Time was when every Mussalman claimed the whole of India as his motherland. During the years that the Ali brothers were with me, the assumption underlying all their talks and discussions was that India belonged as much to the Mussalmans as to the Hindus.
1942CE
Comparing Hitler’s position in the first and third stages of the war, we can see that he is on the threshold of final defeat. Both at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus the Red Army has now in fact stopped the German offensive; Hitler is now nearing exhaustion, having failed in his attacks on Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The forces which he managed to assemble throughout the winter, from last December to May of this year, have already been used up. In less than a month winter will set in on the Soviet-German front, and Hitler will have to turn hastily to the defensive.
We offered the representative Indian political leaders immediate office in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, a body of ministers like those who advise your President. Mr. Gandhi has demanded that we should walk out of India leaving the country, with its deep-rooted religious divisions, without any constitutional form of government and with no organized administration.
The committee is of the opinion that it is harmful to India’s interests, and dangerous to the cause of India’s freedom, to introduce foreign soldiers in India. It therefore appeals to the British Government to remove these foreign legions, and henceforth stop further introduction. It is a crying shame to bring foreign troops in, in spite of India’s inexhaustible man power, and it is proof of the immorality that British imperialism is.
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RABBIS of all elements in American Jewish religious life, have noted with concern a statement by ninety of our colleagues in which they repudiate Zionism on the ground that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious and moral doctrine. This statement misrepresents Zionism and misinterprets historic Jewish religious teaching, and we should be derelict in our duty if we did not correct the misapprehensions which it is likely to foster.
My personal position is clear. I hate all war. If therefore I could persuade my countrymen, they would make a most effective and decisive contribution in favour of an honourable peace. But I know that all of us have not a living faith in non-violence. Under foreign rule however we can make no effective contribution of any kind in this war, except as helots.
Where is this art of ruling, to say nothing of the art of leadership? It is only the unscrupulousness for robbery. And when this same man then says: “We have a fine instinct for idealism and material values.” Yes indeed they have. They have destroyed idealism everywhere, and they have grabbed and taken possession of material worth and always grabbed and taken possession of it, too, by brutal force only. For in 300 years that nation has oppressed and yoked and subjected nation after nation, people after people, race after race.
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