day undergoing a fresh process of transformation. Whilst it tends
generally to be reabsorbed into Hinduism, the very remarkable movement
for sinking the old class distinctions--themselves a survival of
caste--and recognizing the equality of all Sikhs, is clearly due to the
influence of the Arya Samaj. The evolution of the Arya Samaj recalls
very forcibly that of Sikhism, which originally, when founded by Nanak
in the early part of the 16th century, was merely a religious and moral,
reform movement, and nevertheless within 50 years developed under Har
Govind into a formidable political and military organization. It is not,
therefore, surprising that some of those who know the Punjab best and
the sterner stuff of which its martial races are made look upon it as a
potentially more dangerous centre of trouble than either the Deccan or
Bengal. One of the most mischievous results of the Aryan propaganda, and
one which may well cause the most immediate anxiety, is the growing
antagonism which it has bred between Hindus and Mahomedans, for the
Mahomedans are convinced that the Arya Samaj is animated with no less
bitter hostility towards Islam than towards British rule.




CHAPTER IX.

THE POSITION OF THE MAHOMEDANS.


Whilst I was at Delhi one of the leading Mahomedans of the old Moghul
capital drove me out one afternoon to the great Mosque which still bears
witness, in the splendour of its surviving fragments quite as much as in
the name it bears, _Kuwwat ul Islam_, or Power of Islam, to the ancient