This is what explains their insistence upon separate electorates wherever the elective principle comes into play in the composition of representative bodies.

It is not merely that they have yet to learn the elementary business of electoral organization, in which the Hindus, on the contrary, have shown great proficiency, and that they have consequently fared badly even in local bodies where their numbers ought to have secured them more adequate representation.

Many Mahomedans realize the disadvantage of locking up their community in a watertight compartment, but they regard it as the lesser evil.

It is, they contend, an essential safeguard not only against an excessive Hindu predominance in elective or partly elective bodies, but also against the growing disposition which they note amongst those who claim to be the spokesmen of the rising British democracy to accelerate the rate at which political concessions should be made to Hindu opinion, and also to disregard the claim of the Mahomedan minority to be protected against any abuse by the Hindus of the power which a majority must necessarily wield.
My object is to explain the views actually held by the leaders of the Indian Mahomedan community, rather than to endorse or to controvert them.

Even if the construction they place upon the attitude of their Hindu fellow-countrymen and of an influential section of British public opinion be wholly unreasonable, the fact that that attitude is liable to such a construction is one which we ought to bear in mind.