Exactly like the Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism purged of the supernatural. Mahomed's inspiration and miracles are rejected. These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion; reason is their standard, and "reason alone is a sufficient guide." According to Sir Syed Ahmad, founder of the movement, "Islam is Nature, and Nature Islam." Hence the sect is sometimes called the Naturis,[61] or followers of Natural Religion, the adoption of the English word identifying them again with the Brāhmas, who are essentially the outcome of English education and Christian influence among Hindus. The Naturis, the modernised Mahomedans, have as their headquarters the
Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in the United Provinces. It ought to be said that they also claim to be going back to pure original Mahomedanism before it was corrupted by the "Fathers" of Islam.
CHAPTER XIII
HINDU DOCTRINES—HOW THEY CHANGE
Will the new religious organisations survive?
The four new religious organisations described in the preceding chapters may or may not survive—who can tell? What would they become, or what would become of them, in the event, say, of the great nations of Europe issuing from some deadly conflict so balanced that India and the East had to be let alone, entirely cut off? The Indian Christian Church, hardly yet acclimatised so far as it is the creation of modern efforts, would she survive? The English sweet-pea, sown in India, produced its flowers, but not at first any vigorous self-propagating seed. The Brāhma Samāj, graft of West on East, and still sterile as an intellectual coterie, how would it fare, cut off from its Western nurture?
The Ārya Samāj—what, in that event, would be her resistance to the centripetal force that we have noted in her blind patriotism? The reactionary Theosophists—after the provocative action had ceased—what of them? Would not the Indian jungle, which they are trying to reduce to a well-ordered garden of indigenous fruits, speedily lapse to jungle again? We shall not attempt to answer our own questions directly, but proceed to the second part of our programme sketched on p. 122. How far then have Christian and modern religious ideas been naturalised in New India, whether within the new religious organisations or without? Whatever the fate of the organisations, these naturalised ideas might be expected to survive.
Modification of doctrines.
Elements of Christianity being naturalised in India—three.
We recall the statements made on ample authority in an earlier chapter, that certain aspects of Christianity are attracting attention in India and proving themselves possessed of inherent force and attractiveness. These, the dynamical elements of Christianity, were specially the idea of God the Father, the person of Jesus Christ, and the Christian conception of the Here and Hereafter. For although Hinduism declares a social boycott against any Hindu who transports his person over the sea to Europe, within India itself the Hindu