Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/142

128 him. Nothing could deflect him from his set purpose. The die was cast. Imprisonment—threat of exile—nothing could deter him from his course. It was on the occasion of the arrest of C. R. Das that I wrote the following lines which C. R. in one of his speeches quoted as the encouraging message of a Persian Poet (It was published as a translation from a Persian Poet):

“Faith, Fortitude, Firmness, will they falter and fail and fade in the hour of trial, in the moment of despair, asked the Saqi, in mournful strain. Or tried and tested, will they emerge from the fire of life strengthened, ennobled, purified? Never will I forsake them, answered the youth, not even were the heavens to fall. Thine, thine, said the Saqi, is the path of glory; thine a nation’s gratitude; thine, the fadeless crown. Would that courage unfailing, courage unbent, courage as thine, were the proud possession of all! For naught but courage winneth the soul’s freedom—man’s noblest, highest prize. Let courage, then, be thy Gift, O God, to this wondrous land of Love and Light.” (My Love Offerings, p. 37).

When I stated that one of the two qualities that distinguished him was the love of his country, I must add—love of country—unimpaired by any factional or communal spirit. He was too broad-minded; too acute a statesman to imagine that India could ever come by her inheritance without Hindu-Muslim love, unity, co-operation. He was always averse to the mutual Hindu-Muslim hostility which, I regret to say, is deepening, and of which we get sad, infallible proof day by day.

At the time when the Hindu-Muslim pact was a prominent political question of the day—at my table—at 5 Elliott Road—met the Hindu and the Muslim leaders of Bengal. I am not at liberty to disclose what passed at that meeting, for that would be a breach of faith, both to the dead and the living; but this much I can say, without violating any confidence—that throughout that delicate discussion C. R. Das showed a spirit of charity and compromise; an anxiety to meet the