Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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In the year 1833, the Gwalior territory yielded a net revenue to the
treasury of ninety-two lakhs of rupees, after discharging all the
local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different
districts, in officers, establishments, charitable institutions,
religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.[12] In the remote
districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of
Bhils,[13] and in consequence badly peopled and cultivated, the net
revenue is estimated to be about one-third of the gross collections;
but, in the districts near the capital, which are tolerably well
cultivated, the net revenue brought to the treasury is about five-
sixths of the gross collections; and these collections are equal to
the whole annual rent of the land; for every man by whom the land is
held or cultivated is a mere tenant at will, liable every season to
be turned out, to give place to any other man that may offer more for
the holding.

There is nowhere to be seen upon the land any useful or ornamental
work, calculated to attach the people to the soil or to their
villages; and, as hardly any of the recruits for the regiments are
drawn from the peasantry of the country, the agricultural classes
have nowhere any feeling of interest in the welfare or existence of
the government. I am persuaded that there is not a single village in
all the Gwalior dominions in which nine-tenths of the people would
not be glad to see that government destroyed, under the persuasion
that they could not possibly have a worse, and would be very likely
to find a better.

The present force at Gwalior consists of three regiments of infantry,
under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apaji, the adopted
son of the late Bala Bai;[14] eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his
son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command
of the Mamu Sahib, the maternal uncle of the Maharaja; three in what
is called Babu Baoli's camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting,
when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces. The
'Jinsi', or artillery, consists of two hundred guns of different
calibre. There are but few corps of cavalry, and these are not
considered very efficient, I believe.[15]

Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the
habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of
the Dasahra,[16] at the end of October, from the sovereign of a state
at the head of his armies, down to the leader of a little band of
pickpockets from the corner of some obscure village. All invoke the
Deity, and take the auspices to ascertain his will, nearly in the
same way; and all expect that he will guide them successfully through
their enterprises, as long as they find the omens favourable. No one
among them ever dreams that his undertaking can be less acceptable to
the Deity than that of another, provided he gives him the same due
share of what he acquires in his thefts, his robberies, or his
conquests, in sacrifices and offerings upon his shrines, and in
donations to his priests.[17] Nor does the robber often dream that he
shall be considered a less respectable citizen by the circle in which
he moves than the soldier, provided he spends his income as
liberally, and discharges all his duties in his relations with them
as well; and this he generally does to secure their goodwill,
whatever may be the character of his depredations upon distant
circles of society and communities. The man who returned to Oudh, or
Rohilkhand, after a campaign under a Pindhari chief, was as well
received as one who returned after serving one under Sindhia, Holkar,
or Ranjit Singh. A friend of mine one day asked a leader of a band of
'dacoits', or banditti, whether they did not often commit murder.
'God forbid', said he, 'that we should ever commit murder; but, if
people choose to oppose us, we, of course, _strike and kill_; but you
do the same. I hear that there is now a large assemblage of troops in
the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are
opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'[18] The history
of the rise of every nation in the world unhappily bears out the
notion that princes are only robbers upon a large scale, till their
ambition is curbed by a balance of power among nations.

On the 25th[19] we came on to Dhamela, fourteen miles, over a plain,
with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to
the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here
and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising
abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were
built upon masses of this sandstone rock, rising abruptly at
intervals from the surface of the plain, in horizontal strata. These
hillocks afford the people stone for building, and great facilities
for defending themselves against the inroads of freebooters. There is
not, I suppose, in the world a finer stone for building than these
sandstone hills afford; and we passed a great many carts carrying
them off to distant places in slabs or flags from ten to sixteen feet
long, two to three feet wide, and six inches thick. They are white,
with very minute pink spots, and of a texture so very fine that they
would be taken for indurated clay on a slight inspection. The houses
of the poorest peasants are here built of this beautiful freestone,
which, after two hundred years, looks as if it had been quarried only
yesterday.

About three miles from our tents we crossed over the little river
Ghorapachhar,[20] flowing over a bed of this sandstone. The soil all
the way very light, and the cultivation scanty and bad. Except within
the enclosures of men's houses, scarcely a tree to be anywhere seen
to give shelter and shade to the weary traveller; and we could find
no ground for our camp with a shrub to shelter man or beast. All are
swept away to form gun-carriages for the Gwalior artillery, with a
philosophical disregard to the comforts of the living, the repose of
the dead who planted them with a view to a comfortable berth in the
next world, and to the will of the gods to whom they are dedicated.
There is nothing left upon the land of animal or vegetable life to
enrich it; nothing of stock but what is necessary to draw from the
soil an annual crop, and which looks to one harvest for its entire
return. The sovereign proprietor of the soil lets it out by the year,
in farms or villages, to men who depend entirely upon the year's
return for the means of payment. He, in his turn, lets the lands in
detail to those who till them, and who depend for their subsistence,
and for the means of paying their rents, upon the returns of the
single harvest. There is no manufacture anywhere to be seen, save of
brass pots and rude cooking utensils; no trade or commerce, save in
the transport of the rude produce of the land to the great camp at
Gwalior, upon the backs of bullocks, for want of roads fit for
wheeled carriages. No one resides in the villages, save those whose
labour is indispensably necessary to the rudest tillage, and those
who collect the dues of government, and are paid upon the lowest
possible scale. Such is the state of the Gwalior territories in every
part of India where I have seen them.[21] The miseries and misrule of
the Oudh, Hyderabad, and other Muhammadan governments, are heard of
everywhere, because there are, under these governments, a middle and
higher class upon the land to suffer and proclaim them; but those of
the Gwalior state are never heard of, because no such classes are
ever allowed to grow up upon the land. Had Russia governed Poland,
and Turkey Greece, in the way that Gwalior has governed her conquered
territories, we should never have heard of the wrongs of the one or
the other.

In my morning's ride the day before I left Gwalior, I saw a fine
leopard standing by the side of the most frequented road, and staring
at every one who passed. It was held by two men, who sat by and
talked to it as if it had been a human being. I thought it was an
animal for show, and I was about to give them something, when they
told me that they were servants of the Maharaja, and were training
the leopard to bear the sight and society of man. 'It had', they
said, 'been caught about three months ago in the jungles, where it
could never bear the sight and society of man, or of any animal that
it could not prey upon; and must be kept upon the most frequented
road till quite tamed. Leopards taken when very young would', they
said, 'do very well as pets, but never answered for hunting; a good
leopard for hunting must, before taken, be allowed to be a season or
two providing for himself, and living upon the deer he takes in the
jungles and plains.'

Notes:

1. For the characteristics of the Marathas and Pindharis, see _ante_,
Chapter 21, note 2.

2. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8, and Chapter 32, note 9.

3. _Ante_, Chapter 17, note 6.

4. A small principality, about seventy miles equidistant from Agra,
Gwalior, Mathura, Alwar, Jaipur, and Tonk. The attack on Karauli
occurred in 1813. Full details are given in the author's _Report on
Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits_, pp. 99-104.

5. Four hundred thousand rupees.

6. _Ante_, Chapter 33, note 15.

7. Seven hundred thousand rupees.

8. Raghugarh is now a mediatized chiefship in the Central India
Agency, controlled by the Resident at Gwalior. Bajranggarh, a
stronghold eleven miles south of Guna (Goonah), and about 140 miles
distant from Gwalior, is in the Raghugarh territory.

9. Three hundred thousand and two hundred thousand rupees,
respectively. Bahadurgarh is now included in the Isagarh district of
the Gwalior State.

10. I cannot find any mention of Lopar, if the name is correctly
printed. Garha Kota seems to be a slip of the pen for Garha. Garha
Kota is in British territory, in the Sagar District, C. P. But Garha
is a petty state, formerly included in the Raghugarh State. The town
of Garha is on the eastern slope of the Malwa plateau in 25 deg. 2' N.
and 78 deg. 3' E. (_I.G._, 1908, s.v.).

11. On the coronation or installation of every new prince of the
house of Sindhia, orders are given to plunder a few shops in the town
as a part of the ceremony, and this they call or consider 'taking the
auspices'. Compensation is _supposed_ to be made to the proprietors,
but rarely is made. I believe the same auspices are taken at the
installation of a new prince of every other Maratha house. The Moghal
invaders of India were, in the same manner, obliged to allow their
armies to _take the auspices_ in the sack of a few towns, though they
had surrendered without resistance. They were given up to pillage as
a _religions duty_. Even the accomplished Babar was obliged to
concede this privilege to his army. [W. H. S.]

In reply to the editor's inquiries, Colonel Biddulph, officiating
Resident at Gwalior, has kindly communicated the following
information on the subject of the above note, in a letter dated 30th
December, 1892. 'The custom of looting some "Banias'" shops on the
installation of a new Maharaja in Gwalior is still observed. It was
observed when the present Madho Rao Sindhia was installed on the
_gadi_ on 3rd July, 1886, and the looting was stopped by the police
on the owners of the shops calling out "Dohai Madho Maharajki!" five
shops were looted on the occasion, and compensation to the amount of
Rs. 427, 4, 3 was paid to the owners. My informant tells me that the
custom has apparently no connexion with religion, but is believed to
refer to the days when the period between the decease of one ruler
and the accession of his successor was one of disorder and plunder.
The maintenance of the custom is supposed to notify to the people
that they must now look to the new ruler for protection.

'According to another informant, some "banias" are called by the
palace officers and directed to open their shops in the palace
precincts, and money is given them to stock their shops. The poor
people are then allowed to loot them. No shops are allowed to be
looted in the bazaar.

'I cannot learn that any particular name is given to the ceremony,
and there appears to be some doubt as to its meaning; but the best
information seems to show that the reason assigned above is the
correct one.

'I cannot give any information as to the existence of the custom in
other Mahratta states.'

The custom was observed late in the sixth century at the birth of
King Harsha-vardhana (_Harsa-Carita_, transl, Cowell and Thomas, p.
111). Anthropologists classify such practices as rites de passage,
marking a transition from the old to the new.

'Bania', or 'baniya', means shopkeeper, especially a grain dealer;
'gadi', or 'gaddi', is the cushioned seat, also known as 'masnad',
which serves a Hindoo prince as a throne; and 'dohai' is the ordinary
form of a cry for redress.

12. Ninety-two lakhs of rupees were then worth more than L920,000.
The _I.G._ (1908) states the normal revenue as 150 lakhs of rupees,
equivalent (at the rate of exchange of 1_s._ 4_d._ to the rupee, or R
15 = L1) to one million pounds sterling. The fall in exchange has
greatly lowered the sterling equivalent.

13. The Bhil tribes are included in the large group of tribes which
have been driven back by the more cultivated races into the hills and
jungles. They are found among the woods along the banks of the
Nerbudda, Tapti, and Mahi, and in many parts of Central India and
Rajputana. Of late years they have generally kept quiet; in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century they gave much trouble in
Khandesh. In Rajputana two irregular corps of Bhils have been
organized.

14. Daughter of Mahadaji Sindhia. She died in 1834. See _post_,
Chapter 70.

15. 'In 1886 the fort of Gwalior and the cantonment of Morar were
surrendered by the Government of India to Sindhia in exchange for the
fort and town of Jhansi. Both forts were mutually surrendered and
occupied on 10th March, 1886. As the occupation of the fort of
Gwalior necessitated an increase of Sindhia's army, the Maharaja was
allowed to add 3,000 men to his infantry' (_Letter of Officiating
Resident, dated 30th Dec._, 1892). In 1908 the Gwalior army,
comprising all arms, including three regiments of Imperial Service
Cavalry, numbered more than 12,000 men, described as troops of 'very
fair quality' (_I.G._, 1908).

16. _Ante_, Chapter 26, note 8; Chapter 32, note 9; Chapter 49, note
2.

17. In _Ramaseeana_ the author has fully described the practices of
the Thugs in taking omens, and the feelings with which they regarded
their profession. Similar information concerning other criminal
classes is copiously given in the _Report on Budhuk alias Bagree
Decoits_. See also Meadows Taylor, _Confessions of a Thug_, in any
edition.

18. These notions are still prevalent.

19. December, 1835, Christmas Day.

20. 'Overthrower of horses'; the same epithet is applied to the
Utangan river, south of the Agra district, owing to the difficulty
with which it is crossed when in flood (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, 1st ed.,
vol. vii, p. 423).

21. Sindhia's territories, measuring 25,041 square miles, are in
parts intermixed with those of other princes, and so extend over a
wide space. Gwalior and its government have been discussed already in
Chapter 36.

CHAPTER 50

Dholpur, Capital of the Jat Chiefs of Gohad--Consequence of Obstacles
to the Prosecution of Robbers.

On the morning of the 26th,[1] we sent on one tent, with the
intention of following it in the afternoon; but about three o'clock a
thunder-storm came on so heavily that I was afraid that which we
occupied would come down upon us; and, putting my wife and child in a
palankeen, I took them to the dwelling of an old Bairagi, about two
hundred yards from us. He received us very kindly, and paid us many
compliments about the honour we had conferred upon him. He was a kind
and, I think, a good old man, and had six disciples who seemed to
reverence him very much. A large stone image of Hanuman, the monkey-
god, painted red, and a good store of buffaloes, very comfortably
sheltered from the pitiless storm, were in an inner court. The
peacocks in dozens sought shelter under the walls and in the tree
that stood in the courtyard; and I believe that they would have come
into the old man's apartment had they not seen our white faces there.
I had a great deal of talk with him, but did not take any notes of
it. These old Bairagis, who spend the early and middle parts of life
as disciples in pilgrimages to the celebrated temples of their god
Vishnu in all parts of India, and the latter part of it as high
priests or apostles in listening to the reports of the numerous
disciples employed in similar wanderings are, perhaps, the most
intelligent men in the country. They are from all the castes and
classes of society. The lowest Hindoo may become a Bairagi, and the
very highest are often tempted to become so; the service of the god
to which they devote themselves levelling all distinctions. Few of
them can write or read, but they are shrewd observers of men and
things, and often exceedingly agreeable and instructive companions to
those who understand them, and can make them enter into unreserved
conversation. Our tent stood out the storm pretty well, but we were
obliged to defer our march till the next day. On the afternoon of the
27th we went on twelve miles, over a plain of deep alluvion, through
which two rivers have cut their way to the Chambal; and, as usual,
the ravines along their banks are deep, long, and dreary.

About half-way we were overtaken by one of the heaviest showers of
rain I ever saw; it threatened us from neither side, but began to
descend from an apparently small bed of clouds directly over our
heads, which seemed to spread out on every side as the rain fell, and
fill the whole vault of heaven with one dark and dense mass. The wind
changed frequently; and in less than half an hour the whole surface
of the country over which we were travelling was under water. This
dense mass of clouds passed off in about two hours to the east; but
twice, when the sun opened and beamed divinely upon us in a cloudless
sky to the west, the wind changed suddenly round, and rushed back
angrily from the east, to fill up the space which had been quickly
rarefied by the genial heat of its rays, till we were again enveloped
in darkness, and began to despair of reaching any human habitation
before night. Some hail fell among the rain, but not large enough to
hurt any one. The thunder was loud and often startling to the
strongest nerves, and the lightning vivid, and almost incessant. We
managed to keep the road because it was merely a beaten pathway below
the common level of the country, and we could trace it by the greater
depth of the water, and the absence of all shrubs and grass. All
roads in India soon become watercourses--they are nowhere metalled;
and, being left for four or five months every year without rain,
their soil is reduced to powder by friction, and carried off by the
winds over the surrounding country.[2] I was on horseback, but my
wife and child were secure in a good palankeen that sheltered them
from the rain. The bearers were obliged to move with great caution
and slowly, and I sent on every person I could spare that they might
keep moving, for the cold blast blowing over their thin and wet
clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's
playmate, Gulab, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by
the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth
chattering as if he had been in an ague. The rain at last ceased, and
the sky in the west cleared up beautifully about half an hour before
sunset. Little Gulab threw off his stuffed and quilted vest, and got
a good dry English blanket to wrap round him from the palankeen. We
soon after reached a small village, in which I treated all who had
remained with us to as much coarse sugar (_gur_) as they could eat;
and, as people of all castes can eat of sweetmeats from the hands of
confectioners without prejudice to their caste, and this sugar is
considered to be the best of all good things for guarding against
colds in man or beast, they all ate very heartily, and went on in
high spirits. As the sun sank below us on the left, a bright moon
shone out upon us from the right, and about an hour after dark we
reached our tents on the north bank of the Kuari river, where we
found an excellent dinner for ourselves, and good fires, and good
shelter for our servants. Little rain had fallen near the tents, and
the river Kuari, over which we had to cross, had not, fortunately,
much swelled; nor did much fall on the ground we had left; and, as
the tents there had been struck and laden before it came on, they
came up the next morning early, and went on to our next ground.

On the 28th, we went on to Dholpur, the capital of the Jat chiefs of
Gohad,[3] on the left bank of the Chambal, over a plain with a
variety of crops, but not one that requires two seasons to reach
maturity. The soil excellent in quality and deep, but not a tree
anywhere to be seen, nor any such thing as a work of ornament or
general utility of any kind. We saw the fort of Dholpur at a distance
of six miles, rising apparently from the surface of the level plain,
but in reality situated on the summit of the opposite and high bank
of a large river, its foundation at least one hundred feet above the
level of the water. The immense pandemonia of ravines that separated
us from this fort were not visible till we began to descend into them
some two or three miles from the bed of the river. Like all the
ravines that border the rivers in these parts, they are naked,
gloomy, and ghastly, and the knowledge that no solitary traveller is
ever safe in them does not tend to improve the impression they make
upon us. The river is a beautiful clear stream, here flowing over a
bed of fine sand with a motion so gentle, that one can hardly
conceive it is she who has played such fantastic tricks along the
borders, and made such 'frightful gashes' in them. As we passed over
this noble reach of the river Chambal in a ferry-boat, the boatman
told us of the magnificent bridge formed here by the Baiza Bai for
Lord William Bentinck in 1832, from boats brought down from Agra for
the purpose. 'Little', said they, 'did it avail her with the
Governor-General in her hour of need.[4]

The town of Dholpur lies some short way in from the north bank of the
Chambal, at the extremity of a range of sandstone hills which runs
diagonally across that of Gwalior. This range was once capped with
basalt, and some boulders are still found upon it in a state of rapid
decomposition. It was quite refreshing to see the beautiful mango
groves on the Dholpur side of the river, after passing through a
large tract of country in which no tree of any kind was to be seen.
On returning from a long ride over the range of sandstone hills the
morning after we reached Dholpur, I passed through an encampment of
camels taking rude iron from some mines in the hills to the south
towards Agra. They waited here within the frontier of a native state
for a pass from the Agra custom house,[5] lest any one should, after
they enter our frontier, pretend that they were going to smuggle it,
and thus get them into trouble. 'Are you not', said I, 'afraid to
remain here so near the ravines of the Chambal, when thieves are said
to be so numerous?' 'Not at all,' replied they. 'I suppose thieves do
not think it worth while to steal rude iron?' 'Thieves, sir, think it
worth while to steal anything they can get, but we do not fear them
much here.' 'Where, then, do you fear them much?' 'We fear them when
we get into the Company's territories.' 'And how is this, when we
have good police establishments, and the Dholpur people none?' 'When
the Dholpur people get hold of a thief, they make him disgorge all
that he has got of our property for us, and they confiscate all the
rest that he has for themselves, and cut off his nose or his hands,
and turn him adrift to deter others. You, on the contrary, when you
get hold of a thief, worry us to death in the prosecution of your
courts; and, when we have proved the robbery to your satisfaction,
you leave all this ill-gotten wealth to his family,[6] and provide
him with good food and clothing for himself, while he works for you a
couple of years on the roads.[7] The consequence is, that here
fellows are afraid to rob a traveller, if they find him at all on his
guard, as we generally are, while in your districts they rob us where
and when they like.'

'But, my friends, you are sure to recover what we do get of your
property from the thieves.' 'Not quite sure of that neither,' said
they, 'or the greater part is generally absorbed on its way back to
us through the officers of your court; and we would always rather put
up with the first loss than run the risk of a greater by prosecution,
if we happen to get robbed within the Company's territories.'

The loss and annoyances to which prosecutors and witnesses are
subject in our courts are a source of very great evil to the country.
They enable police-officers everywhere to grow rich upon the
concealment of crimes. The man who has been robbed will bribe them to
conceal the robbery, that he may escape the further loss of the
prosecution in our courts, generally very distant; and the witnesses
will bribe them to avoid attending to give evidence; the whole
village communities bribe them, because every man feels that they
have the power of getting him summoned to the court in some capacity
or other, if they like; and that they will certainly like to do so,
if not bribed.