India Under British Rule from the Foundation of the East India Company

by James Talboys Wheeler

CHAPTER IV.—FOURTH PERIOD: RISE TO ASIATIC POWER.—1836-56.

§1. Russian advance checked by Nadir Shah, 1722-38. §2. First Cabul war under Lord Auckland, 1838-42. §3. Lord Ellenborough, 1842-44: return from Cabul and conquest of Sind. §4. War in Gwalior: reduction of Sindia's army. §5. Lord Hardinge, 1845-48: Sikh rule in the Punjab. §6. First Sikh war: Moodki, Ferozshahar, Aliwal, and Sobraon. §7. Lord Dalhousie, 1848-56: Second Sikh war: Chillianwalla and Goojerat: annexation of the Punjab. §8. British rule: patriarchal government. §9. Second Burmese war, 1852: annexation of Pegu. §10. Lord Dalhousie as an administrator: no roads in India. §11. Trunk road, trunk railway, telegraphs, Ganges canal. §12. Annexations of Nagpore, Satara, Jhansi, and Oudh. §13. India Bill of 1853: new competitive Civil Service. §14. New Legislative Council: Lord Macaulay and the Penal Code. §15. Departure of Lord Dalhousie, 1856. §16. Lord Canning, 1856-62: expedition to the Persian Gulf. §17. Mogul family at Delhi. §18. Condition of Oudh.

Lord Auckland, 1836-42: jealousy of Russia.

Lord Auckland landed in Bengal at a grave political crisis. Great Britain was growing jealous of Russia as regards India, and tact and common sense were required, not to promote a war, but to prevent one. Jealousy of Russia was a new sensation. Great Britain had been indignant at the partition of Poland, but the two nations had become reconciled during the wars against France and Napoleon. Later on Russia began to extend her empire, and to menace Turkey on one side and Persia on the other; and at last it dawned on the people of the British Isles that unless there was a speedy understanding between British and Russian diplomatists, the Cossack and the sepoy would cross swords on the banks of the Oxus.

Central Asia: Afghanistan and Turkistan.

§1. Central Asia is a new world which has been slowly opening up to European eyes. It includes the vast territories of Afghanistan and Turkistan, which intervene between British India, Persia, Russia, and China. It is a region of desert and mountain, ruined gardens and dried-up springs—the relics of empires which flourished in the days of the so-called Nimrod and Sennacherib, and the later days of the fire-worshippers, but were brought to rack and ruin by the Tartars and Turkomans in the armies of Chenghiz Khan and Timur.

Cradle of India.

The whole of this region, and, indeed, the whole of Central and Northern Asia, has been the cradle of the people of India from the remotest antiquity. Hindus and Mohammedans are all immigrants from beyond the Indus. The Dravidian races, the pre-Aryan people, brought their devil worship and noisy orgies from Northern Asia into Hindustan. Eventually they were driven to Southern India by the Aryan people, who brought the Vedic gods and hymns, the sacred hôma and the ministration of Rishis, from Persia and Media into Northern India. The Rajputs, the Greeks, and the Indo-Scythians of Hindustan, were all strangers from the north-west. The Turks and Afghans, who invaded India during the Crusades, and the Moguls, who established their empire in the days of the Tudors, were all sojourners from the same remote region. Thus Russia is only following the old instinct of Dravidians and Aryans, as she advances southward from the steppes towards Persia and India. She expands on land just as Great Britain expands on the sea.

Russian advance to Persia, 1722.

The marches of Tartar, Turk, Afghan, and Mogul belong to a distant period. The march of Russia began in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Peter the Great had been humiliated by Turkey on the banks of the Pruth, and looked to Persia for compensation. Persia was on the brink of ruin. In 1722 the Afghans had advanced to Ispahan; and the Czar and the Sultan prepared to divide her remaining territory. Turkey took the western provinces, whilst Russia occupied the provinces along the south of the Caspian. The Caspian was a base for an advance on India, and had Peter lived he would have found his way to India. The road was easy viâ Meshed to Herat, and the Mogul empire would have fallen into his hands like an over-ripe plum. The British at Calcutta were a little hive of traders, who would have been helpless to resist a Russian invasion. Most probably they would have preferred Russia to the Mogul, and would have sent a deputation to the Russian camp to pray for the protection of the Czar.