Indian first, Parsi afterwards

Lahore, Saturday, November 8, 1924

IT was in the fitness of things that the speakers at the public meeting held in Bombay on Wednesday on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the death of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta laid stress on the fact that the illustrious leader was an Indian first and a Parsi afterwards. As a matter of fact, in all political matters, Sir Pherozeshah, like other great leaders of that day, was simply an Indian. With all his splendid gifts, it would have been impossible for him on any other basis to be the uncrowned king of his city, his province and his country that he was. Contrariwise, it would have been impossible for any man of his gifts to be an Indian first and everything else afterwards and yet not occupy the eminent position he did in the public life of his country. The ascendancy of such men as Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah in India’s past public life is, indeed, a fact which ought to be pondered over by all those who are never wary of telling us that the Congress is a Hindu body, that what it has been striving to attain all these years is a Hindu Raj under which the minorities in India would have no opportunities for self-fulfilment. No Hindu body inspired by such an object would so ungrudgingly accept the lead for so many years of persons, many of whom were non-Hindus and some of whom represented only a microscopic minority of the people of India. And in this respect, what was true in the closing years of the last century is equally true today. To what does Mahatma Gandhi owe his position of unrivalled ascendancy in the country if not to the fact that the intellectual and moral gifts with which nature has endowed him, he has placed not at the disposal of a sect or a chapel but of his people as a whole?