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.