Morning News and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- [e-mail];

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Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

Morning News and Mahatma Gandhi 

 

Report in Morning News is grossly exaggerated and vague. Government here is doing its utmost but situation tense and grave in many places. I am staying on here with Nishtar. Vallabhbhai and Liaquat Ali are going on to Delhi. It is evident from the reply that although there has been exaggeration in the news, yet things have gone wrong and the condition is serious. This is unbearable for me as one who is attached to the province of Bihar and also wants that the infection should not spread to other provinces. I have been thinking deeply what my duty should be in this connection. The Congress belongs to the people; the Muslim League belongs to our Muslim brothers and sisters. If Congressmen fail to protect the Mussalmans where the Congress is in power, then what is the use of a Congress Premier? Similarly, if in a League province the League Premier cannot afford protection to the Hindus, then why is the League Premier there at all?

If either of them has to take the aid of the military in order to protect the Muslim or Hindu minorities in their respective provinces, then it only means that none of them actually exercises any control over the general population when a momentous crisis comes. If that is so, it only means that both of us are inviting the British to retain their sovereignty over India. This is a matter over which each of them should ponder deeply. Let us wait for what Panditji and Nishtar Saheb are able to do in Bihar. Let us see whether the Hindus of Bihar shed their madness or not? Tomorrow is the day of Bakr-Id. It is not an occasion when we should quarrel with one another. Let us also wait and see what Shaheed Saheb does tomorrow. How nice it would be if from tomorrow Hindus and Mussalmans and every other community in India start living with each other as friends, and the military or the police find no occasion to use their arms at all. We always put the blame on goondas. But it is we who are responsible for their creation as well as encouragement. It is, therefore, not right to say that all the wrong that has been done is the work of the goondas. 1 

The work here is more difficult than I had imagined. And the Qaid-e-Azam’s statement given to the representative of the Globe which I saw in the Morning News of November 10 has rendered it even more difficult. In the beginning it uses the expression ‘caste Hindu’, later followed by the word ‘Hindu’. Is co-operation between Hindus and Muslims an utter impossibility? If it is so, what will be the plight of Bengal and Hindustan? What will happen to Noakhali and Tippera? 2 

Secondly, I want to collect from Dawn, Azad, and Morning News and Star of India all the telling extracts from Qaid-e-Azam’s and other League leaders’ writings and speeches and put them in chronological order giving under each extract date and origin. These things you can do simultaneously. 3 Newspapers like the Dawn, Morning News, Star of India, Azad and others, whether in English or in any of the Indian vernaculars, should change their policy of inculcating hatred against the Hindus. 4

 

References:

 

1. The Bombay Chronicle, 5-11-1946
2. Letter to H. S. Suhrawardy, November 10, 1946
3. Silence-Day note to N. K. Bose, November 18, 1946
4. Mahatma Gandhi—the Last Phase, Vol. II, pp. 128