llowers who
do not share his disbelief in violence. But Simla only deflected him for
a short time from his dangerous course.

In the whole of this strange movement nothing is more mysterious than
the hold which Mr. Gandhi has over Mahomedans as well as Hindus, though
the wrongs of Turkey, which are ever in his mouth, touch only very
remotely the great mass of Indian Mahomedans, whilst the old antagonism
of the two communities is still simmering and bubbling and apt to boil
over on the slightest provocation. Collisions are most frequent during
religious festivals, especially if they happen to be held by both
communities at the same time. The chief stone of offence for Hindus is
the sacrifice of cows, the most sacred to them of all animals, without
which the Mahomedans consider their great annual festival of _Bakar-Id_
cannot be complete. Mahomedans, on the other hand, to whom musical
instruments as an accompaniment to religious worship are abhorrent, are
often driven wild when Hindu processions pass with their bands playing
in front of a mosque. Only four years ago, when the compact between the
National Congress and the Moslem League was still quite fresh, riots
broke out simultaneously during the _Bakar-Id_ over a great part of the
Patna district, which were only suppressed after a large tract of some
forty miles square had passed into the hands of the Hindu mobs, when a
considerable military force reached the scenes of turmoil and disorder,
for the like of which, according to the Government Resolution, it was
necessary to go back over a period of sixty years to the days of the
great Mutiny. It would be of little purpose to enumerate many other
instances of disorders on a lesser scale that have occurred since then
in connection with cow-killing. When staying for a few days last winter
in Nellore, a small town in the Madras Presidency, _i.e._ in a part of
India noted for its quietude, I had a pertinent illustration of the
often trivial but none the less dangerous forms that the persistent
animosity between Hindus and Mahomedans can assume. In Nellore, itself a
very sleepy hollow, the Mahomedans are not quite in such a hopelessly
small minority as they generally are in Southern India, for they number
about 6000 out of 30,000 inhabitants. The few "Non-co-operationists" in
the place, Hindu and Mahomedan, professed to have formed a
"Reconciliation Committee" to prevent their co-religionists from flying
at each other's throat