Sketches of social life in India

by C. T. Buckland

At the present day the college of Fort William no longer exists as a college for young civilians. They are so fully crammed and instructed and examined under the competition system that they are supposed to arrive in India fully acquainted with the native languages. They are, therefore, at once sent off to join their official appointments as subordinates in various districts. They have thus no longer any opportunity of exercising or learning to exercise in the capital that social influence which their predecessors enjoyed. Perhaps it is fortunate for society that it is not subjected to the combined and overwhelming galaxy of talent that would be found in a band of twenty or thirty young men radiant with all the honour and glory of successful competition in England, and having as yet had little or no opportunity of finding their proper level with the rest of the working world. We have heard of a story of a young competitive civilian who was asked to dine at the Bengal Club, an institution of which the members are chiefly barristers, merchants, and bankers, with a sprinkling of civilians and military men, who all fancy that they live rather well and generously. “I think,” said the young man to his host of the evening, “I could venture to point out to you several solecisms in your club dinner; for instance, the servants actually handed me two kinds of fish at the same time.” The host kindly explained that the servants had shown the two dishes to the young stranger because he could not understand what they tried to say to him in the native language. Presently, on adjourning to the billiard-room, this young stranger observed an indifferent player pocket his adversary’s ball. “Ah,” he said, “do you allow that play here? The club to which I belonged in London considered it ungentlemanly.” But, fortunately, competitive civilians of this highly aristocratic breed and exquisite sweetness and light are rather uncommon, and many of them are as fine specimens of manly and well-educated Englishmen as it could be possible to find in any part of the world.

When a young civilian enters upon the active duties of his profession he is first styled an assistant. Under this description he is the assistant to the magistrate and collector of a particular district. He is vested with certain limited judicial and fiscal authority. He can inflict a small amount of imprisonment, and impose moderate fines in the criminal cases which he tries as assistant magistrate. He may be put in charge of the treasury, and have to deal with sundry matters connected with the land revenue in his capacity of assistant collector. The making or marring of a young assistant sometimes depends not a little on the character of the magistrate-collector under whom he is appointed to serve. The assistant may know a great many things, but when he comes face to face with his actual work in office he finds that he has still very much to learn. He is probably stuffed full of English, Mahomedan, and Hindoo law; he has doubtless passed his examinations in the Oriental languages; but when he takes his seat in court he promptly finds that there is something very wrong. The natives by whom he is surrounded apparently do not understand their own language; they pronounce it so strangely that what they say is not intelligible to him. They certainly fail to understand what he says to them; and as to the legal knowledge with which he expected to astonish them, he finds no opportunity for displaying it. He hears something about an Act—and about duffers—and he suspects that he is being rudely chaffed as a duffer. Now-a-days, relief comes to him usually from one of the native officials in attendance on him, who can speak English, and insinuatingly becomes his interpreter—in fact, his guide, philosopher, and friend. But an assistant is often and ought always to be saved from this abrupt and false position, in entering on his duties, if he will take a little quiet instruction from the magistrate and collector under whom he is to serve. When he joins his district he should first practise anatomy on a few defunct bodies, instead of beginning with vivisection on an actual case. If he will read through the records of a few old decided cases, under the friendly guidance of his magistrate, and in the privacy of his own room, he will soon become master of all the leading technicalities and phraseology of the cases, which he will ordinarily have to decide. He will soon become used to the language of the native officers appointed to attend on him, and will learn to practise his own tongue to the colloquial abbreviations and expressions which differ so widely from the language of the vernacular text-books. Above all things, let him not fear to ask for an explanation of whatever he does not understand, and let him take a note of the explanation given. In after days he will look back at his notes with much satisfaction and amusement at his own quondam ignorance, and he will be the more ready to give help and instruction to the young men who come after him.

If the assistant will open his eyes and look round him thoughtfully, he will soon come to observe the gravity and importance of the official position which he now holds. The district contains more than a million inhabitants. The assistant will be surprised to find that he holds the fourth place in the official hierarchy of the district. There are the judge, the collector-magistrate, and the joint-magistrate ranking above him, but his official place is fourth on the list. What a difference this is from his position in his native land, where he was probably next to nobody, and certainly exercised no sort of authority. Now he has become the fourth in rank amongst a million of people. Many young men are rather slow to perceive this. Very probably a becoming sense of modesty restrains them from attempting to assert the position. But the fact remains, and the official responsibility positively exists. Many an assistant, owing to the casual illness or temporary absence of his official superiors, has suddenly found himself actually the first official among a million of people. In no other part of the world, in no other condition of society, does official responsibility so suddenly thrust itself on a young man about twenty years of age.

In the ordinary routine of social life at a small civil station, the assistant at first holds a comparatively humble position. A civil station is the capital of a district. The society consists principally of members of the Civil Service; there is the judge, who is usually between thirty and forty years of age; the collector-magistrate is now sometimes senior, sometimes junior, to the judge; next comes the joint-magistrate and deputy-collector, a sort of second in command to the collector-magistrate; and next comes the assistant. Outside this nucleus of the Civil Service there come the police officers, the doctor, the clergyman, and one or two other minor English officials, and perhaps a few independent men employed in mercantile business or owning landed estates. If there is a railway running through the district, it may contribute an engineer to the little society, or there may be an officer of the Public Works Department located there. In Bengal, military detachments very seldom help to swell the numbers of a civil station. In fact, with the ladies of the several families, a party of twenty can seldom be assembled, except on the most important festive occasions.

In a very small world such as this, it is not surprising that the assistant, to some extent, acquiesces in his native designation as the “chota saheb,” or little saheb, of the community. He is treated as a newcomer, willing to learn and to be pleased at acquiring experience from the older folks around him. If he is a sensible man, he really feels how very much of practical life he has yet to learn.

After an assistant has been about a year at a district station, and when he has passed certain examinations with which the Government still persists in unnecessarily tormenting its junior servants, he is usually sent to what is called a sub-division of the district. The inventor of sub-divisions was undoubtedly an enemy to his brethren. To be in charge of a sub-division means, in most cases, that the assistant is cut off from all communication with his fellow-Englishmen. He is undoubtedly monarch of all he surveys, but his realms are rather pitiful. He has an official dwelling, usually much out of repair; sometimes it is only a mat and thatched building, but too frequently one part of the building serves as a dwelling-house, and the other part serves as the public office, so that privacy or quiet is almost unattainable. Within a few yards of the dwelling-house the lock-up of the prisoners under trial or under sentence presents itself, with a guard-house for the police detachment. A small tank or pond, in which the prisoners and their guard bathe, also serves to supply the assistant and his domestics with water. There may be some half-cultivated scrap of garden, and sometimes there is actually a bit of road along which a wheeled vehicle can be driven, at least as far as the broken bridge, for the repair of which the estimates have been several months under consideration before some superior officer. The reader may imagine the feelings of the young official on finding himself in charge of such a kingdom as this. There is not another white face to be seen. If he falls ill, there is a half-trained native doctor to attend to him. His nearest white neighbour is probably an indigo-planter, with whom he may not be on good terms, as he may have decided cases adversely to the planter’s interests. Meanwhile his official duties are not only onerous but irksome. He is expected to be a jack-of-all-trades. He has complicated criminal cases before him in his magisterial capacity. The native lawyers who practise in his court are usually men of inferior quality, who have not succeeded in their business at the chief station of the district. The native officers who belong to his court are ill-paid, and too often inefficient. They have at the best a very limited experience, and are not qualified to supply the assistant’s own want of experience. He has to look after his treasury, and to send in all sorts of accounts to the head-quarters of the district. There is hardly a sub-division in which the accounts are kept correctly. In too many there are embezzlements or some fraudulent practices which the assistant fails to detect until he has become in a measure responsible for them, so that when he discovers them he has practically to report evil of himself. His work is carried on for many hours in a crowded room, in a hot and reeking atmosphere. Just as he hopes that his daily labours are coming to an end, there arrives from a remote police-station a corpse and a confessing murderer. The corpse has to be sent to the native doctor for a post-mortem examination, with such information as the assistant can obtain from the police reports as to the nature of the injuries which caused death. This must be done promptly—for corpses will not keep, in fact, they are often very unpleasant when they reach the assistant’s office. Nor will the murderer’s confession keep; it must be taken down at once, while the criminal is still in a state of awe and repentance, and faint with hunger. The police are careful not to let a confessing criminal have too much to eat until he has repeated his confession voluntarily and entirely of his own free will, before the assistant. So, however weary the assistant may be, he must solemnly admonish the prisoner not to confess unless he likes to do so, and then record what the unfortunate creature has to state. When this is over, he hopes to get away, but there is an emergent application for postage-stamps which he does not dare postpone, and he has to count them out from the chest in his little murky den of a treasury, and check all the entries in the account-books before he can close them with a correct balance of the stamps still in store. At last he may gain the privacy of his own rooms, and the company of his sole and faithful companion, his dog. But even then his troubles are not always at an end. Perhaps an alarm of fire is given from the neighbouring village. The sky is red with flames, and dense clouds of smoke fill the air. The assistant quickly mounts his horse, and dashes off to the scene, to try and control the crowd, and to direct the efforts of those few who seem to have their senses left, in attempting to extinguish the flames, or prevent the conflagration from spreading. He will be lucky if he succeeds in doing any good. He will be very lucky if he escapes without some personal injury, and he will probably meet with execrations instead of thanks from those people whose huts have had to be pulled down in order to prevent the fire from spreading.

There is sometimes at a sub-division a great opportunity for getting good sport if the assistant is fond of hunting or shooting. Near the principal station of many districts the game is becoming exhausted; but in a remote sub-division there are usually some natural game-preserves which have not been so often invaded by the adventurous English sportsman. As to snipe, he will probably find them in his own garden any time between September and March; and the rice-swamps which come up to the edge of his garden are sure to be full of snipe in different places as the waters of the annual inundation begin to subside. Wild ducks of infinite variety and in numbers innumerable are to be found in some of the quiet inland backwaters branching from the nearest great river. The wild hogs are seldom wanting. The villagers will gladly point out these dangerous enemies to their crops; and if the ground is rideable, some friends with their horses and spears may occasionally be brought together for a good day’s sport. Leopards are to be heard of in many villages, and when a particular leopard makes itself troublesome by killing the goats of the villagers or perhaps scratching and wounding some old woman, the assistant will be asked to go and shoot it. Tigers are scarce animals now; but they roam over large distances, and a tiger sometimes makes its appearance and establishes itself in a village, to the utter dismay of the inhabitants, who see their cattle killed daily, and live in constant apprehension for their own safety. But when a tiger is thus heard of, let the assistant not trust too much to his own prowess, or to the aid of any native companions who are willing to accompany him to kill the tiger. Let him remember the fate of poor Langdon, who went out a few years ago with a single-barrelled gun in his hand and a revolver in his belt to slay a tiger that had taken up its abode in a neighbouring village. He was attended by a crowd of natives armed with matchlocks, swords, and clubs. They formed a sort of line and advanced upon the tiger, who was sitting on his haunches in an open rice-field, looking at them. Poor Langdon fired his single barrel when he was about twenty yards from the tiger. He probably missed the beast, who came down with a bound and seized him by the neck and killed him like a terrier kills a rat. His native companions very naturally took to their heels. They are hardly to be blamed. They had little chance of killing the tiger, and their only safety was in flight. Not long previous to poor Langdon’s death a stray tiger similarly visited another district, and two or three of the young civilians, with a police officer who had shot many tigers, made an expedition to slay it. They found the tiger lying by a little hut in an open field. They approached cautiously, and made certain of their prey. A crowd of gaping villagers watched them from a high bank of earth, which seemed a safe place of refuge. At a given signal the experienced police-officer fired the first shot, and his companions each fired off both barrels. The tiger rose unharmed and looked at them; but fortunately his wrath was directed to the noisy native villagers on the high bank and he rushed off towards them, scattering them like a flock of sheep. The young officials and their police-mentor returned to their homes sadder and wiser men, not likely to go out again on foot in quest of a tiger.

The life of an assistant civilian at a sub-division is a life of toil and drudgery. But relief may come unexpectedly. One gloomy day, when his misfortunes seem at their worst, he finds a letter informing him that he has been appointed to act as under-secretary to the Government of the province. He can hardly understand or believe, at first, the good fortune that has come to him. He had begun to fancy that he was forgotten by all the world and by his friends. But when he tells the news to his native officials they are not slow to congratulate him. They tell him how under-secretaries are the men who eventually become lieutenant-governors. They almost worship him, and pray that their humble services may not be forgotten when he comes into his kingdom. But he must wait anxiously for a few days until his successor comes to relieve him, and then he rushes off eagerly to the capital, with hardly less change in his position and prospects than that of the butterfly who has emerged from his previous humble form.

In the ordinary routine of the career of an Indian civilian in Bengal, he rises from an assistant to be a joint-magistrate, and he then becomes either a collector-magistrate or a judge of a district—and he never emerges from this quiet and hard-working career. If he is a judge he may, after twenty years or more, hope to obtain a seat in the High Court. If he is a collector-magistrate he may similarly hope to become a commissioner, and eventually to rise to be a member of the Board of Revenue. But outside the ordinary routine of appointments there are a certain number of offices which may be considered to be the special prizes of the service. To get into the secretariat is the very laudable desire of almost every young civilian. In the first place the pay of the under-secretary is very much larger than that of most of his contemporaries. But the pay is mere dross in comparison with the power and change of position which a secretariat appointment confers. His other brethren are the ordinary rank and file—but he has become an officer in command, and he issues his orders accordingly. It is much more pleasant to command than to obey, especially to those who have themselves been disciplined in the school of obedience. It is true that the under-secretary, in writing an official letter, informs his correspondent that he is directed by his honour the lieutenant-governor of the province to bid him do this or abstain from doing that; but the personality of the under-secretary is not always concealed, or rather it derives part of its glory and brilliancy from the association of his name with that of the lieutenant-governor. But it is not merely to his own friends and contemporaries that the young under-secretary stands forth as the representative of the highest authority. When he was an assistant he may have demeaned himself humbly before the collector-magistrate who was his immediate master. He probably felt a sort of mysterious awe as regards the officer styled a commissioner of division, who is the superior master of several collector-magistrates and their assistants. But as an under-secretary he finds himself issuing orders to these commissioners, with instructions to them to communicate his orders to the collector-magistrates. In fact, official etiquette in the secretariat almost precludes him from direct communication with his former superior, the collector-magistrate. There is yet another strong point of contrast between the position of the under-secretary and that of his unpromoted brethren, the sub-divisional officers whom we have tried to describe. The latter have hardly anyone to help them in their offices. Their work is usually carried on in a noisy, crowded room, with many interruptions. They have to draft their own letters, and will do wisely even to examine the despatch copies made by their clerks. But in the secretariat everything is very different. The under-secretary has his comfortable and quiet room, to which no one has access except on business, and with his permission. His work is all neatly prepared for him. The red-taped bundles are sorted in their proper boxes. Office-notes are put up explaining the subject, or giving a convenient clue to important papers. If anything appears obscure the under-secretary touches his bell and summons an experienced office-clerk to his aid. He can order further information to be supplied from the office. But, above all, he finds a draft, put up from the office, of almost every letter that is to issue. It is much less laborious work to sign a well-prepared draft, or even to correct an ill-composed draft, than to have to write each letter with his own hand. When the despatch copies of the letters are brought for his signature he signs them by the dozen bravely, and trusts to the office “examiner” for their correctness. There are, of course, many important cases where the under-secretary must compile notes, and prepare the papers for submission to his superior, the secretary, and he must expect sometimes to have them sent back to him from the secretary for further elucidation. Sometimes the secretary or the lieutenant-governor himself wants some orders issued very urgently, and the under-secretary may have a few hours of hard work, or slavery, if he likes to call it so. But, as a rule, he has a very pleasant time of it in his office; and if he keeps his work well in hand, and does not allow any arrears of bundles to accumulate against him, he will discover the value of the motto “Mihi res non me rebus,” and will find little to interfere with his enjoyment of the social pleasures of the capital. He may even find time for hunting and shooting, if such are his tastes. He can ride and play polo, or he can make his choice between rackets and lawn-tennis, or cricket when cricket is in season. The doors of every fashionable house are open to him if he chooses to leave his card. If he is a good musician he will be all the more welcome. If he can dance well he will have no difficulty in finding partners. At his club he becomes a sort of authority, and has to practice the affectation of being mysterious about trifles, so as to keep himself in training to baffle inconvenient questions on official matters of importance. Whatever social pleasures and amenities life in the capital of Bengal affords, these are all at the disposal of the fortunate civilian under-secretary.

We have hitherto written of the junior officers in the Civil Service. Promotion in the ordinary course is regulated principally by seniority. The whole scheme of the Civil Service in Bengal and in the other provinces of India is like the iron framework of a machine, in which all the principal parts consist of members of the Civil Service. As the older members are used up and worn out, the younger members are fitted into their places. The Government sometimes removes a man who does not seem strong enough for his share in the work, and transfers him to a position where the strain on his power is less, and replaces him by a stronger man. To most men the first direct object of their ambition is to obtain charge of a district. After about ten years of subordinate service, the civilian finds himself appointed as collector and magistrate to the charge of a district, and he thus becomes the direct representative of the executive government of the country. The title “collector-magistrate” is somewhat vague and misleading, especially to English readers unacquainted with India. The word “collector” has no special dignity or authority about it. Our own juvenile reminiscence of a collector in England was of the local collector of taxes, a man with a white apron and a pen behind his ear, and a portable ink-bottle at his waist. An Indian collector, at least in Bengal, is a collector almost only in name. The revenues of the district are doubtless collected under his superintendence, but he has almost as little connection personally with the actual collection as the Governor of the Bank of England has with the sovereigns and bank-notes which pass through his bank. The title of “magistrate” is scarcely less misleading. It is true that he is the chief magistrate of the district, but he has very little direct concern with the actual trial of the criminal cases in his district. But the title of “collector-magistrate” exists in Bengal, and therefore we must deal with it. In reality he is the administrator of a small province which contains a population from one to two million inhabitants. For the details of his administration he has civilian and non-civilian subordinates, each of whom is invested with certain fiscal or magisterial powers. He distributes the work of the district amongst these officers. To one he assigns the care of his treasury and accounts; to another he delegates the management of the excise; to a third he makes over the duty of measuring and assessing landed estates which require a readjustment of the burden of their land revenue; to a fourth he entrusts the special care of those properties belonging to minors and others which come under him as the representative of the Court of Wards. In his magisterial capacity he makes over certain classes of criminal cases to certain subordinates, or assigns to them a limited local jurisdiction for the criminal cases that may occur in it. He is the head of the police of the district, although he has a special officer styled the district superintendent of police by whom all the details of police work are carried on. He is usually the chairman of municipal committees, and of any local body of management connected with education, hospitals, or charitable dispensaries. All schools, especially vernacular schools, are supposed to be his peculiar care. The local jail and its prisoners are under his control, though the doctor or some special officer is in immediate charge of the jail. He is expected to keep himself well-informed as to the trading and commercial interests of the district, and is responsible for the care of the roads and bridges throughout the country. He is expected to keep himself well-informed of all that is going on in the sub-divisions of his district which are in the immediate charge of the sub-divisional officers whom we have already described. If cattle-disease breaks out in the interior, he is expected to report on it and take measures to put an end to it. If fever or cholera begin to devastate any part of his dominion, he must at once take action to contend with the enemy. If troops are marching through the district, he must see to the clearance of the encampment grounds, and to the provision of rations for the soldiers and their camp-followers. If there is no clergyman at the station, he may be called on to baptise infant children, and much more certainly to bury anyone who dies. He will have also to provide for the conduct of the weekly church service. We have by no means exhausted the list of his duties; but finally, if a prisoner in his jurisdiction is sentenced to be hung, it will be his duty to superintend the execution. He is held personally responsible by the Government that everything goes right in the district. He has many hands to help him in the details of his numerous duties, but still he is expected to put his own finger occasionally into every man’s pie; and if he abstains as much as possible from exercising any primary authority, there is hardly a matter in which he is not referred to as the appellate authority by those who are dissatisfied with the orders of his subordinates. To carry out all his functions he should be an Argus and a Briareus. He is often a little sickly-looking man in spectacles.