fellow-believers in the central article of his monotheistic faith, the
unity of God. We, too, in his eyes are a "People of the Book," though
our Book is not the Koran, but the Bible, of which he does not
altogether deny the sacred character. Other things also often draw him
towards the Englishman. The Englishman to him represents a ruling race,
and to such an one he feels that he who also represents a once ruling
race can yield a more willing allegiance than to any one of a race which
he himself ruled over. Equally his fighting and his sporting instincts
also appeal to many Englishmen. Hence both Englishmen and Mahomedans in
India frequently feel that they have more in common than either of them
has with the Hindu. The Mahomedans, moreover, consisting very largely of
the most virile races in India, have always furnished some of the best
contingents of the British Indian Army. Their loyalty has never wavered
except during the Mutiny, and modern Indian writers of the Nationalist
school are themselves at pains to show that, though the mutineers
rallied round the feeble descendant of the Moghul Emperors as the only
available figurehead, and many Mahomedans proved themselves good
"patriots," it was Hindus like Nana Sahib and Tantia Tope and the Ranee
of Jhansi who were the real heroes and moving spirits of that "War of
Indian Independence."

In our day the British connexion has had no stouter and more convinced
supporter than the late Sir Syed Ahmad, than whom no Mahomedan has
deserved or enjoyed greater influence over his Indian co-religionists.
Not only does his educational work, based on the English public school
system, live after him in the college which he founded at Aligarh, but
also his political faith which taught the vast majority of educated
Mahomedans to regard their future as bound up with the preservation of
British rule. The revival of Hinduism has only served to strengthen that
faith by bringing home to the Mahomedans the value of British rule as a