George Dodd - The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

Nothing could be more clear and positive than these assertions. Not only did the governor-general announce that the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Berar, and Oude had been completely annexed, bringing a large accession to the British revenues; but that in every case a scheme of administration had been framed and established, conducive to the lasting benefit of the natives, the honour of the British name, and the development of the natural resources of the several districts. Not a whisper of discontent, of spirits chafed by change of rulers, did the marquis recognise: if they occurred, they reached not him; or if they did reach him, he passed them by as trifles.

Nor was it alone in the newly acquired territories that credit for these advantageous changes was claimed. Improvements in the government of India were pointed out in every direction. The governor-general had been relieved from an overwhelming press of duties by the appointment of a lieutenant-governor for Bengal. A Legislative Council had been organised, distinct from the Supreme Council: the public having access to its deliberations, and its debates and papers being printed and issued to the world. The Indian civil service, by an act passed in 1853, had been thrown open to all who, being natural-born subjects of the British sovereign, should offer themselves as candidates for examination and admission. Young cadets, who previously had been allowed nearly two years to ‘idle and loiter’ at the presidencies while studying for examination as civilians, were by a new regulation required to complete their studies in a much shorter period, thereby lessening their idleness and rendering them sooner useful. Periodical examinations of the civil servants had been established, to insure efficiency before promotion was given. A board of examiners had been founded, to conduct examinations and superintend studies. All officers of the Indian government had been formally prohibited from engaging in banking or trading companies; and any bankruptcy among them entailed suspension from office. In many of the civil offices, promotion, before dependent on seniority alone, had been made dependent on merit alone. A pension or superannuation list had been established in many departments, to insure steady and faithful service. Three boards of administration for salt, opium, and customs had been replaced by one board of revenue, simpler in its constitution. The annual financial reports, transmitted to the home government, had gradually been made more clear, full, and instructive. All the salaries throughout India had been placed under the consideration of a special commissioner, for equitable revision; and the authorities had determined that, in future, no salaries, with a few special exceptions, shall exceed fifty thousand rupees (about five thousand pounds) per annum.

Nor had legislative reform been wholly forgotten. During the eight years under review, laws had been passed or rules laid down for the punishment of officials guilty of corruption, or accountants guilty of default; for allowing counsel to prisoners on their trial; for abolishing the semi-savage custom of branding convicts; for rendering public officers more amenable to public justice; for vesting a right of pardon in the supreme government; for improving the procedure in all the civil and criminal courts; for rendering the reception of evidence more fair and impartial; and, among many less important things, for ‘securing liberty of conscience, and for the protection of converts, and especially of Christian converts, against injury in respect of property or inheritance by reason of a change in their religious belief.’ For the amelioration of prison-discipline, inspectors of prisons had been appointed in all the three presidencies, as well as in Oude, the Punjaub, and the northwest provinces.

Equally in moral as in administrative matters did the Marquis of Dalhousie insist on the manifold improvement of India during the eight years preceding 1856. Schools for the education of natives had been established; the Hindoo College at Calcutta had been revived and improved; a Presidency College had been founded in the same city, to give a higher scale of education to the youth of Bengal; similar colleges had been sanctioned at Madras and Bombay; grants-in-aid to all educational establishments had been authorised, subject to government inspection of the schools aided; a committee had been appointed to consider the plans for establishing regular universities at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras; a distinct educational department had been formed at the seat of government, with director-generals of public instruction in all the presidencies and governments; and the East India Company had, by a dispatch framed in 1854, sanctioned a most extensive educational scheme for the whole of India, to be rendered available to all the natives who might be willing and able to claim its advantages. The delicate subject of female education had not been forgotten. Instructions had been given to the officers of the educational department to afford all possible encouragement to the establishment of female schools, whenever any disposition was shewn by the natives in that direction. There is a peculiar difficulty in all that concerns female education in India, arising from the reluctance which has always been shewn by the higher classes of natives to permit the attendance of their daughters at schools. Mr Bethune commenced, and the Marquis of Dalhousie continued, a delicate and cautious attempt to overcome this unwillingness by establishing a Hindoo ladies’ school at Calcutta; and the minute gives expression to an earnest hope and belief that the female character in India will gradually be brought under the elevating influence of moral and intellectual education. As the native mind was thus sought to be ameliorated and strengthened by education; so had the prevention or cure of bodily maladies been made an object of attention. Additional advantages had been granted to natives who applied themselves to the study of the medical sciences; the number of dispensaries had been greatly increased, to the immense benefit of the poorer classes of Hindoos and Mohammedans; plans had been commenced for introducing a check to the dreadful ravages of the small-pox; admission to the medical service of the Company had been thrown open to natives; and, as a first-fruit of this change, one Dr Chuckerbutty, a Hindoo educated in England, had won for himself a commission as assistant-surgeon in the Company’s service.

In so far as concerns superstition and religion, the minute narrates a course of proceeding of which the following is the substance. Among the extraordinary social customs – atrocities they are unquestionably considered in Europe – of India, those of Suttee, Thuggee, Infanticide, and the Meriah Sacrifice, are mentioned as having undergone much amelioration during the eight years to which the minute relates. The suttee , or burning of widows, had been almost suppressed by previous governor-generals, and the marquis had carried out the plans of his predecessors: remonstrating where any suttees occurred in independent states; and punishing where they occurred in the British and protected territories. Thuggee , or systematic murder of travellers for the sake of booty, had been quite suppressed east of the Sutlej; but having unexpectedly made its appearance in the Punjaub in 1851, it was thoroughly put down there as elsewhere; those who turned approvers or king’s evidence against their brother Thugs now form – or rather did form in 1856 – a peaceful industrious colony at Jubbulpoor, where they spun and wove muslins of exquisite fineness, instead of cutting the throats of unsuspecting travellers. Female infanticide , the result of pride of birth and pride of purse – parents murdering their infant daughters either because they cannot afford the marriage expenditure which must one day be incurred on their account, or because they see difficulties in marrying them suitably – had been greatly checked and discouraged. In the Punjaub a most signal and singular conquest had been achieved; for the British representative, calling together the chiefs of tribes in 1854, unfolded to them a plan, ‘the observance of which would effectually secure that no man should feel any real difficulty in providing for his daughter in marriage;’ whereupon the chiefs, as well as those of the Cashmere tribes, promised that, as the motive for infanticide would thus in great measure be removed, they would cheerfully aid in suppressing the practice. Lastly, the Meriah sacrifice – a horrible rite, in which young human victims are sacrificed for the propitiation of the special divinity which presides over the fertility of the earth – had been nearly rooted out from the only district where it was practised, among the hill and jungle tribes of Orissa. In religious matters, the ecclesiastical strength of the established church had been largely increased; clergymen had been occasionally sanctioned, besides those acting as chaplains to the Company; places of worship had been provided for the servants and soldiers of the Company; Protestant churches had been built in places where the worshippers were willing to contribute something towards the expenditure; Roman Catholics serving the Company had been provided with places of worship; salaries had been granted to three Roman Catholic bishops, one in each presidency; the salaries of the priests had been revised and augmented; and a wish was manifested to observe justice towards the Catholic as well as the Protestant who served his country well in the East.