Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 45

(Ibid., pp. 290-3.) Such swift procedure and sharp punishments would still be highly approved of by the great ma.s.s of Indian opinion in the villages.

10. Misprinted 'much less' in original edition.

11. The new Act, V of 1840, prescribes the following declaration: 'I solemnly affirm, in the presence of Almighty G.o.d, that what I shall state shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth',--and declares that a false statement made on this shall be punished as perjury. [W. H. S.] The law now in force is to the same effect. This form of declaration is absolutely worthless as a check on perjury, and never hinders any witness from lying to his heart's content. The use of the Koran and Ganges water in the courts has been given up.

12. The tendency of modern India is to rely too much on formal law and the exercise of the powers of the central government. The contemplation of the vast administrative machinery working with its irresistible force and unfailing regularity in obedience to the will of rulers, whose motives are not understood, undoubtedly has a paralysing influence on the life of the nations of India, which, if not counteracted, would work deep mischief. Something in the way of counteraction has been done, though not always with knowledge. The difficulties inherent in the problem of reconciling foreign rule with self-government in an Asiatic country are enormous.

13. But panegyrics on the self-government of Indian villages must always be read with the qualification that the standard of such government was low, and that hundreds of acts and omissions were tolerated, which are intolerable to a modern European Government.

Hence comes the difficulty of enforcing numerous reforms loudly called for by European opinion. The vast Indian population hates reform and innovation for many reasons, and, above all, because they involve expense, which to the Indian mind appears wholly unwarrantable.

14. The same phenomenon is observable in rural Ireland, where, as in India, an unhappy history has generated profound distrust and dislike of official authority. The Irish peasant has always been ready to give his neighbour 'the loan of an oath', and a refusal to give it would be thought unneighbourly. An Irish Land Commission and an Indian Settlement Officer must alike expect to receive startling information about the value of land.

15. _Ante_, chapter 49, text at [16].

16. Hume, in speaking of Scotland in the fifteenth century, says, 'Arms more than laws prevailed; and courage, preferably to equity and justice, was the virtue most valued and respected. The n.o.bility, in whom the whole power resided, were so connected by hereditary alliances, or so divided by inveterate enmities, that it was impossible, without employing an armed force, either to punish the most flagrant guilt, or to give security to the most entire innocence. Rapine and violence, when employed against a hostile tribe, instead of making a person odious among his own clan, rather recommended him to their esteem and approbation; and, by rendering him useful to the chieftain, ent.i.tled him to the preference above his fellows.' [W. H. S.]

17. Gibbon, chap. 5. The remark refers to Septimius Severus.

18. The Ballot Act became law in 1872.

19. All that the author says is true, and yet it does not alter the fact that Indian society is and always has been permeated and paralysed by almost universal distrust. Such universal distrust does not prevail in England. This difference between the two societies is fundamental, and its reality is fully recognized by natives of India.

20. Compare the author's account of the fraudulent practices of the Company's sepoys when on leave in Oudh. (_Journey through the Kingdom of Oude_, vol. i, pp. 286-304.)

21. The editor has failed to find these quotations in the Wellington Dispatches.

22. This is the first story in the first chapter of the _Gulistan_.

The _Mishkat-ul-Masabih_ (Matthews, vol. ii, p. 427) teaches the same doctrine as Sadi: 'That person is not a liar who makes peace between two people, and speaks good words to do away their quarrel although they should be lies; and that person who carries good words from one to another is not a tale-bearer.'

23. Gibbon, chapter 27. In the year A.D. 390 Botheric, the general of Theodosius was murdered by a mob at Thessalonica. Acting on the advice of Rufinus, the emperor avenged his officer's death by an indiscriminate ma.s.sacre of the inhabitants, in which numbers variously estimated at from 7,000 to 15,000 perished. The emperor quickly felt remorse for the atrocity of which he had been guilty, and submitted to do public penance under the direction of Ambrose.

24. The sum total of truth in India would not, I fear, be appreciably increased if every European had the temper of an angel.

25. The editor has never known a reputation for corruption in any way lower the social position of an official of Indian birth.

26. The argument in the anthor's mind seems to be that the unveracity practised and condoned by certain cla.s.ses of the natives of India on certain occasions is, at least, not more reprehensible than the vices practised and condoned by certain cla.s.ses of Europeans on certain occasions.

27. Since the author wrote the above remarks, the conditions of Indian trade have been revolutionized by the development of roads, railways, motors, telegraph, postal facilities, and exports. The Indian merchant has been drawn into the vortex of European and American commerce. He is, in consequence, not quite so cautions as he used to be, and is more liable to severe loss or failure, though he is still, as a rule, far more inclined to caution than are his Western rivals. The Indian private banker undoubtedly is honest in ordinary banking transactions and anxious to maintain his commercial credit, but he will often stoop to the most discreditable devices in the purchase of a coveted estate, the foreclosure of a mortgage, and the like. His books, nowadays, are certainly not 'appealed to as holy writ', and many merchants keep a duplicate set for income-tax purposes. The happy people of 1836 had never heard of income tax.

Private remittances are now made usually through the post office or the joint-stock banks, which did not exist in the author's days. In recent times failures of banks and merchants have been frequent.

28. These observations, which are perfectly true, form a corrective to the fas.h.i.+onable abuse of the Indian capitalist, whose virtues and merits are seldom noticed.

29. The editor has not succeeded in tracing this quotation, but several pa.s.sages to a similar effect occur in the _Gulistan_.

30. I ought to except Confucius, the great Chinese moralist. [W. H.

S.]

31. For a brief notice of Sadi (Sa'di) see _ante_, chapter 12, note 6. The _Gulistan_ is everywhere used as a text-book in schools where Persian is taught. The author's extant correspondence shows that he was fascinated by the charms of Persian poetry, even during the first year of his residence in India.

32. The work was 'begun upon' many years ago, and 'a superstructure of munic.i.p.al corporations and inst.i.tutions' now exists in every part of India. But 'the same foundation' does not exist. The stout burghers of the mediaeval English and German towns have no Indian equivalents. The superstructure of the munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions is all that Acts of the Legislature can make it; the difficulty is to find or make a solid foundation. Still, it was right and necessary to establish munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions in India, and, notwithstanding all weaknesses and defects, they are of considerable value, and are slowly developing.

CHAPTER 58

Declining Fertility of the Soil--Popular Notion of the Cause.

On the 18th[1] we came on ten miles to Sahar, over a plain of poor soil, carelessly cultivated, and without either manure or irrigation.

Major G.o.dby left us at Govardhan to return to Agra. He would have gone on with us to Delhi; but having the command of his regiment, and being a zealous officer, he did not like to leave it so long during the exercising season. We felt much the loss of his society. He is a man of great observation and practical good sense; has an infinite fund of good humour, and a cheerfulness of temperament that never seems to flag--a more agreeable companion I have never met. The villages in these parts are literally crowded with peafowl. I counted no less than forty-six feeding close by among the houses of one hamlet on the road, all wild, or rather _unappropriated_, for they seemed on the best possible terms with the inhabitants. At Sahar our water was drawn from wells eighty feet deep, and this is said to be the ordinary depth from which water is drawn; consequently irrigation is too expensive to be common. It is confined almost exclusively to small patches of garden cultivation in the vicinity of villages.

On the 14th we came on sixteen miles to Kosi, for the most part over a poor soil badly cultivated, and almost exclusively devoted to autumn crops, of which cotton is the princ.i.p.al. I lost the road in the morning before daylight,[2] and the trooper, who usually rode with me, had not come up. I got an old landholder from one of the villages to walk on with me a mile, and put me in the right road. I asked him what had been the state of the country under the former government of the Jats and Marathas, and was told that the greater part was a wild jungle. 'I remember,' said the old man, 'when you could not have got out of the road hereabouts without a good deal of risk. I could not have ventured a hundred yards from the village without the chance of having my clothes stripped off my back. Now the whole face of the country is under cultivation, and the roads are safe; formerly the governments kept no faith with their landholders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this "zulm"' (oppression), said the old man, 'there was then more "barkat"

(blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could maintain his little family better upon five acres than he can now upon ten.'

'To what, my old friend, do you attribute this very unfavourable change in the productive powers of your soil?'

'A man cannot, sir, venture to tell the truth at all times, and in all places,' said he.

'You may tell it now with safety, my good old friend; I am a mere traveller ("musafir") going to the hills in search of health, from the valley of the Nerbudda, where the people have been suffering much from blight, and are much perplexed in their endeavour to find a cause.'

'Here, sir, we all attribute these evils to the dreadful System of _perjury_, which the practices of your judicial courts have brought among the people. You are perpetually putting the Ganges water into the hands of the Hindoos, and the Koran into those of Muhammadans; and all kinds of lies are every day told upon them. G.o.d Almighty can stand this no longer; and the lands have ceased to be blessed with that fertility which they had before this sad practice began. This, sir, is almost the only fault we have, any of us, to find with your government; men, by this System of perjury, are able to cheat each other out of their rights, and bring down sterility upon the land, by which the innocent are made to suffer for the guilty.'

On reaching our tents, I asked a respectable farmer, who came to pay his respects to the Commissioner of the division, Mr. Fraser, what he thought of the matter, telling him what I had heard from my old friend on the road. 'The diminished fertility is,' said he, 'owing no doubt to the want of those salutary fallows which the fields got under former governments, when invasions and civil wars were things of common occurrence, and kept at least two-thirds of the land waste; but there is, on the other hand, no doubt that you have encouraged perjury a good deal in your courts of justice; and this perjury must have some effect in depriving the land of the blessing of G.o.d.[3]

Every man now, who has a cause in your civil courts, seems to think it necessary either to swear falsely himself, or to get others to do it for him. The European gentlemen, no doubt, do all they can to secure every man his right, but, surrounded as they are by perjured witnesses, and corrupt native officers, they commonly labour in the dark.'

Much of truth is to be found among the village communities of India, where they have been carefully maintained, if people will go among them to seek it. Here, as almost everywhere else, truth is the result of self-government, whether arising from choice, under munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, or necessity, under despotism and anarchy; self- government produces self-esteem and pride of character.

Close to our tents we found the people at work, irrigating their fields from several wells, whose waters were all brackish. The crops watered from these wells were admirable--likely to yield at least fifteen returns of the seed. Wherever we go, we find the signs of a great government pa.s.sed away--signs that must tend to keep alive the recollections, and exalt the ideas of it in the minds of the people.

Beyond the boundary of our military and civil stations we find as yet few indications of our reign or character, to link us with the affections of the people. There is hardly anything to indicate our existence as a people or a government in this country; and it is melancholy to think that in the wide extent of country over which I have travelled there should be so few signs of that superiority in science and arts which we boast of, and really do possess, and ought to make conducive to the welfare and happiness of the people in every part of our dominions. The people and the face of the country are just what they might have been had they been governed by police officers and tax-gatherers from the Sandwich Islands, capable of securing life, property, and character, and levying honestly the means of maintaining the establishments requisite for the purpose.[4]

Some time after the journey here described, in the early part of November, after a heavy fall of rain, I was driving alone in my buggy from Garhmuktesar on the Ganges to Meerut. The roads were very bad, the stage a double one, and my horse became tired, and unable to go on.[5] I got out at a small village to give him a little rest and food; and sat down, under the shade of one old tree, upon the trunk of another that the storm had blown down, while my groom, the only servant I had with me, rubbed down and baited my horse. I called for some parched gram from the same shop which supplied my horse, and got a draught of good water, drawn from the well by an old woman in a bra.s.s jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.[6]

While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched gram of its sh.e.l.l, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder of the village, a st.u.r.dy old Rajput, came up and sat himself, without any ceremony, down by my side, to have a little conversation. To one of the dignitaries of the land, in whose presence the aristocracy are alone ent.i.tled to chairs, this easy familiarity on the part of a poor farmer seems at first somewhat strange and unaccountable; he is afraid that the man intends to offer him some indignity, or, what is still worse, mistakes him for something less than the dignitary. The following dialogue took place.

'You are a Rajput, and a "zamindar"?' (landholder).

'Yes; I am the head landholder of this village.'

'Can you tell me how that village in the distance is elevated above the ground? Is it from the debris of old villages, or from a rock underneath?'

'It is from the debris of old villages. That is the original seat of all the Rajputs around; we all trace our descent from the founders of that village who built and peopled it many centuries ago.'

'And you have gone on subdividing your inheritances here, as elsewhere, no doubt, till you have hardly any of you anything to eat?'

'True, we have hardy any of us enough to eat; but that is the fault of the Government, that does not leave us enough, that takes from us as much when the season is bad as when it is good.'[7]

'But your a.s.sessment has not been increased, has it?' 'No, we have concluded a settlement for twenty years upon the same footing as formerly.'

'And if the sky were to shower down upon you pearls and diamonds, instead of water, the Government would never demand more from you than the rate fixed upon?'

'No.'