THE CAPITAL OF INDIA
Delhi!
If you draw a line across the map of India from the north to the south
at the greatest length, and another from east to west at the greatest
breadth, the two will form a cross of the usual shape, with the
cross-bar high up. Just at the point where they intersect stands Delhi,
the chief city in India since the King-Emperor's proclamation in 1911.
Before that Calcutta was the capital, but Calcutta, like Bombay, is a
city of trade, and has practically no historic memories. Delhi is full
of the romance of history. In the Mutiny the question as to who should
hold it was of the greatest importance, and if the British then had let
it slip from their grip, without an effort to retake it, their power in
India would have been gone for ever.
Now, on the first morning that we are here, let us drive round and see
what we can of this splendid city. First we will go down the Chandni
Chauk, the main street which cuts Delhi into two parts. It is immensely
wide and lined with trees of a good size. These stand on each side of a
broad walk for foot-passengers, which runs down the middle of the
street, foreign fashion, and makes a popular promenade. The gay colours
of the natives' clothes flash in and out of the shadows of the trees as
the people pass along, each on his own errand. On one side are the
tram-lines and on the other you can see a fast bullock-cart with pretty
little white trotting bullocks as dainty in their own way as antelopes,
and as different from the slow yellow ones as carriage-horses are from
cart-horses. There are on both sides shops for jewels, for sweetmeats,
for the richest and most beautiful silks and ivory, and mingled with
them grocers' shops filled with tinned stuffs from England, and others
with every kind of modern utensil for a house. Such a mixture! They are
all heavily protected against the sun by awnings, for even at this early
hour of the morning it is strong. At the end of the street is a tall red
sandstone tower with a clock in it. In the distance we see the spire of
an English church, and down that opening we catch sight of a Mohammedan
mosque. The shop here beside us is a blaze of colour with Eastern
carpets hung out like banners; the native owner squats on a thing like a
wooden bedstead by his door and chews betel-nut, which makes his tongue
and lips a deep red. Next door is a vigorous agency for the sale of
sewing-machines! A Hindu religious fanatic, smeared with ashes and with
hardly any clothes to cover his lean body, walks ahead with eyes
unseeing, and at the same moment a smart motor-car stops beside us and
the voice of a high-bred English-woman says, "I will meet you at the
Effinghams in an hour," as she waves a greeting to her companions and
steps out.
[Illustration: A SHOP IN DELHI.]
Hullo! There is a band. Round the corner swings a company of Ghurkas,
the sturdy little men who helped England to overcome the mutineers. They
look very soldier-like in their neat holly-green uniforms, with small
round caps set at a jaunty angle on their cropped heads. They are hill
tribes from the north, and in appearance not unlike the Japanese. They
are all so much of one size you could run a ruler along their heads.
Their swinging stride would delight a soldier's heart, for it is like
clockwork in its precision. They are born soldiers, brave and easily
disciplined, devoted to their officers and without the knowledge of
fear. They have faults, of course. The Ghurka is apt to be rather a gay
dog; he gets drunk, and the girls he loves are many, but he is of the
right stuff, and his officers are proud of him.
I was talking to one of them as we came up the coast on the ship.
"Nothing like them anywhere else in the world," he said. "They take to
drill like their mother's milk, they thrive on it and discipline--the
slightest fault that might be overlooked elsewhere we punish severely.
They like it and live up to it. You could lead a Ghurka regiment
anywhere; fighting is their pastime. They have nothing in common with
the slothful races of Lower India; they are alert and vigorous and
active as cats. The funniest thing is their love for the Highlanders; if
a Highland regiment comes up the two meet and mingle as if they were
brothers. You'll see a great Highlander in his kilt and feather bonnet
arm in arm with one of these little chaps, hobnobbing as if they had
known each other all their lives. And the Ghurkas won't have anything to
say to the other Indian regiments; they despise them all except the
Sikhs--they get on with them all right."
We are lucky, for the Ghurkas are followed by a company of Sikhs, and
anything less like the Ghurkas you could hardly imagine. The Sikhs are
big men with stern bearded faces, they look like veterans and are a
pleasant sight in their scarlet tunics with neat gaitered feet. There
were many Sikh regiments belonging to our army in the black days of the
Mutiny, and some wavered, but some held firm. Had it not been for the
Sikhs things would have gone badly with us.
Now we are nearing the Lahore Gate and you can see that Delhi is a
walled city. The walls run all round for six miles, and are backed up
by a twenty-five feet ditch, so that it is a tough city for any army to
take. The gate itself is a fine building. When the British troops, who
varied at times from 5000 to 10,000 men, set to work to attack this
strong city, held by 40,000 to 100,000 natives, many of them trained and
disciplined soldiers, taught by the very men against whom they were
fighting, it seemed an impossible task. The audacity of it! This gate
was one of the hardest of all to break through. Four attacking parties
had been sent against the walls, the other three got in, but the one
that came here failed. Then the others tried to work their way through,
inside the city, to capture this gate. They crept along the narrow lane
running inside the wall, but it was commanded everywhere from the
heights of the houses by the enemy, who poured down a murderous fire
into it. Again and again the reckless men, who determined to take the
gate, started off on the deadly errand, again and again they were wiped
off, and alas! one of those mortally wounded was General John Nicholson,
whose utter disregard of danger and marvellous understanding of the
native character had made many of the natives look on him as a god!
Now we are outside and driving up to the ridge. Every British boy and
girl has heard of the ridge. It played a great part in the Mutiny. It is
a long backbone of hill which runs close up to the city at one end. We
will leave our carriage to go slowly along to the far end, where the
road winds up, and we ourselves will scramble up at this side till we
gain the Mutiny Memorial, a Gothic tower rising in many stages like a
church spire. We can mount the steps inside to see the view. It is worth
it, for miles and miles of country lie spread before us from this
height.
I don't want to go into details of history, but if ever there is a place
where history was made it is here. On this ridge for months was camped
the British army, including some loyal native regiments, and all the
time they never wavered in their determination to retake Delhi, then in
the hands of the natives. Our men could not be said to besiege the city,
because to besiege means to sit down all round a place and prevent the
inhabitants from getting supplies from outside until they are compelled
to give in or are too weak to resist the entrance of the besiegers; we
never invested Delhi in this way. There were not enough men even to
attempt it; the natives could always get supplies into the city, if they
wanted, from the river Jumna, which runs past the other side. But the
British sat steadily on their heights in grim determination, and never
lost the chance of a move. They died in hundreds; remember it was during
an Indian summer, and even under the best conditions, with ice and
punkahs and shade, the European finds it hard to get through the hot
weather. Here there were no conveniences and very few even of what might
be considered necessaries. The men suffered from dysentery, fever,
wounds, and sunstroke, and yet they carried through their forlorn hope
triumphantly, and it was hardly a year later that the Queen of England
was proclaimed Sovereign of India.
In that great plain, which stretches far as eye can see on the other
side of the ridge, some twenty years later another proclamation was
made, and the Queen was further proclaimed under the title of Empress of
India; while in 1911 her grandson, King George, himself proclaimed Delhi
as the capital of India in place of Calcutta.
Over the screen of trees you can see beautiful Delhi lying within its
hoary walls. You can see the towers and steeples and minarets and domes
of the city. Now look the other way, along the ridge. That great pillar
close to us is very old; it was made by one of the Hindu kings, but it
was only put up here ten years after the Mutiny, and is not
interesting. That white house farther on is now a hospital; it was once
a private house, and in it General Nicholson died. Look on again, much
farther, past trees and other houses, and you will see a rounded
building with turrets--that is the Flagstaff Tower so fiercely held.
Come down now to rejoin the carriage and we will go back to the city by
the Kashmir Gate. Of all the gates this is the one with the most daring
story of adventure attached to it.
When the British had resolved to make an assault on the city they
detailed four parties, as I said, to attack in four places. One of them
was this gate. The other three places had been partially broken in by
the guns, and there was a chance for those heroic madmen to get through,
but this was entire. The assaulting party had first to break a way in
and then get through.
And they did it!
The five told off to make the breach were Lieutenants Home and Salkeld,
and Sergeants Carmichael, Burgess, and Smith. Some carried bags of
gunpowder, and others, the fire to set them off. It was daylight when
they ran towards the gate across a single plank spanning the ditch, so
that they had to go one by one in full range of the enemy's fire from
the walls. The marvel is that any lived to reach the gate alive. When
one fell another leaped forward to carry on his task. The bags were
flung down, and those who placed them tumbled back into the ditch, while
their comrades set the powder alight and rolled down too. Out of the
whole party only Home and Smith survived. The wicket of the gate was
burst open by the explosion, and the storming party, also crossing that
single plank, made for it, got inside, and beat back the foe, meeting
their comrades, who had burst in at other points, inside.
The tale of "how Horatius kept the bridge" pales before this amazing
pluck.
[Illustration: A CARPET SHOP, DELHI.]
We must get out and look at the gate where this actually happened not
sixty years ago.
There are two wide arches in the shattered wall, and the coping above is
half gone; it remains unrestored just as it was that day. On a slab is
an inscription telling of this noble deed when men died for their
country without hesitation.
Close by is the cemetery where General Nicholson is buried. You can see
his statue in the city raised high on a pedestal. He stands with bared
head and drawn sword. But Nicholson's is not the only name immortalised
by the Mutiny--there are the two brothers, John and Henry Lawrence,
Outram and Havelock, Hodson, Sir Colin Campbell, and many another name
which is a household word in England. These men, in those days of fierce
fighting and desperate stress, made history and wrote themselves in its
pages by deeds that still cause every British boy's heart to ring within
him. We have passed through the Kashmir Gate, and here, on one side of
the street, is a battered bit of arcade, another Mutiny memorial. In the
early days, just at the first outbreak, when no one realised what was
going to happen, the mutineers marched on Delhi. This bit of wall was
part of the powder magazine, then in charge of nine men. They defended
it against a swarming army of Sepoys, as the native soldiers were
called, and when they found that they could not hold it in spite of
their desperate defence, they calmly blew up the powder magazine, and
themselves with it, to prevent its falling into the hands of the
mutineers and being used against their kinsmen. The most incredible part
of the whole story is that three of those who blew up the magazine
actually escaped with their lives!
We are now approaching the fort and palace, the kernel of the city,
which it is best to see after the ridge.
It is a fine building that faces us, with an ornamental arcade running
along the upper part. We pass in on foot under the gateway and see
another, a Hall of Public Audience, with red sandstone pillars. Inside
is a great throne of white marble, inlaid with mosaic work, where the
old kings of Delhi used to sit and listen to their ministers. The last
of this line was still living in the palace when the Mutiny broke out.
He was a poor specimen, given up to indulgence and sloth; but the
British had left him the state of royalty and all his wealth until the
rising made it impossible any more. His sons and grandson, who, when the
Mutiny broke out, themselves actually murdered and tortured helpless
English women and children, and watched their agonies as "sport," were
rightly shot out of hand, and the old king became a prisoner.
Coming out of this hall our eyes are caught by a gleam of something
lustrously white against a sky which is now burning blue. This is
another Hall of Audience, the Diwan-i-Khas, more beautiful than the
first. It is of white marble, which, in this clear atmosphere, remains
white, and it is richly ornamented with gilt. It is in the form of a
square cloister or arcade, with a little dome at each corner, and if we
stand inside and look out between the white pillars to see the lawns and
the trees in the old palace gardens, we shall find it difficult to
realise that this place of beauty and peace was ever a scene of fierce
revolt. The rest of the palace is now used partly as a barracks.
When the British, having beaten their way through the narrow streets,
and swept them clear of the foe, arrived here on that fateful day, the
14th September 1857, they found the palace deserted, except for a stray
sentry, holding his position with sublime courage. The rest had
fled,--thousands flying from hundreds,--and well they might, for the
British troops were wrought up by the cruelties of the Sepoys to a
sublime and just fury that made them seem like avenging angels. It is
said in one place that the sternness of the expression of the Sikhs'
faces made the wretched Sepoys fly without a shot being fired. The
palace area is full of beautiful buildings, and we shall see many more
specimens of this kind of Oriental architecture when we visit the
mosques in the town this afternoon.
[Illustration: THE KUTAB MINAR.]
So much is there to see, indeed, that it is not until the next day we
can ride out for a sight beyond the walls.
Pull up your horse and look ahead. Do you see that huge column rising
skyward from the plain? It is called the Kutab Minar and is two hundred
and forty feet high. As we get under it and gaze up at it it seems to
tower into the very sky. It is forty-seven feet across the base and
narrows to the top, it is fluted all the way down, and has frills in
stone around it here and there--truly a curious sight! There are three
hundred and seventy-nine steps to climb to the top; do you want to try
them? If so, I will wait here and hold your horse. You shake your head.
Wise boy!
There are other buildings around, parts of a mosque, and inside is an
iron pillar said to be one of the oldest things in India. The Kutab
Minar is supposed to have been built about the reign of our King John,
though there are some who put it further back; the pillar is
considerably older than that, but it cannot compare in antiquity with
many things we have seen in Egypt. After the Hindu kings came a line of
Moghul or Mohammedan kings who swept the others away; of these the old
king of Delhi, living at the time of the Mutiny, was the last, and it is
supposed that it was at the beginning of the rule of the Moghul kings
that the Kutab Minar was erected.
Notice that brown-faced, scantily clad boy, who keeps beckoning and
shouting "Sahib." We follow him as he leads us to a well, and almost
before we realise what he is doing he goes down head first, a drop of at
least eighty feet, into the black water below. There is a tradition that
the water of this well cannot drown anyone. At anyrate it hasn't rid the
world of this rascal, for here he comes shaking the water off his oily
body and grinning. He has earned his bakshish!
As we are in Delhi for several days more we can go at our leisure
through the bazaars, which really are well worth seeing. We choose a
late afternoon, when there is no hurry and we can watch the people in
their daily life and get a glimpse into the real India.
The streets are narrow, mere passages mostly, and lined by the open-air
stalls or wooden sheds which are what the native understands by shops. A
marvellous array of slippers greets us first, for all of one trade tend
to congregate together, a curious custom and one which you would think
was not very good for trade, though convenient to the customer. There
are slippers of all colours from scarlet to brown; you would never have
thought they could be so decorative. They hang in bunches, festoons, and
chains. Every man here wears slippers when he puts anything at all on
his feet. Boots would be of no use to him, for he has so often to
shuffle off his foot-gear in a hurry. Modern streets, with their stones
and liability to nails and broken glass and other sharp things, has led
to the native taking to strong soled slippers when he walks about his
business.
[Illustration: HE GOES HEAD FOREMOST INTO THE BLACK WATER.]
There is a sizzling and a delicious smell from the next shop, and
peeping in we see a huddled form crouched over a pot placed on a few red
embers; it might be a witch stirring potions and muttering incantations.
But it is only a native looking after a pan full of Indian corn popping
out in the most fluffy and tempting way. I have often popped it on a
shovel over the school fire. A native soldier, who is passing, stops and
bargains for a handful, and carries it off, eating it as he goes; when
he has had enough he will stow the rest in his turban, which serves as
his pocket, his private trunk, and play-box all in one. This is the food
he best thrives on, so his wants are easily supplied. A tailor sitting
cross-legged on his board attracts us next; he is a good-looking old man
with a grey beard and kindly eyes blinking behind horn spectacles. His
garments are of the dark red colour seen sometimes in certain parts of
the country when the earth is ploughed. His turban is a mighty erection
of green arranged with much dignity. You would think it hot and heavy to
carry all those yards of stuff on your head, but the habit has probably
arisen to protect the head from sunstroke.
"He is a _dhurzi_, Sahib," says Ramaswamy, who has followed us to
interpret if we want. "He making all clothes for mem-sahibs. Very clever
man and not asking too much money."
Yes, a _dhurzi_ will come and sit outside on a verandah and work by the
day and copy any garment you give him; sewing is a man's job here, and
not a woman's.
Then we see a sweetmeat shop with a crowd outside and a cloud of flies
bearing them company. While we look, many of the flies crawl slowly over
the sticky, syrupy stuff which has just come from the pan, and get their
legs entangled in it, but it doesn't seem to hinder the sale, which goes
on cheerfully. There are sweets in rings and coils and fantastic shapes.
A child gets a large pink slab for two pice, and ten pice go to the
penny, that is to say, the anna, so it is not dear. The buyer tucks the
sticky stuff up in the corner of her garment and ties it carefully into
a knot before starting homeward.
Standing a little aloof from the crowd and looking at them disdainfully
is a small boy with a twisted cord slung across his left shoulder. "He
be Brahman, Sahib," says Ramaswamy timidly. "Very proud and not eating
anything dirty peoples touch, just having had cord." Standing where he
is, so as not to approach nearer to the lad, he asks a few questions,
which are answered curtly and proudly, with a glance thrown across at us
as much as if to say they wouldn't have been answered at all except for
our presence.
"Just two, three days he been made Brahman," explains Ramaswamy.
But he was born a Brahman, of course, and what Ramaswamy means is that
up till then he was counted a child and could play and run about with
other children without responsibilities; now that he has been invested
with the cord he has taken up his birthright and is of the highest
caste, the caste from which the priests come; he may not eat anything
prepared by a lower caste, or even let others touch him, for he is set
apart, and very proud of his new dignity in spite of the many
difficulties it carries with it.
The child who stands staring at us with her shawl over her head is a
little girl about the same age as the boy. She has been grinding corn
between two stones and is a very thin and miserable little wretch. Her
clothes are rags and there are no bangles on her little brown ankles.
Ramaswamy tells us she is a widow! That child? She has probably never
even seen the boy-husband who was so unlucky as to die; but because he
did she is scorned by everyone. The worst life in all India is that of a
widow. She has no ornaments, no amusements, and is treated worse than a
slavey in a boarding-house, and for her there is no escape.
[Illustration: A POTTER.]
Right out in the street sits a man weaving a web of wonderful colours;
he throws the shuttles, carrying different coloured threads, across and
across, without seeming to look at them, and all the time the web is
growing into an intricate pattern under his fingers. So his father wove,
and his grandfather and great-grandfather. All these crafts run in
families. A little farther on is a potter spinning a wheel with his
feet, while the soft lump of dull-coloured clay takes shape beneath his
clever thumb as it races round. It seems to grow and swell and curve
exquisitely as if it were a living thing. There are few sights more
fascinating than a potter at work. You have often heard of the "potter's
thumb," I expect? The thumb grows broad and flat and capable, because it
is the chief instrument with which the potter works. On the floor beside
him lie many of the clay jars of different sizes and shapes ready for
the baking, others are being baked. There is always a good sale for
them, and a potter in India flourishes exceedingly. Even now there is a
woman passing us with a pot balanced on her head and a child on her
hip. She swings along in the dust with a graceful gliding step, for she
has been used to carrying things on her head almost from babyhood. These
pots are brittle enough and frequently get broken, and even the poorest
households must have a supply of them. But what helps the potter to make
a living more than anything else is the custom that when a death occurs
in a family, or a new life arrives in it, all the pots must be broken
and new ones bought! It is a symbol of the life that has gone out and
the new life beginning.
In church you must have heard those grandly poetic lines--
"Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the
pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it."
Pass on to the silversmiths' quarter. Any of these men can do fine and
beautiful work with very few tools. If you want anything made you pay
them in a queer way. For the finished article is put in the scales and
weighed against rupees thrown into the other balance, and when the
rupees equal it then you give them to the workman, together with so many
annas in each rupee for his work.
How can we ever take in all this varied life, so different from the life
we are used to? The women sitting on the balconies above, the pariah
dogs prowling for scraps below, the druggists and spice-sellers, the
fruit and vegetable stalls? Over it all is that peculiar, scented, musty
bazaar smell, made up of saffron and wood and dirt, with which we are
already so familiar.
Wonderful Delhi! A city teeming with myriads of men of many races and
customs, living side by side. Successor of seven cities which have
stood here or hereabout in successive ages. From the earliest days a
place of consequence, a place to be reckoned with, and now, by the
proclamation of the King-Emperor, the first city in the land, as it is
already the centre!
[Illustration: CLUMSY BOATS WITH THATCHED ROOFS.]