ENGLISH RULE IN INDIA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1746, 21 January 1888, Page 4

ENGLISH RULE IN INDIA

LOYALTY OF THB MUSSULMANS

A Native of India thus writes m the 11 Nineteenth Oentnry » : —

England has m India some 50,000,000 of Moisolman subjicta, including m their mass the moat warlike of the native races, upon whom Eagland must chiefly rely to Soil bao.k the tide of Russian aggMssion; aad England Is not likely to forget that it was these very races who, In 1857, at the bidding of their CUliph, the Sultan Abdul Medjtd, gaVe their nnited aupp rt to the British connection at that supreme moment when their defection might have obß* the life of every white m»n and woman m India. My late father fre. qaenily assured me that the whole iuflaence af the Caliphate was used most narenalttingly from Constantinople to. pheik the pread of the mutiny, to rally to the EogUshMandards the Mussulman races oi India, and m this way the d«bt Which Turkey owed to Great Britain for British aupport fn the Crimea wsi paid In full. And the time may again come when the da trot lot of the Mussulmans to their Caliph and the shrine of St Bo6a may not be law neoeasary to Great Brtalnihanin 1857 lam aware that ia the Western World the leliglous sentiment of nations is uo longer considered a i iraporlant faotor m politico, but it would not be wise to raeard any aujti maxim as applicable to the Eiat. The nyriads who to-day m tbe hottest regions m the woild keep for an entire mouth each year the fact of Ramadan— entire abstinence from fond and water between unnrlso and sunset whiJe continuing thulr Toll diily fo'l— the religious zial that has endured this trial ■teadftstly for more thin 1000 years at tbe bidding of the Prophet, is not likely to look on unmoved whe i his shine at Mecca and his tomb at Medina hivft bocome the objective point of foreign aggression. Tne enlightored classes m Jcdia r»cognlse th*fc the rule of Englaud has secured us .gainst incessant internal trifp, iovolving a perpetual exhaustion of the recourses of our community, end a'ao that by a just administration of rq'isl Jaw.n a very «amcient measure of individual liberty is now our brghtrlght. Wo havo hat, as some think, our nstlonal liberties, which after all were merely tho liberties, ecjiyed by de-p-ts to compel th> ir subjacta to maka *»» on one another ; thig so-called " liberty ia deuled us ; but more than 240,000 000 of us havo now th« right lo live our own lires on what line* wo pkaie •nd to be subject only to the control of a known, a written law ; and this bele« so tie oae further inducement needed to keep tbe Mohammedan milhYn« for ever ■teadfast In the British connection is tbe bond of a religious faith and a cherished oonvlolion that, being the loyal oubjeofs of the Great White Empress, we are therefore the strongest link ia the natural I ] MlianoM between our Queen and our ' Oallph, between tbe temporal power m * : m India and the spiritual power that i ttdittN (rcQ tbe fi^phorw, \ !