Greater Britain

Although there are as yet no signs of English settlement in the Punjaub, still the official community in many a Punjaub station is fast becoming colonial in its type, and Indian traditions are losing ground. English wives and sisters abound in Lahore, even the railway and canal officials having brought out their families; and during the cool weather race meetings, drag hunts, cricket matches, and croquet parties follow one another from day to day, and Lahore boasts a volunteer corps. When the hot season comes on, those who can escape to the hills, and the wives and children of those who cannot go, run to Dalhousie, as Londoners do to Eastbourne.

The healthy English tone of the European communities of Umritsur and Lahore is reflected in the newspapers of the Punjaub, which are the best in India, although the blunders of the native printers render the “betting news” unintelligible, and the “cricket scores” obscure. The columns of the Lahore papers present as singular a mixture of incongruous articles as even the Government Gazette offers to its readers. An official notice that it will be impossible to allow more than 560 elephants to take part in the next Lucknow procession follows a report of the “ice meeting” of the community of Lahore, to arrange about the next supply; and side by side with this is an article on the Punjaub trade with Chinese Tartary, which recommends the government of India to conquer Afghanistan, and to reoccupy the valley of Cashmere. A paragraph notices the presentation by the Punjaub government to a native gentleman, who has built a serai at his own cost, of a valuable gift; another records a brush with the Wagheers. The only police case is the infliction on a sweeper of a fine of thirty rupees for letting his donkey run against a high-caste woman, whereby she was defiled; but a European magistrate reprimands a native pleader for appearing in court with his shoes on; and a notice from the Lieutenant-Governor gives a list of the holidays to be observed by the courts, in which the “Queen‘s Birthday” comes between “Bhudur Kalee” and “Oors data Gunjbuksh,” while “Christmas” follows “Shubberat,” and “Ash Wednesday” precedes “Holee.” As one of the holidays lasts a fortnight, and many more than a week, the total number of dies non is considerable; but a postscript decrees that additional local holidays shall be granted for fairs and festivals, and for the solar and lunar eclipse, which brings the no-court days up to sixty or seventy, besides those in the Long Vacation. The Hindoos are in the happy position of having also six new-year‘s days in every twelvemonth; but the editor of one of the Lahore papers says that his Mohammedan compositors manifest a singular interest in Hindoo feasts, which shows a gratifying spread of toleration! An article on the “Queen‘s English in Hindostan,” in the Punjaub Times, gives, as a specimen of the poetry of Young Bengal, a serenade in which the skylark carols on the primrose bush. “Emerge, my love,” the poet cries

“The fragrant, dewy groveWe‘ll wander through till gun-fire bids us part.”

But the final stanza is the best:

“Then, Leila, come! nor longer cogitate;Thy egress let no scruples dire retard;Contiguous to the portals of thy gateSuspensively I supplicate regard.”

The advertisements range from books on the languages of Dardistan to government contracts for elephant fodder, or price-lists of English beer; and an announcement of an Afghan history in the Urdu tongue is followed by a prospectus of Berkhamstead Grammar School. King Edward would rub his eyes were he to wake and find himself being advertised in Lahore.

The Punjaub Europeans, with their English newspapers and English ways, are strange governors for an empire conquered from the bravest of all Eastern races little more than eighteen years ago. One of them, taking up a town policeman‘s staff, said to me, one day, “Who could have thought in 1850 that in 1867 we should be ruling the Sikhs with this?”

CHAPTER XII.

OUR INDIAN ARMY

During my stay in Lahore, a force of Sikhs and Pathans was being raised for service at Hong Kong by an officer staying in the same hotel with myself, and a large number of men were being enlisted in the city by recruiting parties of the Bombay army. In all parts of India, we are now relying, so far as our native forces are concerned, upon the men who only a few years back were by much our most dangerous foes.

Throughout the East, subjects concern themselves but little in the quarrels of their princes, and the Sikhs are no exception to the rule. They fought splendidly in the Persian ranks at Marathon; under Shere Singh, they made their memorable stand at Chillianwallah; but, under Nicholson, they beat the bravest of the Bengal sepoys before Delhi. Whether they fight for us or against us is all one to them. They fight for those who pay them, and have no politics beyond their pockets. So far, they seem useful allies to us, who hold the purse of India. Unable to trust Hindoos with arms, we can at least rule them by the employment as soldiers of their fiercest enemies.

When we come to look carefully at our system, its morality is hardly clear. As we administer the revenues of India, nominally at least, for the benefit of the Indians, it might be argued that we may fairly keep on foot such troops as are best fitted to secure her against attack; but the argument breaks down when it is remembered that 70,000 British troops are maintained in India from the Indian revenues for that purpose, and that local order is secured by an ample force of military police. Even if the employment of Sikhs in times of emergency may be advisable, it cannot be denied that the day has gone by for permanently overawing a people by means of standing armies composed of their hereditary foes.

In discussing the question of the Indian armies, we have carefully to distinguish between the theory and the practice. The Indian official theory says that not only is the native army a valuable auxiliary to the English army in India, but that its moral effect on the people is of great benefit to us, inasmuch as it raises their self-respect, and offers a career to men who would otherwise be formidable enemies. The practice proclaims that the native troops are either dangerous or useless by arming them with weapons as antiquated as the bow and arrow, destroys the moral effect which might possibly be produced by a Hindoo force by filling the native ranks with Sikh and Goorkha aliens and heretics, and makes us enemies without number by denying to natives that promotion which the theory holds out to them. The existing system is officially defended by the most contradictory arguments, and on the most shifting of grounds. Those who ask why we should not trust the natives, at all events to the extent of allowing Bengal and Bombay men to serve, and to serve with arms that they can use, in bodies which profess to be the Bengal and Bombay armies, but which in fact are Sikh regiments which we are afraid to arm, are told that the native army has mutinied times without end, that it has never fought well except where, from the number of British present, it had no choice but to fight, and that it is dangerous and inefficient. Those who ask why this shadow of a native army should be retained are told that its records of distinguished service in old times are numerous and splendid. The huge British force maintained in India, and the still huger native army, are each of them made an excuse for the retention of the other at the existing standard. If you say that it is evident that 70,000 British troops cannot be needed in India, you are told that they are required to keep the 120,000 native troops in check. If you ask, Of what use, then, are the latter? you hear that in the case of a serious imperial war the English troops would be withdrawn, and the defense of India confided to these very natives who in time of peace require to be thus severely held in check. Such shallow arguments would be instantly exposed were not English statesmen bribed by the knowledge that their acceptance as good logic allows us to maintain at India‘s cost 70,000 British soldiers, who in time of danger would be available for our defense at home.

That the English force of 70,000 men maintained in India in time of peace can be needed there in peace or war is not to be supposed by those who remember that 10,000 men were all that were really needed to suppress the wide-spread mutiny of 1857, and that Russia – our only possible enemy from without – never succeeded during a two years’ war in her own territory in placing a disposable army of 60,000 men in the Crimea. Another mutiny such as that of 1857 is, indeed, impossible, now that we retain both forts and artillery exclusively in British hands; and Russia, having to bring her supplies and men across almost boundless deserts, or through hostile Afghanistan, would be met at the Khyber by our whole Indian army, concentrated from the most distant stations at a few days’ notice, fighting in a well-known and friendly country, and supplied from the plains of all India by the railroads. Our English troops in India are sufficiently numerous, were it necessary, to fight both the Russians and our native army; but it is absurd that we should maintain in India, in a time of perfect peace, at a yearly cost to the people of that country of from fourteen to sixteen millions sterling, an army fit to cope with the most tremendous disasters that could overtake the country, and at the same time unspeakably ridiculous that we should in all our calculations be forced to set down the native army as a cause of weakness. The native rulers, moreover, whatever their unpopularity with their people, were always able to array powerful levies against enemies from without; and if our government of India is not a miserable failure, our influence over the lower classes of the people ought, at the least, to be little inferior to that exercised by the Mogul emperors or the Maratta chiefs.

As for local risings, concentration of our troops by means of the railroads that would be constructed in half a dozen years out of our military savings alone, and which American experience shows us cannot be effectually destroyed, would be amply sufficient to deal with them were the force reduced to 30,000 men; and a general rebellion of the people of India we have no reason to expect, and no right to resist should it by any combination of circumstances be brought about.

The taxation required to maintain the present Indian army presses severely upon what is in fact the poorest country in the world; the yearly drain of many thousand men weighs heavily upon us; and our system seems to proclaim to the world the humiliating fact, that under British government, and in times of peace, the most docile of all peoples need an army of 200,000 men, in addition to the military police, to watch them, or keep them down.

Whatever the decision come to with regard to the details of the changes to be made in the Indian army system, it is at least clear that it will be expedient in us to reduce the English army in India if we intend it for India‘s defense, and our duty to abolish it if we intend it for our own. It is also evident that, after allowing for mere police duties – which should in all cases be performed by men equipped as, and called by the name of, police – the native army should, whatever its size, be rendered as effective as possible, by instruction in the use of the best weapons of the age. If local insurrections have unfortunately to be quelled, they must be quelled by English troops; and against European invaders, native troops, to be of the slightest service, must be armed as Europeans. As the possibility of European invasion is remote, it would probably be advisable that the native army should be gradually reduced until brought to the point of merely supplying the body-guards and ceremonial-troops; at all events, the practice of overawing Sikhs with Hindoos, and Hindoos with Sikhs, should be abandoned as inconsistent with the nature of our government in India, and with the first principles of freedom.

There is, however, no reason why we should wholly deprive ourselves of the services of the Indian warrior tribes. If we are to continue to hold such outposts as Gibraltar, the duty of defending them against all comers might not improperly be intrusted wholly or partly to the Sikhs or fiery little Goorkhas, on the ground that, while almost as brave as European troops, they are somewhat cheaper. It is possible, indeed, that, just as we draw our Goorkhas from independent Nepaul, other European nations may draw Sikhs from us. We are not even now the only rulers who employ Sikhs in war; the Khan of Kokand is said to have many in his service: and, tightly ruled at home, the Punjaubees may not improbably become the Swiss of Asia.

Whatever the European force to be maintained in India, it is clear that it should be local. The Queen‘s army system has now had ten years’ trial, and has failed in every point in which failure was prophesied. The officers, hating India, and having no knowledge of native languages or customs, bring our government into contempt among the people; recruits in England dread enlistment for service they know not where; and Indian tax-payers complain that they are forced to support an army over the disposition of which they have not the least control, and which in time of need would probably be withdrawn from India. Even the Dutch, they say, maintain a purely colonial force in Java, and the French have pledged themselves that, when they withdraw the Algerian local troops, they will replace them by regiments of the line. England and Spain alone maintain purely imperial troops at the expense of their dependencies.

Were the European army in India kept separate from the English service, it would be at once less costly and more efficient, while the officers would be acquainted with the habits of the natives and customs of the country, and not, as at present, mere birds of passage, careless of offending native prejudice, indifferent to the feelings of those among whom they have to live, and occupied each day of their idle life in heartily wishing themselves at home again. There are, indeed, to the existing system drawbacks more serious than have been mentioned. Sufficient stress has not hitherto been laid upon the demoralization of our army and danger to our home freedom that must result from the keeping in India of half our regular force. It is hard to believe that men who have periodically to go through such scenes as those of 1857, or who are in daily contact with a cringing dark-skinned race, can in the long run continue to be firm friends to constitutional liberty at home; and it should be remembered that the English troops in India, though under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, are practically independent of the House of Commons.

It is not only constitutionally that Indian rotation service is bad. The system is destructive to the discipline of our troops, and a separate service is the only remedy.

CHAPTER XIII.

RUSSIA

FOR fifty years or more, we have been warned that one day we must encounter Russia, and for fifty years Muscovite armies, conquering their way step by step, have been advancing southward, till we find England and Russia now all-but face to face in Central Asia.

Steadily the Russians are advancing. Their circular of 1864, in which they declared that they had reached their wished-for frontier, has been altogether forgotten, and all Kokand, and portions of Bokhara, have been swallowed up, while our spies in St. Petersburg tell the Indian Council that Persia herself is doomed. Although, however, the distance of the Russian from the English frontiers has been greatly reduced of late, it is still far more considerable than is supposed. Instead of the Russian outposts being 100 miles from Peshawur, as one alarmist has said, they are still 400; and Samarcand, their nearest city, is 450 miles in a straight line over the summit of the Hindoo Koosh, and 750 by road from our frontier at the Khyber. At the same time, we must, in our calculations of the future, assume that a few years will see Russia at the northern base of the Hindoo Koosh, and in a position to overrun Persia and take Herat.

It has been proposed that we should declare to Russia our intention to preserve Afghanistan as neutral ground; but there arises this difficulty, that, having agreed to this plan, Russia would immediately proceed to set about ruling Afghanistan through Persia. On the other hand, it is impossible, as we have already found, to treat with Afghanistan, as there is no Afghanistan with which to treat; nor can we enter into friendly relations with any Afghan chief, lest his neighbor and enemy should hold us responsible for his acts. If we are to have any dealings with the Afghans, we shall soon be forced to take a side, and necessarily to fight and conquer, but at a great cost in men and money. It might be possible to make friends of some of the frontier tribes by giving them lands within our borders on condition of their performing military service and respecting the lives and property of our merchants; but the policy would be costly, and its results uncertain, while we should probably soon find ourselves embroiled in Afghan politics. Moreover, meddling in Afghanistan, long since proved to be a foolish and a dangerous course, can hardly be made a wise one by the fact of the Russians being at the gate.

Many would have us advance to Herat, on the ground that it is in Afghanistan, and not on the plains of India, that Russia must be met; but such is the fierceness of the Afghans, such the poverty of their country, that its occupation would be at once a source of weakness and a military trap to the invader. Were we to occupy Herat, we should have Persians and Afghans alike against us; were the Russians to annex Afghanistan, they could never descend into the plains of India without a little diplomacy, or a little money from us, bringing the Afghan fanatics upon their rear. When, indeed, we look carefully into the meaning of those Anglo-Indians who would have us repeat our attempt to thrash the Afghans into loving us, we find that the pith of their complaint seems to be that battles and conquests mean promotion, and that we have no one left in India upon whom we can wage war. Civilians look for new appointments, military men for employment, missionaries for fresh fields, and all see their opening in annexation, while the newspapers echo the cry of their readers, and call on the Viceroy to annex Afghanistan “at the cost of impeachment.”

Were our frontier at Peshawur a good one for defense, there could be but little reason shown for an occupation of any part of Afghanistan; but, as it is, the question of the desirability of an advance is complicated by the lamentable weakness of our present frontier. Were Russia to move down upon India, we should have to meet her either in Afghanistan or upon the Indus: to meet her at Peshawur, at the foot of the mountains and with the Indus behind us, would be a military suicide. Of the two courses that would be open to us, a retreat to the Indus would be a terrible blow to the confidence of our troops, and an advance to Cabool or Herat would be an advance out of reach of our railroad communications, and through a dangerous defile. To maintain our frontier force at Peshawur, as we now do, is to maintain in a pestilential valley a force which, if attacked, could not fight where it is stationed, but would be forced to advance into Afghanistan or retreat to the Indus. The best policy would probably be to withdraw the Europeans from Peshawur and Rawul Pindee, and place them upon the Indus in the hills near Attock, completing our railroad from Attock to Lahore and from Attock to the hill station, and to leave the native force to defend the Khyber and Peshawur against the mountain tribes. We should also encourage European settlement in the valley of Cashmere. On the other hand, we should push a short railroad from the Indus to the Bholan Pass, and there concentrate a second powerful European force, with a view to resisting invasion at that point, and of taking in flank and rear any invader who might advance upon the Khyber. The Bholan Pass is, moreover, on the road to Candahar and Herat; and, although it would be a mistake to occupy those cities except by the wish of the Afghans, still the advance of the Russians will probably one day force the Afghans to ally themselves to us and solicit the occupation of their cities. The fact that the present ruler of Herat is a mere tool of the Persians or feudatory of the Czar will have no effect whatever on his country, for if he once threw himself openly into Russian hands his people would immediately desert him. So much for the means of defense against the Russians, but there is some chance that we may have to defend India against another Mohammedan invasion, secretly countenanced, but not openly aided, by Russia. While on my way to England, I had a conversation on this matter with a well-informed Syrian Pacha, but notorious Russian-hater. He had been telling me that Russian policy had not changed, but was now, as ever, a policy of gradual annexation; that she envied our position in India, and hated us because our gentle treatment of Asiatics is continually held up to her as an example. “Russia has attacked you twice in India, and will attack you there again,” he said. Admitting her interference in the Afghan war, I denied that it was proved that she had any influence in Hindostan, or any hand in the rebellion of 1857. My friend made me no spoken answer, but took four caskets that stood upon the table, and, setting them in a row, with an interval between them, pushed the first so that it struck the second, the second the third, and the third the fourth. Then, looking up, he said, “There you have the manner of the Russian move on India. I push No. 1, but you see No. 4 moves. 1 influences 2, 2 influences 3, and 3 influences 4; but 1 doesn‘t influence 4. Oh, dear me, no! Very likely even 1 and 3 are enemies, and hate each other; and if 3 thought that she was doing 1’s work, she would kick over the traces at once. Nevertheless, she is doing it. In 1857, Russia certainly struck at you through Egypt, and probably through Central Asia also. Lord Palmerston was afraid to send troops through Egypt, though, if that could have been largely done, the mutiny could have been put down in half the time, and with a quarter the cost; and Nana Sahib, in his proclamation, stated, not without reason, that Egypt was on his side. The way you are being now attacked is this: – Russia and Egypt are for the moment hand and glove, though their ultimate objects are conflicting. Egypt is playing for the leadership of all Islam, even of Moslems in Central Asia and India. Russia sees that this game is for the time her game, as through Egypt she can excite the Turcomans, Afghans, and other Moslems of Central Asia to invade India in the name of religion and the Prophet, but, in fact, in the hope of plunder, and can also at the same time raise your Mohammedan population in Hindostan – a population over which you admit you have absolutely no hold. Of course you will defeat these hordes whenever you meet them in the field; but their numbers are incalculable, and their bravery great. India has twice before been conquered from the north, from Central Asia, and you must remember that behind these hordes comes Russia herself. Mohammedanism is weak here, on the Mediterranean, I grant you; but it is very strong in Central Asia – as strong as it ever was. Can you trust your Sikhs, too? I doubt it.”

When I asked the Pacha how Egypt was to put herself at the head of Islam, he answered: – “Thus. We Egyptians are already supporting the Turkish empire. Our tribute is a million (francs), but we pay five millions, of which four go into the Sultan‘s privy purse. We have all the leading men of Turkey in our pay: 30,000 of the best troops serving in Crete, and the whole of the fleet, are contributed by Egypt. Now, Egypt had no small share in getting up the Cretan insurrection, and yet, you see, she does, or pretends to do, her best to put it down. The Sultan, therefore, is at the Viceroy‘s mercy, if you don‘t interfere. No one else will if you do not. The Viceroy aims at being nominally, as he is really, ‘the Grand Turk.’ Once Sultan, with Crete and the other islands handed over to Greece or Russia, the present Viceroy commands the allegiance of every Moslem people – thirty millions of your Indian subjects included: that is, practically Russia commands that allegiance – Russia practically, though not nominally, at Constantinople wields the power of Islam, instead of being hated by every true believer, as she would be if she annexed Turkey in Europe. Her real game is a far grander one than that with which she is credited.” “Turkey is your vassal,” the Pacha went on to say; “she owes her existence entirely to you. Why not use her, then? Why not put pressure on the Sultan to exert his influence over the Asian tribes – which is far greater than you believe – for your benefit? Why not insist on your Euphrates route? Why not insist on Egypt ceasing to intrigue against you, and annex the country if she continues in her present course? If you wish to bring matters to a crisis, make Abdul Aziz insist on Egypt being better governed, or on the slave-trade being put down. You have made your name a laughing-stock here. You let Egypt half bribe, half force Turkey into throwing such obstacles in the way of your Euphrates route that it is no nearer completion now than it ever was. You force Egypt to pass a law abolishing the slave-trade and slavery itself, and you have taken no notice of the fact that this law has never been enforced in so much as a single instance. You think that you are all right now that you have managed to force our government into allowing your troops to pass to and fro through Egypt, thus making your road through the territory of your most dangerous enemy. Where would you be in case of a war with Russia?”