own way. From the nationalist
ranks now arose the challenging slogan: "Bandemataram!" ("Hail,
Motherland!")[194]

The outstanding feature about this early Indian nationalism was that it
was a distinctively Hindu movement. The Mohammedans regarded it with
suspicion or hostility. And for this they had good reasons. The ideal of
the new nationalists was Aryan India, the India of the "Golden Age."
"Back to the Vedas!" was a nationalist watchword, and this implied a
veneration for the past, including a revival of aggressive Brahminism.
An extraordinary change came over the _intelligentsia_. Men who, a few
years before, had proclaimed the superiority of Western ideas and had
openly flouted "superstitions" like idol-worship, now denounced
everything Western and reverently sacrificed to the Hindu gods. The
"sacred soil" of India must be purged of the foreigner.[195] But the
"foreigner," as these nationalists conceived him, was not merely the
Englishman; he was the Mohammedan as well. This was stirring up the past
with a vengeance. For centuries the great Hindu-Mohammedan division had
run like a chasm athwart India. It had never been closed, but it had
been somewhat veiled by the neutral overlordship of the British Raj. Now
the veil was torn aside, and the Mohammedans saw themselves menaced by a
recrudescence of militant Hinduism like that which had shattered the
Mogul Empire after the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb two hundred years
before. The Mohammedans were not merely alarmed; they were infuriated as
well. Remembering the glories of the Mogul Empire just as the Hindus did
the glories of Aryan India, they considered themselves the rightful
lords of the land, and had no mind to fall under the sway of despised
"Idolaters." The Mohammedans had no love for the British, but they hated
the Hindus, and they saw in the British Raj a bulwark against the
potential menace of hereditary enemies who outnumbered them nearly five
to one. Thus the Mohammedans denounced Hindu nationalism and proclaimed
their loyalty to the Raj. To be sure, the Indian Moslems were also
affected by the general spirit of unrest which was sweeping over the
East. They too felt a quickened sense of self-consciousness. But, being
a minority in India, their feelings took the form, not of territorial
"patriotism," but of those more diffused sentiments, Pan-Islamism and
Pan-Islamic nationalism, which we have already discussed.[196]

Early Indian nationalism was not