Wilfrid Blunt - India Under Ripon - A Private Diary

“ 10th Oct. – The only persons on board we know anything of are the half-caste Russell going to Jeddah, and a young fellow, Mrs. Palmer’s brother, who has been given a Government place worth £800 a year in the Mint at Calcutta. He is to stay there two years, and then to be transferred to the London Mint, this doubtless through Lord Northbrook.”

This is a good instance of the way the Indian revenue is sometimes made use of to evade the difficulties of jobbery in England. Professor Palmer had been sent by Lord Northbrook, then at the Admiralty, on a secret mission connected with the intended invasion of Egypt, and had lost his life (see “Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt”), and his widow had applied to his lordship for a pension. As the mission was a secret one, and could not be avowed, it was not found possible to include this in the English Navy Estimates, so Palmer’s brother-in-law was jobbed into the Indian service in the way described, as part of the compensation due to his widow.

“The rest of the passengers are tea-planters, or English settlers in India, the class most angry at the Ilbert Bill, and we are not very amiably regarded by them. I have passed my time reading the ‘Koran,’ which is a great consolation in circumstances such as ours. There are moments when I could arise and proclaim a jehad on board.

“ 11th Oct. – I have had some conversation with an intelligent young tea-planter settled near the Burmese frontier. He seems to think a new rebellion is brewing in India. In his district within the last two years the villagers have taken to cursing the English when they pass, and even throwing stones. He has the usual arguments against the Ilbert Bill – the venality of native magistrates, prevalence of native false witness, and the rest. In another district the planters had sworn that they would not accept the bill if it became law, but would deal in their own way with the first native magistrate who presumed to try a European. He did not believe the bill would pass. If it did, India would be lost. The natives were already ‘far too cheeky.’ A sensible old lady who has lived twenty-five years in Burmah had something of the same opinion, but spoke very strongly against the opium trade. The Buddhist priests of Burmah have complained that our rule has demoralized the country, which before had no vices, but is now given up to opium eating and spirit drinking. She says this is quite true, and that the Government forced their opium on the people for the sake of the revenue. She likes Burmah, nevertheless, and is going out now with the whole of a very numerous family undismayed at possible dangers.

“ 12th Oct. – The Feast of Beiram. The waiters and crew, most of whom are Moslems, said their prayers together on the forecastle, having put on clean turbans. We are passing Socotra, which lies north of us, ranges of barren hills.

“ 13th Oct. – Last night an old indigo planter with a bottle nose entertained us with his views on the Ilbert Bill and kindred matters. He had been twenty years in Bengal; there were fewer planters now than before the Mutiny; the planters were the backbone of the Empire, and saved it in the Mutiny, and now were the backbone of its finance. I asked him to explain this, and he said that they advanced money to the Zemindars to enable them to pay the Government dues. They charged no interest, but took villages in exchange, their only advantage being that the villagers worked their indigo grounds for them. The planters would all leave India if the Ilbert Bill passed.

“There is a Mr. Y. on board who bought nine thousand acres of land last year from the Government, but the natives on it would only pay rent for sixteen acres, though they occupied it all. He was very indignant, and said the Indian Empire would go to ruin if they played any tricks with it. It was a conquered country, and the niggers were all rogues from the first to the last. The little tea-planter joined in, but assured us that no improvement was to be expected from making them Christians. Some of the planters in his neighbourhood had employed converted coolies, but found them far worse than the others; they used sometimes to go away all together and drink for a week at a time. Nobody became a Christian except for some underhand object, and as soon as he had got it he went back; he considered drinking part of the conversion. He mentioned how an Englishman of his district had been condemned to a year’s imprisonment for manslaughter on false evidence, as the man he had injured had not died – though the Englishman beat him. They asked me what the English Government meant to do, what their idea was in upsetting things? I said I believed it was merely a question of economy; the Indian Government as it was did not pay its expenses; it was like sending away an expensive Scotch gardener from a poor garden; the country would be worse administered perhaps. I consoled Mr. Y., however, by assuring him that the people now in office, Lord Kimberley, Lord Northbrook, and Lord Granville, were as little likely to do anything really in the direction of freeing the Indians as any three Tories in the kingdom. In answer to a question, the tea-planter said: ‘Of course it is impossible to get on without being bullies now and then, but it is a good rule never to touch the natives unless you mean it in earnest. If you strike a nigger and he thinks you are afraid to hit him hard, he runs you in to a certainty before the magistrate, but if you give it him well, he knows he deserves it. You must be careful, however, not to overdo it, for they are very soft, and four out of five have enlarged spleens, and they are capable without any exaggeration of dying to spite you.’

“ 14th Oct., Sunday. – I am worse again to-day, and can do nothing but sit up and lie down, and wish I was dead. The Moslem servants have found out we are different from the rest of their masters on board, and are very attentive. What irritates them particularly, they have told Sabunji, is that nobody speaks to them by name, but only as ‘boy’ here, and ‘boy’ there. There is a bitter hatred between them and the passengers, and no wonder. Not that there is any actual ill-treatment by these – that was put a stop to three years ago by a strike among the Bengalis, who refused any longer to be beaten on the British India boats – but brow-beating there is in plenty. Last night young Langa, Mrs. Palmer’s brother, came to sit with us. He told us he had been given his place in the Indian Mint, although he was not even an Englishman. His father had been a Polish patriot, and he was indignant at the way the natives were treated on board. He is an amiable boy of about twenty-three, very like his sister in face and voice. A yellow butterfly was blown on board to-day.

“ 15th to 18th Oct. – Too ill to write. Last night, however, we cast anchor at Colombo just after sunset. We expected our friends to come to us on board, but I was too tired to care. Sabunji went forth like the raven from the Ark, and did not any more return!”

The next three weeks I spent grievously sick, and then beginning to be convalescent, at Colombo. On the morning of the nineteenth our friends Mahmud Sami and Arabi came on board to take us to a beautiful country house the former had prepared for us, and on landing we were received by a deputation from the Mohammedans of the town. The whole road we found had been decorated with flowers for our reception, and there was a triumphal arch at the entrance to the house, which was some miles from the landing-place. I was carried through it all, hardly conscious of what was going on, nor of the fireworks and illuminations which took place in my honour in the evening. My journal contains no record of these days until the 3rd of November, when I find a pleasant description of my daily life.