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216 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
emphasis only. The real thing is to recognize, as does Mr. Toynbee, that “nationalism is strong enough to produce war in spite of us. It has terribly proved itself to be no outworn creed, but a vital force to be reckoned with.” As was pointed out by him, “the right reading of nationalism has become an affair of life and death.” It was not only so for Europe. It was so for Turkey. It was so for Czechoslovakia. And what was a question of life and death to them could not but be one of life and death to India. Prof. Toynbee pleaded, as was done before him by Guizot, for the recognition of nationality as the necessary foundation of European peace. Could India ignore to recognize this plea ? If she does, she will be acting at her peril. That nationalism is a disruptive force is not the only lesson to be learnt from the history of these two countries. Their experience embodies much else of equal if not of greater significance. What that is, will be evident if certain facts are recalled to memory.
The Turks were by no means as illiberal as they are painted. They allowed their minorities a large measure of autonomy. The Turks had gone far towards solving the problem of how people of different communities with different social heritages are to live together in harmony when they are geographically intermingled. The Ottoman Empire had accorded, as a matter of course, to the non-Muslim and non-Turkish communities within its frontiers a degree of territorial as well as cultural autonomy which had never been dreamt of in the political philosophy of the West. Ought not the Christian subjects to have been satisfied with this? Say what one may, the nationalism of Christian minorities was not satisfied with this local autonomy. It fought for complete freedom and in that fight Turkey was slit open.
The Turks were bound to the Arabs by the tie of religion. The religious tie of Islam is the strongest known to humanity. No social confederacy can claim to rival the Islamic brotherhood in point of solidarity. Add to this the fact that while the Turk treated his Christian subjects as his inferior, he acknowledged the Arab as his equal. All non-Muslims were excluded from the Ottoman army. But the Arab soldiers and officers served side by side with Turks and Kurds. The Arab officer class, educated in Turkish