FIGHT TO THE FINISH
The High Court judgment in the ”Vartman Case” sentencing the editor and publisher to imprisonment and fine does not and must not, as is hastily supposed in some circles, drop the curtain on the ugly scene enacted on the social and political stage of India and the revolt against it on the part of Muslim India. Those who are content with a surface view of things may now bury themselves as usual in their easy chairs and as usual bell themselves to sleep but those who can see deeper would be able to warn such self-deluded men that they are sleeping on what is known as a whale-island. And woe unto the sailors who mistake the overgrowth on the whale’s back for an island and lay anchor to settle down on it. Anytime the sea-monster may stir and go down with the island, its settlers and all.
Rajpals are but visible turnings of the whale underneath and unless the monster itself is effectively dealt with; Muslims would be simpletons of the crudest brand to suppose that all is clear. As long as the Arya Samaj is there, as long as the spirit of Swami Dayanand sways Hindu mentality, so long as chapters 13, 14 of Satyarath Parkas are not expunged, as long as Moonjes and Malviyas are at large to sing their song of Pax-Hinduism with ”Down with Islam ” for its burden, as long as Hindu bureaucracy from the highest judiciary and executive authority to the meanest Baboo is observed with the same unscrupulous communalism, as long as the Banya has his thumb on the Muslim throat, in the crowded town, in the village and in the remotest solitary hamlet, as long as a Muslim workman and a Muslim peasant must toil and moil to fill the over-fattened stomach of the Hindu banker, mill-owner and trader; as long as funds and fanatics are pouring out into ignorant countryside to pervert the Muslim masses—as long as all this hydra-headed monster is there, out avowedly to undo Islam and Muslim, it must be sheer fool, nay suicide to sit down to rest once more as Muslims are generally prone to when a storm is seemingly over. The monster is there. Let us not be hoodwinked by all the gloss and polish that tact and cunning may brush its back with. Firasat-i-Mumin, a believer’s insight was sometime proverbial. Let us make use of that and see things not what they seem, but as they are. It is no time to put our coats on. The fight is on to-day as yesterday and we must fight it and fight it to the finish. Unless and until the monster has been crushed, unless and until the Hindu has been restored to his normal human mental vision, the word rest must be taboo. There should be no talk of rest.How to crush the monster? This is the crux of the whole question. There is only one way to do it—the only way in which all monsters are killed. Let your arm be strong. Let your steel be bright. To imagine that pious sermons, high-sounding resolutions, conferences, negotiations, parleys will move the monster is to misunderstand monster nature. Cut it clean through. That is the one and the only one way. How true the words of an illiterate Pathan at the foot of the Cherrapunji which come up to our mind as we write this. Commenting on the Gauhati Congress and the khaddar campaign, the unsophisticated Daulat Khan curtly remarked with his Pathan clear-sightedness:
Dawoosan! Pade khabars ba Perangai obasi? khudai shta che soe pa tura jukht ghus naki no che larshi — i.e., how silly to think that by mere tall talk they will drive the English out.
Unless cut clean the English man will never go. And this sums up the whole philosophy of national Struggle. Steel i.e., strength – this is the open sesame to the situation.Where must this steel come from, this strength? Here is a brief chart:
1.YOUR ARM – exercise it.
2.YOUR PURSE – keep it full.
3.YOUR RANKS – close them up.
Take good care of these things and if you do not, you will be doing so at your own peril. The monster will make a jolly good meal of you any moment. Every Kalma-go, a Muslim. This must be the corner stone. Have done with the Mulla whose vision like the frog in the parable is limited to his own pond and who cannot imagine the sea of nationality and its wider considerations. Pledge yourself to patronise only Muslim shops. Every pice that goes otherwise goes to sharpen the fangs and the claws of the monster lying in ambush for you. Physical exercise – lathi play, gatka, wrestling, boxing – must be compulsory in every Muslim home. Draw yourselves up in well organised bands and units. It is a state of war and do you know what the Prophet ﷺ and his comrades have done under these conditions.In arms day and night! This would have been their rule to-day as it was in Medina under similar conditions. Let this be the watchword of Muslim India to-day. In arms, day and night – arms of steel, arms of money, arms of organisation. The word rest must be banished as treason. A fight to the finish – this is the call of the times and the sober dictate of cool common sense.
(Editor, The Light , August 16, 1927)
