UNREST IN INDIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1927, Page 4

UNREST IN INDIA

HINDUS AND MOSLEMS RIOT. “It is undoubted that the hostility between the Hindus and the Mohammedans has increased considerably of late. Not only have there been sporadic riots, but the attitude of the two communities to each other has undergone a fundamental change,” writes Professor K. M. Panikkar, of the Moslem University of Aligarah, in the “Contemporary Review.” The Hindu believes that, the Moslem is working for dominance, the Mohammedan believes the Hindu would expel him from India if he could. “The trouble is not primarily religious, political, or racial, but. communal. Dogmas and beliefs do not come into the question al. all,” says Professor Panikkar, “The cow is sacred Io the. Hindu, but lherc is nothing in Hinduism enjoining that other communities should be prevented from slaughtering cows, and in Southern India, where the Mohammedans arc only a few in the midst of a population of extremely orthodox Hindus, cow-killing in public goes on. without disturbance.” Biots have been caused by Hindu processions playing music, when passing Moslem mosques. “Even while the Mogul emperors were in Delhi,” says the professor, “there were only live mosques before which custom prohibited processions with music. It was never claimed that the prohibition of music, even before these mosques, was based on religious principles. In fact, when the Sultan of Morocco, as the Commander of the Faithful, arrived in the mosque at Paris, he was greeted with music from Mohammedan bands.” Religion has little to do with the bitter quarrel, the professor concludes. Neither is it true to say that the riots are wholly political—though politics loom more largely in the mental background than religion. The organised political parties and their leaders are only too anxious to avoid trouble, and they all acknowledge the necessity for Hindu-Moslem unity. The essential point is that though the cause of trouble is political and may be traced to purely political considerations, the present widespread hostility and bloodshed 'would not have resulted but for the organisation of societies into “communities” based on religion. That is why the trouble may more correctly be called communal than political or religious. Professor Panikkar denies also that race has anything to do with it. The great majority of Moslems are converts from Hinduism. Nor were the Mohammedans, taking India, as a whole, a ruling class when the British came. The real difficulty lies, he thinks, in the intense exclusiveness of the two communities, who have not only different places of worship, but different civil laws, social customs, and institutions. Each individual feels a sense of .responsibility to his own community alone. The Hindu considers that the Mohammedan Indian is an outsider, the Mohammedans’ ties of sentiment are rather with their co-religionists in other lahds than with their Hindu fellowIndians.

The Afghan question intensifies this feeling. Afghanistan desires to incorporate the frontier tribes into.her territory. “In fact, in spite of the veil that is cast over this delicate subject, it is clear enough to all that there is a. live Indo-Afghan problem, which may at any time pass from the stage of diplomatic controversy into the realm of war,” says Professor Panikkar. Many Moslems are suspected by Hindus of an unpatriotic desire to establish Afghan supremacy in India. Again. Moslem culture is peculiarly foreign. Moslems are prouder of the achievements of the Mohammedan University of Cordova than of the Hindu Nalanda. To all these possibilities of friction the reforms, with chambers based on communal electorates, have given definite occasions for conflict. Each side fears the dominance of the other. The Hindus are more numerous, the Moslems better organised and more aggressive. Professor Panikkar thinks that all hope for the future depends on the abolition of communal electorates. At present Ministers feel responsible only to their own communities, and party discipline is so fierce, that the liberalminded man has no chance of election. Pact after pad has broken down. The Moslems are angry with the Hindus for their new policy of proselytism, though the Mohammedan faith is itself essentially proselytising, and they fear the Hindu move to conciliate the “untouchables.”