they are not wanted; that the country is not for them; that work would always go to Moslems. Moslem ceremonies have respect elaborately paid to them, Moslem prejudices are yielded to, Moslem customs strengthened and upheld. More serious still, Christian missions are unsympathetically regarded, and their advance thwarted. Actually the leave of the Moslem chief has to be obtained before the mission can be carried into his territory. And, perhaps, more serious still, the government refuses to give a really enlightened system of education to the people, but bolsters up the old useless Koranic system, flatters the Sheikhs, and refuses to allow the missionaries perfect freedom to open schools with an enlightened system of education.

On the other hand the Moslems can go anywhere and make as many proselytes as they please. What wonder that the Mohammedans think that the government is simply running the country for them; that they are the only people; that British officials are afraid of them, and have implicitly declared the superiority of Islam. Such policy can bring nothing but difficulty and disaster in the future. It is cowardly and unchristian; it is not even neutral. It ought to be wholly changed. The British official may one day see that all this subservience to the Moslem and neglect of his own faith. gains him neither the respect, gratitude, nor affection of the people, but the very reverse of all three.

T

XV

MOSLEM ADVANCE IN INDIA

REV. JOHN TAKLE, BENGAL

HE pagan races of India have suffered much from invaders, but most from the raids made

at different times by the hordes of Moslem freebooters that swept down from Central Asia into their midst bent on conquest. These races are supposed to have "let the legions thunder past, then plunged in thought again," but they never regained the position they had before the invasion. With the coming of the Arabs in the eighth century a new epoch in India's history was begun. They were followed by the Huns, Turks, Afghans and Moguls, and with their advent Islam made mighty inroads upon the districts where they came.

Was the progress made by fair or foul means; was it the result of belief born of conviction, or of a propaganda emphasized by force and persecution? Most will agree that progress first came through conquest and amalgamation; it was a growth largely due to the Moslems marrying the women of the land. The inva ders had large battalions of men, but very few women of their own nationality and faith, hence the necessity of finding wives from amongst the Indian people. The men settled down and established towns and villages; thousands of half-breeds were born and this mixed race intermarried with the newcomers and the natives. In this way the crescent with its sickly light began to move across the Indian sky to its first quarter.

With strength of numbers and with a stake in the land the colonists set themselves to further the cause of Islam; and their efforts in this direction were strengthened by the fanatical crusaders who periodically appeared from over the border. Their bigot zeal increased. It bred iconoclasm and persecution, and these became the motive-power in bringing over multitudes to the standard of Mohammed.

The facts of history covering the period from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries bear out this statement. Mahmud of Ghazni (1001-1036 A. D.) is said to have copied Korans "for the health of his soul," but he also made at least sixteen campaigns in India, capturing cities and palaces and throwing down temples and idols, doubtless for the same reason. A story is told of two owls that wished long life to so diligent a creator of ruins. In 1200 A. D., when the Mohammedans became victorious in Bengal, their Viceroy first showed his authority by "the demolishing of temples and the building of mosques." In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were forced conversions in Bengal, and Jallal ud din stands out a most uncompromising bigot and persecutor. The only conditions he of fered were the Koran or death, and it is said that rather than submit to such terms many of the Hindus of Bengal fled to Kamrup in Assam and to the jungles of Cachar.

1

In the fifteenth century a regular officer was appointed in Gujerat to destroy the temples. All Hindus were branded on the arm and compelled to wear coloured garments. Failure to comply meant death. The sixteenth

1 The Viceroy, Bakhtyar Kiliji (1203 A. D.), mentioned in the Persian history, "Riyaz us Salatin."

'From Mirat i Sikandari, quoted in "The History of Gujerat," by Bayley, pp. 439–40.

century saw parts of Orissa swept by a similar invasion, when the Moslems "stabled their horses in the Hindu palaces, and tore down the great temples stone by stone to build residences for their chiefs."1

Aurungzeb's methods are well known. Every temple he set eyes on had to be turned into a mosque, and every religious mendicant of every sect of Hinduism he ordered to be driven out of Hindustan.

The Afghan invaders (1739-1761 A. D.) were just as ready in the use of force. Wherever they marched their route was marked with the charred remains of villagesa route made also red with blood."

It will be seen then that most of the Moslem rulers were more than conquerors. They were "religious knight-errants" of Islam. Their aim was not the mere capture of territory, but temples; their rallying cry was not country but creed. Timur (1398 A. D.) made no secret of this fact. He said, "My object in the invasion of Hindustan is to lead a campaign against the infidels to convert them to the true faith, according to the command of Mohammed to purify the land from the defilement of misbelief and polytheism, and overthrow the temples and idols, whereby we shall become champions and soldiers of the faith before God." 3

With such a line of persecution running through the centuries, it is easily imagined how multitudes of Hindus would turn rather than suffer the penalty of death or

1 Hunter, "Orissa."

'Teiffenthaler, a Tyrolese Jesuit priest who saw something of their methods, says, "They burned the houses together with their inmates, slaughtering others with the sword and the lance; haling off into captivity maidens, youth, men and women. In the temples they slaughtered cows and smeared the images and pavement with the blood" (Hunter's "History of India,” p. 177).

Lane Poole, "Medieval India," p. 155.

disgrace. But persecution appeared in many shapes. Perhaps the persecution felt most keenly by the people, because more lasting and more closely connected with their daily life, was that produced by political coercion. Hindu rulers and zemindars could retain their authority only on condition that they embraced Islam. Hindu princes were forcibly circumcised, and officials in the service of the Mogul government had to become Moslems with their wives, or suffer dismissal.

Then there was instituted a capitation tax on nonMoslems called Jizya. Virtually, it was the revival of the old system of giving the alternative of accepting the Koran, paying tribute, or extermination. It was the lawful price of toleration. Firuz Shah Tughlak (1351– 1388 A. D.), who is said to have been one of the most lenient of Moslem rulers, says in his autobiography, "I encouraged my infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the prophet and I proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Mussulman should be exempt from the Jizya or poll-tax. Information of this came to the ears of the people at large and great numbers of Hindus presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter, and adopting the faith were exonerated from the Jizya, and were favoured with presents and honours." But it was not the tax that did so much injury as the way in which it was imposed and collected. The revenue officers were looked upon in the same way as plague and famine and fever. If the officers wished "to spit in their mouths" the people had to submit. Such humiliation (which, of course, made men outcasts) was "to promote the glory of Islam, the true religion and the contempt for false religion."

"Tarikh i Firuz Shah," p. 290. This is also graphically told in Begali rhyme by a Hindu, Bijoy Gupta, in "Padma Purana."