The World hath set its heavy yoke
Upon the old white-bearded folk
Who strive to please the King.
God's mercy is upon the young,
God's wisdom in the baby tongue
That fears not anything.
The Parable of _Chajju Bhagat_.
Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, and every one in
Simla knew Tods. Most men had saved him from death on occasions. He
was beyond his _ayah's_ control altogether, and perilled his life
daily to find out what would happen if you pulled a Mountain Battery
mule's tail. He was an utterly fearless young Pagan, about six years
old, and the only baby who ever broke the holy calm of the Supreme
Legislative Council.
It happened this way: Tods' pet kid got loose, and fled up the hill,
off the Boileaugunge Road, Tods after it, until it burst in to the
Viceregal Lodge lawn, then attached to 'Peterhoff.' The Council were
sitting at the time, and the windows were open because it was warm.
The Red Lancer in the porch told Tods to go away; but Tods knew the
Red Lancer and most of the Members of Council personally. Moreover,
he had firm hold of the kid's collar, and was being dragged all
across the flower-beds. 'Give my _salaam_ to the long Councillor
_Sahib_, and ask him to help me take _Moti_ back!' gasped Tods. The
Council heard the noise through the open windows; and, after an
interval, was seen the shocking spectacle of a Legal Member and a
Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct patronage of a
Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and very dirty boy, in a
sailor's suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a lively and
rebellious kid. They headed it off down the path to the Mall, and
Tods went home in triumph and told his Mamma that _all_ the
Councillor _Sahibs_ had been helping him to catch _Moti_. Whereat his
Mamma smacked Tods for interfering with the administration of the
Empire; but Tods met the Legal Member the next day, and told him in
confidence that if the Legal Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he,
Tods, would give him all the help in his power. 'Thank you, Tods,'
said the Legal Member.
Tods was the idol of some eighty _jhampanis_, and half as many
_saises_. He saluted them all as 'O Brother.' It never entered his
head that any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was
the buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of
that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the
_dhoby_ to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer
_khit_ from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his
co-mates should look down on him.
So Tods had honour in the land from Boileaugunge to Chota Simla, and
ruled justly according to his lights. Of course, he spoke Urdu, but
he had also mastered many queer side-speeches like the _chotee bolee_
of the women, and held grave converse with shopkeepers and
Hill-coolies alike. He was precocious for his age, and his mixing
with natives had taught him some of the more bitter truths of life:
the meanness and the sordidness of it. He used, over his bread and
milk, to deliver solemn and serious aphorisms, translated from the
vernacular into the English, that made his Mamma jump and vow that
Tods _must_ go Home next hot weather. Just when Tods was in the bloom
of his power, the Supreme Legislature were hacking out a Bill for the
Sub-Montane Tracts, a revision of the then Act, smaller than the
Punjab Land Bill, but affecting a few hundred thousand people none
the less. The Legal Member had built, and bolstered, and embroidered,
and amended that Bill till it looked beautiful on paper. Then the
Council began to settle what they called the 'minor details.' As if
any Englishman legislating for natives knows enough to know which are
the minor and which are the major points, from the native point of
view, of any measure! That Bill was a triumph of 'safe-guarding the
interests of the tenant.' One clause provided that land should not be
leased on longer terms than five years at a stretch; because, if the
landlord had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, he would
squeeze the very life out of him. The notion was to keep up a stream
of independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and
ethnologically and politically the notion was correct. The only
drawback was that it was altogether wrong. A native's life in India
implies the life of his son. Wherefore, you cannot legislate for one
generation at a time. You must consider the next from the native
point of view. Curiously enough, the native now and then, and in
Northern India more particularly, hates being over-protected against
himself. There was a Naga Village once, where they lived on dead
_and_ buried Commissariat mules.... But that is another story.
For many reasons, to be explained later, the people concerned
objected to the Bill. The Native Member in Council knew as much about
Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross. He had said in Calcutta that
'the Bill was entirely in accord with the desires of that large and
important class, the cultivators'; and so on, and so on. The Legal
Member's knowledge of natives was limited to English-speaking
Durbaris, and his own red _chaprassis_, the Sub-Montane Tracts
concerned no one in particular, the Deputy Commissioners were a good
deal too driven to make representations, and the measure was one
which dealt with small land-holders only. Nevertheless, the Legal
Member prayed that it might be correct, for he was a nervously
conscientious man. He did not know that no man can tell what natives
think unless he mixes with them with the varnish off. And not always
then. But he did the best he knew. And the measure came up to the
Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods patrolled the Burra
Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played with the monkey
belonging to Ditta Mull, the _bunnia_, and listened, as a child
listens, to all the stray talk about this new freak of the _Lord
Sahib's_.
One day there was a dinner-party at the house of Tods' Mamma, and the
Legal Member came. Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till he heard
the bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee. Then he paddled
out in his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night-suit, and
took refuge by the side of his father, knowing that he would not be
sent back. 'See the miseries of having a family!' said Tods' father,
giving Tods three prunes, some water in a glass that had been used
for claret, and telling him to sit still. Tods sucked the prunes
slowly, knowing that he would have to go when they were finished,
and sipped the pink water like a man of the world, as he listened to
the conversation. Presently, the Legal Member, talking 'shop' to the
Head of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full name--'The
Sub-Montane Tracts _Ryotwary_ Revised Enactment.' Tods caught the one
native word, and lifting up his small voice said--
'Oh, I know _all_ about that! Has it been _murramutted_ yet,
Councillor _Sahib_?'
'How much?' said the Legal Member. '_Murramutted_--mended.--Put
_theek_, you know--made nice to please Ditta Mull!'
The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to Tods.
'What do you know about _ryotwari_, little man?' he said.
'I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know _all_ about it. Ditta
Mull, and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and--oh, _lakhs_ of my friends
tell me about it in the bazars when I talk to them.'
'Oh, they do--do they? What do they say, Tods?'
Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing-gown and said--'I
must _fink_.'
The Legal Member waited patiently. Then Tods, with infinite
compassion--
'You don't speak my talk, do you, Councillor _Sahib_?'
'No; I am sorry to say I do not,' said the Legal Member.
'Very well,' said Tods, 'I must _fink_ in English.'
He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very slowly,
translating in his mind from the vernacular to English, as many
Anglo-Indian children do. You must remember that the Legal Member
helped him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was not equal to
the sustained flight of oratory that follows.
'Ditta Mull says, "This thing is the talk of a child, and was made up
by fools." But _I_ don't think you are a fool, Councillor _Sahib_,'
said Tods hastily. 'You caught my goat. This is what Ditta Mull
says--'I am not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child? I
can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good. If I am a
fool, the sin is upon my own head. For five years I take my ground
for which I have saved money, and a wife I take too, and a little son
is born." Ditta Mull has one daughter now, but he _says_ he will have
a son soon. And he says, "At the end of five years, by this new
_bundobust_, I must go. If I do not go, I must get fresh seals and
_takkus_-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the harvest,
and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but to go twice is
_Jehannum_." 'That is _quite_ true,' explained Tods gravely. 'All my
friends say so. And Ditta Mull says, "Always fresh _takkus_ and
paying money to _vakils_ and _chaprassis_ and law-courts every five
years, or else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want to go? Am I a
fool? If I am a fool and do not know, after forty years, good land
when I see it, let me die! But if the new _bundobust_ says for
_fifteen_ years, that is good and wise. My little son is a man, and I
am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, paying only once
for the _takkus_-stamps on the papers, and his little son is born,
and at the end of fifteen years is a man too. But what profit is
there in five years and fresh papers? Nothing but _dikh_, trouble,
_dikh_. We are not young men who take these lands, but old ones--not
farmers, but tradesmen with a little money--and for fifteen years we
shall have peace. Nor are we children that the Sirkar should treat us
so."'
Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening. The
Legal Member said to Tods, 'Is that all?'
'All I can remember,' said Tods. 'But you should see Ditta Mull's big
monkey. It's just like a Councillor _Sahib_.'
'Tods! Go to bed!' said his father.
Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed. The Legal
Member brought his hand down on the table with a crash--'By Jove!'
said the Legal Member, 'I believe the boy is right. The short
tenure _is_ the weak point.'
He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was
obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play with a _bunnia's_
monkey, by way of getting understanding; but he did better. He made
inquiries, always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not
the hybrid, University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and
little by little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure
concerned most intimately to give in their views, which squared very
closely with Tods' evidence.
So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was
filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent very
little except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the
thought from him as illiberal. He was a most liberal man.
After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got the
Bill recast in the tenure-clause, and, if Tods' Mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit
and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the
verandah. Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before the
Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little life of him Tods
could not understand why.
In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft of
the Sub-Montane Tracts _Ryotwary_ Revised Enactment; and opposite the
twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the
Legal Member are the words '_Tods' Amendment_.'