herefore congenitally
suspect to one side or the other.

There can be no worthier purpose for either government or public men or
private individuals to pursue than a real reconciliation between two
great communities estranged, not only by fundamentally different
religious beliefs and traditions, but by enduring memories of
century-long conflicts and of the very often oppressive domination of
Mahomedan rulers over conquered Hindu peoples held down in spite of
their numerical superiority by the sheer weight of superior force. There
may have been Englishmen who, believing in the shallow maxim _Divide ut
imperes_, have relied on that estrangement to fortify British rule; but
such has never been the principle of British policy. It has constantly
sought, on the contrary, to prevent and suppress as far as possible
disorders which, whenever they break out afresh, inevitably revive and
quicken the ancient antagonism, and to attenuate it, slowly but
steadily, by the exercise of even-handed justice and the pacifying
influences of education and the rule of law.

Has the alliance between Mr. Gandhi and the Ali brothers or the fusion
between the Congress and League Extremists, Hindu and Mahomedan, proved
more effective? How far down has this Hindu and Mahomedan fraternisation
really reached that is based above all on common hatred of a "Satanic"
Government? How far has it even temporarily checked the instinctive
tendency of the masses in both communities to break away from their
allies and go for each other rather than for that common enemy against
whom "Non-co-operation" bids them combine? Frequent outbreaks continue
to reveal from time to time the _ignes cineri suppositos doloso_. They
mostly follow the same course. _Khilafat_ agitators terrorise the
law-abiding population, extorting subscriptions for _Khilafat_ funds,
compelling shopkeepers to close their shops for _Khilafat_
demonstrations, and so forth, until they are driven to appeal to the
authorities for protection. Then an attempt is made to arrest some of
the ringleaders or to disarm the _Khilafat_ "volunteers," who, when they
have no more modern weapons, know how to use their _lathis_ or heavy
iron-tipped staves with often deadly effect. Rioting starts on a large
scale to the cry of "Religion! Religion!" the small local police force
is helpless, and very soon the whole fury of the Mahomedan mob turns
against the Hindus, as at Malegaon, in the Bombay Presidency, where they