onestly contemplated the
evolution of an Indian "nation" in which Mahomedan and Hindu might sink
their racial and religious differences, but these were leaders with a
constantly diminishing body of followers. Even among the Extremists not
a few would gladly have purchased by pious professions of good will a
temporary alliance with the Mahomedans against the British _Raj_,
subject to an ulterior settlement of accounts for their own benefit. But
the Mahomedans, with their many close points of contact with the Hindus,
knew, as Englishmen could not know, what were the real sentiments and
hopes of the advanced leaders into whose hands passed the control of
militant Hinduism. They had noted the constant exhortation of the Hindu
Nationalist Press that the youth of India must prepare for the coming
Lalki incarnation of Vishnu when the _mlencchas_--i.e., the infidels,
Moslem as well as British--should be driven out of India. The attitude
of the Hindus towards the Mahomedans of Eastern Bengal, after the
Partition, had shown how they resented the position that the creation of
the new province gave the Moslem element. Nor had the Mahomedans in the
Punjab been left without a foretaste of what was to come. In every
Government office, in every profession, the Hindus were banding
themselves closer and closer together against their few Mahomedan
colleagues. The Mahomedans had refused to join in the boycott of British
goods, and in Delhi, in Lahore, and in many other cities the word had
been passed round among the Hindus not to deal with Mahomedan shops, not
to trade with Mahomedan merchants. Some of the more violent spirits were
even prepared to challenge the Mahomedans in places where the Mahomedan
element is strong and excitable, in order that the inevitable
intervention of the British troops for the restoration of order should
lead to the shedding of Mahomedan blood, and thus perhaps drive the
Mahomedans themselves in to disaffection. What educated Mahomedans, they
told me, chiefly feared, and the Hindus themselves chiefly hoped--for
new of them probably believed in any speedy overthrow of British
rule--was that the British Government and the British people would be
wearied by an agitation of which it was difficult for Englishmen to
grasp the real inwardness into making successive concession to the
Hindus which would gradually give them such a controlling voice in the
government of the country that they would actually be in a position