It would have been impossible for the Badhaks to exist and flourish
as they did without the protection of the landowners on whose estates
they lived; and this they received in full measure in return for a
liberal share of their booty. When the chief of Karauli was called upon
to dislodge a gang within his territory, he expressed apprehension
that the coercion of the Badhaks might cause a revolution in the
State. He was not at all singular, says Colonel Sleeman, in his fear
of exasperating this formidable tribe of robbers. It was common to
all the smaller chiefs and the provincial governors of the larger
ones. They everywhere protected and fostered the Badhaks, as did the
landholders; and the highest of them associated with the leaders of
gangs on terms of equality and confidence. It was very common for a
chief or the governor of a district in times of great difficulty and
personal danger to require from one of the leaders of such gangs a
night-guard or _palang ki chauki_: and no less so to entertain large
bodies of them in the attack and defence of forts and camps whenever
unusual courage and skill were required. The son of the Raja of Charda
exchanged turbans with a Badhak leader, Mangal Singh, as a mark of the
most intimate friendship. This episode recalls an alliance of similar
character in _Lorna Doone_; and indeed it would not be difficult to
find several points of resemblance between the careers of the more
enterprising Badhak leaders and the Doones of Bagworthy; but India
produced no character on the model of John Ridd, and it was reserved
for an Englishman, Colonel Sleeman, to achieve the suppression of the
Badhaks as well as that of the Thugs. After the fortress and territory
of Garhakota in Saugor had been taken by the Maharaja Sindhia, Zalim
Singh, a cousin of the dispossessed Bundela chief, collected a force
of Bundelas and Pindaris and ravaged the country round Garhakota
in 1813. In the course of his raid he sacked and burnt the town
of Deori, and 15,000 persons perished in the flames. Colonel Jean
Baptiste, Sindhia's general, obtained a number of picked Badhaks from
Rajputana and offered them a rich reward for the head of Zalim Singh;
and after watching his camp for three months they managed to come on
him asleep in the tent of a dancing-girl, who was following his camp,
and stabbed him to the heart. For this deed they received Rs. 20,000
from Baptiste with other valuable presents. Their reputation was
indeed such that they were frequently employed at this period both by
chiefs who desired to take the lives of others and by those who were
anxious for the preservation of their own. When it happened that a
gang was caught after a robbery in a native State, the custom was
not infrequently to make them over to the merchant whose property
they had taken, with permission to keep them in confinement until
they should refund his money; and in this manner by giving up the
whole or a part of the proceeds of their robbery they were enabled
to regain their liberty. Even if they were sent before the courts,
justice was at that time so corrupt as to permit of easy avenues of
escape for those who could afford to pay; and Colonel Sleeman records
the deposition of a Badhak describing their methods of bribery:
"When police officers arrest Badhaks their old women get round them
and give them large sums of money; and they either release them or
get their depositions so written that their release shall be ordered
by the magistrates. If they are brought to court, their old women,
dressed in rags, follow them at a distance of three or four miles
with a thousand or two thousand rupees upon ponies; and these rupees
they distribute among the native officers of the court and get the
Badhaks released. These old women first ascertain from the people of
the villages who are the Nazirs and Munshis of influence, and wait
upon them at their houses and make their bargains. If the officials
cannot effect their release, they take money from the old women and
send them off to the Sadar Court, with letters of introduction to their
friends, and advice as to the rate they shall pay to each according
to his supposed influence. This is the way that all our leaders get
released, and hardly any but useless men are left in confinement." [52]