As I write I have before me a letter from another Mahomedan friend, a man both of European education and very wide knowledge of his Indian co-religionists, with whom he enjoys exceptional credit. I was so much impressed with the prevalence of this form of fatalism that I wrote and asked him for his opinion. This is his answer:--
Moslems feel that while at present the Government in India is British in spirit as well as in name, there are already indications that it might gradually become Hindu in fact, though the British form might remain. The whole object of the advanced Congress Party and of the leaders of the Nationalist movement is not the overthrow of British rule in name, but in fact. You may say that this is a wild apprehension, and that the Government is not foolish enough or weak enough to degenerate into a mere form. That may be the attitude of an Englishman who is in India only as a bird of passage (and all Englishmen are there as birds of passage, for only those whose children belong to the country are permanently bound up with it). For us who live here, and whose children are to live here, the distant as well as the immediate future is of essential importance. Now what is the tendency of Government? Can any one deny that, taken as a whole, it is towards Hindu predominance in the long run? English observers must not forget that there is throughout India amongst Hindus a strong tendency towards imitating the National movements that have proved successful in European history. Now, while _vis-à-vis_ the British the Hindu irreconcilables assume the attitude of the Italian patriots towards the hated Austrian, _vis-à-vis_ the Moslems there is a very different European model for them to follow. Not only Tilak and his school in Poona, but throughout the Punjab and Bengal the constant talk of the Nationalists is that the Moslems must be driven out of India as they were driven out of Spain.
This is no invention of ours. Nor is it quite so wild as it appears at first sight. I have gone into the matter carefully and I can certainly conceive circumstances--50 or 100 years hence--that would make India intolerable for our upper middle classes; and once you get rid of the intelligent and wealthy Moslems the masses could be reduced to absolute subjection in the hands of Hindu rulers. Far be it from me to say that all Hindus are of this purpose or that the school of "liberal Nationalism" to which Gokhale belongs has ceased to exist. But the other school predominates, and as our very existence is at stake we Moslems do not want to take any risks or to see even the very first steps taken towards transforming the British into a Hindu _raj_. Yet those steps are now being taken, though not quite so fast as we at one time feared and Hindus expected. That the sad and terrible fate which our people had in Spain may still be ours in India is a proposition that sounds extravagant at first, but I for my part (and most thoughtful Moslems agree with me) consider it quite possible, and in a matter of such moment we must take possibilities as well at probabilities into consideration.