Violent conduct of Prince Koireng--A rebuke--Service
payment--Advantage of Manipuri system--Customs
duty--Slavery--Releasing slaves--Chowba's fidelity--Sepoy's
kindness to children--Visit to the Yoma range.
An incident occurred which might have caused some trouble, while
it served to show the violent disposition of Kotwal Koireng, later
known as the Senaputtee. One evening my Naga interpreter reported
to me that an Angami Naga of Kohima had been cruelly assaulted by
that prince, while he was passing along the road to the east of the
palace enclosure. Soon after the man was brought in to me, and an
examination by my native doctor proved that he was suffering from a
severe contusion above the right eye, which might or might not prove
fatal. Now, strictly speaking, the man was not a British subject,
but some day or other he was sure to be one, and we had assumed an
indefinite control over his people. This made me feel that passing
over the offence as one not concerning us, would be to lose prestige
with Manipur, as well as with the Naga tribes, who ought, I felt,
to be assured of my sympathy. I therefore at once sent a strong
remonstrance to the Durbar, claiming the man as a British subject, and
demanding prompt recognition of, and reparation for the outrage. On
further investigation it appeared, that the man was with some of his
friends carrying a large joint of beef on his shoulder just as Kotwal
Koireng was passing, and a few drops of blood fell on the ground;
this enraged the Prince so much that he at once attacked the man
with a thick stick which he carried, and beat him till he was almost
senseless. There was no real provocation, as eating the flesh of cows
that had died a natural death was always allowed, and any dead cow
was at once handed over to the Nagas and other hill-tribes; it was
simply an outburst of temper. The result was, that until the man's
recovery was assured, Kotwal was held in a species of arrest; then
he was released and sent with the Jubraj to make an apology to me;
the man received a sum of money, and the affair ended amicably. I
did not often come across the princes, though sometimes I met them
out riding, and then we were very friendly. Once when I was walking
out, I met one of the younger ones riding in state on an elephant,
he forgot to make the usual salutation. This was reported to the
Maharajah, who sent him with Thangal Major to apologize.
The Manipuris paid very little revenue in money, and none in direct
taxes. The land all belonged to the Rajah, and every holding paid a
small quantity of rice each year. The chief payment was in personal
service. This system known by the name of "Lalloop," and by us often
miscalled "forced labour," was much the same as formerly existed
in Assam under its Ahom Rajahs. According to it, each man in the
country was bound to render ten days' service out of every forty,
to the Rajah, and it extended to every class in the community. Women
were naturally exempt, but, among men, the blacksmith, goldsmith,
carpenters, etc., pursued their different crafts in the Rajah's
workshops for the stated time, while the bulk of the population,
the field workers, served as soldiers, and made roads or dug canals,
in fact executed great public works for the benefit of the state.
The system was a good one, and when not carried to excess, pressed
heavily on nobody. It was especially adapted to a poor state sparsely
populated. In such a state, under ordinary circumstances, where the
amount of revenue is small, and the rate of wages often comparatively
high, it is next door to impossible to carry out many much-needed
public works by payment. On the other hand, every man in India who
lives by cultivation, has much spare time on his hands, and the
"Lalloop" system very profitably utilises this, and for the benefit
of the community at large. I never heard of it being complained of as
a hardship. The system in Assam led to the completion of many useful
and magnificent public works. High embanked roads were made throughout
the country, and large tanks, lakes, appropriately termed "seas," were
excavated under this arrangement. Many of the great works of former
ages in other parts of India are due to something of the same kind.
It was a sad mistake giving up the system in Assam, without retaining
the right of the state to a certain number of days' labour on the
roads every year, as is the custom to this day, I believe, in Canada,
Ceylon, and other countries.
Unfortunately, our so-called statesmen are carried away by false
ideas of humanitarianism, and a desire to pose in every way as the
exponents of civilisation, that is the last fad that is uppermost,
and the experience of ages and the real good of primitive people are
often sacrificed to this ignis fatuus. I hear that "Lalloop" has been
abolished in Manipur since we took the state in charge. We may live
to regret it; the unfortunate puppet Rajah certainly will. Why cannot
we leave well alone, and attack the real evils of India that remain
still unredressed, evils that to hear of them, would make the hair of
any decent thinking man stand on end? We have still to learn that the
native system has much good in it, much to recommend it, and that it is
in many cases the natural outgrowth of the requirements of the people.
Manipur in old days required very little to make it a model
native state of a unique type, and its people the happiest of the
happy. All it required was a better administration of justice, and a
few smaller reforms, also more enlightened fiscal regulations such as
many European states have not yet attained. Given these, no one would
have wished for more. No one asked for high pay; enough to live on,
and the system of rewards already in force from time immemorial,
satisfied all aspirations. The people were contented and happy, and
it should have been our aim and object to keep them and leave them
so. Shall we have accomplished this desirable object when we hand
over the state to its future ruler, that is if it ever does again
come under a Native Government?
One of the standing grievances of the Government of India against
Manipur, was the levying of customs duties on all articles
imported into the state, and on some articles exported to British
territory. These duties supplied almost the only money revenue
the Maharajah had, and also to some extent protected Manipuri
industries. During my tenure of office I did something towards
regulating the system, and in the case of articles not produced in
Manipur, induced the Durbar to lower the rates. In the case of cloths,
however, I strongly advocated the duties being kept up, where, as
in the case of coarse cloths the imports entered into competition
with the excellent manufactures of Manipur, which I wished to see
preserved in all their integrity.
Our system of free trade has done much to injure useful trades in
India, and none more than those in cotton goods. Among an ignorant
people the incentives of cheapness and outward appearance are so great,
that the sudden importation of cheap and inferior foreign goods may
kill out an ancient art, and the people only discover when too late
what they have lost, and then lament having abandoned the really good
for the attractive flimsy article. Thus, in many parts of India,
the beautiful chintzes which were common thirty-five years ago,
are now nowhere to be had, and every year sees the decay of some
branch of manufacture. This was very noticeable in Assam, and the
arts there lost were only kept up in Manipur, owing to its having a
Native Court where tradition and taste encouraged them. Soon after
I went to Manipur, I found that the valley had almost been drained
of ponies by their exportation to Cachar. The ministers consulted me
about it, and I gave my consent to the trade being stopped, and this
was done for years until the numbers had again increased.
On the whole the duties on almost every article were lowered during
my term of office, and the imports largely increased. Indeed, but for
the cumbersome system of levying the custom charges, they would have
been no grievance at all; and as it was they hardly added anything to
the cost of the articles when sold in Manipur, many of which could
be bought for little more than the price paid in Cachar, plus the
charge for carriage.
Slavery of a mild form existed in Manipur, the slaves being hereditary
ones, or people, and the descendants of people who had sold themselves
for debt, their services being pledged as interest for the debt. For
instance a Naga (a very common case), marries a girl of another Naga
village, thereby incurring a debt of forty rupees to the father,
that being the price of a Naga bride. The man not being able to pay,
his father-in-law says, "Sell yourself, and pay me." This is done, and
the man pays the forty rupees and has to work for his master till he
can pay the debt, something being sometimes allowed for subsistence,
or they agree upon a monthly payment, which if not paid is added
to the principal. The wife probably works and supports the family,
and, if the creditor is a fairly good fellow, things go smoothly,
and the debtor never attempts to fulfil his obligations more than
he can help. The law allows a man to transfer his services to any
one who will take up the debt. Here and there great abuses crop up,
and the master takes advantage of the corrupt courts to bind the
slave more and more securely in the chains of debt, and then every
effort is made to escape. I often paid the debts of slaves who came
to me for help and let them work off the money. Once a little girl
named Nowbee came to me. Her mother had sold her to pay her father's
funeral expenses. She stayed with us, working in the nursery for years,
and when I left I forgave her the remainder of her debt which was
unpaid, as, of course, I did with all the others. I once offered to
redeem the mother, who, in turn, had sold herself, but the old woman
declined, as some one told her that we should take her to England,
and she was afraid to go. Sometimes cases of very cruel ill-treatment
came before me, or cases where people had been made slaves contrary
to the laws, and then I made a strong remonstrance to the Durbar,
and insisted on justice. Once or twice I took the complainants under
my protection immediately, and insisted on keeping them. One day a
young man and a small boy came to me for protection: the case was
a bad one, and I at once took them into my service as the best way
of settling the difficulty, the young man as a gardener and the boy
to work in the kitchen and wait at table; both were named "Chowba,"
i.e. big; a name as common out there as John in England. We gave
little Chowba clothes, and he stood behind my wife's chair at dinner,
the first evening crying bitterly from fear. However, he learned his
work, and became an excellent servant. When I went on leave in 1882,
I offered to place him with my locum tenens, but the boy said, "No,
sahib, you have been kind to me; I have broken your things and you have
threatened to beat me, but have never done so; you have threatened to
cut my pay, but have never done so; I will never serve any one but
you!" The poor boy kept his word; he preferred hard toil, cutting
wood and such-like work; but unfortunately died before I returned.
Another bad case I remember, in which a woman complained to me that her
child had been stolen from her house while she was away. I ordered the
child to be brought to me; the poor little thing was only four years
old, and could hardly stand from having been made to walk a great
distance by the man who had stolen her, and whose only excuse was,
that her father, who was dead, owed him nine rupees. I gave her to
her mother, and insisted on the Durbar punishing him. The story was a
sad one. The father of the child, a debtor slave, had been told by his
master to leave his home and go with him, and the man in desperation
attempted to kill his wife and little girl, and then committed suicide.
While in Manipur I did all I could to afford relief in individual
cases. It was a great abuse, but slavery in Manipur must not be put
in the same rank as slavery in Brazil, the West Indies, or Turkey and
Arabia. A thorough reform of the judicial system of Manipur would have
entirely taken the sting out of it. All the same, I wish I could have
abolished it.
My wife's nurse very speedily left us, and we were left to natives
and did much better with them. We always had three or four Naga girls
who did their work well in a rough-and-ready way. Chowbee, Nembee,
and Nowbee, just mentioned, were the best. Chowbee was the wife of
a Naga bearer named Lintoo, and Nembee afterwards married our head
bearer Horna. We engaged a tailor named Suleiman, brother of Sooltan,
one of our chuprassies, as a permanent servant, to do the ordinary
household sewing and mending. My two boys, Dick and Edward, became
very friendly with all the people, and were drilled daily by a naick
(corporal of my escort), and the good-natured sepoys used to allow
themselves to be drilled by the boys. One afternoon, I met these two
walking up the lines with my orderly. I asked what they were going
for, and they replied that the sepoys had not done their drill well
that day, and they were going to give them some more. Whenever a
new detachment came, the boys were formally introduced to the new
native officers and men. As they grew older they learned to ride,
and rode out morning and evening when I went for a walk.
As the Burmese difficulty did not show signs of decreasing, I went out
in February to Kongjang on the Yoma range, to reconnoitre and select
a place for a new stockade, if necessary. At three and a half miles
on my way, I passed Langthabal, the old capital of Ghumbeer Singh,
a pretty place where the cantonment of the Manipur Levy used to be,
and where Captain Gordon was buried under a tree. The ruined palace
lies nestling under a hill, on a spur of which is a magnificent
fir tree; behind the palace a garden run to waste and wood, with
a few ponds, formed an admirable cover for ducks, which I saw in
abundance. After leaving Langthabal, we passed a place called Leelong,
the place of execution for members of the Royal family, who are sewn
up in sacks and drowned in the river. Farther on is a great fishing
weir, where a small lake discharges itself into a river. At last,
after a march of thirty miles, I halted at Pullel, a village of low
caste Manipuris. Next morning we ascended the Yoma range, reaching
Aimole, a village picturesquely situated and inhabited by a tribe
of that name. The head of the village was an intelligent old man,
who remembered Captain Gordon and talked a good deal about him. I
gave him a coat, and the girls and boys of the village got up a dance
for my benefit, the most graceful and modest that I ever saw among
a wild people.
I reached Kongjang in the afternoon, a place very picturesquely
situated, with a fine view of the valley of the Lokchao and the hills
beyond, and of a portion of the Kubo valley. I selected a spot for a
stockade, and, after reconnoitring in the neighbourhood, marched back
next day to Pullel, and thence to Manipur, again passing Langthabal. I
never saw Langthabal without regretting its abandonment, there is
something very charming about the situation, and it is nearer to
Bissenpore on the Cachar road than Imphal; also a few miles nearer the
Kubo valley. It has always had the reputation of being very healthy,
which is not invariably the case with Imphal, and is, if anything,
a little cooler. Before leaving in 1886, I strongly recommended it
as the site for a cantonment, in the event of troops being stationed
in the valley. My recommendation was adopted.