EPILOGUE 189

Government promptly expressed public regret. Under
the circumstances, how it could give " further impetus to
Badshah Khan ", passes one's comprehension.

Badshah Khan's own statement issued on 16-5-1948
ran: "I am constrained to note that despite my recent
earnest appeal to my friends of the rival group, through
Press and platform, they have not viewed sympathetically
the coming into being of the People's Organization — but
they are questioning the bona fides of my party men again
and again, simply because at one time they happened to
owe allegiance to the Indian National Congress. This is
all the more unfortunate when the organization, in Its main
resolution, has implicitly extended its hand of co-operation
in a patriotic spirit to the Government In power. The cri-
terion of loyalty towards the State, according to the oppo-
nents, Is unconditional surrender to the one-party rule."
It is taxing too much the credulity of the world to be told
to believe that this man whose passion in life was to wean
his people from violence, which he considered to be their
bane, and who had performed the miracle of almost con-
verting the much-dreaded Pathan into the soldier of non-
violence, all of a sudden foreswore his faith, i It is Incre-
dible that this man, to whose transparent sincerity and
truthfulness Gandhiji, after testing him through and
through, bore testimony, could after reiterating his
unadulterated faith In non-violence and loyalty to
the Pakistan State with whose best interests lie
had publicly identified himself, jettison his life-long
principles. The writer of these lines has known
Badshah Khan, broken bread with him, lived with him
as a member of one family under Gandhiji's wing. There
is not another person today in India or in Pakistan whp
embodies Gandhiji's principles of Truth and Non-violence,
his deep spirituality, meaning faith in and utter submis-
sion to the will of God and passion for service of His crea-*
tures, In a greater measure than or even In an equal mea-
sure with Badshah Khan.*

: So Mahadev Desai, who had an unequalled intimate knowledge