Transcriber’s Notes:
Italic text is shown _thus_.
The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has
been retained.
INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING.
THREE LECTURES
DELIVERED
AT THE ROYAL ENGINEER INSTITUTE, CHATHAM,
In JULY, 1872.
BY
JULIUS GEORGE MEDLEY,
LIEUT.-COLONEL, ROYAL ENGINEERS; ASSOC. INST. C.E.;
FELLOW OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY;
PRINCIPAL, THOMASON CIVIL ENGINEERING COLLEGE, ROORKEE.
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON:
E. & F. N. SPON, 48, CHARING CROSS.
NEW YORK:
446, BROOME STREET.
1873.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
CROSS.
SYLLABUS OF LECTURES.
INDIA—its area—physical features—climate—scenery. THE
PEOPLE—Bengalees—languages—Hindooism—caste—conservatism of
the East—the Mahomedans—Sikhs—Parsees. THE ENGLISH IN INDIA—their
difficulties—the Anglo-Indian career—the mutiny—Christianity in
India—arts and manufactures—general character of the people.
ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE—in the station—in tents—cost of living—society in
India—travelling—a tour in India.
The Indian Government—the Public Works Department. ROORKEE—the
Thomason College—the Sappers and Miners—the workshops—career
of a Royal Engineer—military engineering—miscellaneous duties
of the Indian engineer—financial aspects of the Public Works
Department—overseers—native subordinates—workmen.
BUILDING MATERIALS—stone—bricks—tiles—limes—timber—iron—wages
and rates—weights and measures—absence of plant—water-raising
machines—carts. FOUNDATIONS—well-cylinders—Indian rivers.
BARRACKS—difficulties of ventilating and cooling—private
houses—churches—other buildings. BRIDGES—temporary—permanent—waterway.
ROADS—metalling—hill roads. RAILWAYS—various lines—the permanent
way—traffic arrangements. IRRIGATION WORKS—their importance—the
Ganges Canal—crops and soils—design of canals—the head—velocity of
stream—falls and rapids—drainage works—irrigation details—Madras
weirs—tanks. RIVER WORKS—inundations—spurs.
INDIAN SURVEY DEPARTMENT—the Great Trigonometrical survey—Topographical
survey—Revenue survey.
INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING.
In proposing to deliver the short series of Lectures which I commence
this evening, I had two objects in view; First, to interest you in
the work which your brother officers are doing at the other end of
the world, and which I think is little understood or appreciated in
this country; Secondly, to give to those amongst you who are likely
to proceed to India some useful information about the country itself,
the nature of the work you will be called upon to undertake, and the
special subjects of study to which it is desirable on that account to
direct your attention.
In the present lecture, I shall endeavour to give you some idea of
the physical features of India, its climate, its people, and of the
peculiarities of Anglo-Indian life. In the other lectures, I shall
say something of the Government, and the great Department of State
by which public works are executed, and of the special duties and
probable career of the Royal Engineer officers who are there employed;
and shall then pass on to the materials and modes of construction with
which the engineer is called upon to deal, and those specialities which
distinguish his work from English practice.
India, then, is about as large as Europe without Russia. A line drawn
from Cape Comorin at the south to Peshawur in the north will measure
about 2000 miles; another line drawn from Kurrachee on the west coast
to Calcutta will measure some 1500 miles; the total area of the whole
peninsula, including British Burmah, is about 1,500,000 square miles,
of which 900,000 are directly under British rule, while the remainder,
though nominally under native governments, is more or less subject to
us.
This vast area of country comprises almost every variety of physical
configuration—lofty mountains and low hills; well-cultivated, alluvial
plains, arid deserts, great forests, marshy swamps and dense jungles;
long, broad rivers, numerous hill torrents, wide and deep nullahs.
The varieties of climate to be found in this great continent are also
numerous; for while the plains of Upper India are for several months
parched up with a fiery heat, the summits of the Himalayahs are covered
with perpetual snow; and while the rainfall of Sindh seldom exceeds
four or five inches annually, there is a place in Assam called Cherra
Poonjee, well known to geographers as the rainiest place on the earth’s
surface, the annual fall amounting to 650 inches.
The popular idea of India is that it is an extremely hot country, and
speaking generally, the popular idea is correct. But the nights in
Northern India are often excessively cold, and I have many times seen
ice half an inch thick on the roadside puddles in the Punjab, while the
hill stations at Simla, Mussorie, and elsewhere, 7000 feet above the
sea level, are covered with snow in January and February.
In Upper India, the part with which I am best acquainted, we enjoy a
climate which for four months in the year—November, December, January,
and February—is probably unequalled in the world both for health and
pleasure: bright skies, a sun hot indeed, yet not too hot for exercise
all day long, and nights cold, dry, and bracing, with a clear, still
atmosphere, make an almost perfect climate. In October, March, and
April, the mornings, evenings, and nights are still delightful, though
the heat out of doors in the daytime is great. For the remaining five
months, the climate, to a European at least, is simply detestable.
You have either fierce hot winds like the blast from a glass furnace,
with clouds of dust; or else a moist, stagnant atmosphere like that of
a continuous vapour bath, and excessively depressing. The nights are
rather worse than the days, and life is only bearable inside large and
lofty rooms and under swinging punkahs. In Southern India, there is
less extreme heat, but more moisture, and no real cold weather.
Yet the climate, with proper precautions and temperate habits, is by
no means unfavourable to the European constitution, except in peculiar
cases. As a rule, men now return from India looking much the same as
their English contemporaries, and those whose minds are well employed
and whose bodies get a fair share of exercise, are as healthy as their
fellow-countrymen whose lot is cast in England or the Colonies. Out of
eight Engineer officers who left Chatham with me twenty-three years ago
to go to India, six are now alive, and five out of the six are strong,
healthy men. Nor is this at all an exceptional case; indeed, when an
Anglo-Indian reaches a certain age he seems to live for ever, though
the popular idea that this is because the Indian sun has dried him up
into a mummy, is not founded on fact.
If I were asked whether India was a very beautiful country, I should
reply that in general it is not, but that it has some of the finest
scenery in the world. In travelling up the main line of railway, for
instance, from Calcutta to Peshawur, your road lies for 1000 miles
of that distance over a country that is one dead level, without even
a hillock to break the monotony. If your journey is made (say) in
March, as far as the eye can reach it rests on an enormous sea of
wheat, diversified by groves of mangoe trees, and mud villages, or
brick-built towns. No crystal streams,—no clear lakes,—no undulating
downs,—no parks or country houses,—not even a grass field. Yet the rich
cultivation, and the general signs of prosperity amongst the dense
population are at least pleasing to the philanthropist; and if we leave
the railway at Umballa and travel for forty miles eastward, we find
ourselves amongst the dark pine forests, the mountain torrents, and the
craggy heights of the Himalayahs, while their gigantic tops covered
with eternal snow, 10,000 feet higher than “the monarch of mountains,”
look down upon us in their calm and solemn grandeur.
Nor are the great forests and mountain ranges of Central India without
much beauty; while the magnificent harbour of Bombay and other sea
views on the coast show that India is not wanting in many of the charms
of marine landscape.
But it is time that I should speak of the people of the country. Those
who have never been in India often form their ideas, (very naturally),
from the few natives of India they have met in this country; but
these are a small and very peculiar class, and are by no means fair
specimens, not merely of the whole population, but even of their own
province.
Let me, however, at once give you a few figures, which will show how
unsafe it is to generalize from a few instances. India is inhabited by
about 200 millions of people, speaking at least eleven totally distinct
languages, and innumerable dialects, and differing amongst each other
in features, character, and social customs, quite as much as the
Russian or Spaniard does from the Englishman.
As, therefore, I have told you not to form a judgment of the whole
from a few isolated and exceptional instances, I shall avoid falling
into the same error, and only talk about the races with which I am
personally acquainted.
The Bengalees, _i.e._ the inhabitants of Bengal proper, have been
those who have benefited most intellectually by their contact with the
English. They are quick-witted and clever; many are excellent English
scholars, and make admirable clerks and accountants. Many have risen to
high positions in the public service: one sits on the Bench as a Judge
of the High Court; several have come to England and fairly won their
place in the Indian Civil Service, in competition with Englishmen. But
no Bengalee serves in the army, or enters into any pursuit or amusement
from choice which requires bodily activity and strength: his physical
organization is of the feeblest; for centuries he has been ruled by the
stronger races from the North, and it is to be feared that his moral
organization but too often follows the law of the physical.
As we go north, after leaving Bengal, we find ourselves amongst a more
manly race—the stalwart Jat, the manly Rajpoot, the warlike Sikh,
and the fierce and treacherous Puthan. These are the men with whom
we wrestled for the empire of the East, and who now recruit our best
native regiments,—who helped to plant the British flag on the towers of
Pekin and the heights of Magdala.
Nor are these men at all deficient in intellectual power, though they
have been less quick than the Bengalee to appreciate the advantages
of education. But the Northern colleges and schools are now crowded
with students, and even the frontier chieftains, who once thought
it disgraceful that a son of theirs should wield a pen instead of a
sword, have given in their adherence to the new-fangled ways of their
conquerors.
The chief languages spoken in India are Tamil, Teloogoo and Canarese
in the south; Mahratta and Guzerati in the west; Bengali, a dialect of
Hindi, in Bengal; Oordoo or Hindustani in the North-west Provinces;
Punjabee, a dialect in the Punjab; Burmese in Burmah; and Pooshtoo,
the language of the Afghans. Sanscrit, as you probably know, is a dead
language, in which the Shasters, or Hindoo scriptures, are written.
Arabic is that of the Koran, read in India, but not spoken. Persian
is only used by the best-educated people at the native courts. The
Hindustani, or Oordoo, is the _lingua franca_ current to a certain
extent over the empire, at least, amongst the people with whom we
chiefly come in contact, but scarcely understood by the people
generally out of Hindustan, _i.e._ the North-west Provinces. It is a
mixture (not a compound,) of words from the Hindi, Persian, Arabic, and
Sanscrit, not unlike French in many of its characteristics, and easy
to speak, but difficult to read and write. It is written both in the
Persian and Hindi characters.
It is absolutely necessary for every Anglo-Indian to acquire a certain
colloquial proficiency in it; for English-speaking natives are rare,
and when found in the ranks of domestic servants, do not bear the best
of characters.
The people of Upper India generally are a good-looking race, with
well-formed features and good figures. The complexion varies very
much, but is generally brown or dark olive—very rarely black. Many
of the men are strikingly handsome, but the best-looking women are
generally secluded at home, and it is only occasionally that one sees
a real Eastern beauty. I need hardly tell so intelligent an audience
that both the Indian and English races belong to the same great Aryan
stock, and that the people of whom I am speaking have nothing in common
with the low-developed, barbarous races of Southern or Central Africa,
or Australasia. On the contrary, they have a language, a religion, a
code of laws, and a civilization, considerably older than our own, and
which, though now degraded from their original purity, yet exist in
full force amongst the great bulk of the people, and by their wonderful
conservatism and adaptation to the requirements of Eastern life, bid
fair to maintain their ascendancy for many generations to come, and to
set European innovations at defiance.
As you know, of course, the vast majority of the people of India are
Hindoos by religion. Boodhism, once prevalent in India as it is now
in China, has disappeared, and Brahminism prevails. I have no time to
enter into any learned dissertation on the Hindoo tenets, but I must
allude to one of its most distinguishing features—that of Caste—because
it has more practical bearing on the every-day life of the people
than all the rest of the tenets put together, and because it is also
generally misunderstood.
Everyone probably knows that the original division of mankind,
according to the Vedas, was into the four castes of the Brahmins, or
priests; the Rajpoots, or warriors; the Ksatryahs, or writers; and the
Sudras, or low-caste men. But this division has been so modified and
altered, that it has practically disappeared. Brahmins are soldiers,
traders, or cultivators, as well as priests; Rajpoots are cultivators
rather than warriors, while all four castes have been divided and
subdivided into innumerable petty castes, which, as a rule, are
identical with the trade or calling of their votaries. Thus, a man who
is a carpenter, will bring up all his sons to be carpenters, and so on
_ad infinitum_; though this is being slowly altered where education
opens out a prospect of more profitable employment in another line.
To lose caste, or be put out of caste, is as great a misfortune as
ever, but there are very few offences for which a man cannot get back
his caste by the payment of a few rupees, which are expended in eating
and drinking by his fellow caste-men. The offences which involve loss
of caste are offences against custom rather than religion, and indeed
there are no people so grossly ignorant of technical religion and their
sacred books as the Hindoos. The ordinary Brahmins are no better than
the common people, and caste is a thing of custom and not of religious
doctrine.
But if it be thought that, on that account, its hold on the people
is small, the thinker has very little acquaintance with the power
of custom in the East. The most bigoted Tory in England—if such
a phenomenon now exists—is a Red Republican in presence of the
Conservatism of the East. There you may see the land cultivated and the
fields watered now as they were 2000 years ago, when the Macedonian
phalanx defeated Porus on the banks of the Jhelum; there you may see
“two women grinding at the mill” the corn for the daily meal, and can
understand the force of the prophecy that one shall be taken and the
other left. The ploughs and carts in every-day use are the same as
those shown on the sculptures of Egypt or Assyria. The unleavened cakes
that Sara prepared on the hearth for the angels were exactly similar to
those your Indian servants now give you if you want a hasty meal. You
see hundreds of men every morning sleeping outside their houses, and
“taking up their beds and walking,” by the simple process of rolling
up their light cotton mattress under one arm, or carrying it and their
light bamboo bedstead on their heads together. The women draw water
from the well, and poise the same shaped vessels on their heads that
Rebekah did when Abraham’s servant greeted her, and, but a few steps
off you will see the camels kneeling down, and the men unloading their
burdens.
It is this wonderful conservatism that perhaps strikes the observant
traveller more than anything else in the East; which opens his eyes
to a state of society utterly foreign to all his Western experience,
and makes him pause to think whether he is right after all in his
ideas of the advantages of civilization. Is the man of the West any
happier for his railways, electric telegraphs, steam factories, and
Parliamentary Governments? Here he finds people who are not in the
least anxious to govern themselves; who think fifteen or twenty miles a
rather long day’s journey, and very seldom take that; who are content
to follow their fathers’ calling as a matter of course, and who shrink
with horror from that restless, bustling, feverish, active life which
has become a second nature to the Englishman. The fact is, that each
follows out, so to speak, the law of his being, and neither has a right
to dictate to the other as to how he shall find his happiness.
Before leaving the subject of the Hindoo religion, I should perhaps
mention that the hideous customs of Suttee (_i.e._ burning the living
wife with the dead husband), and the suicide of pilgrims under the car
of Juggernath, are now things of the past, and indeed they were never
sanctioned by the Hindoo sacred books. The crime of female infanticide
amongst certain high-caste tribes still remains, but it too has nothing
to do with the Hindoo religion; it arises from the social custom that a
man of high rank is disgraced if his daughter is unmarried, while the
same tyrant custom has imposed on him the necessity of spending large
sums at his daughters’ weddings. India is not the only country, nor
are the Hindoos the only people, whom the tyranny of custom compels to
extravagance and disregard of the obligations of common sense and right
feeling, and even religious or moral duties.
Eight hundred and fifty years ago the Mahomedan armies overran India,
and, after a series of fierce struggles, founded the empire of the
Great Mogul at Delhi. Cities were sacked, their people massacred,
temples and idols overthrown, and thousands of Hindoos were forcibly
converted to Mahomedanism. But the fierce torrent soon spent its fury
against the stolid wall of Hindooism. Few converts were made after
the first few years, the new religion was even modified by the old,
and at the present day the Mahomedans of India are scarcely one-tenth
of the whole population, though doubtless a very important section of
it. Generally speaking, they are a more manly race, as if they still
possessed something of their former prestige. But Indian Mahomedanism
is but a poor affair after all; it has taken from Hindooism the idea of
caste, and the Turk, or even the Persian, would scarcely acknowledge
his fellow-worshipper of India.
I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in
England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce
battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat.
At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution
to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest
men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the
corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality
in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers
are dwindling daily.
The Parsees of India are almost strangers and foreigners in the land
like ourselves, descendants of the old Magi or Fire-worshippers of
Persia, who, being driven out of their own country by persecution,
have settled in India, where they form a small but very intelligent
and respectable section of the community, possessing in a large degree
those two rare qualities for an Eastern,—enterprise and public
spirit. Several of them are, I believe, settled in London, and may be
recognized by the peculiar high glazed hat which they always wear.
And in the midst of the 200 millions of dark-skinned people of the land
dwell some 130 thousand British white faces, among them, but not of
them, and indeed separated from them, not so much by the barriers of
language, religion, and social customs, as by the far greater barrier
of race, which, let philanthropists say what they will, has been
created not without wise and useful purposes. The English in India are
often judged harshly and unjustly on this head by their countrymen
at home. We are told that we should mix more with the natives, and
admit them on a footing of equality with ourselves. But how can you
mix socially with men who will neither eat nor drink with you, and who
would sooner see their wives and daughters dead than walking about
with uncovered faces amongst strange men? The only real intimacy there
can be between two races separated so far apart must be confined to
those official or business relations in which there is a feeling of
common interest; all beyond that must be forced and unnatural. If
there is that equality between the races which some pretend, how is it
we are there as rulers? I think, for my own part, that nothing is so
apt to retard the advance of the weaker race, or to lessen the points
of contact between the two, as the attempt to produce a forced and
unnatural union, or to preach up an equality which every white man who
has lived amongst the dark races knows in his heart does not exist.
I have often been asked whether the natives of India like us, and are
attached to our rule, and it is rather a difficult question to answer.
There cannot be much love or strong liking between people separated so
completely in thought and feeling and almost every idea as we are, but
there is often a very strong attachment to the individual Englishman
placed in authority over, and living much amongst, them, such as an
officer commanding a regiment, or a magistrate in charge of a district,
an attachment which has often been severely tried (as during the days
of the Mutiny), and which has often stood the trial successfully. As
to liking for our Government, in the first place the great mass of the
people in all probability never give the subject a thought; the present
generation have no means of forming a comparison between British and
native rule, and look upon the protection they enjoy for life and
property as a matter of course. The better educated amongst them are
more apt to resent their exclusion from the highest posts, than to be
grateful for not having their throats cut and their houses plundered,
as they might have been a hundred years ago.
The great drawback of our rule is, undoubtedly, that it is one of race
over race. The Englishman, bred a free man, is forced into the position
of a despot, and, in his endeavours to elevate his Indian subjects
to the dignity of free men and the privileges of British citizens,
he is rather apt to overdo the matter, and to forget the inherent
differences of race; or, to put it in another form, to overlook the
fact that our free ideas are the growth of several hundred years, just
as their ideas are the growth of as many centuries of an entirely
different history. Hence we are apt to see in India many ludicrous
travesties of our public meetings, municipal institutions, and the
like, at which the native attends to please his English superior, and
does pretty well what he is told to do. When the native does attain
to a high post, as a rule he is hated by his countrymen, who never
thoroughly trust him, and would far sooner see an Englishman in his
place.
Our attempts then at improvement are up-hill work, and made under
all the disadvantages of the stiff and awkward part of our national
character, which keeps us isolated even on the European continent. But
we do our duty in India, I may fairly say, honestly and thoroughly, and
if we have not gained the love, we have, at least, won the respect and
confidence of our native subjects. If the motives of the Government are
occasionally suspected or misrepresented, the individual Englishman
at any rate is implicitly trusted. That is the real strength of our
position, and if our Indian empire is ever destroyed by force, it will
be through the decay in character of the individual Englishman.
It is the fashion in these days to sneer at what is called the selfish
and exclusive policy of the old East India Company, and certainly no
one could venture to propose now-a-days that the Indian Government
should be vested with the power of granting or refusing a licence to
any European who wished to visit India. Yet it is impossible not to
respect the motive which caused the Company to ask for such a power in
days gone by; their feeling that the stability of our rule depended,
not upon brute force, but on prestige, on the belief the natives had of
the superiority of our national character; and that every individual
who, by loose or dishonest conduct, lowered that prestige in the eyes
of the natives, was a dangerous enemy to the State, and ought to be
removed. And when one sees, as unfortunately we often do see now-a-days
in India, a disreputable and ragged fellow-countryman begging from
house to house, or staggering about drunk in the native bazar, while
the natives look upon him with mingled fear, contempt, and dislike, it
is impossible not to wish that the power of deporting such wretched
loafers from a country where they do incalculable harm, cannot be
freely exercised.
And, looking on the reverse of the medal, we may say that what
constitutes the great charm of an Anglo-Indian career is the feeling
of individual responsibility and importance. The English are so few in
number that everyone, whether civilian, soldier, merchant, or what not,
as a rule enjoys a far higher position, and has more responsibility on
his shoulders than he would have in a corresponding position at home.
This applies more especially to the Government officials, charged
with the administration of the country, and for that reason, scarcely
any career offers such attractions as the Indian Civil Service. A
young Englishman, very little past thirty, who, had he remained in
England, might have thought himself lucky to be receiving his first
brief, or might have been canvassing for the medical charge of a parish
dispensary, finds himself governor of a district as large as three
English counties, with a population of 300,000 souls, to whom he is
the embodiment of the Government, and who look up to him for advice or
direction on all possible and impossible subjects. He has extensive
civil and criminal jurisdiction in his own court; he looks generally
after all the schools in the district, superintends all the roads,
bridges, buildings, jails, and municipal works; reports regularly to
Government on the agriculture, trade, manufactures, statistics of
every kind, and has usually some hobby of his own in addition; either
starting agricultural shows, or improving the breed of horses, or
lighting the towns with kerozine, or trying some new piece of machinery
in the jail, which is the model manufactory of the district. His life
may be lonely, for there are often not a dozen of his countrymen in
the district. After his day’s work is done, there is neither theatre,
opera, nor concert to go to, nothing, indeed, in the shape of public
amusement; but he is, in truth, too tired to care for it, and the
interest and responsibility of his work compensate him for all.
He climbs gradually to a still higher position; perhaps becomes
lieutenant-governor of a province as large as Germany, with 40 millions
of inhabitants; retires at last from the service to spend the rest
of his life in his native land, and finds his name and his services
utterly unknown, not merely to the English public, but often to the
very Government of which he had thought himself all this time the
trusted servant.
It is this ignorance, and neglect of all services that are not done
at home, except in very rare cases, which are the cause of so much
irritation both in India and the colonies; a fourth-rate politician in
England, a man who has no power or virtue whatever, save the vulgar
“gift of the gab,” is better known and more thought of than the ablest
servants of the State 5000 miles away. I have often thought how much
good might be done by those in power, if instead of philosophising
so much on the exact relations between England and her colonies, and
demonstrating so clearly that as they pay no taxes to the Imperial
exchequer, they have no right to be defended by the Imperial armies,
care was taken to show that the colonies were really considered to be
an integral part of the empire, and that good service done there was
to be rewarded as if done at home; if a few more royal visits were
paid, and a few more ribbons and stars occasionally bestowed; and if
some means were found, either by life peerages or otherwise, for the
State to avail itself of the experience of those who had grown grey
in its service in distant lands, and for those men to feel that their
talents and knowledge were valued at home in the great council of the
nation. And if you say that you English at home are not interested in
this matter, I beg leave to differ, and ask you fairly if every time
you look at a map of the world, and see the red colour all over the
globe which marks the extent of the British empire, and the great
dependencies which have been conquered and colonized by that little
island in the north-west corner of Europe, you do not feel a glow of
honest pride in the thought that you too are a citizen of that empire
on which the sun never sets, and whether that feeling is to be valued
in pounds, shillings and pence, or rather, whether you are not willing
to pay many pounds in exchange for the right to that feeling.
It is that abominable material philosophy of a certain school of the
present day, which recognises nothing as really valuable that does not
touch the grosser part of our nature, which sneers at patriotism and
sentiment of any kind, and makes a god of selfishness, that sometimes
frightens those who watch the enormous increase of our national wealth,
and the decrease of regard for national duty, and makes them tremble
lest we should one day have a rude awakening to the fact that a selfish
and exclusive policy is as bad for nations as for individuals.
To return to our subject from this digression.
To those who cannot look upon their Indian life from the standpoint I
have mentioned, a career in India is, it must be owned, but a dreary
exile; the time for making fortunes, at any rate in the Government
service, is gone; those who retire have seldom much beyond their very
moderate pensions, and while the cost of living has steadily increased
for many years past, salaries have remained stationary, or even
diminished, and work has very much increased.
Thus, there can be no doubt that an Indian career has fewer attractions
than formerly, and this has been the case ever since the Mutiny—that
great landmark in Indian history whose significance is not even yet
recognised. That great struggle, remember, was in no sense an uprising
of the people against our rule, for, if it had been, we could not
have held India for an hour. But though it was, primarily, a military
revolt, caused and aggravated by overweening confidence and bad
management, it was secondarily, a struggle of conservatism against the
further progress of western innovations; it was a protest by caste
and tradition against railways, telegraphs, and national education.
Attacked under every possible disadvantage, outnumbered in every
direction, with our arsenals in the enemy’s hands, and having to fight
at the worst season of the year, that handful of the great Anglo-Saxon
race turned fiercely to bay, supplied every deficiency by dauntless
courage, wise policy, and heroic endurance, and broke the neck of the
rebellion under the walls of Delhi, and in the residency of Lucknow,
before a single fresh soldier had arrived from England.
Since the suppression of the Mutiny, our hold on the empire has been
firmer than ever, but it owes less to prestige and more to actual
strength. We have been less careful of respecting native opinion than
before, more resolute to push on improvements, and the progress made in
the last fifteen years in the material development of the country has
been undoubtedly greater than in the previous fifty years. But much
of the kindly feeling between the conquerors and conquered has gone,
and will not soon be restored; the traditions and organizations of the
Government services were destroyed, and have not yet been re-settled,
and there is no longer that attachment to the country that was seen
in the days of old John Company, kindest and best of masters. The
remedy for this is not, I think, a return to the old state of things,
which is indeed impossible, but more close and intimate relations
between India and England, until our native subjects feel that they
are really regarded as part of the British empire. The more they visit
England, and the more we visit India, the more will each understand and
appreciate the other. We have no enemy now in India, except popular
ignorance, and that we are doing our best to remove by the most
complete system of State education that has yet been devised in any
country.
And now I must touch on a subject on which many of you will, perhaps,
expect some information. How about the progress of Christianity in
India? Well, I fear it must be owned that it is extremely slow. I dare
say I might be contradicted by many missionaries, but then I am not
a missionary. I have the highest respect for them as a body; many I
have known personally, and know to be able men; but undoubtedly their
success, if judged by the number of converts, is very small, in Upper
India at least; and though doubtless they do much good by keeping up
the schools that are attached to every mission, that good has very
little to do with the progress of Christianity. As translators of
the Bible into the various Indian languages, they have been more
successful, and many of them are amongst the most accomplished
linguists of the East.
I am inclined to think that much of this ill-success is owing to the
forgetfulness of how universal and comprehensive Christianity is. The
best proof of that is that, having originated in the East, it has yet
so completely conquered the West. But in that conquest it has in some
respects assumed a Western garb, and I fear our missionaries often
forget that this Western garb is not essential, and that so long as
the life and doctrine of the Great Master are followed and understood,
the peculiar form to be taken by the latter is a matter of little
importance. This is not the place to enter fully into a discussion of
this sort, though it was impossible for me to avoid it altogether. But
I believe I am only echoing the opinions of many thoughtful and earnest
Christians, like the late excellent Bishop Cotton, of Calcutta, in
saying that our efforts should be rather directed to create a native
Indian Church, than to reproduce the Church of England in India; and
that controversial epistles addressed to Western Churches, and dealing
with questions arising out of the doctrines of Western philosophy, are
puzzling rather than edifying to a convert in India.
* * * * *
Of the state of the Arts and Manufactures in India, all of you can form
some judgment yourselves by an inspection of the beautiful specimens
collected in the Indian annexe of the International Exhibition.
Some of the once famous Indian manufactures have almost disappeared
in modern times, such as the Dacca muslin, of which it was said that
a full-sized dress piece could be drawn through a finger ring. Native
architecture too of the present day is tawdry and meretricious. But
Cashmere is still famous for its wonderful shawls, in which we know
not which to admire most, the beauty of the fabric, or the exquisite
patterns and harmonious contrast of colours; Agra still executes that
beautiful inlaid stone-work, which is yet only one of the wonders of
the Taj Mehal; Delhi and Benares send gorgeous embroideries, heavy with
gold and rich in colouring; Cuttack furnishes its exquisite silver
filagree work; Sealkote, its steel inlaid with gold in arabesque
patterns; Bombay, its massive and curiously-carved ebony furniture.
But Art can never attain to its highest development in the absence of
a healthy national life, and it is to former ages we must turn for
structures like some of the Hindoo Temples, or the great mosque at
Delhi, or “the Dream in Marble” at Agra (the Taj Mehal), and even the
artistic manufactures I have named are legacies from the past, that
are apt to degenerate at the present day into a grotesque copying of
European designs.
Yet there is an indwelling spirit of artistic grace in the East that
will not easily die, which you see in the instinctive choice of colours
in the clothes of the very poorest on a holiday festival,—in the shape
of the commonest earthenware utensils,—in the very salutation that you
get from the poorest peasant in the fields.
Mahomedanism is certainly no friend to sculpture or painting, for it
takes in a very literal sense the prohibition of the Jewish decalogue
to “make no likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or the earth
beneath, or the waters under the earth.” No good Mussulman will even
have his portrait taken, and geometric forms or the flowing Arabic
sentences from the Koran are the proper ornaments of the orthodox
mosque. But the prohibition has been relaxed at least in the case of
flowers, and the exquisite carving and inlaid work of the Taj are
almost unapproachable in excellence, while the fretted marble screens
at Jyepore and elsewhere are more like lace than stone.
* * * * *
I can tell you but little of the inner life of all these millions of
our fellow-subjects, for it is jealously guarded from European eyes;
they and their white masters lead a separate existence, as I have
already said, in all that concerns social and domestic matters, the
one living in their towns and villages, the others in their stations
or cantonments from one to five miles distant. But in their external
life, which we _do_ see, they are generally a quiet and simple race,
temperate in their living, patient and much-enduring, not deficient in
courage, great fatalists and very superstitious; of strong domestic
affections; fond of holiday making and childish amusements. Public
spirit, philanthropy, chivalrous feeling, high principle, truth,
chastity and generosity,—these, as we all know, are the outgrowths, if
not of Christianity, at least of a healthy national life; and in these
qualities natives are, as a rule, deficient. But this at least may
be said, that those amongst us who see most of and live most amongst
them like them the best, and are the readiest to admit their many good
qualities, and to acknowledge that, in spite of the differences created
by religion, colour, race, climate, and manners, there is no such great
difference, after all, in _human nature_.
* * * * *
And now I should like to tell you something more of Indian life in
its English aspect, and make you congratulate yourselves or regret
(according to your tastes) that your lot has not been cast in India.
Well, an Indian up-country Station, say in Northern India, is a piece
of very flat ground, divided by very straight roads into very square
patches, or “compounds” as we call them, which are bounded by prickly
cactus hedges, or often by low mud walls. In each “compound,” or
enclosure, stands a one-storied house, with more or fewer rooms, and
of greater or less size, according to the rent paid for it. Behind
and near the house is a row of mud huts inhabited by your servants, a
range of stables, and a kitchen or cook-house, whose very primitive
arrangements would drive an English cook into a lunatic asylum, but in
which your native _chef_ manages to turn out very presentable dinners.
Part of the compound is occupied by the garden, in which your Malee,
or native gardener, grows vegetables, which naturally cost you a great
deal more than if you bought them in the bazar. However, if you want
peas and beans, you _must_ grow them, for they are not to be found in
the town; the natives don’t eat them themselves, for neither their
fathers, nor their grandfathers, nor their great-grandfathers did so,
and why should they? Potatoes having been introduced some 400 years
or so, are now beginning to be eaten in some parts of the country by
the people, not I suspect without many misgivings lest they should
be suddenly converted to Christianity by eating white men’s food.
Besides English vegetables grown from imported seeds, the kitchen
garden produces some very nasty native vegetables, trees growing plums
and peaches only fit for tarts, a bed of strawberries if you are very
lucky, a patch of Indian corn, and last, not least, two or three mangoe
trees, from which you get the only fruit fit to eat in Northern India,
unless I except the melon.
But let us go into the house and pay our respects to the lady. A
sable attendant (as the novels say) is asleep in the verandah, and is
with some difficulty aroused—“Mem sahib hai?” Is the lady in? “Han,
sahib,”—Yes, sir. You send in your card, for no native can be entrusted
with the task of pronouncing English surnames, and a story is told of a
new arrival ignorant of this fact who, desiring the native footman to
announce him as the Honourable Hastings Sahib, to distinguish him from
a Mr. Hastings who was _not_ Honourable, was considerably disconcerted
at being announced as Horrible Estink Sahib.
The man has returned and says we are to go in; so we enter and find
the lady (looking very like most English ladies, only perhaps rather
paler), seated in the drawing-room, the punkah swinging violently,
for it is the hot weather. You see the room is a good-sized one, at
least 20 feet high, with six or eight doors in it, all indispensable
for ventilation; the floor covered with China matting which is cooler
than a carpet; not too much furniture in it, for that would make it
look hot, but a piano, books, and flowers at least, and a few pictures
on the wall. The master of the house is not visible; he is either at
his office, working in a room crowded with natives and the thermometer
at 96°, or taking it easy in his own room, in his shirt-sleeves and
slippers, smoking, and reading or writing. We sit down and talk to the
lady about the dreadful heat of the weather, the chance of her going
to the hills, the good looks of the last arrived young lady in the
station, the dinner party at the Brigadier’s the night before, and the
chances of getting up private theatricals next cold weather.
If she is very civil, she may ask us to stay to tiffin, when we are
regaled with salmon from England, in hermetically sealed tins, curry
and rice generally very good, and Bass’s pale ale, invariably termed
_beer_ in India; after this, we take our leave; the lady probably takes
her siesta, and then in the evening goes out for a drive to the band
and returns to dinner.
As to your own mode of life, if you are a sensible man, you will always
rise early in the hot weather, say at five o’clock, and get a walk or
ride in the cool of the morning, coming home before seven to what is
called “little breakfast,” where you drink tea and eat fruit if there
is any, or iced mangoe fool; after which, you had better read or write
till it is time for regular breakfast, and then go away to your office.
Men holding official positions get a pretty good spell of desk-work
every day; they are far better off than those who are not forced to
work hard, for the heat is so enervating that it is very difficult to
work as an amateur.
If you can get a month’s holiday, of course you run up to the
hills, where at an elevation of 7000 feet above the sea level, you
find yourself in a charming climate and beautiful scenery. The
Governor-General and all the heads of departments go up now regularly
for six months out of the twelve, like sensible men, for which they get
well abused by the press, the editors being obliged to stay in the hot
plains. Men who can afford it send their wives and children up every
hot weather, and run up there when they can get short leave. It is
expensive work, but if you want to keep your children alive, there is
no resource but the hills or England; they wither and die in the plains
like plucked flowers.
In the cold weather, life is much better; the absentees return from
the hills and society rouses itself up for a little gaiety. If you
are a sportsman, you can generally get shooting of some sort, and
occasionally fishing, or you may have a spell of life in tents, and
go about like the patriarchs of old, literally “with your flocks and
your herds and your little ones,”—for you take every single thing with
you, and travel at the rapid pace of ten or twelve miles a day. The
duplicate tents go on the previous night on bullock-carts, or camels,
and when you ride to your new camp in the morning, you find them ready
pitched under a clump of trees, and breakfast waiting; after which you
set to your work as if at home. The tent you have slept in was struck
when you started, and travels on during the day at the rate of a mile
an hour, for bullocks won’t be hurried and the roads are not over
good. In the evening, the elders of the village come and pay their
respects to you, chat about the state of the crops, or the amount of
fever in the district, which generally results in a request to you for
some medicine, especially quinine. You may go out for an hour or two
into the neighbouring sugar or mustard fields, and knock over some
peafowl or partridge; after which it is time for dinner, and then cold
enough for a camp fire. There are few who do not enjoy camp life,
for a time at least; when you have to go about alone, _i.e._ with no
fellow-countryman, and may not hear your own language spoken for four
or five months together, it is apt to get monotonous.
No one, as I have said, makes fortunes in India now, the time has gone
by; salaries are higher than in England, of course, but the expenses
are enormous. The nabob of the old novels, with a yellow face like a
baboon and a dried-up liver, passionate in temper, telling impossible
tiger stories, and suddenly turning up in England with a hookah, two
or three black servants, and several lakhs of rupees for the hero and
heroine—is a thing of the past. His successor was dear old Colonel
Newcome in fiction, or better still, Henry and John Lawrence, James
Outram, Herbert Edwardes, John Nicholson, Henry Durand, and men of that
stamp, in reality, wise in council, resolute in action, God-fearing
always, with duty ever present before them as the one motive of their
lives; strong men to whom both their countrymen and native subjects
looked up, as worthy to rule and to be obeyed.