Indian Unrest Part 5

Orthodox Hinduism ceased to be a dominant factor in the Punjab when the flood of Mahomedan conquest swept over the land of the Five Rivers. Even Islam did not break the power of caste, and very distinct traces of caste still survive amongst the Mahomedan community itself. But nowhere has caste been so much shaken as in the Punjab, for the infinity of sub-castes into which each caste has resolved itself gives the measure of its disintegration. Sikhism still represents the most successful revolt against its tyranny in the later history of Hinduism. Hence the relatively slight ascendency enjoyed by the Brahmans in the Punjab amongst the Hindus themselves, even the Brahmans having split up into so many sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that many a non-Brahman Hindu will hardly accept food cooked by the lower order of Brahmans--and, next to inter-marriage, food is the great test of caste. Nevertheless it is amongst the Hindus of the Punjab that one of the earliest apostles of reaction against the West has found the largest and most enthusiastic body of followers. Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, was a Brahman of Kathiawar; he was not born in the Punjab, and it was not in the Punjab but in Bombay, where, however, it struck no roots, that he founded the Arya Samaj. Only in the later years of his life did the Punjab become the chief centre of his activities. The doctrines he taught were embodied by him in his _Satyarath Prakash_, which has become the Bible of his disciples, and in his _Veda Bashya Basmika_, a commentary on the Vedas. He had at an early age lost faith in the Hindu Pantheon, and to this extent he was a genuine religious reformer, for he waged relentless war against the wors.h.i.+p of idols, and whether his claims to Vedantic learning be or be not conceded, his creed was "Back to the Vedas." His ethical code, on the other hand, was vague, and he pandered strangely in some directions to the weaknesses of the flesh, and in others to popular prejudices. Nothing in the Vedas, for instance, prohibits either the killing of cattle or the eating of bovine flesh.

But, in deference to one of the most universal of Hindu superst.i.tions, Dayanand did not hesitate to include cow-killing amongst the deadliest sins. Here we have in fact the keynote of his doctrines. The sanct.i.ty of the cow is the touchstone of Hindu hostility to both Christian and Mahomedan, and the whole drift of Dayanand's teachings is far less to reform Hinduism than to rouse it into active resistance to the alien influences which threatened, in his opinion, to denationalize it. Hence the outrageously aggressive tone of his writings wherever he alludes either to Christianity or to Mahomedanism. It is the advent of "meat-eating and wine-drinking foreigners, the slaughterers of kine and other animals," that has brought "trouble and suffering" upon "the Aryas"--he discards the word Hindu on account of its Persian origin--whilst before they came into the country India enjoyed "golden days," and her people were "free from disease and prosperous and contented." In fact, "Arya for the Aryans" was the cry that frequently predominated in Dayanand's teachings over that of "Back to the Vedas,"

and Lajpat Rai, one of his most zealous disciples, has stated emphatically that "the scheme of Swami Dayanand has its foundation on the firm rock of _Swades.h.i.+_ and _Swajati_."

Since Dayanand's death the Arya Samaj has split up into two sections--the "vegetarians" who with regard to religious doctrine may be described as the orthodox, and the "meat-eaters," as the lat.i.tudinarians. It is difficult to differentiate between the precise tendencies of these two sections, whose feuds seem to be waning. In both are to be found not a few progressive and enlightened Aryas who, whatever their political activities may be, have undoubtedly applied themselves with no small success to the carrying out of that part of Dayanand's gospel which was directed to the reforming of Hinduism. Their influence has been constantly exerted to check, the marriages between mere boys and almost infant girls which have done so much physical as well as moral mischief to Hindu society, and also to improve the wretched lot of Hindu widows whose widowhood with all that it entails of menial degradation often begins before they have ever really been wives.

To this end the Aryas have not hesitated to encourage female education, and the Girls' Orphanage at Jalandhar, where there is also a widows'

home, has shown what excellent social results can be achieved in that direction. Again in the treatment of the "untouchable" low-castes, the Arya Samaj may claim to have been the first native body to break new ground and to attempt something akin to the work of social reclamation of which Christianity and, in a lesser degree, Islam had hitherto had the monopoly. Schools and especially industrial cla.s.ses have been established in various districts which cannot fail to raise the _status_ of the younger generation and gradually to emanc.i.p.ate the lower castes from the bondage in which they have been hitherto held. These and many other new departures conceived in the same liberal spirit at first provoked the vehement hostility of the orthodox Hindus, who at one time stopped all social intercourse with the Arya reformers. But whereas in other parts of India the idea of social reform came to be a.s.sociated with that of Western ascendency and therefore weakened and gave way before the rising tide of reaction against that ascendency, it has been a.s.sociated in the Punjab with the cry of "Arya for the Aryans," and the political activities of the Arya Samaj, or at least of a number of its most prominent members who have figured conspicuously in the anti-British agitation of the last few years, have secured for it from Hindu orthodoxy a measure of tolerance and even of good will which its social activities would certainly not otherwise have received. That the Arya Samaj, which shows the impress of Western influence in so much of its social work, should at the same time have a.s.sociated itself so intimately with a political movement directed against British rule is one of the many anomalies presented by the problem of Indian unrest.

Many Aryas, indeed, deny strenuously that the Samaj is disaffected, or even that it concerns itself with politics, and the president of the Lah.o.r.e branch, Mr. Roshan Lal, a.s.sured me that it devotes itself solely to moral and religious reform. I do not question that a.s.surance, as far as Mr. Roshan Lal is himself personally concerned, and it may be true that the Samaj has never committed itself as a body to any political programme, and that many individual members hold aloof from politics; but the evidence that many others, and not the least influential, have played a conspicuous part in the seditious agitation of the last few years, both in the Punjab and in the neighbouring United Provinces, is overwhelming. In the Rawal Pindi riots in 1907 the ringleaders were Aryas, and in the violent propaganda which for about two years preceded the actual outbreak of violence none figured more prominently than Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, both prominent Aryas. The immediate effect produced by their deportation in restoring order is in itself corroborative evidence of the share they were believed to have taken in producing lawlessness. Ajit Singh himself is at the present moment a fugitive from justice, against whom proceedings _in absentia_ were inst.i.tuted this winter in Lah.o.r.e for translating and publis.h.i.+ng seditious books that dealt with the making of bombs, the taking of life, the destruction of buildings, &c. In the course of these proceedings letters from Lajpat Rai were produced in Court showing that just about the time of the disturbances he had been in communication with Shyamji Krishnavarma, of _Indian Sociologist_ fame, for a supply of books "containing true ideas on politics" for the students of Lah.o.r.e, as well as for a.s.sistance towards defraying the cost of "political missionaries." In one of these letters also Lajpat Rai, after remarking that "the people are in a sullen mood" and that "the agricultural cla.s.ses have begun to agitate," adds significantly that his "only fear is that the bursting out may not be premature." Lajpat Rai's correspondent was another prominent Arya, Bhai Parmanand, who, whilst he was Professor at the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, was found in possession of various formulae for the manufacture of bombs, including the same manual that was discovered in the Maniktola Garden at Calcutta.

In Patiala, one of the Sikh native States of the Punjab, Aryas const.i.tuted the great majority of defendants, 76 in number, and many of them officials and persons of position, who were put on their trial last December for seditious practices. So seriously were the charges felt to reflect upon the Arya Samaj as a whole that one of its leading legal members was briefed on its behalf for the defence. From the speech made by counsel for the prosecution in opening the case it appears that some of the defendants were schoolmasters, who were charged with preaching revolutionary doctrines in their schools and carrying on correspondence of the same character with old pupils; others were charged with circulating papers of the _Yugantar_ and _Swarajiya_ type; others with holding secret meetings and delivering inflammatory lectures; others again with distributing pictures and photographs of well-known revolutionists, including Khudiram Bose, the Muzafferpur murderer. Not only were most of these defendants Aryas, but they were very prominent Aryas, who had founded local branches of the Samaj or been members of committees in the State of Patiala. How far the evidence outlined by counsel would have borne out these charges it is impossible to say, though one may properly a.s.sume it to have been of a very formidable character, for after the case had been opened against them the defendants hastened to send in a pet.i.tion invoking the clemency of the Maharajah. They expressed therein their deep sorrow for any conduct open to misconstruction, tendered their unqualified apology for any indiscreet acts they might have committed, and testified their "great abhorrence and absolute detestation" of anarchists and seditionists and their diabolical methods. His Highness thereupon ordered the prosecution to be abandoned, but at the same time banished the defendants from his State and declared their posts to be forfeited by such as had been in his service, and only in a few cases were these punishments subsequently remitted.

The large number of Aryas who have unquestionably taken part in the political agitation of the last few years certainly tends to corroborate the very compromising certificate given only two years ago to the Samaj by Krishnavarma himself in his murder-preaching organ. He not only stated that "of all movements in India for the political regeneration of the country none is so potent as the Arya Samaj," but he added that "the ideal of that society as proclaimed by its founder is an absolutely free and independent form of national Government," and Krishnavarma, it must be remembered, had been appointed by Dayanand to be a member of the first governing body in the lifetime of the founder and, after his death, one of the trustees of his will.

What makes the question of the real tendencies of the Arya Samaj one of very grave importance for the future is that it has embarked upon an educational experiment of a peculiar character which may have an immense effect upon the rising generation. One of its best features is the attention it has devoted to education, and to that of girls as well as of boys. But it was not till 1898 that the governing body of the Samaj in the Punjab decided to carry into execution a scheme for restoring the Vedic system of education which Dayanand had conceived but had never been able to carry out. Under this system the child is committed at an early age to the exclusive care of a spiritual teacher or _guru_, who stands to him _in loco parentis_ and even more, for Manu says that "of him who gives natural birth, and of him who gives knowledge of the Vedas, the giver of sacred knowledge is the more venerable father, since second or divine birth ensures life to the twice-born, both in this world and eternally." In the _gurukuls_ or seminaries founded by the Arya Samaj pupils or _chelas_ are admitted between the ages of six and ten. From that moment they, are practically cut off from the outer world during the whole course of their studies, which cover a period of 16 years altogether--i.e., ten years in the lower school and six years in the upper, to which they pa.s.s up as _Brahmacharis._ During the whole of that period no student is allowed to visit his family, except in cases of grave emergency, and his parents can only see him with the permission of the head of the _gurukul_ and not more than once a month. There are at present three _gurukuls_ in the Punjab, but the most important one, with over 250 students, is at Kangri, in the United Provinces, five miles from the sacred city of Hardwar, where the Ganges flows out of a gorge into the great plain. A large and very popular _mela_ or fair is held annually at Kangri, and it is attended by the _Brahmacharis,_ who act as volunteers for the maintenance of order and collect funds for the support of their _gurukul_. The enthusiasm is said to be very great, and donations last year are credibly reported to have exceeded 300,000 rupees.

Life in the _gurukuls_ is simple and even austere, the discipline rigorous, the diet of the plainest, and a great deal of time is given to physical training. As the _chelas_ after 16 years of this monastic training at the hands of their _gurus_ are to be sent out as missionaries to propagate the Arya doctrines throughout India, the influence of these inst.i.tutions in the moulding of Indian character and Indian opinion in the future cannot fail to be considerable. Some five years more must elapse before we shall be able to judge the result by the first batch of _chelas_ who will then be going forth into the world.

For the present one can only echo the hope tersely expressed a few months ago by Sir Louis Dane, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, in reply to a.s.surances of loyalty from the President of the Arya Samaj, that "what purports to be a society for religious and social reform and advancement may not be twisted from its proper aims" and "degenerate into a political organization with objects which are not consonant with due loyalty to the Government as established." But neither the spirit of Dayanand's own teachings nor the record of many of his disciples, including some of those actually connected with the _gurukuls_, is in this respect encouraging.

There has been, however, no recurrence of serious disturbances in the Punjab since 1907, and if the native Press lost little of its virulence until the new Press Act of this year, and numerous prosecutions bore witness to the continued prevalence of sedition, the province has been free from the murderous outrages and dacoities which have been so lamentable a feature of the unrest in Bengal and in the Deccan. None the less there is still a very strong undercurrent of anti-British feeling.

It has partly been fostered in the large cities by Bengalee immigrants who have come into the Punjab in considerable numbers, and thanks to their higher education have acquired great influence at the Bar and in the Press, but it is rife wherever the Arya Samaj is known to be most active, and the Arya Samaj has already proved a very powerful proselytizing agency. Its meeting houses serve not only for religious ceremonies, but also as social clubs for the educated cla.s.ses in all the larger towns where they congregate. Access to them is readily given to Hindus and Sikhs who have not actually joined the Samaj. They are attracted by the political discussions which are carried on there with great freedom, and having no such resorts of their own, they are soon tempted to obtain the fuller privileges of members.h.i.+p. In this way the Samaj has made many converts among the educated cla.s.ses and even among native officials. But its influence is by no means confined to them. It makes many converts among the Sikhs, and not a few among _Nau-Muslims_ or Mahomedans who have embraced Islam in relatively recent times and mainly for the purpose of escaping from the tyranny of caste. For the same reason it attracts low-caste Hindus, for though it does not ostentatiously denounce or defy caste, it has the courage to ignore it.

Though the Arya leaders are generally men of education and sometimes of great culture, they know how to present their creed in a popular form that appeals to the lower cla.s.ses and especially to the agricultural population. One of the most unpleasant features has been the propaganda carried on by them among the Sepoys of the Native Army, and especially among the Jats and the Sikhs, with whom they have many points of affinity. The efforts of the Aryas seem to be chiefly directed to checking enlistment, but they have at times actually tampered with the loyalty of certain regiments, and their emissaries have been found within the lines of the native troops. Sikhism itself is at the present day undergoing a fresh process of transformation. Whilst it tends generally to be reabsorbed into Hinduism, the very remarkable movement for sinking the old cla.s.s distinctions--themselves a survival of caste--and recognizing the equality of all Sikhs, is clearly due to the influence of the Arya Samaj. The evolution of the Arya Samaj recalls very forcibly that of Sikhism, which originally, when founded by Nanak in the early part of the 16th century, was merely a religious and moral, reform movement, and nevertheless within 50 years developed under Har Govind into a formidable political and military organization. It is not, therefore, surprising that some of those who know the Punjab best and the sterner stuff of which its martial races are made look upon it as a potentially more dangerous centre of trouble than either the Deccan or Bengal. One of the most mischievous results of the Aryan propaganda, and one which may well cause the most immediate anxiety, is the growing antagonism which it has bred between Hindus and Mahomedans, for the Mahomedans are convinced that the Arya Samaj is animated with no less bitter hostility towards Islam than towards British rule.

CHAPTER IX.

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 n.o.blest 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 compet.i.tion 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.ses, 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 _employes_ 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sured 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 diminis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude of the Hindus towards the Mahomedans of Eastern Bengal, after the Part.i.tion, 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 Lah.o.r.e, and in many other cities the word had been pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude of an Englishman who is in India only as a bird of pa.s.sage (and all Englishmen are there as birds of pa.s.sage, 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-a-vis_ the British the Hindu irreconcilables a.s.sume the att.i.tude of the Italian patriots towards the hated Austrian, _vis-a-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 circ.u.mstances--50 or 100 years hence--that would make India intolerable for our upper middle cla.s.ses; and once you get rid of the intelligent and wealthy Moslems the ma.s.ses 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 att.i.tude, 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 antic.i.p.ations, 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 statesmans.h.i.+p 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 unpart.i.tioned), 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 pa.s.sed 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 hards.h.i.+ps are none the less hards.h.i.+ps because they are largely of one's own making. Again, the princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sociated 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociate 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 att.i.tude of their Hindu fellow-countrymen and of an influential section of British public opinion be wholly unreasonable, the fact that that att.i.tude 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 a.s.semblies, it must to some extent diminish the power of the Executive to ensure that equality of treatment for all races and creeds and cla.s.ses 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 statesmans.h.i.+p 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 cla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d. 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 grat.i.tude and enthusiasm than were displayed by the spokesman of the Indian National Congress at Lah.o.r.e, 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 compa.s.sing 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 circ.u.mspection 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.

CHAPTER X.

SOUTHERN INDIA.

Unrest in its most dangerous forms has. .h.i.therto been almost entirely confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab. It has spread to some extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which, indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of the United Provinces. But thanks very largely to the firm and experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces under their Commissioner, Mr. Craddock, and that of the United Provinces under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out of hand. Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of _Swades.h.i.+_ and _Swaraj_ from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the Punjab is likely to elicit any response. Such echoes of far away sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever the British _Raj_ were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the collapse of British power. Along the North-East frontier British India marches with semi-independent States that have little or nothing in common with the rest of India. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim are Himalayan highlands inhabited chiefly by Mongolian Buddhists, who have far more affinity with Tibetans and Chinese than with their Indian neighbours to the south. a.s.sam is little more than an administrative dependency of Eastern Bengal, whilst Burma has been even more accurately described as a mere appendage of India, attached for purposes of administrative convenience to our Indian Empire, but otherwise as effectively divided from it by race, religion, customs, and tradition as by the waters of the Bay of Bengal and the dense jungles of the Patkai Mountains.

In none of these borderlands has Hinduism ever struck root, and in none of them, therefore, is Indian Nationalism, which is so largely bound up with Hinduism, likely to find a congenial soil. But that Southern India where Hinduism is supreme should have remained hitherto so little affected by the political agitation which has swept across India further north from the Deccan to Bengal may at first sight cause some surprise.

Yet the explanation is not far to seek, if one bears in mind the profound differences which nature itself has imposed upon this vast sub-continent. Southern India, which may be defined as including the whole of the Madras Presidency and the three native States of Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore, differs, indeed, almost immeasurably from Central and Northern India. South of the high, sun-scorched plateau of the Deccan, from the mouth of the Kistna to the Indian Ocean, the great Indian peninsula rapidly narrows. Tempered by more frequent rains and the moist breezes which sweep across it from both the Malabar and the Coromandel coasts, the climate is more equable and the heat, though more continuous, is less fierce. The whole character of the country is luxuriantly tropical, and though the lowlands are not more fertile than the matchless delta of the Ganges, the more varied prodigality of nature shows itself alike in the waving forests of cocoanut, which are common all along the coast, in the rich tobacco-fields of Madura and Coimbatore, in the plantations of cinchona, pepper, cardamoms, and other spices on the slopes of the Nilgiri highlands, and in the splendid growths of teak, ebony, and sandalwood that clothe the Western Ghats.

The population, which in some parts attains extraordinary density and lives almost exclusively on the fruits of the soil, is of the old Dravidian stock, industrious and frugal as in other parts of India, and of a placid and gentle temper. Nowhere else in India does one come into such close contact with its original non-Aryan peoples; and nowhere else has the earliest type of religious and social inst.i.tutions evolved by the superior civilization of the Aryans been so completely preserved from the disturbing influences of later ages. And yet--such are the curious contrasts which abound in this strange country--nowhere else does one find so many living survivals of the intercourse which occurred from time to time between India and the West, many centuries before Europe turned her eyes towards that Terra Incognita. Nowhere, for instance, has Christianity made more converts of recent years, perhaps because in Southern India there may still be found indigenous Christian communities which trace their origin back to the first centuries of the Christian era. Even if there be no historical foundation for the tradition that it was St. Thomas the Apostle who himself first evangelized Southern India, and was ultimately martyred at St. Thomas's Mount near Madras, there is good authority for believing that Christianity was imported not many centuries later into Southern India by the Nestorian or Chaldaean missionaries from Persia and Mesopotamia, whose apostolic zeal ranged all over Asia, even into Tibet and Tartary.

According to the Saxon chronicle, our own King Alfred sent alms to India in 883 for St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, and at that date there certainly existed, besides some small Christian communities on the Coromandel coast, two flouris.h.i.+ng communities on the Malabar coast, where the so-called Syrian Church has maintained itself to the present day. Another curious and perhaps equally ancient link with the West may still be seen to survive to-day in the small community of white Jews at Cochin, which, according to their own tradition, was founded when their forefathers were driven out of Palestine after the destruction of the second Temple. To the charter which they still have in their possession, inscribed, like most west coast t.i.tle deeds, on copper plates, the date a.s.signed by the best authorities is about 700 A.D., and the powers and privileges which were specifically conferred upon their ancestors show that at that period already they had acquired in a remarkable degree the confidence and friends.h.i.+p of the Hindu Kings of Malabar. The decline of both Christian and Jewish communities seems to have begun, indeed, with the appearance of the first Portuguese invaders from Europe, whose incursions destroyed the peace and tolerance which Christian and Jew had enjoyed in the days of undisturbed Hindu rule.

To what period the subjection of the old Dravidian stock to the superior civilization of the Aryans dates back, or in what manner it was continued, there is little as yet to show. All that is actually known is that at some very remote period Aryan Hinduism was imported into Southern India by Brahmans from the north, who established it in the first place probably by force, and whose descendants have ever since maintained the claims of their sacred caste to a position of religious and social pre-eminence even greater than that which any other Brahmans of the present day have succeeded in retaining. Nowhere else in India does the Brahman, as such, wield the power and a.s.sert the prerogatives which the Namputri Brahman enjoys on the Malabar coast. Even the Maharajahs of Travancore, who by birth belong to the Kshatrya or warrior caste, have to be "born again" by a peculiar and costly ceremony into the superior caste before they ascend the throne, and one sept of the Namputri Brahmans successfully exacts in the person of the head of the Azhvancheri family recognition of its spiritual overlords.h.i.+p by personal homage from the Maharajah once in every six years. Nothing, perhaps, conveys more graphically the extraordinary sanct.i.ty which attaches to the Brahman caste than the uncompromising manner in which all along the Malabar coast they have enforced and maintained the laws of ceremonial "pollution." Nowhere else have such stringent rules been enacted to fix the precise distance at which the bodily presence of a member of the lower castes is held to defile the sacred person of the Brahman. A Bazar may approach, but must not touch him; a Chogan may not approach him within 24 feet, nor a Kanisan within 36, nor a Pulayan within 64, nor a Nayadi within 72 feet. Equally definite and elaborate are the manifold restrictions on marriage, commensality, occupation, food, ceremonial observances and personal conduct which affect the mutual relations not only between the different castes but also between the innumerable sub-castes into which the higher castes especially have in turns split up. The laws which govern marriage, descent, and inheritance amongst the more important castes throw a peculiarly interesting light on the archaic type of society which has survived in Southern India. Under the matriarchal system of _Manumakkathayam_, which on the Malabar coast obtains to the present day, descent is traced only through the female line. The male member of the family inherits, but he does so only as the son of a female member of the family through whom he may justly claim kins.h.i.+p, or, to put it in another form, a man's natural heir is not his son, or his brother's son, or the descendant of a common male ancestor, but his sister's, or his sister's daughter's son, or the descendant of a common female ancestress. In the event of failure of heirs through the female line, adoption is permissible, but the adoption must be of females, through whose subsequent offspring the line of natural descent may be carried on. With this ancient system are bound up forms of matrimonial union and tenure of property into the complicated and peculiar nature of which I need not enter here.

In the wild hill countries weird remnants of the most primitive races still survive that have not yet been brought within the pale of Hinduism, and here and there a sprinkling of Mahomedans remains as a reminder of the shortlived incursions of Moslem conquerors from the north. But ninety per cent. of the population consists of Hindus, and the social and religious supremacy of Hinduism has never been seriously a.s.sailed. Nowhere has H