Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

by Sir W. H. Sleeman

5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by persons duly licensed.

6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of miles of road are annually planted with trees.

7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days.

[CHAPTER 36]

Gwālior and its Government.

On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwālior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2]

Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwālior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antrī to Gwālior there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [sic] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who, like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwālior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his tent.[6]

Phūl Bāgh, or the flower-garden, was suggested to me as the best place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house. As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet residence in the flower- garden, with good foliage above, and a fine sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents I found them pitched close outside the flower-garden, in a small dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its deformity—just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into it, was the summer-house of the prince, without one inch of green sward or one small shrub before it.

Around the wretched little flower-garden was a low, naked, and shattered mud wall, such as we generally see in the suburbs thrown up to keep out and in the pigs that usually swarm in such places—'and the swine they crawled out, and the swine they crawled in'.[7] When I cantered up to my tent-door, a sipāhī of my guard came up, and reported that as the day began to dawn a gang of thieves had stolen one of my best carpets, all the brass brackets of my tent-poles, and the brass bell with which the sentries on duty sounded the hour; all Lieutenant Thomas's cooking utensils, and many other things, several of which they had found lying between the tents and the prince's pleasure- house, particularly the contents of a large heavy box of geological specimens. They had, in consequence, concluded the gang to be lodged in the prince's pleasure-house. The guard on duty at this place would make no answer to their inquiries, and I really believe that they were themselves the thieves. The tents of the Rājā of Raghugarh, who had come to pay his respects to the Sindhia, his liege lord, were pitched near mine. He had the day before had five horses stolen from him, with all the plate, jewels, and valuable clothes he possessed; and I was told that I must move forthwith from the flower-garden, or cut off the tail of every horse in my camp. Without tails they might not be stolen, with them they certainly would. Having had sufficient proof of their dexterity, we moved our tents to a grove near the residency, four miles from the flower-garden and the court.[8]

As a citizen of the world I could not help thinking that it would be an immense blessing upon a large portion of our species if an earthquake were to swallow up this court of Gwālior, and the army that surrounds it. Nothing worse could possibly succeed, and something better might. It is lamentable to think how much of evil this court and camp inflict upon the people who are subject to them. In January, 1828, I was passing with a party of gentlemen through the town of Bhīlsā, which belongs to this chief, and lies between Sāgar and Bhopal,[9] when we found, lying and bleeding in one of the streets, twelve men belonging to a merchant at Mirzapore, who had the day before been wounded and plundered by a gang of robbers close outside the walls of the town. Those who were able ran in to the Āmil, or chief of the district, who resides in the town; and begged him to send some horsemen after the banditti, and intercept them as they passed over the great plains. 'Send your own people', said he, 'or hire men to send. Am I here to look after the private affairs of merchants and travellers, or to collect the revenues of the prince?' Neither he, nor the prince himself, nor any other officer of the public establishments ever dreamed that it was their duty to protect the life, property, or character of travellers, or indeed of any other human beings, save the members of their own families. In this pithy question the Āmil of Bhīlsā described the nature and character of the government. All the revenues of his immense dominions are spent entirely in the maintenance of the court and camps of the prince; and every officer employed beyond the boundary of the court and camp considers his duties to be limited to the collection of the revenue. Protected from all external enemies by our military forces, which surround him on every side, his whole army is left to him for purposes of parade and display; and having, according to his notions, no use for them elsewhere, he concentrates them around his capital, where he lives among them in the perpetual dread of mutiny and assassination. He has nowhere any police, nor any establishment whatever, for the protection of the life and property of his subjects; nor has he, any more than his predecessors, ever, I believe, for one moment thought that those from whose industry and frugality he draws his revenues have any right whatever to expect from him the use of such establishments in return. They have never formed any legitimate part of the Marāthā government, and, I fear, never will.[10]