Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Aniā ran home through the Kabul gate of the city, unperceived, while Karīm entered by the Ajmēr gate, and passed first through the encampment of Hindoo Rao, to efface the traces of his horse's feet. When he reached their lodgings, he found Aniā there before him; and Rūplā, the groom, seeing his horse in a sweat, told him that he had had a narrow escape—that Mr. Fraser had been killed, and orders given for the arrest of any horseman that might be found in or near the city. He told him to hold his tongue, and take care of the horse; and calling for a light, he and Aniā tore up every letter he had received from Fīrōzpur, and dipped the fragments in water, to efface the ink from them. Aniā asked him what he had done with the blunderbuss, and was told that it had been thrown into a well. Aniā now concealed three flints that he kept about him in some sand in the upper story they occupied, and threw an iron ramrod and two spare bullets into a well near the mosque.

The next morning, when he heard that the city gates had been all shut to prevent any one from going out till strict search should be made, Karīm became a good deal alarmed, and went to seek counsel from Moghal Beg, the friend of his master; but when in the evening he heard that they had been again opened, he recovered his spirits; and the next day he wrote a letter to the Nawāb, saying that he had purchased the dogs that he wanted, and would soon return with them. He then went to Mr. McPherson, and actually purchased from him for the Nawāb some dogs and pictures, and the following day sent Rūplā, the groom, with them to Fīrōzpur, accompanied by two bearers. A pilgrim lodged in the same place with these men, and was present when Karīm came home from the murder, and gave his horse to Rūplā. In the evening, after the departure of Rūplā with the dogs, four men of the Gūjar caste came to the place, and Karīm sat down and smoked a pipe with one of them,825 who said that he had lost his bread by Mr. Fraser's death, and should be glad to see the murderer punished—that he was known to have worn a green vest, and he hoped he would soon be discovered. The pilgrim came up to Karīm shortly after these four men went away, and said that he had heard from some one that he, Karīm, was himself suspected of the murder. He went again to Moghal Beg, who told him not to be alarmed, that, happily, the Regulations were now in force in the Delhi Territory, and that he had only to stick steadily to one story to be safe.

He now desired Aniā to return to Fīrōzpur with a letter to the Nawāb, and to assure him that he would be stanch and stick to one story, though they should seize him and confine him in prison for twelve years. He had, he said, already sent off part of his clothes, and Aniā should now take away the rest, so that nothing suspicious should be left near him.

The next morning Aniā set out on foot, accompanied by Islāmullah, a servant of Moghal Beg's, who was also the bearer of a letter to the Nawāb. They hired two ponies when they became tired, but both flagged before they reached Nagīna, whence Aniā proceeded to Fīrōzpur, on a mare belonging to the native collector, leaving Islāmullah behind. He gave his letter to the Nawāb, who desired him to describe the affair of the murder. He did so. The Nawāb seemed very much pleased, and asked him whether Karīm appeared to be in any alarm. Aniā told him that he did not, and had resolved to stick to one story, though he should be imprisoned for twelve years. 'Karīm Khān,' said the Nawāb, turning to the brother-in-law of the former, Wāsil Khān, and Hasan Alī, who stood near him—'Karīm Khān is a very brave man, whose courage may be always relied on.' He gave Aniā eighteen rupees, and told him to change his name, and keep close to Wāsil Khān. They retired together; but, while Wāsil Khān went to his house, Aniā stood on the road unperceived, but near enough to hear Hasan Alī urge the Nawāb to have him put to death immediately, as the only chance of keeping the fatal secret. He went off immediately to Wāsil Khān, and prevailed upon him to give him leave to go home for that night to see his family, promising to be back the next morning early.

He set out forthwith, but had not been long at home when he learned that Hasan Alī, and another confidential servant of the Nawāb, were come in search of him with some troopers. He concealed himself in the roof of his house, and heard them ask his wife and children where he was, saying they wanted his aid in getting out some hyaenas they had traced into their dens in the neighbourhood. They were told that he had gone back to Fīrōzpur, and returned; but were sent back by the Nawāb to make a more careful search for him. Before they came, however, he had gone off to his friends Kamruddīn and Joharī, two brothers who resided in the Rāo Rājā's territory. To this place he was followed by some Mewātīs, whom the Nawāb had induced, under the promise of a large reward, to undertake to kill him. One night he went to two acquaintances, Makrām and Shahāmat, in a neighbouring village, and begged them to send to some English gentleman in Delhi, and solicit for him a pardon, on condition of his disclosing all the circumstances of Mr. Fraser's murder. They promised to get everything done for him through a friend in the police at Delhi, and set out for that purpose, while Aniā returned and concealed himself in the hills. In six days they came with a paper, purporting to be a promise of pardon from the court of Delhi, and desired Kamr-ud-dīn to introduce them to Aniā. He told them to return to him in three days, and he would do so; but he went off to Aniā in the hills, and told him that he did not think these men had really got the papers from the English gentlemen—that they appeared to him to be in the service of the Nawāb himself. Aniā was, however, introduced to them when they came back, and requested that the paper might be read to him. Seeing through their designs, he again made off to the hills, while they went out in search, they pretended, of a man to read it, but in reality to get some people who were waiting in the neighbourhood to assist in securing him, and taking him off to the Nawāb.

Finding on their return that Aniā had escaped, they offered high rewards to the two brothers if they would assist in tracing him out; and Joharī was taken to the Nawāb, who offered him a very high reward if he would bring Aniā to him, or, at least, take measures to prevent his going to the English gentlemen. This was communicated to Aniā, who went through Bharatpur to Bareilly, and from Bareilly to Secunderabad, where he heard, in the beginning of July, that both Karīm and the Nawāb were to be tried for the murder, and that the judge, Mr. Colvin, had already arrived at Delhi to conduct the trial. He now determined to go to Delhi and give himself up. On his way he was met by Mr. Simon Fraser's man, who took him to Delhi, when he confessed his share in the crime, became king's evidence at the trial, and gave an interesting narrative of the whole affair.

Two water-carriers, in attempting to draw up the brass jug of a carpenter, which had fallen into the well the morning after the murder, pulled up the blunderbuss which Karīm Khān had thrown into the same well. This was afterwards recognized by Aniā, and the man whom he pointed out as having made it for him. Two of the four Gūjars, who were mentioned as having visited Karīm immediately after the murder, went to Brigadier Fast, who commanded the troops at Delhi, fearing that the native officers of the European civil functionaries might be in the interest of the Nawāb, and get them made away with. They told him that Karīm Khān seemed to answer the description of the man named in the proclamation as the murderer of Mr. Fraser; and he sent them with a note to the Commissioner, Mr. Metcalfe, who sent them to the Magistrate, Mr. Fraser, who accompanied them to the place, and secured Karīm, with some fragments of important papers. The two Mewātīs, who had been sent to assassinate Aniā, were found, and they confessed the fact: the brother of Aniā, Rahmat, was found and he described the difficulty Aniā had to escape from the Nawāb's people sent to murder him. Rūplā, the groom, deposed to all that he had seen during the time he was employed as Karīm's groom at Delhi. Several men deposed to having met Karīm, and heard him asking after Mr. Fraser a few days before the murder. The two peons, who were with Mr. Fraser when he was shot, deposed to the horse which he rode at the time, and which was found with him.

Karīm Khān and the Nawāb were both convicted of the crime, sentenced to death, and executed at Delhi, I should mention that suspicion had immediately attached to Karīm Khān; he was known for some time to have been lurking about Delhi, on the pretence of purchasing dogs; and it was said that, had the Nawāb really wanted dogs, he would not have sent to purchase them by a man whom he admitted to his table, and treated on terms of equality. He was suspected of having been employed on such occasions before—known to be a good shot, and a good rider, who could fire and reload very quickly while his horse was in full gallop, and called in consequence the 'Bharmārū.'826 His horse, which was found in the stable by the Gūjar spies, who had before been in Mr. Fraser's service, answered the description given of the murderer's horse by Mr. Fraser's attendants; and the Nawāb was known to cherish feelings of bitter hatred against Mr. Fraser.

The Nawāb was executed some time after Karīm, on Thursday morning, the 3rd of October, 1835, close outside the north, or Kashmir Gate, leading to the cantonments. He prepared himself for the execution in an extremely rich and beautiful dress of light green, the colour which martyrs wear; but he was made to exchange this, and he then chose one of simple white, and was too conscious of his guilt to urge strongly his claim to wear what dress he liked on such an occasion.

The following corps were drawn up around the gallows, forming three sides of a square: the 1st Regiment of Cavalry, the 20th, 39th, and 69th Regiments of Native Infantry, Major Pew's Light Field Battery, and a strong party of police. On ascending the scaffold, the Nawāb manifested symptoms of disgust at the approach to his person of the sweeper, who was to put the rope round his neck;827 but he soon mastered his feelings, and submitted with a good grace to his fate. Just as he expired his body made a last turn, and left his face towards the west, or the tomb of his Prophet, which the Muhammadans of Delhi considered a miracle, indicating that he was a martyr—not as being innocent of the murder, but as being executed for the murder of an unbeliever. Pilgrimages were for some time made to the Nawāb's tomb,828 but I believe they have long since ceased with the short gleam of sympathy that his fate excited. The only people that still recollect him with feelings of kindness are the prostitutes and dancing women of the city of Delhi, among whom most of his revenues were squandered829 In the same manner was Wazīr Ali recollected for many years by the prostitutes and dancing women of Benares, after the massacre of Mr. Cherry and all the European gentlemen of that station, save one, Mr. Davis, who bravely defended himself, wife, and children against a host with a hog spear on the top of his house. No European could pass Benares for twenty years after Wazīr Alī's arrest and confinement in the garrison of Fort William, without hearing from the Windows songs in his praise, and in praise of the massacre.830

It is supposed that the Nawāb Faiz Muhammad Khan of Jhajjar was deeply implicated in this murder, though no proof of it could be found. He died soon after the execution of Shams-ud- dīn, and was succeeded in his fief by his eldest son, Faiz Alī Khān.831 This fief was bestowed on the father of the deceased, whose name was Najābat Alī Khān, by Lord Lake, on the termination of the war in 1805, for the aid he had given to the retreating army under Colonel Monson.832

One circumstance attending the execution of the Nawāb Shams-ud-dīn seems worthy of remark. The magistrate, Mr. Frascott, desired his crier to go through the city the evening before the execution, and proclaim to the people that those who might wish to be present at the execution were not to encroach upon the line of sentries that would be formed to keep clear an allotted space round the gallows, nor to carry with them any kind of arms; but the crier, seemingly retaining in his recollection only the words arms and sentries, gave out after his 'Oyes, Oyes,'833 that the sentries had orders to use their arms, and shoot any man, woman, or child that should presume to go outside the wall to look at the execution of the Nawāb. No person, in consequence, ventured out till the execution was over, when they went to see the Nawāb himself converted into smoke; as the general impression was that as life should leave it, the body was to be blown off into the air by a general discharge of musketry and artillery. Moghal Bēg was acquitted for want of judicial proof of his guilty participation in the crime.

CHAPTER 65

Marriage of a Jāt Chief

ON the 19th834 we came on to Balamgarh,835 fifteen miles over a plain, better cultivated and more studded with trees than that which we had been coming over for many days before. The water was near the surface, more of the field were irrigated, and those which were not so looked better—[a] range of sandstone hills, ten miles off to the west, running north and south. Balamgarh is held in rent-free tenure by a young Jāt chief, now about ten years of age. He resides in a mud fort in a handsome palace built in the European fashion. In an extensive orange garden, close outside the fort, he is building a very handsome tomb over the spot where his father's elder brother was buried. The whole is formed of white and black marble, and the firm white sandstone of Rūpbās, and so well conceived and executed as to make it evident that demand is the only thing wanted to cover India with works of art equal to any that were formed in the palmy days of the Muhammadan empire.836 The Rājā's young sister had just been married to the son of the Jāt chief of Nābhā, who was accompanied in his matrimonial visit (barāt) by the chief of Ludhaura, and the son of the Sikh chief of Patiālā,837 with a cortège of one hundred elephants, and above fifteen thousand people.838

The young chief of Balamgarh mustered a cortège of sixty elephants and about ten thousand men to attend him out in the 'istikbāl', to meet and welcome his guests. The bridegroom's party had to expend about six hundred thousand rupees in this visit alone. They scattered copper money all along the road from their homes to within seven miles of Balamgarh. From this point to the gate of the fort they had to scatter silver, and from this gate to the door of the palace they scattered gold and jewels of all kinds. The son of the Patiālā chief, a lad of about ten years of age, sat upon his elephant with a bag containing six hundred gold mohurs of two guineas each, mixed up with an infinite variety of gold earrings, pearls, and precious stones, which he scattered in handfuls among the crowd. The scattering of the copper and silver had been left to inferior hands. The costs of the family of the bride are always much greater than that of the bridegroom; they are obliged to entertain at their own expense all the bridegroom's guests as well as their own, as long as they remain; and over and above this, on the present occasion, the Rājā gave a rupee to every person that came, invited or uninvited. An immense concourse of people had assembled to share in this donation, and to scramble for the money scattered along the road; and ready money enough was not found in the treasury. Before a further supply could be got, thirty thousand more had collected, and every one got his rupee. They have them all put into pens like sheep. When all are in, the doors are opened at a signal given, and every person is paid his rupee as he goes out. Some European gentlemen were standing upon the top of the Rājā's palace, looking at the procession as it entered the fort, and passed underneath; and the young chief threw up some handfuls of pearls, gold, and jewels among them. Not one of them would of course condescend to stoop to take up any; but their servants showed none of the same dignified forbearance.839

CHAPTER 66

Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques

On the 20th840 we came to Badarpur, twelve miles over a plain, with the range of hills on our left approaching nearer and nearer the road, and separating us from the old city of Delhi. We passed through Farīdpur, once a large town, and called after its founder, Shaikh Farīd, whose mosque is still in good order, though there is no person to read or hear prayers in it.841 We passed also two fine bridges, one of three, and one of four arches, both over what were once streams, but are now dry beds of sand.842 The whole road shows signs of having been once thickly peopled, and highly adorned with useful and ornamental works when Delhi was in its glory.

Every handsome mausoleum among Muhammadans was provided with its mosque, and endowed by the founder with the means of maintaining men of learning to read their Korān over the grave of the deceased and in his chapel; and, as long as the endowment lasted, the tomb continued to be at the same time a college. They read the Korān morning and evening over the grave, and prayers in the chapel at the stated periods; and the rest of their time is commonly devoted to the instruction of the youths of their neighbourhood, either gratis or for a small consideration. Apartments in the tomb were usually set aside for the purpose, and these tombs did ten times more for education in Hindustan than all the colleges formed especially for the purpose.843 We might suppose that rulers who formed and endowed such works all over the land must have had more of the respect and the affections of the great mass of the people than we, who, as my friend upon the Jumna has it, 'build nothing but private dwelling-houses, factories, courts of justice, and jails', can ever have; but this conclusion would not be altogether just.844 Though every mosque and mausoleum was a seat of learning, that learning, instead of being a source of attraction and conciliation between the Muhammadans and Hindoos, was, on the contrary, a source of perpetual repulsion and enmity between them—it tended to keep alive in the breasts of the Musalmāns a strong feeling of religions indignation against the worshippers of idols; and of dread and hatred in those of the Hindoos.

The Korān was the Book of books, spoken by God to the angel Gabriel in parts as occasion required, and repeated by him to Muhammad; who, unable to write himself, dictated them to any one who happened to be present when he received the divine communications;845 it contained all that it was worth man's while to study or know—it was from the Deity, but at the same time coeternal with Him—it was His divine eternal spirit, inseparable from Him from the beginning, and therefore, like Him, uncreated. This book, to read which was of itself declared to be the highest of all species of worship, taught war against the worshippers of idols to be of all merits the greatest in the eye of God; and no man could well rise from the perusal without the wish to serve God by some act of outrage against them. These buildings were, therefore, looked upon by the Hindoos, who composed the great mass of the people, as a kind of religions volcanoes, always ready to explode and pour out their lava of intolerance and outrage upon the innocent people of the surrounding country.

If a Hindoo fancied himself injured or insulted by a Muhammadan he was apt to revenge himself upon the Muhammadans generally, and insult their religion by throwing swine's flesh, or swine's blood, into one of their tombs or churches; and the latter either flew to arms at once to revenge their God, or retaliated by throwing the flesh or the blood of the cow into the first Hindoo temple at hand, which made the Hindoos fly to arms. The guilty and the wicked commonly escaped, while numbers of the weak, the innocent and the unoffending were slaughtered. The magnificent buildings, therefore, instead of being at the time bonds of union, were commonly sources of the greatest discord among the whole community, and of the most painful humiliation to the Hindoo population. During the bigoted reign of Aurangzēb and his successors a Hindoo's presence was hardly tolerated within sight of these tombs or churches; and had he been discovered entering one of them, he would probably have been hunted down like a mad dog. The recollection of such outrages, and the humiliation to which they gave rise, associated as they always are in the minds of the Hindoos with the sight of these buildings, are perhaps the greatest source of our strength in India; because they at the same time feel that it is to us alone they owe the protection which they now enjoy from similar injuries. Many of my countrymen, full of virtuous indignation at the outrages which often occur during the processions of the Muharram, particularly when these happen to take place at the same time with some religious procession of the Hindoos, are very anxious that our Government should interpose its authority to put down both. But these processions and occasional outrages are really sources of great strength to us; they show at once the necessity for the interposition of an impartial tribunal, and a disposition on the part of the rulers to interpose impartially. The Muhammadan festivals are regulated by the lunar, and those of the Hindoos by the solar year, and they cross each other every thirty or forty years, and furnish fair occasions for the local authorities to interpose effectually.846 People who receive or imagine insults or injuries commonly postpone their revenge till these religious festivals come round, when they hope to be able to settle their accounts with impunity among the excited crowd. The mournful procession of the Muharram, when the Muhammadans are inflamed to madness by the recollection of the really affecting incidents of the massacre of the grandchildren of their prophet, and by the images of their tombs, and their sombre music,847 crosses that of the Holī848 (in which the Hindoos are excited to tumultuous and licentious joy by their bacchanalian songs and dances) every thirty- six years; and they reign together for some four or five days, during which the scene in every large town is really terrific. The processions are liable to meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, forgetting in their saturnalian joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown from all kinds of machines over friend and foe; while meeting these come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and too anxious for an excuse to kill anybody else. Let but one drop of the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a hundred swords fly from their scabbards; many an innocent person falls; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power, the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because the other happens to be weeping; and the Hindoos on such occasions laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do so.

A very learned Hindoo once told me in Central India that the oracle of Mahādēo had been at the same time consulted at three of his greatest temples—one in the Deccan, one in Rājputāna, and one, I think, in Bengal—as to the result of the government of India by Europeans, who seemed determined to fill all the high offices of administration with their own countrymen, to the exclusion of the people of the country. A day was appointed for the answer; and when the priest came to receive it they found Mahādēo (Siva) himself with a European complexion, and dressed in European clothes. He told them that their European Government was in reality nothing more than a multiplied incarnation of himself; and that he had come among them in this shape to prevent their cutting each other's throats as they had been doing for some centuries past; that these, his incarnations, appeared to have no religion themselves in order that they might be the more impartial arbitrators between the people of so many different creeds and sects who now inhabited the country; that they must be aware that they never had before been so impartially governed, and that they must continue to obey these their governors, without attempting to pry further into futurity or the will of the gods. Mahādēo performs a part in the great drama of the Rāmāyana, or the Rape of Sīta, and he is the only figure there that is represented with a white face.849