India Under British Rule

Invasion of the Carnatic, 1780: breaking up of the confederation.

About 1779 Warren Hastings was warned that the three powers—the Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder Ali—were preparing for simultaneous attacks on Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and that a large Mahratta army was already on the move from Berar territory for the invasion of the Bengal provinces. In 1780 Hyder Ali desolated the Carnatic with an army of a hundred thousand men, but he was the only one of the three allies that kept to his engagement, and was eventually driven back by Sir Eyre Coote, one of the half-forgotten warriors of the eighteenth century. The Nizam did nothing; he probably waited to see what the others would do. The Mahrattas of Berar encamped in great force in the hills and jungles of Orissa, but only appear to have wanted a money present; and after wasting several months they were induced by Warren Hastings to return to Berar. No movement of any kind was undertaken against Bombay; and thus the strange confederation of Mohammedans and Mahrattas melted away.

Parliament interferes.

§13. The quarrels, the wars, and the irregularities of Warren Hastings induced the British Parliament to attempt radical changes. The antagonism between Philip Francis and Warren Hastings had led to a duel, in which Francis was wounded; and he returned to England to pour his bitter prejudices against Warren Hastings into the ears of Burke and Fox. The result was that a bitter animosity was excited, not only against Warren Hastings, but against the East India Company; and Parliament was called upon to decide whether the control of the administration of British India ought not to be transferred from the Court of Directors to the British Crown. The main question was one of patronage. The patronage of Indian appointments would render the Crown too powerful, as the elder Pitt had foreseen in the days of Clive; and George III. was already straining his royal prerogative over Parliament and Ministers to an extent which was exciting alarm.

Fox's India Bill, 1783.

In 1783, when the coalition ministry of Charles James Fox and Lord North was in power, Fox brought forward a bill for abolishing the Court of Directors, and transferring their authority and patronage to seven Commissioners nominated by Ministers. The bill was passed by the Commons, but George III. opposed it, and it was rejected by the Lords.

Pitt creates a board of control, 1784.

In 1784 William Pitt the younger brought in another bill, which left the Directors in full possession of their power and patronage, but brought them under the strict supervision of a Board of Control, consisting of six privy councillors nominated by the Crown. Henceforth the President of the Board of Control, who was always a member of the Cabinet, was the centre of all authority, and was strictly responsible to Parliament for the conduct of Indian affairs.

Trial of Warren Hastings.

§14. Warren Hastings returned to England in 1785 to find that the minds of Burke, Fox, and other leading statesmen had been poisoned against him by Philip Francis. Eventually he was impeached by the Commons and tried by the Lords in Westminster Hall. Hastings was certainly responsible for the Rohilla war, and also responsible for the execution of Nundcomar; but the crowning charge against him was that he had connived at the torture of the servants of the Oudh Begums by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh. The charge was painted in terrible colours by Sheridan, and it may be as well to sum up the actual facts.

Case of the Oudh Begums.

A Nawab Vizier of Oudh died in 1775, leaving treasure to the value of some two or three millions sterling in the public treasury at Lucknow. The son and successor of the deceased ruler naturally assumed possession on the ground that the money was state property; but his mother and grandmother, known as the two Begums, claimed it as private property, which the late Nawab Vizier had made over to them as a gift. Warren Hastings declined to interfere. Philip Francis, however, insisted that the British Government ought to interfere; and eventually the money was made over to the Begums on the condition that they paid some quarter of a million towards the State debt due to the East India Company.

Did Hastings connive at torture?

During the Mahratta war money was urgently required. The Nawab Vizier owed large arrears to the Company, but could not pay up unless he recovered possession of the State treasures. Philip Francis had returned to England. Accordingly Warren Hastings abandoned the Begums to the tender mercies of the Nawab Vizier, and connived at the imprisonment of their servants. It subsequently appeared that the Nawab Vizier tortured the servants until the money was surrendered, but there is no evidence to show that Warren Hastings connived at the torture.

Services of Hastings.

Warren Hastings was undoubtedly a man of great abilities and marvellous energy. His services to the East India Company, and to British interests in India, are beyond all calculation. But he was exposed to great temptation in times when public virtue was less exalted than it has been in the present generation, and he was hedged around with enemies who were spiteful and unscrupulous enough to misrepresent any and every transaction. His errors were those of his time, but his genius is stamped for ever on the history of British India. His misdeeds cannot be entirely overlooked, but he paid a bitter penalty. For many months he was threatened by the proceedings which culminated in his trial at Westminster Hall. Eventually he was acquitted of all charges, but his trial was protracted over seven long years and ruined his private fortunes and public career.

Merits as an administrator.

After the lapse of a hundred years, the flaws in the character of Warren Hastings may be condoned in consideration of his merits as an administrator. He found the Bengal provinces in chaos, and introduced light and order. He converted British traders into revenue collectors, magistrates, and judges, but he established Courts of Appeal to supervise their proceedings; and if his magistrates and judges had no legal training, they were at any rate Britons with a national sense of justice, and their decisions were infinitely better than those of Bengal zemindars, without law, or justice, or control. Warren Hastings kept a watchful eye on British interests as well as on the welfare of the people under his charge. He sent a mission to Tibet, which shows his anxiety for the extension of trade. He recorded a touching tribute to the memory of Augustus Cleveland, a young Bengal civilian who had done much to humanise and elevate the rude Sonthals of the Rajmahal hills, which sufficiently proves his sympathy with the well-being of the masses. Altogether, if Warren Hastings is not so free from blame as he is represented by his friends, he certainly was not so black as he has been painted by his enemies.

Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93.

§15. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis, an independent peer, was appointed Governor-General. This event marks a change in British rule. Lord Cornwallis was the first British peer, and the first Englishman not in the service of the East India Company, who was appointed to the post of Governor-General. He carried out two measures which have left their mark in history, namely, the perpetual settlement with the Bengal zemindars, and the reform of the judicial system.

Perpetual settlement.

The settlement with the Bengal zemindars was still awaiting a decision. Lord Cornwallis was anxious to arrange the land revenue of the Bengal provinces on English lines. He abandoned the yearly leases, and concluded leases for ten years, with the view of eventually declaring the settlement to be perpetual. Mr. John Shore, a Bengal civilian, pressed for a preliminary inquiry into the rights of the ryots, for the purpose of fixing the rents. But Lord Cornwallis was opposed to any further delay. In 1793 he proclaimed that the ten years settlement would be perpetual; that the tenant-rights of ryots would be left to future inquiry; and that henceforth the Bengal zemindars would be invested with the proprietary rights enjoyed by English landlords, so long as they paid the fixed yearly revenue to Government and respected all existing rights of ryots and cultivators.

Judicial reforms.

The judicial system introduced by Warren Hastings was modified by Lord Cornwallis. The British collector, as already seen, was also magistrate and civil judge. Lord Cornwallis decided that a collector ought to have no judicial duties under which he might be called on to adjudicate in revenue questions. Accordingly a regulation was passed under which the duties of revenue collector were separated from those of magistrate and judge, and the magistrate and judge was to be the head of the district, whilst the revenue collector was his subordinate. It is difficult to understand the merits of this measure. Since then the two offices have been sometimes united and sometimes separated. Eventually the two offices of magistrate and collector were united in the same person.

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1

The island of Goa, and the fortress of Diu in Guzerat, were nominally within Mohammedan dominion, but they were really independent and were held by force of arms.

2

The authorities for the present chapter, which deals with the rise and early development of British rule in India, are somewhat numerous. The most important are the Government records at Madras, in which the weekly transactions of the Governor and Council are entered at full length in a series known as "Consultations." Every year a copy of the "Consultations" was sent to the Court of Directors, together with a summary of the affairs of the year as a "General Letter;" and every year a "General Letter" was received from the Court of Directors, reviewing the "Consultations," and conveying instructions and orders thereon. The Madras records have been closely investigated by the author from 1670 to 1748; and printed extracts were published at Madras in 1860-62, in three volumes small quarto, under the title of Madras in the Olden Time. To them may be added Bruce's Annals of the East India Company; Sir Thomas Roe's Journal of a Mission to the Great Mogul in 1616-18; and the travels of Pietro della Valle, Tavernier, Thevenot and Fryer; as well as Orme's History of Hindustan, Stewart's History of Bengal, Faria y Souza's History of Portuguese Asia, and Shaw's Predecessors of the High Court at Madras. Further authorities will be found cited in the author's History of India from the Earliest Ages, and in his Early Records of British India.

3

The Mofussil Courts, and the High Court in Appeals from the Mofussil Courts, are still required to decide, according to "equity and good conscience." See the "High Court amended Charters" granted in 1866.

4

This was notoriously the case at Surat, where female slaves might be purchased by Europeans. There was a Dutch factory at Surat of the same stamp as the British factory, and its married inmates were in like manner forbidden to bring their wives from Holland. But when the Dutch got possession of Java, they offered grants of land to married Dutchmen, and, according to Pietro della Valle, there was a sudden change in domestic arrangements. Dutch bachelors were in such a hurry to go to Java, that they married Armenian Christians, or went off to the bazaar and bought female slaves and baptised them and married them without loss of time.

5

Abbé Dubois, who lived many years in Southern India, could not account for the distinction between the two Hands; Dr. Fryer was told about 1676 that the antagonism was planned by the Brahmans to keep the lower castes in subjection.

6

Since the foregoing chapter was in type, Professor Terrien de Lacouperie has kindly pointed out that a division between right and left hands has existed from a remote period in Central and Eastern Asia. Among the Turkish Hiung-nu on the north-west of China, the officers were arranged into two divisions, a left and a right-hand side, both before and after the Christian era. The Burut-Kirghiz are still divided into two wings, viz., on of the right and sol of the left.

In China the task of keeping a daily chronicle of "words" and "facts" was entrusted to two officers, one on the left-hand of the emperor and the other on his right. The officer on the left recorded all speeches and addresses, whilst that on the right recorded all facts and events. This last division, however, is a mere title in Chinese administration; the left-hand being more honourable than the right, and taking the precedence.

The distinction between the right and left hands in Southern India, is, as already seen, a caste antagonism, and it is impossible to say whether it has or has not any connection, however remote, with that in Central Asia or China. The Dravidian populations of Southern India certainly immigrated from the region beyond the Himalayas in some unknown period, but all historical links are wanting save the evidence of language. Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, in his lectures on "Indo-Chinese Philology," has pointed out that the Dravidian group forms the fourth division of the Kueonlunic branch of Turanian languages.

7

The three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa are known to Europeans by the one name of Bengal. Bengal proper includes the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Behar is the frontier province towards Oudh, having its capital at Patna. Orissa lies to the south of Behar and Bengal proper, but Cuttack and the hilly country to the south and west had been ceded to the Mahrattas. The Orissa of the period comprises little more than Midnapore; but the high-sounding title was still retained of Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. After the Mahratta wars of 1803, the British took possession of Cuttack and remaining portions of Orissa, in order to hold the sea-board against invasion.

8

In the present day there are forty-five districts in the Bengal provinces, namely, thirty-seven regulation and eight non-regulation. The distinction between the two classes of districts will be explained hereafter.

9

The first portrait of Warren Hastings was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. The second portrait is still hanging in the Council Chamber at the India Office at Westminster.

10

See Holwell's Historical Events in Bengal.

11

The control over the country police was also transferred from the zemindars to the new magistrates and collectors. This measure was good in itself, but attended with disadvantages, which will be brought under review hereafter.

12

The old Sudder Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay finally disappeared in 1862, when they were amalgamated with the Supreme Courts, which will be described hereafter, and which, up to that date, were exclusively composed of barrister judges. In the present day they are forgotten by all but lawyers familiar with a past generation, yet the Sudder Courts played their part in the history of the past. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Marquis of Wellesley was Governor-General, three civilians were appointed judges in the Sudder, one being a member of Council and the Chief Judge in the room of the Governor-General.

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.