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 glories of Mahomedan rule in India.

Two or three other Mahomedan gentlemen had come out to meet us, and there, under the shadow of the Kutub Minar, the loftiest and noblest minaret from which the Musulman call to prayer has ever gone forth, we sat in the Alai Darwazah, the great porch of red sandstone and white marble which formed the south entrance to the outer enclosure of the Mosque, and still presents in the stately grandeur of its proportions and the infinite variety and delicacy of its marble lattice work, one of the most perfect monuments of early Mahomedan art, and discussed for upwards of two hours the future that lies before the Mahomedan community of India.

It is a scene I shall never forget, so startling was the contrast between the racial and religious pride of power which those walls had for centuries reflected and the note of deep and almost gloomy apprehension to which they now rang.

For if the burden of my friends story was reasoned loyalty to the British _Raj_, it was weighted with profound anxiety as to the future that awaited the Mahomedans of India, either should our _Raj_ disappear or should it gradually lose its potency and be merged in a virtual ascendency of Hinduism under the specious mantle of Indian self-government.

They spoke without bitterness or resentment.