Part 14 (2/2)

This Rajah, Ghalib Jung, is now a great favourite with the minister, and no man manifests a stronger disposition to make his influence subservient to his own interest and that of his family. By fraud and violence, and collusion with the officers who have charge of districts and require his aid at Court, he seizes upon the best lands of his weaker neighbours, in the same manner as his namesake, Rajah Dursun Sing, used to do; and of the money which he receives for contracts of various kinds, he appropriates by far the greater part to himself. He is often sent out, with a considerable force, to adjust disputes between landholders and local authorities, and he decides in favour of the party most able and willing to pay, under the a.s.surance that, if called to account, he will be able to clear himself, by giving a share of what he gets to those who send and support him. He commands a large body of mounted and foot police, and he is often ordered to go and send detachments in pursuit of daring offenders, particularly those who have given offence to the British authorities. In such cases he generally succeeds in arresting and bringing in some of the offenders; but he as often seizes the landholders and others who may have given them shelter, intentionally or otherwise; and, after extorting from them as much as they can be made to pay, lets them go. He is not, of course, very particular as to the quant.i.ty or quality of the evidence forthcoming to prove that a person able to pay has intentionally screened the offenders from justice.

Rajah Ghalib Jung was the superintendent of the City Police, and commandant of a Brigade of Infantry, and a prime favourite of the King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, for two years, up to November 1835. He had many other employments, was always in attendance upon the King, and was much liked by him, because he saw his orders carried into immediate effect, without any regard to the rank or sufferings of the persons whom they were to affect. For these two years he was one of the most intimate companions of his sovereign, in his festivities and most private debaucheries. He became cordially detested throughout the city for his reckless severity, and still more throughout the Court, for the fearless manner in which he spoke to the King of the malversation and peculations of the minister and all the Court favourites who were not in his interest. He thwarted the imbecile old minister, Roshun-od Dowlah, in everything; and never lost an opportunity of turning him into ridicule, and showing his contempt for him.

The King had become very fond of a smart young lad, by name Duljeet, who had been brought up from his infancy by the minister, but now served the King as his most confidential personal attendant. He was paid handsomely by the minister for all the services he rendered him, and deeply interested in keeping him in power and unfettered, and he watched eagerly for an opportunity to remove the man who thwarted him. _Mucka_, the King's head tailor, was equally anxious, for his own interests, to get rid of the favourite, and so was _Gunga Khowas_, a boatman, another personal servant and favourite of the King. These three men soon interested in their cause some of the most influential ladies of the palace, and all sought with avidity the opportunity to effect their object. Ghalib Jung was the person, or one of the persons, through whom the King invited females, noted for either their beauty or their accomplishments, and he was told to bring a celebrated dancing-girl, named Mogaree. She did not appear, and the King became impatient, and at last asked Dhuneea Mehree the reason. She had often been employed in a similar office, and was jealous of Ghalib Jung's rivalry. She told his Majesty, that he had obstructed his pleasures on this as on many other occasions, and taken the lady into his own keeping. All the other favourites told him the same thing, and it is generally believed that the charge was true; indeed the girl herself afterwards confessed it. The King, however, ”bided his time,” in the hope of finding some other ground of revenging himself upon the favourite, without the necessity of making him appear in public as his rival.

On the 7th of October, 1835, the King was conversing with Ghalib Jung, in one of his private apartments, on affairs of state. Several crowns stood on the table for the King's inspection. They had been prepared under Mucka, the tailor's, inspection, from materials purchased by him. He always charged the King ten times the price of the articles which he was ordered to provide, and Ghalib Jung thought the occasion favourable to expose his misconduct to his master. He took up one of the crowns, put his left hand into it, and, turning it round on his finger, pointed out the flimsy nature of the materials with which it had been made. His left finger slipped through the silk on the crown, whether accidentally, or designedly, to prove the flimsy nature of the silk and exasperate the King, is not known; but on seeing the finger pa.s.s through the crown, his Majesty left the room without saying a word. Soon after several attendants came in, surrounded Ghalib Jung, and commanded him to remain till further orders. In this state they remained for about two hours, when other attendants came in, struck off his turban on the floor, and had it kicked out of the room by sweepers.

They then dragged out Ghalib Jung, and thrust him into prison. The next day heavy iron fetters were put upon his legs, and upon those of three of his princ.i.p.al followers, who were imprisoned along with him; and his mother, father, wife, and daughters were made prisoners in their own houses; and all the property of the family that could be found was confiscated. On the third day, while still in irons, Ghalib Jung and his three followers were tied up and flogged severely, to make them point out any hidden treasure that they might have. That night the King got drunk, and, before many persons, ordered the minister to have Ghalib Jung's right hand and nose cut off forthwith.

The minister, who prayed forgiveness and forbearance, was abused and again commanded, but again entreated his Majesty to pause, and prayed for a private audience. It was granted, and the minister told his Majesty that the British Government would probably interpose if the order were carried into effect.

The King then retired to rest, but the next morning had Ghalib Jung and his three followers again tied up and flogged. Six or seven days after, all Ghalib Jung's attendants were taken from him, and no person was permitted to enter the room where he lay in irons, and he could in consequence get neither food nor drink of any kind. On the 19th of October, the King ordered all the females of Ghalib Jung's family to be brought on foot from their houses to the palace by force, and publicly declared that they should all on the next day have their hair shaved off, be stripped naked, and in that state turned out into the street. After giving these orders, the King went to bed, and the females were all brought, as ordered, to the palace; but the sympathies of the King's own servants were excited by the sufferings of these unoffending females, and they disobeyed the order for their being made to walk on foot through the streets, and brought them in covered litters.

The Resident, apprehending that these poor females might be further disgraced, and Ghalib Jung starved to death, determined to interpose, and demanded an interview, while the King was still in bed. The King was sorely vexed, and sent the minister to the Resident to request that he would not give himself the trouble to come, if his object was to relieve Ghalib Jung's family, as he would forthwith order the females to be taken to their homes. The minister had not been to the Resident for ten or twelve days, or from the first or second day after the fall of the favourite. He prayed that the Resident would not speak harshly to the King on the subject of the treatment Ghalib Jung and his family had received, lest he, the minister, should himself suffer. The Resident insisted upon an audience. He found the King sullen and doggedly silent. The minister was present, and spoke for his master. He denied, what was known to be true, that the prisoner had been kept for two days and two nights' without food or drink; but admitted that he had been tied up and flogged severely, and that the females of his family were still there, but he promised to send them back. He said that it was necessary to confiscate the property of the prisoner, since he owed large sums to the State. The females were all sent back to their homes, and Ghalib Jung was permitted, to have four of his own servants in attendance upon him.

The Resident reported all these things to Government, who entirely approved of his proceedings; and desired that he would tell his Majesty that such savage and atrocious proceedings would ruin his reputation, and, if persisted in, bring on consequences most injurious to himself. When the Resident, at the audience above described, remonstrated with the King for not calling upon his officers periodically to render their accounts, instead of letting them run on for indefinite periods, and then confining them and confiscating their property, he replied--”What you state is most true, and you may be a.s.sured that I will in future make every one account to me every three months for the money he has received, and never again show favour to any one.”

Rajah Dursun Sing, the great revenue contractor, and at that time the most powerful of the King's subjects beyond the precincts of the Court, had, like the minister himself, been often thwarted by Ghalib Jung when in power; and, after the interposition of the Resident, he applied to have him put into his power. The King and minister were pleased at the thought of making their victim suffer beyond the immediate supervision of a vigilant Resident, and the minister made him over to the Rajah for a _consideration_, it is said, of three lacs of rupees; and at the same time a.s.sured the Resident that this was the only safe way to rescue him from the further vengeance of an exasperated King; that Rajah Dursun Sing was a friend of his, and would provide him and his family and attendants with ample accommodation and comfort. The Rajah had him put into an iron cage, and sent to his fort at Shahgunge, where, report says, he had snakes and scorpions put into the cage to torment and destroy him, but that Ghalib Jung had ”a charmed life,” and escaped their poison. The object is said to have been to torment and destroy him without leaving upon his body any marks of violence.

On the death of Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, Ghalib Jung was released from confinement, on the payment, it is said, of four lacs of rupees, in Government securities, and a promise of three lacs more if restored to office. He went to reside at Cawnpore, in British territory; but, on the dismissal of the minister, Roshun-od Dowlah, three months after, and the appointment of Hakeem Mehndee to his place, Ghalib Jung was restored to his place. The promise of the three lacs was communicated to the new King, Mahommed Allee Shah, by Roshun-od Dowlah himself, while in confinement; and it is said that Ghalib Jung paid one-half, or one hundred and fifty thousand.

Ghalib Jung had, in many other ways, abused the privileges of intimate companions.h.i.+p which he enjoyed with his master, as better servants under better and more guarded masters will do; and the King, having discovered this, had for some time resolved to take advantage of the first fair occasion to discharge him. The people of Lucknow liked their King, with all his faults--and they were many--and hated the favourite as much for the injury which he did to his master's reputation, as for the insults and injuries inflicted by him on themselves. But when the unoffending females of the favourite were dragged from their privacy to the palace, to be disgraced, the feelings of the whole city were shocked, and expressed in tones which alarmed the minister as much as the Resident's interposition alarmed the King. They had no sympathy for the fallen favourite, but a very deep one for the ladies and children of his family, who could have no share in his guilt, whatever it might be.

Ghalib Jung was raised, from a very humble grade, by Ghazee-od Deen Hyder, and about the year 1825 he had become as great a favourite with him as he afterwards became with his son, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, and he abused his master's favour in the same manner. The minister, Aga Meer, finding his interference and vulgar insolence intolerable, took advantage one day of the King's anger against him, had him degraded, seized, and sent off forthwith to one of his creatures, Taj-od Deen Hoseyn, then in charge of the Sultanpoor district, where he was soon reduced almost to death's door by harsh treatment and want of food, and made to disgorge all the wealth he had acc.u.mulated.

Four years after the death of Ghazee-od Deen and the accession of his son, Nuseer-od Deen, Ghalib Jung was, in the year 1831, again appointed to a place of trust at Court by the minister, Hakeem Mehndee, who managed to keep him in order during the two years that he held the reins of government.*

[* Ghalib Jung died on the 1st of May 1851, at Lucknow, aged about 80 years.]

_December_ 20, 1849.--Saleepoor, ten miles. The country, on both sides of the road, well studded with trees, hamlets, and villages, and well cultivated and peopled. The landholders and peasantry seem all happy and secure under their present masters, the brother and son of the late Dursun Sing. They are protected by them from thieves and robbers, the attacks of refractory barons, and, above all, from the ravages of the King's troops; and the whole face of the country, at this season, is like that of a rich garden. The whole is under cultivation, and covered with the greatest possible variety of crops.

The people showed us, as we pa.s.sed, six kinds of sugar-cane, and told us that they had many more, one soil agreeing best with one kind, another with another. The main fault in the cultivation of sugar-cane is here, as in every other part of India that I have seen, the want of room and the disregard of cleanliness. They crowd the cane too much, and never remove the decayed leaves, and sufficient air is never admitted.

Bukhtawar Sing has always been considered as the head of the family to whom Shahgunge belongs, but he has always remained at Court, and left the local management of the estate and the government of the districts, placed under their charge in contract or in trust, to his brothers and nephews. Bukhtawar Sing has no child of his own, but he has adopted Maun Sing, the youngest son of his brother, Dursun Sing, and he leaves all local duties and responsibilities to him. He is a small, slight man, but shrewd, active, and energetic, and as unscrupulous as a man can be. Indeed old Bukhtawar Sing himself is the only member of the family that was ever troubled with scruples of any kind whatever; for he is the only one whose boyhood was not pa.s.sed in the society of men in the every-day habit of committing with impunity all kinds of cruelties, atrocities, and outrages. There is, perhaps, no school in the world better adapted for training thoroughbred ruffians (men without any scruple of conscience, sense of honour, or feeling of humanity) than the camp of a revenue- contractor in Oude. It has been the same for the last thirty years that I have known it, and must continue to be the same as long as _we maintain, in absolute sway over the people, a sovereign who never bestows a thought upon them, has no feeling in common with them, and can never be persuaded that his high office imposes upon him the obligation to labour to promote their good, or even to protect them against the outrage and oppression of his own soldiers and civil officers_. All Rajah Bukhtawar Sing's brothers and nephews were bred up in such camps, and are thorough-bred ruffians.

They have got the lands which they hold by much fraud and violence no doubt, but they have done much good to them. They have invited and established in comfort great numbers of the best cla.s.ses of cultivators from other districts, in which they had ceased to feel secure, and they have protected and encouraged those whom they found on the land. To establish a new cultivator of the better cla.s.s, they require to give him about twenty-five rupees for a pair of bullocks; for subsistence for himself and family till his crops ripen, thirty- six more, for a house, wells, &c., thirty more, or about ninety rupees, which he pays back with or without interest by degrees. Every village and hamlet is now surrounded by fine garden cultivation, conducted by the cultivators of the gardener caste, whom the family has thus established.

The greatest benefit conferred upon the lands which they hold has been in the suppression of the fearful contests which used to be perpetual between the small proprietors of the military cla.s.ses, among whom the lands had become minutely subdivided by the law of inheritance, about boundaries and rights to water for irrigation.

Many persons used to be killed every year in these contests, and their widows and orphans had to be maintained by the survivors. Now no such dispute leads to any serious conflict. They are all settled at once by arbitrators, who are guided in their decisions by the accounts of the Putwaries of villages and Canoongoes of districts.

These men have the detailed accounts of every tenement for the last hundred years; and, with their a.s.sistance, village traditions, and the advice of their elders, all such boundary disputes and misunderstandings about rights to water are quickly and amicably adjusted; and the landlords are strong, and able to enforce whatever decision is p.r.o.nounced. They are wealthy, and pay the Government demand punctually, and have influence at Court to prevent any attempt at oppression on the part of Government officers on themselves or their tenants. Not a thief or a robber can live or depredate among their tenants. The hamlets are, in consequence, numerous and peopled by peasantry, who seem to live without fear. They adhere strictly to the terms of their engagements with their tenants of all grades; and their tenants all pay their rents punctually, unless calamities of season deprive them of the means, when due consideration is made by landlords, who live among them, and know what they suffer and require.

The climate must be good, for the people are strong and well-made, and without any appearance of disease. Hardly a beggar of any kind is to be seen along the road. The residence of religious mendicants seems to be especially discouraged, and we see no others. It is very pleasing to pa.s.s over such lands after going through such districts as Bahraetch and Gonda, where the signs of the effects of bad air and water upon men, women, and children are so sad and numerous; and those of the abuse of power and the neglect of duty on the part of the Government and its officers are still more so.

Last evening I sent for the two men above named, who had been confined for six or seven years, and were said to have been so because they would not sign the _bynamahs_ required from them by Mann Sing: their names are Soorujbulee Sing and Rugonath Sing. They came with the King's wakeel, accompanied by their cousin, Hunooman Sing, on whose charge they were declared to have been confined. I found that the village of Tendooa had been held by their family, in proprietary right, for many generations, and that they were Chouhan Rajpoots by caste. When Dursun Sing was securing to himself the lands of the district, those of Tendooa were held in three equal shares by Soorujbulee and his brothers, Narind and Rugonath; Hunooman Sing, their cousin; and Seoruttun, their cousin.

Maun Sing took advantage of a desperate quarrel between them, and secured Soorujbulee and Rugonath. Narind escaped and joined a refractory tallookdar, and Seoruttun and Hunooman did the same.

Hunooman Sing was, however, invited back, and intrusted, by Maun Sing, with the management of the whole estate, on favourable terms.

In revenge for his giving in to the terms of Maun Sing, and serving him, the absconded co-sharers attacked his house several times, killed three of his brothers, and many other persons of his family, and robbed him of almost all he had. This was four years ago. He complained, and the two brothers were kept more strictly confined than ever, to save him and the village. Hunooman Sing looked upon the two prisoners as the murderers of his brothers, though they were in confinement when they were killed, and had been so for more than two years, and was very violent against them in my presence. They were no less violent against him, as the cause of their continued confinement They protested to me, that they had no communication whatever with Seoruttun or Narind Sing, but thought it very likely, that they really did lead the gangs in the attacks upon the village, to recover their rights. They offered to give security for their future good behaviour if released; but declared, that they would rather die than consent to sign a _bynamah_, or deed of sale, or any relinquishment whatever of their hereditary rights as landholders.

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