India under Ripon: A Private Diary

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

It is my distinct impression, from all that I have seen and heard, that the ill-feeling now existing in India between the English there and the indigenous races is one which, if it be not allayed by a more generous treatment, will in a few years make the continued connection between England and India altogether impossible, and that a final rupture of friendly relations will ensue between the two countries, which will be an incalculable misfortune for both, and may possibly be marked by scenes of violence, such as nothing in the past history of either will have equalled. We have seen within our own recollection a complete obliteration of kindly feelings in Ireland, brought about originally by injustice, later by want of understanding. We are seeing the same thing repeated through the same causes to-day in Egypt. And to-morrow we may well find the case of India equally hopeless. I do not believe it to be already so; but the injustice is there, and the people are beginning to be awake and to resent the stupidity of those who, representing England in India, wantonly affront them; and unless the English public at home, with whom as yet the Indian races have no quarrel, becomes awake too to the danger of its own indifference, the same irreparable results of a general race hatred will follow. Only it should be remembered that, whereas Ireland and Egypt are countries comparatively insignificant in extent and population, and for that reason easily overawed by force, India is a vast continent peopled by races ten times more numerous than ourselves, and that the convulsion when it comes will be on a scale altogether out of proportion to our experience, and so the more alarming. Let India once be united, as Ireland and Egypt are, in a common sentiment of hatred for all that is English, and our rule there will ipso facto cease. Let it once finally despair of English justice, and English force will be powerless to hold it in subjection. The huge mammal, India’s symbol, is a docile beast, and may be ridden by a child. He is sensible, temperate, and easily attached. But ill-treatment he will not bear for ever, and when he is angered in earnest, his vast bulk alone makes him dangerous, and puts it beyond the strength of the strongest to guide him or control.

The account given me by the oldest and best informed of my native acquaintance (and I am not talking here of Bengali demagogues, but of men holding, it may be, or who have held high office under Government, and are deservedly trusted by it), of the gradual estrangement which has come about within their recollection between themselves and the English in India, is most instructive. In the days, they say, of their youth, thirty and forty years ago, though there were always among the Company’s officers men who from their abuse of power were disliked and justly feared, the general feeling of the natives towards the English civilian was one of respect and even of affection. The Indian character is affectionate, enthusiastic, and inclined to hero-worship; and the English in early days, from their superior knowledge and strength of character, exercised no little fascination on the native mind. Nearly all of the older men talk with reverence and esteem of certain teachers who instructed them in youth, and of certain early patrons to whom they owed their success in after life; and they willingly acknowledge the influence exercised over themselves and their generation by such individual example. The English official of that day, they affirm, had more power than now, but he exercised it with a greater sense of responsibility, and so of honour, in its discharge. He took pains to know the people; and in fact he knew them well. Except in the very highest ranks of the service he was readily accessible. He lived to a great extent among the people, and according to the customs of the people. He did not disdain to make friends with those of the better class, and occasionally he married among them, or at least contracted semi-matrimonial relations with the women of the land. This may have had its ill consequences in other ways, but it broke down the hedge of caste prejudice between East and West, and gave the official a personal interest in the people, which no mere sense of duty, however elevated, could supply. The Englishman of that day looked upon India not unfrequently as his second home, and, taking the evil with the good, treated it as such. England could only be reached by the Cape route. Travelling was tedious and expensive, the mails few and far between; and many a retired officer had at the end of his service become so wedded to the land of his adoption, that he ended his days in it in preference to embarking on a new expatriation. It is easy to understand from this that the Anglo-Indian official of the Company’s days loved India in a way no Queen’s official dreams of doing now. Also that, loving it, he served it better than now; and was better loved in return.

Steam communication, however, with England and the increased facility given by it of maintaining home associations, had, even before the death of the Company, begun to effect a change in the way of living of its officers, a change which the Mutiny of 1857 accentuated and finally made complete. Gradually, as a visit to England became easier, leave was more frequently applied for; and the officer, returned from furlough, brought back with him a renewed stock of Western prejudices. He no longer considered himself cut off from the political life of his own country, or occupied himself so exclusively with the politics of India; and he came to look forward to other ways of distinction than those the Indian service offered him. Lastly, the Mutiny itself, with the bitter memories it left behind, put an end to the contracting by Englishmen of native habits and native ties. With the introduction of railways, quick posts, and telegraphic messages, Englishwomen ceased to dread India as a field of marriage; and every official now dreamed of making an English home for himself in the station where he lived. Thus he cared yearly more and more for English news and English interests, and less and less for those of India.

I shall no doubt incur anger by saying it, but it is a fact that the Englishwoman in India during the last thirty years has been the cause of half the bitter feelings there between race and race. It was her presence at Cawnpore and Lucknow that pointed the sword of revenge after the Mutiny, and it is her constantly increasing influence now that widens the gulf of ill-feeling and makes amalgamation daily more impossible. I have over and again noticed this. The English collector, or the English doctor, or the English judge may have the best will in the world to meet their Indian neighbours and official subordinates on equal terms. Their wives will hear of nothing of the sort, and the result is a meaningless interchange of cold civilities.

Nothing in the world can be more dreary than the mixed assemblies of the Indian natives and their Anglo-Indian patrons—inverted Barmecide feasts, where everything is unreal but the meats and drinks, and all the rest is ill-concealed distrust. I have more than once assisted at them, and always with a painful feeling. Englishwomen in India look upon the land of their exile unaffectedly as a house of bondage, on its inhabitants as outside the pale of their humanity, and on the day of their departure home as the only star of hope on their horizon. The feeling may be a natural and an unavoidable one, for it is probable that race prejudices are more deeply rooted everywhere in women than in men, but I affirm that it is most unfortunate, and under the circumstances of growing education in the country, a very great and increasing danger.

The excuse commonly made by the Anglo-Indians for the lack of social cordiality between themselves and well-to-do natives is that the caste regulations of the latter bar real intercourse. A man who will neither eat with you nor drink with you, it is said, nor admit you to his own wife’s society, cannot be really intimate in your house. But I confess I cannot see the force of that argument. In my own case I certainly did not find that caste prejudices prevented my forming the most agreeable relations with a number of Indian gentlemen, Brahmins of high caste, and Mohammedans, as well as Parsis and native Christians, nor did I find any who did not seem quite willing to treat me on an equal footing. I found no difference of any insurmountable kind between their ideas and my own; not more, indeed, than would have been the case had they been Spaniards or Italians. The fact of their not breaking bread with me, I am sure, constituted no kind of obstacle to our kindly relations. On the other hand, it is obvious that, as regards the native Christians at least, the rule cannot apply. These have no caste prejudices, yet they are just as much excluded from the pale of English society as the rest.

It will hardly be credited in England, but in this present year of grace, 1884, no hotel-keeper in India dares receive a native guest into his house, not on account, of any ill-will of his own, but through fear of losing his custom. When I was at Bombay in the winter I was treated with the greatest kindness and attention by various members of the native community, and by none more so than by Mohammed Ali Rogay, the leading Mohammedan of the city. He had travelled in Europe, dressed in European dress, and had even so far adopted our manners as to subscribe to all the public charities and to drive a four-in-hand. Yet, happening one day to ask him to dine with me at my hotel, it was explained to me that this could not be, at least not in the public room, “lest the English guests should take offence and leave the house.”

In Bengal and Northern India things are still worse, and I think it is not too much to say that no native gentleman, whatever his rank, age, or character may be, can visit a place of public resort frequented by Englishmen, especially if he be in native dress, without a certain risk of insult and rough treatment. Railway travelling is notoriously dangerous for them in this respect, and nearly all my native acquaintances had tales to tell of abuse from English fellow-passengers, and of having been turned out of their places by the guards to accommodate these, and now and then of having been personally ill-treated and knocked about. Men of high position, therefore, or self-respect, are obliged, either to secure beforehand special compartments for their use, or to travel third class. The second class they are especially afraid of. I should not make this statement unless I had received it from unimpeachable sources. But I have been assured of its truth among others by two members of the Supreme Legislative Council at Calcutta, who separately narrated to me their experiences. I know also that one of the principal reasons with certain of the leading natives of the Presidency towns who have adopted the European dress has been to escape thereby from chance ill-usage.

A painful incident of this liability to insult occurred last winter in my presence, which, as ocular evidence is always best, I will relate. I had been staying at Patna with the principal Mohammedan nobleman of the city, the Nawab Villayet Ali Khan, a man of somewhat advanced age, and of deservedly high repute, not only with his fellow-citizens, but with our Government, who had made him a Companion of the Star of India for his services. On my departure by the morning train on the 7th January last, he and some thirty more of the leading inhabitants of Patna accompanied me to the station, and after I had entered the railway carriage remained standing on the platform, as orderly and respectable a group of citizens as need be seen. There was neither obstruction, nor noise, nor crowding. But the presence of “natives” on the platform became suddenly distasteful to an English passenger in the adjoining compartment. Thrusting his head out of window he began to abuse them and bid them be off, and when they did not move struck at them with his stick, and threatened the old Nawab especially with it if he came within his reach. I shall never forget the astonishment of the man when I interfered, or his indignation at my venturing to call him to account. It was his affair, not mine. Who was I that I should interpose myself between an Englishman and his natural right? Nor was it till, with great difficulty, I had procured the aid of the police, that he seemed to consider himself other than the aggrieved person. Now I can affirm that there was absolutely no reason for his conduct. He was a middle-aged man of respectable appearance—a surgeon-major, as it turned out, in command of a district in the Punjab; he was travelling with his wife; it was in the morning, when ideas are calmest, and he was otherwise without excuse for excitement. In fact, it was a plain, unmistakable act of class arrogance, such as it has never been my lot to witness in any other Eastern country that I have yet visited. Moreover, it was evident to me that it was no unusual occurrence. The railway officials and the police treated it as a matter of small importance, did their best to screen the offender, and declared themselves incompetent to do more than register my complaint. On the other hand, the Nawab and his friends confessed with shame that, though they were insulted, they were not surprised. It had happened to all of them too often before for them even to feel any special anger.