such an awful indispensability ! If ever the League asks anything or supports anything which goes against the British interests even the League cannot be doubting that the Prime Minister will question its right to speak for the Moslems themselves.

The negotiations were also useful to prove the falsity of the dishonest criticisms of the opponents of the Hindu Mahasabha including the Congressites that it being a communal organization could have no national programme or policy or could take no national lead. It was made clear that the Hindu Mahasabha was more national in its programme and yet less liable to fall a victim to weak-kneed vagaries like the Congress or to perverse communalism like the League. In practical politics also the Mahasabha knows that we must advance through reasonable compromises. Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition Government. The case of Bengal is well known. Wild leaguers whom even the Congress with all its submissiveness could not placate grew quite reasonably compromising and sociable as soon as they came in contact with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Coalition Government, under the premiership of Mr. Fazlul Huq and the able lead of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the communities. Moreover further events also proved demonstratively that the Hindu Mahasabhaits endeavoured to capture the centres of political power only in the public interest and not for the loaves and fishes of the office. Witness the bold and eloquent statement issued by Dr. Mookerji when he threw away the portfolio the moment he saw that the Governor had made it impossible for him to serve the public and continue in the ministry with any degree of self-respect.

10. Even though we do not contribute in the least to the forlorn hope that Americans, Russians or any other foreign nation will risk its own interest and take up cudgels to free [p. 116] India on account of political justice or a high sense of humanity alone, still we cannot altogether dispense with utility of foreign propaganda, for the very practical reasons, to acquaint the independent nations with the political situation in our country and combat any propaganda set on foot by anti-Hindu parties to mislead their judgement or to secure their sympathies. The very self-interest of each of the nations in the world is so intertwined and got mixed up with the self-interests of others that each of them requires to know and let know the real political situation to the other. Coalitions and counter-coalitions even though they be based on national self-interest of each nation could be advantageously formed if each nation knows the correct political situation in all other countries in the world. Ever since the war began England launched a world wide propaganda that she was fighting for freedom and democracy all over the world, the Hindu Mahasabha believed not a word of it and openly said so in its resolutions. England, therefore, had to prove to Americans and others that if she could not free India here and now it was due to India’s own fault. American interest on this and several other grounds require that if India is satisfied it will be an inexhaustible source of men and materials for them to win the war. So they grew more anxious to study the Indian situation. Before the war broke out America had some hazy notion that there was a National Congress and the Moslem League. The first was a Hindu Body in the main and the League represented the Moslems. Consequently, they thought that the Congress and the League meant the united opinion of the Hindus and the Moslems. They heard now and then something about the Hindu Mahasabha but they did not know how to squeeze it in between the two. They had not the slightest notion that the Mahasabha had come to occupy an outstanding position as an all-India body.

But since my cablegram to President Roosevelt which was featured prominently throughout the American press and through it the world press, the attention of the American public and the press was drawn more pointedly to the Mahasabha and a curiosity grew in foreign countries to know more closely its ideology, position and policy. Several press representatives and public men who came to study Indian position in general in the year, from America, England and China interviewed the Hindu Mahasabha leaders also. Some of them wrote back to their respective presses, acquainting their public with the ideology and the outstanding position of the Hindu Mahasabha as the representative all India body of the Hindus, just as the Moslem League was the representative of Moslem interest. A number of cables sent from the Presidential office and other Mahasabha centres on several occasions got good publicity as the American press representatives assured me. Even American film-men got the Presidential office and the routine work photoed personally for a movie and I am told that the news reels are shown on the American screens. At the time of the negotiations also the foreign press-agents took keen interest and did considerable propaganda to make the voice of the Mahasabha heard outside India. The contact we have thus succeeded in establishing with American, Chinese and even British public men who interviewed personally the President and several other leaders and with the public press overseas, has already grown intimate enough in making them realise that any pact signed by the Congress alone cannot bind the Hindus, unless and until it is agreed to and sanctioned by the Hindu Mahasabha the foremost representative body of the Hindus nor can any agreement between the Congress and the League alone be taken as an Indian National agreement if the Hindu Mahasabha is not a party to it. This fact will stand us in good stead at the end of the war when the Powers sit together to reshape the map of the world, and if the political constitution of India does form an item on their agenda at all.

11. It was imperative for reasons indicated above that we should send a delegation on behalf of the Hindu Mahasabha to America, England and China at any rate, to defeat the British propaganda which was carried on a governmental scale and also to acquaint the American public with the ideology and the policy of the Hindu Mahasabha. That section at any rate which took interest in Indian affairs and knew something of the Congress and the League in these foreign countries must be kept well informed of the Hindu Mahasabha [p. 117] activities also. Consequently, a delegation under the lead of Dr. Moonje and Babarao Khaparde was to be sent to America. Another delegation was to go under the lead of Dr.Varadrajalu Naidu to England to counteract any mischief likely to be done by the move on Rajagopalachari’s part, who also wanted to go to England. But as Rajaji was not allowed or did not ask for any facilities, there was no particular point in pressing on for a passport to Dr. Naidu as they were quits. Other outstanding leaders also from Bengal, Punjab and United provinces were consulted in this connection and facilities being denied to Babarao Khaparde and others, at the very outset the question was left further unpursued. The reasons advanced by the Government were various. But the most amusing part of the public criticism in non-Mahasabhait camp was that they condemned along with the Government the very idea of taking out delegations to foreign lands as that would reduce the prestige of our public life and support the British plea that there were dissensions in India. It is bad indeed to wash one’s dirty linen in a public square. But the point is who did it first ? Did not the British press propaganda go round the globe at the failure of the Cripps Scheme that there were incurable communal dissensions in India with a thousand-tongued voice ? Then again do you think that the thousands of Americans and Chinese at present in India have left their eyes and ears in America ? And the Germans, and the Japanese ? The whole world knows that there are communal dissensions but the whole world must also know and does know that no nation in some or the other phases of its history was without its own communal dissensions, wars of secessions or wars of Roses. The point is that just as in spite of the dissensions England has bestowed the curse of slavery of India in spite of her will, so also England can and therefore ought to bestow a blessing of freedom in spite of her dissensions. Just as she is guarding slavery with bayonets she should guard the freedom too. Or she should openly say that she does not want to free India because of the British imperialistic designs and not owing to our dissensions. If the Hindu Mahasabhaits were allowed to go to America our dissensions could not have been a news to the Americans but by acquainting them why these dissensions arose and what is the solution of the Hindu Mahasabha for them, the delegation would have enabled the foreign public to judge better between the black sheep and the grey wolf.

But nevertheless the Government had done well in inviting Rai Bahadur Meherchand Khanna, President, N.W. Frontier Hindu Sabha to join the delegation to the Pacific Relations Committee. The Delegation has already reached its destination. Rai Bahadur Khannaji is bound to have ringing publicity to his thesis ‘Pakistan and the Hindu view’ to enable you to judge how rapidly, though not sufficiently rapidly, the Hindu Mahasabha has asserted its position in England and the other countries, I give below a couple of extracts from the brochure published by the Oxford University Press recently and written by R. Coupland who had many occasions to observe the Indian affairs at close quarters when he was touring India, as well as when attached to the Mission of Sir Stafford Cripps, for what they are worth :-

(1) ‘Still more vociferous was the Mahasabha the militant Hindu organization which has always maintained that all India is Hindusthan and belongs to the Hindus. For sometime past its leaders have denounced as a vice that very non-communalism which Congress boasts as a virtue. Congress, they say, is an unfaithful servant of Hinduism, and it is one more proof of the existing communal tension that the Mahasabha, which not very long ago had little weight in Indian politics, has been growing fast in membership and influence. Its policy is quite frankly communal. ‘Our Moslem countrymen should realise,’ says its fiery President, Mr. Savarkar, ‘that even in their own affairs they should accept the inevitable.’ Etc. page 16.

(2) ‘Militant Hinduism, true to form, was more outspoken. ‘The basic principle of the Hindu Mahasabha’, said its Working Committee, ‘is that India is one and indivisible, and it cannot be true to itself or to the best interests of Hindusthan if it is [p. 118] a party to any proposal which involves the political partition of India in any shape or form.’ Page 37.

Lord Devonshire, the Under-Secretary of State for India, referred to the Mahasabha as, ‘The second great all-India Hindu organization’. If the Congressites were anxious to secure credentials from the Governors, there is no impropriety if we refer incidentally to some references just to know in what light others view our activities.

12. Till a couple of years ago it were only the Moslems, who were fighting for Pakistan and all our arguments, we had to address to them; but since the Cripps Mission and the Congressites yielding to the Pakistan demand in its worst form as I have shown in paragraph 7 of this speech, a preposterous position has arisen. There has sprung up, politically speaking, a hybrid of pro-Pakistani Hindus and they have been infecting the Hindu mind as rapidly as a contagious and loathsome disease would do. Some of these Congressite are good Hindus, but they have been duped into believing that it is in the interest of the Hindus also to allow the Moslem provinces to secede and bring about a final and everlasting unity. Then there are very statesmanly Hindu personalities who recognise no affiliation to any party or body as it behaves statesmanship but whose commitments, views and votes are nevertheless bound to be counted as Hindu ones. It is regrettable that many of these esteemed persons should have been ready to admit the principle of provincial secession and thus ‘statesmanly’ enough betray not only the Hindu cause but what they worship like a fetish, the Nationalism as well . How these pro-Pakistani Hindus are working to persuade the Hindus and even to persuade the Government to compel the Hindus to get persuaded can best be illustrated by the untiring effort of Mr. Rajagopalachari. This ‘Acharya’ has really been exerting himself with more sincerity and perverse fanaticism than any mad-Mullah known to history. Consequently, the real danger to the integrity of India rises now more eminently from the mentality of the Pakistani Hindus than from the efforts of the Pakistani Moslems. I deliberately choose some of these points to argue, which I know from personal knowledge to weigh heavily on the minds, especially on that section of our Hindu brethren who still belong to the Congress persuasion but who nevertheless have a Hindu heart.

(a) It must be noted first of all very carefully that there is a fundamental difference between a provincial re-distribution and provincial self-determination to secede. The latter forms the essence of Pakistan whatever its other aspects or extents may be. There is no fundamental objection from Hindu point of view to any re-distribution of provinces, whether on linguistic, military, financial or any other reasonable ground, provided it does not weaken the national strength or cohesion and does not involve any underlying anti-National and anti-Hindu designs. But the question of provincial secession from the Central State must be altogether ruled out in as much as it means nothing short of breaking up Hindusthan into pieces before a century passes away.

(b) Again, the granting of the right to provinces to secede from the Central Government at their own sweet will and allow them to set up as separate states, entirely independent of the Central Indian Government is far more dangerous than the demand for Pakistan meaning thereby freedom to cut off definite number of provinces, because they contain Moslem majority. The latter case,-of a Pakistan demand intolerable as it is and which also we must oppose with all our might, does still come to the loss of a definite number of provinces. But the principle of self-determination cannot but form a veritable sword of Damocles kept hanging on the head of the Central State. It will be practically an invitation and instigation to any province to secede and blow up at a stroke the whole ground on which the Indian State has to stand. The majority of the Moslems, is the only ground in Pakistani demand for secession; but in [p. 119] admitting the principle of provincial secession, we shall have to face the demand on the part of any province at any time on any economic and any other conceivable ground to secede from the Central Government. Remember that the political centralisation in India is still passing through a phase of formation. The Indian Central State and the political integrity and cohesion are still standing on a fissury rock. We cannot be cocksure against the change that sometime or other even some of those provinces, where there is not a Moslem majority may be caught up by disintegrating forces and rise against the Central Government and carried away by the provincial or even sub-provincial egoistic fever, may demand secession and set themselves into separate states. America, Russia and several other nations can serve as danger signals to us in this connection. In fact, even those nations, which today are strongly unitary, had to pass through this phase and it was only a powerful centrifugal Force which kept the centripetal tendencies on the part of their components, effectively suppressed, till they got slowly eliminated altogether.

(c) Those who think it matters not much to allow the Moslems to form their independent federation on the North-West Frontier Province, in which there is already an overwhelming majority of the Moslems, should take into consideration the Military aspect which makes such a surrender simply suicidal on our part. Can you ever find such a nation on the surface of the earth which would willingly hand over their strongest possible frontiers into the hands of those very people, who seceded from them and had been cherishing a hereditary desire to dominate over it ? Then again, remember that on the heels of Pakistan, there comes treading the demand for Pathanisthan. Those Frontier Provinces, if they get entirely free from the control of the Central Government are sure within measurable time to join hands with the tribals and form a contiguous Pathani State from Hindukush to the very banks of Zelum. There can be no real unity unless and until this their design which for the very existence of ‘Hindusthan’ we can never willingly allow to fructify, is not cowardly allowed by letting go our hold on those mountain ranges, which form our National frontiers and frontier guards at once, throughout historical time. But why should we do it at all ? To avoid rupture with our Moslem friends ? But what guarantee have you to believe that this rupture instead of getting lessened by our handing over our frontier to them as a free gift will not only get intensified ? For, is it not more likely that those, who are now relatively weak and yet are talking of civil war, once they get an independent footing as a State, sufficient time and liberty to organize themselves and entrenched on the powerful frontier-ranges, grown stronger precisely in the proportion your position grows weaker by the withdrawal of your frontier ? Unity, when it lays our nation exposed to more dangerous position is worse than open hostility.

(d) Some of our learned Hindu leaders after most complicated calculations maintain that there is no harm in allowing the Moslems to secede and form Pakistani independent states in the North-Western parts and even in Bengal because they are bound to be so crippled financially and economically that they will soon themselves be compelled to repent for secession and go down on their knees. But this financial weakness need not lead to repentance alone, as our learned Hindu economists expect. So long as we continue to be so cowardly as to yield to any preposterous demand on the part of the Moslems to keep up the show of unity and so terribly afraid of Moslems discontent as to allow even the integrity of our Motherland to get broken up into pieces-is it not more likely that this very financial and economical starvation of these would-be Moslem states may goad them on to encroach once more on our Hindu provinces and instigated by the religious fanaticism, which is so inflammable in the frontier tribes even now and urged on by the ideal of a Pathanistan under the lead of the organised forces of the Ameer, may threaten to invade you if you do not [p. 120] handover to them the remaining parts of the Punjab right up to Delhi to make them financially and economically self-supporting ? The example of the Tribes is before your eyes already. They carry out incursions almost every year into the Indian provinces and loot, kidnap, murder, hold to ransom only the Hindus in particular as a rule. Although they are goaded on by Moslem fanaticism in the main, yet several Congressite Hindus were not found wanting in disgracefully condoning these nefarious activities of the tribal Pathans on the ground of ‘financial and even sexual starvation’ from which those ‘Poor souls’ (!) had to undergo inordinate sufferings. I am referring to facts howsoever disgraceful they may be and not to fictions. What guarantee there could ever be that given this cowardly and ever-yielding inferiority complex on the part of the Hindus and this monomania for Hindu-Moslem Unity ‘at all cost’-that in case these financially starved Pakistani provinces invade the Hindu provinces on their borders with far greater strength than they can now-ever command-a troop of Hindus of such mentality would not similarly condone their encroachments, sympathise with their demands and to vote for handing over even Delhi to those invading Moslems before a shot is fired in order just to make a show before the world of a genuine Hindu-Moslem unity or alliance ? The ‘poor’ Moslems in eastern Bengal are even now making their poverty a sufficient excuse and their fanaticism a merit, to loot and harass the Hindus whenever they find an opportunity to do so. When once you allow them to get organized into governmental strength as a separate Moslem Raj,-do you think that this very financial starvation which you admit will cripple their would-be State, would provide them with a compelling cause to invade or harass the Hindus in Western Bengal and unless you are cured of this unity-mania, would you not be faced again with the same bogey-an alternative of handing over some rich slices of Bengal to save the Moslem State from perpetual starvation or be prepared to resist their perpetually growing demand ?

(e) But some of my Pakistani Hindu friends whisper in my ear, ‘We know all these things, but our yielding for the time being is a craftiest stroke of policy. When we once get rid of these troublesome Moslem provinces and are left free to organise unhindered by them the unalloyed part of Hindusthan, then we shall consolidate our Hindus and raise them into such a mighty military power so rapidly, that the Pakistani provinces of the Moslems would be simply brow-beaten into submission.’ The only question that should be put to them by themselves is, ‘Have you not counted without the host-the British ?’ Have you got any definite guarantee from the British that as soon as you yield to the Pakistani demand, they would clear out and leave you to organise your Hindusthan as you choose ?

Secondly, even if that is done where is the magic wand that shall raise the Hindus into such a military power, while Congress mentality continues to dominate a thousand of them ? We thank you for your inner intention of raising the Hindus into an independent and strong power and for feeling as a Hindu of Hindus, but do you not think that the Moslems too would utilise that interval with a vengeance to strengthen their position and amalgamating themselves with their kith and kin across the frontier grow quick into a powerful Pathanisthan here or a Pakistan there ? Mind you, they have not a single Congressite among them and on the other hand, the Moslem minority in every province of your would-be Hindusthan would be dominating even Congressite Hindus here as they are doing today creating the same troubles over again and demanding that you must come to terms with the Pakistani States by sacrificing some more Hindu provinces on the altar of the fetish of Hindu-Moslem unity as our ‘patriotic’ ‘Azad’ and ‘Allis’ have been purposively doing today. And if you as a staunch Hindu realise that, in that case somewhere or the other, we shall have to resist them today by flatly refusing even to listen to their insulting and intolerable demand, when they are relatively weaker and when we can prove relatively stronger by simply changing our yielding mentality and replacing it by the Hindu Sanghatanist Ideology, pointing out to the aggressive tendency of the Moslems their right place and command them ‘thus far and no further.’

[p. 121] (f) Some of our wise men also are labouring under the misconception that the question of Pakistan is just like the Ulster phase in Ireland. But the fact is that they are committing a grievous error in comparing the two and suggesting that just as the Irish accepted an Ulster we Hindus should accept the Pakistan. In Ireland there was a question of only a small corner to be set aside as Ulster. But the Pakistani demand seeks to break up India into a number of separate Moslem States and insist that there should be no Central Government of India at all; worst than that the principle of provincial secession at the sweet will of provinces was never raised in the Irish negotiations. Had this principle been not accepted or tolerated by the Irish there would have been no integral Ireland today. This principle of provincial secession if accepted by the Hindus would sound the death-knell of our national cohesion, integrity and unity.

(g) The chain of reasoning which has succeeded over these Pakistani Hindus comes to this :- We want Swaraj. England is not going to bestow Swaraj unless and until there is a United demand and univocal constitution framed by Hindus and Moslems together. Moslems have made it clear that they will not join the Hindus in producing a united demand unless and until they are not allowed to break up integrity of India and the Pakistani States are allowed to be set up with no connection with any Central Government. Therefore we must satisfy the Moslems, yield to their Pakistani demands and get Swaraj.

Now almost every word in this chain of reasoning is fallacious and the whole chain of reasoning is based on a foolish hope. Although we want Swaraj, yet that Swaraj must mean the Hindusthani Swaraj in which Hindu, Moslem and all other citizens all have equal responsibilities, equal duties and equal rights. Such a Swaraj would not even tolerate a particular community on religious grounds to get itself cut off from the Central Government, demand portions of our country which is the inalienable basis on which this our national Swaraj stands and any such aggressive claim on the part of a community would be immediately put down as an act of treachery by the united strength of the Central Government. Secondly, it is silly to believe that England is only waiting for a United demand and would walk out of India as that rag, signed by the Hindus and Moslems, is handed over to them. I emphatically assert that even if the Congress, Hindu Mahasabha and the League produce a United demand signed by all the crores of Indian citizens and ask univocally for Independence, Britain will never give it for the mere asking. The superstition that if but the Congress and the League demanded with one voice anything in the world the demand would immediately prove irresistible, is responsible for making the real assets of the League inflated beyond all proportions. As soon as the League does join the Congress and even the whole of India goes to England with a common demand, England will say, ‘well boys, you have behaved wonderfully. Hindus, Moslems, all united in a common demand for Independence. But as, all of you united, are still unitedly helpless, disarmed and unable to protect yourself, Great Britain must continue to rule over you even for the moral obligation to save you from the foreign aggression and your own internal anarchy.’ So, on the whole, all that you do in this bargain is to pay the price knowing perfectly or rather foregoing with open eyes that the substantial thing for which you paid the price can never be delivered over to you. And after all what is the price ? Vivisection of your Motherland and of your Holyland-the liquidating altogether of the spiritual, racial and above all the political unity and of the certain chances of its rapid consolidation.

And above all, if we grant for the sake of argument that paying such a tremendous price for your racial honour and future you are handed over a Swaraj by the British on condition laid down by the Moslems :- What kind of Swaraj and whose Swaraj it can possibly be ? It can in no ways be a Swaraj in which ‘Swatva’ of the Hindus is safeguarded for reasons which I have already shown above at some length. Any independence which is achieved at price of admission of and the brittle basis of the principle of the provincial secession is bound to be like a house raised on a crater of a living volcano.

[p. 122] (h) I appreciate in this connection the emphasis the Viceroy has laid at least on the geographical unity of India and the fervent appeal His Excellency has made, in his recent Calcutta speech, to maintain the integrity of our country on the grounds of practical politics also. Reasonable safeguards to the minorities must be given and the League of Nations has already shown us the way in one of the world-famous documents formulating what reasonable safeguards to minorities really mean. But the Viceroy, perhaps inadvertently, used the term ‘fully satisfactory to the minorities, instead of qualifying the safeguards as ‘reasonable’. Fortunately our countrymen belonging to the Parsi, Jew and Christian communities have extended their readiness to abide by the safeguards laid down as reasonable for the minorities which the Hindu Mahasabha also is ever willing to guarantee. The fact is that it is not a question of minorities, but of one minority, the Moslem minority alone. To say that the safeguards must be fully satisfactory to the Moslem minority is to justify the whole statement because the only safeguard which can be satisfactory to the Moslem minority is, as definitely told by them, to lay an axe at the root of Indian integrity. Thus we are caught in a vicious circle. The self-destructive solution that, to save the integrity of India as a nation let us kill it outright in order to satisfy the Moslems, is like that of some clans who, to save their daughters from dishonour when they grew used to kill them as soon as they were born.

(i) Consequently taking all these above reasons into consideration it will be crystal clear to the Hindus who have still kept an open mind on this question that even yielding the principle of provincial secession or Pakistan in certain provinces could never bring about the Hindu-Moslem Unity but such a move will throw Hindus alone into a hopeless predicament. There is no chance whatsoever for the cowardly hope even though they feel that it is a crafty one, to be realised that this or that concession to the Moslems is bound to prove final and ushering in as permanent and amicable alliance between the two people, so long as it is you who yield, so long as the Moslems who would be fools to give up their aggrandisation on Hindusthan and the Mohammedans are certainly no fools in so far as this ambition is concerned. Invasions against the Kafirsthans is in their grain. They are fed on real or boosted up stories of their past conquests; and the only way to hold them in check is to make them realise that any such mad dreams would cost them much more than it would, to their opponents. That is why, Mr. Jinnah, who speaks in the accents of an Alexander the Great, the conqueror of the world when he addresses some local meetings of his admirers brandishing a presented sword here or there, threatening the Hindus alone, has never displayed the courage of threatening an armed revolt against the English who in fact are comfortably seated on the very Gadi of the Moguls and left no trace of the Moslem Empire throughout India for he knows that the consequences would be immediately terrible.

(j) The only organised body that had the courage to tell the Moslems that the consequences of their efforts to destroy Indian integrity would be in the long run as terrible had been the Hindu Mahasabha alone. Oh ! Hindu Sabhaits and Hindu Sanghatanists you form the last citadel in which the Hindu Hope and Hindu Future have come to seek refuge and take its last stand for the sake of honour, if not for immediate success and among the faithless crowd of Hindus themselves, you form the last faithful army which has rallied round to defend and hold up the Pan-Hindu colours as our ancestors did under such trying circumstances at Chitor ! If you at any rate, Oh ! Hindu Sanghatanists, do not betray yourselves and that tradition of Chitor, then rest assured you will in near future be able to sally out or by your falling in the struggle as indomitable and uncompromising warriors enable your Race to sally out of the Chitor of Martyrdom-to the Raigad of Victory ! Come out then to assert boldly and uncompromisingly on behalf of Hindudom-that

Just as in America, Germany, China and every other country not excluding Russia, so also in Hindusthan, the Hindus by the fact that they form an overwhelming majority are the Nation and Moslems [p. 123] Are but a community because like all other communities they are unchallengeably in a minority. Therefore they must remain satisfied with whatever reasonable safeguards other minorities in India get and accept as reasonable in the light of the world formula framed by the League of Nations. We may adapt it to Indian circumstances by concessions more or less on minor questions but no minority in India shall be allowed to demand to break up the very integrity of Hindusthan from Indus to the Seas as a condition of their participation in the Central Government or Provincial ones. No province whatsoever, by the fact that it is a province shall be allowed to claim to secede from the Central State of Hindusthan at its own sweet will. Hindusthan as a nation can have a right of self-determination but a Province or a District or a Taluka can have no right to run counter by the strength of their own majority to the law and the will of the Central Government of Hindusthan. All we can in fairness promise is to grant a representation to all Indian citizens on the general principle of ‘one man one vote’ or if that is not found to the taste of the Moslems we may go a step further and base all representation strictly on population proportion. We know for certain that those minorities like Parsis, Christians and others who have expressed unmistakably their loyalty to united, undivided and indivisible Indian Nation and the Indian State with reasonable safeguards are with the Hindus and willing to work shoulder to shoulder for Indian independence. It will be well for the Moslems even in their own interest to bear faithful allegiance to the Indian nation on the same conditions offered to other minorities. But if the Moslems mistaking the pseudo-national yielding attitude of Congress for the attitude of Hindudom as such persist in their outrageous and treacherous demand for Pakistan or the principle of provincial self-determination then it is time, you Oh ! Hindu Sanghatanists, that you must proclaim your formula from the very tops of the Himalayas. ‘We don’t want Hindu-Moslem unity at all on such conditions.’ ‘If you come, with you, if you don’t without you, and if you oppose, in spite of you, we shall fight as best as we can do secure independence and defend the integrity of Hindusthan !

Hindusthan shall and must remain an integral and powerful nation and a Central State from the Indus to the Seas, treating any movement on the part of any one to vivisect it, as treacherous and strongly suppress it just as any movement of Negrosthan would be promptly punished by the American nation !!

13. All laws are but generalisations primarily based on detailed observations. The detailed observation of the history of Hindus through centuries on centuries points incontrovertibly to the fact that the Hindu Nation is imbued inherently with such an amazing capacity of resurrection, of renaissance, of rejuvenation that the moment, which finds them completely overwhelmed by anti-Hindu forces is precisely the moment which ushers in the day of Deliverance-to quote the Pouranic style-of the birth of an Avatar. It was in the darkest hour of the Night that Shri Krishna was born. It is this indomitable spirit of the inherent vitality that enabled our National Being to prove almost immortal in relation to other races or nations-ancient or modern-and invested it with that strength which ultimately demolished and swept away all anti-Hindu forces, which raised their head from time to time against us. This is no mere rhodomontade I am indulging in. Leaving aside even the Pouranic period, and the Huns, Shakas or even taking into consideration the Moslems who came as conquerors, this is the gist of well-authenticated Hindu History.

The Moslems came as conquerors, but stayed too long to be conquered by the Hindus and beaten to a chip in a thousand and one battlefields till at last the mighty Moslems Empire which rose like a rocket, fell like a stick, till eventually Hindu horse of Victory rode off unchallenged from Attak to Rameshwar, from Dwarka to Jagganath.

[p. 124] To validate this historical fact, only look at these two following pictures :- Just take up the map of India about 1,600 A.D. The Moslems ruled all over Hindusthan unchallengeably. It was veritable Pakistan realized not only in this province or that but all over India-Hindusthan as such was simply wiped out.

Then open out the map of India about 1700 to 1798 A.D. and what do you see ? The Hindu forces are marching triumphantly throughout India. The very Mogul throne at Delhi is smashed to pieces literally with a hammer by Sadashivrao Bhau, the Generalissimo of the Maratha ! Our Hindu-Sikh brotherhood does ultimately deliver Punjab from the Moslem yoke and rule supremely from the borders of Tibet to the banks of Kabul river; the Gurkha-Hindus rule in Nepal. While the Marathas from Delhi to Rameshwar have planted the triumphant Hindu flag from capital to capital, from temple to temple. The Pakistan actually realised by the Moslems was entombed and out of it rose up once more Hindusthan resurrected and triumphant. The conquering Moslem had to eat the humble pie in the long end and got so completely crushed and weaned of his dominating dreams that even today in his heart of hearts he shudders to think of his fate as soon as he sees the probability of the consolidated strength of the overwhelming Hindu majority in the land.

It would be good to the Moslem themselves if they once realise the import of this historical truth. The fate which overtook them even when they had succeeded on translating whole of Hindusthan into an actual living and mighty Pakistan, ought to warn them of the miserable future they would have in store if they persisted in dreaming wildly of a Pakistan which is today but an airy nothing, a forlorn hope !

14. The Hindu Mahasabhaits should remember that as is very probable they will be called upon to fight out any attempt on the part of the Moslems to thrust the Pakistan on us, whether by resorting to the ‘revolt’ whatever the Leaguers may mean thereby, then the entire burden, responsibility and consequently the merit also will be yours in facing the struggle single-handed. The Congress-minded Hindus, the worshippers of pseudo-Nationality would not only be of no use to you, but would actually try to combat you and try to put you into a false position by their willing surrender to the Moslem demands as Hindus. You should, therefore, try to mobilise your Forces and reserve whatever strength you can command for this defence of the integrity of India, which no one else but you alone may defend. You are the salt of Hindudom; but if the salt loses its flavour, with what shall it be salted ? Independence of Hindusthan has no meaning at the cost of its fundamental integrity as a state and a nation. It may be thrust on us even as the British rule is thrust on us but just as that does not deprive us of the right of struggling for our freedom with England, even so if we but do not betray our own conscience and sign willingly any or all schemes, proposing percentages, plebiscites, which are growing in abundance like mushrooms either out of panic or pusillanimity you will find yourself soon in a position to press on both the demands regarding independence and integrity and together get them realised through your own strength.

So far as the most determining factor of all secondary movements the world war is concerned, neither parties of either the Axis or the allies has as yet secured any result so decisive as to invest it with an unquestionable superiority. Consequently, the best policy for all nations situated as we Hindus are, is to continue so sit on the fence and watch the results, keeping ourselves all the while as well-organised, as well-informed and as tactfully ready to take as much advantage of the last results, when the war ends.

15. In view of this indecisive aspect of the war and the necessity for the Hindu Sanghatanists to keep mobilised their forces for the resistance which they are very likely to be called upon to offer and continue fighting the anti-Pakistani struggle single-handedly and owing to our inability howsoever regrettable but which must be recognized as an actuality, to [p. 125] enter the world combat on our own account to win back our Independence, the most farsighted and practicable programme which, if carried on faithfully and handicapped though we are, while the war continues without arriving at any decisions, is as follows –

(a) To continue a hundred times more intensely the Hindu Militarization Movement and try to get recruited and enlisted as many Hindus as possible in the Army, Navy, the Air Forces, Ammunition Factories, War Technicians, etc. The results of this movement are already so encouraging as to make it quite superfluous now on my part to marshal out all the arguments I had been doing so often. When the war began, the percentage of the Moslems had so dangerously gone high in the Army as 62 percent. This was the result of the Gandhist policy denouncing the soldier as sinner and the spinner as the greatest spiritual warrior, who alone was the real liberator of the land and was sure with the music of his spinning wheel to win over the hearts of all Hitlers, Stalins, Churchills and Tojos. But ever since the Hindu Mahasabha found that the war had made it incumbent on the Government to throw the doors of the Army, Navy, the Air Forces open to the Hindus, it whipped up military enthusiasm amongst the Hindus and conducted an organised campaign to send thousands and thousands of Hindus to all branches of the military forces of the land. The result as has recently been declared is that the percentage of the Moslems in the Army has gone from 62 to 32 per cent. This must also be reduced to some 25 in just accordance with the population proportion of Hindus and Moslems. The Hindu Mahasabha branches all over India must start Militarization Boards to send to the forces of the land the best and the bravest of the Hindus. If any province or a district wants to study an organization board which has proved most competent in this respect it should do well to study personally the working and the results achieved by the Militarization Mandal at Poona under the able lead of our esteemed Hindusabhaits leader Sjt. L.B. Bhopatkar. Hundreds of promising Hindu youths have already secured King’s Commissions, Viceroy’s Commissions and are leading the forces with efficiency and merit and getting an up-to-date knowledge and practice of warfare in different battlefields. The same can be said of the Air-forces. Believe me that nothing can stand the Hindus in better stead even after the war, as this Hindu Militarization will do. I assure every Hindu soldier and officer, who are now serving in the Indian Army, Navy, the Air Forces, etc. that they are doing as patriotic a service to their Nation as those who went to jail at Bhagalpur, if not more. The immediate defence of our hearths and homes does also make it incumbent to make a common cause with the British forces, till they are in the field.

(b) Continue to capture all centres of political power from the Central Executive Council, Legislatures, Defence Committees and Councils, Municipalities, Ministries in the Civic part of the Government just as on the military side. The men who come to occupy these centres of power must be either elected by the Hindu Mahasabha or supported by it as Independent Hindu Sanghatanists. But in no case should a Hindu be trusted with any such centre of power who by persuasion belongs to be Pseudo-Nationalistic Congress School and glorifies more in betraying Hindu rights to the Moslems than in defending them against Moslem encroachment.

(c) Do not fritter away your energies or keep you Sanghatanists forces shackled down in any untimely and tactless movement which pursuing high sounding slogans loses more than gains in the long run. Remember it is not the slogan but the strength that counts. Under the war fever only arms speak and can dictate, not slogans howsoever high sounding.

(d) But you must, because you can, give fight on detailed questions, in defence of the civic rights of the Hindus when they are locally attacked or humiliations deliberately offered to the Hindu honour or any just grievance or to face any anti-Hindu riots, as we have already been doing year in and year out. Only those issues which are beyond our power to tackle and are to be fought out on an all-India scale against armed forces overwhelmingly more powerful than those we can rally, disorganised and disarmed as we relatively are, should not [p. 126] be taken up just now. Time and strategy demand that we should leave them till we are in a better position.

(e) In the meanwhile, in order to mobilise our forces and keep them prepared for any emergency such as the Pakistani struggle, we should continue the constructive activities to make our Hindu Mahasabha organization as strong as possible. The general and suicidal error which makes us under-value constructive programme, which we could easily carry out even during the war time, must be immediately corrected. Even the war-time must be utilised all the more intensely by enlisting as many members, starting branches at as many places down to Talukas and villages and keeping them well organized and working, is a duty which the Hindu Mahasabha must continue to do and can do even now with a hundredfold speed and activity.

(f) Remember also that the removal of untouchability is a task as easy to be tackled as it is bound to strengthen Hindu consolidation. It will be nothing short of a victory won in the battlefield if we, within five year’s time, can sweep out untouchability from the face of our country by killing the very idea of not touching our co-religionists on ground of birth in a particular caste alone, and removing automatically the special disability, some economical and some social, from which those of our religious brothers are suffering most unjustly at this hour. It is only a change of mentality and nothing more than that can achieve this seemingly insuperable task. If everyone of the Hindu Sanghatanists simply says and begins to act on it ‘I would not look upon anyone of my co-religionists as untouchable simply on account of birth in a particular caste’-the question will be solved without a farthing’s cost or the least measure of suffering and we shall have a veritable army of some three crores of our co-religionists fighting shoulder to shoulder with us under Pan-Hindu flag on behalf of Hindudom.

(g) So long as the war continues without reaching any decisions, this is the most profitable and the most tactical programme which the Hindu Mahasabhaits and the Hindu Sanghatanists can work out and must work out before the war introduces any revolutionary factor, concerning our own country so as to demand our first attention and compels us to adapt ourselves to it forthwith.

16. All our present programmes, it need not be mentioned, are based on the assumption that Britain comes out at any rate so successful, of this World War, as to continue to be the Sovereign power in India. Nothing has happened so far, so cataclysmic as to undermine the probability of this assumption. But then the forces of Japan are hanging on so persistently on our eastern borders undislodged to any appreciable measure and on the other hand the Axis powers have been surrounded at any rate for the moment by a veritable hornet of irritated nations, that no one even among the most optimistic statesmen or commanders or dictators is in a position to predict with any certainty or definiteness the results of the war. Till that along with those nations who cannot but helplessly watch their destinies tied up with the fortunes either of the powerful combatants on both sides, India too disarmed as it is must bide her time and tide.

The dice of Destiny are loaded already and recklessly thrown on a world battlefield ! All nations are thrown in the crucible ! The very seas are on flames, and the skies are garrisoned with and showering thunderbolts day and night. No nation after this world war can emerge just as it was. Many of those who were at the pinnacle of their power will be reduced to the dust. Many who were trampled down in the dust may all of a sudden find themselves in a position to rise and come to their own. The face of the earth is bound to get revolutionised in any case and in that revolutionary upheaval which at present lies in the lap of the War Gods, one thing only could be said with some certainty so far as India is concerned that she also cannot but be one of the factors whose future is bound to get revolutionised though we cannot and may not point out definitely the course and the [p. 127] aspects of it. One thing you may rest assured that all possible courses and aspects are already viewed as carefully as human ingenuity can and neither the continuation nor the termination of the war can find the Hindu Mahasabha unprepared to take full advantage of every revolutionary phase the war passes through, near or far off, so as to press on the Hindu cause. As has happened so many times in the Hindu History that it was precisely in the darkest hour that the Avatar destined to deliver us was born, it is not quite unlikely, nay, it is more likely than not, that the spirit of Renaissance of the Hindu Race may find an opportunity to assert itself and as if by a miracle similar to those our Puranas sing, Hindudom emerges triumphant over all the forces of evil which are attacking it today.

About possibilities and even about probabilities wise men should not assert anything more definitely in such cases than pious hopes ! All that they should do is to conserve the forces of their nation in the meanwhile, and wait for the probable time and tide so that they may not be found wanting, if the probability does arise all of a sudden.

Hindu Sabhaits and Hindu Sanghatanists ! Only see to it that on the eve of such a probable, miraculous development in near future, do not play coward to your conscience under the weight of the present or get stampeded by the pseudo-nationalistic forces into any unbecoming pacts and do not sell your birth-rights for the mess of pottages, and play coward to your own conscience ! Hold fast to the programme chalked out above for the present, plain though it may seem and get not yourselves trapped into any untimely outburst, which, instead of bringing you near success may only serve to find you entirely disabled, to catch the tide of fortune which in all probability is likely to reach your shores under the pressure of the war !

In any case, hold fast to the crux of the Hindu Sanghatanist ideology which shall serve you in any event, the Future may unfold, namely :-

‘Hinduise all politics and Militarise Hindudom !’

Hindu Dharm ki Jaya ! Hindu Rashtra ki Jaya !

Vande Mataram