He relied heavily on the ideals he had learned at Eton from its provost, Dr Edward Barnard. During the 1770s, Wellesley had been one of a constellation of extremely able, high-born young men whom Barnard had singled out and cherished as future political leaders.13 The Marquess wanted to cultivate a similar circle of talented, self-confident and self-possessed gentlemen who would be specially trained for the highest offices of state. The upshot was Fort William College near Calcutta, which was founded by Wellesley in 1800. He framed its curriculum, which included courses in Indian languages, culture and history. Most importantly for Wellesley, the aspirant proconsuls would be instructed in the ‘sound and correct principles of religion and government’, that is as preached by the Church of England and upheld by the Tory party. Lecturers would instil ‘a sense of moral duty, and teach those who fill important stations, that the great public duties which they are called upon to execute in India, are not of a less sacred nature than duties of similar situations in their own country’.14 There was clearly no longer any place for businessmen in the running of India, and directors objected strenuously to Wellesley’s plan. But the Board of Control prevailed and Fort William College went ahead.
Wellesley took a keen interest in his college and the progress of its pupils, whom he admitted into his intimate circle. One so honoured, Charles Metcalfe, noted in his diary that, ‘Such civility from Lord Wellesley is no common thing.’ The Marquess regularly attended the graduation ceremonies at the college and was no doubt gratified to hear that the subject chosen for the Persian disputation in 1802 was: ‘The Natives of India under British Government enjoy a far greater degree of tranquillity, security and happiness, than any former government.’15 Sadly, he knew no Persian. On these occasions, cash prizes were handed out to outstanding cadets, a practice which was eventually extended to the Company’s military academy at Addiscombe and Imperial Service College (now Haileybury school, Hertfordshire), which, by the 1840s, had become a ‘feeder’ school for the Indian army and civil service.
Thanks to Wellesley, ruling India had become a vocation of an élite. Along with the church, the armed services and the law, it was a profession that could be pursued by gentlemen without loss of dignity or status. Furthermore, the Marquess had created an institution which fostered a powerful sense of purpose, a shared outlook and close personal bonds between its alumni. He had also set a pattern which would be followed by future high-ranking proconsuls, such as Sir Henry Lawrence, who surrounded themselves with young disciples whom they trained as administrators. As in Fort William College, they passed through more than a mere apprenticeship in the techniques of government; they absorbed the ideals of their master and, through his experience, gained a recondite knowledge of the ways of Indians.
Those who learned the arts of government in India were gentlemen. In 1800 the word carried no connotations of gentleness; rather, it denoted birth and upbringing. Both enabled a young man to acquire manners, learning and a sense of his place in the world and what it expected from him. His inner moral code and conduct in society were shaped by a close study of Greek and Roman literature which, for the great part, concerned the deeds of heroes who were men of noble birth like himself. Tales of their perseverance, fearlessness, honour and love of their native land provided models for the gentleman’s future behaviour. Rome, in particular, was a shining example of a civilising empire whose achievements rested on the exploits of its natural leaders. It was no accident of fashion that so many eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century commanders and proconsuls were portrayed on their monuments as Roman senators or generals. This is how General Sir Samuel Auchmuty appears on his marble wall tomb in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. He died in 1824, having commanded armies in North America, India and Ireland, and appears as a second Scipio with imperturbable and imperious features.
Church memorials broadcast the virtues which distinguished a gentleman. In Bath abbey, the epitaph of Colonel Alexander Champion of the Bengal army announces that ‘his Zeal, Courage and Success were ever tempered by humanity’ and that in his dealings with the world he was ‘plain, open and unaffected’. This paragon died in 1793, during a period when the public image of the gentleman was changing. As the Romantic and Evangelical movements were capturing the imaginations and souls of the upper and middle classes, the concept of the gentleman was reappraised. He was now expected to be more than just a gallant dandy with an over-developed sense of his own superiority and personal honour. ‘True courage blended with humanity’ were the essence of the gentleman, according to Piers Egan, historian of the fashionable sport of boxing. As might be expected, he set great store by manliness and feared that, without a régime of rigorous exercise, ‘The English character may get too refined and the thorough-bred bulldog degenerate into the whining puppy.’16‘Character for honour’ was the inner hallmark of the true gentleman, an army officer wrote in 1827. Social distinction, he added, brought with it obligations for, ‘Society very justly expects from all who move in a certain rank, an amenity of manners, and fair, manly and upright lines of conduct in the general intercourse and transactions of life.’17
The public schools tempered the cultivation of these noble qualities with a preparation for the realities of the unkind world. Charles Metcalfe, the son of a nabob, described Eton in the 1790s as a ‘humble imitation of the world’. Within this microcosm, he discovered that ‘every vice and every virtue which we meet in the world is practised, although in miniature, every deception is triflingly displayed which one would be open to in life.’18 This experience did not make him or men like him unreceptive to idealism, far from it, but it did make them acutely aware of the darker side of human nature. Passage through a public school was a valuable preparation for the daily tasks of an India administrator.
From the beginning, the Raj placed its faith in men before measures. If the men struck the right note, then the Indians would accept the system they brought with them. This enkindling of trust, even friendship, could only be accomplished by a gentleman. First impressions were vital, according to the resident in Delhi who, in 1807, reminded his subordinates that:
By bringing European gentlemen into direct and immediate contact with those of our new subjects who are yet unacquainted with our character, their minds would be conciliated and a groundwork laid for the introduction of our financial and judicial system.19
The gentleman embodied the humane spirit and integrity of the Raj. In 1847, Herbert Edwardes relied on what he believed to be the reputation of his countrymen when he assured tribesmen from the Bannu region that their taxes would not be crippling. ‘You know very well that no “Sahib” ever fixes a heavy revenue. “Sahibs” are at this moment settling the revenue throughout the Punjab, and making all the people happy.’20
II
‘Sahib’, more than any word in the Anglo-Indian lexicon, has come to stand for the relationship between Indians and their British rulers. Its undertones of imperial servility mean that it is now seldom heard in India, where ‘sir’ has become the everyday expression of deference. In Edwardes’s time, ‘sahib’ meant master and was universally used to all Englishmen, whatever their rank. He thought that this polite usage was also ‘an involuntary confession of the master-race energy’ of the British race.
Racial arrogance was always hard to avoid in India, even among the most open-minded and sensitive. Prolonged exile in the country transformed the British for the worst, according to Lieutenant-Colonel H. B. Henderson of the 8th Bengal NI. He lived in India for nearly twenty years and published a miscellany of quirky recollections in 1829. His frankness and acerbity made him a revealing chronicler of his countrymen’s activities in the midst of what he called, ‘The millions of the East . . . happily sunk in their subjection, even as the careless sleep of infancy.’21 In this position of absolute mastery, natural British pride and independence became contaminated by ‘Asiatic’ arrogance so that, in time, the exile became ‘accustomed to measure his own humanity by the standards of a conquered and de
graded race around him’. Among the older, stiff-necked generation of Company men, he discovered a breathtaking arrogance which expressed itself in such statements as:
No native, however high his rank, ought to approach within a yard of an Englishman; and every time an English shakes hands with a Babu [Indian clerk] he shakes the basis on which our ascendancy in this country stands.22
Even those fired with a sense of mission found it hard to repress their inner disdain towards Indians. Consider Captain James McMurdo, who died in 1820 aged thirty-three and who was in many ways the perfect example of the dedicated and hard-working proconsul whom Wellesley hoped would uplift India. According to his encomium, this officer had advanced himself through ‘the paths of integrity, industry and knowledge’ and had acquired a ‘deep insight into all the turnings and wanderings of the Indian character’. In Kathiawar and Kachchh, he suppressed brigandage and won over the natives, having a ‘constant interest in their happiness’. And yet, ‘The native character was far from standing high in his estimation, but as it was his lot to live and act amongst them this he at all times carefully concealed.’23 One wonders how many others similarly placed who shared McMurdo’s secret distaste for the Indian character masked their feelings, and whether they did so successfully.
It would be impossible to generalise about this subject, but among McMurdo’s contemporaries there were officials who believed that the British reserve and exclusiveness handicapped their dealings with Indians. ‘The French character is more popular in India than ours,’ General James Stuart told Dundas in 1800.24 Another officer, whose experience was confined to country stations in the Deccan, wrote in 1808 that he regretted the distance between the British and Indians: ‘We do not intermarry with them, as the Portuguese did; nor do we ever mix with them, in the common duties of social life on terms of equality.’25 More starkly, when Private Ryder tried to calm two frightened camp followers under fire at Multan in 1849, one said, ‘If a ball strikes me, and I am killed, you would say, “Oh, never mind – it’s only a black man.”’26 By this time racial hauteur was more pronounced than ever. The word ‘nigger’ begins to appear in private correspondence and its use spread rapidly. A philologist, touring India on the eve of the 1857 Mutiny, was distressed to find expressions of racial abuse in common use: ‘Now, one hears ordinarily and from the mouths of decent folks nothing but contemptuous phrases (nigger &c).’27
Early impressions often sowed the seeds of racial contempt. As his ship sailed up the Hughli, Ensign James Welsh was horrified by the sight of flotillas of small rowing boats filled with food sellers. They seemed ‘a race of beings seemingly intended by nature to complete the link between man, the image of his Maker, and the tribe of apes and monkeys’.28 Similar thoughts crossed the mind of Lord Hastings after he had disembarked at Calcutta in 1814. ‘The Hindu appears a being nearly limited to mere animal functions, and even in them indifferent,’ he noted in his journal, adding that they seemed to possess ‘no higher intellect than a dog, an elephant or a monkey’.29 In part, these were reactions to the sheer numbers of Indians seen along the shores of the river or congregated by the ghats (landing places), which was something no traveller from the West was ever wholly prepared for. The tinted prints of the city’s waterfront and streets, which became increasingly available in Britain after 1800, showed nothing of the multitudes who moved along them. The newcomer discovered these for himself, together with the ceaseless bustle of masses of men and women who were accustomed to prepare food, eat, wash themselves and defecate in public. There were, of course, crowds in the streets of Regency London and the larger cities, but nothing on the scale of those seen in India. They were an unfamiliar spectacle which heightened a sense of isolation and aroused that nervousness so often expressed in the question ‘how could so many be ruled by so few’. Hastings was relieved to notice that Indian crowds were infinitely more docile than their British counterparts.
The faceless throng first seen from the deck of a ship soon became individuals as the new arrival established his household and hired servants. Advice on their duties, how they should be treated and how much they ought to be paid was plentiful. Ceaseless vigilance and firmness were vital for the smooth running of a household and it helped enormously to have a smattering of the local language. According to John Gilchrist, a former army surgeon who had learned Hindustani through dressing as and mixing with Indians, it was more effective to reprimand ‘stupidity, perverseness and chicanery’ than to punish them with the usual clout.30 His Hindustani phrase book, published in 1800, provided the novice with the language of command and rebuke. Among his appendix of useful expressions were: ‘Row fast, pull away, don’t be lazy’; ‘Give me my boots and spurs’; ‘Hand me my tooth brush and powder’; ‘Give me a clean knife and fork’; ‘Brush the curtains well that no mosquitoes may remain’; and ‘What! has no one yet told you that bearer is in our tongue a very low word, like a slave or drudge.’31
As these imperatives indicate, Indian servants carried, cooked, cleaned and attended to all their master’s personal needs. Each had his special status and newcomers were urged to master local religious taboos quickly to avoid misunderstandings. For instance, Hindus would never eat left-overs from a European’s plate, or drink from a vessel which he had used and, when asleep on the floor, objected to being stepped over. There were higher-class servants such as the khidmutgar (a sort of butler who waited on his master), the bania (money agent), sircar (cashier) and munshi (language instructor and interpreter) who were exempt from manual labour. Household chores were undertaken by menials: the bhisti (water carrier), dhobi (laundrymen), hircarra (messenger), durwan (door-keeper), syce (groom and collector of grass for a horse), hookah-burdar (who prepared a hookah for smoking), doreah (dog keeper and walker), ayah (nursemaid), cooks and sweepers. The last were from the ‘lowest caste’, (i.e. Untouchables) and scraped clean the sides of the privy and removed any scorpions or centipedes which had taken refuge beneath its wooden seats.
Servants enabled Europeans to survive in India and provided the commonest contacts between them and Indians. Household management was a constant source of anxiety, although those who kept a native mistress were relieved of most of its burdens, for she would keep an eye on the servants and see that they did not cheat their employer.32 If the volumes of advice on this subject are to be believed, Indian servants were always seeking ways in which to swindle their masters. Their outward subservience was a mask for what, in 1815, one writer called ‘a continual plot to defraud and deceive’.33 Great care was needed when hiring servants. According to Captain Thomas Williamson, the prissy author of the popular guidebook, The East India Vade-Mecum (1810), khidmutgars who wore silk ‘drawers’ were highly suspect. They were the badge of a libidinous, possibly homosexual servant who had learned his ‘libertinism’ in a harem of a previous European master. A ‘jollication’ held by the khidmutgar, his friends and some women while Captain James Halket was at a party in Simla proved so engrossing that burglars were able to enter the house undetected and carry off some silver.34 Williamson also warned that all but a few munshis suffered from permanent bad breath, which must have made daily language lessons an ordeal. Gilchrist complained about servants who spat indoors and doreahs who allowed dogs to foul the house. Retaining a hookah-burdah who turned out to be an opium addict nearly cost Captain Robert Knolles his life in May 1819. The man, heavily under the influence of the drug and claiming he had been fobbed off when he had asked for his wages, tried to murder him and was only prevented with difficulty.35
The preparation and service of food involved the greatest traumas. No doubt drawing on his own unhappy experience, Williamson suggested that cooks should be discouraged from straining soup through ‘filthy rags’. But compromises had to be made, for he observed that the excellent appearance of a meal had to be allowed to outweigh the ‘unpleasantness of preparation’, although flies in the sauce could never be tolerated. Dining was obviously full of hazards which, in time, were accepted as una
voidable. ‘Good dinner and everything clean . . . which is unusual in India’ was the entry in Captain Halket’s diary after a meal with Sir Henry Lawrence in August 1851. He had been in India since the beginning of the year and was not yet inured to its discomforts.
How many servants a man had depended on his income. A Company ensign with 100 rupees (£10) a month was expected to run an establishment with a khidmutgar who, each month, was paid eight rupees (80p); a dhobi and a cook who got six apiece; a punkah wallah who got four for operating the fan and a sweeper who got three. Sixteen rupees covered the wages of the syce and fodder for the horse. In all, the ensign was paying out just half his salary on his servants, and once promoted to a lieutenancy with 300 rupees a month, he could expand his household. In 1824, Lieutenant Blackwell employed five servants, and, on his arrival in India, Captain Halket hired thirteen, including a gun bearer for hunting excursions.36 Travelling required additional staff: Captain Forrest and his six companions needed seven elephants and a hundred servants for their journey from Calcutta to Cawnpore in 1809.37 Personal servants also accompanied their masters on campaign. Captain Arthur Becher’s khidmutgar followed him on a camel during the 1845–46 Sikh war and was on hand to serve him tea before the battle of Ferozeshah.38
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