• A NATIVE STATE.* THERE is probably no one subject
whatever upon which the aver- age Englishman knows leas than the history of the minor Indian sovereignties. That such and such a State exists he is usually aware, because he has heard either of a war with it, or of its revolt, or of its annexation, but there his information ends. Whether the State is small or great, ruled by a Mussulman or Hindoo, developed like Oude from a pashalic, or, like Oodeypore, older than the rIgime under which Pashas were appointed, a geogra- phical expression like Owalior, or, like Travancore, a true kingdom, with a history more ancient than that of Great Britain, he never bears and, to speak truth, very seldom cares. His interest in India is confined to the British period, and he looks on the Empire as one vast and uniform dependency, peopled with "natives" who pay taxes, and get up rebellions, and sometimes give a great deal of trouble, and some few of whom are decorated with bar- barous titles, and claim a long and, as he imagines, quite fictitious
• Bhopal : the History 0/a Native State and its Bolen A Lscture. By Atoj,r 0. B. MUIV11011.
pedigree. When he is told that there is one Prince in India whose ancestors were ruling before Solomon died, another who still exercises over millions the power of life and death which his family obtained when Britons were offering human sacrifices, and a third who is autocrat of dominions larger than Great Britain, inhabited by a population probably approaching to that of Spain, he simply stares, and the facts having no connection with any other facts previously existing in his mind, forgets them aarapidly as he can. A scene like the Great Durbar at Lahore strikes him as phenomenal, and he reads a book like The Private Life of an Eastern King with the sort of interest with which his father read Lauder's or Clapper- ton's sketches of the chiefs in Central Africa. Considering the time during which Englishmen have virtually reigned in India, the cause of this ignorance is a little curious. There are really no books upon these States, not even a good sketch of India as it is outside the British dominion. In the current histories the native States are named when they come in contact with the British, and there exist a few works on one or two kingdoms, incomparably the best being Todd's Rajasthan and The History of the Marhattas by the late Mr. Grant Duff. But histories of the Indian kingdoms, either native or foreign, scarcely exist except in reports lost in the archives of the India House, and the majority of them are simply forgotten.
Major Malleson, the able scholar whose essays have been once or twice before quoted in these columns, has endeavoured so far as one State is concerned to lift the veil. We question if one in ten of our readers ever heard of Bhopal, yet it is a kingdom of some antiquity, still existing, and with a very picturesque history. It was founded by an Afghan noble of high birth named Post Mahommed, who about a hundred and eighty years ago seized a territory of some 4,000 square miles, inhabited by half a million of people, and in 1707 declared it a separate and independent State. Surrounded on all sides by great Ifindoo powers, Scindia, Holkax, and the Nagpore Maharajah, all hostile, all of a different creed, and each strong enough to crush Bhopal, the new family still contrived to hold its own. It had always some one belonging to it, a brother, or a premier, or a favourite, who could command armies effectively, and it pro- duced two women who in the crisis of its fate chose the right side. The Founder had been succeeded of course by princes who were effete, but their feebleness was of the character which does not disable men from selecting decent agents, and all through the reigns of the son and three grandsons who succeeded each other, Hindoo Premiers managed the affairs of the little State with tolerable success. They were guided by a woman called by the Court the Mahjee Sahibah, the widow of the founder's son, who after exercising power for years at last stood forward with the consent of the reigning Nawab, a mere devotee, as Regent of Bhopal.
"I would pause for an instant to dwell upon ihe character of this Prin- cess. She was born in Upper Hindustan, of obscure parentage. Her name was Mumullah. She had been united at an early age to Nawab Yar Mahommed, son of the founder of the family, by the tie of Nikah. She had no children of her own, but the best proof of the estimation in which she was held may be derived from the fact that all members of the family addressed her as Mahjee Sahibah (Lady Mother). Sir John Malcolm tells us that 'from the account given of her conduct, under the most trying circumstances, it seems difficult to pronounce whether she was most remarkable for the humanity of her disposition or the excellence of her judgment. She was beloved and respected by all. Her memory is still cherished by the natives, both Hindoo and Mahom- medan, of Bhopal; and it is consoling to see, in the example of her life, that, even amid scenes of violence and crime, goodness enS virtue, when combined with spirit and sense, maintain that superiority which belongs alone to the higher qualities of our nature, and which, without these, can be permanently conferred-by neither title nor station.' "
Her first caie was to provide a good Premier, and for this end she selected a Brahmin, named Fowled, converted to Mahom- medanism and adopted into the family, and his brother, Chutta, the latter of whom she thoroughly educated for supreme power. These men administered the State in turn, but the Mahjee Sahibah retained the supreme authority, and when in 1778 the war between Warren Hastings and the Marhattas threatened British power in Bengal with extinction, the old lady had the foresight to perceive on which side the true strength lay. In the midst of the vain protests and menaces of the Marhatta Princes around her she, after the British had been defeated at Wurgaum, declared for their side, fed Colonel Goddard's little army of rescue, and laid the foundation of an alliance which eighty years afterwards helped to preserve British power in Central India.
Fifty years later, after Bhopal had passed under the rule of various members of the same family, almost all of whom were distinguished either as statesmen, or as warriors, or as scoundre]s, —one of them earned for himself even in India the title of the Great Lie,"—Bhopal again fell to a woman, Koodsia Begum, widow of the last Nawab, who at seventeen was proclaimed Regent of the Stats. "Her character, scarcely formed when she assumed the regency, soon showed a power of will and a consistency, for which, up to that time, few had given her credit. This was first displayed by her firm persistent support of Balthazar Bourbon, the Christian minister who had possessed the confidence of her hus- band, notwithstanding many intrigues against him, both inside and outside the circle of her own family." An ambitious and self- confident woman, she refused to resign her power when the nearest male heir reached his majority, but after a lengthened contest, during which her rival laid a plan for her assassination and that of most of the nobles of Bhopal, but shrank when his plot was on the eve of success from shedding so muchblood, she was compelled under the award of the British Government to resign the throne to her son-in-law, the husband of her daughter Secunder Beguin. He only reigned six years, and then after one brief struggle with the Western ideas of inheritance entertained by the British Govern- ment, Secunder, the extraordinary woman who now rules Bhopal, mounted the throne as Regent :—
"The character of Secunder Begum is well illustrated by an incident which followed the death of her husband. Ignorant of her talents, the British Agent, not quite in the spirit of the orders he had received, inti- mated that her mother's brother, Foujdar Mahommed, was to be sole Regent, whilst Secunder Begum was to be intrusted with the education of her daughter, the future ruler. This arrangement was not at all con- sonant to the wishes of that lady, and when the Agent, in a bland man- ner, attempted to explain to her the important nature of her duties as guardian to her daughter, she turned furiously to him, and exclaimed, 'Am I then a Dhaee (wet-nurse)?'"
The Government persisted, but their nominee broke down, and in 1847, Secunder, the third woman who in eighty years had ruled Bhopal, was acknowledged by Lord Hardinge sole Regent, the Sovereignty still, however, belonging to her daughter. "In that capacity she had a large field for her talents, and she fully justified all the expectations that had been formed regarding her. Her administration was remarkable for vigour and ability. In six years she was able to rep'ort to the British Government that she had paid off the entire public debt of the State ; that she had abolished the system of farming the revenue, and had made her own engagements with the heads of villages ; that monopolies of trades and handicrafts had ceased ; that she had re-organized the police ; brought the mint under her own management, and affected many other improvements. She had displayed in fact in all departments of the State an energy, an assiduity, and an administrative ability such as would have done credit to a trained statesman." We may add what Major Malleson omits, that she was by far the most successful banker in Central India, where tales of her financial exploits are still current among the people. Ambitious and conscious of administrative power, the one passion of her life was to be acknowledged as Sovereign in her own right, and for- tune and the family traditions alike favoured her effort. The mutinies broke out in 1857, and in the teeth of her relatives, her subjects, and her army, of a pressure social and religious such as an old Catholic noble would feel if ordered to help Garibaldi in an attack on the Pope, the able woman declared that the de- scendants of Mahommed Khan had never swerved from their loyalty to the British, and like Mahjee Sahibah aided the apparently hopeless cause :—
"In the month of June she expelled from the city a jemadar whom she had caught in the act of raising troops for some nnavowed purpose. In July she afforded shelter to the British officers who had been driven from Indere by the mutinous troops of Holkar. She did this, too in spite of a strong opposition on the part of her own subjects, and under a sense of her inability to render aught but a passive aid to her allies. Even the Contingent had mutinied, and some of her own relatives had proclaimed a religious war. Yet under all these circumstances Secunder Begum, though standing almost alone, never swerved from the tradi- tional policy of Bhopal Her mother was a bigot, her uncles were weak- minded men, yet she never faltered. She caused the British officers to be safely escorted to Hoshungabad ; then, with infinite tact, allayed the excitement in her capital, put down the mutinous Contingent with a strong hand, and finally restored order in every part of the Bhopal terri- tory. In consequence of these measures there was little for the British authorities to do when, at the close of the year, British supremacy was restored in that part of Central India. Rewards were dealt out by the Begum with a liberal hand to those ministers who had so efficiently supported her in her measures, whilst condign punishment was inflicted on her rebel relatives and 149 men of the Contingent."
When in the following year the British Government triumphed, one of Lord Canning's first acts was to acknowledge the Begum, with her daughter's consent, as ruler of Bhopal in her own right. In December, 1862, a new district was added to her dominion, and on the 1st September, 1863, she was publicly invested with the Star of India, being the only woman who wears it except the
Queen. So secure did she feel both of her subjects' fidelity and of the British alliance, that in 1863 she undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca, and before her departure wrote this characteristic letter to Colonel Durand :— " It is a custom of long standing for an individual of the Mahommedan faith, when on the eve of proceeding on a pilgrimage, to solicit forgive- ness at the bands of their former acquaintances. For five or six years you were in Bhopal and a partaker of my happiness and grief. As mortals are prone to err, I beg, that if I have ever done anything which was not agreeable you will pardon such acts. As far as I could help I wish to undertake this sacred mission with as much purity as possible, because life is uncertain, and this world without stability."
She returned after a twelvemonth's absence, and still lives, the only woman actively reigning over an Indian State, and the last survivor of the three women, herself, the Begum of Oude, and the Ranee of Jhansi, who during the mutiny accomplished more than any three sovereigns of the stronger sex. The phenomenon is one which has been frequently noticed in India, and many explanations have been invented to account for it, but we believe the only true one is the old gibe long since applied to Catherine of Russia. In Asia, even more than in Europe, women make the best auto- crats, for under a man women rule, under a woman men. Or, to put it more philosophically, when a man rules an Indian State he is under no restraints, when a woman is on the throne the men who really administer are restrained by the necessity of pleasing her.
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