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Chapter 18 – India under the Crown

1858–1907

In the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to sketch in outline the gradual expansion of our territorial possessions in India, from the time when the rapid disintegration of the Moghul empire had left the whole country in political confusion, up to the complete establishment over it of the British dominion. During about one hundred years, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the English had been occupied in subduing rivals for power, in pacifying and reuniting the scattered provinces under their sovereignty. Whatever may be, in the western world, the proper division between ancient and modern history, it is safe to affirm that the dividing line between ancient and modern India is marked everywhere by the date at which each province or kingdom fell under British dominion. But if it were necessary to draw a single line for India as a whole, the epoch that might be taken would be the assumption by Queen Victoria of the direct government of India under the Crown, in 1858. The vibration caused by the shock of the mutiny of the Bengal sepoys had not entirely ceased before 1860, but the heat of

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Sir John Lawrence

that violent conflagration fused all the elements of further disaffection and welded together the different parts of the empire into compact unity. Its extinction terminated the long series of wars within India, and has been followed by fifty years of internal tranquillity.

The Queen’s Proclamation, announcing that the administration of India had passed from the East India Company to the Crown, confirmed all the treaties and engagements made with the native princes, strictly prohibited interference with the religious beliefs of her Majesty’s Indian subjects, and desired that, so far as might be, all her subjects should be freely and impartially admitted to offices in her service. Under such auspices the work of pacification and reform went on rapidly. Oudh, annexed in 1856, quieted down after two years of agitation; the great landholders were disarmed and conciliated by a favourable revenue settlement. In the Panjab, where the Sikhs in large numbers had taken service in the British army and had fought with great spirit against the mutineers, Sir John Lawrence’s energetic and sagacious administration had reconciled all classes to the new rulership. The last titular representative of the old dynasty had scarcely disappeared

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from his palace at Delhi when a new monarchy was inaugurated, and the political reconstruction of the fragments of the Moghul empire was consolidated by a series of edicts and statutes. For British India, the territory under our immediate government, the narrative of this period is comparatively uneventful – it records internal affairs and administrative progress. But some account of external affairs must be given; first, in regard to the native chiefships whose lands, though not British territory, are enclosed within British India, and secondly, in regard to events and transactions, some of them of great importance, in the adjacent countries outside the external limits of our-territorial jurisdiction.

The policy, inaugurated by Lord Wellesley’s subsidiary treaties, and continued by his successors, of bringing all the native states of India into subordinate relation with the British sovereignty, has already been briefly described. Under this system the supreme government has undertaken their protection and defence, arbitrates in any disputes among them, determines all claims to succeed to the rulership, maintains the chief’s legitimate authority against revolt, and interferes with their internal affairs in cases of serious abuse of power or grave disorder. In 1860 Lord Canning conveyed to all these chiefs the assurance of the Queen’s desire that their rulership should be perpetuated, and that, accordingly, adoption of successors made in accordance with the law and custom of their families would be recognized and confirmed. The effect of this

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declaration was to regulate and define the succession upon a fixed principle of public policy, and above all to convince the ruling chiefs that in future no annexation, upon default of heirs, of their territories was to be feared.

The area occupied, in the aggregate, by these states is at present about 650,000 square miles, with a population of some 66 millions. They vary in size from Haidarabad, with a population of 11½ millions, to petty chiefships containing less than 1000 inhabitants; they represent for the most part, as has been said, the territorial possessions or estates acquired by force and the fortune of war after the dilapidation of the Moghul empire, or the hereditary possessions of chiefs who survived that period of general confusion, and were preserved by the establishment of British supremacy.

The internal tranquillity of these chiefships, from 1860 up to the present time, has left few events worthy of record. The British government has indeed been obliged to interpose occasionally to punish the serious or criminal misconduct of individual chiefs and to determine authoritatively on the conflicting claims to succession. The presence, at the capitals of the larger protected states, of subsidiary British troops is not only a guarantee of a ruler’s rights, but also of his duties toward his subjects. Where succession to the chiefship has been disputed or doubtful, the British government has been frequently required to arbitrate between conflicting claims; occasionally to put down revolt; and in rare instances to punish acts of excessive

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or criminal misconduct committed by a chief or his ministers. In illustration of the use made of this prerogative of interposition, two cases of unusual gravity may be noticed. In 1876 the Gaikwar of Baroda, who had been tried before a Commission for complicity in an attempt against the life of the British Resident, and who was convicted of gross maladministration, was formally deposed and removed to a place of detention. And in 1891, the Maharaja of Manipur, a small state on the eastern frontier of Bengal, took refuge in British India from a military revolt, headed by his brothers. When the Chief Commissioner of Assam proceeded to make an inquiry into the affair, and to take measures for suppressing the disorder, he was enticed to a conference and treacherously murdered, with some of his officers, within the town of Manipur. A British force was despatched, which occupied the state for a time, until those concerned in the assassination had been punished. The Maharaja had abdicated; and since his incapacity was proved beyond doubt, he was replaced by another representative of the reigning family.

An important addition has been made to the list of these self-governing principalities by the revival of the State of Mysore, in southern India. In the fourteenth chapter3 brief reference has been made to its previous history. The territory had been forcibly seized by Ryder Ali, and reconquered from Tippu Sultan by Lord Wellesley4, when part of it was restored to the old

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Hindu dynasty. But in 1831 the Indian government had been obliged to assume the administration, and retained it for fifty years. In 1881, however, the state was reconstituted under the rule of the descendant of the ancient Hindu family from whom it had been taken nearly a century earlier, under conditions that provided for the acknowledgment of the British sovereignty, and for the welfare of the Mysore people. These conditions have been faithfully observed, and this just and politic action of the British government was appreciated by all the native chiefs throughout India as a confirmation of the declared intention to uphold their territorial independence.

But while our relations with the feudatory states lying inside the external frontiers of India have been successfully maintained and strengthened, the course of affairs beyond those frontiers has been complicated by important events and their consequences. Our annexation of the Panjab in 1849 had extended the dominion up to the skirts of the Afghan mountains, and had thereby brought our border into immediate contact with the highlands inhabited by warlike tribes, who had been accustomed for ages to make plundering raids upon the plains below. For the protection of our own districts, and for the punishment of intolerable brigandage, many expeditions into these highlands had been made, but with little or no permanent effect upon intractable barbarians. In 1863 it became necessary to dispatch a strong force into the hills overhanging the Peshawar valley against a settlement of fanatic Mohammedans

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who had been keeping the whole border-side in alarm by their plundering incursions, which the adjoining tribes were encouraged by their example to join. At the Umbeyla Pass the British commander, finding himself confronted by a combination of all the neighbouring clans, was obliged to take up a defensive position, where he was fiercely assailed, and the force was for a short time in considerable jeopardy. The predicament was serious, for a reverse might have been followed by a general rising of the tribes to break in over the frontier into British territory. Some hard fighting ensued, until reinforcements came up, when, after the enemy had suffered severe loss, their leaders submitted to terms, the stronghold of the fanatics was demolished, and their gathering effectively dispersed.

This expedition, known as the Umbeyla campaign, was one of the most hazardous and difficult of the forays and petty wars provoked by the tribes on the north-western frontier; and the brief notice of it that has been here given may serve to illustrate the state of unrest and insecurity that has ensued whenever the British Government has resolved to set bounds to its territorial expansion, to stop short, draw a line, and abstain from all interference with the affairs of the country beyond it. Just as, in many parts of Asia, cultivation ceases abruptly at the farthest point reached by artificial irrigation in a desert tract, so primitive barbarism may exist just outside the edge of settled civilization; and the situation on the north-west frontier of India exhibits this sharp contrast of social and political

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conditions. It would be a costly and difficult operation to extend administrative control over this tribal zone, yet no other effective remedy of chronic disorder has hitherto been discovered, and the problem still awaits solution.

The war with Bhotan, in 1864, was forced upon the British government by similar causes and circumstances. Bhotan is a small state within the exterior ranges of the Himalayan mountains, lying east of Nepal, in-habited by a poor and ignorant people, accustomed to make predatory incursions into the province of Bengal. In one of these raids some British subjects had been carried off into captivity by the Bhotias, and a mission had been dispatched to the capital of the state with instructions to demand their release; but the request was contemptuously rejected, and the envoy was treated with gross insolence and threats of personal violence. It became necessary to send an armed force into the country to exact reparation and to rescue the captives. The troops, at first unskilfully handled in a region of hills and jungles, suffered a reverse which compelled them to retreat in some confusion; but the Bhotias anticipated a fresh advance in greater strength by submitting to terms which imposed upon them the penalty of ceding a strip of lands along the base of the Himalayas; and they have since given no further provocation. As Bhotan is under a ruler with some general authority recognized over a definite area, it was easier to effect some durable settlement with him than in the case of the ungovernable tribes in the Northwest.

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Baluchistan, the country of the Baluch clans, lies along the western border of the Panjab and Sind, extending down to the Arabian Sea; it is under the nominal authority or hegemony of a chief, whose headquarters are at Kelat; but his power was insufficient to restrain the turbulent leaders of the rival clans, who were in constant rebellion against him, and the British border was continually troubled by their brigandage. In 1876, when Lord Lytton was Viceroy, Major Sandeman was deputed to mediate between the Khan and the chiefs, and to arrange for the freedom of trade routes and the general pacification of the border. He succeeded in negotiating a treaty by which the Khan acknowledged the influence and paramount overlordship of the British government in Baluchistan, in exchange for protection and support. The subordinate chiefs willingly accepted a settlement that put an end to incessant civil war, faction fighting, and misrule; and from that time the country has rapidly quieted down, until at the present moment the authority of the British representative is virtually exercised in Baluchistan up to the confines of Persia on the west, and the administration is conducted under his direction and guidance. The passes leading up from India were opened and guarded, and a garrison of native troops was posted at Quetta, not far from the frontier that divides the Baluch territory from southern Afghanistan, on the road toward Kandahar. The importance of this advanced position and of opening the communication in its rear through the Bolan Pass into India, was almost immediately demonstrated.

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Mountain passes near Quetta in Baluchistan

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It is impossible, within the limits of this chapter, to recount in detail the incidents and transactions that preceded and led up to the Afghan war of 1878–1881. They were intimately connected with the larger spheres of war and diplomacy in Europe, and with the attitude of Russia in Central Asia.

When British India had expanded to its geographical limits, from the sea-shore to the mountains, it might have been expected that our record of warfare in Asia was closing. Our command of the sea was unchallenged, and landward no country has stronger natural fortifications. But in the history of Asia during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the dominant element has been the increasing spread of European ascendency, creating a general sense of political instability. For all the kingdoms of Asia felt the growing pressure of formidable neighbours, while the European powers were striving to hold each other at arm’s length, and watching with jealous apprehension the gradual approximation of their respective frontiers. On the Asiatic continent the British dominion seemed at last to have reached its appointed limits at the base of the Afghan mountains; but Russia’s advance through Central Asia was acquiring increased momentum in proportion to the mass of her conquests, and she was rapidly increasing her dominion. For manifest reasons of policy. and strategy the English, who desire to keep other European powers at a distance, insist on reserving a preponderating influence in the countries marching with their own territory, and allow no foreign interference

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with them. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, the British government was watching, with redoubled attention, the approach of Russia in the direction of the Oxus River and the north-western provinces of the Afghan kingdom.

By the subjugation of Khiva the Russian outposts had been brought much nearer to the Afghan frontier, and the attempt of the English Cabinet to check this movement by negotiations had elicited little more than vague assurances from St. Petersburg. In 1873, however, the Russian emperor declared Afghanistan to be completely outside the sphere within which Russian influence might be exercised; and the boundary-line of that kingdom had been partially defined by diplomatic agreement. The whole policy, therefore, of British statesmen at this time was directed upon the object of securing the independence and integrity of Afghanistan. And the record of Indian foreign affairs during the period with which we are now concerned exhibits a series of discussions and ineffectual negotiations, until out of the gathering cloud of misunderstandings and the pressure of events, an Afghan war was suddenly precipitated in 1878. When, in 1868, the Amir of Afghanistan, Sher Ali, had mastered the whole of this country after a long and fiercely contested war for succession to the throne, the situation of his state between two powerful European empires filled him with anxiety, and he turned to India for alliance and material support. In 1869 he paid a visit to Lord Mayo, then Viceroy, at Umballa, where he was received with much ceremony,

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with large presents of arms and money, and with many friendly assurances. But the Amir desired a formal treaty and a fixed subsidy, which Lord Mayo was not authorized to grant, so that the conference ended without any settlement on the substantial basis of an alliance. In 1873, when negotiations were renewed, Lord Northbrook proposed to accord to Sher Ali a guarantee against foreign aggression, but sanction was refused by the ministry at home, and to this disappointment, with other grievances, may be ascribed the distrust and resentment which Sher Ali displayed in his subsequent dealings with the British government.

In 1876, however, the English ministry had become convinced that it was necessary to secure closer and more definite relations with the Amir; and Lord Lytton, on his appointment to the Viceroyalty, took out with him to India instructions to carry out this policy. His first step was to propose sending a mission to Kabul, but this overture was so unfavourably received by the Amir that, after some abortive negotiations, it was abandoned, not without friction and estrangement on both sides. In 1877 came the war between Russia and Turkey, and in 1878, when the Russian army was before Constantinople, the British government prepared for armed intervention by sending Indian troops to Malta. The Russians replied by a counter-move; they pushed forward a detachment from their army in Central Asia towards the Afghan frontier; and a Russian envoy arrived at Kabul, who proceeded to draw up a treaty of alliance with the Amir. The Viceroy of India

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retaliated by a demand for the immediate admission of a British envoy at Kabul; but Sir Neville Chamberlain’s mission was forcibly turned back at the Afghan outposts, whereupon an ultimatum, insisting upon the reception of a British envoy, and. requiring a reply by a fixed date, was dispatched to the Amir. By that date no reply came, so war was declared in November, 1878, and three columns of troops entered Afghanistan from different points. The column which advanced from the south by Quetta occupied Kandahar almost without opposition; the two northern columns threatened Kabul from Kuram and Jalalabad; and when General Roberts had dispersed the Afghan troops at the Peiwar Kotal, the Amir, leaving Kabul, took refuge in his upper provinces near the Oxus, whence he appealed for succour to the Russian authorities in Transcaspia. But the interest of Russia in his affairs had ceased with the signature of the Berlin treaty; he was advised to make peace with the British government, and early in 1879 he died in great distress. His son, Yakub Khan, offered to negotiate for the cessation of hostilities, conditionally upon his own recognition, with British support, as successor to the Amirship. After considerable discussion, the treaty of Gandamak was concluded with him, whereby he ceded certain outlying tracts that would facilitate our command of the routes leading into Afghanistan, and agreed to receive a British envoy at Kabul. To this post Sir Louis Cavagnari was deputed in July, 1879.

But the whole country had been thrown into confusion

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by the war, and the death of the Amir Sher Ali had left it without a ruler. Yakub Khan had neither the experience nor the strength of character required for the mastery of such a situation; his troops were unpaid and mutinous; and his influence was slight over a fierce, indomitable people, whose inveterate hatred of foreigners was intensified by the presence of a British officer at Kabul. The whole fabric of our arrangements with Afghanistan, as it had been built up on the treaty of Gandamak, depended on the envoy’s personal safety. Within three months his assassination brought it down with a terrible crash; and thus, while during the first period of the war we had been engaged in fighting the Amir Sher Ali, in the second we found ourselves involved in the much more arduous task of fighting the Afghan people Immediately upon receipt of the news that Cavagnari, with all his escort, had been murdered, the war was renewed. Kabul was captured by a rapid and daring march of Sir Frederick Roberts upon the capital; Kandahar, which Sir Donald Stewart had just evacuated, was reoccupied; but although we managed to retain a firm military hold on these two important points, the Indian government was now confronted by a most awkward dilemma. The attempt to subdue and pacify the whole country was beyond our power, and had never been contemplated by our policy, while, if we withdrew our garrisons, Afghanistan would have been left to masterless anarchy, and the war would have been waged to no purpose. The armed tribes, believing that the subjugation of

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Abd-ar-Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, from a photograph made between 1870 and 1880

From The Life of Abdur Rahman

Afghanistan was intended, broke out into insurrection around Kabul, and in December, 1879, they combined for a resolute assault upon the British intrenchments outside the city. Their defeat, after some very sharp fighting, quieted the surrounding districts for the time, and communications with India were reopened; but the manifest interest of the British government was to make over Afghanistan to some capable and not unfriendly ruler; and, indeed, the war had been undertaken with this sole object.

From this dilemma we were extricated by the appearance in the northern province of Abd-ar-Rahman, the nephew of the Amir Sher Ali’s predecessor, who had been driven out of the country when Sher Ali won his throne in the civil war for succession, and had been living under Russian protection beyond the Oxus River. The Viceroy of India (Lord Lytton) made amicable overtures to him, with assurances that his accession to the vacant rulership would not be opposed, and he received an invitation to the British headquarters at Kabul, for the

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purpose of discussing terms upon which he might be recognized as Amir, and the rulership of the country might be made over to him. In June, 1880, Lord Lytton resigned his Governor-Generalship of India to Lord Ripon, by whom this arrangement was, not without difficulty, concluded. Abd-ar-Rahman’s accession was proclaimed in the British camp at Kabul; he was strengthened by grants of arms and money, and by a formal promise of support against foreign aggression; and the British troops were just starting on their return to India, when news came that Ayub Khan, Sher Ali’s younger son, had marched with an army from Herat upon Kandahar. In July he routed a British force at Maiwand, not far from Kandahar, and was beleaguering the garrison within the walls of that city. A strong expedition was immediately dispatched from Kabul, under the command of Sir Frederick Roberts, who reached Kandahar by forced marches at the end of August, attacked and completely defeated Ayub Khan, relieved the garrison, and drew off his troops into India by the Bolan Pass. Simultaneously the British army at Kabul had withdrawn from Afghanistan by the direct northern route; and in 1881 the evacuation of Kandahar left the Amir free to enforce his authority over the southern province. Abd-ar-Rahman, thus left to his own resources, drove Ayub Khan (who had returned) out of the country, and rapidly extended his power everywhere, until in a few years all Afghanistan was, for the first time in its history, amalgamated into a strong independent kingdom under a

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ruler of singular ability and merciless severity. During the following years the frontiers of this kingdom were laid down. The demarcation of its north-western boundary, from the Oxus River to the confines of Persia, was undertaken by a joint commission of Russian and English officers; but a dispute over one section of the line caused a collision between Russian and Afghan troops at Panjdah, which brought England and Russia to the verge of a rupture in 1885, at a moment when the Amir was a guest of the Viceroy (Lord Dufferin) in his camp in North India. When that peril had been averted, the whole north-west frontier adjoining Russian possessions was settled by an international convention; and the next measure was to define the Afghan frontier on its eastern side, where a belt of tribal highlands is interposed between the Amir’s territory and British India.

The general effect of all these measures has been of the highest importance to our dominion in India. During the nineteenth century Afghanistan has been a foreign kingdom which the English, who have no desire to possess, are nevertheless imperatively compelled to protect, and which must be retained at all risks and costs within the orbit of British influence, since its independence is essential to the security of any rule or dynasty in India. Under the Moghuls this country was a province of their empire; under the British system it is a protectorate; the Afghan mountains are still the necessary barrier against irruptions into the Indian plains. Since 1880, when the formal promise to defend

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Afghanistan from foreign aggression was given to the Amir, the condition of his kingdom has steadily improved; it is no longer distracted by chronic civil wars and intestine revolts; it has been comparatively quiet and prosperous for twenty-seven years; and the present reigning Amir succeeded to the throne, on his father’s death, without opposition; whereas all previous successions had been contested, or had been followed by rebellions. This transformation of the internal condition of the country may be ascribed, primarily, to the aid and support received by its rulers from the British government; and secondly to the delimitation of the Afghan frontiers, which has been ratified by a public convention between the two European powers.

In order to complete the narrative of events on the northern frontiers of India, it may be here mentioned that in 1896–1897 the petty chiefships on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains beyond Kashmir, were included within the range of the British protectorate. This extension of our political control was not accomplished without some resistance by the tribes of that wild and hitherto inaccessible region. They beleaguered and brought into some peril a British garrison in Chitral, until it was relieved by an expedition that made a difficult and hazardous march to its assistance. Our sphere of influence has thus been extended up to the borders of the Chinese empire in Kashgar; and its landmarks have been permanently set up in those remote highlands. The general result of all these

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The Golden Monastery, Mandalay, Burma

operations, military and diplomatic, has been to lay out along the northern and north-western frontiers of India a broad zone of protected states, which separate China, Russia, and Persia from the territories under our direct administration.

In the meantime, however, while we were engaged in clearing and strengthening the strategic position beyond Northern India, on our southeast frontier new and grave complications had arisen. Since 1853, when the lower provinces of Burma had been conquered and annexed, the attitude of the Burmese rulers toward the British government had been resentful and vindictive. In 1885 the Burmese king persisted in rejecting reasonable demands made for reparation of injuries to British subjects, and what was much more serious, it was discovered

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that he was secretly negotiating a treaty with France, so framed as to give French interests a predominant influence in his country. When remonstrance and warning had proved entirely ineffectual, an ultimatum, backed by the assembling of an army on his frontier, was dispatched to him by the Indian government. The reply was by a proclamation in a tone of hostility, whereupon, in November, 1885, the troops advanced up Mandalay. The Burmese army made no serious resistance, the capital was occupied, the king was captured, and the annexation of Upper Burma was announced by the Queen’s government. After nearly two years of internal disorder, for the conquered provinces were infested by marauding bands and disbanded soldiery, the work of pacification was accomplished, and the civil administration organized. Beyond the north-eastern districts of Upper Burma the petty chiefships in the wild tracts up to the Mekong river became our tributaries, and the tribes in the scarcely explored hills in the north have partially submitted to our control. The ruler of Siam, a kingdom that lies east of Burma, separating it from the French possessions in Cochin China, had become involved in disputes with the French authorities, and since the situation of Siam renders its independence of substantial concern to India, the British government interfered diplomatically in 1896, to prevent the kingdom’s dismemberment, and to obtain recognition of the British protectorate over the Siamese provinces nearest to our own border.

This, the latest, expansion of British dominion by the

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The Memorial Well, Cawnpur

incorporation of Upper Burma has made a considerable addition to the weight of our political responsibilities. Between the populations of India and of the countries known as Indo-Chinese, there is little or no affinity. Here we have broken fresh ground in Asia, we have come. into contact on our advanced position with strange races and languages: we are exploring a region hitherto almost unknown to Europeans, we have to demarcate the outlines and fill in the detail of our ever-widening territorial map. Our policy, on this side as on the Afghan border, is to maintain friendly relations with the Chinese officials, who are very sensitive to our proceedings, and to establish over the barbarous folk in the tracts intervening between the two empires a protectorate sufficient to reclaim them gradually from turbulence, to convert them from plundering borderers into border police, and to exclude foreign. influence or encroachments.

Except by the annexation of Burma, the area under the direct and regular administration of the Indian Government has undergone little change since 1856. On the other hand, the external frontier of the empire, if the line is drawn, as it must be, to include the out-lying regions that have been brought within the sphere of British influence or superior control, has been very materially widened in the course of the last fifty years. This frontier is now conterminous with the Russian possessions in Central Asia on the north-west, it marches for several thousand miles with the empire of China; and on the southeast it touches the Asiatic colonies of

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France. By a recent expedition to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, we have emphasized our determination to permit no encroachment of another European power upon the vast tracts of mountains and deserts that stretch from the Himalayas northward to the confines of Mongolia. Our policy is to keep clear of intrusion all the approaches to India, and to hold in our hands the keys of all its gates. Upon this system we have been obliged to multiply and throw forward our military outposts, and accept a great augmentation of sundry and manifold political responsibilities. The outer frontier of the British dominion that our policy now requires us to defend, has an immense circumference. Its south-eastern extremity rests on the Gulf of Siam, whence it sweeps round Tibet on the north; it touches the Hindu Kush range of mountains and the Oxus; on the north-west it covers Afghanistan and Baluchistan, until it terminates at its western extremity on the shores of the Arabian sea. The consequence of this expansion of our spheres of political influence far beyond the area of our actual dominion is that the frontiers of the British empire are changing their character. The boundaries of India proper are naturally defined on three sides by an almost unbroken wall of mountains or by desert tracts and on the fourth side by the sea. But the political circumscription of our exterior frontier has now been formed by tracing artificial lines, settled by international agreements, across the slopes and valleys of the Central Asian highlands, and across desolate plains or rugged half-explored hill-tracts. These fixed lines of frontier

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represent the outworks of our strategical position; and from the north-west to the southeast they adjoin the dominions of two other great Asiatic empires, Russia and China. The political situation in Asia is now closely dependent upon any entanglement of the network of international relations throughout the world, so that any serious strain or rupture would be felt not only in India, but in all the adjacent countries under European influence; nor is it too much to say that the destiny of the greater part of Asia depends on the balance of power and the adjustment of forces in Europe.

The history of British dominion in India has been written, up to this point in the narrative, with little or no reference to matters of interior administration. It has described, in broad outline, the origin and expansion of British rule by territorial conquest and cessions, the gradual rise of its supremacy over all rival Indian powers, and the external policy adopted for the defence and security of our possessions. But during the latter half of the nineteenth century great internal changes have supervened; the enlargement of territory has increased the number and diversity of the population; the moral and material condition of the people has made important advances. It has, therefore, been thought expedient to complete this volume by adding some brief account of the progress of civil government, and of the reforming measures from time to time introduced, in the course of the period to which this section relates.

The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 was reactionary in its causes and revolutionary in its effects; it shook for a

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The massacre at Cawnpur, June 26, 1857

moment the empire’s foundations, but it cleared the area for reconstruction and improvement. In a previous chapter it has been said that for the twenty years immediately preceding, from 1837 to 1857, there had been only short intervals of peace between recurrent wars, and that British territory had been greatly extended by successive annexations.

When, in 1849, the Panjab had been subdued and pacified after two hard-fought campaigns, and when Oudh, the last and largest kingdom in northern India, had been incorporated by Lord Dalhousie in 1856, it might have been plausibly anticipated that the rough wartime had ended, and that the whole country could settle down in tranquillity under our dominion.

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In reality we were only just turning the first leaf of a new chapter, which opens with the outbreak of a fierce civil war. The thunderstorm of revolt broke in upon these visions of repose, and on the prospects of unclouded calm; the native army, which for a hundred years had shared all our triumphs and reverses in war, rose against us, and was overpowered after a desperate struggle. In Oudh the great landholders set up the standard of rebellion; and throughout the northern provinces British authority was for some time either swept away, or sustained only by the force of arms and the resolution of those who confronted a tremendous crisis with courageous energy. Thus in 1860, when order had been at last restored, the older provinces were recovering from a dangerous insurrection, which had seriously disturbed the adjoining native States; while in the territories that had been recently acquired the fabric of government had been merely provisional, suited to the immediate needs and emergencies of their occupation. With the complete pacification of the country came leisure for organization, for placing the executive authority of the various local governments on a definite footing, and substituting laws properly framed for unmethodical procedure and discretionary ordinances. The moment was opportune for undertaking this work, as the constitution of the Indian government, after passing through various stages of transition, had now reached a condition that rendered comprehensive alterations urgently necessary, in order to adapt it to civilized uses and to the needs of a changing society.

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The administration of the Moghul empire had been to some degree systematic; and its scheme of distribution into districts and provinces, with the methods of assessing the local revenue, still survived in outline. But the native rulerships immediately preceding the British dominion had neither system nor stability, since the incessant warfare and scramble for territory during the eighteenth century had left even able chiefs without time or means for administrative settlement. Yet even the Moghul emperors, in the plenitude of their power, had never promulgated general civil or criminal laws backed by state sanction, in the European sense of these terms; nor had they at any time pretended to regulate authoritatively the customs and domestic relations of the people, being content to levy revenue and do rough justice according to the arbitrary will of the sovereign or of his deputies. The multifarious groups that make up the population of India had lived under their personal institutions and rules of conduct, mainly religious; for it may be said that in Asia law and religion are almost universally regarded as two sides of the same subject. Tinder the earlier regimen of the East India Company the practice had been to issue provincial Regulations of an old-fashioned type framed to suit the requirements and circumstances of sundry times and divers places, loosely drawn and intermixed with instructions and explanations, and further complicated by empirical decisions of the local courts. Latterly some Acts, of importance and value, passed by the supreme legislature, were put in force throughout

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The “Slaughter-House,” where the Cawnpur Massacre took place

the older provinces. But the new territories, as they were annexed to the dominion, were placed by the Governor-General provisionally under his direct control by what was called the Non-Regulation system, reserving his power of extending discretionally the regular laws and procedure, with directions that their spirit rather than their letter should be followed, to be supplemented in doubtful cases by the guidance of equity and good conscience.

When, therefore, after the final suppression of the mutiny and of the agitation that it had spread throughout the northern provinces, the permanent reconstitution of government became practicable and necessary, the task of the British authorities was to deduce order out of this confusion, and to lay the foundations of a new

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and uniform polity. The country had been the scene of more rapid and abrupt transitions, political and economical, than had ever, perhaps, been recorded in the history of nations. For in India old and new forms of civilization had become intermixed, not only by the influx of European ideas upon an Asiatic society, but because it contained an immense population in different stages of material and intellectual progress. The English had originally taken over an empire in a state of political dilapidation; and they had now to complete its administration on a scientific plan, with a solicitous regard for the inveterate prejudices of many races and religions.

Previously to the mutiny of 1857, this process of reformation had been going on slowly; but from that time forward it acquired great momentum By an Act of Parliament passed in 1858, the supreme powers of control over Indian affairs, which had been hitherto divided between the Court of Directors and the ministers of the Crown, were vested in a Secretary of State in Council; and all the naval and military forces of the East India Company were transferred to the imperial service. Then, in 1861, the India Councils Act modified the constitution of the Governor-General’s Executive Council in India, and remodelled the legislature by establishing a Council, presided over by the Governor-General, to make laws for the whole of India, with sub-ordinate legislative Councils at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Another statute instituted High Courts of Judicature under royal charter, at these three capitals;

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and in 1860–1861 the enactment of the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure assimilated throughout the country the general system of criminal law. By these measures the executive and judicial administration was systematically re-arranged; so that, when Lord Canning, the first Viceroy of India, left Calcutta in 1862, he made over to his successor a government very different in organization and character from that which had been transmitted to him, six years earlier, by Lord Dalhousie. The royal supremacy, proclaimed in 1858, became the actual and visible sign of substantial incorporation into the British Empire in all parts of the world, at a time when India had received large accretions of territory; while the sense of unity created by the Queen’s assumption of direct government restored confidence, and gave a powerful impulse to the moral and material advancement of the Indian people.

The administrative history of India during the next fifty years may be described as a development upon the lines that were laid down by these fundamental executive and legislative reforms. It records the methodical prosecution of the work of adjusting the mechanism of a modern state to the circumstances and customs of a most heterogeneous population. On the one hand, personal laws, precepts of caste and creed, and prescriptive rights had to be respected. On the other hand, the effect upon many of these rules and usages made by the introduction of a strong and systematic administration was to derange and modify them, because the needs and circumstances under which they had grown up were

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passing away. In this manner the vague and elastic ordinances of primitive societies were naturally falling into disuse, with a tendency toward dissolution. But the operation of the British courts of justice, which had been established in the older provinces, was to arrest this spontaneous decomposition. To these tribunals every question of right, every dispute over matters of inheritance, property, and customary law generally, was necessarily referred, and the result was commonly to fix by the judicial decisions, and thus to stereotype an order of things that was by its nature elastic, that had taken its shape from the rude exigencies of lawless times, and was becoming inconsistent with the new social and economical environment, with peace, with the growth of wealth, security of property, and the spread of education. The effect was to give inflexible precision and rigidity to loose undefined usages, for, while a self-regulating community can amend or abandon an inconvenient precept of caste or creed, in the hands of an English judge the rule becomes immutable, and the bonds are tightened. But the conditions of life, for all classes of the population, had been so profoundly affected by the advent of British dominion, that nothing but our own positive and inflexible law could have prevented a corresponding modification of archaic ideas and institutions.

It had thus come to pass that while the general civil law of India was to a great extent intricate and uncertain, varying from province to province, with multifarious distinctions and exceptions created by religious

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singularities and local traditions, its complexity was further increased by the importation of an exotic legal procedure. Yet government by a clear and scientific body of laws, binding upon the authorities and appropriate to the circumstances of the people, is the only real security for the progress and prosperity of a country; so that it was essential to mould this mass of heterogeneous sections and rulings into some compact and intelligible shape. The problem was to simplify and generalize the civil law and procedure, and to enact large principles of equity and morality, with the least possible disturbance of the practices, prejudices, and organic institutions of Indian society.

Under the direction of Sir Henry Maine, a jurist whose insight into the forms and ideas of early civilizations admirably fitted him for the task, the solution of this problem was initiated. When, in 1862, he assumed charge of the legislative department of the Indian government, the two great Acts codifying the Penal Law and procedure had already been passed; but the subject of civil or domestic legislation was much more complicated. It is obvious, for example, that questions touching marriage and inheritance lie at the base of every society, being related to fundamental interests and affecting very delicate susceptibilities; so that any interposition by foreign legislators must be exercised with the utmost caution. In India the rules which pre-side over family life and the distribution of property are intermixed with and dependent upon religious ritual, worships, and beliefs; their diversity and multiplicity

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preclude any attempt to comprehend them within a uniform Civil Code. The only practicable course, therefore, was to frame Acts embodying broad principles of jurisprudence, providing, so to speak, the lines upon which social evolution might be assisted. The precise scope and operation of these emancipating Acts cannot be here explained; though the Indian Succession Act may be taken as an illustration of the process. It codified the law relating to the effect of death or marriage upon successors to property, and to testamentary bequest; but it does not apply to Hindus, Mohammedans, or to others who are subject to their own personal laws; it provides a definite civil status for those classes of the population whom the novel rites and peculiar doctrines, which are continually disintegrating orthodox Hinduism, or the softening of manners and intellectual elevation, may have separated from their original sects or communities.

Other Acts, such as that for the remarriage of converts to Christianity, embodied the principle that change of religion involved no loss of ordinary civil rights. The Acts dealing with Evidence and Contract reduced to concise and explicit form a mass of law that the courts had previously been obliged to extract from text-books, reports, and conflicting rulings, and the procedure of all courts of civil jurisdiction was determined by comprehensive enactments. In short, the aim and outcome of the legislation during this period was to simplify and summarize the administration of justice, and to promote by successive measures the general principle

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of civil and religious liberty, taking power to extend them as their expediency and moral superiority should be gradually recognized by the people; and slowly moulding their habits to the conception of government by laws.

The policy of reform and consolidation pursued during this period in one great department of administration is of such importance, and to some extent of such general interest from the standpoint of comparative legislation, that some brief explanation of it may not be here out of place. In India, where the public income from land has always been the chief mainstay of the state’s finances, and where the population in a very great majority subsist by agriculture, the just and skilful management of this source of revenue has always been of vital importance to the welfare of every government and of the people. From the beginning of British rule the provincial authorities have been continually engaged in deciding questions of ownership and occupancy, in allocating the payments due to the treasury from every estate and sometimes from every field, in revising earlier systems of taxation, and in passing laws or framing executive rules to settle disputed proprietorship or to remedy agricultural distress. The fact that from time immemorial the State has invariably shared in the surplus profits of agriculture has provided every strong government in India with a direct and very substantial motive for protecting the actual cultivator; the liability of the country to periodical drought adds weight to this primary interest and obligation.

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But many parts of India, when they first came under British sovereignty, had suffered from the passage of armies, from marauding bands, from the dispersion or impoverishment of the cultivators, and from all the calamities of war. In the violent contests for possession of territory and revenue the lands had been forcibly seized, and the strife had been incessant between the old and the new proprietors. In the outlying districts, during intervals of confusion, neither rent nor revenue could be regularly levied, as an intermittent struggle between those who strove to exact too much and those who would pay nothing at all was maintained among tenants, landlords, and official tax-gatherers. In this manner, by the swaying to and fro of the conflict, by local accidents, and by the vicissitudes of political power, was produced that intricate variety of proprietary and cultivating tenures, with an arbitrary and fluctuating assessment of revenue, which the English found in the different provinces that fell at different times under their administration.

The precarious nature of proprietary and occupancy rights, bearing traces of ruinous exaction or lawless resistance, left room for every kind of theory as to the basis upon which the relations between landlord and tenant, and between both classes and the state, should be permanently or temporarily determined. What meaning and what measure of legal recognition should be assigned to local usage and prescriptive claims, how far the law ought to interfere to modify the stringency of contracts imposed upon the tenantry, whether the

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Detail from the Hall of a Hundred Columns at Conjevaram

State’s demand should be raised or lowered, to what extent double ownership of land should be subjected by statutory definition, all such questions had to be investigated and decided upon considerations of equity and expediency.

It was necessary to mediate between the two interests of ownership and occupancy in agriculture, interests which are so sensitive to economical changes, that the most skilful attempts to distribute them formally, and to provide by legislation, however

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elastic, for all the incidents of the connection, have hitherto failed to prevent severe recurrent strains upon it.

To give, even in outline, an intelligible account of the methods, legal and executive, by which they were determined in the various provinces, would be impracticable within the limits of this chapter. It must be sufficient to state that the determination of these questions in Northern India, especially in the Panjab and Oudh, engaged for several years the attention of the government. The subject holds a prominent place in the administrative history of this period, since the agrarian reforms and the fiscal regulations then settled, after long and accurate inquiries, have probably contributed more than any other measures to the confirmation and popularity of the British rule.

Among the most potent instruments of civilization in India have been the railways. Up to about 1850 the main roads were still unmetalled, and a few years later the first railways were just begun. Since that time, they have branched out over the whole country, disseminating everywhere the benefits of rapid intercourse and commercial interchange, and with great advantage to our strategical position. The external trade of India has increased with the multiplication of outlets to the seaports, and the productive powers of the soil have been augmented over a large area by the extension of artificial irrigation. By the diversion of the flow of the great rivers into canals, many hundred miles in their aggregate length, and by the storage of water in numerous

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The Durbar of 1902

Never was there grander display of Oriental pomp and dazzling splendour than at the durbar in honour of King Edward, as Emperor of India, in 1902. Gorgeous fêtes, ceremonies, and processions lent magnificence to the celebration, and India rivalled England in doing homage to the new sovereign.

reservoirs, the largest irrigation system in the world has been constructed in India. The effect of these great productive works has been to augment and distribute the national wealth; they have perceptibly modified the aspect of the country, and the habits of the people. The capital invested in these undertakings by the state has been, for the most part, obtained from loans, which were raised at low interest on the credit of the British government. The public debt of India to England has been sometimes represented as an intolerable burden, yet probably no incident of the connection between the two countries has been of greater advantage to India than this expenditure of many millions on the development of its natural resources.

In 1877, the assumption of Queen Victoria of the title of Empress of India, declared before a grand assemblage of chiefs and notables at Delhi, gave public form to the fact of sovereignty, and the magnificent durbar of King Edward in 1902, at which the king was represented by the Viceroy, and which was perhaps one of the most gorgeous Oriental pageants of all time, again attested the recognition of supremacy.

For India, therefore, the last fifty years have been pre-eminently an era of consolidation by laws and administrative reform. The British government may now be described as a highly organized machine, so powerful, and so complicated in its functions, that scientific management and control of them is indispensable, and accordingly their superior direction has been hitherto retained in English hands. Foreign dominion must

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necessarily be more or less autocratic for some time after it has been acquired; and since the rulers are usually compelled to rely for its maintenance at first upon the strength and fidelity of their own countrymen, the chiefs of their civil and military government have almost invariably been imported from abroad. The Moghul emperors appointed men of their own race or creed to their military commands, and to most of their highest civil offices; the British nation has been forced, by similar conditions of political existence, to reserve the upper grades of their Indian administration for Englishmen. But the Moghul government was essentially personal and absolute; and, in fact, no other form of rulership has ever been attempted in a purely Asiatic state. The people have been used to concern themselves only with the question whether a despotism was strong or weak, tolerable or intolerable; for the expedient of improving a government by altering its form has not yet been discovered in Asia; the only remedy, if things went outrageously wrong, has been to change the per-son. The English rule, therefore, succeeded to an empire of this character, with a centralized authority presiding over different provinces recently conjoined, and a population in promiscuous ethnical variety. But the inhabitants of India have thereby become fellow-citizens with a European nation that has for centuries been working out popular institutions in a totally different atmosphere; in an island sheltered from invasion, in circumstances peculiarly favourable to the evolution of self-government, among a homogeneous people knit

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together by common interests and national sentiment. Whereas India has for ages been plagued with invasions; its vast territory has been incessantly split up and parcelled out among foreign conquerors and contending dynasties; the population is internally subdivided to a degree unparalleled elsewhere, even in Asia. Yet it has inevitably come to pass that the differences of wealth and learning, frequent intercourse with Europe, and the saturation of the educated classes with Western ideas and political axioms, have stimulated the desire for a larger share in the government of their country among the leaders of native public opinion. An efficient administration no longer satisfies them; on the contrary, it has created ulterior hopes and aspirations. We began with great organic reforms, with improving the police and the prisons, with codes of law, a hierarchy of courts of justice, a trained civil service, and all the apparatus of a modern executive. Latterly we have undertaken the gradual introduction of representative institutions, legislative councils in all the important provinces, and municipalities in every substantial town; we are seriously preparing for the slow devolution of self-governing principles.

But undoubtedly this is an operation of extraordinary difficulty, for we have no precedents to guide us in the experiment. It must certainly be conducted within the limitations necessary to preserve undisturbed and indisputable the fabric of British sovereignty, but some solution of this difficulty is demanded, for now that the English have accomplished the building up, after the

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high Roman fashion, of an immense polyglot empire, the stability of the structure must depend upon a skilful distribution of weight, because excessive centralization is radically insecure, and supports are useless without some capacity to resist pressure. The solution of these problems requires the sympathetic insight as well as the scientific methods of statesmanship, supplemented by the good will and the growing intelligence of the Indian people.

Education, scientific and literary culture, better acquaintance with public affairs, and an enlarged understanding of the conditions of practical politics, may be expected to produce among the foremost advocates of constitutional reform views and proposals moderated by a clearer appreciation of inherent difficulties. Nor is there, so far as can be discerned, any revolutionary element in the ideas now current among serious thinkers in India, where modern thought seems to be taking a strong utilitarian colour in morals, mundane affairs, and even in religious movements. The two countries, England and India, are at any rate associated in a community of moral and material interests, that has already lasted, throughout most of the dominion, for several generations, has exercised a powerful influence over the history of each people, in Europe and Asia, and must affect, to no small degree, their future destiny. It may be confidently affirmed that this alliance cannot now be impaired or interrupted without incalculable injury to both nations.

Footnotes

3. See pages 309–310.

4. At that time known as Lord Mornington.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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