THE MUSLIM LEAGUE
Slit,—In the recent elections to the Central Assembly the Muslim League emerged with roo per cent, triumph in its first round with those who dared to challenge its authority. It will win the second round too. The Congress Party went all out to discredit the League, and the Mahatma's "successor to the Congress Gadi," Pandit Nehru, has been expressing himself vigorously during the election both against the League and against everything British. Indeed the wild outbursts of the Pandit call for some plain speaking. He has blossomed forth since his release from prison into a " Modernist " and sees medievalism everywhere. Religion is medieval, the Pakistan demand is medieval, the Punjab administration is medieval, in fact everything that the Pandit does not like or understand is medieval. A man who favours the philosophy of Mr. Gandhi with its charkha, its loin cloth, and its goats, and yet condemns a nation's will to be free as "medieval" is surely past argument. The Pandit is not able to live up to his reputation for intellectual honesty. He condemns the major and minor repressive measures of the British bureaucracy, but nevertheless not only refuses to acknowledge the shocking wrongs done to minorities by the Congress bureaucrats when they were in power, but in unmeasured language even blames the oppressed for protesting against their oppression.
Nor is Jawahrarlal consistent. At a Press Conference in Bombay,. when questioned about Subash Chandra Bose, he said that if Bose had led a contingent against India, his policy would have been to oppose and fight him," because he is coming here under Japanese auspices and under Japanese control and more for the advantage of Japan than for India." At New Delhi, at another Press Conference, he attempted to find excuses for Subash Bose ; "never doubted his passion for freedom," and bitterly resented any suggestion that Bose if alive should be treated as a war criminal. July 23rd was the eve of the Simla Conference, and Nehru's motto was, "placate Wavell and get into power." On August goth elections were ahead and different tactics were needed. Se; in Kashmir the Pandit told a body of Hindu learned men to keep away from politics, "because a .religious body has no business to dabble in them." But during the recent elections he has been busy exploiting for Hindu political purposes the body of Muslim religious men known as the Jamiat-Ul- Ulema. Finally he has seen "the doom of Pakistan in the discovery of the atomic bomb." For sheer puerility surely this is hard to beat, but has not the great Pandit a great "international reputation" ?
In the summer of 1942 the Japanese came very near conquering parts of India. The Congress synchronised with that situation its "open rebellion." All the top leaders walked into prison as "martyrs of British Imperialism." If the Japanese came they would open the prison gates, "liberate all the ma:tyrs from the foul British Concentration Camps "—the world would ring with tales of British oppression and the liberated would find favour with the invaders. Daily broadcasts at the time from all Japanese-controlled radios bestowed the highest praise on the authors of rebellion and incited them to keep it up. That is one picture, or rather one side of it.
Skipping over the intervening years of Congress "frustration" we come to the second. On their release Congress leaders lionise those who had actively carried on the rebellion and committed murder, rape, arson, dacoity, loot and sabotage of all kinds. In spite of formal disapproval of violence, Pandit Nehru and his friends inaugurate a campaign for mercy for men convicted of serious crimes and bitterly denounce executions for capital offences. And in recent weeks this "ultra modern Internationalist" makes a passionate plea that men who fought alongside the Japanese against the defenders of India should all be acclaimed "brave lovers of their country " and should be "saved from punishment by the British."
From now onward it is a clear fight between the Muslim League and the Caste Hindu Congress Party. The Congress Party led by the political super-Brahmin Gandhi, lion in the loin cloth, striking awe in many a vacuous Western mind, and Nehru the great democrat, adored by all progressive Americans and beloved by all enlightened Britons, cannot agree to the only possible solution to India's troubles, because "it is a sin," it seems, "to vivisect mother India and no more forgivable than cutting mother cow." That operation, however, will before long be
successfully carried out.—I am, Sir, yours, &c., J. D. JENKINS. Poona.
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