Fazl-e-Umar — Page 260
Fazle Umar 260 in Qadian should stay on permanently for the purpose of safeguarding the holy places, and the rest should move to Pakistan. A skeleton organisation was set up at Qadian and the necessary institutions were revived and began to function on a limited scale. Over a couple of years those members of the Movement who had chosen to stay on at Qadian were exposed to certain hazards and had to endure extremes of hardship and privation, but the situation crawled towards normality and in the end arrived at stability. The office-bearers of the revived institutions established contact with the branches of the Movement all over India and Qadian functioned once more as the headquarters of the Movement for the whole of India. All activities pertaining to the headquarters were resumed. A school was established, a weekly paper began to be published and the Annual Conference was revived. Relations with the non-Muslim sections of the people of the town, at first tenuous and hesitant, became friendly, inti- mate and co-operative. The factor that proved most helpful in this respect was that the daily lives of the Ahmadis presented a spectacle of the practical exercise of the highest moral and spiritual qualities. They did not, for a moment, sulk in their tents, but were cheerful, forthcoming and co-operative in matters of common concern, and were ready to give of their best in the service of their fellow citizens. The civil admin- istration found them honest, diligent, law-abiding and, to its surprise, loyal; though they were watched suspiciously every time tension arose between Pakistan and India. The administration had been assured, time after time, that having made the choice of Indian citizenship, they were bound to be loyal citizens, not as a matter of policy, but as a matter of faith, as Islam insisted on loyalty to one’s country. Nevertheless it took a long time for the administration to be convinced and fully reassured on the point. The degree of confidence that the Ahmadis were able to establish between them- selves and the non-Muslim sections of the population of the town might be judged, among other things, from the fact that after the passage of only a few years, Maulvi