The Great Speeches of Modern India

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

  Meanwhile the Government of India was concerned with laying the foundations and extending the borders of a new empire, and thought little of the relics of old ones. From time to time a Governor-General, in an excess of exceptional enlightenment or generosity, spared a little money for the fitful repair of ancient monuments. Lord Minto appointed a committee to conduct repairs at the Taj. Lord Hastings ordered works at Fatehpur Sikri and Sikandra. Lord Amherst attempted some restoration of the Kutub Minar. Lord Hardinge persuaded the Court of Directors to sanction arrangements for the examination, delineation, and record of some of the chief Indian antiquities. But these spasmodic efforts resulted in little more than the collection of a few drawings, and the execution of a few local and perfunctory repairs. How little the leaven had permeated the lump, and how strongly the barbarian still dominated the aesthetic in the official mind, may be shown by incidents that from time to time occurred.

  In the days of Lord William Bentinck the Taj was on the point of being destroyed for the value of its marbles. The same Governor-General sold by auction the marble bath in Shah Jehan’s Palace at Agra, which had been torn up by Lord Hastings for a gift to George IV but had somehow never been despatched. In the same regime a proposal was made to lease the gardens at Sikandra to the executive engineer at Agra for the purposes of speculative cultivation. In 1857, after the Mutiny, it was solemnly proposed to raze to the ground the Jumma Musjid at Delhi, the noblest ceremonial mosque in the world, and it was only spared at the instance of Sir John Lawrence. As late as 1868 the removal of the great gateways of the Sanchi Tope was successfully prevented by the same statesman. I have read of a great Mohammedan pillar, over 600 years old, which was demolished at Aligarh to make room for certain municipal improvements and for the erection of some bunias’ shops, which, when built, were never let. Some of the sculptured columns of the exquisite Hindu-Musulman mosque at Ajmer were pulled down by a zealous officer to construct a triumphal arch under which the Viceroy of the day was to pass. James Fergusson’s books sound one unending note of passionate protest against the barrack-builder and the military engineer. I must confess that I think these individuals have been, and, within the more restricted scope now left to them, still are inveterate sinners. Climb the hill-top at Gwalior and see the barracks of the British soldier and the relics, not yet entirely obliterated, of his occupation of the palace in the fort. Read in the Delhi guide books of the horrors that have been perpetrated in the interests of regimental barracks and messes and canteens in the fairylike pavilions and courts and gardens of Shah Jehan. It is not yet thirty years since the Government of India were invited by a number of army doctors to cut off the battlements of the Fort at Delhi, in order to improve the health of the troops, and only desisted from doing so when a rival band of medical doctrinaires appeared upon the scene to urge the retention of the very same battlements, in order to prevent malarial fever from creeping in. At an earlier date, when picnic parties were held in the garden of the Taj, it was not an uncommon thing for the revelers to arm themselves with hammer and chisel, with which they wiled away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and cornelian from the cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen. Indeed, when I was at Agra the other day, I found that the marble tomb of Shah Jehan in the lower vault, beneath which his body actually lies, was still destitute of much of its original inlay, of which I ordered the restoration.

  That the era of vandalism is not yet completely at an end is evident from recent experiences, among which I may include my own. When Fergusson wrote his book, the Diwan-i-Am, or Public Hall of Audience, in the Palace at Agra, was a military arsenal, the outer colonnades of which had been built up with brick arches lighted by English windows. All this was afterwards removed. But when the Prince of Wales came to India in 1876, and held a Durbar in this building, the opportunity was too good to be lost, and a fresh coat of white-wash was plentifully bespattered over the sandstone pillars and plinths of the Durbar Hall of Aurungzeb. This too, I hope to get removed. When his Royal Highness was at Delhi, and the various pavilions of Shah Jehan’s Palace were connected together for the purposes of an evening party and ball, local talent was called in to reproduce the faded paintings on marble and plaster of the Moghul artists two and a half centuries before. The result of their labours is still an eyesore and a regret. When I was at Lahore in April last, I found the exquisite little Moti Musjid, or Pearl Mosque, in the fort, which was erected by Jehangir exactly three hundred years ago, still used for the profane purpose to which it had been converted by Ranjit Singh, namely, as a government treasury. The arches were built up with brick-work, and below the marble floor had been excavated as a cellar for the reception of iron-bound chests of rupees. I pleaded for the restoration to its original state of this beautiful little building, which I suppose not one visitor in a hundred to Lahore has ever seen. Ranjit Singh cared nothing for the taste or the trophies of his Mohammedan predecessors, and half a century of British military occupation, with its universal paintpot, and the exigencies of the Public Works engineer, has assisted the melancholy decline. Fortunately in recent years something has been done to rescue the main buildings of the Moghul Palace from these two insatiable enemies. At Ahmedabad I found the mosque of Sidi Sayid, the pierced stone lattice-work of whose demi-lune windows is one of the glories of India, used as a tehsildar’s cutcherry, and disfigured with plaster partitions and the omnivorous whitewash. I hope to effect the reconversion of this building. After the conquest of Upper Burma in 1835, the Palace of the Kings at Mandalay which, although built of the most part of wood, is yet a noble specimen of Burmese art, was converted by our conquering battalions into a Club House, a Government Office, and a Church. By degrees I am engaged in removing these superfluous denizens, with the idea of preserving the building as a monument, not of a dynasty that has vanished never to return, but of an art that, subject to the vicissitudes of fire, earthquake, and decay, is capable of being a joy forever. There are other sites and fabrics in India upon which I also have my eye, which I shall visit, if possible, during my time, and which I shall hope to rescue from a kindred or a worse fate.

  These are the gloomy or regrettable features of the picture. On the other hand, there has been, during the last forty years, some sort of sustained effort on the part of government to recognize its responsibilities and to purge itself of a well-merited reproach. This attempt has been accompanied, and sometimes delayed, by disputes as to the rival claims of research and of conservation, and by discussion over the legitimate spheres of action of the central and the local governments. There have been periods of supineness as well as of activity. There have been moments when it has been argued that the state had exhausted its duty or that it possessed no duty at all. There have been persons who thought that when all the chief monuments were indexed and classified, we might sit down with folded hands and allow them slowly and gracefully to crumble into ruin. There have been others who argued that railways and irrigation did not leave even a modest half lakh of rupees per annum for the requisite establishment to supervise the most glorious galaxy of monuments in the world. Nevertheless, with these interruptions and exceptions, which I hope may never again recur, the progress has been positive, and, on the whole, continuous. It was Lord Canning who first invested archaeological work in this country with permanent government patronage by constituting, in 1860, the Archaeological Survey of Northern India, and by appointing General Cunningham in 1862 to be Archaeological Surveyor to Government. From that period date the publications of the Archaeological Survey of India, which have at times assumed different forms, and which represent varying degrees of scholarship and merit, but which constitute, on the whole, a noble mine of information, in which the student has but to delve in order to discover an abundant spoil. For over twenty years General Cunningham continued his labours, of which these publications are the memorial. Meanwhile orders were issued for the registration and preservation of historical monuments throughout India, local surveys were started in some of
the subordinate governments, the Bombay Survey being placed in the capable hands of Mr Burgess, who was a worthy follower in the footsteps of Cunningham, and who ultimately succeeded him as Director-General of the Archaeological Survey. Some of the native states followed the example thus set to them, and either applied for the services of the government archaeologists, or established small departments of their own.

  In the provinces much depended upon the individual tastes or proclivities of the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, just as at headquarters the strength of the impetus varied with the attitude of successive viceroys. Lord Northbrook, who was always a generous patron of the arts, issued orders in 1873 as to the duties of local governments; and in his viceroyalty Sir John Strachey was the first Lieutenant-Governor to undertake a really noble work of renovation and repair at Agra—a service which is fitly commemorated by a marble slab in the Palace of Shah Jehan. The poetic and imaginative temperament of Lord Lytton could not be deaf to a similar appeal. Holding that no claim upon the initiative and resources of the Supreme Government was more essentially Imperial than the preservation of national antiquities, he contributed in 1879 a sum of 33/4 lakhs to the restoration of buildings in the North-West Provinces, and proposed the appointment of a special officer, to be entitled the Curator of Ancient Monuments, which, while it did not receive sanction in his time, was left to be carried out by his successor, Lord Ripon. During the three years that Major Cole held this post, from 1880 to 1883, much excellent work in respect both of reports and classification was done; and large sums of money were given by the Government of India, inter alia, for repairs in the Gwalior Fort and at Sanchi Tope. But at the end of this time succeeded a period of some reaction, in which it appeared to be thought that the task of the Central Government, in the preparation of surveys and lists, was drawing to a close, and that local governments might, in future, be safely entrusted with the more modest, but, I may add, not less critical, duty of conservation. More recently, under Lord Elgin’s auspices, the archaeological work of government has been placed upon a more definite basis. The entire country has been divided into a number of circles, each with a surveyor of its own, and while the establishment is regarded as an Imperial charge, the work is placed under local control and receives such financial backing as the resources of the local governments or the sympathies of individual governors may be able to give it. In the North-West Provinces, where I was recently touring, I found Sir A. MacDonnell worthily sustaining, in point of generous and discriminating sympathy, the traditions that were created by Sir John Strachey.

  For my part, I feel far from clear that government might, not do a good deal more than it is now doing, or than it has hitherto consented to do. I certainly cannot look forward to a time at which either the obligations of the state will have become exhausted, or at which archaeological research and conservation in this country can dispense with government direction and control. I see fruitful fields of labour still unexplored, bad blunders still to be corrected, gaping omissions to be supplied, plentiful opportunities for patient renovation and scholarly research. In my opinion, the taxpayers of this country are in the last degree unlikely to resent a somewhat higher expenditure—and, after all, a few thousand rupees go a long way in archaeological work, and the total outlay is exceedingly small—upon objects in which I believe them to be as keenly interested as we are ourselves. I hope to assert more definitely during my time the Imperial responsibility of government in respect of Indian antiquities, to inaugurate or to persuade a more liberal attitude on the part of those with whom it rests to provide the means, and to be a faithful guardian of the priceless treasure-house of art and learning that has, for a few years at any rate, been committed to my charge.

  Game preservation in India (Rangoon, December 1901)

  LORD CURZON (1859–1925)

  The Burma Game Preserve Association had approached Lord Curzon, while he was on his official visit to Burma in 1901, and drawn his attention to the decimation of wild life. Curzon replied to their address through this speech. But the Viceroy’s commitment to wild life preservation was not just confined to this talk. He followed it up by having the subject examined by the Government of India and two years later, a draft bill about the importance of wild life preservation was circulated to various local governments. The Rangoon address can be seen as the beginning of the long, and still incomplete, process of the preservation of wild life in India.

  The question of Game Preservation in India is one that may appeal, in my judgment, not merely to the sportsman, but also to the naturalist and the friend of animal life. It is certainly not through the spectacles of the sportsman only that I would regard it, though I yield to no one in my recognition of the manly attractions of shikar. Such considerations, however, might be suspected of a selfish tinge, and I think that in approaching the matter we should, so far as possible, put our own predilections in the background, and view it in the public interest at large.

  There are some persons who doubt or dispute the progressive diminution of wild life in India. I think that they are wrong. The facts seem to me to point entirely in the opposite direction.

  Up to the time of the Mutiny, lions were shot in Central India. They are now confined to an ever-narrowing patch of forest in Kathiawar. I was on the verge of contributing to their still further reduction a year ago myself; but fortunately I found out my mistake in time, and was able to adopt a restraint which I hope that others will follow. Except in native states, the Terai, and forest reserves, tigers are undoubtedly diminishing. This is perhaps not an unmixed evil. The rhinoceros is all but exterminated, save in Assam. Bison are not so numerous or so easy to obtain as they once were. Elephants have already had to be protected in many parts. Above all, deer, to which you particularly allude in the case of Burma, are rapidly dwindling. Every man’s hand appears to be against them, and each year thins the herds. Finally, many beautiful and innocent varieties of birds are pursued for the sake of their plumage, which is required to minister to the heedless vanity of European fashion.

  The causes of this diminution in the wild fauna of India are in some cases natural and inevitable, in others they are capable of being arrested. In the former class, I would name the steady increase of population, the widening area of cultivation, and the improvement in means of communication—all of them the sequel of what is popularly termed progress in civilization. Among the artificial and preventable causes I would name the great increase in the number of persons who use firearms, the immense improvement in the mechanism and range of the weapons themselves, the unchecked depredations of native hunters and poachers, and in some cases I regret to say, a lowering of the standard of sport, leading to the shooting of immature heads, or to the slaughter of females. The result of all these agencies, many of which are found in operation at the same time, and in the same place, cannot fail to be a continuous reduction in the wild game of India.

  I cannot say that the Government of India have hitherto shown any great boldness in dealing with the matter. But there has been, and still is, in my opinion, very good reason for proceeding cautiously. There are some persons who say that wild animals are as certainly destined to disappear in India as wolves, for instance, have done in England, and that it is of no use to try and put back the hands of the clock. I do not attach much value to this plea, which seems to me rather pusillanimous, as well as needlessly pessimistic. There are others who say that, in a continent so vast as India, or, to narrow the illustration, in a province with such extensive forest reserves as Burma, the wild animals may be left to look after themselves. This argument does not impress me either; for the distant jungles are available only to the favoured few, and it is the disappearance of game from the plains and from accessible tracts that it is for the most part in question. I do, however, attach great value to the consideration that wild animal life should not be unduly fostered at the expense of the occupations or the crops of the people. Where depredations are committed upon crops, or upon flocks and herds, the culti
vator cannot be denied, within reasonable limits, the means of self-protection. Similarly, it is very important that any restrictions that are placed upon the destruction of game should not be worked in a manner that may be oppressive or harassing to his interests.

  Hitherto the attempts made by government to deal with the question by legislation, or by rules and notifications based on statute, have been somewhat fitful and lacking in method. In parts, as I have already mentioned, elephants have been very wisely and properly protected. A close season has been instituted for certain kinds of game. An Act has been passed for the preservation of wild birds. And I observe from one of the enclosures to your memorial that your ingenuity has not shrunk from the suggestion that a deer may reasonably be considered a wild bird. Under this Act the possession or sale during the breeding season of the flesh of certain wild birds in municipal or cantonment areas is forbidden. Then again rules have been issued under the Forest Act protecting certain classes of animals in certain tracts.