Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - James Inglis
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Generally, about the centre of it, there is a more pretentious
structure, with verandahs supported on wooden pillars. High walls
surround a rather commodious courtyard. There are mysterious little
doors, through which you can get a peep of crooked little stairs
leading to the upper rooms or to the roof, from dusky inside verandahs.
Half-naked, listless, indolent figures lie about, or walk slowly to and
from the yard with seemingly purposeless indecision. In the outer
verandah is an old _palkee_, with evidences in the tarnished gilding
and frayed and tattered hangings, that it once had some pretensions to
fashionable elegance.
The walls of the buildings however are sadly cracked, and numerous
young _peepul_ trees grow in the crevices, their insidious roots
creeping farther and farther into the fissures, and expediting the work
of decay, which is everywhere apparent. It is the residence of the
Zemindar, the lord of the village, the owner of the lands adjoining.
Probably he is descended from some noble house of ancient lineage. His
forefathers, possibly, led armed retainers against some rival in yonder
far off village, where the dim outlines of a mud fort yet tell of the
insecurity of the days of old. Now he is old, and fat, and lazy.
Possibly he has been too often to the money-lender. His lands are
mortgaged to their full value. Though they respect and look up to their
old Zemindar, the villagers are getting independent; they are not so
humble, and pay less and less of feudal tribute than in the old days,
when the golden palanquin was new, when the elephant had splendid
housings, when mace, and javelin, and matchlock-men followed in his
train. Alas! the elephant was sold long ago, and is now the property of
a wealthy _Bunniah_ who has amassed money in the buying and selling of
grain and oil. The Zemindar may be a man of progress and intelligence,
but many are of this broken down and helpless type.
Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant,
conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through
a small staff of _peons_, or un-official police. The accounts are kept
by another important village functionary--the _putwarrie_, or village
accountant. _Putwarries_ belong to the writer or _Kayasth_ caste. They
are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any
class in India. They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot
and landlord with great skill. Their memories are wonderful, but they
can always forget conveniently. Where ryots are numerous, the
landlord's wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for
payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates
and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the
complications and intricacies of a _putwarrie's_ account. Each ryot
pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to
him if he pays the _putwarrie_ the value of a 'red cent' without taking
a receipt. Certainly there may be a really honest _putwarrie_, but I
very much doubt it. The name stands for chicanery and robbery. On
the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money,
questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual
bodily coercion. The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing
excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why
he cannot pay. He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false
evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched _putwarrie_ needs
all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own. But all ryots
are not alike, and when the _putwarrie_ gets hold of some unwary and
ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he _does_ plunder him
systematically. All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle
lifters, and a _putwarrie_ after he has got over the stage of infancy,
and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can
teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains. A
popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:--
'Unda poortee, Cowa maro!
Iinnum me, billar:
Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!!
Humesha mara gwar!!'
This is translated thus: 'When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and
the wild cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.
The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.
The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
even gun-locks, made by a common native village blacksmith, that could
not be surpassed in delicacy of finish by any English smith. It is
foreign to our ideas of the brawny blacksmith, to hear that he sits to
his work, but this is the invariable custom. Even carpenters and masons
squat down to theirs. Cheap labour is but an arbitrary term, and a
country smith at home might do the work of ten or twelve men in India;
but it is just as well to get an idea of existing differences. On many
of the factories there are very intelligent _mistrees_, which is the
term for the master blacksmith. These men, getting but twenty-four to
thirty shillings a month, and supplying themselves with food and
clothing, are nevertheless competent to work all the machinery, attend
to the engine, and do all the ironwork necessary for the factory. They
will superintend the staff of blacksmiths; and if the sewing-machine of
the _mem sahib_, the gun-lock of the _luna sahib_, the lawn-mower,
English pump, or other machine gets out of order, requiring any metal
work, the _mistree_ is called in, and is generally competent to put
things to rights.
[Illustration: CARPENTERS AND BLACKSMITHS AT WORK]
As I have said, every village is a self-contained little commune. All
trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are
represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly
every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he
farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a
few goats, and probably a pair of plough-bullocks.
When a dispute arises in the village, should a person be suspected of
theft, should his cattle trespass on his neighbour's growing crop,
should he libel some one against whom he has a grudge, or, proceeding
to stronger measures, take the law into his own hands and assault
him, the aggrieved party complains to the head man of the village.
In every village the head man is the fountain of justice. He holds
his office sometimes by right of superior wealth, or intelligence,
or hereditary succession, not unfrequently by the unanimous wish of
his fellow-villagers. On a complaint being made to him, he summons
both parties and their witnesses. The complainant is then allowed to
nominate two men, to act as assessors or jurymen on his behalf, his
nominations being liable to challenge by the opposite party. The
defendant next names two to act on his behalf, and if these are
agreed to by both parties, these four, with the head man, form what
is called a _punchayiet_, or council of five, in fact, a jury. They
examine the witnesses, and each party to the suit conducts his own
case. The whole village not unfrequently attends to hear what goes on.
In a mere caste or private quarrel, only the friends of the parties
will attend. Every case is tried in public, and all the inhabitants of
the village can hear the proceedings if they wish. Respectable
inhabitants can remark on the proceedings, make suggestions, and give
an opinion. Public feeling is thus pretty accurately gauged and
tested, and the _punchayiet_ agree among themselves on the verdict. To
the honour of their character for fair play be it said, that the
decision of a _punchayiet_ is generally correct, and is very seldom
appealed against. Our complicated system of law, with its delays, its
technicalities, its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its
stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the
innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in
our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of
Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give
them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are
far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and
complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate'
is what they want. It is quite enough admission of the reality of our
rule--that we are the paramount power--that they submit a case to us
at all; and all impediments in the way of their getting cheap and
speedy justice should be done away with. A codification of existing
laws, a sweeping away of one half the forms and technicalities that at
present bewilder the applicant for justice, and altogether a less
legal and more equitable procedure, having a due regard to efficiency
and the conservation of Imperial interests, should be the aim of our
Indian rulers. More especially should this be the case in rural
districts where large interests are concerned, where cases involve
delicate points of law. Our present courts, divested of their hungry
crowd of middlemen and retainers, are right enough; but I would like
to see rural courts for petty cases established, presided over by
leading natives, planters, merchants, and men of probity, which would
in a measure supplement the _punchayiet_ system, which would be easy
of access, cheap in their procedure, and with all the impress of
authority. It is a question I merely glance at, as it does not come
within the scope of a book like this; but it is well known to every
planter and European who has come much in contact with the rural
classes of Hindostan, that there is a vast amount of smouldering
disaffection, of deep-rooted dislike to, and contempt of, our present
cumbrous costly machinery of law and justice.
If a villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a
plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready
with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a _vakeel_,
that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or
round the factory to get some little business done, to neglect his
work, to get his rent or produce account investigated, wherever there
is worry, trouble, delay, or difficulty about anything concerning the
relations between himself and the factory, the deepest and keenest
expression of discontent and disgust his versatile and acute
imagination can suggest, or his fluent tongue give utterance to is,
that this is 'Adanlut lea mafich,' that is, 'Like a court of justice.'
Could there be a stronger commentary on our judicial institutions?
The world is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages.
Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are
much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of
besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering
tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no
difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I
have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the
country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers to
try petty cases. There is a vast material--loyalty, educated minds, an
honest desire to do justice, independence, and a genuine scorn of
everything pettifogging and underhand--that the Indian Government
would do well to utilise. The best friend of the Baboo cannot acquit
him of a tendency to temporise, a hankering after finesse, a too fatal
facility to fall under pecuniary temptation. The educated gentleman
planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering
titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench,
and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers'
while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour,
and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place
their services at the disposal of Government. 'India for the Indians'
is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to
its logical issue. Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in
accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to
India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to
Australia. In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half,
quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen. Make more of your
Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please,
but make more of your Englishmen. Keep them loyal and content. Treat
them kindly and liberally. One Englishman contented, loyal, and
industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to
the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them
have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates
of loyalty from junior civilians as they may. Not India for the
Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.
CHAPTER XIV.
A native village continued.--The watchman or 'chowkeydar.'--The
temple.--Brahmins.--Idols.--Religion.--Humility of the poorer classes.
--Their low condition.--Their apathy.--The police.--Their extortions
and knavery.--An instance of police rascality.--Corruption of native
officials.--The Hindoo unfit for self-government.
One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or
_chowkeydar_. He is generally a _Doosadh_, or other low caste man, and
perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or
a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the _chowkeydars_
of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after
cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into
faintness. At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out
close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do
not feel it to be so. The _chowkeydar_ has to see that no thieves
enter the village by night. He protects the herds and property of the
villagers. If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to
the nearest police station. If you lose your way by night, you shout
out for the nearest _chowkeydar_, and he is bound to pass you on to
the next village. These men get a small gratuity from government, but
the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according
to individual means. The _chowkeydar_ is generally a ragged, swarthy
fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a
blue _puggra_. The blue is his official badge. Sometimes he has a
brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle
of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman's hand would be found
to fit it. It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it
has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.
[Illustration: HINDOO VILLAGE TEMPLES.]
In the immediate vicinity of each village, and often in the village
itself, is a small temple sacred to Vishnu or Shiva. It is often
perched high up on some bank, overlooking the lake or village tank.
Generally there is some umbrageous old tree overshadowing the sacred
fane, and seated near, reclining in the shade, are several oleaginous
old Brahmins. If the weather be hot, they generally wear only the
_dhote_ or loin cloth made of fine linen or cotton, and hanging about
the legs in not ungraceful folds. The Brahmin can be told by his
sacred thread worn round the neck over the shoulder. His skin is much
fairer than the majority of his fellow villagers. It is not
unfrequently a pale golden olive, and I have seen them as fair as many
Europeans. They are intelligent men with acute minds, but lazy and
self-indulgent. Frequently the village Brahmin is simply a sensual
voluptuary. This is not the time or place to descant on their
religion, which, with many gross practices, contains not a little that
is pure and beautiful. The common idea at home that they are miserable
pagans, 'bowing down to stocks and stones,' is, like many of the
accepted ideas about India, very much exaggerated. That the masses,
the crude uneducated Hindoos, place some faith in the idol, and expect
in some mysterious way that it will influence their fate for good or
evil, is not to be denied, but the more intelligent natives, and most
of the Brahmins, only look on the idol as a visible sign and symbol of
the divinity. They want a vehicle to carry their thoughts upwards to
God, and the idol is a means to assist their thoughts heavenward. As
works of art their idols are not equal to the fine pictures and other
symbols of the Greeks or the Roman Catholics, but they serve the same
purpose. Where the village is very poor, and no pious founder has
perpetuated his memory, or done honour to the gods by erecting a
temple, the natives content themselves with a rough mud shrine, which
they visit at intervals and daub with red paint. They deposit flowers,
pour libations of water or milk, and in other ways strive to shew that
a religious impulse is stirring within them. So far as I have
observed, however, the vast mass of the poor toilers in India have
little or no religion. Material wants are too pressing. They may have
some dumb, vague aspirations after a higher and a holier life, but the
fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too
incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim
idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a
very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms
and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins
tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they
have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low
castes about immortality, about salvation, about the higher virtues,
about the yearnings and wishes that every immortal soul at periods
has, and he will simply tell you 'Khoda jane, hum greel admi,' i.e.
'God knows; I am only a poor man!' There they take refuge always when
you ask them anything puzzling. If you are rating them for a fault,
asking them to perform a complicated task, or inquiring your way in a
strange neighbourhood, the first answer you get will, ten to one, be
'Hum greel admi.' It is said almost instinctively, and no doubt in
many cases is the refuge of simple disinclination to think the matter
out. Pure laziness suggests it. It is too much trouble to frame an
answer, or give the desired information, and the 'greel admi' comes
naturally to the lip. It is often deprecatory, meaning 'I am ignorant
and uninformed,' you must not expect too 'much from a poor, rude,
uncultivated man like me.' It is often, also, a delicate mode of
flattery, which is truly oriental, implying, and often conveying in a
tone, a look, a gesture, that though the speaker is 'greel,' poor,
humble, despised, it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who
are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning
obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I
will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of
every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a
hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to
hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it
but patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
toiling tenants struck down in this way. Even if you give them
medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it. You must see
them take it before your eyes. It is _your_ struggle not theirs. _You_
must rouse them, by _your_ will. _Your_ energy must compel _them_ to
make an attempt to combat their weakness. Once you rouse a man, and
infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a
hard fight to get him to TRY. What a meaning in that one word TRY! TO
ACT. TO DO. The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of
it.
Of course their moods vary. They have their 'high days and holidays,'
feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average
ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.
In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle
lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture. The cow
being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.
The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of
emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening
wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had
but 'short commons' all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.