A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II

by Sir W. H. Sleeman

[* See King of Oude's letter to the Governor-General, dated 5th October, 1837, and Residents letters of the 7th idem and 14th December, 1837.]

This privilege which the native officers and sipahees of our native army enjoy of petitioning for redress of grievances, through the Resident, has now been extended to all the regular, irregular, and local corps of the three Presidencies—that is, to all corps paid by the British Government, and to all native officers and sipahees of contingent corps employed in and paid by native States, who were drafted into them from the regular corps of our army up to a certain time; and the number cannot be less than fifty or sixty thousand. But European civil and political functionaries, in our own provinces and other native States, have almost all some men from Oude in their offices or establishments, whose claims and complaints they send for adjustment to the Resident; and it is difficult for him to satisfy them, that he is not bound to take them up in the same manner as he takes up those of the native officers and sipahees of our native army; and he is often induced to yield to their importunity, and thereby to furnish grounds for further applications of the same sort. This privilege is not recognized or named in any treaty, or other engagement with the Sovereign of Oude; nor does any one now know its origin, for it cannot be found in any document recorded in the Resident's office.

If the Resident happens to be an impatient, overbearing man, he will often frighten the Durbar and its Courts, or local officers, into a hasty decision, by which the rights of others are sacrificed for the native officers and sipahees; and if he be at the same time an unscrupulous man, he will sometimes direct that the sipahee shall be put in possession of what he claims in order to relieve himself from his importunity, or that of his commanding officer, without taking the trouble to inform himself of the grounds on which the claim is founded. Of all such errors there are unhappily too many instances recorded in the Resident's office. This privilege is in the hands of the Resident an instrument of torture, which it is his duty to apply every day to the Oude Durbar. He may put on a screw more or a screw less, according to his temper or his views, or the importunity of officers commanding corps or companies, and native officers and sipahees in person, which never cease to oppress him more or less.

The most numerous class of complaints and the most troublesome is that against the Government of Oude or its officers and landholders, for enhanced demands of rents; and whenever these officers or landholders are made to reduce these demands in favour of the privileged sipahees, they invariably distribute the burthen in an increased rate upon their neighbours.

Officers who have to pass through Oude in their travels or sporting excursions have of late years generally complained that they receive less civility from villages in which our invalid or furlough sipahees are located than from any others; and that if they are anywhere treated with actual disrespect, such sipahees are generally found to be either the perpetrators or instigators. This complaint is not, I fear, altogether unfounded; and may arise from the diminished attachment felt by the sipahees for their European officers in our army, and partly from the privilege of urging their claims through the Resident, enjoyed by native officers and sipahees, now ceasing on their being transferred to the invalid establishment.

But the privilege itself is calculated to create feelings of dissatisfaction with their European officers, among the honest and hard-working part of our native army. Such men petition only when they have just cause; and not one in five of them can obtain what they demand, and believe to be their just right, under an administration like that of Oude, whatever efforts the Resident may make to obtain it for them; and where one is satisfied, four become discontented; while the dishonest and idle portion of their brother soldiers, who have no real wrongs to complain of, and feign them only to get leave of absence, throw all the burthen of their duties upon them. Others again, by fraud and collusion with those whose influence they require to urge their claims, often obtain more than they have any right to; and their unmerited success tends to increase the dissatisfaction felt by the honest, and more scrupulous portion of the native officers and sipahees who have failed to obtain anything.

Government will not do away with the privilege without first ascertaining the views and wishes of the military authorities. They are not favourable to the abolition, for though the honest and hard-working sipahees may say that it is of no use to them, the idle and unscrupulous, who consider it as a lottery in which they may sometimes draw a prize, or a means of getting leave of absence when they are not entitled to it, will tell them that the fidelity of the whole native army depends upon its being maintained and extended. I am of opinion, after much consideration, and a good deal of experience in the political working of the system, that the abolition of the privilege would be of great advantage to the native army; and it would certainly relieve the European officers from much importunity and annoyance which they now suffer from its enforcement. It is not uncommon for a sipahee of a regiment in Bombay to obtain leave of absence for several times over for ten months at a time, on the pretence of having a case pending in Oude. When his leave is about to expire, he presents a petition to the Resident, who obtains for him from the Court an order for the local authorities to settle his claim. This order is sent to the officer commanding his regiment. The man then makes up a piteous story of his having spent the whole ten months in prosecuting his claim in vain, when, in reality, he has been enjoying himself at home, and had no claim whatever to settle. The next year, or the year after, he gets another ten months' leave, for the same purpose, and when it is about to expire, he presents himself to the Resident, and declares that the local authorities have been changed, and the new officers pay no regard to the King's orders. New orders are then got for the new officers, and sent to his regiment, and the same game is played over again.

Native officers and sipahees, in the privilege of presenting petitions through the Resident, are now restricted to their own claims and those of their wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. They cannot petition through the Resident for the redress of wrongs suffered, or pretended to have been suffered, by any other relations. In consequence, it has become a common custom with them to lend or sell their names to more remote relations, or to persons not related to them at all. The petition is made out in their own name, and the real sufferer or pretended sufferer, who is to prosecute the claim, is named as the mookteear or attorney. A great many bad characters have in this way deprived men of lands which their ancestors had held in undisputed right of property for many generations or centuries; for the Court, to save themselves from the importunity of the Residency, has often given orders for the claimant being put in possession of the lands without due inquiry or any inquiry at all. The sipahees are, in consequence, much dreaded by the people among whom they reside; for there really is no class of men from whom it is more difficult to get the truth in any case. They have no fear of punishment, because all charges against them for fraud, falsehood, or violation of the rules laid down by Government have to be submitted either to a court-martial, composed of native officers, or to the Governor-General. Both involve endless trouble, and it would, I fear, be impossible to get a conviction before a court-martial so composed. No Resident will ever submit to a Governor-General the scores of flagrant cases that every month come before him; still less will he worry unoffending and suffering people by causing them to be summoned to give evidence before a military court.

In a recent instance (July 1851), a sipahee in a regiment stationed at Lucknow was charged before a court-martial with three abuses of the privilege. He required no less than seventy-four witnesses to be summoned in his defence. The Court had to wait till what could be got out of the seventy-four appeared, and the man became an object of sympathy, because he was kept so long in arrest. He named the first Assistant to the Resident, who has charge of the Sipahee Petition Department, as a witness; and he was not, in consequence, permitted to attend the Court on the part of the Resident, who preferred the charges, though he was never called or examined by the Court on the part of the defence. The naming him, and the summoning of so many witnesses were mere ruses on the part of the sipahee to escape. No person on the part of the Resident was allowed to attend the Court and see that his witnesses were examined; nor had he any means of knowing whether they were or not. He had reason to believe that the most important were not. The sipahee was of course acquitted, as sipahees charged with such abuses of the privilege always will be. This man's regiment was at Lucknow, and near the place where the cause of action arose, his own village, and the Resident's office. How much more difficult would it be to get a conviction against a sipahee whose regiment happens to be many hundred miles off!

The transfer of their lands from the jurisdiction of the local authorities to that of the Hozoor Tehseel is often the cause of much suffering to their copartners and neighbours. Their co-sharers in the land often find much inconvenience from it, and apprehend that, sooner or later, the influence of the sipahee will enable him to add their shares to his own. The village so transferred, being removed from the observation and responsibility of the local authorities, often becomes a safe refuge for the bad characters of the district, who thence depredate upon the country around with impunity. Claims to villages, to which the claimant had really no right whatever, have been successfully prosecuted by or through sipahees, for the sole purpose of having them transferred to the Hozoor Tehseel, and made dens of thieves and highway robbers. The person in charge of the Hozool Tehseel villages has generally a good deal of influence at Court, and this he lends to such claimants, for a consideration, without fear or scruple, as he feels assured that he shall be able to counteract any representations on the part of the local authorities of the evils suffered from the holders and occupants of such villages. He never pretends to be able to watch over or control the conduct of the holders and occupiers of the villages under his charge, situated, as they mostly are, in remote districts. The transfer of such villages can be justified only in districts that are held in contract, and even in them it might be easy to provide effectually for the protection of the holders from over-exactions on the part of the contractors.