Non-intervention.
Four provincial Courts of Circuit and Appeal were created by Lord Cornwallis, and remained without alteration for a period of forty years. One Court was at Calcutta, a second at Dacca, a third at Murshedabad, and a fourth at Patna. Each Court consisted of three civilian judges and three Asiatic expounders of the law, namely, a Mohammedan cazi and mufti, and a Hindu pundit. The judges sat in their respective cities to hear appeals in civil cases; and they went twice a year on circuit to try the prisoners who had been committed by the district magistrates within their respective jurisdictions.
Munsifs and darogahs.
Lord Cornwallis also created a class of Hindu civil judges named munsifs, and a new body of Asiatic police under the name of darogahs. These changes are best dealt with in connection with modern reforms which will be brought under review in a future chapter.
First war against Tippu.
Lord Cornwallis was engaged in two campaigns against Tippu of Mysore, the son and successor of Hyder Ali. The war is a thing of the past. Tippu had invaded the territory of the Hindu Raja of Travancore, who was under British protection; and a triple alliance was formed against him as a common enemy by the British Government, the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. In the end Tippu was reduced to submission and compelled to cede half his territories, which were distributed amongst the three allies. The confederation, which only lasted to the end of the war, is memorable for suggesting the idea of maintaining the peace of India by a balance of power, which for a brief interval dazzled the imaginations of Anglo-Indian statesmen.[15]
Shore, 1793-98; abolition of "dharna."
In 1793 Lord Cornwallis was succeeded by Sir John Shore, the Bengal civilian who pressed Lord Cornwallis to settle the rights and rents of the ryots before proclaiming the perpetual settlement with the zemindars. He is better known by his later title of Lord Teignmouth. He was the first British ruler who suppressed a Hindu institution. He put a stop to "sitting in dharna," a Hindu usage which was subversive of all justice and all law. It was based on the superstitious belief that the life of a Brahman was as sacred as that of a sovereign, and that killing a Brahman, or being in any way implicated in his death, was the most hideous crime that could be committed by mortal man. Any Brahman might ruin a Hindu, either for private revenge or to avenge another, by sitting at his door and refusing to take food. The victim was as helpless as a bird under the fascination of a serpent. He dared not eat so long as the Brahman fasted. He dared not move lest the Brahman should injure himself or kill himself—a catastrophe which would doom the victim to excommunication in this life and perdition in the next. The terrors of this superstition were removed by a British regulation passed in 1797; and although "sitting in dharna" is still a crime under the Penal Code, the memory of the usage is passing away.[16]
Sir John Shore strictly adhered to the old policy of non-intervention, which amounted to political isolation. Meanwhile the Mahratta powers united to demand enormous arrears of chout from the Nizam; and the Nizam was utterly defeated, prostrated and paralysed. All hope of a balance of power for the maintenance of the peace of India was thus cast to the winds. Finally, as if to show beyond all question the absurdity of the idea, the Mahratta powers were at war with each other for the mastery at Poona. Such was the state of affairs in 1798 when Lord Mornington, better known by his later title of Marquis of Wellesley, succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor-General, boasting, as he left Europe, that he was going to govern India from a throne with the sceptre of a statesman, and not from behind a counter with the yard measure of a trader.