The Dawn and Dawn Society’s Magazine July 1911

The figures given have been derived mainly from the Statistics published by the Commercial Intelligence Department of the Goverment of India and from tliose found in the returns of the Bombay Mill-owners' Association and in recognised Industrial journals like the Indian Trade Journal (Calcutta); the Indian Textile Journal (Bombay) and the Economist (London) and also in a vast mass of floating l [...] In Malabar the only place in Southern India where the faith of Islam has many adherents the majority of the Musalmans are said to be the descendants of local converts made by the Arabs who frequented the coast as far back as the beginning of the 8th century. [...] In Gujarat the Bohras IChojas and M'emons all of whom are now Muhammadan are of Hindu ancestry and in Rajputana the Muhammadans are for the most part the descbndants of Rajputs who were converted in the time of the Delhi Eperors ; of the remainder many are Meos also of indigenous origin. [...] The puritanic severity of the few festivals of Arabian Islam failed to satisfy the natural partiality of the Indian mind for a symblistic and ritualistic religion with forms and rites calculated to appeal to the senses and the imagination and to bring them in touch with the life of Nature around them the changes of the seasons the glory of the landscape and the delicious freshness of the na [...] The action of the vanquished on the vanquishers had more of force in the peninsula than in any of the countries which underwent the yoke of the sectaries of Mahomet.