A clash of conferences

Lahore, Saturday, December 6, 1924

THE Punjab Provincial Conference meets today under circumstances at once the gravest and the most auspicious in its history. Except for a brief period in 1918 and 1919, the relations between the two principal communities in the province have never in recent years been anything else than strained. But never since the Lucknow pact have they been really so bad as now. One single fact will show how far the process of estrangement has gone. The Khilafat Conference, which ordinarily meets in the same city as the Congress, is, in the present case, being held not at Lahore, the place where the Provincial Conference meets, but at Amritsar, and is being held simultaneously with the latter. It was hoped at one time that by earnest representation, this collision should be averted, but the hope has been frustrated. Not only so, it is a practical certainty that with a few exceptions, no leading Mahomedan of the province will participate in the proceedings of the Provincial Conference, whether as an active worker or a member of the Reception Committee or as a delegate. The most extraordinary part of the thing is that the very men who are thus standing aloof from the Provincial Conference, in spite of strenuous attempts to make them join it, are and have always been loud in their complaint about the Congress being a Hindu organisation. What else can it be, so far as its personnel are concerned, if in spite of the catholicity of its constitution and of its membership being equally open to all communities, none but Hindus will join it in large or even substantial numbers?