of all. That the Hindus had from the beginning secured a considerably
larger share in Government employment of all kinds was, no doubt,
inevitable, as they had shown much greater alacrity to qualify
themselves by education on Western lines than the Mahomedans,
unfortunately, had until much more recently begun to show. But so long
as Government _employés_ were merely the servants of Government, and
Hindus had no more influence than the Mahomedans in shaping the policy
of the Government, the Mahomedans had no serious grievance, or, at any
rate, none for which they had not themselves very largely to blame. But
of late years they had seen the policy of the British Government itself
gradually yielding to the pressure of Hindu agitation and the British
_Raj_ actually divesting itself of some of the powers which it had
hitherto retained undiminished for the benefit, in fact if not in
theory, of certain classes which, however loudly they might claim to be
the representatives of the Indian people, represented with few
exceptions nothing but the political ambitions of aggressive Hinduism.
The Mahomedans, they assured me, recognized quite as fully as, and
perhaps, more sincerely than, the Hindus the generous spirit which had
inspired the British Government to grant the reforms embodied in the
Indian Councils Act, but they also realized what it was far more
difficult for Englishmen to realize, that those reforms must inevitably
tend to give the Hindus a predominant share, as compared with the
Mahomedans, in the counsels of Government. In its original shape the
scheme of reforms had indeed threatened the Mahomedans with gross
unfairness and the wrath which its subsequent modification in deference
to Mahomedan representations had roused among the Hindu politicians was
in itself enough to betray to all who had eyes to see and ears to hear
the purpose to which they had hoped to turn the excessive predominance
they had claimed and expected. That purpose was to advance the political
ascendency of Hinduism which was the goal of Hindu aspirations, whether