Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia 25
and a constant shriek in his ears telling him that “the conquerors” have
more rights than the “conquered”, that the colour gives more dignity and
privileges to a person than any other colour, the policy of coercion is
the best policy for Asiatics, and that the Christian civilisation is the only
civilisation that can be respected. A Muslim cannot bear ignominious
treatment ... This is the secret of the Egyptians disliking British predomi-
nance and their want of appreciation of the benefits that have accrued
to them through it.4Pickthall, by contrast, remained a great admirer of Cromer’s twenty-year
“autocratic but benevolent and upright reign” in Egypt.5 His pro-imperial
attitude was made amply clear in his reflections on the Denshawai Incident
of 1906 that had resulted in the public hanging of four peasants and life
imprisonment and lashes for others. Kidwai, writing in 1908, criticised the
punishments meted out to the villagers on what amounted to fabricated
charges as “inhuman”; for him, they testified to the “barbarous fanaticism of
Christian, white and ‘civilised’ people”, which he viewed with “great disgust
and abhorrence”.6 Pickthall, in contrast both to Kidwai and to liberal opinion
in England outraged by the executions, absolved Cromer of any wrong-doing:
English rule in Egypt at the time stood for things which did not exist
in neighbouring lands – things like religious toleration, personal secu-
rity and some attempts at even-handed justice. The uniform symbolised
British rule; its prestige had to be “jealously” guarded and its authority
unreservedly upheld; it could not be allowed to be “violently insulted
with comparative impunity”. The villagers of Denshawai were perfectly
aware, when they attacked those pigeon-shooting officers [though oth-
ers contradicted this account, claiming that it was the officers who fired
shots at the villagers first, provoking their response] that they were com-
mitting an unheard-of crime for which unheard-of punishment might be
exacted.7In Pickthall’s view, the villagers’ actions were not unpremeditated and so while
the “punishment, awarded by a Special Court [may have been] extraordinarily
4 Kidwai, Pan-Islam, 28.
5 Athenaeum, 4503 (14 February 1914), 222.
6 Kidwai, Pan-Islam, 22–3.
7 New Age, xiv (26 February 1914), 520.