India and Indian Engineering. / Three lectures delivered at the Royal Engineer Institute, Chatham, in July 1872

by J. G. Medley

Before leaving the subject of the Hindoo religion, I should perhaps mention that the hideous customs of Suttee (i.e. burning the living wife with the dead husband), and the suicide of pilgrims under the car of Juggernath, are now things of the past, and indeed they were never sanctioned by the Hindoo sacred books. The crime of female infanticide amongst certain high-caste tribes still remains, but it too has nothing to do with the Hindoo religion; it arises from the social custom that a man of high rank is disgraced if his daughter is unmarried, while the same tyrant custom has imposed on him the necessity of spending large sums at his daughters’ weddings. India is not the only country, nor are the Hindoos the only people, whom the tyranny of custom compels to extravagance and disregard of the obligations of common sense and right feeling, and even religious or moral duties.

Eight hundred and fifty years ago the Mahomedan armies overran India, and, after a series of fierce struggles, founded the empire of the Great Mogul at Delhi. Cities were sacked, their people massacred, temples and idols overthrown, and thousands of Hindoos were forcibly converted to Mahomedanism. But the fierce torrent soon spent its fury against the stolid wall of Hindooism. Few converts were made after the first few years, the new religion was even modified by the old, and at the present day the Mahomedans of India are scarcely one-tenth of the whole population, though doubtless a very important section of it. Generally speaking, they are a more manly race, as if they still possessed something of their former prestige. But Indian Mahomedanism is but a poor affair after all; it has taken from Hindooism the idea of caste, and the Turk, or even the Persian, would scarcely acknowledge his fellow-worshipper of India.

I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat. At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers are dwindling daily.

The Parsees of India are almost strangers and foreigners in the land like ourselves, descendants of the old Magi or Fire-worshippers of Persia, who, being driven out of their own country by persecution, have settled in India, where they form a small but very intelligent and respectable section of the community, possessing in a large degree those two rare qualities for an Eastern,—enterprise and public spirit. Several of them are, I believe, settled in London, and may be recognized by the peculiar high glazed hat which they always wear.

And in the midst of the 200 millions of dark-skinned people of the land dwell some 130 thousand British white faces, among them, but not of them, and indeed separated from them, not so much by the barriers of language, religion, and social customs, as by the far greater barrier of race, which, let philanthropists say what they will, has been created not without wise and useful purposes. The [English in India] are often judged harshly and unjustly on this head by their countrymen at home. We are told that we should mix more with the natives, and admit them on a footing of equality with ourselves. But how can you mix socially with men who will neither eat nor drink with you, and who would sooner see their wives and daughters dead than walking about with uncovered faces amongst strange men? The only real intimacy there can be between two races separated so far apart must be confined to those official or business relations in which there is a feeling of common interest; all beyond that must be forced and unnatural. If there is that equality between the races which some pretend, how is it we are there as rulers? I think, for my own part, that nothing is so apt to retard the advance of the weaker race, or to lessen the points of contact between the two, as the attempt to produce a forced and unnatural union, or to preach up an equality which every white man who has lived amongst the dark races knows in his heart does not exist.

I have often been asked whether the natives of India like us, and are attached to our rule, and it is rather a difficult question to answer. There cannot be much love or strong liking between people separated so completely in thought and feeling and almost every idea as we are, but there is often a very strong attachment to the individual Englishman placed in authority over, and living much amongst, them, such as an officer commanding a regiment, or a magistrate in charge of a district, an attachment which has often been severely tried (as during the days of the Mutiny), and which has often stood the trial successfully. As to liking for our Government, in the first place the great mass of the people in all probability never give the subject a thought; the present generation have no means of forming a comparison between British and native rule, and look upon the protection they enjoy for life and property as a matter of course. The better educated amongst them are more apt to resent their exclusion from the highest posts, than to be grateful for not having their throats cut and their houses plundered, as they might have been a hundred years ago.

The great drawback of our rule is, undoubtedly, that it is one of race over race. The Englishman, bred a free man, is forced into the position of a despot, and, in his endeavours to elevate his Indian subjects to the dignity of free men and the privileges of British citizens, he is rather apt to overdo the matter, and to forget the inherent differences of race; or, to put it in another form, to overlook the fact that our free ideas are the growth of several hundred years, just as their ideas are the growth of as many centuries of an entirely different history. Hence we are apt to see in India many ludicrous travesties of our public meetings, municipal institutions, and the like, at which the native attends to please his English superior, and does pretty well what he is told to do. When the native does attain to a high post, as a rule he is hated by his countrymen, who never thoroughly trust him, and would far sooner see an Englishman in his place.

Our attempts then at improvement are up-hill work, and made under all the disadvantages of the stiff and awkward part of our national character, which keeps us isolated even on the European continent. But we do our duty in India, I may fairly say, honestly and thoroughly, and if we have not gained the love, we have, at least, won the respect and confidence of our native subjects. If the motives of the Government are occasionally suspected or misrepresented, the individual Englishman at any rate is implicitly trusted. That is the real strength of our position, and if our Indian empire is ever destroyed by force, it will be through the decay in character of the individual Englishman.

It is the fashion in these days to sneer at what is called the selfish and exclusive policy of the old East India Company, and certainly no one could venture to propose now-a-days that the Indian Government should be vested with the power of granting or refusing a licence to any European who wished to visit India. Yet it is impossible not to respect the motive which caused the Company to ask for such a power in days gone by; their feeling that the stability of our rule depended, not upon brute force, but on prestige, on the belief the natives had of the superiority of our national character; and that every individual who, by loose or dishonest conduct, lowered that prestige in the eyes of the natives, was a dangerous enemy to the State, and ought to be removed. And when one sees, as unfortunately we often do see now-a-days in India, a disreputable and ragged fellow-countryman begging from house to house, or staggering about drunk in the native bazar, while the natives look upon him with mingled fear, contempt, and dislike, it is impossible not to wish that the power of deporting such wretched loafers from a country where they do incalculable harm, cannot be freely exercised.

And, looking on the reverse of the medal, we may say that what constitutes the great charm of an Anglo-Indian career is the feeling of individual responsibility and importance. The English are so few in number that everyone, whether civilian, soldier, merchant, or what not, as a rule enjoys a far higher position, and has more responsibility on his shoulders than he would have in a corresponding position at home. This applies more especially to the Government officials, charged with the administration of the country, and for that reason, scarcely any career offers such attractions as the Indian Civil Service. A young Englishman, very little past thirty, who, had he remained in England, might have thought himself lucky to be receiving his first brief, or might have been canvassing for the medical charge of a parish dispensary, finds himself governor of a district as large as three English counties, with a population of 300,000 souls, to whom he is the embodiment of the Government, and who look up to him for advice or direction on all possible and impossible subjects. He has extensive civil and criminal jurisdiction in his own court; he looks generally after all the schools in the district, superintends all the roads, bridges, buildings, jails, and municipal works; reports regularly to Government on the agriculture, trade, manufactures, statistics of every kind, and has usually some hobby of his own in addition; either starting agricultural shows, or improving the breed of horses, or lighting the towns with kerozine, or trying some new piece of machinery in the jail, which is the model manufactory of the district. His life may be lonely, for there are often not a dozen of his countrymen in the district. After his day’s work is done, there is neither theatre, opera, nor concert to go to, nothing, indeed, in the shape of public amusement; but he is, in truth, too tired to care for it, and the interest and responsibility of his work compensate him for all.