The Comrade, 4 January, 1917, the First Issue

"We have no faith in the cry that India is united. The problems of India are almost international. But when the statesman ... of Europe ... do not despair of abolishing war ... shall we despair of Indian nationality? We may not create today the patriotic fervour and fine national frenzy of Japan with its forty millions of homogeneous people. But a concordat like that of Canada is not beyond the bounds of practicability. It may not be a love-marriage born of romance and poetry. But a marreage de convenance, honourably contracted and honourably maintained, is not to be despised."

... The bisection of India at Agra proposed by Sardar Mohammed Gul Khan (1924) was described by the Moulana as a proposal of some Muslim madcap. But the Moulana himself propounded the following proposition:

"If this partition was practicable, instead of this suggestion being an indication of the treachery harboured, and of the probability of their letting in and assisting a foreign power beyond our frontiers to conquer India, it would rather be an indication that Mussalmans had no desire to rule over Hindus to whom they were willing to consign the whole of India from Agra to Cape Comorin .. Turkey had despaired of Christian and Muslim unity as some Hindus and Mussalmans despair of Hindu and Muslim unity. But that despair was anything but indicative of a desire to conquer territories inhabited exclusively by Christians.

Because at one time in the very remote past the empire of the Hindu Mauryans included these territories, or because in more recent times the Sikhs held possession of them, their inhabitants should now be deprived of their right to determine whom they would have as their rulers? Nobody can question ... right of self-determination ... to the people living on our borders ?... All the border people should exercise this right when India herself is free, and that no compulsion should be used on our side to keep the inhabitants of any portion of our frontier tied to us by force, even if the Mauryans, the Mughals and the Sikhs had kept them so tied to India, or if the Muslim Generals of the Abbasid Khulafa and several Ghaznevid Kings had kept them so tied to some other Empire or Kingdom It may be that ... Indians may like a particular river- bank or a mountain-top to remain within the confines of India. But the only way in which we can secure such river-bank or mountain-top is to offer to the inhabitants of the coveted area such inducements as would incline them to affiliation with India ... These wishes may be dictated by economic reasons or strategic ones, by religious reasons or cultural ones. But in any case it would not be right to use force. We can only try persuasion and inducement, and, instead of compulsion, we could only aim at carrying conviction to the people whom we desire to attach to ourselves. The problem is a very different one in the case of areas situated in the heart of India, for separation is not physically possible ... Where areas on the periphery of India are concerned. If the inhabitants of those areas have need of us, they will no doubt come to us unasked. If, on the contrary it is we that have need of them, we must offer them sufficient inducement to remain or become affiliated to India."