Manners Morals And Missionaries
A.D. 1850 TO A.D. 1857
Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is
little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former
passed on, as did every war, to annexation; yet once again there seems
little doubt that this was brought about by obstinate refusal to keep
the treaty which ensured "the utmost protection and security" to
British ships trading to Burm
se ports.
The question of the annexation of Oude, however, falls into another
category, and is so often cited as one of the chief causes of the
Great Mutiny of 1857, that it is best discussed among the many other
reasons for resentment and rebellion which undoubtedly existed in
India at this time. One of these was the change of manners in the
ruling white-faced race.
In the old days of a good year's voyaging and sea-sickness round the
Cape few women had been found to face it; and so the Englishmen in
India had formed irregular connections with native women, often of
very good birth. These connections, though, of course, contrary to our
marriage laws, were not exactly immoral; they were, indeed, often as
regular as the differing codes of Christianity, Hinduism, and
Mahomedanism would allow. And, naturally, they greatly bridged over
the gulf between the rulers and the ruled.
The short sea-passage changed all this. English ladies came out in
crowds, and seeing themselves surrounded by native sister-subjects who
thought differently to what they did on almost every conceivable
social subject, held up holy hands of horror at everything they saw,
oblivious, apparently, of the obvious fact, that if the native sister
appeared a bogey to them, they also must have been a bogey to the
native sister.
She, however, by her very seclusion, was prevented from airing her
opinion. Not so the Englishwomen and young girls who began to come to
live amongst those who were generally called the heathen. There is no
more charitable and kindly soul than the average British matron, and
in the days before '57 she was beyond measure romantic. This was the
time when, escaping from the stern rule of papa and mama, who had been
ready with bread and water for "miss" if she refused an eligible
parti, the English girl looked on Love with a big L, as something
only a trifle less divine than the God whom she worshipped. She was
not, therefore, likely to find anything but militant pity and charity
for a social system which began by ignoring love as synonymous with
passion. Thus the Englishwoman was no factor for peace in the new
order of things. Then the changes inaugurated by the inclusion of the
"introduction of religious and moral improvement" as a licensable
trade had borne much fruit. One has only to read missionary reports to
find out how enormously organised effort to convert the people of
India had increased since 1813, and still more from 1833. In the year
1840 Dr Duff's Christian college at Calcutta numbered over six hundred
pupils, and in 1845 came the added interest to the cause of Missions
brought by the great Evangelical movement, not only in the Church of
England, but throughout all Europe. This wave of religiosity left no
Christian sect untouched, and part of its result was the introduction
into India of a race of Church-Militant officials, admirable in
character, in work, who, despite their faithful performance of duties
to Caesar which demanded absolute impartiality, could not divest
themselves absolutely of their other duty (as they held it) to God;
that is to say, to influence the natives for good--in other words, to
Christianity. Without attempting praise or blame, it is impossible to
deny that the example of such strong and militant Christians as the
Lawrences, as Havelock, as half a hundred other well-known names, to
say nothing of the hundreds of lesser-known ones who in civil stations
and cantonments were encouraging mission work with all their might and
main, must inevitably have attracted the attention of pandits and
moulvies, whose profession, whose bare living, was bound up in
so-called heathendom.
Then, ever since the days of Lord William Bentinck, legislation had
favoured the new faith. It will be remembered that he was mixed up
with the mutiny at Vellore--a mutiny, if ever there was one, caused by
abject fear of enforced conversion. His abolition of suttee, his
tinkering with Indian law so as to free Hindu converts to Christianity
from disabilities in succession (or as it has been put, "to free them
from the trammels of their former superstitions and secure them in the
full possession of Christian freedom"), had passed muster at the time,
but as their effects became palpable, their interference in matters of
custom and religion was resented. The very inauguration of female
education was an offence, and as the years went on, bringing ever more
and more missionary effort, and, above all, more support to that
effort on the part of the ruling race, fear of wholesale conversion
sprang up amongst the ignorant people, and was carefully fostered by
the priests and preachers who had all to gain and nothing to lose by
revolt.
And behind all this lay slumbering a great resentment. Say what folk
would, be the excuse what it might, the fact remained that the last
hundred years had seen every Indian prince reduced to the position of
a pensioner, his land annexed. And the years between 1850 and 1857
produced a large crop of such annexations and usurpations. To begin
with the petty state of Sattarah. When Pertap-Singh the ruler
(given his chiefship by the British who hunted him up, prisoned,
poverty-stricken) had to be deposed childless, England forebore to
annex, and placed a brother on the cushion of State; but when that
brother, also childless, adopted a son but a few hours before his
death, she refused to recognise his right to do so in regard to the
succession. Such a son was legal heir to personal property, but
Sattarah, being a dependency, could not by Indian law pass by adoption
without the permission of the lord-paramount, which in this case had
not been asked. Legally, she was right; but the sting of annexation
rankled.
Then the case of Kerowli occurred, in which adoption was made without
permission; but here the Governor-General's order was over-ruled by
the Directors, who held that though "Sattarah had been originally a
gift and creation of the British Government, Kerowli was one of the
oldest Rajput states, and merited different treatment." Annexation was
not, therefore, carried out; but the very considerateness of the
decision intensified feeling in the other case.
Following this came the Jhansi case, involving an area of about
2,000 square miles. Here, again, no issue--almost no collateral
relationships--was the cause of an unauthorised adoption which,
because the chiefship was, again, a creation of the English, was held
inadmissible.
Then, as if these three almost forced annexations, occurring in
1849,1852, and 1853 respectively, were not enough to damn British
policy in the eyes of disaffection, yet another case came up for
settlement in 1853; for on the 11th of December died Ragoji-Bonsla,
the Rajah of Berar. He left neither issue nor collateral heir, neither
had he attempted to supply their place by adoption; thus the question
of the state lapsing to the Crown arose in its simplest and clearest
form. The decision was, naturally, that by the Rajah's "death without
any heir whatever, the possession of his territories has reverted to
the British Government which gave them"; a decision without any doubt
legal.
Now, ere passing on to the annexation of Oude, which stands on a
totally different footing, it is as well to notice the drift of what
may be read between the lines of this long record of principalities
passing by lack of heirs of the body to the lord-paramount. What does
it mean? Doubtless, it points first to degeneracy, to the fading away
of families which is due to dissolute life. But this life in high
places was no new thing; the English had found it rampant when they
came. Therefore some other reason for the necessity of State
interference must be found. What was this?
Plainly, on the very face of things, the answer is to be found. It was
the order, the law, the freedom from conspiracy, assassination,
self-aggrandisement, which English protection had ensured. In the old
times an heirless rajah of past fifty would have been the centre of a
snatching crowd of nobles, and the strongest would have asserted his
right, and possibly hurried on the death of the dying king, or ever
the lord-paramount had time to interfere; and then a payment in gold
would have satisfied authority! So degeneracy did not matter; a new
family always took the place of the dead one.
Now there was a hard and fast law which had to be obeyed by king and
subject alike; a bitter lesson for any Oriental to learn, whose very
idea of kingship is its superiority to order.
The trouble in Oude began--when did it not begin!
In 1760 Sujah-ud-daula, its hereditary wazir, well beaten by the
Company for aggression on Bengal, ceded Allahabad and Korah, but was
left undisputed master of the rest of his territories. In 1768, again
in consequence of defeat, he was bound over to reduce his army. In
1773 he once more bound himself to further dependence in return for
troops. In 1775 Sujah-ud-daula died, and his son Asaf-ud-daula, in
return for "good consideration," ceded territory as perpetual payment
of the said troops, and afterwards, by various treaties, promised, in
return for the guarantee of the possession, protection, and
administration of Oude, to govern "in such a manner as would be
conducive to the prosperity of his subjects"; also, to act on the
advice of the British Government. Sa'adut-Ali, his successor, ratified
these treaties, and showed, by the mere fact of his amassing treasure
to the amount of L14,000,000 during his reign of fifteen years, that
they were not, at least, pecuniarily hard. Ghazi-ud-din, the next
Nawab or wazir, regained a certain independence, not by treaty, but by
loaning out his father's millions to the Company. The sop of being
allowed to assert his independence of Delhi and call himself King was
thrown to him; but he was no ruler, and the aid of British troops
being refused him, "except in support of just and legitimate demands,"
he defied the treaty which limited his own army, and kept sixty
thousand native troops, two-thirds of whom were entirely without
discipline, living naturally by rapine and robbery. His son
Nasir-ud-din, hopeless debauchee, continued and increased these
evils, drawing down on himself the solemn warning of Lord William
Bentinck in 1829, that deposition must surely follow on such misrule.
Unfortunately, however, advice how to rule was refused, and on
Nasir-ud-din's death--of course without issue--advantage was taken of
the accession of the old man--almost in his dotage--Nasir-ud-daula, to
obtain a fresh and still more stringent treaty, by which, if misrule
continued, the British Government reserved the 'right to administer,
rendering account to the Nawab,' and so far as possible maintaining
existing forms so as to 'facilitate the future restoration of power
to its rightful owner.' In other words the Nawab was, if
contumacious, to be put under trustees for the time. This was in 1837.
At Nasir-ud-daula's death in 1842 his son succeeded, and in 1847
another son rose to the throne by his brother's death--of course
without issue. Now Wajid-Ali-Shah, the last Nawab or King of Oude, was
utterly worthless. One has but to read the journal of the Resident,
General Sleeman, to recognise how hopeless was the problem of peace,
prosperity, or progress, under his rule. Surrounded by fiddlers,
prostitutes, poetasters, eunuchs, he wasted half the revenues on these
creatures, by whom he was led about, a silly imbecile, with drugged
brain and diseased body.
"There is not, I believe," writes General Sleeman--a man of infinite
knowledge of the native, infinite sympathy with them--"another
Government in India so entirely opposed to the best interests and most
earnest wishes of the people as that of Oude now is. People of all
classes have become utterly weary of it."
No better case for deposition, for the removing of a whole people from
the grip of fatuous immorality and crass misrule, could be found than
this; but the means chosen to effect the desirable consummation were
mean in the extreme. There were two definite treaties regarding the
government of Oude. The one signed in 1837, gave as the punishment for
misrule, the placing of the administration under trustees only. That
signed in 1801 gave a guarantee of British protection in return for
the cession of certain territories, provided the administration of
Oude coincided with the advice of the Company. In this case,
therefore, the only penalty was palpably the withdrawal of
protection.
Neither of these penalties satisfied the desire for a total change of
policy. Instead of saying this openly, instead of boldly running up
the flag of England, and saying: "This passes! It can no longer be
permitted, that, under the protection of England such vice, such
fraud, such extortion, such downright devilry, should exist. This
crazy, imbecile, lecherous, drunken scoundrel shall take his pension
and cease to be a tyrant." Instead of all this, with at least some
backbone of righteous indignation to carry it through, Lord Dalhousie
the Governor-General and his advisers informed the Nawab that the
treaty of 1837 had never been ratified in England, but that by some
mistake the fact had never been notified to him! And this after Lord
Hardinge in 1847 had threatened the Nawab with the penalty laid down
in that treaty, and no other!
It is almost incredible! But there is more to tell. By thus setting
the treaty of 1837 aside, that of 1801 remained, under which the
English had no power to do more than withdraw their protection from
Oude. Thus annexation stood less justified than ever, except on the
plain ground of the greatest good of the greatest number.
Oude was annexed in 1856. It was the recruiting-ground of a large
portion of our native armies, and there is no doubt whatever that we
have here the great political cause of disloyalty. In the previous two
or three years, also, many measures had been passed to rouse religious
resentment and suspicion, such as the Hindu widows re-marriage Act,
and the Act to remove all forfeiture of property due to a change of
religion. Nor were these things, as of old, too remote to touch on the
common lives of the people. In Lord Dalhousie's term of office alone
4,000 miles of electric telegraph wires had spread a network over
India, railways were every day eating into the heart of the land, a
road, metalled, duly laid out for posting, stretched 2,000 miles from
Culcutta to Peshawar, schools were starting up in the rural districts,
and letters--stamped letters--carrying God knows what of lies born of
fear or fraud, were being delivered for a trifle to almost every town
and hamlet in India.
A mighty change this, bringing with it at every point the defiling
touch of the Feringhi.
Nor was this all. Government was changing. It might be for the
better--at any rate, it could not be for the worse--but still it was
strange. The man to whom the revenue would in future be paid would
have a white face, and that in itself was disturbing.
Yes! without doubt, the West was encroaching fast
Oude, it has been said, was the great recruiting-ground of our native
cavalry, but also for our table attendants. The first went home to
hear tales of annexation, of order which gave the brotherhood-of-arms
that had remained at home no chance of plunder as in the past. The
latter took home with them on their holidays long tales of the
mem-sahibas, and the sahibs' command that all servants should attend
family prayers; and of the bakshish of kindness to be gained by
professing interest in the new faith.
So, fostered by professional agitators, by disappointed
claimants--even as the present unrest is fostered in India
nowadays--the indefinite fear of something grew in the years between
'fifty and 'fifty-seven.