Sir Thomas Munro and the British settlement of the Madras

Front matter

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Introduction

No name, in any part of India, perhaps, is so familiar or held in such veneration as that of Munro is in the Madras Presidency, though two generations have passed away since his death. In the town of Madras the celebrated equestrian statue by Chantrey serves as a landmark, ever keeping the name of ' Munro ' in the mouths of all ; but in the Districts where the best years of his life were spent no monument is needed to perpetuate his name or memory.

Great changes have taken place in Southern India during the two-thirds of a century since Munro's death. The country has been opened up by railways and telegraph wires, and the people have been modernized by schools and colleges. Almost every town which Munro visited as Collector, Colonel, and Governor has now a railway st,ation or is within a few hours' drive of one, and each has its English school, its dispensary or hospital, its post and telegraph office, its magistrate's court and its police station.

But great as have been the changes since Munro's time, they are not so great as those which the

6 SIJi THOMAS MUNRO

Presidency witnessed in the half century between Thomas Munro's arrival at Madras as a military cadet in 1780, and his death as Governor in 1827. ^ ^^ former year Haidar was devastating the Kam&tik up to the walls of Fort St. George, and * black columns of smoke were everywhere in view from St. Thomas' Mount.' During the following forty years the history of Madras was one of wars, of cession of territory to the British, and of the settlement of the new Districts. How large a share Munro took as a soldier and as a civil administrator in the British settlement of Southern India, these pages will show.

They will also exhibit a character worthy of imitation by every Indian official and by every well-wisher of the Indian races. His own letters paint the man — brave, wise, and kindly. No truer estimate of his qualities could be given than that by the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone — 'strong practical good sense, simplicity and frankness, perfect good nature and good humour, real benevolence unmixed with the slightest cant of misanthropy, activity and truthfulness of mind, easily pleased with anything, and delighted with those things that in general have no effect but on a youthful imagination ^.'

*It is not enough,' the same writer observes, *to give new laws or even good courts. You must take the people along with you, and give them a ^hare in your feelings^ which can only be done by shaHng

^ Colebrooke*8 Li/^ of Mountstuart Elphinstone, ii. 35.

INTRODUCTION 7

theirs' This Munro did fully, and he had his reward, for to this day the natives of his old Districts rise up and call him ^blessed. In my official capacity I have visited almost every spot in the Madi*as Presidency in which Sir Thomas Munro lived or encamped, and can speak from personal knowledge of the impression that great administrator has leffc on the face of the country, the system on which it is governed, and on the hearts of the people. From Salem the Eev. W. Bobinson, writing to me, says : 'Munro^s name is held in the greatest reverence in this District, and the highest compliment they can pay a civilian is to compare him to Munro. I have talked to old natives who cherish his memory as that of their greatest benefactor.' In the Ceded Districts boys are still named after him, * Muni*olappa.' In the Cuddapah District wandering mendicants sing ballads to his praise. At Gooty a Br&hman schoolmaster recently informed me that * Sir Thomas Munro is styled Mandava Eishi, — Mandava Rishi being no other than Munro deified.' In the recent season of scarcity, 1891- 9a, at a meeting held at Gooty, with the object of petitioning Government for a reduction of the land assessment, near the end of the proceedings an old rdyat stood up and merely said in Telugu, * Oh for Munro Sdhib back again I '

As Munro's own letters afford the truest and the most vivid record of his life's work, they have been largely used in the following pages. They give this volume an autobiographical character which forms its individual feature in the Rulers of India Series. In his diary, Feb. 15, 1830, Elphinstone writes : —

' I have begun Sir T. Munro's Life^ and am quite enchanted with it. It cannot fail to delight even those who had previously no interest in the subject. It is almost all made up of his own letters, which have fortunately been preserved, and which show that his judgment and sagacity at nineteen were as superior to those of ordinary people as they were to those of his contemporaries when his reputation was more extensive. They also mosfc fortunately disclose- the many accomplishments which were concealed by his modesty and that delicacy of taste and tenderness of feeling which lay hid under his plain and somewhat stem demeanour/

This Memoir is mainly based on the Life of Sir Thorriaa Munro^ by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A., late Chaplain-General of the Forces (Colburn and Bentley), 3 vols. 1 83 1, and the Letters have been reprinted from the revised edition, published in one volume by John Murray, 1849. "^^^ reader is also referred to Sir A. J. Arbuthnot's Sir Thcmiaa Munro, with Sdectiona from his Minutea, <fcc., (Kegan Paul and Co., 1881); to Sir W. W. Hunter's Brief History of the Indian Peoples, and to the volumes on Elphinstone and the Marquess of Hastings in this Series.

Writing in India I have not had the advantage of seeing the final proofs of this work, but I desire to thank the Editor of the Series for his kindness and for the additional trouble he has had in seeing it through the press.

J. B.

Contents

CHAP. PAGES

IirrRODUcnoN 5-8

I. Boyhood 11-16