The menacingly spiked Delhi Gate of the Shaniwar Wada, official residence of the Peshwas (prime ministers) of the Maratha Confederacy, at Poona (Pune), in modern-day Maharashtra. There were trenchant critics of British policy in India right from the start. Some, such as Adam Smith, Robert Clive, Edmund Burke and John Bright, were full of suggestions for handling it better through greater freedom and independence; others, such as Major Thomas Evans Bell, made money on the speaker’s circuit in the USA offering (in Bright’s opinion) plenty of anti-colonial breast-beating but nothing that would make life any better for Indians: see The Righting of Wrongs.
Part 1 of 2
WHOEVER sought their protection was much honoured, respected, and treated with great kindness, and they fixed an allowance for his maintenance. Notwithstanding that the English are few in number, yet, by their prudent measures and superior wisdom and understanding, they have introduced such management into the countries conquered by them as never was known in the days of any ancient rulers, although they possessed much greater power and more numerous armies.
For the comfort of their subjects and tranquillity of all the people they have established courts in all their cities and towns,* so that, in fact, in apprehension of their equity and justice, the wolf and the lion live in the same den with the goat and the deer and the wagtail and sparrow sit in the same nest with the falcon and hawk.
* Harsukh’s praise was not all undeserved. Bishop Reginald Heber found that Colonel James Tod had worked wonders in Rajputana, and that the only people who were ungrateful to him were the British. See The Quiet Kingdom.
Précis
Shortly after the Second Maratha War ended in 1805, Indian historian Harsukh Rai reflected on the advantages of living in a society governed by the English. They English, he said, did not have the sheer numbers that other conquering armies had brought to India, but had nonetheless achieved more peace and security than any of them. (55 / 60 words)
Part Two
Richard Colley Wellesley (1760-1842), 1st Marquess Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington, Governor of Bengal between 1798 and 1805. His younger brother Arthur handled many of his most difficult military campaigns; Arthur went on become the Duke of Wellington, hero of The Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and served as Prime Minister from 1828 to 1830. Their younger brother Henry was Richard’s secretary in Bengal. With their help, Richard put an end to the dangerous pro-French rebellion of Hyder Ali and Tipu in Mysore, and steered the East India Company through the testing Second Anglo-Maratha War in 1803-1805, of which Harsukh Rai has left us his account: see The Moth Versus the Fire. Wellesley thus all but ended French colonial interest in India.
THE powerful fly before the weak, and robbers and highwaymen show the way to benighted travellers. All enjoy rest under their protection, and all are comforted by their justice.* If a brief account of the rules and regulations which are made by these great people for the adminstration of justice were given, it would much lengthen this work. The judges, at the time of hearing complaints, look on all, poor and rich, respectable and mean, with an impartial eye, and punish them according to the law, in proportion to the atrocity of their deeds, so that others may take warning from them, and avoid to commit crime. May Almighty God preserve the shadow of their favour and kindness over the heads of all people, as long as the world exists!*
* Harsukh Rai’s contemporary Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (1752-1806) was less impressed with British justice, both on his visit to London and in Calcutta, but he acknowledged that sometimes justice was done: see A Shabby Suit and Pillars of Justice.
* If Harsukh Rai is to be believed, English administration had come a long way since Edmund Burke gave his assessment of it before the Commons in 1783. See A Dereliction of Duty.
Précis
Harsukh Rai picked out the British justice system for special praise. It was, he said, complex and exhaustive but also strict and impartial, avenging and deterring crime regardless of wealth or social class. So efficient were the courts, that even highwaymen had resigned their trade, and were courteously directing lost travellers safely to their destination. (55 / 60 words)
