It was only after my return to the borderland of Afghanistan and India, and after I had assumed once more native garb and speech, that I began to feel myself an alien among those Europeans and Anglo-Indians with whom I was brought into contact.
For the first time in my life I felt the ghastly meaning of the words “Racial Prejudice,” that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the European and the American the world over, that terrible blight which modern Christianity has forced on the world. And it chilled me to the bone and I wondered….
In Europe I had known many Asiatics who visited the universities there. And we were the equals of the Europeans, the Christians, in intellect and culture, and decidedly their superiors, being Muslim, in cleanliness and courage. We were not only familiar with the European classics which were the basis of their culture, but we were also thoroughly versed in the literature and history of India and Central Asia, things of which they knew less than an average Egyptian donkey-boy. We were polyglots: we had mastered half a dozen European languages, while even a smattering of Arabic or Turki or Chinese was a rare exception amongst them. We all of us knew at least three Asian languages to perfection. And finally we had a practical knowledge of English, French and German political ideals and systems, while to them the name of even such great Asian reformers as Asoka and Akbar and Aurangzeb were absolutely unknown.
In physical strength, virility, power of endurance and recuperation
we were immeasurably their superiors. And we were not picked men, but plain, average Asian gentlemen.
And yet, when I returned to my own land, there was that superior smile, that nasty, patronizing attitude, that insufferable “Holier than Thou” atmosphere about all of them whom I happened to meet.
They made me feel that I was of the East and they of the West; and they tried to make me feel—with no success—that they were the salt of the earth, while the men of my faith and race were but the lowly dung.
Not even the bridge of personal friendship seemed able to span this gulf, this abyss which I could feel more than I could define it; and so I folded my tent and travelled; I studied India from South to North, I visited Siberia, Egypt, Malta, Algeria, Turkey, Tunis, and the Haussa country, wandering in all the lands where East and West rub elbows, and I investigated calmly, I compared without too much bias.
Finally I bent my steps Northward, to see with my own eyes and according to the limits of my own understanding the working of Christian civilization, and to study the dominant Western Faith in the lands where it rules supreme.
I was looking for a bridge with which to span the chasm, and I failed miserably. Christian hypocrisy, Christian intolerance, savage Christian ignorance frustrated me right and left.