Volunteering in India/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
If the reader should be displeased with the above digression, and censure me for having, at this distance of time, raked up a wretched and cruel past, the best excuse I can offer is that the defunct East India Company has never been (to my knowledge) adequately exposed to public scorn for their iniquitous policy of territorial spoliation in the East. And when we come to reflect that the calamitous consequences which resulted from the Mutiny, were due to their tyrannical and rapacious acts, no words can possibly be too strong for their condemnation.
As an old Anglo-Indian I say, and I challenge contradiction, that, after the annexation of Oudh, the educated natives of Upper India despised and detested the very name of .the so-called “Honourable” East India Company.
And why? Well, as the dethronement of the King of Oudh, and the seizure of his vast and superb possessions, was the last stroke of “annexation business” done by the Company before their extinction, and burial beneath the ruins of a policy they themselves had created for their doom, I will here venture to show (though it may sound egotistical; but why “egotistical,” when — as all along — in my narrative I am only concerned to tell the truth?) why the natives despised the Company, and British rule became naturally odious and justly offensive, especially to the Mahomedans; on what grounds Oudh was annexed, and how the annexation was accomplished. And as I was on the spot, and had but too good an opportunity of being an eye-witness of all that occurred on the occasion, I confine myself — as invariably — to indisputable facts.
In the outset, it is necessary to repeat that Oudh was so magnificent a kingdom that any other in Europe would have been justly proud to have amalgamated it with its own. Consequently, the Company never ceased to envy and hunger for its possession; until at last, impatient at finding no justifiable excuse for pouncing down upon the prey (I use the word in no disparaging sense), they composed — needless to say, behind a screen, to shade it from the light of the outer world — a proclamation for its seizure. And the essential abstract of this precious document is as follows: “Uniform extravagance and unparalleled profligacy, the grossest abuse of kingly power, and the most heartless disregard to justice (!) and that paternal care of his subjects which in every country forms the bond of union between the king and people.” As this much is the gist of the proclamation under which Oudh was annexed, and which, no doubt, was also intended to operate as charity is said to do in mortals, and cover a multitude of the king’s sins, I need not quote farther to warrant my asking: what would have been thought, said, or done had any attempt been made to confiscate, or rather usurp, a kingdom in Europe on so scandalously concocted a pretence, as the above-quoted abstract of the proclamation suggests? Doubtless the king had his failings, as all men have. And admitting that Oudh was a broken-down kingdom, ruined by native misrule, did these reasons sufficiently justify the Company in summarily depriving him of his crown?
But in those benighted days — and I am speaking of far more than thirty years ago, mind — India was exclusively locked out from the civilised world, and regarded as a huge “preserve” for the families and friends — whose name was legion — of the East India Company. It was a land in which you might have passed your whole life, and been in blissful ignorance almost all the while of the outer world. There was no such thing there as Public Opinion to checkmate wrongs; no railway or telegraph communication; no means of locomotion, excepting by the barbarous pālke which resembled a huge coffin slung on black poles and borne on men’s shoulders, who, poor wretches, toiled and crept over the country with their living freight like beasts of burden — when, in fact, it took more than a month to accomplish a distance that now takes less than a day, and when a journey to Upper India from Calcutta or Bombay, required as much preparation and time as it does now to undertake a trip round the world; — no Independent Press to boast of. No wonder then, that the Governor-General of India in those days held the position — to speak plainly — of a despotic Emperor. He could say and nnsay, or do and undo what he pleased, and when, and how, and where he pleased. And if any proof should be deemed necessary to confirm the accuracy of these remarks, all we have to do is to call up the recollection of Lord Dalhousie’s great absorption — within five years — of territory, which in area was more than double the extent of Great Britain and Ireland.
Unpleasant though it is for me to go back to the recollection of those wholesale annexations, and to speak of them in plain language, they must be so spoken of; for there is nothing like plain language, asserted and pronounced in sweeping terms, when plain language is thus needed, and if ever it was needed it is in speaking of the scandalous annexation under notice. And I am speaking, I repeat, as an eye-witness of all that occurred on the occasion, and asking whether any civilised government ever perpetrated a more unwarrantable act of tyranny and injustice, than that hidden from the world in the criminal seizure of Oudh; and whether its proud, susceptible, and deeply aggrieved people, numbering at least ten millions, could patiently bear, and contemplate with indifference, such grossly wrongful deeds, and yet in the bitterness of their feelings refrain from the relentless and barbarous vengeance which, in retaliation, they subsequently inflicted when the opportunity came.
We now come to that fatal day of the annexation, when, only about one year before the Mutiny, a scandalised army, armed with the disgraceful proclamation quoted above, crossed the Ganges into Oudh, to the exhilarating tune of bands playing “See the conquering hero comes!” Flags and banners fluttered in the breeze; generals looked exultant, ensigns big; the people groaned, the troops applauded; the guns saluted; and the trick was done. The coveted crown was torn off the regal owner's head, and placed on that of the usurping “John Company” — the kingdom proclaimed part and parcel of his territories, without a shot being fired, or the loss of a single life; while the unfortunate king, overwhelmed with grief and tears, was trotted down to Calcutta, and lingered there in sorrowful exile, to all intents and purposes as a “State Prisoner.” Think of that, reader, as a State Prisoner, poor fellow, until (in banishment for thirty years) he died.
Hence, without an atom of doubt, the Mutiny. And hence, alas I the sacrifice of innumerable innocent lives, whose precious blood will continue to stain the East India Company's historic records for all time.
It must not, however, be imagined that the king was powerless against this iniquitous usurpation of his kingdom. Far from that; for an estimation of the power at his disposal may be formed when it is explained that, although his trained army was comparatively small, it was backed literally by hundreds of thousands of armed high-caste auxiliaries, from among whom the Company's Sepoys themselves were largely recruited; and who, in fact, mainly composed the Bengal Army. Moreover, he had the sinews of war — as it is the sinews of most things— money.
Besides, further proof of the armed force at the king’s back can be adduced by mentioning the power and influence of Man Singh, one among many of the proud and powerful Hindu noblemen of Oudh, and a more dangerous man to the welfare of our interests in that province could not have been found in those days.
Now, notwithstanding the king being a Mahomedan — and Mahomedans and Hindūs are very seldom amicably disposed to one another — on a mandate from him, Mān Singh with tens of thousands of his armed Rajput tribe — born warriors, and although entirely abstaining from animal food, physically a splendid race of men, with handsome countenances, averaging about six feet high, amazingly strong, and withal remarkably athletic — would have risen as one man, and, with the aid of the king’s trained troops, swept the invaders through rivers of blood out of the kingdom.
Another formidable chieftain, named Bâne Madha (and I speak of both these men from personal experience), may be mentioned as possessing such influence over the Rājpūt population, as would have enabled him to double Mān Singh’s force, for the expulsion of the invaders.
But no. The king was, as most Mahomedans are, a bigoted fatalist; and as such it seemed as if he preferred losing a kingdom, with all the glory of his dynasty, and departing into exile and humiliation, rather than ignore the inexorable law of Fate, and disown his tenets.
Be that, however, as it may, and hard as the struggle must have been to him, he resigned himself to his “fate,” and with meek dignity submitted to his bitter destiny. And the history of this dishonourable dethronement has not only passed into the traditional history of Hindustan, but also into that of the Mahomedan nations of Asia — where, we may rest assured, it will never be forgotten to be handed down hereafter, from generation to generation.
If I could peer into the dim and distant future, and venture to prophesy, I would venture to foretell that, in after ages, when glorious India, in her regeneration, and under happier auspices, has grown up to maturity, and risen to the zenith of her destiny in becoming one of the grandest empires on earth, her posterity, instructed by Hindu tradition, will learn that the annexation policy of the East India Company originated the Mutiny, and that that policy was also instrumental in leading the Usurpers of Kingdoms into the realms of oblivion for ever.
Not a man in England would be better satisfied than I should to see the statements contained in this chapter refuted. But, alas! twenty-eight years’ experience, together with having viewed the scene, and taken an active part on the stage myself, enable me to affirm that the plain facts stated are beyond refutation.
Sad as the contents of the above paragraphs are, I yet grieve to leave embalmed within this one — enfolded as if in a winding sheet — a black shadow symbolising, so to speak, a ghastly spectre, eternally hovering over the unhallowed tomb of the East India Company. And although inexpressibly lamentable as it is to dwell upon the harrowing reminiscences of one of the most cruel catastrophes on record, I make no apology for the digression, especially as it has enabled me to trace, however faintly, the darkest spot on the historic pages of British rule in India. Indeed, the digression might still be continued, but what is the good; except to add that the Mutiny, in one respect, was not altogether an unmitigated calamity? For it resulted in the old order of things being rolled up like a scroll of stupendous failures; and from that eventful period a new era — the glorious Victorian era of righteousness — dawned upon benighted India, by kind Britannia generously lifting her up to a higher level of prosperity and happiness than that to which she had ever attained; and, as years roll on, she is destined to become, as I have already ventured to say, without any prophetic romance, a glory to Asia in her resources of civilisation; and in the far, far distant future, her lustre will tend to brighten the lot of countless millions of her people, and reflect the grandeur of the mighty English nation which, with its irresistible arm, benevolently dispelled the darkness in which she had slumbered for ages immemorial, and raised her to the dignity of an Empire perhaps second to none in the world. And when communication by railway is established between England and India; and steam has annihilated the space across the Eastern and Western hemisplieres; and the natives, in their regeneration, pass a portion of their lives amid the enlightening influences of European nations; and caste-superstitions have become humbugs of the past; and the representatives, or M.P.’s, of the Empire take their seats in the national assemblies, — generations yet unborn may see Imperial India, linked arm-in-arm to her foster parent — Old England — taking her place among the foremost realms of the earth, as one of the most marvellous Empires that the world has ever known.