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440 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
that your Excellency will be gracious enough to give due consideration to our prayers. We have the honour to subscribe ourselves, Your Excellency’s most obedient and humble servants.
LORD MINTO’S REPLY
Appreciation of Mahomedan aspirations
After the address, His Excellency rose and delivered a most sympathetic reply, which was frequently punctuated with cheers and cries of “Hear, hear” from the members of the deputation, particularly when his Excellency declared that he was entirely in accord with the views of the deputation that any electoral system must take cognizance of the various religious beliefs of this great Empire and that the British Government would always in the future as in the past safeguard the political rights of the different communities entrusted to their charge. The Viceroy concluded by thanking the deputation for affording him the unique opportunity of meeting so many representative men.
The Viceroy said :—
Your Highness and Gentlemen, Allow me before I attempt to reply to the many considerations your address embodies, to welcome you heartily to Simla. Your presence here today is very full of meaning. To the document which you have presented me are attached the signatures of nobles, of Ministers of various States, of great landowners, of lawyers, of merchants and of many others of His Majesty’s subjects. I welcome the representative character of your deputation as expressing the views and aspirations of the enlightened Muslim community of India. I feel that all you have said emanates from a representative body basing its opinions on a matured consideration of the existing political conditions of India, totally apart from the small personal or political sympathies and antipathies of scattered localities, and I am grateful to you for the opportunity you are affording me of expressing my appreciation of the just aims of the followers of Islam and their determination to share in the political history of our Empire.
As your Viceroy, I am proud of the recognition you express of the benefits conferred by British rule on the diverse races of