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CHAPTER VI MEN-AT-ARMS AND
SOME OTHERS UNTIL the Pax Brittanica turned swords into ploughshares, India was an ideal land for the soldier. In its social system, the fighting castes trod close on the heels of the privileged priestly one, and men-at-arms were as sand on the seashore. For those who were fortunate there were kingdoms to be won, and for all, adventure and pillage. The feudal system which obtained presented countless posts of command, and a bold heart seldom had to wait long for promotion. But in this peaceful generation the soldier’s sun has set, and there is only employ for a quarter of a million of men, where a century ago three millions would have been a moderate estimate of the aggregate strength of the standing armies permanently employed. Except in
the
military stations, known as “Camps” or “Cantonments,” which correspond
to
English garrison towns, the Indian soldier is as little in evidence in
the
daily life of town and country as his brother-in-arms in England. His
profession, however, continues to hold its high place in popular
esteem, and to
have a relation in the army creates a feeling of pride. In popular
assemblies,
the “sepoy” is accorded a place of honour, and is not debarred
admission to the
seats of the high, and in private life he is an object of respect and
admiration, not to say envy. Nor is this to be wondered at, for he is
remarkably well paid and treated. In a country where, as a viceroy has
stated,
the average monthly income of the population is five shillings and
fourpence
sterling, the soldier draws a comparatively princely pay of nine
shillings and
fourpence when he enlists (wherewith he has to feed, but not to lodge
himself
), rising by handsome increments to thirteen shillings and fourpence.
When he
has accomplished a sufficiently long service he retires on a munificent
pension
of tuppence ha’penny a day. So you may put it that he is able to live
in luxury
and die in comfort. Then,
again, he is
elevated by the prestige which attaches to military service under the
ruling
power of an empire ruled by the sword. He is a Jack in Office, but
generally
unobjectionable. Army discipline and the nature of his calling lift him
far
above the blood-sucking myrmidons of the civil administration, and,
apart from
his profession, as when he is at home on furlough or has retired on his
pension, it is ever a pleasure to meet him. It happened that for some
years I
employed a large body of native labourers, amongst them many boys of
sixteen to
twenty, of whom a few here and there used to enlist. And when they next
turned
up, and came to make their salaam, well-set, smart, soldierly,
respectful men,
but with the national characteristic of servility eradicated, it was a
delight
to note the improvement in them. They seemed to have benefited as much
under
Government military service as their fellows who went into the police
and other
civil employments had degenerated, and they verified the assertion
sometimes
made by old martinet drill-sergeants, that there is no school like the
army. The native
of India
in private life is a slovenly man when he is in the habit of wearing
clothes;
the very fashion of his costume is a premium on untidiness, and his
detestation
of physical exertion makes him a sloucher. You may tell a sepoy by his
carriage
as easily as you can a London policeman by his boots. And when he is in
uniform
there are few more picturesque soldiers in the Empire, as London has
observed
and noted. Hodge, translated from the plough to the parade-ground is a
difficult
subject to etherialise, even when you dress him up in a scarlet coat;
but
Kareem Bux and Poorun Singh, togged out in khaki “to kill,” with smart puggari, accoutrements, and
arms, seldom
fail to do justice to their cloth, especially if they come of one of
the
superior fighting races, whose physique only needs the drill-sergeant
to bring
out its admirable points. Even the little Ghoorka, with his bow-legs,
squat
frame, and Mongolian features, presents a pleasing picture of smartness
in
uniform. In
England, there
are four international groups of fighting-men associated with the four
divisions of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In India, as befits its
cosmopolitan nature, the martial races are numerous, and merely to
catalogue
them would fill a page, and leave only bewilderment behind. The Indian
soldier
always serves with his fellows, whether it be in a regiment composed
exclusively of his own caste or race, or in a “mixed” regiment, in
which some
companies are of one, some of another caste. Racial feeling runs
strong, and
leads to great emulation, and the older corps, who have a history (the
Mutinies
terminated the majority of them), are as proud and tenacious of their
traditions as the most famous of British and Irish regiments. In the
piping times
of peace, the Indian soldier is a singularly peaceful man. Where his
caste
permits, his womenfolk live in barracks with him, and the cantonment is
a small
city in its way, with its own bazaar, its numerous “followers,” and
innumerable
wives and children. Very interesting and curious is it to note the way
in which
these latter learn to drill and fit themselves for their father’s
profession,
which, in this land of inherited occupations, they usually follow; and
to see
the little chaps, down to veritable toddlers, going through regimental
evolutions and manoeuvres with the precision of the parade‑ground, is
an
object-lesson in the hereditary tendency. The
British public
has a very fair idea of the Indian soldier or trooper from the
opportunities of
study presented by the representative bodies that have from time to
time
paraded the streets of London. Looking at their fine stalwart figures,
at the
mere height, weight, bulk, and girth of some of them, it is difficult
to credit
the simplicity of their fare and the frugality of their lives in their
native
land. Most of them are vegetarians, and those big-boned frames and
brawny
muscles are innocent of any bolstering up with flesh food. Even in a
country
where meat sells at a penny a pound, the sepoy (putting his caste
aside) cannot
afford such luxuries as beef, mutton, or goat, except on high days and
holidays. Wheat and Indian corn are his staple food. In drinking, he is
even
more temperate, confining himself to water and milk. It is not our
ideal diet
for a martial folk; but what shall we say when we cone to his idea of a
“treat”? Not for him the amber ale of the canteen, or the nut-brown rum
associated with splicing the main-brace. Give him a good junket of
sweetmeats
or treacle! You cannot offer him anything he appreciates or enjoys
more. In short,
the
man-at-arms of modern India is no longer a blustering, blood-drinking,
pillaging freebooter, but a temperate, orderly, well-behaved
individual, who
sends a great portion of his pay home to his people in his native
village, or
deposits it in the regimental bank. Notwithstanding, when it comes to
the day
of battle, you shall find him not a whit less brave than those heroic
fighters
who faced the English at Laswarrie, Sobraon, and ChillianWallah. Under British officers
there are
few tasks he will not attempt, and as the Sikhs proved at Saraghari,
the
Ghoorkas at Dar-gai, and many of the other races in the brilliant
military
annals of India, Jack Sepoy is a first-rate fighting-man. When you
come to
the soldiery of the native states, there is another tale to tell, with
the
exception of the Imperial Service troops, lately introduced, who are as
fine
material as any commander could wish to lead. For the rest, the rajahs’
irregulars fully deserve the designation of rag-tag and bob-tail
usually
applied to them, and in a service where the pay is not only poor, but
problematical, and the pension to seek, they are apt to degenerate into
Jacks
in Office of the predatory sort. But they serve the useful purpose of
reminding
us what the man-at-arms of India was in the past, and engender a
pleasant sense
of satisfaction at what he has developed into under British rule. So much
for the
administrative and military classes, the Jacks in Office objectionable
and
unobjectionable, who loom large in the eye, although they only
represent a
minute fraction of the total population of India. They are men of
assured
employment and pay, and by reason of it stand out as a privileged
class. The
Indian Empire, it must be remembered, is an empire of paupers; nine out
of ten
are agriculturists, and we have seen what are the conditions of the
peasant’s
life. The trading classes can be passed without particular description,
whilst
we take a glance at some of those callings which are indigenous to the
soil,
and have an established place in the economy of daily life in India. And first
of all
the barber, no insignificant personage in the East, where every man is
obliged
to shave, and forbidden by his religion to operate on himself. The
barber has
an official appointment in the Hindu village, with au endowment of land
to
support its dignity, and a vested right to the shaving of its
inhabitants,
which can be protected by legal injunction in case of infringement.
With the
exception of a few races, every native of India shaves his head, and
not a few
of them their faces. Amongst the Hindus, the business is compulsory,
for sin is
supposed to adhere to the hairs of the head, and they can undertake no
religious ceremony or rite without being divested of their locks. The
dead are
always shaved prior to cremation, and shaving the face by the survivors
is the
outward and visible sign of mourning. The Mahomedan, too, shaves his
head
(leaving a tuft for the Prophet to pull him into heaven by) but never
his chin,
although he clips his moustache close to his upper lip, thereby often
spoiling
the effect of a magnificent beard. The Indian
barber
attends his customer, not the customer the barber’s shop. This carries
him into
the home-life of the people in a way which is open to no other calling.
He
enjoys an even greater reputation for gossip than the barber in other
countries, and might, indeed, be termed a peripatetic “Daily Male.”
Prom the
nature of his business, he has become the matrimonial agent of the
East, and,
with his wife, arranges most of the alliances, being the accredited
go-between
and matchmaker of Hindustan. He is skilful with the razor, and will cut
your
nails, clean your ears, and manicure you after his fashion. He travels
about
with a little bag under his arm, containing his instruments, and the
looking-glass, which plays a most important part in his profession.
There is no
more essential personage in the daily life of the East than the barber,
without
whose aid the marriage market would languish, and the dead carry with
them to
the other world as many sins as there are hairs on their heads, for
such is the
superstition of Hinduism. Another
important
individual is the astrologer, who is naturally a Brahmin, and often the
family
priest. He, too, may be said to be indispensable to the Hindu, for he
is
supposed to be able to avert all sorts of evil influences in a country
which is
crushed by superstition; where a child who accidentally kicks its foot
against
a stone makes a salaam to it to propitiate the evil spirit, and the man
who
ascends a ladder mutters a pious prayer to it not to collapse under his
weight.
No prudent Hindu does anything material without first consulting the
family
astrologer. When a child is born, the Brahmin casts its horoscope; when
a marriage
is arranged, he fixes the auspicious day and hour; when a journey has
to be
undertaken, he advises the time to start; and he has his say in the
initiation
or completion of every important business. In marriages especially, he
is a
despot, and there are extended periods during the year when no Hindu
would
dream of marrying. In his priestly character, the astrologer blesses
houses and
wells, consecrates new idols, purifies people who have accidentally
slipped
from caste, and officiates at weddings and funerals, for all of which
he draws
his fees. He is a prodigious humbug, who earns a very nice income by
charlatanism. We are
accustomed
to speak of the “humble” potter, perhaps because he works with mud. But
the
potter in India is an artist, and there are three and a half millions
in the
land. As there are men, mustard manufacturers to wit, who make their
fortunes
out of what is thrown down the sink, so the Indian potter makes much of
his
livelihood by what is cast on the dust-heap. The poorer class natives
of India
dine off the rudest earthenware platters, and there is a caste
prejudice
against using the same dish twice, which creates an immense demand for
cooking
pots and plates. Water is always stored in pitchers, and we know what
happens
to the pitcher that goes to the well. The Indian
pitcher
is called a gurrah, and is circular-shaped, with a small mouth. It
contains as
much water as you would ordinarily care to lift, and its price is three
farthings if you buy a rupee’s worth, or a penny for one. Such a thing
as a
metal water-can was practically unknown in India until within the last
decade,
when the empty five-gallon kerosene-tin has been adapted to that
purpose, much
to the prejudice of the potter. However, he has a monopoly of making
clay gods
and roofing tiles. Sir George Birdwood, in his striking book on the Industrial Arts of India,
displays an
enthusiasm about the potter, “under whose hand the shapeless heap of
clay grows
into all sorts of faultless forms of archaic fictile art.” The potter
is a hereditary
village officer, and receives certain very comfortable fees. His
position is
respected, and he enjoys the privilege of beating the drum at
merry-makings. He
shares with the barber a useful and lucrative place in the community,
and there
is probably no member of it who is happier in his lot, and less liable
to the
vicissitudes of fortune. The
mention of the
drum recalls to mind the musicians and dancers of the East, who are in
great
request at all festivities. The dancing-girl will be dealt with in
another
chapter, for she deserves more than an incidental notice. The musical
artist
plays upon a variety of instruments, skin, string, and wind, and
manages to
evoke from these, sounds that convey the maximum of discord to English
ears.
Performers apparently derive more pleasure from beating a drum than the
average
British four-year-old in the nursery. Moreover, their music, such as it
is,
goes on for ever. Having engaged his band of musicians, the Indian
employer
insists on having his money’s worth. The Oriental concert lasts as long
as a
cricket match. Tomtoming and twangtwanging, varied with constant and
inconsequent blasts from a horn, continue from morn to long past
midnight. The
orchestra sits in a semicircle on the ground with stolid, solemn faces,
which
periodically break out into terrifying grimaces as they expel a series
of notes
intended to be song. That the native ear enjoys it, there can be no
doubt, but
it is equally certain that it enjoys English music played out of tune.
One of
the most curious importations into India is what is known in England as
the
“German Band.” This has become a recognised institution in the East,
and has
superseded the native one as being more noisy, I imagine, and more
fashionable.
The instruments, with the exception of the drums, are all of brass, and
there
is a decided partiality for those which assume the shapes of
antediluvian
monsters, and wind about the person. I remember one such band visiting
the
jungle I resided in during a particularly auspicious marriage month.
Its répertoire
consisted of four or five
tunes, which it repeated with a maddening monotony, and all out of
tune. A very
favourite tune with these wandering minstrels is For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,
and another, Yankee Doodle,
and they are played indiscriminately
at marriages and funerals. The social status of the musician is low —
which it
decidedly deserves to be. Entertainers
in
India are always “on tour,” for there are no fixed places of amusement.
Conjurers, acrobats, monkey men, bear leaders, snake charmers,
perambulate the
country, picking up a precarious living. They “pitch” where they can,
like
Punch and Judy men. I do not remember ever to have seen one who could
be
considered anything but a beggar; but the better class are probably
confined to
the palaces of the rajahs and the houses of the wealthy. The population
is too
practical and joyless to waste money on amusement; the native never
gives a
hearty laugh, indeed, it is a breach of good manners to do so. How
shall you
expect him to pay for the pleasure of laughing or being amused? He
scorns
delights; nothing shocks his sense of propriety so much as a ball, and
he calls
a picnic a “lunatic feed.” You may look in vain throughout India for
such means
of entertainment as a picture-gallery, a music-hall, a promenade-pier,
a
recreation-ground, a magazine, an illustrated or comic paper, a
pleasure-boat,
a horse-race, a regatta, or a museum, except where the Englishman has
established them. These things are quite outside the genius of the
people. The native
Indian
doctor is a quack pure and simple, who works much with nostrums,
incantations,
and charms. When he is called in, it is often as a resident, for he
proceeds to
take up his abode in the patient’s house, and lives there as long as he
decently
can. He has no diploma or qualification, and any one is at liberty to
practise
the healing art if he can get patients. His reputation is made by word
of
mouth, and did you analyse the result of his practice, you would
probably find
he was a wholesale manslaughterer. In India, no death-certificate is
required,
and the coroner is unknown. It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds
of
thousands die annually from preventable causes. Cremation follows death
in
twelve hours at the utmost, often in three or four, and inquests are
impracticable. Speedy disposal of the dead is not only a climatic
necessity but
a religious duty. No one may eat whilst a corpse is in the house. Nay,
this
rule is extended in some cases, and in my plantation, no one might eat
whilst a
corpse remained within the boundaries of it, and, when one of my
coolies died,
it meant the entire establishment fasting until he was carried out to
be burnt.
Under such conditions, investigation into the cause of death is
impossible, and
when you add to them the privacy of the zenana
system for women, you arrive at a premium on secret assassination. That
this is
largely practised in India, there can be no doubt. But the
native
doctor assassinates openly, and his instrument is ignorance. He divides
all
maladies into “hot” ones and “cold” ones. Bleeding is as favourite a
remedy
with him as it was in England a hundred years ago. Every native of
India, well
or ill, is periodically bled, and would conceive himself in mortal
danger if he
omitted it. A common domestic cure for a headache is a plaster of
cow-dung
smeared over the forehead. There are many useful drugs in the Indian
pharmacopoeia, but quantity rather than quality seems to appeal to the
native
mind. I have often been informed with pride that the mixture prescribed
by a
certain baid or hakim contained ten, fifteen,
or twenty
ingredients, as though efficacy lay in numbers. In this connection, I
may
notice one thing, namely the quick and beneficial effect medicine has
on the
vegetarian constitution, which seems to respond to treatment much more
easily
than that of the flesh-eating European. I have been astounded sometimes
at the
“cures” effected by a dose of chloradyne and a mustard plaster, which
seemed to
“touch the spot” with miraculous precision. In my plantation, I dosed
many
hundreds of coolies for many years with not more than half a dozen
drugs, and
though I have just previously referred to defunct labourers, I have few
sad
memories in that connection, whilst, on the other hand, I have many
very satisfactory
recollections of men restored to health who appeared far more ill than
I should
like to be. Perhaps
the most
important personage in India, if you bear in mind the influence he
wields, is
the village headman. The village system is communal, and the lumberdar or patél is the hereditary
functionary who governs it. He is
the link between the villagers and the Government, and collects the
taxes, on
which he draws a dustoorie
of
five per cent. He has many privileges, as one in authority, and makes
the most
of them; but if he squeezes where he can, he is, on the whole, very
loyal to
his flock. He is much more than a tax-collector or a mayor, being
invested with
a patriarchal prestige, and, if he is a man of force of character,
exerts great
personal influence. In the first place, he is the recognised mouthpiece
of the
community he governs; then he is called in to settle disputes, expected
to
entertain strangers, and the effective working of the village machinery
depends
upon him. His charity is frequently encroached upon to relieve the
needy. For
another of the anomalies of India is that, although it is the poorest
country
in the British Empire, and boasts a civilisation two thousand years
old, there
is absolutely no provision for the poor throughout the length and
breadth of
the land. The charitable instinct of the people is the only thing that
stands
between its poor, its aged, its infirm, and death by starvation. Only
when a
famine scourges the land does Government grant any “relief,” and in
this Empire
of paupers there is not such a thing as a poorhouse! Whereby
begging has
become a recognised institution and sometimes a lucrative profession in
India.
The poor and needy we may pass over with the remark that they are
desperately
poor and pathetically needy. The crippled and de. formed require
notice. Such
loathsome and terrible sights as you may see are too horrible to
attempt to
describe. Perhaps the worst of all are the lepers, who infest the
highways, and
when they fail in obtaining compassion have a power of compulsion in
cursing;
for a “leper’s curse” is a calamity few will dare to encounter, and the
leper
vituperates roundly when he conceives he has a cause. Apart from
those
miserable creatures who owe their deformities or diseases to
Providence, there is
a large class who maim and deform themselves in the name of religion,
and trade
upon their deformities. You see them in thousands at the places of
pilgrimage,
with shrivelled limbs, withered from deliberate disuse, and other
incredibly
dreadful contortions, contractions, and deformities. These are not
impostors,
but men who have wittingly maimed themselves and thereby incurred a
certain
character for sanctity. The tortures they must have endured before the
limb
dried up from disuse, or the finger-nail grew through the palm, or the
uplifted
arm was stiffened in its posture above the head, appeal vividly to the
charitable eye, and represent their stock-in-trade as professional
beggars.
Kings amongst them are the fakirs, and other religious mendicants, who
clothe
their nakedness in ashes, roam the land in thousands, and batten on the
superstition of the people. These have no self-inflicted deformity to
parade;
inherent holiness is their cue, and their craft a complete knowledge of
the
weakness of womankind. Impudent, lazy, good-for-nothing rogues, many of
them
grow fat, and do far worse things in the course of their abominable
careers,
practising their arts and seductions, and under the specious guise of
asceticism living the lives of debauchees and blackmailers. India is a
strange
country of contrasts; and one of the strangest of them is the stark
poverty of
the starving, industrious peasant, and the sleek impudence of the lazy,
improvident beggar, who masquerades as a holy man and lives comfortably
on the
charity of the neediest nation in the world. |