bad characters of the same type, whom it was inexpedient or impossible
to charge with an offence under the Penal Code; and the Magistrates
showed no objection whatever to supporting the action of the police in
such cases. Thus for three years a very wholesome check was placed upon
this deplorable traffic, at a time when there was little articulate
Indian opinion to support the activity of the Commissioner. It was not
till twelve or thirteen years later that the Indian Government was
invited to consider Bills introduced by non-official Indian members of
the Legislature, designed to check or suppress both the immigration of
European unfortunates and the _swadeshi_ traffic in minor Indian girls.
Mr. Kennedy’s personal activities during the earlier months of his
Commissionership were to some extent reminiscent of the methods of Mr.
Forjett. He is said to have sometimes assumed a disguise—the full-dress
of an Arab or the _burka_ or covering of a Musalman _pardah-nashin_,—and
thus attired to have wandered about the city after nightfall in company
with one of his agents. He would pay surprise visits in this way to
various police-stations and _chaukis_, in order to discover at first
hand what sort of work his European and native officers were doing;
and all ranks learned to fear the consequences of their negligence or
other shortcomings being discovered by the Commissioner and performed
their duties with greater caution and zeal. He made himself feared by
the evil-doer and the lazy, who tried occasionally to forestall him by
obtaining previous information of his nocturnal visitations. They met,
however, with little success; the Commissioner was more than a match
for them. These constant surprise visits during 1899 and 1900 enabled
him to keep his finger on the pulse of the city and to checkmate the
criminal on several occasions. During the greater part of his term of
office, however, an injury to one of his ankles, which produced a limp,
practically deprived him of the power to pass unnoticed in disguise.
The lower classes thenceforth knew him as _Langada Kandi Saheb_, i.e.
‘the lame Mr. Kennedy’, and he is thus spoken of to this day by the old
law-breakers and disreputables who recollect his efforts to bring them to
book.
Short as was his tenure of the Commissioner’s appointment, Mr. Kennedy
managed to inspire the unworthy, whether belonging to the police-force
or to the lower-class urban population, with a wholesome fear of
retribution; and he spared no effort to tighten up the divisional police
administration to discover by personal inquiry the character of his
subordinates, and to place a check upon immorality. The discipline which
he inculcated in the police force was evident at the census of 1901,
when, in response to the request of the census authorities for assistance
in enumerating the large cosmopolitan population of the city, he placed
his European police officers in charge of the census-sections, directed
the Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali to secure the co-operation of the leaders of
the various sections and castes among the lower classes, and made the
divisional police responsible on the actual night of the census for
counting the large army of homeless and wandering people, who are a
permanent feature of the capital of Western India. Mr. Lovat Fraser, then
editor of the _Times of India_, wrote a graphic account in his paper of
this “Counting by Candle-light”, and paid a tribute to the thoroughness
of the census organization. The author of this book, who happened to
be in charge of the urban census, under the orders of the Provincial
Superintendent, Mr. R. E. Enthoven, can testify truly that his plans
for the enumeration could not have been successful without the active
assistance of a police-force inspired by its chief with a high standard
of efficiency.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. H. G. GELL, M.V.O.
1902-1909
When Mr. Kennedy left Bombay on furlough preparatory to retirement, his
place was taken by Mr. Herbert G. Gell, who had held the substantive
appointment of Deputy Commissioner since 1884, and on three occasions
had acted for short periods as Commissioner. “Jel Saheb,” as the Indian
constables called him, was thus no stranger to the police-force or to
Bombay, when he took charge of the Commissioner’s office. So far as
personal popularity with all classes was concerned, the Government could
not have made a happier selection. In his younger days Mr. Gell had been
a good cricketer and the best racket-player in Bombay; and while this
counted in his favour chiefly with his own countrymen, his genial address
and straight-forwardness commended themselves equally to Europeans and
Indians. During his term of office, which lasted a little more than seven
years, he was granted furlough twice—in 1904 when Mr. Michael Kennedy,
afterwards Inspector-General of Police, Bombay Presidency, carried on his
duties, and again in 1906 when Mr. W. L. B. Souter, a son of Sir Frank
Souter, acted as _locum tenens_. During Mr. Gell’s first year of office,
the Deputy Commissioner’s post was filled by Superintendent J. Crummy, a
good police officer of the old type, who joined the force as a constable
in 1866 and finally retired from the service in 1903. He was succeeded
by Mr. R. P. Lambert (1903-1905), Mr. Reinold, who died prematurely, and
Mr. R. M. Phillips (1905-09), all of whom belonged to the Imperial Indian
Police service.
[Illustration: MR. H. G. GELL]
The years of Mr. Gell’s administration were fraught with anxiety and
difficulties of various kinds. Social and semi-political events like
the festivities in connexion with the Coronation of King Edward VII
and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1903, the arrival
of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905, and the visit of the Amir
Habibullah of Afghanistan in 1907, imposed much extra work upon the
force. On the whole, however, they probably caused the Commissioner less
real anxiety than the Muharram riots of 1904, the Bombay Postal strike of
1906, the mill-hand strikes of 1907 and 1908, the serious Tilak riots of
1908, and last but not least the strike of the Bombay Indian constabulary
in 1907. Besides these symptoms of local discontent, the Commissioner
and his somewhat old-fashioned detective agency had to grapple with a
constantly growing stream of enquiries, reports and references, arising
out of the spread of the dangerous Indian revolutionary movement, which
was partly fostered and directed by men of extreme views living in France
and America.
The baneful activities of Krishnavarma and the India House in London, of
the brothers Savarkar, of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the Deccan, and of the
anarchists of Bengal, had many ramifications in India, and, coupled with
the malignant incitements to sedition disseminated by certain vernacular
newspapers, imposed a large burden of confidential and secret work upon
the various provincial and urban police-forces. Some of these were but
poorly equipped to cope with this secret menace to the State. Bombay
from its proximity to the Deccan, which was the focus of intrigue in
western India, and from its position as the chief port of arrival from
Europe, had an important part to play in the official struggle against
the revolutionary movement. The difficulties which beset Mr. Gell’s
administration resulted largely from the fact that he was working with
a machine designed for dealing mainly with ordinary urban crime against
person and property, and numerically inadequate even for that purpose.
A thorough reorganization in respect of personnel, numbers and pay was
required to render the Bombay police force capable of dealing effectively
with the problems of the early years of the twentieth century.
The total numbers of the force in 1902 were 2,126 and the annual cost Rs.
773,580. The numbers remained practically stationary during Mr. Gell’s
_régime_, despite a great expansion of the residential area and a steady
increase of population during the first decade of the present century.
The prolonged visitation of the plague led many of the richer Indian
merchants to forsake their old family-houses in the crowded and low-lying
parts of the city and to seek a new domicile on Malabar and Cumballa
hills, which had previously been occupied almost wholly by European
residents. Many of the less well-to-do citizens sought new quarters in
the empty areas (the F and G divisions) in the north of the Island. The
Commissioner drew the attention of Government in 1903 to the alterations
which were taking place in Mahim, Sion, Matunga, Naigaon and adjacent
parts, and emphasized the consequent need of more police for watch and
ward. His view was corroborated by the census taken by the Municipal
Health authorities in 1906, which showed that the total population of
Bombay had increased by more than 200,000 since 1901, the increase being
general over all sections of the City and Island. In the light of these
facts a revision of the police establishment was obviously necessary, and
but for two events of primary importance it would probably have taken
the form of spasmodic increments to the existing strength and small
enhancements in the salaries and allowances of the constabulary.
The first important event was the publication in 1905 of the report of
the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon and presided over by
Sir Andrew Frazer. Of the Indian police service generally the report
was highly condemnatory, declaring it to be ‘far from efficient ...
defective in training and organization ... inadequately supervised
... and generally regarded as corrupt and oppressive.’ Though these
strictures referred chiefly to the district police forces of the various
provinces, it was admitted that the police organization of the large
cities required considerable overhauling. The Commissioners of Police in
Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were therefore instructed to submit proposals
for a thorough reorganization, based _mutatis mutandis_ upon the broad
lines laid down by the Police Commission. Owing to pressure of work and
other reasons Mr. Gell did not submit his proposals for reform for more
than two years after the publication of the report of Sir A. Frazer’s
Commission, and when they eventually reached the Bombay Government,
the latter found it impossible to accept them. Moreover, circumstances
connected with the outbreak and handling of the Tilak riots of July,
1908, led Government to believe that the police force needed a far more
comprehensive reorganization than was contemplated by the Commissioner.
In September, 1908, therefore, the Governor, Sir George Clarke,
(afterwards Lord Sydenham) appointed a special committee of three
officials—Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Morison of the Indian Civil
Service, Mr. S. M. Edwardes, also a member of the I. C. S., and Mr.
Pheroze H. Dastur, 2nd Presidency Magistrate—to scrutinize Mr. Gell’s
proposals, to take any evidence that might seem necessary, and finally
to submit detailed proposals for the numerical strength, pay and duties
of the various branches of the Police force. This committee held several
meetings in September and October, examined the Commissioner, Deputy
Commissioner and other members of the force, as well as certain leading
citizens, and submitted its report at the end of October, 1908. The
policy and proposals therein advocated met with the approval of the
Bombay Government; but the further step of introducing the changes in
the constitution of the force thereby involved, was not undertaken until
after Mr. Gell’s departure on leave in 1909. The broad details of the
scheme eventually sanctioned in September, 1910, can be explained more
suitably in the next chapter, which deals with the administration of Mr.
Gell’s successor. The facts mentioned above show the reason why the
actual numbers of the force at the date of Mr. Gell’s departure were
practically the same as they had been in 1902.
The second event of importance was the police strike, which obliged the
Bombay Government to introduce revised rates of pay for the constabulary
in advance of the general reorganization of the force. Rents in the
city and the cost of living had been steadily rising since 1900, and
the Indian police-constables, in common with other low-paid servants of
Government, found the burden of supporting themselves and their families
almost intolerable. The majority of them were Konkani Marathas—the large
class which supplies the bulk of the mill-labour and the menial staff
in public and private offices, and they could not remain unaffected by
the general demand for higher wages which was being made at this time
to all employers of labour. Their superior officers had assured them
more than once that their appeals were being favourably considered and
that some concessions would be granted, while the open sympathy with
their circumstances and their difficulties shown by Mr. Souter, when
acting as Commissioner in 1906, inspired them with the idea that their
claim to increased pay was absolutely unquestioned and deserved instant
confirmation by Government. They were also affected to some extent by the
constant and often bitter criticism of the authorities, which appeared in
the native Press, and by the incitements of professional agitators who
urged them to follow the lead of the postmen, who went on strike in 1906,
and adopt more overt measures to secure their demands. The unrest thus
created culminated in a strike of a large proportion of the constabulary
in 1907. Refusing to don their uniforms and report themselves for
duty until Government assented to their request for higher pay, the
men assembled in a body on the Esplanade _maidan_, where they were
addressed by the chief agitators in their own ranks. The Commissioner
was left to carry out the routine-work of the force with the help of
the European police, a certain number of constables who remained loyal,
and the comparatively useless body of Ramoshis. In brief, the police
administration was practically at a standstill.
By resorting to a strike, the men had rendered themselves individually
liable to prosecution; and when the strike was declared, Mr. Gell,
with the approval of Government, caused some of the ringleaders to be
arrested. But the Bombay Government was aware that their resort to
illegitimate action was the outcome of a real grievance, which could only
be redressed by enhancing the pay of the various grades. Consequently,
of the men arrested, only two were subsequently placed before the Courts
and sentenced to pay a nominal fine; and they and others were afterwards
reinstated in the force. Simultaneously the Government sanctioned the
long-delayed increase in the pay of the constables and native officers.
The old fourth-grade constable on Rs. 10 per mensem disappeared for ever,
the monthly pay of the lowest rank being fixed at Rs. 12 and of the three
upper ranks at Rs. 13, Rs. 14, and Rs. 15. The pay of the havildars was
also augmented. The announcement of the new rates put an end to the
_impasse_ caused by the men’s defection, and within a few days the force
was again working with full vigour.
It was unfortunate that the concessions in respect of pay and allowances
should have had the appearance of being extorted from the authorities by
methods which, often objectionable in the case of private employees, are
deplorable in the case of men appointed to be guardians of the public
peace. The Bombay Government was not so much to blame for procrastination
as might at first appear. They were perfectly prepared to grant the
required increments of salary to the lower ranks of the force: but they
wished to treat the revision of salaries as part and parcel of the
general reorganization, rendered necessary by the Report of the Police
Commission and by the increase of work resulting from the growth of
the City. They had instructed the Commissioner to formulate proposals
for reorganization, which had not been submitted at the date of the
strike, and which, when they eventually received them in 1908, they found
themselves unable to approve without further enquiry by an independent
committee. The responsibility for the delay in granting relief to
the constabulary cannot therefore be assigned wholly to the Bombay
Government. A more rapid effort to prepare without delay a comprehensive
scheme of reform might have helped to prevent the occurrence of an
episode, which did not redound to the credit of the force.
The result of the revision of the pay of native officers and constables,
secured in the manner described above, was an increase of the annual
cost of the force from Rs. 773,000 odd in 1902 to Rs. 975,000 in 1908.
These charges fell wholly upon the Provincial Government, in accordance
with the provisions of the Bombay Police Charges Act of 1907. Since 1872
the cost of the force had been borne partly by Government and partly by
the Bombay Municipality under Act III of 1872 and the subsequent Act
III of 1888. The arrangement did not prove wholly satisfactory, and
the Municipal Corporation evinced a tendency to deprecate increased
expenditure on a department over which it had no direct control. After
much discussion, therefore, between the Bombay Government and the
Corporation’s representatives, Bombay Act III of 1907 was passed by the
legislature. Under this enactment the Government was pledged to pay the
whole charges of the police-force, and the Municipal Corporation was
bound in return to shoulder the cost of primary education and, within
certain limits, the cost of medical relief in the City. This arrangement
in no wise absolved the Bombay Port Trust from its liability to pay a
moiety of the charges of the harbour police and the entire cost of the
police employed in the docks. On the other hand it enabled the Government
to sanction, without the intervention or concurrence of the Corporation,
such additional expenditure as might be involved in a thorough scheme of
reorganization. When the latter scheme had been introduced by Mr. Gell’s
successor, the improvement and standardization of the uniform of the
European officers of the force and the abolition of the old municipal
helmet-badges followed naturally upon the settlement of the changes
embodied in the Act.
Another important matter in the legislative sphere was the passing of
the Bombay City Police Act IV of 1902, which consolidated the provisions
of the preceding enactments and vested the whole control of the police
force in the Commissioner. The Act removed the difficulties of which
Mr. Kennedy had complained in 1898, and furnished the police with all
the legal authority required for the performance of watch and ward
duties, the investigation of offences, and the arrest and detention of
wrong-doers.
During the first decade of the twentieth century the volume of crime
steadily increased. The annual average number of cases for the
quinquennial periods ending in 1900 and 1905 was respectively 32,411 and
30,814: in 1908 the police dealt with nearly 41,000 cases. The number
of persons arrested likewise increased from 37,000 in 1900 to 44,000 in
1908, while the number of convictions secured in 1908 was 41,500, as
compared with 19,900 in 1880 and 34,450 in 1900. The value of property
stolen in 1880 was estimated at Rs. 146,000; in 1900 at Rs. 333,000; and
in 1908 at Rs. 353,000; while the percentage of recoveries during Mr.
Gell’s _régime_ decreased from 59 in 1902 to 37 in 1905 and rose again
to 56 in 1908. The annual migration of the people to plague-camps during
the hot months still offered special facilities to the professional
house-breaker, and was occasionally responsible, as in 1903, for an
abnormal number of thefts. A somewhat similar epidemic of robberies
resulted from the immigration of famine-stricken refugees in 1906. Many
of these cases defied investigation, as they were not immediately
reported; and in the case of thefts from houses temporarily vacated
during the season of heavy plague-mortality, the losses were often not
reported to the police until the owners returned two or three months
afterwards to their homes.
These failures, which may be ascribed in some measure to the absence of a
proper beat-system, were counter-balanced by the capture of two notorious
professional house-breakers, one of whom was a Parsi, Nanabhai Dinshaw
Daruwala, and the other a Borah named Tyebali Alibhai. Nanabhai was a
criminal of more than ordinary courage and address, who had gathered
around him a gang of clever assistants and had contrived to defy justice
for more than twenty years. He had amassed considerable wealth by his
house-breaking exploits, and as he spent his ill-gotten gains freely and
was ready to pay ample hush-money, he secured immunity from arrest for
many years. His capture was long sought without success. But at last, in
1907, the detective police managed to run him to ground, and, despite
the offer of heavy bribes for his release, secured his conviction and
imprisonment for a long term of years. The Borah, Tyebali, was a man of
much less ability, and confined his attention almost entirely to the
houses of respectable residents on Malabar Hill. In this area he carried
out a series of daring robberies both by day and night, and had disposed
of much valuable plate and jewellery before he was finally arrested and
convicted in 1908.
Hardly a year passed without one or more murders, the number which
occurred in 1902 and 1904 being respectively 18 and 20. Most of them were
of the usual type—murder for the purpose of robbery or as the punishment
of a wife or mistress for infidelity. With a few exceptions, all these
cases were successfully investigated by the detective branch of the
force. A prolonged and complicated series of forgeries, devised and
carried out by eighteen men possessed of education and private means,
was cleverly brought home to the culprits by Superintendent Sloane, who
was appointed head of the detective branch on the retirement of the
Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali in 1903.[110]
Neither the divisional nor the detective police, however, succeeded
in discovering the origin of the disastrous cotton-fires which took
place at Colaba in 1906. The value of the cotton destroyed or rendered
unsaleable was estimated at 40 lakhs of rupees. Since that date similar
conflagrations have occurred at intervals, in circumstances which seem to
justify more than a suspicion of deliberate incendiarism. But in spite
of special precautions and special police arrangements no practical
proof of complicity has ever been obtained. In 1913 these fires at the
Colaba cotton-green were so frequent and so disastrous that the Bombay
Government appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Mr.
S. M. Edwardes, the Commissioner of Police at that date, to investigate
the circumstances and origin of the conflagrations and make proposals for
minimising the risk of them in future. The result of that committee’s
enquiry will be mentioned on a later page; but it may be here stated that
on each occasion of these wholesale conflagrations at the old Colaba
cotton-green the police found it very difficult to initiate and prosecute
inquiries about firms or individuals, suspected of aiding and abetting
incendiarism, owing to the disinclination of the insurance companies,
with whom the cotton was insured, to assist the inquiries or register a
formal complaint in respect of their losses. The system of underwriting
adopted by all the fire insurance companies in Bombay resulted in the net
loss incurred in any fire being divided among so many parties that the
actual sum paid out by the company concerned was comparatively trivial,
and did not, in their view, justify the adoption of proceedings, which
might have frightened the cotton-merchants into refusing to insure
their goods with them in future. Consequently, the only chance the
police had of discovering an offence was to arrest an incendiary _in
flagrante delicto_, and this was rendered practically impossible by
the character of the cotton, which will smoulder unseen for some time
before it bursts into flame, by the enormous width and height of the
stacks of cotton-bales, crowded on far too small an area on the edge of
a main thoroughfare, and by the ease with which any person could escape
detection in the labyrinth formed by the various _jethas_ or collections
of bales.
The question of traffic regulation in the streets demanded attention
during this period. By 1903 the number of public and private conveyances
in Bombay had risen to nearly 16,000, and although the style and
condition of the victorias plying for hire showed considerable
improvement,[111] rash driving was exceedingly common and street
accidents had largely increased. The position was aggravated by a steady
rise in the number of motor-vehicles, necessitating the creation of a
special branch of the police-force for the registration of motor-cars and
the issue of driving-licenses. One of the first owners of a car in Bombay
during the closing years of the nineteenth century was the late Mr. B. H.
Hewitt, one of the Municipal Engineers; and after 1900 his example was
followed by a constantly increasing number of residents, some of whom
showed a tendency to drive at excessive speed and to pay little attention
to the orders of the police on traffic-duty. Thus, between 1905 and 1907
more than 900 new motor-cars appeared on the streets, and in the latter
year the traffic-problem was further complicated by the abolition of the
old horse-tramcars and the opening on May 7th of the electric tramways.
In these circumstances the incapacity of the average Indian constable
to regulate traffic in the European manner became more marked, and
some of the Divisional Superintendents had to spend more time than they
could really spare in trying to inculcate an aptitude for directing
and controlling pedestrian and wheeled traffic. Their efforts were not
very successful, and it was generally felt that, although a few Indian
officers and constables had profited by tuition and showed improvement
in this branch of their duties, the presence of European police was
absolutely essential at crowded points during the busy hours of the day.
As previously remarked, the difficulties of the Indian constable were
much aggravated by the studied disregard of his orders and warnings,
frequently shown by his own compatriots.
As regards the beggar nuisance, Mr. Gell was disposed to continue the
policy of his predecessor; and accordingly in 1902 he deported no less
than 10,000 mendicants, mostly belonging to the territories of Indian
Princes. But this procedure was peremptorily forbidden by Government in
the following year, on the grounds that deportees of this class were
prolific disseminators of plague infection. After 1903, therefore, the
expulsion of beggars ceased, with the result that Bombay became once
again a popular resort for penurious and homeless vagrants from all parts
of India.
Efforts to rid Bombay of the foreign procurers, who subsisted on the
traffic in European women, continued unabated. In 1902 the Commissioner
deported 29 of these rascals; in 1903, 30; in 1904, 20; and in 1905,
2. No action was recorded in 1906 and 1907, but ten men were deported
in 1908. These figures indicate in some measure the dimensions of the
traffic and the lucrative nature of the business. The prospect of trivial
profits would scarcely have persuaded 81 aliens within a period of
four years to risk the chances of arrest and deportation. The history
and description of these foreigners were recorded in the files of the
detective branch, and in most cases their finger-print impressions were
taken by the Criminal Identification Bureau, which under the auspices of
Mr. Kirtikar and his assistant was rapidly acquiring a reputation for
useful work.
The daily work of the police in the courts was directly affected by
the establishment in 1904 of three benches of honorary magistrates in
Girgaum, Mazagon and Dadar, which were intended to afford relief to
the Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. J. Sanders Slater, and his three
colleagues in the disposal of unimportant police cases. A fourth bench
was established at the Esplanade Police Court in 1908, to deal with
petty cases from the Harbour and Docks. These benches were empowered to
deal with cases arising under certain sections of the Bombay City Police
Act, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the Public Conveyance
Act, the Gambling Act, the Railways Act, and under section 352 of the
Indian Penal Code. They proved very convenient to the police of the
outlying F and G divisions, who were formerly obliged to bring offenders
and witnesses all the way to the stipendiary court in Mazagon, but they
involved much extra work for the European police officers of the various
sections, who had frequently to attend both the stipendiary and honorary
magistrates’ courts. The latter commenced their work daily at 8-45 a.m.,
and the stipendiary courts at 11 a.m., so that European officers of busy
sections had often to spend most of the working day in the courts. During
their absence the registration and investigation of complaints at the
police-station had perforce to remain in abeyance. One of the most urgent
requirements during Mr. Gell’s Commissionership was the creation of
properly equipped and staffed police-stations, at which, no matter what
the volume of work in the courts, at least one superior police officer
would be found on duty at any hour of the day or night, ready to record
complaints and initiate inquiries. The establishment of the benches of
honorary magistrates served to accentuate the inadequacy of the old
police system and the inability of the force to cope with a greatly
increased volume of case-work.
[Illustration: RAO SAHEB DAJI GANGAJI RANE]
A serious obstacle to any re-arrangement of duties was the illiteracy of
the great majority of the Indian subordinate officers and constabulary.
As early as 1868 the Bombay Government asked the Commissioner to mention
in his annual reports the progress made by the police in simple reading
and writing; to which the Commissioner replied that as each member of the
force was on actual duty for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, any
form of education was impracticable. In 1885, when the total strength of
the force was 1,721, there were only 113 officers and 362 men able to
read and write, and of these only the European officers were literate in
English. These numbers had slightly increased by the end of the following
decade, in consequence presumably of the gradual spread of primary
education. The numbers of officers and men able to read and write in 1896
were respectively 194 and 570. Occasionally an Indian with practically
no education would rise to a high grade in the force by sheer natural
ability and devotion to duty. Such men were the Subehdars Ramchandra
and Daji and Inspector Khan Bahadur Sheik Ibrahim Imam, of whom the
latter served for 47 years and on his retirement in 1911 was granted by
the Bombay Government a special _jagir_ (landed estate) in the Poona
District, in recognition of his long and meritorious service.[112] The
value of these men lay in their extraordinary knowledge of the urban
population, their _flair_ for criminal investigation, and their power of
mediation between conflicting sects. Their lack of education and their
ignorance of English debarred them from affording any relief to the
European police in the registration of complaints and the prosecution of
offenders in the courts.
No effort had been made to open a career in the force for literate
Indians of the upper-classes, and it became obvious during Mr. Gell’s
_régime_ that in this respect the composition of the force had not
kept abreast of the spirit of the age. While the general standard of
literacy in Bombay had widened appreciably, and the growth of population
had resulted in an increased number of cases of all kinds, the bulk of
the Indian element in the force remained ignorant of English and was
also often uneducated in its own vernaculars. Consequently the whole
responsibility for the routine duties of the force fell upon a limited
number of European officers, many of whom could claim no higher standard
of education than that provided for the rank and file of the British
Army. Among the latter, however, there were men of natural ability who by
dint of application and study at odd moments had acquired a fair standard
of general knowledge and could frame a good report of facts. To this
category belonged men like Superintendents McDermott, Grennan, Nolan,
Sloane, Williamson and others; and on their reports and administrative
capacity the Commissioner and his Deputy necessarily placed much
reliance. There were others, however, who acquired no literary polish
throughout their career and whose educational attainments were no higher
than when they first joined the force as supernumerary sub-inspectors. On
the other hand, these men were always a solid asset in times of popular
disturbance or at seasons of public festivity requiring the preservation
of order among large crowds. From the Superintendent down to the latest
joined Sub-Inspector, the European police contributed the leaven, which
stiffened the force at the periodical Muharram outbreaks and ensured the
orderly progress of events on the occasions of Royal and Viceregal visits.
The annual pilgrimage to Mecca again assumed large proportions during
these years. In 1902 the restrictions, imposed originally as a
precautionary plague-measure, were abolished, and the period opened
with the arrival in Bombay of about 1,000 pilgrims and with the return
of 3,376 Hajis, who had to be repatriated to various districts of
British India. In the following year the number of outgoing pilgrims was
8,700, and in 1904, 16,593, the large increase in the latter year being
ascribable to the occurrence of the _Akbari Haj_, which falls once in
ten years. But the traffic continued to expand. In 1905, 19,000 pilgrims
embarked at Bombay for Jeddah and nearly 14,000 returned; in 1906, 24,300
embarked and 16,000 returned; and in 1907 more than 20,000 from all parts
of India, from Bokhara, Turkestan and other parts of Central Asia, from
Ceylon and Java, had to be shepherded on board by the Pilgrim Department
of the Commissioner’s office. The majority of these people were wholly
uneducated; the existing _musafirkhanas_ (rest-houses) provided for them
in the City were quite inadequate for their proper accommodation; while
the vessels provided for the passage to Jeddah by two or three merchants
or companies were ill-found and equipped, and were becoming unseaworthy
by reason of age.
At the same time the treatment of the pilgrims at various stages of
their self-imposed journey, the behaviour of the pilgrim-brokers, who
arranged for the purchase of tickets and were responsible generally for
assisting pilgrims under the supervision of the Pilgrim Department, the
arrangements for their embarkation and the disinfection of their clothing
and effects, carried out by the Port Health authorities, and various
other matters connected with the annual exodus, occupied the increasing
attention of the Muhammadan community and occasionally formed the subject
of rather acid criticism. It was asserted that the whole subject of the
pilgrimage required more attention than an overworked Police Commissioner
could give it, and that more facilities should be accorded to respectable
Moslem residents for expressing their views on the details of the traffic
and for keeping in touch with the local arrangements for booking and
embarkation. Accordingly, the Bombay Government, with a view to disarming
criticism and in the hope of giving some relief to the Commissioner,
appointed in 1908 a Haj Committee, composed of leading Muhammadan
residents of Bombay, with the Commissioner of Police as _ex-officio_
President. During the first year of its existence, this Committee did not
do very much; but later it developed into a useful consultative body,
and gave much assistance to Mr. Gell’s successor in matters connected
with the comfort of the pilgrims and the local arrangements for housing
and disembarkation. On several occasions the members of the Committee
subscribed money from their own pockets to relieve cases of distress and
secure the repatriation of penniless Moslems stranded in Jeddah.
This period witnessed the preparation of schemes for the housing of
the police and the construction of police-stations. In 1902 the City
Improvement Trust forwarded to Government for approval plans for stations
and residential quarters at Wodehouse road in the Fort and at 1st.
Nagpada: and these buildings, together with quarters for the Risaldar
of the Mounted Police and stables for the sowars, were completed and
occupied in 1906. Meanwhile the Commissioner was pressing for the
provision of more accommodation for the constabulary, and he found a
powerful ally in the Police Surgeon, Dr. Arthur Powell, who reported in
1905 that the prevalence of pneumonia and consumption in the force was
primarily due to the residence of the men in dark, crowded and insanitary
_chals_. A little relief was afforded in 1908 by the completion of
a block of lines for constables and quarters for native officers in
Duncan road, and a set of quarters for European officers, with lines
for the men, was also completed at Sussex road in the same year. Much
expenditure, however, had still to be incurred before the force could be
said to be suitably housed.
Two other important buildings of a different character were provided
during Mr. Gell’s _régime_—the Northcote Police Hospital and the office
of the Protector of Pilgrims. Up to 1866 constables requiring medical
treatment were admitted to the Sir J. J. Hospital on Parel road. In
that year the stable of the old Hamilton Hotel was assigned as a
separate hospital for the police, and was so used till 1870, when the
Municipality placed an old workshop in Mazagon at the disposal of the
Police Commissioner. This ramshackle building, which accommodated only
35 indoor patients, was totally unsuited for a hospital and was a source
of constant and justifiable complaint. Nevertheless the police were
forced to put up with it, until Lord Northcote, the Governor, (1900-03)
sanctioned the construction of a proper building, accommodating 94
patients, on one of the new roads at Nagpada constructed by the City
Improvement Trust. The building was formally opened by Lord Lamington in
August, 1904.
The growth of the annual Haj traffic, mentioned in a previous paragraph,
rendered accommodation for the office of the Protector of Pilgrims an
urgent necessity. A ground-floor building, consisting of a large covered
porch and two or three rooms, was therefore built in 1907 in the compound
of the Head Police Office and served as the headquarters of the Pilgrim
department, until the reorganization of the Criminal Investigation
Department by Mr. Edwardes and his Deputy, Mr. F. A. M. H. Vincent,
rendered necessary a re-arrangement of the accommodation at headquarters.
Before we describe the disturbances which occurred during Mr. Gell’s
tenure of office, a word may be said of the courage and resource
occasionally shown by Indian constables in the course of their daily
duty. In 1903 a havildar was awarded the medal of the Royal Humane
Society for rescuing two boys from drowning; a constable received the
medal for similar action in the following year; while in 1906 the Society
rewarded three constables for saving life in difficult and dangerous
circumstances. On several occasions also the Commissioner rewarded
constables for actions marked by conspicuous courage or intelligence.
These instances serve to support the opinion that under proper leadership
the Maratha of the Konkan and the Muhammadan of the Deccan will show
plenty of sang-froid in emergencies. Considering that the men received
little or no training before being placed on duty in the streets, that
they had little or no education, and that they served year after year in
a climate which is notoriously enervating and under conditions productive
of ill-health, it is greatly to the credit of the police constable that
he performed his duty with so few serious mistakes and that he frequently
gave proof of personal courage and tenacity. If at times he appeared
to cling too closely to the _pan-supari_ shops in the vicinity of his
post or beat, or to lack alertness in directing traffic, it must be
remembered that he was rarely off duty for any length of time, that he
had singularly little opportunity for recreation and amusement, and that
long hours of point-duty under the Bombay sun would try the strongest
constitution.
Twice during Mr. Gell’s term of office the peace of the City was
broken by rioting at the annual celebration of the Muharram. The first
occasion was March 23rd, 1904, the fifth day of the festival, when the
ancient antagonism between the Sunni and Shia sects developed into open
hostility. The ostensible cause of the disturbance was the determination
of the Sunni processionists to play music and beat their tom-toms
in front of the Bohra mosque in the notorious Doctor Street. Casual
street-fighting between the Bohras and their antagonists occurred daily
up to March 27th (the _Katal-Ki-Rat_ or night of slaughter), and the
aspect of affairs was so ominous that Mr. Gell decided to cancel the
license for the _tabut_ procession from Rangari _moholla_ (i.e. Abdul
Rehman street and adjoining lanes), the inhabitants of which had been
directly responsible for several assaults upon the Bohras. This order was
strongly resented by the general Sunni population, which resolved not to
carry out the _tabuts_ for immersion on the final day of the festival.
As usual, the abandonment of the _tabut_ procession released large
bodies of hooligans and bad characters, who testified to their annoyance
by attacking the police and the general public. At the same time the
Bohras were seized by a general panic, the results of which might have
been disastrous, and this fact, combined with the open disorder in the
streets, led Mr. Gell to summon the military forces to his assistance.
The Cheshire Regiment, a Battery of the R. A., the Railway Volunteers,
the Bombay Light Horse and H. E. the Governor’s Bodyguard were despatched
to various points of the disturbed area and picketed the streets
until April 1st, when peace was finally restored. The casualties were
fortunately few, and serious loss of life was prevented by the speedy
arrival of the troops.
Another serious disturbance marred this festival during the last year
of Mr. Gell’s Commissionership. On the morning of February 13th, 1908,
a fracas occurred between a Shia tabut-procession, composed of Julhais,
Mughals, Khojas and a few Bohras, and a body of Sunni Muhammadans
congregated at a mosque in Falkland road. The police arrested some of
the Sunnis who appeared to be the ringleaders in the affray. The news of
the encounter spread rapidly to other quarters; and the arrest of their
co-sectaries so annoyed the Sunni Muhammadans that they declined to take
out their _tabuts_ in procession. This resulted, as usual, in letting
loose on the streets hundreds of low-class and combative Muhammadans, who
usually accompanied the processions, and they straightway proceeded to
sow the seeds of disorder in various parts of the bazar. In the hope of
averting a catastrophe Mr. Gell gave orders early in the afternoon for
the release of the men arrested after the fracas in the morning. But the
temper of the mob had by that time been aroused, the cry of _Huriya,
Huriya_, was raised, and the ominous stampedes and rushes which usually
preceded an outbreak of disorder occurred in the streets and lanes
bordering on the Grant and Parel roads. The mob confined itself to these
tactics and to spasmodic attacks on the Bohras and other Shias until the
late hours of the afternoon, when serious rioting broke out on Parel
road. Here the Pathan element joined forces with the mob; shops were
looted and set on fire; all traffic was stopped and the tram-cars were
stoned. General panic supervened. As the mob was truculent and refused to
disperse, Mr. Gell ordered the European police, who were facing the mob
in Parel road (Bhendy Bazar), to use their revolvers. The firing put a
stop to the actual rioting, but in view of the general demeanour of the
crowds, troops were called out in the evening in aid of the civil power
and remained on duty in the disturbed quarter until the next day.
These Muharram disturbances, though imposing a severe strain upon the
Commissioner and the police force, caused less concern to the general
public than the prolonged rioting in the industrial quarter in July,
1908, when more than 400,000 mill-hands broke into open disorder after
the conviction of the late Bal Gangadhar Tilak for sedition by the High
Court. Tilak had been arrested in Bombay on June 24th on charges arising
out of the publication in his paper, the _Kesari_, of articles containing
inflammatory comments on the Muzaffarpur outrage, in which Mrs. and Miss
Kennedy had been killed by a bomb—the first of a long list of similar
outrages in Bengal. The bomb was extolled in these articles as ‘a kind of
witchcraft, a charm, an amulet’, and the _Kesari_ delighted in showing
that neither ‘the supervision of the police’ nor ‘swarms of detectives’
could stop ‘these simple playful sports of science.’ Whilst professing
to deprecate such methods, it threw the responsibility upon Government,
which allowed ‘keen disappointment to overtake thousands of intelligent
persons who have been awakened to the necessity of securing the rights
of _Swaraj_’. “Tilak spoke for four whole days in his own defence—21½
hours altogether—but the jury returned a verdict of “Guilty”, and he was
sentenced to six years’ transportation, afterwards commuted on account of
his age and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay.”[113]
From the moment of his arrest, Tilak’s agents and followers descended
upon the mill-area of Bombay and sedulously spread the story that Tilak
had been arrested because he was the friend of the industrial workers and
had tried to obtain better wages for them. Some of them were reported
to have declared during the trial that there would be a day’s bloodshed
for every year to which he might be sentenced by the Court. Most of the
‘jobbers’ who control the supply of labour were easily won over, and
Tilak’s Brahman emissaries from Poona found many co-adjutors among their
own caste-men in Bombay, and among the Bhandaris and Konkani Marathas
living in Parel, Tardeo, Chinchpugli and Dadar sections. Curiously
enough the Ghatis, or Marathas from the Deccan, showed far less interest
in the trial of Tilak and far less disposition to violence than their
caste-fellows from Ratnagiri and other districts of the western seaboard.
The Deccan mill-hands at Sewri, for example, at the very height of the
rioting, informed an Englishman with whom they were familiar that he need
fear no harm from them, and they confirmed their words by taking no share
in the disturbance which lasted for six days. The hostile attitude of the
Konkani Marathas was due to the continuous efforts of agitators, and this
was particularly the case in the neighbourhood of Currey and De Lisle
roads, where special agents from their own districts had been introduced
by Tilak’s revolutionaries.
The probability of a disturbance was foreseen by the authorities, and Mr.
Gell took various precautions to circumscribe the area of the outbreak.
British regiments, Indian infantry and cavalry were held in readiness;
a barricade was erected on Mayo road leading to the High Court; several
officials and non-officials were appointed Special Magistrates and were
posted at important points to watch the progress of events, assist the
police, and take all feasible measures for securing the peace of the
City. The Special Magistrates were a curiously mixed body. Among them
were Mr. James Macdonald, a sexagenarian Scotsman, who had served the
City for years as a member of the Municipal Corporation; Colonel Cordue,
R. E., the Master of the Mint; Mr. Philip Messent, Engineer of the Port
Trust; Mr. Arthur Leslie of Messrs. Greaves, Cotton and Co., who filled
his pockets with lemon-grass oil for the benefit of the men of the Royal
Scots, who were posted at the old police _chauki_ in Jacob’s Circle and
had their bare knees badly bitten by the mosquitoes and other forms of
low life which shared the _chauki_ with the police-constables; the author
of this work, who was at the time enjoying a spell of comparative ease in
the literary backwaters of the Bombay City Gazetteer; and last but not
least, the Hon. Arthur Hill-Trevor, a commercial free-lance and honorary
magistrate, who regarded himself as a sort of Honorary and Supernumerary
Deputy Commissioner of Police, and in that capacity executed various
blood-curdling manœuvres which caused no little apprehension to his more
pacific colleagues.
It so happened that some of the precautions proved superfluous. There
was no attempt on the part of the rioters to rush the High Court or even
to attend the trial of Tilak: there was no organized attempt to march on
the European residential quarter or to attack the European population
_en masse_. Although the rioting assumed at times a very threatening
character, it was confined wholly to the mill-area, except on one
afternoon, when the Bania merchants, employed in the cloth-market of
the C division, turned out in force and had to be dispersed by firing.
A consideration of all the circumstances of the Tilak riots leads one
to infer that the Commissioner was not as well served by his detective
agency as he might have been, and that the disturbances might have
been more disastrous and have lasted longer, if Tilak’s emissaries and
agents had had more time at their disposal in which to foster the spirit
of violence. By the end of the first day’s rioting it was clear that
outlying areas like the Fort and Malabar Hill were exposed to no danger,
and consequently most of the Special Magistrates gravitated from their
original posts to Jacob’s Circle, which divided the industrial quarters
from the central portion of the City and served as a gathering-ground for
the forces of law and order.
Within the mill-district the rioting was fairly continuous and
occasionally serious, and isolated Europeans whose duties obliged them to
reside in the area north of Jacob’s Circle found it wise to vacate their
houses for the time being and seek shelter in Mazagon, the Fort and other
parts. Much damage was done to mill-property, and in several encounters
with the mob the European police were forced to use their revolvers and
the troops had to fire in self-defence. The Indian cavalry were stoned
from the _chals_ on more than one occasion, and small parties of unarmed
police fared badly at the hands of the rioters, who had accumulated
considerable stores of brick-bats and road-metal at convenient
vantage-points.
The Bombay Government, realizing that the trouble was not a sudden
and spontaneous outburst of popular feeling and that the rebellious
mill-hands were the victims of an unscrupulous agitation, based on
malevolent falsehood, had issued strict orders for the avoidance of
bloodshed as far as possible: and both the military forces and the police
exercised such steady self-restraint that the casualties were relatively
few. Nevertheless the continuance of rioting and the dislocation of
business in the City set many people wondering whether other methods
of restoring peace might not be tried. About the fifth day of the
disturbance the Chamber of Commerce sent a deputation to the Governor,
to point out the loss sustained by the commercial and trade-interests
of the City and to urge upon Government a stronger effort to dissuade
the mill-population from violence. The author of this history, who had
witnessed the whole sequence of events at Jacob’s Circle and had on one
occasion accompanied a detachment of the Northampton Regiment to Dadar
to protect certain isolated Europeans, had already asked permission
of Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Jenkins, Member of Council, to visit the
heart of the disturbed area in company with certain Indian gentlemen
who had offered their assistance, and endeavour to produce a milder
feeling among the mill-hands. The permission was granted. Accordingly
the writer, accompanied by the late Rao Bahadur Narayan T. Vaidya, Dr.
Dinanath Naik Dandekar and four or five others, visited a large number of
mill-hands’ _chals_ and dwellings in Parel and Dadar, spoke to several
groups of mill-hands, and urged them to resume their regular duties. In
places the party was met with sullen hostility and with shouts of _Tilak
Maharaj ki Jai_, but the eloquence of the Indian members of the party
was not without effect, and when Rao Bahadur N. T. Vaidya urged them to
substitute _Satya Narayan ki Jai_ for their Tilakite war-cry, some of
them seemed disposed to accept the suggestion.
Though some were inclined to look askance at their intervention, the
efforts of this little peace-party did engender a better feeling, and
this, coupled with a natural weariness of prolonged hostilities and the
loss of their wages, resulted in the gradual return of tranquillity
after the sixth day. By the end of the first week of August, affairs had
resumed their normal course, the mill-hands were again at work, and the
Bombay Government were at liberty to consider the salient features and
lessons of the outbreak. Sir George Clarke, the Governor, was blamed
in some quarters for having paid a sympathetic visit, after the close
of the riots, to wounded mill-hands in the Sir J.J. Hospital. But his
policy in this matter was dictated by an earnest desire to smooth away
the bitterness which measures of repression are calculated to provoke,
and by a conviction that there had been an absence of contact between
the local authorities and the industrial population, which had been
permitted to fall completely under the lawless influence of Tilak and his
immediate followers. The fact that the disturbances lasted for a whole
week invited a doubt whether the police arrangements were as effective as
they might have been, and whether indeed a more efficient intelligence
organization might not have facilitated a speedier conclusion of the
unsatisfactory duties which the military were called upon to perform. An
impression prevailed that, although the mill-hands who defied the police
and troops had been severely punished, the real authors and fomenters of
the disturbances had managed to escape scot-free, and that they could
not have enjoyed such immunity, if the police had had their fingers more
closely upon the pulse of the City.
So far as concerns the prosecution and conviction of Tilak, Sir George
Clarke won “the respect of the vast majority of the community, and
although he failed to secure the active support which he might have
expected from the ‘moderates’, there were few of them who did not
secretly approve and even welcome his action. Its effects were great
and enduring, for Tilak’s conviction was a heavy blow to the forces
of unrest, at least in the Deccan; and some months later, one of the
organs of his party, the _Rashtramat_, reviewing the occurrences of the
year, was fain to admit that ‘the sudden removal of Mr. Tilak’s towering
personality threw the whole province into dismay and unnerved the other
leaders’”.[114]
Having thus secured the discomfiture of the revolutionary party in
Western India, the Governor applied himself to the problem of the Bombay
City Police administration, which appeared to him to need revision, not
only in response to the general findings of the Police Commission, but
also by reason of its apparent failure to keep closely in touch with
political intrigue, such as that which precipitated the riots of July
1908. Apart from the mere question of numbers and pay, the force appeared
to the Governor to be working on somewhat obsolete lines and to need
keying up to the pitch at which it might cope more successfully both
with its regular duties of watch and ward and with the large amount of
confidential investigation necessitated by the rapid and alarming growth
of political unrest and sedition. These were the main reasons underlying
the appointment of the Morison Committee, which has been described in an
earlier paragraph. One of the most important sections of that committee’s
report was concerned with the reorganization of the old detective branch
of the police-force, hereafter to be called the Criminal Investigation
Department (C. I. D.), upon which devolved the task of watching the trend
of political movements and of accumulating knowledge of the antecedents
and actions of the chief fomenters of unrest.
The work of a police-officer in an Indian city has always been extremely
arduous, and few men in these days are able to bear the strain for many
years without some loss of vitality and health. There is little doubt
that the extra work and anxiety entailed by the Royal Visit of 1905,
which was followed a few days later by the arrival of Lord Minto and the
departure of Lord Curzon, had much to do with the temporary breakdown of
health which obliged Mr. Gell to take furlough in 1906; while the strain
inevitably imposed upon him by the Muharram and Tilak riots of 1908 was
partly the cause of his again taking leave to England in the early part
of 1909. In doing so, his long service in the City came to an end: for
by the time his leave had expired, his successor was in the midst of a
comprehensive reorganization scheme, which would have suffered in the
event of his reversion to his own grade in the Indian Civil Service.
In order, therefore, to enable him to complete his full period of
pensionable service, Mr. Gell, on his return from England, was appointed
Deputy Inspector-General of Police for the Presidency and a little later
for Sind. It was in Sind that he completed his official career, and from
Karachi that he sailed finally for England. His long connexion with the
City of Bombay is commemorated, though not perhaps adequately, in the
name of one of the newer streets opened by the City Improvement Trust in
the neighbourhood of Ripon road. Memories of his equability of temper and
his impartiality are still cherished by the older officers and men of the
police-force, who pay a willing tribute to his character as an officer
and a gentleman.
CHAPTER IX
MR. S. M. EDWARDES, C.S.I., C.V.O.
1909-1916
Mr. S. M. Edwardes, who succeeded Mr. Gell as head of the Bombay City
Police Force, was the first member of the Indian Civil Service to hold
that appointment. He had previously held various appointments in Bombay
ranging from Assistant to the Collector and Chief Inspector of Factories
to acting Municipal Commissioner, and had acquired considerable knowledge
of the population and past history of Bombay by his work as Census
Officer in 1901 and later as Compiler of the Gazetteer. Shortly after the
Tilak riots in 1908, he was nominated a member of the Morison Committee
which, as previously stated, was appointed by the Bombay Government
to consider the working of the urban police administration and make
proposals for its future organization.
[Illustration: MR. S. M. EDWARDES]
This Committee, which met in the Secretariat, directed particular
attention to the provision of properly equipped police stations, to
the reconstitution and enlargement of the detective branch, hereafter
to be known as the C. I. D., to the creation of a trained Indian staff
for the investigation of crime in the Divisions, and to the numbers
and personnel of the European and Indian branches of the force. The
Committee came to the conclusion from the facts and evidence before them
that in dealing with political crime and seditious movements, planned,
promoted and carried out by an Indian _intelligentsia_, the police
were handicapped by the absence of educated Indians in the subordinate
ranks of the force, and that the investigation of ordinary crime by the
divisional police suffered from being in the hands of an old-fashioned
agency, which conducted its inquiries in a multiplicity of small and
sometimes obscure _chaukis_ and kept no proper record of its cases.
Concentration of the staff in a definite number of properly-equipped
stations in each division, and the inclusion in the force of a new cadre
of Indian officers for the divisional investigation of crime were two
obvious desiderata, upon which the Committee laid particular stress.
They decided also that the time had arrived to place the C. I. D. under
the immediate control of a gazetted officer of the Imperial Police, who
would occupy the position of a Deputy Commissioner, leaving the existing
Deputy Commissioner to deal with the divisional police and with the large
amount of miscellaneous work requiring the attention of the headquarters
staff. Proposals, of a more or less tentative character, were also
made regarding the numbers, grading and duties of the European police,
the recruitment of Indian constables, and the numbers and work of the
Harbour, Docks and Mounted Police.
After drafting the report of the Committee and arranging for its
submission to Government in October, 1908, Mr. Edwardes took leave
to England. While there, he received an intimation from the Bombay
Government of their intention to appoint him Commissioner of Police
_vice_ Mr. Gell, who proposed to take leave in 1909. He was at the same
time instructed to visit Scotland Yard and study at first hand the
organization of the Metropolitan Police. Armed with a letter from the
Home Office to the Chief Commissioner, Sir Edward Henry, Mr. Edwardes
accordingly spent some time in the early part of 1909 in acquainting
himself with the distribution of work and the machinery for the
prevention and detection of crime in a typical London police division,
with the details of the Metropolitan beat-system, with the work of the
constables’ training-school in Westminster, with the organization of
the Finger Print Bureau, and with the staffing, equipment, structural
features and general management of one of the latest and most up-to-date
London police-stations. The knowledge thus acquired was of the greatest
value, when his own proposals for the reorganization of the Bombay City
Police were under preparation.
Mr. Edwardes assumed charge of the Commissioner’s office on May
7th, 1909, with Mr. R. M. Phillips as his Deputy Commissioner and
Superintendent Sloane as head of the Criminal Investigation Department.
The former was succeeded in July by Mr. Hayter, who made way in September
for Mr. Gadney. The latter served as Deputy Commissioner until November,
1913, when his place was taken by Mr. O. Allen Harker, who held the
appointment until after the expiry of Mr. Edwardes’ term of office. In
pursuance of the recommendations of the Morison Committee, an additional
appointment of Deputy Commissioner in charge of the C. I. D. was
sanctioned by G. R. J. D. 3253 of June 8th, 1909; and, Superintendent
Sloane having been promoted to the cadre of the Imperial Police and
transferred to a district, the new post was given to Mr. F. A. M. H.
Vincent, son of the former Commissioner of Police, who held it until the
beginning of 1913, when he was appointed Deputy Director of Criminal
Intelligence at Simla. He was succeeded in Bombay by Mr. F. C. Griffith,
who remained in charge of the C. I. D. during the remainder of Mr.
Edwardes’ term of office. Both Mr. Vincent and Mr. Griffith subsequently
succeeded in turn to the Commissioner’s appointment. In 1914 a third
appointment of Deputy Commissioner was sanctioned by G. R. J. D. 9249 of
December 19th, 1914, under the style and title of Deputy Commissioner of
Police for the Port of Bombay. Mr. G. S. Wilson was chosen for this post
and became responsible, under the general authority of the Commissioner,
for all work connected with the Harbour and Dock Police and the Pilgrim
Traffic. This period thus witnessed the permanent appointment of three
Deputy Commissioners in place of a single officer of that rank, and
the consequent delegation to them by the Commissioner of much of the
work which he had hitherto been expected to perform without adequate
assistance.
Mr. Edwardes’ appointment was not received favourably at first by
the members of the Imperial Police Service, who naturally felt some
resentment at such a post being given to one who was not a professional
police-officer. This feeling led to the submission of memorials on the
subject to the Bombay Government, who were able without difficulty to
justify their departure from the usual practice. The discontent also
communicated itself to the rank and file of the City police, who during
the first few months of Mr. Edwardes’ _régime_ displayed a spirit of
captious criticism, which was fanned at last by a few malcontents into
overt disobedience. The movement culminated on January 7th, 1910, in the
refusal of a certain number of Indian constables to receive their pay.
The Commissioner, who had kept himself informed of the course of the
movement, had arranged with the European officers of the Divisions what
action should be taken in the event of open insubordination. The men who
declined to accept their pay were therefore marched immediately to the
Head Police Office and, after inquiry into their conduct, were dismissed
from the force. This action completely quashed the movement, which was
based upon no real grievance and was designed merely to cause trouble to
a Commissioner, whose policy and plans they had been taught to regard
with suspicion.
The strength and cost of the City Police Force underwent much alteration
during this period of seven years, in consequence of the reorganization
scheme prepared by the Commissioner. His proposals for the future
constitution and character of the force, which were submitted in July,
1910, were sanctioned by the Government of India in September, 1911; but
owing to very heavy work connected with the visit of Their Majesties the
King and Queen in November of that year, the scheme was not actually
introduced until the beginning of 1912. As early as 1909, however,
certain changes were made in consonance with the proposals of the
Morison Committee, and to meet emergent requirements, which resulted in
an increase of the total number to 2,408. This total included additions
to the Dockyard police, temporary sanitary police for service under the
Port Health Officer, temporary constables for traffic-duty at various
railway level crossings, and finally the revised strength of the C.
I. D., which was fixed by G. R. J. D. 2708 of May 10th, 1909, at 1
Superintendent, 6 Inspectors, 7 Sub-Inspectors, 23 Head Constables and
41 Constables. In 1910 an additional Inspector was sanctioned for the
Motor Vehicles department; and 9 Indian sub-inspectors, 3 head constables
and 9 constables were added to the force, to enable the Commissioner to
introduce tentatively in three areas the new divisional organization
which formed the salient feature of his administrative proposals. Thus by
1911 the force numbered 2,505, which was equivalent to a proportion of
one policeman to every 394 of population, and cost annually, inclusive
of temporary police and contingent charges, Rs. 10,93,351. In 1913,
when the reorganization was well in hand, the total strength of the
force stood at 2,844 and cost Rs. 12,73,834; while at the end of 1915,
a few months before Mr. Edwardes relinquished office, the total number,
inclusive of a small temporary staff for watching transfrontier Pathans
in the City, was 3,011, and the annual cost amounted to Rs. 13,37,208.
The proportion of police to population at this date was 1 to 327, which
compared unfavourably with the proportions in Calcutta and London. Had
the Commissioner’s first proposals been sanctioned without alteration,
the proportion of police to population in Bombay would have been far more
favourable; for he had worked out a complete beat-system on the London
model for the whole of the City. The number of men, however, required
for this purpose was naturally large, and as the Bombay Government
were compelled by the Government of India to restrict the additional
annual cost of the force to 2½ lakhs of rupees, the Commissioner was
obliged to jettison the beat-system and utilize the available funds in
other directions, such as perfecting the divisional machinery for the
investigation of crime, increasing the number of fixed traffic posts, and
augmenting the inadequate pay of the European police.
This force of just over 3,000 men was distributed among the following
divisions at the close of 1916:—
---------+----------------------------------------------------------
Division | Sub-divisions or Sections
---------+----------------------------------------------------------
A | Colaba, Fort South, Fort North, Esplanade
B | Mandvi, Chakla, Umarkhadi, Dongri
C | Market and Dhobi Talao, Bhuleshwar and Khara Talao
D | Khetwadi, Girgaum, Chaupati, Walkeshwar
E | Mazagon, Tarwadi, Kamathipura, New Nagpada, Mahalakshmi,
| Jacob’s Circle
F | Parel, Dadar, Matunga, Sion
G | Mahim, Worli
H and I | Harbour and Docks
L | Head Quarters Armed and Unarmed Police
M | Mounted Police
N | The Government Dockyard
and The Criminal Investigation Department (formerly the K division).
With the appointment of Mr. F. A. M. H. Vincent as Deputy Commissioner,
C. I. D., and the increase in its personnel, the Criminal Investigation
Department entered upon a period of remarkable activity. The staff
was divided into four branches—Political, Foreign, Crime, and
Miscellaneous—each in control of one or more Inspectors; work-books were
introduced, which fixed responsibility upon individual officers for
cases entrusted to them for inquiry and served as a check upon delay
in the submission of final reports of investigations; a confidential
strong-room was provided, and the card index system and upright filing
of records were substituted for the old methods in vogue at this
date in most official departments. In addition to the investigation
of cases, some of the more remarkable of which will be mentioned
hereafter, the department made confidential inquiries, often of a
delicate character, into political, religious and social movements;
it scrutinized plays for performance licenses, amending or rejecting
those that were objectionable; it took vigorous action under the Press
Act, confiscating on occasions as many as twenty-one thousand copies of
proscribed books; it maintained a constant watch upon the arrivals and
departures of steamers, assisted the Excise authorities, collaborated
with the police of other districts and provinces, supervised and, if
necessary, prohibited the songs sung by the _melas_ at the annual Ganpati
celebration, and performed an immense amount of confidential work in
connexion with the Muharram. It also assisted or secured the repatriation
of all manner of destitute persons stranded in Bombay, including English
theatrical artistes, Arabs belonging to French territories, ladies from
Mauritius, Bengali seamen, Pathan labourers expelled from Ceylon, and
deportees from the Transvaal.
The establishment at the beginning of 1911 of a “Police Gazette”,
appearing thrice in the twenty-four hours and containing full details of
all reported crimes, persons wanted, property stolen or lost, etc., was
a further step in the direction of increased efficiency. Prior to this
date, when a case of theft occurred, the first duty of the Inspector, in
whose jurisdiction it took place, was to prepare with his own hand thirty
or forty notices for dispatch to other police-stations in the City.
Much valuable time was thus wasted; and when the notices were ready,
several constables had to be released from their proper duties to act as
messengers. Under the system introduced in 1911 the duty of the sectional
officer consisted simply in telephoning full details to the Deputy
Commissioner C. I. D., who arranged for their insertion in the next issue
of the “Gazette”, copies of which were delivered at every police station
within a few hours of the occurrence. The arrangements were adapted from
the system followed in London and effected a great saving of time and
trouble in the divisions. In 1915 the Police Notice Office, composed of a
European Inspector and an Indian head constable, circulated in this way
nearly 10,000 paragraphs and 67 supplements dealing with murders, thefts,
deserters and persons wanted, and also published and circulated to the
divisions forty pages of special orders concerned with daily routine.
Another salient feature of the reorganization, as mentioned above, was
the creation of a special agency for the divisional investigation of
crime. This was dependent upon the provision of properly-equipped police
stations of a definite type, recommended by Mr. Edwardes, comprising
the necessary offices, charge-room, cells, quarters for the European
and Indian staff, and barracks for the constabulary. The scheme, as
sanctioned, contemplated the provision of 17 stations of this character.
At the date when Mr. Edwardes was appointed Commissioner, none of the
existing police-stations fulfilled these requirements, and in some
divisions paucity of accommodation directly hampered the daily work of
the police. In 1911, for example, the station of the Khetwadi section
of the D division was described as practically non-existent. The lease
of a building having expired, and no alternative accommodation being
available, the Inspector was holding his office in the dressing-room
of an Indian theatre in Grant road, the station-stores and constables’
kit-boxes were temporarily placed in a tea-shop in Falkland road, and
the two European officers of the section were forced to reside in very
poor quarters in an adjoining section. Most of the older stations were
very inconvenient and insanitary. The only office consisted of one of
the sectional Inspector’s dwelling-rooms or of a portion of a verandah
screened off; prisoners and witnesses were herded together on the stairs
or in the street; the residence was surrounded by old-fashioned and
odoriferous latrines; and every odd corner was choked with kit-boxes and
with the recumbent forms of constables taking a rest before going on duty.
By the end of 1910, however, a complete programme for new stations had
been prepared, and sanctioned by Government, and a commencement had been
made in Colaba, Nagpada and Agripada, where the newer police-stations
erected by the Improvement Trust were subjected to structural alterations
and additions, in order to make them conform with the plan adapted
from the London model. Each of these stations was equipped with a
staff composed of one Inspector, one Deputy Inspector, three Indian
Sub-Inspectors for criminal investigation, plain-clothes constables
and a clerical staff; the first information sheet, case-diary and
other records used by the District Police were so adapted to urban
requirements as to secure a complete record of every case taken up by
the police; and the time-table of duties was arranged so that at any
moment during the twenty-four hours an English-knowing officer, with
power to record complaints and commence inquiries, would be found in the
general charge-room of the station. At the outset most of the Indian
Sub-Inspectors were chosen from among the few English-knowing Jemadars
and Havildars, already in the force; but from 1910 onwards a regular
supply of such officers was secured by choosing young Indians of good
middle-class standing and deputing them to the Provincial Police Training
School at Nasik for an eighteen months’ course of tuition in law and
police-work.
At the beginning of 1913 the Commissioner opened two more stations on the
new model at Princess Street—a building erected by the Improvement Trust
in 1910, and at Maharbaudi: and two more in 1914 in the new buildings of
the Harbour and Dock police at Mody Bay and Frere road respectively,
which were completed and occupied in January. At the beginning
of January, 1916, three more stations were established under the
reorganization scheme at Khetwadi, Hughes road, and the Esplanade, while
at the close of the same year similar stations were organized in the
new buildings erected at Gamdevi, Lamington road and Palton road. Thus,
by the end of 1916 thirteen out of the seventeen model police-stations,
originally proposed by the Commissioner, had been opened with a full
complement of officers and men, while plans had been approved for similar
accommodation in Mahim, Parel and other places in the northern portion
of the Island of Bombay. Where it was found impossible to build full
residential accommodation for both officers and men on the site allotted
for these new stations, ancillary accommodation schemes were prepared,
which, when completed, would ensure the proper housing of the majority of
the force as it existed at the date of Mr. Edwardes’ departure.
A sustained effort was made during these years to teach English to the
Indian constabulary, with the object of giving the men themselves a
better chance of promotion and enabling them to hold their own more
confidently with the large English-speaking population. In 1910 the
number of officers, exclusive of Europeans, able to read and write was
127, of whom only 36 were literate in English, while literate constables,
of whom only one or two knew English, numbered 584. In July 1911 the
Commissioner commenced sending a chosen number of Muhammadan and Hindu
constables to two free night-schools for instruction in English and
one vernacular language. The success attending this experiment led the
Bombay Government to sanction a proposal to open an English school for
constables at the Head Police Office, under a qualified teacher from
one of the official training-schools maintained by the Educational
Department. This school was attended by 150 constables from the various
branches of the force, who were given a three years’ course of tuition
in English, and on Saturdays attended lectures on their duty to the
public, their powers under the Police Act, and matters of simple hygiene.
In 1913 the number of men attending the school had risen to 200, and the
master had been forced to obtain gratuitous assistance in teaching the
various classes. The question of accommodation also became urgent, and
during 1915 and 1916 the classes had to be assembled in the Elphinstone
Middle School, which the educational authorities allowed the police
to use during the early morning and evening hours. The men, who were
encouraged to study by the grant of small rewards and occasionally of
promotion, if they were successful in the periodical examinations,
derived distinct advantage from the school-course, and the number of
constables literate in the English language showed a steady increase
between 1911 and 1916. In the latter year 846 constables were reported
to be able to read and write, and 72 of them were literate in English.
Connected with the subject of education was the foundation of a fund
in the name of the Commissioner—the S. M. E. Memorial Fund—subscribed
by Hindu and Muhammadan residents, with the object of assisting Indian
constables of the force to educate their sons. The proposal was made in
the first instance by Mr. Kazi Kabiruddin, a barrister and Justice of the
Peace, and at his instance sufficient funds were subsequently provided
to admit of the grant of monthly scholarships and stipends to the sons
of constables attending primary schools maintained by the Municipal
Corporation.
A large amount of routine work devolved upon the police under the Arms,
Explosives, Petroleum and Poisons Acts. Under the Arms Act licenses of
various kinds were granted or cancelled, the shops and store-rooms of
licensed dealers were regularly inspected and their stocks checked,
and constant inquiries, numbering several thousand annually, were made
to verify purchases from local dealers and trace the whereabouts of
fire-arms. In 1911, just before the arrival of Their Majesties the King
and Queen, five revolvers were stolen from a licensed dealer’s shop.
The C. I. D. were successful in recovering the arms and in obtaining
the conviction of the thieves: but in consideration of the approach of
the Royal Visit, the Commissioner decided to take charge of the entire
stock of arms and ammunition held by five Indian dealers, and kept it
in deposit in the Head Police Office until after the departure of Their
Majesties. Under the Explosives Act licenses were issued for manufacture,
possession and sale; and magazines for the storage of explosives were
regularly inspected by the special branch maintained for this purpose
at headquarters. Similar duties were carried out under the Petroleum
Act; while from April 1st, 1909, the Police became responsible for
licensing the sale of poisons and checking stocks,—duties which up to
that date had been performed by the Municipality. The task of licensing
theatres and granting performance licenses, which was transferred to
the Arms department at the close of 1909, imposed a heavy additional
burden on the special staff. Most of the theatres at this date were
devoid of proper exits and of means of protection against fire, and these
seven years witnessed a continuous struggle to secure the erection of
fire-proof staircases etc. and the provision of fire-proof drop-curtains.
Fortunately the Police were able to obtain the help of the Chief of the
Fire-brigade and of the Government engineering and electrical experts,
in deciding what improvements were essential in each case, and it was
chiefly due to this collaboration that a better fire-service had been
installed by 1913 in each of the thirteen theatres of the City, and that
many important structural alterations in both theatres and cinematographs
had been introduced by the close of 1916. Perhaps the most notable
achievement of the headquarters staff under Chief Inspector M. J.
Giles was the preparation of a set of theatre rules, applicable to all
structures used for public performances, which were brought into force
in August 1914, and gave the police power to insist upon the provision
of fire-appliances, water supply, exits, and fire-proof materials. As
mentioned in a previous paragraph, the C. I. D. was made responsible for
the scrutiny of plays, for which a performance license was required,
and licenses were granted only to such plays as were declared by that
department to be unobjectionable on political, moral or general grounds.
The growth in the number of motor-vehicles continued unchecked and
ultimately necessitated the promulgation of new rules under the Motor
Vehicles Act in 1915. In 1909, the total number of motor-vehicles
registered since 1905 was 1,295, while in 1915 this figure had increased
to 4,947. But a good many of these gradually disappeared in the course
of ten years, and the actual number estimated to be on the roads in
1915 was 2,482 as compared with only 814 in 1909. Heavy motor-vehicles
of the lorry type also appeared during this period and numbered 70 in
1915. This increase of motor-traffic synchronized with, and was partly
responsible for, a steady increase in the number of street accidents.
While reckless driving was unquestionably the cause of many accidents,
despite energetic action in several directions to prevent it, the large
majority of the casualties reported from year to year were the outcome
of that carelessness and lack of alertness on the part of the average
Indian pedestrian, with which all who have driven cars or carriages in
Bombay are only too well acquainted. Accustomed as they are to the peace
of a sequestered country life, many of the foot-passengers in the streets
of the city seem totally unable to exercise any caution or to acquire
the habit of keeping to the side of the road, while in the case of the
mill-workers, whom one meets in Parel and elsewhere, the sense of hearing
seems to have been permanently dulled by the constant rattle and clatter
of the machinery at which they labour during the greater part of the day.
The Haj traffic continued to expand between 1909 and 1911, the total
number of pilgrims who left Bombay for Jeddah in those years being
19,748 and 21,965 respectively. From 1912 the numbers commenced to
decline until the year after the outbreak of the War, when the traffic
virtually ceased altogether. The period witnessed a struggle on the
part of a British shipping-firm to secure the monopoly of the Red Sea
trade, including the pilgrim traffic, by ousting the few Muhammadan-owned
vessels which had hitherto catered for the pilgrims. The firm in question
was unquestionably in a position to offer better vessels and a better
organization for the return journey than the Indian ship-owners: but
one or two of the latter resented the effort to drive them out of the
traffic, with the result that the Commissioner of Police and the Pilgrim
department, who endeavoured to act in a strictly neutral manner, ran
the risk of blame from both parties for showing undue preference to
their rivals. At the moment of the Declaration of War all the vessels
engaged in the traffic were owned by the British firm, except one or at
most two which belonged to a well-known Muhammadan resident. It might
have been supposed that, considering the wholly Islamic character of
the pilgrimage, a British firm would have acquiesced in the continued
presence of a Muhammadan-owned vessel, and have trusted to time and the
ordinary economic law for its ultimate disappearance from the Jeddah
route. Such, however, was not the case; and at the instance of the local
manager of the firm, a pushing Scot from Aberdeen, the Bombay Government
was asked practically to insist upon the Commissioner and the Pilgrim
department refusing all facilities to the Muhammadan ship-owner to sell
his tickets and dispatch his vessel. The outbreak of War in 1914, and the
consequent cessation of the traffic to and from Jeddah, solved a dispute
which for some time imposed additional work upon the Police and Pilgrim
authorities.
The Finger Print Bureau steadily maintained its efficiency and had
compiled a record of more than 45,000 slips by the end of 1915. At the
request of the municipal authorities, it commenced about 1912 to take the
finger-impressions of hundreds of candidates for employment as sweepers
in the Health department, and was able to prove annually from its records
that a certain proportion of these people had previous convictions under
the Penal Code. In another direction—revolver-practice by the European
police—a considerable improvement was effected. Up to 1914 it was
customary to arrange for the practice in a field at the back of the China
Mill at Sewri, which was sufficiently remote and secluded to obviate
danger to the public. But the distance of the site from the centre of
the City rendered the regular attendance of all officers practically
impossible, and in consequence, on the rare occasions when the European
police were called upon to use their revolvers at disturbances, their
shooting was inclined to be a trifle erratic. In the Muharram riots
of 1908, for example, when Mr. Gell ordered the European officers to
fire on the mob in Bhendy Bazar, a Parsi who was watching the rioting
from the window of a third upper-storey was unfortunately killed by
a revolver-shot, directed at the crowd in the street. To ensure more
regular practice by all officers, therefore, the Commissioner obtained
the approval of Government to the erection of a safety revolver range in
the compound of the Head Police Office, which was opened in September,
1914.
Before dealing with the record of crime, a brief reference is desirable
to the extraordinary volume of miscellaneous work performed under the
orders of the Commissioner. Derelict children were constantly being
picked up in the streets by the divisional police and forwarded to the
Head Office, when the Commissioner had to make the best arrangements he
could for their maintenance and welfare; penniless women and children
were repatriated to various parts of India, to Persia, Mauritius,
Egypt, South Africa and Singapore, with funds collected by the Police
Office for each individual case from charitable townspeople; penurious
women were assisted to get their daughters married, and on one occasion
a Muhammadan and his wife, who desired a divorce and applied for
police assistance, were granted facilities for the ceremony at police
headquarters. On another occasion the Commissioner was asked to assist in
the rebuilding of a mosque belonging to the Sidis or African Musalmans
of Tandel Street, and was able to obtain the necessary funds from
several well-to-do Muhammadans in the city. The Police dealt also with
a large number of lunatics; they traced deserters from the Army and
Navy; they made inquiries into the condition of second-class hotels and
drinking bars in the European quarter and took action, when necessary, in
consultation with the Excise authorities; they dealt with a very large
number of prostitutes under the Police Act. The number of summonses which
they were called upon to serve annually on behalf of magisterial courts
in Bombay and other Provinces was enormous, and their work in connexion
with the grant of certificates of identity to persons proceeding to
Europe, with the grant of passes for processions and for playing music in
the streets, and of permits to enter the Ballard Pier on the arrival and
departure of the English mail-steamer, was heavy and continuous. Appeals
for unofficial assistance from private individuals and from societies
like the League of Mercy, engaged in rescue-work among women, were also
never refused. Miscellaneous activities of this varied type formed no
small portion of the annual task of the force and were rendered effective
by the close collaboration of the staff at headquarters, the C. I. D.,
and the divisional police.
The difficulty of providing suitable shelter and guardianship for the
many derelict girls of tender age found wandering in the streets by
the police led directly to the foundation by the Commissioner of the
Abdulla Haji Daud Bavla Muhammadan Girls’ Orphanage. With the possible
exception of one or two Christian missionary institutions, to which it
would have been impolitic on political and religious grounds to send
children, no organization or society existed in 1909, which was prepared
to take charge of homeless girls. Consequently, many little waifs
gravitated into the brothels of the city or were gradually absorbed in
the floating criminal population. Moreover, when a child was found in
the streets, homeless and friendless, the police had no shelter to offer
her except the cells at the sectional police-station; and these, being
regularly filled with the dregs of the criminal population, were a most
undesirable environment for girls of tender years. As caste-prejudices
offered peculiar obstacles to any scheme for the benefit of Hindu girls
belonging to the Shudra class, the Commissioner determined to concentrate
his attention upon a home for Muhammadan girls, and accordingly drew up
a scheme and issued an appeal, which was widely circulated among the
Muhammadan community. The appeal was favourably received, and about 2
lakhs of rupees were collected within a few weeks. To this sum were
added more than 3 lakhs from the estate of the late Abdulla Haji Daud
Bavla, whose executors offered the amount on condition that the orphanage
should bear his name, that his trustees should be represented on the
managing committee of the orphanage, and that the objects, constitution
and maintenance etc. of the orphanage should be embodied in a legal deed
of trust. At the request of the Commissioner, the Bombay Government
agreed to become a party to the deed and bound themselves to appoint
the Commissioner of Police, or any other of their officers resident for
the time being in Bombay, as chairman of the board of trustees of the
orphanage. The legal preliminaries having been completed and the funds
duly invested in gilt-edged securities, a suitable building was taken
on a lease, and furnished at the expense of a philanthropic Muhammadan
merchant, and in December, 1910, the orphanage was formally opened by
Sir George Clarke (now Lord Sydenham) and Lady Clarke. The institution
soon justified its existence; the number of girl-inmates steadily
increased, their physical health and welfare being under the general
supervision of a trustworthy Englishwoman, and their religious exercises
and elementary lessons being given by a Mullani and her assistants. The
problem of the girls’ future was solved in the only feasible way by
arranging for their marriage with Muhammadans of their own class, as
soon as they reached the age of maturity. These hymeneal arrangements
were made by a chosen officer of the C. I. D., Khan Saheb M. F. Taki,
in consultation with the _jamats_ and leaders of the various Musalman
sections. Experience has proved that the establishment of institutions
like this Muhammadan Girls’ Orphanage is an essential preliminary to any
serious effort to combat the deplorable traffic in children, which still
flourishes in India and constitutes the chief means of recruitment for
the brothels of the larger towns and cities.
This period witnessed a steady increase in crime up to 1915, when the
stringent measures taken during the pendency of the War to clear the
City of undesirables imposed a notable check upon the normal increase
in reported crime. Previous to that date the rapid increase in recorded
crime was the natural result of the changes which took place in the
force after 1909, and particularly of the improvement in registration
which followed the introduction of the new divisional police-stations.
Not only did these stations offer increased facilities for the reporting
and detection of crime, but it was also impossible under the new system
for cases to escape registration and final inclusion in the returns.
The improvement in the registration of cases was manifested also in a
marked diminution of the number of complaints classed as made under a
misapprehension of law or fact. By 1916 the sanctioned strength of the
police force had been augmented by one-third since 1906, and this fact
by itself would have sufficed to account for a large increase in the
amount of crime brought to light. When coupled with the reorganization of
the various police-stations, each of which was furnished with a strong
registering and investigating staff, the increase in recorded crime
became inevitable. It was likewise due to more accurate estimates of the
value of property stolen that the percentage of recovery declined from 56
in 1908 to about 40 in succeeding years.
Murder and attempts at murder were still deplorably frequent, including
cases of infanticide which are extremely difficult to detect in an
Oriental city. The number of murder cases varied from 16 in 1909 to 31 in
1910, 25 in 1911, 31 in 1912, and 24 in both 1913 and 1915. The largest
number, 35, occurred in 1914. The most notable murder was that of a
young and wealthy Bhattia widow, residing in her own house on Malabar
Hill. Her husband, Lakhmidas Khimji, who had died some time previously
in circumstances which gave rise to ill-founded rumour, had been a
well-known figure in Indian commercial circles. His widow Jamnabai, was
brutally strangled by a gang of six men from northern India, two of whom
belonged to well-known criminal tribes in the United Provinces and a
third was a night-watchman in the employ of a Jain resident on Malabar
Hill. At first there appeared to be no clue whatever to the crime; but
a few days after its occurrence the commissioner received an anonymous
letter in Hindi, which was translated for him by the Subehdar of the
Armed Police, who happened to be a north-Indian Brahman conversant with
that language. The letter, which was written by one of the criminals
in revenge for not receiving what he regarded as a fair share of the
ornaments stolen from the widow’s house, gave sufficient details to
enable the Police to arrest five of the gang the same evening. The sixth
accused was subsequently arrested at Bassein. All of them were placed on
trial for murder and convicted.
By the year 1909, the vice of cocaine-eating had attained an
extraordinary hold upon the lower classes of the population. Women and
even children had fallen victims to a habit which plainly exercised a
deplorable effect upon their health and morals. The supplies of the drug
came in the first instance from Germany in packets bearing the name
of Merk, and were frequently smuggled into India in ways that defied
detection. Moreover the traffic in the drug, which was international in
character, was so cleverly organized that it was practically impossible
to trace and prosecute the importers and distributors. Action was
therefore confined to prosecuting the smaller fry for the offences of
illicit sale and possession, and the majority of such cases occurred
in the notorious Nal Bazar area of the C division, which for the last
thirty or forty years has sheltered a large population of disreputables.
The Police were not held primarily responsible for the control of the
cocaine-traffic. This duty devolved upon the Collector of Bombay, who
maintained a large and well-paid excise staff for the purpose.[115]
But the obligation which rested on the police to assist the excise
authorities as far as possible, and the direct stimulus to crime provided
by the cocaine-habit, rendered the question of combating the traffic of
more than ordinary importance. With this in view, the Commissioner in
1909 put a special police-cordon on the area devoted to the traffic for
about six weeks. This produced satisfactory results for the time being,
but had to be abandoned, to allow of the men reverting to their regular
duties which suffered by their absence. In 1911 a second attempt was
made to restrict the evil by placing a European Inspector and a staff of
constables on special duty in the C division for a period of about two
months, during which nearly 600 individuals were caught and convicted
by the courts. These incursions into the area of the retail-traffic were
not the only successes achieved by the police. In 1911 the Dock Police
arrested an Austrian steward of the S. S. _Africa_ with 300 grains of
cocaine concealed in the soles of his boots; in 1912 the Superintendent
of the Harbour Police secured the arrest of a fireman from a German
merchant-ship with 40 lbs. of the drug, valued at Rs. 45,500, in his
possession; another large consignment, valued at Rs. 17,000 was traced
by Khan Saheb M. H. Taki and Khan Saheb F. M. Taki of the C. I. D. to a
house in Doctor Street in 1913; and on two occasions Indian constables on
duty in the Docks arrested on suspicion persons belonging to vessels in
the harbour, with large quantities of the drug concealed on their person.
It cannot be asserted, however, that these arrests and prosecutions
secured any real diminution of the traffic from abroad. They did upset
the local market for the drug, and interfered temporarily with the supply
of the tiny paper packets sold in the darker corners of the C division.
The traffickers were not thereby daunted, for when the real article was
difficult to procure, they palmed off powdered magnesia and Epsom salts
on their unfortunate victims, who were naturally unable to complain of
the deception. The first real check to the traffic was provided by the
drastic restrictions on imports and exports imposed after the declaration
of War in 1914, and by the sudden cessation of the continental steamship
companies’ traffic between Europe and the East. At a comparatively recent
date the question of the traffic in cocaine has been discussed at Geneva
under the auspices of the League of Nations, and the view seems to be
generally accepted that the evil can only be adequately countered by
stringent supervision of the primary sources of supply and joint action
on the part of all the States concerned.
Of the many important criminal cases successfully investigated by the
Police during these seven years, a few deserve special mention. In
1910 and 1911 some very seditious books were brought to the notice of
the Bombay Government by certain persons to whom they had been sent
anonymously. In the course of their inquiries the Police discovered a
large store of these books at Navsari in the Baroda State, and also
secured proof that the books were printed at Mehsana in the same
territory. A prominent Indian pleader of Kaira, who was concerned in
their distribution, was prosecuted and duly convicted. H. H. the Gaekwar
of Baroda was in England at the time of the inquiry; but on his return
he deported the author of the books, who was one of his own subjects,
for a period of five years. In 1912 the police successfully dealt with
a swindler named Amratlal, who had victimised a firm of jewellers in
Germany to the extent of nearly 2 lakhs of rupees, and they also detected
the perpetrator of a series of thefts on board the P. and O. Company’s
ships, including a case of tampering with the mails. In the following
year the premises of the well-known firm of Messrs Ewart, Latham and
Company were destroyed by fire. Immediately after the fire, a stolen
cheque filled in for Rs. 10,826 and bearing a forged signature, was
presented at a bank for payment and cashed. One of the firm’s employés
was eventually arrested and charged with the offences of theft, cheating
and forgery, the police investigation establishing also the moral
certainty that the accused had set fire to the office in the hope of
obliterating all trace of his crime. The accused was committed to the
Sessions, where a peculiarly stupid jury, failing to appreciate the
evidence, brought in a verdict of “not guilty.” The presiding Judge
discharged the accused and passed severe comments on the perversity
displayed by the jury. A case, which contained elements of both tragedy
and comedy, concerned the marriage of a Koli girl, about 9 years old, to
a sexagenarian Bania. Three Hindus, acting on the principle that love is
blind, falsely represented that the girl was a Bania, and thereby induced
the elderly Lothario to pay Rs. 1,500 for the privilege of wedding the
girl. After the marriage the old gentleman discovered the deception
practised upon him, and made a formal complaint to the police, who traced
the three culprits and secured the conviction of two of them.
In 1914 the embezzlement of Rs. 1,000, representing the fees paid by
students at the Government Law School, led to the arrest and conviction
of a clerk on the school staff, who was proved in the course of the
police-inquiry to have embezzled no less than Rs. 12,000 between
the years 1902 and 1912. At the request of the police of the United
Provinces, two charges of filing false civil suits, with the object of
avoiding payment of sums due by them, were successfully proved against
natives of upper India; and these were followed by an equally long and
intricate inquiry into a case of cheating, in which three Hindus, one
of whom had a local reputation as a palmist and astrologer, persuaded
two Bhandaris of Bombay to pay them Rs. 4,000, on condition that they
would use their supposed influence with the excise authorities to
obtain two liquor-licenses for their dupes. In 1915 the Bohra thief and
house-breaker, Tyebali, whose conviction during Mr. Gell’s _régime_
has already been mentioned, completed his term of imprisonment and
recommenced his thieving exploits. After committing several thefts from
houses in Nepean Sea road he was caught, convicted and sentenced to
a fresh term of six years’ imprisonment. All the stolen property was
recovered from a Bohra receiver, who worked with Tyebali. In September
of the same year information was received from the Director of Criminal
Intelligence, Delhi, that three valuable Persian manuscripts had been
stolen from the library of Nawab Sir Salar Jung Bahadur at Hyderabad.
After a lengthy inquiry the Bombay police traced one of the manuscripts,
a _Shahnama_, with illuminated headings and illustrations in colours and
gold, which was declared by experts to be an artistic treasure of immense
value. A chance remark furnished a clue to the whereabouts of the
manuscript, which was in due course returned to its owner in Hyderabad.
Anonymous communications are exceedingly common in India, and as a rule
it is practically impossible to trace their authorship. A case of this
type, which presented unusual features, was successfully investigated by
the police in 1915. For more than two years a series of objectionable and
defamatory postcards and letters had been received by high officials,
prominent Indians, and clubs. Any event of public interest during that
period resulted in a shower of these typed communications, which were
always very scurrilous and occasionally flagrantly indecent. They were
addressed not only to residents of Bombay, but to officials in other
parts of India also, to the Governor, the Viceroy and even to members of
the Royal Family in England. The C.I.D. had been able to establish the
fact that all the cards and letters were typed on a single machine of a
particular and well-known make; and having done that, they proceeded,
with the approval of the postal authorities, to subject all the postcards
received in the General Post Office to close scrutiny throughout a
period of several weeks. At length their patience was rewarded. A card
was found, which on careful scrutiny was seen to have been typed on the
missing machine, and as it was an ordinary and _bona fide_ business
communication it was not difficult to locate the machine. It proved to
be the property of a well-known Indian merchant, and further inquiry
rendered it certain that he was the author of the anonymous cards. He was
therefore arrested and released on bail. While the Police were collecting
further evidence to support the charge against him, the accused, who had
many influential friends, confessed his guilt to one of them and asked
his advice. The friend advised him to make a clean breast of the whole
matter to the Commissioner of Police and throw himself on his mercy. This
he agreed at the moment, but in the end failed, to do and a few days
later, while ostensibly endeavouring to light a gas-stove with a bottle
of methylated spirit, he was so severely burned about the body that he
died in a few hours. The case caused some commotion in the community, to
which the accused belonged, and the Commissioner was urged to refrain at
the inquest on the deceased from any allusion to the criminal inquiry
into the authorship of the postcards. But this the Commissioner refused
to do, in view of the wild rumours about the case which were being
spread about the City, some of which placed the police in a false and
undesirable position. It was doubtless satisfactory to the friends of the
deceased that the Coroner’s jury found themselves able to pronounce a
verdict of accidental death. It only remains to add that after the arrest
of the accused the plague of anonymous postcards entirely ceased.
The criminal record of these years would be incomplete without a
reference to the collapse in 1913 of a number of Indian banks. The most
notable of all, the Indian Specie Bank, was never made the subject
of a criminal investigation, though the apathy of its Directors was
unquestionable, and its manager, who had set out to “corner” silver
against the Indian Government with the monies of the bank’s depositors,
found it desirable, when the crash came, to die suddenly at Bandora.
Orders were issued by the Bombay Government to the Police to investigate
the transactions of several lesser banks and bring the guilty to trial;
and accordingly a protracted and intricate inquiry was commenced by
Inspector Morris of the C. I. D. into the accounts and balance-sheets of
the Credit Bank, the Bombay Banking Company and the Cosmopolitan Bank.
In the case of the first-named bank, charges of criminal breach of trust
and falsification of accounts were proved against the manager, who was
sentenced in 1914 to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, while the manager
of the Bombay Banking Company and his nephew were likewise convicted of
criminal breach of trust and cheating and sentenced to varying terms
of imprisonment with hard labour. In the third case the police proved
clearly that the bank was not a bank at all, and had neither funds,
business nor influence; but the manager and the “bank’s” broker, who
were charged by the police with cheating, were eventually discharged
by the trying magistrate. These bank-failures were not confined to
Bombay, but took place in other Provinces also, notably in the Punjab.
When the collapse commenced, an attempt was made to draw some of the
European-managed banks into the vortex, with the object of showing that
the failures were due rather to general economic conditions than to bad
management. The attempt failed; for the Scotchmen, who form ninety per
cent of the European banking community in India, were too cautious and
too solidly entrenched to succumb to any artificial panic, and despite
the assertion of some Indian politicians that the European-managed banks,
by withholding assistance from these mushroom Indian concerns, had
deliberately precipitated the crisis, the general conclusion was that the
failures were primarily due to careless or fraudulent management. This
view found confirmation in the verdicts delivered in the Courts.
The collapse of at least one bank was due to the uncontrolled habit
of speculation which has always distinguished the City of Bombay. Few
persons now remain who can remember the famous Share Mania of the early
’sixties: but the spirit of gambling which underlay that colossal
financial fiasco is still alive and manifests itself from time to time in
wild speculation in the cotton and share markets. The abnormal readiness
of the average Indian to follow the lead of any man of outstanding
personality, and the ease with which credit is obtained and renewed
in Indian circles only serve to aggravate the evil. The suicide of
Mr. Dwarkadas Dharamsey, a leading Bhattia mill-agent and merchant,
in September, 1909, provided an example of the latitude allowed to
one whose financial position had for several years been very unsound.
Dwarkadas Dharamsey was a man of great mental capacity, but devoid of
scruple. He occupied a leading position in the mercantile and social
world, was well-known on the race-course as an owner of horses, was a
member of the Municipal Corporation and of the Board of the Improvement
Trust, and had been appointed Sheriff of Bombay two or three years before
his death. Yet in the very heyday of his prosperity he was spending more
than he possessed, staving off importunate demands by all manner of
temporary expedients, and juggling with the funds of the mills of which
he was director and agent. Faced at last with almost complete insolvency
and unable to raise further funds, he shot himself with a revolver
at his house in the Fort. He left a kind of confession behind him in
which he explained the reason for his action and referred in ambiguous
language to some greater crime that he had committed. Though various
conjectures were made as to the nature of this act, no definite solution
was ever forthcoming. His secret died with him. Immediately after his
death, the police discovered that the operatives of his four mills had
not been paid their wages for two months, and owing to the closing of
the mills they were left stranded and unemployed. With the assistance
of Mr. R. D. Sethna, the Official Receiver, the Commissioner was able
to get the mill-hands’ wages treated as a first charge on the estate
of the deceased, and within a short time the wages due to the men were
liquidated under Mr. Sethna’s orders.
On several occasions Indian constables distinguished themselves by
acts of bravery and examples of professional acumen. The detection of
a burglary in the showroom of an English firm was due entirely to the
action of a Hindu constable, who noticed on a piece of furniture the
mark of a foot possessing certain peculiarities, which he remembered
having seen before in the foot of an ex-convict. Another Hindu constable
grappled with a European who had stabbed a townsman, and though severely
wounded in the stomach and bleeding profusely, managed to pursue the
offender and hold him down till help came. On three other occasions
Indian constables sustained severe wounds, when grappling single-handed
with armed Pathans and others, and on each occasion they clung to the
prisoner until his arrest was secured. Several instances occurred of
women and children being saved from drowning, and in two cases the men
were rewarded with the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society. The
action of a young Hindu constable, who had been only three months in
the force, deserves more detailed description. About 3 a.m. one morning
in August, 1912, a Punjab Muhammadan murdered his comrade in a room in
Bapty road. The murder was not discovered till some time afterwards. At
4 a.m. the constable on duty at the junction of Falkland and Foras roads
saw a man hurrying in a suspicious manner through the shadows towards
Gilder street. He stopped and questioned him; and, his suspicions being
aroused, decided to search the man. The fugitive offered the constable
a bribe of Rs. 5, Rs. 10 and finally Rs. 30 to let him go; but the
constable arrested him and marched him to the Nagpada police station,
where a report of the murder had by that time been received. It was then
found that the arrested fugitive was the murderer, and that the money
with which he had tried to bribe the constable was stained with blood
and formed part of the sum which he had stolen from his victim. Further
investigation proved beyond doubt that the murdered man had himself
stolen the money from an Englishman in Mussoorie. A unique case, in
which an accused asked permission of the Magistrate to pay a reward to
the constable who arrested him, occurred in 1914. The prisoner, on being
questioned, explained that, owing to his timely arrest, he had managed to
retain possession of a sum of money, of which he would certainly have
been robbed by the disorderly persons with whom he was consorting at the
time the constable locked him up.
Among the special events of these years which imposed extra work for the
time being on the Police were the Nasik murder and conspiracy trials in
the High Court in 1910, the visit of Lord Minto in 1909, the arrival of
Lord Hardinge and the visit of the ex-German Crown Prince in 1910, and
the arrival of Lord Chelmsford in 1916. For the first time on record,
the Mounted Police under their European officers were permitted to form
part of the escort both of Lord Minto and the German Crown Prince, and,
riding grey Arabs in their handsome full-dress uniform, they provided not
the least showy part of the spectacle. These Viceregal progresses from
the railway terminus or the Apollo Bandar to Malabar Hill had changed
in character since the beginning of the twentieth century. Formerly the
route chosen for the arrival of a new Viceroy or the departure of his
predecessor lay as a matter of course through Kalbadevi road and Bhendy
Bazaar, and thence by way of Grant road, or later Sandhurst road, to
Chaupati and Walkeshwar. No particular precautions were taken, for none
were deemed necessary; the people were well-disposed and always ready to
welcome the King’s representative as he was driven through the heart of
the Indian quarters. But as the anarchical and revolutionary movement
spread and attempts were made upon the lives even of Viceroys, the old
route through the city was, except for very special reasons, gradually
abandoned, and the incoming and departing potentates were escorted along
the safer route of Queen’s road. The distance of this thoroughfare from
the heart of the City, and the growing nonchalance of the majority of the
inhabitants in regard to Viceregal appearances in public, were naturally
responsible for an absence of sight-seers on the processional route, and
at times there were few persons to be seen except the foot-police lining
the sides of the road. On the occasion of Lord Chelmsford’s arrival in
April, 1916, one of the Superintendents, through whose division a portion
of the route passed, determined to keep up appearances of loyal welcome,
by collecting the necessary crowd at Sandhurst Bridge and instructing
them beforehand in the art of hand-clapping and other manifestations
of popular satisfaction. As it was obviously impossible to impress
respectable householders and others for this duty, the sectional officers
were instructed to shepherd their bad characters of both sexes to the
fixed point, after arranging that they all donned clean clothes and were
paid 2 annas apiece for their trouble. The plan worked well. As the new
Viceroy’s carriage swept out of Queen’s road on to the bridge, the signal
was given and a hearty burst of hand-clapping, punctured with cries of
_shabash_, rose from the little crowd of disreputables at the corner.
No one knew who they were, except the police who had hunted them out
of their haunts a few hours previously: and the Viceroy was doubtless
gratified at this signal expression of welcome. When the last of the
escort had passed, the unfortunates were taken back to their quarter and
there set free to resume their ordinary and less harmless avocations.
There was no need of artificial welcomes of this character when Their
Majesties visited Bombay in 1911, or at their final departure in
1912. They drove through the heart of the City; and both in the wide
thoroughfares of the European business-quarter and in the narrower
streets of the Indian city they were affectionately greeted and welcomed
by thousands of their subjects of all castes and creeds. Their progress
was, indeed, a triumph. The choice of the route had not been settled
without some doubt and misgiving. The authorities in England declared
that the royal procession must not pass along any road of less than
a certain width: the Commissioner of Police pointed out that this
restriction would entirely debar Their Majesties from entering the City
north of Carnac road. The restriction was therefore waived, on condition
that the Police adopted all possible measures to render the route
completely secure. This by no means easy task was achieved by the C. I.
D. and the divisional police, of whom the former spent the three months
preceding the Royal Visit in mapping out the houses on the route, making
themselves acquainted with all the inmates, posting plain-clothes men and
agents in the upper-storeys, and keeping a daily register of arrivals
and departures. In one or two cases the divisional police, whose duties
lay in holding the route and directing traffic, imposed even stricter
conditions than the C. I. D., as the following incident proves. Three
or four days before Their Majesties’ arrival, an elderly Muhammadan
woman of the lower class visited the Head Police Office and asked for an
interview with the Commissioner. Her request was granted; and on being
shown in, she informed the Commissioner that she occupied a room in the
upper-storey of a house near the junction of Sandhurst and Parel roads,
and that she desired permission to look out of her window at the royal
procession. “But,” said the Commissioner, “you need no permission for
that.” “Yes, Huzur, I do”, she answered; “the section-wala (_i.e._ the
officer in charge of a police-station) says that unless I obtain a permit
I must keep my window shut on the day”. It was clearly useless to argue
with the old lady, who was honestly bent upon obtaining _darshan_ of the
_Padshah_. The Commissioner, therefore, wrote out the following pass in
his own hand, signed it, and sent her away satisfied:—
“To all Police Officers and those whom it may concern.
This is to certify that Aminabai, living in House No. —— ————
street, second floor, is hereby granted permission to look
out of her own window at His Majesty the King-Emperor, on the
occasion of the Royal Progress through Bombay on December 2nd.
1911.
S. M. Edwardes,
_Commissioner of Police_.”
As an additional precaution the Commissioner of Police asked the Bombay
Government to invest him with special magisterial powers, which would
enable him to deal summarily with persons of bad character, whose liberty
it might be necessary to curtail during the period of the Royal Visit.
The request having been granted, the Commissioner proceeded to remand
to jail the majority of the well-known hooligans and bad characters,
to the number of 400. Fully another three hundred persons with guilty
consciences decided to leave Bombay for a holiday up-country, in the
belief that they would be sent to jail if they stayed in the City. In
this way the City was cleared of seven or eight hundred of its worst
characters, and the daily crime returns subsequently proved that the
action thus taken produced a very marked diminution of crime during the
period of the Royal Visit. Moreover, respectable townspeople, learning
of the incarceration of the criminal classes, were able to leave their
houses freely at night to visit the illuminations, without fear of
burglaries occurring in their absence or of having their pockets picked
in the crowd. Political offenders, who usually belonged to a higher
stratum of society, were treated differently. In one or two cases they
were remanded to jail for treatment as first-class misdemeanants: but
the majority were given the option of spending a fortnight in some
place chosen by themselves, the police of that place being warned of
their arrival and of the need of keeping them under surveillance. In
one instance a _détenu_ asked to be allowed to visit Ceylon, which he
had never seen, and he was accordingly sent there in company with a
plain-clothes officer of the C. I. D., who duly escorted him back again
at the end of fifteen days. The entire absence of any protest on the
part of the public or the Indian press against the Commissioner’s action
shows that the powers were wielded cautiously and that special measures
of this kind were generally accepted as appropriate to the occasion. The
wholesale disappearance for the time being of the criminal and hooligan
element certainly contributed to the peaceful and orderly progress of
the Visit, and produced an immediate and marked decline of crime, which
enabled the police to concentrate all their attention on the special
arrangements for the functions held during Their Majesties’ stay.
Both before and during the Royal Visit, the Police received much help
from the public. There was scarcely a householder who did not willingly
undertake to carry out the suggestions of the police, and a large number
of people, drawn from various classes and communities, volunteered to
serve as special constables during the Visit. As to the manner in which
the police force itself performed its heavy work, it will suffice to
quote the words of the Governor-in-Council, who was “commanded to express
to the Police of the City of Bombay His Imperial Majesty’s ‘entire
satisfaction with the admirable police arrangements made during His
Imperial Majesty’s recent visit to Bombay and with the manner in which
they were carried out’”. In recognition of the exemplary performance
of heavy additional duties, all ranks of the force, from inspectors
downwards, received a special bonus, equivalent to ten days’ pay. Four
Superintendents and three Inspectors received the medal of the Royal
Victorian Order from the King-Emperor himself.
The subject of cotton-fires at the Colaba Green was revived by the
disastrous epidemic of fires in the cold weather of 1913-14. As
previously mentioned, a special committee was appointed by Government,
with the Commissioner of Police as chairman, to enquire into the origin
of the fires and suggest precautions for the future. The report of this
committee, which found that the weight of evidence pointed to wholesale
incendiarism, was submitted only a few weeks before the outbreak of
War in 1914, and consequently received early burial in the records of
the Secretariat. The deductions of the Committee were strengthened to
some extent by the inquiries carried out by the C. I. D. during 1914.
A thorough examination of the books of various companies established
beyond a shadow of doubt that large fortunes had been made over the
fires by persons in the cotton trade, as a result of fraudulent dealing,
mixing and classification of cotton. This system of dishonesty had been
facilitated by slack methods of insurance, which in turn were rendered
profitable by clever underwriting. It is doubtful whether these little
‘idiosyncrasies’ of the Bombay cotton market will ever be wholly
eradicated.
It is possible that long after the details of the reorganization of
the police force have passed into oblivion, Mr. Edwardes’ tenure of
office will be remembered for the abolition of the dangerous and rowdy
side of the annual Muharram celebration. At the time he was appointed
Commissioner, the Muharram, which had been a cause of excitement and
anxiety from the days of Forjett, had degenerated into an annual scandal
and become a menace to the peace of the city. No respectable Musalman
took part in the annual procession of _tabuts_, nor would permit his
family to visit the _tazias_ and _tabuts_ during the ten days of the
festival, for fear of insult and annoyance from the _badmashes_ and
hooligans, who chose the sites of the _tabuts_ in the various _mohollas_
as their gathering-ground. The cost of building and decorating each
_tazia_ and _tabut_ was defrayed by a public subscription, which
had degenerated into pure and simple blackmail, levied by the less
respectable denizens of each _moholla_ upon the general public. The
Marwadi and other Hindu merchants suffered particularly from this
practice; at times they were threatened with physical injury if they did
not subscribe; on other occasions the collecting-party, composed of four
or five Muhammadan roughs, would visit the shops of the Jain merchants,
carrying a dead rat, and threaten to drop it into the heaps of grain and
sugar if the shop-owner did not forthwith hand out a fair sum. By the
exercise of pressure and threats, some _mohollas_ contrived to raise
comparatively large sums, aggregating several hundred rupees, and as
only a fractional portion of this money was required to defray the cost
of the _tabut_ and the paraphernalia of the final procession, the balance
was devoted to the support of the hooligans of the _mohollas_ during
the following few months. Attached to each _tabut_, and accompanying
it whenever it was carried out in procession, was a _toli_ or band of
attendants, usually varying in numbers from 50 to 200 and composed of
the riff-raff of the lower quarters. In some cases these _tolis_ had
been gradually allowed to assume a gigantic size, as for example that
of the Julhai weavers of Ripon road (Madanpura), which comprised from
two to three thousand men, all armed with _lathis_ tipped with brass or
lead. Similarly the notorious Rangari _moholla_ (Abdul Rehman street),
Halai Memon _moholla_, Kolsa _moholla_ and Chuna Batti _moholla_, could
count upon turning out several thousand followers, armed with sticks and
staves, who could be trusted to render a good account of themselves if
there was a breach of the public peace.
The time-honoured sectarian enmity between Sunni and Shia usually showed
itself by the second day of the festival, in the form of insults hurled
at the Bohras (Shias) by the Sunni rag-tag and bobtail in the various
streets occupied by the former. The most notorious of these centres of
disturbance was Doctor Street, which debouched into Grant road opposite
Sulliman _chauki_; but none of the Bohra quarters were safe from
disturbance; and year after year Bohra merchants had to leave Bombay
during the festival, or had to secure special protection, and even had to
disguise their women in male attire, in the hope of thereby minimising
the chance of insult by the lower-class Sunnis. Muharram rioting, which
had become much too frequent during the first decade of this century,
usually commenced with a fracas of some sort between Sunnis and Bohras,
in which the former were generally the aggressors; and when the Police
intervened to restore order, the mob on one pretext or another declared
war against them with the inevitable result. The Sunni hooligans would
never have reached the pitch of insolence which marked their behaviour in
1910, had they not felt assured that they had the support of the leading
Sunnis residing in the _mohollas_, many of whom, though comparatively
wealthy, were almost illiterate and totally uncultured; and the latter
in turn were prompted to foster the more rowdy and disreputable aspects
of the festival by the belief that the Moslem community thereby acquired
more importance, even though of a sinister character, in the eyes of
Government, and that the possibility of disturbance could be occasionally
used as a lever to secure consideration or concessions in other
directions.
This belief was partly confirmed by the attitude of the authorities,
who persisted in attaching undue weight to the religious character of
the festival,—a character which had practically ceased to have any
influence on the celebrants, and in accordance with the time-honoured
principle of strict religious neutrality showed great reluctance to
impose any restrictions upon the celebration. The Police, who in times
of disturbance often reaped a fair harvest of tips and presents from
timorous townspeople who desired protection from mob-violence, and who
also discovered in the aftermath of rioting an easy means of paying off
old scores, had never troubled to explain to Government the precise
character and danger of the annual Muharram. The old doctrine of “the
safety-valve” was still in favour, with the result that during the
concluding days of the festival Bombay used to witness the spectacle
of police officers of the upper ranks urging the most uncompromising
rascals to lift the _tabuts_ and form the processions, regardless of the
fact that at any other season of the year they would not have hesitated
to lock up most of these disreputables at sight. In short, under the
cloak of religion, the worst elements in the bazaar were permitted to
burst their bounds for ten days and flow over the central portion of
the City in a current of excessive turbulence, to terrorize the peaceful
householder and to play intolerable mischief in the streets. If the
leaders and wire-pullers decided that there should be a disturbance,
culminating in a conflict with the police, all they had to do was to
pass the order to the various _mohollas_ not to “lift” their _tabuts_ on
the tenth day and to the Bara Imam shrine in Khoja street not to send
out the _sandal_-procession on the ninth night. This latter procession
was, so to speak, the barometer of the Muharram, and its non-appearance
in the streets invariably indicated storm. Once it had been decided not
to “lift” the _tabuts_, the huge _tolis_, which should have accompanied
them to their final immersion in the sea, were let loose in the streets
with nothing to do, and a breach of the peace was rendered practically
inevitable. When this point was reached on the last day, it was customary
for the Afghans and Pathans, residing in the B division, to collect in
groups in the lanes behind Parel road (Bhendy Bazar), and at the right
moment to commence looting and setting fire to shops. In the Muharram
riots of 1908 it was these people who set fire to a shop on Parel road
and threw a Hindu constable into the middle of the flames. The only
unobjectionable feature of the old Muharram was the _Waaz_ or religious
discourse, which was delivered nightly in each of the leading _mohollas_
by a chosen _Maulvi_ or _Mulla_. Unfortunately these were very little
patronized by the hooligans and damaged characters, who composed the
_tolis_ and monopolized the celebration of the festival in the streets.
Mr. Edwardes’ first Muharram in 1910 ended without an actual breach of
the peace: but the behaviour of the _mohollas_ was so insolent, and
the license and obscenity displayed by the mob were so intolerable,
particularly in the Bohra quarter of the C division, that he determined
to impose restrictions at the Muharram of January, 1911. Accordingly
in December, 1910, he issued a notification closing Doctor Street and
the neighbouring lanes running parallel with it to all processionists
throughout the period of the festival, and from the first night he
placed a strong cordon of police round the prohibited area, to prevent
any attempt by the mob to break the order. Practically the whole police
force was on continuous duty for ten days and nights in the streets, and
commissariat arrangements for both European and Indian police had to be
made on the spot. Though no serious trouble occurred during the first
few days of the festival, there were several indications of trouble
brewing, and the Commissioner therefore arranged with Brigadier-General
John Swann to hold garrison troops in readiness. On the tenth night
or _Katal-ki-rat_ a serious disturbance broke out in Bhendy Bazar
about 3 a.m., in connexion with the procession of the Rangari _moholla
tabut_. Free fighting between the processionists and the mob from other
_mohollas_ took place all the way from Grant road to Pydhoni, and it was
due solely to the efforts of Mr. Vincent, the Deputy Commissioner, and a
handful of police who were escorting the procession, that the _tabut_ was
eventually brought back to its resting-place. The mob by this time had
tasted blood and displayed so truculent an attitude that the Commissioner
decided to telephone for the troops and picket them throughout the danger
zone. By 4 a.m. on January 12th the troops had taken their places, and
the mob, for the moment deeming discretion the better part of valour,
melted away in the darkness. About 5 p.m., however, in the afternoon
of the same day, the mob, which declined to carry out the _tabuts_ in
procession, collected on Parel road and Memonwada road and commenced
stoning the troops and police. They also stopped all traffic, stoned
tram-cars and private carriages, and roughly handled several harmless
pedestrians. The police made several charges upon them from Pydhoni,
but were unable permanently to disperse the rioters. At length the
Commissioner, seeing that the two mobs refused to disperse and were
practically out of hand, and that the Pathans were on the point of
breaking loose, called Rao Bahadur Chunilal H. Setalwad, one of the
Presidency Magistrates, who was on duty at Sulliman Chauki, and asked him
to give the order to the troops (the Warwickshire Regiment) picketed at
Pydhoni to fire on the mob. The order was given at once and the rioting
ceased.[116]
Like Napoleon’s famous “whiff of grapeshot”, the firing of the Warwicks
may be said to have blown the old Muharram into the limbo of oblivion.
From that date, January 1911, the processional part of the Muharram, with
its _tolis_, its blackmail, its terrorism and its obscenities, ceased
to exist and has not up to the present 1922 been revived. Before the
succeeding Muharram drew near, the Commissioner had framed new rules
for the celebration, of which the deposit by _tabut_-license holders
of ample security for good behaviour and a complete revision of the
processional route for each _tabut_ were two of the main features. He had
also contrived to persuade the leaders of the various Muhammadan sections
and _mohollas_ that the orgiastic method of celebrating the festival
was an anachronism, not countenanced by Islamic teaching and gravely
injurious to the City. In thus securing the obliteration of the customs
and practices, which for more than fifty years had been responsible for
periodical outbreaks of disorder, the Commissioner was greatly assisted
by some of the leading men of the Sunni _jamats_, of whom the most
conspicuous and most helpful was Sirdar Saheb Sulliman Cassum Haji Mitha,
C. I. E., of Kolsa _Moholla_. He led the way at succeeding Muharrams in
popularizing the _waaz_ or nightly religious discourses and in spending
upon them, and upon illuminations and charitable distribution of food to
the poorer classes, the money which was formerly wasted on irreverent
and turbulent processions. For this fundamental change in the character
of the festival none perhaps were more grateful than the _Maulvis_ and
_Mullas_ who presided over the _waaz_; for with the disappearance of
the _tolis_ and their paraphernalia their audiences were enormously
increased. But respectable Moslems and the general public also breathed a
sigh of relief, on realizing that the longstanding annual menace to law
and order had been exorcised. In December, 1914, on the conclusion of the
fourth Muharram celebrated in the new manner, the Bombay Government wrote
to Mr. Edwardes, expressing their thanks for his unremitting efforts and
skilful management of the festival. “The result”, they remarked, “is
in large measure due to the excellent relations which you established
between the Muhammadan leaders and yourself, thus rendering it possible
to relegate to the past the disreputable ceremonies which used to
disfigure the Muharram. It is now possible to regard the new regulations
as having become permanently established”.
Such, very briefly, is the history of the purification of the Bombay
Muharram. The old days, when the police were on continuous duty for
ten days and nights, when the Bohras were subjected to volleys of the
vilest and most obscene abuse and to open assault, when the lowest and
most turbulent portion of the population was permitted to take charge of
the central portion of the city, and when rioting with its complement
of drastic repression was liable to recur in any year—those days have
passed, and one hopes that a weak administration will never permit them
to recur. The present puritanical and more reverent method of celebration
was firmly established during Mr. Edwardes’ Commissionership with the
help and approval of leading Muhammadans, who realized at length that the
annual orgy in the streets was a disgrace to Islam.
It remains only to notice the effect upon the police of the outbreak of
the Great War in August, 1914. The day after War was declared, local
shopkeepers, particularly the dealers in foodstuffs, commenced to raise
their prices to famine level, and large numbers of the poorer classes
appealed to the police for assistance. Government having decided to
appoint a food-price committee, the Commissioner ordered a _battaki_
to be beaten throughout the City for three days; several shopkeepers
who were disposed to be recalcitrant were called up to the Head Police
Office and warned; and in several cases constables were posted at shops
to see that prices were not unduly raised. Excess amounts received by
shopkeepers from mill-hands and others were in many cases recovered and
paid back to the purchasers, and a series of judiciously-fabricated
reports were spread by chosen agents, describing the imaginary fate which
had overtaken certain shopkeepers, who had extorted fancy prices from the
public. Somewhat similar action was taken with excellent effect in the
case of retail-dealers, who refused to accept currency-notes of small
denominations from the poorer classes. Within a few days these measures
produced the required effect, and trade again became normal. The police
were on constant duty day and night at the Government Dockyard, at the
various military camps erected for the Indian Expeditionary Force, and
during the economic disturbance in the early days of the War at the
banks and Currency Office. They assisted the military authorities to
find Dhobis, Bhistis and other camp-followers for enrolment, they traced
absentee followers and native seamen, and during the heavy rain-storms of
October, 1914, they found accommodation in permanent buildings for the
troops under canvas. They took charge of coal-stacks for the Director, R.
I. M., and did much extra duty at the Wadi Bandar railway goods-sheds.
They displayed great tact in their management of the crowds which used
to collect in the streets to hear the special editions of the vernacular
newspapers read out during the early months of the War; and during the
aeroplane scare, they were equally successful in dealing with the mobs
which used to scan the skies for airships. While the _Emden_ was seizing
vessels in the Bay of Bengal and bombarding Madras, there was again a
scare in the City and some of the more timorous merchants, taking their
cash and jewellery with them, fled to their homes in Native States, where
in several cases the local police kindly relieved them of most of their
valuables. Others, equally timorous but more reasonable, applied to the
Police Commissioner for advice, and were satisfied with his assurance
that if it should become necessary to vacate Bombay, he would give them
ample warning beforehand. Trusting to this promise, many Hindu merchants
remained in the City, who would otherwise have fled.