Cawnpore & Lucknow

by Donald Richards

  Whilst the menfolk had specific tasks to occupy their time, there was little to relieve their wives from the long hours of boredom. Letter writing, receiving calling cards, engaging in needlework or supervising the household servants might be undertaken, but until the heat of the day was over, few outdoor activities were possible. Many women preferred to remain indoors, a restriction which undoubtedly contributed to the loathing of India expressed by many memsahibs in their letters home. The wife of a future Chief Commissioner of Oude found the dull routine of a military station stifling, and the sheer tedium of cantonment life is convincingly brought to life by Honoria Lawrence in a letter written four years before the Mutiny:

  the highlight of the day was reached when the married couples went out for the evening drive on the same dusty road where they had driven a thousand times, meeting the same faces they had met a hundred times. When they came in there is dinner, then coffee; then bed. So passes day after day till the corps or the civilian is removed, and then they settle down elsewhere to plod on the same eternal round.

  The evening’s parade of carriages along the main street excited the interest of The Times correspondent, then in Cawnpore. ‘Whose buggy is that preceded by two native troopers and followed by five or six armed natives running on foot?’ asked William Howard Russell.

  ‘That is the magistrate and collector,’ came the reply.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He is the burra Sahib or big man of the station.’

  ‘Who is that in the smart gharry with servants in livery?’

  ‘That is the chaplain of the station who marries and baptises and performs service for the Europeans.’

  ‘Does he go among the natives?’

  ‘Not he; he leaves that to the missionaries.’

  ‘Well, and who comes next along the drive, in the smart buggy with the bay mare?’

  ‘That is the doctor of the station. He attends the sick Europeans. He also gets, under certain circumstances, head-money for every native soldier in garrison.’

  ‘Does he attend them?’

  ‘I should think not. Why on earth should he attend a lot of niggers?’

  ‘But he is paid for them,’ suggested Russell naively.

  ‘Ah, that is another matter,’ came the reply. ‘You must understand our system a little better before you can comprehend things of this sort.’

  ‘Who, then, is this jolly looking fellow on the grey Arab?’

  ‘That is the judge of the station, a very good fellow. All judges are rather slow coaches, you know. They do the criminal business, and it is not much matter if they make mistakes, as they don’t meddle with Europeans. When they can do nothing else with a fellow in the Civil Service, they make him a judge.’

  Russell had to be content with this potted history of the station’ s hierarchy, but the inherent prejudice against the native population was not lost upon the Irish journalist when he wrote: ‘The fact is, I fear, that the favourites of Heaven, the civilizers of the world, are naturally the most intolerant in the world.’

  At Cawnpore, as with many other military stations, much of the evening’s social activity took place around the bandstand. There, officers in tight-fitting uniforms and civilians in alpaca jackets would gossip and exchange pleasantries with ladies in sprigged muslin dresses to the accompaniment of a sepoy band playing distorted versions of popular tunes of the day. Families would gather beneath the spreading branches of a peepul tree whilst their offspring were led around the bandstand by an ayah, which, as one fond parent remarked, ‘Would give the little things a decided taste or dislike for music in future years.’

  Occasionally, an invitation to dine at a local rajah’s palace made a welcome diversion, which Captain George Atkinson recalled in what might seem less than flattering terms:

  The guests arrive, and are installed in velvet-cushioned chairs, and attar of roses is handed round with dried fruits and sweetmeats. Then come the dancing girls, gyrating on their heels, ogling and leering, and shaking their uplifted palms, with their idiotic contortions, indicative, in the eastern eye, of grace and dignity of motion. Lobsters and tart fruits commingled, whilst truffles, sausages, and sugared almonds share mutually the same dish. Nor is it for want of crockery as dishes and plates, and vessels even of the most domestic character, grace the board, side by side with silver plate and glittering ormolu, to the unsmotherable amusement of the guests.

  To a recent arrival from Britain, there was something inappropriate in the way a local nawab displayed his devotion to Western table manners. John Lang, a barrister, after a visit to the palace of Nana Gorind Dondhu Pant, the Rajah of Bithur, better known as the Nana Sahib – Nana being a term of endearment – recorded his impressions:

  I sat down at a table twenty feet long … which was covered by a damask tablecloth of European manufacture. But instead of a dinner napkin there was a bathroom towel. The soup – for the steward had everything ready – was served up in a trifle dish which had formed part of a dessert service belonging to the 9th Lancers – at events the arms of that regiment were upon it; but the plate to which I ladled it with a broken teacup was of the old willow pattern. The pilau which followed the soup was served upon a huge plated dish, but the plate from which I ate it was of the very commonest description. The knife was a bone handled affair, the fork and spoon were of silver and of Calcutta make. The plated side dishes containing vegetables were odd ones, one was round and the other was oval. The pudding was brought in upon a soup plate of blue and gold pattern, and the cheese was placed before me on a glass dish belonging to the dessert service. The cool claret I drank out of a richly cut champagne glass, and the beer out of an American tumbler of the very worst quality.

  Apart from the few Britons who took pains to learn something of the native’s culture, language and history there were many more who looked upon their service in India simply as an unavoidable step on the ladder towards self-aggrandizement. To many of those individuals the Indian was beneath ordinary notice. In reply to a question as to what she had seen of the country and its people since coming ashore, the wife of a newly appointed magistrate, replied: ‘Oh, nothing, thank goodness. I know nothing at all about them, nor do I wish to. Really, I think the less one knows of them the better.’ Comments such as these betrayed an unforgivable arrogance which was by no means confined to the newcomer, or griffin as he was known. Referring to the sepoys under his command, a major of a native regiment exclaimed to William Russell: ‘By Jove, Sir! By Jove! Those niggers are such a confounded sensual lazy set, cramming themselves with ghee and sweet meats, and smoking their cursed chillumjees all day and night, that you might as well think to train pigs.’

  That infantry major’s attitude to his responsibilities would, however, have outraged many an earlier generation of Company officers. Writing some twenty-five years before the Mutiny, an enlightened Captain Albert Hervey advised the ‘griffin’ to divest himself of any notion that he was here to rule over an inferior race. He wrote:

  People come out to India with but very different ideas regarding the native. They think that because a man is black he is to be despised. The grand mistake on the part of the officers is their ignorance of, and their indifference to, the feelings of their men. As long as they look upon them with prejudiced eyes … the poor soldier will be maltreated until his meek and humble spirit becomes roused, his pride hurt, and the consequence attended with fearful results.

  Hervey of course, was referring to an earlier age when it was common for an officer to learn the language and customs of the people from his Indian mistress, and before the proselytizing by missionaries worked to the disadvantage of the East India Company. Sita Ram Pande, of the Bengal Native Infantry, recalled:

  In those days the sahibs could speak our language much better than they do now and they mixed more with us. The sahibs often used to give nautches for the regiment, and they attended all the men’s games. Nowadays they seldom attend nautches because their padre sahibs have told them
that it is wrong. The sahibs have done, and are still doing, many things to estrange the British officers from the sepoys.

  No doubt the work of missionaries was much resented by the sepoys but the incompetence of many of the Company’s officers was certainly a factor in the poor morale and lack of discipline prevailing among the lower ranks. Many of the British officers in the Native Infantry (NI) were the younger sons of minor English gentry who had been sent out to make something of themselves, but had been deemed unsuitable to fill the growing number of well-paid posts in Administration. Resentful, and with low self-esteem, they only occasionally exposed themselves to the stifling heat of the day to appear on parade, preferring to remain in the shuttered gloom of their bungalow, frustrated, bored and often drunk. John Lang, who was travelling through Oude, was told of a certain major commanding a native regiment. ‘He knows nothing whatever of soldiering. All the sepoys as well as the Company officers, laugh at him when he comes on the parade ground and attempts to handle the regiment. For thirty years he was employed on commissariat duties. At the expiration of that period, he became a major; and then, according to the rules of the service, he was appointed to command a corps.’

  ‘Surely you are jesting,’ exclaimed an incredulous John Lang.

  ‘On my honour, I am serious,’ came the reply, ‘that is part of our military system, sir.’

  When the time came for Sita Ram to retire on a subadar’s pension, the religious practices, which for centuries had formed an integral part of the Hindu or Moslem way of life, were already under serious threat from European missionaries. Fired with evangelical enthusiasm, these early Victorians looked upon the religions of India as ‘one grand abomination’ and their efforts to convert the natives to Christianity was to become a decisive factor which alienated both Hindu and Muslim who preferred their own established customs and religious practices to those being introduced by foreigners.

  Queen Victoria readily appreciated the fears of her Indian subjects and in a letter to the Governor General’s wife made clear her concern:

  There is a dangerous spirit among the native troops … a fear of their religion being tampered with is at the bottom of it. I think the greatest care ought to be taken not to interfere with their religion – as once a cry of that kind is raised among a fanatical people – very strictly attached to their religion – there is no knowing what it may lead to & where it may end.

  William Russell came close to an understanding of the sepoys’ fears when he advised his readers:

  It is hard to bear the rule of an alien at any time, but when that alien is haughty, imperious, and sometimes insolent and offensive, his authority is only endured till the moment has arrived to destroy it, or at least to rise in rebellion, hopeless or successful, against a Government which has violated all the conditions of possibility.

  The growing number of young ladies of marriageable age who, now that an overland route via Egypt had supplanted the long and expensive voyage round the Cape, began to arrive from England in search of husbands, was a further factor in the isolation of the Company officers from their native charges. ‘The arrival of a cargo of young damsels from England is one of the exciting events that mark the advent of the cold season,’ wrote Lady Falkland to a friend. ‘It can be well imagined that their age, height, features, dress, and manners become topics of conversation and as they bring the latest fashions from Europe, they are objects of interest even to their own sex’.

  Among the most sought-after marriage partners were the Haileybury men employed in the covenanted Civil Service, which as John Beames explained ‘was in those days an aristocracy in India’. These Company employees, who enjoyed a subsistence allowance in addition to their salary of £300 a year, were also obliged to contribute to a fund which guaranteed a pension of £300 per annum to their widow – an arrangement which earned for them the sobriquet of ‘the three hundred dead or alive men’, and of course, numerous invitations from the mothers of marriageable daughters. Because of the pecuniary advantage enjoyed by the civil employees, competition between them and the military for female attention usually ended in favour of the former despite the attraction of a smart uniform, and was naturally much resented by the officers of the station. At a dinner in Madras, an officer was heard to remark, perhaps rather un-gallantly, to his female neighbour: ‘Now I know very well Mrs —— you despise us all from the bottom of your heart, you think no one worth speaking to in reality but the Civil Service. Whatever people may really be you just class them all as civil or military – civil or military, and you know no other distinction. Is it not so?’

  ‘No’, came the icy rejoiner. ‘I sometimes class them as civil or uncivil.’

  The conquest of the Punjab which followed General Gough’s victory at Gurerat in 1849 was also a factor in the subsequent unrest, for it had serious consequences for the sepoys who comprised nine tenths of the Company’s army. The pay of a native soldier was seven rupees a month, which could be supplemented by an additional allowance should he be asked to serve outside the Company’s territory. Now that the Punjab was administered by the Government, duty there no longer qualified for extra pay, despite the fact that the sepoy was far from home among a people he feared and despised.

  Worse was to follow. The Sikh who, according to some accounts paid scant attention to the personal hygiene so important to the high-caste Hindu, was being recruited for the Company’s regiments.

  ‘This annoyed the sepoys exceedingly,’ recalled Sita Ram. ‘They were never as smart as we were on parade and their practice of using curds to clean their long hair gave them an extremely disagreeable odour.’

  The changes brought about by Dalhousie’s annexation of the Punjab, and particularly that of the kingdom of Oudh in 1856, generated widespread discontent among the natives of the Company’s regiments, who in addition to the loss of their foreign service allowance, found that they were no longer entitled to the concessions which were once their right in the Civil Courts. As a consequence, the prestige a sepoy had enjoyed among the elders of his village had diminished and he was becoming increasingly despondent. ‘I used to be a great man when I went home,’ complained a sowar of Native Cavalry to Sir Henry Lawrence. ‘The best of the village rose as I approached, now the lowest puff their pipes in my face.’

  Towards the end of February 1857 the first sign of general unrest had manifested itself in a mysterious but open distribution of chapattis – small flat cakes made of flour, water and salt. It was not known with any certainty where the chapattis had originated – some thought from Barrackpore – but they were carried in an east-west direction by village watchmen in batches, the chaukidar, or watchman, receiving them being requested to retain two and bake four more for distribution to nearby villages with the same message. So rapid was their progress throughout the North-West Provinces from Rohilkand in the north to Allahabad in the south-east, that in ten days, almost every village had received its allotment.

  Various theories were put forward to account for the phenomenon; some Indians thought that the chapattis were meant to draw the people’s attention to some forthcoming event, or were even a spell against one of the many diseases – cholera was, in fact, prevalent at the time. Others recalled a similar occurrence some fifty years before, which was followed by a mutiny at Vellor in which fourteen officers and more than 100 British troops had perished. ‘They think it is an order from Government,’ wrote Lady Canning on 8 April 1857, ‘and no one can discover any meaning in it.’ To Mrs Elizabeth Sneyd, it savoured much of ‘Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot’ than anything else, and in a letter to her son she wrote: ‘I fully now believe that something terrible was at hand, & would soon burst forth.’

  The native police were equally mystified and in reply to a question from the magistrate of Delhi, the thanadar, or chief police officer, replied that his father had once told him that ‘upon the downfall of the Mahratta power, a sprig of millet and a morsel of bread had passed from village to village, and that it was more than
probable that the distribution of this bread was significant of some great disturbance which would follow immediately.’

  No satisfactory explanation was ever recorded and it was left to a Calcutta newspaper to make light of the incident. ‘Are all the chaukidars about to strike for increased wages?’ the Friend of India asked its readers. ‘Or is it someone trying out a new scheme for a parcel dawk? Is it treason or is it jest? Is the chapatti a fiery cross or only an indigestible substitute for a hot cross bun, a cause for revolt or only of colic?’

  The affair was soon forgotten by most Europeans except for those in the up-country stations, but for the simple villagers it had the effect of instilling feelings of deep unease.

  Chapter 2

  THE GATHERING STORM

  In January 1856, Lord Dalhousie had annexed the powerful kingdom of Oudh, resulting in the removal of Wajid Ali Shah, the king of Lucknow, who, in the opinion of the Governor General, had done nothing to reform his corrupt administration. Dalhousie’s action, no doubt well intended, was followed by further measures in which landowners or talukdars as they were known, had their estates confiscated. This was done on the premise that they were unable to produce a title deed, or proof of ownership, a requirement previously unknown in Oudh.

  ‘The truth was that so many people in Oudh had acquired property by methods which the Government would never recognize, that they began to fear an enquiry,’ commented Sita Ram Pande. ‘Since all these people had large numbers of relations, retainers and servants living with them who were all interested parties, it explained the great excitement prevailing in Oudh at that time.’

  The unrest to which he referred was zealously exploited by the talukdars whose only means of regaining their confiscated possessions lay in the overthrow of British rule, and by the Muslim holy men who worked upon the feelings of the sepoys still smarting from the removal of their king. Sita Ram Pande was firm in his opinion that the ‘seizing of Oudh filled the minds of the sepoys with distrust and led them to plot against the Government,’ adding, ‘They [the agents of the king] worked upon the feelings of the sepoys, telling them how treacherously the feringhees had behaved towards their king.’