كتاب منهج دراسة الأديان بين الشيخ رحمت الله الهندي والقس فندر
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proclaimed the truth and beauty of Christianity while the empire of the Christians in India was trembling in the balance."]27[
Interestingly, Rahmat All was actively involved on the rebels side and fled India for Mecca with a price on his head. Pfander himself believed that the rebellion was Muslim inspired and led. Certainly, both Hindus and Muslims resented not only the imperialists' presence in India but also their hostility toward Indian culture, including its religion. Lord Macauley's infamous memo of 1835 suggests that scholars shared this negativity toward anything Indian.]28[Although the East India Company claimed a policy of religious neutrality, the open support given to Christian missions by sympathetic colonial officials looked very much like part of a concerted effort to undermine India's religious and cultural heritage. Pfander expressed early confidence in "the efficacy of a technologically superior and socially progressive Europe in ensuring the eventual success of the Gospel"]29[and was confident that God would not allow India to revert to Muslim rule.]30[
Rahmat All, whose Izhar al-haqq achieved great popularity throughout the Muslim world, appears to have been invited to Istanbul by the caliph to instruct the ulema in anti-Christian polemic. Some think that Pfander and he may actually have met again in debate, but this is unconfirmed. In fact, Pfander's activities in Turkey were curtailed by the caliph, who in 1864 banned the Mizan, closed down the "preaching hall in the bazaar, and imprisoned those Muslims who . . . had converted to Christianity."]31[Perhaps, tactically, what had worked reasonably well in British India, tinder sympathetic government officials such as Sir William Muir and, in his Peshawar days, Sir Herbert Edwardes (1819 - 68), was less successful when removed from such protection.]32[The CMS mission relocated to Egypt, Pfander went to England (previously visited on leave in 1853) with his wife, who was ill, unexpectedly fell ill himself, and died very suddenly in early 1866. Powell surmises that Pfander left Turkey
