is
survey--the _Khilafat_ agitation has gone deeper than probably in any
other part of India amongst large and very backward Mahomedan
populations. Yet upon the Punjab itself so cruel a lesson has not been
lost as that taught to thousands of unfortunate Mahomedan peasants in
the Frontier Province who were persuaded to give up their lands and trek
into Afghanistan to seek the blessings of Mahomedan rule, and came back
starved and plundered from their ill-starred exodus undertaken for the
sake of Islam. In Lahore and in the other chief urban constituencies
"Non-co-operation," with its usual methods of combined persuasion and
intimidation, was so far successful that not 5 per cent of the electors
went to the poll. In some of the Mahomedan rural constituencies the
attendances at the polls were, on the other hand, fairly large,
especially in those where the influence of old conservative families was
still paramount. Altogether the Punjab Provincial Council is perhaps
less representative of the whole electorate than in any other province
in India. Some official ingenuity had been displayed in grouping remote
towns together without any regard for geography, in order to prevent
townsmen undesirably addicted to advanced political views from standing
as candidates for the rural constituencies in which many of the smaller
towns would otherwise have been naturally merged. This was a last effort
based on the old belief that the population of the Punjab could be
divided into goats and sheep, the goats being the "disloyal" townsmen
and the sheep being the "loyal" peasantry. There may have been substance
in that belief before 1919, but how little there is in it now has been
shown by the large majority who, in an assembly in which it is just the
rural constituencies that are most effectively represented, passed a
Resolution for the remission of the fine imposed on Amritsar to punish
the disorders in that city, already amply punished, they considered, at
Jallianwala. The presence in the new Government of Mr. Harkishen Lal,
himself condemned two years ago under martial law to transportation for
life and treated for months as a common criminal, has done more than
anything else perhaps to restore public confidence. He was elected to
the Council, not by political firebrands, but by a sober constituency
specially constituted to represent the Punjab Industries, and in
courageously choosing him to be one of his new Ministers, the Governor,
Sir E