December 20, 1849.—Saleepoor, ten miles. The country, on both sides of the road, well studded with trees, hamlets, and villages, and well cultivated and peopled. The landholders and peasantry seem all happy and secure under their present masters, the brother and son of the late Dursun Sing. They are protected by them from thieves and robbers, the attacks of refractory barons, and, above all, from the ravages of the King's troops; and the whole face of the country, at this season, is like that of a rich garden. The whole is under cultivation, and covered with the greatest possible variety of crops. The people showed us, as we passed, six kinds of sugar-cane, and told us that they had many more, one soil agreeing best with one kind, another with another. The main fault in the cultivation of sugar-cane is here, as in every other part of India that I have seen, the want of room and the disregard of cleanliness. They crowd the cane too much, and never remove the decayed leaves, and sufficient air is never admitted.
Bukhtawar Sing has always been considered as the head of the family to whom Shahgunge belongs, but he has always remained at Court, and left the local management of the estate and the government of the districts, placed under their charge in contract or in trust, to his brothers and nephews. Bukhtawar Sing has no child of his own, but he has adopted Maun Sing, the youngest son of his brother, Dursun Sing, and he leaves all local duties and responsibilities to him. He is a small, slight man, but shrewd, active, and energetic, and as unscrupulous as a man can be. Indeed old Bukhtawar Sing himself is the only member of the family that was ever troubled with scruples of any kind whatever; for he is the only one whose boyhood was not passed in the society of men in the every-day habit of committing with impunity all kinds of cruelties, atrocities, and outrages. There is, perhaps, no school in the world better adapted for training thoroughbred ruffians (men without any scruple of conscience, sense of honour, or feeling of humanity) than the camp of a revenue-contractor in Oude. It has been the same for the last thirty years that I have known it, and must continue to be the same as long as we maintain, in absolute sway over the people, a sovereign who never bestows a thought upon them, has no feeling in common with them, and can never be persuaded that his high office imposes upon him the obligation to labour to promote their good, or even to protect them against the outrage and oppression of his own soldiers and civil officers. All Rajah Bukhtawar Sing's brothers and nephews were bred up in such camps, and are thorough-bred ruffians.
They have got the lands which they hold by much fraud and violence no doubt, but they have done much good to them. They have invited and established in comfort great numbers of the best classes of cultivators from other districts, in which they had ceased to feel secure, and they have protected and encouraged those whom they found on the land. To establish a new cultivator of the better class, they require to give him about twenty-five rupees for a pair of bullocks; for subsistence for himself and family till his crops ripen, thirty-six more, for a house, wells, &c., thirty more, or about ninety rupees, which he pays back with or without interest by degrees. Every village and hamlet is now surrounded by fine garden cultivation, conducted by the cultivators of the gardener caste, whom the family has thus established.
The greatest benefit conferred upon the lands which they hold has been in the suppression of the fearful contests which used to be perpetual between the small proprietors of the military classes, among whom the lands had become minutely subdivided by the law of inheritance, about boundaries and rights to water for irrigation. Many persons used to be killed every year in these contests, and their widows and orphans had to be maintained by the survivors. Now no such dispute leads to any serious conflict. They are all settled at once by arbitrators, who are guided in their decisions by the accounts of the Putwaries of villages and Canoongoes of districts. These men have the detailed accounts of every tenement for the last hundred years; and, with their assistance, village traditions, and the advice of their elders, all such boundary disputes and misunderstandings about rights to water are quickly and amicably adjusted; and the landlords are strong, and able to enforce whatever decision is pronounced. They are wealthy, and pay the Government demand punctually, and have influence at Court to prevent any attempt at oppression on the part of Government officers on themselves or their tenants. Not a thief or a robber can live or depredate among their tenants. The hamlets are, in consequence, numerous and peopled by peasantry, who seem to live without fear. They adhere strictly to the terms of their engagements with their tenants of all grades; and their tenants all pay their rents punctually, unless calamities of season deprive them of the means, when due consideration is made by landlords, who live among them, and know what they suffer and require.
The climate must be good, for the people are strong and well-made, and without any appearance of disease. Hardly a beggar of any kind is to be seen along the road. The residence of religious mendicants seems to be especially discouraged, and we see no others. It is very pleasing to pass over such lands after going through such districts as Bahraetch and Gonda, where the signs of the effects of bad air and water upon men, women, and children are so sad and numerous; and those of the abuse of power and the neglect of duty on the part of the Government and its officers are still more so.
Last evening I sent for the two men above named, who had been confined for six or seven years, and were said to have been so because they would not sign the bynamahs required from them by Mann Sing: their names are Soorujbulee Sing and Rugonath Sing. They came with the King's wakeel, accompanied by their cousin, Hunooman Sing, on whose charge they were declared to have been confined. I found that the village of Tendooa had been held by their family, in proprietary right, for many generations, and that they were Chouhan Rajpoots by caste. When Dursun Sing was securing to himself the lands of the district, those of Tendooa were held in three equal shares by Soorujbulee and his brothers, Narind and Rugonath; Hunooman Sing, their cousin; and Seoruttun, their cousin.
Maun Sing took advantage of a desperate quarrel between them, and secured Soorujbulee and Rugonath. Narind escaped and joined a refractory tallookdar, and Seoruttun and Hunooman did the same. Hunooman Sing was, however, invited back, and intrusted, by Maun Sing, with the management of the whole estate, on favourable terms. In revenge for his giving in to the terms of Maun Sing, and serving him, the absconded co-sharers attacked his house several times, killed three of his brothers, and many other persons of his family, and robbed him of almost all he had. This was four years ago. He complained, and the two brothers were kept more strictly confined than ever, to save him and the village. Hunooman Sing looked upon the two prisoners as the murderers of his brothers, though they were in confinement when they were killed, and had been so for more than two years, and was very violent against them in my presence. They were no less violent against him, as the cause of their continued confinement They protested to me, that they had no communication whatever with Seoruttun or Narind Sing, but thought it very likely, that they really did lead the gangs in the attacks upon the village, to recover their rights. They offered to give security for their future good behaviour if released; but declared, that they would rather die than consent to sign a bynamah, or deed of sale, or any relinquishment whatever of their hereditary rights as landholders.
Bukhtawar and Maun Sing said,—"That the people of the village would not be safe, for a moment, if these two brothers were released, which they would be, on the first occasion of thanksgiving, if sent to Lucknow; that people who ventured to seize a thief or robber in Oude must keep him, if they wished to save themselves from his future depredations, as the Government authorities would have nothing to do with them."
I ordered the King's wakeel to take these two brothers to the Chuckladar, and request him to see them released on their furnishing sufficient security for their future good behaviour, which they promised to produce.* They were all fine-looking men, with limbs that would do honour to any climate in the world. These are the families from which our native regiments are recruited; and hardly a young recruit offers himself for enlistment, on whose body marks will not be found of wounds received in these contests, between landlords themselves, and between them and the officers and troops of the sovereign. I have never seen enmity more strong and deadly than that exhibited by contending co-sharers and landholders of all kinds in Oude. The Rajah of Bulrampoor mentioned a curious instance of this spirit in a village, now called the Kolowar village, in the Gonda district, held in copartnership by a family of the Buchulgotee tribe of Rajpoots. One of them said he should plant sugar-cane in one of his fields. All consented to this. But when he pointed out the place where he should have his mill, the community became divided. A contest ensued, in which all the able-bodied men were killed, though not single cane had been planted. The widows and children survived, and still hold the village, but have been so subdued by poverty that they are the quietest village community in the district. The village from that time has gone by the name of Kolowar village, from Koloo, the sugar-mill, though no sugar-mill was ever worked in the village, he believed. He says, the villagers cherish the recollection of this fight; and get very angry when their neighbours twit them with the folly of it.
[* They were released, and have been ever since at large on security. One of them visited me in April 1851, and said, that as a point of honour, they should abstain from joining in the fight for their rights, but felt it very hard to be bound to do so.]