This is no exaggeration. It is the every day practice of the police. They exercise a real despotism. They have set up a reign of terror. The nature of the ryot is such, that he will submit to a great deal to avoid having to leave his home and his work. The police take full advantage of this feeling, and being perfectly unscrupulous, insatiably rapacious, and leagued together in villany, they make a golden harvest out of every case put into their hands. They have made the name of justice stink in the nostrils of the respectable and well-to-do middle classes of India.
The District Superintendents are men of energy and probity, but after all they are only mortal. What with accounts, inspections, reports, forms, and innumerable writings, they cannot exercise a constant vigilance and personal supervision over every part of their district. A district may comprise many hundred villages, thousands of inhabitants, and leagues of intricate and densely peopled country. The mere physical exertion of riding over his district would be too much for any man in about a week. The subordinate police are all interested in keeping up the present system of extortion, and the inspectors and sub-inspectors, who wink at malpractices, come in for their share of the spoil. There is little combination among the peasantry. Each selfishly tries to save his own skin, and they know that if any one individual were to complain, or to dare to resist, he would have to bear the brunt of the battle alone. None of his neighbours would stir a finger to back him; he is too timid and too much in awe of the official European, and constitutionally too averse to resistance, to do aught but suffer in silence. No doubt he feels his wrongs most keenly, and a sullen feeling of hate and wrong is being garnered up, which may produce results disastrous for the peace and wellbeing of our empire in the East.
As a case in point, I may mention one instance out of many which came under my own observation. I had a moonshee, or accountant, in one of my outworks in Purneah. Formerly, when the police had come through the factory, he had been in the habit of giving them a present and some food. Under my strict orders, however, that no policemen were to be allowed near the place unless they came on business, he had discontinued paying his black mail. This was too glaring an infringement of what they considered their vested rights to be passed over in silence. Example might spread. My man must be made an example of. I had a case in the Court of the Deputy Magistrate some twenty miles or so from the factory. The moonshee had been named as a witness to prove the writing of some papers filed in the suit. They got a citation for him to appear, a mere summons for his attendance as a witness. Armed with this, they appeared at the factory two or three days before the date fixed on for hearing the cause. I had just ridden in from Purneah, tired, hot, and dusty, and was sitting in the shade of the verandah with young D., my assistant. One policeman first came up, presented the summons, which I took, and he then stated that it was a warrant for the production of my moonshee, and that he must take him away at once. I told the man it was merely a summons, requiring the attendance of the moonshee on a certain date, to give evidence in the case. He was very insolent in his manner. It is customary when a Hindoo of inferior rank appears before you, that he removes his shoes, and stands before you in a respectful attitude. This man's headdress was all disarranged, which in itself is a sign of disrespect. He spoke loudly and insolently; kept his shoes on; and sat down squatting on the grass before me. My assistant was very indignant, and wanted to speak to the man; but rightly judging that the object was to enrage me, and trap me into committing some overt act, that would be afterwards construed against me, I kept my temper, spoke very firmly but temperately, told him my moonshee was doing some work of great importance, that I could not spare his services then, but that I would myself see that the summons was attended to. The policeman became more boisterous and insolent. I offered to give him a letter to the magistrate, acknowledging the receipt of the summons, and I asked him his own name, which he refused to give. I asked him if he could read, and he said he could not. I then asked him if he could not read, how could he know what was in the paper which he had brought, and how he knew my moonshee was the party meant. He said a chowkeydar had told him so. I asked where was the chowkeydar, and seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's behaviour to lose my temper. The second man was not such a brute as the first, and when I proceeded to ask their names and all about them, and told them I meant to report them to their superintendent, they became somewhat frightened, and tried to make excuses.
I told them to be off the premises at once, offering to take the summons, and give a receipt for it, but they now saw that they had made a mistake in trying to bully me, and made off at once. Mark the sequel. The day before the case was fixed on for hearing, I sent off the moonshee who was a witness of my own, and his evidence was necessary to my proving my case. I supplied him with travelling expenses, and he started. On his way to the Court he had to pass the thanna, or police-station. The police were on the watch. He was seized as he passed. He was confined all that night and all the following day. For want of his evidence I lost my case, and having thus achieved one part of their object to pay me off, they let my moonshee go, after insult and abuse, and with threats of future vengeance should he ever dare to thwart or oppose them. This was pretty 'hot' you think, but it was not all. Fearing my complaint to the superintendent, or to the authorities, might get them into trouble, they laid a false charge against me, that I had obstructed them in the discharge of their duty, that I had showered abuse on them, used threatening language, and insulted the majesty of the law by tearing up and spitting upon the respected summons of Her Majesty. On this complaint I was accordingly summoned into Purneah. The charge was a tissue of the most barefaced lies, but I had to ride fifty-four miles in the burning sun, ford several rivers, and undergo much fatigue and discomfort. My work was of course seriously interfered with. I had to take in my assistant as witness, and one or two of the servants who had been present. I was put to immense trouble, and no little expense, to say nothing of the indignation which I naturally felt, and all because I had set my face against a well known evil, and was determined not to submit to impudent extortion. Of course the case broke down. They contradicted themselves in almost every particular. The second constable indeed admitted that I had offered them a letter to the magistrate, and had not moved out of the verandah during the colloquy. I was honourably acquitted, and had the satisfaction of seeing the lying rascals put into the dock by the indignant magistrate and prosecuted summarily for getting up a false charge and giving false evidence. It was a lesson to the police in those parts, and they did not dare to trouble me much afterwards; but it is only one instance out of hundreds I could give, and which every planter has witnessed of the barefaced audacity, the shameless extortion, the unblushing lawlessness of the rural police of India.
It is a gigantic evil, but surely not irremediable. By adding more European officers to the force; by educating the people and making them more intelligent, independent, and self-reliant, much may be done to abate the evil, but at present it is admittedly a foul ulcer on the administration of justice under our rule. The menial who serves a summons, gets a decree of Court to execute, or is entrusted with any order of an official nature, expects to be bribed to do his duty. If he does not get his fee, he will throw such impediments in the way, raise such obstacles, and fashion such delays, that he completely foils every effort to procure justice through a legal channel. No wonder a native hates our English Courts. Our English officials, let it be plainly understood, are above suspicion. It needs not my poor testimony to uphold their character for high honour, loyal integrity, and zealous eagerness to do 'justly, and to walk uprightly.' They are unwearied in their efforts to get at truth, and govern wisely; but our system of law is totally unsuited for Orientals. It is made a medium for chicanery and trickery of the most atrocious form. Most of the native underlings are utterly venal and corrupt. Increased pay does not mean decrease of knavery. Cheating, and lying, and taking bribes, and abuse of authority are ingrained into their very souls; and all the cut and dry formulas of namby pamby philanthropists, the inane maunderings of stay-at-home sentimentalists, the wise saws of self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or would end in anything but anarchy and chaos.
It sounds very well in print, and increases the circulation of a paper or two among the Baboos, to cry out that our task is to elevate the oppressed and ignorant millions of the East, to educate them into self-government, to make them judges, officers, lawgivers, governors over all the land. To vacate our place and power, and let the Baboo and the Bunneah, to whom we have given the glories of Western civilization, rule in our place, and guide the fortunes of these toiling millions who owe protection and peace to our fostering rule. It is a noble sentiment to resign wealth, honour, glory, and power; to give up a settled government; to alter a policy that has welded the conflicting elements of Hindustan into one stable whole; to throw up our title of conqueror, and disintegrate a mighty empire. For what? A sprinkling of thinly-veneered, half-educated natives, want a share of the loaves and fishes in political scrambling, and a few inane people of the 'man and brother' type, cry out at home to let them have their way.
No. Give the Hindoo education, equal laws, protection to life and property; develop the resources of the country; foster all the virtues you can find in the native mind; but till you can give him the energy, the integrity, the singleness of purpose, the manly, honourable straightforwardness of the Anglo-Saxon; his scorn of meanness, trickery, and fraud; his loyal single-heartedness to do right; his contempt for oppression of the weak; his self-dependence; his probity. But why go on? When you make Hindoos honest, truthful, God-fearing Englishmen, you can let them govern themselves; but as soon 'may the leopard change his spots,' as the Hindoo his character. He is wholly unfit for self-government; utterly opposed to honest, truthful, stable government at all. Time brings strange changes, but the wisdom which has governed the country hitherto, will surely be able to meet the new demand that may be made upon it in the immediate present, or in the far distant future.
CHAPTER XV.
Jungle wild fruits.—Curious method of catching quail.—Quail nets. —Quail caught in a blacksmith's shop.—Native wrestling.—The trainer.—How they train for a match.—Rules of wrestling.—Grips. —A wrestling match.—Incidents of the struggle.—Description of a match between a Brahmin and a blacksmith.—Sparring for the grip.—The blacksmith has it.—The struggle.—The Brahmin getting the worst of it.—Two to one on the little 'un!—The Brahmin plays the waiting game, turns the tables and the blacksmith.—Remarks on wrestling.