INDIA UNDER RIPON A PRIVATE DIARY BY WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT CONTINUED FROM HIS “SECRET HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF EGYPT” T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 1909 ( All rights reserved. ) CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. INDIA UNDER RIPON...

INTRODUCTORY I ought perhaps to have named this volume “The Awakening of India,” because it describes the condition of Indian things at the time of Lord Ripon’s viceroyalty, which was in truth the awakening hour of the new movement towards liberty in India, the dawn of that day of unrest which is the necessary prelude to full self-assertion in every subject land. The journey it records was made under circumstances of exceptional interest at an exceptional moment, and should be instructive in vie

CEYLON “ 12th Sept., 1883. “Left home by the 10 o’clock train, and spent the day in London. A letter had come from Eddy Hamilton by the morning’s post asking to see me before I went abroad, and I went to Downing Street at one o’clock. Mr. Gladstone is away yachting, and Eddy is acting Prime Minister, and a very great man. I had not been to Downing Street since last year—just upon a year ago—when I went to ask for Arabi’s life. Eddy was extremely amiable this time, and asked me what I was going t

MADRAS “ 12th Nov. “After a good passage of about fifteen hours we sighted the Indian coast, first the western hills, and then the low shore off Tuticorin. We have been carrying four hundred and thirty-five Indian labourers coming home after working in Ceylon. The captain says they carry 15,000 every year each way. They are fat and merry, so I judge that they thrive during their absence from home—all I believe Hindu Tamils. On the pier we were met by twenty or thirty Moslems, representing the lo

HYDERABAD “ 28th Nov. “Arrived at Hyderabad at daybreak. We found Seymour Keay’s carriage waiting for us, and a very amiable note from Mr. Cordery, inviting us to stay at the Residency. The note was forwarded by Keay, so we accepted both the carriage and invitation, and are now at the residency. I am glad of this, for when we were in England we had made a kind of half promise to stay with Keay and his wife, but since then Keay has brought forward several charges against the Indian Government, wh

CALCUTTA “ 17th Dec. “Arrived at Calcutta, and were met by Walter Pollen [an aide-de-camp of Lord Ripon, and a private friend of ours], who has taken capital rooms for us at 2, Russell Street. Wrote our names down at Government House, and arranged with Primrose, the private secretary, that I am to have an interview with Lord Ripon on Wednesday afternoon. Sent several letters of introduction which had been given us to Hindus of the place. There is notice of a meeting of a thousand persons held un

A MOHAMMEDAN UNIVERSITY “ 1st January, 1884. “To-day our visitors were: “Mohammed Yusuf, a Member of Council, to whom I broached my idea of a university, but he is of the worldly school, and says he would rather have his sons educated at the Presidency College. He dresses, however, becomingly, in dark clothes, and with a gilt crown on his head. “A Sheykh from Yemen came next, who brought a letter of introduction from Arabi, whom he had visited in Ceylon. He talked about the Mahdi, and told us th

PATNA, LUCKNOW “ 7th Jan. “Arrived at Patna at half-past 9 o’clock, and found about eighty of the leading Mohammedans at the City station awaiting us. Our host, Seyd Rasa Huseyn, drove us in a handsome barouche to his house, where we have been very comfortably lodged, and sumptuously entertained, and have made the acquaintance of, I believe, every Mohammedan of importance in Patna. Patna is one of the Mohammedan strongholds, as they number 50,000 out of a total population of 150,000; and they st

DELHI, RAJPUTANA “ 22nd Jan. ( continued ). “At Delhi we were met by Ikhram Ullah with three of the chief noblemen of the town, Nawab Ala-ed-din, Ahmed Khan, chief of Loharo, a prince Mirza Suliman Jah, of the Mogul family, and Ala-ed-din’s son, Emir-ed-din Feruk Mirza. The Nawab accompanied us to the hotel, where he had taken rooms for us, and, as he speaks English, we had a long conversation, principally about Egypt. But I found him very ignorant as to the state of affairs there. He asked very

THE NIZAM’S INSTALLATION “ 3rd Feb. “We are established in tents at a camp just outside the Residency, where Kurshid Jah does the honours to all strangers in the Nizam’s name. It consists of a large shamiana and fifteen principal tents arranged in a street, with flowers, in pots, down the whole row—very pretty certainly, but it wants the natural attraction of camp life, the individual choice of site one always finds in Arabia, and there are no beasts of burden near it, so that it has an unlocomo

BOMBAY “ 14th Feb. “Arrived at Bombay at 11 o’clock. I see the ‘Bombay Gazette’ has published the Patna letter, and there is important news from Egypt. Sinkat has fallen to the Mahdi, and Mr. Gladstone has ordered 4,000 English troops to the Red Sea. Next we shall hear that Khartoum has fallen and Gordon has been killed, and then there will be a regular Soudan expedition on the scale of the Abyssinian one. I shall protest against the employment of Indian troops.” We spent the next few days mostl

AN APOLOGY FOR FAILURE Such was my Indian tour of 1883-1884. It will be rightly asked by those who have read thus far how it came about that I wasted so great an opportunity for good as then seemed open to me, and did not return the following year, or indeed in any subsequent year, to carry out the mission which appeared marked out for me. I often ask myself the same question. Looking back at the position I held for a moment with Hindus, Mohammedans, and Parsis alike, I am filled with regret tha

THE AGRICULTURAL DANGER I believe it to be an axiom in politics that all social convulsions have been preceded by a period of growing misery for the agricultural poor, combined with the growing intelligence of the urban populations. Certainly this was the case in Europe at the time of the Reformation, and again, following the lead of France, in the last century; and, most certainly and immediately under our own observation, it has been the case in Ireland and in Egypt at the present day. Where t

RACE HATRED If agricultural distress is the major premiss of revolution in India, the growth of political education in the towns is its minor—political education, that is, unaccompanied by any corresponding growth of political power. With all my belief in Asiatic progress, I confess that before my recent visit to India I was not prepared to find this latter at all so far advanced as in fact it is; and from first to last I remained astonished at the high level at which native intelligence in poli

THE MOHAMMEDAN QUESTION It is never well to have travelled from Dan to Beersheba and to record that one has found all barren; and in my present chapter I shall endeavour to paint the brighter side of the India which I saw last winter. The material misery of her peasantry has been enough described, and the bitter feeling of her townsmen educated to a sense of their fallen estate as a conquered people; and it remains to me to show the compensating good which by the mysterious law which rules all h

THE FUTURE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT [20] Before considering the case for self-government in British India, a few words may be said about the semi-independent Native States. There is an interest attaching to these Native States which is twofold for the political observer. They present in the first place a picture, instructive if not entirely accurate, of the India of past days, and so serve in some measure as landmarks and records of the changes for good and evil our rule has caused. And secondly, they

THE MOHAMMEDAN UNIVERSITY Scheme for a University, forwarded to the Nizam, January 24, 1884 The lamentable decline, during the last forty years, of the Mohammedan community of India in wealth and social importance, while at the same time it has been numerically an ever-increasing body, makes it a matter of anxious consideration with those who love their religion to consider by what means best to avert the danger attending such a condition of things, and to restore prosperity to the community and

Sir William Hunter to Mr. Blunt Calcutta, 6th January, 1884 . Dear Mr. Blunt, I have been unable to procure a copy of the “Settlement Handbook.” But here is one which I have borrowed. With regard to the Madras settlement, some detailed facts will be found at pp. 668 and 672, among other places. The rules are: (1) First calculate the actual average produce and actual average value of it, over a period of years. Say the actual gross produce thus ascertained is 100 bushels. (2) Then deduct from the

Major Claude Clerk to Mr. Blunt 9, Albert Hall Mansions, Kensington Gore, S.W. November 15th, 1904 . Dear Mr. Blunt, Very many thanks for your “Ideas about India” which you have so kindly sent me. I look forward with pleasure to reading your work, and I know I shall find much in it of the greatest interest to me. Although I have only just glanced at what you then wrote, I can see that all you say is as true now as it was then—the impoverishment of the millions, and the reckless extravagance of t