the way of God than to live in the way of Satan.
Therefore, whoever is satisfied that this Government represents the
activity of Satan has no choice left to him but to dissociate
himself from it.

Are there any limits to the disastrous lengths to which a people may not
be carried away by one who combines to such ends and in such fashion
religious and political leadership?

CHAPTER X

SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE ELECTIONS

On probably the last of seventeen visits to India spread over some forty
years, I landed after three years' absence in Bombay early in November
1920, on the eve of the first elections for the new popular assemblies
created by the Act of 1919.

Municipal elections there had been in India for a long time past, and
elections for the Councils since 1909, but on a very restricted
franchise or by indirect processes. To provide a real measure of popular
representation, and even to secure the usefulness of the reforms as a
means of political education for the Indian people, the franchise was
now placed on as broad a basis as possible, whilst in mapping out the
constituencies the principle of separate representation for particular
races and creeds and special interests had to be taken into account. The
territorial basis prevailed largely, and rural and urban constituencies
corresponded roughly to county and borough constituencies in this
country, but besides the "general constituencies" for all qualified
electors indiscriminately, "special constituencies" had to be created
wherever required for "community" representation, whether of Mahomedans,
or, in the Punjab, of Sikhs, or, in Madras, of non-Brahmans, or, in the
large cities, of Europeans and of Eurasians, besides still more
specialised constituencies for the representation of land-holders,
universities, commerce, and industries. There was no female suffrage,
and no plural vote. No elector could vote both in a "general
constituency" and in a "special" one. The qualifications laid down for
the franchise were of a very modest character. Illiteracy was no bar, as
to have made it so in a country where barely 10 per cent of the adult
males attain to the slender standard of literacy adopted for census
purposes would have reduced the electorate to very insignificant
proportions, and many Indians who cannot read or write have often quite
as shrewd a knowledge of affairs as those who can. The franchise varied
in slight details from province to pr