Quwwat al-Islam Masjid: "When Qutbu'd-Din, the commander-in-chief of Muizzu'd-Din Sam alias Shihabu'd-Din Ghuri, conquered Delhi in AH 587 eorrespond… - Syed Ahmed Khan

...was ordained by a higher power than any on earth, that the destinies of India should be placed in the hands of an enlightened nation, whose principles of government were in accordance with those of intellect, justice, and reason. Yes, my friends, the great God above, He who is equally the God of the Jew, the Hindu, the Christian, and the Mohammedan, placed the British over the people of India-gave them rational laws (and no religious laws revealed to us by God can be at variance with rational laws), gave you, up to the year 1858, the Government of the East India Company. The rule of that now defunct body of merchant princes was one eminent for justice and moderation, both in temporal and religious matters. The only point in which it failed to satisfy the wants of the age latterly, was the fact of its not being a regal Government,-a necessity which had gradually forced itself more prominently into notice as time rolled on, when the once solitary factory on the banks of the Ganges had grown into an empire half as large as Europe, with a population of nearly two hundred millions. 117

...then will one glorious fact stand out in prominent relief and become patent to the universe... if in Hindustan there was one class of people above any other, who from the principles of their religion, from habits and associations, and from kindred disposition, were fast bound with Christians, in their dread hour of trial and danger, in the bonds of amity and friendship, those people were the Mohammedans, and they alone... I really do not see that any class besides the Mohammedans displayed so much single-minded and earnest devotion to the interests of government or so willingly sacrificed reputation and status, life and property, in their cause... It is to the Mohammedans alone that the credit belongs of having stood as the staunch and unshaken friends of the government amidst that fearful tornado that devastated the country, and shook the Empire to its centre; and who were ever ready, heart in hand, to render their aid to the utmost extremity, or cheerfully to perish in the attempt, regardless of home and kindred, of life and its enjoyments...

We also like a civil war. But not a civil war without arms; we like it with arms. If Government wants to give over the internal rule of the country from its own hands into those of the people of India, then we will present a petition that, before doing so, she pass a law of competitive examination, namely, that that nation which passes first in this competition be given the rule of the country; but that in this competition we be allowed to use the pen of our ancestors, which is in truth the true pen for writing the decrees of sovereignty. Then he who passes first in this shall rule the country. If my friends the Bengalis pass first, then indeed we will pick up their shoes and put them on our heads; but without such a civil war we do not want to subject our nation to be trodden under their feet. Let my Hindu fellow countrymen and Bengali brothers understand well that my chief wish is that all the nations of India should live in peace and friendship with one another; but that friendship can last so long only as one does not try to put another in subjection. The Bengalis and also the educated Hindus of this Province have tried on this game, and hope that we Mohammedans will join them: " 'tis imagination, 'tis impossible, 'tis madness." 220