Q : The Government proposes to have special intelligence men, special investigators and special courts for riot cases. Is it necessary?
A : That amounts to Government's lack of confidence in its normal administrative apparatus! It will be ruinous for its morale.
Q : Why do you think the Government withdraws all riot cases after some time?
A : Obviously because they have no evidence against Hindus and they do not want to proceed against Muslims.
Q : Why do you think the Government suppressed the Jabalpur riot inquiry report?
A : Evidently because it went against the Muslims. An analysis of all the riots will show that the first overt act came from the Muslim side. They are always the first to attack. In Nagpur, they started collecting arms and evacuating their families two days before the violence started. They had planned it that way. The police know all this. But they cannot act for fear of the displeasure of their political bosses.
A few years back I said that Muslims were collecting arms in mosques. This ruffled some gentlemen and they said that I should be prosecuted under Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code. An officer of the Central CID came to me and asked me why I did not report the offending mosques to the Government. I told him that if I did so, the offending Muslims would be informed of it even before the police went to search the mosques. I named a mosque some forty miles from Nagpur. The officer rushed to the place immediately and found truck-loads of arms. They never talked of using Section 153-A again!
(With Pressmen in Calcutta, October 1949)
Q : How do you view our leaders proclaiming our state as secular?
A : Emphasizing a state as secular, from the point of view of a Hindu, is superfluous. All these centuries in the past, we have been able to maintain religious harmony in the country. The state was only keeping a close watch to see that the people did not fall out and thus render the state weak. Otherwise all had their freedom of worship etc. That was the concept followed by Hindu ideology. But it was only in the interim period of Buddhist era that the state was non-secular, i.e., theocratic. During that period, the resources of the state were being used for propagation of a particular persuasion and dissuading others from practicing their own. All these unfortunate things were done by the state in the name of Lord Buddha, i.e., out of a misunderstanding of what he has said. This was only an exception in the great current of our national life. Therefore the qualifying word 'secular' is superfluous and unwanted from our point of view.