Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

CHAPTER IV

LORD MAYO'S DEALINGS WITH THE FEUDATORY STATES

The India of which Lord Mayo assumed charge in 1869 was a profoundly different India from that which had, eleven years previously, passed from the Company to the Crown. The fixed belief of the founders of the British Empire in India had been, that the Native States must inevitably, and in their own defence, be either openly or secretly hostile to our rule. They held that by good government and a scrupulous respect for the religions, customs, and rights of the people, they might attach the population of the British Provinces. But the Independent or Feudatory Native Powers in India must, in their opinion, for ever remain a menace to our sway.

It was therefore the permanent policy of the greatest servants of the East India Company to bring the Native States under subjection by treaties, and, when they could do so without actual injustice, to incorporate the lesser States into the British Dominions. In 1841 the Government of India laid down the uniform principle 'to persevere in the one clear and direct course of abandoning no just and honourable accession of territory or revenue, while all existing claims of right are at the same time scrupulously respected.'

We have seen how, after the Mutiny, this policy of annexation was deliberately reversed. The Queen of England, when she became the Sovereign of India, became the protectress of all classes of the Indian people. She declared in the most solemn manner her will 'that the governments of the several Princes and Chiefs who now govern their own territories should be perpetuated, and that the representation and dignity of their houses should be continued.' In 1862 Lord Canning, as the first Viceroy of India, thus summed up the new situation:—

'The last vestiges of the royal house of Delhi, from which, for our own convenience, we had long been content to accept a vicarious authority, have been swept away. The last pretender to the representation of the Peshwá' (the Maráthá over-lord) 'has disappeared. The Crown of England stands forward the unquestioned ruler and paramount power in all India, and is, for the first time, brought face to face with its Feudatories. There is a reality in the suzerainty of the Sovereign of England which has never existed before, and which is not only felt, but eagerly acknowledged, by the Chiefs.'

The change in policy meant that an area of 600,000 square miles, with a population of nearly 50 millions, under the Feudatory Chiefs, was no longer a foreign territory subject to annexation, but an integral portion of the British Empire for whose welfare the Queen became responsible in the sight of God and man. Her responsibility, although not the direct responsibility of a sovereign, was the responsibility of a suzerain. On Lord Canning and Lord Lawrence devolved the heavy task of consolidating the Native States under the changed régime. But the memories of the Mutiny still cast their shadow over India throughout the period of their government. Lord Mayo came as a new man to India, free from the recollections which that terrible struggle had graven into the souls of all who took part in it. The work of conquest had been effected by his predecessors, the task of conciliation remained for him to accomplish.

'I, as the representative of the Queen,' he declared to the Rájput Princes assembled in darbár, 'have come here to tell you, as you have often been told before, that the desire of Her Majesty's Government is to secure to you and to your successors the full enjoyment of your ancient rights and the exercise of all lawful customs, and to assist you in upholding the dignity and maintaining the authority which you and your fathers have for centuries exercised in this land.

'But in order to enable us fully to carry into effect this our fixed resolve, we must receive from you hearty and cordial assistance. If we respect your rights and privileges, you should also respect the rights and regard the privileges of those who are placed beneath your care. If we support you in your power, we expect in return good government. We demand that everywhere, throughout the length and breadth of Rájputána, justice and order shall prevail; that every man's property shall be secure; that the traveller shall come and go in safety; that the cultivator shall enjoy the fruits of his labour, and the trader the produce of his commerce; that you shall make roads, and undertake the construction of those works of irrigation which will improve the condition of the people and swell the revenues of your States; that you shall encourage education, and provide for the relief of the sick.

'Be assured that we ask you to do all this for no other but your own benefit. If we wished you to remain weak, we should say: Be poor, and ignorant, and disorderly. It is because we wish you to be strong that we desire to see you rich, instructed, and well-governed. It is for such objects that the servants of the Queen rule in India; and Providence will ever sustain the rulers who govern for the people's good.

'I am here only for a time. The able and earnest officers who surround me will, at no distant period, return to their English homes; but the Power which we represent will endure for ages. Hourly is this great Empire brought nearer and nearer to the throne of our Queen. The steam-vessel and the railroad enable England, year by year, to enfold India in a closer embrace. But the coils she seeks to entwine around her are no iron fetters, but the golden chains of affection and of peace. The days of conquest are past; the age of improvement has begun.

'Chiefs and Princes, advance in the right way, and secure to your children's children, and to future generations of your subjects, the favouring protection of a power who only seeks your good.'

'We see,' wrote one of his Councillors after his death,—'we see Lord Mayo in every line of this speech, the frank and courteous and enlightened gentleman; but, at the same time, the strong and worthy representative of the Queen, and the unmistakeable ruler of the Empire. Every Native Prince who met him looked upon Lord Mayo as the ideal of an English Viceroy. They all felt instinctively that they could place perfect confidence in everything that he told them; and their respect, I ought rather to say their reverence, was all the deeper, because, while they knew that he was their master, they felt also that he was their friend.'

Lord Mayo discerned the evil as well as the good of our Feudatory system. He was often sorely hurt by the spectacle of Native mal-administration, which our principles of non-interference rendered him powerless to amend. He found that the existing system allowed of petty intermeddling, but often precluded salutary intervention—straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. His mind was attracted to the possibility of developing a scheme which would secure to the Indian Feudatories their present independence, and at the same time arm the suzerain power with adequate checks on its abuse.

In his personal and social relations with the Feudatories, he made them realise that the one path towards the Viceregal friendship was the good government of their territories. The Indian Foreign Office strictly regulates the official courtesies of a Governor-General to each Prince, and these regulations Lord Mayo accurately observed. But he made the Native Chiefs feel that beyond such State receptions there was an interior region of intercourse and kindly interest, and that this region was open to every one who deserved it, and to no one else. He led them to see that his friendship had nothing to do with the greatness of their territory, or their degree of political independence, or the number of jealously counted guns which saluted them from our forts. These considerations regulated his State ceremonials; but his private friendship was only to be won by the personal merit of character and conduct.

By his attitude he practically said to each: 'If you wish to be a great man at my Court, govern well at home. Be just and merciful to your people. We do not ask you whether you come with full hands, but whether you come with clean hands. No presents that you may bring can buy the British favour; no display which you may make will raise your dignity in our eyes; no cringing or flattery will gain my friendship. We estimate you not by the splendour of your offerings to us, nor by the pomp of your retinue here, but by your conduct to your subjects at home. For ourselves, we have nothing to ask of you. But for your people we demand good government, and we shall judge of you by this standard alone. And in our private friendship and hospitality, we shall prefer the smallest Feudatory who rules righteously, to the greatest Prince who misgoverns his people.'

The Native Chiefs very soon understood the maxims which regulated his personal relations towards them; and the outburst of passionate grief that took place among them on his death proves whether the Indian Princes are, or are not, capable of appreciating such a line of conduct. As regards his public dealing with them, the four following principles, although never formally enunciated in any single paper, stand out in many letters and State documents from his pen:—

I.	Non-annexation and a fixed resolve that even the misrule of a Native Chief must not be used as a weapon for aggrandising our power.
II.	But a constant feeling of responsibility attached to the British Government as suzerain, for any serious misrule in Native States; and a firm determination to interfere when British interference became necessary to prevent misgovernment. Such interference to consist not in annexing the territory, but in displacing the Chief, and administering by British officers or a Native regency in the interest of the lawful heirs.
III.	Non-interference, and the lightest possible form of control, with Chiefs who governed well. Lord Mayo tried to make the Indian Feudatories feel that it rested with themselves to decide the degree of practical independence which they should enjoy, and that that degree would be strictly regulated by the degree of good government which they gave to their subjects.
IV.	Above all, and as an indispensable complement to his whole policy, the education of the younger Native Chiefs under British officers, and in a high sense of their responsibilities alike to their subjects and to the Suzerain Power.

I shall endeavour very briefly to show how Lord Mayo gave effect to these principles.

I take first a case in which Lord Mayo recognised the necessity for reform, but abstained from direct intervention. In the great Province of Káthiáwár, with its 187 chiefdoms, Lord Mayo had to deal with the relics of five centuries of Native misrule. He found many conflicting claims to the soil and a number of ancient communities, each with a vested right to depredation. The 'ex-ruling classes,' representatives of old houses forcibly dispossessed, or of younger brothers of Chiefs unable to live on their slender share of the inheritance; 'predatory tribes,' and 'dangerous communities,' whose hereditary means of livelihood was plunder; 'aboriginal races,' penned into the hills by successive waves of invaders,—all these elements of anarchy still fermented in the population of Káthiáwár. Some venerable customs also survived. Litigants still retained their right of báhirwátia, literally, 'going out' against their neighbours. This method of adjusting suits for real property consisted in forcing the husbandmen to quit their villages, while the litigant retired with his brethren to 'some asylum, whence he may carry on his depredations with impunity.'

Lord Mayo keenly realised the evils from which Káthiáwár was suffering; but he also clearly perceived the futility of attempting to rush reforms upon the loose congeries of 187 chiefdoms that made up the Province. While, therefore, he gradually introduced a better system for the whole, he confined his more direct interference to a leading principality which might serve as an object lesson to the rest. One of the richest and most important States of the 'first class' in Káthiáwár passed to a minor. Instead of bringing it under a British regent, an experienced Native Minister and a picked Member of the Bombay Civil Service were appointed as its joint-rulers. The experiment succeeded admirably. Reforms which could not have been introduced by an English regent without popular opposition, and which would never have been introduced by a Native ruler at all, were smoothly and harmoniously effected. The State became, with a minimum of interference by the Suzerain Power, a model of prosperity and firm administration.

But during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, as during every other General-Governorship, cases of Feudatory misrule—pure, simple, and incorrigible—took place. In such instances he did not hesitate to interfere in a manner that left no doubt as to the interpretation which he gave to the duties of the Suzerain Power. He held that until everything had been done to render the English surveillance in a Native State as efficient as possible, he had no right to complain of the Chief. He realised that the process by which an Indian State casts its old skin of anarchy is necessarily a slow one. He kept his hands clean of any faintest stain of annexation. But he made every Feudatory in India clearly understand that if he persistently misgoverned his subjects, the sceptre would be taken out of his hands.

The State of Alwár afforded an example of this class. It was founded in the latter half of the last century, by a Rájput soldier of fortune, and had an area of 3000 square miles, a population of three-quarters of a million, and an army of about 7000 men. In 1863 the young Hindu Chief attained his legal majority. His first act was to take vengeance on the President of the Native Council of Regency who had governed during his minority. In seven years he not only squandered a cash-balance of £172,287 saved during his minority, together with the regular revenue of £200,000 per annum, but he had plunged the State into debt to the extent of £160,000. The current taxes were so forestalled, that the balance due for the whole year would suffice but for two months' expenditure; the Mahárájá having hit on the clever financial device of rewarding his creatures by 'orders on the harvest!'

Some of the items of his expenditure will repay notice. Over £4000 a year were assigned to 'men whose sole duty it is to make saláms to the Chief'; over £5000 to singers and dancing girls; and £1900 to wrestlers. 'The Mahárájá manifests the utmost contempt of decency, drinking publicly with low Muhammadans, and getting drunk nearly every day.' The revenues formerly spent on the administration of justice and police had 'been devoted to the Chief's private pleasures.' 'Indeed, the Chief himself is on terms of intimacy with two dakáit leaders,' i.e. heads of robber gangs. He had confiscated the public lands assigned for the support of his troops, and for the maintenance of religion, or for the relief of the poor—one of the latter grants being 270 years old.

The result was to completely alienate the Rájá of Alwár from his Rájput nobility and subjects. The nobility consisted of a powerful body of Hindu Thákúrs, or barons. In vain they pleaded with him to observe some measure in his excesses. His practical answer to them was the disbandment of fifteen out of the eighteen Rájput troops of cavalry, whose fathers had won the State for his ancestor, and the enrollment of Muhammadan mercenaries in their stead. In March, 1870, the news reached the Government of India that the people of Alwár had risen, and that 2000 men were in the field against the Hindu Prince.

Lord Mayo first laboured to do what was possible by arbitration between the unworthy Prince and his revolted subjects. But the nobility would have been contented with nothing short of the deposition of the Chief. Lord Mayo interfered to prevent so extreme a measure. He gave the Prince a last chance, by summoning him to name a Board of Management which would command the confidence of his people; and the Chief having neglected to do so, Lord Mayo issued orders for the creation of a Native Council at Alwár. The Council consisted of the leading nobility in the State, with the British Political Agent as President—the Mahárájá having a seat next to the President.

Under the efficient management of this board, Alwár speedily emerged from its troubles. The Chief received an allowance of £18,000 a year for his personal expenditure, exclusive of the permanent establishments required for his dignity as titular head of the State. These establishments included, among other things, 100 riding-horses, 26 carriage-horses, and 40 camels, at the disposal of His Highness. The remainder of the revenue was devoted to paying off the debt and to replacing the administration on an efficient basis. Peace was firmly established; the courts were reopened; schools were founded; and crime was firmly put down by an improved police.

The Chief still clung to his lowest favourites, and, so far as his debauched habits allowed him to interfere at all, he interfered for evil. At a State darbár on the Queen's birthday, he publicly insulted his nobility. Lord Mayo, however, still adhered to his resolve to govern Alwár by means of its own Native Council, rather than by any expedient which might bear the faintest resemblance to annexation. 'I fear this young Chief is incorrigible,' he wrote early in 1871, 'but we must pursue the course of treatment we have laid down, firmly and consistently. The whole action of this Chief is that of a mischievous and wily creature, who finds himself over-matched, tightly bound, and unable to do further harm.' Lord Mayo plainly told him that the only chance of 'his being ever freed from the Council' would depend on his showing 'symptoms of repentance, and a determination to reconcile himself with his subjects.'

But this amendment was not to be. The Native Council of Management went on with its work of improvement and reform. The Chief held himself sullenly aloof, and sank deeper and deeper into the slough of evil habits, until he died, a worn-out old man of twenty-nine, in 1874.

This was the most serious case of Native misrule during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, and the only one in which he had to push interference to the point of superseding the hereditary Prince. Another instance of mal-administration was visited with a severe rebuke, which the Chief resented, and refused to take his proper place at a Viceregal darbár in the seat below the head of the ancient Udaipur house. The offender was promptly ordered to quit British territory in disgrace, and was further punished by having his salute reduced from seventeen to fifteen guns.

It is only fair to the Indian Feudatories to state, that against these examples of misrule many instances could be cited of wise government and a high sense of duty. Lord Mayo gathered round him a circle of Chiefs whose character he personally admired, and in whose administration he took a well-founded pride. Of such territories, Bhopál may serve as an illustration. It is one of the Feudatory States of Central India which exercise sovereign powers over their own subjects: has an area of 6764 square miles, a population of 663,656 souls, and yields a revenue to its Chief of £240,000 a year. Its army, besides a British Contingent which the Chief was bound to maintain by the treaty of 1818, amounted to 4000 men.

The State of Bhopál was founded in 1723 by an Afghán adventurer, who expelled the Hindu Chiefs, built a fortress, and assumed the title of Nawáb. In 1778, when a British army under General Goddard marched through Central India, Bhopál stood forward as the one State friendly to our power. The Maráthá aggressions of the early part of the present century compelled it, like many other Indian States, to seek English aid. In 1819 it acknowledged the supremacy of our Government, was received under the British protection, and was rewarded by some valuable districts which we had won from the Maráthás. The Mutiny of 1857 found Bhopál under the government of a lady, the celebrated Sikandar Begam, whose wise administration had raised her State to a high rank among the Indian Feudatories. For her loyal services at that juncture she was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, and dying in 1868, left her territory to a daughter worthy of her blood.

This Princess, at the time of her accession in 1868, was a widow of thirty-one years of age. She inherited her mother's firmness and good sense, with a rare aptitude for the duties of administration. During Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty she devoted herself to the measures of progress which the Viceroy pressed on every Feudatory Chief who came under his influence. She opened out roads, organised a system of public instruction, executed a survey of her State, reformed the police, suppressed the abominable but deep-rooted trade of kidnapping minors for immoral purposes, and improved the jails. Lord Mayo received her in his capital with marks of distinction, and, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, presented her with honour to His Royal Highness. The Princess carried back to her State the liveliest recollections of his hospitality and kindness, and the next few years of her rule became conspicuous for good government and prudent administrative reforms.

Her Highness was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, as the ruler of a model State.

Lord Mayo entertained very stringent views as to the duties of the Government of India towards the wilder frontier tribes. He held that, while his Government was bound to preserve the peace of the border, it was bound to do so not by vindictive chastisements for raids committed, but by a more perfect organisation of preventive measures.

In one case on the North-Western Frontier of India, after persistent provocations, it had been locally proposed to deal with the mountaineers by means of a force to be kept ready to make reprisals at a moment's notice, in the event of future raids. Lord Mayo, after reviewing the recent events, thus declared his policy:—'The whole recommendation comes to this—that in the early part of spring a large force should be assembled at different points within the hills; and that this force, being placed absolutely at the disposal of the officers who believe that the burning of crops and the destruction of villages by British troops are indispensable to the maintenance of the peace of the frontier, should, at the least appearance of robbery or raid, advance into the hills and commence the old system of devastation.' Lord Mayo then points out that such a force, acting on the moment, would be beyond the guidance of the Government of India, and that that Government 'might find itself involved in serious military operations, upon the character, justice, or necessity of which the Governor-General in Council never had an opportunity of expressing an opinion.' 'I object to authorise action which may cause such serious results.'

'No one can read ——'s letter without coming to the conclusion that there still exists in the minds of the local authorities an ardent though partly concealed desire for that avenging policy which the Government of India is so anxious to avoid.' Lord Mayo proposed 'to substitute, as far as possible, for surprise, aggression, and reprisal, a policy of vigilant, constant, and never-ceasing defence of those parts of our frontier which are by their position liable to be attacked by foreign tribes.'

It had been objected that such a system of watchful defence 'must act as a constant menace to the tribes.' To this Lord Mayo replies: 'I cannot see the force of this objection. The presence of a policeman is indeed a standing menace to the thief; and a sight of the gallows may be a salutary reminder to the murderer. It is, I fear, too much the habit to adopt what is doubtless the view taken by the mountaineers themselves of these affairs. They look upon them as acts of war and justifiable aggression. We have to teach them that assassination, the attack of a defenceless village by night, and killing people in their beds, are not acts of war, but are esteemed by civilised nations to be acts of murder. The sooner we teach these people this lesson the better. We have already taught it to millions who are less intelligent than the Patháns of the Hazára frontier.'

Lord Mayo's policy was to remove such crimes from the operations of honourable warfare into the jurisdiction of a strong armed police. To the objection that a raid, unless avenged by a military expedition, would impair 'our prestige on the frontier,' he answers: 'I object to fight for prestige. And even those who may still think that killing people for the sake of prestige is morally right, will hardly assert that the character and authority of the British arms in India are affected one way or the other by skirmishes with wild frontier tribes. But there are other considerations connected with the subject, of wider and greater import than the punishment of a few mountain savages, and the vindication of a local officer's prestige. Every shot fired in anger within the limits of our Indian Empire reverberates throughout Asia; gives to nations who are no friends to Christian or European rule the notion that amongst our own subjects there are still men in arms against us; and corroborates the assertion that the people within our frontier are not yet wholly subjected to our sway, and that the British power is still disputed in Hindustán.'

The other example which I shall cite of Lord Mayo's frontier policy will be taken from the opposite extremity of India, and it may seem at first to point to views different from the above. In 1871 the Viceroy sanctioned an expedition against the Lúshai tribes of the North-Eastern border. These races occupy the then terra incognita which stretches from the Cachar valley to the Chittagong District on the Bay of Bengal; and from Hill Tipperah on the west to the great watershed which pours its eastern drainage into the rivers of Burma. As regards the event of the expedition, it may be briefly said that it was perfectly successful, and that, by the infliction of the smallest possible amount of temporary suffering, it introduced, for a period, order and peace into tracts which had been from time immemorial the haunt of rapine and inter-tribal wars.

Lord Mayo, however, would have been the last man to claim any special credit for success in such operations. 'The affair,' he wrote, 'should be conducted with as little parade, noise, and fuss as possible. It must not be looked upon as a campaign, for no formidable resistance is anticipated. It should be looked upon more as a military occupation and visitation of as large a portion of the Lúshai Districts as possible, for the purpose of punishing the guilty where they can be traced and found, but more particularly for showing these savages that there is hardly a part of their hills which our armed forces cannot visit and penetrate.'

But while Lord Mayo dealt thus firmly, and at the same time considerately, with the Indian Feudatories and wild frontier tribes, he clearly perceived that our whole relations with the Native States of India must undergo a profound change. The Indian Feudatories had, as I have repeatedly insisted on, ceased to be semi-foreign allies of a commercial company. They had become an integral part of the India of the Queen. It was Lord Mayo's earnest desire that a new generation of Native Princes should be trained up to discharge the new and higher functions involved by this change. He believed that this could only be done by a carefully devised system of education, adapted to the various classes of Chiefs.

Whenever a great Native State passed to a minor, he held it the duty of the Suzerain Power to do two things. In the first place, to make such arrangements by means of a Native or a mixed regency, as would secure a good local administration, and at the same time convince both the ministers and the people of the State that the British Suzerain respected their independence and would scrupulously maintain it. In the second place, to make such arrangements for the education of the young Prince as would train him up in English rather than Native ideas of his responsibility as a ruler. He believed that this work of rearing up the young Feudatories to a high sense of their public duty was a worthy work for British officers of rank and talent. The system of educating the Native Princes under English guardians or tutors has borne blessed fruit. It rendered possible those subsequent measures for incorporating the military strength of the Native States into the general array of the Empire, which form perhaps the most important political reform in India during the last quarter of this century.

Lord Mayo was not content with providing for the education of the great Indian Feudatories alone. Under his auspices colleges were established for the lesser Chiefs. Such a college formed a part of his scheme for improving the condition of Káthiáwár. For he held it vain to expect that a large collection of Native Chiefs would discharge their responsibilities as men, unless they were properly trained as boys. The rank of these youths had hitherto confined them to private education under the indulgent influences of the Zanáná. Lord Mayo designed for them an Indian Eton, in which they should mix with each other, and learn to fit themselves for the duties of their future position in life.

Another, and perhaps more conspicuous, example was the Mayo College at Ajmere, to which the Native Chiefs themselves subscribed £70,000 sterling. This institution Lord Mayo intended to be a purely aristocratic College for Rájputána, where the sons of the Rájput Princes and noblemen would be brought into direct contact with European professors and European ideas, and under the healthy influences of physical and moral training. The Council of the College consists of all the principal Chiefs of Rájputána and the British Political Agents accredited to their States, with the Viceroy as President, and the Agent to the General-Governor in Rájputána as Vice-President.

I believe, if Lord Mayo were now alive, it would be his educational policy for the Native Princes of India, rather than his immediate dealings with them, however successful, that he would regard as the most beneficent memorial of his feudatory rule.