Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan Part 13

His attention was chiefly directed to the prompt realization of revenue. Pargannahs were generally farmed; a few were allotted as jaidad to chiefs on condition of military service; [of the lands in the neighbourhood of Aligarh] the revenue was collected by the large bodies of troops always concentrated at head-quarters. A brigade was stationed at Sikandrabad for the express purpose of realizing collections. In the event of any resistance on the part of a land-holder, who might be in balance, a severe and immediate example was made by the plunder and destruction of his village; and life was not unfrequently shed in the harsh and hasty measures which were resorted to. The arrangements for the administration of justice were very defective; there was no fixed form of procedure, and neither Hindu nor Mohamadan law was regularly administered. The suppression of crime was regarded as a matter of secondary importance. There was an officer styled the Baks.h.i.+ Adalat, whose business was to receive reports from the Amils [officials] in the interior, and communicate General Perron's orders respecting the disposal of any offenders apprehended by them. No trial was held; the proof rested on the Amil's report, and the punishment was left to General Perron's judgment.

"Such was the weakness of the administration that the Zamindars tyrannized over the people with impunity, levying imposts at their pleasure, and applying the revenues solely to their own use." The "Old Resident" thus compares the past and present of Aligarh: - "Under the native rule no one attempted to build a showy masonry house for fear of being noticed as one possessing property, and thus become subject to heavy taxations. Even in de Boigne and Perron's time it was the same as before, people lived in a very low state both as regards their food and clothes, their marriages were not costly, and none of their females dared to put jewels on. In such a state of things, the well-to-do acc.u.mulated money and could not enjoy it, they buried it under ground, and often from death and other causes the wealth got into other hands by the sudden discovery of the place. What a mighty change in the s.p.a.ce of seventy years the city of Coel bears now to what it did before? elegant houses now stand in the city everywhere, and the market is well stocked with articles of trade and consumption.

Bankers and money changers have their shops open, free from any apprehension of danger, and the females go about with their trinkets and jewels, all enjoying the wholesome protection of law. The bazar street of the city of Coel was very narrow in Perron's time, and neither he nor de Boigne ever paid any attention to the improvement or welfare of the people. Their time was princ.i.p.ally occupied in military tactics and preserving order in the country. They knew and were told by their own officers that their rule was only for the time being, and that a war with Scindhia would change the state of affairs, and with it eventually these provinces."

From a report written so near the time as 1808 confirmation of these statements is readily obtained. The Collector of Aligarh, in addressing the Board formed for constructing a system of administration in the conquered provinces, recommended cautious measures in regard to the a.s.sessment of the land tax or Government rental. He stated that, in consequence of former misrule, and owing to the ravages of famine in 1785, and other past seasons, or to the habits induced by years of petty but chronic warfare, the land was fallen, in a great measure, into a state of nature. He antic.i.p.ated an increase in cultivation and revenue of thirty-two per cent., if six years of peace should follow.

The great landholders, whether originally officials, or farmers who had succeeded in making good a position before the conquest, were numerous in this neighbourhood. The princ.i.p.al persons of importance were, to the westward, Jats, from Bhartpur; the eastward, Musalmans descended from converted Bargujar Rajputs.

The long dissensions of the past had swept away the Moghul n.o.bility, few or none of whom now held land on any large scale.

These Jats and these Musalmans were among the ancestors of the famous Talukdars of the North-West Provinces; and as the limitation of their power has been the subject of much controversy, justice to the earlier British administrators requires that we should carefully note the position which they had held under the Franco-Mahratta rule, and the conditions under which they become members of British India.

We have already seen that the Talukdars (to use by antic.i.p.ation a term now generally understood, though not applied to the large landholders at the time) were in the habit of making unauthorized collections, which they applied to their own use. Every considerable village had its Sayar Chabutra (customs-platform), where goods in transit paid such dues as seemed good to the rural potentates. Besides this, they derived a considerable income from shares in the booty acquired by highwaymen and banditti, of whom the number was constantly maintained by desertions from the army, and was still further swollen at the conquest by the general disbandment which ensued.

Both of these sources of emolument were summarily condemned by General Lake; though he issued a proclamation guaranteeing the landholders in the full possession of their legitimate rights.

But the rights of fighting one another, and of plundering traders, were as dear to the Barons of Hindustan as ever they had been to their precursors in medival Europe; and, in the fancied security of their strong earthen ramparts, they very generally maintained these unsocial privileges.

So far back as the beginning of 1803, before war had been declared upon Sindhia, the whole force of the British in Upper India, headed by the Commander-in-Chief himself, had been employed in the reduction of some of the forts in that portion of the Doab which had been ceded by the Nawab of Audh during the preceding year. The same course was pursued, after long forbearance, towards the Musalman chiefs of the conquered provinces. In December, 1804, they had rebelled in the neighbourhood of Aligarh, and occupied nearly the whole of the surrounding district. Captain Woods, commanding the fort of Aligarh, could only occasionally spare troops for the collector's support; and the rebellion was not finally suppressed until the following July, by a strong detachment sent from headquarters.

They again broke out in October, 1806, after having in the interim ama.s.sed large supplies by the plunder of their tenantry; the whole of the northern part of the Aligarh district, and the southern part of the adjoining district of Bolandshahar were overrun; the forts of Kamona and Ganora were armed and placed in a state of defence; and the former defended against the British army under Major-General d.i.c.kens, on the 19th November, 1807, with such effect that the loss of the a.s.sailants, in officers and men, exceeded that sustained in many pitched battles. The subjugation of the tribe shortly followed.

The Jat Talukdars of the Aligarh district were not finally reduced to submission for nearly ten years more; and there is reason to believe that during this long interval they had continued to form the usual incubus upon the development of society, by impeding commerce and disturbing agriculture. At length the destruction of the fort of Hatras and the expulsion of Daya Ram the contumacious Raja, put the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to this state of things in March, 1817.

It may be fairly a.s.sumed that the protection of life and property, and that amount of security under which merchants will distribute the productions of other countries, and husbandmen raise the means of subsistence from the soil, are among the primary duties of Government. But in the dark days of which our narrative has had to take note, such obligations had not been recognized.

"It is a matter of fact," say the authors of the "Statistics"

before me, "that in those days the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through by-ways. The facility of escape into the Begam Sumroo's territories, the protection afforded by the heavy jungles and numerous forts which then studded the country, and the ready sale for plundered property, combined to foster robbery."

A special force was raised by the British conquerors, and placed under the command of Colonel Gardner, distinguished Mahratta officer. His exertions were completely successful, as far as the actual gangs then in operation were concerned; but unfortunately they were soon encouraged to renewed attempts by the countenance which they received from Hira Sing, another Jat Talukdar. This system also was finally concluded by the destruction of the Raja of Hatras; nor will fourteen years appear a long time for the reorganization of order, which had been in abeyance for more than forty.

The following extract from Vol. I. of Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, is the result of observations made in a more southern part of the country between 1763 and 1783, and published, not with a purpose, or in controversy, but in the calm evening of retirement, and at least thirty years later. "Marre was the nearest Mahratta town of consequence to the hot wells; by crossing the river it was within a pleasant walk, and we made frequent excursions to an excavated mountain in its vicinity. Marre is fortified, large, and populous; the governor resided at Poona, inattentive to the misery of the people, whom his duan, or deputy, oppressed in a cruel manner; indeed the system of the Mahratta government is so uniformly oppressive that it appears extraordinary to hear of a mild and equitable administration; venality and corruption guide the helm of State and pervade the departments; if the sovereign requires money the men in office and governors of provinces must supply it; the arbitrary monarch seldom inquires by what means it is procured; this affords them an opportunity of exacting a larger sum from their duans, who fleece the manufacturers and farmers to a still greater amount than they had furnished; thus the country is subjected to a general system of tyranny. From the chieftains and n.o.bles of the realm to the humblest peasant in a village, neither the property nor the life of a subject can be called his own. When Providence has blessed the land with the former and the latter rain, and the seed sown produces an hundredfold, the Indian ryot, conscious that the harvest may be reaped by other hands, cannot like an English farmer behold his ripening crop with joyful eyes; his cattle are in the same predicament; liable to be seized, without a compensation, for warlike service or any other despotic mandate; money he must not be known to possess; if by superior talent or persevering industry he should have acc.u.mulated a little more than his neighbours, he makes no improvements, lives no better than before, and through fear and distrust buries it in the earth, without informing his children of the concealment." And again at Vol. II. p. 339 - "Of all Oriental despots the arbitrary power of the Mahrattas falls perhaps with the most oppressive weight; they extort money by every kind of vexatious cruelty, without supporting commerce, agriculture, and the usual sources of wealth and prosperity in well-governed States." We have further pictures of native rule, drawn in 1807, by the collectors of the newly-acquired districts of Etawah and Koel, and to be found at pages 314 and 337 of the North-West Provinces Selections from Revenue Records, published in 1873. Says the Collector of Etawah; - "The warlike tribes of this country, from disposition and habit, prefer plunder to peace, and court the exchange of the ploughshare for the sword. Foreign invasion and intestine tumults had materially checked population; whilst the poverty of the country, and the rapacity of its governors had almost annihilated commerce or had confined it, for the most part, to a few wealthy residents from the Lower Provinces" (to the Babu "Zemindar"). But he of Koel is even more bold: - "The consequences of the various revolutions which have taken place are sufficiently evident in an impoverished country and a declining population; the form of government which has existed has not operated to relieve the necessities of the subjects, or to improve the resources of this extensive empire, by the encouragement of husbandry and commerce; and military life has been embraced by a large body of the people. Habits of peace and industry have been neglected for the profession of arms, which was more suited to the disposition of the people and to the character of the times, and which has also tended to affect the revenue and to thin the population. The system of rent-oppression and extortion likewise, which has prevailed, has operated with the most injurious influence upon the country. The exertions of the landholders have been discouraged, and means of cultivation denied them by depriving them of the fair profits of their industry. They have found every attempt at improvement, instead of being beneficial to themselves, to have been subservient only to the rapacity of the Government, or of farmers; and without any inducement to stimulate their labours, agriculture as a natural consequence has languished and declined."

Aligarh (Koel) details are the more noticeable because they relate to the part of the country which had been first occupied by the conquering British, and still more because, having been under the immediate management of General Perron, that part may be supposed to have been a somewhat more favourable specimen than districts whose management had not had the advantage of European supervision. In districts administered exclusively by Asiatics, or which were more exposed to Sikh incursions, or where the natural advantages of soil, situation and climate were inferior, much greater misery, no doubt, prevailed; but what has been shown was perhaps bad enough. An administration without law, an aristocracy without conscience, roads without traffic, and fields overgrown by forest - such is the least discreditable picture that we have been able to exhibit of the results of self-government by the natives of Hindustan, immediately preceding British rule.

On the whole record of the past there emerge clearly a few indisputable truths. Setting apart the community of colour, and to a less degree of language, the British are no more foreigners to the people of India than the people of one part of India may be, and often are, to the people of another. Demoralized by the hereditary and traditional influence of many generations of misgovernment and of anarchy, none of these populations have as yet shown fitness for supreme rule over the entire peninsula, vast and thickly inhabited as it is. For example, the Brahmans and their system fell before the fury of the early Muslims, as these, again, were subdued by the Moghuls. When the Pathans and Moghuls in their turn became domesticated in Hindustan they formed nothing more than two new castes of Indians, having lost the pride and vigour of their hardy mountain ancestry. The alliance of a refugee, like M. Law, or of a runaway seaman, like George Thomas, became an object of as much importance as that of a Muslim n.o.ble with a horde of followers.

Nor is it to be overlooked that, in the best days of Muslim rule in Hindustan, however much the governing cla.s.s had the chief attributes of sovereignty, the details of administration were, more or less, in the hands of the patient, painstaking natives of the land. And the immediate decay of the Muslim Empire was preceded by an attempt to centralize the administration in the Imperial Durbar, and to cas.h.i.+er and alienate the Hindu element.

But the Hindus remained, as indeed we still see them, indispensable to the conduct of administrative details.

None the less is it certain that the real, if overbearing, superiority of the Muslim conquerors had emasculated the Hindu mind and paved the way for anarchy, which was reached as soon as immigration ceased and degeneration set in. Holding now the position once abused and lost by the Muslims, the British in India are bound alike by honour and by interest to mark the warning. Called and chosen by fortune and their own enterprise to rule so many tribes and nations in a stage of evolution so unlike their own, they have to be wary, gentle, and firm. Their office is to advance the natives and fit them for a true and n.o.ble political life.

It does not follow that the result will be to tempt the natives to demand Home Rule. Difficulty there will no doubt always be, and the end is hidden from our eyes. Moreover, that difficult will be increased by the unavoidably secular character of State-education. When races lacking in material resources are also in a very submissive and very ignorant condition they may be kept on a dead level of immobility; and that has perhaps been the ideal of many not incompetent rulers. But it is not one which will satisfy the spirit of the day in England. Modern Englishmen have recognized that it is their bounder duty to impart knowledge in India. On the other hand, their relations towards the people forbid them to attempt religious instruction. Thus the students in British-Indian schools and colleges are in a fair way to lose their own spiritual traditions without gaining anything instead.

It is likely enough that such a system may lead to discontent.

Men who lose their hopes of compensation in another state of being, will be the more anxious about securing the good things of that state in which they find themselves placed.

Nevertheless, of discontent there are, plainly, two sorts; and one sort tends to exclude the other. The mult.i.tude may hanker after the flesh-pots of Egypt, or they may long for the milk and honey of a Promised Land. In the one case they will be inclined to obey their leaders, in the other to murmur against them. It cannot be necessary to dwell upon the application. Let the rulers of India persuade the people that they are being conducted to light and to liberty. Let us hold up before those laborious and gentle millions the picture of a redeemed India moving in an orderly path among the members of a great Imperial system. That ideal may never be completely realized in the days of any of the existing generation. But it is one that may still be profitably maintained for the contemplation of all who aspire and work for the strength and welfare of Greater Britain.

NOTE. - The following list of Perron's possessions is taken from the schedule annexed to the treaty of Sarji Anjangaum (dated 30th December, 1803):-

Resumed Jaigirs, seven, yielding an annual income of ... ... ...

... 3,75,248

Talukas in the Doab, four ... ... ... 84,047

To the west of the Jamna, three districts ... 65,000

Subah of Saharanpur, eighteen ... ... 4,78,089

Formerly held by General de Boigne in the Doab, twenty-seven ..

20,83,287

To the west of the Jamna, nine ... ... 10,31,852

Grand Total, Rs. 41,12,523

APPENDIX A.

IN the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to steer a middle path between obliterating all trace of my materials and enc.u.mbering the margin with references that appeared superfluous. Wherever I have decided a disputed point, I have endeavoured to indicate the chief sources of information - at least throughout the portions which form the actual history - and to give my reasons for following one authority rather than another.

Besides the authorities - English and Persian - which have been thus cited, the following works have been occasionally consulted:-

1. Amad us-Saudat. - A history of the Viceroys of Lucknow from the death of Farokhsiar to the accession of Saadat Ali II., in 1797.

2. Jam-i-Jum. - Genealogical tables of the House of Timur.

3. Tasallat-i-Sahiban Anqriz. - An account of the rise of British power in Hindustan and Bengal. By Muns.h.i.+ Dhonkal Singh; originally written for the information of Ranjit Singh, Thakur of Bhartpur, about the end of the last century.

4. Hal-i-Begam Sahiba. - A little Persian memoir of Begam Sumroo, full of vagueness and error, written four years after her death, and from traditional sources.

Much information as to the views of the British chiefs of those days lies at present inaccessible at the Calcutta Foreign Office; and it is to be hoped that the Record Commission will ultimately make public many useful and interesting papers.

Other information perhaps exists, very difficult to be got at, in the private archives of old native families at Dehli. But the events of 1857 broke up many of these collections. A continuation of the Tarikh-i-Mozafari, down to the taking of Dehli by Sir A.

Wilson, would be a most valuable work, if there be any native author possessed of the three requisites of leisure, knowledge, and a fearless love of truth.

Some account of the Siar-ul-Mutakharin has been already given (vide Note to Part II. Chap. i.). The author was a Saiyid of the n.o.ble stock of Taba-Taba, whose father had been employed by Safdar Jang, in Rohilkand, during that minister's temporary predominance. The family afterwards migrated to Patna. This celebrated history - which has been twice translated into English, and of which an edition in the original Persian has been likewise printed - is a work of suprising industry, and contains many just reflections on the position of the English and the feelings of the people towards them, which are almost as true now as they were when written. The translation of the S. u. M.. which has been mentioned in the text, was made by a French creole, styling himself Mustafa, but whose true name, it is relieved, was Raymond. The notes are often interesting.

But my chief guide, where no other authority is cited, has been the Tarikh-i-Mozafari, the work of an Ansari of good family, some of whose descendants are still living at Panipat. He was the grandson of Latfula Sadik, a n.o.bleman who had held high office under the Emperor Mohammad Shah. The historian himself was in civil employ in Bihar, under the Nawab Mohammad Raza Khan, so famous in the history of Bengal during the last century. To him the work was dedicated, and its name is derived from his t.i.tle of "Mozafar Jang." The work is laborious, free from party bias, and much thought of by the educated natives of Hindustan. For access to Persian MSS. I was indebted to the late Colonel Hamilton, formerly Commissioner of Dehli, and of his friendly a.s.sistance and encouragement I take this opportunity to make thankful acknowledgment.

APPENDIX B.