If a review of the course pursued by our people in India shows how we became the governing power, and indicates the ground on which our rule rests, a review of the history of India for ages previous to our advent, and of the condition in which we found it, will help us greatly in answering the question—Has India been benefited or injured by our having seized the sceptre?
MUHAMMADAN RULE.
For centuries Muhammadans were the rulers of India. They entered, not to avenge wrongs done to them, but as the servants of Allah, called to put down idolatry, and entitled to rule over the nations they subdued. Centuries elapsed before the extension of their rule beyond the North-West region. Gradually it extended to other parts of India. The seventeenth century was well advanced before the greater part of Southern India came under the rule of the Emperor of Delhi—the Shah-un-shah, King of kings, as he was called. His suzerainty was generally acknowledged in those lands which continued under Hindu rulers.
As we turn over page after page of the Muhammadan rule in India, what scenes of strife, of bloody war, of treachery, of desolated countries, continually meet our view! No sooner did an emperor die than the struggle commenced for the vacant throne between his many sons, brother fighting with brother till one became the victor, and then woe to the vanquished! The governors of Provinces, as soon as they thought they had sufficient power, rebelled against the sovereign, and struggled—not infrequently with success—to secure an independent throne. In the course of these civil wars countries were overrun, towns and villages levelled with the ground, their inhabitants massacred, and their property pillaged. We read of rival dynasties which contended with each other for empire. We are told of terrible invasions like those of Timour and Nadir Shah. There were no doubt great emperors, such as the illustrious Akbar, during whose rule India suffered comparatively little from war, and enjoyed great prosperity. Governors were now and then firm and just rulers. Looking at the whole period of Muhammadan rule, during no part of which India was free from the scourge of war, and during a great part of which war on a large scale was carried on, untold misery must have been endured by many of its inhabitants, and there was little security for life and property. The aristocracy of the emperors' courts was mainly that of office, and only to a limited degree that of blood and ancient possession. We find persons of mean birth rising to greatness, and persons on the very pinnacle of honour cast down to the ground. There was a succession of emperors called Slave Emperors, as they had originally been slaves in the court, whence they rose to supreme power. When we consider the teaching of the Quran respecting those who do not submit to Islam, we may suppose what the condition of the Hindus was under Muhammadan rulers, so far as they acted out their principles. Happily during this period, though constantly exposed to terrible disasters, the people in their villages were often left to manage their own affairs.
THE REIGN OF ADVENTURERS.
When our nation commenced its conquering career in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Muhammadan Empire was in a state of collapse. Within thirteen years of Aurungzeb's death, in 1706, six sovereigns were seated on the imperial throne. Shah Alum was nominal emperor from 1759 to 1806, and all the time he was a wanderer, a prisoner, or a pensioner of the Mahrattas, the Rohillas, or the English. He was as melancholy an example of fallen greatness as can well be conceived, a greatness which retained its title while its bearer was subjected to every indignity. He had been for some time in the hands of the Mahrattas, who used his seal freely, and at the same time treated him with the utmost cruelty. The food supplied was so insufficient that he and his household were almost starved. When Lord Lake took Delhi from the Mahrattas in 1803 he found the poor old blind emperor under a tattered canopy, trembling at what might now befall him. Some years previously his eyes had been gouged out by one of his Rohilla keepers. At once he was treated by us with the highest consideration. Power was not given, but a handsome pension was assigned, and he was personally treated with all the honour due to a reigning sovereign. When these facts are remembered, it is strange we should be charged with overthrowing the Muhammadan Empire in India. Whoever was injured by our conquest, Shah Alum and his family were assuredly benefited.
Our contention was with those whose only claim to rule rested on the sword. Bold adventurers had risen everywhere, and were snatching at the fallen sceptre. There were still emperors, as we have mentioned, and their prestige gave value to documents bearing their seal, but they did not retain a shred of power. Daring Europeans, helped by native allies, had set to carving out principalities for themselves. The viziers and nawabs that ruled in the name of the emperors rendered them neither obedience nor tribute. Our first great battle was fought with Suraj ud Dowla, the Nawab of Bengal, the grandson of Aliverdi Khan, an Afghan adventurer, who had acquired the government of the country. In the South we fought with Hyder Ali, a trooper who gathered under him a marauding band, and by courage and craft rose to being a sovereign, and with his son Tippoo Sahib. Our longest and most severe contests were with the Mahrattas, a warlike tribe of Hindus in Western India, who came first into prominence in the seventeenth century under Sivajee, a petty chieftain, and gradually advanced under various leaders till they became for a time the paramount power. Their hordes of horsemen scoured the country in all directions, north and south, east and west, demanding the chauth, the fourth part of the revenue, and returning to their capitals laden with spoil. The leaders with whom we had most to do, sometimes in the way of friendship, far more frequently in the way of warfare, were the Peshwa, the head of the Mahratta confederacy, the heir of Sivajee; Ranojee Bhonsla, a private horseman, who became Prince of Nagpore; Pilajee Gaikwar, a cowherd, who ruled in Baroda; Ranojee Scindia, a menial servant of the Peshwa, who made Gwalior his capital; and Mulhar Rao Holkar, a shepherd, who became Maharajah of Indore. Not one of their number professed to belong to the ancient ruling families of India.
As we glance at India as it was under Muhammadan rule, and consider its state when our conquering career began, we find there were no elements of stable government: the Imperial power had become a shadow; ambitious leaders were everywhere striving for the mastery, ready to beat down all opposition within their own immediate sphere, and then prepared to wrest power from neighbouring chiefs. India had at that time a very dark prospect before it.
This review of the past history of India may seem an unduly long introduction to a brief statement regarding its condition under our rule, but it is only by looking to the past a right answer can be given to the questions: What right have we to govern India? From what evils has our government delivered it? What benefits have we conferred on its population? Inattention to the past has led many to give in some cases an utterly wrong, in other cases a very inadequate, answer to these questions. It is clear that India has been brought under our rule by what may be rightly called aggressive war only to a very limited extent. It is also clear that the hostile forces we encountered were not those of the ancient princes of the land, but of adventurers who were struggling to rise on the ruins of the disorganized empire. At the present time, on the mere ground of the length of possession, our rule has a stronger claim than that of the potentates whom we overthrew.
THE ADVANTAGES OF BRITISH RULE.