I have never had the pleasure of meeting Pandit Jawaharlal, though I have always admired his sincerity and outspokenness. His latest statement in reply to his Mahasabhite critics has a ring of sincerity which is rare in the pronouncements of present-day politicians in India. It seems, however, that he is not in full possession of the facts regarding the behaviour of Muslim delegates to the Round Table Conferences held in London during the past three years.

He has been led to believe that Mr. Gandhi offered personally to accept all of the Muslim demands on condition that Muslims assured him of their full support in the political struggle for freedom and that reactionaryism rather than communalism prevented Muslims from accepting this condition. This is a perfectly wrong statement of what happened in London.

Pandit Jawaharlal has described His Highness the Agha Khan as the greatest inspirer of political reactionaryism among Muslims. The truth, however, is that it was the Agha Khan himself who assured Mr. Gandhi in the presence of several Indian delegates, including myself, that if the Hindus or the Congress agreed to Muslim demands, the entire Muslim community would be ready to serve as his (Mr. Gandhi's) camp followers in the political struggle.

Mr. Gandhi weighed the Agha Khan's words and his offer to accept Muslim demands came later and was hedged round with conditions. The first condition was that Mr. Gandhi would accept the Muslim demands in his personal capacity and would try to secure, but not guarantee, the acceptance of his position by the Congress. I asked him to wire to the Congress Executive and secure its consent to his offer. He said he knew that the Congress would not make him their plenipotentiary on the question.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru can easily refer to Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who sat near me at the time as to her observations which she shared with me on Mr. Gandhi's attitude. Mr. Gandhi was then asked to secure at least the Hindu and Sikh delegates' consent to his offer. He did make something like an attempt to do so but failed and privately expressed his disappointment with their attitude.

Mr. Gandhi's second and most unrighteous condition was that Muslims should not support the special claims of Untouchables, particularly their claim to special representation. It was pointed out to him that it did not lie in the month of Muslims to oppose those very claims on the part of the Untouchables which they were advancing for themselves and that if Mr. Gandhi could arrive at a mutual understanding with the Untouchables, the Muslims would certainly not stand in their way. Mr. Gandhi, however, insisted on the condition. I should like to know how far Pandit Jawaharlal, with his well-known socialist views would sympathize with such an inhuman condition.

This is the inner history of the negotiations between Mr. Gandhi and Muslim delegates. I would leave it to Pandit Jawaharlal to judge whether the alleged political reactionaryism among Muslim delegates or the narrow political outlook of others was responsible for the result of negotiations.

The offer which His Highness the Agha Khan made to Mr. Gandhi two years ago still holds good. If under Pandit Nehru's leadership the Hindus or the Congress agree to the safeguards which Muslims believe to be necessary for their protection as an all-India minority, the Muslims are still ready to serve, in the Agha Khan's words, as camp followers of the majority community in the country's political struggle. If however, he is unable to accept this offer, let him at least not accuse Muslims of political reactionaryism but leave those who understand the motive and purposes of Hindu communalism to draw the conclusion that he is in essential agreement with the Mahasabha in the latter's campaign against the Communal Award.

Another accusation which Pandit Jawaharlal brings against Muslims is that some of them are definitely anti-national. If by "nationalism" he means a fusion of the communities in a biological sense, I should personally plead guilty to the charge of anti-nationalism. The building up of nation in this sense is, in my opinion, neither possible nor perhaps desirable in the peculiar circumstances of India. In his sense perhaps the greatest anti-national leader in India of today is Mr. Gandhi who has made it a life-mission to prevent the fusion of Untouchables with other communities and to retain them in the fold of Hinduism without any real fusion even between them and the caste Hindus. As far as I can judge it, his message to the Untouchables amounts to this: 'Do not leave Hinduism. Remain in it without being of it.'

A man who opposes nationalism in the sense of a fusion of the communities is, however, not necessarily anti-national. It is obvious that there are interests common to the various communities of India. In so far as these interests are concerned, an understanding among the communities is possible according to my belief, and it is bound to come. The present situation is only a necessary stage in the country's political evolution. A united India will have to be built on the foundation of concrete facts, i.e. the country. The sooner Indian leaders of political thought get rid of the idea of a unitary Indian nation based on something like a biological fusion of the communities, the better for all concerned.

Pandit Jawaharlal further seems to think that Muslims, while believing in democracy as a religious institution, are afraid of democracy in practice. He overlooks the fact that the communal electorates and other safeguards on which Muslims insist are only intended to prevent 80 million members of a comparatively poor and backward community from being ousted from all real advantages of democracy. The Muslim wants safeguards not because he is afraid of democracy but because he has reason to be afraid of communal oligarchy in the garb of democracy in India. He wants to ensure the substance of democracy even at the expense of its conventional form.

As for his reference to the speeches made by His Highness the Agha Khan, Dr. Shaffat Ahmed and myself before a gathering of members of the House of Commons, I have only to say that the kind of statements attributed to us were never made. It is unfair to cite the impressions of a Press correspondent instead of an authorized text of our speeches in such an argument. No Indian can believe for a moment that it is impossible to govern India except through a British agency.

In conclusion I must put a straight question to Pandit Jawaharlal. How is India's problem to be solved if the majority community will neither concede the minimum safeguards necessary for the protection of a minority of 80 million people, nor accept the award of a third party; but continue to talk of a kind of nationalism which work out only to its own benefit? This position can admit only two alternatives. Either the Indian majority will have to accept for itself the permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the East, or the country will have to be redistributed on a basis of religious, historical and cultural affinities so as to do away with the question of electorates and the communal problem in its present form.¹