India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    495/552 page 465
    we should see in London great Rajput princes who, to prove their loyalty, had thrown aside the prejudices of caste and immemorial custom, and that Sindhia, the descendant of Maratha chiefs, who had fought with us for supremacy in India, and was now ruling one of its most important States, would be proud to ride as Aide- de-camp at the Coronation of the King and Emperor. The Emperor of India has become to its chiefs and people a great and real personality, in place of “ the impersonal power of an administrative abstraction.” 1 There has been, but only in recent years, a marked and satisfactory improvement in the administration of the Native States. To this I shall refer again, but as lately as 1883, Sir Lepel Griffin, than whom no one could at that time speak with greater personal knowledge, declared that, although there were many honourable exceptions, the Native States of India were for the most part “ a wilderness of oppression and misrule.” This conclusion^ was~That 'of airTLose most competent to judge, and it was certainly my own. I think it useful to refer to the former condition of some of these States, because it cannot be doubted that if the vigilance of the British Government were relaxed, that condition would often become no better than it was not long ago. It is to our inter- vention before misrule became altogether insufferable that many of these States owe their continued exist- ence. Without going back to more distant times, when all conditions were different, if we examine the history of the principal Native States during the greater part of the latter half of the last century, we can hardly find a single case in which the record was one of uninterrupted tranquillity and fairly good administra- 1 History of Lord Lyttons Indian Administration, by Lady Betty Balfour. 2 H
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