India Under British Rule

13

The defence of Sir Elijah Impey has been thoroughly investigated from a legal point of view, in the Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey, by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

14

Two centuries have passed away since the death of Sivaji, yet in June, 1885, a public meeting was held at Poona to take steps for repairing his tomb. His admirers styled him the Wallace of the Deccan.

15

Lord Cornwallis carried out important reforms in the Bengal army, and thus enabled his successors to build up the larger Indian empire. The British army in India, Asiatic and European, will be brought under review it Chapter V., which deals with the sepoy revolt of 1857-58.

16

The abolition of "sitting in dharna" by Sir John Shore was the first great social reform which was carried out in India under British rule. In 1802 Lord Wellesley abolished the still more horrible practice of sacrificing living children by throwing them to the alligators at the mouth of the Ganges; whilst the once famous rite of suttee, or the burning of living widows with their dead husbands, was practised under British rule down to 1829, when it was abolished by Lord William Bentinck.

17

The following fragment preserves something of the feeling of the time:—

"Fill the wine-cup fast, for the storm is past,The tyrant Tippu is slain at last,And victory smilesTo reward the toilsOf Britons once again."Let the trumpet sound, and the sound go roundAlong the bound of Eastern ground;Let the cymbals clangWith a merry-merry bang,To the joys of the next campaign."

18

There was also some show of treaty rights in appropriating the territory, but the question is obscure and obsolete. In 1775 the Nawab Vizier had ceded the revenues of the territory for the maintenance of a British force in Oudh, and Lord Wellesley is said to have only closed the mortgage by taking over the country.

19

The ex-Peishwa was born in 1775, when Warren Hastings and Philip Francis were beginning to quarrel at Calcutta. He ascended the throne of Poona in 1795. He concluded the treaty of Bassein with Lord Wellesley in 1802. He was dethroned in 1818. He lived at Bithoor, near Cawnpore, until he died, an old man of seventy-seven, in 1853. After his death the notorious Nana Sahib claimed to be an adopted son, and demanded a continuation of the pension of 80,000l. The story will be found in Chapter VI., of the present volume, in connection with the massacre at Cawnpore during the sepoy mutinies of 1857.

20

Kali, the black goddess, is the tutelar deity of Calcutta. By a strange anomaly, Calcutta is so called after the temple Kali, at the village of Kali ghat, in the suburbs of the British metropolis. The temple enclosure, where kids and goats are sacrificed, is not a pleasant place to look at.

21

In each district there was a magistrate and collector. The two duties had been separated by Lord Cornwallis, but were generally united in one officer, who was the head of the district and representative of the British government. As magistrate he punished Asiatic offenders with fine and imprisonment, and committed serious cases for trial. He controlled the police, managed the jail, and was generally responsible for the peace and order of the district. As collector he received the revenues of the district, took charge of the treasury, and controlled the district expenditure. If anything went wrong in the district the magistrate and collector was the universal referee and centre of authority.

The civil judge in each district was raised to the rank of a sessions judge. He was the judicial head of the district. He heard appeals from all the subordinate courts, tried all important civil cases, and held a jail delivery once a month, for the trial of all prisoners committed by the magistrate and collector. Henceforth he was known as the district judge.

Lord William Bentinck abolished the four provincial courts of circuit and appeal which had been established by Lord Cornwallis, declaring that they had become mere resting-places for those civil servants who were unfit for higher duties. In their room he appointed commissioners of divisions, each of whom had five or six districts under his control. Henceforth the commissioner supervised the civil and judicial administration throughout the districts within his division. He was the channel of all communications between the British government at Calcutta and the district officers. Sometimes he heard appeals from the civil and sessions judge, but as a rule such appeals went to the Sudder Courts at Calcutta. In revenue matters he was controlled by the Board of Revenue at Calcutta.

The district officers had European assistants, as well as establishments of Asiatic officials.

22

The North-West Provinces, which extend from Bengal to the Punjab, were to have been formed into the "Agra" Presidency. The change of name would have been extremely convenient. Later on, when the Punjab was annexed, the term "North-West Provinces" became a misnomer. The Punjab was de facto the furthest province on the north-west. Since then Oudh has been annexed to the North-West Provinces, and the term "North-West Provinces and Oudh" has become cumbrous. A single name like "Agra" would be more appropriate.

23

See the author's History of India from the Earliest Ages, vol. iii., pages 60, 280, etc.

24

The villages in the Company's Jaghir shared the same fate. They were sold by auction in groups, and were mostly bought up by native servants and dependents of the British officials at Madras. In process of time the ryotwari settlement was introduced, and then a very knotty question was raised. Under the ryotwari settlement a certain portion of the waste lands round a village was given to the villagers in common for grazing and other purposes; but the culturable waste lands were taken over by the British authorities, and valued, and rented out accordingly, to such ryots as were willing to bring them under cultivation. The buyers of the villages in the Company's Jaghir claimed, however, to be proprietors of the whole of the waste lands. For many years the demand was referred by the Board of Revenue to the Supreme Court, and by the Supreme Court back again to the Board of Revenue. By this time the question has perhaps been settled.

25

The capture of Ghazni was mainly due to the cool intrepidity of the late Sir Henry Durand, then a lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers.

26

As these pages are passing through the press Upper Burma has been annexed to the British empire. In 1870 the author was sent by the British government on a semi-political mission to Mandalay and Bhamo. In those days the reigning king respected British supremacy, and British representatives were maintained at the capital and the frontier. These political ties were subsequently loosened, and annexation became a state necessity. Like most of the Buddhist kings of Burma, Theebaw was a professed water drinker, but much given to strong liquors, in which state he committed the most revolting cruelties. Similar horrors are related of the old kings of Burma in the author's Short History of India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Burma, chap. xv.

27

English and India, by M. E. de Valbezen, late Consul-General at Calcutta, Minister Plenipotentiary.

28

During the first Cabul war of 1839-42, Hindu sepoys were taken prisoners by the Afghans, and subjected to a similar process in order to convert them to Islam. But times had changed since the establishment of British supremacy. Money would expiate any spiritual crime, or purchase any pardon or privilege from the Brahmans. When the prisoners returned to India they received back pay from the British government for the whole term of their captivity. Accordingly, after a long series of abstruse calculations, the Brahmans discovered that this back pay would exactly meet the cost of expiation. But the sepoys refused the bait. They preferred keeping the back pay in their pockets, and remaining within the fold of Islam. What became of their Hindu wives and families is a mystery to this day.

29

This last fact was vouched by an English civil servant who was living at the time with the late Mr. Cooper, the magistrate in question. Unfortunately Mr. Cooper subsequently published a description of the execution in a tone of levity which was generally condemned.

30

Eventually the king and his family were sent to Rangoon, where he died in 1862.

31

Mr. John Colvin, a distinguished Bengal civilian and Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, who was shut up in the fortress at Agra, died during the siege. Many old Anglo-Indians still remember his career with interest. He was private secretary to Lord Auckland during the first Cabul war. His son, Sir Auckland Colvin of the Bengal Civil Service, is now Financial Minister to the Government of India under Lord Dufferin.

32

During the march, the 93d Highlanders suddenly stopped, broke their ranks, and rushed off right and left like madmen. It was thought that they were seized with a panic. It turned out that they were flying from bees, who were swarming at their bare legs and stinging like fury.

33

For an interesting account of the state of affairs in Central India during the mutinies of 1857, see Life of Major-General Sir Henry M. Durand, by his Son. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1883. Sir Henry Durand was Agent to the Governor-General for Central India, and Resident at Indore, during the mutinies.

34

Mr. James Wilson died in 1860. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Laing as financial minister, who in his turn was succeeded in 1862 by Sir Charles Trevelyan.

35

During the Viceroyalty he was plain Sir John Lawrence, but when it was over he was raised to the peerage.

36

Calcutta is by no means an unpleasant residence for Europeans with tolerably sound constitutions. Sir John Lawrence was only in his fifty-fifth year, but he was sadly worn by hard work and unexampled anxieties.

37

British territory in India comprises 900,000 square miles, with a population of 200,000,000. Asiatic territory comprises nearly 600,000 square miles, with a population of 52,000,000.

Northern India is fringed on the west by Afghanistan, on the north by Cashmere, Nipal, and Bhotan; on the east by Munipore and Burma.

Central India is traversed from west to east by a belt or zone of states and chiefships—Rajput, Mahratta, and Mohammedan—which extends from the western coast of Gujerat facing the Indian Ocean, and the western desert of Sind facing Rajputana, through the heart of the Indian continent eastward to the Bengal Presidency. This belt includes, amongst a host of minor principalities and chiefships, the three leading Rajput states—Jeypore, Jodhpore, and Oodeypore; the Jhat state of Bhurtpore; the Mahratta territories of the Gaekwar of Baroda in Western India, and those of Sindia and Holkar in Central India; and the Hindu states of Bundelkund, including Rewah, along the eastern hills and jungles to the south of the river Jumna.

The Deccan includes the Mohammedan dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad, to the eastward of the Bombay Presidency.

Southern India includes the Hindu states of Mysore and Travancore to the westward of the Madras Presidency.

The term "foreign" as applied to the Indian Foreign Office is a misnomer, and has led to confusion. The term "political department" would be more correct, as it deals mainly with Asiatic feudatory states which are bound up with the body politic of the Anglo-Indian empire. The relations between the British government and its Asiatic feudatories are not "international" in the European sense of the word, and are not controlled by international law. They are "political" in the imperial sense of the word, and are governed by the treaties, and regulated by the sovereign authority which is exercised by the British government as the paramount power in India. A British officer is placed in charge of every state, or group of states, and is known as "political agent" or "Resident."

Lord Macaulay, versed in European history, but with no special knowledge of Asia, condemns the word "political," which had been used ever since the department was founded by Warren Hastings. He declared that Asiatic feudatories were "foreign states," and that the relations between those feudatories and the paramount power were diplomatic. Lord Macaulay in his time was as great a literary authority as Dr. Samuel Johnson. Lord Ellenborough took the hint when he was Governor-General, and changed the Political Department into the Foreign Office. It would be better to call it "Political and Foreign."