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 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