e ourselves creating, and to err, if at all, in favour of the
protection of minorities. Elementary considerations of statesmanship
impose the same obligation upon us.

The Mahomedans of India form more than a fifth of the whole population.
They are not racially any more homogeneous than the Hindus, and except
towards the north-western frontier, where they are to be found chiefly
amongst the half-tamed tribes of the Indian borderland, and in the
Punjab and United Provinces, where there are many descendants of the
Moslem conquerors, they consist chiefly of converted Hindus who accepted
Islam as a consequence of Mahomedan rule. But whatever racial
differences there may be amongst them, they are now bound together by a
creed which has an extraordinary welding power. That there are also
explosive potentialities in their creed the Wahabi rising in Bengal
little more than 30 years ago and the chronic turbulence of the tribes
and frequent exploits of _ghazis_ on the north-western frontier are
there to show. But amongst the large body of Mahomedans scattered
through India, and especially amongst the higher classes, Islam has in a
great measure lost its aggressive character. Surrounded on all sides by
an overwhelming majority of Hindus, whose religion he regards as
detestably idolatrous, the Indian Moslem is inclined to sink his
hostility to Christianity and to regard us less as "infidels" than as
fellow-believers in the central article of his monotheistic faith, the
unity of God. We, too, in his eyes are a "People of the Book," though
our Book is not the Koran, but the Bible, of which he does not
altogether deny the sacred character. Other things also often draw him
towards the Englishman. The Englishman to him represents a ruling race,
and to such an one he feels that he who also represents a once ruling
race can yield a more willing allegiance than to any one of a race which
he himself ruled over. Equally his fighting and his sporting instincts
also appeal to many Englishmen. Hence both Englishmen and Mahomedans in
India frequently feel that they have more in common than either of them
has with the Hindu. The Mahomedans, moreover, consisting very largely of
the most virile races in India, have always furnished some of the best
contingents of the British Indian Army. Their loyalty has never wavered
except during the Mutiny, and modern Indian writers of the Nationalist
school are themselves at pains to show that, though the mutin