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Chapter 2

So, three years after his arrival in India, Dalhousie had brought to a close two great military campaigns, and had captured two great provinces. He had then done with foreign wars; his after-career was one of peaceful invasion. Ere long there was a word which came to be more dreaded than that of Conquest. The native mind is readily convinced by the inexorable logic of the sword. There is no appeal from such arbitration. To be invaded and to be conquered is a state of things appreciable by the inhabitant of India. It is his “kismat;” his fate; God’s will. One stronger than he cometh and taketh all that he hath. There are, however, manifest compensations. His religion is not invaded; his institutions are not violated. Life is short, and the weak man, patient and philosophical, is strong to endure and mighty to wait. But lapse is a dreadful and an appalling word; for it pursues the victim beyond the grave. Its significance in his eyes is nothing short of eternal condemnation.

“The son,” says the great Hindu lawgiver, “delivers his father from the hell called Pat.” There are, he tells us, different kinds of sons; there is the son begotten; the son given; the son by adoption; and other filial varieties. It is the duty of the son to perform the funeral obsequies of the father. If they be not performed, it is believed that there is no resurrection to eternal bliss. The right of adoption is, therefore, one of the most cherished doctrines of Hinduism. In a country where polygamy is the rule, it might be supposed that the necessity of adopting another man’s offspring, for the sake of these ceremonial ministrations, or for the continuance of an ancestral name, would be one of rare occurrence. But all theory on the subject is belied by the fact that the Princes and chiefs of India more frequently find themselves, at the close of their lives, without the solace of male offspring than with it. The Zenana

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is not an institution calculated to lengthen out a direct line of Princes. The alternative of adoption is one, therefore, to which there is frequent resort; it is a source of unspeakable comfort in life and in death; and politically it is as dear to the heart of a nation as it is personally to the individual it affects.

It is with the question of Adoption only in its political aspects that I have to do in this place. There is a private and personal, as there is a public and political, side to it. No power on earth beyond a man’s own will can prevent him from adopting a son, or can render that adoption illegal if it be legally performed. But to adopt a son as a successor to private property is one thing, to adopt an heir to titular dignities and territorial sovereignty is another. Without the consent of the Paramount State no adoption of the latter kind can be valid. Whether in this case of a titular Prince or a possessor of territorial rights, dependent upon the will of the Government, Hinduism is satisfied by the private adoption and the penalties of the sonless state averted,. is a question for the pundits to determine; but no titular chief thinks the adoption complete unless he can thereby transmit his name, his dignities, his rights and privileges to his successor, and it can in no wise be said that the son takes the place of his adoptive father if he does not inherit the most cherished parts of that father’s possessions.

Satarah

But whether the religious element does or does not rightly enter into the question of political adoptions, nothing is more certain than that the right, in this larger political sense, was ever dearly prized by the Hindus, and was not alienated from them by the Lords-Paramount who had preceded us. The imperial recognition was required, and it was commonly paid for by a heavy “nazarana,” or succession-duty, but in this the Mughul rulers were tolerant. It was reserved for the British to substitute for the right of adoption what was called “the right of lapse,” and in default of male heirs of the body lawfully begotten to absorb native principalities into the great amalgam of our British possessions. “In 1849,” wrote Lord Dalhousie, in his elaborate farewell minute, “the principality of Satarah was included in the British dominions by right of lapse, the Rajah having died without male heir.” The Princes of Satarah were the descendants of Sivaji, the founder and the head of the Maratha Empire. Their power and their glory had alike departed. But they were still great in tradition, and

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were looked up to with respect by the Marathas of Western India. In April, 1848, the last Rajah died15; and a question arose as to whether, no direct male heir of the body having been left by the deceased, a son by adoption, or a collateral member of the family, should be permitted to succeed him, or whether the rights and titles of the principality should be declared to be extinct. Sir George Clerk was then Governor of Bombay. He looked at the Treaty of 1819; saw that “the British Government agreed to cede in perpetual sovereignty to the Rajah of Satarah, his heirs and successors,” the territories which he had held, and at once declared himself in favour of the continuance of the native Raj. The members of his Council looked upon the question as purely one of expediency, and considered it the duty of the British Government to decide it in the manner most advantageous to ourselves. But the Governor refused to admit any secondary considerations, saying, “If it be inconsistent with justice to refuse confirmation to the act of adoption, it is useless to inquire whether it is better for the interests of the people or of the empire at large to govern the Satarah territories through the medium of a native Rajah, or by means of our own administration.” The trumpet of that statesman was not likely to give an uncertain sound.

When this question first arose, the Governor-General was in his novitiate. But new as he was to the consideration of such subjects, he does not appear to have faltered or hesitated. The opinions, the practical expression of which came subsequently to be called the “policy of annexation,” were farmed tit the very outset of his career, and rigidly maintained to its close. Eight months after his first assumption of the Government of India, he placed on record a confession of faith elicited by this agitation of the Satarah question. Subsequent events of far greater magnitude dwarfed that question in the public mind, and later utterances of the great minute-writer caused this first manifesto to be comparatively forgotten; but a peculiar interest must ever be associated with this earliest exposition of Dalhousie’s political creed, and therefore I give it in the words of the

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statesman himself: “The Government,” he wrote on the 30th August, 1848, “is bound in duty, as well as policy, to act on every such occasion with the purest integrity, and in the most scrupulous observance of good faith. Where even a shadow of doubt can be shown, the claim should at once be abandoned. But where the right to territory by lapse is clear, the Government is bound to take that which is justly and legally its due, and to extend to that territory the benefits of our sovereignty, present and prospective. In like manner, while I would not seek to lay down any inflexible rule with respect to adoption, I hold that, on all occasions, where heirs natural shall fail, the territory should be made to lapse, and adoption should not be permitted, excepting in those cases in which some strong political reason may render it expedient to depart from this general rule. There may be conflict of opinion as to the advantage or the propriety of extending our already vast possessions beyond their present limits. No man can more sincerely deprecate than I do any extension of the frontiers of our territory which can be avoided, or which may not become indispensably necessary from considerations of our own safety, and of the maintenance of the tranquillity of our provinces. But I cannot conceive it possible for any one to dispute the policy of taking advantage of every just opportunity which presents itself for consolidating the territories that already belong to us, by taking possession of States that may lapse in the midst of them; for thus getting rid of these petty intervening principalities, which may be made a means of annoyance, but which can never, I venture to think, be a source of strength, for adding to the resources of the public Treasury, and for extending the uniform application of our system of government to those whose best interests we sincerely believe will be promoted thereby. Such is the general principle that, in our humble opinion, ought to guide the conduct of the British Government in its disposal of independent States, where there has been a total failure of heirs whatsoever, or where permission is asked to continue by adoption a succession which fails in the natural line.”

The Court of Directors of the East India Company confirmed the decision of the Governor-General, and Satarah was annexed. There were men, however, in the Direction who protested against the measure as an act of unrighteous usurpation. “We are called upon,” said Mr. Tucker, ever an opponent of wrong, “to consider and decide upon a claim of right, and I have

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always felt that our best policy is that which most closely adheres to the dictates of justice.” “We ought not to forget,” said Mr. Shepherd, who, on great questions of this kind, was commonly to be found side by side with his veteran friend, contending for the rights of the native Princes of India, “that during the rise and progress of our empire in the East, our Governments have continued to announce and proclaim to the people of India that not only should all their rights and privileges which existed under preceding Governments be preserved and maintained, but that their laws, habits, customs, and prejudices should be respected16.” And what right more cherished, what custom more honoured, than the right and custom of adoption? But the majority of the Court of Directors supported the views of the Governor-General. They had heard the voice of the charmer. And from that time the policy of Dalhousie became the policy of Leadenhall-street, and the “Right of Lapse” was formally acknowledged.

Nagpur

And it was not, for reasons which I have already given, likely long to remain a dead letter. Soon another of the great Maratha chiefs was said to be dying, and in a few days news came to Calcutta that he was dead. It was the height of the cold season of 1853 – a few days before Christmas – when the slow booming of minute guns from the Saluting Battery of Fort William announced the death of Raguji Bhonsla, Rajah of Nagpur. At the age of forty-seven he succumbed to a complication of disorders, of which debauchery, cowardice, and obstinacy were the chief. There have been worse specimens of royalty, both in Eastern and Western Palaces, than this poor, worn-out, impotent sot; for although he was immoderately addicted to brandy and dancing-girls, he rather liked his people to be happy, and was not incapable of kindness that caused no trouble to himself. He had no son to succeed him; a posthumous son was an impossibility; and he had not adopted an heir.

It may seem strange and contradictory that if the right of adoption as sanctioned by religion and prescribed by ancestral usage be so dear to the people of India, they should ever fail to adopt in default of heirs of their body. But we know that they often do; and the omission is readily explicable by a reference

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to the ordinary weaknesses of humanity. We know that even in this country, with all the lights of civilisation and Christianity to keep us from going astray, thousands of reasoning creatures are restrained from making their wills by a vague feeling of apprehension that there is something unlucky “in such a procedure; that death will come the sooner for such a provision against its inevitable occurrence. What wonder, then, that in a country which is the very hotbed of superstition, men should be restrained by a kindred feeling from providing against the event of their dissolution? But in this case there is not only the hope of life, but the hope of offspring, to cause the postponement of the anticipatory ceremony. Men, under the most discouraging circumstances, still cling to the belief that by some favourable reaction of nature they may, even when stricken in years, beget an heir to their titles and possessions. In this sense, too, adoption is held to be unlucky, because it is irreligious. It is like a surrender of all hope, and a betrayal of want of faith in the power and goodness of the Almighty. No man expects to beget a son after he has adopted one.

In the case, too, of this Maratha Prince, there were special reasons why he should have abstained from making such a provision for the continuance of his House. According to the law and usage of his country, an adoption by his widow would have been as valid as an adoption by himself. It was natural, therefore, and assuredly it was in accordance with the character of the man, who was gormandising and dallying with the hand of death upon him, that he should have left the ceremony to be performed by others, Whether it was thus vicariously performed is not very clearly ascertainable. But it is certain that the British Resident reported that there had been no adoption. The Resident was Mr. Mansel, who had been one of the first members of the Lahor Board of Administration – a man with a keen sense of justice, favourable to the maintenance of native dynasties, and therefore, in those days, held to be crotchety and unsound. He had several times pressed the Rajah on the subject of adoption, but had elicited no satisfactory response. He reported unequivocally that nothing had been done, and asked for the instructions of the Supreme Government.

Lord Dalhousie was then absent from Calcutta. He was making one of his cold-weather tours of inspection – seeing with his own eyes the outlying province of Pegu, which had fallen by right of conquest into his hands. The Council, in his

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absence, hesitated to act, and all the instructions, therefore, which they could send were to the effect that the Resident should provide for the peace of the country, and keep things quiet until further orders. There was no doubt about Dalhousie’s decision in such a case. Had the Rajah adopted a son, there was little likelihood of the Governor-General’s sanction of the adoption; but as he had wilfully failed to perform the ceremony, it appeared to be as clear as noon-day that the great organ of the Paramount State would pronounce the fatal sentence of Lapse.

Dalhousie returned to Calcutta, and with characteristic energy addressed himself to the mastery of the whole question.

January 28, 1854

Before the first month of the new year had worn to a close, he attached his signature to an elaborate minute, in which he exhausted all the arguments which could be adduced in favour of the annexation of the country. Printed at full length, it would occupy fifty pages of this book. It was distinguished by infinite research and unrivalled powers of special pleading. It contended that there had been no adoption, and that if there had been, it would be the duty of the British Government to refuse to recognise it. “I am well aware,” he said, “that the continuance of the Raj of Nagpur under some Maratha rule, as an act of grace and favour on the part of the British Government, would be highly acceptable to native sovereigns and nobles in India; and there are, doubtless, many of high authority who would advocate the policy on that special ground. I understand the sentiment and respect it; but remembering the responsibility that is upon me, I cannot bring my judgment to admit that a kind and generous sentiment should outweigh a just and prudent policy.”

Among the members of the Supreme Council at that time was Colonel John Low. An old officer of the Madras army, who long years before, when the Peshwa and the Bhonsla were in arms against the British, had sate at the feet of John Malcolm, and had graduated in diplomacy under him; he had never forgotten the lessons which he had learnt from his beloved chief; he had never ceased to cherish those “kind and generous sentiments” of which the Governor-General had spoken in his minute. His whole life had been spent at the Courts of the native Princes of India. He had represented British interests long and faithfully at the profligate Court of Lakhnao. He had contended with the pride, the obstinacy, and the superstition of the effete

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Princes of Rajputana. He had played, and won, a difficult game, with the bankrupt State of Haidarabad. He knew what were the vices of Indian Princes and the evils of native misrule. But he had not so learnt the lesson presented to him by the spectacle of improvident rulers and profligate Courts; of responsibilities ignored. and opportunities wasted; as to believe it to be either the duty or the policy of the Paramount Government to seek “just occasions” for converting every misgoverned principality into a British province. Nor had he, knowing as he did, better perhaps than any of his countrymen, the real character of such misgovernment, ever cherished the conviction that the inhabitants of every native State were yearning for the blessings of this conversion. There were few such States left – Hindu or Muhammadan – but what remained from the wreck of Indian dynasties he believed it to be equally just and politic to preserve. And entertaining these opinions he spoke them out; not arrogantly or offensively, but with what I believe may be described as the calm resolution of despair. He knew that he might speak with the tongue of angels, and yet that his speech would no more affect the practical result than a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. “What am I against so many? he said; nay, what am I against one? Who will listen to the utterance of my ideas when opposed to the “deliberately-formed opinion of a statesman like the Marquis of Dalhousie, in whose well-proved ability and judgment and integrity of purpose they have entire confidence17?” But great statesmen in times past had thought that the extension of British rule in India was, for our own sakes, to be arrested rather than accelerated; that the native States were a source to us of strength rather than of weakness, and that it would go ill with us when there were none left18.

Strong in this belief, Colonel Low recorded two minutes, protesting

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against the impolicy and the injustice of the proposed annexation of Nagpur. He said that already the annexation of Satarah had in many parts of India had a bad moral effect19; that it had shaken the confidence of the people in the justice and good faith of the British Government; that people had asked what crime Satarah had committed that sentence of political death. should thus have been pronounced against it; that throughout India acquisition by conquest was well understood, and in many cases admitted to be right; that the annexation of the Panjab, for example, had not been regarded as a wrong, because the chiefs and people had brought it on themselves, but that the extinction of a loyal native State, in default of heirs, was not appreciable in any part of India, and that the exercise of the alleged right of lapse would create a common feeling of uncertainty and distrust at every Durbar in the country. He dwelt upon the levelling effects of British dominion, and urged that, as in our own provinces, the upper classes were invariably trodden down, it was sound policy to maintain the native States, if only as a means of providing an outlet for the energies of men of good birth and aspiring natures, who could never rise under British rule. He contended that our system of administration might be far better than the native system, but that the people did not like it better; they clung to their old institutions, however defective, and were averse to change, even though a change for the better. “In one respect,” he said, “the natives of India are exactly like the inhabitants of all parts of the known world; they like their own habits and customs better than those of foreigners.”

Having thus in unmeasured opposition to the Dalhousie theory flung down the gauntlet of the old school at the feet of the Governor-General, Low ceased from the enunciation of general principles, and turned to the discussion of the particular

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case before him. He contended that the treaty between the British Government and the late Rajah did not limit the succession to heirs of his body, and that, therefore, there was a clear title to succession in the Bhonsla family by means of a son adopted by either the Rajah himself or by his eldest widow, in accordance with law and usage. The conduct, he said, of the last Prince of Nagpur had not been such as to alienate this right; he had been loyal to the Paramount State, and his country had not been misgoverned; there had been nothing to call for military interference on our part, and little to compel grave remonstrance and rebuke. For what crime, then, was his line to be cut off and the honours of his House extinguished forever? To refuse the right of adoption in such a case would, he alleged, be entirely contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the treaty. But how was it to be conceded when it was not claimed; when no adoption had been reported; when it was certain that the Rajah had not exercised his right, and there had been no tidings of such a movement on the part of his. widow? The answer to this was, that the Government had been somewhat in a hurry to extinguish the Raj without waiting for the appearance of claimants, and that if they desired to perpetuate it, it was easy to find a fitting successor.

Of such opinions as these Low expected no support in the Council-chamber of Calcutta – no support from the authorities at home. It little mattered, indeed, what the latter might think, for the annexation of Nagpur was decreed and to be accomplished without reference to England. As the extinction of the Satarah State had been approved by the Company, in the face of an undisputed adoption asserted at the right time, Dalhousie rightly judged that there would be no straining at a gnat in the Nagpur case, where there had been no adoption at all. Indeed, the general principles upon which he had based his proceedings towards Satarah, in the first year of his administration having been accepted in Leadenhall-street, there could be no stickling about so mild an illustration of them as that afforded by the treatment of Nagpur. The justification of the policy in the latter instance is to be found in the fact that there was no assertion of an adoption – no claim put forward on behalf of any individual – at the time when the British Government was called upon to determine the course to be pursued. It is true that the provisional Government might, for a time, have been vested in the eldest widow of the deceased Prince, adoption by

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whom would have been recognised by Hindu law and Maratha usage; but it was not probable that the British Government would have thus gone out of its way to bolster up a decayed Maratha dynasty, when the head. of that Government conscientiously believed that it was the duty of the Paramount State to consolidate its dominions by recognising only among these effete Princes succession by direct heirship of the body. Cherishing the faith which he did, Dalhousie would have gone grievously wrong, and he would. have stood convicted of a glaring inconsistency, if he had adopted any other course; so the kingdom of Barar was declared to have lapsed to the British Government, and the family of the Bhonsla was extinct.

The country passed under British rule, and the people became British subjects, without an audible murmur of discontent except from the recesses of the palace. There the wretched ladies of the royal household, at first dismayed and paralysed by the blow which had fallen upon them, began, after a little space, to bestir themselves and to clamour for their asserted rights. Liberal pensions had been settled upon them; but their family was without a head, and that which might soon have faded into an idea was rendered a galling and oppressive reality by the spoliation of the palace, which followed. closely upon the extinction of the Raj. The live stock and dead stock of the Bhonsla, were sent to the hammer. It must have been a great day for speculative cattle-dealers at Sitabaldi when the royal elephants, horses, and bullocks were sold off at the price of carrion20; and a sad day, indeed, in the royal household, when the venerable Bankha Bai21, with all the wisdom and moderation of fourscore well-spent years upon her, was so stung by a sense of the indignity offered to her, that she threatened to fire the palace if the furniture were removed. But the furniture was removed, and the jewels of the Bhonsla family, with a few propitiatory exceptions, were sent to the Calcutta market. And I have heard it said that these seizures, these sales, created a

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worse impression, not only in Barar, but in the surrounding provinces, than the seizure of the kingdom itself22.

But even in the midst of their degradation, these unfortunate ladies clung to the belief that the Bhonsla family would some day be restored and rehabilitated. The Governor-General had argued that the widow, knowing that her husband was disinclined to adopt, had, for like reasons, abstained from adoption. He admitted the right according to Maratha, usage, but declared that she was unwilling to exercise it. He contended, too, that the Bankha Bai, the most influential of the royal ladies, would naturally be averse to a measure which would weaken her own authority in the palace. But his logic halted, and his prophecy failed. Both the elder and the younger lady were equally eager to perpetuate the regal dignities of their House. Mr. Mansel had suggested a compromise, in the shape of an arrangement somewhat similar to that which had been made with the Nawabs of the Karnatik, by which the title might be maintained, and a certain fixed share of the revenue set apart for its dotation. But he had been severely censured for his indiscretion, and had left Nagpur in disgrace. He was, perhaps, the best friend that the Ranis had in that conjuncture; but – such is the value of opinion – they accused him, in the quaint Palace-English of their scribe, of “endeavouring to gain baronetage and exaltation of rank by reporting to the Governor-General that the late Rajah was destitute of heirs to succeed him, with a view to his Lordship being pleased to order the annexation of the territory23.” But there was not a man in the country

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less disposed to annex provinces and to humour Governors than Charles Mansel, and instead of being exalted in rank, he sacrificed his prospects to his principles and retired from the Service.

Failing altogether to move the Governor-General, the Ranis sent agents to London, but with no better result. After the manner of native emissaries from Indian Courts, they spent large sums of money in feeing lawyers and printing pamphlets, without making any impression on Leadenhall-street or Cannon-row, and at last, being recalled by their employers, and having nothing wherewith to pay their debts, they flung themselves on the generosity of their opponents, and were sent home by the help of the great Corporation whom they had reviled. Meanwhile, the elder widow of the late Rajah died, and a boy, of another branch, whom the Ranis called Janoji Bhonsla, and in whose person they desired to prolong the Nagpur dynasty, was formally adopted by the dying lady. Clutching at any chance, however desperate, an attempt was made to revive the question of the political adoption; but the sagacity of the Bankha Bai must have seen that it was too late, and that nothing but the private property of the deceased Princess could be thus secured to the adopted heir. The country of the Bhonslas had become as inalienably a part of the Company’s possessions as the opium go-downs of Patna, or the gun-factory at Kasipur.

Thus, within a few years of each other, the names of two of the great rulers of the Maratha Empire ceased from off the roll of Indian Princes; and the territories of the Company were largely increased. Great in historical dignity as was the Satarah Raj, it was comparatively limited in geographical extent, whilst the Bhonsla, though but a servant in rank, owned rich and productive lands, yielding in profusion, among other good gifts, the great staple of our English manufactures24. Whilst the annexation of the Panjab and of Pegu extended the British Empire at its two extreme ends, these Maratha acquisitions

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helped to consolidate it. Some unseemly patches, breaking the great rose-hued surface, which spoke of British supremacy in the East, were thus effaced from the map; and the Right of Lapse was proclaimed to the furthermost ends of our Indian dominions.

There is a circumstantial difference between these two cases, inasmuch as that, in the one, there was an actual and undisputed adoption by the deceased Rajah, and in the other there was none; but as Dalhousie had frankly stated that he would not have recognised a Nagpur adoption had there been one, the two resumptions were governed by the same principle. And this was not a mere arbitrary assertion of the power of the strong over the weak, but was based, at all events, on a plausible substratum of something that simulated reason and justice. It was contended that, whenever a native Prince owed his existence as a sovereign ruler to the British Government, that Government had the right, on failure of direct heirs, to resume, at his death, the territories of which it had originally placed -him in possession. The power that rightly gives, it was argued, may also rightfully take away. Now, in the cases both of Satarah and Nagpur, the Princes, whom the British Government found in possession of those States, had forfeited their rights: the one by hidden treachery and rebellion, the other by open hostility. The one, after full inquiry, had been deposed; the other, many years before, had been driven into the jungle, and had perished in obscurity, a fugitive and an outcast25. In both cases, therefore, the “crime” had been committed which the natives of India are so willing to recognise as a legitimate reason for the punishment of the weaker State by the stronger. But the offence had been condoned, and the sovereignty had been suffered to survive; another member of the reigning family being set up by the Paramount State in place of the offending Prince. Both Partab Singh and Raguji Bhonsla, as individuals, owed their sovereign power

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to the grace and favour of the British Government. All this is historical fact. It may be admitted, too, that when the crimes of which I have spoken were committed by the heads of the Satarah and Nagpur families, the British Government would have been justified in imposing conditions upon the restoration of the Raj, to the extent of limiting the succession to heirs of the body, or even in making a personal treaty with the favoured Prince conferring no absolute right of sovereignty upon his successors. But the question is whether, these restrictions, not having been penally imposed, at the time of forfeiture, the right which then might have been exercised could be justly asserted on the occurrence of a subsequent vacancy created by death? Lord Dalhousie thought that it could – that the circumstances under which the Satarah and Nagpur Princes had received their principalities as free gifts from the British Government conferred certain rights of suzerainty on that Government, which otherwise they could not have properly asserted. But, on the other hand, it is contended that both principalities, whatsoever might have been the offences committed years before by their rulers, had been re-established in their integrity – that no restrictions as to their continuance had then been imposed – that treaties had been concluded containing the usual expressions with respect to succession – in a word, that the condonation had been complete, and that both the Satarah and the Nagpur Houses really possessed all the rights and privileges which had belonged to them before the representative of the one compromised himself by a silly intrigue, and the head of the other, with equal fatuity, plunged into hostilities which could result only in his ruin.

This justificatory plea, based upon the alleged right of the British Government to resume, in default of direct heirs, tenures derived from the favour of the Lord Paramount, was again asserted about the same time, but with some diversity of application. Comparatively insignificant in itself, the case claims especial attention on account of results to be hereafter recorded in these pages.

Jhansi

In the centre of India, among the small principalities of Bundelkhand, was the state of Jhansi, held by a Maratha chief, originally a vassal of the Peshwa. But on the transfer to the British Government of that Prince’s possessions in Bundelkhand, the former had resolved “to declare the territory of Jhansi to be hereditary in the family of the late Sheo Rao Bhao, and to perpetuate with

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his heirs the treaty concluded with the late Bhao;” and, accordingly, a treaty was concluded with the ruling chief, Ram Chand, then only a Subahdar, constituting “him, his heirs, and successors,” hereditary rulers of the territory. Loyal and well disposed, he won the favour of the British Government, who, fifteen years after the conclusion of the treaty, conferred upon him the title of Rajah, which he only lived three years to enjoy.

For all purposes of succession he was a childless man; and so various claimants to the chiefship appeared. The British agent believed that the most valid claim was that of the late Rajah’s uncle, who was at all events a direct lineal descendant of one of the former Subahdars. He was a leper, and might have been rejected; but, incapable as he was, the people accepted him, and, for three years, the administration of Jhansi was carried on in his name.

1838

At the end of those three years he died, also without heirs of the body, and various claimants as before came forward to dispute the succession. Having no thought of absorbing the State into our British territories, Lord Auckland appointed a commission of British officers to investigate and report upon the pretensions of the several claimants; and the result was, that Government, rightly considering that if the deceased Rajah had any title to the succession, his brother had now an equally good title, acknowledged Gangadhar Rao’s right to succeed to the hereditary chiefship.

Under the administration of Ragunath the Leper the country had been grossly mismanaged, and as his successor was scarcely more competent, the British Government undertook to manage the State for him, and soon revived the revenue, which had dwindled down under the native rulers. But, in 1843, after the amputation of a limb of the territory for the support of the Bundelkhand Legion, the administration was restored to Gangadhar Rao, who carried on the government for ten years, and then, like his predecessors, died childless.

Then again arose the question of succession; but the claims of the different aspirants to the Raj were regarded with far other eyes than those which had scrutinised them in times past. The Governor-General recorded another fatal minute, by which the death-warrant of the State was signed. It was ruled that Jhansi was a dependent State, held by the favour of the Peshwa, as Lord Paramount, and that his powers had devolved upon the British Government. A famous minute recorded, in 1837,

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by Sir Charles Metcalfe, was cited to show the difference between Hindu sovereign Princes and “chiefs who hold grants of land or public revenue by gift from a sovereign or paramount Power,” and to prove that, in the latter case, “the Power which made the grant, or that which by conquest or otherwise has succeeded to its rights, is entitled to limit succession,” and to “resume on failure of direct heirs of the body26.” To demonstrate the right to resume was in those days tantamount to exercising it. So Jhansi was resumed. In vain the widow of the late Rajah, whom the Political Agent described as “a lady bearing a high character, and much respected by everyone at Jhansi,” protested that her husband’s House had ever been faithful to the British Government – in vain she dwelt upon services rendered in former days to that Government, and the acknowledgments which they had elicited from our rulers – in vain she pointed to the terms of the treaty, which did not, to her simple understanding, bar succession in accordance with the laws and usages of her country – in vain she quoted precedents to show that the grace and favour sought for Jhansi had been yielded to other States. The fiat was irrevocable. It had been ruled that the interests both of the Jhansi State and the British Government imperatively demanded annexation. “As it lies in the midst of other British districts,” said Lord Dalhousie, “the possession of it as our own will tend to the improvement of the general internal administration of our possessions in Bundelkhand. That its incorporation with the British territories will be greatly for the benefit of the people of Jhansi a reference to the results of experience will suffice to show.” The results of experience have since shown to what extent the people of Jhansi appreciated the benefits of that incorporation.

Karauli

Whilst this question was being disposed of by Lord Dalhousie and his colleagues, another lapse was under consideration, which had occurred some time before, but regarding which no final decision had been passed. In the

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summer of 1852, the young chief of Karauli, one of the smaller Rajput States, had died, after adopting another boy, connected with him by ties of kindred. At that time Colonel Low represented the British Government in Rajputana, and he at once pronounced his opinion that the adoption ought immediately to be recognised.

The Governor-General hesitated. It appeared to him that Karauli might, rightly and expediently, be declared to have lapsed. But his Council was divided; his Agent in Rajputana, had declared unequivocally for the adoption; and the case differed in some respects from the Satarah question, which had already been decided with the sanction and approval of the Home Government. How great the difference really was appeared far more clearly to the experienced eye of Sir Frederick Currie than to the vision of the Governor-General, clouded as it was by the film of a foregone conclusion27. The name of Satarah had, by the force of accidental circumstances, become great throughout the land, both in India and in England; it was a familiar name to thousands and tens of thousands who had never heard of Karauli. With the Marathas, too, the House of Sivaji had been held in high veneration; but the Marathas could only boast of recent sovereignty; their high estate was one of modern usurpation. Their power had risen side by side with our own, and had been crushed down by our greater weight and greater vigour. But the houses of Rajputana had flourished centuries before the establishment of British rule; and the least of them, had an ancestral dignity respected throughout the whole length and breadth of Hindustan, and treaty rights not less valid than any possessed by the greatest of territorial Princes. To men who had graduated, from boyhood upwards,-in Indian statesmanship, there was something almost sacrilegious in the idea of laying a destroying hand even upon the least of the ancient Houses of Rajputana – of destroying titles that had been honoured long years before the face of the white man had been seen in the country. But impressions of this kind are the growth of long intercourse with the people themselves, and we cannot be surprised that, after a year or two of Indian government, Lord Dalhousie, with all his unrivalled

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quickness of perception, should not have thoroughly understood the vital differences between the various races inhabiting the great continent of India. Had he done so, he would at once have sanctioned the proposed adoption; as it was, he referred the question to the final decision of the Home Government.

Eager as they were at that time to support the policy of Lord Dalhousie, and entire as was the faith of many of them in his wisdom, the Directors could not look with favour upon a proposal to commence the gradual extinction of the ancient principalities of Rajputana.

January 26, 1853

“It appears to us,” they said, “that there is a marked distinction in fact between the case of Karauli and Satarah, which is not sufficiently adverted to in the Minute of the Governor-General. The Satarah State was one of recent origin, derived altogether from the creation and gift of the British Government, whilst Karauli is one of the oldest of the Rajput States, which has been under the rule of its native princes from a period long anterior to the British power in India. It stands to us only in the relation of protected ally, and probably there is no part of India into which it is less desirable, except upon the strongest grounds, to substitute our government for that of the native rulers. In our opinion, such grounds do not exist in the present case, and we have, therefore, determined to sanction the succession of Bharat Pal.”

But before the arrival of the despatch expressing these just sentiments and weighty opinions, all chance of the succession of Bharat Pal had passed away. Had the adoption been granted at once, it would, in all probability, have been accepted by the members of the late Rajah’s family, by the principal chiefs, and by the people of the country. But it is the inevitable tendency of delay in such a case to unsettle the public mind, to raise questions which but for this suspense would not have been born, and to excite hopes and stimulate ambitions which otherwise would have lain dormant. So it happened that whilst London and Calcutta were corresponding about the rights of Bharat Pal, another claimant to the sovereignty of Karauli was asserting his pretensions in the most demonstrative manner. Another and a nearer kinsman of the late Prince – older, and, therefore, of a more pronounced personal character – stood forward to proclaim his rights, and to maintain them by arms. The ladies of the royal family, the chiefs, and the people, sup-

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ported his claims; and the representative of the British Government in Rajputana recognised their validity. That representative was Sir Henry Lawrence. Succeeding General Low in the Agency, he cherished the same principles as those which had ever been so consistently maintained by that veteran statesman; but circumstances had arisen which moved him to give them a different application. This new pretender to the throne had better claims on the score of consanguinity than Bharat Pal, but Adoption overrides all claims of relationship, and, if the adoption were valid, the latter was legally the son and heir of the deceased. In this view, as consonant with the customs of the country, Henry Lawrence would have supported the succession of Bharat Pal; but, on investigation, it appeared that all the requirements and conditions of law and usage had not been fulfilled, and that the people themselves doubted the validity of the adoption. It appeared to him, therefore, that the British Government would best discharge its duty to Karauli by allowing the succession of Madan Pal. Even on the score of adoption his claims were good, for he had been adopted by the eldest of the late Rajah’s widows, which, in default of adoption by the Rajah himself, would have been good against all claimants. But, in addition to this, it was to be said of the pretensions of this man that he was older than the other; that a minority would thus be avoided altogether; that he had some personal claims to consideration; and that the voice of the chiefs and the people had decided in his favour. As the succession, therefore, of Bharat Pal had not been sanctioned, and as the decision of the Home Government in his favour had not been published, there would be no wrong to him in this preference of his rival, so Henry Lawrence recommended, and the Government of Lord Dalhousie approved, the succession of Madan Pal to the sovereignty of Karauli.

So Lapse, in this instance, did not triumph; and the ancient Houses of Rajputana, which, during these two years of suspense, had awaited the issue with the deepest interest, felt some temporary relief when it was known that the wedge of annexation had not been driven into the time-honoured circle of the States. But it is not to be supposed that because no wrong was done at last no injury was done by the delay. Public rumour recognises no Secret Department. It was well known at every native Court, in every native bazaar, that the British Government were discussing the policy of annexing or not annexing Karauli.

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The mere fact that there was a question to be discussed, in such a case, was sufficient to fill the minds of the people with anxiety and alarm. For two years Karauli was without any other ruler than the Political Agent of the British Government; and this was a significant fact, the impression of which was not to be removed by the subsequent decision. The Rajput Princes lost their confidence in the good faith of the British Government. Karauli had been spared, they scarcely knew how; some were fain to attribute it to the well-known justice and liberality of Henry Lawrence. But the same moderation might not be displayed again; there were childless men amongst them; and from that time a restless, uneasy feeling took possession of them, and no man felt sure that his House would not perish with him. It was not strange, indeed, that a year or two afterwards there should have been in circulation all over the country ominous reports to the effect that the policy of Lord Dalhousie had eventually triumphed, and that the gradual absorption of all the Rajput States had been sanctioned by the Home Government. It was a dangerous lie; and even the habitual reticence of the Court of Directors was not proof against the grossness of the calumny; so it was authoritatively contradicted. But not before it had worked its way in India, and done much to undermine the foundations of that confidence which is one of the main pillars of our strength.

Sambhalpur 1849

There is one other story of territorial annexation yet to be told – briefly, for it was not thought at the time to be of much political importance, and now is held but little in remembrance. Beyond the south-western frontier of Bengal was the territory of Sambhalpur. It had formerly been an outlying district of the Nagpur principality, but had been ceded by the Bhonsla family, and had been bestowed by the British on a descendant of the old Sambhalpur Rajahs, under terms which would have warranted the resumption of the estate on the death of the first incumbent. But twice the sovereign rights had been bestowed anew upon members of the family, and not until 1849, when Narain Singh lay at the point of death, was it determined to annex the territory to the British dominions. There were no heirs of the body; no near relatives of the Rajah. No adoption had been declared. The country was said to have been grievously misgoverned. And so there seemed to be a general agreement

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that the Lapse was perfect, and that annexation might be righteously proclaimed. Dalhousie was absent from the Presidency; but the case was clear, and the Government neither in India nor in England hesitated for a moment. And, perhaps, though it was not without its own bitter fruit, there is less to be said against it, on the score of abstract justice, than against anything of which I have written in this division of my work.

But there were lapses of another kind, lapses which involved no gain of territory to the British Government, for the territory had been gained before. There were several deposed princes in the land, representatives of ancient Houses, whose sceptres had passed by conquest or by treaty into the white man’s hand, but who still enjoyed the possession of considerable revenues, and maintained some semblance of their former dignity and state. It happened. that, whilst Dalhousie reigned in India, three of these pensioned princes died. Of the story of one of them I must write in detail.

The Story of the Peshwa

There had once been three great Maratha Houses: the Houses of Satarah, of Nagpur, and of Puna. It has been told how Dalhousie extinguished the two first; the third had been for some thirty years territorially extinct when he was sent out to govern India. In 1818, at the close of the second great Maratha war, the Peshwa, Baji Rao, surrendered to Sir John Malcolm. He had been betrayed into hostility, and treacherous hostility; he had appealed to the sword, and he had been fairly beaten; and there was nothing left for him but to end his clays as an outcast and a fugitive, or to fling himself upon the mercy of the British Government. He chose the latter course; and when he gave himself to the English General, he knew that he was in the hands of one who sympathised with him in his fallen fortunes, and would be a generous friend to him in adversity. Malcolm pledged the Government to bestow upon the Peshwa, for the support of himself and family, an annual pension of not less than eight lakhs of rupees. The promise was said to be an over-liberal one; and there were those who at the time condemned Malcolm for his profuseness. But he replied, that “it had been the policy of the British Government, since its first establishment in India, to act towards princes, whose bad faith and treachery had compelled it to divest them of all power and dominion, with a generosity which almost lost sight of their offences. The effect of this course of proceeding in reconciling

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all classes to its rule had been great. The liberality and the humanity which it had displayed on such occasions had, I was satisfied, done more than its arms towards the firm establishment of its power. It was, in fact, a conquest over mind, and among men so riveted in their habits and prejudices as the natives of their country, the effect, though unseen, was great beyond calculation.” It was a solace to him to think that these sentiments were shared by such men as Mountstuart Elphinstone, David Ochterlony, and Thomas Munro.

So Baji Rao went into honourable seclusion, and an asylum was found for him at Bithur, distant some twelve miles from the great military station of Kanhpur, in the North-Western Provinces of India. He was not then an old man, as age is calculated by years, but he was said to be of debauched habits and feeble constitution; and no one believed that he would very long survive to be a burden upon the Company. But he outlived his power for a third part of a century, living resignedly, if not contentedly, in his new home, with a large body of followers and dependents, mostly of his own race, and many others of the outward insignia of state. From the assemblage, under such circumstances, of so large a body of Marathas, some feeling of apprehension and alarm might have arisen in the mind of the British Government, especially in troubled times; but the fidelity of the ex-Peshwa himself was as conspicuous as the good conduct and the orderly behaviour of his people. Nor was it only a passive loyalty that he manifested; for twice, in critical conjunctures, when the English were sore-pressed, he came forward with offers of assistance. When the War in Afghanistan had drained our Treasury, and money was grievously wanted, he lent the Company five lakhs of rupees; and when, afterwards, our dominions were threatened with an invasion from the Panjab, and there was much talk all over the country of a hostile alliance between the Sikhs and the Marathas, the steadfastness of his fidelity was evidenced by an offer made to the British Government to raise and to maintain at his own cost a thousand Horse and a thousand Foot. As he had the disposition, so also had he the means to serve us. His ample pension more than sufficed for the wants even of a retired monarch; and as years passed, people said that he had laid by a great store of wealth, and asked who was to be its inheritor? For it was with him, as it was with other Maratha princes, he was going down to the grave leaving no son to

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succeed him. So he adopted a son, from his own family stock28, and, some years before his death, sought the recognition of the British Government for an adoption embracing more than the right of succession to his savings (for this needed no sovereign sanction), the privilege of succeeding to the title and the pension of the Peshwa. The prayer was not granted; but the Company did not shut out all hope that, after the death of Baji Rao, some provision might be made for his family. The question was reserved for future consideration – that is, until the contingency of the ex-Peshwa’s death should become an accomplished reality; and as at this time the old man was feeble, paralytic, and nearly blind, it was not expected that his pension would much longer remain a burden on the Indian revenues.

Death of Baji Rao

But not until the 28th of January, 1851, when there was the weight of seventy-seven years upon him, did the last of the Peshwas close his eyes upon the world for ever. He left behind him a will, executed in 1839, in which he named as his adopted son, “to inherit and be the sole master of the Gadi of the Peshwa, the dominions, wealth, family possessions, treasure, and all his real and personal property,” a youth known as Dundu Pant, Nana Sahib.

The Nana Sahib

When Baji Rao died, the heir was twenty-seven years old; described as “a quiet, unostentatious young man, not at all addicted to any extravagant habits, and invariably showing a ready disposition to attend to the advice of the British Commissioner.” What he was safe to inherit was about £300,000, more than one-half of which was invested in Government securities29; but there was an immense body of dependents to be provided for, and it was thought that the British Government might appropriate a portion of the ex-Peshwa’s stipend to the support of the family at Bithur. The management of affairs was in the hands of the Subahdar Ramchandar Pant, a faithful friend and

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adherent of Baji Rao, who counselled his master with wisdom, and controlled his followers with vigour; and he now, with all due respect for the British Government, pleaded the cause of the adopted son of the Peshwa. “Nana Sahib,” he said, “considering the Honourable Company in the room of the late Maharajah as his protector and supporter, is full of hopes and free of care on this subject. His dependence in every way is on the kindness and liberality of the British Government, for the increase of whose power and prosperity he has ever been, and will continue to be, desirous.” The British Commissioner at Bithur30 supported the appeal on behalf of the family, but it met with no favour in high places. Mr. Thomason was then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces. He was a good man, an able man, a man of high reputation, but he was one of the leaders of the New School, and was no friend to the princes and nobles of the land; and he told the Commissioner to discourage all hopes of further assistance in the breasts of the family, and to “strive to induce the numerous retainers of the Peshwa speedily to disperse and return to the Dakhin.” Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General; and, in such a case, his views were little likely to differ from those of his Lieutenant. So he declared his opinion that the recommendations of the Commissioner were “uncalled for and unreasonable.” “The Governor-General,” it was added, “concurs in opinion with his Honour (Mr. Thomason) in thinking that, under any circumstances, the Family have no claim upon the Government; and he will by no means consent to any portion of the public revenues being conferred on them. His Lordship requests that the determination of the Government of India may be explicitly declared to the Family without delay.” And it was so declared; but with some small alleviation of the harshness of the sentence, for the Jaghir, or rent-free estate, of Bithur was to be continued to the Nana Sahib, but without the exclusive jurisdiction which had been enjoyed by the ex-Peshwa.

Memorial of the Nana

When Dundu Pant learnt that there was no hope of any further assistance to the family at Bithur from the liberality of the Government of India, he determined

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to appeal to the Court of Directors of the East India Company. It had been in contemplation during the lifetime of Baji Rao to adopt such a course, and a son of the Subahdar Ramchandar had been selected as the agent who was to prosecute the appeal. But, discouraged by the Commissioner, the project had been abandoned, and was not revived until all other hope had failed after the ex-Peshwa’s death. Then it was thought that a reversal of the adverse decision might be obtained by memorialising the authorities in England, and a memorial was accordingly drawn up and despatched, in the usual manner, through the Government in India.. “The course pursued by the local governments,” it was said, “is not only an unfeeling one towards the numerous family of the deceased prince, left almost entirely dependent upon the promises of the East India Company, but inconsistent with what is due to the representative of a long line of sovereigns. Your memorialist, therefore, deems it expedient at once to appeal to your Honourable Court, not merely on the ground of the faith of treaties, but of a bare regard to the advantages the East India Company have derived from the last of the Maratha Empire. ... It would be contrary to the spirit of all treaties hitherto concluded to attach a special meaning to an article of the stipulations entered into, whilst another is interpreted and acted upon in its most liberal sense.” And then the memorialist proceeded to argue, that as the Peshwa, on behalf of his heirs and successors, had ceded his territories to the Company, the Company were bound to pay the price of such cession to the Peshwa and his heirs and successors. If the compact were lasting on one side, so also should it be on the other. “Your memorialist submits that a cession of a perpetual revenue of thirty-four lakhs of rupees in consideration of an annual pension of eight lakhs establishes a de facto presumption that the payment of one is contingent upon the receipt of the other, and hence that, as long as those receipts continue, the payment of the pension is to follow.” It was then argued that the mention, in the treaty, of the “Family” of the Peshwa indicated the hereditary character of the stipulation, on the part of the Company, as such mention would be unnecessary and unmeaning in its application to a mere life-grant, “for a provision for the support of the prince necessarily included the maintenance of his family; “and after this, from special arguments, the Nana Sahib turned to a general assertion of his rights, as based on precedent and

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analogy. “Your memorialist,” it was said, “is at a loss to account for the difference between the treatment, by the Company, of the descendants of other princes and that experienced by the family of the Peshwa, represented by him. The ruler of Maisur evinced the most implacable hostility towards the Company’s government; and your memorialist’s father was one of the princes whose aid was invoked by the Company to crush a relentless enemy. When that chieftain fell, sword in hand, the Company, far from abandoning his progeny to their fate, have afforded an asylum and a liberal support to more than one generation of his descendants, without distinction between the legitimate and the illegitimate. With equal or even greater liberality the Company delivered the dethroned Emperor of Delhi from a dungeon, re-invested him with the insignia of sovereignty, and assigned to him a munificent revenue, which is continued to his descendants to the present day. Wherein is your memorialist’s case different? It is true that the Peshwa, after years of amity with the British Indian Government, during which he assigned to them revenue to the amount of half a crore of rupees, was unhappily engaged in war with them, by which he perilled his throne. But as he was not reduced to extremities, and even if reduced, closed with the terms proposed to him by the British Commander, and ceded his rich domains to place himself and his family under the fostering care of the Company, and as the Company still profit by the revenues of his hereditary possessions, on what principle are his descendants deprived of the pension included in those terms and the vestiges of sovereignty? Wherein are the claims of his family to the favour and consideration of the Company less than those of the conquered Maisurean or the captive Mughul?” Then the Nana Sahib began to set forth his own personal claims as founded on the adoption in his favour; he quoted the best authorities on Hindu law to prove that the son by adoption has all the rights of the son by birth; and he cited numerous instances, drawn from the recent history of Hindustan and the Dakhin, to show how such adoptions had before been recognised by the British Government. “The same fact,” he added, “is evinced in the daily practice of the Company’s Courts all over India, in decreeing to the adopted sons of princes, of zamindars, and persons of every grade, the estates of those persons to the exclusion of other heirs of the blood. Indeed, unless the

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British Indian Government is prepared to abrogate the Hindu Sacred Code, and to interdict the practice of the Hindu religion, of both of which adoption is a fundamental feature, your memorialist cannot understand with what consistency his claim to the pension of the late Peshwa can be denied, merely on the ground of his being an adopted son.”

Another plea for refusal might be, nay, had been, based upon the fact that Baji Rao, from the savings of his pension, had accumulated and left behind him a large amount of private property, which no one could alienate from his heirs. Upon this the Nana Sahib, with not unreasonable indignation, said: “That if the withholding of the pension proceeded from the supposition that the late Peshwa had left a sufficient provision for his family, it would be altogether foreign to the question, and unprecedented in the annals of the History of British India. The pension of eight lakhs of rupees per annum has been agreed upon on the part of the British Government, to enable his Highness the late BAY Rao to support himself and family it is immaterial to the British Government what portion of that sum the late prince actually expended, nor has there been any agreement entered into to the effect that his Highness the late Baji Rao should be compelled to expend every fraction of an annual allowance accorded to him by a special treaty, in consideration of his ceding to the British Government territories yielding an annual and perpetual revenue of thirty-four lakhs of rupees. Nobody on earth had a right to control the expenditure of that pension, and if his Highness the late Baji Rao had saved every fraction of it, he would have been perfectly justified in doing so. Your memorialist would venture to ask, whether the British Government ever deigned to ask in what manner the pension granted to any of its numerous retired servants is expended? or whether any of them saves a portion, or what portion, of his pension? and, furthermore, in the event of its being proved that the incumbents of such pensions had saved a large portion thereof, it would be considered a sufficient reason for withholding the pension from the children in the proportions stipulated by the covenant entered into with its servant? And yet is a native prince, the descendant of an ancient scion of Royalty, who relies upon the justice and liberality of the British Government, deserving of less consideration than its covenanted servants? To disperse, however, any erroneous impression that may exist on the part of the

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British Government on that score, your memorialist would respectfully beg to observe that the pension of eight lakhs of rupees, stipulated for by the treaty of 1818, was not exclusively for the support of his Highness the late Baji Rao and his family, but also for the maintenance of a large retinue of faithful adherents, who preferred following the ex-Peshwa in his voluntary exile. Their large number, fully known to the British Government, caused no inconsiderable call upon the reduced resources of his Highness; and, furthermore, if it be taken into consideration the appearance which Native princes, though rendered powerless, are still obliged to keep up to ensure respect, it may be easily imagined that the savings from a pension of eight lakhs of rupees, granted out of an annual revenue of thirty-four lakhs, could not have been large. But notwithstanding this heavy call upon the limited resources of the late Peshwa, his Highness husbanded his resources with much care, so as to be enabled to invest a portion of his annual income in public securities, which, at the time of his death, yielded an income of about eighty thousand rupees.

MS. Records

Is then the foresight and the economy on the part of his Highness the late Bail Rao to be regarded as an offence deserving to be visited with the punishment of stopping the pension for the support of his family guaranteed by a formal treaty?

But neither the rhetoric nor the reasoning of the Nana Sahib had any effect upon the Home Government.

Decision of the Company

The Court of Directors of the East India Company were hard as a rock, and by no means to be moved to compassion. They had already expressed an opinion that the savings of the Peshwa were sufficient for the maintenance of his heirs and dependents31; and when the memorial came before them, they summarily rejected it, writing out to the Government to “inform the memorialist that the pension of his adoptive father was not hereditary, that he has no claim whatever to it, and

that his application is wholly inadmissible.”

May 4, 1853

Such a reply as this must have crushed out all hope from

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the Bithur Family, and shown the futility of further action; but it happened that, before this answer was received, the Nana Sahib had sent an agent to England to prosecute his claims. This agent was not the son of the old Maratha Subahdar, to whom the mission first contemplated was to have been entrusted, but a young and astute Muhammadan, with a good presence, a plausible address, and a knowledge of the English language. His name was Azim-ullah Khan. In the summer of 1853 he appeared in England, and in conjunction with an Englishman named Biddle, prosecuted the claims of the Nana, but with no success. Judgment had already been recorded, and nothing that these agents could say or do was likely to cause its reversal.

So Azim-ullah Khan, finding that little or nothing could be done in the way of business for his employer, devoted his energies to the pursuit of pleasure on his own account. Passing by reason of his fine clothes for a person of high station, he made his way into good society, and is said to have boasted of favours received from English ladies. Outwardly he was a gay, smiling, voluptuous sort of person; and even a shrewd observer might have thought that he was intent always upon the amusement of the hour. There was one man, however, in England at that time, who, perhaps, knew that the desires of the plausible Muhammadan were not bounded by the enjoyment of the present. For it happened that the agent, who had been sent to England by the deposed Satarah Family, in the hope of obtaining for them the restoration of their principality, was still resident in the English metropolis. This man was a Maratha named Rangu Bapuji. Able and energetic, he had pushed his suit with a laborious, untiring conscientiousness rarely seen in a Native envoy; but though aided by much soundness of argument and much fluency of rhetoric expended by others than hired advocates, upon the case of the Satarah Princes, he had failed to make an impression on their judges. Though of different race and different religion, these two men were knit together by common sympathies and kindred tasks, and in that autumn of 1853, by like failures and disappointments to brood over, and the same bitter animosities to cherish. What was said and what was done between them no Historian can relate. They were adepts in the art of dissimulation. So the crafty Maratha made such a good impression even upon those whom his suit had so greatly troubled, that his debts

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were paid for him, and he was sent back at the public expense to Bombay with money in his pocket from the Treasury of the India House32; whilst the gay Muhammadan floated about the surface of society and made a conspicuous figure at crowded watering-places, as if he dearly loved England and the English, and could not persuade himself to return to his own dreary and benighted land.

Karnatik and Tanjur

So little material are they to this History that I need not write in detail of the circumstances attending the extinction of the titular sovereignties of the Karnatik and Tanjur, two ancient Houses, one Muhammadan, the other Hindu, that had once flourished in the Southern Peninsula. Lord Wellesley had stripped them of territorial power.

1854

1855

It remained, therefore, only for Lord Dalhousie, when the Nawab of the Karnatik and the Rajah of Tanjur died without heirs of the body, to abolish the titular dignities of the two Families and “to resume the large stipends they had enjoyed, as Lapses to Government.” Pensions were settled upon the surviving members of the two Families; but in each case, the head of the House made vehement remonstrance against the extinction of its honours, and long and loudly clamoured for restitution. There were many, doubtless, in Southern India who still clung with feelings of veneration to these shadowy pageants, and deplored the obliteration of the royal names that they had long honoured; and as a part of the great system of demolition these resumptions made a bad impression in more remote places. But empty titular dignities are dangerous possessions, and it may be, after all, only mistaken kindness to perpetuate them when the substance of royalty is gone33.

Footnotes

15. Appa Sahib. He had succeeded his brother, who in 1839 was deposed, and, as I think, very rightly, on account of a series of intrigues against the British Government, equally foolish and discreditable. It is worthy of remark, that Sir Robert Grant, being satisfied of the Rajah’s guilt, proposed to punish him in the manner least likely to be advantageous to ourselves.

16. Colonel Oliphant and Mr. Leslie Melville recorded minutes on the same side.

17. Minute of Colonel John Low. February 10, 1854.

18. “If Great Britain shall retain her present powerful position among the States of Europe, it seems highly probable that, owing to the infringement of their treaties on the part of native Princes and other causes, the whole of India will, in the course of time, become one British province; but many eminent statesmen have been of opinion that we ought most carefully to avoid unnecessarily accelerating the arrival of that great change; and it is within my own knowledge that the following five great men were of that number – namely, Lord Hastings, Sir Thomas Munro, Sir John Malcolm, the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Metcalfe.” – Minute, Feb. 10, 1854.

19. “When I went to Malwa, in 1850, where I met many old acquaintances, whom I had known when a very young man, and over whom I held no authority, I found these old acquaintances speak out much more distinctly as to their opinion of the Satarah case; so much so, that I was on several occasions obliged to check them. It is remarkable that every native who ever spoke to me respecting the annexation of Satarah, asked precisely the same question: What crime did the late Rajah commit that his country should be seized by the Company?’ Thus clearly indicating their notions, that if any crime had been committed our act would have been justifiable, and not other wise.” – Minute of Colonel Low, Feb. 10, 1854.

20. Between five and six hundred elephants, camels, horses, and bullocks were sold for £1300. The Ranis sent a protest to the Commissioner, and memorialised the Governor-General, alleging, in the best English that the Palace could furnish, that “on the 4th instant (Sept.) the sale of animals, viz. bullocks, horses, camels, and elephants, commenced to sell by public auction and resolution – a pair her hackery bullocks, valued 100 rupees, sold in the above sale for 5 rupees.”

21. The Bankha Bai was a widow of the deceased Rajah’s grandfather.

22. I know that the question of public and private property, in such cases, is a very difficult one, and I shall not attempt to decide it here. I only speak of the intense mortification which these sales create in the family itself, and the bad impression which they produce throughout the country. Rightly or wrongly, they cast great discredit on our name; and the gain of money is not worth the loss of character.

23. Lord Dalhousie, in his Nagpur Minute, says that the Rajah did not adopt, partly because he did not like to acknowledge his inability to beget a son, and partly because he feared that the existence of an adopted son might some day be used as a pretext for deposing him. He then observes: “The dislike of the late Rajah to the adoption of a successor, was of course known to his widow; and although the custom of the Marathas exempts her from that necessity for having the concurrence of her husband in adoption, which general Hindu law imperatively requires, in order to render the act of adoption valid, still the known disinclination of the Rajah to all adoption could not fail to disincline his widow to have recourse to adoption after his decease.” It will be seen at once that the ordinary logical acumen of the Governor-General failed him in this instance, for the very reasons given by the writer himself for the failure of adoption by the Rajah ceased altogether to be operative, ipso facto,” after his decease.”

24. Lord Dalhousie put forth the cotton-growing qualities of the Barar country as one of the many arguments which he adduced in favour of the annexation of the territory.

25. It is to be observed, too, with respect to Satarah, that not only had the last Rajah been elevated by the British Government, but that the Raj itself had been resuscitated by us in the person of his predecessor. We had found the Rajah prostrate and a prisoner, almost, it may be said, at his last gasp; we had rescued him from his enemies, and set him up in a principality of his own; a fact which, assuming the validity of the argument against adoption, necessarily imparted additional force to it. The same may be said of the Nagpur Raj. It was “resuscitated” by the British Government.

26. But what Sir Charles Metcalfe really said was, that the paramount Power was “entitled to limit succession according to the limitations of the grant, which in general confirms it to heirs male of the body, and consequently precludes adoption. In such cases, therefore, the Power which granted, or the Power standing in its place, would have a right to resume on failure of heirs male of the body.” This passage is very fairly quoted in Lord Dalhousie’s Minute.

27. Sir Frederick Currie’s Minute on the Karauli question is an admirable state-paper – accurate in its facts, clear in its logic, and unexceptionable in its political morality.

28. Strictly it should be said that he adopted three sons and a grandson. His will says: “That Dundu Pant Nana, my eldest son, and Gangadhar Rao, my youngest and third son, and Sada-Sheo Pant Dada, son of my second son, Pundu Rang Rao, my grandson; these three are my sons and grandson. After me Dundu Pant Nana, my eldest son, Mukh Pardan, shall inherit and be the sole master of the Gadi of the Peshwa, &c.” – NS. Records.

29. The official report of the Commissioner said, 16 lakhs of Government paper, 10 lakhs of jewels, 3 lakhs of gold coins, 80,000 rupees gold ornaments, 20,000 rupees silver plate.

30. It should rather be said, “two British Commissioners.” Colonel Manson was Commissioner when the Peshwa died, but he left Bithur shortly afterwards, and Mr. Morland, then magistrate at Kanhpur, took his place, and on him devolved the principal business of the settlement of the ex-Peshwa’s affairs.

31. “May 19, 1852. – We entirely approve of the decision of the Governor-General that the adopted son and dependents on Baji Rao have no claim upon the British Government. The large pension which the ex-Peshwa, enjoyed during thirty-three years afforded him the means of making an abundant provision for his family and dependents, and the property, which he is known to have left, is amply sufficient for their support.” – The Court of Directors to the Government of India. – MS.

32. Rangu Bapuji returned to India in December, 1853 The East India Company gave him 2300l. and a free passage.

33. In this chapter might have been included other cases of Lapse, as those of the Pargannah, of Udaipur, on the South-Western Frontier, and of Jaitpur, in Bundelkhand; but, although every additional absorption of territory tended to increase, in some measure, the feeling of insecurity in men’s minds, they were comparatively of little political importance; and Lord Dalhousie did not think them worth a paragraph in his Farewell Minute.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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