Eight Lectures on India

by Halford John Mackinder

|32.
The Same—the Raw Hide Shed.| |33.
The Same—unloading Bark.| |34.
The Same—the Boot Shop.| |35.
Well in Messrs. Cooper Allen’s Model Village, Cawnpore.| |36.
Native Potters.| |37.
The Same.| Here is a leather factory for making Government boots and army equipment. This view shows the raw hides, mostly buffalo, gathered by rail from all parts of India. The hides on the weighing machine have been dried. This is bark being unloaded from the train for use in the tannery. Then we see the boot shop itself, thronged with workmen. These workmen are mostly Musulmans. As will be seen, the boots are hand-sewn. One large firm, employing daily some three thousand five hundred hands, has built a model village, of which we have here the well, the central feature of every Indian village, whether of the new and garden type, or of the old and traditional. What a contrast must all this be to the inhabitants of the country districts, where village tradesmen still follow their traditional crafts! Here, for example, are two views in a pottery near Benares. The potters turn the wheel with their feet. Most Hindu workmen use their feet a good deal, and of course the typical squatting attitude makes it easier for them to do so.

Consider the revolution in all the social life of India, which is involved in the steady displacement of these village-made wares by the cheaper machine-made products of Cawnpore and other factory centres. There is a change beginning throughout the length and breadth of this vast land, not wholly unlike that which took place in Britain under the name of the Industrial Revolution a century and a half ago. As higher and more skilled industries are introduced, it seems likely ultimately to result in a migration of workers from the villages to the cities, in the growth of the size of the cities, and in the greater monotony of life in the rustic villages. No doubt there will be some inevitable suffering, especially on the part of those workers who cannot adapt themselves to the new conditions. In the main, however, the factory operatives have thus far been peasant proprietors who forsake their villages only for a time.

|38.
The Rumi Gate, Lucknow.| |39.
The Same—from within.| |40.
The Imambara, Lucknow.| |41.
The Same—the Great Hall.| Lucknow is a city of modern temples and palaces, many of them stucco buildings of debased architecture, which appear beautiful only by moonlight and when artificially illuminated. We have here the Rumi Gateway, and here the same gateway from within. Then we have the Imambara, built under Asaf-ud-daulah, who also built the Residency, as a relief work in a great famine in 1784. The most striking feature is the successful construction of an enormous roof of coarse concrete without ribs, beams, pillars, or visible support of any kind, except that from the four surrounding walls. Here is the great hall, beneath this roof. It is about a hundred and sixty feet long, fifty feet wide, and some fifty feet high. On the floor is the tomb of Asaf-ud-daulah, a slab of plain masonry surrounded by silver, and covered with a canopy. The tomb is not in line with the sides of the hall, but is a little askew in order that it be oriented in accordance with the direction of Mecca. Near by can be seen a huge tazia, which is carried through the streets on the Musulman anniversary of the Moharam.

|42.
In the Chauk Bazaar, Lucknow.| |43.
The Same.| |44.
A Musulman Woman in a Burka.| |45.
The Jama Masjid, Lucknow.| |46.
The Husainabad Imambara, Lucknow.| |47.
Karbala of Diana-ud-daula, Lucknow.| |48.
The Kasmain, Lucknow.| Next we have two views in the Bazaar of Lucknow, which forms one of the six wards of the city. In the bazaar are to be found jewellers and silversmiths, together with brassworkers and woodcarvers. Then we come to a very characteristic Indian scene, a Musulman woman wearing a burka, that is to say, a veil with eye-slits. All Musulman women of a higher class are veiled when they leave the privacy of their houses, in accordance with the general feeling of Islam, alike in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Here we see the Jama Masjid, a three-domed mosque, with decorations painted in blue and purple upon its walls. Within it is a curious ledge used by the Shiahs, one of the two great sects of the Musulmans, for resting their foreheads at prayer time. From the platform of this mosque, we have a view of one of the largest Muhammadan buildings of the city, the Husainabad Imambara, built in 1837, by Muhammad Ali Shah, as a burial place for himself and his mother. It is almost entirely of painted stucco. Beyond its tallest minaret can be seen in the distance the red brick Clock-Tower of the city. Here we see the Karbala or burying place of Diana-ud-daula, of red sandstone, with a gilded cupola, and close by is the Kasmain, whose architecture is copied from that of a sacred place in Bagdad.

|49.
The Chhattar Manzil, Lucknow.| |50.
Women planting Tobacco Plants, Lucknow.| Next we see the Chhattar Manzil, once the Palace of the Kings of Oudh, now transformed into the United Service Club. Finally, in contrast, is a scene near the Residency, showing women planting out young tobacco plants, with an irrigation well in the background. Notice the oxen pulling at the rope with a skin attached, which draws up the water.

Already the busy hive of industry at Cawnpore plays no mean part in the economy of the Indian Empire, but for British ears Cawnpore and Lucknow have a historical and deeper interest. These two cities were the focus of those events in the tragic year 1857, which we speak of as the Indian Mutiny. At that time British India was still ruled by the East India Company, an Association founded at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The British East India Company had at first purely mercantile aims, but, as we have already heard in these lectures, was soon involved in native intrigues and wars owing to the rivalry of the competing French Company. Robert Clive went out to India as a writer or clerk in the employ of “John Company,” as it was called, but he exchanged the pen for the sword, and by his defence of Arcot brought about the defeat of the French party in the Carnatic, and the supremacy of the British Company in that state. So he established the Madras Province around Fort Saint George on the southeastern coast. The great Colonel Clive, who recaptured Calcutta and won the Province of Bengal by the decisive victory at Plassey, was the same soldier grown a little older in the service of the same great Company.

By successive stages in the next two or three generations the East India Company was deprived of its trading monopolies. At the time of the Mutiny it was in fact merely the Government of India, and was controlled even in this function by the British Government. The Company maintained a large army of sepoys or native soldiers, officered by Europeans, and also a small force that was wholly British. In the years immediately preceding the Mutiny, great changes had been made in India. In one way or another several native governments had been overthrown, and among these was the Kingdom of Oudh, whose capital was at Lucknow, which was annexed because of its misrule. There was hence much unrest among some of the Indian peoples, and the spirit of discontent spread to the native army of Bengal, mostly recruited from Oudh. Then an unfortunate incident occurred. A new form of cartridge was supplied to the troops, the end of which had to be bitten off before the old fashioned gun of those times could be loaded. Rumour got about that beef grease or pigs’ fat had been employed in the manufacture of these cartridges. Now the Hindus regard oxen as sacred, and the Musulmans look on the pig as unclean. The Hindus use oxen as draught animals for their ploughs and their carts, but to kill them or to eat their flesh is sinful. So it was that the agitators were able to play on the superstitions and prejudices of the ignorant soldiers. The mutinous troops murdered many of their white officers, and gradually gathered into three armies, which attacked the small loyal native forces and the white men and women who had collected at Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. Of the fall of Delhi and its re-capture by the British we will speak later when we come to describe in the seventh lecture the northern part of India. Assistance came to that place, not from Calcutta and the sea, but from the great newly acquired Province of the Punjab, which remained loyal. Cawnpore and Lucknow lay, however, far to the southeast of Delhi, and were inaccessible from that direction. Sir Henry Lawrence was in command at Lucknow, and General Wheeler at Cawnpore. In each case the native city was abandoned, and the small loyal native force and white refugees were gathered into an area more possible of defence. General Havelock led the first army of relief from Calcutta and Allahabad towards Cawnpore, but before he arrived, the little garrison, trusting to treacherous promises, had surrendered. They marched down to the river to take boat for Allahabad, and there most of them were slain—men, women, and children. A few were imprisoned at Cawnpore and were massacred a fortnight later.

|51.
Massacre Ghat, Cawnpore.| |52.
The Same—another View.| We have here the ghat, now known as Massacre Ghat, by which the English went down to the fatal shore, and here another and wider view of the same scene. The road that leads down to the ghat is shaded by some fine trees, behind which were hidden on the 27th June, 1857, the mutineers who carried out the massacre. In the distance can be seen the red brick piers of the Oudh and Rohilkund Railway bridge, built of course since the Mutiny.

Retribution soon came to the mutineers. General Havelock marched from Allahabad with some two thousand men, and in a fierce battle defeated the rebels under Nana Sahib, and entered Cawnpore. He then tried to carry relief across the forty miles of plain northeastward to Lucknow. Twice he failed, and was forced back, but at last he effected his entry to that city, with a force so weak, however, that it was impossible to keep open his communications, and the reinforced garrison at Lucknow was subjected to a renewal of the siege. At last Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, arrived with an army sent out from Britain. We must remember that in those days there was no Suez Canal, and communication with India was round the Cape of Good Hope. Fortunately an expedition was on its way to China when the Mutiny broke out, and this force was diverted to Calcutta, and supplied the first relief, which was led, as we have seen, by General Havelock.

|53.
The Residency, Lucknow.| |54.
The Tower of the Residency.| |55.
The Baillie Gate, Lucknow.| |56.
The Ammunition Mosque in the Residency.| |57.
The Monument outside the Residency.| The defence at Lucknow centered in the Residency, the official home that is to say of the British Resident at the court of the recently dethroned King of Oudh. The Residency is now in ruins, as we see in the three slides which follow. Here is a view taken from the direction of the Baillie Gate, and here is the Tower. Here is the Baillie Gate itself, the scene of the most furious attacks on the British position. The old man whom we note with his hat off and a medal on his breast is the guardian of the place, a veteran of the Mutiny, who as a boy took part in the defence of Lucknow. These Mutiny veterans have now become but a very small band. Here in the Residency is another ruin, the mosque in which the ammunition was kept during the siege, and here is the Monument to the loyal native soldiers. It bears the following inscription:—“To the memory of the native officers and sepoys who died near this spot nobly performing their duty.” This monument was erected in 1875 by Lord Northbrook, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, and serves to remind us that the Indians who fell in defence of our flag outnumbered the British. The Tower of the Residency can be seen in the background.