There have been men of splendid capabilities for understanding and
sympathizing with these points of view, men such as Sir James Outram, the
Bayard of India; Sir John Malcolm, Lord Elphinstone, Sir George Russell
Clerk, Lord Lawrence, Ovans, and many others, who helped forward the
better understanding between England and India very greatly; and of these,
Outram suffered grievous misrepresentations at the hands of his
Government, Clerk was put aside, and Ovans had to stand his trial in
England for an absolutely unjustifiable charge.
Whenever the question of co-operation and sympathy comes up, as from time to time it does, between Englishmen and Indians, whether it is fifty or sixty years ago, in Newman's day or now in the year of grace 1909, with a few honourable exceptions, the answer is identically the same. It is practically an unknown quantity. The East and West have not really met. Still the ranks of the service are absorbed by Englishmen; still, as all educated Indians protest, the "true centre of gravity for India is in London"; still India is unrepresented in the Viceroy's Executive Councils, and in Customs, Post, Survey, Telegraph, Excise, etc., and also in the Commissioned ranks of the Army; still, because district administration is to all intents and purposes not in existence, there is no compulsory education for boys and girls, though most educated Indians are very strongly in favour of it.
It is not, it cannot be, because our eyes, as a nation, have been shut to the fact of what the faults of our own administration have been in years gone by. If no one else had trumpeted them abroad, at least one man spoke out the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it in the last century: Francis, the great Social Reformer—Francis Newman, who was no time-server, no prophesier of smooth things; but, as much as in him lay, desired more than anything else to lay the whole unvarnished truth before his fellow men, things that concerned the weaker members of the community. In lecture after lecture he turned things to the "rightabout-face" which had hitherto been done sub rosâ in India. He did in effect pull down the very rose tree which had acted as such an efficient shelter. His bull's- eye lantern always cast an uncompromising glare upon those sometimes very "shady" doings of our countrymen which characterized their treatment of natives in the early Victorian era, and—occasionally perhaps, even since.
No one has forgotten, for instance, the words of Mr. Halliday, Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, when he described our police as a curse to India in 1854.
Newman reminded his countrymen that in 1852 a petition had been sent to the House of Commons from Lower Bengal, "among other grievous complaints," which "stated that by reason of the hardships inflicted on witnesses, the population" were averse from testifying to the ill-doings and tyranny of these police.
Again, as regarded the courts of law in India, Newman reminded us of the revelations contained in that volume by the Hon. Mr. Shore concerning our Government (the book which was withdrawn 1844).
It was there stated definitely that, until the days of Lord William Bentinck, Persian was the only language used in these courts. Consequently, as neither judge, nor clerk, nor litigating party, nor person accused, nor his witnesses understood it, it constantly happened that the case was a veritable reductio ad absurdum. No one knew what was happening until at last the man—if it was a case of murder—was shown that the case had gone against him by being shown the gallows!
It is true nous avons changé tout cela, in these days, and the vernacular tongue is used instead, but now it is the judge who doesn't always know accurately what is going on, for he cannot always understand what the witnesses are saying! As Newman says very shrewdly: "If self- confident, he trusts his own impressions; if timid, he leans on the judgment of his native clerk; if formal and pedantic, he believes all clear and coherent statements. His weaknesses are watched, and it is soon understood whether he is to be better managed by fees to the clerk, or by the forging of critical evidence, in cases for which it is worth while. Very scandalous accounts have been printed in great detail … and one thing is clear, that those Englishmen who have looked keenly into the matter and dare to speak freely, believe justice to have a far worse chance in such tribunals than before native judges."
Francis Newman tells us that his own eyes were opened to the prevailing state of things in those days, by "a very intelligent, and widely informed indigo-planter." He told him that when he first began indigo-planting, his partner had given this emphatic rule of conduct: "Never enter the Company's Courts!" And to his own amazed question as to what course of action was to be pursued when a difficulty arose, he clearly and openly explained. "If a native failed to pay us our dues, we never sued him, but simply publicly seized some of his goods, sold them by auction, deducted our claim from the proceeds, and handed over to him the balance." There is something almost humorous in this travesty of an amende honorable for so highhanded a measure!
One may in very deed be thankful that since the day of all these happenings, Indians have, as Mr. Gokhale tells us, "climbed in the field of law, to the very top of the tree," and can now deal out first-hand justice to their fellow countrymen.