Chapter II: Second Period: Bengal Provinces (2)

The Mahratta kingdom covered the greater part of the area of the Mahratta-speaking people. But the Peishwa sent his lieutenants to collect chout, or black-mail, in Northern India; and one of these lieutenants, Mahadaji Sindia, became a greater man than his master. Sindia always professed to be the loyal servant of the Peishwa, and yet he managed to exercise a commanding influence at Poona. It was Mahadaji Sindia who carried off the Great Mogul to Delhi in 1771 and established a dominion in Hindustan, extending from the Gwalior territory northward over the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges. The other lieutenants were only beginning to play their parts in history; they included Holkar of Indore, the Gaekwar of Baroda, and the Bhonsla Raja of Berar in the Deccan, immediately to the northward of the Nizam.

[Sidenote: British relations with Berar.]

Very soon after the battle of Plassy, the British at Calcutta came into contact with the Bhonsla Raja of Berar. It was the Bhonsla Raja who compelled the later Nawabs of Bengal to pay chout, and to cede Cuttack; and when Lord Clive had concluded his settlement with the Great Mogul and the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, he advised the Court of Directors to pay chout on condition of getting back Cuttack. But the Directors did not want Cuttack and would not pay black-mail; and the Bhonsla Raja pressed his demand at convenient intervals, but wisely abstained from invading the Bengal provinces.

[Sidenote: Bombay and the Peishwas.]

Meanwhile, the British at Bombay had come into contact with the Mahrattas at Poona. For years the East India Company had been anxious to hold two important positions close to Bombay harbour, namely, the little island of Salsette and the little peninsula of Bassein. But the Mahrattas had wrested Salsette and Bassein from the Portuguese, and would not part with them on any terms. A civil war, however, had broken out in the Mahratta country. A Peishwa had been murdered. An uncle ascended the throne, but was banished on suspicion of being the murderer. He applied for help to the British at Bombay, and offered to cede the coveted positions if the British at Bombay would restore him to the Mahratta capital. The Governor and Council at Bombay closed with the offer, and the war began.

[Sidenote: Disastrous retreat.]

After some successes, the British at Bombay met with disaster. Mahadaji Sindia appeared at Poona with a large army to act against the banished Peishwa. A British force advanced from Bombay towards Poona, but took alarm at the report of Sindia's army, and suddenly halted, and beat a retreat. During the return march, the British force was environed by the Mahrattas, and finally surrendered to Sindia under what is known as the "Convention of Wurgaum."

[Sidenote: Success of Warren Hastings.]

Warren Hastings condemned the war from the outset; as, however, the Company was committed to a war, he exerted himself, in the teeth of Francis, to maintain British prestige in India. He sent an expedition, under Colonel Goddard, from Bengal to the Mahratta country, and detached another force under Captain Popham to capture Sindia's fortress at Gwalior. The success of these exploits electrified half India. The war was brought to a triumphant close, but all conquered territories, excepting Salsette and Bassein, were restored to the Mahrattas. Indeed, Warren Hastings was not a conqueror like Clive; he acquired no territory during his régime, excepting that of Benares, which was ceded to the Company by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.

[Sidenote: Three Asiatic powers in India.]

§12. During the Mahratta war secret negotiations were carried on between the Indian powers for a confederation against the British. The two great powers of the Deccan--the Mahrattas on the west representing the Hindus, and the Nizam on the east representing the Mohammedans--had hated one another for the greater part of a century. A third power, that of a Mohammedan adventurer named Hyder Ali, was becoming formidable further south on the western tableland of the peninsula. Hyder Ali is said to have once served as a sepoy in the French army. Later on, he entered the service of the Hindu Raja of Mysore, and eventually ousted the Raja, usurped the sovereign authority, and conquered the countries round about.

[Sidenote: Hyder Ali of Mysore.]

For many years Hyder Ali was the Ishmael of the Deccan and peninsula. His hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against him. He invaded alike the territories of the Mahrattas and the Nizam in the Deccan, and those of the Nawab of the Carnatic up to the suburbs of Madras and Fort St. George. At the same time, he more than once exasperated the British by his secret dealings with the French at Pondicherry.

[Sidenote: Invasion of the Carnatic, 1780: breaking up of the confederation.]

About 1779 Warren Hastings was warned that the three powers--the Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder Ali--were preparing for simultaneous attacks on Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and that a large Mahratta army was already on the move from Berar territory for the invasion of the Bengal provinces. In 1780 Hyder Ali desolated the Carnatic with an army of a hundred thousand men, but he was the only one of the three allies that kept to his engagement, and was eventually driven back by Sir Eyre Coote, one of the half-forgotten warriors of the eighteenth century. The Nizam did nothing; he probably waited to see what the others would do. The Mahrattas of Berar encamped in great force in the hills and jungles of Orissa, but only appear to have wanted a money present; and after wasting several months they were induced by Warren Hastings to return to Berar. No movement of any kind was undertaken against Bombay; and thus the strange confederation of Mohammedans and Mahrattas melted away.

[Sidenote: Parliament interferes.]

§13. The quarrels, the wars, and the irregularities of Warren Hastings induced the British Parliament to attempt radical changes. The antagonism between Philip Francis and Warren Hastings had led to a duel, in which Francis was wounded; and he returned to England to pour his bitter prejudices against Warren Hastings into the ears of Burke and Fox. The result was that a bitter animosity was excited, not only against Warren Hastings, but against the East India Company; and Parliament was called upon to decide whether the control of the administration of British India ought not to be transferred from the Court of Directors to the British Crown. The main question was one of patronage. The patronage of Indian appointments would render the Crown too powerful, as the elder Pitt had foreseen in the days of Clive; and George III. was already straining his royal prerogative over Parliament and Ministers to an extent which was exciting alarm.

[Sidenote: Fox's India Bill, 1783.]

In 1783, when the coalition ministry of Charles James Fox and Lord North was in power, Fox brought forward a bill for abolishing the Court of Directors, and transferring their authority and patronage to seven Commissioners nominated by Ministers. The bill was passed by the Commons, but George III. opposed it, and it was rejected by the Lords.

[Sidenote: Pitt creates a board of control, 1784.]

In 1784 William Pitt the younger brought in another bill, which left the Directors in full possession of their power and patronage, but brought them under the strict supervision of a Board of Control, consisting of six privy councillors nominated by the Crown. Henceforth the President of the Board of Control, who was always a member of the Cabinet, was the centre of all authority, and was strictly responsible to Parliament for the conduct of Indian affairs.

[Sidenote: Trial of Warren Hastings.]

§14. Warren Hastings returned to England in 1785 to find that the minds of Burke, Fox, and other leading statesmen had been poisoned against him by Philip Francis. Eventually he was impeached by the Commons and tried by the Lords in Westminster Hall. Hastings was certainly responsible for the Rohilla war, and also responsible for the execution of Nundcomar; but the crowning charge against him was that he had connived at the torture of the servants of the Oudh Begums by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh. The charge was painted in terrible colours by Sheridan, and it may be as well to sum up the actual facts.

[Sidenote: Case of the Oudh Begums.]

A Nawab Vizier of Oudh died in 1775, leaving treasure to the value of some two or three millions sterling in the public treasury at Lucknow. The son and successor of the deceased ruler naturally assumed possession on the ground that the money was state property; but his mother and grandmother, known as the two Begums, claimed it as private property, which the late Nawab Vizier had made over to them as a gift. Warren Hastings declined to interfere. Philip Francis, however, insisted that the British Government ought to interfere; and eventually the money was made over to the Begums on the condition that they paid some quarter of a million towards the State debt due to the East India Company.

[Sidenote: Did Hastings connive at torture?]

During the Mahratta war money was urgently required. The Nawab Vizier owed large arrears to the Company, but could not pay up unless he recovered possession of the State treasures. Philip Francis had returned to England. Accordingly Warren Hastings abandoned the Begums to the tender mercies of the Nawab Vizier, and connived at the imprisonment of their servants. It subsequently appeared that the Nawab Vizier tortured the servants until the money was surrendered, but there is no evidence to show that Warren Hastings connived at the torture.

[Sidenote: Services of Hastings.]

Warren Hastings was undoubtedly a man of great abilities and marvellous energy. His services to the East India Company, and to British interests in India, are beyond all calculation. But he was exposed to great temptation in times when public virtue was less exalted than it has been in the present generation, and he was hedged around with enemies who were spiteful and unscrupulous enough to misrepresent any and every transaction. His errors were those of his time, but his genius is stamped for ever on the history of British India. His misdeeds cannot be entirely overlooked, but he paid a bitter penalty. For many months he was threatened by the proceedings which culminated in his trial at Westminster Hall. Eventually he was acquitted of all charges, but his trial was protracted over seven long years and ruined his private fortunes and public career.

[Sidenote: Merits as an administrator.]

After the lapse of a hundred years, the flaws in the character of Warren Hastings may be condoned in consideration of his merits as an administrator. He found the Bengal provinces in chaos, and introduced light and order. He converted British traders into revenue collectors, magistrates, and judges, but he established Courts of Appeal to supervise their proceedings; and if his magistrates and judges had no legal training, they were at any rate Britons with a national sense of justice, and their decisions were infinitely better than those of Bengal zemindars, without law, or justice, or control. Warren Hastings kept a watchful eye on British interests as well as on the welfare of the people under his charge. He sent a mission to Tibet, which shows his anxiety for the extension of trade. He recorded a touching tribute to the memory of Augustus Cleveland, a young Bengal civilian who had done much to humanise and elevate the rude Sonthals of the Rajmahal hills, which sufficiently proves his sympathy with the well-being of the masses. Altogether, if Warren Hastings is not so free from blame as he is represented by his friends, he certainly was not so black as he has been painted by his enemies.

[Sidenote: Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93.]

§15. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis, an independent peer, was appointed Governor-General. This event marks a change in British rule. Lord Cornwallis was the first British peer, and the first Englishman not in the service of the East India Company, who was appointed to the post of Governor-General. He carried out two measures which have left their mark in history, namely, the perpetual settlement with the Bengal zemindars, and the reform of the judicial system.

[Sidenote: Perpetual settlement.]

The settlement with the Bengal zemindars was still awaiting a decision. Lord Cornwallis was anxious to arrange the land revenue of the Bengal provinces on English lines. He abandoned the yearly leases, and concluded leases for ten years, with the view of eventually declaring the settlement to be perpetual. Mr. John Shore, a Bengal civilian, pressed for a preliminary inquiry into the rights of the ryots, for the purpose of fixing the rents. But Lord Cornwallis was opposed to any further delay. In 1793 he proclaimed that the ten years settlement would be perpetual; that the tenant-rights of ryots would be left to future inquiry; and that henceforth the Bengal zemindars would be invested with the proprietary rights enjoyed by English landlords, so long as they paid the fixed yearly revenue to Government and respected all existing rights of ryots and cultivators.

[Sidenote: Judicial reforms.]

The judicial system introduced by Warren Hastings was modified by Lord Cornwallis. The British collector, as already seen, was also magistrate and civil judge. Lord Cornwallis decided that a collector ought to have no judicial duties under which he might be called on to adjudicate in revenue questions. Accordingly a regulation was passed under which the duties of revenue collector were separated from those of magistrate and judge, and the magistrate and judge was to be the head of the district, whilst the revenue collector was his subordinate. It is difficult to understand the merits of this measure. Since then the two offices have been sometimes united and sometimes separated. Eventually the two offices of magistrate and collector were united in the same person.

[Sidenote: Non-intervention.]

Four provincial Courts of Circuit and Appeal were created by Lord Cornwallis, and remained without alteration for a period of forty years. One Court was at Calcutta, a second at Dacca, a third at Murshedabad, and a fourth at Patna. Each Court consisted of three civilian judges and three Asiatic expounders of the law, namely, a Mohammedan cazi and mufti, and a Hindu pundit. The judges sat in their respective cities to hear appeals in civil cases; and they went twice a year on circuit to try the prisoners who had been committed by the district magistrates within their respective jurisdictions.

[Sidenote: Munsifs and darogahs.]

Lord Cornwallis also created a class of Hindu civil judges named munsifs, and a new body of Asiatic police under the name of darogahs. These changes are best dealt with in connection with modern reforms which will be brought under review in a future chapter.

[Sidenote: First war against Tippu.]

Lord Cornwallis was engaged in two campaigns against Tippu of Mysore, the son and successor of Hyder Ali. The war is a thing of the past. Tippu had invaded the territory of the Hindu Raja of Travancore, who was under British protection; and a triple alliance was formed against him as a common enemy by the British Government, the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. In the end Tippu was reduced to submission and compelled to cede half his territories, which were distributed amongst the three allies. The confederation, which only lasted to the end of the war, is memorable for suggesting the idea of maintaining the peace of India by a balance of power, which for a brief interval dazzled the imaginations of Anglo-Indian statesmen.[15]

[Sidenote: Shore, 1793-98; abolition of "dharna."]

In 1793 Lord Cornwallis was succeeded by Sir John Shore, the Bengal civilian who pressed Lord Cornwallis to settle the rights and rents of the ryots before proclaiming the perpetual settlement with the zemindars. He is better known by his later title of Lord Teignmouth. He was the first British ruler who suppressed a Hindu institution. He put a stop to "sitting in dharna," a Hindu usage which was subversive of all justice and all law. It was based on the superstitious belief that the life of a Brahman was as sacred as that of a sovereign, and that killing a Brahman, or being in any way implicated in his death, was the most hideous crime that could be committed by mortal man. Any Brahman might ruin a Hindu, either for private revenge or to avenge another, by sitting at his door and refusing to take food. The victim was as helpless as a bird under the fascination of a serpent. He dared not eat so long as the Brahman fasted. He dared not move lest the Brahman should injure himself or kill himself--a catastrophe which would doom the victim to excommunication in this life and perdition in the next. The terrors of this superstition were removed by a British regulation passed in 1797; and although "sitting in dharna" is still a crime under the Penal Code, the memory of the usage is passing away.[16]

Sir John Shore strictly adhered to the old policy of non-intervention, which amounted to political isolation. Meanwhile the Mahratta powers united to demand enormous arrears of chout from the Nizam; and the Nizam was utterly defeated, prostrated and paralysed. All hope of a balance of power for the maintenance of the peace of India was thus cast to the winds. Finally, as if to show beyond all question the absurdity of the idea, the Mahratta powers were at war with each other for the mastery at Poona. Such was the state of affairs in 1798 when Lord Mornington, better known by his later title of Marquis of Wellesley, succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor-General, boasting, as he left Europe, that he was going to govern India from a throne with the sceptre of a statesman, and not from behind a counter with the yard measure of a trader.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa are known to
Europeans by the one name of Bengal. Bengal proper includes the delta
of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Behar is the frontier province towards
Oudh, having its capital at Patna. Orissa lies to the south of Behar
and Bengal proper, but Cuttack and the hilly country to the south and
west had been ceded to the Mahrattas. The Orissa of the period
comprises little more than Midnapore; but the high-sounding title was
still retained of Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. After the
Mahratta wars of 1803, the British took possession of Cuttack and
remaining portions of Orissa, in order to hold the sea-board against
invasion.

[8] In the present day there are forty-five districts in the Bengal
provinces, namely, thirty-seven regulation and eight non-regulation.
The distinction between the two classes of districts will be explained
hereafter.

[9] The first portrait of Warren Hastings was exhibited at the
Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. The second portrait is still hanging in the
Council Chamber at the India Office at Westminster.

[10] See Holwell's _Historical Events in Bengal_.

[11] The control over the country police was also transferred from the
zemindars to the new magistrates and collectors. This measure was good
in itself, but attended with disadvantages, which will be brought
under review hereafter.

[12] The old Sudder Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay finally
disappeared in 1862, when they were amalgamated with the Supreme
Courts, which will be described hereafter, and which, up to that date,
were exclusively composed of barrister judges. In the present day they
are forgotten by all but lawyers familiar with a past generation, yet
the Sudder Courts played their part in the history of the past. In the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Marquis of Wellesley was
Governor-General, three civilians were appointed judges in the Sudder,
one being a member of Council and the Chief Judge in the room of the
Governor-General.

[13] The defence of Sir Elijah Impey has been thoroughly investigated
from a legal point of view, in the _Story of Nuncomar and the
Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey_, by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

[14] Two centuries have passed away since the death of Sivaji, yet in
June, 1885, a public meeting was held at Poona to take steps for
repairing his tomb. His admirers styled him the Wallace of the Deccan.

[15] Lord Cornwallis carried out important reforms in the Bengal army,
and thus enabled his successors to build up the larger Indian empire.
The British army in India, Asiatic and European, will be brought under
review it Chapter V., which deals with the sepoy revolt of 1857-58.

[16] The abolition of "sitting in dharna" by Sir John Shore was the
first great social reform which was carried out in India under British
rule. In 1802 Lord Wellesley abolished the still more horrible
practice of sacrificing living children by throwing them to the
alligators at the mouth of the Ganges; whilst the once famous rite of
suttee, or the burning of living widows with their dead husbands, was
practised under British rule down to 1829, when it was abolished by
Lord William Bentinck.