History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c45.s6.2

v3.c45.s6.2

In Mughal India it was, in addition, the dominion of a small minority. And this minority differed from the politically depressed majority not in race or culture, but in creed only. Centuries of intermarriage had left no Muhammadan in India—not even of the blood royal—who could claim absolute purity of foreign descent; they were all Hindustan-born, Hindu blood flowed in their veins, they had the same language, manners and dress as their Hindu subjects. The minority, therefore, could not justify its monopoly of power and office, its political privileges and social hauteur, by any pretended superiority of racial qualities, physical or mental. Religion was the only line dividing the two classes. Thus the subjects' attitude to the State was naturally vitiated by the odium which theological differences excite all the world over. It was rightly felt by all persons outside the fold of the dominant creed that the power and resources of the community, entrusted to the Government for the public good, were being misused by being applied to the propaganda of a Church which aimed at their extinction. Such a State had no right to be called national; it did not rest on the love and devotion of the people.