Project Gutenberg's India and Indian Engineering., by Julius George Medley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: India and Indian Engineering. Three lectures delivered at the Royal Engineer Institute, Chatham, in July 1872 Author: Julius George Medley Release Date: December 24, 2017 [EBook #56245] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING. *** Produced by Chris Curnow, Brian Wilcox and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING. THREE LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL ENGINEER INSTITUTE, CHATHAM, In JULY, 1872. BY JULIUS GEORGE MEDLEY, LIEUT.-COLONEL, ROYAL ENGINEERS; ASSOC. INST. C.E.; FELLOW OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY; PRINCIPAL, THOMASON CIVIL ENGINEERING COLLEGE, ROORKEE. colophon LONDON: E. & F. N. SPON, 48, CHARING CROSS. NEW YORK: 446, BROOME STREET. 1873. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. SYLLABUS OF LECTURES. India—its area—physical features—climate—scenery. The People—Bengalees—languages—Hindooism—caste— conservatism of the East—the Mahomedans—Sikhs—Parsees. The English in India—their difficulties—the Anglo- Indian career—the mutiny—Christianity in India—arts and manufactures—general character of the people. Anglo- Indian life—in the station—in tents—cost of living—society in India—travelling—a tour in India. The Indian Government—the Public Works Department. Roorkee—the Thomason College—the Sappers and Miners—the workshops—career of a Royal Engineer—military engineering—miscellaneous duties of the Indian engineer—financial aspects of the Public Works Department—overseers—native subordinates—workmen. Building materials—stone—bricks—tiles—limes—timber—iron—wages and rates—weights and measures— absence of plant—water-raising machines—carts. Foundations—well-cylinders—Indian rivers. Barracks—difficulties of ventilating and cooling—private houses—churches—other buildings. Bridges—temporary —permanent—waterway. Roads—metalling—hill roads. Railways—various lines—the permanent way—traffic arrangements. Irrigation Works—their importance—the Ganges Canal—crops and soils—design of canals—the head —velocity of stream—falls and rapids—drainage works—irrigation details—Madras weirs—tanks. River Works— inundations—spurs. Indian Survey Department—the Great Trigonometrical survey—Topographical survey—Revenue survey. iv INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING. In proposing to deliver the short series of Lectures which I commence this evening, I had two objects in view; First, to interest you in the work which your brother officers are doing at the other end of the world, and which I think is little understood or appreciated in this country; Secondly, to give to those amongst you who are likely to proceed to India some useful information about the country itself, the nature of the work you will be called upon to undertake, and the special subjects of study to which it is desirable on that account to direct your attention. In the present lecture, I shall endeavour to give you some idea of the physical features of India, its climate, its people, and of the peculiarities of Anglo-Indian life. In the other lectures, I shall say something of the Government, and the great Department of State by which public works are executed, and of the special duties and probable career of the Royal Engineer officers who are there employed; and shall then pass on to the materials and modes of construction with which the engineer is called upon to deal, and those specialities which distinguish his work from English practice. India, then, is about as large as Europe without Russia. A line drawn from Cape Comorin at the south to Peshawur in the north will measure about 2000 miles; another line drawn from Kurrachee on the west coast to Calcutta will measure some 1500 miles; the total area of the whole peninsula, including British Burmah, is about 1,500,000 square miles, of which 900,000 are directly under British rule, while the remainder, though nominally under native governments, is more or less subject to us. This vast area of country comprises almost every variety of physical configuration—lofty mountains and low hills; well-cultivated, alluvial plains, arid deserts, great forests, marshy swamps and dense jungles; long, broad rivers, numerous hill torrents, wide and deep nullahs. The varieties of climate to be found in this great continent are also numerous; for while the plains of Upper India are for several months parched up with a fiery heat, the summits of the Himalayahs are covered with perpetual snow; and while the rainfall of Sindh seldom exceeds four or five inches annually, there is a place in Assam called Cherra Poonjee, well known to geographers as the rainiest place on the earth’s surface, the annual fall amounting to 650 inches. The popular idea of India is that it is an extremely hot country, and speaking generally, the popular idea is correct. But the nights in Northern India are often excessively cold, and I have many times seen ice half an inch thick on the roadside puddles in the Punjab, while the hill stations at Simla, Mussorie, and elsewhere, 7000 feet above the sea level, are covered with snow in January and February. In Upper India, the part with which I am best acquainted, we enjoy a climate which for four months in the year— November, December, January, and February—is probably unequalled in the world both for health and pleasure: bright skies, a sun hot indeed, yet not too hot for exercise all day long, and nights cold, dry, and bracing, with a clear, still atmosphere, make an almost perfect climate. In October, March, and April, the mornings, evenings, and nights are still delightful, though the heat out of doors in the daytime is great. For the remaining five months, the climate, to a European at least, is simply detestable. You have either fierce hot winds like the blast from a glass furnace, with clouds of dust; or else a moist, stagnant atmosphere like that of a continuous vapour bath, and excessively depressing. The nights are rather worse than the days, and life is only bearable inside large and lofty rooms and under swinging punkahs. In Southern India, there is less extreme heat, but more moisture, and no real cold weather. Yet the climate, with proper precautions and temperate habits, is by no means unfavourable to the European constitution, except in peculiar cases. As a rule, men now return from India looking much the same as their English contemporaries, and those whose minds are well employed and whose bodies get a fair share of exercise, are as healthy as their fellow-countrymen whose lot is cast in England or the Colonies. Out of eight Engineer officers who left Chatham with me twenty-three years ago to go to India, six are now alive, and five out of the six are strong, healthy men. Nor is this at all an exceptional case; indeed, when an Anglo-Indian reaches a certain age he seems to live for ever, though the popular idea that this is because the Indian sun has dried him up into a mummy, is not founded on fact. If I were asked whether India was a very beautiful country, I should reply that in general it is not, but that it has some of the finest scenery in the world. In travelling up the main line of railway, for instance, from Calcutta to Peshawur, your road lies for 1000 miles of that distance over a country that is one dead level, without even a hillock to break the monotony. If your journey is made (say) in March, as far as the eye can reach it rests on an enormous sea of wheat, diversified by groves of mangoe trees, and mud villages, or brick-built towns. No crystal streams,—no clear lakes,—no undulating downs,—no parks or country houses,—not even a grass field. Yet the rich cultivation, and the general signs of prosperity amongst the dense population are at least pleasing to the philanthropist; and if we leave the railway at Umballa and travel for forty miles eastward, we find ourselves amongst the dark pine forests, the mountain torrents, and the craggy heights of the Himalayahs, while their gigantic tops covered with eternal snow, 10,000 feet higher than “the monarch of mountains,” look down upon us in their calm and solemn grandeur. Nor are the great forests and mountain ranges of Central India without much beauty; while the magnificent harbour of Bombay and other sea views on the coast show that India is not wanting in many of the charms of marine landscape. 2 3 4 5 But it is time that I should speak of the people of the country. Those who have never been in India often form their ideas, (very naturally), from the few natives of India they have met in this country; but these are a small and very peculiar class, and are by no means fair specimens, not merely of the whole population, but even of their own province. Let me, however, at once give you a few figures, which will show how unsafe it is to generalize from a few instances. India is inhabited by about 200 millions of people, speaking at least eleven totally distinct languages, and innumerable dialects, and differing amongst each other in features, character, and social customs, quite as much as the Russian or Spaniard does from the Englishman. As, therefore, I have told you not to form a judgment of the whole from a few isolated and exceptional instances, I shall avoid falling into the same error, and only talk about the races with which I am personally acquainted. The Bengalees, i.e. the inhabitants of Bengal proper, have been those who have benefited most intellectually by their contact with the English. They are quick-witted and clever; many are excellent English scholars, and make admirable clerks and accountants. Many have risen to high positions in the public service: one sits on the Bench as a Judge of the High Court; several have come to England and fairly won their place in the Indian Civil Service, in competition with Englishmen. But no Bengalee serves in the army, or enters into any pursuit or amusement from choice which requires bodily activity and strength: his physical organization is of the feeblest; for centuries he has been ruled by the stronger races from the North, and it is to be feared that his moral organization but too often follows the law of the physical. As we go north, after leaving Bengal, we find ourselves amongst a more manly race—the stalwart Jat, the manly Rajpoot, the warlike Sikh, and the fierce and treacherous Puthan. These are the men with whom we wrestled for the empire of the East, and who now recruit our best native regiments,—who helped to plant the British flag on the towers of Pekin and the heights of Magdala. Nor are these men at all deficient in intellectual power, though they have been less quick than the Bengalee to appreciate the advantages of education. But the Northern colleges and schools are now crowded with students, and even the frontier chieftains, who once thought it disgraceful that a son of theirs should wield a pen instead of a sword, have given in their adherence to the new-fangled ways of their conquerors. The chief languages spoken in India are Tamil, Teloogoo and Canarese in the south; Mahratta and Guzerati in the west; Bengali, a dialect of Hindi, in Bengal; Oordoo or Hindustani in the North-west Provinces; Punjabee, a dialect in the Punjab; Burmese in Burmah; and Pooshtoo, the language of the Afghans. Sanscrit, as you probably know, is a dead language, in which the Shasters, or Hindoo scriptures, are written. Arabic is that of the Koran, read in India, but not spoken. Persian is only used by the best-educated people at the native courts. The Hindustani, or Oordoo, is the lingua franca current to a certain extent over the empire, at least, amongst the people with whom we chiefly come in contact, but scarcely understood by the people generally out of Hindustan, i.e. the North-west Provinces. It is a mixture (not a compound,) of words from the Hindi, Persian, Arabic, and Sanscrit, not unlike French in many of its characteristics, and easy to speak, but difficult to read and write. It is written both in the Persian and Hindi characters. It is absolutely necessary for every Anglo-Indian to acquire a certain colloquial proficiency in it; for English-speaking natives are rare, and when found in the ranks of domestic servants, do not bear the best of characters. The people of Upper India generally are a good-looking race, with well-formed features and good figures. The complexion varies very much, but is generally brown or dark olive—very rarely black. Many of the men are strikingly handsome, but the best-looking women are generally secluded at home, and it is only occasionally that one sees a real Eastern beauty. I need hardly tell so intelligent an audience that both the Indian and English races belong to the same great Aryan stock, and that the people of whom I am speaking have nothing in common with the low-developed, barbarous races of Southern or Central Africa, or Australasia. On the contrary, they have a language, a religion, a code of laws, and a civilization, considerably older than our own, and which, though now degraded from their original purity, yet exist in full force amongst the great bulk of the people, and by their wonderful conservatism and adaptation to the requirements of Eastern life, bid fair to maintain their ascendancy for many generations to come, and to set European innovations at defiance. As you know, of course, the vast majority of the people of India are Hindoos by religion. Boodhism, once prevalent in India as it is now in China, has disappeared, and Brahminism prevails. I have no time to enter into any learned dissertation on the Hindoo tenets, but I must allude to one of its most distinguishing features—that of Caste—because it has more practical bearing on the every-day life of the people than all the rest of the tenets put together, and because it is also generally misunderstood. Everyone probably knows that the original division of mankind, according to the Vedas, was into the four castes of the Brahmins, or priests; the Rajpoots, or warriors; the Ksatryahs, or writers; and the Sudras, or low-caste men. But this division has been so modified and altered, that it has practically disappeared. Brahmins are soldiers, traders, or cultivators, as well as priests; Rajpoots are cultivators rather than warriors, while all four castes have been divided and subdivided into innumerable petty castes, which, as a rule, are identical with the trade or calling of their votaries. Thus, a man who is a carpenter, will bring up all his sons to be carpenters, and so on ad infinitum; though this is being slowly altered where education opens out a prospect of more profitable employment in another line. To lose caste, or be put out of caste, is as great a misfortune as ever, but there are very few offences for which a man cannot get back his caste by the payment of a few rupees, which are expended in eating and drinking by his fellow caste-men. The offences which involve loss of caste are offences against custom rather than religion, and indeed there are no people so grossly ignorant of technical religion and their sacred books as the Hindoos. The ordinary Brahmins 6 7 8 9 are no better than the common people, and caste is a thing of custom and not of religious doctrine. But if it be thought that, on that account, its hold on the people is small, the thinker has very little acquaintance with the power of custom in the East. The most bigoted Tory in England—if such a phenomenon now exists—is a Red Republican in presence of the Conservatism of the East. There you may see the land cultivated and the fields watered now as they were 2000 years ago, when the Macedonian phalanx defeated Porus on the banks of the Jhelum; there you may see “two women grinding at the mill” the corn for the daily meal, and can understand the force of the prophecy that one shall be taken and the other left. The ploughs and carts in every-day use are the same as those shown on the sculptures of Egypt or Assyria. The unleavened cakes that Sara prepared on the hearth for the angels were exactly similar to those your Indian servants now give you if you want a hasty meal. You see hundreds of men every morning sleeping outside their houses, and “taking up their beds and walking,” by the simple process of rolling up their light cotton mattress under one arm, or carrying it and their light bamboo bedstead on their heads together. The women draw water from the well, and poise the same shaped vessels on their heads that Rebekah did when Abraham’s servant greeted her, and, but a few steps off you will see the camels kneeling down, and the men unloading their burdens. It is this wonderful conservatism that perhaps strikes the observant traveller more than anything else in the East; which opens his eyes to a state of society utterly foreign to all his Western experience, and makes him pause to think whether he is right after all in his ideas of the advantages of civilization. Is the man of the West any happier for his railways, electric telegraphs, steam factories, and Parliamentary Governments? Here he finds people who are not in the least anxious to govern themselves; who think fifteen or twenty miles a rather long day’s journey, and very seldom take that; who are content to follow their fathers’ calling as a matter of course, and who shrink with horror from that restless, bustling, feverish, active life which has become a second nature to the Englishman. The fact is, that each follows out, so to speak, the law of his being, and neither has a right to dictate to the other as to how he shall find his happiness. Before leaving the subject of the Hindoo religion, I should perhaps mention that the hideous customs of Suttee (i.e. burning the living wife with the dead husband), and the suicide of pilgrims under the car of Juggernath, are now things of the past, and indeed they were never sanctioned by the Hindoo sacred books. The crime of female infanticide amongst certain high-caste tribes still remains, but it too has nothing to do with the Hindoo religion; it arises from the social custom that a man of high rank is disgraced if his daughter is unmarried, while the same tyrant custom has imposed on him the necessity of spending large sums at his daughters’ weddings. India is not the only country, nor are the Hindoos the only people, whom the tyranny of custom compels to extravagance and disregard of the obligations of common sense and right feeling, and even religious or moral duties. Eight hundred and fifty years ago the Mahomedan armies overran India, and, after a series of fierce struggles, founded the empire of the Great Mogul at Delhi. Cities were sacked, their people massacred, temples and idols overthrown, and thousands of Hindoos were forcibly converted to Mahomedanism. But the fierce torrent soon spent its fury against the stolid wall of Hindooism. Few converts were made after the first few years, the new religion was even modified by the old, and at the present day the Mahomedans of India are scarcely one-tenth of the whole population, though doubtless a very important section of it. Generally speaking, they are a more manly race, as if they still possessed something of their former prestige. But Indian Mahomedanism is but a poor affair after all; it has taken from Hindooism the idea of caste, and the Turk, or even the Persian, would scarcely acknowledge his fellow-worshipper of India. I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat. At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers are dwindling daily. The Parsees of India are almost strangers and foreigners in the land like ourselves, descendants of the old Magi or Fire-worshippers of Persia, who, being driven out of their own country by persecution, have settled in India, where they form a small but very intelligent and respectable section of the community, possessing in a large degree those two rare qualities for an Eastern,—enterprise and public spirit. Several of them are, I believe, settled in London, and may be recognized by the peculiar high glazed hat which they always wear. 10 11 12 13 And in the midst of the 200 millions of dark-skinned people of the land dwell some 130 thousand British white faces, among them, but not of them, and indeed separated from them, not so much by the barriers of language, religion, and social customs, as by the far greater barrier of race, which, let philanthropists say what they will, has been created not without wise and useful purposes. The English in India are often judged harshly and unjustly on this head by their countrymen at home. We are told that we should mix more with the natives, and admit them on a footing of equality with ourselves. But how can you mix socially with men who will neither eat nor drink with you, and who would sooner see their wives and daughters dead than walking about with uncovered faces amongst strange men? The only real intimacy there can be between two races separated so far apart must be confined to those official or business relations in which there is a feeling of common interest; all beyond that must be forced and unnatural. If there is that equality between the races which some pretend, how is it we are there as rulers? I think, for my own part, that nothing is so apt to retard the advance of the weaker race, or to lessen the points of contact between the two, as the attempt to produce a forced and unnatural union, or to preach up an equality which every white man who has lived amongst the dark races knows in his heart does not exist. I have often been asked whether the natives of India like us, and are attached to our rule, and it is rather a difficult question to answer. There cannot be much love or strong liking between people separated so completely in thought and feeling and almost every idea as we are, but there is often a very strong attachment to the individual Englishman placed in authority over, and living much amongst, them, such as an officer commanding a regiment, or a magistrate in charge of a district, an attachment which has often been severely tried (as during the days of the Mutiny), and which has often stood the trial successfully. As to liking for our Government, in the first place the great mass of the people in all probability never give the subject a thought; the present generation have no means of forming a comparison between British and native rule, and look upon the protection they enjoy for life and property as a matter of course. The better educated amongst them are more apt to resent their exclusion from the highest posts, than to be grateful for not having their throats cut and their houses plundered, as they might have been a hundred years ago. The great drawback of our rule is, undoubtedly, that it is one of race over race. The Englishman, bred a free man, is forced into the position of a despot, and, in his endeavours to elevate his Indian subjects to the dignity of free men and the privileges of British citizens, he is rather apt to overdo the matter, and to forget the inherent differences of race; or, to put it in another form, to overlook the fact that our free ideas are the growth of several hundred years, just as their ideas are the growth of as many centuries of an entirely different history. Hence we are apt to see in India many ludicrous travesties of our public meetings, municipal institutions, and the like, at which the native attends to please his English superior, and does pretty well what he is told to do. When the native does attain to a high post, as a rule he is hated by his countrymen, who never thoroughly trust him, and would far sooner see an Englishman in his place. Our attempts then at improvement are up-hill work, and made under all the disadvantages of the stiff and awkward part of our national character, which keeps us isolated even on the European continent. But we do our duty in India, I may fairly say, honestly and thoroughly, and if we have not gained the love, we have, at least, won the respect and confidence of our native subjects. If the motives of the Government are occasionally suspected or misrepresented, the individual Englishman at any rate is implicitly trusted. That is the real strength of our position, and if our Indian empire is ever destroyed by force, it will be through the decay in character of the individual Englishman. It is the fashion in these days to sneer at what is called the selfish and exclusive policy of the old East India Company, and certainly no one could venture to propose now-a-days that the Indian Government should be vested with the power of granting or refusing a licence to any European who wished to visit India. Yet it is impossible not to respect the motive which caused the Company to ask for such a power in days gone by; their feeling that the stability of our rule depended, not upon brute force, but on prestige, on the belief the natives had of the superiority of our national character; and that every individual who, by loose or dishonest conduct, lowered that prestige in the eyes of the natives, was a dangerous enemy to the State, and ought to be removed. And when one sees, as unfortunately we often do see now-a-days in India, a disreputable and ragged fellow-countryman begging from house to house, or staggering about drunk in the native bazar, while the natives look upon him with mingled fear, contempt, and dislike, it is impossible not to wish that the power of deporting such wretched loafers from a country where they do incalculable harm, cannot be freely exercised. And, looking on the reverse of the medal, we may say that what constitutes the great charm of an Anglo-Indian career is the feeling of individual responsibility and importance. The English are so few in number that everyone, whether civilian, soldier, merchant, or what not, as a rule enjoys a far higher position, and has more responsibility on his shoulders than he would have in a corresponding position at home. This applies more especially to the Government officials, charged with the administration of the country, and for that reason, scarcely any career offers such attractions as the Indian Civil Service. A young Englishman, very little past thirty, who, had he remained in England, might have thought himself lucky to be receiving his first brief, or might have been canvassing for the medical charge of a parish dispensary, finds himself governor of a district as large as three English counties, with a population of 300,000 souls, to whom he is the embodiment of the Government, and who look up to him for advice or direction on all possible and impossible subjects. He has extensive civil and criminal jurisdiction in his own court; he looks generally after all the schools in the district, superintends all the roads, bridges, buildings, jails, and municipal works; reports regularly to Government on the agriculture, trade, manufactures, statistics of every kind, and has usually some hobby of his own in addition; either starting agricultural shows, or improving the breed of horses, or lighting the towns with kerozine, or trying some new piece of machinery in the jail, which is the model manufactory of the district. His life may be lonely, for there are often not a dozen of his countrymen in the district. After his day’s work is done, there is neither theatre, opera, 14 15 16 17 nor concert to go to, nothing, indeed, in the shape of public amusement; but he is, in truth, too tired to care for it, and the interest and responsibility of his work compensate him for all. He climbs gradually to a still higher position; perhaps becomes lieutenant-governor of a province as large as Germany, with 40 millions of inhabitants; retires at last from the service to spend the rest of his life in his native land, and finds his name and his services utterly unknown, not merely to the English public, but often to the very Government of which he had thought himself all this time the trusted servant. It is this ignorance, and neglect of all services that are not done at home, except in very rare cases, which are the cause of so much irritation both in India and the colonies; a fourth-rate politician in England, a man who has no power or virtue whatever, save the vulgar “gift of the gab,” is better known and more thought of than the ablest servants of the State 5000 miles away. I have often thought how much good might be done by those in power, if instead of philosophising so much on the exact relations between England and her colonies, and demonstrating so clearly that as they pay no taxes to the Imperial exchequer, they have no right to be defended by the Imperial armies, care was taken to show that the colonies were really considered to be an integral part of the empire, and that good service done there was to be rewarded as if done at home; if a few more royal visits were paid, and a few more ribbons and stars occasionally bestowed; and if some means were found, either by life peerages or otherwise, for the State to avail itself of the experience of those who had grown grey in its service in distant lands, and for those men to feel that their talents and knowledge were valued at home in the great council of the nation. And if you say that you English at home are not interested in this matter, I beg leave to differ, and ask you fairly if every time you look at a map of the world, and see the red colour all over the globe which marks the extent of the British empire, and the great dependencies which have been conquered and colonized by that little island in the north-west corner of Europe, you do not feel a glow of honest pride in the thought that you too are a citizen of that empire on which the sun never sets, and whether that feeling is to be valued in pounds, shillings and pence, or rather, whether you are not willing to pay many pounds in exchange for the right to that feeling. It is that abominable material philosophy of a certain school of the present day, which recognises nothing as really valuable that does not touch the grosser part of our nature, which sneers at patriotism and sentiment of any kind, and makes a god of selfishness, that sometimes frightens those who watch the enormous increase of our national wealth, and the decrease of regard for national duty, and makes them tremble lest we should one day have a rude awakening to the fact that a selfish and exclusive policy is as bad for nations as for individuals. To return to our subject from this digression. To those who cannot look upon their Indian life from the standpoint I have mentioned, a career in India is, it must be owned, but a dreary exile; the time for making fortunes, at any rate in the Government service, is gone; those who retire have seldom much beyond their very moderate pensions, and while the cost of living has steadily increased for many years past, salaries have remained stationary, or even diminished, and work has very much increased. Thus, there can be no doubt that an Indian career has fewer attractions than formerly, and this has been the case ever since the Mutiny—that great landmark in Indian history whose significance is not even yet recognised. That great struggle, remember, was in no sense an uprising of the people against our rule, for, if it had been, we could not have held India for an hour. But though it was, primarily, a military revolt, caused and aggravated by overweening confidence and bad management, it was secondarily, a struggle of conservatism against the further progress of western innovations; it was a protest by caste and tradition against railways, telegraphs, and national education. Attacked under every possible disadvantage, outnumbered in every direction, with our arsenals in the enemy’s hands, and having to fight at the worst season of the year, that handful of the great Anglo-Saxon race turned fiercely to bay, supplied every deficiency by dauntless courage, wise policy, and heroic endurance, and broke the neck of the rebellion under the walls of Delhi, and in the residency of Lucknow, before a single fresh soldier had arrived from England. Since the suppression of the Mutiny, our hold on the empire has been firmer than ever, but it owes less to prestige and more to actual strength. We have been less careful of respecting native opinion than before, more resolute to push on improvements, and the progress made in the last fifteen years in the material development of the country has been undoubtedly greater than in the previous fifty years. But much of the kindly feeling between the conquerors and conquered has gone, and will not soon be restored; the traditions and organizations of the Government services were destroyed, and have not yet been re-settled, and there is no longer that attachment to the country that was seen in the days of old John Company, kindest and best of masters. The remedy for this is not, I think, a return to the old state of things, which is indeed impossible, but more close and intimate relations between India and England, until our native subjects feel that they are really regarded as part of the British empire. The more they visit England, and the more we visit India, the more will each understand and appreciate the other. We have no enemy now in India, except popular ignorance, and that we are doing our best to remove by the most complete system of State education that has yet been devised in any country. And now I must touch on a subject on which many of you will, perhaps, expect some information. How about the progress of Christianity in India? Well, I fear it must be owned that it is extremely slow. I dare say I might be contradicted by many missionaries, but then I am not a missionary. I have the highest respect for them as a body; many I have known personally, and know to be able men; but undoubtedly their success, if judged by the number of converts, is very small, in Upper India at least; and though doubtless they do much good by keeping up the schools that are attached to every mission, that good has very little to do with the progress of Christianity. As translators of the Bible into the various Indian languages, they have been more successful, and many of them are amongst the most 18 19 20 21 22 accomplished linguists of the East. I am inclined to think that much of this ill-success is owing to the forgetfulness of how universal and comprehensive Christianity is. The best proof of that is that, having originated in the East, it has yet so completely conquered the West. But in that conquest it has in some respects assumed a Western garb, and I fear our missionaries often forget that this Western garb is not essential, and that so long as the life and doctrine of the Great Master are followed and understood, the peculiar form to be taken by the latter is a matter of little importance. This is not the place to enter fully into a discussion of this sort, though it was impossible for me to avoid it altogether. But I believe I am only echoing the opinions of many thoughtful and earnest Christians, like the late excellent Bishop Cotton, of Calcutta, in saying that our efforts should be rather directed to create a native Indian Church, than to reproduce the Church of England in India; and that controversial epistles addressed to Western Churches, and dealing with questions arising out of the doctrines of Western philosophy, are puzzling rather than edifying to a convert in India. Of the state of the Arts and Manufactures in India, all of you can form some judgment yourselves by an inspection of the beautiful specimens collected in the Indian annexe of the International Exhibition. Some of the once famous Indian manufactures have almost disappeared in modern times, such as the Dacca muslin, of which it was said that a full-sized dress piece could be drawn through a finger ring. Native architecture too of the present day is tawdry and meretricious. But Cashmere is still famous for its wonderful shawls, in which we know not which to admire most, the beauty of the fabric, or the exquisite patterns and harmonious contrast of colours; Agra still executes that beautiful inlaid stone-work, which is yet only one of the wonders of the Taj Mehal; Delhi and Benares send gorgeous embroideries, heavy with gold and rich in colouring; Cuttack furnishes its exquisite silver filagree work; Sealkote, its steel inlaid with gold in arabesque patterns; Bombay, its massive and curiously-carved ebony furniture. But Art can never attain to its highest development in the absence of a healthy national life, and it is to former ages we must turn for structures like some of the Hindoo Temples, or the great mosque at Delhi, or “the Dream in Marble” at Agra (the Taj Mehal), and even the artistic manufactures I have named are legacies from the past, that are apt to degenerate at the present day into a grotesque copying of European designs. Yet there is an indwelling spirit of artistic grace in the East that will not easily die, which you see in the instinctive choice of colours in the clothes of the very poorest on a holiday festival,—in the shape of the commonest earthenware utensils,—in the very salutation that you get from the poorest peasant in the fields. Mahomedanism is certainly no friend to sculpture or painting, for it takes in a very literal sense the prohibition of the Jewish decalogue to “make no likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.” No good Mussulman will even have his portrait taken, and geometric forms or the flowing Arabic sentences from the Koran are the proper ornaments of the orthodox mosque. But the prohibition has been relaxed at least in the case of flowers, and the exquisite carving and inlaid work of the Taj are almost unapproachable in excellence, while the fretted marble screens at Jyepore and elsewhere are more like lace than stone. I can tell you but little of the inner life of all these millions of our fellow-subjects, for it is jealously guarded from European eyes; they and their white masters lead a separate existence, as I have already said, in all that concerns social and domestic matters, the one living in their towns and villages, the others in their stations or cantonments from one to five miles distant. But in their external life, which we do see, they are generally a quiet and simple race, temperate in their living, patient and much-enduring, not deficient in courage, great fatalists and very superstitious; of strong domestic affections; fond of holiday making and childish amusements. Public spirit, philanthropy, chivalrous feeling, high principle, truth, chastity and generosity,—these, as we all know, are the outgrowths, if not of Christianity, at least of a healthy national life; and in these qualities natives are, as a rule, deficient. But this at least may be said, that those amongst us who see most of and live most amongst them like them the best, and are the readiest to admit their many good qualities, and to acknowledge that, in spite of the differences created by religion, colour, race, climate, and manners, there is no such great difference, after all, in human nature. 23 24 25 And now I should like to tell you something more of Indian life in its English aspect, and make you congratulate yourselves or regret (according to your tastes) that your lot has not been cast in India. Well, an Indian up-country Station, say in Northern India, is a piece of very flat ground, divided by very straight roads into very square patches, or “compounds” as we call them, which are bounded by prickly cactus hedges, or often by low mud walls. In each “compound,” or enclosure, stands a one-storied house, with more or fewer rooms, and of greater or less size, according to the rent paid for it. Behind and near the house is a row of mud huts inhabited by your servants, a range of stables, and a kitchen or cook-house, whose very primitive arrangements would drive an English cook into a lunatic asylum, but in which your native chef manages to turn out very presentable dinners. Part of the compound is occupied by the garden, in which your Malee, or native gardener, grows vegetables, which naturally cost you a great deal more than if you bought them in the bazar. However, if you want peas and beans, you must grow them, for they are not to be found in the town; the natives don’t eat them themselves, for neither their fathers, nor their grandfathers, nor their great-grandfathers did so, and why should they? Potatoes having been introduced some 400 years or so, are now beginning to be eaten in some parts of the country by the people, not I suspect without many misgivings lest they should be suddenly converted to Christianity by eating white men’s food. Besides English vegetables grown from imported seeds, the kitchen garden produces some very nasty native vegetables, trees growing plums and peaches only fit for tarts, a bed of strawberries if you are very lucky, a patch of Indian corn, and last, not least, two or three mangoe trees, from which you get the only fruit fit to eat in Northern India, unless I except the melon. But let us go into the house and pay our respects to the lady. A sable attendant (as the novels say) is asleep in the verandah, and is with some difficulty aroused—“Mem sahib hai?” Is the lady in? “Han, sahib,”—Yes, sir. You send in your card, for no native can be entrusted with the task of pronouncing English surnames, and a story is told of a new arrival ignorant of this fact who, desiring the native footman to announce him as the Honourable Hastings Sahib, to distinguish him from a Mr. Hastings who was not Honourable, was considerably disconcerted at being announced as Horrible Estink Sahib. The man has returned and says we are to go in; so we enter and find the lady (looking very like most English ladies, only perhaps rather paler), seated in the drawing-room, the punkah swinging violently, for it is the hot weather. You see the room is a good-sized one, at least 20 feet high, with six or eight doors in it, all indispensable for ventilation; the floor covered with China matting which is cooler than a carpet; not too much furniture in it, for that would make it look hot, but a piano, books, and flowers at least, and a few pictures on the wall. The master of the house is not visible; he is either at his office, working in a room crowded with natives and the thermometer at 96°, or taking it easy in his own room, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, smoking, and reading or writing. We sit down and talk to the lady about the dreadful heat of the weather, the chance of her going to the hills, the good looks of the last arrived young lady in the station, the dinner party at the Brigadier’s the night before, and the chances of getting up private theatricals next cold weather. If she is very civil, she may ask us to stay to tiffin, when we are regaled with salmon from England, in hermetically sealed tins, curry and rice generally very good, and Bass’s pale ale, invariably termed beer in India; after this, we take our leave; the lady probably takes her siesta, and then in the evening goes out for a drive to the band and returns to dinner. As to your own mode of life, if you are a sensible man, you will always rise early in the hot weather, say at five o’clock, and get a walk or ride in the cool of the morning, coming home before seven to what is called “little breakfast,” where you drink tea and eat fruit if there is any, or iced mangoe fool; after which, you had better read or write till it is time for regular breakfast, and then go away to your office. Men holding official positions get a pretty good spell of desk-work every day; they are far better off than those who are not forced to work hard, for the heat is so enervating that it is very difficult to work as an amateur. If you can get a month’s holiday, of course you run up to the hills, where at an elevation of 7000 feet above the sea level, you find yourself in a charming climate and beautiful scenery. The Governor-General and all the heads of departments go up now regularly for six months out of the twelve, like sensible men, for which they get well abused by the press, the editors being obliged to stay in the hot plains. Men who can afford it send their wives and children up every hot weather, and run up there when they can get short leave. It is expensive work, but if you want to keep your children alive, there is no resource but the hills or England; they wither and die in the plains like plucked flowers. In the cold weather, life is much better; the absentees return from the hills and society rouses itself up for a little gaiety. If you are a sportsman, you can generally get shooting of some sort, and occasionally fishing, or you may have a spell of life in tents, and go about like the patriarchs of old, literally “with your flocks and your herds and your little ones,”—for you take every single thing with you, and travel at the rapid pace of ten or twelve miles a day. The duplicate tents go on the previous night on bullock-carts, or camels, and when you ride to your new camp in the morning, you find them ready pitched under a clump of trees, and breakfast waiting; after which you set to your work as if at home. The tent you have slept in was struck when you started, and travels on during the day at the rate of a mile an hour, for bullocks won’t be hurried and the roads are not over good. In the evening, the elders of the village come and pay their respects to you, chat about the state of the crops, or the amount of fever in the district, which generally results in a request to you for some medicine, especially quinine. You may go out for an hour or two into the neighbouring sugar or mustard fields, and knock over some peafowl or partridge; after which it is time for dinner, and then cold enough for a camp fire. There are few who do not enjoy camp life, for a time at least; when you have to go about alone, i.e. with no 26 27 28 29 fellow-countryman, and may not hear your own language spoken for four or five months together, it is apt to get monotonous. No one, as I have said, makes fortunes in India now, the time has gone by; salaries are higher than in England, of course, but the expenses are enormous. The nabob of the old novels, with a yellow face like a baboon and a dried-up liver, passionate in temper, telling impossible tiger stories, and suddenly turning up in England with a hookah, two or three black servants, and several lakhs of rupees for the hero and heroine—is a thing of the past. His successor was dear old Colonel Newcome in fiction, or better still, Henry and John Lawrence, James Outram, Herbert Edwardes, John Nicholson, Henry Durand, and men of that stamp, in reality, wise in council, resolute in action, God-fearing always, with duty ever present before them as the one motive of their lives; strong men to whom both their countrymen and native subjects looked up, as worthy to rule and to be obeyed. It may be useful if I say a word as to the cost of living in India; this has, doubtless, greatly increased within the last ten years, but of course admits of very varied estimate according to a man’s tastes and idiosyncrasies. I have known a subaltern live on 150 rupees a month, which may be set down as the smallest possible sum for a single man, and if you double that sum a young man should live comfortably on it, without being able to indulge in any extravagancies. Many young married couples live on this, but they must exercise great self-denial to do so, and this of course is for current expenditure, and makes no allowance (in their case at least) for first cost of furniture, horses, travelling expenses, &c. The unit of coinage is the rupee, which, though nominally worth 2s., is practically given wherever you would in England give 1s., or even sometimes 6d. But, although this is the case, there is some compensating advantage in the fact, that there is not much temptation to extravagance in India, and that social life in the up-country stations is on an easy and natural footing that prevents any foolish ostentation on the one hand, or on the other, any inability to mix in society on the ground of not being able to afford it. This arises from two causes: First, that few men in India have private fortunes, and anyone may know the amount of his neighbour’s income by simple reference to the pay code. Secondly, that the society, except in a few large places, is so limited that everyone who can make himself or herself agreeable is welcome on that account, and can enjoy hospitality freely without an uneasy sense of obligation arising from inability to return it in kind. On the whole, I think Anglo-Indian society is pleasant and agreeable; few men suffer from ennui, or think everything a bore; most of the men are interested in their work and talk a certain amount of shop...