under the British _Raj_ or without it.

The whole tendency of the Hindu revival, social, religious, and
political, during the last 20 years had been as consistently
anti-Mahomedan as anti-British, and even more so. Some of the more
liberal and moderate Hindu leaders no doubt honestly 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