Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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34 Zafaryab Khan died in 1802 or 1803. His son-in-law, Colonel Dyce,
was employed in the Begam's service. 'The issue of this marriage was:
(l) David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who married Mary Anne, daughter of
Viscount St. Vincent, by whom he had no issue. He died in Paris in
July, 1851. In August, 1867, his body was conveyed to Sardhana and
buried in the cathedral. (2) A daughter, who married Captain Rose
Troup. (3) A daughter, who married Paul Salaroli, now Marquis of
Briona. The present owner of Sardhana is the Honourable Mary Anne
Forester, the widow of David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, and the
successful claimant in the suit against Government which has recently
been decided in her favour.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), p.
296.) This lady, in 1862, married George Cecil-Weld, third Baron
Forester, who died without issue in 1886. (Burke's _Peerage_.) Lady
Forester died on March 7, 1893.

35. In the original edition these statistics are given in words.
Figures have been used in this edition as being more readily grasped.
The amounts stated by the author are approximate round sums. More
accurate details are given in _N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), p.
295. The Begam also subscribed liberally to Hindoo and Muhammadan
institutions. Her contemporary, Colonel Skinner, was equally
impartial, and is said to have built a mosque and a temple, as well
as the church at Delhi.

The Cathedral at Sardhana was built in 1822. St. John's College is
intended to train Indians as priests, There are, or were recently,
about 250 native Christians at Sardhana, partly the descendants of
the converts who followed their mistress in change of faith. 'The
Roman Catholic priests work hard for their little colony, and are
greatly revered and respected. At St. John's College some of the boys
are instructed for the priesthood, and others taught to read and
write the Nagari and Urdu characters. The instruction for the
priesthood is peculiar. There are some twelve little native boys who
can quote whole chapters of the Latin Bible, and nearly all the
prayers of the Missal. Those who cannot sympathize with the system
mast admire the patience and devotion of the Italian priests who have
put themselves to the trouble of imparting such instruction. The
majority of the Christian population here are cultivators and
weavers, while many are the pensioned descendants of the European
servants of Begam Sumru, and still bear the appellation of Sahib and
Mem Sahib.' (_N.W.P. Gazetteer_, vol. iii (1875), pp. 273, 430.)

The Begam's palace, built in 1834, was chiefly remarkable for a
collection of about twenty-five portraits of considerable interest.
They comprised likenesses of Sir David Ochterlony, Dyce Sombre, Lord
Combermere, and other notable personages. (_Calcutta Review_, vol.
lxx, p. 460; quoted in _North Indian N. & Q._, vol. ii, p. 179.) The
mansion and park were sold by auction in 1895. Some of the portraits
are now in the Indian Institute, Oxford, some in the Indian Museum,
Calcutta, and some in Government House, Allahabad. A long article by
H. N. on Sardhana and its owners appeared in the _Pioneer_
(Allahabad) on December 12,1894.

36. A miniature portrait of the Begam is given on the frontispiece to
volume ii of the original edition. Francklin, describing the events
of 1796, in his memoirs of George Thomas, first published in 1803,
describes her personal appearance as follows: 'Begum Sumroo is about
forty-five years of age, small in stature, but inclined to be plump.
Her complexion is very fair, her eyes black, large and animated; her
dress perfectly Hindustany, and of the most costly materials. She
speaks the Persian and Hindustany languages with fluency, and in her
conversation is engaging, sensible, and spirited.' (London ed., p.
92, note.) The liberal benefaction of her later years have secured
her ecclesiastical approval, and I should not be surprised to hear of
her beatification or canonization. Her earlier life certainly was not
that of a saint.

37. In her younger days she strictly maintained Hindustani etiquette.
'It has been the constant and invariable usage of this lady to exact
from her subjects and servants the most rigid attention to the
customs of Hindoostan. She is never seen out of doors or in her
public durbar unveiled.

'Her officers and others, who have business with her, present
themselves opposite the place where she sits. The front of her
apartment is furnished with _chicques_ or Indian screens, these being
let down from the roof. In this manner she gives audience and
transacts business of all kinds. She frequently admits to her table
the higher ranks of her European officers, but never admits the
natives to come within the enclosure,' (Francklin, p, 92.)

38. The Governor-General's name was William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck,
I do not understand the signature M. W. Bentinck, which may be a
misprint. The eulogium seems odd to a reader who remembers that the
recipient had been for fifteen years the mistress and wife of the
Butcher of Patna. But when it was written, the memory of the massacre
had been dimmed by the lapse of seventy-two years, and His Excellency
may not have been well versed in the lady's history.

Perhaps the author was mistaken, and the letter was sent by Lady
Bentinck, whose name was Mary.

CHAPTER 76

ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA

Abolition of Corporal Punishment--Increase of Pay with Length of
Service--Promotion by Seniority.

The following observations on a very important and interesting
subject were not intended to form a portion of the present work.[1]
They serve to illustrate, however, many passages in the foregoing
chapters touching the character of the natives of India; and the
Afghan war having occurred since they were written, I cannot deny
myself the gratification of presenting them to the public, since the
courage and fidelity, which it was my object to show the British
Government had a right to expect from its native troops and might
always rely upon in the hour of need, have been so nobly displayed.

I had one morning (November 14th, 1838) a visit from the senior
native officer of my regiment, Shaikh Mahub Ali, a very fine old
gentleman, who had recently attained the rank of 'Sardar Bahadur',
and been invested with the new Order of British India.[2] He entered
the service at the age of fifteen, and had served fifty-three years
with great credit to himself, and fought in many an honourable field.
He had come over to Jubbulpore as president of a native general
court-martial, and paid me several visits in company with another old
officer of my regiment who was a member of the same court. The
following is one of the many conversations I had with him, taken down
as soon as he left me.

'What do you think, Sardar Bahadur, of the order prohibiting corporal
punishment in the army; has it had a bad or a good effect?'

'It has had a very good effect.'

'What good has it produced?'

'It has reduced the number of courts martial to one-quarter of what
they were before, and thereby lightened the duties of the officers;
it has made the good men more careful, and the bad men more orderly
than they used to be.'

'How has it produced this effect?'

'A bad man formerly went on recklessly from small offences to great
ones in the hope of impunity; he knew that no regimental, cantonment,
or brigade court martial could sentence him to be dismissed the
service; and that they would not sentence him to be flogged, except
for great crimes, because it involved at the same time dismissal from
the service. If they sentenced him to be flogged, he still hoped that
the punishment would be remitted. The general or officer confirming
the sentence was generally unwilling to order it to be carried into
effect, because the man must, after being flogged, be tumed out of
the service, and the marks of the lash upon his back would prevent
his getting service anywhere else. Now he knows that these courts can
sentence him to be dismissed from the service--that he is liable to
lose his bread for ordinary transgressions, and be sentenced to work
on the roads for graver ones.[3] He is in consequence much more under
restraint than he used to be.'

'And how has it tended to make the well-disposed more careful?'

'They were formerly liable to be led into errors by the example of
the bad men, under the same hope of impunity; but they are now more
on their guard. They have all relations among the native officers,
who are continually impressing upon them the necessity of being on
their guard, lest they be sent back upon their families--their
mothers and fathers, wives and children, as beggars. To be dismissed
from a service like that of the Company is a very great punishment;
it subjects a man to the odium and indignation of all his family.
When in the Company's service, his friends know that a soldier gets
his pay regularly, and can afford to send home a very large portion
of it. They expect that he will do so; he feels that they will listen
to no excuse, and he contracts habits of sobriety and prudence. If a
man gets into the service of a native chief, his friends know that
his pay is precarious, and they continue to maintain his family for
many years without receiving a remittance from him, in the hope that
his circumstances may one day improve. He contracts bad habits, and
is not ashamed to make his appearance among them, knowing that his
excuses will be received as valid. If one of the Company's sepoys[4]
were not to send home remittances for six months, some members of the
family would be sent to know the reason why. If he could not explain,
they would appeal to the native officers of the regiment, who would
expostulate with him; and, if all failed, his wife and children would
be tumed out of his father's house, unless they knew that he was gone
to the wars; and he would be ashamed ever to show his face among them
again.'

'And the gradual increase of pay with length of service has tended to
increase the value of the service, has it not?'

'It has very much; there are in our regiment, out of eight hundred
men, more than one hundred and fifty sepoys who get the increase of
two rupees a month, and the same number that get the increase of one.
This they feel as an immense addition to the former seven rupees a
month.[5] A prudent sepoy lives upon two, or at the utmost three,
rupees a month in seasons of moderate plenty, and sends all the rest
to his family. A great number of the sepoys of our regiment live upon
the increase of two rupees, and send all their former seven to their
families. The dismissal of a man from such a service as this
distresses, not only him, but all his relations in the higher grades,
who know how much of the comfort and happiness of his family depend
upon his remaining and advancing in it; and they all try to make
their young friends behave as they ought to do.'

'Do you think that a great portion of the native officers of the army
have the same feelings and opinions on the subject as you have?'

'They have all the same; there is not, I believe, one in a hundred
that does not think as I do upon the subject. Flogging was an odious
thing. A man was disgraced, not only before his regiment, but before
the crowd that assembled to witness the punishment. Had he been
suffered to remain in the regiment he could never have hoped to rise
after having been flogged, or sentenced to be flogged; his hopes were
all destroyed, and his spirit broken, and the order directing him to
be dismissed was good; but, as I have said, he lost all hope of
getting into any other service, and dared not show his face among his
family at home.'

'You know who ordered the abolition of flogging?'

'Lord Bentinck.'[6]

'And you know that it was at his recommendation the Honourable
Company gave the increase of pay with length of service?'

'We have heard so; and we feel towards him as we felt towards Lord
Wellesley, Lord Hastings, and Lord Lake.'

'Do you think the army would serve again now with the same spirit as
they served under Lord Lake?'

'The army would go to any part of the world to serve such masters--no
army had ever masters that cared for them like ours. We never asked
to have flogging abolished; nor did we ever ask to have an increase
of pay with length of service; and yet both have been done for us by
the Company Bahadur.'

The old Sardar Bahadur came again to visit me on the 1st of December,
with all the native officers who had come over from Sagar to attend
the court, seven in number. There were three very smart, sensible men
among them; one of whom had been a volunteer at the capture of
Java,[7] and the other[s] at that of the Isle of France.[8] They all
told me that they considered the abolition of corporal punishment a
great blessing to the native army. 'Some bad men who had already lost
their character, and consequently all hope of promotion, might be in
less dread than before; but they were very few, and their regiments
would soon get rid of them under the new law that gave the power of
dismissal to regimental courts martial.'

'But I find the European officers are almost all of opinion that the
abolition of flogging has been, or will be, attended with bad
consequences.'

'They, sir, apprehend that there will not be sufficient restraint
upon the loose characters of the regiment; but now that the sepoys
have got an increase of pay in proportion to length of service there
will be no danger of that. Where can they ever hope to get such
another service if they forfeit that of the Company? If the dread of
losing such a service is not sufficient to keep the bad in order,
that of being put to work upon the roads in irons will. The good can
always be kept in order by lighter punishments, when they have so
much at stake as the loss of such a service by frequent offences.
Some gentlemen think that a soldier does not feel disgraced by being
flogged, unless the offence for which he has been flogged is in
itself disgraceful. There is no soldier, sir, that does not feel
disgraced by being tied up to the halberts and flogged in the face of
all his comrades and the crowd that may choose to come and look at
him; the sepoys are all of the same respectable families as
ourselves, and they all enter the service in the hope of rising in
time to the same stations as ourselves, if they conduct themselves
well; their families look forward with the same hope. A man who has
been tied up and flogged knows the disgrace that it will bring upon
his family, and will sometimes rather die than return to it; indeed,
as head of a family he could not be received at home.[9] But men do
not feel disgraced in being flogged with a rattan at drill. While at
the drill they consider themselves, and are considered by us all, as
in the relation of scholars to their schoolmasters. Doing away with
the rattan at drill had a very bad effect. Young men were formerly,
with the judicious use of the rattan, made fit to join the regiment
at furthest in six months; but since the abolition of the rattan it
takes twelve months to make them fit to be seen in the ranks. There
was much virtue in the rattan, and it should never have been given
up. We have all been flogged with the rattan at the drill, and never
felt ourselves disgraced by it-we were _shagirds_ (scholars), and the
drill-sergeant, who had the rattan, was our _ustad_ (schoolmaster);
but when we left the drill, and took our station in the ranks as
sepoys, the case was altered, and we should have felt disgraced by a
flogging, whatever might have been the nature of the offence we
committed. The drill will never get on so well as it used to do,
unless the rattan be called into use again; but we apprehend no evil
from the abolition of corporal punishment afterwards. People are apt
to attribute to this abolition offences that have nothing to do with
it; and for which ample punishments are still provided. If a man
fires at his officer, people are apt to say it is because flogging
has been done away with; but a man who deliberately fires at his
officer is prepared to undergo worse punishment than flogging.[10]

'Do you not think that the increase of pay with length of service to
the sepoys will have a good effect in tending to give to regiments
more active and intelligent native officers? Old sepoys who are not
so will now have less cause to complain if passed over, will they
not?'

'If the sepoys thought that the increase of pay was given with this
view, they would rather not have it at all. To pass over men merely
because they happen to have grown old, we consider very cruel and
unjust. They all enter the service young, and go on doing their duty
till they become old, in the hope that they shall get promotion when
it comes to their turn. If they are disappointed, and young men, or
greater favourites with their European officers, are put over their
heads, they become heart-broken. We all feel for them, and are always
sorry to see an old soldier passed over, unless he has been guilty of
any manifest crime, or neglect of duty. He has always some relations
among the native officers who know his family, for we all try to get
our relations into the same regiment with ourselves when they are
eligible. They know what that family will suffer when they learn that
he has no longer any hopes of rising in the service, and has become
miserable. Supersessions create distress and bad feelings throughout
a regiment, even when the best men are promoted, which cannot always
be the case; for the greatest favourites are not always the best men.
Many of our old European officers, like yourself, are absent on staff
or civil employments; and the command of companies often devolves
upon very young subalterns, who know little or nothing of the
character of their men. They recommend those whom they have found
most active and intelligent, and believe to be the best; but their
opportunities of learning the characters of the men have been few.
They have seen and observed the young, active, and forward; but they
often know nothing of the steady, unobtrusive old soldier, who has
done his duty ably in all situations, without placing himself
prominently forward in any. The commanding officers seldom remain
long with the same regiment, and, consequently, seldom know enough of
the men to be able to judge of the justice of the selections for
promotion. Where a man has been guilty of a crime, or neglected his
duty, we feel no sympathy for him, and are not ashamed to tell him
so, and put him down[11] when he complains.'

Here the old Subadar, who had been at the taking of the Isle of
France, mentioned that when he was senior Jemadar of his regiment,
and a vacancy had occurred to bring him in as Subadar, he was sent
for by his commanding officer, and told that, by orders from
headquarters, he was to be passed over, on account of his advanced
age, and supposed infirmity. 'I felt,' said the old man, 'as if I had
been struck by lightning, and _fell down dead_. The colonel was a
good man, and had seen much service. He had me taken into the open
air; and when I recovered, he told me that he would write to the
Commander-in-Chief, and represent my case. He did so, and I was
promoted; and I have since done my duty as Subadar for ten
years.'[12]

The Sardar Bahadur told me that only two men in our regiment had been
that year superseded, one for insolence, and the other for neglect of
duty; and that officers and sepoys were all happy in consequence--the
young, because they felt more secure of being promoted if they did
their duty; and the old, because, they felt an interest in their
young relations. 'In those regiments,' said he, 'where supersessions
have been more numerous, old and young are dispirited and unhappy.
They all feel that the _good old rule of right_ (_hakk_), as long as
a man does his duty well, can no longer be relied upon.'

When two companies of my regiment passed through Jubbulpore a few
days after this conversation on their way from Sagar to Seoni, I rode
out a mile or two to meet them. They had not seen me for sixteen
years, but almost all the native commissioned and non-commissioned
officers were personally known to me. They were all very glad to see
me, and I rode along with them to their place of encampment, where I
had ready a feast of sweetmeats. They liked me as a young man, and
are, I believe, proud of me as an old one. Old and young spoke with
evident delight of the rigid adherence on the part of the present
commanding officer, Colonel Presgrave, to the good old rule of 'hakk'
(right) in the recent promotions to the vacancies occasioned by the
annual transfer to the invalid establishment. We might, no doubt,
have in every regiment a few smarter native officers by disregarding
this rule than by adhering to it; but we should, in the diminution of
the good feeling towards the European officers and the Government,
lose a thousand times more than we gained. They now go on from youth
to old age, from the drill to the retired pension, happy and
satisfied that there is no service on earth so good for them.[13]
With admirable _moral_, but little or no _literary_ education, the
native officers of our regiments never dream of aspiring to anything
more than is now held out to them, and the mass of the soldiers are
inspired with devotion to the service, and every feeling with which
we could wish to have them inspired, by the hope of becoming officers
in time, if they discharge their duties faithfully and zealously.
Deprive the mass of this hope, give the commissions to an _exclusive
class_ of natives, or to a favoured few, chosen often, if not
commonly, without reference to the feelings or qualifications we most
want in our native officers, and our native army will soon cease to
have the same feelings of devotion towards the Government, and of
attachment and respect towards their European officers that they now
have. The young, ambitions, and aspiring native officers will soon
try to teach the great mass that their interest and that of the
European officers and European Government are by no means one and the
same, as they have been hitherto led to suppose; and it is upon the
good feeling of this great mass that we have to depend for support.
To secure this good feeling, we can well afford to sacrifice a little
efficiency at the drill. It was unwise in one of the commanders-in-
chief to direct that no soldier in our Bengal native regiments should
be promoted unless he could read and write-it was to prohibit the
promotion of the best, and direct the promotion of the worst,
soldiers in the ranks. In India a military officer is rated as a
gentleman by his birth, that is _caste_, and by his deportment in all
his relations of life, not by his _knowledge of books_.

The Rajput, the Brahman, and the proud Pathan who attains a
commission, and deports himself like an officer, never thinks
himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that
constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same
time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the
quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and
honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he
thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it
through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the
profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is
clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage,
and the order which militated so much against it has happily been
either rescinded or disregarded.

Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn
from the Rajput peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of
the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a
long series of generations.[14] The good feelings of the families
from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their
service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men
and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them,
they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always
return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary
to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always
present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last
visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as
men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles
by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the
same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform
propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers
of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to
those unacquainted with its source--veneration for parents cherished
through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear
objects by which it is constituted.

Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary
standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and
purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.[15] We can
have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could
not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always
understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and
harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any
regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to-
morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter
among them all.[16]