Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

W >> William Sleeman >> Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68

CHAPTER 34

The Suicide--Relations between Parents and Children in India.

The day before we left Datiya our cook had a violent dispute with his
mother, a thing of almost daily occurrence; for though a very fat and
handsome old lady, she was a very violent one. He was a quiet man,
but, unable to bear any longer the abuse she was heaping upon him, he
first took up a pitcher of water and flung it at her head. It missed
her, and he then snatched up a stick, and, for the first time in his
life, struck her. He was her only son. She quietly took up all her
things, and, walking off towards a temple, said she would leave him
for ever; and he, having passed the Rubicon, declared that he was
resolved no longer to submit to the parental tyranny which she had
hitherto exercised over him. My water carrier, however, prevailed
upon her with much difficulty to return, and take up her quarters
with him and his wife and five children in a small tent we had given
them. Maddened at the thought of a blow from her son, the old lady
about sunset swallowed a large quantity of opium; and before the
circumstance was discovered, it was too late to apply a remedy. We
were told of it about eight o'clock at night, and found her lying in
her son's arms--tried every remedy at hand, but without success, and
about midnight she died. She loved her son, and he respected her; and
yet not a day passed without their having some desperate quarrel,
generally about the orphan daughter of her brother, who lived with
them, and was to be married, as soon as the cook could save out of
his pay enough money to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. The
old woman was always reproaching him for not saving money fast
enough. This little cousin had now stolen some of the cook's tobacco
for his young assistant; and the old lady thought it right to
admonish her. The cook likewise thought it right to add his
admonitions to those of his mother; but the old lady would have her
niece abused by nobody but herself, and she flew into a violent
passion at his presuming to interfere. This led to the son's outrage,
and the mother's suicide. The son is a mild, good-tempered young man,
who bears an excellent character among his equals, and is a very good
servant. Had he been less mild it had perhaps been better; for his
mother would by degrees have given up that despotic sway over her
child, which in infancy is necessary, in youth useful, but in manhood
becomes intolerable. 'God defend us from the anger of the mild in
spirit', said an excellent judge of human nature, Muhammad, the
founder of this cook's religion;[1] and certainly the mildest tempers
are those which become the most ungovernable when roused beyond a
certain degree; and the proud spirit of the old woman could not brook
the outrage which her son, so roused, had been guilty of. From the
time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed
her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to
live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a
parricide.

There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much
reverenced by their sons as they are in India, in all classes of
society. This is sufficiently evinced in the desire that parents feel
to have sons. The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage
transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents,
on whom alone devolves the duty of protecting and supporting them
through the wedded and the widowed state. The links that united them
to their parents are broken. All the reciprocity of rights and duties
which have bound together the parent and child from infancy is
considered to end with the consummation of her marriage; nor does the
stain of any subsequent female backsliding ever affect the family of
her parents; it can affect that only of her husband, who is held
alone responsible for her conduct. If a widow inherits the property
of her husband, on her death the property would go to her husband's
brother, supposing neither had any children by their husbands, in
preference to her own brother; but between the son and his parents
this reciprocity of rights and duties follows them to the grave.[2]
One is delighted to see in sons this habitual reverence for the
mother; but, as in the present case, it is too apt to occasion a
domineering spirit, which produces much mischief even in private
families, but still more in sovereign ones. A prince, when he attains
the age of manhood, and ought to take upon himself the duties of the
government, is often obliged to witness a great deal of oppression
and misrule, from his inability to persuade his widowed mother to
resign the power willingly into his hands. He often tamely submits to
see his country ruined, and his family dishonoured, as at Jhansi,
before he can bring himself, by some act of desperate resolution, to
wrest it from her grasp.[3] In order to prevent his doing so, or to
recover the reins he has thus obtained, the mother has often been
known to poison her own son; and many a princess in India, like
Isabella of England, has, I believe, destroyed her husband, to enjoy
more freely the society of her paramour, and hold these reins during
the minority of her son.[4]

In the exercise of dominion from behind the curtain (for it is those
who live behind the curtain that seem most anxious to hold it), women
select ministers who, to secure duration to their influence, become
their paramours, or, at least, make the world believe that they are
so, to serve their own selfish purposes. The sons are tyrannized over
through youth by their mothers, who endeavour to subdue their spirit
to the yoke, which they wish to bind heavy upon their necks for life;
and they remain through manhood timid, ignorant, and altogether
unfitted for the conduct of public affairs, and for the government of
men under a despotic rule, whose essential principle is a _salutary
fear_ of the prince in all his public officers. Every unlettered
native of India is as sensible of this principle [as] Montesquieu
was; and will tell us that, in countries like India, a chief, to
govern well, must have a _smack of the devil_ ('shaitan') in him;
for, if he has not, his public servants will prey upon his innocent
and industrious subjects.[5] In India there are no universities or
public schools, in which young men might escape, as they do in
Europe, from the enervating and stultifying influence of the
zanana.[6] The state of mental imbecility to which a youth of
naturally average powers of mind, born to territorial dominion, is in
India often reduced by a haughty and ambitious mother, would be
absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are
often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. If they
happen, as they sometimes do, to get well informed in reading and
conversation, they remain, Hamlet-like, nervous and diffident; and,
however speculatively or _ruminatively_ wise, quite unfit for action,
or for performing their part in the great drama of life.

In my evening ramble on the bank of the river, which was flowing
against the wind and rising into waves, my mind wandered back to the
hours of infancy and boyhood when I sat with my brothers watching our
little vessels as they scudded over the ponds and streams of my
native land; and then of my poor brothers John and Louis, whose bones
now he beneath the ocean. As we advance in age the dearest scenes of
early days must necessarily become more and more associated in our
recollection with painful feelings; for they who enjoyed such scenes
with us must by degrees pass away, and be remembered with sorrow even
by those who are conscious of having fulfilled all their duties in
life towards them--but with how much more by those who can never
remember them without thinking of occasions of kindness and
assistance neglected or disregarded. Many of them have perhaps left
behind them widows and children struggling with adversity, and
soliciting from us aid which we strive in vain to give.

During my visit to the Raja, a person in the disguise of one of my
sipahis[7] went to a shop and purchased for me five-and-twenty
rupees' worth of fine Europe chintz, for which he paid in good
rupees, which were forthwith assayed by a neighbouring goldsmith. The
sipahi put these rupees into his own purse, and laid it down, saying
that he should go and ascertain from me whether I wished to keep the
whole of the chintz or not; and, if not, he should require back the
same money--that I was to halt to-morrow, when he would return to the
shop again. Just as he was going away, however, he recollected that
he wanted a turban for himself, and requested the shopkeeper to bring
him one. They were sitting in the verandah, and the shopkeeper had to
go into his shop to bring out the turban. When he came out with it,
the sipahi said it would not suit his purpose, and went off, leaving
the purse where it lay, cautioning the shopkeeper against changing
any of the rupees, as he should require his own identical money back
if his master rejected any of the chintz. The shopkeeper waited till
four o'clock in the afternoon of the next day without looking into
the purse.

Hearing then that I had left Datiya, and seeing no signs of the
sipahi, he opened the purse, and found that the rupees were all
copper, with a thin coating of silver. The man had changed them while
he went into the shop for a turban, and substituted a purse exactly
the same in appearance. After ascertaining that the story was true,
and that the ingenious thief was not one of my followers, I insisted
upon the man's taking the money from me, in spite of a great deal of
remonstrance on the part of the Raja's agent, who had come on with
us.

Notes:

1. The editor has failed to trace this quotation, which may possibly
be from the _Mishkat-ul-Masabih_ (_ante_, Chapter 5, note 10).
Compare '"There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a
sheep", said de Marsay' (Balzac, _Lost by a Laugh_).

2. The English doggerel expresses the opposite sentiment,
'My son's my son till he gets him a wife;
My daughter's my daughter all her life.'

3. _Ante_, chap. 29, text at [4], and before [7].

4. Edward II, A.D. 1327.

5. The principle, so bluntly enunciated by the author, is true,
though the truth may be unpalatable to people who think they know
better, and it applies with as much force to European officials as it
does to Indian princes. The 'shaitan' is more familiar in his English
dress as Satan. The editor has failed to find any such phrase in the
works of Montesquieu. In chapter 9 of Book III of _L'Esprit des Lois_
that author lays down the principle that 'il faut de la crainte dans
un gouvernement despotique; pour la vertu, elle n'y est point
necessaire,'

6. It can no longer be said that universities do not exist, at least
in name, in India. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad
are the seats of universities, and new foundations at Dacca and Patna
are promised (1914). The Indian universities, when first established,
were mere examining bodies, on the model of the University of London.
But changes, initiated by Lord Curzon, are in progress, and the
University of London is being remodelled (1914). The Indian
institutions are not frequented by young princes and nobles, and have
little influence on their education. Attempts have been made, with
partial success, to provide special boarding schools, or 'Chiefs'
Colleges', for the sons of ruling princes and native nobles. The most
notable of such institution are the colleges at Ajmer, Rajkot in
Kathiawar, and Indore. The influence of the zanana is invariably
directed against every proposal to remove a young nobleman from home
for the purpose of education, and obstacles of many kinds render the
task of rightly educating such a youth extraordinarily difficult and
unsatisfactory. In some cases a considerable degree of success has
been attained.

7. Armed follower. The word is more familiar in the corrupt form
'sepoy'.

CHAPTER 35

Gwalior Plain once the Bed of a Lake--Tameness of Peacocks.

On the 19th, 20th, and 21st[1] we came on forty miles to the village
of Antri in the Gwalior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial
soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having
been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed
of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now
seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable
islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all
directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like
the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the
spring crops, which cover the surface in one wide sheet unintersected
by hedges, tends to keep up the illusion, which the rivers have
little tendency to dispel; for, though they have cut their way down
immense depths to their present beds through this soft alluvial
deposit, the traveller no sooner emerges from the hideous ravines,
which disfigure their banks, than he loses all trace of them. Their
course is unmarked by trees, large shrubs, or any of the signs which
mark the course of rivers in other quarters.

The soil over the vast plain is everywhere of good quality, and
everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a
soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or
voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it
has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents
the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator
rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter
upon the territories of the Gwalior chief, Sindhia.

The villages are everywhere few, and their communities very small.
The greater part of the produce goes for sale to the capital of
Gwalior, when the money it brings is paid into the treasury in rent,
or revenue, to the chief, who distributes it in salaries among his
establishments, who again pay it for land produce to the cultivators,
farmers, and agricultural capitalists, who again pay it back into the
treasury in land revenue. No more people reside in the villages than
are absolutely necessary to the cultivation of the land, because the
chief takes all the produce beyond what is necessary for their bare
subsistence; and, out of what he takes, maintains establishments that
reside elsewhere. There is nowhere any jungle to be seen, and very
few of the villages that are scattered over the plains have any fruit
or ornamental trees left; and, when the spring crops, to which the
tillage is chiefly confined, are taken off the ground, the face of
the country must have a very naked and dreary appearance.[3] Near one
village on the road I saw some men threshing corn in a field, and
among them a peacock (which, of course, I took to be domesticated)
breakfasting very comfortably upon the grain as it flew around him. A
little farther on I saw another quietly working his way into a stack
of corn, as if he understood it to have been made for his use alone.
It was so close to me as I passed that I put out my stick to push it
off in play, and, to my surprise, it flew off in a fright at my white
face and strange dress, and was followed by the others. I found that
they were all wild, if that term can be applied to birds that live on
such excellent terms with mankind. On reaching our tents we found
several feeding in the corn-fields close around them, undisturbed by
our host of camp-followers; and were told by the villagers, who had
assembled to greet us, that they were all wild. 'Why', said they,
'should we think of _keeping_ birds that live among us on such easy
terms without being _kept_?' I asked whether they ever shot them, and
was told that they never killed or molested them, but that any one
who wished to shoot them might do so, since they had here no
religions regard for them.[4] Like the pariah dogs the peacocks seem
to disarm the people by confiding in them--their tameness is at once
the cause and the effect of their security. The members of the little
communities among whom they live on such friendly terms would not
have the heart to shoot them; and travellers either take them to be
domesticated, or are at once disarmed by their tameness.

At Antri a sufficient quantity of salt is manufactured for the
consumption of the people of the town. The earth that contains most
salt is dug up at some distance from the town, and brought to small
reservoirs made close outside the walls. Water is here poured over
it, as over tea and coffee. Passing through the earth, it flows out
below into a small conduit, which takes it to small pits some yards'
distance, whence it is removed in buckets to small enclosed
platforms, where it is exposed to the Sun's rays, till the water
evaporates, and leaves the salt dry.[5] The want of trees over this
vast plain of fine soil from the Sindh river is quite lamentable. The
people of Antri pointed out the place close to my tents where a
beautiful grove of mango-trees had been lately taken off to Gwalior
for _gun-carriages_ and firewood, in spite of all the proprietor
could urge of the detriment to his own interest in this world, and to
those of his ancestors in that to which they had gone. Wherever the
army of this chief moved they invariably swept off the groves of
fruit-trees in the same reckless manner. Parts of the country, which
they merely passed through, have recovered their trees, because the
desire to propitiate the Deity, and to perpetuate their name by such
a work, will always operate among Hindoos as a sufficient incentive
to secure groves, wherever man has be made to feel that their rights
of property in the trees will be respected.[6] The lands around the
village, which had a well for irrigation, paid four times as much as
those of the same quality which had none, and were made to yield two
crops in the year. As everywhere else, so here, those lands into
which water flows from the town and can be made to stand for a time,
are esteemed the best, as this water brings down with it manures of
all kinds.[7] I had a good deal of talk with the cultivators as I
walked through the fields in the evenings; and they seemed to dwell
much upon the good faith which is observed by the farmers and
cultivators in the Honourable Company's territories, and the total
absence of it in those of Sindhia's, where no work, requiring an
outlay of capital from the land, is, in consequence, ever thought of-
-both farmers and cultivators engaging from year to year, and no
farmer ever feeling secure of his lease for more than one.

Notes:

1. December, 1835.

2. The anthor's favourite theory. See _ante_, Chapter 14 note 7,
Chapter 24 note 6, on the formation of black cotton soil. The Gwalior
plain is covered with this soil.

3. It has a very desolate appearance. The Indian Midland Railway now
passes through Gwalior.

4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathura (Mattra) on the
Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly
sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier
relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by
the Hindoos of Gujarat for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, _Travels_,
transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of
the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumara, Skanda, or Kartikeya.
the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundelkhand no
objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares
for such poor sport.

5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by
persons duly licensed.

6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India
provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of
miles of road are annually planted with trees.

7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.

CHAPTER 36

Gwalior and its Government.

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwalior, over some
ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the
Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose
upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally
horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by
internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some
dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]

Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwalior; the
hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass
or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any
appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that
lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antri to Gwalior
there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable
police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side
of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene
around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and
unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath,
and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all
this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of
man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one
occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the
greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that
he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who,
like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose
their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary
wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are
within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not
yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in
all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so
hideously ugly as Gwalior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one
redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a
rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital
as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as
little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his
tent.[6]

Phul Bagh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best
place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.
As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the
heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the
revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil
and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long
concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign
of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet
residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine
sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and
around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents
I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small
dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its
deformity--just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs
of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into
it, was the _summer-house_ of the prince, without one inch of green
sward or one small shrub before it.

Around the wretched little _flower-garden_ was a low, naked, and
shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up
to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places--'and
the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I
cantered up to my tent-door, a sipahi of my guard came up, and
reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen
one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and
the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all
Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several
of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's
_pleasure-house_, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of
geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to
be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this
place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe
that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Raja of
Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege
lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses
stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he
possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the
_flower-garden_, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp.
Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly
would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our
tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower-
garden and the court.[8]

As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be
an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an
earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwalior, and the army
that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and
something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil
this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them.
In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the
town of Bhilsa, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sagar
and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the
streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the
day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close
outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the
Amil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged
him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as
they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he,
'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of
merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?'
Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the
public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect
the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any
other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this
pithy question the Amil of Bhilsa described the nature and character
of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are
spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the
prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court
and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the
revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces,
which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for
purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions,
no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital,
where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and
assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment
whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his
subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I
believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and
frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect
from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never
formed any legitimate part of the Maratha government, and, I fear,
never will.[10]