India Through the Ages Part 31

PART III

THE MODERN AGE

INDIA IN THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A.D. 1707

Before making our _volte face_, and in future chronicling the history of India from the Western standpoint, it will be well to see what this India was which England set herself deliberately to annex.

So far as the East India Company was concerned, the vast peninsula was at this time what a huge slice of iced plum-cake upon a plate must be to a hungry mouse. That is to say, nice enough for outside nibblings, but with unexplored possibilities of plums within. Every now and again a bolder merchant would dive into the comparatively unknown centre, and come back laden possibly with idol-eyes, rich brocades, jewels in the rough.

It must--to repeat ourselves--have been a tremendous temptation having to live, as these early writers or clerks to John Company had, on the very verge of Tom Tiddler's ground--to have only to reach out their hands and touch a totally different world. A world which by virtue of immutable changelessness had not commuted the gold which the years had brought it into luxuries, but had stored it up uselessly in lavish ornamentation and idle, almost unappropriated treasure. Except as a gaud for a woman, a toy for a babe, or a flourish of trumpets for some man who called himself n.o.ble, gold in India had practically no value, for the rich man lived in all ways much as the poor man lived. The standard of personal comfort had not risen at all either for the wealthy or the poverty-stricken during the four thousand years and odd since the splendours of Princess Draupadi's Swayamvara had been chronicled in the Mahabharata. An instant's thought will show us the effect which this h.o.a.rding of every diamond found in Golconda, of every bale of rich stuff made by some leisurely artificer, must have had upon the country. It became full to overflowing with scarcely recognised riches. To English traders, keen on commerce, India must indeed have been the land of Upside-down; a land into which their gold was sucked down at the same time that astounding, almost undreamt-of treasures were literally vomited forth from every petty bazaar.

Francois Bernier's views on this matter, and the conclusions which he draws from the indubitable facts which he observed, are so distinctly what may be called conventionally insular, that they serve well to show the att.i.tude of mind in which the West, strong in conviction of its own worth, faced the East, all unfamiliar and startling.

"Before I conclude," he says, in a letter addressed to M. Colbert, the French Minister of State, "I wish to explain how it happens that though the gold and silver introduced into the Empire centre finally in Hindustan, they still are not in greater plenty than elsewhere, and the inhabitants have less the appearance of a monied people than those of many other parts of the globe.

"In the first place, a larger quant.i.ty is melted, re-melted, and wasted in fabricating women's bracelets, both for the hands and feet, chains, ear-rings, nose and finger rings, and a still larger quant.i.ty is consumed in manufacturing embroideries; _alachas_ or striped silken stuffs, _touras_ or tufts of golden nets worn on turbans; gold and silver cloths and scarves, turbans, and brocades. The quant.i.ty of these articles made in India is incredible."

He then goes on to paint, in vivid, horror-stricken phrases, the evils of a paternal despotism, pointing out that it is "slavery," that it "obstructs the progress of trade," since there is no encouragement to commercial pursuits when the "success with which they may be attended, instead of adding to the enjoyments of life, only provokes the cupidity of a neighbouring tyrant." This we are a.s.sured is the sole cause why the "possessor, so far from living with increased comfort, studies the means by which he may appear indigent: his dress, lodging, and furniture continue to be mean, and he is careful, above all things, never to indulge in the pleasures of the table."

Poor Bernier! And after more than a hundred years of comparative freedom under British rule there was still not a face-towel or a bit of soap in an Indian household; not a chair, not a table, and the simple food, cooked over a hole dug in the ground, was served on leaf-plates set upon the floor. For luxury has. .h.i.therto pa.s.sed India by. Will it do so in the future? Who can say?

The state of the arts in India evidently puzzled Bernier's Western brain, and he sets to work to find out some occult cause for the undoubted skill of the artisan. He a.s.serts that

"no artist can be expected to give his mind to his calling" without the stimulus of personal advantage, "and that the arts would long ago have lost their beauty and delicacy if the monarch and the princ.i.p.al n.o.bles did not keep the artists in their pay to work in their houses."

Then:--

"The protection afforded by powerful patrons, rich merchants and traders, who give the workmen rather more than the usual wages, tends to preserve the arts; rather more wages, for it should not be inferred from the goodness of the manufactures that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a state of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed."

And this in a country where, to this day, the pride of hereditary dexterity in hand and eye is handed down from father to son, and to say of a coppersmith or a carpenter or a weaver in brocades: "His grandfather, see you, was a real _ustad_ (teacher)," is to raise that man above his fellows. Once more, poor Bernier! He might have learnt something from the eager-faced, lissome-fingured Indian smith, who, handling a gun made by Manton, laid it down reverently and salaamed to it as if it had been a G.o.d, with these simple words: "He who made that was a Great Artificer."

Here we have epitomised the true artistic temperament.

But it needs art to apply the solvent of sympathy; and the dealings of the West with the East were at this time purely commercial; so we meet with absolute, almost pathetic lack of comprehension. Indeed, as we read with painstaking care every record that exists of these Western dealings with the East at this period, we know not whether to laugh or to cry at the spectacle presented to us of mutual misunderstanding.

India is a problem even now. What must it have been then, to these worthy Lombard Street merchants who knew nothing of ancient faiths and past civilisations, who looked on the native of India as a barbarian utterly. What a shock it must have been to them, when a native accountant, given some abstruse problem in arithmetic, solved it lightly, easily, by algebra! Small wonder that, finding the Hindu circle divided into 360 equal parts and the ratio of diameter to circ.u.mference expressed correctly at 1 to 3.14160 they credited Alexander's Greek phalanxes with being mathematical teachers as well as conquerors. Small wonder that every discovery of scientific knowledge amongst these "barbarians" should have been referred to some contact with the West.

It required long years before due credit could be given to the East; it is doubtful indeed whether sufficient credit is given to it even now. Who, for instance, knows of the accurate trigonometrical tables of India, in which _sines_ are used instead of the Greek _chords?_--or of their framer, of whom Professor Wallace writes:--

"He who first formed the idea of exhibiting in arithmetical tables the ratios of the sides and angles of all possible triangles must have been a man of profound thought and extensive knowledge. However ancient, therefore, any book may be in which we meet with a system of trigonometry, we may be a.s.sured that it was not written in the infancy of the science. Hence, we may conclude that geometry must have been known in India long before the writing of the 'Surya Siddhanta.'"

Now this book on Astronomy was written at the latest computation about the year A.D. 400. Centuries before this, therefore, India was aware of certain of those inviolable laws of our Universe, in the apprehension of which lies humanity's best hope of immortality. And there is one curious fact about these vestiges of ancient knowledge which Professor Playfair has noted in a pregnant remark concerning these same trigonometrical tables. "They have the appearance, like many other things in the science of these Eastern nations, of being drawn by one _who was more deeply versed in the subject than may at first be imagined, and who knew much more than he thought it necessary to communicate_."

It is a remark which stimulates the imagination.

But as a matter of fact the Western imagination of those days appears not to have been stimulated at all by anything save the prospect of plunder. And in truth the h.o.a.rded wisdom of the East was not nearly so much in evidence as its h.o.a.rded wealth. In Akbar's time some effort had been made to give such wisdom fair hearing. There is small doubt, for instance, but that his study of the kingcraft chapters of the Mahabharata had done much towards making Akbar what he was--the best ruler India has ever seen, or is likely to see; but, taking it as a whole, the tide of Mahomedan conquest had simply submerged Hindu learning, and the rising flood of Mahratta power was not one whit less prejudicial to philosophy. But below the troubled surface of wars and rumours of wars the heart of India dreamt on undisturbed. All things, as ever, were illusion. The Wheel-of-Life revolved between the pivots of Birth and Death, so what mattered it whether the painted zoetrope showed the yellow face of a Toorkh from the North, or the white one of a trader from the West? Both sought gold; and even gold was illusion.

It is quaint to think, say, of those pirates of Arracan bursting in upon a crowd of pilgrims round some ancient shrine, and carrying off the whole concern, as it were--priests, worshippers, offerings, even the idol-eyes, leaving the empty sockets staring out helplessly at the deserted village.

But there are many such quaint items to be added to our picture gallery of India in the beginning of the eighteenth century, not the least of these being the spectacle of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, carrying off from amongst the very flames of her husband's funeral pyre the Hindu widow who afterwards became his wife.

For on the confines of the various factories in the contiguous lands which had been won from Moghul rule by purchase, or bribe, or treaty, English laws had already begun to oust native customs. Indeed, quite an elaborate legal procedure, duly decked with Courts of Appeal, had been set up in the three presidencies. So far, it is to be feared, without much benefit to the people, for those who held the power seem ever to have been more occupied by the rules of commerce than those of justice.

Already, also, each presidency had its own regular army. This was composed first of recruits from England, sent out by the Company in their ships; secondly, of adventurers who had deserted from other European armies and had come out to the East to seek their fortunes; thirdly, of half-caste Indo-Europeans, the offspring of mixed marriages. In the beginning of the eighteenth century a few pure natives were enlisted, and from this time the Sepoy army of John Company grew by leaps and bounds.

As yet, however, there was no attempt at the policy of pike and carronade. That had been disastrous in the days of Sir John Child; so the small armies--the garrison of Calcutta in 1707 was _raised_ to three hundred men--were kept simply for defence.

The insecure state of the country, also, which followed on Aurungzebe's death led to greater caution on the part of the Company.

Hitherto, its clerks and merchants and agents had themselves carried their English goods to the various markets in the interior of the country; but now orders were issued directing everything to be sold by auction at the port of import, thus minimising the risk of loss.

A simple order which, nevertheless, must have had far-reaching results, since it introduced the middleman between the English merchants and the people of India; an unscrupulous middleman also.

Then the method employed, and necessarily employed, in the collection of the calicoes and other woven cotton-stuffs which at this time formed the staple of Indian trade was one which made fair dealing almost impossible. For there were no large merchants with whom the Company could deal. It had therefore to elaborate an agency of its own, by which it could come in contact with the weaver, who--ever one of the most poverty-stricken of Indian artisans--required raw material and sustenance given him before he could keep his rude loom going.

A fateful affair this! One European functionary issuing orders to a native secretary, he employing a native agent, who in his turn calls together the local brokers, who send out to village and towns by their paid messengers and advance cotton and money to the actual workmen.

Here indeed were sufficient loopholes for fraud. Each one of these men had, in addition to his poor pay, to find secret gratification for himself and for those who were supposed to keep an eye upon him. The wretched weaver, of course, coming off worst in the scramble, being made, first, to work as he had never worked before, and secondly, as a set-off to the sustenance given, to take a price often 40 per cent.

less than the work would have fetched in open market.

But the rate of pay which at this time the Company offered to its servants tells in unmistakable brevity the whole tale of its administration.

The salary of a president was but 300 a year, that of a factor but 20. Even when Bengal was practically ceded to it, and all power, judicial and executive, vested in its servants, the pay of a man who had almost unlimited power, and who had doomed himself to a life of exile, was but 130. Yet the actual profit of the East India Company at this time was nothing prodigious; it barely touched 8 per cent. on the capital employed. Still, the monopoly must have been valuable, for the efforts made to retain it would fill volumes; and one Act of Parliament followed another, prohibiting foreign adventure to India under penalty of forfeiture of triple the sum embarked, and declaring all British subjects found in India who were not in the Company's service liable to seizure and punishment, and generally crying "hands off" to all and sundry.

The Portuguese power in India had by this time dwined away; none too soon for its reputation. It had suffered reverses at many hands, not least of these being one dealt by itself; for the story of Bahadur-Shah, the king of Guzerat, is not one to bring credit with it.

He had entered into negotiations with the Portuguese, had granted them many favours, amongst others the right to build a factory. This, however, they surrounded with a wall which converted the whole into a fortification. Bahadur-Shah remonstrated, and was met with fair words from Nuno de Cunha, the Portuguese viceroy, who, however, came to the conference with a suspiciously martial fleet containing over four thousand fighting-men. Now, whether the Portuguese historians are right in attributing meditated treachery to the Mahomedans, or the historians of the latter are right in attributing it to the Portuguese, matters little in face of what actually happened. The viceroy, feigning sickness as an excuse for not paying his respects on land, the king, with but a few unarmed attendants, went to meet him on the admiral's ship. Once there, he became alarmed at whisperings and signs that were pa.s.sing between the viceroy and his officers, and took a hasty leave. Hardly had he reached his boat, however, when he was attacked. Being a good swimmer he flung himself into the sea, was pursued, struck over the head with an oar, and when he clung to it, was finally despatched with a halbert.

The facts are brutal. Nothing can extenuate them, and though the affray may have originated in mutual distrust and alarm, there can be no doubt that such evidence of premeditated treachery as there is points to the Portuguese as the real criminals.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, they had retired to Further India, there to repeat their brilliant but evanescent career of conquest, and in 1739 they finally ceded their few remaining possessions in the Konkan to the Mahratta power.

But their influence lives still all along the western coast, where to this day a large proportion of the people are professedly Roman Catholic, the descendants of the converts who, it is said, flocked in thousands to be baptized by St Francis Xavier. This, however, is extremely doubtful. Yet even the Portuguese power was but a sea-board influence, the nibblings, as it were, of the Western mouse upon the rich cake of India.

Inside this frayed and fraying fringe of contact with the outside world India was very much what it had been always, what in a way it will be always. So far as princes and princ.i.p.alities went it was a very distracted country; so far as the peasantry went it was a very peaceful one. But neither prince nor peasant seemed to realise that a great change was imminent.

One of the most curious points about this coming change was that though the greed of gold was undoubtedly the chief factor in bringing it about, the first two solid holds which the English got on India were due to the skill, not of British diplomacy or British commerce, but of British medicine. It was in consequence of the services rendered by Ship's surgeon Gabriel Boughton to the Emperor Shahjahan's beloved daughter Jahanara, when she was as a child badly burnt, that the Old East India Company gained the right to trade in Bengal free of all duty; this being the only fee asked--surely a public-spirited and disinterested one. And equally so was the only fee demanded by Staff Surgeon William Hamilton in 1715 for curing the decadent Emperor Farokhshir of a tumour in the back which had resisted the efforts of all the court physicians. He asked for the first sizable grant of land on the Indian peninsula which had ever been given to any foreign power: that is to say, for thirty-seven villages contiguous to the factory at Calcutta, which gave the English command of the river for 10 miles south of the port, for some villages near Madras, which consolidated that _pied a terre_; and for the island of Din on the western coast.