In no other city in India would such an alliance between Hindus and
Mahomedans have seemed only a few years ago more unthinkable. For
nowhere else have we such a vision as in Delhi of the ruthlessness as
well as of the splendour of Mahomedan domination in India. Nowhere can
one measure as in Delhi the greatness of its fall, and its fall had
begun before it ever came into conflict with the rising British power.
It had been shaken to its foundations by the far more ancient power of
Hinduism, which Islam had subdued but never destroyed. In the
seventeenth century Shivaji, the hero still to-day of the Hindu revival
of which Mr. Gandhi is the latest apostle, led out for the first time
his Mahrattas in open rebellion against Delhi and started the continuous
process of disintegration from which the Moghul Emperors were driven to
purchase their only possible respite under British protection. Since
India finally passed not under Mahratta, but under British rule,
Hinduism has never again been subjected to the oppression which the
fierce monotheism of Islam itself taught all her Mahomedan rulers, with
the one noble exception of Akbar, to inflict upon an "idolatrous" race.
British rule introduced into India not only a new reign of law and order
but the principles of equal tolerance and justice for all which had
struck root in our own civilisation. Nevertheless, at the very moment at
which we were attempting to extend a wide and generous application of
those principles to the domain of political rights and liberties, we
were being confronted with unexpected forces of resistance which, even
in Mahomedan Delhi, drew their chief inspiration from Hinduism.

But, it might be argued, Delhi, though restored to the primacy it had
lost under British rule as the capital city of India, has continued to
live on the memories of the past and has been scarcely touched by the
breath of modern civilisation. For the full effect of close contact
with the West, ought one not to look to the great cities that have