BENGAL. new
their
Their ancient
faith.
rites
289
and modes of
religious thought
reasserted themselves with an intensity that could not be suppressed,
monotheism almost flickered out Hinduism. A local writer, speaking
until the fierce white light of Semitic
amid the from
fuliginous exhalations of
personal
acquaintance with the
Musalman peasantry in the own day, stated that not
northern Districts of Lower Bengal in our
one
in ten could recite
constant repetition
Muhammadans.
is
He
of the ceremonies of
of
its
whose good which observes none
the brief and simple kalmd or creed,
a matter of unconscious habit with
described them as a
its faith,
which
is
creed, which worships at the
‘
sect
all
ignorant of the simplest formulas shrines
of a rival religion, and
tenaciously adheres to practices which were denounced as the foulest
abominations by its founder.’ Fifty years ago, these sentences would have truly described the Muhammadan peasantry, not only in the all Lower Bengal. In the cities or Musalman nobility and their religious foundations, a few Maulvis of piety and learning calmly carried on the routine of their faith. But the masses of the rural Musalmans had
northern Districts, but throughout
amid the palace
of the
life
relapsed into something low-caste Hindus.
little
better than a
mongrel breed of circumcised
Since then, another of those religious awakenings
so characteristic of India has passed over the
Muhammadans
of Bengal.
wandered from District to District, calling on the people to return to the true faith, and denouncing God’s wrath on the indifferent and unrepentant. A great body of the Bengali Musalmans have purged themselves of the taint of Hinduism, and shaken off the yoke of the ancient social rites. This Muhammadan revival has had a threefold effect in Bengal religious, social, and political. It has stimulated the religious instinct among an impressionable people, and produced an earnest desire to cleanse the worship of God and His Prophet from idolatry. Its stern rejection of ancient superstitions has also widened the social gulf between the Muhammadans and the Hindus. Fifty years ago the Bengali Musalmans were simply a recognised caste, less widely separated from the lower orders of the Hindus than the latter were from the Kulin Brahmans. There were certain essential points of difference, of a doctrinal sort, between the Hindu and Muhammadan villager but they had a great many rural customs and even religious rites in common. The Muhammadan husbandman theoretically recognised the one Semitic God ; but in a country subject to floods, famines, the devastations of banditti, and the ravages of wild beasts, he would have deemed it foolish to neglect the Hindu festivals in honour of Krishna and Durga. Now, however, the peasantry no longer look to their gods, but to the officer in charge of the District, for protection and when he fails them, instead of offering VOL. II. T Itinerant preachers, generally from the north, have
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