So the rulers departed, and again the feeble old guns did their utmost to voice the honours due to Imperial grandeur. Then the Maharajah returned to his sofa, and a sigh of relief appeared to pass through the hall. I thought I could even hear it from behind the carved shutters of the gallery, where ladies stood watching in seclusion, like the ladies behind the grill of our House of Commons. The attendants again bore garlands, bouquets, and sprinklers into the hall. The Maharajah was garlanded first, and then his son, the heir to the sofa, who received his honours with a superior smile that told of Oxford’s contamination. The most peculiar part of the ceremony came next, when silver plates were brought in, heaped high with vermillion powder and with yellow, to represent the fertilizing dust of flowers in spring, and this dust was thrown in handfuls over the Maharajah and his heir, and then over each Sirdar in turn.
Suddenly the white chests of all those loyal counsellors blazed with patches of scarlet and gamboge, while pipes and drum pursued their own wild will, and the dancing-girl danced up seductively. Then the Maharajah rose, and the whole assembly followed him from the hall. The climax had been reached, and the ceremony of spring was over, except that for the rest of the day the street boys rejoiced in “all the fun of the fair,” throwing red and yellow powder over the passers-by. And if they mixed a little oil with the powder, the passer-by would recall the flowers that bloom in the spring whenever he put those clothes on again.
You would suppose that such a ceremony was but the childish consolation of some wretched prince, whom we allow to retain on sufferance the pomps and vanities of barbaric splendour, just as an idiot heir is allowed a rocking-horse and wooden sword by his trustees. And that is partly true. It is in the spirit of interested trustees for idiot children that the British Government gives the Maharajah that artillery to play with, and arms his handful of troops with ancient muzzle-loaders that I had despaired of ever seeing in use. An ordinary and enfeebled ruler might thus solace himself with pretty shows for a life of miserable impotence, just as Napoleon’s son played at soldiers in the Austrian palaces. Such is the end of most of those who are born to rule our Native States. Fantastic palaces in every street, marble courts where fountains play all the summer, bedizened elephants in lordly rows, bejewelled girls beyond the dreams of Solomon, studs of horses ceaselessly neighing, changes of golden clothes for every hour of the day and night, heaps of golden coins piled high in treasuries, drink deep as wells, exquisite foods selected from Paris to Siam—oh, but to be weak is miserable!
But the ruler of Baroda has the strength that conquers power out of weakness. Brought up among the temptations of princes, cheated with the mockeries of authority, distrusted as seditious for the very excellence of his reforms, he has raised his little State of some two million souls to become the most advanced and best administered district of India, with the possible exception of Mysore. I know the worst that can be said against him. His land-tax is rather above the average of British India, but at all events his entire income of just under £1,000,000 a year is spent in the country itself, and does not go to cherish the annuitants in Cheltenham or Whitehall. Like the English aristocracy, he is fond of building more houses than one man needs to live in. Like the late Lord Salisbury and Mr. Kruger, he displays an exaggerated solicitude in providing for members of his family, beyond the requirements of laudable thrift. And, worst fault of all, he has been sometimes suspected of imitating the Anglo-Indian authorities in favouring Europeans at the cost of fully qualified Indians. On one occasion also, I believe, he conducted a punitive expedition, on almost British lines, against some troublesome villagers. I know all this is said, and much of it is very likely true, for even in a hovel it is difficult to live above reproach. But I have also heard that in the foolish Durbar at Delhi, when other native rulers salaamed and prostrated themselves to earth, the Maharajah of Baroda went up to Lord Curzon like a man, and shook him heartily by the hand; and I think that story as likely to be true as the others.
It is now over twenty-five years since he entered upon his power, after a few years of tutelage under the British Government, which had deposed his predecessor for overstepping the latitude granted to native rulers in everything but politics. In that quarter-century, by the help of carefully chosen Ministers, such as Mr. Romesh Chandra Dutt, he has realized reforms in government and daily life that are continually called impossible by ourselves. Throughout his whole State he has absolutely separated the judicial from the executive functions—a reform that we have acknowledged for years to be essential for India, but are boggling over still. He has restored the ancient village Panchayat, or parish council, by the men whom villagers can trust, whereas, in our passion for rigid and centralized power, we have almost destroyed the last vestige of this national training in self-government.
After a careful experiment for fourteen years in one district, he has now made primary education compulsory and universal throughout his State. Whereas in British India the Government expenditure upon primary education still stood in 1906-7 at about £200,000, or considerably less than £1 per thousand of the population, in Baroda the proportion was about £1 to every fifty-five, and the State counts more educated girls, for its size, than any other part of India. The latest step in constitutional reform has been the admission of genuinely elected members into the Legislative Council, which was to meet that year (1908) for the first time in its more democratic form. Such reforms as the Indian Government had at that time proposed for its Legislative Council, were only intended to frustrate what shadow of democratic principle then existed in them.
Making Yarn.
A Village Panchayat.