get a few lessons in dancing as well. We, as usual, entered our first mild
protest against thus dissipating the energy of our youth in light-hearted
pastime when momentous issues hung in balance. The gentleman,
unconvinced but impressed, took our leave promising to continue to call
upon us every now and then.
He was Shriyut V.V.S. Aiyer
In 1910 A.D., somewhere in March, we stood as a prisoner then only very
recently pent up in Brixton—the formidable prison in London. The warder
announced visits. Anxiously, we accompany the file of prisoners to the
visiting yard. We stand behind the bars wondering who could have come to
call on us and thus invited the unpleasant attentions of the London police.
For, to acknowledge our acquaintance from the visitor's box in front of the
prison bars, was a sure step to eventually get behind them. The visitors are
let in. They crowdedly pass past our window. Presently, one dignified figure
enters the box in front of us. It was V.V.S. Aiyer. His beard was loosely
waving on his breast. He was unkempt. He was no longer the neatly dressed
fashionable gentleman. His whole figure was transformed with some great
act of dedication of life. “Oh leader!” he feelingly accosted us, “why you
left Paris at all”! Soothingly, I said: “Friend, what is the use now of
discussing it here. Rightly or not I am here, pent up in this prison-and the
best way now is to see what is to be done next, how to face the present.”
While fully occupied in discussing future plans, the bell rang and the
warders came rushing and shouting unceremoniously: “Time is up.” With a
heavy heart, we looked into each others’ eyes. We knew it would perhaps
be the last time we ever saw each other in this life. Tears rose, Suppressing
them we said: “No! no! We are Hindus. We have read Gita. We must not
weep in the presence of these unsympathetic crowds.” We spoke in Hindi;
curious crowds of English men watched the ‘young Indian rebel ‘ and his
friend. We parted, I watched him till he disappeared and said to my mind:
“Alas! it is well nigh, impossible to see this loving soul again.” For, one of
the two fates was certain to fall to my lot, the gallows or the Andamans, and
neither could hold any prospect before me of seeing my friends again.
This was in 1910 A.D.; fourteen years rolled by, and the impossible
actually happened. Travelling the most dangerous and meandering bypaths
and bylanes and subterenean passages of life so formidably bordering the
realms of death, I met Shriyut Aiyer a couple of months ago. He had
travelled all the distance from Madras to Bombay to enable us to revel a

few hours in the wines of romantic joy. We forgot for a while, the bitterness
and the deep pangs of the afflicted and tortured past and lightly gossiped as
boys fresh from schools meeting back after a long holiday. He took my
leave. I watched him disappear and said to my mind, now can call him
again, any time I like.
Little I knew that it was then that he was to disappear beyond all human
recall. When human wisdom shook its head and snorted out ‘impossible’,
events proved it possible and when it gaily assured itself ‘at any time,’
Destiny put in a stern never; thus oft, fate seems to act with no nobler
intention but to mock and humiliate human calculations!
With Aiyer, the politician, we cannot concern ourselves here. It is the loss
of Aiyer, the scholar, the friend, the noblest type of a Hindu gentleman, the
author of Kural, the saintly soul, whose life has been one continuous
sacrifice and worship that we so bitterly bewail to-day and bitterly chafe at
our inability to pay a public tribute to his memory in a fashion worthy of the
noble Dead. Oh, the times on which our generation has fallen! The noblest
sink down and are washed off to the shores of Death, while the unworthy
keep gaily swimming on the tides of Life.
But thou hast done thy duty. Friend! It was for Human Love that thou
livedst and thou diedst too for Human Love, even as a martyr unto her.
Thou knewst no peace in life, oh, soldier of God. But Peace be with Thee
in Death. Oh friend! Peace be with thee and divine rest!’
—(Mahratta 28-6-1925)
$\square$

Then Who is Who, Pray?
While cursorily glancing over the papers, our eye caught a heap of
capitals, which, scanning a little closer, revealed a list of names of Pratap,
Shivaji, Govind singh and others. Out of respect for these heroic
representatives of our race, we naturally read a sentence or two of the article
wherein those occurred, when to our surprise, we found ourselves face to
face with the ghost of that hackneyed lie which had been killed and buried a
dozen times over in the past and which asserted that the Hindus could not
be said to be a race and could not, therefore, claim to inherit the blood of
Pratap and Shivaji and Govind. We were just on the point of sweeping aside
this statement as a contemptuous vapouring of foreign malice or ignorance,
when somewhere about the sentence, the eye caught another familiar name.
It was of Mahatma Gandhi. Without going further in the article, we
instinctively felt that he must have been the author of that statement. It was
worthy of no one else in India. From what other source can such profound
shallowness flow than from the perennial fountain of ‘Himalayan mistakes!’
To level down to dust at a single non-violent stroke, the cherished love and
pride and exalted emotions of a whole race that fondly felt in its vein the
blood of a Shivaji and a Shankaracharya or a Pratap or a Chhatrasal or a
Chaitanya flow—only a Mahatmaic audacity can accomplish that! Let the
silly and unscientific Hindus disown forthwith the superstitious belief that
after all, they were the sons of those sires who fought at Haldighat and were
martyred at Sarhind and won at Udgir and ruled at Delhi!
Gandhiji tells us we cannot be said to inherit the blood of Pratap and
Shivaji and Govind. But then do we inherit any one’s blood at all? We are
born in Maharashtra—can we claim to inherit the blood of Shivaji at least?
The caste system that prevails amongst the Hindus and the consequent
absence of the custom of intermarriages amongst them, which seems to be
the reason, which prevents a Gujarati from owning the blood of a Rajput
Pratap or a Maratha Shivaji in his veins, ought to, if true and sound a reason
in the first case, prevent us also from claiming to inherit the blood of
Shivaji. For, Brahmins in Maharashtra married not with the Bhonsle and
other Kshatriya castes. Taking a step further, not only the Brahmins but also
the Vaishyas and Shudras and Atishudras, the Prabhus and Saraswats—
almost all of those crores of Hindus who go by the name of Maharashtrians,
cannot look upon Shivaji as one of their forefathers any more than a

Gujarati can. Even amongst those who are Kshatriyas of Shivaji’s caste, all
cannot claim him as their ancestor; for many—nay, the majority of their
families had no blood connection with the Bhonsles or the Jadhavas.
Leaving aside the question of Shivaji, we cannot positively succeed in
proving that we possess the blood of even the Peshavas in our veins unless
and until our genealogy reveals a marriage connection with the Bhats and
other families relating to the Peshavas. All Brahmins also cannot claim
common blood, for they all do not intermarry. So, then taking the last case
of Maharashtra, not only does a Gujarati or a Bengali or a Madrasi or a
Punjabi Hindu fail to establish his superstitious belief that claims Bajirao
and Shivaji and Ramdas and Nana and Bhau and the hundred other heroic
figures that fought for, died for and won the cause of Hindu-patpadashahi in
the past as his glorious forefathers, but even a Maratha, a Maharashtrian,
must disown them unless indeed, any one of them can produce a genealogy
establishing an individual blood relation through inter-marriage. Nor can all
Rajputs claim Pratap for their ancestor, nor the Sikhs Guru Govind for
theirs. In such an anomalous situation, all that one can state is that Sambahji
alone inherited the blood of Shivaji or following the more unobjectionable
style of Satyakama Jabali of old, assert that any given person can claim the
blood of his mother alone—and of no one else.
So, then, the poor Hindu is no racial entity at all. Shri Ram and Shri
Krishna are mere persons to him, with whom he has nothing more in
common either in blood or ancestry than he has with the citizens of
Timbuctoo or with the man in the moon! Thus, he who used to live and
breathe and had his being in a sublime conviction of his consanguinity and
affinity with the seers and heroes and warriors, with Ram and Krishna and
Shivaji, find the stream of his lifeblood suddenly choked and dried up, lost
in bogs and sands of Mahatma Sahara of absurdity, and stand alone, a unity
by himself, no one in the world whom he can call his kith or kin outside the
scrap of his family-genealogical chart.
But then, the Hindu suffers not alone. He has to undergo the pangs of
bereavement in company with almost all the world. If a Hindu cannot be
said to possess the blood of a Pratap or a Shivaji, as Englishman too cannot
by the same analogy, be said to be positively entitled to inherit the blood of
a Cromwell or a Shakespeare. For, in spite of a general custom of
intermarriages amongst the English people, no one can assert that every
English individual has affinity with all other English people or has entered

through his family in an individual blood relation with every other English
family, which he can prove as soon as summoned by M. Gandhiji to do so.
How can the cockney in the East London dare to claim to inherit the blood
of the house of York or the proud Earls, whose pedigree boasts of pure
patrician blood, that for generations and generations admitted none but a
patrician within its sacred precincts? If a Hindu cannot be said to possess
the blood of a Pratap and Ram or Rohidas Chambhar on account of the
absence of the custom of intermarriages amongst castes and consequent
absence of individual blood relations with the persons or their families, with
whom he claims consanguinity, then an Englishman too cannot necessarily
be said to inherit the blood of a Shakespeare, or an American of
Washington, or an Italian, of Mazzini, or a German, of Frederick the Great,
on account of the absence of any positive proof of his or any of his family
being allowed to mix his blood with that of the other, in spite of the custom
of intermarriages amongst the European nations that can suggest a mere
possibility of consanguinity or affinity, but cannot in itself be a positive
proof thereof. The only advantage that a cockney of East London has over
the Hindu is that the cockney may be imaginatively looked upon as a blood
relation of, say, Henry VIII. Just as he may be imaginably looked upon to
be the prospective King of England or, for the matter of that, of all Europe!
But just as in spite of this imaginable possibility of being the Emperor of all
Europe, he, so far as facts are concerned, remains a cockney amongst
cockneys; even so, in spite of a possibility of being otherwise, he, so far as
all practical proofs are concerned, cannot be said to inherit the blood of a
Shakespeare or Hampden or Pitt or the Black Prince and, most certainly, not
of all these put together. And yet the school-children of these every
cockneys are made to short till they get hoarse in their school: We are the
sons of sires that baffled, crowned and martyred tyranny! They defied the
field and scaffold, for their birthright-so will we!”
Foolish rhodomontade! How can all English children be supposed to have
entered through their families into blood relation with all those Englishmen,
who centuries and centuries ago, ‘baffled, crowned and martyred tyranny!
We sincerely hope that if ever Mahatma Gandhi comes to wield the power
of a Supreme World Censor—God forbid!—which he hypothetically
granted to himself on the occasion of opening the offices of the Hindusthan
Times at Delhi, he would give his second attention to suppress throughout
Europe—nay all the world over—these foolish blusterings of intoxicated

fancy that sings “We are the sons of sons that baffled.” What lies! No man
should be allowed to state that he is the son of any other sire, but his
individual father and mother and at the most, of those, whom he can prove
on written testimony to have entered into blood connection with his family.
We were going to claim his first attention for this task but that he has
already reserved, as he declared in that speech for the still more urgent
business of suppressing all other papers but Young India and Nav-Jivan!
The poor Mahratta, of course, being destined to be the first fat kid to be
sacrificed to the Goddess of Liberty, as Gandhiji had seen her.
But if a mere chance that the cockney in the East London has, of
conceivably being related through blood in the ninetieth generation before
him to, say Thomas-a-Backet by virtue of the custom of intermarriages,
entitles him to claim him as his sire, then surely, the chance, that the poor
Hindu too has, of being somehow, somewhere and somewhen relation
through blood to the illustrious names of Hindu history must entitle him, in
spite of the caste system and absence of the custom of intermarriages
amongst the Hindus, to claim to inherit their blood. For, first of all, the
racial stock of the Aryans used to intermarry amongst themselves. Even a
casual acquaintance with the Vedic literature can convince—has convinced,
every one, of the fact, outside the Sabarmati Ashram. Secondly, even the
mere mention of the Aunloma (अनुलोम) and Pratiloma (प्रतिलोम)
theory of marriage, which the most ancient Smrities record, and the
hundreds of examples that lie scattered throughout the pages and periods of
the history and mythology of our race, prove that these systems actually
affected the everyday life of the people. The mere mention of these should
be enough to prove that the racial blood of our ancestors could never be said
to have been absolutely locked in watertight compartments. Mahabharat
abounds with precedents—the very heroes of that epic show that even the
kingly houses, did at times, admit strains of popular blood. The birth stories
of Vyasa, Valmiki, Parashuram or Vashishtha, the origin of the castes of
Suta and Magadha down to Chandals, the descriptions of the harems of
Krishna and Arjun and Bhima—who married Hedamba—Chandragupta and
Ashoka-down to Mahadaji Scindia who descended from a Rajput mother
and a Mahratha—all these and hundreds of other illustrations joined with
the supreme fact that Nature has and will ever prove stronger than all the
caste rules and regulations, prove to the hilt that the caste system has not
been and perhaps was never meant to be, an absolute and imperious dam

and that the life-current of our mind flowed richly from the Himalayan
altitudes of our ancestry to common plains. We, Hindus, own a common
life, a common blood pulsed through our veins, and we have as much a
right to assert that we inherit the blood of Pratap and Shivaji and
Shankaracharya, as the Englishman has to claim that of Shakespeare or the
American of Washington. Dravidians or Aryans—we are, Indians even
through blood, Hindus first and everything else next.
—Mahratta, 14-6-1925
❑

Crushing Reply to Sir Kishan Prasad

The following statement is issued by Br. Savarkar, the President of the
Hindu Mahasabha, in reply to the Article published by Maharaja Sir Kishan
Prasad of Hyderabad regarding the Hindu Civil Resistance Movement:
In spite of the personal respect, which every Hindu feels for the elderly,
noble and highly placed Maharaja Sir Kishan Prasad, we cannot but
denounce the statement he has recently issued carrying down the Hindu
Mahasabha and Arya Samaj Civil Resistance Movement against the
intolerably anti-Hindu policy of the Nizam Government as untrue, timid
and treacherous. His charges against the Arya Samaji in particular are not
only baseless but base. For, if during the last fifty years or so, any section of
Hindudom had really proved itself to be the Defender of the Hindu faith,
culture and community, it is the Arya Samaj that has done so.
Neither the Hindu Mahasabha nor the Arya Samaj has launched this civil
resistance movement in a light mood. Thousands of Hindus groaning under
the Nizam Rule had for years been calling upon the Hindu Mahasabha to
come to their rescue. Just on the very eve of the Civil Resistance
Movement, the Maharashtra Provincial Hindu Sabha had deputed trusted
workers to investigate into the grievances of our co-religionists in the
Nizam State and they, after studying the situation on the spot, had published
reports full of unimpeachable facts and figures to substantiate that the
condition of the Hindus was actually worse than what had come to light.
The leaders of the Civil Liberties Union, who hail from the state itself, have
borne ample testimony to the same fact. Nay, the Hindu leaders, who now
under the spell of the State Congress, are persisting in a guilty silence had
only the other day, been loudest in condemning the Nizam Government’s
policy as most detrimental to Hindu interest and dictated by Moslem
fanaticism. Does the Maharaja, Sir Krishan Prasad venture to say that he
has any better right to represent the Hindu feeling than these thousands of
aggrieved Hindus in the State?
But apart from all that, the very statement of Maharaja carries with it its
own refutation. During the course of the statement, he boastfully asserts that
he and his ancestors had ever gloried in living contentedly under the
subjection of the Moslem rule for generations together. The long subjection
of the Hindus in Hyderabad State is a historical fact and one can understand
if a Hindu tolerates it as an inevitable evil. But what are we to think of a

Hindu of the eminence of the Maharaja, who glories in the fact that his
Hindu ancestors had been contented slaves throughout centuries under the
political domination of the Moslems? Is it not a fact that it is these
contented Hindu slaves who proved traitors to the Hindu cause in the past,
fought for their Moslem masters against the emancipating forces of the
Maratha Empire and enabled the Moslem rule to survive in Hyderabad? The
Nizam was defeated in battles after battles at Bhopal, Udgir, Kharda and the
Marathas liberated Hindu Provinces from Nagar to Nagpur and from
Nagpur to Orissa from the grip of the Moslem rule. But it is to the
treacherous assistance of these contentedly slavish 'Ancestors', that gave
the Nizam Government the long lease of life it enjoys. Otherwise, the forces
of the Maratha Empire would have freed the Hindus in Hyderabad long ago
and spared them their present serfdom, Instead of hanging his head down in
shame at the thought of this continuous political and racial subjection of the
Hindus to Moslem domination, the Maharaja parades it as if it was an
additional feather in his cap. This one fact proves as no detailed Hindu
grievance can ever do, the thoroughness with which the anti-Hindu policy
of the Nizam Government has succeeded in emasculating the Hindu spirit in
the dominions and how not a vestige of self-respect is left even in the best
of them by the age-long serfdom to which the Moslem rule had reduced
them.
It is this supreme task and not only the removal of local and detailed
minor grievances of the Hindus—this task of emancipating the Hindu mind
from this slavish mentality—that the Hindu Mahasabha had set before
itself. The Mahasabha demands that the Hindus in the Nizam Dominions
must be allowed all Civil Liberties in equal measure in common with other
non-Hindu citizens, so that they may grow to their full height as self-
respecting men, who would not tolerate anything that implies racial
inferiority or humiliation to which they are subjected as Hindus.
So far as the right of representing our Sanatani Section which the
Maharaja wants to monopolise is concerned, it cannot be better refuted than
by pointing out to the one single fact that the President of Warnashram
Swaraja Sangha of Maharashtra and the leader of the Sanatanists all over
India—Dharmaveer Vishwasrao Davre—is rotting even at this moment in
the Nizam's jail under the very nose of the Maharaja, for championing the
cause of the Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj Civil Resistance
Movement. The spirit of the real Sanatan Dharma is represented by

Dharmaveer Davre. What Maharaja Kishan Prasad represents in his article
is not the spirit of Sanatan Dharma but of Sanatan slavery. He is playing
that part today, which Raja Man Singh played so ignobly in days gone by
when he posed as the leader of the Rajputs in lieu of Rana Pratap.
It is not even now too late for the Maharaja to repent, to go in sackcloth
and ashes and as a gentleman bold enough to make amends for this untrue
and treacherous article by boldly confessing the truth.
—Mahratta 12-5-1939
❏

Freedom and Democracy
The following Cablegram was sent by Br. Savarkar, the President of the
Hindu Mahasabha, to President Roosevelt of U.S.A. on 23rd April, 1939:
“If your note to Hitler is actuated by disinterested human anxiety for
safeguarding Freedom and Democracy from Military Aggression, pray ask
Britain too to withdraw her armed domination over Hindusthan and let her
have free and self-determined Constitution. A Great Nation like Hindusthan
can surely claim at least as much international justice as small nations in
your opinion do.”
Britain’s Policy towards India
The statement issued by the Viceroy regarding Britain’s policy towards
India with reference to the present war situation is disappointing to a
degree. The four or five columns of the verbose statement could have well
been compressed into four or five sentences, so far as substance is
concerned. The rest is full of platitudes.
The Viceroy refers to the old and often discarded declaration that India’s
ultimate goal is Dominion Status, made somewhere in 1919 A. D. It has not
materialised since during the last twenty years and was almost forgotten till
this war broke out. The present repetition of those same vague phrases may
share the same fate, if things are allowed to drift in this manner by the
Indians, till another war breaks out some twenty years hence.
H.E. the Viceroy should realise that India is sick of running after this
wordy mirage. She refuses to look upon the Dominion Status as an ultimate
goal. But instead, insists upon it as an immediate step to be taken. A
constitution based on that Status must be conceded by Britain to India, just
at the end of this war, at the latest. A definite and the shortest time limit to
the actual introduction of this constitution was the essential thing, which
was expected by the Indian political world and it is precisely this very point
that has studiously been omitted in the statement issued by His Excellency.
Even now, it is not too late to mend. The British Government must bear in
mind that India can never extend a willing co-operation unless she feels that
the cause of her own freedom is likely to be served in a substantial measure
by offering responsive co-operation to Britain.
The Advisory Board contemplated in the statement is welcomed. But then,
it has not its functions and powers defined. If it is going to be a mere
appendage to serve as a camouflage to conceal autocratic high-handedness,

then it can only mean an insult added to injury. But if it is made to serve as
a tentative measure with powers, more or less equal to a Federal Board of
Ministers, is entrusted without reservation with matters concerning Indian
defence during the war time and if its advice carried into effect as that of a
responsible Council of Ministers, it may prove a step in advance on the line
of political progress. But much will still depend on its composition. The
Hindu Mahasabha must secure such a representation on it as is in keeping
with the proportion to population of the Hindus!
❏

Moslem Chinaman: Hidden Motive of Chinese
Moslem Mission to India
The following statement is issued by Barrister V. D. Savarkar, the
President of the Hindu Mahasabha, in connection with the Chinese Moslem
Mission to India:
We had no mind to give expression to the details, which point beyond
doubt to well-concerted activities on the part of the Indian Moslems to
inject the Chinese Moslems too with the Pakistani virus, while the Chinese
Moslem Mission led by Mr. Woo was in India on behalf of our friendly
neighbour China. But the Moslem Mission is grievously transgressing its
national and friendly task and has, in its message recently sent to the
Moslems at Nellore, been guilty of betraying anti-Hindu tendency. It has,
consequently, forfeited the right of a national hospitality on the part of the
Hindus and I feel myself quite justified in exposing the real nature of the
movement, so that Hindudom may be warned of the dire consequences,
which must result, if it is not watched, opposed and checked in time.
Burma Lesson
A couple of years ago, I had issued a statement warning the Burmese that
there was growing rapidly a hybrid Moslem population in Burma, which
would in near future constitute a similar danger to the homogeneity of the
Burmese people, as it did in the case of India. The Moslems used to marry
Burmese girls in large numbers for at least a century in the past and were
very particular in bringing up their progeny as Moslems, while no Moslem
would, as a rule, give his girl in marriage to a Burmese. The easy-go-lucky
Burmese hardly suspected political danger out of such designed social
relations. But soon after that, the Burmo-Moslem riots, miscalled the Indo-
Burmese riots, started. The Moslems paid a heavy price for their mischief
and the eyes of the Burmese got opened. Just then, the Japanese invasion
took place and held all such questions in suspension.
China Follows Suit
Next to Burma comes China. The Moslem population there is to be
counted in crores. China was once ruled by the Tartars, and when the
Tartars embraced Islam, these Moslems made China their home and for a
short period, even looked upon themselves as a ruling class. But the great
Buddhistic Empire, which rose on the ashes of the Tartars, showed the
Moslems their right place and they were more or less thoroughly reduced to

unquestioning subjection. But the fall of the Chinese Empire, the Japanese
conquest of the large portions of the Chinese territories and the
simultaneous rise and spread of the pan-Islamic movement about the time
of the last great European war stirred up the Moslems in China too, with the
consciousness which was latent in all Moslems through the Koranic
teaching itself of being a separate entity unallied with and even antagonistic
to, anyone else, who did not believe Koran and especially the Hindus,
including Buddhists. We know how the Moslems bore a special hatred to
and massacred the Buddhists on their way to India and how the word
Buddha prashasti, which means, in fact, the worship of the Lord Buddha,
had come to mean the greatest sin man can commit in the Moslem eyes.
The Chinese Moslem Federation was formed and a large section of the
Chinese Moslems refused to merge themselves with the Chinese, but
maintained that they should keep up their separate entity and even a
political brotherhood.
The Marshal’s Fable
We have great respect for Marshal Chiang Kai Sheik as a doughty warrior
and a farsighted statesman. But that is the very reason why he could not but
tell us the fairy tale that in China they were all Chinese first and last and in
politics there was no clash between the Buddhists and the Moslems. But in
face of facts we cannot but take this statement of the Great Marshal with a
pinch of salt. Was it not only a couple of years ago that a batch of young
Chinese Moslems was sent to Turkasthan and Egypt to get themselves
initiated into pan-Islamic mysteries and who, on reaching Bombay, sought
the interviews of Mr. Jinnah and other Leaguers, discarded their National
Chinese dress and paraded their newly-bought fez caps as an insignia of a
new order? This present mission, led by Mr. Woo, is a far more significant
step on the part of the Chinese Moslems and is primarily meant and was
perhaps invited by the Indian Moslem Leaguers themselves to establish a
closer pan-Islamic contact. They have chosen to interview the leading lights
of the Pakistani movement including the Nizam, and they are already
emboldened to talk such trash as that they would not fail to help their Islamic
brothers in India after the war is over. But are they sure whether they
themselves would be in a helping or a helpless position at the end of this
war? A covenant between the sparrows and the rabbits to defeat the eagle has
no sense so long as the eagle dominates the field. Again, what kind of help

and against whom are these Chinese Moslems going to render to the Islamic
brothers in India after the war? Against the Hindus and to prop up Pakistan?
The appointment of Sir Mohomed Zaffarulla Khan as Indian Agent
General in China under such circumstances bodes nothing but evil. He may
represent the pan-Islamic or Pakistani principles there as every dutiful
Moslem is expected to do.
A Mere Dream!
The Indian Moslems, who want to carve out a Western Pakistan from
Delhi to the Tribal regions, have openly declared more than once that they
would depend upon their co-religionists outside India from Afganistan to
Turkey. But they could not indulge in any such airy nothings, regarding the
support for their Eastern Pakistan to be constituted out of Bengal and
Assam. That is why they are trying desperately to forge a pan-Islamic line
between the Burmese and the Chinese Moslem groups and now that the
Chinese Moslems have promised them help after the war on the Eastern
side, they may very well build castles in the air hoping thereby to frighten
the Hindus in the East, too.
If that be so, I can only remind them that the Hindus have also some
trump cards in their hand. If it is feasible for the Indian Moslems to have a
united Chinese Moslem front on the East, whether cultural or political, then
it is at least as feasible, if not more, for the Hindus to have a united Hindu-
Buddhist front from Jammu to Japan. Just as the frog cannot but remain a
frog even if she jumps into the sea, so also the hopeless Indian Moslem
minority can never grow into a dominating majority, even if Mr. Woo woos
them with all the Chinese Moslems.
—Mahratta, 29-5-42
❑

Gandhi-Jinnah Negotiations (September 29,
1944)
Emphasising that the proposal to vivisect India had assumed ‘a far more
dangerous aspect today when the Gandhi-Jinnah talks are adjourned than it
had on the day when the talks began’, Mr. V.D. Savarkar, President of the
Hindu Mahasabha, in a statement, appeals to all those opposed to the
partitioning of the country to support the Akhand Hindusthan Leaders’
Conference to be held at Delhi on October 7 and 8.
Mr. Savarkar says: Mr. Jinnah demands vivisection of India even more
relentlessly than before. Gandhiji wants to placate that intolerable demand
even more relentlessly than before. The Moslems are openly claiming that
they have nothing to do with the so-called Indian nation, that they are a
different nation by themselves and that they want to cut off as many
provinces of India as possible, utilise them as a territorial base to rear up an
anti-Hindu Moslem state quite independent of any central Indian
Government. Gandhiji, who confidently asserts in getting the Congress to
support him, is ready to hand over, at any rate, four frontier provinces,
which form the natural and invulnerable Himalayan borderline of our
Motherland, to the Moslems for the above treacherous objective, for the
mere asking of it without firing a shot.
The tragedy of it all is that the ‘Indian National Congress’, which was
ushered into existence to consolidate the Indian nation, has itself betrayed
its sole mission. The very justification of its existence and falling a victim
to the pseudo-nationalistic malady, had dealt the unkindest cut of all at the
‘Indian national integrity. The Indian National Congress itself is indulging
in treacherous conspiracies to vivisect the oneness of that Indian nation so
as to wipe out the very name of India from the map of the world.
When Gandhiji started from Wardha by ‘the Pakistani train’ almost in a
triumphal mood, he left orders behind to the country or to the Congress at
any rate to keep peace, to have complete confidence in him and not to
criticise the Gandhi-Rajaji proposal while his talks with Jinnah continued to
find out a way to Hindu-Moslem unity on the basis of handing over to them
some of the holiest and cherished parts of India and acknowledging their
right to form a separate and sovereign state there.
This trick, in fact, was so transparent that it was not likely to dupe any
sensible politician. What reliance could there be on the assurance of a

leader like Gandhiji, who only the other day, asserted that vivisection was a
sin and is today supporting Rajaji’s Pakistani proposals. Only those
Congressites and some other leaders among the Hindus, who had grown in
the habit of accepting any Gandhist ‘mumbo-jumbo’ as a gospel truth,
obeyed those orders and tried their best to stand tongue-tied. Not only that,
but they wanted to hush-hush even the Hindu Sanghatanists and other far-
sighted politicians, who refused to be duped by that flimsy political trick
and refused to acquiesce in such a guilty silence.
Whirlwind of protest
The whirlwind of protest raised by the indignant people, the forest of
black flags and picketings, through which that triumphal Pakistani train had
to pass crestfallen from Poona to Panchagani, Panchagani to Wardha and
Wardha to Bombay, the trenchant statements issued by some of our
foremost leaders in the country condemning the treacherous proposal, those
thousands of meetings and signed protests wherein millions of Indian
citizens led by the Hindu Sanghatanists pledged themselves to stand by the
integrity of their Motherland and to resist the Pakistani proposals, defeated
the design of the Gandhist group to lull the whole country into a false sense
of security, and by demonstrating the fact that there was a country-wide
challenge thrown to them, made it impossible for Gandhiji and others of his
persuasions to claim the leadership of the whole country in general and of
the Hindus in particular.
It was to organise this whirlwind of protest against these sinful designs to
break up the integrity of Hindusthan, as a nation and a state, and to
consolidate all those leaders and citizens who had thus protested publicly
against the Pakistani proposal that the Akhand Hindusthan Leaders’
Conference was convened to meet at Delhi on October 7 and 8.
It was supported by hundreds of prominent leaders from all parts of India
including the accredited representatives of the Sanghatanists, Sikhs, Arya
Samajists and other Hindu Sanghatanist organisations, as well as by several
leaders of note in their personal capacity. This conference had, from its very
inception, almost nothing to do, to the beginning or ending of the Gandhi-
Jinnah talks. It is an independent effort to consolidate those who stand by
the integrity of India into a common front. Many of those Congressites and
others who had secret sympathy with Gandhiji’s unholy mission either
through conviction or want of foresight, tried their best to frustrate the
efforts of holding such an Akhand Hindusthan Leaders’ Conference.

Gandhi-Jinnah talks were over simply because Gandhiji said: “Let no one
speak against the Gandhi-Rajaji proposal till we are trying to arrive at a
compromise with brother Jinnah!” But the organisers of the Akhand
Hindusthan Leaders’ Conference did not yield to these efforts simply
because the very starting point of those Gandhi-Jinnah talks was the
acceptance in this or that form of the treacherous concession of Pakistan. It
was impossible, as the Rt. Hon. Shreenivasa Shastriji said, for a genuine
Indian nationalist to remain tongue-tied while the integrity of our
Motherland and hoty land was being openly sold at auction.
Political Matricide
Even now that the Gandhi-Jinnah talks are over for the time being, none
should overlook the point that Gandhiji had made it quite clear that they are
only adjourned ‘sine die.’ Are we also going to remain tongue-tied without
raising a finger in defence of the integrity of our nation or without uttering a
single word of protest against the political matricide and keep looking on it
unconcerned ‘sine die’?
I earnestly request those Congressites and other leaders who wanted to
wait till the Gandhi-Jinnah talks were over but were in their heart of hearts
against the Pakistani proposal, to take courage in both hands to conquer
their own inferiority complex and come forward to condemn all further
efforts to vivisect India and attend the Akhand Hindusthan Leaders’
Conference to consolidate the anti-Pakistan front. They would doubtlessly
be welcomed in the conference by each and every one who had consented
to attend it.
But even if some of those do not find themselves to do so, the Akhand
Hindusthan Leader’s Conference will meet at Delhi irrevocably on 7th and
8th of October.
The prominent leaders of our Sikh brotherhood, the Mahantas of different
Mathas and Ashramas, His Holiness Shankaracharya of Puri, the Sanatani,
the Arya Sanghatanist leaders and their personalities occupying prominent
position in the social and political life of the country, have already
consented to attend the conference.
A hope that specially in view of the adjournment of the Gandhi-Jinnah
talks and the consequent commitment, which Gandhiji and almost all the
Congressite press, and the fact that the Congressite following has now made
to accept this or that proposal to vivisect India, it is all the more urgent to
consolidate the anti-vivisection party. As a first step towards it, the genuine

national leaders all over India will not fail to join the Akhand Hindusthan
Leaders' Conference at Delhi.

Problems before Hindudom After Bloodless (!)
Vivisection
RETALIATION
The vital interests of Hindudom demand that some maxims and arguments
emphasized in chorus by the Congressite Ministers, leaders and the press
should be promptly refuted. For example, Pandit Nehru has been reiterating,
of late, that the right of retaliation or punishment belongs to the state alone
and in no case, the people (meaning in this case Hindu-Sikhs) could be
justified in exercising it on their own initiation and responsibility. In laying
down this maxim, Panditji has happily refused to indulge in the
mischievous mumbo-jumbo of Gandhistic morals. He stated clearly that he
was not talking about the morals of this question but the practical aspects of
it only. So far so good. But he conveniently forgot to touch the most crucial
and practical aspect of the question—what were the people to do, when the
state proved either so unwilling or so pusillanimous as to fail miserably
even to defend its own people, not to speak of retaliating to avenge the
wrongs perpetrated on their hearths and homes and honour?
Even an individual has a legal right of self-protection and of retaliation in
so far, at any rate, as it forms an inevitable weapon of self-defence against a
violent aggressor, when the police is nowhere in evidence or is unable, or
the worst of it all, is unwilling to face the aggressor for fear of displeasing
him. Verily a people must have this fundamental right that every citizen
possesses.
What were the thousands of Hindu-Sikhs to do when faced by an
imminent danger of being massacred in cold blood, looted, ‘burnt alive,’
forcibly converted, in short, of being exterminated as a racial and national
being by the most barbarous attacks of an organised, dangerously armed
and fanatically hostile foe, and especially when the state as such was
nowhere in evidence so efficiently as to render any the least protection to
them? While the state of Pakistan allowed firearms and explosive to be
distributed to the Moslem population throughout Western Punjab, the
League leaders were openly inciting their people that Pakistan was but a
springboard to pounce upon Hindusthan and the Moslems in their thousands
were parading in the streets, in towns and in cities, dangerously armed and
raising terror-striking slogans ‘Haske liya Pakistan, marke lenge
Hindusthan.’ While the Moslem state was planning in this wise definite