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 INTRODUCTION.

XIX

to be able to bear with complacency the loathing and aversion of their fellow-men, or to acquiesce in an inferiority which was derived solely from the accident of birth, and which no merit and no achievement can exalt. The mere abstract truths of religion might be preached for centuries to deaf ears, but it is a fact which cannot fail to be recognized, and in its recognition to bear practical fruit, that the Kori or the Chamar must always submit to scorn and outrage from the other ranks of his co-religionists, that his every aspiration will be contemptuously repressed, and that if by something little short of a miracle he attains some slight success in life, his advancement will only add anger to the feelings with which he was previously regarded whereas he has only to change the symbols of his faith in order to be admitted to a community which has no outcasts, to become, however poor, a fellow-man, and to be enabled to indulge in the ambition of rising to the highest positions open to his countrymen, where his extraction will be forgiven, and his family after two or three generations be enrolled in the ranks and bear the sounding names of nobility. The small groups of Muhammadan cultivators form scattered centres of revolt against the degrading oppression to which their religion hopelessly consigns the lower castes of Hindus. In joining them they not only acquire freedom, but find a society in which they can marry and give in marriage, and satisfy the It is this which gives Muhammadism gregarious instincts of man. The latter has no its decisive superiority over Christianity, centres of life among the people, and conversion to it entails an isolation which is intolerable, and worse than the worst social It is worth while to add that this motive has freer tyranny. play, and that conversions are likely to be far more frequent when

the two religions are living peaceably side by side under a government which protects both and represses both impartially, than in the days when Hinduism borrowed coherence from a constant acting struggle with its rival. In the hio-her ranks the Muhammadans number 7S taluqdars, some of whom, as the Rajas of Utraula and Nanpara, are descended from old local chieftains, who had long ago conquered differed in little for themselves places in the Hindu hierarchy, and Many more, and compeers. Hindu their from religion but their Hasanpur of Bandhua, chieftains great the all at the head of adopted the who faith of families, Hindu ruling were of ancient conferred influence faith at that when days the in

Muhammad

few owe their estates to the powerful court of Agra, and some The old colonieskings. Lucknow late the with office or favour and Rudauli— Malihabad, Kdkori, Bilgram, such as those of