Hinduism, on the other hand, is the very antithesis of all this. At first, this was not so. But its rigid pantheism gradually necessitated manifestations of the divine, in order that faith and devotion might be made possible. And, in later centuries, the doctrine of incarnation was accepted as a haven of rest to the Hindu mind and soon became a wild passion of its soul. There is no other people on earth who have carried the doctrine of incarnation (Avatar) to such excess of imaginings as to create such abundantly grotesque and fanciful appearances of their many divinities. Normally, then, the Mohammedan faith, at its very core, must be unsatisfying and even repulsive to the tropical Hindu mind. It was brought here at the point of the sword; and, for centuries, it was the faith of a ruling power whose custom was to tax heavily all people who did not conform, outwardly at least, to the State religion.
After Islam had become established and secure in its success in India, when it could relax its grip upon the sword and relinquish something of the spirit of intolerance which characterized it, it had to meet and cope with a greater foe than that of the battle-field. Hinduism has always exercised a great benumbing influence upon all faiths which have come into contact and conflict with it. It has insinuated itself into the mind of the conquerors and laid its palsied hand upon every department of religious thought and life. So that, after a few centuries of prosperity in India, Islam began to forget its narrow bigotry and uncompromising severity and fraternized more or less with the religion of the country. Little by little a latitudinarianism crept in, which found its culmination in that remarkable man, Akbar the Great, who entertained the teachers of all faiths and encouraged a fearless discussion of their respective merits. Dr. Wherry writes: "The tolerance of Akbar, who not only removed the poll-tax from all his non-Moslem subjects, but who established a sort of parliament of religions, inviting Brahmans, Persian Sufis, Parsee fire-worshippers, and Jesuit priests to freely discuss in his presence the special tenets of their faith and practice, was remarkable. He went farther, and promulgated an eclectic creed of his own and constituted himself a sort of priest-king in which his own dictum should override everything excepting the letter of the Quran. His own creed is set forth in the following words of India's greatest poet, Abul Fazl:—
"O God, in every temple I see those who see thee, and, in every tongue that is spoken, thou art praised.
Polytheism and Islam grope after thee,
Each religion says, 'Thou art one, without equal,'
Be it mosque, men murmur holy prayer; or church, the bells ring, for love of thee;
Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque:
But thee only I seek from fane to fane.
Thine elect know naught of heresy or orthodoxy, whereof neither stands behind the screen of thy truth.
Heresy to the heretic,—dogma to the orthodox,—
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller."[8]
[8] "Islam and Christianity," p. 68.
This religious cosmopolitanism developed into what has been called an "Eclectic Pantheism," which welcomed all men and satisfied no one.
Even though Aurangzeeb tried to stem this tide of liberalism and to rehabilitate the intolerance and cruelty of ancient Islam, his effort was not only unsuccessful, but was partly instrumental in bringing on the downfall of the Empire. And the faith of Mohammed in India has revealed, ever since, the sickly pallor and want of vigour which tropical life and contact with Hinduism necessarily entail.
When the government of this land ceased to be Mohammedan, and the sceptre passed into the hands of the British, whose glory it has been, for centuries, to protect its subjects from the bloody hand of intolerance and to vouchsafe unto all not only the blessed boon of Pax Britannica, but also the inexpressible right and privilege of religious liberty,—then passed away, never to return, we hope, from this motherland of tolerance, the ghastly sceptre of bigotry and fanaticism. And thus Islam ceased to be enforced and propagated by the strong arm of law and by the pointed argument of sword and spear of the legions. It has, since then, enjoyed in this land a free and an open field for the exercise of its powers of persuasion. But its increase has not been marked. And what there has been of progress has been owing to its other characteristics, which we will mention later.
Thus the faith of the Arabian prophet has lost, in India, not only its vigour, but also its prestige and purity, by contact with the lower faiths of the land, especially with the ancestral faith of India. From that religion it has taken unto itself many of the base superstitions, and not a few of the idolatrous practices, which have characterized it.
Indeed, the great mass of the converts from Hinduism, and their descendants, have had but a distorted conception of the lofty faith of Mohammed, which they have unequally yoked with their ancient superstitions and errors.
The Indian census of 1901 tells us how the pure monotheism of Mohammed has been debased by contact with worship at human shrines: "We have seen in the case of Hinduism that the belief in one supreme God, in whom are vested all ultimate powers, is not incompatible with the belief in Supernatural Beings who exercise considerable influence over worldly affairs, and whose influence may be obtained or averted by certain ceremonies. Similarly, in the case of Islam, while the masses have, on the whole, a clearer idea of the unity and omnipotence of God than the ordinary Hindu has, they also have a firm belief in the value of offerings at certain holy places for obtaining temporal blessings. Thus the shrine of Saiyad Salar, at Bahraich, is resorted to, both by Hindus and Mussulmans, if a wife is childless, or if family quarrels cannot be composed. Diseases may be cured by a visit to the shrine of Shaik Saddo, at Amroha in Moradabad; while for help in legal difficulties Shah Mina's dargah at Lucknow is renowned. Each of these has its appropriate offering,—a long embroidered flag for the first, a cock for the second, and a piece of cloth for the third. Other celebrated shrines are those of Bahauddin Madar Shah at Nakkanpur in the Cawnpore district, and of Ala-uddin Sabir at Piran Kaliar in Saharanpur." The same writer, in his report concerning Bengal, says: "The unreformed Mohammedans of the lower and uneducated classes are deeply infected with Hindu superstitions, and their knowledge of the faith they profess seldom extends beyond the three cardinal doctrines of the Unity of God, the mission of Mohammed, and the truth of the Quran; and they have a very faint idea of the differences between their religion and that of the Hindus. Sometimes they believe that they are descended from Abel (Habil), while the Hindus owe their origin to Cain (Kabil). Kabil, they say, killed Habil and dug a grave for him with a crow's beak."