"Why do the secularists never comment on such material? Where do the fatwas leave the ecumenical homilies of our Sarva dharma samabhava school? The fatwas of the ‘nationalist’ ulema were surprising enough: they urged joint action with kafirs on strictly pragmatic grounds, on the ground in particular that such joint action was the best, indeed the only available way to maintain separateness. But here we have fatwas which proclaim even that pragmatism to be kufr. Notice that the person in question, the one whose leadership occasioned the fatwas was Mahatma Gandhi—a more saintly person is not likely to be available in our public life for decades and decades. And yet these were the fatwas. The cause too was as noble as a cause can be—the country’s Independence. Often—as during the Khilafat movement—the cause was of direct concern to the Muslims. And yet these were the fatwas. Notice too that while, for urging even that minimal cooperation with the kafir Hindus, an alim even of the eminence of Mufti Kifayatullah had to confine himself to pragmatic reasoning, Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan was able to justify his fatwas by citing chapter and verse from the Quran and Hadis. For the Quran and Hadis ordain the position elaborated by Ahmad Riza Khan, and not the one the ‘nationalist’ ulema strained to justify. That is the fact which our intelligentsia does not want to face."