INDIA AND THE U.S.A.
Sta,—The Press of America has reported Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit's interesting draft memorandum presented to the official delegates of the San Francisco Conference, in which she pleads for " justice and equality for everybody including India's one fifth of the world population."
Neither the official delegates nor the world Press representatives at San Francisco possibly know what "justice and equality" mean in the vocabulary of the Indian National Congress and the dominant caste Hindu majority of India, or how the principle was practised when a Congress Ministry governed the United Provinces with Mrs. Pandit herself as one of its members. Mass assaults on Muslims, looting, butchery of individual Muslim families, wholefale desecration and demolition of mosques, prevention of religious cow sacrifice, denying Muslims the use of village wells as if they were untouchables, compelling, Muslims to sing the idolatrous and offensive song " Bande Mataram "- these were some of the "just " things which power-drunk Hindus did to the Muslims then—under the banner of the Congress and the encourage- ment of local Congress leaders, to the accompaniment of shouts of " Gandhi-ki-jai," and with the connivance of Congressmen in power.
Typical instances may be cited: the holocaust at Dadri cattle fair on November 20, 1937: the mass assaults on Muslims at Sitapur on Feb- bruary 12, 1938, at Banda and Benares in March 1938, and at Benares again in January and February 1939: the butchery of an entire Muslim family in two instalments at Oujaikot Goujaikol in August, 1937, &c. The same history was repeated in Bihar the C.P. and many other provinces. If the world Press seeks truth and not mere sensation they will resist the propaganda wiles of this Indian " nationalist " siren and examine more closely the Muslim charge that the freedom for which the Indian Hindu Congress so loudly clamours is freedom to oppress. What India badly needs at this hour is " freedom from fear." Mr. Gandhi's party does very little to remove this intense sense of fear.
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