READER:  But I am impatient to hear your answer to my question.  Has the introduction of Mahomedanism not unmade the nation?

EDITOR:  India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it.  The introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it.  A country is one nation only when such a condition obtains in it.  That country must have a faculty for assimilation.  India has ever been such a country.  In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals, but those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one another’s religion.  If they do, they are not fit to be considered a nation.  If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland.  The Hindus, the Mahomedans, the Parsees and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow countrymen, and they will have to live in unity if only for their own interest.  In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms:  nor has it ever been so in India.

READER:  But what about the inborn enmity between Hindus and Mahomedans?

EDITOR:  That phrase has been invented by our mutual enemy.  When the Hindus and Mahomedans fought against one another, they certainly spoke in that strain.  They have long since ceased to fight.  How, then, can there be any inborn enmity?  Pray remember this, too, that we did not cease to fight only after British occupation.  The Hindus flourished under Moslem sovereigns, and Moslems under the Hindu.  Each party recognised that mutual fighting was suicidal, and that neither party would abandon its religion by force of arms.  Both parties, therefore, decided to live in peace.  With the English advent the quarrels recommenced.

The proverbs you have quoted were coined when both were fighting; to quote them now is obviously harmful.  Should we not remember that many Hindus and Mahomedans own the same ancestors, and the same blood runs through their veins?  Do people become enemies because they change their religion?  Is the God of the Mahomedan different from the God of the Hindu?  Religions are different roads converging to the same point.  What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?  Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?

Moreover, there are deadly proverbs as between the followers of Shiva and those of Vishnu, yet nobody suggests that these two do not belong to the same nation.  It is said that the Vedic religion is different from Jainism, but the followers of the respective faiths are not different nations.  The fact is that we have become enslaved, and, therefore, quarrel and like to have our quarrels decided by a third party.  There are Hindu iconoclasts as there are Mahomedan.  The more we advance in true knowledge, the better we shall understand that we need not be at war with those whose religion we may not follow.