Read Ebook: India under Ripon: A Private Diary by Blunt Wilfrid Scawen

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It may here be said that we left Madras accompanied by a very excellent servant, a native Christian named Solomon, who had been provided for us by our friend Ragunath Rao. Solomon was a dignified and altogether worthy old man, absolutely honest and faithful in his service, and with but a slight knowledge of English. As he was the only native Christian with whom we came in contact in India, I am glad to be able to give him this high character.

"Tirupati is a very beautiful place, surrounded by high hills, and is a celebrated resort of Brahmin pilgrims from all parts of India. The temple, though not very large, has a splendid pagoda at the entrance, and stands in the middle of the town, and there are other pagodas at a distance, leading up to a sacred hill not very far away. The ceremony was over when we arrived at the bungalow, which had been fitted up at great expense for the expected guests. It was very hot, and the drive from the station had been tiring, in country bullock carts drawn by ponies, and we were glad to rest in the shade, though we had missed the expedition to the sacred hill which had followed the ceremony. A good luncheon had been prepared for us, and soon after Rangiar Naidu arrived and took us over the temple and the town. The gala preparations, he informed us, were in honour of Mr. T., an English official who had come to represent the Governor on the occasion. He was away with the rest on the sacred hill, and would not be back till after dark. Rangiar Naidu besought us not to let him, or any of those with him, know of our intended visit to the villages, as he would certainly prevent it. This T., he said, has a reputation of being a friend of the natives on the ground of his knowing something of Sanskrit, and patronizing their educational institutions, but Rangiar and all our friends are suspicious of him;--old Ragunath Rao spoke of him yesterday very plainly as a humbug. About nine o'clock, after great lighting of lamps in a kiosk, the party from the hill returned, escorting the Government officials in all state--T. a dry, stiff-looking civilian, very much on his dignity, and surprised and rather disgusted to find us here. It was evident that Rama Rao had not told him how we had been invited by his son, and I let the cat out of the bag, without intending it, by telling Rama Rao in the official hearing that Varada had come to see us off at the station, and Rama looked confused and began to talk of other things. It was painful to see the fear everybody was in of this very ordinary Englishman, but I suppose he has the power to ruin them, and that he and his like do ruin those that cross them. With him was another Englishman, the head of a school department, a more genial man, and one other. A dinner for a hundred had been prepared, but no more English had come than these three, and so we five sat down and ate what we could of it.

"T. was not communicative, but nevertheless we made conversation on various more or less political subjects, the school inspector, who liked talking, helping us not a little. Afterwards I had some conversation apart with Rama, but both he and the Pundits were too frightened to say much so near the 'presence.' They, poor people, had brought a piece of gold or silver plate to give to the great man, an offering which he received without a word of thanks, and had put in his carriage; only to two or three did he vouchsafe a few words, remaining seated while they stood to listen. It is inconceivable why these Indians should put themselves to the trouble of entertaining at such expense and to so little profit. The kiosk alone cost ?30 they told us, and the whole entertainment cannot have cost far short of ?100, which would have better gone in helping to endow the College. Government gives nothing, and the thing is to be supported by the funds of the Temple, which are large. It was amusing to see the relief which came over everybody when the officials had left, as they did as soon as the fireworks were over, about eleven. We, too, were not sorry. As there were no beds, we slept on the floor, on which, also, the servants and the poor people from outside soon after rolled themselves up--it was a large place--very happily with Mr. T.'s cushions and carpets.

"I have forgotten to say what was to me the most interesting part of the day's proceedings. While waiting in the shade of a grove that afternoon we had seen a procession come to a little shrine with offerings close by--a beautiful pagan rite, with drums and pipes leading the way, and behind a number of women walking with large copper dishes on their heads filled with rice and flowers as offerings to the god. They stopped under the grove near us, and there lit fires and cooked their rice--a merry party sitting on all the afternoon. Towards evening the women approached the altar, which was an oblong table of stone supported by a dozen upright slabs carved with curious devices. Each woman chose her slab, and painted it with ochre, yellow and red, and then crowned it with flowers. I asked what it signified. They told me it was Friday, one of the fortunate days, and that the women had come to pray for fertility. The rice, after being offered, they will eat, and count it as a feast. It is seldom the peasants get so good a meal, for their usual food is only a cake made of a kind of rape. Rice is held to be too good for common fare." This was an interesting day spent in beautiful surroundings, and remains in my mind as one typical of Southern India.

"Rangiar Naidu accompanied us to the railway station in the evening, and gave me letters to friends farther on. He is a highly educated man, was at school with Ragunath Rao, and maintains close friendship with him. He is of the Khastriah or military caste, which is not common in the Madras Presidency. His type of face is distinctly Egyptian, and he might well be a village sheykh of the Delta. He is a rich man and member of the Municipal Council of Madras, an elective post which leaves him independent.

"In the afternoon, however, eight or nine Hindu gentlemen came to see us, as highly educated as those at Madras, and even more free spoken. Among them was a Brahmin of high caste, who had broken his rule by visiting England, and had even become a Christian there, losing thereby his caste but not altogether his social position at Bellari. He spoke about the absurdity of the reason commonly given by English officials for having no social intercourse with the natives, namely, that the laws of caste prevent it. 'Here you see me,' he said. 'A few years ago my caste laws were so strict that I could not eat with any of these gentlemen'--turning to the rest who sat round--'I was obliged to throw away my meals if one of them happened to look at me while I was eating. Yet it did not prevent us being the best of friends. Neither, now that my caste is gone, am I less intimate with them, although they in their turn cannot now eat with me. Is it then necessary that men should eat together to be friends? The Europeans receive me no better to-day, though I could eat and drink with them all day long. The difficulty is entirely of their making.' He said this with as little embarrassment as there might be in England between one who on religious grounds only eats fish on a Friday, and others who eat meat. The manner of the speaker, too, was so good, and with so much conversational charm, that the refusal of the English officials to associate with him sounded to us particularly ludicrous. These Hindus are no wit inferior to Italians or Spaniards in their address, and are very little darker of skin.

"The Eurasian to whom we had the letter was with them, also a municipal councillor and clearly on excellent terms with the rest. He assured us it was quite untrue that the mass of the Eurasians sided with the English in their quarrel with the natives. On the contrary, their social sympathies were with the latter, and it was only the richer ones and those in Government employment who affected English ways. There was no real sympathy anywhere, as the English despised the Eurasians even more than they did the true natives, and the Eurasians were under greater disabilities as to the public service. He himself owns a cotton mill in partnership with an Englishman here, but they do not mix socially together. Our talk was principally on these matters. The Brahmin who had been in England had been received by Bright, Fawcett, Dilke, and other notabilities, had stayed in country houses, and been f?ted everywhere. Here the collector's wife is too proud to call upon his wife. They expressed themselves much disappointed with the Gladstone Ministry, of which they had had great hopes. Lord Ripon was the best Governor-General India had ever had, but he had been thwarted throughout in his work, and had not been properly supported at home; he had been able to achieve nothing. Mr. Grant Duff had been the worst disappointment of all. He had come with a flourish of Liberal trumpets, but had proved a mere windbag, good at making speeches on generalities, but useless at administration. He had left all work to the permanent officials, who had thwarted Lord Ripon's good intentions everywhere.

"We dined with Sebapathy Ayar and his wife. It was he who had become a Christian, having been converted by Dean Stanley and Miss Carpenter about twelve years ago. The dinner was as English as possible, and they drank wine. But she wore her Indian dress and jewels--a nice woman. Afterwards a number of friends came in, and we had a very pretty nautch with Telegu singers, and all chewed Betel leaves, which, it appears, can be done in common without injury to caste. There was one Mohammedan among them from Bombay. The Hindus here are very courageous and outspoken. They all discussed the advantages, or rather the lack of advantages of British rule, without any reticence, and agreed that, while good had been done in the past, evil was being done now. They were loud in their praise of Ripon as an honest man, who meant well by them. But they said that in fact he had been able to do nothing for them. The officials had made it impossible. No real reform could be begun till the Covenanted Service was abolished. They did not fancy the idea which has been put forward of the Duke of Connaught succeeding to the Viceroyalty. He was young and without experience, and would be entirely dry-nursed by the officials. Nothing could be worse than a Viceroy who should only be a figure-head.

HYDERABAD

"Arrived at Hyderabad at daybreak. We found Seymour Keay's carriage waiting for us, and a very amiable note from Mr. Cordery, inviting us to stay at the Residency. The note was forwarded by Keay, so we accepted both the carriage and invitation, and are now at the residency. I am glad of this, for when we were in England we had made a kind of half promise to stay with Keay and his wife, but since then Keay has brought forward several charges against the Indian Government, which, though they may be true, I do not wish to identify myself with, and I wrote from Madras to tell him so, and that I could not, under the circumstances, just now stay with him, all my movements being reported in the papers. I was advised, too, at Bellari, to go to the Residency, as it would give me a better position with the Hyderabad authorities. Now it would seem that Keay has squared his difference with Cordery, and is not offended at our declining his own invitation. So all has happened for the best.

"A more interesting visitor was Laik Ali, the young Salar Jung, who has succeeded to his father's title. He is only twenty-two, but has already an extremely dignified and at the same time quite natural manner, just the manner, in fact, of our best bred Englishmen. This, and his height, which is considerably over six feet, remind me vaguely of Pembroke, though Salar Jung has no remarkable good looks to recommend him, and seems likely to grow fat, which Pembroke never will. He talked well, and with very little reserve, said he thought the English Government had made a great mistake in Egypt, and seemed delighted at the prospect of Arabi's return. I told him about the letter I had from Sheykh Jemal-ed-Din for the Nawab Rasul Yar Khan, and he said that the Sheykh had been a friend of his father's, and invited us to breakfast with him for Saturday, promising also to invite the Nawab, so that we might talk without official listeners. I am immensely taken with this young man, and it consoles me for not having found his father still alive here. Salar Jung, the father, was a standing reproach to our Government, and, according to Lytton, a standing menace. Salar Jung, the younger, ought to play a leading part in the history of Indian emancipation.

"With Cordery at the Residency there is one Trevor, a younger, but, according to my friends at Bellari, a more dangerous, man. He is a good type of Indian civilian, decidedly clever, and a good talker, and under him again Melville. They looked on me at first with great suspicion, but since I have told them plainly that I should like to see the Covenanted Civil Service, to which they belong, abolished, we have got on friendly terms.

"After luncheon Major Clerk, the Nizam's tutor, came to take us through the town on elephants, which pleased us much. The town is most interesting, being after Cairo the most gay and busy in the Mohammedan East. Compared with Madras, it is as Paris to a decayed watering-place. Instead of the squalid back streets and the pauper population of native Madras, Hyderabad is like a great flower bed, crowded with men and women in bright dresses and with a fine cheerful air of independence, more Arab than Indian. Many of the men carry swords in their hands, as they do in Nejd, and one sees elephants and camels in the streets, besides carriages, and men on horseback. It is impossible they should not be happier here than in the mournful towns under English rule. And so I am sure it is. We went to-day to the Palace of the Bushir-ed-Dowlah, from the roof of which there is one of the most beautiful views in the world. Hyderabad lies in a sort of elevated basin, surrounded by low granite hills, picturesque and bare, the town half hidden in green trees. It has thus something of the effect of towns in Arabia, of which it in other ways reminds us. It covers a very large space on account of the gardens inside the walls, and is in truth an immense city, containing, with its suburbs, 250,000 inhabitants. From the Palace we went on to Salar Jung's tank, a beautiful sheet of water of a thousand acres, with a dam, which seems at first sight too weak for the mass it sustains as it is very high, and only a foot and a half thick at the edge, and the water brims over, so that as you sail about on it, you look down upon the city. But the dam is really a strong one, being constructed on the principle of an arch, the better to uphold the water. Passing on, we were taken to what had been the French barracks a hundred years ago when the French garrisoned the city.

"After breakfast another Arab visitor called, brother of the El Kaeti who made himself Sultan of Makala in Hadramaut with English help, also Seyd Ali Bilgrami, a Mohammedan from Delhi, one of those brought here by Salar Jung--'a great pity' in Cordery's opinion--to wake up public opinion. He has had a partly English education, and has an appointment as civil engineer. His brother, Seyd Huseyn, was old Salar Jung's private secretary. He explained to us the state of parties here. At Salar Jung's death the Minister's son, Laik Ali, was appointed with the Peishkar, a local Hindu nobleman, to a joint commission of Government, the Nizam being a minor. The Peishkar paid little attention to business, and young Salar Jung was kept as far as possible in the background, the principal influence being exercised by a third official, Shems-el-Omra, an enemy of Salar Jung's. And thus affairs had got into a bad state. This was encouraged by the Residency, whose policy it was to show that the native Government was unfit to keep order in the country. Under old Salar Jung the Hyderabad State had been as secure as any part of India.

"We drove in the afternoon through Secunderabad and the English cantonments to Bellarum, where the Resident has a country house.

"We went this evening at sundown to see the flying fox rookery in the Residency grounds. It was the most curious sight imaginable. All day long they hang, many hundreds of them together, head downwards from the branches, making the whole of the great tree look as if it were infected with some horrible blight. They are very large, having a spread of nearly three feet across the wings, but in the day time these are folded up. As the sun goes down and it begins to darken, they one by one awaken and stretch and scratch themselves, and at last one lets down a wing and a leg, and drops from his perch, and flaps away just like a great crow, and is followed by another and another, till there are thousands in the air, all going off in the same direction to some fruit garden which they know, and which they spend the night in pillaging.

"We dined with Major Clerk, already mentioned as the Nizam's tutor. Cordery is trying to get rid of him, too, as he is an independent man, and is honest in looking to the Nizam's interests instead of those of the Calcutta Foreign Office.

"In the afternoon we were taken by Cordery to the races, where we were presented to the Nizam, a shy little young man of sixteen, with a rather awkward manner. Salar Jung, who is twenty-two and over six feet high, stood imposingly beside him. The races were of a gymkhana sort, elephant, camel and pony races, over which Salar Jung's younger brother presided with the master of the horse, Mohammed Ali Bey.

"Dined with the Keays. A young man Vincent, brother to Howard and Edgar, has arrived at the Residency from Madras. Like all these 'politicals' he is clever, and affects liberal ideas.

"Coming home Mrs. Clerk gave us an interesting account of Hyderabad politics. She says the young Nizam's extreme shyness and frightened manner are due to an accident which happened in his Zenana. While playing with a pistol he accidentally shot a child, and he has been made to believe that the English Resident has power at any time to imprison him for this. He is, however, she says, talkative enough with her, and declares his intention of managing everything at Hyderabad himself as soon as he gets on the throne. He likes young Salar Jung, and respects him because he speaks frankly to him, but is afraid of Cordery, who supports Kurshid Jah and has placed one of Kurshid Jah's sons to be always with him. Cordery is under Trevor's influence. Cordery is angry with Major Clerk because he has opposed a guarantee of the Northern Railway which the Indian Government for strategical reasons supports. Cordery wants to get rid of Clerk and Gough and all the former friends of the late Salar Jung, and to isolate young Salar Jung from such liberal advisers as Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami. The policy seems to be to keep the Hyderabad nobles in ignorance of modern thought, and it also looks as if the Indian Government encourages the bad administration purposely. It is precisely what they are doing in Egypt.

"We breakfasted with Ali Abdullah, the Arab superintendent of the Nizam's breeding establishment, and met there Salar Jung and his brother, Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami and others, and went on to drink tea with them at Salar Jung's country house at Serinagar. They talked freely about social and political matters. We discussed the drinking of wine, which is common among the Mohammedans of Hyderabad, where there are drinking shops even in the City. I told them that in England we did not respect Mohammedans who drank wine, and that very few drank in Egypt, and none in Arabia. I begged Seyd Huseyn to advise Salar Jung most strongly to speak to Lord Ripon when he is at Calcutta, and tell him the whole state of things here.

"Dined with Bushir-ed-Dowlah, a rather dull entertainment of about forty people, mostly English, our only new native acquaintance being the chief of the Shiah Ulema, Seyd Ali, a native of Shustar, with whom we conversed in Arabic. He, too, is a friend of Jemal-ed-Din's, he says, but has the name of being 'a great fanatic.' He is a thorough Iraki, and I confess I do not like him. He remembers Layard at Mosul, when he was a boy. Bushir-ed-Dowlah speaks very little English. After dinner we were entertained rather lugubriously with a magic lantern representing the Afghan War.

"Dined at Vikar-el-Omra's, a handsome house--gold plate, nautch, and illuminations, but no native guests. Vikar-el-Omra is out of favour with the Residency on account of the quarrel with his brother Kurshid Jah. Cordery, however, was there and about twenty English. Major Gough, who is one of the Nizam's people, was among them, and begged me to speak to Lord Ripon in support of Salar Jung when I see him at Calcutta, which I most certainly will do.

"With regard to Hyderabad politics, he spoke with the greatest enthusiasm of the late Salar Jung, who was himself of Arab descent. He described the state of things when he first came here thirty years ago, how people killed each ether openly in the streets, and how the great Minister had established peace everywhere. I asked him about the Shiahs, and he said there was no quarrel here between them and the Sunnis. He himself was a Sunni, but they all prayed together. They were on good terms, too, with the Hindus. The Hindus did not eat with them, but that was all. Of Laik Ali he spoke very highly, said he was a young man of good thought and good language, and would become a great Minister like his father. All the people loved him. As to the Peishkar he neglected public business. He had no energy, and letters of importance were put aside. It was very different from old Salar Jung's time. I asked him about the Nizam, whom he spoke of as the 'Pasha,' and he said he was good, not at all dull, but that he was young, and the nobles about him taught him to be silent in public, and so he seemed lacking in intelligence, but with his own people he talked and was merry enough. I like this Meccan merchant much, and doubt if there are many shop-keepers in London who could give me as sensible an account of their local politics as he has given me. The Hindus in the Deccan are mostly men of the lower castes. There are few nobles or Brahmins among them, and their only rich men are the money-lenders. The rest are shop-keepers, and out of the town peasants. The Peishkar is their only great man.

"The Nizam came to dinner at the Residency, and took Anne in. There was also a large party of Nawabs and dignitaries, the Peishkar, Salar Jung, Kurshid Jah, Bushir-ed-Dowlah, Vikar-el-Omra, and the rest, as well as the Roman Catholic bishop and some English. Kurshid Jah has asked us to dinner for Tuesday, but neither to him, nor to the Peishkar can we go, as we leave on Monday. The Nizam was as usual very silent, but this is etiquette. Trevor tells me the Nizam's father never spoke at all to the English officials, or even looked at them.

"He also complained terribly of the tyranny of the English officials and their brutal manners. He asked how it was that I was different from them, that I made him sit down on the same sofa with myself, that I addressed him politely, and did not treat him as a slave. The officials, he said, sit without moving in their chairs and talk to us, while they leave us standing, abruptly in words of command, without any salutation or words of friendship. You treat me, a poor man, as your equal. Why is this? I explained to him there were degrees of good breeding amongst us, and that the better the breeding the greater the politeness. That the men who came out to India as Government servants were, many of them, taken from a comparatively low rank in life, and that, being unused to refined society, or to being treated with much consideration at home, they lost their heads when they found themselves in India in a position of power. I hoped, however, that this might soon be changed. He said the officials made their nation hated by the people; many who were willing to think the English Government was good were estranged by the manners of its officials. He asked me again why I travelled so far to see them, and why I cared to help them, and I explained that in youth I had led a life of folly, and that I wished to do some good before I died, and that I had received much kindness from the Moslems, and learned from them to believe in God, and so I spent a portion of every year among them. I like the man much.

"At ten we went to breakfast with Salar Jung, a farewell visit. We had bargained to have no English with us, and the party consisted of himself, his brother, and his sister's governess Mdlle. Gaignaud, of Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami, and of our two selves. We talked very freely of the political situation, which is this. In a few weeks the Nizam will come of age, and an attempt is going to be made by the Residency to get his signature to a treaty which, in renewing the alliance existing between the Nizam and the Government of India, contains an article abrogating all previous treaties, thus putting the Berar provinces permanently into English hands."

The question of the Berars was this. Many years ago, before the time of old Salar Jung, the Hyderabad State was badly governed, and its finances became so involved that the Nizam was obliged to borrow several millions sterling from the Calcutta Government. The Government took in pledge for the debt the provinces in question, which were the richest he possessed, it being agreed that they should be administered by the Government of India until the loan was repaid. This arrangement naturally gave much employment to Englishmen and many highly paid posts to members of the Covenanted Civil Service, and it has consequently been their settled policy to make the resumption of the provinces by the Nizam impossible. In this view the provinces have been exceptionally well administered; the taxation has been light, and everything has been done to make the peasantry satisfied with English rule, so that they form a striking contrast with most parts of British India. It was never expected that the Nizam would be able to repay his debt, but, in case he could, the prosperity of the provinces would then, it was thought, be a reason for refusing. This is precisely what happened. Salar Jung, being a man of great ability, not only restored order in the Deccan, but brought the Hyderabad finances into so prosperous a condition that he was able to come forward with the borrowed millions in his hand, and claimed their repayment and the restitution of the provinces. It was for his insistence on this point that his persecution at the hands of the Imperial Government began, and was carried on relentlessly until his death. The claim, however, still remained, and could not be contested, as it was embodied in a public treaty between the two States, and advantage was being taken of the Nizam's minority and the death of his powerful Minister to get it annulled.

"The existence of the draft treaty at the Residency explains to me what has hitherto seemed inexplicable, the strong support given to the Peishkar, in spite of his misgovernment; the isolation in which Salar Jung is being placed by the dismissal of so many of his father's best servants; the stories circulated against the character of all those who have advocated the retrocession of the Berar Provinces; Cordery's words about Laik Ali's 'headstrong character' and that his only chance was to make common cause with the Peishkar; the favour shown to Kurshid Jah as heir to the throne and substitute in case it should be found necessary to get rid of the young Nizam, along with the bad character Cordery attributes to the latter; and the tales of his childishness, of his early corruption with women and other scandals. Cordery at dinner has talked a great deal to Anne on all these matters. It also perhaps explains how the other day, when he had been speaking more severely than usual to Laik Ali, he put his arm paternally on his shoulder and said Laik Ali must forgive him, for he was only following his instructions. He made a sort of apology to Seyd Huseyn, too, when he sent for him the other day. He told him he must leave Hyderabad for six months, but added 'I am doing you an injustice, but it is necessary in the public interest.' I exhorted Laik Ali to talk openly of all these things to Lord Ripon when he sees him at Calcutta, and I have promised to urge Lord Ripon to pay full attention to him. As soon as he arrives with the Nizam's party at Calcutta I will see him and advise him, for none of Laik Ali's friends are to be allowed to go with him. He has given me printed copies of his father's private correspondence relating to the Berars and other matters, and will send to me at Bombay a copy of the minute written by his father on the case. It is a curious comment on the little trust placed by the native Government in English administration that he does not send me the minute by post, but will forward it through an agent to be delivered by hand.

"Talking on general matters of government, Laik Ali said that he did not think that the Nizam would be fit to govern the country by himself, as he has thought of doing, but neither is the country fit for self-government. The custom has been that it should be governed by a Minister, and doubtless he intends to be that Minister. I shall do what I can to help him, as he possesses his father's traditions, and there is no question he is very popular at Hyderabad. His age is his only drawback, as he is little more than twenty-one. I asked him about this particularly, and he said he was born in August, 1862. But he is far older than his years. He has invited us to come back for the Nizam's installation. The Peishkar's administration seems to have been signalized by a general round of plunder as in the old time. It is not only from Laik Ali that I know this, but from everybody I have spoken to. When Salar Jung died, Sir Stewart Bailey was sent from Calcutta to settle matters here, and Laik Ali was appointed Co-Administrator with the Peishkar, and as such he ought now to be taking his share in the administration, but this has been prevented. There is no public office at which business is transacted, and the Peishkar will not consult him or let him into his house with any regularity for the discussion of affairs; nor will he send him, as he ought to do, the documents for his signature. The consequence is he is powerless to do or to prevent anything, and he says he will throw up his office if after he has been to Calcutta the position is not altered. He now has the responsibility without the power, and this he refuses to go on with.

"Mehdy Hassan sat next me. He is a native of Lucknow, and told me I should be well received by the Mohammedans there, for they knew my name well, and he has promised to give me letters for some of them. They would be glad to learn the truth about the Egyptian War, for until a few months ago they had all been deceived about it, thinking that the English had really gone to Egypt as the Sultan's allies. They said I should do well to give a lecture at Calcutta on the subject, but that it would be difficult to get up a public protest against future wars waged with Mohammedans, because, although the thing would be popular, it would be too dangerous for the leaders in it, who would from that moment become marked men. They told me I had no conception of the despotism under which India was held, nor of the danger there was for them in meddling with politics; Jemal-ed-Din's stories about the deportation of religious Sheykhs to the Andaman Islands were perfectly true. The dinner was a good one, partly European, partly Indian, but we left early in order to appease Mr. Cordery.

"We were taken by Miss Dillon, with whom we are staying, to see the Deccan College, an absurd building, from the tower of which we viewed the scene described. It contains a hundred and twenty boarders, all Hindus but half a dozen, only one Mohammedan. Ninety of the Hindus are Brahmins. I talked to some of the pupils in the reading rooms. They told me they read the 'Bombay Gazette,' which represented their views better than any other English paper, but the best native one was the 'Hindu Prakash.' The English Director struck us as being rather a weak vessel, contrasting unfavourably in the point of intelligence and knowledge with a learned Brahmin who explained to us the connection of Hindi, Mahratta, and Hindustani with Sanskrit. On the other hand, I noticed this learned man thumbing without ceremony palm leaf manuscripts of the eleventh century in a way which would have made a book collector's blood run cold. In these two incidents the difference between the East and the West is exemplified."

In the afternoon a friend of Rangiar Naidu came to see us, and gave us a number of interesting statistics as to the state of agriculture in the Bombay Presidency. It is hardly worth, however, transcribing them here, as they do not differ essentially from those we received elsewhere, and I have incorporated the result of all my agricultural inquiries omitted from my diary in the chapter on "The Agricultural Danger" given at the end of this volume.

On the 12th we went on to Bombay, where we spent a couple of days in the society principally of a Europeanized Mohammedan to whom we had brought letters, Mr. Mohammed Rogay, a wealthy man, advanced and liberal, and the head of the Moslem community. His ideas were all of the most modern type, far too modern on some points quite to please me. "He drove us through the native town, which is most picturesque and cheerful, very unlike Madras. Rogay would like it all pulled down, and built up again in rows of sham Gothic houses." A more interesting personage was Mr. Malabari, editor of the "Indian Spectator," a friend of Colonel Osborne's. "He is a Parsi, but says his sympathies are rather Hindu than of his own people. He is an intelligent, active little man, going about constantly from place to place on philanthropic and political business. He confirms everything we have heard elsewhere as to the agricultural misery, and promises to take us a round of inspection on our return, as well as to get up meetings at which I can express my views, and agrees that there will be no improvement until India has gone bankrupt--bankruptcy or revolution, as Gordon suggested. He also described how such English officials as dared to protest against the over taxation were persecuted. If any of them espoused the wrongs of the natives he was bullied out of the service, and then his evidence was scouted on the plea that he was only 'a man with a grievance.' Such had been Colonel Osborne's case. Malabari is only thirty, though he looks eighty. He has written, among other things, certain loyal poems which are sad trash. He is, however, a great admirer of Lord Ripon, and he exhorted me to support him with prudence."

The rest of our time at Bombay was spent principally in the Arab stables looking at horses, but of this more on the occasion of our second visit.

FOOTNOTES:

When Robert Bourke, Lord Connemara, was sent as Governor to Madras in 1886, I recommended Ragunath Rao to him, and he gave him once more a post as Minister to one of the Native Princes.

Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami, now member of the Indian Council in London.

This refers to a talk I had had with General C. G. Gordon at the end of 1882 in which he had assured me emphatically that "no reform would ever be achieved in India without a Revolution." Gordon, it will be remembered, accompanied Ripon, as his private secretary, to India in 1880, but soon after their landing at Bombay had resigned his place. The opposition of the covenanted civil service to any real reform had convinced him that he would be useless to Lord Ripon in an impossible task.

Sir John Gorst.

CALCUTTA

"Arrived at Calcutta, and were met by Walter Pollen , who has taken capital rooms for us at 2, Russell Street. Wrote our names down at Government House, and arranged with Primrose, the private secretary, that I am to have an interview with Lord Ripon on Wednesday afternoon. Sent several letters of introduction which had been given us to Hindus of the place. There is notice of a meeting of a thousand persons held under Rangiar Naidu at Madras to protest against the Address presented to T.; I have telegraphed to congratulate him.

"Later Sir Jotendro Mohun Tagore called, a Hindu of rank as he has the title of Maharajah. He confirmed much of what Norendro said about Lord Ripon, and was clean against the Rent Bill, but, as he explained, he was prejudiced on this point, being himself a Zemindar. The point of the bill is to break the agreement made by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, by which the absolute ownership of the land was recognized in the Zemindars. The present tenure is briefly this: the Zemindars are the proprietors, and cannot be assessed at more than one-fifth of the gross produce of their estate. They generally let their land to middlemen or farmers, who employ the ryots or labourers, just as we do in England. The effect of the bill will be to transfer the ownership to these occupants, who will then hold them directly from the Government. At present no increasing of the assessment is announced, but the agreement made by Lord Cornwallis being once broken, it seems probable that this will follow. The Zemindars will be reduced to the ownership only of such lands as they occupy. The contention of the Government would seem to be that the land will then be better cultivated and produce more, and their fifth be proportionately increased. But Sir Jotendro is of opinion that the old system of husbandry was safer than any new system is likely to be. The land might be made to produce more by steam ploughing and high farming, but in the end the fertility would be exhausted. Here, again, precisely the same thing has happened in Egypt. He has promised, however, to put us in the way of seeing some villages here and there that we may study the question on the spot, and we are to make him a return call in a day or two.

"Last came Schomberg Kerr, Lord Ripon's chaplain, who knew my brother and sister so well years ago. He is a very nice fellow, and not unlike his cousin, the other Schomberg Kerr. But he was wary of talking politics, as befits a Jesuit and a private chaplain. I fancy he makes it a rule to confine himself strictly to spiritual advice, but I don't know.

"While we were talking, arrived a dignified old man, Manockji Rustemji, the Parsi Consul-General for Persia, with his son. We talked about the Bengal Rent Bill, to which, like everybody else I have talked with, they are opposed. Sir Jamsetji Jijibhoy is staying with him, and he promises to send him to see us. I like this old man very much. He is a friend of Ragunath Rao's, and spoke very warmly of him, saying that he was a far cleverer man than his cousin, Sir Madhava Rao, who has more celebrity but less courage. We are to call on his wife next week.

"At a quarter to three I paid my visit to Lord Ripon, feeling rather nervous about it beforehand, but I have every reason to be satisfied with the result. I had a good hour's conversation, first about the state of the agricultural districts which I described, and afterwards about the really important business of Hyderabad. I set the whole state of the case before him, the reversal by the Peishkar and Kurshid Jah of all Sir Salar Jung's policy; the dismissal of the skilled administrators; the consequent breakdown of the administration; the return to old practices of corruption and the rest of it; and, lastly, 'what would seem incredible but for which I could nevertheless vouch' that the Peishkar's misgovernment was strongly supported at the Residency. I made no charge against Mr. Cordery, who I considered was merely the responsible person representing the several interests of the official class. But I could only explain the matter to myself by supposing that these officials feared a retrocession of Berar, and so purposely abetted the misgovernment of the State. This had been done without doubt in former years for similar reasons, and I had had sufficient experience of official ways in Egypt to make me very distrustful. Lord Ripon smiled at this and said that official ways were always a little the same everywhere, but he did not commit himself to any opinion as to whether I was correct or not. He said, however, that I must know well how great a difficulty there was in Hyderabad in finding any one competent to carry on Sir Salar Jung's administration. He had considered Sir Salar's death a great misfortune, though others, and he believed Lord Lytton, had thought otherwise. It was the more deplorable to himself because he had just had the satisfaction of restoring the good relations which had so long existed between Sir Salar and the Indian Government, but which had latterly been interrupted, and he had personally a high opinion of Sir Salar's integrity and good faith. But who was there to fill his place?

"I then told him my high opinion of young Salar Jung, both as a good young man, and one with statesmanlike qualities, which only wanted practice to develop into a capacity equal, perhaps, to his father's. He said that he was glad to hear me say this, for such had also been Sir Stewart Bailey's opinion. But Laik Ali was very young for so responsible a position. I said that he was twenty-one, and he asked me whether that meant twenty-one according to the Mohammedan or the English reckoning. I said: 'According to the English, as he was born in August, 1862,' and so was very nearly as old as his father had been when he first became Prime Minister, for Sir Salar had been only twenty-four according to the Mohammedan reckoning, and, if one considered how troubled and disorganized a State Hyderabad then was and compared it with what it is now, it would be seen that Laik Ali's position, if he were made Minister to-morrow, would be a more favourable one by a great deal than his father's had been. Now all the machinery of government was there, and it only required to be kept going, instead of having to be created. I also begged him to see the young man himself privately when he came to Calcutta, and he said he would certainly do so, and as Laik Ali could speak English, they would not want an interpreter, and he would give him every encouragement to explain his position and ideas thoroughly. All Lord Ripon's manner showed a thorough good will towards young Salar Jung, and I have little doubt that he will give him his support. He then asked me about the character of the Nizam, and I told him I could say nothing for certain, because he had been so silent in our interviews that I had not been able to judge, but it was my opinion that he was far from being without ideas of his own, and very likely a will of his own too. He asked me whether the people of Hyderabad wished him to be proclaimed of age this year or not till two years later, and I said it was not a case of their wishing. They all expected it to be at once, and would be grievously disappointed if it was deferred. There was a strong feeling of loyalty and affection towards the Nizam among the people, and they would resent his being kept out of his right. He also asked about Bushir-ed-Dowlah and to which faction he belonged. I said I could not answer certainly, but I believed Laik Ali considered him to be among his friends. Bushir-ed-Dowlah seemed to be without strong political colour. Lord Ripon remarked, however, that he, Bushir-ed-Dowlah, had been on bad terms with Laik Ali's father. Of this I knew nothing.

"From him I went to Sir Stewart Bailey, and, as the conversation led up to it, told him something of the state of things at Hyderabad. He seemed surprised that Cordery was actually supporting the Peishkar and Kurshid Jah; said he thought he had been weak in letting things go on so far unchecked; repudiated all idea of its being done on policy; did not think that Trevor really influenced Cordery; Trevor was not nearly as clever a man, but very likely he had been too long at Hyderabad. Sir Stewart, however, spoke with great sympathy of Laik Ali, and said his was a waiting game, and it was only a matter of time his becoming Minister. We discussed his age, and he asked me, as Lord Ripon had done, whether I thought him capable of being now at the head of affairs. I said of course it was a very responsible position for a youth of twenty-one, but I believed him capable of it if really supported and rightly advised at the Residency. He was very popular in Hyderabad on his father's account and his own, and would find no opposition except from the old Mogul nobles.

"We then discussed the north-west men. Sir Stewart does not like Seyd Huseyn Bilgrami, says his letters are flippant, but agreed with me that Salar Jung's system, to be carried out at all, must be so through people who had received a modern education. Of Gough he spoke highly, but not of Clerk. On the whole I am satisfied with our conversation. It is evident Sir Stewart meant to have Laik Ali supported when he made the arrangement which left him co-administrator, and will do what he can for him now. At leaving he said it was a question whether it might not be better to let things go on a little longer and then interfere, or to interfere now on the Nizam's coming of age. I said I considered they had gone quite far enough. In any case he promised to talk the whole matter over with Laik Ali, and I shall be surprised if Trevor is not removed and a change of attitude insisted on with Cordery. Talking of past affairs at Hyderabad, Bailey said that Sir Richard Meade's alliance with the late Emir el Kebir against Sir Salar Jung had been most unfortunate, and had 'dragged the Indian Government through a deal of mud.' He did not wish to be quoted in this opinion, but such was the fact.

"Called also on Sir Jotendro, who lamented Mr. Gladstone's apostasy from the principles he had proclaimed in Midlothian. He said his speech on the question of making India pay the expense of the Egyptian campaign had destroyed all confidence in him in India, and he wondered that any man should be so base. I told him that in England words said out of office bind no statesman in office, an explanation which seemed to surprise him. We afterwards talked poetry, Byron, Moore, Tennyson. He did not understand Tennyson, preferred Moore infinitely. Sir Jotendro has a handsome old-fashioned house in the centre of the town, one of the first houses, he says, that were built in Calcutta; the city had grown up round it.

"At last Mulvi Abd-el-Latif, the head of the older-fashioned Mohammedans, has called. I had a letter for him from Sheykh Jemal-ed-Din, but I feared he would not come. He is a judge, and much occupied or would have called before. I found him all, and more than all I could have expected. He began by telling me people were afraid here of coming to see me, partly because I was looked ill on by the Government, partly because they knew I was taking notes on all I saw or heard, and they were not sure but what I might compromise them, or compromise their cause by telling too much. He knew, however, that I had the Mohammedan cause at heart, for he had heard from Sheykh Jemal-ed-Din what I had done, and he thought it best to tell me all frankly, and put me on my guard. Also it would explain to me why the Mohammedans had not come forward to welcome me. He then sketched the position of the two parties among the Mohammedans. Amir Ali and his friends had broken with the mass of the community by affecting English dress and ways, and posing as reformers, although they were in no way qualified in a religious sense for such a position. Amir Huseyn they even considered to be an unbeliever. In any case, Amir Ali did not represent the Mussulman community in Bengal, for he was a Shiah, and they were Sunnis. He, Abd-el-Latif, was a reformer too, though working on other lines. He wished to improve the religious education of the people, and had been labouring for the last twenty years to get the Government to establish proper schools. Reform must be introduced by religious, not irreligious persons, or it would take no hold on the people. These young men were out of all sympathy with the mass of the Mohammedans. They knew nothing even of the religious language, Arabic, or Persian which was the language of good society. How could they serve as a medium between the English Government and them?

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