["My Diary in India." By W. H. Russell, LL.D. London:
Routledge & Co.]
I. THE VOYAGE OUT —CALCUTTA.
Suppose that we were told, for the first time in our
lives, that a small insular people, of some thirty millions of
inhabitants, held dominion, at the other end of the globe, over a vast
tract of land more than three times the length of their own largest
island, in parts more than three-fourths as broad as it is long, and
peopled with from one hundred and eighty to two hundred millions of men;
that this dominion was held, not by means of broad-cast colonies of the
dominant race, but by an imperceptible garrison, civil or military, of
not one hundred thousand souls of that race; that it was held without
identity or amalgamation in blood, in religion, in language, in manners,
between the dominant race and the subject ones; that the subject races
were, with trifling exceptions, no wandering savages, but men skilful in
agriculture and handicrafts, and most of the arts and luxuries of
civilised life, and possessing a literature and a religion of which the
earliest monuments are more than three thousand three hundred years
old,—should we not declare the tale incredible?
But suppose that we were assured of the reality of
that tale, what conclusion should we draw from it as Christian men?
Should we not say: Such a state of things is awful, overwhelming. God's
purpose respecting those two countries must be of unspeakable greatness.
What a humbling position for those subject
races! What a dreadful responsibility for that dominant one! What a
blessed sphere of usefulness is open to it, if it use its dominion
aright! What a curse impends over it, if it should abuse its power!
Surely, if, even without being Christian, it have any feeling of
national duty or righteousness, the sense of its relations with its far
subject empire must outweigh all but the most pressing considerations of
internal interest! What a field for the genius of its statesmen, for the
labours of its philanthropists!
Perhaps our wonder would abate somewhat, when we were
told that the dominant race was Christian, the subject races idolaters,
votaries of the false prophet, fire-worshippers. Yes, we should say,
that alone can explain the fact. The conquest has been a religious one.
The vast empire thus won can only be that of the Cross. It must be that
of justice, virtue, peace, love. No force could hold it together.
A blessed rule must be that of this Christian people.
Many, very many of us have long loved to think even
thus of England's Indian empire. The faith is a natural, almost
irresistible one. It was sedulously inculcated upon us by all, or very
nearly all of our fellow-countrymen who came back to us, rich with
India's gold. It afforded a comfortable pillow for our ignorance of and
indifference to the subject. Things went on so well in India—why should
we trouble ourselves about them? Our government of India, if it had a
fault, was only too mild, too considerate towards the native races. It
certainly did not seem to take a quite high enough view of its spiritual
duties. It was too afraid of missionaries. So far there might be some
duty left for us private Englishmen to fulfil. The mission-box might
have some claim on our gold, our silver, or our pence. Beyond that, all
was blessing in our rule. What could prove it more incontrovertibly than
the one palpable fact, that we ruled India through a native army, whose
absolute faithfulness and reliableness were proclaimed by all who came
in contact with them—a few unaccountable croakers excepted?
But in the year 1857, suddenly—amidst the profoundest
internal peace—a few months after the departure of a Governor-General,
the most able and successful, it was loudly asserted, since Lord
Wellesley —this very native army, hitherto quoted as the irrefragable
evidence of the justice and stability of our Anglo-Indian rule, broke
out into mutiny, under circumstances which lit up, as with a
lightning-flash, a gulf of misunderstanding and mistrust between the
dominant and the subject races. The immediate ground of the mutiny seems
to us as impalpable, as the sincerity was manifest with which it was
urged. We, Protestant Christians, were charged by that class of natives
of all others who were in the closest relations with us, who should have
known and understood us best, with seeking to make Christians of them—by
inveigling them into tasting beef-suet and hog's lard, mixed up in the
shape of cartridge grease! So much for the ideas as to the nature of our
Christianity, which some two or two and a half centuries of intercourse
with us had given them. But so determined were they not to accept this
Christianity, even at the cost of a bite, that sooner than do so, they
rejected the use of the improved weapon (the Enfield) which that
cartridge would have placed in their hands, submitted to punishment,
disbandment, and finally, their heads turned with wild rumours,
deceptive prophecies, and, as it would seem, long-stifled rancours, rose
upon their European masters, with nothing, for the most part, but old
Brown Bess in their hands,—murdered their most beloved chiefs, often
with their wives and children, and filled the world with the noise of
their unheard-of treachery. The mutiny rapidly swelled into a rebellion;
throughout large tracts of country our authority vanished rather than
fell; the empire was convulsed, from the Himalaya mountains on the
north, to its southernmost province but one (Canara) —from Guzerat in
the west to Assam in the east. Massacres the most barbarous shewed the
love with which we had succeeded in inspiring our subject peoples;
resistances the most heroic, on the part of scattered English garrisons,
gave a new measure to the willingness of native loyalty; kingdoms
annexed without a blow had to be conquered, and invaded over and over
again, at a fearful sacrifice of life, before they were.
We conquered; yes, thank God! we conquered. But at
what cost? At the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, of which God
alone knows the tale,— many precious beyond a king's ransom—Henry
Lawrence, and Havelock, and William Peel. At the cost of millions and
millions of money, draining away still from England towards India. At
the cost of the annihilation of one whole native army of ninety thousand
men, proudest of the three in our pay. At the cost of the political
power of that strange body, the East India Company, which seemed to have
climbed the very summit of earthly greatness, only to establish its
chairs of office on the apex of a yet unopened volcano, whose sudden
eruption sent chairs and chair-holders, past, present, and future,
flying wildly through the air.
"He setteth up one, and pulleth down another." In the
revolutions of empires, in the upsets of human fortunes, the Bible
teaches us invariably to see the hand of God. But the God of the Bible
is not a capricious God. He is the same God who fixed the ordinances of
heaven, "and caused the day-spring to know his place." A hidden order
rules in all His doings, which it is our business to search out. Why did
He send us the Indian mutiny and rebellion? Will He send us another? Is
it true, as we are now often told, that India is to be ruled only by the
sword? Followers of the God of peace, can this be our mission? Is India
worth keeping at such a price? If not, how are we to avert, in future,
the disasters of the past? Such ought surely to be the thoughts of every
one of us, constituent atoms as we are all, tabling at the lowest, in
that "public opinion" which is itself a power in the world. For this one
conclusion is perfectly clear: If mutiny and rebellion in India are for
the future to be averted, it is not by acting as we have acted. The
course of government and policy which has led to such an explosion, is
not to be pursued henceforth. Sweet as was our faith of old, that "all
was well" in India, we can hold it henceforth but upon one condition,
that of knowing that all is not as it was.
So that, in short, we are driven to the conviction
that God does not choose us to be ignorant of, or indifferent to India.
We must learn something of what it was—of what it is. And, as in all
things one must look at the outside before the in—though in fact one
never thoroughly understands the outside before one has looked
within—let us apply ourselves to some work which shall give us that
outside clearly and vividly. I know none better for the purpose than Mr
Russell's—Dr Russell's, to give him the benefit of his LL.D. degree—the
Times' correspondent's recently-published "Diary." Although often
fatiguing, from that Times' smartness, and Times'
scene-painting, which must have spoilt as many a pen as they have
trained, it is nevertheless a striking, interesting, and valuable book.
The man knows how to see, and how to tell what he saw, though he is too
fond of shewing us that he knows it. He is no theorist or
sentimentalist. He is used to practical life, used to the rough arts and
rough acts of war. Scenes of horror may spoil his appetite for
breakfast, or make him puff more vigorously at his cheroot, but he is
willing to undergo the sight of them for a consideration. He has a sense
of right and wrong, and does not shrink from expressing it; but the
horror which he feels at seeing native servants lying bloody from the
effects of their English master's " licking," does not hinder him from
sitting down to table with the latter the moment after. We need not be
afraid, under such guidance, of being carried away into excesses of pity
or virtuous indignation. "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make
thyself overwise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?" wrote the wise
king. We may rest assured that a Times' special correspondent
will act up to the precept.
Mr Russell started for India in the winter of 1857,
engaged on terms, if rumour speaks true, unparalleled in newspaper
annals. Our first great success had already been won; Delhi, the old
capital of the Mussulman empire, had fallen; at Alexandria the traveller
was met with the news of the relief of Lucknow, and, alas! of Havelock's
death. We need not tarry with him over what is, as he says, "by a sort
of 'dry humour' called the Overland Route," (seeing that the whole
land-journey upon it is between Alexandria and Suez,) except to notice
the humours of his fellow-passengers, "for the most part either old
Indians, returning full of anger, gloom, and vengeance to their former
posts, now freed from the enemy, or to others promised or to be gotten
by interest and perseverance, or young ones, of whom one alone was
preparing himself, by studying the language and history of the people,
for the sphere of his labours;" besides "some Queen's officers going
out to join their regiments," "a few 'younger men, unposted," "a few
civilians," with "a poll of wives going to their husbands, and of young
ladies going to find husbands,"—altogether, it would seem, a not unfair
sample of such stuff as English rule and influence in India are made of.
Already, at Cairo, he observes, that "whatever may be
the reason, such civilisation as the East may receive promises to be
French." Do we wonder at this? Listen—"The insufferably rude and
insolent behaviour of some of our fellow-countrymen, which here I
witnessed for the first time, does, in my mind, go far to create dislike
to us.....We ride at full gallop through the streets; laugh in the face
of every long-bearded, odd-looking Mussulman we see; despise all foreign
dignity." What should we say if a parcel of Frenchmen were to behave
thus in our streets? And if we behave thus in a country where we are but
guests, how are we likely to behave where we are masters?
As he journeys down the Red Sea, he finds already his
Indian difficulties commence. There are men on board who "have spent
their lives in Hindostan among the people. They have mastered their
languages—they have administered justice. . . . Do they agree upon any
one point connected with the mutinies, or with the character of the
people? Not one. There is one man who has been the annual historian of
the Punjab, who believes that the only salvation for India is the
application of the system of the Punjab and John Lawrencism to all
India. There is another who has passed a long career of active
governmental life in Bengal, who declares that the attempt to introduce
such a Lawrencratic, irresponsible, and arbitrary rule, would convulse
his beloved province to the very centre. One man 'hates the rascally
Mohammedans,' and says there will be no safety for us till they are 'put
down.' . . . Another thinks that, after all, the Mohammedan can be made
something of if a career is opened to him; but that those slimy,
treacherous Hindoos, with their caste, and superstition, and horrid
customs, constitute the real difficulty of government. . . . Meantime,
sitting almost apart from the rest of the passengers, a few Englishmen,
whom no one noticed, shook their heads as they listened, but the
civilians took no thought of them.....They were traders, merchants,
indigo-planters, and such like, who viewed with as much prejudice and
antipathy the servants of the government under which they lived, as the
latter exhibited in their demeanour for men who were undoubtedly
developing the resources of the country in which they were passing the
best part of their lives, and making their fortunes. All the evils which
afflict India were and are, according to these gentlemen, the direct
results of the rule of the Company. . . . Why should they not be
magistrates, and sit on the bench, and adjudge disputes between
themselves or their representatives, and the native landholders or
labourers? Why should they, as Englishmen, not be exempted from the
operation of the ordinary tribunals of the land in which they lived, and
have special courts of their own, as being peers and nobles of a natural
aristocracy placed among serfs and ignobles? As you listen to this chaos
of opinions, you see a row of animated machines sitting crouched down on
the floor of the cabin, swaying listlessly to and fro, as they pull the
punkahs (large fans). Their slender, well-knit frames, bright eyes, and
glistening teeth, give these 'poor niggers' some claim to be thought, as
Mr Carlyle would say, not quite unlovely, but they have a dark hide—they
are low Mohammedans, and, to the intelligent Briton, they are as the
beasts of the field."
A striking picture, surely. But of what? Of "a house
divided against itself," which, if Christ our Saviour lied not, (be the
awful hypothesis uttered without blasphemy,) cannot stand. If Englishmen
know no better than this what is to be their task in ruling India, they
cannot rule it, though they may reconquer it from time to time. And
what, indeed, is the train of thought to which our observer is led by
this foretaste of Indian experience? Does he speculate upon the chain of
blessings which Christian England is to confer upon heathen or Mussulman
India? No. He is occupied with the dry, hard question—Can we keep
India, and how? The white man, he thinks, treads the coloured man under
foot, hunts him out wherever he can. But there are regions in the earth
which seem to be specially reserved for the coloured man, in which the
white man cannot permanently abide. "Do what we may or can, our race can
neither destroy the inhabitants of India, as the Americans destroyed the
red men, nor can it dispossess and drive them out to other regions, as
the Spaniards drove out the Mexicans. And, were it possible for us to
succeed, Hindostan would at once become a desert in which our race would
miserably perish in the first generation. It would seem, then, if these
views are right, that the Anglo-Indian, and his conquerors in India,
must either abate their strong natural feelings against the coloured
race, restrain the expression of their antipathies, or look forward to
the day, not far distant, when the indulgence of their passions will
render the government of India too costly a luxury for the English
people. If we, who are the governors of the people, do not govern
ourselves and protect the people, what redress have they, and what have
we to expect? These were the sentiments which gradually grew upon me as,
day after day, I heard the same expressions used with respect to the
natives of Hindostan. Let every word that is tittered of that sort be
granted in its entirety, and we come at once to the question, How can
those who entertain such feelings govern a people in justice and in
mercy?"
The voyage proceeds. The traveller begins his
tropical experiences at Galle, the ill-chosen western port of Ceylon,
that interesting island, of which Sir Emerson Tennent has given us
lately so full and valuable an account, which has perhaps an older
history than any other country — China and Palestine excepted—on the
face of the earth. He touches at Madras, and sees a population "blacker,
more naked, and more ugly" than he expected, yet, he is told, singularly
given to hoarding. (Is hoarding a sign of prosperity? still more, of
security? of affectionate confidence in the rule under which men live?)
"It appears to be admitted by all those clever gentlemen on board that
they know nothing of the inner social life of the people. One of them,
indeed, said—'We know nothing of the natives as they appear to each
other: their aspect to us is as different as possible from that which
they present to their families, friends, and native rulers.' Indeed, it
begins to dawn upon me that we are in India rather on sufferance and by
force than by affection." The great trouble of his friends on board is
the apprehended reduction of salaries. "Reduced salaries and, admission
by competition will degrade the civil service . . . . One must be paid
highly to live in such a country at all . ... Every Indian officer has a
right to a good retiring allowance." The listener cannot forbear asking
himself—"How is it that able men and gentlemen are easily had to
discharge high functions in Ceylon at much lower salaries than in
India?" Already a French official from Pondicherry, the chief
establishment of France in India, had urged upon him that high salaries
and too few officials are the bane of Anglo-Indian administration. At
Pondicherry the French are as one in seven as compared with the natives;
French is the language of the state, of the employes, of the
courts, of the public schools, and of the government factories; and any
native who desires the service of government, must speak the language of
the governors. The French officials remain for years; the governor has
only half the salary of the neighbouring English civilian, perhaps a
young man just come a year or two from England. So says the foreigner;
but what of that? The English boys on board wondered at our special
correspondent for encouraging the jabber of " that confounded
Frenchman."
The water becomes turbid with Ganges mud; the shadowy
outline of land appears; the pilot comes on board. Then the bounds of
the waste of yellow waters can just be made out on either side. As the
river contracts, hundreds of first-class ships, fleets of odd-looking,
dilapidated country boats, working up and down through many tortuous
channels, give "an appearance of life and activity to the scene which
could not be surpassed by the Downs." The native crews are thin, slight
men, nearly black, very poorly attired. In the fields, men and women
work, naked to the waist, under the hot sun. The villages are of mud
huts, propped up by bamboo canes; but each has its temple—heavy-domed,
squat, yet it may be of marble or finely-worked chunam (a kind of
stucco). Between the villages no roads for traffic, only innumerable
watercourses and cuts winding between muddy banks. Then the country
becomes more civilised, with larger villages, better-cultivated fields;
then detached houses appear, some of them two-storied, standing in
detached gardens, with groups of Europeans, mostly women, on the
balconies; then the houses appear on both sides, become continuous, run
into lines of streets. Our traveller is at Calcutta.
He lands, passing on his way to the landing-place two
or three dead bodies of Hindoos, consigned to their last place of unrest
on the waters of the sacred stream (for the Bengalee makes a
burying-place of his noble river, as the Londoner a sewer of his). He
puts up at "The Club;" he is provided with a native servant—a Roman
Catholic convert, named Simon; he is taken "to perform the great
ceremony of Calcutta life," the evening turn on the esplanade or course.
And here, after the first impression of utter weariness, he sees "such
insult offered as the arrogance of the most offensive aristocracy—that
of race —can invent, to those who by no means admit themselves to be the
plebeians of the race." The great Hindoo merchant—one of the young
Bengal school, who abjure heathenism and are civil to Christianity —is
for the white man but "one of those nigger merchants, a cheeky set of
fellows, and d—d blackguards all of them." Barely a few Europeans bow to
a rajah, pensioned off on an allowance. A gulf separates the white
people, not only from the natives, but from the Eurasians, or mixed
bloods. "The high-capped Parsees," (fire-worshippers,) "who are driving
about in handsome carriages, are on better terms with the Europeans, as
far as the interchange of salutations go," (goes?); "but the general
effect of one's impressions derived from a drive in the Calcutta course,
is that not only is there no rapprochement between the Indian and
the Englishman, but that there is an actual barrier which neither
desires to cross." And who are the white men present? A privileged class
themselves; for "it is not considered quite proper for shopkeepers to
drive on the esplanade." Is it a privilege of superior morality? "Whose
is this magnificent carriage with the gold liveries? 'That? Oh, that's
Bunkum! He's a merchant, who has broken several times; but they don't
think much of breaking in Calcutta. It's very easy to pass the court,
and they come out as strong and as bright as ever.' .... There is an
impression that the relief given by the bankruptcy and insolvency courts
is administered too largely and too carelessly, where every clerk keeps
a buggy" (gig with a hood), "every merchant has a carriage, and lives in
a style which speaks of enormous profits or little conscience."
Still, Calcutta has a reforming school, though
perhaps, in the main, little more than that of an opposition. Our
special correspondent is pressed on, one evening, "to examine the
working of the legal system;" "to expose the ruinous land system, as
affecting the introduction of British capital;" "to go through all the
missionary-schools;" " to 'shew up' the iniquities of the Company
generally; to investigate the system of non-canalisation,
non-irrigation, non-road-making, non-railway-constructing; to hold up to
public obloquy the partial and defective administration of various
courts, by which the Europeans were harassed and natives unduly
protected." He is almost forcibly carried off to see "the worst road in
the world," as a sample of the development of Indian resources by the
Company. To all these promptings he turns a deaf ear, alleging that his
sole object is "to give an account of the military operations, and to
describe the impressions made on his senses by the externals of things."
The next day he drives to Government House, to
present his letters of introduction. At the gateways he sees the first
sample of the sepoy—disarmed, indeed, and with a cane only in his
hands—but "so like a British soldier, when his back is turned, that at a
sudden view he would beguile; tall, broad-backed, stiff-set, but with
lighter legs than the Briton, and a greater curvature in the thigh."
Within the Viceroy's palace he is surprised to find, in the midst of
rebellion, not a single English servant,—none but white-turbaned
natives, some with large daggers in their waists. From the
Governor-General he receives all courtesy, and promise of assistance.
Another day he drives to Serampore, a former Danish
settlement, and as such of old the asylum of British missionaries when
denied a residence in British India, and crosses thence to Barrackpore,
the military station of Calcutta. On his way to Serampore—ten miles or
so—"he hunts, as an antiquary would hunt for an inscription, or a
botanist for a new plant," for "a white face amid these leagues of black
and brown fellow-creatures, with scant attire, who are swarming in and
out of their miserable dwellings." He sees not
one, till he enters his entertainer's house at Serampore. At Barrackpore,
indeed, he finds them. But in what company? "Under every shady clump of
trees, at every lazy corner, were groups of large, well-made, six-foot
soldiers, in red coatees .... but their faces
were black . . . These were the men of the disarmed regiments, two of
which are stationed at Barrackpore, held in watch and ward by one
English regiment. The men saluted us as we passed; but my companions
made a point of not returning the salutes, or taking the least
notice of the men."
We will leave our traveller preparing to start up the
country for the army. He will have stayed at Calcutta from January 24 to
February 4, 1858—certainly not long enough to do more than see, as he
himself told us, that outside of things which he was sent to look at.
And what has that been, even at this first glance? Leagues of black men
with never a white among them. The black men scant of dress, swarming
out of miserable dwellings. The white men members of a community in
which every merchant keeps a carriage, every clerk a gig. An esplanade
on which the two races drive side by side, but with a social barrier
between them which forbids all intercourse, and so traced as to exclude
even the white man's children by a dark mother. Such is the aspect of
India's capital, of one of its centres of European life, as it presented
itself to the newly-arrived European.
How it appeared to him when he had plunged deeper
into the sea of Indian life which then lay before him, we shall observe
hereafter.
J. M. L.