J. G. Medley

“ But we do our duty in India, I may fairly say, honestly and thoroughly, and if we have not gained the love, we have, at least, won the respect and confidence of our native subjects. If the motives of the Government are occasionally suspected or misrepresented, the individual Englishman at any rate is implicitly trusted. That is the real strength of our position, and if our Indian empire is ever destroyed by force, it will be through the decay in character of the individual Englishman. ”

“ As we go north, after leaving Bengal, we find ourselves amongst a more manly race—the stalwart Jat, the manly Rajpoot, the warlike Sikh, and the fierce and treacherous Puthan. These are the men with whom we wrestled for the empire of the East, and who now recruit our best native regiments,—who helped to plant the British flag on the towers of Pekin and the heights of Magdala. ”

“ I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat. At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers are dwindling daily. ”

“ No crystal streams,—no clear lakes,—no undulating downs,—no parks or country houses,—not even a grass field. Yet the rich cultivation, and the general signs of prosperity amongst the dense population are at least pleasing to the philanthropist; and if we leave the railway at Umballa and travel for forty miles eastward, we find ourselves amongst the dark pine forests, the mountain torrents, and the craggy heights of the Himalayahs, while their gigantic tops covered with eternal snow, 10,000 feet higher than “the monarch of mountains,” look down upon us in their calm and solemn grandeur. ”

“ How about the progress of Christianity in India? Well, I fear it must be owned that it is extremely slow. I dare say I might be contradicted by many missionaries, but then I am not a missionary. I have the highest respect for them as a body; many I have known personally, and know to be able men; but undoubtedly their success, if judged by the number of converts, is very small, in Upper India at least; and though doubtless they do much good by keeping up the schools that are attached to every mission, that good has very little to do with the progress of Christianity. ”

“ To those who cannot look upon their Indian life from the standpoint I have mentioned, a career in India is, it must be owned, but a dreary exile; the time for making fortunes, at any rate in the Government service, is gone; those who retire have seldom much beyond their very moderate pensions, and while the cost of living has steadily increased for many years past, salaries have remained stationary, or even diminished, and work has very much increased. ”

“ The remedy for this is not, I think, a return to the old state of things, which is indeed impossible, but more close and intimate relations between India and England, until our native subjects feel that they are really regarded as part of the British empire. The more they visit England, and the more we visit India, the more will each understand and appreciate the other. We have no enemy now in India, except popular ignorance, and that we are doing our best to remove by the most complete system of State education that has yet been devised in any country. ”

“ On the whole, I think Anglo-Indian society is pleasant and agreeable; few men suffer from ennui, or think everything a bore; most of the men are interested in their work and talk a certain amount of shop—not more so, I think, than other men; there are plenty of book clubs at all stations, and most people read a good deal; there are few stations at which sport of some kind is not procurable for those who have leisure for it; and those who can get two or three months’ leave to travel in Cashmere or the Himalayahs will certainly not sigh for Switzerland or the Alps. ”

“ In Upper India, the part with which I am best acquainted, we enjoy a climate which for four months in the year—November, December, January, and February—is probably unequalled in the world both for health and pleasure: bright skies, a sun hot indeed, yet not too hot for exercise all day long, and nights cold, dry, and bracing, with a clear, still atmosphere, make an almost perfect climate. ”

“ And in the midst of the 200 millions of dark-skinned people of the land dwell some 130 thousand British white faces, among them, but not of them, and indeed separated from them, not so much by the barriers of language, religion, and social customs, as by the far greater barrier of race, which, let philanthropists say what they will, has been created not without wise and useful purposes. The English in India are often judged harshly and unjustly on this head by their countrymen at home. We are told that we should mix more with the natives, and admit them on a footing of equality with ourselves. ”

“ While I am on the subject of society, let me disabuse you of the notion still prevailing in the minds of many respectable people, as well as second-rate novelists, that ladies in India are different from their English sisters, and that, when young, they are shipped over to the East like figs, to the market of Hymen. ”

“ It is this wonderful conservatism that perhaps strikes the observant traveller more than anything else in the East; which opens his eyes to a state of society utterly foreign to all his Western experience, and makes him pause to think whether he is right after all in his ideas of the advantages of civilization. Is the man of the West any happier for his railways, electric telegraphs, steam factories, and Parliamentary Governments? Here he finds people who are not in the least anxious to govern themselves ”

“ The crime of female infanticide amongst certain high-caste tribes still remains, but it too has nothing to do with the Hindoo religion; it arises from the social custom that a man of high rank is disgraced if his daughter is unmarried, while the same tyrant custom has imposed on him the necessity of spending large sums at his daughters’ weddings. India is not the only country, nor are the Hindoos the only people, whom the tyranny of custom compels to extravagance and disregard of the obligations of common sense and right feeling, and even religious or moral duties. ”

“ Hence we are apt to see in India many ludicrous travesties of our public meetings, municipal institutions, and the like, at which the native attends to please his English superior, and does pretty well what he is told to do. When the native does attain to a high post, as a rule he is hated by his countrymen, who never thoroughly trust him, and would far sooner see an Englishman in his place.
Our attempts then at improvement are up-hill work, and made under all the disadvantages of the stiff and awkward part of our national character, which keeps us isolated even on the European continent. ”

“ To lose caste, or be put out of caste, is as great a misfortune as ever, but there are very few offences for which a man cannot get back his caste by the payment of a few rupees, which are expended in eating and drinking by his fellow caste-men. The offences which involve loss of caste are offences against custom rather than religion, and indeed there are no people so grossly ignorant of technical religion and their sacred books as the Hindoos. ”

“ Why are the British troops not all kept at the hill stations, where they enjoy a European climate all the year round? Now, the first use of having troops at all is unquestionably that they should be ready for action at the points where trouble is likely to arise; those points are the great cities where, in the East as in the West, the mauvais sujets of the empire are generally found congregated; and all our principal cantonments have been located with this view. It is true that the railways have done much to abridge distance in India, as elsewhere. ”

“ After your night’s journey, in which you have probably accomplished some 35 miles, you are glad to espy a solitary house—a dâk-bungalow, as it is termed—in which you can get temporary rest and refreshment; so the doolie is deposited in the verandah; the hot and dusty traveller, who has hardly had a wink of sleep all night, emerges from the inside of the coffin, and summons the native servant, who in white robes and with a venerable grey beard, might sit for a portrait of any of the Old Testament patriarchs. ”

“ Thus, there can be no doubt that an Indian career has fewer attractions than formerly, and this has been the case ever since the Mutiny—that great landmark in Indian history whose significance is not even yet recognised. ”

“ This has been the case all over the East from time immemorial; the only ownership in the land belongs to the Government, although the occupier or cultivator often has rights of occupancy which are almost as inalienable as the right of the State.
This being the case, it is evident that the Government is as much interested as the people in the productiveness of the harvest; for if the harvests fail, the people not only starve, but cannot pay the land rent, and the Government has to feed thousands of hungry people with an empty exchequer. ”

“ For the remaining five months, the climate, to a European at least, is simply detestable. You have either fierce hot winds like the blast from a glass furnace, with clouds of dust; or else a moist, stagnant atmosphere like that of a continuous vapour bath, and excessively depressing. The nights are rather worse than the days, and life is only bearable inside large and lofty rooms and under swinging punkahs. In Southern India, there is less extreme heat, but more moisture, and no real cold weather. ”

“ It is expensive work, but if you want to keep your children alive, there is no resource but the hills or England; they wither and die in the plains like plucked flowers.
In the cold weather, life is much better; the absentees return from the hills and society rouses itself up for a little gaiety. ”

“ On the other hand, while the one terrible drawback of Anglo-Indian life is the continual separation of husband and wife, parents and children, I am bold enough to say that those social relations—the former, at any rate—are stronger even than in England, if only on this account, that each is less independent of the other than at home. ”

“ Yet there is an indwelling spirit of artistic grace in the East that will not easily die, which you see in the instinctive choice of colours in the clothes of the very poorest on a holiday festival,—in the shape of the commonest earthenware utensils,—in the very salutation that you get from the poorest peasant in the fields. ”

“ If, however, he is fond of hard work and knocking about in the jungles, and doesn’t mind a solitary life, he will prefer the Irrigation or Railway branch, and I do not think he will regret his choice, for no man fond of his profession could desire more interesting work, and in the construction of a new line of Canal or Railroad he will every day find scope for his talent or ingenuity or readiness of resource. ”

“ I can tell you but little of the inner life of all these millions of our fellow-subjects, for it is jealously guarded from European eyes; they and their white masters lead a separate existence, as I have already said, in all that concerns social and domestic matters, the one living in their towns and villages, the others in their stations or cantonments from one to five miles distant. But in their external life, which we do see, they are generally a quiet and simple race, temperate in their living, patient and much-enduring, not deficient in courage, great fatalists and very superstitious ”

“ Great progress has been made within the last twenty years in providing India with roads, but thousands of miles are still wanted before the road system can be considered anything like complete. The cost of carriage in many parts of the country is still enormous, owing to the wretched state of the unmetalled tracks, and whole districts may be starving while plenty reigns in those adjoining, owing to the same cause. However, these are questions with which the young engineer at least has seldom anything to do; his work begins when the construction of the road is decided upon. ”

“ If you can get a month’s holiday, of course you run up to the hills, where at an elevation of 7000 feet above the sea level, you find yourself in a charming climate and beautiful scenery. The Governor-General and all the heads of departments go up now regularly for six months out of the twelve, like sensible men, for which they get well abused by the press, the editors being obliged to stay in the hot plains. Men who can afford it send their wives and children up every hot weather, and run up there when they can get short leave. ”

“ Few converts were made after the first few years, the new religion was even modified by the old, and at the present day the Mahomedans of India are scarcely one-tenth of the whole population, though doubtless a very important section of it. Generally speaking, they are a more manly race, as if they still possessed something of their former prestige. But Indian Mahomedanism is but a poor affair after all; it has taken from Hindooism the idea of caste, and the Turk, or even the Persian, would scarcely acknowledge his fellow-worshipper of India. ”

“ The subject of what is the best description of building, both as to design and materials, for Europeans in such a climate as India, is indeed still an open one, and admits of great discussion. Neither our barracks, churches, nor private houses are as yet satisfactory, and as to their architectural appearance, the less said about that the better. The Gothic churches generally built in our Indian stations are insufferably hot. ”