Mahometan, and this was taken as
a personal insult. I suggested that the English were equally boycotted;
but that we regarded the boycott as a religious obligation, not as a
social stigma. But, like the Irish Ulstermen, he was not there to listen
to argument. He rolled on like a river. None of us could escape. He
detected the first signs of straying, and beckoned us back to the flock.
"Mr. Audubon, this is important." "Mr. Coryat, you must listen to this."
Coryat, at last, grew restive, and remarked rather tartly that no doubt
there was friction between the two communities, but that the worst way
to deal with it was by recrimination. He agreed; with tears in his eyes
he agreed. There was nothing he had not done, no advance he had not
made, to endeavour to bridge the gulf. All in vain! Never were such
obstinate fellows as these Hindus. And he proceeded once more to
"multiply examples." As we said "Good-bye" in the small hours of the
morning he pressed into our hands copies of his speeches and addresses.
And we left him perorating on the steps of the hotel.

A painfully acquired mistrust of generalisation prevents me from saying
that this is _the_ Mahometan point of view. Indeed, I have reason to
know that it is not. But it is a Mahometan point of view in one
province. And it was endorsed, more soberly, by less rhetorical members
of the community. Some twenty-five years ago, they say, Mahometans woke
to the fact that they were dropping behind in the race for influence and
power. They started a campaign of education and organisation. At every
point they found themselves thwarted; and always, behind the obstacle,
lurked a Hindu. Lord Morley's reform of the Councils, intended to unite
all sections, had had the opposite effect. Nothing but the separate
electorates had saved Mahometans from political extinction. And
precisely because they desired that extinction Hindus desired mixed
electorates. The elections to the Councils have exasperated the
antagonism between the two communities. And an enemy might accuse the
Government of being actuated, in that reform, by the Machiavellian maxim
"Divide et impera."

What the Hindus have to say to all this I have not had an opportunity of
learning. But they too, I conceive, can "multiply examples" for their
side. To a philosophic observer two reflections suggest themselves. One,
that representative government can only work when there is real give and
take between the contending parties.