Lepel H. Griffin Quotes

Fakir Azizuddin. He was one of the ablest and certainly the most honest of all Ranjit Singh's courtiers. Azizuddin was of so engaging a disposition, and so
perfect a courtier in his manners, that he made few
declared enemies, though many were doubtless jealous of his influence. One reason of his popularity, as a
Muhammadan minister at a Hindu Court, was the liberality of his belief. He was a Sufi, a sect held,
indeed, as infidel by orthodox Muhammadans, but to which the best thinkers and poets of the East have
belonged. He had no love for the barren dogmata of the Kuran, but looked on all religions as equally to be respected and disregarded. On one occasion Ranjit Singh asked him whether he preferred
the Hindu or the Muhammadan religion. ' I am,' he replied, 'I am a man floating in the midst of a mighty river. I turn my eyes towards the land, but can
distinguish no difference in either bank.

...the strong attractive force of Hinduism, which, in days of peace, when martial instincts have less influence, retains its hold of the people. Its ivy-like vitality, enfolding and strangling everything which it has once grasped, has been fatal to almost all creeds
which, like Sikhism and Buddhism, both heterodox forms of Hinduism, have put themselves in competition with it. As the Church of Rome in the West so is Hinduism in the East.

Even in the palmiest days of the Khalsa it is astonishing how small a proportion of the Punjab population was of the Sikh profession. The fierce fanaticism of the earlier years of the century was succeeded by the unequalled military organisation of
the Maharaja, and these together enabled a people who were never numerically more than a sect of Hinduism to overrun the whole Punjab and Kashmir, to beat back the Afghans to the mountains, and to
found a powerful kingdom in which they were outnumbered by Hindus and Muhammadans by ten to one.

The children of the mountains are too free and independent to bear with any patience the restraints of civilization.