THE TURKS IN INDIA.* So little is known of the

history of India, even among tolerably well-educated people in this country, that not a few of Mr. Keene's readers will probably learn, with surprise that the Turks ever ruled in India at all. Yet their rule there lasted, from first to last, upwards of three centuries, reckoning from Babar's decisive battle at Paniput in 1526, to the formal deposition of the last of the great Moguls in 1857. It is true, of course, that during considerable tracts of this period the power of the Moguls was little more than nominal. The son of Balm him- self, the founder of the dynasty, was expelled from Hindustan by the Pathan Sher Shah, and did not recover his throne till after fifteen years of exile. Sher Shah's motive for conspiring against his master is related by himself in a passage which shows how little either Turks or Afghans have changed since then :—

" If luck and fortune favour me, I will expel the Mughals [Moguls] from Hind, for they are not superior to the Afghans in battle or single combat ; but the Afghans have let the empire slip through their fingers by means of their dissensions. Since I have been among the Mughals, and observed their conduct, I see that they have no order or discipline ; and that their rulers, from pride of birth and station, do not personally superintend the administration, but leave affairs and all the business of State to chiefs and ministers, in whose sayings and doings they blindly trust. These grandees act on corrupt motives in every case, whether it be a soldier's, a cultivator's,

or a rebellious zernindar's From this lust of gold, they make no distinction between friend or foe."

It is amusing, on the other hand, to contrast with this Afghan estimate of the Turks the Emperor Babar's description of his new subjects :—

"The people," he said, 'grave no idea of the charms of friendly society, or of familiar intercourse. They have neither genius, intel- ligence, politeness, kindness, ingenuity, invention, skill, nor knowledge of the arts. You cannot oven get a decent light at night. The greatest man, if he wants to see by night, has to call in a filthy fellow with a torch, who stands close to his employer all the time that be is using the light. The peasants and lower classes go about almost naked. They tie on a thing they call a 'loin-cloth,' and the ends of this knotted clout are all that they have to cover them."

Who would have thought that this fastidious critic was a Mussulman Tartar from Central Asia, descended on his mother's side from Gengie, "the scourge of God ;" on his father's, from the redoubtable Timour P But the truth is that the wild blood and rude manners of the nomad Tartar had been gradually tamed and refined by contact with a superior race. Of the vast dominions of Timour, Babar's father inherited only the strip of territory now known as Kokand. It was then inhabited by a people of Aryan blood, of peaceful habits and cultivated tastes. The dominant Tartar minority yielded to the civilising influences of the subject race, and learnt to appreciate and imitate the re- finements and elegancios of social life. Babar's maternal grand- father is thus described by a pilgrim from Hindustan :—" I had heard that Yunis Khan was a Mughal, and I concluded that he was beardless, with the rude ways of an inhabitant of the De- sert. But I found a handsome man, with a fine, bushy beard, of elegant address, most agreeable and refined manners and conversation, such as are seldom to be met with even in the most polished society."

Driven from his ancestral home by the Uzbeks, Babar, then only twenty-one; conquered Bokhara. But he had hardly settled down in his new possession, when the relentless Uzbeks again forced him to wander in search of new conquests. The young adventurer soon indemnified himself by the rapid acquisi- tion of nearly the whole of the present Afghanistan. Having consolidated his power there, he invaded and annexed the Pun- jab ; and from the Punjab he descended upon Hindustan, and

• The Turks in India: Critical Chapters on the Administration of that Country by the Chugtai, Babar, and Ms Descendants. By Henry Qeorgo Keene, ALR.A.S., Judge of Agra. London: Allen and Co.

fought in 1526 the decisive action at Paniput, which malls him master of the country. I3abar attributed his victory, under Providence, to his artillery and. hastily constructed earth-works.

But his success was much more directly due to the anarchy and divisions of the people whom he invaded. Hindustan was, at.

the time, under the dominion of seven kings, five of whom were Mussulmans and the remaining two Hindus. A successful invasion of Hindustan, under such circumstances, presented no very serious difficulties. Yet its easy conquest by Behar is sometimes, adduced as an illustration of the facility with which Russia, failing, our possession of a" scientific frontier," might repeat the achieve- ment of Babar. The utter dissimilarity between the two cases is se transparent, that one marvels at the density of the prejudice which fails to see through it. But even granting the feasibility of a Russian invasion of India, we must at least assume a motive. The most vehement of Ruasophobists would not affirm that Russia would embark on a costly and hazardous expedition without a purpose. What could be her purpose for invading India, even if she wore assured of ultimate success? Would the gain be worth the venture? Why, even the British Govern- ment, with its undisputed sway over the whole land, cannot make both ends meet in India. If we were to clear out of India to-morrow, "bag and baggage," it is probable that not one Euro- pean Power, and Russia least of all, would think it worth its. while to make any effort to succeed US. Yet any movement of Russian troops in Central Asia sets a number of sane people in this country in a flutter of alarm for the safety of our Indian Empire. Whatever else the Russians are, they are not fools. Yet fools they would be, if they contemplated an enterprise. which, under the present condition of things, would certainly prove a military disaster, and which could not, in any case, be profitable.

The victory of Paniput put Babar in possession of a splendid empire. The Turkish Power, as Mr. Keene observes, was now "paramount in Hindustan and the adjacent lands from Cabal to the Carnatic, and from the boundaries of Berar to the 'hanks of the Brahmaputra river." Babar died at the early age of fifty, a victim, Moslem as he was, to habitual intemperattee.. His portrait has been drawn by his own hand in his "Con- fessions," in which his failings, his good resolutions, his fitful self-conquests, and his constant relapses, are all recorded with engaging frankness, Mr. Keene truly calls him "a typical Turk, amiable, sociable, enduring, fond of all pleasures,—fighting included,—with scant sense of duty, and neither taste nor talent for administration."

Passing over the gap in the Turkish regime during the short- lived dynasty of the Afghan Sher Shah, we come to Babar's great-grandson, the celebrated Akbar. Of all Mahommedan rulers known to history Akbar was the only. one who governed his subjects without distinction of creed or race. During the best periods of their history the Turks recognised their own incapacity for the work of administration, and were pru- dent enough to employ non-Mussulmans largely in the civil service. This they did in Spain and Sicily, in Turkey, in Persia, and in India. But their armies have almost always been exclusively Mahommedan. To this rule, however, Akbar's. 'reign was an exception. His army was recruited, and the best men promoted, without distinction of race or religion. "It was because Akbar employed all classes of the natives in all branches

of the public service, without any exception," says Mr. Keene, significantly, "that the Mughal Empire' took root in India under him, and was a domestic institution of the country—not a merely superficial dominion, like so many before him, and, alas I like that of his present successors."

But Akbar's wise policy was gradually reversed by his suc- cessors, and may be said to have been altogether abolished by the ablest of them, Aurungzeb. He reigned for fifty years, and when he died the whole administration of the country, civil and military, was in the hands of the dominant Mussulmans, who treated the natives as dominant Mussulmans always have treated subject races. The inevitable consequence followed,— chronic disaffection among the oppressed and more numerous population, and the moral deterioration of the oppressors. When Clive appeared upon the scene the rule of the Turk in India was already doomed.

The truth is that Mahommedanism, as a politico-religious system, carries within its own bosom the germ of inevitable decay. It professes to be a divine revelation delivered once for all to mankind, and sacred and immutable in its minutest details. In fact, however, this revelation embodies simply the

ideas on religion, war, and civil government of an Arab chief of the seventh century of our era. And this chief is the sole prophet 'of Islam. His shrewd, but crude notions, limited knowledge, and sagacious though rude methods of government are de- clared unchangeable and eternal. In this respect Islam is totally unlike all other religious and political systems. It is the only one which declares a war of extermination against all who will not embrace it, the Kitabi (i.e., Jews and Christians) -alone excepted, and they only on condition of submission to abject servitude. Other religions have practised perse- cutions and intolerance,—on occasions quite as much as Islam. Jews and Christians have persecuted at times with as much cruelty as Mussulmans. But persecution and intolerance are not fundamental articles of their creed. The persecution and extermination of Unbelievers are not prescribed in their sacred books. The extermination of the Canaanites is sometimes -quoted as a parallel case to the relentless edicts of the Koran. But there is really no analogy. Whatever may be thought of the destruction of the doomed tribes on other grounds, the ex- plicit object was to stamp out a malignant and incurable pest, as rinderpest is stamped out. And it is remarkable that Dr. Arnold, in a sermon to the boys of Rugby, did not scruple to say that "the ' sword of Israel," in that destruction, "did a work of mercy to all generations of men to the end of time." But however that may be, the Israelites were not sent to give the Canaanites the choice of the Pentateuch or the sword ; they were sent to exterminate them utterly, with their cattle and all that belonged to them ; and it was added that a similar doom would overtake the Israelites themselves, if they gave themselves up to the same abominations. But outside these banned tribes, the Israelites were bidden to act not only justly, but kindly, towards the Gentiles. There was, too, a succession of Prophets, equally inspired with Moses, who were 'commissioned to proclaim a higher, a more merciful, and a more spiritual system than the Mosaic. But the only prophet of Islam is its founder, and therefore the system admits of no development. There cannot arise within it, as within Judaism and Christianity, reformers, and. preachers of righteousness .and toleration towards those who are beyond its pale. In a word, Christian rulers have persecuted and may yet persecute dissentients from the established faith ; but Christianity does not oblige them so to act. On the contrary, persecution and forcible conversion are contrary alike to the precepts and ex- ample of the Founder of the Christian religion. A Mussulman ruler, on the other hand, must persecute all unbelievers,—that is, if he sincerely believes in his own religion, and acts up to his convictions, Akbar, it is true, was one of the most tolerant and enlightened rulers known to history ; but then Akbar very speedily got rid of such Molommedanism as he had imbibed in his early years, and was an avowed Freethinker, with certain proclivities towards Christianity.

In short, Mahommedanism lies under the curse of two in- curable maladies, which must always, in the long-run, prove fatal to any State ruled by it,—especially if a considerable pro- portion of the population be non-Mussulman. The first of these maladies is the degradation of woman. Woman must be always degraded in a polygamous society, and under Islam polygamy is eternal and irremovable, for it is sanctioned by the precept and example of its founder. With polygamy, again, is inseparably associated the harem or zanana life. In this life —this hot-bed of all that is vile, and petty, and tricky, and untruthful—must be reared all the rulers and administra- tors of every Mussulman State. Therefore it is that as soon as any Mussulman Power ceases to be a conqueror, it begins to decline. It is seldom that we have found ourselves obliged to dissent from anything in Mr. Keene's ex- cellent book ; but he is certainly in error when he says :—" Bagdad fell from violence from without; Cordova and Granada yielded to Gothic patriotism ; in neither case is there any proof of inherent evils caused by reli- gion." On the contrary, both in Bagdad and in Spain, Mussul- man rule perished, quite as much from internal corruption, .directly due to religion, as from external violence. Dozy's learned work on the Mussulmans of Spain, and Colonel Osborn's excellent book on Mussulman rule in Bagdad, prove this to demonstration. No reform is possible in any Mus- sulman State—no reform, especially in the direction of justice to nondVlussulmans—except under the coercion of foreign power. That is a fact which lies on the surface of Mahom- inedati history. Yet the Times newspaper, in one of those

shallow articles on Eastern politics with which it has for some time past regaled its readers, wrote as follows a few days ago :—

" The principle from which all successful treatment of that [Eastern] Question must start is, that the introduction of good government is not essentially dependent upon either political or religious con- siderations. Justice could be executed, the taxes fairly collected, and order maintained, in the name of the Sultan, no less than in the name of the Queen, or under the authority of a newly constituted Assembly ; and this is the simple, practical object which we have to keep in view, in all our dealings with the Porte and its tributary principalities."

It is quite clear that the writer of this article has not yet mastered the elementary facts of the Eastern Question. Yet these are the ignorant platitudes which appear to govern the policy of her Majesty's Government.