How far he expected to please God by that statement I do not know. But probably he was quite sincere, for it is impossible to exhaust or caricature the illusions of mankind.
One would like to discover the causes of a certain “quality” (as country people say of gentlefolk) that appears common to nearly all Mohammedans. I have felt it almost equally in Constantinople and other parts of Turkey, in Asia Minor and Crete, in Morocco, and on the West African coast, in Madras, in the North-West Frontier Province, and even in the rather petted luxury of the Mohammedan College at Aligarh. In all these places one finds a similar pleasing gravity of manner, courteous address, and an impression of straightforward dealing, which, perhaps, would be more trustworthy if the Sultan were not a Mohammedan. This gentlemanly manner may exist merely as the heritage of a conquering religion; for in all these countries, as in Eastern Bengal, the Mohammedans have come and stayed as conquerors, and it is easy to acquire fine and aristocratic manners when you carry a sword and the other man does not. But at the back of external behaviour there is a queer mixture of simplicity and shrewdness more difficult to account for. It may arise naturally in a mind reared upon a broad and unquestioned basis of belief, free alike from the confusion of mythologies and the distracting details of useful knowledge. There is a well-known letter, written to a friend of Nineveh Layard by a Turkish Cadi, that exactly expresses the finer side of Mohammedan ignorance. For that reason I quote it in the note below,[43] and when to this disregard of unessential phenomena in earth and sky is added an indifference to the controversies, bare facts, and mechanical actions upon which most of us spend our lives, we may look for a certain simplicity tempered by shrewdness. That even in the Nawab, in spite of his Government loan and boasted powers of design, cookery, and the control of men, I should still have been conscious of both those qualities combined, is a remarkable testimonial to the influence of Islam.
The Temple of Sikhs.
A Mohammedan Mosque.
[Face p. 200.
Owing to these pleasant qualities, so attractive to Englishmen sprung like myself from the public-school, country-house, and villa classes, I have almost invariably found English officers and officials on the side of the Mohammedans where there is any rivalry of race or religion at all. And in Eastern Bengal this national inclination is now encouraged by the Government’s open resolve to retain the Mohammedan support of the Partition by any means in its power. It was against the Hindus only that all the petty persecution of officialdom was directed. It was they who were excluded from Government posts; it was Hindu schools from which Government patronage was withdrawn. When Mohammedans rioted, the punitive police ransacked Hindu houses, and companies of little Gurkhas were quartered on Hindu populations. It was the Hindus who in one place were forbidden to sit on the river bank. Of course, the plea was that only the Hindus were opposed to the Government’s policy of dividing them from the rest of their race, so that they alone needed suppression. And certainly, after what I had seen in the previous four or five years in Macedonia, Central Africa, Russia, and the Caucasus, this kind of persecution might well appear ludicrously small. But it was the beginning of a dangerous road, to which one could not see the end, and the knowledge that our own country was taking that road aggravated the sense of wrong.
It was the same with espionage. Personally I enjoyed being followed by spies wherever I went. I enjoyed it much more than the spies themselves. It was a pleasure to watch the open-hearted stupidity which never left me in doubt as to their purpose, or to look them tranquilly in the face and see their eyes drop in honourable shame. It was a joyful moment when at Serajganj I turned in wrath upon a man who had been following me all day long in the melodramatic disguise of a black shawl and an umbrella, and watched the poor hired worm grovel away, murmuring tearful appeals about superior orders. In that case I was angry because I was visiting the schools—the same over which Sir Bampfylde Fuller resigned—and it seemed to me unfit that the schoolboys should see our Government’s habit of espionage thus illustrated before their faces. But at another place where I arrived in the cold of half-past three in the morning, and found that the telegram to prepare for my arrival had been detained, there was no alloy in the pleasure with which I seized upon the spy detailed to dog me, and compelled him to procure a cart, conduct me to the house where he knew I ought to have been expected, and knock up the sleeping servants to receive me.
When I first landed in Bombay, it appeared to me a little undignified that representatives of the British Government should set police spies to question a Member of Parliament’s chauffeur every morning and evening where he was going or had been, and with whom he had conversed. Of course it made no difference to the Member of Parliament, any more than the delightful spies in Eastern Bengal made any difference to me. But what was a joke to us may be anything but a joke to native Indians who are compelled to live permanently under a system of official surveillance which reads their private letters, detains their telegrams, and hires men to watch their actions. Far worse than the mere annoyance involved is the indignant contempt which our Government thus stores up against itself. Every now and then by such means it may discover the trail of some seditious movement. But the discovery of all the sedition in India would not be worth the loss of reputation to which we expose ourselves by resorting to methods that would exclude a man from any club in our country.