CHAPTER VII
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 still have many rich families and noble families of the time of the Empire. The Province of Behar, they tell me, contains also a certain Mohammedan population of ryots, 30,000 or 40,000, who are descended from the Pathan invaders, and are a warlike race, retaining, however, nothing of their former rank but their name Malik, the mass of the ryots being Hindus or converted Hindus. The character of these is quite unwarlike. The Mohammedans, therefore, hold their heads higher here than in most places.
“We received visits all the morning, meeting our old friend Mohammed Ali Rogay from Bombay, Nur-el-Huda, Ferid-ed-Din, and others, also Mohammed Abbas Ibn Huseyn Bafiti, Sheykh es Saadat of Medina, a young Arab, who invited us cordially to come and stay with him in Medina, whither he returns in a few months. He says that if ever we write and tell him we are coming, he will prepare to receive us, and gave us his address and took ours. He repeated this invitation more than once, and I am sure it was sincerely given. The other acquaintance was that of Sirhadé Huseyn, who once wrote to me from Cirencester. After luncheon we were driven out to see something of the town and country. The town is old and picturesque, but we saw no specially fine buildings. We got out and inspected a village by the river side, but it was too near the river to be quite a fair specimen of Behar agriculture. One of the inhabitants, whom we questioned, told us it belonged to a rent-free Zemindar, and he was a tenant on a permanent rent, that is to say, fifteen rupees an acre, for three acres. We calculated the gross produce at thirty-six rupees, so he nets sixty-three rupees a year, or over five rupees a month, a fortune, but it is land of the best quality, and he grows maize and potatoes. It is not irrigated, so does not grow sugar cane. We asked whether he felt the salt tax, and he said ‘No.’ He was in debt twenty rupees this year, though he had never been in debt before. He and his family had held the land for generations.
“We sat down, sixteen or twenty, to dinner, and adjourned at 9 o’clock to the house of Nawab Villayet Ali Khan, the chief nobleman of Patna, where, in a large hall, about one hundred and fifty Mohammedans assembled to hear me give a lecture I had promised on their prospects. I shall not give my speech here, which was almost entirely extempore, because it is to be printed in one of the local papers. Suffice it to say that it included, with other matter, most of what I had said at the Anjuman i Islam, and was extremely well received.
“8th Jan.– We left Patna by the morning train, attended to the station by our host and Nawab Villayet Ali, with some thirty others, and a disagreeable incident occurred, as the train was starting, owing to the violence of a Scotch doctor, who threatened our friends, and especially the old Nawab, with his stick if they remained near his carriage window. I jumped at him, of course, and after calling him a blackguard for his conduct, gave him in charge at the next station, Dinapore. The railway authorities tried hard to screen him, and proposed to me to compromise the matter, but I insisted on having his name, and after about ten minutes he produced his card as Dr. K., Army and Navy Club (in pencil), Sealkote. So I have written a strong letter to Lord Ripon, warning him of the state of things, and of the bitterness of native feeling in consequence of their habitual ill treatment by the English.”
This was a worse case than quite appears from this entry. The Nawab, with his party of friends, were on the platform wishing me good-bye, with all possible decorum, when the Scotchman, who turned out to be Chief Medical Office of the Punjab, put his head and shoulders out of the next compartment and struck with his stick at the Nawab and his friends, bidding them, with an insolent air of authority, to stand back from the neighbourhood of his carriage window. This happened just as the train moved on, and I had to wait till the train again stopped before I could take action. Fortunately, however, Patna has two stations, and in five minutes we came to the second. There I entered the Doctor’s compartment, and insisted upon having his name, which he refused, and it was only by threatening the station-master with reporting the case to Lord Ripon that I got him to intervene. Several of my Patna friends had come on by the train, and supported me, or I doubt if I could have prevailed with him to do his duty. The matter being treated in this way made a prodigious sensation, as it was the first time an Englishman had openly taken part with the natives against his fellow countrymen.
“We arrived at 4 o’clock at Benares, and are the Maharajah’s guests in one of his empty houses, being attended to by one of his head servants. The river at Benares is striking, but less beautiful than I had expected.
“9th Jan.– In the morning I wrote a letter to Lord Ripon about the incident of yesterday, in a tone to compel his attention, and I enclosed it to Primrose with a hint that I should publish it if the matter was not promptly set right.
“We then went out to pay our respects to the Maharajah at Ahmednagar, crossing the river in a boat. The Palace at Ahmednagar is certainly one of the most striking buildings in the world. The Maharajah received us most kindly. He is a really ‘grand old man,’ blind with a cataract, but delighted to ‘see’ us. We had a rather long conversation with him, touching on religion and the disadvantage of a too-English education for men of the East. In which opinion we cordially agreed. He had his little Court of old servants round him, as he sat on the sofa, smoking his hookah, and his son, an amiable youth, sat in front on a chair, translating for him our conversation into Urdu. There was nothing of the new world in all this. He also talked about various Englishmen he had known, Sir John Strachey among others, whom he laughed at for his airs of grandeur. On one occasion he had come to pay a visit and had taken offence because the servants were not all at the door to receive him, and so had gone home. I told him he would laugh more if he could see Sir John Strachey in England, glad of anybody who would take the trouble to say ‘how do you do’ to him. This caused a chorus. Yet the officials fancy the ‘natives’ rate them at their own pretensions.
“After seeing the temple and the tank and the various sights of the Palace, we were rowed down the river in a barge, a really splendid sight, stopping once or twice to be shown the insides of houses. Bagdad must have been like this in its great days. But, what is strange at Benares, there is not a single house south of the river. Holkar’s house, which has slipped bodily into the Ganges, shows how all that is solid on the river front will one day go, leaving, as at Bagdad, only the mud huts they now screen. The temples here are insignificant compared with those of the South. It has been a pleasant day of comparative rest after all the talking we have lately done.
“10th Jan.– Calling accidentally at the Post Office, we found important letters from England; and, amongst other good news, I find my Colombo letter is published in the ‘Times’; also I am informed that orders were sent to Lord Ripon not to receive me at Government House.
“We were taken again on the river, which is a still more wonderful sight in the morning than it was in the evening, and, through the Maharajah, we had arranged to pay a visit, without which our Mohammedan tour would have been incomplete, namely, to the last representative of the Moguls, an elderly gentleman who lives in an old palace on the river, on a pension, he told us, of 649 rupees, 6 annas, and 3 pice a month, paid him in lieu of his Indian Empire by Her Majesty. He had had another 249 rupees with his wife, but she died last year, and now he wanted his case laid before the public. He was immensely pleased with our visit, for it seems no one ever thinks of paying him any attention, because he is poor; but we inundated him with compliments and courtesies, and he was moved to telling us of his descent from Arungzeb through the Emperor of Delhi, whose eldest son was his grandfather, and who, being disinherited by his father, left Delhi and settled at Benares. Sad old relic perched in a half ruinous house, like a sick eagle, looking down on the river and the crescent-shaped city, with his little group of tattered servants. We were pitying him from our hearts, melted at his pedigree, when he suddenly changed his tragic tone, and asked whether we would like to see a cock fight, and, when we assented, jumped briskly on his legs and led the way to the palace yard, where cocks had already been brought in crowing. The cock fight, as a cock fight, was a delusion. The birds were evidently too precious to be allowed to hurt each other, and their spurs were carefully swathed in bandages, so that no harm was done. This innocent amusement kindled him for a minute or two, and then he relapsed into his old listlessness. Wreaths were brought for us and perfumes, and we bade him farewell, and went on our way. I would not have missed this visit to the last of the Moguls for millions.
“We went on to Allahabad in the afternoon, and are staying with Lyall10 at Government House. There were a large number of Mohammedans to meet us at the station; among them Ferid-ed-Din, quite hilarious with the recollection of the row at the Patna station. We were hurried off, however, to Government House, where there was a large dinner of uninteresting officials. How dull Anglo-Indian society is! But when everybody was gone, I unfolded to Lyall my ideas of Mohammedan reform, and the university scheme, which last, to my astonishment, he cordially approved, promising, if it was started in his province, to aid it with a public grant. He also suggested Jonpore or Rampore as suitable places.
“Ferid-ed-Din came to settle about the presentation of the address and the lecture, but, after consultation with Lyall, it has been agreed that the latter is to be abandoned. Ferid-ed-Din suggested asking him to it, but this Lyall declined to do. I don’t quarrel with him for this. But it is painful to see what terror he inspires in the ‘natives.’ Ferid-ed-Din, in spite of his boldness, was struck speechless in his presence, and stood before him barefooted. I told Ferid-ed-Din to put his shoes on, but Lyall said he had better stay as he was. Yet Lyall is very far from being a narrow-minded man, and we have discussed the most burning questions without reserve. Talking of the Ilbert Bill, he said it was, as far as the Anglo-Indians were concerned, a local Bengal measure. It was quite true the Assam planters regarded it as an attempt to do away with their right of beating their own niggers. The jury system could not work there, as it would leave them free to do exactly what they chose. We discussed the chances of revolution. He would not agree that it would come in five years, but perhaps in twenty. But the people of India were a weak race, and would never be able to stand alone. They would be a prey to seafaring nations on their seaboard, and to the Russians and Chinese on their land frontier.
“We played lawn tennis, at which Lyall is good, in the afternoon; and after dinner we went to the Mayo Hall, a public place where about three hundred Mohammedans presented us with an address of an effusively loyal nature, to which I replied in a carefully moderate tone. Everything went off well, but the thing was tame compared with the Patna meeting, for the fact of our being at Government House has raised, in spite of us, a barrier between us and the people. They dare not come to see us there, and dare not talk openly anywhere. I feel suddenly shut out from all light, as when one goes through a tunnel on a railway journey.
“In England all seems going well. Churchill has made a grand speech at Edinburgh about Egypt, and I am glad to see advocates moral principles of government according to the programme I sketched for him. Gladstone’s mantle of righteousness, which has slipped off his shoulders, may be picked up now by anybody. Also I have several letters about my Colombo letter in the ‘Times.’ It was published on the 13th, as Churchill’s speech was made on the 16th. From Egypt, however, there comes news less good. Sherif has indeed resigned, but Nubar is in his place, and there is talk of increasing the staff of English employés, and prolonging the occupation for five years.
“12th Jan.– Akbar Huseyn and his brother came in the morning, and we wrote out an account of the meeting last night, and sent it to the ‘Pioneer.’ In the afternoon there was a garden party, and I talked to Sir Donald Stewart, the High Court Judge, about the Patna business. It surprised him, as it surprises every Englishman, and fails to surprise every native. He said the only similar case he had brought before him in his twelve years of judgeship, was one in which certain native pleaders had been insulted in their robing room in Court. This, however, does not affect the question of such things happening, because it shows only that no native ever dreams of complaining, or would have a chance of having his complaint inquired into if he did. On the other hand they have been settling a case this very day, in which a Hindu railway clerk beat an Englishman, and have sentenced the clerk to ten months imprisonment. Several of our Mohammedan friends were at the party, among them Ferid-ed-Din, but I noticed that they mixed with none of the English, talking only to each other or to certain Hindus.
“At dinner there were several intelligent people, especially a Mr. Patterson, who is on good terms with the natives, and spoke of them as I have not yet heard an Englishman speak. But he served with Garibaldi in Italy, and so has ideas of liberty the rest have not. The other was a young Strachey, son of Sir John, a true chip of the old block, with his father’s way of sitting with his head on one side like a sick raven, and the same spectacles and soft voice, a clever youth. I had another long talk with Lyall about the prospects of a Mohammedan reformation, and he reminded me of our dinner at the Travellers in the summer of 1881, with Morley and Zohrab, and of how I was then looking for a prophet in Arabia to proclaim him Caliph. He thinks Egypt will certainly now be annexed.
“13th Jan.– I was nervous all day yesterday at getting no answer from Lord Ripon. But at dinner last night the post arrived, with a most gracious letter, which makes me feel ashamed of my own violent one. I shall now leave the matter entirely in his hands, and I am glad of it, for it might interfere with my larger plans to have to fight a newspaper battle on such a field.
“Since writing this, Lyall has spoken to me also about the Patna business, and tells me Lord Ripon has sent him a copy of my letter, and begged him to urge on me the excision of such portions of it as treat the general question, because, Lyall says, if it were brought forward in that form just now, there would be a terrible row all over India, and it would upset Lord Ripon altogether. He has had a terribly hard time lately, and another angry question would be too much for him. He said he could promise me on Lord Ripon’s part, that if I would rewrite the letter in this sense, Lord Ripon would see justice done in the matter. He was not a man to do less than justice, and he, Lyall, would advise that Dr. K. be brought down to Patna to apologize to the Mohammedan gentleman, and that an order should be issued to the Railway Company for the better protection of natives. Of course I readily agreed to all this, and have now rewritten the public letter, and posted it, with a private one of thanks, to Lord Ripon. Nothing could have been better. But Lyall charges me I should tell no man – no Englishman that is – for I have already shown my first letter to several Mohammedans, and sent a copy of it to Villayet Ali. Rajah Amir Hassan called on his way to Lucknow, where we are to stay with him.
“In the afternoon we went with Mohammed Kazim, a friend of Ferid-ed-Din, to see some villages across the river, and saw also the Hindu pilgrims encamped in the river bed, at the junction of the waters. I feel in high spirits to-day at things having gone so exactly as I intended them to do in connection with the Patna incident. I could not really have published the first letter at a moment like this, and now Lord Ripon is under an obligation to me, and I shall have a right to speak about the university.
“Another long talk with Lyall. He told me that the Ceylon authorities had telegraphed about me to those of Bengal, and I fancy, though he did not say so, that he has been instructed to look pretty closely after me. It is also evident that Ferid-ed-Din has been warned not to go too far; and Lyall advised me to allow myself to be directed by Rajah Amir Hassan at Lucknow, as to whom to see and not to see, which means that he, too, has been warned to keep me out of dangerous company. I have been very frank with Lyall about my plans and ideas. Government opposition now would only strengthen me with the Mohammedans. They would do far better to help than to hinder me, for my ideas do not really run counter to any liberal interpretation of the continuance of British rule in India. Lyall, as a man, is everything that is charming and sympathetic; as an official he has graduated in a thoroughly bad school. It was he who, more than any one else, ruined Salar Jung’s administration in Hyderabad, and he admitted nearly as much to me. Salar Jung, he said, presumed upon the fact of his good government to claim what he could not get, that is, independence of the Paramount Power. There were certain things which the Government of India would always insist upon advising about, and having its advice followed. But Salar Jung did not see this. He thought he could rely on his own cleverness, and extra-official sympathy in England. But this could not be allowed. On that point he agreed with Lytton that Salar Jung was a dangerous man. It was not part of the Imperial policy that the Berar provinces should ever be restored.
“14th Jan.– The ‘Pioneer,’ instead of publishing the account of the meeting at the Mayo Hall, has printed a vicious little paragraph, saying that the natives of Patna regard me as a paid spy of the English Government. This is too much, and I expostulated with Lyall about it on the ground that the ‘Pioneer’ is a semi-official journal, a fact which, with certain qualifications, he admitted, and sent at once for N., the sub-Editor – Allen, the Editor, being away. After a sermon from Lyall, N. was shown in to me, a lackadaisical youth in a check suit, apparently still in his teens, and so frightened he could hardly speak or find his way to a chair. I was sorry for the boy, and dealt with him mildly when he stammered an excuse that the paragraph had been inserted as a joke, and he promised repentance, and to print the address verbatim as well as my speech, and also to print, when it should arrive, any letter from the Patna Mohammedans. Lyall tells me he is a youth who spends his time playing lawn tennis, and picks up his information in such places. They make use of him, however, to insert communiqués (one of them was Cordery’s explanation a few days ago), and Colvin is thick with Allen, the Editor, lodging, I understand, in the same house with him at Calcutta. Colvin, he says, has always worked the press. He himself has made the rule only to work anonymously to the extent of writing articles he was prepared, if challenged, to avow. But he is of opinion it is best to keep out of it altogether. It is Colvin, no doubt, who has prompted the spiteful tone of the ‘Pioneer’ towards myself. But how ridiculously these newspapers rule the world.
“7th to 15th Jan.– We went to Lucknow, the party here breaking up at the same time, Lyall going on a tour of the province, his wife and daughter to a ball at Lucknow. Mulvi Wahaj-ed-din and about twenty others came to see us off at the station, but we have seen nothing of them, for they won’t come to Government House to be treated like servants. Nothing happened on the journey except that at Cawnpore about one hundred Mohammedans had assembled to see us while the train stopped. One of them recited some verses in Arabic, and an address was promised, but they had had no time, they said, to write one. There are not many Mohammedans at Cawnpore, and only one can speak a little English, so our interview was limited to compliments, bowings, and hand shakings.
“At Lucknow we were received by all the great people, two of the Oude princes, and our host, Rajah Amir Hassan, who drove us to his house in a state carriage and four. He made many apologies to us for the poorness of his abode, which was, in fact, a small palace, and explained that his own palaces had been burned down at the time of the Mutiny, and this house was given him in exchange by the English Government. It was late, and we had no more time than to dine and go to bed, the Rajah dining with us, the first time in his life, he told us, he had ever dined with Europeans, nor had he ever entertained an Englishman in his house.
“16th Jan.– We have had a great deal of conversation with our host, who is a man of much intelligence, though a rather bigoted Shiah. He explained to me the dogmatic differences they had with the Sunnis, the principal of which, he said, was that the Shiahs asserted God’s justice, and that the prophets had been without sin and infallible. He also went through the old discussion about Ali’s succession to the Caliphate with warmth; and told me a number of other curious things connected with his sect. Lucknow is its stronghold in India, as the Court was Shiah during the last eighty years of its existence. We then talked of Hyderabad. Sir Salar Jung had been a great friend of his, and he had recommended Seyd Huseyn to him.
“In the afternoon he drove us round the town and showed us the Imambara, where he said a prayer on the tomb, touching it with his right hand. Also to the Residency ruins, while he told us the history of the Mutiny from his own point of view. His father had sided with the mutineers and been the chief leader of the Shiah faction among them, till the massacres occurred, when he left them in disgust and went to his own fort, at Mahmudabad, where he took ill and died. Twelve of Amir Hassan’s brothers and cousins were shot, blown up, or hanged by the English, and he alone was left, a boy of ten, to be educated by them. All the family property in Lucknow was confiscated and destroyed, for the English destroyed one third of the city, and so he comes in for an inheritance of woe. Looking, however, at the ruins, which are very beautiful, he said: ‘We have agreed to forget our history, and the days of our glory. But the English refuse to forget it. They leave their ruins standing to perpetuate the memory of bloodshed. If I could do it, I would persuade the Lieutenant-Governor to have them razed or rebuilt.’
“The Rajah is only thirty-six years old, but his hair is very gray, and he looks fifty. He complains of his liver, and I have strongly advised him, for the good of his soul and body, to make the land pilgrimage from Kerbela to Mecca, and he says he will certainly do so. He does not go into English society, because he dislikes being disrespectfully treated. The officials are very tyrannical. Of General Barrow he spoke very highly, as of one who had saved them from destruction after the Mutiny, and he showed us a statue of him the Talukdars of Oude are going to set up. He is President of the Talukdars’ Association, and takes considerable part in public affairs, besides having started some indigo factories. Altogether he is a superior man.
“17th Jan.– We went to the 10th Hussar ball last night, in the Chotar Menzil, a beautiful room robbed by the Government from the princes of Oude. Wood, the Colonel, is an old friend of mine, and we met Brabazon and Lady Lyall and the Franklins.
“There is a furious article against me in the ‘Pioneer,’ written evidently by Colvin, or inspired by him, to the effect that I am stirring up sedition in Patna and other Mohammedan centres. The text, however, of it is the ‘Wind and the Whirlwind,’ and its tone is exactly what I could most have wished. Good hearty abuse as a revolutionist can do me nothing but good. In the same sheet they publish the text of my Allahabad address.
“I am to give a lecture here and receive an address to-morrow, and have been busy preparing. In the middle of the day we went to a horse sale of the 10th Hussars, and had luncheon with them; and then we drove through the city with the Rajah, he lamenting over the ruins. A great road has been run through the city by pulling down the houses of poor men. Hardly any got compensation, and the ruins make a causeway raised about twenty feet above the general level. This is called Victoria Street.
“We had several visits: First, Mohammed Ibrahim, chief Mujtahed of the Shiahs, a dignified old man who talked good Arabic. He did not fancy a university at Hyderabad, because the Government was Sunni. He lamented the decay of religious institutions here in Lucknow. Secondly, Prince Mirza Mohammed Madhi Ali Khan, a polite and amiable personage who talked no English, but had sent us last night an enormous tray of fruits and sweetmeats. Thirdly, Ihtimam ed Dowlah Nawab Haidar Huseyn Khan, an elderly nobleman of Lucknow. Fourthly, Rajah Tasadak Rasul Khan, a nobleman related to the princes, in very fine clothes. I find, however, that no Sunni has been to see us, nor any of the small people of the town, who are the most interesting. Perhaps our host is carrying out Lyall’s instructions; perhaps he discourages Sunnis. It is tiresome, but cannot be helped.
“We were taken to-day to see the Shiah Madrasa, a poor little place, where seventy pupils, men and boys, are taught religion, logic, and arithmetic up to the rule of three. I was begged to examine them, and asked who was the Mogul leader who had sacked Bagdad, but was told that no one knew history. Then I put the problem of the herring and a half costing three half-pence, and six boys, on slates, worked out the problem, two correctly.
“18th Jan.– We went out in the morning to see the Hoseynabad Imambara, which is certainly the most beautiful thing in Lucknow, though less imposing than the great Imambara. Here we took off our shoes, which pleased the Rajah greatly, and at his suggestion we refused the wreaths offered us by the guardian, this on the ground that, it being a charitable endowment, the money spent on these wreaths given to English visitors was misspent. The way in which this endowment is misappropriated is astonishing. The guardian is a Hindu, appointed by the English trustees with a salary of four hundred rupees a month, and quite recently they have spent £10,000 on building a ridiculous clock tower as a memorial to Sir George Couper, the man most hated by the Mohammedans of Lucknow. These are the things that bring the English name into contempt.
“Prince Mahdi Ali called again and one or two others, but there seem to be few Mohammedans here who know English, except among the younger men, and these did not come to the house. In the afternoon, however, they came to the meeting. We talked with the Rajah about the land assessment, and he gave us the following as the proportion between the ryot, the Talukdar, and the Government. Of a field producing one hundred maunds, the ryot would keep sixty (that is three-fifths, of which fifteen or twenty would represent the seed corn, and forty or forty-five for his profit and labour). Of the remaining forty maunds the Government takes twenty or twenty-five, leaving fifteen or twenty to the Talukdar. He said this would be an average reckoning.
“The meeting in the Kaisar Bagh Hall was the most successful we have yet had. All the religious chiefs, Sunnis and Shiahs, and many of the noblemen of Lucknow, and altogether about one thousand persons were present, as well as about a dozen Englishmen. Three addresses were presented, and I made a long speech of an hour and a half, which, as it is to be printed, I will not give here.
“Lyall has written to apologize for the article in the ‘Pioneer,’ which he says he knows comes from Calcutta, and he will give orders that I am to be well received everywhere in his province. This is good of him, though nobody can do me much good or harm now. My only anxiety is Hyderabad, and I think I shall write to Lord Ripon and ask him whether he wishes me to come or not. Unless he gives me his countenance, my going back there will do more harm than good. We came away by the night train to Aligarh.
“19th Jan.– Mulvi Sami Ullah, Seyd Ahmed, and a number more of the Aligarh Mohammedans, met us at the station, and we are staying in Sami Ullah’s house, a bungalow furnished in extra English taste, and having a certain chill simplicity which savours of the convent. One expects a crucifix and a holy water stoup in every room. The Mulvi’s dress is almost a cassock, and he has something of the manner of a Don. I can understand why the Aligarh men are not liked. I myself feel rather constrained with them, for one does not know whether to treat them as pious Mohammedans, or latter-day disciples of Jowett. Not that they are not extremely amiable, but there is a tone of apology in their talk to me, as much as to say ‘we are not such infidels as you suppose.’