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

In the tribunals we introduce among them, such people soon find that
the judges who preside can seldom search deeply into the hearts of
men, or clearly distinguish truth from falsehood in the declarations
of deponents; and when they can distinguish it, it is seldom that
they can secure their conviction for perjury. They generally learn
very soon that these judges, instead of being, like the judges of
their own woods and wilds, the only beings who can search the hearts
of men, and punish them for falsehood, are frequently the persons, of
all others, most blind to the real state of the deponent's mind, and
the degree of truth and falsehood in his narrative; that, however
well-intentioned, they are often labouring in the 'darkness visible'
created by the native officers around them. They not only learn this,
but they learn what is still worse, that they may tell what lies they
please in these tribunals; and that not one of them shall become
known to the circle in which they move, and whose good opinion they
value. If, by his lies told in such tribunals, a man has robbed
another, or caused him to be robbed, of his property, his character,
his liberty, or his life, he can easily persuade the circle in which
he resides that it has arisen, not from any false statements of his,
but from the blindness of the judge, or the wickedness of the native
officers of his court, because all circles consider the blindness of
the one, and the wickedness of the other, to be everywhere very
great.

Arrian, in speaking of the class of supervisors in India, says: 'They
may not be guilty of falsehood; and indeed none of the Indians were
ever accused of that crime.'[7] I believe that as little falsehood is
spoken by the people of India, in their village communities, as in
any part of the world with an equal area and population. It is in our
courts of justice where falsehoods prevail most, and the longer they
have been anywhere established, the greater the degree of falsehood
that prevails in them. Those entrusted with the administration of a
newly-acquired territory are surprised to find the disposition among
both principals and witnesses in cases to tell the plain and simple
truth. As magistrates, they find it very often difficult to make
thieves and robbers tell lies, according to the English fashion, to
avoid running a risk of criminating themselves. In England, this
habit of making criminals tell lies arose from the severity of the
penal code, which made the punishment so monstrously disproportionate
to the crime, that the accused, however clear and notorious his
crimes, became an object of general sympathy.[8] In India,
punishments have nowhere been, under our rule, disproportionate to
the crimes; on the contrary, they have generally been more mild than
the people would wish them to be, or think they ought to be, in order
to deter from similar crimes; and, in newly-acquired territories,
they have generally been more mild than in our old possessions. The
accused are, therefore, nowhere considered as objects of public
sympathy; and in newly-acquired territories they are willing to tell
the truth, and are allowed to do so, in order to save the people whom
they have injured, and their neighbours generally, the great loss and
annoyance unavoidably attending upon a summons to our courts. In the
native courts, to which ours succeed, the truth was seen through
immediately, the judges who presided could commonly distinguish truth
from falsehood in the evidence before them, almost as well as the
sylvan gods who sat in the pipal- or cotton-trees; though they were
seldom supposed by the people to be quite so just in their decisions.
When we take possession of such countries, they, for a time at least,
give us credit for the same sagacity, with a little more integrity.
The prisoner knows that his neighbours expect him to tell the truth
to save them trouble, and will detest him if he does not; he supposes
that we shall have the sense to find out the truth whether he tells
it or not, and then humanity to visit his crime with the punishment
it merits, and no more.

The magistrate asks the prisoner what made him steal; and the
prisoner enters at once into an explanation of the circumstances
which reduced him to the necessity of doing so, and offers to bring
witnesses to prove them; but never dreams of offering to bring
witnesses to prove that he did not steal, if he really had done so;
because the general feeling would be in favour of his doing the one,
and against his doing the other. Tavernier gives an amusing sketch of
Amir Jumla presiding in a court of justice, during a visit he paid
him in the kingdom of Golconda, in the year 1648. (See Book I, Part
II, chap. 11.)[9]

I asked a native law officer, who called on me one day, what he
thought would be the effect of an Act to dispense with oaths on the
Koran and Ganges water, and substitute a solemn declaration made in
the name of God, and under the same penal liabilities, as if the
Koran or Ganges water had been in the deponent's hand. 'I have
practised In the courts thirty years, sir,' said he, 'and during that
time I have found only three kinds of witnesses--two of whom would,
by such an Act, be left precisely where they were, while the third
would be released by it from a very salutary check.' 'And, pray, what
are the three classes into which you divide the witnesses in our
courts?'

'First, sir, are those who will always tell the truth, whether they
are required to state what they know in the form of an oath or not.'
'Do you think this a large class?'

'Yes, I think it is; and I have found among them many whom nothing on
earth could make to swerve from the truth; do what you please, you
could never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood. The
second are those who will not hesitate to tell a lie when they have a
motive for it, and are not restrained by an oath. In taking an oath
they are afraid of two things, the anger of God and the odium of men.
Only three days ago, 'continued my friend,' I required a power of
attorney from a lady of rank, to enable me to act for her in a case
pending before the court in this town. It was given to me by her
brother, and two witnesses came to declare that she had given it.
"Now," said I, "this lady is known to live under the curtain; and you
will be asked by the judge whether you saw her give this paper; what
will you say?" They both replied: "If the judge asks us the question
without an oath, we will say yes--it will save much trouble, and we
know that she did give this paper, though we did not really see her
give it; but if he puts the Koran into our hands we must say no, for
we should otherwise be pointed at by all the town as perjured
wretches--our enemies would soon tell everybody that we had taken a
false oath." Now,' my friend went on, 'the form of an oath is a great
check upon this sort of persons. The third class consists of men who
will tell lies whenever they have sufficient motive, whether they
have the Koran or Ganges water in their hands or not. Nothing will
ever prevent their doing so; and the declaration which you propose
would be just as well as any other for them.'

'Which class do you consider the most numerous of the three?'

'I consider the second the most numerous, and wish the oath to be
retained for them.'

'That is of all the men you see examined in our courts, you think the
most come under the class of those who will, under the influence of
strong motives, tell lies if they have not the Koran or Ganges water
in their hands?'

'Yes.'

'But do not a great many of those, whom you consider to be included
among the second class, come from the village communities--the
peasantry of the country?'

'Yes.'

'And do you not think that the greatest part of those men who tell
lies in the court, under the influence of strong motives, unless they
bear the Koran or Ganges water in their hands, would refuse to tell
lies, if questioned before the people of their villages among the
circle in which they live?'

'Of course I do; three-fourths of those who do not scruple to lie in
our courts, would be ashamed to be before their neighbours, or the
elders of their village.'

'You think that the people of the village communities are more
ashamed to tell lies before their neighbours than the people of
towns?'

'Much more[10] here is no comparison.'

'And the people of towns and cities bear in India but a small
proportion to the people of the village communities?'

'I should think a very small proportion indeed.'

'Then you think that in the mass of the population of India out of
our courts, and in their own circles, the first class, or those who
speak truth, whether they have the Koran or Ganges water in their
hands or not, would be found more numerous than the other two?'

'Certainly I do; if they were always to be questioned before their
neighbours or elders, or so that they could feel that their
neighbours and elders would know what they say.'

This man is a very worthy and learned Muhammadan, who has read all
the works on medicine to be found in Persian and Arabia; gives up his
time from sunrise in the morning till nine, to the indigent sick of
the town, whom he supplies gratuitously with his advice and
medicines, that cost him thirty rupees a month, out of about one
hundred and twenty that he can make by his labours all the rest of
the day.

There can be no doubt that, even in England, the fear of the odium of
society, which is sure to follow the man who has perjured himself,
acts more powerfully in making men tell the truth, when they have the
Bible in their hands before a competent and public tribunal, and with
a strong worldly motive to tell a lie, than the fear of punishment by
the Deity in the next world for having 'taken his name in vain' in
this. Christians, as well as other people, are too apt to think that
there is yet abundance of time to appease the Deity by repentance and
reformation; but they know that they cannot escape the odium of
society, with a free press and high tone of moral and religions
feeling, like those of England, if they deliberately perjure
themselves in open court, whose proceedings are watched with so much
jealousy. They learn to dread the name of 'perjured villain' or
'perjured wretch', which would embitter the rest of their lives, and
perhaps the lives of their children.[11]

In a society much advanced in arts and the refinements of life,
temptations to falsehood become very great, and require strong checks
from law, religion, or moral feeling. Religion is seldom of itself
found sufficient; for, though men cannot hope to conceal their
transgressions from the Deity, they can, as I have stated, always
hope in time to appease Him. Penal laws are not alone sufficient, for
men can always hope to conceal their trespasses from those who are
appointed to administer them, or at least to prevent their getting
that measure of judicial proof required for their conviction; the
dread of the indignation of their circle of society is everywhere the
more efficient of the three checks; and this check will generally be
found most to prevail where the community is left most to self-
government--hence the proverb, 'There is honour among thieves'. A
gang of robbers, who are outlaws, are, of course, left to govern
themselves; and, unless these could rely on each other's veracity and
honour in their relations with each other, they could do nothing. If
Governments were to leave no degree of self-government to the
communities of which the society is composed, this moral check would
really cease--the law would undertake to secure every right, and
enforce every duty; and men would cease to depend upon each other's
good opinion and good feelings.[12]

There is perhaps no part of the world where the communities of which
the society is composed have been left so much to self-government as
in India. There has seldom been any idea of a reciprocity of duties
and rights between the governing and the governed; the sovereign who
has possession feels that he has a right to levy certain taxes from
the land for the maintenance of the public establishments, which he
requires to keep down rebellion against his rule, and to defend his
dominions against all who may wish to intrude and seize upon them;
and to assist him in acquiring the dominions of other princes when
favourable opportunities offer; but he has no idea of a reciprocal
duty towards those from whom he draws his revenues. The peasantry
from whom the prince draws his revenues feel that they are bound to
pay that revenue; that, if they do not pay it, he will, with his
strong arm, turn them out and give to others their possessions--but
they have no idea of any right on their part to any return from him.
The village communities were everywhere left almost entirely to self-
government; and the virtues of truth and honesty, in all their
relations with each other, were indispensably necessary to enable
them to govern themselves.[13] A common interest often united a good
many village communities in a bond of union, and established a kind
of brotherhood over extensive tracts of richly cultivated land. Self-
interest required that they should unite to defend themselves against
attacks with which they were threatened at every returning harvest in
a country where every prince was a robber upon a scale more or less
large according to his means, and took the field to rob while the
lands were covered with the ripe crops upon which his troops might
subsist; and where every man who practised robbery with open violence
followed what he called an '_imperial_ trade' (padshahi kam)--the
only trade worthy the character of a gentleman. The same interest
required that they should unite in deceiving their own prince, and
all his officers, great and small, as to the real resources of their
estates; because they all knew that the prince would admit of no
other limits to his exactions than their abilities to pay at the
harvest. Though, in their relations with each other, all these
village communities spoke as much truth as those of any other
communities in the world; still, in their relation with the
Government, they told as many lies;--for falsehood, in the one set of
relations, would have incurred the odium of the whole of their
circles of society--truth, in the other, would often have involved
the same penalty. If a man had told a lie to _cheat_ his neighbour,
he would have become an object of hatred and contempt--if he told a
lie to _save_ his neighbour's fields from an increase of rent or tax,
he would have become an object of esteem and respect.[14] If the
Government officers were asked whether there was any truth to be
found among such communities, they would say, _No, that the truth was
not in them_; because they would not cut each other's throats by
telling them the real value of each other's fields.

If the peasantry were asked, they would say there was plenty of truth
to be found everywhere except among a few scoundrels, who, to curry
favour with the Government officers, betrayed their trust, and told
the value of their neighbours' fields. In their ideas, he might as
well have gone off, and brought down the common enemy upon them in
the shape of some princely robber of the neighbourhood.

Locke says: 'Outlaws themselves keep faith and rules of justice one
with another--they practise them as rules of convenience within their
own communities; but it is impossible to conceive that they embrace
justice as a practical principle who act fairly with their fellow
highwaymen, and at the same time plunder or kill the next honest man
they meet.' (Vol. i, p. 37.) In India, the difference between the
army of a prince and the gang of a robber was, in the general
estimation of the people, only in _degree_--they were both driving an
_imperial trade_, a 'padshahi kam'. Both took the auspices, and set
out on their expedition after the Dasahra, when the autumn crops were
ripening; and both thought the Deity propitiated as soon as they
found the omens favourable;[15] one attacked palaces and capitals,
the other villages and merchants' storerooms. The members of the army
of the prince thought as little of the justice or injustice of his
cause as those of the gang of the robber; the people of his capital
hailed the return of the victorious prince who had contributed so
much to their wealth, to his booty, and to their self-love by his
victory. The village community received back the robber and his gang
with the same feelings: by their skill and daring they had come back
loaded with wealth, which they were always disposed to spend
liberally with their neighbours. There was no more of truth in the
prince and his army in their relations with the princes and people of
neighbouring principalities, than in the robber and his gang in their
relations with the people robbed. The prince flatters the self-love
of his army and his people; the robber flatters that of his gang and
his village--the question is only in degree; the persons whose self-
love is flattered are blind to the injustice and cruelty of the
attack--the prince is the idol of a people, the robber the idol of a
gang. Was ever robber more atrocious in his attacks upon a merchant
or a village than Louis XIV of France in his attacks upon the
Palatine and Palatinate of the Rhine? How many thousand similar
instances might be quoted of princes idolized by their people for
deeds equally atrocious in their relations with other people? What
nation or sovereign ever found fault with their ambassadors for
telling lies to the kings, courts, and people of other countries?[16]

Rome, during the whole period of her history, was a mere den of
execrable thieves, whose feelings were systematically brutalized by
the most revolting spectacles, that they might have none of those
sympathies with suffering humanity, none of those 'compunctious
visitings of conscience', which might be found prejudicial to the
interests of the gang, and beneficial to the rest of mankind. Take,
for example, the conduct of this atrocious gang under Aemilius
Paulus, against Epirus and Greece generally after the defeat of
Perseus, all under the deliberate decrees of the senate: take that of
this gang under his son Scipio the younger, against Carthage and
Numantia; under Cato, at Cyprus--all in the same manner under the
_deliberate decrees of the senate_. Take indeed the whole of her
history as a republic, and we find it that of the most atrocious band
of robbers that was ever associated against the rest of their
species. In her relations with the rest of mankind Rome was
collectively devoid of truth; and her citizens, who were sent to
govern conquered countries, were no less devoid of truth
individually--they cared nothing whatever for the feelings or the
opinions of the people governed; in their dealings with them, truth
and honour were entirely disregarded. The only people whose
favourable opinion they had any desire to cultivate were the members
of the great gang; and the most effectual mode of conciliating them
was to plunder the people of conquered countries, and distribute the
fruits among them in presents of one kind or another. Can any man
read without shuddering that it was the practice among this atrocious
gang to have all the multitude of unhappy prisoners of both sexes,
and of all ranks and ages,--who annually graced the triumphs of their
generals, taken off and murdered just at the moment when these
generals reached the Capitol, amid the shouts of the multitude, that
their joys might be augmented by the sight or consciousness of the
sufferings of others? (See Hooke's _Roman History_, vol. iii, p. 488;
vol. iv, p. 541.) 'It was the custom that, when the triumphant
conqueror tumed his chariot towards the Capitol, he commanded the
captives to be led to prison, and there put to death, that so the
glory of the victor and the miseries of the vanquished might be in
the same moment at the utmost.' How many millions of the most
innocent and amiable of their species must have been offered up as
human sacrifices to the triumphs of the leaders of this great gang!
The women were almost as brutalized as the men; lovers met to talk
'soft nonsense', at exhibitions of gladiators. Valeria, the daughter
and sister of two of the first men in Rome, was beautiful, gay, and
lively, and of unblemished reputation. Having been divorced from her
husband, she and the monster Sylla made love to each other at one of
these exhibitions of gladiators, and were soon after married. Gibbon,
in speaking of the lies which Severus told his two competitors in the
contest for empire, says, 'Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as
they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a
less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the
intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of
courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is
impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of
followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world,
under the name of _policy_, seems to have granted them a very liberal
indulgence of craft and dissimulation.'[17]

But the weak in society are often obliged to defend themselves
against the strong by the same weapons; and the world grants them the
same liberal indulgence. Men advocate the use of the ballot in
elections that the weak may defend themselves and the free
institutions of the country, by dissimulation, against the strong who
would oppress them.[18] The circumstances under which falsehood and
insincerity are tolerated by the community in the best societies of
modern days are very numerous; and the worst society of modern days
in the civilized world, when slavery does not prevail, is
immeasurably superior to the best in ancient days, or in the Middle
Ages. Do we not every day hear men and women, in what are called the
best societies, declaring to one individual or one set of
acquaintances that the pity, the sympathy, the love, or the
admiration they have been expressing for others is, in reality, all
feigned to soothe or please? As long as the motive is not base, men
do not spurn the falsehood as such. How much of untruth is tolerated
in the best circles of the most civilized nations, in the relations
between electors to corporate and legislative bodies and the
candidates for election? between nominators to offices under
Government and the candidates for nomination? between lawyers and
clients, vendors and purchasers? (particularly of horses), between
the recruiting sergeant and the young recruit, whom he has found a
little angry with his widowed mother, whom he makes him kill by false
pictures of what a soldier may hope for in the 'bellaque matribus
detestata' to which he invites him?[19]

There is, I believe, no class of men in India from whom it is more
difficult to get the true statement of a case pending before a court
than the sepoys of our native regiments; and yet there are, I
believe, no people in the world from whom it is more easy to get it
in their own village communities, where they state it before their
relations, elders, and neighbours, whose esteem is necessary to their
happiness, and can be obtained only by adherence to truth. Every case
that comes before a regimental court involves, or is supposed to
involve, the interest or feelings of some one or other of their
companions; and the question which the deponent asks himself is-not
what religion, public justice, the interests of discipline and order,
or the wishes of his officers require, or what would appear manly and
honourable before the elders of his own little village, but what will
secure the esteem, and what will excite the hatred, of his comrades.
This will often be downright, deliberate falsehood, sworn upon the
Koran or the Ganges water before his officers.

Many a brave sepoy have I seen faint away from the agitated state of
his feelings, under the dread of the Deity if he told lies with the
Ganges water in his hands, and of his companions if he told the
truth, and caused them to be punished. Every question becomes a party
question, and the 'point of honour' requires that every witness shall
tell as many lies about it as possible.[20] When I go into a village,
and talk with the people in any part of India, I know that I shall
get the truth out of them on all subjects as long as I can satisfy
them that I am not come on the part of the Government to inquire into
the value of their fields with a view to new impositions, and this I
can always do; but, when I go among the sepoys to ask about anything,
I feel pretty sure that I have little chance of getting at the truth;
they will take the alarm and try to deceive me, lest what I learn
should be brought up at some future day against them or their
comrades. The Duke of Wellington says, speaking of the English
soldiers: 'It is most difficult to convict a prisoner before a
regimental court-martial, for, I am sorry to say, that soldiers have
little regard to the oath administered to them; and the officers who
are sworn well and truly to try and determine _according to the
evidence_, the matter before them, have too much regard to the strict
_letter_ of that administered to them.' Again: 'The witnesses being
in almost every instance common soldiers, whose conduct this tribunal
was instituted to control, the consequence is that perjury is almost
as common an offence as drunkenness and plunder, &c.'[21]