The union that we want is not a patched up thing but a union of hearts based upon a definite recognition of the indubitable proposition that Swaraj for India must be an impossible dream without an indissoluble union between the Hindus and the Muslims of India.  It must not be a mere truce.  It cannot be based upon mutual fear.  It must be a partnership between equals each respecting the religion of the other.

I would frankly despair of reaching such union if there was anything in the holy Quran enjoining upon the followers of Islam to treat Hindus as their natural enemies or if there was anything in Hinduism to warrant a belief in the eternal enmity between the two.

We would ill learn our history if we conclude that because we have quarrelled in the past, we are destined so to continue unless some such strong power like the British keep us by force of arms from flying at each other’s throats.  But I am convinced that there is no warrant in Islam or Hinduism for any such belief.  True it is that interested fanatical priests in both religions have set the one against the other.  It is equally true that Muslim rulers like Christian rulers have used the sword for the propagation of their respective faiths.  But in spite of many dark things of the modern times, the world’s opinion to-day will as little tolerate forcible conversions as it will tolerate forcible slavery.  That probably is the most effective contribution of the scientific spirit of the age.  That spirit has revolutionised many a false notion about Christianity as it has about Islam.  I do not know a single writer on Islam who defends the use of force in the proselytising process.  The influences exerted in our times are far more subtle than that of the sword.

I believe that in the midst of all the bloodshed, chicane and fraud being resorted to on a colossal scale in the west, the whole humanity is silently but surely making progress towards a better age.  And India by finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent means, i.e., unadulterated self sacrifice can point a way out of the prevailing darkness.

VI.  TREATMENT OF THE DEPRESSED CLASSES

DEPRESSED CLASSES

Vivekanand used to call the Panchamas ‘suppressed classes.’  There is no doubt that Vivekanand’s is a more accurate adjective.  We have suppressed them and have consequently become ourselves depressed.  That we have become the ‘Pariahs of the Empire’ is, in Gokhale’s language, the retributive justice meted out to us by a just God.  A correspondent indignantly asks me in a pathetic letter reproduced elsewhere, what I am doing for them.  I have given the letter with the correspondent’s own heading.  Should not we the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we ask the English to wash theirs?  This is a proper question reasonably put.  And if a