Note 120 — Chapter IX · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.

Love for a Muhammadan woman is occasionally the cause of the conversion of a Hindu, since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an unbeliever is absolutely forbidden by the Muslim law. Hindu children, if adopted by wealthy Musalmans, would be brought up in the religion of their new parents; and a Hindu wife, married to a follower of the Prophet, would be likely to adopt the faith of her husband.120 As the contrary process can rarely take place, the number of Muhammadans is bound to increase in proportion to that of the Hindus. Hindus, who for some reason or other have been driven out of their caste; the poor who have become the recipients of Muhammadan charity, or women and children who have been protected when their parents have died or deserted them—(such cases would naturally be frequent in times of famine)—form a continuous though small stream of additions from the Hindus.121 There are often local circumstances favourable to the growth of Islam; for example, it has been pointed out122 that in the villages of the Terai, in which the number of Hindus and Muhammadans happen to be equally balanced, any increase in the predominance of the Muhammadans is invariably followed by disputes about the killing of cows and other practices offensive to Hindu feeling. The Hindus gradually move away from the village, leaving behind of their creed only the Chamār ploughman in the service of the Muhammadan peasants. These latter eventually adopt the religion of their masters, not from any conviction of its truth, but from the inconvenience their isolation entails.