CHAMBER OF REPOSE
compromises with unbelievers," urged the Badaoni with rising ardour.
"The True Faith descends to no mean devices like force or compulsion," calmly replied Abul Fazel. "Rulers are but trustees, my friend, and rule by the wishes of their people."
Badaoni remained silent for a while, but bigoted men are never shaken in their convictions. And the historian was not the man to hide his convictions, even before his Sovereign.
"It is not for your humble servant, Abul Fazel, to judge of the statecraft which you have learnt these fifty years, but I would be untrue to Islam if I submitted in silence. The true faith, as I have said, makes no unholy compromises with infidels. The faith of Islam shall triumph in India when your new eclecticism, which you call the Divine Faith, will pass away like a vision, a dream."
"Be it so, Badaoni. I shall be content to be remembered as a humble servant of God who dared to preach from the shadow of the throne the same truth which so many saints are preaching to-day from their cottages to listening millions."
"But the Empire of Islam rests more secure on the sword of the faithful than on the teachings of unbelievers. Pardon a humble student of history if he dares speak of His Majesty's Imperial policy, but that was not the policy of the Moslem conquerors of India from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni, and that will not be the policy of future Moslem rulers of India. Monarchs will spring from this Royal House who will teach the infidels their proper place and will rule India by the sword, as half of the earth is ruled by Moslem potentates to-day."
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