Part 7 (1/2)

The Theosophists, it should be noted, do not figure as such in the Census. Indian Christians, Brahmas, and [=A]ryas have all taken up a definite new position in respect of religion, and ticket themselves as such; the Theosophists are now at least mainly the apologists of things as they are, and require no name to differentiate themselves.

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW MAHOMEDANS

[Sidenote: The national anti-British feeling not manifested among Mahomedans.]

[Sidenote: Mahomedan religious movements.]

The Mahomedans, the other great religious community of India,[59] have been far less stirred by the new era than the Hindus, whom hitherto we have been chiefly considering. Only a small number of Mahomedans belong to the professional cla.s.s, so that modern education and the awakening have not reached Mahomedans in the same degree as Hindus. Quite outnumbered also by Hindus, they identify themselves politically with the British rather than with the Hindus, so that as a body they do not support the Congress, the great Indian Political a.s.sociation, and have no anti-British consciousness. Mahomedan solidarity is strong enough, but it is religious not national, and so it is only in the religious sphere that we find the new era telling upon Mahomedans. Two small religious movements may be noted curiously parallel to the [=A]rya and Br[=a]hma movements among Hindus, and suggesting the operation of like influences.

[Sidenote: The Wahabbi movement a.n.a.logous to [=A]ryaism.]

As the [=A]ryas preach a return to the pure original Hinduism of the Vedas, the first Mahomedan movement inculcates a return to the pure original Mahomedanism of the Koran. In particular, it urges a casting off of the Hindu customs and superst.i.tions that the Indian converts to Mahomedanism have frequently retained,--the offerings to the dead, for example. In the first instance, the movement came from a seventeenth century Arabian sect, the Wahabbis, but the movement reached India only about the year 1820, and therefore is a feature of the period we are surveying. The movement belongs specially to Bengal and the United Provinces north-west of Bengal, and is known by a variety of local names, Wahabbi and other. Significant, as supporting what has been said regarding the absence of anti-British feeling among present-day Mahomedans, is the fact that in the first stages of the Wahabbi movement, both in Eastern and Western Bengal, the duty of war upon infidels--on the British and the Hindus in this case--was a prominent doctrine of the crusade. In Mahomedan language, India was _Daru-l-harb_ or a Mansion of War. In these later years, on the contrary, it is generally recognised by Mahomedans that India under the British rule is not _Daru-l-harb_, but _Daru-l-Islam_, or a Mansion of Islamism, in which war on infidels is not inc.u.mbent.[60] It may be noted that the decree, recently issued from Mecca, that British territory is Daru-l-Islam, can only refer to India.

[Sidenote: The Aligarh movement a.n.a.logous to Brahmaism.]

Exactly like the Brahmas, the other new Mahomedan sect, in the modern rational spirit, have refined away their faith to a theism or deism purged of the supernatural. Mahomed's inspiration and miracles are rejected. These represent the modern rationalising spirit in religion; reason is their standard, and ”reason alone is a sufficient guide.”

According to Sir Syed Ahmad, founder of the movement, ”Islam is Nature, and Nature Islam.” Hence the sect is sometimes called the Naturis,[61]

or followers of _Natural_ Religion, the adoption of the English word identifying them again with the Br[=a]hmas, who are essentially the outcome of English education and Christian influence among Hindus. The Naturis, the modernised Mahomedans, have as their headquarters the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in the United Provinces. It ought to be said that they also claim to be going back to pure original Mahomedanism before it was corrupted by the ”Fathers” of Islam.

CHAPTER XIII

HINDU DOCTRINES--HOW THEY CHANGE

”As men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world advances. Society rests upon them; mighty revolutions spring from them; inst.i.tutions crumble before their onward march.”

--_Extract from Mr. Kiddle, an American writer, which occurs in a letter ”received” by Madame Blavatsky from Koot Humi in Thibet_.

[Sidenote: Will the new religious organisations survive?]

The four new religious organisations described in the preceding chapters may or may not survive--who can tell? What would they become, or what would become of them, in the event, say, of the great nations of Europe issuing from some deadly conflict so balanced that India and the East had to be let alone, entirely cut off? The Indian Christian Church, hardly yet acclimatised so far as it is the creation of modern efforts, would she survive? The English sweet-pea, sown in India, produced its flowers, but not at first any vigorous self-propagating seed. The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j, graft of West on East, and still sterile as an intellectual coterie, how would it fare, cut off from its Western nurture? The [=A]rya Sam[=a]j--what, in that event, would be her resistance to the centripetal force that we have noted in her blind patriotism? The reactionary Theosophists--after the provocative action had ceased--what of them? Would not the Indian jungle, which they are trying to reduce to a well-ordered garden of indigenous fruits, speedily lapse to jungle again? We shall not attempt to answer our own questions directly, but proceed to the second part of our programme sketched on p.

122. How far then have Christian and modern religious ideas been _naturalised_ in New India, whether within the new religious organisations or without? Whatever the fate of the organisations, these naturalised ideas might be expected to survive.

[Sidenote: Modification of doctrines.]

[Sidenote: Elements of Christianity being naturalised in India--three.]

We recall the statements made on ample authority in an earlier chapter, that certain aspects of Christianity are attracting attention in India and proving themselves possessed of inherent force and attractiveness.

These, the dynamical elements of Christianity, were specially the idea of G.o.d the Father, the person of Jesus Christ, and the Christian conception of the Here and Hereafter. For although Hinduism declares a social boycott against any Hindu who transports his person over the sea to Europe, within India itself the Hindu mind is in close contact with such modern religious ideas. The wall built round the garden will not shut out the crows. Indeed, like the ancient Athenian, the modern Hindu takes the keenest interest in new religious ideas.

To comprehend the impression that such new religious ideas are making, we must realise in some measure the background upon which they are cast, both that part of it which the new ideas are superseding and the remainder which const.i.tutes their new setting and gives them their significance. In brief, what is the present position of India in regard to religious belief; and in particular, what are the prevailing beliefs about G.o.d?

[Sidenote: Indian beliefs about G.o.d--Polytheists; Theists; Pantheists.]

A rough cla.s.sification of the theological belief of the Hindus of the present day would be--the mult.i.tude are polytheists; the new-educated are monotheists; the brahmanically educated are professed pantheists.