The Light of Truth — Page 235
REFUTING OBJECTIONS 235 Footnote Related to p. 105¹ 105t of The Light of Truth, Part I We deem it appropriate here to quote from a few newspaper articles written by learned and astute commentators about the publications of 'Imād-ud-Din. I will transcribe them in their original form in the Indian language, by which I mean Urdu, copied from the publication ‘Uqūbāt- ud-Dallin, printed at Nusrat Press in Delhi, in response to the publica- tion Hidayatul-Muslimīn. These are as follows, O fair-minded ones. Opinions of the newspapers Hindu Prakāsh and Aftāb-e-Punjab, Lahore; Excerpt the current proprietors of both these papers are Hindus. from Uqubat-ud- Reverend 'Imād-ud-Din carries out the duties of a pastor in Amritsar. Dallin Accordingly, a newspaper of Amritsar, Hindu Prakāsh-vol. 2, no. 4, printed 12 October 1874, pages 10-11, which is published by the Hindus of Amritsar says the following: Reverend 'Imad-ud-Din's publications Tārikh-e-Muhammadi Hindu Prakash etc. ('etc. being a reference to his book, Hidayatul-Muslimīn) quoting are no less a source of agitation than that book which turned Aftab-e-Punjab the unity and love between the Muslims and Parsis of Mumbai, which had existed for hundreds of years, into discord and en- mity, and brought both to the brink of destruction. But why did the books of the Reverend, i. e. Tarikh-e-Muhammadi, Hidayatul-Muslimīn, and Tafsir Mukāshifāt, fail to create so- cial unrest here? [It is because] the Muslims of the Punjab are poor, weak, and mostly uneducated, or they simply do not un- derstand these books, and the real reason they were written was only to create a rift between the Muslims and the British gov- ernment. For argument's sake, let us suppose that all his allega- tions are true: even then, we would not consider the Reverend's work immune to censure under Article 494 of the Indian Penal Code. This is because under this article, every such action [i. e. the writing of such books] must be done with the intent to pro- mote the public good in order to be exempt from prosecution. We have taken the preceding excerpts from the newspaper Aftab- e-Punjab, vol. 2, no. 39, which form the basis for the entire article 1. As in the original. See p. 233 of this book. [Publisher]