THE SITUATION IN INDIA.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."]
Macphail's letter in your last issue has recalled to me a passage in Wilks's "Mysore," a very interesting but, I believe, little-known book, published in 1817. Wilke narrates that at the siege of Dindigul by the British in 1791 (it was held for Tippu Sultan), " during the whole of two days on which the British batteries were firing for a breach, several ploughs were quietly at work within a thousand yards of the batteries, as if to realize those fables of the golden age, which represent the Indian husbandmen as uniformly undisturbed by contending armies." This passage has always appeared to me to illustrate most forcibly the passive attitude of the Indian peasant to political turmoils going on around him. He is the most conservative of mortals ; he is the same under the British rule as he has been under Rajahs and Nawabs from time immemorial.—I am, Sir, &c.,
GEO. CHRYSTIE, Colonel.
Short Heath Lodge, Farnham, Surrey.
Previous page
