r> EPILOGUE 165
concerned. He did not spare the Congress Minis-
tries, and who had better right to speak to nationalist
India than he ? The Provincial Governments under the
popular Ministers \vere not powerful enough to check any
major trouble, he said. He appealed to the Muslim Lea-
gue too. " 1 would draw your attention to the fact that
the precepts of Islam are the most tolerant in the world
and if we are to be true Muslims we should realize this
and do our utmost to spread toleration amongst our bro-
thers. .....Today, I see, other communities are far more
tolerant. We should rectify this fault in ourselves......
to become true Muslims/'
But those were the clays of mass dementia, and his
remained a voice in the wilderness. As early as December,
1946, from Bihar, incendiary propagandists had carried
the embers of communal conflagration to the Frontier,
and in February and March, 1947, there was again an out-
break of lawlessness In the Hazara District, and he had
to hurry back to his province. *c This is perhaps the most
critical period In the history of our country," he observed
in a statement from Peshawar. " Violence is in the air,
many of us have ceased to be men. We have become
savages." The whole of his time in this Frontier Pro-
vince., he said, would be devoted to weaning his correli-
gionlsts from savagery, whether In the Frontier or the
trans-Frontier. " I have no quarrel with the Muslim Lea-
gue or with the British official world. My ardent desire
is to see the Pathan and, for the matter of that, all peoples
of the world free from domination."
" I warn those who are setting our dear country on
fire that the fire kindled by them will consume them also,"
he observed addressing his first public meeting in his pro-
vince after three and a half months of absence in Bihar.
" I fall to understand how Islam can be served by setting
fire to religious places......and by killing and looting
innocent people."
It gladdened his lacerated heart, however, that during
the March disturbances the Kliudai Khidmatgars had
fully come up to his expectations and 10,000 of them, true