India under Ripon: A Private Diary

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

“Arrived at Bombay at 11 o’clock. I see the ‘Bombay Gazette’ has published the Patna letter, and there is important news from Egypt. Sinkat has fallen to the Mahdi, and Mr. Gladstone has ordered 4,000 English troops to the Red Sea. Next we shall hear that Khartoum has fallen and Gordon has been killed, and then there will be a regular Soudan expedition on the scale of the Abyssinian one. I shall protest against the employment of Indian troops.”

We spent the next few days mostly in the Arab stables with Abd-el-Rahman, Eid el Temini, and other dealers from Nejd, arranging for the taking of horses to England for the intended Arab race at Newmarket. It resulted in our taking back four with us to England.

“18th Feb.—No letter has come from the Nizam, so I am writing again to get one. They are really the most aggravating people to deal with. A vote of censure is expected in England, and if the Ministry go out of office Lord Ripon will follow, and there will be an end of the university and everything else. Gordon has arrived at Khartoum, and has issued a proclamation announcing the slave trade to be henceforth free. This is in accordance with a conversation I had with him last year, for I remember well his admitting that, in spite of all, he had done more harm than good by his crusade against the traffic. The only point indeed we differed on was as to the necessity of retaining Khartoum for Egypt. I have always been for limiting Egypt to its old frontier at Assouan, and abolishing slavery in Lower Egypt, and encouraging its abolition elsewhere. But the Anti-Slave Trade Association does not want slavery abolished any more than a huntsman wants to abolish foxes. Their livelihood depends too entirely on it.

“We spent the afternoon at the stables with Abd-el-Rahman Minni and Eid el Temini, and arranged with the latter that he should go with us next winter to Nejd, starting from Jerusalem and travelling by Kheybar to Aneyzeh. He is himself of the Harb Tribe, but he knows them all, and we could go to the Ateybeh, who are now in high feather, having beaten Ibn Rashid and the Shammar several times. The son of Saoud has joined, and is living with them, declaring that he will not go back to Riad until Ibn Rashid is destroyed. He is on good terms now with his uncle Abdallah, but remains with the Bedouins. Abd-el-Rahman will give us letters to them all, and he says there would be no danger or difficulty in going to Riad. They would all be delighted to see us. So, therefore, let it be. We need to see the desert again, and we need to visit Medina.

“19th Feb.—Had luncheon at Parel with the Governor, Sir James Fergusson, whom I remember in old days. He is a good fellow of the old Tory type, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and firmly convinced that the Anglo-Indian administration is worked perfectly by high-minded and disinterested men, having the welfare of the natives at heart. He himself undoubtedly has, but I cannot think he knows all that happens under his Government. Talking of the Mahdi, he quoted his own head chuprassi as having told him that the man in Africa could not be he. He admitted, however, that the forest conservancy had been a great evil, and was making the hillmen very angry. The ryots on all other points were highly delighted at our rule. He would not hear of any danger of a revolution, because seven years ago a Mahratta Brahmin had been discovered trying to excite rebellion, and in his diary had been found complaints of the people being as dull as stones to his preaching. The assessment everywhere in Bombay was low, the people everywhere but in the hills and at Poonah were well affected, and he thought a war with the Mahdi would be popular. This is possibly true to some extent in the city of Bombay, because war would bring wealth in the shape of contracts and employment. I told him frankly my views, and he was at pains to convince me that they were wrong. He has asked us to stay with him a few days in Government House before we go. To the races later, where we found Mohammed Ali Rogay and Ali Bey the Turkish Consul. They will dine with us to-morrow. Mr. Gladstone states in Parliament that he disbelieves Gordon’s having proclaimed free slave trade.

“20th Feb.—Wrote letters all the morning and then went to call on Prince Agha Khan, where I met a Persian Mulvi of repute, and had a long talk about the Mahdi. This reverend gentleman would not hear of his being the real Mahdi, who, of course, ought to be a Shiah, but they seemed to think him better than English rule in Egypt. I could not get the Prince to give a decided opinion one way or the other. His father was head of a sect in Persia, and was driven out with some thousands of his followers, and they settled at Bombay, where he was considered to the day of his death a saintly personage. His son inherits something of his position, and is visited by many devotees from Persia, but he is inclined to worldly interests, and thinks a great deal about horse racing. He showed me his stud, and I am glad to say has agreed to send his best horse Kuchkolla to Newmarket for the Arab race.

“Mohammed Ali Rogay and Ali Bey came to dine with us. We discussed the condition of Turkey, the Sultan, and the prospect in Egypt. Ali Bey is of opinion that the fortune of Islam is bound up with the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire, but he would see a new system introduced into the administration, for the Mohammedan population was dying out. ‘There are no young men in the villages,’ he said, ‘none but old ones left.’ I could not, however, get anything more definite out of him than a suggestion that the personal power of the Sultan should be curtailed, and the Government intrusted to a Council, that the official language should be Arabic instead of Turkish, and that the revenue collected in the provinces should be spent in the provinces.

“22nd Feb.—Gordon’s proclamation in favour of the slave trade has been fully confirmed, and Gladstone’s later denial seems only to have been a dodge in view of the Vote of Censure, which has been thrown out by a majority of eighty-one. On the whole I am glad of it, as, though the poetical justice would have been admirable, we should lose our game altogether just now with the Tories, as they would certainly annex Egypt and invade the Soudan.

“I went to call on Malabari, and afterwards to the stables, where I had a long conversation with Abd-el-Rahman, partly about the condition of the inhabitants of Bombay, but principally about horses. We talked of Rogay, who, Abd-el-Rahman says, makes two mistakes. He is a disciple of Seyd Ahmed (he told me so himself the other day), and he mixes himself up with politics. This, Abd-el-Rahman deplores. But they are friends, and he says he is a good-hearted man. Abd-el-Rahman is a vice-chairman or something of the Anjuman i Islam, and will attend the meeting which is now put off till Friday. His heart, however, is in horses, as becomes an Arab and a horse dealer, and we soon got back to them. Abd-el-Rahman tells me the Nejd horses take longer to get into condition when they come over poor than the Anazeh horses. He says three quarters of the racing Arabs are bay, which is certainly the case at present, as The Doctor is the only first-class gray horse now running. Among the ponies this is not so much so.

“23rd Feb.—Yesterday evening I received the letter promised me by Salar Jung, which has been wandering about, having been first sent to Kalbarga. It is most satisfactory. The Nizam signifies in it his readiness to see the university founded at Hyderabad, he records the Viceroy’s approval, and he invites me to return to Hyderabad to complete the work.[13] This ‘crowns the edifice.’ I am now only anxious to get home.