India Under Ripon: A Private Diary

In view of all these circumstances, the following resolutions have, therefore, been suggested, and are now put before the Mohammedan community at large:

1. That in each town a Provincial Committee shall be formed, to consider where and under what conditions it will be best to found an educational establishment on a large scale, which shall equally satisfy the religious and the secular wants of the community; and to raise subscriptions for that purpose.

2. That, this being done, a Central Committee shall be convened, the same to be composed of one delegate from each of the Provincial Committees, in order finally to decide the questions raised in the Provincial Committees.

3. That, if possible, his Highness the Nizam of the Deccan be asked to become the patron of a Central Establishment, as being the most powerful Mohammedan prince now reigning in India, and that a humble petition be addressed to his Highness in that sense. The following suggestions also are made:

1. That the educational establishment should take the form of a university, to be called the Deccan (?) University, empowered to grant degrees in religion and in secular knowledge, and to appoint professors in both branches of learning for such as shall repair to its metropolis (say Hyderabad) for their education. It is hoped that his Highness the Nizam may be pleased to grant a building to serve as university hall and lecture-rooms.

2. That, under the university, each province of the Indian Empire, or, if funds suffice, each great city, should erect or purchase at its own cost a building for its own students in the metropolis, the same to be called the college of that province or city, at which lodging (not board or furniture) should be provided at nominal rates to the students. These colleges should be the property of the provinces or cities erecting them, and should be managed by provincial or city trustees appointed by themselves in such manner (subject to the general laws of the university) as they shall themselves think most desirable. Thus each province or city would practically pay for and manage its own education.

3. That an appeal be made to the Mohammedan princes, noblemen, talukdars, zemindars, and rich merchants to found professorships for the university, the same to bear the name of their founders, and to be vested as religious endowments in the hands of university trustees, the duty of the professors being to give gratuitous public lectures to all students of the university. A donation of Rs.30,000 shall be considered equivalent to founding a professorship, and shall entitle the donor to have his name perpetually connected with it – this, although it may be hereafter considered necessary to increase the provision out of university funds. Such donors should moreover be granted the title of “Founders” of the university, and should form its special council.

4. That a similar appeal be made to poorer men to found scholarships under the like conditions, except that Rs.10,000 should be the sum entitling the donor to perpetual remembrance – the said scholarships to be granted in the form of monthly stipends of thirty rupees to such students as, having graduated in religious and secular knowledge in the university, may be chosen by special competition, on the condition that they shall act as schoolmasters in provincial towns and districts. The object of this provision will be to spread religious and secular education throughout the country. The founder of three scholarships to have the same privilege and title as the founder of a professorship.

5. That special provision be made in the scheme for the religious needs of the Shiah as well as of the Sunni communities.

6. That his Highness the Nizam be prayed to grant a perpetual charter regulating the university according to the rules usual in such institutions.

7. That a memorial be at the same time addressed to his Excellency the Viceroy of India, stating the objects of the university, and humbly praying the countenance of the Imperial Government for the scheme.

Hyderabad Deccan,February 13, 1884.

My dear Mr. Blunt,

I am desired by his Highness to inform you, in reply to your letter of the 24th of January, enclosing a memo. embodying a scheme for the formation of a Mohammedan University, that his Highness cordially approves of your suggestions, and will give every support in his power to any attempt that may be made to carry them out. His Highness had the honour of holding a conversation with his Excellency the Viceroy during his short sojourn here, in the course of which he understood that his Excellency was prepared to countenance and support the scheme.

I am to say that his Highness regards the scheme as one calculated immensely to advance the cause of Mohammedan progress, and that he will be glad if Hyderabad is given the honour, by preference, of becoming the centre of the movement. As, however, the scheme has originated with you, and you have taken the trouble of ascertaining the views of the leading Mohammedans in all parts of India, his Highness would have wished that you had prolonged your stay in this country so as to see it carried out. In any case, if your other engagements give you time to pay another visit to Hyderabad, his Highness will be gratified to have your assistance in the matter. His Highness is glad to say that his Excellency the Viceroy has promised him his.

Believe me, yours very sincerely,Salar Jung.

APPENDIX II

Sir William Hunter to Mr. Blunt

Calcutta,6th January, 1884.

Dear Mr. Blunt,

I have been unable to procure a copy of the “Settlement Handbook.” But here is one which I have borrowed. With regard to the Madras settlement, some detailed facts will be found at pp. 668 and 672, among other places.

The rules are: (1) First calculate the actual average produce and actual average value of it, over a period of years. Say the actual gross produce thus ascertained is 100 bushels. (2) Then deduct from the average actual gross produce one-sixth, as an extra allowance for risks of the season; leaving 83⅓ bushels. (3) Take an average of one-fourth, or 25 per cent., from this reduced gross produce as Government Revenue; this is four eighty-thirds and a half, = 20¾ bushels.

The 20¾ of bushels are about one-fifth of the actual gross produce (100 bushels), which has already included the risk of seasons, for it is the actual produce yielded, as a matter of fact, on an average of many years and seasons.

The 20¾ bushels are about one-half of the net produce after allowing for cost of cultivation and all possible risks; and this is probably what your raiyat friends meant in Madras.

The actual yield of each class of land is estimated by many experiments, sometimes 1,300 in a single district. The Famine Commissioners, by independent inquiry, came to the conclusion that the average land tax throughout India was only 5½ per cent. of the gross produce; but their calculation included Bengal and the Permanently Settled Districts. I have not been able to examine afresh the evidence on which they based this conclusion; but they were careful men, and by no means favourers of the status quo.

I am no favourer of that status in many parts of India; and if you care to go into the question I shall be happy to send you my exposure in Council of the heavy burden imposed by our Land Assessments on the Deccan peasant. The speech was telegraphed verbatim to the “Times” fourteen months ago; but, if you did not see it, and care to look at it, I can get you a copy.

I send you the foregoing facts, not to convert you to a system which has grievous defects, but to enable you to deal with that system without running into little inaccuracies which would be laid hold of as vitiating your main argument.

I have been much impressed by your sympathy for the hard lot of the peasant, whether in Egypt or in India, and by your determination to find out the facts for yourself. If at any time you desire to compare the information thus collected with the statistics officially accepted by the Government, I shall be happy to render you any assistance in my power.

Very faithfully yours,W. W. Hunter.

APPENDIX III

Major Claude Clerk to Mr. Blunt

9, Albert Hall Mansions, Kensington Gore, S.W.November 15th, 1904.

Dear Mr. Blunt,

Very many thanks for your “Ideas about India” which you have so kindly sent me. I look forward with pleasure to reading your work, and I know I shall find much in it of the greatest interest to me. Although I have only just glanced at what you then wrote, I can see that all you say is as true now as it was then – the impoverishment of the millions, and the reckless extravagance of their effeminate rulers, living away from the people in their mountain retreats nine months usually out of the twelve. You may put down much of India’s woes to the farce of a government whose officials are perched away in the clouds, absorbed in their own amusements, etc., “in the hills,” and unmindful of their duty to the people. Lord Curzon has done something to break down this Simla curse of India. Lord Randolph Churchill was a very great loss to India. Had it been fated that his time at the India Office could have been prolonged, he would have set many things to rights there. The hard work he did do there went a long way to break him down, as it did to a good man of the name of Moore he found there, and who died, I think, about the same time as Lord Randolph Churchill. I should like some day, when you are again in England and I alive, to send you a copy of a letter I wrote to Lord Ripon, and of an official report I sent in showing what the state of things was during the last years of the Nizam’s minority, affecting as it did his training, etc. I much doubt whether this ever got beyond the Residency.

I had no idea that your knowledge as to what was really going on at Hyderabad had so largely influenced Lord Ripon. You are perfectly right in what you say as to his being put away at Bolarum, removed from the city, etc. I had offered my house but was told there was fear of cholera! That matters went wrong subsequently between the young Salar Jung and his master was no fault of what Lord Ripon did. Foiled in what they had aimed at, the party in power had other sinister objects in view, and with the underhand support of the Residency these they carried out. They, of course, saw that a difference between the Nizam and his young minister opened the road to their designs, especially as the latter – who was throughout in the wrong – was supported by Cordery, which, of course, made matters worse. From the first, when Salar Jung asked me, when here in England, to take up the appointment – which I declined at first and for some weeks – I determined, when I had accepted it, to hold myself entirely aloof from the Simla clique and its ways, of which I was not an admirer. After you left, my summary removal by the party in power was an object to be kept in view. But the first attempt was so clumsy that even Cordery could give it only a half-hearted support. Afterwards they succeeded. My agreement with Salar Jung was to serve ten years, and fifteen if required to do so. The young Nizam, unknown to me, as I was in England on sick leave for three months, had asked to retain my services for the full period, but the Government of India, of course prompted by Cordery, abruptly refused the Nizam’s request.

Pray pardon all this personal recollection of what occurred then, but my pen has run on! Your pp. 132, 133, as to the Emir-el-Kabir, the colleague forced by Lord Lytton on Salar Jung, this is what was written of him by Sir George Yule, one of the best men we ever had as Resident at Hyderabad and who retained Salar Jung’s friendship to the day of his death:

“In spite of Salar Jung’s repeated remonstrances, we have forced upon him as his colleague a man who was notoriously his personal enemy, a man who had heavily bribed others in scandalous intrigues against him, and whose servant had openly tried to murder him.” This was the man – the tool – we wanted to work Salar Jung’s humiliation to the bitter end. Such had been his iniquitous intrigues in former years that a more honest Government than Lord Lytton’s had ordered that he was never to be present at any Durbar where English officers were present.

Very truly yours,Claude Clerk.9, Albert Hall Mansions,April 29th, 1905.

I often look at your “Ideas about India,” and find always something to interest me and to inform me. Lord Ripon’s policy in making the young Salar Jung Dewan was of course a risky one. But it was, as you well know, the right course. That it would have been crowned with success there is no doubt whatever – I was behind the scenes throughout – in my mind, had Lord Ripon gone only one step further and changed the Resident. Cordery was bound hand and foot by the action of those with whom he was associated, and they were supporting the very party in the city – which Cordery went so far as to call “our party” – who had determined on the moral ruin of the Nizam during a two years’ prolongation of the minority, during which they would have kept the lid of the Treasury open without scruple of any sort or kind. As it was, Lord Ripon had not been gone from Hyderabad for a month before that party, supported through thick and thin by Cordery, had gained the ascendancy. The difference, originally but a trifle, between the Nizam and his Dewan, was skilfully fanned by the bribed members of the Nizam’s and the Dewan’s entourage, and an open breach between the two was then inevitable. How our Government acted to retain the young Salar Jung in power – when they knew it was too late – is an amusing story, but too long to trouble you with here. But I would like some day when you are again in London to send you my official reports for the last years of the Nizam’s minority. These were written by me yearly and submitted to H.H.’s Government and then sent on through the Resident to the Government of India (Foreign Department). I ought to have been called on to explain the statements I had made, or H.H. ought to have been desired to dismiss me on the spot, considering what I had stated. But this only being the truth, the Government of India did neither, fearing the result. My reports were left entirely unnoticed and this after the Government of India’s repeated declarations that it, the Government of India, was the guardian of H.H. and deeply interested in his education, welfare, etc. But I was much in the way of the party in power, and soon opportunity was found of getting me out of Hyderabad.

Yours very truly,Claude Clerk.

1

A history of Seyyid Jemal-ed-Din Afghani, the well-known leader of Liberal Panislamism will be found in my “Secret History of the Occupation of Egypt,” 1907. Mr. Sabunji had been employed by me in Egypt, and accompanied me there on the present occasion as my secretary as far as Ceylon.

2

When Robert Bourke, Lord Connemara, was sent as Governor to Madras in 1886, I recommended Ragunath Rao to him, and he gave him once more a post as Minister to one of the Native Princes.

3

Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami, now member of the Indian Council in London.

4

This refers to a talk I had had with General C. G. Gordon at the end of 1882 in which he had assured me emphatically that “no reform would ever be achieved in India without a Revolution.” Gordon, it will be remembered, accompanied Ripon, as his private secretary, to India in 1880, but soon after their landing at Bombay had resigned his place. The opposition of the covenanted civil service to any real reform had convinced him that he would be useless to Lord Ripon in an impossible task.

5

Sir John Gorst.

6

The late Lord Lothian.

7

N.B. Precisely this leonine treaty in the form of a perpetual lease was imposed on the Nizam twenty years later by Lord Curzon under circumstances of extreme compulsion.

8

Compare Lord Cromer’s book, “Modern Egypt,” where this same Mahmud Sami, a poet and a highly educated gentleman, is described as an “illiterate” man – a foolish judgement, typical of the writer’s ignorance of Egyptian character.

9

See Sir William Hunter’s letter in Appendix.

10

Sir Alfred Lyall, K.C.B., G.C.I.E., then Lord Governor of the North-West Provinces.

11

Mr. Beck certainly succeeded and acquired a notable influence with the young generation of Mohammedans. His death, some years ago, caused universal regret.

12

See Appendix.

13

See Appendix.

14

I include in the term “Deccan” the whole geographical area of the central and southern plateau of India; not merely the Nizam’s territory.

15

Since this was written factories especially for cotton goods have been established by native enterprise in Bombay, but have been met in the interests of Lancashire by measures designed to limit their competition with imported goods. Lord Cromer with the same object imposed “countervailing excise duties” in Egypt.

16

It was, I believe, a maxim of Sir John Strachey’s that, in the interests of Finance, the Bengal Settlement must by hook or by crook be rescinded.

17

The literary calibre of the native Indian press has immensely increased since this was written.

18

The apology was made, a lame one enough and rather tardy; but as Mr. Primrose, Lord Ripon’s private secretary, remarks in his letter of August 29, 1884, forwarding me a copy of it, “The mere fact of a European addressing a formal apology to a native gentleman is worth something.”

19

Much of what is here recommended as England’s duty towards Islam has within the last two years been taken to heart by our rulers, and adopted as a part of English policy. It is only to be regretted that in India the motive seems to have been the encouragement of Mohammedan loyalty as a counterpoise to the Hindu movement for self-government, 1909.

20

In reprinting this chapter I have incorporated with it part of another chapter on the Native States.

21

Note.– The reader must once more be reminded that this chapter, with the three that precede it, was written full twenty-five years ago. Its scheme of constitutional reform was scoffed at then as fanciful and Utopian. But the Asiatic world has marched on, and English opinion to-day seems to have awakened at last to its recommendations as a coming necessity. Whether the concessions now being elaborated so tardily at the India Office will suffice to allay the bitter feelings aroused by the reactionary policy of a whole past generation since Lord Ripon’s time, I forbear to prophesy. It is the common nemesis of alien rule to be too late in its reforms, and, even with the best intentions, to give the thing no longer asked, because its knowledge of the ruled has lagged behind. I deliver no opinion. It must suffice me that I have recorded my full testimony in this volume to a historical understanding of the India I knew in 1883-1884, during the too short rule of its best and wisest Viceroy.