The Native States of India, of which we have seen a series of examples, occupy about a third of the area of the whole country, and contain about one-fifth of the population. They represent in their present secure position a new phase of Anglo-Indian policy. The Indian Mutiny closed a period characterised by successive great annexations to the territory directly ruled by Britain. Since the Mutiny there has been no acquisition of directly ruled provinces, except in Burma. Therein the policy of the Empire differs markedly from that of the old East India Company. The King-Emperor now guarantees the privileges and separate modes of rule in the Feudatory States. As a result, there are no more loyal supporters of the British Raj than these great native chiefs, who in recent years have raised an army of Imperial Service Troops, to reinforce the Indian and British armies for the defence of the Empire and the maintenance of internal order.
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Political Map of India.| Let us cast our eye over the map and enumerate the principal divisions of India. Under direct British rule are in the south Madras and in the east Burma. Then in succession through the plain at the foot of the Himalayas are Eastern Bengal and Assam; Bengal; the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; and the Punjab. In the east centre round Nagpur are the Central Provinces, and in the west is the Presidency of Bombay, with the detached territory of Sind on the lower Indus. On the Northwestern Frontier are British Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province, while in the midst of Rajputana is the little district of Ajmer, and away in the south amid the forests of the Western Ghats the little district of Coorg. Ceylon, as was said in the first lecture, though British, is not a part of India, but a separate Crown Colony. All these Provinces are directly administered by the British Civil Service.
Now consider the Feudatory States. In the far south, from Cape Comorin along the west coast, we have the two little countries of Travancore and Cochin, ruled by Hindu Maharajas. They are far removed from all the greater problems of Indian Government, remote homes of the caste system in its most stringent form, and also, curiously, of a most ancient form of Christianity introduced long centuries ago from Nestorian sources in Western Asia. Then, north of the Nilgiri hills and the hill station of Ootacamund, is the State of Mysore, high on the plateau, completely surrounded by British territory of the Provinces of Madras, Bombay, and Coorg. The Maharaja here is a Hindu in religion, and the people are chiefly Hindu. Northward again, and still on the Deccan plateau, is the largest and most important native State of India, ruled from Hyderabad by the Nizam, a Musulman, who administers a country largely of Hindu religion. Then we have the two great groups of States, whose relations with the Empire are conducted by the Agencies of Central India and Rajputana. The most important of the Central Indian chiefs are Holkar and Sindhia, Marathas in a Hindi-speaking country, though in faith Hindus like their subjects. In Rajputana are the Rajput States of which we have spoken in this lecture.
It will be observed that, with the small exceptions of Travancore and Cochin, all the States thus far enumerated lie inland and are surrounded by British territory directly administered. The remaining native states form a fringe along the northern and northwestern borders. To the northeast amid the foot hills of the Himalayas are in succession, from east to west, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal. Of these, Nepal stands outside the Indian Protectorate in a special relation of independent alliance with the British Government. In the far north is the state of Kashmir, whose centre is a beautiful valley, with a lake in its midst, deeply sunk amid the Himalayan ranges proper. A part of the foot hills on the one hand and a length of the Tibetan Indus on the other hand are also included within the territory ruled by the Maharaja of Kashmir. To the northwest are the Pathan and Baluchi hill tribes in relation with the North West Frontier Province and British Baluchistan.
Such a survey as that which we have thus rapidly made gives perhaps the best idea of the complexity and vastness of the Indian Political System. The Indian Empire is in fact not a country but, as the inhabitants of the United States say of their own land, a sub-continent, and as regards everything but mere area the expression is far more true of India than of the United States, for in the United States a single race and a single religion are dominant, but in India a long history lives to this day in the most striking social contrasts, presenting all manner of problems which it will take generations to solve.
LECTURE VII.
DELHI.