EPILOGUE 191
put their bona fides vis-a-vis loyalty to the Pakistan State
above suspicion. It would be doing them cruel wrong to
suspect them of double-dealing or treachery. They are in-
capable of either. They love their country and people with
a deep, passionate love. Badshah Khan is simple and
straight as a die and by nature guileless at times to the
point of embarrassment. Such a person can never be an
enemy of a State that calls itself Islamic.
It Is well with the Khan brothers. They are
of the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made.
They would be content to lay down their lives
for the cause for which they have lived to the
exclusion of all else. i41 am quite certain that It Is all
God's doing. He kept me out just for the time He wanted
to use me outside. Now it is His will that I must serve
from Inside. What pleases Him pleases me/* Badshah
Khan had remarked in 1934 when he was taken away
from Wardha under a warrant of arrest by the then Bom-
bay Government, to be sentenced to three years' rigorous
Imprisonment. I am sure he would repeat the same today,
But surely a better use could be found for such £ Servants
of God' than to immure them alive behind prison walls.
Would that India had a servant today like Badshah
Khan — a Godfearing, selfless, truth-loving and fearless
critic — to reprove the powers that be if they strayed from
the right path; a man of sterling character, unim-
peachable integrity and Christlike compassion for the
downtrodden masses to whose emancipation and service
every breath of Ms life is dedicated. A couple of persons
of that type in either Dominion would be the safest gua-
rantee for peace and amity between the two sister Domi-
nions and — who knows — therethrough Asia and the
world !
This is not to say that he has no faults dr short-
comings. What mortal has not ? I have already adverted
to Gandhiji's comments on his proneness to extreme sus-
picion of Englishmen's intentions. We are what circum-
stances make us. I remember how In 1931, after the