LORD MAYO'S DEALINGS WITH THE FEUDATORY STATES
The India of which Lord Mayo assumed charge in 1869 was a profoundly
different India from that which had, eleven years previously, passed
from the Company to the Crown. The fixed belief of the founders of
the British Empire in India had been, that the Native States must
inevitably, and in their own defence, be either openly or secretly
hostile to our rule. They held that by good government and a
scrupulous respect for the religions, customs, and rights of the
people, they might attach the population of the British Provinces.
But the Independent or Feudatory Native Powers in India must, in
their opinion, for ever remain a menace to our sway.
It was therefore the permanent policy of the greatest servants of the
East India Company to bring the Native States under subjection by
treaties, and, when they could do so without actual injustice, to
incorporate the lesser States into the British Dominions. In 1841 the
Government of India laid down the uniform principle 'to persevere in
the one clear and {99} direct course of abandoning no just and
honourable accession of territory or revenue, while all existing
claims of right are at the same time scrupulously respected.'
We have seen how, after the Mutiny, this policy of annexation was
deliberately reversed. The Queen of England, when she became the
Sovereign of India, became the protectress of all classes of the
Indian people. She declared in the most solemn manner her will 'that
the governments of the several Princes and Chiefs who now govern
their own territories should be perpetuated, and that the
representation and dignity of their houses should be continued.' In
1862 Lord Canning, as the first Viceroy of India, thus summed up the
new situation:--
'The last vestiges of the royal house of Delhi, from which, for our
own convenience, we had long been content to accept a vicarious
authority, have been swept away. The last pretender to the
representation of the Peshwa' (the Maratha over-lord) 'has
disappeared. The Crown of England stands forward the unquestioned
ruler and paramount power in all India, and is, for the first time,
brought face to face with its Feudatories. There is a reality in the
suzerainty of the Sovereign of England which has never existed
before, and which is not only felt, but eagerly acknowledged, by the
Chiefs.'
The change in policy meant that an area of 600,000 square miles, with
a population of nearly 50 millions, under the Feudatory Chiefs, was
no longer a foreign {100} territory subject to annexation, but an
integral portion of the British Empire for whose welfare the Queen
became responsible in the sight of God and man. Her responsibility,
although not the direct responsibility of a sovereign, was the
responsibility of a suzerain. On Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence
devolved the heavy task of consolidating the Native States under the
changed regime. But the memories of the Mutiny still cast their
shadow over India throughout the period of their government. Lord
Mayo came as a new man to India, free from the recollections which
that terrible struggle had graven into the souls of all who took part
in it. The work of conquest had been effected by his predecessors,
the task of conciliation remained for him to accomplish.
'I, as the representative of the Queen,' he declared to the Rajput
Princes assembled in darbar, 'have come here to tell you, as you have
often been told before, that the desire of Her Majesty's Government
is to secure to you and to your successors the full enjoyment of your
ancient rights and the exercise of all lawful customs, and to assist
you in upholding the dignity and maintaining the authority which you
and your fathers have for centuries exercised in this land.
'But in order to enable us fully to carry into effect this our fixed
resolve, we must receive from you hearty and cordial assistance. If
we respect your rights and privileges, you should also respect {101}
the rights and regard the privileges of those who are placed beneath
your care. If we support you in your power, we expect in return good
government. We demand that everywhere, throughout the length and
breadth of Rajputana, justice and order shall prevail; that every
man's property shall be secure; that the traveller shall come and go
in safety; that the cultivator shall enjoy the fruits of his labour,
and the trader the produce of his commerce; that you shall make
roads, and undertake the construction of those works of irrigation
which will improve the condition of the people and swell the revenues
of your States; that you shall encourage education, and provide for
the relief of the sick.
'Be assured that we ask you to do all this for no other but your own
benefit. If we wished you to remain weak, we should say: Be poor, and
ignorant, and disorderly. It is because we wish you to be strong that
we desire to see you rich, instructed, and well-governed. It is for
such objects that the servants of the Queen rule in India; and
Providence will ever sustain the rulers who govern for the people's
good.
'I am here only for a time. The able and earnest officers who
surround me will, at no distant period, return to their English
homes; but the Power which we represent will endure for ages. Hourly
is this great Empire brought nearer and nearer to the throne of our
Queen. The steam-vessel and the railroad enable England, year by
year, to enfold India in a {102} closer embrace. But the coils she
seeks to entwine around her are no iron fetters, but the golden
chains of affection and of peace. The days of conquest are past; the
age of improvement has begun.
'Chiefs and Princes, advance in the right way, and secure to your
children's children, and to future generations of your subjects, the
favouring protection of a power who only seeks your good.'
'We see,' wrote one of his Councillors after his death,--'we see Lord
Mayo in every line of this speech, the frank and courteous and
enlightened gentleman; but, at the same time, the strong and worthy
representative of the Queen, and the unmistakeable ruler of the
Empire. Every Native Prince who met him looked upon Lord Mayo as the
ideal of an English Viceroy. They all felt instinctively that they
could place perfect confidence in everything that he told them; and
their respect, I ought rather to say their reverence, was all the
deeper, because, while they knew that he was their master, they felt
also that he was their friend.'
Lord Mayo discerned the evil as well as the good of our Feudatory
system. He was often sorely hurt by the spectacle of Native
mal-administration, which our principles of non-interference rendered
him powerless to amend. He found that the existing system allowed of
petty intermeddling, but often precluded salutary
intervention--straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. His
mind was attracted to the possibility of developing a scheme which
would {103} secure to the Indian Feudatories their present
independence, and at the same time arm the suzerain power with
adequate checks on its abuse.
In his personal and social relations with the Feudatories, he made
them realise that the one path towards the Viceregal friendship was
the good government of their territories. The Indian Foreign Office
strictly regulates the official courtesies of a Governor-General to
each Prince, and these regulations Lord Mayo accurately observed. But
he made the Native Chiefs feel that beyond such State receptions
there was an interior region of intercourse and kindly interest, and
that this region was open to every one who deserved it, and to no one
else. He led them to see that his friendship had nothing to do with
the greatness of their territory, or their degree of political
independence, or the number of jealously counted guns which saluted
them from our forts. These considerations regulated his State
ceremonials; but his private friendship was only to be won by the
personal merit of character and conduct.
By his attitude he practically said to each: 'If you wish to be a
great man at my Court, govern well at home. Be just and merciful to
your people. We do not ask you whether you come with full hands, but
whether you come with clean hands. No presents that you may bring can
buy the British favour; no display which you may make will raise your
dignity in our eyes; no cringing or flattery will gain my friendship.
We estimate you not by the splendour of {104} your offerings to us,
nor by the pomp of your retinue here, but by your conduct to your
subjects at home. For ourselves, we have nothing to ask of you. But
for your people we demand good government, and we shall judge of you
by this standard alone. And in our private friendship and
hospitality, we shall prefer the smallest Feudatory who rules
righteously, to the greatest Prince who misgoverns his people.'
The Native Chiefs very soon understood the maxims which regulated his
personal relations towards them; and the outburst of passionate grief
that took place among them on his death proves whether the Indian
Princes are, or are not, capable of appreciating such a line of
conduct. As regards his public dealing with them, the four following
principles, although never formally enunciated in any single paper,
stand out in many letters and State documents from his pen:--
I. Non-annexation and a fixed resolve that even the misrule of a
Native Chief must not be used as a weapon for aggrandising our
power.
II. But a constant feeling of responsibility attached to the
British Government as suzerain, for any serious misrule in
Native States; and a firm determination to interfere when
British interference became necessary to prevent misgovernment.
Such interference to consist not in annexing the territory, but
in displacing the Chief, and administering by British officers
or a Native regency in the interest of the lawful heirs.
{105}
III. Non-interference, and the lightest possible form of control,
with Chiefs who governed well. Lord Mayo tried to make the
Indian Feudatories feel that it rested with themselves to
decide the degree of practical independence which they should
enjoy, and that that degree would be strictly regulated by the
degree of good government which they gave to their subjects.
IV. Above all, and as an indispensable complement to his whole
policy, the education of the younger Native Chiefs under
British officers, and in a high sense of their responsibilities
alike to their subjects and to the Suzerain Power.
I shall endeavour very briefly to show how Lord Mayo gave effect to
these principles.
I take first a case in which Lord Mayo recognised the necessity for
reform, but abstained from direct intervention. In the great Province
of Kathiawar, with its 187 chiefdoms, Lord Mayo had to deal with the
relics of five centuries of Native misrule. He found many conflicting
claims to the soil and a number of ancient communities, each with a
vested right to depredation. The 'ex-ruling classes,' representatives
of old houses forcibly dispossessed, or of younger brothers of Chiefs
unable to live on their slender share of the inheritance; 'predatory
tribes,' and 'dangerous communities,' whose hereditary means of
livelihood was plunder; 'aboriginal races,' penned into the hills by
successive waves of invaders,--all these elements of {106} anarchy
still fermented in the population of Kathiawar. Some venerable
customs also survived. Litigants still retained their right of
_bahirwatia_, literally, 'going out' against their neighbours. This
method of adjusting suits for real property consisted in forcing the
husbandmen to quit their villages, while the litigant retired with
his brethren to 'some asylum, whence he may carry on his depredations
with impunity.'
Lord Mayo keenly realised the evils from which Kathiawar was
suffering; but he also clearly perceived the futility of attempting
to rush reforms upon the loose congeries of 187 chiefdoms that made
up the Province. While, therefore, he gradually introduced a better
system for the whole, he confined his more direct interference to a
leading principality which might serve as an object lesson to the
rest. One of the richest and most important States of the 'first
class' in Kathiawar passed to a minor. Instead of bringing it under a
British regent, an experienced Native Minister and a picked Member of
the Bombay Civil Service were appointed as its joint-rulers. The
experiment succeeded admirably. Reforms which could not have been
introduced by an English regent without popular opposition, and which
would never have been introduced by a Native ruler at all, were
smoothly and harmoniously effected. The State became, with a minimum
of interference by the Suzerain Power, a model of prosperity and firm
administration.
But during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, as during {107} every other
General-Governorship, cases of Feudatory misrule--pure, simple, and
incorrigible--took place. In such instances he did not hesitate to
interfere in a manner that left no doubt as to the interpretation
which he gave to the duties of the Suzerain Power. He held that until
everything had been done to render the English surveillance in a
Native State as efficient as possible, he had no right to complain of
the Chief. He realised that the process by which an Indian State
casts its old skin of anarchy is necessarily a slow one. He kept his
hands clean of any faintest stain of annexation. But he made every
Feudatory in India clearly understand that if he persistently
misgoverned his subjects, the sceptre would be taken out of his
hands.
The State of Alwar afforded an example of this class. It was founded
in the latter half of the last century, by a Rajput soldier of
fortune, and had an area of 3000 square miles, a population of
three-quarters of a million, and an army of about 7000 men. In 1863
the young Hindu Chief attained his legal majority. His first act was
to take vengeance on the President of the Native Council of Regency
who had governed during his minority. In seven years he not only
squandered a cash-balance of 172,287 pounds saved during his
minority, together with the regular revenue of 200,000 pounds _per
annum_, but he had plunged the State into debt to the extent of
160,000 pounds. The current taxes were so forestalled, that the
balance due for the whole year would suffice but for two {108}
months' expenditure; the Maharaja having hit on the clever financial
device of rewarding his creatures by 'orders on the harvest!'
Some of the items of his expenditure will repay notice. Over 4000
pounds a year were assigned to 'men whose sole duty it is to make
_salams_ to the Chief'; over 5000 pounds to singers and dancing
girls; and 1900 pounds to wrestlers. 'The Maharaja manifests the
utmost contempt of decency, drinking publicly with low Muhammadans,
and getting drunk nearly every day.' The revenues formerly spent on
the administration of justice and police had 'been devoted to the
Chief's private pleasures.' 'Indeed, the Chief himself is on terms of
intimacy with two _dakait_ leaders,' i.e. heads of robber gangs. He
had confiscated the public lands assigned for the support of his
troops, and for the maintenance of religion, or for the relief of the
poor--one of the latter grants being 270 years old.
The result was to completely alienate the Raja of Alwar from his
Rajput nobility and subjects. The nobility consisted of a powerful
body of Hindu Thakurs, or barons. In vain they pleaded with him to
observe some measure in his excesses. His practical answer to them
was the disbandment of fifteen out of the eighteen Rajput troops of
cavalry, whose fathers had won the State for his ancestor, and the
enrollment of Muhammadan mercenaries in their stead. In March, 1870,
the news reached the Government of India that the people of Alwar had
risen, and that 2000 men were in the field against the Hindu Prince.
{109} Lord Mayo first laboured to do what was possible by arbitration
between the unworthy Prince and his revolted subjects. But the
nobility would have been contented with nothing short of the
deposition of the Chief. Lord Mayo interfered to prevent so extreme a
measure. He gave the Prince a last chance, by summoning him to name a
Board of Management which would command the confidence of his people;
and the Chief having neglected to do so, Lord Mayo issued orders for
the creation of a Native Council at Alwar. The Council consisted of
the leading nobility in the State, with the British Political Agent
as President--the Maharaja having a seat next to the President.
Under the efficient management of this board, Alwar speedily emerged
from its troubles. The Chief received an allowance of 18,000 pounds a
year for his personal expenditure, exclusive of the permanent
establishments required for his dignity as titular head of the State.
These establishments included, among other things, 100 riding-horses,
26 carriage-horses, and 40 camels, at the disposal of His Highness.
The remainder of the revenue was devoted to paying off the debt and
to replacing the administration on an efficient basis. Peace was
firmly established; the courts were reopened; schools were founded;
and crime was firmly put down by an improved police.
The Chief still clung to his lowest favourites, and, so far as his
debauched habits allowed him to interfere at all, he interfered for
evil. At a State darbar on {110} the Queen's birthday, he publicly
insulted his nobility. Lord Mayo, however, still adhered to his
resolve to govern Alwar by means of its own Native Council, rather
than by any expedient which might bear the faintest resemblance to
annexation. 'I fear this young Chief is incorrigible,' he wrote early
in 1871, 'but we must pursue the course of treatment we have laid
down, firmly and consistently. The whole action of this Chief is that
of a mischievous and wily creature, who finds himself over-matched,
tightly bound, and unable to do further harm.' Lord Mayo plainly told
him that the only chance of 'his being ever freed from the Council'
would depend on his showing 'symptoms of repentance, and a
determination to reconcile himself with his subjects.'
But this amendment was not to be. The Native Council of Management
went on with its work of improvement and reform. The Chief held
himself sullenly aloof, and sank deeper and deeper into the slough of
evil habits, until he died, a worn-out old man of twenty-nine, in
1874.
This was the most serious case of Native misrule during Lord Mayo's
Viceroyalty, and the only one in which he had to push interference to
the point of superseding the hereditary Prince. Another instance of
mal-administration was visited with a severe rebuke, which the Chief
resented, and refused to take his proper place at a Viceregal darbar
in the seat below the head of the ancient Udaipur house. The offender
was promptly ordered to quit British territory in {111} disgrace, and
was further punished by having his salute reduced from seventeen to
fifteen guns.
It is only fair to the Indian Feudatories to state, that against
these examples of misrule many instances could be cited of wise
government and a high sense of duty. Lord Mayo gathered round him a
circle of Chiefs whose character he personally admired, and in whose
administration he took a well-founded pride. Of such territories,
Bhopal may serve as an illustration. It is one of the Feudatory
States of Central India which exercise sovereign powers over their
own subjects: has an area of 6764 square miles, a population of
663,656 souls, and yields a revenue to its Chief of 240,000 pounds a
year. Its army, besides a British Contingent which the Chief was
bound to maintain by the treaty of 1818, amounted to 4000 men.
The State of Bhopal was founded in 1723 by an Afghan adventurer, who
expelled the Hindu Chiefs, built a fortress, and assumed the title of
Nawab. In 1778, when a British army under General Goddard marched
through Central India, Bhopal stood forward as the one State friendly
to our power. The Maratha aggressions of the early part of the
present century compelled it, like many other Indian States, to seek
English aid. In 1819 it acknowledged the supremacy of our Government,
was received under the British protection, and was rewarded by some
valuable districts which we had won from the Marathas. The Mutiny of
1857 found Bhopal under the government of a {112} lady, the
celebrated Sikandar Begam, whose wise administration had raised her
State to a high rank among the Indian Feudatories. For her loyal
services at that juncture she was created a Grand Commander of the
Star of India, and dying in 1868, left her territory to a daughter
worthy of her blood.
This Princess, at the time of her accession in 1868, was a widow of
thirty-one years of age. She inherited her mother's firmness and good
sense, with a rare aptitude for the duties of administration. During
Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty she devoted herself to the measures of
progress which the Viceroy pressed on every Feudatory Chief who came
under his influence. She opened out roads, organised a system of
public instruction, executed a survey of her State, reformed the
police, suppressed the abominable but deep-rooted trade of kidnapping
minors for immoral purposes, and improved the jails. Lord Mayo
received her in his capital with marks of distinction, and, on the
occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, presented her with
honour to His Royal Highness. The Princess carried back to her State
the liveliest recollections of his hospitality and kindness, and the
next few years of her rule became conspicuous for good government and
prudent administrative reforms.
Her Highness was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, as
the ruler of a model State.
Lord Mayo entertained very stringent views as to the duties of the
Government of India towards the {113} wilder frontier tribes. He held
that, while his Government was bound to preserve the peace of the
border, it was bound to do so not by vindictive chastisements for
raids committed, but by a more perfect organisation of preventive
measures.
In one case on the North-Western Frontier of India, after persistent
provocations, it had been locally proposed to deal with the
mountaineers by means of a force to be kept ready to make reprisals
at a moment's notice, in the event of future raids. Lord Mayo, after
reviewing the recent events, thus declared his policy:--'The whole
recommendation comes to this--that in the early part of spring a
large force should be assembled at different points within the hills;
and that this force, being placed absolutely at the disposal of the
officers who believe that the burning of crops and the destruction of
villages by British troops are indispensable to the maintenance of
the peace of the frontier, should, at the least appearance of robbery
or raid, advance into the hills and commence the old system of
devastation.' Lord Mayo then points out that such a force, acting on
the moment, would be beyond the guidance of the Government of India,
and that that Government 'might find itself involved in serious
military operations, upon the character, justice, or necessity of
which the Governor-General in Council never had an opportunity of
expressing an opinion.' 'I object to authorise action which may cause
such serious results.'
'No one can read ----'s letter without coming to {114} the conclusion
that there still exists in the minds of the local authorities an
ardent though partly concealed desire for that avenging policy which
the Government of India is so anxious to avoid.' Lord Mayo proposed
'to substitute, as far as possible, for surprise, aggression, and
reprisal, a policy of vigilant, constant, and never-ceasing defence
of those parts of our frontier which are by their position liable to
be attacked by foreign tribes.'
It had been objected that such a system of watchful defence 'must act
as a constant menace to the tribes.' To this Lord Mayo replies: 'I
cannot see the force of this objection. The presence of a policeman
is indeed a standing menace to the thief; and a sight of the gallows
may be a salutary reminder to the murderer. It is, I fear, too much
the habit to adopt what is doubtless the view taken by the
mountaineers themselves of these affairs. They look upon them as acts
of war and justifiable aggression. We have to teach them that
assassination, the attack of a defenceless village by night, and
killing people in their beds, are not acts of war, but are esteemed
by civilised nations to be acts of murder. The sooner we teach these
people this lesson the better. We have already taught it to millions
who are less intelligent than the Pathans of the Hazara frontier.'
Lord Mayo's policy was to remove such crimes from the operations of
honourable warfare into the jurisdiction of a strong armed police. To
the objection that a raid, unless avenged by a military {115}
expedition, would impair 'our prestige on the frontier,' he answers:
'I object to fight for prestige. And even those who may still think
that killing people for the sake of prestige is morally right, will
hardly assert that the character and authority of the British arms in
India are affected one way or the other by skirmishes with wild
frontier tribes. But there are other considerations connected with
the subject, of wider and greater import than the punishment of a few
mountain savages, and the vindication of a local officer's prestige.
Every shot fired in anger within the limits of our Indian Empire
reverberates throughout Asia; gives to nations who are no friends to
Christian or European rule the notion that amongst our own subjects
there are still men in arms against us; and corroborates the
assertion that the people within our frontier are not yet wholly
subjected to our sway, and that the British power is still disputed
in Hindustan.'
The other example which I shall cite of Lord Mayo's frontier policy
will be taken from the opposite extremity of India, and it may seem
at first to point to views different from the above. In 1871 the
Viceroy sanctioned an expedition against the Lushai tribes of the
North-Eastern border. These races occupy the then _terra incognita_
which stretches from the Cachar valley to the Chittagong District on
the Bay of Bengal; and from Hill Tipperah on the west to the great
watershed which pours its eastern drainage into the rivers of Burma.
As regards the event {116} of the expedition, it may be briefly said
that it was perfectly successful, and that, by the infliction of the
smallest possible amount of temporary suffering, it introduced, for a
period, order and peace into tracts which had been from time
immemorial the haunt of rapine and inter-tribal wars.
Lord Mayo, however, would have been the last man to claim any special
credit for success in such operations. 'The affair,' he wrote,
'should be conducted with as little parade, noise, and fuss as
possible. It must not be looked upon as a campaign, for no formidable
resistance is anticipated. It should be looked upon more as a
military occupation and visitation of as large a portion of the
Lushai Districts as possible, for the purpose of punishing the guilty
where they can be traced and found, but more particularly for showing
these savages that there is hardly a part of their hills which our
armed forces cannot visit and penetrate.'
But while Lord Mayo dealt thus firmly, and at the same time
considerately, with the Indian Feudatories and wild frontier tribes,
he clearly perceived that our whole relations with the Native States
of India must undergo a profound change. The Indian Feudatories had,
as I have repeatedly insisted on, ceased to be semi-foreign allies of
a commercial company. They had become an integral part of the India
of the Queen. It was Lord Mayo's earnest desire that a new generation
of Native Princes should be trained up to discharge the new and
higher functions involved by this change. {117} He believed that this
could only be done by a carefully devised system of education,
adapted to the various classes of Chiefs.
Whenever a great Native State passed to a minor, he held it the duty
of the Suzerain Power to do two things. In the first place, to make
such arrangements by means of a Native or a mixed regency, as would
secure a good local administration, and at the same time convince
both the ministers and the people of the State that the British
Suzerain respected their independence and would scrupulously maintain
it. In the second place, to make such arrangements for the education
of the young Prince as would train him up in English rather than
Native ideas of his responsibility as a ruler. He believed that this
work of rearing up the young Feudatories to a high sense of their
public duty was a worthy work for British officers of rank and
talent. The system of educating the Native Princes under English
guardians or tutors has borne blessed fruit. It rendered possible
those subsequent measures for incorporating the military strength of
the Native States into the general array of the Empire, which form
perhaps the most important political reform in India during the last
quarter of this century.
Lord Mayo was not content with providing for the education of the
great Indian Feudatories alone. Under his auspices colleges were
established for the lesser Chiefs. Such a college formed a part of
his scheme for improving the condition of Kathiawar. {118} For he
held it vain to expect that a large collection of Native Chiefs would
discharge their responsibilities as men, unless they were properly
trained as boys. The rank of these youths had hitherto confined them
to private education under the indulgent influences of the Zanana.
Lord Mayo designed for them an Indian Eton, in which they should mix
with each other, and learn to fit themselves for the duties of their
future position in life.
Another, and perhaps more conspicuous, example was the Mayo College
at Ajmere, to which the Native Chiefs themselves subscribed 70,000
pounds sterling. This institution Lord Mayo intended to be a purely
aristocratic College for Rajputana, where the sons of the Rajput
Princes and noblemen would be brought into direct contact with
European professors and European ideas, and under the healthy
influences of physical and moral training. The Council of the College
consists of all the principal Chiefs of Rajputana and the British
Political Agents accredited to their States, with the Viceroy as
President, and the Agent to the General-Governor in Rajputana as
Vice-President.
I believe, if Lord Mayo were now alive, it would be his educational
policy for the Native Princes of India, rather than his immediate
dealings with them, however successful, that he would regard as the
most beneficent memorial of his feudatory rule.
{119}