The healthy English tone of the European communities of Umritsur and Lahore is reflected in the newspapers of the Punjaub, which are the best in India, although the blunders of the native printers render the “betting news” unintelligible, and the “cricket scores” obscure. The columns of the Lahore papers present as singular a mixture of incongruous articles as even the Government Gazette offers to its readers. An official notice that it will be impossible to allow more than 560 elephants to take part in the next Lucknow procession follows a report of the “ice meeting” of the community of Lahore, to arrange about the next supply; and side by side with this is an article on the Punjaub trade with Chinese Tartary, which recommends the government of India to conquer Afghanistan, and to reoccupy the valley of Cashmere. A paragraph notices the presentation by the Punjaub government to a native gentleman, who has built a serai at his own cost, of a valuable gift; another records a brush with the Wagheers. The only police case is the infliction on a sweeper of a fine of thirty rupees for letting his donkey run against a high-caste woman, whereby she was defiled; but a European magistrate reprimands a native pleader for appearing in court with his shoes on; and a notice from the Lieutenant-Governor gives a list of the holidays to be observed by the courts, in which the “Queen‘s Birthday” comes between “Bhudur Kalee” and “Oors data Gunjbuksh,” while “Christmas” follows “Shubberat,” and “Ash Wednesday” precedes “Holee.” As one of the holidays lasts a fortnight, and many more than a week, the total number of dies non is considerable; but a postscript decrees that additional local holidays shall be granted for fairs and festivals, and for the solar and lunar eclipse, which brings the no-court days up to sixty or seventy, besides those in the Long Vacation. The Hindoos are in the happy position of having also six new-year‘s days in every twelvemonth; but the editor of one of the Lahore papers says that his Mohammedan compositors manifest a singular interest in Hindoo feasts, which shows a gratifying spread of toleration! An article on the “Queen‘s English in Hindostan,” in the Punjaub Times, gives, as a specimen of the poetry of Young Bengal, a serenade in which the skylark carols on the primrose bush. “Emerge, my love,” the poet cries
“The fragrant, dewy grove
We‘ll wander through till gun-fire bids us part.”
But the final stanza is the best:
“Then, Leila, come! nor longer cogitate;
Thy egress let no scruples dire retard;
Contiguous to the portals of thy gate
Suspensively I supplicate regard.”
The advertisements range from books on the languages of Dardistan to government contracts for elephant fodder, or price-lists of English beer; and an announcement of an Afghan history in the Urdu tongue is followed by a prospectus of Berkhamstead Grammar School. King Edward would rub his eyes were he to wake and find himself being advertised in Lahore.
The Punjaub Europeans, with their English newspapers and English ways, are strange governors for an empire conquered from the bravest of all Eastern races little more than eighteen years ago. One of them, taking up a town policeman‘s staff, said to me, one day, “Who could have thought in 1850 that in 1867 we should be ruling the Sikhs with this?”
CHAPTER XII.
OUR INDIAN ARMY.
During my stay in Lahore, a force of Sikhs and Pathans was being raised for service at Hong Kong by an officer staying in the same hotel with myself, and a large number of men were being enlisted in the city by recruiting parties of the Bombay army. In all parts of India, we are now relying, so far as our native forces are concerned, upon the men who only a few years back were by much our most dangerous foes.
Throughout the East, subjects concern themselves but little in the quarrels of their princes, and the Sikhs are no exception to the rule. They fought splendidly in the Persian ranks at Marathon; under Shere Singh, they made their memorable stand at Chillianwallah; but, under Nicholson, they beat the bravest of the Bengal sepoys before Delhi. Whether they fight for us or against us is all one to them. They fight for those who pay them, and have no politics beyond their pockets. So far, they seem useful allies to us, who hold the purse of India. Unable to trust Hindoos with arms, we can at least rule them by the employment as soldiers of their fiercest enemies.
When we come to look carefully at our system, its morality is hardly clear. As we administer the revenues of India, nominally at least, for the benefit of the Indians, it might be argued that we may fairly keep on foot such troops as are best fitted to secure her against attack; but the argument breaks down when it is remembered that 70,000 British troops are maintained in India from the Indian revenues for that purpose, and that local order is secured by an ample force of military police. Even if the employment of Sikhs in times of emergency may be advisable, it cannot be denied that the day has gone by for permanently overawing a people by means of standing armies composed of their hereditary foes.