Source on M. A. Sherring

“The Europeans should clearly understand that this spirit of Mohammedanism is unchangeable, and that, if by any mischance, India should again come into the possession of men ofthis creed, all the churches and colleges and all the Mission institutions, would not be worth a week's purchase. So wrote Reverend Mathew Atmore Sherring. The Muslims had done no harm to the Christians of British India. But he was so upset at the vandali sm he saw in Benares that he could not help speaking out.”

“Reverend Sherring was a devout, and maybe a s lightly bigoted evangelist member of the London Missionary Society. He was dead against idol worship. As he has written idolatry is a word denoting all that is wicked in imagination and impure in practice. IdolatJy is a demon- an incarnation of all evil. And yet he said it would not be difficult, I believe, to find twenty temples in all Benares of the age of Aurangzeb, or from 1658 to 1707. The same unequal proportion of old temples, as compared with new, is visible throughout the whole of northern India. Hi s description of the desecration of temples b y the thousand, and their blatant conversion into either mosques, mausoleums, dargahs, palaces or pleasure houses has to be seen to be believed.”

“In his view, if there is one circumstance respecting the Mohammedan period which Hindus remember better than another, it is the insulting pride of the Musulmans (sic), the outrages which they perpetrated upon their religious convictions, and the extensive spoilation of their temples and shrines. When we endeavour to ascertain what the Mohammedans have left to the Hindus of their ancient buildings in Benares, we are startled at the result of our investigations. Although the city is bestrewn with temples, it is unlikely that there are many which are old.”