Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/97

 ISLAM IN INDIA 67 was of course as great a contrast between a Moslem Turk and a Hindu Rajput as between a Scotch Pres- byterian and a Spanish Catholic; but the reverence paid to power overbore all distinctions of race. The caste system had accustomed Indians to immovable bar- riers between classes, and though the Moslem kings had no claim of pedigree and not much distinction of ceremonial purity, they formed in a way a caste, the caste of Islam, a fellowship of equal brotherhood un- surpassed in coherence and strength in all the world. The great power of Islam as a missionary influence in India has been due to the benefits of this caste. The moment an Indian accepts Islam he enters a brother- hood which admits no distinctions of class in the sight of God, and every advancement in office and rank and marriage is open to him. To those outside Islam the yoke of the alien ruler was no worse than that of the native raja. Both represented a separate caste, and both belonged to the inscrutable workings of providence. The essential union of the Moslems as a conquer- ing caste was indeed the chief cause of their success- ful hold of the vastly preponderating multitudes they governed. Their power in India was always that of an armed camp, but it was a camp in which all the soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder for the same cause, in which all were brothers; and it had the immense advantage of being able to draw continually and in unlimited numbers upon the recruiting-grounds of the Mohammedan countries behind it, which were always reinforcing their co-religionists by fresh bodies of hardy