The pride of conquest is the bane of all Mohammedan societies sprung from Northern Asia, and the Mohammedans of India form no exception. The Moguls never condescended to trade, but either settled on the land or took service, civil or military, under government; and their descendants are still swayed by the same proud instincts. Their misfortunes in India came upon them in successive waves. Forced by the Mahratta wars into an alliance with the East India Company, the Mogul Emperors became early dependent on these; and with the gradual absorption of the Delhi Monarchy, the exclusive privilege of rule departed from the Mohammedan caste--not all at once, but by degrees as new regulations were enacted and a new system introduced. The first to suffer were the landowners. By a certain fiscal measure, known as the “resumptions,” requiring all holders of lands to show their title deeds, the Mohammedans, who often held by prescription rather than by written grant, lost largely of their estates, and so were reduced to poverty. Next, the military services were in great degree cut off for them by the extinction of the native armies. And, lastly, the Act, changing the official language from Persian and Hindustani to English, took from them their still leading position in the civil employment. The Mohammedans had up to this more than held their own with the Hindus, as Hindustani was their vernacular, and Persian the language of their classics; but in English they were at a distinct disadvantage, for that was already the language of commerce, and so of the educated Hindus. Nor could English be learned except at the secular schools, to which Mohammedans were averse from sending their sons as tending to irreligion. The sources, therefore, of their employment were on every side curtailed, and a growing poverty has been ever since the natural result. The military revolt of 1857, which in Oude and at Delhi assumed a specially Mohammedan aspect, completed their disfavour with the English Government, and with it their material decline.
At the same time, owing to circumstances which I have never heard fully explained, it is an admitted fact that numerically the Mohammedans of Northern India have been and are a rapidly increasing body. This may have been due at times to extensions of British territory, or to conversion among the lower castes of Hindus, or to other causes; but it is certain that, whereas in old calculations the Indian Mohammedans were placed roughly at thirty millions, and more recently by Dr. Hunter at forty millions, they are now by the last census acknowledged to number fifty millions of souls, although the increase of the general population of India has been not at all in like proportion. With regard to their actual position, therefore, we are faced with the unsatisfactory phenomenon in Northern India of a vast community growing yearly more numerous, and at the same time less prosperous; of a community owning the instincts and the traditions of administration excluded yearly more and more from the administration; and of a community which has good grounds for tracing its misfortunes to the unfavourable conditions imposed upon them by the Imperial Government. The Mohammedans of Northern India, there is no denying it, are restless and dissatisfied, and the only question is in what form their repressed energy, fired by misfortune and threatened with despair, is likely to find its vent. It may be in two ways--for their own and the general good, or for their own and the general harm; and I believe that at the present moment it lies largely within the power of those who rule India to guide it to the former and turn it from the latter.