such a construction is one which we ought to bear in mind. Nor can it be
disputed that, however generous the sentiments that prompt us to
delegate some part of our authority to elective or partly elective
assemblies, it must to some extent diminish the power of the Executive
to ensure that equality of treatment for all races and creeds and
classes by which we have hitherto justified our rule in India. Our sense
of equity should make us, therefore, all the more scrupulously careful
to adjust the balance as evenly as possible under the new conditions
which we are 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