I turned thereupon to Mr. Shaukat Ali and asked him whether he would explain to me the application to India under Swaraj of the Mahomedan doctrine that the world is divided into two parts, one the “world of Islam” under Mahomedan rule, and the other “the world of war,” in which infidels may rule for a time but will sooner or later be reduced to subjection by the sword of Islam.  To which of these worlds would Mahomedans reckon India to belong when she obtained Swaraj?  Mr. Shaukat Ali evaded the question by assuring me with much unction that he could not conceive the possibility of the Hindus doing any wrong to Islam, but, if the unthinkable happened, Mahomedans, he quickly added, would know how to redress their wrongs, for they could never renounce their belief in the sword, and it was indeed because Turkey is the sword of Islam that they could not see her perish or the Khalifate depart from her.

I wondered as I withdrew how long the fiery Mahomedan would keep his sword sheathed, did he not feel that his own personality and that of his brother Mahomed Ali would count for very little without the reflected halo with which they were at least temporarily invested by the saintliness of Mr. Gandhi’s own simple and austere life of self-renunciation, so different in every way from their own.  For it is to his personality rather than to his teachings that Mr. Gandhi owes his immense influence with the people.  It is a very different influence from that of Mr. Tilak, to whom he is sometimes, but quite wrongly, compared.  Mr. Tilak belonged by birth to a powerful Deccani Brahman caste with hereditary traditions of rulership.  He was a man of considerable Sanscrit learning whose researches into the ancient lore of Hinduism commanded respectful attention amongst European as well as Indian scholars.  Whatever one may think of his politics and of his political methods, he was an astute politician skilled in all the ways of political opportunism.  Mr. Gandhi is none of these things.  He is not a Brahman, but of the humbler Bania caste; he does not come from the Deccan, but from Gujarat, a much less distinguished part of the Bombay Presidency.  He does not claim to be anything but a man of the people.  He looks small and fragile and his features are homely.  He lives in the simplest native way, eating simple native food which he is said to prepare with his own hands, and dresses in the simplest native clothes from his own spinning-wheel.  His private life is unimpeachable—­the only point indeed in which Mr. Tilak resembled him.  Though he lays no claim to Sanscrit erudition, his speeches are replete with references to Hindu mythology and scripture, but they usually reflect the gentler, and not the more terrific, aspects of Hinduism.  He blurts out the truth as he conceives it with as little regard for the feelings or prejudices of his supporters as for those of his opponents.  He will tell the most orthodox Brahman audience at Poona that if they want