In the year 1857, our passion for visiting upon people the crimes which we thought they were bound by their tenets to commit ran riot throughout the north of India. Our proverbial tendency to give a dog a bad name and hang him was most barbarously and literally exemplified in the case of the unfortunate Moslem. After the capture of Delhi, every member of a class of religious enthusiasts named Ghazees were hung, as it were, _ex officio_; and it is to be feared that a vindictive and irresponsible judge, who plumed himself upon having a good eye for a Ghazee, sent to the gallows more than one individual, whose guilt consisted in looking as if he belonged to a sect which, probably, was hostile to our religion. It would have been equally humane and logical if the ministers of Queen Elizabeth had burned as a Jesuit every one who was bald on the crown of his head. The city of Patna, where the Mahomedan element was large and influential, was the favourite bugbear of the Calcutta alarmists. Happily for them, the officer in charge of that city shared their suspicions and prejudices, and afforded them inexpressible delight by discovering secret meetings, by intercepting treasonable correspondence, and by arresting leading bankers on the charge of harbouring mutineers. And yet, while tumult and massacre were rife in the great towns of Oude and the North-west, the disturbances in Patna were confined to one partial _émeute_, and one unpremeditated murder. At length the Governor of Bengal, tired of requesting to be informed why people had been executed in an irregular manner; sick of listening to the complaints of shopkeepers who were not allowed to leave their houses after nine at night, and disciples of Mahomedan professors whose studies were interrupted by the incarceration of their teachers, superseded the Commissioner, and appointed a successor, who at once gave his confidence to an able official of the Mahomedan persuasion. From that day forward Patna was as quiet as Madras.
No act of fidelity or self-sacrifice could exempt a Mussulman from the hatred and distrust of a large section of Anglo-Indian society. Syed Azimoodeen, whom Lord William Bentinck had thought worthy of his friendship and esteem, was among the defenders of the house at Arrah. The besiegers had set a price on his head, and had offered to spare the lives of the little garrison if he and one other were surrendered to their vengeance. As a reward for his loyalty, he became for some months subsequently the popular theme of abuse in the Anglo-Saxon papers. "Is it, or is it not the fact," so writes a correspondent, "that Syed Azimoodeen supplied the mutineers with information as to the hiding-places of English fugitives? Is it, or is it not the fact that Coer Sing gave particular injunctions to the sepoys, that, when the house was stormed, Syed Azimoodeen should be excepted from the slaughter?" This production proved too strong for the digestion even of the constant reader of a Calcutta journal. A few days afterwards there appeared a communication inquiring whether it was or was not the fact that Coer Sing had given particular orders that the bullets fired against the house should not hit Azimoodeen, and that, when the mine exploded, he should be dropped on to a feather-bed placed in the middle of the compound. But who can wonder at any excess of folly and ferocity in a publication which could stoop to insert a letter recommending the rack for "respectable Mahomedans?" When there were some hopes that an overflow of the river would complete the desolation of our Gangetic provinces, an Englishman was found inhuman enough to put these words on paper: "We accorded great favours to the rascally Mussulmans, but the rains are acting so as to nullify all our indulgences."