Sympathy with Bengal

Lahore, Thursday, November 6, 1924

PRACTICALLY every province has, both through the Press and its accredited leaders, assured Bengal of its deep and genuine sympathy with her in the hour of her trouble. Nor is this mere lip sympathy. Everyone who remembers the great agitation against the partition of Bengal and the repression by which the government of the day sought to combat that agitation knows how serviceable the sympathy of the rest of the country was to the people of Bengal in that great crisis. So is it today. As a matter of fact, in almost every case, the expression of sympathy is coupled with the assurance that the province concerned is prepared to do everything in its power to support the people of Bengal and make their cause its own. The latest assurances of this kind have come from the Central Provinces (CP), the United Provinces and Punjab. At a public meeting held in the capital of CP, Mr Abhayankar, who moved the principal resolution, declared that “the people of Bengal would not merely have their wordy sympathy but their active support in repelling the present attack on their liberty”. In the United Provinces, the Swarajya party passed a resolution “assuring the party in Bengal of its wholehearted support,” while a resolution passed at the provincial conference “called upon the people of the province generally to stand by the people of Bengal” and support them in every possible way. In our own province, the Working Committee of the Provincial Congress Committee has passed a resolution expressing its “determination to support Bengal and offer its services for helping in carrying on any constitutional agitation consistent with the Congress creed against the encroachment on our primary rights.”