Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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6. Compare the story of Ramkishan in Chapter 25. Books on
anthropology cite many instances of deaths caused by superstitious
fears.

7. Arrian, _Indica_, chap. 12: 'The sixth class consists of those
called "superintendents". They spy out what goes on in country and
town, and report everything to the king where the people have a king,
and to the magistrates where the people are self-governed, and it is
against use and wont for them to give a false report;--but indeed no
Indian is accused of lying.' (McCrindle, _Ancient India, as described
by Megasthenes and Arrian_, Truebner, 1877, p. 211). Arrian uses the
word [Greek text 1]; in the Fragments of Megasthenes quoted by
Diodorus and Strabo, the word is [Greek text 2]. The people referred
to seem to be the well-known 'news-writers' employed by Oriental
sovereigns (_ante_, chapter 33, note 7); a simple explanation missed
by McCrindle (op. cit. p. 43, note). The remark about the
truthfulness of the Indians appears to be Arrian's addition. It is
not in the Fragment of Megasthenes from which Arrian copies, and the
falsity of the remark is proved by the statement (ibid., p. 71) that
'a person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of
his extremities'. But in Fragment XXVII from Strabo (op. cit., p. 70)
Megasthenes says, 'Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem'; and
in Fragment XXXIII (ibid., p. 85) he asserts that 'the ablest and
moat trustworthy men' are appointed [Greek text 2].

8. Up to the year 1827 'grand larceny', that is to say, stealing to a
value exceeding twelve pence, was punishable with death. The Act 7
George IV, cap. 28, abolished the distinction of grand and petty
larceny. In 1837, the first year of Queen Victoria's reign, the
punishment of death was abolished in the case of between thirty and
forty offences. Other statutes have further mitigated the ferocity of
the old law.

9. The year was 1652, not 1648 (Tavernier, _Travels_, transl. Ball,
vol. i, p. 260, note). The passages describing the criminal procedure
of Amir Jumla are not very long, and deserve quotation, as giving an
accurate account of the administration of penal justice by an able
native ruler. 'On the 14th [September] we went to the tent of the
Nawab to take leave of him, and to hear what he had to say regarding
the goods which we had shown him. But we were told that he was
engaged examining a number of criminals, who had been brought to him
for immediate punishment. It is the custom in this country not to
keep a man in prison; but immediately the accused is taken he is
examined and sentence is pronounced on him, which is then executed
without any delay. If the person whom they have seized is found
innocent, he is released at once; and whatever the nature of the case
may be, it is promptly concluded. . . . On the 15th, at seven o'clock
in the morning, we went to the Nawab, and immediately we were
announced he asked us to enter his tent, where he was seated with two
of his secretaries by him. . . . The Nawab had the intervals between
his toes full of letters, and he also had many between the fingers of
his left hand. He drew them sometimes from his feet, sometimes from
his hand, and sent his replies through his two secretaries, writing
some also himself. . . . While we were with the Nawab he was informed
that four prisoners, who were then at the door of the tent, had
arrived. He remained more than half an hour without replying, writing
continually and making his secretaries write, but at length he
suddenly ordered the criminals to be brought in; and after having
questioned them, and made them confess with their own mouths the
crime of which they were accused, he remained nearly an hour without
saying anything, continuing to write and to make his secretaries
write, . . . Among these four prisoners who were brought into his
presence there was one who had entered a house and slain a mother and
her three infants. He was condemned forthwith to have his feet and
hands cut off, and to be thrown into a field near the high road to
end his days. Another had stolen on the high road, and the Nawab
ordered him to have his stomach slit open and to be flung in a drain,
I could not ascertain what the others had done, but both their heads
were cut off. While all this passed the dinner was served, for the
Nawab generally eats at ten o'clock, and he made us dine with him.'
(Ibid., pp. 290-3.) Such swift procedure and sharp punishments would
still be highly approved of by the great mass 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 God, 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 nobility, 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, entitled 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 massacre 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 classes of the natives of India on
certain occasions is, at least, not more reprehensible than the vices
practised and condoned by certain classes 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 fashionable abuse of the Indian capitalist, whose virtues and
merits are seldom noticed.

29. The editor has not succeeded in tracing this quotation, but
several passages 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 municipal corporations and institutions' 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 municipal institutions 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 municipal institutions 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 Godby 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 principal. 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. God 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 God.[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 municipal
institutions, 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 passed 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
brass jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.[6]

While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched gram of its
shell, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder
of the village, a sturdy 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 entitled 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 assessment 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.'

'Then why should you expect remissions in the bad seasons?'

'It cannot be disputed that the "barkat" (blessing from above) is
less under you than it used to be formerly, and that the lands yield
less to our labour.'

'True, my old friend, but do you know the reason why?'

'No.'

'Then I will tell you. Forty or fifty years ago, in what you call the
times of the "barkat" (blessing from above), the cavalry of Sikh
freebooters from the Panjab used to sweep over this fine plain, in
which stands the said village from which you are all descended; and
to massacre the whole population of some villages, and a certain
portion of that of every other village; and the lands of those killed
used to be waste for want of cultivators. Is not this all true?'

'Yes, quite true.'

'And the fine groves which had been planted over the plain by your
ancestors, as they separated from the great parent stock, and formed
independent villages and hamlets for themselves, were all swept away
and destroyed by the same hordes of freebooters, from whom your poor
imbecile emperors, cooped up in yonder large city of Delhi, were
utterly unable to defend you?'

'Quite true,' said the old man with a sigh. 'I remember when all this
fine plain was as thickly studded with fine groves of mango-trees as
Rohilkhand, or any other part of India.'

'You know that the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and
bullocks, and that, if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting
crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last not
be worth the tilling?'

'Quite well.'

'Then why do you not give the land rest by leaving it longer fallow,
or by a more frequent alternation of crops relieve it?'

'Because we have now increased so much that we should not get enough
to eat were we to leave it to fallow; and unless we tilled it with
exhausting crops we should not get the means of paying our rents to
the Government.'

'The Sikh hordes in former days prevented this; they killed off a
certain portion of your families, and gave the land the rest which
you now refuse it. When you had exhausted one part, you found another
recovered by a long fallow, so that you had better returns; but now
that we neither kill you, nor suffer you to be killed by others, you
have brought all the cultivable lands into tillage; and under the old
System of cropping to exhaustion, it is not surprising that they
yield you less returns.'[8]

By this time we had a crowd of people seated around us upon the
ground, as I went on munching my parched gram, and talking to the old
patriarch.

They all laughed at the old man at the conclusion of my last speech,
and he confessed I was right.

'This is all true, sir, but still your Government is not considerate;
it goes on taking kingdom after kingdom, and adding to its dominions
without diminishing the burden upon us, its old subjects. Here you
have had armies away taking Afghanistan, but we shall not have one
rupee the less to pay.'[9]

'True, my friend, nor would you demand a rupee less from those honest
cultivators around us, if we were to leave you all your lands
untaxed. You complain of the Government--they complain of you.' (Here
the circle around us laughed at the old man again.) 'Nor would you
subdivide the lands the less for having it rent-free; on the
contrary, it would be every generation subdivided the more, inasmuch
as there would be more of local ties, and a greater disinclination of
families to separate and seek service abroad.'

'True, sir, very true--that is, no doubt, a very great evil.'

'And you know it is not an evil produced by us, but one arising out
of your own laws of inheritance. You have heard, no doubt, that with
us the eldest son gets the whole of the land, and the younger sons
all go out in search of service, with such share as they can get of
the other property of their father?'

'Yes, sir; but when shall we get service?--you have none to give us.
I would serve to-morrow if you would take me as a soldier,' said he,
stroking his white whiskers.

The crowd laughed heartily; and some wag observed that I should
perhaps think him too old.