sitting on the roof of a mud Arab house, then a regimental mess, where
we had established ourselves for the evening, hoping to find some
movement in the stifling air. Looking down we saw the jemadar doubling
painfully and deliberately across the walled palm grove in a temperature
of 105 degrees in the shade. We thought at first the man had been bitten
by a scorpion or a snake, and the Colonel called out to him from the
roof, "What is the matter, Mota?" "Nothing is the matter, Sahib," he
called up, "I am practising for the Victaria Crarse." The Colonel smiled
and sighed. He knew his man, and he told me what these preparations
impended. The regiment was new to the country and to war, and I gathered
that unless otherwise instructed the jemadar would go over the parapet
the first time he found himself in action, doubling along clumsily in
the same determined fashion as if he had been propelled mechanically
from behind, and that he would not pull up or look round until he got to
the enemy's trenches. And he would do this with the full expectation of
having the glittering cross pinned on his breast in the evening. The
other alternative would not trouble his head.
Also I gathered that the phrase "unless otherwise instructed" implied
much uphill work on the part of the regimental officer. Mota was imbued
with a fixed idea. His mind was not in that receptive mood which enables
the fighting man to act quickly in an emergency. Supposing his rôle were
not the offensive. Supposing that he were suddenly attacked at the
moment when he felt himself secure, and had no time for deliberation or
counsel, the old jemadar might be doubling in any direction under the
contagion of example or to reach a place where he could think out the
new situation and resolve how to act. When a Mer gets as far as a
rehearsal he will never fail in the performance. He is all right so long
as he knows exactly what he is expected to do.
There was the historic occasion of Ajmere in 1857, when the action of
the Mers and Merats altered the whole course of the Mutiny in their own
district, and held back the wave that threatened to sweep over
Rajasthan. News came to the local battalion that the garrison had risen
at Nasirabad and murdered the British officers. Led by their Sahib and
lawgiver, the Mers made a forced march of thirty-eight miles from Beawar
to Ajmere, dispossessed the mutinous guards of the treasury and arsenal,
and held the fort against the rebels who were advancing upon the city,
flushed with success, from Nasirbad. All of which fell in with the Mer
legend that they would never be ruled by any save a white king.
It was a class battalion that I met at Qurnah in June, 1916;
incidentally it was not Mota's crowd. They had already seen much hard
campaigning, and a small scrap or two in the desert between the Kharkeh
and Karum rivers, where some of the regiment had died of thirst. But the
most interesting point about the Mers and Merats to a student of Indian
races is the relationship between the Hindus and Muhammadans of the same
stock. In the chapter about the Brahmans and Rajputs in the Army I have
given an instance of how the caste system strengthened discipline.
Caste, of course, is in itself a discipline, and was originally imposed
as such. In its call for the sacrifice of the individual to the
community it has played its part in the stiffening of the Hindu for
countless generations. But in the twentieth century the most orthodox
will admit its disabilities, the exacting ritual involved in it, and the
artificial and complex differentiation between men who have really
everything in common. The caste question as a rule, when it emerges in a
regiment, creates difficulties, and very rarely, as in the case of the
excommunicated Rajputs, smooths them over. The Merwara battalion, which
was once divided by caste into two camps, is a case in point. It is an
old story, but as it is little known it is worth recording as an example
of the evils of exclusiveness. And as both parties are now good friends,
no harm can be done by telling it.
First it should be understood that the Mers and Merats are the most
home-staying folk in the Indian Army. Like the Gurkhas, the class
battalion has one permanent cantonment, and never leaves it except to go
on active service. Until this war they had not been on a campaign since
the Afghan expedition in 1878-9. They are even more domiciled than the
Gurkha, for their depôt at Ajmere is in their own district, and they can
get home on a week-end's leave from Friday night till Monday morning;
and when their turn comes they seldom let the privilege go by.
Living and serving in their own country, detached from other folk, they
evolved a happy easy-going, tolerant, social system of their own. The
Mers are Hindus; the Merats Muhammadans. They are of the same stock, but
the Mussalman Merats are the descendants of the Mers who were forcibly
converted to Islam by Aurungzeb. This conversion did not break up the
brotherhood. Hindu and Muhammadan intermarried, and sat at meals
together within the chauka as before. It is no doubt on account of their
freedom from the restrictions of both religions that the Merats have
never reverted to Mers or become Muhammadans in real earnest. They still
feared the Hindu deities, and were strangers to the inside of a mosque.
Mer and Merat together made up a very united people, and one quite
apart. They cared little for dogma or ritual, and had their own ideas
about caste. Thus they lived contentedly together until 1904, when a
party of them were sent home to England with other details of the Indian
Army to attend the Coronation of King Edward VII.
It is sad to think that this happy anniversary should have been the
beginning of discord, but the serpent entered their Eden when they took
train to Bombay and embarked on the transport. Here they found
themselves amongst every kind of sepoy from the Mahratta of the Konkan
to the Jharwa of Assam, from the Bhangi Khel of Kohat to the Mussalman
of Southern Madras--all of whom had their prescribed ritual and fixed
rules of life. Few of this crowd had ever seen the sea before, but they
were most of them travelled men of the world compared to the Mer and
Merat. Amongst the Rajputs, Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans, and Punjabi
Mussalmans, the Ajmere contingent must have appeared the most
open-mouthed and bewildered of country cousins. None of the sepoys knew
anything about them. "Who are you? Where do you come from?" they were
asked. They were just like children torn from the bosom of the family
and plunged for the first time into the unsympathetic entourage of a
school. They were twitted unmercifully for their unnatural alliance.
Asked to define themselves they stated, quite honestly, that they were
Rajputs. The easy-going Hindus made a huge joke out of this; the
orthodox were angry and rude. For whoever saw a Rajput and a Mussalman
break bread together? The Mer was told that he was not a true Rajput,
not even a true Hindu. The poor Merats, too, were regarded as
backsliders from Islam. They did all sorts of things that a good
Muhammadan ought not to do. All their old customs and easy compromises,
all the happy little family understandings, those recognised and
cherished inconsistencies which make half the endearments of home-life,
became the subject of an unfeeling criticism.
Mer and Merat became mutually suspicious. Before they reached Aden the
Mers had already begun to dress their hair differently, more in the
Rajput style. At Suez they were in two distinct camps. The
cooking-vessels which had been common to both were abhorred by the
Hindus; neither would eat what the other had touched; each eyed the
other askance.
When they returned to India the infection of exclusiveness spread, and
Hindu sectarian missionaries coming into the fold added to the mischief.
But happily common sense and old affections prevailed. Now they do not
ostensibly feed together and intermarry; but they are good friends, and
relations are smooth, though they can never be quite the same happy
family again.
Two generations or more of regimental life have passed since these
events, and I heard a very different story of a Merwara company on board
a transport in this war. When they embarked in Karachi harbour they trod
the deck of the vessel tentatively and with suspicion. But soon timidity
gave place to pride. "You see, Sahib," the Subadar explained, "we are
not laid out by this sea-sickness which we are told is very disastrous
to certain classes of sepoys, and even to some sahibs." The unknown
peril had been the theme of conversation most of the way from Rajputana,
and the Mers, no doubt, believed that the first entries in the
"Regimental Roll of Honour" would be the victims of the subtle and
malignant paralysis with which Kala pani (the black water) can infect
the strongest. As bad luck would have it, no sooner had the transport
cleared the harbour than they struck dirty weather and a choppy sea. Mer
and Merat collapsed as one. On the third day those who had legs to
support them or strength to stir the pot were carrying round food to the
less fortunate, united in this common emergency and careless of caste
and creed. The sea separated them, and ten years afterwards the sea
joined them again. Let us hope that the voyage marked a revival of the
golden age.
The story of both voyages bears out the comment of Mota's Colonel, that
the Mer and Merat, though far from being impressionable, are singularly
open to example. These brave and friendly folk may be lacking in
initiative, but give them a lead, show them what may be done, and they
will never fail in emulation. Hardly a man of military age is not
enlisted, and the traditions of Ajmere were continued at Kut, where
there was a company of Mers and Merats in one of the two regiments who
held the liquorice factory so gallantly through the siege.
THE RANGHAR
The Mussalmans of Rajput descent are a fine fighting stock. The best
known are the Ranghars of the Eastern Punjab and the Kaim Khanis of
Rajputana proper. The handsomest sepoy I met in Mesopotamia was a
Ranghar, and he had that jolly, dare-devil look about him which recalls
the best traditions of the highwayman.
When the non-military Hindus, most of them unwilling converts, embraced
Muhammadanism, it was the custom in choosing their Islamic name to adopt
the prefix "Sheikh." Alma Ram became Sheikh Ali, for instance, and
Gobind Das Sheikh Zahur-ud-din. But the proud Rajput warriors were
unwilling to be classed with these. "We come of a fighting stock," they
argued, "like the Pathans. Our history is more glorious than theirs." So
they adopted the suffix "Khan," which with the man of genuine Muhammadan
ancestry implies Pathan descent. The Chohans, when they became
converted, were known to the Rajputs as the Kaim Khanis, or "the firm
and unbreakable ones." Every Ranghar, too, was be-khaned, and as a class
they have shown a martial spirit equal to the title.
The British officer in the Indian Cavalry swears by the Ranghars. I know
cavalry leaders who would unhesitatingly name him if asked in what breed
they considered there was the best makings of a sowar. He is born
horseman and horsemaster. And he is very much "a man." Even in the
Punjab, where there are collected the best fighting stocks in
India--that is to say, the best fighting stocks in the East--he is a
hero of romance. "You'll find the Ranghar," the Pirrhai tells us,
"In the drink shop, or in the jail,
On the back of a horse,
Or in the deep grave."
[Illustration: THE RANGHAR.]
I had heard that tag long before I met the Ranghar on service, and I
wanted to see how his dare-devil, undisciplined past--if indeed it was
as dare-devil as it is painted--served him on a campaign. The Ranghar,
one knows, is a Rajput by origin and a Muhammadan by faith. His
ancestors were brought to see eye to eye with the Mogul--a change of
vision due to no priestcraft, but dictated by the sword. It must be
remembered that their lands were exposed to the full tide of the Moslem
flood. The Rajputs who earned immortality by their defiance of Akbar,
the lions of Rajasthan, lived far from Delhi in the shelter of their
forests and hills. The vicinity of the Ranghars to the Mogul capital
helps to explain their submission; it does not explain the relative
virility and vitality of the breed to-day compared with their Hindu
Rajput contemporaries. It will be generally admitted, I think, that the
average Ranghar or Khaim Khani is a stouter man than the Rajput pure and
simple. Why this should be so; why the descendants of the unconverted
Rajputs who held by their faith should not produce as hard a breed of
men as the Rajputs who were the first to submit to Islam, and that under
compulsion, is a mystery unexplained. One does not set much store by
converts in the East. They are generally a yielding, submissive crew.
But the Ranghar is very decidedly "lord of himself," a man of action,
with something of the pagan in him perhaps, but no hidden corners in his
mind where sophistry can enter in and corrupt. The best answer I have
heard to the Hun Jehadist wile was given by a Ranghar.
It was in the Shabkadr show on the 5th September, 1915, when the
Mohmunds had the support of the Afghan Ningrahahis under the notorious
Jan Badshah, who came in against us in defence of the Amir. There had
been some hot scrapping. Our cavalry were clearing a village out Michni
way in the afternoon, and had had heavy casualties in horses and men.
The scene was a long, walled compound, from which we had been sniped at
for hours. Into this rode half a dozen men of the 1st D.Y.O. Lancers,
headed by the Ranghar Jemadar Rukkun-ud-din. The colonel of the
regiment, standing up in his stirrups, saw the whole affair from over
the wall, and heard the first parley, or rather the Afghans' impudent
Jehadist appeal and the Ranghars' answer to it. As the Lancers cantered
through the gate three abreast, the head of the Afghan crowd stepped
forward, gave them the Muhammadan greeting, and with the confidence of
an unassailable argument cried out to them, "We are of the true faith.
Ye are of the true faith. Why then do ye fight for unbelieving Kafirs?"
For answer Jemadar Rukkun-ud-din drew his revolver and shot the man in
the stomach where he stood. In the scrimmage that followed the two
parties were evenly matched in respect of numbers. No one gave quarter;
in fact, no quarter had been given or taken all day; it is not the
Mohmund or the Afghan habit, and they do not understand it. The sowars
were mounted, and rode in with their lances; the Afghans were unmounted,
but their magazines were full, and they fired a volley at the Lancers as
they charged. Two sowars fell wounded, but not mortally. There was
pandemonium in the compound for the next forty seconds, the Afghans
running round and firing, the Ranghars galloping and swerving to get in
their thrust. The lance beat the rifle every time, for the Afghan found
the point and the menace of impact, and the plunging horse too
unsteadying for accurate aim. In less than a minute they were all borne
down.
Some one suggested that in the natural course of events Rukkun-ud-din
would receive a reward, but the astute Colonel, said in the hearing of
all--
"Reward! What talk is this of reward? What else could a Ranghar do but
kill the man who insulted him. It would be a deep shame to have failed."
At the moment the speech was worth more than a decoration. It made the
Ranghars feel very Ranghar-like--and that is the best thing that a
Ranghar can feel, the best thing for himself and for his regiment.
Incidentally the decoration came. One has not to search for pretexts for
bestowing honour on men like these.
There was another youngster in that _melee_ who deserved an I.O.M., a
lance-duffadar, a lad of twenty. He had been hit in the seat from
behind. The colonel heard of it and noticed that the lad was still
mounted.
"You are wounded?" he asked.
"Sahib, it is nothing."
"Answer my question. Where were you hit?"
The boy for the first time showed signs of distress.
"Sahib," he said hesitatingly, "it is a shameful thing. These dogs were
spitting in every corner. I have been wounded in the back."
He was made to dismount. His saddle was ripped by a bullet and sodden
with blood.
"You must go back to the ambulance, young man," his Colonel told him.
"Sahib, I cannot go back in a doolie like a woman."
He was allowed to mount, though it was an extraordinarily nasty wound
for the saddle. A weight seemed to be lifted from him when the Colonel
explained that to a Ranghar and a cavalryman a wound in the back could
only mean one was a good thruster and well in among the enemy when one
was hit.
THE MEENA
I found the Meenas of the Deoli regiment in a backwater of the Euphrates
some days' journey from anywhere. They were so far from anywhere that
when we came round a bend in the river in our bellam the sight of their
white camp on the sand, and the gunboat beside it, made me feel that we
had reached the coast after a voyage of inland exploration. The Meenas
were a little tired of Samawa, where nothing happened. They wanted to be
brigaded; they wanted to fight; they wanted at least to get up to
Baghdad. They had to wait a long time before any of these desires were
fulfilled. Nevertheless, although they had reasons to think themselves
forgotten, they were a cheery crowd.
[Illustration: THE MEENA.]
There are two classes of Meenas--those of the 42nd Deoli regiment, the
Ujlas, Padhiars and Motis, who claim to have Rajput blood in them, and
the purely aboriginal stock enlisted by the 43rd Erinpura regiment from
Sirohi and Jodhpur. I expected to find the Deoli Meenas small, alert,
suspicious-looking men of the Bhil, Santal, or Sawarah cast. I was
surprised to discover them tall and stolid; pleasant, honest, plain in
feature; and offering great variety in type. The Rajput blood is no
myth. They do not look the least like aboriginals, and you could find
the double of many of them among Dogras, Jats, Mahrattas, and Rajputana
and Punjabi Mussalmans. This normal Aryan appearance is no doubt partly
the impression of discipline, drill, confidence, training. In their own
hills, before they enlisted they were a wild and startled-looking breed.
And they had curious customs. One was that a man on losing his father
had the right to sell his mother. In the days when they were first
recruited you had to pay a man four annas to come in for a drill. The
Meena would arrive with his bow and arrow, which were deposited in the
quarter-guard. He was taught drill and paid for a day's work. He then
picked up his bow and arrow and departed. Gradually, as they realised
that no harm came of it, they began to settle and to bring their
families into cantonments. But they were so distrustful of us in the
beginning that we had to pay them every evening after the day's work.
The taming of the Meena and the genesis of the Deoli cantonment were
slowly evolved processes. The history of it reads like an account of the
domestication of a wild creature. First the Meena was encouraged to
build. A collection of huts was soon grouped together, and the men lived
in them. Each man built his own hut, and when he left the regiment sold
it to his successor. After some little time they asked if they might
bring their wives and families to live in them. This marked the
beginning of an unalienable confidence, but the Meena was already imbued
with a faith in his British officer. In after days, when the old huts
were pulled down and regimental lines constructed, the men still lived
in their own quarters, and this proprietary right was maintained until a
few years ago. The motto of the regiment, "E turba legio," well
describes the method of raising it.
Suspicion is the natural inheritance of the Meenas. They are the sons of
cattle-lifters, dacoits, and thieves. For centuries they plundered the
Rajput and were hunted down by him. It was the British who helped the
Rajput to subdue them. To clear the district they infested it was
necessary to cut down the jungle. The Meenas were gradually rounded up
and confined to a prescribed area--the Meena Kerar, which lies partly in
Jaipur and partly in Udaipur and Bundi, and is administered by the
Political Agent at Deoli. Roll was called at night in the villages, and
the absentee was the self-proclaimed thief. The system still holds in
the more impenitent communities, but the restrictions on the Meena's
movements are becoming fewer as he conforms with the social contract.
The pleasing thing about it is that he bears us no grudge for the part
we played in breaking him in. Like his neighbours, the Mer and the
Merat, he recognises the British as the truest friends he has.
The simplicity, disingenuousness, and friendliness of the Meena are
unmistakable. They are the most responsive people, and as sepoys,
through contact with their British officers, they soon lose the habit of
suspicion. I spent half a day with the Indian officers, and neither I
nor they were bored. They like talking, and intersperse their
conversation with ready and obvious jokes. It seemed to me that though
they had had most of the mischief knocked out of them, they retained a
good deal of their superstition and childishness. That was to be
expected, but one missed the shyness and sensitiveness that generally go
with superstition. They were curiously frank and communicative about
their odd beliefs. Like the old Thugs they have faith in omens. The
Subadar showed me the lucky and unlucky fingers, and I gathered that if
the jackal howls twice on the right, one's objective in a night march is
as good as gained; if thrice on the left, the stars are unpropitious,
and the enterprise should be abandoned. In November, 1914, the regiment
was moved to Lahore to do railway defence work. The morning the
battalion left the railway station where they entrained most of the men
did puja (homage) to the engine, standing with open mouths, and fingers
tapping foreheads. The railway is fifty-eight miles from cantonments in
Deoli, and it was the first train that many of them had seen. Until the
regiment moved opinions were divided as to whether the Meenas would
continue to enlist. Such an upheaval and migration had not happened
since the Afghan war. Wild rumours flew round the villages, but the
Commanding Officer, by a wise system of letting a few men return on
leave to their homes to spread the good news that the regiment was well
and happy, soon quieted the countryside. Living so far out of the world
they are naturally clannish. There is as much keenness about winning a
hockey match against an outside team as there is in the final for a
house-cup in an English public school. And here in Mesopotamia they were
full of challenge. They wanted to show what Deoli could do, but as luck
would have it there was not a Turk within a hundred and fifty miles.
The most delightful story I got out of the Subadar was the history of a
Meena dynasty which ruled in Rajputana in the good old days before the
gods became indifferent. I learnt that the proud Rajputs who claim
descent from the sun and the moon are really interlopers who
dispossessed the Meena by an act of treachery a hundred years ago.
"Fifteen princes have been Rajputs," the Subadar told me. "Before that
the Meenas were kings. The last Meena king was the sixteenth from now."
"What was his name?" I asked.
"Sahib, I have forgotten his name--but he was childless. One day, when
he was riding out, he met a Rajput woman who carried a child unborn.
'Your son shall be the child of my heart,' he told her; and when the boy
was born he brought him up, and made him commander of his horse."
"Did he adopt him?"
"Sahib, he could not adopt him. The custom was in those days that when
the old king died, the new king must be one of his line. Thus the gadi
would pass to his brother's son, a Meena. No Rajput could inherit.
Nevertheless, he treated the boy as his child. And then, Sahib, one day
when the boy came back from seeing the Emperor at Delhi, he killed the
king and all his relatives, and the whole army. It was like this, Sahib.
It was the Kinaghat festival, when the king and all his people used to
go down to the river without arms, and sprinkle water for the dead. It
was the old custom, Sahib, and no one had ever made use of it for an
evil purpose. But the Rajput secretly gathered his men behind a hill,
and when the king and his people had cast aside their arms, and were
performing the holy rite, the Rissaldar and other Rajputs fell upon them
and killed them all, so that there was not a Meena left alive within a
great distance of the place of slaughter. That is how the Rajput became
the master, and the Meena his servant."