Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former passed on, as did every war, to annexation; yet once again there seems little doubt that this was brought about by obstinate refusal to keep the treaty which ensured "the utmost protection and security" to British ships trading to Burmese ports.
The question of the annexation of Oude, however, falls into another category, and is so often cited as one of the chief causes of the Great Mutiny of 1857, that it is best discussed among the many other reasons for resentment and rebellion which undoubtedly existed in India at this time. One of these was the change of manners in the ruling white-faced race.
In the old days of a good year's voyaging and sea-sickness round the Cape few women had been found to face it; and so the Englishmen in India had formed irregular connections with native women, often of very good birth. These connections, though, of course, contrary to our marriage laws, were not exactly immoral; they were, indeed, often as regular as the differing codes of Christianity, Hinduism, and Mahomedanism would allow. And, naturally, they greatly bridged over the gulf between the rulers and the ruled.
The short sea-passage changed all this. English ladies came out in crowds, and seeing themselves surrounded by native sister-subjects who thought differently to what they did on almost every conceivable social subject, held up holy hands of horror at everything they saw, oblivious, apparently, of the obvious fact, that if the native sister appeared a bogey to them, they also must have been a bogey to the native sister.
She, however, by her very seclusion, was prevented from airing her opinion. Not so the Englishwomen and young girls who began to come to live amongst those who were generally called the heathen. There is no more charitable and kindly soul than the average British matron, and in the days before '57 she was beyond measure romantic. This was the time when, escaping from the stern rule of papa and mama, who had been ready with bread and water for "miss" if she refused an eligible parti, the English girl looked on Love with a big L, as something only a trifle less divine than the God whom she worshipped. She was not, therefore, likely to find anything but militant pity and charity for a social system which began by ignoring love as synonymous with passion. Thus the Englishwoman was no factor for peace in the new order of things. Then the changes inaugurated by the inclusion of the "introduction of religious and moral improvement" as a licensable trade had borne much fruit. One has only to read missionary reports to find out how enormously organised effort to convert the people of India had increased since 1813, and still more from 1833. In the year 1840 Dr Duff's Christian college at Calcutta numbered over six hundred pupils, and in 1845 came the added interest to the cause of Missions brought by the great Evangelical movement, not only in the Church of England, but throughout all Europe. This wave of religiosity left no Christian sect untouched, and part of its result was the introduction into India of a race of Church-Militant officials, admirable in character, in work, who, despite their faithful performance of duties to Cæsar which demanded absolute impartiality, could not divest themselves absolutely of their other duty (as they held it) to God; that is to say, to influence the natives for good--in other words, to Christianity. Without attempting praise or blame, it is impossible to deny that the example of such strong and militant Christians as the Lawrences, as Havelock, as half a hundred other well-known names, to say nothing of the hundreds of lesser-known ones who in civil stations and cantonments were encouraging mission work with all their might and main, must inevitably have attracted the attention of pandits and moulvies, whose profession, whose bare living, was bound up in so-called heathendom.
Then, ever since the days of Lord William Bentinck, legislation had favoured the new faith. It will be remembered that he was mixed up with the mutiny at Vellore--a mutiny, if ever there was one, caused by abject fear of enforced conversion. His abolition of suttee, his tinkering with Indian law so as to free Hindu converts to Christianity from disabilities in succession (or as it has been put, "to free them from the trammels of their former superstitions and secure them in the full possession of Christian freedom"), had passed muster at the time, but as their effects became palpable, their interference in matters of custom and religion was resented. The very inauguration of female education was an offence, and as the years went on, bringing ever more and more missionary effort, and, above all, more support to that effort on the part of the ruling race, fear of wholesale conversion sprang up amongst the ignorant people, and was carefully fostered by the priests and preachers who had all to gain and nothing to lose by revolt.
And behind all this lay slumbering a great resentment. Say what folk would, be the excuse what it might, the fact remained that the last hundred years had seen every Indian prince reduced to the position of a pensioner, his land annexed. And the years between 1850 and 1857 produced a large crop of such annexations and usurpations. To begin with the petty state of Sattârah. When Pertâp-Singh the ruler (given his chiefship by the British who hunted him up, prisoned, poverty-stricken) had to be deposed childless, England forebore to annex, and placed a brother on the cushion of State; but when that brother, also childless, adopted a son but a few hours before his death, she refused to recognise his right to do so in regard to the succession. Such a son was legal heir to personal property, but Sattârah, being a dependency, could not by Indian law pass by adoption without the permission of the lord-paramount, which in this case had not been asked. Legally, she was right; but the sting of annexation rankled.
Then the case of Kerowli occurred, in which adoption was made without permission; but here the Governor-General's order was over-ruled by the Directors, who held that though "Sattârah had been originally a gift and creation of the British Government, Kerowli was one of the oldest Râjput states, and merited different treatment." Annexation was not, therefore, carried out; but the very considerateness of the decision intensified feeling in the other case.
Following this came the Jhânsi case, involving an area of about 2,000 square miles. Here, again, no issue--almost no collateral relationships--was the cause of an unauthorised adoption which, because the chiefship was, again, a creation of the English, was held inadmissible.
Then, as if these three almost forced annexations, occurring in 1849,1852, and 1853 respectively, were not enough to damn British policy in the eyes of disaffection, yet another case came up for settlement in 1853; for on the 11th of December died Râgoji-Bônsla, the Râjah of Berâr. He left neither issue nor collateral heir, neither had he attempted to supply their place by adoption; thus the question of the state lapsing to the Crown arose in its simplest and clearest form. The decision was, naturally, that by the Râjah's "death without any heir whatever, the possession of his territories has reverted to the British Government which gave them"; a decision without any doubt legal.
Now, ere passing on to the annexation of Oude, which stands on a totally different footing, it is as well to notice the drift of what may be read between the lines of this long record of principalities passing by lack of heirs of the body to the lord-paramount. What does it mean? Doubtless, it points first to degeneracy, to the fading away of families which is due to dissolute life. But this life in high places was no new thing; the English had found it rampant when they came. Therefore some other reason for the necessity of State interference must be found. What was this?
Plainly, on the very face of things, the answer is to be found. It was the order, the law, the freedom from conspiracy, assassination, self-aggrandisement, which English protection had ensured. In the old times an heirless râjah of past fifty would have been the centre of a snatching crowd of nobles, and the strongest would have asserted his right, and possibly hurried on the death of the dying king, or ever the lord-paramount had time to interfere; and then a payment in gold would have satisfied authority! So degeneracy did not matter; a new family always took the place of the dead one.
Now there was a hard and fast law which had to be obeyed by king and subject alike; a bitter lesson for any Oriental to learn, whose very idea of kingship is its superiority to order.
The trouble in Oude began--when did it not begin!
In 1760 Sûjah-ud-daula, its hereditary wazîr, well beaten by the Company for aggression on Bengal, ceded Allahabad and Korah, but was left undisputed master of the rest of his territories. In 1768, again in consequence of defeat, he was bound over to reduce his army. In 1773 he once more bound himself to further dependence in return for troops. In 1775 Sûjah-ud-daula died, and his son Asâf-ud-daula, in return for "good consideration," ceded territory as perpetual payment of the said troops, and afterwards, by various treaties, promised, in return for the guarantee of the possession, protection, and administration of Oude, to govern "in such a manner as would be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects"; also, to act on the advice of the British Government. Sa'adut-Ali, his successor, ratified these treaties, and showed, by the mere fact of his amassing treasure to the amount of £14,000,000 during his reign of fifteen years, that they were not, at least, pecuniarily hard. Ghâzi-ud-din, the next Nawâb or wazîr, regained a certain independence, not by treaty, but by loaning out his father's millions to the Company. The sop of being allowed to assert his independence of Delhi and call himself King was thrown to him; but he was no ruler, and the aid of British troops being refused him, "except in support of just and legitimate demands," he defied the treaty which limited his own army, and kept sixty thousand native troops, two-thirds of whom were entirely without discipline, living naturally by rapine and robbery. His son Nâsir-ud-din, hopeless debauchee, continued and increased these evils, drawing down on himself the solemn warning of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, that deposition must surely follow on such misrule. Unfortunately, however, advice how to rule was refused, and on Nâsir-ud-din's death--of course without issue--advantage was taken of the accession of the old man--almost in his dotage--Nâsir-ud-daula, to obtain a fresh and still more stringent treaty, by which, if misrule continued, the British Government reserved the 'right to administer, rendering account to the Nawâb,' and so far as possible maintaining existing forms so as to 'facilitate the future restoration of power to its rightful owner.' In other words the Nawâb was, if contumacious, to be put under trustees for the time. This was in 1837. At Nâsir-ud-daula's death in 1842 his son succeeded, and in 1847 another son rose to the throne by his brother's death--of course without issue. Now Wajîd-Ali-Shâh, the last Nawâb or King of Oude, was utterly worthless. One has but to read the journal of the Resident, General Sleeman, to recognise how hopeless was the problem of peace, prosperity, or progress, under his rule. Surrounded by fiddlers, prostitutes, poetasters, eunuchs, he wasted half the revenues on these creatures, by whom he was led about, a silly imbecile, with drugged brain and diseased body.
"There is not, I believe," writes General Sleeman--a man of infinite knowledge of the native, infinite sympathy with them--"another Government in India so entirely opposed to the best interests and most earnest wishes of the people as that of Oude now is. People of all classes have become utterly weary of it."
No better case for deposition, for the removing of a whole people from the grip of fatuous immorality and crass misrule, could be found than this; but the means chosen to effect the desirable consummation were mean in the extreme. There were two definite treaties regarding the government of Oude. The one signed in 1837, gave as the punishment for misrule, the placing of the administration under trustees only. That signed in 1801 gave a guarantee of British protection in return for the cession of certain territories, provided the administration of Oude coincided with the advice of the Company. In this case, therefore, the only penalty was palpably the withdrawal of protection.
Neither of these penalties satisfied the desire for a total change of policy. Instead of saying this openly, instead of boldly running up the flag of England, and saying: "This passes! It can no longer be permitted, that, under the protection of England such vice, such fraud, such extortion, such downright devilry, should exist. This crazy, imbecile, lecherous, drunken scoundrel shall take his pension and cease to be a tyrant." Instead of all this, with at least some backbone of righteous indignation to carry it through, Lord Dalhousie the Governor-General and his advisers informed the Nawâb that the treaty of 1837 had never been ratified in England, but that by some mistake the fact had never been notified to him! And this after Lord Hardinge in 1847 had threatened the Nawâb with the penalty laid down in that treaty, and no other!
It is almost incredible! But there is more to tell. By thus setting the treaty of 1837 aside, that of 1801 remained, under which the English had no power to do more than withdraw their protection from Oude. Thus annexation stood less justified than ever, except on the plain ground of the greatest good of the greatest number.
Oude was annexed in 1856. It was the recruiting-ground of a large portion of our native armies, and there is no doubt whatever that we have here the great political cause of disloyalty. In the previous two or three years, also, many measures had been passed to rouse religious resentment and suspicion, such as the Hindu widows re-marriage Act, and the Act to remove all forfeiture of property due to a change of religion. Nor were these things, as of old, too remote to touch on the common lives of the people. In Lord Dalhousie's term of office alone 4,000 miles of electric telegraph wires had spread a network over India, railways were every day eating into the heart of the land, a road, metalled, duly laid out for posting, stretched 2,000 miles from Culcutta to Peshâwar, schools were starting up in the rural districts, and letters--stamped letters--carrying God knows what of lies born of fear or fraud, were being delivered for a trifle to almost every town and hamlet in India.
A mighty change this, bringing with it at every point the defiling touch of the Feringhi.
Nor was this all. Government was changing. It might be for the better--at any rate, it could not be for the worse--but still it was strange. The man to whom the revenue would in future be paid would have a white face, and that in itself was disturbing.
Yes! without doubt, the West was encroaching fast
Oude, it has been said, was the great recruiting-ground of our native cavalry, but also for our table attendants. The first went home to hear tales of annexation, of order which gave the brotherhood-of-arms that had remained at home no chance of plunder as in the past. The latter took home with them on their holidays long tales of the mem-sahibas, and the sahibs' command that all servants should attend family prayers; and of the bakshish of kindness to be gained by professing interest in the new faith.
So, fostered by professional agitators, by disappointed claimants--even as the present unrest is fostered in India nowadays--the indefinite fear of something grew in the years between 'fifty and 'fifty-seven.