first contemplated.  The new representation in the enlarged Indian Councils was based proportionally upon a rough estimate of the populations of India which credited the Hindus with millions that are either altogether outside the pale of Hinduism or belong to those castes which the majority of educated Hindus of the higher castes still regard as “untouchable.”  The effect would have been to give the Hindus what the Mahomedans regarded as an unfairly excessive representation.  Happily, though, the question trembled for a long time in the balance, Lord Morley listened to the remonstrances of the Mahomedans, and in its final shape the Indian Councils Act made very adequate provision for the representation of Mahomedan interests.  But the Mahomedans saw in the angry disappointment of the Hindu politicians when the scheme was thus modified ample justification for the fears they had entertained.  Even as it is—­and the Mahomedans recognize both the many good points of the scheme and Lord Morley’s desire to deal fairly with them—­these new reforms may well seem to the Mahomedans to have enured mainly to the benefit of the Hindus.  The Mahomedans appreciate as warmly as the Hindus the appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy’s Executive Council, and if the first Indian member was to be a Hindu they admit that Mr. Sinha had exceptional qualifications for the high post to which he was called.  The Indian members added under the now Act to the Executive Councils of Bombay and Madras are also both Hindus, and another Hindu will almost certainly be nominated in like manner to the Executive Council of Bengal.  None of these appointments may be open to objection, but the fact nevertheless remains that it is the Hindus and not the Mahomedans who will have had the immediate benefit of this new departure to which Indian opinion attaches the greatest importance.

The fact is that the more we delegate of our authority in India to the natives of India on the principles which we associate with self-government, the more we must necessarily in practice delegate it to the Hindus, who form the majority, however much we may try to protect the rights and interests of the Mahomedan minority.  This is what the Mahomedans know and fear.  This is what explains their insistence upon separate electorates wherever the elective principle comes into play in the composition of representative bodies.  It is not merely that they have yet to learn the elementary business of electoral organization, in which the Hindus, on the contrary, have shown great proficiency, and that they have consequently fared badly even in local bodies where their numbers ought to have secured them more adequate representation.  Many Mahomedans realize the disadvantage of locking up their community in a watertight compartment, but they regard it as the lesser evil.  It is, they contend, an essential safeguard not only against an excessive Hindu predominance in elective or partly elective bodies, but also against the growing disposition which they note amongst those who claim to be the spokesmen of the rising British democracy to accelerate the rate at which political concessions should be made to Hindu opinion, and also to disregard the claim of the Mahomedan minority to be protected against any abuse by the Hindus of the power which a majority must necessarily wield.