I have sent a reply to the writer. But as the views expressed in the
quotation are likely to be shared by many of my English friends and as I
do not wish, if I can possibly help it, to forfeit their friendship or
their esteem I shall endeavour to state my position as clearly as I can
on the Khilafat question. The letter shows what risk public men run
through irresponsible journalism. I have not seen _The Times_ report,
referred to by my friend. But it is evident that the report has made the
writer to suspect my alliance with "the prevailing anarchies" and to
think that I have "thrown to one side" my "moral responsibilities."

It is just my sense of moral responsibilities which has made me take up
the Khilafat question and to identify myself entirely with the
Mahomedans. It is perfectly true that I am assisting and countenancing
the union between Hindus and Muslims, but certainly not with "a view of
embarrassing England and the Allied Powers in the matter of the
dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire," it is contrary to my creed to
embarrass governments or anybody else. This does not how ever mean that
certain acts of mine may not result in embarrassment. But I should not
hold myself responsible for having caused embarrassment when I resist
the wrong of a wrong-doer by refusing assistance in his wrong-doing. On
the Khilafat question I refuse to be party to a broken pledge. Mr. Lloyd
George's solemn declaration is practically the whole of the case for
Indian Mahomedans and when that case is fortified by scriptural
authority it becomes unanswerable. Moreover, it is incorrect to say that
I have "allied myself to one of the prevailing anarchies" or that I have
wrongly countenanced the movement to place the cruel and unjust
despotism of the Stamboul Government above the interests of humanity.
In the whole of the Mahomedan demand there is no insistance on the
retention of the so-called unjust despotism of the Stamboul Government;