Eight Lectures on India

by Halford John Mackinder

Bombay has a population only a little smaller than that of Calcutta, and, like Calcutta and Madras, it is a new city, as time goes in the Immemorial East. The island on which it stands was presented to King Charles II. as part of the dower of his Portuguese Queen, and in order to enable the British the better to co-operate with the Portuguese in resisting the aggressions and encroachments of the Dutch. When handed over by the Portuguese, there was but a small settlement on the island. In 1668, however, Bombay was ceded to the East India Company, and the Company transferred thither the centre of its trade on the west coast of India, which had up to that time been at Surat, a hundred miles north of Bombay. Gradually the commerce of the port increased, although for a long time it was far outdistanced by Calcutta, whose great riverway extends, as we have seen, through densely peopled plains for a thousand miles inland. Eastward of Bombay, on the other hand, is the mountain face of the Western Ghats, barring easy access to the interior. The greatness of Bombay came only with the opening of the Suez Canal and of the railway lines up the Bhor and Thal Ghats, northeastward and southeastward into India.

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Exterior of Caves of Elephanta.| |24.
Caves of Elephanta.| |25.
The Same, showing the Trimurti.| |26.
Villagers of Elephanta.| In Bombay Harbour there is a small island, about six miles from the city, which is called Elephanta. It contains carved rock temples whose antiquity contrasts strangely with the modern city close by. We have here the entry to these temple caves, and here a view within. This is another picture, showing a three-faced image. The carving is some twenty feet high, and represents Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver. The nature of these gods was described in the first of these lectures. Here we have a little group of the villagers of Elephanta. The village has some seven hundred inhabitants. It is known as Elephanta because there was formerly conspicuous among the rock carvings of the temple a great elephant, which, however, decayed and fell some fifty years ago. The native name of the island means “the town of excavations.”

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Map of Bombay Presidency, Nizam’s Territory, and Maratha Country.| |28.
The Satara Hills, Maratha Country.| |29.
Native Plough, Maratha Country.| Now let us journey inland, up the Ghats, through their thick forests, and if it be the rainy season, past rushing waterfalls, until surmounting the brink top we come out on to the plain of the tableland, and into the relative drought of the upper climate. This is the Maratha country, and here we have a typical view of the open landscape which it presents. The hills in the distance are the Satara hills, extending west and east through the heart of India. Here is another view in this same Maratha Country. It shows a native plough at work, and in the background one of the table-topped mountains, which are studded over the surface of the generally level plateau, not unlike the kopjes of South Africa. These steep-sided isolated mountain blocks have often served as strongholds in warfare, and many of them are noted in connection with the Maratha wars, waged in this part of India a little more than a century ago under the lead of Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the great Duke of Wellington. At the foot of the mountain may just be seen one of the Towers of Silence of the Parsis.

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Maratha Soldier.| |31.
Map of the Maratha Dominions at their greatest extent.| The Marathas are a people of Hindu religion and Marathi language, which is akin, as we learned in the last lecture, to the Hindi of the United Provinces. Some four generations ago they raided most of India from their home on this high plateau of the Western Deccan, and the troops of the East India Company had to wage three successive wars with them. Had it not been for the British victory, there can be little doubt that the Marathas would have established an Empire in India. Their homeland round the city of Poona now forms the main portion of the Province of Bombay, but Maratha princes still rule large conquered countries as feudatories of the King-Emperor. This map shows us the dominion of the Marathas at its greatest extent, near the end of the eighteenth century, when they were the dominant warlike race of India. Their original home was not far from Poona. As they spread, five principal officers of court and state took the place of the dynasty of the Rajas, which became decrepit. These were the Peshwa, the Gaikwar, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Bhonsla. These five great chiefs conquered far and wide through all the heart of India. Sindhia’s dominions extended northward to Delhi, and Bhonsla’s eastward to Orissa on the east coast. The Peshwa was on the plateau round Poona. Holkar was seated at Indore between the Peshwa and Sindhia, and the Gaikwar at Baroda, in the fertile lowland round the head of the gulf of Cambay. At times there was rivalry and war between them, but with the exception of the Peshwa they were united by French intrigue in the time of Napoleon, with the result that we had to fight between the years 1803 and 1805 the most widespread war which we have ever fought in India. Our generals were Lake and Wellesley. The most brilliant victory was that of Assaye, in the plateau country just north of Poona. There, with three thousand troops, Wellesley defeated Sindhia’s army of twenty thousand men, organised by French officers, and captured an artillery of a hundred guns. Peace was made with the conquered Marathas about the time when Trafalgar was fought, and it was stipulated that they were for the future to allow no European influence in their States except the British. There was a subsequent Maratha war, but the great war just referred to was the most serious crisis through which the British rule in India has had to pass, perhaps not even excepting the Mutiny of 1857.

The Marathas are of Hindu religion, but the caste system is not with them carried to the extreme that prevails among other Hindus. They present, in fact, the nearest approach to a national caste. As we shall learn presently, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Gaikwar still rule great territories as Feudatory Princes, but Nagpur, the Bhonsla’s capital, is now the chief town of the Central Provinces of British India, and Poona, the capital of the Peshwa, is the seat of the Bombay Government during part of the year.

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Political Map of Bombay Province and Central India.| In contrast with the last map, showing the extent of the former Maratha Dominions, we have here a map of the central parts of India as they are to-day, with the Province of Bombay ruled directly by the British Government marked in red, and also the Central Provinces under direct British rule from Nagpur, but in addition it will be seen that in blue colour there are two patches of territory northeastward of Bombay, which bear the inscription Central India, a term to be carefully distinguished from the Central Provinces.

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Scene near Hyderabad.| |34.
Street Scene, in Hyderabad.| |35.
The Nizam’s Palace, Hyderabad.| Central India consists of Native Feudatory States, which acknowledge the British suzerainty, but are immediately ruled by their own Maharajas, of whom the two most important are the Maratha princes Holkar at Indore, and Sindhia at Gwalior. There is another larger patch of blue, southeastward of Bombay. This is the State of Hyderabad, ruled under British suzerainty by the Nizam. This great prince is however no Maratha, but a Musulman. His people for the most part speak the Dravidian language Telugu, and are Hindu by religion. Thus we see that none of these large states, each as important as one of the smaller European kingdoms, has for its ruler a man of the same race as the people. Sindhia and Holkar are Marathas ruling Hindi populations; the Nizam is a Musulman ruling Telugu-speaking Hindus. The Gaikwar of Baroda, it may be added, who governs a small but very rich and populous territory, is a Maratha ruling a Gujrati population. We have here a typical landscape in the Nizam’s territory, and see that it is not very different from the Maratha landscapes. It is on the same open Deccan plateau. This is a scene in Hyderabad itself, showing a procession of elephants, and then we see the Nizam’s Palace.

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Golkonda Fort.| Next we have a view of Golkonda Fort, placed on one of the usual flat-topped hills, and defended on one side by a large sheet of water. Golkonda is in the neighbourhood of Hyderabad, the capital of the Nizam’s dominions. Its name has become proverbial as indicative of immense wealth. Formerly it was the great Indian centre of diamond cutting and polishing, or in other words the Amsterdam of India. The diamonds were not found in the immediate neighbourhood, but in the extreme southeastern corner of the Nizam’s territory.

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The Same, nearer view.| |38.
A Bastion at the top of Golkonda Fort.| |39.
View from Golkonda Fort, looking Northeast.| |40.
Hindu Temple, Golkonda Fort.| |41.
Musulman Mosque, Golkonda Fort.| Here is a nearer view of Golkonda Fort, and here a view over the plain, from the bastion at the top of the Fort, from which can be seen the Tombs of the Kings about half a mile away. These kings belonged to a great Musulman dynasty which ruled here during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until it was overthrown by Aurangzeb. Next we have, near the summit of the Fort, the ruins of a Hindu temple, and close by, shown in the following slide, the remains of a Muhammadan mosque. The Fort, therefore, in its ruins, records the essential history of the country, first the Hindu civilization, and then two successive Musulman conquests.

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Mahbub College, Secunderabad.| |43.
Ploughing at Agricultural School at Aurangabad.| |44.
A Queen’s Boy at the same School.| Some of these Feudatory Native States do not lag far behind the territories directly ruled by British officials. Western civilization is permeating all India under the British suzerainty. At Secunderabad and Aurangabad, places in the Nizam’s Dominions, are, for instance, Agricultural and Industrial Schools. Here is a group of students at the Mahbub College, Secunderabad, and here a view taken at the Agricultural School at Aurangabad, which shows some of the students ploughing. One of the gentlemen in the foreground is the Director of Public Instruction in the Nizam’s State, and by his side is the Superintendent of the School. Then we see an orphan student, a “Queen’s boy.” He will probably settle down in a year or two’s time, very likely marrying one of the “Queen’s girls.” With a portion of his scholarship saved up for him, he will purchase the necessary bullocks and plough. He came to the college from the Victoria Memorial Orphanage, where each child is trained in his own religion.