The Spider and the Fly
Mohammad Ali Jinnah
In his Presidential address at Berhampur (Bengal), Mr Jinnah has most succinctly summed up the whole significance of Congress advances towards Musalmans. These advances are like the soft persuasions of the spider in the story to make the fly walk into its parlour. The spider is all politeness to the fly. It is loud in it praises of its soft snug parlour. It draws a rosy picture of life in the parlour only if the fly would just walk in. But with all that sweet talk the hard fact remains that if the fly should listen to these suave invitations that would be its end. It would be swallowed up.
All-India Muslim League
This is the only apt illustration of the relative positions of the Musalmans and the Congress and the latter’s attempts to make the Musalmans merge their identity into the Congress. The Congress is undoubtedly a very strong organization. The Congress has undoubtedly taken the country a very long way towards the goal of freedom. The Congress has a brilliant record of sacrifice at its back in the country’s cause. And it may even be conceded that the Congress alone is capable of carrying on the battle of freedom to a successful issue. Conceding all this, the fact remains that it must spell political and cultural death to the Musalmans, should they merge their own identity into the Congress. In fact, the very strength and efficiency of the Congress makes it all the greater danger to the safety of the identity of Islam in India.
Indian National Congress
We are disinclined to believe that a saintly man life Mahatma Gandhi or a frank, straight-forward man like Jawaharlal would consciously behave like the spider and play fraud upon the credulous Musalmans. One may without much hesitation associate such designs with most of Hindu leaders of the Mahasabha school who make no secret of these designs. Perhaps it was only last year that it was announced from the Presidential chairs of two important all-India organisations – the Mahasabha and the Hindu Youth Conference – that Hindustan was the land of the Hindus, that legally as well as politically, Hinduism was the state religion and culture of India. Men of this school – and the bulk of Hindus belong to this – are no doubt out to see nothing but Hindu domination in India, politically as well culturally. But one would not like to think that the High Priests of the Congress who appear to be great apostles of human freedom would also share these dreams and do anything to destroy the political power or culture of Islam in India. Nevertheless, when one faces hard facts of the situation, one is filled with serious misgivings and is forced to the conclusion that the end of the Congress policy, though by a circuitous route, is ultimately bound to be the same as that of the Mahasabha -viz. that the Musalman should walk into the parlour of Hinduism and get swallowed up.
Here are some hard facts against which it is impossible to shut eyes:
1. No community can maintain its own in the struggle of life unless it stands on its own legs, unless it organizes itself, unless it should develop its own internal strength. This is a truism which a man who runs should be able to see. Yet the Congress refuses to see this very first principle of national existence in the case of Musalmans and has actually declared a war on the solidarity of Musalmans. Only a fool would put any other interpretation on this than that the Congress is out to swallow the Musalmans. There are exclusively Hindu organizations in the country. There are exclusively Christian and Sikh organizations. The Congress sees no harm in these. But it cannot tolerate Muslim organisation in any shape or form. Even the separate organizations of Muslim students are opposed and fought against. What can it possibly mean except that the Congress does not want to see Islam thrive and flourish in India; for all strength lies in organization and solidarity and these exactly are the things the Congress would not let the Musalmans have.
2.When the Communal Award was announced treating untouchables as a separate community from the Hindus, Mahatma Gandhi started a fast-unto-death against it, characterising it as the vivisection of the Hindu body politic. He rightly saw in it the thin end of the wedge that would ultimately lead to the disintegration and decay of the Hindu society. But he sees nothing wrong in sowing seeds of discord among Muslims!
3.To say that Musalmans will have freedom of religion and culture is a mere delusion. No people who lose their own political strength can long retain their faith or culture. Even Maulana Ahmad Saeed, General Secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema, can see no wrong in the idolatrous and anti-Muslim song of Bande Mataram and has declared it to be the national song of India, throwing away the soul-stirring Islamic national war-cry of ”Allah-o-Akbar” to the winds and adopting instead a hymn to Durga, Lakhshmi and Saraswati! Even a proud Pathan like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan has adopted the Hindu way of address and salutation. It is against all psychology to expect that a people politically undermined can retain their faith or culture. What has become of the Untouchables? Where is their faith and their culture? They certainly had a faith of their own and a culture of their own. It was wiped off along with their political power, and now in their inferiority complex, they fight for being admitted to Hindu temples. Nothing can prevent the same doom befalling Musalmans when they would take pride in worshipping Durga and Lakhshmi as national deities. God`s laws are no respecter of persons. There are no chosen people with Him. If the Musalmans allow themselves to be dominated by another people, they must be prepared to see the Jamia Masjid of Delhi someday converted into a temple or a museum.
4.Again, the propaganda has been set going that the Muslim League is a body of reactionary people. Is that a sufficient excuse to stand in the way of Muslim solidarity? If that is a reactionary body, does it mean that the Musalmans should have no organization whatever? Why not have an organization of men of independent spirit among Muslims? During the freedom struggle, more Muslims went to jails than Hindus. Why not organize this section into a strong Muslim body? But the fact of the matter is the Congress does not want a separate Muslim organization, even if it be all composed of men of the type of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Abul Kalam. The fate of the Frontier Red-Shirts organization is too well known. No one can accuse that body of being reactionary. In fact all the glory of the Congress is due to the gallant fight and sacrifices of those brave Pathans. Ant yet what did the Congress do to it? It saw in it a menace to Hinduism and forced Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to wind up that organization and merge it into the Congress. This served a threefold purpose. Muslim solidarity was shattered. A rift was created among the lieutenants of Abdul Ghaffar Khan himself. And a potential danger to the dreams of Hindu Raj was averted. To-day we find those very brave Pathans who should have been the standard-bearers of Islam, serving as the sword-arm of those who are out to wipe Islam off. If the Congress is honest in its opposition to the League on the alleged ground of its members being reactionary, let it help in the formation of a Muslim organization with better membership. But that it will never do!
5.The cry, however, that the Congress is the only body that wants freedom is also a fraud to a great extent. No body claiming to stand for complete independence can stoop to work a constitution like the present one and thereby become part and parcel of the very machinery which is holding India in subjection. As Mr. Jinnah has exposed it in his address, the Congress has the “wrecking” of the Constitution on its lips but the ” working ” of it in its hands.
6. Another piece of false propaganda is that the (Muslim) League has big people at its back – big landlords, titled men, high officials and so forth. But what about the big millowners whose money is making the Congress mare go? Messers Birla and Jamnalal Bajjaj cannot possibly have anything in common with the peasants whom the Congress claims to uplift. The interests of the two are diametrically opposed and yet both can find room in the Congress. Why can´t Muslim landlords and Muslim peasants meet together and work for their common good?
The list can be multiplied. The Congress has actually woven, like the spider in the story, a cobweb of false theories, false slogans and false propaganda in order somehow to make the Musalman walk in and be swallowed up. That in plain language is the significance of the Congress campaign against Muslim solidarity and Mr. Jinnah, whose political integrity, as well as patriotism has all through his life been above board has done his duty as a Musalman to issue a solemn and timely warning to his coreligionists against it. It is up to them to heed the warning or be lured away by the siren songs of the Congress spider waiting in ambush for them. We doubt though, that they would listen to this grim warning; for a people whom the gods wish to destroy, as the saying goes, they first make run mad. The Muslamans are struck with something of that madness.
Mohammad Yaqub Khan
(Editor: The Light – Monday, November 1, 1937)
