ese things have met. To what result?

III

ULSTER IN INDIA

"Are you a Home Ruler?" "Yes. Are you?" Instantly a torrent of protest.
He was a Mahometan, eminent in law and politics; clever, fluent,
forensic, with a passion for hearing himself talk, and addressing one
always as if one were a public meeting. He approached his face close to
mine, gradually backing me into the wall. And I realised the full
meaning of Carlyle's dictum "to be a mere passive bucket to be pumped
into can be agreeable to no human being."

It was not, naturally, the Irish question for its own sake that
interested him. But he took it as a type of the Indian question. Here,
too, he maintained, there is an Ulster, the Mahometan community. Here,
too, there are Nationalists, the Hindus. Here, too, a "loyal" minority,
protected by a beneficent and impartial Imperial Government. Here, too,
a majority of "rebels" bent on throwing off that Government in order
that they may oppress the minority. Here, too, an ideal of independence
hypocritically masked under the phrase "self-government." "It is a law
of political science that where there are two minorities they should
stand together against the majority. The Hindus want to get rid of you,
as they want to get rid of us. And for that reason alone, if there were
not a thousand others"--there were, he hinted, but, rhetorically, he
"passed them over in silence"--"for that reason alone I am loyal to the
British raj." It had never occurred to me to doubt it. But I questioned,
when I got a moment's breathing space, whether really the Hindu
community deliberately nourished this dark conspiracy. He had no doubt,
so far as the leaders were concerned; and he mistrusted the "moderates"
more than the extremists, because they were cleverer. He "multiplied
examples"--it was his phrase. The movement for primary education, for
example. It had nothing to do with education. It was a plot to teach the
masses Hindi, in order that they might be swept into the anti-British,
anti-Mahometan current. As to minor matters, no Hindu had ever voted for
a Mahometan, no Hindu barrister ever sent a client to a Mahometan
colleague. Whereas in all these matters, one was led to infer,
Mahometans were conciliation and tolerance itself. I knew that the
speaker himself had secured the election of Mahometans to all the seats
in the Council. But I refrained from referring to the matter. Then there
was caste. A Hindu will not eat with a