द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

76 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE unique position among the public. This was due partly to their own activities and their suffering during the Great War—partly to the new awakening among the Moslems—but largely to the propaganda conducted in their favour by the Mahatma. The Mahatma associated himself so closely with them that they came to be looked upon as the right and the left hand of the Mahatma. In their company the Mahatma toured the country and one clearly remembers that in those days whenever there was a popular shout of 'Victory to Mahatma Gandhi' (Mahatma Gandhi Ki Jai), it would be accompanied by a shout of 'Victory to the Ali brothers' (Ali Bhai-o-Ki Jai). Though after some years the Ali brothers parted company with the Mahatma, I do not think one could find fault with the latter for his intimate association with them. The real mistake in my opinion did not lie in con- necting the Khilafat issue with the other national issues, but in allowing the Khilafat Committee to be set up as an independent organisation throughout the country, quite apart from the Indian National Congress. The result of this was that when later on Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha, as the leader of New Turkey, forced the Sultan to abdicate and abolished the office of Khalifa altogether, the Khilafat question lost all meaning and significance and the majority of the members of the Khilafat organisations were absorbed by sectarian, reactionary and pro-British Moslem organisations. If no separate Khilafat Committees had been organised and all Khilafatist Moslems had been persuaded to join the ranks of the Indian National Congress, they would probably have been absorbed by the latter when the Khilafat issue became a dead one. After the middle of the year, the political situation began to grow tense. Neither the Government nor the Congress knew at the time when the storm would break, but signs of the coming clash began to appear in different parts of the country. Throughout all these episodes the public took the offensive and the Government played a defensive rôle Reference has already been made to the no-tax campaign in Midnapore District in Bengal and to the defiant conduct of the Congress leaders after the incarceration of the Ali