FOOTNOTES:
[62] “Life and Teachings of Dayananda Saraswati,” by Bawa Chaju Singh (Lahore, 1903).
[63] Speech at Lahore before the meeting of the Calcutta Congress, 1906.
[64] “Our Struggle for Freedom: How to Carry it on”; see “Lala Lajpat Rai, the Man in his Word” (Madras, Ganesh and Co., 1907), p. 134-145.
[65] Ibid., p. 197, “Indian Patriotism towards the Empire,” being an answer to a circular order from the Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab (May, 1906) requiring all schools to celebrate Empire Day in a certain manner.
[66] Ibid., p. 141, “Our Struggle for Freedom.”
[67] Ibid., p. 184, “The Swadeshi Movement.”
[68] Ibid., p. 209, “The National Outlook.”
[69] See Introduction, p. [17] ff.
[70] For a full account of these events, see “The Story of My Deportation,” by Lajpat Rai (The Punjabi Press, Lahore, 1908).
CHAPTER XVII
A Festival of Spring
The mango trees were all in bloom, and the air full of their smell. It has just the touch of turpentine in it that makes the mango fruit so pleasant, and is so refreshing in an English room that has been spring-cleaned with furniture polish. The mango bloom is the Indian “may,”—the sign that spring has come indeed, and that was why all the great Sirdars, or landowners, of Baroda were gathered in the palace hall at nine o’clock one morning, and sat in thick rows of white-clad figures, with Mahratta turbans of red and gold on their heads, and curved swords glittering across their knees. The Maharajah had summoned them in durbar, to celebrate the festival of Vasantha, or the Spring, and on the inlaid pavement below their seats a nautch-girl from Madras danced without ceasing, to the inspiriting noise of three or four pipes and a little drum. All the instruments sounded their peculiar notes together, but apparently with random independence, though the girl seemed to know what varied emotions they would express. For she danced forward with gestures that she felt to be suited to some imperceptible motive, her jewels flashing, and the heavy gold of her sash swinging over her knees. Then, having reached her limit of advance towards the empty throne, she walked quietly backwards, softly clapping her little brown hands to some imperceptible time.
Suddenly from the palace garden came the sound of the tiny old guns which the British Government allows Native Rulers to retain for saluting purposes, or to batter the mud walls of an occasional village, as evidence of their regal power. To the roar of this artillery the Maharajah entered, and, keeping step at his side, came the British Resident, conspicuous in civilization’s clothing. Behind them, stiff with scarlet and gold, stalked the British officers of a regiment quartered upon the State by the terms of an ancient treaty. Passing up the pavement between the rows of Sirdars, the Maharajah took his seat upon the purple velvet sofa, having the British Resident side by side upon his right, while the British officers settled into the topmost chairs, like a patch of poppies in a daisy field. All the time the pipes and drum never ceased, and the dancing-girl continued to advance and retire with various embellishments.
Attendants appeared, bearing garlands and silver sprinklers, and trim little bunches of flowers tightly tied up. The heaviest garland was selected for the British Resident, and he bent his comely head submissively to receive it on his neck. It was made of white jasmine, picked out with silver “fairy rain,” which I have mentioned before as beautifying our Christmas-trees. He was also presented with a tight bunch of flowers, and lavishly sprinkled with scent from the silver vessels. Similar but smaller garlands were then placed round the necks of the British officers; similar but smaller bunches were presented to them, and they were sprinkled with scent, but less lavishly, as became their inferior position in the representation of Britain’s might. When the most junior subaltern had been sprinkled, the Maharajah and the Resident rose, and the British contingent marched out of the hall, the garlands flopping against their thighs, as when of old Greek bulls went adorned for sacrifice.
So the rulers departed, and again the feeble old guns did their utmost to voice the honours due to Imperial grandeur. Then the Maharajah returned to his sofa, and a sigh of relief appeared to pass through the hall. I thought I could even hear it from behind the carved shutters of the gallery, where ladies stood watching in seclusion, like the ladies behind the grill of our House of Commons. The attendants again bore garlands, bouquets, and sprinklers into the hall. The Maharajah was garlanded first, and then his son, the heir to the sofa, who received his honours with a superior smile that told of Oxford’s contamination. The most peculiar part of the ceremony came next, when silver plates were brought in, heaped high with vermillion powder and with yellow, to represent the fertilizing dust of flowers in spring, and this dust was thrown in handfuls over the Maharajah and his heir, and then over each Sirdar in turn.
Suddenly the white chests of all those loyal counsellors blazed with patches of scarlet and gamboge, while pipes and drum pursued their own wild will, and the dancing-girl danced up seductively. Then the Maharajah rose, and the whole assembly followed him from the hall. The climax had been reached, and the ceremony of spring was over, except that for the rest of the day the street boys rejoiced in “all the fun of the fair,” throwing red and yellow powder over the passers-by. And if they mixed a little oil with the powder, the passer-by would recall the flowers that bloom in the spring whenever he put those clothes on again.
You would suppose that such a ceremony was but the childish consolation of some wretched prince, whom we allow to retain on sufferance the pomps and vanities of barbaric splendour, just as an idiot heir is allowed a rocking-horse and wooden sword by his trustees. And that is partly true. It is in the spirit of interested trustees for idiot children that the British Government gives the Maharajah that artillery to play with, and arms his handful of troops with ancient muzzle-loaders that I had despaired of ever seeing in use. An ordinary and enfeebled ruler might thus solace himself with pretty shows for a life of miserable impotence, just as Napoleon’s son played at soldiers in the Austrian palaces. Such is the end of most of those who are born to rule our Native States. Fantastic palaces in every street, marble courts where fountains play all the summer, bedizened elephants in lordly rows, bejewelled girls beyond the dreams of Solomon, studs of horses ceaselessly neighing, changes of golden clothes for every hour of the day and night, heaps of golden coins piled high in treasuries, drink deep as wells, exquisite foods selected from Paris to Siam—oh, but to be weak is miserable!
But the ruler of Baroda has the strength that conquers power out of weakness. Brought up among the temptations of princes, cheated with the mockeries of authority, distrusted as seditious for the very excellence of his reforms, he has raised his little State of some two million souls to become the most advanced and best administered district of India, with the possible exception of Mysore. I know the worst that can be said against him. His land-tax is rather above the average of British India, but at all events his entire income of just under £1,000,000 a year is spent in the country itself, and does not go to cherish the annuitants in Cheltenham or Whitehall. Like the English aristocracy, he is fond of building more houses than one man needs to live in. Like the late Lord Salisbury and Mr. Kruger, he displays an exaggerated solicitude in providing for members of his family, beyond the requirements of laudable thrift. And, worst fault of all, he has been sometimes suspected of imitating the Anglo-Indian authorities in favouring Europeans at the cost of fully qualified Indians. On one occasion also, I believe, he conducted a punitive expedition, on almost British lines, against some troublesome villagers. I know all this is said, and much of it is very likely true, for even in a hovel it is difficult to live above reproach. But I have also heard that in the foolish Durbar at Delhi, when other native rulers salaamed and prostrated themselves to earth, the Maharajah of Baroda went up to Lord Curzon like a man, and shook him heartily by the hand; and I think that story as likely to be true as the others.
It is now over twenty-five years since he entered upon his power, after a few years of tutelage under the British Government, which had deposed his predecessor for overstepping the latitude granted to native rulers in everything but politics. In that quarter-century, by the help of carefully chosen Ministers, such as Mr. Romesh Chandra Dutt, he has realized reforms in government and daily life that are continually called impossible by ourselves. Throughout his whole State he has absolutely separated the judicial from the executive functions—a reform that we have acknowledged for years to be essential for India, but are boggling over still. He has restored the ancient village Panchayat, or parish council, by the men whom villagers can trust, whereas, in our passion for rigid and centralized power, we have almost destroyed the last vestige of this national training in self-government.
After a careful experiment for fourteen years in one district, he has now made primary education compulsory and universal throughout his State. Whereas in British India the Government expenditure upon primary education still stood in 1906-7 at about £200,000, or considerably less than £1 per thousand of the population, in Baroda the proportion was about £1 to every fifty-five, and the State counts more educated girls, for its size, than any other part of India. The latest step in constitutional reform has been the admission of genuinely elected members into the Legislative Council, which was to meet that year (1908) for the first time in its more democratic form. Such reforms as the Indian Government had at that time proposed for its Legislative Council, were only intended to frustrate what shadow of democratic principle then existed in them.
Making Yarn.
A Village Panchayat.
But it is much harder to change a social custom than to legislate, and the Maharajah’s greatest triumphs lay in the prevention of child-marriages, the emancipation of ladies from the “purdah,” or curtained life, and the breaking-down of caste barriers. In all this he had been aided by the encouragement and example of his Maharani, who had stood by his side like one of the heroic queens of Mahratta history. In all India I suppose there was not another man and woman who had done more for the happiness and advancement of their people, or done more to disprove the common Anglo-Indian charge that Indians are incapable of carrying out even their own reforms. For their very success they were suspected and maligned by officials, who had not the courage to imitate their methods. But when official torpor and private malignity had said their worst, the Maharajah and his queen remained among the royal souls of India. They had once more established the old Roman paradox that it is possible to follow virtue even in a palace, and there was something almost Aurelian in their proud service to the Commonwealth.[71]