The Riots of 1953 — Page 24
24 munity about the time of Partition and immediately after have already been mentioned and need not be repeated here. It may be added here that at Amritsar in 1947 the Community helped the local Muslims by supplying them such equipment as they badly needed to defend themselves and also provided legal aid for such Muslims as were being prosecuted at that time. The Muslims of Amritsar warmly appreciated these services. 27. The greatest service which the Community could justly claim to have rendered to the State was its propaganda which in- troduced this infant State to many outside countries of the world. The Community, it may be said, has branches all over the world and in almost every important country its representatives worked hard to make the new State known and respected. Incidentally it may be mentioned that the Ahmadiyya Community has missions in about fifty foreign countries having converted nearly thirty two thousand non-Muslims to Islam and built 232 mosques in dif- ferent countries. But to revert to our subject it would be useful to state that the goodwill mission sent out from Pakistan abroad included a well-known Muslim leader Mr. Hatim Alvi from Kara- chi. On his return from that good-will mission, in a letter to the Head of the Ahmadiyya Community, he expressed his gratitude for the services rendered by the Ahmadiyya Community in this direction. 28. It may perhaps be thought that in counting the services that the Ahmadiyya Community had rendered to the Muslim cause in pre-partition India the Anjuman is laying claims which could not be substantiated. In point of fact however Muslim In- dia has always referred to the activities of the Community in ex- tremely laudatory terms. The extracts (given in Appendix C) from the various Muslim Journals of India and opinions expressed by highly placed Muslim public men and non-Muslim writers and