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.

    505/552 page 475
    Council of State, acting under the advice of the British Resident. In 1884 the condition of Bhopal, a State with nearly 1,000,000 inhabitants, became such that it was necessary for the Government of India to remove the husband of the reigning princess from power, and to appoint an English minister to carry on the adminis- tration. The land revenue had been arbitrarily raised from £170,000 to £410,000 ; the payment of more than £1,000,000 was demanded in a lump sum from the people; justice became a mere engine of corruption and oppression ; districts were ruined and depopulated ; the police were no better than dacoits who shared their plunder with men in high places. Although, through the efforts of the English minister, all this was reformed, we were told that many years must elapse before the people of Bhopal could recover from the ruin which they suffered.1 1 In 1894 a valuable work, Our Indian Protectorate, was published by Sir Charles Tupper of the Indian Civil Service. It gives a very clear account of the relations between the British Government and its Indian Feudatories. Sir Charles Tupper, while he fully acknowledges that many Native States are well administered, gives some terrible illustrations “to show that the battle with cruelty, superstition, callous indifference to the security of the weaker and poorer classes, avarice, corruption, disorder in all public affairs, and open brigandage is by no means over even at the present day. ” I will quote one passage only from Sir Charles Tupper’s work. “We are not far yet from the confusions of the last century, and deep in existing societies lie predatory instincts which, in the absence of strong control, might soon fill whole provinces with pillage and alarm. In a State where there was a good deal of corruption, and the torture of prisoners was not unknown, a colony settled not long ago, consisting of the descendants of Thugs. In 1888 there were in three villages 800 of these people all told. They had no occupation except theft, robbery, and the disposal of stolen goods. ... In a circle of three States not less than 400 miles from the villages of these Thugs, a formidable band of robbers was lately making depredations. In the four years ending February 1889, twenty-two villages had been plundered by daring gangs, forty-seven murders committed, fifty-one persons wounded, and about two hundred hostages carried off, of whom many were ransomed at enormous gains to the brigands. In another State, in 1885 and 1886, seven or eight bands of dacoits, each fifty to one
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