Our first duty, therefore, should be to reduce the fee for the
membership of the League and thus increase its members, who will choose
their representatives of the League every year. The members to the
Council of the Provincial and the All-India Muslim Leagues should be
chosen as in the case of the Congress every year. But the most pressing
necessity of all is a change in the first object of the League to suit
the changed Muslim conditions. Everyone of us knows that the word Swaraj
has been definitely left vague and undefined in the creed of the
Congress. The object of it has been that, if the Khilafat and the Panjab
wrongs, are settled on the lines of our demands, then Swaraj within the
British Empire will be considered sufficient; otherwise efforts will be
directed towards the attainment of complete independence. But, gentlemen
from the Muslim point of view it is not enough that we should stand for
complete independence alone. It is necessary to decide upon the form
that it should take and in my opinion it can only be an Indian Republic
or on the lines of the United States of India.
Besides this, the term "peaceful", which defines and restricts the scope
of the legitimate means for the attainment of Swaraj in the Congress
creed, is opposed to the nature and religious aspirations of the
Musalmans. Therefore, in the creed of the League the words "possible"
and "Proper" should be substituted for the words "Legitimate" and
"Peaceful". I will explain the matter in detail. The Musalmans should
understand clearly that they derive a two-fold advantage from the
establishment of an Indian Republic, firstly, the general benefit which
they will undoubtedly share along with their Indian brethren as citizens
of a common State and secondly, the special advantage which the
Musalmans will derive from it is that, with every decline in the
prestige and power of the British Empire, which, to-day is the worst
enemy of Muslim countries, the Muslim world will get breathing time and
opportunity to improve its conditions. Gentlemen, in spite of the
present Hindu-Muslim unity, there still exists many serious
misunderstandings and suspicions between these two great communities of
Hindustan, and it is of primary importance that we should grasp the true
nature of these misunderstandings. The Hindus have a lurking suspicion
that given an opportunity, the Musalmans will either invite their
co-religionists from outside to invade India or will, at least help
them, in case they invaded to plunder and devastate Hindustan, and these
misunderstandings are so deep-rooted and widespread that, so far as my
knowledge goes, no Indian statesman has escaped it, except the late
Lokamanya Tilak. On the other hand, the Musalmans suspect that on the
achievement of Self-Government, the Hindus will acquire greater
political powers and will use their numerical superiority to crush the
Musalmans. Gentlemen, it is quite clear that these misunderstandings can
only be won over by a compromise discussion and mutual and intimate
knowledge, and it is an essential condition of this mutual understanding
that the third party should not come between them.