PUNE DIARIES

The Muslims are easily incited to destructive activities but, when called upon to perform constructive work, they remain impassive, as if they have not even heard the call. There is another Hindu organization in Poona, called Sadhu Vaswani Mission, which is engaged in a wide range of academic activities. One of its schemes has been given the name: Life-beyond Project. This project can be described as a systematic effort to rationally and scientifically prove the validity of the doctrine of reincarnation. Research on this topic is being conducted on a worldwide scale. There is yet another institute here, Vasant Vyakhyanmala, in which lectures are held every year in the month of May, the holiday season, on a wide range of religious and historical topics. Highly qualified people are invited for these lectures from all over the country. To attend these lectures, one has to obtain a ticket, which is bought at a price. Even so the spacious auditorium is packed to capacity. One special quality of the Hindu community is the diversity of their activities. Take, for instance, Gandhiji’s boycott of foreign cloth (1921). Muslims were as much a part of this campaign as Hindus, but there was one important difference between the approaches adopted by the two communities. If Hindu, on the one hand, burnt cloth from the mills of Lancashire, and Manchester, then they also established hundreds of cotton mills in their own country, whereas Muslims kept on burning foreign cloth, but did not establish any mills of their own. Such has been Muslims’ approach to every issue in modern times. They are easily incited to destructive activities, but, when called upon to perform constructive work, they remain impassive, as if they have not even heard the call. When anyone wishes to gain popularity among the Muslims, what he does is raise some negative slogan in their midst. To present a positive programme before Muslims is tantamount to sacrificing one’s own position, but it ought to be accepted that encouragement is the only way to breathe new life into the Muslim community as a whole. Since no Muslim leader of modern times has shown himself willing to make this self-sacrifice, the Muslims are caught in a rut of constant negativity. Programmes in Poona While I was in Poona, from March 19 to March 22, a total of nine meetings were held, in which I addressed audiences consisting of both Muslims and Hindus. Particularly noteworthy was a public meeting held in the hall of the Tilak Samarak Mandir, the largest and most