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.

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 ar