Mr. H. G. GELL
The years of Mr. Gell’s administration were fraught with anxiety and difficulties of various kinds. Social and semi-political events like the festivities in connexion with the Coronation of King Edward VII and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1903, the arrival of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1905, and the visit of the Amir Habibullah of Afghanistan in 1907, imposed much extra work upon the force. On the whole, however, they probably caused the Commissioner less real anxiety than the Muharram riots of 1904, the Bombay Postal strike of 1906, the mill-hand strikes of 1907 and 1908, the serious Tilak riots of 1908, and last but not least the strike of the Bombay Indian constabulary in 1907. Besides these symptoms of local discontent, the Commissioner and his somewhat old-fashioned detective agency had to grapple with a constantly growing stream of enquiries, reports and references, arising out of the spread of the dangerous Indian revolutionary movement, which was partly fostered and directed by men of extreme views living in France and America.
The baneful activities of Krishnavarma and the India House in London, of the brothers Savarkar, of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the Deccan, and of the anarchists of Bengal, had many ramifications in India, and, coupled with the malignant incitements to sedition disseminated by certain vernacular newspapers, imposed a large burden of confidential and secret work upon the various provincial and urban police-forces. Some of these were but poorly equipped to cope with this secret menace to the State. Bombay from its proximity to the Deccan, which was the focus of intrigue in western India, and from its position as the chief port of arrival from Europe, had an important part to play in the official struggle against the revolutionary movement. The difficulties which beset Mr. Gell’s administration resulted largely from the fact that he was working with a machine designed for dealing mainly with ordinary urban crime against person and property, and numerically inadequate even for that purpose. A thorough reorganization in respect of personnel, numbers and pay was required to render the Bombay police force capable of dealing effectively with the problems of the early years of the twentieth century.
The total numbers of the force in 1902 were 2,126 and the annual cost Rs. 773,580. The numbers remained practically stationary during Mr. Gell’s régime, despite a great expansion of the residential area and a steady increase of population during the first decade of the present century. The prolonged visitation of the plague led many of the richer Indian merchants to forsake their old family-houses in the crowded and low-lying parts of the city and to seek a new domicile on Malabar and Cumballa hills, which had previously been occupied almost wholly by European residents. Many of the less well-to-do citizens sought new quarters in the empty areas (the F and G divisions) in the north of the Island. The Commissioner drew the attention of Government in 1903 to the alterations which were taking place in Mahim, Sion, Matunga, Naigaon and adjacent parts, and emphasized the consequent need of more police for watch and ward. His view was corroborated by the census taken by the Municipal Health authorities in 1906, which showed that the total population of Bombay had increased by more than 200,000 since 1901, the increase being general over all sections of the City and Island. In the light of these facts a revision of the police establishment was obviously necessary, and but for two events of primary importance it would probably have taken the form of spasmodic increments to the existing strength and small enhancements in the salaries and allowances of the constabulary.
The first important event was the publication in 1905 of the report of the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon and presided over by Sir Andrew Frazer. Of the Indian police service generally the report was highly condemnatory, declaring it to be ‘far from efficient ... defective in training and organization ... inadequately supervised ... and generally regarded as corrupt and oppressive.’ Though these strictures referred chiefly to the district police forces of the various provinces, it was admitted that the police organization of the large cities required considerable overhauling. The Commissioners of Police in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were therefore instructed to submit proposals for a thorough reorganization, based mutatis mutandis upon the broad lines laid down by the Police Commission. Owing to pressure of work and other reasons Mr. Gell did not submit his proposals for reform for more than two years after the publication of the report of Sir A. Frazer’s Commission, and when they eventually reached the Bombay Government, the latter found it impossible to accept them. Moreover, circumstances connected with the outbreak and handling of the Tilak riots of July, 1908, led Government to believe that the police force needed a far more comprehensive reorganization than was contemplated by the Commissioner.
In September, 1908, therefore, the Governor, Sir George Clarke, (afterwards Lord Sydenham) appointed a special committee of three officials—Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Morison of the Indian Civil Service, Mr. S. M. Edwardes, also a member of the I. C. S., and Mr. Pheroze H. Dastur, 2nd Presidency Magistrate—to scrutinize Mr. Gell’s proposals, to take any evidence that might seem necessary, and finally to submit detailed proposals for the numerical strength, pay and duties of the various branches of the Police force. This committee held several meetings in September and October, examined the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and other members of the force, as well as certain leading citizens, and submitted its report at the end of October, 1908. The policy and proposals therein advocated met with the approval of the Bombay Government; but the further step of introducing the changes in the constitution of the force thereby involved, was not undertaken until after Mr. Gell’s departure on leave in 1909. The broad details of the scheme eventually sanctioned in September, 1910, can be explained more suitably in the next chapter, which deals with the administration of Mr. Gell’s successor. The facts mentioned above show the reason why the actual numbers of the force at the date of Mr. Gell’s departure were practically the same as they had been in 1902.
The second event of importance was the police strike, which obliged the Bombay Government to introduce revised rates of pay for the constabulary in advance of the general reorganization of the force. Rents in the city and the cost of living had been steadily rising since 1900, and the Indian police-constables, in common with other low-paid servants of Government, found the burden of supporting themselves and their families almost intolerable. The majority of them were Konkani Marathas—the large class which supplies the bulk of the mill-labour and the menial staff in public and private offices, and they could not remain unaffected by the general demand for higher wages which was being made at this time to all employers of labour. Their superior officers had assured them more than once that their appeals were being favourably considered and that some concessions would be granted, while the open sympathy with their circumstances and their difficulties shown by Mr. Souter, when acting as Commissioner in 1906, inspired them with the idea that their claim to increased pay was absolutely unquestioned and deserved instant confirmation by Government. They were also affected to some extent by the constant and often bitter criticism of the authorities, which appeared in the native Press, and by the incitements of professional agitators who urged them to follow the lead of the postmen, who went on strike in 1906, and adopt more overt measures to secure their demands. The unrest thus created culminated in a strike of a large proportion of the constabulary in 1907. Refusing to don their uniforms and report themselves for duty until Government assented to their request for higher pay, the men assembled in a body on the Esplanade maidan, where they were addressed by the chief agitators in their own ranks. The Commissioner was left to carry out the routine-work of the force with the help of the European police, a certain number of constables who remained loyal, and the comparatively useless body of Ramoshis. In brief, the police administration was practically at a standstill.
By resorting to a strike, the men had rendered themselves individually liable to prosecution; and when the strike was declared, Mr. Gell, with the approval of Government, caused some of the ringleaders to be arrested. But the Bombay Government was aware that their resort to illegitimate action was the outcome of a real grievance, which could only be redressed by enhancing the pay of the various grades. Consequently, of the men arrested, only two were subsequently placed before the Courts and sentenced to pay a nominal fine; and they and others were afterwards reinstated in the force. Simultaneously the Government sanctioned the long-delayed increase in the pay of the constables and native officers. The old fourth-grade constable on Rs. 10 per mensem disappeared for ever, the monthly pay of the lowest rank being fixed at Rs. 12 and of the three upper ranks at Rs. 13, Rs. 14, and Rs. 15. The pay of the havildars was also augmented. The announcement of the new rates put an end to the impasse caused by the men’s defection, and within a few days the force was again working with full vigour.
It was unfortunate that the concessions in respect of pay and allowances should have had the appearance of being extorted from the authorities by methods which, often objectionable in the case of private employees, are deplorable in the case of men appointed to be guardians of the public peace. The Bombay Government was not so much to blame for procrastination as might at first appear. They were perfectly prepared to grant the required increments of salary to the lower ranks of the force: but they wished to treat the revision of salaries as part and parcel of the general reorganization, rendered necessary by the Report of the Police Commission and by the increase of work resulting from the growth of the City. They had instructed the Commissioner to formulate proposals for reorganization, which had not been submitted at the date of the strike, and which, when they eventually received them in 1908, they found themselves unable to approve without further enquiry by an independent committee. The responsibility for the delay in granting relief to the constabulary cannot therefore be assigned wholly to the Bombay Government. A more rapid effort to prepare without delay a comprehensive scheme of reform might have helped to prevent the occurrence of an episode, which did not redound to the credit of the force.
The result of the revision of the pay of native officers and constables, secured in the manner described above, was an increase of the annual cost of the force from Rs. 773,000 odd in 1902 to Rs. 975,000 in 1908. These charges fell wholly upon the Provincial Government, in accordance with the provisions of the Bombay Police Charges Act of 1907. Since 1872 the cost of the force had been borne partly by Government and partly by the Bombay Municipality under Act III of 1872 and the subsequent Act III of 1888. The arrangement did not prove wholly satisfactory, and the Municipal Corporation evinced a tendency to deprecate increased expenditure on a department over which it had no direct control. After much discussion, therefore, between the Bombay Government and the Corporation’s representatives, Bombay Act III of 1907 was passed by the legislature. Under this enactment the Government was pledged to pay the whole charges of the police-force, and the Municipal Corporation was bound in return to shoulder the cost of primary education and, within certain limits, the cost of medical relief in the City. This arrangement in no wise absolved the Bombay Port Trust from its liability to pay a moiety of the charges of the harbour police and the entire cost of the police employed in the docks. On the other hand it enabled the Government to sanction, without the intervention or concurrence of the Corporation, such additional expenditure as might be involved in a thorough scheme of reorganization. When the latter scheme had been introduced by Mr. Gell’s successor, the improvement and standardization of the uniform of the European officers of the force and the abolition of the old municipal helmet-badges followed naturally upon the settlement of the changes embodied in the Act.