HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY.
At a public meeting held at Patna, on Saturday 13th October, 1917, under the auspices of the Patna City Students’ Association, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu delivered a lecture on “ Hindu-Muslim Unity.” There was a large gathering of both Hindus and Mahomedans. The Hon’ble Rai Bahadur Krishna Sahay was in the chair. The chairman having said a few words about the lecturer, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu delivered the following speech:—
President and Brothers, Hindus and Mussalmans,— I feel to-day a peculiar sense of responsibility such as I have never felt before when dealing with a subject so intimately bound up with my life strings that I almost hesitate in trying to find words that might be wise enough to suit this occasion in this province at this juncture. When I arrived here a few moments ago, it seemed to me, as I mounted this platform so close to the sacred river flowing beneath, that I got the keynote of what should be my message to you to-day. (Applause.) Centuries ago when the first Islamic army came to India, they pitched their caravans on the banks of the sacred Ganges and tempered and cooled their swords in the sacred waters. It was the baptism of the Ganges that gave the first welcome to the Islamic invaders that became the children of India as generations went by. And to-day, in speaking of the Hindu-Moslem Unity, we should bear in mind that historic circumstance, that historic culture, that historic evolution for which the Gangetic valley has stood in bringing about the Hindu-Muslim relationship age after age, and so I trust you will pardon me if I fail, out of my own limited powers, to define the conditions that to-day might strain your hearts.
I seek inspiration from that river which has stood always to the Hindus as the spiritual life that gives wisdom in this life and absolution after death. (Applause). To-day we are confronted with a very critical moment in our national history—what might be and what I trust is merely a passing episode. But it appears to our mind to have assumed a significance that is too great for the people concerned with the future of India to feel lightly about and to permit it to be misconstrued and misrepresented as to cause cleavage between the two communities. Gentlemen, it is, perhaps, very indiscreet for a mere stranger like me within this province to speak of difficulties, momentary difficulties, that are peculiarly local; and yet the day has come within our history when nothing that happens to disturb the tranquillity and harmony between the two races can be called local, because there is no province whose life is separated from the life (applause) and suffering of any other part of India.
Therefore you will permit me to consider myself for the moment while I am the guest within this city as one of yourselves. I wish to invoke in your hearts the sense of anxiety, a sense of responsibility that nothing should come to disturb the future harmony of Behar, the fair progress of the Behari people, who have always stood for peace and goodwill in the past and whose united hearts should not be cut asunder. It used to be the boast of Behar that there was no Hindu-Muslim problem in this province and I have heard over and over again of tributes paid by the leaders of other provinces, saying that when the national sky was overcast with doubt and despair, Behar stood kindling the torch of love and union. There was no Hindu-Muslim problem, but only the shining prescience of a hopeful unity that was real and not merely born of any political exigencies. Then, shall we for the moment allow that fair record to be stained. Shall we, because ignorance brings cleavage, let that record to be stained to bitterness among those who should know better, who should think better to confound that all differences are merely temporary illusions, that the reality cannot be broken and that where knowledge comes the understanding of love must also come ? It is only because we are ignorant that we are divided and it is the sacred mission of enlightenment to bring not the lesson of quarrel but the lesson of peace. (Hear, hear).
That is the problem with which we have to deal today. For what is the Hindu-Muslim Unity! We hear it spoken of vigorously, we hear it spoken of unceasingly, we hear it spoken of passionately. But have we defined to ourselves its practical issues? What is the meaning, what is the significance of the Hindu-Muslim Unity ? There is so much misconception abroad that if a Muslim shows sympathy towards a Hindu, he becomes a traitor and if a Hindu shows sympathy towards a Mussalman he becomes an outcast. But what is the reason of this mistrust of those who stand as links between the two races ? Nothing save our misreading of the entire purpose of national history.
The problem of the Hindu-Muslim Unity stands like this : There are in India two communities (I will not say two races), two communities that are separated by what they consider the difference of creeds. But when you come to analyse this difference of creed you begin to find that after all, fundamentally, the teaching that came in the wake of the Muslim conquerors was the same as the teaching that arose in the great hymns in the sacred mountain regions of the Himalayas and on the sacred Ganges five thousand years ago. It means essentially the love of truth, the love of purity, the services of humanity, the search for wisdom, the great lessons of self-sacrifice, the worship of the same Transcendent Spirit, no matter whether in one language it was called Allah and in another Parmeswar. (applause). After all what is this antagonism between creed and creed? Antagonism is merely the asset of the ignorant. They are not the weapons of the wise, (hear, hear) who realise that after all it is only the misunderstanding of the essential truth wherein lies the difficulty in launching across that golden bridge of sympathy that brings together the two great communities whose fundamental teaching is the love of God and the service of men.
And then in this great country the Moslems came to make their home not to carry spoils and to go back to their own home but to build permanently here their home and create a new generation for the enrichment of the Motherland. How can they live separate from the people of the soil? Does history say that in the past they have so lived separate? Or rather it says that once having chosen to take up their abode in this land they became the children of the soil, the very flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. Gentlemen, history has said that the foreign emperors sought not to divide and rule, but to unite the people and so build an imperishable guarantee of their own power and administration. (Loud cheers.) It may not be strange to you when you look back and see what were the chief characteristics of the Mughal Rule. Not that the Hindus were kept at arms length, but that the Emperor Akbar took his son to Rajputana, so that the blood of the conqueror and the blood of the conquered were mixed to create a new generation of Indians in India.
That was the marital union between the Mussalmans and the Hindus. Do not for a moment misunderstand this. I have quoted this symbolically as typical of what should be the kinship between the two great communities in this land. Keep your separate entities, keep your separate creed, but bring to the federated India the culture of centuries to enrich with all those contributions that each has to make for the sum total, for the healthful growth of the national progress. Who says that we want in India marriage between the Hindus and the Mussalmans so that each might loose its own special characteristics? India is so complex in the problem of her civilisation, in her races and her creeds that it is impossible, that it is even very undesirable—nay, psychologically false—were we to say that we desire a unity that means the merging of the separate races to make one kind of common life for the common weal of the country. What we want is this: that for the evolution of national life we want the Mussalmans to bring their special characteristics and so we want the Hindus to contribute theirs and considering the chivalry of the past allow no minority to suffer. We are not limiting ourselves to the contributions of the Hindu-Muslim culture alone, but we want the special contributions which the Zoroastrians and the Christians and other races scattered over this land can bring us.
Gentlemen, do not for a moment entertain any idea of exclusion, harbour any thought of isolation of one group from another, of one sect from another. But let each bring its own quota of special contributions as free gifts offered lovingly and generously at the feet of the great Motherland for the swelling of the national Commonwealth. What is the special contribution of the Mussalmans ? And what is the special contribution of the Hindus ? We have only to go back and look to their own records, their own annals, their own culture. The Hindus have to bring to modern evolution of life the principal qualities of that spiritual civilization that gave to the world not merely the tone of the Upanishads, but created for the intellectual and the illiterate alike such glorious type of virtue, courage, wisdom, truth, as Ram among men and Savitri among women, that mystic genius of the Hindus, that spiritual passion, that fervour of self-abnegation, that great first realisation that the true measure of life is not the material, not the temporal, but the spiritual—that is the special contribution that the Hindu race has to make to the future evolution of India. And what of the Mussalmans?
The first of the great world religions that thirteen hundred years ago laid down the first fundamental principles of Democracy was the religion of Islam. In the twentieth century we hear that the ideal of the future is Democracy. In the West they speak of it as if it was a thing new born, the discovery of the western people, but the first secret of this great world-wide Democracy was laid in the desert sands of Arabia by a dreamer of the desert and it is the peculiar privilege of his spiritual children to bring to this mystic India of spiritual value that human sense of Democracy that makes the king and the beggar equal. (Applause). Now it is this principle of Democracy that implies certain mental qualities that is inseparable from Democracy. It implies a certain inviolable sense of justice that gives to every man his equal chance in the evolution of national life and these we want imported into our national life, assimilated into our national life which the Hindu community cannot; with its system of exclusion that have been the misinterpreted characteristic of a system that made it merely a true division of responsibility.
I say the Hindu community by itself cannot evolve it because, Hindu as I am, I stand here to confess the limitation of my community. We have not mastered that fundamental equality that is the privilege of Islam. What is mutual cooperation? What is the meaning of unity? Not merely bringing together the separate qualities, the mystic genius of the Hindus (hear, hear) and the dynamic forces of Islam.
We go further; we want that from the very beginning of our childhood there should be an interchange of culture. We want that the Mussalmans should hear from their nurses the great history, the great legends that are the inspiration of every man and woman and we want that the Hindu children sitting in the twilight by the peepal tree should thrill with the history, the chivalry of the Arabian armies that carried in one hand the torch of knowledge and in the other, the sword of their own conviction. It is by this interchange of knowledge and culture of each community from its babyhood, that we shall be able to build up not merely that kinship that is born of political expediency. Politics is sordid, politics is vulgar.
It deals with current problems which are important today and forgotten tomorrow. Politics deals with current details. Nationality deals with the character of the nation and the character of the Indian people is such a complex thing that you cannot in one little phrase say that it is Aryan. You can only say that the character of the Indian is the achievement neither of the mystic qualities of the Aryan race nor of the dynamic qualities of the Semetic people alone, but the union of the power that thinks and the courage that acts, the mixture of dream and action which alone can make for the true uplifting of the national life. Now I have come to the essential point. It used to be said with reference to Italian Liberty, that Mazzini by himself was merely a dreamer and that Garibaldi was by himself merely a soldier and either of them separately could not have built what is the great Liberated Italy of to-day. But it was the genius of Mazzini the dreamer, Mazzini, that became the deed of Garibaldi that made Italy free. And so in the evolution of our national history the Hindus are the Mazzini and the Mussalmans the Garibaldi. A combination of the visionary, the dreamer with the statesman, the soldier, the mystic genius with the virility of manhood — that is what we want to-day in this great India of ours. Then when we set out to reach this high goal to unite, the consecrated fire that unites the different aspirations of the two different communities — of dream and actuality, shall we pause by the way, because of a little quarrel here, a little faction there?
Shall we be deterred from this triumph of a self-realization of a united people simply on account of some personal resentment here, some passing grudge there, or shall we push on? We have before us only a few difficulties and the goal is so radiant that we cannot stop by the way; for the way is long and our life is short and we cannot pass into the shadows of generations that have gone behind leaving their works unfinished and incompleted. Therefore, we cannot loiter by the wayside in settling personal quarrels. We can only set our faces forward. There is a work for the united army to do. There is no separate act for us, no separate gain or loss, no separate suffering, no separate failure, no separate victory, but one common march, one common suffering, one common starvation, one common affinity which death alone can sever. (Prolonged cheers).
Gentlemen, these words sound, you will say, like the words of a Hindu visionary, but believe me that the words of visionaries are always the inmost thought that is common in the heart of a nation. There is no poet who has sung, there is no prophet who has spoken in the past except that he was the articulate voice of the people that had not yet found words to suit their aspirations. Because after all when you come to consider all that makes the art of a nation, the philosophy of a nation, the literature of a nation, the achievement of a nation, why do you honour the maker of the music, the sculptor, the builder of those temples? Because these are the embodiments of the common vision, the common aspiration, the common experience of Unity, and so, no man is separate from another and when the voice of a prophet speaks, calling like the trumpet, it is only that focussed music of the Indian people and his race that speaks in hymns and everyday life.
When I stand up and say to you let there be this union between the vision and action, it is simply that I am articulating your inmost desires and giving words to our inmost conviction. So your leaders are the embodiments of your own dreams and desires, of your own capacity and energies and when you stoop to blame your leaders that they are not true, when you say they are not worthy, they are not able, have you realised what a condemnation of yourselves it is that you are not worthy enough yourselves as followers to evolve worthy and great leaders who are true to their cause. Gentlemen, when I hear men say we have no leaders, I say, is it because India has no men? Remember that the law of demand and supply always holds good in all things alike small and great and it is only by the worth of your leaders that the worth of followers, of people can be guaged, because, as I said, no man is an original thinker amongst us. Every one of us is but the mirror of his own desires, the embodiments, the images of his own souls and aspirations. Therefore, I pray, consider your shares in cooperating to bring about that reality of your dreams for which you are ready to suffer. I trust you are ready to suffer; and in what way shall these things be done? The way is so simple that when it is put to you in terms of daily life, the glamour, no doubt, becomes less dazzling in your daily action, than when you hear it said in the advertisement of lectures on the Hindu-Muslim Unity. That is a magnificent phrase but in daily action what does it mean? It means the simple fact that you love your neighbour as yourselves, you realise his humanity as common with your experiences and aspirations of life, his failures, his triumphs, his hopes and fears, his culture and ignorance which are the common inheritance between you and him. (Cheers) There is no difference (hear, hear) because of your common aspirations, your common destiny of humanity.
It becomes a very simple thing to say that all men are neighbours of one another, brothers, blood ties, because they have the same tears and the same laughter. Therefore, perhaps, they may have the same kind of aspirations; the same quality of men may have the same kind of aspirations; so why make difference between the tillers of the soil whether he is a Muslim or a Hindu? Does he not suffer from drought, from the failure of harvest, from pestilence, from locusts? The schoolmaster, whether he be a Hindu or a Mussalman, has he not the same responsibility of creating within his hands (is he not a sharer of a common responsibility I ask) a bond between brother and brother whether he be a Hindu or a Mussalman? Then when floods come, and famines come, and plagues come, do not all of us suffer equally? Why make difference between men? Are there different angels of death for the Hindus and Mussalmans to carry them off? Does not every man feel that he must cooperate with each other, what matters if he be a Hindu or a Mussalman? Shall not a Brahmin carry on his head the corpse of a Mussalman and shall not a Syed carry on his head the corpse of a Hindu? What has the corpse of a Hindu or a Mussalman done not to deserve the same sense of honour from each of us who are equally created by God and who have been equally subject to mortality? These are trivial details of life. And when, gentlemen, feelings run high and passions are roused and when men forget this common brotherhood, what are the duties of those whose visions are not obscured? What are the duties of those who have not been excited by some little trifling cause that has such awful, farreaching effect? Remember that blessed is the man that makes peace and thrice cursed is the man or woman that sets a little spark of fire into flames. Is not that what we have to remember when we see two brothers fighting at the street corner? Shall not we go to them and say, “Cease, brothers. Be friends.” That is the symbolism of what we should do when two communities are at the parting way of national life. Cursed be every man and woman of every rank and creed in this great country that incites, that excites instead of quelling, that urges on instead of quenching, that separates instead of uniting; that, gentlemen, brings up the differences between creed and creed instead of preaching that fundamental Truth of Humanity, the Humanity of one God, the one Indivisible in all men. That is the meaning of the Hindu-Muslim Unity — not resentment, not suspicion, not the ungenerous schism that divides and says aggressively ‘we are a majority and you are a minority and so shall trample on you.’ These things, gentlemen, are the cancers in the growth of social life. Rather we want the chivalry of the majority — the original children of this land to say to their Muslim brothers, “take what we have because there is no division between you and us.
Are we not the children of the common Motherland and shall the elder, by the priority of his older age, wrest from you your equal inheritance?” This is the feeling of a generous love, of brotherly love that we want to establish as a thing flawless, and in the hearts of the Hindus towards Mussalmans. We want to establish that nobility that knows how to trust without reservation, we want the manliness, the virility of the soldier that says—you give your word of honour and that word shall be as a bond of strength, of manhood that does not consider petty differences of castes and creeds. Gentlemen, that is Hindu-Muslim Unity. Not the betraying of one community by its own leaders against another, not the selling of the community for the sake of the honour that might come but rather the responsible sense of co-operation in the mutual reverence for each other’s creed, mutual love for each other’s civilisation, mutual trust in your common good intention and co-operation and equal responsibilities in the evolution of your great national life of tomorrow. That is the meaning of the Hindu-Muslim Unity.
Once more we turn to the sacred river flowing beneath us; what has been the symbolism of that river through the centuries? What has been the symbolism of that river? What is the symbolism, I say, that age after age has made it sacred not merely in Sanskrit but in Persian verses as well, that flows giving gift to the land, that waters the fields of both the Hindu and Mussalman alike. It has been the inspiration of the Hindu and Mussalman geniuses as well.
The sacred waters of this sacred river, with the solemn music flowing through city after city has washed away sins after sins of the Hindu people and has given cold waters to the thirsting armies of the Mussalmans. And when this great river arrives where it meets another river, in sacred Prayag, there is the Union with mystic music, soul to soul and heart to heart, of the two great rivers, the Ganga and the Jumna — a Sangum of two rivers each without losing its own characteristics and qualities. And yet it is a perfect union. And that should be the symbol of the Hindu and Muslim Unity, each keeping its own culture, its own individual characteristics, its own purity, its own special colour of its own waters, the music of its own deed even at that point of Union. That is the meaning of the Sangum of national life. That is, gentlemen, the true meaning of the Hindu-Muslim Unity. I will not detain you longer because I have another function to attend—something, gentlemen, which does not a little contribute towards this Unity.
I speak of children studying each the culture of the other that makes for mutual unity; but there is another thing that translated into national life is sure to bind the children of the two communities in a common bond. That other act is the unifying influences of sports that teach us fairplay, justice, cooperation, harmony, equal competition and therefore train us in all those qualities that are needed for virile manhood—the eye, the brain, the mind, the arm and above all things, that training and discipline which will evolve our manhood of tomorrow. That also makes for the Hindu-Muslim union. And now when I have given you the message of the river, the symbol of the river, the symbol of its Union, symbols that you should enshrine
in your hearts, I will ask your leave to go and give away the shield that stands also in its own important manner as the reality of Hindu-Muslim Unity. (Prolonged and enthusiastic cheers).