with your own proposal.  There are various methods by which it could be done.  In the first place, an election exclusively Mahomedan might be direct into the legislative council.  To this it may be said that it would be impossible by reason of distance.  In the second place, you could have an election by separate communities to a local board, and the local board should be the electoral college, the Mahomedans separating themselves from the other members of the board for that purpose.  Thirdly, the members of the local board, the communities being separate in the same way, could return a member for the electoral college.  Fourthly, you might have a direct election to an electoral college by the community, and this electoral college would return a representative to the legislative council.  These, you see, are four different expedients which well deserve consideration for attaining our end.

I go to the next point, the apprehensions lest if we based our system on numerical strength alone, a great injustice would be done to your community.  Of course we all considered that, from the Viceroy downwards.  Whether your apprehensions are well founded or not, it is the business of those who call themselves statesmen to take those apprehensions into account, and to do the best we can in setting up a working system to allay and meet such apprehensions.  If you take numerical strength as your basis, in the Punjab and Eastern Bengal Mahomedans are in a decisive majority.  In the Punjab the Moslem population is 53 per cent. to 38 per cent.  Hindu.  In Eastern Bengal 58 per cent. are Moslem and 37 per cent. are Hindu.  Therefore, in those two provinces, on the numerical basis alone, the Mahomedans will secure sufficient representation.  In Madras, on the other hand, the Hindus are 89 per cent. against 6 per cent. of Moslems, and, therefore, numbers would give no adequate representation to Moslem opinion.  In Bombay the Moslems are in the ratio of 3-3/4 to 14 millions—­20 per cent. to 77 per cent.  The conditions are very complex in Bombay, and I need not labour the details of this complexity.  I am inclined to agree with those who think that it might be left to the local Government to take other elements into view required or suggested by local conditions.  Coming to the United Provinces, there the Moslems are 6-3/4 millions to 40-3/4 Hindus—­14 per cent. to 85 per cent.  This ratio of numerical strength no more represents the proportion in the elements of weight and importance, than in Eastern Bengal does the Hindu ratio of 37 per cent. to 58 per cent. of Moslems.  You may set off each of those two cases against the other.  Then there is the great province of Bengal, where the Moslems are one-quarter of the Hindus—­9 millions to 39 millions—­18 per cent. to 77 per cent.