Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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'But the wells were not dried up, were they?'

'No.'

'And the people whose fields they watered had good returns, and high
prices for produce?'

'Yes, they had; but their cattle died for want of food, for there was
no grass any where to be found.'

'Still they were better off than those who had no wells to draw water
from for their fields; and the only way to provide against such evils
in future is to have a well for every field. God has given you the
fields, and he has given you the water; and when it does not come
from the clouds, you must draw it from your wells.'[16]

'True, sir, very true; but the people are very poor, and have not the
means to form the wells they require.'

'And if they borrow the money from you, you charge them with
interest?'

'From one to two per cent. a month according to their character and
circumstances; but interest is very often merely nominal, and we are
in most cases glad to get back the principal alone.'[17]

'And what security have you for the land of your grove in case the
landholder should change his mind, or die and leave sons not so well
disposed.'

'In the first place, we hold his bonds for a debt of nine thousand
rupees which he owes us, and which we have no hopes of his ever
paying. In the next, we have on stamped paper his deed of gift, in
which he declares that he has given us the land, and that he and his
heirs for ever shall be bound to make good the rents, should
Government sell the estate for arrears of revenue. We wanted him to
write this document in the regular form of a deed of sale; but he
said that none of his ancestors had ever yet sold their lands, and
that he would not be the first to disgrace his family, or record
their disgrace on stamped paper--it should, he was resolved, be a
deed of gift.'

'But, of course, you prevailed upon him to take the price?'

'Yes, we prevailed upon him to take two hundred rupees for the land,
and got his receipt for the same; indeed, it is so mentioned in the
deed of gift; but still the landlord, who is a near relation of the
late chief of Hatras, would persist in having the paper made out as a
deed, not of sale, but of gift. God knows whether, after all, our
grove will be secure--we must run the risk now we have begun upon
it.'

Notes:

1. This phrase is misleading. There is no want of trees in Upper
India generally; only certain limited areas are ill wooded. Most of
the districts in the plains of the Ganges and Jumna are well wooded.

2. This is a favourite doctrine of the author, often reiterated. The
absence of a powerful middle class is a characteristic, not of India
only, but of all Oriental despotisms, and the subdivision of landed
property is only one of the causes of the non-existence of such a
class.

3. This is quite true. The rural population want two things, first a
light assessment, secondly the minimum of official interference, They
do not care a straw who the ruler is, and they like best that ruler,
be his name or nationality what it may, who worries them least, and
takes least money from them.

4. Goldsmith, 'The Hermit' (in chapter 8 of _The Vicar of
Wakefield_).

5. Groves are still scarce in the Agra country, but much planting has
been done on the roads.

6. Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, and some other districts, forming half of the
old province of Oudh, ceded by the ruler of Oudh in 1801, were long
known as the Ceded Provinces. The western districts of the North-
Western Provinces, known as the Conquered Provinces, were taken from
the Marathas in 1803-5. The Province of Benares became British
territory in 1775. The hill districts of the Kumaun Division were
annexed in 1816, at the close of the war with Nepal. All the regions
named are now included in the Agra Province of the United Provinces
of Agra and Oudh, in which the editor served for twenty-nine years.

7. The author's remarks are not readily intelligible to readers
unversed in the technicalities of Indian revenue administration. The
author writes on the assumption that Government was the proprietor of
the soil. While he was writing, the settlements under Regulation IX
of 1833 were in progress. Those settlements, or revenue contracts,
were ordinarily sanctioned for periods of thirty years, and the
landholders, whom the author calls 'lessees', have gradually changed
into 'proprietors', with full power over their land, subject only to
the State lien for the 'land revenue' (Crown rent, or State share of
the produce), and to the laws of inheritance and succession. The
'resumption of rent-free lands' simply means the subjection of those
lands to the payment of 'land revenue'. It is inaccurate to say that
the lands are become 'the property of Government' by reason of their
being assessed. Even when land generally was regarded as the property
of the State, and the landholders were considered to be only lessees,
no objection would have been made to the planting of groves if
payment of the 'land revenue' had been continued for the planted area
as for cultivated land. Now that landholders have been recognized as
proprietors, there is nothing to prevent them from planting as much
land as they like with trees, although the State has not always been
willing to exempt the whole planted area from assessment. No one ever
objected to the renewal of trees except on the ground that the area
under trees might be excluded from assessment. For many years past
the Government of India has been most anxious to encourage tree-
planting, and has sanctioned liberal rules respecting the exemption
of grove land from assessment to 'land revenue', or 'rent', as the
author calls it. The Government of the United Provinces certainly is
not now liable to reproach for indifference to the value of groves.
Enormous progress in the planting of road avenues has also been made.
The deficiency of trees in the country about Agra is partly due to
nature, much of the ground being cut up by ravines, and unfavourable
for planting.

8. The Aligarh district lies to the north and east of the Mathura
district. The fort of Aligarh is fifty-five miles north of Agra, and
eighty-four miles south-east of Delhi.

9. 'pakka' here means 'burned in a kiln', as distinguished from 'sun-
dried'.

10. The 'bigha' is the unit of superficial land measure, varying, but
often taken as five-eighths of an acre. The 'jarib' is a smaller
measure.

11. The rules now in force require assessing officers to make
allowance for permanent improvements, such as the well described in
the text, so as to give the fair benefit of the improvement to the
maker. In the early settlements this important matter was commonly
neglected.

12. Tolerable bullocks, fit for use at the well and in the plough,
would now cost much more. This conversation appears to have taken
place in the year 1839, The famine alluded to is that of 1837-8.

13. This conversation gives a very vivid and truthful picture of
rural life in Northern India. Most revenue officers have held similar
conversations with rustics, but the author is almost the only writer
on Indian affairs who has perceived that exact notes of casual chats
in the fields would be found interesting and valuable.

14. The early settlements were made for short terms.

15. The certificate would not be of much avail in a civil court.

16. The Aligarh district is now irrigated by canals.

17. This is the lender's view of his business; the borrowers might
have a different story.

CHAPTER 62

Public Spirit of the Hindoos--Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for
extending it.

I may here be permitted to introduce as something germane to the
matter of the foregoing chapter a recollection of Jubbulpore,
although we are now far past that locality.

My tents are pitched where they have often been before, on the verge
of a very large and beautiful tank in a fine grove of mango-trees,
and close to a handsome temple. There are more handsome temples and
buildings for accommodation on the other side of the tank, but they
are gone sadly out of repair. The bank all round this noble tank is
beautifully ornamented by fine banyan and pipal trees, between which
and the water's edge intervene numerous clusters of the graceful
bamboo. These works were formed about eighty years ago by a
respectable agricultural capitalist who resided at this place, and
died about twenty years after they were completed. No relation of his
can now be found in the district, and not one in a thousand of those
who drink of the water or eat of the fruit knows to whom he is
indebted. There are round the place some beautiful 'baolis', or large
wells with flights of stone steps from the top to the water's edge,
imbedded in clusters of beautiful trees. They were formed about the
same time for the use of the public by men whose grandchildren have
descended to the grade of cultivators of the soil, or belted
attendants upon the present native collectors, without the means of
repairing any of the injury which time is inflicting upon these
magnificent works. Three or four young pipal-trees have begun to
spread their delicate branches and pale green leaves rustling in the
breeze from the dome of this fine temple; which these infant
Herculeses hold in their deadly grasp and doom to inevitable
destruction. Pigeons deposit the seeds of the pipal-tree, on which
they chiefly feed, in the crevices of buildings.

No Hindoo dares, and no Christian or Muhammadan will condescend, to
lop off the heads of these young trees, and if they did, it would
only put off the evil and inevitable day; for such are the vital
powers of their roots, when they have once penetrated deeply into a
building, that they will send out their branches again, cut them off
as often as you may, and carry on their internal attack with
undiminished vigour.[1] No wonder that superstition should have
consecrated this tree, delicate and beautiful as it is, to the gods.
The palace, the castle, the temple, and the tomb, all those works
which man is most proud to raise to spread and to perpetuate his
name, crumble to dust beneath her withering grasp. She rises
triumphant over them all in her lofty beauty, bearing high in air
amidst her light green foliage fragments of the wreck she has made,
to show the nothingness of man's greatest efforts.

While sitting at my tent-door looking out upon this beautiful sheet
of water, and upon all the noble works around me, I thought of the
charge, so often made against the people of this fine land, of the
total want of _public spirit_ among them, by those who have spent
their Indian days in the busy courts of law, and still more busy
commercial establishments of our great metropolis.

If by the term public spirit be meant a disposition on the part of
individuals to sacrifice their own enjoyments, or their own means of
enjoyment for the common good, there is perhaps no people in the
world among whom it abounds so much as among the people of India. To
live in the grateful recollections of their countrymen for benefits
conferred upon them in great works of ornament and utility is the
study of every Hindoo of rank and property.[2] Such works tend, in
his opinion, not only to spread and perpetuate his name in this
world, but, through the good wishes and prayers of those who are
benefited by them, to secure the favour of the Deity in the next.

According to their notions, every drop of rain-water or dew that
falls to the ground from the green leaf of a fruit-tree, planted by
them for the common good, proves a refreshing draught for their souls
in the next [world]. When no descendant remains to pour the funeral
libations in their name, the water from the trees they have planted
for the public good is destined to supply its place. Everything
judiciously laid out to promote the happiness of their fellow
creatures will in the next world be repaid to them tenfold by the
Deity.

In marching over the country in the hot season, we every morning find
our tents pitched on the green sward amid beautiful groves of fruit-
trees, with wells of 'pakka' (brick or stone) masonry, built at great
expense, and containing the most delicious water; but how few of us
ever dream of asking at whose cost the trees that afford us and our
followers such agreeable shade were planted, or the wells that afford
us such copious streams of fine water in the midst of dry, arid
plains were formed! We go on enjoying all the advantages which arise
from the _noble public spirit_ that animates the people of India to
benevolent exertions, without once calling in question the truth of
the assertion of our metropolitan friends that 'the people of India
have no public spirit'.

Manmor, a respectable merchant of Mirzapore, who traded chiefly in
bringing cotton from the valley of the Nerbudda and Southern India
through Jubbulpore to Mirzapore, and in carrying back sugar and
spices in return, learning how much travellers on this great road
suffered from the want of water near the Hiliya pass, under the
Vindhya range of hills, commenced a work to remedy the evil in 1822.
Not a drop of wholesome water was to be found within ten miles of the
bottom of the pass, where the laden bullocks were obliged to rest
during the hot months, when the greatest thoroughfare always took
place. Manmor commenced a large tank and garden, and had laid out
about twenty thousand rupees in the work, when he died. His son, Lalu
Manmor, completed the work soon after his father's death, at a cost
of eighty thousand rupees more, that travellers might enjoy all the
advantages that his good old father had benevolently intended for
them. The tank is very large, always full of fine water even in the
driest part of the dry season, with flights of steps of cut freestone
from the water's edge to the top all round. A fine garden and
shrubbery, with temples and buildings for accommodations, are
attached, with an establishment of people to attend and keep them in
order.[3]

All the country around this magnificent work was a dreary solitude--
there was not a human habitation within many miles on any side. Tens
of thousands who passed this road every year were blessing the name
of the man who had created it where it was so much wanted, when the
new road from the Nerbudda to Mirzapore was made by the British
Government to descend some ten miles to the north of it. As many
miles were saved in the distance by the new cut, and the passage down
made comparatively easy at great cost, travellers forsook the Hiliya
road, and poor Manmor's work became comparatively useless. I brought
the work to the notice of Lord William Bentinck, who, in passing
Mirzapore some time after, sent for the son, and conferred upon him a
rich dress of honour, of which he has ever since been extremely
proud.[4]

Hundreds of works like this are undertaken every year for the benefit
of the public by benevolent and unostentatious individuals, who look
for their reward, not in the applause of newspapers and public
meetings, but in the grateful prayers and good wishes of those who
are benefited by them; and in the favour of the Deity in the next
world, for benefits conferred upon his creatures in this.[5]

What the people of India want is not public spirit, for no men in the
world have more of it than the Hindoos, but a disposition on the part
of private individuals to combine their efforts and means in
effecting great objects for the public good. With this disposition
they will be, in time, inspired under our rule, when the enemies of
all settled governments may permit us to divert a little of our
intellect and our revenue from the duties of war to those of
peace.[6]

In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of
Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to
be made of the public works of utility and ornament it contained. The
population of the district at that time amounted to 500,000 souls,
distributed among 4,053 occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There
were 1,000 villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were
then deserted. There were 2,288 tanks, 209 'baolis', or large wells
with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when
in its lowest stage; 1,560 wells lined with brick and stone, cemented
with lime, but without stairs; 860 Hindoo temples, and 22 Muhammadan
mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present
price, had the labour been paid in kind at the ordinary rate, was
R86,66,043 (866,604 pounds sterling).[7]

The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds
the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and
corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average
seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the
labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum
here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the
public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicate
a very high degree of _public spirit_.

The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to
R650,000 (65,000 pounds sterling), that is, 500,000 demandable by the
Government, and 150,000 by those who hold the lands at lease
immediately under Government, over and above what may be considered
as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must,
therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual
rent of the whole of the lands of the district, or the whole annual
rent for above thirteen years.[8]

But I have not included the groves of mango and tamarind, and other
fine trees with which the district abounds. Two-thirds of the towns
and villages are imbedded in fine groves of these trees, mixed with
the banyan (_Ficus Indica_) and the pipal (_Ficus religiosa_). I am
sorry they were not numbered; but I should estimate them at three
thousand, and the outlay upon a mango grove is, on an average, about
four hundred rupees.

The groves of fruit-trees planted by individuals for the use of the
public, without any view to a return in profit, would in this
district, according to this estimate, have cost twelve lakhs
[12,00,000] more, or about twice the amount of the annual rent of the
whole of the lands. It should be remarked that the whole of these
works had been formed under former governments. Ours was established
in the year 1817.[9]

The Upper Doab and the Delhi Territories were denuded of their trees
in the wars that attended the decline and fall of the Muhammadan
empire, and the rise and progress of the Sikhs, Jats, and Marathas in
that quarter. These lawless freebooters soon swept all the groves
from the face of every country they occupied with their troops, and
they never attempted to renew them or encourage the renewal. We have
not been much more sparing; and the finest groves of fruit-trees have
everywhere been recklessly swept down by our barrack-masters to
furnish fuel for their brick-kilns; and I am afraid little or no
encouragement is given for planting others to supply their place in
those parts of India where they are most wanted.

We have a regulation authorizing the lessee of a village to plant a
grove in his grounds, but where the settlements of the land-revenue
have been for short periods, as in all Upper and Central India, this
authority is by no means sufficient to induce them to invest their
property in such works. It gives no sufficient guarantee that the
lessee for the next settlement shall respect a grant made by his
predecessors; and every grove of mango-trees requires outlay and care
for at least ten years. Though a man destines the fruit, the shade,
and the water for the use of the public, he requires to feel that it
will be held for the public in his name, and by his children and
descendants, and never be exclusively appropriated by any man in
power for his own use.

If the lands were still to belong to the lessee of the estate under
Government, and the trees only to the planter and his heirs, he to
whom the land belonged might very soon render the property in the
trees of no value to the planter or his heirs.[10]

If Government wishes the Upper Doab, the Delhi, Mathura, and Agra
districts again enriched and embellished with mango groves, they will
not delay to convey this feeling to the hundreds, nay, thousands, who
would be willing to plant them upon a single guarantee that the lands
upon which the trees stand shall be considered to belong to them and
their heirs as long as these trees stand upon them.[11] That the
land, the shade, the fruit, and the water will be left to the free
enjoyment of the public we may take for granted, since the good which
the planter's soul is to derive from such a work in the next world
must depend upon their being so; and all that is required to be
stipulated in such grants is that mango tamarind, pipal, or 'bar'
(i.e. banyan) trees, at the rate of twenty-five the English acre,
shall be planted and kept up in every piece of land granted for the
purpose; and that a well of 'pakka' masonry shall be made for the
purpose of watering them, in the smallest, as well as in the largest,
piece of ground granted, and kept always in repair.

If the grantee fulfil the conditions, he ought, in order to cover
part of the expense, to be permitted to till the land under the trees
till they grow to maturity and yield their fruit; if he fails, the
lands, having been declared liable to resumption, should be resumed.
The person soliciting such grants should be required to certify in
his application that he had already obtained the sanction of the
present lessee of the village in which he wishes to have his grove,
and for this sanction he would, of course, have to pay the full value
of the land for the period of his lease. When his lease expires, the
land in which the grove is planted would be excluded from the
assessment; and when it is considered that every good grove must cost
the planter more than fifty times the annual rent of the land,
Government may be satisfied that they secure the advantage to their
people at a very cheap rate.[12]

Over and above the advantage of fruit, water, and shade for the
public, these groves tend much to secure the districts that are well
studded with them from the dreadful calamities that in India always
attend upon deficient falls of rain in due season. They attract the
clouds, and make them deposit their stores in districts that would
not otherwise be blessed with them; and hot and dry countries denuded
of their trees, and by that means deprived of a great portion of that
moisture to which they had been accustomed, and which they require to
support vegetation, soon become dreary and arid wastes. The lighter
particles, which formed the richest portion of their soil, blow off,
and leave only the heavy arenaceous portion; and hence, perhaps,
those sandy deserts in which are often to be found the signs of a
population once very dense.

In the Mauritius, the rivers were found to be diminishing under the
rapid disappearance of the woods in the interior, when Government had
recourse to the measure of preventing further depredations, and they
soon recovered their size.

The clouds brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade
wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in
the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing
showers. In many other parts of the world governments have now become
aware of this mysterious provision of nature; and have adopted
measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and
the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our
districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been
of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may,
perhaps, induce our Indian Government to turn its thoughts to the
subject.[13]

The province of Malwa, which is bordered by the Nerbudda on the
south, Gujarat on the west, Rajputana on the north, and Allahabad on
the east, is said never to have been visited by a famine; and this
exemption from so great a calamity must arise chiefly from its being
so well studded with hills and groves. The natives have a couplet,
which, like all good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to
Sahadeo, one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahabharata, to this
effect: 'If it does not thunder on such a night, you, father, must go
to Malwa, and I to Gujarat', meaning, 'The rains will fail us here,
and we must go to those quarters where they never fail'[14]

Notes:

1. The Archaeological Survey is engaged in unceasing battle with the
pipal seedlings.

2. This proposition is too general.

3. The Hiliya, or Haliya, Pass is near the town of the same name in
the Mirzapur district, thirty-one miles south-west of Mirzapur. A
bilingual inscription, in English and Hindi, on a large slab on the
bank of the river, records the capture of the fort of Bhopari in 1811
by the 21st Regiment Native Infantry. The tank described in the text
is at Dibhor, twelve miles south of Haliya, and is 430 feet long by
352 broad. The full name of the builder is Sriman Nayak Manmor, who
was the head of the Banjara merchants of Mirzapur. The inscription on
his temple is dated 23 February, 1825, A.D. 'I suppose', remarks
Cunningham, 'that the vagrant instinct of the old Banjara preferred a
jungle site. No doubt he got the ground cheap; and from this vantage
point he was able to supply Mirzapur with both wood and charcoal.'
(_A.S.R._, vol. xxi, pp. 121-5, pl. xxxi.)