India Under British Rule

Non-Regulation.

The Punjab was parcelled out into divisions and districts, like the Bengal and North-West Provinces. It was not, however, brought under the "Regulations," which had the force of laws in Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and the North-West Provinces. For some years it was known as a non-Regulation province; in other words, British administration in the Punjab was carried on according to the spirit of the Regulations, and on the same lines as the administration of the North-West Provinces, but a large margin of latitude and discretion was allowed to the chief commissioner, and he was empowered to issue his own instructions and orders, which might sometimes be out of harmony with the Regulations.

Patriarchal government.

The result was that a so-called patriarchal rule prevailed in the Punjab, which was admirably adapted to the transition state of the "land of five rivers." British officers laboured to govern the country, and to administer justice amongst a mixed population of Sikhs, Mohammedans, and Hindus, according to local circumstances and usages, rather than according to the strict letter of the law which had prevailed for generations in Regulation provinces.

District officers.

Under the non-Regulation system the duties of magistrate, collector, and civil and sessions judge were discharged by a single officer, who was known as the deputy-commissioner. The deputy-commissioner was thus not only the head of the civil administration of his district, but the magistrate and judge. Below him were certain grades of assistant commissioners, whose duties were of a similarly comprehensive character. Half of these grades were taken from the ranks of the Indian civil service, and the other half from British officers in the Indian army. Below them were grades of uncovenanted officers, European and Asiatic, known as extra assistant commissioners, who corresponded more or less with the class of deputy-collectors created by Lord William Bentinck.

Commissioners.

The commissioners of divisions controlled the administration of the districts under their charge after the manner of commissioners in Bengal, Bombay, and the North-West Provinces. They also heard appeals from the courts of deputy-commissioners. Another officer, known as the "financial commissioner," controlled the expenditure of the entire province, in subordination to the chief commissioner.

Judicial commissioner: Punjab code.

There was no Supreme Court, and no Sudder Court, in the Punjab. In those patriarchal days a single officer, known as the "judicial commissioner," controlled all the law courts in the province, and was the last court of appeal. Meanwhile a code of laws was drawn up, under the directions of the chief commissioner, by his secretary, Mr. (now Sir Richard) Temple. Since then Sir Richard Temple has filled high positions in India, which were only second in importance to those occupied by his illustrious master.

Land settlement: village system.

The land settlement in the Punjab was carried out on the same lines as that in the North-West Provinces. Proprietary rights of village communities, joint or otherwise, were recognised as far as possible. The village system was perhaps as perfect in the Punjab as in any other part of India, but for years the rights of village proprietors had been ignored or stamped out under Sikh rule. The revenue collectors of Runjeet Singh cared nothing for proprietary right, nor indeed for any law or usage which debarred them from exacting as much revenue as possible from the cultivators of the land.

North-West Provinces.

Meanwhile the land settlement of the North-West Provinces, which had been modified by Lord William Bentinck, was brought to a close under the supervision of Mr. Thomason, the Lieutenant-Governor. It was based on the principle of recognising, defining, and recording all existing rights of proprietors of every kind and sort, from those of hereditary chiefs and landlords, down to village proprietors, joint or otherwise. The settlement included a full record of the rights of all proprietors in every village. Every field was measured and mapped; every house was entered on a list. All shares in the land, and all joint and separate liabilities for revenue, were registered. The customs of the village were recorded, and formed a manual of village law. Finally, details of all lawsuits under the settlement officers were preserved, and formed a history of the village settlement. This system was carried out in the Punjab and other new provinces of British India. In Bengal, however, it is stopped by the zemindari system; whilst in Madras village rights are equal under the ryotwari system.

Second Burmese war, 1852.

§9. In 1852 a second Burmese war was forced upon Lord Dalhousie. A treaty of commerce and friendship had been concluded with the king of Burma at the end of the first war, but of late years it had been grossly violated. Burmese officials had condemned British sea captains to fine and imprisonment on false charges, and British merchants residing at Rangoon were preparing to abandon their property and leave Burmese territory unless they were protected by their own government.

Arrogant officials.

Commodore Lambert was sent to Rangoon to investigate complaints. He was treated by the Burmese officials with such insolence and arrogance that negotiations were impossible. Eventually he seized a Burmese ship by way of reprisal, but engaged to restore it on receipt of something like 1,000l. as nominal compensation for British sufferers. In reply the Burmese fired on the commodore's steamer, and the firing was promptly returned. From that moment war was inevitable.

Annexation of Pegu.

A British expedition under General Godwin reached Rangoon. The Shway Dagohn pagoda, the great cathedral of Buddhism in Burma, was taken by storm; and then all fighting was over. The court of Ava was powerless and paralysed. It could not resist British forces, and simply left the British authorities to do as they pleased. Upper Burma was abandoned to the king, and the rich valley of Pegu, and port of Rangoon, were added to the British empire; and eventually the three divisions of Pegu, Arakan, and Tenasserim were formed into the province of British Burma.

New frontiers of British Empire.

The annexation of the Punjab and Burma are the crowning events of the nineteenth century. Lord Wellesley had delivered India from Tippu, and established the paramount power of the East India Company over the Mogul viceroys and the Mahratta princes. Lord Hastings had converted Nipal into a staunch ally, and stamped out the predatory powers of Central India. Lord Dalhousie annexed the empire of Runjeet Singh, excepting Cashmere, and the empire of the Alompras, excepting Upper Burma, and thus laid down frontiers which remained unchanged for an entire generation.26

Lord Dalhousie as an administrator. Progressive policy.

§10. But Lord Dalhousie left his mark in history as an administrator rather than as a conqueror. Having annexed the Punjab and Pegu, he threw his whole soul into the administration. The Punjab was soon traversed with roads like a Roman province, and one magnificent and difficult road was completed from Lahore to Peshawar. Rangoon was cleared of malarious jungle, and planned out in streets and roads like a European city. The working of British administration in the new provinces has been most successful. Lord Dalhousie not only delivered the population from oppression and violence, but introduced order, liberty, and law, such as prevails in no Oriental country outside the British pale from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chinese Seas. Lord Dalhousie may have petted the Punjab and Pegu at the expense of Madras and Bombay, but he was never unmindful of the interests of the Anglo-Indian empire. He is the first Governor-General who laboured for the benefit of India in the interests of the British nation, as well as in those of the East India Company.

Public works of the East India Company.

Public works in India before the advent of Lord Dalhousie had chiefly consisted of military and civil buildings, such as barracks, arsenals, jails, and hospitals. The Company, however, was the landlord of India, and the bulk of the people were its tenants; it had therefore sought to improve the condition of its tenants after the manner of landlords. It encouraged the cultivation of tea, coffee, and cotton. It restored choked-up channels, which had been dug by Mohammedan Sultans of former days for watering their palaces, gardens, and hunting grounds; and it converted them into canals for irrigating a large acreage in the North-West Provinces. Such was the origin of the Western and Eastern Jumna canals, which were constructed in the days of Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland. Each canal received the water from the upper stream on the slope of the Himalayas, and irrigated the high lands which were above the level of the lower stream. Above all, the Company sanctioned the Ganges canal which was purely a British undertaking, constructed for navigation as well as for irrigation.

Northern India: old caravan routes.

But India was without roads. Rough caravan routes traversed Northern India in the seventeenth century, and European travellers landing at Surat could find their way to Ajmere, Agra, and Delhi. From Delhi again there was a caravan route through the Punjab and Afghanistan to Persia and Turkistan. But in the eighteenth century all were closed. Rajput rebels and outlaws stopped all travelling between Surat and Agra; the Jhat brigands of Bhurtpore stopped it between Bengal and Delhi; and Sikhs and Afghans cut off all trade with Persia and Turkistan.

Water-ways.

In Northern India the ordinary route from Calcutta to the north-west was by water. The rivers Jumna and Ganges flow from the Himalayas in a south-easterly direction until they meet at Allahabad in the centre of Hindustan. The Jumna flows past Delhi and Agra; the Ganges flows past Cawnpore; and after meeting at Allahabad, the two rivers flow in one united stream past Benares, Patna, Monghyr, and Calcutta, until they reach the Bay of Bengal. But travelling up country against the stream was always tedious, and a journey which formerly occupied months by water, now only occupies the same number of days by rail.

Deccan: no traffic.

In the Deccan the routes were much worse. There was no traffic between Bombay and the Mahratta country until 1831, when Sir John Malcolm opened a cart-road through the western Ghats, and thus broke through the mountain wall which cut off Bombay from the interior. In the Nizam's country there were no roads except a rough route between Hyderabad and the seaport at Masulipatam, which was cursed by every British Resident from the days of Clive and Verelst down to very modern times.

Southern India: palanquins.

In Southern India there were neither caravan routes nor waterways of any moment. Hindu Rajas never opened out the country like the Mohammedans of Northern India. Hindu infantry and light Mahratta horsemen required no roads; and Rajas and other Hindu grandees were carried in palanquins. Europeans travelled in palanquins down to the present generation, and were in no fear of robbers. Ladies and children were borne along through jungles and over rivers; leopards and tigers were kept off at night by lighted torches; and the sure feet of the half-naked coolies carried travellers safely over rocky heights and troubled waters.

Macadamised roads.

Mr. Thomason, who was Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces from 1843 to 1853, was the first Bengal administrator who constructed macadamised roads. His object was to connect the large cities under his jurisdiction, but the work once begun soon advanced apace. A trunk road was commenced between Calcutta and Delhi, and in 1850 mail carts ran for the first time between the two capitals of Northern India. The annexation of the Punjab gave a further impetus to road-making, and Calcutta and Delhi were soon brought into communication with Lahore and Peshawar.

Proposed railways.

Meanwhile railways had created a furor. Promoters in the British Isles were anxious to construct railways in India at the expense of the East India Company, but the idea did not recommend itself to the men who had the largest experience of India. There was a natural reluctance to accept schemes by which speculators might profit at the Company's expense, whilst the gain to the people of India would be doubtful. It was currently believed, by men who had spent the best part of their lives in the country, that Hindus would never travel by railway; that they would trudge on foot, and carry their families and goods in carts and cars, as they had done in the days of Porus and Megasthenes.

Lord Dalhousie, a new type of Indian statesman.

§11. Lord Dalhousie was the type of British administrators of the modern school. He had served two years' apprenticeship in Great Britain as President of the Board of Trade under Sir Robert Peel, and he was especially familiar with the construction of British roads and railways. In India he opened the great trunk road from Calcutta to Delhi, and post carriages, known as "dak gharies," soon superseded the old river "budgerows." Other metalled roads were begun in Madras and Bombay. Still one thing was wanting. Calcutta was united to all the great capitals of Northern India—Allahabad, Agra, and Delhi—but Bombay and Madras were as far off as ever from both Northern India and each other.

Trunk railway lines.

Railways would remedy the evil, and Lord Dalhousie was bent on introducing them. He planned a trunk system which in the present day unites the three Presidencies, and connects them with the north-west frontier. He induced railway companies to undertake the construction, by giving a government guarantee of five per cent. interest per annum on the outlay; and before he left India three experimental lines were already in progress, namely, one from Calcutta, a second from Bombay, and a third from Madras. Such was the origin of the three great railways of India, namely, the "East Indian," which runs through Northern India; the "Great Indian Peninsula," which runs through the Deccan; and the "Madras railway," which runs through Southern India.

Telegraph system, 1853-55.

Between 1853 and 1855 the telegraph system was constructed, which electrified Europeans and awakened the Asiatics from the torpor of ages. Madras and Bombay could talk with all the great cities of Northern India, and Rangoon was placed in telegraphic communication with Lahore and Peshawar. Unfortunately there was only one line of wires from Allahabad to Delhi, and when the wires were cut by the sepoy mutineers of 1857, communication was cut off. This incident, however, belongs to the régime of Lord Dalhousie's successor.

Ganges canal, 1854.

In 1854 the Ganges canal, the greatest work of irrigation ever accomplished, was completed by Sir Proby Cautley and opened by Lord Dalhousie. The British nation has never realised this grand undertaking of the old East India Company. It receives the water on the lower slope of the Himalayas, and runs along the Doab, or high lands between the Jumna and Ganges, throwing out distributaries at intervals. About eighty miles to the south-east of Delhi it separates into two branches, one flowing into the Ganges at Cawnpore, and the other flowing into the Jumna near Etawah. The whole length of the canal and branches for navigation is 614 miles; the length of the distributaries for irrigation is 3,111 miles.

Annexation policy.

§12. Lord Dalhousie was so convinced of the superiority of British administration, that he considered every opportunity should be taken for bringing the territories of feudatory princes under British rule. Hitherto it had been the policy of the East India Company to perpetuate the dynasties of its feudatories. If a feudatory prince was without a son, he was advised by the British Resident to adopt one. But Hindu princes shrink from the idea of adopting a son. It is often as difficult to persuade a Raja to adopt as it used to be to persuade Englishmen to make wills. He puts it off with some vague intention of marrying another wife, which he is permitted to do under Hindu law when the first wife is barren. Accordingly Hindu princes often die without leaving any son whatever, real or adopted. Under such circumstances the widow was permitted to adopt a boy, and the East India Company permitted this boy to succeed to the principality.

Question of adoption.

Adoption, however, is purely a religious ceremonial. It is the outcome of the religious belief of the Hindus that when a man dies his soul goes to a sort of purgatory until his sins are washed away; and that during this interval it is the duty of a son, real or adopted, to offer cakes and water to refresh the soul in question. The East India Company accepted the adoption as giving a claim to the principality, because it settled the succession when a natural heir was wanting. Lord Dalhousie decided that the adoption gave no claim to the principality, but only to the personal property of the deceased feudatory, because he was anxious to bring the territory under British administration.

Satara and Nagpore.

The Court of Directors refused to accept the views of Lord Dalhousie in the case of "protected allies," such as Sindia, Holkar, and the princes of Rajputana. But they accepted his views as regards "dependent principalities," such as Satara and Nagpore, which had been created, or artificially resuscitated, by the Marquis of Hastings, and in which the Hindu rulers had turned out very badly. Accordingly, Nagpore and Satara became British territory, and were brought under British administration.

Jhansi in Bundelkund.

A chiefship in Bundelkund, known as Jhansi, was also annexed to the British empire. The chiefs and princes of Bundelkund were situated far away to the south of the river Jumna. They were cut off by hills and jungles from the civilising influences of British rule, and retained much of the lawlessness and anarchy of the eighteenth century. The chief of Jhansi died without leaving any heir, real or adopted. The widow was allowed to adopt a son for the offering of cakes and water, but not allowed to adopt a successor to the principality, and the territory accordingly lapsed to the British government, and was brought under British administration. The widow was very angry. She had expected to rule Jhansi as queen regent; but a Hindu lady brought up in the seclusion of a zenana cannot always be trusted with the irresponsible powers of a despot. She yielded to her fate, but it will be seen hereafter that she bottled up her wrath and waited for revenge.

Obsolete controversy.

Since Lord Dalhousie's time the controversy as regards adoption has become obsolete. The right of adopting a son, who should not only offer cakes and water to the soul of the deceased, but succeed him in the government of the principality, has been distinctly recognised by the British government. Meanwhile the aspect of the question has entirely changed. In the days of Lord Dalhousie few, if any, of the Indian feudatories of the British government showed any signs of progress. In the present day the heirs to principalities are taught in schools and colleges, and are learning something of India and the great world around them by the help of railways and telegraphs. It is therefore to be hoped that a day may yet dawn when British systems of administration may be worked in every feudatory state in India by trained Asiatic officials.

Exceptional annexation of Oudh.

Last of all, Lord Dalhousie annexed the Mohammedan kingdom of Oudh to the British empire. This was an exceptional measure, having nothing whatever to do with the Hindu usage of adoption. The Nawab of Oudh had assumed the title of "king," but had degenerated under British protection into an Oriental ruler of the worst possible type. His kingdom was parcelled out amongst a landed aristocracy, known as talukdars, who were half landlords and half revenue collectors, like the zemindars of Bengal. Every talukdar of position had a fortress of his own, with a garrison and guns. He collected rents from the ryots, but paid little or no revenue to the king's officers, unless compelled by force of arms. The king lived secluded in his palaces at Lucknow, surrounded by greedy and corrupt officials, immersed in Oriental pleasures, ignorant of what was going on outside his capital, yet maintaining a rabble army, which was either in mutiny for want of pay, or plundering the villages for bare necessaries. A British Resident was appointed to Lucknow, but he could only interfere by way of advice, remonstrance, or warning. A British force was stationed in Oudh, under the direction of the Resident, but only for the maintenance of the public peace, and not for interference in the administration. Deposition of the king would have done no manner of good, for there was not a prince of the family capable of governing the country in his room. It was thus impossible to maintain the dynasty without sacrificing the interests of ten millions of population whom the British government was bound to protect. At last, in 1856, the territory of Oudh was annexed to the British empire, and brought under British administration.

India Bill of 1853; new Civil Service.

§13. In 1853 the last charter of the East India Company, which had been granted in 1833 for a term of twenty years, was brought to a close. Parliament refused to renew the charter, but declined as yet to abolish the Company, and meanwhile carried out some constitutional changes. It placed the Indian civil service on a national basis, by abolishing the system of nomination by the Court of Directors, and introducing the system of competitive examinations, which was eventually thrown open to all British subjects—Asiatic as well as European.

New Legislative Council.

In like manner Parliament broadened the supreme government of India by creating a new legislative council. The Governor-General in Council continued to exercise supreme control over the executive. At the same time this executive council was formed into a legislative council by the addition of representative members; namely, the chief justice and one puisne judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, and one representative member from each of the four presidencies, namely, Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the North-West Provinces.

Constitutional germ.

§14. The legislative council was opened in 1854. It was the first germ of representative government in India. Lord Dalhousie introduced parliamentary forms, and the debates were conducted with a spirit which recommended them to the attention of the Indian public, official and non-official, Asiatic and European. The Governor-General and executive council exercised a veto on the introduction of bills. But four Indian civilians represented the governments of four presidencies, and the judges of the Supreme Court represented, more or less, the interests of the public outside official circles. Moreover, although the Asiatic populations had no voice in the debates, they were enabled to express their objections in the form of petitions, which were duly considered by the committees of the council on the several bills. In a word, the legislative council of India, imperfect as it may have been, was an advance in the development of constitutional government of India, and will accordingly be brought under review in the concluding chapter.

Macaulay and the Penal Code.

The new legislative council brought to light Lord Macaulay's draft of a Penal Code, which had been shelved for nearly twenty years. The delay, however, had not been without its advantages. Mr. (now Sir Barnes) Peacock, took charge of the bill under which the Code became law, and subjected its clauses to a careful revision. Moreover, the representative civilians from the four presidencies, and two judges of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, had opportunities for discussing any or every clause from local and imperial points of view, which could scarcely fail to adapt the Penal Code to all parts of British India.

Characteristics of the Code.

The Penal Code had evidently been drafted in Lord Macaulay's best style. It was eminently clear and concise, free from redundancies and repetitions, and singularly happy in the definitions of offences and law terms. It embodies illustrations, as well as explanations, of every conceivable offence known to criminal law. Consequently, no educated individual, Asiatic or European, who refers to the Penal Code, can possibly make any mistake as regards the criminal law in British India. It did not, however, take effect until 1860. Meanwhile events transpired which opened up an entirely new era in the progress of Great Britain as an Asiatic power.