there is no warrant in
Islam or Hinduism for any such belief. True it is that interested
fanatical priests in both religions have set the one against the other.
It is equally true that Muslim rulers like Christian rulers have used
the sword for the propagation of their respective faiths. But in spite
of many dark things of the modern times, the world's opinion to-day will
as little tolerate forcible conversions as it will tolerate forcible
slavery. That probably is the most effective contribution of the
scientific spirit of the age. That spirit has revolutionised many a
false notion about Christianity as it has about Islam. I do not know a
single writer on Islam who defends the use of force in the proselytising
process. The influences exerted in our times are far more subtle than
that of the sword.

I believe that in the midst of all the bloodshed, chicane and fraud
being resorted to on a colossal scale in the west, the whole humanity is
silently but surely making progress towards a better age. And India by
finding true independence and self-expression through an imperishable
Hindu-Muslim unity and through non-violent means, i.e., unadulterated
self sacrifice can point a way out of the prevailing darkness.

VI. TREATMENT OF THE DEPRESSED CLASSES

DEPRESSED CLASSES

Vivekanand used to call the Panchamas 'suppressed classes.' There is no
doubt that Vivekanand's is a more accurate adjective. We have suppressed
them and have consequently become ourselves depressed. That we have
become the 'Pariahs of the Empire' is, in Gokhale's language, the
retributive justice meted out to us by a just God. A correspondent
indignantly asks me in a pathetic letter reproduced elsewhere, what I am
doing for them. I have given the letter with the correspondent's own
heading. Should not we the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we
ask the English to wash theirs? This is a proper question reasonably
put. And if a member of a slave nation could deliver the suppressed
classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would
do so to day. But it is an impossible task. A slave has not the freedom
even to do the right thing. It is a right for me to prohibit the
importation of foreign goods, but I have no power to bring it about. It
was right for Maulana Mahomed Ali to go to Turkey and to tell the Turks
personally that India was with them in their righteous struggle. He was
not free to do so. If I had a truly natio