A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
it.
Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.
The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become
extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems
to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not
scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons,
writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the
courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any
way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are
undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt. They accept a bribe much
more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.
If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head
man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite
of his office. If a theft is reported, the inspector of the nearest
police-station, or _thanna_ as it is called, sends one of his
myrmidons, or, if the chance of bribes be good, he may attend himself.
On arrival, ambling on his broken-kneed, wall-eyed pony, he seats
himself in the verandah of the chief man of the village, who
forthwith, with much inward trepidation, makes his appearance. The
policeman assumes the air of a haughty conqueror receiving homage from
a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on
information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing
goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and
so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad
to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a
small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The
guardian of the peace is then regaled with the best food in the house,
after which he is 'wreathed with smiles.' If he sees a chance of a
farther bribe, he takes his departure saying he will make his report
to the _thanna_. He repeats his procedure with some of the other
respectable inhabitants, and goes back a good deal richer than he
came, to share the spoil with the _thannadar_ or inspector.
Another man may then be sent, and the same course is followed, until
all the force in the station have had their share. The ryot is afraid
to resist. The police have tremendous powers for annoying and doing
him harm. A crowd of subservient scoundrels always hangs round the
station, dependents, relations, or accomplices. These harry the poor
man who is unwise enough to resist the extortionate demands of the
police. They take his cattle to the pound, foment strife between him
and his neighbours, get up frivolous and false charges against him,
harass him in a thousand ways, and if all else fails, get him summoned
as a witness in some case. You might think a witness a person to be
treated with respect, to be attended to, to have every facility
offered him for giving his evidence at the least cost of time and
trouble possible, consistent with the demands of justice, and the
vindication of law and authority.
Not so in India with the witness in a police case, when the force
dislike him. If he has not previously satisfied their leech-like
rapacity, he is tormented, tortured, bullied, and kicked 'from pillar
to post,' till his life becomes a burden to him. He has to leave all
his avocations, perhaps at the time when his affairs require his
constant supervision. He has to trudge many a weary mile to attend the
Court. The police get hold of him, and keep him often in real durance.
He gets no opportunity for cooking or eating his food. His daily
habits are upset and interfered with. In every little vexatious way
(and they are masters of the art of petty torture) they so worry and
goad him, that the very threat of being summoned as a witness in a
police case, is often enough to make the horrified well-to-do native
give a handsome gratuity to be allowed to sit quietly at home.
This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police.
They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror.
The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to
avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full
advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous,
insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a
golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made
the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and
well-to-do middle classes of India.
The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after
all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports,
forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant
vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district.
A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of
inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The
mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much
for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested
in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and
sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of
the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each
selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one
individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to
bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir
a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the
official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to
do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most
keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up,
which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of
our empire in the East.
As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came
under my own observation. I had a _moonshee_, or accountant, in one of
my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the
factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some
food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be
allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had
discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an
infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed
over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example
of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty
miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness
to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a
citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a
witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three
days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden
in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade
of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came
up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it
was a _warrant_ for the production of my moonshee, and that he must
take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons,
requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give
evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is
customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he
removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude.
This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of
disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat
down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very
indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that
the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt
act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper,
spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some
work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then,
but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The
policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a
letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons,
and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if
he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could
not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had
brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a
chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and
seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he
shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another
policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had
evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act
as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's
behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as
the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them,
and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they
became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the
summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had
made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the
sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off
the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was
necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling
expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the
_thanna_, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was
seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the
following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having
thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my
moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future
vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was
pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to
the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into
trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed
them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on
them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law
by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty.
On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge
was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four
miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much
fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered
with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the
servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no
little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally
felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and
was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case
broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular.
The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter
to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the
colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate
and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving
false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they
did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one
instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has
witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the
unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more
European officers to the force; by educating the people and making
them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done
to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the
administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a
summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any
order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If
he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way,
raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely
foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No
wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let
it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor
testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity,
and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are
unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our
system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium
for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the
native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does
not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes,
and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all
the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane
maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of
self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he
really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will
ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be
productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or
would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper
or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the
oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into
self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors
over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo
and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western
civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these
toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule.
It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to
give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the
conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up
our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A
sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of
the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people
of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their
way.
No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and
property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues
you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy,
the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable
straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness,
trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his
contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity.
But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing
Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the
leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly
unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable
government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which
has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new
demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the
far distant future.