rong to
Islam, but, if the unthinkable happened, Mahomedans, he quickly added,
would know how to redress their wrongs, for they could never renounce
their belief in the sword, and it was indeed because Turkey is the sword
of Islam that they could not see her perish or the Khalifate depart from
her.

I wondered as I withdrew how long the fiery Mahomedan would keep his
sword sheathed, did he not feel that his own personality and that of his
brother Mahomed Ali would count for very little without the reflected
halo with which they were at least temporarily invested by the
saintliness of Mr. Gandhi's own simple and austere life of
self-renunciation, so different in every way from their own. For it is
to his personality rather than to his teachings that Mr. Gandhi owes his
immense influence with the people. It is a very different influence from
that of Mr. Tilak, to whom he is sometimes, but quite wrongly, compared.
Mr. Tilak belonged by birth to a powerful Deccani Brahman caste with
hereditary traditions of rulership. He was a man of considerable
Sanscrit learning whose researches into the ancient lore of Hinduism
commanded respectful attention amongst European as well as Indian
scholars. Whatever one may think of his politics and of his political
methods, he was an astute politician skilled in all the ways of
political opportunism. Mr. Gandhi is none of these things. He is not a
Brahman, but of the humbler _Bania_ caste; he does not come from the
Deccan, but from Gujarat, a much less distinguished part of the Bombay
Presidency. He does not claim to be anything but a man of the people. He
looks small and fragile and his features are homely. He lives in the
simplest native way, eating simple native food which he is said to
prepare with his own hands, and dresses in the simplest native clothes
from his own spinning-wheel. His private life is unimpeachable--the only
point indeed in which Mr. Tilak resembled him. Though he lays no claim
to Sanscrit erudition, his speeches are replete with references to Hindu
mythology and scripture, but they usually reflect the gentler, and not
the more terrific, aspects of Hinduism. He blurts out the truth as he
conceives it with as little regard for the feelings or prejudices of his
supporters as for those of his opponents. He will tell the most orthodox
Brahman audience at Poona that if they want to be the leaders of the
nation they must give up their worldly notions of caste ascendancy and