Dr Kitchlew has rendered a public service of great value by supporting joint electorates, and on exactly the ground on which we and others have always advocated them. The ground is that “in case of a joint electorate, the Hindu and the Mahomedan will have to seek the help and cooperation of each other.” In other words, under a system of joint electorates, a Hindu candidate will be partially dependent for his success at the polls on Mahomedan votes; and so will a Mahomedan candidate upon Hindu votes. It is a matter of ordinary common sense that if communal representation is to remain, this is the only way to make it, not innocuous, for innocuous it can never be, but least harmful to the national cause. On any other basis it is bound to lead to growing estrangement between the communities by making their outlook in all civic and political matters, in which their interests are inextricably bound up, communal instead of national. Even the most thoroughgoing and uncompromising advocate of communal representation does professedly look forward to the time when it will cease to be necessary and when India, like all other modern countries, will have general instead of sectional representation. It is now perfectly clear to all unprejudiced minds that as long as the present system continues, this is nothing but an idle dream, that so far from hastening the day of general representation, this system is every day making its advent more and more unlikely. The only possible way of making communal representation is to take away separate electorates and, while fixing the number of representatives for such communities, to make it necessary for them to secure this representation though a system of joint electorates.
