Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/691

 THE ARREST OF THE ALI BROTHERS. APPEAL TO THE MUSSALMANS OF INDIA.

[The Alt Brothers were arrested by order of the Bombay Government in the third week of September 1921. Mr. Gandhi addressed the following open letter Young India.]
 * o the Mussalmans of India through the columns of

Dear Countrymen: Whilst the arrest of Moulanas Shaukat AH and Mahomed Ali has touched every Indian heart, I know what it has meant to you. The brave brothers are staunch lovers of their country, but they are Mussalmans first and everything else after, and it must be so with every religiously minded man. The Brothers have, for years past, represented all that is best and noblest in Islam. No two Mussalmans have done more than they to raise the status of Islam in India. They have promoted the cause of the Khilafat as no two other Mussalmans of India have. For they have 'been true and they dared to tell what they felt even in their internment in Chiudwara. Their long internment did not demoralise or weaken them. They came out just as brave as they went in.

And since their discharge from internment they have shown themselves true nationalists and you have taken pride in their being so.

The Brothers have, by their simplicity, humility and inexhaustible energy, fired the imagination of the masses as no other Mussalman has*

All these qualities have endeared them to you. You regard them as your ideal men. You are, therefore

�� �