My object is to explain the views actually held by the leaders of the Indian Mahomedan community, rather than to endorse or to controvert them.  Even if the construction they place upon the attitude of their Hindu fellow-countrymen and of an influential section of British public opinion be wholly unreasonable, the fact that that attitude is liable to such a construction is one which we ought to bear in mind.  Nor can it be disputed that, however generous the sentiments that prompt us to delegate some part of our authority to elective or partly elective assemblies, it must to some extent diminish the power of the Executive to ensure that equality of treatment for all races and creeds and classes by which we have hitherto justified our rule in India.  Our sense of equity should make us, therefore, all the more scrupulously careful to adjust the balance as evenly as possible under the new conditions which we are ourselves creating, and to err, if at all, in favour of the protection of minorities.  Elementary considerations of statesmanship impose the same obligation upon us.

The Mahomedans of India form more than a fifth of the whole population.  They are not racially any more homogeneous than the Hindus, and except towards the north-western frontier, where they are to be found chiefly amongst the half-tamed tribes of the Indian borderland, and in the Punjab and United Provinces, where there are many descendants of the Moslem conquerors, they consist chiefly of converted Hindus who accepted Islam as a consequence of Mahomedan rule.  But whatever racial differences there may be amongst them, they are now bound together by a creed which has an extraordinary welding power.  That there are also explosive potentialities in their creed the Wahabi rising in Bengal little more than 30 years ago and the chronic turbulence of the tribes and frequent exploits of ghazis on the north-western frontier are there to show.  But amongst the large body of Mahomedans scattered through India, and especially amongst the higher classes, Islam has in a great measure lost its aggressive character.  Surrounded on all sides by an overwhelming majority of Hindus, whose religion he regards as detestably idolatrous, the Indian Moslem is inclined to sink his hostility to Christianity and to regard us less as “infidels” than as fellow-believers in the central article of his monotheistic faith, the unity of God.  We, too, in his eyes are a “People of the Book,” though our Book is not the Koran, but the Bible, of which he does not altogether deny the sacred character.  Other things also often draw him towards the Englishman.  The Englishman to him represents a ruling race, and to such an one he feels that he who also represents a once ruling race can yield a more willing allegiance than to any one of a race which he himself ruled over.  Equally his fighting and his sporting instincts also appeal to many Englishmen.  Hence both Englishmen and Mahomedans in India frequently feel that they