India under Ripon: A Private Diary

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

At the same time it is abundantly clear that in all that constitutes intellectual life the India of old days, as represented in the still independent States, was far more than a century behind the India of our day. Mental culture is at the lowest ebb in the capitals of the native princes. They possess neither schools on any large plan, nor public libraries, nor are books printed in them nor newspapers published. I was astonished to find how in the centre of busy intellectual India large flourishing towns were to be found completely isolated from all the world, absorbed in their own local affairs, and intellectually asleep. At certain of the native courts history is still represented by the reciter of oral traditions, letters by the court poet, and science by professors of astrology; while the general politics of the Empire hardly affect, even in a remote degree, the mass of the unlettered citizens. Last winter’s storm over Lord Ripon’s internal policy left the native States absolutely unmoved. There is both good and bad in this.

With regard to their material prosperity, as contrasted with British India, I can only speak of what I have seen. The territories of the native princes are for the most part not the most fertile tracts of India; and one cannot avoid a suspicion that their comparative poverty has been the cause of their continued immunity from annexation. Nearly the whole of the rich irrigated ricelands of the peninsula are now British territory; and the estates of the Nizam, and the two great Mahratta princes Holkar and Scindia, comprise a large amount of untilled jungle. These countries possess no seaports or navigable rivers, and their arable tracts are not of the first order of productiveness, while the Rajput princes are lords of districts almost wholly desert. It would be, therefore, misleading to compare the material wealth of the peasantry in any of these States with those of Bengal or the rich lands of the Madras coast, for the conditions of life in them are not the same. But, poor land compared with poor land, I think the comparison would not be unfavourable to the native States. I was certainly struck in passing from the British Deccan below Raichore into the Nizam’s Deccan with certain signs of better condition in the latter. Most of the Nizam’s villages contain something in the shape of a stone house belonging to the head man. The flocks of goats, alone found in the Madras Presidency, are replaced by flocks of sheep; and one sees here and there a farmer superintending his labourers on horseback, a sight the British Deccan never shows. In the few villages of the Nizam which I entered I found at least this advantage over the others, that there was no debt, while I was assured that the mortality during the great Deccan famine was far less severe in the Nizam’s than in her Majesty’s territory.

It must not, however, be supposed that in any of the native States the ancient economy of India has been preserved in its integrity. Free trade has not spared them more than the rest. Their traditional industries have equally been ruined, and they suffer equally from the salt monopoly; while in some of them the British system of assessing the land revenue at its utmost rate, and levying the taxes in coin, has been adopted to the advantage of the revenue and the disadvantage of the peasant. On the whole the agricultural condition of the Hyderabad territory seemed to me a little, a very little, better than that of its neighbour, the Madras Deccan, and I believe it is a fact that it is attracting immigrants from across the border. The Rajput State of Ulwar, where I also made some inquiries, was represented to me as being considerably more favourably assessed than British Rajputana.

The best administered districts of India would seem to be those where a native prince has had the good fortune to secure the co-operation of a really good English assessor, allowing him to assess the land, not with a view to immediately increased revenue, but the true profit of the people. Such are to be found in some of the Rajput principalities, where the agricultural class is probably happier, though living on a poor soil, than in any other part of India; for the assessor, freed from the necessity which besets him in British territory of raising a larger revenue than the district can quite afford, and having no personal interest to serve by severity, allows his kindlier instincts to prevail, and becomes—what he might be everywhere in India—a protector of the people. I trust that it is understood by this time that I am far from affirming that Englishmen are incapable of administering India to its profit. What I do say is that selfish interests and the interests of a selfish Government prevent them from so doing under the present system in British territory. Thus it is certain that the Berar province of Hyderabad under British administration has prospered exceedingly; and its prosperity affords precisely that exceptional instance which proves the general rule of impoverishment. What may probably be affirmed without any risk of error is, that the best administered districts of the native States are also the best administered of all India.

With regard to the town population, I found the few independent native capitals which I visited exhibiting signs of well-being in the inhabitants absent in places of the same calibre under British rule. With the exception of Bombay, which is exceptionally flourishing, the native quarter, even in the Presidency towns, has everywhere in British India a squalid look. The “Black Town” of Madras reminds one disagreeably of Westminster and the Seven Dials: and there is extreme native misery concealed behind the grandeur of the European houses in Calcutta. The inland cities are decidedly in decay. Lucknow and Delhi, once such famous capitals, are shrunk to mere shadows of their former selves; and there is a distrustful attitude about their inhabitants which a stranger cannot fail to notice. The faces of the inhabitants everywhere in Northern India are those of men conscious of a presence hostile to them, as in a conquered city. In the capitals of the native States, on the contrary, there is nothing of all this, and the change in the aspect of the natives, as one passes from British to native rule, is most noticeable. The Hyderabadis especially have a well-fed look not commonly found in the inland towns, and are quite the best dressed townsmen of India. There is a bustle and cheerfulness about this city, and a fearless attitude in the crowd, which is a relief to the traveller after the submissive silence of the British populations. Elephants, camels, horsemen—all is movement and life in Hyderabad; and as one passes along one realizes for the first time the idea of India as it was in the days when it was still the centre of the world’s wealth and magnificence. That these gay externals may conceal a background of poverty is possible—English officials affirm that they do so; but at least it is better thus than that there should be no gaiety at all, nor other evidence of well-being than in the bungalows of a foreign cantonment.

Nor is the cause of the better condition far to seek. Whatever revenue the native court may raise from the people is spent amongst the people. The money does not leave the country, but circulates there; and, even where the profusion is most irrational, something of the pleasure of the spending remains, and is shared in and enjoyed by all, down to the poorest. In British India the tamachas of governors-general and lieutenant-governors interest no one but the aides-de-camp and their friends; and a large portion of the revenue goes clean away every year, to the profit of other lands and other peoples.

Of the administration of justice in the native States I had no opportunity of forming an accurate opinion, but I am willing to believe that it is less satisfactory in these than in British India. The only advantage that I could distinctly recognize in compensation was, what I have already mentioned, the absence of the Civil Courts, which are so loudly complained of in the latter on account of the encouragement they give to usury. It is worth repeating that the only villages I found free from debt in India were in the Nizam’s territory. With this exception, it is probable that British justice is better everywhere than “native” justice, and there is certainly not the same check exercised in a native State by public opinion over the doings of magistrates and judges. In all this the native States are far behind the Imperial system, for the despotic form of rule is the only one recognized in any of them, Hindu or Mohammedan, and there is no machinery by which official injustice can be inquired into or controlled. The ideas of liberty are spreading slowly in India, and the native States are hardly yet touched by them.

Having said this much about the native States, in which there is as yet no clamour for reform, I will go on to the question, one quite apart from them, of British India proper.

Unless I have wholly failed to make my reasoning clear, readers of these essays will by this time have understood that, in answer to the question propounded at the outset of this inquiry—namely, whether the connection between England and India is of profit to the Indian people; and to the further question whether the Indian people regard it as of profit—I have come to conclusions on the whole favourable to that connection.

My argument, in a few words, has been this: seeking the balance of good and evil, I have found, on the one hand, a vast economic disturbance, caused partly by the selfish commercial policy of the English Government, partly by the no less selfish expenditure of the English official class.