Mysore Kingdom

“ Farther south, Trichinopoly was the capital of a Hindu raja, and Tanjore formed another Hindu kingdom under a degenerate descendant of the line of Sivaji. Inland, Mysore was gradually growing into a third Hindu state, while everywhere local chieftains, called palegars or naiks, were in semi-independent possession of citadels or hill-forts.
In that condition of affairs the flame of war was kindled between the British and the French in Europe in 1745. Dupleix was at that time governor of Pondicherry and Clive was a young writer at Madras. A British fleet first French and British wars. ”

“ The remainder of the imperial possessions in the peninsula were held by chieftains acknowledging the supremacy of one or other of these two potentates. In the sequel, Mysore became the prize of the Mahommedan usurper Hyder Ali. During the contests for power which ensued about the middle of the 18th century between the native chiefs, the French and the English took opposite sides. After a brief course of triumph, the interests of France declined, and a new empire in India was established by the British. Mysore formed one of their earliest conquests in the Deccan. ”

“ Lord Wellesley had acquired Mysore by the conquest of Tippu in 1799. He incorporated some provinces into the Madras Presidency, but formed the remaining territory into a little Hindu state, and placed a Hindu boy, a kinsman of the Raja who had been supplanted by Hyder, on the throne of Mysore. The boy grew to be a man, and turned out a worthless, extravagant, and oppressive ruler, deaf to all remonstrances and warnings. ”

“ The domed building for the public offices in Gordon Park, the Maharaja's College, the Victoria Jubilee Institute, and the law courts are conspicuous. Mysore, though the dynastic capital of the state, was superseded by Seringapatam as the seat of the court from 1610 to 1799, and in 1831, on the British occupation, the seat of administration was removed to Bangalore. ”

“ Finally, I may observe that in Mysore we have the great advantage of being out of reach of the faddists of the House of Commons, who, for the sake of their votes, have to be humoured, whether the interests of India suffer or not. ”

“ Mysore (4,900) , a native State, half the size of England, embedded in the Madras Presidency, occupies a lofty, broken, but fertile tableland; the upper waters of the Kistna and Kaveri are used for irrigation purposes; betel-nut, coffee, cotton, rice, and silk are exported; cloth, wheat, and precious metals are imported; the climate is healthy and pleasant; under British government from 1831, it was restored to its prince in 1881, under British protection; the capital is Mysore (74) , a prosperous, well-built town. ”

“ During his minority Hyderabad was wisely administered by Sir Salar Jung, who initiated a form of government which was most beneficial to his State.
The Maharaja of Mysore is the ruler of a State in southern India of a total area of 80,000 square miles, containing a population of 5,500,000, and yielding a revenue of about £1,500,000. It is an ancient Hindu dynasty which has undergone strange vicissitudes. ”

“ It was for some time doubtful whether the Government would recognize the adoption, as, after the death of the Maharajah, it had been generally assumed that the province would be annexed, but in April, 1867, the Home Government decided that it should be recognized, and on September 23rd, 1868, six months after the death of Krishna Rajah, his adopted son, Chama Rajendra Wodeyar Bahadur, at that time between five and six years old, was duly installed at Mysore, and it was then decided that the country should remain under British administration till the Maharajah came of age. ”

“ I have said at the outset, that the journey to India is not the same as it was in 1855, and that still less is India the same India, and I may certainly say that still less is Western Mysore the Western Mysore of 1855, except that its beautiful scenery is as beautiful as ever. For our planting is not like that of Ceylon, where the planter, like the locust, finds a paradise in front to leave a desert in his rear—a desert of bare lull sides from which the beautiful forest has been entirely swept away, while the most valuable constituents of the soil have been washed down to the river beds. ”

“ Surinam had been Success of the war in India against the Mahrattas. conquered from the Dutch, and in the year 1805 a great war was brought to a triumphant conclusion in India. After the capture in 1799 of Seringapatam, the capital of Tippoo Sahib, the ruler of Mysore, the territories of Mysore had been divided by what is known as the Tripartite Treaty between the English, the Nizam of the Deccan, and a descendant of the ancient Rajahs of Mysore, whom Hyder Ali had dispossessed. ”

“ In its capital there are ranges of building equal in extent and richness to those of any of the capitals above enumerated, but degraded in taste to an extent it is hardly possible to credit in a people who so shortly before had shown themselves capable of such noble aspirations.
13. The style adopted by the short-lived dynasty of Mysore (A.D. 1760-1799) , being further removed from the influences of European vulgarity, is not so degraded as that of Lucknow, but is poor and inartistic when compared with earlier styles. ”

“ The sandalwood souvenirs from Mysore possess a delightful fragrance which time does not exhaust; a slight pinprick revives the odor. Mysore boasts some of the largest pioneer industrial undertakings in India, including the Kolar Gold Mines, the Mysore Sugar Factory, the huge iron and steel works at Bhadravati, and the cheap and efficient Mysore State Railway which covers many of the state’s 30,000 square miles.
The Maharaja and Yuvaraja who were my hosts in Mysore in 1935 have both recently died. ”

“ Mysore is perhaps the most prosperous native state in India. Situated on a healthy plateau, it receives the benefit of both the south-west and north-east monsoons, a natural advantage which, in conjunction with its irrigation system, has brought to Mysore a larger degree of immunity from famine than almost any other internal tract of India (always excepting the great calamity of 1876–1877, when one-fourth of the population are believed to have perished) . Coffee, sandal-wood, silk, gold and ivory are among the chief products. ”

“ He had been constrained to sign the peace of Mangalore by the withdrawal of the French alliance, and the coalition of the British and Mahrattas against him. But the war had been a triumph for Mysore arms. South of the Kistna river, Mysore was the most powerful state in India, and no single power could hold its own against the son of Hyder Ali. But Tippoo failed to realize the increase of power of the English Company, due to five years of peace. In 1785, a quarrel broke out between him and the Mahrattas, who allied themselves with the Nizam, and invaded Mysore territory. ”

“ You see, my friend and I are officers of the Palace, and no one would venture to question us, as we should be supposed to be travelling upon the sultan's business. There is peace at present, and although Tippoo may intend, some day or other, to fight again, everything is settling down quietly. Traders go about the country unquestioned. There is plenty of traffic on the roads from one town to another; and so long as your disguise is good enough to prevent your being recognised as a white, there is no greater danger in travelling, in Mysore, than there would be down in the Carnatic. ”

“ For Orissa had been absorbed by the Mogul armies late in the seventeenth century, and Mysore was being ground under the heel of Hyder, who himself avoided assuming the position of royalty. The Mogul was sovereign of India from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin; but the best energies of the dynasty had long been spent, and when strength was put forth at the seat of Government, the extreme boundaries of the empire, if they felt it at all, were sensible of but a feeble vibration. ”

“ Mysore is still a native State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is increasing year by year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper, there is room for many coffee-planters, though fever is not unknown; but when India is carefully surveyed, the only district that appears to be thoroughly suited to English settlement, as contrasted with mere planting or land-holding, is the valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably not suffer deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European settlement. ”

“ The maharaja's first minister was Ranga Charlu, who had been trained in the British administration of Mysore. He signalized the restoration of native rule by creating the representative assembly. In 1883 Sheshadri Aiyar succeeded Ranga Charlu, and to him Mysore is indebted for the extension of railways and schemes of irrigation, the development of the Kolar goldfields, and the maintenance of the high standard of its administration. The maharaja died at Calcutta on the 28th of December 1894. ”

“ There is also occasion for much tact, firmness, and temper, in dealing with the labourers and overseers on the estates, and also the native population with which nearly all the estates in Mysore are surrounded. Then much tact and judgment is required in dealing with the Government officials. Other points might also be added, but I have probably said enough to caution those who may be inclined to embark in coffee planting in Mysore, against assuming, as has hitherto been too often done, that it is a business which may be managed by people of inferior capacity. ”

“ I can assure you that the present wave of activity is passing away, and a new civilisation is coming shortly, which will be a nobler one.
India is a great dependency and Mysore is a great Native State. ”

“ The naval confederacy which was to rob England of the command of the seas had been foiled by the utter wreck of the Dutch fleet, and the imprisonment of the Spanish fleet in Cadiz. But the genius of Buonaparte had seized on the schemes for a rising against the English rule in Hindostan, and widened them into a project of all but world-wide conquest. At this time the strongest and most vigorous of the Indian powers was that of Mysore, at the southern extremity of the peninsula, where a Mussulman state had been built up by the genius of an adventurer, Hyder Ali. ”

“ It is notorious that the very best Government in India to-day is not that carried on by the British, but that of several of the Native States, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these States, particularly Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented, and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note the superiority of both these States in the important matter of popular education{xvii}. Mysore is spending on education more than three times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made her education free and compulsory. ”

“ For the ruler of Mysore is not only desirous of meeting the people half way, but even of anticipating their wants, and the people have a ready means of making their wants known. And, when making known these wants, their representatives are not only free from the expense and annoyances to which Members of Parliament are exposed, but have a most enjoyable time of it as well, for the Assembly is held at the time of the great annual festival of the Dassara, when there are wonderfully picturesque processions, illuminations, and displays of fireworks. ”

“ Dick said, as they left one of the villages. "We shall have to alter our story somehow, for the first person we meet, in Seringapatam, will see that we are not natives of Mysore. We must give out that we come from some village far down on the ghauts--one of those which have been handed over to the English by the new treaty. You know the country well enough there to be able to answer any questions that may be asked. We must say that, desiring to be soldiers, and hating the English raj, we have crossed the hills to take service of some sort in Mysore. ”

“ With this caution, I may then observe that, from information I have received, I have ample reason to believe that in the interior of Mysore there are many families of Pariahs who are as well off, in point of cattle, cash and land, as the average of the farmer caste, notwithstanding that the forefathers of these Pariahs were merely the servants of the farmer tribe. ”

“ Their titular head, the Peishwa, was no more really supreme over the other Mahratta princes than the emperor at Delhi had been over the rulers of the Deccan and Bengal. About the time at which Mysore was finally passing into English hands, the ablest of the secondary Mahratta princes had gone near to making himself master of all India, outside the British sphere. He dominated the puppet emperor at Delhi; he had troops trained and officered by Europeans, besides the splendid cavalry which had always been the main strength of the Mahrattas. ”

“ There is scarce a man here that is not, like myself, a Hindoo, for when we were brought here from Mysore, the piece of ground on which the street stands was assigned to us, and we were directed to build houses here. ”

“ In 1868 he was transferred to Mysore under Runga Charlu; and for thirteen years filled various offices in that state; but when Mysore was restored to native rule in 1881, he became personal assistant to Runga Charlu, whom he succeeded as diwan in 1885. For the next seventeen years he laboured assiduously to promote the economic and industrial development of the state, and proved an able assistant to the Maharaja Chamarajendra. By means of railway, irrigation and mining works, he added greatly to the wealth of the state, and put it on a sound financial footing. ”