Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo

by William Wilson Hunter

But this amendment was not to be. The Native Council of Management went on with its work of improvement and reform. The Chief held himself sullenly aloof, and sank deeper and deeper into the slough of evil habits, until he died, a worn-out old man of twenty-nine, in 1874.

This was the most serious case of Native misrule during Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty, and the only one in which he had to push interference to the point of superseding the hereditary Prince. Another instance of mal-administration was visited with a severe rebuke, which the Chief resented, and refused to take his proper place at a Viceregal darbár in the seat below the head of the ancient Udaipur house. The offender was promptly ordered to quit British territory in disgrace, and was further punished by having his salute reduced from seventeen to fifteen guns.

It is only fair to the Indian Feudatories to state, that against these examples of misrule many instances could be cited of wise government and a high sense of duty. Lord Mayo gathered round him a circle of Chiefs whose character he personally admired, and in whose administration he took a well-founded pride. Of such territories, Bhopál may serve as an illustration. It is one of the Feudatory States of Central India which exercise sovereign powers over their own subjects: has an area of 6764 square miles, a population of 663,656 souls, and yields a revenue to its Chief of £240,000 a year. Its army, besides a British Contingent which the Chief was bound to maintain by the treaty of 1818, amounted to 4000 men.

The State of Bhopál was founded in 1723 by an Afghán adventurer, who expelled the Hindu Chiefs, built a fortress, and assumed the title of Nawáb. In 1778, when a British army under General Goddard marched through Central India, Bhopál stood forward as the one State friendly to our power. The Maráthá aggressions of the early part of the present century compelled it, like many other Indian States, to seek English aid. In 1819 it acknowledged the supremacy of our Government, was received under the British protection, and was rewarded by some valuable districts which we had won from the Maráthás. The Mutiny of 1857 found Bhopál under the government of a lady, the celebrated Sikandar Begam, whose wise administration had raised her State to a high rank among the Indian Feudatories. For her loyal services at that juncture she was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, and dying in 1868, left her territory to a daughter worthy of her blood.

This Princess, at the time of her accession in 1868, was a widow of thirty-one years of age. She inherited her mother's firmness and good sense, with a rare aptitude for the duties of administration. During Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty she devoted herself to the measures of progress which the Viceroy pressed on every Feudatory Chief who came under his influence. She opened out roads, organised a system of public instruction, executed a survey of her State, reformed the police, suppressed the abominable but deep-rooted trade of kidnapping minors for immoral purposes, and improved the jails. Lord Mayo received her in his capital with marks of distinction, and, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, presented her with honour to His Royal Highness. The Princess carried back to her State the liveliest recollections of his hospitality and kindness, and the next few years of her rule became conspicuous for good government and prudent administrative reforms.

Her Highness was created a Grand Commander of the Star of India, as the ruler of a model State.

Lord Mayo entertained very stringent views as to the duties of the Government of India towards the wilder frontier tribes. He held that, while his Government was bound to preserve the peace of the border, it was bound to do so not by vindictive chastisements for raids committed, but by a more perfect organisation of preventive measures.

In one case on the North-Western Frontier of India, after persistent provocations, it had been locally proposed to deal with the mountaineers by means of a force to be kept ready to make reprisals at a moment's notice, in the event of future raids. Lord Mayo, after reviewing the recent events, thus declared his policy:—'The whole recommendation comes to this—that in the early part of spring a large force should be assembled at different points within the hills; and that this force, being placed absolutely at the disposal of the officers who believe that the burning of crops and the destruction of villages by British troops are indispensable to the maintenance of the peace of the frontier, should, at the least appearance of robbery or raid, advance into the hills and commence the old system of devastation.' Lord Mayo then points out that such a force, acting on the moment, would be beyond the guidance of the Government of India, and that that Government 'might find itself involved in serious military operations, upon the character, justice, or necessity of which the Governor-General in Council never had an opportunity of expressing an opinion.' 'I object to authorise action which may cause such serious results.'

'No one can read ——'s letter without coming to the conclusion that there still exists in the minds of the local authorities an ardent though partly concealed desire for that avenging policy which the Government of India is so anxious to avoid.' Lord Mayo proposed 'to substitute, as far as possible, for surprise, aggression, and reprisal, a policy of vigilant, constant, and never-ceasing defence of those parts of our frontier which are by their position liable to be attacked by foreign tribes.'

It had been objected that such a system of watchful defence 'must act as a constant menace to the tribes.' To this Lord Mayo replies: 'I cannot see the force of this objection. The presence of a policeman is indeed a standing menace to the thief; and a sight of the gallows may be a salutary reminder to the murderer. It is, I fear, too much the habit to adopt what is doubtless the view taken by the mountaineers themselves of these affairs. They look upon them as acts of war and justifiable aggression. We have to teach them that assassination, the attack of a defenceless village by night, and killing people in their beds, are not acts of war, but are esteemed by civilised nations to be acts of murder. The sooner we teach these people this lesson the better. We have already taught it to millions who are less intelligent than the Patháns of the Hazára frontier.'