N
 
 A VISION OF INDIA
 
 A VISION OF 
 INDIA 
 
 By SIDNEY LOW 
 
 1906. May. ist Edition. 
 
 1907. Mar. 2nd ,, 
 
 1910. Feb. 3rd Impression, and Edition. 
 
 1911. Oct. 41)1 ,, (is. Edition).
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LOW 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO. 
 
 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 1911 
 
 [All rights reserved!
 
 Printed by BALLANTVNE, HANSON & Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE materials on which the following pages are founded 
 were collected, for the most part, during the progress of 
 the King and Queen, then Prince and Princess of Wales, 
 through the Empire of India in the autumn and 
 winter of 1905 and the spring of the following year. Of 
 this interesting journey, with which I was concerned 
 as special correspondent of a leading London newspaper, 
 much might have been written from the personal, the 
 political, and the purely pictorial side. It was not, how- 
 ever, with these matters that I was chiefly occupied. I 
 deviated rather frequently from the route of the royal 
 travellers, since it was my object to give some general idea 
 of the conditions of life and society prevailing in India 
 rather than to furnish a circumstantial record of the 
 tour, or to describe in detail those places of historical, 
 antiquarian, and aesthetic interest which were included in 
 the official itinerary. It was my aim to reproduce some- 
 thing of the impression which our vast and varied dominion 
 of the East almost a world in itself leaves on the mind, 
 in its splendour and its contradictions, its colour and 
 its mystery, its wealth and poverty, its medley of classes, 
 creeds, and peoples: to hint at a few of the absorbing 
 problems suggested by the contemplation of this strange
 
 VI A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and fascinating amalgam. I hoped that my survey, 
 partial and incomplete as it might be, would not mis- 
 lead those who know India only from hearsay and from 
 books, and that it might even contain some things worth 
 consideration by those who have an intimate acquaintance 
 with our Asiatic Dependency. 
 
 The present edition is a reprint of the Third Im- 
 pression (published in 1910) with a few unimportant 
 
 alterations. 
 
 S.L. 
 
 September 1911.
 
 Mr. JOHN MORLEY, in his Indian Budget Speech 
 
 in the House of Commons, July 20, 19U."., said: 
 
 ' One of the books about India which I would respectfully 
 recommend hon. members to read is by Mr. Sidney 
 Low a gentleman of proved competence in political 
 subjects. Mr. Low is a man who knows what he is 
 writing about. ' 
 
 LORD CURZON, in a Speech at the New Vagabond 
 Club, May 15. 1906, said: 
 
 ' Mr. Sidney Low, the author of that interesting book, 
 "A Vision of India," has succeeded in giving a striking 
 picture of Indian life under many of its varied aspects, 
 which I believe to be substantially accurate, and which 
 is clearly the result of much acute observation and pene- 
 trating insight.' 
 
 SIR CHARLES CROSTHWAITE, K.CiS.I., late 
 Lieu tenant-Governor of the North- West Pro* 
 vinces, and Member of the Indian Council, says: 
 
 ' Full of information in a picturesque shape on the 
 forms and problems of Indian life altogether a remarkable 
 book.' 
 
 SIR DONALD ROBERTSON, K.C.S.I,, formerly 
 of the Indian Political Department and Resident 
 in Mysore, says : 
 
 ' I would especially exempt from the circle of unreliable 
 critics the talented writer of " A Vision of India." I do not 
 know Mr. Sidney Low ; but for a clever and moderate 
 account of India and its peculiarities, I have never read 
 anything more interesting and entertaining.'
 
 MAP OF THE TOUR 
 Of 
 
 H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES 
 
 IN INDIA 
 
 Peshawar. 
 
 Kala Ki Sarai , 
 
 Hussan AbduT^Rawal Pindi 1905-1906. 
 
 PJammu 
 iritsur 
 
 
 ^} 
 
 iXurrachee 
 
 OF 
 
 Madras 
 
 BENGAL 
 
 CEYLON | 
 
 \_^
 
 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 AT THE SEAWABD GATE 
 
 THE tension of the restless Eastern night lay upon the 
 great P. and 0. liner as she glided through the last stretch 
 of dark water that held her from India. On a ship in the 
 western and northern waters, night, so far as may be, is 
 given to seclusion and repose, as it is on shore. Except 
 for the stokers, toiling among their abysmal fires below, 
 and the watch keeping silent vigil overhead, all are 
 asleep, or at least seeking to get as much sleep as winds 
 and waves permit. But the passenger steamer, eastward 
 bound, when once she has passed Suez and felt the 
 languorous breath of the Red Sea, falls swiftly into the 
 indefinite eastern way, the way of a world that is never 
 wholly awake by day or quite asleep at night. 
 
 If you leave your cabin any time between the mid- 
 night and the dawn, you are conscious of a vague stirring 
 of life about you. You have need to walk delicately lest 
 you stumble over some prone and breathing form. On 
 the spar deck and the promenade deck you may disturb 
 the repose of many of the first-class passengers, who, 
 finding their berths unendurable, even with the electric 
 fans whirling, have ordered their beds to be laid out upon 
 the boards. On the starboard side, fenced in by a zareeba 
 
 A
 
 2 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 of deck-chairs, are a dozen ladies ; on the port side scores 
 of men lie stretched upon their mattresses, with no more 
 bed-clothing than a sheet drawn over them, if so much. 
 The solvent of climate has acted quickly. Here is a 
 stout responsible gentleman, no longer in his first youth. 
 Three weeks ago you could have met him in an English 
 hotel or a Swiss pension, and he would as soon have 
 danced a hornpipe on the table of the salle-d,-manger as 
 passed a night in public. He wooed the goddess of 
 slumber chastely, behind closed doors, in the midst of 
 decorous bedroom furniture. Now he lies in the open, 
 amid a score of casual strangers, with bare feet touched 
 by the sea wind, and all his portly form in striped 
 pyjamas revealed to the searching stars. 
 
 Below, in the aisles and galleries of the main deck, 
 where the luggage has been stacked in readiness for the 
 morning, and in all sorts of odd corners, are other sleepers. 
 The ship carries a large complement of ladies and chil- 
 dren and consequently has many ayahs ; and the ayah, 
 like the Indian servant generally, sleeps where she can, 
 by preference muffling herself in her cotton rug near the 
 door of her mistress's cabin, so that she may respond 
 readily if the Memsahib should call, or if sonny baba should 
 cry in the watches of the night. Sometimes she may 
 be allowed to take her charge with her. As I pass the 
 main hatch, which covers the baggage-room, I see a pretty 
 picture. A Madrassi ayah lies there, swathed in garments 
 of spotless white, from which emerge arms of chocolate and 
 a brown foot and ankle adorned with heavy silver bangles. 
 On the same mattress is an English child, with dewy 
 cheeks, golden curls, and dimpled rosy limbs. The boy 
 tosses restlessly in the dim heat-laden air, till the Tamil 
 woman pats him with a deft magnetic touch, and croons 
 softly some old-world nursery song of the south, and so 
 lulls him to a fitful slumber again.
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 3 
 
 The great ship sways gently and slowly, like a cradle, 
 on the swell of a drowsy sea that seems to breathe with 
 long measured respirations. The water is dark, with no 
 ripple of light to break its sleek and oily blackness. 
 Black, too, without one touch of blue or grey, is the sky, 
 a dome of solid velvet, through which the stars burn like 
 points of golden fire, or gleam in showers and rains of 
 silver in the broad cincture of the Milky Way. The 
 shafts of starlight and moonlight cross one another in the 
 spaces overhead, but they are lost in the dull water, and 
 the ship glides through heavy banks of shadow. Suddenly 
 an orange light flames out of the void beyond our bows 
 and disappears, only to turn its glare upon us again a few 
 seconds later. Even the unimaginative European tourist 
 may feel some tightening of the heart as the big yellow 
 eye winks solemnly at him across the heaving plain ; for 
 this is the seaward light of Bombay, and behind it lies 
 India, with all its mysteries and its millions. 
 
 But what are these white-robed shapes, moving 
 silently, with shoeless feet, along the crowded decks ? 
 The shadowy figures flit across the gangway to the fore- 
 castle, where the anchor gear lies in a huddle of wind- 
 lasses and cranes and chains. They pause just behind 
 the Lascar sailor and the English quartermaster who 
 share the look-out, and go through a series of compli- 
 cated genuflections and salaams. I forbear to disturb the 
 devotions of the Faithful, and do not draw near enough 
 to ascertain whether this is some special ceremony con- 
 nected with the sacred fires of home, or whether these 
 are merely the customary orisons before the dawn of day. 
 Do my eyes mislead me in the dimness, or is one of those 
 shrouded forms that of the extremely alert young native 
 gentleman, who had won the sweepstake on the ship's 
 run in the morning, discussed Haeckel and Mr. Benjamin 
 Kidd with me in the afternoon, and played an animated
 
 4 A VISION OF ENDIA 
 
 game of bridge in the smoking-room all the evening? 
 But it is time to go below and snatch a little sleep, and 
 then bathe and dress, if we are to pay our own respects 
 on the threshold of the Empire in the East. 
 
 There are finer roadsteads in the world than that of 
 Bombay, but not many, I think, that are more picturesque 
 and impressive. The sun is rising high in the heavens 
 as the anchor-chains rattle through the hawse-pipes; 
 and the harbour launches, Government tugs, and Com- 
 pany's tenders pant anxiously round the floating bridge 
 that weekly joins India and ' Home.' The water-front of 
 the city, with its long line of high white buildings, lies 
 before us ; a few cables away we see the funnels and 
 fighting-tops of a cruiser, the flagship of the Admiral of 
 the station ; white- winged yachts skim over the twinkling 
 waters; there are two other large passenger steamers 
 swinging at their moorings. We are in what appears to 
 be a land-locked space of sea, dotted with islands, and 
 shut in by green hills, leaning to the water's edge, with 
 higher mountain shapes swelling in the distance. It 
 might be a Scottish loch, but for the white sunlight, 
 which pours over everything and makes outlines sharply 
 visible as they seldom can be behind the watery veil of 
 the denser northern atmosphere. 
 
 But the East greets you with a rush the moment you 
 step ashore. All along the landing-stage you see a line 
 of bare-legged men, in turbans and very clean white linen 
 robes, who are servants of the incoming passengers, 
 brought in perhaps only from the suburbs of Bombay, 
 perhaps from the Punjab, Madras, or Assam, to await the 
 arrival of their masters and mistresses. And on that same 
 platform are many other types and figures characteristic 
 of India as it is to-day under British rule. Here is the 
 Anglo-Indian husband, from up the country, come down
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 5 
 
 to greet a returning wife. It may be many months since 
 he has seen her last, months of toil amid the baked dust 
 of the plains for him, and for her perhaps a quiet rectory 
 nestling among leafy English lanes. She has to tell him 
 of the boys, left in schools ' at home ' ; or she may try to 
 induce the baby, rather cross in her ayah's arms, to make 
 friends with the lean, brickdust-coloured person, of whom 
 she was too young to ' take notice ' when she was carried 
 away on the homeward voyage. 
 
 Tenderer meetings occur in a secluded corner of the 
 landing-stage. Here are a couple of affianced maidens 
 come out to marry the men of their choice. They have 
 the English blush in their cheeks, the unmistakable bridal 
 look in their eyes ; the smartest of Bond Street dresses 
 have been extracted from the many packages which form 
 their travelling trousseaux to impress the stalwart young 
 fellows whose bungalows they will presently irradiate. 
 Before the hot morning has waned into the merciful 
 coolness of evening there will be a wedding service at the 
 Cathedral and a wedding breakfast at the Taj Mahal 
 Hotel ; and in a few weeks the new gowns will have roused 
 the envy of critical matrons among the hills, or evoked 
 the despairing admiration of home-sick subalterns on the 
 plains. 
 
 A clatter of many tongues prevails, and a torrent of 
 hasty conversation, as the slow process of clearing and 
 checking the passengers' baggage is got through. Brisk 
 young Bombay business men are exchanging greetings 
 with friends from the Yacht Club and the Byculla ; 
 officers of all arms are already deep in conversation as to 
 stations and marching orders ; and Indian civilians, 
 returned from leave, assume a certain pride in their port 
 and dignity in their rnien which you did not notice on 
 shipboard. During the voyage the Collector Sahib was 
 an inconspicuous unit in the crowd, who spent his time
 
 6 A 
 
 for the most part in his deck-chair reading novels. But 
 the mail-train is in waiting to bear him to his satrapy. 
 To-morrow he will be the Huzur, the Presence, the Pro- 
 tector of the Poor, the representative of an omnipotent 
 Government, ruler, patron, beneficent despot, and earthly 
 Providence for a million of miscellaneous Asiatics. The 
 air of authority comes back upon him as naturally as the 
 pith helmet and the suit of silk with which he invests 
 himself on the last morning of his journey. 
 
 You go outside into the white sunlight to find a cab. 
 The Mussulman driver of the tikka gharry salaams to 
 you with effusion as being a Sahib of inexperience, who 
 will give a rupee where another would bestow eight annas. 
 The short drive to the hotel takes you through what 
 seems to be a fine modern town. You see handsome 
 stone and brick buildings of great size, imposing frontages, 
 clubs, hotels, public gardens, statues, fountains, well- 
 stocked shop windows. But you have no eyes for such 
 things. You are held and fascinated by the riot of colour 
 and strange humanity with which you are assailed at 
 once. Bombay is a generous and liberal hostess to the 
 stranger within her gates. She feels the responsibility of 
 showing him India, and she does not husband her trea- 
 sures or reveal them grudgingly, but, on the contrary, 
 throws them lavishly before him at the first onset. The 
 great city is cosmopolitan and Pan- Asiatic. A fifth of 
 the human race has its representatives within the island 
 town where the white Power in the East found its first 
 secure resting-place. Bombay is largely an epitome and 
 abstract of the conglomerate of peoples and religions 
 which we call by a single inadequate name. 
 
 The visitor will find out something of this later. But 
 in the beginning he can only gaze in a sort of helpless 
 amazement, stunned by the succession of living pictures 
 which ring their chromatic chords upon his bewildered
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 7 
 
 retina. His first impression is that he is taking part in a 
 gigantic masquerade, with everybody in fancy dress of 
 indiscriminate extravagance. Here are splendour, wealth, 
 poverty, but, above all, colour and strangeness. All the 
 hues of the rainbow, and many more, are displayed against 
 a background of white and brown, the white of cotton 
 garments and the dusky tone of bare legs and arms and 
 bodies. The reflection you feebly make as you survey the 
 groups which move like ants over the broad roads is that 
 in Bombay any person may wear anything or nothing. 
 He may clothe himself in a costume which would seem 
 grotesquely spectacular in a Drury Lane pantomime, or 
 he may go with a wisp of rag round his loins. Here is a 
 pudgy child, naked as nature made him, save for two 
 anklets of rough silver ; here a Parsi lady in a robe of 
 sky-blue silk, and a filmy veil of muslin and silver tinsel 
 drawn over her black hair and round the pale oval of her 
 dark face. 
 
 A porter strides along the tram-lines bearing a load of 
 wood. His thin legs, revealed in all their length, his bare 
 arms and breast and shoulders, gleam in the sun as if 
 carved out of some smooth polished brown wood. There 
 is a shout of ' Ey-ah ' behind him, and he jumps out of 
 the way to avoid being run over by the carriage in which 
 his Highness the Raja is seated with some of his suite. 
 His Highness has come into Bombay, where he is rent- 
 ing a bungalow for a fortnight on Malabar Hill for 
 20,000 rupees, in order that he may welcome the Prince 
 of Wales on his arrival, and he is in festal array. His 
 coachman and his two grooms have gold turbans and 
 gold sashes, his landau is a noble vehicle, and it is drawn 
 by two high-stepping bays. He himself is attired in 
 white silk trousers, spangled with gold stars, a pink 
 jacket, and a magnificent green and gold turban with a 
 high aigrette and a brooch of diamonds.
 
 8 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 The landan moves with stately slowness; its big 
 horses are fat and out of condition. It is easily passed, 
 not only by the shabby gharry, in which is seated an 
 English lady in a white flannel dress with a huge sun 
 helmet, but also by the native bullock-cart with its two 
 little humped zebus trotting smartly along. The cart is 
 gaily painted, and a whole Hindu family in striped cottons 
 of various shades are stowed miscellaneously inside. 
 
 Wherever the eye travels it catches some patch or 
 point of colour ; and no combination seems to be excluded 
 on the ground of extravagance or excess. In most places, 
 even in Cairo, or Constantinople, or Tangier, some notice 
 would be directed to a stout man, with a sort of Roman 
 toga of vivid purple, drawn over a yellow under-garment, 
 and crossed by a sash or waistband of cerise, with a head- 
 dress of red velvet and silver braid, especially if the 
 arrangement ended inadequately with tight cotton drawers 
 and canvas shoes in bad condition. In Bombay no one is 
 surprised at this decorative scheme ; nor at others, such 
 as that of the man with bare feet, several inches of un- 
 sheltered skin above the waist-line, and a turban of a pale 
 lemon silk of a quality and shade so delicious that one 
 would have liked to buy it on the spot. 
 
 There are Parsi gentlemen in grey bowlers provided 
 with a parti-coloured roll instead of a rim, and Parsi clerks 
 and shop assistants in black alpaca surtouts and high hats 
 of shiny oilskin. A few Englishmen are visible in sola 
 topis and flannels, and there are Arabs, Armenians, veiled 
 Mussulman ladies, ragged dervishes all hair and tatters, a 
 water-carrier with his goat-skin bag across his back, and 
 coolie women in bright-coloured saris. The novelty of 
 the scene, and the flood of living light poured over 
 everything, transfigure the commonest incidents to your 
 enraptured senses. A Hindu with the caste mark on his 
 forehead, under the white folds of his ample headdress.
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 9 
 
 and two bullet-headed Goanese servants, are leaning from 
 a low verandah to talk to a woman of the people on the 
 pavement below. A crimson shawl drapes gracefully over 
 her head and shoulders, leaving her shapely brown legs 
 bare to the knee, and as she lifts an arm you see that it is 
 clothed to the elbow in broad bands of silver. A carriage 
 dashes through an open gateway, and two grooms leap 
 down and run beside it, with long horse-tails fluttering 
 from the staves they carry. In a hand-cart, heaped with 
 garbage, a man is rooting and burrowing like a dog. All 
 his raiment would not furnish the substance of a table- 
 napkin ; but gold loops depend from his ears, and a collar 
 of dull blue stones is round his neck. As you drive in to 
 the welcome coolness of the shaded hotel courtyard, you 
 feel that if your Vision of India were to be limited to a 
 single morning spent in Bombay you would not have 
 crossed the seas altogether in vain. 
 
 His first few days in the city, if the visitor has never 
 set foot on the soil of India before, are likely to be a 
 period of delighted amazement and most enjoyable con- 
 fusion. He wanders about, drinking in the fulness of the 
 new experience, perplexed and absorbed by all be sees, 
 trying to wind his way through the jumble of novel human 
 types and unfamiliar customs and costumes borne before 
 him. Bombay is different from any other town outside 
 India ; the tourist will presently discover that India itself 
 has nowhere anything quite like it. The Island City 
 is unique a diluvies gentium, a well into which the races 
 of Asia have poured themselves, or, perhaps one should 
 say, a reservoir out of which they pass as fast as they flow 
 in. It is full of the wealth of the East and the wealth of 
 the West, and of the poverty and vice of both. It has its 
 palaces fit for a prince, and its human kennels unfit for a 
 dog. The hand of Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the 
 
 A2
 
 10 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Destroyer, are felt in their might daily. A splendid indus- 
 trial and commercial activity makes Bombay rich and 
 great, and a canker is working at its vitals. Every tenth 
 person you meet is doomed to swift and painful death by 
 a disease for which science has no remedy. It is the 
 city of the Parsi millionaire. It is the city of the Plague. 1 
 
 When you have begun to disentangle your first im- 
 pressions, you can appreciate the force of the contrasts 
 which Bombay presents. The East and the West, the 
 Old and the New, are here in curious and piquant juxta- 
 position. A great deal of that part of Bombay which 
 is called the Fort, and is the centre of the European 
 business life, is very modern indeed. There are enormous 
 ranges of huge public buildings, designed with a fine 
 official disregard for all local associations, great blocks 
 of flats, and flourishing shops, some of which might have 
 been transported from Bond Street and others brought 
 from the Edgware Road ; and a life, essentially English 
 and only touching the East at the fringes, is in being 
 here. But a few hundred yards away are the bazaars 
 and the native streets, and you are in the heart of Asia. 
 This is true, more or less, of many Indian towns ; but it 
 is specially felt to be the case in Bombay, because there 
 the Europeans are not shepherded apart in cantonments, 
 or in any separate quarter of their own, but are physically, 
 at least, in pretty close contact with the natives. The 
 lines touch at many points, but they do not merge. 
 
 ' Society ' in Bombay is still English in the English 
 orthodox mode. It is more varied in its constituents, more 
 permeated by the commercial element, and less dominated 
 by the official factor, than in other Indian towns, except 
 Calcutta. But its forms and customs are those to which 
 we cling with fidelity wherever we settle. There are 
 excellent clubs in Bombay, where the stranger, if properly 
 
 1 This, it must be remembered, was written in 1906.
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 11 
 
 accredited much meaning in that ' if ' will be welcomed 
 with a most agreeable hospitality; there is a relative 
 abundance of ladies' society ; tea parties, lawn-tennis 
 parties, and dinner parties prevail ; people dance, ride, play 
 bridge, and go out with a good pack of hounds to hunt the 
 jackal ; they escape the heats of Bombay by ruralising in 
 the hill stations of the Ghats, or they flit about the 
 harbour in smart little yachts. 
 
 In the cool garden of the Yacht Club, from tea onward 
 till dinner-time, the visitor may almost forget that he is 
 in India. If it is on a Friday, the day when the P. and O. 
 liner discharges its complement, the grounds will be 
 thronged, especially during the weeks of the autumn rush 
 eastward. Except for the dark faces and white cotton 
 garb of the servants, there is little that is distinctively 
 Oriental. Ladies are parading the green lawns, or taking 
 tea and cooling drinks at small tables set out on the 
 terrace which overlooks the shimmering waters of the 
 roadstead. Immediately opposite lies the slate-grey 
 guardship, and a wall-sided yellow-funnelled transport. 
 The band of the Blankshire Regiment is playing a selec- 
 tion from the last new musical comedy. The fragrance 
 of cigarette-smoke is wafted into the air ; there is the 
 tinkle of feminine laughter and the buzz of many voices ; 
 the women are in light European summer dresses ; the 
 straw hat has replaced the sun-helmet for the men ; we 
 might be on the Riviera, or at some fashionable country 
 club in the United States, or perhaps even at Ranelagh 
 or Hurlingham. 
 
 When you have stayed long enough and drunk your 
 tea, and the sudden Eastern night has fallen in its pall of 
 blackness, you will be asked to dine in some luxurious 
 bungalow or well-appointed flat. Here, it is true, the 
 flavour is slightly more Oriental. The punkahs will be 
 flapping above your head ; barefooted ' boys ' will minister
 
 12 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to you. But though there may be some unfamiliar 
 dishes and a local fish, the viands presented will be in the 
 main those of home. You will find a menu card, written 
 in the usual culinary French; mutton cutlets and par- 
 tridges and asparagus and ices and olives farcies will 
 appear on the list ; you will drink Mumm or Heidsieck, 
 and talk to your neighbour about nothing in particular 
 in a subdued undertone. It is a replica of those sparkling 
 repasts with which we exhilarate ourselves during the 
 London season. You will emerge into the starlight with 
 the consciousness of an evening spent in a reputable and 
 decorous dulness. 
 
 But get back into your gharry and tell the driver to 
 take you by the Grant Road past the Munbadevi Tank, 
 along Abdul Rahman Street, by the Bendi Bazaar, and 
 about the native quarter generally. You will not lack 
 entertainment : especially if you strike Bombay, as I did, 
 on the eve of a Eoyal visit, and at the new moon of the 
 month Kartik, which is the Hindu Feast of Lanterns. 
 The entertainment begins even before you leave Malabar 
 Hill, that most desirable residential region, where the 
 luxurious bungalows have their place. Many of these 
 have been rented for a fortnight by native chiefs and 
 potentates, who have come into Bombay to pay their 
 respects to the Shahzada. They are in a demonstrative 
 mood; they attest their loyalty to the eye and ear. That 
 is why ' The Queen Victoria Royal Band ' has been 
 brought up to the lawn of Bellaggio, and why its Eurasian 
 artists are fiddling drumming and fifeing furiously among 
 the flower-beds ; that is why The Pines is a blaze of light, 
 and why its compound is dotted all over with red, green, 
 and white balls of tinsel stuck on little poles. If a man is 
 a raja, and a ruling chief, and a K.C.I.E., entitled to be 
 met at the railway-station by a Government House aide- 
 de-camp, and to a salute of several guns, there is no reason
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 13 
 
 in the world why his presence should not be made known 
 to the general public in a perceptible fashion. 
 
 The night, indeed, like Prospero's isle, is ' full of 
 noises ' ; the Indian night always is, even in the quieter 
 suburbs of the towns, for there are the noises of beast and 
 bird, as well as the sounds made by human hands and 
 throats. The field crickets and grasshoppers are chirping 
 with a loud metallic clank ; the grey-backed crows, which 
 you have noticed all day feeding on dead rats and other 
 carrion, retire to their nests with raucous cawings ; weird 
 squeals and chatterings are heard from a thicket, and you 
 know that is, you know when your driver tells you 
 that they are emitted by the monkeys who are swinging 
 in the boughs. 
 
 When you reach the native bazaar, your coachman 
 must drive at a foot's-pace, with many stoppages. The 
 narrow twisting streets are swarming with people, spread- 
 ing all over the roadway in close groups and solid columns. 
 You will make better progress by leaving your carriage 
 and walking ; besides, this will give you an opportunity 
 of observing the people in their various types and tribes. 
 Your studies have not gone very far, but you make an 
 attempt to classify and select. In India everybody bears 
 the mark of his occupation, his religion, and his social 
 status, upon his person, so that his mere outward aspect 
 should tell you who he is and what he does. It is as if 
 you could wait for the nine-fifteen train at Ludgate Hill, 
 and, as the crowd poured through the turnstiles, you could 
 point a finger and say : ' Here is a Koman Catholic, here 
 a member of the Church of England, here a Welsh Non- 
 conformist ; this man was born in Lancashire and is a 
 member of the Stock Exchange ; that other is very 
 likely to be an auctioneer, though it is also possible 
 that he does something on commission in coals and 
 
 wine.' 
 
 r
 
 14 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 There is ample opportunity for such exercises in the 
 Bombay bazaar. Even a novice can distinguish between 
 the Mussulman head-gear and that of the Hindu, between 
 the sturdy, upstanding Sikh; and the Mahratta with his 
 rat-like profile, little, restless eyes, and receding forehead ; 
 between the Brahman, with his oval face and pale 
 yellowish skin, and the outcast, despised Mahar, a little 
 blackened wisp of a man, stunted and ape-like. In 
 honour of the Festival many of the people have been to 
 the priests, and paid their fee to have their caste-marks 
 repainted, so that their foreheads glisten with weird 
 symbols, balls and lines and ovals, and smears of red and 
 yellow. 
 
 The expert can tell you something about almost 
 everybody you pass in the throng. Here is a baniya, 
 or retail trader, with carpet slippers and a large gamp 
 umbrella in his hand. The baniya is often fat; for, 
 though he lives generally in the native quarter and in the 
 native fashion, he may be quite rich, and wealth means 
 to a Hindu more butter and ghee and rice and sweet- 
 meats and other viands that produce adipose tissue. 
 Here is a man in white jacket and trousers of a some- 
 what European cut, carrying a child sitting astride his 
 right hip, and followed by a woman in a purple sari, 
 a square of cotton cloth, which serves for tunic and 
 bodice and as much skirt as she needs. It is the prosper- 
 ous upper servant of a well-to-do family, or perhaps the 
 butler at a club, taking his youngest born and the more 
 favoured of his two wives out to see the show. He 
 shuffles along, in ungainly fashion, in his canvas shoes ; 
 his wife, in her graceful drapery, with silver earrings 
 and anklets, is a more distinguished figure, and she 
 walks like a princess ; but she keeps respectfully a pace 
 or two behind her lord, and does not speak to him ex- 
 cept when he turns to address her over his shoulder.
 
 AT THE SEAWARD GATE 15 
 
 In Bombay, and elsewhere in India, the women of the 
 lower classes have a dignity of carriage which is denied to 
 their male owners. Some of them of the coolie grade 
 are almost pygmies in stature, their features are blunt 
 and shrivelled, and they are black from exposure to the 
 sun ; but no wild doe on the mountain -side moves with 
 more unfettered grace and freedom. The women walk 
 better than the men, for they bear their burdens on their 
 heads, while their partners and proprietors bend and 
 slouch under the weight of heavy loads carried on the 
 shoulders and back. 
 
 The bazaar is always crowded from early morning 
 until late night ; it is always full of people walking, 
 sitting, lying on the ground, jostling against one another 
 like ants. But perhaps the throng is a little more than 
 normal on this Feast of Lamps, the Diwali, which is one 
 of the great festivals of the Hindu year. The Diwali is 
 held in honour of Lakhshmi, the Venus of the Indian 
 Pantheon, the wife of Vishnu the Preserver. Lakhshmi, 
 like her Hellenic antitype, arose out of the foam of the 
 sea waves, and she is the Goddess of Beauty ; but she is 
 also the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity, and is there- 
 fore held in special honour by shopkeepers and tradesmen. 
 
 On the Feast of Lamps the gains of the year are 
 dedicated to the goddess, and every house is lighted for 
 her. The larger Europeanised stores in the bazaar, the 
 'cheap jacks/ where they sell all sorts of things, from 
 bicycles to safety-pins, the motor garage where the 
 wealthy native buys his up-to-date car, are hung with 
 tiers of electric lights and glow-lamps ; but each little 
 square booth has its own small illumination. All the 
 shops are open, and the owners are seen sitting beside the 
 implements and objects of their trade. The goldsmith 
 has rows of candles to set off his golden bowls, his cups 
 and chains and jewellery work ; the shroff", the small
 
 16 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 moneylender or usurer, piles up his account-books in a 
 heap, with a kerosene lamp on top. A white Hindu 
 temple is all festooned with ropes and wreaths of flowers ; 
 a yellow Jain chapel sparkles with coloured lights, and 
 looks rather like a Paris cafe, with its open rooms and 
 balconies and lounging groups. Only the Mohammedan 
 mosque stands grimly shut and dark and silent ; for 
 Diwali is a Hindu festival, and the children of the Faith 
 have no part in it. There were times when the celebra- 
 tion was a fruitful source of faction-fighting and serious 
 riot. But the vigilant Bombay constables, little sturdy 
 men in blue, are scattered freely among the crowds, and 
 in the very centre of the whole turmoil, where the chief 
 Mohammedan street crosses the Hindu bazaar, there is 
 a small square brick building which is the police post. 
 Here a couple of sepoys are talking to a khaki-clad sowar 
 of the mounted force standing beside his horse, ready to 
 ride to the barracks for assistance, if need be ; and against 
 the door-post leans a tall young Englishman, in white 
 uniform and helmet, surveying the passing stream of 
 humanity with good-humoured, but not inattentive, indif- 
 ference a symbol of that impartial tolerance, combined 
 with the vigorous assertion of public authority in the 
 maintenance of order, which is the attitude of the British 
 raj towards the creeds and sects of India.
 
 CHAPTEB n 
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 
 
 THE six days that were spent by the Prince and 
 Princess of Wales in the capital of Western India are not, 
 I should imagine, likely to be forgotten by the Royal 
 visitors, even if somewhat blurred by the panorama of 
 strange countries and picturesque towns unrolled before 
 them during the ensuing weeks. The memory of these 
 days will, at any rate, not easily be lost by those who 
 were perhaps better able than the illustrious voyagers 
 themselves, deeply occupied with State ceremonials, to 
 appreciate its curious and significant incidents. 
 
 The visit, I believe, was generally successful. If the 
 demeanour of a crowd is any index to their feelings, the 
 inhabitants of Bombay, and the strangers within their 
 gates from other parts of the Presidency, were un- 
 affectedly pleased to see the future Emperor of India. 
 The throng that packed the streets of the native quarter 
 from the ground to the roofs was enthusiastic and 
 animated as an Eastern populace seldom is ; or so, at 
 least, we were told by people who had seen many 
 Viceregal processions and inaugural receptions. In the 
 presence of British notabilities the Indian multitude 
 is accustomed to be respectful and interested rather 
 than demonstrative. It stands in waiting rows, and looks 
 on fixedly as the scarlet horsemen of the body-guard, the 
 guns, the hussars, and the open landaus go by. But for 
 t-he Prince and Princess there were cheers I will not say 
 
 17
 
 18 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 loud and long, but frequent and almost continuous. 
 Perhaps the Parsis and the Eurasians may have been 
 the fuglemen ; but the Hindus and Mohammedans took 
 up the strain and said ' Heep hourr-a ! ' and clapped their 
 hands as if they had been doing it all their lives. 
 
 It was something of a surprise to white residents, who 
 had felt doubts as to the possible attitude of Bombay, for 
 the great city is known to contain elements, not perhaps 
 of disloyalty, but of disaffection. The local ruling chiefs 
 are not men of the calibre and distinction of the Princes 
 of Eajputana and Central India, nor have they accepted 
 the Imperial system with so much cordiality. There was 
 at least one powerful and capable prince, the ruler of a 
 large territory and a numerous population, who was some- 
 what out of favour with the Government of India. The 
 Mahrattas, a restless, shifty, suspicious race, have never 
 been quite reconciled to the loss of the supremacy they 
 once exercised over half India. Poona is a centre of 
 intrigue, and even sedition, and the Poona Brahman is 
 banefully busy in Bombay. 
 
 Some experienced persons were a little anxious. As 
 the event showed, they could have dismissed their fears. 
 There was every outward sign that the people of all 
 tribes and classes were glad to welcome the son of their 
 Sovereign. The loyalty of the Indian is largely a personal 
 attachment to a family and dynasty. To him the Royal 
 office means a great deal; he ascribes to it a kind of 
 Divine authority, if not a Divine origin ; whereas the 
 Viceroy or the Governor, the ' Lord Sahib ' though he be, 
 is only a mortal like himself, perhaps the first of the 
 King's servants, but a servant after all. 
 
 The show part of the ceremonial was, on the whole, 
 well done ; the stage management, if one may use the 
 term, was skilful. I heard only a single adverse criticism, 
 and it is characteristic enough to be reproduced. An
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 18 
 
 able member of the non-official community, a man of 
 thirty years' Indian residence, said that the natives 
 were a little surprised to find the Prince driving through 
 the town in the ordinary white Indian uniform and 
 helmet, which every Englishman wears in the sunny 
 hours of the day, which is borne by private soldiers 
 and shop-assistants, and is sometimes used by Eurasian 
 clerks. 
 
 I had the same testimony from natives. They ex- 
 pected to see the heir to the Empire blazing in scarlet 
 and adorned with stars and orders. The full gala array 
 of a field-marshal, with cocked hat and plumes, would 
 have been appreciated. And my informants thought 
 that it would have given additional lustre to the procession 
 in native eyes if all the rajas and feudatory chiefs, in their 
 silks and jewels, had driven behind the Royal carriage. 
 As it was, the body-guard and the hussars were no more 
 than the populace see every time the Governor performs 
 some public function, rather less than they can witness 
 when the Viceroy comes into the city in state. In India 
 greatness is supposed to live and move amid pomp and 
 pageantry. That austere simplicity, behind which the 
 reality of power is often veiled in the West, is not 
 understood or valued by Orientals. 
 
 The interest of the whole occasion was keenly felt by 
 those who were allowed to participate in the various 
 parades and festivals without being oppressed by the 
 weight of official duty. A private individual, in this 
 situation, with leisure to observe, could not fail to find 
 himself sometimes obsessed by a curious and piquant 
 sense of unreality. One seemed to be living in several 
 different worlds at once, passing from Earl's Court to the 
 Arabian Nights and back again, touching various other 
 places and periods in transit. At the Byculla Club ball, 
 for instance, you could easily forget that you were in
 
 20 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Asia. ' No native need apply ' might be the inscription 
 over the portals of the Byculla, as of most other impor- 
 tant clubs in the East. Consequently the ball was 
 altogether British and insular. The large, solid, square 
 saloon, built in the late 'thirties of the last century, 
 might have been the assembly-room of a fashionable 
 watering-place or a provincial town in the Midlands. 
 The company was in keeping with the place. There was 
 the usual array of black coats and white shoulders, 
 military officers in smart mess-jackets and spurs, naval 
 men in blue and gold, the Chief Justice creditably legal, 
 the Bishop blandly episcopal, broad blue ribbons across 
 expansive shirt-fronts, and diamond tiaras gleaming above 
 blonde or chestnut ' transformations.' There was a state 
 quadrille and many valses, and some strolling or sitting 
 out in the grounds, and much supping off salmon and 
 mayonnaise and champagne. There was hardly anything 
 to remind you of India nothing, indeed, but the native 
 servants and the troopers of the body-guard, tall Sikhs 
 and bearded Mohammedans, in gorgeous scarlet and blue, 
 standing like statues by their lances in the corridors, and 
 gazing in a kind of savage bewilderment at the scene 
 before them. 
 
 Or take the day of the great reception at Government 
 House, a day in which it seemed to me that I sampled 
 several very varied phases of life. In the morning, a 
 friend took me to call on a Mohammedan chief, who had 
 come down to pay his respects to the Prince. His High- 
 ness, a man of immense stature, with a massive forcible 
 face, like that of one of the granite Pharaohs in the 
 Egyptian temples, spoke no English, and had never 
 been outside India, seldom indeed outside his own tiny 
 principality. But he was full of intelligence and a 
 genuine kingly feeling a sensible man, with some of the 
 ideas of a born ruler, and certainly all the manner of one.
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 21 
 
 Through the interpreter he told me of his little State, of 
 the difficulties he had had with famine and plague, of his 
 farming and his shooting, and his somewhat primitive 
 methods of administering justice and promoting educa- 
 tion. I left his Highness's presence to go and look at his 
 Highness's future Suzerain laying the foundation-stone 
 of a new public institution. There were speeches and 
 addresses, and frock-coats and tall hats, and the handling 
 of a trowel and plumb-rule, and the declaration that 
 the block was well and truly laid. It was all familiar 
 enough. 
 
 Familiar, too, was the long line of slowly moving 
 carriages making their way towards the doors of Govern- 
 ment House for the evening f&te. The road runs 
 through the gardens and close above the shore, and one 
 had time to admire the singular beauty of the Back Bay 
 of Bombay. Past the lithe graceful stems and over 
 the feathered heads of palm-trees, the eye travelled across 
 a space of still water, glimmering in the cool moonshine, 
 and beyond that to the crescent of silver light on the 
 opposite strand of the bay. Where a cross-road joined 
 the main avenue there was a patch of bare earth, and on 
 it a man and a woman lay fast asleep, careless of the 
 long train of carriages, of the lamps, the clatter, the hoarse 
 cries of the marshalling police. But here we are at 
 Government House, and in the midst of a vast and 
 promiscuous throng of Europeans, Parsis, Hindus, ladies, 
 turbaned chiefs, military uniforms. It takes long to pass 
 through the crush, an hour or more of waiting to get 
 started again homeward, while carriages, with pawing 
 horses, are brought up, loaded, and sent away, amid a 
 scene of confusion pleasantly reminiscent of Park Lane in 
 the season. 
 
 It is the Arabian Nights again as we drive through 
 the native city, with its variegated crowd, its medley of
 
 22 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 shifting light and wavering shadow. And then we pass 
 out on to the Maidan, or open public garden, where a 
 Fancy Fair is being held in honour of the Prince's visit, 
 and it is an aggravated. Bank Holiday with the most 
 fantastic local adjuncts. I step through an aggressive 
 triumphal arch, inscribed with the motto ' Duo in Uno ' 
 and adorned with female transparencies emblematic of 
 Britannia and India, and find myself back in a con- 
 torted Cockneydom. There is a switchback railway, 
 roundabouts, four great wooden towers entwined with 
 coloured glow-lamps ; there are booths and stalls where 
 they sell cheap German glass, imitation meerschaum 
 pipes, ferocious neckties, fiery perfumes, and other 
 triumphs of Western skill and taste ; there are shooting- 
 galleries and fortune-telling booths ; and there is a cafe 
 chantant, with a high-class performance by the Sisters 
 Somebody, warranted of London. 
 
 The Fair is deliriously popular with the natives, who 
 come in shoals. They are of all ranks and classes 
 plutocrats who can pay their rupee a ride on the switch- 
 back without wincing, young Parsi clerks from the banks 
 and railway offices, families from the country districts 
 moving about rather bewildered amid all the splendour. 
 Two elders of the village will be holding each other by 
 the hand for better security, while their wives and a little 
 company of children follow close on their footsteps. Tall 
 Arabs and brawny Kajputs elbow Tommy Atkins from the 
 standing camps on the Esplanade and negro sailors from 
 the docks. The shooting-galleries, the try-your-weight 
 machines, the sham-finery shops, are beset by customers. 
 As I went out I nearly knocked over an old Mussulman 
 with a beard stained red and a green turban the signs of 
 sainthood gravely trailing by a string a couple of inflated 
 air-bladders. Then I found my gharry again, and as I 
 drove home I saw two men in white raiment bestriding
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 23 
 
 the same mule, and another man, with no raiment at all 
 but a wisp of waistcloth, accurately and punctiliously 
 washing a huge drab Guzerati buffalo in the open street. 
 Who will deny that Bombay is rich in contrasts ? But 
 so is all India. 
 
 Indeed, to one who has never been in Eastern Asia 
 before, almost any great Indian city is a weird revelation. 
 The Prince of Wales during his sojourn in Bombay was 
 shown the docks, and the harbour and new street, and the 
 cathedral, and doubtless his attention was directed to the 
 Victoria Terminus and the Clock Tower, the Town Hall 
 and the Courts of Justice. But these are not the things 
 most worth seeing ; and I should venture to doubt 
 whether any of them interested his Koyal Highness nearly 
 so much as his drives through the native quarters. 
 
 For the thing to see in Bombay is Bombay itself. It 
 has no sight to show, no spectacle to offer, at all equal to 
 that presented by its own streets, seething with miscel- 
 laneous humanity, especially if one can examine them at 
 leisure and on foot, mingling with the populace and 
 peering into the open houses. In the East people do not 
 live in sealed compartments, and the front door, the shield 
 of our own cherished domesticity, can hardly be said to 
 exist. The climate and the local habits are opposed to it. 
 Before the sun has risen, or after his setting, everybody 
 seeks space and air and coolness out of doors ; nor is 
 there any jealous shrinking from observation, even in the 
 daytime. People do all sorts of things in public which 
 to our thinking should be transacted in privacy, such as 
 dressing, shaving, washing, and sleeping, and, in spite of 
 the caste rules and religious restrictions, even a good deal 
 of eating. 
 
 Going into one of the large sheds in the quarter of 
 Bombay where the hand-loom weavers carry on their 
 work, I saw two men crouching in the dust by the outside
 
 24 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 wall. They proved to be a barber and his client. The 
 latter was naked to the waist ; the barber, a respectable 
 old gentleman in robe and turban, was sitting on the 
 ground beside his victim, pn whom he was operating in a 
 very complete fashion, passing his razor not merely over 
 the chin, but over the head, arms, and shoulders, and 
 performing the whole toilet in full view of passers-by and 
 of various other persons engaged in minor manufacturing 
 or domestic avocations at intervals of a few yards along 
 the wall of the shed. So it is everywhere. As you pass 
 along the streets of the bazaar you can look right into 
 half the houses. The shops are simply boxes, set on end 
 with the lids off. You can, if you please, stand and watch 
 the baker rolling his flat loaves, the tailor stitching and 
 cutting, the coppersmith hammering at his bowls and 
 dishes, the jeweller drawing out gold and silver wire over 
 his little brazier. The Indian townsman does not mind 
 being looked at. He is accustomed to it. He passes his 
 life in the midst of a crowd. 
 
 And that, to go back to the point from which I started, 
 is what strikes the newcomer from the West most keenly. 
 After a time, I suppose, he ceases to notice it, as we cease 
 to notice anything which is before us constantly. (It is 
 not every married man of twenty years' standing who 
 could tell you off-hand the colour of his wife's eyes.) But 
 upon the novice this sense of crowded humanity presses 
 like an obsession, a nightmare, as he walks through the 
 native streets in the noonday furnace, or at the cool of 
 morning, or amid the restlessness of the closing night. 
 The amazement which is his first feeling, the admiration 
 for varied forms and bold colour that succeeds it, give 
 way to a kind of horror as he sees all this brown, 
 common, unregarded swarm poured out upon the ground 
 like locusts, crawling in and out of every chink and 
 cranny like ants, filling every vacant space. You cannot
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 25 
 
 cast your eye into any corner but you find a man there, if 
 it is not a woman or a child. 
 
 If there is a spare decorative niche in the wall of a 
 building, the odds are that you will find a man or boy 
 huddled up there. In any little patch of vacant ground 
 there are thick groups of squatters by day and sleepers by 
 night. People roost for hours on the edges of the pave- 
 ment, or on any fragment of sill or low wall, sitting 
 motionless upon their heels, with their hands stretched out 
 over their knees, looking strangely like crows or vultures. 
 The European will find the attitude so constrained and 
 uncomfortable that he cannot endure it beyond a few 
 minutes, if, indeed, he can get into it at all. The native, 
 apparently, can maintain this posture all day. The 
 Westerner, when he has work to do, likes to stand up 
 to it. The native sits or lies, or crouches down, whether 
 he be sewing or using the hammer and chisel, or cleaning 
 a vessel, or dusting a room, or mending a garment. The 
 scribe sits down on the floor to write a letter. The mali, 
 or gardener, grovels over the flower-beds to grub up weeds 
 or plant his roses. It seems as if they could not get too 
 close to the warm and teeming bosom of the elemental 
 Mother from whom they have sprung. 
 
 It is not the throng poured forth on some special 
 occasion which moves one's wonder so much as the con- 
 course that perpetually besets the streets and houses. 
 The formal crowd assembled to witness a spectacle is not 
 greater than can be seen elsewhere. There were vast hordes 
 of people on the route through which the Prince of 
 Wales drove in his public progresses, but not by any 
 means enough to excite the astonishment of a Londoner 
 by their numbers, though every window and cranny and 
 chink in the house-fronts showed a turbaned head or a 
 brilliant robe, and men clung like apes to every projecting 
 timber and carved balustrade, and perched with the
 
 26 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 sparrows on eaves and sloping roofs. An Indian crowd, 
 it is true, is larger than it looks. There is no attempt 
 to leave air-space or elbow-room between its constituent 
 units; the natives are accustomed to get close together, 
 and have no prejudices against intimate personal contact, 
 as anybody can see who has watched them packing them- 
 selves into a railway-carriage or a bullock-cart. Between 
 the desire to secure good places and the rough pressure 
 of the police, the throng is kneaded into a soft compact 
 mass, knees, backs, and arms laced into one another, so 
 that it occupies the minimum amount of space and stand- 
 ing-room. 
 
 Making due allowances for all these circumstances, 
 the Bombay throngs were not to be compared with those 
 which London can turn out to witness a coronation 
 procession or a Royal funeral. Bub the Eastern crowd 
 has no need to assemble. It is always mobilised and 
 in marching order. Unending streams of people pass 
 through the streets, by units, or in couples, or small 
 groups, or sit immovable, hour after hour. Not till you 
 get to Asia do you realise how cheap the human animal 
 can be, and how easily man-power, of a certain limited 
 kind, is to be had. In this part of India one does not 
 notice many elderly people. They age too fast to grow 
 old ; for the women of the labouring class are worked 
 out at thirty-five or forty, the men under fifty, and I 
 suppose they die before they can become grey-headed. 
 
 But perhaps the most marvellous thing about these 
 people to the Western eye is the way they sleep. It is 
 an unending source of wonder and awe, this capacity of 
 the Indian native for slumber under all sorts of condi- 
 tions. Sleep comes to him without any of the allure- 
 ments and amenities with which it is wooed by us. 
 The poorest of European day labourers needs a bed and 
 bed-furniture, if not a bedroom. The Indian manages
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 27 
 
 contentedly without all three. He will throw himself 
 down, like a dog, on the bare earth, and sleep the night 
 through without a movement. We say that he has no 
 nerves, which may or may not be the explanation. 
 
 The poorer native, of the labouring or menial class, 
 sleeps where he can, anywhere and everywhere. At 
 Agra I went with a friend to look at the Taj Mahal by 
 moonlight. We left our carriage waiting for us outside 
 the great gate. When we emerged, we saw this vehicle 
 and its horses standing under the trees ; but the coach- 
 man we did not see. We called him loudly and more 
 loudly, we searched the shadowy courtyard under the 
 glimmering moonlight, we peered into the carriage and 
 under it, with no result. At last it occurred to us to 
 examine the driver's seat, a perch about two feet long and 
 twelve inches wide ; and there, sure enough, close inspec- 
 tion revealed a minute bundle, which on being fiercely 
 prodded and shaken uncoiled itself and sat up and became 
 the missing charioteer. 
 
 Your own personal attendant, valet, or ' bearer ' a 
 functionary of a certain standing will sleep night after 
 night with no better accommodation than the mat out- 
 side your bedroom door. He does not undress when he 
 lies down ; he apparently does not wash when he gets up ; 
 yet he is moderately tidy to look upon, he is quite as clean 
 in his person as most English servants, and if his white 
 garments are not spotless you are entitled to revile him. 
 In one of the hotels in which I stayed, the floors of 
 the passages were laid with porcelain tesselated tiles, 
 hard as steel and shiny as glass ; but all over them were 
 men extended at length, sometimes upon a thin cotton 
 sheet, more often with nothing under or over them. 
 Outside the building, on the verandahs, the steps, the 
 courtyard, the bare earth of the stables and offices, were 
 other slumbering forms. At every dark corner protruded
 
 28 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a brown leg and foot from under a white wrapper. If 
 there is no other place for him, an Indian will sleep 
 contentedly in the open street or the channel of the 
 pavement. At the Festival of the Diwali, when all the 
 bazaars were blazing with lamps and alive with people, 
 1 saw men lying fast asleep on the bulkheads of 
 shops and in open doorways. The noises, the lights, 
 the passing crowds that brushed their garments, left 
 them undisturbed. They slept as animals sleep, 
 with the same indifference to comfort, the same dead 
 immobility. 
 
 It is this carelessness of the amenities of the bed- 
 chamber that somewhat qualifies one's view of the Indian 
 slum-dwelling. Bombay, where plague is still endemic, 
 and was taking its victims not long since at the rate of a 
 thousand a week, has its congested quarter, where people 
 are packed more closely than in almost any place outside 
 China and a few other Indian cities. The municipality 
 and the City Improvement Trust have made great efforts 
 to clean the worst area. They have opened out the 
 nests of courts and alleys by running fine broad streets 
 through them, and erecting blocks of model chawls, or 
 tenement dwellings, to provide accommodation, which 
 is at least sanitary, for those who have been displaced. 
 
 Under the guidance of an English resident, who has 
 studied Bombay long and closely, accompanied by a sani- 
 tary inspector and an able young Hindu medical man in 
 the service of the Corporation, I was taken to see some 
 of the dwellings in the condemned and congested district. 
 I confess I was less impressed than perhaps my friends 
 expected ; for I have seen slum areas and municipal clear- 
 ances nearer home, and for pure filth, foulness, degrada- 
 tion, and outward misery I am afraid that London has 
 more painful sights to show than those which were 
 brought before me in Bombay.
 
 STUDIES IN CONTRASTS 29 
 
 The houses I saw had been visited by the plague again 
 and again ; on many a doorpost was the red circle, with 
 date within, which is the sign that the pestilence had 
 done its work and claimed its victim. On some of the 
 lintels there were as many as five or six of these marks 
 of doom. The houses were rabbit-warrens, with a family 
 or two families to every room. And these rooms them- 
 selves were mere oblong cavities low, dark, cavernous, 
 sometimes all but windowless. There was no chimney ; 
 the fireplace consisted of a few bricks or stones piled up 
 in a corner ; the floors were of hardened cow-dung, which 
 is the kind of flooring that breeds the plague infection, and 
 gives a resting-place to the rats that carry it. There 
 was usually no bed and no bedding, and often no more 
 furniture than a couple of wooden chests and a cord on 
 which clothes were suspended. 
 
 It sounds bad enough ; and yet, as I have said, to 
 those who have seen European slums it might have been 
 worse. For, poor as it was, there was an absence of some 
 of those pretences at civilisation which make urban 
 poverty so much more horrible. You could go in and out 
 of the rooms without being appalled by spectacles of de- 
 grading indecency. There were no broken leg-less chairs, 
 cracked crockery, fragments of carpet and wall-paper be- 
 grimed with indescribable dirt. The cow-dung floors were 
 usually clean, so were the wooden chests ; and the brass 
 pots and bowls shone like burnished gold. The very 
 emptiness of the tenements, the scanty and elementary 
 needs of the occupants, were in their favour. Sleeping 
 largely out of doors, the people had no frowsy mattresses ; 
 tables they do not want, or chairs, for they sit on the 
 floor, and eat from it ; religion and custom prescribe 
 cleanliness for the person and for cooking utensils ; the 
 scanty drapery of a warm climate is easily washed. Poor 
 as they were, the people seemed to retain a certain dignity,
 
 30 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 as if they still felt themselves members of a community, 
 not mere outcasts from it. Poverty, I suppose, has be- 
 come so habitual with the masses of an Eastern popula- 
 tion that they can accept ife- as the normal state of things. 
 It does not seem to bring with it the hopeless degrada- 
 tion which it produces in societies where the require- 
 ments of all men are less simple and the general standard 
 of comfort higher.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BOMBAY: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 To the passing visitor, the casual globe-trotter, pro- 
 vided with good introductions and without these it is 
 hardly worth his while to come to India at all the life 
 of the European resident in Bombay must seem, at first 
 view, distinctly agreeable. He has a noble town to live 
 in, full of life and movement, with good clubs, yachting, 
 golf, tennis, bridge to taste, some music, feminine society, 
 much dancing. When he needs a change he can run up 
 to some hill village among the Western Ghats, and feast 
 his eyes upon the castellated sierras, the bold, upstanding 
 peaks, and rugged rock-crowned kopjes of the mountain 
 land. The climate is fair, and tempered by the sea- 
 breeze, if a little too warm and sticky at a season which 
 the judicious tourist usually avoids. 
 
 The said tourist will be much gratified by his first 
 dinner-party, especially if it takes place at a bungalow on 
 Malabar Hill. The main part of the city lies low among 
 the flats and reclaimed marsh lands of its island site. 
 But towards its south-western extremity the island throws 
 out a horn into the sea, and here the ground rises to a 
 height of three hundred feet. At the point of the spur is 
 Government House ; close to it is the famous Hindu 
 temple of Walkeshwar, to which pilgrims resort from all 
 parts of India. When the ladies of Government House 
 drive out to play croquet at the Gymkhana Club, they pass 
 groups of these worshippers streaming from the shrine,
 
 32 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 with the caste-marks newly painted on their foreheads, 
 and some of them with the staves and bowls and wallets 
 which show that they have travelled from a far country. 
 All along the ridge are the, best and most desirable houses 
 in Bombay, the houses where Europeans like to live, 
 because of the air, and the gardens, and the views over 
 the town, the Back Bay and the open waters of the 
 Indian Ocean. 
 
 In the cool evening light the visitor drives up from 
 the noisy streets and the swarming bazaars of Bombay. 
 The breeze quickens as he reaches the upper levels, and 
 he sees trim villas set back among palms and lotos-trees 
 and the Indian acacia with its sumptuous blossoms. 
 Presently he finds himself at his friend's house, and 
 wonders why it should be called a bungalow, which to 
 him suggests some sort of makeshift erection, flimsy and 
 impermanent. But the Malabar Hill bungalow is quite 
 likely to be a solid brick-and-stone building, with spacious 
 and lofty apartments. The best bedroom is as large as 
 an ordinary London drawing-room, the drawing-room 
 the size of a small Dissenting chapel. The floor is of 
 coloured tiles and porcelain, the walls painted in creamy 
 yellow, and a great gold-fringed punkah sweeps overhead. 
 
 White-robed attendants glide about on noiseless feet, 
 and serve an excellent dinner. Ice, still a rarity in the 
 hottest London summer, is as common in India as in the 
 United States, and the cold blocks chink musically in the 
 glasses as the Mohammedan butler pours out champagne. 
 There is not much furniture in the large rooms, but 
 probably a fine Delhi or Cashmere rug or two, some old 
 metal work, and a handsome bureau or table carved from 
 the local blackwood. After dinner the company sit out 
 on the longest of long chairs in the deepest of deep 
 verandahs, and always there are the same soft-footed 
 ministers at hand to tender the soothing cigarette, and
 
 BOMBAY : THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 38 
 
 prepare the welcome peg of whisky and soda. The 
 gratified guest sits and smokes, and drinks, and listens to 
 the many voices of the Indian night, and gazes on the 
 lights of the shipping, sprinkled like fireflies over the 
 dark waters far below, and across to the opposite shores 
 of the Back Bay outlined in points of silver. He may be 
 excused for thinking that he has drifted into something 
 like an earthly Paradise ; and he marvels the more when 
 he reflects that his entertainer is no millionaire or prince 
 or great noble but only a bank manager, or a transport 
 agent, or perhaps an official who at home would be 
 nothing more dignified than a somewhat superior clerk 
 in the Treasury. 
 
 But when he has been a few days in Bombay he 
 will discover that his satisfaction is by no means shared 
 by his European friends. He will perceive that they are 
 suffering under an irritating sense of grievance, all the 
 more annoying since they do not see their way to a 
 remedy. For one thing, they will speedily inform him 
 that his earthly Paradise is pretty nearly Paradise Lost, 
 so far as they are concerned. The time was when all 
 Malabar Hill, with its adjacent ridges, was given up 
 solely to European habitation. The native lay swelter- 
 ing in the narrow streets of the low-lying bazaar quarter, 
 huddled up in the cramped, insalubrious, Eastern fashion ; 
 the Englishman lived spaciously at his ease on the airy 
 uplands. 
 
 But all this has changed. The native has made 
 money, he has enlarged his ideas, and he has been tho- 
 roughly scared by the plague. When he discovered that 
 people died like flies in the bazaars, while the Sahibs, 
 behind their roomy compounds, enjoyed comparative 
 immunity, he quietly went to work to turn these same 
 Sahibs out. As he holds nearly all the land and most of 
 the money, he found no great difficulty in the task. When 
 
 B
 
 34 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a lease determined or a house fell vacant on the ridges 
 he stepped in. If he owned the site himself, he occupied 
 it, and refused to entertain any offer from an European ; 
 if it belonged to a compatriot, he tendered a price far 
 heyond the resources of the civilians and the soldiers, or 
 even those of the mercantile agents and business men. 
 
 The result is that to-day the English bungalows on 
 Malabar Hill and Cumballa Hill may almost be counted 
 on the fingers. Nearly all the finest houses are occupied 
 by natives who live there in great style, with their horses, 
 their carriages, their motor-cars, and their married sons 
 and daughters to the second and third generation. Small 
 tradesmen and baniyas who know no better, or who 
 prefer to stick to the ancient ways, coolies and weavers 
 who cannot help themselves, may keep to the bazaar 
 region; the wealthy native does not mean to catch 
 plague if he can help it, and he will have a house on the 
 hills while there are houses to be had, The Englishman 
 complains bitterly that he has no room to live. At his 
 moderate salary he cannot compete with his affluent 
 brown competitor. For him the Parsi land speculator 
 builds blocks of flats down near the sea-front, and he has 
 to pay a relatively high rent for his three or four stuffy 
 rooms, and be glad to get them, while his landlord looks 
 down upon him from his eyrie three miles away. There 
 has been something like a house famine in Bombay of 
 late, and Europeans have been driven to camp out on the 
 Maidan, or to live permanently and unsatisfactorily in 
 rooms at the hotels. 
 
 If you listen to your resentful European informants, 
 they will tell you that this is only typical of what is 
 happening generally in Bombay. The white man, they 
 say, is being ' crowded out,' and the native is establishing 
 his ascendency. You hear the case put in various ways, 
 according to the temper and temperament of those who
 
 BOMBAY : THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 35 
 
 formulate it. ' All d d nonsense, Sir ! ' says the 
 
 colonel at the club, over his third peg of whisky and soda. 
 ' These blank niggers are getting the upper hand. They 
 think themselves as good as we are, and we encourage 
 them with our rotten new-fangled notions. They want 
 keeping in their places, or they will turn us out of ours, 
 confound them ! ' The urbane officer's views are expressed 
 in a less crude, but equally significant fashion, by more 
 discriminating observers. One of the cleverest ladies in 
 Bombay an ' European,' according to the technical 
 classification, but in fact an American said to me : 
 ' There is a native conspiracy against you here a con- 
 spiracy to get the best of everything and leave the worst 
 to the English.' 
 
 Most residents, whether they believed in the existence 
 of this complot or not, would probably take the same 
 view as to the facts. They would tell you ruefully that 
 the natives have already obtained the best of things in 
 Bombay. They own, as we have seen, the finest houses ; 
 they are monopolising the choicest residential sites ; they 
 drive the most expensive horses, ride in the showiest 
 carriages, elect the majority of the municipality, run 
 the best of the cotton-mills, and every day they are 
 getting more of the profitable business of the town into 
 their hands. Many of them are extremely rich while 
 most of the Europeans are rather poor. The English 
 are, in a dignified fashion, the hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water, doing all the hard work of govern- 
 ment, police, and sanitation, and toiling through the 
 sweltering days to maintain the ordered security under 
 which the Parsi and the Hindu merchant wax mighty 
 and amass money. 
 
 Bombay, in spite of its splendid Europeanised public 
 buildings, is still a native town, and the natives are fully 
 conscious of the fact.
 
 36 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 expecting to find a handful of his countrymen lording it 
 over a subservient dusky population will assuredly be dis- 
 appointed. There is not much subserviency about the 
 sturdy little natives of the. Presidency. These descendants 
 of the Mahratta raiders, of the Concanese villagers, and of 
 the amphibious tribesmen of the coast, are not particularly 
 good to look at. They are short and dark and insignifi- 
 cant, though the women, as I have said, are somewhat 
 redeemed, in spite of their shrivelled features, their nose- 
 rings, and their betel-chewing, by the grace of their 
 draperies and the excellence of their gait. But they are 
 rather self-assertive folks, and their demeanour towards 
 Europeans is not in the least servile or even respectful. 
 If the white man gets among the seething crowd of the 
 bazaars he will have to push his own way through, and 
 he will find himself handled with no more ceremony than 
 if he were in the Mile-end Road on a Saturday night. 
 
 Old Anglo-Indians shake their heads gloomily over the 
 change of manners, and look back fondly to the good 
 times when the native left the pavement to the white 
 people, and halted his beasts when they wanted to cross 
 the road. He does that still in some of the up-country 
 districts, but not in the Presidency towns. He knows too 
 much about the Sahibs to regard them with any special 
 awe. For the white man in Bombay is not always a 
 ruler and an English gentleman. He may be a tailor's 
 cutter at the Stores, or an assistant at one of the big 
 outfitting shops, or a German commercial traveller, or an 
 Italian hotel-manager, or the chauffeur who drives some 
 wealthy Parsi's motor-car. It is a very miscellaneous 
 oligarchy, and the native is not much impressed by it, 
 and treats its members with impartial indifference, relying 
 on the protection of the law. If the Briton with a 
 remnant of the old ideas about Oriental subordination 
 displays his resentment in a forcible fashion, there is at
 
 BOMBAY : THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 37 
 
 hand a magistrate, probably a native himself, to right 
 the aggrieved Asiatic's wrongs, with no prejudice in 
 favour of the governing race. So our Aryan and Dravidian 
 brethren are free to wear gilded raiment and pile up 
 rupees, while the Anglo-Saxon plods on doggedly in the 
 interest of his subjects, giving the best years of his life 
 for them at a pittance, and going home to die when he 
 can work for them no more. 
 
 We sometimes console ourselves by reflecting that we 
 earn the native's respect and gratitude, if not his affection. 
 But one cannot be quite sure even of that. Some light 
 on this point came to me from a conversation I had with a 
 highly intelligent Hindu merchant, not from the Bombay 
 Presidency but from the Southern Dekhan. If you can 
 get a native to talk to you at all he will often talk quite 
 freely and frankly. This man spoke English fluently, 
 and he made no fuss about telling me all his busi- 
 ness and learning as much as he could of mine. He 
 had been in many different trades, and had appa- 
 rently made money out of everything. He dealt in 
 grain, he had general stores here and there, he financed 
 various industrial concerns, and he owned a lot of house 
 property. For the English, as a nation, he entertained a 
 sentiment which, I think, was almost contemptuous. 
 He liked us personally, but it seemed to me that when he 
 contemplated our proceedings they filled him not so much 
 with awe as with amazement. 
 
 Indeed, he said as much. He recognised our dis- 
 tinctive qualities, but he did not admire us for them 
 so cordially as one could have wished. He summed up 
 his views in a few concise sentences. ' You English,' 
 he said, ' are a curious people. Now if it were 
 ordered that I and the District Magistrate were set 
 down together, without an anna, in a strange country 
 he would starve, but in three years I should be a
 
 38 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 rich man again.' I agreed that this was possible, but 
 suggested that matters might be different if it were a 
 question of governing the hypothetical land of exile. 
 
 My Hindu gave way there at once. He admitted that 
 in this competition he would be as badly outclassed as 
 the Englishman in the other. He could not govern, he 
 confessed ; it was not his m&tier or that of his people. 
 For his part he was glad the English devoted themselves 
 to this function, since it saved considerable trouble to 
 many individuals like himself who had other and, as 
 he plainly thought, worthier scope for their intellectual 
 activities. Military officers, judges, magistrates, deputy- 
 commissioners, and civil servants generally, he regarded 
 without hostility but without enthusiasm. How does 
 a prosperous professional man or a manufacturer in an 
 English town feel towards the local tax collector, the 
 sanitary inspector, the police superintendent, the borough 
 surveyor? He knows these are all useful functionaries 
 doing necessary work, which he would not in the least 
 care to be doing himself ; but he neither admires nor 
 envies them. Such seemed to me about the attitude of 
 this highly intelligent native towards the finest bureau- 
 cracy in the world. 
 
 To see something of native society is easier in Bombay 
 than in any other place in India, and yet it is not in 
 itself an easy thing even there. The city is full of 
 educated, emancipated Asiatics, of various denominations, 
 many of whom have gone a long way towards assimi- 
 lating Western customs and ideas. I do not refer 
 merely to the Parsis ; there are also in Bombay Hindus 
 of high rank and good standing, and even Moham- 
 medans, who can associate familiarly with Europeans, 
 who travel to England frequently, who take their ' cure ' 
 at Hamburg and Vichy, who know London and Paris, 
 who read English books, play English games, and some-
 
 BOMBAY : THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 39 
 
 times though this is an extreme step v/ear English 
 attire indoors. 
 
 In the streets they compromise by keeping to the 
 national headgear, a badge of race and religion, which 
 a man seldom discards except as an intimation that he 
 has abandoned both. Thus you will see the Persian 
 cap of the Parsis, or their more distinctive oil-cloth 
 mitre, above a suit of tweeds ; and at the Prince of 
 Wales's levee a native chief or sardar would sometimes 
 appear in ordinary evening dress topped by a gorgeous 
 jewelled turban. One of the most Anglicised young 
 Parsis I met, an athlete and a great cricketer, apologised 
 for taking me round his factories and offices wearing the 
 national cap. The members of his community would not 
 consider it quite dignified for him to be seen in public 
 without it. After all, as he pointed out, it is no more 
 irrational than the affection of the English professional 
 man for his silk topper, which for hardness, heaviness, 
 ugliness, and general inconvenience could hardly be beaten 
 by the most bizarre of Oriental headdresses. As for the 
 ladies, even when emancipated from the purdah limita- 
 tions, they generally keep to some adaptation of the garb 
 of their mothers. Herein they show their sense, for the 
 flowing draperies and bright colours suit them, and the 
 European dresses do not. A Parsi lady in a tailor-made 
 gown and a hat derived from Bond Street looks no 
 better than a common little Eurasian nursemaid ; whereas 
 in her robe of flowered silk, with the pale oval of her face 
 set off by a floating muslin veil bordered with silver 
 braid, she may become quite attractive. 
 
 Theoretically there is very little to prevent the 
 European and the emancipated part of the native societies 
 from associating together. In practice they do not mingle. 
 The men see each other in the way of business, on 
 municipal boards, and in the course of official functions,
 
 40 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and native gentlemen come to Government House to 
 attend the great promiscuous public receptions. But the 
 white and brown communities stand aloof socially. There 
 are many Englishmen in Bombay who have lived in the 
 city for years, and have never been in a native house or 
 seen any native but a servant or a tradesman within their 
 own doors, nor have they ever exchanged a sentence with 
 an Indian lady. Indeed, I fancy that, even in Bombay, a 
 man who was known habitually to seek native society 
 would be looked at with some suspicion by his friends at 
 the clubs. 
 
 Anglo-India does not care to be too familiar with the 
 inhabitants of the country. It confines its interests 
 mainly to itself, and the relations of its own constituent 
 parts to one another, and to the people At Home. Espe- 
 cially is this the case in the great towns, which contain, 
 it must be remembered, an unduly large part of the white 
 population of the peninsula. The civilians in the rural 
 districts, and some of the officers of the police and the 
 forest service, make praiseworthy efforts to know some- 
 thing of native gentlemen out of working, and even sport- 
 ing, hours ; for you may play polo with a man, or go 
 pig-sticking with him, without really knowing him. It 
 is a difficult task, but occasionally it is successful. In 
 the Presidency towns, English society is large enough to 
 be self-contained, and it is languid about cultivating the 
 local element. Besides, it is mainly composed of busi- 
 ness men, who do not feel, as the more conscientious 
 civilians do, that it is their duty to try to understand 
 our Eastern fellow-subjects. The breaking down of social 
 barriers is no affair of theirs. 
 
 I suppose that is why a, certain acerbity is perceptible 
 in the sentiments of many influential Indians in Bombay 
 towards the English and English rule. When you first 
 come in contact with the educated native, on the
 
 BOMBAY: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 41 
 
 threshold of the Empire, you cannot fail to be struck 
 by the fact that he is a man with a veiled grievance. 
 And this in spite of the fact that Bombay even beyond 
 the rest of India is being run for his benefit, and that 
 he is the dominating factor in its industry and its pro- 
 fessional life. He seems to have things very much his 
 own way ; but he is in rather an irritable splenetic mood, 
 and is inclined to patronise radical Congress orators, in- 
 triguing Mahratta Brahmans, insubordinate rajas, and 
 divers others who are discontented with the existing 
 scheme of things. While staying in Bombay I found 
 myself one evening dining with a company of leading 
 men among the Asiatic community of the Presidency 
 city. I was the only European present ; the other guests 
 were Parsis and Hindus, with one Mohammedan. Need- 
 less to say they were all emancipated, occidentalised 
 persons, otherwise they would not have been dining with 
 me or with each other. One of them held high office 
 under the Government ; another had taken honours at 
 Cambridge ; a third was a wealthy merchant and finan- 
 cier, who generally has a house in London for the season, 
 entertains lavishly, and is quite an important figure in 
 metropolitan society. 
 
 Now, on the face of it, none of these men should have 
 been suspected of any special prejudice against the ruling 
 race, whose manners they copied, or of any" particular 
 affection for the congeries of peoples from whom they 
 had, to a large extent, broken asunder. Yet, when they 
 were properly warmed up by French cookery and judi- 
 cious contradiction, I found that they were one and all 
 suffering under a sense of injustice and slight. They 
 declared, some with distinct heat, others in more guarded 
 terms, that the theoretical equality of all men in British 
 India was a mere fiction. Though I told them that 
 everything I had seen in Bombay conveyed a contrary 
 
 B2
 
 42 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 impression to my mind, they insisted that this was an 
 error. The native, they said, throughout the country was 
 treated as an inferior and as a member of a servile and 
 subject race. 
 
 I asked for illustrations, and they rolled out a string 
 of them. Many were concerned with the railways, where, 
 of course, people of all races come into contact. At some 
 stations, I was assured, the first-class waiting-room is 
 reserved for Europeans and the second-class for natives. 
 ' One of the white foremen at my factory,' said a great 
 Parsi mill-owner, ' can go into the superior apartment, 
 while I, his employer, must slink into the other enclosure, 
 in company with coolies and day-labourers.' An English 
 and a Mohammedan Judge of the High Court were travel- 
 ling together; when they alighted at the station, both 
 strolled into the same waiting-room. Presently an official 
 of the company came up and ordered one of the eminent 
 lawyers to leave on the plea that the place was not 
 intended for natives. 
 
 In several of the stories the British subaltern, with 
 his comprehensive contempt for all 'niggers,' played a 
 shining part. There is one pleasing tale which is a 
 ' chestnut ' in India, so often has it been told, but may 
 perhaps be new to some English readers. A young 
 cavalry officer entering a first-class carriage, for a long 
 night journey on an express train, found that he had for 
 fellow-traveller a middle-aged stout Hindu, who was 
 chewing betel -nut. The trooper requested that this ob- 
 jectionable practice should be discontinued. The Asiatic 
 refused ; whereupon the youngster compelled his com- 
 panion, under menaces, to enter the adjoining lavatory 
 compartment, locked him in, and threatened him with 
 dire personal injury if he made the smallest sound till he 
 was released. The native, a man of peace, complied, and 
 passed a night of quaking stillness in his darksome prison.
 
 BOMBAY: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 43 
 
 In the morning the train drew up at a station, and uni- 
 formed Government House functionaries and gold-tur- 
 baned attendants came to the carriage in search of the 
 important chief they had been sent to receive; but, 
 though his Highness's slippers and his Highness's um- 
 brella were in evidence, his Highness himself was nowhere 
 to be seen. Explanations were sought from the subaltern, 
 and with some difficulty he grasped the situation. ' I 
 expect,' he said cheerfully, 'the chap you want is the 
 black Johnny I locked up in the bath-room last night * ; 
 so the doors were unclasped, and the limp potentate 
 extracted. 
 
 Several other histories were narrated, tending to show 
 that the young British officer is often wanting in tact and 
 consideration in his dealings with natives ; nor are his 
 superiors, or even the high civilian officials, always im- 
 peccable. Rajas and other great personages, if seldom 
 handled so disrespectfully as in the above-mentioned ex- 
 ample, are sometimes treated with scant courtesy and in 
 off-hand fashion, even on occasions of public ceremony. 
 The grievance is social rather than legal or political, and it 
 is in this form that it is felt by some of those, whether they 
 be feudal landowners of progressive views or ambitious 
 plutocrats, who admire English methods but are irritated 
 by English exclusiveness. With all their cleverness, and 
 all their wealth and worldly success, they cannot get 
 the English to put them exactly on the same level as 
 themselves socially. The Parsi millionaire may ask half 
 London to his entertainments when he is living in 
 Piccadilly or Queen's Gate ; but he would be requested to 
 withdraw at once if he ventured to put a foot inside the 
 grounds of the Bombay Yacht Club or the Byculla. 
 I was told that p. famous Indian cricketer, n prince, and 
 a hero with English schoolboys, could not be asked to 
 play a game of tennis at the Ladies' Gymkhana Club.
 
 44 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 These seem all very small matters ; I mention them 
 because, apparently, they do not appear quite so in- 
 significant to some of the natives whom we have admitted 
 to equality with ourselves in other respects. And what 
 did not seem to me a small matter, by any means, was 
 that all these Anglicised de-orientalised natives had a 
 certain common national feeling as against the alien ruler. 
 Differing as they do, among themselves, in origin, race, 
 and language two of the company, both Bombay-side 
 men, could find no common medium of communication 
 but English they yet manifested a consciousness that, 
 vis-d-vis the British, they were all ' Indians.' It was a 
 sentiment the existence of which most Anglo-Indians 
 would emphatically deny, but I have seen other evidence 
 that it prevails, even in Europeanised Bombay, which 
 is perhaps the last place where one would expect to 
 find it. 
 
 In the business world of Bombay the Parsis hold a 
 position out of all proportion to their numbers. Wherever 
 in the world you find a small community, distinctive in 
 race or religion, or both, that community will generally 
 be successful, especially in finance and trade. Witness 
 the Jews, the Armenians, the Basques, the Marwaris, the 
 Levantine Greeks, the Quakers. But of these organisms 
 the Parsis are in some ways the most remarkable, for 
 they are by far the smallest and certainly, for their 
 numbers, the most flourishing of any. 
 
 They are a mere handful, though it is hard for the 
 European, in his novitiate in India, to believe it. There 
 are only some 45,000 of them, men, women, and children, 
 in Bombay, and well under a hundred thousand in the 
 whole world, including Piccadilly. The fact seems in- 
 credible ; for at the first aspect Bombay gives the impres- 
 sion of a city of Parsis. They are visible, they and their 
 work, everywhere. The wealth of the place is largely
 
 BOMBAY: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 45 
 
 in their hands, so is the manufacturing industry and the 
 real property. Parsi names are painted on the gate- 
 posts of many of those desirable suburban residences 
 from which European tenants have been banished. If 
 the eye falls on a handsome public building, it is 
 quite likely to be a Parsi hospital, or a Parsi con- 
 valescent home, or the college founded by one wealthy 
 fire-worshipper, or the monument presented to the 
 city by another. Parsis hold most of the shares in 
 the largest of the cotton-mills, whose tall chimneys 
 are blackening the sunlit air all over the northern 
 quarter of the island ; the big new hotel, whose impos- 
 ing sea-front greets the voyager with his first view of 
 Bombay, belongs to a family of Parsi financiers whose 
 names are known in the West as well as the East. 
 
 In the morning, streams of Parsis, in black alpaca 
 coats and high shiny caps, are flowing down to their 
 offices, to go ebbing back at eventide. There are apparently 
 no Parsi coolies, or labourers ; but the clerks, the shop 
 assistants, the native officials, the doctors, lawyers, brokers, 
 engineers, accountants, are largely drawn from this com- 
 munity. They are very prominent in the Bombay 
 Corporation, and generally ' boss ' municipal affairs, so 
 far as these can be bossed under the Indian system. And 
 on every public festivity, a reception of the Viceroy or 
 a B/oyal Prince, the Parsi ladies and gentlemen are much 
 in evidence. There is no purdah for Parsi women, who 
 drive and walk about as they please, and sometimes even 
 ride bicycles ; but they keep to their picturesque national 
 dress, and particularly to the gauzy veil, because no 
 woman, in this part of India, is considered quite respect- 
 able without some sort of covering for her head. 
 
 The Parsis, we are often reminded, are foreigners, like 
 ourselves, in India. As it is some twelve centuries since 
 they left their home, they may be said to have taken root.
 
 16 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 They fled from Persia to escape Mohammedan persecution, 
 and found a refuge under the Hindu kings of Guzerat, 
 who tolerated them, within limits. They were allowed to 
 practise their Zoroastriarf worship of the elements, but 
 they were expected to conform to Brahmanist feeling, and 
 compelled to adopt the high black cap, supposed to be 
 shaped like a cow's hoof, as a sign of subjection and con- 
 formity. But they brought their consecrated fire from 
 Persia, and it burns to this day in little, whitewashed, 
 empty temples, within sound of the tramway gongs of 
 Bombay. Driven upon themselves, they became, as these 
 proscribed and powerless minor sects often do, hard- 
 working craftsmen and industrious traders. For many 
 generations they were the minor shopkeepers and artisans 
 of Bombay, persevering but uninfluential. 
 
 Under the settled peace of British rule they have 
 flourished wonderfully and waxed mighty. Free from 
 Mahratta tyranny and Hindu suspicion, they have been 
 able to give full scope to their mercantile and financial 
 talents. They were no longer afraid to make money, and 
 were able to keep it. Some of them left off being small 
 tradesmen, and developed into merchants, manufacturers 
 mill-owners, millionaires. Having no chain of caste re- 
 strictions like the Hindus, and no swathing of burden- 
 some religious prejudices like the Mohammedans, they 
 got into contact with the white mercantile community, 
 and assimilated some not all of our manners and cus- 
 toms with avidity. They learnt the English language, 
 read English books, and sometimes wrote them, founded 
 schools for their children on English lines, and joined 
 with Englishmen in works of charity and benevolence. 
 Also they learnt English games. As everybody knows, 
 they play cricket. They play it so well that for the last 
 year or two matches between them and British teams are 
 discouraged : the native spectators having developed a
 
 BOMBAY : THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 47 
 
 taste for ' barracking ' the beaten eleven (which is gene- 
 rally the white one), and exulting riotously and offensively 
 over the victory of the men of Asia. 
 
 Many of the Parsis also provided themselves with 
 English names, or distant imitations of them. The Parsi 
 nomenclature is curious. Every man has his first name, 
 which is what we call a Christian name, and his family 
 patronymic, and a third appellation of a descriptive 
 character. It is rather like the mediaeval English system 
 under which a person was William the son of Robert 
 the Smith, or something of the kind. The Parsis 
 of the past generation varied their descriptive labels 
 according to taste. Not being above their business, they 
 took titles drawn from their avocations or otherwise con- 
 nected with their station in life. Thus, if a young Parsi 
 were, say, a waiter who poured wine at a club, he would 
 probably call himself Mr. Bottleman, which in the ver- 
 nacular would be Bottlywalla ; and this, slightly disguised 
 as Batlivala, is, in fact, now the name of a Bombay family 
 honourably distinguished in professional life. 
 
 So we have bootwalla, coatwalla, and sackcloth- 
 walla, which is now Saklatvala. Such a name as ' Mr 
 Beady-money ' sounds as if it came out of a novel or a 
 comic opera, but it belongs to highly important people, and 
 is known all over Western India. After all, it is not very 
 different from Mr. Butler or Mr. Baker or Mr. Cartwright. 
 Sometimes the aspiring Parsi went farther afield, 
 and simply appropriated the most important English 
 names with which he was acquainted, calling him- 
 self Mr. Spencer or Mr. Ripon, or labelling his firm 
 ' Curzon & Co.,' or Minto Brothers. But it is suspected 
 that some of these names are simply adopted for business 
 purposes, according to a custom not unknown elsewhere, 
 and are not used in the domestic circle. 
 
 Hindus, as well as Parsis, are rather loose about
 
 48 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 names. There is a story that one Madras shopkeeper 
 brought an action against another to restrain him from 
 using his trade name which was English and high- 
 sounding. The Judge of the High Court, whom we may 
 call Sir William Kamsbury, in giving judgment against 
 the defendant, explained that he was quite at liberty to 
 adopt any name but that pre-occupied by the plaintiff. 
 ' May I use any other name I like ? ' said the defeated liti- 
 gant. ' Certainly,' said Mr. Justice Eamsbury. The 
 next morning his Honour received a card announcing 
 that ' Eamsbury and Company ' were prepared to supply 
 him for cash on the most reasonable terms. 
 
 The Parsis are an interesting and rather attractive 
 body of people. Their cleverness is undeniable, and it 
 shows itself in other ways besides that of commerce. 
 There are eminent surgeons in the community, able 
 lawyers, good engineers, botanists, and physiologists. In 
 business itself they have not only the quickness and alert 
 adaptability of the Oriental trader, but also a boldness of 
 conception and a courage in undertaking great and even 
 hazardous enterprises which we are rather inclined to 
 regard as Western traits. There is at the present moment 
 a great scheme for developing the mineral resources of 
 the Bombay Presidency and generating electricity by 
 water-power, initiated by a Parsi group, which is quite 
 Transatlantic in its comprehensive audacity. 
 
 They have a taste for open-air amusement ; and their 
 family life is, as a rule, excellent : one can go for after- 
 noon tea to a Parsi lady's drawing-room and find good 
 conversation and pleasant feminine companionship, though 
 the few highly ' advanced ' Parsi ladies who travel abroad 
 must not be taken as quite average specimens of their sex 
 in the community. The majority retain sufficient vestiges 
 of Orientalism to believe that a certain seclusion and 
 reserved domesticity are required of a woman, and that
 
 BOMBAY: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 49 
 
 she should still occupy herself mainly in her household 
 and family affairs. Female emancipation among the 
 Parsis has not gone quite so far as we are apt to 
 imagine. 
 
 ' At Home ' the Parsis get on very well. Those who 
 come abroad have plenty of money to spend, and they 
 are hospitable, courteous, kindly, and quite modern in 
 their views and ways. But in his own real home the 
 Parsi is not always quite so happy. He is to some extent 
 adrift in an uncertain position between the Asiatic and 
 the European, and he represents, in its acutest form, that 
 social grievance to which reference has already been 
 made. He is so English in his customs, he talks English 
 so well, and he has got rid of so much of his superfluous 
 Oriental baggage, that he has almost got into the habit 
 of thinking himself a member of the ruling race. Yet 
 he is painfully conscious that to nine Englishmen out of 
 ten he is only a ' native,' lumped up unceremoniously 
 with all the conglomerate of civilised, semi-civilised, and 
 savage humanity denoted by that comprehensive term. 
 
 From these same natives themselves he receives only 
 that qualified amount of deference which attaches rather 
 to riches than to race. An English friend tells me that 
 a Parsi gentleman was driving him in his phaeton 
 through the streets of Bombay. His horses were as 
 smart a pair as you could want to see in the Kow, he 
 handled whip and reins neatly, he was a handsome man, 
 well dressed and well set-up. The Englishman noticed 
 that policemen, and other officials, saluted them with 
 considerable precision, and he made some remark on the 
 respectfulness of their bearing. 'Yes,' said his friend 
 rather bitterly, ' but that is because you are sitting beside 
 me, and they see you are one of the Sahibs. If I were 
 alone, not one of these men would take the slightest 
 notice of me. And they would make me pull up and
 
 50 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 keep my horses standing if a white shop-assistant chose 
 to dawdle across the street.' For my own part, I must 
 confess that I did not observe any sign in Bombay of that 
 exaggerated deference towards the members of the ruling 
 race which this remark suggested. 
 
 The future of the Parsis is somewhat doubtful. Some 
 people who know them tell me that there are signs of 
 degeneration among them. The young Parsis, who go 
 to the high schools, or to Oxford or Cambridge, and 
 acquire a taste for culture, have lost the grip and go of 
 their hard-headed pertinacious progenitors who pushed 
 themselves, by sheer force of character, from the trades- 
 man's counter and the small money-lender's office to 
 become merchant princes and captains of industry. They 
 are less strenuous, more frivolous, somewhat ashamed of 
 the * shop ; ' they are losing their identity ; and they are 
 relaxing their hold on the religion of their fathers, with 
 its simple ethical code, without finding a substitute for it. 
 They are becoming denationalised, and some of them 
 have themselves told me that they fear it is their destiny 
 to be absorbed into the general body of Europeans in 
 India. Here I think they are mistaken. There is no 
 sign that the English will assimilate them. They may 
 cease to be Parsis ; but if they merge at all it will be 
 with that still small and hesitating body of Asiatics who 
 are trying in a tentative way to regard themselves as 
 ' Indians.'
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AT THE MILLS 
 
 MANUFACTURES, like most other things In India, are very 
 new and very old ; and it is often easy to see the new and 
 the old side by side. You can observe the juxtaposition, 
 for instance, in Cawnpore, a town which seems to be 
 rapidly ascending towards the second place among the 
 manufacturing cities of India. The visitor to Cawnpore 
 usually limits his attention to the Memorial Church and 
 the Massacre Ghat, and that garden of intolerably tragic 
 memories where the sculptured Angel of Peace droops 
 her white wings above the pit into which ' a great com- 
 pany of Christian people, chiefly women and children,' l 
 were cast, 'the dying with the dead,' after being hacked 
 to pieces by the butchers of the Nana Sahib. But when 
 he has seen these reminiscences of a sombre past, he 
 might walk over to the cotton-mills, the woollen-mills, 
 or the great leather-factories, where modern industrialism 
 is humming with eager vitality. The Cawnpore woollen- 
 mills are crowded with splendid machinery, so nearly 
 automatic that the chumar, the low-caste coolie who 
 attends it, has little more to do than to brush away the 
 
 1 The words are from the inscription round the screen wall above the 
 Well at Cawnpore. The inscription, in its simplicity, is more in touch 
 with the sentiment evoked by this sorrowful place than the feebly ornate 
 screen and the mid- Victorian angel. One feels that if Baron Marochetti 
 had been Michelangelo he could hardly have put an adequate intensity of 
 expression into the face and form. A plain cross or column of marble to 
 mark the spot where the Nana's victims lie, in the midst of the beautiful 
 quiet garden, would surely have been better. 
 
 61
 
 52 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 dust and feed the thirsty faucets with oil. It is almost as 
 if the man and the machine had changed places : the 
 former has only to exert a limited amount of mechanical 
 force ; the moving thing, of metal seems endowed with 
 intelligence and volition. There is a knitting-machine 
 which needs only to be fed with a reei of worsted-thread 
 to turn out a whole string of stockings, beginning a new 
 one as soon as it has finished the last. With deft steel 
 fingers it picks up the threads and works away swiftly 
 and unerringly at the leg and ankle, never dropping or 
 missing a stitch, and putting in the right number with 
 faultless precision. Then it comes to the heel and stops 
 a moment ; it reflects that in a well-made stocking the 
 heel should be of double thickness. So it takes up two 
 threads instead of one, works away a little slower till 
 the heel is done, stops again, goes back to the single ply, 
 and so finishes the foot. And all this absolutely without 
 a touch from the attendant, without the handling of a 
 tap or a lever. Unless something goes wrong, he is 
 merely required to snip off the stockings from the string 
 as they are wound out in front of him. Here is the New 
 World indeed. But the Old can also be seen in the squalid 
 bazaars of Cawnpore, where men and women sit in their 
 reeking little hutches, weaving, fulling, and dyeing the 
 cloth with such primitive processes and implements as 
 they used before there were English in India or steam- 
 engines in England. 
 
 In Bombay one can pass from the great steam- 
 power cotton-mills in the suburbs to the Street of the 
 Weavers, which is in a crowded insalubrious por- 
 tion of the native city, and is inhabited chiefly by 
 Mohammedans of a sturdy, rather truculent, type, who 
 have been hand-loom weavers for generations. There 
 is no caste system among the Mussulmans ; but in the 
 East a man likes to follow the calling practised by his
 
 AT THE MILLS 53 
 
 father before him. These hand-loom weavers work in 
 their own homes on their own account, or in small work- 
 shops, where a dozen or so of them will be collected. 
 They sell the woven cloth through the owner or lessee 
 of the place, who takes a small commission on the pro- 
 ceeds. The plant required is not costly. The hand- 
 loom consists of a few sticks and strings, and the whole 
 apparatus, I was assured, could be bought new for 
 less than a couple of rupees say half a crown. Pro- 
 vided with this trumpery machine and a few hanks of 
 cotton or silk thread, the Indian weaver can get to work. 
 He needs nothing more nothing but his own bony 
 claw-like fingers and his own capacity for patient 
 monotonous endurance. 
 
 The weaver is a little man : his occupation is not 
 favourable to long limbs and big muscles. He sits on 
 the floor of dried cow-dung, with his legs huddled into 
 a hole under him ; his flimsy framework hangs from the 
 ceiling above, and he pulls the bobbin with its spool of 
 thread backward and forward across his knees. He does 
 this all day, never varying the slow even pace at which 
 he goes, following his rough pattern without a mistake, 
 seldom stopping to rest or talk. If you peer into his 
 dark little cell in the early morning, you find him there, 
 silent and intent, with his brown hands skimming across 
 his brown knees ; in the noontide heat he goes on ; he 
 is still at his toil when evening falls. From sunrise to 
 sundown are the traditional hours of labour for the Indian 
 weaver from the beginning of the natural day to the 
 time when the light is veiled. Now and again the weaver 
 rises and goes out to get a drink of water. He eats little 
 during his working hours; in the Eamazan, the month of 
 fasting, being a Mohammedan, he does not eat at all, taking 
 his food before the rising and after the setting of the sun ; 
 but he stops to say his prayers at noon and in the after-
 
 64 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 noon, and, when night comes, he gets out his square of 
 threadbare rug, turns his face vaguely to the West, 
 where the Holy City lies, and gives thanks to Allah for 
 the mercies of the day. He pays, perhaps, three rupees 
 a month for his lodging, and, if he is lucky and times are 
 good, may earn seven rupees, so that he has four over 
 say eighteenpence a week for food and clothing and the 
 maintenance of hi? wife, or wives, and his children. So 
 he lives and labours and starves and endures, as his 
 fathers have done before him through the dim centuries. 
 
 When you have considered this image of his Maker 
 sufficiently, go by train or carriage to the northern 
 suburbs, where the tall chimneys of the mill are pouring 
 black smoke into the sunlight, and fouling the low-lying 
 marshy soil of the island with their refuse. There are 
 good mills and bad mills in Bombay, as in Calcutta and 
 Cawnpore and the other cities whose industry is fast 
 giving India a place among the great cotton-manu- 
 facturing countries of the world. The first mill I visited 
 belonged to one of the largest and most successful of the 
 native joint-stock companies, and its shares stand at a 
 premium of 1,500 per cent., or more. It was a fine and, 
 apparently, a very well-managed concern. And here, 
 again, it seemed strange, with the recollection of the 
 hand-loom weaver in mind, to look into the vast sheds 
 of glass and iron, full of modern machinery, with row 
 after row of workmen and workwomen at the spindles. 
 So far as cleanliness and good order were concerned, it 
 was equal to most mills or factories I have seen, even 
 in Germany. There was no reek or smell of tainted 
 air, except, as you went through the lines, the somewhat 
 acrid odour of perspiring humanity. Sweeper-women 
 were prowling about everywhere, brushing away the dust 
 and refuse and cotton-waste, and keeping the floors tidy. 
 The sanitary accommodation, as things go in the East,
 
 AT THE MILLS 55 
 
 was good enough, and there were pipes and taps and large 
 cement cisterns at which the workpeople could perform 
 their frequent ablutions. The Indian, at his dirtiest, is 
 a washing animal. He can no more live without sluicing 
 himself all over with water (not necessarily clean water) 
 than his own buffaloes. 
 
 This, as I say, was one of the better mills : in fact, it 
 is, I believe, pretty nearly the best in the district. I saw 
 others which impressed me less favourably, where the 
 sheds were low and dark, the workpeople crowded together, 
 and the arrangements for ventilation and sanitation 
 capable of considerable improvement. However, there 
 seems on the whole no great reason to criticise the 
 general structural condition of the mills, which is kept 
 up to a fair standard, especially where the buildings are 
 modern. What the Indian workman complains of are 
 the long hours of labour exacted. That is to say, he 
 might complain. But he does not ; he complains of 
 nothing. Sufferance through long ages has been the 
 badge of his kin. Some of the mill-hands belong to the 
 Mahars, an outcast tribe, probably of aboriginal descent, 
 who are still not far removed from savages. Outside 
 one great mill I visited was a village of these people. 
 Their houses were the merest shanties of earth and 
 thatch, as poor as Kaffir kraals, or the cabins in which 
 men and voters live on the coast of Connemara and 
 Donegal. 
 
 But most of the mill-workers are immigrants from the 
 Concan and other rural districts of the Western Presi- 
 dency. A good proportion were women, for the most 
 part of a low type, short, stunted, and ill-favoured, though 
 here and there one saw a Hindu woman of a higher caste, 
 with sari and chudder, and silver ornaments. The women 
 are sometimes the wives of the male operatives, sometimes 
 they are not. ' That man,' said the manager, pointing to
 
 56 A 
 
 a burly Hindu, ' has two wives at work in the mill, and 
 three children.' The family earnings must have rendered 
 this owner of livestock quite prosperous. Other women 
 were widows, and a Hindu widow has sometimes no 
 resource but to form an illicit connection with a man, 
 who may, perhaps, chivalrously send her to work in the 
 mill while he takes her wages. He may, it is true, invest 
 part of the proceeds in a ring for her nose, and bangles 
 for her legs and arms, not from generosity or gallantry, 
 but because this is the local substitute for a bank-balance, 
 and more convenient than digging a hole in the ground 
 and putting the rupees there. And there were plenty of 
 children, some of them well-grown girls and boys, others 
 tiny scraps of skin and bone, who looked (I do not say 
 that they were) even less than the mature age of nine, 
 at which it is lawful in India for employment as a half- 
 timer to begin. 
 
 There has been an agitation in Bombay for a re- 
 duction of the hours both for child labour and for adult 
 labour in the cotton-mills. The echoes have reached 
 Lancashire, and fall on willing ears ; for Lancashire has 
 been hard hit by Bombay and Delhi and Calcutta, 
 and will be hit harder still. A country which has the 
 cotton on its own fields, and in which grown men will 
 work all day and a good part of the night for a few pence, 
 must be a formidable competitor. Bombay, after rather 
 a long spell of bad times, caused in part by the plague, 
 has been advancing very rapidly of late, and even claims 
 that she is now ' the second city of the Empire ' in point 
 of population. The Bombay merchants have been 
 shipping full cargoes, not only of cotton-yarn, but of 
 cotton-cloth, to the Far East. The mills have been 
 running at full pressure, and there are public-spirited 
 persons in Bombay, with no arriere-pensee such as the 
 citizens of Oldham and Manchester may possibly feel,
 
 AT THE MILLS 57 
 
 who are pressing for a more merciful treatment of the 
 workmen by their employers. 
 
 The leading Bombay journal, the Times of India, went 
 closely into the subject, and published some distressing 
 revelations. It insists that the laws as to juvenile labour 
 have been systematically evaded. Under these laws, 
 passed in consequence of an agitation in England, no 
 child may be employed under the age of nine, and 
 from nine to fourteen only for six hours a day, or for 
 more than three hours and a-half without an interval. 
 It is alleged that these provisions have been disregarded. 
 When the European inspector goes his rounds, low whistles 
 are heard in the shops, and the children are d";ven helter- 
 skelter down the steps, or concealed under sacks and 
 behind doors, in order that they may not be seen and 
 questioned. ' On entering a mill in the afternoon or after 
 sunset a perfect chorus of whistles went up, and it 
 was invariably followed by a stampede of half-naked 
 children. The jobbers (native overseers) hardly attempted 
 to disguise what they were doing. Kepeatedly I saw 
 them driving the children before them with cuffs and 
 blows. On several occasions we chased the children 
 among the frames, caught one or two, and questioned 
 them. More than once they gave evasive answers, but 
 at other times told us the number of hours they had 
 worked. The law was being systematically evaded, with 
 the manifest connivance of the jobbers.' 
 
 It is also asserted that large numbers of the mill- 
 children are below the statutory age. This is an illegality 
 which it is hard for the inspectors to detect. An Indian 
 child of nine looks very like an Indian child of eleven to 
 the European eye ; and the officials get small help from 
 the parents, who will sometimes, it is said, compel their 
 children to work a legal day's shift at one mill and then 
 a shift at another. This is not so much from cruelty as
 
 58 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 from ignorance and carelessness and the poverty that 
 makes the labourer hungry after every pice. 
 
 Inspection, whether of factories or dwelling-houses, 
 is in any case difficult to perform with searching ade- 
 quacy. The native subordinate cannot invariably be 
 trusted ; the European officer, active and zealous as he 
 may be, does not always penetrate the devices employed 
 to baffle him. I was told a grimly illustrative story while 
 I was going round the slum tenements in Bombay. In 
 the first two years of plague there was the greatest pos- 
 sible difficulty in enforcing measures of disinfection in a 
 plague-stricken dwelling. The authorities were supposed 
 to be notified wherever a death occurred, in order that the 
 other tenants should be isolated and clothes removed. 
 
 In India, if the cause of death is not ascertained at 
 once, it will be too late to do anything, for in an hour or 
 two the body will be at the burning ghat. A medical 
 inspector, hearing that two deaths had occurred in a large 
 tenement building, hurried to the place and went into the 
 suspected room. He saw nothing more remarkable than 
 four men sitting on the ground playing cards, two of 
 them propped against the wall in the stiff immovable 
 attitude these people often adopt. Otherwise the room 
 was empty ; no bed or hangings ; no cavity in which a 
 human body could be concealed. The inspector turned 
 away ; but as he walked out of the doorway his native 
 sepoy whispered to him, ' Better go back to that room, 
 Sahib.' He did so, and found the two card-players 
 at the wall still sitting in the same immovable attitude ; 
 but one, whom the sepoy touched with his foot, rolled 
 over on the floor in a limp bundle. The men were both 
 dead : dead of the plague. A similar dramatic incident 
 has been put on the stage, and has been condemned, I 
 believe, as improbable. The critics who said that had, 
 perhaps, not been in the East, and did not know how
 
 AT THE MILLS 59 
 
 easily life and death can be counterfeited and played with 
 by Orientals. 
 
 To return to the mills. At fourteen the Indian child 
 is a man under the Factory Acts, and can be legally em- 
 ployed for an unlimited number of hours. It is really 
 rather appalling to read that, as the result of philanthropic 
 agitation, some of the more enlightened mill-owners have 
 held a meeting, and decided to limit the tale of work to 
 twelve hours daily. Twelve hours ! Think of it, for a 
 grown man or woman, not to say for a boy of fifteen, or 
 a girl of sixteen, in a room sprayed with steam heat to 
 keep the yarn moist, and in a climate which makes us 
 break into a profuse perspiration all over after ten minutes' 
 gentle walking ! But this twelve hours' shift, it seems, 
 is a sweeping concession, a reform so extensive that even 
 the reformers do not ask for more. It is as much as the 
 good mills will give ; in the bad mills they work by the 
 old Eastern measure, from sunrise to sunset. Consider 
 what that means in the Indian summer, when it is dawn 
 at five and light till seven ! Then the mill-hand may 
 work his fourteen hours at a stretch ; and, incredible as it 
 may seem, even that is not the limit. There is a great 
 outcry in Bombay against the ' electric-light mills,' which 
 are putting in artificial illumination, so as to be able to 
 keep the machinery going after dark. Thus there may 
 be a fourteen or fifteen hours day all the year round, and 
 not merely in the long-drawn days of the early summer. 
 
 How can even the Indian mill-hand stand it ? Partly, 
 say the obstructives, because he has no nerves, and partly 
 because he is accustomed to long spaces of toil. As to 
 the nerves, I do not know. It is one of the convenient 
 theories we adopt, without taking much trouble to test 
 them. The Oriental seems nervous enough sometimes. 
 But that he can labour for portentous periods, if he is 
 allowed to go his own pace and not hustled, is apparent
 
 60 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to anyone who walks through the bazaar and sees the 
 tailor at his work early in the morning and late into the 
 night. With all this, it is quite certain that fourteen 
 hours spent standing before a machine in a factory is 
 more than any flesh and blood, Eastern or Western, can 
 endure without physical disaster. The Indian mill-hand 
 is soon worked out. Men and women are aged pre- 
 maturely, even for this climate, where youth flies swiftly. 
 Nor would the operative last as long as he does, if he 
 did not take periodical holidays and occasional intervals 
 of recuperation and something like repose. 
 
 He is by nature a peasant, an agriculturist, as are nine 
 out of ten of the inhabitants of India. The life he knows, 
 the life he loves, is that of the village community and the 
 fields. The town and all its conditions are alien to him, 
 unwelcome, demoralising. Poverty has brought him into 
 the city to pick up a few rupees at the works; but his 
 heart is in the mud hut away in the hills or on the plains, 
 with the buffalo wallowing in the byre, the chickens 
 pecking in the untidy yard, the small field of millet, the 
 tiny patch of earth which his uncles and aunts and 
 brothers and nephews, perhaps his wife and children, 
 tend and cherish. When the burden of the whirring 
 spindles and humming engines is too much for him, he 
 takes a holiday of three or four months, and goes back as 
 he says to ' my country.' There he grubs in the earth, 
 and delves in the sun, and rests in the shade, and feeds 
 the beasts, and gossips by the tank, and feels himself a 
 man again, till the call for more rupees sends him back 
 to the mill. When he has had enough of it, and can 
 stand the strain no more, he returns to his ' country ' for 
 good. His hope is to have saved enough, during his 
 exile, to live comfortably in his retirement. More often 
 he has spent all he has earned, and is in debt to the small 
 trader and the village money-lender to the end.
 
 CIIAPTEK V 
 
 IN CAMP 
 
 TILL you come to India, you do not understand the 
 possibilities of life under canvas. In most countries and 
 climates the idea of luxury, or even ordinary comfort, in a 
 camp, would seem absurd. It is supposed to be a hugger- 
 mugger makeshift existence, at the best, in which you 
 put up with all sorts of inconveniences, on the same 
 principle as that which induces people to forego some of 
 the elementary decencies and amenities of civilisation on 
 shipboard or the railway. Baths, good cookery, meals 
 served with refinement, soft beds, adequate shelter from 
 sun and rain, facilities for reading and writing, and 
 privacy who would look for these in a place in which 
 one is a mere temporary sojourner ? It is unpleasant, but 
 soon over. That is why, I suppose, we submit to be 
 locked up in a cupboard to dress, undress, and sleep, in 
 company with a perfect stranger, on a wagon-lit train or 
 in a first-class passenger steamer. People go into tents 
 either to satisfy a temporary need or a passing caprice, or 
 under conditions which do not allow much room for 
 choice. A. soldier on active service must deem himself 
 lucky if he gets any sort of covering from the weather. 
 If his tent saves him from sleeping in a pool of rain- 
 water or shelters him from a snow-storm, it is about all 
 he can ask, and more than he will usually obtain. 
 
 Some of the newspaper correspondents, unused to 
 Indian ways, when they heard that they were to live in
 
 62 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 camp during a considerable part of the Prince of Wales's 
 tour, may have felt moments of apprehension. Those 
 who had gone through more than one serious campaign 
 recalled the hardships and privations of tent-life under 
 the burning skies of the Sudan or the merciless blasts 
 of Manchuria. Less hardened travellers thought of 
 their 'camping out' in English meadows; or they may 
 have had memories of Easter holiday volunteering, with 
 half a dozen men packed in a small bell-tent, spending 
 laborious mornings in emptying pails, washing up tea- 
 things, and peeling potatoes. By young fellows, released 
 from desk and office for a few days' outing, this was 
 easily endured ; responsible persons, with work to do, 
 might find it less attractive. A place of abode, in 
 which there would be no room to stow baggage, to write 
 undisturbed, or to dress and undress in comfort, would 
 have been disagreeable. 
 
 There was no cause for alarm. The first camp we 
 came to was a revelation, even to those who had heard 
 something of the Indian practice in these matters. Con- 
 sidering how large the party was that travelled with the 
 Prince, I had not anticipated that each correspondent 
 would have a tent to himself, and was wondering who 
 would be my stable-companion. But when we drove 
 into the canvas town one of the first objects that caught 
 my eye was a small white sign-post, planted in the 
 ground, with my own name painted in visible black 
 letters upon it, and it was signified to me that the tent 
 behind this notice-board constituted my exclusive do- 
 main. And a surprisingly desirable little estate I found 
 it, and greatly did I enjoy the two and a-half days I 
 spent therein. I parted from it with deep regret, 
 mitigated, however, by the reflection that other and 
 equally satisfying domiciles awaited me at various sub- 
 sequent stages of our journey, which, indeed, proved to
 
 IN CAMP 63 
 
 be the case. Sometimes we were even more luxuriously 
 lodged ; sometimes slightly less so. But this first tent 
 of mine was a fair average specimen, not only of those 
 which I occupied at other times, but of those which 
 form the domicile of many Englishmen during a sub- 
 stantial portion of the years they spend in Southern 
 Asia. 
 
 My tent is, properly speaking, two tents one inside 
 the other. You need much more than a single thickness 
 of canvas between yourself and the searching sun of 
 the tropics. Therefore a good Indian tent is made with 
 an outer and an inner skin, and an air-space of a foot or 
 more between the two roofs. The inner tent is the one 
 in which I sleep and work. It is about sixteen feet 
 square, and about seven feet high at the sides, rising to 
 perhaps twenty feet at the apex, where the shaft 
 of stout bamboo goes through the covering. This tent 
 is of the single-pole type, having one main central 
 support, with plenty of thinner posts at the corners and 
 sides to keep everything taut and rigid. Indeed, the 
 whole concern has an air of solidity and permanence, 
 which is all the more remarkable when one reflects that 
 it may have been put up with a couple of hours' work 
 yesterday, and that to-morrow it may be travelling away 
 on a bullock-cart, a mere bundle of rods and sheets and 
 cordage. 
 
 When I sit in this combined bedroom and parlour, 
 my eye is not offended by the sight of crude rough 
 canvas ; for walls and sloping ceiling are all clothed with 
 hangings of some stout cotton material, of a gold-yellow 
 hue, with a small geometrical pattern in brown. There 
 is even a sort of dado or fringe, of a suitably harmonious 
 design, where roof and walls join. There are doorways 
 or oblong openings at the back, front, and sides, each 
 covered bv a chick or curtain of lath, which adrnits the
 
 64 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 air and keeps out the sun, besides a flap of the same 
 material as the walls, which can be let down at night. 
 
 My doorways, however, do not let me out of my little 
 territory at once. They give upon the corridor formed 
 by extending the roof of the outer tent laterally and 
 bringing its sides down to the ground, so that I have a 
 passage about five feet wide all round. At one corner 
 this corridor is enlarged to a canvas outhouse, screened 
 off from the main building. Here is my bath-room, and 
 it is large enough to hold a wash-stand, basins, towel- 
 horse, and a great oblong zinc cistern, not a mere tub, in 
 which I can sit down and bathe in comfort ; or I can 
 stand upright in it, and have water poured over me, ice- 
 cold, from great earthen pitchers, which is the alluring, 
 but rather perilous, custom of many Anglo-Indians when 
 heated in the chase. 
 
 My saloon is well furnished. There is a cotton rug 
 all over the floor, and a bed-mat. It is no case of 
 sleeping on the earth and a waterproof sheet. There 
 is a regular iron bedstead, with proper framework for 
 mosquito-curtains, and there is a mattress, and sheets 
 blankets and pillows, which things, as a rule, the Anglo- 
 Indian traveller carries about with him everywhere ; there 
 is a writing-table, a dressing-table with mirror, and a 
 folding chest of drawers ; and there are two cane chairs, 
 besides a large well-wadded armchair in which I can take 
 my rest. My passages and bath-room are lighted with 
 lanterns protected by wire guards, and by two good oil- 
 lamps (made to stow away in tin boxes for travelling), 
 which shed a bright light into every corner of my saloon. 
 Nothing is wanting. There is an inkstand, with pens, 
 blotting-book, and stationery on the table, a waste-paper 
 basket on the floor. And the whole compact little estab- 
 lishment is placed on a square of turf, carefully kept 
 green by diligent watering, with a small path or minia-
 
 IN CAMP 65 
 
 ture carriage-drive edged with red tiles leading up to the 
 front door. 
 
 My tent is one of a hundred or so, set in two rows on 
 each side of the broad main street of the camp, and along 
 the cross-roads, which branch out from this avenue. 
 Larger tents, of similar construction but with double 
 poles and sometimes two rooms, accommodate important 
 members of the Royal suite, or serve as offices for those 
 who have business to transact. There is a post-office, 
 with a red pillar-box in front, and a notice that the next 
 collection will be at such and such an hour, into which 
 receptacle you drop your letters with as much confidence 
 as if you were in a London square. There is a telegraph- 
 tent, with a staff of clerks and messengers ; and there are 
 office-tents for the military secretary, the chief of the staff, 
 the transport director, and others, and a press room, with 
 tables, and writing materials, and newspapers. 
 
 In a little crescent, off the main thoroughfare, with a 
 flower-garden in front, there is a whole range of spacious 
 marquees, with silken hangings, which serve for recep- 
 tion-room, drawing-room, smoking-room with a counter 
 where you can get tea, and cooling drinks, and cigars at 
 most times and dining-room. Behind this last is a 
 square yard, with high canvas walls, where are small 
 pyramidal tents and other structures, and brick ovens, 
 and a whole corps of cooks and waiters, who between 
 them contrive to produce each morning, noon, and even- 
 ing, breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners which would do 
 credit to the kitchen of a first-rate hotel in any European 
 or American city. Tube wells and pumps provide an 
 unlimited supply of cold water ; great iron cauldrons, 
 with brick furnaces, enable anybody to have hot baths 
 three times a day, if he pleases, and in India many people 
 do please to bathe at frequent intervals and at all sorts of 
 odd hours ; and there is a tall electric-light standard in 
 
 c
 
 66 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 front of the dining-marquee, and lamps on poles scattered 
 about freely. Though there are carriages and cavalry 
 escorts and mounted messengers and sowars moving along 
 the camp roads all day, there is no cloud of dust; for 
 the bheesties, with their huge leathern water-bags, slung 
 over the patient backs of their bullocks, are always at 
 work keeping the whole camp moist and fresh, and 
 making it difficult to believe that its site was a space of 
 arid sand or a burnt-up patch of scrub and friable plough- 
 land not many days ago. 
 
 When Koyalty travels things are at their best, and no 
 doubt this is an encampment complete and luxurious even 
 for India. But with a little less elegance and refinement 
 in the upholstery and the reception-rooms, a little less 
 perfection in the menus of the dinner-table, it is such a 
 camp as the Viceroy often has, and the Commander-in- 
 Chief, and at times even a Lieutenant-Governor or a Chief 
 Commissioner. It is a different matter for that humbler, 
 but most necessary, functionary, the lynch-pin and crank- 
 shaft of Indian administration, the District Officer. Yet, 
 when he traverses his domain, he will carry with him a 
 small cohort of servants, six or eight bullock-carts, or a 
 score or so of camels, and three or more commodious 
 tents, like that described above, with furniture that takes 
 to pieces, in order that it may travel in sections. People 
 ' go into camp,' to use the technical phrase, so frequently 
 in India, that they must make themselves reasonably 
 comfortable over the process. 
 
 The Indian camp is a necessity because of the condi- 
 tions of Anglo-Indian existence and administration. It is 
 not a mere passing expedient, but a part of the ordinary 
 machinery of life. Almost everybody is in camp at 
 some time or other, and a large number of highly im- 
 portant persons spend a considerable portion of each year 
 in this situation. The Viceroy is in camp when he makes
 
 IN CAMP 67 
 
 his regular progresses and when he pays visits to native 
 potentates or goes on a shooting-expedition. The Com- 
 mander-in-Chief is constantly in camp, visiting the various 
 military stations, inspecting cantonments, supervising 
 manoeuvres, and seeing battalions, brigades, or whole 
 divisions out for exercise. Political Agents camp out all 
 over the group of feudatory States which they superintend. 
 Lieutenant-Governors and Chief Commissioners go into 
 camp when they wish to traverse their territories and see 
 how their subordinate satraps are getting on ; so do the 
 heads and high officials of the Public Works and the 
 Irrigation departments ; and the civilian District Officers 
 spend from a third to nearly a half of their period of 
 active service under canvas. Anybody, in fact, who 
 travels much in India, and goes at all far afield, must be 
 prepared to live in camp ; for outside the large cities and 
 the regular tourist route, along which the cold- weather ex- 
 cursionist runs his precipitate career, there are no hotels, 
 and very little accommodation of any sort for the tra- 
 veller save such as he brings with him. In the villages 
 there is none at all. So the voyager whose way lies in 
 the country districts, in the forest, the jungle, the desert, 
 or the vast cultivated plains, and among the smaller towns 
 he journeys with some such equipage as that described, 
 and contrives to make himself fairly comfortable as he 
 goes along. 
 
 It is not a case of self-indulgence. The autumnal 
 inquisitor, taking a casual glance at one of these camps, 
 with all its appurtenances and appliances, may go back 
 and talk about Oriental luxury. But the Indian official 
 is compelled to give himself some of the comforts of home 
 in his tent, if he is to reside in it for weeks and months 
 at a time, and do serious work there. The camp, unless 
 perhaps he is shooting or paying a visit to friends, is not 
 a place in which he amuses himself. It is the scene of
 
 68 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 definite, regular, important, anxious, day-to-day business ; 
 and you cannot get through business properly with 
 habitually inconvenient surroundings, especially in a 
 climate in which the native of Northern Europe can only 
 retain his energy and efficiency by taking a good deal of 
 care of himself. A person who, while in camp, still 
 remains executive ruler, revenue authority, head tax- 
 collector, and administrator of the criminal law, for 
 several hundred thousand human beings, cannot afford to 
 impair his efficiency by exposing himself to superfluous 
 privations and avoidable discomforts. 
 
 Take the example of the District Magistrate, the Col- 
 lector, or the Deputy-Commissioner, as he is called in 
 some provinces. Under the standing orders of his 
 Government he is obliged to go on tour through his 
 district for several months in each year. Normally he 
 would be so engaged, on and off, from about the end of 
 October till near the beginning of the hot weather in the 
 early spring. The most vital part of his official duties is 
 performed in this period, during which he visits the 
 various villages and towns under his command, examines 
 revenue questions in conference with the subordinate 
 officials on the spot, hears complaints, receives petitions, 
 casts an eye on education and public works, and as he 
 moves from place to place acts as a minor judicial officer 
 and court of first instance. Situated as he is, he must 
 take his belongings and the tools of his trade with him. 
 
 For those many weeks his camp must be his office 
 and his home. His bungalow at the district capital will 
 be shut up, or left with a servant or two in charge. If 
 he is a married man, with no children, his wife, unless 
 she is in Europe or at the Hills, may come with him. 
 So does his cook, his butler, his bearer or valet, his 
 horses, with a syce or groom to each, his laundry-man, 
 his dirzee or tailor and mender, his table-servants, hia
 
 IN CAMP 69 
 
 sweepers to empty slops and do dirty work generally ; 
 and, if his wife accompanies him, she will bring her 
 ayah, who acts (for the most part inadequately) as her 
 personal attendant and maid. The magistrate's house- 
 hold is with him in the camp, since that is to be rendered 
 an endurable residence for a busy man, struggling under 
 a load of responsibility. His office, of course, must be 
 with him too. He has his clerk, and copyist, and tran- 
 scriber ; he must take his documents, his records, and his 
 letter-files, his stationery and his books of reference. 
 He cannot, at a moment's notice, send for a paper to 
 his headquarters, which may be thirty miles distant, 
 through more or less roadless jungle. When he opens 
 his bed of justice before the porch of his tent, or in- 
 augurates a local commission of inquiry, he must have 
 the requisite material to hand. So his office desk and 
 his despatch-boxes travel about with him by bullock-cart 
 and camels, or are sent on ahead during the night, in 
 order to be ready for him as he moves from stage to stage. 
 This is what renders the Indian camp necessary. 
 What makes it possible is the abundance of available 
 man-power and beast-power. It is not till you come to 
 the East that you realise how cheap the human animal 
 can be, and how plentiful is the supply of the other slightly 
 more expensive animals, the quadrupedal kinds, which are 
 his companions in toil. A man, a bullock, a donkey 
 they are always to be had ; the horse, the camel, even 
 the elephant, can be obtained when wanted. Looking 
 at a District Officer's paraphernalia, I noticed the cum- 
 brous clumsiness of his receptacle for documents. I told 
 him of a new invention, which would enable him to keep 
 his papers in better order, without burdening himself with 
 half the weight. He admitted its merits, but demurred 
 to the initial cost, which was rather heavy. It would save 
 labour in handling and transport, I urged. 'Yes,' he
 
 70 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 replied, ' but that is not worth our while to consider. We 
 like things to be cheap and roomy. We are not very par- 
 ticular about their lightness in travelling ; for what is an 
 extra coolie or two, or another half-hundredweight when 
 you are loading a bullock-waggon ? ' 
 
 When the Deputy-Commissioner travels, the headman 
 of the next village is told that so many men and so many 
 animals will be needed for his use, and they are forth- 
 coming. The owners and the workers are paid for their 
 services, at a rate fixed by Government, and they get the 
 money, or so much of it as is not intercepted by native 
 subordinates. No doubt the stream which flows from the 
 Sirkar and the Sahib becomes an exiguous trickle by the 
 time it reaches the dusty palms of the peasant. 
 
 He may esteem himself rather lucky if anything comes 
 his way. When a late Political Agent went on tour some 
 years ago there moved with him, in the shape of subordi- 
 nate officials, military escort, clerks, assistants, and 
 followers, a train of fifteen hundred people all told. And 
 where he went the country was swept nearly bare for six 
 miles or so on each side of his track. The villagers would 
 learn that the Sahib would require a hundred sheep, fifty 
 goats, a drove of pigs, so many maunds of grain, bowls 
 of milk, earthen chatties, bullock-carts, and so forth, 
 and three days' labour from an army of coolies. Nine- 
 tenths of these commodities he did not want and did not 
 get. He was a particularly humane and considerate 
 man, and he laid down careful regulations to protect the 
 country-folk from being robbed and cheated. But robbed 
 and cheated they were, all the same, as I happen to know 
 from unimpeachable first-hand European evidence. 
 
 This was in native states, where things are done more 
 loosely than in our territory; but even in provinces 
 directly administered by our civilians I believe the same 
 abuses, in a minor form, are often practised in spite
 
 IN CAMP 71 
 
 of the vigilance of the officials and elaborate Govern- 
 ment regulations. What can the Huzur do ? Between 
 him and the people there lies a great, squeezable, elastic, 
 but nearly impervious, cushion of inferior native official- 
 dom, which keeps him from direct contact with the sub- 
 ject masses. If he gives an order, there is a native sub- 
 ordinate to see to its execution ; if he makes a payment, 
 the money usually passes through native hands. That is 
 the Indian way. 
 
 The poor man submits. He has been taught for 
 generations to endure, and he deems it part of the order 
 of nature that those who serve the great and powerful of 
 the earth should fleece him and domineer over him. If 
 the process is carried out with some degree of moderation, 
 he does not greatly complain of it. We try to teach him 
 that he has rights, which the law will enforce, even against 
 officers of state and their retainers ; but he is slow to learn 
 that lesson in the villages, though in the towns it is a 
 different story. 
 
 The peasant inherits a tradition of servitude. Under 
 his old masters he toiled hard and long, and often for no 
 reward. By his newer masters he is paid, or should be 
 paid, for his services ; but the habit of patient endurance 
 is in his blood, and for his pittance he will perform an 
 astonishing amount of monotonous, prolonged, uninviting 
 drudgery. In my first camp, and often enough after- 
 wards, I saw men going over the ground on their knees 
 and haunches, picking up the filth and ordure with their 
 bare hands ; everywhere in India you get human beings 
 to do all kinds of repellent cleaning and emptying which 
 in other countries have to be done by mechanical assist- 
 ance or they would not be done at all. Take the case 
 not the worst case of the punkah-wallah, the poor 
 wretch who crouches in a corner of the verandah or in 
 the dust outside it and pulls at the cord which moves
 
 72 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 the ventilating-fan. You pay him about seven shillings 
 a month or less ; and for hours at a stretch this ragged 
 automaton goes on jerking at his string, through the fierce 
 day, when you are working or dining, and the long hot 
 night while you are trying to sleep. It is not hard work, 
 and it is not skilled work anything with an arm and 
 some fingers could do it ; but to most men of European 
 nerves and temper the task would be a sheer impossibility, 
 or would lead to madness and death. The punkah-wallah 
 does not die prematurely, he does not become insane, he 
 does not take to drink. He is miserably poor, but still not 
 without self-respect, aware that he is born of the breed 
 which waves fans to keep other people cool, and conscious 
 that he is doing his duty in that state of life to which it 
 has pleased God to call him. For the practical applica- 
 tion of that usually neglected article of the Church 
 Catechism you must go to India.
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 ON THE LINE 
 
 RAILWAY-TKAVELLING in India is a thing apart, even 
 for those who take it in a first-class compartment. We 
 are in a land of mighty distances. The Anglo-Indian, 
 normally a migrant, a bird of passage, spends much of 
 his time in long journeys by rail. And his journeyings 
 are somewhat elaborate proceedings, not to be transacted 
 in the casual fashion customary in the Outer World. 
 
 It is no case of packing a portmanteau, whistling at 
 the door for a hansom, arriving at the station ten minutes 
 before the train starts, giving a sixpence to a civil porter, 
 and finding yourself under way with an open magazine 
 on your knees. There are no hansoms; and if there 
 were, a file of them would be needed to transport a very 
 ordinary Sahib's effects. The amount of luggage which 
 people take with them, even on comparatively short 
 journeys, would amaze those austere travellers who believe 
 that one trunk and a handbag should be enough to carry 
 them anywhere. This may be sound reasoning in Europe, 
 but it certainly does not apply in India. In that region 
 every traveller, every white traveller, at least, must move 
 rather like a snail, and sometimes at a snail's pace, with 
 his house, or a good part of it, on his back. When 
 he arrives at his destination he cannot rely upon finding 
 effective substitutes, not merely for the luxuries, but 
 for the common necessaries, which he may have left 
 behind. Thus, like an army in campaigning order, 
 
 73 C2
 
 74 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 or a ship on the high seas, he must have sufficient in 
 his own stores to be equal to all emergencies. Perhaps 
 his point of arrival is a camp on the plains or among the 
 hills, perhaps it is a bungalow in the cantonments or the 
 civil lines adjacent to a native city. In any case, unless 
 he goes into one of the Presidency towns, where life has 
 been Europeanised, he cannot hope to make good any 
 omissions, except by the generosity of friends, who have, 
 as a rule, nothing to spare. Suppose, when he opens his 
 despatch-box to write, he finds that he has forgotten such 
 trifles as ink, or envelopes, or the filler for his stylographic 
 pen, or suppose his ' boy ' confesses to a dearth of, say, 
 bootlaces or white neckties. There can be no sending off 
 a messenger to the stationer or to the haberdasher in the 
 town, no putting up, for once, with the resources of the 
 village shop. There is no village shop. Even if the 
 European station is nominally at a large town, that town 
 is quite likely to be three or four miles distant, with 
 nothing beyond a native bazaar. The bootlaces, and the 
 stationery, soap, medicine, books, games all the things 
 that civilised man and woman require must be brought 
 with the baggage or done without. 
 
 This alone would render the Anglo-Indian's trans- 
 port train formidable. But, then, the conditions of his 
 life compel him to load himself with a quantity of other 
 articles, which do not usually form part of a travelling- 
 kit elsewhere. Some things, it is true, in common use in 
 most countries, he may leave behind. One of them is a 
 purse. In India you carry your own mattress with you ; 
 but if you forget to bring your money, you will not greatly 
 miss it. Some small coin for occasional tips is useful ; 
 but even that will be supplied by your bearer out of the 
 current petty cash, for which he renders you periodical 
 and mysterious accounts. Otherwise currency is scarcely 
 necessary in a land where everybody's income and every-
 
 ON THE LINE 75 
 
 body's status are accurately known. Except for the tourists 
 who frequent the towns and the hotels and are requested 
 to pay cash, a card-case or, at the worst, a cheque-book is 
 all that is required. If you are a person of the proper 
 and recognised position, you get everything you want 
 in India by the attractively simple process of handing in 
 a chit, or scrap of paper signed with your name. Indeed, 
 where natives are the intermediaries,- the chit is in most 
 cases compulsory. Employers and traders do not care to 
 have small amounts of money paid directly into the hands 
 of their Asiatic clerks and servants. In the club smoking- 
 room, if you call for a penny cheroot and a halfpenny 
 glass of soda-water, you render yourself responsible for 
 the debt by giving a chit to the waiter. In due course, 
 these promissory-notes come home to roost, but money 
 seldom passes even then. A postal-order, or a draft on 
 one of those admirable agents, who paternally supervise 
 the finances of Anglo-Indians from the seaport capitals, 
 will settle the matter. With a credit from Messrs. 
 King, King & Co. of Bombay in your pocket-book you 
 can buy most things vendible from Cashmere to Ceylon. 
 
 But if you need not burden yourself with much in the 
 way of notes and bullion, there seems no limit to the rest 
 of your impedimenta. First, you must have your bed- 
 ding. This is an absolute necessity without which nobody 
 travels. In the East you understand the meaning of the 
 Biblical command : ' Take up thy bed and walk.' People 
 carry their beds with them wherever they go : even the 
 native walks about with his, which is the less difficult since 
 it often is no more than a square of cotton counterpane. 
 As for the European, he brings his sleeping-equipage 
 with him, whether he stays at an hotel, or spends the 
 night in a railway-carriage, or visits a friend. The 
 bundle, containing a razai, or wadded quilt, two pairs of 
 blankets thick and thin, sheets, pillows, and perhaps an
 
 76 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 eiderdown coverlet, the whole done up in a big canvas 
 hold-all, is never omitted. The bedstead, a mere frame- 
 work of wood, with strings or tape-webbings across it, is 
 to be found in most places, and, if not, it is one of the 
 things that can be bought in the bazaars ; but the 
 bed-furniture cannot be reckoned on, even in hospitable 
 private quarters. Many people will willingly provide you 
 with a room or a tent to sleep in, but they will have no 
 blankets and razais available, and will expect you to 
 bring your own. Similarly you may sometimes borrow a 
 horse, but may have to supply your own saddle and bridle. 
 So the traveller takes these articles too. Then a folding 
 table is a very handy thing to have in a railway-carriage, 
 where you may want to write or eat, and it is useful again 
 in camps and bungalows where there is not always quite 
 enough furniture to ' go round.' 
 
 On the same principle a folding deck-chair is added to 
 the list : one can never have too many of them on 
 verandahs and places where they lounge. A tiffin-basket, 
 with teapot, cups, plates, spoons, a couple of bottles of 
 soda-water, a pot of marmalade, and a tin of biscuits, 
 cannot be dispensed with on long journeys, where a 
 restaurant-car is not always available, and the refresh- 
 ment-rooms are far apart. For the dark evenings a lamp 
 is requisite, and it is often taken with the luggage : 
 usually, what is called a camp-lantern, a fine metal-and- 
 glass affair, with a copious kerosene reservoir, carried 
 safely in a great tin case. Another tin case holds two or 
 three topis, or pith-helmets, absolutely necessary, of 
 course, and far too ample for any ordinary hat-box. 
 Kiding-breeches, boots, leggings, spurs, whips, a gun or 
 two, and a rifle, cannot be forgotten in a land where 
 everybody rides and most people shoot. Add to all these, 
 clothes in great abundance, evening dress and dresses 
 for dinner and parties, light suits of flannel or khaki for
 
 ON THE LINE 77 
 
 the heat of the day, warm garments and wraps for the 
 chilly mornings and evenings, and it is not surprising 
 that a small mountain of trucks and packages has to be 
 conveyed to the station when ' master ' and the Mem- 
 sahib set out for even a comparatively short journey. 
 
 But the business of transport rests lightly on their own 
 shoulders. The servants manage it. Some hours before 
 the train is due to leave, a bullock-cart, or camel-cart, or 
 perhaps even an elephant-lorry, arrives at the bungalow, and 
 takes the whole load to the station, in charge of the head 
 ' boy.' Bound it, on arrival, a disorderly crowd of ragged 
 coolies collects, and amid squabbling and objurgations 
 and disparaging remarks about their female relatives, the 
 various parcels are distributed among them. The number 
 of these bearers is large. My own not immoderate personal 
 effects have furnished employment for eleven persons. 
 But that is because each porter will only carry a single 
 packet, whatever its size or weight. One man will stagger 
 along with a gigantic dress-trunk on his head, another 
 will sail away with nothing but a pocket camera. There 
 is much competition for the smaller parcels, since every 
 coolie receives the same number of annas or pice, 
 whatever his burden. Long after all this excitement 
 has subsided, the owner of the property drives down 
 comfortably in a carriage or pony-cart, having sent the 
 indispensable chit to the station-master, asking that 
 official to allow his servants to stow his hand-baggage in 
 the compartment reserved for him. Hand-baggage is an 
 elastic term. The two extreme interpretations are to be 
 met with in the United States and in India. On a train 
 in the West you have about room enough in the parlour- 
 car for a minute satchel, in which you can keep a razor 
 and a toothbrush. In a first-class carriage on an Indian 
 railway, the voyager expects to find space for at least a 
 leather portmanteau, a suit-case, a dressing-bag, a hat-box,
 
 78 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a helmet-case, a lunch-basket, and a huge roll of bedding. 
 The rest of his modest belongings will have been deposited 
 in the brake-van. 
 
 When two or three are gathered together under these 
 conditions, the place becomes a little congested. The 
 sleeping-compartment may legally hold four; but there 
 are seldom more than two, and often the traveller may 
 get a whole compartment to himself. The seats are wide, 
 and when pulled out for the night they make comfortable 
 foundations for the passenger's blankets and sheets, laid 
 out for him by his own servant, who is boxed away in 
 another part of the train. This assiduous retainer visits 
 his master at intervals during the day and night, brings 
 him the chota hazri or early tea and toast, in the morning, 
 draws his attention to the approach of stations where 
 lunch and dinner are to be had, and supplies him with 
 ice and soda-water at intervals. Tea and ice and soda- 
 water are to be had at most places in India. Much 
 of the rolling-stock of the Indian railways is venerable 
 with age, and stands in considerable need of renovation 
 and improvement; though, on the other hand, certain 
 of the more enterprising managers of the State lines 
 have recently placed on their rails first-class carriages of 
 the most admirable quality. Some of the new carriages 
 of the Great Indian Peninsula, the East Indian, and the 
 Oudh and Kohilkhand railways would be hard to beat 
 anywhere. And even the worst of the Indian first-class 
 compartments have windows which will close and efficient 
 lattice-shutters to keep out the sun ; and a lavatory, with 
 taps that will work, and a cistern that is not allowed to 
 run dry. In the cool season, or at night, a journey 
 under these conditions is not unpleasant. But at other 
 times, when the heat burns through the woodwork of 
 the shutters, and the inside of the carriage is an oven, 
 while the world beyond is a furnace, the traveller may
 
 ON THE LINE 79 
 
 sometimes sigh for the rabbit-hutches of a damp little 
 island where, at least, you can open the window without 
 being choked by fiery dust, and put your head outside 
 without the risk of sunstroke. 
 
 If travelling in the hot weather and in the daytime 
 may have its inconveniences even for the Sahib amid the 
 amenities of the first-class, what must it be for the native 
 who travels third ? The authorities of the Indian railway 
 companies do not greatly disturb themselves about the 
 comfort of their third-class passengers, being content to 
 carry them in enormous numbers at marvellously low 
 rates. For these voyagers, a kind of slightly superior 
 cattle-truck, packed rather closer than careful drovers 
 would permit, is usually considered sufficient. A third- 
 class car on an Indian railway is not an attractive 
 vehicle for white people. I tried it myself for short 
 periods, and I found the experience more instructive 
 than enjoyable. As a means of conveyance I am free 
 to confess that I preferred the Royal special trains. 
 
 The native, however, has no such feeling, or, at any 
 rate, he is not prevented by it from patronising the rail- 
 ways to the utmost extent of his resources. The people 
 of India have taken most kindly to railway-travelling, 
 which is to them not so much a disagreeable necessity as 
 a delightful and exhilarating recreation. The fact should 
 qualify the dogmatism of those who talk too confidently 
 about the changelessness of the immovable East. We 
 are told that the Oriental will endure no innovations, that 
 he will not look at a new invention, that he insists on 
 doing everything precisely in the same fashion as his 
 fathers before him. Yet he seems willing enough to 
 adopt novelties when they suit his purpose. A case in 
 point is that of the sewing-machine. From the days of 
 Shem the son of Noah, and Arphaxad the son of Shem, 
 the East has undoubtedly sewn its garments and its fabrics
 
 80 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 by hand. Forty years ago, many people would have con- 
 fidently predicted that it would go on doing the same 
 thing till the last Flood of all. The prophecy would 
 have been fallacious. The East now sews by machinery. 
 The name of Singer is known from the Mediterranean to 
 the Pacific. In every bazaar in India one may see men 
 they are always men, not women in turban or Mussul- 
 man cap, crouching over the needle-plate and working the 
 pedals. No prejudice in favour of the traditional methods 
 has interfered with the employment of this instrument, 
 now that its utility is understood. Another example is 
 the use of mineral oil as an illuminant. The cheap 
 petroleum lamp is fast driving out the butty or chirag, 
 the earthenware saucer of animal fat or tallow, with 
 its floating wick, which has furnished light to countless 
 Eastern households for centuries. The cubical kerosene- 
 tin is now a most familiar object in every village, and it is 
 fast superseding the great brass bowl or the chatty of rough 
 red pottery as a vessel for carrying water from the well. 
 
 It is the same with the railway. At their first intro- 
 duction, the ' fire-carriages ' of the English were regarded 
 by the natives with suspicion and alarm. There is good 
 reason to believe that they contributed towards that 
 general ferment of men's minds which preceded the 
 Mutiny. It was some time before the natives could over- 
 come their distrust of an invention which seemed clearly 
 of diabolical origin. But this sentiment wore away as the 
 value of the new mode of locomotion came to be under- 
 stood, and now there are no more ardent and enthusiastic 
 railway-travellers in the world than the lower classes 
 among the people of India. They take a journey by 
 tia ; n whenever they can spare the time and afford the 
 money, evidently regarding the occasion as one of en- 
 joyment and festivity. It is an amusement like riding a 
 bicycle or driving in a motor, to which latter proceeding
 
 ON THE LINE 81 
 
 the wealthier natives are also taking very kindly. So 
 popular is the railway that many families will save up 
 their spare cash for weeks and months in order to 
 enjoy a trip. The whole clan, with its friends, retainers, 
 and dependants, fathers, mothers, children, thirty or forty 
 in a batch, will go on the journey, with apparently their 
 entire worldly possessions tied up in enormous bundles. 
 
 You can hardly enter an Indian railway-station with- 
 out coming upon one or more of these tribal excursion 
 parties, with probably another horde of their friends to see 
 them off, the whole crowd talking, shrieking, gesticulating, 
 arguing with one another, or wrangling with coolies and 
 officials, and buying eatables and cheap cigarettes from 
 the hawkers who pervade the platform ; so that the 
 place usually looks as if a permanent Bank-holiday were 
 in progress. They arrive hours before the time fixed for 
 the departure, and when the train comes up they pack 
 themselves like eels into the long third-class carriage, until 
 the windows bristle with protruding heads and irrespon- 
 sible arms. Then, perhaps, when all are stowed, it is dis- 
 covered that one of the party is missing. More shrieks, 
 more gestures, more vehement discussion, ending with 
 half a dozen of the voyagers uncoiling from the heap and 
 throwing themselves out upon the platform to wait for 
 the absentee. They may have to tarry for the rest of the 
 day, for Indian trains run at infrequent intervals ; but 
 that does not affect their spirits. Time is of no great 
 value in Asia, and the native is good at waiting. It is his 
 favourite recreation. He will sit for hours on his heels, 
 with his hands drooping from his knees, motionless, doing 
 nothing, even where there is nothing to see. Much more 
 is he inclined to loiter at so agreeable a place as a rail- 
 way-station, where there is always something to observe, 
 if it is only a porter lighting a lamp, or a bullock being 
 inducted to a cattle-truck.
 
 82 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 The travelling native hardly seems to have grasped 
 the significance of the time-table. He thinks that a 
 train starts at some indefinite and uncertain moment, 
 probably due to the caprices of the engine-driver, and he 
 holds that it is well to be prepared for emergencies. So 
 he arrives at the station at any hour of the day or night, 
 and proceeds to encamp there until his train appears. 
 If it is timed to leave in the morning, it is quite the thing 
 for him to turn up vaguely the evening before. At many 
 places there are regular rest-rooms or enclosures provided 
 for him ; otherwise he makes himself comfortable on the 
 platform or in odd corners outside. 
 
 In the very early hours of the morning, before the sun 
 has risen, an Indian railway-station, in the up-country 
 districts, is rather a weird place. There are no lamps 
 alight ; but a few railway-officials drift about shedding a 
 faint yellowish glow from their hand-lanterns. As you 
 move cautiously in the gloom, among heaps of piled-up 
 luggage and goods, you discern other heaps under dim white 
 coverings, generally lying in pairs ; one heap being the 
 native's shapeless bundle, the other consisting of himself, 
 equally shapeless beneath his blanket or cotton shroud. As 
 the day draws on he wakes up and makes his way to the 
 booking-office. In the remoter districts he has not always 
 mastered the system of fixed fares. The journey strikes 
 him in the light of a promising opening for a bargain. 
 He demands his ' et-tickett,' and when the babu at the 
 window tells him the price he promptly offers half. This, 
 of course, is rejected, whereupon he goes away tranquilly, 
 and returns in an hour or two with a slightly increased 
 bid. It may take the best part of a day to convince him 
 that there is no possibility for him to obtain a reduction 
 in the official rate. 
 
 As for the regulations about overcrowding the carriages 
 they are, so far as my observation goes, habitually dia-
 
 ON THE LINE 83 
 
 regarded : which is not wholly the fault of the companies, 
 but is partly due to the fact that the travelling native 
 likes being in a throng, and does not really enjoy him- 
 self unless his compartment is filled far in excess of its 
 proper capacity. If there is no seat for him, he squats 
 contentedly on the floor or on his bundles, or balances 
 himself precariously against doors and windows. The 
 passengers seem oddly mixed, and represent very diverse 
 sections of the Indian population. In one third-class 
 carriage in Rajputana in which I made a brief pilgrim- 
 age, my fellow-travellers included a good-looking young 
 Thakor, or small squireen, in very well-made linen riding- 
 breeches of the celebrated ' Jodhpur ' cut ; two or three 
 Marwari traders, in their peculiar peaked turbans ; a fat 
 Hindu merchant, arrayed in a sort of dressing-gown of 
 flowered silk ; a Surat man, in white trousers, light tweed 
 overcoat, and round skull-cap, who talked some Eng- 
 lish, and was probably a servant to one bf the first-class 
 passengers ; some unkempt farmers or drovers, redolent of 
 the cowshed, with long sticks; and a couple of women, 
 very dark and uninviting, with nose-rings and bright- 
 ooloured mantillas. Most of the company were on 
 excellent terms with one another, and chatted familiarly, 
 though the young Thakor talked little, and the women 
 hardly at all. 
 
 I was rather surprised to find that a considerable 
 amount of eating and drinking went on throughout the 
 journey. At every station hawkers gathered round, bear- 
 ing trays laden with chupatties or thin wheaten cakes, 
 other cakes of bajra or millet, various kinds of sticky and 
 smeary sweetmeats, and open brown-paper parcels, con- 
 taining, I believe, a mixture of meal and sugar which 
 seemed to be in request. Several of the passengers were 
 chewing or sucking something most of the time, such as 
 the sweetmeats aforesaid, betel-nut, of which the red
 
 84 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 stain was plainly visible on their teeth and lips, or bits of 
 sugar-cane. This last is immensely popular in most parts 
 of India, so that you may see the labourer going to his 
 work with a long stick of it over his shoulder, like a fish- 
 ing-rod. But the great demand was for water, with which 
 they supplied themselves from the great ewers or goatskins 
 brought round at the stations. The water-bearers are 
 employed by the railway companies, and no charge is 
 made for the liquid. Most of the passengers had their 
 own brass or copper pots; others made a cup of their 
 two hollowed hands, from which they contrived to drink 
 a pint or so of water without spilling a drop. At intervals 
 somebody would proceed to perform his ablutions, sitting 
 down on the ground in front of the train, pouring water 
 over his face and neck, and operating on his mouth, with 
 the aid of a fragment of split cane, and with much tooth- 
 rubbing and expectoration. The native is always doing 
 something to himself with water, and it seldom seems to 
 make him any cleaner. 
 
 I tried in vain to reconcile what I had heard of the 
 strictness of the Hindu caste rules with this promiscuous 
 jumbling-up of persons of varied status. I do not know 
 what would have been the result if I had touched one of 
 the eating or drinking vessels, but having been warned 
 on this point I took care not to do so. Among themselves 
 no great precautions seemed to be observed, though I 
 noticed that one or two of the passengers neither ate nor 
 drank in the carriage but took their refreshment, during 
 the stoppages, on the platform. The railways, however, 
 have acted as a great solvent of caste restrictions in India, 
 and I believe on the trains it is generally recognised that 
 the strict letter of the rules need not be observed. There 
 are carriages set apart for females, but it is quite common 
 to see women travelling in the general compartment*. 
 Even Mohammedan women, who are strictly purdah, have
 
 ON THE LINE 85 
 
 yielded to the innovation. Hidden under the burka, or 
 shapeless round upper garment which effectually conceals 
 all feminine charms, they will take long journeys in 
 carriages filled with men. 
 
 It is another example of the adaptability of the native 
 when his own comfort and convenience are involved. It 
 would take more than the Brahman and the moulvie 
 nowadays to deprive the Indian, utrvusque juris, of the 
 pleasures of railway-travelling.
 
 CHAPTEB VII 
 
 MEDLEVAL INDIA 
 
 NOT till you begin to travel about India do you gain 
 some idea of its size. To most of us at home India is a 
 country like another, one country among many. We talk 
 of India as we might talk of Italy and Spain, of ' seeing 
 India ' as some of us try to ' see ' Switzerland or Portugal. 
 I suppose our geography-books are partly responsible for 
 this misapprehension ; and it is confirmed by the map of 
 the world, drawn ' on Mercator's projection,' which delu- 
 sive invention, too familiar in the schoolroom, colours 
 all our notions of the relative size of different portions 
 of the earth's surface. On Mercator's projection the 
 territories near the Equator are unduly shrunken, and 
 those towards the Pole unfairly drawn out. India looks 
 somewhere about the size of Sweden and Norway, and 
 appears a quite insignificant triangle compared with the 
 frozen wastes of Siberia. 
 
 But when you have been but a little while in Asia 
 your views undergo a change. You appreciate the mean- 
 ing of that shrewd remark of a great Oriental adminis- 
 trator who said that the first and most essential fact to 
 be learnt about India is that there is no such country. 
 There is no such country as India; the name includes 
 many countries, which have some common characteristics, 
 it is true, but also many and deep-seated divergences. 
 For India is larger than all Europe without Russia, and it 
 has a greater population, and as many varieties of climate,
 
 MEDIEVAL INDIA 87 
 
 race, creed, and custom. We do not, as a rule, gene- 
 ralise about Europe ; we should be cautious about saying 
 that a ' European ' does this or that, or has such and such 
 peculiarities. We know that the Norwegian is a European, 
 and so also is the Sicilian : we hesitate before framing 
 sweeping statements meant to apply equally to the bur- 
 gesses of Aberdeen and the peasants of Andalusia. 
 
 Yet, as Sir John Strachey observes, Scotland is 
 more like Spain than Bengal is like the Punjab. The 
 mountaineer of the Northern Frontier is as far, physically 
 and morally, from the Mysore villager as the Londoner 
 is from the Montenegrin. ' European civilisation has 
 grown up under conditions which have produced a larger 
 measure of uniformity than has been reached in the 
 countries of the Indian continent, often separated from 
 each other by greater distances, by greater obstacles to 
 communication, and by greater differences of climate. It 
 is probable that not less than fifty languages, which may 
 rightly be called separate, are spoken in India. The 
 diversities of religion and race are as wide in India as in 
 Europe, and political catastrophes have been as frequent 
 and as violent. There are no countries in civilised 
 Europe in which the people differ so much as the man 
 of Madras differs from the Sikh, and the languages of 
 Southern India are as unintelligible in Lahore as they 
 would be in London. A native of Calcutta or Bombay 
 is as much a foreigner in Delhi or Peshawar as an 
 Englishman is a foreigner in Paris or Koine.' l 
 
 North and south, or east and west, you can travel in 
 a straight line over a greater distance than that which 
 separates Charing Cross from Constantinople without 
 quitting the territories that owe allegiance to the 
 Kaisar-i-Hind. You can begin at the foot of mountains 
 
 1 Sir John Strachey, India : its Administration and Progress (3rd eJ.), 
 p. 3.
 
 88 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 nearly twice the height of Mont Blanc, in a region where 
 the cold of winter is more severe than that of Lapland, 
 and finish your journey in the very heart of the tropics, 
 looking out towards the Equator over a sea of changeless 
 blue. To most of us the very name India is synonymous 
 with intense heat and burning sunlight ; but the autumn 
 tourist, if he gets up to Peshawar or to the Afghan or 
 Baluchistan border, will endure more discomfort from 
 cutting winds and frosty mornings than any he is likely 
 to suffer from excessive warmth. The popular idea is 
 that the people of India live mainly on rice ; but there are 
 tens of millions of them who never touch that cereal 
 and seldom see it. All general statements about India 
 must be accepted with due regard to these considerations. 
 What is true of the natural and geographical conditions 
 is equally true of the human product. We have to do 
 with a sub-continent which includes a vast number of 
 countries, tribes, states, religions, and peoples, at various 
 stages of development and progress. 
 
 The Royal tour, if it did nothing else, should have 
 brought home to Englishmen the exceeding greatness 
 of the heritage which has been gained for them by 
 valour, foresight, diplomacy, and good luck. The Prince 
 of Wales spent some three weeks in visiting the feuda- 
 tory princes of Central India and Eajputana. The public 
 at home learnt that he was passing a day or two with 
 Holkar at Indore, three days with the Maharaja of 
 Udaipur, two at Jaipur, five with Scindia at Gwalior, and 
 so on. A few telegrams and casual references in the news- 
 papers, and one ruling chief is left, and another has his 
 turn. But anybody who looks up his atlas and his 
 gazetteers will discover that each of these ' petty ' 
 sovereigns, who individually count for so little in the 
 great checker-board of Indian administration, would else- 
 where be reckoned a somewhat important personage. We
 
 MEDIAEVAL INDIA 89 
 
 do not take very much notice of them in England : Simla 
 is polite to them, but it has many other things to think of. 
 Yet each of these princes rules a territory equal to that of 
 a second-rate European kingdom, and he has his court, 
 his army, his feudal aristocracy, and perhaps a million 
 or two of subjects. Indore is quite a minor State, but it 
 is larger than the Kingdom of Saxony. Jaipur covers 
 more space than either Holland or Belgium, and it is 
 more populous than Greece. Gwalior is about the size 
 of Scotland, and it has nearly as many people. And if 
 we go a little farther south, to the Dekhan, we find the 
 Nizam ruling an area as extensive as that of Great 
 Britain, with nearly twelve millions of inhabitants. All 
 these principalities are held in suzerainty to the Imperial 
 throne, and they exist on sufferance and by our goodwill 
 and pleasure ; and all together the whole of them do 
 not include more than a fifth of the three hundred 
 millions of human beings who are counted in among the 
 inhabitants of ' India.' 
 
 But it is the diversity as much as the magnitude of 
 the great Empire which impresses the imagination. It is 
 a good object-lesson to pass swiftly, or as swiftly as the 
 formidable distances permit, from Bombay to the land of 
 the Rajputs. The change is quite as striking as that 
 which would be felt in travelling through from the 
 Adriatic to the Baltic. In the coast port the visitor 
 from Europe, even if he comes in the autumn, is pretty 
 certain to complain of the heat. He finds himself 
 plunged into a moist and sticky warmth which makes 
 him perspire as if he were in the hot room of a Turkish 
 bath. But on the upland plains he is in a more vitalising 
 atmosphere. The sun burns fiercely at midday, even in 
 the cool season ; and in the summer, before the mon- 
 soon, it flames with scorching fury, parching the soil 
 into brown waste or blinding white dust. Yet the air is
 
 90 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 dry and bracing, there is a snap in it at its worst, and 
 even when pitiless it is not enervating. For the luxuriant 
 greenery of the lower Ghats we have exchanged the bare 
 plains, the baked deserts, and the rugged kopjes, of the 
 tableland. Instead of the busy merchants and traders of 
 Bombay, the pushing Parsis, the alert baniyas, the foxy- 
 faced intriguing Mahrattas, we find a race of hunters, 
 cattle-drovers, shepherds, and horsemen, square-headed, 
 square-shouldered, and upstanding, burly as Yorkshire- 
 men, and independent as the farmers of the Lothians. 
 
 At Jaipur, some friends and I borrowed a couple of 
 tongas from the transport train, which is the Maharaja's 
 sensible contribution to the Imperial Service Corps, to 
 drive to the ruins of the old royal city of Amber. When 
 we got back we offered one of the drivers a gratuity ; 
 but he declined to take it, pointing to a medal he wore 
 and murmuring something about the Maharaja. He 
 was a soldier, and a servant of his king, and he did not 
 need a present for doing his work. The custodian of 
 the old palace was equally dignified. He, too, explained 
 that he was in the Maharaja's service, and did not wish 
 to be ' tipped ' for showing a little attention. But the 
 tips would have assuredly been accepted in Bombay, or, 
 for that matter, in most other parts of India and the 
 world. Perhaps a Scottish Highlander, of the old strain, 
 would have refused them too. 
 
 It is of the Highlanders that the Rajputs remind one 
 in many ways, even including physique, though the Indian 
 sun has tanned them brown, and darkened their eyes and 
 hair. They are raw-boned, wiry, and muscular, with 
 something of the Caledonian build. As I stood looking at 
 a highly dignified Eajput chief, who was entertaining ua 
 in his palace, I thought that with his robes and turban 
 exchanged for a bonnet and kilt, and his black ragged 
 beard turned a sandy red, he might very well pass for
 
 MEDLEVAL INDIA 91 
 
 some patriarch from the moors and deer forests, a great 
 territorial magnate, a keen sportsman, shrewd, kindly, 
 domineering, and quick-tempered. The racial affinity 
 may be nearer than we suspect. The learned Lieut.- 
 Colonel James Tod, who wrote The Annals and Anti- 
 quities of Eajasthan, as long ago as the time when 
 William IV. was King, holds that the Kajputs are of 
 Scythian origin, and modern scholars are inclined to 
 accept this conclusion. Now the Celts and the Scythians 
 are thought by some authorities to have had close family 
 connections, in the early days when the fighting branches 
 of the great ' Aryan ' stock were roaming Europe and 
 Asia to find a permanent home. 
 
 Whatever they may be, the Rajputs of Eajputana 1 
 are very different from the majority of the peoples who 
 inhabit the plains of Hindustan and the Dekhan. They 
 are a northern people with many of the northern charac- 
 teristics. At some remote period they came down from 
 beyond the barrier mountains and settled in the Trans- 
 Indus region and on the upper portion of the great 
 Gangetic plain. In the early centuries of the Christian 
 era they seemed likely to found a great empire. But they 
 were a small people, in point of numbers, and they were 
 always divided among themselves. Like the Celts once 
 more, they have never shown a capacity for national or 
 political unity. They were tribesmen and clansmen, 
 devoted to their chiefs, but incapable of combination on a 
 large scale. The Mohammedans, more numerous, and 
 
 1 There are of course plenty of Rajputs outside the Bajputana terri- 
 tories. The name is not that of a nation there are no nations in India 
 but that of a caste. The Rajputs are the supposed descendants of the old 
 warrior clan, the most influential and aristocratic of all except the 
 Brahmans ; and like the latter they are found all over the Peninsula, the 
 name having been freely adopted by many tribes and septs, who have 
 gradually risen in the social scale, and in the process of their ascent have 
 ascribed to themselves an origin for which there is no historical founda- 
 tion.
 
 92 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 directed by leaders who were statesmen and organisers as 
 well as soldiers, gradually pushed them away into the 
 deserts and the arid sandy tracts which lie south and 
 east of the great rivers. Here the Rajput chiefs founded 
 their kingdoms, established their capitals, Jodhpur, 
 Chittor, Amber, Boondi, Alwar, built their white-walled 
 palaces, beautified them with enamel-work and mosaics 
 and painted ceilings, took their pleasure in marble 
 summer-houses by cool tanks and artificial lakes, hunted 
 the wild boar, the tiger, and the sambhur, and ruled 
 precariously over turbulent feudatories, each with his 
 own following of more or less devoted subjects. 
 
 They were great builders and gardeners and founders 
 of Hindu temples, these Rajput kings, and they were 
 always fighting sometimes with the Moghuls, sometimes 
 with their rebel barons, often with one another. When 
 the generals and proconsuls of John Company took to 
 the work of pacifying India in earnest in the later 
 eighteenth century, the Rajput princes were in a bad 
 way. They had been so weakened by their contests with 
 the Moslem and their internal dissensions that they 
 were making little head against the Mahratta raiders, 
 who were sweeping over the country like locusts. Thus 
 it fell that to Rajputana the English came not as con- 
 querors but deliverers. The princes accepted our supre- 
 macy without reluctance ; and, for the most part, they 
 have shown themselves loyal and steady supporters of 
 the Power which has secured them in their ancestral 
 thrones and rendered it possible for them to maintain 
 their independence and identity without perpetual 
 conflict. 
 
 So all Rajputana remains to-day outside the direct 
 control of the Indian Government, and it is in some 
 respects the most characteristically Oriental and un- 
 changed portion of the Empire, redolent of a not un-
 
 MEDIEVAL INDIA 93 
 
 welcome flavour of medievalism. It is ruled by its own 
 chiefs, some of whom represent famous royal dynasties 
 of venerable antiquity. With the old laws and customs 
 we have interfered no more than is necessary ; the 
 Maharajas are still the heads of a feudal hierarchy ; and 
 they live in state, in the midst of a horde of retainers and 
 privileged hangers-on, as an Oriental monarch likes to do. 
 They have their cavalry, and their batteries of artillery, 
 and stout regiments of infantry, armed with flint-locks 
 or Enfield muzzle-loaders ; they keep their elephants, 
 and studs of horses and camels, and menageries of wild 
 beasts, and their household guards with ancient swords 
 and halberts and coats of mail. Each has a British 
 Eesident to keep him in order ; but the Rajput princes 
 are as a rule honest and fairly capable rulers, and there 
 is no desire to curtail their freedom of action, though a 
 little pressure has sometimes to be put upon them to 
 organise famine relief properly, and to encourage educa- 
 tion and see after the making of roads. 
 
 It is an old-world interesting land, full of primitive 
 ways, the ways of a people of herdsmen, horsemen, and 
 soldiers. Fighting is in the Eajput blood, though peace 
 has long reigned, and it is seldom that a shot is now fired 
 in anger. Now and again we may allow a Maharaja to 
 levy execution upon a recalcitrant Sardar, or to coerce re- 
 bellious aboriginal Bhils with fire and sword. But the 
 tradition remains ; a Kajput still clings to his weapons 
 and does not like to move without them. As you travel 
 through the country you may see the peasant, going to his 
 fields in the morning with his curved scimitar hugged 
 close under his cotton robe, or driving his bullocks with a 
 long matchlock over his shoulder. They have something 
 of the bearing of warriors, their gestures are free and 
 animated, they are great talkers, as voluble and noisy 
 m a crowd as any folks I have seen ; and they are good-
 
 94 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 humoured and easy to deal with. The Rajput gentleman 
 is frank and pleasant, a good sportsman, a manly and 
 genial companion. He takes kindly to the English ways, 
 is pretty nearly the best polo-player in India, and may 
 be seen sometimes at Eanelagh and Hurlingham. 
 
 But will the Rajputs keep their stamina and virile 
 virtues now that the fighting days are over ? The young 
 Thakors, who might have been leading their men in 
 the battle and the march, pass their lives in a rather 
 supine inactivity, relieved by sport and by quarrels with 
 their liege lord. Some who know them tell us that 
 they are less tenacious, less energetic, less masculine 
 altogether, than their fathers before them. We used to 
 get many Rajputs in our Indian army, and have still good 
 companies of them. But the supply is falling off : the 
 younger men, it seems, have lost some of their taste for 
 the military life, and the whole population has been hard 
 hit by the famine and the plague. The future of the 
 race, and that of their barren picturesque country, is one 
 of the problems of India one of the many unsolved 
 enigmas which meet us at every turn.
 
 CHAPTEE VHI 
 SOME EAJPUT CAPITALS 
 
 THE CITY OF THE ENCHANTED LAKES 
 
 
 
 THE older un-Occidentalised Eajputana, which still 
 clings to its feudalism and mediaevalism, finds its most 
 favourable example in the State of Mewar ; for the ruler 
 of that territory, a dignified, upright, and conscientious 
 prince, thoroughly loyal to the Empire, is, nevertheless, 
 a steady champion of Hindu conservatism, who dislikes 
 modern innovations, admits them grudgingly, and does 
 his best to keep his country and his people to the older 
 ways. The bluest blood of India runs in his veins : he 
 can trace his lineage back authentically nearly two 
 thousand years, and mythically he goes further still, for 
 he is the head of the Sesodia dynasty, the descendants of 
 the Sun God, who have "never sullied the purity of their race 
 by giving a daughter in marriage to the Mohammedans. 
 For this reason, his Highness the Maharana, Sir Fateh 
 Singh Bahadur, G.C.S.I., is regarded with reverence all 
 over the Hindu world ; and partly on this account, and 
 partly because he is an excellent man, who governs 
 wisely and honestly according to his lights, we interfere 
 with him as little as possible, and allow him to retain 
 in being many vestiges of the past, which more progres- 
 sive rajas have been induced to abandon. To the 
 student of Eastern institutions, of sociology, of Asiatic 
 history, and Indian politics, much fruitful material lies 
 to hand in Mewar State. But that student must be
 
 96 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 ' more or less than man ' if he can keep his mind on 
 these matters during the first day of his sojourn in the 
 distracting city of Udaipur. You cannot easily make 
 statistical observations in Fairyland. 
 
 Conceive a rugged mountain country, of brown, bare, 
 jagged peaks, and scarped, serrated hills ; and in a broad 
 valley or basin of this desolate land place a chain of still and 
 silvery lakes, with palms and plantains, and blossoming 
 wisteria, and cactus, and spiny jungle-grass, breaking the 
 sandy hummocks in a belt of verdure at' the edges of the 
 pools. And plant, by the margin of the largest lake, and 
 on the lowest ridges of the upland, a city of snowy palaces 
 and gleaming towers and fretted minarets, and the great 
 carved blunt pyramids of temples a city which leans 
 over the flood in long stretches of crenellated rampart and 
 jutting bastion, or opens from it in arabesqued gateways, 
 which reveal narrow streets, gay with many-hued life, 
 and backed by a sheet of turquoise sky. It is a city of 
 wharves and bridges, like Venice, and tiers of marble steps, 
 leading down to the lapping water, and balconies, with 
 delicate domes and threadlike mullions and shafts of 
 embroidered ivory hung from high white walls. Stud 
 the surface of the lake with islands, and make these visions 
 of marble porticoes and cupolas and trellis-work and 
 terraces, with the plumes of the palm and the broad 
 green pennants of the plantain waving above them ; and 
 let castles and forts and shrines dot the mountain-sides, 
 or rest like tiaras on the frowning headlands. Imagine 
 all this, and you may get some faint idea of the earthly 
 Paradise which the Children of the Sun created for them- 
 selves when the Moghuls sacked their ancient capital and 
 drove them to find a home and resting-place behind the 
 desert hills. 
 
 Udai Singh and his successors had a sense of the fit- 
 ness of things. Perhaps they were not great designers ;
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 97 
 
 I do not know that there is a really fine piece of architec- 
 ture in Udaipur, and whenever you pry into the details 
 of the buildings you are met with something petty and 
 insignificant, with silly pepper-pot turrets, domes with 
 poor lines and bad curves, and cemented verandahs that 
 look mean at close quarters. Put all this confectionery 
 under a dull sky and in a leaden northern atmosphere, 
 and it might seem common and shabby. But in this 
 fine air, picked out against the monotone of enamelled 
 blue, it is in its place. The old palace is an immense 
 building, of high, blank, and nearly windowless, wall, 
 which dominates the lake from its lofty terrace ; but 
 behind this massive screen one catches a glimpse of pin- 
 nacles and roofs in creamy marble, so graceful and so light 
 that you almost think they must wave and quiver with 
 the breeze. 
 
 The palace is a town of itself, so vast that the 
 Maharana's stables, with all their horses and grooms, can 
 be stowed away among the foundations of the great con- 
 taining wall. The newer portion of the palace, built in 
 the last century, with its courts and fountains and re- 
 ception-rooms, occupies a mere corner of the huge fabric, 
 a corner happily which does not too roughly depart from 
 the style of the remainder. Seen from the lake, the 
 palace is always the centre of the picture as it should be, 
 standing, impassive and serene, with the clustering town 
 at its knees, the green gardens at its feet, and the 
 castellated brown heights, like kneeling elephants with 
 their howdahs, shutting off the enchanted valley from 
 the world beyond. 
 
 It would be hard to say at what hour of the twenty- 
 four Udaipur is at its best. Is it when the touch of 
 dawn turns the hills to gold and flushes the white walls 
 and cold marbles with the rose of life? Or is it that 
 magic moment just before sunset, when the heat-haze 
 
 D
 
 98 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 rises like thin smoke over the ridges, and when all the 
 foreground, lake and town and islands, swims in a bath 
 of thin and luminous azure ? One has seen it at night, 
 and on that special night when the Maharana clothed 
 it in golden light in honour of his Boyal guests. Illu- 
 minations are, as a rule, rather vulgar affairs ; but I think 
 all illuminations henceforth must seem cheap and tawdry 
 to those who remember that November evening on the 
 terraces at Udaipur. Here there were no electric arcs, 
 with their cold and steel-like beam, no incandescent 
 lamps, with hard unwinking stare, no coloured lanterns 
 in garish green and red. Nothing was used but the 
 common Eastern butty, the true ' Light of Asia,' a mere 
 earthenware saucer, with a shred of cotton-wick and 
 a tiny pool of oil. These humble nightlights were set 
 by the thousand and the ten thousand, outlining every- 
 thing with a tender palpitating glow, as if streams and 
 runlets of lambent flame were slowly trickling along 
 every wall and pinnacle and projection, by the sides of 
 buildings, and down the shafts of columns. The islands 
 mirrored themselves in the lake in temples and palaces of 
 softened fire ; the forts flickered like giant fireflies on the 
 distant hills. It was Fairyland with the elfin lamps 
 alight. 
 
 When you are recovered from your first ecstasy at the 
 mere outward form and aspect of Udaipur, and you come 
 to know it familiarly and to move about its streets and 
 courts, you find it more delightful still. You are filled 
 with a strange sense at once of novelty and reminiscence. 
 You may go down to the lake-side, and there, on the 
 broad steps of the palace itself, under the embossed and 
 fretted arches of the gateway, you may see the women 
 filling their water-pots at sunrise and evening : pots of 
 gleaming brass and copper, that go dripping up the steps, 
 or great red earthen chatties, balanced on dusky heads,
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 99 
 
 under veils of purple or crimson, and held in place by 
 a single curved brown arm. You can look over the low 
 wall into the square arena of sand, with the circular 
 stone pedestal in the middle, where the King has his wild- 
 beast fights on certain state occasions ; or you may stroll 
 down to the bottom end of the lake, and see the King's 
 wild boars fed, and the King's tigers and black bears 
 ramping at their bars. Walk down the narrow dusty 
 street, through the Hathi Pal, the Gate of the Elephants, 
 past the great Temple of Jaggernath, and by the Sarai, 
 or caravanserai, where camels and bullocks and squealing 
 stallions are tethered all over the open courtyard. 
 
 Peer into the rows of dim little booths as you pass. 
 Here is the armourer at his work, and the goldsmith, and 
 the man who puts spots and borders of silver tinsel on 
 the cotton saris. The money-changer sits at his door 
 with his scales and measures and his little heaps of coin ; 
 if you give him a quarter of a rupee, which is fourpence, 
 he will fill both your hands with irregular square-shaped 
 bits of copper, that represent the small currency of the 
 Maharana's realm. A huge Brahminy bull wanders by, 
 none making him afraid, for he can nose into what stalls 
 and baskets he pleases, and is a licensed plunderer and 
 drone. And here is the man whom the King delights to 
 honour, resplendent in silk and cloth of gold, with his 
 runners before him to clear the way ; here a young 
 cavalier, riding down the street with his falcon perched 
 upon his gloved wrist ; here a Eajput noble, in helmet and 
 crest, with a hauberk of chain-mail descending over his 
 shoulders, followed by his knot of armed retainers with 
 long spears and rusty scimitars. In the cool of the 
 evening you may see many people walking upon the flat 
 roofs of the houses, even as King David walked when his 
 eye lighted upon the wife of Uriah the Hittite ; you may, 
 perchance, come upon Jezebel, with her head tired,
 
 100 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 looking out from an upper window. After all, we are 
 on familiar soil. We have come far from the world of 
 the twentieth century. But we are close to countries 
 which have been travelled" 4 ground to most of us at some 
 period of our lives. We are in the land of the Bible 
 and the land of the Romances. 
 
 JODHPUE THE MEDIEVAL 
 
 Away in the western corner of the Rajputana regior 
 lies the kingdom of Marwar. It is one of our ' petty ' 
 subject states, only about the size of Ireland ; most of it 
 dry sand, with great conical rock masses, eight hundred to 
 a thousand feet high, rising out of the plain. On the 
 eastern edge there is a huge brine marsh, where you may 
 see tons and tons of glistening salt piled up in hillocks as 
 you pass by on the railway ; through the western slice 
 runs the river Luni, which loses itself in the porous soil 
 in summer, but in the autumn overflows the land in 
 a fertilising inundation, and enables heavy crops of barley 
 and wheat and millet to be reaped. But, unlike the Nile, 
 the Luni is capricious and irregular in its action. It 
 depends upon the rainfall, as indeed does Bajputana in 
 general even more than the rest of India. With any- 
 thing over ten inches of rain, the country is green for 
 a few weeks and prosperous for the year. But when the 
 fall has been less than two inches, the country grows 
 bare and brown, even beyond its wont, the people begin 
 scattering into other districts, and for those that remain 
 famine-relief camps have to be prepared. 
 
 Life is not easy in Marwar ; which is perhaps a reason 
 why its people are vigorous, alert, and energetic, beyond 
 the average of Asiatics. The Marwaris are the best 
 native bankers and retail dealers in India, nnd they are to
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 101 
 
 be found in Calcutta and most other great cities all over 
 the Peninsula, pushing their trade, and for the most part 
 doing well at it. The bazaars of Jodhpur and Bikaner 
 are full of tall houses with carved fronts which are the 
 homes of Marwari merchants, who have made money in 
 the distant haunts of commerce, and have come back to 
 spend it among their own people. 
 
 The territory belongs to the Eahtors, the great fight- 
 ing clan of the Eajputs, of whom the Maharaja of 
 Jodhpur is the chief. They are of the ' Solar race,' and 
 claim descent from Bama, like the Sessodia of Udaipur, 
 their age-long rivals. Coming down from the north seven 
 centuries ago, the horse-loving Eahtors settled on these 
 breezy, sun-dried, dusty steppes, subdued the native 
 inhabitants, and formed a powerful little state, too small 
 to become an empire, but large enough to play the lead- 
 ing part in the turbulent history of Eajputana which so 
 singularly resembled that of Central Europe in the early 
 middle ages. Unfortunately there was no Eajput Charle- 
 magne, no Pope, no Holy Eoman Empire, to give unity to 
 the loose collection of principalities and feudal baronies. 
 Marwar was always quarrelling with Mewar, and the 
 Moghuls and the Mahrattas made prey of both, till the 
 English came and brought peace to the land. 
 
 A few years ago Jodhpur was better known in Eng- 
 land than most Indian native capitals. The late Maharaja 
 Jeswant Singh had the good sense to appoint as his 
 Prime Minister his brother, that popular and picturesque 
 Eajput cavalier, Sir Pertab Singh, who is a distinguished 
 and welcome visitor at Windsor and Buckingham Palace 
 and at Eanelagh and Hurlingham. To see the Maharaja 
 of Idar on a horse, to see him in white coat and casrulean 
 turban as colonel of the dashing corps of Imperial Cadets, 
 to see him in his shirt-sleeves on the polo-ground, is to 
 set eyes on as fine a figure of a native gentleman and
 
 102 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 soldier as all India can produce. Sir Pertab Singh 
 brought Jodhpur forward in many ways. He induced 
 Sir Swinton Jacob to give his services to the state as 
 architect and engineer, and commissioned him to build 
 a set of handsome law courts and public offices, designed 
 with admirable taste after the old Indian fashion. He 
 cultivated the English and he cultivated the horse. 
 
 Visitors of standing were always welcome in Jodh- 
 pur, where they were given pigs to stick, Arabs or 
 thoroughbreds to ride, and champagne to drink. The 
 Jodhpur racing-stables were famous all over India, and 
 the Jodhpur colours frequently caught the judge's eye. 
 The Jodhpur polo-team was trained to the highest point 
 of perfection, with state aid in the shape of enormous 
 subsidies for the purchase of ponies, so that it held the 
 championship of India till it lost the Cup in the final 
 round of the great Delhi Durbar contest. 
 
 In its enthusiasm for polo Jodhpur was not alone. 
 During the last few years the game has become a passion 
 in some of the native states, and sporting Maharajas were 
 led by it into extravagances which called for the inter- 
 vention of the Government of India. The state treasuries 
 were depleted in order that the local teams might be 
 mounted on the best ponies that money could secure, 
 such ponies as no British regimental club in India could 
 afford to purchase. In one case at least, a very few 
 years ago, skill on the polo-ground was the sure avenue 
 to court favour; and an active sowar or non-commis- 
 sioned officer who made a brilliant run or hit a difficult 
 goal, under the eye of his sovereign, might be rewarded 
 with the command of a regiment or assigned the revenues 
 of a village. 
 
 The polo at Jodhpur is as good as ever ; but in other 
 respects the sporting glory of the state is a little tarnished. 
 Sir Pertab Singh has given up the Premiership, and con-
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 103 
 
 fines himself to English society and the government of his 
 minute principality of Idar. The racing- stud and other 
 luxuries were found too expensive for the state, which 
 drifted into financial confusion, and is now passing 
 through a course of retrenchment and reform under 
 severe Government-of-India tutelage. The ambitions of 
 the Eahtors are to some extent satisfied by the Jodhpur 
 Lancers, which is one of the most satisfactory Imperial 
 Service corps on the register. Tn this fine regiment the 
 poor gentleman of Rajputana finds a career and an occu- 
 pation. It suits him as well as the Black Watch suited 
 the Highland clansman after the break-up of 1745. 
 Soldiering is his hereditary profession, and here he can 
 devote himself to it with credit and to the common 
 advantage. In the regiment he meets his comrades ; the 
 officers are the nobles and feudal landowners of his own 
 country. An Imperial Service corps provides its local 
 colonel and staff ; the only British officer is the Inspector, 
 who is appointed from the headquarters of the Indian 
 Army, and is responsible for seeing that the proper 
 standard of efficiency is maintained. 
 
 The entire system, which was instituted by Lord 
 Dufferin, is a splendid outlet for the energy and military 
 instincts of the fighting races of India, and it gratifies the 
 national pride of the people and the legitimate vanity 
 of the Princes, who are allowed to have this small, 
 modern, well-drilled, perfectly equipped force, as well as 
 their own miscellaneous armies with obsolete rifles and 
 travestied British uniforms. Perhaps the discipline of 
 even the Jodhpur Lancers and the Bhopal Lancers is 
 not quite what it would be if they were converted (as 
 some military precisians would like to convert them) 
 into regular regiments of the Native Indian Army, with 
 a proper proportion of European officers. But it would 
 be bad policy to purchase this advantage by dealing a
 
 104 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 blow at local sentiment and national esprit de corps. 
 We can be content for the present with having found 
 an opening for the pride of race and warlike aptitude, 
 which have been running- s to seed badly since we caused 
 the Pax Britannica to prevail from the Himalayas to the 
 Southern Cape. 
 
 Jodhpur is a little off the route of the autumn tourist, 
 though he appears occasionally. If properly recom- 
 mended he will be entertained in great comfort in the 
 Maharaja's luxurious guest-house, where he will find 
 himself provided with commodious rooms, and as good a 
 menu at dinner and breakfast and tiffin as any reasonable 
 man can desire. Also the State will decline to receive 
 any remuneration from him for all this generous hospit- 
 ality. Otherwise he must go to the Dak Bungalow, for 
 a hotel in Jodhpur is not yet. Presently it will come. 
 The English visitor, the American, the German, will find 
 out the city, pervade it, and spoil it. Meanwhile it re- 
 mains, in spite of Sir Pertab Singh, and the railway 
 and the polo and racing-stables, unspoilt, picturesque, 
 and entirely delightful. It is still a fragment of the 
 feudal, mediaeval India, whose development we cut short. 
 Feudalism speaks to us as we look up to the towering 
 rock, frowning three hundred feet above the sandy plain, 
 on which the Rao Jodha built his fortress, a vast and 
 splendid castle-palace, with massive gateways, and a ring 
 of guard-houses and embattled outworks, and a great 
 bastioned wall which is thrown all round the city. 
 
 In the beauty and romance of its situation, Jodhpur 
 falls behind Udaipur ; but in Eastern colour and pictur- 
 esqueness it does not yield to many cities in India. It is 
 full of Hindu temples, with elaborate fronts and open 
 courtyards. You may go as far as the entrance of these 
 courts, but not farther, unless you will consent to take off 
 your boots, which is a proceeding unsuited to the dignity
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 105 
 
 of the ruling race in India. When I went to the oldest 
 and most venerated of these temples, though accompanied 
 by a distinguished Anglo-Indian official and a most con- 
 sequential chuprassi, we were not permitted to pass 
 beyond the threshold ; indeed, when we placed our feet 
 an inch or two farther, a bearded old gentleman, with a 
 conspicuous red-and-white caste-mark smeared all over 
 his forehead, angrily motioned us back. Otherwise the 
 Brahmans were quite civil, and allowed us to look in and 
 see about a dozen worshippers going through a sort 
 of morning service, and raising a monotonous wailing 
 chant before the canvas screen which hid the idol from 
 view. They were chiefly women. The temple itself was 
 built by a Maharani ; and we were told that the priests 
 depend largely on wealthy ladies, who are more regular 
 and constant in their devotions than persons of the other 
 sex. The same phenomenon has been observed else- 
 where. 
 
 There are other imposing buildings in the place 
 besides the temples. The wealthy Thakor, or feudal land- 
 owner, has his town house in Jodhpur, as the old French 
 nobles had their hotels in Paris, and here he comes from 
 time to time to attend the Court, and generally make a 
 show. His mansion is as large as his means allow, and 
 sometimes larger ; for he likes to ruffle it with a suit- 
 able following of spearmen and sword-bearers. Some 
 of the older houses, now occupied by wealthy baniyas 
 or traders, have elaborate facades, with overhanging 
 balconies, nobly carved in that fine old red sandstone 
 which is the best material for Indian architecture, since 
 it is sufficiently soft to take the most delicate tracery 
 and chisel-work while it is hard enough to weather the 
 climate. In front of these loftier fabrics, or in the 
 lower storeys under pent-house roofs, the busy bazaar 
 goes on from early morning till late night, a bazaar of 
 
 D 2
 
 106 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 tiny cells packed close, like those of a beehive, in which 
 the trader sits on the floor in the midst of his wares. If 
 you want to buy anything, you stop in the street and 
 traffic with him across tha stone lintel ; if he desires to 
 offer you something, he reaches out a hand to his stock 
 piled about him, or extracts it from a tin box or a rag 
 bundle. He does not need to rise ; all his commodities 
 are within arm's length. When you begin the process of 
 bargaining, without which, of course, nobody buys or 
 sells anything, the passers-by gather in a small circle, 
 and watch tbe process with interest. There is no 
 particular use in attempting to maintain privacy, in a 
 place where every man's business is done in public. 
 Competition, one would suppose, must be limited in 
 Jodhpur, and the market is an open one in every sense. 
 Custom ordains that dealers of the same trade should put 
 their shops side by side ; consequently, if jeweller number 
 one is selling a silver bangle or a pair of gold-wire earrings, 
 jeweller number two has only to crane an ear round the 
 partition-wall to know all about the transaction. 
 
 Even affairs of state are managed with the same 
 artless publicity. A mint, for example, would seem to be 
 an institution in which closed doors are essential. But in 
 Jodhpur the royal mint is up a small courtyard, opening 
 from the main bazaar, and anybody who pleases can stroll 
 in and watch the current coin of the realm in course of 
 manufacture. Under a little, open, whitewashed roof 
 there are two or three tiny furnaces, two or three small 
 anvils, and two or three nearly naked workmen. Three 
 iron pegs, six inches high, with flattened heads, look- 
 ing rather like exaggerated golf-tees, spring from the 
 stone floor ; one of them is the die for the gold pieces, 
 one for the silver rupees, and one for the lesser coins. 
 The workman takes a lump of bullion in his hands, 
 heats it in the furnace, cuts off a round or moderately
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 107 
 
 round disc, carries it with his pincers to the die, 
 and hammers on it until he has got a sufficient impres- 
 sion ; then he casts it aside upon a little heap to get cool, 
 and to be conveyed to the royal treasury. This free- 
 and-easy mint, I am told, was a busy place two or three 
 years ago. Unhappily, progress is laying its touch upon 
 Jodhpur. The State has adopted the Indian Government's 
 rupee, and imports most of its coinage. The mint is now 
 chiefly occupied in manufacturing a few gold mohurs, and 
 copper coins. It will also supply you with seven of the 
 small two-anna pieces, made with shanks to wear as 
 buttons, if you give the order for the same to the intelli- 
 gent, but unclothed, official in charge, in exchange for a 
 rupee. As the rupee is worth sixteen annas, the profit 
 on the transaction to the Controller of the Mint, or to the 
 Treasury, is about twopence, including the cost of labour. 
 When the tourist has really annexed Jodhpur, no doubt 
 the price will rise. 
 
 Animals, as well as men and women and impish 
 brown children, swarm through the Jodhpur bazaars. 
 High, gaunt, brown camels, sometimes in strings of half 
 a dozen or so, thread their way through the narrow lanes. 
 Well -mounted young Thakors, on sporting-looking country- 
 breds, come cantering by. Goats and chickens walk in 
 and out of the houses, great grey baboons chatter among 
 the sparse trees of the suburbs, and dogs of all kinds 
 prowl about in the roadways, unnoticed for what Indian 
 native would demean himself to pay any attention to a 
 dog? but unmolested. Bulls and heifers and horned 
 cattle of every sort pervade the place, standing about on 
 the pavements, browsing at the market-stalls, and 
 generally making themselves at home. Nobody interferes 
 with them beyond giving them a gentle push when they 
 are too much in the way. The great beasts are so used to 
 human society that they move about quite lightly and
 
 108 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 intelligently, and cause far less obstruction than might 
 be imagined. Twice a day all these wandering cattle, 
 bullocks, buffaloes, skimpy calves, and sleek Brahminy 
 bulls, assemble in an open space fitted with many deep 
 stone troughs. These are supplied with grain through 
 the posthumous munificence of a wealthy Marwar mer- 
 chant, who left money for this purpose, and in conse- 
 quence obtains, I believe, several million years of celestial 
 bliss. The universal Hindu respect for the cow and its 
 kin seem accompanied in Rajputana by a real liking. I 
 made an observation on this point to the highly intelligent 
 Bengali babu, from the Prime Minister's office, who, 
 through the kindness of the State authorities, was de- 
 puted to be my amiable and courteous guide in Jodhpur. 
 'It is true, sir,' he replied, 'in this region there is much 
 predilection for the bovine species.' The predilection is 
 supposed to be general throughout India, but in Rajputana 
 it is less theoretical than in other districts. 
 
 JAIPUR AND BIKANEE 
 
 The ' rose-red city ' of Jaipur has a great reputation 
 for picturesqueness and artistic effect, which is somewhat 
 beyond its deserts, and is due chiefly to the fact that it 
 is on the regular tourist line, and is taken in his stride 
 by the autumn visitor who ' does ' India, between Bombay 
 and Calcutta, in a few weeks. But when you compare 
 Jaipur with the other capitals of Rajputana, with Udai- 
 pur, by its enchanted lakes, with Jodhpur, with its 
 grand fortress-palace, and its crowded, quaint bazaars, 
 with Bikaner, islanded in its desert, Jaipur seems modern, 
 pretentious, artificial, rather vulgar. One is inclined to 
 agree with a great Indian Viceroy who declared the 
 ' rose-red city ' to be no more than a rose-red fraud.
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 109 
 
 It is clean, well planned, well governed, prosperous, pro- 
 gressive. But it has lost a good deal of that distinctive 
 old-world flavour of Eastern mediae valism which renders 
 the other towns so delightful. 
 
 In some respects Bikaner is the most interesting 
 of all. Four hundred and fifty years ago, when the 
 Moghuls were pressing hard upon the rulers of Marwar, 
 Bika Singh, the sixth son of the Rao Jodha, the founder 
 of Jodhpur, moved into the heart of the wilderness and 
 founded a new city there. All Rajputana is more or 
 less desert, but Bikaner State is desert almost unadul- 
 terated a waste of waterless sand, with green oases, on 
 which are villages and cultivated fields. From the old 
 palace of Bikaner, builded on a rock, as all these Rajput 
 citadels were, you see, beyond the low houses and flat 
 roofs of the town, the desert extending on all sides, like a 
 sea. And, indeed, at some hours it is hard to persuade 
 oneself that it is not the sea ; for in the heat-haze the 
 brown and yellow tones turn to purple and the effect 
 is that of a level plain of dark water. If you mount a 
 horse and ride in any direction, in ten minutes you are 
 deep in the desert, with nothing about you but drifting 
 sand and a few weakly stunted bushes. 
 
 Bikaner is a fragment of Arabia or Africa transported 
 to India ; and the town itself seems Syrian or Egyptian, 
 with its thick walls of sandstone, its square flat-roofed 
 houses, its prevailing tints of brown and orange, its 
 plenitude of camels, which here attain a speed and 
 strength and spirit beyond those of their fellows in 
 other parts of India. To the Bikaner people, till the rail- 
 way came, the camel was as necessary as it is to the 
 Bedaween and the Sudanese. It was their connecting- 
 link with the outer world, their only means of transport- 
 ing goods and merchandise across the arid wilderness 
 which shut them in on all sides. Under the conditions
 
 110 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 of its existence Bikaner might be expected to show 
 itself a poverty-stricken town, struggling desperately for 
 a bare livelihood. But it js nothing of the sort. On the 
 contrary, it impresses the stranger with its air of pro- 
 sperity and well-being. There is an old palace on the 
 Port which shows that the Maharajas of Bikaner in the 
 past contrived to get a good deal of money to spend. It 
 is a vast rambling structure, a maze of small rooms and 
 dark passages, like many of these Indian palaces, with 
 the usual medley of incised marble and glittering rubbish. 
 But it has a fine collection of old arms, and a library of 
 exquisite illuminated Hindu and Arabic manuscripts and 
 other things, to testify that for centuries past the Bikaner 
 kingdom has enjoyed a prosperous civilisation. 
 
 Agriculture in this tract of bare and drifting sand 
 must be a heart-breaking business ; and when the rains 
 fail, as they did to a great extent in the year 1905, then 
 the farms simply go out of cultivation and four-fifths of 
 them are temporarily abandoned. Yet in this trying 
 environment the races of Kajputana are seen at their 
 best. The cleverest and wealthiest of the Marwari 
 merchants issue from the desert-city, and often come 
 back to it. The Rajput physique is perfected by the sun 
 and wind. Many of the women are tall and straight, 
 with clear skins and regular features ; and the men of 
 the Bikaner Contingent, who served as a camel-corps in 
 China and Somaliland, are as fine a body of long-limbed 
 clean-built troopers and sepoys as India can produce. 
 
 There is an excellent gaol, managed under English 
 direction, where the convicts make carpets that are sold all 
 over the world ; there is a good club ; and the clever ener- 
 getic young Maharaja has lately built a splendid new palace, 
 a really fine example of modern Indian architecture, fur- 
 nished in excellent taste, and provided with electric fans 
 and electric lights and all the latest improvements.
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 111 
 
 With all this the atmosphere of the place still remains 
 antique and Oriental. 
 
 Jaipur is different. It is two hundred years old, but 
 it is in some respects more modern than most towns in 
 Europe. The Maharaja Jai Singh, who founded it in 
 1728, was a reformer, a utilitarian, and a man of science. 
 He was a great astronomer, and established an Observa- 
 tory, which consists of a sandy courtyard with immense 
 instruments built up of brick and stone, that look as if 
 intended to be playthings for a race of giants. 
 
 Jai Singh would have proved an invaluable chairman 
 for the Improvements Committee in a modern borough 
 council. He had the root of the matter in him, since he 
 knew that urban locomotion demands broad and straight 
 streets. These conditions could not be effectively secured 
 at the old capital of Amber, up among the hills, five 
 miles away, which now lies, with its marble courts and 
 embossed houses, empty, deserted, and exquisite. The 
 palace at Amber was built in the great age of Kajput 
 architecture. It is full of dignity and stateliness, and 
 though its internal decorations are tinselly and meretri- 
 cious, it has beautiful ceilings, held up by noble columns, 
 trellised balconies with chiselled screens of stone-work, 
 and a labyrinth of porticoes and flat roofs which give 
 lovely views of the valley and the hills. ' Progress, 
 what crimes are committed in thy name ! ' So one 
 feels inclined to say on surveying the work of the early 
 municipal reformer who wrote the doom of Amber in 
 order that he might create Jaipur. 
 
 But Jai Singh did not want his improved scientific 
 capital to be complicated by valleys and rising ground. 
 He perceived that for a city, laid out 011 a strictly regular 
 geometrical pattern, a level site is the best. So he planted 
 the new town on a dead, flat, dusty plain, without a hillock 
 or a depression anywhere. Its ground-plan is like that of
 
 112 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a modern American city. The main avenues run straight 
 as a line from end to end, a hundred and eleven feet wide, 
 which is more than the width of any thoroughfare in 
 London, except about thre"e. Lesser, but still very wide, 
 streets run parallel to these ; others cross them at right- 
 angles. There are circular spaces at various points, and 
 in the middle of all is the palace, covering an enormous 
 area of ground, with its stables, its menageries, and its 
 great oblong sanded arena, in which the king's animals, 
 his horses, elephants, bears, wild boars, rams, and ante- 
 lopes, exercise and occasionally fight. 
 
 It is rather curious to reflect that some fifty years 
 before Jai Singh created his new capital, Sir Christopher 
 Wren drew up a somewhat similar plan (it is now in the 
 library of All Souls College, Oxford) for the rebuilding of 
 London after the Great Fire. Wren could not get the 
 Corporation to accept his design ; but Jai Singh had no 
 Lord Mayor and Common Council to consult, and as the 
 King ordered so it was done. He decreed that his city 
 should be all of a deep pink, the colour of the red sand- 
 stone, and thus it is to this day. Unfortunately, there was 
 not enough of the stone to go round, and most of the 
 buildings are of painted stucco. Moreover, they are very 
 low, and they look ridiculously mean and petty, ranged 
 along the immense sandy roadways. In many cases, 
 upper storeys with battlemented parapets have been 
 superimposed, but these only make matters worse; for they 
 are obviously ' duffers/ mere shells of wall, with no roofs 
 and no rooms behind them. In this way they add to the 
 general air of theatrical unreality with which the city is 
 invested. It seems a town of pasteboard, a hollow affair 
 of lath and plaster, and canvas and paint, made to be 
 looked at, but not to stand, like those imitation streets 
 ' India in London,' or ' Venice in London ' which are 
 sometimes exhibited for our entertainment. indeed,
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 113 
 
 when I drove through the town for the first time, and 
 saw it adorned with flags and coloured 'transparencies 
 of the Prince and Princess of Wales, I could not escape 
 the feeling that the whole city had been run up for the 
 occasion by some enterprising caterer, and that it would 
 be taken down and packed away for use elsewhere when 
 done with. 
 
 The circus-like impression is intensified when you 
 wander about the vast pink palace, with its menagerie of 
 animals. You come upon elephant-stables and camel- 
 stables ; and there are all kinds of creatures, housed in 
 what look like temporary sheds, apparently just prepar- 
 ing to ' go on.' Within the precincts of the building, in 
 close proximity to the reception-rooms, with their new 
 French furniture, their gilding, and chandeliers, and 
 glistening modern glass-ware, there is a whole village of 
 mud huts, with half-naked men and women, and wholly 
 naked brown children tumbling about in the sunshine. 
 This mingling of luxury and squalor is very characteristic 
 of India. You find it everywhere. Bags and silk and 
 jewels are always in juxtaposition. Tattered hangers-on 
 loaf about the courtyards of great people, even on the 
 mosb solemn occasions of State. 
 
 At Jaipur these villagers, I believe, are the sweepers 
 and cleaners of the palace and the attendants on the 
 Maharaja's livestock, which last is highly extensive and 
 varied. I went to a sort of gymkhana or exhibition, held 
 in the arena, early one morning, and saw a great many of 
 them. There were haughty cream-coloured and piebald 
 stallions with sumptuous velvet housings, bulls and 
 buffaloes, pretty little chinkara deer, and spotted antelopes, 
 huge grunting boars, young pigs playful as kittens, 
 and rams with threatening voluted horns. All of them 
 were tethered with ropes, and in the case of the larger 
 beasts there were half a dozen men hanging on to each
 
 114 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 rope. After being led round the ring, the animals were 
 pitted against each other in pairs. There were quail- 
 fights, and cock-fights, and deer-fights, and boar- fights, 
 and little-pig-fights, and rain-fights. It was rather a poor 
 show, not without an element of cruelty. Most of the 
 animals had no stomach for the fray ; and as for the fat 
 and well-fed boars, they simply looked at one another and 
 turned away, until hustled together by the attendants, 
 when they lost their tempers, and cut and ripped in 
 earnest, inflicting some nasty gashes. The only really 
 spirited contests were between the rams, who charged each 
 other with fury, clashed their armed foreheads together 
 with a shock like a pistol-shot, and were pulled away half- 
 stunned after each encounter. The Prince and Princess 
 of Wales did not attend this exhibition, and the whole pro- 
 ceeding is regarded with little favour by the Government 
 of India, though the privilege of keeping and training 
 fighting-beasts for the arena is one which the independent 
 princes are unwilling to surrender. In its present modified 
 and mitigated form it seems hardly worth retaining, and 
 even the tiger- and boar-fights and the rhinoceros-fights 
 are said to be very tame performances. 
 
 This kind of survival seems particularly out of place 
 in Jaipur, which in many ways is quite a modern city. 
 It is well kept, it is lighted by gas, and it has hotels for 
 the accommodation of the autumnal visitors. It has 
 a famous School of Art, where they make excellent 
 enamelled metal ware under exceedingly skilled direction ; 
 and it has the best museum, with one exception, in all 
 India, a museum which, in the careful selection and 
 the judicious arrangement of its contents, is a model of 
 what such an institution ought to be. There are a 
 hundred and sixty thousand people in Jaipur, and the 
 place is full of life and business, the commercial centre 
 and entrepot of all Rajputana and the adjacent parts of
 
 SOME RAJPUT CAPITALS 115 
 
 India. The Maharaja has shown considerable interest, 
 as befits a descendant of Jai Singh, in art, and science, 
 and education ; and it seems prosperous enough, even in 
 a famine year. Being a resort of many traders and artisans 
 from various districts, near and remote, it assembles a 
 variegated multitude in its wide avenues. If the rose- 
 pink walls are shoddy, the crowd is genuine, and delight- 
 ful hours may be spent in watching its motley streams 
 and mingling with its noisy eddies.
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHABAJA 
 
 HE may, or may not, have some of the best blood in 
 India in his veins. In the East birth and breeding go a 
 long way, but they are not everything ; and in the curious 
 chaos of Indian history strange things have happened. 
 The long procession of Princes and Kuling Chiefs who 
 passed before the Shahzada on his way through the 
 Empire can only be described as a miscellaneous collection. 
 They differed from each other as much in origin and 
 descent as they did in appearance and religion. Some 
 were of the pure northern strain, men who could trace 
 back in unbroken sequence to the earliest conquerors, 
 who have preserved their race to this day, uncontami- 
 nated by admixture with the inferior castes, the black 
 children of the soil. The ancestors of others were Arab 
 or Afghan or Tartar raiders centuries ago ; and some were 
 the descendants of cowherds and court favourites and 
 soldiers of fortune, who were upstarts when the English 
 came. 
 
 It was interesting to note the variety of types these 
 feudatories exhibited, as one saw them at the receptions, 
 which were held in each province and group of states in 
 order that they might make their salute to the Prince 
 and present him with the nazar, or offering of gold coins, 
 to be touched and remitted. Not infrequent was the kind 
 of person whom many of us might be inclined to regard 
 as the typical Eaja, the huge man, with thick lips, a vast 
 
 116
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHAEAJA 117 
 
 face, great insolent shoulders, like those of a Brahminy 
 bull, a bloodshot saturnine eye, an elephantine regal gait ; 
 a king obviously, though not quite the sort of king whose 
 subject one would care to be under genuine Oriental con- 
 ditions. But there were princes of a very different make : 
 high-bred gentlemen, tall and lithe, with olive complexions 
 and oval faces, and regular features of the Brahman or 
 Rajput mould ; or lean, wiry, hook-nosed, eagle-eyed 
 warriors from the Border ; and dark, short men from the 
 south. And in their characters and their situation was as 
 much variety as in their faces and their figures. 
 
 A few years ago it would have been easier to classify 
 them than it is to-day. Broadly speaking, they would have 
 fallen under two main headings, at least in the estimation 
 of the Indian Foreign Office and the Political depart- 
 ments. There was the virtuous Maharaja and there was 
 the Maharaja who lacked virtue. The unvirtuous Maharaja 
 still exists ; but he is mainly a survival, and he has had his 
 claws so severely pared and his wings so closely clipped 
 that his more picturesque lapses from the straight path 
 are no longer possible. We have made examples of so 
 many of his kind that he has become exceedingly cautious; 
 nor do his supervisors and the representatives of the 
 paramount Power allow him so much latitude as the 
 more indulgent ' politicals ' of the past. The unvirtuous 
 Maharaja was often inclined to treat his state as his own 
 private property, and to spend its revenues for his personal 
 gratification. He filled his great rambling palace with 
 monstrosities from Europe, for which he was charged blood- 
 curdling prices. He spent lakhs of rupees on emeralds to 
 adorn his own person and diamonds for his favourite wife 
 or more favourite dancing-girl. He built new wings to 
 his noble old residence, of monumental hideousness, and 
 emptied the State treasury to pay for horrible glass lustre 
 chandeliers, crystal thrones, and gilded Lord Mayor's
 
 118 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 carriages ; or he wasted his substance on a stnd of elephants 
 with silver howdahs, on fighting bears and tigers, and on 
 whole menageries of animals, wild and tame. 
 
 These were the milder indulgences, and with them we 
 did not, and do not, interfere when exercised hi con- 
 junction with a reasonable amount of good government. 
 But when his Highness took to twisting the tails of his 
 Sardars, his knights and barons, in order to make them 
 yield more than the feudal revenues, when he levied 
 mediaeval benevolences and plundered his merchants and 
 traders, when he courted rebellion by general maladmin- 
 istration, and tried to suppress it with his matchlock- 
 men and his ancient batteries of smooth-bore muzzle- 
 loaders : when he broke out in this fashion, it became 
 necessary to bring his performances to an end. 
 
 Nor could we permit his private life to rise above a 
 certain level of scandalousness. We were not too par- 
 ticular in these matters, and we preferred not to inquire 
 curiously into the interior economy of the palace. But 
 the Eastern despot, who lives in the true Eastern 
 fashion, finds moderation difficult, and easily slides into 
 practices which make it impossible for self-respecting 
 individuals or governments to have any friendly relations 
 with him. In due course, the career of the unvirtuous 
 Maharaja is brought to a conclusion. After sufficient 
 warning, the Government of India drops down a heavy 
 hand upon him, and flattens him out, to rise, as a rule, no 
 more. Sometimes the State is put into commission, under 
 the political agent, and the Baja is given a period for 
 repentance, with a promise of restoration if he shows 
 signs of amending his ways. More often he is deposed 
 and pensioned off, and his throne is conferred upon some 
 reputable brother or cousin ; or one of the royal infants 
 is taken away to be educated up to the latest Anglo-Indian 
 standard, while a Council of Begency is appointed to do
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 119 
 
 those things which seem good in the eyes of Simla and 
 the local Agency, until such time as the young sovereign 
 comes of age and can take up the reins of government, 
 and proceed, it is hoped, to put into practice the lessons 
 of his preceptors. 
 
 Like other dethroned monarchs, the deposed Maharaja 
 does not always take his fall quietly, and may show a 
 disposition to give trouble, sometimes by fomenting in- 
 ternal intrigue within his late dominions, more frequently 
 by trying to reach the ear of the Viceroy and other 
 influential persons in Asia and Europe. As a rule he is 
 harmless, and relapses after a time to a struggle between 
 his allowance and his pleasures. A curious little incident 
 occurred while the Prince of Wales was the guest of one 
 of the greater chiefs, a promising young ruler, with 
 sporting and Anglicising tastes, who had been substituted 
 within the past few years for a disreputable elderly pre- 
 decessor. There was a garden-party at the Eesidency, 
 the Boyal visitors being present, together with the young 
 Maharaja and most of the native and European notabili- 
 ties of the district. In the midst of the entertainment, 
 while the band was playing and the guests were busy 
 with tea and ices, the slightest possible signs of activity 
 were visible in the local official group ; and the officers in 
 command of the Besidency guard and the troops brought 
 up from the nearest British cantonment held a brief con- 
 sultation. Not till afterwards was it known, and then 
 only to a minute number of persons, that the deposed 
 chief had been in need of attention. The old ruffian had 
 made various applications to be allowed to see the Prince 
 of Wales, which had been ignored ; and finally, on the 
 afternoon of the garden-party, news was received that he 
 had started off on his motor-car, from his castle a few 
 miles distant, to pay his respects in person. This could 
 not be permitted, so a small party of well-mounted sowars
 
 120 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 was despatched to head off the vehicle and lead the dis- 
 crowned potentate safely home again. 
 
 The unvirtuous Maharaja, though he had a taste for 
 Western luxuries and Western extravagances, was usually 
 Oriental and Conservative in his political attitude. He 
 had no sympathy with modern progress, and strenuously 
 objected to reforms, which, as he perceived, must often 
 cost money he preferred to spend on himself, his house- 
 hold, and his zenana. Schools, model prisons, hospitals, 
 irrigation works, and famine relief would make a con- 
 siderable hole in his private Civil List. Therefore his 
 Highness entrenched himself behind Hindu or Mussul- 
 man orthodoxy, and protested as vehemently as he dared 
 against innovations. Sometimes, indeed, he may have 
 been unselfish in his opposition, knowing that the re- 
 forming schemes would bring more Englishmen and 
 English influences into his dominions, and so shake the 
 belief of his subjects in the wisdom of their fathers and 
 the ancient social and religious ways. 
 
 One of the best of the present ruling chiefs, a man of 
 the highest character and deservedly respected by English 
 and natives throughout India, takes this view. He is 
 a champion of the old Hindu system, an upright and 
 conscientious sovereign, who does the best for his subjects 
 according to his own lights ; but he sets his face against 
 the wholesale adoption of European methods. He does 
 not want his people to live in imitation English houses, 
 and wear shoddy English clothes ; he sees no great 
 necessity for teaching them to read and write, holding 
 that education will only turn them from hunters and 
 herdsmen into clerks and babus. He keeps rigidly to the 
 caste rules, and he will not eat with Europeans, or drink 
 their whisky and champagne. Even the railway seems 
 to him undesirable, and it needed a good deal of pressure 
 before he would permit the line to approach his ancient
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE AIAHAKAJA 121 
 
 and picturesque capital. His territory is rich in mineral 
 deposits ; but he will not allow them to be worked by 
 modern appliances, and he discourages the beneficent ad- 
 vances of the company-promoter and the share-monger. 
 Nor will he patronise British sport. He shoots the tiger 
 and spears the wild pig, and leaves polo and racing and 
 cricket to others. 
 
 But the virtuous Maharaja, as a rule, is full of 
 English ideas. He is enlightened and progressive. He 
 adopts the Anglo-Indian method of administration, per- 
 haps even institutes a Council, and imports a Bengali 
 or two to act as Secretary or Legal member. He re- 
 forms his judicature on the English model, and allows 
 the Penal Code to prevail. With European assistance 
 he improves his gaols, and sometimes puts his instructors 
 to shame by the excellence of his work. 
 
 There is not, in the whole of India, a prison more 
 admirably equipped and arranged than that in the Maha- 
 raja of Bikaner's capital : there is, perhaps, no better one 
 anywhere. Its cleanliness, sanitation, and good order are 
 beyond reproach, and one can scarcely imagine a more 
 cheerful, and apparently contented, body of criminals than 
 its inmates. They have large open corridors to sleep in ; 
 and if they wear fetters on their legs, that is only in 
 accordance with Indian sentiment, and is, moreover, more 
 humane than locking up prisoners in small close cells 
 during the hot weather. Steady industry is the rule in 
 this model house of detention. There are tailors' shops, 
 carpenters' shops, and brassworkers' shops ; and in the 
 great weaving and tapestry sheds, murderers, thieves, 
 dacoits, and pickpockets are peacefully, and as it would 
 seem quite happily, employed in making carpets of lovely 
 design and irreproachable workmanship to the order of 
 wealthy clients all over the world. The Bikaner gaol is 
 not only efficient, but it is economical, for it is run at a
 
 122 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 clear profit to the state. It is also quite popular with 
 its tenants ; so that when a prisoner shows signs of in- 
 subordination the Governor can usually reduce him to 
 obedience by threatening to set him at liberty and turn 
 him out. Again, at Jaipur there is a museum, which 
 is equal to any in India, with the single exception of that 
 at Lahore. The Maharaja of this State has shown him- 
 self a discriminating and liberal patron of art and science ; 
 and he, and the Nizam, the Maharaja of Gwalior, and 
 others, have founded excellent colleges and are zealous 
 promoters of the higher education among their subjects. 
 
 This is one side of the Anglicising activity of these 
 progressive princes. The tendency develops in other 
 ways, interesting, but not always of such unques- 
 tionable utility. They have an inclination to gratify 
 Western tastes more reputable than those of their pre- 
 decessors, but sometimes quite as costly. The old 
 rambling palaces, with their rookery of passages and 
 inlaid cells behind marble screens, are deserted ; and a 
 fine new building, with large modern saloons and recep- 
 tion-rooms, is erected. His Highness will often be a keen 
 sportsman himself, and a munificent patron of many 
 kinds of sport. Those aspirations after excellence in 
 polo, to which reference has been made, are apt to run 
 into money, and the durbar may be required to pay the 
 expenses of training a first-class team and buying ponies 
 at prices far beyond the legitimate resources of the state 
 treasury. The Chief may even keep a racing-stable, bring 
 out stud-grooms and trainers from England, and secure 
 the services of well-paid English jockeys to carry his 
 colours at the fashionable Indian race-meetings. 
 
 The good Maharaja's English friends will be only too 
 ready to encourage him in so meritorious an extravagance 
 as that of promoting open-air recreations. ' You ought 
 to have a pack of jackal-hounds, Maharaja Sahib,' says
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 123 
 
 one set of enthusiasts. ' You should turn that field into a 
 lawn-tennis ground,' suggests another. Anxious to oblige, 
 the Chief provides both the hunting and the tennis, much 
 to the satisfaction of the subalterns and the young ladies 
 of the station. Meanwhile, his own personal tastes must 
 be gratified in other ways. So enlightened a student of 
 western institutions can hardly get on without frequent 
 visits to Bombay and Calcutta, and an occasional trip to 
 the still more instructive cities of London and Paris. 
 Perhaps, when he asks permission to quit his dominions, 
 the Government of India ungraciously informs him that 
 he has been expending far too much money on his various 
 diversions, and reminds him that his subjects are suffering 
 great privation from the failure of the rains. The vir- 
 tuous Maharaja sighs, and proceeds to organise famine 
 relief, not in the ancient rule-of-thumb fashion of his 
 royal ancestors, but according to the English system. 
 
 He has his trials, for the new way is not always 
 understood, and it may have to be worked by the old 
 officials. It is said that during a recent famine the 
 British Resident remonstrated with a native prince on the 
 mismanagement of his relief works. ' These men, whom 
 your Highness sent to distribute food, are simply robbing 
 you.' ' Eshmitt Sahib,' said the Maharaja ; ' is there a 
 man in all my country, except yourself, who does not rob 
 me ? ' Indeed, there are many difficulties before the 
 reforming Raja in this transitional age. The more credit 
 to him that he overcomes them so well as he often does. 
 
 It is the opinion of the most brilliant Anglo-Indian 
 statesman of our age that the real Indian aristocracies, 
 the princely class, and the reigning families, were never 
 so well content with British supremacy or so loyal to the 
 Empire as they are to-day. Up to the post-Mutiny 
 settlement, and long beyond it, there were always princes 
 who could be, and were, centres of disaffection. The
 
 124 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 insubordinate or disappointed chief easily drifts into that 
 position, and the older Indian administrators were quite 
 right in regarding an ill-disposed Maharaja of one of 
 the greater states as a possible source of danger. They 
 knew that these princes, powerless as they seemed, at the 
 moment, might under conceivable circumstances become 
 extremely formidable. 
 
 One must, of course, distinguish. There are rajas and 
 chiefs of all kinds in India, from the Nizam whose 
 subjects are more numerous than those of the Queen of 
 Holland, the King of Belgium, the King of Denmark, and 
 the King of Portugal taken together to the petty Nawab 
 with a few square miles of territory and a lakh or two of 
 revenue. But the head of one of the older and more 
 influential dynasties is undoubtedly a personage, even 
 outside his own dominions. It was impossible to mingle 
 with the crowd in the cities through which the Prince 
 of Wales passed without feeling that some of these poten- 
 tates aroused an interest in the native breast deeper than 
 that evoked by any British official, not excluding the 
 highest of all. A Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, the 
 virtual ruler of thirty or forty millions of people, is in 
 reality a far more important individual, especially in his 
 own province, than any of the local reigning chiefs. 
 
 Yet I think that the multitude, or some of them, looked 
 on the Maharaja, as he went by in his gilded coach and four, 
 followed by his caracoling escort, with a livelier and more 
 sentimental curiosity than that which could be evoked 
 even by the ' Lord Sahib ' himself. To the Indian natives, 
 our officers, civil and military, our judges, commissioners, 
 generals, commanders-in-chief, provincial satraps, vice- 
 roys, are mortal men, like themselves ; highly placed and 
 highly paid servants, dignified and potent, but evanescent : 
 here to-day and gone to-morrow, moved about at the bid- 
 ding of unknown masters. It is otherwise with the man
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 125 
 
 who reigns by right of birth, albeit his realm may be 
 only a patch of rock-ribbed desert, and his authority so 
 restricted that he cannot sentence a convicted murderer 
 to death in his own courts. 1 The sacredness of the 
 ' Lord's anointed ' is still a living force in the East, 
 though the idea would be expressed differently. Loyalty 
 has much of the old meaning which it has lost in Europe ; 
 it includes a sort of religious reverence for the person of 
 the sovereign, and a tendency to regard unquestioning 
 obedience to his commands as something higher than a 
 legal duty. It may be taken as a general rule in native India 
 that the people would follow their princes anywhere. 
 
 And even to those outside the ranks of his own sub- 
 jects the ruling Maharaja frequently represents something 
 of significance. He may be the head of a great religious 
 community ; or the premier prince of a race which is 
 invested with a special sanctity by millions; or the in- 
 heritor of a stirring tradition of conquest and successful 
 war. Even when their material power is trivial, they 
 may wield a moral influence sufficient to render their 
 content or discontent with the prevailing regime a matter 
 worth very serious consideration. 
 
 In the old days they were usually discontented. It 
 was very natural that they should be so. They had sub- 
 mitted to the paramount Power with reluctance, some- 
 times because they had been subdued by force of arms, 
 sometimes because of irresistible pacific pressure, some- 
 times because it was the only way to save themselves 
 from being wiped out by stronger neighbours. But they 
 did not enjoy the situation, nor did they appreciate the 
 blessings of Imperial rule. Equal laws and equal rights 
 
 1 It is only in a few of the larger native states that the ruling princes 
 are entrusted with what is technically known as the power of life and 
 death. In the great majority of these states no death penalty can be 
 carried out except after reference to the local Agency or the Government of 
 India.
 
 126 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 had few attractions for men whose very existence was an 
 assertion of the principle of inequality. An Eastern 
 despot, who did what he liked in his own country, subject 
 to the chances of rebellion, and made war when he 
 pleased, would seldom care to exchange this exciting irre- 
 sponsibility for an uneventful security and a dignified 
 dependence. The Government of India put him in leading- 
 strings, and deprived him of some of his most cherished 
 indulgences. The true Oriental licence to plunder and 
 misgovern was practically withdrawn. His territory was 
 no longer his private property ; he was expected to con- 
 sider the feelings and interests of his subjects, with what 
 no doubt seemed to him quite superfluous solicitude. This 
 patriarchal mixture of oppression and generosity had to 
 make way for something more nearly resembling the rule 
 of law. The process annoyed the chief, and it did not 
 always please the people, who sometimes preferred the old, 
 irregular, free-and-easy arrangements. Besides, the Raja 
 really disliked the English and their ways, many of which 
 seemed to him offensive or absurd or irreligious, and he 
 would have been heartily glad to see them cleared out of 
 India altogether. So he was potentially disloyal, though 
 wise enough not to quarrel openly with the Power that 
 was master of his destinies. 
 
 The theory of the statesman to whom I have referred, 
 and of many other distinguished Indian administrators, 
 is that the attitude here suggested has been changed in 
 recent years. We are told that the members of the 
 great ruling and princely families are becoming recon- 
 ciled to the British supremacy, and are now in many 
 cases its cordial and whole-hearted supporters. They 
 no longer endure it with sombre acquiescence. On the 
 contrary, they understand the prevailing system, they 
 appreciate the benefits it confers upon the country, and 
 they would be the last persons to rejoice at its overthrow.
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 127 
 
 The younger generation has a tendency to be Anglophile. 
 Some of the princes and greater territorial proprietors 
 have been educated in England itself, and not merely 
 under English teachers and tutors ; many of them are on 
 very friendly terms with English officers and officials, they 
 are getting to like their ways, they join in their sports and 
 games, they meet them in business, on the polo-field, on 
 the parade-ground, and to some extent in society. They 
 have abandoned a good deal of their exclusiveness and 
 aloofness, and find it possible occasionally to be on terms 
 of frank camaraderie with the better kind of Englishman. 
 Then they know more of England and of the extra- 
 Indian world generally. Some of them travel, and read 
 European books, not excluding fiction from the fair land 
 of France. They cultivate a taste for modern inventions, 
 and have modern progressive ideas as to sanitation and 
 education. All these things put them in a better frame of 
 mind than their sulky and resentful fathers before them. 
 
 Add to all this that we are at length making some pro- 
 gress towards bringing them back to the only career which 
 really suits a member of an Eastern aristocratic caste. 
 We are giving them a revived interest in soldiering. We 
 have always permitted the native States to keep up armies 
 of sorts. But it was our policy that these armies should 
 be ineffective for fighting purposes. The princes might 
 have a limited number of men in buckram, or in red or 
 khaki coats, or in mail armour, to play with ; but we could 
 not afford to let these troops be made efficient enough to 
 become dangerous. Consequently we have refused to allow 
 the feudatories to have their regiments drilled by European 
 officers. We do not permit them to possess batteries of 
 breechloading artillery, and we forbid the purchase of 
 good modern rifles. 
 
 The forces of the native States were paraded for 
 the Prince of Wales's inspection as he passed through ;
 
 128 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and some of them made a very brilliant appearance, for 
 we exercise no veto upon the sartorial fancies of the 
 Maharaja, and if his Highness chooses to clothe his horde 
 of military retainers, arnld with smooth-bore muskets 
 and old Enfield carbines, in uniforms of canary yellow or 
 blue and silver, with old French dragoon helmets, we do 
 not offer any objection. His subjects like the show, and 
 are pleased to see these obsolete warriors facing about 
 and presenting arms, while Colonel Gopal Singh or 
 Major Mohammed Khan gives the word of command in 
 what is supposed to be the English language. But to a 
 young prince of spirit the whole affair must doubtless 
 seem silly and theatrical, and perhaps no more than a 
 proof of humiliation and dependence. A man sprung 
 from generations of warlike ancestors, who won their 
 way and held it by the sword, must chafe at the restric- 
 tion which binds him down to an army of stage supers 
 and provides no worthy profession for the cadets and col- 
 lateral branches of his royal house. That was one of the 
 reasons why the Maharaja aforetime gave himself to 
 unworthy courses. He ' chewed bhang and toyed with 
 dancing girls,' as described by Macaulay. What else was 
 he to do, when we had made his government an unreality, 
 and his army a farce ? 
 
 But we are now opening to him a wider avenue of 
 activity. We allow him to raise a contingent for the 
 Imperial Service Corps, which he may make as efficient 
 and soldier-like as he can. The I.S.C. was instituted 
 during Lord Dufferin's viceroyalty, and it has been much 
 improved and enlarged during the past few years. It is 
 intended to associate the feudatories with the defence of 
 India, in a genuine sense, and to allow them to maintain 
 small bodies of troops, armed, equipped, and trained, as 
 nearly as possible like those in the direct employment of 
 the Crown. Each unit of the Imperial Service Corps is
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 129 
 
 stationed 'in the native State to which it belongs. It is 
 part of the army of that State, and it is paid for out of 
 its revenues ; the officers are the Maharaja's own subjects, 
 holding their commissions from him. All that the Indian 
 Government requires is that there shall be a British 
 inspecting officer, whose business it is to see that the 
 force is kept well up to the standard of our own Native 
 Army. It has modern weapons and receives the latest 
 instruction in drill and tactics ; and it may be called 
 upon to take its place in line with British troops when 
 the Empire goes to war. 
 
 The Maharaja who decides to establish an Imperial 
 Service Corps is left a considerable latitude of choice as 
 to the kind of contingent he will supply. The horse- 
 loving Eajputs of Jodhpur contribute a dashing regiment 
 of lancers. In Bikaner, the desert State, they have a 
 first-rate Camel Corps, which did valuable service in 
 Somaliland and China in the latter case with the high- 
 spirited young Maharaja himself in command. The 
 Maharaja of Jaipur contents himself with a workmanlike 
 and useful train of transport carts. At Gwalior, the 
 Maharaja Scindia, that energetic Indian prototype of the 
 German Kaiser, sitting erect on a magnificent charger, 
 with wa\ing sabre flashing in the sunlight, led his own 
 Imperial horsemen, at a thundering gallop, past the Boyal 
 standard. When the Prince of Wales was at Lahore, a 
 review of all the Imperial Service contingents of the 
 Punjab chiefs was held at Mian Mir. There were between 
 three and four thousand troops on the ground of all arms, 
 except artillery since the Mutiny we do not put field- 
 guns into native hands and a better display of physique, 
 good marching and riding, and accurate drill could scarcely 
 be seen in any country. There was little to choose, so far 
 as the eye could judge, between the Mohammedan and 
 Sikh soldiers of Patiala and Kapurthala and the best 
 
 E
 
 130 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 regiments of our Native Army. And these contingents, it 
 must be remembered, were in all cases officered by men 
 of their own state and people. Colonels, captains, and 
 subalterns were of the same districts and the same racea 
 as their men. Many of them were relatives of the 
 Chief, his brothers, nephews, or cousins, or members of 
 the landowning families who owed him feudal allegiance. 
 
 But this is not all that we do to gratify the military 
 tastes of our Indian warrior castes. The young scions of 
 the reigning houses can be educated at the Rajkumar 
 colleges, where they receive a combination of that sort of 
 training which an English lad can get at a public school 
 and at Sandhurst and "Woolwich. When they leave these 
 academies they can join the Imperial Cadet Corps, a very 
 select body, formed entirely of princes of the Indian 
 reigning houses, which was one of Lord Curzon's happy 
 thoughts. This squadron of high-born youths was 
 happily chosen as one of the Prince of Wales's guards 
 of honour, and a very gay and gallant troop of young 
 cavaliers they looked, fit to be the escort of any sovereign, 
 with their pretty fawn uniforms, their turbans of tur- 
 quoise blue, and their saddle-cloths made of the skin of 
 the snow-leopard. It is proposed that some of these 
 young gentlemen shall obtain direct commissions in the 
 Indian Army. One of them has already been appointed to 
 the General Staff, where they think extremely well of him. 
 
 The mere existence of these corps is symptomatic of 
 a certain change in the attitude of the rulers of India 
 towards the native states. It is a kind of testimonial to 
 the loyalty of the Chiefs : a certificate that they can be 
 safely trusted with so formidable a weapon as a few first- 
 rate modern regiments, on the assumption that it would 
 never be used except in our service or at our direction. 
 If we went to war with an European Power we take it 
 for granted that all the Imperial Service contingents
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 131 
 
 would vie with each other in pressing to be sent to the 
 front. There they would be valuable. On the other 
 hand, we could not afford to leave thirty or forty thousand 
 magazine rifles, in trained native hands, on the rear of our 
 Army of the first line. If the Rajas were not loyal, if 
 they were at any time to develop active disaffection, then 
 one cannot deny that these well-drilled troops might be 
 a source of potential danger. Meanwhile we have un- 
 doubtedly done something to give a legitimate outlet to 
 the martial instincts of the ' fighting races ' and their 
 leaders ; and we assume that the Ruling Chiefs, at any 
 season of stress, will perceive that their interests and those 
 of the Imperial Government of India lie along the same 
 line. Are we justified in this complacent hypothesis ? It 
 is a rather delicate subject to discuss, and there is not 
 much that can be said upon it with any profit. Ambitious 
 men, who have behind them a tradition of successful 
 struggle, may sometimes chafe a little under the regime, 
 which has substituted safe tranquillity and dignified 
 subordination for attractive adventure and undefined 
 authority. 
 
 Looking at the matter from the outside, one might say 
 that the ruling families have no reason to be discontented 
 with the place assigned to them. If we have taken much 
 from the feudatory ruler, we have also given him a good 
 deal. We have rendered him secure. His throne is no 
 longer precarious. He can ' sleep well,' like King Duncan, 
 though not in his grave. Treason, domestic broil, foreign 
 assault ' can touch him not and harm him not again,' 
 provided he exhibits a moderate diligence and a mode- 
 rate good sense in the task of government. We might 
 dethrone him ourselves, but we should allow neither rebel 
 barons nor ambitious rivals to overturn him. 
 
 Moreover, he has good assurance that we have no 
 aggressive intentions towards him. If he were deposed it
 
 132 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 would only be for proved misconduct, and even in that 
 case his throne would not be forfeit. The time has gone 
 by when the Indian Government would use an occasion 
 of the kind in order to round off its territory. The era of 
 annexation in the Peninsula is closed, and we desire only 
 to maintain the political status quo. If it becomes 
 necessary to administer a native state, the Government 
 regards itself only as a trustee, acting in the interests of 
 the population, but with due regard also to that of the 
 legitimate dynasty, whose right to be replaced, so soon as 
 circumstances permit, is always acknowledged. 
 
 A striking object-lesson was afforded by the rendition 
 of Mysore. This old Hindu kingdom was transferred by 
 us to the representatives of its ancient sovereigns after we 
 had conquered it from Tippoo Sultan and Hyder Ali and 
 their French allies at the end of the eighteenth century. 
 But the restored Princes of Arcot had learnt nothing and 
 forgotten nothing, like the Bourbons, and they proceeded 
 to misrule their recovered domains in a bad Oriental 
 fashion. Thereupon it was in the year 1831 we found 
 it imperative to give them their conge and replace them 
 by Anglo-Indian officials. For fifty years Mysore was in 
 commission under an English administration. 
 
 It was practically an integral part of our own ter- 
 ritories, and we could hardly have been condemned if we 
 had forgotten that it had ever been anything else. Few 
 people in India could have imagined that it would be 
 given back to the descendant of its former rulers. The 
 restoration was an act of voluntary justice, carried out 
 when the reforms had been completed, and when it 
 seemed that a capable Maharaja, with competent native 
 assistance, could be safely left at the head of affairs. 
 
 Mysore has used its restored self-government well. It 
 found not only an upright and well-educated Raja, but 
 a Prime Minister of exceptional capacity, and since 1881,
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 133 
 
 the year of the surrender, it has been a model state, as 
 excellent a specimen of administrative efficiency as India 
 has to show. The example of Mysore has been valuable 
 in many ways ; but it has been particularly so by con- 
 vincing the Indian princes that we mean to keep faith 
 with them, that we have no desire to extinguish the 
 qualified independence we have left them, and no wish to 
 incorporate their dominions with our own. 
 
 The Indian Government acts wisely in maintaining, 
 so far as it can, the separate existence of these principali- 
 ties. They discharge, or may discharge under favourable 
 circumstances, some useful functions in the Indian body 
 politic. Within their comparatively restricted area it is 
 possible to try experiments, legislative, economical, and 
 social, which could with difficulty be attempted at one 
 stroke over the whole large area of British India. The 
 little cock-boat of a state, steered by its own native pilot 
 and crew, might make the trial trip into waters upon 
 which, if the navigation prove fortunate, it can in due 
 course be followed by the weightier argosies. Thus 
 Mysore can venture to go further in the direction of a 
 social and domestic reform than the Government of India 
 has cared to do. It can raise the age of marriage for 
 women a full two years above the level at which it stands 
 in British India. If this salutary and necessary change 
 were made in one British province it would have to be 
 followed in all the others ; some fifty million families 
 would be asked to modify intimate customs and abandon 
 their rooted prejudices. In Mysore there is only a fiftieth 
 part of the population involved, which makes a difference ; 
 and there is a native administration concerned in this 
 interference with domestic practices, not a foreign bureau- 
 cracy, which makes a greater difference still. 
 
 The Mysore Government, again, has used part of the 
 surplus funds in its treasury to establish a great power-
 
 134 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 station at the Falls of the river Cauvery, from which 
 electric energy is supplied to the adjacent Kolar Gold- 
 fields and the town of Bangalore. The scheme has 
 proved successful both from- an engineering and a financial 
 point of view, and the Mysore exchequer receives a steady 
 revenue from it. But this bold and rather speculative 
 enterprise could hardly have been initiated by a British 
 province which has no money save what it raises by 
 taxation, and which has to account to the Government of 
 India and to Parliament for every penny it spends. The 
 greater elasticity of native rule allows scope for various 
 tentative essays, and it also supplies an element of variety 
 amid the level uniformity of the Anglo-Indian system of 
 administration . 
 
 In this and similar ways an enlightened prince, on the 
 gadi of an Indian native state, can find great possibilities 
 of usefulness if he cares to grasp them. A philosopher on 
 a throne could hardly desire a more favourable situation 
 for the exercise of his abilities and his benevolence. He 
 has most of the advantages of despotism without its 
 customary discomforts and dangers. The cares of diplo- 
 macy, the burdens of military defence, are taken off his 
 hands by his Imperial guarantors. He can ignore the 
 peril of invasion, and it is his own fault if he is vexed by 
 intrigue. Within his borders we leave him a large 
 measure of freedom. He can appoint his own ministers 
 and officials ; and if he has to pay some deference to the 
 views of the Besident he is, on the other hand, untroubled 
 by a parliament or an electorate. He has a docile, loyal, 
 and rather primitive, people within his own little ring- 
 fence, and he can find ready to hand ample opportunities 
 for adding to their well-being. His own station is assured, 
 and should be extremely agreeable. He occupies a fine 
 position ; he has honours and dignities ; he is treated like 
 a reigning sovereign, with salutes of artillery, cavalry
 
 HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJA 135 
 
 escorts, and other tributes of respect, when he enters 
 British territory ; and he need only manage his finances 
 with some approach to economy and avoid the grosser 
 forms of personal extravagance to have plenty of spending 
 money, with few of the anxieties which usually attend 
 the possession of wealth in an Eastern society. 
 
 For these benefits he should be grateful. Perhaps he 
 is ; but he has his grievances. They are apt to bulk large 
 when he is not on good terms with the political officer 
 appointed unto him by the Government. The ' political ' 
 is not always the most tactful of human beings. Those 
 who are selected by the India Office to manage the 
 greater states, which come under its direct authority, are 
 usually able men. But the Provincial Governments nomi- 
 nate Agents and Besidents to their own groups of minor 
 states, and one does not invariably hear the best accounts 
 of these gentlemen. The position does not attract the 
 most capable and ambitious officials of the Civil Service, 
 because there is no great prospect of promotion in it. An 
 aspiring young civilian, who hopes for a Lieutenant- 
 Governorship or a Chief Commissionership or a post on 
 the Council, as the crown of his career, will not consent 
 to spend his active life in an unimportant Kesidency. 
 The Department has to fall back on a military man who 
 has taken to civil employment, or it selects a possibly 
 second-rate member of the bureaucracy. He may be 
 fussy or pretentious, or pompous, or merely ignorant and 
 idle. There are political officers to whom most of these 
 epithets could be justifiably applied. When such an 
 individual has to manage a subtle, intriguing, and irri- 
 table native princeling, at once proud, sensitive, and 
 suspicious, the machinery is not likely to work with 
 smoothness. 
 
 At the best it does not run easily. The more we 
 educate and Europeanise the native gentlemen, the less
 
 136 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 do they like being held in leading-strings. The Raja 
 feels that his brain is at least equal to that of a middle- 
 aged, middle-class Colonel, and he is quite aware that 
 this diplomatist is nobody in particular when he goes 
 back to his own country. In the old days that fact was 
 hidden from him. Mysterious beings were emitted from 
 out of the darkness of an unknown land. They might 
 be princes themselves, or great councillors of state whose 
 seat was on the steps of the Imperial Throne, for what 
 his Highness knew. 
 
 But the mystery has been stripped bare. The Maha- 
 raja goes 'Home,' he knows all about our politics, he 
 reads our newspapers, he assimilates even the valuable 
 and informing society paragraphs. Fussy colonels 
 impress him no longer. He takes them at about the 
 valuation of their own countrymen, which is not exalted ; 
 and if he is young, able, ambitious, progressive, he is 
 inclined to ask why he should not be permitted to manage 
 his own affairs and those of his people without perpetual 
 and patronising supervision. 'You are making men of 
 us," said one young Europeanising prince to an English 
 friend of mine, who had been admitted to his confidence. 
 ' Isn't it about time to leave off treating us like children ? ' 
 The suggestion conveyed in these words may be called 
 unreasonable, when we consider that some of these Ruling 
 Chiefs would now be throneless and landless outcasts but 
 for our protection. Yet the sentiment exists, and it would 
 be foolish to pretend that it does not. His Highness the 
 Maharaja makes his account, like a sensible man, with 
 things as they are, especially as they really work out 
 remarkably well for him. But we need not suppose that 
 he is entirely satisfied with them, or that he would fail 
 to seize an opportunity for modifying them if it came 
 conveniently in his way.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 
 
 THE peoples of India are, speaking generally, a docile and 
 a peaceable folk. The great majority of them are easily 
 taught to abstain from strife and bloodshed. They do not 
 like killing man or other animals, even in self-defence or 
 for food. Most of them are habitual vegetarians ; many 
 are forbidden by their religion to take life under any 
 circumstances. Though Buddhism was driven out of the 
 Peninsula by the Brahmans, it left its impress upon the 
 dominant sect in a theoretical aversion from violence of 
 all kinds. The ' mild Hindu ' is not a mere figment of 
 the imagination. The Hindu, when excited, can become 
 wild rather than mild. But, taken in the mass, he is 
 assuredly not a first-class fighting-man. He will endure 
 oppression, or endeavour to counter it by subtlety and 
 craft, rather than resent it openly. His tendency is to 
 obey authority, even when wrongly exercised. In fact, 
 he is a highly governable person. 
 
 If it were not so, our task would be difficult to the 
 verge of impossibility. As it is, though we hold India by 
 force, that force itself is, in point of numbers, almost 
 contemptible. The Indian army is much the smallest in 
 the world in comparison with the size of the country. In 
 Germany there is one soldier, actual or potential, for about 
 every twenty civilians, women and children included ; in 
 France there is one among twelve ; even in the United 
 Kingdom at least one person in forty or fifty has been 
 
 1" E2
 
 138 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 trained, more or less, to the use of arms. The population 
 of India is close on three hundred millions, and the 
 troops of the King-Emperor, Imperial Service Corps and 
 all, total up to some two hundred and fifty thousand ; that 
 is to say, one soldier for every twelve hundred persons. 
 
 Naturally, the military profession is not much in 
 evidence in the greater part of the Peninsula. It is as if 
 the army, let us say, of Belgium or Switzerland had to do 
 duty for the whole of Western Europe, from Lapland 
 to Sicily. There are large tracts of India where a soldier 
 is never seen, and there must he millions of peasants who 
 do not set eyes on a military uniform from one year's end 
 to another. Yet the experts assure us that these unguarded 
 tracts are perfectly safe, and that over the greater part 
 of them rebellion is as unlikely as it would be in Bedford- 
 shire, and a serious disturbance beyond the power of the 
 police to handle almost equally improbable. We keep a 
 few troops in cantonments near the large cities, where 
 there are European residents and a possibly turbulent 
 mob ; but even this is thought by many soldiers to be a 
 superfluous sacrifice to the tragic memories of the Mutiny. 
 The New School would like to take the regiments away 
 from the enervating plains altogether, trusting to the 
 railway to truck them down again when needed, and 
 quartering the troops upon the frontier and the districts 
 adjacent, where the great wars for the mastery of India 
 will be waged in the future as they have been waged in 
 the past. 
 
 It is to the far North- West that you must go to see 
 the flower of the Anglo-Indian army, and the men who 
 hold the sword of Britain in the East. You see it best 
 of all near the point of the blade, the tongue of land 
 thrust up into the mountains from which the invaders 
 of India have so often dropped. Peshawar lies a little 
 back from the extremity, a town of soldiers, and where
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 139 
 
 the soldier rules. Elsewhere the civilian bureaucrat is 
 omnipotent ; here he is subordinate to the warrior caste. 
 The Chief Commissioner of the North- West Frontier 
 Province is a military officer, and so are his principal 
 assistants. For the whole district is like a fortress with 
 the ramparts manned, or like a ship of war cleared for 
 action. Even in peace time it is always on guard. There 
 is a simmer of unrest in the very air, and you feel it as 
 you come up from the busy tranquil toiling Hindustan 
 down below. 
 
 Much study of maps and books at home may give 
 you some idea of what the Borderland is like, in its 
 geographical and political aspects ; but its true character 
 is not revealed till you reach that colossal mountain 
 rampart which shuts off India from the mainland of 
 Asia. The frontier is a broad irregular zone of broken 
 earth, tossed into frowning hills, or gashed by deep and 
 sinuous valleys, through which the watercourses cut their 
 way towards the great plains and the sea. In the north 
 the barrier spreads out to more than the breadth of 
 France, and takes in Kashmir and Chitral and the Pamir 
 country, till it loses itself in the towering masses of the 
 Himalayas ; to the south it flattens and widens again, 
 till it covers the area of British Baluchistan, now solidly 
 held by our soldiers and engineers as an outlying bastion 
 to command and turn the whole line. Here we have made 
 our strong place of arms at Quetta, a fortress which could 
 defy modern artillery ; and we have carried the railway 
 almost to the border of Afghanistan, so that, if an invader 
 should attempt to press through the Amir's territory, we 
 could pour troops into Kandahar, and strike his advancing 
 columns upon the flank. 
 
 In its central portion, where it faces the Punjab and 
 Scinde, the frontier zone narrows down, and India and 
 Afghanistan are joined by the Khyber, and further south
 
 140 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 by the Gomal and Kuram Passes, which pierce the dividing 
 ridge. All this vast tract of rough country has been 
 peopled from time immemorial by clans of wild High- 
 landers, hardy, independent, quarrelsome, and militant as 
 any mountaineers in the world. The tribes differ much 
 among themselves ; and while the Hazaras and Baluchis are 
 fairly dependable and amenable to control, the Afridis are 
 difficult to manage and the Mahsud Waziris, who could 
 call out thirty thousand fighting men or more, are 
 normally in a state of turbulence and internecine warfare. 
 These hillmen belong to the fighting races. They 
 have been raiders and warriors from the beginning, 
 pursuing each other with fierce blood-feuds and savage 
 hereditary vendettas, and lifting cattle impartially from 
 the Afghan valleys and the Indian plains, like Scott's 
 freebooter, who 
 
 stole the beeves that made his broth, 
 From England and from Scotland both. 
 
 In 1893 a joint British and Afghan Commission 
 marked out the ' Durand line,' which makes the frontier 
 strip nominally Indian territory up to the Afghan 
 boundary. In reality, it is still abandoned to the clans- 
 men, who carry on their feuds and contests, tribe against 
 tribe, village against village, as their fathers did. We 
 should be well content if they would confine themselves 
 to these pastimes, so long as they left the communications 
 uninterrupted and abstained from interfering with our 
 peaceable subjects. 
 
 But even this compromise cannot be maintained 
 without constant friction. We have arrived at a good 
 understanding with certain headmen and have made them 
 and their levies re sponsible for keeping the peace of their 
 own districts. But some of the chiefs are doubtful, and 
 some of the tribes have no chiefs whose authority they
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 141 
 
 respect. Just now we are on fair terms with the Afridis, 
 among whom we have raised an excellent and disciplined 
 force for the policing of the Khyber. Other clans are 
 perennially restless. In 1896 there was a great rising of 
 many confederated tribes, acting temporarily in unison; 
 and the Indian Army has seldom found a harder task than 
 that of cornering these tough mountaineers among their 
 glens and gorges, and beating them into a reluctant sub- 
 mission. Few people at home realised what the Tirah cam- 
 paign meant, or knew how near we came to being swept 
 out of the frontier altogether. The peace of the border 
 is still extremely precarious. No longer ago than 1902 
 we had twenty thousand men engaged in blockading the 
 Mahsuds, with the object of exacting restitution for the 
 outrages they had committed. We levied our fine and 
 withdrew the troops. But the lesson was imperfectly 
 learnt ; and all the time I was in India the talk among 
 soldiers was of another ' punitive expedition/ which might 
 easily become a serious campaign before it was ended. 
 
 In the fringe of country that adjoins this perturbed 
 tract, where the rifle and the long jezail are seldom mute 
 for any length of time, our officers sleep, so to speak, with 
 their arms in their hands. Lawless deeds, even when 
 there is no formal trouble with the tribesmen, may be 
 expected at any moment. A few days before the Prince 
 arrived at Peshawar, a frontier picket had been attacked, 
 several sepoys had been killed and wounded, and some 
 rifles were carried away ; and about three weeks after the 
 Royal visitors left an armed band made a sudden raid 
 on a village a few miles from Peshawar itself. The 
 episode is thus instructively explained by one of the 
 Indian newspapers : ' The raiders are said to have been 
 Afridis, and their leader the notorious outlaw Gafar, who 
 was already wanted by the police for many other misdeeds. 
 In Banamani is the residence of a well-known Pathan
 
 142 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 contractor, by name Wali Khan ; and as the simple-minded 
 Afridi connects contracts with wealth, it was supposed 
 that a raid on his house would yield a good haul. So 
 Gafar, taking advantage of a dark night, led the attack 
 on Wali Khan's house in true military style. But it was 
 a case of Greek meeting Greek. Wali Khan was more 
 than prepared for the kindly attentions of Gafar and his 
 gang. The report (from all accounts a true one) is that 
 Gafar and three of his men fell to the valiant contractor's 
 gun, and so the raid failed. It appears that six of the 
 marauders have been captured.' Obviously a region in 
 which contractors play their game in this warlike fashion 
 breeds a different kind of trader from the pacific townsmen 
 and home-loving cultivators of the more settled interior 
 districts. 
 
 The moral change is as great as the physical, and 
 that is marked enough. In this far northern region we 
 come back to the northern winter. There is a savage 
 bite in the frost-laden morning wind which sets you long- 
 ing for the open grates and blazing hearth-fires of home ; 
 and though the sun may burn strongly for an hour or 
 two at midday, the mercury runs down thirty degrees 
 at dusk, and in your tent or draughty bungalow you 
 shiver under your rugs and blankets. The unwary 
 voyager, coming out with only thin flannels, to match 
 his conception of the Indian climate at all seasons, finds 
 himself hurrying to the bazaar, and is thankful for the 
 poshtin, the coat of sheepskin and embroidered yellow 
 leather, which he can buy for a few rupees. 
 
 It is a country that straightens a man's back and 
 strings up his muscles. There is no softness in the town, 
 the people, the atmosphere of Peshawar. We have left 
 the region of bright colours and smooth faces behind us, 
 the gay cotton robes, the green, and orange, and crimson 
 turbans of Eajputana, the shrewd Marwari merchants and
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 143 
 
 the sleek Hindu tradesmen. When the Prince of Wales 
 held his first reception at Peshawar we had a scene till 
 then unfamiliar to us in India. Here was no galaxy of 
 corpulent notables, shining in silks and brocaded satins, 
 and hung round with jewels. The Border chiefs, who 
 offered their packet of gold coins, or put forward their 
 sword-hilts for the Prince to touch, did not make a 
 decorative group, if judged by their costumes. Most of 
 them were plainly, some were even shabbily, dressed ; and 
 they stumbled into the Royal presence, these wild men 
 of the hills, with none of the self-confident ease of the 
 down-country rajas. I noticed that not one of them 
 paid the least attention to the Royal lady sitting beside 
 the Prince ; indeed, they seemed too nervous to salute 
 her, though, perhaps, being Mohammedans, they might 
 have deemed it contrary to etiquette to recognise her 
 presence in any way. They looked as if they would have 
 been far more in their element leading their tribesmen in 
 a foray against a neighbouring clan, or lurking among the 
 rocks to cut off a convoy. Both occupations are familiar 
 to most of them. If they were not decorative, they were 
 eminently interesting : tall and sinewy, with fierce keen 
 eyes, they moved with the step of the mountaineer and 
 the unconscious dignity of men sprung from generations 
 of free and fighting ancestors. 
 
 Just now our frontier officials have a good under- 
 standing with these chiefs, who are helping to guard the 
 roads through the mountains, and are doing their best 
 to keep their people from interfering with traders and 
 travellers. But their own feuds are carried on ener- 
 getically, and life is ruthlessly sacrificed. At the very 
 moment when the Prince was at Peshawar two of the 
 tribes were at war, though they had very courteously 
 agreed on a week's truce so that his Royal Highness 
 might not be incommoded in his journey through the
 
 144 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Khyber Pass. In our passage along that famous defile 
 we could see the little shelter-trenches up the hillside 
 which the belligerents had dug for the greater convenience 
 of pursuing their warlike operations. In a country like 
 this perpetual vigilance is required. When the Prince 
 drove through the streets of Peshawar to the Ghor Kattri, 
 where General Avitabile, in the days of Eanjit Singh, 
 used to have his weekly hangings, the streets were guarded 
 by the Black Watch, the Gordons, and the 37th Dogras. 
 
 The Highlanders and the Hindu troops stood in a close 
 line, and behind them were rows of tall Pathans, gaunt 
 and bony, with keen eyes and vulturine Semitic beaks. 
 The soldiers had ball-cartridge in their pouches, and 
 the people were kept sternly from coming too near the 
 edge of the pavement. These precautionary measures 
 were not directed against any organised disaffection, which 
 nobody for a moment expected. But it was necessary to 
 provide against the contingency of an isolated outbreak of 
 infuriated fanaticism. An Afghan Mussulman may go 
 Ghazi at any moment. When he does so, he becomes 
 the most dangerous creature that walks the earth not 
 so much a lunatic as a demoniac, under the influence of 
 an irresistible hypnotic suggestion which impels him first 
 to kill an infidel and then to get killed himself, in order 
 that he may go straight to Paradise. Even when the 
 Border in a general way is quite tranquil, a single Ghazi 
 may break out and destroy a valuable life or two before 
 he can be shot or knocked on the head like a mad dog. 
 
 An officer of one of the local corps told me that he 
 never took the short ride from Peshawar to Jamrud, which 
 is regular British territory, and ordinarily undisturbed, 
 without a loaded revolver on his person ; for a Ghazi 
 might pop out even there, and he did not wish to afford 
 the public the undignified spectacle of an Englishman 
 bolting before a screaming fanatic. Against the Ghazi
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 145 
 
 the white man unprovided with firearms has no chance. 
 He can only run away. 
 
 So the Prince and Princess were well guarded all the 
 time they were on the frontier. Even at the garden- 
 party in the grounds of Government House precautions 
 were unobtrusively observed. It was odd to notice that 
 the attendants and Eoyal servants were armed, at what 
 was otherwise a very English-seeming entertainment. 
 The menace of the Frontier was forgotten as one paced 
 the smooth lawns behind Government House, dotted with 
 groups of ladies in charming summer dresses, with officers 
 in uniform, and with frock-coated civilians, listening to 
 the military bands and the pipers of the Highlanders. 
 Peshawar is characteristically Asiatic, but its European 
 quarters have a homelike air. The cantonments are 
 among the most delightful in India, with their wide 
 avenues lined with trees that keep their greenery in this 
 northern climate, and their bungalows set in gardens 
 where the English flowers bloom. 
 
 It is strange to pass from the pleasant umbrageous 
 suburbs to the Mohammedan city, with its flat-roofed 
 houses of sun-dried brick, looking down from loop-holed 
 windows and jealously latticed casements upon the stream 
 of mixed Asian humanity Afghan, Afridi, Mongolian, 
 Hindu flowing through the narrow streets and the dark 
 alleys in which a European ig warned that it is wiser not 
 to walk after dusk. 
 
 And whenever you cast your eyes upwards in Peshawar, 
 the dragon-teeth of the hills are before you. From the 
 gate of the Ghor Kattri, or the roof of the barracks, or 
 the bastions of the fortress, the mountain-barrier fronts 
 you, grey-green in the morning, golden brown in the day, 
 glowing with rose and reddened umber at sunset ; and 
 Peshawar is an historic city, because it faces the breach 
 in that wall of sandstone and shales by which the men
 
 146 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 of the north have been marching upon the plains of India 
 since history began. The Scythian, the Tartar, the Arab, 
 the Moghul, the Persian have come that way. The 
 Afghan would sweep through it to-morrow if the sentinels 
 of Peshawar were withdrawn. 
 
 Yet there is little to see in the Khyber Pass itself, and 
 no memorial of all the triumphant or dejected pilgrims who 
 have traversed its stony sands. From Peshawar the rail- 
 way leads across some dozen miles of rough pasture and 
 arable land, which is dead level plain to the very foot of 
 the hills. Here stands the fort of Jamrud, looking like a 
 great battleship anchored at the mouth of the dangerous 
 strait. The road, which English engineers have made, 
 goes winding up between barren hills, treeless and bare to 
 the summits which Pollock crowned with his infantry 
 and batteries, when he forced the Pass on his way to 
 relieve Jellalabad in 1842. At intervals there is one of 
 those fortified farms, with round towers, like the peels of 
 the Scottish border, in which the women and the cattle 
 can be placed at night. 
 
 Nothing tells more strongly of the insecurity of the 
 country than these embattled dwellings. After the great 
 tribal rising in 1897, when we were driven clean out of 
 the Khyber by a sudden wave of Moslem fanaticism, 
 many of the towers were demolished ; but we have per- 
 mitted new ones to be erected, nor, indeed, could we well 
 forbid it, since we do not hold the Afridi country, but have 
 only preserved a right of way through the Pass itself. We 
 guard the road, and punish any breach of the peace fifty 
 yards on either side of it. Beyond this narrow ribbon 
 we do not assert our authority, and if the tribesmen shoot 
 each other outside the limit we make it no business of 
 ours. Along the Pass itself British forts, crenellated and 
 machicolated, with loopholed walls and steel shutters 
 for protection against musketry fire at close quarters,
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 147 
 
 alternate with the native strongholds. At Ali Masjid, in 
 the middle of the valley, which was sacked by the tribes- 
 men in 1897, there are now barracks and a permanent 
 garrison. Here the mountains rise higher and the scenery 
 gains in boldness ; and thence onward, past gorge and 
 jutting mass of rock and deep chasm, the skilful spirals 
 of the road twist and turn, till it opens upon a fine 
 basin, in the midst of which stands Landi Kotal, on the 
 edge of Afghanistan, the last outpost of Britain on the 
 road from Central Asia. 
 
 The Wardens of the Marches that is to say, the Chief 
 Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province and 
 the Political Officer of the Khyber district had resolved 
 that no risks should be taken when the Prince drove 
 through the Pass. In the ordinary way the Khyber is 
 guarded twice a week ; sentries are posted and pickets are 
 out on those two days, and then it is safe for the tourist to 
 take his tonga through, and for the great caravan from 
 Central Asia, with its train of laden Bactrian camels, its 
 horses, and its pack-mules, to plough slowly over the sand 
 to Peshawar Bazaar and Eailway Station. On this Monday 
 in December, the royal cortege went by under the watch- 
 ful eyes of a small army of troops. There was a line of 
 sentries all the way along a few yards above the roadside, 
 and if the eye travelled upwards, on every conspicuous 
 height or jutting fragment of rock, it picked out the khaki 
 uniforms and glinting bayonets of other sentries. Minute 
 figures, perched two thousand feet in the air, were pre- 
 senting arms to the procession that must have looked like 
 a train of toy carriages in the dusty thread of road below 
 them. These were the men of the Khyber Kifles. The 
 whole seventeen hundred of them were on duty that 
 day ; and we knew, though we could not see them, that 
 an equal number of the tribal levies formed an outer 
 cordon on the farther heights beyond.
 
 148 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 If the Prince was well defended, his defenders them- 
 selves were those who had been, many of them, fierce 
 enemies of the rule and the civilisation he represents. 
 There was an interesting scene at Ali Masjid, where the 
 maliks or headmen of the Zakka Khel, the Kubri Khel, 
 the Sipah, and other wild clans, assembled to offer their 
 nazar of sheep and honey to the Prince, and to assure 
 him of their loyalty. ' Though I am blind,' said one fine 
 old sightless patriarch, ' I can touch the hand of my 
 king.' The Khyber Rifles themselves are Afridis, who 
 have been taken into our pay and drilled and disciplined 
 under our officers. It is the policy which made the Black 
 Watch and the Gordons out of the caterans and cattle- 
 raiders of the Scottish Highlands, and it seems to be 
 succeeding almost as well. A handful of young English 
 officers are turning the savages into first-rate British 
 soldiers orderly, obedient, and proud of their service. 
 When you look at these admirable battalions of disci- 
 plined infantry, with their two squadrons of smart cavalry, 
 you find it hard to believe that these are the own brothers 
 and cousins of the long-haired picturesque barbarians 
 who come out from their hamlets to stare at the Eoyal 
 travellers. 
 
 And the men who have done this thing ? We saw , 
 some of them at Landi Kotal, by the Afghan end of the 
 Pass. It is a desolate place enough, this lonely sentry- 
 box on the Empire's rim. All round it are the brown 
 bare mountains, spotted with stunted trees and wispy 
 bushes of camel-thorn ; in front is Afghanistan and the 
 unknown dangers beyond ; behind, the long sandy path 
 that goes snaking through the hills and is the only way 
 back to India and home. In this forlorn abiding-place 
 you will find the British subaltern, neat and cool and 
 comfortable, a boy with clear cheeks and smooth hair, 
 who handles his half-hundred wind-baked ruffians much
 
 ON THE FRONTIER 149 
 
 as if they were the Second Eleven and he their captain. 
 He has to be something of a linguist, an ethnologist, a 
 cartographer, a diplomatist, this cheerful youngster; he 
 may be shot down by a stray sniper from the hills any 
 morning as he goes his rounds ; he has no one to talk to 
 but three or four of his own comrades, no society, no 
 amusements, hardly any leisure ; he is always drilling his 
 men, or teaching thviin, or making up their accounts, or 
 finding out what n?.ischief is brewing among the villages. 
 His life is as hard and as busy as that of the juniors in 
 the ward-room of a man-of-war ; he takes it with the 
 same reserved vivacity ; he keeps his health, his manners, 
 his sense of humour. There are those who say that 
 the young British officer is always foolish and always 
 idle. They should go and look at him in India, and, 
 above all, on the Frontier.
 
 CHAPTER XT. 
 SEPOY AND SOWAB 
 
 IT is a truism to say that we hold India by the sword ; 
 and, like other truisms, it is often forgotten and often mis- 
 understood. It does not mean, for example, that we rule 
 India by mere armed strength against the will of the 
 majority of its population, as the Sultan of Turkey rules 
 Albania. Nor does it mean that any large proportion 
 of our subjects are only deterred from rising against us 
 by the certainty that we should shoot them down if they 
 did so. Not in that sense do we govern India by force. 
 We are the masters of India because we control the 
 administration and have got the executive authority into 
 our hands. 
 
 Of the inhabitants of the sub-continent, five-sixths 
 have for centuries lived and died under alien domination. 
 We are the substitutes for various sovereigns and dynas- 
 ties, all of whom were foreigners as much as we are to 
 the mass of those who yielded them obedience. Two 
 hundred and fifty millions of the peasantry of India have 
 never known political freedom and have never known 
 native government. We took no independence from them, 
 for they had none. All that we have done has been to 
 put ourselves in the place of other despots, whose title, like 
 our own, rested in the last resort on military efficiency. 
 If we hold India by the sword, the point and edge of 
 the weapon are not turned against the ' Indian people ' 
 (which does not exist), but against potential rivals, 
 
 150
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 151 
 
 within and without, who would wrest it from us in order 
 that they might grasp the hilt themselves. 
 
 Yet it is true enough that the mainstay and sheet- 
 anchor of our position in India is the British-Indian 
 Army. If there is any force, within the confines of 
 the territory itself, or within accessible distance, which 
 could overcome that army, our civil administration, our 
 public works, our law, justice, and education, would melt 
 away like the winter snows in spring. All that we have 
 done, all that we may do, in India rests on the basis of 
 that armed power. We make, as I have pointed out, no 
 ostentatious display of it. How little we need to use it 
 against the vast and obedient multitude of our subjects 
 is shown by the almost ridiculous paucity of our garrison 
 in the Plains. It may still be said to-day, as it was by 
 Sir William Hunter a few years ago, that in Bengal 
 ' probably forty millions of people go through life without 
 once seeing the gleam of a bayonet or the face of a 
 soldier.' But those whose interest or whose business it 
 might be to make prey of that forty millions, know where 
 the bayonets gleam; they are aware that they will do 
 well not to look on the faces of British soldiers except 
 in the way of friendship. 
 
 Fortunately, we have enlisted the militant instincts of 
 many of the natives in our own service. The sword 
 which Britain wields in Asia is largely in Asiatic hands. 
 It is not till you have seen something of our Eastern 
 army at close quarters that you realise the excellence of 
 the material at our command. Two-thirds of our army 
 in India is native ; the rest is European. Of the latter, 
 not much need be said. The effectiveness of our British 
 infantry battalions, of our regiments of Lancers and 
 Hussars, and our batteries of Royal Artillery, depends on 
 the administration of the War Office at home, and on the 
 quality of suitable recruits it is able to attract to the
 
 152 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 colours. The officers and men are not very different from 
 their comrades at Aldershot and the Curragh. 
 
 Such variation as one can discern is all in favour of the 
 Indian contingent. For the regiments have been picked 
 and weeded over before they leave their depots ; they have 
 ampler space and latitude for training and drill ; they 
 live under something much more nearly resembling 
 service conditions, and they are hardened by abundant 
 exercise in the open air. The Scottish and Irish lads, the 
 Cockneys, and the young fellows from the villages, are 
 tougher and stronger and more soldier-like than they 
 appear in the old country. I saw the Queen's, the 
 Dorsets, and the Cameronians march past in the great 
 Eeview at Eawul Pindi on December 8, after days of 
 marching and sham-fighting in the sun and the awful 
 Indian dust, and after bivouacking on the bare hillside at 
 night, without tents or blankets. A smarter, cheerier, 
 more workmanlike, lot of infantry soldiers it would be 
 hard to find. And when the batteries of the Royal 
 Artillery thundered by, every trace taut, every horse 
 extended at a pounding gallop, one could not doubt that 
 the guns dancing behind the racing teams would be un- 
 commonly well served when the word was Action Front. 
 Excellent troops if only there were enough of them to 
 fill up the gaps when this admirable first line begins to 
 feel the waste of war. As for the officers, they are much 
 like their brothers and cousins at home : clean, pleasant, 
 well-mannered, good-tempered youths, sport-loving, 
 manly, a little ' casual ' about their work, but showing 
 signs of the sobering effect produced by the change in 
 their environment. India is a serious country for the 
 Englishman of every grade, and he cannot take his re- 
 sponsibilities too lightly. 
 
 You notice, however, a perceptible contrast between 
 the officers of the Home, and those of the Indian, Army.
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 153 
 
 With these latter the amateurishness of the British sub- 
 altern has gone by the board. You feel at once that you 
 are in the presence of men, who make soldiering their 
 business and have no other interest in life which can in 
 the smallest degree compete with it. Neither French 
 officers, nor Germans, nor Japanese are more candidly 
 professional. There is no affectation of regarding the 
 regiment as a nuisance, no abhorrence of talking shop. 
 On the contrary, the Indian subaltern will talk shop all 
 day if you will let him. Polo, racing, hunting, pig-sticking 
 may interest him ; but these things are his amusements ; 
 he does not pretend to live for them, and would not be 
 respected by his fellows if he did. 
 
 His thoughts and the most of his time are occupied 
 with his duties, as is the case with his kinsmen who wear 
 His Majesty's uniform on board His Majesty's ships of 
 war. Indeed, he has many points of affinity with the 
 naval officer, and I am struck by his resemblance to that 
 admirable public servant. Like the sailor, he is kept in 
 order by those two potent stimulants, poverty and work. 
 The Indian officer is usually poor ; he would not be in 
 India if he were not. A large majority of the men of the 
 Staff Corps (to use the term which is still current, though 
 it was officially abolished in 1903), I am assured, live on 
 their pay. One hears cases of captains, married and with 
 children, supporting themselves on a salary and allow- 
 ances which, all told, would not reach four hundred a 
 year ; of youngsters living on half that sum, and this in 
 a country where horses and many servants are necessary. 
 
 Further, the Indian lieutenant, like his friend in the 
 ward-room, cannot play with his duties. He is responsible 
 for some six-score of semi-savage Pathans, or dour hard- 
 bitten Sikhs, or wild Punjabi Mohammedans. He has no 
 European sergeants to take the rough work off his hands. 
 The oldest bearded native resaldar-major, a gentleman
 
 154 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and a landed proprietor in his own district and a soldier 
 of twenty years' service in the regiment, may come to 
 the boy for orders. He has to be drill-instructor, and 
 riding-master, and musketry expert, and accountant ; and 
 all his men, and their horses, and their rifles, and, to 
 some extent, their morals, are under his charge. And he 
 toils, so far as the climate will allow him, from morning 
 till night. 
 
 In the hot season there is not so much doing, and it 
 is the wise policy of the authorities to permit him to take 
 plenty of leave at this period, and to keep in touch with 
 European ideas and military developments by getting a 
 few weeks at home every third year or so. But in the 
 cold weather he is always at it. Early-morning parades, 
 drill, target-practice, stable-inspections, teaching recruits, 
 checking accounts for stores and forage, and a vast amount 
 of office-work (far too much of it, some good judges think), 
 leave him little time for recreation. If he can get an 
 hour or two at polo or hookey in the afternoon, and now 
 and then a game at whist or bridge, he may consider 
 himself lucky. 
 
 The staff are no less sedulous. One officer told me 
 that it is his custom to begin work soon after six in the 
 morning, and, except for his meals and a break of an 
 hour or two before dinner, he is busy till ten o'clock at 
 night. People who think that military men are mainly 
 occupied in amusing themselves should see the officers of 
 the Indian Native Army in camp or at headquarters. 
 They cannot afford to be dissipated, and they have no 
 time to be idle. But their work, if hard, is interesting. 
 It trains the character and the brain, provided only that 
 a man has an adequate supply of both to start with. If 
 he is not so furnished he will do little good in the Indian 
 Army, and it generally contrives to get rid of him. 
 Industry, self-reliance, intelligence, a knowledge of human
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 155 
 
 nature, and a sense of humour, are requisite for success 
 in that exacting school, and these qualities seem to be 
 developed there. 
 
 An Indian regiment, with its eight or nine hundred 
 bayonets, or its five or six hundred sabres, is under the 
 charge of from nine to thirteen Europeans, including the 
 colonel, the surgeon, and the adjutant. The rest are 
 natives. They come from a comparatively limited section 
 of the population. Bengal, with its eighty millions, 
 hardly supplies a sepoy or a sowar, Madras very few, 
 Bombay not many. The great majority are from the 
 Punjab and the northern frontier districts and from Oudh. 
 They are members of the fighting races, some of whom 
 have once ruled India, while others would make a fair 
 bid to do it again, if they had the chance. The Pathans 
 of the hill border, the Sikhs, the Dogras, the Kajputs, the 
 Gurkhas, and the Punjabi Mohammedans, descendants of 
 Afghan or Tartar invaders, are the chief elements. The 
 Punjabis and the Pathans believe in the Prophet ; the 
 Sikhs, Dogras, and Rajputs believe in Vishnu and Siva ; 
 the Gurkhas believe in nothing in particular except their 
 own officers. In Central India some of the aboriginals 
 have been drilled, and in Madras there are regiments in 
 which ' Pariahs and Christians ' and other miscellaneous 
 folk are enlisted. 
 
 But the staple of the Indian Army consists of these 
 aforesaid Sikhs, Pathans, Punjabis, and Gurkhas. In the 
 old days there were mostly ' class regiments ' formed 
 entirely of men of the same race and religion. Since the 
 Mutiny we have preferred a judicious mixture, making up 
 many of the regiments with companies each drawn from 
 the same sect or tribe, the idea being generally to keep 
 a balance of Mohammedans and Hindus in the corps. 
 The Gurkhas are all class regiments still, because we have 
 the greatest confidence in the little yellow Mongolians,
 
 156 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 who would not serve with either Hindus or Mohammedans, 
 and have no sort of respect for either. The Gurkha deems 
 himself one of the sahib-log. He will not wear the turban 
 of the Asiatic peoples, though he has no objection to the 
 helmet, or the round cap, or the South African slouch 
 hat, or any other hideous headgear of civilised Western 
 man. 
 
 Better troops than some of those belonging to these 
 warlike races few armies in the world possess. The 
 Gurkha looks in all respects precisely like the Japanese, 
 and is as tenacious, as brave, and as invincibly cheerful. 
 The Pathans are wiry hillmen, born fighters, and full of 
 dash and mettle ; and the Sikhs, in regard to physique 
 and bearing, would give points to most European regi- 
 ments, including our own and the Prussian Guards. 
 
 Whether these soldiers would really hold their own 
 with white troops no one can say, for the quality of the 
 Indian Army has not been tried by that test. But one 
 cannot see why they should fail under it. They drill as 
 well as any Europeans, and they ride and shoot and march 
 better than most. Opinions may differ as to the precise 
 value of the tactical and strategical training they receive. 
 
 The verdict of some military experts present during 
 the great manoauvres near Bawul Pindi was not, I be- 
 lieve, quite favourable. They suggested that there was 
 too much of the old Aldershot unreality about the whole 
 transaction, that cavalry enacted impossible spectacular 
 charges, that infantry were tranquilly deployed, under the 
 fire of heavy artillery, before impregnable positions. As 
 to the supreme administration, as everybody knows, it has 
 formed the subject of embittered controversy of late, and 
 there are those who say that the internal economy of the 
 Indian War Office needs reform as much as that of the 
 establishments in Pall Mall and Whitehall. But I am 
 sure that the fifty-seven thousand men who marched past
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 157 
 
 the Prince of Wales at the great review constituted as fine 
 a host as any nation need wish to have when doing battle 
 for its life. The organisation may need improvement, 
 but the material is not far short of the best. 
 
 Indeed, the Indian trooper or sepoy will compare, in 
 some particulars, rather favourably with Tommy of the 
 Line. He is drawn from, speaking relatively, a superior 
 class of society ; he respects himself more, and is, I think, 
 also held in more respect by his officers. You will not 
 often find a subaltern of an English regiment eager to 
 assert that his men are the finest fellows in the world. 
 But I have scarcely met an officer of the Indian Army 
 who does not hold that opinion ; nor does he usually 
 hesitate to give audible expression to it. The ingenuous 
 youth, who is responsible for a double company of Gurkhas, 
 is an enthusiastic eulogist of the men of Nepaul. The 
 squadron-leader, who rides in front of a hundred hook- 
 nosed Afghans, assures you that there are no soldiers like 
 his Pathans. I look back to a delightful hour on a sunny 
 verandah spent with an officer of Madras Pioneers, who 
 pointed out, at considerable length, the superiority of the 
 sturdy cheerful Tamils, unduly depreciated by the military 
 autocrats of the North, over turbulent Mussulmans and 
 uncomfortable high-caste Hindus. 
 
 The Indian officer has some reason to be proud of his 
 native comrade in arms. Pir Bukhsh or Ahmed Khan 
 is, taking him all round, a reputable person not without 
 honour in his own country. He does not come from the 
 residuum of the towns, but is, on the contrary, usually 
 sprung from a sturdy population of yeomanry and peasants. 
 Enlistment is for him not a final resource to avert starva- 
 tion, but the entry to a dignified and recognised profession. 
 It elevates rather than debases him in the social scale. 
 When he goes back to his village with a pension, after 
 carrying a lance or rifle for a dozen years, he will be
 
 158 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 treated with a certain amount of deference by his neigh- 
 bours, and will feel himself entitled to walk with a swagger 
 for the remainder of his days. In the ranks his conduct 
 is usually excellent. His discipline is good ; he revels in 
 his work, and is proud of it ; he keeps his uniform and 
 accoutrements spotless, and looks a soldier all over under 
 his dashing lunghi ; he is sober, temperate, and thrifty ; 
 he is often a married man, and when he takes his leave he 
 spends it in visiting his family and the paternal farm. If 
 he is in the cavalry, he is commonly a sort of gentleman, 
 belonging to the class of small landed proprietors, with an 
 hereditary predilection for the trade of arms. 
 
 Besides being one of the best of soldiers, he is also one 
 of the cheapest. In the infantry, the private receives nine 
 rupees say, twelve shillings a month, and out of that 
 sum he feeds and clothes himself. His rifle he receives 
 from the Government ; he is given a sum of forty rupees 
 on joining to provide himself with the rest of his equip- 
 ment, and an allowance of nine rupees a year to keep it in 
 order. The sowar has thirty-one rupees per mensem, and 
 he provides for his own clothing and maintenance, as well 
 as for the keep of his horse, half the wages of a syce 
 or camp-follower, and the food of a mule or pony ; there 
 being one attendant and one such animal for every two 
 troopers. When on active service he receives his rations, 
 and at other times a small allowance to supplement the 
 cost of forage if the price rises beyond a certain level. 
 Otherwise, the Sirkar gets this excellent trooper, his horse, 
 his clothing, his food, his half-mule, and his half-follower, 
 at an inclusive charge of less than twenty-four guineas 
 per annum, which does not seem excessive. 
 
 The cavalry regiments, except in Madras, are organised 
 on what is called the Silladar system. Instead of bringing 
 his own horse, the sowar pays two hundred rupees into a 
 common regimental fund. Out of this fund the regiment
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 159 
 
 buys the charger for him and other necessary equip- 
 ment, repaying itself by deducting the amount from his 
 monthly pay. If he loses his horse on active service, the 
 Government supplies him with another; should the 
 accident occur in peace time, an inquiry is held, and if it 
 is proved to be due to any preventable cause the sowar 
 obtains another animal from the regimental fund, but he 
 has to pay for it by monthly stoppages. This naturally 
 renders the troopers extremely careful of their mounts, 
 and better horse-masters than the men of the Indian 
 cavalry are not to be found. They ride light for their 
 height, with no superfluous baggage, and they never miss 
 a convenient opportunity of saving their horses by dis- 
 mounting, when an English Hussar would be sitting 
 stolidly, ,all the twelve stone of him, in the saddle. 
 
 The Silladar organisation cares for the interests of the 
 rank and file in various ways. Some regiments keep their 
 own stud-farms and remount establishments, under the 
 charge of a non-com, and a few pensioners of the corps. 
 Nearly all buy grain and forage and clothing material in 
 large quantities and retail it to the men at a reasonable 
 rate. The whole arrangement is under the superintend- 
 ence of the European officers, which is one of the reasons 
 why the regiment works together in a kind of family 
 union. When the trooper takes his discharge from the 
 colours, his horse, or what is left of it, goes back to the 
 regiment, and he receives the balance of his two hundred 
 rupees deposit. 
 
 Thus Pir Bukhsh may return to his village with a 
 small capital, as well as his pension. He often buys a 
 small plot of land, if he has not inherited one, and lives 
 in moderate prosperity, provided he keeps out of the 
 hands of the moneylenders. He brings his old cavalry 
 sabre with him, and sometimes he takes it down and 
 cleans it carefully, regaling his sons with stories of the
 
 160 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 warlike exploits performed by him in the regiment under 
 Captain Eshmitt or Captain Estewart, and of the singular 
 and special notice which he, the said Pir Bukhsh, received 
 from the Colonel, and even from the great ' Lat Sahib ' 
 himself, when he was detailed to do duty as orderly to 
 that commander. Then in the fulness of time, perhaps, 
 young Smith or young Stewart, now leader of his father's 
 troop, despatches a native officer to the village, with an 
 intimation that a few recruits would be welcome ; and the 
 veteran sells a bullock or two, scrapes together the neces- 
 sary entrance-money, and sends off the likeliest of his 
 boys, with his blessing, to become a soldier of the Em- 
 peror, like himself. 
 
 There are rumours that it is proposed to abolish the 
 Silladar system. But it seems incredible that any such 
 mischievous project should be seriously entertained. Good 
 judges are convinced that it would be the ruin of the 
 native cavalry. The soldier likes to think that he is 
 serving the Sirkar in the old feudal fashion, which we did 
 not invent, but only inherited with some modifications 
 from our predecessors in the government of India. He 
 would deeply resent the idea of being converted, as he 
 indignantly puts it, into a mere paid servant like any 
 coolie or table-waiter. 
 
 Promotion in the Indian Army is from the ranks. 
 The ambitious young native gentleman who aspires to a 
 military career enlists as a private, perhaps bringing 
 with him a welcome contribution of a dozen or twenty of 
 his father's retainers and dependants. He is naturally 
 marked out for promotion from the beginning ; and if he 
 is intelligent and attentive, and shows some aptitude for 
 command, he soon rises. Presently he becomes a naik or 
 duffadar, and in due course havildar, jemadar, and subadar, 
 or resaldar-major. Even higher honours may await him. 
 Dining with a general commanding one of the most
 
 SEPOY AND SOWAR 161 
 
 important military districts in India, I found his Moham- 
 medan aide-de-camp at the table, and treated by every- 
 body the general himself, the ladies of his family, and 
 his guests on precisely the same footing as the English 
 members of the staff. Though he was a young Border 
 noble, of ancient descent and some fortune, he had gone 
 through the ranks and carried a rifle like any peasant 
 recruit from the mountain hamlets on his estate. 
 
 But the Indian Army has been suffering of late 
 from a recruiting difficulty of its own. In India we are 
 drawing our contingent from a somewhat constricted 
 circle. We depend more and more upon the ' fighting 
 races,' and these form only a small fraction of the vast 
 population of the Empire. And the proportion has been 
 steadily diminishing of late years. The Mahrattas, once 
 great warriors, now prefer intrigue and other civil pur- 
 suits ; the .Rajputs, a fine people but no longer quite what 
 they were, do not now enter our armies as freely as in 
 former times ; the high-caste Hindus, the Brahmans and 
 ' Pandies,' who formed the staple of the old pre-Mutiny 
 army, scarcely offer themselves at all. Thus we are rely- 
 ing mainly on the two hill-peoples beyond the frontier, 
 the Pathans and the Gurkhas, whose numbers are limited, 
 and on the Sikhs and Punjab Mohammedans. The Sikhs 
 are brave and excellent soldiers ; but they are also keen 
 lovers of money, and they are finding many profitable 
 avenues open to them as policemen, railway servants, and 
 watchmen. 
 
 There is another difficulty, of which one hears a good 
 deal just now. The pay of the Indian soldier has not 
 kept pace with the times and with the increased demands 
 made upon him. In this respect he suffers in company 
 with his own officers, and with most other persons in 
 official employment. Living in India, for native and 
 European alike, is no longer so cheap as it once was. Tie 
 
 F
 
 162 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 cost of everything has increased, including that of food 
 and clothes and lodgings. The native soldier is not 
 now able to buy grain and condiments, sufficient to keep 
 him in health, for twopence a day; he finds himself a 
 badly paid man in comparison with a mill-hand or a 
 domestic servant. 
 
 He has also another special grievance. Military 
 training, in every modern army, is and must be more 
 exacting than it used to be. Under the new regime, the 
 regiments are constantly at work, on parades and field 
 exercises, in practising night attacks, route marches, en- 
 trenching operations. This means more destruction of 
 clothing and kit, more wear and tear of horses and shoe- 
 leather, and more food for man and beast ; for the Indian 
 native, in his wisdom, adjusts his consumption of food to 
 the amount of muscular energy he requires to produce. 
 Thus the soldier is put to greater expense in many ways, 
 and instead of saving a few annas at the end of the month, 
 he may find himself with a deficit. Happily the remedy 
 is easy. The Indian Government must contrive to add 
 another rupee or two to the monthly wages of its native 
 troops. Aid while it is so engaged, it might usefully 
 make some improvement in the pay and allowances of the 
 hardworking corps of European officers, who have made 
 its military establishment, with all its defects, one of the 
 finest working armies in the world.
 
 CHAPTER XH 
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 
 DELHI, NEW AND OLD 
 
 FROM the wild Northland, with its whisperings of the 
 wars to come, the Prince of Wales passed down into the 
 Punjab, where almost every seamed and ravined plain, 
 and every devious spreading river, carries a memory of 
 triumphs and disasters in the past. The Indus, the 
 Sutlej, the Jhelam, the Kavi, the Jumna the very names 
 speak of ' the drums and tramplings of a thousand con- 
 quests.' Afghans, Sikhs, Tartars, Rajputs, Mahrattas, and 
 English, have poured their blood into the sandy lagoons 
 of the great watercourses. The Prince might have 
 mused (if the crowded days of a Royal progress yield time 
 for musing) on the strange fate which makes him heir to 
 the thrones of Akbar and Aurangzeb. It is as if, in some 
 distant century, a Mikado of Japan were to visit his 
 subjects among the palaces and churches of Rome, as 
 perhaps (who knows ?) he may. 
 
 Rome herself has scarcely a stronger appeal to offer to 
 the imagination than some of these storied cities of north- 
 ern India. The view over the Campagna, with its halting 
 legions of broken arches and riven columns, is little more 
 impressive than that which lies before the watcher from 
 the minarets of the Jamrna Masjid at Delhi. The history 
 of many ages is in that wide prospect. Close below is 
 the splendid fort and palace, where the latter Mohammedan 
 
 168
 
 164 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Emperors ruled, the noble halls of Shah Jehan, first of 
 crowned builders and married lovers, and the maze of 
 rose-red courts above the river-bed, where the traditions 
 of the race of Timur flared up again for a brief revel of 
 murder and intrigue in the tragedy of 1857. To the 
 south, amid the wasit! of grey fields, are the ruins of the 
 older Delhis, mile after mile of remnants dropped, as it 
 were, by Hindu and Mohammedan kings in their transi- 
 tory conquests of this much-conquered land. Out from 
 Rome, along the Appian Way, you are among the tombs 
 of men and women ; but here you come upon a very 
 cemetery of cities, a graveyard stocked with the monu- 
 ments of dynasties and nations. 
 
 It is a book of torn and fading records, that sheet of 
 dusty earth beyond the Delhi Gate. Here and there is 
 an entry that resists the touch of time. Nearly a thousand 
 years ago a Hindu king laid an iron finger on the page, 
 when he planted a famous pillar forged from a single bar 
 of metal, with a vaunting inscription in Sanskrit. The 
 founders of the first Mohammedan Delhi, three centuries 
 later, di 1 not think it worth while to alter the legend or 
 deface its setting. The little Iron Pillar stands ; but 
 hard by, the Moslem Kutab Minar, the Tower of the 
 Faith, soars two hundred and forty feet aloft, decked out 
 for ever in a bannered pomp of red and orange and 
 purple and creamy white. Vend6me Columns and Nelson 
 Memorials and Teutonic Victory Denknials, even St. 
 Mark's Winged Lion ramping on his pole, seem tame 
 beside this cry of victory in coloured stone. Slender, 
 graceful, defiant, the brilliant shaft rears itself skyward, 
 with all the triumphant symbolism of that Moslem art, 
 which had learnt to express by line and tint the passions 
 and emotions it was forbidden to illustrate on the human 
 face and form. 
 
 Between the Kutab Minar and the Delhi Gate lies the
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 165 
 
 Tomb of Humayun, the second great Emperor of the 
 Tartar line. Oriental potentates are careful of their last 
 abiding-places. It is perhaps one phase of that yearning 
 for repose which haunts the Eastern temperament, at 
 once unquiet and indolent, and makes it so easily at home 
 with Death the Eeconciler. ' For now should I have 
 lain still and been quiet, I should have slept ; then had 
 I been at rest with kings and counsellors of the earth, 
 which built desolate places for themselves.' 
 
 The writer of the book of Job had doubtless looked 
 upon the Pyramids. But the tombs of the Moghul kings 
 of Hindustan, and those of their queens and ministers 
 and favourites, are by no means desolate places. On the 
 contrary, they are among the most beautiful objects that 
 the hand of man has created. The ' kings and coun- 
 sellors of the earth,' who dwelt while alive at Delhi 
 and Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, were epicures in graves. 
 To erect a splendid monument for themselves and their 
 wives was their hobby, their amusement, the occupation of 
 their leisure. From the battle and the march, the angry 
 struggle with intrigue and rival ambition, the fever of 
 sensual pleasure, they turned to contemplate the long 
 silences to come. Life was hurried and broken, full of 
 weariness and travail, menaced by murderous enmities. 
 For the fallen king or the fallen favourite there was 
 nothing to hope ; all that he had, or could leave, would 
 be at the mercy of his supplanter. But no Mohammedan 
 would desecrate a tomb. There, even the dethroned 
 monarch, the disgraced and condemned minister, could 
 sleep in peace. So all the resources of Moghul power 
 and taste were lavished upon the mausoleum. It is the 
 crowning achievement of Mohammedanism in the domain 
 of art, more beautiful and distinctive even than the 
 splendid mosques and palaces with which the Tartar 
 kings enriched Agra and Delhi.
 
 166 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Its site was laid in some delicious plot of garden- 
 ground, where the dark spires of the cypress and the 
 feathers of the neem tree are mirrored in the silvery gleam 
 of shallow waters poured through marble cisterns, and 
 where beds of flowering shrubs are set amid turf kept 
 green even in the tropic summer. Bound it was thrown 
 a high wall, crenellated like that of a fortress, with a 
 great red sandstone arch, itself a wonder of proportion and 
 design, standing on guard over the treasure within. 
 
 In the cool and silent space of verdure, behind the 
 doors of ebony or bronze, the Sultan built his shrine. 
 The cunning hands of Hindu workmen, whose fathers 
 had wrought in stone through buried centuries, were his 
 to command ; the old Indian patterns of deeply carved 
 balcony and incised bracket, and chased and fretted 
 surface-wall, were before him. To the rich but sternly 
 limited Brahmanic schemes the Moghuls added all the 
 refinements of later Saracenic art, in hovering domes and 
 sumptuous cusped arches and nobly aisled and vaulted 
 halls and delicate cupolas, poised lightly in mid-air, like 
 windflowers trembling on their stems. Skilful craftsmen 
 were brought from Baghdad and Samarkand, from Persia 
 and China and Arabia, even from Italy and France, to 
 perform miracles in inlaying and mosaic and plaster-work 
 and enamelling ; and Asia was ransacked for rare marbles 
 and jade and turquoise and jasper and lapis lazuli. 
 
 About the shrine itself was no hint of funeral gloom : 
 it was a casket, shining in ivory, like the Taj Mahal, or set 
 with jewellery, like the tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah at Agra, 
 or solemnly rich, like that of Akbar at Sikandra. While 
 he lived, the exquisite empty chamber was its owner's 
 garden-house and place of serene enjoyment ; when he 
 died, it became a sanctuary, where he could lie quiet 
 through the ages, behind the verses of the Koran traced 
 in flawless blue down the lintels of the doorway.
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 167 
 
 But as we gaze upon the distant dome of Humayun's 
 tomb, floating in the luminous haze of morning or the 
 amber and emerald of the sunset sky, we remember that 
 once, at least, the sanctuary was violated. It was from 
 these vaults, after Delhi had fallen, in September 1857, 
 that ' Hodson, of Hodson's Horse,' that dashing, daring, 
 reckless adventurer, dragged out the last of the Moghuls, 
 the puppet king who had been made the nominal head of 
 the rebellion. The coffin of his ancestor could not shield 
 the trembling old intriguer from the arm of England and 
 an English prison. Nor could it save his sons from a 
 darker doom. It was at Humayun's monument that the 
 princes were in hiding when this same Hodson sought 
 them out the following day. Tall and thin, with red hair, 
 and flaming blue eyes all alight with the concentrated 
 wrath that was burning in English hearts in that grim 
 autumn, a hundred of his wild horsemen at his heels, the 
 fierce guerilla chief burst into the crowd that beset the 
 mausoleum. Before that Spirit of Vengeance Moslem 
 fanaticism quailed. With ten men Hodson disarmed the 
 clamorous mob in the garden of the tomb, and took a 
 thousand swords and firearms from them. Then he 
 brought the fugitives through the throng, and carried 
 them on that famous and fatal drive to the Delhi Gate, 
 where he shot them with his own hand, while a host of 
 Mohammedans looked on, paralysed with fear and horror. 
 A bloody deed : but let us remember that it was the year 
 of the Cawnpore massacres before we pass hasty judgment 
 upon it and its author. 
 
 The mention of this lurid episode reminds us that he 
 who watches from the turrets of the great Delhi mosque 
 is not left alone with the buried past and the long- 
 forgotten dead. He can turn from the distant domes and 
 straggling ruins to look down into the Chandni Chauk, 
 the main street of the bazaar, swarming with eager life.
 
 168 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 He can see the laden bullock-carts, the carriages, and the 
 tongas, pushing their way through the broad crowded 
 street ; he can catch faintly the hum of voices that issues 
 from the chattering multi-coloured throng. And if he 
 casts his eyes northward, he is confronted with other 
 scenes which appeal to the imagination no less forcibly 
 than the ruined cities and lonely fanes of the southern 
 view, scenes, indeed, on which few Englishmen can look 
 for the first time without some quickening of the pulses. 
 
 Beyond the city on that side are leafy glades and 
 avenues, w T ith white bungalows and spreading suburban 
 parks. Here, among these gardens, is the grave of John 
 Nicholson; close by, in the compound of the building, 
 which is now a club, is the spot where the breaching 
 batteries were placed for the final bombardment of the 
 rebel town on September 11 and 12 in the Mutiny year. 
 Two hundred yards away is the old wall, still showing the 
 rents and gaps torn by the English guns ; and not far off 
 stands the famous Kashmir Gate, all shattered as it was 
 left on the night when Lieutenant Home and his hand- 
 ful of unnoticed heroes scrambled into the ditch with 
 their port-fires and fuses. That small building, again, 
 just inside the walls, near the yellow spire of St. John's 
 Church, is on the site of the Arsenal, which Willoughby 
 and a dozen other English lads blew up over their own 
 heads after holding it all night against a surging mob of 
 mutineers. 
 
 Somewhat farther round the wall used to stand the 
 Lahore Gate ; and there, if you poke about a little among 
 the dusty by-streets, you will come upon the narrow lane, 
 high houses on one side, the high rampart on the other 
 (and marksmen swarming upon both on that 14th of Sep- 
 tember, 1857), where Nicholson met his death. ' Showers 
 of grape tore their ranks open ; bullets flew down upon 
 them like hail from above ; stones and round-shot were
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 169 
 
 pitched among them ; two officers fell mortally wounded ; 
 five more were struck, and the shattered column, hurled 
 back in confusion, stood cowering under the storm. Then 
 Nicholson himself strode forward, and, raising his sword 
 above his head, indignantly appealed to them to advance. 
 In another moment he had fallen, shot through the chest.' 
 
 The actual spot you cannot make out from the minaret 
 platform ; but the Flagstaff Tower you can see, and all 
 the length of the Eidge, where the avenging force of 
 Britain, a mere skeleton of an army, hungry, fever- 
 stricken, harassed by daily attacks, ' stormed at by shot 
 and shell," tormented by the heat, clung desperately all 
 through that bitter summer of the Year Terrible. They 
 were not five thousand, British and native, at the 
 beginning, and never much more than eight thousand 
 to the close, many of them sick ; yet they pinioned, and 
 finally they captured, a city of two hundred thousand 
 people, with a garrison of at least fifty thousand angry 
 fanatics, armed like our own men, and drilled by our own 
 officers. A hopeless enterprise it seemed ; doomed to 
 failure. 
 
 It did not fail. The Kidge is green and grown with 
 waving trees to-day, and the curt record on the Mutiny 
 Memorial is idly read by a generation which has forgotten 
 the very names of the men who brought England and 
 India through the long agony of 1857. But their work 
 abides. Look from your lofty station, past their famous 
 tumulus, and you see the high roofs of factories where tall 
 chimneys are spouting the smoke of lignite coal in a black 
 stream across the sky-line. It is the ugly pennant of that 
 peaceful industrial India, which toils and pushes under 
 the strong rule for which the martyrs of '57 died. So in 
 Agra, from the Jasmine Tower of the Palace, itself a box 
 of gems, on one side of the river you look down to the 
 ' white wonder ' of the Taj ; and on the other side to a 
 
 F 2
 
 170 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 monstrous railway-bridge, strident, naked, unashamed, 
 and then again to great chimneys trailing their mephitic 
 mist above the lovely heads of minaret and mosque. 
 Here in Delhi we have an epitome of the three phases 
 of Indian development that concern us most : the India 
 of the older civilisations, to which it owes all it has 
 inherited of grace and beauty and devotion ; the India 
 of the long struggle, in which we rescued it from a fast- 
 devouring anarchy and gave it law and peace; and the 
 India of the New Age, which is that of mechanical 
 progress and modern industry. To reconcile the first 
 with the last is the problem before the Nicholsons, the 
 Lawrences, the Herbert Edwardeses of the future, and it 
 is one as hard as those their fathers faced in the days of 
 conquest and pacification. 
 
 THE DEAD CITY OF FATEHPUB SIKRI 
 
 India has many dead cities besides those which are 
 scattered upon the country south from Delhi. There is 
 the noble old capital of the Rajputs at Chitor, towering 
 over the circumjacent plain on its immense natural earth- 
 work, and Amber, near Jaipur, asleep among its green 
 deserted hills, and the huge fortress of Golconda, and 
 Vijayanagar, the once mighty centre of the Hindu 
 kingdom of Southern India, with its forest of ruined 
 temples, and various others. But none of these can vie 
 in impressiveness with Akbar's capital of Fatehpur 
 Sikri, some twenty miles from Agra. For the other 
 places are all more or less ruinous and time-worn. But 
 the palace of Fatehpur Sikri looks as it must almost 
 have done when it came fresh from the builder's hand 
 three centuries ago. There is no mould of decay upon 
 its walls, no broken arches or ruined columns or crumbling 
 ornaments. It lies too far in the wilderness for van-
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 171 
 
 dalism or barbaric spite to have wrecked it ; and the 
 clear dry air has dealt so lightly with the red sandstone 
 of its fabrics that it stands to-day intact in its desola- 
 tion an island fragment of the vanished Moghul Em- 
 pire. Dead and still it lies ; bare and cold its audience- 
 halls, its council-chambers, its galleries, its temples, its 
 baths and playing-grounds, and the cages of chiselled 
 stone where Akbar's women lived. It seems as if the 
 Destroying Angel had breathed upon it in a night and 
 swept all life out at a blast, leaving the cenotaph of 
 empty courts to stand in petrified perfection through 
 the ages. 
 
 It dates back to no very remote antiquity, and in this 
 it resembles all that is best in the architecture of 
 Northern India. What is old is, as a rule, interesting 
 only to the antiquary. Elizabeth had been Queen of 
 England six years when Akbar halted on his march at 
 the lonely village of Sikri, where the Sheik Salem 
 Chishti, a holy anchorite, prayed and fasted in his cave. 
 The Emperor had no male heir, and he consulted the 
 saint, who advised him to bring his Hindu or as some 
 say his Christian wife to Sikri. This was done, and in 
 due course a son, afterwards the Emperor Jehangir, was 
 born in the saint's cell. ' My revered father,' says 
 Jehangir in his Memoirs, ' regarding the village as for- 
 tunate to himself, made it his capital, and in the course 
 of fourteen or fifteen years the hills and deserts, which 
 abounded in beasts of prey, became converted into a 
 magnificent city.' It was called Fatehpur, the Town of 
 Victory, after Akbar's triumphs in Guzerat. 
 
 Magnificent indeed must have been the state which 
 the great Emperor maintained. It needs small exercise 
 of the imagination to conceive these halls and pavilions 
 glowing with silken hangings and gorgeous tapestries, 
 and the quadrangles and cloisters and vestibules glitter-
 
 172 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 ing with resplendent retainers and all the clashing bravery 
 of an Eastern Court. For Salem Chishti himself, when 
 in due course he passed into the Paradise of Moslem 
 saints, a shrine was prepared behind an exquisite screen of 
 marble lace-work. Though the glory of Fatehpur has 
 long departed, the saint is worshipped there still. Eound 
 the outside of the tomb numberless small wisps of string 
 and silk are twined into the trellis-work by childless 
 mothers who have prayed to the saint to help them in 
 their need, even as he helped Akbar the Emperor. Not 
 all the supplicants are Mohammedans and Hindus. They 
 showed me a knot of ribbon, which had been left by an 
 English lady, perhaps with some faint half-ironical hope 
 that the faith of her Eastern sisters in the virtues of the 
 saint might not be wholly vain. 
 
 The white tomb of Salem Chishti shines like some 
 delicate casket of crystal near a corner of the great quad- 
 rangle which Akbar drew round it. One face of this 
 square is formed by the Jamma Masjid, the Cathedral 
 Mosque, dedicated by the Emperor to the saint. It is 
 one of the noblest temples in the Moslem world, solemn, 
 simple, and dignified, with the lightly poised yet massive 
 domes of its three chapels and the rich severity of its 
 arabesque internal aisles and colonnades. But the 
 Mosque is almost dwarfed by the grand entrance-arch, 
 the Buland Darwaza, or Gate of Victory, which opens 
 on another side of the court. From within the immense 
 portal may look too large for its environment ; but seen 
 from outside, lifting itself aloft, a superb mass of ensan- 
 guined stone and marble, with the light playing on its 
 galleries and arcades, and the shadows lurking in its deep 
 recessed alcoves, it is overpowering in its magnificence, 
 the finest by far of the Moghul gateways, perhaps the 
 most splendid entrance-tower of the earth. In the effec- 
 tiveness of its position no other can surely compare with it.
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 173 
 
 The bare dusky plain stretches to the horizon in front of 
 the mighty arch, which must be visible for league upon 
 league, as it stands against the sky-line, heaved into mid- 
 air by the mound and broad flight of steps on which it 
 is raised aloft. 
 
 Through the wall of the great recess three doorways 
 are pierced. Over one of them, carved in Arabic charac- 
 ters, these words may be read : ' Said Jesus, on whom be 
 peace ! The world is a bridge, pass over it, but build 
 no house there." The Emperor was not a Christian, 
 though he had a Christian wife ; but he was an eclectic 
 in religions, a dabbler in many forms of faith, with a 
 turn for rationalism, mysticism, and occultism, and no 
 sympathy with the narrower forms of Mohammedan 
 puritanism. Yet he was devout, and a believer in the 
 things of the spirit. On another doorway of the Buland 
 Darwaza it is written : 
 
 He that standeth up in prayer and his heart is not in 
 it, does not draw nigh to God, but remaineth far from Him. 
 Thy best possession is what thou givest in the name of 
 God ; thy best traffic is selling this world for the next. 
 
 Strange to read these words of humility and devotion, and 
 to pass from the court of the Jamma Masjid into the 
 Palace and the Residency buildings. They bring before 
 us, with a weird emphasis, the manner in which the 
 Moghul rulers lived in the short summer of their power. 
 Here is the Daftar Khana, or Record Office, where Akbar 
 worked with his secretaries, and the Mahal-i-Khas, or 
 Private Apartments of the Emperor, with his sleeping 
 chamber, on the roof. We can see the Diwan-i-Khas, 
 or Hall of Private Audience, with a single column and 
 colossal bracket capital that carried Akbar's throne ; from 
 it there branched off stone gangways or bridges to the 
 corners of a gallery round the room, where (so it is said) the
 
 174 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 four chief ministers of the kingdom sat. We can look at 
 the Panch Mahal, a sort of grand-stand in stone, in which 
 five storeys are raised one above another, on columns 
 each carved to its own distinct elaborate design. From 
 these stages the ladies of the zenana would taste the 
 freshness of the evening air, and gaze down at the cere- 
 monies and revels in the courts below, and at the great 
 pachisi or chess-board marked out on the pavements, 
 where the game was played with slave-girls as the living 
 pawns and pieces. One can walk down to the Elephant 
 Gate, with its tower, bristling with stone teeth and tusks, 
 from which the Emperor used to shoot antelopes and 
 deer, driven up to him from the margin of the great 
 artificial lake. 
 
 There are many smaller separate dwellings scattered 
 about the enclosures : the Palace of the Hindu Minister ; 
 ' Miriam's House,' where perhaps the Christian wife lived, 
 with paintings on the walls supposed to be of Biblical 
 subjects ; and the so-called ' Turkish Sultana's House,' 
 with a covered passage to the royal private apartments, a 
 charmingjpe^e maison ornamented to the last square inch. 
 We ponder over the skilful labour that all this work must 
 have been for a multitude of diligent hands, and consider 
 what it meant to transform this desert rock into a palace 
 of art arid a pleasure-house ; and with a shock we realise 
 that all this was only to satisfy the caprice of an hour. 
 Scarcely was the costly toy made than it was thrown 
 aside, to lie abandoned on its dust-heap ever since. 
 
 Akbar held his court at Fatehpur Sikri for no more than 
 seventeen years, when he removed it to Agra. Some 
 accounts aver that the transfer was prompted by considera- 
 tion for the feelings of Saint Salem Chishti. The holy 
 man complained that the concourse of human beings in 
 the city and palaces disturbed his devotions, and that 
 either he or the Emperor must go elsewhere. ' Then,'
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 175 
 
 said Akbar, 'let it be your servant, I pray.' Eecent 
 inquirers have suggested 1 that the City of Victory was 
 more probably deserted because the water-supply was in- 
 adequate. Whatever the cause, there it stands, the most 
 splendid and striking testimony to that capricious and 
 irresponsible Eastern despotism, which could use the lives, 
 the labour, the destinies of men for its own purposes, and 
 sould at its will call rich and populous towns into being 
 in the wilderness and drop them back again into solitude 
 and silence. Nowhere does that come quite so clearly 
 before us as in the beautiful dead city which Akbar built 
 and left. 
 
 AGRA AND THE TAJ 
 
 But of the later Moslem art the crown and flower is 
 the Taj Mahal at Agra ; and of the Taj what is one to 
 say ? It is a thing whereof it is hard to write ; for no 
 writing can convey its peculiar and unique appeal to the 
 emotions. There was an instructive anecdote related to 
 me when I was at Agra. It was of a middle-class, middle- 
 aged American, probably from Chicago, and quite possibly, 
 when at home, in Pork. He was doing India rapidly, in 
 a shiny black coat, and with no outward traces of senti- 
 ment. To all appearance the price of commodities in- 
 terested him more than the customs of the East, and as 
 a subject of conversation at the club he preferred the 
 tariff to Indian art. No man could have been less readily 
 suspected of yielding to the emotions. Yet when they 
 took him to the Taj for the first time, on a night of moon 
 and stars, he gazed in blank silence for a space as he 
 came through the entrance portal. Then he lifted up 
 his voice and wept, disturbing the solemn stillness with 
 
 1 See Mr. E. B. Havell's excellent Handbook to Agra and the Neighbour- 
 hood, which contains an admirable and very well-written description of 
 Fatehpur Sikri.
 
 176 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 audible sobs and ejaculations. So at least the story was 
 given to me by a respectable resident in Agra, who was 
 himself present and witnessed the phenomenon. I had 
 no reason to suppose that he imagined this remarkable 
 incident, and, for my own part, I believed his tale. It is 
 not so difficult to credit when you have yourself seen the 
 Taj Mahal by moonlight. 
 
 There are some few things of this earth which cannot 
 be vulgarised, and chief among these is the Taj. Fami- 
 liarity does not touch the edge of its charm, or sully its 
 virginal freshness. One has seen it travestied a thousand 
 times, in feeble photograph, and libellous post-card, and 
 clumsy ' process ' print, and utterly inadequate water- 
 colour or oils. They cut it out of cardboard, or make a 
 miserable forlorn toy of it, in imitation marble, under 
 a deplorable glass shade, so that it seems fit only for the 
 lodging-house mantelpiece. It has been described to death, 
 and the late Sir Edwin Arnold assailed it with blank verse. 
 Tourists travel half round the globe to look at it and go 
 home to gush. If any object could awaken disillusion and 
 resentment by being known too well, that object should 
 be the Agra shrine. But it comes victoriously through 
 all. There is no spoiling it, any more than by the same 
 familiarity it is possible to spoil the Moonlight Sonata, or 
 Borneo and Juliet or the Sistine Madonna. 
 
 A healthy critical intellect, when all men combine to 
 praise, is inclined to question. Some people fortify them- 
 selves for a visit to the Taj by suspecting that much of 
 the admiration lavished on it is mere conventional 
 exaggeration, based on no definite conviction, and there is 
 a moment when the rationalist may think he did well to 
 be sceptical. The first view of the Taj, it is commonly 
 said, is ' disappointing.' That is because of the conditions 
 under which it is so often taken. The alert visitor, anxious 
 to lose no time, makes for the tomb as soon as possible
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 177 
 
 after his arrival in Agra. In the morning or early after- 
 noon he drives out from his hotel in a hired carriage, 
 which sets him down inside the outer courtyard by the 
 steps of the great entrance door. He has not noticed the 
 beauty of the approaches, nor can he spare an eye for 
 the quiet precincts, or the stone bells on their delicate 
 stalks at the corners of the garden wall, or the mosques 
 and chatris grouped about the central chapel ; scarcely 
 does he observe the noble gateway as he passes through 
 it with a hasty unilluminative glance. 
 
 Then he stops, with probably a gasp of amazement. 
 Is this the Wonder of the World, this smallish square 
 building, with its four dumpy cupolas huddling under the 
 dome, and its four cylindrical lighthouse towers, looking, 
 in the remorseless clearness of the atmosphere, dispro- 
 portionately distant from each other and the main edifice ? 
 The spectator, educated on soaring Gothic spires and 
 massive towers, on huge walls, opulent with flying but- 
 tress and springing arch and intricate ornamentation, is 
 apt to be taken aback by the restrained simplicity of the 
 white fabric that perches on its platform in front of him. 
 He is visited by the blasphemous thought that it is some- 
 what petty, that it is even (Heaven forgive him !) a 
 little hard and cold. The flaring sunlight is flung full 
 upon its gleaming surface, so that the shadows vanish, and 
 the recesses are flattened, and the angles come out with 
 unfaltering crudity. If he were to see it but once, and 
 see it like that, he would go away vexed with the Taj 
 Mahal, and smile derisively for ever after when he heard 
 its praises sung. 
 
 Kepentance comes speedily after that first full-faced 
 unsatisfying glance. It is born when you have crossed 
 the terrace, and passed out of the noonday glare into the 
 silent richness and sweet subdued glow of the interior. 
 Here the golden sunlight strays wandering in, filtered
 
 178 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 through thread-like trellises of marble, till the whole 
 chamber is full of a soft and luminous aether, free alike 
 from the levity of day and the gloom of night. In this 
 clear twilight dusk, all the lovely details of the decoration 
 are ' more expressed than hid,' and it needs no peering 
 into dark corners to reveal the flowers that grow in low 
 relief on the mural tablets of the ante-chapels, and those 
 that blossom in inlay of poppy red and turquoise blue and 
 emerald green on the walls of the octagon shrine itself. 
 Under the vault of the great dome (you see how large it 
 is as you look upwards into its billowing depths) lies the 
 tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, the fair and gentle lady for 
 whom Shah Jehan, the Emperor, created this peerless 
 monument, in the plenitude of his power and passion. 
 When he died, old and broken, and a dethroned prisoner, 
 they laid him beside her, with the same screen of laced 
 and embroidered stone thrown round both to shelter their 
 slumbers, and the same unfading flowers blooming by 
 their graves. 
 
 But, beautiful as is the interior of the Taj, its fullest 
 charm is caught from the outside. You realise this when 
 you abandon the front view, and wander about the 
 gardens, finding exquisite glimpses of snowy structures, 
 so light and graceful that they seem to rest on air, of 
 buoyant cupola and climbing campanile. The Taj owes 
 much to its surroundings. Perhaps it would lose 
 its effect in the Waterloo Bridge Eoad, or even in the 
 Champs-Ely sees. But where it stands, amidst its trees 
 and flower-beds and waters, rising serene from among the 
 lesser tombs and temples clustering at its knees, you 
 cannot wish it otherwise. Go a little distance away, and 
 you wonder that you ever deemed it trivial. You see 
 that it is, in fact, spacious and lofty (the dome rises 
 higher than the spire of many cathedrals), and that it has 
 grandeur as well as beauty.
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 179 
 
 Fortunately you can now get sight of the masterpiece 
 without approaching too near. The gardens have been 
 restored to something more nearly resembling their ori- 
 ginal condition, and the results of many decades of neglect 
 and carelessness have been cleared from the precincts. 
 It is one item in that work of renewal and conservation, 
 which India owes to some of its recent administrators, 
 and more particularly to the late Viceroy. It is not the 
 least of Lord Curzon's achievements that he caused the 
 finest examples of Hindu and Mohammedan architecture 
 to be treated with reverent and judicious attention. He 
 has induced the masters of India to respect the artistic 
 heritage which has descended to them from the rulers 
 they supplanted. If we cannot reproduce, we may at 
 least preserve, the splendid works of the older conquerors, 
 long regarded with barbarian indifference. It waa a pre- 
 decessor of Lord Curzon's on the viceregal throne who 
 began to sell the materials of the palaces at Agra, and 
 would have sold the Taj itself if he could have got a good 
 price for the marble. And even so late as the period 
 when King Edward VII. visited India, they could find 
 nothing better to do with the Taj than to illuminate its 
 dome with limelight. Let us be thankful that they fore- 
 bore to embellish it with advertising placards. 
 
 In these days of slightly better perception, the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales were spared the illuminations. 
 They went to view the Taj by moonlight, which every- 
 body should do who finds that the daytime aspect still 
 leaves him with lingering doubts. For at night its 
 seduction is irresistible. Criticism is mute, as you sit on 
 the steps by the entrance gate, while the moon drifts 
 above the trees, and the ring of silver light is stealing 
 round the base of the dome and creeping gently upwards 
 to the pinnacle. Here are none of the harsh contrasts 
 familiar in such circumstances elsewhere. To talk of
 
 180 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 ebony and alabaster is to evoke ideas too rough for this 
 intimate revelation of beauties withheld from the in- 
 discreet and prying day. The shadows on the Taj are 
 not black, but something between umber and violet ; and 
 the marble itself, glimmering under the dusky velvet of 
 the sky, has lost its frozen pallor and hints at the warmth 
 and soft texture of life. You note the tender half-tones 
 growing upon the smooth and rounded surfaces, as a 
 young lover, sitting with his mistress by a moonlit 
 window, might watch the faint shadows hovering over 
 the warm whiteness of satin throat and ivory shoulder. 
 
 It is this sensuous suggestiveness of the Taj which 
 some critics disparage. They say it is feminine, it lacks 
 strength and stern dignity. But of course it is feminine. 
 One might as well make that a reproach against the Venus 
 of the Capitol and the Virgins of Murillo. If Shah Jehan 
 had been a Greek or an Italian, the Lady of the Tomb 
 would have stood in changeless marble or smiled from 
 breathing canvas. But Moslem art was forbidden to 
 imitate the human figure. It could only symbolise ; and 
 the Taj is a symbol, like all the finest creations of the 
 later Mohammedan architecture. The Kutab Minar sym- 
 bolises warlike energy and passion ; the Tomb of Akbar 
 majesty and varied wisdom; the Hall of Audience at 
 Delhi, the Diwan-i-Khas, with its famous inscription, 
 
 If the earth holds a heaven of bliss, 
 It is this, it is this, it is this ; 
 
 symbolises the sumptuousness of ease and wealth and 
 arbitrary power. 
 
 Yet the Taj Mahal is not merely a monument and 
 a symbol, but also to some extent a representation. 
 The meaning which its subtle and allusive art conveys is 
 significantly revealed when you see it neither in full day 
 nor by night, but at the moment after sunset, when most
 
 THE CITIES OF THE MOGHULS 181 
 
 of the light has faded from the sky, and only a few flying 
 streamers of rose and opal are left under a canopy of 
 azure, paling swiftly into greyness. The dim shape, with 
 its flowing curves all shrouded in white, might be the 
 figure of some veiled Eastern princess, walking with 
 bowed head and rhythmical footstep in her gardens by 
 the shining river. And the four watching minarets are 
 the grave and kindly sentinels, keeping guard over the 
 beauty and tenderness, the modesty and shrinking charm, 
 which so often find shelter behind the purdah screen 
 of Indian womanhood. 
 
 When you have time to spare from the Taj, you go to 
 see the other Moghul monuments of Agra. The best of 
 them were built by Shah Jehan, in whose time the archi- 
 tecture and decorative art of the Indian Mohammedans 
 flowered into their fullest splendour, before they ran to seed 
 in the tawdry extravagance of the palaces and monuments 
 at Lucknow. Shah Jehan's days were chequered. He 
 rebelled against his father Jehangir, and when he came 
 to the throne he disposed of all disputes about the succes- 
 sion by murdering his brothers. He was self-indulgent 
 and tyrannical, and in the end his son Aurangzeb headed 
 a conspiracy against him and deprived him of his crown. 
 
 He married Mumtaz Mahal when he was twenty-one 
 and she was nineteen. He had one wife already ; but his 
 second marriage was a true love-match, and Mumtaz 
 Mahal which, being interpreted, means ' The Crown of 
 the Palace ' was famous for charity and mercifulness, 
 as well as for beauty and wit. Eighteen years after the 
 marriage she died, having borne her husband no fewer 
 than fourteen children. The Emperor was inconsolable, 
 or, rather, he consoled himself by sending for the most 
 skilful architects and craftsmen he could find, and with 
 their help and a lavish outpouring of treasure he built the 
 tomb by the Jumna.
 
 182 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 A great artist was Shah Jehan as well as a great lover. 
 The Palace Fort at Agra is full of gorgeous buildings, and 
 the finest are those which owe their origin to him. He 
 built the Pearl Mosque, a dream of delicacy and grace, 
 by some thought lovelier than the Taj itself, and the 
 Khas Mahal and Diwan-i-Khas at Agra, besides that Hall 
 of Audience at Delhi, all of which are miracles of pro- 
 portion and design and ornamentation. When Aurangzeb 
 had driven him from his throne, and taken his kingdom 
 from him, Shah Jehan was kept in confinement in the 
 exquisite pavilion called the Jasmine Tower, which stands 
 in the Fort at Agra, hard by some of his own masterpieces, 
 and in full view of the Taj. Seven years he lived there, 
 the old broken king, faithfully attended by his good and 
 gentle daughter Jehanara, who voluntarily shared his 
 captivity. He was seventy-five when the end came, and 
 his last day he spent in gazing down the river to the 
 tomb where Mumtaz Mahal lay. When sunset fell and 
 darkness hid the domes and turrets from his sight, he 
 diad, bidding Jehanara be of good cheer, and calling on 
 the name of Allah the Merciful. His sins be forgiven 
 him. He shed blood and he broke troth. But he made 
 the world more beautiful, and he loved much.
 
 CHAPTEK XIII 
 THE BLOSSOMING OF THE WILDERNESS 
 
 IT might almost have been the terrace of an English 
 country house, as we stood there on the verandah that 
 pleasant Sunday morning. In front of the stone steps was 
 a gravelled sweep of carriage-drive, bordered by a bed of 
 standard roses and pink and yellow chrysanthemums. On 
 the other side of the low hedge was a smooth rectangle 
 of turfed lawn-tennis ground, with the court marked out 
 and the nets standing. The eye ranged down an avenue 
 of young tamarind-trees to the swinging gate of the com- 
 pound, and beyond that to a broad high road. Not far 
 away one saw the red walls of other bungalows, and in 
 the distance the clustering roofs of a town, the sheds and 
 signal-posts of a railway-station, and a tall warehouse- 
 chimney. Bound us the flat country lay green with 
 fodder and the ripening winter crops ; and at intervals 
 small brown hamlets spotted the plain, which stretched 
 away in an unbroken level to the foot of a purple line of 
 saw-backed hills. Cattle grazed in the meadows, husband- 
 men were at work among the fields and trickling water- 
 courses, laden carts moved slowly along the roads. It 
 seemed a picture of ordered and tranquil prosperity. 
 
 But you are admonished to glance at a large patch of 
 tawny yellow in the midst of the greenery not far away. 
 You see that this inset is bare and lifeless sand, with 
 nothing growing upon it but a few stunted bushes. And 
 you have to learn that as this space now is, so, a few 
 
 183
 
 184 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 years ago, was the whole wide champaign before you. It 
 was all arid waste, without grass or trees or cultivation. 
 There was no town, no road, no railway-station, no agri- 
 culture. There were no cattle but the small and half- 
 starved beasts belonging to the scattered nomads who 
 roamed over the desert track. Now the same area yields 
 food for nearly a million people, and sends its surplus 
 coastwards to load the corn-ships which help to give 
 Londoners their daily bread. 
 
 The miracle has been wrought by water water and 
 brains, and well-directed energy to apply both. Four- 
 fifths of the inhabitants of India cultivate the soil ; but 
 they serve a hard and fitful taskmistress. Under that 
 burning sun, which crumbles dry earth to a powder or 
 bakes it into fissured blocks, there can be no culture with- 
 out abundant moisture. To the Indian peasant, the rain- 
 fall which comes, or should come, towards the close of the 
 south-west monsoon or in the early spring, is all in all. 
 If it is plentiful he may have a good crop and a prosperous 
 year ; if it drops below the average, he will be hardly 
 pressed ; if it fails altogether, his cattle will probably die, 
 his home will be broken up, his wife and children and 
 himself may become outcasts, and the whole family may 
 perish miserably, unless there happens to be a Belief 
 Camp accessible. No wonder the ryot, as he sits under a 
 tree in the heat of a summer afternoon, watches the hard 
 dome of polished azure above him with ravenous eye. To 
 the farmer in another country a bad season brings trouble 
 and loss ; here it is a matter of life and death for millions. 
 
 And, unhappily, the rains cannot be depended upon. 
 Seas of water pour upon India from the clouds, or roll 
 down into its plains from the melting snows of the 
 Himalayas ; but the flood is badly distributed and capri- 
 cious. Over large tracts the normal rainfall is only just 
 sufficient to feed the crops and grass-lands ; if there is a
 
 THE BLOSSOMING OF THE WILDERNESS 185 
 
 surplus one year, there may be drought the next. There 
 is an area of a million square miles say twenty times the 
 size of England ' of which,' says an official document, 
 ' in the absence of irrigation, no portion can be deemed 
 absolutely secure against the uncertainties of the seasons 
 and the scourge of famine.' Other extensive districts 
 there are in which the annual rainfall is so scanty that 
 sufficient harvests cannot be gathered in without artificial 
 irrigation. 
 
 The greatest and most permanent of all the benefits 
 which British rule has conferred upon India is that of 
 regulating, improving, and equalising the supply of water 
 for agricultural purposes. It is sometimes said that if we 
 were to quit the Peninsula to-morrow we should leave 
 behind us nothing worthy to endure : only iron bridges, 
 mostly hideous, and a few tasteless churches, museums, 
 and town halls no noble monuments such as those of 
 some of the Hindu and Mohammedan kings. But our 
 canals we should leave ; and unless our successors were 
 sheer barbarians they could not allow these splendid 
 public works to decay, or permit the provinces we have 
 made habitable by them to go back to desert again. 
 
 India, for many centuries, has been supplementing the 
 atmospheric water-supply in its own primitive fashion. 
 The rain-water was stored in tanks, or it was tracked to 
 its subterranean reservoirs and drawn up to the surface. 
 The ancient rulers of the land were great diggers of wells 
 and builders of cisterns ; in the South especially their 
 handiwork is seen in many thousands of ponds and 
 artificial lakes, large and small, which are used to this 
 day. Canal-making came much later. It was not till 
 the Moghul sovereigns had given a large part of northern 
 India a stable and settled government that they turned 
 their attention to this subject. But most of their schemes 
 were abandoned or remained in abeyance during the dis-
 
 186 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 orders which overtook their empire in the eighteenth 
 century. It was left for the English to amplify and 
 develop the enterprise. For the last fifty years the 
 engineers of the Indian Government and the Public 
 Works Department have been busily engaged upon it. 
 The result is a system of irrigation, which though still 
 uncompleted is unquestionably the most magnificent 
 created by human effort in any modern country. The 
 great rivers have been tapped in their upper ranges, and 
 the surplus water that comes down in the rainy weather 
 is drawn off into main feeder canals which deliver their 
 contents into branch canals ; and these again fill a network 
 of minor runlets, and finally discharge their fertilising 
 streams into the conduits and ditches by which the farmers 
 keep their crops green. 
 
 The canals are officially classed under two heads: 
 they are regarded either as Protective or Productive. The 
 former are supposed to supplement the water-supply of 
 districts which in years of normal rainfall can be culti- 
 vated successfully. Thus they furnish a defence against 
 famine and all the loss and misery that evil word 
 suggests. The Protective canals are not kept up mainly 
 for profit, though as a matter of fact they mostly yield a 
 very fair return on the capital expended. The Productive 
 works are, however, intended to increase the yield of the 
 soil, and in some cases to render cultivation practicable 
 where otherwise it could not be attempted owing to the 
 scantiness of the rainfall. 
 
 Millions of acres of good but drought-stricken land 
 have been turned into arable and pasture by this means. 
 The earth is willing enough to yield up its abundance ; 
 but the heavens deny the water of life, and it has had to 
 be brought in by the hand of man. The Productive works 
 pay very well. In the Punjab they yield 1(H per cent, 
 interest on the capital outlay, and for the whole of India
 
 THE BLOSSOMING OF THE WILDERNESS 187 
 
 the net revenue is over 7 per cent. The Government of 
 India, after paying 4 per cent, interest on the capital cost, 
 is nearly three-quarters of a million in pocket by its canals 
 at the end of every year, besides having saved its subjects 
 incalculable damage and suffering. 
 
 So satisfactory a result abundantly justifies the con- 
 templation of a further expenditure on canal construction 
 amounting to several million pounds during the next few 
 years. Some of the projects are daring even for the 
 new school of engineers, who fear nothing. There is talk 
 of banking the snows of the Himalayas in a stupendous 
 artificial lake in Kashmir, and spreading them by pipes 
 and aqueducts half over Northern Hindustan. This may 
 be visionary ; but another proposal, almost equally striking, 
 is considered quite feasible, and will probably be carried 
 out. The Jhelam, one of the Punjab rivers, has rather 
 more water than is needed, and the Chenab rather 
 less ; so the engineers are calmly devising a new con- 
 duit, by which they can connect the two watercourses, 
 and regulate the flow of both by turning on a tap. 
 Nature is rough and unruly and frequently terrible 
 in Southern Asia; but she is being slowly got into 
 harness. 
 
 The most audaciously conceived and brilliantly suc- 
 cessful of all the schemes are those monuments of 
 engineering enterprise and administrative capacity, the 
 'Canal Colonies,' as they are called, of these same Chenab 
 and Jhelam river-basins. The colonies are vast tracts of 
 land, which, owing to the want of water, were almost 
 uninhabited, except by a few nomads and semi-civilised 
 squatters and cattle-thieves. The engineers constructed 
 the artificial watercourses that rendered it possible to 
 bring the soil under cultivation. Then the Government 
 constituted each district an administrative unit, and placed 
 it under the charge of a Deputy Commissioner, who was
 
 188 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 also appointed ' Colonisation Officer,' with special in- 
 structions to carry out a definite and systematic scheme 
 of settlement. 
 
 The Sirkar had the wisdom or good fortune to secure 
 the services of officials of quite exceptional capacity for 
 this important task. The Chenab Colony, which is the 
 older and the larger, had been for five years before my 
 visit under the successful rule of Mr. Leslie Jones, who 
 had done great things with it. The district which he 
 controlled is nearly equal in extent to Kent, Surrey, and 
 Sussex taken together, and the population five years ago 
 was over a million. It has two hundred miles of railway, 
 admirable roads, several prosperous little towns, and one 
 larger place, Lyallpur, which is rapidly growing to quite 
 respectable proportions ; and it has yielded a net revenue 
 of more than 2 1 per cent, on its capital cost. 
 
 But I preferred to visit the Jhelam Colony, which, 
 though slightly smaller, is newer, for its canal was only 
 opened in the autumn of 1901; and it was here that I 
 spent some singularly agreeable and instructive days. 
 The Jhelam Colony was watched over from its birth 
 by one of the ablest of the younger officials in the 
 Civil Service of the Punjab Commission a man with 
 just that force of character, clearness of insight, relentless 
 industry, and restrained enthusiasm, which are required 
 for such work as this. Little more than four years before 
 my visit the colony was lifeless scrub and empty desert. 
 To-day, like its neighbour on the Chenab, it is covered with 
 fields of grain, with orchards, gardens, grazing-meadows, 
 breeding-farms, and cattle-runs. It was studded with 
 prosperous villages, and it included a population of pro- 
 bably three-quarters of a million, of whom several thousands 
 were living in the rising capital of Sargodha, a model 
 little town, with well-planned straight streets, a granary, 
 a municipal market, a busy bazaar, a cotton-store, a
 
 THE BLOSSOMING OF THE WILDERNESS 189 
 
 factory, and an active group of traders and merchants 
 who were on the high road to wealth. 
 
 These colonies are ' plantations ' in the old sense of 
 the term. They have to be sown not only with trees, but 
 with men. The Colonisation Officer, as he settles down 
 in his first camp or his newly built bungalow, in the 
 centre of what is afterwards to be the civil station of the 
 cantonment, has a blank sheet before him : a million acres 
 of bare waste, to be converted into townships, farms, and 
 villages. To a large extent he has a free hand ; he is the 
 mandatory of a despotic Government, intended to act the 
 part of a beneficent autocrat himself. There are not many 
 vested rights to be considered in this wilderness, and few 
 troubles about ancient titles or prescriptive boundaries. 
 The Commissioner can divide out his domain accurately 
 into square plots, so many for each farm and each hamlet ; 
 he can trace his highways and local roads on the most 
 suitable lines with regard to topography and water-supply ; 
 he can lay out his town with broad avenues and inter- 
 secting cross-streets, and secluded but airy courts, accord- 
 ing to the latest municipal ideas adapted to Oriental 
 customs ; he can put his finger on the map and decree, in 
 consultation with the engineers, where men and women 
 are to live, and under what conditions. 
 
 The settlers come to the places allotted to them, with 
 their wives and children, their buffaloes and cows, their 
 brass pots and simple tools, and presently, on the pre- 
 scribed site, there arises a brown village which is the 
 counterpart, with certain sanitary improvements, of that 
 which they have left behind a village with its pond 
 and well and mud-walled byres and farmsteads, its tiny 
 mosque or temple. The Mohammedans are in one village, 
 the Hindus in another, the Sikhs congregate in a third. 
 
 And, besides the cultivators, people of other classes have 
 to be encouraged or attracted : policemen, postmen, and
 
 190 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Government messengers, traders, and baniyas to supply the 
 markets and fill the bazaars, dealers to buy and sell the 
 grain and cotton from the farms, artisans and labourers- 
 It is not a backwoods colony of isolated pioneers, 
 slowly working towards cohesion, but an organised com- 
 munity, with its complex social gradations properly ad- 
 justed. And here the structure stands to-day, in its 
 outlines and relative proportions, pretty much as it may 
 be found a century or two hence, save for some cataclysm 
 of Nature or politics : a complete little province, a minia- 
 ture state, busy, thriving, and self-sustaining, and pro- 
 ducing such a superfluity of food that it is helping to 
 convert Karachi into a formidable rival to Bombay and 
 changing the balance on the corn-markets of the world. 
 
 A wonderful work, truly, to have been done in a few 
 brief years sliced out of a young man's lifetime, a work 
 assuredly not accomplished without heavy sacrifices and 
 an invincible endurance and determination. Before the 
 Jhelam Colony had been many months in being, the 
 plague broke out and the people began to flee from their 
 houses in panic. The Commissioner's chief native sub- 
 ordinate (he had no European assistant) fell ill and died ; 
 he himself, going in and out of the plague-stricken dwell- 
 ings to superintend disinfecting operations, caught the 
 epidemic and narrowly escaped with his life. 
 
 The men at the head of these irrigation colonies must 
 know the natives thoroughly, and they should love them 
 wisely, but perhaps not too well. They must have 
 that combination of deep sympathy and equable justice 
 wherein lay the strength of the great Anglo-Indian admi- 
 nistrators in the past. If you ride with a Colonisation 
 Officer on his daily rounds, you begin to understand 
 something of the meaning of paternal government. He 
 is judge, governor, supreme adviser, tax-collector, chief 
 magistrate, agricultural expert, and general admonisher, of
 
 THE BLOSSOMING OF THE WILDERNESS 191 
 
 his subjects. When he enters the village, he has an eye 
 for everything. Why is that heap of refuse allowed to 
 encumber the road outside Abdul Kerim's enclosure, con- 
 trary to regulations? Let it be cleared away. The 
 offender objects to the suggestion, and makes no sign of 
 compliance. ' Hookum hai it is an order,' says a voice, 
 which is quite low and level ; but Abdul knows the tone, 
 and, with a sigh of resignation, he begins to remove the 
 obstruction. 
 
 The head-man comes out with the village elders. 
 They salaam before the Head of the District, but they 
 have a grievance. They collect round his horse, and pour 
 out a billowy torrent of excited speech, in which you 
 distinguish the word ' Pani' (water), reiterated with 
 sobbing passion. They are complaining that the engi- 
 neers of the Public Works Department are stinting them 
 of their lawful allowance of the fluid, or charging them 
 unduly for that which they do receive. As the Colon- 
 isation Officer moves slowly along, they follow him ; the 
 head-man, with agitated staff sawing the air, keeps by 
 his off stirrup-leather; a tall, black-bearded, sunburnt 
 peasant, with his red mantle thrown round his right 
 shoulder, raises an antistrophe from the other side ; com- 
 panions behind and in front act as a voluble chorus ; 
 the village children, grinning all over their brown faces, 
 toddle gleefully in the wake of the procession. 
 
 The pale-faced, square-shouldered gentleman, sitting 
 erect in his saddle, listens, asks a question now and 
 again, does not say much. He lets them chatter : it may 
 be that their complaint is legitimate and must be looked 
 into ; in any case he knows that half their sense of injury 
 will disappear if they are allowed to talk their fill upon 
 it. And so on to another village and another, and then 
 back to camp or bungalow, to make notes of what has 
 been heard and seen, to discuss it with the water officials,
 
 192 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 perhaps to begin a wearisome correspondence over it 
 with the Public Works Department or the Provincial 
 Government. 
 
 But years hence these orators of the hamlet will 
 recollect their speeches and repeat them, and explain how 
 they stood up before the Huzur and patriotically spoke 
 for the common weal ; and sadly they will compare the 
 Burra Sahib, the Protector of the Poor, who brought 
 them to this good land, with the much inferior sahibs 
 known to the younger generation. They will not have 
 forgotten him, even after he has long left India and gone 
 home for good, when such a scene as this will be no more 
 than a dim memory, that may perchance steal faintly 
 back to his brain, as he turns over the evening papers in 
 the smoking-room on some sunny afternoon. At the 
 club they may have only a vague remembrance that 
 So-and-So was once 'something in India.' Therein 
 they are, indeed, not wrong. A man of this stamp is 
 unquestionably Something in India,
 
 CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 THE PILGRIM PAIR 
 
 WHAT is the most wonderful sight in India the 
 strangest thing to be seen in all this land, where so much 
 is strange ? For my part, I am inclined to doubt whether 
 anything can be witnessed more impressive and picturesque, 
 more pregnant, too, with meaning and significance, than 
 the Kumbh Mela, or great Pilgrim Fair, which is held, 
 once in every twelve years, where the waters of the 
 Ganges and the Jumna meet, below the walls of Alla- 
 habad. Until you have looked upon one of these tre- 
 mendous gatherings of humanity many aspects of Indian 
 life and character must be hidden from you. 
 
 At the Kumbh Mela, which occurs only at Allahabad 
 and Hardwar, and in a minor form at two other places, 
 you see Hinduism at its best and its worst ; you begin to 
 realise faintly the hold that this jumble of devotion, 
 metaphysics, and rank idolatry has upon the masses of 
 the people; you observe Brahmanism working hand in 
 hand with a crude and savage fetish-worship ; you have 
 before you such multitudes of men and women as you 
 may not meet twice in a lifetime ; and you know that 
 this gigantic assemblage, built up on a framework of pro- 
 fessional fanaticism, is kept in absolute control and perfect 
 order by a handful of Europeans, which is, perhaps, the 
 greatest miracle of all. How we govern the peoples of 
 India, and how it is that we can govern them that, too, 
 you understand better if you are so fortunate as to get to 
 
 193 G
 
 194 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 the duodecennial Festival at the meeting of the Sacred 
 Rivers. 
 
 India is a land of pilgrimages and pilgrim fairs. All 
 over the country there are spots where some one of the 
 vagrant gods of the populous Hindu Pantheon has 
 sojourned on earth for a space and left behind an odour 
 of special and undying sanctity. To these holy shrines 
 the worshippers resort as eagerly as they did in that 
 Merrie England of Chaucer's time, when men wandered 
 forth ' feme halwes for to seeke,' and they do it with the 
 same mixture of devotional zeal and pleasurable zest. 
 
 For the pious Hindu the pilgrimage is a church festival 
 and a bank holiday in attractive combination. To wash 
 in the sacred Ganges, to sacrifice a kid on the blood- 
 stained shambles of Kali's temple, to bathe in the beating 
 surf before the Jagannath altars at Puri, will bring 
 redemption of sin and a few aeons of salvation. It will 
 also provide an extremely agreeable outing. There is the 
 great world to be seen, perhaps an unknown big city to 
 be visited, temples, holy tombs, healing tanks, not to 
 mention the marvels of the bazaar and the European 
 shops, to be inspected, and many ' side-shows ' and 
 amusements to be tasted in the enlivening company of 
 a vast miscellaneous concourse. 
 
 For the Indian peasant and craftsman, and more par- 
 ticularly for their womankind, life is hard and monotonous. 
 The pilgrimage is the treat of the year, perhaps of many 
 years. In the old times the journey was made on foot, or 
 in crazy native vehicles of one kind or another. In these 
 days a large proportion of the pilgrims travel by railway, 
 and opulent is the harvest that is reaped from them. 
 Eight-and-twenty third-class trains, packed as one would 
 imagine no cattle-trucks or sheep-pens could be packed, 
 will be run into one of the great pilgrim centres in a single 
 day. The platforms are jammed with squealing voyagers,
 
 THE PILGKIM FAIR 195 
 
 the waiting enclosures swelter and flutter like chicken- 
 crates. 
 
 The travellers are not all of this kind. Now and then 
 even a ruling prince with his horde of followers will set up 
 an encampment on the ground, though this happens 
 seldom in these days, for religious zeal is not fashionable 
 with the modern generation of rajas. But many well- 
 to-do traders and baniyas come, and some bring their 
 families with them. The fair is the Hindu woman's holi- 
 day, even more than the men's the one brilliant fortnight 
 in years of drudgery and seclusion. At these festivals you 
 see more women of a grade above that of the coolies and 
 the sweepers in a few hours than in many weeks among 
 the great cities ; and your estimate of Hindu feminine 
 beauty rises by leaps and bounds. 
 
 A woman, in most countries, looks her best when she 
 has got her nicest ' things ' on ; and at the fair bright new 
 robes and a lavish display of ornaments, bangles, anklets, 
 nose-rings, and earrings, are the mode. Moreover, the 
 women here, unlike most of those visible to the European 
 connoisseur elsewhere, are not all darkened by exposure 
 and stunted by toil and hard living. Pretty soft oval 
 faces, bright eyes, teeth unreddened by betel-nut, and 
 complexions of almost European fairness, are not un- 
 common. And the ladies are all smiling and cheerful, 
 and are treated with comparative politeness, even by their 
 own husbands, on these exceptional occasions. 
 
 Of all the festivals, those connected with bathing in 
 the sacred rivers are the most popular, and of these rivers 
 the Ganges is the holiest. That is why Allahabad, which 
 in the Hindi language is called Prayag, the Place of 
 Sacrifice, has been a goal of pilgrimage for many centuries. 
 The celebration is older than Mohammedanism, older than 
 Christianity, perhaps older than Brahmanism itself. Just 
 below the Fort there is a triangular spit of sand, at the
 
 196 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 point of which the Jumna rolls into the Ganges ; and, 
 according to popular belief, a line of ripples marks the 
 junction of a third river, which bubbles up from under the 
 ground, and is visible to the eyes of the Enlightened, 
 though not to those of the ordinary sin-laden spectator. 
 
 This triangle, the Sangam, or meeting-place, is among 
 the most exalted bathing-sites in all India, and great is the 
 merit acquired by dipping in the waters at its apex. Con- 
 sequently there is a much frequented Mela at Allahabad 
 every winter. But when the planet Jupiter enters the 
 sign of the Kumbha^ which is Aquarius the water-carrier, 
 then the sanctity of the place is increased tenfold, and 
 more than tenfold are the numbers of the pilgrims, so that 
 they are only exceeded by the tale of those who flock to 
 Benares during a total eclipse of the sun. There were 
 said to be two millions at the Mela during one of the 
 great processional days on which I visited it ; and to the 
 casual spectator, surveying the immense encampment and 
 the moving crowds, the estimate did not seem exaggerated. 
 The camp, indeed, should not be called by that name. It 
 is a town a temporary town, it is true ; but while it lasts 
 one of the great cities of the world, more populous than 
 Peking or Vienna, with nearly as many inhabitants as 
 Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow rolled into one. 
 
 The Fair is largely a money-making concern. It is run 
 by associations of ascetics, who have their headquarters in 
 Allahabad and in some cases their branches all over India. 
 They assume the fakir dress, or want of dress, and go 
 about publicly in rags, with matted hair, their faces and 
 bodies daubed with the river clay. Some of them wear 
 no clothes at all, and are regarded on this account with 
 peculiar reverence. But these akharas, or religious 
 societies, are not too much absorbed in the things of the 
 spirit to neglect earthly details. They own a good deal of 
 property, and some of them are bankers and landholders,
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 197 
 
 as well as mendicant friars ; they are legally enrolled as 
 corporations, and can sue and be sued ; and they have 
 their own superiors, or mahants, who manage their 
 common affairs, and are treated with considerable respect 
 by the British authorities, for they are important persons, 
 able to give a good deal of help or to cause much trouble 
 during the processional periods. 
 
 The various sects and akharas are active rivals, and 
 some care has to be taken that they do not come into 
 collision during the Allahabad Mela. The most turbulent 
 are the Bairagis, a large association worshipping Rama 
 and Krishna, which has its adherents all over Northern 
 India. The Bairagis are always a source of anxiety to 
 the police officials during the Fair ; for they are noisy and 
 aggressive, and, unlike the other bodies, they are not 
 under the regular control of their rnahants. All the 
 akharas are encamped upon the left bank of the Ganges, 
 with the Bairagis separated by a broad road and a fence 
 from the others. 
 
 From bank to bank two temporary bridges of boats are 
 laid during the Mela. On the Allahabad side is the camp of 
 the pilgrims. It is a town of many streets. The avenues 
 and cross-roads are laid out by the Government, which 
 also builds huts of plaited straw, and allows them to be 
 occupied at a very low rent by the visitors. A few 
 hundred thousand are lodged in this way. Others make 
 tiny sheds for themselves of logs and brushwood, or put 
 up little shelters of canvas, or are content with the bare 
 ground, and it may be an umbrella. 
 
 They can please themselves as to this ; but certain 
 limited sanitary rules are laid down and strictly en- 
 forced. The Kumbh Mela is an affair of the priests and 
 the fakirs. They keep it going mainly for their own 
 benefit ; and in essentials it probably does not differ 
 greatly from what it was three centuries or ten centuries
 
 198 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 ago. The Government does not interfere with the re- 
 ligious ceremonies. Hinduism, even in its ridiculous and 
 offensive manifestations, is given a free hand. But we do 
 for its votaries what they would never do for themselves : 
 we watch over their health, we keep the peace among 
 them, we humbly go about to see that they are properly 
 policed and scavenged and disinfected. We make the 
 place about as safe as Piccadilly, and nearly as healthy. 
 
 A little cholera there will always be in this immense 
 concourse of folks from the four corners of India, of whom 
 many will bathe in the cold waters of the river in the 
 morning, eat unwholesome food, lie in the sun all day, 
 and expose themselves with no sufficient covering to the 
 chills of night. There was a case or two during my 
 visit, and I saw one brown figure with knees drawn up, 
 eyes closed, and rigid jaw, lying in a state of collapse 
 outside his shanty. But he was not jolted down to the 
 river to die, as he would have been before we took the 
 Fair in hand. There are proper segregation huts, with 
 native doctors and attendants, and a body of trained in- 
 spectors to see that the cholera patients are promptly 
 dealt with, and the sanitary regulations carried out. 
 
 To go his rounds with a police officer at the Fair, on 
 the afternoon before one of the days fixed for the great 
 processions of the akharas, is an interesting experience. 
 Strange scenes and figures are met at every turn. There 
 is a separate enclosure for the barbers, a whole village of 
 them, for no less than 2,800 of these useful persons are 
 needed to perform the offices of the toilet for the pilgrims. 
 The main street of the camp is a seething bazaar, where 
 traders and merchants of all kinds. have set up shops. 
 Brass pots and pans, clothing, provisions, toys, jewellery, 
 native shoes and Austrian kid boots, books, perfumes, 
 cheap haberdashery, sewing-machines, and numberless 
 other things, are on sale. The booths of the sweetmeat-
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 199 
 
 sellers are surrounded by struggling crowds from morning 
 to night ; for every Hindu eats sweetstuff. There are 
 numerous shows and performances. A native, supposed to 
 be got up as an European, with a false moustache, a straw 
 hat, and check trousers, is beating a drum at the entrance 
 of a tent where a vernacular adaptation of Faust is to be 
 given. Next to him is a mart for the sale of devotional 
 literature. The customers can buy religious tracts, or if 
 they prefer them, ancient chromos of King Edward VII. 
 as Prince of Wales in the costume of the 'seventies a 
 remnant, perhaps, of the previous Royal tour. 
 
 Religion, trade, and amusement go hand in hand 
 everywhere. The ground is dotted with tiny shrines and 
 makeshift temples, which are an excuse for the faithful to 
 make an offering. Dust-strewn fakirs sit under big um- 
 brellas, wrapped in meditation, but with an ear for the 
 clinking of coppers in the begging-bowl beside them. 
 Some of them rest immovable, hour after hour, on wooden 
 bedsteads studded with iron nails, the points upwards. 
 Others exhibit hideous deformities : a leper, with both legs 
 swollen into horrible grey trunks ; a man with one arm 
 withered to a loose tendril, which he wags endearingly at 
 the passers-by. In an open vault, at the bottom of a 
 flight of steps, is a huge recumbent figure of Hanuman, 
 the monkey-god. The idol is smeared all over with red 
 paint, and in the dim light one can see the priest picking 
 from its monstrous limbs the rupees and annas thrown 
 upon them by the worshippers, who stand upon the steps 
 with bowed heads and supplicating palms. 
 
 The Sikhs are much in evidence at the Fair. We go 
 into one of their large open pavilions, where a sort of 
 prayer-meeting is being held. An altar is placed at one 
 end of the tent, and before it black-bearded men sit 
 solemnly in rows, while a reader recites passages from the 
 Granth, the sacred volume of the Khalsa, in a monotonous
 
 200 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 sing-song. There is an instrumental accompaniment: 
 one man beats a small tom-tom, another performs on a 
 kind of concertina, and the brass bell-mouth of a gramo- 
 phone yawns beside him. 
 
 The mahant, a splendid old Sikh, six feet two at least, 
 with a chest like that of a bull elephant, courteously in- 
 vites us to a place where we can have a good view of the 
 proceedings. He thinks we might like to hear the 
 gramophone. So the reader stops his chant, and the 
 machine, a very bad one, grinds out what I presently dis- 
 cover to be an English lyric, painfully familiar. ' Wow'n't 
 you come home, Bill Bailey ? ' asks the wheezy gramo- 
 phone in a Cockney accent, while the old mahant leans 
 on hie stick and beams with pride, and the black-bearded 
 worshippers look on with unrelaxed features. Perhaps 
 they thought they were listening to a devotional melody. 
 
 My companion has various calls to make. One of 
 them is upon the mahant of a group which on these 
 occasions dispenses with clothes. With him he has to 
 discuss some details of the morrow's procession ; for these 
 men, as I have said, are influential and can keep things 
 in order. They made an unusual pair the tall young 
 Englishman, in his neat khaki uniform, with belt and 
 shoulder-straps, and the little drab fakir, without a rag 
 or stitch upon him. But the mahant was an intelligent 
 man, with a shrewd eye and a courteous manner, and 
 the interview went smoothly. 
 
 There were many other duties to fill the police officer's 
 well-spent day precautions to be enforced against fire, 
 the order of the great processions to be arranged, the out- 
 lying police-posts to be visited, the daily charge-sheet to 
 be examined. In one respect, his task is made easier than 
 it could be in some other countries. Sectarian rivalries 
 may give trouble, but there is scarcely any ordinary 
 crime.
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 201 
 
 As we went back to the police headquarters, a con- 
 stable was holding by a cord a miserable outcast lad, who 
 had been caught pilfering small coins ; but the charge- 
 sheet was almost blank, and the wooden cages, intended 
 as a lock-up for prisoners, were empty. In this vast 
 assemblage, swept up from a continent, there was a com- 
 plete absence of violence, of drunkenness, of disorder. 
 Noise there was, indeed, in deafening quantity, for the 
 people, as they passed through the lines of tents and 
 swarmed about the shops and shows, were all chattering 
 furiously, screaming, calling to one another, talking at 
 the full stretch of the high-pitched strident native voice; 
 but there was no rowdiness, no rough horseplay, no offen- 
 sive revelry, no indecent larking. Women and young girls 
 were there by the hundred thousand. I was told that 
 amid the throng of the camp bazaar, and among the 
 rows of dimly-lighted shanties, they were as secure from 
 molestation or annoyance as they could have been in their 
 own homes. Some comparisons, not wholly welcome, 
 leaped unbidden to the mind. 
 
 The Allahabad Kumbh Mela is kept up for some 
 weeks in January and February. To see it at its weirdest, 
 it should be visited on one of the three great days when 
 the associations of sadhus and swamis and other holy 
 men go in procession to bathe at the meeting of the 
 Sacred Eivers. Ascetics as these persons are by profes- 
 sion, contemptuous of the elementary comforts of life and 
 even its conventional decencies, they understand the im- 
 portance of spectacular display in impressing the multi- 
 tude. Elephants, with gilded howdahs and rich housings, 
 resplendent palanquins, and broad banners of silk and 
 gold waving over long columns of marching worshippers, 
 make these processions very showy affairs, so that they 
 will quite bear comparison with some of the interesting
 
 202 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 medleys of childishness and splendour which certain of 
 the feudatory princes array on occasions of festivity or 
 state. The martial pomp of gleaming weapons and 
 prancing chargers is wanting ; but its absence is not felt. 
 Without it there is enough of varied colour and vibrating 
 life; and there are some singular, and even startling, 
 features which give the parade a character most distinc- 
 tively its own. 
 
 The Fort of Allahabad, capacious as most of those 
 built by the Moghul kings, a stronghold and a town in 
 itself, stands high on its bluff of land above the sandy 
 bank and spreading channel of the Ganges. There was a 
 Sabbath hush about its vacant courts as we drove through 
 them in the early morning of that Sunday, which was the 
 Sankrant, the first of the three chief processional days of 
 the festival. European society was still mostly in bed, 
 and the soldiers, except the few on duty, were in their 
 barrack -rooms. 
 
 We made for an angle of the ramparts which over- 
 looks the sacred spit of sand wedged between the com- 
 mingling rivers. A little clump of grey and a fleck of 
 scarlet guided us to the place ; for there was a knot of 
 official spectators here, together with a sergeant and a 
 couple of privates of a British battalion, languidly busy 
 with the cartridge-slide of a Maxim gun. There were 
 some two millions of people from all over India close 
 at hand, of whom thousands were professional fanatics ; 
 so that a reserve of coercive machinery was no doubt 
 necessary. But of visible military preparation one saw 
 nothing beyond this Maxim and another small field-piece 
 trained upon the inclined way leading up to the main 
 approach to the Fort from the water-side. There had been 
 an idea of ordering a native regiment into camp, some- 
 where near the Mela site ; but there came a scare of 
 cholera, and it was decided not to expose our uirbaned
 
 THE PILGEIM FAIE 203 
 
 warriors to the risk of infection. The civilians and the 
 police were left to manage the crowd, and well they did it. 
 
 I went up to the parapet, and from the grey stillness 
 behind me looked down upon a scene which took my 
 breath away. The Sangam, the sacred triangle below us, 
 was covered to its last inch by a swarming, shifting, 
 variegated crowd. Even as I gazed, the sun, which had 
 been struggling through the smoky river-mist, burst into 
 the sudden splendour of the Eastern day, and under that 
 radiant light the rustling throng seemed like a giant 
 horde of gay tropical beetles, settling upon a flower-bed 
 with scintillating scales and quivering pinions. 
 
 From the sort of private box or balcony-stall out of 
 which we had our view of this vast stage, we could see 
 that the crowd was all alive with movement and aflame 
 with colour. The garish tints of the dyed cotton robes, 
 orange, and purple, and sanguine crimson, and emerald 
 green, coarse and crude individually, blended into an 
 opulent harmony, from which now and again the sparkle 
 of polished metal ornaments, or the flash of a glass 
 bracelet, five inches deep on a rich brown arm, rose like 
 the high notes of the violin above a rolling wave of 
 orchestral music. 
 
 The crowd went down to the river's brink beyond it ; 
 for all the way along the spit the shallows were alive 
 with bathers, standing immersed to the waist, ducking 
 their heads under the surface, scooping up the dun fluid 
 in the cupped hollows of their hands, or throwing it over 
 their bodies, so that the water was foaming and spouting 
 like the surf of the sea breaking on a ragged edge of beach 
 when the tide is rising. 
 
 The throng was densest just under our bastion at the 
 base angle of the three-cornered Sangam, where a bridge 
 of boats led to the opposite bank of the Ganges, upon 
 which the akharas lay encamped like a great army.
 
 204 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Three-quarters of a mile further up the river another 
 temporary bridge had been placed. The processions were 
 to cross this, pass along between the Fort and the 
 stream to the Waters-meet, and then, after their cere- 
 monial bath, re-form, march up the Sangam, and return 
 to their camps by the lower of the bridges. Between 
 the two, the level stretch was beset by more people 
 than I ever saw on an English racecourse ; but through 
 the midst of them a broad track was kept clear, hedged 
 by a weak open palisade of thin laths, and guarded by 
 policemen dotted fifty yards apart. A child could have 
 broken down the flimsy fencing with one hand, a brigade of 
 infantry could not have kept the massed spectators back, 
 if they had chosen to sway forward ; but till the proces- 
 sions passed the course was left inviolate, save for the 
 police and a few civil officials, who rode up and down on 
 horseback to see that everything was in order. 
 
 A burst of wild Eastern music, the music of tom- 
 toms and pipes, vague, threatening, inarticulate, warns us 
 that the parade has begun. Looking up the course from 
 our grand-stand, we see it approaching, and presently it 
 is under our feet. In front rides an Englishman in 
 tweeds and gaiters, and another in uniform with a sword 
 at his side. They are the District Magistrate and the 
 Superintendent of Police, the representatives of that 
 haughtily impartial Government, which ' views with equal 
 eye ' this carnival of paganism and a Methodist school 
 treat, and throws the same shield of vigilant guardianship 
 over both. 
 
 The two officers have for escort a squad of mounted 
 police, followed by a score of constables on foot, all in 
 khaki, with cerise turbans. Then we get the first akhara, 
 which is that of the Nirbanis, a respectable society, 
 largely drawn from the Sikh districts. After the ' broken 
 music ' of the band, tom-tomming and whistling with
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 205 
 
 energy, we have the now familiar, but always imposing, 
 spectacle of a dozen great elephants, rolling ponderously 
 on, with the sand swirling at their massive knees like 
 the bow- wave before a battleship. Housings of cloth of 
 gold depend from their painted sides, and in their howdahs 
 sit various notables of the akhara. 
 
 Then come chobdars and servants in handsome liveries, 
 men carrying feather fans and gilt umbrellas and great 
 curled silver trumpets. Follows a line of palanquins, 
 through whose open doors, as they swing past, we catch 
 glimpses, now of silk-clad forms, now of brass images, 
 recumbent amid flowers and garlands. Behind them are 
 the banner-bearers, holding the tall poles from which 
 droop the great squares of embroidered silk. The banners 
 are sometimes exquisite in colour, stiff with embossed 
 designs in gold and silver thread ; but the staves of silver 
 end in rough wooden hafts wound round, for more con- 
 venience in carrying, with dirty strips of rag ; for we are 
 in India. 
 
 After the banner-bearers, necks are craned along the 
 palisade, and the crowd waits in hushed expectancy for 
 the detachment of specially sanctified Nagas or unclothed 
 ascetics. Slowly, under the remorseless daylight, there 
 marched, two by two, a hundred and twenty men, naked 
 as God made them, save that some had added mutilations 
 and deformities to the Creator's handiwork, and others 
 were smeared and streaked with the muddy clay of the 
 river. One of the leading files of the column was a giant, 
 a swollen hulk of grey flesh, and in his arms he carried a 
 cramped and knotted dwarf, no bigger than an infant. 
 
 The strange company went by with a kind of 
 measured gravity, even with a certain dignity, as if per- 
 forming a solemn rite, neither flaunting their nudity nor 
 ashamed of it. These men had nothing in common with 
 the half-insane fanatics who wandered about the camps
 
 206 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 with gibbering tongues and obscene gestures. Some of 
 the sadhus and mahatmas before us were celebrated 
 pundits, learned in all the learning of the Vedas and the 
 Shastras, famous teachers, who expounded the Sanskrit 
 texts to thousands of disciples beneath the branches of a 
 wild fig-tree, or under the shadow of a great rock. 
 
 The spectators, male and female, looked on without 
 prurience, without flippancy, without shamefacedness ; 
 only a low reverential murmur broke from the dense 
 ranks as the holy men paced on, with silent footfall, 
 followed by their rearguard of chelas and attendants. 
 After the akhara had passed, the crowd swarmed all 
 over the cleared track ; and you saw men throwing them- 
 selves down at full length to touch the ground marked 
 by the sacred footprints, or kneeling to take up handfuls 
 of the dust, and carry it to their lips and foreheads. 
 
 I descended from my perch, and came down with a 
 companion to the level, in order to witness the approach 
 of the Bairagi akhara. The Bairagis are the people who 
 cause most anxiety to the authorities on these occasions. 
 They are imperfectly controlled by their leaders, and not 
 at all particular as to the character of their members. 
 At this very Mela I saw a man arrested, in the disguise 
 of a Bairagi fakir, by a keen-eyed Pathan detective from 
 the Punjab, who ' wanted ' him on a charge of murder 
 somewhere in the North. These Bairagis are a quarrel- 
 some lot, and given to fighting not only with other 
 akharas, but also among themselves ; for they are divided 
 into three sections, which have disputes over precedence 
 and ceremonial, as, for instance, whether the processional 
 banners ought to be carried at the trail or erect during 
 the march to the Sangam. Moreover, they prefer to do 
 the course at a sprint, instead of taking it, like the others, 
 at a respectable walking pace. 
 
 Looking back along the track I see the mounted
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 207 
 
 police cantering their horses and the constables on foot, a 
 strong body this time in five ranks, going at a hard 
 double. Behind them the akhara of the Bairagis is 
 coming on in a sort of war dance. The great banners 
 are swaying overhead like ships' pennants in a stormy 
 sea, the palanquins rock perilously upon the shoulders of 
 the trotting bearers, and fakirs and chelas and a miscel- 
 laneous crowd of hangers-on are bounding and shrieking. 
 
 We wait until they have passed, and then go down to 
 the bathing-place at the point of the spit. Here every pre- 
 caution has been taken against accident. A kind of river- 
 bath, or pool of shallow water, has been staked off, with 
 wooden shelters round it, for people to dress and undress, 
 if anybody cares about that convenience which most 
 people do not. There are covered sheds, built over the 
 water, for the benefit of female bathers who are purdah. 
 Otherwise it is the mode for most visitors to go in ' as they 
 are,' and assume dry garments on the bank or as they are 
 stepping out. An Indian woman can change in public 
 from a wet chudder to a dry one, with a lightning-like 
 celerity that would baffle a music-hall conjurer, and with- 
 out exposing more than a glimpse of neck and shoulder. 
 
 Outside the bathing-pool there are some of the boats 
 of the famous Benares water-police, smart and workman- 
 like crews, organised by the local District Superin- 
 tendent for river work at the Holy City. Within the 
 space there are several flat-bottomed police punts. We 
 get into one of these with a tall Sikh inspector, and push 
 out among the bathers, who are ducking and diving like 
 water-ouzels, and rubbing themselves with intent earnest- 
 ness, as if to get as much of the sacred fluid as possible 
 through the very pores of their skin. 
 
 Anon there is a stir among the crowd on the shore, 
 discordant noises are heard, and with yells and thrum- 
 mings the second akhara of the Bairagis comes barging
 
 208 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 down. They rush into the depths, plunging and wallow- 
 ing in the water all round us, like a shoal of black 
 porpoises, shouting and laughing and splashing one 
 another. Fanatics they may be, but they are in the 
 larkiest of moods, and as merry as holiday excursionists 
 at Blackpool. Presently they begin to climb into our 
 crazy little craft, until her sides sink perilously low, and 
 it becomes necessary to assist the Sikh inspector in shoving 
 them off and plumping them back into the water. 
 
 They take it all with excellent temper, and only respond 
 by allowing a good many of their splashes to come in our 
 direction, so that we have enough of the sacred Ganges 
 upon us to wash some of our sins away before we set foot 
 on the shore again. Many people will tell you that the 
 Indian native is sad and immobile, with no sense of 
 humour. He may seem so in the large towns, where he 
 is out of his element and cumbered with much serving. 
 But when you see him in the villages, or on the road or 
 the railway, and most of all at the fairs, he seems jolly 
 enough, with a ready laugh and an obvious desire to find 
 material for a joke on the smallest provocation. 
 
 The noisy Bairagis were seen safely back to their camp 
 at last, much to the relief of the police officers. Two of 
 their sections were very cross and sulky with one another. 
 On one of the subsequent processional days I learnt that 
 these Bairagis managed to get up a serious riot, which 
 could only be quelled by calling out the military; on 
 another day a panic arose, owing to the terrific crush 
 along the walls of the Fort, and many people were 
 trampled under foot and several pushed into the river 
 and drowned; but on the Sankrant no actual collision 
 occurred, thanks to the ubiquitous vigilance of the District 
 Superintendent and his assistants, and the day passed 
 without disturbing incidents, except such as were caused 
 by the elephants.
 
 THE PILGRIM FAIR 209 
 
 These stately animals, I regret to say, were ' supers.' 
 They had been lent by wealthy zemindars and rajas for the 
 occasion, and of course the mahouts, or drivers, went with 
 them as part of their furniture. There were not enough 
 elephants to go round, and while one procession was 
 passing over the second bridge, the whole elephant corps 
 was driven back to the first bridge to ' come on ' with the 
 next body. But the mahouts expected a fee for each 
 trip ; and at the very height of the proceedings these 
 worldly men struck, and refused to move their bulky 
 beasts unless they were paid then and there. Demoralised 
 by this evil example, one of the elephants subsequently 
 bolted into the Ganges, and declined to come out till the 
 following morning. 
 
 It was evening before all the processions had passed, 
 and the sunset was turning to a curtain of luminous 
 orange the veil of dust that the stirring of myriads of 
 feet had lifted. Then the darkness came down, and 
 presently the moon rose and shed its silver flood upon 
 thousands and tens of thousands making their way along 
 the strand and through the maze of huts back to the 
 places where they were to prepare their meals and lie 
 down to sleep. But many stopped to lay their offerings 
 by the tiny shrines, at the waterside, in the sandy gullies, 
 among the alley- ways and spaces of the camps. In India 
 the gods are many and the gods are strong; and none 
 can tell what harm a chance neglected deity may do. So 
 any fakir who set up his little lamp and mat before his 
 image of brass or painted wood was sure of some prayers 
 and some pice. 
 
 A religion of terror, they tell us, much more than one 
 of love. And yet the people, as I saw them at this Pilgrim 
 Fair, were gentle, obedient, temperate, contented. Is it 
 their religion, with its incredible fantasies, its monstrous 
 obligations, which has made them thus, or have they
 
 210 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 become so in its despite? But the question drifts us ioto 
 the deeper waters. 
 
 Allahabad is one of the nicest of Anglo-Indian stations. 
 The globe-trotter and the tourist seldom trouble it ; and 
 the stranger can find himself made welcome to a hospit- 
 able circle, large enough to be cheerful, and not too large 
 to be intimate. You will spend pleasant days at Alla- 
 habad if its kindly residents take to you. But of the 
 Kumbh Mela you will hear comparatively little. Local 
 society, except the officials specially concerned, is not 
 deeply interested in it. It has its own affairs to attend 
 to. An Allahabad man I met elsewhere, shortly after my 
 visit, apologised for not calling upon me while I was at 
 the town. ' You see,' he explained, ' there was a good 
 deal going on just then. It was the week of the Hockey 
 Tournament, and that always brings a lot of people 
 down to us. I daresay you noticed there was rather a 
 crowd about the place ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' I said, ' I did notice that.'
 
 CHAPTEK XV 
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 
 
 THE voyager who comes down to Calcutta after a journey 
 through the ' mofussil ' may feel at first as if he had 
 suddenly left India a long way behind. In the hot 
 weather, it is true, the undeniable Indian sun, and the 
 feverish breath of the stewed sodden land-breeze, may 
 convince him of his error. But in midwinter the climate 
 is only just warm enough to be comfortable, and the air 
 is clean bright and wholesome. In this invigorating 
 season the stranger looks about him, and he sees people 
 in European clothes and with European faces walking 
 positively walking, not driving, or riding, or bicycling 
 even in the solid hours of the day, strolling across or 
 beside a broad common, which is neither brick-red nor 
 dusty yellow, but a good northern green. He passes a 
 line of shops, genuine shops, as they know them in the 
 West, with counters and plate-glass windows. He per- 
 ceives many imposing buildings, not Oriental in any 
 sense, but stucco-classical, or pseudo-Gothic, or latter-day 
 Renaissance. 
 
 A further touch of homeliness is imparted by the 
 frequent monuments which meet the vagrant gaze. Most 
 of the Indian cities we have mercifully forborne to 
 decorate with the triumphs of modern British statuary. 
 Our cantonments and civil stations are too impermanent 
 and strictly utilitarian for such indulgences. But in 
 
 Calcutta the statesman, in trousers of changeless if 
 
 211
 
 212 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 wrinkled bronze stares gloomily from his pedestal, the 
 hero curvets on a circus-horse of tormented marble. 
 There is even a long stone cylinder, which resembles, if it 
 does not consciously imitate, that painful column which 
 rears itself unashamed over the steps at the bottom of 
 Waterloo Place, S.W. The Duke of York was a suffi- 
 ciently bad soldier to deserve a bad monument ; but Sir 
 David Ochterlony was a general of some distinction, and 
 he should have been better treated. 
 
 Still one would not wish the Ochterlony column 
 away from the Calcutta Maidan, nor the other examples 
 of our plastic art which adorn that noble stretch of 
 verdure. Nor would one care to see them denationalised 
 or made much other than they are. It is a just instinct 
 which has dictated that the new Memorial Hall in 
 honour of Queen Victoria, of which the Prince of Wales 
 laid the foundation-stone during his visit, shall be ' clas- 
 sical ' in its design, with no suggestion of Orientalism at 
 all. It is to be built all of stainless white marble, and no 
 doubt it might be made very splendid with domes and 
 minarets ; but so conceived, it would not respond to the 
 local tradition. Calcutta is an English city, the second of 
 the Empire, and it does well to be conscious of the fact. 
 
 It is a city which owes its very existence to English 
 adventure, and its greatness to English rule. We are 
 not here inheriting past stories or treading in the steps 
 of fallen dynasties. But for the English, all that there 
 now is of Calcutta would to-day be no more than a few 
 villages scattered among the swamps of the Hooghly, as 
 it was when Mr. Job Charnock bought the site for the 
 East India Company two hundred and seventy years ago. 
 
 Charnock lies buried, with a legible inscription over 
 his grave, in the old church of St. John's, with his native 
 wife not beside him ; for the story is that the lady was 
 a Hindu widow, whom he rescued by force just as she
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 
 
 was about to commit suttee, and though she lived with 
 him to the end, and bore him children, she was never 
 converted to Christianity, and died a ' pagan.' Charnock, 
 however, was the first of the line of great merchants, 
 statesmen, administrators, and soldiers, who never wavered 
 from the determination that Calcutta should be the 
 Imperial centre of British power and commerce in the 
 East. 
 
 From Charnock on it is a long and notable succes- 
 sion, through Warren Hastings, Cornwallis, Wellesley, 
 Bentinck, Dalhousie, Canning, Lawrence, Lytton, Dufferin, 
 Curzon. The history of Calcutta is a record of great 
 names and great events, on -which Englishmen might be 
 excused for dwelling with much more self-satisfaction 
 than they commonly exhibit. Thanks largely to Lord 
 Curzon, the old memorials have been restored, and new 
 ones erected. The streets are full of associations. In one 
 corner of the Maidan are the mounds and earthworks 
 and bastions of Fort William, a name which ought to 
 make our hearts beat higher when we think of Robert 
 Clive, albeit it is not Clive's Fort William, but one of 
 slightly later date, from which the Commander-in-Chief 
 rules the Indian Army of to-day. 
 
 Walking from the stately stairs of Government House 
 we come upon Wellesley Place, which recalls one famous 
 proconsul, and Dalhousie Square, named after another. 
 And when we have registered our letters at the post- 
 office, we can shiver at the tablet on the corner wall, 
 which tells us that a few yards distant was the Black 
 Hole, that torture-chamber, twenty-two feet by fourteen, 
 where 146 human beings spent the night of an Indian 
 June ; and we can walk across to the marble obelisk, 
 renovated by Lord Curzon, which one of the twenty- 
 three survivors erected to the memory of his fellow- 
 sufferers.
 
 214 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Not far from these records of a dire tragedy is 
 Hastings House, which has been restored and acquired 
 by the Imperial Government ; and, if you like, you can 
 drive out past the common, and the shops and offices 
 and Chowringhee, along the line where the electric trams 
 run, past the bungalows set back among their trees and 
 gardens, past Belvedere, where the Lieutenant-Governor 
 of Bengal lives, and where Hastings fought his famous 
 duel with the author of 'Junius,' to the leafy village- 
 suburb of Alipore, where the great Proconsul himself 
 resided, with the woman whom he had made his own 
 under such strangely romantic circumstances. One need 
 not tell the story again. That episode, at least, is familiar 
 to some people who know little else of Anglo-Indian 
 history, for in these gossip-loving days a great man's 
 affairs of the heart are apt to be remembered when his 
 works are forgotten. 
 
 The mention of Hastings and his Austrian Baroness 
 and the Black Hole recalls Macaulay, the first writer who 
 brought India into popular English literature. We can 
 go back to Chowringhee, and pass through the hospitable 
 portals of the Bengal Club always open to any properly 
 accredited visitor and so be in the very house which 
 Macaulay himself occupied when he was legal member of 
 the Governor-General's Council. Here Macaulay spent 
 the cold weather of four happy years, enjoying himself 
 hugely, drafting the Penal Code, delighting in everything, 
 in the society of the statesmen and civilians he met on 
 the Council, in the big salary he drew (the rupee was a 
 rupee in those days), which made him independent for 
 the rest of his life, in Orme and Tod and the other 
 historians, and, above all, in the life and colour of 
 the wonderful land which he rendered into his own 
 animated prose, for the first time making people at home 
 realise that India was something else besides a country
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 215 
 
 whence a man returned, possibly with a larger income 
 certainly with a larger liver. 
 
 It is as a home of English trade even more than 
 a seat of English statesmanship that Calcutta impresses 
 one. The factors and merchants of the East India 
 Company may have been founding an Empire, to use the 
 late Sir John Seeley's phrase, in a fit of absence of mind. 
 Perhaps they had no consciousness of the political results 
 of their enterprise, and shrank from the dominion which 
 their generals and vicegerents compelled them reluctantly 
 to acquire. But they did intend that Calcutta should be 
 a world-centre of trade, the British mart and emporium 
 for the Eastern Continent. Here they laid their founda- 
 tions broad and deep, and the building has endured and 
 waxed exceeding great. 
 
 There is an air of solidity and permanence about Euro- 
 pean Calcutta which is wanting to most of the English 
 settlements in India. Soldiers and civilians, who are 
 merely encamped on the soil for a term of years, and that 
 broken by frequent flights homeward, need not be too 
 particular as to their accommodation. Soon the bunga- 
 low and the garden will be left to others, and the 
 transient tenant will never care to look on them again. 
 Under such conditions, people naturally do not build and 
 plant for posterity. 
 
 "With the merchants, and particularly the merchants 
 of the days before fast steamers, it was otherwise. From 
 the beginning they felt they were on the Hooghly to stay. 
 The trader could not often be leaving his business to take 
 holiday, when the voyage to Europe occupied months and 
 there were no hill-stations. Calcutta was to be his home 
 for perhaps the greater part of his life, and when he left 
 or died, the firm would go on, and there would be others 
 to take his place. It was worth while to set up an office 
 or warehouse that would endure, and a house in which
 
 216 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a man might live in comfort, even through the hot 
 weather. 
 
 So the old-time traders built fine mansions, spacious 
 and durable, planned with no more concession to Eastern 
 ideas than was necessary for shelter against the Eastern 
 sun. You see these stately dwelling-houses behind the 
 masts and funnels, as you steam up the river along Garden 
 Beach. Society has deserted this quarter now; it has 
 migrated to others nearer the centre of the city and the 
 Maidan, and here the manufacturers, the men of business, 
 and the high officials live, in handsome houses, behind 
 white walls, over which the bougainvilleas droop their 
 purple blossoms. 
 
 In most of the Indian cities the members of the 
 governing race are poor, and what wealth there is seems 
 to be chiefly in native hands. But Calcutta in this 
 respect differs noticeably from its rival on the West coast. 
 Bombay, as its residents will sometimes bitterly tell you, 
 is almost ceasing to be a white man's town : the Asiatic is 
 so pushing and so thriving. But the Bengal capital is 
 still the seat of a highly affluent European community, 
 which dominates commerce in spite of the Hindu baniya 
 and the versatile Marwari dealer. The great jute-mills, 
 the cotton-mills, the ironworks, the shipping lines, are in 
 Western hands. It is a thriving manufacturing centre, 
 where England holds her own, though the Germans are 
 active too : a haunt cf comfortable people, who can afford 
 to dress their wives in garments for which the up-country 
 ladies sigh in vain, to give resplendent dinner-parties, to 
 keep half a dozen excellent clubs in high prosperity, and 
 to make the Tollygunj racecourse on a Cup day look 
 rather like Ascot or Goodwood. 
 
 It is a great native town, too, though it is not one of 
 which white Calcutta affects to be proud. It has the 
 squalor of the East, without its picturesque colour a
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 217 
 
 nest of mean streets, unpaved, dirty, and shabby, lined 
 wifch dingy shops and malodorous hovels. The poorest 
 bazaars of most Indian cities have a redeeming touch of 
 local character ; but in Calcutta they are Western or cos- 
 mopolitan. There are busy thoroughfares, which are as 
 ugly as the working-class suburbs of an English seaport ; 
 there are rows of small houses, where the Chinese car- 
 penter plies his trade ; and there are back alleys which 
 have the shiftless untidy aspect of Southern Europe. 
 Native Calcutta is like some of her own citizens : she has 
 departed from the ways of the East only to produce a very 
 poor travesty of the West. 
 
 Yet there is an Oriental Calcutta which is still 
 primitive enough, and you need not go far to find it. You 
 may see it any morning, close beside the great Howrah 
 bridge, over which the clerks and shop-assistants and 
 labourers are pouring in to their work in an endless 
 stream, like that which rolls across London Bridge or 
 Blackfriars. A stone's throw distant is the pile of steps 
 leading down to the river, from which the people bathe 
 in crowds; for the Hooghly is a branch of the Ganges 
 and its waters are credited with the virtues of that 
 sacred stream. They come from remote inland districts 
 of Bengal, from Bihar and Orissa, from Sikkim and Assam. 
 
 It is a curious manifestation. The railway trundles 
 its goods-trucks close at hand, waggons laden with bales 
 from the mills creak along the road behind the bathers, 
 the chains and mooring-ropes of tramp steamers and iron 
 lighters are before them. In the dust by the roadside, 
 where the groaning wheels of the big trollies almost touch 
 it as they pass, a little altar to Ganesh has been set up. 
 A Brahman crouches beside the hideous four-armed image, 
 and a worshipper, naked to the waist, listens with joined 
 hands and half-closed eyes while the holy man goes 
 through his muttered incantations, careless of the railway
 
 218 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and the goods waggons and the passers-by in European 
 garments, and the knot of native Christians formed into 
 a little circle and lustily singing a Salvation Army hymn 
 in Bengali. 
 
 Or you may go any Tuesday morning to the shrine of 
 Kali, at Kalighat which is the original of Calcutta, where 
 you may see Hinduism in one of its more rampant phases. 
 Through a rookery of reeking narrow lanes, leading up 
 from a muddy creek, you come upon the black little 
 courtyard, with its group of temple buildings, in one 
 of which is the idol of the Destroying Goddess. The 
 place is swarming with people, some still dripping from 
 their bath, some holding moist and bleating lambs and 
 kids, which are to be offered up in sacrifice after 
 being soused in the slimy canal. There is a sort ol 
 butcher's block in a corner, round which congregate 
 half-draped priests, wild-looking and dirty. One of them 
 presses a wretched animal's neck into a hollowed cavity 
 of the wooden frame ; another swings a long curved 
 cleaver aloft, and with a single blow slices off the head, 
 leaving a spout of blood to join the crimson pool on the 
 slippery flagstones. Then the palpitating little body is 
 carried into the inner temple to be offered to the idol, 
 round which an eager crowd is pressing. 
 
 It is not a nice spectacle, and we quit it without re- 
 luctance. As we pass out of the squalid precincts our 
 attention is directed to a square pool, set back in a sort of 
 hollow behind the temple and the priests' houses. A 
 single white-robed female figure is bowing and prostrating 
 itself at the water's edge, a figure whose attitude, even 
 through the shrouding veil, is instinct with a sort of de- 
 spairing pathos. For this is a childless woman, who is 
 beseeching the goddess to lift from her the worst afflic- 
 tion but one that Indian womanhood can endure. Her 
 prayers, at least, are genuine, whatever may be the case
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 219 
 
 with the salvage revellers in the temple slaughter-house. 
 But the gongs of the electric tramcars are clinking 
 merrily at the end of the road ; and as we step into one in 
 order to get back to Chowringhee we reflect that there 
 is a good deal of unvarnished Indian Orientalism even 
 in Europeanised and babu-ridden Calcutta. 
 
 To the English resident the typical Bengal native is 
 the babu, the man of the clerkly, semi-educated, class. It 
 is certainly not that rather interesting person's own fault 
 if he is not well known. He has pretty nearly the best 
 brains in India and the readiest tongue. His memory is 
 prodigious and his fertility in talk inexhaustible. He is 
 something of an Irishman, something of an Italian, some- 
 thing of a Jew : if one can conceive an Irishman who 
 would run away from a fight instead of running into it, 
 an Italian without a sense of beauty, and a Jew who 
 would not risk five pounds on the chance of making 
 five hundred. He is very clever, but his cleverness 
 does not lead him far on the road to achievement ; for 
 when it comes to doing, rather than talking, he is often 
 passed by people of far inferior ability. The wealth of 
 Bengal is not exploited by him ; the profits of the local 
 industry are not his to reap. 
 
 He has shown little of the capacity of the indigenous 
 native in Bombay for asserting himself successfully in 
 trade. The active Parsis, the shrewd Hindus of the 
 Presidency and the Dekhan, are getting the business of 
 the Western capital into their hands, buying up the shares 
 in the old cotton-mills or starting new ones, elbowing the 
 Europeans out of commercial and financial enterprise. 
 The Bengalis have developed differently. The banks, the 
 offices, the engineering- works, the cotton-mills, the jute- 
 factories, are still English. 
 
 If the mercantile predominance of the ruling race is
 
 220 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 threatened it is not by the Bengalis, but by immigrants 
 from the other side of India, who carry on most of the 
 trade and much of the finance. The babu orator pero- 
 rates about Bengal for the Bengalis ; but he allows the 
 Marwari to come from the deserts of Kajputana and 
 pluck away the most lucrative commerce from under his 
 very nose. 
 
 The reason, or part of it, was given to a friend of 
 mine by a wealthy Marwari merchant, with whom he was 
 discussing the Swadeshi movement. 'The Bengali,' he 
 said, 'may talk about native industries as much as he 
 pleases; but they will do no good to him. In all the 
 larger kind of business he will not hold his own with us. 
 And I will tell you why. The Bengalis have no power of 
 initiative, and they have no mutual confidence. They 
 will not take the risk of starting a new enterprise. They 
 are afraid to strike out for themselves, and they do not 
 trust one another. A Bengali would not care to hold 
 shares in any joint-stock concern run by another Bengali, 
 and if the stock fell a point he would be half-dead with 
 anxiety until he had sold out, even at a loss. Now I, 1 
 added the man from the West, ' should not have grown as 
 rich as I am if I had not known how to trust my fellow- 
 countrymen. If a Marwari, whom I have never seen 
 before, comes to me and asks for goods on a three-months 
 credit, I let him have them without a contract. I take 
 his word for it that he will pay me when the time comes.' 
 Suspicious and timid people are obviously unsuited for 
 the great operations of modern commerce, which demand, 
 above all other qualities, confidence and courage. 
 
 There are many other kinds of work in the capital 
 city which the native of Lower Bengal does not perform. 
 Policemen, postmen, messengers, tramcar-drivers, are up- 
 country men, from Bihar or Chota Nagpur or the United 
 Provinces ; so, too, are many of the workers in the factories
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 22 i 
 
 and mills. The managers are mostly Europeans, as well 
 as the foremen and inspectors. The owners would prefer 
 the native article if they could get it of the right quality. 
 For the imported overseer is expensive. The capable 
 Scots mechanic, who might be earning thirty-five shillings 
 a Week in Dundee, will have to be provided with three or 
 four hundred pounds a year, and perhaps a house, when 
 he gets out to the banks of the Ganges. His native sub- 
 stitute is far cheaper, and if he is a Bengali, intelligent, 
 well-taught, and capable of mastering detail, he may 
 understand the work equally well. But the employers 
 say that he cannot be depended upon, and that he is apt 
 to lose his head and his nerve at moments of crisis. He 
 makes a good subordinate, and does very well in quiet 
 times and when things are going smoothly. But he is 
 no daring pilot in extremity, and when the storm runs 
 high he may forget to keep a steady hand on the helm. 
 
 That, at least, is the English view in Bengal, where it 
 is not favourable to the children of the soil. In some 
 other parts of India, in the Punjab, the North-west, and 
 Eajputana, you may find plenty of Englishmen express- 
 ing real regard for the natives of their district. But you 
 might be a long time in Bengal without hearing a good 
 word spoken for the Bengali. The Englishman frankly 
 does not like him, nor does he for his part entertain any 
 profound affection for the English. The gap between 
 the races here yawns very widely. Calcutta is full of 
 natives who speak what they regard as the English 
 language, wear the English dress slightly modified, and 
 read English newspapers. But I doubt if there is much 
 more community of feeling between them and the gentle- 
 men who frequent the Bengal Club and the United 
 Services Club than there was between the cringing 
 Orientals of the eighteenth century and the ' nabobs ' and 
 merchant princes, who lived sumptuously in the great
 
 222 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 mansions by the river-side that are the warehouses of 
 to-day. 
 
 And it must be admitted that the Bengali, be he 
 peasant or pleader, is not the kind of person who naturally 
 wins his way to the Anglo-Saxon heart. He is not 
 picturesque, like the wild man of the North with his 
 martial air and swashbuckling swagger, nor simple and 
 manly like the sunburnt cultivator of the Central dis- 
 tricts. In outward appearance he is, in the lump, by no 
 means attractive. He is rather short, and so dark that 
 Anglo-Indians seem almost justified in describing him as 
 a black man ; he walks abroad with his round bullet 
 head often bare of any covering at all a mode which 
 seerns scarcely decent to an eye that has become habit- 
 uated to the graceful folds of the many -coloured turban. 
 If poor, he arrays himself in a scant drapery of dingy 
 white ; if well-to-do, he shuffles along in a tweed coat, a 
 cotton dhoti, and cheap leather shoes. 
 
 His diet of rice and oily butter and sweetmeats induces 
 corpulency ; and the richer he is the more of this inflating 
 food he eats, and the fatter he gets and flabbier. Of late 
 years the young men have taken to various athletic sports 
 and pastimes, and the figures of the newer generation 
 tend to be a good deal less pronounced than those of 
 their elders. But, except in the way of pastime, the 
 civilised Bengali is not fond of muscular exertion; he 
 prefers the sedentary labour of the bureau, or the 
 security, and possible perquisites, of an official post. This 
 is the object of his ambition, and in the hope of it he 
 endures the stress of lectures and classes and examina- 
 tions. To place his son within reach of such a prospect 
 the small landowner, the tradesman, even the farmer, sends 
 him to school and college and encourages him to take a 
 degree, or at least to try for one. 
 
 With his memory, and his power of assimilation m a
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 223 
 
 rapid superficial fashion, he accommodates himself easily 
 to the examination system, and has a well-grounded belief 
 that he could beat most English youths of his own years 
 at the game. That is why there is a demand for throwing 
 open the covenanted Civil Service to simultaneous com- 
 petition in India and England, in which case a fair pro- 
 portion of the posts would be sure to fall to 'Indian 
 gentlemen ' from the Ganges delta. 
 
 The babu makes an excellent minor official ; indeed, 
 all India ought to be grateful to him, for it would not be 
 too much to say that the administration of the country 
 could hardly be run without him, so largely is he employed 
 in doing the clerical work and filling the subordinate 
 offices. Properly supervised, he does useful service, being 
 adaptable and intelligent, with more capacity than most 
 other natives for learning to write and read English. 
 As we all know, he learns it rather too well, having a 
 taste for ornate sentences and mellifluous phrases, mingled 
 with fragments of idiomatic colloquialism. Much easy 
 wit has been expended over babu-English, which is, 
 indeed, a peculiar dialect. At a certain railway-station a 
 female milk-vendor caused some annoyance to the ticket- 
 collector, who sat down and composed a letter to her 
 employer in the following terms : 
 
 Horned Sir, I beg you will remove your hand-maiden of 
 milk, as she is not good fellow, and we cannot stand her cheeks. 
 
 Other samples can be obtained by the visitor in every 
 Indian club and mess-room. But most people have their 
 own collection of babuisms, even if they do not remember 
 those which Mr. Anstey has so ingeniously invented. We 
 need not make too much of them. If English boys had 
 to read the Chinese classics at school, and to learn Chinese 
 from masters who had never been nearer China than 
 Dover beach, I daresay their literary style would cause
 
 224 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 amusement in Peking. We teach our young Hindus a 
 little English grammar under native instructors, and 
 then feed them on Shakespeare and Addison, on Gibbon, 
 Scott, Dickens, and Buskin. No wonder the result is a 
 little mixed. 
 
 Education (of a sort) has been spread widely in 
 India, and the Bengali takes to it as a young duck takes 
 to water. Colleges are numerous, and very cheap, and 
 the ladder from the back bazaar to the University is easy 
 to climb. But though the ascent is gentle, there are a 
 good many tumbles. Yet even the unsuccessful candidate 
 has achieved something. 
 
 It is better (in Bengal) to have gone in for an exam- 
 ination and been plucked than never to have tried at all. 
 The Failed B.A. has a recognised status, and proudly 
 mentions his qualifications when applying for a post. 
 The head of a great establishment tells me that every 
 week he is solicited by gentlemen who offer this singular 
 testimonial of mitigated efficiency. One even sees adver- 
 tisements : ' Wanted a Failed B.A., with some knowledge 
 of typewriting ' ; the advertisers being no doubt shrewd 
 as well as economical persons who believe that they may 
 get good value for their money even out of the slightly 
 inferior article which has not ' satisfied the examiners.' 
 
 As for the B.A. who has not failed, but arrived, he is, 
 of course, eligible in various ways. His price in the 
 marriage-market is increased. A Bengali father expects 
 to pay cash for the bridegroom before he can get his 
 daughter off, and the value of a B.A., I am credibly in- 
 formed, is assessed in some circles at two thousand rupees, 
 while the M.A. may be worth as much as four thousand. 
 For a man of this higher academic standing may be 
 expected, not only to get a good situation himself, but to 
 do something for his family, and perhaps even to put 
 pickings in the way of a deserving father-in-law.
 
 BENGAL AND BABUDOM 225 
 
 The college man, failed or otherwise, who does not 
 get a post in the public service or in private employ- 
 ment often fares badly. Bengal is full of educated or 
 semi-educated hangers-on, waiting for something to turn 
 up. It is this material of which, in every country, agi- 
 tators are made, and in Bengal they are numerous and 
 voluble. Some of them take to journalism and write 
 anti- Administration articles in a swarm of vernacular 
 newspapers. 
 
 Many more gravitate to the law, and become pleaders, 
 or attorneys, or barristers ; for India has a passion for 
 litigation, and there is some sort of a living to be made by 
 a whole host of practitioners, from the Small Cause Court 
 lawyer, who touts for clients at two rupees a case, to the 
 leader in the Calcutta High Court, who earns an income 
 which would be deemed handsome in Lincoln's Inn. The 
 law is the one profession in which the Bengalis more than 
 hold their own with Europeans. The ' black Bar ' in 
 Calcutta is pushing out the white, which has a pretty 
 hard struggle for existence ; for the native barrister is 
 sometimes a man of real capacity, an able lawyer, a clever 
 cross-examiner, and a first-rate forensic orator. 
 
 The calling suits the Bengali, with his subtlety, his 
 ingenuity, and his readiness of speech. And when pro- 
 moted from the Bar to the Bench he often does very well 
 there. The High Courts and Chief Courts of the various 
 Provinces are seldom without native Judges, who obtain 
 and deserve the respect of their European colleagues ; 
 and much of the minor judicial work throughout the 
 country is performed by Hindus and Mohammedans. It 
 is for the higher responsibilities of executive business 
 that the Bengali, with some rare exceptions, is supposed 
 to be unfitted. For that needs character and courage 
 and firmness ; and these are qualities in which he is 
 commonly deficient, according to the received opinion not 
 
 H
 
 226 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 only of most Europeans, but also of many natives outside 
 his own Provinces. 
 
 When everybody says the same thing, that thing is 
 usually untrue. But it is difficult to resist the consensus 
 of testimony that the native of Lower Bengal is not, to 
 put it gently, a person of conspicuous valour. He is 
 credited with being able to yield to the menace of physical 
 violence without any sense of humiliation. One hears 
 stories like that (possibly apocryphal) anecdote of the 
 Bengali, travelling in the train with his wife, who sum- 
 moned a drunken sailor for kissing the lady. When asked 
 why he made no attempt to prevent the outrage, he 
 replied, ' Your Honour, I am a fearful man.' 
 
 I have seldom met an Anglo-Indian who doubted that 
 the inhabitant of this region was a ' fearful man,' though 
 I have encountered an educated Hindu from another part 
 of the Peninsula who flatly denied it. He ascribed the 
 theory to a famous passage in Macaulay's Essays, which, 
 he said, had given the Bengalis a false character for 
 cowardice with the English reading public. 
 
 It is highly probable that the habitual timidity of 
 these people has been exaggerated. The Bengalis used to 
 be great faction-fighters, and still are so in some of the rural 
 districts, where they will turn out and pummel each other 
 with bamboos and staves in a vigorous and bloodthirsty 
 fashion. The rule is that the fight stops when a man is 
 killed, and it is said that the party which is getting the 
 worst of the engagement will sometimes slay one of their 
 own side. This serves a twofold purpose. It brings the 
 battle to an end, and it enables the vanquished combatants 
 to lay a charge of murder against their opponents. 
 
 Kiots, indeed, of one kind or another are not at all 
 infrequent in Bengal. The Anglo-Indian view is that if 
 a single unarmed individual falls among a body of Ben- 
 gali rioters he will be in great danger ; but that a dozen
 
 BENGAL AND BABTJDOM 227 
 
 policemen will subdue the largest and most turbulent mob. 
 Some courage, at any rate, the young men of Bengal 
 undoubtedly display. They have taken to cricket, and 
 will stand up boldly, without pads or gloves, to the fastest 
 bowling. They play football, too, in bare feet, and can 
 make a good match with Thomas Atkins in his thickest 
 ammunition boots. 
 
 But if the Bengalis are not all cowards, they are 
 certainly un warlike. There is no people in the world with 
 less taste for martial glory. It is said that all the millions 
 in Lower Bengal do not contribute one single sepoy or 
 sowar to the ranks of the British-Indian army. 
 
 As we know him best and hear most about him, the 
 Bengali is a babu. Yet all babudom would make but a 
 small island in the sea of population that floods the valley 
 of the Lower Ganges and the lands adjacent. The true 
 vocation of the man of Bengal, away from artificial urban 
 conditions, is that of the agriculturist. If you want to 
 see him au naturel, you must leave the great cities and 
 the railways, and wander among the villages which cluster 
 all over the rich alluvial plain. Very different are they 
 from the bare brown mud-walled hamlets of the North. 
 The tiny cottages, with their conical roofs of thatch, look 
 like beehives ; and like bees the people swarm in and out, 
 and over the rice-grounds, and among the lanes shadowed 
 by palm-trees and bamboos. There is no solitude on this 
 countryside, for it is such a breeding-ground of human 
 animals as exists scarcely anywhere else on earth, outside 
 China. Here, as he hoes and rakes his fields, with sedu- 
 lous though slovenly labour, or lies under the spreading 
 banyan-tree during the heat of the day, or walks by his 
 bullock-cart along the road, above all when he sits and 
 gossips outside his shanty in the evening with his brood 
 about him, the Bengal peasant seems fairly content, in 
 spite of malaria, the fever, the moneylender, and the land-
 
 228 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 lord. If he is poor enough in the world's goods, he is 
 usually rich in sons and daughters and uncles and aunts 
 and cousins and nephews ; for he is essentially a family 
 man, soft and kindly and philoprogenitive, and he esteems 
 himself happiest when his quiver is fullest. Indeed, in 
 the plenitude of his paternal bounty he does not limit his 
 regard to his male offspring, but will sometimes even 
 display a quite demonstrative affection for a favourite little 
 daughter; and he will mortgage his financial future for 
 years, in order that she may be suitably married, with all 
 the honours of a ruinously expensive wedding-feast, at 
 the mature age of seven.
 
 CHAPTEK XVI 
 
 IN THE SOUTHLAND 
 
 WHEN yon pass from the North of India to the South 
 you realise once again the greatness and the diversity of 
 the vast territory. The traveller who has been spending 
 some weeks or months in Bajputana, the Punjab, the 
 United Provinces, and Bengal, may begin to presume 
 that he has got his orientation with some approach to 
 correctness, and may even be rashly inclined to believe 
 that he is coming to know something about India. But 
 he will find that many of his bearings have to be taken 
 afresh when he gets into the Southland. The aspect 
 of the country is changed its scenery, its peoples, its 
 architecture, its flora and fauna, its languages. 
 
 The voyager discovers that the smattering of collo- 
 quial Hindustani he has laboriously acquired is of small 
 use to him. That extraordinary dialect, which was made 
 up in the camps of the Northern invaders, and is more 
 or less understood by two hundred millions of people, 
 is nearly unknown to the majority of the remaining 
 hundred. The servant, brought from Bombay or Cal- 
 cutta, is almost as much at a loss as his master, when 
 talking to a Telugu-speaking coolie or a Tamil tonga- 
 driver, and he often has to fall back on English as a 
 common medium of communication. 
 
 This, by the way, is one of the points that first attracts 
 attention. In the North and West, English is the 
 language of the sahibs and the Eurasians, and of them
 
 230 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 almost alone. Even in Bombay and Calcutta, with their 
 English shops and business houses, and a European popu- 
 lation several thousands strong, you cannot make yourself 
 understood without some slight acquaintance with the 
 vernacular. But in Madras, if you address a porter, a 
 policeman, an hotel waiter, or any casual native, in your 
 own tongue, the chances are that he will answer you in 
 fairly correct and grammatical English. In the Southern 
 Presidency it is not at all unusual for ladies and gentle- 
 men to talk to their servants habitually in English, and I 
 have met residents of some years' standing who know next 
 to nothing of the vernacular. I do not say that the mem- 
 sahib of the other Provinces is always an accomplished 
 linguist ; but she has to pick up a little colloquial Hindu- 
 stani or Bengali or Guzerati, since otherwise she would 
 hardly be able to convey her wishes to her domestics 
 at all. 
 
 The contrast throws light on a whole chapter of his- 
 tory. It reminds us that we have been in Madras longer 
 than anywhere else. When you stand by the earthworks of 
 Fort St. George, and look out upon the line of surf break- 
 ing upon the shore, you are at the seat of our Empire in 
 the East. In a large part of the North we are but new- 
 comers. It is only the other day, so to speak, that we 
 annexed Oude ; I met old men, and at least one old lady, 
 in Lucknow, who were living there when the Moham- 
 medan kings still misruled in that noble city. In the 
 Punjab we have not been settled much longer; in the 
 Frontier Province we are hardly settled yet. 
 
 But in Madras the English have been at home for not 
 far short of three hundred years. The agents of the East 
 India Company planted themselves upon that coast, by the 
 old Portuguese settlement of San Thome, while Charles 
 the First was still King of England ; and there they 
 remained, trading, working, fighting hard at times with
 
 IN THE SOUTHLAND 231 
 
 the ' Moors ' and the French, but constantly increasing 
 the extent of their territories and the number of their 
 subjects. 
 
 Madras, like Calcutta, is a city mainly of English 
 creation ; and though it has been outpaced by its later 
 rivals, it had its three hundred thousand inhabitants when 
 both Bombay and Calcutta were small and struggling 
 towns. Thus the traders and the officials have had 
 more time to teach the people English ; and, perhaps, 
 because these latter are of more malleable fibre than the 
 men of the North, and because they have no such massive 
 literature as that of the Sanscrit to fortify them, they have 
 yielded more easily to the speech of the conqueror ; and 
 they use it with a readiness for which the tourist would 
 bless them, if he came. 
 
 But he does not come. Madras lies beyond his radius, 
 together with all the Southern States, including plea- 
 sant Mysore and picturesque Hyderabad. Anglo-Indians 
 themselves, unless business or officialdom places them 
 there, know little of Madras, and are accustomed to 
 speak of it with a certain contemptuous patronage. It is 
 the benighted Presidency, left outside the main sweep of 
 Indian life, rather backward and deficient in enterprise, 
 with an inferior administrative record and a degenerate 
 people. The ' best men ' of the Civil Service always go 
 to the Punjab, the second best to the United Provinces 
 and Bengal ; Madras puts up with the leavings. So one is 
 told in the superior North, and warned further that there 
 is nothing to see and nothing to do in this hot and com- 
 fortless abode of the unworthier black races, persons of 
 low stature, who cannot even fight. The visitor is pre- 
 pared to expect little that will furnish him with interest 
 and entertainment in the South country, and looks for- 
 ward to enduring it with resignation and leaving it without 
 regret.
 
 232 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 And he is agreeably disappointed. It is one of the 
 many illusions and disillusions of his Indiarl experiences. 
 When he was in the Punjab he saw reasons for doubting 
 whether the administration of that important and self- 
 conscious province is so supremely able and successful as 
 it professes to be ; or whether the Punjab official himself, 
 excellent as he often is, has not been a little over-praised. 
 Conversely, when he comes to Madras and its daughter 
 states and dependencies, he will seek in vain for evidence 
 cf inefficiency or stagnation. He will find, on the con- 
 trary, all the signs of a Government which understands 
 its business, and studies the interests of its subjects, and 
 watches over them with a vigilant care. 
 
 If he enters the Presidency by train from the North 
 he will reach a certain frontier station, at which he and 
 his fellow-passengers, including the screaming horde from 
 the third-class vans, are turned out for plague-inspection 
 purposes. A doctor, with his native assistants, proceeds 
 to take the dossier of the whole complement, ascertains 
 where everybody comes from, makes a medical examina- 
 tion in cases of doubt, and finally issues an elaborate 
 certificate, testifying that the incomer is to remain under 
 observation and report himself during the first ten days 
 after his arrival. It is a little annoying, and the aggrieved 
 European grumbles freely ; but Madras has kept itself 
 almost clear of plague, while Bombay, with a very similar 
 climate, has been decimated by the disease. 
 
 Madras has a flourishing educational system, and can 
 boast more persons per thousand who can read and write 
 than any other province in India, except Burma, which, 
 of course, is not India at all in any but the administrative 
 sense. Its roads seem excellent, and its railways not 
 below the ordinary Indian standard. Its Public Works 
 Department may fairly challenge comparison with that 
 of the very best of its rivals. I have said something
 
 IN THE SOUTHLAND 233 
 
 already of the Punjab irrigation schemes and colonies. 
 Magnificent as these are, they do not surpass, in bold- 
 ness of conception and brilliancy of execution, the great 
 dams of the South, by which the fitful rivers, rushing 
 wildly at one season from their mountain reservoirs, 
 and trickling weakly along their parched channels at 
 another, have been tamed and rendered subservient to 
 the uses of man. 
 
 Moreover, it is in Mysore, which is a geographical and 
 political adjunct to Madras, that the most serious and 
 successful effort has been made to develop the mineral 
 resources and the natural agencies of India. Some of 
 the richest mines in the world are being worked on the 
 Kolar goldfields; and the Sivasamudram power-station, 
 where the falls of the Cauvery are used to develop elec- 
 trical energy, is laid out on a scale which is not to be 
 met with again until we get across the Atlantic. A visit 
 to the Sivasamudram works and then to the Mysore 
 mines does not leave on the mind the impression that 
 Southern India is effete. 
 
 Nor is it, as the supercilious Northerner will some- 
 times aver, a repellent, a disagreeable, or a forbidding 
 land. Quite the contrary. It is a commonplace to 
 observe that the South is the India of the picture- 
 books; but one cannot help repeating the saying, for 
 its truth is self-evident. Here at last you can find that 
 for which you have been searching, with expectant and 
 baffled gaze, for many weeks. The brown deserts of 
 Rajputana, the stony hills of the Borderland, the rock 
 walls and snow-capped pyramids of the Himalayas, the 
 bare rifted plains of the Upper Ganges valley, the rice- 
 fields of Lower Bengal, the forts and tombs and palaces 
 of the old royal cities all these are interesting enough. 
 But they are not the India of tradition, the India of 
 our youth ; and in the midst of them we are sometimes 
 
 H 2
 
 234 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 impelled to ask when India the real India is going to 
 begin. 
 
 It begins when the night mail from Calcutta has 
 carried you clear of Orissa, and you wake in the morning 
 to find yourself among 'the palms and temples of the 
 South,' amid villages set deep in broad-leaved tropical 
 plants, cactus and aloe. Here are the Indians that we 
 have all known ; not the gaunt, bearded peasants of 
 the upper regions, nor the bullet-headed stout Bengali, 
 but the brown half-naked folks, with large gentle eyes, 
 and with vestments of red and blue, such as the Apostles 
 wear in the old coloured nursery Bibles. 
 
 These Canarese and Telugus and Tamils command no 
 great amount of respect either from Europeans or from 
 the natives of the other Provinces. They are not among 
 the fighting races ; they furnish a very small contingent 
 to the armies of the King-Emperor, and the head- 
 quarters staff thinks so poorly of them that it has almost 
 abolished Madras as a recruiting-ground. Yet all the 
 virtues of the world are not military, and these South- 
 erners seem to me a rather attractive people. They have 
 the reputation of being ill-looking, except the high-caste 
 Brahmans, among whom, indeed, you will find faces not 
 easily beaten for perfection of feature and intellectual 
 distinction. I have seen a Brahman lawyer of Madras 
 who could have sat for the model of Giotto's ' Dante,' 
 and another who might have passed for Phoabus Apollo 
 in cream-coloured marble. 
 
 It needs no ethnological expertness to select the 
 ' Aryan ' strain of this aristocracy of birth from the 
 Dravidian masses. These same Dravidians are dark and 
 low of stature and sometimes negroid in type ; but they 
 seem healthy and sturdy, their chocolate skins are sleek and 
 clear. They are a lively, good-tempered folk ; very poor, 
 I am told ; extremely lazy, I make no doubt ; but kindly,
 
 IN THE SOUTHLAND 235 
 
 humorous, and placable, except when they are roused into 
 frenzy by fanaticism. They have the Southern insou- 
 ciance, and some touch of Southern artistry, in their selec- 
 tion of bright colours that go unerringly with their 
 dusky tones of skin, and in the classic grace with which 
 they loop their scanty drapery over one shoulder leaving 
 the other bare as the Greek often did. For picturesqueness 
 I saw no festal crowds in India to beat those which 
 assembled to greet the Prince of Wales on his entry into 
 Madras and Mysore. Some of the groups of women, in 
 glowing robes of orange or magenta or deep blue, made 
 splendid clumps of colour, as they lined the roofs or were 
 framed in the recesses of verandahs and arcaded windows. 
 Madras itself seemed to me one of the most desirable 
 of the larger Indian towns. I did not notice anything 
 which struck me as resembling the attitude or demeanour 
 often ascribed to this fine city. We have been told to 
 see in the capital of the South only 
 
 A withered beldame now, 
 Dreaming of ancient fame. 
 
 But Madras looks more like a matronly beauty than a 
 faded old hag. She may be dreaming of ancient fame, 
 but she has many present amenities to comfort her. It 
 is a city of ' magnificent distances ' far ampler even 
 than those of Washington. The five hundred thousand 
 inhabitants are spread out over an area almost compar- 
 able to that occupied by the five millions of Londoners. 
 And, like London, the capital of the South is not so 
 much a town as an agglomeration of villages. They are 
 linked together by wide open tree-shaded roads, flanked 
 by gardens and meadows. 
 
 In Madras you find that the compounds are the largest 
 in India, so that quite insignificant official personages or 
 private individuals have their three or four acres of
 
 236 A VISION OF 
 
 ground, and many have email estates, like miniature parks, 
 with lawns and groves and kitchen gardens and pasture- 
 land. They are well housed, for they are able to live in 
 handsome roomy bungalows, such as people built in the 
 spacious old Anglo-Indian days, before they began to be 
 cramped by rising prices and a falling rupee. Space is 
 treated with a kind of lavish disdain in Madras, where, 
 in the middle of the municipal area, you come upon a 
 great grassy maidan, a sort of Hampstead Heath or 
 Putney Common, upon public offices surrounded by leafy 
 glades and flower-beds, upon watercourses and river- 
 channels, and native hamlets and plantations of palm-trees. 
 
 Social life, too, seems to glide along with a certain 
 Southern ease and freedom, untroubled either by over- 
 important officialdom or by great wealth, as in the other 
 two capitals. There are no jute or cotton magnates or 
 Parsi millionaires in Madras, and no Viceregal Court, too 
 dignified to be quite accessible. Everybody knows every- 
 body else within the limits of the knowable and the 
 clubable, of course ; there is much meeting and tea- 
 drinking at the Adyar Club, where you can sit on the 
 pleasant lawns by the riverside, and watch the fours 
 swinging along, and the pairs and skiffs putting off from 
 the adjacent Boat Club, and almost fancy yourself by 
 the reaches of the upper Thames on some warm summer 
 afternoon. 
 
 But Madras is not too much lapped in ease to be 
 indolent and careless ; nor does it at all confirm the im- 
 pression, which you may have brought with you, that it 
 is drifting behind the world. The fine harbour, a purely 
 artificialc reation, in which great merchantmen and twelve- 
 thousand-ton battleships can moor alongside the wharves, 
 is a proof that the city, even though she may now be a 
 little out of the main stream of cominerco, does not 
 despair of her future ; nor has she lost the energy which
 
 IN THE SOUTHLAND 237 
 
 made a great port and world-famous trade centre of this 
 strip of wind-swept surf-beaten sand. 
 
 As you drive along the Marina, and watch the famous 
 catamarans the boats whose name you have known, and 
 whose picture you have seen, all your life skimming their 
 way across the fidgeting waves, you wonder anew at the 
 vigour and the genius which turned this strand into the 
 seat of an Empire. And you look again at the mounds of 
 Fort St. George, and also you marvel why Madras thinks 
 so little of her one immortal name. In common with the 
 rest of India, she seems to have forgotten Robert Olive. 
 She has a statue of Neill, the man of Cawnpore and 
 Lucknow, one of the gallant soldiers of the Mutiny. But 
 of a far greater than Neill and the other Mutiny heroes 
 she has, I think, no memorial at all. I am not sure that 
 there is a single monument to Clive in the whole of India. 
 We have yet to do justice to the man to whom, more 
 than any other human being, we owe our Empire of the 
 East.
 
 CHAPTBB XVII 
 GOLD AND WATER-POWER 
 
 MYSOKB is one of the best governed of Indian native 
 States, and the most important in Southern India, except 
 that of the Nizam. For nearly half a century it was 
 under British management ; and when we handed it back 
 to the reigning dynasty, twenty-five years ago, we did so 
 with a first-rate Anglicised administration, which the late 
 Maharaja, assisted by a native Prime Minister of ex- 
 ceptional ability, maintained intact. They even intro- 
 duced further improvements, creating a Representative 
 Assembly, which, it is true, is not allowed to do anything 
 in particular, but, on the other hand, is permitted to talk 
 as freely, and almost as long, as it pleases. 
 
 There are many interesting things to see and do in this 
 pleasant little country. Good shooting is to be had, and 
 the Prince of Wales was taken to the great keddahs, where 
 the wild elephants are caught and corralled, with the 
 assistance of traitorous tame giants of their own species. 
 Those whom history tempts more than sport can drive 
 out from the bright Eesidenz-Stadt, where the Maharaja 
 is building what will be the finest and most artistic- 
 ally important modern palace in India, to the famous 
 but now ruined city of Seringapatam, where the last 
 rounds in the fierce struggle for the Carnatic were 
 played off between the British, the French, and the 
 Mohammedans. 
 
 23S
 
 GOLD AND WATEK-POWER 239 
 
 When I took the trip to Tippoo Sahib's old capital it 
 was in a motor-car on a clear warm morning, some hours 
 before the Koyal party were expected to make the same 
 journey. Many people were passing along the nine miles 
 of road, lined with green mangoes and spreading banyans 
 and other trees of the forest, as roads so often are in 
 India. The villagers had been ordered to keep the track 
 moist for the august visitors, and they stood in groups 
 to see our unfamiliar machine go by men with their 
 white togas flung over one shoulder, and women, statuesque 
 and graceful in their crimson and orange robes, with the 
 great brass lotas balanced on their heads. Sometimes we 
 came upon roadside hamlets, with the goats and buffalo- 
 calves straying in and out of the byres, amid brown 
 laughing children ; or upon the shepherd, with his long 
 staff and long mantle, walking solemnly at the head of 
 his flock. 
 
 At Seringapatam there is much to see if one is in 
 the sight-seeing mood. They show you the beautiful 
 mausoleum with the tombs of Tippoo Sultan and Hyder 
 Ali, those sturdy Moslem tyrants, with whom we had 
 pretty nearly the toughest of all our fights for India ; 
 and the tomb of General Baillie, who died a prisoner in 
 Tippoo's hands. One may also see the dungeon arches 
 where Major Baird, a hot-tempered Scots officer, was kept 
 in captivity for three years and a-half, chained to a native 
 warder. ' I'm sorry for the chiel that's tied to oor Davie,' 
 said Baird's mother when she was made acquainted with 
 this arrangement. 
 
 But Mysore has interests which are in no way con- 
 nected either with archaeology, with history, or with 
 sport. The Kolar gold-mines lie in this State, and their 
 names, Champion Eeef, Mysore, Ooregum, and the rest, 
 are known to thousands of people in places where they 
 buy and sell shares, who perhaps would find some
 
 240 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 difficulty in explaining precisely where they are. The 
 Kolar district is now one of the leading goldfields of the 
 world, and it is able to throw two million pounds' worth 
 into the common stock of the precious metal every year. 
 And, in order that the mines may be worked with economy 
 and efficiency, the State Government has established a 
 scheme for transmitting to them, over ninety miles of 
 intervening country, the electric energy developed in its 
 power-station at the Falls of the Cauvery Biver. 
 
 There is nothing in India, or in all Asia, more re- 
 markable in its own way than this skilful and successful 
 effort to utilise and transmute some of the wasted force of 
 Nature ; and it says much for the Mysore Administration, 
 under its late Diwan, the clever Brahman statesman, Sir 
 Seshadri lyar, that it had the courage and foresight to 
 carry out and finance this project. The Sivasamudram 
 power-station, planned by a clever Anglo-Canadian 
 engineer, Major de Lotbiniere, B.E., but fitted up by an 
 American company, and run by American managers, is 
 worth coming a long way to see, by those who are 
 interested in the future, as well as in the present and the 
 past, of India. 
 
 But not many people, save those whom business takes 
 there, ever do think of seeing Sivasamudram. For one 
 thing, it is not easy to reach. It is thirty miles from 
 the nearest railway-station, and it was not thought 
 necessary to bridge the distance even by a tramway or 
 construction-line for the transport of heavy machinery. 
 Men and animals are too cheap in India for such assist- 
 ance to be required. The dynamos, the turbines, all 
 the weighty forgings and huge pipes and tubes, were 
 brought in on bullock-carts, at a rate per ton with which 
 mechanical transport could not compete. 
 
 There is no passenger traffic in the remote and solitary 
 river-bottom where the works He. The officials have a
 
 GOLD AND WATER-POWER 241 
 
 tonga service to and from Maddur station, on the line 
 between Mysore and Bangalore ; but it was temporarily 
 suspended at the time of my visit, because all the vehicles 
 were needed at Mysore and the Eoyal shooting-camp. 
 The only possible mode of conveyance was the native 
 country cart, which is called a jutka ; and so in jutkas a 
 companion and myself determined to traverse the thirty 
 miles from Maddur to Sivasamudram. Experienced 
 residents at Mysore obliged us beforehand with lurid 
 descriptions of the horrors of this method of transport, 
 which they assnred us was fit only for the dura ilia of 
 the native. In the result we did not fare so badly, though 
 I should not recommend the trip to anyone solicitous as 
 to his personal comfort. 
 
 You become acquainted with various strange machines 
 in your passage through the Empire of India. There is 
 the two-horsed tonga, with the pole running right under 
 the body of the carriage, and the single-horsed ekka, with 
 a similar arrangement of shafts, both of which are apt to 
 tip you out backwards if not properly balanced ; there is 
 the Burmese chaise, which has been described as a 
 decayed match-box dragged by an enlarged rat ; and there 
 is the bullock-cart, drawn by two trotting zebus with 
 painted and brass-tipped horns, which is so pretty to look 
 at that you almost forgive its absence of springs. For 
 rancid discomfort the jutka is in the first flight. It is 
 like a costermonger's barrow turned the other way about, 
 with a pony between the handles, and it is provided with 
 a sort of beehive or dome-shaped cover of plaited straw. 
 It is about two feet wide, and the floor slopes steeply 
 from front to back. A whole family of natives, men, 
 women and children, can contrive, in some acrobatic 
 fashion of their own, to huddle up inside it ; but a single 
 moderate-sized European, with a moderate-sized suit- case, 
 finds himself badly cramped for space.
 
 242 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 I crawled under the tilt, and discovered that when I 
 tried to sit up my hat was in contact with the low roof ; 
 and when I attempted to lie down my legs protruded in- 
 decently beyond the tail-board. Moreover, the concern 
 was redolent of that mingled odour of garlic, cocoa-nut 
 oil, and warm humanity, which the native leaves behind 
 him, and every time I moved clouds of dust arose from 
 the sacking which covered the boards. The pony was a 
 minute country-bred framework of gaunt skin and jagged 
 bone, and I formed the worst anticipations when I re- 
 flected that I had thirty miles to travel by this agency, 
 under a searching afternoon sun which pierced the straw 
 covering as if it were tissue-paper. 
 
 However, the ragged Mohammedan driver was willing, 
 and the pony belied his appearance. We went along at 
 a smart ambling trot that carried us over the ground at 
 an unexpected speed ; and when, after a dozen miles, we 
 stopped to change horses, our wiry little animal, as soon 
 as he was released, took a long roll in the dust, and then, 
 espying a tethered stallion about twice his own size, 
 went up to him with a snort and began a spirited fight. 
 The jutka covered the thirty miles, with two relays of 
 ponies, in little more than three hours. It delivered us 
 at the inspection-bungalow of the power-station in time 
 to sit down to dinner with the State Engineer and the 
 manager of the scheme, Americans both, and as hospit- 
 able and as keenly interested in their work as American 
 men of business and experts usually are wherever you 
 meet them. 
 
 The next morning I went all over the installation 
 with my genial hosts, and marvelled much at what I 
 saw. It seemed strange to hear the familiar, kindly 
 American locutions ; stranger still to witness this superb 
 example of American mechanical skill, here amid these 
 lonely hills in the heart of Asia. It is a beautiful corner
 
 GOLD AND WATEK-POWER 243 
 
 of country which the engineers have annexed, albeit, one 
 heard with regret, much troubled by malaria a country 
 of bold headlands and scooped hollows and flashing 
 waters. Near Sivasamudram, which is just at the point 
 where Mysore State and the Madras Presidency touch, 
 the Cauvery makes its spring of four hundred feet from 
 the Dekhan upland to the lower level of the coast region. 
 Down the mountain stairs the swift river hastens, gushing 
 through clefts and gorges in foaming cataracts, or pouring 
 in fleecy torrents over the sheer black surface of the cliffs. 
 One lovely cascade hangs like a floating bridal veil of 
 silvered gauze upon the brow and shoulder of the mountain, 
 and loses itself in a rock-bound basin of still green water 
 at the foot. 
 
 A couple of miles above the Falls, the Cauvery broadens 
 out into a shallow boulder-strewn bay before gathering 
 itself for its downward plunge. Here is a long stone 
 bridge of native workmanship, perched on a hundred little 
 rough pillars, rude and primitive to the eye, but which 
 yet can stand unharmed the fiercest violence of the river 
 when it roars and races in the madness of its flood orgy. 
 Hard by the engineers have thrown their dam across 
 the channel, and placed weirs and gates, through which 
 the water is led by four long aqueducts or canals to the 
 penstocks that feed the turbines four hundred feet 
 below. Bound about the pond or forebay, at the head of 
 the great steel pipes, are clustered the offices of the 
 power-station, the bungalows where the managers and 
 officials live, their little club and recreation-ground, and 
 the neat brick huts of the workpeople and coolies. 
 Here also are the fitting-shops, where skilled mechanics 
 do the repairs necessary for keeping the machinery in 
 order ; and the drum and winding-engine of the tramway 
 which runs down the perpendicular face of the cliff 
 alongside the penstocks.
 
 244 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 We take our seats in the trolley, and in a couple of 
 minutes are in the generating-shed at the lower level of 
 the river. In the long brick building we find the row 
 of turbines, the wheels set with little cups round their 
 tyres, which are receiving the impact of the solid core of 
 fluid as it pounds out of the penstocks. Our expert guides 
 explain to us the score of elaborate devices employed to 
 regulate the flow, so that each wheel spins its allotted 
 three hundred revolutions per minute, no more and no 
 less, and they show us the chains and bridles which 
 render the angry river nixies obedient, if not willing, 
 slaves to man. 
 
 Opposite the turbines is ranged the line of dynamos ; 
 and you can stand between these two files of imprisoned 
 iron monsters, and know that the miracle is being 
 wrought in your presence. The Spirits of the Waters are 
 transmuted into the Spirits of the Ether, and the inert 
 stored forces the river has gathered from the rain-clouds 
 are turned into the fiery energy, which is carried through 
 a few thin strands of wire to the engine-houses and 
 stamping-mills of the Kolar goldfields nearly a hundred 
 miles away. 
 
 Eleven thousand horses, with all the thunder of their 
 trampling hoofs and the strain of their quivering limbs, 
 could not equal the power which those few purring boxes of 
 steel and copper evolve ; and the engineers hope to work up 
 to a full capacity of twenty thousand horse-power before 
 long. Even in the East you feel that the new magic is 
 more potent than the old, the machine mightier after all 
 than the crude force of flesh and blood and tissue, though 
 they be spent with uncalculating prodigality. 
 
 For my part, while the men of science were explaining 
 to me, in that lucid curt language of theirs, which puts 
 our literary efflorescence to shame, the triumphs of 
 reasoned ingenuity which the General Electric Company
 
 GOLD AND WATEBrPOWER 245 
 
 of Schenectady, N.Y., had brought to bear in order to 
 economise labour and develop efficiency while I listened 
 to them, I was thinking what all this may mean for 
 India in the future. A shrine of Siva, the embodi- 
 ment of the elemental force which brings life and death, 
 was near this place ; it may have stood on this very 
 spot. East and West are in contact again : the West 
 purposefully bending Nature to the service of man ; the 
 East trembling before Nature as a cruel capricious 
 Colossus avid of lust and blood. Siva has gone, and 
 Schenectady has come. But the conflict is only 
 beginning. Are the old gods vanquished yet ? Which 
 will prevail in the end, Siva or Schenectady ? 
 
 Labour-saving, at any rate, is a new idea in Asia, and it 
 is carried far at the Cauvery station. The whole apparatus 
 is as near as possible automatic. When I heard that 
 by this scheme the power derived from the river-fall is 
 turned into electric energy, generated at a force of thirty- 
 two thousand volts, transformed to a voltage of two 
 thousand, and so transmitted to the goldfields of Kolar 
 and to the street lamps of Bangalore, I looked to see 
 a great army of workmen, a whole corps of officials. 
 But nothing of the sort is in evidence. The manager 
 is the only high officer permanently in residence at the 
 Cauvery generating-station, assisted by occasional visits 
 from the Mysore chief executive engineer. The entire 
 skilled staff consists of no more than a score of Eura- 
 sian operatives and fitters, and there are less than a 
 hundred all told of native labourers, coolies, cleaners, and 
 sweepers. 
 
 George Eliot, in The Impressions of Theophrastus 
 Sttch, imagined a cycle in which machinery should be 
 endowed with intelligence and volition. We seem almost 
 to have reached that stage, when we enter this great 
 generating-shed, and see the cohort of turbines and
 
 246 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 dynamos, whirling obediently and uninterruptedly, with a 
 single oiler to wait on them ; or when we ascend to the 
 switch-room above, with its tiers of levers and dials and 
 pointers, and one skilled operative sitting at a table with 
 pencil and note-book, occupied in taking records, con- 
 cerned mainly to see that nothing goes wrong with the 
 process by which the downward rush of the river is 
 turned into magnetic energy. The tubes and wheels and 
 wires do the work ; the human assistant need only put 
 a finger upon the pulse of the organism, to ascertain tha* 
 it is beating normally. 
 
 The Cauvery station, with its ninety-three miles of 
 wire to Kolar and its fifty-seven to the electric lights of 
 Bangalore, is one of the largest producers and transmitters 
 of power in the world. At Niagara, and at three or four 
 other places in the United States, its capacity is exceeded ; 
 but it is ahead of anything that exists, and is in actual 
 operation at this moment of writing, either in Europe or 
 in Asia. No more striking example is to be found of 
 the scientific utilisation of the natural fall of great masses 
 of water for the development of electrical energy. 
 
 And at Sivasamudram the new agent, I'houille blanche, 
 as M. Hanotaux has called it, is free from the repellent 
 surroundings that are usually found where great work is 
 being done through the action of coal and steam. With 
 water-power and electricity it is not necessary to deface a 
 whole country-side, to hide the daylight under palls of 
 smoke, to poison grass and trees and rivers, or to pile up 
 hideous mounds of refuse and burnt-out cinders. Though 
 the engineers have diminished the volume of the flow in 
 the dry season, the cascades still drift in gleaming folds 
 down the rocks, the wild flowers bloom among the clefts, 
 and the low brick buildings, the pools and reservoirs and 
 canals made for the power-scheme, have done little to 
 spoil the beauty of this fair, though unfortunately fever-
 
 GOLD AND WATER-POWER 247 
 
 haunted, valley of the Cauvery. Nature is enslaved ; but 
 here, at any rate, she is not degraded or deformed. 
 
 The day after leaving Sivasamudram we picked up 
 the power-cables of the Cauvery station at their other 
 end, and made our way to the Kolar goldfields, where 
 the energy developed from the river- falls is used to work 
 stamp-mills and mining machinery. Here, too, one felt 
 the atmosphere of the Newer World. The mining settle- 
 ment straggles along the line of the great reefs for a 
 length of some nine miles, in a high breezy plain, with 
 bare scarped hills, like South African kopjes, jutting out 
 from it in the distance. The winding-gear and head- 
 works of the mines raise themselves at frequent intervals, 
 surrounded by stone-built battery-rooms and crushing- 
 sheds, cyanide-tanks, motor-houses, and mounds of tail- 
 ings ; with officers' bungalows enclosed in flower-gardens, 
 brick tenements for the European workers, and row 
 after row of small straw tin-roofed huts for the native 
 miners. 
 
 It is, as I have said, one of the noticeable goldfields of 
 the world, representing, as it does, a capital of 2,192,000, 
 a market valuation, when I was there, of about nine 
 millions sterling, a total gold production well over twenty- 
 three millions, and a contribution, by way of royalty, to 
 the revenues of the Mysore State of not less than eleven 
 hundred thousand pounds. Thirty thousand persons are 
 employed above ground and below, and five and a-half 
 lakhs of rupees are paid out in wages every month. There 
 are more European residents here than in almost any 
 place in India, outside the military cantonments and the 
 Presidency cities ; but of course the great majority of the 
 miners and labourers are natives. The lowest unskilled 
 coolie receives eightpence for a day's work of eight hours, 
 and a cottage, which he occupies at a rent of eightpence
 
 248 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to one and fourpence a month. These would be deemed 
 favourable terms anywhere in the Peninsula, so that 
 native labour is plentiful, and there is much competition 
 for employment on the fields. 
 
 The European foremen and skilled artisans and the 
 officials are also very well paid: a man who would be 
 satisfied with something under thirty shillings a week at 
 home may be making his two hundred pounds a year or 
 more, with free quarters, lights, and medical attendance, 
 and very little occasion to spend largely on his necessities 
 and comforts. He comes as a single man, without 
 ' encumbrances ' ; if he has a wife or family, they stay 
 behind him, and he is allowed by the companies five 
 months' leave of absence every three years and a free 
 return passage, in order that he may go home and visit 
 his belongings. A careful person, under these conditions, 
 can have a very nice nest-egg laid by at the end of a few 
 years ; and some of the Cornish miners, who are thrifty 
 and saving to penuriousness, do not take long to amass 
 money enough to return to the old Western county as 
 capitalists in a moderate way. 
 
 What strikes one most about this mining settlement 
 is its air of quiet, well-conducted prosperity. There is 
 little outward evidence of the rowdiness and raffishness 
 and the adventurous instability, which are characteristic 
 of such concourses of humanity elsewhere. The great 
 firm, which manages nearly all the mines, and is the 
 virtual employer of almost the entire population, 
 encourages neither booms nor rushes ; the outside pro- 
 moter and prospector receive so scanty a welcome that in 
 the whole colony there is not a single hotel where they 
 can stay, and, unless they come properly introduced, they 
 will be hard put to it to find a night's lodging. On the 
 other hand, any person who brings suitable credentials 
 may be sure of hearty and hospitable entertainment in
 
 GOLD AND WATER-POWER 249 
 
 one or other of the commodious bungalows of the chief 
 officials. 
 
 The climate of Kolar is almost the best in India, 
 outside the hill-stations bright, airy, and equable, and 
 seldom hot enough to make the punkah necessary. 
 These conditions, and perhaps most of all the absence 
 of any floating population, since almost everybody on 
 the fields is engaged under contract and has some definite 
 status, render the level of health high and that of 
 crime low. I noticed no saloons, or bars, or gambling- 
 rooms, or drinking-shops ; but there is a first-rate hos- 
 pital, there are good schools for the Eurasian children, 
 there are churches and chapels, social institutes, cricket 
 and tennis grounds, racquet-courts, and an excellent club. 
 The Goidfields Eifles count among the smartest volun- 
 teer forces in India. For general comfort and well-being, 
 and for the absence of disorder and violence of any kind, 
 I am assured by those who know California and South 
 Africa and Australia and British Columbia, that the 
 Kolar settlement has no superior, and probably no 
 equal. 
 
 We were shown the shafts and surface-workings of 
 the great mines, the Champion Keef and the Mysore, 
 whose names they know so well in Throgmorton Street 
 and the Place de la Bourse. We peered down the new 
 shafts, two thousand five hundred feet deep in one case, 
 four thousand, when completed, in another, which are 
 to tap the veins at their lower levels, and prolong the 
 life of mines that are already among the steadiest and 
 most constant producers within the investor's ken. 
 
 We went into the reduction-sheds, and watched the 
 ever-fascinating process by which the shapeless, useless- 
 looking, chunks of grey stone are made to yield the 
 precious metal at their hearts. We see the load of rough 
 quartz trucked from the mouth of the shaft and lifted up
 
 250 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to a high revolving table, on which natives, treading bare- 
 footed among the flinty cores, sift out the gold-bearing 
 lumps from the heap, and pitch them into a shoot, where 
 great iron teeth bite them into manageable morsels. 
 
 We pass into the battery-rooms, where the ponderous 
 stamps, dancing up and down like giant piano-keys, grind 
 the fragments of ore into powder under their manganese- 
 steel heads ; and we behold this powder, watered into a 
 viscous fluid, flowing over the copper plates past the 
 cunning barrier of mercury, which takes up the gold held 
 in solution. We witness the process of roasting and 
 retorting the amalgam, till all the mercury is driven off 
 as vapour, and only the precious yellow stuff is left in the 
 crucible. Then we inspect the cyanide-tanks, with their 
 pools of deadly liquid, and the tub holding a hundred- 
 weight of an innocent-looking white precipitate, one 
 feathery ball of which would suffice to poison a regiment. 
 Finally we enter the trim little office, where the manager 
 opens the three-inch-armour-plate door of the strong-room 
 and reveals the gold bricks glistening in a tempting row, 
 ready to be packed and sealed and labelled and sent down 
 under an armed escort to the railway. 
 
 It is all very modern, business-like, un-Indian. The 
 sturdy Cornish miners, the keen-eyed Welsh and Scotch 
 foremen and fitters, make us forget the coolies and 
 sweeper- women raking away at the sand-heaps and tail- 
 ings. The cheery fresh-faced mine-managers and engi- 
 neers, loud in speech, jovial, careless, informal in dress 
 and demeanour they seem to have little in common with 
 the precise civilians and the sporting young exquisites of 
 the parade-ground. We hear the deep Lancastrian bass, 
 the rolling burr of Northumbria, the level monotone of 
 the American West. 
 
 We pass from the mine-works, in company with 
 these good-humoured and well-informed men of business,
 
 GOLD AND WATER-POWER 251 
 
 to their club, and from the club to the hospital, a model 
 of all that is up-to-date and scientific, where the alert 
 young doctors exhibit the latest triumphs of curative 
 electric apparatus and X-ray improvements. We look 
 from the spotless wards out upon the neat garden, with 
 its English flowers, and beyond that to a tall brick 
 chimney, a row of sheds, and the straddling iron legs 
 of a windlass hoist : and we forget that we are in India. 
 
 But what are those strange piercing cries, unearthly, 
 blood-curdling, that fly through the open windows? 
 What is this Maenad figure which meets our gaze as we 
 emerge hastily upon the terrace ? A woman, with long 
 black hair floating loose in the wind, comes staggering 
 past the low iron fence of the compound. Her red robe 
 streams behind her, leaving breasts and shoulders bare ; 
 her arms are wildly extended, and in one uplifted hand 
 she brandishes a kind of trident ; the head is thrown back, 
 the dark eyes blaze with frenzied light, the features are 
 hideously distorted ; demoniac shrieks tear her as she 
 runs. So might some priestess of Cybele have looked 
 when the fury of the goddess was upon her. 
 
 And that, indeed, is the case of this coolie woman. 
 ' Drunk ? ' says one of the European spectators. The 
 hospital surgeon shakes his head. He points to a small 
 three-sided enclosure of rough stones in a patch of waste 
 land hard by. Within is a big boulder forming a kind of 
 altar, and upon it a rude wooden image. It is a temple 
 of Durga Kali, the Hecate of the Hindu Pantheon. The 
 altar-stone was just a lump of the quartzite rock scattered 
 over the brae. But there was something a little unusual 
 in its shape and size, and so the people took to wor- 
 shipping the spirit that dwelt within it. Then somebody 
 walled it in, and they put the misformed red-daubed idol 
 upon it, and now, adds our informant, it is a temple, ' and 
 we must not touch it.'
 
 252 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 The woman has been worshipping at the shrine of the 
 Goddess of Terror until the mania has entered her brain. 
 She is possessed of the devil, as our forefathers would 
 have said ; the gadfly is stinging at her heart, the oestrus 
 of Durga, the Slayer, the Blood-drinker, she who is the 
 wife of the Destroyer, drives her onward. Her husband 
 and a group of neighbours follow, at a respectful distance, 
 half-alarmed, half-admiring. She approaches the steps of 
 the hospital, and it is time to intervene, lest she break in 
 and disturb the patients. The doctors and a policeman 
 modern science and the instruments of the law bar her 
 progress, and exhort her friends to get her away ; but 
 these latter are obviously reluctant to meddle with the 
 manifestation of the deity. The trident is taken from the 
 woman, and with difficulty she is turned back and headed 
 off to safer ground. An hour afterwards, when we pass by 
 the low wall of the crude temple, we see her crouching upon 
 the altar-steps, her snaky locks falling over her bowed 
 head, a knot of the villagers still standing near in awed 
 silence to watch her shivering shoulders and listen to her 
 convulsive sobs. Close by the laden trucks are rolling to 
 the mills, and the wire-ropes are rattling over the drums 
 of the winding-engines. Here, as in Sivasamudram, we 
 are faced by the perpetual contrast, the inevitable ques- 
 tion. Which will survive in the end the old gods of 
 Asia or the new spirit of the West ? Is it to be Siva or 
 Schenectady, Kali or the General Electric Construction 
 and Maintenance Company, Limited ? Perhaps it will 
 be neither perhaps both.
 
 CHAPTEE XYIH 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 
 
 'CHRIST is our salvation; Caste is our curse.* The 
 sentence was painted in black letters on the whitewashed 
 wall of the little mission building. It represents the 
 honest opinion of many earnest teachers who are trying 
 to turn the people of India to the Christian faith. Some 
 Hindu reformers take the same view. Whenever there is 
 what may be called a Protestant movement in Hinduism, 
 an attempt to bring back the old Vedantic system, and to 
 purge away the priestly excrescences, there is a certain 
 revolt against caste. The new theistic Hindu sects, such 
 as the Brahmo Somaj and the Arya Somaj, preach the 
 equality of all men in the spiritual world. The Sikhs, 
 who started as Hindu Puritans, with Brahmanism as 
 their Scarlet Woman, are not supposed to recognise caste 
 distinctions,. 
 
 But the insurrections have usually died away; the 
 Nonconformists themselves end by a return to orthodoxy 
 and a reconciliation with the caste arrangement. The 
 Sikhs have in reality, though not ostensibly, fallen into 
 castes ; so, to a large extent, have the Mohammedans ; so 
 have even many of the native Christians in the South of 
 India, where alone they count as a substantial element in 
 the population. Simon Sebastian, clerk and writer, is a 
 good Catholic ; he attends Mass, he listens to prayers 
 read in the Latin tongue, he confesses his sins to Father 
 Dominic or Father Ambrosius. But he will not marry 
 
 253
 
 254 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 his daughter to a man who works in leather, nor, if he 
 can help it, eat with him. For twenty centuries or more 
 the people of India have lived under the rule of caste ; 
 the vast majority of them live under it to-day, and will so 
 live for longer than we can see. 
 
 It is an affair of immense complications, intricate and 
 confused. The origin is probably ethnological. Such 
 appears to be the conclusion of the closest modern 
 observers, including Sir H. Risley, whose essay, in the 
 introductory volume of the Indian Census Report for 
 1901, contains more information on the whole subject 
 than is to be found elsewhere in a convenient form. The 
 highest castes of all, the Brahmans, who are the priests, 
 and the Rajputs, who were the knights, are descended 
 from the Northern conquerors, the ' Aryans,' who came 
 down from beyond the mountains. The secondary classes 
 are a mixed race, made up from these fairer taller people 
 of the North, and the Dravidians, or Mongoloids, who 
 still constitute the mass of the population in Bengal, 
 the Central Provinces, and the South. 
 
 Climate and environment worked physical changes in 
 the course of centuries, and no doubt there has been 
 much mixing of the blood, even in the aristocratic septs. 
 Still, many of the high-caste Hindus bear obviously the 
 stamp of race. The Brahman, with his light-brown skin, 
 his lithe delicate build, and his well-cut features, is clearly 
 marked off from the swarthy peasants of the Lower 
 Ganges, the stubby semi-negroid Telugus and Tamils of 
 Madras. The contrast is most noticeable in the South, 
 where the priestly order has always kept itself apart and 
 retains many of its ancient privileges. Some of the high- 
 caste Southern women, the celebrated ' cream-coloured ' 
 lyengas, are warmly praised by exigent connoisseurs in 
 female beauty ; and I have seldom seen faces of more 
 intellectual distinction than those of the leading native
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 255 
 
 barristers and pleaders of Madras, who are nearly all 
 Brahrnans. 
 
 The Hindus are not the only people among whom 
 elaborate devices have been attempted for preserving 
 intact the supposed purity of certain superior stocks. 
 Most conquering aristocracies have tried it, and most have 
 failed. But in India the classification is guarded by the 
 strictest observance of the principle of heredity, and it is 
 not confined to a comparatively small number of selected 
 families. It has been extended till it includes most of 
 the population, so that every Hindu, above the lowest 
 stratum of all, is a member of some caste. Society 
 in India is made up in air-tight compartments, every 
 group being rigidly marked off from the rest, and it is 
 extremely difficult for a person to pass from one to 
 another, or even to establish very intimate relations with 
 those outside his own circle. 
 
 The common tie may be that of race, of social status, 
 or of occupation. To get a loose analogy, we might 
 suppose that everybody who could claim descent from 
 one of the old Norman families in England formed one 
 caste ; that members of the ' learned professions,' who 
 had never soiled themselves with commerce, were com- 
 bined in a second ; and that others consisted exclusively 
 of bankers or moneylenders, or of pork-butchers, coster- 
 mongers, bricklayers, and so on ad inftnitum. 
 
 Add that a man born in the costermonger class would 
 remain, or ought to remain, a member of that connection 
 to the end of his days, and that he would usually bring up 
 his sons to the same business ; that a greengrocer ought 
 not to eat food in company with a poulterer, that a baker 
 might not give his daughter in marriage to a cheese- 
 monger, and that neither could have any matrimonial 
 relations with a bootmaker ; and, further, that none of 
 these persons should place himself in personal contact;
 
 256 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 with a clergyman or a solicitor imagine all this, and you 
 begin to acquire some faint notion of the involved tangle 
 in which the entire Hindu community has managed to 
 get itself enwound. 
 
 At the back of it all lies the religious sanction ; an rn 
 India religion, with what seems a malign ingenuity, lias 
 occupied itself in heaping complications round the two 
 essential functions of eating and marrying. The Hindu 
 cannot take his food without elaborate precautions against 
 pollution; and the higher his caste the more burden- 
 some are these rules. Even the coolie woman in the 
 street, carrying home her bowl of cooked porridge, will 
 take care to keep well clear of any passing sahib ; for if 
 the Viceroy or the Lieutenant- Governor should happen 
 to touch the brass vessel with so much as the flap of hii 
 overcoat the contents would have to be thrown away. 
 
 As for the higher sort of Brahman, nothing is easier 
 than to sully his purity. There are some inferior castes 
 in the South, who are not supposed to approach even 
 within speaking distance of the elect. A regular table 
 has been drawn up of what may be called the degrees of 
 pollution ; so that, while some of these low persons can 
 pollute a man of a superior caste only by actually touching 
 him, it is held that blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, and 
 leather-workers can pollute at a distance of twenty- 
 four feet, toddy-drawers at thirty-six feet, and cultivators 
 at forty-eight feet, while the pariahs, who eat beef, 
 have a pollution-range of no less than twenty-one yards 
 twelve inches. 
 
 The more sacred a Hindu is the more he is worried by 
 his code of table etiquette. The very high-caste Brahman 
 ought to strip of all his clothes, and, if possible, sit on a 
 floor of cow-dung when he consumes his food. He 
 should not eat anything which has been touched by an 
 inferior, or a non-Hindu, nor drink water out of any
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 257 
 
 vessel similarly defiled. As the scale descends the re- 
 strictions relax, until we get down to the lowest kind of 
 menial or labourer, who can attend to dogs, if required, 
 and do many other things forbidden to his superiors, and 
 allow his womankind to dispense with the dignity and the 
 restraint of the purdah. Finally we reach the outcast, 
 who, having no social position to lose, eats any kind of 
 meat whenever he can get it, and will even drink out of 
 an earthenware cup which has touched other lips. 
 
 Luckily for the modern Hindu these burdensome 
 prohibitions and injunctions are subject to certain con- 
 venient legal fictions. Sweetmeats, it appears, are not 
 food, and may be taken by anybody anywhere. Not long 
 ago the Brahman pundits at Benares decided that soda- 
 water is not water, within the meaning of the Act so to 
 speak, and that ice does not count. The priests made a 
 virtue of necessity. They found that iced soda-water was 
 too popular in an Indian summer to be kept on the Index. 
 The most orthodox Eajput gentleman, when exhausted 
 by a hard game of polo, will not hesitate to drink the 
 sparkling fluid, even though it is possible that some un- 
 believing hand may have touched the bottle from which 
 it bubbles or the frozen block with which it is cooled. 
 
 The complexity of the Hindu socio-religious system 
 looms even more formidably when we enter the domain 
 of marriage. A Brahmanist Table of Prohibited Degrees 
 would be an appalling document. It would include 
 almost everybody, except some of the prospective bride- 
 groom's own cousins several times removed. What the 
 caste system means in the matrimonial sphere is strikingly 
 illustrated by a vivid apologue with which Sir H. Risley 
 lightens the pages of the Census Report. 
 
 He imagines the great tribe of the Smiths, through- 
 out Great Britain, bound together in a community, and 
 recognising as their cardinal doctrine that a Smith must 
 
 I
 
 258 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 always marry another Smith, and could by no possibility 
 marry a Brown, a Jones, or a Kobinson. This seems 
 fairly simple : there would be quite enough Miss Smiths to 
 go round. But, then, note that the Smith horde would be 
 broken up into smaller clans, each fiercely endogamous. 
 Brewing Smiths, Sir H. Risley asks us to observe, must not 
 mate with baking Smiths ; shooting Smiths and hunting 
 Smiths, temperance Smiths and licensed-victualler Smiths, 
 Free Trade Smiths and Tariff Reform Smiths, must seek 
 partners for life in their own particular section of the 
 Smithian multitude. The Unionist Smith would not 
 lead a Home Eule damsel to the altar, nor should Smith 
 the tailor wed the daughter of a Smith who sold boots. 
 
 An additional complication would be introduced by 
 the fact that certain very lofty Smiths might marry the 
 daughters of the groups next below them, but were 
 strictly forbidden to unite their own girls to the male 
 scions of these slightly inferior families. It is as if the 
 Brompton Smiths might give a daughter to the Smiths 
 of Shropshire, but could by no means be permitted to 
 pass on a son to that respectable county connection. 
 
 Under such conditions the difficulties of the Hindu 
 parent with a marriageable daughter on his hands must 
 often be great : especially since the whole family will be 
 disgraced if the young lady is not wedded when she 
 reaches the age of thirteen or fourteen at the outside. 
 Custom rigorously enjoins that she must marry some- 
 body; yet the circle in which she can find a suitable 
 husband is strictly circumscribed. Likely bridegrooms 
 are scarce, and among the classes with social pretensions 
 it may be impossible to get them at all without a con- 
 siderable outlay in cash. 
 
 The unfortunate father is often compelled to put down 
 a lump sum to obtain a youth of the correct caste as a 
 bridegroom for his daughter, or he runs the risk of seeing
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 259 
 
 her remain single until she is long past the age at which 
 a Hindu woman is supposed to become a wife. The tariff 
 is fixed according to the social standing and personal 
 qualifications of the bridegroom. Besides paying a large 
 dowry, the bride's father is expected to hold a marriage- 
 feast on such a lavish scale that the expenses may cripple 
 him for years. Small wonder that the birth of a daughter 
 is not a cause of rejoicing in Hindu households, and that 
 the poor little thing receives a frosty welcome in this 
 hard world. 
 
 In the old days the provident parent, foreseeing these 
 social and financial difficulties, frequently got rid of them, 
 together with his baby daughter, at the outset. Female 
 infanticide was regularly practised, not amongst the de- 
 graded races, but among some of the most respected and 
 reputable peoples in India, such as the Jats, the Eajputs, 
 the Sikhs. We call it murder, and do our best to stop it ; 
 but the disproportion of female to male children, revealed 
 in the Census returns, shows that the practice has not 
 yet been completely stamped out. The isolated crime is 
 hard to detect ; but when the ratio of girls to boys falls 
 particularly low in any village, the Government makes 
 things unpleasant for everybody by quartering extra 
 police on the place, and causing all the inhabitants to 
 contribute towards the cost ; which naturally annoys a 
 thrifty population. 
 
 Still, public opinion is hardly as yet on the side of 
 the law. An old jemadar in one of our native regiments 
 discussing the subject with his company commander, said 
 that he could not understand why the Sirkar interfered 
 with what he evidently regarded as a beneficial custom. 
 If it were a question of boys he could understand it ; for 
 boys are useful, and may in time grow into sepoys and 
 sowars. But why all this fuss about girls, who are of no 
 value, and only a source of expense ?
 
 260 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Under the spell of ' the monster custom ' the Hindus 
 can be amazingly callous and brutal, especially where 
 women and female children are concerned. In the older 
 days, when infant murders were numerous, if it were in- 
 convenient or dangerous to dispose of the wretched little 
 corpse by cremation, it might be buried in the compound, 
 with a jibing verse over the grave, such as this : 
 
 Your life, my dear, we must destroy, 
 Since you're a girl and not a boy. 
 
 And the mothers ? Did not the mothers object ? My 
 friend, the company officer, asked the question. ' If it 
 was the first one,' replied the native corporal calmly, 
 ' they used to give a lot of trouble. But after a time they 
 got used to it.' 
 
 Worse than the infanticides much worse are the 
 child-marriages, with all their evils, of which the greatest 
 is girl-widowhood. Hard and sorrowful, as everybody 
 knows, is often the lot of the Hindu widow. We have 
 abolished suttee, 1 but one sometimes wonders whether 
 that is really a reform, since multitudes of women have 
 exchanged the swift and passing agony of the funeral 
 pyre for years of oppression, neglect, and misery. Many 
 thousands of widows have to choose between a life of 
 degradation and shame if they leave their husband's 
 relatives, and barbarous ill-usage if they remain with 
 them. According to the Census of 1901, there were close 
 on twenty million Hindu widows, of whom 321,470 were 
 under fifteen years of age. And though perfunctory reso- 
 lutions are sometimes passed at the National Congress in 
 favour of raising the age of marriage to twelve ! no 
 serious attempt is made to wean the people from the 
 practice of child-wedlock, and there is more of it in 
 Bengal than in any of the other provinces. 
 
 1 Or tried to do so. But cases of public self-immolation by widows still 
 occasionally occur in the villages and are sometimes brought before the 
 courts.
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 261 
 
 All the Congress orators combined have not done so 
 much as a single unobtrusive Political Officer, Colonel 
 Walter, a former Agent for Rajputana, who in 1888 
 induced the leading Rajput families to agree to a re- 
 vised code of marriage rules. Under this scheme, four- 
 teen was laid down as the minimum age of marriage for 
 girls, the expenses of betrothal fetes and wedding-feasts 
 were regulated according to a fixed and moderate scale, 
 and second marriages, during the lifetime of the first 
 wife, were prohibited. The code has been called the 
 greatest social reform which has been made effective in 
 India for about two thousand years. When we consider 
 what this single English gentleman accomplished by 
 moral suasion alone, we may be tempted to ask whether 
 our Government does not sometimes deal too tenderly 
 with caste abuses ; and whether that which Colonel 
 Walter did for Rajputana the law might not contrive to 
 accomplish for the whole of British and native India. 
 
 As to the tyranny of caste rules in other matters, many 
 curious examples were given me, drawn from the opposite 
 extremes of native society. One relates to a young Indian 
 nobleman, wealthy, educated, and almost European in 
 his ways. He talks and reads English perfectly, wears 
 English clothes, plays English games, has many English 
 friends, and would seem to have left most of his Oriental 
 habits and predilections behind him. But this gentleman 
 is the hereditary head of a caste of thieves ; and it is ex- 
 pected of him that once a year at least, if not oftener, he 
 should steal something. So now and again his [English] 
 secretary leaves a few rupees carelessly lying on his desk, 
 and the raja pockets them, thereby discharging himself 
 of the obligation laid upon him at his birth. The story 
 may be ben trovato rather than true ; but the fact that it 
 is repeated and believed illustrates the tendency of Indian 
 opinion, which still feels that if a man is born a thief he
 
 262 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 must go on robbing to the end of his course on earth. 
 The gods have written it on his forehead, as the common 
 saying runs : there is no help for it. Our laws are doing 
 something to modify this theory, by making the position 
 of the criminal tribes as precarious and uncomfortable as 
 possible. In the meanwhile, there are still a good many 
 of them, scattered up and down the country, or even 
 living quite quietly in their own villages, from which they 
 emerge to prey upon the rest of the community. The 
 police know all about them ; but a person bred to larceny 
 and pilfering from the cradle is not easily caught in the act. 
 
 Hereditary occupations are not limited to one sex, as 
 the following authentic history demonstrates. A lady, 
 who had a Mission School for native Christians, was 
 visited by the mother of one of her pupils, a bright and 
 promising girl. The woman asked that music and certain 
 other accomplishments might be imparted to her daugh- 
 ter, as these would prove useful in her future career. 
 Asked what this was to be, she explained that the maiden 
 was destined to pursue that branch of industry which has 
 been euphemistically described as ' the oldest profession in 
 the world.' The Mission teacher was naturally horrified. 
 ' How can you let your child give herself to such wicked- 
 ness ? ' she said. ' You are a Christian.' The native 
 woman was not shaken. No doubt she was a Ki-listian ; 
 but she belonged to that ancient calling, like her mother 
 before her, and so her daughter ought to follow it also. 
 The girl had indeed been married in infancy to a peepul- 
 tree with this express object. It was her caste ; she had 
 no other place in life. 
 
 But the crudities and cruelties of the caste system need 
 not blind us to its other aspects. There is no doubt that 
 it is the main cause of the fundamental stability and 
 contentment by which Indian society has been braced for 
 centuries against the shocks of politics and the cataclysms
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 263 
 
 of Nature. It provides every man with his place, his 
 career, his occupation, his circle of friends. It makes 
 him, at the outset, a member of a corporate body ; it pro- 
 tects him through life from the canker of social jealousy 
 and unfulfilled aspirations ; it ensures him companionship 
 and a sense of community with others in like case with 
 himself. The caste organisation is to the Hindu his 
 club, his trade union, his benefit society, his philanthropic 
 society. There are no workhouses in India, and none 
 are as yet needed. The obligation to provide for kins- 
 folk and friends in distress is universally acknowledged ; 
 nor can it be questioned that this is due to that recog- 
 nition of the strength of family ties, and of the bonds 
 created by association and common pursuits, which is 
 fostered by the caste principle. An India without caste, 
 as things stand at present, it is not quite easy to 
 imagine. 
 
 BBNAEES 
 
 Those who seek to get a little closer to the religion 
 that lies behind the Hindu social system must go to 
 Benares, which is in some ways the most notable of the 
 cities of India : not because of her wealth, her magnificence, 
 or her beauty, for the Presidency capitals are richer, by 
 far, and greater, nor has she any such noble monuments of 
 art or such memorials of the past as those which lend 
 undying interest to Agra and Delhi. But Benares is 
 the metropolis of Hinduism, the Rome of the strange 
 amalgam of creeds and customs that rules the lives of so 
 many dusky millions, the mysterious Queen of the Brah- 
 manic world; and, like a queen, Benares sits by the 
 Ganges, albeit a queen with purple robes somewhat 
 patched and tattered and a throne of ivory and clay. 
 
 The stream of the sacred river sweeps past in a wide 
 crescent of pale yellow water, and Kashi, ' the Splendid,'
 
 264 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 as the Hindus call the city, looks down upon the flood in a 
 huddle of palaces and towers, of walls and window-spaces, 
 of cones and cupolas and fretted temple pyramids, with 
 the tall minarets of a mosque lifting themselves sternly 
 towards the impassive sky, as though calling upon Allah, 
 the One and Indivisible, in indignant protest against the 
 idolatrous tangle below. 
 
 Beauty and squalor, pretentiousness and insignificance, 
 meet you as you are rowed past the broken line of 
 wharves and ghats. Now a noble fa9ade, now a tumbled 
 heap of ruin or a patch of bare sandbank and gravel-pit ; 
 now the deep red gopuram of a Hindu temple, or a white 
 Jain steeple, with vanes and bells of gold ; now the 
 mighty piers and massive stone blocks of an unfinished 
 palace, which has slipped on its foundations of river-mud, 
 and lies threateningly on the brink. From the irregular 
 masses of buildings, terraced on the high bank, great 
 flights of steps lead to the water's edge ; broad steps, 
 which for many hours of the day and most days of the 
 year are all alive with pilgrims, bathing and washing, with 
 worshippers throwing their chaplets of marigold upon 
 Mother Gunga's bosom, with priests and ascetics sitting 
 in prayer under great straw sunshades ; steps which the 
 red-robed women climb at evening, with their pots of 
 gleaming brass and dripping earthen bowls ; steps down 
 which they bring the dead for burning, and the dying 
 that they may pass away with their feet wet from the 
 lapping of the River of Life. 
 
 Apart from its sumptuous water-front, there is little 
 dignity and charm in Benares. The temples, even the 
 Golden Temple itself, are mean things, with no claim to 
 architectural merit. The old town is a nest of narrow 
 lanes, where the pilgrims, on their way to the shrines 
 and the bathing ghats, can look into the tiny booths from 
 which is heard the clink of the brassworker's hammer and
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 265 
 
 chisel, as he works at his images of Mahadeo and Parvati 
 and Ganesh. 
 
 The Mohammedans trampled heavily on Kashi, and 
 most of its older shrines disappeared. If you want to see 
 the true memorials of Hindu art, in its stronger days, 
 you must go elsewhere, to Madura or Tan j ore or Con- 
 jevaram, or to the temple caves of Ellora, enriched with 
 sculptured figures almost Hellenic in their austere 
 simplicity. Benares, like Eome, has passed under the 
 hoof of the spoiler. 
 
 But Aurangzeb, the iconoclast, broke the idols of the 
 sacred city in vain. When the Prince of Wales rode 
 through the flower-festooned streets of Benares at the 
 head of a great elephant procession, a company of 
 ascetics, ragged and unkempt, greeted him at one point. 
 A little farther on there was a kind of lofty throne, under 
 the canopy of which were seated two boys, dressed in the 
 richest silks and jewels, with half a dozen gorgeous 
 attendants to hold gilded fans and maces behind them : 
 small boys, who might have been princes themselves, by 
 the haughty insouciance of their demeanour. These were 
 the hereditary mahants, the heads, by right of descent, 
 of the great religious corporations. They typified that 
 insolent ecclesiasticism of which Benares is the centre, 
 even as the fakirs represented the crowd of ignorant 
 fanatics who wander into its courts, as irresponsible as 
 its sacred bulls and cows, and not much more intelligent. 
 
 Benares is the embodiment of Hinduism, and, like 
 Hinduism, it leaves on the mind the impression of a con- 
 fused jurnble, a mass of contradictions. What is the 
 Hindu religion ? Men who have spent more years upon it 
 than I have spent days confess themselves unable to 
 answer the question. To the superficial observer it seems 
 to be the strangest mixture : magic tempered by meta- 
 physics, according to one epigrammatic description. The
 
 266 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 outsider, however, sees more of the magic, the crude 
 idolatry, than of the philosophy. Perhaps he does it an 
 injustice on that account. The spiritual impress which 
 Brahmanism has laid upon the Indian people is hidden 
 from him. But what he does see is the welter of super- 
 stition in which it leaves the masses, the tyranny of 
 priestcraft it lays upon them, the solid barrier with which 
 it walls round private life, the crude, cumbrous, repellent 
 maze of rules and observances, on which it places the 
 stamp of despotic custom and immutable law. 
 
 It is full of contradictions, not, perhaps, in this 
 differing from other religions. It enjoins tenderness, 
 self-sacrifice, mercy, so that some of its votaries will not 
 take the life of a stinging insect ; and it can exhibit the 
 most relentless cruelty, especially where its own formal- 
 ism is involved. ' Thou shalt not kill,' is the maxim ; 
 therefore a pious Hindu will allow an ox with a broken 
 leg to starve to death in lingering agony by the wayside. 
 When you hear of the barbarities practised upon women 
 in child-birth, of the savage rites with which the dying 
 are surrounded, the child-marriages, the persecution of 
 widows, you sometimes feel inclined to wish that the 
 missionaries and the Imperial Government could combine 
 to sweep the whole business into the sea. 
 
 Yet the Hindus are a kindly people, with more highly 
 developed family affections than ourselves. If they do 
 cruel things it is with the intention to be humane. Their 
 humanity looks beyond this transient world to that which 
 includes and comprehends all others, and it points vaguely 
 to the supreme abstraction, of which the horrible gods and 
 distorted idols are grotesque or terrifying symbols. 
 
 Of death, of the dead, and of the dying you see much 
 at Benares, for every Hindu would like to perish by the 
 Ganges if he could. The Burning Ghat on the water- 
 front is always busy, and the tourist, as he is rowed
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 267 
 
 along, can see the pile of logs crackling briskly with a 
 stiff brown corpse laid upon it. There is no sanctity and 
 no privacy about this place of cremation. The poor relic 
 of humanity lies unregarded by the strand before the 
 flames do their work upon it. Pariah dogs, the sacred 
 dogs of Benares, prowl about with expectant eyes ; know- 
 ing that the body may sometimes be thrown half- 
 consumed into the river. 
 
 That used often to be done to save the expense of fuel, 
 though it happens less frequently now that the Govern- 
 ment provides wood enough for every pyre free of charge. 
 The Burners of the Dead, an unclean caste, who alone may 
 tend the funeral fire, are sitting on a neighbouring bulk, 
 engaged in cheerful conversation ; others are raking with 
 long rods among the blazing heaps, poking down an 
 exposed skull or a charred protruding foot ; close by 
 women are dipping clothes in the Ganges, or filling their 
 water-pots, without a glance at the pile and its burden. 
 Life is cheap in India, and death too common. 
 
 At certain places, and in Benares especially, when 
 Hindus are at the point of death, their kinsmen drag them 
 from their sick-rooms, that they may breathe their last 
 beside a holy river. A heartless custom, it seems, which 
 must be the cause of much suffering to racked and 
 shattered frames, and is at times scarcely distinguishable 
 from murder ; for in the old days, if the victim, when 
 brought to the water, still obstinately refused to render 
 up his soul, they would occasionally help him on his way 
 by filling his mouth with mud. 
 
 Yet even this rite is not always repulsive. In Benares, 
 drifting down the stream, one late and luminous afternoon, 
 some weeks before the approach of the Prince had caused 
 the banks to be beset with decorated house-boats, I passed 
 close to the Manikarnika Ghat, the most sanctified of all 
 the stairways that lead to the Ganges. At the foot of the
 
 268 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 steps, a group of three or four men were bending over a 
 recumbent form, swathed in white. As we came opposite 
 the ghat we saw that the figure was that of a woman, 
 lying stretched upon a couch or mattress of cotton, with 
 the feet just touched by the sacred water. 
 
 She had been brought here to die, so that her spirit 
 might pass into the other world, saved and purified by the 
 river of redemption. The dying light fell full upon the 
 dying face ; and it showed us the eyes already half-closed 
 and a smile of transfiguring peace playing about the pale 
 and quivering lips. There was no suggestion of harshness 
 in this scene ; it was one of painful beauty. Happiness 
 was written on the wan features under the loose white coif, 
 the happiness of an intense and passionate calm, like that 
 of the doomed Cenci girl on Leonardo's canvas ; and in 
 the attitudes of the watching attendants there seemed 
 to me a grave and anxious reverence. 
 
 But when I looked up the bank I saw another party 
 carrying a litter on which a sick old man was lying. 
 They were running fast, and audible groans broke from 
 the wretched shrivelled creature, as they jolted his crazy 
 catafalque over the rough path, anxious to get it down 
 to the brink before the end came. So Hinduism shows 
 its twofold aspect ; and who shall say how far the deep 
 spiritual tranquillity it yields its votaries is balanced by 
 the wrongs, the follies, and the barbarisms, which hive 
 under its shelter ? 
 
 There is no religion in which the difference between 
 the elect and the common herd is so marked. From a 
 Welsh revivalist to an Oxford professor of theology the 
 acclivity is steep. But the gulf between the highly 
 cultivated Hindu, who is a philosophical Pantheist, and 
 the villager, smearing himself with the blood of butchered 
 goats before the altar of Durga, is wider. In practice, 
 one might say that Hinduism consists largely of priest-
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 269 
 
 craft and a genial, primitive, rollicking, unclean idolatry. 
 To ' feed and fee ' the Brahmans is the main duty of the 
 layman : that done, he is free to worship stocks and stones, 
 or ghosts and demons, or any fee-faw-fo-fum images that 
 seize his fancy ; and his morals may take care of them- 
 selves, provided he sticks to certain caste practices and 
 abstains from the killing of cows. 
 
 Loose as the system is, it holds two hundred and forty 
 millions in a clasp which has never relaxed through the 
 centuries, and is just about as firmly fastened to-day as 
 ever. It is natural to assume that Hinduism is a waning 
 force, weakened by its impact upon modern science and 
 progress. But that is extremely doubtful. Some of those 
 who know most about India believe that the change is 
 in the opposite direction. They tell us that of late years 
 there has been a striking revival of Brahmanism, that it 
 is going forward instead of backward, that it is clutching 
 closer into its subtle embrace whole classes and tribes 
 who before hung loose from its influence. 
 
 At the first glance one would say that the railway, the 
 telegraph, the printing-press, the secondary school, must 
 make short work of the idol-worship, the hideous altars, 
 the battening temple hordes, the offerings, and the sacri- 
 fices. But this does not seem to be the case. It may be 
 that Hinduism is even assisted in its onward march by 
 these new agencies. The railways make the pilgrimages 
 to the sacred rivers and the famous shrines easier and 
 more popular. These festivals are public holidays as 
 much as religious celebrations ; but the priests and the 
 sadhus profit by them. They have learnt how to use 
 the printing-press, and with their vernacular tracts and 
 cheap liturgies they are bringing into the regular Hindu 
 communion many aboriginals and Animists and outcasts 
 and others, who were formerly mere pagans. Now that 
 all India is drawn closer together by better communi-
 
 270 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 cations and the printed word, so that its various pro- 
 vinces are growing conscious of a certain identity, the 
 one thing they have in common, which is the Brah- 
 manical system, emerges more clearly. It is becoming 
 better organised, and is gaining some of the attributes 
 of a church as well as a vague creed. 
 
 But education surely this must tell ? No doubt it 
 does ; but the educated Hindu sometimes reconciles 
 the Higher Thought with the Lower Act in a startling 
 fashion. It is not merely that cultivated native 
 gentlemen, university graduates, trained lawyers, fluent 
 writers, will doff their European ideas with their European 
 garments inside their own doors, and submit themselves 
 to the most irrational code of caste formularies. They 
 do more. Persons who can quote Herbert Spencer and 
 Weissmann at an English dinner-table may ' go Fanti ' 
 at any moment. You may have a native friend, let us say 
 a Sessions Judge I am not giving an imaginary case 
 who seems in the ordinary way all that is enlightened 
 and refined. He understands our fashions, is acquainted 
 with our literature, behaves in his office, or when you ask 
 him to your house, much like any well-bred English- 
 man. But the festival of Kali comes, and you must 
 not be surprised to find him, daubed with red paint, 
 half-naked, with dishevelled hair, howling and shrieking 
 in the midst of a frenzied crowd of idol-worshippers. 
 
 Some people, whose opinions deserve respect, hold 
 that Hinduism is destined eventually to succumb before 
 the advance of Christianity. The Light of the Gospel, 
 waxing perhaps somewhat dimmer in the West, may be 
 relumed in the East. 
 
 Oh, never star 
 
 Was lost here but it rose afar ! 
 Look East, where whole new thousands are. 
 In Vishnu-land what Avatar ?
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 271 
 
 Not, I think, this avatar. Christianity, it is true, is 
 making some progress, and the actual increase in the 
 number of native converts between the last two Censuses 
 is remarkable. It rose from 1,246,000 in 1872 to 
 2,664,000 in 1901, which is at the rate of more than 
 113 per cent, for the thirty years. In Madras, during the 
 decade 1891-1901, the increase of the whole population 
 was 7*2 per cent., while that of the Christians was 
 18'1 per cent. In the Southern Presidency one person in 
 thirty-eight is a Christian, and in some of the contiguous 
 native states the proportion is even higher, so that it 
 amounts to almost a quarter of the entire population in 
 Cochin and Travancore. It is in the South that Chris- 
 tianity is strongest ; for here a colony of the so-called 
 Syrian Christians has been in existence possibly since 
 Apostolic times, 1 and the Portuguese and the Society of 
 Jesus have been making Roman Catholics of the Tamils 
 and Telugus for centuries. Of late the Anglicans, and 
 various other Protestant missionaries, have been busy, 
 and have gained a considerable number of converts, chiefly 
 in Madras, but also to a lesser degree in Bengal, the 
 Punjab, and other provinces. But, taking India as a 
 whole, there is only one Christian for every ninety-nine 
 persons belonging to some other religious community. 
 
 And the increase, such as it is, does not show itself 
 among the educated classes, nor among those with much 
 pretension to social status. The high-caste Hindu does 
 not become a convert. I once asked an excellent 
 missionary, who had been for over thirty years in a 
 native State and spoke with some satisfaction of the 
 results of his work, how many Brahmans he had brought 
 into his fold. He answered, ' One ' ; and I afterwards 
 ascertained that this solitary proselyte was a man who 
 
 1 The Syrian Church in India was said to have been founded by 
 St. Thomas. Its adherents still number about half a million persona.
 
 272 A VISION OP INDIA 
 
 had got into difficulties with his own communion because 
 of a marriage which violated caste rules. The Christian 
 converts come from another class of society. 
 
 In the Indian Army List the constitution of the regi- 
 ments is given according to the race and caste of the 
 soldiers : two companies of Sikhs and two companies of 
 Punjabi Mohammedans, and so on. Against the names 
 of a few of the battalions, which bear the old title of 
 Carnatic Infantry, one finds this curious entry : ' 4 com- 
 panies Sikhs ; 2 companies Mohammedans ; 2 companies 
 Pariahs and Christians.' For official purposes it seems 
 that Christians can be conveniently classed with the 
 pariahs or outcasts. There is a certain brusqueness in 
 the description, but it corresponds roughly with the facts. 
 The converts to Christianity, especially the recent con- 
 verts, are drawn (so the Madras Census officer tells us) 
 
 almost entirely from the classes of Hindus which are lowest in 
 the social scale. These people have little to lose by forsaking 
 the creed of their forefathers. As long as they remain Hindus 
 they are daily and hourly made to feel that they are of 
 commoner clay than their neighbours. Any attempts which 
 they may make to educate themselves or their children are 
 actively discouraged by the classes above them : caste restric 
 tions prevent them from quitting the toilsome, uncertain, and 
 undignified means of subsistence, to which custom has con- 
 demned them, and taking to a handicraft or a trade : they are 
 snubbed and repressed on all public occasions : are refused 
 admission even to the temples of their gods : and can hop^ for 
 no more helpful partner of their joys and sorrows than the 
 unkempt and unbandy maiden of tbe paracheri with her 
 very primitive notions of comfort and cleanliness. 
 
 Whatever one may think of missionary effort in a 
 general way, it can hardly be doubted that it is an 
 excellent thing for many of these poor outcasts to be 
 received into a body which releases them from the iron
 
 HINDUISM AND THE CASTES 273 
 
 shackles fettered on them at birth and helps them to 
 escape from their semi-servile condition. The converted 
 sweeper or pariah has made a distinct advance in the 
 social scale. He has acquired a position of his own, he is 
 a member of an association which includes many of his 
 ' betters,' he is allowed to cultivate his self-respect, and he 
 can, if he pleases, acquire the rudiments of an education, 
 not to mention other advantages ; for the missionaries 
 are charitable, and have some funds at their disposal. It 
 is significant, though not surprising, that there is often 
 a perceptible growth of Christian converts in districts 
 where poverty has been accentuated by recent drought 
 and famine. 
 
 But while Christianity is thus doing something for the 
 lowest grade of Hindus, there does not seem much 
 evidence that it is touching the higher classes. Chris- 
 tian ethics exercise a certain impalpable influence on 
 Hindu thought ; for Hinduism has a capacity for assimi- 
 lating other faiths and systems. If the Brahmans found 
 Christianity really formidable, I imagine they would 
 absorb it, just as they absorbed Buddhism. They are 
 content to ignore it, so long as it does not get far beyond 
 the village helots and the residuum of the towns. As for 
 the educated Hindu, when he has tasted of the springs 
 of Western enlightenment and emancipated himself from 
 the tenets of his fathers, he commonly becomes an 
 agnostic or a rationalist, usually retaining just enough 
 orthodoxy, in matters of ceremonial, to avoid shocking 
 public opinion. Christianity offers him few temptations. 
 He can get all the latitude he needs without leaving his 
 own community.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 
 
 THE banners of the morning were streaming in folds of 
 flying crimson across a sky of pearl as the luxurious 
 special train of the Great Indian Peninsula Kailway 
 slowed up outside the cantonment station. I threw down 
 the window-shutter and looked out upon a sheet of water, 
 a floor of smooth and polished turquoise, edged with a 
 blood-red border where the flaming light had caught and 
 stained the shallows. It was the great tank, or artificial 
 lake, which lies just outside the Nizam's capital of 
 Hyderabad. 
 
 The city was all astir, for the Nizam had brought out 
 his troops and his household retainers to do honour to the 
 Shahzada, and the townspeople and many visitors from 
 the countryside were in the streets. So one of the most 
 picturesque of Indian towns was seen at its best. 
 Nowhere, except perhaps in Peshawar and in Bombay, 
 had one seen more diverse types assembled. Hyderabad 
 is the premier Mohammedan State of India, and Islam 
 was very variously represented. 
 
 Fresh from Mysore with its plump, cheerful, swarthy 
 little men and women, we were here once more face to 
 face with some old friends from the North hawk-nosed 
 Pathans, tall Punjabi Mohammedans, Kohillas, Afridis, 
 and Afghans. The Hyderabad sovereigns have long 
 drawn their mercenaries from all Mussulman India and 
 beyond it. Here we saw companies of the Nizam's 
 
 274
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 275 
 
 famous ' Arab ' irregulars, their heads enwrapped in loose 
 hooded turbans of saffron yellow, which is the Hyderabad 
 court colour. Arabs these men are called ; but many of 
 them had the thick lips, the woolly hair, and the ebony 
 skin of Africa. 
 
 There were the Nizam's regular troops, too, in baggy 
 red breeches, with crooked sword-bayonets, oddly re- 
 miniscent of the French infantry of the Second Empire 
 days. Alongside these relics of the past, with their 
 obsolete Enfield rifles, were other Hyderabad battalions 
 armed with Martinis ; and finally his Highness's Imperial 
 Service Cavalry, with magazine carbines and all the best 
 modern equipment, a corps able to hold its own with the 
 picked regiment of British Indian Lancers which had 
 come down from Secunderabad to act as the Prince's 
 escort. 
 
 There is much that is reminiscent of Turkey in this 
 the largest Moslem capital outside the dominions of the 
 Padishah. Gone are the days when scarcely a man walked 
 in Hyderabad without arms in his hand or about his 
 person. Yet you still see the peasant coming in from the 
 wilder rural districts of the Dekhan with his brass-barrelled 
 hollow-butted gun over his shoulder, and the yeoman or 
 small squireen with a broad curved yataghan in a scabbard 
 of faded velvet belted to his side, and a whole magazine 
 of knives, daggers, and flint-lock pistols in his leather 
 girdle. Here, also, are many men and boys in the red fez 
 or tarbush, which is an uncommon headgear in the rest 
 of India ; and sometimes you observe that it completes 
 the costume of a portly gentleman in a black frock coat, 
 who might put Pasha or Bey to his name in Cairo or 
 Constantinople. 
 
 In the intervals of waiting, the soldiers sit on the 
 heels of their deplorable shoes and smoke bad cigarettes, 
 and slouch about, as they do in Monastir and Salonika.
 
 276 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Suddenly they spring to attention, and present arms ; and 
 the civilians, frock-coated officials and all, prostrate them- 
 selves, with an ultra-Oriental salaam, heads knocking the 
 ground, as when in Stamboul the Sultan drives forth to 
 the Selamlik. A yellow-painted landau dashes by, and in 
 it is seated a gentleman with side-whiskers and sharply 
 cut, rather Semitic features a little gentleman, incon- 
 spicuously dressed, who looks about him with the eye of 
 a king. You do not need to be told that this is his High- 
 ness the Nizam, sole and autocratic sovereign, by the 
 grace of God and the Government of India, of a territory 
 as large as Great Britain, and ruler of more people than 
 are contained in the Dominion of Canada and the Common- 
 wealth of Australia taken together. 
 
 It is a long walk through Hyderabad, for the city is 
 larger even than its population of 450,000 would lead you 
 to imagine. Past white-walled bungalows and public 
 buildings, set back in roomy gardens, under high 
 mediaeval-looking arches, through furlong after furlong of 
 the painted hutches of the bazaar, you come at length to 
 the far end of the town, where the Faluknama Palace is 
 perched on high. 
 
 About the story of this royal residence there is a 
 distinct flavour of the nearer, and the older, East. It 
 was built, out of his modest savings, by one of the 
 ministers of the last Nizam not, of course, the great 
 Sir Salar Jung, who was everything that was honourable 
 and distinguished, but another somewhat less precise. 
 The Nizam's favourite sultana cast the eyes of desire 
 upon this delectable abode, and pointed out to her lord that 
 it was far too good for a subject, and at any rate much 
 better than the old palace down below in the town. So 
 the minister was informed that he would have to sell the 
 pleasure-house to his master, and, sorely against his will, 
 he complied, receiving, as some say, its full equivalent in
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 277 
 
 rupees, and, as others aver, considerably less. However 
 this may have been, the Light of the Zenana soon tired 
 of the toy. After a few months it was abandoned, and it 
 has never been regularly occupied since. Except when 
 the Nizam entertains guests of state, it lies upon the 
 hillside empty and silent, with its saloons filled with 
 French furniture and gilding and glass-lustre chandeliers 
 a monument of reckless expenditure and uncalculating 
 caprice. 
 
 From the terrace of this same palace there is a pro- 
 spect which is hard to beat. At the foot of the hill, the 
 great city with its suburbs spreads out over many miles 
 of country, a dim blur of groves and gardens, with the 
 lanes of small dwelling-houses hidden by the leafage, and 
 only here and there the outlines of a palace, or the 
 bulbous domes and white shafts of a mosque, showing 
 among the date-palms and mango-trees. Beyond the 
 suburbs and the sparkling azure lakes lies the grey-brown 
 Dekhan tableland, crossed by jutting ridges and ragged 
 masses of isolated rock. 
 
 On one of these eminences you are able to make out 
 the remnants of walls and towers and ramparts, which are 
 the colossal ruins of the fortress-palace of Golconda, that 
 famous stronghold of the earlier Mussulman dynasty, 
 eventually extinguished by the Moghul Emperors. India 
 has many hill-fortresses ; for in its centuries of warfare 
 no potentate, whether he was emperor, king, or feudal 
 noble, could deem himself safe unless he could shelter 
 his wives, his treasures, and his faithful followers behind 
 some impregnable fastness, builded upon a rock. There 
 is one such, a marvel of inaccessible situation and defen- 
 sive ingenuity, at Daulatabad, near the cave-temples of 
 Ellora, in the far corner of the Nizam's state. 
 
 But Golconda is the most impressive of all ; perhaps 
 the most impressive castle ruin in the world. Its size is
 
 278 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 prodigious ; Kenilworth or Warwick would go into a 
 corner of the vast space of boulder-strewn hill enclosed 
 within its crenellated walls. Whole blocks of dwelling- 
 houses and nests of courts and alleys were scattered here 
 and there among the ramparts and bastions and fortified 
 terraces ; the great stone-stepped path that leads through 
 them to the palace-rooms at the summit of the hill is like 
 the main street of a town. The fortress seems built to 
 hold, not merely a garrison, but a people ; as indeed it 
 did in the long siege of 1687, when for eight months 
 Abdul Hasan, the last of the Kutab Shahi kings, held out 
 against the hosts of Aurangzeb. The defence is a fine 
 romantic story of heroism, treachery, and valorous ad- 
 venture. But in the end the Moghuls prevailed; and 
 it is the descendant of the Moghul's lieutenant, the 
 Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Viceroy of the Dekhan, who rules 
 over Hyderabad to-day as the Premier Prince of India 
 under the Imperial Crown of Britain. 
 
 ' If the Nizam goes, all is lost." So wrote the Gover- 
 nor of Bombay to the Kesident at Hyderabad in the crisis 
 of the Mutiny. But the Nizam did not go. He stood 
 faithfully by us, remembering that we had saved his house 
 when all Mohammedanism was being swept out of India 
 by the Mahratta flood. The fidelity of the Dekhan princes 
 has been rewarded by leaving them in a position of quasi- 
 independence such as no other chief in India enjoys. 
 
 But this has made them rather formidable too ; and 
 we have paid them the compliment of keeping pretty 
 nearly the largest concentrated force in India in their 
 dominions. At Secunderabad, which is an outlying suburb 
 of Hyderabad, the Prince of Wales was able to review 
 some nine thousand troops, including four British regi- 
 ments and three batteries of Royal Artillery. We do 
 not, however, interfere more than we can help with the 
 Nizam's internal policy, and we leave him to carry on his
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 279 
 
 domestic administration chiefly by the aid of his own 
 subjects. There are very few Englishmen in his High- 
 ness's employment, and only an exiguous squad of 
 officials has been ' lent ' him by the Government of India. 
 
 That the principality, under such circumstances, should 
 be as well managed as our own provinces, or even as 
 some of the other native states, is not to be expected. 
 For thirty years the Nizam's predecessors were guided by 
 the counsels of Sir Salar Jung, the greatest of native 
 Indian statesmen in modern times, who introduced and 
 carried out salutary reforms in every department. There 
 has been some falling-off since his death, and Hyderabad 
 in recent years has not been exactly a model state, nor 
 is it so at present. But it is improving. The present 
 Nizam has his faults. He is said to be somewhat indo- 
 lent and dilatory, and a little too Oriental in his ways. 
 Yet he is understood to be a capable man, with much 
 natural ability and considerable force of character. He 
 takes a great interest in educational matters, and is a 
 munificent supporter of Mohammedan teaching insti- 
 tutions, not merely in his own dominions, but in other 
 parts of India. He appears to be honestly desirous to do 
 his best for his twelve millions of subjects, of whom the 
 most part are peasants painfully striving to squeeze a 
 subsistence out of a hard and unfruitful soil. 
 
 The Nizam is a personage in India outside his own 
 territory. For Mohammedanism, if it has lost its old 
 political predominance, is still a great force in India. It 
 is the faith of one person out of every five in the country. 
 The King-Emperor rules more than half the Mohamme- 
 dan population of the world, the Sultan of Turkey coming 
 a very long way behind him. There is one province that 
 of the North-West Frontier which is almost entirely 
 Mohammedan, the Hindus being an unimportant minority. 
 Mohammedans are numerous in the Punjab, and they are
 
 280 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to be found scattered everywhere down to the extreme 
 South, especially in the towns. 
 
 In Eastern Bengal there are some twenty-seven or 
 twenty-eight million followers of the Prophet, and in 
 this region they are increasing more rapidly than the 
 Hindus ; for the Mussulman, with his varied diet, has a 
 better physique than the pulse and grain feeding Brah- 
 manists, and, moreover, he does not believe in child- 
 wedlock, nor does he think it wrong for widows to 
 re-marry. The high and growing proportion of the 
 Mohammedan population in Bengal is one of the hard 
 nuts for the Bengalis to crack. It is also an elementary 
 fact which is not, I think, so generally apprehended in 
 England as it should be. 
 
 By race these Bengal Mohammedans are akin to the 
 Hindus, and that, indeed, is true of the great majority of 
 their co-religionists outside the frontier districts. Most 
 of them are descended from Hindus who were converted 
 during the long period of Moslem rule. They exist as a 
 standing argument against that modern doctrine which 
 ascribes everything to race, and nothing to environment, 
 education, social conditions, and custom. 
 
 It is commonly held that the religion and social system 
 of Islam tend to develop the character of the Indian 
 Mohammedan somewhat at the expense of his intellect. 
 He is simpler, braver, more masculine than the Hindu, 
 more devout, in a rough, practical, straightforward fashion, 
 but less subtle, less ingenious, less acute, and less capable 
 of assimilating the methods of modern education. He 
 makes a first-rate soldier, he is useful as a policeman, an 
 inspector, or a watchman, and he does fairly well in any 
 position where courage, fidelity, and a certain self-respect 
 are requisite ; at times he exhibits a distinct aptitude for 
 trade, and as a shopkeeper he is frequently successful. 
 He is a convenient man to have as butler or personal
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 281 
 
 attendant, for in the first place he is in moderation honest, 
 and, secondly, he is not under the tyranny of caste rules, 
 and can serve food to a Christian without a qualm. 
 
 But the Hindu beats him at the office and the desk 
 and in the class-room. This is one of the reasons why 
 there ought not to be direct appointments to the higher 
 Civil Service by competitive examination in India. It is 
 tolerably certain that in this contest the babu and the 
 Brahman would drive the Mohammedan out of the field, 
 and that would be unfortunate. Most Indian Mussul- 
 mans cherish in their hearts some memory of the days 
 when their fathers were the masters of India, and they 
 believe, rightly or wrongly, that if ever the English power 
 were shaken they would regain their old predominance. 
 In the meanwhile they will endure being the subjects of 
 a Christian race, whose character they respect, and whose 
 religion they can understand. But to the feebler tribes 
 of idol-worshippers, as they consider them, they protest 
 indignantly that it would be an outrage to ask them to 
 yield obedience. 
 
 Englishmen, for their part, find it easy to get on with 
 the children of Islam. They have no difficulty in liking 
 men who have good manners without servility, and who 
 possess some of the open-air qualities and tastes we 
 ascribe to ourselves. The Hindu, with his glib tongue, 
 his pliant brain and back, his fantastic social rites, and 
 his incomprehensible religion, puzzles and annoys us. The 
 Mohammedan gentleman is just the man we should like 
 to see taking a prominent part in our provincial adminis- 
 tration. The difficulty is to get him there : for he is apt to 
 be too conservative and obscurantist, too haughtily con- 
 temptuous of modern progress and modern learning, and 
 too much under the influence of an obsolete system of 
 education. Mohammedans of the better class are still 
 rather disposed to regard Western knowledge as at once
 
 282 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 impious and vulgar, tending to disbelief in the Koran and 
 to the neglect of the classical literatures of Persian and 
 Arabic. 
 
 There is, however, a progressive movement in Indian 
 Mohammedanism. The chief promoter of this reform 
 was the late Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a man who did more 
 to broaden the minds and liberalise the views of his 
 co-religionists than any Indian Mohammedan since the 
 Emperor Akbar. Sir Syed, who was a member of an 
 old family which had held high office under the Moghuls, 
 devoted his life, his conspicuous ability, and the whole of 
 a considerable fortune, to the encouragement of education 
 on European lines among those of his countrymen who 
 professed the faith of Islam. He was to the end a devout 
 Mussulman, and he believed that Moslem schools and 
 colleges should be strictly denominational ; that is to say, 
 that instruction in the doctrines of their creed, by their 
 own qualified teachers, should be provided for the students. 
 But in all secular subjects he saw no reason why the 
 youthful Mohammedan should not have the advantages 
 of the best modern training. His efforts long impeded 
 by his co-religionists, and even viewed askance by many 
 Englishmen culminated in the establishment of a first- 
 rate school and college for the education of Moham- 
 medans at Aligarh in the United Provinces. This is in 
 some respects the finest educational institution in India. 
 I do not know that a much better one is to be found in 
 England. 
 
 It is worth while to go to Aligarh, if only to have 
 your convictions disturbed, and your belief in the ineradi- 
 cable differences between East and West a little shaken. 
 The time I spent at Aligarh (I took care not to visit it 
 when the Koyal party went there, wishing to see the 
 college under its normal everyday aspect) I found 
 extremely instructive and a trifle bewildering. The town
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 283 
 
 is an interesting old place, with a fine fort and a pictur- 
 esque mosque, and a Hindu tank with tame monkeys 
 swarming about it ; and the bazaar seemed to me the 
 cleanest and best kept of any I had seen in India. The 
 Civil Station outside the city is clean and neat, too, with 
 nice wide roads, and bungalows set back in suburban- 
 looking gardens and avenues of fine trees. Everything is 
 trim and orderly and quiet ; there is an academic, almost 
 an ecclesiastical, feeling in the air ; a bishop in his gaiters 
 would scarcely seem out of place here. 
 
 Sir Syed Ahmed's foundation is so closely modelled on 
 Western lines that you find it hard to believe, as you go 
 round the buildings and courts with the Principal, that 
 you are not back in the old country, with a cathedral 
 spire or a castle keep somewhere in the background. The 
 establishment is carried on under English direction. The 
 late Principal, Mr. W. A. Archbold, who succeeded those 
 famous Indian educationists, Sir Theodore Morison and 
 Mr. Theodore Beck, was a distinguished Cambridge 
 graduate. English university men, too, are the professors 
 and the headmaster of the school, with native graduates 
 of Indian Universities to assist them. 
 
 The small dormitories, in which the students live, are 
 built round large quadrangles like those of an Oxford or 
 Cambridge college. There are lecture-rooms, with forms 
 and desks, and a great dining-hall, and cricket-grounds, and 
 football-fields, and tennis-courts. In one corner of the 
 great court there is the mosque, which might be the 
 college chapel, where the students are expected to attend 
 prayers daily ; and I suppose they are taken to task by 
 their tutors if they fail to put in the statutory number of 
 attendances. 
 
 We go into one of the students' rooms. In defer- 
 ence to the Indian climate it has ' chicks ' before the 
 doors and windows, and whitewash, or distemper, instead
 
 284 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 of paper on the walls ; and the furniture is scanty, as it 
 always is in India. But the apartment bears a quite 
 colourable resemblance to a study at an English public 
 school, or even an undergraduate's abode, say at Selwyn 
 or Keble. There is the student's bed on one side, his 
 table on the other. His shelf of books hangs against the 
 wall, and upon it you may note Strubbs's Constitutional 
 History, Mill's Political Economy, perhaps a Cambridge 
 Euclid and Algebra, as well as a Persian and Arabic 
 Grammar. In one corner there is a stand of hockey- 
 sticks ; in another a cricket-bat and some Indian clubs, 
 with a pair of boxing-gloves; on one wall pictures of 
 the King and the Sultan of Turkey, a highly coloured 
 chromo of Windsor Castle, and a photograph of the 
 members of the First Eleven in their caps and flannels. 
 
 Athletics are much cultivated at Aligarh. They have 
 excellent football and hockey teams, and their cricket is 
 pretty nearly the best in India, which is saying a good 
 deal. Cricket, during the last few years, has caught on 
 throughout the Peninsula, and is played by the natives all 
 over the country with the utmost zest and considerable 
 skill. In fact, it is now almost a native game, the Anglo- 
 Indian being more inclined to devote himself to polo and 
 hockey. This is partly because the latter games are less 
 dilatory and provide more exercise with a smaller expen- 
 diture of time. But I believe the waning interest in 
 cricket among the white community is also due to a 
 consciousness that the natives are playing it so well 
 that matches with them are not altogether satisfactory to 
 the ruling race. There are certainly not many regimental 
 or other cricket-clubs in India which could engage the 
 Aligarh boys with any confidence. 
 
 I got into conversation with a member of the cricket 
 eleven, and in two minutes I forgot that he was an Indian. 
 He talked of the game, of the matches they had won and
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 285 
 
 lost, of the prospective arrangements for the next season, 
 of football and the Australians, of pig-sticking and shoot- 
 ing, of which he had done a little in the holidays with 
 ' his people,' and something also of his books and studies 
 and approaching examinations. He had the manner, the 
 tone, the expression, of a gentlemanly, well-set, healthy 
 English lad ; he might have been a sunburnt prefect at 
 Winchester, the captain of the boat-club at Brasenose or 
 Trinity Hall. The Principal talked to the lads just in 
 the frank, kindly way adopted by those headmasters at 
 home who happen to be men of the world rather than 
 pedagogues and pedants. ' I treat them precisely as if 
 they were English boys,' he said, ' and often I find it an 
 effort to remember they are anything else.' He told me 
 that they seemed to him very like our own youngsters : 
 intellectually not much better or worse, perhaps with 
 rather stronger memories and slightly less capacity for 
 close reasoning; more docile and obedient and easily 
 managed ; not, as a rule, more devoted to study or less 
 addicted to play. 
 
 The discipline and general arrangement of the college 
 and the school are kept on the English lines so far as is 
 compatible with a due regard for the social traditions of 
 the pupils and their parents. Some of these young gentle- 
 men, it must be remembered, are married ; most will re- 
 turn to homes where, of course, the customs of the 
 country still prevail. It would not do to send them back 
 unable to eat with their own male relatives. So they 
 consume native food, served in the native fashion in 
 the dining-halls. A few of the Anglicising fathers send 
 their boys to what is known as the ' English House,' 
 where knives and forks and table-napkins and roast beef 
 and boiled potatoes are provided, and here the re- 
 semblance to a boarding-house at one of our public 
 schools is very close indeed. The six or seven hundred
 
 286 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 young followers of the Prophet at Aligarh 1 are drawn 
 from a good many divisions of the Islamic world. In a 
 group of bright youngsters with whom I foregathered 
 there was a light-coloured Persian, a blue-eyed Afghan, a 
 Burman from Rangoon, an ebon-cheeked boy from 
 Hyderabad, whose father was an officer of the Nizam's 
 ' Arabs,' and even a lad from Capetown, the son, I suppose, 
 of one of the Malay traders settled in South Africa. The 
 Aligarh College is doing a work comparable mutatis 
 mutandis to that of the Bhodes scholarships. It gets to- 
 gether the picked scions of Mohammedanism, and gives 
 them a common culture and common associations. Inci- 
 dentally it is helping to bring the Indian Mussulman 
 gentry out of their seclusion, and qualifying them for the 
 professions and pursuits of active modern life. 
 
 But the youth who goes to Aligarh may have a sister. 
 She, too, sometimes gets educated in these days. She 
 learns French and music, and reads English novels. 
 Then in due course she is married, and is shut up for life 
 in the mitigated captivity of the zenana. The purdah is 
 a much more rigorous screen for the woman of Islam 
 than for her Hindu sister, and it is thrown round many, 
 even among the poorer classes, who, if they were of the 
 rival faith, would be allowed to escape from its seclusion. 
 
 There are bold innovators in the Moslem community 
 who go so far as to suggest that married women, in these 
 days, might be treated like rational human beings, and 
 allowed rather more liberty than is given to habitual 
 criminals in the West. And there are even one or two 
 Mohammedan families of high rank and unquestioned 
 orthodoxy who permit their ladies to go about unveiled 
 and to talk to male persons, European and others. But 
 
 1 There are even a few Hindus, who come under a sort of conscience 
 clause and are allowed to obtain the educational advantages of the seminary 
 without being subjected to the religious discipline and teaching.
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 287 
 
 in this respect Mussulman emancipation moves but 
 slowly, and it does not seem that any substantial progress 
 is being made in modifying the domestic arrangements 
 which form the real barrier against genuine intimacy 
 between ourselves and the people of India. It is difficult 
 to get to intimate relations with a married man, when 
 you will never be permitted to see his wife, and may not 
 even allude to her in the course of conversation. 
 
 Speaking at the Imperial Institute, 1 Sir Theodore 
 Morison, who was for sixteen years the distinguished 
 Principal of the Aligarh College, ascribed the conser- 
 vatism of the Indian Mussulmans, in matters of social 
 reform, not so much to religious fanaticism as to ' a quasi- 
 patriotic feeling of which they themselves were only 
 dimly aware, and to which they would have found it 
 difficult to give articulate expression.' In the conflicts of 
 ages the Cross and the Crescent have become the symbols 
 not merely of two different religions (though the kindred 
 origin of both has often been recognised by cultivated 
 Mohammedans), but of two distinct and rival social 
 systems. ' The followers of both religions, being habituated 
 to look upon each other as natural enemies, had em- 
 phasised those social customs in which they differed from 
 each other, and had come to regard with peculiar fondness 
 those habits and manners which might be reckoned dis- 
 tinctively Islamic or Christian. Practices which were 
 neither good nor bad in themselves became lovable and 
 praiseworthy when they were recognised characteristics of 
 the followers of the true faith, and bigots would be in- 
 clined to view with an indulgent eye even the bad 
 practices of their own people, if they were in sharp 
 contrast to the manners of the infidels.' 
 
 1 In a very interesting lecture delivered before the National Indian 
 Association, November 16, 1905, of which a report is given iu the Allahabad 
 / 1 , December 8, 1'JOd.
 
 288 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 The mischief of this was so strongly felt by Sir Syed 
 Ahmed that, while emphasising his strict adhesion to all 
 the tenets of the Islamic faith, -he made public renuncia- 
 tion of many of the Mohammedan customs, for which he 
 could see no sufficient cause, and ostentatiously paraded 
 his liking for some English manners and habits. ' His 
 impenitent admiration for English ways while he was 
 in this country led the Doctors of the Law in Delhi 
 to set him formally under a ban, as a Kafir outside 
 the pale of Moslem society, and for a long time his 
 relatives and friends dare not receive him into their 
 homes. His experience was shared by all who ventured 
 to adopt European customs. When Nawab Mohsin-ul- 
 Mulk first went to dinner with an Englishman, the news 
 was telegraphed to his native city and spread consterna- 
 tion through the place. On his return home none of his 
 friends came to meet him on the platform, and he was 
 followed to his own doors by an angry crowd of Mussul- 
 mans. The indignation ran so high that when his son died 
 shortly afterwards not a Mohammedan of the city would 
 accompany the bier to the grave.' 
 
 It was amazing, added Sir T. Morison, to observe how 
 much heat could still be generated by such apparently 
 trivial questions as the length of the trousers a true 
 believer should wear, the cut of his moustache, or the 
 shaving of his beard. ' With a sort of inarticulate 
 patriotism, the old-fashioned party were struggling to 
 preserve the existence of their particular civilisation.' 
 The lecturer thought that ' the struggle had terminated 
 in favour of the Anglicising party. Islamic civilisation 
 had gone ; the old mode of Mohammedan life had been 
 broken up, and the most vigorous spirits in the com- 
 munity were inspired by European ideals.' One would 
 not differ from so high an authority without hesitation ; 
 but I am afraid Sir T. Morison's view is a little too
 
 ISLAM AND ITS CHILDREN 289 
 
 sanguine. The struggle between the New School and 
 the Old School of Indian Mohammedanism has not yet 
 terminated decisively in favour of the former, nor is it 
 rendered less acute by the fact that it does seem to turn 
 partly upon theological differences. 1 Social reform is 
 hampered by the fact that the dead-weight of an intole- 
 rant priesthood is against it, and the Moslem is even 
 more under the influence of the moulvie than the Hindu 
 is subject to that of the guru. 
 
 Withal, as I have said, there is conspicuous progress, 
 and this not merely among the superior classes, who are 
 getting their sons educated in the learning of the West 
 so that they may become magistrates, lawyers, civil 
 servants, engineers, and doctors. The movement is ex- 
 tending downwards, and the Mohammedan of the peasant 
 and labouring orders is finding his way into the industrial 
 army. Discussing the subject with some of the leading 
 employers of Cawnpore, I was much struck by their 
 
 1 Some interesting comments upon Sir T. Morison's lecture were made by 
 Mr. Yusuf Ali, an accomplished Mohammedan official of the Indian Civil 
 Service : ' Change of customs was a contributory cause of the bitterness with 
 which Sir Syed Ahmed was assailed, but the main reason was on account 
 of his theological views. It was because Sir Syed adopted opinions which 
 were in the eyes of many Mohammedans absolutely heretical if not anti- 
 Moslem that their great hatred of him arose. When he was last in Lucknow 
 he said to a moulvie connected with the most pronounced of anti-Aligarh 
 organisations, " Why is it you and your party so strongly object to English 
 education ? " He replied, " We don't object to English education, or to 
 your wearing European clothes. What we do object to is that you learn 
 natural theology ; that you try to interpret the Koran in ways that we 
 cannot follow ; that you throw aside the authority of the commentators, 
 and take your stand upon the text as interpreted by your own intelligence." 
 That expression explained the line of cleavage between the Aligarh School 
 and the Old School. This cleavage had existed in the history of other 
 religions of the world, and certainly in Christianity. He believed that the 
 first great movement which gave rise to the Eeformation arose from the 
 claim of a small minority of devout men to exercise the right of private 
 judgment, instead of accepting without question the authority, on questions 
 of doctrine and practice, of the Fathers. The reform party in Islam took 
 a like position; and when this view generally prevailed Western civilisation 
 and culture would be accepted by Mohammedans, to the working out of 
 those human laws of culture and development which they in early times did 
 so much to cultivate. 1
 
 290 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 testimony to the increase in the number of the Mussul- 
 man workers. ' When I first came here, fifteen years 
 ago/ said the manager of one large establishment, ' there 
 was not more than one Mohammedan in our factories to 
 five Hindus ; now the proportion is at least fifty per cent.' 
 I asked if the Children of Islam gave satisfaction. I was 
 told that they did ; that they were getting the better jobs 
 assigned to them, and earning higher wages. It seemed 
 to be admitted that for the posts in which some intel- 
 lectual qualifications were required it was still necessary 
 to resort to the Hindus ; though that, perhaps, was mainly 
 because it was so much easier to find men with educa- 
 tional advantages in that community. 
 
 But (although there was some difference of opinion on 
 this point) my informants were inclined to think that, 
 among the rank and file of the workmen, the Moham- 
 medans showed a higher efficiency. They have more 
 grit, more energy, more endurance, and more physical 
 vigour ; they need less constant supervision ; and they are 
 easier to deal with because they are free from the burden- 
 some caste rules. They are, however, somewhat less 
 industrious, and not so careful in attention to detail, 
 whether as artisans or as cultivators. "When I was going 
 through a section of rural country, in which Jat and 
 Mohammedan villages were sandwiched in together, I 
 soon found it easy to distinguish one from the other by 
 the mere appearance of the lands ; for the Moslem farms 
 were usually worse tilled and more slovenly than those of 
 the Hindus. Besides, the Jat cultivator can get his 
 womankind to help him in the fields as well as the 
 factory, while his rival has no such assistance. In this 
 respect, as in others, the ' peculiar institution ' of the 
 Moslems handicaps them in the competition of modern 
 industrialism.
 
 CHAPTEB XX 
 
 THE DISTRICT OFFICEB 
 
 LET us suppose, by a long stretch of fancy, that we are 
 living in the year 2106, and that the Japanese, taking 
 advantage of the dissensions and divisions among the 
 Western nations, have become the masters of the greater 
 part of Europe, including the British Isles. Let us 
 conceive ourselves in Wales at this hypothetical period. 
 The Principality is inhabited by two and a-half millions 
 of people, speaking Welsh and English, as they do to-day. 
 There are schools for both races just as there are at 
 present, there are newspapers in the two languages, there 
 are landowners of Norman blood drawing their rents from 
 Celtic tenant farmers ; there are Methodist ministers, 
 Church of England parsons, and an Anglican bishop 
 still enjoying the modest revenues of St. Asaph ; there 
 are tax-collectors and revenue officers, not distinguish- 
 able from those who are even now discharging their 
 honourable functions ; Welsh and English judges will be 
 deciding cases in the local courts, barristers and attorneys, 
 mostly Welsh, will be arguing before them ; Welsh miners 
 will be hewing coal in the Bhondda Valley ; enterprising 
 financiers from London will be making money out of the 
 ores of Swansea and the cargoes of Cardiff. 
 
 There might be a Japanese regiment at Chester, and a 
 cruiser flying the chry santhemum flag acting as guardship 
 off the Severn. But beyond a few traders there are no 
 Japanese residents at all, save and except a Mr. Hay ash i 
 
 291
 
 292 A VISION 0" INDIA 
 
 or a Mr. Inaga, who is the principal administrative officer 
 of the province, with a couple of young Japanese assist- 
 ants, a Japanese police-commandant, and a Japanese 
 chief judge. Imagine, further, Mr. Hayashi or Mr. Inaga 
 ruling from an extremely modest country-house some- 
 where in the mountain valleys, and assume that he has 
 no Parliament or local Assembly to control him, but re- 
 ceives his orders direct from the Mikado's Cabinet at 
 Tokio, or from a Japanese ' Government of Europe,' with 
 its seat at Berlin or Vienna. Imagine all this, and you get 
 something like the miraculous condition of things which 
 prevails in British India at this moment of writing. 
 
 And if anyone says that this is a mere fancy picture, 1 
 can direct him to a district in Southern India which is 
 not much smaller than Wales ; where the inhabitants are 
 of two races as different from ourselves as either English- 
 men or Welshmen are from Japanese, with their temples, 
 their priests, their religious systems, their schools, their 
 vernacular newspapers, with all which things we prac- 
 tically do not interfere at all ; where there is no British 
 military force within a much greater distance than that 
 which separates Chester from St. David's Head ; where 
 all the police, the revenue collectors, the minor civil 
 officials, and the subordinate judges are natives of 
 India ; and where there are not more than half a dozen 
 Europeans, all told, to assist the English gentleman, who 
 has a chuprassi or two and a few policemen about him 
 as the only external signs of that authority under which 
 the entire district rests. He is thirty-six years of age ; he 
 draws about the salary of a county-court judge at home ; 
 he lives in a bungalow, which looks shabby compared 
 with that of the adjacent wealthy native landowner ; and 
 he takes his instructions from a centre of government 
 which he can only reach after a day and a night of un- 
 interrupted rapid travel.
 
 THE DISTRICT OFFICER 293 
 
 Those who think that India is a country in which a 
 ' horde ' of foreign officials batten upon the natives should 
 look at the actual figures. They will find that the 
 horde is one of amazing smallness. It is hard to 
 believe when out of India it is harder to believe when 
 there that the Indian Civil Service comprises little more 
 than a thousand persons. ' Including military officers in 
 civil employ, and others,' says Sir John Strachey, ' about 
 1,200 Englishmen are employed in the civil government 
 of 232 millions of people, and in the partial control of 62 
 millions more.' On the average there are only four 
 members of the ruling race for every million of its 
 subjects. 
 
 Bureaucratic administration has surely never been 
 exercised with a stricter economy in the higher grades of 
 service. We might have filled India with a swarm of 
 officials of our own blood, conferring upon them every 
 place of any importance in all the departments. But 
 we use our Englishman in India with parsimonious 
 thrift. We engage him only for a few superior posts, 
 leaving him to conduct the actual management of the 
 country, its revenue system, its defence, its finances, its 
 police, its justice, by means of an army of natives. India 
 is a government of Indians under British direction. To 
 understand what that means in practice you need to go 
 out into a rural district, where you may see the provincial 
 ruler at work, with perhaps two European assistants, 
 perhaps one, and a whole corps of native subordinates. 
 
 The unit of Indian administration is the District ; and 
 the important individual is its chief, the District Magis- 
 trate, the Collector as he is called in some provinces, the 
 Deputy-Commissioner in others. He is the regimental 
 officer of the Indian service ; and on him, much more than 
 on Lieutenant-Governors and Members of Council, and 
 even Viceroys, the efficiency of the whole vast machine
 
 294 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 depends. He tramps through the mud and does the hard 
 work, lives in camp most of the winter, fries and bakes 
 in the summer, and simmers and stews during the rains. 
 The Councils and the Secretariats escape to Simla or 
 Ootacamund, or some other pleasant hill-station, to carry 
 on their intellectual labours through the hot season ; 
 but the Head of the District works away on the plains, 
 except when he is fortunate enough to be absent on 
 leave. 
 
 Within his own area of jurisdiction, which may be as 
 large as Kent or Yorkshire, or larger still, the Collector 
 is a monarch, rather of the personal than the constitu- 
 tional type. He is himself responsible for the behaviour 
 of his million or so of subjects ; he has to see that the 
 laws are carried out, that the police do their duty, that the 
 /evenue is punctually gathered in ; to supervise his string 
 of native deputy-collectors, assistant-commissioners, teh- 
 sildars, naibs, patwaris, and the rest, down to the village 
 headmen. Prisons, schools, roads, railways, canals, dis- 
 pensaries, famine, plague, epidemics, the state of the farms, 
 the progress of trade and commerce, the social condition 
 of the people in all these he is constantly and prac- 
 tically interested. He is to some extent judge as well as 
 governor ; he should be a lawyer as well as an adminis- 
 trator and accountant ; and he ought to know something 
 of land surveying, of irrigation, of agriculture and stock- 
 breeding, of sanitary science and engineering. And on 
 all these subjects and many others he must be prepared, 
 at short notice, to write reports and memoranda with 
 fluency and knowledge. 
 
 To his people the District Officer is the Government 
 in corporeal form. For the villager, Parliament, the 
 Cabinet, the Secretary of State, have no existence ; the 
 King-Emperor is a dim mysterious Shape in another 
 planet ; the Great Lord Sahib and the Governor are far-
 
 THE DISTRICT OFFICER 295 
 
 away inaccessible potencies ; even the Commissioner is 
 too remote. But the Head of the District they know ; 
 they see him in the flesh when he goes his rounds in the 
 camping season, or when they attend at his cutcherry to 
 proffer a petition. 
 
 The aspiring small landowner, who thinks that his 
 family importance entitles him to be placed on the pro- 
 vincial durbar list, the official who believes that he has 
 been unjustly denied his promotion, the tradesman who 
 hopes for a Government contract, the village headman 
 who has a complaint to make against the Public Works 
 Department for an insufficient supply of irrigation water 
 all these and many others appeal in writing or by word 
 of mouth to the Huzur, the Presence, who is to them 
 the personal representative of the beneficently despotic 
 Sirkar. He sits outside his tent, or on his verandah, or 
 in his dusty little office, and hears, judges, condemns, 
 admonishes, awards praise or punishment, makes notes, 
 reproves the petitioners, or promises to have their cases 
 further considered. It is government as they understand 
 it in the East : the Cadi under the Palm-tree, with modern 
 improvements. 
 
 And the Cadi for the most part is no more than a very 
 average, fairly well-educated, intelligent, conscientious 
 Briton. He is not, of course, as a rule either a genius or 
 a hero. Some people write of him as if he were neces- 
 sarily both. The visitor to India, with his literary and 
 historical recollections thick upon him, may confess to a 
 faint feeling of disappointment when he comes in due 
 course to make the acquaintance of the rulers of the land 
 in situ. I suppose the race of the Lawrences, the Herbert 
 Edwardeses, the Nicholsons, the Taylors, the Sleemans, 
 is not extinct. But the ordinary civilian, as you meet 
 him, though an excellent fellow, does not perhaps strike 
 you as the silent, strong man, masterful but kindly, self-
 
 296 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 devoted yet unbending, for whom you have been vaguely 
 and rather foolishly looking. 
 
 Such men there are, such you will even find in 
 the course of a hasty peregrination. But the majority 
 are quite ordinary persons, much like their fathers, their 
 brothers, and their cousins, in rectories, college common- 
 rooms, and public offices at home. For myself, I confess 
 that the young civilian fell a little below my expecta- 
 tions, just as the young officer of the native army, and 
 even the young police-superintendent, rose rather above 
 them. 
 
 One has been taught to believe the soldier ' stupid,' the 
 policeman perfunctory ; but I do not think that in braine 
 and character they rank far behind the competition-wallah. 
 A man may pass a moderately stiff examination, and 
 write I.C.S. after his name, without changing his nature. 
 The civilian has the ordinary faults, the ordinary virtues. 
 His outlook is often limited; he is sometimes pedantic, 
 conceited, and too complacently official. But he belongs 
 to a service which brings out some of his best qualities 
 and mitigates his worst a service which has a tradition 
 of hard work, self-reliance, and absolute, irrefragable, 
 untainted integrity. 
 
 And the training of the District is like that of his 
 Majesty's ships : it makes or breaks the individual sub- 
 jected to it. If the young civilian is gifted with some 
 elements of strength and resourcefulness, if he has his 
 share of tact and judgment and knowledge of human 
 nature, he is developed and improved by the splendid re- 
 sponsibilities of the magistracy, till he is fit for even 
 greater things. But if not, he is quietly removed from 
 the executive deck, and sent to office work in the Secre- 
 tariat, or turned into a Sessions Judge, or provided with 
 some other employment, in which industrious steadiness 
 may compensate for some lack of decision and temper
 
 THE DISTRICT OFFICER 297 
 
 and the capacity to deal with men and cope with unfore- 
 seen emergencies. 
 
 But are the Indian administrators of our time better 
 or worse than their predecessors ? How do they compare 
 with the men of the pre-Mutiny and pre-competition days 
 and with those who inherited the traditions of that 
 period ? These are questions to which diverse answers 
 will be given, and on them it is not easy to come to a 
 definite conclusion. 
 
 Some of the older generation of officials are altogether 
 unfavourable to the men of the new order. In Anglo- 
 Indian society and in the Indian clubs there are dolorous 
 headshakings over the social shortcomings of the younger 
 civilians. Many of them, it is whispered, are not ' gentle- 
 men,' but only clever lads who have worked their way up, 
 with scholarships and exhibitions, from the board-schools 
 and grammar-schools to the Universities and the high 
 places on the Civil Service Commissioners' list. ' Why, 
 sir, the son of my father's gamekeeper is Collector of my 
 old district/ says the indignant veteran ; and you are 
 bidden to observe that the natives have the keenest eye 
 for social distinctions : they know one kind of sahib from 
 another, and they dislike rulers of plebeian origin. 
 
 But in these democratic days the gamekeeper's son 
 has ' come to stay ' ; and if, besides having the ability and 
 energy to pass high in the examination, he also happens 
 to have rowed in his college boat or to have got his Blue 
 if he is a good sportsman and a good fellow, manly, 
 capable, and well-mannered it is possible that even the 
 astute Oriental may not detect these disabilities of birth, 
 or may condone them if he does. So far it does not seem 
 that the new system has filled the I.C.S. with 'bounders ' 
 or weaklings or with persons too unpolished to hold their 
 own in the cultured society of an Indian cantonment. 
 
 It is also alleged that the latter-day civilians know 
 
 K 2
 
 298 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 less of native life and the condition of the country than 
 their forerunners ; one is often told that they are not 
 nearly so well acquainted with the vernacular. But the 
 suggestion is probably quite unwarranted. The older 
 civilian had a rough knowledge of the colloquial speech 
 of his province, picked up from his servants and his 
 native subordinates ; but he had seldom studied the 
 language accurately and grammatically as the young 
 officials and officers are now compelled to do. 
 
 On the other hand, I daresay it is true that the man 
 of the past was better acquainted with his district and 
 its people. Facilities of communication, here as every- 
 where else, have worked their effects. The official of the 
 days when John Company Bahadur ruled, and long after, 
 was more closely rooted to the soil of Asia than his suc- 
 cessor. The voyage to Europe was long and costly ; the 
 civilian did not look forward to taking it more than 
 once or twice during his whole term of service. India 
 was his home ; and he knew that if he did not leave his 
 bones there he would at any rate not often get away from 
 the country, until he left it for ever after thirty or forty 
 years of almost continuous residence in the East. 
 
 Here there has been a great change. In these times, 
 when the voyage is an affair of a fortnight, people are 
 constantly taking it. Anglo-India is always on the move, 
 flitting backwards and forwards. Many of the ladies get 
 home every season ; plenty of the men can contrive a 
 holiday in England or in France, Italy, or Switzerland 
 once in about three years. Europe is no longer a 
 remote region, from which only faint echoes reach the 
 exile. Modern Indian society is closely in touch with the 
 West ; it has read the new books, seen the new plays, 
 kept itself well in the current of politics, sport, and 
 amusement. 
 
 The change is in many ways beneficial. The Anglo-
 
 THE DISTRICT OFFICER 299 
 
 Indian is, physically and morally, the healthier for it. It 
 saves his liver, and keeps him from sinking down into the 
 crude provincialism which Thackeray drew with savage 
 veracity in the person of Jos Sedley. The original of the 
 Collector of Boggleywallah exists no longer ; nor the 
 official who made himself so much at home in India that 
 he provided himself with feminine companionship of indi- 
 genous growth. In the compounds of many of the old- 
 time bungalows you will see a little whitewashed annexe 
 or garden-house, wherein the Sahib was wont to relax, 
 after his daily labours, in true Oriental fashion. No such 
 indecorous arrangement would be tolerated in a modern 
 cantonment or civil station. But the newer system is 
 not without some disadvantages of its own. The Anglo- 
 Indian is thinking ' Europe ' all the time ; and even the 
 civilian is a lodger, a mere transient visitor, in his district, 
 who will not stay in it long enough to know it with the 
 ancient intimacy. Something has had to be paid for the 
 swift steamers, the rapid mails, the telegrams, the railways 
 to the hills, the frequent holidays, which have robbed the 
 life of the Englishman in India of some of its former 
 terrors.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 
 
 WHEN Tompkyns Sahib is At Home, he is apt to assume 
 the airs of a martyr. He may succeed in persuading 
 others, and he honestly tries to persuade himself, that he 
 does not like India. He will speak of it as the Land of 
 Regrets, and justify himself by referring to the poets : 
 
 What far-reaching Nemesis steered him, 
 
 From his home by the cool of the sea ? 
 When he left the fair country that reared him, 
 
 When he left her, his mother, for thee ; 
 That restless, disconsolate worker, 
 
 Who strains now in vain at thy nets ; 
 O sultry and sombre Noverca, 
 
 Land of Regrets 1 
 
 He asks for sympathy on the ground that he is a for- 
 lorn exile, living afar from his native land, in a deplorable 
 climate, among an alien, semi-barbarous people. He will 
 contrast the amenities of life in England with the condi- 
 tions of an existence, in which work has to be done with 
 babu clerks and with the temperature in the nineties for 
 eight months out of the twelve. The intellectual poverty 
 of a society without theatres or even a music-hall fur- 
 nishes him with matter for indignant comment. All the 
 time he is in India he makes a serious effort to imagine 
 that he is counting the hours till his next trip to Europe ; 
 and he would rather like to believe that the one really
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 301 
 
 agreeable moment of his joyless sojourn in the East is that 
 in which he sets foot on the tender while the P. and 0. 
 liner is getting up steam for the homeward voyage in 
 Bombay harbour. And when the time comes for him to 
 leave the foggy skies and mud-draggled pavements of his 
 native land, Tompkyns is heartily sorry for himself, and 
 disappointed if he does not obtain a reasonable amount of 
 condolence, particularly from the feminine members of 
 his circle. 
 
 Yet, if he will allow himself to think so, he has some 
 compensations. Tompkyns is only a chota sahib, a minor 
 mercantile personage, neither the Collector of a District 
 nor the Colonel of a Kegiment. If he were at home he 
 would be in a bank or an export house in the City, as his 
 younger brother actually is. He would probably live in a 
 middle-class suburb and go down to his work every morn- 
 ing by the omnibus or the District Eailway, instead of 
 driving to his office in a neat dog-cart, behind a smart 
 country-bred pony, with a syce in a green turban balancing 
 himself on the step. 
 
 Young Tompkyns, as a matter of fact, resides in 
 Putney, where he occupies a bedroom and a sitting-room, 
 with a somewhat overworked lodging-house maidservant 
 to minister to his wants. This lady leaves a can of 
 lukewarm water at his door in the morning, and Young 
 Tompkyns pours it himself into the tin pan in which he 
 performs his ablutions. She dumps an egg or a rasher of 
 bacon in front of him before he catches the 8.45 train up ; 
 and if he is not dining out she is able to furnish him with a 
 steak and some potatoes in the evening. Young Tompkyns 
 is not without his relaxations. A few people ask him to 
 dances ; he goes to the theatre sometimes with a friend ; 
 he practises the violin in his rooms and joins a quartette 
 party ; on Sunday he plays his round or two of golf. He 
 is at work five days and a-half out of seven, and has few
 
 302 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 extra holidays, beyond his annual three weeks, when he 
 goes to the seaside, or perhaps takes an economical trip 
 to the Continent. 
 
 A perfectly wholesome and not unsatisfactory existence, 
 but it cannot be called brilliant. When Tompkyns Sahib 
 is more than usually inclined to ' grouse,' it may strike 
 him that this would have been his situation, if he had re- 
 mained in London instead of getting an appointment in 
 the country he asperses. As it is, he enjoys at least certain 
 material advantages which otherwise might have been 
 denied him. He lives not in modest lodgings or a cramped 
 little London house, but in a roomy bungalow. He 
 shares this abode, it is true, with two other young men ; 
 but each tenant of the chummery has his own spacious 
 apartment, and there is a sitting-room, twenty feet square 
 and twenty feet high, with a punkah depending from the 
 ceiling ; also there is a dining-room in which a dinner can 
 be, and sometimes is, given to a dozen guests. The 
 windows of Young Tompkyns abut upon a minute back- 
 yard and the cisterns of the next street. But the dwelling 
 of Tompkyns Sahib is in a compound, which is, in fact, 
 a small estate, such as Young Tompkyns is not likely to 
 occupy, down Putney way, until some time after he has 
 become married and moneyed and middle-aged. 
 
 When Tompkyns Sahib steps through the lattice of 
 his sleeping-room, in the early morning, stumbling over 
 the punkah-man asleep by the sill, he comes out upon a 
 half-acre of lawn, set with flower-beds. In the height of 
 the hot season it is baked into grey dust ; but for a large 
 part of the year the bheesties keep the turf green by con- 
 stant outpourings from leather goat-skins and great earthen 
 jars, and the gardeners, impelled by much tuition and 
 objurgation, contrive to make the place gay with asters 
 and chrysanthemums and sunflowers and bougainvilleaa 
 and other blossoms, English and Indian. You sit \\ith
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 303 
 
 Tompkyns, under the shade of his deep verandah, fringed 
 with the tassels of the wisteria and the hibiscus, and from 
 your reposeful arm-chair you look out upon his palms and 
 cactus-plants and the arcades of a mighty banyan or the 
 spreading arms of a great mango-tree, all covered by the 
 orange and purple trumpets of the climbing bigonia; 
 and you are disposed to sympathise with the Sahib less 
 cordially than when you listened to his lamentations At 
 Home. 
 
 Nobody takes any particular notice of Young Tomp- 
 kyns, who is but an inconspicuous unit in a crowd 
 of persons no more distinguished or important than 
 himself. Nor is there any real distinction attaching to 
 Tompkyns Sahib. Still he is an aristocrat one of, per- 
 haps, a hundred and fifty members of the ruling race in a 
 community of a hundred and fifty thousand. He moves 
 and has his being, conscious that the vast majority of 
 the people about him are, and know themselves to be, 
 socially his inferiors. 
 
 Young Tompkyns would be greatly surprised if he 
 were respectfully saluted by policemen and officials and 
 the general public when he walked or drove in the 
 streets ; but Tompkyns Sahib is not at all astonished 
 at these tributes, and is even a little indignant at the 
 4 infernal cheek ' of the native who withholds them, a 
 native, perhaps, as well educated as himself, not less in- 
 telligent, and probably ten times as rich. 
 
 Then again his domestic arrangements, if in some 
 respects wanting in comfort, imply a certain assumption 
 and style which Young Tompkyns would deem quite 
 unsuitable for his station in life. Across the lawn of his 
 compound, beyond the path and the hedge of prickly pear, 
 you catch sight of certain whitewashed low buildings, 
 which are the abodes of the servants and the stables of 
 the horses. Of the limited establishment of Young
 
 304 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 Toinpkyns something has been said. His brother, though 
 a bachelor also, requires nevertheless the services of a 
 considerable number of attendants. Some sixteen or 
 eighteen adult males constitute the regular domestic 
 staff of the chummery, not to mention auxiliaries like 
 the washerman and the barber. 
 
 Each gentleman has his own ' boy,' or personal valet, 
 and there is a butler, a cook, and his assistant, table- 
 servants, water-carriers, a sweeper, and others. Tornp- 
 kyns Sahib begs you to observe that all these menials 
 do no more work than a quarter of their number in 
 England. But if he were in England he would not 
 have even this quota, and would doubtless find himself 
 dependent, like Young Toinpkyns, on a single unwilling 
 female. He would certainly take off his own boots, and 
 put the studs into his own shirt, and do various things 
 for himself which now involve no more exertion than a 
 brief command in the vernacular to somebody lurking 
 within earshot outside a partition or behind a curtain. 
 
 Tompkyns Sahib keeps his own horse, with its own 
 special groom. He rides every morning, before driving to 
 his office in his pony-cart, and occasionally he can get 
 out to hunt the jackal. He is also proposing to buy 
 another pony to serve him in the game of polo. Young 
 Tompkyns, when he rides anything, rides a bicycle ; he 
 cannot afford to keep a horse, and he would as soon think 
 of playing polo as of entering for the Grand National. 
 But all Tompkyns Sahib's friends have horses, as they all 
 have several servants, and his ' living wage ' is calculated 
 in accordance with this circumstance. 
 
 His office is organised with due regard to the 
 exigencies of a climate in which an European cannot 
 maintain his full health and vigour without many and 
 frequent holidays. Every three or four years Tompkyns 
 Sahib is allowed to leave the work to his colleagues, and to
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 305 
 
 take a six months' or an eight months' vacation. Young 
 Tompkyns, who has never had six months' holiday in his 
 life, is inclined to envy his brother these prolonged periods 
 of repose, and sometimes he wonders whether even a spell 
 of Indian hot seasons would be too heavy a price to pay 
 for them. 
 
 It is a cheerful society to which Tompkyns Sahib 
 belongs, a society of which a large proportion of the 
 members are young. The old people have gone home, 
 and if they are wise and fortunate they went before age 
 had begun to lay a heavy finger upon them. India is not 
 a good place to grow old in ; even late middle-age feels 
 that it would be better elsewhere. To enjoy it, you should 
 be as Tompkyns Sahib is full of the animal spirits of youth 
 and its delight in physical exertion. You should be blithe 
 and lively and easily amused, and whatever underlying 
 earnestness you may possess it should be compatible with 
 a certain tolerance of frivolity, a capacity for enjoyment 
 not exclusively intellectual, and that lightness of heart 
 which is proof against disturbing shocks and depressing 
 incidents. 
 
 A good reserve of recuperative buoyancy is needed, 
 such as men possess who pass their lives on ship- 
 board, and in other situations where a shadow of sudden 
 danger and possible tragedy lurks always in the back- 
 ground. The day's work must be done, and even the 
 day's play got through, though your partner of the night 
 before is down with fever in the morning, and the man 
 you jested with at breakfast is dead of cholera before 
 dinner. It is a life of hasty friendships, hastily broken by 
 death, by absence, by separation a life in which nothing 
 seems very permanent, in which new faces drift into your 
 sphere and drift out, in which the rosebud must be gathered 
 before it fades upon the bough, and the passing hour 
 snatched swiftly because it passes so soon. The melan-
 
 306 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 cholic, reflective temperament is not suited to the English- 
 man in India. He seems sometimes afraid to think too 
 much, lest he should unfit himself for the duties cast upon 
 him and the relaxations which render them tolerable. 
 
 Tompkyns Sahib is in no peril of being sicklied o'er by 
 the pale cast of thought. He is otherwise occupied. He 
 can put in seven hours of busy labour in his office in the 
 hot season, when the place is like a furnace, though all 
 the shutters are closed and the fans humming, and even the 
 Eurasian clerks are in a state of collapse as they pant and 
 perspire over their typewriters. He is not too tired for a 
 rattling game of polo, or a few hard sets of tennis, under 
 the mitigated, but still scorching, blaze of the afternoon 
 sun. Then a change and a bath, and a saunter and cool 
 drinks at the club, or perhaps an hour of bridge before 
 dinner. 
 
 And after that meal there may be a dance, into which 
 Tompkyns throws himself with zeal ; and though he 
 dances every valse, except those which he sits out, and 
 though he does full justice to the supper and the cham- 
 pagne-cup somewhere after midnight, he is able to be up 
 and taking his morning canter at daylight. To the man 
 who has health and energy and the vigour to work and 
 flirt and dance and ride and shoot and play indoor and out- 
 door games, all with equal zest and enjoyment, India has a 
 good deal to give in return for all she takes away. So 
 Tompkyns really feels ; and when he is at home he misses 
 the spacious freedom, the easy society, and the open-ail 
 recreations of his banishment, and he is not sorry, when all 
 is said, to find himself on board the liner heading down 
 the Mediterranean for the Ked Sea and the 'Land of 
 Regrets ' once more. 
 
 But the sensation tends to grow weaker with each suc- 
 cessive holiday ; and as the years pass by, and Tompkyns 
 Sahib floats towards autumn, his plaints become leas
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 307 
 
 voluble, but more sincere. He can no longer take it out 
 of himself, night and day, with the old impunity. The 
 games and sports, and even the dances, have lost much of 
 their attraction ; he goes on with them steadily, but it is 
 with an effort ; the gossip of the station, the chatter of the 
 club, bore him, and the burden of his work weighs heavier. 
 He begins to develop nerves and a temper, scolds his 
 subordinates, and bullies his attendants, and is sick of the 
 sight of anything ' native.' The wet lanes of England, 
 the pale sunlight, the whistling rains, are calling him. 
 He would give his tropical garden, his bungalow, his 
 verandahs, his horses and carriages and many servants, 
 for a brick box in a suburban street. 
 
 When an Anglo-Indian is in this condition, it is time 
 he left his place to some younger man, who will come out 
 with a gay heart and stout limbs, and fling himself into 
 the life of India, and find it all delightful, as his prede- 
 cessor did once. Tompkyns Sahib goes home, and settles 
 down again among his kindred, and the East sees him no 
 more. He has few good words to say of India ; and yet he 
 cannot forget it. He wonders why people are somehow so 
 different from what they were when he left them a quarter 
 of a century ago, and why England has grown so much 
 duller, and, above all, why he seems so much older than 
 his stay-at-home brother, who is now in the full flush of 
 a vigorous middle-age, full of work and interests, with 
 no thought of retirement for years to come. So it may 
 be that Young Tompkyns has not had so much the worst 
 of it after all. 
 
 Whether the amenities of Indian life compensate for 
 its limitations is a point on which the returned exile is 
 often more uncertain than when he was in his place of 
 banishment. It is not easy for the external observer to 
 strike the balance ; for India is a land of bewildering
 
 30* A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 contrasts. Eastern opulence and Eastern poverty make 
 an antithesis that constantly seizes the imagination. The 
 pride of life is before you, and also its meanness and 
 degradation. One of the first objects that caught my 
 attention when I began to look about me in Bombay was 
 a man (he was a retainer or attendant of one of the native 
 chiefs who had come into the city to receive the Prince 
 of Wales) in very conspicuous vesture. His head was 
 crowned by a large and showy turban, folded with bands 
 of gold, and he wore a robe of rose-tinted satin, with 
 pendant earrings of pearl, and a necklace of amethysts 
 and emeralds. But when I looked below these splendours 
 I found them supported by legs in frayed cotton pyjamas 
 and feet shuffling upon old carpet slippers. 
 
 When I came to know more, it seemed to me that this 
 figure was typical of India, in its strange mixture of pomp 
 and squalor, of gorgeousness and grime, of luxury and 
 discomfort, of gold and ashes, of ideal beauty and naked 
 realistic wretchedness. You meet the conjunction every- 
 where ; a hundred examples leap to the memory even of 
 the casual wanderer who may have been but a few weeks 
 or months in Asia. 
 
 At Lahore, for instance, I was passing through the 
 broad tree-planted courtyard of the Jamma Masjid, the 
 mosque of Aurangzeb. It is a splendid and spacious 
 example of the later Mohammedan architecture, degenerate 
 but still beautiful. The fluted lotus-shaped domes float 
 like water-lilies upon the swelling curves of the smooth 
 red-sandstone arches. But in the sacred court, which 
 the unbeliever may not enter without putting felt sandals 
 over his shoes, there is a square marble cistern ; and at 
 this tank I saw a common porter or coolie washing hia 
 face and feet and hands, taking the holy water into hie 
 mouth and throwing it back into the fountain stained all 
 red with the juices of the betel-nut he had been chewing.
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 309 
 
 There is a finer Moslem church at Lahore, the mosque 
 of Wazir Khan, hard by the Delhi Gate. It is built of 
 brick, inlaid with a mosaic of blue and yellow tiles, blue 
 and yellow as pure and lucent as the colours on a plate of 
 early Italian faience. The deep-set doorway is shimmering 
 with azure light, like a sea-cave, and above are traced in 
 blue, on a white ground, some sentences in that bold and 
 flowing Persian script which is a decoration in itself : 
 ' Remove your heart from the gardens of the world.' So 
 Islam holds high its blazon on this noble banner. But in 
 the chauk or small square, on which the gateway opens, 
 tin pots are being made, street traders are selling common 
 wares for farthings, animals are tethered against the 
 foundation-walls of the temple, and rags and ordure are 
 on its very steps. 
 
 At one of the palaces where the Prince and Princess 
 of Wales were entertained to a sumptuous banquet by a 
 great ruling chief, the guests were received in a shamiana, 
 or pavilion, erected before the open entrance-hall. The 
 walls of the tent and the pillars of the portico were draped 
 in gold brocade, and wide levels of this same fabric were 
 stretched over the steps and pavements of the courtyard. 
 On this flooring were ranged those who were to receive 
 the Royal guests, his Highness himself with half the value 
 of the State Treasury on his person, jewelled and silk-clad 
 feudatories, English ladies in evening dress, laced and 
 uniformed officials and officers. The Maharaja's chobdars, 
 big men in blazing liveries, held the golden fire-screen 
 fans and the silver maces. 
 
 As we waited amid all this splendour, I cast my eye 
 casually along the carpet, behind the tier of gorgeous 
 ' supers,' and in one corner I noticed an untidy little pile 
 of dingy cotton and a pair of deplorable shoes. They 
 were the relics left behind him by some coolie or hammal, 
 some inferior palace menial, who had been taking his siesta
 
 310 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 in the casual native fashion in the first place that 
 convenient, and no donbt meant to resume it as soon as he 
 had finished the errand on which he had been despatched. 
 The stage carpenter's coat and moleskin cap and pot of 
 beer are kept behind the scenes in most countries ; in 
 India nobody seems to mind very much if they are close 
 to the footlights when the curtain rings up. If you go to 
 a railway-station to witness the state entry of a Viceroy, 
 you will see another exhibition of red cloth, and uniforms, 
 and carefully marshalled notabilities. But when the train 
 steams up to the platform, the guard of honour will 
 probably find itself presenting arms, in the first instance, 
 to bare-legged followers and half-dressed servants hanging 
 in disorderly groups out of the windows and about the 
 footboards of the carriages. 
 
 The same antithesis enters curiously into Anglo-Indian 
 life. There is a certain amount of luxury with an absence 
 of elementary necessaries, more show than comfort. There 
 are places where a silver ewer is more easily to be got 
 than enough clean water to wash your hands, or a glass 
 of it pure enough to drink. The Anglo-Indian expects to 
 sit down to a meal of four courses in the midst of the 
 wilderness, but he does not hope to get a slice of nourish- 
 ing fresh beef or mutton. His elaborate menu at dinner is 
 largely made up of the flesh of animals, which have been 
 running about the compound at lunch-time, if their bodies 
 have not been conveyed to him in tins from Australia 
 and America. There are many places where he can have 
 iced champagne but where he cannot get milk which can 
 be put into his tea with safety. In the midst of groves 
 of mangoes and date-palms and waving fields of grain, 
 his vegetables may be bottled peas, and his fruits canned 
 peaches from California. 
 
 Similarly he keeps a carriage or two, where in England 
 he would hardly have a bicycle, and he can borrow a
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 311 
 
 horse more lightly than an umbrella. A man who would 
 never think of riding in England wonld never think of 
 walking in India. But that same individual in the latter 
 country, even if rich and influential, must go very short 
 of many things which in the former come as a matter of 
 course to everybody such things, for instance, as books, 
 magazines, daily and weekly newspapers, doctors, druggists, 
 theatres, most of the articles which are sold over the 
 counter in every provincial town at home. He may have 
 to send a thousand miles for a new hat, a hundred for a 
 pair of braces. His wife may drive out in a sort of 
 state carriage, with grooms running at her horses' heads ; 
 but she has no chemist round the corner to purvey her 
 sal-volatile if she has a headache, no convenient haber- 
 dasher's shop at which any of the minor deficiencies of 
 the wardrobe can be supplied. If her clothes want 
 mending, they are handed over to the household tailor, 
 who encamps on the verandah with his needles and 
 threads, and works his will alike on the Memsahib's Bond 
 Street gowns and ' Master's ' riding-breeches. 
 
 If you are the guest of any official of importance, or 
 other prosperous Anglo-Indian resident, you will be lodged 
 in an apartment which at first sight is rather imposing. 
 It is about twenty-five feet square, and as high as it is 
 wide, with a punkah hanging from the ceiling. Should 
 you feel incommoded by the heat, you have only to clap 
 your hands and say a word, and unseen arms somewhere 
 will cause the fan to flap refreshingly until you need it 
 no longer. If your soul desires a cooling drink, you dio 
 not ring a bell and wait until it pleases a haughty 
 functionary in a remote apartment to ascend some flights 
 of stairs and consider the application. You call to your 
 'boy,' reposing on his mat behind the door-screen, and 
 promptly he goes away and promptly returns with a 
 tinkling tumbler.
 
 312 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 If important messages have to be sent, you step out 
 upon the verandah, where the chuprassis, the red-scarved 
 official commissionaires of your host's establishment, are 
 in waiting. They salaam humbly at your call, take the 
 order, and are off well, not exactly like the wind, but 
 with reasonable diligence. Again, when you want a bath, 
 you are not compelled to cross a passage, or even to turn 
 on a hot-water tap. You utter your instructions, there is 
 a pattering of bare feet, and a swishing of water from 
 buckets and goatskin bags, and presently the curtain 
 before one of the four doors of the apartment is drawn 
 back, and there is the big tin tub all ready to step into, 
 with a waiting satellite to proffer soap and towels and 
 sponges. All this sounds to some extent, indeed, it is 
 rather luxurious. 
 
 On the other hand, your commodious chamber has 
 many of the characteristics which seem to us proper to 
 a prison or hospital ward, and some which would not be 
 tolerated in either. The ceiling is bare beam and rafter. 
 There is no paper, or silk, or tapestry on the walls, because 
 dust, and heat, and damp, and insects render anything 
 but distemper impossible. The floor is of cement, for 
 the same reason. The furniture is heavy and hard and 
 forbidding, useful, but not elegant or attractive : a bed 
 with a mere framework of iron rods to support the 
 mosquito-curtains, brown wooden armchairs with cane 
 bottoms, clean wooden tables, oblong or circular. 
 
 Your host may lack neither means nor taste ; but who 
 would spend much money on upholstery, when encamped, 
 so to speak, for perhaps three or five yeais or at the 
 most for ten ? And this in a climate where the mandi- 
 bles of insects, the teeth of rodents, and the hands of native 
 servants are always to be dreaded? The amenities of 
 your spacious quarters do not include those of privacy 
 and seclusion. There are, as I have said, four doors; but
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EXILE 313 
 
 during the heat of the day, and in the summer during the 
 night also, these are all left open, and are defended only 
 by curtains and screens of lath. Life is very public in 
 India. Most of the bungalows have no internal passages. 
 All rooms open into one another, or upon the verandah ; 
 and if you want to know whether anybody is at home, 
 the simplest way is to lift up the curtain and look in. 
 
 Lastly, Anglo-Indian luxury is always compatible with 
 the denial of some things without which we in the West 
 have learnt to believe that existence would stand still. 
 You cannot say that the drains are good or that they are 
 bad in an Indian house, for as a rule there are no drains. 
 The sanitary arrangement is precisely that which pre- 
 vailed in England in the fifteenth century and in Scotland 
 in the eighteenth. It is endurable, as noticed in a former 
 chapter, because of the abundance of the cheap human 
 animal, and the willingness of certain Orientals to dis- 
 charge servile functions which few men can be induced to 
 perform for hire in the West. But that is characteristic 
 of the ' gorgeous East,' with its external glitter and its 
 inward limitations. Its realities come a little closer to us, 
 when we reflect that a man who perhaps rides abroad 
 with a cavalry escort, before a salaaming multitude, lives 
 at home under conditions which no English town-council 
 would permit if they were inflicted on a day labourer in 
 a common lodging-house.
 
 CHAPTEK XXII 
 
 THE MEMSAHIB 
 
 INGENIOUS writers of fiction have given an engaging pic- 
 ture of her, as of one who combines imperfect manners 
 with highly uncertain morals. That the wives and 
 mothers of British India are always fast and sometimes 
 loose is a libel too blatant to gain acceptance even from 
 popular novelists. But many persons would be quite 
 prepared to find the Englishwoman in India loud, 
 irresponsible, and flirtatious. Also they believe that her 
 life is one of unfettered enjoyment, passed in an atmo- 
 sphere of Oriental indolence, untroubled by sordid cares, 
 with half her time spent in a glorified grass- widowhood 
 on the hill-tops, amid a congregation of male admirers. 
 
 The picture is absurdly mendacious. But no doubt it 
 is true that matronhood in India often carries with it a 
 certain element of exuberance, a touch of lightness and 
 gaiety, which are commonly wanting to the state matri- 
 monial of middle-class England. There is a spaciousness 
 and freedom about the life which makes it seem attractive 
 enough, especially to those who do not look very far 
 below the surface of things. In the early years of her 
 exile, the memsahib, particularly if she is high-spirited 
 and good-looking, can contrive to enjoy herself very well. 
 
 Young girls and young wives, if fortunate in their 
 location and surroundings, find much to commend in India. 
 From the grey dulness of the parsonage, the fossilised 
 family circle, the country village, or the suburban square, 
 
 314
 
 THE MEMSAHTB 315 
 
 the youthful bride is transported to a larger atmosphere 
 and a more vivid light. The life is less intellectual, and in 
 reality it is harder ; but at first sight it seems broader, 
 sunnier, more luxurious, with wider scope for amusement 
 and easier social intercourse. People dine more and dance 
 more and play more than persons of a similar social status 
 can usually do at home ; they see more of their friends 
 and acquaintances, the few white folks with whom they 
 are islanded amid the ocean of brown humanity ; there is 
 more unrestrained communion between the sexes ; a spice 
 of Southern levity mitigates the formalism of English 
 manners. 
 
 My friend Tompkyns Sahib, of whom mention has 
 already been made, has a sister, whom he brought out to 
 spend a cold season with him. Miss Tompkyns's blue 
 eyes and cool pink cheeks were naturally appreciated in 
 a station where girls at the moment were scarce. So 
 nobody was surprised when that smart young officer, 
 Captain Jones, of the 150th Chitralis, induced her to 
 share his bungalow and his fortune. 
 
 The latter was moderate, the former far from sump- 
 tuous. Nevertheless, Mrs. Jones, at Cutchapore, feels 
 herself a good deal more important than Miss Tompkyns 
 was at Streatham, or was ever Likely to have become if 
 she had accepted the attentions of a possible suitor in 
 that respectable locality. She drives about the station 
 in a dashing high dog-cart, with a tall syce in a gold- 
 laced turban holding a sunshade over her pretty head. 
 At Streatham, Miss Tompkyns made her journeys for the 
 most part by omnibus or in the London County Council's 
 inexpensive tramcars. 
 
 The Jones compound is rather an untidy enclosure, 
 with a good deal of dusty turf and sun-baked flower-bed ; 
 but there is room in it for some score or so of servants, 
 for the stables in which the captain keeps his charger and
 
 316 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 a couple of polo ponies and his wife's trapper and riding- 
 horse, and for the deep well, with its rough windlass and 
 sloping embankment, up which two yoke of patient 
 bullocks draw water all day long for the necessities of the 
 household. 
 
 There is always something going on at Cutchapore, 
 which is a largish cantonment with a British battalion 
 and a couple of native regiments in the lines. Mrs. Jones 
 goes out to dinners and gives them ; she can reckon on a 
 dance about once a week in the cold season ; in the late 
 afternoons everybody drives down to the club, where there 
 is Badminton for the ladies and bridge and racquets for 
 the men ; hockey, tennis, polo, and croquet are cultivated 
 with assiduity, and there is a good deal for Mrs. Jones to 
 be doing or seeing. 
 
 She has no lack of masculine society. An informal 
 tea-party is held several days in the week on the wide 
 and shaded verandah in front of her drawing-room. Nice 
 'boys ' from the military camps, and dapper young civilians, 
 are on terms of easy intimacy wjth her, are in and out of 
 her house rather frequently, are perhaps not discouraged 
 from smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky and soda in 
 her drawing-room, are permitted to ride and drive and 
 walk and sing songs with her, and generally to con- 
 stitute themselves into a court of her devoted but discreet 
 admirers and attendants. 
 
 Mrs. Jones enjoys it all, in this heyday of her spring- 
 time, though she is conscious that the Indian climate 
 does not improve the cream-and-rose complexion she 
 brought with her from England. She adapts herself to 
 the traditions of the station, treats all natives with 
 becoming hauteur, develops social ambitions, and is even 
 disposed to look down on the box wallahs, the mere mer- 
 cantile persons, whom her brother sometimes introduces 
 to her notice. It is very different from Streatham ; and
 
 THE MEMSAHIB 317 
 
 Mrs. Jones, when she pays a brief visit to her relatives 
 at home, finds their social circle tame and their recreations 
 limited, and thinks England an uncomfortable country, 
 with a very inadequate supply of domestic servants. 
 
 But, as the years go by, she discovers that the 
 attractions of India are not purchased without a price. 
 There is the annual recurring misery of the hot weather, 
 when life is unendurable out of doors, and almost intoler- 
 able within, for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. 
 When the thermometer is in the nineties, and sometimes 
 over the hundred, for weeks at a time, existence is a 
 burden and a penance. The men feel it less ; they have 
 their work to do, and in the offices and law-courts, or on 
 the parade-ground and the polo-field, they can partly 
 forget the heat. 
 
 But a woman, after her early morning ride, can only 
 lounge about in her darkened rooms, anaemic, inanimate, 
 and lonely, trying to read or paint or do something quiet 
 to kill the hours until the sun has fallen and it is possible 
 to venture out again. Her health, her looks, her temper, 
 all suffer under the long torture of the Indian summer. 
 She may try to escape it by flitting to the hill-stations or 
 taking a trip home ; but Indian wives are not essentially, 
 and on the average, different from wives in most other 
 countries, and they do not enjoy taking perfunctory 
 holidays, while their husbands are toiling on, exposed to 
 all the perils of climate and illness. 
 
 Then there are the children. India is no country for 
 them. It is not till Mrs. Jones's boy and girl have come 
 that she sometimes begins to envy her married sister at 
 home. She vows she will keep the children with her as 
 long as possible ; but at the best she finds she cannot 
 have them for more than a short time. The white-faced 
 precocious Anglo-Indian child must be sent home, if it is 
 to get the sturdy English limbs, and the English colour,
 
 318 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and, above all, the English mind and morals and 
 behaviour. The petting and spoiling and cringing of 
 the native ayahs and servants are not wholesome, after 
 the first infantile years; and when the child begins to 
 'take notice,' it notices more things than a judicious 
 parent cares to have brought to its attention. 
 
 One lady told me that the road near her bungalow 
 happened to be much frequented by parties of Hindus 
 taking their dead down to the Burning Ghat. Close by 
 the house was a patch of grass, kept well watered by the 
 cantonment authorities, which was a favourite spot for 
 the bearers to put down their stiff white burden for a 
 few minutes' rest and gossip. My friend was horrified 
 to find that her little daughter was constantly taken to 
 this attractive rendezvous by her ayah in the course of 
 the morning walk. Again, what is a careful mother to say 
 when an intelligent child comes back from the servants' 
 compound with the information that Kuttun or Muttroo 
 has provided himself with a second wife, having un- 
 fortunately failed to obtain a male heir by the assistance 
 of his first consort ? 
 
 So at five years of age, or thereabouts, the child goes 
 home to be left to the care of strangers or the more or 
 less satisfying kindness of relations. It is not so bad 
 now, in these days of rapid communication, as it used to 
 be. The Anglo-Indian mother may, if she is lucky, see 
 her children every second or third year ; but then that 
 probably means months of separation from her husband. 
 The boy grows up to manhood, seeing his father only as 
 a holiday visitor ; the girl may be a woman and a wife 
 herself before she has the chance of real intimacy with 
 her mother. 
 
 There are good schools at the hill-stations, and some 
 Anglo-Indians are getting their sons and daughters edu- 
 cated there. But the experiment is not wholly successful.
 
 THE MEMSAHEB 319 
 
 It is the moral, as much as the physical, climate of 
 Asia which is unhealthy for the English child. The 
 'country-bred,' they tell us, even if of the best stock, 
 deteriorates. As a rule, I suppose, the Anglo-English 
 children will continue to be sent home, leaving aching 
 hearts behind them. 
 
 That is one side of the tragedy that lurks beneath the 
 buoyant surface of the memsahib's existence. And there 
 are others, or at least the possibility of others ; for in 
 India one never knows what may happen. Death, disease, 
 and danger are no respecters of sex. The Anglo-Indian 
 woman requires to keep her wits about her and to be 
 possessed of that quality which is known as presence of 
 mind. Let me give two or three examples communi- 
 cated to me, quite casually and in the course of conversa- 
 tion, by Anglo-Indian ladies themselves. 
 
 1. The narrator is the wife of a magistrate, who is in 
 charge of a remote district, inhabited by a primitive 
 agricultural population. Their bungalow is fifty miles 
 from the nearest station, the nearest English lady, the 
 nearest European doctor. The magistrate and his wife 
 are the only white people in the place, except a sub- 
 ordinate official of the Public Works Department; the 
 assistants in the office are all natives. In the very height 
 of the hot season plague breaks out in the village. The 
 visitation is new to these parts, and the inhabitants are 
 in a state of panic terror. 
 
 Through the fierce summer days, the sulphurous 
 summer nights, the magistrate has to do the work of ten 
 men : he has to keep the frightened peasants from 
 abandoning their houses and fleeing helplessly to the 
 fields ; he has to devise measures of sanitation and dis- 
 infection, and see that they are carried out ; he has to get 
 the dead buried and the sick nursed, to worry the distant 
 Provincial Government for medicines and help, to attend
 
 320 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 to his normal office duties, and keep the machinery of 
 administration going all the time. 
 
 Before the crisis is over he is himself struck down. 
 One evening he comes home, after spending a terrible 
 afternoon among the plague-stricken huts, with his 
 eyes burning and his hands shaking. That night he 
 has high fever, and next morning he is on his bed unable 
 to move. The memsahib must do everything. A tangle 
 of responsibilities is upon her. She is compelled to nurse 
 her husband, and to do about half his work at the same 
 time, to conduct his correspondence with the Govern- 
 ment, to take his directions to the native subordinates, 
 themselves paralysed with alarm and anxiety, to give 
 orders in his name to the frightened villagers, to see that 
 the social organisation does not lapse into chaos before 
 he can rise from his couch of sickness. 
 
 Upon the hands of this young woman are thousands 
 of helpless people; they look to her since there is no 
 one else for help, counsel, guidance, moral support, 
 medical advice. For the moment she is the representa- 
 tive of the Sirkar, the principle of authority ; if she fails 
 them the tie that binds the community will snap, the 
 work of years will be undone. 
 
 She does not fail. She nurses the invalid till it is pos- 
 sible for him to be moved ; she admonishes the collapsed 
 native assistants to do their duty, consults with the head 
 of the police, exhorts the villagers in the name of the sick 
 chief, becomes, like him, doctor, nurse, inspector of sani- 
 tation, commissariat officer, general controller of affairs. 
 All this the memsahib does she who six years ago was 
 a school-girl, who before she came to India had seen 
 nothing of life more serious than a little ' parish work ' 
 with the curate. 
 
 2. An English lady is sitting in her verandah one 
 afternoon. Her husband is away on a tour of inspection,
 
 THE MEMSAHIB 321 
 
 and will not return for a day or two. Suddenly there is 
 a great commotion in the compound ; a crowd of servants 
 and hangers-on rush up. A man has been bitten in the 
 foot by a snake, supposed to be a cobra ; in a few minutes 
 he will be dead unless the memsahib will help. There is 
 no European within call ; there is a native doctor, but he 
 lives in a village eight miles distant. 
 
 The lady puts down her novel and goes to look at the 
 sufferer. He is lying in a heap on his string bed, beside 
 himself with terror, pointing to his foot, and clamouring 
 to have the bitten place cut out. The man may or may 
 not die from snake-bite ; but he will assuredly die from 
 fear if the operation is not performed. Will not any of 
 the servants undertake it ? With one accord they excuse 
 themselves. The Mohammedan butler says that if it be 
 the will of God the man must die, otherwise he will re- 
 cover ; and he intimates that in either case he personally 
 sees no occasion to intervene. The bearer, a Hindu, has 
 religious scruples ; the other bystanders are all too flurried 
 and nervous to do anything but talk loudly and make 
 confused suggestions. 
 
 What is to be done ? The lady knows nothing about 
 surgery, and has never operated on anything bigger than 
 a pet canary in her life ; her friends at home give her 
 credit for being a rather unhandy, self-indulgent, incapable 
 kind of person. But she is a soldier's daughter ; she comes 
 of the race on which emergency acts like a tonic. She 
 sends to the house for one of her husband's razors, tells 
 a groom to hold the man's legs, and then and there hacks 
 the bitten piece out of the quivering brown foot. It is 
 a horrible bungling bit of work ; there are no anaesthetics 
 or antiseptics, and the operator's white hands and white 
 dress are all dabbled with the spouting blood. 
 
 ' I was not at all certain,' she told me, ' that I should 
 not kill the man by cutting an artery, or giving him 
 
 L
 
 322 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 lockjaw or something. But I felt quite sure he would 
 have died if I had not done it.' As a matter of fact, in 
 spite of the unskilful surgery, and the amateur bandaging 
 with which they contrived to stop the bleeding, the man 
 recovered, and lived (I hope) to be grateful. ' I wonder 
 how you could do it,' said I. ' Oh, I don't know. It had 
 to be done,' replied the memsahib. ' Have another cup 
 of tea, won't you 9 ' 
 
 3. A civilian, with his wife and girl-baby twenty 
 months old, in a disturbed district near the Frontier. 
 The Mahsuds are disaffected, and roving bands are on the 
 prowl all over the country. The husband's duties compel 
 him to spend the whole day in a survey camp twenty 
 miles distant. Before he rides out he puts a loaded 
 revolver into his wife's hand : ' If the Pathans come, shoot 
 the child first and then shoot yourself.' When next you 
 are inclined to talk lightly of Anglo-Indian womanhood, 
 think of this little scene : the young mother standing 
 there in the dim morning light with the pistol clenched 
 in her hand, while the husband, after that grim farewell 
 address, calmly mounts his horse and rides forth to do his 
 spell of daily toil for a forgetful Government and an 
 unappreciative people. 
 
 4. Another young wife goes out after breakfast to 
 make her inspection of the servants' quarters, the small 
 hamlet of huts and shanties behind the bungalow. She 
 finds that plague has attacked the establishment in the 
 night ; one man is dead already, two are dying. The 
 same lady told me that coming home in a friend's carriage 
 late one night after a dance she found her own coach- 
 man lying dead of cholera on the steps of her residence. 
 A disagreeable experience ; especially when one has two 
 young children inside the house. 
 
 When you listen to stories such as these and there 
 are many Anglo-Indian women who could supply copious
 
 THE MEMSAHIB 323 
 
 additions to your collection you are inclined to revise 
 your estimate of the memsahib. If you see her gome- 
 times, when her life ' fleets pleasantly as in the golden 
 world,' you may remember that sooner or later some 
 crisis may arise, some grave moment of stress and 
 strain, which will test her mettle. They come suddenly, 
 these strokes of Fate, more suddenly in India than else- 
 where. Behind the easy, indulgent, sociable existence, 
 the spectral shapes loom the spectres of death, of deadly 
 sickness, of absence, loneliness, separation. No wonder if, 
 in the midst of her mirth, the memsahib casts an anxious 
 glance at them ; no wonder that her laugh is sometimes 
 a little hollow, that her merriment is a trifle forced, 
 that there is a suggestion of strain and nervousness in 
 her gaiety. If she enjoys herself more obtrusively than 
 her staid sisters at home, if she laughs more loudly, 
 talks more freely, and cultivates male friendships with a 
 more candid comradeship, we need not assume that she is 
 merely frivolous and empty. When, it may be after years 
 of ease and security, the day of her trial comes she does 
 not often prove unequal to it.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 IN THE VILLAGES 
 
 4 You will see many things and people in India,' said the 
 Member of Council, ' but do not forget the Man who 
 Matters.' 
 
 ' Meaning thereby ? ' I inquired. 
 
 ' Meaning the cultivator of the soil. India, recollect, 
 consists mainly of him.' 
 
 That is a fact which nobody who wishes to grasp the 
 conditions of Indian life should for a moment ignore. 
 It is also one of the reasons why, to the ordinary tourist, 
 the customary autumn trip is so unsatisfying ; for it 
 gives him little real insight or information in return for 
 long and dusty railway journeys, for poor food, and for 
 hotels, with a few exceptions, contemptibly inadequate. 
 He goes in at one of the two great sea-gates and emerges 
 at the other : having in the interim spent more or less 
 time at Delhi, Agra, Benares, and perhaps at Madura, 
 Conjevaram, Ellora, and Ahmedabad, with a run up to 
 Simla or Darjiling for a look at the snow-ranges. He 
 will have seen some interesting towns, some wonderful 
 tombs and temples and ancient monuments, and some 
 picturesque scenery. But of the Indian people he will 
 know little more than when he set out from home. For 
 the Indian people do not live in the cities. Their habitat 
 is in the country, to which five-sixths of them belong; 
 the overpowering majority of them are villagers. 
 
 And with the villager it is not easy to come into
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 325 
 
 touch without the benevolent assistance of those who 
 conduct the local administration. Without such aid the 
 voyager can hardly ever set eyes on a rural hamlet, 
 except from a distance; he will not know how to approach 
 it. There are no railway-stations at the villages ; their 
 only access, as a rule, is by field-paths or jungle-tracks, 
 or at the best by cutcha roads, narrow lanes, deep in sand 
 or mire, along which a horse may travel, but not a 
 carriage with wheels and springs. 
 
 If you would seek out one of these communities, you 
 must get the Collector to send his tehsildar or other 
 qualified native assistant to pilot you to the clump of 
 thatched or mud-walled dwellings ; you must let him 
 summon the headman and bring out the principal inhabi- 
 tants and set them to elucidate for your benefit the work- 
 ing of the primitive but yet rather complicated little social 
 organism. Better still it is to have a good friend who, 
 being himself Deputy Commissioner or Settlement Officer, 
 will endure the burden of taking an irresponsible inquisi- 
 tive spectator into his camp when he goes his rounds. 
 Then you see the Man who Matters governing man and 
 governed at first hand, and you begin to realise the 
 difference between the semi-Europeanised sophisticated 
 India of the towns and the India of two hundred and 
 fifty million peasants. 
 
 To go into camp with a Settlement Officer is, indeed, 
 among the most delightful and instructive experiences 
 that a visitor to India can enjoy ; and a few days so spent, 
 under kindly and competent guidance, will teach him 
 more of the life of the villages, which is the life of the 
 people, than many weeks passed in other and less informal 
 ways. For with this village life the civilian engaged in 
 settlement work, more even than his colleagues, the District 
 Magistrate and the Police Superintendent, is in intimate 
 and habitual contact.
 
 326 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 By the ancient law and custom of all the states and 
 provinces of India, the ruling power is entitled to a certain 
 proportion of every acre of land in the country, unless it 
 has transferred or limited its rights. The procedure by 
 which that proportion is determined is called a Settlement 
 of the Land Revenue. Such a settlement may be per- 
 manent, in which case the demand of the State is fixed 
 once and for ever. This was the course adopted in the 
 famous Permanent Settlement of 1793, which is operative 
 over the whole of Bengal and parts of the United Pro- 
 vinces and Madras. By this much-criticised measure, the 
 persons responsible to the State for the collection of the 
 land-revenue were given all the rights of English landlords, 
 and they have been able to absorb the entire rack-rental 
 of the richest agricultural areas of the Peninsula, paying 
 in return a land-tax calculated on the values of a hundred 
 years ago. The unearned increment goes to the rent- 
 receiver. The State gains nothing, and the actual culti- 
 vator very little, though something has been done by 
 recent legislation to secure his position and moderate the 
 exactions of the landlord under the Permanent Settlement. 
 
 In the rest of India the mistakes of the eighteenth- 
 century legislators, hidebound in the traditions of English 
 real-property law, have been avoided. The settlements 
 are temporary ; and the Government tax is fixed for a 
 period of twenty or thirty years only, after an elaborate 
 examination of local customs, resources, and conditions, 
 conducted by selected officials of the Indian Civil Service, 
 who are carefully trained for the work. A kind of 
 Domesday Book is compiled for each district, in which the 
 particulars for every village are entered in detail, and the 
 tax is increased or diminished on each holding after due 
 consideration of the facts upon the record. 
 
 This assessment is of vital importance to every person 
 connected with the land, be he landowner, tenant, or
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 327 
 
 labourer ; for rents, wages, profits, and to a large extent 
 prices, will rise or fall in relation to it. Much, therefore, 
 depends upon the Settlement Officer. He must have a 
 deep knowledge of the country, tact, judgment, industry, 
 patience ; above all, sympathy and a sense of justice, so 
 that he can enter into the feelings of the agriculturists 
 and consult their interests without sacrificing those of 
 the Sirkar. 
 
 At the headquarters of his district the Settlement 
 Officer has his central bureau, with a staff of native 
 secretaries, clerks, registrars, and draughtsmen, who are 
 engaged in compiling and revising the record, and in 
 dealing with the accounts, reports, and surveys sent in 
 from the various tehsils. Much time is spent by the 
 S. O. in supervising all this minute book-keeping, and 
 fixing his assessment, or hearing appeals from the pre- 
 liminary decisions of his subordinates. But during a 
 considerable portion of the cold weather, and sometimes 
 in the hot weather also, he is occupied with a close 
 personal investigation of the local conditions. 
 
 In the course of this examination he goes over the 
 district himself, consults the tehsildars, the minor revenue 
 officials, the patwaris, or village accountants, the head- 
 men, the landowners, and other principal inhabitants, 
 looks into the facts on the spot, hears complaints, re- 
 ceives representations, considers the crops, the rainfall, 
 the soil, the animals, the wells, the irrigation facili- 
 ties, the character, standing, and temperament of the 
 population. 
 
 The inquisition is not resented by the people for tw<> 
 reasons. In the first place, they are used to it ; secondly, 
 they know that the more carefully the Huzur inquires, 
 the more readily they place accurate and comprehensive 
 information in his way, the greater is the probability that 
 the assessment will be moderate and equitable.
 
 328 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 It is hard, anxious, responsible work for the civilian 
 in charge, yet not without its amenities, and performed 
 in a stimulating atmosphere of spaciousness and freedom. 
 The Settlement Officer's guest, who is spared his host's 
 responsibilities and anxieties, will hardly fail to enjoy his 
 trip, especially if he is able to select for the scene of his 
 pilgrimage some bracing unspoilt corner of the Northern 
 plains with a good spring climate and a manly attractive 
 peasantry. He will see Indian camp life at its best : 
 not, it is true, with the luxury and parade with which 
 Governors and Commanders-in-Chief are almost compelled 
 to surround themselves on tour, but with quite as much 
 solid comfort. 
 
 Neither in the various Eoyal camps, nor in those pro- 
 vided by hospitable Maharajas at the capitals of the 
 principal native states, did I find myself in possession 
 of more commodious and agreeable quarters than those 
 allotted to me when I travelled with a Settlement Officer 
 through a portion of his district. An extra tent one of 
 those admirable double-pole pavilions, with outside porch 
 and passages, which I have already described l was taken 
 along for me ; otherwise the camp was in its ordinary 
 service guise. Yet it required a whole convoy of bullock- 
 carts and a long train of camels to move it from place to 
 place ; and when pitched on the dusty maidan, a mile or 
 so from a small native town, it looked like a canvas 
 suburb itself. There was my host's living-tent and office- 
 tent, with an extra deep verandah in front, before which a 
 local police sentry kept guard, with two or three chuprassis 
 and orderlies usually sitting in the corners. 
 
 My own tent was ranged alongside, and here also 
 wo ild have been that of the Commissioner's civilian 
 colleague or deputy if he had taken one. At a little 
 distance was the tent of the principal native assistant, a 
 
 1 See supra, Chap. V. p. 63.
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 329 
 
 somewhat important personage, with responsible executive 
 and quasi-judicial duties to perform ; adjacent to this 
 were the lodgings of the tehsildar and those of the munshi 
 or official translator and secretary, the clerks, surveyors, 
 and accountants. In the rear were shanties for the 
 servants, a kitchen-tent and a storeroom-tent, and a long 
 stable-tent, with racks and mangers and everything com- 
 plete for the accommodation of four or five horses and 
 ponies. 
 
 Several of these apartments were in duplicate ; for we 
 were moving about from day to day, and while we were 
 using one set of tents the other was travelling on ahead 
 so as to be ready for us at our next halting-place. I saw 
 now why the writing-table, which stood in my friend's 
 da/tar when he was at his bungalow, had strong steel 
 hooks depending from its sides. In camp it occupied 
 the middle of his office-tent, and his papers and books 
 of reference were in its nest of drawers. When the 
 day's work was done his servants and tent-pitchers would 
 take away the heavy teak bureau in sections ; while we 
 were at dinner they were slinging it across the back of 
 a camel ; all through the night, when we were sleeping 
 peacefully, it was being carried along the roads or by 
 field-paths ; and when, in the forenoon of the next day, 
 we reached the new camp, there was the office-table in 
 position, with its inkstand and calendar and stationery, 
 precisely as one had last seen it the previous afternoon 
 twelve or fourteen miles away. 
 
 Early hours are kept in the camp. If you would ride 
 out with the Settlement Officer on his daily round, you 
 must be up betimes. It is dark and chilly as you scramble 
 into your clothes and go forth to take chota hazri, the 
 early-morning tea and toast, in your host's tent. The 
 syces bring up the horses and ponies, and presently you 
 find yourself beside the ' Burra Sahib,' as he makes his 
 
 L2
 
 330 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 way across the country, at the head of a miscellaneous 
 troop of mounted men, with an infantry detachment 
 tailing in the rear. 
 
 The cortege is quite a large one ; for it includes the 
 chief native assistants and officials, and all sorts of minor 
 local notabilities, resident landowners, zemindars, and 
 various persons more or less interested in the matter in 
 hand. Some are here byway of compliment to the repre- 
 sentative of the Sirkar ; others merely because they like 
 to see what is going on. Anybody who pleases can join 
 in the procession, and even take part in the business, 
 which is conducted with the frank publicity customary in 
 a country where everybody is cognisant of everybody else's 
 affairs. A man in an old khaki uniform, with a cavalry 
 seat on his weedy country-bred pony, rides up and salutes. 
 He is a retired resaldar of one of our lancer regiments, 
 who has come back to settle in his native village : a 
 prosperous man, having his pension and special allowances 
 for his two medals and the Order of Merit. He attaches 
 himself to the Settlement Officer for the rest of the 
 morning, acts as a sort of voluntary guide and aide-de- 
 camp, is ready with much local learning as occasion 
 offers. 
 
 A sporting young Mohammedan gentleman, in a 
 checked coat and riding-breeches, with his falconer running 
 beside him, makes his salaam. He has brought his hawk, 
 thinking that the great man might like to see a flight, 
 if a partridge or a hare can be flushed on the way. 
 There is almost a holiday feeling as the little troop rides 
 along in the exhilarating morning air, now winding in 
 single file on the edge of a plantation, now snapping the 
 dry sticks of last year's cotton crop under the hoofs of the 
 ponies, now cantering across an open stretch of jungly 
 common, with a herd of black buck or chinkara galloping 
 away in the distance.
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 331 
 
 But serious business is being done, and the Settlement 
 Officer is hard at work all the time. He has his eyes 
 wide open, noting the aspect of the country, the character 
 of the vegetation, the lie of the soil, the wells, the water- 
 courses, everything. Presently we come upon a group of 
 men standing beside a long bamboo pole at the top of 
 which flutters a little triangular pink pennant. We are 
 at a village boundary, and here are the lambardars, the 
 headmen, and other office-holders, to supply information, 
 answer questions, make complaints. The Settlement 
 Officer's native staff gathers round him, maps are pro- 
 duced, and registers, and there is much interrogation, 
 discussion, and explanation. 
 
 Sometimes matters go quietly, sometimes otherwise. 
 Fierce disputes arise between rival claimants for land, or 
 between landlords and tenants, angry or piteous appeals 
 are uttered. A knot of ryots declare that their property 
 has been wrongfully taken from them by the zemindars 
 of a contiguous village : cannot the Huzur order them 
 to be put back at once ? The Huzur explains that this 
 summary process is slightly beyond his powers ; moreover, 
 he has his doubts as to the truth of the story. The spokes- 
 man for the complainants draws his hand across his throat. 
 ' The Sahib can hang me to-morrow if I lie,' he says. 
 
 When the community is prosperous and in comfort 
 general good-humour prevails ; but if it is poor and dis- 
 tressed, there may be painful scenes. Women, with bowed 
 heads under their shrouding mantles, will throw them- 
 selves before the officer's path, or seize the bridle of his 
 horse, and assail him with tears and sobs and sometimes 
 with objurgations. The crops have failed, they say, 
 through the drought, the young men have died of the 
 plague, the village has no money and cannot pay the 
 taxes. The Protector of the Poor must bid the Sirkar be 
 merciful.
 
 332 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 With good reason has the Government of India caused 
 it to be placed on record that the Settlement Officer is the 
 member of the governing class who is likely to know the 
 people best and to regard them with most sympathy. ' In 
 no official relation does a member of the Public Service 
 come into such close contact with the people as in Settle- 
 ment work ; and it cannot be his desire to aggrieve those 
 among whom he is spending some of the most laborious 
 years of his life, or to initiate a settlement which, after a 
 short interval, will break down.' l 
 
 The sun is high in the heavens and throwing its rays 
 strongly upon us when we ride into our camp again, either 
 the camp we left some four hours earlier in the grey dawn, 
 or the new one, its duplicate, to which our chattels and 
 effects have been conveyed. In either case everything is 
 in order, and the servants are going about their duties as 
 quietly as if they had been settled for a month. Our 
 baths are in readiness, and after a wash and a change we 
 find ourselves sitting down to an excellent and by no 
 means austerely simple repast, such as Indian servants 
 can apparently prepare anywhere and at any time. 
 
 The brisk morning air and the exercise have given one 
 an appetite, and prompt justice is done to the scrambled 
 eggs, the chops, the sausages, the curried chicken, and 
 other good things provided. Afterwards, it is pleasant 
 to smoke and chat in the shade, looking out upon the 
 mango-grove and the far-stretching landscape now glim- 
 mering in the sun-haze. Pleasant, too, to stretch your 
 legs in the long cane-bottomed lounging-chair and fall 
 asleep, or to steal back to your darkened tent for the 
 luxurious midday siesta of the South and East. 
 
 The guest may take his ease that way if he pleases. 
 But there is no such repose for his host. The Settlement 
 
 1 Land Revenue Policy of the Indian Government, p. 20. (Published by 
 order of the Governor-General in Council, Calcutta, 1902.)
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 
 
 Officer is soon at work again. The four or five hours' 
 ride through the villages is only the prologue to his day's 
 labour barely the first chapter of it. Half an hour after 
 tiffin, his munshi and chief clerk are in attendance, and 
 in front of his tent a long line of natives can be seen 
 sitting patiently in the sunshine, awaiting audience with 
 him. Presently the flap of the tent is raised ; the S.O. 
 has a table and chair brought out to the entrance ; his 
 assistants stand near him with note-books and pencils 
 and official documents ; and by twos, or threes, or fives, 
 his suitors and petitioners appear before him, telling their 
 story, as they sit, with shoeless feet and joined supplica- 
 tory hands, on the ground at the edge of the deep covered 
 porch or canvas verandah. 
 
 Much and varied is the business which the revenue 
 official transacts on these occasions. . Sometimes he is 
 hearing appeals against the assessments which have been 
 provisionally fixed, or he is considering claims for exemp- 
 tion and reduction brought forward by lambardars repre- 
 senting a whole village, or by individual zemindars and 
 ryots. Sometimes he sits in his judicial capacity, and 
 decides intricate disputes over ownership and compli- 
 cated questions of tenure. He is compiling a registry 
 of titles as well as fixing the burdens which the land is 
 to bear for the next twenty or thirty years, so that it is 
 extremely important for his records to be accurate. 
 
 Minute local knowledge is needed, as well as judgment 
 and common-sense. A good Settlement Officer knows the 
 people of his district thoroughly ; he understands their 
 temperament, their character, their mode of cultivation, 
 their caste distinctions and tribal differences : and in the 
 more primitive agricultural regions, where the vernacular 
 press and the babu pleader are still uninfluential, they 
 have a child-like confidence in his sense of justice, not 
 often, I think, misplaced. The problems before him
 
 334 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 sometimes need anxions thought, and it is not always 
 qnite easy to reconcile law and equity, or to see the way 
 clear through the undergrowth of vociferous assertion and 
 doubtful testimony. 
 
 Here, for instance, are half a dozen ryots who declare 
 that the land they hold was made over to them in abso- 
 lute ownership by Narain Singh, a zemindar of their 
 village, in consideration of value received. But Narain 
 Singh, scowling from the other end of the chicon cloth 
 stretched on the verandah, declares that they are his 
 tenants, and defies them to prove that they can be any- 
 thing else. Odd scraps of faded paper, rude dusty maps, 
 are produced and peered into and pored over. Probably 
 Narain is right ; there seems no legal proof that he has 
 ever parted with the ownership, and that venerable white- 
 bearded rustic, who adduces youthful memories to the 
 contrary, is most likely lying. Nevertheless it will be bad 
 for the village if these men, who have lived on their plots 
 of land and cultivated them for years, should be dis- 
 possessed or mercilessly rack-rented. The Settlement 
 Officer suggests a compromise. Narain Singh looks sulkily 
 obstinate : the Huzur is his father and his mother ; but 
 he knows his rights under the law, and he means to have 
 them. Case adjourned for further consideration. 
 
 It is late in the afternoon, and the darkness is falling, 
 before the sittings are over and the crowd of litigants 
 and appellants stream away, many of them to return the 
 next morning. Then, perhaps, half an hour's stroll in 
 the twilight, and back to dinner ; and after dinner there 
 are a few notes to make, a letter or two to write, a bundle 
 of official papers to look at, some reports of subordinates 
 to check. So the Settlement Officer's lonely evening in 
 his tent passes quickly enough, till it is time to go to bed 
 in order to be up at six the next morning for another 
 busy day of responsibility and toil.
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 335 
 
 They differ widely among themselves, these Indian 
 villages, and it would be strange if they did not, seeing 
 how various is the outward aspect and climatic character 
 of the vast country they cover. In the far South the 
 tiny thatched huts are buried deep in a tropic growth of 
 lush green vegetation, and the little half-naked brown 
 people paddle about in their wet rice-fields, in the shade 
 of dense palm-groves or in the rank growths overlooking 
 blue salt-water lagoons turquoises set among emeralds. 
 It is like passing from Sicily to Poland to travel to the 
 Northern plains, and make acquaintance with the villages 
 of the Punjab, standing bare and gaunt over their sun- 
 scorched fields. 
 
 But, widely as they vary, the Indian peasants have 
 some points in common. One is that they are essentially 
 villagers men of the village, in the literal sense. They 
 do not live in scattered farms, each isolated amid its own 
 arable and pasture. The farmer, be he owner or tenant, 
 lives by, but not on, his land. His house, his sleeping- 
 place and eating-place, the lairs of his cattle, his children, 
 and his women, are in the crooked wynds of the hamlet. 
 His fields lie outside, and he goes to them for work in the 
 daytime, returning, like his beasts, his buffaloes and cows 
 and bullocks, after sundown. In Indian terminology, 
 technical and colloquial alike, the word ' village ' has a 
 meaning rather like that of the old English township : it 
 signifies not only a cluster of houses and farmsteads, but 
 also all the lands belonging to, or cultivated by, the 
 owners and inhabitants of the settlement. The Indian 
 peasant, almost universally, is a gregarious, social animal. 
 
 Thus it ensues that, whatever he may suffer from 
 other causes, he is at least spared the burden of solitude. 
 On the contrary, he has abundant humanity about him : 
 he is never denied the society of his fellows. He is the 
 member of a community, still to a large extent self-
 
 336 A TISION OF INDIA 
 
 contained, self-centred, and separate from the rest of the 
 world, as it has been from the beginning. 
 
 Wars and revolutions have swept over the land ; 
 dynasties come and go ; new laws are made by one set 
 after another of alien rulers in their turn. Through it 
 all the rural unit endures with indestructible vitality. 
 Famine, plague, robber raids, the march of great armies, 
 might blot one village, a dozen villages, a whole circle, 
 out of existence. But the system maintains itself with 
 the tenacity which Nature confers on her own simpler 
 organic forms 
 
 1 So careful of the type, it seems, 
 So careless of the single life.' 
 
 Twenty-two hundred years ago a certain Megasthenes 
 spent some time in Hindustan, as agent for Seleucus at 
 the court of Chandra Gupta, the Hindu king of the 
 lower Ganges region, and subsequently he set forth hit 
 Vision of India for the benefit of the reading public of 
 ancient Greece. His account of the Indian rural com- 
 munities has been preserved, and it might almost pass for 
 a description of a village in the United Provinces to-day. 
 What struck the Greek investigator is precisely that 
 which impresses the modern visitor. He found that the 
 tiny republic so he called it, adapting his language to 
 Hellenic ideas was a complete society, with its various 
 classes and orders, its aristocracy, its helots, and its 
 regular hierarchy of officials, each having his own ap- 
 pointed duties to perform towards the commonwealth. 
 So it is still all over India, though the social structure is 
 better articulated in some provinces than in others. 
 
 Megasthenes might well have visited one of that very 
 same group of fairly prosperous hamlets into which I was 
 inducted by a well-qualified official guide one bright morn- 
 ing in the early spring. A short journey across the fields
 
 IN THE V1LLAOES 33? 
 
 from the carriage-road brought us to the village boundary, 
 that is, to the outside limits of the land which the 
 inhabitants tilled. Here we came upon one or two of 
 the peasants at work among their fields of ripening 
 wheat and barley and oil-seed. They were looking for- 
 ward to the gathering in of the rabi, or spring crop, 
 which the Indian farmer sells, whereas the kharif, or 
 autumn crop, is that which he eats. 
 
 The peasants accompanied us into the interior of their 
 little nest of cottages, and presently we had all the prin- 
 cipal inhabitants standing in a semicircle before us in 
 front of the village well. In the midst was the zemindar, 
 whom we must call, for want of a better word, the land- 
 lord, though properly he is only the rent-receiver and 
 rent-collector, responsible to the State for the payment of 
 the revenues and land-tax, and entitled to make his profit 
 by letting the land to tenants. There are zemindars of 
 all sorts and kinds, enormously wealthy proprietors, like 
 some of those in Bengal and the United Provinces, with 
 vast estates and huge incomes, who own carriages and 
 motor-cars, and shine resplendent at official and viceregal 
 entertainments in ropes of pearls and collars of diamonds. 
 
 One such gentleman was pointed out to me at 
 Lucknow, who was understood to wear ten thousand 
 pounds' worth of jewellery on his dress hat. Another 
 had subscribed several lakhs towards educational and 
 charitable institutions ; whilst a third had expended an 
 almost equally large sum in the purchase of a necklace 
 for a nautch-girl much in vogue. At the opposite pole 
 from these affluent personages are such zemindars as may 
 be seen in some parts of the Punjab, who are simply 
 peasant-proprietors, yeomen working on their own hold- 
 ings of a few acres with their own hands. 
 
 The zemindar in this village was of the medium kind 
 a small squireen, only a little elevated above his tenants.
 
 338 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 He was a civil shrewd little man, a Brahman by caste, 
 wearing a checked cotton pyjama suit and canvas shoes, 
 as a proof of superiority, I suppose, to his tenants, who 
 went bare-footed and bare-legged. He showed us his 
 house, built of brick, with an upper storey, and a small 
 courtyard, from which the women's apartments opened ; 
 for, of course, the zemindar had sufficient social status 
 for his women to be purdah-nashin. He was accom- 
 panied by a rather shabby retainer, a sort of bailiff or 
 intendant, who kept his accounts, and knew much more 
 about the estate than his employer. 
 
 Master and man answered all questions quite freely ; 
 nor did they appear to sustain any embarrassment from 
 the presence of numerous onlookers and auditors. There 
 can be few secrets in an Indian community. Everybody 
 seems to be perfectly well acquainted with everybody 
 else's business and his private affairs, if private they can 
 be called. The official inquisitor has no delicacy in 
 putting questions, and the people, so far from resenting 
 the interrogatories, answer with alacrity, and even pride. 
 It is clearly a compliment to be singled out as a person 
 capable of giving information publicly in the sight of 
 one's kinsfolk and neighbours. 
 
 On this occasion we had all the village notabilities 
 paraded for our inspection. We saw the lambardar or 
 headman, the patel or accountant, and the chokidars or 
 watchmen, these last clothed in a shabby uniform, and 
 armed with a long staff for the terror, more or less 
 qualified, of evil-doers. We were shown the village 
 barber, the potter sitting at his wheel, with his rows of 
 clay plates and jugs baking in the sun before his hut, 
 the blacksmith, the carpenter. Then we were taken to 
 the square tank, under the shade of the mango-trees, 
 where the village waters its beasts, and bathes, and 
 washes its clothes, and empties its slops. On its bank
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 339 
 
 we observe a whitewashed shanty, which is the village 
 temple, with its own hideous image of Mahadeo smeared 
 with red paint, and the customary symbol, and its own 
 private priest, who has a grant of the manorial land in 
 Jeturn for his ministrations. 
 
 At one end of the village is a cluster of huts, rather 
 smaller and poorer than the rest. We ask what this is, 
 and are told briefly that it is the place where the coolies 
 live, the chumars, or leather-workers of the North, the 
 mahars of the West, the pariahs of the South, the 
 sweepers and others, who do the menial work of the 
 hamlet. There is hardly a village in India so poor that 
 it has not its contingent of these helots, who discharge 
 various necessary offices, such as clearing away (and 
 sometimes eating) the carcasses of dead animals, and 
 removing ordure. 
 
 The outcasts have their own well, for it would never 
 do for them to contaminate the water touched by their 
 superiors ; they have their own little temple, or perhaps 
 only their own shapeless block of stone and their sacred 
 tree, that they may perform their devotions apart ; and 
 they are expected 'to keep themselves to themselves/ so 
 that we notice they do not join the group which gathers 
 round us, but stand and gaze from a distance. There 
 is a village school to which the children of the trades- 
 men, the artisans, and the cultivators are sent. But if 
 the boys from the coolie huts were received at this seat of 
 education the others would leave at once ; pariah children 
 and caste-people's children must not ait on the same 
 benches. 
 
 Riding into a village in the Punjab with a District 
 Officer and his very intelligent and well-educated native 
 assistant, I asked the latter whether the inhabitants of 
 the coolie suburb were Hindus. ' No,' he replied, with 
 some indignation, ' how can they be Hindus ? ' Here the
 
 340 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 magistrate intervened, and said that these people certainly 
 were Hindus, though of low caste. But the native official 
 (himself, by the way, a member by birth of the baniya 
 or merchant order) declined to admit it. ' They are not 
 Hindus,' he insisted, ' they are chumars.' In the old 
 days, these pariahs were practically serfs, compelled to 
 labour for the community on something less than a bare 
 subsistence wage. Now they have their rights, like other 
 people ; and, if not properly rewarded for their services 
 and treated with reasonable civility, they will go on 
 strike, and reduce the village to great inconvenience, 
 especially if there be an epidemic of cholera or cattle - 
 plague threatening. 
 
 The village has persons of other professions, who 
 could perhaps be spared more advantageously than the 
 menials. I was introduced to one man who was described 
 as the local money-lender. In outward appearance he 
 differed very little from the cultivators ; but he had one 
 of the best houses in the place, and was, I believe, 
 prosperous. He seemed on excellent terms with the 
 peasants, and fulfilled, I have no doubt, a useful function ; 
 for what is the ryot to do when the crops have failed, or 
 partially failed, owing to a deficient rainfall ? 
 
 In former times, when rent and taxes were paid in 
 kind a quota of the actual produce of the soil the land- 
 lord and the Sirkar suffered with the farmer in a bad year, 
 even if they made up for it by plundering him ruthlessly 
 in a good one. In these days payments are in cash, and 
 they are fixed and rigid ; the rupees must be forthcoming, 
 whether or not the ryot can sell his rice and barley, and 
 even when he has none to sell. So if the harvest has 
 fallen short, or the bullocks are dying for lack of forage, 
 or a dowry and a suitably expensive marriage-feast have 
 had to be provided on a daughter's wedding, the peasant 
 goes to the sowkar and gives a mortgage on his farm.
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 341 
 
 Perhaps he redeems it in a year or so, if times are good ; 
 perhaps he never redeems it at all, and goes on, year after 
 year, paying an ever-increasing burden of interest, until 
 at length he defaults altogether and the farm is sold over 
 his head. 
 
 A few years ago it k>oked as if, throughout a large 
 part of India, the farmer would become a mere drudge, 
 labouring for the benefit of an absentee proprietor, a 
 money-lender or small banker, the real owner of the land. 
 But most of the local governments have passed laws 
 rendering it difficult or impossible to pledge the tenants' 
 interest as security for loans, and so it is hoped that the 
 wholesale indebtedness and expropriation of the peasantry 
 will be checked. 
 
 Next to debt and famine, litigation is the worst evil 
 from which the Indian agriculturist suffers. He is a 
 disputatious, argument-loving creature, constantly quar- 
 relling with somebody over something, usually land or 
 its many incidents. He generates an atmosphere in 
 which the lawyer, the vakil, the native pleader, flourish 
 amazingly. In the old days these disputes adjusted 
 themselves, more or less, by faction fights, fierce local 
 feuds, and savage private vendettas. 
 
 Now we have stopped all that. Ink is shed instead of 
 blood ; angry farmers and graziers, contentious landlords 
 and tenants, have it out with one another in the law 
 courts, wasting their substance in suits and appeals, to 
 their own ruin, and to the profit of the swarm of babu 
 practitioners who are to be found everywhere. When the 
 contest is once fairly entered upon, it will often continue 
 till one or the other combatant is pumped dry ; and the 
 Government, by multiplying the minor civil courts, and 
 making resort to them easy and superficially cheap, 
 has rather encouraged than curtailed this ruinous 
 indulgence.
 
 342 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 More perhaps might be done to promote the settle- 
 ment of disputes by some inexpensive form of arbitra- 
 tion. A very useful experiment has been made in this 
 direction in the native State of Patiala, in the Punjab, 
 a territory of Jat, Hindu, and Mohammedan villagers, 
 among whom lawsuits used to rage with epidemic fury. 
 The Settlement Commissioner, Major F. Popham Young, 
 induced the Council of Begency to allow him to con- 
 stitute Panchayats, or local arbitration committees, in 
 each district, for the arrangement of quarrels over pro- 
 perty and the adjudication of claims for the recovery of 
 debt. Men of standing and respectability, small land- 
 owners, farmers, retired officers and non-commissioned 
 officers of our Indian regiments, and the like, are 
 nominated in each village to form the committee. They 
 receive no pay, but some modicum of that izzet, or 
 honourable recognition, which is dear to the heart of 
 every native of the East ; for they are allowed a higher 
 place at public audiences, and when the Commissioner 
 goes his round in the districts the members of the 
 Panchayat are assembled and publicly presented to him 
 in the sight of all their fellow- villagers. 
 
 Each committee has a clerk, in receipt of a small 
 salary, to keep a record of the cases and the decisions 
 entered ; and every disputant pays a rupee before his 
 suit is heard. Otherwise there are no fees, no ex- 
 penses, and no technicalities. The proceedings are brief, 
 pimple, and informal, the parties state their own argu- 
 ments and examine their own witnesses, if witnesses are 
 required ; the village elders, being practical men, with 
 minute local knowledge, speedily arrive at a very good 
 understanding of the question at issue, and their decisions, 
 I was told, have been generally deemed satisfactory. The 
 disputants can, if they please, seek a further remedy in 
 the legal tribunals ; but, as a rule, they are quite content
 
 IN THE VILLAGES 343 
 
 to abide by the verdict of the Panchayat. This interest- 
 ing and valuable Patiala experiment has been successful 
 beyond the expectations of its originator ; and though it 
 has only been in operation a couple of years it has saved 
 the villagers many thousands of rupees, which otherwise 
 would assuredly have gone to the lawyers and the court 
 officials. The system might advantageously be adopted 
 in the provinces under our own direct control. Next to 
 releasing them from the exactions of the usurer, no greater 
 benefit could be conferred on the Indian landowners and 
 cultivators than that of inducing them not to waste their 
 energies and their substance in the law-courts.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 THE PBESENT AND THE FUTURE 
 
 WHEN I was in Calcutta I took care to read those news- 
 papers which appealed specially to native ' patriotic ' 
 sentiment. Some of these journals wrote in a very 
 animated strain on the wrongs of the 'Indian people' 
 and the means by which it was thought they might be 
 alleviated : 
 
 The situation is critical indeed, but we must ever bear 
 in mind that the honour of India is at present ' in our 
 keeping.' We have already given unmistakable proofs of 
 our capacity for organisation and sustained work. But 
 we must end as we have begun with an unshaken resolu- 
 tion and a firm determination. In the name of our beloved 
 country and for her sacred cause we would urge our 
 countrymen who have been forced to enter into this heroic 
 struggle and have had to go to the extreme length of boy- 
 cotting foreign goods to persevere and they are bound to 
 succeed. We cannot more fittingly conclude than with the 
 stirring words of the hero 
 
 ' Charge, Chester, charge 1 On, Stanley, on 1 ' 
 
 The passage is worth giving, not only as a pleasing 
 example of babu journalistic style, but also because of 
 the sentiment it embodies. When I turned from the 
 editorial to the advertisement columns of these Bengal 
 newspapers, I came upon various illuminating notices : 
 
 Patronise mother- country by purchasing country-made 
 goods. . . . Essence White Rose, 12 annas ; Otto-de- 
 Bose, no way inferior to English and French ones, Es 1.4. 
 
 344
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 345 
 
 We beg to inform patriotic public that all sorts of 
 country-made dhoties, saries, chaddars, bed-sheets, coat- 
 ings, shirtings, &c., are sold here at a very fixed and 
 moderate price. 
 
 Buy the Swadeshi ulsters, the strongest, the beauti- 
 fullest, the best. 
 
 The Swadeshi movement the agitation for encourag- 
 ing Indian home industries by abstaining from the 
 purchase of imported manufactured goods had attracted 
 comparatively little interest in this country, nor did many 
 Anglo-Indians seem to attach much importance to it. It 
 was considered sufficient to dismiss it as merely the work 
 of disaffected and discontented native politicians. These 
 persons have had a good deal to do with it. But it is 
 worth consideration all the same. 
 
 The most remarkable thing about advertisements such 
 as those just quoted is that they should have appeared in 
 newspapers mainly read by natives of India. The Swadeshi 
 agitation, in, the startling modernity alike of its aims and 
 its methods, was symptomatic of the changes which are 
 passing over the country. In the movement itself there is 
 a good deal which should command the sympathy of many 
 Englishmen of these Tariff Eeform days. That Indians 
 should be anxious to foster and encourage Indian in- 
 dustries can scarcely be deemed unnatural or blameworthy. 
 If the patriotic Briton may legitimately be exhorted to 
 consume British-made matches and cigarettes, we need 
 not complain when public-spirited Hindus are urged to 
 ' patronise mother-country ' by perfuming themselves with 
 the local ' Otto-de-Eose,' and clothing themselves in 
 indigenous ulsters. 
 
 In his presidential address, delivered at the first annual 
 meeting of the Industrial Conference, held at Benares in 
 December 1905, Mr. Bomesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E., a dis- 
 tinguished native administrator and publicist, who had
 
 346 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 held high office in the Indian Civil Service, dwelt effect- 
 ively on this analogy. * The Swadeshi movement,' he said, 
 ' is one which all nations on earth are seeking to adopt in 
 the ^resent day. Mr. Chamberlain is seeking to adopt 
 it by a system of Protection ; Mr. Balfour seeks to 
 adopt it by a scheme of Retaliation. France, Germany, 
 the United States, and all the British Colonies adopt it 
 by building up a wall of prohibitive duties.' 
 
 ' We have no control,' continued the speaker, ' over 
 our fiscal legislation, and we adopt the Swadeshi scheme 
 therefore by a laudable resolution to use our home manu- 
 factures, as far as practicable, in preference to foreign 
 manufactures. I see nothing that is sinful, nothing that 
 is hurtful in this ; I see much that is praiseworthy and 
 much that is beneficial. It will certainly foster and en- 
 courage our industries, in which the Indian Government 
 has always professed the greatest interest.' And on the 
 same occasion, in language which has a very familiar ring, 
 Mr. Dutt said : ' Gentlemen, we will not consent to see 
 our country made a land of raw produce or a dumping- 
 ground for the manufactures of other nations.' 
 
 It may be said that Mr. Dutt and his friends of the 
 Congress belonged to the educated de-Orientalised class 
 of Indians who are out of touch with the people, and 
 have no real influence with them. Let us look then to 
 another quarter. Three months before this speech was 
 delivered there was a great meeting at the Kalighat 
 Temple in Calcutta. Over fifty thousand persons were 
 present, and they were so little emancipated from the prac- 
 tices and tenets of Hinduism that most of them had 
 the vermilion symbol of the goddess painted on their fore- 
 heads by the priests. To this assemblage of worshippers 
 the chief Brahman, or High Priest of the Temple, recited 
 a commandment or rule of conduct to the following 
 effect : ' Worship your country above all other duties,
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 347 
 
 give up sectarianism, religious differences, animosity, and 
 selfishness, perform all you promise, serving your country 
 and devoting your lives to the relief of her distress.' 
 And the whole assemblage then took a solemn pledge, 
 which has been rendered into English in these terms : 
 ' We swear in the holy presence of the Goddess Kali, in 
 this sacred place, that so far as practicable we will not 
 use imported goods, nor will we buy articles in foreign 
 shops which are available in native shops, nor buy any 
 article made by foreigners which can be made by our 
 own countrymen.' In the West, religion and politics 
 have often gone hand in hand. The East, adopting our 
 own methods, carries the conjunction into other fields. 
 India, impressed by the example of China, invokes reli- 
 gious sentiment in aid of industrial protectionism, and 
 applies both to the distinctly modern machinery of the 
 boycott. 
 
 Swadeshi, however, aimed at political as well as 
 economic objects, and behind it all loomed dimly a vague 
 Nationalist movement. The notion of expressing re- 
 sentment, over the partition of Bengal into two adminis- 
 trative provinces, by refusing to buy Lancashire cottons 
 and Nottingham hosiery may have seemed to many people 
 at home merely absurd. Undoubtedly it had its grotesque 
 side ; as when highly educated Bombay Brahmans, Cam- 
 bridge graduates some of them, were to be found making 
 a public bonfire of their English collars and waistcoats, 
 to an accompaniment of invocations addressed to Shivaji, 
 the great Mahratta raider, in order to declare their sym- 
 pathy with their persecuted brethren on the other side of 
 the continent. It may not mean very much, this alliance 
 between Bengali babudom and Mahratta Brahmanism; 
 but it points to that nascent conjunction of the articulate 
 classes throughout India which is one of the signs of the 
 times.
 
 348 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 There is no order or body of men entitled to act and 
 speak for the ' Indian nation,' which does not exist and 
 never has existed. Deep and wide are still the racial, 
 religious, linguistic, and geographical differences in that 
 patchwork of humanity which we have coloured red on 
 the map of Asia. But while we do well to take note of 
 these elements of division, let us also not forget that a 
 certain consciousness of identity is beginning to make itself 
 perceptible through the mass. There is little in common 
 between the various races and sects except that they are 
 all Asiatics. Divided among themselves, they are yet 
 faintly realising the existence, or the imagined existence, of 
 a solidarity, a unity, which marks them off from Europe 
 and the white peoples in general. The victory of a team 
 of Sikhs or Bajputs over an English regiment at polo is 
 acclaimed with delight by Parsis and Bengalis and Punjab 
 Mohammedans and Madrassi Christians ; which is as if 
 Sicilian peasants should rejoice over the defeat of an 
 American crew by Leander at Henley. There is an in- 
 definite Pan-Indian sentiment in the air, highly nebulous, 
 or even gaseous, at present, which might assume a more 
 tangible form under the pressure of events in the near 
 future. 
 
 We have been preparing the ground ourselves in all 
 sorts of ways. We have given India what it never 
 enjoyed until within the past half-century : to wit, peace, 
 absolute internal tranquillity, security for life, property, 
 and the fruits of industry ; we have given it the universal 
 rule of law. We have welded the sub-continent into 
 one by means of swift communication by canals, bridges, 
 roads, railways, and telegraphs. 
 
 Before the Mutiny it meant a long and difficult 
 pilgrimage for a man from the South to reach the North, 
 or for a Bengali, let us say, to make acquaintance with 
 the Punjab. Lord Lawrence told Sir John Strachey that
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 349 
 
 when he was a young man he was thought to have per- 
 formed an extraordinary feat because, travelling day and 
 night, he reached Delhi a fortnight after leaving Calcutta. 
 Any native can now accomplish the journey in thirty 
 hours for a very few rupees. Thus India, still sundered 
 as it is by caste and class and race, is beginning to draw 
 together in a manner which never could have been pos- 
 sible in the earlier ages. Ideas circulate as well as human 
 beings. That which is said or written in Poona to-day 
 may be known in Peshawar and Travancore to-morrow. 
 The results are for the moment seen most clearly among 
 the educated minority, whom we have taught in our 
 schools. But the circle is extending, and in course of 
 time the peasant in his village will read the newspapers 
 as the trader in the towns does already. 
 
 We have not only knitted India together by steam 
 and electricity : we have also used the same agencies to 
 connect it with the alien world. Europeans of all sorts, 
 not to mention Americans, come to India, and some of 
 these miscellaneous visitors and sojourners do not inspire 
 the native mind with any particular respect. At the 
 same time the natives themselves are travelling. Many 
 quite humble persons coolies, artisans, Sikh policemen, 
 traders have been far afield, to China, to the Straits, 
 to South Africa, to Mauritius ; others besides rajas and 
 students for the Bar have found their way to Europe. 
 
 Much of the mystery which used to surround us has 
 been stripped away. Our home life, our politics, our faction 
 struggles, our social questions, are examined with keenly 
 inquisitive glances by many intelligent natives. The 
 Anglo-Indian will often tell one that these investigators 
 do not greatly count : they are only ' Congress-wallahs,' 
 more or less denationalised babblers, of no real import- 
 ance. But, even if that be true, we must remember that 
 such persons can talk and write, and their words are read
 
 350 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 and heard by many who carry more weight than them- 
 selves. 
 
 Are we wholly justified in concluding that modern 
 Eadicalism and Socialism deal with ideas unintelligible 
 to the masses of Indian artisans and agriculturists? 
 We used, I remember, to say the same thing about 
 Russia a few years ago, when it was the received opinion 
 that the professors of the universities and the ' intel- 
 lectuals ' of the towns could not make the echo of their 
 voices heard in the villages. Events have shown that 
 this view was erroneous. Our belief in the conservatism 
 and irresponsiveness to agitation of the docile, kindly, 
 authority-loving Indian peasant may require some quali- 
 fication. 
 
 As regards the educated natives themselves, it must 
 be remembered that we are steadily adding to their 
 numbers. It is true that the great majority of the Indian 
 people are still illiterate. Only one man in ten can read 
 and write, and only one woman in a hundred and forty- 
 four ; and if we exclude the large towns and Burma the 
 proportion will be far lower. The cultivator, in his 
 millions, is still for the most part ignorant of all book- 
 learning. When he wants to write a letter he goes to the 
 village scribe ; he casts his accounts by means of a rough 
 mental arithmetic and a good memory. 
 
 But even with him the leaven is working. Passing 
 through a group of Punjab villages with a Settlement 
 Officer I had the results of the new educational pro- 
 cesses brought constantly before me. Policemen, retired 
 soldiers of our native regiments, village accountants, and 
 minor officials of the various public services, were to be 
 found everywhere ; all these persons had been given a 
 thin wash of elementary instruction, sufficient, in any 
 case, to enable them to read the vernacular newspapers. 
 Scattered about pretty freely were men who had begun to
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 351 
 
 ascend the rungs of the social ladder by means of a 
 smattering of the higher education. 
 
 One would meet in almost every hamlet a com- 
 paratively well-dressed individual, who spoke English, 
 and could converse with intelligence on various sub- 
 jects. He might be the son of a village tradesman or 
 a small yeoman ; but he had been sent to one of the 
 provincial colleges, and had qualified for a post in the 
 bureaucratic hierarchy, a clerkship in the revenue depart- 
 ment, or the public works, or on the railways. If he were 
 quick at learning and had some taste for books, he might 
 go higher. He would emerge with a degree and ambi- 
 tions. He might become a pleader, and attain to a 
 large practice and affluence. Or he might enter the 
 judicial service, and become a subordinate judge, perhaps 
 eventually to reach the bench of the High Court. 
 
 The probability is that he would do none of these 
 things. He would go to swell the multitude of disap- 
 pointed educated men whom the Indian colleges and 
 universities are annually manufacturing. And such edu- 
 cation as he had received would not have tended to 
 render his discontent less poignant, or to remove that 
 sense of grievance, which so often finds expression in 
 the native journals, written and edited as they are by men 
 of his class and kind. 
 
 The ' higher education ' in India has been upon the 
 wrong lines from the outset. When it was first seriously 
 taken in hand in the 'thirties of the last century, it was 
 a question whether the basis of study should be English 
 literature and history, or the classical Eastern languages, 
 Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. But those were the days 
 of the Manchester School and middle-class Liberalism, 
 when things ancient and things unfamiliar were treated 
 with contempt. And, as it happened, the most brilliant 
 and cocksure of all middle-class English Liberals was a
 
 352 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 member of the Governor-General's Council at the critical 
 moment. Macaulay, in 1835, clinched the question with 
 a slashing, dashing Minute, in which he tore the learning 
 and pseudo-science of the East to rags and plumped for 
 ' sound philosophy and true history,' as embodied in onr 
 own literature. 
 
 And so it is on ' English ' that the youthful Hindu 
 or Mohammedan is encouraged to spend laborious nights 
 and days. Mathematics, Natural Science, the various 
 classical languages (Latin and Greek, as well as the 
 Eastern tongues), are admitted, and some candidates 
 do in fact study them. But the vast majority of our 
 native graduates have been nurtured on English litera- 
 ture, on European history, and on the odd hotch-potch 
 of superficial ethics and controversial politics, which for 
 academic purposes is labelled Mental and Moral Science 
 and Political Economy. 
 
 I have before me the prospectus of the Faculty of 
 Arts in one of the Indian universities. I find that the 
 candidate can obtain his B.A. degree, if he can write an 
 essay in English on ' a subject of general interest,' and if 
 he shows a ' competent knowledge ' of English literature. 
 In this latter branch of study his ' special subjects ' are 
 King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, Milton's Comus, 
 Mrs. Craik's John Halifax Gentleman, Messrs. Bowe and 
 Webb's Selections from Tennyson, and Burke's Reflections 
 on the French Revolution. If the aspirant takes up 
 ' Philosophy,' he can offer Mill's Utilitarianism, Muir- 
 head's Ethics, a selection from Berkeley, and Professor 
 Flint's Theism. For a third group of subjects he may 
 submit ' Political Science,' as expounded by the late Sir 
 John Seeley, and by an American professor who has 
 written a handbook on ' Practical Politics ' ; or ' Modern 
 European History ' in Freeman's General Sketch, Miche- 
 let's Precis de I'Histoire Moderne and Professor Oman's
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 353 
 
 England in the Nineteenth Century ; or, again, ' Political 
 Economy,' according to the somewhat diverse views of 
 Air. Walker, Professor Marshall, and Mr. L. L. Price. 
 
 Now imagine a young Bengali student, brought up by 
 the family Brahman on the family morals, or fresh from 
 the village : imagine a young Moslem, who has sat at the 
 feet of the moulvie, left to browse on all this miscellaneous 
 fodder, this queer jumble of poetry, history, fiction, and 
 the second-rate opinions of mostly second-rate men on 
 morals, theology, and politics. What a strange education 
 has our swarthy B.A. received, when he goes back to his 
 kindred, away in the jungles, or on the plains, or in a 
 back lane off some reeking bazaar, with his head whirl- 
 ing with Portia and Cordelia and the Idylls of the 
 King, with Berkeley and Michelet and John Halifax 
 Gentleman, with the Reform Bill and British and Ame- 
 rican economics, with a Scotch Calvinist view of Theism 
 and a philosophical English Radical theory of the 
 State ! 
 
 His development has naturally been one-sided. A 
 single set of ideas, imperfectly assimilated, is likely to 
 remain with him after his hasty and fragmentary debauch 
 on history, poetry, and controversy. What wonder if 
 youngsters fed on Burke and Mill and Milton, and en- 
 couraged to ' get up ' our faction struggles of the eight- 
 eenth century, and to dabble in a literature ' saturated 
 with party politics ' what wonder if they emerge with 
 a predisposition to regard the autocratic rule under which 
 they live as an abomination ? We are surprised that the 
 educated native so often takes to agitation and subversive 
 politics. What else can we expect? Our system has 
 unsettled most of his ideas, and given him in exchange 
 a system of ethics which can mean nothing to him, and 
 an admiration for eminent men who were mostly ' agin 
 
 the Government,' and who were in general enthusiastic 
 
 M
 
 354 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 champions of the political liberty which no Asiatic com- 
 munity has ever yet experienced. 
 
 What India needs is modern education in the true 
 sense : that is to say, modern science. The literature and 
 history of alien countries and a remote and unfamiliar 
 civilisation are not wanted ; even if they do no harm, 
 they cannot be of much use. We ought to be teaching 
 the clever young native mathematics (for which he has 
 often a great natural aptitude), physics, biology, chemistry, 
 geology, and applied mechanics ; we ought to have first- 
 class technical colleges, and plenty of them, and endea- 
 vour to substitute scientific knowledge for the study of 
 words and phrases. If we could send out of the colleges 
 and schools a larger number of doctors, chemists, engineers, 
 architects, technologists, and trained industrial experts, 
 and fewer lawyers, journalists, office-seekers, and place- 
 hunters, we should give the people of India much better 
 reason to be grateful for the higher educational facilities 
 we have placed within their reach. 
 
 What is to be the future of India ? What will our own 
 position be in the coming time? How long will it be 
 possible for a remote and somewhat inattentive European 
 democracy to maintain an autocratic control over three 
 hundred millions of Asiatics ? These are questions which 
 can scarcely fail to occur to any person of intelligence 
 when he makes some survey, however hasty and super- 
 ficial, of our Eastern Empire. In that Empire itself he 
 will seldom find them asked, and still less often answered. 
 The English in India are, for the most part, too busy to 
 think. They have their day's work to do ; the vineyard 
 is large and the labourers are few. The Anglo-Indian is, 
 as a rule, content to toil strenuously in his own corner of 
 the field, to make his money or earn his promotion as 
 speedily as may be, and go home. The future of India
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 355 
 
 commonly interests him but little. A sailor, paid off at 
 the end of a voyage, does not greatly concern himself with 
 the subsequent career of the ship he has left. 
 
 But the few who have leisure and inclination to look 
 about them are not inclined to give a definite and succinct 
 reply to such interrogations as those just suggested. The 
 wisest men speak least dogmatically. They know how 
 many factors there are in the problem and how few of 
 them we fully understand. Great changes are likely to 
 pass over India before this century has grown from child- 
 hood to middle age ; but what form these will take, or 
 whither they will lead, is not as yet in the least clear. 
 The Awakening of Asia may affect India more slowly than 
 the countries farther East, but in the end perhaps not 
 less decisively. 
 
 Those who imagine they know something of that 
 mysterious crucible of unfamiliar ideas, the native mind, 
 believe that it has been stirred tempestuously by the 
 sudden and rapid emergence of Japan. The Manchurian 
 war was followed closely in India ; in every bazaar its 
 details were known and canvassed with absorbing interest. 
 All over the Eastern world, from the China Sea to the 
 Balkans, the success of the Japanese has been regarded 
 as a triumph of Orientalism. The sentiment has been 
 strongly felt in India. That Kussia has nothing in 
 common with England, that she is indeed our frequent 
 rival and potential enemy, is ignored. 
 
 The point which has impressed itself on the popular 
 imagination is that an European Power has gone down 
 before an Asiatic ; white soldiers and sailors have been 
 worsted by those of a warmer hue ; the East has pre- 
 vailed over the West in fair fight. To the Indians, who 
 do not draw fine distinctions between one Occidental 
 people and another, it seems that the sahib-log, their 
 rulers and governors, have shown themselves no more
 
 356 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 efficient, when it comes to the ultimate trial of strength 
 and capacity, than those whom they choose to regard as 
 their own kindred. What has been accomplished by one 
 Asiatic people, so it is thought, may be repeated by 
 another. 
 
 The set-back sustained by Russia may be politically 
 beneficial to us in certain respects; but it has reacted 
 upon our position in Asia, and somewhat weakened that 
 prestige, based on a general acquiescence in the military 
 superiority of Europe, on which in the last resort our 
 Empire of the East depends. And it has imbued our 
 subjects with a new self-confidence, a growing pride of 
 race, which may have important consequences. 
 
 We are pouring the new wine of Western progress 
 into the Eastern vessels. Modern industrialism is coming 
 in slowly, it is true, but quite perceptibly. India, with 
 its abundant natural resources and its reservoir of cheap 
 labour, must sooner or later take its place among the 
 notable manufacturing countries of the world. It has 
 assimilated the factory system ; and the process has 
 begun by which the villager, the tiller of the soil, the 
 small independent cultivator, is turned into a unit in the 
 urban labour army. The country needs capital ; but 
 capital is coming from abroad, and the native is even 
 beginning to relax his caution and supply it himself out 
 of his immense hoarded store. Industrialism is creating 
 new wants and a new standard of living ; but it is sowing 
 and germinating new ideas as well. 
 
 Whether these movements will bring the rulers and 
 the ruled closer together or draw them further apart is, 
 again, another question which few would essay to answer 
 with any confidence. Some people hold that an Indian 
 who takes to Western ways and habits must naturally 
 begin to look at life from a Western standpoint. Others 
 warn us that an Oriental may learn all about the use of
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 357 
 
 a magazine-rifle, a dynamo, a motor-car; he may play 
 cricket and ride a bicycle, and sit on a committee ; he 
 may do all these things and yet remain an Oriental at 
 heart. But in these days we have seen some reason to 
 distrust broad generalisations about race and nationality ; 
 it may be that ' environment ' is more than either ; and it 
 is even possible that the heart and thinking apparatus, 
 which work under a brown skin, are not in essentials so 
 different as we used to believe from those which are cased 
 by a white integument. 
 
 For practical purposes, however, the question of 
 questions is one that is not often spoken. How long 
 shall we be able to go on Europeanising, industrialising, 
 educating the Indian native, ' raising him,' as we put 
 it, 'to our level,' and yet keep him under our paternal 
 despotism ? Some pessimists, I know, think that we are 
 sounding the knell of our supremacy : we have been 
 digging our own graves ; we are teaching the native so 
 much that he will presently learn to do without us. 
 
 To a certain extent this is true. As time goes on, 
 no doubt we shall find the natives doing many things for 
 themselves which we have done for them. The adminis- 
 tration of the country is largely in Indian hands already, 
 and I suppose we must look forward to seeing more and 
 more educated Asiatics taking responsible office in the 
 public-works departments, and in the sanitary, judicial, 
 medical, and educational branches, until eventually we 
 shall have little left for Englishmen but a few of the 
 highest posts in the Army and the Civil Service. 
 
 Such a result has been long foreseen, and it has been 
 faced, if not exactly welcomed, by some officials of the 
 highest capacity and experience. Fifty years ago Mount- 
 stuart Elphinstone wrote : 
 
 I conceive that the administration of all the depart- 
 ments of a great country by a small number of foreign
 
 358 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 visitors, in a state of isolation produced by a difference in 
 religion, ideas, and manners, which cuts them off from all 
 intimate communion with the people, can never be con- 
 templated as a permanent state of things. I conceive also 
 that the progress of education among the natives renders 
 such a scheme impracticable. 
 
 Much has been done since 1850 to give the natives a 
 larger and ever larger share in the administration of the 
 country. The European bureaucracy has been attenuated 
 to minute proportions. Yet there are complaints that it 
 is still excessive in quantity, and not always what it 
 should be in quality. On this point some intelligent 
 native gentlemen, who have no sympathy with the plat- 
 form extremists, speak with emphasis. 
 
 'Why,' they ask, 'should you make us pay high 
 salaries to second-rate surveyors, sanitary and medical 
 officers, educationists, and judges, who are sent out to us 
 from England, when we could supply better men our- 
 selves men, too, who would work for lower pay, and 
 who understand the country and the languages ? ' 
 
 The grievance is not entirely imaginary. Our superior 
 bureaucracy that is to say, the few hundred executive 
 officers of the Indian Civil Service still deserves the 
 praise so freely bestowed upon it ; but there may be room 
 for improvement even in the I.C.S. itself, and still more 
 so in some of the other departments. India is not so 
 attractive to the capable young Englishman as it used 
 to be, and considerable difficulty is found in getting men 
 with a good professional training to accept posts in the 
 technical branches of the administration. 
 
 The deficiency is most marked on the legal side. 
 Some of the English barristers sent out from home to 
 occupy seats on the benches of the High Courts have 
 been notoriously unfitted for positions of such import- 
 ance; men of little standing in their profession, who
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 359 
 
 could hardly have been appointed to a county-court judge- 
 ship if they had remained in England ; men who, in 
 knowledge of the law and judicial capacity, have shown 
 themselves inferior to their native colleagues. Even 
 stronger criticism may be directed against some of the 
 judges of the local tribunals. The Divisional and 
 District Judges are civilian magistrates who have passed 
 from the executive into the judicial ranks, either by their 
 own desire or at the order of their Governments. 
 
 It is common talk in India that many of these gentle- 
 men are the failures, or the comparative failures, of the 
 service ; for the executive department is so much more 
 interesting, and offers so much wider scope for important 
 work and legitimate ambition, that the more capable offi- 
 cials naturally prefer to remain in it if they can. Some 
 of the District Judges, it is true, may have been chosen 
 because they exhibit a natural aptitude ; bnt even then 
 their professional qualifications must often be weak. 
 They can hardly ever have found time to acquire a 
 regular legal training, and have usually picked up their 
 law in the course of their magisterial work in the 
 districts. 
 
 In the administration of criminal justice, where 
 common-sense and quickness of decision are more ser- 
 viceable than legal learning, they do very well. But 
 in civil causes their lack of technical knowledge may 
 sometimes expose them to invidious comparison with 
 their nominal subordinates, the native judges of the 
 inferior tribunals, who have studied law at Indian 
 colleges or English universities, and have often pre- 
 pared themselves for the bench by practice at the bar. 
 One of the leading English banisters in India told me 
 that he sometimes found considerable difficulty in arguing 
 before the Divisional and the District Courts because of 
 the ignorance frequently exhibited on the bench. He
 
 360 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 went so far as to declare that he even preferred, if the 
 case were at all complicated, to lay it before native judges. 
 ' They, at least,' he said, ' are lawyers, and can under- 
 stand a legal argument.' 
 
 Our method of appointing judges is a relic of the 
 earlier, pioneering, unsettled period of our rule in India, 
 if it is not merely one phase of our superstitious belief 
 that the English gentleman of high character is capable 
 of performing any task that can be set him. Perhaps the 
 whole of the Indian service is suffering in some degree 
 from the effects of that theory. Character is invaluable ; 
 but it is not a substitute for expert knowledge in a settled 
 civilised community. India requires plenty of trained 
 specialists ; and if we do not supply them ourselves in 
 sufficient quantity, it will be difficult to prevent natives 
 from pushing into the higher, as well as the lower, places 
 themselves. 
 
 In commerce, too, the natives are treading on our heels. 
 Much of the banking, the supervision of manufactures, 
 the export and import trade, may be expected to pass over 
 to them, as they get to know more of the methods of 
 modern commerce, and as they cease to require the 
 Englishman to act as their intermediary with the external 
 mercantile communities. I am told that there are export 
 houses in Calcutta, even now, where the real business and 
 financing, the placing of orders, and giving of credit, are 
 in the hands of the Hindu broker, who is nominally no 
 more than the firm's agent or managing clerk. 
 
 In due course, this important individual will get into 
 touch with foreign buyers himself, he will have his own 
 agents and correspondents in England and Germany, and 
 so he will almost be able to dispense with the assist- 
 ance of his European partners and ostensible employers. 
 What the Parsis have accomplished in Bombaj', the 
 Hindus and Mohammedans may be able to do elsewhere.
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 361 
 
 Here is a natural Swadeshi movement, which we can 
 hardly counteract, even if we should desire to do so. 
 
 It does not follow that we need fear it, or that it will 
 be fatal to our political predominance so long as our 
 military strength remains unimpaired, and so long as we 
 retain control of the supreme administration. That, it 
 must be remembered, is the ultimate source of our power. 
 Our position in India has no parallel in ancient or modern 
 times ; for the Eoman Empire, with which we sometimes 
 like to compare it, was essentially and fundamentally dis- 
 similar. The nearest analogy is that of the Manchus in 
 China ; since they, like ourselves, are a small body of 
 foreigners, an alien official colony, able to rule a vast 
 congeries of Eastern peoples, because they have the 
 threads of the administration in their hands. Most 
 Oriental countries have been governed in that way, though 
 the experiment has never been performed on such a scale 
 as in India and in China. 
 
 The point that differentiates our rule from that of 
 every Eastern dynasty is that we are migrants, not settlers. 
 It is to some extent an element of weakness ; but it is also 
 the prime and main source of o-ur efficiency and strength. 
 In all the other cases, the masculine conquering race has 
 established itself in the country, and presently it has 
 suffered that deterioration which seems, as if by a law of 
 Nature, to overtake every despotic monarchy in the East. 
 The Moghuls might be masters of India to this hour if 
 they could have bred a succession of Babers and Akbars ; 
 and the ' Nabobs ' of the Company, in the eighteenth 
 century, if they had been cut off from home and allowed 
 to create an hereditary oligarchy in India, would have 
 degenerated no less surely than their predecessors. It is 
 the uniqueness of our situation that we can supply a con- 
 stant fresh infusion of that Northern vigour, which has so 
 often been able to subdue an Eastern people, but has 
 
 M 2
 
 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 invariably waned and weakened when it has settled down 
 to govern it. 
 
 The Manchus, weak and corrupt as they are, have held 
 China for close on three centuries. There seems no reason 
 why we should doubt our own ability to maintain our rule 
 in India for an indefinite period, if we do not shrink from 
 the burden and if we remain strong enough to beat back 
 aggression from outside. The danger that threatens, so 
 far as it is not a military danger, may develop among 
 ourselves rather than among our subjects. We are giving 
 the Indian peoples two things they cannot at present pro- 
 vide for themselves a capable and honest central govern- 
 ment and the force to resist anarchy and external attack. 
 
 These are great benefits ; but it is by no means certain 
 that they are recognised by the majority of those upon 
 whom they are conferred, and it is even probable that 
 our labours will be less appreciated as time goes on, and 
 as a larger proportion of Asiatics become imbued with 
 a feeling of racial self-consciousness. Even now it is 
 undeniable that there is a rising hostility to our system 
 of beneficent despotism among the educated classes 
 throughout the country. It is idle to ignore the fact ; it 
 is equally idle to endeavour to scold it down by brand- 
 ing it as disloyal. I do not think there is much dis- 
 loyalty even among the agitators of the platform and 
 the native press, still less among those who listen to 
 their exhortations. 
 
 The journey of the Prince of Wales showed clearly 
 that there is a deep and widespread attachment to the 
 Imperial House among the Indian people, and that even 
 where there is discontent with the mode of government 
 there is no feeling against the Throne. Nor, I imagine, 
 is there any hostility to the Empire and the Flag, so far 
 as the meaning of these terms is understood. Calcutta, 
 when the Prince visited it, was in the trough of a furious
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 363 
 
 agitation against the partition of Bengal an agitation 
 which had, on one occasion, caused every native shop in 
 the city to be closed as a sign of mourning. The Viceroy 
 and the new Lieutenant- Governor had been assailed with 
 the most virulent abuse, and the latter official could 
 scarcely have driven abroad in safety without an escort 
 of cavalry. Yet when the Prince appeared among this 
 angry populace he was received not only with cordiality 
 and good-humour but even with demonstrative enthusiasm. 
 
 I was told that the leading agitators had themselves 
 done their best to render the reception favourable. If so, 
 it goes to show that they were anxious to relieve them- 
 selves and their movement of the stigma of disloyalty. 
 Some of these native politicians, when I met them in Cal- 
 cutta and Bombay, assured me that no idea of secession 
 or separation was in their minds. They declared and I 
 think with sincerity that it was no part of their object 
 to sever the bond which unites India to the British 
 Empire and the Monarchy. They know well enough that 
 'the people of India' are not strong enough to stand 
 alone in the world and resist external encroachment. 
 
 But they do think that they are rapidly gaining the 
 strength to manage their own affairs, and even to main- 
 tain internal cohesion, with little or no aid from ourselves. 
 They believe that they are wise and capable enough for 
 self-government on the ' Colonial ' model ; and they talk 
 of an India, converted into a federation of autonomous 
 states, attached to the Empire by the link of an Imperial 
 Viceroy or Governor-General, like the Commonwealth of 
 Australia. This is the ideal or the illusion cherished by 
 an increasing number of persons who write and talk and 
 influence their neighbours in most of the Indian provinces, 
 and we must make our account with it. Impracticable 
 as it may be, we cannot dismiss it brusquely as a mere 
 fantasy best treated with ridicule or contempt.
 
 364 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 There is a racy and rather illuminative story which 
 was recently going the rounds of the Indian clubs and mess- 
 rooms. It concerns a certain Indian prince, very popular 
 in English society, a veteran soldier and sportsman, 
 and a chief among one of the great fighting peoples. 
 To him a highly distinguished personage is said to have 
 put a question which is more easily asked than answered : 
 ' Tell me frankly, Maharaja, what you think would 
 happen if we were to leave India to-morrow.' ' If you 
 were to leave India to-morrow,' replied the old warrior, 
 ' on the day after to-morrow my men would be in 
 the saddle; and three months after that, there would 
 not be a virgin or a rupee left in Lower Bengal.' 
 
 This is a pithy and concise summary of an argument 
 often used in Anglo-Indian circles with reference to the 
 * aspirations ' of the Bengalis and other native politicians. 
 If we were to leave India to-morrow, it is said, what 
 would become of all these talking and writing gentlemen ? 
 The Afghans, the Gurkhas, the Dogras, the fierce 
 Mohammedans of the Punjab, the hill tribesmen, would 
 sweep down upon them ; the Pathans and Afridis and 
 other cut-throats would soon make short work of their 
 ' self-government,' not to mention their lives and wives 
 and property. The force of the argument is undeniable 
 when one considers the history of India and the ethno- 
 logical distribution of its population. But it is not quite 
 conclusive of the matter in hand. 
 
 ' If we were to leave India to-morrow ' many things 
 would happen. But we are not going to leave India 
 to-morrow. We shall stay there and carry on our 
 work in spite of its difficulties. There is no reason to 
 suppose that these will be less serious in the future than 
 they have been in the past. The task of governing India 
 may indeed become more arduous rather than easier, as 
 we have to deal with a rising discontent among the pro- 
 gressive, articulate, semi-educated classes, perhaps an in-
 
 THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 365 
 
 creasing volume of agitation. TjVe are in India to-day, 
 whatever may have been the case in the past, for the 
 benefit of its people much more than our own. But we 
 must not be surprised if ambitious men among our sub- 
 jects, inspired by a sentiment which cannot be deemed 
 wholly ignoble or egotistic, chafe under the government 
 of aliens and do not recognise their own incapacity to 
 replace it. Danger, perhaps even disaster, may arise, 
 if this restlessness on the one side is met only by im- 
 patience or neglect on the other. Even now, the general 
 indifference of Englishmen to all that concerns India is 
 amazing and ominous. The masses, who are the real 
 rulers of India's rulers, seem content to remain ignorant, 
 the middle classes, except so far as they have friends or 
 relatives in the country, uninterested. It has often been 
 said that the reluctance of Parliament to devote itself 
 seriously to Indian affairs has been politically valuable, 
 since it has left these matters to be settled by the men 
 who understand them, the men on the spot. But a 
 sovereign democracy cannot permanently delegate its 
 powers. It must know what is being done in its name, 
 and why that is done ; particularly when it is called upon, 
 for high and noble ends, it is true, but with small appa- 
 rent or immediate reward, to exercise unsleeping vigilance, 
 to incur weighty responsibilities, to submit to ill-requited 
 sacrifices, and to cope with harassing problems, increasing 
 in gravity and complexity as the years roll on. 
 
 Will our Democracy prove equal to the burden ? That 
 is the real question on which the future of our Eastern 
 Empire turns. For the worst perils which threaten it 
 are not likely to become formidable in India itself, unless 
 they are assisted by incautious haste or negligent weak- 
 ness at home. 
 
 TEE END.
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNK, HANSON & Co 
 Edinburgh i> London
 
 A VISION OF INDIA 
 
 By SIDNEY LOW 
 
 LORD CURZON, in a speech to the New Vagabonds' Club on 
 May I5th. said: "Mr. Sidney Low, the author of that interesting 
 book, ' A Vision of India,' has succeeded in giving a striking picture 
 of Indian life under many of its varied aspects, which I believe to be 
 substantially accurate, and which is clearly the result of much acute 
 observation and penetrating insight." 
 
 RT. HONBLE. LORD MORLEY in his Indian Budget Statement, 
 1906 : " Mr. Sidney Low's book, ' A Vision of India,' is a work which 
 I would respectfully recommend honourable members to read. Mr. 
 Low is a man who knows what he is writing about." 
 
 THE TI.1fES."UlT. Low's book is authoritative because it 
 embodies the judgment of a competent critic on a subject which he 
 has studied under exceptionally favourable conditions. . . . The book 
 is full of facts, it is brightly and ably written." 
 
 DA1L Y TELEGRAPH. 11 Mr. Sidney Low has written a re- 
 markable book. . . . The volume manages with extraordinary ability 
 to present the chief problems of India to the mind of the English 
 reader in a fresh, vivid, and most attractive form." 
 
 SPECTATOR. "The author of 'The Governance of England' 
 mi^ht be trusted to give us a lucid and accurate account of Indian 
 politics and government." 
 
 TRUTH. " It is a long time since we have read a book on India, 
 its peoples and its problems, its present, past, and probable future, 
 more suggestive and more instructive than ' A Vision of India.' " 
 
 THE ENGLISHMAN (Calcutta). "The book breathes a judicial 
 impartiality which is convincing. . . . Anglo Indians will agree that 
 the normal conditions of life in India could not be more sanely and 
 faithfully described. It is a book to recommend to friends at home 
 who want to know exactly what India is like." 
 
 REVIEW OF REVIEWS. "It. is a book which we hope will 
 be widely read, for it cannot fail to create a better understanding 
 between the two widely sundered lands whose destinies fete has so 
 closely linked together." 
 
 COUNT R Y LIFE." Written with the spirit and go of a novel, 
 and contains scarcely a dull page." 
 
 T. P. O'CONNOR, M.P., in T. P.'S WEEKLY, says: "It 
 is written with such go, with such close cohesion, that one is carried 
 along from page to page without a sense of motion. Within its four 
 hundred pages you get a picture of that vast continent which is at once 
 harmonious and complete."
 
 At all Booksellers and Bookstalls 
 
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 t. Deeds that Won the Empire 
 
 Dr. W. H. Fitchett 
 
 2. The Cruise of the " Cachalot " Round 
 
 the World after Sperm Whales 
 
 Frank T. Bullen 
 
 3. Fights for the Flag 
 
 Dr. W. H. Fitchett 
 
 4. The Log of a Sea Waif 
 
 Frank T. Bullen 
 
 5. The Gamekeeper at Home 
 
 Richard Jefferies 
 
 6. A Londoner's Log Book 
 
 Rt. Hon. G. W. E. Russell 
 
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 J. A, Owen 
 
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 Dr. W. H. Fitchctt 
 
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 Sir Henry W. Lucy 
 
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 Sir Nigel. 
 
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 Canadian Born. 
 Diana Malloiy. 
 
 5TH IMPRESSION. 2ND EDITION. 
 
 Fenwick's Career. 
 
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 Eleanor. 
 
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 Fenwick's Career. 
 
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