Page:The Indian Musalmans.djvu/15

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THE THREEFOLD ASPECT OF THE CASE.
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Traitors' Camp on our Frontier; and to elect, once and for all, whether he shall play the part of a devoted follower of Islám, or of a peaceable subject of the Queen. In order to enable the Muhammadans to decide these points, they have consulted not only the leading Doctors of their Law in India, but they have gone as far as Mecca itself. The obligation of the Indian Musalmáns to rebel or not rebel, hung for some months on the deliberations of three priests in the Holy City of Arabia.

I propose to exhibit this spirit of unrest among our Musalmán subjects in the threefold form which it has assumed. I shall briefly narrate the events which led to the settlement of a Rebel Colony on our Frontier, and lay before the reader a few of the chronic disasters in which it has involved the British Power. In my second chapter I shall explain the treasonable organization by which the Rebel Camp has drawn unfailing supplies of money and men from the interior Districts of the Empire. I shall then unfold the legal discussions to which this anomalous state of things has given rise,—discussions which disclose the Muhammadan masses eagerly drinking in the poisoned teachings of the Apostles of Insurrection, while a small minority anxiously seeks to get rid of the duty to rebel by ingenious interpretations of the Sacred Law. But if I were to end here, I should have only told half the truth. The Musalmáns of India are, and have been for many years, a source of chronic danger to the British Power in India. For some reason or other they hold aloof from our system, and the changes in which the more flexible Hindus have cheerfully acquiesced, are regarded by them as deep personal wrongs. I propose, therefore, in my fourth chapter, to inquire into the grievances of the Muhammadans under English Rule; to