There was a universal thrill of horror and fury, and passions rose so high that Government found itself suddenly confronted with a situation which at once put to a severe test the capacity of the new regime to deal with emergencies endangering law and order.  That Indian Ministers now shared in the responsibility of government, and that there was a popular assembly to undertake legislation for composing the differences between the conflicting sections of the Sikh community, helped at least as much to avert still graver troubles as the object-lesson which the Nankhanda Saheb tragedy afforded to thoughtful Punjabees of all creeds.  The massacre carried out by a mere handful of Pathans was a grim reminder of the dangers to which the Punjab would be the first to be exposed if the hasty severance of the British connection for which Mr. Gandhi is clamouring were to leave it defenceless against the flood of lawless savagery that would at once pour down, as so often before in Indian history, from the wild fastnesses of the North-West Frontier.

CHAPTER XI

CROSS CURRENTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA

The elections in the Southern Provinces presented a somewhat different picture though the defeat of “Non-co-operation” was equally complete.  The Nerbudda river has been from times immemorial a great dividing line, climatic, racial, and often political, between Northern and Southern India.  It still is so.  For, whilst with a few relatively unimportant exceptions the whole of British India—­save Burma, which, except from an administrative point of view, is not India at all—­has been brought with perhaps excessive uniformity within the scope of the new constitutional reforms, many conditions in the Central Provinces and in the great Presidency of Madras differ widely from those prevailing in the other major provinces north of the Nerbudda, and the actual failure of “Non-co-operation” to enforce its boycott of the elections was less noteworthy than some other features in the new situation.  In the Central Provinces the elections themselves were fought out on much the same lines as in the north and with very similar results, if allowance is made for the intellectual backwardness of the province.  Political activity and agitation had been confined in the past mainly to Nagpur, the capital, and to the western districts, in which a large Mahratta element predominates especially amongst the better-educated classes.  Most of Mr. Tilak’s former followers there had joined the “Non-co-operation” movement, and their rigid abstention from the elections left the doors of the Provincial Council wide open for the representation of more sober Indian opinion.  The Extremists showed their contempt for the new assembly by putting up one or two “freak” candidates in breach of the boycott they were preaching, and actually got in a dhobi, or laundryman, at Jubbulpur.  But the elections were overshadowed by the preparations