The ordinary assumption that caste in India is an institution peculiar to Hindus is altogether erroneous.

'Caste,' writes Mr. Kitts, 'is not necessarily conterminous with religion. Among the 185 largest castes or tribes in the Punjab, there are only forty-three the members of which belong all of them to the same large religious body. In Bombay and Berár members of the same castes are found, some of whom are Jains, while others are Vaishnava Hindus, and here the difference of religion is not even a bar to intermarriage. Converts to Islam commonly retain their old caste name. A complete list of castes and tribes cannot be confined simply to the Hindu religion.'

Mr. Ibbetson, in his Report on the census in the Punjab, shows how completely it is true that caste is a social and not a religious institution. Conversion to Mohammedanism, for instance, does not necessarily affect the caste of the convert.

This brings me to the general subject of Mohammedanism in India.

In the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, out of a total population of 44,000,000, about 6,000,000 are Mohammedan.

In

There has been much misapprehension about the Indian Mohammedans. We are sometimes warned that there are 50,000,000 of them, many of them disaffected, and we are told of possible dangers to our rule. regard to this matter there are two facts of primary importance. The first is, that among all the countries of India, there are only two in which the Mohammedans are very numerous; the second is, that the larger proportion of these so-called Mohammedans are so ignorant of the religion to which they nominally belong, and so little devoted to any of its tenets, that they might almost

1 Compendium of the Castes and Tribes of India.

as properly be counted among the innumerable classes of Hindus.

Throughout the long strip of country, for the most. part scantily peopled, in the valley of the Indus, below the mountains of Afghánistán and Baluchistán that form the western frontier of India, the great majority of the population has been for many centuries Mohammedan. This tract, varying in breadth to a maximum of about 400 miles, extends some 800 miles, from beyond Pesháwar on the north, through the plains of the Western Punjab and Sindh to the sea. Although within the geographical limits of India, it has no resemblance to any other Indian country. It contains a population of 9,000,000 or 10,000,000, of which between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 are Mohammedan. The dominant races of Patháns and Baluchis are of foreign origin, but the majority of the population consists of the descendants of Hindu or aboriginal tribes, who long ago accepted, more or less, the religion of their conquerors.

In the eastern and richer and more populous parts of the Punjab, Mohammedans, real or nominal, are also numerous, but their faith was never generally adopted. There are between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 of them, descended mostly from converts from Hinduism.

Excepting these countries, on the northern and western frontiers of India, the only great Indian province in which a very large proportion of the population embraced Mohammedanism was Lower Bengal. Out of 36,000,000 people in Bengal Proper, nearly 18,000,000 are Mohammedans. In the castern districts of the delta of the Ganges, and beyond the Brahmaputra to the eastern limits of India, they constitute the great bulk of the agricultural population. Nothing is

known historically of the time or manner in which this religious conversion occurred. But the conversion was nominal rather than real.

Thus, some 31,000,000, or more than three-fourths of the whole number of Mohammedans, are found on the western and eastern borders. In the rest of India, containing 196,000,000 people, there are only 19,000,000 Mohammedans. The progress of the Mohammedan religion in India generally has therefore been far smaller than might be supposed from the bare statement that it is professed by 50,000,000 people, and that progress will seem still smaller when the true character of Indian Mohammedanism is understood.

The great majority of the Mohammedans of India. hardly deserve that name. They differ little from their Hindu neighbours in religion or customs, and they maintain similar distinctions of caste. I will read to you the description given by Mr. Ibbetson of the Mohammedans of the Eastern Punjab :

'The Mussulman Rájput, Gujar, or Jat is, for all social, tribal, political, and administrative purposes, exactly as much a Rájput, Gujar, or Jat as his Hindu brother. His social customs are unaltered, his tribal restrictions are unrelaxed, his rules of marriage and inheritance unchanged; and almost all the difference is that he shaves his scalp-lock and the upper edge of his moustache, repeats the Mohammedan creed in a mosque, and adds the Mussulman to the Hindu wedding-ceremony. local saints and deities still have their shrines, even in villages held wholly by Mussulmans, and are still regularly worshipped by the majority, though the practice is gradually declining. The women especially are offenders in this way, and a Mussulman mother who had not sacrificed to the small-pox goddess would feel that she had wantonly endangered the life of her child. The Hindu family priests are still kept kept up and consulted as of old, and Brahmans are still fed on the usual occasions, and in many cases still officiate at weddings side by side

with the Mohammedan priests. As for superstitions, as distinct from actual worship, they are wholly untouched by the change of faith, and are common to Hindu and Mussulman. A brother officer tells us that he once entered the rest-house of a Mohammedan village in Hissar, and found the headmen refreshing an idol with a new coat of oil, while a Brahman read holy texts alongside. They seemed somewhat ashamed of being caught in the act, but, on being pressed, explained that their Mulla had lately visited them, had been extremely angry in seeing the idol, and had made them bury it in the sand. But now that the Mulla had gone they were afraid of the possible consequences, and were endeavouring to console the god for his rough treatment. The story is at any rate typical of the state of the Mohammedan religion in the villages of the Delhi territory,' 1

In these matters, I may add, the Hindus are ready to meet the Mohammedans more than half way. The Brahmans have no sort of scruple in accepting Mohammedan saints as proper objects of veneration, and nothing is commoner than to see the lower classes of Hindus taking an active part in Mohammedan ceremonies, and beating their breasts at the Moharram like good Mussulmans.

Similar accounts might be given of the agricultural Mohammedans in other Indian countries. There is no more reason to suspect these so-called Mohammedans of disaffection, or to look upon them as a source of possible political danger, than would be the case if they were called Hindus. For the most part they are quiet peasants, the descendants of Hindus, nominally converted. The Mohammedan sovereigns usually treated their subjects, in matters of religion, with great tolerance; but more or less pressure was from time to time brought Hindus to induce them to embrace the faith of the ruling power. This was especially the case in the time.

upon

Report on the Census of 1881 in the Punjab, p. 143.

of Aurangzeb, the most bigoted of the Mohammedan emperors. The change of faith was often little more. than nominal, and took place to an extent just sufficient to save the joint property of the village community from molestation. One section of the brotherhood would become Mohammedan, while the rest remained Hindu. The change of religion had little practical result, nor did it affect the rules of caste or the social life of the community.

There is, of course, in India a large and very important body of Mohammedans of a different type, descended, with little or no admixture of the Hindu element, from former invaders or immigrants, and holding with more or less orthodoxy the tenets of their faith. The Mohammedan population of the towns, whatever may have been its origin, is usually far less Hinduised than that of the country villages. In the North-Western Provinces, only 7 per cent. of the Hindu population live in the towns, while 25 per cent. of the Mohammedans are found there. In the agricultural districts, with a total population of 40,000,000, less than 4,500,000 are Mohammedan, or about 111 among every 1,000 persons; but in the towns, with a total population of 4,250,000 nearly 1,500,000, or one-third of the inhabitants, is Mohammedan. This fact tends to make the political importance of the Mohammedans greater than it would otherwise be. In many of the towns much religious animosity prevails between Mohammedans and Hindus, and this has often led to sanguinary affrays. Among the agricultural population the members of the several creeds, if creeds they can be called, usually live together very peaceably.

When a Mohammedan who has been virtually a Hindu in his customs and religious observances rises in