India and the Indians

by Edward Fenton Elwin

It was now the turn of Bhau and his relations to appear daily at the city court. For a time no cruelty was perpetrated, until one afternoon two police appeared in the village and beat Bhau in the village chowdi, or place of assembly, and they ordered him to attend the court again the next day. As soon as I heard what had happened, I was naturally as indignant as the villagers, and went myself to the court with the boy. I was quickly taken to the Hindu police inspector of the district in which Yerandawana is situated. In him I found a courteous, English-speaking Brahmin, who promised to come himself and look into the matter. He did so, examined Bhau, asked various questions, and promised that the conduct of the police should be investigated.

Meanwhile I had written a letter of complaint to the District Superintendent of Police, and two inspectors, one a Mohammedan, the other a Hindu, were sent to hold a formal inquiry. One of these men revealed something of their methods, when engaged in collecting evidence, by remarking to me that "a few slaps would not be of much consequence, but that anything of the nature of cruelty must not be allowed." It was only in response to my assertion that nothing whatever of the nature of punishment must be used in order to obtain evidence, that he said, "Of course not. It must be stopped altogether."

The labouring man who was said to have been beaten was called to give evidence. But unfortunately the policeman who was supposed to have done this was sitting outside, and beckoning to him, got a word with him before I realised what was taking place, and the man denied that he had been beaten. I was glad to see that the inspectors showed real indignation at this attempt to tamper with a witness. They were both very polite, and in examining the village boys tried to copy our paternal way of speaking to them, with rather comical results. When it transpired that one of the boys was an orphan, the Mohammedan Inspector said in English, "Oh dear! sad, sad," as if it was the first case of the kind he had ever met with, and he recommended the boy to seek refuge in the Mission orphanage.

Although they professed to be indignant with the police, and said that they would be severely punished, I was not altogether surprised at the nature of the report which they ultimately sent to the District Superintendent, a copy of which was forwarded to me. It was accompanied by a memorandum, saying that the charges appeared to have been considerably exaggerated, but that the constable who was reported to have "slapped" the boys had been "transferred to headquarters," whatever that might mean.

That irregular proceedings on the part of the police were only stayed with difficulty by the force of English interference and emphatic words and letters, suggests how hopeless may be the position of any unhappy mortal in out-of-the-way places on whom the police choose to father a charge. Many tales are told of the ingenious barbarities still practised in the endeavour to extort confessions from suspected persons, or unwilling witnesses, and it is to be feared that these tales are not without foundation. The apparent tendency of some English officials to make light of complaints, does not give much room for hope that the evil system will be quickly eradicated.

Even supposing that torture was justifiable on the ground that it leads to the detection of crime, the actual result is probably quite the reverse. It certainly leads to false confessions. People in their fear are tempted to say that they have done a certain thing, in order to escape from present pain. It has often been urged that confessions made by prisoners to the Indian police should not be accepted as evidence, and this is a reform urgently needed. The trouble to which the police subjected our villagers will not deter them from committing offences, but it has convinced them, from the Patel down to the Mahars, that if in the future there is any wrongdoing in the village, anything is preferable to invoking the aid of the police. And that is a serious result, because in an out-of-the-way village, if the Patel takes no action, almost any crime, even murder, could be committed, and the fact need never be known.

It should, however, be added that the detection of wrongdoers is beset in India with peculiar difficulties. The presence of serious crime in a certain locality may be a sufficiently self-evident fact, and yet it may be years before it is brought home to its real authors. The Western rogue often betrays himself by his clumsy efforts to escape. The Eastern wrongdoer never commits this mistake. While the police are searching for him far and wide, he is very likely all the time living in their midst.

In the smaller sphere of a household or school, there is a similar difficulty in discovering the real origin of some irregularity. Thieving may go on in a certain bungalow; all kinds of people are suspected, almost always the wrong ones; if the police are called in, they generally lay the guilt on one of the poorer class of servants, who in sheer fright at being accused, and with the dread of torture in his mind, is almost ready to say that he is guilty. Innocent servants are sometimes thoughtlessly discharged without character, only on suspicion. Not unfrequently, even before the excitement has subsided, fresh thefts occur, showing that the thief is still at large. And if he is ever found out, which is not by any means invariably the case, the chances are that he will prove to be somebody near at hand, who was supposed to be above suspicion.

Serious moral wrongs may go on in an Indian household quite unknown to most of its members, and so skilfully concealed that they may have existed for years without suspicion. Even when the matter has ultimately come to light, the head of the household is perhaps the last to learn what nearly everybody else knew. Many Indian schoolboys are ready enough to tell tales of each other concerning trifling matters, and Indian school authorities unfortunately rather encourage the habit, and the sneak does not get sent to Coventry as he ought to be. But when something serious has happened which it is the duty of the boys to report, it is rare to find amongst them one of sufficient force of character to enable him to do so, and the unembarrassed denial of any knowledge of the offence adds greatly to the difficulty of detecting the offender. Though there are brilliant exceptions, Christian principles rarely stand the test of truthfulness when really serious complications have arisen. And the Indian story-teller so seldom contradicts himself, and if he finds himself in a corner he gets out of it so readily, that it is difficult not to believe him, even when you have the strongest reasons for thinking that he is deceiving you.

In a certain boys' school it was known that some evil influence was at work, but it could not be traced to its root. When elder boys left who were thought to be possibly the cause of the evil, it was hoped that the trouble would cease. But several generations of boys passed out of the school, and the evil influence remained. When its source was discovered after some years, the clue was given by an almost chance remark of a small boy. The person who had so long been a centre of corruption had been so little suspected that, even after it had been brought home to him, it was difficult to understand how he had been able to secure concealment so effectually that no shadow of suspicion was ever aroused.