PUNE DIARIES

famous Hindu temple in Poona. This meeting which took place on the evening of March 20, was attended by the Mayor of Poona, along with a considerable number of highly educated people. The topic of this address, laid down by the organizers of the meeting, was: The Prophet of Islam: Founder of the Modern Age. I gave a one-and-a-half hour talk on this subject and the audience listened attentively from beginning to end. Some Hindu brethren afterwards offered comments such as these: “We have not seen a Maulvi like this before. We had no idea that this was the meaning of Islam.” Many bought books published in English by the Islamic Centre from a bookstall set up outside the hall, among these being” Muhammad: The Prophet of Revolution. Specially for the occasion, the organizers had printed some pamphlets consisting of articles from AI-Risala translated into Marathi. These were distributed among the audience. Progress of AI-Risala Mission in Poona AI-Risala, and the cause it represents, are by the grace of God receiving wider and wider dissemination in Poona. One of the programme organizers told me that, in comparison to previous trips, this time they had laid less emphasis on publicity, yet the attendance for my talks was much larger than on previous occasions. On Friday, March 21, a meeting was arranged in the Makkah Masjid of Poona prior to the congregational prayers. On reaching there I saw this sentence above the door of the mosque: “High station in life comes from raising oneself, not from raising slogans and banners.” There were at least twice as many people in the mosque as compared with the number who normally attend Friday prayers. In spite of this mosque being so large, it was filled to capacity. Similar audiences assembled for every meeting which was held. One gentleman put forward a suggestion that AI-Risala be published in regional languages. He said that about three-quarters of Gujrati- and Marathi-speaking Muslims, for example, were able to read only Gujarati and Marathi script. They were not able to read Urdu. AI-Risala would not have to be translated into these languages. A transliteration would be sufficient, with the original Urdu rendered into Gujarati and Marathi script. He said that this would not only be beneficial to Muslims, but also to people of other faiths who were able to understand Urdu, but could not read it. Another member of the audience said that nowadays only those newspapers and journals which had the backing of some major organization were able to last. Whichever publication you looked at, he