Multan Riots and Hindu-Muslim Unity

IT is a matter of gratification that deplorable as the Muslim riots were, they have not only not proved a source of weakness to the much-cherished cause of Hindu-Muslim unity, as some of our enemies had hoped, but have supplied yet another proof of the fact that Hindu-Muslim unity is no mere empty political war-cry but a feature of our life as a nation. With the exception of the Anglo-Indian Press and a coterie of interested people, the bulk of our countrymen, Hindu and Mahomedan, have condemned the acts of loot, arson, incendiarism and violence against ladies. No one, be he a Hindu or a Mahomedan, can help condemning in the strongest words possible such outbursts of so-called “religious” frenzy. It is also in the fitness of things that the guilt of the Mussalman mob being much greater than that of any member of the other community who took part in the looting of Mussalman shops, the strongest and most outspoken condemnation of the misdeeds should have come from Mussalman leaders. No condemnation of the misdeeds could, indeed, have been severer or more emphatic than that of such all-India leaders as Hakim Ajmal Khan and Dr. M.A. Ansari, or provincial leaders like Malik Lal Khan and Maulana Abdul Qadir and broadminded gentlemen of the type of Khwaja Ghulam Yaseem of Amritsar. And this being the attitude of the Moslem leaders who were free (though one of them has since gone to jail) it is not difficult to imagine what would have been the views of those others — men like the Ali Brothers, Dr Kitchlew, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who unhappily being prisoners are not free to give expression to their feelings.