“1st March.—We left India to-day, being exactly the anniversary of our leaving Egypt two years ago, and we are going home with something of the same vague hopes and fears. We have only taken our tickets to Suez, but I do not mean to land there, as it would only give them a triumph to have me arrested, and I can strike them a severer blow by moderation.
“As we were leaving Government House, Professor Monier Williams and his wife arrived. I had some talk with him about the things that interest me, and he invited me to come and stay with him at Oxford, and give a lecture on Mohammedan education. This I promised to do.
“And so we leave India, well satisfied with what we have done, but not a little glad now it is over.”
CHAPTER XI
AN APOLOGY FOR FAILURE
Such was my Indian tour of 1883-1884. It will be rightly asked by those who have read thus far how it came about that I wasted so great an opportunity for good as then seemed open to me, and did not return the following year, or indeed in any subsequent year, to carry out the mission which appeared marked out for me. I often ask myself the same question. Looking back at the position I held for a moment with Hindus, Mohammedans, and Parsis alike, I am filled with regret that in the sequel I should have put it to so little purpose. If I had had the perseverance to pursue the course I had begun, and had followed it out unflinchingly to its full results, I believe that I might have brought about great permanent good for the people whose interests I had espoused, and perhaps with the Mohammedans encouraged them to a real reformation, social and intellectual, if not political. To do this, however, it would have been necessary for me to devote the whole of my life to this special work, and to give up every other interest which I had at heart and all my private affairs at home. It would have required something more than sympathy to bring me to the point; and I suppose my mind lacked the impetus of a full faith, without which complete devotion to a cause more than half religious could not be.
Nevertheless I left Bombay with an entire intention of returning the following winter, and of making a new tour for the collection of the funds necessary for the proposed Mohammedan University. I had already received promises of over £20,000, the greater part being the intended gift of my friend the Rajah Amir Hassan, of Lucknow; and, with the patronage of the Nizam and Lord Ripon’s approval, the accomplishment of at least this part of my plans seemed already within my reach. If it was frustrated, the fault, though partly mine, was not wholly so. A series of misfortunes happened in the course of the year which combined to defeat it, and which nothing but very persistent determination on my part could have sufficed to overcome.
In the first place Lord Ripon, though he had established a state of things at Hyderabad favourable to reform as far as the native elements of the government were concerned, had not been able to impose his will altogether on the Calcutta Foreign Office. Trevor, indeed, left soon after, but the personnel of the Residency at Hyderabad, in spite of all that had passed, was not thoroughly changed. Cordery was allowed to remain on in power, and, as we had foreseen, the old intrigues were quietly renewed. The young minister, Laik Ali, was left without advice of any profitable kind by the Resident, and through his youth and inexperience made mistakes by which his enemies were not slow to profit. The confidence and friendship which had from the outset existed between him and the Nizam were undermined, and both were frustrated in their better intentions, and, in accordance with the time-honoured plan in dealing with native states, were encouraged to neglect their public duties and indulge in a life of pleasure destructive of their more serious energies. Thus the year was not out before it became clear to me, from the reports I received, that the Nizam’s patronage of the university scheme was not one which could be prudently relied on.