gs to social traditions and religious superstitions of
which their male belongings have already been taught to recognise the
evils. In this respect Mahomedan domination has helped to strengthen the
forces of resistance inherent to Hinduism.

On the other hand, Mahomedan domination has left behind it a deep line
of religious cleavage, deepest in the north, which was the seat of
Mahomedan power, but extending to almost every part of India. Sixty-six
millions of Indians out of three hundred millions are still Mahomedans,
and though time has in a large measure effaced the racial differences
between the original Mahomedan conquerors and the indigenous populations
converted to their creed, the religious antagonism between Islam and
Hinduism, though occasionally and temporarily sunk in a sense of common
hostility to alien rulers who are neither Mahomedans nor Hindus, is
still one of the most potent factors not only in the social but in the
political life of India, both indelibly moulded from times immemorial by
the supreme force of religion. We have a pale reflection of that sort of
antagonism at our own doors in the bitterness between Protestants and
Roman Catholics in Ulster. All over India, Mahomedans and Hindus alike
remember the centuries of Mahomedan domination, the latter with the
bitterness bred of the long oppression that struck down their gods and
mutilated their shrines, the former with the unquenched pride and
unquenchable hope of a fierce faith which will yet, they believe, make
the whole world subject to Allah, the one God, and Mahomed, his one
Prophet.

CHAPTER IV

BRITISH RULE UNDER THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

The basic fact which has governed the whole evolution of British rule in
India is that we went there in the first instance as traders, and not as
conquerors. For trade meant co-operation. There could be no successful
trading for British traders unless they found Indian traders ready to
co-operate with them in trade. That we ever went to India at all was due
to the national instincts of an insular people accustomed to go down to
the sea in ships and to trade with distant lands. When the rise of great
Mahomedan states on the southern and eastern shores of the
Mediterranean, and finally the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks,
blocked the overland trade routes from Christendom into the Orient, our
forefathers determined to emulate the example of the Spaniards and
Portuguese and open up new ocean