frightfulness and the guns of the _Emden_ bombarding Madras, which were
an ominous reminder that a far worse fate than British rule might
conceivably overtake India, helped to confirm Indians in the conviction
that the British Empire and India's connection with it were well worth
fighting for. This was one of Germany's many miscalculations, and the
loyalty of the Indian people quite as much as the watchfulness of
Government defeated the few serious efforts made by the disaffected
emissaries and agents in whom she had put her trust to raise the
standard of rebellion in India. All they could do was to feed the
"Indian Section" of the Berlin Foreign Office with cock-and-bull stories
of successful Indian mutinies and risings, which the German public,
however gullible, ceased at last to swallow. Amongst the Indian
Mahomedans there was a small pro-Turkish group, chiefly of an Extremist
complexion, whose appeals to the religious solidarity of Islam might
have proved troublesome when Turkey herself came into the war, had not
Government deemed it advisable to put a stop to the mischievous
activities of the two chief firebrands, the brothers Mahomed Ali and
Shaukat Ali, by interning them under the discretionary powers conferred
upon it by the Defence of India Act. Indian Mahomedan troops fought with
the same gallantry and determination against their Turkish
co-religionists in Mesopotamia and Palestine as against the German enemy
in France and in Africa, and the Mahomedan Punjab answered even more
abundantly than any other province of India every successive call for
fresh recruits to replenish and strengthen the forces of the Empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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