CHAPTER X.
SOUTHERN INDIA.
Unrest in its most dangerous forms has hitherto been almost entirely confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab.

It has spread to some extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which, indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of the United Provinces.

But thanks very largely to the firm and experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces under their Commissioner, Mr.Craddock, and that of the United Provinces under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out of hand.

Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of _Swadeshi_ and _Swaraj_ from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the Punjab is likely to elicit any response.

Such echoes of far away sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever the British _Raj_ were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the collapse of British power.