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PAKISTAN : APPENDICES
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many creeds who go to form the population of this huge continent. You yourselves, the descendants of a conquering and ruling race, have told me to-day of your gratitude for the personal freedom, the liberty of worship, the general peace and the hopeful future which British administration has secured for India.
Help in the Past
It is interesting to look back on early British efforts to assist the Mahomedan population to qualify themselves for the public service. In 1782 Warren Hastings founded the Calcutta Madrassah with the intention of enabling its students to compete on more equal terms with the Hindus for employment under Government. In 1811 my ancestor, Lord Minto, advocated improvements in the Madrassah and the establishment of Mahomedan Colleges at other places throughout India. In later years the efforts of the Mahomedan Association led to the Government resolution of 1885 dealing with the educational position of the Mahomedan community and their employment in the public service, whilst Mahomedan educational effort has culminated in the College of Aligarh that great institution which the noble and broad-minded devotion of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan has dedicated to his co-religionists.
The Aligarh College
It was in July 1877 that Lord Lytton laid the foundationstone of Aligarh, when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan addressed these memorable words to the Viceroy: “The personal honour which you have done me assures me of a great fact and fills me with feelings of a much higher nature than mere personal gratitude. I am assured that you, who upon this occasion represent the British rule, have sympathies with our labours and this assurance is very valuable and a source of great happiness. At my time of life it is a comfort to me to feel that the undertaking which has been for many years, and is now the sole object of my life has roused on the one hand the energies of my own countrymen, and on the other has won the sympathy of our British fellow-subjects and the support of our rulers, so that when the few years I may still be spared are over, and when I shall be no