"Imperialism thrives on divisions and it sows them even where they do not exist. The British Government invited one Dr. E. Trumpp, a German Indologist and missionary, to look at Sikh scriptures and prove that their theology and cosmology were different from those of the Vedas and the Upanishads. But he found nothing in them to support this view. He found Nanak a "thorough Hindu," his religion "a Pantheism, derived directly from Hindu sources."... However, to please his clients, he said that the external marks of the Sikhs separated them from the Hindus and once these were lost, they relapsed into Hinduism.... One Max Arthur Macauliffe, a highly placed British administrator, became the loudest spokesman of this thesis. He told the Sikhs that Hinduism was like a "boa constrictor of the Indian forests," which "winds its opponent and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior." The Sikhs "may go that way," he warned. He was pained to see that the Sikhs regarded themselves as Hindus which was, "in direct opposition to the teachings of the Gurus." He put words into the mouth of the Gurus and invented prophecies by them which anticipated the advent of the white race to whom the Sikhs would be loyal.... These youths, he said, "are ignorant of the Sikh religion and of its prophecies in favour of the English and contract exclusive customs and prejudices to the extent of calling us Mllechhas or persons of impure desires, and inspire disgust for the customs and habits of Christians." ... The influence of scholarship is silent, subtle and long- range. Macauliffe and others provided categories which became the thought-equipment of subsequent Sikh intellectuals."