19. In conclusion, I must raise the question as to what should be our policy for the future in regard to the Moharram. As matters are at present, there is no vestige of religion or religious fervour in the _toli_-processions and the tabut-processions. On the contrary the Moharram has become, and is utilized as merely an excuse for rascality to burst its usual barriers and flow over the city in a current of excessive turbulence. For ten days every year the Hindu merchants are blackmailed and harassed until they pay a contribution to the cost of the processions; the police, who are not half numerous enough to guard the whole area involved, are kept in the streets for ten days and nights and ordinary police work simply disappears, as there is no officer at the police-stations to record complaints and no native police to take up an enquiry; a large portion of the Shia population has to evacuate its houses and take refuge in Sálsette for fear of insult and assault; and in the end, if the police hold fast and insist upon rascality keeping within certain limits, the city has to face the distressing spectacle of open disorder and its complement of drastic repression. The only unobjectionable features of the ten days’ celebration are the nightly _Waaz_ or religious discourses by chosen preachers. But, unfortunately, these are little patronized by those to whom they would do most good, namely, the bad characters in the _tolis_. _Statement made by Mr. N. J. Paton, J. P., partner in the firm of Messrs. W. & A. Graham & Co._ On Thursday, 12th January, at 2 p.m., at the invitation of a Mahomedan friend I went with Mrs. Paton to the house at the junction of Parel Road and Kolsa Moholla (otherwise Memonwada) with a view to witnessing the Moharram procession. The house, on the first floor where we were, has windows at the back and on the Kolsa Moholla side and a verandah on the Parel Road side, the latter affording a clear view down the Parel Road and of the open space in front of the Paidhuni Police Station. The crowd came and went without much incident until about 3, when two Mahomedans were brought up under arrest amid a good deal of apparently sympathetic shouting on the part of the on-lookers. After that the temper of the crowd seemed to change; but, although several carriages with European ladies drove past, they were suffered to do so without molestation. I was not myself then anxious, but my Mahomedan friend at about 4 o’clock warned me that the crowd was now anything but peaceably disposed. Shortly thereafter I became apprehensive of coming trouble on noting the overt truculent bearing of the Pathans, of whom there were many, and notably of a group which halted for some time under our verandah. In my twenty years’ experience of the country I never before witnessed behaviour which so impressed me with a sense of sinister intentions.