A Brief Introductory Note:

 

            ON the appearance of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s three articles in the Modern Review of Calcutta I received a number of letters from Muslims of different shades of religious and political opinion. Some writers of these letters want me to further elucidate and justify the attitude of the Indian Muslims towards the Ahmadis. Others ask me what exactly I regard as the issue involved in Ahmadism. In this statement I propose first to meet these demands which I regard as perfectly legitimate, and then to answer the questions raised by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. I fear, however, that parts of this statement may not interest the Pandit, and to save his time I suggest that he may skip over such parts.

 

            It is hardly necessary for me to say that I welcome the Pandit’s interest in what I regard as one of the greatest problems of the East and perhaps of the whole world. He is, believe, the first Nationalist Indian leader who has expressed a desire to understand the present spiritual unrest in the world of Islam. In view of the many aspects and possible reactions of this unrest it is highly desirable that thoughtful Indian political leaders should open their mind to the real meaning of what is at the present moment agitating the heart of Islam.

 

            I do not wish, however, to conceal the fact either from the Pandit or from any other reader of this statement that the Pandit’s articles have for the moment given my mind rather a painful conflict of feelings. Knowing him to be a man of wide cultural sympathies my mind cannot but incline to the view that his desire to understand the questions he has raised is perfectly genuine, yet the way in which he expressed himself betrays a psychology which I find difficult to attribute to him.........

 

            He thinks, wrongly in my opinion, that the only way to Indian Nationalism lies in a total suppression of the cultural entities of the country through the interaction of which alone India can evolve a rich and enduring culture. A nationalism achieved by such methods can mean nothing but mutual bitterness and even oppression. It is equally obvious that the Qadanis, too, feel nervous by the political awakening of the Indian Muslims, because they feel that the rise in political prestige of the Indian Muslims is sure to defeat their designs to carve out from the Ummat  of the Arabian Prophet a new Ummat  for the Indian Prophet. It is no small surprise to me that my effort to impress on the Indian Muslims the extreme necessity of internal cohesion in the present critical moment of their history in India; and my warning them against the forces of disintegration, masquerading as Reformist movements, should have given the Pandit an occasion to sympathize with such forces.

 

            However, I do not wish to pursue the unpleasant task of analysing the Pandit’s motives. For the benefit of those who want further elucidation of the general Muslim attitude towards the Qadianis, I would quote a passage from Durant’s Story of Philosophy which I hope will give the reader a clearer idea of the issue involved in Qadianism. Durant has in a few sentences summed up the Jewish point of view in the excommunication of the great philosopher Spinoza. The reader must not think that in quoting this passage I mean to insinuate some sort of comparison between Spinoza and the founder of Ahmadism. The distance between them, both in point of intellect and character, is simply tremendous. The “God intoxicated” Spinoza never claimed that he was the centre of a new organization and that all the Jews who did not believe in him were outside the pale of Judaism. Durant’s  passage, therefore, applies with much greater force to the attitude of Muslims towards Qadianism than to the attitude of the Jews towards  the excommunication of Spinoza. The passage is as follows:

 

Furthermore, religious unanimity seemed to the elders their sole means of preserving the little Jewish group in Amsterdam from disintegration, and almost the last means of preserving the unity, and so ensuring the survival, of the scattered Jews of the world. If they had their own state, their own civil law, their own establishments of secular force and power, to compel internal cohesion and external respect, they might have been more tolerant; but their religions was to them their patriotism as well as their faith; the synagogue was their centre of social and political life as well as of ritual and worship; and the Bible whose veracity Spinoza had impugned was the “Portable Fatherland” of their people; under the circumstances they thought heresy was treason, and toleration suicide.

 

            Situated as the Jews were–a minority community in Amsterdam – they were perfectly justified in regarding Spinoza as a disintegrating factor threatening the dissolution of their community. Similarly the Indian Muslims are right in regarding the Qadiani Movement, which declares the entire world of Islam as Kafir and socially boycotts them, to be far more dangerous to the collective life of Islam in India than the metaphysics of Spinoza to the collective life of the Jews. The Indian Muslim, I believe, instinctively realizes the peculiar nature of the circumstances in which he is placed in India and is naturally much more sensitive to the forces of disintegration than the Muslims of any other country. This instinctive perception of the average Muslim is in my opinion absolutely correct and has, I have no doubt, a much deeper foundation in the conscience of Indian Islam. Those who talk of toleration in a matter like this are extremely careless in using the word toleration which I fear they do not understand at all. The spirit of toleration may arise from very different attitudes of the mind of man.  As Gibbon would say: There is the toleration of the philosopher to whom all religions are equally true; of the historian to whom all are equally false; and of the politician to whom all are equally useful. There is the toleration of the man who tolerates other modes of thought and behaviour because he has himself grown absolutely indifferent to all modes of thought and behaviour. There is the toleration of the weak man who, on account of sheer weakness, must pocket all kinds of insults heaped on things or persons whom he holds dear. It is obvious that these types of tolerance have no ethical value. On the other hand they unmistakably reveal the spiritual impoverishment of the man who practises them. True toleration is begotten of intellectual breadth and spiritual expansion. It is the toleration of the spiritually powerful man who, while jealous of the frontiers of his own faith, can tolerate and even appreciate all forms of faith other than his own. Of this type of toleration the true Muslim alone is capable. His own faith is synthetic and for this reason he can easily find grounds of sympathy and appreciation in other faiths. Our great Indian poet, Amir Khusro, beautifully brings out the essence of this type of toleration in the story of an idol-worshipper. After giving an account of his intense attachment to his idols the poet addresses his Muslim readers as follows: