LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE SCARE IN INDIA. [To xas Rorroa OP TEE " BriccrsTos."]
have just seen the article in the Spectator of May 5th
-on a prospective mutiny in India, and although my experience is confined to Calcutta only, can confirm your information that there is a most dangerous feeling agitating the natives -a present. For nearly twenty years I have been in business in Calcutta, and as the produce I deal in is all bought and sold by natives in the first place, I have had a good opportunity -of -becoming acquainted intimately with some of the cornmer- -cial classes of natives. To one trader in particular, a Gaze- rati Hindoo, long resident in Calcutta,but whose family house and headquarters were in Bombay, I was able to render some service of considerable value, and we got quite friendly, apart from business.
One day last year, when in this man's house shortly after the Bombay riots, the conversation turned on the cow-killing question, and I was astonished at the excitement he developed. I defended the Government and the Mussulmans, insisting on their right to kill cattle for food. He replied that in the old days all this was done very quietly and out of sight, but now Mussulmans killed cows anywhere, and insulted the Hindoos when they got the chance, by always killing them in the most -open manner possible ; that the Hindoos would not stand this any longer, and that there would certainly be serious trouble. I tried to convince him that the Government were not showing any favour to Mussulmans, and of the hopeless- ness of forcible resistance, pointing out that the railways had -made it so easy for the Government to move troops, that one hundred men could scarcely gather before they would be dis- persed. He said —"Rails are easily torn up and thrown in rivers, and the native army will not help you. Their food is getting dearer, and Lord Roberts has made the regiments into separate castes again, so they can fight for us. He was very foolish for the Government when he did this."
could scarcely believe that the old man was in earnest, but he went on to tell me that this agitation has been going -on for two or three years, but was being aggravated by the native police, who were now, since the riots, making all sorts
• of -inquiries and extorting money from the ignorant Hindoos. This I can easily believe, for the police are so shamefully underpaid that they must make money in some way or starve. Their pay is lower than that of coolies in Calcutta, and they are recruited from a worthless class. The difficulty in getting -policemen is so great that every " jemadar " or head-policeman is able to fill up the ranks under him with a licensed band of what are practically plunderers and blood-suckers. Govern- ment are quite well aware of the worthlessness of the native police, and various proposals have been made for their improvement, but as the basis of all reform is additional expenditure, nothing is done, or can be done at present. But my native friend astonished me most of all by saying that the most foolish thing the Government ever did was "to allow any -one to start a newspaper and put anything in it he liked." He told me thatnatives were printing newspapers that Government never took any notice of, full of all sorts of treason and sedition, as well as of lies of the most extraordinary kind about the inten- tions and proposals of Government as to taxes, interference with religion, &c. He said that no Government except the British would tolerate such abuse of its members and func- tions, and that the people believed the " Sircar " was afraid to punish the writers of these outrageous articles. All old Indian -civilians, commercial men, and the few really educated natives agree as to the folly of allowing a Free Press in India, but it was a new thing to hear a comparatively uneducated man and a bigoted Hindoo condemn the Free Press. My own -conviction is that when this row comes, if it does come, the man to be hanged is the importer of the Free Press into India. The people are not ripe yet for political freedom. What they want is freedom in their religious observances and prejudices, and freedom from police oppression and taxation. They are much too unsophisticated to understand that free- dom to write sedition is not naturally followed by freedom to practise it.
That my native friend is in earnest I fully believe, because he undertook to protect me when the row began, and because he shut up on the entrance of his son, who, on listening to a few words of our conversation, said something to his father in Gazerati which I could not understand, but which the father said was to the effect that I would teU the " Sircar Government. I told him he need not fear, that Govern- ment would not believe anything till the rails were torn up and wires cut, and the sooner they got their row started the sooner it would be ended. That there will be another " row " I am convinced, and the causes will be :—(1.) A seditious, ignorant, fanatical Press, working on the fears and prejudices of a simple and ignorant people. In Bengal, this Press is malicious, not ignorant : and many of its outrageous lies are accepted as truth by more ignorant and less malicious scribblers up country. (-2.) Increased taxation. Here the Zemindars are working on the people for their own ends. The Behar survey is a huge blunder. The Zemindars know Government is hard up, and nothing will convince them that this survey is not an excuse for fresh land-taxes (3.) Depre- ciated currency, which is raising prices, both of food and clothes. It will be a curious reflection on our management of India, if the two great Liberal ideas—a Free Press and a gold standard—are the cause of another mutiny.—I am, Sir, &C.,
Previous page
