CHAPTER VII
PATNA, LUCKNOW
“7th Jan.
“Arrived at Patna at half-past 9 o’clock, and found about eighty of the leading Mohammedans at the City station awaiting us. Our host, Seyd Rasa Huseyn, drove us in a handsome barouche to his house, where we have been very comfortably lodged, and sumptuously entertained, and have made the acquaintance of, I believe, every Mohammedan of importance in Patna. Patna is one of the Mohammedan strongholds, as they number 50,000 out of a total population of 150,000; and they still have many rich families and noble families of the time of the Empire. The Province of Behar, they tell me, contains also a certain Mohammedan population of ryots, 30,000 or 40,000, who are descended from the Pathan invaders, and are a warlike race, retaining, however, nothing of their former rank but their name Malik, the mass of the ryots being Hindus or converted Hindus. The character of these is quite unwarlike. The Mohammedans, therefore, hold their heads higher here than in most places.
“We received visits all the morning, meeting our old friend Mohammed Ali Rogay from Bombay, Nur-el-Huda, Ferid-ed-Din, and others, also Mohammed Abbas Ibn Huseyn Bafiti, Sheykh es Saadat of Medina, a young Arab, who invited us cordially to come and stay with him in Medina, whither he returns in a few months. He says that if ever we write and tell him we are coming, he will prepare to receive us, and gave us his address and took ours. He repeated this invitation more than once, and I am sure it was sincerely given. The other acquaintance was that of Sirhadé Huseyn, who once wrote to me from Cirencester. After luncheon we were driven out to see something of the town and country. The town is old and picturesque, but we saw no specially fine buildings. We got out and inspected a village by the river side, but it was too near the river to be quite a fair specimen of Behar agriculture. One of the inhabitants, whom we questioned, told us it belonged to a rent-free Zemindar, and he was a tenant on a permanent rent, that is to say, fifteen rupees an acre, for three acres. We calculated the gross produce at thirty-six rupees, so he nets sixty-three rupees a year, or over five rupees a month, a fortune, but it is land of the best quality, and he grows maize and potatoes. It is not irrigated, so does not grow sugar cane. We asked whether he felt the salt tax, and he said ‘No.’ He was in debt twenty rupees this year, though he had never been in debt before. He and his family had held the land for generations.
“We sat down, sixteen or twenty, to dinner, and adjourned at 9 o’clock to the house of Nawab Villayet Ali Khan, the chief nobleman of Patna, where, in a large hall, about one hundred and fifty Mohammedans assembled to hear me give a lecture I had promised on their prospects. I shall not give my speech here, which was almost entirely extempore, because it is to be printed in one of the local papers. Suffice it to say that it included, with other matter, most of what I had said at the Anjuman i Islam, and was extremely well received.
“8th Jan.—We left Patna by the morning train, attended to the station by our host and Nawab Villayet Ali, with some thirty others, and a disagreeable incident occurred, as the train was starting, owing to the violence of a Scotch doctor, who threatened our friends, and especially the old Nawab, with his stick if they remained near his carriage window. I jumped at him, of course, and after calling him a blackguard for his conduct, gave him in charge at the next station, Dinapore. The railway authorities tried hard to screen him, and proposed to me to compromise the matter, but I insisted on having his name, and after about ten minutes he produced his card as Dr. K., Army and Navy Club (in pencil), Sealkote. So I have written a strong letter to Lord Ripon, warning him of the state of things, and of the bitterness of native feeling in consequence of their habitual ill treatment by the English.”
This was a worse case than quite appears from this entry. The Nawab, with his party of friends, were on the platform wishing me good-bye, with all possible decorum, when the Scotchman, who turned out to be Chief Medical Office of the Punjab, put his head and shoulders out of the next compartment and struck with his stick at the Nawab and his friends, bidding them, with an insolent air of authority, to stand back from the neighbourhood of his carriage window. This happened just as the train moved on, and I had to wait till the train again stopped before I could take action. Fortunately, however, Patna has two stations, and in five minutes we came to the second. There I entered the Doctor’s compartment, and insisted upon having his name, which he refused, and it was only by threatening the station-master with reporting the case to Lord Ripon that I got him to intervene. Several of my Patna friends had come on by the train, and supported me, or I doubt if I could have prevailed with him to do his duty. The matter being treated in this way made a prodigious sensation, as it was the first time an Englishman had openly taken part with the natives against his fellow countrymen.
“We arrived at 4 o’clock at Benares, and are the Maharajah’s guests in one of his empty houses, being attended to by one of his head servants. The river at Benares is striking, but less beautiful than I had expected.
“9th Jan.—In the morning I wrote a letter to Lord Ripon about the incident of yesterday, in a tone to compel his attention, and I enclosed it to Primrose with a hint that I should publish it if the matter was not promptly set right.