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Pandit Malaviya who is touring in South India now has fallen into the same pitfalls and snares that are usually and habitually set up by a certain section of the public who claim for themselves a sort of preordained congenital superiority, based not on reason and merit, but on the accident of birth, and which is tolerated by a people abounding in ignorance and superstition. Fully aware that they can live – if living one may call it – only by booming and bolstering up this belief and keeping the people in their continued misery and ignorance, they pay their unstinted devotion to, and spend their whole energy in an art of mischievous misinterpretation of any movement that is started for the welfare and awakening of the masses, and which would reveal the utter artificiality and woeful worthlessness of this class of people in all their nakedness.

This is not the first instance of, nor is Panditji the first visitor to fall a prey to their clever art. Their subtle hypocrisy can be traced through ages long prior to the present day, and many a learned man of deeper insight and broader vision than Panditji, has been deluded and victimized by them. And we can well say that at no other period of time had they such necessity for the use of their black art of vilification than at present, when the advancing tide of civilization, force of culture, and the radiant rays of the Self- Respect Movement have already begun slowly; but surely and firmly, to penetrate the minds of masses and make each one of them feel and realize the highest Truth that Philosophy can teach, namely that he is That (Tatvamasi) and as such inferior to none in Himself.

By this art of vilification and organized misinterpretation they conspire to impose upon the minds of great and noble men like Panditji, whose minds so far as these vital and local problems are concerned, are a tabula rasa, false ideas and beliefs, which when they are given vent to in public, through their mouths, produce an illusion by their association with these otherwise honest men, and appear as truths in themselves.

The production of such an effect is what these men desire and strive for. But they are grievously mistaken. Even the very men who are victimized now, like the Panditji, will be the foremost when they acquire a first-hand knowledge of such movements, to condemn in no unequivocal terms, the hypocrisy that originally clouded their intellect and the truths that they subsequently learned. This is what actually happened in the case of a much greater man like Mr. Ghandi who after seeing things for himself compared our temples with the dwelling houses of prostitutes. While any amount of superstition, delusion, falsehood and hypocrisy, even when they are associated directly or indirectly with reputed names that cast a magic spell on the downtrodden masses, cannot hide the Truth or cloud the Reality forever, yet it is to be admitted that “Truth from the lips of these men will prevail with double sway”.

We may well pause to think and reflect, what would befall such villainy then. We may warn them, that it is nothing but Destruction and Sheer Annihilation. That Panditji should say, that “he was surprised to find in this province a movement which not only wanted to demolish caste, but also to demolish God himself”, would alone suffice to illustrate the colossal dose of poisonous ignorance injected into his mind by these ignoble men; and in the very next sentence, Panditji blurted out the truth by admitting, “he was told that there was a party growing here which did not believe in the existence of God”. We wish to tell the Pandit that nothing which this organized group will do or tell others, will in the least surprise us as it has surprised him. We only request that these honest visitors, if they have any faith in the maxim, “That there is no religion higher than Truth”, will come in personal touch with these movements and learn things for themselves.

- S. Lakshmirathan, M.A., and B.L.

(Revolt, 8 May 1929)

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