Note 89 — Chapter IX · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.

The Afg͟hān adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have been active in the work of proselytising, for besides the children that they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam.89 But it is not in the ancient centres of the Muhammadan government that the Musalmans of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.90 The similarity of manners between these low-caste Hindus and the followers of the Prophet, and the caste distinctions which they still retain, as well as their physical likeness, all bear the same testimony and identify the Bengal Musalmans with the aboriginal tribes of the country. Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muhammadan invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigour after its triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest distress and degradation. But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were welcomed with open arms by the aborigines and the low castes on the very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan rulers. “To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high. It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in its sight to a despised and neglected population. The initiatory rite rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population. Compulsory conversions are occasionally recorded. But it was not to force that Islam owed its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu community, a free entrance into a new social organisation.”91