Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 48

Should Government by and by extend the System that obtains in this single line to the Customs all over India they may greatly augment their revenue without any injury, and with but little necessary loss and inconvenience to merchants. The object of all just taxation is to make the subjects contribute to the public burthen in proportion to their means, and with as little loss and inconvenience to themselves as possible. The people who reside west of this line enjoy all their salt, cotton, and other articles which are taxed on crossing the line without the payment of any duties, while those to the east of it are obliged to pay. It is, therefore, not a just line. The advantages are, first, that it interposes a body of most efficient officers between the ma.s.s of harpies and the heads of the department, who now virtually superintend the whole System, whereas they used formerly to do so merely ostensibly. They are at once the _tapis_ of Prince Husain and the telescope of Prince Ali; they enable the heads of departments to be everywhere and see everything, whereas before they were nowhere and saw nothing.[7] Secondly, it makes the great staple articles of general consumption alone liable to the payment of duties, and thereby does away in a great measure with the odious right of search.

At Kosi our friend, Charles Fraser, left us to proceed through Mathura to Agra. He is a very worthy man and excellent public officer, one of those whom one always meets again with pleasure, and of whose society one never tires. Mr. Wilmot, the Collector of Customs, and Mr. Wright, one of the patrol officers, came to dine with us. The wind blew so hard all day that the cook and khansaman (butler) were long in despair of being able to give us any dinner at all. At last we managed to get a tent, closed at every crevice to keep out the dust, for a cook-room; and they were thus able to preserve their master's credit, which, no doubt, according to their notions, depended altogether on the quality of his dinner.

Notes:

1. The place is a small town in the Gurgaon District, Panjab.

2. The term 'uncovenanted' may require explanation for readers not familiar with the details of Indian administration. The Civil Service of India, commonly called Indian Civil Service, which supplies most of the higher administrative and judicial officers, used to be known as the Covenanted service, because its members sign a covenant with the Secretary of State. All the other departmental services--Public Works, Postal and the rest--were grouped together as uncovenanted. In accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7) the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.

3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilized country. A Customs line was established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers, at an annual cost of 162,000. It would have stretched from London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted princ.i.p.ally of an immense impenetrable hedge of th.o.r.n.y trees and bushes . . . A similar line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878 the salt duties were revised, and the necessary arrangements with the native states were made. With effect from the 1st April, 1879, the whole Customs line was abolished, with the exception of a small portion on the Indus. (Sir J. Strachey, _The Finances and Public Works of India_, 1869-81, London, 1882, pp. 219, 220, 225.) Great mines of rock salt are worked near the Indus.

4. Most people who know India intimately are of opinion that indirect taxation is more suitable to the circ.u.mstances of the country than direct taxation. For munic.i.p.al purposes, indirect taxation, under the name of octroi, is levied by most considerable towns, and notwithstanding its inconveniences, is far less unpopular and far more productive than any form of direct taxation. The people have been accustomed to indirect taxation of divers kinds from the most remote times, and hate income tax or any other direct impost, however reasonable it may be in theory. Since 1895 the general customs duty is 5 per cent. _ad valorem_ on commodities imported into British India by sea. (See _I.G._, 1907, vol. iv, chapter 8). The above remarks on the suitability of indirect taxation for India are not intended as a defence of the barbarous device of the 'Customs hedge', which was indefensible.

5. That unsound System prevailed in all departments during the early years of the nineteenth century. 'In Bengal, the monopoly of salt in one form or other dates at least from the establishment of the Board of Trade there in 1765. The strict monopoly of salt commenced in 1780, under a System of agencies. The System introduced in 1780 continued in force with occasional modifications till 1862, when the several salt agencies were gradually abolished, leaving the Supply of salt, whether by importations or excise manufacture, to private enterprise. Since then, for Bengal Proper, the supply of the condiment has been obtained chiefly by importation, but in part by private manufacture under a System of excise.' (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia_, 3rd ed., s.v. Salt.) At present the Salt Department is controlled by a single Commissioner with the Government of India, The fee payable for a licence to manufacture salt is fifty rupees. It is inaccurate to describe the limitation imposed on the manufacture of salt as a monopoly. Any one can sell salt, but it can be made only under licence.

6. The author.

7. The same observations, _mutatis mutandis_, are applicable to the magistracy of the country; and the remedy for all the great existing evils must be sought in the same means, the interposition of a body of efficient officers between the magistrate and the 'thanadars', or present head police officers of small divisions. [W. H. S.] Much has been done to carry out this advice. The 'most efficient officers' of the inland Customs department alluded to in the text were the European or Eurasian 'uncovenanted' Collectors of Customs and their a.s.sistants. The allusion to Prince Husain and Prince Ali refers to the well-known tale in the _Arabian Nights_, 'The story of Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri-Banu'. It is omitted, I believe, from Lane's version.

CHAPTER 61

Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government--Want of Trees in Upper India [1]--Cause and Consequence--Wells and Groves.

What strikes one most after crossing the Chambal is, I think, the improved size and bearing of the men; they are much stouter, and more bold and manly, without being at all less respectful. They are certainly a n.o.ble peasantry, full of courage, spirit, and intelligence; and heartily do I wish that we could adopt any system that would give our Government a deep root in their affections, or link their interests inseparably with its prosperity; for, with all its defects, life, property, and character are certainly more secure, and all their advantages more freely enjoyed under our Government than under any other they have ever heard of, or that exists at present in any other part of the country. The eternal subdivision of the landed property reduces them too much to one common level, and prevents the formation of that middle cla.s.s which is the basis of all that is great and good in European societies--the great vivifying spirit which animates all that is good above it in the community.[2]

It is a singular fact that the peasantry, and, I may say, the landed interest of the country generally, have never been the friends of any existing government, have never considered their interests and that of their government the same; and, consequently, have never felt any desire for its success or its duration.[3]

The towns and villages all stand upon high mounds formed of the debris of former towns and villages, that have been acc.u.mulating, most of them, for thousands of years. They are for the most part mere collections of wretched hovels built of frail materials, and destined only for a brief period.

Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.[4]

And certainly there is no climate in the world where man wants less than in this of India generally, and Upper India particularly. The peasant lives in the open air; and a house to him is merely a thing to eat and sleep in, and to give him shelter in the storm, which comes upon him but seldom, and never in a pitiless shape. The society of his friends he enjoys in the open air, and he never furnishes his house for their reception or for display. The peasantry of India, in consequence of living and talking so much in the open air, have all stentorian voices, which they find it exceedingly difficult to modulate to our taste when they come into our rooms.

Another thing in this part of India strikes a traveller from other parts--the want of groves of fruit-trees around the villages and along the roads. In every other part of India he can at every stage have his tents pitched in a grove of mango-trees, that defend his followers from the direct rays of the sun in the daytime, and from the cold dews at night; but in the district above Agra, he may go for ten marches without getting the shelter of a grove in one.[5] The Sikhs, the Marathas, the Jats, and the Pathans destroyed them all during the disorders attending the decline of the Muhammadan empire; and they have never been renewed, because no man could feel secure that they would be suffered to stand ten years. A Hindoo believes that his soul in the next world is benefited by the blessings and grateful feelings of those of his fellow creatures who unmolested eat the fruit and enjoy the shade of the trees he has planted during his sojourn in this world; and, unless he can feel a.s.sured that the traveller and the public in general will be permitted to do so, he can have no hope of any permanent benefit from his good work. It might as well be cut down as pa.s.s into the hands of another person who had no feeling of interest in the eternal repose of the soul of the planter. That person would himself have no advantage in the next world from giving the fruit and the shade of the trees to the public, since the prayers of those who enjoyed them would be offered for the soul of the planter, and not for his--he, therefore, takes all their advantage to himself in this world, and the planter and the public are defrauded. Our Government thought they had done enough to encourage the renewal of these groves, when by a regulation they gave to the present lessees of villages the privilege of planting them themselves, or permitting others to plant them; but where they held their leases for a term of only five years, of course they would be unwilling to plant them. They might lose their lease when the term expired, or forfeit it before; and the successor would have the land on which the trees stood, and would be able to exclude the public, if not the proprietor, from the enjoyment of any of their advantages.

Our Government has, in effect, during the thirty-five years that it has held the dominion of the North-Western Provinces,[6] prohibited the planting of mango groves, while the old ones are every year disappearing. On the resumption of rent-free lands, even the ground on which the finest of these groves stand has been recklessly resumed, and the proprietors told me that they may keep the trees they have, but cannot be allowed to renew them, as the lands are become the property of Government. The lands of groves that have been the pride of families for a century and a half have been thus resumed. Government is not aware of the irreparable mischief they do the country they govern by such measures.[7]

On my way back from Meerut, after the conversation already related with the farmer of a small village (_ante_, chapter 58, text at [7]), my tents were one day pitched, in the month of December, amidst some very fine garden cultivation in the district of Aligarh;[8] and in the evening I walked out as usual to have some talk with the peasantry. I came to a neighbouring well at which four pair of bullocks were employed watering the surrounding fields of wheat for the market, and vegetables for the families of the cultivators. Four men were employed at the well, and two more in guiding the water into the little embanked squares into which they divide their fields.

I soon discovered that the most intelligent of the four was a Jat; and I had a good deal of conversation with him as he stood landing the leather buckets, as the two pair of bullocks on his side of the well drew them to the top, a distance of forty cubits from the surface of the water beneath.

'Who built this well?' I began.

'It was built by one of my ancestors, six generations ago.'

'How much longer will it last?'

'Ten generations more, I hope; for it is now just as good as when first made. It is of 'pakka' bricks without mortar cement.'[9]

'How many waterings do you give?'

'If there should be no rain, we shall require to give the land six waterings, as the water is sweet; had it been brackish four would do.

Brackish water is better for wheat than sweet water; but it is not so good for vegetables or sugar-cane.'

'How many "bighas" are watered from this well?'

'We water twenty "bighas", or one hundred and five "jaribs", from this well.'[10]

'And you pay the Government how much?'

'One hundred rupees, at the rate of five rupees the bigha. But only the five immediately around the well are mine, the rest belong to others.'

'But the well belongs to you; and I suppose you get from the proprietors of the other fifteen something for your water?'

'Nothing. There is more water for my five bighas, and I give them what they require gratis; they acknowledge that it is a gift from me, and that is all I want.'

'And what does the land beyond the range of your water of the same quality pay?'

'It pays at the rate of two rupees the bigha, and it is with difficulty that they can be made to pay that. Water, sir, is a great thing, and with that and manure we get good crops from the land.'[11]

'How many returns of the seed?'

'From these twenty bighas with six waterings, and cross ploughing, and good manure, we contrive to get twenty returns; that is, if G.o.d is pleased with us and blesses our efforts.'

'And you maintain your family comfortably out of the return from your five?'

'If they were mine I could; but we had two or three bad seasons seven years ago, and I was obliged to borrow eighty rupees from our banker at 24 per cent., for the subsistence of my family. I have hardly been able to pay him the interest with all I can earn by my labour, and I now serve him upon two rupees a month.'

'But that is not enough to maintain you and your family?'

'No; but he only requires my services for half the day, and during the other half I work with others to get enough for them.'

'And when do you expect to pay off your debt?'

'G.o.d only knows; if I exert myself, and keep a good "niyat" (pure mind or intentions), he will enable me or my children to do so some day or other. In the meantime he has my five bighas of land in mortgage, and I serve him in the cultivation.'

'But under those misfortunes, you could surely venture to demand something from the proprietors of the other fifteen bighas for the water of your well?'

'Never, sir; it would be said all over the country that such an one sold G.o.d's water for his neighbours' fields, and I should be ashamed to show my face. Though poor, and obliged to work hard, and serve others, I have still too much pride for that.'

'How many bullocks are required for the tillage of these twenty bighas watered from your well?'

'These eight bullocks do all the work; they are dear now. This was purchased the other day on the death of the old one, for twenty-six rupees. They cost about fifty rupees a pair--the late famine has made them dear.'[12]

'What did the well cost in making?'