Servants of the empire: The Irish in Punjab 1881–1921 9781526118417

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The Irish in Punjab, 1881–1921

PAT R I C K O ’ L E A RY

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general editor John M. MacKenzie When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. Studies in Imperialism is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding area of scholarship.

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Servants of the empire

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S E L E CT E D T I T L E S AVAI LAB LE I N T HE SER I ES MATERIALS AND MEDICINE Trade, conquest and therapeutics in the eighteenth century Pratik Chakrabarti BORDERS AND CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA

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The Radcliffe boundary commission and the partition of Punjab Lucy P. Chester IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP Empire and the question of belonging Daniel Gorman IRELAND, INDIA AND EMPIRE Indo-Irish radical connections, 1919-64 Kate O’Malley ‘THE BETTER CLASS’ OF INDIANS Social rank, imperial identity, and South Asians in Britain 1858-1914

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Martin A. Wainwright

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Servants of the empire The Irish in Punjab, 1881–1921

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Patrick O’Leary

MANCHESTER UNIVE RSITY PR ESS Manchester

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Copyright © Patrick O’Leary 2011 The right of Patrick O’Leary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7ja, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN

978 0 7190 8385 3 hardback

First published 2011 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Trump Medieval by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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For Karen, Donagh, Isolde, Alannah, Ruby and Rhiannon

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C ONT E NTS

List of figures—ix List of maps—x List of tables—xi List of abbreviations—xii General editor’s introduction—xiii Part I

Context

1

Introduction: the scattered Irish

2

India and Punjab in the late nineteenth century

14

3

The Indian public service

24

4

Who were they?

33

5

Straits Settlements, Malaya and Ceylon

51

Part II

3

The frontier

6

Waziristan: warriors and administrators

69

7

Pro-consul and the Viceroy

83

8

Frontiersman and the diplomat

94

Part III

Land and infrastructure

Land: the Irish dimension

111

10

Canal colonies

126

11

Louis Dane and land bills

139

12

Irish engineers and Punjab’s infrastructure

152

9

Part IV

Politics and society

13

Lansdowne and Fitzpatrick

167

14

Punjab affairs are Simla affairs

181

15

Dane and O’Dwyer: conciliation and provocation

195

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C O N TEN T S

Part V 16

Conclusions

Conclusions

217

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Appendix I—228 Appendix II—232 Bibliography—234 Index—243

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FIGUR ES

1 2 3 4 5

Tochi Pass Attock bridge Viceregal lodge, Simla Golden Temple, Amritsar Private Daly with Connaught Rangers

76 153 182 184 187

Figures 1 and 2 by kind permission of The Centre of South Asian Studies Cambridge University; Figure 5 by kind permission of The Military Museum, Dun Ui Mhaoiliosa, Galway; Figures 3 and 4 by the author.

[ ix ]

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MA PS

India and Ceylon c. 1895 Punjab and Afghanistan c. 1890 British Malaya c. 1910 North-West Frontier Province c. 1905

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1 2 3 4

[x]

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T AB L E S

1

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2

3

4

UK-born residents in Punjab, including North-West Frontier Province and Delhi, and Irish-born as an included percentage of these, in decennial census years 1881-1921 Numbers of Irish medical graduates in the Indian Medical Service serving in Punjab in the period 1881–1921, with colleges attended where these are known Irish civilian engineers in Punjab 1881-1921, with schools, colleges, date of arrival in Punjab and place of birth where these are known Irish civilian members of the Indian Civil Service working for the Punjab Commission in the years 1881–1921, with personal and educational details where these are known

36

39

42

44

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A B B R E V IATIO N S

BL BMS FMS ICE ICS IMS IOR NUI NWF NWFP ODNB OIOC PRONI PWD QCB QCC QCG QUB QUI RAMC RCSI RUI TCD UCC UCD UCG

British Library British Medical Service Federated Malay States Institute of Civil Engineers Indian Civil Service Indian Medical Service India Office Records National University of Ireland north-west frontier North-West Frontier Province Oxford dictionary of national biography Oriental and India Office Collection Public Records Office of Northern Ireland Public Works Department (India) Queen’s College Belfast Queen’s College Cork Queen’s College Galway Queen’s University Belfast Queen’s University of Ireland Royal Army Medical Corps Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Royal University of Ireland Trinity College Dublin University College Cork University College Dublin University College Galway

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G E NE R A L E DIT OR ’S IN TRO D U CTIO N

The British empire was actually an amalgam of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English empires. The appellation ‘British’ should not obscure the many and varied influences that went into its construction and the modes of exploitation supported by its political, social and professional practices. This is not just a matter of different ethnicities among settlers in what became the ‘dominions’ or among the personnel, civilian and military, of India and the so-called ‘dependent’ empire. It was also a case of the working through of different domestic experiences in the areas of politics, society and the environment. It was additionally connected with a variety of educational systems, religious affiliations, and historical and cultural traditions. All of these were important in a variety of ways. Individual attitudes and motivations were unquestionably influenced, if in heterogeneous ways, by the politics, social norms, economic conditions and environmental characteristics of a ‘home’ that was in effect a number of homelands. Professional and vocational aptitudes were affected by differing emphases and pedagogical systems in the schools and universities/colleges of the peoples of such homelands. Moreover, their sense of ethnic solidarity and concerns with the manner in which empire could and, from their point of view, should influence indigenous societies were rooted in the religious, historical and cultural forms in which they had been nurtured. Embedded within these were philosophical and intellectual traditions which also modified their approaches to their professions. A modern historiography is exploring these ethnic dimensions of the British imperial experience in increasing detail. A good deal of work has already been done on the Scots. A volume of essays on the Welsh will shortly be published in the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series, and a pioneering collection on Ireland, edited by Keith Jeffery, appeared in this series in 1996, later followed by books on aspects of migration, law, and transnational influences in the development of twentieth-century nationalism. More generally, work on Irish migration, by scholars such as Akenson and Fitzpatrick, is already extensive as well as notable in quality. A good deal of research has been done on the characteristics and influence of people from Ireland in the various former territories of settlement of the British empire. Crosbie has examined the significance of the Irish in certain professions and the ‘Companion Series’ of the Oxford History of the British Empire contains a volume edited by Kevin Kenny. This book adds a significant new dimension to this considerable, [ xiii ]

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G EN ERA L ED I TO R’ S IN T R O D U C T IO N

but by no means complete, corpus of work. It takes up the assertion that imperialism can only be truly understood in terms of the local and the interactions between such localities both in the empire and in the different social units of the British and Hibernian Isles. O’Leary examines these exchanges between specific areas of Ireland and one of the key parts of India, namely Punjab and the north-west frontier. For the British, Punjab was always strategic, not only in geopolitical/military terms, but also in respect of frontier theory, administrative practice, ethnic and religious diversity, communal tensions, land settlement practices and environmental, particularly hydrological, conditions. As it happens, these diverse aspects of the strategic continued right down to the era of the Indian independence movement, the tragedies of the Partition of the subcontinent, and the strained relations between the successor states of India and Pakistan. Twentieth-century contemporaries even made connections between north-west India and Northern Ireland by dubbing Punjab the ‘Ulster of India’. In this study we have an examination of Irish members of the administration of this highly significant region of British India, together with their relations with fellow Irish figures (or aristocrats connected with Ireland through extensive land-owning) such as viceroys and other senior figures within the wider Indian imperial system. Beyond this we have an analysis of Irish doctors in the Indian medical services, civilian and military, and of engineers in the Public Works Department. As fascinating sidelights, we also have some quantitative and qualitative consideration of the Irish in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Straits Settlements and federated Malay states (now Malaysia and Singapore). All of this is important because it reveals the key roles played by the Irish from all parts of the island and from a variety of religious and social backgrounds. We learn of the extent to which they interacted with each other, of the manner in which their Irishness influenced their approaches to India (or in some cases seems to have failed to have offered any influence at all). Would things have been different if the personnel had not been Irish? Would policies in specific instances have been more or less conservative? Would medical research have taken different courses? Would great engineering projects have been accomplished as comprehensively and as swiftly as they were? All of these questions are addressed and the book adds considerably to the Irish historiography as well as offering ideas and methodologies for similar studies elsewhere in both India and the ‘British’ empire. John M. MacKenzie

[ xiv ]

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North-Western Provinces

Map 1: INDIA & CEYLON c. 1895

[ xv ]

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[ xviii ]

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PART I

Context

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1

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Introduction: the scattered Irish

The waves of Irish emigration which surged on to so many shores in the nineteenth century also generated ripples which lapped on the exotic beaches of the Indian subcontinent. This emigration was quite different from that to the Americas or Australasia in that the planters, government employees and business people who came ashore at Bombay or Calcutta did not intend to stay. Although a military officer or civil servant might spend his entire working life on the subcontinent he eventually came back to retire in Britain or Ireland.1 He sent his children home to be educated when they reached the age of seven or thereabouts, and sometimes his wife accompanied them.2 When steamships came in, and especially when the Suez canal was opened, he spent his long furloughs hunting in Tipperary,3 or shooting on the bogs of Tyrone,4 and, if unmarried, searching, a little desperately perhaps, for a wife.5 India, for the Irish emigrant, was a man’s world. Except for a few missionaries and others, women were there because of their husbands’ or fathers’ careers. In the latter part of the nineteenth century intermarriage with Indians was rare indeed.6 All this applies to the main protagonists in this book, middle-class public servants. The thousands of Irishmen who served in the ranks of the British army in India lived very different lives.7 It is generally accepted that emigrant Irish brought their political and religious baggage with them to Australia and other British Dominions, affecting the political and cultural life of those countries in important ways.8 But what of the Irish who chose to take part in the imperial project by offering their services in the governance and development of its ‘jewel in the crown’, India? Although the numbers of Irish involved were minute in that vast and teeming setting, and although their historiography has been largely subsumed in the broader themes of the British Raj, the following chapters will testify to their considerable influence on the life and history of Punjab, the province regarded as British India’s [3]

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C O N TE X T

‘greatest success story’.9 The effect of their sway extended, in time, to the geopolitics of the countries – India and Pakistan – which partitioned that province.10 That influence on a country in which they worked but with which otherwise their connection was tenuous, an influence by its nature quite undemocratic, ensured that their story does not fit neatly into the theme of what is generally known as the Irish diaspora. If one accepts what Stephane Dufoix defines as the ‘classical diaspora phenomenon’, that is the capacity of the Jewish people to preserve their integrity as an ethnoreligious community despite two millennia of dispersion throughout the world,11 and applies a modification of this definition to Irish emigrants and their capacity to maintain a separate communal identity for an extended period within their host country, then the experience of the Irish in the settled Dominions seems to more readily come within the ambit of Irish diaspora studies than the transitory involvement of small numbers of Irishmen in the affairs of the Indian subcontinent. However, transience has not precluded the existence of a considerable historiography of Irish temporary emigration.12 Temporary emigration was a common feature of Irish life before the study period, with seasonal migrations from the south-eastern counties to the Newfoundland fisheries in the eighteenth century, and from the north-west counties to work on farms in England in the years before the great famine of the 1840s. Thereafter, seasonal workers from these latter counties gravitated to Scotland and to the industrial midlands and northern England.13 In view of the academic interest in these phenomena, which were at once ephemeral and recurring, the longer-term but impermanent move to service in India or other non-settled imperial possessions such as Ceylon and the Straits Settlements may thus be considered an integral part of the story of the Irish diaspora. In 1881, there were 214,771 Irish-born residents in Australia and 186,000 in Canada,14 while during the forty-year period covered by this book a further 90,000 Irish emigrated to Australia and New Zealand, and 126,248 sailed to Canada.15 Yet, the relatively small numbers of Irish temporary emigrants involved in Punjab (it takes but a small space in this book to name all the members, over a span of forty years, of the three professions studied) need not make the Irish experience in that province insignificant. Andy Bielenberg’s assertion that ‘host societies are themselves profoundly challenged and changed by the presence of migrants’,16 applies as forcefully to the influence of the Irish in India and other British eastern possessions as it does to their impact in any of the settled Dominions. One does not have to approve of the Raj to accept that its British rulers ‘provided the bridge for India to pass from the medieval world . . . to the new age of science and humanism’,17 that, particularly in Punjab, they created ‘a free peasant economy’,18 or [4]

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I N TRO D U C TI O N : TH E SCA T T E R E D IR IS H

that modern Indian and Pakistani society was formed by an Englisheducated elite.19 Irish viceroys, provincial lieut.-governors and civil servants were part of the imperial apparatus that changed the subcontinent so profoundly; so the potential influence of the Irish, disproportionate to their number, is thus difficult to exaggerate and it is an aim of this book to describe how this potential was realised. The Irishness of some administrators and others working in British India has been noted en passant by chroniclers of the Raj, and in a more deliberate way by historians with an Irish perspective. Keith Jeffery, in arguing that mere description of Irish achievements in India contributes to the ‘just fancy that’ school of history, states, ‘What needs to be persistently addressed is the question of whether the Irishness of imperial servants and settlers, both individually and as a group, made any specific difference to their experience and service.’20 Accepting Jeffery’s admonition, the original thesis on which this book is based advanced the proposition that the policies of the British government towards India, particularly as applied to Punjab in the period 1881–1921, were subverted, or eccentrically implemented, by individual public servants from Ireland who were motivated by attitudes peculiar to their country of origin. There is little evidence so far in historical research to support that proposition, but Jeffery’s exhortation is a sensible challenge which requires a properly researched response. Barry Crosbie has described the anomalous and Irish nationalistinspired behaviour of C. J. O’Donnell, an Irish civil servant in Bengal,21 but what is required is not the example of just one Irish administrator but an examination of the behaviour and motivation of a group of such men. The relevance of such an examination acquired new significance when, during the course of research, it was realised that some of the decisions and actions taken at that time by Irishmen have had important effects on happenings on the Afghan–Pakistan border region in the early part of the twenty-first century, and on the internal politics of Pakistan. A part of the stated proposition could be regarded as self-evident in that peoples’ attitudes are influenced by early experiences; the home backgrounds of English and Scots imperial servants must also have affected their attitudes. Indeed, Clive Dewey in his Anglo-Indian Attitudes argues exactly that. He claims that, ‘the members of one of the most powerful elites the world has ever known, the Indian Civil Service at the high noon of empire, were the prisoners of the values they absorbed in their youth’.22 Barry Crosbie has pointed out that the Irish in India were essentially products of nineteenth-century Irish society and have to be seen against this background.23 What this book aims to do is to ascertain if the [5]

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C O N TE X T

backgrounds of Irish public servants in Punjab, and also that of Irish viceroys in dealing with Punjab affairs, engendered attitudes which were so different, and so particular to them, that their consequent actions influenced Punjab and Indian history in specific ways which might not otherwise have occurred. It is not argued that all of the Irish who served the Raj had similar Irish-engendered responses to their Indian service. Unionists and Nationalists, Catholics and Protestants, landed gentry and the middle classes, were not likely to share the same kind of upbringing and early experiences from which some later motivations are constructed. But in so far as these motivations stemmed from opinions formed by domestic experience, then they shared the fact that their predilections were peculiarly Irish. As will emerge in several later chapters, educated Indians recognised and sometimes referred to the differences between the Irish and people from Great Britain,24 and superiors sometimes detected Irish idiosyncrasies in public servants,25 but the mass of the people were unlikely to distinguish between one European and another. The nub of the matter is whether an Irish background influenced public servants in their duties, whether or not they thought themselves primarily as British or Irish. While the stated hypothesis determines the framework within which the topic is discussed, other factors are taken into account, such as the presence of Irish engineers and doctors whose professions did not so readily allow of modification to government policy. As stated above, the British introduced modern scientific method to South Asia, with profound results, with doctors and engineers to the forefront in such scientific and technological developments. Christopher V. Hill argues that ‘by the end of empire public works had changed the shape of India in terms of culture, economy and environment’.26 Doctors of the Indian Medical Service had a profound impact on the lives of Indian people through their research into and treatment of tropical diseases.27 The careers of Irishmen in these professions are, then, worth a chapter here. These other Irish, as will be seen, had similar social and educational backgrounds to the administrators in the Indian Civil Service (ICS). They also were public servants, and their presence would have added to the sense of Irish community which may have affected the outlook of those who helped to shape or implement policy. It is not intended to be strictly prescriptive in the definition of the term ‘Irish’. As Scott B. Cook has pointed out, there were different layers of political loyalties and identities of Irishmen and women, particularly when viewed in the imperial context.28 Annie Besant, founder of the Indian Home Rule League,29 and General Lord Roberts, commander-in-chief in India,30 both claimed to be Irish, yet neither was born in Ireland and the former visited the country but once.31 [6]

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I N TRO D U C TI O N : TH E SCA T T E R E D IR IS H

Lord Inchiquin could claim direct descent from Brian Boru and yet be absolutely loyal to the English monarch.32 General O’Moore Creagh, another commander-in-chief in India, proudly wrote of his dual heritage of Gael and planter.33 Michael McConville lists some of those wellknown Irish names such as Walsh, Doyle, Macauliffe, Fitzgerald, Joyce which indicate ancestries varying from Welsh and Danish to Norman. That writer also believes that: ‘If there is a modern Irishman without English blood in his arteries he is a genetic freak.’34 Donald Akenson claims that the answer to the question ‘who is an Irish person?’ is clear; it is anyone ‘who lived permanently within the social system that was the island of Ireland’ but he also accepts that, for his purposes, anyone claiming – truthfully one presumes – to be primarily of Irish ethnicity is indeed of that ethnic group.35 To anyone familiar with contemporary Ireland it is evident that ambivalences and ambiguities abound when ‘Irishness’, ‘Anglo-Irishness’ and ‘Scots-Irishness’ are under consideration. The definition, it would seem, depends on one’s purpose, be it in deciding criteria for Irish passport-holders or eligibility for inclusion in an Irish national football team. For the purpose of this book, any public servant in Punjab who was born in Ireland or, being of Irish parentage, was educated in Ireland, is included. Another criterion, not an exclusive one, used in applying the label ‘Irish’ is that the individual is likely to have been constantly exposed to Irish influences, of whatever stream of Irish culture, during their upbringing. The question of dual loyalty, British and Irish, is briefly dealt with in chapter 4. In any event, it can hardly be denied that the early experiences and upbringing of persons born of Irish parents of whatever ethnic or cultural heritage were likely to be different to some degree from that of those of nonIrish parentage. The Irish participated for long, and at many levels, in the British overlordship of India, a fact which in recent years has attracted the attention of historians. But Tadhg Foley and Margaret O’Connor have pointed out that the substantial Irish involvement in the ICS has scarcely been studied.36 As yet, interest in the Irish who served British interests on the subcontinent has been diffuse; there has been little focus on the possibility that the Irish backgrounds of some professional servants of the Raj influenced their attitudes and decisions in ways which were pivotal to British rule and Indian life. Barry Crosbie’s 2004 study addresses this question in the context of a broader examination of Ireland’s role in the British colonial system and of Ireland’s affinities with India as a whole within the framework of the empire over a period of 150 years.37 This present study is narrower in focus, temporally, spatially and, unlike Crosbie’s work, in its concentration on public servants involved in their everyday duties, who, by definition, and [7]

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C O N TE X T

unlike other Irish expatriates in India, were bound to serve the empire. This is the first book to examine the influence of the Irish public servant in a particular part of India by focusing on what they actually did in the course of their daily duties, not always on the minutiae of paperwork but on their interaction with the world around them, with Indians, their colleagues, with provincial superiors in Lahore, or with the Viceroy and secretariat in Simla or Calcutta. It is also the first to connect the doings of Irishmen in the service of the Raj with twentyfirst-century tensions in Pakistan. It is the aim of this volume, then, to view the historical role of the Irish in the service of the Raj through a prism which will highlight, as it were, their greenness, the way in which their Irishness affected the history of the British in Punjab, that of Punjab itself, as well as that of India. The presumption is that Irish history and contemporaneous events, in addition to education and home life in Ireland, affected their outlook in India and in other non-settled imperial possessions. Although Punjab, as will be seen, is a special case because of its geographical position and the military traditions of its people, the perceived elitism of its civil servants in relation to those in other provinces, and the pride with which their work there was regarded by the British, it can nevertheless serve as a specimen from which much may be learned about Irish experiences on the subcontinent as a whole and, in chapter 5, about those of their countrymen who served in other British possessions in Asia. The period 1881–1921 was a seminal period in the development of agrarian reform and nationalist consciousness in both Ireland and India. Following on the establishment of the Irish Home Rule movement in 1870, the National Land League was founded in 1879. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 and various land bills aimed at ensuring security of tenure were enacted in both countries from the 1870s into the early twentieth century. The end of the period was marked in Ireland by the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence; in India events at Amritsar in 1919 led to profound changes in Indian nationalist attitudes, including an animus towards Britain which would lead towards independence. The precise dates within which the topic is discussed were dictated by the ten-year census intervals beginning in 1881. Punjab’s history has been repeatedly narrated and been the subject of thorough analysis by historians; in so far as that history is described here, it is in order to explain the circumstances in which the Irish functioned. What is new is the particular focus on how the Irish and their motivation featured in that history, not only at the macro-level but also at the level of minor frontier skirmishes, the building of a weir, [8]

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I N TRO D U C TI O N : TH E SCA T T E R E D IR IS H

the interaction with villagers, the traversing of previously unknown mountain passes, the treatment of tropical illnesses. The underdeveloped state of studies of the Irish in India can be deduced from the fact that in the twenty-four essays which make up Foley’s and O’Connor’s seminal and important work as referred to above, Punjab is not once mentioned. Yet, Punjab was a volatile province which, during the relevant period, dominated the thoughts of the Raj;38 and its northern border was arguably the most strategically sensitive in the empire.39 As will be expounded in the body of this work, Irishmen were influential not only in the demarcation and protection of that border with Afghanistan, undertakings which have important current global resonances,40 they also had important influences on the economy of Punjab, and played central roles in events in Punjab in 1919 which, as Michael Silvestri claims, had an effect on tentative Indian progress towards self-rule as crucial as the events of Easter 1916 had on moves towards Irish independence.41 Throughout, the book draws on secondary sources which represent the various modes of historiography which dominate discussion of Indian history – imperialist, nationalist, Marxist, subaltern studies and so on – without subscribing to any one in particular. But the reader should be aware of these and interpret what is quoted from them with the possibility of bias in mind. Current writing on South Asian history lays much emphasis on subaltern studies, which school stresses that alongside the history of the elite, the grand history which records and perhaps reflects the doings and views of government as well as the Indian political and intellectual elite, there is the story of the dispossessed, of those on the periphery of society. But, as such an approach is not germane to the theme of this book it must suffice that attention is directed to the fact that beneath or alongside the themes addressed here, there is a history to be told of the proletariat. In so far as the Irish are concerned, there is also a subaltern theme, if we may borrow that description, which is not dealt with here; that is the story of the ordinary Irish soldier, one of thousands who endured a brutal life, who was as powerless personally as the poorest of the people he was employed to subdue.42 An examination of the context in which Irish public servants functioned in Punjab must necessarily work through several layers: Indian, Punjabi, the public service, the servants’ own backgrounds and a comparison with the experiences their counterparts in other colonies. These ordered layers determine the progression of chapters in this first part of the book, and also of the following paragraphs. From the mid-eighteenth century, when the British began to move out of their trading enclaves in the initial moves towards the conquest of the [9]

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C O N TE X T

subcontinent, Irish soldiers and administrators featured prominently in India. In 1761, Sir Eyre Coote from Limerick broke French power in India when he defeated, at Wandewash, General Comte de Lally, whose father had left Co. Galway as Thomas Arthur Mulally.43 De Lally brought his regiment, part of the Irish Brigade, with him to India.44 The Wellesley brothers had a major impact on Indian history as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, when Richard’s ruthless empire-building,45 along with Arthur’s efficient and bold generalship at such battles as Assaye, helped to establish Britain as the dominant power.46 In Punjab, which had been wrenched from the ruling Sikhs by General Hugh ‘Tipperary Joe’ Gough in the wars of 1845–49,47 the Ulster-educated Lawrence brothers established the tough ‘Punjab school’ of administration in the province which was to last well into the period covered by this study.48 Dublin-born and Ulster-educated John Nicholson served with the Lawrences and famously went on to recapture Delhi during the conflict which British historians refer to as the Indian Mutiny of 1857.49 According to James, John Lawrence was joined by yet another Ulsterman, Robert Montgomery, who succeeded Lawrence as Punjab lieut.-governor, in consciously taking the same severe approach with mutineers as their ancestors did with Catholic, Gaelic Irish. James continues by quoting Sir William Kaye’s statement that these men were ‘familiar with the stirring watch-words of Derry: ‘‘No Surrender’’ ’.50 Lawrence’s biographer, Charles Aitcheson, wrote, ’the blood of the defenders of Derry warmed him as he fought in India against fearful odds’.51 This strong presence of the Irish in Punjab and the rest of India continued throughout the forty-year span of this study. They were to be found at every level from private soldier and railway engine driver to viceroy and commander-in-chief. During this period, three commanders-in-chief were Irish-born and one, General Roberts, had strong Waterford connections. Two viceroys, Dufferin and Lansdowne, had large Irish estates and, although neither was born in Ireland, they had influential Irish ancestry,52 that of Lansdowne going back to the Kerry Fitzmaurices.53 During the 1890s seven of the eight Indian provinces were ruled by Irish pro-consuls while several of the more important government secretariat posts were held by their compatriots, leading Antony MacDonnell, that outstanding imperial civil servant, to say that ‘Ireland had temporarily relieved England of the task of governing India’.54 In Punjab, three Irishmen, Fitzpatrick, Dane and O’Dwyer, followed Lawrence and Montgomery as lieut.-governors of the province, and there were several Irishmen holding such influential positions as revenue and financial secretaries.55 Irish connections with India continued even after both countries had achieved independence, as attested by Kate O’Malley’s Ireland, India and Empire.56 The Irish [ 10 ]

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influence in the empire east of India was not quite so potent but it was nevertheless considerable as, for example, in Hong Kong where there were once five Irish governors in a row.57 This first part of the book has four chapters following this one. These deal, in turn, with the layers of context mentioned above. Firstly, with India and Punjab and then, secondly, with the three Indian public services: the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the Indian Medical Service (IMS) and the Indian Public Works Department (PWD), the Irish personnel of which, along with two Irish viceroys, are the focus of attention in later parts of the book. The next chapter, the fourth, examines the social, religious, ethnic and educational backgrounds of Irish recruits to the three services and the reasons behind the remarkable increase in Irish recruitment beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. The last chapter in this part briefly compares the experiences and backgrounds of Irishmen recruited to serve in other British possessions in Asia with those of their counterparts in India. Two of the most important issues dominating the thoughts of the British in Punjab were the frontier question including Afghanistan, and – in the absence of a thriving industrial sector – the rural economy, with its various ramifications to do with tax, famine, equitable land distribution and the opening of new areas to cultivation through irrigation. These two main issues, including their infrastructural framework, take up a total of seven chapters in the next two parts of the book. British and Irish public servants could hardly participate in domestic Indian politics but they influenced such politics in various ways, especially when it came to decisions bearing on the participation of Indians in provincial and viceroys’ councils, and on the admission of Indians to the very services dominated by the British. Irish public servants exercised considerable influence on these matters, as they did on the manner in which Indians were allowed to express their grievances and their desire to have more say in their own governance. These matters are dealt with in the fourth main part of this work, which consists of three chapters. These chapters also explain why it was that viceroys, including two of Irish origin, took special interest in Punjab and had close contact with Irish personnel in that province. The final and separate chapter draws conclusions from the accumulated evidence.

Nomenclature and currency To avoid confusion and to maintain consistency with primary sources and earlier books on India, the names of places and peoples are given [ 11 ]

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as they were applied by the British at about the end of the nineteenth century, for example Calcutta, Simla, Bombay, Pathan. No attempt is made to convert into present-day currencies the fluctuating sterling or rupee values which applied at various times during the relevant forty-year period, except to say that in 1870 the rupee was valued at 2 shillings (one tenth of a pound), that by 1885 it had declined in value by about 20 per cent and would decline further. To avoid anachronism, distances and area measurements are given in imperial measure (miles, acres, etc.), and, where necessary, metric equivalents are also included.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

David Gilmour, The ruling caste: imperial lives in the Victorian Raj (London, 2005), pp. 312–13. Ibid., p. 294. Michael O’Dwyer, India as I knew it (Photographically reproduced, New Delhi, 2004), p. 145. W. O. Clark, diary entry, 3 Dec. 1880 (British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection [hereafter BL, OIOC], Clark papers, IOR, MSS EUR A148/1). Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 279–80. Ibid., pp. 278–93. Louis L. Cornell (ed.), ‘Introduction’, in Rudyard Kipling, The man who would be king, and other stories (Oxford, 1991), pp. xxvii–xxxi. Keith Jeffery, ‘Irish military tradition in the British empire’, in K. Jeffery (ed.), An Irish empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British empire (Manchester, 1996), pp. 110– 11; R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London, 1988), pp. 369–72. Lawrence James, Raj: the making and unmaking of British India (London, 1997), p. 425. Imran Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, 1885–1947 (Princeton, 1988), passim; Alice Albinia, Empire of the Indus: the story of a river (London, 2008), pp. 1–51, 120–9. Stephane Dufoix, Diasporas (Berkeley, 2008), p. 4. Anne O’Dowd, Spalpeens and tattie hokers (Dublin, 1991); Ruth-Ann M. Harris, The nearest place that wasn’t Ireland: early nineteenth century Irish labor migration (Athens, USA, 1994); Donald H. Akenson, The Irish diaspora: a primer (Toronto, 1996), pp. 192–3. Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 347–8. Akenson, The Irish diaspora, pp. 99–102. Ibid., pp. 257–8. Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish diaspora (Harlow, 2000), p. 2. Percival Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, 1740–1975 (2nd edn, New Delhi, 2004), p. 7. C. A. Bayly, Indian society and the making of the British empire (Cambridge, 1988), p. 203. John Keay, India: a history (London, 2001), p. 447. Jeffery, ‘Introduction’ in Jeffery (ed.), An Irish empire?, p. 17. B. J. Crosbie, ‘C. J. O’Donnell and the British administration in Bengal’, in Robert J. Blyth and Keith Jeffery (eds), The British empire and its contested pasts (Dublin, 2009), pp. 115–34. Clive Dewey, Anglo-Indian attitudes (London, 1993), p. vii. B. J. Crosbie, ‘The Irish expatriate community in British India, c. 1750–1900’ (PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 2004), p. 3.

[ 12 ]

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Tribune, 13 Jan. 1892; Scott B. Cook, Imperial affinities: nineteenth century analogies and exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi, 1993), pp. 15–18. John Morley to Lord Minto, 12 June 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/12). C. V. Hill, South Asia: an environmental history (Santa Barbara, 2008), p. 101. David Arnold, Science, technology and medicine in colonial India (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 17–57. Scott B. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj: social origins and careers of Irishmen in the Indian Civil Service, 1855–1914’, Journal of Social History, xx:3 (1987), pp. 507–29. Annie Besant, Annie Besant: an autobiography (London, 1917), pp. 13–14. Frederick S. Roberts, Forty one years in India (2 vols, London, 1897), i, p. 1. Anne Taylor, Annie Besant: a biography (Oxford, 1992), p. 254. Michael McConville, Ascendancy to oblivion: the story of the Anglo-Irish (London, 2001), p. 126. Garrett O’Moore Creagh, Indian studies (London, 1918), pp. 1–12. McConville, Ascendancy to oblivion, p. 121. Akenson, The Irish diaspora, pp. 7–9. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor, ‘Introduction’, in Foley and O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India: colonies, culture and empire (Dublin, 2006), p. xiii. Crosbie, ‘The Irish expatriate community in British India’, passim. Herman Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A history of India (3rd edn, London, 1998), p. 239; Stanley Wolpert, A new history of India (4th edn, New York, 2004), p. 242. Jan Morris, Heaven’s command: an imperial progress (London, 1998), p. 90. Michael Barthorp, Afghan wars and the north-west frontier (London, 2002), p. vii. Michael Silvestri, ‘Irish and Indian nationalists in North America’, in Foley and O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India, p. 249. Thomas Bartlett, ‘The Irish soldier in India, 1750–1947’, in Michael Holmes and Denis Holmes (eds), Ireland and India: connections, comparisons, contrasts (Dublin, 1997), p. 22. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 184; Patrick Cadell, ‘Irish soldiers in India’, The Irish Sword, i:2 (1950–51), p. 75. Anon. [an officer of the Bengal Staff Corps], ‘The career of Count Lally’, in Essays and lectures on Indian historical subjects (London and Calcutta, 1866), pp. 125–65. Keay, India: a history, pp. 399–400. S. L. Menezes, Fidelity and honour: the Indian army from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century (New Delhi, 1999), p. 49. James, Raj, pp. 108–18. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 35; Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 224. Charles Allen, Soldier sahibs: the men who made the north-west frontier (London, 2001), pp. 303–23. James, Raj, p. 242., quoting J. W. Kaye, The history of the Sepoy War 1857–8 (3 vols., London, 1874), ii, pp. 423–4. Charles Aitcheson, Lord Lawrence (Oxford, 1892). Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’. Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne: a biography (London, 1929), p. 1. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 520. India list civil and military 1891, 1893, 1899; India list and India Office list 1901, 1911, 1914 (published variously in Calcutta and London). Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and empire: Indo-Irish radical connections, 1919– 1964 (Manchester, 2008). Jan Morris, Hong Kong (London, 1997), p. 96.

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India and Punjab in the late nineteenth century

The last three decades of Queen Victoria’s reign are generally seen as the high noon period of British power in India, the apotheosis of which took place in 1876 with the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. In 1881 the British had just emerged from their second inconclusive war with Afghanistan and, since the defeat of the Sikhs in 1849, there was now no independent power left to offer serious challenge to British hegemony. Peasant cultivators were to acquire some security of tenure and a modus vivendi would be achieved with the rulers of the many principalities over which the British exercised varying degrees of control.1 Percival Spear asserts that there seemed to be little demand for independence or even systematic political influence on the part of educated Indians. He categorises this period as one of ‘efficiency and order, benevolence and development’.2 More sceptical observers accept that there were remarkable achievements such as the massive irrigation schemes which by 1891 had made over ten million acres of irrigated land available for cultivation, and also the building of the extensive rail network, extending to 25,000 miles (40,000 km) by the end of the century, both undertaken at least partly to deal with the ever-present threat of famine;3 but, they assert, the rails, locomotives and steel for bridges which were a necessary part of the admired rail network were imported from England, and, though the necessary capital was raised in London, interest on the amounts borrowed were paid by the Indian taxpayer. The rail network was meant for troop movements as well as for commercial and social purposes. Revenue demands fell most heavily on the peasant cultivator, or ryot, who was the backbone of the economy, land taxes being the principal single source of government revenue, accounting for 50 per cent of such revenue in 1858, declining by the end of the century to 25 per cent.4 At this time in many parts of India the zamindari system, adapted by the British, was akin to the situation in Ireland with many absentee [ 14 ]

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rent-receivers.5 A zamindar was originally a revenue gatherer who, under the British, became a landlord.6 Attempts to arrive at an equitable system of land distribution, rent, security of tenure and of land-tax assessment had resulted in various land acts, some later ones deriving sections from Gladstonian Irish land acts and, in turn, providing inspiration for further improvements in Ireland.7 Despite the genuine regard some officials had for the welfare of Indians, the British empire in India was a system of foreign domination in which India was governed with British and not Indian interests at heart. Stanley Wolpert, the American historian, says that while the Indian population ‘balanced on a knife-edge’, government revenue demands grew to fund wars8 (there had been Indian army expeditions to China, Burma and Abyssinia; there would be others),9 as well as military control of frontier tribes, the ordinary costs of government, guaranteed interest payments to British investors in Indian railways, ‘home charges’ which included army and civil service pensions paid in Britain, and the running of the India Office in London.10 It has been calculated that these ‘home charges’ drained away as much as a quarter of Indian revenue. Much of the rest, somewhere between 40 and 50 per cent, was expended on the military, especially on the 1879 invasion of Afghanistan, the continuing cost of security on the north-west frontier and the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885.11 Thus, between 25 and 30 per cent of revenue was available to serve the interests of the Indian population. A summation of this period from an Indian point of view sees it as being governed by an ideology of ‘paternalistic benevolence, occasionally combined with talk of trusteeship and training towards self-government’,12 all this but thinly veiling the realities of a Raj uncompromisingly white and despotic under whose rule lower-class discontent was inevitably endemic in what had become, by the nineteenth century, one of the poorest countries in the world.13 India had been acquired gradually, by force of arms or threat of such, by the East India Company which traded as a monopoly and governed, albeit under increasing regulation directed from Westminster but otherwise autocratically, until 1833 when it lost most of its trading monopoly. Then, in 1858 in the wake of the Great Mutiny, governance of the country was assumed by the Crown. In 1857, the mutiny had occurred in the army of the Bengal Presidency, one of the three such entities into which India was then divided. Joined by various members of the Indian nobility who harboured grievances against the British, the mutineers seized several important towns in northern India and for a brief period seemed to be about to oust the British from a large part of the subcontinent. Atrocities on both sides led to an already growing alienation between [ 15 ]

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ruler and ruled which, subsequent to the reassertion of British authority, coloured attitudes towards each other for the rest of the century.14 The keeping of Indian mistresses by East India Company officials had declined sharply before the mutiny; afterwards, as the Crown replaced the Company and mental wounds of the mutiny festered, that practice would cease in most of India and interracial marriage between British officials and Indians became unthinkable. Even social interaction between the races was scorned except at the exalted level of princes and the hereditary wealthy.15 Attempts at proselytisation by Christian missionaries, one of the causes of the mutiny, antagonised Hindus and Muslims alike, an antagonism sometimes aimed at government which was thought, often mistakenly, to support missionary zeal.16 By the 1880s security had become more soundly based than hitherto in that the Indian army, which now numbered some 130,000 men, had almost entirely replaced recruitment of Brahmans from the Ganges valley, from whose ranks most of the 1857 mutineers had come, with that of soldiers from the ‘martial races’ of Punjab – Pathans, Sikhs and Punjabi Mussulmans (Muslims). These numbers were balanced by the 62,000 men approximately of the British army in India, an army which maintained a virtual monopoly of artillery and the latest modern rifles.17 India was secured against external threat from the north by the almost impenetrable mass of the Himalaya where a group of independent mountain kingdoms backed on to the hostile environment of the Tibetan plateau, from the north-east by thick jungle and the waters of the Brahmaputra and Ganges, and by the deserts and hills of the north-west. The only conceivable threats, given the weakness of the dying Chinese empire, were a Russian incursion through Afghanistan or Russian Turkestan or a move by France through Siam into Burma. The latter threat, if it ever really existed, was eliminated by the British annexation of Burma. Russophobia was responsible for the Indian government’s policy towards Afghanistan and the border tribes as will be explained in later chapters. In the northernmost point of India, in an area then known as the Eastern Hindu Kush which came under the rule of the native state of Kashmir, the Russian menace and its manoeuvring in the area as part of the intrigues known as the Great Game were effectively forestalled by British-led Kashmiri troops and a detachment of Gurkhas who, in 1891 in a typical little frontier war, ousted the ruler of the hill state of Hunza and pushed the British frontier to the borders of Chinese Turkestan (now Xinjiang).18 The apolitical stance of the Indian elite mentioned by Spear might have continued but for an attempt during the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon (1880–84) to bring in legislation, the Ilbert Bill, which would [ 16 ]

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give Indian judges and magistrates the right to try Europeans who, hitherto, could insist on being heard by a British judge. Such was the furore and political manoeuvring this provoked among the European community in India that Ripon was forced to modify the Bill to meet their demands. This so dismayed many influential Indians, some of whom were educated in the democratic principles of the west, that it gave rise within a short time to the first meeting and formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. These men were educated, mainly high-caste Hindus, who were called together by a progressive retired civil servant, A. O. Hume. According to James they were to some extent inspired by the example of the Irish Home Rule party. Dabhadi Naoroji, a powerful force in Congress, had been offered an Irish constituency, and Michael Davitt, land reformer and former Fenian, would later be offered the presidency of Congress for a year.19 The country, excluding Burma, had a population which grew from 250.2 million in 1881 to 305.7 million in 1921.20 It consisted of a patchwork of nine directly ruled provinces (ten after 1901) and nearly 700 native states. The provinces and central government shared responsibility for charges on the public purse, with local charges being covered by local taxation, and for disbursement of revenue, the collection of which was mainly a provincial responsibility.21 The provinces were ruled by lieut.-governors or chief commissioners and, in Bombay and Madras, for reasons of tradition, by governors. From its early days, when ruled by the East India Company, British India had been divided into three presidencies, Bengal, Madras and Bombay, each with its own army and bodies such as a medical service. The separateness of the presidencies was gradually eroded but Madras and Bombay were still ruled by governors appointed directly by London, whereas the lieut.governors and commissioners were drawn from the ranks of the ICS and appointed by the Viceroy.22 The Viceroy himself, whose statutory position was that of governor-general, was an aristocrat appointed by the Westminster government and, though responsible to the Secretary of State for India and assisted by a viceregal council, he was close to being an autocrat, particularly when the Secretary of State was weak or incompetent.23 During the forty-year course of this study provincial councils and the viceregal council had their Indian membership increased and their method of election made more representative, but for most of the period there was little that was democratic in their appointment and they wielded little power.24 India was ruled from Calcutta and Simla by a viceroy who seldom spent more than five years in office, and was administered by the thousand or so men of the Indian Civil Service whose story is told in the next chapter. [ 17 ]

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About a quarter of the population lived in the native states which covered roughly a third of India’s area. In size, these states varied from those as extensive as France to some which were tiny with a population measured in hundreds. Although once regarded as doomed Asiatic anachronisms, their ruler’s loyalty or, at least, quiescence during the Great Mutiny led to their being regarded as important allies of the British. They were guaranteed safe from external threat or annexation and allowed to run their own internal affairs provided they were reasonably competent and did not cause venal or sexual scandal. In return ‘they had to tolerate a British political officer charged to guide them along the path of responsible rule’.25 This official was an army officer or member of the ICS, known as a Resident in the larger states; in the lesser states, which would sometimes be grouped together under one official, he was known as a political agent.26 The Indian National Congress was conceived not as a party but as a movement which would gradually begin to think of India as a nation. That conception of India as a nation and then as an independent state was to come at the end of a long process which involved various setbacks and various campaigns including that of the Swadeshi effort of 1903–8 to persuade people to use home-manufactured goods and boycott imports, but finding its strength, especially after 1918, from the militancy and self-sacrificing spirit of the masses through satyagraha, passive resistance as promoted by Mr Gandhi.27 Following the First World War during which over two million Indian combatants and support staff had served overseas, but also during which several nationalist or religious movements had caused the British some anxiety, the government brought in legislation, the Rowlatt Bills, which gave it powers of summary arrest and detention to replace wartime emergency measures. This belied the spirit of imminent reform contained in the Montagu-Chelmsford measures which were designed to promote the gradual realisation of responsible self-government within the empire. The Rowlatt Bills were regarded as insulting by a population which had sacrificed so much in the war, and were regarded as a foreshadowing of British readiness to resort to further repression. Widespread agitation led, in the spring of 1919, to a call by Mr Gandhi for satyagraha and a nationwide hartal (lockout), which found its expression, even if somewhat misunderstood, in the Punjab city of Amritsar where a large crowd gathered illegally in an enclosed, open-air space to hear speakers object to repressive measures. The crowd was fired upon by British-led Indian and Gurkha troops resulting in the death of at least 379 people and injury to many more. For many previously moderate nationalists this was the turning point. Their attempts at gaining some measure of political influence and a [ 18 ]

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degree of autonomy now hardened into demands for immediate independence and led to years of protest, agitation and loss of belief in the good faith of the British.28

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Punjab For the purposes of this book the term ‘Punjab’ applies to the area before it was divided between the independent nations of India and Pakistan (Map 1). It also includes the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) which was an integral part of the province until 1901,29 and the district and city of Delhi which separated from the province in 1912 but was lumped together with it in the 1921 census. Punjab, including NWFP, Delhi and the province’s feudatories was 148,966 square miles (385,822 square kilometres) in area and situated in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent.30 (Feudatories were those semi-autonomous native states as described above.)31 A region of vast plains at the foot of the Himalayan mountains which run along its northern and north-eastern borders, the province lay roughly between the Jumna (Yamuna) river in the east and the Indus in the west and took its name, which means ‘five waters’ (panch ab), from the five rivers which traverse it from north-east to south-west and unite to pour their waters into the Indus (Map 2). These seven rivers were the most important features of the country according to the 1921 census.32 But it can also be claimed that the Himalaya and the hills along the Afghan border were the most important physical features in the province.33 Temperatures vary in the region from fifty degrees Celsius in the plains in May–June to minus thirty degrees in inhabited mountain areas in winter. Heavy monsoon rains fall, not always reliably, upon the parched plains from late June until early September.34 In the plains the weather from October until February, the ‘cold season’, is at its most pleasant, and historically this was the time for military manoeuvres and for inspection tours by administrators.35 According to the censuses of India carried out at ten-year intervals, the Punjab population, the great majority of whom were rural dwellers, grew from 22,712,120 persons in 1881 to 30,177,536 in 1921.36 The province shared borders with several other provinces, as shown in Map 1, and in the north-west with Afghanistan and with a number of tribal areas, many of which were unmapped, largely untrodden by outsiders and whose fealty was uncertain. The province’s feudatory princely states varied from large ones such as Patiala to the many tiny entities, loosely associated under the designations Simla Hill States and the Punjab Hill States, which for the most part constitute the present-day Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Punjab’s provincial capital was Lahore, but during [ 19 ]

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the summer its government moved up to share the hill station of Simla with the Indian government. During the early part of the nineteenth century the Sikhs had tightened and expanded their hold on Punjab, had ejected Afghans from Peshawar and extended their rule beyond the Indus to the fringe of the hills where Pathan tribes occupied a region along Afghanistan’s undemarcated border. When the British took Punjab from the Sikhs in 1849 they established such an unusual rapport with that robust people that Sikh soldiers played an important role only eight years later in the retaking of Punjab and Delhi from the mutinous sepoys of the empire’s Indian army. Thereafter, they became a much-admired element in that very army. When the British became rulers of Punjab, they immediately sought to appease military and landed interests. While professing to maintain pre-existing systems, which hinged strongly on a system of Jagirs or revenue collection in which the land remained state property, they created secure and alienable property rights, on the basis of continuous occupancy, for agriculturalists and especially for members of the demobilised army of the Sikh kingdom. After the mutiny they reinforced this implied alliance by supporting not only the village communities of the central and eastern districts but also the larger landlords of the south and south-west. On the whole, the alliances with these groups in Punjab were consolidated by paternalistic rule and by an emphasis on customary law rather than the abstract rules of British law, along with politically motivated limitation of the land revenue demand and by privileges granted to favoured castes in newly irrigated lands. There were weak attempts to establish rapport with educated politicians, particularly in relation to education and municipal affairs, but it took intervention by central government during agrarian disturbances in 1906–7 to overcome the characteristic hostility of the Punjab government to urban politicians. Successive lieut.-governors either resisted or simply failed to pursue the establishment of a legislative council for the province as allowed for in the Indian Councils Act of 1861 and it was not until 1897 that such a council came into being.37 A large part of Punjab was transformed by massive irrigation schemes during the period 1881–1921 from a desert waste, or, at best, pastoral savannah, into one of the major centres of commercial agriculture in South Asia. Vast ‘canal colonies’ came into being, which were used to accommodate people from overpopulated areas in the east of the province, and to serve as rewards for military service and loyalty. The state now controlled the most important agricultural resource, water, and had complete rights over the manner in which land was disposed. Most of the nine established colonies were in that part of Punjab which [ 20 ]

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became Pakistan, and Imran Ali argues that the system of land distribution, which often depended on the beneficiary’s rank and length of service in the army, not only retarded nationalism in Punjab but would strongly indicate the historic preconditions for the eventual political authority of the military in Pakistan.38 Favouritism by the British towards certain groups strengthened their influence in the countryside as well as reinforcing tribal cohesion, thus isolating the countryside from much of the intercommunal clashes which were a feature of the later years of the nineteenth century. The transformation of Punjab into a productive agricultural area resulted in an increase in per capita output of 45 per cent between 1891 and 1921, and by that latter time one-third of India’s wheat was produced in the province. The new system of ownership established by the British combined with a rise in land values led to easier access to credit, to consequent debt and widespread alienation of land, especially to Hindu moneylenders. Principles of laissez-faire were abandoned as legislation was brought in to deal with that problem, and the risk of Muslim discontent, by setting conditions on the free sale of land. In the canal colonies, however, grantees were generally occupancy tenants not allowed to acquire proprietary rights.39 The Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1901 was followed by an attempt in 1906 to bring in legislation which would more strictly control various aspects of cultivators’ use of land in the new canal colonies. This led to widespread agitation which, in turn, led to the granting of virtually unfettered ownership, under the lieut.-governorship of Irishman Louis Dane, to those cultivators who had previously been state tenants.40 Fear of Russian incursion had persuaded the Indian government to keep a military and political presence in the tribal area along the Afghan–Punjab border and to insist on an arrangement whereby Afghanistan’s foreign affairs were handled at Calcutta and Simla. Tribal resentment, religious fervour and local patriotism among the Pathan tribesmen who inhabited the north-west border region led to numerous fierce clashes, sometimes major engagements, and to almost constant warfare which was a perennial feature of life in the Indian army and in that part of the British army stationed in the subcontinent. Security on the border was, for some of the period, the responsibility of the government of Punjab and engaged the attention of that government throughout the period even though most of the area along the border was transferred from Punjab to a new entity, the NWFP, in 1901.41 From the outset, under the leadership of Ulstermen such as the Lawrence brothers, Robert Montgomery and John Nicholson, along with Galway-born Henry Daly and a number of talented young Britons, [ 21 ]

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the administration of Punjab – that is the lieut.-governor and those members of the ICS who worked with him in the entity known as the Punjab Commission – acquired a reputation for effectiveness based on a benevolent despotism, on a respect for local culture where it did not upset western sensibilities as in the practice of suttee, and for a kind of rough and ready justice which relied as much on common sense as on the formal and elaborate structures of ordinary law.42 In keeping with the lawless nature of the frontier and with certain other new provinces, army officers were employed to work beside their civilian colleagues on the Punjab Commission. These new provinces, including Punjab, were known as non-regulation provinces.43 Unconventional practices of administration and law could not forever be tolerated, so Punjab and other new provinces were gradually obliged to conform, a process imposed more urgently as the original unorthodox brilliance and independent actions of the province’s founders became less necessary with improved communications and more immediate control from central government.44

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 239–47. Ibid. James, Raj, p. 304. Kulke and Rothermund, A history of India, pp. 230–60. Ibid. Peter Robb, A history of India (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 126–8. Heather Laird, ‘India and the translation of the Irish Brehon Laws’, in Foley and O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India, pp. 3–11; Cook, Imperial affinities, pp. 108–16. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 265. Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: the climax of an empire (London, 1998), p. 263. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 268. Ibid., p. 259. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 1989), p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 19. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 244. Morris, Pax Britannica, pp. 229–56. Philip Mason, A matter of honour: an account of the Indian army, its officers and men (New Delhi, 2004), pp. 318–19. Algernon Durand, The making of a frontier (London, 1900), pp. 325–55. James, Raj, pp. 349–55. Census of India, 1881 and 1921. B. R. Ambedkar, The evolution of provincial finance in British India: a study in the provincial decentralisation of imperial finance (London, 1925), parts I to IV. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 177–88. James, Raj, p. 312. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 265–85. David Gilmour, Curzon: imperial statesman 1859–1925 (London, 1994), p. 183. Ibid. Bipan Chandra, ‘Foundation of the Indian National Congress: the reality’, in Bipan

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

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36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, K. N. Panikkar and Suchita Mahajan (eds), India’s struggle for independence, 1857–1947 (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 71–81. Keay, India: a history, pp. 474–5. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 269. Census of India, 1891, Punjab and its feudatories, xx, part II. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 272. Census of India, 1921, Punjab and Delhi, part I, report. Ian Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, 1849–1947 (New Delhi, 1988), p. 8. Keay, India: a history, p. xxiv. John Masters, Bugles and a tiger (London, 1956), pp. 119–25; Evan Maconochie, Life in the Indian Civil Service (London, 1926), p. 41. Census of India, 1881, Panjab; Census of India, 1921, Punjab and Delhi; Census of India, 1921, North-West Frontier Province. Khushwant Singh, A history of the Sikhs (Princeton, 1966), p. 217. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, pp. 1–110. Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, pp. 13–67. Norman Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907: the response of the British government in India to agrarian unrest’, Modern Asian Studies, i:4 (1967), pp. 353–83. Ibid., pp. 140–1. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 163. L. S. S. O’Malley, The Indian Civil Service 1601–1930 (London, 1965), pp. 53–95. Cross (Secretary of State) to Lansdowne, 24 April 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2).

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The Indian public service

The Indian Civil Service The ICS originated as the administrative arm of the East India Company which ruled India until 1858. Indeed, the term ‘civil servant’ itself is believed to have been first used to describe those servants of the Company who were engaged in mercantile work as distinct from army or naval duties. Later, as these functionaries became more involved in administration rather than trading, the term acquired its new and present meaning. As a result of reforms introduced by strong governors-general of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, widespread venality was eliminated and the service much improved. As the Company came to acquire vast territories, a need for adequate training of civil servants was filled by the establishment of Haileybury College in Hertfordshire in 1809.1 Admission was limited to those nominated by directors of the Company and, while the required age varied from time to time, entrants were usually aged between seventeen and twenty-one. Since the eighteenth century the Company’s servants were known as covenanted servants because of a covenant or contract they entered into with the Company before departure for India. Because of their civil status these covenanted servants were unofficially but widely referred to as Civilians. Conditions of service and salaries were improved, partly to ensure probity, and the service became the best paid in the world.2 These men became noted for their honesty. An Abbé Dubois writing in 1822 said that, ‘For uprightness of character, education and ability it would be hard to find a body of public servants better capable of filling with zeal and distinction the offices, more or less important, entrusted to them.’3 Competitive examinations for entry to the service were introduced in 1853, long before such were required for the home civil service, and Haileybury was closed down in 1857, the year of the great uprising in [ 24 ]

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India variously described as the Indian Mutiny, the Sepoy Revolt or, by some Indian nationalists, as the First War of Independence. When the Crown took over the government of India following the mutiny, the ICS continued in its unusual role as a body which, unlike its UK counterpart, served not merely executive and administrative functions but also judicial ones, as well as formulating policy at its higher levels. These Civilians, the ‘heaven born’,4 rarely exceeding 1,200 in number, ruled over a population of 300 million. Allowing for furloughs in the UK, ordinary Indian leave and illness, the number of Civilians was considerably less at any given time. Each would serve some time in one or other of the 250 districts into which India was divided. The average size of a district was 4,430 square miles, about the size of Devon and Cornwall combined, or that of Cork and Kerry, or the state of Connecticut, and containing, at the beginning of the twentieth century, an average population of 931,000. A district was ruled over by an ICS man of some experience called variously a district officer, collector or, in Punjab, a deputy commissioner. He was directly responsible to a commissioner who would coordinate the work of three or four districts. He in turn was responsible to the lieut.-governor of a province and so to the Indian government. The work of a district officer had to do with almost everything in connection with governmental administration in his district. He was responsible for the police, jails, schools, roads, canals, agriculture and much more. The main work of the Indian administration was the assessment of land tax, the chief source of revenue. The man in charge of a district was responsible for the collection of that tax, hence the title ‘collector’ by which he was sometimes known.5 But he was responsible for almost everything else that went on in his area; he was at once chief of police and chief magistrate, he inspected hospitals and waterways and held durbars with local dignitaries. He guided the young ‘griffins’ or newcomers to India as they settled into their posts as assistant commissioners and strode the land as part of their measurement and assessment duties or sat in judgement in local courts as they struggled with the language and tried to get to grips with the legal system.6 In border regions he could find himself at considerable risk in dealing with unruly tribesmen. During the 1857 mutiny, especially in Punjab, Civilians found themselves leading troops and a number were killed. At some stage in his career a Civilian was expected to opt for the executive or the judicial branch, or, if he was thought to be lacking energy or ability, he might be pushed into the latter. The top post open to a Civilian was that of ruler of a province, a lieut.-governor, but he could also, if he were talented, find himself fulfilling diplomatic or border duties as part of the Political Service, the diplomatic arm of the Indian [ 25 ]

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C O N TE X T

government which was responsible, inter alia, for relations with the native princely states. The higher echelons of the governmental and provincial secretariats were also manned by ICS men.7 In 1886, the secretaries of the legislative, finance and commerce departments of the Indian government were occupied by Irishmen.8 Most of the ordinary work of administration was carried out by Indians. Those who manned the lower echelons in the service, Indians and Eurasians in the main, were termed ‘uncovenanted’ civil servants. There was also a Provincial Civil Service for Indians, from which those of ability could be promoted to certain posts previously held only by covenanted Civilians.9 Even more than was usual in the ‘permanent government’ represented by most western civil services, members of the ICS wielded considerable power and means of independent action. Mr Gandhi said of them that they were, ‘the most powerful secret corporation the world has ever known’,10 and they were later recognised as virtually omnipotent by Josef Stalin.11 Socially, they had precedence over almost all of their compatriots.12 For instance, only army officers and ICS men could be full members of the principal club in Simla, a hill station where snobbery and a combination of social and official intrigue permeated life during the hot season.13 The animosity and fears aroused by the Great Mutiny served further to isolate European society from that of the far more numerous Indians. Most large towns had a club, an escape from the relative isolation of the district, and also had the ordered lines of exclusive enclaves the British built for themselves following the mutiny. In smaller stations, a Civilian would have as companions perhaps the engineer, the doctor, the superintendent of police, a subordinate magistrate or two who were junior Civilians, all of whom would have to put up with each other for lengthy spells, unless there was an army post nearby. Rarely would more than four ICS men find themselves together, and it was often the case that there was just one woman at a station.14 The impression is of an existence where Irishmen in public service were perforce subject to the influences of a fairly narrowly based society which may or may not have included compatriots. There appears to have been very little open support among Irish Civilians for Indian aspirations towards Home Rule. A certain sympathy towards India’s backward condition was evinced by Irishmen such as Antony MacDonnell and C. J. O’Donnell, the latter going so far as to openly support Indian Home Rule, but this did not extend to enthusiasm for the appointment of Indians to higher posts under the Raj. A number of Irish ICS men, including O’Donnell, had close relatives who were Irish Nationalist MPs at Westminster but they saw no [ 26 ]

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contradiction in their situation. Indeed in Scott B. Cook’s felicitous phrase, ‘their objective was to satisfy and, if possible, to synthesize the competing requirements of Irish nationalism, British imperialism and Indian welfare’.15 As Ireland neared independence its struggle invoked in Maurice Collis, an Anglican ICS recruit working in Burma, an awareness of affinities between the Irish experience and that of Burma. He would later act as an intermediary between a Burmese delegation seeking advice on their striving towards independence, and people such as Maud Gonne McBride and Robert Barton, prominent figures in the cultural and political movements in Ireland. He suffered in his career for his pro-Burmese sentiments and, to use a twenty-first-century expression, he was constructively dismissed. But Burma was marginal, geographically and politically, to the striving of Indian nationalists and Collis’s exceptional concern coincided with the later phase of the Irish independence movement and of this study. Civilians had a reputation for honesty and hard work, and the organisational system in which they laboured continued with little change under the governments of both Pakistan and India. But was it the best system and could they have utilised it more effectively on behalf of India and its people? Were those young Irishmen who succeeded in the entrance examinations put to the best use? In their devotion to the state and people could they be likened, as suggested by Philip Mason, himself a former Civilian, to Plato’s ‘guardians’ – disinterested, superior to bribery, aloof from those to whom they dispensed impartial and wise justice?16 Or was the system so inefficient because of frequent transfer of personnel, an unwillingness to employ Indians on equal terms, a tendency to issue an endless stream of reports, a preoccupation with personal advancement on the part of officials – all faults cited by an American, Bradford Spangenberg – that a great deal of effort was ineffective?17 There would appear to be truth in both views. Much of what the ICS did was laudable and had many beneficial effects, as will be seen in later chapters; those who worked in it did what they thought was right, but Mason admits that the service was responsible to Westminster, not to the people they governed.18 As will also be seen in later chapters, the Irish Civilian and his British colleagues were subject to frequent transfers, as Spangenberg suggests, sometimes several in a year as they stood in for ill colleagues or those on leave, thus inhibiting attempts to relate to the people or familiarise themselves with their districts. In that way Mason’s platonic aloofness was sadly realised, although he himself comes across as caring and approachable.19 With so few men scattered over a vast arena, with so many transfers, with important decisions on policy having to be referred back to a distant provincial capital or to even more detached governments in [ 27 ]

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C O N TE X T

Calcutta or Simla, it was inevitable that there was a resort to paper and innumerable rules, memos, reports and records, although things were less bureaucratic in the field.20 More than one commentator, including several viceroys, considered the service to be in need of reform.21 A picture emerges of colonial servants, not models of perfection but superior in some measure to their counterparts in other colonial regimes, who served their masters as diligently as the system allowed while doing their best for a people to whom they themselves were masters, a people whom the evidence suggests were regarded fondly by many but by no means all ICS men. The paternalistic, even patronising, undertone is there but that is better than many an alternative. Some Indian historians, such as Naresh Chandra Roy, are agreed on the honesty and incorruptibility of Civilians and most commentators attest to their hard work and dedication.22 But regardless of the benevolent intentions and efficiency of the service, the proportion of revenues available to it and its primary loyalty to Westminster could not but mar its effectiveness.

The Indian Medical Service In 1763 medical professionals in the employ of the East India Company in Bengal were organised into the Bengal Medical Service. The presidencies of Bombay and Madras soon followed with the establishment of similar organisations. By the 1860s these services had become centralised as the Indian Medical Service,23 competitive entry examinations had been introduced and, to an extent the service was modelled on the ICS with the esprit de corps and training that this entailed.24 The role of the IMS was primarily to provide medical officers to the Indian army in times of war.25 During the forty-year span which this book covers some of the IMS officers were seconded to civilian duties and, in Punjab, came under the supervision of the Punjab Commission while retaining their military ranks.26 And most of those attached to regiments and military cantonments also served Indian civilians, including those in volatile frontier regions where the IMS presence and services were an important factor in winning the trust of tribal peoples.27 David Arnold asserts that, ‘To a degree unparalleled in other scientific fields and matched by few aspects of technological change, medicine represented direct intervention in, and interaction with, the social, cultural and material lives of the Indian people.’28 Members of the IMS had a profound effect on research into and the treatment of tropical diseases, with consequent benefits in Punjab. As General Edwards testified at a legislative council meeting in Delhi in 1918: [ 28 ]

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The Service has worked out the life-history of the malarial parasite, a discovery which has revolutionised our ideas concerning malaria . . . it has reduced the mortality of cholera by two thirds and shorn amoebic dysentery of its terrors. It has worked out the method of transmission of bubonic plague, work which points to eradication of that disease. Prostate enlargement, that terrible and fatal concomitant of old age, can now be overcome thanks to a member of the IMS, while in the domain of eye surgery . . . the service is recognised throughout the medical world.29

The member of the IMS referred to by General Edwards was Clifdenborn Sir Peter Freyer who was educated at Queen’s College Galway (QCG), and the service’s reputation in the field of ophthalmics owed much to Henry Smith, a QCG graduate who worked in Punjab.30 The benefits accruing to Punjab from such research, and the part played by Irish doctors in advancing medicine in Punjab, will be explicated in later chapters. IMS members sometimes fulfilled unexpected roles and found themselves at the very heart of momentous events. A Surgeon-Major Robertson led the defence of Chitral Fort, a central feature in one of the great frontier wars and a feat which inspired much imperial pride and press coverage during the 1890s.31 A further illustration of the pivotal incidents in which IMS men could be involved, as well as providing an insight into the ubiquity of the Irish and the variety of roles open to them, was the tragic incident at the Residency in Kabul in 1879. An entire party consisting of the head of the Kabul Mission, Sir Louis Cavagnari whose mother was Irish, an escort of about eighty Indians of the Corps of Guides led by Lt Walter Hamilton VC from Inistioge,32 along with Surgeon Ambrose Kelly who was a Punjab-based IMS man from Dublin,33 and a Mr Jenkyns, were killed by mutinous Afghan troops.34 This led to the costly resumption of the Second Afghan War and the enhancement of the already-growing reputation of General Frederick Roberts who had Waterford connections.35 Another Irish IMS man took part in an early Mt Everest expedition.36 The IMS, being one of the principal scientific agencies in India in the nineteenth century, produced a considerable number of amateur but influential botanists, geologists, zoologists and meteorologists.37 By the 1880s the position of medical officers in the armies had become more respectable than had been the case for much of the previous two centuries. According to Sir Robert Drew, medical officers in the British army prior to 1887 had what was known as ‘relative rank’ and were often treated as social inferiors by army officers, even to the extent, on occasion, of being obliged to eat at separate tables.38 Indeed, recruitment to the British Medical Service (BMS) had drastically declined in the early 1870s because of ‘the refusal to recognise [ 29 ]

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C O N TE X T

medical men in the Army as on an equality with combatants and other officers’.39 The status of officers in the IMS was seen to be even less exalted until the 1850s, with its members looked down upon by the European civilian and military elite.40 Conditions improved with the passing of the Medical Registration Act of 1858.41 Conditions and status would continue to improve over the years and offer a reasonably well-remunerated career to graduates of Irish colleges.42 In 1881, on joining, a junior doctor, ranked Surgeon and Captain, earned 286 rupees per month, rising to Rs410 after five years, with the prospect of rising, after about twenty years, to Lt Colonel at Rs852. (In 1885 this would represent a range of from £271 to £809 p.a. The rupee declined in value from about 2 shillings in 1870, to about 1s 7d by 1885 because of the German demonetisation of silver to which the rupee was tied. It declined further thereafter.)43 If he reached the top of the service he would be ranked Surgeon Major-General with a commensurate salary.44 All these rates were to increase.45 On retirement after thirty years’ service he drew £500 p.a. In addition, IMS doctors, except in posts which expressly forbade it, drew substantial incomes from private practice.46 They also received an award of at least 150 rupees per month when on military service.47 As in the ICS there was opposition to Indianisation of the medical service so that as late as 1920 there were only fifty-five native assistant surgeons in the IMS. As with the ICS there was also a subordinate medical service manned by Indians trained in colleges set up in each presidency.48 A possible reason for that small number of Indians in the service may have been that western medical practices such as inoculation, autopsy and dissection were anathema to upper-caste Hindus, an aversion which considerably hindered efforts of the authorities to deal with such diseases as the plague. Another scourge, that of cholera, persisted partly because most religious practices entailed the use of water but also because British doctors were unaware of its cause – contaminated drinking water – and some were reluctant to accept the validity of upto-date research which discovered the cause.49

Indian Public Works Department Subsequent to the mutiny, in 1858, the Crown took control of the Public Works Department and set up a civil engineering hierarchy parallel to that of the military. The rapid growth in the numbers of PWD personnel, from 113 engineers in 1840 to 1,200 in 1874, along with the phasing out of army engineers and official dissatisfaction with the quality of the mature, established engineers sent out from Britain and their inability [ 30 ]

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to cope with local climatic and working conditions, led to the recruitment of young men by means of examination from 1859 to 1870.50 Civil engineering works in India consisted mainly of those connected with irrigation, along with the building of roads of which the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawar was the outstanding example, the bridging of India’s many great rivers and the laying of railways. By the 1930s, 43,000 miles (69,000 km) of railways had been laid.51 Until 1836 most irrigation work focused on restoring old Mughal works. Then, following widespread famine in north India in 1837–38 the British started to build their own irrigation systems starting with the 350-mile-long (560 km) Ganges canal, the largest canal works in history up to that time. The increase in PWD personnel stemmed from this time as did the phasing out of the army engineers whose main tasks up to that time had been the building of army camps and defences, besides various public buildings connected with the administration of the country. By the time the British left India, public works had transformed the subcontinent in terms of culture, economy and the environment.52 The contribution of Irish engineers to the extensive Punjab public works will be dealt with in later chapters. From the foregoing it can be seen that, from about the middle of the nineteenth century, interesting, challenging, exciting and well-paid jobs were to be had in India for those Irish sufficiently bright and ambitious to avail of the opportunity, so the need to provide suitable education and training required to be addressed. The next chapter ascertains who these exceptional Irishmen were, as well as the effects the need for their training had on parts of the Irish educational system.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

O’Malley, The Indian Civil Service, p. 236. Ibid., pp. 1–160. Ibid., p. 49. Pamela Kanwar, Imperial Simla: the political culture of the Raj (2nd edn, New Delhi, 2003), p. 71. Morris, Pax Britannica, pp. 267–9. Ibid. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. xiii–236. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’. Ibid. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 269. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. xiii. Kanwar, Imperial Simla, p. 71. Ibid., pp. 50–3. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 90 and 29. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 522. Philip Mason, The men who ruled India (New Delhi, 2002), pp. 207–8. Bradford Spangenberg, British bureaucracy in India (New Delhi, 1976), passim.

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26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

Mason, The men who ruled India, p. xiv. Ibid., passim. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 270. Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, pp. 55–107; Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 214. Naresh Chandra Roy, The civil service in India (Calcutta, 1958), p. 9. Hill, South Asia, p. 133. Ibid. Donald McDonald, ‘The Indian Medical Service: a short account of its achievements’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, il:1 (1956), pp. 13–17. India list civil and military 1881, 1891; India list and India Office list 1901, 1911, 1921. McDonald, ‘The Indian Medical Service’. Arnold, Science, technology and medicine, p. 57. Ibid., p.17. James P. Murray, ‘Medicine’, in Tadhg Foley (ed.), From Queen’s College to National University: essays on the academic history of QCG/UCG/NUIG (Dublin, 1999), p. 148. Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 103–18. Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, Tournament of shadows: the Great Game and the race for empire in Asia (London, 2001), p. 189. D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615–1930 (London, 1930), no. 1966. Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 72–4. Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (Oxford, 1991), pp. 384–401. Crawford, Roll of the IMS, no. 535. Arnold, Science, technology and medicine, p. 57. Robert Drew, Commissioned officers in the medical services of the British army, 1660–1960 (2 vols, London, 1968), i, p. viii. Ibid. Arnold, Science, technology and medicine, p. 60. M. J. Peterson, The medical profession in mid-Victorian London (Berkeley, 1978), p. 38. McDonald, ‘The Indian Medical Service’. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 222. India list civil and military 1881, pp. xli–xlii. Crawford, Roll of the IMS, p. 386. Arnold, Science, technology and medicine, p. 60. Crosbie, ‘The Irish expatriate community in British India’, p. 165. Donald McDonald, Surgeons two and a barber, being an account of the history of the Indian Medical Service (London, 1950), p. 133. Ibid. ‘Introduction’, Cooper’s Hill Royal Engineering College (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8), pp. 135–6; B. P. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College, Cooper’s Hill 1871–1906: a case study of state involvement in professional civil engineering education’ (PhD thesis, London University, 1980), p. 63. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 265. Hill, South Asia, p. 101.

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Who were they?

In the late nineteenth century Ireland’s peculiar status as a polity was bound to promote equivocation in the minds of those trying to decide if they were Irish or British – or both. Not precisely a colony in view of its strong representation at Westminster, but different from other parts of the United Kingdom in having a viceroy, an armed police force and a separate civil service, Ireland was part of the empire but nurtured a strong Home Rule movement as well as an influential body plotting a republican revolution.1 Nationalism was almost entirely Catholic while Unionism was principally, if less exclusively, Protestant, as Roy Foster has pointed out.2 Although support of the union did not necessarily translate into a desire to be considered British, the very term Anglo-Irish, a description of themselves accepted by uppermiddle-class and landed Protestants,3 implied an identification with Britain and, in practice, entailed a tendency towards having an English accent and education.4 Michael McConville, in explaining that the Old English component of Catholic Ireland had long been combined with the Gaelic Irish into a cultural whole in a process of assimilation, makes the point that the differences between the ‘Anglo-Irish’ and others were religious and cultural and not racial.5 Some ‘Anglo-Irish’ families such as Blakes, Burkes and Butlers could trace their heritage back to early Norman settlers who had assimilated and intermarried with Gaelic families.6 Advocates of Home Rule, in other words those mainly but certainly not exclusively Catholic Irish who sought a degree of self-government within the British empire, implicitly accepted a close identification with Great Britain. There were also Ulster Presbyterians and southern middle-class Protestants, neither of which are usually described as Anglo-Irish,7 and who varied in their acceptance of a dual British–Irish identity.8 In India, there was an awareness among the Irish of these contrarieties, as will be seen in later chapters. [ 33 ]

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The truth, if one is to follow the logic of the various writers cited above, is that there was a spectrum or scale which stretched from ‘Gaelic’ at one end to ‘British’ or even ‘English’ at the far extremity, and it was possible for a person to be both British and Irish unless motivated to choose to be one or the other. It is argued here that the point at which the balance for a given individual would tip to one side more than another depended on circumstances. In the situation where a young Irishman found himself serving the Raj in Punjab as part of a subculture dominated by English mores, and surrounded by an Indian society in which he could not freely mix, a tendency to slide towards the British side of the scale would depend not only on his upbringing but also on the degree to which he also belonged to another subculture, that shared by his fellow Irishmen. That particular subculture would to a considerable degree depend for its viability on the numbers involved and the extent to which its members shared a common social, religious and educational background. It is important, then, to establish how many Irish there were in Punjab during the period 1881–1921, how much they shared those common backgrounds and how influential they were. The amount and type of information available vary between the three professions studied – civil servants, engineers and doctors – and are dependent on the ways in which sources present that information, but it should be possible to relate tabulated information in this chapter to individuals mentioned in the following chapters. In the case of Irish engineers, a body of men whose important contribution to Punjab’s and India’s prosperity has received little attention from historians, a description of their education and recruitment is addressed in chapter 12, partly because their hitherto underresearched contribution merits a separate treatment, and partly to save the reader from too much statistical information in this chapter. However, brief details of their numbers and educational backgrounds are given here in order to demonstrate the similarity of their backgrounds to that of the members of the other two professions. The context within which the three categories of Irish professionals operated, and the functioning of the three professions, have already been outlined. Those Irishmen who served the Raj – the employees of the government of India were almost exclusively men – were a minority within the tiny minority of people from the United Kingdom who represented just under one-tenth of 1 per cent of the population of India during the study period. (See population figures in chapter 2 and Table 1.) There was virtually no social contact with Indians; professional interaction between the races, for most of the period in question, was that of superior and [ 34 ]

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subordinate, because very few Indians occupied posts in the ICS, and senior posts in other public service professions were held almost exclusively by Europeans.9 Young Irishmen at an impressionable age coming straight from college, and in some cases from school, could very easily find whatever peculiarly Irish attitudes they possessed being gradually eroded, unless they had opportunities to mix with others of their kind. In this chapter an effort will be made to determine, within the limits of the information available, if such opportunities existed. It will then be possible to make more accurate assessments of the effect Irishmen had on the history and development of Punjab, and of the probability that their attitudes and actions were influenced by their Irishness. The effects which recruitment to India had in Ireland are also considered, because attitudes towards such recruitment reflected the views of a proportion of the Irish population towards empire and its employment opportunities, and these attitudes would be noted by the young prospective employees of the Raj. Irishmen who were members of the ICS or the IMS, their countrymen who were engineers in the PWD or officers in the Indian army, might all spend the entirety of their working lives in India, often retiring to such places as London, Cheltenham, Oxford, Edinburgh and Kingstown.10 There were also Irish serving as ordinary soldiers in some British regiments, as police officers and as missionaries of several denominations. There were those who managed the railways and those who occupied some of the more skilled junior posts in the extensive rail network.11 Their numbers were recorded in several of the decennial censuses which took place from 1881 to 1921. Table 1 shows that in Punjab the proportion of Irish to that of the number of people from the United Kingdom as a whole was about 12 per cent on average for those years in which they were separately enumerated. Many of these Irish would have been in the two main armies which came under the command of army headquarters at Simla: the British army and the Indian army. The British army included men in Irish regiments, of which there were never less than two battalions in Punjab at the times of the various censuses except during the Boer War in 1901 when there was just one, the 2nd battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers stationed at Lahore and Dalhousie.12 Other Irish regiments were stationed in the province from time to time.13 The proportion of Irish in the British army as a whole varied from 20.9 per cent in 1881 to 9.2 per cent in 1911.14 In 1901 there were 21,133 British troops in the province.15 Added to these was the high proportion of Irish officers in the Indian army, as much as 30 per cent of the total officer force, according to Bartlett.16 [ 35 ]

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Table 1 UK-born residents in Punjab, including North-West Frontier Province and Delhi, and Irish-born as an included percentage of these, in decennial census years 1881-1921

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UK born including Irish Irish-born Irish percentage of UK-born

1881

1891

1901

1911

1921

17,590

23,926

No figure

27,947

25,759

No figure

2,702 11.3

No figure

3,877 13.8

2,911 11.3

Sources: Indian censuses: Punjab and its feudatories, 1881–1921. Indian censuses: North-West Frontier Province, 1911 and 1921.

Except during the First World War, there were usually between 160 and 180 regiments in the Indian army with seven British or Irish officers in each.17 As mentioned in chapter 1, almost half the army was stationed in Punjab so the total number of Irish officers in Punjab-based regiments could be several hundred. Some army units had wives and families with them,18 who accounted for a proportion of the 452 Irish females counted, for instance, in Punjab in 1891.19 It can thus be appreciated that soldiers and their families must have accounted for most of the Irish in Punjab throughout the period. This was in keeping with the pattern in India as a whole, where, since early Victorian times, most of the Irish in the country were in one or other of the armies.20 In this and the previous chapter it is mooted that the presence of Irish soldiers is relevant because it is to be supposed that in socialising with them, the members of the three professions which are the principal focus of this study were moving in a setting in which Irish mores and modes of thought would not seem out of place, and perhaps even be reinforced. However, social contact between the ‘other ranks’ of the British army and professional people was highly improbable. The British ranker lived ‘the communal life of the barrack room and wet canteen’,21 committed to a service that polite society held in contempt.22 Their Irish officers were drawn almost entirely from what can be described, for want of a better term, as the Anglo-Irish Protestant landowning class; born in Ireland and frequently educated in England, they were natural unionists.23 ‘Tall, strong, handsome chaps’,24 as Friedrich Engels described their class, the Anglo-Irish families from which they sprung were influenced, in Ireland, in their patriotic orientation and in their social and mental outlook, by association with the local army garrison.25 In India, their social and political outlook would be likely [ 36 ]

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to reinforce those held by Irish expatriate Civilians of unionist persuasion, and perhaps inhibit expression of nationalist and Home Rule sentiments by their fellow countrymen of a different persuasion. Besides those in the army, smaller numbers of Irishmen held modest civilian jobs working for the Crown in such positions as post-masters or as railway workers.26 According to an unpublished report available in the National Rail Museum in New Delhi, there were, in 1881, 174 Europeans involved in the running of railroads in Punjab, 139 of these in such jobs as station-masters, guards, locomotive drivers, firemen and pilotmen.27 According to later such reports which deal with various years from 1894 to 1921, there were, in 1920, almost 7,000 Europeans on the railways in India and over 10,000 Eurasians,28 some of whom may have been part-Irish. No separate figures are given in the reports for Irish or Irish-Indians, but given that retired Irish soldiers sometimes stayed on in India to work on the state railroads,29 as, in ideation, did exColour Sergeant O’Hara (Kim’s father), and that some of these married Indian women,30 it is reasonable to assume that there was an Irish and Irish-Indian presence on the Punjab railways. There were Irish nuns in India and nurses from Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Service,31 and political and social activists such as Annie Besant and Margaret Noble, but this latter pair were based outside Punjab.32 But it is to the positions open to educated Irishmen in the public service in Punjab that this study turns because not only did many opportunities exist for such individuals to affect Indian and Punjabi affairs, as will be seen in following chapters, but their duties as servants of the Raj placed them in an anomalous category that historians have described, not necessarily pejoratively, as ‘collaborators’:33 a state in which ambiguities and ambivalences exist which are of interest to the historical researcher. Punjab offered to educated Irishmen well-paid, pensionable careers which were highly valued in Ireland as was pointed out by the Irish Times in 1862 when it said that no profession in Ireland offered prizes to the ambitious which compared with that presented by the Indian government.34 (Although the value of the rupee, in which currency Indian public servants were paid, fell considerably in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, their salaries remained high compared to those in similar posts in the empire and at home. In 1901, for instance, on appointment as third-grade assistant commissioner shortly after arrival in Punjab, a young recruit would receive the rupee equivalent of £340 p.a., and within two or three years could be earning £800. As deputy commissioner, which position they could reach in less than ten years, they would earn £1,912 and could finish as quite a number of Irishmen did as lieut.-governor of a province at a salary of [ 37 ]

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C O N TE X T

£7,083. All grades received a pension of £1,000 p.a., paid in sterling, after twenty-five years’ service. These rates were very much better than those in smaller British colonies. See chapter 5 for comparative figures.) Those working in and for the Punjab Commission included doctors, engineers and, of course, the members of the ICS. All three professions, besides offering desirable careers in India, also had considerable beneficial effects on Indian life, although these were sometimes collateral to the strategic or economic aims of the Raj. Certainly, Rudyard Kipling thought highly of such men, admiring ‘the dedication to the service of the Empire of these administrators, doctors, soldiers and engineers’.35 It was fortunate for the ambitious sons of the Irish middle classes that, in the social upheaval following the great famine of the 1840s and the subsequent faltering of the Irish economy in the 1860s,36 a series of events serendipitously followed on one another. The Queen’s Colleges were opened to students in 1849.37 Open competitive examinations for both the IMS and the ICS were instituted in 1855,38 replacing a system of appointment by patronage which, in the ICS, had resulted in Irish recruits amounting to only 5 per cent of the total intake and that proportion being almost exclusively Ulster Protestants.39 The establishment of the Indian Public Works Department in 1854 to cope with considerable expansion in state-funded public works, not least in Punjab, combined with a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of engineers available on the subcontinent, led to a demand for universitytrained engineers in the 1860s.40 In India, all three professions, doctors, administrators and engineers, received an influx of Irishmen during these early years, the effects of which were still felt, as will be seen, well into the 1880s and beyond.

Indian Medical Service Irish recruits to the IMS accounted for as much as 38 per cent of new entrants in the 1870s,41 and many of these worked in Punjab until the 1890s and beyond.42 According to Michael Holmes, the proportion of Irish in the IMS never fell below 10 per cent in the years 1855–1909.43 Punjab reflected the trend in India as a whole, as can be seen in Table 2, which was compiled from data in a well-known roll drawn up by Crawford, cross-referenced with names and dispositions taken from the relevant Civil and Military Lists of those serving in Punjab during the decennial censuses and during several campaigns conducted against north-west frontier tribes in the intervening decades. The accuracy of the data is dependent on the cited sources which, understandably, given the numbers involved, contain occasional small confusions regarding [ 38 ]

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Table 2 Numbers of Irish medical graduates in the Indian Medical Service serving in Punjab in the period 1881–1921, with colleges attended where these are known TCD QUI/ UCC/ QCB UCG/ Carmi- Catholic UCD Other Total Univ. QCG chael RUI/ QCC School NUI

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36

24

15

11

5

4

4

1

17

117

Sources: India list civil and military 1881-91; India list and India Office list 1901-21; Quarterly Indian army list 1901-21; D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 16151930 (London, 1930). See Appendix I.

identities, spellings of names, or stations in which individuals served. The names of these doctors, the locations in which they served and the colleges or hospitals at which they trained are given in tables for each decade in Appendix I. Reference will be made in subsequent chapters to individuals named in these tables. The number of Irish doctors working in the IMS in Punjab far outnumbered the combined numbers of Irish engineers and Irish civil servants. (See Tables 2, 3 and 4.) In the following chapters, when an individual Irishman is mentioned as serving in a particular location, it should be possible by use of these tables to see if he had the company of an Irish doctor or doctors. The constituent colleges of the Queen’s University (QUI), later named the Royal University (RUI) and then the National University (NUI), accounted for 55 per cent of the Irish IMS doctors. In some cases the particular college within QUI is not known. Trinity College Dublin (TCD) accounted for 30 per cent of the total and the rest came from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), from private medical schools such as Carmichael School and from the short-lived Catholic University. Very few students in Irish medical schools were drawn from outside Ireland,44 while some Irish doctors graduated abroad, particularly from Scottish universities,45 so the number of Irish doctors in the IMS was probably greater than that shown, as was the case with Irish doctors who joined the British Medical Service.46 Some difficulty arises during the First World War in identifying all Irish members of the IMS because the twice-yearly entrance examinations were suspended in 1915 for the duration of the conflict and for some time afterwards. After August 1915 appointments were made by nomination and the majority of these were of men who had served in the war and whose service records do not include nationality within the United Kingdom.47 However, some Irish appointed just after the war have been identified from the Civil and Military Lists, as also have a few who were appointed before 1857 and were still serving in 1881. [ 39 ]

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Given that hospitals are given as training institutions in some cases and that there is no distinction made in the second column between the constituent colleges of the Queen’s University of Ireland, it is not possible to draw conclusions, from the lists of colleges in various tables, in regard to probable religious or political allegiance of the Irish IMS recruits. Some people from Ulster, for instance Richard Charles and Henry Smith, attended Queen’s Colleges in other parts of Ireland,48 while the brothers of Antony MacDonnell and Michael O’Dwyer, both Roman Catholics, went to TCD. (See below and Appendix I.) Crawford found that, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, some 60 per cent of IMS recruits were from the professional, mercantile and farming middle classes, with 8 per cent coming from the lower middle class (trade and artisan).49 Crosbie claims that 60 per cent of Irish recruits to the IMS as a whole during the period 1855–84 were from rural areas and small towns. The closest comparison to Crosbie’s figures that can be made arising from research for this book is with the proportion – 58 per cent – of Irishmen that came from the provinces and were in the BMS in Punjab during 1881–1921, as can be seen in the next section. It is apparent from Appendix I that such recruits came from colleges in all four provinces and that there is an eclectic mix of family names associated with various Irish politicoreligious groupings. The scale of recruitment of Irishmen to the IMS during this time, 117 in Punjab alone, had an influence on Irish universities as medical graduates exceeded domestic requirements,50 and, in TCD at least, the curriculum had been altered as early as the 1830s to meet the particular needs of those competing for places in the service.51 QCG and its subsequent manifestation as University College Galway (UCG) largely depended on the numbers attending its medical school to enable the college to survive,52 and much of the college effort was directed towards preparing men to work in the colonies,53 although this is not reflected in the small number, less than 5 per cent of the total Punjab-based IMS Irish recruits, which entered the service from QCG/UCG during the period in question. Queen’s College Cork (QCC) was described as ‘little more than an excellent medical school which manufactured doctors for export’.54 It can readily be seen that service in the empire and, in particular, in India would feature notably in the career plans of parents and students.

British Medical Service Medical officers in that section of the British army known as the British Medical Service (BMS), before being transformed into the Royal Army [ 40 ]

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Medical Corps (RAMC) in 1898,55 also performed some services for Indian Civilians as they worked beside their IMS colleagues in Punjab’s troubled border areas and in emergency situations such as plagues.56 In a process similar to that used in the case of the IMS, details of those Irish who served in the BMS in Punjab were extracted from a list compiled by Drew and Johnston,57 and from the relevant Civil and Army Lists. A total of 149 Irishmen served in the BMS/RAMC in Punjab during the period 1881–1921, the numbers of whom, if added to Irish IMS doctors, brings the total of Irish medical graduates serving in Punjab in that time to 266. Fifty-eight per cent of the BMS Irishmen in Punjab were from outside the Dublin area. In the case of the BMS, unlike those for the IMS, the figures given refer only to Irish-born graduates. The records for doctors in the BMS/ RAMC are less satisfactory than those of the IMS in a number of ways. For this reason it is not possible to construct a table for BMS members similar to the one for IMS members as in Table 2. The number of TCD graduates among the Irish in the BMS in Punjab amounted to 30 per cent as compared to 23 per cent TCD men in the IMS.58 There is some evidence that a sense of Irish national identity among medical men transcended even deep immersion in other cultures.59

Punjab Public Works Department Following the annexation of Punjab in 1849, and increasingly when the Crown superseded the East India Company in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny, a series of public works were undertaken in Punjab, some of which had both military and civic importance such as the building of railways and the Punjab section of the Grand Trunk Road, while others were designed to improve the lot of farmers – while simultaneously increasing tax revenue – such as the building of huge irrigation works including barrages, canals and service roads.60 The increase in recruitment of engineers mentioned in the previous chapter also applied to Punjab. Details of such recruitment are contained in chapter 12, which deals specifically with the experiences and achievements of these engineers. But, in order to allow comparisons of numbers and backgrounds with those of the other two professions that are the subject of this chapter, such information is contained here in Table 3. The list is incomplete in regard to railway engineers for reasons that will be outlined in chapter 12. Dissatisfaction with the quality of engineers emerging from existing colleges led, in 1871, to the opening of the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill near London. Irish graduates from Cooper’s Hill are included in Table 3. [ 41 ]

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Table 3 Irish civilian engineers in Punjab 1881-1921, with schools, colleges, date of arrival in Punjab and place of birth where these are known Name

School

College

Thomas Martin W. D. Bruce F. L. O’Callaghan F. B. Walker M. S. Dooley R. T. Mallet A. B. Phelan J. E. Cathen H. J. Johnston F. W. Maunsell J. K. Verschoyle W. Drew R. S. Glover W. H. Price A. S. Montgomery F. E. Kanthack C. V. G. Scott S. Walker W. S. Dorman W. H. Mills H. W. Nicholson G. M. Ross A. M. N. Robertson A. R. B. Armstrong E. O. Cox W. G. Dench A. E. Knox W. S. Tinsley G. H. Dundon

Bandon

TCD St Andrew’s QCC QCC QCG

Private

Royal Armagh St Columba’s

TCD Cooper’s Hill TCD TCD Cooper’s Hill Cooper’s Hill QCG Cooper’s Hill Cooper’s Hill TCD/Cooper’s TCD QCC/Cooper’s

St Andrew’s Cork Gram.

Mountjoy Drogheda Gr. Clongowes

TCD QCC TCD TCD TCD TCD UCG Glasgow

Arrival date 1859 1860 1862 1863 1866 1868 1869 1874 1880 1881 1881 1881 1885 1893 1895 1900 1900 1900 1901 1905 1905 1905 1905 1908 1912 1913 1914 1919

Birthplace Cork Leitrim Cork Kerry Dublin

Dublin

Carlow

Cork Dublin Cork Dublin Antrim Dublin Louth Cork Limerick

Sources: BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/1-2, IOR L/PWD/8/405, IOR PWD/8/13; ICE (London) proceedings and obituaries; ICE (Ireland) proceedings. Individual references in Appendix II.

Indian Civil Service In considering the identity and backgrounds of Irish ICS men serving in Punjab it is apt to place them in the overall context of the service in the subcontinent. The cessation of the system of patronage which had governed appointment to the ICS, and its substitution with competitive public examinations, presented to young Irishmen, particularly those [ 42 ]

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without ‘connection’, an opportunity to share in the prosperity generated by empire, an opportunity sought eagerly across the religious, social and political divides.61 The percentage of Irish-born recruits to the Indian service as a whole jumped from 5 per cent in the first half of the century, these being almost invariably Northern Protestants,62 to 24 per cent between 1855 and 1863.63 Although this high proportion dropped after this in line with Ireland’s dwindling proportion of the United Kingdom’s population, and because the entry process was altered in a way which disadvantaged Irish candidates,64 the effect of early recruitment was still felt in Punjab in the 1880s, as can be seen in Table 4. The willingness of the Queen’s Colleges to adjust their curricula to the needs of the Indian service, added to the abolition of the system of patronage, helped to raise the Roman Catholic proportion of Irish ICS recruits from 8 per cent in 1855–64 to 29 per cent in 1905–14.65 Of the 1,600 young men recruited to the ICS from 1858 to 1897 virtually all came from the British and Irish middle classes – the professions, businessmen and lesser gentry.66 Cook asserts that the change in the proportions of religious affiliation among Irish recruits also marked a growing change in social diversity in the ICS, as Catholics were more likely to come from underprivileged backgrounds.67 He presents no evidence for the assertion of this likelihood. An effort at reform, by Lord Salisbury, of the examination and recruitment system for the ICS led, in 1879, to a lowering of the age requirements and a consequent opportunity for candidates such as Michael O’Dwyer, aged eighteen, to go straight from school to a crammer, Wren’s in London, for a few terms before passing the entry examination to the service and to spend two years’ probation at Balliol.68 It was common practice for candidates, including university students, to attend such schools for intense and focused preparation. From time to time, as age limits and examination requirements changed, the proportion of non-university men fluctuated. Flanagan and Spangenberg both believe that these changes were effected in order, inter alia, to minimise the number of successful Irish candidates.69 But it is just as likely that such alterations to entry requirements were class-based rather than aimed directly at Irish applicants. The Report of the Public Service Commission 1886–87 (the Aitcheson Committee), besides hearing evidence that there was one ICS man for every 181,254 of the Indian population, recalled that Lord Macauley’s committee of 1853, which had devised the entrance competition, had thought it desirable that ICS applicants would be men who had taken first-class Arts degrees in Oxford or Cambridge. Macauley had gone on to say that the entrance examination should be confined to [ 43 ]

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Table 4 Irish civilian members of the Indian Civil Service working for the Punjab Commission in the years 1881–1921, with personal and educational details where these are known

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Name

Birth or Homeplace

Religion

Father’s occupation

J. W. Smyth D. Barkley D. Fitzpatrick A. Bulman T. W. Smyth E. O’Brien G. Smyth

Down

Presb.

Private Gent.

M. Macauliffe J. Frizelle

Limerick Tyrone

Presb.

W. E. Purser F. O’Bullock R. I. Bruce

Tipperary C. of I.

Private Gent. Merchant

R. Clark W. O. Clark J. G. Silcock R. M. Dane

Donegal L’derry Armagh Chichester Chichester Clare

L. W. Dane L. W. King

Dublin

RC

School

College Year or of crammer joining QUB QUB TCD

Med. Doc. Richmond

Bandon

Rural Landlord Farmer C. of I.

C. of I.

M. O’Dwyer M. Fenton J. Connolly L. H. L. Jones

Tipperary RC Wicklow C. of I. Clare

C. of I.

C. M. King

Antrim

C. of I.

Clergyman Army Surgeon Army Surgeon IMS/ Clergyman Farmer

N’paper Prop. Clergyman

St Columba’s Kingstown

Newcastle QCG R. Dungannon TCD

1863 1863

R. Enniskillen Kingstown

TCD Cantab.

1865 1864 1868

R. Raphoe Portora R. Armagh Kingstown

TCD TCD TCD

1870 1871 1872 1874

Kingstown

Donegal Dublin Limerick Bolton Dublin

Presb. RC Presb. C. of I.

W. Powell F. W. Wylie

Dublin

C. of I.

Tailor Agent Clergyman Civil Servant Police

1874

Ennis

TCD

1880

Tullabeg R. Armagh Belvedere

Wren’s TCD Oxford QCB

1882 1883 1893 1889

Ballymena Dioc.

TCD

1890

RUI/ Camb. TCD TCD TCD TCD TCD

1893

R. Humphreys R. T. Clarke H. F. Forbes V. Connolly N. H. Prenter J. Fitzpatrick

QUB Oxford TCD

1858 1858 1858 1861 1861 1863 1863

R. Raphoe Wesley Belvedere St Andrew’s High School

High School TCD R. Dungannon TCD

1896 1900 1901 1901 1902 1906 1914

Source: A. C. Tupp, The I.C.S. and the competitive system (London, 1876); India list civil and military 1881–1900; India list and India Office list 1901–1921; Trinity College Dublin, Entrance books, 1858–1914; Oxford Magazine, 1892–1921.

[ 44 ]

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those branches of knowledge to which it was desirable that an English gentleman who meant to stay at home should pay attention.70 The authorities, it would seem, were concerned with the type or class of Irishman being recruited rather than trying to impose restrictions on all Irish candidates. After all, there had been no public adverse comment, as far as can be ascertained, made on Irish recruitment when candidates were appointed by nomination, presumably by ‘reliable’ gentlemen. If the backgrounds of Punjab Civilians is central to the thesis posited in chapter 1 then it is essential, before considering certain individuals in the following chapters, to look to the Irish ICS men in Punjab as a group and to gain some idea of their families, schooling and other factors which may have formed their characters and outlook. Their backgrounds in general are more easily traced than is the case with the other two professions under discussion. Various sources are crosschecked with the names of Civilians in Civil Lists at the time of the decennial censuses from 1881 to 1921 in order to obtain the details outlined in Table 4. There may have been a small number of others working for the commission at other times but, as Civilians usually stayed in the same province during their long service of twenty-five years or more, or reverted to that province after duties elsewhere,71 any others not found in the census years would have had very short services due to such factors as death or illness. No Irishman other than the thirty-one Civilians listed in Table 4 has been traced in the lists of successful candidates in the Civil Lists published each year of the period of study. The backgrounds of Irish ICS men in Punjab, as detailed in Table 4, correspond closely to findings, relating to Irish ICS in India as a whole, of Scott B. Cook for the years 1886–1914 and of Kevin Flanagan for the years 1855–1900.72 The former writer found that approximately 80 per cent of Irish recruits came from the middle classes (professional, mercantile, business and substantial farmers) while the latter, confining himself to TCD graduates, had similar figures. He also found that some 28 per cent of Trinity ICS men had clergymen fathers.73 In Table 4, 13.3 per cent of recruits are shown to have clergyman fathers, with the proportion for TCD recruits being 26 per cent. The proportion with middle-class backgrounds, as categorised by Cook, is at least as great as that stated by him. In general, recruits came from backgrounds which may not have been poor, but where the salaries associated with an Indian career would have represented an unusual degree of security. Flanagan goes on to paint a verbal portrait of an Irish recruit to the ICS, saying that he was probably an Anglican, that he was unlikely to be a product of the landed gentry class, and was more likely to be from a middle-size home, not a Big House. He would be the product of a small, [ 45 ]

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rural school, probably a royal foundation or proprietary school with boarders and day boys; he was more likely to be a graduate of TCD than of other colleges. Cook paints a similar picture regarding Irish recruits, as does Spangenberg in relation to the social standing of their British counterparts.74 None of these profiles, which deal with the ICS in India as a whole, differ greatly from the picture of the Punjab situation which emerges from Table 4 where 33 per cent of recruits attended rural schools, seven of these, or 22 per cent of the total, being royal schools. TCD graduates dominate in Table 4, accounting for almost 59 per cent of the total, with the combined Queen’s Colleges reaching a very distant second on the list of those who attended college before recruitment. The religion of only half of the Irish ICS men in Punjab is known; of these, 80 per cent were Protestants. Their family backgrounds were similar to those of Irishmen in the IMS, according to Cook,75 and as can be seen from the relevant tables above; indeed some families had members in both services – L. W. King’s father and an older brother of Michael O’Dwyer were IMS surgeons, as was a brother of Antony MacDonnell (see Appendix I and Table 4). Although the recruitment system and competitive examinations had been designed with the intention of attracting Oxbridge graduates,76 an unforeseen result was the success of non-university candidates and of graduates of the Irish universities. It has not proved possible, in the case of all those listed as having attended Oxford, to ascertain if this designation refers to a probationary period required of ICS entrants, or to a full degree course. Those members of the ICS who served the Punjab Commission wielded an authority which not only made them senior to those doctors and engineers who also served the Commission, but also made them more influential in their dealings with the Indian public than their counterparts in longer-settled parts of India. As mentioned in chapter 1, because of the firm approach initiated by the tough Irish founders of the province’s administration and of their immediate successors, and because the province remained ‘unregulated’ for some time, the ‘Punjab school’ was noted for the ruggedly individualistic, if paternalistic, approach it encouraged in its officers. This is exemplified by the two unwritten rules stated by Philip Mason to permeate the ethos of the Punjab Commission: firstly, do not hesitate, act at once; and secondly, because a junior in an isolated station must not wait for support, he must be assured that his superior will back him up.77 This is a theme which permeates much of what will be described in later chapters. Punjab was the preferred posting for brighter Civilians, who regarded themselves, on appointment to that province, as a corps d’élite, somewhat to the chagrin of Civilians in other provinces.78 In truth, Civilians who served in Punjab were picked men, or self-selected ones as those [ 46 ]

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highest placed in the entrance examination chose their own postings.79 They were appointed to so many influential posts that their colleagues in Bombay and Madras were given to complaining. They chaired the most important commissions of enquiry, they set up new administrations when new territories were annexed and were appointed in disproportionate numbers as governors of other provinces.80 The appeal of Punjab owed much to its frontier life, to its historical connection with the Irish-educated Lawrences and John Nicholson, and to the many grand schemes undertaken, such as the building of canals and the improvement of agriculture.81 The Punjab system was generally judged the best because the province had not only held firm during the mutiny but had provided troops to suppress it.82 The Irish connection with Punjab continued throughout the period 1881–1921, with, as will be seen, three lieut.-governors being Irish, along with two chief secretaries and two financial secretaries.

Conclusions It was postulated at the beginning of this chapter that Irish recruits to the three mentioned professions would be likely to retain their ‘Irishness’ if there were sufficient numbers of their compatriots of similar social, educational and religious standing to withstand total assimilation into the culture of their more numerous English and Scottish colleagues. The various tables, numbers and information provided in the chapter demonstrate that there was a sufficient number of Irishmen in Punjab to provide opportunities for social and professional interaction with each other’s countrymen, and that most of the non-military men came from one or other of the four main colleges. Whether or not the presence of their countrymen and their Irish backgrounds produced an inclination towards one or other end of the British–Irish spectrum, and if such an inclination affected their actions towards India and the Indians, will be seen in the following chapters. All of the colleges and all four provinces threw up some outstanding public servants in India as can be deduced from the evidence already presented. There was a sufficient geographical spread in relation to places of birth and education to provide a variety of outlooks, even if these were confined in one or other of the main religious-cultural-political streams such as AngloIrish Anglican, Ulster-Scots Nonconformist or Catholic Nationalist. There are enough famous examples to show that, in any case, each of these streams was given to leakage into another (for example, the Pearses and the Plunketts; Wolfe Tone and Henry Joy McCracken; see also McConville).83 The percentage of ICS recruits who graduated from TCD was considerably more than the percentage of that college’s [ 47 ]

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graduates in the other two professions. Army bases provided opportunities for socialisation with officers from Ireland, imbued though they may have been with a certain straitened outlook. Even if members of the ICS were regarded, in India, as being socially superior to those in the other professions, the fact that individual members would sometimes find themselves in small stations with no other Europeans than a colleague or two, an engineer, a doctor, perhaps a forester, meant that it would occasionally be possible to converse at length with fellow countrymen and reinforce each other’s Irishness. Of course, there was also the possibility that one’s countryman might come from a religious and political background so much at odds with one’s own that intimate communication would be easier with those from other parts of the United Kingdom. However, the point has been established that Irishmen formed a sufficiently large proportion of the various professions in Punjab to allow for some degree of continuity in their youthful affinities. That so many of the most senior of these officers should continue to be Irish, scions of a people not allowed to rule themselves, would seem to be an ironic coincidence rather than a deliberate policy dictated by some perceived innate suitability of the Irish to keep a tight rein on what could sometimes be a recalcitrant province.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 373–460. Ibid., p. 317. R. V. Comerford, Ireland (London, 2003), p. 67. McConville, Ascendancy to oblivion, pp. 250–1. Ibid., pp. 267–9. T. W. Moody and F. X. Martin (eds), The course of Irish history (Cork, 1984), p. 176. Comerford, Ireland, p. 67. J. C. Beckett, The making of modern Ireland, 1603–1923 (London, 1981), pp. 398–9. India list civil and military 1881, pp. 99–114; India list and India Office list 1921 pp. 61–9. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 13. Bielenberg, ‘Irish emigration to the British empire’, p. 223. India list civil and military 1881, 1891; Quarterly Indian army list 1901, 1911, 1921. Ibid. Bartlett, ‘The Irish soldier in India’, p. 21. Quarterly Indian army list 1901, p. 360. Bartlett, ‘The Irish soldier in India’, p. 21. Menezes, Fidelity and honour, pp. 191–245. Vyvyen Brendon, Children of the Raj (London, 2005), pp. 124–34. Census of India, 1891, Punjab and its feudatories. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 35. Richard Holmes, Sahib: the British soldier in India 1750–1914 (London, 2005), p. 149. Cornell, ‘Introduction’, in Kipling, The man who would be king, p. xxviii.

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

T. G. Fraser, ‘Ireland and India’, in Keith Jeffery (ed.), An Irish empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British empire (Manchester, 1996), pp. 77–122. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 464. E. M. Spiers, ‘Army organisation and society in the nineteenth century’, in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1997), p. 339. Bielenberg, ‘Irish emigration to the British empire’, p. 223; India list civil and military 1881, pp. 108–14. Administration report on the working of railways in India 1881 (Calcutta, 1882), p. 12. A report with cover and title missing, dealing with railway personnel from 1894 to 1921 (National Rail Museum, New Delhi), p. 14. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’. Frank Richards, Old soldier sahib (London, 1928), p. 86. Michael Holmes, ‘The Irish and India: imperialism, nationalism and internationalism’, in Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish diaspora (Harlow, 2000), p. 239; Quarterly Indian army list 1911, p. 457. Taylor, Annie Besant, pp. 216–317; Maina Singh, ‘The layered identities of Sister Nivedita/Margaret Noble, 1867–1911’, in Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India: colonies, culture and empire (Dublin, 2006), pp. 42–55. Ronald Robinson, ‘Non-European foundation of European imperialism: a sketch for a theory of collaboration’, in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds), Studies in the theory of imperialism (London, 1972), pp. 117–42; Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’. Irish Times, 1 Dec. 1862. Andrew Lycett, Rudyard Kipling (London, 1999), p. 91. Beckett, The making of modern Ireland, pp. 362–4. Ibid., p. 330. Crosbie, ‘The Irish expatriate community in British India’, pp. 163–220. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 35. ‘Introduction’, Cooper’s Hill (BL, OIOC, IOR, L/PWD/8), pp. 135–6. Holmes, ‘The Irish and India’, p. 238. India list civil and military 1881, pp. 112–13, 350–7; 1891, pp. 350–7. Holmes, ‘The Irish and India’, p. 238. Greta Jones, ‘“Strike out boldly for the prizes that are available to you”: medical emigration from Ireland 1860–1905’, Medical History, liv:1 (2010), pp. 55–74. Ibid. See Appendix II. Crawford, Roll of the IMS, passim. Kirkpatrick Archive, The Royal College of Physicians in Ireland. Crawford, Roll of the IMS, p. 651. Kevin Flanagan, ‘The rise and fall of the Celtic ineligibles: competitive examinations for the Irish and Indian civil services in relation to the education and occupational structures of Ireland 1853–1921’ (DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 1977), p. 275. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 510. Murray, ‘Medicine’, p. 143 (see ch. 3, n. 30). Foley, From Queen’s College to National University, p. xi. Quoted in Jones, ‘Medical emigration from Ireland’. William Johnston and Robert Drew, Commissioned officers in the medical services of the British army, 1660–1960 (2 vols, London, 1968), i, pp. lviii–lix. Ibid., p. 557. Ibid. (no specific page). Ibid., passim. Jones, ‘Medical emigration from Ireland’, pp. 70–1. Mason, The men who ruled India, pp. 225–8. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 51–4. Ibid., p. 35.

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63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Akenson, The Irish diaspora, p. 145. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, pp. 513–14. Ibid., p. 517. Geoffrey Moorhouse, India Britannica (London, 1983), p. 141. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 517. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 16–26. Spangenberg, British bureacracy, pp. 14–54; Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, pp. 510–13. Report of the Public Service Commission 1886–87 (BL, OIOC, IOR V/20–210/1), pp. 13–17. India list civil and military 1881–95, passim. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 515; Flanagan, ‘Celtic ineligibles’, pp. 466–9. Flanagan, ‘Celtic ineligibles’, p. 467. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, pp. 515–17; Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, pp. 14–43. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj’, p. 512. Ibid., p. 510. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 167. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 56–7. Ibid. Dewey, Anglo-Indian attitudes, p. 202. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 58. Ranajit Guha, A subaltern studies reader, 1986–1995 (Minneapolis, 1997), p. 242. McConville, Ascendancy to oblivion, pp. 267–9.

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Straits Settlements, Malaya and Ceylon

India was not just the second focus of a dual empire, it was, in effect, an ‘empire’ of its own with dependent territories stretching from the Red Sea to the frontiers of Siam.1 It differed from other British possessions not only in its enormous size but in its essential importance. India’s population was about double that of the rest of the empire, or sixty times that of the rest of Britain’s Asian colonies combined;2 Punjab alone had, in 1901, a population almost five times greater than all these eastern colonies together.3 This Indian empire was the very origin and initial raison d’être of Britain’s other Asian possessions as was also the case in regard to the many territories acquired to protect the sea routes between England and the subcontinent.4 Most of the Asian colonies were established by the East India Company itself or by the home government, firstly in connection with the spice trade and later mainly in order to augment the trade with China which the company had fostered.5 It was a set of fortunate circumstances, as described below, which then led to Ceylon and Malaya becoming discrete, prosperous entities within the empire. These Asian possessions reflected, in their diversity and means of acquisition and control, the somewhat extemporaneous nature of the empire as a whole. There were, at varying times within the period encompassed by this book, protectorates such as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and some of the Malay states; a condominium, New Hebrides, run jointly with France; and a chartered territory, North Borneo, controlled by a private British company. And there were the three territories most usefully compared with India – Ceylon, British Malaya and Hong Kong.6 All these far-flung outskirts of the empire had to have a system of governance and thus provided opportunities of employment for venturesome souls from Britain and Ireland. Although the ‘Scramble for Africa’, with its potential for imperial salaried service, had only begun as our period opens, John Bright’s earlier and prescient [ 51 ]

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statement that the colonies were ‘a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain’7 already applied with force in the case of Irish landed gentry, as well as that of grandees such as Lords Lansdowne, Dufferin and Mayo to whom were reserved such posts as the governorships of India and Canada.8 At one stage in time extending into the 1880s, there were five Irish governors of Hong Kong in a row and there were to be two further Irishmen in that position before 1921.9 There were also four Irish governors of Ceylon between 1860 and 1903.10 That such opportunities existed was a boon for Irish landowners suffering from post-famine encumbrances and later land wars, but, as in the case of India, there were also positions available for the middle classes in the administrative, engineering and medical establishments of these eastern possessions. In particular, Ceylon, British Malaya and Hong Kong offered careers which can be readily compared with those available in Punjab. These colonies constitute useful yardsticks against which can be measured the experiences, attitudes and achievements of the Irish in Punjab, besides serving as useful comparators to illustrate Punjab’s special features. While reference will be made to all three colonies, the confines of just one chapter are insufficient to allow of a detailed examination of any more than Ceylon and British Malaya.

Straits Settlements British India’s trade with China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries required not only a base or bases on or near the Chinese coast, which requirement was fulfilled by Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports, but there was also need for a haven on the eastern margin of the Bay of Bengal to provide shelter from monsoon storms while simultaneously serving as a base for trade with the Malay peninsula. This latter trade initially consisted largely of selling Indian and western goods, including opium, to local traders who provided, in turn, goods suitable for the onward Chinese trade. The Dutch occupied most of the viable island bases and the peninsular states were endemically unstable, so a deal was struck with the Sultan of Kedah who ceded the island of Penang off the west Malay coast to the East India Company in 1786. Later, Thomas Stamford Raffles would acquire the island of Singhapura which, as Singapore, combined with Penang, the mainland enclaves of Malacca and Dinding and some scattered islands to become the Straits Settlements (Map 3). From 1830, the Settlements were administered as a residency of the Bengal Presidency, ruled from Calcutta until 1867 when the territory became a Crown Colony responsible to the Colonial Office in London.11 [ 52 ]

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Federated Malay States Gradually, treaties arranged with the rulers of several peninsular Malay states led to these becoming British protectorates with appointed Residents possessing increasingly influential powers similar to those exercised by Residents in Indian princely states. These Malay states, rich in tin and with soil and climate suitable for rubber plantations, became associated in 1899 as the Federated Malay States (FMS) and, while still having their respective Residents, became more closely centralised under a Resident-General at Kuala Lumpur, who, in turn, reported to the Governor of the Straits Settlements. Other Malay states remained unfederated but also came to accept British ‘advisors’ whose advice, by the terms of various treaties, had to be accepted. Together with the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States were a unified British colony, although the sovereignty of the states remained a legal fact. To lend verity to this arrangement the governor who controlled both entities was designated High Commissioner in his dealings with the states.12 The entire collection of unfederated and federated states of the peninsula, along with the Straits Settlements, was called British Malaya by Arnold Wright in 1907,13 and was being officially so designated by 1921 as evident from the opening paragraph in that year’s census.14 For convenience, that designation is used here. In the Straits and FMS, property surveys were carried out by government surveyors, rather than by civil servants appointed as settlement officers as was the case in Punjab.15 Western systems of land distribution and tenure and the establishment of huge rubber plantations on the peninsula had unsettling effects on traditional agriculture, usurped traditional feudal systems of land tenure and had profound effects on the landscape.16 There were no direct taxes in the Straits Settlements, the chief sources of revenue being, for most of the period 1881–1921, import duties and licence fees connected with the import of spirits, wine and opium, and export duties on plantation produce.17 In the Straits, as in the FMS, government revenue depended on the ‘luxuries and vices’ of the Chinese community, particular poor immigrant tin miners whose demand for opium and spirits, and their predilection for gambling, presented opportunities for extracting revenue from a transitory and landless class through a system of taxes, licences and import duties. Such dependence lessened as income became enhanced by export duties on increased volumes of tin, a resource of which Malaya possessed two-thirds of the world’s supply, as well as on rubber and, to a lesser extent, on land revenues derived mainly from European-run rubber plantations.18 All benefited from Singapore’s position as one of the [ 53 ]

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world’s greatest duty-free entrepot ports, through which the colony’s tin and rubber were shipped as well as goods being transhipped east or west.19 The rail and road systems on the peninsula developed rapidly with some 2,500 miles of metalled cart roads in the early twentieth century and a 400-mile railway line linking Singapore to a point on the coast opposite Penang. The governor and his administration were closely involved with the commercial interests of the colony: ‘the aim of government was the promotion and nurturing of trade’.20 Increasing prosperity and the use of immigrant labour, mainly labourers from southern China and Tamils from India, led to a doubling in population of the Straits Settlements from 423,384 in 1881 to 883,769 in 1921,21 and in that of British Malaya as a whole, where earlier figures are not available, from 2.68 million in 1911 to 3.36 million in 1921.22

Ceylon Remarkably, for over two thousand years Ceylon (Map 1) remained independent of its huge neighbour India, not only from Mughal dominance and that of native princes on the mainland, but also from Britain until it was invaded by that country as a result of Dutch–British hostilities during the American War of Independence and again in 1795–96 as part of the Napoleonic conflict, when the Dutch were ousted. The island was ceded to Britain as part of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. The Dutch, and before them the Portuguese, had established bases on the island but had not conquered the native kingdom. The British now proceeded to effect this conquest following the transfer of the island to the Colonial Office, and consolidated their control during several wars with the kingdom of Kandy. A number of Eurasians of Dutch and Portuguese ancestry, known as Burghers, remained on the island to add to its later multi-ethnic make-up.23 In Ceylon, where the bedrock of the economy in the later years of the nineteenth century was the export of tea grown in upland plantations, there was, in a similar situation to that in British Malaya, an intimate connection between the colonial government and the British interests who controlled this export sector.24 Tea had replaced coffee, which had failed from leaf disease in the 1870s, and this new dominant commodity, almost entirely grown by British planters, was supplemented by two other plantation crops, rubber and coconut, in which local capital and labour were much more involved, often in smallholdings. The processing and export of these products were also European-controlled. Plantations, particularly those of tea, were labour intensive, leading to the immigration – seasonal at first but becoming more permanent – of Indian Tamils. There was thus a mixture of races: Sinhalese, Ceylon [ 54 ]

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Tamils, Indian Tamils, Burghers and British, with some minor groupings including aboriginals. It was generally agreed that the quality of the colony’s maps were poor, and no cadastral survey was undertaken, factors of which the importance will be explained when such details are discussed in relation to Punjab.25 Notwithstanding British land policy which favoured plantation interests and led to what amounted to an enclosure movement that caused landlessness and social discontent among some peasants, Ceylon’s standard of living was well ahead of that of South Asia and most of South-East Asia in the period 1880 to 1910.26 The colony, according to Perrera writing in 1903, was: ‘always regarded as far in advance of her big neighbour [India] from an educational, social and material point of view’.27 A rail and road network was developed. By the end of the nineteenth century 2,500 miles of road had been built and 562 miles of railway, while 1,600 miles of telegraph wires were strung. The cultivated area had increased to 2.6 million acres, twice that of 1875. Schools and hospitals were built.28 Unlike the situation in Punjab where the main source of revenue was land taxes and where this fact determined much of government policy and the relationship between individual Civilians and the people of Punjab,29 in Ceylon there was no land tax except for small charges on paddy, the principal sources of Ceylon’s revenue being railway charges, customs, a salt monopoly, land sales, harbour dues and, for a period, government-run pearl fisheries. Interestingly, there were no imposts on tea.30 As in Malaya, increasing prosperity and immigration led to a growth in population, from 2,759,738 in 1881 to 4,504,549 in 1921.31 The prosperity of the colony was aided by governmental policy and public works overseen by a succession of governors, some of the more outstanding ones being Irish.

Government Hong Kong, Ceylon and the Straits Settlements had a standard governmental system, in which the Crown had entire control over legislation through a governor appointed by London who in turn was advised by appointed executive and legislative councils,32 and, as will be seen, over an administration run by public officers who were aided by a technical and scientific establishment. Each colony was expected to be financially self-sufficient. The governance and administration of these colonies were, then, partly modelled on the Indian system. But, naturally, there were local differences in the official cultures and in the methods of implementation. [ 55 ]

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As the empire acquired new territories, governors had to be found to oversee the implementation of Colonial Office policy; many of these as they progressed in their careers were transferred from colony to colony and several served in both Hong Kong and Ceylon, the latter being considered the ‘blue riband’ of the colonial service. One of these was Sir Henry Blake of Co. Galway (governor 1898–1903) whose family had settled in Ireland in the twelfth century. Having been Governor of Newfoundland, Bahamas and Jamaica – a not untypical career path – his time in Hong Kong was marked by a certain eccentricity and a sympathy with indigenous Chinese which provoked the hostility of the European community. He had demonstrated forcefulness in putting down local opposition to the acquisition of the New Territories, but his rule in Ceylon was unremarkable.33 This may have been due to Ceylon’s increasing prosperity and advanced state of its physical infrastructure. Though there were economic fluctuations due to variations in commodity markets, for governors there was little left to do of a challenging nature. Subdued long before Punjab, Ceylon had been pacified and properly irrigated, with most land questions being settled before Blake came on the scene.34 The great works then under way in Punjab, as described in later chapters, the tensions on that province’s north-west frontier, the sweep of later historic events there were not the stuff of a Ceylon governor’s life. Blake’s predecessors had long since brought the island to this state of quiet prosperity. One of these, Sir William Henry Gregory of Coole Park, Co. Galway who was governor from 1872 to 1876 (and whose second marriage would be to Isabelle Augusta Persse, also of Co. Galway, who would acquire fame in connection with the Irish literary revival), had considerable impact on the island’s development, especially in the case of irrigation in which his efforts were probably the most beneficial of any of Ceylon’s nineteenth-century governors, both Wright and The Times obituary writer describing him as the ‘ideal’ governor.35 Perrera says of him, ‘When the governor left in 1877 there were few rivers of any importance left unbridged, a large extent of previously uncropped country had been opened up for cultivation and an impetus given to Sinhalese and European colonists in the extension of cultivation, especially of new products.’36 Foremost among these new products was tea. Gregory was one of those Irish landowners who had considerably encumbered estates and, as MP for Co. Galway prior to his sojourn in Ceylon, was a supporter of ‘full tenant rights’ and of Gladstone’s 1870 Land Act, despite his advocacy of a retrograde measure depriving smallholders of relief during the great famine of the 1840s. He was also a determined opponent of Irish Home Rule and considered himself to be English.37 In Ceylon there [ 56 ]

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is no evidence that he had a particular interest in the tenant rights of Sinhalese, and his efforts at social reform met with limited success, although his Irish and parliamentary experience in these matters must have informed his outlook. However, he demonstrated high administrative ability, and spent more money on irrigation works and transport than any other governor, asserting that the healthy state of the island’s finance enabled him to do so;38 he also took a keen interest in the culture and antiquities of Ceylon and was a successful and popular governor.39 In regard to irrigation and the restoration of ancient ‘tanks’ (water reservoirs), de Silva claims that ‘Gregory’s administration was indeed the high-water mark of British achievement in irrigation activity in the nineteenth century’.40 Before Gregory, Charles Justin McCarthy from Cork had been governor from 1860 to 1863,41 followed soon afterwards by Hercules Robinson (later first Baron Rosmead) from Westmeath. Robinson had also experienced the Irish famine, in his case as an administrator, and his experience served him well in his wider imperial role as governor of Hong Kong and Ceylon. His Irish background had also given him an insight into the functioning of oligarchies of powerful landowners and this influenced his modernising paternalistic approach to the Sinhalese, often against the wishes of the small settler elite.42 He served at a critical stage in the island’s history and did much to establish the modern infrastructure and civil service professionalism.43 Beneath the governor was a colonial secretary, a post filled in the early 1880s by G. T. M. O’Brien, and other centrally based staff, while out in the field were nine government agents each of whom fulfilled in his individual province a role similar to a deputy commissioner (district officer) in Punjab. A number of Irishmen served at this level, including the very able Francis Robert Ellis from Tyrone, who for a time in 1897 administered two provinces simultaneously.44

Malaya Sir Andrew Clarke, of a Scots family settled in Ireland, was brought up in Donegal and educated partly at Portora School in Enniskillen. He was appointed Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1873 and succeeded in reducing piracy as well as persuading several native Sultans to accept British ‘advisers’ – an important precedent – before his tenure was cut short as he was called to serve in India.45 Hercules Robinson’s brother, William Cleaver Francis Robinson, was governor from 1877 to 1879. Both of these Irish governors had served as governors in other colonies. Unlike their counterparts in Ceylon, Straits governors, in their capacity as High Commissioners to the Malay states, had to deal with [ 57 ]

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unwelcome foreign interests, fending off French influence and Siamese infringements across the borders of contiguous Malay states.46 There is no evidence that their Irish experiences had any impact on their work in the Straits Settlements or in the Malay states. Each of the states came to have its own administration under a Resident served by magistrate-collectors (district officers) and their staffs, while the Governor, to whom the Chief Resident was responsible, ran the Straits Settlements with its own administrative structure.47

The civil service Like his counterparts in Punjab, a public servant in one of the eastern colonies was ‘just a sojourner, [whose] one object is to make his fortune and take it home before his health breaks’.48 Although their early histories are different it is sensible, because of their common method of recruitment and other shared characteristics which will be elucidated, to consider together the civil services of Ceylon and the Straits Settlements, and to a lesser degree those of Hong Kong and the FMS. On taking over responsibility for Ceylon in 1802 the Colonial Office established a separate civil service which underwent a gradual process of modification similar to that which had occurred in India until, in 1856, the Colonial Office instituted competitive examinations for most candidates. From 1882 recruits took part in common open examinations with those wishing to join the Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements’ services. Local candidates were then virtually excluded, but in 1891 a lower division of the civil service was opened to local recruits who had to pass a locally held competitive examination which attracted Burghers (mainly descendants on the male side of Dutch and Portuguese settlers) and educated Sinhalese.49 At first, during its time as a minor appendage of Bengal, the Straits Settlements’ civil servants followed normal ICS practice but this changed somewhat in 1856 with the introduction of competitive examinations for nominees of the Secretary of State. Two years after the colony came under the aegis of the Colonial Office in 1867, open competitive examinations replaced the system of nominations, and in 1882, prospective civil servants were required to take part in the combined examination for all eastern ‘cadetships’ (civil service recruits) as mentioned above.50 From 1895 onward, when the services of the Straits and the FMS became one legal entity, they were required to take a common examination with applicants for the Home and Indian civil services, which fact proves useful for purposes of comparison.51 Indeed, the results of these common examinations not only determined the career choice of successful candidates, they also pointed to [ 58 ]

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essential differences in the requirements of the Colonial Office when compared with those of the India Office and thus with those of the Punjab administration. The colonial service required a high, though not necessarily the highest, intellectual standard in its recruits.52 What it required were ‘good physical specimens who were gentlemen – men of character and honour, and reasonable intelligence’ rather than men of outstanding brilliance.53 Candidates for the ICS and the eastern cadetships were the only prospective colonial civil servants to gain entry through competitive examinations. Those with the best examination results tended to opt for the Home Civil Service, the ICS and then for eastern cadetships in that order, with Ceylon being the preferred choice among the three eastern colonies. It has already been established that, of the ICS recruits, the brightest inclined to postings in Punjab. However these were the norms, not the invariable practice, as can be noted in the case of Thomas Reid, of Clongowes Wood and QCC, who, in 1905, came sixty-third out of eighty-three successful examinees and chose an eastern cadetship and a place in the Ceylon Civil Service, while another Irishman who came seventieth was admitted to the ICS.54 Almost all these men were of similar backgrounds; the ICS also sought ‘gentlemen’, preferably Oxbridge graduates, and expected robust health. Heussler points out that the difference in examination scores between ICS and eastern cadet candidates were in many cases very small. Both Ceylon and the Straits had to deal with a legacy of nominated appointees, as had Punjab. Once these had gradually been phased out, new recruits increasingly were graduates, principally from Oxford, Cambridge and TCD. These came from the same middle-class world of clergymen, army officers and schoolteachers, with a lesser representation of businessmen and the professions, as did their ICS colleagues.55 In 1911, of eighty-eight officers of grades I to V in the Ceylon service (those categories confined to men who had passed the London examination), 8 per cent of the total were identifiably Irish, consisting of four TCD graduates and three RUI (college unspecified).56 The Punjab figures for the same year were 173 officers of whom 5.7 per cent were Irish. If military officers and Indians are excluded the Punjab figure was 7.1 per cent.57 Comparable figures for the Straits Settlements are difficult to isolate but the figures for the combined Malayan service – that is for the Straits, FMS and unfederated states together – between 1895 and 1915 show that 257 Europeans were recruited with an average of 10 per cent of these being graduates of TCD, fading to just 3 per cent in the following decade,58 due, perhaps, to an influx of ex-servicemen following the First World War. In a similar period, from 1891 to 1911, there were [ 59 ]

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approximately 160 recruits to Punjab if army officers transferred to ICS from within India are excluded. Of these 160, 7 individuals or 4.3 per cent were Irish.59 Up to 1895 there had been an average annual intake of just 4 to the combined Straits and the Malay states.60 The salaries reflected the standing of the eastern cadets in relation to the ICS Civilians, those of the latter being from 35 to 100 per cent higher than their closest counterparts in Ceylon and the Straits Settlements. Precise comparisons are not possible due to different grading systems but it is possible to say that recruits to the Straits Settlements and the federated states earned the equivalent of £350–£480 in 1903, which compares with a starting salary of about £340 for recruits to the ICS in Punjab in 1901. Thereafter the Punjab Civilian’s salary rose more quickly and to greater amounts, with a deputy commissioner earning more than £1,800 p.a. compared to the £900–£1,020 of a Class II civil servant in the Straits and FMS. Ceylon rates were lower and Hong Kong’s lower still. The highest ranking Straits Settlement civil servant received £1,700 p.a., the highest FMS man £2,260; a number of Punjab Civilians earned more than this with one, the financial commissioner, getting £2,800. The highest Ceylon Civil Service salary was £1,700. Pensions for the Far Eastern cadets were also lower.61 Nonetheless, the salaries were generous, with commensurate pensions, and were obviously attractive to Irish graduates who did not have the same home employment opportunities as those available in England. Competition was keen, with the number of candidates sometimes being ten times the number of places.62 Serving populations much less than India there were, naturally, fewer positions available in the civil services of the smaller colonies. But when a comparison is made between the combined Malayan services (they were to be designated the Malayan Civil Service in 1920) and the Punjab Commission it is seen that the former were unduly overstaffed. In 1915 there were 236 officers when the population of British Malaya was approximately three million. (Earlier comparisons are impossible because of lack of censuses in the unfederated states.) This compares with approximately 175 ICS members in Punjab for a population in the region of twenty-four million people.63 Ceylon, with its eighty-eight officers for a population of 4.1 million in 1911, had more sensible proportions than did Malaya but still compared unfavourably with Punjab.64 The reasons for this imbalance are complex. Among these were the efficient service provided by native junior staff in India, and in Ceylon where Burghers filled many of junior posts, by the greater and increasing prosperity of Malaya which provided the revenue necessary for generous recruitment,65 and presumably by the splintered nature of the service there, where a certain minimum [ 60 ]

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staffing level had to be provided in each state. Although the British in Malaya developed a liking for and good relations with native Malays, there was opposition to their being admitted to the higher grades of the civil service, particularly in cases of mixed blood. The Malayan Administrative Service was established locally, theoretically allowing Malays to advance through this to the senior service but so slow were promotions available that by the time an able Malay approached higher grades he was too old to qualify. No Malay was appointed from London, to the extent that between 1904 and 1945 there was not a single Malay appointed from there to the Malayan service, whereas in Ceylon Burghers and Sinhalese were slowly but steadily assimilated through a junior service established in 1891 so that by 1938 no more European recruits were taken on.66 In India, beginning in the years of the First World War, the number of Indians admitted to the ICS increased dramatically despite earlier opposition on the part of European Civilians, the summer intake of 1919 being composed entirely of Indians.67 In 1921 there were at least six Indian deputy commissioners in Punjab with several others in the junior ranks and in the district courts.68 It might be gathered from the foregoing that there was an element of racial discrimination and snobbery present among the British official community in the Straits Settlements and the FMS, despite the avowed liking of the British for the native Malays. (There was little such feeling for the more numerous Chinese.) This is confirmed by various writers who comment on the clubby and exclusive atmosphere of official Malaya where British planters, who earned the revenues which kept the colony going, were regarded as socially inferior, let alone the representatives of other races. The planters, nevertheless, were powerful groups who dominated society in the larger towns.69 Hill stations were yet to be established in Malaya but the preciousness and pretentions of these features of British society in India and Ceylon already existed in Malayan tennis clubs and shooting parties, in a Somerset Maugham world of sundowners and rattan chairs.70 It is difficult to gauge the relative degrees of British aloofness and exclusivity as manifested in the different colonies but it can be argued, as de Vere Allen does in relation to British Malaya, that British society, particularly that of the officials and their families, reflected the prejudices and values of a small sector of British society. These attitudes derived from a few public schools and Oxbridge,71 but, as described by novelists such as E. M. Forster72 and George Orwell73 as well as historians such as Cook,74social life in the colonies was a distorted and out-of-date version of the class-layered Victorian and Edwardian society then extant in England. As in India, the degree to which the young Irish recruit in Colombo or Singapore allowed himself to be more than superficially [ 61 ]

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influenced by the mores of this narrowly based community would depend to some extent on opportunities to mix with Irish people of his own background. In 1911, the only year in which comprehensive comparable data is available, there were 7,592 Europeans in Ceylon, of whom 4,317 were British with 347 of these, or 8 per cent, being Irish. The principal occupations of Europeans were connected with the plantation economy where they served as owners, managers and senior staff.75 Figures for the Straits Settlements show the corresponding figures to be 8,149 Europeans, 4,266 British and an included percentage of these British being 6 per cent Irish, that is 254 persons, more than half of these Irish being in Singapore.76 Figures for Punjab are not strictly comparable because of the Irish element in the strong military presence there; the Irish made up 13.8 per cent of the British population there in 1911. (see Table 1, chapter 4). Without access to personal or other contemporary accounts it is impossible to say how the Irish adapted to the prevailing social outlook in Malaya and Ceylon. Beyond the superficial, when it came to an Irish administrator’s official attitudes and actions, there is no evidence that these were affected in any way by the purely Irish elements of the backgrounds of civil servants in British Malaya or Ceylon, although the Irish influences which had acted on Irish governors in the latter colony prior to 1881 should be noted.

Medicine and engineering Doctors and engineers were appointed by the Crown Agents on behalf of the Colonial Office and were also locally appointed in the individual colonies so the extraction of accurate figures is difficult. By 1909, in Ceylon almost all medical vacancies were filled locally,77 and in 1911, of the sixty-four listed personnel in the civil medical department, there was only one identifiable Irishman. In Malaya in 1906 there were twentytwo qualified medical men from the United Kingdom,78 of which at least two were Irish, one an RUI graduate, the other from TCD.79 Irish engineers in Ceylon, including a number of TCD graduates, worked as district and provincial engineers with responsibility for roads and irrigation, while others were employed by Ceylon Railways, a state-run project which, in 1921, had 196 European employees including some Irish graduates.80 In Malaya, where the railways were built under contract to the Crown Agents in London, records of those employed are not available, but the system had afterwards to be maintained as were the roads and irrigation projects. Each state had a state engineer and staff. [ 62 ]

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Comment The main difference between the experiences of administrators in Punjab and those in Ceylon and British Malaya was to do with land use. This will be discussed further in the final chapter when the reader has had the chance to gauge the Irish response to conditions in Punjab. There was no exact equivalent, in the two smaller colonies, of the lieut.-governor of Punjab. Although the colonial governors were not promoted from the civil service, as was the Punjab pro-consul, their role was sufficiently similar to necessitate inclusion of Irish holders of governorships in any comparative examination of the different entities. Unlike their Punjab contemporaries, the administrators in the smaller colonies were committed to implementing policies which were designed to serve mainly the purposes of European planting communities. Land distribution, irrigation projects, rail and road construction would also serve the indigenes and immigrant communities from China and southern India, but these state projects were there to facilitate the transport of plantation and mining products. Expenditure on such projects reflected the importance of revenues derived from exports of plantation and mining yields, and from imports and exports of opium and spirits. Socially, despite the aloofness of the official community, the presence of planters and the outlets for recreation provided by relatively convenient and cosmopolitan Singapore and on the pleasant island of Penang, along with well-developed and easily reached hill stations, such as Nuwara Eliya, in Ceylon, made for very different worlds from those experienced by many isolated Civilians in the plains of Punjab. Even in Simla, social contact was unlikely with businessmen and planters so far away from their workaday environments. So it can be said that Irish public servants in British Malaya and in Ceylon, particularly those based in larger towns or near hill stations, were more likely than their counterparts in Punjab to come under the influence of an exclusive and commercially minded British society. What effect this may have had needs more study. It follows, then, that although the Irish members of the Indian, Ceylon and Malayan services, both administrative and technical, came from similar educational and social backgrounds, their duties and degrees of responsibility varied considerably. Far Eastern cadets in the other two civil services were generally not as academically gifted as their counterparts in the ICS; but the differences between them in an examination designed to suit Oxbridge graduates was not very great, so their reactions to local conditions were not due to intellectual or other human differences but to the variation in these conditions. The land [ 63 ]

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issues in Punjab, as will be seen in chapters 9 to 11, gave Irish Civilians both the opportunity and predisposition inspired by their experience of similar Irish issues to use their knowledge to good effect. The assistance given to them by skilled Indian junior staff enabled them to devote more effort to that task. Few such issues arose in the cases of Ceylon and Malaya, especially in the tax-free Straits Settlements. In the former colony such factors had been dealt with earlier in the nineteenth century, notably by Irish governors, and in the latter place administrators found that much of their time was occupied by tasks which in other jurisdictions would be the work of juniors. So it appears on the evidence that Irishness did not play such a significant role in the forming and implementation of government policy in the Straits Settlements and British Malaya, nor in Ceylon, at this particular time, as it did in Punjab.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Morris, Hong Kong, p. 205; Pax Britannica, p. 263. www.1911 encyclopedia.org/British Empire (accessed 5 April 2010). Ibid.; Census of India 1901, the Punjab, its feudatories and the North-West Frontier Province. R. K. Webb, Modern England from the eighteenth century to the present (2nd edn, London, 1980), p. 359. John Keay, The honourable company: a history of the English East India Company (London, 1993), pp. 361–456. Denis Judd, Empire (London, 2001), pp. 141–2. Robert Heussler, British rule in Malaya (Oxford, 1981), p. 28. Keay, India: a history, p. 460; Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 239–45. Morris, Hong Kong, p. 96. Edward E. Perrera, ‘Ceylon under British rule’, in Arnold Wright, Twentieth century impressions of Ceylon (London, 1907), p. 3. Keay, The honourable company, pp. 361–456; Heussler, British rule in Malaya, pp. 2–13. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, pp. 8–18. Arnold Wright, Twentieth century impressions of British Malaya (London, 1907). Census of British Malaya, 1921. Dept. of Survey and mapping Malaysia, Cadastral template: field data www. cadastastraltemplate.org/fielddata/a4.htm (accessed 11 April 2010). Heussler, British rule in Malaya, pp. 1–18; Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 75. Wright, Twentieth century impressions of British Malaya, pp. 137–51. John G. Butcher, ‘The demise of the revenue farm system in the Federated Malay States’, Modern Asian Studies, xvii:3 (1983), pp. 387–412. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, pp. 1–18. Ibid., p. 40. Census of Straits Settlements; Census of British Malaya, 1921. Census of British Malaya 1921. Perrera, ‘Ceylon under British rule’, pp. 60–78. K. M. de Silva, A history of Sri Lanka (New Delhi, 2005), p. 375. Ibid., p. 363; Peter Collier, The colonial survey committee and the mapping of Africa (International Symposium, Utrecht, Aug. 2006), p. 3, www.cahistcarto.org/ pdf/Collier_Peter_ _the ColonialSurveycommittee.pdf (accessed 11 April 2010).

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26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

de Silva, A history of Sri Lanka, pp. 351–86. Perrera, ‘Ceylon under British rule’, p. 83. Ibid., pp. 60–84. See chapters 6 and 7. Wright, Twentieth century impressions of Ceylon, p. 215. Census of Ceylon, 1881, 1921. Morris, Hong Kong, p. 201. de Silva, A history of Sri Lanka, p. 385. Perrera, ‘Ceylon under British rule’, pp. 60–84. Ibid.; The Times, 7 April 1893. Perrera, ‘Ceylon under British rule’, p. 78. William H. Gregory, Sir William Henry Gregory: an autobiography (London, 1894), p. 271. Ibid., p. 341. C. L. Falkiner, ‘Gregory, Sir William Henry (1816–1892)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11476 (accessed 18 Feb. 2010). de Silva, A history of Sri Lanka, p. 385. Lennox A. Mills, Ceylon under British rule, 1795–1932 (Abingdon, 1964), p. 90. Deryek Schreuder, ‘Robinson, Hercules George Robert (1824–1897)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/23844 (accessed 13 April 2010). Ibid. J. R. Toussaint, Annals of the Ceylon Civil Service (Colombo, 1935), p. 150. A. G. L. Shaw, ‘Clarke, Sir Andrew (1824–1902)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23844 (accessed 13 April 2010). J. de Vere Allen, ‘Malayan Civil Service, 1874–1941: colonial bureaucracy/Malayan elite’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, xi:2 (1970), pp. 149–78. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 100. The Times, 3 March 1888. Toussaint, Annals of the Ceylon Civil Service, pp. 9–18. Anthony Kirk-Greene, On Crown service (London, 1999), pp. 6–14. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 112. Robert Heussler, Yesterday’s rulers (Syracuse, NY, 1963). Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 31. Oxford Magazine, supplement, xxiv:3 (1905). Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 31. Ceylon civil list 1911 (Colombo, 1911). India Office list 1911, Punjab. de Vere Allen, ‘Malayan Civil Service’, pp. 160–5. India list civil and military 1891, Punjab; India list and India Office list 1901, Punjab; India Office list 1911, Punjab. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 126. India Office list 1901, Punjab; de Vere Allen, ‘Malayan Civil Service’, p. 162. Lawrence Lowell, Colonial civil service: the selection and training of colonial officials in England, Holland and France (New York, 1900), pp. 69–76. India Office list 1911 and 1921, Punjab. Census of Ceylon, 1911 and Ceylon civil list 1911. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 32; de Vere Allen ‘Malayan Civil Service, pp. 159–72; Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 46. de Vere Allen, ‘Malayan Civil Service’, pp. 160–72. Oxford Magazine, xxxvi:3 (1917); xxxvii:3 (1918); xxxviii:2 (1919); India Office list 1921. India Office list 1921. Heussler, British rule in Malaya, p. 32. Jan Morris, Farewell the trumpets: an imperial retreat (London, 1998), pp. 372–3; de

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71 72 73

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74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Vere Allen, ‘Malayan Civil Service’, pp 149–78; Wright, Twentieth century impressions of British Malaya, pp. 195–212. de Vere Allen, Malayan Civil Service, p. 159. E. M. Forster, A passage to India (Harmondsworth, 1980), passim. George Orwell, Burmese days (Penguin anthology, complete novels of George Orwell, Harmondsworth, 1983), passim. Scott B. Cook, Colonial encounters in the age of imperialism (New York, 1997), pp. 124–32. Census of Ceylon, 1911. Census of British Malaya, 1911. British Medical Journal, ii:2541 (4 Sep. 1909). H. Conway Belfield, Handbook of the Federated Malay States (London, 1906), p. 19. Rosemary Lim, An Irish tour of Singapore (Singapore, 2008) p. 1. Census of Ceylon, 1921; Wright, Twentieth century impressions of Ceylon, pp. 154–215.

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P AR T II

The frontier

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Waziristan: warriors and administrators

The north-western marches of the Indian subcontinent, as this chapter will illustrate, are among the world’s most fateful and turbulent borderlands. A chain of mountains with peaks up to 16,000 feet in height stretches from the even higher permanent snows of the Hindu Kush in the north to the deserts of Baluchistan in the south, and forms a barrier between South and Central Asia. In the fastnesses of its deep valleys a warlike people has for hundreds of years fought for its tribal areas and its faith against allcomers – Mughal, Sikhs, the British Raj, the Russian army and, in the early twenty-first century, the United Nations and Pakistani forces.1 Great armies have traversed its passes to plunder the wealth of India or to acquire its sources; Alexander’s Macedonians, Mongols, Turks, Babur the first of the Mughals, have all fought their way through its rugged defiles,2 or, in recognition of the difficulty of forcing the passes, have paid off the hill tribes.3 Going the other way, the armies of British India marched twice into Afghanistan to suffer some of their greatest defeats.4 The twin and associated problems posed by the Afghan state and the hill tribes were to make demands on the resources of British India, and to occupy the minds of British statesmen, throughout the period 1881–1921.5 Irishmen helped to shape the history of the region during this time and this chapter is devoted to their efforts and experiences. To appreciate the work of the Irish on the frontier, and the possible difference in their approach to that of their colleagues, it is necessary to describe that which they served. British preoccupation with the area was due to a fear, albeit sometimes politically nurtured, of a Russian invasion through Afghanistan. Both the First and Second Afghan Wars were fought when British India invaded Afghanistan in order to counter a perceived Russian threat of incursions into Afghanistan as a prelude to an attack on India. The Second Afghan War, which ended just before the study period, had its origins in a situation when Russia thought to [ 69 ]

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gain advantage at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which followed from a thwarted czarist thrust into the Balkans, by diverting British attention through sending a delegation to Kabul.6 Conservative leaders in Britain saw the situation in reverse and contemplated the exerting of pressure on Russia in Europe by threatening its Central Asian territories through Afghanistan.7 In effect, both sides used Afghanistan as a surrogate focus of pressure in their Balkan and Middle-Eastern power struggle. Thus, Afghan affairs were of direct, urgent importance to the Punjab government which had responsibility, during most of the study period, for the frontier region, and to some of its Irish servants who played significant roles in border and trans-border matters. Indeed, until 1886, the Punjab authorities exercised direct control over a segment of the army known as the Punjab Frontier Force which, as its name indicates, had been specially charged with defence of the frontier.8 When the Punjab government took over from the Sikhs it realised that direct control over the tribes, and application of normal laws and revenuegathering within what was then known as Yaghistan – the land of rebels – would be impracticable, so its direct writ stopped short at a line which approximated that of the former limit of Sikh control and ran more or less along the fringe of the foothills.9 This was the administrative boundary, up to which the normal laws of Punjab applied; in the tribal area beyond this, various means of indirect and even, on occasion, direct control were tried and the story of these attempts, and Irish participation in them, will run as a thread throughout this chapter. The exercise of such control, and the form it would take, was of much more than local concern; it was influenced by the international tensions mentioned above.

The Pathans The tribes living in the frontier area for which Punjab was responsible were called, by the British, Pathans – more properly Pukhtuns or Pushtuns depending on the vagaries of dialect – who were made up of a number of groups, Waziris, Mahsuds, Yusufzai and others whose names were to become well known to generations of British, Irish and Indian soldiers,10 and more recently to United Nations forces and those of their own country, Pakistan.11 These groups occupied an area roughly 25,000 square miles in extent but until 1893 this was not well defined as the border with Afghanistan had not, until then, been established.12 Russophobia prompted consideration, on the part of the authorities in Simla and Calcutta, of the best defensive line against a czarist threat. It was decided to adopt neither the radical forward policy of those who advocated a Kabul–Kandahar line inside Afghanistan, nor a defensive [ 70 ]

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line set well back along the Indus. The former was dismissed, especially after the Second Afghan War, because of the logistical difficulties posed by the passes though which such a line would be supplied, and because of the presence of bellicose tribes in the rear; the latter was not chosen because of the dictum that mountains make better defences than rivers and because the eastern (Indian) bank was overlooked by the western one. The moderate forward policy of those who wished to see a defensive line cutting though tribal territory along what was to become the eventual Afghan–Indian boundary, and ultimately the Afghan–Pakistan border, was strongly advocated by General Roberts and was taken up during the viceroyalty of Lord Lansdowne. Opinions in political and military circles seesawed, throughout most of the 1881 to 1921 period, between adoption of the moderate forward policy – this was elevated to Forward Policy – and a stance somewhere behind the administrative boundary.13 On occasion, when tensions heightened, influential Irishmen such as Roberts, his successor George White and Viceroy Lansdowne advocated an advance, once again, into Afghanistan.14 But whichever policy held sway, the Pathans could not be ignored. Numbering up to 200,000 fighting men of fierce disposition,15 and possessed of superior fighting qualities and hillcraft, they could be expected to resist incursions associated with the Forward Policy and, if left to themselves, they would resort to their traditional custom of raiding their more peaceful neighbours in the administered territories. There was also the fear that they might be subverted by outside (Russian) influences and serve in support of a possible invasion. There being no definite frontier until 1893, it was difficult to know to whom the tribes owed allegiance, and the Afghan Amir was not averse to stirring up anti-British feeling. The likely cost of subduing the tribes and bringing them under direct administrative control of British India was deemed to be too great.16 It was only the fissile nature of the tribes and their tendency towards internecine warfare that allowed any kind of control to be contemplated.17 But some sort of control was deemed necessary, and it was in this connection that Richard Isaac Bruce from Co. Cork made his name.

Bruce, butcher and bolt According to his private papers,18 and the autobiographical account of his life on the frontier, The forward policy and its results,19 Bruce, who was born in 1840, was the son of Jonathan Bruce, JP, of Miltown Castle near Bandon and Anne, daughter of a Major Maxwell. The Bruces were solidly Anglican Anglo-Irish with lands in Miltown Castle, Ashill and [ 71 ]

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other parts of Cork and Limerick, and were to suffer loss of income when rents went unpaid during and after the great famine. Richard was the youngest of six sons (The Times obituary wrongly states he was the third son),20 so, due to his father’s straitened circumstances and an inability to pay for an education, it was no doubt with some relief that he accepted an appointment to the uncovenanted civil service in India, not the ICS but a junior service manned mainly by Eurasians and Indians. The appointment had been arranged for him by his brother, Reverend Robert Bruce, who was a missionary in Dera Ismael Khan in a frontier district, besides being a friend of Sir Robert Montgomery, an Ulsterman and lieut.-governor of Punjab. Having studied and passed an examination in Hindustani, Richard began as an extra assistant commissioner in May of 186321 and rose from that relatively humble post to ‘positions of great importance on the Indian Frontier’.22 Bruce says that he was used to riding since he was a child,23 a not inconsiderable factor in a vast country in which riding was considered so important that the ICS entrance examination included a riding test,24 and an accomplishment, in Bruce’s case, which was one of the admirable assets listed by a superior in recommending him for promotion.25 Not long after his appointment he was transferred to Dera Ghazi Khan near the border with the province of Sind and came under the supervision of Robert Sandeman, the deputy commissioner and one of the most influential of British frontiersmen. Bruce spent over twenty years with Sandeman, learning and applying Sandeman’s system of dealing with frontier tribes, a system quite different from the official policy of ‘masterly inactivity’ initiated by Ulster-educated John Lawrence, the first lieut.-governor of Punjab and later viceroy. Lawrence, who favoured a frontier line anchored on the Indus,26 instituted a policy, the so-called Close Border Policy,27 which consisted of leaving the frontier tribesmen to their own devices, even if they became involved in internecine war. Strict instructions prevented ICS men from stepping across the administrative boundary without express permission from Lawrence and his successors. In effect, the tribal areas became a kind of human nature reserve where the denizens were protected from outside interference. However, if the tribesmen’s raids into the plains became sufficiently serious a punitive force would be sent into the territory of the offending tribe to burn villages, and sometimes crops, before retiring to British territory, a policy which was to become notorious as ‘butcher and bolt’.28 Sandeman and Bruce, initially without permission, developed a system of cooperation with village and tribal headmen in which they employed locally raised Baluchi tribal levies to enforce territorial security and to uphold traditional laws and customs as defined by these headmen, thus ensuring that the British writ ran, albeit at one remove, throughout [ 72 ]

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their territories. A network of forts linked by roads and manned by local levies would gradually be built. This led to a form of indirect control which entailed strong and determined support of the headmen when they complied with government wishes. The policy won the approval of the Punjab government and in 1876 Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, dropped the non-intervention policy. Bruce became closely identified with the policy and he himself claimed that he had more to do with the practical execution of the Forward Policy among the tribes than any man in India.29 In 1868, Bruce was gazetted as assistant commissioner. Mason claims that this unusual, if not unprecedented promotion from uncovenanted ranks to membership of the Punjab Commission was due to Bruce’s marriage to his boss’s daughter,30 but, according to Bruce’s own account, he married a Miss Webb, an Irishwoman from Cork, in a Kinsale church almost three years after his promotion.31 There is no record of an ICS man called Webb in the north-west at this time. In 1877 Sandeman was gazetted as the Viceroy’s agent in Baluchistan.32 At the same time Bruce was appointed as political agent, first class, and became responsible, through Sandeman, to the higher authority of the Indian government rather than to the Punjab government for the next eleven years. (The Indian Political Service, to which he now belonged, was the Viceroy’s diplomatic corps. It served in frontier areas, Baluchistan and in the princely states.)33 Remarking on what it called Bruce’s remarkable career, the Tribune, a Lahore-based Indian newspaper, said that he was the solitary example in India of an uncovenanted officer rising to this level.34 Bruce says that he was the first man on the frontier to study the Baluchi language, and it is a fact that he wrote a manual of the language, A Manual and Vocabulary of the Biluchi dialect, published by the Punjabi government in 1875.35 He planned and laid out the central principal streets of what was to become the city of Quetta.36 Bruce endured the bouts of illness which commonly befell Civilians in unhealthy postings,37 and frequently suffered from malaria.38 His wife almost died of cholera,39 and he had, at one stage, to undergo that scourge of the British in India, the necessity of leaving his children, supervised by their mother, to be educated in England.40 His involvement in many minor and major skirmishes with various tribal groups between 1880 and 1885 typified that of so many civil servants in the north-west who frequently faced dangers more readily associated with their army colleagues.41 He had several furloughs which he spent in Ireland, on one of which, in 1881, he had much contact with Sandeman, whose sister had a cottage in Ardmore in Waterford, and where Sandeman met his future second wife, a lady from Co. Meath. [ 73 ]

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Sandeman and Bruce used to meet at the Co. Cork Club to talk about their hopes and plans for India.42 At the time Ireland was in the throes of widespread rural agitation; Gladstone’s Land Act of 1881 must have been a topical subject of conversation, and there had recently been a recurrence of famine conditions in the west.43 There is no mention in Bruce’s account, in his papers or in The Forward Policy, of any of this or an indication that such events had any bearing on their life in India, a life which included adjudication in land disputes (see chapter 8).

Dufferin and a ‘sensual savage brute’ In 1885, when it seemed that war with Russia was imminent, Bruce began to gather supplies for troops who might have to move through his district, but the crisis was averted, at least in part, by decisions taken at a meeting in the Punjab frontier area between the Irish Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, and the Afghan Amir who had come into power some six years previously following the Second Afghan War. Dufferin, a landlord with property in Co. Down, had suffered the fate of so many of his class in Ireland after the great famine and had to sell off two-thirds of his large estate to meet mounting debts.44 After Eton and Oxford, appointments to ambassadorships in Constantinople and St Petersburg, and a spell as governor-general of Canada, had earned him a reputation as a somewhat indolent but amiable diplomat. His acceptance of the offer to become viceroy of India was, in part, like his readiness to accept other foreign postings, a matter of financial necessity.45 He arrived in India in December 1884 and found himself immediately embroiled in the international tensions associated with recent czarist moves on the ill-defined Russo-Afghan border. In its remarkable and inexorable expansion into Central Asia over the course of the previous thirty years, imperial Russia had now reached the north-western border of Afghanistan just south of Merv, thus inducing, punsters said, acute ‘mervousness’46 in the Indian administration. Despite an agreement to set up a joint Anglo-Russian border commission to settle the poorly defined border, ambitious Russian generals advanced on Pandjeh, an oasis which both Afghanistan and Britain regarded as Afghan territory. World attention centred on this remote place as a force of 25,000 men was mobilised in India in preparation for an advance to Quetta47 and the Royal Navy prepared for action against Russia in the North Pacific. Dufferin met the Amir, Abdur Rahman (described by Mortimer Durand as ‘a sensual brutal savage – a sort of Afghan Henry the VIIIth’),48 in the Punjab town of Rawalpindi in March 1885 as news came in that Russian forces had taken Pandjeh, killing many of its Afghan garrison.49 [ 74 ]

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Dufferin was to remark later: ‘my interview with the Amir . . . prevented a war which would certainly have broken out between England and Russia in connection with the Pandjeh affair had he not been in my camp when that sinister event occurred’.50 This may be an exaggerated claim but the fact remains that Abdur Rahman remained calm and accepted the loss of Pandjeh in return for Russian agreement not to take the more important Zulfiqar Pass. If the meeting in Punjab had not been arranged, if a less emollient and tactful man than Dufferin had represented British India’s interests, and had failed to be sensitive to the Amir’s amour propre and sense of Afghanistan’s dignity, the outcome could have been disastrous. Perhaps it helped that Dufferin had an ex-ambassador’s knowledge of Russia. That country, aware of how close it had come to a war it did not want, and of British determination to set a limit on its encroachment, drew back from a proposed advance on the town of Herat and instructed its representatives to proceed with the joint border commission. There were no further incursions across that frontier until the Soviet invasion of 1979.51 Whereas Dufferin’s intimate experience of Irish agrarian matters and a sound knowledge of Irish politics were of considerable influence in his approach to land settlements and politics in India, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, there is no indication that his Irish experiences were of any assistance in his dealings with the exotic and rather savage Amir.

Bruce, King and the Gomal Pass Bruce was transferred back to a position in the Punjab Commission where he became deputy commissioner in Dera Ismael Khan in April 1888, with a determination to apply Sandeman’s methods, as had been applied to Baluchis, to the reputedly fiercer Pathan tribes, particularly the Wazirs and Mahsuds, which occupied the adjacent hills. It is salutary to narrate, albeit somewhat repetitively, some of the encounters Bruce, and later his Irish assistant, L. W. King, had with the several tribes for whom they were responsible. These encounters exemplify the frequent experiences of frontier officers along with dangers and hardships usually associated with soldierly duties, besides indicating the need for the possession of certain military skills. Bruce professed to see little difference between the Waziris, who now came within his ambit, and the Baluchis who had responded so positively to Sandeman’s endeavours. Contrary to the accepted common belief, then and later, among his colleagues, he felt that the so-called democratic tendencies of the Waziris, which made them unwilling to listen to leaders, was a result of the British practice of bypassing established hereditary leaders.52 He insisted that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the [ 75 ]

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1

Tochi Pass

Mahsuds, one of the borderland’s fiercest tribes, were not all brigands and rebels, that many were hardworking and skilled farmers and craftsmen.53 He also believed that it was unfair and counterproductive to impose land-revenue demands on a tribe without first pacifying its area to the extent that cultivators felt secure and protected from depredation by their neighbouring tribes. These tenets were his guiding influences throughout the rest of his career and into his retirement in London when he was still writing to newspapers advocating a forward policy which would achieve the twin aims of bringing peace and civilising influences to the tribal areas and of serving imperial strategic interests by securing the frontier.54 He set about meeting the maliks (headmen) of the various tribes and subgroups, and at jirgas (tribal councils) tried to confirm and strengthen their authority with the use of subsidies which they, in turn, could distribute as they saw fit. As his area shared a border with Baluchistan, he again came in contact with Sandeman and, in 1890, was persuaded to accompany him on an expedition to open the Gomal and Tochi passes (Figure 1) and to bring the people living in their vicinity and in the Zhob valley into British jurisdiction.55 On being promoted to the post of Commissioner he handed over his deputy commissionership [ 76 ]

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to Lucas White King, a newly arrived graduate of TCD from Co. Clare and, at Sandeman’s request, set about estimating the cost of recruiting tribal levies to protect the passes. Sandeman and he duly rode through the Gomal Pass while a recalcitrant section of the Pathans who opposed their incursion was subdued by a force under Antrim man Sir George White who would later become commander-in-chief in India. Bruce’s appointment in 1890 as commissioner of Derajat – which included Dera Ismael Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan – was the first post of this seniority to be given to an uncovenanted man.56 Bearing in mind the chauvinistic and bellicose nature of the Wazirs and Mahsuds, who had until then been left largely to their own devices but who would henceforth cause repeated depredation even into the twenty-first century, Bruce’s appointment as deputy commissioner and his promotion to commissioner were fateful assignments. There are some minor discrepancies between Bruce’s and King’s timing of the sequence of events pertaining to the Gomal at about this time. King’s is more likely to be accurate as he was new to his post, and therefore perhaps more impressionable, and his account is contained in letters sent home at the time.57 King writes that the Gomal had been traversed by Sandeman and Bruce several weeks before he arrived in Dera Ismael Khan on 5 October 1890 to replace Bruce as acting deputy commissioner of that district. A granddaughter describes him as being totally Irish.58 His great-grandfather, John King a successful publisher in early nineteenthcentury Dublin, had lost his business because of his involvement with the rebels of his day (presumably those connected with Robert Emmett’s abortive rebellion of 1803, as John was still a respected freeman of Dublin in 1802). Lucas White King’s father was an IMS surgeon who retired to Lansdowne Road, Dublin in 1884. When Lucas White was eight years old he was sent back home from India, where he was born, to live in Tulla, Co. Clare under the care of his great-uncle the Rev. Robert Humphreys, later dean of Killaloe. In January 1870, when Lucas was thirteen, he was sent to school at Ennis College which was attached to the Church of Ireland, and where his grandfather had been headmaster. He did well in school and went to TCD, moving in with his parents who were then living temporarily in Dublin as his father was engaged in research there. In 1878, Lucas White King came eighth in the examination for the Indian Civil Service. He was sent to Lahore, and after a short time in Multan he spent five years in the foreign department of the government of India, working in Mysore in southern India. He spent nine months in Russia and was awarded an interpretership in the Russian language, to which he added prizes in Persian, Arabic, Baluchi, Hindustani and Pushtu. Within weeks of taking up his appointment in Dera Ismael Khan, [ 77 ]

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which he describes as the largest district in Punjab and the second most important one on the frontier, King was involved as political officer on secondment to the Indian government on an expedition into the area of the Gomal Pass which came under his jurisdiction, in order to bring to book certain members of the Shirani tribe.59 These had killed two members of another tribe who were working for the British authorities in the Zhob valley, which lay beyond the Gomal. He was accompanied by a considerable military force and wrote to his future wife: ‘If any of the tribes fight we shall burn their villages and crops.’60 At this early stage of his dealings with frontier tribesmen he had little respect for them. ‘You have no idea, sweet love, what brutes these Afghans [Pathans] are! You cannot rely on their word for a single hour.’61 It was arranged that his force would join a larger one led by Antrim-born Sir George White, which came under the political control of Sandeman and Bruce and would approach the Gomal from a different direction. King and his force of over 2,000 men were attacked as they came through another pass, but duly met White and were relieved by yet another Irishman, Major O’Moore Creagh VC, whom King describes as an old friend.62 Creagh, who would emulate White in becoming commander-in-chief, India, was also from Co. Clare. Bearing in mind that the Viceroy was still Dufferin, that the commander-in-chief at this time was Roberts – shortly to be succeeded by White – and that Dennis Fitzpatrick would soon be Punjab lieut.-governor, it is remarkable that Bruce and King do not allude to this definite Irish presence in their lives and on their particular part of the frontier. When it was felt that the tribes were subdued, the larger force, with Bruce, Sandeman and White, retired, leaving King to explore a region along the Baluchistan boundary and to fix that boundary accurately.63 King wrote that he did not like Bruce or his wife, asserting in his letters that the former was brusque, one-eyed and not beautiful, and had claimed much credit for what King had achieved in the pacification of the tribes.64 He told his fiancée that his work load was sometimes appalling and that, in the course of a fierce argument with Bruce, he had insisted on Bruce not interfering unduly in his everyday work.65 He also remarked that Bruce appeared to tire after a day in the saddle,66 a picture at variance with the one Bruce portrays of himself. King was granted two weeks’ leave to get married to Geraldine Harmsworth, a sister of the future press barons Viscounts Northcliffe and Rothermere. She had Irish connections and had met King in her cousin’s home in Dalkey. Geraldine had journeyed to India to join him and they endured the usual hardships and dangers associated with living in a frontier post.67 In 1891 King and Bruce toured together through the Gomal, escorted by tribal levies.68 King was responsible [ 78 ]

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for overseeing the work of surveyors who were preparing the way for a proposed railway through the pass.69

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Fitzpatrick, Lansdowne and the Kelly incident In the following year Bruce arranged a durbar (a public reception along the lines of an oriental court) for the new lieut.-governor of Punjab, Dublin-man Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, which was attended by the leading men of the Mahsud and Derwesh Khel tribes and was considered to be a great success by both sides.70 However, Fitzpatrick was determined to continue the policies of his predecessor, Lyall, who had opposed pushing forward towards what had been in his time an indefinite borderline.71 In this, of course, he disagreed with Bruce but there are no indications in Bruce’s papers or book, nor in Fitzpatrick’s correspondence, that there was friction between them. In fact there appears to be sufficient ambiguity in their respective positions to allow for easy compromise. For instance, until there was agreement with Afghanistan about the exact position of the line of the border Bruce could hardly move very far forward without risking confrontation with the Amir, while Fitzpatrick’s reluctance to cross the administrative boundary of the 400-mile-long strip of the frontier for which he was responsible went hand in hand with acceptance of Bruce’s more penetrative efforts in his particular section. Both very soon were caught up in a notorious series of events which tested their commitment to their respective preferred policies and which demonstrated that imperial realpolitik trumped both. In 1893, Mr Kelly, an overseer in the Public Works Department, and a sowar (Indian cavalryman) accompanying him were shot dead in Zhob, as a result, Bruce writes, of anti-British intrigues fostered by the Amir who was at the time involved in negotiations regarding delineation of the border.72 Bruce, helped by King, called together a meeting of maliks of the Mahsud and demanded the surrender of five men, the two who had shot Kelly and the cavalryman, and another three who were accused of shooting an Indian soldier. His faith in the maliks was justified when they brought him the five men who were then tried by a group of maliks selected by tribal council and found guilty. Bruce sentenced the men to terms of imprisonment. He dismissed the council and within a few weeks three of the maliks were murdered.73 As Mason points out, this was a vital moment; if Bruce’s policy was to succeed, if the rule of law was to be upheld and those loyal to the Raj were to be protected, then the murderers must be hunted down. This was also what Fitzpatrick believed, but the Indian government felt that a [ 79 ]

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punitive expedition would endanger border negotiations with the Amir and ruled against further action. This effectively negated Bruce’s work with some of the fiercest tribes on the frontier,74 although he did not accept this, then or later, and continued to argue in favour of bringing the tribes under the full administration of British India. He insisted that among border tribes where blood feuds carried on from generation to generation with a pertinacity difficult for westerners to understand, the murder of the loyal maliks imposed on the Raj a responsibility and obligation that it was bound in honour not to shirk.75 Despite the government’s decision, Bruce and King were highly commended. King’s granddaughter’s unpublished account quotes a citation from the Indian government in relation to the arrest of the killers of Mr Kelly, which says, ‘The untiring efforts of Mssrs Bruce and King, and the officers serving them are worthy of praise.’76 But, even if the Kelly incident had not occurred, Bruce would now be labouring under further difficulties because of the attitude of his chief, Fitzpatrick, however supportive the latter was of Bruce personally. Although willing to accept what had already been achieved, and to support tough action in the Kelly case, the lieut.-governor was opposed to further expansion into tribal areas.77 In this he was also at odds with Lord Lansdowne, who was the Viceroy when Fitzpatrick took over Punjab, and with the Indian government.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. vii-19; The Economist, 17–23 Oct. 2009. Ibid. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 254. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 219–54. Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 91–158. James, Raj, pp. 364–86. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 251. Menezes, Fidelity and honour, p. 22. Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 45. Olaf Caroe, The Pathans, 550 BC–AD 1957 (London, 1965), pp. xiii–xxii. The Economist, 17–23 Oct. 2009. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 254–6. Ibid., pp. 254–317. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, letter of 9 Sept. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23; Andrew Adonis, ‘Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith Petty-fifth marquess of Lansdowne (1845–1927)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31914 (accessed 11 May 2006); Lansdowne to Queen, letter of 5 Sept. 1892 (Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/1). James, Raj, p. 404. Mason, A matter of honour, pp. 334–7. Frederick Barth, Political leadership among Swat Pathans (London, 1965), pp. 119–23. Bruce papers, undated (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR F163/17).

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WAZI RI STA N : W A RRI O RS A N D A D M IN IS T R A T O R S 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Richard Isaac Bruce, The forward policy and its results (London, 1900), p. 11. The Times, 1 Jan. 1924. Bruce papers (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR F163/17). The Times, 1 Jan. 1924. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 11. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 64–5. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 41. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 256. Caroe, The Pathans, pp. 346–59. Holmes, Sahib, p. 86. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 2. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 241. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 43. T. R. Moreman, ‘Sandeman, Sir Robert Groves (1835–1892)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006),www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24616 (accessed 14 Feb. 2008). Caroe, The Pathans, p. 456. Tribune, Lahore, 19 Sept. 1894. Ibid. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 71. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 306–10. Bruce, The forward policy, pp. 42–8. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 123. Ibid., pp. 66–164. Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 410–12. Alfred Lyall, The life of the marquis of Dufferin and Ava (2 vols, London, 1905), i, 3–196. Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Blackwood, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-, first marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1862–1902)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31914 (accessed 11 May 2006). Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 253. Dufferin to Sec. of State, letter of 11 April 1885 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, IOR NEG 4325). Lycett, Rudyard Kipling, p. 107. Dufferin to Sec. of State, letter of 27 April 1885 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, IOR NEG 4325). Dufferin, speech at Calcutta 23 March 1888 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR D/107/H/M/16/1). Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 97–8; Hopkirk, The Great Game, pp. 425–32; James, Raj, pp. 380–2. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 320. James, Raj, p. 170. Bruce, The forward policy, pp. 165–373; Memorandum of Nov. 1888 (BL, OIOC, Bruce papers, MSS EUR F163/9); ibid., two letters, both undated, to The Times and Morning Post, in folder of letters sent to newspapers, F163/16). Bruce, The forward policy, pp. 165–373. Tribune, 19 Sept. 1894. King papers (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR C852/1–2). A. G. N. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’ (typescript, BL, OIOC, MSS EUR C852/1–2). King to fiancée, letter of 25 Oct. 1890 (King papers, MSS EUR C852/1–2). King to fiancée, 8 Oct. 1890. King to fiancée, 25 Oct. 1890. King to fiancée, 31 Oct. and 8 Nov. 1890.

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63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

King to fiancée, 12 Nov. 1890. King to fiancée 27 Nov. 1890. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, pp. 114–28. King to wife, 27 May 1891. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 202. King to wife, 24 May 1891. King to wife, 12 Nov. 1891. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 255. Lansdowne to Cross, 1 April 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Bruce, The forward policy, p. 258. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 242. Ibid. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 261. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 165. Dennis Fitzpatrick in a note dated 14 Dec. 1900 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/A146).

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Pro-consul and the Viceroy

Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick was a Catholic, a graduate of TCD, born in 1837 as the second son of a Dublin physician, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and Mary Clare, the daughter of a Mr Kearney of Pernambuco.1 He passed the ICS entrance examination in 1858 and was posted to Punjab as an assistant magistrate at Delhi. His subsequent career will be dealt with in later chapters but it is well to state here that early in his career he had established a considerable reputation as a lawyer in London and India.2 As The Times said of him at his death in 1920, ‘The best quality of his mind was essentially legal, and he acquired a great reputation for clear-headed insight into the many matters which came up for legislative consideration.’3 Both The Times and the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore opined that he had a propensity to accept the status quo in political matters rather than make new departures.4 His grasp of fine detail was accompanied by a tendency to exercise control over everyday administration,5 and this, if Lord Curzon is to be believed, would seem to have manifested itself on the frontier in his unwillingness to allow full freedom of action to his political officers, holding them with ‘unnecessary tightness’.6 Sir Mortimer Durand, one of British India’s most influential political officers, after whom the eponymous line which would demarcate the Afghan–Indian border was named, remarked that Fitzpatrick meddled rather fussily in frontier matters.7 (Both men had reason to entertain bias against Fitzpatrick, as will be seen.) Curzon would also point out later that Fitzpatrick had no previous experience of frontier matters when he was appointed lieut.governor.8 However, King wrote that a better man could not have been chosen.9 Fitzpatrick himself wrote that the main thing in India was to keep things going straight and smoothly,10 hardly a motto for a show of enterprise.

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A restive frontier Wars, skirmishes and raids were part of frontier life, for soldiers and tribesmen alike. On taking up office in 1899 Lord Curzon would say that in the fifty years since the province had been annexed there had been forty military expeditions against the tribes,11 and this did not include the many armed encounters with which levies, political officers and others had so frequently to deal. Between 1899 and 1906 local intelligence officers catalogued 602 raids and disturbances in the frontier area.12 The rate at which such military incursions on the part of the British took place was to increase after the signing of a border agreement with the Amir in 1893. The agreement was negotiated by Sir Mortimer Durand and involved some loss of territory by the Amir, which was to goad that worthy into even more incitement of frontier tribes against the Raj. A boundary commission was set up and Bruce along with King and two other officers were made responsible for the Waziristan section.13 In 1894 they crossed the Gomal Pass to the Zhob area, with a brigade of troops as escort, distributing allowances to chiefs to ease the task of surveying and delineation. However, as King describes graphically, their camp was penetrated in darkness by a force of 1,500 Mahsuds led, according to Caroe, by one of the chief perpetrators of the Kelly murder, and they suffered casualties.14 In his official report King says that the ‘cleverly planned and gallantly executed’ attack resulted in quite a number of the attackers penetrating the camp where handto-hand fighting took place. A British officer and forty-four men were killed and there were many wounded, the attackers losing 300 men.15 The troops were reinforced by a British battalion and an Indian army infantry regiment, and the usual punitive measures were employed, including the burning of villages and the arrest or killing of some of the tribesmen responsible for the attack. Some innocent villages were burnt, according to Bruce, and he writes that it is always difficult to avoid this when a large military operation is undertaken.16 Fitzpatrick, in a cold lawyerly way, saw these punitive raids as being akin to the execution of a process under a decree of court; the alternative was to let the debt (in this case a communal fine) accumulate with resultant more severe measures.17 Although Bruce says that the maliks supported him throughout, other commentators have since believed that his particular vision of the Forward Policy was now defunct. No hostages were handed over and, according to Olaf Caroe, an expert on the Pathans, the Gomal was never opened to peaceful through-traffic and remained closed to outsiders as late as 1957,18 while Ahmed describes disputed passage through the pass in the late 1970s.19 [ 84 ]

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Accompanied by a military escort, King proceeded with the delineation of the international boundary. He described the work as most trying as the line ran along the ridge crest of ‘almost inaccessible’ peaks varying in height between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above his camps.20 General Lockhart, a much-admired soldier who led the accompanying force, said of King in his subsequent report: I cannot speak too highly of this most able officer, and I trust that his successful delimitation of the southern section of the Waziristan–Afghan boundary . . . may receive recognition, carried out as it was under conditions demanding not only great physical endurance, but also keen intelligence, patience and resolution.21

King reported in February 1895 that he had completed his particular section of the boundary which stretched from Khwaja to the Khyber Pass.22 To further illustrate the interweaving of Irishmen into the fabric of frontier life in British India, the presence on the Khyber at this time of an extraordinary individual is worthy of mention. Robert Warburton was the son of an Irish officer from Garryinch in Queen’s County and an Afghan noblewoman.23 He was stationed as political officer in the area for sixteen years, and because of his Afghan blood and personal character he achieved considerable influence with the Afridi tribesmen who controlled passage through this, the most direct route between Peshawar and Kabul.24 There is no evidence that Warburton had any connection with or knowledge of Ireland but his very presence was indicative of how embedded the Irish were, however eccentrically, in the imperial undertaking. In December 1895 Bruce reverted to his position as chief political officer for Waziristan and commissioner for Derajat. He retired during the following April but continued to argue in favour of his policies in letters to newspapers (see above) and in letters to Fitzpatrick. He became increasingly querulous in correspondence with Fitzpatrick and the India Office as he sought to have his pension brought up to the level enjoyed by covenanted men and to have his work recognised by a decoration of a higher class than his modest CIE (Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire).25 He succeeded in neither supplication although, following Fitzpatrick’s intervention, the government agreed to assist with a gratuity of 10,000 rupees.26 He died in Teddington, a London suburb, in January 1924.27 Despite their obvious differences of approach, Fitzpatrick trusted Bruce and in fact made it clear to the Indian government that arrangements with tribes in his area be left to Bruce ‘who is a master of this subject’.28 Furthermore, Bruce owed his appointment to the boundary commission to Fitzpatrick. In a letter to Lord Elgin who had become [ 85 ]

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viceroy in early 1894, Fitzpatrick says that in previous correspondence to the government, ‘I fear I did not give Bruce and his subordinates sufficient credit for what they did. Recent events have shown that the difficulties they had to contend with were far greater than I imagined.’29 He goes on to argue against the appointment of a Mr Fryer whom the government favoured, saying that it was essential to appoint a man who had proved his ability to do that kind of work and that Bruce’s experience of such matters was unsurpassed.30 He also heartily endorsed Bruce’s recommendation that the Mahsud area be promoted as a recruiting ground for the army.31 However, this initiative was also abortive and would seem to indicate that Bruce seriously misjudged the determination of Mahsuds to resist outside interference. In 1904, a Mahsud militiaman murdered the political agent in South Waziristan and, a few months later, the commander of the militia was also murdered by a Mahsud militiaman who seemed to be supported by his fellow tribesmen who garrisoned the fort in which the killing took place. As a result of this and other felonies, recruitment of Mahsuds ceased. There were military campaigns against the Mahsuds in 1881, 1894, 1900, 1917 and 1923, besides others in Waziristan in 1936–37 and 1937–39.32 Even as late as October 2009, the Mahsud section of Waziristan was aflame as Pakistani forces tried to oust Taliban sheltered there.33 Caroe joins the writers already mentioned in opining that Bruce’s and Sandeman’s policies simply would not work when applied to a tribe as independent, warlike and as loosely organised as the Mahsuds.34 Elsewhere along the frontier the pattern of raids and ambushes continued. When the authorities were sufficiently provoked another punitive expedition would be sent in, as happened in the Black Mountain area in 1888 when a force of ten Indian battalions and five British had to be sent in to extract fines, burn villages and otherwise punish the tribes. In 1895 a rescue force of 15,000 troops was sent through previously unmapped terrain to relieve a besieged garrison at Chitral, a campaign that was to inflame almost the entire frontier.35 Lucas White King was appointed in charge of the Peshawar district during this difficult time in 1895–96 and newspaper reports suggest that he was appointed because of his experience in Dera Ismael Khan.36 Peshawar was an important base where the 15,000-strong force was assembled in preparation for a fighting march to relieve Chitral. (See Map 4.) Someone with experience of mobilising supplies, fodder and pack animals to keep such a force was needed and King must have done well as subsequent events demonstrated.37 One campaign led on to another and spread disaffection among neighbouring tribes. In a region where feuds, skirmishes and wars were [ 86 ]

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bitterly fought, the campaigns of this particular period were noted for the ferocity with which they were waged; no prisoners were taken on either side and villages were burnt down.38 Fitzpatrick felt that the destruction of villages was justified if the tribes, knowing the possible outcome, ‘misbehaved’.39 The Tirah campaign of 1897–98, in which King was deeply involved, was among the toughest fought, according to A. E. C. Bredin, and involved the 2nd battalion of the Royal Irish and the 2nd of the Royal Inniskillings.40 As will be seen in Appendix I, a number of Irish doctors in the IMS were involved in various campaigns on the frontier, including that in Tirah, at this time. The nature of the conflict was embodied in Kipling’s admonition: When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.41

From the bracing and comfortable surrounds of Simla, Lansdowne wrote to the Secretary of State for India: Please remember when you read of the destruction of villages, that a frontier village means a few trumpery mud walls and some grass mats, the whole of which can be replaced at a very slight cost and with little trouble.42

The young Winston Churchill’s on-the-spot account was more telling: We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke reservoirs in punitive desolation.43

The Malakand campaign on which Churchill served was led by Major-General Bindon Blood who was educated at the Royal School, Banagher and at QCG.44 In 1897, King had been appointed as deputy commissioner of Kohat with responsibility for the Orakzai tribe, which a short time later, in August, joined with their neighbours, the Afridis, in action against the British. The Tirah campaign was directed against the tribes’ previously unassailed mountain stronghold and resulted in the terrible fighting mentioned above. General Lockhart took charge of this campaign which involved 34,000 men, 20,000 non-combatants (porters, horsewranglers and so on) and 30,000 pack animals. Lockhart chose King as his political officer because the latter ‘has had an experience second to none in the delicate work involved’.45 King was thus seconded to the government of India and became responsible, with others, for the delivery of 1,500–2,000 tons of supplies daily to Kohat from the railhead thirty-two miles away. He and his fellow Civilians took no part in the [ 87 ]

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fighting but faced considerable danger such as that presented by bullets whizzing through the dining tent at night.46 The Orakzai were his particular responsibility and, in common with other ‘politicals’ in similar situations, he was faced with the tricky and dangerous task of renewing something like normal relations with the tribe when peace was restored and reparations made.47 He was made Companion of the Star of India in January 1898 and in May of that year a newspaper said of him, ’Nobody will grudge Mr. White King his well earned decoration in the British Honours List. His political tact kept the Adma Khel and Jowaki maliks “razi” [satisfied, reconciled] at a time when they could have made themselves very troublesome.’48 Although he liked Kohat, remarking that it was a well-watered delight with mangos, vines and raspberries, he was promoted, in April 1901, to the commissionership of Dharamsala, the capital of the state of Kangra. This ended his career on the frontier. Somehow he found time to produce a scholarly monograph, Monograph on the Orakzai Country and Clans, which was reprinted in 1984 for use by the Pakistani government.49 He disappears from this narrative but it is well to note here that by the beginning of 1899 he and his wife had four children under seven years of age, one of whom became Cecil King, chairman of the Mirror press group and founder of the Sun newspaper;50 and that in 1905 Lucas White King retired from the ICS to take up the Chair of Arabic, Persian and Hindustani at TCD.51 Fitzpatrick’s view of what should be frontier policy, as already intimated, was at odds with that of the Indian government and that of the army throughout his term of office. He believed that Bruce’s experiment with the Mahsuds and others in his area had failed because of their wilder nature, because they were more anarchic than the Baluchi with whom Sandeman and Bruce had such success, and he was thus reluctant to become closely involved in tribal affairs or to exercise more direct control over their territory.52 Lansdowne and his successor, Elgin, along with the commander-in-chief, Roberts, and his successor, Sir George White, were very much Forward Policy men. In a long exchange of correspondence with Lansdowne, Fitzpatrick strongly asserts that many influential people in India, he mentions Durand and Roberts, ‘deliberately entertain the design to reduce Afghanistan to the position of the Native States of India’53 and he recommends that the Amir be given firm assurances that his country will not be taken over, and that it be explained to him that ‘a strong and united Afghanistan between us and Russia’ was what the Indian government sought.54 In reply Lansdowne sought to play down the forward tendency in the named individuals but, as he had the Secretary of State looking over his shoulder, could hardly disagree with the general thrust of Fitzpatrick’s [ 88 ]

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attitude towards Afghanistan.55 In a comment made some years later, Fitzpatrick said that the Indian government believed that, ‘in every tribe, however democratic, there are responsible leaders capable of maintaining order if properly supported’.56 Fitzpatrick was to comment in a note written some years after his retirement that the Indian government expected him to exercise control over the tribes right up to the Durand Line to a degree which would not only protect Britishcontrolled areas and personnel, but would also enforce his authority in inter-tribal disputes.57 He was obliged to accede to his superiors but one senses in his correspondence a degree of obstructiveness masked by polite, even obsequious, submission to authority. In a letter sent to the government sometime in 1895–96 he writes: I should be averse to issuing any orders which might seem to sound the advance along the whole line at a moment like this when we are not yet out of the woods in Waziristan and on the Chitral road, . . . when the Lt. General commanding the Punjab is already crying out that the force under his command is not sufficient.58

He then goes on to say that, however that might be, he would always exert himself to give effect to the views of the government of India, exactly as if those were his own. He might have expressed himself more boldly if he had been aware of a trenchantly expressed objection to the government’s policy contained in a minute of dissent by three knights of the realm, including fellow Irishman Sir Antony MacDonnell. This minute dissented from a despatch sent by the government of India to the Secretary of State which ostensibly suggested a middle course between the moderate forward policy and Fitzpatrick’s preference for indirect influence from outside the administrative boundary, but which obviously favoured the former option. The three knights, all very senior Civilians who sat on the Viceroy’s council, agreed with Fitzpatrick’s viewpoint in regard to Waziristan – and differed from that of Bruce – but were narrowly outvoted in the council in July 1894 by two military men, along with Viceroy Lord Elgin, and another. Their views were made public in the press four years later.59 Of course it is possible that Fitzpatrick was aware of his fellow Irishman’s views – they would both probably have been in Simla at the time the despatch was prepared in mid-summer – and may even have had something to do with the dissenting minute. This splintering of authority along the frontier between the British, Indian and Punjab governments, and the tensions which inevitably existed between the army and the political officers charged with the difficult and dangerous task of re-establishing relations with the tribes subsequent to an army incursion, would suggest that control of an [ 89 ]

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international frontier area should be more directly implemented by central government, and this is what had been proposed as early as 1876 in a memorandum prepared by Lord Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India.60 Sixteen years later, Lansdowne, in a letter to the Secretary of State said: Four years’ experience has, in spite of the fact that I have always been on the best of terms with the lieut.-governor of Punjab, led me to the conclusion that the interposition of the Punjab government in matters of frontier administration not only leads to friction and difficulty, but increases the chances of complications on the frontier. It necessitates the maintenance of two sets of frontier officials, owing allegiance to different Administrations and pulling in different directions. The result is to unsettle the minds of the tribesmen, to produce inconsistencies of treatment and fluctuations of policy, and to bring about misunderstandings and collisions which, in their turn, beget punitive expeditions, with all the attendant expense and suffering and ill-feeling which they involve.61

A suggestion that frontier political officers should be put under the direct control of the Indian government was adamantly opposed by Fitzpatrick. He wrote, ‘it is the wildest and stupidest proposal that it ever entered the head of man to conceive.’62 However, logic, and perhaps his own intransigence, albeit softened by official obsequiousness, told against him after he had left office. When the dynamic and innovative Lord Curzon became viceroy one of his first major policy changes was to establish the North-West Frontier Province, which came under the direct control of the Indian government through a commissioner based at Peshawar.63 The province included almost all of the trans-Indus region between the river and Afghanistan and the cis-Indus district of Hazara.64 Bruce and Lansdowne would also have been disappointed, as Curzon pulled major army units back from the frontier and insisted that the area be policed by British-officered tribal levies with little other direct input from British legislators or soldiers. In an undated letter to The Times which, judging by the context, must have been written some time in 1901 or 1902, Bruce wrote, ‘They [the tribes] now suffer the maximum of inconvenience arising from intervention, without the compensating advantage of settled administration.’65 In the same letter he states, ‘Twenty years of settled government – Lord Salisbury’s remedy for Ireland – is what is needed.’66 This is the only mention of the Irish situation to be found in Bruce’s papers, apart from a comment about the difficulties with tenants at the time of the famine.67 According to his private papers, Lansdowne, a Fitzmaurice of Irish descent and owner of vast Irish estates in Offaly, Kerry and elsewhere,68 had proposed to the Secretary of State for India in London that troops [ 90 ]

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should be moved up to the border, such as it was, or into Afghan territory, in view of likely trouble which would follow on the death of the Amir.69 The speed of modern communications enabled the Secretary of State to give a curt negative to that proposal. With the completion of an undersea link in 1870, Britain was able to exercise more immediate control over Indian affairs and to assess quickly Russian threats, imagined, real or fake.70 Lansdowne felt that the Punjab government, under Fitzpatrick’s predecessor, J. B. Lyall, was ‘too tender of their [tribal] susceptibilities’71 and he criticised what he saw as the Punjab administration’s belief ‘that, once we have administered suitable chastisement to a refractory tribe, we should leave it entirely to its own devices, until such time as another chastisement becomes necessary’. A month later he writes, ‘The Punjab government [is] notoriously opposed to an aggressive frontier policy.’72 He argued that the result of this policy had not been satisfactory in the past and was currently liable to prevent a definite understanding with tribes which were resisting advances into their territory by the army.

An Irish sensibility? In view of the foregoing, can it be said that the Irish had any particular effect on the history of the border region, and did their Irishness affect their outlook and actions? Waziris and Mahsuds were hostile to outside interference long before the British displaced the Sikhs as rulers of the north-west. Lawrence was aware of this and opted for his strategy of containment by means of the Close Border policy, and for a frontier on the Indus. Although the latter plan was rejected and the former was short-lived in practice, Waziristan was maintained, as Fitzpatrick would have wished, at what in modern counter-insurgency parlance is called ‘an acceptable level of violence’ until Bruce tried to apply Sandeman’s Baluchi policy to a much different tribal ethos. The application by Bruce and King of Sandeman’s policies and Lansdowne’s support of a forward policy, backed by aggressive enthusiasm of the two Irish commanders-in-chief, may not have been the original cause of the xenophobia and bellicosity of the Mahsuds and other Pathans, but their actions were certainly the immediate occasion of various uprisings and a hatred of westerners which extends morbidly into modern times. As McConville puts it in relation to the Anglo-Irish, they were members of an oligarchy whose role was essentially to defend against invasion by a European power.73 Their outlook could hardly be better suited to life on the north-west frontier. Irishmen, then, from Lawrence to Lansdowne, from Bruce to Fitzpatrick, along with the unusually ubiquitous Irish generals, had a [ 91 ]

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considerable effect on the history of the north-west, extending even to the twenty-first century. It could be said, in the case of the Anglo-Irish, that they were peculiarly suited to frontier tactics but no evidence has come to light that they were motivated in their policy towards the tribes by peculiarly Irish sensibilities.

Notes

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

S. V. Fitz-Gerald, ‘Fitzpatrick, Sir Dennis (1837–1920)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33156 (accessed 14 April 2006). Ibid. The Times, 22 May 1920. Ibid.; Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, 14 Dec. 1900, note in response to comment by Curzon (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/A146–94). A. C. Lyall to J. B. Lyall, Sept./Oct. 1897 (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR. F132/164/47 48). Curzon, 27 Aug. 1900, a minute on Punjab and NWFP (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/A148). King to wife, 7 Aug. 1891 (King papers). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 24 Jan. 1894 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, D558/26). Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, 14 Dec. 1900, note in response to a minute of Lord Curzon (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/A149.3). James, Raj, p. 403. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 174. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 400. Ibid., pp. 174–8. Bruce, The forward policy, pp. 264–92. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 10 Feb. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/24). Caroe, The Pathans, p. 376. Akbar S. Ahmed, Resistance and control in Pakistan (London, 1991), pp. 68–70. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, pp. 174–6. Ibid., p. 178. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 300. The Times, 10 May 1899. Caroe, The Pathans, p. 357. Bruce, 11 April 1902, to unidentified peer making a case for a suitable decoration (BL, OIOC, Bruce papers, MSS EUR F163/1–17). There are also a number of undated letters of similar content. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 373. The Times, 1 Feb. 1924. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 308. Fitzpatrick to Elgin, 27 Aug. 1894 (BL, OIOC, Elgin papers, MSS EUR/F84). Ibid. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 320. Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 178. Irish Times, 19 Oct. 2009. Caroe, The Pathans, pp. 390–412. Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 93–118. Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 178. Ibid., pp. 180–5. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 418.

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44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 10 Dec. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). A. E. C. Bredin A history of the Irish soldier (Belfast, 1987), p. 366. Rudyard Kipling, ‘The young British soldier’, in Kipling, War stories and poems (World Classic edn, Oxford, 1990), pp. 55–7. Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 29 April 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/4). Winston Churchill, My early life: a roving commission (Reprint Society edn, London, 1944), p. 158. C. V. Owen, ‘Blood, Sir Bindon (1842–1940)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31930 (accessed 30 March 2008). Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 186. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 185–200. Unidentified newspaper cutting, 25 May 1898 (BL, OIOC, King papers, MSS EUR C852). Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 189. John Beavan, ‘King, Cecil Harmsworth (1901–1987)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40163 (accessed 17 May 2008). Verity, ‘The Kings in imperial India’, p. 241. Dennis Fitzpatrick, note, 14 Dec. 1900 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/ A146–94). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 9 Sept. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). Ibid., 31 Aug. 1892. Lansdowne to Fitzpatrick, 12 Sept. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). Fitzpatrick, note, 14 May 1900 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/ Political and Secret/A146–94). Fitzpatrick, note, 14 Dec. 1900 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/ Political and Secret/A146–94). Fitzpatrick, 14 Dec. 1900, quoting a letter he had written in 1895 or 1896 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/Political and Secret/A146–94). Pioneer, Allahabad, 2 March 1898. Lord Salisbury, July 1876, memorandum on separation of trans-Indus districts (BL, OIOC, IOR L/ Political and Secret/18/A132 (IOR NEG 31054). Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 5 Oct. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/5). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 9 July 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 141. www.1911encyclopedia.org/North-West_Frontier_Province (accessed 10 Feb 2008). Bruce, undated, to The Times in relation to establishment of North-West Frontier Province (BL, OIOC, Bruce papers, MSS EUR F163/1). Ibid. Bruce, The forward policy, p. 6. Newton, Lord Lansdowne: a biography pp. 24–55. Lansdowne to Secretary of State, 8 Aug. 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/4). Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 250–1. Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 1 April 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/4). Ibid., letter to Sec. of State, 15 April 1891. McConville, Ascendancy to oblivion, p. 2.

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Frontiersman and the diplomat

Even before he became viceroy in January 1899, Lord Curzon had become aware of some of the anomalies associated with the administration of the area between the Indus and the Durand Line. The transIndus area included districts subject to the ordinary laws of Punjab, as well as tribal areas which were not. It was undesirable to have the Indian government’s wishes in an important and unruly international border area mediated through a provincial administration which was not always alive to the exigencies of imperial policy or concerned with geopolitical matters. He dismissed the argument that the Punjab government was closer to the scene of action, noting that for much of the year the two governments were located in the same spot, Simla.1 On assuming office he found that as many as 10,000 troops were stationed beyond the administrative boundary as a result of the unrest caused mainly by the assertion of the Raj’s authority on the Malakand. Plans were in hand for the construction in tribal areas of costly fortifications which had no lateral communications. Not only was this deployment costly, risky and inefficient, it also caused antagonism among the tribes.2 Within two years of his taking office the British government had accepted his case that a new province, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), be established with a commissioner at its head who would be directly responsible to the Indian government.3 According to Curzon’s new scheme, troops were to be stationed in large cantonments in the fully administered area, from which mobile columns would be dispatched if needed by the expanded system of British-officered tribal levies mentioned in chapter 7. Curzon’s new arrangements were opposed by old hands such as Bruce who wrote ineffectual letters to papers back in London, and the Viceroy’s highhanded method of introducing his measures were deeply resented by Fitzpatrick, his successor Mackworth-Young and by many in the Punjab Commission. Fitzpatrick’s ire was directed not so much at the setting [ 94 ]

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up of the new province as at Curzon’s habit of forensically demolishing opponents in an argument rather than trying to win them over,4 and of criticising the record of previous Punjab governments, including Fitzpatrick’s. The Dublin man, who was now retired and vice-president of the Council of India which proffered advice to the Secretary of State in London, responded furiously in a series of minutes and memoranda, some of which have already been quoted. He insisted that the Punjab government’s cautious policy had been the correct one and that it was the too-rapid expansion of control at the Indian government’s behest which had caused the recent tribal revolts.5 Early in 1901 three experienced civil servants were appointed to work out the details of the boundaries of the new NWFP, its system of administration, the appointment of a cadre of administrative officers and so on. One of the three appointed by Curzon was Michael O’Dwyer, born in 1864, the Catholic son of a farmer from Barronstown near Tipperary town.6 Details of his early career are to be found in his book, India as I Knew it. Proud of his Gaelic heritage and his family’s part in Cromwellian and Williamite wars, O’Dwyer was aware of Irish nationalist politics and the land agitation of the 1880s. His father was in the main apolitical, but favoured Isaac Butt and spoke out against the violence associated with the land agitation of the early 1880s. Because of this, according to O’Dwyer, his father received threatening letters and narrowly prevented the houghing (severing of the hamstring) of horses on his 500-acre farm. The family home was fired on and the house came under police protection for a time. The resultant tension was blamed for a stroke which led to his father’s death. O’Dwyer was to remember all this during his time in India. One of a family of nine sons and five daughters, O’Dwyer was educated by Jesuits at Tullabeg, his brothers also being schooled there or at Clongowes. An older brother’s position as a doctor in the IMS was partly responsible for his decision to study for the entrance examination to the ICS at a London crammer, Wren’s. He passed the examination in 1882 and was sent to Balliol, Oxford, on two years’ probation as was the normal practice at the time. As part of his required legal training he had to attend and report on the trial of the Invincibles (a band of Irish political assassins) whom he describes as a gang of desperate scoundrels. He also attended the Old Bailey when O’Donnell was convicted of the murder of Carey, an informer in the Invincible case. The failure of the authorities to protect the informer influenced his own approach to the safeguarding of Indians of that ilk later in his career. He passed out fourth at the end of his two years and then obtained permission to stay on at Oxford for another year because of the recent death of his father. This permission was conditional on his [ 95 ]

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reading for an honours degree, which he did in just the one year, gaining a First in Jurisprudence.7 Arriving in India in 1885, he was posted to Punjab where his brother Malachi was already stationed, and where he was put to learning the language and ways of the people by trying petty civil and criminal cases. In about six months he had passed the required examinations in law and languages and was transferred to Multan at the height of the hot season when most of his superiors were on leave and found himself, at twenty-two years of age, acting as magistrate, superintendent of the jail with 500 prisoners, treasury officer, and civil judge with limited powers. He was then moved to Shahpur where he assisted in the revision of the land-revenue settlement of an area of some 5,000 square miles. The work of land survey and resultant revenue settlement will be described in the next chapter but here it is instructive to observe O’Dwyer’s enthusiasm for that part of the job which involved meeting the people, and his genuine feeling for the countryside, especially during the cold-weather season when cool nights under canvas yielded to bright, fresh, sunny mornings when riding and possibly the bagging of some game worked up an appetite for breakfast before the hot day’s work. He was never to lose his affection for country people, though it may have been paternalistic, and he would later favourably compare them with the western-educated, urban Indian with whom he never developed a rapport.8 In 1889, at the age of twenty-five, he was given independent charge of the settlement of Gujranwala, a district of 3,000 square miles with a population of three-quarters of a million. It is evident that he did good work there as, nearing the end of his five-year stint, he was appointed deputy commissioner and then, after a long furlough, he was placed in charge of land-revenue settlements of Alwar and Bharatpur princely states in Rajputana.9 During the long furlough he toured Europe where in the course of twenty-one months he visited the Balkans and Vienna, hunted with his family in Tipperary, attended Ascot, went to Russia where he met the general who had been in charge at Pandjeh, and met and married a Frenchwoman, Mlle Eunice Bord.10 It was from his posting in Rajputana that O’Dwyer was transferred to the work of setting up the new North-West Frontier Province. It is significant that Col. H. A. Deane (the commissioner-designate), O’Dwyer and the third member of the team, C. E. Bunbury, were all Punjab Civilians so the vigorous ethos of the Punjab Commission was likely to be reflected in their approach to their new task. O’Dwyer states in his autobiography that they strove to retain or attract some of the pick of the younger officers of the Punjab Commission and largely succeeded. [ 96 ]

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One of these was J. A. O. Fitzpatrick, a Dublin man who went to High School and TCD and who would still be in the province, as Resident in Waziristan, in 1921.11 F. W. Wylie, Royal Dungannon and TCD, would be an assistant commissioner in 1921. At first Deane was busy winding up his work as Resident in the state of Kashmir so the work of O’Dwyer and Bunbury was accordingly more significant. The new province came into being in November 1901 and O’Dwyer was appointed revenue commissioner with responsibility, under Deane, for almost all aspects of administration. Deane was responsible for the political sphere and Bunbury for the judicial.12 The supervision of land-revenue resettlements in the settled areas and new settlements in some other areas formed much of O’Dwyer’s work so he travelled extensively throughout the province. Clues to O’Dwyer’s character and outlook on life can be gleaned from his description of these tours and his comments on people. He seems to have revelled in risk and the rough companionship of the tribesmen. On the British side of the administrative boundary he was sometimes accompanied by his wife. They travelled unescorted, he writes, and he rarely carried a revolver. He liked the company of soldiers and strongly approved of the Punjab system, then under threat, of having army officers working for the Commission. He helped ensure that a third of the administrative officers in the new province were army officers trained in civil duties. He thought this important in a province where, ‘murders and blood feuds were everyday incidents; the hired assassin a recognised trade; the midnight foray, with the abduction and holding to ransom of rich Hindus by trans-border bandits a familiar occurrence’.13 Pathan hospitality was so profuse as to be often embarrassing. He says that one could, without giving offence, return the offered fat-tailed sheep by telling one’s host to fatten it up for a future visit. It was not so easy to avoid the cup of green tea sweetened with a lump of sugar produced from the folds of a dirty turban and stirred with a finger.14 Hospitality, even to enemies, was one of the three tenets which went to make up pakthunwali, the Pathan code of honour – the other two being an obligation to provide refuge to fugitives and to avenge, no matter how long it took, usually by the spilling of blood, any insult or slight.15 O’Dwyer describes with obvious pleasure his unofficial participation in what he called a typical frontier scrap. He accompanied, at his own request, a column of 500 Sikhs led by British officers to take a fort used as headquarters by a band of outlaws. He was beside his friend, the colonel in charge, when the latter was shot dead. As night approached without the fort being taken O’Dwyer supported the idea of a further attack which proved successful but not before another officer, with whom he had dined the previous evening, was also killed. [ 97 ]

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The Tipperary man’s tone is one more of excitement than of horror or regret, but this may be unfair to him given the tendency to soldierly understatement associated with the Victorian era just ended. He had to learn yet another language, Pushtu, to converse with the Pathans so he understood the insulting shout of what he calls a fanatical mullah as he, O’Dwyer, rode on his bicycle through a hamlet. He dismounted and demanded that the mullah put his pugri (a turban and symbol of Punjabi dignity) at his feet as a sign of repentance, whereupon the priest seemed to be about to draw his long Pathan knife until checked by the arrival of O’Dwyer’s police orderly. The orderly held his own sword at the ready until O’Dwyer’s wishes were met and the mullah had put his head on the ground and his pugri at the Irishman’s feet.16 Some years later when O’Dwyer’s name first came up in relation to taking over as lieut.-governor of Punjab, the then Viceroy, Lord Minto, thought that ‘there is more of the frontier officer in him than a lieut.-governor’.17 Mason’s judgement could be considered apt when he writes of O’Dwyer, ‘one gets the impression of a man whose keen hard brain acquired facts quickly but had little time to waste on subtleties’.18 O’Dwyer left the frontier in 1907. His work and that of his colleagues in the new province was effective in that the NWFP outlasted the British presence and is still in existence, somewhat altered in area, in Pakistan of the early twenty-first century. Lord Curzon’s scheme for the NWFP worked reasonably well up to and including the First World War, although not so well as he was wont to trumpet. It was true that for some years after his policy was first implemented there were no military expeditions on the scale of some in the 1890s but there were frequent outbreaks of violence, especially among the Mahsud. A large force sent against the Mahsud was not called an ‘expedition’ because this would reflect badly on the policy so the force was called a ‘blockade’.19 O’Dwyer writes that the assault on the fort in which he took part was also called a ‘blockade’.20 But it was not until the Third Afghan War in 1919 that the tribes seized the opportunity to cause trouble all along the frontier and to attack the lines of communications of advancing British and Indian troops. In particular, the Mahsuds and Waziris were aroused and continued to provoke strong actions against them almost until the outbreak of the Second World War.21 Curzon’s despotism, however benevolent some historians have regarded it,22 his compulsion to exercise control over every aspect of his administration, and his imperial outlook, led him to treat neighbouring powers in the same cavalier way as he did so many of his subordinates. Afghanistan had caused British India little concern since Pandjeh, apart from indulging in covert incitement of tribal unrest, [ 98 ]

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under Abdur Rahman. The Amir received a subsidy in return for, inter alia, allowing British India handle his foreign affairs.23 On his death his son Habibullah had an unusually easy succession to the throne but felt it necessary to consolidate his position by asserting a greater independence from India. Reports came to India that Habibullah was preparing to receive a Russian mission in Kabul. Curzon reacted angrily, firing off notes saying that he would not remain idle in the face of Russian ‘interference’.24 Given his noted self-regard,25 he probably regarded Habibullah’s presumption as a form of lèse-majesté. His attitude is reflected in his approval of Lord Salisbury’s advice that: ‘The tone to be avoided is that of cold timidity, the attitude to be maintained is that of cordial but conscious superiority.’26 The Amir repeatedly refused invitations to meet Curzon at Peshawar,27 the Secretary of State, St John Brodrick (Lord Midleton), later saying that this was probably because of fear of instability in Kabul in his absence.28 St Petersburg did not proceed with whatever mission may have been contemplated, but Curzon’s tone so much worsened relations with Afghanistan that Whitehall became alarmed at his truculence and seized on the opportunity presented by his absence on leave in Britain to press for a different approach on the part of his temporary replacement, Lord Ampthill, who served 30 April 1904 to 12 December 1904. A conciliatory approach was adopted and it was decided to send Louis Dane, who was at this time foreign secretary to the government of India, to Kabul to seek a new agreement with the Amir.29 Louis William Dane was born on 21 March 1856, the third of four surviving sons of Richard Martin Dane who had served in India as a surgeon in the British army and was to become inspector-general of hospitals. His mother, Sophia Eliza, came from a family long connected with India.30 Dane was to say in a speech that his family had worked in India for five generations.31 He writes that the Danes were an AngloIrish family who had lived in Fermanagh since the seventeenth century; an ancestor, Paul Dane, had been provost of Enniskillen in 1688.32 Louis’s cousin was elected MP for Fermanagh in 1892.33 Louis was born in Chichester and was sent with an older brother, Richard Morris, to Dr Stacpoole’s school at Kingstown near Dublin,34 an establishment known for its success in getting its students into the ICS. He followed his brother into the ICS directly from school at the then permissible age of seventeen, coming fourth in the list of successful candidates. He spent two years training in England and was sent to India in 1876 where he was posted to Punjab. In 1877 he passed the required examination in law and languages, passing with ‘great credit’, the only officer to be given that distinction.35 In 1878 he was posted to Dera Ghazi Khan (Bruce’s first posting) as assistant commissioner and ensured supplies [ 99 ]

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for an army column in the Second Afghan War. During a serious flood he found himself the only officer in the station and later remembered signing one paper in six different capacities.36 On his transfer to Lahore, Sandeman asked that Dane be kept on as a frontier officer but Dane was sent elsewhere.37 It would be misleading to say that Dane’s career path was typical, but his progress was sufficiently characteristic of what other Irishmen experienced in the service that a brief account of his postings will serve to illustrate the varied and sometimes very interesting biographies which were acted out against the backdrop of historic events. And as lifeexperience, necessarily rooted in Irish soil, is mooted as being central to the theme of this book, such biographies are of historical interest. From Dera Ghazi Khan, Dane was sent to Lahore to engage in ‘special duties’ attached to the secretariat before being appointed private secretary to the lieut.-governor, Sir Robert Egerton, a posting which, according to his obituary in The Times, he owed to his resourcefulness at Dera Ghazi Khan.38 He held that post for two years, in the meantime showing, in a way similar to O’Dwyer and King, his aptitude for languages by passing an examination in Persian at the higher grade, for which he received a donation of 500 rupees. He married, in March 1882, Edith Norman, a daughter of an army officer,39 and in April was sent to Kulu as assistant commissioner. He said later in life that his three years in Kulu were perhaps the happiest of his life.40 Like Bruce, who had spent some time there to recover from a bout of illness and had delighted in the beauty of that valley in the heart of the Himalaya, and in the physical challenge of crossing high passes into neighbouring Spiti and Ladakh,41 Dane relished the opportunities for adventure. He said that Kulu provided him with boundless fields for his energies.42 In August of 1884, in the course of a tour of his wide area of responsibility, he pioneered a route across a high, glaciated and snow-covered pass from Spiti back into the Kulu valley. The 18,000-foot pass is now known as the Pin-Parbati Pass to the hardy souls who attempt it, but it is sometimes referred to as Sir Louis Dane’s Pass.43 His powerful physique was a valuable asset in his travels,44 a further illustration, along with the horse-riding prowess of Bruce and O’Dwyer, of the physical toughness of the Punjab ICS. While at Kulu, Dane was called upon several times to stand in for seniors in Simla and Lahore who, presumably, were on leave or ill. In 1886 he was registrar of the chief court of Punjab and in the same year passed a higher proficiency examination in Persian. He was a district judge in Amritsar in 1887 and later that year he was acting deputy commissioner in Sialkot. Dane was then sent to Gurdaspur where his brother had served, and spent four years as settlement officer there. As with O’Dwyer in [ 100 ]

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a similar post, he was commended on the work’s completion, being promoted to deputy commissioner before it ended. (Although it is not stated officially, successful completion of a revenue settlement seems to have led to accelerated promotion in the ICS.) Following a furlough of seven months in 1892 he was appointed settlement officer at Peshawar, the nearest town to the Khyber Pass, where his work resulted in a revenue increase of over a quarter million rupees. He demarcated the Peshawar boundary much further into tribal territory than it had previously been, incorporating lands which had been omitted as too dangerous to map. He camped with his family unguarded, making a public statement that he was the guest of chiefs and that any molestation of him or his family would result in loss of subsidies and a severe revenue settlement for thirty years.45 ‘Mr. Dane has now brought almost to a close one of the most important and difficult settlements which it can fall to the lot of a Revenue Officer to make in this country’ was the comment of Punjab’s financial commissioner.46 Dane, echoing O’Dwyer’s comments, also notes that he gained an intimate knowledge of the area and its people, a knowledge which was to serve him well later as lieut.-governor of the province. In 1896 he was appointed by Dennis Fitzpatrick to be chief secretary to the Punjab government.47 Haward says that this appointment took place in 1898 but Dane’s own papers and The Times obituary both give 1896 as the year in question. According to Dane’s account in the Asiatic Review of October 1939, he left India on furlough in 1899 because of failing eyesight and in view of rumours as to Curzon’s intentions in regard to the setting up of the NWFP. He took up a position as resident magistrate at Tralee which he held for two years.48 Although he was at this time on extended furlough it would appear that he was trying to decide if he should leave India entirely. The pettiness of some of the cases in Kerry – he once travelled in bad weather to decide on a case involving the trespass of three geese on reserved pasture – was instrumental in his decision to return to a larger, more exciting arena.49 In November 1901 he was recalled to India by Curzon to act as Resident in Kashmir, and in March 1903 he was appointed foreign secretary to the Indian government.50 However, Curzon was not impressed with Dane’s administrative abilities and criticised literary defects in his writing of despatches.51 On 25 October 1904, while Curzon was still in England, Dane left Simla on his way to Kabul with the object of renewing the engagements agreed with Habibullah’s father.52 In his papers Dane says that he stopped for twelve days at Peshawar and reached Kabul on 12 December.53 In a despatch to Curzon written on 17 December Dane writes that he and the Amir spoke in Persian although his, Dane’s, was [ 101 ]

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rusty. He says that the Amir liked the idea of the treaty being personal to him because it would strengthen his position as, if he were murdered, his successor would have to make fresh terms with the British. Dane put various points to the Amir but the Amir, so far, was interested almost exclusively in the defence of Afghanistan, as he was alarmed at Russia’s recent pushing of railway lines closer to the Afghan frontier.54 In his official report written in April 1905, Dane said that the Afghans blew hot and cold and were resentful that Britain would not commit to a joint invasion of Russia with Afghanistan. The Amir’s three principal advisers were hostile to foreigners.55 Negotiations dragged on throughout the winter. Dane originally thought that his mission would last a fortnight but he spent fifteen weeks in Kabul with the temperature dropping to twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit below freezing.56 In January Curzon urged his recall unless some advance could be made on the previous treaty with Abdur Rahman. Dane dissented, saying that the Amir’s renewal of his father’s engagements should be accepted as sufficient. He was supported in London.57 Midleton said that in dealing with Habibullah he agreed with the remark made by an ICS man in 1880: ‘It is rather Abdur Rahman than the government of India who holds the commanding position. We require him, and he does not necessarily require us.’58 Fitzpatrick, now on the Council of India, was in favour of accepting the Amir’s ‘draft’ and advised that a sort of modus vivendi was better than the alternative. Curzon strove in vain to have various clauses added to the treaty which Dane had drawn up.59 There was a last-minute hindrance when the Amir produced his own version of the treaty written in Persian. Imperial pride was gulped and the sourness made somewhat more palatable by insisting that: ‘The Oriental style in which the draft treaty is worded renders it unusual but the highest legal authority has pronounced its substance is perfectly clear.’60 Perhaps the highest legal authority was Fitzpatrick? The treaty was signed in March and Dane returned to Simla. A reading of the translation of the treaty shows that the Amir yielded nothing, not even signing an English version. He merely agreed to be bound by the terms of the agreement made with his father some twenty years earlier.61 The Times in its obituary said of Dane: ‘His good humour and linguistic attainments were good assets in dispelling the suspicions of the Amir and leading him to the attitude of benevolent neutrality, necessarily somewhat disguised, which was of immense value to Great Britain in the 1914–18 war.’62 Haward points out that despite persistent German pressure and domestic danger Habibullah maintained his country’s neutrality until he was assassinated in 1919.63 In his official report dated 15 April 1905, Dane says that the Amir had given verbal assurances in regard to the demarcation of a particular [ 102 ]

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section of the frontier, the treatment of the British agent in Kabul, the setting up of a committee to settle border disputes, and his future attitude towards border tribes. He also stated that he had no hostility towards railways to Khyber and Kurram and that he was willing to discuss the erection of a telegraph line, although the tribes did not like it.64 However, these were merely verbal assurances and it is not clear how many were implemented. Curzon privately opposed the granting of a KCSI (Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India) to Dane on the grounds that the treaty was not due to Dane’s negotiating skills but to the result of persistence on the part of the Amir. He thought Dane was a ‘duffer’ and outwitted by the Amir.65 However, the cabinet in London approved the knighthood for Dane, and Curzon was gracious enough to praise him in glowing terms in a despatch to the Secretary of State.66 In May 1908 Dane was made lieut.-governor of Punjab and is consigned to other chapters. The north-west continued to smoulder and occasionally burst into flame. While it is true that no major conflagration on the scale of the 1890s occurred again until after the First World War it is apposite to reflect on the daily tensions endured by Irish soldiers, doctors, engineers and administrators, even during the war years. The major expeditions and conflicts which took place from 1919 onwards and which are referred to below are sufficient proof in themselves that Bruce’s approach, and that of Lansdowne, were unlikely to work with the Waziris and Mahsuds, and even with other tribes with whom Deane and Warburton had some success. As anthropologist Frederick Barth has pointed out, in the case of the Yuzufsai Pathans, the choices made by individual tribesmen rather than by their leaders determined how leadership roles were fulfilled, and he further iterates that tactical requirements in battle could be satisfied without the formal organisation of command and hierarchy among the chosen leaders.67 In those circumstances maliks who inclined to moderation had little sway against religious exhortations of mullahs and individuals set on violence. There were punitive incursions directed against Mohmands in 1915 and into Waziristan in 1917, both accompanied by Irish doctors,68 but even in administered areas there were constant assassinations and raids, compounded by diseases and heat-stroke. Irish doctors were scattered throughout the frontier area, never far from danger, and enduring the discomforts and excitements of life in that seething region, a region often overlooked because of the more terrible happenings elsewhere in the world at this time. Irish IMS men at the frontier included D. V. O’Malley (NUI), H. Crossle, R. B. B. Foster and R. H. [ 103 ]

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Lee (all TCD), and S. M. McSwiney (UCD). J. A. O. Fitzpatrick was in Tochi as political officer, and in Bannu as deputy commissioner during 1914 and 1915.69 In early 1919 Amir Habibullah was assassinated and his brother Nasrullah quickly assumed the title only to be ousted in turn by Habibullah’s son Amunullah who had himself declared Amir on 28 February. In an effort to hold on to his position by reconciling different Afghan factions, and to satisfy an upsurge in nationalism, he took advantage of widespread unrest in Punjab. Afghan troops crossed into India on 3 May, a little prematurely as the incursion was meant to coincide with a planned uprising in Peshawar. Michael O’Dwyer was lieut.governor of Punjab at this time and his reactions, as will be described in chapter 15, were coloured by his assumption that the unrest was part of a concerted plot which included the Afghan attack.70 Afghan troops were joined by tribesmen and the hills around the Khyber and Peshawar came alive with large bodies of Pathans poised to strike.71 Irish interest in this conflict and its aftermath continued up to the end of the reviewed period although not at the policy-making level. There were at least seven Irish IMS men on the frontier during the short-lived war, and at least one Irish BMS doctor.72 O’Dwyer was just on the point of retiring as lieut.-governor and played no part in the war. The Kabul Treaty which ended the war led to the final nullification of the various frontier policies previously supported by Irishmen such as Lawrence, Bruce, King, Dufferin, Fitzpatrick, Roberts and White. The treaty gave Afghans what they most wanted – the right to conduct their own foreign affairs.73 Although the Afghan army had been quickly driven back, the tribes were roused all along the frontier and were to remain so, with few short respites, up to the Second World War.74 Curzon’s policies, to use General Menezes’s euphemism, were ‘reviewed’ in the early 1920s and large army units were permanently stationed in tribal territory.

Conclusions At the outset of this investigation into the doings of Irishmen on the frontier and into the possibility that they may have been motivated in some way by their Irishness, it was not clear how such Irishness could have influenced their actions in a volatile area where conflict and hostility towards westerners were almost constant factors. The evidence contained in this and the previous two chapters would suggest that it would seem natural in these circumstances to ‘circle the wagons’, to identify completely with what one sees as one’s own kind, regardless of regional or national differences within the United Kingdom. Irishmen [ 104 ]

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would incline towards the British side of the Gaelic–English spectrum of identity. Irishmen played significant, indeed vital, roles in implementing government policy on the frontier and in relation to Afghanistan. But, from the noble viceroy to the relatively junior engineer and ICS man, there is no indication that their Irishness had anything to do with their conscious professional attitudes or actions. There remains the possibility that the unusually talented individuals who are the subject of this part of the book were selected to work on the frontier because of some perceived inherent abilities or characteristics which were derived from their Irish background and this is discussed in chapter 16. The combined efforts of all these Irishmen in regard to the tribes were negated by subsequent events and by their own failure to recognise some fundamental truths. The Pathans were simply too numerous, too warlike, too well armed, too democratically organised, and too driven by a combination of local patriotism and religious fervour to be appeased or forcefully subdued without an unacceptable price being paid in lives, in treasure and in British prestige. Even an independent Pakistan had to deal with violent agitation for a Pashtun homeland.75 As late as October 2009, Waziris were still fighting government forces and lending aid to their kith, and perhaps kin, in the Afghan Taliban.76 It could be argued that Louis Dane and Lord Dufferin, by virtue of their personalities, had beneficial impacts on British–Afghan relations. Dane’s personal charm was more than once noted, as for instance in the Tribune,77 while Dufferin’s Irishness and associated qualities of cleverness, adaptability and resourcefulness along with a ‘touch of blarney’ were qualities widely remarked upon.78 But even if these qualities were fostered by their Irish backgrounds, there is no suggestion that their Irishness had any bearing on their motivations in the dealings with the Amirs. It is evident from his treatment of the village mullah, and from his volunteering to take part in a skirmish, that O’Dwyer certainly eccentrically implemented the policies of the Raj. But what bearing his Irishness had in the matter is debatable. Nowhere in his account of his experiences in NWFP does he refer to Irish parallels, parallels which he is quite prepared to draw in his work elsewhere in Punjab, as is described in later chapters.79 King’s friendship with Creagh who came from landed gentry, his admiration for Fitzpatrick, an urban Catholic, and his dislike of Bruce, would suggest that religion, ethnicity and class were not overriding factors in his professional life. His attitude to punitive measures taken against tribesmen was similar to those of Bruce and Fitzpatrick in that he took it for granted that such measures were necessary. That attitude, [ 105 ]

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so common among administrators, soldiers and viceroys, would appear to be born of events and circumstances in India and owed nothing to any particular Irish prejudice.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Caroe, The Pathans, pp. 413–17. Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 141. Caroe, The Pathans, pp. 413–17. Ibid. Dennis Fitzpatrick, 14 Dec. 1900, note on Curzon’s proposals regarding administration of NWFP (BL, OIOC, Government of India, IOR L/PS/A146–94). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 1, 105. Ibid., pp. 1–21. Ibid., pp. 27–50. Ibid., pp. 51–103. Ibid. India list and India Office list 1902, 1921. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 107–9. Ibid. Ibid. Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 12. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 104–34. Minto to Sec. of State, 15 Jan. 1908 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/4). Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 284. J. R. Dunlop Smith, 11 March 1908, note to Viceroy on frontier policy (BL, OIOC, Dunlop Smith papers, MSS EUR F166/40). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 111. Barthorp, Afghan wars, pp. 146–7; Caroe, The Pathans, p. 418. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 307. Dufferin to Sec. of State, telegram 10 April 1885 (BL, OIOC, IOR NEG 4334); Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 253. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 268–70. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 262. Curzon to St John Brodrick, 18 July 1904, secret correspondence on Afghanistan (BL, OIOC, Brodrick papers, MSS EUR B. P. 22), p. 6. Ibid., p. 8. St John Brodrick (Lord Midleton) minute 12 Aug. 1905 (BL, OIOC, Government of India, IOR L/PS/18/A164). Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 270. Edwin Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William (1856–1946)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32705 (accessed 7 April 2008). Tribune, Lahore, 3 March 1912. Louis Dane, ‘Records and reactions’, Asiatic Review, xxxv:124 (1939), pp. 808–15. Ibid. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’. Dane papers, record of service (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR D/659/1). Louis Dane, ‘The Indian frontier problem’, Asiatic Review, xxxv:123 (1939), pp. 509–14. Ibid. The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. Bruce, The forward policy, pp. 48–53.

[ 106 ]

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42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. Harish Kapadia, Spiti: adventures in the trans-Himalaya (New Delhi, 1999), pp. 120–7. The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. Dane papers, record of service 1869 to 1896 (BL, OIOC, MSS EUR D659/1). Ibid. Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. Ibid. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). Gilmour, Curzon, p. 216. Louis Dane, official report, 15 April 1905 (BL, Dane papers, MSS EUR D659/5). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. St John Brodrick to Curzon, 15 Oct. 1904, summary of correspondence with Amir (BL, OIOC, Government of India, IOR L/PS/A164/4). St John Brodrick to Curzon, 17 March 1905 (BL, OIOC, Brodrick papers, MSS EUR B. P. 22). Ibid. Dane, official report, 15 April 1905 (BL, OIOC, Dane papers MSS EUR D659/5). The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). Dane, official report, 15 April 1905 (BL, OIOC, Dane papers, MSS EUR D659/5). Gilmour, Curzon, pp. 321–2. Government of India to Sec. of State, 23 May 1905 (BL, OIOC, Curzon papers, MSS EUR F111/293). Barth, Political leadership, pp. 2, 23. See Appendix I. India Office list 1916, p. 517. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 311–12. Ibid., p. 159. Quarterly Indian army list 1919. Barthorp, Afghan wars, p. 157. Ibid., pp. 170–85. D. S. Richards, The savage frontier (London, 1990), pp. 187–8. The Economist, 17–23 Oct. 2009. Tribune, 2 March 1911. Tribune, 13 Jan. 1892; Curzon to Northbrook, 19 Feb. 1902 (BL, OIOC, Curzon papers, MSS EUR F111/179). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 7, 14–15, 145.

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P A R T I II

Land and infrastructure

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9

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Land: the Irish dimension

Edward Said has famously said that the main battle in imperialism was that over land, who owned it, who had the right to settle and work on it.1 During the period under review this question was to the fore in Ireland and, as will be described, was crucial to Punjab’s history and generated effects which reverberate in the twenty-first century.2 This chapter and the two following will elucidate the complex ways in which the difficult problems inherent in land settlement and ownership were resolved in Punjab, and will give an account of the part Irish public servants played in that endeavour. As will be seen in this and following chapters, the questions of rural economy, revenue, agriculture, politics, law, provincial and central government, army recruitment, intercommunal tensions and rising nationalism were so inextricably linked in Punjab that separate treatment of any one of these various elements must necessarily be arbitrary. Nevertheless, in order to impose a useful narrative structure, to give some of these elements their due weight, it is desirable to consider the rural economy of Punjab as a topic separate from, but influencing, and being influenced by, these other elements. Where the political impinges on the topic of this section of three chapters, but is summarily dealt with, it is to be understood that the political element will be expanded upon in the subsequent chapters. As in the previous chapters, the main focus will be on the Irish presence in the province. The identity and influence of individual Irishmen will be examined, as will motivations which may be attributable to their Irish origins. Their work will be described and an effort will be made to ascertain if this was in any way subversive of the policies of the Raj. Bearing in mind that there is a need to discern whether or not there was some sense of community among the Irish in the province, the brief details of their backgrounds, which are contained in the various tables in Chapter 4 and Appendix II, will be expanded upon where possible in order to establish if their backgrounds were similar to each [ 111 ]

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other and to their compatriots in the other two professions which are the subject of this research. The questions of land tenure, rural poverty, agrarian unrest, the development of strong links between such matters and political power and nationalism, were common to both Ireland and India during the period 1881–1921.3 Knowledge of these commonalities was an inescapable reality in Westminster, Simla and Lahore. Some secretaries of state for India of the period were Irish landlords such as Lords Hamilton (who described himself as ‘an Irish gentleman’)4 and Midleton, or had first-hand experience of Irish conditions, such as Randolph Churchill who had been secretary to the Irish Lord Lieutenant.5 Viceroys from Ripon to Lansdowne were very aware of Irish conditions.6 There were personages such as Antony MacDonnell who, after his return from India, was deeply immersed in both Indian and Irish affairs and had the ear of no less a patron than King Edward VII;7 and Balfour who had been Chief Secretary for Ireland some years before becoming Prime Minister when MacDonnell was active in Dublin and while Hamilton was still engaged with India.8 More importantly in the context of this book, such matters exercised the minds of Irishmen in the public service in Punjab. They would have been aware that the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 owed much in its conception and content to the work of a number of Irish Civilians consciously influenced by their experiences of post-famine Ireland and cooperating to bring about a desired result, sometimes in the face of opposition by a number of their colleagues from other parts of the United Kingdom, in addition to initial hostility on the part of the Viceroy, some of the British community in India and the Secretary of State for India in London.9 Their influence and a tendency to favour the cause of ryots (peasants or tenant cultivators) over that of landlords were recognised and well known in India. A maharajah with estates totalling 2,460 square miles had said ‘Irishmen were generally against landlords.’10 The Daily News referred to ‘about half a dozen extreme Home Rulers in the ICS, notorious as landlord haters’.11 The probability that Irishmen were influenced in their approach to such matters in Punjab by their experience, first-hand or otherwise, of similar factors in Ireland is central to the theme of this chapter. Agriculture was the main means of subsistence for 50 per cent of Punjab’s population, and the province was essentially a country of peasant proprietors. The principal crops were wheat, gram and barley in the spring, with jowar, bajra (types of millet), maize and rice in the autumn. Cotton came to be grown in increasing quantities at the beginning of the twentieth century, and in addition some oilseed, hemp, sugar-cane, poppies (for opium), tobacco, tea and indigo were [ 112 ]

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grown.12 Plantation cultivation barely existed in Punjab although there was some tea-growing in the hills of Kangra.13 Orchards had become an important asset in some of the Himalayan valleys by the turn of the century.14 Before the British arrived, individual ownership of land, as known in the west, did not exist. Village brotherhoods held land in trust; individuals who worked the soil had use of its yield and villagers guarded closely the sale of land to outsiders.15 The Mughals had insisted that all land was the king’s; people farmed it at his will and he, through his agents, took a proportion of the harvest, in cash.16 The system varied from place to place, depending on village tradition and the cupidity or efficiency of the agent. The Sikhs, who had filled the vacuum left in Punjab by a waning Mughal power, had operated a cruder form of revenue collection, taking one-third to one-half of the actual crop.17 Because of such high taxation, combined with communal control of land, agricultural land had little sale value.18 When the British in their turn took over from the Sikhs, they had already learned much about revenue collection, sometimes from mistakes made in other provinces. And it was of vital importance to get it right as land revenue accounted for some 50 per cent of state revenue in 1858–59, declining to 26 per cent in 1920–21.19 Realising that land revenue was the backbone of the Raj’s administration, they had learned to reconcile their Victorian desire to apply scientific and technical expertise to revenue collection with the political and cultural realities of local society. Initially puzzled by trying to identify landowners, they decided that he who paid the revenue was the owner. In some provinces this led to the original Mughal tax-farmers becoming owners of large estates with vested interest in supporting the Raj. In Punjab, a desire to placate the defeated Sikh soldiery and existing landed interests caused the Irish founders of the Punjab administration to create secure and alienable property rights for agriculturalists and demobilised soldiers, on the basis of previous continuous occupation, whilst professing to be maintaining the existing system. An image was created of sturdy martial peasants who were to be treated well, although the larger landlords – the Sikh sirdars of the southern and south-western parts of the province – were also supported in the same way as the aristocratic model had been elsewhere in India.20 Ruling groups, if they behaved, were not replaced but were confirmed as useful intermediaries between government and the people. A grant of latifundian proportions was made to at least one Sikh family which the British wanted to keep on their side.21 The process of change, and of achieving its acceptance by the various interested parties, was helped by applying the vigorous, commonsense, if paternalistic, approach initiated by the Ulster-born Lawrences, by placing an emphasis on customary law rather than on [ 113 ]

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what Robb calls ‘a universalist jurisprudence’.22 The land revenue demand was lowered, as much for political as fiscal reasons, and privileges extended to certain favoured castes. Officials aimed at demands set at between 20 and 30 per cent below that of the Sikhs and, of course, payable in cash.23 All this applied only to those lands in the British administered area and, to a certain extent, to its feudatories; the tribal areas of the north-west were a different matter, as the previous chapters illustrated. One of the last pieces of legislation enacted by John Lawrence, a founder of the ‘Punjab school’, was when, as viceroy (the last ICS man to occupy that post), he saw through the Punjab and Oudh tenancy acts of 1868. The Punjab act gave occupancy rights to all tenants who had held land for a specified period and became ‘the bulwark and charter of a contented peasantry’.24 Sir Louis Dane later said that he had been told by Lord Morley that Mr Gladstone, in 1869–70, got the idea of settling the Irish tenancy question, by fixity of tenure at a fair price, from the Punjab act of 1868.25 There is no mention of the obvious irony which was apparent in Irish-inspired Indian legislation being used as a model for similar British-imposed Irish legislation. Elsewhere Dane said that he was by descent and always had been a firm unionist, but, ‘one cannot help feeling that, if the merits of a good land act of this kind had been reached by all parties at an earlier date, much of the subsequent trouble in Ireland might have been avoided’.26 Lord Dufferin’s Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887 owed much, as will be seen later, to that peer’s Irish experiences. Decisions relating to ownership, property boundaries, and fair assessments of taxes due, hinged on accurate cadastral surveys and this is where British scientific method triumphed. Based on principles worked out in longer-established provinces, British settlement officers, assisted by scores of Indian assistants, carried out surveys and valuations,27 most of which were very similar to those carried out by Sir Richard Griffith and his assistants in Ireland.28 The work of settlement, according to Michael O’Dwyer – and this is echoed elsewhere – offered the best life and most fascinating work to be found in India, and it is mainly to O’Dwyer, along with Mason, that a description of this important work refers; important not only because of its stated purpose, but also because it offered administrators the opportunity of getting to know the countryside and the rural people of the province,29 a factor missing in the plantation economy of Ceylon, and in Malaya where surveyors carried out the task. O’Dwyer, in 1889, at twenty-five years of age, had independent charge of revenue settlement at Gujranwala, a district with an area of some 3,000 square miles, and a population approaching three-quarters of a million. His period at Gujranwala overlapped [ 114 ]

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Louis Dane’s spell as settlement officer at Gurdaspur which was barely fifty miles distant; and also that of Edmund O’Brien, a past pupil of St Columba’s, a graduate of Cambridge and a nephew of William Smith O’Brien the celebrated Young Irelander,30 in the hilly district of Kangra. O’Dwyer had a house of his own with a dozen servants and stabling for his six horses. The country people were of the Jat tribal group and, though all were originally Hindu and claiming a common ancestor, they were now divided into Sikh, Hindu and Muslim sections – often in the same village. O’Dwyer’s work is described in his autobiographical India as I Knew it, and in his assessment report as presented to the Punjab government in the person of Wicklow man Michael Fenton, at that time senior secretary to the financial commissioners.31 A copy of the report survives in the British Library. Their practical training and education accustomed Civilians to the writing of lengthy reports and some were presented in quite elegant and easily assimilated form. O’Dwyer’s introductory remarks are an excellent example and provide the reader with a vivid picture of the terrain in that part of Punjab: The Gujranwala district occupies the centre of the Rechna Doab, being intermediate in natural features, fertility and conditions of agriculture between the highly favoured submontane tracts comprised in the Sialkot district on the north-east, and the barren wastes of Jhang and Montgomery on the south-west. The Chenab forms the north-western boundary for a distance of nearly eighty miles, separating it from Gujrat and Shahpur, while on the south it slopes into the valley of the Dey. The latter stream enters the district from Sialkot on the south-east corner and after a very sinuous course of about fifteen miles in which it benefits about twenty villages in the Gujranwala tehsil, passes into the Lahore district. The entire tract is an alluvial plain of almost unbroken evenness, sloping imperceptibly to the south-west.32

The work consisted partly of carrying out a topographical survey, or re-survey, of each of the 200 to 400 estates or villages which made up a tehsil, which in turn was one of the subdivisions of a district. O’Dwyer’s district in this case was composed of 1,200 villages, sometimes called estates, each of which consisted of perhaps 1,000 cultivated acres (approximately 400 hectares) farmed by about 100 peasant proprietors. (This does not quite tally with figures of total cultivated acreage which is given as 798,480 acres, which would suggest that the average acreage of villages was less than 1,000 acres.) Subsidiary to the survey was the sorting out of legal disputes pertaining to boundaries, inheritance, leases, tenancies and so on, for in Punjab the ICS men still had judicial powers.33 This could entail the drawing up of a genealogical tree of owners, the history of a well, when it was sunk [ 115 ]

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and repaired, when present rights to it had been acquired and so on.34 O’Dwyer and his assistants adjudicated on 60,000 of these disputes, usually on the spot in the presence of the parties and without the presence of lawyers. Each estate (village) was also inspected in detail at least once, and discussions entered into with owners and tenants concerning the crops, rents and yields. Note would be taken of the type of crop and fertility; O’Dwyer would set his horse loose to find the best grazing, and thus the best soil, while the village headmen endeavoured to lead the Irishman to the least good land. The number of wells and other such matters would be taken into account.35 Although O’Dwyer does not say so, the assessment would include classifying each small field according to general physical properties and situation, and the total soil value of each field ascertained. Adjustments were made based on distance from market and accessibility.36 The field survey, committed to a map on a scale of twenty-four inches to one mile, covered 850,000 fields and a total area of 1,640,000 acres and accounted for thirty months of the time devoted to the assessment. Fifty-seven per cent of the area was still uncultivated.37 All the data would be entered in the books of the patwari or village accountant, who was now to be a government employee, and O’Dwyer would bring his team, none of whom could speak English, on to the next group of villages. Having completed the inspections for the subdivision which was his responsibility, and having made rough notes on what each village might reasonably be expected to pay – for the revenue collection was taken from villages rather than individuals – he then framed proposals for the entire area, giving an account of its financial history, agriculture and revenue capacity, supported by statistics. Proposals were then examined by his superiors, the commissioner and the financial commissioner, and were in turn submitted to the government. The government would hand down its proposals, which might differ from O’Dwyer’s, and it was then his job to distribute this total among the various villages and arrange for the redistribution within each village. The assessments were usually designed to last for thirty years, when again there would be a detailed survey and revaluation.38 Mechanisms for appeal were available to the villages and individuals.39 At the completion of his work a settlement officer would produce a comprehensive report running to hundreds of pages, the introduction to which would often, as in O’Dwyer’s case, make most interesting reading, containing anthropological, geological, historical, archaeological and linguistic information and data, and would sometimes include or have appended a monograph on one or other of these topics. For instance, Dane produced Customary Law of the Main Tribes in the Gurdaspur District,40 while [ 116 ]

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O’Brien, who had previously carried out another settlement, was the author of a glossary of the Multani language.41 So much of the described assessment process is similar to the system used by Griffith in Ireland, a system with which O’Dwyer, a farmer’s son, was familiar, that it is worth reading his understanding of the history of such revenue assessments as applied in the east. He writes that Julius Caesar laid down standards of measurement and assessment to secure a reasonable revenue from public land which had been annexed by profiteering patricians, a decision which may have led to the conspiracy which cost him his life. His standards were adopted by the Byzantine empire and spread from there into Persia, from whence Akbar the great Mughal drew his inspiration for Indian revenue assessment. Akbar even brought Julius Caesar into his reference to the Mughal standard of length.42 The British inherited the system and adapted it. The first truly scientific British revenue assessment in India took place between 1833 and 1840,43 which leaves the question open as to whether Griffith’s surveys owed anything to the Indian system, or vice versa. Under Sikh rule, proprietary rights had no value, the distinction between owner and tenant was unknown as the state demand absorbed all the profits of cultivation, leaving no margin for the non-cultivating proprietors. At annexation the district was found to be impoverished and demoralised.44 Revenue demands of former rulers were progressively lowered by the British so that, when Punjab was acquired, the principle had been established that the demand would be half the economic rent which a reasonable landlord would expect. This would generally be the cash equivalent of one-fifth to one-eighth of the crop but, according to O’Dwyer, in practice the Punjab government did not exact more than one-eighth to one-twelfth of the value of the produce.45 There were other charges which he does not mention and which will be dealt with later. O’Dwyer revelled in the battle of wits he engaged in with the sturdy rural people, a battle played out each day of the six-month-long cold season, going on from seven in the morning until noon. Then, in the afternoon the villagers would assemble outside his tent for a more general discussion when the truth of what he had been told might be contradicted by those from neighbouring villages who were anxious to magnify others’ resources while minimising their own.46 All this was done in good humour, Jan Morris saying of these encounters that O’Dwyer, ‘did his best work in intimate contact with the Punjabi peasants – often rogues to an Irish pattern themselves, living close to the soil, and as shot through with brutality, as poor men lived in O’Dwyer’s native Tipperary’.47 [ 117 ]

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It is not certain that O’Dwyer saw his relationship with the landed gentry and rural folk in quite that way, but he makes it clear that he made many good friends among them and maintained many of these associations long after he had left India.48 Louis Dane also thought that the Punjabi peasant in many ways resembled the Irish in character.49 Dane, along with O’Dwyer, enjoyed the work of settlement,50 as, much later, did Philip Mason who echoes almost exactly O’Dwyer’s feelings about the country people.51 The Tipperary man hunted with the local people and engaged in the risky activity of ‘pig-sticking’, galloping across often-difficult terrain in an effort to spear wild boar. The sense one gets is that of a paternalistic and sympathetic attitude towards the peasant on the part of Civilians – a paternalism recognised by historians52 – and, in O’Dwyer’s case, an empathetic recognition of somewhat similar backgrounds shared with the larger landholders.53 Settlements took a long time. O’Dwyer was five years in Gujranwala, so that there was every opportunity to become familiar with the problems of the country people, an opportunity that was unlikely to occur again in the career of a Civilian, unless he did another settlement, as frequent transfers were otherwise the norm in the service, so that men seldom got to know an area quite so well as a settlement officer.54 In regard to O’Dwyer’s work the government of India commented that it: ‘fully concurred . . . in the estimate of the work done by Mr. O’Dwyer. His report contains evidence throughout of intimate knowledge, and of great care and judgement in its application.’55 Many, if not most, settlement officers and the general run of Civilians in rural areas subjectively felt that they were doing good, that their work contributed to the well-being of the people of the mofussil (rural hinterland) and, indeed, it is evident from so many accounts of the writers already mentioned that ICS men worked extremely hard and their work did ease the burden of the tillers of the soil, and even helped many to experience a prosperity and security previously scarcely imagined, as statistics will later demonstrate. However – despite their intention to respect indigenous practices – in introducing western ideas of ownership, valuation, assessment and collection; inheritance and alienation of land; and, as will be seen, easier access to markets on newly built roads and railways, the British created the kind of problems which might be expected at the heart of Said’s already mentioned crucial conflict over land-ownership.56 In putting into practice Benthamite ideas promulgated by those such as James and John Stuart Mill, both of whom were East India Company employees in London earlier in the century,57 the Raj conjured up difficulties which were perhaps inevitable in transforming a largely self-subsisting economy into a marketoriented one; and a society ruled by custom and tradition – which is [ 118 ]

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not to suggest that it lacked a certain sophistication – into one forced into the straitjacket of imposed legislation based on alien principles. By O’Dwyer’s time, much of the utilitarian outlook had been discredited as being inappropriate to India, and a more paternalistic one guided by contemporary liberalism had taken its place, but the new systems of ownership and market-orientation had been established by then.58 The most immediate result was the alienability of land. Agricultural property now acquired monetary value, which increased under the new conditions created by the British through irrigation, peaceful stability and readier access to markets. The reduced revenue demand which had been introduced, albeit more strictly and efficiently applied, allowed more profit to the landholder and thus increased the value of his property. O’Dwyer wrote that in Punjab, after annexation, the average sale price of land was about 5 shillings (one-quarter of a pound) per acre; in 1924 it was almost £20 per acre, a price representing 180 years’ purchase of the state demand. He compares this with the situation in most native states where land was less than £1 per acre, which would not purchase more than a few years’ purchase of the state demand.59 A Sikh historian writes that the price of land increased tenfold, from 10 rupees to 100 rupees an acre between 1870 and 1900.60 It was natural for cultivators unused to owning property to avail of the opportunity presented by possession of a valuable commodity to realise that asset by selling it. This led to the number of landless farmers assumed alarming proportions.61

Moneylenders For a variety of reasons, such as a poor harvest due to the vagaries of the monsoon, the cost of developing a holding or buying seed, the provision of a marriage dowry or, as O’Dwyer put it, through their own extravagance, the Punjab smallholders frequently found themselves in debt to moneylenders.62 These moneylenders were almost invariably Hindu, while their clients were mainly Muslim and Sikh. The lenders were naturally resented, and prior to the British annexation would not have dared to press their debtors too far.63 The collection of revenue had become more peremptory over the years since the days in which John Lawrence and his several Irish subordinates had actively defended indigenous institutions and the rights of the landholder. Moneylenders now increasingly demanded agricultural property as collateral and tried to confiscate or buy peasants’ fields. The introduction, after the Indian Mutiny, of laws which conformed with those in the regulation provinces led to rising debt litigation. The newly introduced elaborate legal system contributed towards the [ 119 ]

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impoverishment of the peasantry and the enrichment of moneylenders and lawyers.64 As O’Dwyer had pointed out in his report, the rigid and complex system of civil law was unsuited for the circumstances, unintelligible to the people and administered in a narrow, technical spirit by poorly trained Indian judges from the moneylending or capitalist class who were unsympathetic to agrarian problems.65 The judges in these munsif courts (courts presided over by junior Indian judges) refused to consider customs or local practice, basing decisions strictly according to legal procedure.66 This in turn allowed for the manipulation of illiterate peasants by men of education, or by those who possessed some knowledge of the law. Also a new pleader class which had been allowed to practise in Punjab since 1866 had a vested interest in moving cases from village authority into urban courts. Barrier concurs with O’Dwyer in saying that lower demands, and a good harvest year, allowed peasants to use expanded credit to meet societal and cultivating expenses. Thus, a moneylender was enabled to dun his debtors under the protection of the law in a way in which villagers hitherto would simply not have allowed.67 The Punjab government’s response for several decades was to rely on laissez-faire to ensure the well-being of the rural economy. Differences of opinion arose between officials in Lahore and the officers on the ground,68 of whom, in 1881, fifteen of the ninety-eight Civilians were Irish,69 in relation to the desirability of land sales and mortgages. Successive governments believed that problems arising from such matters were not their duty to solve. In 1884, S. S. Thorburn, an experienced revenue official in Dera Ismael Khan, sent a report to the financial commissioner in Lahore, J. B. Lyall, in which he described deteriorating conditions. He argued that the Raj had a duty to protect and help the rural Indian masses. Using data collected by three assessment officers, two of them Irishmen, he illustrated the plight of Muslim cultivators.70 He cited the report of Edmund O’Brien who, he said, had laboured for seven years, from 1873 to 1880, the sole European in the area, to produce a report which showed that 70 per cent of the ‘Mohammedans’ in his area were in debt, and 30 per cent of Hindus. ‘The lowest estimate before me’, wrote O’Brien, ‘says that the amount borrowed yearly is equal to thirty per cent of the yearly income of the indebted proprietors. The highest estimate gives the debtors eighty per cent of yearly income.’71 W. E. Purser from Tipperary (Royal Enniskillen and TCD) was the settlement officer in Montgomery from 1868 to 1874. ‘He had no society but that of the people and no occupation but that of his work. His ability and learning were great,’ said Thorburn.72 Purser reported a similar situation to that described by O’Brien. Tenants were not indebted to the [ 120 ]

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same degree as proprietors because of less easy access to credit. Hindus, he said, acquired land as payment for debt while ‘Mohammedans’ generally borrowed to purchase it.73 Relying on this evidence Thorburn argued that if the government did not protect peasants, particularly Muslims, from the exploitation by Hindu moneylenders, the cultivating class might rebel. He wrote, ‘The danger of allowing the Hindu to assume a position of domination over the more warlike Muhammedan would create a state of things which would tempt the latter to welcome the subversion of our government.’74 He made a number of recommendations, the most relevant to this study being, ‘I would make it illegal for any person deriving profits from a shop or from money-lending, to acquire an interest in arable pasture or land.’75 When his ideas were turned down he circulated his celebrated book Musalmans and Money-Lenders in the Punjab, without notable effect on the government although supported by nearly all his colleagues.76 When Lyall became lieut.-governor in 1887 he opposed Thorburn’s thesis but, in his first two years in the post, land alienation doubled. In the fiscal year 1886–87 1,200,000 acres of land changed hands through sale and mortgage and this amount was exceeded in the following year.77 From 1884–85 to 1887–88 the acreage mortgaged or sold in each of those years increased from 632,782 acres to 1,376,326 acres.78 Outbursts of communal violence in Punjab directed against Hindus accompanied the rise in land transfer. Fears were exacerbated because of tensions among Muslims on the frontier. Fear in London and at Indian-government level led to considerable political manoeuvrings which need not be dealt with here. In 1891 Lyall asked the government of India to initiate the usual legislative process of preparing for a bill similar to the Deccan Ryot Act which had eased the problem elsewhere, but the government decided to consider the matter in an all-India context, thus ensuring that the process would be a lengthy one.79 When Dennis Fitzpatrick took over from Lyall he also opposed, or at least was ambivalent about, Thorburn’s proposals. Lansdowne felt that the Punjab government (Fitzpatrick) was disinclined to move on the issue because it accepted land alienation as inevitable.80 However, having made a tour of the north-west and seen things on the ground for himself, Lansdowne demanded a thorough investigation of the issue.81 Fitzpatrick also came under some pressure from General Roberts who was concerned about the reaction of peasantry to the possible increase in land taxation due to resettlements in the army’s main recruiting grounds such as Gujranwala and Gurdaspur.82 Fitzpatrick replied in typically forensic fashion, saying that it was commonly accepted that lowness of taxation resulted in farming being more lucrative, thus leading to a drop in recruitment, and hence it might suit the [ 121 ]

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army’s purpose better to support an increase in land taxes. He then goes on to say that he constantly stresses to his assessment officers that assessment be light.83 It took a long time but eventually, in 1900, the Punjab Alienation of Land Bill was enacted, the provisions of which were designed to prevent sale of land to ‘non-agricultural classes’ and thus to ensure that smallholders did not become indebted to moneylenders and speculators, urban and rural.84 This gave rise to further problems which will be explicated in chapter 11. There was yet another factor in relation to rural indebtedness which complicated the tasks of Irish Civilians and their British colleagues, and particularly those of the three Irish lieut.governors who served during this period. This was the question of the new canal colonies, which, while leading to increased production and prosperity, brought their own problems.

Canal colonies One of the remarkable achievements of the British in Punjab was the establishment of organised settlements, called colonies, associated with irrigation provided by the extensive network of newly built canals which will be described in this section. While O’Dwyer’s settlement of Gujranwala was under way he was faced with the assessment problems presented by the irrigation of the western half of his district by means of the newly constructed Lower Chenab canal, a system that was to become part of the greatest irrigation complex in the world.85 This, he says, meant a revolutionary change in the whole order of rural economy, the results of which were difficult to forecast. His onthe-spot and somewhat elastic solution to the problem did not meet with the approval of the lieut.-governor, Dennis Fitzpatrick, and he was summoned to Government House to explain his approach, thus providing the researcher with an insight into the interaction between two Irish administrators. Fitzpatrick, having, in his fellow Irishman’s opinion, an exceptionally clear and logical mind, prepared an alternative and elaborate scheme which, on consideration, O’Dwyer bluntly said would not work. Fitzpatrick was amused at this presumption, ‘for he had an Irish contempt for official convention’.86 They went on a two-hours-long ride during which the subject was thrashed out and O’Dwyer was sent on his way with his scheme approved. He remarks on Fitzpatrick’s knowledge of practical administration, and later writes approvingly that Fitzpatrick’s rather stern, judicial outlook on men and things had softened under his wide administrative responsibilities.87 Fitzpatrick, on taking up office, had little experience of land revenue matters or settlements but, according to a local newspaper, he set his [ 122 ]

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mind to learn.88 During the last year of his settlement work, O’Dwyer was also given charge of the district as deputy commissioner, and this led to criticism by another local newspaper which felt that this appointment inhibited representation being made to government by aggrieved peasants.89 A final report on the Chenab colony prepared in 1915 by B. H. Dobson, with an introductory note by Wicklow man Sir Michael Fenton, who was then a financial commissioner in Punjab and partly responsible for revenue matters, is a very useful source on the history of the colony and various statistics pertaining to it. A copy survives in the British Library.90 The irrigation schemes built by the British laid the foundation for the future prosperity of Punjab and for a remarkable movement of population from east to west.91 Fenton writes in his introductory note, ‘In the administration and economic development of the modern Punjab, the canal colonies are the most notable achievement, and of the Punjab canal colonies the Lyallpur Colony is the prototype.’92 (Lyallpur was the chief town in the Chenab colony.) It is evident, then, that Irishmen who worked on the setting up and maintenance of these colonies were involved in significant projects which were justification in themselves of the careers of these administrators, engineers and others involved. Irishmen played a part in new schemes of irrigation almost from the moment of annexation, as John Lawrence and his several Irish assistants embarked on schemes to augment or replace previous, less ambitious Mughal and Sikh works. The five rivers of Punjab enclose four areas which were once untilled wasteland. The water level was eighty feet below the surface, which made well irrigation impracticable, but the waste land was ideal for canal irrigation, bearing in mind the location of the Indus and its tributaries.93 The Mughals had constructed inundation canals some centuries previously, which functioned seasonally in the southern Punjab, and the British set about building weirs to convert these into weir-controlled perennial canals. The contribution of Irish engineers to the development of various such schemes is described in chapter 12. The Lower Chenab canal was completed in 1892,94 this being the canal whose irrigating waters posed a problem for O’Dwyer, a problem which was but one of several which lie at the heart of this section and to which this exposition is leading.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Edward Said, Culture and imperialism (London, 1993), p. xiii. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 210; Webb, Modern England, p. 366. Cook, Imperial affinities, pp. 15–18. John Ramsden, ‘Hamilton, Lord George Francis (1845–1927)’, Oxford dictionary

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5 6

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

of national biography (online edn, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33667 (accessed 14 April 2008). Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 418; Dane, ‘Records and reactions’, pp. 808–15. Anthony F. Denholm, ‘Robinson, George F. S, First Marquess of Ripon (1827–1909)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/35792 (accessed 6 April 2008). M. L. Brillman, ‘An uncommon under-secretary: Sir Antony MacDonnell, India and Ireland’, in Foley and O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India, pp. 179–88. Foster, Modern Ireland, p. 413. Cook, Imperial affinities, pp. 108–16. Ibid., p. 87. Daily News, 31 Oct. 1893. India list and India Office list 1910, p. 394. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 268. Penelope Chetwood, Kulu, the end of the habitable world (New Delhi, 1989), p. 129. Norman Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill of 1900 (Durham, NC, 1966), p. 2. Mason, The men who ruled India, pp. 10–11. Ibid., p. 153. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 1–3. Robb, A history of India, pp. 157–8. Ibid., pp. 172–3; Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 153. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, p. 17. Robb, A history of India, pp. 172–3. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 153. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 241–2. Dane to private secretary to Minister for the Colonies, 9 March 1942 (BL, OIOC, Dane papers, MSS EUR D1158/5). Dane, ‘Records and reactions’, pp. 808–15. Mason, The men who ruled India, pp. 130–47. James R. Reilly, ‘Is there more in Griffith’s valuation than just names’, Journal of the Irish at Home and Abroad, www.leitrim-roscommon.com/GRIFFITH/Griffiths. pdf, no pagination (accessed 3 March 2008). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 52. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 5 Nov. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Michael O’Dwyer, Assessment report on Gujranwala district (Lahore, 1894), (BL, OIOC, IOR V/27/314/497). Ibid., p. 1. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 52–6. O’Dwyer, Assessment report, pp. 32–40. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 52–6. Maconochie, Life in the Indian Civil Service, p. 57. O’ Dwyer, Assessment report, p. 32. C. M. Rivaz, in introductory notes to O’Dwyer’s report. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 52–6. Louis Dane, Customary law of the main tribes in the Gurdaspur district (Lahore, 1893). The India Office list for 1891 containing an account of the services of officers in the Indian Civil Service (London, 1891). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 56. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 130. O’Dwyer, Assessment report, p. 11. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 57. Ibid., p. 55. Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 468. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 72.

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Dane, ‘Records and reactions’. The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Mason, The men who ruled India, pp. 210–15. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 246. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 40. Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, p. 55. Denzil Ibbetson, secretary to Government of India to Michael Fenton, Punjab revenue sec., 17 Aug. 1896 (BL, OIOC, Punjab government, revenue and agricultural dept, proceedings, Sept.–Oct. 1896, IOR P/4928). Said, Culture and imperialism, p. xiii. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 202–3. Keay, India: a history, pp. 430–45. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 97–8. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 151. Ibid. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 55. S. S. Thorburn, Musalmans and money-lenders in Punjab (London and Edinburgh, 1886), p. 1. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 152. O’Dwyer, Assessment report, p. 25. Ibid. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 6–16. Ibid., pp. 15–16. India list civil and military April 1881, pp. 99–102. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, p. 19. Thorburn, quoting E. O’Brien’s assessment report of Muzaffargarh, in Musalmans and money-lenders in the Punjab, p. 81. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, p. 19. Thorburn, Musalmans and money-lenders in the Punjab, p. 102. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 38. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 24–44. Lansdowne to Cross, 23 Jan. 1890 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558 58). Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, p. 30. Ibid. Ibid., p. 28. Roberts to Lansdowne, 25 Jan. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, D558/24). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 10 Feb. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, D558/24). B. H. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement (Lahore, 1916) (IOR D823/2), pp. 14–15. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 9. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 67–8. Ibid., p. 88. Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. Tribune, 18 July 1894. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement. Ibid. Ibid., Introductory note, p. 1. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 226. Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Punjab’s farm potential’, Dawn, 15 May 2007, www.dawn. com/2007/05/15/op.htm (accessed 8 April 2008).

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Canal colonies

The Chenab irrigation scheme was designed to transform the semidesert and to ease the problem of overpopulation in the eastern part of the province. The physical contours of the seemingly flat plain were particularly suitable for irrigation with a fall of some 181 feet from north-east to south-west, a distance of over eighty miles.1 A ‘colony’ was planned: A whole countryside was designed – roads, railways, railway-stations, market towns, villages, the mosque, the temple, the village school, the pound, the side-road, the little bridge, the grove of trees for shade, firewood and timber, the meeting place, the magistrate’s court, the police station.2

Numbers of colonists from eastern Punjab – Muslim, Hindu and Sikh – were helped to migrate; ‘the relief of pressure in congested districts was made the keystone of government policy’,3 reported Dobson over twenty years later. Hindus and Sikhs found themselves on the Pakistan side of the new frontier when that country split from India in 1947, and faced the terrors of reverse migration through a hostile countryside.4 The newcomers settled in square holdings each of twentyseven and a half acres.5 Retired soldiers from Punjab received ‘military grants’ of one to three squares, which would amount to eighty-two and a half acres. Grants of similar size were given to ‘yeomen’, that is, cultivators with enough capital to maintain more than one square, the purpose being to encourage those with initiative and leadership to build up community spirit. Plots ranging in size from 5 to 100 squares were offered by auction to urban investors but the bulk of the land was reserved to peasant grantees in line with the government’s desire to preserve the province as a country of peasant farmers.6 The state now controlled the most vital resource, water, in this hot and otherwise arid region and it used this fact to impose various [ 126 ]

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restrictions and regulations, and also instituted new water charges in addition to the normal revenue assessments.7 It was probably these new factors that posed the problem about which O’Dwyer consulted Fitzpatrick. The complaint of the local newspaper mentioned in the previous chapter, in connection with O’Dwyer’s position as deputy commissioner as well as settlement officer, related to the quadrupling of water rates, which, the paper said, led to some land being left uncultivated.8 While the colony scheme was not wholly philanthropic in intent, it was conceived in a spirit of singular breadth and magnanimity, according to Dobson.9 Initially fairly relaxed in their approach to colonists and with the scheme designed to encourage them, authorities gradually laid more emphasis on revenue-collecting and on strict application of the procedures and conditions laid down for efficient running of the colony. Recipients of land grants were occupancy tenants and were not allowed to acquire proprietary rights. Non-agricultural tribes and castes were excluded from the scheme, as were landless labourers and traditional providers of village services – smiths, carpenters and the like. Grantees were subject to punitive action if they failed to cooperate in relation to sanitation, home sites, arboriculture. They were required to build walls around their animal yards and dispose of night soil.10 Absenteeism was not allowed; residence in the colony was essential. There were also regulations regarding succession, designed to prevent rapid subdivision. Colonists prospered, land increased in yield but could not be sold. Cultivators found themselves again in debt; ready cash in a good year prompted them to overreach in the development of their farms or in expenditure on the societal requirement of lavish dowries and weddings.11 The importance of the problem of dowries can be deduced from census figures which show that numbers of females were considerably below the normal figure of approximately 50 per cent of the population,12 which suggests that female infanticide was practised in order to avoid the payment of dowries, a practice well documented.13 Extra charges on water usage and for such things as education, police and other community projects did not help matters.14 Before considering the effects of the Punjab Alienation of Land Bill, 1900 it is well, at this stage, to look at the contribution of the Irish to the rural economy up to the passing of the 1900 act.

The Irish During the political debates connected with consideration of the 1900 Land Alienation Bill, Viceroy Curzon, and the Punjab governor of the time, Sir Charles Rivaz (1902–7), defended the government decision to [ 127 ]

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examine the land bill at Simla, because of its proximity to Punjab.15 Indeed land revenue matters relating to Punjab were often treated as ‘Simla affairs’, as they were usually considered at summer and autumn sessions of the Viceroy’s Council at a time when the Punjab Executive Council, the secretariat and many Punjab officers were gathered at the hill station.16 The inclusion in this section of the two viceroys with strong Irish connections is therefore considered appropriate as, with their experience as Irish landlords, they brought their particular prejudices to bear in their discussions with the Irish ICS men and lieut.-governors who are the particular focus of this book, and whom they met frequently, officially and socially, on occasion riding together in the evening.17 In further explanation of what was said at the beginning of chapter 9, it is stressed that the inclusion of so many names and biographical notes is not to present some meaningless litany. Brief details of the backgrounds of these men are important to confirm that they belonged to an Irish community of similar social and educational origins, although not always of similar religious or political affiliation. In 1881, there were seven settlement officers in Punjab of whom two were Irish, W. E. Purser, who was a Civilian senior settlement officer at Jullundur, and Capt. J. A. L. Montgomery, an army man who was working in Hoshiapur. Purser was a member of the Church of Ireland and the son of a merchant in Tipperary.18 Montgomery was from the well-known family of that name from Moville, Donegal,19 and was the son of Sir Robert Montgomery the previous Punjab lieut.governor who also came from Moville, and was grandfather of Bernard Law Montgomery of El Alamein fame.20 Richard Morris Dane, Louis’s brother, was secretary to the financial commissioner in the revenue office at Lahore, to whom settlement officers were responsible. (Where the location of an Irish engineer or administrator in any given year is mentioned, it is to be understood, unless otherwise indicated, that the information is taken from the Civil List of that year.) In December 1884, Lord Dufferin replaced Ripon as viceroy and, if one accepts the opinion of Davenport-Hynes, his experiences in Ireland had given him a practical sympathy with tenants’ rights and a distrust of unsound agricultural legislation.21 This description seems strange of someone who, in Ireland, had asserted that landlords’ property rights were unquestionable, and looked with disapproval on the Ulster custom of tenant rights which gave tenants some degree of security,22 saying that it was a curse on property and a form of agrarian blackmail on the part of the tenants.23 But his Irish experiences and a spell at the India Office had given him an insight possessed by few Indian legislators. As Alfred Lyall says, ‘No better training, in short, than that of the India Office and Irish politics could have been given [ 128 ]

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to a statesman who had to pass the Bengal Tenancy Bill within a few months of arrival in Calcutta.’24 Dufferin had witnessed the famine in Skibbereen and never forgot it.25 He remembered fever patients lying four to a bed and had seen the town’s stinking burial pit,26 and said in relation to India, ‘Perhaps the widespread misery which I had witnessed in Ireland, produced by similar conditions, had quickened my observation.’27 This attitude was consistent with his desire to move cultivators from overcrowded eastern parts of Punjab to the newly opened colonies. His Irish background, then, would make him favourably disposed towards both fair agricultural legislation and measures to improve the lives of peasants and to protect them from the famines which occurred so frequently in India.28 He had brought in the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, even though initially suspicious of the influence and motivations of the Irish Civilians who so enthusiastically supported it.29 He was persuaded to overcome this initial reaction by his growing respect for the efficiency and personality of Antony MacDonnell from Mayo,30 even though the bill was much modified from that originally favoured by MacDonnell and his countrymen.31 In correspondence with Lord Randolph Churchill, in relation to a land act in Oudh which was brought in more or less in tandem with a similar bill in Punjab, Dufferin wrote, ‘As an Irish landlord dealt with under the Act of 1880 you need have no doubt of my fully taking into account the deep bitterness engendered in a man’s mind by unjust legislation, and that I shall not overlook the political dangers likely to be created by an error in that direction.’32 Although he meant this as an indication that he was on the side of the zamindars (meaning landlords, in most Indian provinces) he continued, ‘On the other hand the condition of the Oudh peasantry seems intolerable.’33 So, even if he was predisposed towards the landlords’ point of view he was very aware of the political need for equitable land legislation, based on his Irish experience. In 1887 Dufferin saw through the Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887 which dealt with some shortcomings in the 1868 legislation and provided for fairness and clarity in the rights of tenant occupancy, and relief for wrongful dispossession, while allowing landlords to enhance rents following improvements carried out by them.34 Moreover, he proved sympathetic to calls for funding of the various ambitious irrigation schemes underway, especially in Punjab.35 He was not blind to the fact that the question of property rights, and the way in which these were handled by the British, was not merely the subject of esoteric economic theory, saying, ‘We are irritating the natives out here in exactly the same manner as for hundreds of years we have been irritating the Irish.’ And he also remarked on, ‘that intolerable and vulgar brutality which the strong English race always manifests towards more inferior and sensitive populations’.36 [ 129 ]

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Irrigation in India was divided into two main classes, major and minor. Major schemes were subdivided into two categories, Productive and Protective. Major Protective works were those designed to prevent or deal with famine and resulted from recommendations made in the wake of a severe famine in Behar in 1874, recommendations that owed much to the work of Mayo-man Antony MacDonnell. These Protective works were funded from the general revenue of India. Productive works, on the other hand, were funded by borrowed capital and were expected to pay for themselves.37 The year of the 1887 act also saw the start of construction of the Chenab canal headworks which was a major Productive work. The Chenab canal supplied water to colonies which were to extend to 2,859 square miles (7,405 square kilometres) by 1906. The first colonists from the congested districts of eastern Punjab were settled in 1891 and by 1906 the population would amount to 863,244 people. It was to be traversed by railroads totalling about 230 miles in length and would include several towns and important markets.38 There were two rather odd factors, to modern eyes, impinging on rural life. Besides the land revenues, the government relied, sometimes quite heavily, on a tax on salt production, a tax which fell disproportionately on the poor and thus affected the rural landless. The salt-tax yield varied from 2 to 16 per cent of government revenue, declining after 1900.39 The other oddity was the government-sanctioned growing of the opium poppy,40 opium being a product strictly controlled by the government since the East India Company had encouraged its production and export to China in order to correct the imbalance of trade with that country caused by the trade in China tea, a trade which had resulted in a critical drain in silver bullion in the late eighteenth century.41 That trade led to the need for the acquisition of Penang, and contributed to the ‘luxuries and vices’ already mentioned of Chinese labourers in British Malaya, and a consequent further source of income. Richard Morris Dane was appointed commissioner of excise in 1890 and became responsible for the administration of the salt tax. He also became involved in a royal commission on opium and contributed two lengthy appendices to the report of the commission in which he argued a case against the anti-opium lobby in Britain and asserted that the Indian government could not abolish the trade without instituting new and unpopular taxes. He was criticised in the House of Commons and brought on his head the opprobrium of the anti-opium movement.42 Present at the opening of the Chenab works was Dennis Fitzpatrick who had taken over as lieut.-governor two months previously. Fitzpatrick’s term in office was bedevilled by increasing rural indebtedness and its implications for political instability in the province. [ 130 ]

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Urban-based moneylenders were charging over 50 per cent interest per annum to the increasing numbers of indebted peasants.43 Lansdowne was now viceroy and he had written to Lord Cross the Secretary of State two years previously that he had seen a statement that 75 per cent of the land held in mortgage in the 1880s had been transferred to the moneylending class.44 Fitzpatrick demanded action, pointing out that the legal system gave advantage to clever moneylenders, and he said that he regarded it as politically dangerous that there should be discontent among cultivators.45 He called for new legislation but did not support the growing call for prohibition of transfer of land to moneylenders and non-agriculturalists. He held strong views on the sanctity of contracts and he was chary of proposals which might treat these things lightly, so he refused to arrive at a decision in favour of a land alienation bill until the case for its introduction became more clear.46 A complication lay in the fact that some land was set aside in the colonies, as it had been previously, for ex-soldiers. Ten thousand acres were set aside in the Chenab colony as grants to military, and much more in other areas. Military service in the ranks had a very strong correlation with poverty, so remittances, pensions and land grants were very important to the rural economy.47 This bias towards the military, and the Raj’s close relationship with the landed elite which had developed as a result of the help given by these two intertwined rural communities, would have long-lasting political and economic effects, especially on the Pakistan side of the line which divided the Indian and Pakistani segments of Punjab at independence. Initially weakened because of their opposition to partition, the middleclass landowners with ties to the military gradually acquired political power as the army determined much of what happened in Pakistan’s politics.48 Besides the problem of reverse migration at the time of partition a further problem arose which threatened the very existence of the new state of Pakistan when the dividing line between the two newly independent countries left the headworks of almost all the canal schemes on the Indian side of the border.49 The Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Beas rivers all had their sources in India, while the Indus and Sutlej flowed for hundreds of miles through Indian territory before reaching Pakistan. So it can be said that the work in which the Irish had played an important part, from laying down the policy in the first place in regard to irrigation and land distribution to the development and administration of colonies and revenue assessment, was to have a significant and long-lasting effect on the history of Punjab and of the two independent nations which eventually split the province. Fitzpatrick tried unsuccessfully to resist Lansdowne’s insistence that the land rights in the Chenab colony and all succeeding ones be [ 131 ]

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made inalienable.50 It is difficult to disagree with the Tribune’s view that Sir Dennis’s policy in general was to leave things as they were.51 However, he is credited with securing substantial funds from government for irrigation works during a financially straitened time.52 And there seems to have been universal approval among Indians in Punjab for his stance against the government when it sought to shorten the length of settlements from thirty years, and for his statement that the duty of a settlement officer was so to assess that people might live with some degree of comfort.53 He had in mind the various additional charges which burdened the cultivator when he opposed adamantly a government proposal to raise taxes, saying that, ‘He [Fitzpatrick] is, with the utmost deference to the government of India, decidedly of the opinion that in considering what assessments the people can bear without having their standard of comfort unduly affected, it is absolutely impossible to leave out of account the amount of local cesses levied on the land.’54 His difficulties with the government in regard to rural matters may have resulted partly from Lansdowne’s ignorance of the intricacies of Indian land revenue matters. The latter had written to Antony MacDonnell in connection with another province, ‘I had no idea of the extent to which our actions had favoured the Zamindar [substantial landlord] at the expense of the ryot.’55 This came from a man nearing the end of his term of office, in connection with one of the great issues in Indian affairs. In some ways, Lansdowne’s background was similar to Dufferin’s; both were Irish landlords who had considerable trouble with tenants, both were at Oxford and became disillusioned with Gladstone because of his Irish land acts, and each had been governor-general of Canada. However, Lansdowne was an absentee landlord whose family had not resided in Ireland for some time, so, despite having huge estates in Ireland – he was Ireland’s second largest landowner – he could not have had the grasp of everyday tenants’ issues that Dufferin possessed.56 Nonetheless, he travelled to Punjab and on seeing for himself the poverty of some of the people endeavoured to do something about it. The prohibition on land transfers in the colonies sprang from this.57 As might be expected, he saw the parallels between the Irish and Indian land questions, and the lessons one could learn from the other. In a letter to Sir A. MacKenzie, chief commissioner of Burma, Lansdowne states that, ‘I think with you that our Irish land courts might learn a great deal from India. I have often contrasted the scientific procedures followed with the haphazard decisions of the Irish courts.’58 In a note to Lord Reay, governor of Bombay, he said, in a manner which could be applied to either country, that the land question was that which lay in the front of all their difficulties.59 He did not succeed in pushing through a land [ 132 ]

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alienation bill but left a note as he left India suggesting such a provision in legislation, as well an extension of advances to cultivators.60 Works on other canal colonies were underway towards the end of the century, particularly the Jhelum irrigation canal, a project on much the same model as the Chenab.61 Besides providing the beneficial economic effects apparent on completion of such schemes, the construction of the Jhelum now fulfilled the role of a Protective work. Famine was racking large parts of India but Punjab, through good management, managed to avoid the worst effects. The Times reported that officials saw immense advances in scientific relief resulting from the labours of Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick (who had now left office) who had closely adopted the improved executive and sanitary methods that were recommended by the 1880 Famine Commission.62 Huge numbers were employed on the construction of the Jhelum canal and associated works, thus availing of life-saving food. The Times described an inspection of the works by a party, including Brig. Surgeon Roe, on 21 January 1897. ‘Forty thousand “coolies” were congregated there, including twelve thousand blind and infirm persons who were classed as non-workers.’63 It is interesting to speculate whether the Famine Commission had learned something from the Irish experience of 1846– 47 when there were 750,000 workers on relief works, most of these of little economic value, and when people weakened or not able to work struggled to stay alive.64 Michael Fenton, a Wicklow man educated at Royal School Armagh and at TCD, was revenue secretary to the Punjab government in 1896 and had written to all commissioners and deputy commissioners to insist in a tone which surely reflected more than a bureaucrat’s concern for efficiency that: Proper plans and estimates for a sufficient number of projects to give work for some months should be ready and proper arrangements for providing funds should be made in accordance with the provisions of the Famine Code. But if disasters should appear suddenly, act immediately even if all plans are not quite ready. It need hardly be said, still more implied, that people should not be allowed to starve owing to relief measures being delayed one moment after they become necessary. Officers will be held strictly responsible for any avoidable neglect of provisions of the Famine Code.65

Michael Fenton played important roles in Punjab for the next twenty years and will be met again in subsequent chapters. Born in Wicklow in 5 July 1861, he served for over twenty years at the heart of the Punjab government, first as senior secretary to the finance commissioner from 1892, then as revenue secretary from October 1896. He became [ 133 ]

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a commissioner in December 1909, chief secretary to the government in October 1910 and then acted as financial secretary, firstly in Louis Dane’s administration and afterwards in Michael O’Dwyer’s.66 He narrowly missed out being appointed as lieut.-governor in succession to Dane.67 The presence of the Brig. Surgeon at the Jhelum workings raises the issue of increased incidence of malaria brought about by the vast amount of water which now lay in the countryside because of irrigation, and which provided breeding grounds for the malarial mosquito. As early as 1893 Fitzpatrick admitted in his annual review of the administration of the province that irrigation was partly responsible for the extraordinary rise in the cases of ‘fever’ and the Tribune, a few months earlier, had identified irrigation as being the cause of increased risk of malaria.68 A number of other potentially fatal diseases added to the problems of the poor or indebted in the countryside, and cultivators also had to cope with the considerable risk of attacks by wild animals, and of snakebite.69 This anticipates the elucidation of the role of Irish doctors which will follow in chapter 14 and is mentioned here merely to show that the history of irrigation and canal colonies in Punjab was not entirely beneficial. But, on the whole, the story of irrigation is an edifying one, and the role of Irishmen in these remarkable works has not received deserved attention. At a prize-giving ceremony at Cooper’s Hill Engineering College, Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, said that in the recent widespread and unprecedented famine (of 1896–97) it would have been impossible, no matter how excellent the civil administration, to have kept the people alive but for the great works which had been associated with the PWD. He went on to say that it was no exaggeration to state that people must otherwise have died by the millions.70 Earlier catastrophes in 1876–77 could have been avoided by technology, planning and cash; the Famine Commission of 1880 recommended that this be addressed, and the subsequent spread of irrigation works and of railways which ensured rapid movement of food relief certainly enabled Punjab to avoid a potential disaster in 1897–98.71 In 1900 another Famine Commission, under the chairmanship of Antony MacDonnell, improved on the recommendations of the 1880 Commission and drew up a series of provincial famine codes which, according to Spear, did not prevent famine but succeeded in bringing new resources of science and planning to deaden the force of the subcontinent’s most terrible scourge.72 Partly because of his work, but mainly because of the great irrigation works of Punjab, the province was not to suffer again the worst consequences of famine.73 With the retirement of Fitzpatrick and increasing pressure to do [ 134 ]

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something about rural indebtedness, the Punjab and Indian governments withdrew from whatever attachment they had to laissez-faire in relation to this matter and, under pressure from London, proceeded to bring in legislation.74 Louis Dane, who had, in 1896, been appointed chief secretary to the Punjab government by Fitzpatrick, later said that discontent among the rural population had become so great that the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, 1900 was brought in under the new lieut.-governor Mackworth Young, and that he was glad to think that, as chief secretary and an old settlement officer, he was able to help in this. Fitzpatrick, although retired, pressed for experimentation in selected areas rather than blanket legislation and the majority of officers on the ground in Punjab agreed with him.75 But Hamilton in London was in favour of the bill because of his fear of rural agitation due to his experience in Ireland – he was an Ulster landowner who had initiated legislation on Ireland76 – so the act became law on 22 June 1900.77 But the act raised new problems without entirely solving the old ones. These problems are the subject of the next few paragraphs and of the first section of chapter 11.

The 1900 Land Alienation Act Official concern over the alienation of land by agriculturalists stemmed partly from a genuine if paternalistic concern for the illiterate peasants, but the main motivation which galvanised the government was fear of its own position. General rural unrest throughout India, but particularly in Punjab, the main recruitment ground for the army, led the government to bring in the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, 1900.78 It is difficult to avoid the impression that it would have been further delayed, as it had been throughout the 1890s by the opposition of Fitzpatrick and others, were it not for the dominant presence of the new viceroy, Curzon, who swept into office intent on reform.79 Barrier believes that this particular legislation was the greatest single piece of social engineering ever attempted in India.80 Reference has already been made to the roles Irishmen played in bringing in the legislation. The Land Alienation Act was designed to prevent the sale of land to non-agriculturalists, so groups of people found themselves defined as belonging to agricultural tribes whilst some tribes were deemed to be non-agriculturalists. But such a narrow definition would exclude those ex-soldiers and others who, at annexation, had been granted land, so additional definitions of what constituted an agriculturalist had to be found, the most obvious one being ‘any person who in his own name or in that of his ancestor in the male line was recorded as an owner or as an occupancy tenant at the first regular settlement of his district’.81 [ 135 ]

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But this was too prescriptive and did not comply with the government’s desire to include others, such as soldiers and public servants, and to exclude those it thought undesirable. The government was also anxious not to interfere with the availability of agricultural labourers from among the landless classes so they also were excluded,82 as were moneylending classes and urban-based speculators.83 Some forms of mortgage, usually usufructuary, were allowed (usufruction being a system of mortgage which allows use of another’s property for a limited period) and the terms of the bill applied province-wide and not to some limited tracts as urged by Fitzpatrick.84 Louis Dane was to claim many years later that, ‘The Act is one of the reasons why the Punjab is now one of the most loyal and flourishing provinces in India,’85 which prosperity came to pass but, in writing as he did, he conflated the effects on the population of a number of bills including the 1900 one. For, while the 1900 Alienation of Land Act at first proved acceptable to the majority of rural people, although opposed by some newspapers and by urban moneylenders,86 it brought with it new problems which had to be overcome by further acts. Several other somewhat paternal pieces of legislation over the next few years were also received, if not always favourably, at least without protest from agriculturalists. These included provisions that encouraged retention of transferred property within a family or village, that extended the period during which debt suits could be instituted from three to six years and which placed insolvent aristocratic families under the official court of wards.87 The Punjab government, in an effort to improve on the provisions of the 1893 legislation which governed the running of the Chenab colony, and to deal with administrative problems which had become manifest,88 embarked on a course which, as will be seen, would change their relationship with Punjab agriculturalists, have profound effects on the paternal regime which had guided the development of settlements and canal colonies over the previous thirty years, and would be largely influential in politicising what had been politically a fairly inert province.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 77. Mason, The men who ruled India, pp. 226–7. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, chapter I, par. 4. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, p. viii. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 227. Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, p. 13. Tribune, 18 July 1894. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 3.

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C A N A L C O LO N IE S 10 11 12 13

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Ibid., p. 13. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, pp. 62–5. Census of India, Panjab, 1881, ii:A, Table no. I, Lahore, 1882. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 286; Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 95–6. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 13. Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 35. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 10 Oct. 1893, letter no. 240 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). Table 4, chapter 2. Ibid. Clive Dewey, The settlement literature of the greater Punjab (Leicester, 1982), p. 34. Davenport-Hynes, ‘Blackwood, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-, first marquess of Dufferin and Ava’ (ODNB). Lyall, Life of Dufferin, i, pp. 49–163. Public Records Office, Northern Ireland [hereafter PRONI], Dufferin papers, www. proni.gov.uk/introduction_dufferin.pdf (accessed 24 April 2008). Lyall, Life of Dufferin, ii, p. 78. A. T. Q. Stewart, Lord Dufferin and the fall of the kindom of Ava, 1885–6 (London, 1972), p. 23. Patrick Hickey, ‘The famine in the Skibbereen Union 1845–51’, in Cathal Póirtéir (ed.), The great Irish famine (Cork, 1995). Lord Dufferin and Ava, Speeches delivered in India 1884–1888 (London, 1890), p. 112. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 239–84. Dufferin to Queen Victoria, 14 Jan. 1885 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR F130/1). L. Perry Curtis jun., ‘MacDonnell, Antony Patrick, Baron MacDonnell (1844–1925)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/34714 (accessed 30 March 2008). Cook, Imperial affinities, p. 136. Dufferin to Sec. of State, Randolph Churchill, 12 Oct. 1885 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, IOR NEG 4325). Ibid. The Punjab Tenancy Act 1887, Act No. 16 of 1887, www.punjabrevenue.nic.in/ pbtan_actI.htm (accessed 11 April 2008). Tribune, 25 Aug. 1892. Dufferin to Sir Harry Varney, 6 Jan. 1888 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR F130/29A). Tribune, 25 Aug. 1892. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 47. Robb, A history of India, p. 158. Ibid., p. 279. Keay, The honourable company, pp. 452–3. Julia C. Strauss, ‘Dane, Sir Richard Morris (1854–1940)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/54358 (accessed 17 Dec. 2007). Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 153. Lansdowne to Cross, 23 Jan. 1890 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/58). J. P. Miora, The administration of India under Lord Lansdowne 1884–1888 (New Delhi, 1975), p. 116. Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. David Brief, ‘The Punjab and recruitment to the British army 1846–1918’ (MLitt thesis, Oxford University, 1979), pp. 42–96.

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LA N D A N D I N FRAS T R U C T U R E 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Burki, ‘Punjab’s farm potential’, 22 May 2007. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 419. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, p. 34. Tribune, 27 Feb. 1897. The Times, 22 Sept. 1920. Tribune, 1 Jan. 1911. Ibid., 18 Feb. 1893. Lansdowne to MacDonnell, 10 Oct. 1893, no. 240 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/24). Newton, Lord Lansdowne: a biography, p. 497. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 30–4. Lansdowne to MacKenzie, 12 Dec. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/14). Lansdowne to Reay, 14 Jan. 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/13). Miora, India under Lord Lansdowne, pp. 120–1. The Times, 23 Jan. 1897. Ibid. Ibid. Mary E. Daly, ‘The operation of famine relief, 1845–47’, in Cathal Póirtéir (ed.), The great Irish famine (Cork, 1995), pp. 123–34. Michael Fenton, note of 29 Oct. 1896 (BL, OIOC, Punjab government, revenue and agricultural dept, proceedings, Sept.–Oct. 1896, IOR P/4928). India list and India Office list 1916. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 168. Tribune, 12 Sept. 1893 and 31 May 1893. Tribune, 25 April 1912. The Times, 29 July 1897. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 223. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 284. Ibid. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 46–71. Ibid., p. 44. Ramsden, ‘Hamilton, Lord George Francis (1845–1927)’ (ODNB). Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, p. 71. Ibid., p. iii. Mason, The men who ruled India, p. 262. Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’. Gordon Walker at meeting of Punjab Legislative Council, April 1906. Ali, The Punjab under imperialism, pp. 63–80. Robb, A history of India, p. 73. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 43–6. Dane to private secretary to Minister for the Colonies, 9 March 1942 (BL, OIOC, Dane papers, MSS EUR D1158/5). Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’. Ibid. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, pp. 13–15.

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Louis Dane and land bills

Various factors had interfered with the smooth running of the Chenab colony and with the even tenor of provincial agriculture in general. The irrigation department, running out of good land, had distributed plots which were not readily accessible to canal branches and thus were faced with irate colonists in possession of poor land. Some grants were sanctioned in the Jhelum colony also, in 1904–5, in favour of a large number of government servants but, when other grants such as those to the military and those set aside for horse-breeding had been allocated, it was found that there were not enough left for the government employees, who were either given poor land or transferred to other colonies. This added to the general resentment.1 In addition, the government had become alarmed at the subdivision of plots among sons when a landholding farmer died. It was also found that many colonists evaded such requirements as the observing of specified sanitary measures and non-felling of trees which they had been required to plant. Threats of expulsion had not worked, partly because officers were disinclined to adopt such drastic measures, so colonisation staff adopted an informal system of fines. When taken to court by aggrieved tenants in regard to the fines, the government, to its surprise, lost several cases. The government responded by including the fine system in contracts signed after 1902, along with binding clauses relating to tree-planting and a higher occupancy fee.2 Corruption in the subordinate (provincial) civil service led to arbitrary and inequitable decisions in the allocation of land or assessments, thus adding to general disquiet.3 The price of land increased as the government had hoped but not to the benefit of those cultivators, noncolonists for instance, who were entitled to sell their land. Farmers generally sold to larger land-owning families who had amassed capital, and these, possessing a virtual monopoly of purchasing rights and ability, did not always pay what the government had decreed. Much of [ 139 ]

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the effort to prevent debt and alienation proved to be in vain, for a new class of moneylender filled the obvious vacuum. Peasants turned to the more entrepreneurial of their neighbours for loans and the traditional moneylenders got around the act by finding loopholes.4 Bubonic plague had entered India in the late 1890s and gradually penetrated inland and northwards, reaching Punjab in 1902 and reaching its peak incidence there in 1904.5 Precise numbers of deaths are difficult, if not impossible, to establish. Khushwant Singh gives a figure of four million for the province over an indefinite period which seems to be confined to the few years before 1907.6 Norman Barrier claims that 60,000 Punjabis were dying each week from the plague in 1907,7 which would result in over three million deaths if extrapolated for an entire year, but a memorandum issued in 1912 by C. P. Lukas, director general of the IMS, states that for the entire decade to 1911 there were two million plague deaths in the province.8 Singh claims that the administration remained insensitive to the plight of cultivators in fear of the plague and not long recovered from near-famine; instead of remitting land tax, he says, the authorities continued to increase it with each new settlement and inflicted heavy punishment on defaulters.9 In the four years up to 1907 the Punjab government collected 11 lakhs (1.1 million) of rupees in fines from colonists, much to the surprise and dismay of Lord Minto, Curzon’s successor.10 As a final blow to the hard-pressed cultivator, the bollworm destroyed the 1905 and 1906 cotton crop, the chief crop of the irrigated areas. All this, and political factors which will be explained in later chapters, led to widespread discontent.11 By 1906 the purely beneficent stage of colonisation was over and it was time to check on how conditions had been complied with. To the consternation of colonisation officers and some colonists it had gradually been realised, as a result of court cases, that although the conditions as set out in the 1893 act were indeed binding, it had been overlooked that punitive measures designed to enforce these conditions, such as fines as already mentioned, could not be imposed arbitrarily and needed to be passed by the courts. The Punjab government was of the view that colonists were unwilling to rely on government ordinances as they had been wont to do before moving into the colonies, and were prepared ‘to cavil at the most transparent measures for their welfare’.12 The government either deliberately ignored or somehow overlooked the fact that many illiterate early colonists had put their thumbs to documents, and had undertaken with light heart, and an expectation of government benevolence, the many obligations into which they had entered, perhaps with little understanding. On mature reflection they found these unpalatable.13 The government resolved to deal with these matters by bringing in [ 140 ]

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a new bill. As the authorities saw it, the bill was directed solely to the improvement of colony administration and the removal of legitimate grievances, and was made necessary by defects in the act of 1893. But on learning of the provisions of the new bill, rural and urban Punjab erupted in agrarian disturbances, exacerbated by communal disturbances, which moved the problems of rural economy ever closer to the political sphere.14 Provisions of the proposed new bill, the Punjab Land Colonisation Bill, 1907, included a prohibition on the cutting down of trees without permission. Primogeniture was introduced in order to avoid fragmentation of property, along with a ban on passing on land in a will without official permission. Other factors, perhaps inevitable in expanding irrigated areas, fostered ill-feeling towards the way in which the colonies were managed. For instance, as colonies such as the Chenab colony expanded, the government policy and practice of ensuring an even distribution of water led to somewhat less supply to earlier settlers.15 The rates on water taken from the Bari Doab canals were increased.16 Dissension and agitation spread, Lieut.-governor C. M. Rivaz, supported strongly by his revenue secretary James Wilson and by Denzil Ibbetson who would shortly replace Rivaz, dismissed reports of unrest, attributing them to the mischiefmaking of urban politicians. In the strong tradition of the Punjab Commission, they believed that the government knew best what was acceptable to the people. In London, Dennis Fitzpatrick warned his colleagues on the Council of India that the provisions of the proposed bill would create disturbance because it gave individual officers too much discretionary power and it interfered with ‘vested interests’.17 When Ibbetson, who had earned a reputation as an outstanding administrator, took over he also dismissed the fears of Simla and London, and took a strong line with those he thought responsible for fomenting unrest. But he badly misjudged the situation, for this agitation was unlike any other disturbance previously witnessed in Punjab, having the support of leading agricultural families outside the colonies, and educated ex-government employees who had acquired land inside them. Disaffection spread in the army, many of whose members owned colony land themselves or had relatives who did. Despite all this the bill was introduced in the Punjab Legislature in October 1906 and passed by that body.18 Eventually, the Indian government and the Secretary of State became alarmed at the effects that an accumulation of hardships and provisions of the new bill were having on the population and particularly on the army. Lord Minto, although he had approved the passing of the bill, wrote to Lord Morley the Secretary of State to inform him of the [ 141 ]

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dissatisfaction in Punjab over the colonisation bill. Political upheaval and repressive press laws provoked further unrest. The ravages of the plague were raising wild suspicions about the British poisoning the wells, Minto reported.19 Morley replied that he believed that the bill along with the plague, increased water rates and the failure of the cotton harvest (there had been a bad monsoon) all helped to spread sedition.20 This last remark about sedition expressed what was probably their main worry. As Minto pointed out in two letters, the colonisation bill had raised the fear of sedition and unrest among Sikh regiments and of the effect this might have on the situation on the north-west frontier.21 The bill was withdrawn by Minto in May 1907, a rare occurrence, and land tax and water rates were reduced.22 The effect was immediate. As Popham Young said in a confidential report, ‘the whole attitude of the people has changed with withdrawal of the Bill’.23 He goes on to report that there was now no unrest, although a certain amount of sulkiness remained and a sense of past grievances.24 This report also attributed the nullification of British efforts to make the Chenab colonists ‘the most happy and contented, as they are the most prosperous community in British India’, to the influence of more educated Indians.25 It was also felt that the colonists were supervised and inspected by too many departments and officers. A Colonies Committee was set up in November 1907, consisting of ICS men, to consider afresh the whole question of colony administration.26 In the meantime, work continued as the authorities expanded irrigation and colonisation schemes, and brought in other measures in an effort to improve the lot of Punjabi cultivators. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a few piecemeal efforts had been made by individual ICS officers in Muslim villages to ease the debt burden by setting up small cooperative credit societies. Muslims are forbidden to take interest on money lent, so Hindus dominated moneylending, with all that meant for intercommunal hostility. In a letter to The Times in May 1901 William Wedderburn an ex-Civilian had drawn attention to the success of Horace Plunkett and his friends in Ireland in relieving distressed peasantry, and advocated the setting up of agricultural banks in India and the attention to detail which he attributed to Plunkett in enquiring into cultivators’ condition and needs.27 By 1905 sufficient progress had been made to justify the passing of the Cooperative Credit Societies Act, and a member of the ICS was appointed registrar. Beginning with twelve societies and capital of a few thousand rupees the movement grew by 1919 to over 6,000 societies with a working capital of £1.5 million. By pooling their resources rural communities were enabled to borrow at 9 to 12 per cent instead of the 24 to 36 per cent charged by moneylenders. The registrar would later cite the Irish [ 142 ]

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model in implementing measures which attracted cross-community support.28 Although Irishmen were not immediately involved in this development, Michael O’Dwyer was very much in favour of such measures,29 and there was a strong Irish influence in the Punjab Commission as these measures were implemented at the start of the new century. Louis Dane was still listed as chief secretary, although he had begun or was about to begin his short-lived retirement to Tralee; there was one commissioner, R. T. Clark from Donegal, and six deputy commissioners. Among these were Michael O’Dwyer, Richard Morris Dane and Louis White King.30 In addition there was Michael Fenton who had been closely associated with the setting up of the Chenab colony and famine-relief measures, and would become even more involved with new irrigation and colonisation schemes when, in 1912, he became financial commissioner and then a close associate of Michael O’Dwyer when the latter became lieut.-governor.31 There were three Irish assistant commissioners in 1901 and the chief judge of Punjab was W. O. Clark from Magherafelt, educated at Portora and TCD, who presided over the system which had declared illegal the government’s arbitrary punitive actions against colonists.32 The Colonies Committee mentioned above presented its report on 10 April 1908.33 It was left to Louis Dane, now Sir Louis after his success in concluding the 1905 agreement with the Afghan Amir, to implement the Committee’s recommendations when he took over as lieut.-governor of Punjab on 25 May 1908, in succession to Ibbetson who had died following a very short period in charge of the province. There followed a period of appeasement of angry agriculturalists in the colonies and elsewhere which seemed particularly suited to Dane’s emollient personality. Dane’s commitment to the task in hand is plain to be seen in his writings and, as Ibbetson had just shown, a clumsy hand at the tiller could easily lead to disaster. In his private papers and in contributions to the Asiatic Review, Dane demonstrates that his knowledge of Ireland influenced or confirmed his view of what should be done in Punjab. Dane believed that in Punjab, as in Ireland, the contentment of substantial landowners and of peasants must be the first object of good government.34 He implies, in praising Lord Midleton’s Irish policy, that he believed that the remedy for Punjab, as for Ireland, was not so much political as social, based on land reform and uplift.35 The Times said of him in its obituary that his bustling, almost boisterous ways, his unconventional but not undignified manner, and his energy combined with unremitting zeal in the promotion of public interest, enabled him to bring the province to a condition of political restfulness. On the other hand, on his appointment, Morley had doubts [ 143 ]

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in regard to his abilities, telling Minto that ‘Irish gentlemen . . . are not always accurate or sure-footed.’36 As someone with the instincts and tastes of an amateur engineer, Dane found abundant scope in the canal colonies and the various irrigation schemes which presented themselves to his agile mind.37 Triteness can hardly be avoided in stating that Dane was the right man in the right place at the right time. Among the recommendations of the Colonies Committee was the bestowal of permanent proprietary rights on the mass of peasant colonists to replace the twenty years’ entitlement which had previously existed. This was mooted in the belief that thriftlessness had disappeared with the implementation of the Punjab Alienation of Land Act,38 although, as mentioned above, this was only partly true. It was also felt by the Committee that the former arrangement had militated against improvements being carried out on farms and buildings, as it did against better credit facilities and higher social standing in the community. It was recommended that the permanent occupational rights should also apply to residential plots and to such people as shopkeepers, tradesmen and certain menials.39 These recommendations were accepted. It took several years to thrash out the details and include further measures before Dane announced the various proposals on 14 December 1910. Among the measures which were to be implemented were permanent proprietary rights conditional on fifteen years’ occupancy; rules of succession more favourable to tenants than in the Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887; and exemption of tenants, upon acquisition of property rights, from many of the conditions previously imposed on them.40 Colonists were entitled to buy proprietary rights by payment of a sum amounting to twelve and a half times their annual assessment.41 All this was subject to certain conditions but was received with enthusiasm by colonists. The Colony Act, 1912 ensued. As a consequence land values increased dramatically.42 The success of the measure can be gauged by the fact that it was reported to a meeting of the Punjab Legislative Council in 1913 that attempts had been made by certain non-agricultural classes to change group or individual classifications from non-agricultural tribal background to agricultural castes such as Rajputs and Sayads.43 In effect, what had happened was that the great social and rather paternalistic experiment that began with the allocation of alienable land to cultivators, and had then endeavoured to bring about a model agricultural society tightly controlled by conditions attached to tenancy or ownership in the irrigation colonies, had been forced, by dint of public agitation and fear of revolt in the army’s major recruitment ground, to yield ground to nakedly selfish forces unleashed by the [ 144 ]

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very workings of that experiment. An attempt to escape from the more malign elements of laissez-faire, and to respond, consciously or not, to the liberal current of thought running through English public life at the time,44 by protecting indebted agriculturalists from the consequences of their own improvidence, had ended in capitulation to market forces. By yielding to the agitation of 1907, the government had lost its ready ability to prevent fragmentation of family property. As Barrier points out, the passage of the 1912 act marked the end of paternalism and brought to a dramatic conclusion an era of agrarian legislation in Punjab.45 That is not entirely true, as the government still had control over considerable tracts of land, the distribution of which, as will be seen in chapter 15, it used for its own politic and recruitment purposes, but once it had handed over that land it had lost most of its ability to enforce good farming and sanitary practices, quite apart from its virtual helplessness to prevent indebtedness. Fenton, who retired in 1916, was able to remark in his introductory note to Dobson’s report on the workings of the Chenab that the land revenue of the tract was, by 1915, amounting annually to 60 to 70 lakhs of rupees (6 to 7 million rupees), which exceeded that of any other district in India, even some considerably larger ones. Railway traffic receipts had also provided considerable profits, as had charges for water.46 The colony area had increased progressively from 422,774 acres in 1894 to 1,829,980 acres by 1906.47 By 1912–13 this would have increased to 2,254,094 acres paying 39.18 per cent on a capital expenditure to that date of 30,918,169 rupees.48 The population had increased from 112,286 in 1891 to 1,105,997 in 1911, with 548,997 of these being migrants who had been born outside the colony. The percentage of children in the colony was above the provincial average.49 Fenton remarks in his introduction, ‘That such pride of place has been attained by a tract which thirty years ago was an arid wilderness is a phenomenon which can never be sufficiently dwelt upon by those who seek to appraise the results and achievements of British rule in India.’50 However, he noted that corruption was particularly rampant especially in the subordinate ranks of the irrigation department. He might well have added that Irishmen had been deeply involved in the Chenab: from Dufferin under whose viceroyship the work began and Fitzpatrick who was at the scheme’s official opening; to Lansdowne who oversaw the passing of the 1893 act; to O’Dwyer who had assessed parts of the colony and had been a deputy commissioner of one of its districts during the initial stages; and on to Dane who had filled several roles, as Fenton himself had done; and not least there was the work carried out by Irish engineers. The colonists’ satisfaction with new arrangements along with [ 145 ]

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relative political peace led to the declaration by a member of the province’s legislative body, the Honourable Shadi Lal, that Dane’s term had resulted in ‘a quinquennium of uninterrupted prosperity’.51 Other irrigation works and colonies had proceeded. The Lower Jhelum was officially opened in 1901 although it was not completed until later,52 the Triple Canal project went ahead with the Upper Chenab section being opened in 1912, the Lower Bari Doab in 1913 and the Upper Jhelum in 1915. Thus, an area which was one of the most desolate regions of Punjab was converted into one of the province’s chief cotton and wheat-producing areas, the original estimate of four million acres (1.62 million hectares) to be brought under cultivation being exceeded.53 When 20,000 acres of this land were put up for auction in the Montgomery area in March 1915, the average price paid was 275 rupees per acre (a price which no doubt would have amazed the Donegal man after whom the town and district were named), with peasant farmers from older colonies being eager bidders.54 The new colony, even more than other schemes had done, fulfilled far more than the needs of the colonists: 175,000 acres were reserved for those who undertook on behalf of the army to breed camels, or mares for mulebreeding, or to plant trees; 100,000 acres were set aside for regimental farms, presumably for remounts and army catering; and 22,000 acres were specifically for soldiers.55 The colonies, despite some criticism and the fact that a major reason for their existence was the increased revenue they earned for government, transformed Punjab. The province’s population (including what was to become NWFP) increased by over 30 per cent between 1881 and 1921 despite famines, plague, cholera and the depredations of malaria.56 In 1868 just over 6 per cent of the area under cultivation was served by canal irrigation; by 1921 this had increased to 36 per cent. Although the cultivated area per capita had increased only slightly during that time, the per capita food-producing base was considerably enhanced as was the standard of living. In a country which had been racked frequently by famine, the province of Punjab had greatly reduced the uncertainty of its food supply.57 At a meeting of the Legislative Council in 1916 one of its members, Pandit Jawahar Lal Bhargava, was moved to say: The Punjab today is not the Punjab at the time of the advent of British rule. Seven decades of British Raj have changed the whole aspect of the country. These seven decades have witnessed the transformation of arid and vast jungles into smiling and fertile grain and cotton-producing fields due to the extension of the system of irrigation unparalleled in the world, which has won for the Punjab the name of the ‘Granary of the East’ . . . at present, the Punjab can boast of having at its capital the centre of the biggest and longest State-managed railway in Asia.58

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Irrigation did not entirely solve the problems of Punjab’s rural economy. During some of the years of the First World War poor rainfalls were a cause for concern. Much agricultural land lay outside the colonies and it can be assumed that, in calculating water needs from canals, engineers had relied on a certain amount of rainfall. Michael O’Dwyer, speaking to the council in March 1915, told its members that the season’s monsoon had been the worst since 1877, and that though the province was in a much better position to deal with the problem than it had been at that time, it was, nonetheless, a cause of great anxiety. The situation was not made any easier by the fact that grain had been selling at high prices in Punjab’s market ever since the outbreak of war.59 In 1916 the government had to allow concessionary rates for carriage of fodder on the railway and by so doing saved the lives of hundreds of cattle.60 In April 1918, he referred once again to the effect weather had on the rural economy, citing drought because of a poor monsoon in the previous year, optimism in the early summer because of an early and abundant monsoon turning to dismay in the autumn due to excessive rains. The government had eased the burden on some cultivators by remitting canal water rates on over 425,000 acres.61 With O’Dwyer’s retirement in 1919, Irish involvement at the higher policy-making level became virtually negligible up to the end of the study period. There were still several Irish ICS men in Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, and there would again be Irish lieut.governors in the period before Indian independence. (A total of seven Irishmen would have served as lieut.-governors of Punjab in its ninetyeight years under British rule.)62 There were more Irish civilian engineers working in Punjab in 1921 than there had been at any time since 1881. (Although, as previously remarked, there is a sparsity of data on Irish engineers in Punjab in the first decades of the study period.) And the Punjabi peasant, whom the authorities had tried to protect from himself and his disposition towards thriftlessness and debt? In 1927 it was found that Muslim districts in Punjab were deeply in debt. The Punjab Banking Enquiry found that moneylending to agriculturalists had become Punjab’s largest industry.63

Conclusions The influence of the Irish in the rural economy of Punjab was quite remarkable, beginning before the period under review, with settlements, land allocation and irrigation schemes initiated by John Lawrence and his associates, and continuing on through the period in office of Robert Montgomery. Lawrence was responsible for the 1868 legislation which secured the land occupancy of the Punjab peasant. [ 147 ]

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The experiences and detailed reports, accumulated under conditions of hardship and isolation, of O’Brien and Purser, which partly fell into the timeframe covered by this book, inspired and assisted Thorburn in his eventually successful efforts to have land alienation limited by legislation. Viceroy Dufferin brought in the Punjab Tenancy Act of 1887 and this was followed by the Punjab Land Colonisation Bill of 1893 implemented by Fitzpatrick. Lansdowne pushed hard but unsuccessfully for land alienation legislation and left a note on the subject when he left office which kept the topic alive. Irishmen such as O’Dwyer, Dane and O’Brien were prominent in advancing government policy through their work as settlement officers, and the two first-named developed long-lasting relationships with Punjabi agriculturalists which were to serve them well when they each in turn became lieut.-governor. Dane played some part in putting through the important Land Alienation Act, 1900 and was very influential in calming the province after the 1907 agitation, and in the nurturing of the 1912 Colonisation Act to fruition. During the war years O’Dwyer helped to ease shortages and to ameliorate some of the effects of bad harvests. Fitzpatrick, although obstructive towards the type of land alienation legislation proposed, was very active in securing funding for the further development of the colonies besides successfully resisted the shortening of the interval between assessments, and his fine work in implementing the recommendations of the Famine Commission was largely responsible for protecting Punjab from the effects of famine in 1896–97. It is odd that a reference cannot be found in the press or public papers to Fitzpatrick’s Irishness whereas Dufferin, along with Dane, O’Dwyer and Fenton, were readily recognised by their superiors and colleagues as being Irish.64 The part that their Irishness played in the administrators’ and viceroys’ outlook and decision-making was significant, and the effects that events in Ireland had in such matters was crucial. The similar problems of the two countries were familiar to the two viceroys with large Irish holdings, and they were both motivated by their Irish experiences to ensure, through legislation, a contented Punjabi peasantry and landowning class. Their proximity to the Punjab Commission in Simla during half the year prompted a keener interest than might otherwise have been the case. Dane’s stint in Tralee and his family’s links with Fermanagh and the O’Dwyer’s Tipperary farming background put them in a far better position than someone from an English urban centre to understand the Punjabi peasant’s attachment to the soil and to see through their efforts to outwit the assessment officer. All Irishmen in Punjab, and possibly [ 148 ]

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their British colleagues, would have been aware, from the Irish parallel, of the importance of avoiding agitation, and of damping nascent nationalist feelings, by ensuring a contented peasantry. But, more sharply than their colleagues, the Irish would carry with them the distant odour of the stinking workhouse and the fetid breath of the starved, as Dufferin did from direct experience and MacDonnell did vicariously. Its reek had also roused the social conscience of their fellow pro-consul in Ceylon, Hercules Robinson. What John Millington Synge, their contemporary, called ‘the omni-present famine shadow’65 could surely not have failed to motivate the Irish in India in ensuring food supply and meaningful work when famine threatened. Fenton’s note on strict observation of the Famine Code, and his exhortations to avoid delay in ensuring that no one starved even if all preparations had not yet been made, have the flavour of a concern which transcends the bureaucratic. But it cannot be argued that in these matters Irishmen subverted the policies of the Raj, although there may have been some eccentricity in the way they implemented these. Indeed, they helped to create and develop such policies. Administrators and also engineers, as will be seen in the next chapter, implemented government policies seemingly without demur once these had been discussed and approved, and on the evidence of those who left written comments on such matters, such as O’Dwyer and Dane, they did so with enthusiasm. Fitzpatrick may have resisted the raising of taxes and the introduction of a land alienation bill but, as with his tendency to obstruction on the north-west frontier, his goal was to advance the imperial project, not to subvert it. It might be said, perhaps a little simplistically but in line with arguments advanced in previous chapters, that, in relation to the rural economy, they inclined more to the Irish end of the Gaelic–English spectrum of identity whilst retaining loyalty to the Raj and to Britain.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

Tribune, 8 Aug. 1912. Ibid. Ibid. Barrier, The Punjab alienation of land bill, pp. 46–83. Hwa-Lung Yu and George Christakos, ‘Spatiotemporal modelling and mapping of the bubonic plague epidemic in India’, International Journal of Health Geographics, v:12 (2006), www.ij.-healthgeographics.com/contents/5/1/12 (accessed 1 March 2008). Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 156. Norman Barrier, ‘Punjab politics and disturbances of 1907’ (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1966), p. 233. Tribune, 17 Feb. 1912. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 156. Minto to Morley, 7 Aug. 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/12, f. 61).

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LA N D A N D I N FRAS T R U C T U R E 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, p. 63. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Minto to Morley, 8 May 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/11, f. 108). Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, par. 23. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 157. Dennis Fitzpatrick, minute dated 1 Jan. 1905, part of Sec. of State’s despatch 3 March 1905 (BL, OIOC, IOR, J and P 3075). Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’. Minto to Morley, 8 May 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/11, f. 108). Morley to Minto, 16 May 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/2, f. 106). Minto to Morley, 29 May and 12 Sept. 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/11, f. 119 and D573/12, f. 86). Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 159. Popham Young, confidential note to Government of India on administration of the Chenab colony, 24 June 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR, June to Sept. 1907, D573/12). Ibid. Ibid. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 14. The Times, 16 May 1901. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 255–6. Ibid., pp. 254–5. India list and India Office list 1901. The Times, 4 March 1941. India list and India Office List 1901; see also Table 4, chapter 4, above. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 14. Dane, ‘Records and reactions’, pp. 808–15. Ibid. Morley to Minto, 19 March 1908 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/3). The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 15. Ibid. Ibid., p. 17. Tribune, 6 July 1912. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 16. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1913–15 (BL, OIOC, 19 Sept. 1913, IOR V/9/3411). Webb, Modern England, pp. 460–1. Barrier, ‘Punjab politics and the disturbances of 1907’. Fenton, introductory note to Dobson report, dated 3 Jan. 1916. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 12. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 34. Fenton, introductory note to Dobson report, p. 3. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1913–15 (BL, OIOC, 14 Jan. 1913, IOR V/9/3411), p. 159. P. W. Paustian, Canal irrigation in the Punjab (New York, 1968), p. 58. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 60–5. Census of India, Panjab and its feudatories, 1881; Census of India, Punjab and Delhi, 1921; Census of India North-West Frontier Province, 1921. Paustian, Canal irrigation in the Punjab, pp. 69–97. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1916–18 (BL, OIOC, 12 June 1916, IOR V/9/3412).

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62 63 64 65

Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1913–15 (BL, OIOC, 13 March 1915, IOR V/9/3411). Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1916–18 (BL, OIOC, 12 June 1916, IOR V/9/3412). Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1916–18(BL, OIOC, 25 April 1918, IOR V/9/3412). Dane, ‘Records and reactions’, pp. 808–15. Dewey, Anglo-Indian attitudes, p. 8. Tribune, 13 Jan. 1892. Kevin Whelan, ‘Pre and post-famine landscape change’, in Cathal Pórtéìr (ed.), The great Irish famine (Cork, 1995), pp. 19–33.

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Irish engineers and Punjab’s infrastructure

Indian railroads fostered a political and socio-cultural revolution.1 These metal arteries played a very important part in India’s development and, in particular, in Punjab’s rural economy. But the main lines, in general, were routed to suit the needs of the military and to provide links from the interior to the main ports.2 Perhaps the most important of the lines needed by the military were those leading to the Afghan frontier. The Pandjeh crisis had convinced General Roberts that a forward line must be established on the frontier, although not fixed fortifications. His belief was in mobility, with railways and roads built as far forward as possible, with forward depots and strong fall-back positions north of the Indus.3 The building of railways and roads, some of them right up to the border, was of strategic importance and also helped in dealing with the tribes. Roberts was anticipated in seeing railways as vital in India’s defensive plans, facilitating as they did the rapid movement of troops into the frontier area and up to the more important passes, so several frontier railways had already been built. But before that happened the Indus had to be bridged, and this task was completed at Attock in 1883 under the supervision of Francis Langford O’Callaghan (later Sir Francis), who was the son of a Justice of the Peace from Drisheen, Co. Cork. An Anglican, he was privately educated before graduating from QCC. Having completed practical training with a working engineer, he entered the Indian Public Works Department in 1862. He was appointed superintendent engineer in 1880 and served with considerable success in pushing railways into the frontier area. He was in charge of the Rawalpindi–Peshawar section of the Punjab Northern Railway which entailed the erection of the Attock bridge (Figure 2), the first ever to span the Indus.4 It replaced a bridge of boats which floated on the river quite close to where Alexander had crossed 2,000 years before. The new bridge was double-decked with the rail line on top and the road below. Large iron gates at either end were [ 152 ]

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Attock bridge

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locked at night with chains and great bolts; block towers, gun emplacement and ever-watchful sentries guarded this age-old, yet new gateway to the north-west.5 The completion of the Attock bridge opened up the frontier region and enabled a line to be pushed up towards the Khyber. At the southern end of the frontier O’Callaghan was supervising engineer on the construction, in 1885–86, of a line to Quetta through the Bolan Pass which has been described as one of the greatest engineering feats of British rule in India. Besides all the problems associated with pushing a rail line through very rough terrain, the builders had to cope with the fact that the line rose 5,000 feet in a little over 100 miles.6 A graduate of QCG, Ralph Stephen Glover, was engineer in charge of building a section of this line.7 O’Callaghan then designed and partly built a line through the Khojak Pass to the Afghan border, another engineering feat which served the independent nation of Pakistan so well that an image of the Khojak railway tunnel appeared on the 5 rupee note into the twenty-first century. He was described as a bright, genial character, and a most deservedly popular officer in the Punjab PWD.8 He was made Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) for the Attock bridge and was made Commander of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) for the Bolan Pass work. He was later to be promoted to chief engineer first class and was appointed consultant engineer to the Indian government and then, in 1892, he became secretary to the government of India Public Works Department, the first civilian to attain the highest rank open to an engineer in India. On retirement he was appointed to the managing committee for Ugandan railways, and was knighted for his work on that body. He died in Guildford in 1909.9 O’Callaghan was but one, albeit an outstanding one, of the Irish engineers who helped to change the economy, geography and communications structure of Punjab. The construction of important artefacts is a topic as relevant to a country’s history as is the description of political or economic events, as is implied in Wolpert’s remark quoted in this chapter’s opening sentence. The massive irrigation works, railways, bridges and roads which were built by the British in India, and, in particular, in Punjab during the period 1881–1921, contributed greatly to the economy and strategic importance of this province which was the pride of the Raj.10 Historians have not done justice to the part played in all this by Irish engineers, some of whom were to become quite prominent, and who were to build artefacts which remain to this day, contributing to the well-being of the two countries which now divide Punjab between them. The inclusion in this chapter of many of the engineers’ names is not a mere catalogue as feared and deprecated by Keith Jeffery (see chapter 1), but is meant to rescue these men from undeserved obscurity as well as to show that their presence contributed [ 154 ]

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to a certain Irish ubiquity, as did their backgrounds to a possible solidarity with their fellows in the ICS and IMS. Their careers also point to the varied colonial appointments of such men, as the deaths of some of them do to the dangers of working in the tropics. It is not claimed, of course, that there was any special Irish approach to engineering or that the engineers’ Irishness affected their work. Until 1854 engineering works carried out by the British in India were under the charge of the Royal Engineers. Their contribution to civil works consisted mainly in restoring Mughal works, particularly the Jumna canal. Then, following a famine in 1837–38 which killed one million people in northern India, the first original British scheme, the Ganges canal, was constructed. This 350-mile-long waterway was the largest canal works in history to that time and was perhaps the first easily recognised symbol of colonial technological supremacy.11 In Punjab, the first large irrigation work was carried out in accordance with the plans prepared by John Lawrence and his coterie, and under the direct supervision of Lieut. Col. J. H. Dyas from Annefield in Co. Kildare. This was a weir-controlled perennial canal on the river Ravi, one of the great tributaries of the Indus,12 and was to result in a remarkable improvement in irrigated agriculture when compared with the inundation canals constructed by the Mughals.13 One of the most noted engineers of the mid-nineteenth century was John Pitt Kennedy (1796–1879) who was born in Carndonagh, Co. Donegal, the son of the local rector. Educated at Foyle College Londonderry and at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he became, as a junior officer, a protégé of Charles Napier who was to become commander-in-chief in India. Kennedy served in Ireland as secretary to the Devon Commission which investigated the law and practice of land occupation and he later became involved in faminerelief work. Napier, on becoming commander-in-chief, summoned him to India as his military secretary. While in Simla, Kennedy became involved in the design and construction of a road from the plains to Simla, and beyond to the Tibetan border at Shipki. Known as the Hindustan–Tibet Road (although local people to whom it was a boon called it Kengree Sahib ke Surruck, Mr Kennedy’s road),14 this was to ease the monumental annual task of shifting the government from Calcutta to Simla besides serving as an important military road linking various hill cantonments to the plains.15 It was also the road, actually little more than a mule track in its further reaches, which Kipling’s Hurree Babu followed on his return to Simla from Chini with duped Franco-Russian spies.16 Although completed in the 1850s, well before the study period, it was to serve throughout this time as an important route, as will be seen in chapter 14. [ 155 ]

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When the Crown replaced the East India Company in 1858 it took control of the Public Works Department which had been set up in 1854 with an engineering hierarchy paralleling that of the military, even assigning rankings to administrative officers. Each individual canal project was known as a circle and had a chief engineer who was responsible to the provincial lieut.-governor. At the top of the PWD hierarchy was the secretary to the PWD who reported to the Viceroy.17 Initially, the PWD consisted almost entirely of military engineers, not all of whom would have received engineering training. Implementation of a series of public works which were undertaken in Punjab subsequent to the setting up of the PWD intensified under the new regime as mentioned in chapter 4, and led to the recruitment of young men by means of public examinations from 1859 to 1870.18 It is possible to estimate the number of Irish-born engineers recruited at this time more precisely than those taken on later in the century because their birthplaces are given in their application forms contained in the records of the PWD held in the India Office files in the British Library. According to these, a total of 163 successful candidates were recruited to the Indian PWD in those twelve years of whom 31.3 per cent were Irish.19 This differs somewhat from Cuddy’s calculations of 173 successful candidates in the same period, of whom 30.6 per cent were Irish.20 Of these Irish, forty had graduated from Irish universities.21 Six of these were still working in Punjab in 1881.22 British authorities in India deplored the quality of those recruited throughout the 1860s, particularly their lack of practical experience, and this led to the establishment of the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill outside London in 1871.23 The importance of the Indian outlet for engineering students of Irish colleges can be gauged by the action of QCG in sending a testimonial to the India Office opposing the setting up of Cooper’s Hill.24 According to Ronald Cox, the attraction of India’s engineering service was strong at TCD and the college’s influence across the world, particularly in such places as India, was remarkable for such a small school.25 As we have seen, TCD engineers also worked in Ceylon. Irish colleges were right to be concerned because, as will be seen in the following paragraphs, the numbers of Irish diminished sharply during Cooper’s Hill’s existence and immediately recovered when, in anticipation of that college’s closure in 1906, an open examination was again held in 1901 in which Irishmen accounted for 66 per cent of the successful candidates. By the late 1870s, the output of an annual average of fifty graduates from Cooper’s Hill had fulfilled PWD requirements.26 In the 1890s the majority of engineers in India were Cooper’s Hill graduates.27 Records of Cooper’s Hill recruitment contained in the India Office [ 156 ]

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section of the British Library under the heading ‘Cooper’s Hill Students: Admissions and Final Examinations’ are incomplete,28 and, where such documentation as baptismal certificates and application forms exist, these are frequently damaged or illegible, so an accurate count of Irish recruits for the period 1870–1900 is not possible. However, an examination of what is available from 1873 shows that the proportion of Irish recruits was considerably lower than that of those recruited directly into the PWD during the 1860s.29 The reasons for the low numbers of Irish admitted to Cooper’s Hill are not clear but an official letter suggested that the fees, amounting to £1,500, may be a factor.30 The record is also incomplete in regard to which Indian province graduates of the college were allocated, so it is necessary to look at the records of the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) in the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin, and in those of the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) in London, along with the appropriate Civil and Military Lists combined with those figures which can be extracted from Cooper’s Hill records, to gain some approximate idea of the numbers and identities of Irish engineers working for the Punjab Commission during the period 1881–1906. The situation is further complicated by the shifting responsibility for the construction and maintenance of railways in Punjab, as this changed from local to central government and from private investors to government and back again,31 and thus the record-keeping and direct supervision of railway engineers in the province was only intermittently a function of the Punjab government. F. L. O’Callaghan, for instance, was at one time engineer-in-chief of one of Punjab’s more important railways but is listed under India rather than Punjab for some of that period.32 The cost of running Cooper’s Hill combined with the increasing influence of university engineering departments led to the closing down of Cooper’s Hill in 1906 and, beginning tentatively in 1901 and then annually from 1905, the recruitment once again of engineers by public examination.33 The first such open examination in 1901 resulted in a revival of Irish interest and in six out of the nine successful candidates being Irish, of whom three were sent to Punjab.34 Competitive examinations were then held every year from 1905 until 1921 excluding the war years 1916–18. The yearly average proportion of Irish recruits to the Indian PWD from 1906 to 1921 was 17 per cent, the average number of Irish being 4.5 individuals. Nine of these Irish recruits were sent to Punjab.35 Because of all the foregoing factors, precise numbers of Irish engineers working for or with the Punjab Commission during this time cannot be established, nor can colleges and places of birth be always identified, so the best that can be done is to list those which it has been possible to identify, bearing in mind that there were probably [ 157 ]

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more Irish engineers working in the province, on the railways or for private contractors. The number of Irish civilian engineers identified as working for or in the Punjab Commission from 1881 to 1921 amounts to twenty-nine, and their names and colleges from which they graduated are shown in Table 3 in chapter 4. Thirty per cent of these engineers graduated from TCD, 24 per cent from Cooper’s Hill, about 10 per cent each from QCG/UCG and QCC/UCC, with the rest unknown or from two Scottish universities. The sources from which these are compiled are given in detail in relation to each individual in the appropriate notes, and in Appendix II, as these are too widespread and diverse to show in Table 3. At the beginning of the study period, works in Punjab associated with irrigation, including ancillary roads, embankments and railways, came under the overall command of Major-General Charles Pollard who was born at Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath, on 16 April 1826 and was educated at Bexley and the military school at Addiscombe where he received his engineering training. He was sent to India in 1846 where he joined the Bengal Sappers and Miners. According to his papers in the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge he served at the second siege of Multan and at the battle of Gujrat against the Sikhs, for which he was mentioned in despatches.36 In 1849 he entered the PWD and served at various grades in Punjab, in Jhelum, Lahore and Peshawar.37 In his papers it is mentioned that he served as a colonel in the early 1860s in the Rajputana and Central India circle but no mention is made of the fact that he was censured and reduced in rank for one year following the collapse and total failure of Sagar barracks, which he, along with another colonel, had inspected during its construction.38 In a letter to his mother on St Patrick’s Day, 1857, he refers to a St Patrick’s morning in Ireland some twenty years previously and to a plate of shamrock on the table,39 his only reference to Ireland, unless a mention of the death of a Colonel Pakenham refers to a scion of the noted Co. Meath family.40 In a reference to so many deaths during the Indian Mutiny he comments on the sorrow that must be felt in England, but does not mention Ireland where so many of the soldiers and civilians came from.41 He retired in 1883. Under Pollard’s overall control but working directly to other senior engineers were J. E. Catton (also spelled Cathen), A. B. Phelan and T. Martin who all worked in the irrigation branch of the PWD. Catton, from Co. Mayo, was a graduate of Cooper’s Hill,42 while Phelan was a TCD graduate,43 as was Martin who had been an engineer on the West Jumna, Lower Bari Doab and Sirhind canals. But he was not to see the completion of the Sirhind in 1887 as he died of ‘Delhi fever’ at the military cantonment of Mian Meer in December of 1883.44 [ 158 ]

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Military engineers like Pollard also worked for the Punjab Commission. Although their recruitment was gradually wound down, they still accounted for a significant proportion of PWD professional engineers during most of the study period.45 Identifying Irish military engineers is even more problematical than is the case with their civil counterparts, for Civil and Military Lists do not specify their countries of origin and because they came from so many different army units, some of which had no connection with engineering.46 After the 1857 mutiny, changes in record-keeping and recruitment methods associated with the replacement of East India Company control by that of the British government through a viceroy, leads the researcher along confusing and often fruitless paths. The records of those few military engineers employed before the mutiny in 1857 and, to a certain extent, those recruited from the former East India Company Military Seminary at Addiscombe until 1860, yield, in some cases, places of birth.47 On transfer of officer training to Sandhurst in 1861–62 some engineers’ records, with birthplaces, found their way to the Register of Cadets at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, none of which show Irish-born engineers traceable to Punjab,48 but otherwise there are no records of birthplaces between 1863 and 1900. So a trawl of the combined records in the British Library India Office files of Addiscombe, and of Queen’s India Cadetships at Sandhurst,49 besides the Civil and Military Lists, the National Archives at Kew, and the archives of the ICE Dublin and the ICE London was necessary, if short in yield. Using these various sources it can be said that there were at least four Irish military engineers employed by the Punjab Commission during the relevant period, and their numbers added to those listed in Table 3 bring the total of Irish engineers, civil and military, working in the Punjab during 1881– 1921 to at least thirty-three. The names of the four are: Major-General Charles Pollard; Col. W. A. J. Wallace; Captain F. W. Joseph; and Lieut. C. Hoskyns. Their ranks refer to the highest they held whilst working for the Commission.50 That there were others there can be little doubt, perhaps working for railways or private contractors, but a researcher is more likely to stumble on the fact that they were Irish, rather than discover it by dint of a systematic search of known sources. There were Royal Engineers working in India during the study period, in addition to those engineers in the Indian army, but as their work was principally military and their numbers are subsumed in those for the military as a whole, they are not separately counted here. Spiers says that 10.4 per cent of Royal Engineers were Irish, so there is one further group of Irishmen of presumably similar educational background with whom the three professions under consideration might meet socially and professionally.51 [ 159 ]

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A contemporary of O’Callaghan was William Arthur James Wallace (1842–1902), an army officer and railway engineer, who was for eighteen months, 1884 to 1886, chief engineer to the government of India for guaranteed railways at Lahore. Born in Kingstown, Co. Dublin, the son of a Justice of the Peace in Co. Wexford who had been a general in the Bengal army, Wallace was educated privately at Rev. Fleury’s and Mr Dunbar’s in Dublin, and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. At the beginning of the Afghan War in 1878 he conducted the transport of General Stewart’s division between Multan in Punjab and Sukkar in Sind on its way across the Bolan Pass to Kandahar. He then served under General Roberts as field engineer to the Kurram valley column as it advanced on Kabul, for which he was mentioned in despatches and commended for his work on road making and his handling of the tribes in his area of operations. He served in Egypt for some time before taking up his Lahore appointment. He was again transferred out of Punjab for a short time but returned to Lahore in 1887 as a colonel and chief engineer of the north-western railway. He retired in 1892 and died in London in 1902.52 Among the functions of the new railways was the rapid transfer of aid in times of famine, and, of course, the provision of easy access to markets of the new canal colonies. Indeed, new market towns in canal colonies were built along the various lines which were built through the colonies in order to provide easy access to local markets and even, in the case of exports, to the distant port of Karachi.53 Other Irish engineers working on Punjab’s railways in the 1880s were M. S. Dooley educated at QCG and R. T. Mallet from Dublin who built a rail bridge across the Ravi and also designed and built the bridge across the Sutlej at Ferozepore.54 William John (or St John) Galwey (1833–91) from Cork, who started his career as a railway engineer in 1872, built the wellknown Empress bridge over the Sutlej in the late 1870s, a difficult task which involved the construction of foundations 100 feet (thirty metres) below water-surface level, and he also constructed a bridge over the Jhelum. He was to die in 1891 in a boating accident while working on a railway in Siam.55 None of Punjab’s rivers had been spanned before the British took on the task, previous rulers being happy to have these great waterways act as defensive lines.56 Bridge building in Punjab, then, by Irish engineers was a significant endeavour of lasting benefit to that province and both Pakistan and India. In 1882, F. W. Maunsell of St Columba’s, TCD and Cooper’s Hill worked on inundation canals on the Lower Sutlej and on the West Jumna canal as assistant first grade. He died of typhoid at Delhi in December of 1896. The works associated with the Chenab canal colony [ 160 ]

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which presented Michael O’Dwyer with revenue assessment problems had at least two Irishmen, both graduates of Cooper’s Hill, working on them. H. J. Johnston, educated at Royal School Armagh, TCD as well as Cooper’s Hill, and F. E. Kanthack were engaged in the complex construction of the headworks and weir which controlled the river’s flow.57 These works are described by the Tribune of Lahore as consisting of a weir across the river 4,000 feet (1,219 metres) long with twelve scouring sluices of twenty-feet (six-metre) span on its left, and with massive training works on its right. The supply channel which connected the works with the original inundation canal was eight miles long with a bed width of 108 feet (32.4 metres). A regulator allowed up to 8,000 cubic feet (226 cubic metres) of water per second to pass through. It was completed two years in advance of schedule.58 An idea of the scale of the works on which Irish engineers were involved is given by Dobson when he writes that there were eight main branches of the canal system, one of seventy-seven miles (123 km) in length with others between forty and sixty miles (64 to 96 km). Total length of main water lines was 427 miles (683 km) and of smaller watercourses 2,280 miles (3,648 km).59 Johnston was to go on to work as an executive engineer in charge of a division of the Bari Doab at Amritsar before taking up a similar post on the Jhelum weir and headworks from 1899 to 1902. Perhaps the most ambitious of the irrigation schemes carried out in Punjab was the Triple Canal project. When the various schemes already mentioned had been completed a large area of the Bari Doab (Doab is the area between two rivers) between the Ravi and the Sutlej was still a wasteland. There was insufficient water in the Ravi to feed another colony so it was decided to augment the flow in the river by tapping the waters of the Chenab and Jhelum through a system of interlinking canals. Designed in 1905 by J. E. Benton and completed in 1917, the scheme involved the cutting of three large canals, the Upper Jhelum, the Upper Chenab and the Lower Bari Doab. On completion the scheme would double the fertile area of Punjab. According to Gilmartin this scheme marked not only a critical new era in the Indus basin, it also had worldwide significance in the history of irrigation. He says that the connection between water control and empire has provoked scholarly discussion over the years and cites the examples of Egypt and Rome. In that context the Punjab irrigation schemes can be seen as an expression of British imperial hegemony and accounts for the increased prestige of professional irrigation engineers in India at this time.60 Involved in this imaginative project was A. B. Phelan, a graduate of TCD who had already been in Punjab for thirty years and was a superintending engineer, the second highest engineering rank, and there were also a number of Irish junior engineers.61 [ 161 ]

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The British, and the Irish employed by them, thus developed a series of major irrigation and communications works which would leave a legacy of a well-engineered physical infrastructure which would eventually serve both the Indian and Pakistani parts of the divided Punjab. As pointed out in chapter 10, most of the canal headworks were on the Indian side of the border, as were the sources of four of the five rivers from which the province derives its ancient name, while the Indus and Sutlej rise in Tibet and flow through India for hundreds of miles before reaching Pakistan, and this was to be the cause of much diplomatic and on-the-ground conflict between the two countries.62 This was to become apparent almost from the beginning and was an important element in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1948.63 It deserves to be reiterated that the work of Irish engineers and their British colleagues was to transform Punjab physically, economically and politically for generations. But it can hardly be said that Irishness was a contributing factor, although in the early days of competitive recruitment the vocationally oriented Irish education system gave potential Irish recruits some advantage. Bearing in mind the purposes for which the various Punjab public works were built, the possibility of differential ethnic motivation on the part of their builders is unlikely.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 229–30. Ibid. Mason, A matter of honour, p. 348. Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers [hereafter ICE], clxxix:1, London, 1909–10, pp. 364–5; Ian J. Kerr, ‘O’Callaghan, Sir Francis Langford (1839–1909)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/35282 (accessed 17 Dec. 2007). Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 413. Parsons papers, March 1906 (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, journal of tour 1906, p. 71). Proceedings of ICE, clxiii:1, London, 1905–6, p. 391. Ibid., clxxix:1, London, 1909–10, pp. 364–5. Kerr, ‘O’Callaghan, Sir Francis Langford’. Morris, Pax Britannica, pp. 357–79. Hill, South Asia, pp. 100–1. Edward Thackeray, The Royal (Bengal) Engineers (London, 1900), pp. 175–80. Burki, ‘Punjab’s farm potential’. Edward J. Buck, Simla past and present (2nd edn, Shimla, 2000), p. 16. R. V. Vetch, ‘Kennedy, John Pitt (1796–1879)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2008), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15387 (accessed 15 October 2009). Rudyard Kipling, Kim (Oxford, 1987), pp. 267–8. Hill, South Asia, p. 128. Introduction, Cooper’s Hill (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8), pp. 135–6; Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College’, p. 63.

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19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/1, 1861–66 and BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/2, 1867–71. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College’, p. 116. Ibid. India list civil and military 1881, pp. 106–9. BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8, pp. 135–6. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College’, p. 128. Ronald Cox, Engineers at Trinity (Dublin, 1993), p. 81. BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8, pp. 135–6. Hill, South Asia, p. 28. BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/10–13. Birth/baptismal certificates of students of Cooper’s Hill, 1871–1903 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/11); Cooper’s Hill candidates, application papers, alphabetical list of students admitted, 1873–1903 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/10), (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/12), Copies of despatches to India on results of final examinations (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/13). George Hamilton to the India Office, 6 Dec. 1900 (BL, OIOC IOR L/PWD/8/13). Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 263–5. India list civil and military 1879, p. 38. BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8, p. 138. Ibid.; India list and India Office list 1911, pp. 73–4. BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/405. Charles Pollard to his mother, 17 March 1857 (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Pollard papers, item 18, p. 3). Proceedings of ICE, cxxxvi:4(ICE, London, 1903–4, p. 455. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College’, pp. 43–4. Pollard to his mother, 17 March 1857 (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Pollard papers, item 23). Ibid., 1 Oct. 1857. Ibid., 20 May 1857. Cooper’s Hill Royal Engineering College, table attached to list showing distribution of graduates of 1874 to PWD (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/13). List of those who passed PWD examinations 1867–71 (BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/2). India list civil and military January 1881, pp. 106–7; Proceedings of ICE, lxxviii:4, London,1883, pp. 435–6. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Engineering College’, pp. 27–42. Ibid. BL, OIOC, IOR L/Mil/9/333–57. Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, gentleman cadet registers. BL, OIOC, IOR L/Mil/9/297–312. India list civil and military January 1881, pp. 106–9; see also notes 36 and 52. Spiers, ‘Army organisation’, p. 338. R. V. Vetch, ‘Wallace, William Arthur James (1842–1902)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36705 (accessed 17 Dec. 2007). Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, p. 47. Proceedings of ICE of Ireland, xcv:1 (ICE archive, The Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland, Dublin, 1906), p. 391. The Times, 14 Oct. 1891. The bridges of Pakistan: all things Pakistan, www.pakistaniat.com/2006/12/26/ Pakistan-bridges (accessed 21 Nov. 2009). Cooper’s Hill Society, Account of careers of graduates of Royal Engineering College (BL, OIOC, IOR MSS EUR F239/108). Tribune, 1 June 1892. Dobson, Final report on the Chenab settlement, pp. 20–1. David Gilmartin, ‘Imperial rivers: irrigation and British visions of empire’ (North Carolina, 2006), pp. 1–16, www.ias.berkeley.edu/SouthAsia/gilmartin.doc (accessed 20 April 2008).

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LA N D A N D I N FRAS T R U C T U R E India list and India Office list 1901. Burki, ‘Punjab’s farm potential’. Bharat Rakshak: security research review, i:3 (2005), www.bharat-rakshak.com/srr/ volume13/sirdhar.html (accessed 22 Nov. 2009).

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61 62 63

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P AR T IV

Politics and society

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13

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Lansdowne and Fitzpatrick

Politics in Punjab, as elsewhere, involved not just the interplay of organised groups, each seeking to exercise control over the governance of the province, but also entailed internal manoeuvring for control of each of these groups. In Punjab, in the early 1880s public politics as normally understood simply did not exist.1 Until 1897, there were no officially sanctioned political representative groupings which had any say in the government of the province and it was to be another twenty years before any meaningful, if limited, electoral franchise was allowed at the provincial level.2 For much of the period being researched, the absence of indigenous political forces with an electoral mandate meant that mainstream political activity was confined to internal disputation within, on the one hand, certain politico-religious groups, and in such bodies as the National Congress, which had little impact in Punjab until quite late in this period,3 and, on the other hand, within the Indian Civil Service at provincial and national level.4 In addition there were sectarian clashes of such intensity that communal rivalry took on a political character which resulted in Punjab being given the appellation ‘the Ulster of India’.5 The three chapters in this section will examine the part Irish public servants had to play in the policy discussions between the Punjab Commission and central government, and will also inquire into the ways in which these civil servants reacted to the development of public politics in the province. In particular, in this first chapter, the interaction between Dennis Fitzpatrick and Lord Lansdowne, the Viceroy, is examined in their correspondence, an examination which has not previously been undertaken with their mutual Irishness in mind. As political life, like history, consists largely of an accumulation of small incidents occurring to a wide variety of people engaged in society, in the sense of social community, these chapters will also look into certain aspects of such society with a view not only to identifying influences [ 167 ]

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which may have confirmed or modified the outlook and motivations of these Irishmen, but also to providing insights into what these outlooks and motivations were. Some of these Irishmen were doctors, and much of what appears here in regard to them, as well as what pertains to Fitzpatrick’s administration, is deserving of historians’ notice. In consonance with preceding chapters, the aim is to establish that the cumulative weight of numbers and of influence of Irish public servants was sufficient to have an assured Irish impact on politics and society. The occasional passing references to Irish individuals at various levels of seniority are to be read with this in mind. When Lord Ripon took over as viceroy in June 1880 he brought with him a Gladstonian liberalism and, as Cook says, an Irish-informed agenda to prevent what he saw as the predictable duplication of Irish circumstances in India.6 It was expected that he would be sympathetic to Indian aspirations.7 Politically, those aspirations did not aim very high, as yet. It is true that some of those Indians who benefited from the first tentative education measures brought in by the British aspired to positions in the governance and administration of their country, but these ambitions were focused on a sharing of the fruits of service with the British rather than on overthrow of the Raj.8 The Tribune, which Dennis Fitzpatrick was to call ‘the leading organ of the advanced Indians in [Punjab]’,9 said in 1881 that: ‘English education has created political aspirations in the Native mind. Our countrymen, under the influence of European civilisation, now feel that those who have a country have a right to share in its administration.’10 In Punjab, that administration was entirely in the hands of the Punjab Commission. Although the Indian Councils Act, 1861 had authorised the establishment of provincial legislatures, this important province, unlike its older counterparts, did not have a council until thirty-six years after the promulgation of that act.11 While admission to the ICS, and thus to the Punjab Commission, was theoretically possible for educated Indians there were obvious difficulties in sitting an entrance examination held in London and designed to test the products of a British education. In 1881 there were just two Indians working in the 150-member-strong ICS in Punjab. The number had increased to eight in 1891, to nine in 1901, and even in 1921 there were still only fifteen Indians, although by that time six had managed to become deputy commissioners.12 Irishmen were involved, to varying degrees, in the lengthy machinations associated with support or opposition to measures designed to increase Indian participation in these two areas of administration – the ICS and a Punjab legislature. Following on Ripon’s modest reforms and the failure to implement [ 168 ]

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others due to the opposition of much of the British community in India, his successor, Dufferin, had liberal reform still in mind but was guided by a more pragmatic approach.13 From Simla, he quietly suggested to Lord Cross, the Secretary of State for India, that the number of ‘loyal’ natives on provincial legislative councils be increased and that they be allowed more scope for discussing their provincial budgets.14 Nothing came of this, possibly because Dufferin was distracted, and funds diverted, by his pursuit of a war with Burma.15 He had been disturbed by the effect Irish politics had on the members of the Indian National Congress which was founded during his term of office, and explained to the Secretary of State: ‘The course of events at home in regard to Ireland has produced a considerable effect on the minds of the intelligent and educated section of our native community.’16 His object in regard to the legislative councils was to provide an outlet for peaceful protest and a means of monitoring educated opinion. This was because, ‘the instinctive desire which possesses them is to ape the leading organisations of the Irish Revolutionists’.17 The government had been concerned about the question of legislative councils for some time, having had its attention further focused by a minute of Lord Dufferin’s in which he again proposed that his own legislative council and those of the provinces should be enlarged to allow more Indian representation, and reformed in order to allow such representatives more say.18 Lord Lansdowne, immediately on his arrival in Calcutta to succeed Dufferin, took up this suggestion and in a series of communications with London argued strongly in its favour. He noted that as long ago as 1871, another Irish viceroy, Lord Mayo, had suggested something similar.19 In further correspondence, he urged introduction of an electoral element, with some members being nominated by municipal councils. While agreeing with the Secretary of State’s view that anything like representation in the English sense of the word was not applicable in India, he went on to propose that members of the councils be allowed to discuss budgetary questions and even to have powers of interpellation, by which he meant limited powers of questioning some aspects of the state’s administration.20 Up to this time, the various legislative councils were confined to the exact function described by their title: they passed laws, the discussion of which was severely limited. Indeed it was said that one object of a section of the 1861 Councils Act was to prevent legislative councils from interfering with the function of the executive government.21 There was a majority of nominated officials, while the non-official members were also nominees of either the Viceroy or the provincial governors; there were no elected members.22 [ 169 ]

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Lansdowne became so enthused by his own proposal that, despite – or because of – Lord Cross’s coolness, he pushed the case further with the Master of Balliol,23 with Lord Northbrook a former viceroy24 and with A. J. Arbuthnot, a member of the Council of India,25 all of whom could exercise some influence in London. The idea of expanding existing councils was taken up, but not the electoral element, nor the powers of interpellation. Lansdowne faced further disappointment when, feeling that this was an opportune moment to set up a legislative council in Punjab, he tried to put this into effect, but encountered fervent opposition from Dennis Fitzpatrick whom he had appointed as lieut.-governor of that province. Fitzpatrick did not even wait until the idea was put to him. In July 1892, when they were both in Simla, he wrote to the Viceroy: From something I have heard, it seems possible that the consideration of the action to be taken on the new Indian Councils Act may lead to my being addressed officially on the question of establishing a Legislative Council in the Punjab as proposed by my predecessor. As I am much opposed on various grounds to anything of the kind, and the question is a delicate one to discuss officially, I trust that, before I am addressed on it officially, I may be allowed an opportunity of speaking to your Excellency privately on the matter.26

Here, once again, as in his approach to policies regarding the northwest frontier and those relating to the alienation of land, Fitzpatrick is seen to oppose the government’s intentions. And this time he was but four months in office, and for the first time in his career he was serving in an important administrative post in Punjab. Why does he seem to have been so obstructive, especially in this case, with so little relevant experience to lend weight to his judgement? A closer look at his career thus far is called for, as is an account of some of his doings as lieut.governor, in an effort to discern a pattern of behaviour which reflected a certain outlook, Irish-tinged or not. When he first came to India in 1859, Fitzpatrick was posted as assistant magistrate at Delhi. His bent for the law and his grasp of complicated detail led to his being chosen to fight an important legal case in London on behalf of the government. He spent four years on legal duty in London, being called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1872. He returned to India with an established legal reputation, which was augmented by terms as deputy secretary, and then secretary, of the legislative department of the government of India. He was a judge of the chief court of Punjab in 1876–77.27 He was then appointed to a series of important administrative posts, first at government level and then in various provinces. He was home secretary during the prolonged and sometimes heated debates associated with the passing into law of the Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885 (the precursor to the similar Punjab bill of 1887), and took a neutral, though [ 170 ]

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influential, stance when the combined energies of a well-known and capable group of fellow Irishmen were directed in favour of the Bengal peasant. Cook attributes this conservative approach to Fitzpatrick being career-minded and superior-pleasing,28 but, in view of what has been described in previous chapters, it is likely to have been due to the Dublin man’s almost habitual obstructiveness stemming from an innate conservatism. In 1889 he was appointed as Resident at Hyderabad, one of the most important political appointments in the ICS.29 Fitzpatrick did well there, exercising a useful influence over the Nizam in helping to get the state’s finances in order.30 Referring to his appointment to that post, the Secretary of State, Lord Cross, wrote that he agreed with Dufferin that there was a shortage of ‘strong men’ in India, which he attributed to the growing ease of communication provided by such things as telegraphs.31 (Presumably he meant that it had become easier to refer to higher authority for decisions.) He also said that Fitzpatrick was well thought of, thoroughly trustworthy and not likely to land them in difficulties.32 Then, in August of 1891, Lansdowne told the Secretary of State that he had decided to offer the lieut.-governorship of Punjab to Fitzpatrick, saying that he was an extremely good man whose selection would command universal confidence.33 So it is established that Fitzpatrick was a ‘strong man’ with a decidedly legal bent. He had spent little time previously in Punjab and that was spent in a judicial capacity. He had never carried out a settlement survey, as O’Dwyer, Dane and others had done, nor had he served as an administrator in a Punjab district or on the frontier. So it is difficult to understand why he opposed the views of both his predecessor and the Viceroy in regard to a Punjab Legislative Council. The Tribune said on his appointment that he had ‘a reputation for firmness, justice, impartiality and sympathy’.34 It later said his opposition to a provincial legislative council was unaccountable.35 The discussion which Fitzpatrick had requested with Lansdowne in Simla was followed up by a letter in which he put his case. Unfortunately, this letter is unavailable but Lansdowne’s reply indicates that Fitzpatrick objected on the grounds that there was no analogy between Punjab and Bengal, which province had accepted Lansdowne’s recommendations; that there was difficulty in finding anyone that might reflect public opinion in Punjab; that there was a lack of demand in Punjab for such a council; and that the province’s ‘peculiar circumstances and geographical situation’ demanded that the government think twice before setting up a council. Cross wrote to Lansdowne in May 1892, ‘There must be no mention of anything like “election’’ in there,’36 by which he meant in the Council Act. A change to Liberal government at Westminster brought [ 171 ]

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a new Secretary of State, Lord Kimberley, who wrote in September, ‘I conclude that the postponement of the introduction of the “elective” element into your Council is only a postponement for a limited time, and not an adjournment sine die.’37 Fitzpatrick would not have been unaware of the changed mood at home. His colleague Crosthwaite, the lieut.-governor of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, had written that the course they had now entered upon was inconsistent with the maintenance of British power in India.38 Fitzpatrick replied, ‘I agree with you as to the probable effects of introducing sham liberal measures of representation and so forth. This is in the hands of people at home whom we could never get to understand the position and who would pretend not to understand in order not to risk losing votes of faddish M.P.s.’39 Fitzpatrick’s opposition to the establishment of a Punjab Legislative Council continued until he left office.40 Five months after he retired, the first legislative council of the lieut.-governor of Punjab came into being, and on 1 November 1897 the General Clauses Act, 1898, the first enactment of that body, was moved by Louis Dane who was then chief secretary to the Punjab government.41 The elective principle, with limited franchise, came gradually into being and became law in 1921.42 Before all that happened, Fitzpatrick availed of another opportunity to deliver what seems to have been a dismissive kick to the idea of Indian participation in administration, as if this were a cur at a feast. Lansdowne asked him to recommend a Punjabi to the Viceroy’s own now-enlarged legislative council and suggested that he consult some of the Native Associations in the province on the subject. In his reply, Fitzpatrick dismisses the idea of such consultation and goes on to say: On this I should like to consult with two or three other persons; but I may say at once that, though a ruling Chief, or one of his subjects, may with propriety, and in accordance with past practice, be appointed, I would think it more suitable to appoint a British subject, if we can find one qualified . . . I can hardly think that it would be wise to appoint a Native Christian like Hurnam Singh; even though he might be in other respects the most eligible man. Lastly, I may say that, though inability to speak English well is undoubtedly a drawback, I do not think it should be conclusive against a man, seeing that no one whom we could appoint could ever do anything at the Council meeting, except deliver a previously composed speech, anything like taking part in an extempore debate being altogether beyond the powers of such men, nor is this of much importance, inasmuch as all real discussion is, as a rule, carried on in Select Committee, and there a Native Member can have everything explained to him . . . One thing will doubtless strike your Excellency on reading these discussions, viz., how very far the Punjab still is from being fit to take its place in any sort of scheme of representation.43 (Italics as in original.)

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In the following year the Tribune announced that the Punjabi nominee to the Viceroy’s Council, Baba Khem Singh Bedi, could not speak English.44 This must have raised the collective eyebrows of the Punjabi English-speaking readers of this Indian-owned and Lahorepublished newspaper, who were sufficiently numerous and well educated to make the paper viable – and presumably to provide one among their number to the Viceroy’s Council. Support for greater participation in legislative councils was one of the main planks in the Indian National Congress’s political platform, so the Councils Act was seen as a great success for that body.45 Fitzpatrick’s lack of support for that act and his reluctance in nominating an educated, English-speaking person to the Viceroy’s Council appears to be consistent with his opposition to another major concern of Congress, that of making it possible for Indians to take the ICS examination in their own country. Creating opportunities for indigenes in the senior ranks of public service had been a concern of some British and educated Indians alike for some time. In taking over responsibility for Indian administration from the East India Company, government found that manpower shortages grew with expansion and increased specialisation.46 Attempts had been made to recruit Indians, especially young aristocrats, into higher levels, at first by the creation of a shortlived Statutory Service, then by leaving open a fifth of ICS posts to persons promoted from the uncovenanted service.47 These and other schemes failed to work, partly because the Indian aristocracy was not interested and partly because those intelligent young men of the new English-speaking middle classes who were attracted to well-paid positions encountered official obstruction at various levels within Civilian ranks.48 A Public Service Commission set up in 1886 recommended that the age limit for ICS candidates be raised from nineteen to twenty-three, thus allowing Indian candidates to get a degree, study in London and compete on improved terms with British candidates. Much pressure from the ranks of the ICS prevented other pro-Indian measures but the government accepted the raising of age recommendation, leading to an increase in Indian participation in the ICS.49 Then, in 1893, the House of Commons passed a measure allowing for simultaneous entrance examinations in London and India.50 Amid much consternation, Viceroy, lieut.-governor and Civilians combined in opposition. Lansdowne told the Secretary of State that, as the civil service was a mere handful in the midst of millions, it would be a calamity of the first magnitude if it were largely recruited from among the successful competitors at examinations held in India.51 (In doing so he implicitly accepted that Indians would outshine British candidates.) He later told [ 173 ]

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the Secretary that he had decided to ask the provincial authorities for their views, saying ‘a weighty examination of the proposal by men like Crosthwaite, MacDonnell and Fitzpatrick will certainly strengthen the case’.52 The clear implication is that he expected, or knew, that the two Irishmen and their colleague would oppose the measure. Another letter to the Secretary in September stated that indeed Fitzpatrick was against simultaneous examinations and that Madras was the only province which lent some support.53 In fact, Fitzpatrick’s lengthy minute on the matter, a communication twice referred to as ‘able’, prompted Lansdowne to inform the Secretary of State that it ‘seems to me to demolish the case in favour of simultaneous examinations completely’.54 Lansdowne was thus enabled, in defiance of parliamentary wishes, to declare implementation of such wishes to be non possumus, or unable to be acted upon. The Indian government justified its stance by saying that simultaneous examinations would be discriminatory in that these would favour the educated and mainly Hindu elite, so alienating Sikhs and Muslims of the north-west on whose loyalty the Raj so much relied.55 This reasoning sounds so legalistic that one looks for the hand of Fitzpatrick. The Lahore-based Civil and Military Gazette, one of Kipling’s old newspapers, later said it understood that Fitzpatrick’s ‘masterly’ minute on simultaneous examinations had much to do with the final decision on the matter.56 It was to be 1923 before such simultaneous examinations were established.57 Spangenberg sees Fitzpatrick’s opposition to a Punjab Council and to simultaneous examinations as part of a general reluctance on the part of Civilians to accept ‘Indianisation’ in any part of the administration,58 and Norman Barrier felt that the Irish lieut.-governor distrusted educated Indians.59 Spangenberg’s assertion does seem to reflect the truth, but an additional and equally valid explanation is provided by other actions of Fitzpatrick, and by press comment during his tenure, just after it, and following his death in 1920. There is a discernible, if not very strong, thread to be seen in Sir Dennis’s performance as proconsul which must be followed to arrive at an informed assessment of his motives. On a personal level there was tragedy in his life. His wife left India on health grounds quite early in his career and his daughters acted as hostesses and companions. Two daughters and an adult son died in India.60 On taking up his appointment he was criticised by his predecessor’s brother A. C. Lyall, lieut.-governor of the North-Western Provinces – not to be confused with the North-West Frontier Province – who wrote some five months into Fitzpatrick’s tenure that, ‘Fitzpatrick is disappointing his friends, he is said to be strident in voice, bad in manners and indiscreet in talk. He doesn’t understand how to deal with the [ 174 ]

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government of India on frontier matters . . . The competition wallahs have yet to turn out a first-class Lt. Governor.’61 This could be taken as a not untypical plaint of an Eton-educated, Haileybury-trained man against the first Punjab lieut.-governor who had entered the ICS by competitive examination (a competition wallah).62 Fitzpatrick was likely to be aware of such attitudes. On his taking up office, the Tribune said of the Dublin man that he had in his previous service in the province won admiration and respect.63 Although it had subsequent differences with him, that newspaper never strayed too far from its stated opinion during and after Fitzpatrick’s term of office. Its reportage leaves an impression of a conscientious, if perhaps pernickety lieut.-governor, honest, fair and, rather surprisingly in view of what has been described above, sympathetic to Indian sensibilities. In June the paper has him carefully reviewing various administrative reports ‘a small screw loose here and another tightened’,64 and in July he is commenting on the length of paragraphs and the meagreness of the index in another departmental report.65 In October the paper took up the question of begar, an iniquitous system of forced labour and compulsory purchase of services where a touring official demanded porterage of his goods and supplies for his camp as he passed from village to village. Fitzpatrick put a stop to the latter practice,66 and would later be reported as having issued a proclamation which provided for the payment of reasonable hire for any impressments or any service rendered to a touring officer.67 Also in November it is reported that the lieut.-governor’s personality comes out strongly in his reviews of departmental reports and that he is determined to keep straight all the officers under his command.68 In 1894, Fitzpatrick is reported as having issued orders that when prisoners in the province’s jails were being whipped they should have previously exposed parts covered with a piece of cotton to prevent bruising and humiliation.69 There was a certain reciprocity, as Fitzpatrick learned of some misdemeanours from newspapers and addressed all commissioners and deputy commissioners to the effect that in cases where a native’s death was caused by a European they were directed to report the facts of the case to him. He did not wish to learn of it first from newspapers.70 In August 1893 Fitzpatrick wrote to Lansdowne about a case which neatly illustrates the interplay between the lieut.-governor and the newspaper which he believed to be the voice of the educated native and the mouthpiece of Congress.71 He expressed annoyance that at a time when he was pondering how best to put the matter of the contrast between English and Native officials (to the detriment of the latter) a case had been publicised by the newspapers, and had also been the subject of anonymous letters, [ 175 ]

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about an officiating English deputy commissioner in Montgomery who had cut off a piece of the beard of a Muslim lambardar (village official) because he had broken some forest rule, and then sent the hair, ‘with a foolish superscription’, to a forester colleague. The man denied it but, as it transpired to be true, Fitzpatrick had him turned out of the service.72 The Tribune took due note and thanked the lieut.-governor.73 Fitzpatrick also intervened in a case where a magistrate had dismissed a case against a Mr Tomkins who had beaten an Indian assistant surgeon, calling the verdict a stigma on justice.74 By far the most interesting of these cases of bullying of Indians by Europeans, and there were many, was reported by the Tribune but could not be found in Fitzpatrick’s correspondence. This was in relation to the Irish deputy commissioner of Jhelum, a Mr Silcock from Armagh, who had shouted at a well-known and respected Indian executive engineer, a Mr Ram Singh, and had him dragged from his horse because the man had not salaamed him as he rode by. Mr Singh, who was from one of Punjab’s leading families and who had been received by Queen Victoria, said that he did not know Silcock, and the paper scathingly asks how he could be expected to recognise that the pudgy, irate European standing before him was the autocrat of the district.75 Fitzpatrick’s intervention resulted in Silcock being censured and required to send a written apology, which was not accepted by the injured party. Silcock was then temporarily transferred to Delhi but was allowed later to return.76 While Silcock was in Delhi, the Tribune reported that while he was still in Jhelum he had been in the habit of confiscating the umbrellas of persons who passed him with their umbrellas open. The umbrellas were later sold by auction.77 Fitzpatrick had little regard for National Congress, writing to Lansdowne after that body’s meeting in Lahore after Christmas 1893 that it was a very petty and unimportant affair. There was little in the way of a Punjabi element about it, he said, beyond pleaders, newspaper editors and schoolboys.78 Throughout this time he was faced with the problem of tensions between Muslims and Hindus. Old animosities were exacerbated as a Hindu revivalist movement, Arya Samaj, became an important influence in Punjab.79 A radical wing of the movement, which focused on cow protection, gave doctrinal justification, intentional or not, to violent opposition to cow-killing, leading to bloody communal rioting in the major towns of Punjab.80 So intense and widespread was this violence that it is not surprising that the appellation, ‘the Ulster of India’, was considered to be apt. It was this background of communal violence, and the army’s reliance on its Punjabi Muslim recruits, which lent urgency to the solving of the province’s tenurial, rural indebtedness and land alienation problems as detailed in earlier chapters. [ 176 ]

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Sir Dennis’s response was to attempt to persuade Lansdowne to allow him to use stern measures against agitators and press alike. He began a drawn-out correspondence on the subject with a long letter in August 1893, saying, ‘What I think we should do is to stop all meetings and other sorts of agitation on which we can put our hands in regard to sectarian quarrels between Hindoos and Musulmans; and further that we should stop all discussion of such quarrels in newspapers whether Vernacular or English.’81 He went on to suggest that he should issue a friendly warning to newspaper editors to abstain from such discussion and if they failed to do so he would enforce the necessary legal provisions without compunction. He said that it was important to stop instantly the first breach in any big bund (embankment), a figurative statement which foreshadowed a similar sentiment voiced by a fellow Irish lieut.governor, Michael O’Dwyer. Fitzpatrick finishes his letter by asking if he might that afternoon discuss the matter with the Viceroy at a social function or on the walk home. There followed an extended exchange of correspondence which is best summarised by referring to a note prepared by the Viceroy in December of that year. In his first paragraph Lansdowne explains that the magnitude of the danger arose from the fact that disloyal elements had found popular backing which they could not have obtained from any other source. The case, he said, presented a close analogy to that which had arisen in Ireland when a purely political movement was fairly harmless until Mr Parnell had aligned it with the agrarian question. Lansdowne goes on to write that Fitzpatrick had proposed taking measures to stop organised agitation on the subject of kine-killing, even if that agitation stopped short of criminal intimidation, and at the same time to allow people to hold ‘quiet meetings’. In another letter he, Fitzpatrick, had stated that what was required was not merely a power to stop publication of false news in unfair spirit, but power to stop everything good, bad or indifferent in any paper which was likely to excite irritation in the minds of unreasonable, fanatical persons. Lansdowne had written to him in September, apparently in a dual effort to persuade the lieut.-governor that his proposals were not necessary and at the same time to stress that softer methods worked. He said in a letter addressed to other provinces also: It is remarkable that the Punjab, in which we had so much trouble two or three years ago, has been so quiet of late. This is mainly due to the judicious manner in which the local government has enforced the Punjab Law Act of 1870, Section 43, which forbids the killing of kine except under rules made by local government. Attention of other local governments is brought to this act.82

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Fitzpatrick remained stubborn. He pointed out in yet another missive that the Anglo-Indian (British in India) press was claiming that Congress and anti-cow-killing agitation were the same thing, while the native press blamed the riots on the machinations of British officials. Lansdowne and Kimberley, the Secretary of State back in London, opposed Fitzpatrick’s various suggestions, the Viceroy himself explaining that a threat to editors would add to the excitement in India and lead to agitation in London.83

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Sarkar, Modern India, p. 1. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 250–300. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 293–4. Spangenberg, British bureaucracy in India, pp. 264–354. Talbot, Punjab and the Raj, p. 67. Cook, Imperial affinities, p. 135. Keay, India: a history, p. 455. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 258–9. Tribune, 14 April 1894. Ibid., 26 March 1881. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 217. India list civil and military 1881, 1891; India list and India Office list 1901, 1921. See chapter 1. Dufferin to Cross, 17 Aug. 1888 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR F130). Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 259. Dufferin to Cross, 21 March 1886 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR F130/3). Ibid., 26 April 1866. Lansdowne to Cross, 1 Jan. 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2). Ibid. Ibid., 12 Feb. 1889. Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 18 May 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2). Bipan Chandra, ‘Propaganda in the legislatures’, in Chandra et al., India’s struggle for independence, pp. 113–23. Lansdowne to Jowett, 3 Feb. 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Lansdowne to Northbrook, 13 Jan. 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Lansdowne to Arbuthnot, 11 Feb. 1890 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/3). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 28 July 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/23). India list civil and military 1894; Fitz-Gerald, ‘Fitzpatrick, Sir Dennis’ (ODNB). Cook, Imperial affinities, pp. 89–136. India list civil and military 1894. Lansdowne to Dufferin, 14 Dec. 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Cross (Sec. of State) to Lansdowne, 24 April 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2). Lansdowne to Sec. of State 2 April 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2).

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LA N SD O W N E A N D FIT Z P A T R IC K 33 34 35 36 37 38

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39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Lansdowne to Cross, 14 Aug. 1891 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Tribune, 4 March 1892. Ibid., 24 Feb. 1897. Cross to Lansdowne, 6 May 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/5). Kimberley to Lansdowne, 22 Sept. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/5). Crosthwaite to Fitzpatrick, 3 Oct. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Fitzpatrick to Crosthwaite, 5 Oct. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, p. 306. Council of the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab 1897, www.pap.gov.pk/general/ assemblies/S-1897–1909.htm (accessed 2 July 2008). Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, pp. 342–7. Fitzatrick to Lansdowne, 26 July 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Tribune, 18 Aug. 1894. Keay, India: a history, p. 459. Robb, A history of India, p. 155. Ibid. Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, pp. 125, 307–22. Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 49–51. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 266. Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 13 June 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/14). Ibid., 4 July 1893. Ibid., 27 Sept. 1893. Ibid. Keay, India: a history, p. 459. Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 50. Spangenberg, British bureaucracy, pp. 303–54. Barrier, ‘Punjab politics and the disturbances of 1907’, p. 79. Fitz-Gerald, ‘Fitzpatrick, Sir Dennis’ (ODNB). A. C. Lyall to J. B. Lyall, 1 Sept. 1892 (BL, OIOC, Lyall papers, MSS EUR F132/164/57–9). Gilmour, The ruling caste, pp. 64–8. Tribune, 4 March, 1892. Ibid., 23 June 1892. Ibid., 30 July 1892. Ibid., 26 Oct. 1892. Ibid., 21 June 1911. Ibid., 23 Nov. 1892. Ibid., 1 Sept. 1894. Ibid., 4 July 1894. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 19 Aug. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 16 Aug. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Tribune, 6 Dec. 1893. Ibid., 14 April 1894. Ibid., 28 March 1894. Ibid., 7 Nov. 1894. Ibid., 25 Aug. 1894. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 27 Jan. 1894 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558).

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83

Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 287. Robb, A history of India, pp. 234–5. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 14 Aug. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Lansdowne to Fitzpatrick, 20 Sept. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/6). Lansdowne, a note, 28 Dec. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/58).

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Punjab affairs are Simla affairs

Two remarkable features of Lord Lansdowne’s correspondence stand out: firstly, that almost every day, in letters or telegrams exchanged with people in the United Kingdom, there is discussion on Ireland, on the politics of Home Rule and land reform, and more personal comments on individuals or Lansdowne’s properties in Ireland. Secondly, as shown by the letter headings, it is quite apparent that the Punjab government, in this instance represented by Fitzpatrick, were in a unique position in that for much of the year – it could be for six months or more – they shared a summer location with the Viceroy and his government in Simla. Simla’s main churches, schools, government and military offices, its theatre and restaurants were and are all ranged along the single thoroughfare which stretches from the residence of the Punjab lieut.-governor to the viceregal lodge, so frequent encounters between the two Irishmen could be expected. In regard to Ireland, Lansdowne corresponded with Queen Victoria,1 with the Secretary of State comparing Indian with Irish legislation,2 Lord Salisbury,3 Lord Reay4 and Lord Northbrook,5 and others. He wrote to the Earl of Zetland at the viceregal lodge in Dublin asking for an order in Council which would enable the building of a light railway from Lansdowne’s property in Kenmare to the station at Headfort.6 If the question of Ireland was so much to the fore in Lansdowne’s mind, it is hardly likely to feature less in the thinking of people like Fitzpatrick and others who were born in the country, but who were possibly not so free to express their affiliations as was the well-connected Lord, and who did not leave such a voluminous correspondence. In relation to the other feature revealed in correspondence, the Punjab government, or much of it, transferred to the leafy coolness of Simla each summer, there to join the Viceroy and his paraphernalia of thousands of files, papers and boxes, which had been transferred up from the heat of Calcutta 1,200 miles away, along with hundreds of [ 181 ]

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3

Viceregal lodge, Simla

clerks and household staff.7 Much has been written about the wonderful strangeness of Simla, a pseudo-English town clinging to a ridge with magnificent views of the Himalaya, but the object here is to explore what it meant to the Irish in Punjab. Lord Dufferin had said: ‘In Simla, he [the Viceroy] is in immediate communication with the lieut.-governor of Punjab, his most important officer.’8 Lansdowne in a farewell speech said that he had spent a larger number of months in Simla than at any other place in India.9 John Lawrence, that Irish founder of the Punjab administration, was responsible for designating Simla as the summer capital of the British empire in India.10 Lord Roberts claimed that his father, a Waterford man, had built the first house there, called Ballyhack,11 but it seems to be generally accepted that a Scot, Captain Kennedy (not to be confused with the Derryman, John Pitt Kennedy), had that honour in 1822.12 During his term of office Dufferin had constructed and moved into the viceregal lodge, built in the Scottish baronial style atop Observatory Hill,13 on a watershed of symbolic importance with all the drainage on one side ending up in the Bay of Bengal, and the streams on the other flank flowing eventually into the Arabian Sea, far on the other side of the subcontinent (Figure 3). The lodge is still there, a popular location for guided tours of Indian tourists and housing the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. [ 182 ]

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On their way to Simla from Lahore before the deadly heat of summer and the outbreak of the monsoon, the lieut.-governor and his entourage would, in Fitzpatrick’s time, travel by train, passing through Amritsar which contained the principal shrine of Sikhdom, the Golden Temple (Figure 4). It was here in 1893 that Micheal Macauliffe, known as Max, came at the request of Sikh authorities, when he retired from the ICS, to work on the compiling and translation of the Sikh sacred book, Guru Granth Sahib, a translation which would be for long regarded as the standard work.14 Macauliffe, from Co. Limerick, was educated at Newcastle in that county, and at QCG.15 The train carrying the gubernatorial party would then continue to Jullundur, which even today is one of those dusty towns of the Punjab plains where the summer heat is almost unbearable, and in June of 1920 was particularly bad, and is said to have been a contributory cause of the unrest among Irish troops there which led to the Connaught Rangers Mutiny.16 In the 1890s the commissioner based in Jullundur was George Smyth, a TCD graduate,17 and one of the garrison’s medical officers was Limerick-man W. L. Gubbins, a TCD graduate in the British army who was later to become Sir William, and principal medical officer in India. Also working in the town was one of the most notable medical men in the history of the IMS, Henry ‘Jullundur’ Smith, who was well on the way to being ‘by far the most experienced cataract surgeon the world had ever known’.18 Smith, born in Clogher, Co. Tyrone in 1862, was a graduate of QCG where, as stated earlier, courses were geared towards imperial service. He stood six feet four inches in height and was said to be a giant mentally, physically and morally.19 Years later, Michael O’Dwyer was to write that there was no country in the world at that time where the affliction of blindness was so widespread as in India, nor where the ratio of blindness to population was so high.20 In 1905, Smith submitted an article to the journal Archives in which he described the results of 2,616 intracapsular extraction of cataracts, a procedure which was then regarded as too risky by most surgeons. His success led to his technique being the standard treatment worldwide for the next sixty years. By 1921 he had completed 50,000 cataract operations.21 His book on the subject became a classic,22 and ophthalmologists came from all over the world to see him operate in Jullundur.23 He was by no means the only eminent medical man in India. Ronald Ross of the IMS was to receive a Nobel Prize for his work on malaria. Nor indeed was Smith the only notable Irish surgeon. Peter Freyer from Clifden, yet another graduate of the empire-oriented system of QCG, would become famous and be knighted for his work in India in crushing stones in the bladder by means of litholopaxy and later in London for devising a new technique for removal of the prostate gland, a most [ 183 ]

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4

Golden Temple, Amritsar

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PU N J A B A FFA I RS A RE S IM L A A F F A IR S

important boon to many who would have died or endured a brutal treatment which made death seem a reasonable alternative.24 Both these men worked outside Punjab but their work was indicative of the manyfaceted benefits IMS men brought to India and the world. Within Punjab, the research of Robert McCarrison (1878–1960) of Portadown, Co. Armagh would again bring fame, a knighthood and many international honours to an Irish medical graduate. McCarrison studied medicine at QCB and at the Richmond Hospital in Dublin and qualified with first-class honours in 1900. Subsequent to joining the IMS, and after formative and productive years in Chitral and Gilgit in the mountainous north, he transferred in 1912 to the Pasteur Institute at Kasauli in the Punjab hills where he continued his research into the causes and cure of goitre, a condition which was endemic in some mountain populations. He was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal for public service in 1911, in addition to various international awards. The curriculum at the Queen’s Colleges, slanted as it was towards service in India, inevitably had some effect on the career choices of such men as McCarrison. General Neville Chamberlain had said in 1887 that the peaceful and civilising influence of the work done in the dispensaries and by the regimental surgeons of the IMS on the frontiers of India had been in political importance equivalent to the presence of some thousands of bayonets. He went on, ‘I have never known a time when the halt, the lame and the blind have not flocked to our cantonments, or into our camps in search of relief . . . and however distasteful may have been the sight of our soldiers . . . the people come with confidence to seek medical aid.’25 Life in Punjab, as in India as a whole, was precarious for indigenes and Europeans alike. After two decades in India, a single year’s recruitment to the ICS could expect to have lost a third of its number,26 and this is among a group of men who had gone through rigorous health checks on recruitment. The premature deaths of some Irish engineers through accident or disease was noted in chapter 12, and the early demise of Dennis Fitzpatrick’s children was not at all unusual among the families of public servants.27 At the beginning of November 1893, Fitzpatrick reported to the Viceroy from Dharamsala that O’Brien, the deputy commissioner for the area who was a nephew of William Smith O’Brien, had a riding accident when his horse fell down a khud (ravine) and that he was paralysed.28 The Civil List for the following year shows that O’Brien died shortly following Fitzpatrick’s letter, on 28 November 1893, presumably as a result of the fall.29 Rough, steep terrain was not the only hazard facing public servants and their families. Wild animals caused the deaths of 2,911 persons in India in 1891 [ 185 ]

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while no less than 21,389 died from snakebite.30 Deaths from major diseases such as malaria, cholera and bubonic plague accounted for enormous numbers at various times in the period 1881–1921, some of which figures were given in chapter 11. Life expectancy for native Indians was 25.83 years.31 By 1918 IMS doctors had worked out the method of transmission of bubonic plague as well as that of malaria, and how to deal with amoebic dysentery as well as doing the work already mentioned of Irishmen in the fields of goitre, prostatectomy and cataracts. Leaving Jullundur on his way to Simla the Punjab governor would then pass through Umballa, a major military base where S. F. Freyer, a brother of the more famous Peter and also a QCG graduate, was stationed in the BMS during the 1890s.32 From the terminus at Kalka, until 1903 when a narrow-gauge railway was built all the way to Simla, the climb to 7,000 feet from the plains was done by tonga, a two-wheeled cart drawn by two ponies, and followed the Hindustan–Tibet Road which was designed and partly built by the Derry man, Kennedy. The road, well graded, climbed fifty-eight miles to Simla and continued from there for some 220 miles before reaching the Tibetan border at the Shipki Pass.33 Not far from Kalka, and on a nearby alternative route, was Kasauli where a Pasteur Institute would be built and where McCarrison would do his research. In the early 1890s, the idea of building the institute was supported by the director of the IMS, General W. R. Rice, a graduate of the QUI, but he opposed the idea of the Viceroy lending his name to an establishment which was to be called the antirabies institute. Rice believed that Pasteur had not yet proved his case as to the preventative powers of the anti-rabies virus, although he felt that anti-rabies investigation could be carried out as part of the work of what he saw as a future bacteriological institute at Kasauli.34 Dennis Fitzpatrick questioned the need for such an institute and was not satisfied with Rice’s reasoning for its establishment.35 The Pasteur Institute at Kasauli was thriving and very popular in 1912 when McCarrison went to work there,36 so Lansdowne or another viceroy had apparently overruled the two doubting Irishmen. Further up the road to Simla, or later by the railway, the traveller would have passed beneath the hill on which sat the cantonment of Dagshai, one of a group of military bases protecting the route to Simla besides affording troops some relief from the heat of the plains. It was this facility to block access to Simla from the plains, combined with its ready access to Punjab and the north-west frontier, that led to the ridge-top town being designated as summer capital.37 At Dagshai, on 2 November 1920, Private James Daly was to be executed for his part in the Connaught Rangers Mutiny,38 the second Irishman to be executed in the Irish nationalist cause since the death of [ 186 ]

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5

Private Daly (front row, far right) with Connaught Rangers

the leaders of the 1916 rebellion, Kevin Barry who was the first having been hanged on the previous day (Figure 5).39 His fellow mutineers were imprisoned at Dagshai and there was still, in 2010, a much overgrown Roman Catholic graveyard in the cantonment with almost exclusively Irish names on the broken headstones. Further on, the road and railway pass by the town of Solon where Daly and the second group of mutineers had been based, the first group having been at Jullundur.40 On arrival in Simla the Punjab lieut.-governor’s carriage, in later years his car, was one of only three allowed use of the main street and certain other roads. The other two privileged people were the Viceroy and the commander-in-chief.41 If this imaginary journey to Simla took place in 1893 then all these three gentlemen were Irish (assuming Lansdowne’s very strong connections allowed of this description). Fitzpatrick was lieut.-governor, Lansdowne was viceroy and the army chief was Antrim man Sir George White.42 There also in 1893 would have been Irishmen General Rice, the head of IMS; Sir Francis O’Callaghan who was by now secretary to the government of India PWD; the head of Indian railways, F. E. Spring;43 Michael Fenton in his capacity as senior secretary to the Punjab financial commissioner; and any other Irish Civilian of the Punjab Commission who could carry out his work at this distance or take a short break from it and the summer heat. There, at various times [ 187 ]

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throughout the period covered in this volume, Irishmen would have been quite prominent in society, may indeed, as at this time, have been at its very centre, in a place infamous for its intrigue, snobbery, awareness of hierarchy and separateness from things Indian.44 They may have felt more at home, or more nostalgic, in the houses they had named Ballyhack, Abbeyfeale, Dunmurry, Connemara and Ballyhooly.45 Beyond Simla, the Hindustan–Tibet Road became little more than a mule-track cut into precipitous slopes and continued into the great gorge of the Sutlej river as it gouged its way through the Himalaya. Some years later than the posited rail journey, Louis Dane would follow the mule-track with Lieut. Col. Parsons, drinking five bottles of Chianti a day as they rode along the gorge. Parsons, whose family had lived in Ireland for 300 years,46 in his letters describing the journey, also asked his wife back in Simla to send six bottles of port (secondbest quality) as a present for Mr Dane. Dane, who when in Simla was an enthusiastic actor at the Gaiety Theatre amateur productions ,47 then went across the Bashleo Pass, a normal route in those days to Kulu where he had been so happy as assistant commissioner in 1882. Before continuing to Kulu it is interesting to read of Col. Parsons experiences as he toured India in 1906 in which he mentions a party in Burdwan in Bengal at the home of Mr O’Brien, the collector (district officer) where all the guests were Irish. There he became involved in an argument about Ireland with a Miss ffrench-Mullen in which he said he became quite heated and wrote in his diary that, ‘It does disgust me, this stubborn Irish refusal to be British first and Irish second.’48 At Kulu, in the village of Manali, Louis Dane would have encountered an interesting case of an Irish contribution to the growth of the fruit industry which is today such an important part of the economy of the state of Himachal Pradesh, of which Simla (now Shimla) is the capital (21,000 metric tons of apples were exported from the state in the months up to early October 2007).49 In the early 1870s at about the time R. I. Bruce had served in Kulu, the mild climate of the valley prompted an English farmer, one of a like-minded colony who settled in this beautiful place, to introduce orchards of apples, pears and other temperatezone fruit.50 A Captain Arthur Banon, cousin of Christopher Banon, MP, of Broughal Castle, King’s County,51 retired from the Munster Fusiliers and settled among this isolated and rare group of British settlers, where he developed fruit-growing into a commercial enterprise by ingeniously seizing on the cheap postal rates on parcels to transport apples as mail, carried by long trains of porters and pack animals, across the roadless high passes to the market at Simla. Eventually, the opening of a road into the valley in 1928 turned apple-growing into a booming industry.52 (Dennis Fitzpatrick supported a scheme for expanding fruit [ 188 ]

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culture in the Simla hills.)53 Arthur Banon’s sons, like himself, settled permanently, married local women, and embraced Kulu – or Kullu – socio-religious customs.54 Back in the Punjab plains, Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick would continue to correct his subordinates,55 and end his term of office having obstructed or attempted to block policies of either or both Indian and home governments, in regard to the north-west frontier, simultaneous examinations, a legislative council for Punjab, the raising of land tax, land alienation and the issue of the Pasteur Institute, a consistent obstructiveness that has piqued the interest of at least one historian. All of these policies which he opposed, except that in relation to an increase in land tax, were implemented when he had left office, some of these after a considerable time, a few almost immediately.56 When the Dublin man left office to retire to London he was well thought of by both the Tribune and the Civil and Military Gazette, two papers catering for very different readerships, although both had reservations about him. While the Tribune had said that Fitzpatrick was one of the few provincial governors prepared to condemn police corruption and inefficiency,57 and had remarked that under Fitzpatrick’s rule officials worked more diligently,58 on his retirement it said, ‘In the administration, in public service and in all matters of importance the Punjab has been compelled to lag behind. Sir Dennis’s policy has been to leave things as he found them. His great ability has enabled him to detect and correct errors and to correct injustices wherever he found them. For the rest he stood fast and declined to take the initiative.’59 The newspaper also stated that though he had the ability and strength to make the administration better, he lacked the sympathy and enthusiasm of the right sort and consequently had been unable to leave the province stronger than he had found it.60 But much later, looking back in 1911, the Tribune referred to Sir Dennis as ‘one of the most sympathetic and popular of lieut.-governors of the province’.61 The Gazette said of him that: ‘Sir Dennis is unquestionably a man of very exceptional ability with the power of grasping the whole bearing of a mass of facts and setting forth, in clear and luminous language, the result of considerations of cases which come before him.’62 The Gazette goes on to say that he had been anxious to keep the administration running quietly on its course and that he had been inclined to be the executive head of every department. He held strong views on sanctity of contracts and he was very chary of proposals which treated those principles lightly. It praised his timely preparations against famine.63 The Irish Times, following his death, concurred with much of the above, remarking that he was efficient rather than innovative.64 In contrast to his superior, Lansdowne, there is no reference to Ireland [ 189 ]

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in Fitzpatrick’s correspondence with the Viceroy, and none to be found in his public utterances. It is notable that, even on Lansdowne’s departure from India, there is nowhere a comment on their common links with Ireland. So, although Fitzpatrick could be said to sometimes be eccentric in his implementation of British policy, part of the proposition on which this work is hinged, there is no direct evidence that his Irishness influenced his work. It is not surprising, given the various tensions which have been mentioned above, and the factors associated with opposition to the Punjab Colonisation of Land Bill, 1906 as described in chapter 11, that there was a violent reaction to the introduction of that bill. What is surprising is that neither the Punjab nor Indian government foresaw the likelihood of such violence, or, if they did, they misjudged the intensity of it. The Indian press was opposed to that bill.65 Leading local lawyers and Congress supporters also opposed it and their efforts led to the political awakening of a previously politically inert province.66 Probably the most important, certainly the most controversial, political development in the years leading up to the colonisation bill debate was the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. In 1905 he had split the province into an eastern section with a Muslim majority, leaving the western predominantly Hindu. This caused communal tensions all over India including Punjab, strengthened Congress by giving it a popular cause and gave rise to the Swadeshi (‘of our country’) movement, which aimed to boycott British goods.67 Nationalistic feeling was further encouraged by the portentous victory of an Asian nation over a European one in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.68 It was not a good time to introduce potentially disruptive measures such as the colonisation bill. Dennis Fitzpatrick, now retired, had warned his former colleagues that the bill would create a disturbance, and the government in London agreed.69 That Ibbetson, Rivaz and the viceroy Curzon persisted, shows a degree of disconnection from the population that is surprising. They simply thought, in the tradition of the province’s administration, that they knew best what was good for rural Punjabis.70 The editor of the Zamindar newspaper, and several prominent yeomen belonging to a farmer’s organisation, initiated an unprecedented systematic protest against the bill, involving mass meetings and signed memorials. Urban politicians belonging to a branch of the Indian National Congress, led by Lala Lajpat Rai, attended one of the meetings, as spectators according to Barrier,71 but, in his autobiography Lajpat says that, although he went reluctantly to two meetings, he did address a crowd on two occasions and tried to play a restraining role.72 Whichever is the case, his presence at the meetings convinced the authorities that he and his urban colleagues had masterminded the [ 190 ]

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entire agitation. As the agitation grew, Ibbetson, who had now taken over as lieut.-governor from Rivaz, requested powers to quell a rebellion, a telling reaction which prefigured a similar one some twelve years later on the part of Michael O’Dwyer, an admirer of Ibbetson. He obtained permission to deport Lajpat, who was prominent in Arya Samaj, along with Ajit Singh, another Arya Samaj member who was supposed to be a co-conspirator but in truth was antagonistic to Lajpat,73 and was later to adopt terrorist tactics.74 The deportations to Burma and a ban on meetings quietened agitation; withdrawal of the bill and the return of the deportees further calmed public feeling, and it was into this atmosphere that Louis Dane, now Sir Louis, was drafted in 1908 as lieut.-governor to replace Walker who temporarily stood in for Ibbetson as the latter was dying of cancer.75

Irishness Before going on to describe Dane’s period as lieut.-governor and contrasting it with Michael O’Dwyer’s term in the same office it is apposite to consider how remarkable it is that so many Irishmen were involved in Punjab at a high level during the years preceding Dane’s appointment and especially during the 1890s. Despite the lack of written evidence, is it reasonable to dismiss the probability that there was a definite and obvious Irish influence on social life, and surely on political matters also, brought about by the presence at one time in such a hierarchy-conscious place as Simla, of the Viceroy, the lieut.governor of Punjab, the commander-in-chief, the heads of the IMS, the PWD and Indian railways, the chief financial secretary to the Punjab Commission and a number of other Civilians and officers, all of whom were Irish? Although the coincidence of all these in 1893 was unusual, on several occasions during the study period more than one of these senior posts would be occupied separately by Irishmen. Both Irish viceroys were prompted to take an interest in Punjab affairs due to their being in the province for so much of each year – Simla was the responsibility of a deputy commissioner of the Punjab cadre – and to the fact that the Punjab’s lieut.-governor and his staff, unlike their counterparts in other provinces, also spent their summers in the same hill station. It was largely due to efforts of the two great Irish landowners that the legislative council in the province came into being, albeit belatedly. Neither Lansdowne or Dufferin was born in Ireland, but one of the criteria laid down in the introductory chapter was that an individual was likely be constantly exposed to Irish influences in his early years. Dufferin lived in Co. Down and was fully attuned to Irish mores, [ 191 ]

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particularly those of Ulster, where he had been exposed to the results of land agitation and, in Skibbereen, he had witnessed the consequences of the great famine. Lansdowne’s family owned large estates in Ireland and he also was well aware of land agitation and was bitter about Gladstone’s land bills. His family had lived in Ireland since Norman times and their position as one of the premier landowners in Ireland would have exposed him to things Irish, even if this was at a very different level from that known to people like Fitzpatrick and O’Dwyer. Both peers were so caught up in the politics of Irish landlordism that they consciously favoured legislation in India that would ensure a peaceful countryside, and that would provide an outlet for constitutional politicians. So, their actions in regard to both the establishment of a Punjab Legislative Council and land legislation were at least partly inspired by their Irish experiences, but it cannot be said that they acted in these matters contrary to the wishes of the British government. The overall impact of their influence on Punjab – the frontier, rural economy and politics – will be considered in chapter 16. Fitzpatrick is an enigmatic figure. The thread which runs through his term of office, and to which allusion was made above, seems to be a steadfast line of fairness, honesty, conscientiousness, an expectation of efficiency in his subordinates as well as respectful treatment of the ordinary Indian, stubbornness perhaps, and an unimaginative legalistic approach which militated against change. He combined an obvious concern for the dignity of the man-in-the-street with an almost paranoid desire to limit press freedom; and he managed to show his concern for those faced with famine alongside a reluctance to give them any say in the running of their country. Politically, then, his influence was generally a negative one and his reputation must depend on his contribution to the rural economy and on the regard, as expressed by the Tribune, for his humane approach to everyday matters. There is not one indication in his official communications with the Viceroy that his Irish background had any influence on his outlook or actions. That they must have discussed things Irish in their frequent social and official contacts would seem obvious but there is no evidence of that in the examined documents.

Notes 1 2 3

Lansdowne to Queen, 13 May 1891, 5 Sept. 1892 etc. (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/1). Lansdowne to Sec. of State, 29 Jan. 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/2). Lansdowne to Marquess of Salisbury, 3 May 1890 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11).

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Lord Reay to Lansdowne, 23 Oct. 1890 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Lansdowne to Lord Northbrook, 25 March 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Lansdowne to Zetland, 14 Oct. 1889 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/11). Morris, Pax Britannica, p. 259. Dufferin to Sec. of State, 9 July 1886 (BL, OIOC, Dufferin papers, MSS EUR F130/3). Lansdowne, 10 Oct. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/1). Raja Bhasin, Simla: the summer capital of British India (New Delhi, 1991), p. 45. E. J. Buck, Simla, past and present (2nd edn, Shimla, 2000), p. 6. Bhasin, Simla, p. 8; Kanwar, Imperial Simla, pp. 15–24. Bhasin, Simla, pp. 55–7. M. A. Macauliffe, The Sikh religion, its gurus, sacred writings and authors (New Delhi, 1991). Report on the Queen’s University of Ireland from 1 Sept. 1858 to 1 Sept. 1859 (Dublin, 1860). Anthony Babington, The devil to pay: the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers, India, July 1920 (London, 1991), p. 88. See Table 4, chapter 4. J. G. Ravin, ‘Henry “Jullunder” Smith’s “Extraction of cataract in the capsule”’, Arch Ophtalmol, cxxiii (April 2005), pp. 544–5, www. Archophtalmol.com (accessed 19 Dec. 2007). The Lancet, 30 Oct. 1948. Sir Michael O’Dwyer in a foreword to an appeal by the National Institute for the Blind, 1940, www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/visuagate/public_ blindind40.h (accessed 19 Dec. 2007). Ravin, ‘Henry “Jullunder Smith”, pp. 544–5. The Lancet, 30 Oct. 1948. Foley, From Queen’s College to National University, p. 148. McDonald, ‘The Indian Medical Service’. Ibid. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 310. Ibid., pp. 306–10. Fitzpatrick to Lansdowne, 5 Nov. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D58/25). India list civil and military, June 1894. Tribune, 16 Nov. 1892. Report on Census of India 1891, p. 172. India list civil and military 1891, 1892, 1893. Buck, Simla, past and present, p. 318. Surgeon-General Rice to Lansdowne, 2 Sept. 1893 (BL, OIOC, Lansdowne papers, MSS EUR D558/25). Tribune, 5 Sept. 1893. Ibid., 5 July 1911. Bhasin, Simla, p. 46. Babington, The devil to pay, pp. 60–5. Tim Carey, Hanged for Ireland (Dublin, 2001), p. 12. Babington, The devil to pay, pp. 1–48. Bhasin, Simla, p. 76. Buck, Simla, past and present, p. 71. Cox, Engineers at Trinity, p. 82. Morris, Pax Britannica, pp. 260–5. Liddel’s Directory 1903 (personal papers of Mr Marion, Antique Bookshop, The Mall, Shimla). Col. Clement Parsons, personal journal, Jan. 1906 (Centre of South Asian Studies, Parsons papers), p. 32.

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Lieut. Col. Parsons, diary entry 25 Jan. 1906 (Centre of South Asian Studies, Parsons papers), Box 1. Tribune, 7 Oct. 2007. Chetwood, Kulu, pp. 128–30. Banon family papers, Manali, Himachal Pradesh, and Dalkeith, Western Australia. Chetwood, Kulu, pp. 128–30. Tribune, 27 Oct. 1894. Banon family papers. Tribune, 21 June 1893. Legislative Council 1897; Alienation of Land Act, 1900; Pasteur Institute 1906; simultaneous examinations 1926. Tribune, 21 Nov. 1894. Ibid., 19 Dec. 1894. Ibid., 27 Feb. 1897. Ibid. Ibid., 3 Jan. 1911. Civil and Military Gazette, 1 March 1897. Ibid. Irish Times, 21 May 1920. Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’. Ibid. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 272–4. Keay, India: a history, p. 466. Ibid., p. 360. Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’, p. 364. Ibid. Sarkar, Modern India, pp. 128–9. Ibid. Ibid. Barrier, ‘The Punjab disturbances of 1907’.

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Dane and O’Dwyer: conciliation and provocation

Louis Dane There had been some doubt expressed by Lord Morley, the Secretary of State, in regard to Dane’s appointment as Punjab lieut.-governor. Ibbetson had recommended O’Dwyer, but Minto, the Viceroy, thought him too junior and felt that he had more of the attributes of a frontier officer.1 Ibbetson had also recommended W. O. Clark, a judge of the Punjab High Court, a Londonderry man schooled at Portora and TCD.2 Minto thought highly of Dane even though Morley thought him impetuous,3 and Curzon had labelled him a duffer. Minto, having made enquiries in clubs and society, found that Dane was almost universally thought to be the best man.4 Minto later reported that Dane’s appointment had been very well received. A few months later Morley wrote that he seemed to have been misinformed about Dane, but that he still thought him one of the fussy forward men as regards the frontier. ‘However, if the Irishman, subject to attacks of “impetuous ideas” as you describe him, is kept in his place by a solid-judging Scotsman, that will be quite enough for the peace-loving Englishman who is responsible for this mighty department at home.’5 Dane, in his emollient manner, thought that the loyalty and cooperation of Punjabis could be ensured by the minimum use of force. During his regime, Punjab only infrequently exercised powers under the Press Act and he personally rejected demands from the central secretariat that printing presses be seized.6 His energetic touring of the province set an example to his officers and his easy manner helped to win him general respect and restored public confidence.7 The Times said of him in its obituary that as lieut.-governor of Punjab he was unconventional without being undignified, his hustling, almost boisterous ways, his genial egoism and light-hearted disregard of precedents were combined with unremitting zeal.8 [ 195 ]

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It is unnecessary to go again into the facts which were associated with the withdrawal of the Colonisation Bill, 1906 or the announcement by Dane in 1910 of what measures would be included in the Colony Act of 1912, except to say that he must have worked hard to get that far in a difficult situation in just two years from the date of his appointment. His popularity helped. The Tribune was especially impressed. It remarked favourably on Dane’s coming to the assistance of an old man who had been knocked down by a policeman,9 and on his lightness of touch at public events.10 Dane’s easy relationship with Indians is in contrast to ‘the ungracious bearing of Europeans to Natives’ described to John Morley by the Prince of Wales after an earlier Indian visit by the prince.11 It must have eased Dane’s way in pushing forward several schemes that required coordination and cooperation of Indians. Work on the Triple Canal scheme proceeded apace. Conscious that no less that 31 lakhs (3.1 million) of rupees were charged against canal works, Dane had work going on the Upper Jhelum section by day and by night in an effort to generate an income stream from the finished works as soon as possible.12 He told his newly established legislative council in April 1911 that the province had been in a state of near-bankruptcy when he took over but was now in a much more satisfactory position.13 He organised the ‘memorable’ people’s fair at the royal durbar in Delhi on the occasion of King George V’s visit to India in 1911.14 The Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 led to greater Indian participation in provincial councils. In Punjab, the first such enlarged council, presided over by Dane, sat in January 1910. Its membership was increased from ten to thirty, and included fourteen non-official and five elected members. This council was given power to pass non-binding resolutions on the budget as well as on matters of public importance.15 The reforms, in introducing a democratic element into government, diluted the power of the ICS, much to the disappointment of some of its members.16 At a meeting of the Legislative Council in December 1912 Dane told its members that in 1897 he had been almost alone in advocating the establishment of a council in Punjab, and also in being in favour of a considerable electoral element. At the same meeting he said that in the past three years (that is, under his stewardship) there had been eighteen meetings of the council as compared to three meetings in the three previous years.17 At a meeting in March 1912 when the topic of proposed panchayats (village councils) was being discussed, Dane, in a long speech, referred to his experiences as magistrate in Tralee and compared what he called ‘singularly similar conditions’ in the remote parts of rural Kerry with those he saw in Punjab. ‘We have our tenant rights question; we have our question of women; we have our land hunger and all that this leads to.’18 He pointed out that the [ 196 ]

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magistrates in Kerry were not all great landed magnates but were of all classes, shopkeepers as well as petty farmers, and that these were precisely the type of people that were being proposed in Punjab to adjudicate in petty criminal litigation. He recommended the proposal, arguing that it would result in local conciliation preventing high feelings leading to vendettas and possibly murder. Two other Irish official members of council, R. T. Clarke and J. F. Connolly, were in favour of the proposal.19 The proposal was only partly implemented in the Punjab Panchayat Act, 1912 due to the opposition of pleaders and petition-writers whose jobs were threatened.20 Taken together with his Irish-inspired views on land legislation, it is clear that Dane’s views on village committees were part of a pattern of thought induced by his Irishness. In 1912 Sir Louis Dane handed over the Delhi district to the Indian government as the enclave of its new capital. The Viceroy, Lord Harding, was seriously wounded by a bomb thrown by Bengali revolutionaries on his way to the ceremony which nevertheless took place. (These Bengalis, according to Bipan Chandra, were inspired by the methods of Irish nationalists and Russian nihilists.)21 In the subsequent tense atmosphere, after his formal speech at the hand-over, Dane put aside his typescript and began to talk in Urdu. ‘It swept though the audience like a strong wind. Formality melted in emotion.’22 As Dane neared retirement, the gossip in Simla was that the choice of his successor lay between two ‘Macs’ (two Scots) and two ‘Micks’, two Irishmen – Michael O’Dwyer who succeeded Dane in May 1913, and Michael Fenton, who was born at Ballinapark, Co. Wicklow.23 Fenton had been appointed as chief secretary by Dane in 1910 and he became financial commissioner in 1912. Because of the drama associated with O’Dwyer’s years in office, and that individual’s strong personality, the work of Fenton tends to be overshadowed. He was to work with O’Dwyer for three fateful years. His father was Samuel Fenton of Humewood, Baltinglass. Having attended the Royal School, Armagh, Michael Fenton went to TCD. He took first place in the open examination for the ICS in 1881 and, after the usual two years’ probation, was posted to Punjab.24 By 1891 he was under- secretary in the revenue department.25 In 1892 he was senior secretary to the financial department. He was associated with the inception of the Lower Chenab colony and it was through him, as financial commissioner, that the final report on that colony would be presented in 1916. The Times said of him that he regarded the government as trustee of the vast potential wealth of the new colonies and he applied in his work the principle that this wealth should be distributed in the manner best calculated to benefit the province as a whole.26 Note has already been made of the [ 197 ]

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caring tone of the letter he circulated in regard to famine preparations, a tone which echoed the sentiment of other Irishmen in India who recalled the Irish great famine, but he could be caustic at legislative council meetings. At a meeting of that body in 1915 he would say, ‘When listening to the Honourable Rai Bahadur Ram Sain Das’s speech it seemed to me that he had pulled out of his pocket a speech he had forgotten, but intended to deliver at the Punjab Sanitary Conference held at Simla several years ago.’27 He had been prodded in what was probably a sensitive area by a speech criticising certain aspects of the running of the canal colonies. He would be knighted in June 1914 and he retired to London in July 1916.28 O’Dwyer said of him that he was possessed of unswerving courage and scrupulous impartiality.29

Michael O’Dwyer The broad outline of Michael O’Dwyer’s career, his doings during the First World War and his part in the momentous events which occurred in Amritsar in 1919 are well known. But just how much were his reactions to the terrible events of 1919 coloured by his Irish outlook? Written comments about O’Dwyer are usually based on his autobiography. What follows is an attempt to utilise a variety of sources to look at these events from a fresh perspective in an effort to discover how relevant to the theme of this book are such aspects of his career. Primary sources are used as much as possible to obtain a different perspective on events, most of which have been narrated by O’Dwyer himself in his autobiography. O’Dwyer’s career has been traced in other chapters to the point where he completed his work in setting up the administration of the NWFP. From there he took up the post as Resident at Hyderabad which Fitzpatrick had occupied some years previously. He was there from 1907 to 1909, during which time he caught malaria for the first time and went on leave to spend a winter hunting in Tipperary. From 1910, until he took up his Punjab appointment in 1913, O’Dwyer was actingagent to the governor-general (viceroy) in Central India, a political post in which he was responsible for relations with 114 princely states with a total population of fourteen million.30 Writing of his time in these two posts he displays a decided dislike of Hindu Brahmins and an admiration for aristocratic Muslims. He thought very highly of the Nizam of Hyderabad, a tolerant Sunni who had in his court Shia, Hindu, Parsee and European ministers and heads of departments. In both postings O’Dwyer indulged freely in his sporting activities, big game hunting, ‘pig-sticking’ and horse-riding.31 His bias against educated urban Hindus, his fellow feeling with the Muslim [ 198 ]

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landed gentry and the robustness suggested by his love of field sports were to be reflected, as will be seen, in his experience as lieut.-governor of Punjab. There are several other personal traits of O’Dwyer which are relevant in connection with his behaviour as lieut.-governor. He was a self-declared supporter of Home Rule for Ireland but was against violent assertion of that aspiration.32 As a probationary ICS student at Oxford, he was sufficiently young to come under the influence of Jowett the Master of Balliol and made much in his autobiography of an invitation to spend a week at that influential scholar’s home.33 He made it very plain in that same work that he believed in clamping down hard on the initial onset of what he saw as subversion or lawlessness. He quoted a couplet which in translation reads, ‘You can stop a spring with a twig. Let it flow unchecked, and an elephant cannot cross it.’34 Two factors were immediately apparent to him on taking up his appointment. The first was the improvement in material prosperity, especially among the rural population, which he attributed to the irrigation and colonisation schemes. He claimed that the additional strengthening of that prosperity by the passing of the 1900 Alienation Act and by the setting up of the rural cooperative credit movement, was opposed on both counts by the urban bourgeoisie who preyed on the rural masses.35 (He was a supporter of the cooperative movement because of his admiration for Count Plunkett’s successful efforts associated with that movement in Ireland.)36 The other factor was the rising tensions caused by the bomb attack on Lord Harding and by the planting of a similar device, only two days before he took office, at a place in Lahore frequented by British officials, and which killed an office messenger.37 The strong terms in which he condemned assassinations by the ‘Invincibles’ in Dublin has already been noted in chapter 8 and it would be surprising if he had been less than severe in his reaction on this occasion. O’Dwyer, whom V. N. Datta describes as ‘a rough Irishman’,38 made his mark without delay. In his President’s address at the first meeting of his council he announced that the government had been compelled to demand security from some newspaper publishers, and to forfeit the security of others which published matter for ‘blind sectarian partisanship or other and even more unworthy motives’.39 He also reversed the decision of his officials in a case where one of the Bengalis charged with bringing the bombs used in Delhi and Lahore escaped the death penalty imposed on his companion, on the grounds of diminished mental capacity. O’Dwyer appealed the ruling and the man was hanged. At the same time a Hindu official who had been acquitted of a charge of being implicated in the plot had applied to be reinstated in his former position. O’Dwyer renewed the case against him and had him [ 199 ]

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transported for life. Such transportation usually meant confinement to the Andaman Islands.40 During the First World War, which began fourteen months after his posting to Lahore, O’Dwyer had to deal with subversive movements associated with the three main religious communities, besides his other duties directly associated with the war.41 In his autobiography he drew direct parallels between the secret terrorist societies of Punjab and the ‘terrorism and violent crime [which] were rampant in the south and west of Ireland’ during the land agitation of 1881–82.42 Some of these Punjabi movements, particularly those associated with Hinduism and Sikhism, originated or found their main expression in Punjab or among Punjabi emigrants outside India; others were of a more widespread nature. The Arya Samaj promoted a return to the tenets of the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures. It was against the caste system and the worship of idols, and aimed at shuddi, the ‘reconversion’ of Muslims and native Christians who were assumed to have once been Hindus, and it reviled some of the great Sikh gurus. It thus antagonised these two communities. Although founded by a Bombay preacher, its principal following was in Punjab. It acquired nationalistic overtones which became more pronounced under the leadership of urban, middle-class educated advocates such as the lawyer Lala Lajpat Rai, and was prominent in the 1907 agitation against the Colonisation Bill of 1906.43 A certain amount of anti-British feeling had arisen among Muslims because of the neutral stance of Britain in the Balkan Wars of 1911– 13, and because of what was seen as an anti-Turkish speech by Prime Minister Asquith in November 1912.44 A pan-Islamist feeling had been growing in India during the nineteenth century, resting to a considerable extent on the spreading of respect for the Caliph in Constantinople. In the north of India the rise of Urdu, a language of what was considered the true religion, was an important element.45 Thompson, the Punjab chief secretary, remarked that Muslims were inclined to think of the Tigris and Euphrates even having lived for centuries beside the Ganges and Jumna.46 A rather complicated and probably quixotic pan-Islamic conspiracy began soon after Turkey entered the war against the allied powers. Some young men of respectable families who had been recruited by what O’Dwyer called ‘Mohammedan firebrands’ fled to Kabul where they met with the anti-British section led by the Amir’s brother, and with a Turco-German mission. Nothing much came of this or a later plan to set up a provisional government. Two of the students ended up back in Lahore where they were leniently treated by O’Dwyer because he was well disposed to their influential and loyal friends.47 [ 200 ]

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Sikh emigration to Canada, mainly to British Columbia, began in the early years of the twentieth century. Anti-Asian feeling among Canadians had been roused by the inflow of large numbers of Chinese and Japanese to their country, and that ill-will transferred to the Sikhs who, although British subjects, were different and very distinctive in their turbans and long beards. Anti-immigration legislation directed against Sikhs, and street violence, led to a spill-over of Sikhs to Oregon, Washington state and particularly to California where they were met with pogroms and official bans. In response, radicalism grew among the immigrant Sikh communities, many of whom, as soldiers or policemen, had served the British Crown. Political agitation, which was directed against Britain and its position in India, and was encouraged by Lala Lajpat Rai, the Lahore lawyer who then lived in the United States, led to the establishment in November 1913 of a newspaper called Ghadr (revolution) and a political organisation called the Ghadr party which advocated revolution in India. The newspaper, Ghadr, began to circulate in the wider Sikh community in British possessions in Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong, in the Caribbean and in Africa.48 The Ghadr movement in California received considerable financial help and advice from Irish-American nationalists, as well as support in a plot to smuggle arms to India.49 Against the wishes of Lala Lajpat Rai, they joined together in secret cooperation with German agents in the United States.50 At the outbreak of the war two of these conspirators, Har Dyal and Barkatulla, went to Berlin to join other Indians in the German-supported Indian Revolutionary Society, which had as its aim the establishment of a Republic of India.51 O’Dwyer writes, ‘One can imagine how thoroughly the Indian conspirator, with his low cunning, abnormal vanity, inborn aptitude for intrigue, and capacity for glossing over the unpleasant facts, was at home in this atmosphere.’52 O’Dwyer makes much of the case that various conspiracies involving the Ghadr originated or had their main support from Berlin,53 but Plowman makes it plain that the Germans ‘walked into an already elaborate network’ involving the Ghadr and their Irish friends and fellow revolutionaries.54 O’Dwyer seems to have been unaware of this link with his fellow Irishmen and the paradoxical connection between, on the one hand, events in Punjab, the home of Sikhism, where Irishmen had so much influence and where an Irishman ruled throughout the war and, on the other, with Irish-assisted, violent Punjabi Sikh nationalism in North America. Following the outbreak of war, O’Dwyer used an Indian government ordinance to control entry to the province by returning Sikh emigrants. It was this ordinance he invoked in the famous case of the SS Komagatu Maru.55 As hostilities opened in Europe, hundreds of Sikhs and some [ 201 ]

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Muslims who had been refused entry to Canada, and had recrossed the Pacific in the Japanese ship SS Komagatu Maru, were refused entry to Hong Kong and Shanghai but were told that they would be accepted at Calcutta. O’Dwyer sent a body of Sikh police with British officers to the port of Budge Budge, or Baj Baj, near Calcutta to accompany the group on a special train to Punjab.56 A report to the Director of Criminal Intelligence describes how the ship’s Sikh passengers at first refused the directions of the Bengali government’s representative to board the train, and started to march towards Calcutta to voice objection to their treatment by the Canadian government which they saw as representing the British. A reinforced body of military and police persuaded them to return to the port to await another train, the first having departed with the Muslim group. While they were waiting, according to Mr Petrie the writer of the report, firing suddenly broke out and violent clashes ensued which resulted in the death of eighteen Sikhs, one European officer and a Punjabi policeman, besides several wounded on both sides.57 (This report was written almost as the events occurred and there are small discrepancies in the casualty numbers as compared with O’Dwyer’s later figures.) ‘It is a question of common experience’, wrote Mr Petrie, ‘that Indians too often return from abroad with tainted political views and diminished respect for their white rulers.’58 The news of the killings at Baj Baj angered other returning Sikh emigrants as shiploads carrying thousands began to arrive from America and the Far East. In at least one case O’Dwyer had the entire passenger complement loaded onto a special train to Punjab where, against his officials’ advice, he imprisoned the lot while their loyalties were checked. He arranged for thousands of others to register at an office in Ludhiana. There it was decided to intern, pending prosecution, those deemed most likely to cause trouble, and to restrict others to their respective villages. From October 1914 until September 1915 there was a constant series of explosions in Punjab. Policemen were murdered, Sikhs known to favour the authorities were shot or bombed, gang robberies against wealthy Hindus were carried out and railway installations were attacked.59 O’Dwyer strongly urged the Indian government, now sitting in New Delhi, to bring in legislation sufficiently draconian to allow him to deal with the situation. Following the introduction of such legislation and having received the support of his old friends among the rural chieftains, the violence was brought under control by the end of 1915.60 Of the 175 persons brought before the special tribunals established under emergency legislation, 136 were convicted, 20 were hanged, 58 transported for life and another 58 transported for shorter periods. A number had their property seized.61 Twelve members of a Sikh cavalry regiment who had been suborned were executed.62 [ 202 ]

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In February 1915, taking advantage of what was seen as a weakening of British power because of the war, Muslims in the south-west of Punjab rose en masse and stormed the premises of Hindu shopkeepers and moneylenders. There was much damage of property but little loss of life. The emergency powers enabled the authorities to convict some 500 people and sentenced them to exemplary punishment. Punitive police were stationed in the affected areas.63 Congress and the intelligentsia, in the main, supported the British war effort.64 At the very outset of the war two unsuitably equipped Indian divisions, including the Lahore Division of Punjabi troops, was sent to man one-third of what was at that time the precariously held British line in France, and suffered heavy casualties. Before the war ended 1,105,000 Indian personnel had been sent overseas at a cost of 60,000 dead;65 400,000 of these were to come from Punjab.66 Total recruitment was 1,272,437, with Punjab supplying 446,976 men.67 O’Dwyer responded just as vigorously to the wartime need for enlargement of the Indian army and to requests for help from Britain as he had to the Ghadr and other threats. He believed it was necessary to remove every obstacle to the successful prosecution of the war. Part of this effort was: To discourage the various subversive and revolutionary movements . . . It was also essential to discourage the spread of political agitation which, although ostensibly constitutional, might be and was used . . . either for seditious purposes, or at least as a means of creating difficulties for a Government engaged in a death-struggle against powerful enemies.68

The civil authorities under his command cooperated with the military in recruiting efforts. According to Col. Rule, who was involved in recruiting campaigns during 1914–15, the rural Punjabi population was friendly except for Sikh areas while the inhabitants of certain towns were hostile due to Congress propaganda.69 Even before the end of 1914, Rule encountered difficulties recruiting in what he called exhausted districts. In the Amritsar area there were forty-one recruiting parties with at least a dozen British officers, yet they found that the men and boys recruited were inferior in size and strength. Women would try to dissuade young men who were already on their way, and on one occasion women followed a recruiting party for fifteen miles in an effort to get a young man to change his mind. He describes getting one recruit from a village after much discussion, and getting no recruits from a group of three villages; in another place the recruiters were attacked.70 The period covered in Rule’s account of recruiting took place at the height of the Ghadr agitation. However, the need to replace casualties and to respond to renewed [ 203 ]

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calls from Britain had, by 1916, put additional strain on recruitment. David Brief, in his account of recruitment in Punjab, says that as the demands for men increased in intensity it became necessary to employ the civilian authorities more directly. In fact O’Dwyer, who had been consulted by the Viceroy, severely criticised the efficiency of the military system and he himself took on a great deal of responsibility for recruitment. Throughout the war O’Dwyer dispensed patronage to local notables and made it clear that izzat (honour) in the government’s eyes depended upon aid given in the war effort. At the start of the war honours were dispensed not so much as a reward for services as a bribe to ensure cooperation. In 1916, grants of prime colony land were made to leading families or religious leaders. In most areas leaders realised that active help would produce enormous returns.71 O’Dwyer granted remissions of land revenue, amounting to £100,000, to the village communities with the best record, and grants of land amounting to 15,000 acres were awarded to individuals who had been most active in furnishing recruits from their own areas.72 A request for more men in early 1918 led to increased pressure on local recruiting agents and to widespread abuse, corruption and coercion. There was at least one instance of men being beaten in order to force them to join. In Gujranwala district the salary of the lambardar of a particular village was forfeited on account of deficient recruiting and others were threatened with similar treatment. The extent of the strain on the province of providing the manpower needs of the army gave rise to dissatisfaction which was to manifest itself in the later 1919 disturbances, especially in the Gujranwala area.73 Montagu Butler, the father of Rab Butler the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, was unhappy working as a deputy commissioner under O’Dwyer. ‘I am weary going round each of my 55 administrative units, punishing those who don’t bring recruits and rewarding those who do.’74 O’Dwyer continued to look askance at all political agitation, even, as indicated above, where it was constitutional. He prohibited two Indian Home Rulers, B. G. Tilak and B. C. Pal, from visiting Punjab and would have extended this ban to Annie Besant, the Irish founder of the Indian Home Rule League, if she had indicated a desire to visit the province.75 He referred in council to the speeches of Punjabi politicians as being ‘public harangues’.76 In a speech to his legislative council in April 1918 he said: I am convinced that an agitation for Home Rule in this province on the lines advocated by the leaders of the movement and as it would be

[ 204 ]

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interpreted by those to whom it would be addressed would stir up the dying embers of the revolutionary forces which we have almost succeeded in extinguishing, and set parts of the province ablaze once more.77

While recognising the growing desire for a measure of selfgovernment, he continued, this would only come about in time in an orderly manner. The case of Home Rule for Ireland had often been cited as an argument in their favour by those who advocated Home Rule for India, but, he said, the cases were very different in that in Ireland the movement aimed at the restoration of the situation prior to the Act of Union of 1800. In reference to the Easter 1916 Rising he said: A year ago one section of the supporters of Irish Swaraj, following in the footsteps of our Punjabi Swarajists, allied themselves with the King’s enemies and brought about an abortive rebellion. This was speedily suppressed; but it left a fatal legacy of distrust and ill-feeling which all good Irishmen deplore; for it has prevented Ireland from bearing her full share in the defence of the Empire . . . In the matter of Home Rule, I fear the case of Ireland, in so far as it is analogous at all, conveys to us a lesson and a warning.78

O’Dwyer censored and closed some local newspapers, and prevented the circulation of others from outside. His regime was noted by the rest of India as harsh. He made frequent derogatory speeches denigrating the educated classes.79 Harcourt Butler, brother of Montagu and lieut.governor of North-Western Provinces, wrote to his mother in 1918: ‘The Punjab is said to be in a bad way. O’Dwyer has been running things too hard. But I daresay it will blow over.’80 During the war there was some discontent leading, in a few isolated units, to open mutiny among Muslim soldiers opposed to conflict with their Turkish fellow religionists. There was also a great deal of unhappiness and disillusion throughout India at the badly mismanaged Mesopotamian campaign which led to the death and acute suffering of many Indian troops.81 Indian troops serving overseas, especially in Europe, had seen how farmers lived in comparison to Indians and found that they themselves were treated not as mere natives or coolies but more as social equals.82 They saw that French Algerian and Senegalese officers were equivalent to French officers and not in the category of sub-officers as almost all Indian officers were.83 Chelmsford was to write to E. S. Montagu, Secretary of State, following the terrible events at Amritsar, ‘Here we have a difficult problem. Strong Mussalman feeling: a population in many parts given to lawlessness; a large number of disbanded soldiery, some puffed up by victory, others discontented by being demobbed, high prices of food and a reaction from all the war has put upon them.’84 [ 205 ]

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Even while war raged, Montagu had toured India with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, meeting with Indian politicians with a view to arriving at a new constitutional arrangement which would begin to set up institutions which would eventually lead to self-government within the empire. These emerged in 1919 as the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which would result in 1920 in the ‘dyarchy’ arrangement whereby nominated or elected Indians formed the majority in executive councils and Indian ministers shared limited provincial responsibility with executive councillors, controlling departments and their ICS officers, while other departments remained the preserve of Civilians.85 However, in March 1919, weeks before O’Dwyer was due to retire, the Indian government rushed through the Rowlatt Acts, named after the justice who had recommended the measures. These were meant to replace the wartime emergency legislation of 1915 which had been forcefully urged by O’Dwyer and included powers of summary arrest and detention. The acts immediately aroused widespread Indian outrage.86 The ensuing widespread violence, which reached a peak at Amritsar on 13 April, has been well documented. That the worst of the violence, and the infamous massacre at Jallianwallabagh, should have occurred in Punjab is best explained by reference to the above paragraphs. The army with its postwar grievances contained a very large proportion of Punjabis, including the warlike Sikhs and Pathans. These grievances intensified when returning soldiers heard about the Ghadr rising and subsequent hangings and deportations.87 Punjabi farmers had suffered from coercive recruitment; O’Dwyer had been contemptuous of Indian politicians; Muslims, who were the dominant religious group in Punjab,88 were already attracted to the Khilifat movement whose support for the Turkish Sultan as the Sunni Caliph had a definite antiBritish focus.89 In protest at the Rowlatt Acts, Mr Gandhi called for a hartal, a closure of all workplaces, in early April as part of his nationwide satyagraha campaign of passive resistance. A journal kept by J. P. Thompson, later Sir John, gives a day-by-day account, spare, but almost theatrical in its gradual rise to a climax, of what happened inside Government House at Lahore in the fateful early days of April 1919. On 28 March he records a threat of a twenty-four-hour fast in some of the colleges in pursuance of Mr Gandhi’s instructions. Two days later there was rioting in Delhi and firing as troops were called out. At Amritsar a crowd of 30,000 demonstrated but there was no disorder. On 4 April orders went from Punjab to Delhi to exclude Mr Gandhi from the province. On 9 April he says that they are sending Kitchlew and Satyapal away to the hills in Dharamsala. (Dr Kitchlew was a Muslim barrister, Dr Satyapal was a Hindu medical doctor who had served with the army [ 206 ]

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during the war. Both men were advocates of non-violent protest).90 On 10 April at 10.30 a.m. the two men were arrested at Amritsar and sent off. At noon a crowd estimated at 50,000 tried to rush Amritsar’s civil station. (Thompson does not say that this was to demand the release of the arrested men.)91 The crowd then made for the railway station and city, wrecked a telegraph office, burnt banks and murdered five Europeans. Troops fired and there was more damage done to railway lines. The protest spread to Lahore where there was more firing. On the evening of 11 April Thompson mentions that Amritsar had been placed in the hands of the military and that aircraft were ready to bomb rioters. Late at night on 13 April a military wire came through from Amritsar to report that at a meeting held despite a prohibition, 200 people had been killed (a figure that was to be corrected upwards). It is quite clear from Thompson’s diary entries that there had been no serious violence in the province, except Delhi, until the deportation of Kitchlew and Satyapal.92 Thus, O’Dwyer’s decision to arrest Kitchlew and Satyapal had led to violent protest, to the fateful meeting at Jallianwallabagh in Amritsar and to the firing on the crowd by Indian and Gurkha troops under the direct command of General Dyer, resulting in the deaths of some 379 people and the wounding of many more. Thompson does not note in his journal the reaction of O’Dwyer to the news, but in his evidence to the subsequent inquiry (the Disorders Inquiry Committee, known as the Hunter Commission) he testified that the lieut.-governor had approved of General Dyer’s actions as outlined over the phone by General Beynon, the local divisional commander.93 In his autobiography Michael O’Dwyer writes that having been told by General Beynon that he, the general, would like to add the lieut.-governor’s approval to that of his own, he at first hesitated. But he then allowed Beynon to send the message, ‘Your action correct and lieutenant-governor approves.’94 In a signed typescript – one of the very few extant and available original, unpublished documents of O’Dwyer – he later explains that when Beynon called, he was busy receiving reports of further rebellion, train wrecks and arson in various places and that Beynon’s message was conveyed to O’Dwyer by his private secretary. Beynon, through the secretary, asked for his approval and on being asked if that was necessary said that he thought that Dyer would be glad of it, so O’Dwyer, again through his secretary, gave his approval.95 Presumably, O’Dwyer wished to make the quite reasonable point that he gave his permission in the heat of the moment when he was under considerable pressure. (Contrary to some writings on the matter,96 General Dyer, although educated for seven or eight years at Midleton College, did not have familial Irish connections.)97 [ 207 ]

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In the following June, Montagu Butler, who was himself to become a lieut.-governor, wrote to his wife, ‘We have not heard of the end of the massacre there [Amritsar] or of O’Dwyer’s untrue communiqué on the subject.’98 Widespread unrest continued throughout the province, some of it put down at O’Dwyer’s suggestion (he could not command the military) by means of bombs dropped from aircraft. After weeks of suppressing attacks on railways and other installations things were beginning to quieten when Afghan forces crossed the frontier, ostensibly in support of their Muslim brethren then in revolt. This was later used by O’Dwyer as justification of his belief that the disorder in Punjab was part of a concerted rebellion and a conspiracy involving Afghanistan.99 Such matters are outside the scope of this account; there was little or no Irish involvement except for that of the army. But it cannot be stated sufficiently strongly that whatever pressures were on O’Dwyer immediately following the Amritsar massacre which may have led him to follow well-established procedure in Punjab of publicly backing actions taken by colleagues, and whatever on-the-spot exigencies led him to suggest the use of aircraft against civilian crowds, there are two undeniable factors which tell against him. Firstly, as was reported of the minority opinion of Indians on the Hunter Commission, it was the accumulation of his actions during the war and his treatment of everyone from hesitant potential army recruits to educated Indians exercising constitutional rights of free speech which laid the ground for widespread discontent.100 Secondly, protests were relatively peaceful until his deportation of Messrs Kitchlew and Satyapal. The political furore which followed the putting down of the Punjab unrest was so forceful, the abhorrence of what happened at Jallianwallabagh was so deeply felt, that this became a turning point in Indian attitudes and behaviour towards the Raj. The next annual meeting of Congress was held at Amritsar in December 1919 to signify that body’s horror at Dyer’s actions and O’Dwyer’s stated approval;101 within two years it led to the joining of forces between Mr Gandhi and the Khilifat movement; it led to widespread and deliberate lack of cooperation with the British. All this was exacerbated by what Indians saw as widespread support in the United Kingdom of General Dyer’s actions.102 Sir Michael O’Dwyer’s term of office, which had been extended to allow him to deal with the disorders, expired in May and he left Punjab on 29 May 1919. The Tribune said of him that he was, ‘A man who never lost an opportunity of insulting and humiliating their [Punjabis’] leaders and whose administration will live in their memory as long as that memory endures as that of the worst and most reactionary Lieut.Governor that any Indian province ever saw.’103 [ 208 ]

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O’Dwyer felt, with some justification, that he had been let down by authorities who had lent tacit approval to his actions whilst the unrest was underway, and afterwards let him fend for himself, and a great deal of his autobiography is a combined apologia and attack on the British authorities, particularly Mr Montagu.104 On retirement to London he continued to defend his actions in articles and letters to newspapers. He wrote a book on his family’s history, The O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh.105 He remained interested in India until 1940, when he was assassinated at a meeting of the Royal Central Asian Society by Udham Singh who has been described by General Menezes and others as a probable survivor of Jallianwallabagh.106 Sir Louis Dane was badly wounded in the arm in the same attack.107 There was little direct Irish influence on the doings of government or the ICS at a high level in the two remaining years of the period under review although, of course, the aftermath of Amritsar and O’Dwyer’s time in Punjab would continue for many years as already mentioned. Irish engineers would continue to work in Punjab into 1921, as would ICS men such as F. V. Wylie, Vincent Connolly and R. T. Clarke, while J. G. Acheson would attend Afghan peace talks in a minor role in Mussoorie and Kabul. The Connaught Rangers Mutiny would occur at Jullundur and Solon in June 1920, but that need concern readers of this work only in that it signalled the approach of a new dispensation in Ireland, a dispensation which would presumably alter significantly the outlook of future Irish recruits to the ICS, the IMS and the PWD.

Conclusions Fitzpatrick, Dane and O’Dwyer were closely supported by fellow Irishmen in their secretariats. Dane and O’Dwyer served under Fitzpatrick, and Fenton occupied a number of important positions under two of the Irish lieut.-governors. Irishmen dominated the shortlists of candidates to replace Ibbetson and then Dane; Fenton and Clarke were both likely candidates. Even among the outstandingly clever men of the ICS, these men excelled: Fenton gained first place in the open examinations; O’Dwyer passed from Balliol into ICS in fourth place; he and Dane were both accomplished linguists; Fitzpatrick shone in legal circles in London and was one of the keenest legal brains to practise in India. They were able men in a province where keen minds and robust personalities were essential. They were, of course, expected to put British interests first, and even perhaps, as Col. Parsons argued, to regard themselves as British first, then Irish. Dane’s easy-going and friendly approach, which, rightly or wrongly, is attributed to his Irish charm, calmed the turbulence which had [ 209 ]

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affected the province in the period immediately before he took office as its ruler. He used his time among the people of Kerry to good effect when he needed to draw comparisons at legislative council meetings. His energy ensured the rapid enactment of the Colony Act of 1912 which transformed the lives of Punjabis and their relationship with the British. Sir Louis’s social graces, as shown in his prominent role in the doings of Simla’s theatre, must have smoothed his path through bureaucratic mazes. He was openly influenced by his Irish experiences but, in general, acted in accordance with government policy. One is tempted to speculate on what might have occurred had he, rather than Michael O’Dwyer, been in charge of Punjab during the war years. Such is Michael O’Dwyer’s reputation as treated by historians that the researcher approaches his case with caution and a proper desire to be objective. Aware of comments such as ‘rough Irishman’, ‘little time to waste on subtleties’, there is a consciousness that responsibility for Amritsar was not attributed to his seniors in government, nor to the army other than General Dyer. Scapegoats are not unknown in history. But the evidence can leave little doubt that, although O’Dwyer cannot be directly blamed for what happened in Jallianwallabagh, his repressive policies throughout the war, his coercive recruitment measures, his alienation of Indian politicians, and his deportation of Kitchlew and Satyapal, were responsible for the unrest and violence which resulted in the massacre, and the animus which thereafter entered into IndoBritish relations. O’Dwyer’s attitudes and actions were informed by his hostility to the violence in Irish politics and by what had happened to his father. His attitude to Indian politicians is difficult to fathom; if he was against the violent manifestation of national feeling why did he not support the peaceful expression of such ideals, as he and his family had done in Ireland? Whatever the reasons, O’Dwyer presided over events which were momentous, which drove the agenda of Indian politics for a generation. He was not unusual among the Punjab administrators in his liking, however paternally expressed, for the rough-edged villagers, nor in his contempt for the educated, middle-class townsman. It was his misfortune, and Punjab’s, that the expression of his bias had such singular and tragic consequence.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Minto to Morley, 1 Jan. 1908 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/4). Table 4, chapter 4. Minto to Morley, 15 Jan. 1908 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/4). Ibid., 1 Jan. 1908.

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Morley to Minto, 12 June 1907 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, EUR MSS, D573/12). W. R. Gustafson and K. W. Jones, Sources on Punjab history (New Delhi, 1975), pp. 54–5. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). The Times, 23 Feb. 1946. Tribune, 3 Jan. 1911. Ibid., 2 March 1911. Morley to Minto, 3 May 1906 (BL, OIOC, Morley papers, MSS EUR D573/1). Tribune, 15 May 1912. Ibid., 11 April 1911. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). Keay, India: a history, p. 469; James, Raj, p. 432; Bipan Chandra, ‘The split in the Congress and the rise of revolutionary terrorism’, in Chandra et al. (eds), India’s struggle for independence, pp. 124–34. James, Raj, pp. 432–3. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 14 Dec. 1912 (BL, OIOC, IOR V/9/3410). Ibid., 13 March 1912. Ibid. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 13 March 1916 (BL, OIOC, IOR V/9/3412). Chandra, ‘The split in the Congress and the rise of revolutionary terrorism’, pp. 136–45. Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 168. The Times, 28 Feb. 1941. India list civil and military, 1891 The Times, 28 Feb. 1941. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 13 March 1915 (BL, OIOC, IOR V/9/3411). The Times, 28 Feb. 1941. Ibid. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 135–67. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 6–10. Ibid., pp. 21–2. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 168–71. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 168–71. V. N. Datta, New light on the Punjab disturbances in 1919 (2 vols, Simla, 1975), i, p. 19. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 14 Jan. 1913 (BL, OIOC, IOR V/9/3411). The discrepancy between his date of taking up office in May and this prior date in January is unexplained. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 169–70. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., pp. 7–8. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 276–7; Robb, A history of India, pp. 234–5; Singh, A history of the Sikhs, pp. 137–9. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 172. Robb, A history of India, pp. 189–233. J. P. Thompson, journal entry 9 Jan. 1912 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/12). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 176–8. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, pp. 168–77. Matthew Erin Plowman, ‘Sinn Fein and the Gadar party in the Indo-German conspiracy of the First World War’, Foley and O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India, pp. 233–43. Menezes, Fidelity and honour, pp. 266–7.

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51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 187. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 187–9. Plowman, ‘Sinn Fein and the Gadar party’, pp. 233–43. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 192–4. Ibid. Report by Mr Petrie to Mr Slocock, Director of Criminal Intelligence, 30 Sept. 1914 (Indian National Archives, Government of India, home dept (political) Nov. 1914, 97–177A). Ibid. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 190–209. Ibid., pp. 200–9. Michael O’Dwyer, speech to Legislative Council, 17 April 1918 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/32). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 202–3. Ibid., pp. 210–12. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 289. Menezes, Fidelity and honour, pp. 241–6. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 230. Brief, ‘The Punjab and recruitment to the British army’, p. 119. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 214. Col. D. G. Rule to Ms Thatcher of Centre of South Asian Studies, undated letter, on handing over his journal (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Rule papers). Col. D. G. Rule, journal entries 15 Nov. to 1 Dec. 1914 (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Rule papers). Brief, ‘The Punjab and recruitment to the British army’, pp. 60–144. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 224. Brief, ‘The Punjab and recruitment to the British army’, pp. 160–80. Montagu Butler to his mother, 21 Jan. 1918 (BL, OIOC, Butler papers, MSS EUR F225/3). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 12–13. Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1916–18 (BL, OIOC, 13 Sept. 1917, IOR V/9/3412). Michael O’Dwyer, speech to Punjab Legislative Council, 17 April 1918 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/32). Ibid. Nigel Collett, The butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London, 2007), pp. 222–3. Harcourt Butler to his mother, letter of 15 July 1918 (BL, OIOC, Butler papers, MSS EUR F116/11). Menezes, Fidelity and honour, pp. 241–305. Wolpert, A new history of India, p. 297. Menezes, Fidelity and honour, p. 284. Chelmsford to Montagu, 16 April 1919 (BL, OIOC, Chelmsford papers, Jan.–June 1919, MSS EUR 264/22). Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 294–7. Keay, India: a history, pp. 476–7. Singh, A history of the Sikhs, p. 161. Census of India, Panjab, 1911. Keay, India: a history, pp. 477–9. Collett, The butcher of Amritsar, p. 230. Wolpert, A new history of India, pp. 298–9. Thompson, journal entries, 28 March–13 April 1919 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/13). Minutes of evidence taken before the Hunter Commission, 9 Aug. 1919 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/32).

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99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 286. Michael O’Dwyer, original typescript 24 Dec. 1919 (BL, OIOC, Thompson papers, MSS EUR F137/31). Holmes, ‘The Irish and India’, pp. 215–35. Collett, The butcher of Amritsar, pp. 1–23. Montagu Butler to his wife 19 June 1919 (BL, OIOC, Butler papers, MSS EUR F225/11). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 308–14. Tribune, 30 May 1920. James, Raj, p. 477. Mridula Mukherjee, ‘The non-cooperation movement – 1920–22’, in Chandra et al. (eds), India’s struggle for independence, pp. 184–96. Tribune, 30 May 1920. O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, pp. 10–15, 298–453. Michael O’Dwyer, The O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh (London, 1933). Menezes, Fidelity and honour, p. 317; Philip Woods, ‘O’Dwyer, Sir Michael Francis (1864–1940)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2004), www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/35292 (accessed 14 April 2006). Haward, ‘Dane, Sir Louis William’ (ODNB).

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PART V

Conclusions

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Conclusions

The Punjab mystique To a public servant, Punjab was an exciting and challenging place to be during the period 1881–1921. The intoxicating mix of frontier wars, great irrigation and land distribution schemes, the building of prodigious bridges, the opportunity to apply medical innovations on a grand scale, could hardly fail to enthral. The setting was superb, from snowclad peaks and verdant mountain valleys to great forests and sweeping arid plains across which wound some of the subcontinent’s great rivers. The people, Buddhist Bhotias (hill-dwellers of Tibetan origin) from the far reaches of the Hindustan–Tibet Road, big bearded Sikhs at their Golden Temple, hawk-nosed Pathans on the frontier, sturdy Jat farmers and the few remaining sophisticates in the old city of Delhi, all these came under the jurisdiction of the Burra Sahibs at Lahore and Simla. The experiences of officials in the less extensive and more peaceful countryside associated with serried rows of tea and rubber plantations in Ceylon and Malaya could hardly be as exhilarating. For Irishmen whose working lives might otherwise be spent in some obscure rural practice or commuting daily on the 8.45 from Greystones or Kingstown to city offices, the experience in Punjab must have been heady and seductive. Those who had headed the examination list and opted for the Home Civil Service would find nothing on the Tunbridge Wells–Charing Cross run to equal it. To share meaningfully in the magnificent project that was strategically the most important province in the proudest territorial possession of an empire at its zenith, to exercise power which was utterly outside the experience of home-bound bureaucrats, could hardly fail to excite collaborative feelings of esprit de corps. It would not be surprising that a young man from Ireland, or indeed his more experienced compatriots tasting the fruits of seniority, would be caught up in imperialist fervour. [ 217 ]

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Andy Bielenberg contends that the Irish influence in Africa and Asia was much less significant than in the settlement colonies,1 but the evidence presented in the foregoing chapters would, at least, throw that assertion open to debate. More, it would suggest that, in relation to the Irish diaspora, historians have undervalued the contribution of the Raj’s Irish servants to the history, economy, political development, geography and geopolitics of two countries, India and Pakistan, either of whose populations outnumber by far the combined populations of all the settled Dominions.2 Certainly the numbers of Irish were minuscule in proportion to the subcontinent’s total population, and in absolute terms the Irish presence was much smaller than that in New Zealand, Australia or Canada. In diaspora terms, as outlined in chapter 1, the transient nature of their sojourn in India – and in the Straits Settlements and Ceylon – prevented these servants of the empire from maintaining separate community identities within their host populations for an extended period. But in regard to one of the propositions propounded at the beginning of this book, that Irish public servants had significant effects on the history of Punjab, small numbers and transience are not the issue; the central point is that of influence. There is sufficient evidence advanced in the foregoing chapters not only to support that stated proposition but to dispute Bielenberg’s assertion within the context of the discussed timeframe. A summary of that evidence, with comment, may be presented with some advantage, even if it entails going over already tilled ground, before discussing the second element of the core proposition, that of the effects of Irishness on the service provided by these public servants.

Irish influence Even a fairly cursory examination of the doings of the Punjab Commission would reveal that many talented Irishmen had important roles to play in the first seventy years of British rule in Punjab and, in particular, in the forty-year span covered here. Allowing for the fact that Punjab attracted very able people from all parts of the United Kingdom it is nonetheless noteworthy that the Irish featured so prominently. General Gough’s defeat of the Sikhs preceded the Lawrences’ conciliatory but firm land distribution measures and the shaping by John Lawrence, and the dominant Irish members of his staff, of the character of the Punjab administration, a character that was to determine much that transpired in the period 1881–1921. Similarly, Lawrence’s early enthusiasm for irrigation was to lay a solid foundation for the hugely ambitious schemes which were to follow, and his Punjab and Oudh Tenancy Act of 1868 would do much for Punjabi peasantry besides [ 218 ]

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acting as an inspiration for later Gladstonian measures in Ireland and India, including Punjab. His introduction to India of the principle of paying for productive public works by means of raised loans was to yield great benefit in Punjab.3 Those Irishmen who succeeded to Lawrence’s legacy in the decades either side of the turn of the century were Civilians who were in Punjab largely through a process of self-selection; those who did well in the competitive examinations – a success at least partly attributable to the vocationally oriented Irish education system as mentioned in chapter 4 – were generally given preference in selecting the province in which they wished to work. Their colleagues in the IMS and PWD, unlike so many of their like throughout the colonial world, were also chosen following competitive examinations. The office of lieut.-governor of Punjab, the Viceroy’s most important pro-consul according to Lansdowne, required not only administrative ability and exceptional mental capacity, honed through years of service in the ICS, but also the kind of toughness which was necessary in a province which was the Raj’s most important recruiting area, which had not only an extremely important frontier with a temperamental neighbour, but contained, in the Pathans and Sikhs, two of India’s most bellicose groups. People like O’Brien, Purser, Dane and O’Dwyer had opportunities through their orchestration of cadastral surveys, opportunities denied to their counterparts in Malaya and Ceylon, to get to know the cultivators and their problems and then to set about alleviating these. In the case of the two first-named individuals, their knowledge and experience were put to good use by S. S. Thorburn in his presentations to government and then in his book, Musalmans and Money-lenders in the Punjab, presentations which eventually led to legislation which Norman Barrier thought so highly of in an all-Indian context and was thought of by Dane as being responsible for Punjab’s prosperity. Dane and O’Dwyer used their knowledge of the Punjabi rural dweller to implement significant measures, although these were very different in outcome. Dane used his to good effect in the Colony Act of 1912, in his discussions on panchayats and in his enthusiasm for major irrigation works while O’Dwyer’s closeness to the landed proprietors enabled him to suppress subversion and advance his aggressive recruiting campaigns during the World War. O’Dwyer’s active support of a ‘militarised peasantry’4 and his continuance of the interdependence of the Punjab authorities and dominant elements in the province’s rural society led not only to a restriction of nationalism in rural Punjab but also to the eventual influence of the military–Punjabi landowner nexus in independent Pakistan. It has already been recognised that Dufferin, Lansdowne and Fitzpatrick were not outstanding statesmen or administrators but all [ 219 ]

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contributed to the welfare of rural Punjabis in various important ways, advocating or initiating various legislative measures which ensured far more equitable tenurial arrangements than had previously existed, and which resulted in a prosperous countryside of capitalist, yeomen and peasant proprietor farmers.5 Fitzpatrick supervised the building of great irrigation projects, was very active in securing funding for the development of canal colonies, resisted the shortening of intervals between tax assessments and was largely responsible for protecting Punjab from the effects of famine in 1896–97. He brought in the Punjab Land Colonisation Bill of 1893, and also encouraged the establishments of orchards, thus profoundly affecting the economy of the region which was to become the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. These measures affected the lives of much larger populations than was possible to do in the smaller colonies or in the established self-governing Dominions. The establishment of canal colonies and associated irrigation projects, combined with the various pieces of land legislation, were to result in large population movements and changes in the demography of Punjab which were to have profound geopolitical effects. Unlike the cases of Ceylon and Malaya, or for that matter that of the settled Dominions, this did not involve mass immigration of foreign workers and settlers, but was entirely a matter of internal adjustments. It is not argued, of course, that these important impacts on the countryside and its population were solely or even mainly the work of Irishmen – after all they were implementing British policies emanating from Whitehall or Calcutta/Simla – but Lawrence in particular, followed by Lord Mayo along with Dufferin and Lansdowne, were major shapers of those policies, while Dane, Fitzpatrick and O’Dwyer were among their principal executors. It was Lawrence who first wanted to have the northern limits of India anchored on the Indus and who, being persuaded otherwise, decided that the tribes be more or less quarantined in their hilly fastness and that Afghanistan, in accordance with a policy formed by Dalhousie, be allowed to handle its own affairs. His outlook was completely vindicated by later events.6 Irishmen were instrumental in negating his policies. It was unfortunate that Bruce happened to be posted to the volatile Waziristan area at a time when border policy was changing under Sandeman’s influence and that he helped in what can now be seen as the latter’s futile and eventually disastrous attempt to apply, in an utterly inappropriate tribal context, policies which had worked elsewhere. Bruce’s stubborn pursuit of that policy, a pursuit in which Lucas White King was obliged to participate, did immeasurable harm to the cause of good relations between the area’s warlike inhabitants and the British, and contributed, again to an immeasurable degree, to a [ 220 ]

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growth in hostility which has had repercussions into the twenty-first century. Fitzpatrick’s attempts to revert in some degree to the wise approach established by Lawrence was undermined by Lansdowne’s Forward Policy mindset and by the ambition of a succession of Irish commanders-in-chief, and by local Irish commanders in the border region. There were less significant contributions by Irishmen to the history of the area such as King’s delineation and surveying of the Durand Line and Warburton’s peacekeeping on the Khyber Pass, and the rather more important and lasting effects of the construction of bridges, tunnels and rail lines by O’Callaghan. But it is given to few bureaucrats to set up the administrative structure of an entire new province as O’Dwyer did (and which the Lawrences had done in the case of Punjab), and to few statesmen to help avert a war between two great powers as did Dufferin. The former’s ‘keen hard brain’ and his wide experience of rural Punjab served him well in getting the administration of the North-West Frontier Province on its feet and in devising plans and procedures relating to settlements and irrigation projects in the new province. Dufferin’s success in his dealings with the Afghan Amir in regard to the Pandjeh incident receives but slight mention in most histories of India, but at the time the British and Indian press were on tenterhooks,7 the Indian army had begun to mobilise and the Far East fleet was readying to steam north in the China Sea. A misspoken word, an error of judgement on Dufferin’s part, might well have brought about a great war. In all these frontier dealings, Irishmen – Civilians, diplomats, engineers, soldiers – were at the very heart of some of the most consequential frontier happenings. Louis Dane’s linguistic skills, and a personality which in its bonhomie one finds an echo of Dufferin’s perhaps more suave amiability, enabled him to bring back from Kabul an assurance, admittedly rather vaguely expressed, of friendly cooperation which bore fruit when Britain was vulnerable during the First World War. With regard to India’s internal politics at a crucial time of transition, all the aforementioned Irishmen were prominent and the actions of some, particularly O’Dwyer, were to have profound effects on Indian and Punjabi history. If it were not for Fitzpatrick, the Punjab Legislative Council would have been established sooner, and the same can be said of the 1900 Alienation of Land Act. Lansdowne and Fitzpatrick, together with others, defied the will of Parliament by registering a non possumus in the case of simultaneous examinations, with Fitzpatrick’s ‘masterly’ memorandum being the decisive factor. Fitzpatrick’s efforts at press censorship and the curtailment of public meetings in Punjab were effectively quashed by Lansdowne. Thus, Irishmen did subvert the wishes of the British government or, in Fitzpatrick’s case, obstructed [ 221 ]

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the implementation of the wishes of the Indian government, thereby fulfilling an important part of the thesis which underlies the theme of this book, albeit not in the spirit implied by the original proposition. Dane’s boisterous and commonsense approach did much to quieten a tense population following the debacle of the 1907 Punjab Land Colonisation Bill. The granting of land to military figures, upheld in particular by O’Dwyer, was to have important long-term political effects which are felt into the twenty-first century. But, above all, O’Dwyer’s misjudged arrest of the moderates Kitchlew and Satyapal incensed a population already restive due to his harsh wartime measures, and brought about a disaster which left an ugly and lasting wound on the Indian body politic. His characteristically severe reaction to developing mob violence, combined with his approval – however hasty and ill-informed – of Dyer’s wild actions at Amritsar, brought about a transformation in Indian attitudes to British rule which soured relations and inspired further violence as the subcontinent moved slowly towards independence. Taking into account the effects, short and long term, of all these foregoing measures to do with the frontier, with the rural economy and great population movements, and with the political repercussions of these and such matters as support of the Punjabi military and O’Dwyer’s repressions, it would be difficult to identify a situation where an equally small body of expatriate Irishmen had such a profound effect on world affairs. Socially, the Irish presence in Simla was ubiquitous at times, especially in the early 1890s, although there is no evidence to show that this had any significant effect on the outlook or mores of the strange and faux-Britishness of that place, no more than did the presence of their compatriots in Nuwara Eliya, Penang and Singapore. Yet, bearing in mind that most provincial capitals and their corresponding hill stations were at that time presided over by Irish lieut.-governors, among them the dominant figure of Antony MacDonnell, besides the fact that Irishmen were commanders-in-chief for most of that decade and were resident at Simla for much of the summer along with the heads of the PWD, the IMS and the Indian railways, then it is difficult to imagine that there was not a certain Irishness to the feel of the place. What bearing such a concentration of influential Irishmen may have had on their collective outlook is discussed later. Irishmen made contributions to varied aspects of culture and society in Punjab, from Bruce’s authorship of a Baluchi dictionary to Max Macauliffe’s work on the sacred books of the Sikhs. Works of ethnographic interest were produced by Dane and Edmund O’Brien. Lucas White King’s work on the Orakzai people and territory was deemed to [ 222 ]

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be so important that it was reissued for staff use by the Pakistani government in 1984. Louis Dane explored unknown territory in Spiti and completed the first crossing of a difficult pass. House names redolent of the Irish countryside testified to the strong Irish presence in Simla society. The presence in Simla of O’Callaghan of the PWD, Rice of the IMS and Spring of Indian railways is indicative of the part played by Irishmen in the development of Punjab’s infrastructure and medical facilities. Not all the engineering projects were as ambitious as were O’Callaghan’s and most Irish doctors would not rise to Rice’s prominence but the everyday work of building and maintaining dams, canals, bridges, roads and railways was important and can be seen as the end product of the work of Civilians who arranged land settlements or sat in the revenue department in Lahore, for one of the main tasks of these ICS men had to do with raising the revenue which enabled such great infrastructural schemes to be implemented. Irish engineers, some of whom it is hoped are rescued from anonymity in these chapters, shared responsibility for many of the works which transformed Punjab and unwittingly sited irrigation headworks in locations which would contribute to the causes of future war. Irish doctors, whose numbers outweighed those of their engineering and administrative colleagues combined, worked quietly to alleviate the effects of the many endemic diseases while such people as ‘Jullundur’ Smith and Robert McCarrison would discover new techniques which would further what General Chamberlain had termed the civilising work of the IMS. Away from the Indian subcontinent there was Irish influence in the development of the economies, politics and welfare of Ceylon and Malaya, especially so in the former colony, and instances of such influence need further study given that these places achieved a degree of prosperity far in advance of that achieved in India. The main difference between the experiences of the Irish in Punjab and those in the smaller colonies had to do with land use. In Punjab, revenues were derived from land taxes, and the work of administrators was centred mainly around the settlement and collection of such revenues, which involved close and sustained contact with the rural population in the early careers of many Civilians as they conducted cadastral surveys, and entailed a degree of regard for cultivators’ welfare. Land taxes hardly existed in British Malaya and government policies centred around the plantation economy, mining and the maintenance of Singapore’s position as one of the world’s great entrepots. Government policy in Punjab, in the absence of a powerful plantation lobby and that of the distant British business communities of Bombay and Calcutta, hinged on land use, its enhancement, distribution and [ 223 ]

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alienation as well as on a factor unique to the province, the appeasement of its martial races which made up so much of British military resources. The resultant closeness of officials to tillers of the Punjabi soil was in marked contrast to the symbiotic relationship between government and plantation owners in the two smaller colonies with its concomitant disconnection between officials and the largely immigrant plantation labourers. There were also the challenges and opportunities provided by duties along the north-west frontier. A Punjab-based Civilian, even one holding a relatively junior post, had responsibility for a more numerous and volatile population than did his counterpart in the two smaller colonies. It is confirmed, then, that the Irish exercised much influence, sometimes eccentrically, on the history of Punjab, of India and the sensitive Afghan border, and that some of this influence had long-lasting and important effects. A part of the original stated hypothesis was that this influence was directed towards the subversion of government policy but it is plain from all the foregoing that such a theory does not hold up, that Irish public servants in Punjab applied themselves loyally to furthering government policy towards India. These were not Said’s ‘antagonistic collaborators’; theirs was a loyal and circumscribed opposition. Even Fitzpatrick’s almost habitual obstructiveness, apart from the case of simultaneous ICS examination, did not go beyond the normal remonstrance allowed of officials before a policy became established.

Irish motivation The peculiar suitability of the landed Anglo-Irish for frontier duties has been noted, as has their ability as soldiers. In Ireland, the outlook and mannerisms of the Anglo-Irish as a body were closely allied to those of the local garrison so it would not be surprising if they brought with them to India, and in particular to the frontier, a certain mentality derived from a military tradition combined with what McConville sees as the mindset of an oligarchy charged with preventing rebellion and the guarding of Britain’s western approaches. Lawrence, in whom was noted ‘a good deal of the Irish element’,8 was moved strongly in his approach to what he saw as rebelliousness by his awareness of the experiences of settlers in Ulster. So, although there may not have been an overt policy of placing Irishmen such as Bruce, King, O’Dwyer, Wylie and J. A. O. Fitzpatrick on the frontier, their personal qualities, fostered in a recalcitrant Ireland, may have led to their being selected for such duty. O’Dwyer was of strong Gaelic stock belonging to a family [ 224 ]

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conscious of its Irish military tradition, who lived close to their ancestral home, hunted regularly, farmed 500 acres of the Golden Vale, and whose sons were, in these respects, not very different from their AngloIrish neighbours. His eagerness to take part in a military engagement on the frontier would suggest that he shared their martial bent. Minto remarked on O’Dwyer having the qualities required of a frontier officer. It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose that the Irish backgrounds of so many senior Punjab officials may have helped in their selection for frontier posts, although it would not do to push this supposition beyond the limits of conjecture, however plausible. Bearing in mind the vocational nature of Irish third-level education and the lack of domestic career opportunities, it can be contended that Irish engineers and a disproportionate number of Irish doctors also found themselves in British service in India because of their peculiarly Irish backgrounds, but it is not argued that these circumstances affected their professional outlook or their attitude towards Indians. A much stronger case can be made, indeed incontrovertible proof is available, that Irish experiences did much to influence decisions in regard to land legislation. The two Irish viceroys and two of the Punjab pro-consuls, Dane and O’Dwyer, were openly influenced by their Irish experiences, albeit in different ways. Experiences of the great famine in Ireland, whether direct or vicarious, were of some significance as they were in the case of some Irishmen in Ceylon. The Punjab Tenancy Act, the establishment of a Punjab legislative council, the 1900 Alienation of Land Act, the 1912 Colony Act were all at least partly inspired by the Irish experiences of those who initiated or implemented these measures. The two viceroys and Louis Dane were explicit in stating that they were moved by the situation in Ireland to ensure a contented peasantry in India. That such attitudes were political as much as altruistic in nature hardly mattered to those who benefited. O’Dwyer was perhaps more explicit in his reference to Irish inspiration and more openly political in his motivation. His statements, in speeches and in his autobiography, make this clear. In fact, the first sentence of his autobiography reads: ‘Early environment, as a rule, colours all one’s subsequent outlook on life.’9 In chapter 4 it was mooted that a sufficient number of Irish public servants were stationed in Punjab to allow of social and possibly professional interactions with an Irish flavour which could, in turn, lead to Irish-coloured official actions. Figures would suggest that the numbers were there but there is no evidence that a group or groups of officials with an agreed Irish outlook existed as they have been shown to exist in Bengal.10 However, the presence of so many highly placed Irishmen in Punjab, and, in particular, at Simla when what has to be regarded as the [ 225 ]

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three most important men in India – the Viceroy, the commander-inchief and the Punjab lieut.-governor – all Irish, were simultaneously in residence, along with several other prominent compatriots, is worthy of comment. Lansdowne and Dufferin referred to Irish connections in correspondence or speeches, as did Dane and O’Dwyer, along with generals Roberts and O’Moore Creagh.11 Is it reasonable to suppose that Ireland and their attitudes towards it were not discussed when they met, or that some parallels with Punjab were not noted? How such discussions would influence official attitudes is quite another question and in the absence of documentation on the matter it must remain an open one. What influence the ubiquity of Irish people had on the outlook of their compatriot Civilians and doctors is not measurable but it cannot be dismissed, bearing in mind that at times the Irish, military and civilian, were at the very heart of European society, not only in Simla the nub of the Indian empire, and in the capitals of several Irish provincial governors in other parts of India, but in such out of the way places as Kulu. These senior men – most Civilians repeatedly mentioned here held senior posts – were, almost by definition, highly competent and ambitious in a province that demanded much of its officials. They would not have reached higher echelons if they had displayed a hint of ‘unsoundness’ in support of Indian nationalism. One could support constitutional nationalism in faraway Ireland but one could not hope to gain high office if such support were extended, as in the case of Maurice Collis, to Indian or Burmese national aspirations. However, Collis’s case and that of the Connaught Rangers mutineers point to a changing perception of Irishness and Irish nationalism which differed from that held by those who are the principal subjects of this narrative and indicate that a study of post-independence Irish recruitment to the Indian public service might prove worthwhile. It is outside the scope of this narrative to discuss the role of the Irishmen in London who supervised Indian and Punjabi matters as secretaries of state for India, but it is worthy of note that Hamilton, ‘an Irish gentleman’,12 and Brodrick, owner of substantial Irish estates, were both influenced by Irish experiences in their approach to India.13 The term ‘diaspora’ does not sit easily alongside the story of the Irish in Punjab, the Straits Settlements or Ceylon, for, with the exception of the few such as Banon in Kulu, the presence of the Irish was impermanent. The Irish immigrant to, say, Australia could shape a future in that country for his or her children and grandchildren, an ability beyond the autocratic powers of their compatriot in Punjab. However, these latter on their return to Britain or Ireland – Dublin was second only to London in attracting retired ICS men – were in a position, unlike that of the [ 226 ]

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Australian immigrant, to ensure a future and education in Ireland for their children.14 Perhaps the long-term but impermanent commitment of Irish people to the furtherance of British colonial aims merits a more apt designation, one perhaps less pejorative than ‘collaborator’. It has been shown that Irish public servants wielded considerable influence at various levels and in several professions in the Indian public service, that some acted eccentrically and in what can only be described as a loyally subversive way, that some of their work had profound influences on Punjabi and Indian history, and that in relation to politics and to land use, Said’s ‘main battle in imperialism’,15 much of that work was inspired by Irish experiences in a manner which could hardly be applied to their Scots and Welsh counterparts. This Irish motivation differed in its genesis and manifestation from person to person and existed across boundaries of class, religion, ethnic heritage and politic affiliation. But it did exist.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Bielenberg, ‘Irish emigration to the British empire’. The Times atlas of the world, (London, 1988). Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 241. Rajit K. Majumder, The Indian army and the making of Punjab (New Delhi, 2003), p. 5. Gopal Krishan, ‘Demography of the Punjab’, Journal of Punjab Studies, xi:1 (2004), pp. 77–92. Spear, The Oxford history of modern India, p. 242. The Times, 10–11 April 1885. David Steele, ‘Lawrence, John Laird Mair, first Baron Lawrence (1811–1879)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn, 2006), www.oxford.com/view/ article/16182 (accessed 7 Oct. 2007). O’Dwyer, India as I knew it, p. 1. Cook, Imperial affinities, pp. 108–16. See chapter 1. Ramsden, ‘Hamilton, Lord George Francis’ (ODNB). See chapters 10 and 11. Gilmour, The ruling caste, p. 313. Said, Culture and imperialism, p. xiii.

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A P P E NDIX I

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Table A

Irish IMS doctors stationed in Punjab in 1881 with their stations, and colleges or training hospitals in Ireland

Name

Station

College

G. E. Farrell G. C. Chesnay C. P. Costello A. P. Holmes James Kelly G. C. Ross G. McBride Davis W. A. C. Roe Thomas Robinson H. J. Linton F. A. Smyth D. N. Martin Edward Palmer E. O. Tandy R. Power J. T. B. Bookey W. R. Murphy R. N. Stoker C. J. MacCartie Timothy Moloney John O’Neill T. E. L. Bate P. F. O’Connor M. D. Moriarty William Owen Bernard Doyle D. P. MacDonald T. H. Sweeney D. F. Barry Jeremiah Mullane James Browne R. J. Taaffe G. E. Nicholson

Abbottobad Bakloh Edwardabad Edwardabad Edwardabad Delhi Dera Ismael Khan Murree Edwardabad Rawalpindi Rawalpindi Rawalpindi Kohat Lahore Peshawar Abbottobad Umballa Fort Attock Dera Ismael Khan Dera Ismael Khan Shapur Jhelum Kohat Abbottobad Peshawar Peshawar Peshawar Rawalpindi Rawalpindi Lahore

RCSI, Dr Stevens Hosp. Carmichael School Carmichael School QUI QUI RCSI QCB TCD TCD TCD TCD QCC QCG TCD RCSI TCD RCSI RCSI QUI QUI QCC Adelaide Hosp. QUI TCD TCD TCD QCC St Vincent’s Hosp. QCC QUI TCD TCD QUI

Mahsud Waziri 1881 Rawalpindi

Sources: D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930 (London, 1930); India list civil and military 1881.

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Table B Irish IMS doctors newly stationed in Punjab from 1882 to 1891, showing places they were stationed in 1891, or campaigned at any time during the decade (this latter with dates); and colleges or training hospitals attended in Ireland. These are in addition to those remaining from Table A Name

Station or campaign

College

Henry Potter George Massy S. H. Browne James A. Nelis James Croft William Coates Malachi O’Dwyer Stephen Little J. A. Cunningham L. T. Young D. St J. D. Grant R. H. Charles R. J. Macnamara D. T. Lane H. M. Brabazon Henry Smith J. C. Fullerton J. O’M. MacDonnell W. R. Rice Thomas Grainger Patrick Mullane James Norwood Andrew Buchanan F. J. Drury

Meean Meer Amritsar Lahore Hazara Kotah Murree Dharamsala Dalhousie Multan Lahore Jullundur Lahore Karnal Miranzai 1891 Hazara Richmond Zhob 1890 Ferozepore Simla Hazara 1891 Miranzai 1891 Hazara 1888 Peshawar Ferozepore

RCSI RCSI QCB TCD QCC/TCD QCB TCD QCB RUI TCD TCD QCC RUI QCC TCD QCG TCD QCG QUI QCB RUI QCB QCB TCD

Sources: D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930 (London, 1930); India list civil and military 1891.

Table C Irish IMS doctors newly stationed in Punjab 1892–1901, showing places where they were stationed in 1901 or campaigns served at any time during the decade (the latter with dates); and colleges or training hospitals attended in Ireland. These are in addition to those remaining from the previous decades as shown in Table A and B Name

Station

College

T. E. L. Bate Henry Hamilton W. H. E. Woodwright C. E. L. Gilbert

Lahore Chitral Hazara 1898 Waziristan 1894-95

Adelaide QCB RCSI St Mary’s

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Table C

Continued

Name

Station

College

W. H. B. Robinson H. C. Hudson B. R. Chatterton A. F. MacCardle G. B. Irvine J. T. Daly A. W. Tuke Robert MacCarrison Matthew Corry Godfrey Tate J. G. G. Swan Richard Heard Robert Steen William Lapsley William Keys G. H. Frost J. J. Bourke George Kerans W. W. White T. B. Kelly

Zhob Valley Waziristan 1894-95 NWF 1897-98 Tirah 1897-98 Tochi 1897-98 Waziristan 1894-95 Dera Ghazi Khan Punjab Derajat Punjab Punjab Waziristan 1895 Waziristan Waziristan Waziristan Bakloh Waziristan 1894-95 Waziristan Chitral 1898 Chitral

Carmichael Sch. Richmond TCD RUI Carmichael Sch. Cath. Univ. St Thomas’s QCB RCSI TCD TCD RUI RUI RUI TCD Cath. Univ./RUI RUI QCG QCC QCG

Sources: D.G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930 (London, 1930); Quarterly Indian army list April 1901.

Table D Irish IMS doctors newly stationed in Punjab 1902–11, showing places where they were stationed in 1911 or campaigned at any time during the decade (the latter with dates); and colleges or training hospitals attended in Ireland. These are in addition to those remaining from the previous decades as shown in Tables A to C Name

Station

College

A. M. Crofts de Vere Condon J. E. Clements Henry Ross J. L. Lunham R. F. Steel D. C. W. Fitzgerald Samuel Haughton J. D. Sandes J. A. Shortes E. G. Kennedy E. W. O’G. Kirwan

Jullundur Tonk Montgomery Waziristan 1902 NWF Mahsud 1908 NWF Mahsud 1908 NWF Mahsud 1908 Chitral NWF 1908 Rawalpindi Lahore Lahore

QCC TCD RUI RUI RUI TCD – RUI RUI RUI QCC Cath. Univ.

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Table D

Continued

Name

Station

College

J. M. Holmes G. H. Frost F. F. O’D. Fawcett J. E. Clements T. G. F. Paterson

Sialkot Bakloh Punjab Montgomery Lahore

TCD Cath. Univ. TCD QCB TCD

Sources: D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930 (London, 1930); Quarterly Indian army list April 1911.

Table E Irish IMS doctors newly stationed in Punjab 1912–21, showing places where they were stationed in 1921 or campaigned at any time during the decade); and colleges or training hospitals attended in Ireland. These are in addition to those remaining from previous decades as shown in Tables A to D Name

Station

College

Samuel Godkin R. B. B. Foster T. H. Gloster G. I. Davys A. A. MacNeight R. S. Kennedy R. H. Lee E. G. Kennedy T. A. Hughes J. A. Sinton VC D. F. Murphy Francis Phelan J. P. Huban S. A. McSwiney D. V O’Malley Howard Crossle J. B. Tackaberry T. A. Hughes J. M. Mitchell

Multan Peshawar Afghan War 1919 Kasauli Afghan War 1919 Afghan War 1919 Kotah Jullundur Lahore Kasauli Afghan War Mohmand/Swat 1915 Afghan War 1919 Rawalpindi Waziristan 1917 d. Peshawar 1919 Afghan War 1919 Afghan War 1919 Mardan

RCSI TCD QCC TCD TCD QCC TCD QCC TCD QCB UCC UCC NUI UCD NUI TCD TCD TCD TCD

Sources: D. G. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930 (London, 1930); Quarterly Indian army list April 1921.

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AP P E ND IX II

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Sources for details of Irish engineers in Punjab as listed in Table 3, chapter 4.

ICE (London) proceedings, lxxviii:4 (1883–84), pp. 435–6 Thomas Martin

ICE (London) proceedings, clixv:1 (1913–14), p. 374 R. T. Mallet

ICE (London) proceedings, cxviii:4 (1893–94), pp. 461–2 F. W. Maunsell

ICE (London) proceedings, clxiv:2 (1905–6), pp. 413–14 W. H. Price

ICE (London) proceedings, clxiii:1 (1905–6), p. 391 R. S. Glover

ICE (London) proceedings, xxiii (1964), pp. 156–7 F. E. Kanthack

BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/1 W. D. Bruce F. L. O’Callaghan F. B. Walker

BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/2 A. B. Phelan M. S. Dooley

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BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/13

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W. Drew C. V. G. Scott J. K. Verscoyle A. S. Montgomery W. S. Dorman S. Walker J. E. Cathen

BL, OIOC, IOR MSS EUR F239/108 H. J. Johnston

BL, OIOC, IOR L/PWD/8/405 W. H. Mills H. W. Nicholson G. M. Ross A. M. N. Robertson E. O. Cox W. G. Dench A. E. Knox W. S. Tinsley G. H. Dundon A. R. B. Armstrong

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B IB L IOGRAPH Y

Primary sources

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Private papers Banon family papers Banon family papers, Manali, Himachal Pradesh Bodleian Library, University of Oxford MacDonnell papers Mss. Eng. Hist., C350-56 British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection Acheson papers Photo EUR/401 Brodrick papers MSS EUR B. P. 22 Bruce papers MSS EUR F163 Butler papers MSS EUR F116 MSS EUR F225 Chelmsford papers MSS EUR B216 MSS EUR B264 Clark papers MSS EUR A148 Curzon papers MSS EUR F111/179 and 293 Dane papers MSS EUR D659 MSS EUR D1158 Dufferin papers MSS EUR D/107/H/M/16/1 MSS EUR F130 IOR NEG 4325-70 Dunlop-Smith papers MSS EUR F166 Elgin papers MSS EUR F84 Ilbert papers MSS EUR D594 King papers MSS EUR C852 Lansdowne papers MSS EUR D558 Lyall papers MSS EUR F132 Morley papers MSS EUR D573 Thompson papers MSS EUR F137 Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge Parsons papers Pollard papers Rule papers Public Records Office, Northern Ireland Dufferin papers, www.proni.gov.uk/introduction_dufferin.pdf

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Official papers – unpublished British Library (Oriental and India Office Collection) Cooper’s Hill Royal Engineering College, IOR L/PWD/8 Cooper’s Hill Society, Account of careers of graduates of Royal Engineering College, IOR MSS EUR F239/108 Government of India, IOR PS/A146-94 Government of India, IOR L/PS/18/A164 Government of India, political dept, correspondence, IOR L/Political and Secret/A146-94 Punjab government, revenue and agricultural dept, proceedings, Sept.–Oct. 1896, IOR P/4928 Punjab Legislative Council proceedings, 1912–18, IOR V/9/3410–12 Recruitment papers, East India Company Military Seminary, Addiscombe, IOR L/Mil/9/333–57 Recruitment papers, Queen’s Indian cadetships, IOR L/Mil/9/297–312 Indian National Archives Government of India, home dept (political) Nov. 1914, 97–177A Official papers – published British Library (Oriental and Indian Office Collection) Census of India, 1881–1911, Punjab and its feudatories Census of India, 1901–21, North-West Frontier Province Census of India, 1921, Punjab and Delhi Dobson, B. H., Final report on the Chenab settlement (Lahore, 1916), IOR D823/2 India list civil and military 1881–95 (London, 1881–95) India list and India Office list 1896–1921 (London, 1896–1921) O’Dwyer, Michael, Assessment report on Gujranwala district (Lahore,1894), IOR V/27/314/497 Quarterly Indian army list 1897–1921 (Calcutta, 1897–1921) Report of the Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919–20, vol. II (Calcutta, 1920) Report of the Public Service [Aitcheson] Commission 1886–87, IOR V/20– 210/1 National Rail Museum, New Delhi Administration report on the working of railways in India 1881 (Calcutta, 1882) Other British Library Collections Census of British Malaya 1911–21 Census of Ceylon 1881–1921 Census of Straits Settlements 1881–1901 Ceylon civil list 1911

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Universities and professional bodies, unpublished papers Institute of Civil Engineers, London Minutes of proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1875–1967

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Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland Application forms for admission to Institute of Civil Engineers, Ireland, 1845– 1914 Trinity College Dublin Entrance books, 1847–1910. Newspapers and periodicals Civil and Military Gazette Irish Times Liddell’s Weekly (Simla) Oxford Magazine Pioneer (Allahabad) The Times Tribune (Lahore) Autobiographies and other writings Besant, Annie, Annie Besant: an autobiography (London, 1917) Bruce, R. I., The forward policy and its results (London, 1900) Dane, Louis, ‘The Indian frontier problem’, Asiatic Review, xxxv:123 (1939), pp. 509–14. — ‘Records and reactions’, Asiatic Review, xxxv:124 (1939), pp. 808–15. Elsmie, G. R., Thirty-five years in Punjab (Lahore, 2001) O’Dwyer, Michael, India as I knew it (Photographically reproduced, New Delhi, 2004) Roberts, Frederick S., Forty one years in India (2 vols, London, 1897)

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Wright, Arnold, Twentieth century impressions of British Malaya (London, 1907). — Twentieth century impressions of Ceylon (London, 1907). Yu, Hwa-Lung and George Christakos, ‘Spatialtemporal modelling and mapping of the bubonic plague epidemic in India’, International Journal of Health Geographic, v:12 (2006), www.ij.-healthgeographics.com/contents/5/1/12.

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(Note: page numbers in italic refer to illustrations.) Abdur Rahman, Amir 74, 75, 99, 102 acts 15, 114, 132, 136, 206, see also bills; legislation Addiscombe 158, 159 administrator(s) 5–10, 19–69 passim, 103–49 passim, 210–23 Afghan 20, 29, 38, 47, 69–78, 85, 91, 102–5, 160, 208, 209 Afghan border 5, 19–23, 27, 39, 71–102 passim, 152, 154, 224 Afghanistan 11, 14–21, 69–79, 87–90, 98–105, 208, 220 Afghan War(s) 29, 69–74, 98–102, 160 agriculture 20, 25, 47, 53, 111–16, 139, 155 Ahmed, Akbar S. 84 Aitcheson Committee 43 Akenson, Donald H. 7 Alexander the Great 69, 152 Ali, Imran 21 America(n) 3, 15, 27, 54, 201–2 Amir 71–80, 84–91, 99–105, 143, 200, 221 Amritsar 8, 18, 100, 161, 183, 198–210, 222 Amunullah, Amir 104 Anglican 27, 45–7, 71, 152 Anglo-Indian 5, 178 Anglo-Irish 7, 33–47, 71, 91–9, 224–5 Arya Samaj 176, 191, 200 Asiatic Review 101, 143 assistant commissioner(s) 25, 37, 72–3, 97–100, 143, 188 Attock (bridge) 152, 153, 154 Australasia 3 Australia 3, 4, 218, 226, 227 Baj Baj (or Budge Budge) 202 Balkans 70, 96, 200

Balliol 43, 95, 170, 199, 209 Baluchi 73, 75, 77, 88, 91, 222 Baluchistan 69, 73, 76, 78 Banon, Arthur 188, 189, 226 Bari Doab 141, 146, 158, 161 Barrier, Norman 120, 135, 140, 145, 174, 190, 219 Bartlett, Thomas 35 Beas River 131 Bengal 5, 15, 17, 52–8, 112–60 passim, 170–1, 182–90, 197–206, 225 Berlin, Congress of 70 Besant, Annie 6, 37, 204 Bielenberg, Andy 4, 218 bill(s) 8, 121, 131–6, 141, 149, 192 Bengal Tenancy (1885) 129, 170 Ilbert (1883–4) 16–17 Punjab Alienation of Land (1900) 122–8, 135–6 Punjab Land Colonisation (1893) 148, 220 Punjab Land Colonisation (1906) 141–2, 191–6, 200, 222 Rowlatt (1918–19) 18 Blake, Henry 56 BMS see British Medical Service Bolan Pass 154, 160 Bombay 3, 12, 17, 28, 47, 132, 200–23 Brief, David 204 Bright, John 51 Britain 3–15, 30–3, 51–4, 70–4, 91, 102, 130, 149, 200–4, 221–6 British 4–12, 14–21, 26–47, 51–63, 69–91, 94–105, 112–23, 129–62, 168–227 British army 3, 16–21, 29, 35–40, 99, 183 British empire 15, 33, 182

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British Library 115, 123, 156–7, 159 British Malaya 51–4, 60–4, 223 British Medical Service 29, 39, 40 Brodrick, John see Midleton, Lord John Bruce, R. I. 44, 71–105, 188, 220–4 Burghers 54–61 Burma 15–17, 27, 132, 169, 191 butcher and bolt 71–2 Butler, Montagu 204, 208 Calcutta 3–12, 17, 21, 28–31, 52–181 passim, 202–23 Cambridge, University of 43, 59, 115, 158 Canada 4, 52, 74, 132, 201–2, 218 canal(s) 25, 41, 47, 122–3, 141–61, 223 canal colonies 20, 21, 122–36, 144, 160, 198, 220 Carmichael School 39 Caroe, Olaf 84, 86 Catholic, Roman 6–10, 33–47, 83, 95, 105, 187 Ceylon 4, 51–64, 114, 149, 156, 217–26 Ceylon Civil Service 57–60 Chandra, Bipan 197 Chenab Canal 122–3, 130 Chenab Colony 123, 131–43, 197 Chenab River 114, 131, 161 China(ese) 15, 16, 51–63, 130, 201 cholera 29, 30, 73, 146, 186 Churchill, Winston S. 87 Civil and Military Gazette 83, 174, 189 Civil and Military Lists 38, 39, 157, 159 Civilians (ICS members) 24–8, 37–64, 73, 89, 96, 112–29, 173–4, 206–26 civil servant(s) 5–26 passim, 34–95 passim, 167 civil service(s) 15, 24, 26, 33, 57–60 Clark, Andrew 57 Clark, W. O. 44, 143, 195, 209

Clongowes Wood 42, 39, 95 Close Border Policy 72, 91 collector(s) 25, 58, 188 Collis, Maurice 27, 226 Colonial Office 52–62 commander-in-chief 6–10, 77, 88, 155, 187, 191, 226 commissioner(s) 17, 25, 53, 57, 76–101, 116, 127–32 competitive examinations 24–59 passim, 157–75 passim, 219 Connaught Rangers 183, 186, 187, 209, 226 Cook, Scott B. 6, 27, 43–6, 61, 168, 171 cooperative credit societies 142, 199 Cooper’s Hill College 41–2, 134, 156–61 Coote, Eyre 10 cotton 112, 140–6, 175 councils, legislative 20, 28, 144–7, 169–74, 189–210, 221, 225 viceregal 17, 89, 128, 173 cow-killing 176, 178 Cox, Ronald 156 Crawford, D. G. 38, 40, 228 Creagh, Garret O’Moore 7, 78, 105 Crosbie, B. J. 5, 7, 40 Cross, Lord 131, 169–71 Crown, the 15, 16, 25, 30, 37, 41, 55, 156, 201 Crown Agents 62 Curzon, Lord George 83–94, 95–104, 127, 135, 140, 190, 195 Dagshai 186, 187 Daly, Henry 21 Daly, Private James 186, 187 Dane, Louis W. 10, 21, 44, 99–149, 171–2, 188–95, 196–7, 209–26 Dane, Richard Morris 128, 130, 143 Davitt, Michael 17 de Lally, Comte 10 Deane, H. A. 96, 97, 103 Delhi 10–20, 28, 36–7, 83, 170–6, 196–217

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deputy commissioner(s) 25, 37, 57–77, 87, 96–104, 123–45, 168–76, 185, 191, 204 Dera Ghazi Khan 72, 77, 99, 100 Dera Ismael Khan 72–7, 86, 120 de Silva, K. M. 57 Dewey, Clive 5 Dharamsala 88, 185, 206 diaspora 4, 218, 226 Dinding 52 district(s) 19–27, 57–62, 72–8, 86–100, 114–35, 145–7, 171–88, 203 district officer 25, 57–8, 188 Dobson, B. H. 123–7, 145, 161 doctors 6, 29–46, 62–186 passim, 223–6 Dominions 3, 4, 218, 220 Drew, Robert 29, 41 Dublin 10, 29, 41–4, 77–160 passim, 181–3, 199, 226 Dufferin, Lord Frederick 10, 52, 74–8, 104–5, 114, 128–32, 145–9, 169–91 passim, 219–26 Dufoix, Stephane 4 Durand Line 89, 94, 221 Durand, Mortimer 74, 83, 84 Dutch 52, 54, 58 Dyas, J. H. 155 Easter (1916) 9, 205 East India Company 15–17, 24–52, 118, 130, 156–9, 173 Ellis, Robert 57 Engels, Friedrich 36 engineer(s) 6, 26, 30–1, 34–48, 52–135 passim, 144–9, 152–62, 176–225 passim English 5, 7, 33–129 passim, 145–9, 168–76, 182, 188, 195 European(s) 6, 17, 26–37, 48–63, 91, 120, 168–85, 190–207, 226 famine 4–14, 31, 38, 52–7,72–134 passim, 140–9, 155–225 passim Famine Commission, 133, 134, 148 Far Eastern Cadets 60–3

Federated Malay States 53–61 Fenton, Michael 44–133 passim, 143–9, 187, 197, 209 financial commissioner(s) 60, 101, 115, 116, 120–8, 143, 187, 197 First World War 18, 36–9, 59–62, 98–221 passim Fitzpatrick, Dennis 10, 44, 78–105, 121–49, 167–224 Flanagan, Kevin 43, 45 FMS see Federated Malay States Foley, Tadhg 7, 9 Forster, E. M. 61 Forward Policy, the 70–6, 84–91, 221 Foster, R. F. 33 Freyer, Peter 29, 183 frontier 8–16, 22–9, 47, 51–6, 69–105, 121–6, 142–52, 170–5, 185–225 Gaelic 10, 33–4, 95, 105, 149, 224 Galway 10, 21, 56 Galwey, W. J. 160 Gandhi, Mahatma 18, 26, 206–8 gentry 6, 43, 45, 52, 105, 136, 199 Ghadr newspaper 201 Ghadr party 201–6 Gilbert and Ellice Islands 51 Gladstone, W. 56, 74, 114, 132, 217 Golden Temple 183–4, 217 Gomal Pass 75–8, 84 Gough, Hugh 10, 218 governor-general 17, 74, 132, 198 Grand Trunk Road 31, 41 Great Game, the 16 Gregory, W. H. 56–7 Griffith’s Valuation 114–17 Gujranwala 96, 114–22, 204 Gurdaspur 100, 115, 116, 121 Habibullah, Amir 99–104 Haileybury, 24, 175 Hamilton, Lord George 112, 134–5, 226 Harmsworth, Geraldine 78 hartal 18, 208 Heussler 59

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High Commissioner 53, 57 Himachal Pradesh 19, 188, 220 Himalaya 16, 19, 100, 113, 162, 220 Hindu(s) 16–21, 30, 97, 115–26, 142, 174–6, 190, 198–206 Hindu Kush 16, 69 Hindustan(i) 72, 77, 88 Hindustan-Tibet Road 155, 186, 188, 217 Holmes, Michael 38 Home Rule, Indian 6, 24, 26, 205 Home Rule, Irish 8, 17, 33, 37, 56, 181, 199 Home Rulers 112, 204 Hong Kong 52–60, 201–2 Hyderabad 171, 198 Ibbetson, Denzil 141–3, 190–5, 209 ICS see Indian Civil Service IMS see Indian Medical Service India Office 15, 59, 85, 128, 156–9 India list and India Office list (1901–21) 39, 44 India list civil and military (1881–1900) 39, 44 Indian(s) 3–11, 14–21, 26–47, 51–64, 69–86, 91–142, 152–7, 162, 168–76, 181–92, 198, 201–6 Indian army 20–1, 28, 35–6, 39, 84, 159, 203, 221 Indian Civil Service 5–7, 11, 17–18, 22–31, 35–48, 58–63, 72–88 passim, 95–105, 112–18, 128, 142, 155–68, 173–85, 196–9, 206, 209, 224, 226 Indian empire 51, 226 Indian government 10, 15–26, 34, 37, 73, 77–102, 111, 116–21, 130–5, 141, 154–221 passim Indian Medical Service 6, 11, 28–30, 35–46, 77–155 passim, 183–7, 191, 209, 219, 222, 223 Indian Mutiny 10, 15–20, 25–30, 41, 47, 159, 183, 205 Indian National Congress 8, 17, 18, 169, 173, 190

Indus River 19–20, 71–2, 90–4, 123–31, 152–62, 220 infrastructure 56–7, 152, 162, 223 Inniskilling Fusiliers 35, 87 Institute of Civil Engineers 157 Ireland 3–10, 14, 15, 27, 33–48, 51–77, 85, 90, 111–17, 128–35, 142–77 passim, 181–92, 199–210, 217–26 Irishness 5–8, 35–148 passim, 155–67, 190–7, 218–26 Irish Times 37, 189 irrigation 11, 14, 20, 31, 41, 56–63, 119–99, 217–20 Jallianwallabagh 206, 207, 208, 209, 210 Jeffery, Keith 5 Jhelum Canal 133–4, 146, 161, 196 Jhelum Colony 139 Jhelum River 131, 160–1 Johnston, H. J. 42, 161 Johnston, William 41 Jullundur, 128, 183–7, 209 Jumna River 19, 155, 158, 200 Kabul 29, 70, 85, 99–104, 160, 200, 209, 221 Kandahar 70, 160 Kandy 54 Kangra 88, 113, 115 Kashmir 16, 97, 101 Kedah 52 Kelly incident 79, 80, 84 Kennedy, J. P. 155, 182, 186 Khilifat 206, 208 Khojak Pass 154 Khushwant Singh 140 Khyber Pass 85, 101–4, 154, 221 Kim 37 Kimberley, Lord John 172, 178 King, Cecil H. 88 King, Louis W. 44–6, 75–91, 100–5, 143, 221–4 Kingstown, 35, 44, 99, 160, 217 Kipling, Rudyard 38, 87, 155, 174

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Kitchlew, Saifuddin 206–10, 222 Kohat 87–8 Komagatu Maru, S.S. 201–2 Kuala Lumpur 53 Kulu 100, 188–9, 226 Lahore 8–160 passim, 173–6, 183, 199–207, 217, 223 laissez-faire 21, 120, 135, 145 Lajpat Rai, Lala 190–1, 200–1 land 6, 14–63, 71–6, 95–149, 155, 171, 181, 189–204, 220–7 land acts; bills see acts; bills land, alienation of 21, 118–22, 135, 140–225 passim land distribution 11, 15, 21, 53, 63, 131, 217–8 landlord(s) 15, 20, 44, 74, 112–17, 128–32 192 land settlements 75, 223 Lansdowne, Lord Henry 10, 52, 71, 77–91, 103–48 passim, 167–92, 219–26 Lawrence brothers 10, 21, 47, 218, 221 Lawrence, John 10–182 passim, 218–24 legislation 16, 18, 21, 55, 114, 119, 128–36, 141, 145–8, 168, 181, 192–206, 219–25 legislature(s) 141, 168 lieut.-governor(s) 5, 10, 17–25, 37, 47, 63, 72–83, 90, 98–104, 121, 122, 128–48, 156, 170–99, 205–9, 219–26 Lockhart William 85, 87 Lyall, Alfred 128, 174 Lyall, J. B. 79, 91, 120–3 Macauley, Lord Thomas B. 43 Macauliffe, Michael ‘Max’ 44, 183, 222 McCarrison, Robert 185–6, 223 McCarthy, C. J. 57 McConville, Michael 7, 33, 47, 91, 224

MacDonnell, Antony P. 10–112 passim, 129–34, 149, 174, 222 Mackworth-Young, William 94, 135 Madras 17, 28, 47, 174 Mahsud(s) 70–9, 84–91, 98, 103 Malacca 52 Malakand 87, 94 Malaria 29, 73, 134, 146, 183–5, 198 Malay(s) 51–61 Malaya 51–64, 114, 130, 217–23 Malayan Civil Service 59–61 malik(s) 76, 79, 80, 84, 88, 103 Mason, Philip 27, 46, 73, 79, 98, 114, 118 Mayo, County 129, 130, 158 Mayo, Lord R. S. 52, 169, 220 Medical Registration Act (1858) 30 Mesopotamian campaign 205 Midleton, Lord John 99, 102, 112, 143, 226 Military engineers 156, 159 Minto, Lord Gilbert 99, 102, 112, 143 Moneylenders 119–22, 131, 136, 140–2, 203 Montagu, E. S. 205, 206, 209 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms 18, 206 Montgomery, Robert 10, 21, 72, 128, 147 Morley, Lord John 114, 141–3, 195–6 Morley-Minto reforms 196 Morris, Jan 117 Mughal 31, 113, 117, 123, 155 Multan(i) 77, 96, 117, 158, 160 Muslim(s) 16, 21, 115, 119–26, 142, 147, 174, 176, 190, 198, 200–8 Naoroji, Dabhadi 17 nationalism 21, 104, 112, 201, 219 Indian 111, 226 Irish 27, 33, 226 National University of Ireland 39, 103 native states 17–19, 88 Newfoundland 4, 56 New Hebrides 51

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New Zealand 4, 218 Nicholson, John 10, 21, 47 Noble, Margaret 37 North Borneo 51 North-Western Provinces 172, 174, 205 north-west frontier 15, 56, 91, 142, 149, 170, 186, 189, 224 North-West Frontier Province 19–90 passim, 94–105, 146, 198 NUI see National University of Ireland 39, 103 Nuwara Eliya 63, 222 NWFP see North-West Frontier Province O’Brien, Edmund 115, 117, 120, 148, 185, 219, 222 O’Brien, G. T. M. 57 O’Donnell, C. J. 5, 26, 95 O’Callaghan, F. L. 42, 151, 154, 157, 160, 187, 221, 223 O’Connor, Margaret 7, 9 O’Dwyer, Michael 10, 40–6, 95–127, 134, 143–9, 161–83 passim, 191–226 O’Malley, Kate 10 opium, 52, 53, 63, 112, 130 Orakzai 87, 88, 222 orchards 113, 188, 220 Oxford, University of 35, 43, 44, 46, 59 Pakistan(i) 4–8, 19, 21, 27, 69–71, 86–162 passim, 218, 219, 223 Pal, B. C. 204 Pandjeh, 74, 75, 96, 98, 152, 221 Parsons, Clement 188, 209 Pasteur Institute 185, 186, 189 Pathan(s) 12, 16, 20, 21, 70–98, 103–5, 206, 217, 219 peasant(s) 4, 14, 55, 112–40, 143–8, 171, 220 peasantry 114, 120, 121, 129, 142, 148–9, 218–19, 225 Penang 52, 54, 63, 130, 222

Perrera, E. E. 55, 56 Peshawar 20, 31, 85, 90, 99, 101, 104, 152, 158 pig-sticking 118, 198 plantation(s) 53–63, 113, 114, 217, 223, 224 Plunkett, Horace 142, 199 Political Service 25, 73 politics Indian 11, 167, 168 Irish 75, 95, 128, 169, 181, 192, 210, Pollard, Charles 158–9 population 15–43 passim, 51–62, 96, 112, 114, 123–46, 183, 185, 190, 198–205, 218–24 Portuguese 54, 58 Presbyterian 33 Protestant 6, 33, 36, 38, 43, 46 public servants 3–11, 24–218 passim, 224–7 Public Works Department 30–41, 79, 152–9 187, 191, 209, 219–23 Punjab Commission 22–96 passim, 141–8, 157–9, 167, 168, 189, 191, 218 Purser, W. E. 44, 120, 128, 148, 219 PWD see Public Works Department QCB see Queen’s College Belfast QCC see Queen’s College Cork QCG see Queen’s College Galway QUB see Queen’s University Belfast Queen’s College Belfast 39, 44, 185 Queen’s College Cork 39–42, 59, 152, 158 Queen’s College Galway 29, 39–44, 87, 154–60, 183, 186 Queen’s Colleges 38, 40, 43, 46, 185 Queen’s University Belfast 44 Queen’s University of Ireland 39, 40, 186 Quetta 73, 74, 154 QUI see Queen’s University of Ireland

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Railways 15, 31, 35–41, 54–5, 62–134 passim, 145–52 Raj, the 3–9, 15, 34–8, 69–105, 111–20, 131–219 passim Rajputana 96, 158 Ravi River 131, 155, 160–1 Rawalpindi 74, 152 RCSI see Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland recruitment Indian army 16, 77, 86, 111, 121, 135, 144–5, 203–4, 219 public services 11, 31–60, 156–62, 185, 226 revenue 10–55 passim, 60–76, 96–161, 197, 204, 223 Rice, W. R. 186, 187, 223 Ripon, Lord 16, 17, 112, 128, 168 Rivaz, C. M. 127, 141, 190, 191 Robb, Peter 114 Roberts, Frederick S. 6, 10, 29, 71, 78, 104, 152, 160, 182, 226 Robinson, Hercules 57, 149 Robinson, W. C. F. 57 Rowlatt Bills 18 Roy, N. C. 28 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland 39 Royal University of Ireland 39, 44, 62 rubber 53, 54, 217 RUI see Royal University of Ireland Russia 69–77, 88, 96, 102 Russian(s) 16, 21, 69–77, 91, 99, 155, 197 Russophobia 16, 70 ryot(s) 14, 112, 132 Said, Edward 111 salary 30, 37, 60, 204 Salisbury, Lord 43, 90, 99, 181 Sandeman, Robert 72–8, 86, 88, 91, 100, 220 satyagraha 18, 206 science 4, 134 Scotland 4

Scots 5, 57, 195, 197, 227 secretary of state 17, 58, 87–91, 95–103, 112, 131, 134, 141, 169–81, 195, 202 Shahpur, 96, 115 Sikh(s) 10–97 passim, 113–14, 126, 158, 174, 201–22 Silcock, J. G. 44, 176 Silvestri, Michael 9 Simla 8–28, 35–94 passim, 100–2, 112–71 passim, 181–98, 210–26 simultaneous examinations 174, 189, 221 Singapore 52–4, 61–3, 201, 222–3 snakebite 134, 186 Spangenberg, Bradford 21, 43, 46, 174 Spear, Percival 14, 16, 134 Spring, F. E. 187, 223 Straits Settlements 4, 52–64, 218, 226 Stuart Mill, John 118 subaltern studies 9 surgeons 30, 39, 46, 183, 185 Sutlej River 131, 160–2, 188 swadeshi 18, 190 swaraj 205 Synge, John Millington 149 Tamils 54, 55 tax 14–15, 25, 41, 53–5, 64, 113–14, 122–223 passim TCD see Trinity College Dublin tea 54–6, 97, 112, 113, 130, 217 tehsil 15 telegraph 55, 103, 171, 207 Thorburn, S. S. 120–1, 148, 219 Tilak, B. G. 204 Times, The 56, 72, 83, 90, 100–2, 133, 142–3, 195, 197 tin 53–4 Tipperary 3, 10, 44, 95–8, 117–20, 128, 148, 198 Tirah, 87

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Tochi Pass 76, 104 Tralee 101, 143, 148, 196 Treaty of Amiens 54 Treaty Ports 52 Tribes(men) 15–25, 38, 69–105, 116–220 passim Tribune newspaper 73–165 passim, 168–76, 189, 192, 208 Triple Canal project 146, 161, 196 Trinity College Dublin 39–47, 59–143 passim, 156–61, 183, 195, 197 Tullabeg 44, 95 Tyrone 3, 44, 57, 183 Ulster 10, 33, 38, 40, 47, 128, 135, 167, 176, 192, 224 Unionist(s) 6, 36, 37, 114 United Kingdom 33–9, 43, 48, 62, 104, 112, 181, 208, 218

viceregal lodge 181, 182 viceroy 5–11, 17, 28, 33, 71–114, 127–35, 148, 156–9, 168–226 Wallace, W. A. J. 159–60 Wandewash 10 Warburton, Robert 85, 103, 221 Waziri(s) 70, 75, 91, 98, 103, 105 Waziristan 70, 75, 84–6, 89, 91, 97, 103, 220 Wedderburn, William 142 Wellesley brothers 10 Welsh 7, 227 White, George 71, 77, 78, 88, 104, 183 Wolpert, Stanley 15, 154 Wren’s 43, 44, 95 Wright, Arnold 53, 56 Zamindar(s) 14, 15, 129, 132, 190 Zhob 76, 78, 79, 84

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