There remains no extant copy of today’s paper, and the excerpt below is taken from the previous day’s edition.

(EDITORIAL) Exactly two months after the ugly incidents of Calcutta, Bombay is repeating history. Some people decide to take out a procession, the police prevent them from proceeding along a certain road… . The processionists insist that their dear souls will be in peril of perdition unless their feet trample the asphalt of the prohibited road. Authority is equally convinced that the heavens will fall if the processionists were allowed to do so; then follow … lathi charge, brickbats, tear-smoke, the ringing out of rifles and revolvers, casualties … newspaper headlines, outburst of countrywide resentment — and then, “back to normal” again. It is all a mad business, and no commissions of enquiry or post-mortems can ever decide with accuracy exactly where the original madness lay. …If it is the responsibility of the police to exercise the utmost possible restraint in handling troublesome mobs, it is equally the responsibility of those who bring mobs into existence either by direct incitement or long distance propaganda, to remember that there are such things as the business ends of guns in policemen’s hands.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2021