Nawabgunge, midway between Cawnpoor and Lucknow–Oosur soils how produced–Visit from the prime minister–Rambuksh, of Dhodeeakhera– Hunmunt Sing, of Dharoopoor–Agricultural capitalists. Sipahees and native offices of our army–Their furlough, and petitions– Requirements of Oude to secure good government. The King’s reserved treasury–Charity distributed through the Mojtahid, or chief justice–Infanticide–Loan of elephants, horses, and draft bullocks by Oude to Lord Lake in 1804–Clothing for the troops–The Akbery regiment–Its clothing, &c.,–Trespasses of a great man’s camp in Oude–Russoolabad and Sufeepoor districts–Buksh Allee, the dome– Budreenath, the contractor for Sufeepoor–Meeangunge–Division of the Oude Territory in 1801, in equal shares between Oude and the British Governments–Almas Allee Khan–His good government–The passes of Oude–Thieves by hereditary profession, and village watchmen– Rapacity of the King’s troops–Total absence of all sympathy between the governing and governed–Measures necessary to render the Oude troops efficient and less mischievous to the people–Sheikh Hushmut Allee, of Sundeela.
January 8, 1850.–Nawabgunge, eleven miles over a plain, the soil of which, near the road, is generally very poor oosur. No fruit or ornamental trees, few shrubs, and very little grass. Here and there, however, even near the road, may be seen a small patch of land, from which a crop of rice has been taken this season; and the country is well cultivated all along, up to within half a mile of the road, on both tides [sides]. Nawabgunge is situated on the new metalled road, fifty miles long, between Lucknow and Cawnpoor, and about midway between the two places.* It was built by the late minister, Nawab Ameen-od Dowlah, while in office, for the accommodation of travellers, and is named after him. It is kept up at his expense for the same purpose now that he has descended to private life. There is a small house for the accommodation of European gentlemen and ladies, as well as a double range of buildings, between which the road passes, for ordinary travellers, and for shopkeepers to supply them.
[* The term Gunge, signifies a range of buildings at a place of traffic, for the accommodation of merchants, and all persons engaged in the purchase and sale of goods and for that of their goods and of the shopkeepers who supply them.]
Some people told me, that even the worst of this oosur soil might be made to produce fair crops under good tillage; while others denied the possibility, though all were farmers or landholders. All, however, agreed that any but the worst might be made so by good tillage–that is, by flooding the land by means of artificial embankments, for two or three rainy seasons, and then cross- ploughing, manuring, and irrigating it well. All say that the soil hereabouts is liable to become oosur, if left fallow and neglected for a few years. The oosur, certainly, seems to prevail most near the high roads, where the peasantry have been most exposed to the rapacity of the King’s troops; and this tends to confirm the notion that tillage is necessary in certain soils to check the tendency of the carbonates or nitrates, or their alkaline bases, to superabundance. The abundance of the chloride of sodium in the soil, from which the superabounding carbonates of soda are formed, seems to indicate, unequivocally, that the bed from which they are brought to the surface by capillary attraction must at some time have been covered by salt water.
The soil of Scind, which was at one time covered by the sea, seems to suffer still more generally from the same superabundance of the carbonates of soda, formed from the chlorides of sodium, and brought to the surface in the same manner. But in Scind the evil is greater and more general from the smaller quantity of rain that falls. Egypt would, no doubt, suffer still more from the same cause, inasmuch as it has still less rain than Scind, but for the annual overflowing of the Nile. The greater part of the deserts which now disfigure the face of the globe in hot climates arise chiefly from the same causes, and they may become covered by tillage and population as man becomes wiser, more social, and more humane.
January 9, 1850.–Halted at Nawabgunge. A vast deal of grain of all sorts has for the last two years passed from Cawnpoor to Lucknow for sale. The usual current of grain is from the northern and eastern districts of Oude towards Cawnpoor; but for these two years it has been from Cawnpoor to these districts. This is owing to two bad seasons in Oude generally, and much oppression in the northern and eastern districts, in particular, and the advantage which the navigation of the Ganges affords to the towns on its banks on such occasions. The metalled road from Cawnpoor to Lucknow is covered almost with carts and vehicles of all kinds. Guards have been established upon it for the protection of travellers, and life and property are now secure upon it, which they had not been for many years up to the latter end of 1849. This road has lately been completed under the superintendence of Lient. G. Sim of the engineers, and cost above two lacs of rupees.
The minister came out with a very large cortège yesterday to see and talk with me, and is to stay here to-day. I met him this morning on his way out to shoot in the lake; and it was amusing to see his enormous train contrasted with my small one. I told him, to the amusement of all around, that an English gentleman would rather get no air or shooting at all than seek them in such a crowd. The minister was last night to have received the Rajahs and other great landholders, who had come to my camp, but they told me this morning that they had some of them waited all night in vain for an audience; that the money demanded by his followers, of various sorts and grades, for such a privilege was much more than they could pay; that to see and talk with a prime minister of Oude was one of the most difficult and expensive of things. Rajah Hunmunt Sing, of Dharoopoor, told me that he feared his only alternative now was a very hard one, either to be utterly ruined by the contractor of Salone, or to take to his jungles and strongholds and fight against his Sovereign.*
[* The Rajah was too formidable to be treated lightly, and the Amil was obliged to give in, and consent to take from him what he had paid to his predecessor; but to effect this, the Rajah was, afterwards obliged to go to Lucknow, and pay largely in gratuities.]
Rajah Rambuksh, of Dondhea Kheera, is in the same predicament. He tells me, that a great part of his estate has been taken from him by Chundun Lal, of Morowa, the banker already mentioned, in collusion with the Nazim, Kotab-od Deen, who depends so much on him as the only capitalist in his district; that he is obliged to conciliate him by acquiescing in the spoliation of others; that he has already taken much of his lands by fraud and collusion, and wishes to take the whole in the same way; that this banker now holds lands in the district yielding above two lacs of rupees a-year, can do what he pleases, and is every day aggrandizing himself and family by the ruin of others. There is some truth in what Rambuksh states, though he exaggerates a little the wrong which he himself suffers; and it is lamentable that all power and influence in Oude, of whatever kind or however acquired, should be so sure to be abused, to the prejudice of both sovereign and people. When these great capitalists become landholders, as almost all do, they are apt to do much mischief in the districts where their influence lies, for the Government officers can do little in the collection of the revenue without their aid; and as the collection of revenue is the only part of their duty to which they attach much importance, they are ready to acquiesce in any wrong that they may commit in order to conciliate them. The Nazim of Byswara, Kotab-od Deen, is an old and infirm man, and very much dependent upon Chundun Lal, who, in collusion with him, has certainly deprived many of their hereditary possessions in the usual way in order to aggrandize his own family. He has, at the same time, purchased a great deal of land at auction in the Honourable Company’s districts where he has dealings, keeps the greater part of his wealth, and is prepared to locate his family when the danger of retaining any of either in Oude becomes pressing. The risk is always great; but they bind the local authorities, civil and military, by solemn oaths and written pledges, for the security of their own persons and property, and those of their families and clients.
January 10, 1850.–At Nawabgunge, detained by rain, which fell heavily yesterday, with much thunder and lightning, and has continued to fall all night. It is painful and humiliating to pass through this part of Oude, where the families of so many thousands of our sipahees reside, particularly at this time when so large a portion of them are at their homes on furlough. The Punjab war having closed, all the corps engaged in it have this year been sent off to quiet stations in our old provinces, and their places supplied by others which have taken no share in that or any other war of late. As a measure of economy, and with a view to indulge the native officers and sipahees of the corps engaged in that war, Government has this season given a long furlough to all the native army of Bengal. Some three hundred and fifty native officers and sipahees from each regiment are, or are to be, absent on leave this season. This saves to Government a very large sum in the extra allowance which is granted to native officers and sipahees, during their march from one station to another, and in the deductions which are made from the pay and allowances of those who go on furlough. During furlough, subadars receive 52 rupees a- month instead of 67; jemadars 17, instead of 24; havildars 9, instead of 14; naicks 7, instead of 12; and sipahees 5-8, instead of 7.
These native officers and sipahees, with all their gallantry on service and fidelity to their salt, are the most importunate of suitors, and certainly among the most untruthful and unscrupulous in stating the circumstances of their claims, or the grounds of their complaints. They crowd around me morning and evening when I venture outside my tent, and keep me employed all day in reading their petitions. They cannot or will not understand that the Resident is, or ought to be, only the channel through which their claims are sent for adjustment through the Court to the Oude tribunals and local authorities; and that the investigation and decision must, or ought to, rest with them. They expect that he will at once himself investigate and decide their claims, or have them investigated and decided forthwith by the local authorities of the district through which he is passing; and it is in vain to tell them that the “law’s delay” is as often and as justly complained of in our own territory as in Oude, whatever may be the state of its uncertainty.
The wrongs of which they complain are of course such as all men of their class in Oude are liable to suffer; but no other men in Oude are so prone to exaggerate the circumstances attending them, to bring forward prominently all that is favourable to their own side, and keep back all that is otherwise, and to conceal the difficulties which must attend the search after the truth, and those still greater which must attend the enforcement of an award when made. Their claims are often upon men who have well-garrisoned forts and large bands of armed followers, who laugh at the King’s officers and troops, and could not be coerced into obedience without the aid of a large and well-appointed British force. For the immediate employment of such a force they will not fail to urge the Resident, though they have, to the commanding officer of their company and regiment represented the debtor or offender as a man of no mark, ready to do whatever the Resident or the Oude authorities may be pleased to order. On one occasion no less than thirty lives were lost in attempting to enforce an award in favour of a sipahee of our army.
I have had several visits from my old friend Sheikh Mahboob Allee, the subadar-major, who is mentioned in my Essay on Military Discipline. He is now an invalid pensioner in Oude, and in addition to the lands which his family held before his transfer to the invalids, he has lately acquired possession of a nice village, which he claimed in the usual way through the Resident. He told me that he had possession, but that he found it very difficult to keep cultivators upon it.
“And why is this, my old friend?” I asked. “Cultivators are abundant in Oude, and glad always to till lands on which they are protected and encouraged by moderate rents and a little occasional aid in seed, grain, and stock, and you are now in circumstances to afford them both.”
“True, sir,” said the old subadar, “but the great refractory landholder, my neighbour, has a large force, and he threatens to bring it down upon me, and my cultivators are afraid that they and their families will all be cut up some dark night if they stay with me.”
“But what has your great neighbour to do with your village? Why do you not make friends with him?”
“Make friends with him, sir!” replied the subadar; “the thing is impossible.”
“And why, subadar sahib?”
“Sir, it was from him that the village was taken by the orders of the Durbar, through the interposition of the Resident, to be made over to me, and he vows that he will take it back, whatever number of lives it may cost him to do so.”
“And how long may he and his family have held it?”
“Only thirty or thirty-five years, sir.”
“And neither you nor your family have ever held possession of it for that time?”
“Never, sir; but we always hoped that the favour of the British Government would some day get it for us.”
“And in urging your claim to the village, did you ever tell the Resident that you had been so long out of possession?”
“No, sir, we said nothing about time”
“You know, subadar sahib, that in all countries a limit is prescribed in such cases, and at the Residency that limit is six years; and had the Resident known that your claim was of so old a date he would never have interposed in your favour, more especially when his doing so involved the risk of the loss of so many lives, first in obtaining possession for you, and then keeping you in it.” Cases of this kind are very numerous.
The estate of Rampoor which we lately passed through belonged to the grandfather of Rajah Hunmunt Sing. His eldest son, Sungram Sing, died without issue, and the estate devolved on his second son, Bhow Sing, the father of Rajah Hunmunt Sing. The third brother separated from the family stock during the life of his father, and got, as his share, Sursae, Kuttra Bulleepoor, and other villages. He had five sons: first, Lokee Sing; second, Dirguj Sing; third, Hul Sing; fourth, Dill Sing; and fifth, Bul Sing, and the estate was, on his death, subdivided among them. Kuttra Bulleepoor devolved on Lokee Sing, the eldest, who died without issue; and the village was subdivided among his four brothers or their descendants. But Davey Buksh, the grandson, by adoption of the second brother, Dirguj Sing, unknown to the others, assigned, in lieu of a debt, the whole village to a Brahmin named Bhyroo Tewaree, who forthwith got it transferred to Hozoor Tehseel, through Matadeen, a havildar of the 5th Troop, 7th-Regiment of Cavalry, who, in an application to the Resident, pretended that the estate was his own. It is now beyond the jurisdiction of the local authorities, who could ascertain the truth; and all the rightful co-sharers have been ever since trying in vain to recover their rights. The Bramin [Brahmin] and the Havildar, with Sookhal a trooper in the same regiment, now divide the profits between them, and laugh at the impotent efforts of the old proprietors to get redress. Gholam Jeelanee, a shopkeeper of Lucknow, seeing the profits derived by sipahees, from the abuse of this privilege, purchased a cavalry uniform–jacket, cap, pantaloon, boots, shoes, and sword–and on the pretence of being an invalid trooper of ours, got the signature of the brigadier commanding the troops in Oude to his numerous petitions, which were sent for adjustment to the Durbar through the Resident. He followed this trade profitably for fifteen years. At last he got possession of a landed estate, to which he had no claim of right. Soon after he sent a petition to say that the dispossessed proprietor had killed four of his relations and turned him out. This led to a more strict inquiry, when all came out. In quoting this case to the Resident, in a letter dated the 16th of June 1836, the King of Oude observes: “If a person known to thousands in the city of Lucknow is able, for fifteen years, to carry on such a trade successfully, how much more easy must it be for people in the country, not known to any in the city, to carry it on!”
The Resident communicated to the King of Oude the resolution of the Honourable the Court of Directors to relieve him from the payment of the sixteen lacs of rupees a-year for the auxiliary force; and on the 29th of July 1839, he reported to Government the great gratification which his Majesty had manifested and expressed at this opportune relief. But his gratification at this communication was hardly so great as that which he had manifested on the 14th of December 1837, when told by the Resident that the British Government would not insist upon giving to the subjects of Oude who might enlist into that force the privilege of forwarding complaints about their village affairs and disputes, through their military superiors and the Resident; and it appeared to the Resident, “that this one act of liberality and justice on the part of the British Government had done more to reconcile the King of Oude to the late treaty, in which the Oude auxiliary force had originated, than all that he had said to him during the last three months as to the prospective advantages which that treaty would secure to him and his posterity.” The King observed: “This kindness on the part of the British Government has relieved my mind from a load of disagreeable thoughts.” The prime minister, Hakeem Mehndee, who was present, replied: “All will now go on smoothly. When the men have to complain to their own Government, they will seldom complain without just cause, being aware that a false story will soon be detected by the native local authorities, though it could not be so by European officers at a distance from the villages; and that in all cases of real grievances their claims will soon be fairly and speedily adjusted. If,” added he, “the sipahees of this force had been so placed that they could have enlisted their officers on their side in making complaints, while such officers could know nothing whatever of the circumstances beyond what the sipahees themselves told them, false and groundless complaints would have become endless, and the vexations thereby caused to Government and their neighbours would have become intolerable. These troops,” said he, “will now be real soldiers; but if the privileges enjoyed by the Honourable Company’s sipahees had been conferred upon the seven regiments composing this force, with the relations and pretended relations of the sipahees, it would have converted into corrupt traders in village disputes sixteen or seventeen thousand of the King’s subjects, settled in the heart of the country, privileged to make false accusations of all kinds, and believed by the people to be supported in these falsehoods by the British Government.” Both the King and the minister requested the Resident earnestly and repeatedly to express to the Governor-General their most sincere thanks for having complied with his Majesty’s solicitations on this point.*
[* See King of Oude’s letter to the Governor-General, dated 5th October, 1837, and Residents letters of the 7th idem and 14th December, 1837.]
This privilege which the native officers and sipahees of our native army enjoy of petitioning for redress of grievances, through the Resident, has now been extended to all the regular, irregular, and local corps of the three Presidencies–that is, to all corps paid by the British Government, and to all native officers and sipahees of contingent corps employed in and paid by native States, who were drafted into them from the regular corps of our army up to a certain time; and the number cannot be less than fifty or sixty thousand. But European civil and political functionaries, in our own provinces and other native States, have almost all some men from Oude in their offices or establishments, whose claims and complaints they send for adjustment to the Resident; and it is difficult for him to satisfy them, that he is not bound to take them up in the same manner as he takes up those of the native officers and sipahees of our native army; and he is often induced to yield to their importunity, and thereby to furnish grounds for further applications of the same sort. This privilege is not recognized or named in any treaty, or other engagement with the Sovereign of Oude; nor does any one now know its origin, for it cannot be found in any document recorded in the Resident’s office.
If the Resident happens to be an impatient, overbearing man, he will often frighten the Durbar and its Courts, or local officers, into a hasty decision, by which the rights of others are sacrificed for the native officers and sipahees; and if he be at the same time an unscrupulous man, he will sometimes direct that the sipahee shall be put in possession of what he claims in order to relieve himself from his importunity, or that of his commanding officer, without taking the trouble to inform himself of the grounds on which the claim is founded. Of all such errors there are unhappily too many instances recorded in the Resident’s office. This privilege is in the hands of the Resident an instrument of torture, which it is his duty to apply every day to the Oude Durbar. He may put on a screw more or a screw less, according to his temper or his views, or the importunity of officers commanding corps or companies, and native officers and sipahees in person, which never cease to oppress him more or less.
The most numerous class of complaints and the most troublesome is that against the Government of Oude or its officers and landholders, for enhanced demands of rents; and whenever these officers or landholders are made to reduce these demands in favour of the privileged sipahees, they invariably distribute the burthen in an increased rate upon their neighbours.
Officers who have to pass through Oude in their travels or sporting excursions have of late years generally complained that they receive less civility from villages in which our invalid or furlough sipahees are located than from any others; and that if they are anywhere treated with actual disrespect, such sipahees are generally found to be either the perpetrators or instigators. This complaint is not, I fear, altogether unfounded; and may arise from the diminished attachment felt by the sipahees for their European officers in our army, and partly from the privilege of urging their claims through the Resident, enjoyed by native officers and sipahees, now ceasing on their being transferred to the invalid establishment.
But the privilege itself is calculated to create feelings of dissatisfaction with their European officers, among the honest and hard-working part of our native army. Such men petition only when they have just cause; and not one in five of them can obtain what they demand, and believe to be their just right, under an administration like that of Oude, whatever efforts the Resident may make to obtain it for them; and where one is satisfied, four become discontented; while the dishonest and idle portion of their brother soldiers, who have no real wrongs to complain of, and feign them only to get leave of absence, throw all the burthen of their duties upon them. Others again, by fraud and collusion with those whose influence they require to urge their claims, often obtain more than they have any right to; and their unmerited success tends to increase the dissatisfaction felt by the honest, and more scrupulous portion of the native officers and sipahees who have failed to obtain anything.
Government will not do away with the privilege without first ascertaining the views and wishes of the military authorities. They are not favourable to the abolition, for though the honest and hard- working sipahees may say that it is of no use to them, the idle and unscrupulous, who consider it as a lottery in which they may sometimes draw a prize, or a means of getting leave of absence when they are not entitled to it, will tell them that the fidelity of the whole native army depends upon its being maintained and extended. I am of opinion, after much consideration, and a good deal of experience in the political working of the system, that the abolition of the privilege would be of great advantage to the native army; and it would certainly relieve the European officers from much importunity and annoyance which they now suffer from its enforcement. It is not uncommon for a sipahee of a regiment in Bombay to obtain leave of absence for several times over for ten months at a time, on the pretence of having a case pending in Oude. When his leave is about to expire, he presents a petition to the Resident, who obtains for him from the Court an order for the local authorities to settle his claim. This order is sent to the officer commanding his regiment. The man then makes up a piteous story of his having spent the whole ten months in prosecuting his claim in vain, when, in reality, he has been enjoying himself at home, and had no claim whatever to settle. The next year, or the year after, he gets another ten months’ leave, for the same purpose, and when it is about to expire, he presents himself to the Resident, and declares that the local authorities have been changed, and the new officers pay no regard to the King’s orders. New orders are then got for the new officers, and sent to his regiment, and the same game is played over again.
Native officers and sipahees, in the privilege of presenting petitions through the Resident, are now restricted to their own claims and those of their wives, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. They cannot petition through the Resident for the redress of wrongs suffered, or pretended to have been suffered, by any other relations. In consequence, it has become a common custom with them to lend or sell their names to more remote relations, or to persons not related to them at all. The petition is made out in their own name, and the real sufferer or pretended sufferer, who is to prosecute the claim, is named as the mookteear or attorney. A great many bad characters have in this way deprived men of lands which their ancestors had held in undisputed right of property for many generations or centuries; for the Court, to save themselves from the importunity of the Residency, has often given orders for the claimant being put in possession of the lands without due inquiry or any inquiry at all. The sipahees are, in consequence, much dreaded by the people among whom they reside; for there really is no class of men from whom it is more difficult to get the truth in any case. They have no fear of punishment, because all charges against them for fraud, falsehood, or violation of the rules laid down by Government have to be submitted either to a court-martial, composed of native officers, or to the Governor-General. Both involve endless trouble, and it would, I fear, be impossible to get a conviction before a court-martial so composed. No Resident will ever submit to a Governor-General the scores of flagrant cases that every month come before him; still less will he worry unoffending and suffering people by causing them to be summoned to give evidence before a military court.
In a recent instance (July 1851), a sipahee in a regiment stationed at Lucknow was charged before a court-martial with three abuses of the privilege. He required no less than seventy-four witnesses to be summoned in his defence. The Court had to wait till what could be got out of the seventy-four appeared, and the man became an object of sympathy, because he was kept so long in arrest. He named the first Assistant to the Resident, who has charge of the Sipahee Petition Department, as a witness; and he was not, in consequence, permitted to attend the Court on the part of the Resident, who preferred the charges, though he was never called or examined by the Court on the part of the defence. The naming him, and the summoning of so many witnesses were mere ruses on the part of the sipahee to escape. No person on the part of the Resident was allowed to attend the Court and see that his witnesses were examined; nor had he any means of knowing whether they were or not. He had reason to believe that the most important were not. The sipahee was of course acquitted, as sipahees charged with such abuses of the privilege always will be. This man’s regiment was at Lucknow, and near the place where the cause of action arose, his own village, and the Resident’s office. How much more difficult would it be to get a conviction against a sipahee whose regiment happens to be many hundred miles off!
The transfer of their lands from the jurisdiction of the local authorities to that of the Hozoor Tehseel is often the cause of much suffering to their copartners and neighbours. Their co-sharers in the land often find much inconvenience from it, and apprehend that, sooner or later, the influence of the sipahee will enable him to add their shares to his own. The village so transferred, being removed from the observation and responsibility of the local authorities, often becomes a safe refuge for the bad characters of the district, who thence depredate upon the country around with impunity. Claims to villages, to which the claimant had really no right whatever, have been successfully prosecuted by or through sipahees, for the sole purpose of having them transferred to the Hozoor Tehseel, and made dens of thieves and highway robbers. The person in charge of the Hozool Tehseel villages has generally a good deal of influence at Court, and this he lends to such claimants, for a consideration, without fear or scruple, as he feels assured that he shall be able to counteract any representations on the part of the local authorities of the evils suffered from the holders and occupants of such villages. He never pretends to be able to watch over or control the conduct of the holders and occupiers of the villages under his charge, situated, as they mostly are, in remote districts. The transfer of such villages can be justified only in districts that are held in contract, and even in them it might be easy to provide effectually for the protection of the holders from over-exactions on the part of the contractors.
This privilege is attended with infinite difficulty and perplexity to the Resident and Government; and is at the same time exceedingly odious to the people and Government of Oude. Officers commanding regiments and companies have much trouble with such petitions. Able to hear only one side of any question, they think that the evils suffered by the sipahees are much greater and more numerous than they really are, and grant leave to enable them to prosecute their claims to redress more often than is necessary. Men who want leave, when they are not otherwise entitled to it, feign wrongs which they never suffered, or greatly exaggerate such as may really have been inflicted on them in order to obtain it; or, as I have stated, lend their names to others and ask leave to prosecute claims with which they have really nothing whatever to do. The sipahees and native officers of our army are little better with than they would be without the privilege; and a great many enlist or remain in the service solely with the view of better prosecuting their claims, and resign or desert as soon as they have effected their purpose, or find that the privilege is no longer necessary. They make a convenience in this way of our service, and are the most useless soldiers in our ranks. I am persuaded that we should have from Oude just as many and as good recruits for our army without as with this privilege.
The regiments of the Gwalior Contingent get just as good recruits from Oude as those of the Line, though they do not enjoy the privilege. I believe that those corps which did not enjoy the privilege till within the last two years got just as good recruits from Oude as they now do, since it has been extended to them. Till 1848 the privilege was limited to the native officers and soldiers of our regular army, and to such as had been drafted from our regular army into local corps up to a certain date; but in July of that year the privilege was extended to all corps, regular and irregular, attached to the Bengal, Madras, and Bombay Presidencies, which are paid by the British Government. The feelings and opinions of the Oude Government had not been consulted in the origin of this privilege, nor were they now consulted in the extension given to it.
Officers commanding regiments and companies complain that the sipahees and native officers never get redress, whatever trouble they take to obtain it for them; and, I believe, they hardly ever hear a sipahee or native officer acknowledge that he has had redress. A sipahee one day came to the first Assistant, Captain Shakespear, clamouring for justice, and declared that not the slightest notice had been taken of his petition by the Oude Government or its local authorities. On being questioned, he admitted that no less than forty persons had been seized and were in prison on his requisition; but he would not admit that this was any proof of the slightest notice having been taken of his complaint. All are worried, and but few benefited by the privilege, and the advantage of it to the army never can counterbalance all the disadvantages. Invalid pensioners do not now enjoy the privilege, but are left to prefer their claims direct to the King’s Courts, like others of the King’s subjects, on the ground that they cannot–like sipahees still serving–plead distance from their homes; but a large proportion of the sipahees still serving who have, or pretend to have, claims, obtain leave of absence from their regiments to prosecute them in person.
The objection once raised by Lord William Bentinck against our employing troops in support of the Government of Oude against refractory landholders, is equally valid against our advocacy of the claims of sipahees to lands. “If,” said his Lordship, “British troops be lent to enforce submission, it seems impossible to avoid becoming parties to the terms of submission and guarantees of their observance afterwards on both sides; in which case we should become mixed up in every detail of the administration.” If the sipahee does not pay punctually the assessment upon the lands which he has obtained through the Resident, the Oude Government calls upon the Resident to enforce payment; and if the Oude Government ventures to add a rupee to the rate demanded for the year, or for any one year, the sipahee, through the commandant of his corps, and, perhaps, the Commander-in- Chief and Governor-General, calls upon the Resident to have the rate reduced, or to explain the grounds upon which it has been made; or if the sipahee has a dispute with his numerous co-sharers, the Resident is called upon to settle it. If the King’s troops have trespassed, if the crops have suffered from calamities of season or marauders, or the village has been robbed, the sipahee refuses to pay, and demands a remission of the Government demand; and if he does not get it, appeals in the same manner to the Resident. If a sipahee be arrested or detained for defalcation, a demand comes for his immediate release; and if his crops or stock be distrained for balance, or lands attached, the Resident is called upon to ascertain and explain the reason why, and obtain redress. All such distraint is represented as open robbery and pillage.
It is not at all uncommon for a sipahee to obtain leave of absence from his regiment three or four times to enable him to prosecute the same case in person at Lucknow, though he might prosecute it just as well through an attorney. He often enjoys himself at his home while his attorney prosecutes his claim, if he really has any, at Lucknow. The commanding officers of his regiment and company of course believe all he says regarding the pressing necessity for his presence at Lucknow; and few of them know that the cases are derided in the King’s Courts, and that the Resident could not possibly decide them himself if he had five times the establishment he has and full powers to do so. If the Resident finds that a sipahee has lent his name to another, and reports his conduct, he makes out a plausible tale, which his commanding officer believes to be true; the Commander-in- Chief is referred to; the case is submitted to the Governor-General, and sometimes to the Court of Directors, and a voluminous correspondence follows, till the Resident grows weary, and the sipahee escapes with impunity. In the mean time, troops of witnesses have been worried to show that the sipahee has no connection whatever with the estate, or thing claimed in his name, or with the family to whom his name was lent. Many a man has, in this way, as above stated, been robbed of an estate which his family had held for many generations; and many a village which had been occupied by an honest and industrious peasantry has been turned into a den of robbers. In flagrant cases of false claims, the Resident may get the attorney, employed by the sipahee in prosecuting it, punished by the Durbar, but he can rarely hope to get the sipahee himself punished.
In a case that occurred shortly before I took charge, a sipahee complained that a tallookdar had removed him, or his friends, from their village by over exactions, demanding two thousand eight hundred rupees a-year instead of eight hundred. An ameen was sent out to the district to settle the affair. Having some influence at Court, he got the sipahee put into possession, at the rate of eight hundred, and obtained from him a pledge to pay to him, the ameen, a large portion of the two thousand profit! The tallookdar, being a powerful man, made the contractor reduce his demand upon his estate, of which the village was a part, in proportion; and the contractor made the Government give him credit for the whole two thousand eight hundred, which the estate was well able to pay, in any other hands, and ought to have paid. The holder continued, I believe, to pay the ameen, who continued to give him the benefit of his influence at Court. Cases of this kind are not uncommon. The Resident is expected by commandants of corps and companies to secure every native officer and sipahee in the possession of his estate at a fixed rate, in perpetuity; and as many of their relations and friends as may contrive to have their claims presented through the Resident in their names. He is expected to adjust all disputes that may arise between them and their co- sharers and neighbours; or between them and their landholders and Government officers; to examine all their complicated accounts of collections and balances, fair payments, and secret gratuities.
Sipahees commonly enter the service under false names, and give false names to their relatives and places of abodes, in order that they may not be traced if they desert; or that the truth may not be discovered if they pretend to be of higher caste than they really are, or otherwise offend. When they find, in the prosecution of their claims through the Resident, that this is discovered, they find an alias for each name, whether of person, place, or thing: the troubles and perplexities which arise from this privilege are endless.
The Court of Directors, in a despatch dated the 4th March, 1840, remarking on a report dated the 29th November, 1838, from the Resident, Colonel Low, relating to abuses arising from the interference of the Resident in respect to complaints preferred by subjects of Oude serving in our army, observes, “that these abuses appear to be even more flagrant than the Court had previously believed them to be, and no time ought to be lost in applying an effectual remedy: cases are not wanting in which complaints and claims, that are utterly groundless, meet with complete success, the officers of the Oude Government finding it less troublesome to comply with the unjust demand than to investigate the case in such a manner as to satisfy the Resident; and the Oude Government, for the purpose of getting rid of importunity, reduces the assessment on the lands of these favoured individuals, making up the loss by increased exactions from their neighbours.” The Court orders the immediate abolition of the privilege in the case of invalided and pensioned sipahees, and directs that those still serving in our army be no longer allowed to complain in respect of all their relatives, real or pretended, but only in cases in which they themselves, their parents, wives, or children are actually interested. “All unfounded complaints, and all false allegations made in order to render complaints cognizable, ought to be, when discovered, punishable by our own military authorities, who ought not to be remiss in inflicting such punishment when justly incurred.” “Under the restrictions which we have enjoined,” continues the Court, “the trial may once more be made whether this privilege is compatible with good government in Oude, and with the rightful authority of the King of Oude and his officers. Should the abuses which have prevailed still continue under the altered system, the whole subject must be again taken into consideration, and the Resident is to be required to submit a report on the operation of the privilege after the expiration of one year.”
How the rule with regard to relationship is evaded has been already stated, and among the numerous instances of this evasion that have been discovered every year since this order of the Honourable Court was passed, the offence has never been punished by any military authority in one. The Resident has no hope, nor the sipahee any fear, that such an offence will ever be punished by a court-martial; and the former feels averse to trespass on the time and attention of the Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief with such references. He hardly ever submits them till the necessity is forced upon him by references made to the Commander-in-Chief, by officers commanding regiments, in behalf of offenders in whose veracity they are disposed to place too much confidence.
In one of the cases quoted by Colonel Low in his letter of the 29th November, 1838, Reotee Barn, a sipahee, claimed a village, which was awarded to him by the Court, without due inquiry, to avoid further importunity. The owner in possession would not give it up. A large force was sent to enforce the award; lives were lost; the real owner was seized and thrown into gaol, and there died. Reotee Ram had no right whatever to the village, and he could not retain possession among such a sturdy peasantry. His commanding officer again appealed to the Commander-in-Chief, and the case was referred to the Governor- General and to the Honourable the Court of Directors, and a voluminous correspondence took place. It was afterwards fully proved, that the sipahee, Reotee Ram, had never had the slightest ground of claim to the village; and had been induced to set up one solely at the instigation of an interested attorney with whom he was to share the profits.
In another case quoted by Colonel Low in that letter, a pay havildar of the 58th Regiment complained, jointly with his brother Cheyda, through the Commander-in-Chief, to the Governor-General, in June 1831, stating, that Rajah Prethee Put had murdered two of his relations, plundered his house, burnt his title-deeds, cut down five of his mango-groves, seized seventy-three beegahs of land belonging to him, of hereditary right, turned all his family out of the village, including the widows of the two murdered men, and still held in confinement his relative Teekaram, a sipahee of the Bombay army. On investigation before the Assistant Resident, Captain Shakespear, the havildar and Cheyda admitted-first, that Teekaram had rejoined his regiment before they complained; second, that of the two murdered men, one had been killed fifty-five years before, and the other twenty years, and that both had fallen in affrays between landholders, in which many lives had been lost on both sides; third, that he had never himself held the lands, and that his father had been forty years before deprived of them by the father of Cheyda, who had the best claim to them, and had mortgaged them to a Brahmin, from whom Prethee Put had taken them for defalcation; fourth, that it was not his own claim he was urging, but that of Cheyda, who was not his brother, but the great grandson of his grandfather’s brother, and that he had never been in the British service; fifth, that the lands had been taken from his father by Cheyda’s father fourteen years before he, the havildar, entered the British service twenty-eight years ago; sixth, that his family had lost nothing in the village, by Prethee Put, and that the persons deprived of their mango-groves were only very distantly related to him.
Fuzl Allee, a notorious knave, having, in collusion with the local authorities of the district, taken from Hufeez-ollah the village of Dewa, which had been held by his family in proprietory right for many generations, and tried to extort from him a written resignation of all his rights to the lands, Hufeez-ollah made his escape, and went to Lucknow to seek redress. During his absence his relations tried to recover possession, and in the contest one of Fuzl Allee’s followers was killed. Fuzl Allee then prevailed upon Ihsan Allee, a pay havildar in the 9th Regiment of our Cavalry, who was in no way whatever connected with the parties, and had no claim whatever on the lands, to present a petition to the Resident, charging Hufeez-ollah with having committed a gang-robbery upon his house, and murdered one of his servants. Hufeez-ollah was seized and thrown into prison, and the case was made over for trial to Zakir Allee. No proof whatever having been adduced against him for four months, Zakir Allee declared him innocent, and applied for his release; but before his application reached the Durbar, another petition was presented to the Resident, Colonel Richmond, in the name of the pay havildar; and the Durbar ordered that the case should be made over to the Court of Mahommed Hyat, and that the prisoner should not be released without a settlement and the previous sanction of the Durbar, as the affair related to the English.
The prisoner proved that he was at Lucknow at the time of the affray, and that the lands in dispute had belonged to his family for many generations. No proof whatever was produced against him, but by frequently changing the attorneys of the pay havildar, pretending that he required to attend in person but could not get leave of absence, and other devices, Fuzl Allee contrived to postpone the final decision till the 27th of February, 1849, when Mahommed Hyat acquitted the prisoner, and declared that the pay havildar had in reality no connection whatever either with the parties or with the lands; that his name had been used by Fuzl Allee for his own evil purposes; that he had become very uneasy at the thought of keeping an innocent man so long in prison merely to gratify the malice and evil designs of his enemy; and prayed the Durbar to call upon the prosecutor to prove his charges before the Minister or other high officer within a certain period, or to direct the release of the poor man.
On the 16th of January, 1852, the prisoner sent a petition to the Resident, Colonel Sleeman, to say, that after he had been acquitted by Mahommed Hyat on the 27th of February, 1849, his enemy, Fuzl Allee, had contrived to prevail upon the Durbar to have his case made over to the Court of the Suder-os Sudoor, by whom he had been a third time acquitted; but that the Durbar dared not order his release, as the case was one in which British officers were concerned. He therefore prayed that the Resident would request the King to order his release, on his giving security for his appearance when required, as he had been in prison for more than four years. On the 24th of January, 1852, the Resident requested the King to have the prisoner immediately released. This was the first time that the case came to the notice of Colonel Sleeman, though Hufeez-ollah had been four years in prison, under a fictitious charge from the pay havildar.
January 11, 1850.–At Nawabgunge, detained by rain, which fell heavily all last night, to the great delight of the landed interest, and great discomfort of travellers. Nothing but mud around us–our tents wet through, but standing, and the ground inside of them dry. Fortunately there has been no strong wind with the heavy rain, and we console ourselves with the thought that the small inconvenience which travellers suffer from such rain at this season is trifling, compared with the advantage which millions of our fellow-creatures derive from it. This is what I have heard all native travellers say, however humble or however great–all sympathise with the landed interests in a country where industry is limited almost exclusively to the culture of the soil, and the revenue of the sovereign derived almost exclusively from the land. After such rains the cold increases–the spirits rise–the breezes freshen–the crops look strong–the harvest is retarded–the grain gets more sap and becomes perfect–the cold season is prolonged, as the crops remain longer green, and continue to condense the moisture of the surrounding atmosphere. Without such late rain, the crops ripen prematurely, the grain becomes shrivelled, and defective both in quantity and quality. While the rain lasts, however, a large camp is a wretched scene; for few of the men, women, and children, and still fewer of the animals it contains, can find any shelter at all!
January 12, 1850.-At Nawabgunge, still detained by rain. The Minister had ordered out tents for himself and suite on the 8th, but they had not come up, and I was obliged to lend him one of my best, and some others as they came up, or they would have been altogether without shelter. When he left them on the 10th, his attendants cut and took away almost all the ropes, some of the kanats or outer walls, and some of the carpets. He knew nothing about it, nor will he ever learn anything till told by me. His attendants were plundering in all the surrounding villages while he remained; and my people tried in vain to prevent them, lest they should themselves be taken for the plunderers. Of all this the Minister knew nothing. The attendants on the contractors and other local officers are, if possible, still worse; and throughout the country the King’s officers all plunder, or acquiesce in the plunder, utterly regardless of the sufferings of the people and the best interests of their Sovereign. No precaution whatever is taken to prevent this indiscriminate plunder by the followers of the local authorities; nor would any one of them think it worth his while to interpose if he saw the roofs of the houses of a whole village moving off on the heads of his followers to his camp; or a fine crop of sugar-cane, wheat, or vegetables cut down for fodder by them before his face. It is the fashion of the country, and the Government acquiesces in it.
Among the people no man feels mortified, or apprehends that he shall stand the worse in the estimation of the Government or its officers, for being called and proved to be a robber. It is the trade of every considerable landholder in the country occasionally, and that of a great many of them perpetually; the murder of men, women, and children generally attends their depredations. A few days ago, when requested by the King to apply to officers commanding stations, and magistrates of bordering districts, for aid in the arrest of some of the most atrocious of these rebels and robbers, I told his Majesty, that out of consideration for the poor people who suffered, I had made a requisition for that aid for the arrest of three of the worst of them; but that I could make no further requisition until he did something to remove the impression now universal over Oude, that those who protected their peasantry managed their estates well, obeyed the Government in all things, and paid the revenue punctually, were sure to be oppressed, and ultimately ruined by the Government and its officers, while those who did the reverse in all these things were equally sure to be favoured and courted.
As an instance, I mentioned Gholam Huzrut, who never paid his revenues, oppressed his peasantry, murdered his neighbours, and robbed them of their estates, attacked and plundered the towns around with his large band of robbers, and kept the country in a perpetual state of disorder; yet, when seized and sent in a prisoner to Lucknow by Captain Bunbury, he managed to bribe courtiers, and get orders sent out to the local authorities to have his son kept in possession of all his ill-gotten lands, and favoured and protected in all possible ways. I knew that such orders had been obtained by bribery; and the Minister told me, that he had ordered nothing more than that the son should have the little land which had been held of old by the family, and should be required to give up all that he had usurped. I showed him a copy of the order issued by his confidential servant, Abid Allee, to all commanders of troops in the district, which had been obtained for me for the occasion of the Minister’s visit to my camp; and he seemed much ashamed to see that his subordinates should so abase the confidence he placed in them. The order was as follows:-
“To the Officers commanding the Forces in the District of Sidhore, Nawabgunge, Dewa, &c.
“By Order of the Minister.–The King’s chuprassies have been sent to Para to invite in Bhikaree the son of Gholam Huzrut; and you all are informed that the said Bhikaree is to be honoured and cherished by the favour of the King; and if any of you should presume to prevent his coming in, or molest him in the possession of any of the lands he holds, you will incur the severe displeasure of his Majesty. You are, on no account, to molest or annoy him in any way connected with his affairs.
(Signed) "ABID ALLEE."
The thing necessary in Oude is a system and a machinery that shall inspire all with a feeling-first, of security in their tenure in office so long as the duties of it are performed ably and honestly; second, in their tenure in their lands assessed at moderate rates, as long as the rents and revenues so assessed are fully and punctually paid, and the duties of the holders towards the Government, their tenants, and the public, are faithfully discharged; third, in the safety of life, person, and property on the roads and in the towns, villages, and hamlets scattered over the country. This good can never be effected with the present system and machinery, whatever be the ability and diligence of the King, the Minister, and the Resident; be they of the highest possible order, the good they can effect must be small and temporary; there can be, under such a system, no stability in any rule, no feeling of security in any person or thing!
A tribunal, formed under the guarantee of the British Government, might, possibly–first, form a settlement of the land revenue of the whole country, and effectually enforce from all parties, the fulfilment of the conditions it imposed; second, decide, finally, upon all charges against public officers–protect the able and honest, and punish all those who neglect their duties or abuse their authority; third, reform the military force in all its branches–give it the greatest possible efficiency, compatible with the outlay– concentrate it at five or six stations, and protect the people of the country from its rapacity; fourth, raise and form a police, distinct altogether from this military force, and efficient for all the duties required from it; fifth, create and maintain judicial courts to which all classes might look up with confidence and respect. But to effect all this it would require to transfer at least twenty-five lacs of rupees a-year from the pockets of official absorbants and Court favourites to those of efficient public officers; and, finally, to set aside the present King, Minister, and Commander-in-Chief, and take all the executive upon itself.
The expenditure is now about twenty lacs of rupees a-year above the income, and the excess is paid out of the reserved treasury. This reserved treasury was first established by Saadut Allee Khan in A.D. 1801, when he had serious thoughts of resigning the government of his country into the hands of the Honourable Company, and retiring into private life. Up to this time he used to drink hard, and to indulge in other pleasures, which tended to unfit him for the cares and duties of sovereignty; but, in 1801, he made a solemn vow at the shrine of Huzrut Abbas at Lucknow to cease from all such indulgences, and devote all his time and attention to his public duties. This vow he kept, and no Sovereign of Oude has ever conducted the Government with so much ability as he did for the remaining fourteen years of his life. On his death, which took place on the 12th of July, 1814, he left in this reserved treasury the sum of fourteen crores of rupees, or fourteen millions sterling, with all his establishments paid up, and his just debts liquidated. When he ascended the musnud on the 21st January, 1798, he found nothing in the Treasury, and the public establishments all much in arrears.
Out of this reserved treasure, the zukaat, or two and a-half per cent., is every year paid to the mojtahid for distribution among the poor of the Sheea sect at Lucknow. No person of the Sonnee sect is permitted to partake of this charity. Syuds or lineal descendants of the Prophet are not permitted to take any part of this charity, except for the bonâ fide payment of debt due. The mojtahid is, at the same time, the high priest and the highest judicial functionary in the State. Being a Syud, neither he nor any member of his family can legally take any part of this charity for themselves, except for the bonâ fide purpose of paying debts; but they get over the difficulty by borrowing large sums before the money is given out, and appropriate the greater part of the money to the liquidation of these debts, though they all hold large sums in our Government securities. To his friends at Court he sends a large share, with a request that they will do him the favour to undertake the distribution among the poor of their neighbourhood. To prevent popular clamour, a small portion of the money given out is actually distributed among the poor of the Sheea sect at Lucknow; but that portion is always small.
Saadut Allee’s son and successor, Ghazee-od Deen Hyder, spent four crores out of the reserved treasury over and above the whole income of the State; and when he died, on the 20th of October, 1827, he left ten crores of rupees in that treasury. His son and successor, Nusseer-od Deen Hyder, spent nine crores and thirty lacs; and when he died, on the 7th of July, 1837, he left only seventy lacs in the reserved treasury. His successor, Mahommed Allee Shah, died on the 16th of May, 1842, leaving in the reserved treasury thirty-five lacs of rupees, one hundred and twenty-four thousand gold mohurs, and twenty-four lacs in our Government securities–total, seventy-eight lacs and eighty-four thousand rupees. His son and successor, Amjud Allee Shah, died on the 13th of February, 1847, leaving in the reserved treasury ninety-two lacs of rupees, one hundred and twenty- four thousand gold-mohurs, and twenty-four lacs in our Government securities–total, one crore and thirty-six lacs. His son and successor, his present Majesty, Wajid Allee Shah, is spending out of this reserved treasury, over and above the whole income of the country, above twenty lacs of rupees a-year; and the treasury must soon become exhausted. His public establishments, and the stipendiary members of the royal family, are, at the same time, kept greatly in arrears.*
[* November 30, 1851.–The gold-mohurs have been all melted down, and the promissory notes of our Government all, save four lacs, given away; and of the rupees, I believe, only three lacs remain; so that the reserved treasury must be entirely exhausted before the end of 1851; while the establishments and stipendiary members of the royal family are in arrears for from one to three years. Fifty lacs of rupees would hardly suffice to pay off these arrears. The troops on detached duty, in the provinces with local officers, are not so much in arrears as those in and about the capital. They are paid out of the revenues as they are collected, and their receipts sent in to the treasury. For some good or pleasing services rendered by him to the minister this year, in the trial of offenders whom that minister wished to screen, three lacs of rupees have been paid to the mojtahid as zukaat for distribution to the poor. This has all been appropriated by the mojtahid, the minister, and Court favourites.
The State, like individuals, is bound to pay this zukaat only when it is free from debts of all kinds. The present King’s father was free from debt, and had his establishments always paid up; and he always paid this charity punctually. The present King is not bound to pay it, but the high-priest, minister, and Court favourites are too deeply interested in its payment to permit its discontinuance; and the king, like a mere child in their hands, acquiesces in all they propose. The zukaat has, in consequence, increased as the treasury has become exhausted.]
January 13, 1850.–Russoolabad, twelve miles, over a country better peopled and cultivated than usual, where the soil admits of tillage. There is a good deal that requires drainage, and still more that is too poor to be tilled without great labour and outlay in irrigation, manure, &c. The villages are, however, much nearer to each other than in any other part of the country that we have passed over; and the lands, close around every village, are well cultivated. The landholders and cultivators told me, that the heavy rain we have had has done a vast deal of good to the crops; and, as it has been followed by a clear sky and fine westerly wind, they have no fear of the blight which might have followed had the sky continued cloudy, and the winds easterly. Certainly nothing could look better than the crops of all kinds do now, and the people are busily engaged in ploughing the land for sugar-cane, and for the autumn crops of next season.
I had some talk with the head zumeendar of Naraenpoor about midway. He is of the Ditchit family of Rajpoots, who abound in the district we have now entered. We passed over the boundary of Byswara, about three miles from our last encampment, and beyond that district there are but few Rajpoots of the Bys clan. These Ditchits give their daughters in marriage to the Bys Rajpoots, but cannot get any of theirs in return. Gunga Sing, the zumeendar, with whom I was talking, told me that both the Ditchits and Byses put their infant daughters to death, and that the practice prevailed more or less in all families of these and, he believed, all other clans of Rajpoots in Oude, save the Sengers.* I asked him whether it prevailed in his own family, and he told me that it did, more or less, as in all others. I bade him leave me, as I could not hold converse with a person guilty of such atrocities, and told him that they would be all punished for them in the next world, if not in this.
[* The Sengers are almost the only class of Rajpoots in Bundelkund, and Boghilcund, Rewa, and the Saugor territories, who used to put their female infants to death; and here, in Oude, they are almost the only class who do not.]
Rajah Bukhtawar Sing, who was on his horse beside my elephant, said, “They are all punished in this world, and will, no doubt, be punished still more in the next. Scarcely any of the heads of these landed aristocracy are the legitimate sons of their predecessors; they are all adopted, or born of women of inferior grade. The heads of families who commit or tolerate such atrocities become leprous, blind, deaf or dumb, or are carried off in early life by some terrible disease. Hardly any of them attain a good old age, nor can they boast of an untainted line of ancestors like other men. If they get sons, they commonly die young. They unite themselves to women of inferior castes for want of daughters in families of their own ranks, and there is hardly a family among these proud Rajpoots unstained by such connections.* Even the reptile Pausies become Rajpoots by giving their daughters to Powars and other Rajpoot families, when by robbery and murder they have acquired wealth and landed property. The sister of Gunga Buksh, of Kasimgunge, was married to the Rajah of Etondeea, a Powar Rajpoot in Mahona; and the present Rajah–Jode Sing–is her son. Gunga Buksh is a Pausee, but the family call themselves Rawats, and are considered to be Rajpoots, since they have acquired landed possessions by the murder and ruin of the old proprietors. They all delight in murder and rapine–the curse of God is upon them, sir, for the murder of their own innocent children!”
[* A great number of girls are purchased and stolen from our territories, brought into Oude, and sold to Rajpoot families, as wives for their sons, on the assurance, that they are of the same or higher caste, and that their parents have been induced to part with them from poverty. A great many of our native officers and sipahees, who marry while home on furlough, and are pressed for time, get such wives. Some of their neighbours are always bribed by the traders in such girls, to pledge themselves for the purity of their blood. If they ever find out the imposition, they say nothing about it.]
“When I was sent out to inquire into the case of Brigadier Webber, who had been attacked and robbed while travelling in his palkee, with relays of bearers, from Lucknow to Seetapoor, I entered a house to make some inquiries, and found the mistress weeping. I asked the cause, and she told me that she had had four children, and lost all– that three of them were girls, who had been put to death in infancy, and the last was a fine boy, who had just died! I told her that this was a just punishment from God for the iniquities of her family, and that I would neither wash my hands nor drink water under her roof. I never do under the roof of any family in which such a cruel practice prevails. These Rajpoots are all a bad set, sir. When men murder their own children, how can they scruple to murder other people? The curse of God is upon them, sir.
“In the district of Byswara,” he continued, “through which we have just passed, you will find at least fifty thousand men armed to fight against each other, or their government and its officers: in such a space, under the Honourable Company’s dominion, you would not find one thousand armed men of the same class. Why is this, but because you do not allow such crimes to be perpetrated? Why do you go on acquiring dominion over one country after another with your handful of European troops and small force of native sipahees, but because God sees that your rule is just, and that you have an earnest desire to benefit the people and improve the countries you take?”
He told me that he had charge of the cattle under Saadut Allee Khan when Lord Lake took the field at the first siege of Bhurtpoor; that his master lent his Lordship five hundred elephants, eight thousand artillery bullocks, and five hundred horses; that two hundred and fifty of the elephants returned; but whether any of the bullocks and horses came back or not he could not say.
The country we came over to-day is well studded with groves and fine single trees, but the soil is generally of the lighter doomuteea kind, which requires much labour and outlay in water and manure. The irrigation is all from wells and pools. In the villages we came through, we saw but few of the sipahees of our army home on furlough; they are chiefly from the Byswara and Bunoda districts. We found our tents pitched upon a high and dry spot, with a tight soil of clay and sand. After the heavy rain we have had, it looked as if no shower had fallen upon it for an age. The mud walls of the houses we saw on the road were naked, as usual. The rapacity of the King’s troops is everywhere, directly or indirectly, the cause of this: and till they are better provided and disciplined the houses in the towns and villages can never improve.
The commandant, Imdad Hoseyn, of the Akberee or Telinga Regiment, on duty with the Amil of the Poorwa district, in which our camp was last pitched, followed me a few miles this morning to beg that I would try to prevail upon the Durbar to serve out clothing for his corps. He told me that the last clothing it got from the Government was on the occasion of Lord Hastings’ visit to Lucknow, some thirty-three years ago, in 1817; that many orders had been given since that time for new clothing, but there was always some one about Court to counteract them, from malice or selfishness; that his father, Zakir Allee, commanded the corps when it got the last clothing, and he succeeded him many years ago. The Telinga Regiments are provided with arms, accoutrements, and clothing by Government. The sipahees formerly got five rupees a-month, but for only ten months in the year; they now get four rupees and three and a-half annas a-month for all the twelve months. ‘He is, he says, obliged to take a great many sufarashies, or men put in by persons of influence at Court, out of favour, or for the purpose of sharing in their pay; and, under the deductions and other disadvantages to which they are liable, he could get no good men to enlist. The corps, in consequence, has a wretched appearance, and certainly could not be made formidable to an enemy. The “Akbery” is one of the Telinga corps of infantry, and was intended to be, in all things, like those of Captains Barlow, Bunbury, and Magness; but Imdad Hoseyn told me that they had a certain weight at Court, which secured for their regiments many advantages necessary to make the corps efficient, while he had none: that they had occasional intercourse with the Resident, and were all at Court for some months in the year to make friends, while he was always detached.
January 14, 1850.–Halted at Russoolabad, for our second set of tents, which did not come up till night, when it was too late to send them on to our next ground. We have two sets of sleeping and dining tents–one to go on and the other to remain during the night–but only one set of office tents. They are struck in the afternoon, when the office duties of the day are over, and are ready by the time we reach our ground the next morning. This is the way in which all public functionaries march in India. Almost all officers who have revenue charges march through the districts under their jurisdiction during the cold season, and so do many political officers who have control over more than one native principality. I have had charges that require such moving ever since the year 1822, or for some twenty-eight years; and with the exception of two intervals of absence on medical certificate in 1826 and 1836, I have been every cold season moving in the way I describe.
No Resident at the Court of Lucknow ever before moved, over the country as I am doing to inquire into the condition of the people, the state of the country, and character of the administration; nor would it be desirable for them to do so unless trained to civil business, and able and disposed to commune freely with the people of all classes. The advantages would hardly counterbalance the disadvantages. When I apologize to the peasantry for the unavoidable trespasses of my camp, they always reply good-humouredly, “The losses we suffer from them are small and temporary, while the good we hope from your visit is great and permanent.” Would that I could realize the hopes to which my visit gives rise.
January 15, 1850.–To Meeangunge, five miles, over a plain of good doomuteea soil, well studded with trees; but much of the land lies waste, and many of the villages and hamlets are unoccupied and in ruins. We passed the boundary of the Russoolabad district, about two miles from our last ground, and crossed into that of Meeangunge or Safeepoor. The Russoolabad district was held in contract for some years by one of the greatest knaves in Oude, Buksh Allee, a dome by caste, whose rise to wealth and influence may be described as illustrative of the manners and customs of the Lucknow Court and Government. This man and his deputy, Munsab Allee, reduced a good deal of the land of the district to waste, and depopulated many of its villages and hamlets by over-exactions and by an utter disregard of their engagements with the landholders and cultivators; and they were in league with many atrocious highway robbers, who plundered and murdered so many travellers along the high road leading from Lucknow to Cawnpoor, which runs through the district, that it was deemed unsafe to pass it except in strong bodies.
When I took charge of my office in January last, they used to seize every good-looking girl or young woman, passing the roads with parents and husbands, who were too poor to purchase redress at Court, and make slaves or concubines of them; and, feeling strong in the assurance of protection from the fiddlers in the palace, who are of the same caste–domes–Buksh Allee defied all authority, and kept those girls and women in his camp and house at Lucknow, while their parents and husbands, for months and years, in vain besought all who were likely to have the least influence or authority to interpose for their release. Some of them came to me soon after I took charge, and, having collected sufficient proof of these atrocities, and of some robberies which he had committed or caused to be committed along the high road, I insisted upon his being deprived of his charges and punished. He remained for many months concealed in the city, but was at last seized by some of the Frontier Police, under the guidance of an excellent officer, Lieutenant Weston, the Superintendent.
I had prevailed on the King to offer two thousand rupees for his apprehension, and the two thousand rupees were distributed among the captors. The girls and young women were released, their parents and husbands compensated for the sufferings they had endured, and many of the persons who had been robbed by him and his deputy had the value of their lost property made good. Great impediments were thrown in the way of all this by people of influence about Court; but they were all surmounted by great skill and energy on the part of Lieutenant Weston and steady perseverance on mine; and Buksh Allee remained in gaol, treated as a common felon, till all was effected. All had, in appearance, been done by the King’s officers, but in reality by ours, under his Majesty’s sanction, for it was clear that nothing would be done unless we supervised and guided their proceedings. The district is now held in contract by a very respectable man, Mahommed Uskaree, who has taken it for four years.
The district of Safeepoor, in which we are now encamped, has been held in contract for five years by Budreenath, a merchant of Lucknow, who had given security for the former contractor. He could not fulfil his engagements to Government, and the contract was made over to him as surety, on condition that he paid the balance. He has held it ever since, while his younger brother, Kiddernath, has conducted their mercantile affairs at Lucknow. Budreenath has always considered the affair as a mercantile speculation, and thought of nothing but the amount he has to pay to Government and that which he can squeeze out of the landholders and cultivators. He is a bad manager; the lands are badly tilled, and the towns, villages, and hamlets are scantily peopled and most wretched in appearance.
Near the border, we passed one village, Mahommedpoor, entirely in ruins. After some search we found a solitary man of the Pausee tribe, who told us that it had been held for many generations by the family of Rugonath, a Gouree Rajpoot, who paid for it at an uniform rate of six hundred rupees a-year. About three years ago the contractor demanded from him an increased rate, which he could not pay. Being sorely pressed, he fled to the jungles with the few of his clan that he could collect, and ordered all the cultivators to follow his fortunes. They were of a different clan–mostly Bagheelas–and declined the honour. He urged that, if they followed him for a season or two, the village would be left untilled, and yield nothing to the contractor, who would be constrained to restore him to possession at the rate which his ancestors had paid; that his family had nothing else to depend upon, and if they did not desert the land and take to the jungles and plunder with him, he must, of necessity, plunder them. They had never done so, and would not do so now. He attacked and plundered the village three times, killed three men, and drove all the rest to seek shelter and employment in other villages around. Not a soul but himself, our informant, was left, and the lands lay waste. Rogonath Sing rented a little land in the village of Gouree, many miles off, and in another district, still determined to allow no man but himself to hold the village or restore its tillage and population. This, said the Pausee, is the usage of the country, and the only way in which a landholder can honestly or effectually defend himself against the contractor, who would never regard his rights unless he saw that he was prepared to defend them in this way, and determined to involve all under him in his own ruin, depopulate his estate, and lay waste his lands.
Meean Almas, after whom this place, Meeangunge, takes his name, was an eunuch. He had a brother, Rahmut, after whom the town of Rahmutgunge, which we passed some days ago, took its name. Meean Almas was the greatest and best man of any note that Oude has produced. He held for about forty years this and other districts, yielding to the Oude Government an annual revenue of about eighty lacs of rupees. During all this time he kept the people secure in life and property, and as happy as people in such a state of society can be; and the whole country under his charge was, during his life- time, a garden. He lived here in a style of great magnificence, and was often visited by his sovereign, who used occasionally to spend a month at a time with him at Meeangunge. A great portion of the lands held by him were among those made over to the British Government, on the division of the Oude territory, by the treaty of 1801, concluded between Saadut Allee Khan and the then Governor-General Lord Wellesley.
The country was then divided into equal shares, according to the rent-roll at the time. The half made over to the British Government has been ever since yielding more revenue to us, while that retained by the sovereign of Oude has been yielding less and less to him; and ours now yields, in land-revenue, stamp-duty, and the tax on spirits, two crore and twelve lacs a-year, while the reserved half now yields to Oude only about one crore, or one crore and ten lacs. When the cession took place, each half was estimated at one crore and thirty- three lacs. Under good management the Oude share might, in a few years, be made equal to ours, and perhaps better, for the greater part of the lands in our share have been a good deal impoverished by over-cropping, while those of the Oude share have been improved by long fallows. Lands of the same natural quality in Oude, under good tillage, now pay a much higher rate of rent than they do in our half of the estate.
Almas Allee Khan, at the close of his life, was supposed to have accumulated immense wealth; but when he died he was found to have nothing, to the great mortification of his sovereign, who seized upon all. Large sums of money had been lent by him to the European merchants at Lucknow, as well as to native merchants all over the country. When he found his end approaching, he called for all their bonds and destroyed them. Mr. Ousely and Mr. Paul were said to have at that time owed to him more than three lacs of rupees each. His immense income he had expended in useful works, liberal hospitality, and charity. He systematically kept in check the tallookdars, or great landholders; fostered the smaller, and encouraged and protected the better classes of cultivators, such as Lodhies, Koormies, and Kachies, whom he called and considered his children. His reign over the large extent of country under his jurisdiction is considered to have been its golden age. Many of the districts which he held were among those transferred to the British Government by the treaty of 1801; and they were estimated at the revenue which he had paid for them to the Oude Government. This was much less than any other servant of the Oude Government would have been made to pay for them; and this accounts, in some measure, for the now increased rate they yield to us. Others pledged themselves to pay rates which they never did or could pay; and the nominal rates in the accounts were always greater than the real rates. He never pledged himself to pay higher rates than he could and really did pay.
Now the tallookdars keep the country in a perpetual state of disturbance, and render life, property, and industry everywhere insecure. Whenever they quarrel with each other, or with the local authorities of the Government, from whatever cause, they take to indiscriminate plunder and murder over all lands not held by men of the same class; no road, town, village, or hamlet is secure from their merciless attacks; robbery and murder become their diversion– their sport; and they think no more of taking the lives of men, women, and children who never offended them, than those of deer or wild hogs. They not only rob and murder, but seize, confine, and torture all whom they seize, and suppose to have money or credit, till they ransom themselves with all they have, or can beg or borrow. Hardly a day has passed since I left Lucknow in which I have not had abundant proof of numerous atrocities of this kind committed by landholders within the district through which I was passing, year by year, up to the present day. The same system is followed by landholders of smaller degrees and of this military class–some holders of single villages or co-sharers in a village. This class comprises Rajpoots of all denominations, Mussulmans, and Pausies. Where one co-sharer in a village quarrels with another, or with the Government authorities, on whatever subject, he declares himself in a state of war, and adopts the same system of indiscriminate plunder and reckless murder. He first robs the house and murders all he can of the family of the co-sharer with whom he has quarrelled, or whose tenement he wishes to seize upon; and then gets together all he can of the loose characters around, employs them in indiscriminate plunder, and subsists them upon the booty, without the slightest apprehension that he shall thereby stand less high in the estimation of his neighbours, or that of the officers of Government; on the contrary, he expects, when his pastime is over, to be at least more feared and courted, and more secure in the possession of increased lands, held at lower rates.
All this terrible state of disorder arises from the Government not keeping faith with its subjects, and not making them keep faith with each other. I one day asked Rajah Hunmunt Sing how it was that men guilty of such crimes were tolerated in society, and he answered by quoting the following Hindee couplet:–“Men reverence the man whose heart is wicked, as they adore and make offerings to the evil planet, while they let the good pass unnoticed, or with a simple salute of courtesy.”*
[* There is another Hindee verse to the same effect. “Man dreads a crooked thing–the demon Rahoo dares not seize the moon till he sees her full.” They consider the eclipse to be caused by the demon Rahoo seizing the moon in his mouth.]
The contractor for this district, Budreenath, came to call in the afternoon, though he is suffering much from disease. He bears a good character with the Government, because he contrives to pay its demand; but a very bad one among the people, from whom he extorts the means. He does not adhere to his engagements with the landholders and cultivators, but exacts, when the crops are ripe, a higher rate than they had engaged to pay at the commencement of tillage; and the people suffer not only from what he takes over and above what is due, but from the depredations of those whom such proceedings drive into rebellion. Against such persons he is too weak to protect them; and as soon as the rebels show that they can reduce his income by plundering and murdering the peasantry, and all who have property in the towns and villages, he re-establishes them on their lands on their own terms. He had lately, however, by great good luck, seized two very atrocious characters of this description, who had plundered and burnt down several villages, and murdered some of their inhabitants; and as he knew that they would be released on the first occasion of thanksgiving at Lucknow, having the means to bribe Court favourites, he begged my permission to make them over to Lieutenant Weston, superintendent of the Frontier Police, as robbers by profession. “If they come back, sir, they will murder all who have aided in their capture, or given evidence against them, and no village or road will be safe.”
Some shopkeepers in the town complained that the contractor was in the habit of forcing them to stand sureties for the fulfilment, on the part of landholders, of any engagements they might make, to pay him certain sums, or to make over to him certain land produce at the harvest. This, they said, often involved them in heavy losses, as the landholders frequently could not, or would not, do either when the time came, and they were made to pay. This is a frequent practice throughout Oude. Shopkeepers and merchants who have property are often compelled by the contractors and other local officers to give such security for bad or doubtful paymasters with whom they may happen to have had dealings or intercourse, and by this means robbed of all they have. All manner of means are resorted to to compel them: they and their families are seized and confined, and harshly or disgracefully treated, till they consent to sign the security bonds. The plea that the bonds had been forced from them would not avail in any tribunal to which they might appeal: it would be urged against them that the money was for the State; and this would be considered as quite sufficient to justify the Government officer who had robbed them. The brief history which I propose to give of Buksh Allee, the late contractor for the Russoolabad district, is as follows:–
Mokuddera Ouleea, one of the consorts of the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, was the daughter of Mr. George Hopkins Walters, a half-pay officer of one of the regiments of British Dragoons, who came to Lucknow as an adventurer. He there united himself (though not in marriage) to the widow of Mr. Whearty, an English merchant or shopkeeper of that city, who had recently died, leaving this widow, who was the daughter of Mr. Culloden, an English merchant of Lucknow, and one son, now called Ameer Mirza, and one daughter, now called Shurf-on Nissa. By Mr. Walters this widow had one daughter, who afterwards became united to the King in marriage (in 1827), under the title of “Mokuddera Ouleea.” Mr. Walters died at Lucknow, and the widow and two daughters went to reside at Cawnpoor. The daughters were good-looking, and the mother was disposed to make the most of their charms, without regard to creed or colour.
Buksh Allee, a dome by caste, who had been by profession a drummer to a party of dancing-girls, served them as a coachman and table attendant. At Cawnpoor he cohabited with Mrs. Walters, and prevailed upon her to take her children back to Lucknow as the best possible market for them, as he had friends at Court who would be able to bring them to the notice of the sovereign. They were shown to the King as soon as he succeeded his father on the throne in 1827. He was captivated with the charms of Miss Walters, though they were not great, demanded her hand from the mother, and was soon after united to her in marriage according to the Mahommedan law. A suitable establishment was provided by the King for her mother, father-in-law, brother, and sister; and as his Majesty considered that the manner in which Buksh Allee and her mother had hitherto lived together was unsuitable to the connection which now subsisted between them, he caused them to be married in due form according to the Mahommedan law. The mother and her three children now changed their creed for that of Islamism, and took Mahommedan names.
By a deed of engagement with the British Government, hearing date the 1st of March 1829, the King contributed to the five per cent loan the sum of sixty-two lacs and forty thousand rupees, the interest of which, at five per cent., our Government pledged itself to pay to the four females.*
[* Mulika Zumanee, 10,000; Taj Mahal, 6,000; Mokuddera Ouleea, 6,000; Zeenut-on Nissa, the daughter of Mulika Zumanee, 4,000.]
These pensions were to descend in perpetuity to their heirs, if they left any; and if they left none, they were to have the power to bequeath them by will to whomsoever and for what purposes soever they chose, the British Government reserving to itself the power to pay to the heirs the principal from which the pensions arose, instead of continuing the pensions.
The King died in July 1837, and Mokuddera Ouleea went to reside near her mother and Buksh Allee, taking with her great wealth in jewels and other things, which she had accumulated during the King’s lifetime. Her sister, Ashrof–alias Shurf-on Nissa–resided in the same house with her mother and Buksh Allee. Mokuddera Ouleea had from the time she became estranged from her husband, the King, led a very profligate life, and she continued to do the same in her widowhood. On the 14th of September 1839, the mother died; and the sister, Shurf-on Nissa, supplied her place, as the wife or concubine of Buksh Allee.
Mokuddera Ouleea became pregnant, and on the 9th of November 1840, she was taken very ill from some violent attempt to produce abortion. She continued insensible and speechless till the evening of the 12th of that month, when she expired. The house which Buksh Allee occupied at that time is within the Residency compound, and had been purchased by Mr. John Culloden, the father of Mrs. Walters, from Mr. George Prendergast on the 22nd of February 1802. Mr. Prendergast purchased the house from Mr. S. M. Taylor, an English merchant at Lucknow, who obtained it from the Nawab Assuf-od Dowlah, as a residence. The Nawab afterwards, on the 5th of January 1797, gave him, through the Resident, Mr. J. Lumsden, permission to sell it to Mr. Prendergast. The remains of Mokuddera Ouleea were interred within the compound of that house, near those of her mother, though the King, Mahommed Allee Shah, wished to have them buried by the side of those of her husband, the late King. The house is still occupied by Shurf-on Nissa, who succeeded to her sister’s pension and property, under the sanction of the British Government, and has built, or completed within the enclosure, a handsome mosque and mausoleum.
On the death of Mr. Walters, Mrs. Whearty made application, through the house of Colvin and Co., for the arrears of pension or half-pay due to him up to the time of his death, and for some provision for herself as his widow; but she was told that unless she could produce the usual certificate, or proof of her marriage with him, she could get neither. No proof whatever of the marriage was forthcoming, and the claim was prosecuted no further. Shurf-on Nissa, and her brother and his son, continued to live with Buksh Allee, who, upon the wealth and pension left by Mokuddera Ouleea to her sister, kept up splendid establishments both at Lucknow and Cawnpoor.
At the latter place he associated on terms of great intimacy with the European gentlemen, and is said to have received visits from the Major-General commanding the Division and his lady. With the aid of his wealth and the influence of his brother domes (the singers and fiddlers who surround the throne of his present Majesty), Buksh Allee secured and held for some years the charge of this fertile and populous district of Russoolabad, through which passes the road from Lucknow to Cawnpoor, where, as I have already stated, he kept up bands of myrmidons to rob and murder travellers, and commit all kinds of atrocities. This road became, in consequence, the most unsafe of all the roads in Oude, and hardly a day passed in which murders and robberies were not perpetrated upon it. Proof of his participation in these atrocities having been collected, Buksh Allee was, in October 1849, seized by order of the Resident, tried before the King’s Courts, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, and ordered to restore or make good the property which he was proved to have taken, or caused to be taken, from travellers. His house had become filled with girls of all ages, whom he had taken from poor parents, as they passed over this road, and converted into slaves for his seraglio. They were all restored to their parents, with suitable compensation; and the Cawnpoor road has become the most safe, as well as the best, road in Oude.
On the death of Mokuddera Ouleea, a will was sent to the Resident by her sister, who declared that it had been under her sister’s pillow for a year, and that she had taken it out on finding her end approaching, and made it over to her, declaring it to contain her last wishes. By this document pensions were bequeathed to the persons mentioned in the note below* out of one-third, and the other two- thirds were bequeathed to her sister and brother. In submitting this document to Government, the Resident declared that he believed it to be a forgery; and in reply he was instructed to ascertain whether the persons named in the document had any objections to consider Shurf-on Nissa sole heir to her sister’s property and pension. Should they have none to urge, he was directed to consider her as sole heir, and the pretended will as of no avail. They all agreed to consider her as sole heir; and the Resident was directed to make over to her the property, and pay to her the pension or the principal from which it arose. The Resident considered the continuance of the pension as the best arrangement for the present, and of this Government approved.
[* Buksh Allee, 1,000 rupees per month; Allee Hoseyn, 75; Sooraj Bhan, 40; Syud Hoseyn, 30; Sheik Hingun, 20; Mirza Allee, 30; Ram Deen, 12; Meea Sultan, 15; Sudharee, 10; Imam Buksh, 3; Ala Rukhee, 10; Sadoo Begum, 20; Akbar, 15; Mahdee Begum, 30.]
Shurf-on Nissa has no recognised children, and her brother and his reputed son are her sole heirs, so that no injury can arise to him from the omission, on the part of Government and the Resident, of all mention of his right as co-sharer in the inheritance. Neither brother nor sister had really any legal right whatever to succeed to this pension, for Mokuddera Ouleea was an illegitimate child, and had no legal heirs according to either English or Mahommedan law. This fact seems to have been concealed from the Resident, for he never mentioned it to Government. It was the dread that this fact would cause the whole pension to be sent to the shrines in Turkish Arabia, that made them forge the will. All readily consented to consider Shurf-on Nissa the heir, when they found that our Government had no objection to consider her as such. The King wished to have the money to lay out on bridges and roads in Oude, and the Resident advocated this wish; but our Government, ignorant of the fact of the illegitimacy of the deceased, and with the guaranteed bequest of the late King before them, could not consent to any such arrangement.
Government has long been strongly and justly opposed to all such guarantees, and the Resident was told on the 14th November 1840, “that the Governor-General in Council could not consent to grant the absolute and unqualified pledge of protection which the King was solicitous of obtaining in favour of four other females; and directed to state to his Majesty that, although in the instances he had cited, such guarantees had certainly been afforded in former times, yet they were always given either under the impression of an overruling necessity, or in consequence of some acknowledged claims, or previously existing engagements, the force of which could not be avoided; that their existence had often operated practically in the most embarrassing manner, while it constituted a standing and perpetual infringement of the rights of the Government of Oude; and that his Lordship in Council was, consequently, decidedly opposed to the continuance of a system so plainly at variance with every just principle of policy.” The objections of the British Government to such guarantees are stated in letters dated 18th February, 28th March, 20th May, 3rd October, and 19th December 1839, and 11th May 1848.
In a despatch from the Honourable the Court of Directors, dated 4th March 1840, their just disapprobation of such guarantees is expressed; and reference is made to former strong expressions of disapprobation. In their despatch of the 28th March 1843, the Honourable Court again express their disapprobation of such guarantees; and refer to their letter of the 16th March, in which they gave positive orders that no such engagement should ever be concluded without a previous reference to the Court. The argument that the arrangement did not, in any particular case, add to the number of guaranteed persons, such persons being already under guarantee, did not in the opinion of the Court touch the stronger objection to such a measure, that of the impropriety of our aiding, especially by the grant of peculiar privileges, the appropriation of the resources of the State to the advantage of individuals. The Court expresses a hope that they shall never have occasion to notice any future violation of their orders as respects such engagements.
January 16, 1850.–We were to have gone this morning to Ouras, but were obliged to encamp at Burra, eight miles from Meeangunge, on the left bank of the Saee river, which had been too much increased by the late rains to admit of our baggage and tents passing over immediately on anything but elephants. As we have but few of them, our tents were pitched on this side of the river, that our things might have the whole day before them to pass over on carts and camels, as the river subsided. Ouras is three miles from our camp, and we are to pass through it and go on to Sundeela to-morrow. There is no bridge, and boats are not procurable on this small river, which we have to cross and recross several times.
The country from Meeangunge is scantily cultivated, but well studded with trees, and generally fertile under good tillage. The soil is the light doomuteea, but here and there very sandy and poor, running into what is called bhoor. The villages and hamlets which we could see are few and wretched. We have few native officers and sipahees in our army from the districts we are now in, and I am in consequence less oppressed with complaints from this class of the Oude subjects.
We met, near our tents, a party of soldiers belonging to Rajah Ghalib Jung, a person already mentioned, and at present superintendent of police, along the Cawnpoor road, escorting a band of thieves, who robbed Major Scott some ten months ago on his way, by dawk, from Lucknow, and an European merchant, two months ago, on his way, by dawk, from Cawnpoor to Lucknow. They had been seized in the Sundeela districts, and the greater part of the stolen property found in their houses. They are of the Pausie tribe, and told me that thieving was their hereditary trade, and that they had long followed it on the Cawnpoor road with success. The landholder, who kept them upon his estate and shared in their booty, was also seized, but made over to the revenue contractor, who released him after a few days’ imprisonment for a gratuity.
Of these Pausies there are supposed to be about one hundred thousand families in Oude. They are employed as village watchmen, but, with few exceptions, are thieves and robbers by hereditary profession. Many of them adopt poisoning as a trade, and the numbers who did so were rapidly increasing when Captain Hollings, the superintendent of the Oude Frontier Police, arrested a great many of them, and proceeded against them as Thugs by profession, under Act III. of 1848. His measures have been successfully followed up by Captain Weston, his successor, and this crime has been greatly diminished in Oude. It prevails still, however, more or less, in all parts of India.
These Pausies of Oude generally form the worst part of the gangs of refractory tallookdars in their indiscriminate plunder. They use the bow and arrow expertly, and are said to be able to send an arrow through a man at the distance of one hundred yards. There is no species of theft or robbery in which they are not experienced and skilful, and they increase and prosper in proportion as the disorders in the country grow worse. They serve any refractory landholder, or enterprising gang-robber, without wages, for the sake of the booty to be acquired.
Many of the sipahees of the Mobarick Pultun, on detached duty with the king’s wakeel in attendance upon me, were this morning arrested, while taking off the choppers from the houses of villages along the road and around my camp, for fuel and fodder, in what they called the “usual way.” The best beams and rafters and the whole of the straw were fast moving off to my camp; and when seized, the sipahees seemed much surprised, and asked me what they were to do, as they had not received any pay for six months, and the Government expected that they would help themselves to straw and timber wherever they could most conveniently find it. All were fined; but the hope to put a stop to this intolerable evil, under the present system, is a vain one. The evil has the acquiescence and encouragement of the Government and its functionaries of all kinds and grades throughout the country. It is distressing to witness every day such melancholy proofs of how much is done that ought not to be done, and how much that ought to be done is left undone, in so fine a country.
A want of sympathy or fellow-feeling between the governing and governed is common in all parts of India, but in no part that I have seen is it so marked as in Oude. The officers of the Government delight in plundering the peasantry, and upon every local Governor who kills a landholder of any mark, rewards and honours are instantly bestowed, without the slightest inquiry as to the cause or mode. They know that no inquiry will be made, and therefore kill them when they can; no matter how, or for what cause. The great landholders would kill the local Governors with just as little scruple, did they not fear that it might make the British Government interpose and aid in the pursuit after them.
January 17, 1850.–Sundeela, about thirteen miles from our last camp, on the bank of the little River Saee, over a plain of good doomuteea soil, very fertile, and well cultivated in the neighbourhood of villages. The greater portion of the plain is, however, uncultivated, though capable of the best tillage, and shows more than the usual signs of maladministration. In this district there are only three tallookdars, and they do not rob or resist the Government at present. They distrust the Government authorities, however, and never have any personal intercourse with them. The waste is entirely owing to the bad character of the contractors, and the license given to the troops and establishments under them. The district is now held in amanee tenure, and under the management of Hoseyn Buksh, who entered into his charge only six weeks ago. He is without any experience in, or knowledge of, his duties; he has three regiments of Nujeebs on duty under him, and all who are present came out to meet me. Anything more unlike soldiers it would be difficult to conceive. They are feared only by the honest and industrious. Wherever the Amil goes they go with him, and are a terrible scourge to the country–by far the worst that the country suffers under.
The first thing necessary to effect a reform is–to form out of these disorderly and useless bodies a few efficient regiments; do away with the purveyance system, on which, they are now provided with fuel, fodder, carriage, &c.; pay them liberally and punctually; supply them with good clothing, arms, accoutrements, and ammunition; and concentrate them at five or six points in good cantonments, whence they can move quickly to any part where their services may be required. No more than are indispensably required should attend the local authorities in their circuits. All the rest should remain in cantonments till called for on emergency; and when so called for, they should have all the conveyance they require, and the supplies provided for them–the conveyance at fixed rates, and the supplies at the market price, in good bazaars. For police duties and revenue collections there should be a sufficient body of men kept up, and at the disposal of the revenue and police authorities. The military establishments should be under the control of a different authority. But all this would be of no avail unless the corps were under able commanders, relieved from the fear of Court favourites, and under a Commander-in-Chief who understood his duty and had influence enough to secure all that the troops required to render them efficient, and not a child of seven years of age.
Several of the villages of Sundeela are held by Syud zumeendars, who are peaceable and industrious subjects, and were generally better protected than others under the influence of Chowdhere, Sheik Hushmut Allee, of Sundeela, an agricultural capitalist and landholder, whom no local authority could offend with impunity. His proper trade was to aid landholders of high and low degree, by becoming surety for their punctual payment of the Government demand, and advancing the instalments of that demand himself when they had not the means, and thereby saving them from the visits of the local authorities and their rapacious and disorderly troops: but in an evil hour he ventured to extend his protection a little further, and, to save them from the oppressions of an unscrupulous contractor, he undertook to manage the district himself, and make good all the Government demand upon it. He was unable to pay all that he had bound himself to pay. His brother was first seized by the troops and taken to Lucknow. He languished under the discipline to which he was there subjected, and when on the point of death from what his friends call a broken heart, and the Government authorities cholera-morbus, he was released. He died immediately after his return home, and Hushmut Allee was then seized and taken to Lucknow, where he is now confined. The people here lament his absence as a great misfortune to the district, as he was the only one among them who ever had authority and influence, united with a fellow-feeling for the people, and a disposition to promote their welfare and happiness.*
[* Hushmut Allee is still in confinement, but under the troops at Sundeela, and not at Lucknow. July 20, 1851.]
END OF VOL. 1.