CHAPTER VIII.

COLONIZATION.

Connected with the question of the site of the future capital is that of the possibility of the colonization by Englishmen of portions of the peninsula of India.

Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made have been mainly confined to six districts--Mysore, where there are only some dozen planters; the Neilgherries proper, where coffee-planting is largely carried on; Oude, where many Europeans have taken land as zemindars, and cultivate a portion of it, while they let out the remainder to natives on the Metayer plan; Bengal, where indigo-planting is gaining ground; the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in the hot plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there be reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be confined.

One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists in the supposition that there is available land in large quantities on the slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan slopes; the country is all straight up and down, and for English colonists there is no room--no ground that will grow anything but deodars, and those only moderately well. The hot sun dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and cut it through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually making all the hills both steep and ribbed. Mysore is still a native State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is increasing year by year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper, there is room for many coffee-planters, though fever is not unknown; but when India is carefully surveyed, the only district that appears to be thoroughly suited to English settlement, as contrasted with mere planting or land-holding, is the valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably not suffer deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European settlement. Family life is impossible where there is no home; you can have no English comfort, no English virtues, in a climate which forces your people to live out of doors, or else in rocking-chairs or hammocks. Night-work and reading are all-but impossible in a climate where multitudes of insects haunt the air. In the Himalayan valleys, the hot weather is terribly scorching, and it lasts for half the year, and on the hill-sides there is but little fertile soil.

The civilians and rulers of India in general are extremely jealous of the “interlopers,” as European settlers are termed; and, although tea-cultivation was at first encouraged by the Bengal government, recent legislation, fair or unfair, has almost ruined the tea-planters of Assam. The native population of that district is averse to labor, and coolies from a distance have to be brought in; but the government of India, as the planters say, interferes with harsh and narrow regulations, and so enormously increases the cost of imported labor as to ruin the planters, who, even when they have got their laborers on the ground, cannot make them work, as there exists no means of compelling specific performance of a contract to work. The remedy known to the English law is an action for damages brought by the employer against the laborer, so with English obstinacy we declare that an action for damages shall be the remedy in Burmah or Assam. A provision for attachment of goods and imprisonment of person of laborers refusing to perform their portion of a contract to work was inscribed in the draft of the proposed Indian “Code of Civil Procedure,” but vetoed by the authorities at home.

The Spanish Jesuits themselves were not more afraid of free white settlers than is our Bengal government. An enterprising merchant of Calcutta lately obtained a grant of vast tracts of country in the Sunderbunds--the fever-haunted jungle near Calcutta--and had already completed his arrangements for importing Chinese laborers to cultivate his acquisitions, when the jealous civilians got wind of the affair, and forced government into a most undignified retreat from their agreement.

The secret of this opposition to settlement by Europeans lies partly in a horror of “low-caste Englishmen,” and a fear that they will somewhat debase Europeans in native eyes, but far more in the wish of the old civilians to keep India to themselves as a sort of “happy hunting-ground”--a wish which has prompted them to start the cry of “India for the Indians”--which of course means India for the Anglo-Indians.

Somewhat apart from the question of European colonization, but closely related to it, is that of the holding by Europeans of landed estates in India. It will perhaps be conceded that the European should, on the one hand, be allowed to come into the market and purchase land, or rent it from the government or from individuals, on the same conditions as those which would apply to natives, and, on the other hand, that special grants should not be made to Europeans as they were by us in Java in old times. In Eastern countries, however, government can hardly be wholly neutral, and, whatever the law, if European landholders be encouraged, they will come; if discouraged, they will stop away. From India they stop away, while such as do reach Hindostan are known in official circles by the significant name of “interlopers.”

Under a healthy social system, which the presence of English planters throughout India, and the support which would thus be given to the unofficial press, would of itself do much to create, the owning of land by Europeans could produce nothing but good. The danger of the use of compulsion toward the natives would not exist, because in India--unlike what is the case in Dutch Java--the interest of the ruling classes would be the other way. If it be answered that, once in possession of the land, the Europeans would get the government into their own hands, we must reply that they could never be sufficiently numerous to have the slightest chance of doing anything of the kind. As we have seen in Ceylon, the attempt on the part of the planters to usurp the government is sternly repressed by the English people, the moment that its true bearing is understood, and yet in Ceylon the planters are far more numerous in proportion to the population than they can ever be in India, where the climate of the plains is fatal to European children, and where there is comparatively little land upon the hills; while in Ceylon the coffee-tracts, which are mountainous and healthy, form a sensible proportion of the whole lands of the island. It is true that the press, when once completely in the planters’ hands, may advocate their interests at the expense of those of the natives, but in the case of Queensland we have seen that this is no protection to the planters against the inquisitive home eye, which would be drawn to India as it has been to Queensland by the reports of independent travelers and of interested but honest missionaries.

The infamies of the foundation of the indigo-plantations in Bengal, and of many of the tea-plantations in Assam, in which violence was freely used to make the natives grow the selected crop, and in some cases the land actually stolen from its owners, have gone far to make European settlement in India a by-word among the friends of the Hindoo; but it is clear that an efficient police would suffice to restrain these illegalities and hideous wrongs. It might become advisable in the interest of the natives to provide that not only the officers, but also the sub-officers and some constables of the police, should be Europeans in districts where the plantations lay, great care being taken to select honest and fearless men, and to keep a strict watch on their conduct.

The two great securities against that further degradation of the natives which has been foretold as a result of the expected influx of Europeans are the general teaching of the English language, and the grant of perfect freedom of action (the government standing aloof) to missionaries of every creed under heaven. The bestowal of the English tongue upon the natives will give the local newspapers a larger circulation among them than among the planter classes, and so, by the powerful motive of self-interest, force them to the side of liberty; while the honesty of some of the missionaries and the interest of others will certainly place the majority of the religious bodies on the side of freedom. It is needless to say that the success of a policy which would be opposed by the local press and at the same time by the chief English Churches is not an eventuality about which we need give ourselves concern, and it is therefore probable that on the whole the encouragement of European settlement upon the plains would be conducive to the welfare of the native race.

That settlement or colonization would make our tenure of India more secure is very doubtful, and, if certain, would be a point of little moment. If, when India has passed through the present transition stage from a country of many peoples to a country of only one, we cannot continue to rule her by the consent of the majority of her inhabitants, our occupation of the country must come to an end, whether we will or no. At the same time, the union of interests and community of ideas which would rise out of well-ordered settlement would do much to endear our government to the great body of the natives. As a warning against European settlement as it is, every Englishman should read the drama “Nil Darpan.”

During my stay at Simla, I visited a pretty fair in one of the neighboring valleys. There was much buffoonery and dancing--among other things, a sort of jig by a fakeer, who danced himself into a fit, real or pretended; but the charm of this, as of all Hindoo gatherings, lay in the color. The women of the Punjaub dress very gayly for their fêtes, wearing tight-fitting trowsers of crimson, blue, or yellow, and a long thin robe of white, or crimson-grounded Cashmere shawl; bracelets and anklets of silver, and a nose-ring, either huge and thin, or small and nearly solid, complete the dress.

At the fair were many of the Goorkhas (of whom there is a regiment at Simla), who danced, and seemingly enjoyed themselves immensely; indeed, the natives of all parts of India, from Nepaul to the Deccan, possess a most enviable faculty of amusement, and they say that there is a professional buffoon attached to every Goorkha regiment. Their full-dress is like that of the French _chasseurs à pied_, but in their undress uniform of white, the trowsers worn so tight as to wrinkle from stretching--these dashing little fellows, with their thin legs, broad shoulders, bullet heads, and flat faces, look extremely like a corps of jockeys. A general inspecting one of these regiments once said to the colonel: “Your men are small, sir.” “Their pay is small, sir!” growled the colonel, in a towering passion.

There were unmistakable traces of Buddhist architecture in the little valley Hindoo shrine. Of the Chinese pilgrimages to India in the Buddhist period there are many records yet extant, and one of these, we are told, relates how, as late as the fourteenth century, the Emperor of China asked leave of the Delhi ruler to rebuild a temple at the southern base of the Himalayas, inasmuch as it was visited by his Tartar people.