THE RANEE OF JHANSI
Amongst the introductions which Tom took with him to India was one to Dinkur Rao, Dewan or Prime Minister at the Court of the Mahratta Prince, Sindia, Maharaja of Gwalior. The Dewan was one of those remarkable men who, at critical times, stand out boldly from their fellows. Subtle of mind and sagacious, and possessing to a degree which, in a full Asiatic, is unusual, the executive talent through which great theories can be brought out in action, he had already steered the State, to the government of which he had been summoned when the youthful Maharaja attained his majority, through more than one dangerous crisis. Like Jung Bahadoor, he had fully realised the importance to his country of British over-lordship in the peninsula; and, unlike the Nana, Kunwer Singh, and the host of fanatic priests and prophets, who thought that to exhaust England and to drain her of her population would be an easy task, he held firmly to his belief in the strength, no less than the beneficence, of the Paramount Power.
As regarded his policy, both internal and external, Dinkur Rao might almost be said to have been the pupil of the late Rajah of Gumilcund; and although, being hampered by obstacles from which that enlightened ruler was free, such as an intriguing court, and a young sovereign of unstable mind, who had on one occasion at least deliberately reversed the wise measures of the Dewan and shut him out from his counsels, he could not give to his own people such happiness and security as was enjoyed by the people of Gumilcund, he was able, through the superior position of Gwalior and her larger resources, to exercise a more commanding influence on the policy of the nations of Central India than Gumilcund could have done, even if her wise ruler had lived to tide her through this dangerous crisis. The Dewan had heard of the probable arrival at Gumilcund of the rajah's heir. A certain amount of mystery surrounded him; but he believed him to be, like his predecessors, of mixed blood, and was not, indeed, altogether indisposed to suspect that he was actually the son of the late rajah by an English mother. As he had loved the father, he was ready and anxious to make the acquaintance of the son. When, therefore, having passed through the cantonments and pitched his camp on an open space outside the native city and fort of Gwalior, Tom sent in a messenger with his letter of introduction and a note from himself requesting permission to pay his respects to the Maharaja and the Dewan, Dinkur Rao started off, attended by a guard of honour, to meet and welcome him. Then, having received him with Eastern ceremony, he escorted him back to the city, and introduced him to the Maharaja, who set apart rooms in the palace for his use.
Tom spent three days enjoying the hospitality of Gwalior. Before the end of that time, he and the Dewan had become firm friends. In the long nights that they spent together on one of the palace balconies, while the Dewan smoked his hookah and looked up meditatively into the starlit sky, Tom unburdened himself of some of the thoughts and feelings that had possessed him since he entered upon his new life.
He was troubled by his inability to lay out the future. 'I make plans one day,' he said, 'and I change them the next, and I find no firm standing-ground anywhere.' He was troubled still more by the dual impulses that governed him, and by the way in which startlingly new thoughts and unbidden imaginations forced themselves upon his mind. 'I thought I knew myself,' he said sadly; 'but I find that my very will is not my own.'
The Dewan consoled him. 'It is a time of transition with you,' he said. 'The new has not yet accommodated itself with the old. Western ideas, and, if I may venture to say so, Western prejudices, are warring in your mind with the Orientalism which is its true element. You will settle down in time and then you will take the best out of both. Who knows that the Great Spirit may not have decreed that you shall be one of the reconcilers for whom the world is waiting? Your father, the great Byrajee Pirtha Raj, of blessed memory, believed that such would be, and that only then, when the East learned from the West and the West from the East, as now they interchange terrestrial products, would the earth and her long-troubled children enter upon the holy path that leads to spiritual freedom.'
'And do you think this time is near?' said Tom, trembling.
'Nay,' answered the Dewan, smiling. 'I am no prophet. The future is with the gods.'
'But you think that England does well to maintain her power in India?'
'I know that in England is our only hope. They are preaching independence to the people,' cried the Dewan, his excitement rising as he spoke. 'Govern yourselves, they say. Be free men! Throw the invaders from the West into the sea! The fools! Do they know what they mean? Are we then one nation in India? Can we be governed by ourselves? They know very well that we cannot. There is not one preacher of sedition at this moment who is not well aware that the retreat of the English would introduce a period of anarchy such as even our unhappy country has never known. And how could it be otherwise? Moslems, Hindustanis, Bengalis, Mahrattas, Sikhs, Punjaubis, Ghoorkas, hill tribes of the north, and hill tribes of the south—we are far more foreigners to one another than French and English, Spaniards and Germans. Which of all these, I ask you, shall govern the others? Who are to be the free and independent men, and who are to be the slaves?'