dge spanning the river. By it old India,
self-centred, exclusive, introspective, was brought into the modern
world; compelled, one might say, by these great spans to admit the
modern world and its conveniences, in spite of protest that the railway
bridge would pollute the sacred stream. Crossing the bridge, our eyes
are fixed on the outstanding feature of Benares--city of hundreds of
Hindu temples. What is it? Not a Hindu temple, but a splendid Mahomedan
mosque whose minarets overlook the Hindu city, calling the city of
Hindus to the worship of Allah. For the site of that mosque, the Moghul
emperor Aurangzeb ruthlessly cleared away a magnificent temple most
sacred to the Hindus. Concerning another famous Hindu temple in the same
city, listen to the Autobiography of another earlier Moghul emperor,
Jahangir. "It was the belief of these people of hell [the Hindus] that a
dead Hindu laid before the idol would be restored to life, if in his
life he had been a worshipper there.... I employed a confidential person
to ascertain the truth, and as I justly supposed, the whole was detected
to be an impudent imposture.... Throwing down the temple which was the
scene of this imposture, with the very same materials I erected on the
spot the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at
Benares, and with God's blessing it is my desire ... to fill it full of
true believers." These things I write, not to hold up to condemnation
these Moghul rulers, but to point out by contrast the voluntary
character of the influence during the British and Christian period. For
there is in India a grander interest still than that of the British
political organisation, namely, the peaceful gradual transformation of
the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, of each individual of
the millions of India.

[Sidenote: The nineteenth century in India--a conflict of ideas]

The real history of the past century in India has been the conflict and
commingling of ideas, a Homeric struggle, renewed in the nineteenth
century, between the gods of Asia and Europe. Sometimes the shock of
collision has been heard, as when by Act of Legislature, in 1829, Suttee
or widow-burning was put down, and, in 1891, the marriage of girls under
twelve; or when by order of the Executive, the sacred privacy of Indian
houses was violated in well-meant endeavours to stay the plague [1895-],
great riots ensuing; or when an Indian of social standing has joined the
Ch