Part 10 (1/2)

Khalsa Lands Present Khalsa Lands Bahraetch . . . 2,50,000 4,000 Hissampoor . . . 2,00,000 40,000 Hurhurpoor . . . 1,25,000 10,000 Buhareegunge . . . 1,50,000 15,000 ________ ______ 7,25,000 69,000 ________ ______

The contract was held by Balkida.s.s Kanoongoe, for five years, from 1807 to 1811, when he died, and was succeeded in the contract by his son, Amur Sing, who held it till 1816. In the end of that year, or early in 1817, Amur Sing was seized, put into confinement, and murdered by Hakeem Mehndee, who held the contract for 1817 and 1818.

In the year 1816, Hakeem Mehndee, who held the contract for the Mahomdee district, at four lacs of rupees a-year, and that for Khyrabad at five, heard of the great wealth of Amur Sing, and the fine state to which he and his father had brought the district by good management; and offered the Oude government one lac of rupees a- year more than he paid for the contract for the ensuing year. Hakeem Mehndee resided chiefly at the capital of Lucknow, on the pretence of indisposition, while his brother, Hadee Allee Khan, managed the two districts for him. He had acquired a great reputation by his judicious management of these two districts, and become a favourite with the King, by the still more skilful management of a few male and female favourites about his Majesty's person. The minister, Aga Meer, was jealous of his growing fame and favour, and persuaded the King to accept the offer, in the hope that he would go himself to his new charge, in order to make the most of it. As soon as he heard of his appointment to the charge of Bahraetch, Hakeem Mehndee set out with the best body of troops he could collect, and sent on orders for Amur Sing to come out and meet him. He declined to do so until he got the pledge of Hadee Allee Khan, the Hakeem's brother, for his personal security. This mortified the Hakeem, and tended to confirm him in the resolution to make away with Amur Sing, and appropriate his wealth.

Both Hakeem Mehndee and his brother are said to have sworn on their Koran that no violence whatever should be offered to or restraint put upon him; and, relying on these oaths and pledges, Amur Sing met them on their approach to Bahraetch.

After discussing affairs and adjusting accounts for some months at Bahraetch, the Hakeem, by his courteous manners and praises of his excellent management, put Amur Sing off his guard. When sitting with him one evening in his tents, around which he had placed a select body of guards, he left him on the pretext of a sudden call, and Amur Sing was seized, bound, and confined. Meer Hyder and Baboo Beg, Mogul troopers, were placed in command of the guards over him, with orders to get him a.s.sa.s.sinated as soon as possible. Sentries were, at the same time, placed over his family and wealth. At midnight he was soon after strangled by these two men and their attendants. Baboo Beg was a very stout, powerful man; and he attempted to strangle him with his own hands, while his companions held him down; but Amur Sing managed to scream out for help, and, in attempting to close his mouth with his left hand, one of his fingers got between Amur Sing's teeth, and he bit off the first joint, and kept it in his mouth. His companions finished the work; and Baboo Beg went off to get his fingers dressed without telling any one what had happened. In the morning Hakeem Mehndee gave out, that Amur Sing had poisoned himself, made the body over to his family, and sent off a report of his death to the minister, expressing his regret at Amur Sing's having put an end to his existence by poisoning, to avoid giving an account of his stewards.h.i.+p. The property which Hakeem Mehndee seized and appropriated, is said to have amounted, in all, to between fifteen and twenty lacs of rupees!

Amur Sing's family, in performing the funeral ceremonies, had to open his mouth, to put in the usual small bit of gold, Ganges water, and leaf of the toolsee-tree; and, to their horror, they there found the first joint of a man's finger. This confirmed all their suspicions, that he had been murdered during the night, and they sent off the joint of the finger to the minister, demanding vengeance on the murderer. Aga Meer was delighted at this proof of his rival's guilt, and would have had him seized and tried for the murder forthwith, but Hakeem Mehndee gave two lacs of rupees, out of the wealth he had acquired from the murder, to Rae Doulut Rae, Meer Neeaz Hoseyn, Munshee Musaod, Sobhan Allee Khan, and others, in the minister's confidence; and they persuaded him, that he had better wait for a season, till he could charge him with the more serious offence of defalcations in the revenue, when he might crush him with the weight of manifold transgressions.

They communicated what they had done to Hakeem Mehnde, who, by degrees, sent off all his disposable wealth to Shabjehanpoor and Futtehghur, in British territory. In April 1818, the Governor-General the Marquess of Hastings pa.s.sed through the Khyrabad and Bahraetch districts, attended by Hakeem Mehndee, on a sporting excursion, after the Mahratta war; and the satisfaction which he expressed to the King with the Hakeem's conduct during that excursion, added greatly to the minister's hatred and alarm. He persuaded his Majesty to demand from Hakeem Mehndee an increase of five lacs of rupees upon nine lacs a- year, which he already paid for Mahomdee and Khyrabad; and resolved to have him tried for the murder of Amur Sing, as soon as he could get him into his power. Hakeem Mehndee knew all this from the friends he had made at Court, refused to keep the contract at the increased rate, and, on pretence of settling his accounts, went first to Seetapoor from Bahraetch, and thence over the border to Shahjehanpoor, with all his family, and such of the property as he had not till then been able to send off. The family never recovered any of the property he had taken from Amur Sing, nor was any one of the murderers ever punished, or called to account for the crime.

On the departure of Hakeem Mehndee, Hadee Allee Khan (not the brother of Hakeem Mehndee, but a member of the old official aristocracy of Oude) got the contract of the district of Bahraetch with that of Gonda, which had been held in Jageer by and for the widow of Shoja-od Dowlah, the mother of Asuf-od Dowlah, commonly known by the name of the Buhoo Begum, of Fyzabad, where she resided. Hadee Allee Khan held the contract of these two districts for nine years, up to 1827. He was succeeded by Walaeut Allee Khan, who held the contract for only half of the year 1828, when he was superseded by Mehndoo Khan, who held it for two years and a half, to the end of 1830, when Hadee Allee Khan again got the contract, and he held it till he died in 1833. He was succeeded by his nephew, Imdad Allee Khan, who held the contract till 1835.

Rajah Dursun Sing superseded him in 1836, and was the next year superseded by the widow of Hadee Allee, named ”Wajee-on-Nissa Begum,”

who held the contract for one year and a half to 1838. For the remainder of 1838, the contract was held by Fida Allee Khan and Ram Row Pandee jointly; and for 1839, by Sunker Sahae Partuk. For 1840, it was held by Sooraj-od Dowlah, and for 1841 and up to September 1843, Rajah Dursun Sing held it again. For 1844 and 1845, Ehsan Allee and Wajid Allee held it. For 1846 and 1847, Rughbur Sing, one of the three sons of Rajah Dursun Sing, held it. For 1848, it was held by Incha Sing, brother of Dursun Sing; and for 1849, it has been held by Mahummud Hasun. The Gonda district consisted of the purgunnahs of Gonda and Nawabgunge, and a number of tallooks, or baronial estates.

Under the paternal government of Balukram and his son, Amur Sing, hereditary canoongoes of the district, life and property were secure, the a.s.sessment moderate, and the country and people prosperous. It was a rule, strictly adhered to, under the reign of Saadut Allee Khan, from 1797 to 1814, never under any circ.u.mstances to permit the transfer of _khalsa_ or allodial lands (that is, lands held immediately under the Crown) to tallookdars or baronial proprietors, who paid a quit-rent to Government, and managed their estates with their own fiscal officers, and military and police establishments.

Those who resided in or saw the district at that time, describe it as a magnificent garden; and some few signs of that flouris.h.i.+ng state are still to be seen amidst its present general desolation.

The adjoining district of Gonda became no less flouris.h.i.+ng under the fostering care of the Buhoo Begum, of Fyzabad, who held it in Jageer till her death, which took place 18th December, 1815. Relying upon the pledge of the British Government, under the treaty of 1801, to protect him against all foreign and domestic enemies, and to put down for him all attempts at insurrection and rebellion by means of its own troops, without any call for further pecuniary aid, Saadut Allee disbanded more than half his army, and reduced the cost, while he improved the efficiency of the other half, to bring his expenditure within his income, now so much diminished by the cession of the best half of his dominions to the British Government. He a.s.sessed, or altogether resumed, all the rent-free lands in his reserved half of the territory; and made all the officers of his two lavish and thoughtless predecessors,* disgorge a portion of the wealth which they had acc.u.mulated by the abuse of their confidence; and, at the same time, laboured a.s.siduously to keep within bounds the powers and possessions of his landed aristocracy.

[* Asuf-od Dowlah and Wuzeer Allee.]

Hakeem Mehndee exacted from the landholders of Bahraetch two annas in the rupee, or one-eighth, more than the rate they had hitherto paid; and his successor, Hadee Allee, exacted an increase of two annas in the rupee, upon the Hakeem's rate. It was difficult to make the landholders and cultivators pay this rate, and a good deal of their stock was sold off for arrears; and much land fell out of cultivation in consequence. To facilitate the collection of this exorbitant rate, and at the same time to reduce the cost of collection, he disregarded systematically the salutary rule of Saadut Allee Khan, who had died in 1814, and been succeeded by his do-nothing and see-nothing son, Ghazee-od Deen Hyder; and transferred the khalsa estates of all defaulters to the neighbouring tallookdars, who pledged themselves to liquidate the balances due, and pay the Government demand punctually in future. This arrangement enabled him to reduce his fiscal, military, and police establishments a good deal for the time, and his tenure of office was too insecure to admit of his bestowing much thought on the future.

As soon as these tallookdars got possession of khalsa villages, they plundered them of all they could find of stock and other property; and, with all possible diligence, reduced to beggary all the holders and cultivators who had any claim to a right of property in the lands, in order to prevent their ever being again in a condition to urge such claims in the only way in which they can be successfully urged in Oude--cut down all the trees planted by them or their ancestors, and destroyed all the good houses they had built, that they might have no local ties to link their affections to the soil.

As the local officers of the Oude government became weak, by the gradual withdrawal of British troops, from aiding in the collection of revenue and the suppression of rebellion and disorder, and by the deterioration in the character of the Oude troops raised to supply their places, the tallookdars became stronger and stronger. They withheld more and more of the revenue due to Government, and expended the money in building forts and strongholds, casting or purchasing cannon, and maintaining large armed bands of followers. All that they withheld from the public treasury was laid out in providing the means for resisting the officers of Government; and, in time, it became a point of honour to pay nothing to the sovereign without first fighting with his officers.

Hadee Allee Khan's successors continued the system of transferring khalsa lands to tallookdars, as the cheapest and most effectual mode of collecting the revenue for their brief period of authority. The tallookdars, whose estates were augmented by such transfers, in the Gonda Bahraetch district, are Ekona, Pyagpoor, Churda, Nanpoora, Gungwal, Bhinga, Bondee, Ruhooa, and the six divisions of the Gooras, or Chehdwara estate. The hereditary possessions of the tallookdars, and, indeed, all the lands in the permanent possession of which they feel secure, are commonly very well cultivated; but those which they acquire by fraud, violence, or collusion, are not so, till, by long suffering and ”hope deferred,” the old proprietors have been effectually crushed or driven out of the country. The old proprietors of the lands so transferred to the tallookdars of the Gonda Baraetch districts from time to time had, under a series of weak governors, been so crushed or driven out before 1842, and their lands had, for the most part, been brought under good tillage.

The King of Oude, in a letter, dated the 31st of August 1823, tells the Resident, ”that the villages and estates of the large refractory tallookdars are as flouris.h.i.+ng and populous as they can possibly be; and there are many estates among them which yield more than two and three times the amount at which they have been a.s.sessed; and even if troops should be stationed there, to prevent the cultivation of the land till the balances are liquidated, the tallookdars immediately come forward to give battle; and, in spite of everything, cultivate the lands of their estates, so that their profits from the land are even greater than those of the Government.” This picture is a very fair one, and as applicable to the state of Oude now as in 1823.

But if a weak man, by favour, fraud, or collusion, gets possession of a small estate, as he often does, the consequences are more serious than where the strong man gets it. The ousted proprietors fight ”to the death” to recover possession; and the new man forms a gang of the most atrocious ruffians he can collect, to defend his possession. He cannot afford to pay them, and permits them to subsist on plunder. In the contest the estate itself and many around it become waste, and the fellow who has usurped it, often--nolens-volens--becomes a systematic leader of banditti; and converts the deserted villages into strongholds and dens of robbers. I shall have occasion to describe many instances of this kind as I proceed in my Diary.

Dursung Sing was strong both in troops and Court favour, and he systematically plundered and kept down the great landholders throughout the districts under his charge, but protected the cultivators, and even the smaller land proprietors, whose estates could not be conveniently added to his own. When the Court found the barons in any district grow refractory, under weak governors, they gave the contract of it to Dursun Sing, as the only officer who could plunder and reduce them to order. During the short time that he held the districts of Gonda and Bahraetch in 1836, he did little mischief.

He merely ascertained the character and substance of the great landholders, exacted from the weaker all that they could pay, and ”bided his time.” When he resumed the charge in 1842, the greater landholders had become strong and substantial; and he was commanded by the Durbar to coerce and make them pay all the arrears of revenue due, or pretended to be due, by them.

Nothing loth, he proceeded to seize and plunder them all, one after the other, and put their estates under the management of his own officers. The young Rajah of Bulrampoor had gone into the Goruckpoor district, to visit his friend, the Rajah of Basee, Mahpaul Sing, when Dursun Sing marched suddenly to his capital at the head of a large force. The garrison of the small stronghold was taken by surprise; and, in the absence of their chief, soon induced to surrender, on a promise of leave to depart with all their property. They pa.s.sed over into a small island in the river, which flows close by; and as soon as Dursun Sing saw them collected together in that small s.p.a.ce, he opened his guns and musketry upon them, and killed between one and two hundred. The rest fled, and he took possession of all their property, amounting to about two hundred thousand rupees. The Rajah was reduced to great distress; but his personal friend, Matabur Sing, the minister of Nepaul, aided him with loans of money; and gave him a garden to reside in, about five hundred yards from the village of Maharaj Gunge, in the Nepaul territory, fifty-four miles from Bulrampoor, where Dursun Sing remained encamped with his large force.

The Rajah had filled this garden with small huts for the accommodation of his family and followers during the season of the rains, and surrounded it with a deep ditch, knowing the unscrupulous and enterprising character of his enemy. In September 1843, Dursun Sing, having had the position and all the road leading to it well reconnoitred, marched one evening, at the head of a compact body of his own followers, and reached the Rajah's position at daybreak the next morning. The garden was taken by a rush; but the Rajah made his escape with the loss of thirty men killed and wounded. Dursun Sing's party took all the property the Rajah and his followers left behind them in their flight, and plundered the small village of Maharaj Gunge; but in their retreat they were sorely pressed by a st.u.r.dy landholder of the neighbourhood, who had become attached to his young sporting companion, the Rajah, and whose feeling of patriotism had been grievously outraged by this impudent invasion of his sovereign's territory; and they had five sipahees and one trooper killed. The Bulrampoor Rajah had been plundered in the same treacherous manner in 1839, by the n.a.z.im, Sunkersahae and Ghalib Jung, his deputy or _collector_. He had invited them to a feast, and they brought an armed force and surrounded and plundered his house and capital. He escaped with his mother into British territory; and tells me, that he was a lad at the time, and had great difficulty in making his mother fly with him, and leave all her wardrobe behind her.

The Court of Nepaul complained of this aggression on their territory, and demanded reparation. The Governor-General Lord Ellenborough called upon the Oude government, in dignified terms, to make prompt and ample atonement to that of Nepaul. ”Promptness,” said his Lords.h.i.+p, ”in repairing an injury, however unintentionally committed is as conducive to the honour of a sovereign, as promptness in demanding reparation where an injury has been sustained.” The Nepaul Court required, that Dursun Sing should be seized and sent to Nepaul, to make an apology in person to the sovereign of that state; should be deprived of all his offices, with an a.s.surance, on the part of Oude, that he should never be again employed in any office under that government; and, that the amount of injury sustained by the subjects of Nepaul should be settled by arbitrators sent to the place on the part of both States, and paid by the Oude government. The Governor- General did not insist upon Oude's complying with the first of these requirements; but Dursun Sing was dismissed from all employments, arbitrators were sent to the place, and the Oude government paid the nine hundred and fourteen rupees, which they decided to be due to the subjects of Nepaul.

Dursun Sing at first fled in alarm into the British territory, as the Nepaul government a.s.sembled a large force on the border, and appeared to threaten Oude with invasion; while the Governor-General held in readiness a large British force to oppose them; and he knew not what the Oude government, in its alarm, might do to the servant who had wantonly involved it in so serious a sc.r.a.pe. His brother, Bukhtawar Sing, the old courtier, knew that they had enemies, or interested persons at Court, who would take advantage of the occasion to exasperate the King, and persuade him to plunder them of all they had, and confiscate their estates, unless Dursun Sing appeared and pacified the King by his submission, and aided him in a judicious distribution of the ready money at their command; and he prevailed upon him to hasten to Court, and throw himself at his Majesty's feet.

He came, acknowledged that he had been precipitate in his over-zeal for his Majesty's service; but pleaded, in excuse, that the young Rajah of Bulrampore had been guilty of great contumacy, and owed a large balance to the Exchequer, which he had been peremptorily commanded to recover; and declared himself ready to suffer any punishment, and make any reparation or atonement that his master, the King, might deem proper. The British and Nepaul governments had expressed themselves satisfied; but other parties had become deeply interested in the dispute. The King, with many good qualities, was a very parsimonious man, who prided himself upon adding something every month to his reserved treasury; and he thought, that advantage should be taken of the occasion, to get a large sum out of so wealthy a family. Three of his wives, Hoseynee Khanum, Mosahil Khanum, and Sakeena Khanum, had at the time great influence over his Majesty, and they wished to take advantage of the occasion, not only to screw out of the family a large sum for the King and themselves, but to confiscate the estates, and distribute them among their male relations. The minister, Menowur-od Dowlah, the nephew and heir of Hakeem Mehndee, who has been and will be often mentioned in this Diary, thought that, after paying a large sum to gratify his Majesty's ruling pa.s.sion, and enable him to make handsome presents to the three favourites, Dursun Sing ought to be released and restored to office, for he was the only man then in Oude capable of controlling the refractory and turbulent territorial barons; and if he were crushed altogether for subduing one of them, the rest would all become unmanageable, and pay no revenue whatever to the Exchequer. He, therefore, recommended the King to take from the two brothers the sum of twenty-five lacs of rupees, leave them the estates, and restore Dursun Sing to all his charges, as soon as it could be done without any risk of giving umbrage to the British Government.

The King thought the minister's advice judicious, and consented; but the ladies called him a fool, and told him, that the brothers had more than that sum in stores of seed-grain alone, and ought to be made to pay at least fifty lacs, while the brothers pleaded poverty, and declared that they could only pay nineteen. The minister urged the King, to take even this sum, give two lacs to the three females, and send seventeen to the reserved treasury; and called upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give in his accounts of the actual balance due by the two brothers, on their several contracts, for the last twenty-five years. He, being on good terms with the minister, and anxious to meet his wishes, found a balance of only one lac and thirty-two thousand due by Dursun Sing, and one of only fifteen lacs due by his brother, Bukhtawar Sing, in whose name the contracts had always been taken up to 1842. The King, sorely pressed by the females, resolved to banish Dursun Sing, and confiscate all his large estates; but the British Resident interposed, and urged, that Dursun Sing should be leniently dealt with, since he had made all the reparation and atonement required. The King told him, that Dursun Sing was a notorious and terrible tyrant, and had fearfully oppressed his poor subjects, and robbed them by fraud, violence, and collusion, of lands yielding a rent-roll of many lacs of rupees a-year; and, that unless he were punished severely for all these numerous atrocities, his other servants would follow his example, and his poor subjects be everywhere ruined!

The Resident admitted the truth of all these charges; but urged, in reply, that the Oude government had, in spite of all these atrocities, without any admonition, continued to employ him with unlimited power in the charge of many of its finest districts, for twenty-five or thirty years; and, that it would now be hard to banish him, and confiscate all his fine estates, when his Majesty had so lately offered, not only to leave them all untouched, but to restore him to all his charges, on the payment of a fine of twenty-five lacs.