edans, 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 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 an