HOW THE NEWS FROM MEERUT WAS RECEIVED AT GUMILCUND
Of the days that followed the young rajah's entry into his capital but little record remains. He ceased almost altogether to write in his diary; Chunder Singh, being always reticent with regard to this period, there was no one about him who could supply the deficiency; and, to the deep distress of his English friends both at home and in India, he gave up writing to them. When, preceded by Vishnugupta, and followed by Chunder Singh, Hoosanee, and the foremost of the citizens of Gumilcund, he went into the palace, he entered upon a seclusion which might have been that of the grave.
But, though unheard of outside the state, he was busy within it. I gather from hints scattered through his later writings that, as day followed day tranquilly, he entered more completely into the life of the city; and that the people—many of whom believed with Chunder Singh and Hoosanee that in this comely stranger their own rajah had returned to them—received him as one of themselves.
It was not a happy time; no period of transition can be altogether satisfactory to oneself. Being highly strung by temperament, he felt the mental strain more than others, while the complete severance with the old life affected him painfully. Up to this there had always been something to connect him with the past. Jung Bahadoor, Gambier Singh, Dinkur Rao, and the Ranee of Jhansi had all spoken to him of England. Wherever he had been he had seen English faces and heard the English tongue; here he met no one but Indians. Even the Resident was absent. Owing to the death of the late rajah, he had been on duty for some time; his health, he said, was suffering; so, after welcoming the new ruler, he had started with his family to take holiday in a hill-station.
At first Tom felt disposed to congratulate himself on this isolation. He remembered what had been said to him on board the 'Patagonia'—that between East and West a great gulf is fixed. If, as he would sometimes imagine, he was to lay the first stone of a bridge to unite them, he must learn to stand firmly on both sides. Then, too, he had little time for vain regrets. He had begun to realise the magnitude of the task that lay before him, and all the energies of his nature were bent on preparing himself for it. The language, the religion, the laws, and social customs of his new country had all to be made separate subjects of study before he could presume to say that he understood its people; while, in addition, there was the duty—peculiarly sacred to him—of finding out what the aims of his predecessors had been, and of looking for and examining any records they had left behind them.
But after those first few days, filled to the brim with hard and unremitting toil, there came a sense of want. His old feelings might be stifled, but they were not dead. A dull craving, which he could not formulate, haunted him perpetually. During the night, which was his only time of relaxation from mental labour, there would come to him vivid visions of home, from which he would awake with a sick anguish that brought tears to his eyes and throbs of pain to his heart. Like a nightmare the sense of his isolation would weigh upon him; dear faces from the past would gaze at him reproachfully, and he would stretch out his arms to them with a bitter cry. He could not—he could not let them go.
Meanwhile, with the passion born of despair, he clung to what remained to him of his past life. He had brought away with him a little English New Testament, his mother's last gift to him. In the silence of his marble chamber, when everyone in the palace was asleep but himself, he opened and read it. How different it was from the subtle philosophies into which he was painfully working his way! Could it be only that the words were familiar and therefore dear to him? Or was there indeed some sweet majestic power in them, such as is to be found nowhere else in all the world? With a trembling heart he read them over:—'He that loveth his life shall lose it.' 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' 'This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.'
They were not new to him; from his childhood up he had been instructed in them. They were so familiar to his ears as almost to have lost their sense to his heart. But now, coming fresh to him from these other religions, they smote upon his mind with a new power and beauty.
From the utterances he turned to the record of the life, and his wonder and enchantment grew. Its purity—he had never thought of this before, for he had not seen how men build up their deities—its selfless love, its courage, its devotion; these came upon him like a revelation. More than once in these silent nights he asked himself if this might not be the secret, this the reconciling element which, after these many ages of ignorance and disunion, would blend the two continents together so that they might move forward to a new era of blessedness. But as yet he said nothing, even to Chunder Singh.
The sultry month of April ran its course; the heat continued to be terrible; but the young rajah, in his large marble-lined rooms, artificially darkened and cooled with flowing water and the spray of fountains, suffered little inconvenience from it.
He heard daily of the outside world, and what he heard was reassuring. In these latter days of April it seemed to the English in the North-west Provinces—who were for the most part as ignorant of the inner life of the people about them as the infant is of the feelings of those who dandle it in their arms—that any danger which might once have existed was over. The soldiers had been convinced by a variety of telling examples that to fight against their salt would be the height of folly; and the people, even if they were disaffected, as a few acts of incendiarism, with a sullen demeanour towards the English, seemed to indicate, could do nothing without the army.
May opened, and still they held on their way quietly, and the rajah's heir began to hope that the fanatics were silenced by hard and stubborn facts, and that the bitterness, so long foretold, had run its course. Then, like a flash of lightning flaming across the blue of a cloudless sky, came the news of the revolt at Meerut.
There are many still living who will remember the horror and sickening dismay which flew from station to station as the story, discredited at first, pressed itself home to the minds of the conquering race. We had heard unpleasant rumours before, here and there a mutinous regiment, bungalows set on fire, outrages committed, muttered insults in the public highways; some of us, indeed, had been visited with vague apprehensions. But there was always some one of experience at hand to point out how foolish it was to be afraid either of the people or the soldiers, and we were only too glad to be reassured. So much the greater was the shock of this terrible intelligence. It is true that it was nothing like so dreadful as what we were to hear later. The mutineers were young in crime and fearful of punishment. As a fact, it was rather a herd of frightened wild creatures that rushed madly out of the burning station on that awful Sunday night than a victorious army triumphing in its first success. But this we did not know. All we saw and understood was the extraordinary audacity of this first definite move. Through the breathless days that followed we were momentarily expecting to hear of the mutineers being pursued and punished. Our servants looked at us strangely. Native officers and soldiers, who, in the first flush of surprise, had passionately sworn to be faithful, began to lift up their heads. Old English commanders, of the type of General Elton, who was away from home on a tour of inspection in the outlying districts, gnashed their teeth with impotent fury, and wondered what the people at Meerut were about. For the news we expected never came. The next distinct intelligence was that flashed from the telegraph station at Delhi by the young signaller, who, with the messengers of death yelling in his ears, was working his instrument quietly: 'The Sepoys have come in from Meerut, and are burning everything; we must shut up.'
Not till then did the full magnitude of the disaster that had come to us break upon our minds. Ah! what a change it was! Few of us can have any conception of its horror. From a life that is quiet, simple, and secure, to be plunged all in a moment into the dark, strenuous world of tragedy, nerves strung up, senses on the alert, affection made lurid by passion, heart-consuming anxiety the companion of our solitude. Can we imagine it? If so, we shall have a faint picture of the experiences of many of us in that terrible May and June.
When the Rajah of Gumilcund heard of the uprising, his brain seemed to reel with the shock. His impulse was to go to Meerut himself, but Chunder Singh dissuaded him. 'The English,' said this wise minister, 'have troops enough to defend themselves; and if my lord were stopped, as he well might be, for the roads will be infested with evil characters, of what profit will that be to his friends? My advice is that we take time to consider, that we look to ourselves, that we strengthen our defences and provision the city.'
'You are right. Yes, I acknowledge it. You are wiser than I am. Call the people together! Let us have a public council!' cried the young rajah, springing up. 'If the people side with me now, they have my affection and gratitude for ever.'
'They will,' said Chunder Singh.
In the beautiful Dwan-i-Khas, or public hall of audience, which was a large pillared pavilion, standing in the midst of an open court, surrounded by an arcade or corridor, all the principal people of the city were gathered together that evening. The court was literally packed. Within the pavilion, on a marble platform ten feet high, stood the young rajah, with Chunder Singh on his right hand, and Vishnugupta on the left.
Chunder Singh, to whom, as chief minister, it fell to open the proceedings, was deeply anxious. His voice trembled as he stood out and announced, in a few brief words, the calamity that had happened, with the rajah's orders that his people should attend to what he had to say upon the subject. But, in a few moments, his anxiety was gone, and he looked out before him with radiant confidence.
The young rajah's speech was admirable. Fortunately for himself, he had studied not only the religion and philosophy of this people, but their history. He stood before them, his mind stored with pictures out of the past. Better than anyone in that crowd he knew what the life of the peninsula had been before the strong hand of the English, guided by their orderly, methodical minds, had undertaken to weld the great chaos of contending states into one peaceful empire.
Of the internecine warfare that led to Mogul and Tartar invasions, of the brief prosperity that, however, did not penetrate to the smaller states, when the Moslem empire became consolidated under wise rulers, of the selfish and cynical policy of Aurungzebe that broke up the empire, of the horrors that accompanied its disintegration—piratical incursions on peaceful coasts, sackings of wealthy cities, forced contributions from those who, through industry and shrewdness, had attained to comfort, languishing in a slavery worse than death of hundreds of innocent people, fields ravaged, harvests swept away, and monuments of antiquity destroyed by a brutal soldiery—of these the young rajah spoke. He spoke quietly; but there was a repressed power in his voice and manner that told upon everyone in the assembly. Then, when their hearts were hot with passionate memories, and a tremor of vague apprehension was running through them, he told, in a few brief words, of the Power that, for these hundred years and more, had been growing up amongst them.
Here he appealed to the more intelligent amongst his audience, the wealthy merchants, and clever artificers, who had made Gumilcund what she was, and the reasonableness of his words impressed them.
He did not, he said, seek to deny that it was the lust of gain which had first brought the English to their shores. Other nations had come on the same quest, come and gone so far as their influence on the national life of India was concerned. But this nation had stayed. Why? In answer he bade them follow him while he showed how the conscience of a great nation had been struggling with its cupidity, and how conscience had conquered, so that by degrees the majesty of might became the majesty of right, till the English name was a watchword for those who strove to live righteously, and the English power was a refuge for the oppressed. Even the late annexations, the wisdom of which so many called in question, had been made in the spirit of mercy, and to stave off the anarchy which would surely have resulted from the continuance in the peninsula of selfish and oppressive governments. And what, he asked, were the men who had been set over the annexed provinces? Had England sent from her superfluous population men who desired only to enrich themselves? No: she had given India of her best. Brave, true, strong and noble, denying themselves, and thinking sternly and simply of their duty, were the citizens whom she had sent to govern India. 'I speak what I know,' cried the young rajah, 'for though I belong to you now, none of you are ignorant of the fact that England has been the home of my childhood. I am English and I am Indian, in a sense which it would be impossible for me to explain, and I speak with a full knowledge of the political position of both countries, when I say that England and India are necessary one to the other. I need not urge this upon you, my people, who are, I believe, deeply conscious of the benefits which have come to us from a strong and unselfish Imperial government. It is our desire that this power should be strengthened rather than weakened, and set on a broader rather than a narrower basis. But I would that my voice could resound through the land. I would that every citizen of this great empire could, at this awful crisis which some of us believe to be impending, see on which side his interest and safety lie. Then the army, which is being led astray by fanatics, would swiftly return to its allegiance, and peace and security would again reign amongst us.' He paused for a moment, and then his voice rose, and a passion of prophetic woe seemed to tear, him, as he cried, 'I know the English; they are fierce when they are roused, they are dogged when their hearts are set upon an object, and if they seem to fall back it will only be for a moment. They will triumph, and the vengeance they will exact will be in proportion to their consciousness of rectitude. Thousands will die the death of felons. Thousands will lose their all. Thousands will wander homeless through the land, cursing those who betrayed them. But that is not all. That is not even the worst, for death and the flight of years will dissipate the anguish upon which we may have to look. The disturbers of our peace will pass away, and a new generation will arise. But the sore left behind by the struggle will remain. The new civilisation, which we so fondly hoped to establish, will be thrown back. The seeds of a mutual distrust will be sown, and the union between East and West, to which my predecessors looked as enshrining the secret of the future, and holding within it the promise of a peace and happiness greater than the world has ever known, will be indefinitely delayed. For this,' cried the young orator, his voice rising and his frame seeming to expand, 'that the calamity which I foresee might be averted. I could wish that our little Gumilcund was a million-fold stronger and greater than she is. To take the van in the great contest which we see coming, to make for order against anarchy, to force upon others the views which we hold ourselves, and which we believe to be beneficial to us all, to cure the blood-fever which has seized upon the heart of these unhappy peoples, and to lead them back into the paths of reason and quietness—this we would do if we had the strength. We know that we have not. By the Supreme Spirit, which, call it by what name we will, every one of us acknowledges, our place amongst the nations has been allotted to us. We are to this people as a single grain in a heaped-up storehouse, as a little one in a multitude. But we can do something, and what we can do we will. We can be faithful to our convictions; we can make sacrifices for our faith; we can govern ourselves; we can be wise, prudent, firm and watchful. This, which I ask of myself, I ask of you.' His voice dropped, and there crept into its tones a curiously soft inflection as he went on. 'I am new to you, the tumult of your welcome is still ringing in my ears. I came to you an unknown man, and you received me with an honour and distinction such as are seldom accorded to a stranger. That I owe this not to my own merits, but to the merits of those who went before me, I am well aware; and when I say that it is in response to this welcome I venture to come forward as your leader, you will not mistake me. I am speaking in the name and by the power—present, as I believe, at this moment amongst us—of your late rajah, done foully to death by the hands and heads that are plotting this rising. Tell me then what your desire is. Let us confer together about the measures we should take for the proper defence of this city. Let us agree to open our gates to the fugitive and to shut them to the oppressor; and, whatever may be in the future, we shall have our reward, for we shall have within us what a Western scripture would call "the answer of a good conscience towards God and towards men," or, in the not less striking words of the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred lore, the divine wisdom, "worshipping by the performance of our duties Him from whom is the endeavour of men, we shall attain perfection."'