Kitabı oku: «Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official», sayfa 41
We took our System of drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be raised and maintained.1108
The sepoys of the Bengal army, the only part of our native army with which I am much acquainted, are educated as soldiers from their infancy—they are brought up in that feeling of entire deference for constituted authority which we require in soldiers, and which they never lose through life. They are taken from the agricultural classes of Indian society—almost all the sons of yeomen—cultivating proprietors of the soil, whose families have increased beyond their means of subsistence. One son is sent one after another to seek service in our regiments as necessity presses at home, from whatever cause—the increase of taxation, or the too great increase of numbers in families.1109 No men can have a higher sense of the duty they owe to the state that employs them, or whose 'salt they eat'; nor can any men set less value on life when the service of that state requires that it shall be risked or sacrificed. No persons are brought up with more deference for parents. In no family from which we drew our recruits is a son through infancy, boyhood, or youth, heard to utter a disrespectful word to his parents—such a word from a son to his parents would shock the feelings of the whole community in which the family resides, and the offending member would be visited with their highest indignation. When the father dies the eldest son takes his place, and receives the same marks of respect, the same entire confidence and deference as the father. If he be a soldier in a distant land, and can afford to do so, he resigns the service, and returns home to take his post as the head of the family. If he cannot afford to resign, if the family still want the aid of his regular monthly pay, he remains with his regiment, and denies himself many of the personal comforts he has hitherto enjoyed, that he may increase his contribution to the general stock.
The wives and children of his brothers, who are absent on service, are confided to his care with the same confidence as to that of the father. It is a rule to which I have through life found but few exceptions that those who are most disposed to resist constituted authority are those most disposed to abuse such authority when they get it. The members of these families, disposed, as they always are, to pay deference to such authority, are scarcely ever found to abuse it when it devolves upon them; and the elder son, when he succeeds to the place of his father, loses none of the affectionate attachment of his younger brothers.
They never take their wives or children with them to their regiments, or to the places where their regiments are stationed.1110 They leave them with their fathers or elder brothers, and enjoy their society only when they return on furlough. Three-fourths of their incomes are sent home to provide for their comfort and subsistence, and to embellish that home in which they hope to spend the winter of their days. The knowledge that any neglect of the duty they owe their distant families will be immediately visited by the odium of their native officers and brother soldiers, and ultimately communicated to the heads of their families, acts as a salutary check on their conduct; and I believe that there is hardly a native regiment in the Bengal army in which the twenty drummers who are Christians, and have their families with the regiment, do not cause more trouble to the officers than the whole eight hundred sepoys.
To secure the fidelity of such men all that is necessary is to make them feel secure of three things—their regular pay, at the handsome rate at which it has now been fixed; their retiring pensions upon the scale hitherto enjoyed; and promotion by seniority, like their European officers, unless they shall forfeit all claims to it by misconduct or neglect of duty.1111 People talk about a demoralized army, and discontented army! No army in the world was certainly ever more moral or more contented than our native army; or more satisfied that their masters merit all their devotion and attachment; and I believe none was ever more devoted or attached to them.1112 I do not speak of the European officers of the native army. They very generally believe that they have had just cause of complaint, and sufficient care has not always been taken to remove that impression. In all the junior grades the Honourable Company's officers have advantages over the Queen's in India. In the higher grades the Queen's officers have advantages over those of the Honourable Company. The reasons it does not behove me here to consider.1113
In all armies composed of involuntary soldiers, that is, of soldiers who are anxious to quit the ranks and return to peaceful occupations, but cannot do so, much of the drill to which they are subjected is adopted merely with a view to keep them from pondering too much upon the miseries of their present condition, and from indulging in those licentious habits to which a strong sense of these miseries, and the recollection of the enjoyments of peaceful life which they have sacrificed, are too apt to drive them. No portion of this is necessary for the soldiers of our native army, who have no miseries to ponder over, or superior enjoyments in peaceful life to look back upon; and a very small quantity of drill is sufficient to make a regiment go through its evolutions well, because they have all a pride and pleasure in their duties, as long as they have a commanding officer who understands them. Clarke, in his Travels, speaking of the three thousand native infantry from India whom he saw paraded in Egypt under their gallant leader, Sir David Baird, says, 'Troops in such a state of military perfection, or better suited for active service, were never seen—not even on the famous parade of the chosen ten thousand belonging to Bonaparte's legions, which he was so vain of displaying before the present war in the front of the Tuileries at Paris. Not an unhealthy soldier was to be seen. The English, inured to the climate of India, considered that of Egypt as temperate in its effects, and the sipāhees seemed as fond of the Nile as the Ganges.'1114
It would be much better to devise more innocent amusements to lighten the miseries of European soldiers in India than to be worrying them every hour, night and day, with duties which are in themselves considered to be of no importance whatever, and imposed merely with a view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.1115 But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve order and discipline.1116
Sportsmen know that if they train their horses beyond a certain point they 'train off'; that is, they lose the spirit and with it the condition they require to support them in their hour of trial. It is the same with soldiers; if drilled beyond a certain point, they 'drill off', and lose the spirit which they require to sustain them in active service, and before the enemy. An over-drilled regiment will seldom go through its evolutions well, even in ordinary review before its own general. If it has all the mechanism, it wants all the real spirit of military discipline—it becomes dogged, and is, in fact, a body with but a soul. The martinet, who is seldom a man of much intellect, is satisfied as long as the bodies of his men are drilled to his liking; his narrow mind comprehends only one of the principles which influence mankind—fear; and upon this he acts with all the pertinacity of a slave-driver. If he does not disgrace himself when he comes before the enemy, as he commonly does, by his own incapacity, his men will perhaps try to disgrace him, even at the sacrifice of what they hold dearer than their lives—their reputation. The real soldier, who is generally a man of more intellect, cares more about the feelings than the bodies of his men; he wants to command their affections as well as their limbs, and he inspires them with a feeling of enthusiasm that renders them insensible to all danger—such men were Lord Lake, and Generals Ochterlony, Malcolm, and Adams, and such are many others well known in India.
Under the martinet the soldiers will never do more than what a due regard for their own reputation demands from them before the enemy, and will sometimes do less. Under the real soldier, they will always do more than this; his reputation is dearer to them even than their own, and they will do more to sustain it. The army of the consul, Appius Claudius, exposed themselves to almost inevitable destruction before the enemy to disgrace him in the eyes of his country, and the few survivors were decimated on their return; he cared nothing for the spirit of his men. The army of his colleague, Quintius, on the contrary, though from the same people, and levied and led out at the same time, covered him with glory because they loved him.1117 We had an instance of this in the war with Nepāl in-1813, in which a king's regiment played the part of the army of Appius.1118 There were other martinets, king's and Company's, commanding divisions in that war, and they all signally failed; not, however, except in the above one instance, from backwardness on the part of their troops, but from utter incapacity when the hour of trial came. Those who succeeded were men always noted for caring something more about the hearts than the whiskers and buttons of their men. That the officer who delights in harassing his regiment in times of peace will fail with it in times of war and scenes of peril seems to me to be a rule almost as well established as that he, who in the junior ranks of the army delights most to kick against authority, is always found the most disposed to abuse it when he gets to the higher. In long intervals of peace, the only prominent military characters are commonly such martinets; and hence the failures so generally experienced in the beginning of a war after such an interval. Whitelocks are chosen for command, till Wolfes and Wellingtons find Chathams and Wellesleys to climb up by.
To govern those whose mental and physical energies we require for our subsistence and support by the lash alone is so easy, so simple a mode of bending them to our will, and making them act strictly and instantly in conformity to it, that it is not at all surprising to find so many of those who have been accustomed to it, and are not themselves liable to have the lash inflicted upon them, advocating its free use. In China the Emperor has his generals flogged, and finds the lash so efficacious in bending them to his will that nothing would persuade him that it could ever be safely dispensed with. In some parts of Germany they had the officers flogged, and princes and generals found this so very efficacious in making those act in conformity to their will that they found it difficult to believe that any army could be well managed without it. In other Christian armies the officers are exempted from the lash, but they use it freely upon all under them; and it would be exceedingly difficult to convince the greater part of these officers that the free use of the lash is not indispensably necessary, nay, that the men do not themselves like to be flogged, as eels like to be skinned, when they once get used to it. Ask the slave-holders of the southern states of America whether any society can be well constituted unless the greater part of those upon the sweat of whose brow the community depends for their subsistence are made by law liable to be bought, sold, and driven to their daily labour with the lash; they will one and all say No; and yet there are doubtless many very excellent and amiable persons among these slave-holders. If our army, as at present constituted, cannot do without the free use of the lash, let its constitution be altered; for no nation with free institutions should suffer its soldiers to be flogged. 'Laudabiliores tamen duces sunt, quorum exercitum ad modestiam labor et usus instituit, quam illi, quorum milites ad obedientiam suppliciorum formido compellit.'1119
Though I reprobate that wanton severity of discipline in which the substance is sacrificed to the form, in which unavoidable and trivial offences are punished as deliberate and serious crimes, and the spirit of the soldier is entirely disregarded, while the motion of his limbs, cut of his whiskers, and the buttons of his coat are scanned with microscopic eye, I must not be thought to advocate idleness. If we find the sepoys of a native regiment, as we sometimes do at a healthy and cheap station, become a little unruly like schoolboys, and ask an old native officer the reason, he will probably answer others as he has me by another question, 'Ghora ārā kyūn? Pānī sarā kyūn?' 'Why does the horse become vicious? Why does the water become putrid?'-For want of exercise. Without proper attention to this exercise no regiment is ever kept in order; nor has any commanding officer ever the respect or the affection of his men unless they see that he understands well all the duties which his Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in all situations and under all circumstances. There are always some bad characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment, or disinclined, from a mistaken esprit de corps, or any other cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.1120
There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations. In such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or sepoys. In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one, which often takes up the whole of a young man's time. The ladies must have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty. The consequence is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off duty.1121
It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service. Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds of sympathy and confidence. 'Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere.' After the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore, where the gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one condition—that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European officers after that war, solicited permission to go and make their 'salām' to the tomb, and all went who were off duty.1122 The system which now keeps the greater part of our native infantry at small stations of single regiments in times of peace tends to preserve this good tone of feeling between officers and men, at the same time that it promotes the general welfare of the country by giving confidence everywhere to the peaceful and industrious classes.
I will not close this chapter without mentioning one thing which I have no doubt every Company's officer in India will concur with me in thinking desirable to improve the good feeling of the native soldiery—that is, an increase in the pay of the Jemadārs. They are commissioned officers, and seldom attain the rank in less than from twenty-five to thirty years;1123 and they have to provide themselves with clothes of the same costly description as those of the Sūbadār; to be as well mounted, and in all respects to keep the same respectability of appearance, while their pay is only twenty-four rupees and a half a month; that is, ten rupees a month only more than they had been receiving in the grade of Havildārs, which is not sufficient to meet the additional expenses to which they become liable as commissioned officers. Their means of remittance to their families are rather diminished than increased by promotion, and but few of them can hope ever to reach the next grade of Sūbadār. Our Government, which has of late been so liberal to its native civil officers, will, I hope, soon take into consideration the claims of this class, who are universally admitted to be the worst paid class of native public officers in India. Ten rupees a month addition to their pay would be of great importance; it would enable them to impart some of the advantages of promotion to their families, and improve the good feeling of the circles around them towards the Government they serve.1124
CHAPTER 77
Invalid Establishment
I have said nothing in the foregoing chapter of the invalid establishment, which is probably the greatest of all bonds between the Government and its native army, and consequently the greatest element in the 'spirit of discipline'. Bonaparte, who was, perhaps, with all his faults, 'the greatest man that ever floated on the tide of time', said at Elba, 'There is not even a village that has not brought forth a general, a colonel, a captain, or a prefect, who has raised himself by his especial merit, and illustrated at once his family and his country.' Now we know that the families and the village communities in which our invalid pensioners reside never read newspapers,1125 and feel but little interest in the victories in which these pensioners may have shared. They feel that they have no share in the éclat or glory which attend them; but they everywhere admire and respect the government which cherishes its faithful old servants, and enables them to spend the 'winter of their days' in the bosoms of their families; and they spurn the man who has failed in his duty towards that government in the hour of need.
No sepoy taken from the Rājpūt communities of Oudh or any other part of the country can hope to conceal from his family circle or village community any act of cowardice, or anything else which is considered disgraceful to a soldier, or to escape the odium which it merits in that circle and community.
In the year 1819 I was encamped near a village in marching through Oudh, when the landlord, a very cheerful old man, came up to me with his youngest son, a lad of eighteen years of age, and requested me to allow him (the son) to show me the best shooting grounds in the neighbourhood. I took my 'Joe Manton' and went out. The youth showed me some very good ground, and I found him an agreeable companion, and an excellent shot with his matchlock. On our return we found the old man waiting for us. He told me that he had four sons, all by God's blessing tall enough for the Company's service, in which one had attained the rank of 'havīldār' (sergeant), and two were still sepoys. Their wives and children lived with him; and they sent home every month two- thirds of their pay, which enabled him to pay all the rent of the estate and appropriate the whole of the annual returns to the subsistence and comfort of the numerous family. He was, he said, now growing old, and wished his eldest son, the sergeant, to resign the service and come home to take upon him the management of the estate; that as soon as he could be prevailed upon to do so, his old wife would permit my sporting companion, her youngest son, to enlist, but not before.
I was on my way to visit Fyzabad, the old metropolis of Oudh,1126 and on returning a month afterwards in the latter end of January, I found that the wheat, which was all then in ear, had been destroyed by a severe frost. The old man wept bitterly, and he and his old wife yielded to the wishes of their youngest son to accompany me and enlist in my regiment, which was then stationed at Partābgarh.1127
We set out, but were overtaken at the third stage by the poor old man, who told me that his wife had not eaten or slept since the boy left her, and that he must go back and wait for the return of his eldest brother, or she certainly would not live. The lad obeyed the call of his parents, and I never saw or heard of the family again.
There is hardly a village in the kingdom of Oudh without families like this depending upon the good conduct and liberal pay of sepoys in our infantry regiments, and revering the name of the government they serve, or have served. Similar villages are to be found scattered over the provinces of Bihār and Benares, the districts between the Ganges and Jumna, and other parts where Rājpūts and the other classes from which we draw our recruits have been long established as proprietors and cultivators of the soil.
These are the feelings on which the spirit of discipline in our native army chiefly depends, and which we shall, I hope, continue to cultivate, as we have always hitherto done, with care; and a commander must take a great deal of pains to make his men miserable, before he can render them, like the soldiers of Frederick, 'the irreconcilable enemies of their officers and their government'.
In the year 1817 I was encamped in a grove on the right bank of the Ganges below Monghyr,1128 when the Marquis of Hastings was proceeding up the river in his fleet, to put himself at the head of the grand division of the army then about to take the field against the Pindhārīs and their patrons, the Marāthā, chiefs. Here I found an old native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Sūbadār (captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of Java,1129 and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their families formed the aristocracy of the neighbourhood. In the evening, as the fleet approached, the old gentleman, dressed in his full uniform of former days as a commissioned officer, had himself taken out close to the bank of the river, that he might be once more during his life within sight of a British Commander-in-Chief, though he could no longer see one. There the old patriarch sat listening with intense delight to the remarks of the host of his descendants around him, as the Governor-General's magnificent fleet passed along,1130 every one fancying that he had caught a glimpse of the great man, and trying to describe him to the old gentleman, who in return told them (no doubt for the thousandth time) what sort of a person the great Lord Clive was. His son, the old Sūbadār, now and then, with modest deference, venturing to imagine a resemblance between one or the other, and his beau idéal of a great man, Lord Lake. Few things in India have interested me more than scenes like these.
I have no means of ascertaining the number of military pensioners in England or in any other European nation, and cannot, therefore, state the proportion which they bear to the actual number of forces kept up. The military pensioners in our Bengal establishment on the 1st of May, 1841, were 22,381; and the family pensioners, or heirs of soldiers killed in action, 1,730; total 24,111, out of an army of 82,027 men. I question whether the number of retired soldiers maintained at the expense of government bears so large a proportion to the number actually serving in any other nation on earth.1131 Not one of the twenty-four thousand has been brought on, or retained upon, the list from political interest or court favour; every one receives his pension for long and faithful services, after he has been pronounced by a board of European surgeons as no longer fit for the active duties of his profession; or gets it for the death of a father, husband, or son, who has been killed in the service of government.
All are allowed to live with their families, and European officers are stationed at central points in the different parts of the country where they are most numerous to pay them their stipends every six months. These officers are at— 1st, Barrackpore; 2nd, Dinapore; 3rd, Allahabad; 4th, Lucknow; 5th, Meerut. From these central points they move twice a year to the several other points within their respective circles of payment where the pensioners can most conveniently attend to receive their money on certain days, so that none of them have to go far, or to employ any expensive means to get it—it is, in fact, brought home as near as possible to their doors by a considerate and liberal government.1132
Every soldier is entitled to a pension when pronounced by a board of surgeons as no longer fit for the active duties of his profession, after fifteen years' active service; but to be entitled to the pension of his rank in the army, he must have served in such rank for three years. Till he has done so he is entitled only to the pension of that immediately below it. A sepoy gets four rupees a month, that is, about one-fourth more than the ordinary wages of common uninstructed labour throughout the country.1133 But it will be better to give the rate of pay of the native officers and men of our native infantry and that of their retired pensions in one table.
TABLE OF THE RATE OF PAY AND RETIRED PENSIONS OF
THE NATIVE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF OUR NATIVE INFANTRY
a. I presume this means that no special rate of pension was fixed for the rank of Sūbadār Major.
b. The monthly rates of pay and pension now in force for native officers and men of the Bengal army are as follows:
c. Half of this rank in each regiment receive the higher rate of pay.
The circumstances which, in the estimation of the people, distinguish the British from all other rulers in India, and make it grow more and more upon their affections, are these: The security which public servants enjoy in the tenure of their office; the prospect they have of advancement by the gradation of rank; the regularity and liberal scale of their pay; and the provision for old age, when they have discharged the duties entrusted to them ably and faithfully.1134 In a native state almost every public officer knows that he has no chance of retaining his office beyond the reign of the present minister or favourite; and that no present minister or favourite can calculate upon retaining his ascendancy over the mind of his chief for more than a few months or years. Under us they see secretaries to government, members of council, and Governors-General themselves going out and coming into office without causing any change in the position of their subordinates, or even the apprehension of any change, as long as they discharge their duties ably and faithfully.
In a native state the new minister or favourite brings with him a whole host of expectants who must be provided for as soon as he takes the helm; and if all the favourites of his predecessor do not voluntarily vacate their offices for them, he either turns them out without ceremony, or his favourites very soon concoct charges against them, which causes them to be tumed out in due form, and perhaps put into jail till they have 'paid the uttermost farthing'. Under us the Governors-General, members of council, the secretaries of state,1135 the members of the judicial and revenue boards, all come into office and take their seats unattended by a single expectant. No native officer of the revenue or judicial department, who is conscious of having done his duty ably and honestly, feels the slightest uneasiness at the change. The consequence is a degree of integrity in public officers never before known in India, and rarely to be found in any other country. In the province where I now write,1136 which consists of six districts, there are twenty-two native judicial officers, Munsifs, Sadr Amīns, and Principal Sadr Amīns;1137 and in the whole province I have never heard a suspicion breathed against one of them; nor do I believe that the integrity of one of them is at this time suspected. The only one suspected within the two and a half years that I have been in the province was, I grieve to say, a Christian; and he has been removed from office, to the great satisfaction of the people, and is never to be employed again.1138 The only department in which our native public servants do not enjoy the same advantages of security in the tenure of their office, prospect of rise in the gradation of rank, liberal scale of pay, and provision for old age, is the police; and it is admitted on all hands that there they are everywhere exceedingly corrupt. Not one of them, indeed, ever thinks it possible that he can be supposed honest; and those who really are so are looked upon as a kind of martyrs or penitents, who are determined by long suffering to atone for past crimes; and who, if they could not get into the police, would probably go long pilgrimages on all fours, or with unboiled peas in their shoes.1139
'All these facts and opinions seem to me to establish incontrovertibly that a large proportion of European troops is necessary for our security under all circumstances of peace and war. . . .
'I believe the sepoys have never been so good as they were in the earliest part of our career; none superior to those under De Boigne. . . I fearlessly pronounce the Indian army to be the least efficient and most expensive in the world.'
The events of 1857-9 proved the truth of Lord William Bentinck's wise words. The native army is no longer inefficient as a whole, though certain sections of it may still be so, but the less that is said about the supposed affection of mercenary troops for a foreign government, the better.
I must here take the liberty to give an extract from a letter from one of the best and most estimable officers now in the Bengal army: 'As connected with the discipline of the native army, I may here remark that I have for some years past observed on the part of many otherwise excellent commanding officers a great want of attention to the instruction of the young European officers on first joining their regiments. I have had ample opportunities of seeing the great value of a regular course of instruction drill for at least six months. When I joined my first regiment, which was about forty years ago, I had the good fortune to be under a commandant and adjutant who, happily for me and many others, attached great importance to this very necessary course of instruction, I then acquired a thorough knowledge of my duties, which led to my being appointed an adjutant very early in life. When I attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel I had, however, opportunities of observing how very much this essential duty had been neglected in certain regiments, and made it a rule in all that I commanded to keep all young officers on first joining at the instruction drill till thoroughly grounded in their duties. Since I ceased to command a regiment, I have taken advantage of every opportunity to express to those commanding officers with whom I have been in correspondence my conviction of the great advantages of this system to the rising generation. In going from one regiment to another I found many curious instances of ignorance on the part of young officers who had been many years with their corps. It was by no means an easy task to convince them that they really knew nothing, or at least had a great deal to learn; but when they were made sensible of it, they many of them turned out excellent officers, and now, I believe, bless the day they were first put under me.'
The advantages of the System here mentioned cannot be questioned; and it is much to be regretted that it is not strictly enforced in every regiment in the service. Young officers may find it irksome at first; but they soon become sensible of the advantages, and learn to applaud the commandant who has had the firmness to consult their permanent interests more than their present inclinations. [W. H. S.]
