Chapter I. 1857. May. Commission. annexation by the Government of India of Berár BOOK XIII. and of Oudh had been in the one case followed, in the other preceded, by an Act known as Act XI. of 1852, under the operation of which an Inám Commission was empowered to call upon The Inám all landed proprietors to produce the title-deeds of their estates. A new tribunal had, under this Act, been invested with arbitrary jurisdiction over this vast mass of property. The holders of estates, careless and improvident, unacquainted with law, and accustomed to consider that thirty years' possession conferred an irrefragable title, had failed in many instances to preserve the most valid muniments of their estates. In some cases, indeed, no muniments had ever existed. Chiefs who, in the anarchy which prevailed in India subsequent to the death of Aurangzíb, had won their estates by the sword, had not been careful to fence them in with a paper barrier-in that age utterly valueless-but they had transmitted to their descendants the arms and the retainers who had constituted their right to possession, and The manner with whose aid they had learned to consider commission mere titles superfluous, as without it they were contemptible. In other cases, men who had and landacquired land in the general scramble which preceded the downfall of the Péshwá's Government, had transmitted their acquisitions to their children, fortified by no better titles than entries in the village account-books. To both these classes the Inám Commission had been a commission simply of confiscation. In the southern Maráthá country the titles of thirty-five thousand in which that affected many of the chiefs owners. BOOK XIII. estates, large and small, had been called for by Chapter I. the new tribunal. In twenty-one thousand cases 1857. that tribunal had pronounced sentences of conMay. fiscation. Thousands of other landowners, still unevicted, looked on in dismay, tremblingly awaiting the sentence which was to add their wail of distress and resentment to that of their impoverished neighbours.* Can it be wondered at, then, that Mr. Seton-Karr, when he assumed charge under these circumstances in May 1856, found the native landowners of the southern MaTheir discon- ráthá country in a state of moody discontent, which was prevented from bursting into open disaffection only by a sense of its utter hopelessness? tent. * In writing thus of the feelings of the actual landowners, I am far from desiring to say a single word against the inquiries instituted by the Inám Commission. I wish to record only the discontent of the nien who actually possessed the land when the inquiry was ordered. I admit not only that the Government was perfectly justified in ordering that inquiry, but that it was demanded by thousands who had been violently and, in some cases, fraudulently dispossessed of their hereditary acres during the period antecedent to the fall of the Péshwa. The Inám Commission rendered substantial justice to these men. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that forty years had elapsed since the dominions of the Péshwá had been brought under British sway, and that during those years, and, in many cases, during many antecedent years, the landowners who felt aggrieved by the action of the Inám Commission, had enjoyed and transmitted to their children the estates which their fathers had gained. The long possession gave them in their eyes a better right than any which could be urged by the descendants of the men who had been dispossessed. No wonder, then, from their point of view, the Inám Commission was an instrument of tyranny. BOOK XIII. 1857. May. But another cause increased, even intensified, the discontent, and, by its connection with the religious feelings of all classes, added greatly to the danger of the situation. Of all the rights The right of devolving upon a Hindú landowner, the right to adoption, adopt is at once the most cherished and the most sacred. It is an observance enjoined upon him by his religion. Should he fail to beget a child, he is bound to provide for himself an heir by adoption. On the child so adopted he bestows all the care and the affection ordinarily lavished on the offspring of love. Taught by his religion to a religious believe that his own happiness in the other world for the depends upon the transmission to the adopted son of the inheritance of his fathers, he is ever careful to instil into his mind that he actually is of the family, and will be, after his death, the representative of its traditions and its honours. The idea that he might die heirless is to the Hindu landowner an ever-present canker-worm. It is sufficient to make him moody, despairing, miserable. The prohibition to find for himself such an heir might even make him reckless. rite necessary Hindú. Lord Dalhou sie But the Anglo-Indian Government had, in many instances, pronounced such a prohibition. The policy of absorption adopted by Lord Dal- The policy of housie had shown no respect for the principle of adoption. Under its action large states had been absorbed, and the power to adopt had been denied to lesser landowners. This refusal had been extended to the landowners of the southern Maráthá this rite to country-amongst others, to the important chief many influenof Nargúnd. The prohibition produced conster denies the exercise of tial chiefs. Chapter I. 1857. May. Effect produced by this efusal. BOOK XIII nation. The effeminate training of the Hindú upper classes often rendered it absolutely neces sary to employ the rite of adoption to prevent the extinction of a family. The custom had been hallowed by time. The prohibition of it by a paramount power, alien in race and faith, could be attributed only to greed for the land. When, then, the prohibition was extended, and the landowners saw family after family disappear, a great fear fell upon them. They felt, one and all, that their turn would come; that their names, too, would perish; that none would succeed to commemorate their deeds and the deeds of their ancestors, and to appease their manes by yearly celebrations. In the common despair old feuds were laid aside, hereditary enmity was forgotten. A common dread produced a common sympathy, and the indignation or alarm of each was supported and increased by the sense that it was shared by all. For the moment, indeed, no one thought to combine against the British Government. But though tranquillity prevailed, it was not the tranquillity which is based upon contentment. The landowners were tranquil simply because successful revolt seemed impossible. The British authority seemed too firmly fixed to be easily shaken. But, were it to be shaken, it was always possible, considering the intense and widespread discontent of the landowners, that their hopeless apathy might become the audacity of despair. State of the southern Maráthá Such was the state of the southern Maráthá country when, in May 1856, Mr. Seton-Karr as DISCONTENT OF THE LANDOWNERS. 25 BOOK XIII 1857. May. sumed charge of it. But a few weeks elapsed before his experienced mind had mastered the causes of the discontent which he found everywhere prevailing. It was difficult, even for a country in man who condemned the policy of the Govern- May 1856. ment and who sympathised with the native landowners, to allay it. He found, in fact, that in almost every instance the landowners had been grievously wronged. The influential chief of Nargúnd had been denied the rights of adoption in terms which-owing to the faultiness of the translation of the original English-added insult to injury. Other landowners of ancient lineage, and possessing weight in the country, were found by Mr. Seton-Karr estranged from their loyalty by the causes to which I have adverted-the Inám Commission and the withholding of the right of adoption-and plunged in moody mistrust of the Government. It was not in the power of Mr. Seton-Karr to carry out the only Mr. Setonact which would have restored confidence-to moderate the action of the Inám Commission and to restore the right of adoption. Nor, conciliatory and sympathising as he was, was he more able to reconcile the native chiefs and landowners to the new order which had to them all the effects of a revolution. But all that an earnest and high-minded man could do be did. He visited every landowner. Their individual characters he carefully studied. To their complaints he listened with patience. He met them generally with such explanations of the policy of the Government as might remove misapprehension as to its general Karr's powers, in respect of the grievances, restricted; but he uses all his in fluence to soothe the discontented. |