THE POSITION OF THE MAHOMEDANS.
Whilst I was at Delhi one of the leading Mahomedans of the old Moghul
capital drove me out one afternoon to the great Mosque which still bears
witness, in the splendour of its surviving fragments quite as much as in
the name it bears, _Kuwwat ul Islam_, or Power of Islam, to the ancient
glories of Mahomedan rule in India. Two or three other Mahomedan
gentlemen had come out to meet us, and there, under the shadow of the
Kutub Minar, the loftiest and noblest minaret from which the Musulman
call to prayer has ever gone forth, we sat in the Alai Darwazah, the
great porch of red sandstone and white marble which formed the south
entrance to the outer enclosure of the Mosque, and still presents in the
stately grandeur of its proportions and the infinite variety and
delicacy of its marble lattice work, one of the most perfect monuments
of early Mahomedan art, and discussed for upwards of two hours the
future that lies before the Mahomedan community of India. It is a scene
I shall never forget, so startling was the contrast between the racial
and religious pride of power which those walls had for centuries
reflected and the note of deep and almost gloomy apprehension to which
they now rang. For if the burden of my friends story was reasoned
loyalty to the British _Raj_, it was weighted with profound anxiety as
to the future that awaited the Mahomedans of India, either should our
_Raj_ disappear or should it gradually lose its potency and be merged in
a virtual ascendency of Hinduism under the specious mantle of Indian
self-government. They spoke without bitterness or resentment. They
acknowledged freely the shortcomings of their own community, its
intellectual backwardness, its reluctance to depart from the ancient
ways and to realize the necessity of equipping itself for successful
competition under new conditions, its lack of organization, due to an
inadequate sense of the duty of social service, and the selfishness and
jealousy often displayed by different sections and classes. They were
beginning to awaken to the dangerous consequences of their shortcomings,
but would time be given to them to repair them? The British _Raj_ had
always claimed that its mission in India was to hold the balance evenly
between the different races and creeds and classes, and to exercise its
paternal authority equally to the detriment of none and for the benefit
of all. That the Hindus had from the beginning secured a considerably
larger share in Government employment of all kinds was, no doubt,
inevitable, as they had shown much greater alacrity to qualify
themselves by education on Western lines than the Mahomedans,
unfortunately, had until much more recently begun to show. But so long
as Government _employés_ were merely the servants of Government, and
Hindus had no more influence than the Mahomedans in shaping the policy
of the Government, the Mahomedans had no serious grievance, or, at any
rate, none for which they had not themselves very largely to blame. But
of late years they had seen the policy of the British Government itself
gradually yielding to the pressure of Hindu agitation and the British
_Raj_ actually divesting itself of some of the powers which it had
hitherto retained undiminished for the benefit, in fact if not in
theory, of certain classes which, however loudly they might claim to be
the representatives of the Indian people, represented with few
exceptions nothing but the political ambitions of aggressive Hinduism.
The Mahomedans, they assured me, recognized quite as fully as, and
perhaps, more sincerely than, the Hindus the generous spirit which had
inspired the British Government to grant the reforms embodied in the
Indian Councils Act, but they also realized what it was far more
difficult for Englishmen to realize, that those reforms must inevitably
tend to give the Hindus a predominant share, as compared with the
Mahomedans, in the counsels of Government. In its original shape the
scheme of reforms had indeed threatened the Mahomedans with gross
unfairness and the wrath which its subsequent modification in deference
to Mahomedan representations had roused among the Hindu politicians was
in itself enough to betray to all who had eyes to see and ears to hear
the purpose to which they had hoped to turn the excessive predominance
they had claimed and expected. That purpose was to advance the political
ascendency of Hinduism which was the goal of Hindu aspirations, whether
under the British _Raj_ or without it.
The whole tendency of the Hindu revival, social, religious, and
political, during the last 20 years had been as consistently
anti-Mahomedan as anti-British, and even more so. Some of the more
liberal and moderate Hindu leaders no doubt honestly contemplated the
evolution of an Indian "nation" in which Mahomedan and Hindu might sink
their racial and religious differences, but these were leaders with a
constantly diminishing body of followers. Even among the Extremists not
a few would gladly have purchased by pious professions of good will a
temporary alliance with the Mahomedans against the British _Raj_,
subject to an ulterior settlement of accounts for their own benefit. But
the Mahomedans, with their many close points of contact with the Hindus,
knew, as Englishmen could not know, what were the real sentiments and
hopes of the advanced leaders into whose hands passed the control of
militant Hinduism. They had noted the constant exhortation of the Hindu
Nationalist Press that the youth of India must prepare for the coming
Lalki incarnation of Vishnu when the _mlencchas_--i.e., the infidels,
Moslem as well as British--should be driven out of India. The attitude
of the Hindus towards the Mahomedans of Eastern Bengal, after the
Partition, had shown how they resented the position that the creation of
the new province gave the Moslem element. Nor had the Mahomedans in the
Punjab been left without a foretaste of what was to come. In every
Government office, in every profession, the Hindus were banding
themselves closer and closer together against their few Mahomedan
colleagues. The Mahomedans had refused to join in the boycott of British
goods, and in Delhi, in Lahore, and in many other cities the word had
been passed round among the Hindus not to deal with Mahomedan shops, not
to trade with Mahomedan merchants. Some of the more violent spirits were
even prepared to challenge the Mahomedans in places where the Mahomedan
element is strong and excitable, in order that the inevitable
intervention of the British troops for the restoration of order should
lead to the shedding of Mahomedan blood, and thus perhaps drive the
Mahomedans themselves in to disaffection. What educated Mahomedans, they
told me, chiefly feared, and the Hindus themselves chiefly hoped--for
new of them probably believed in any speedy overthrow of British
rule--was that the British Government and the British people would be
wearied by an agitation of which it was difficult for Englishmen to
grasp the real inwardness into making successive concession to the
Hindus which would gradually give them such a controlling voice in the
government of the country that they would actually be in a position to
achieve their policy of ascendency under the aegis of the British _Raj_.
Such fears might seem exaggerated, but the Mahomedans could not but take
note of the extent to which the Hindu politicians had already secured
the ear of an important section of the British Press and of not a few
members of the British Parliament, whilst in those same quarters the
Mahomedan case never even obtained a hearing, and when the Mahomedans at
last realized the necessity of creating an organization for the defence
of their legitimate interests they were denounced for reviving racial
and religious hatred. For 20 years and more the educated Mahomedans had
strictly followed the advice of their revered leader, Sir Syed Ahmed,
and had put their trust in the sense of justice of the British
Government and the fair-mindedness of the British people instead of
plunging into political agitation. They had not lost their faith in the
British Government or in the British people if their case was properly
put before them, but they felt that if they were not to become the
victims of organized misrepresentation they must have an organization of
their own which should speak for them with authority. Moreover, it was
impossible for the Mahomedans to stand any longer completely aloof from
politics, since the general trend of events in India and the enlargement
of the Indian Councils had thrust new responsibilities upon the leaders
of their community. Of those responsibilities none was more fully
realized than that of showing their loyalty to the British _Raj_--a
loyalty all the more unalterable in that it was based upon their growing
conviction that the maintenance of the British _Raj_ was essential to
the welfare, and even to the existence, of the Mahomedans of India.
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.
The Imperial problem in India is not to get this or that law
changed, or so and so many troops increased, or such and such
measures of repression or concession adopted. It is to bring
about a new mental and spiritual attitude, and to replace
the narrow "Nationalism" of the present day by a broad
and truly liberal Imperialism in the practical sense of securing
general recognition for India's difficulties and divisions, and for
the natural and necessary maintenance of the British connexion
and of British rule. The statesman who can suggest
practical means for carrying out this intellectual conversion
will certainly have saved England and India much unhappiness
and disaster.
On the other hand, I am bound to say that there are also many Mahomedans
who, though professing similar apprehensions, show no disposition
towards fatalistic resignation. For they believe that, whatever may be
the fate of the British _raj_, the future must belong to the more virile
peoples of India, and certainly those who do not merely put their trust
in the fighting traditions of a conquering race may find a good deal of
encouragement for the faith within them from the vital statistics of
Hindus and Mahomedans respectively in India.
Whilst it is most important that nothing should be done to give colour
to the idea sedulously promoted by the Hindu politician that Government
intend to favour, or, as he generally puts it, to "pamper," the
Mahomedans at the expense of the Hindus, it is equally important that
Government should do nothing to strengthen the apprehensions entertained
by so many intelligent and educated Mahomedans. Those apprehensions are
no doubt exaggerated, and may even be quite unfounded; but they
correspond exactly with what I have been told were Tilak's hopes and
anticipations, and if we will only take the trouble to try to see things
as they may well strike an Indian Mahomedan we can hardly dismiss them
as wholly unreasonable.
The antagonism between the two communities is not the creation or the
result of British rule. It is the legacy of centuries of conflict before
British rule was ever heard of in India. It has been and must be one of
the chief objects of British statesmanship to compose this conflict, and
the Mahomedans do not deny that their British rulers have always
desired to deal as fairly with them as with the Hindus. They hold,
however, that, as a matter of fact, British rule has in many ways worked
out to the relative detriment of Mahomedan influence and to the greater
advantage of the Hindus. Nor is that fact rendered any more palatable to
the Mahomedans because it is mainly due to the greater adaptability and
suppleness displayed by the Hindus ever since India has been brought
into contact with Western education and Western methods. The
establishment of English as the official language of the Law Courts and
of all public Departments necessarily favoured the Hindus by displacing
Persian and the vernaculars in which the Mahomedans were most
proficient. At the present day the vast majority of Indians employed in
every branch of the Government service are Hindus, and this majority is
entirely out of proportion to the numerical preponderancy of the Hindu
community at large[11]. According to the last Census Report the Hindus
of Bengal (which was then unpartitioned), though only twice as numerous
as the Mahomedans, held 1,235 higher appointments under Government in
Bengal, as against only 141 held by Mahomedans. In the Bombay Presidency
the Hindus held 266 such appointments, as against 23 held by Mahomedans;
and in the Central Provinces 339, as against 75. Of the provinces in
reference to which the report furnishes detailed statistics the United
Provinces alone failed to show the same disparity, the number of posts
held by the Mahomedans, 453, against 711 held by Hindus, being actually
and very largely in excess of their proportion to population. The
Mahomedans, moreover, complain that where Mahomedans are employed as
clerks in Government Departments the head clerks, who are almost always
Hindus and alone have direct access to the English superior officers,
use their influence with the latter to prejudice them against their
Mahomedan subordinates. Education has passed very largely from our own
hands into those of Hindu teachers. In all the liberal professions, at
the Bar, in the Press, the preponderance of Hindus is greatly out of
proportion even to the numerical preponderance of the Hindu population
as a whole. Intelligent Mahomedans are conscious that all this is to a
great extent the result of the backwardness of their community, but
hardships are none the less hardships because they are largely of one's
own making. Again, the principal seat of the Government of India and
those of the two great Presidency Governments are in centres of Hindu
life where the voice of the Mahomedan element does not make itself
easily heard.
Then Mahomedans who watch public opinion in England note that one of the
two great parties in the State has for many years past professed to
recognize in the views of Hindu politicians a commendable affinity to
its own political principles, whilst the memory of its greatest leader,
Mr. Gladstone, is chiefly associated in India with a violent hostility
to Turkey, which, at any rate amongst many of his followers, degenerated
into violent denunciations of Islam in general. By his personal
qualities Lord Ripon, the most pronounced Liberal ever sent out in our
time as Viceroy, endeared himself to many Mahomedans as well as to the
Hindus, but he never made any secret of his political sympathies with
Hindu aspirations. Whilst Unionist Governments were in office, with only
one short break during a period of nearly 20 years, and especially
whilst Lord Curzon was Viceroy, the alliance between the Hindu leaders
and Radical politicians at home became more and more intimate. The Hindu
National Congress, which the Mahomedans had come to regard as little
more than a Hindu political organization, was not only generally
acclaimed by English newspapers of an advanced complexion as the
exponent of a new-born Indian democracy, but it had founded[12] in
London an organ of its own, _India_, subsidized out of its funds, and
edited and managed by Englishmen, which may not have a very large
circulation at home, but is the chief purveyor of Indian news to a large
part of the Liberal Press. When Radical members of Parliament visited
India the views they chiefly cared to make themselves acquainted with or
reproduced when they went home were the views of Hindu politicians, and
when the latter visited England they could always depend upon the
demonstrative hospitality not only of Radical clubs and associations but
also of the Radical Press for their political propaganda.
When the Liberal Party returned to power at the end of 1905 the majority
in the new House of Commons included a very active group that identified
itself wholeheartedly with a campaign which, in Bengal, soon assumed a
character of scarcely less hostility to the Mahomedans than to the
British Administration, and the new Government announced their intention
of preparing a scheme of reforms which, whatever its merits, was greeted
in India as a concession to Hindu rather than to Mahomedan sentiment.
For the Mahomedan has always been a believer in personal rule, and one
of the objects of the reforms scheme was to diminish to some extent that
element in the Indian Administration. Moreover, when it was first
outlined by the Secretary of State, the scheme contained provisions
which seemed to the Mahomedans to be at variance both with principles of
fair and equal treatment for all races and creeds and classes upon which
British rule had hitherto been based, and with the specific pledges
given by the Viceroy to the Mahomedan deputation that waited upon him
four years ago at Simla when the reforms were first contemplated. The
new representation in the enlarged Indian Councils was based
proportionally upon a rough estimate of the populations of India which
credited the Hindus with millions that are either altogether outside the
pale of Hinduism or belong to those castes which the majority of
educated Hindus of the higher castes still regard as "untouchable." The
effect would have been to give the Hindus what the Mahomedans regarded
as an unfairly excessive representation. Happily, though, the question
trembled for a long time in the balance, Lord Morley listened to the
remonstrances of the Mahomedans, and in its final shape the Indian
Councils Act made very adequate provision for the representation of
Mahomedan interests. But the Mahomedans saw in the angry disappointment
of the Hindu politicians when the scheme was thus modified ample
justification for the fears they had entertained. Even as it is--and the
Mahomedans recognize both the many good points of the scheme and Lord
Morley's desire to deal fairly with them--these new reforms may well
seem to the Mahomedans to have enured mainly to the benefit of the
Hindus. The Mahomedans appreciate as warmly as the Hindus the
appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy's Executive Council, and
if the first Indian member was to be a Hindu they admit that Mr. Sinha
had exceptional qualifications for the high post to which he was called.
The Indian members added under the now Act to the Executive Councils of
Bombay and Madras are also both Hindus, and another Hindu will almost
certainly be nominated in like manner to the Executive Council of
Bengal. None of these appointments may be open to objection, but the
fact nevertheless remains that it is the Hindus and not the Mahomedans
who will have had the immediate benefit of this new departure to which
Indian opinion attaches the greatest importance.
The fact is that the more we delegate of our authority in India to the
natives of India on the principles which we associate with
self-government, the more we must necessarily in practice delegate it to
the Hindus, who form the majority, however much we may try to protect
the rights and interests of the Mahomedan minority. This is what the
Mahomedans know and fear. This is what explains their insistence upon
separate electorates wherever the elective principle comes into play in
the composition of representative bodies. It is not merely that they
have yet to learn the elementary business of electoral organization, in
which the Hindus, on the contrary, have shown great proficiency, and
that they have consequently fared badly even in local bodies where their
numbers ought to have secured them more adequate representation. Many
Mahomedans realize the disadvantage of locking up their community in a
watertight compartment, but they regard it as the lesser evil. It is,
they contend, an essential safeguard not only against an excessive Hindu
predominance in elective or partly elective bodies, but also against the
growing disposition which they note amongst those who claim to be the
spokesmen of the rising British democracy to accelerate the rate at
which political concessions should be made to Hindu opinion, and also to
disregard the claim of the Mahomedan minority to be protected against
any abuse by the Hindus of the power which a majority must necessarily
wield.
My object is to explain the views actually held by the leaders of the
Indian Mahomedan community, rather than to endorse or to controvert
them. Even if the construction they place upon the attitude of their
Hindu fellow-countrymen and of an influential section of British public
opinion be wholly unreasonable, the fact that that attitude is liable to
such a construction is one which we ought to bear in mind. 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. But amongst the large body of Mahomedans scattered
through India, and especially amongst the higher classes, Islam has in a
great measure lost its aggressive character. Surrounded on all sides by
an overwhelming majority of Hindus, whose religion he regards as
detestably idolatrous, the Indian Moslem is inclined to sink his
hostility to Christianity and to regard us less as "infidels" than as
fellow-believers in the central article of his monotheistic faith, the
unity of God. We, too, in his eyes are a "People of the Book," though
our Book is not the Koran, but the Bible, of which he does not
altogether deny the sacred character. Other things also often draw him
towards the Englishman. The Englishman to him represents a ruling race,
and to such an one he feels that he who also represents a once ruling
race can yield a more willing allegiance than to any one of a race which
he himself ruled over. Equally his fighting and his sporting instincts
also appeal to many Englishmen. Hence both Englishmen and Mahomedans in
India frequently feel that they have more in common than either of them
has with the Hindu. The Mahomedans, moreover, consisting very largely of
the most virile races in India, have always furnished some of the best
contingents of the British Indian Army. Their loyalty has never wavered
except during the Mutiny, and modern Indian writers of the Nationalist
school are themselves at pains to show that, though the mutineers
rallied round the feeble descendant of the Moghul Emperors as the only
available figurehead, and many Mahomedans proved themselves good
"patriots," it was Hindus like Nana Sahib and Tantia Tope and the Ranee
of Jhansi who were the real heroes and moving spirits of that "War of
Indian Independence."
In our day the British connexion has had no stouter and more convinced
supporter than the late Sir Syed Ahmad, than whom no Mahomedan has
deserved or enjoyed greater influence over his Indian co-religionists.
Not only does his educational work, based on the English public school
system, live after him in the college which he founded at Aligarh, but
also his political faith which taught the vast majority of educated
Mahomedans to regard their future as bound up with the preservation of
British rule. The revival of Hinduism has only served to strengthen that
faith by bringing home to the Mahomedans the value of British rule as a
bulwark against the Hindu ascendency which in the more or less remote
future they have unquestionably begun to dread. The creation of a
political organization like the All-India Moslem League, which is an
outcome of the new apprehensions evoked by Hindu aspirations, may appear
on the surface to be a departure from the teachings of Sir Syed Ahmad,
who, when the Indian National Congress was appealing in its early days
for Mahomedan support, urged his people to hold altogether aloof from
politics and to rely implicitly upon the good will and good faith of
Government. But things have moved rapidly since Sir Syed Ahmad's time,
and when the British Government themselves create fresh opportunities
for every Indian community to make its voice heard in political counsel,
the Mahomedans hold that none can afford to stand back.
The Moslem League founded by the Aga Khan, one of the most broad-minded
and highly-educated of Indians, with the full approval of the late Nawab
Mohsin-ul-Mulk, the confidant and successor of Sir Syed Ahmad, is
moreover not merely or even chiefly a political organization. It is
intended to serve as a centre for the maintenance and consolidation of
the communal interests of the Mahomedans all over India in their social,
educational, and economic as well as political aspects. Its programme
was unfolded at the annual meeting of the League held in January last at
Delhi both in an address read on behalf of Mr. Ameer Ali, who was
detained in England by his duties on the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, and in a speech delivered by the Aga Khan, the recognized
leader of the whole community. The programme of the Moslem League puts
forward no such ambitious demands as self-government for India. All it
asks for is "the ordered development of the country under the Imperial
Crown." It accepts the reforms with much more gratitude and enthusiasm
than were displayed by the spokesman of the Indian National Congress at
Lahore, and it accepts them in no narrow or sectarian spirit. The Aga
Khan was in fact at special pains to indicate the various directions in
which Mahomedans and Hindus might and ought to act in harmonious
co-operation. The functions of the Mahomedan representatives on the new
Councils would, the Aga Khan said, be threefold.
In the first place they must co-operate as representative
Indian citizens with other Indians in advancing the well-being
of the country by working wholeheartedly for the
spread of education, for the establishment of free and universal
primary education, for the promotion of commerce and
industry, for the improvement of agriculture by the establishment
of co-operative credit and distribution societies, and
for the development of the natural resources of India. Here,
indeed, is a wide field of work for Hindus and Mahomedans
acting together. In the second place our representatives
must be ready to co-operate with the Hindus and all other
sections of society in securing for them all those advantages
that serve their peculiar conditions and help their social
welfare, for although the two sister communities have developed
on different lines, each suffers from some peculiar
weakness in addition to the misfortunes common to
general economic and educational backwardness. And then
our representatives must watch and promote social measures
required exclusively for the benefit of their Moslem co-religionists,
with the co-operation, we hope, of the Hindu
members, for we too have needs that are not known to them
and which we alone can fully understand.
No language could be more generous or more statesmanlike. The Aga Khan
doubtless realizes that, whatever the more or less remote future may
have in store for the two communities, their increasing antagonism in
consequence of the aggressive tendencies, displayed by Hindu
"nationalism" during the last few years is pregnant with immediate
danger, and nowhere more so than in the Punjab where he was speaking.
Not only have the preachers of the Arya Samaj, taking their cue from the
writings of their apostle Dayanand, frequently indulged, both in the
Press and on the platform, in outrageous attacks upon the Mahomedans'
religion, but the militant Hindus have visited upon the Mahomedans their
refusal to join in an anti-British agitation by enforcing against them a
commercial and social boycott, none the less oppressive and damaging
because it is not openly proclaimed. The bitterness thus engendered
found vent in serious riots this year at Peshawar, just as it did in
Eastern Bengal, when the boycott campaign there was at its height. Even
in Hyderabad, the capital of the Nizam's dominions, where, under the
wise administration of a great Mahomedan ruler whose Prime Minister is a
Hindu, the relations between Moslem and Hindu have hitherto been quite
harmonious, a change is gradually making itself felt under the
inspiration of a small group of Bengali Hindus who have brought with
them the Nationalist cry of "Arya for the Aryan." The animosity which
has always existed between the Mahomedans and the Hindus, especially
amongst the lower orders, has been a constant source of anxiety to
Anglo-Indian administrators. As far as it springs from the clash of
religious beliefs, social customs, and historical traditions, it can
only be eradicated by the slow process of education. The most trivial
incident, the meeting of rival processions, the maltreatment of a cow,
so sacred to the Hindus, some purely personal quarrel suddenly leads to
violent affrays in which the whole populace on both sides joins in
without knowing even what it is all about. The danger must be enormously
heightened if one community begins to believe that the other community
is compassing deep-laid schemes for the promotion of its own ultimate
ascendancy. The political agitation conducted by the Hindus has for some
time past tended to create such a belief amongst the Mahomedans. As far
back as 1893, at the time of the Bombay riots and of Tilak's
"anti-cow-killing" propaganda in the Deccan, which spread sporadically
to other parts of India, the Bombay Government reported "an uneasy
feeling among Mahomedans that they and their faith were suffering at the
hands of the Hindus, that they were being gradually but surely edged out
of the position they have hitherto held, and that their religion needed
some special protection." That uneasy feeling has gradually ripened
since then into a widespread and deep-rooted conviction--not the least
of the many deplorable results of a movement that claims to be called
"national."
It would be an evil day for the internal peace of India if a people
still so proud of their history, so jealous of their religion, and so
conscious of their virile superiority as the Mahomedans came to believe
that they could only trust to their own right hand, and no longer to the
authority and sense of justice of the British _Raj_, to avert the
dangers which they foresee in the future from the establishment of an
overt or covert Hindu ascendancy. Some may say that it would be an
equally evil day for the British _Raj_ if the Mahomedans came to believe
in the futility of unrequited loyalty and joined hands with its enemies
in the confident anticipation that, whatever welter might follow the
collapse of British rule, they could not fail sooner or later to fight
their way once more to the front. Certainly at no time since we have
ruled India has greater circumspection been needed in holding the
balance between the two communities. It would be as impolitic to forget
that the Mahomedans have held steadfastly aloof from the anti-British
movement of the last few years and represent on the whole a great
conservative force, as to create the impression amongst the Hindus at
large, of whom the vast majority are still our friends, that we are
disposed to visit upon them the disloyalty of what is after all a small
section of their community by unduly favouring the Mahomedans at their
expense.