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132 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
of Mirza Ghulam Ahamed of Quadiyan—who claimed to be the messiah and Mahdi and a prophet of a sort—was stoned to death* at Kabul by the order of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of Afghanistan. The crime of this man was, as reported by a Khilafat paper, that he was professing and preaching ideas and beliefs, inconsistent with Islam and Shariat. This man, says the same paper, was stoned to death according to the agreeing judgments of the first Shariat (canon) Court, the Central Appellate Court and the Ulema and Divines of the final Appellate Committee of the Ministry of Justice. In the light of these difficulties, the scheme must be said to be wild in its conception and is sure to prove ruinous in its execution. It is adventurous in character and is too fantastic to appeal to any reasonable man except perhaps some fanatical Arya Samajists of the Punjab.
II
The stand taken by Hindu Mahasabha has been defined by Mr. V. D. Savarkar, the President of the Sabha, in his presidential addresses at the annual sessions of the Sabha. As defined by him, the Hindu Maha Sabha is against Pakistan and proposes to resist it by all means. What these means are we do not know. If they are force, coercion and resistance, they are only negative alternatives and Mr. Savarkar and the Hindu Maha Sabha alone can say how far these means will succeed.
It would, however, not be fair to Mr. Savarkar to say that he has only a negative attitude towards the claim put forth by the Muslims of India. He has put forth his positive proposals in reply to them.
To understand his positive proposals, one must grasp some of his basic conceptions. Mr. Savarkar lays great stress on a proper understanding of the terms, Hinduism, Hindutva and Hindudom. He says :†
“In expounding the ideology of the Hindu movement, it is absolutely necessary to have a correct grasp of the meaning attached to these three terms. From the word “Hindu” has been coined the word “Hinduism” in English. It means the schools or system of Religion the Hindus
- See Report in Times of India 27-11 -24, “Through Indian Eyes”.
† Speech at the Calcutta Session of the Hindu Maha Sabha held in December
1939, p. 14.