INDIA'S MODERN CAPITAL
Kipling, who has gracefully lured roamers to India by saying, "It is
good for every man to see some little of the great Indian Empire and the
strange folk who move about it," obligingly prepares those entering by
the gateway of Calcutta for an olfactory affront. The stenches of
Calcutta are numerous and pervading, surely; but the tourist who has
crawled up the Bay of Bengal in a caravel of the Peninsular & Oriental
Company cheerfully accepts them. The "P. & O." line is one of Britain's
venerated institutions; consequently English people would as soon commit
a felony as criticize this antiquated concern. In these times ten-knot
passenger steamers are hard to find outside the Calcutta service of the
"P. & O." Company and in marine junk yards.
As a great commercial port, Calcutta is unfortunately located. It is on
the Hooghly river, one of the outlets of the sacred Ganges, and ninety
miles from its mouth. The Hooghly is a tortuous stream of mud that can
be navigated by large vessels only by daylight and with favoring
conditions of tide, for its channel is seldom two days alike. This
demands expert piloting, and explains why Hooghly pilots are selected
with great caution. A Hooghly pilot is the very maximum of a nautical
swell, and one's boarding of a ship attended by man-servant and a mass
of belongings partakes somewhat of the character of a function.
This Calcutta pilot is a fine fellow--well-bred, educated, and entitled
to the splendid compensation and social position which he enjoys. Since
the days of the East India Company, the forerunner of British rule in
India, the pilots of the Hooghly have been esteemed as personages and
they have taken rank but slightly lower than officers of the navy, and
much ahead of ordinary commercial people and mariners. When off duty in
Calcutta the pilot goes to his club and drives on the Maidan with other
Anglo-Indians of quality, and never is seen about hotel bars and cafés
like the ruck of seafaring men having a spare day on shore.
[Illustration: A CALCUTTA NAUTCH DANCER]
The Hooghly is charted practically every twenty-four hours, and on his
way upstream the pilot gets his information pertaining to depths and
bars by signals from stations on shore. The river presents nothing of
interest to the traveler until a point twenty miles from Calcutta is
reached; thereafter it is a stream of many attractions. Fortifications
with visible native troops and an occasional red-coated English soldier
occur frequently; then come scores of enormous cotton and jute mills,
attended by strange-looking stern-wheel steamboats, most of them with
huge cargo barges on either side. At last Calcutta is in sight. Tall
factory chimneys and domed public buildings pronounce it a city of size
and importance. The last two miles of the journey are made through a
flotilla of shipping, a bewildering medley of sailing vessels and
steamers, flying the flags of all the maritime nations of the earth--all
but the Stars and Stripes of Uncle Sam.
Bombay, on the other side of India, and immediately on the sea, would
make a better capital than Calcutta. But the malodorous city of the
Hooghly will probably ever be the seat of Britain's rule.
While the names of Warren Hastings and Clive dominate the printed page
dealing with modern India, Calcutta fairly throbs with recollections of
Job Charnock, the audacious Englishman who raised the red flag of
Britain just two hundred and seventeen years ago over a collection of
mud hovels and straw huts on the site of what to-day is the capital of
the Indian Empire.
Charnock, perhaps the founder of England's rule in the East, was the
agent of the old East Indian Company. Having been granted permission by
the Mogul rulers to establish a post on the Hooghly convenient for
trading purposes, he chose a spot having the advantage of a generous
shade tree. The spot and neighborhood now is Calcutta, the chief city of
India, with over a million inhabitants. A Hindu village in the vicinity
of the place where Charnock established his trading post was called
Khali-ghat--these words, corrupted by use, have come to mean
"Calcutta." The quaint pioneer obviously had no realization of the part
he was playing in empire-making, and Great Britain has never made
adequate acknowledgment of the gratitude clearly this man's due.
Calcutta residents delight to recount Charnock's exploits, and they take
visitors to St. John's churchyard to view the substantial monument
beneath which rest his bones. The inscription states that he died
January 10, 1693.
A single story proves Charnock's independence of character. He went with
his ordinary guard of soldiers to witness the burning of the body of a
Hindu grandee, whose wife was reputed more than passing fair. It was
known that the rite of the suttee was to be performed--the widow was to
sacrifice herself upon the blazing pyre of the deceased, in keeping with
Hindu custom. Charnock was so impressed by the young widow's charms that
he ordered his soldiers to rescue her and by force take her to his home.
They were speedily married, had several children and lived happily for
many years. Instead of converting her to Christianity, she made him a
proselyte to paganism, and the only shred of Christianity thereafter
remarkable in him was the burying of her decently when she was removed
by death; but Charnock is said to have observed in true pagan manner
each anniversary of her demise, even to making animal sacrifices before
the image of the goddess Khali.
[Illustration: GENERAL POST-OFFICE, CALCUTTA]
Calcutta has improved greatly since Kipling wrote of it as the "City of
Dreadful Night"; but it is yet a place of striking contrasts, of
official splendor and native squalor, of garish palaces abutting in rear
allies upon filthy hovels. The good is extremely good--that is for the
British official; the bad is worse than awful--and that is for the
native.
Viewed superficially, Calcutta looks like a prosperous city in Europe,
perhaps in England; but rear streets and suburbs are as filthy and
congested as any town in vast India. What the average tourist beholds is
spick and span in a modern sense; and what he doesn't see is intensely
Asiatic, with all that the word can mean. Being a city of extremes, the
visitor may be brought to his front windows by the warning cries of the
footmen of a sojourning maharajah driving in state to a function, while
through the rear windows float the plaintive notes of the muezzin
calling the faithful to prayers from the minaret of a Mohammedan mosque
close by.
The Indian metropolis presents an array of fine homes, bungalows and
stucco villas, put up when the rupee was worth two shillings and a
penny, wherein unhappiness may now dwell, because the rupee has
depreciated to a shilling and fourpence. The parade of fashion on the
Maidan late in the afternoon presents every variety of equipage and
livery known to the East, The horse-flesh of Calcutta is uniformly fine.
Better animals than are daily grouped around the band stand, or along
the rail of the race-course, cannot be found short of Europe. The
viceroy is often seen driving a mail phaeton, preceded by two native
lancers and followed by four others. The automobile has many devotees in
Calcutta, and bicycle-riding natives are everywhere. The babu is
exceedingly fond of wheeling on the Maidan whenever he can escape from
his account books. Nearly every carriage on the Maidan in the afternoon
has two men on the box and two footmen behind, all gorgeously
dressed--servants are cheap in India. At sundown nowadays half the
pianos in Chowringee--where Calcutta's officials and prosperous
commercial people reside--seem to be playing airs from American light
operas, and not infrequently a regimental band compliments the United
States by playing "Hiawatha" or one of Sousa's compositions.
It is compensating to a person burdened with the habit of wondering
where words come from, to discover that Dum-dum is a suburb of Calcutta,
and is important as a military post and as the seat of an ammunition
factory and arsenal.
[Illustration: SHIPPING ON THE HOOGHLY, CALCUTTA]
The sights of Calcutta are unimportant. The general post-office occupies
the site of the native prison whose horrors of the Black Hole stain
chapters of Indian history; and a description of the burning of human
bodies on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the
old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The
gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort
William impresses the casual spectator. The zoölogical garden is
conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the
largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have
been fitly described as of two kinds--bad and adjectively bad. All that
interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the
movement of official and social life, and the parade of races forming
the population of the marvelous, mysterious country.
There, across the esplanade, with imposing gates and approaches, is
Government House, winter seat of the Viceroy of India--whose most
distinguished incumbent in recent years was His Excellency the Right
Honorable the Baron Curzon of Kedleston, P. C., G. M. S. I., G. M. I.
E., etc., etc. Few traveling Americans had the time to speak of him in a
manner honoring all these designations. Visitors from Chicago used to
refer to him, it was claimed, with naïve simplicity as "Mary Leiter's
husband," and let it go at that. A person of extraordinary ability was
this husband of an American queen, and it is generally believed that he
may some day be prime minister of England. The viceroyship is the
highest appointive office in the world. Its compensation is the
equivalent of $80,000 per annum, but the allowances for entertaining
European functionaries, an army of native servants, and a stableful of
horses and elephants for State ceremonials, swells the amount two or
threefold. Both at Government House in Calcutta and at the summer home
in Simla the viceroy is surrounded by a court equalled in splendor by
few royalties in Europe. Compared with the increment and disbursements
of India's viceroy, those of the President of the United States appear
insignificant. But oriental show and parade are expensive, so expensive
in fact, that a viceroy is forced to make liberal drafts upon his
private purse.
India may have had as capable rulers in the past as Lord Curzon, but
rarely one more tactful or courageous, and never one having the
assistance of a vicereine possessing the charm and lovable qualities of
the late Lady Curzon. Her splendid work in behalf of the natives,
especially the women, endeared her to all Indians. The Delhi durbar in
1903 honored Edward VII in a degree unsurpassed, but was a greater
personal triumph for Viceroy Curzon and his accomplished consort from
Chicago. His administration had many perplexing situations to deal with
and one of them forced his resignation. The constant nightmare of a
viceroy of India is famine, and twice Lord Curzon had to deal with
this--one visitation alone cost the Indian Government fifty million
pounds sterling. His understanding of frontier technicalities, and the
ways and wiles of native rulers--none too loyal to British rule,
assisted mightily in the successful administration of his high office.
Under the Curzons' régime Government House balls and garden parties were
counted the most brilliant occurring in the East.
A mighty personage in present-day Calcutta is General Viscount
Kitchener, commander-in-chief of the Indian army. In Egypt he reformed
the nature of the Nile peasant to the extent of making good fighters of
the sons of the cravens of Tel-el-Kebir; good enough, when led by
British officers, to annihilate the army of the Khalifa; and in South
Africa Kitchener wound up with success a war that had been horribly
bungled by others. Military critics had long been aware that the army of
India was antiquated, honeycombed with dry-rot, and largely ruled by
favorites sitting in high places at Whitehall. Consequently, Kitchener
was sent to India with instructions conferring almost plenary power to
reorganize the forces, British as well as native. He prefers work to
participating in the social game.
In England there is a growing desire that finds expression frequently in
the newspapers for Kitchener's translation from Calcutta to the War
Office in London, from whence the British army as a whole might profit
by the trenchant efforts of the Irish soldier who has seldom blundered.
As commander in India Lord Kitchener is paid a lakh of rupees a
year--$32,000, and heads an army of 242,000 men--77,000 British and
165,000 native troops.
The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, always spoken of as the "L. G."
resides in Calcutta and works in close relationship with the viceroy.
This British functionary administers the affairs of a territory but one
twentieth the area of the United States, but which possesses 75,000,000
people.
And what is this India, governed by Great Britain through its delegated
officials? It is a country greater than all Europe, omitting Russia, and
fully half as large as the United States. Its population numbers
300,000,000, and is the most heterogeneous of any land in the
world--were there homogeneity, or anything approaching it, a mere
handful of Britons could not hope to control a fifth part of the people
of the earth. India is made up of a multiplicity of races and tribes,
professing every religion of paganism; and these are separated by
thousands upon thousands of castes each going its own distinct and
peculiar way. Great Britain's control of these teeming millions is
unique in the history of oversea rule. India is almost exclusively
agricultural, and in sections of Bengal averages 900 people to the
square mile. At the beginning of 1906 the government had brought
14,000,000 acres of waste land under cultivation by irrigation upon an
expenditure of $135,000,000. India now has 215 cotton mills, which
employ a capital of $70,000,000, and last year's jute product of Bengal
alone was valued at $70,000,000. The Indian Empire is ponderous and
complex from any point of view. Possessing but half the area of the
United States, it represents one seventh of the British Empire, and more
than seven times the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland.
It should not be assumed that the whole of India is under British rule,
for practically a third of the country is still governed by independent
native princes. With almost four times the population of the United
States, India supports less than 29,000 miles of railway, as against
215,000 miles in the great republic--and this difference makes the
contrast between Asiatic conservatism and New World progress.
[Illustration: CALCUTTA COOLIES]
The person demanding physical statistics gets enough pabulum in a day's
search to keep the machinery of the mind going for months, and must be
amazed when learning that there are seven hundred and twenty-one
distinct languages and dialects spoken in India; that the population has
trebled with the British occupation; that for every insane person in
India there are thirteen in Europe,--the words "placid East" purveying
the explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only
one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can
read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the
native knows no such thing as scholarship--he learns everything by rote,
even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the
meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate
Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every
statement, and it is not uncommon for report to have it that an
Englishman has spoken abusively of a hundred thousand good Hindus, when
that individual has merely intimated to a native servant that he would
like his morning meal served with more punctuality. The illiterate
Hindu, it is interesting to know, believes that the human soul passes
through eight million reincarnations. When this child of the East deals
with numbers his tongue runs into meaningless extravagance, and there
appears to be no communion between his intellect and speech.
While marriage is universal in India, if not obligatory, the custom
forbidding the remarriage of widows works an injustice to the sex
amounting to national disgrace. A Hindu maiden who at twelve or thirteen
is unmarried brings social obloquy on her family and entails
retrospective damnation on three generations of ancestors. A Hindu man
must marry and beget children to make certain of his funeral rites, lest
his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth or be
precipitated into the temporary hell called _Put_. The last available
census discloses the astonishing fact that there are twenty-six million
widows in India, meaning that out of every hundred women at least
fourteen have been bereft of their husbands, and consequently are no
better than human derelicts upon the earth. It is a teaching of the
abominable Hindu faith that the bridegroom cometh but once. A pundit of
the belief will argue that the practical reason for prohibiting
remarriage is to prevent the crowding of the marriage market--and this
is the only "reason" that can be extracted from one claiming to speak
with knowledge on the unfortunate subject. The enlightened Gaekwar of
Baroda, devoting influence and fortune to the moral uplifting of the
people of his land, pronounces the custom forbidding the remarriage of
widows to be a national curse exceeded only by that compassed by the
word "caste."
A statistical paper on India issued recently by the British Government
shows that there were killed in that country last year by snakes and
wild beasts 24,034 persons--21,880 by snake bites, 796 by tigers, 399 by
leopards, and the rest by other animals. The number of cattle destroyed
by snakes and wild beasts was 98,582.
The other side of the account shows that 65,146 snakes and 16,121 wild
animals were killed, for which rewards aggregating $37,000 were paid.