After five years in India, or, Life and work in a Punjaub district

Preface

During five years' residence in India, in a secluded district of the Punjaub, of which my husband held charge as deputy-commissioner, magistrate, and collector, I had many opportunities of studying the life of the people and the methods of administration employed by the British government. On my return to England I found that comparatively speaking so little is known of that administration and of the work done in India, that I was tempted to believe I might be able to interest others in some aspects of native life and English government, which I myself had found intensely interesting. To these I have added a short account of our own personal experiences.

These Indian sketches do not presume to give a full account of the multifarious and complicated system of administration in India or of the intricacies of native problems, or any solution of the many difficult questions which confront the representatives of British rule. They only strive to convey in simple language the somewhat superficial knowledge of certain branches of these subjects, gained by an Englishwoman during her stay in one small corner of an empire vast as Europe.

I offer these impressions and experiences for what they are worth. They may possibly supply a want amongst readers who would shirk graver books of statistics. They

Vlll PREFACE.

may stir memories and awaken associations for some whose life in India lies behind them. They may interest others whose friends and relations are placed in similar circumstances to ourselves. They may give those whose fortune it is to enjoy the comforts of home, some idea of the experiences of others whose lot has placed them in the far-off and mysterious East, and be a link, however small, in the chain that binds every Briton to the greater Britain beyond the seas.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Sir John Strachey's admirable work on India for several facts and quotations, made use of in the chapters on the system of government, to Mr. Ibbetson's Census Report of the Punjaub, to Mr. Thorburn's monograph on Mussulmans and Money-lenders, to my father, Dr. Norman MacLeod's Peeps at the Far East, and to my husband for his account of the Sirsa District, and for much of the information embodied in this book.

A number of the illustrations are from photographs by Messrs. Bourne and Shepherd, or by the Lahore School of Art, to whom my acknowledgments are also due.

ANNE C. WILSON.

December, 189J,.

Contents

Chap. Page

I. A Deputy-Commissioner's Day — Morning, 13

II. A Deputy-Commissioner's Day — In Office, .... 29

Chapter I. A Deputy- Commissioner's Day— Morning

LEEPY HOLLOW— that is the name which might be given by anybody transplanted from a busy town in England to the group of bungalows and public buildings which are called the head- quarters of our district. The acacia trees that line the dusty roads, and throw their shadows on the brown, parched land, are as still as if their life had been suspended. The country, which on one side is hemmed in by a long range of hills, and on all others stretches flat as moorland to the horizon, has the air of being entirely cut off from the outer world. The drone of the well as its wheel is turned by broad-backed bullocks, the coo of brooding pigeons in the wood, the regular thud of the peasants hatched as he 'cuts through the trunk of a tall J^^^^A^^4tf**th^eai? like the refrain of a tale of monotony that time cannot change, nor any stirring episode disturb.

And yet what an epitome of life is here. Not many of the seven stages of a man's existence have been left unwitnessed by that group of buildings. In the church, whose spire points upwards to the immutable sky, couples have been married and babies christened; in the high- walled English cemetery yonder lie one or two in solitary graves. The tragedy of love and death has been here played out.

Each building, half hidden by the trees, speaks of the cares, the troubles, the struggles for subsistence, the petty hopes and fears, the successes and the sins of half a million people. That is the doctor's bungalow, where the children are playing in the verandah; and the dispensary and hospital, like two long lines of barracks, lie a little distance off. In that bungalow sits the English engineer, poring over maps and making abstruse calculations for new canals. On the other side of the road, a native overseer, who is in charge of roads and buildings, is giving directions to a carpenter at his work.

There stands the sturdy Treasury, a bastion at each corner of its outer wall, a guard patrolling night and day within its ramparts, to protect its coffers, which contain the revenue of the district. Near it is the police office, eloquent of the efforts made to uphold the outward form of order. That is where the district superintendent of police works with his staff of native subordinates. And this high- walled building in the background is the jail. The building to the right contains the secret of half the prisoners who pass under the jail's barred gateways, for in it the maps and records are kept of every field in the district, too often a source of envy, hate, and murder. It is the kutcherry, where trials are also held, and heaped-up files of all the cases that have been tried in it for the last forty years could tell tales to those who cared to make the dry bones live, of love and hatred, jealousy, and all the petty squabbles and hereditary feuds of thousands. Petition-writers sit in an open building close at hand, and write down the hundred-and-one outpourings, requests, complaints, reports, and prayers that shouting peasants wish to make to ' Sarkar', the all-embracing name they have for the government.

Not far off is the bazaar, alive with babbling gossip. School-boys in the board school are reading aloud their English history in a high-pitched sing-song; and a child, as innocent of clothes as Nature made it, sits playing in the dust.

The outward framework is for an Englishman certainly most unlike that of a busy town at home. Much that is dear to him is entirely absent from it. There is no stir of politics to refuse the fighting instincts in him. There are no pictures to delight his eye, and there is little music to enchant his ear. Literature, with its wide horizon and possibilities of communion with the thoughts of past and present ages, is the luxury of days of comparative leisure which seldom fall to his lot. Social distractions in an isolated district are certainly somewhat limited. And yet he has his compensations. A man who may never hope to make a figure on a public platform may yet be satisfied with a certain eloquence in action. His sense of beauty may be starved, but there is something to touch the imagination in the hope of himself making one corner of the earth more beautiful and of seeing a desert growing green, and dry and scorching places cool and shady. It appeals at least to his sense of power to be given a tract of country to administer as large in area as one-third of Holland. For a man who has a place for east as well as west in his conceptions of the world and life, there is some pleasure in an opportunity to shape the destinies for good of half a million people. The drudgery of routine- work may veil ' the visionary gleam \ he may sink into an official groove and talk of transfer and promotion and redtape. But there is an alternative, and it is an aim not left deserted in the hearts of many who do not treasure it the less because they do not care to wear it written on their sleeves.

Throughout British India the district is the unit of administration. When one remembers that in the eight large provinces there are but a thousand civilians to carry out the orders of government, and that altogether the ruling race numbers only about ten to a million of the people they govern, one is tempted to ask by what magic are these mil] ions held in check? Why should not they raze the prisons to the ground, rob the treasuries, massacre the handful of Englishmen who impose their laws upon them ? Is it the fear of British forces standing armed to support the law that gives a weight to each command? Is it the unconscious instinct of obedience to authority that is inborn in them? Is it the conscious recognition of the benefits of peace and order? Is it the prestige of the British name? Whatever the cause, the result is undoubted, that not more certainly would a flock of sheep obey the bark of the shepherd's collie, than that the most distinguished notable would obey the orders of the village watchman if he brought them from head-quarters. • An old man once met walking on a property in Scotland, was asked by a stranger if the estate was his. 'No,' he answered, 'but the view is mine/ The reply may be taken as an illustration of the enthusiasm with which an Englishman regards his work in India. It is not as a person, but as a patriot that he is proud of its importance. It is the outlook he enjoys. Let him enjoy it while he may. He is a patriot in a far-off corner of the Empire. Who knows his name beyond the confines of his province? The property is not his; he will leave it soon to younger men. When he returns in middle age to his own country, he visits his old haunts to find the place thereof already knows him no more.

Perhaps, like a gallant soldier whose life was written lately, the largest interest of his latter days will be to watch his children playing cricket and to read to his old nurse. Meantime no sentiment need be grudged him as a counterpoise to the drudgery of his crowded days. Here is a description of a magistrate, collector, or deputy-commissioner, as he is called in different parts of India, given by Sir William Hunter, which may serve to define some of his multifarious duties.

' The Indian collector is a strongly individualized worker in every department of rural well-being, with a large measure of local independence and of individual initiative. As the name of collectormagistrate implies, his main functions are twofold. He is a fiscal officer, charged with the collection of the revenue from the land and other sources: he is also a revenue and criminal judge, both of first instance and in appeal. Police, jails, education, municipalities, imperial revenues of his district, are to him matters of daily concern. He is expected to make himself acquainted with every phase of the social life of the natives, and with each natural aspect of the country. He should be a lawyer, an accountant, a financier, and a ready writer of state papers. He ought also to possess no mean knowledge of agriculture, political economy, and engineering.

' Nothing can pass in the district of which it is not his duty to keep himself informed, and to watch the operation. The vicissitudes of trade, the state of the currency, the administration of civil justice, the progress of public works, must all affect most materially the interest of the classes of whom he is the constituted guardian. Officious interference in matters beyond his immediate control must be avoided ; but temperate and intelligent remonstrance against anything which he sees to be wrong is one of his most important duties/

It is hardly necessary to say that the administration is not carried out in detail by the deputy- commissioner himself. He has a large staff of officers, of magistrates, overseers, and supervisors, numbering several hundreds, by whom the work is carried out. Of these, the most important are the assistant commissioner, as he is called in the Punjaub, who is generally a European, and the extra assistants, who are generally native like all the rest of the staff.

The district is divided into three or more subdivisions called tahsils, over each of which is a species of magistrate whose duties are almost as various as those of the deputy-commissioner. The municipal committees again do for the towns what the district board does for the country. They partly elect their own members, they partly collect their own revenue, they partly administer their own funds, they partly undertake the management of roads, dispensaries, schools, and other local matters within their boundaries. But all are subject to rules and orders within the district as well as from outside. The deputy-commissioner, who is also guided by these rules and orders, and subject to a similar supervision from his superior officers, is responsible for all that happens in his district. Let us take a page from the unwritten journal of his day's work to show how these responsibilities affect him.

A new week has begun, and the jail has to be inspected. The day then begins with a visit to its precincts. A guard of policemen dressed in a uniform of yellow trousers, blue coat, and red-ancl-blue turban present arms at the entrance. The enclosure has rows of narrow houses not unlike the outhouses of an English farm, with the distinction that they are built of mud, and have flat roofs. The prisoners live, like the rest of their countrymen, in the open air for most of the day. The barracks in which they sleep have beds like detached boxes built of clay, on each of which a grass- mat lies. Government supplies the prisoner's clothing, a close-fitting flannel cap is exchanged for his turban, and a warm flannel coat is worn instead of the winding-sheet usually twisted round his person.

Hardships, no doubt, exist in prison life; but one is inclined to think they are not often as great as those that belong to a native's ordinary life. The prisoners have to work, and to a native all involuntary occupation is irksome. Pottery and paper are manufactured, carpets woven; official papers are printed, the clothing of the prisoners is made, their food prepared by some of themselves. These men being mostly Mahomedans, no caste prejudice is offended by a different occupation being assigned to them from that to which they are accustomed. A man who has been a farmer does not, however, take kindly to the work of cook, to baking the scones,

"The prisoners must squat when, they are making their complaints."

— which with vegetables and pulses form the dailymeal, — to tearing up paper, or to teasing wool. The want of the usual two hours' sleep in the middle of the day is felt as a privation, the absence of the hookah is as great a trial as the loss of his pipe would be to an Englishman. The solitary confinement, which is a part of some punishments, and the quarantine, which is imposed on all new-comers until the doctor is satisfied that they have no infectious illness, are severely felt. Yet, strange to say, the part of prison discipline which is most disliked by the prisoners is having their hair cut short. A Mahomedan apparently glories in its length, and it is a proof of their sorrow for its loss that on three occasions when our doctor invited a man condemned to be hanged to express his last wish, it was a request that this part of the punishment should be remitted to his fellow-prisoners.

That it is not altogether a congenial life is indicated by the fact that the prisoners must squat when they are making their complaints, to prevent their making this an opportunity for attacking the officer on his rounds. For the rest, the triviality of the requests made to the deputy-commissioner as he goes on his round of inspection — one man praying lie may have more spice in his food, another pointing to the blisters raised on his hand by the friction of the handle he has to work, a third begging that a lawsuit hanging over him should be deferred till he can be present — shows that prison life is by no means unendurable, and lends some colour to the assertion that the bread-winner of the family has sometimes little difficulty in finding a younger or older member of the clan who is willing to plead guilty and suffer in his place. Perhaps the comparative easiness of the life, and the alleged willingness of the innocent to substitute themselves for the guilty, may account for the fact that the prisoners are very much like everybody else outside of the prison walls. It is difficult, indeed, to say whether those outside or in, look most guilty. Half-a-dozen within the prison look imbecile, two are mad. A murderer in a condemned cell is the picture of good-natured, plump content. So much for the mysteries of fate and fortune, and one might add, of native physiognomy.

And now, the jail inspected, the treasury visited, the cash counted and compared with the treasurer's accounts, the deputy-commissioner turns his face towards home. A verandah in the bungalow is full of black figures, dressed in their best of spotless cotton. They have come to 'pay their respects', and rise like a covey of birds, while one of the orderlies, dressed in scarlet, kneels to dust his master s shoes. These orderlies are government factotums, who fetch and carry, and play a part which is a mixture of message-boy and doorkeeper. In the eyes of the natives they are endowed with imaginary powers: it is believed that in their hands lie the chance of interviews and hopes of favour, and rumour says they thrive accordingly on propitiatory gifts. No interview can be granted just at present, for breakfast must be first discussed.

Several bundles of papers are lying on the table. They have been returned from the office, and are the files of previous correspondence with authorities outside the district, which have been added by the clerks in the office to the communications received the previous day on these subjects by the deputy-commissioner. Here are some specimens of the contents. They must be attended to, after the visitors in the verandah have been dismissed.

I. The first file begins with a letter from the director of agriculture. ' I should be obliged if you would furnish me as early as possible with a careful estimate of the amount of wheat which has been exported from your district, and the amount which has been purchased in advance for export.'

II. The under-secretary of the government of the Punjaub forwards for information a copy of a report by an English specialist, regarding his recent enquiries into dairy industries in India.

III. The third file contains the details of travelling allowance demanded by the hospital-assistant of a remote dispensary who had been summoned to give evidence at head-quarters in a criminal case. The assistant-commissioner who acted as magistrate certifies that the journey was taken.

IV. The next is a correspondence following on a letter addressed by the deputy-commissioner to the executive engineer of the public works department which begins, ' Kindly give me a rough sketch for a local funds office, a separate building with rooms as follows: (1) English office for three clerks; (2) vernacular office for three clerks; (3) education office for two clerks; (4) record office. Also an estimate of its cost.'

V. The next is addressed to the superintendent of ways and works on the North-western Kailway, and runs as follows : ' An inquiry into the cause of death of a woman who was run over by an engine between M. and H. shows that the accident was not due to any fault of the engine-driver, but was in consequence of the fact that three small railway-bridges at that place are often made use of by travellers as the only means of crossing the currents which pass under those bridges in the flood season. I have the honour to enquire whether you will not, for the convenience of travellers, construct foot-bridges at these places, independent of those necessary for the conveyance of trains.' The discussion following is as usual tied up with the request.

VI. The Commissioner asks for the deputy-commissioners opinion regarding the proposed extension of the Dera Canal in his district, and especially regarding the financial prospects of this scheme.

VII. The Commissioner forwards, for the deputycommissioner's opinion, a bill now before the Legislative Council for the better control of habitual criminals.

VIII. An executive engineer submits a scheme for the drainage of Mie town, of Bhatpur and its neighbourhood, to be carried out at the cost of the municipal committee.

IX. Is a petition from a native to have his license to distil liquor renewed, and to be allowed to use a still within the enclosure of the government distillery. The writer is a man about whom a correspondence has been going on, as his liquor has been proved to be adulterated. This man's license will therefore not be renewed.

X. A long correspondence with the inspector of schools for the circle, on the subject of school prizes awarded by the liberality of native gentlemen, the list of which had not been published with the general one.

XL 'Dear Sir, I beg to state that I served the government for thirty-eight years. During my long services, when I saw the high officials of the department, they always gave me a chair to sit on. You were always pleased to give me a seat on a chair when you saw me last. But some of your subordinate officials did not show me the same courtesy, while modesty prevents me from making a representation to them. I therefore hope that you will be good enough to confer on me the permanent right to sit on a chair.'

The rest of the packet consists of requests for leave and of documents to be signed, as everything must pass through the deputy-commissioner's hands on its way to the head of its special department. These files glanced at, and breakfast disposed of, an invitation is sent to the occupants of the verandah in order of precedence, and in they come in turn.

Chapter II. A Deputy-commissioner's Day — In Office

rjIHE day has hardly yet begun in earnest. The -*- reception of these good people who are waiting in the verandah is but an entre acte, so to speak, thrown in between the serious parts of the performance. The first to enter is Malik Futteh Mahomed. He is an old soldier, who did good service, both in the Sikh War, which won us the Punjaub, and in the Mutiny. His scarlet uniform has been donned in honour of the memory, and one or two medals pinned on his breast. Out of the folds of his sash he brings a bundle of old tattered letters, with the signatures of heroes — John Lawrence, Edwardes, Neville Chamberlain, Nicholson — upon some of them. These are the testimonials every native loves to collect from every Englishman with whom he has any dealings. They all speak of the old man as a loyal friend of government, and a gallant soldier. On the strength of this he advances a request to be allowed to buy 1000 acres of government land at a low rate. It cannot be done in the meantime. A fourth of the land of the district belongs to government, but it cannot be sold at a moment's notice to every bidder who thinks his services have not yet been fully requited. The land has to be valued, a fair rent has to be fixed, the just claims of government have to be considered as well as those of the old soldier, and as well as those of the thousand-and-one jealous people who also want and cannot get land. Malik Futteh Mahomed must wait to take his turn with the rest. So the bundle of letters is returned to the folds of the waistband, and Malik Futteh Mahomed leaves the room, a wiser but not a sadder man. This is only the first of a score of visits he will pay to the place, and always upon the same errand.

Next enters a scapegrace of twenty-six. He has a good-looking but weak face. He wears a light brown, tightly-fitting, and closely-buttoned surtout, baggy dark-blue cotton knickerbockers, and high Hessian boots, a blue-and-gold silk turban giving the finishing touch to his modish costume. He has run through a fortune in a few years by gambling, horse-racing, and other forms of excitement and excess. Now he wants government to advance him money, and help him to pay his debts, and save him from parting with his land. He will turn over a new leaf if he gets a new start, and soon repay it. Doubt is expressed as to the wisdom of government's throwing away money on such a hopeless cause. ' But large sums have already been advanced by government to Malik Shah Nadir and Malik Sher Bahadur, who were in money difficulties too/ Yes, but that was another affair. These two Maliks were hereditary enemies. In old days they and their followers would have fought it out with spears and matchlocks. Modern innovation had given a new complexion to the method of attack and defence. They encouraged their respective retainers to ruin each other in lawsuits, and ruined themselves by paying their expenses, a reprehensible form of expenditure no doubt. Still it did not affect the fact that the men had large properties, which they managed well. A government loan to them, to save them from falling into the clutches of the usurers, was a safe investment. No such compliment could be paid to the scapegrace. If he would consent to become a ward of government, accept an allowance, and not exceed it, and hand over the estate to be managed by government till his debts were paid, what could be done would be done for him, but no other arrangement could be contemplated. Exit the scapegrace to ponder over the situation.

The next visitor is an extra assistant-magistrate, who is quickly disposed of. The ostensible object of his visit is to consult the deputy-commissioner on a point of procedure. One of the magistrates of the district has refused to try a case which he had sent to him on the plea of its being unsuited to a magistrate of his powers. The prisoner is being bandied from one to another, while the knotty point remains undecided. The extra assistant-magistrate's appeal for support is interwoven with a subtle display of his knowledge of law and procedure, and many allusions to overwork and his qualifications for promotion. He is dismissed with a reference to a certain section of the Code of Criminal Procedure for his further instruction, and goes away happy in the memory of his legal fireworks.

The native head of the agricultural department has just returned from a tour of inspection in the district, and has come to report that the trees planted b}^ the district board along the newly made road have been fenced in, and have taken root well. He says there has been a large demand by the wealthy natives of the towns for grafts from the government orange and mango groves, to be used by them in their private gardens. He begs to be allowed to increase his working staff of one hundred subordinates by four, to be employed in the new public garden under construction, and is very proud of the fact that there has been a larger sale of fruit this season than was ever known before in the district.

The next is a conscience case, which can hardly however be considered typical. A Hindu banker has come hundreds of miles from a former district of the deputy- commissioner, to offer his congratulations and respects, and to give an account of all that has happened to him since they last met. He takes the opportunity of discussing at the same time his own mental and moral condition. Everything about him speaks of his material prosperity, from his beautiful white silk embroidered coat, lined with sable, up to the snowy folds of his muslin turban, and down to his gold -embroidered shoes. His rotund figure, his chubby, dimpled hands, his sleek, smooth visage and double chin all proclaim that he has the largest, highest house, the best-filled granaries, the largest sum of surplus rupees in his neighbourhood. A more curious mixture of selfconsciousness and self-effacement, self-satisfaction and humility, never struggled for the mastery on any man's face. Self- consciousness, it may be safely prophesied, will not lose the clay.

The man belongs to one of the new reformed Hindu sects. He has set himself to practise virtue and renounce the world. To attain to virtue he gives away large sums of money, and struggles to be fair and honest in his dealings. To attain to abstraction from the world he has been practising a painful operation, which he has found effectual. It belongs to one of the eighty-four postures recommended by the priests of his philosophy as aids to contemplation. Retiring to a quiet quarter he sits upon the ground, holds his breath for some time, and does not breathe at all; then he breathes as little as he can for hours. At first the plan is so painful the devotee can only think of the pain and not of his surroundings. When the pain passes away the habit of abstraction has been acquired. Now hundreds might talk round about him and he would never hear them.

Notwithstanding these efforts he had lost his selfrespect, and had come to learn how he could have it re-instated. The point was this. He had vowed to tell the truth, and had not wandered from it, to the best of his knowledge, for several years, till, being engaged in a lawsuit last summer, he had been tempted to suborn false witnesses, and had thereby perjured his soul and sacrificed his rest. What was he to do to regain his peace of mind? The answer was so obvious as to rouse speculations why he had ever come to hear it. Speculations which include the efficacy of confessionals, and the complex mystery of human strength and weakness, have no time for growth, however, in a government office, so the man receives his answer, and signs, it must be hoped, another pledge to truth and uprightness.