Lord Dalhousie, 1812-1860
THE most striking feature in Lord Dalhousie was his
strong personality: this trait lie owed to his descent strength of
character had always been a characteristic of the family to which lie
belonged.
Lord Dalhousie was
born in Canada, where his father was at the time Governor-General. He was
sent to school at Harrow. One incident of his schoolboy days made a marked
impression upon him, as it was well calculated to do this was a visit paid
to his old school by the Marquess of Hastings, on his return from ruling
India for nine years, and his generosity in presenting each boy with a
couple of sovereigns.
From
Harrow he proceeded to Oxford, where among his contemporaries were
Gladstone, Canning, and Elgin, the two latter, like himself, destined to
be Rulers of India. He took an ordinary degree, but the examiners,
recognizing his splendid abilities, and in consideration of certain
special circumstances that had interfered with his reading for Honours,
gave him an Honorary Fourth, which was then regarded as equivalent to a
Second in Greats.
In 1835,
lie made an attempt to enter Parliament, but was unsuccessful. He married
in the course of the following year. His second attempt to enter
Parliament, in 1837, was successful, but his Parliamentary career was
destined to be a very short one, for in the following year he succeeded to
the Earldom of Dalhousie. He now proceeded to devote himself to whatever
local work came to his hand. In 1842 he had the honour of receiving a
visit from the young Queen. It is recorded of him, as characteristic of
the haughty courtesy which in later years grew upon him, that he playfully
reminded Her Majesty that the last English Sovereign
who had approached DJhousie Castle was Henry IV, and he had remained
outside for weeks, and never succeeded in gaining admission. A few years
after this he held office as President of the Board of Trade, and in that
capacity laid before the Prime Minister a scheme of railway development:
he treated it entirely as a concern of the State, thus anticipating his
later work in India. His scheme provided that no new line of railway
should be sanctioned, except on some clear ground of public advantage,
commercial or strategic. This system was not accepted in England, but it
formed the basis on which the railway system of India has been elaborated.
He devoted much time and thought to the subject : indeed his persistent
overwork in connexion with it is thought to have laid the foundation of
future disease. English statesmen now began to recognize his eminent
qualities, and in 1847, at the early age of thirty-five, he received the
offer of the Governor- Generalship of India. He accepted the offer with
some hesitation, as a promising political career in England seemed to be
opening out before him.
He proceeded to India at the end of the same year. At
the very outset he was called on to experience that penalty of an Indian
career that so many have to undergo, for, though his wife accompanied him,
he had to leave his two little daughters behind in England.
Before handing over charge of his office to Lord
Dalhousie, his immediate predecessor, Lord Hardinge, had remarked that, so
far as human foresight could predict, it would not be necessary to fire a
gun in India for seven years to come. Similarly, the English Press had
written, 'Everything seems to favour the new ruler; India is in the full
enjoyment of a peace, which, humanly speaking, there seems nothing to
disturb.'
Events, however, were destined speedily to falsify
these predictions: the seven years of peace Lord Hardinge had predicted
ultimately proved to be seven years of war. Indeed, within a short three
months after Lord Dalhousie's arrival in India, an event occurred which
opened the eyes of the new ruler to the actual state of things. Two
British officers, Lieutenant Anderson and Mr. Vans Agnew, were murdered at
Multan by the treachery of Mulraj, Governor of the town. This man had been
removed from office by the influence of the British Resident at Lahore,
and the two officers had been sent to take over the government from him,
and to install a Sikh Governor in his place.
These young officers had had to take refuge in a
Muhammadan mosque from a sudden attack made on them by a fanatical
soldier, and Mulraj directed his guns upon this place. It is to the credit
of the Sikh soldiers in the pay of Mulraj, and of the better sort of the
people of the town, that they refrained from taking any part in the murder
of the defenceless men; it was left to the city rabble, who were not Sikhs
at all. Vans Agnew's last words were: 'We are not the last of the
English.' A marble tablet to the memory of the young officers was
afterwards erected in the Cathedral at Calcutta.
Vans Agnew had sent off a pencilled note for aid to the
British Resident at Lahore, and another to the Commissioner of Bannu ;
this latter reached the hands of Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes as he was
sitting in his solitary tent on the banks of the Indus. The letter was
addressed in Persian 'To General Courtland in Bannu, or wherever he may
be'. Edwardes, thinking the letter might be urgent, opened it, and
realizing the gravity of the situation from its contents, at once rushed
to the rescue with his District escort, and a few local companies of
Sikhs, in all some 400 men. Mulraj met him with 4,000 men and eight guns.
Edwardes could do little without reinforcements, which unfortunately never
came. He remarked, 'I am like a terrier barking at a tiger.' Nevertheless,
the plucky little terrier kept barking at the tiger all through the hot
weather of 1848, and actually, with the help of some native allies from
the Muhammadan State of Baha\valpore, succeeded in driving Mulraj back
into the fort with the loss of his eight guns. The British commander,
however did not see the urgency of a hot-weather campaign, 'as if,' wrote
an indignant officer from Multan, 'the rebellion could be put off, like a
champagne tiffin, with a three- cornered note to Mulraj to name a date
more agreeable.' The local revolt soon extended into a general rising of
the Sikhs, and the second Sikh war was thus precipitated. It ended in the
annexation of the Punjab to the British Empire.
Lord Dalhousie had expressed his determination to make
the last battle of the war a final and decisive one. He wrote to the
commander: 'The war must be prosecuted now to the entire defeat and
dispersion of all who are in arms against us, whether Sikhs or Afghans:
and a final and decisive one it was accordingly made. Of the Afghan
horsemen who had been engaged, a native writer wrote in picturesque
language: 'They had ridden down through the hills like lions, and they ran
back into them like dogs.'
Before the second Sikh war, Lord Dalhousie had been
averse from annexation, but after it he realized that this was the only
feasible policy. 'There never will be peace in the Punjab,' he wrote, ' as
long as its people are allowed to retain the means and the opportunity of
making war: there never can be now any guarantee for the tranquillity of
India until we shall have effected the entire subjection of the Sikh
people and destroyed its power as an independent nation.' it is
interesting to note how the difference in the character of the two
advisers whom Lord Dalhousie had consulted in the matter came out in their
respective answers: Henry Lawrence had said that annexation was just but
not expedient; John Lawrence had said that it was just, and that its
expediency was undeniable and pressing. The country was therefore annexed:
the boy prince was deposed, and was granted a very handsome provision for
life, with the titular dignity of Prince. In making his final decision,
Lord Dalhousie used these solemn words: 'While deeply sensible of the
responsibility I have assumed, I have an undoubting conviction of the
expediency, the justice, and the necessity of my act. What I have done, I
have done with a clear conscience, and in the honest belief that it was
imperatively demanded of me by my duty to the State.'
The natural corollary to conquest was the settlement
and consolidation of the country. Lord Dalhousie personally dealt with
each question as it came up, and personally inspected each part of the
Province: he also took up his residence for many months of the year at
Simla, so as to be near. With Lord Dalhousie as the controlling power, and
with such agents as the Lawrences, Herbert Edwardes, and John Nicholson,
the success of the measures that were taken to settle the Province was
assured.
That even the chiefs were ultimately satisfied by the
arrangements made may be illustrated by the remark of one of them : 'We
have got more than Ranjit Singh would ever have given us, and that free of
all military service.' Not the least important of the measures taken was
the settlement of the Land Tax on a fairer basis than before, and the
establishment of a record of rights. The two instruments of the revenue
system of the old Sikh Governments had been the soldier and the
tax-gatherer: the taxes were often collected, indeed, at the point of the
bayonet: just so in Oudh, its Kings were in the habit of collecting the
taxes at the cannon's mouth. A new moral life was stirred up in the
country by the introduction of an educational system; that this was so,
may be illustrated by the action which the Sikh Sardars took in resolving
to reduce their heavy marriage expenses ; the old financial difficulty of
providing dowries for their daughters 'had been one of the principal
causes that led to the crime of female infanticide formerly so rife in the
Punjab. It was this successful administration that made of the Punjab what
it became in the troublesome days of the Mutiny: The Saviour Province of
India.'
Lord Dalhousie was next involved in war with the Raja
of Sikhirn, who had treacherously seized the British political officer,
and the great botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker. This war resulted in the
annexation of an outlying tract of the country: it was only a fitting
punishment for such an act of treachery.
Ever since the Burmese War in Lord Amherst's time,
Rangoon had remained an integral part of the Burmese Empire. A British
Resident had been originally stationed at Ava, and during the lifetime of
the ruler, with whom the Treaty of Yandabu had been made, it had been
faithfully observed. On the succession of a new ruler, a change had taken
place in the position of the British: no representative had been allowed
at the Burmese capital: and all diplomatic relations had ceased. The
pretensions of the Emperor of Burmah of the time may be illustrated from
such high-sounding titles as : 'The Elder Brother of China,' 'The Lord who
is the greatest of Kings.' The immediate cause of the action of Lord
Dalhousie was a petition of British merchants at Rangoon, which stated
that the Burmese Governor had granted his dependants permission to rob the
inhabitants, as he had no money to pay them ; they were to get money as
best they could. A British naval officer was sent to interview the
Governor in order to obtain redress. He could get no reply at all to his
repeated requests for an interview; he was kept waiting in the sun, and
then was informed that the Governor was asleep, and could not be
disturbed. It became evident that redress could not be obtained by
peaceful means, and that there was no other alternative but war. The
result of the war that ensued w-as the conquest and annexation of Lower
Burmah. From the very commencement of the campaign, Lord Dalhousie had
laid down the principle that, with a nation so ridiculously and
mischievously self-conceited and arrogant, whatever was conquered must be
annexed; any other course would be regarded as a sign of weakness.
The chief incident in the campaign was the storming of
the great temple-citadel of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Rangoon. On the
occasion of a visit which Lord Dalhousie paid at a later date to Rangoon,
he remarked to the British General: 'I cannot imagine, General, how your
men ever got in at this place.' The chief constituents of the garrison
were the picked guards, known as 'The Immortals of the Golden Country',
whose discipline compelled them to die at their posts: on this occasion,
however, they were the first to flee, and they were in such a hurry that
they forgot to unloose some women and children who had been fastened up
among the guns as pledges for the valour of the defenders. The curious
device by which the courage of the ordinary troops used to be ensured also
proved of no avail on this occasion: the king used to keep the wives and
children of the married soldiers as hostages, while all bachelor soldiers
were chained up to the guns and embrasures of the forts. While he foresaw
the necessity of an ultimate annexation of the whole Burmese Empire, Lord
Dalhousie was content to stay his hand after the capture of the city that
commanded the approach to the capital by river: his reasons for thus
acting were given in a private letter: 'To march to Ava will give no peace
unless the army remains at Ava; in other words, unless we absorb the whole
Burmese Empire: that necessity may come some day; I sincerely hope it will
not come in my day.'
As had been the case with the Punjab, so now with
Burmah, Lord Dalhousie devoted much time and thought to the question of
the administration of the newly annexed territory, and he personally
controlled the measures taken. He paid altogether four visits to see that
his policy was properly carried out. The nature of the problems to be
solved was distinct. For one thing, there was an entire absence of any
ruling class in Burmah, below the King and the King's officials ; these
latter were only the instruments of the King's oppression—the attitude of
the people towards them was naturally, therefore, one of distrust and
dislike, and disorder was the natural atmosphere in which they moved. The
change that took place under British administration was naturally slow,
but the final results were good: a conviction was created among the people
that under British rule peaceful industry yielded an easier livelihood
than crime.
By the conquest and consequent annexation of the
Punjab, Lower Burmah, and the outlying tracts of Sikhim, Lord Dalhousie
had added to the British dominions in India territories equal to nearly
twice the area of England and Wales.
The annexations which were made by Lord Dalhousie were
forced on him by circumstances just as conquest had been. It was becoming
increasingly evident that the old system of ruling, through the
make-believe of sham royalties, could exist no longer side by side with
the object- lesson which was being shown the people of India of the very
different system under which the Government of India itself was
administering its own territories. If the Government of India itself
recognized, as it undoubtedly did, that it existed only for the benefit of
the governed, and not for the profit of the rulers, it was only natural
that it should insist on the same policy for the Dependent Native States.
The Times, in an article written in the year 1853, on the results of the
old system, under which native rulers, no matter what the character of
their rule, had been bolstered up by British support, had thus expressed
itself : 'We give many of these princes power without responsibility: our
hand of iron maintains them on the throne despite their imbecility, their
vices, and their crimes.' Even Sir Henry Lawrence had been obliged to
acknowledge of many of the native Indian rulers of the time that, if they
could not plunder strangers, they must harry their own people. The time
seemed ripe then for a change, and Lord Dalhousie determined to apply to
the Dependent Native States of India the principle that already actuated
the Supreme Government, namely, that government is not designed for the
profit of princes but for the welfare of the people.
The whole question practically centred round the
privilege of adoption. Under Hindu Law, every man has the right of
adopting a son on failure of a male heir, to allow of the proper discharge
of all due religious ceremonies, on which the welfare of the deceased
parent depends in his future state in the other world ; the adopted son
thus became the spiritual persona of his adoptive father, and succeeded to
his property. This was recognized by the Government as a right to
succession to property, but not to government. As regards the right, of
succession to government, the principle had been laid down by law that,
where the government of a State was in question, the consent of the
paramount power was necessary to confirm such an adoption; it was further
recognized that the paramount power had full legal right to withhold its
assent if it thought fit; a recognition of adoption was to be regarded,
moreover, as a special mark of favour.
A poet has well expressed the principle on which the
Sovereign Power is bound to act in such cases:-
Are crowns and empire, The government and safety of
mankind, Trifles of such light moment to be left Like some rich
toy, a ring, or fancied gem, Like pledge of parting friends? Can
kings do thus, And give away a people for a legacy?
On this principle Lord Dalhousie proceeded to act. Thus the doctrine of
lapse became, by force of circumstances, the deliberately formulated
policy of the Government of India at this time. One of the earliest
examples of the application of the new policy was the Principality of
Satara. This had been created by the British on the general breakup of the
Mahratta power in the early part of the nineteenth century. The ruler of
the State had adopted a successor on his death-bed. As far back, however,
as 1841, the principle had been laid down that it was inexpedient to
reconstitute a subordinate State by recognizing a death-bed adoption. Lord
Dalhousie and his responsible advisers decided that in this particular
case the principle must be adhered to; Satara therefore lapsed to the
British Government, and thus became an integral part of the British
dominions. In the next case, that of Samnbalpur, the chief had
deliberately refused to adopt an heir, with the express view that his
people, after his death, might enjoy the security of English
administration: here the question of adoption did not come up at all : it
was a case of a childless chief practically bequeathing his territory to
the British Government. Jhansi had been ceded by the Peshwa to the British
so far back as 1817 : in 1832, a Raja had been created out of the local
Subandar: he had died childless a few years later, after a weak and
oppressive administration. The Government of the day selected a
great-uncle to succeed him; he also died childless after a similar
oppressive rule. The Government again selected a successor, but, owing to
the country having fallen into disorder, had for a time to assume the
administration itself, the management being afterwards restored to the
Baja. He proved a fair ruler as judged by native standards; lie died in
1853, leaving no natural heir, but only an adopted child. The question
then arose whether the child was to be allowed to succeed to the
sovereignty of the State: the Government, having in view the misrule of
the previous thirty years, and the calamities that had befallen the people
in consequence, decided in the negative. Lord Dalhousie held that sound
policy combined with duty in urging the British Government to refuse to
recognize the adoption and to take possession of Jhansi as an escheat. An
ample pension was given to the widow, and the
territories were brought under the direct administration of the Government
of India. Some other smaller States lapsed in the same way. In one case,
that of a certain Amir of Scinde, it was discovered that he had obtained
possession of certain British districts under a forged document; these,
therefore, naturally reverted to their rightful owners. In another ease
that occurred in Orissa, the persistent practice by the ruler of the rite
of human sacrifice formed an all-sufficient ground for the forfeiture of
his territories. Even in these days evidence every now and again crops up
to show that this practice has not entirely died out in some of the more
remote hill tracts.
Nagpur was perhaps the most important of the States,
taking extent of territory into consideration, that were thus annexed.
This State comprised four-fifths of the existing Central Provinces,
excluding Berar. It had been originally Gond territory, and had been
conquered by the Mahrattas in 1781. Years of terrible suffering had
followed this conquest. When Mahratta rule disappeared, as it did in 1818,
a portion of the old State was reconstituted by the Marquess of Hastings
as a subordinate Native State. This was placed under the nominal rule of
an infant descendant of the second Raja; an English Resident, Sir Richard
Jenkins, was appointed to administer it. The long minority of the young
Baja under the able administration of Jenkins extended for some twelve
years. This period has been called 'the golden age of Nagpur'. A change of
scene occurred when the young Baja attained his majority, and was put in
charge of the administration of his territory: lie at once proceeded to
dissipate the treasure that had accumulated during his long minority, and
recommenced the old Mahratta extortions upon his people. In 1853 the
Resident wrote of him: 'One of his choicest amusements is an auction sale,
when some unfortunate widow is ruled not to be entitled to her deceased
husband's estates.' His sole idea of the treaty that had secured him the
chief- ship was that it secured for him British protection against the
vengeance of his subjects: 'See,' he had remarked to a newly appointed
minister, that the provisions of the Treaty are enforced to protect me in
the enjoyment of those pleasures of dancing and singing that I have loved
from my boyhood.' He died in 1853, leaving no male heirs and no legitimate
daughters; he had persistently refrained, moreover, from adopting an heir.
The question then arose whether an adoption by one of his widows should be
consented to. Lord Dalhousie decided against the State being thus
artificially re-created. 'We set up a Raja at Nagpur,' he wrote, 'we
afforded him every advantage a native prince could command: his boyhood
was trained under our own auspices : an able and respected princess was
his guardian and the regent of the State. For over ten years, while he was
yet a youth, we governed his country for him we handed it over to him with
an excellent system of administration in full and practical operation,
with a disciplined and well-paid army, with a full treasury, and a
contented people. Yet, after little more than twenty years, this prince,
descending to the tomb, has left behind him a character whose record is
disgraceful to him alike as a sovereign and as a man: so favoured and so
aided, he has, nevertheless, lived and died a seller of justice, a
drunkard, and a debauchee. What guarantee can the British Government now
find for itself, or offer to the people of Nagpur, that another successor
will not imitate and emulate this bad example? And if that should be the
case, what justification could the Government of India hereafter plead for
having to exercise the power which it possessed, to avert for ever from
the people of Nagpur so probable and so grievous an evil?' The private
rights of the family of the deceased Baja were scrupulously respected by
Lord Dalhousie. The Court of Directors had declared that the possessions
of the Baja were fairly at the disposal of the Government, but, in his
regard for all private rights, he himself took a different view: he had
the personal effects of the late Baja realized, and thus created a fund
called 'The Bhonsla Fund', for the benefit of the family: pensions to the
various members of the family and their dependants were assigned out of
the large revenues that thus accrued. Lord Dalhousie further ordered that
the widows should be treated with the greatest courtesy, in consideration
of their rank, their sex, and their changed condition. This treatment of
the widows presented a marked contrast to that which the late Raja himself
had served out to the widows of his own subjects who happened to die
possessed of wealth that he coveted.
In Southern India, the last Nawab of the Karnatik had
died, 'of dancing girls and of ennui,' wrote Sir Edwin Arnold, in 1855,
after some thirty years of misrule : he had left no natural heirs : as far
back as 1819, the definite conditions had been laid down that the title
was not to be regarded as an hereditary one. It was therefore now decided
by the Court of Directors that the title of Nawab should be placed in
abeyance: liberal pensions were awarded to the members of the family, and
the rank of premier nobleman in Madras was assigned to the leading
representative of the family.
Another ease of lapse, but not of territory, was that
of the pension that had been originally granted, as far back as 1818, by
the Government of the Marquess of Hastings, to the deposed Mahratta
Prince, Baji Rao. It had been distinctly stated at the time, that it was
to be a life pension only. Baji Rao only died in 1851. The pension was not
continued to his adopted son, the Nana Sahib, as he has been generally
styled: at the same time, the Government treated him very liberally by
granting him the land, where his father had been residing, as a Jaghir for
life. The Secretary to the Government, in explaining the ample provision
that had been made for him, thus wrote: 'For twenty-three years the Peshwa
received an annual clear stipend of eighty thousand pounds, besides the
proceeds of the Jaghir: in that time he received the enormous sum of more
than two millions and a half sterling. He had no charges to maintain, he
has left no sons of his own, and he has bequeathed property to the amount
of two hundred and eighty thousand pounds to his family. Those who remain
have no claim whatever on the consideration of the Government : neither
have they any claim on its charity, because the income left to them is
amply sufficient.' History records how the Nana Sahib made it a grievance
that the pension was not continued to him, and how he took the first
opportunity that presented itself, in the troublous times of the Mutiny,
to avenge himself, leaving a name behind him that no one can envy, 'the
infamous Nana Sahib.'
As regards the more important Sovereign States, the policy of the
Government had been to maintain the succession as far as was practicable
it was considered a matter of the highest political importance that an
orderly devolution of the succession should take place on the demise of
each prince the Government had accordingly directed its efforts to secure
that an heir should be invariably forthcoming, whether by public
declaration, or by testamentary provision, or by adoption. Lord Dalhousie
did not depart from the principle thus laid down. In the case of the two
principal States that circumstances compelled him to deal with, Hyderabad
and Oudh, two different questions were involved. As regards Hyderabad, the
Nizam was bound by Treaty to pay for the contingent of troops maintained
by the Government in his territories : the payments had, however, fallen
considerably into arrear; in order, therefore, to ensure more punctual
payment in the future, a Treaty was made in 1853 between the Nizam and the
Government of India whereby certain districts, comprising the territory
known as The Berars, were ceded to the British. This territory is now
included in the administration of the Central Provinces, having been
leased practically in perpetuity from the Nizam by a Treaty made with him
by the Government of Lord Curzon. For all practical purposes this cession
of territory may therefore be styled an annexation.
As regards the important State of Oudh, far more important questions were
involved. Repeated warnings against misrule and tyranny had been conveyed
to the rulers of Oudh, both by dispatch and by personal advice tendered by
successive Governor-Generals, on their visits to the State on various
occasions. The King had been given every chance of reforming his
administration. In 1847 Lord Hardinge had visited Lucknow, and had
solemnly warned the King that, unless His Majesty reformed his
administration within two years, the British Government would be forced to
interfere by assuming the direct government of Oudh. In 1851, Colonel
Sleeman, who was at the time Resident at the Court of Lucknow, made such a
report of the state of things as compelled the Governor- General to ask
himself whether he could any longer be responsible for
such a spectacle of human misery and callous misrule. In 1854 he asked
Colonel Outram for a report: this showed that matters, instead of
improving, had been steadily growing from worse to worse. The country,
Outram reported, was completely delivered over to anarchy and the cruelest
forms of oppression. Lord Dalhousie realized that the time for action had
now come, and in sending his report of the state of affairs to the Home
Government he wrote: ' I respectfully submit that the time has come when
inaction on the part of the British Government in relation to the affairs
of the Kingdom of Oudh can now be no longer justified, and is already
converting our responsibility into guilt.'
He suggested that, while the King should be permitted
to retain his royal title and rank, lie should be required to vest the
whole civil and military administration of Oudh in the lands of the
Company, and that its power should be perpetual in duration, as well as
ample in extent. The Home Government decreed the sterner policy of
complete annexation, a policy which involved the deposition of the King.
Though Lord Dalhousie himself had not advocated this complete measure, lie
loyally carried out the orders. This annexation of Oudh was the last and
at the same time the greatest of the annexations of territory made by the
Government, and the carrying it out was practically Lord Daihousie's last
public act.. The minute he wrote on the occasion contained these solemn
words: 'The British Government would be guilty in the sight of God and
man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an
administration fraught with suffering to millions: with this feeling on my
mind, and in humble reliance on the blessing of the Almighty, for millions
of His creatures will draw freedom and happiness from the change, I
approach the execution of this duty gravely, and not without solicitude,
but calmly and altogether without doubt.'
Conquest and annexation only formed one part, and that
perhaps not the most important part, of the rule of Lord Dalhousie. Great
works of internal organization also formed a very conspicuous feature of
it. Owing to the recent vast accession of territory, many changes in
administration had become necessary. The measure of time changes effected
by Lord Dalhousie in the map of India may be gauged by the fact that he
left to his successors to administer a country whose area was a third and
a half larger than the country he had himself received charge of from his
predecessor. The first change in administration made was to relieve the
Governor-General of the charge of Bengal, for the administration of which
lie was still responsible, and the burden of which, with his other
responsibilities, had become intolerable. Bengal was for the future to be
ruled by a Lieutenant-Governor. In order that the Governor-General might
be in a position to maintain watch and ward over provinces so far apart as
the new Provinces were, and to exercise supervision generally over the
whole Empire, the location of the Imperial Government for the greater part
of the year at Simla was decided on. Hitherto the command of India had
been held by the British, as became a great ocean power, from the sea: on
the land side India had been isolated from all her powerful neighbours by
intervening States : under the new condition of things created by Lord
Dalhousie, India had practically been converted into an inland Asiatic
realm. A redistribution of military power had thus become necessary, and
the head quarters of the Army was removed from Calcutta to a station one
thousand miles inland. Calcutta thus ceased to be the political and
military head quarters of time Government.
Lord Dalhousie organized for his new Provinces a mixed
system of government by which lie endeavoured to unite military strength
and promptitude with civilian exactitude of justice and vigilance in
administrative details. Local usages and customs were to form the
groundwork of the whole system of judicial and revenue administration, and
the simple class only of British Laws, Enactments, and Regulations, as
culled from the systems at work in the older Provinces, was to be
introduced. Under such a system as this, the affairs of native life
proceeded upon their previous footing with scarcely a perceptible change.
In matters of revenue or criminal law there was of course a change; thus,
if a man committed a crime, he found himself dealt with by a stricter
judicial procedure, and fined or sent to prison, instead of having his
hand or foot chopped off. This system was known as 'The Non-Regulation
System', and was itself a striking testimony to the genius of Lord
Dalhousie. It proved to have within itself the capacity of adaptation to
the new wants and requirements of the people, as they prospered and
multiplied under British rule. With the further development and progress
of the Provinces, other changes have become necessary, and these have been
introduced from time to time, as circumstances have permitted.
All these administrative changes were but preliminary
to the great work of consolidation and development which forms one of the
distinguishing characteristics of Lord Dalhousie's rule in India. He has
been styled the father of the railway and the telegraph systems, as the
introduction of both was entirely his work. In his usual picturesque
language, Sir Edwin Arnold has said of the railway system in India as
devised by Lord Dalhousie: 'Railways may do for India what dynasties have
never done: what the genius of Akbar the Magnificent could not effect by
government, nor the cruelty of Tippu Sultan by violence: they may make
India a nation.' It is interesting to note that, as a corollary to the
development of railways, Lord Dalhousie took every precaution to encourage
freedom of trade at the chief ports of India.
It is hard in these days to realize the immense
difficulties that the pioneers of the telegraph system had to encounter in
India, and for that matter throughout the East. Science and perseverance,
however, triumphed in the end over all difficulties. The casual remark of
a mutineer as lie was being led out to execution, 'It is that accursed
string that strangles us,' affords a remarkable illustration of the
utility of the telegraph in India at the time of the Mutiny.
Another great factor in Lord Dalhousie's work of
consolidation was his introduction of cheap postage. One writer goes so
far as to say: 'It has done more than perhaps his telegraphs or his
railways, in revolutionizing the old, stagnant, and self-isolated life in
India.' In old days, the postmaster was often the station doctor, or some
subaltern who had plenty of spare time on his hands; in the present day
village schoolmasters are found in the remotest districts acting in the
same capacity.
The Public Works Department was the creation of Lord Dalhousie; he
specially encouraged the training of skilled engineers, and instituted
Engineering Schools in the three leading Presidencies, while at the same
time he urged on the Home Government the training of young men in England
for an Indian career in the Department.
Apart from the material benefits which Lord Dalhousie conferred on the
people of India, he laid India under an eternal obligation by the
inestimable moral benefits which followed in the train of his educational
system; he laid the foundations of a national system of Education. To him
was due the development of that system of vernacular instruction which Mr.
Thomason had inaugurated among the masses of the population in the Upper
Provinces. The celebrated dispatch of Sir Charles Wood in 1854 laid down
the lines which were to be followed: 'Indian Education was to be founded
neither on English nor on Sanscrit or Arabic, but on the modern vernacular
languages of the Indian peoples.' Under the system thus developed by Lord
Dalhousie, a network of educational institutions was spread over India;
this was his crowning act of consolidation. New forces, both intellectual
and political, have been set in motion by the liberal educational policy
of the Government. 'It is to the credit of Lord Dalhousie,' writes an
authority, 'that he was the first to begin that process of binding
together the Indian races, both by a common system of education, and by a
community of interest, mercantile and political, which was altogether
unknown in Ancient India, and which forms the most significant feature of
the India of to-day.' What the issue will be it is impossible to foresee.
Sir Edwin Arnold, in summing up the results of Lord Dalhousie's
rule, has said: 'We are making a people in India, where hitherto there
have been a hundred tribes, but no people.'
This sketch, so far as it has gone, has delineated the born ruler of
commanding personality: a portrait of the man, as he appeared to his
contemporaries, may well be presented in conclusion. Speaking of Lord Dalhousie's
general characteristics, one authority has written: 'Small of stature, but
with a noble head, a most penetrating glance, and a noble demeanour, the
little man of Government House first inspired awe in
those with whom he came in contact, then trust, and finally an ardent
admiration, in which loyalty to the master mingled strangely with personal
love. During eight years of trials, and sorrows, and successes, ho
presented to our countrymen in India the loftiest type, I had almost said
the apotheosis, of the great qualities with which we in distant lands love
to associate the name of Englishman.'
Lord Daihousie's administrative qualities were of no
mean order; he possessed an enormous capacity for work, and rarely allowed
himself less than eight hours' continuous brain-work at his desk: sitting
down at half-past nine in the morning, he never quitted it, even while he
ate his lunch, till half-past five in the afternoon. Nothing was allowed
to interfere with his daily tale of work, neither weariness, nor heat, nor
the fatigue of an Indian march. Sir Richard Temple, himself at one time a
notable administrator, wrote thus of him: 'Every man who had business with
him felt that intercourse to be a pleasure : the harder the affair the
greater the satisfaction, so completely trained was his capacity for
administration.' Of his ordinary routine work, the Chief Clerk of the
Foreign Department once remarked that, if Lord Dalhousie had been a writer
paid by the sheet, he would have earned a considerable income. Towards his
subordinates ho was always scrupulously polite: when it did become
necessary to administer a rebuke, he always did so in writing, and toned
its severity down in the act.
He exacted from all under him that same austere
conscientiousness in the performance of duty that characterized himself.
All who served him loyally, and there were few who did not do so, regarded
him as a trustworthy friend, while at the same time looking up to him with
a certain awe. One of the principal factors that succeeded in winning the
allegiance and loyalty of his lieutenants, was their recognition of the
fact that he owned time truest right to command, the right of personal
knowledge gained by personal work.
Yet another factor was his great power of sympathy: the
knowledge that all those who worked immediately under hi had, that he
watched with interest every incident in their lives, naturally drew from
them the best that they had to give in return. He possessed great strength
of will, which was especially conspicuous in the resistance he offered to
the inroads of disease and ill-health, the results of his devotion to duty; he never gave himself rest till he had completed the task he had set
himself to do. He suppressed as much as possible, we are told, any
manifestation of his distress or suffering, and the public was scarcely
aware that his strength and life were gradually, but surely, ebbing away.
The only occasion on which he is ever known to have broken down was on the
receipt of the news of his wife's death at sea, on her homeward voyage, in
1853. It is recorded of him that lie fell to the ground as if stricken
dead, and for two days he shut himself up with his grief. But his old
fortitude returned, and he again had recourse to work as his sure and only
consolation in his grief. The contrast that was presented between the man
when he first came to India, and the man who left India, must have struck
everybody; he came to India more or less in the plenitude of youthful
vigour and activity: he has himself left on record what he felt like when
he was leaving India. The occasion was the installation of Lord Canning as
his successor in office: Sir John Lawrence had asked him a certain
question to which he had replied: 'I wish I were in Canning's place, and
he in mine, and then wouldn't I govern India; but no, I could not wish my
worst enemy to be the poor, miserable, broken-down, dying man I am now.'
The crowds that assembled to witness the departure for
his native land of 'the glorious little invalid', as a contemporary writer
styled him, were swayed with but one feeling, a deep sense of regret,
combined with admiration they realized that they were losing a man, the
key-notes of whose career in India had been devotion to duty and
self-sacrifice, and they now also realized that he had practically given
his life for India. So indeed it proved: within a short five years, which
were years of suffering borne with exemplary patience and fortitude, the
first Marquess Dalhousie passed away in his own home, at the early age of
forty-nine. The
Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India
By Edwin Arnold in 2 volumes (1862)
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |