The Making of Modern Sindh: British Policy and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century [2 ed.] 9780195790085, 0195790081

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The Making of Modern Sindh British Policy and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century

The Making of Modem Sindh British Policy and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century

Hamida Khuhro

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris S3o Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Enquiries concerning reproduction should be sent to Oxford University Press at the address below. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0 19 579008 1

Printed in Pakistan at Mehran Printers, Karachi. Published by Ameena Saiyid, Oxford University Press 5-Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal PO Box 13033, Karachi-75350, Pakistan.

CONTENTS page

A cknowledgements

vii

Preface

ix

Abbreviations

xii

Introduction to this Edition

xiii

Introduction

xxi

The Structure of Administration

1

Jagir Settlement

31

Land Revenue Administration

88

Irrigation

151

Trade and Communications

174

Language and Education

223

British Administrative Policy and the Role of Bartle Frere

280

Epilogue

290

Glossary

295

Bibliography

299

Index

315

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was originally submitted as thesis for Ph. D. degree in the University of London. My most grateful thanks are due to my kind and ever helpful Supervisor, Major J.B. Harrison of the School of Oriental and African Studies and to Professor J.A. Gallagher of Trinity College, Cambridge, that busy but never failing source of inspiration for the dullest student. I would like to thank Dr H.T. Lambrick without whose guidance, both personal, and through his published works, any research on the modern history of Sindh would be rendered infinitely more difficult. My thanks are also due to the always helpful and courteous staff of India Office Library, London, among whom I have many good friends. My warmest gratitude to my father, an exceptionally courageous and broad-minded man, who disregarded the taboos of an extremely conservative society and allowed me, a daughter, to study and work both at home and abroad, with complete freedom. My thanks to Ameena Saiyid for her initiative of OUP for publishing this edition of the book and the staff of OUP for their care in preparing the book. I dedicate this book to my parents with all gratitude and affection.

PREFACE This book is a study of the early British administrative policies in Sindh and their effects. It is intended to try and discern the impact of these policies on the social and economic conditions in the country as far as it is possible in the first two decades under British rule. Sindh was conquered in 1843, a comparatively late date in the history of British rule in India. It is mainly a Muslim country, is strategically near Persia and is close to Afghanistan, a fact which made it a sensitive border area in view of the Russian advance in Central Asia. The conquest of Sindh and the pacification of the Baloch territories provided a secure frontier on at least a part of the dangerous north-west of India. The story of British imperial strategy and the long confrontation with Russia in the countries to the north-west of India is a fascinating one and has found many excellent historians to record it. The present work is not intended to be a part of that story. It is concerned with the internal history of Sindh as a part of the British Indian Empire and the relevance of this history to policies elsewhere in India. The conquest of Sindh occurred at the height of the period of Victorian optimism. The fashionable creed at this time was Philosophical Radicalism. Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindh, and Lord Ellenborough the Governor-General of India at the time, both paid lip service to the fashionable theories of the day and shared with their generation a belief in the 'mission' of the British Empire. This belief was shared equally firmly by men of greater realism such as Sir Bartle Frere and John Jacob. These early adm inistrators sought to lay the basis of administration in Sindh in line with the popular theories of the day and sought to encourage a laissez-faire type economy. In so doing they were dealing with a largely Muslim tribal society.

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Sindh has often been called a ‘backwater’ of Indian history. Its comparative remoteness and lack of contact with contemporary developments in the subcontinent led Ellenborough to hope that his and Napier’s arrangements would help ‘redeem the character we have lost in India, on this new field for the exercise of the European mind in the administration of an Asiatic Province’. It is the intention of this work to examine the manner in which the European mind was exercised in Sindh and the response of Sindh to its new rulers. The first two decades of British rule in Sindh can be regarded as the formative phase of administration. Immediately after the conquest Sir Charles Napier became the Governor of Sindh with complete powers and full backing of Lord Ellenborough. Napier’s regime both in its political and military aspects has been admirably and exhaustively treated in H. T. Lambrick’s book Sir Charles Napier and Sind. The vital strategic task of pacifying the Baloch areas so successfully carried through by John Jacob has again been more than adequately described by Dr Lambrick in John Jacob o f Jacobabad. On the departure of Napier from Sindh in the end of 1847, the province became a part of Bombay Presidency. It was ruled henceforth as a ‘nonregulation’ province under an officer, designated Commissioner in Sind. The first man to succeed Napier was R. K. Pringle, a senior Bombay civilian. Reputedly a good officer, Pringle proved too much of a ‘secretariat’ man and was unable to meet the challenge posed by Sindh. In a couple of years he was relieved of his job and thirty-five year old Bartle Frere was appointed in his place. After Napier’s quixotic rule and Pringle’s uninspired two years, Frere proved just the man to restore order in the chaos, to galvanize the administration, and to fulfil some of the hopes of Ellenborough and Napier, and to attempt at least to ‘create an Egypt’ on the banks of Indus. Frere was energetic and enterprising. Acting with comparative freedom because of the difficulties of communication with the Presidency headquarters at Bombay, he was able to give shape to his ideas and innovate to an extent which would have been impossible almost anywhere else in the subcontinent. He was obviously

PREFACE

xi

restricted by financial considerations, and difficulties also arose in cases where government decisions had to be obtained from Bombay or Calcutta, but on the whole Frere managed to pull Sindh through the difficult years of transition and left for his successors a government which was an effectively working machinery and a job much easier than he himself had found. It was in Sindh that Frere made his great reputation as an Imperial administrator, and from here that he went directly to the Viceroy’s Council in Calcutta, and then to Bombay as Governor. This book concentrates mainly on Frere’s years in Sindh and his policies which were instrumental in creating modem Sindh. The body of the present work is concerned mainly with Frere’s Commissionership. The introductory chapter deals in broad terms with Napier’s and Pringle’s administration. Thereafter the book is divided into the several subjects with which the administration had to deal, each being treated in separate chapters. In order to preserve the continuity of each subject, reference has been made in each chapter to the policies of Napier and Pringle in that field. In the cases of Jagir and Zemindar settlements, Napier’s ideas have an important bearing on the final shape of the policies, hence these have been set out in some detail. As far as possible each policy and its effects have been treated over a period which would give it significance. Hence in some cases the post-Frere period has been discussed in some detail, as again for example the zemindari and educational policies. This book is not purely a study of policy, but also a study of the effects of policy. Long-term effects on the social fabric cannot of course be studied in the space of twenty or twentyfive years but the inevitable disruption caused by the conquest is recorded and, also the efforts of an outstanding administrator to restore order and cohesion to a disturbed society.

ABBREVIATIONS as B.C. B.R.P. B.G.P. H.C. H.L. I.O.L. I.O.R. P.R.O. P.M.R. R.C.O.S. S.I.H. Reeds. S.P.L. S.L.B.I. S.R.B.I. S.R.B.G. P.R.S.S. R.P.I.B. B.S.P.P. G.D. Pol. ps

annas Board’s Collections Bombay Revenue Proceedings Bombay General Proceedings House of Commons House of Lords India Office Library India Office Records Public Record Office Pre-Mutiny Records of the Commissioner-inSindh Records of the Commissioner’s Office, Sind Records of the Sind Irregular Horse Secret and Political Library (India Office) Secret Letters from Bengal and India Selections from the Records of the Government of India Selections from the Records of the Government of Bombay Papers relating to the Survey of Sind in the India Office Records Reports Public Instruction, Bombay Bombay Secret and Political Proceedings General Department Political paisas

INTRODUCTION TO THIS EDITION It is over thirty years since I wrote this, my first of what were to be many excursions into the writing of history. During that time there has been intense debate among historians and others as to how exactly history should be written. Socialists, feminists, and many others have maintained that there are other histories, other delineations of what happened then to be written. When I was writing this history of Sindh there was no doubt that diaries, official dispatches, newspaper reports, and other material were the facts on which authors based their historical accounts of what happened. At university we were taught that sources of history had to be authentic written material. And when I was looking at all this material in the India Office Library in London I was incredibly excited and deeply moved by what I found. It gave me what I thought was a real insight into what was happening in Sindh and in the rest of India in the last century and half of colonial history. Although most of the material came from the British: all the records and documents were theirs; I understood the problem and was well able to cope with it. My whole training had taught me to examine and sift the evidence and to conclude what had really happened and to present it with objectivity. I have kept to that path over my almost forty years as a historian and I can say that these precepts have served me well. I can understand that history can be written from a particular point of view. I deeply appreciate Edward Said’s Orientalism and feel that his insights have greatly contributed to the history of colonialism and imperialism. The Subaltern* school of history writing in the subcontinent of India has also made an impact on the way history is now written. This school has made the point that hitherto Indian history has been written from a colonialist and elitist point of view. There is a great gap in history writing

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as the point of view of the people whose history it is (the subaltern groups) has been ignored by historians. A number of very talented historians have tried to fill this gap and have produced a number of excellent works but the implementation of this type of history is difficult because as Edward Said says: For not only was a great deal of new and otherwise neglected or ignored material to be excavated; there was also to be an appreciably greater heightening of the theoretical and methodological element. The point was that if a new, or at least more authentic, history of India was to be written, its authors had better bring forth new material and carefully justify the importance of this material as sufficiently as it was necessary to displace previous historical work on India.2

But even though the theory of this worms eye view of history was not fashionable at the time I was writing this book3,1 made every effort to find any texts I could, giving the point of view of the people at the receiving end of colonial administration. The gap in their sources is always felt by historians of nineteenth century colonial India: that of local voices, the response and the reactions of the colonized people, particularly in this early period. Later in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries when the vernacular press had been established and social and political parties had come into existence there was no dearth of subaltern opinion and response to the actions of the colonial government but practically no such source exists immediately after the period of the conquest. There is a powerful oral tradition of poetry in Sindh and all major events in the life of region of Sindh and Balochistan are recorded in popular narrative poems. Dr N. A. Baloch has done immense pioneering work4 in collecting these ^oems which cover the historical events such as the passage of British troops through Sindh in 1838, the battles of the British and the Talpurs up to 1843, the efforts of the British officers to control and subdue tribes such as the Thakurs in Tharparkar, the inter tribal clashes of Gaboles and Gadra, of Jokhias and Numrias, and so on but there is hardly anything to be found on the everyday

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XV

pains of adjustment to a new dispensation under the British. The only reference that I have found to a peace time event is the celebratory mention of the Sukkur Barrage in the folk song Ho Jamalo. When I was writing this book I was acutely aware that others had trodden the imperial path before the English. They had not been the only marauders and plunderers who had looked at the fertile valley of Indus and longed to own the land and its riches. But it was the particular way the British had done so which fascinated me. The British have always been attached to respectability, doing things properly, impressing on others that their ways were best and that everything was, properly constitutional and legal. And how they went about this in Sindh was part of the course. Its what my history has been about. The conquest of Sindh was completed in 1843 at the battles of Miani and Dubbo where the Talpurs who had ruled Sindh for over sixty years were defeated by Sir Charles Napier. In the following four years the British completed the conquest of the Indian empire by adding the Punjab and the north-west frontier of the subcontinent to their dominions (by defeating the armies of the Sikh rulers of the Punjab). Thus a process which had begun with the Battle of Plassey in Bengal in the east of India in 1757 was completed nearly two hundred years later in 1847. The Making o f Modem Sind was published a quarter of a century ago and has assumed the aspects of a classic on nineteenth century Sindh, a subject on which no other modem work exists. In this book I have not dealt with the history of Sindh before the British conquest in 1843 as such. The Kalhora (circa 1711-83) and the Talpur (1783-1843) periods which immediately preceded the British conquest in 1843 are not discussed except where their administration and policies are relevant to the policies of the British colonialists. The discussion of the colonial advent does not extend back to the early ‘factories’ set up in Sindh or to British agents and adventurers such as Nathan Crowe, Alexander Bumes, and others, or to the tortuous negotiations between the Sindh rulers and the British who were determined to control the Indus and to

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make the border countries of Sindh and Balochistan subservient to them. I have not discussed the conquistadors such as Charles Napier, Sandman, and John Jacob. I have concentrated on the ideas and actions of the conquistadors-tumed-administrators: Napier, John Jacob, and Imperial pro-consul par excellence Sir Bartle Frere. I have dealt with the policies of the British in the different fields of administration and the effects of these policies on the local society. Since the book is limited to the nineteenth century, and these policies were put into place as late as the fifties and sixties of the century, the discussion is not of the long term effects but of the immediate shock to the system and the dislocation of the age old established ways of the people. There were fundamental changes in the laws regarding land grants to jagirdars or ‘feudatory’ chiefs, the administration of revenue collection and consequently the laws of land tenure and the new criminal and civil legal codes governing the lives of the people. There were also the ‘social engineering’ component of the policy such as the organization of the new ‘secular’ education which would have long term effects not only on the intellectual life of the people but also change the direction of their social development and open up choices so far unknown in Sindhi society. The standardization of the alphabet of the Sindhi language, the introduction of the printing press, all of which would bring modem learning to the Sindhi people. These innovations would change the face of Sindhi society in the next century: not only would it fulfil the object of the colonial agenda in producing suitably qualified personnel for employment in the revenue and other administrative departments but it would bring Sindh into the ‘developing’ world. However, the immediate effect was that of bewilderment and pain and of a loss of occupation for a large number of people as well as the hardship caused by the harsh and changeable system of taxation. The jagir policy of Napier and his successors not only stripped the displaced ruling class of its perks and properties but also deprived many sections of society of state support particularly the education section which was dependent on waqfs and jagirs.

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Customarily these grants were allotted to those Syed families who were professional teachers and who maintained the madressahs or the schools and universities of Sindh. But no voices were raised against this extraordinarily severe treatment of local system of education and learning which was the basis of the local culture. These voices could not of course be those of strong protest but there is almost nothing in literature and only a little in poetry. The system of land settlement was similarly to affect the lives of the people in a fundamental way. With ninety years of experience of Indian conditions the British felt that they knew all about the ways land revenue should be fixed and land settlements made. The system they brought to Sindh in the initial phase was the one they had used in Bombay and the Deccan— the ryotwari system dealing with individual farmers. They forgot that the conditions of agriculture in the monsoon-fed Bombay were very different from the agricultural practices in the parched and sandy soil of Sindh existing on inundation and canal irrigation. As in other great irrigated areas of the world such as Egypt and Mesopotamia the requirement was a just and strong government to make fair water sharing arrangements. Large areas were organized under the care of communities or the zemindari system where an accepted elder or wadero would be responsible for allocating land for cultivation, equitable sharing of water and produce, for maintaining law and order, and handing out quick justice. The whole community would be involved in this administration of the village or a group of villages which made up a zemindari. This intelligible community, autonomous and well ordered, was put at risk by the hasty and ill considered actions of the colonial administration which imported ill understood laws from other regions of the subcontinent and caused unnecessary and quite prolonged period of disruption for the people of Sindh. It would not be until the eighties of the nineteenth century that land settlements more in keeping with local requirements were made which would give a chance to the agriculturist to recover if he had not fallen into the bania debt trap.

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An important feature of the new dispensation was the introduction of the principle of ‘capitalism’ as opposed to a society where there were established and traditional controls on ‘free enterprise’ and limits to the acquisition of wealth. So although there was no limit to the amount of land that could be brought under cultivation, this was always a community enterprise and all shared in the ensuing prosperity. The Hindu bania traders were very wealthy, had their trade connections in all parts of the world and were bankers to the rulers. But they could not buy into agricultural land and therefore a capitalist transfer of property could not take place and the society remained stable. The introduction of capitalism and free enterprise was an avowed aim of the British colonialists and therefore for the first time agricultural land was bought and sold. It was also given in settlement of debt incurred by farmers to the capitalist banias. The notion of land being awarded by courts in settlement of debts was so new that for some time it confused the people who could not deal with it. Landowners, mainly small khatedars, became the victims of this new capitalist practice on a large scale. The instruments of change included not only the new laws of civil and criminal procedure and the introduction of the capitalist principles but also the communications revolution which was brought about by the improvement of the Karachi harbour and the rail and steam ship link with the Punjab and other parts of India. Karachi became the nearest Indian port to Europe and was to play a crucial role in the expansion of trade and the maintenance of imperial order in the subcontinent by making the Sindh route the quickest for communication with the ‘mother country’ England. Any or all of the subjects mentioned above could have been treated more exhaustively. Certainly the social implications of the changes could have been treated more thoroughly, but looking back now and carefully rereading what I wrote and re­ visiting some of the source material in the India Office Library, I am surprised that what I wrote then seems to stand the test of time.

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My daughter who is at Columbia University studying South Asian History is being given courses in how to write history. She is being taught the pitfalls of relying only on official sources and that there are other histories; other people whose stories are lost and should be remembered. But what is there and after all this material is not homogeneous; it is varied; a lot of it is deeply conflicting. The historian does not only quote sources: a certain amount of imagination and a great deal of judgement is required.

NOTES 1. The word ‘subaltern’ first of all, has both political and intellectual connotations. Its implied opposite is of course ‘dominant’ or ‘elite’, that is, groups in power, which in the Indian case, Said explains, are the classes who were (in a loose sense) ‘allied’ with the British colonial rulers. The usage of the word ‘subaltern’ is derived from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. 2. Edward Said, ‘Forward’ in Selected Subaltern Studies by Ranajit Guha and G.C. Spivak, Oxford University Press, New York, 1988. 3. Ranajit Guha’s first volume of ‘subaltern studies’ was not published till 1982. 4. Dr N.A. Baloch, Jangama covers folk poetry of the British Talpur battles among others. Dr Baloch has collected and edited a large number of volumes which contain the folk tales and folk poems including the ‘oral history’ material of Sindh.

INTRODUCTION ‘Young Egypt’ was a favourite nineteenth century term for Sindh and in fact there were many important similarities in the physical make-up of the two countries. Sindh occupies the lower half of the valley of the Indus, the river which, until the construction of modem extensive irrigational works annually overflowed its banks, covered the land with alluvial deposit and made it fertile. In the almost complete absence of rain it was also the only source of water supply. The waters of the Indus were utilized through an extensive system of irrigation which dated back to the earliest times. The name Sindh itself is derived from the ancient Sanskrit word for a river or sea Sindhu. Sindh lies in the north-western part of the subcontinent of India. It is bounded on the north by the Punjab, on the east by Rajputana, on the south by the Rann of Kutch and the Indian Ocean, and on the west by Balochistan. The area it covers is between 56,000 and 57,000 square miles.2 The first of the Indian states to be invaded by Muslims (in a d 711), Sindh has in modem historical times always been a predominantly Muslim country. In the nineteenth century its population was 75 per cent Muslim and the majority of the remaining 25 per cent Hindu. The Muslims were made up of Arab, Baloch, local Sammat and Rajput elements, while the Hindus were mostly comparatively recent immigrants from the Punjab.3 The majority of Hindus belonged to the Lohana tribe and were subdivided into what may be termed ‘castes’ of Amils or the professional class, and the Bhaiband (Bania) or the traders. There were also some low caste Hindu tribes, Bhils, Dheds, and Kolis, who were to be found in the Thar and Parkar district, adjoining the Rajput States.4 The Lohana Hindus were not orthodox Hindus as in the rest of India. Most of them were known as Nanak Shahis or the followers of Guru Nanak, the

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fifteenth century reformer who preached monotheism and denounced idolatry. The Nanak Shahis, however, practised a blend of Hinduism and Guru Nanak’s teachings, revered the sacred text of the Sikhs, though they could not otherwise be regarded as Sikhs.3 As professional government officers and traders, Hindus lived chiefly in towns, except that every village had its bania shop keeper. Muslims on the other hand being on the whole connected with the land as peasants and zemindars lived mainly in the villages. Certain sections of the Muslim community however, did live in towns. These were usually artisans and labourers, but there were Baloch sirdars in Hyderabad and elsewhere, and the Sayad communities chiefly in Thatta, Sehwan, Rohri, and Hala. The Sayad community was the teacher and scholar class of Sindh and was usually the recipient of pensions or jagirs. In the early nineteenth century Sindh was ruled by a loose confederacy of chiefs from the Baloch tribe of Talpurs., who had seized power from the Kalhoras in 1783. The Talpurs were nominally under the suzerainty of the Afghan kings, an authority recognized when Nadir Shah had invaded the country in 1739, during the Kalhora regime.6 At the time the British began to take an active interest in Sindh in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Talpurs had been trying to follow a policy of isolation, discouraging as far as they could any kind of foreign interest in the country. The Talpurs were not long to be left undisturbed however. In 1827, Dr James Bumes visited Sindh to treat one of the Hyderabad Amirs, and published an account of the country which laid emphasis on the possibility of developing the country, and on the potential value of the river Indus as the highroad to Central Asia and the key to its trade. He also denounced what he regarded as the obscurantist nature of the Talpur government which, he said, systematically discouraged any sign of enterprise.7 About this time fears of a Russian advance through the north-west also focussed the attention of British strategists on possible lines of defence and ‘safe frontiers’ for the Indian Empire. Wellington and Lord Ellenborough, Governor-General

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of India, Duke of Wellington were firm advocates of a policy to acquire control of the Indus and then to use the river as the main feature in their plans to counter the Russisn advance and to offset Russian influence in Central Asia.8 These two objects were to be achieved by making the Indus the bastion of Imperial defence and by using it also to extend British commerce, which was to establish permanent British ascendancy in the area and to remove the Russian menace for ever.9 But before any practical steps could be taken it was necessary to collect more information about the Indus. With this object in view, Alexander Bumes, the brother of the doctor, and Assistant Resident in Kutch, was chosen in 1831 to take a present of horses for Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Punjab. After some hesitation and with reluctance the Amirs of Sindh gave permission for Bumes to go up the Indus. Bumes made optimistic reports about the navigational possibilities of the Indus which were enthusiastically received by the Governor-General, and negotiations were started to open the river to commercial activity. Successive treaties in 1832 and 1834 freed the navigation of the river from restriction but did not produce any spectacular improvement in trade. The Afghan crisis of 1838-41 and the consequent need to send troops up the Indus passageway brought further British pressure on the helpless Amirs, who by this time had been reduced in position from ‘the rulers of an independent state to princes of a client state’.10The only question that now remained was whether Sindh would be allowed to remain a nominally independent state under the Amirs as faithful allies or whether it would be taken directly under British rule. The matter was decided by the appointment of Sir Charles Napier to the command in Sindh in September 1842. At the age of sixty, Napier found himself at last in a position where he could perhaps satisfy his ambition to achieve fam e.11 It was not long before Napier, supported by Ellenborough had precipitated a crisis which ended in the battles of Miani (17 February 1843) and Dubba (26 March 1843). By August Sindh had been annexed. The conquest of Sindh was received with mixed feelings in England and India. The political and strategic importance of this

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new acquisition was undoubted for the security of the Empire. The Sikh kingdom of the Punjab was as yet unconquered and Afghanistan to the north-west was a constant problem. It was of the utmost importance to be in control of the lower Indus valley with its sea harbour river route, and even more valuable, the control it gave of the western border country of Balochistan, with its ‘wild and turbulent tribes’ and the access it offered to Afghanistan and Central Asia. In this sense the political argument for the control of Sindh by the British at a sensitive period of British Imperial history was very strong. Lord Ellenborough was a firm advocate of the conquest and fully supported Napier’s action. There was, however, a political lobby both in England and India which was opposed to Napier’s actions in Sindh. This group based its case partly on ethical and humanitarian grounds, and partly on practical financial considerations. Although in the larger context of Imperial strategy, the acquisition of Sindh was an obvious advantage, valid objections could be raised against the conquest mainly on grounds of expense. It could not be denied that the conquest and the subsequent pacification of the country would involve large scale expenditure and the East India Company would find it difficult to meet all the demands that would be made on it. There was sufficient ammunition in the hands of the opponents of Ellenborough and Napier for a strong attack to be made against their policies, especially as Sir James Outram (the Ex-Resident in Sindh) and John Jacob both joined the ranks of N apier’s critics and provided evidence of N apier’s highhandedness in Sindh. They provided proof for the contention that Napier had no real justification for undertaking the war against the Amirs who had in the main been true to their treaties and who had finally been driven to take up arms in the face of the ‘grossest provocation’ offered by Napier. The anti-conquest lobby was not only able to prove that Napier’s action in fighting the Amirs was unjustified but also that after the conquest the treatment of the defeated ruling family had been less than generous. The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors in England informed the Board of Control that it had passed a resolution condemning Lord Ellenborough’s policy in

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Sindh. It was only after the Duke of Wellington and Lord Ripon had pointed out to the Court of Directors the serious consequences which would result if this resolution became known that in December 1843 the Secret Committee was persuaded to acquiesce in the conquest.12Censure of the Governor-General ’s action would have meant the recall of Lord Ellenborough from India. At this stage moreover, it was not practical to give up the annexed part of Sindh as this would mean inducing Bahawalpur and Jaisalmer also to give up areas which had been given to them. The clinching argument was put forward by Wellington: ‘Is our constitutional executive authority prepared to see a colony of French adventurers introduced and settled on the Indus by their Friends.... in the ’ 13 service of the Sikhs? In fact, therefore, the conquest of Sindh was an accomplished fact. The controversy between Napier and his opponents was to rage for a long time both in India and England and was not settled to the satisfaction of either. Napier’s culpability as the instigator of an unjust war was immortalized by Punch with a brilliant pun ‘Peccavi - I have Scinde* but, however, much the critics might deplore the cost and decry the injustice, it proved impossible to give up the conquered territory. Sindh was too valuable as a frontier against the encroachment of Afghans and Persians, independently or as pawns of the Russians. It was necessary to the eventual conquest of the Punjab and was to prove its value as a supply route during the events of 1857. The occupation of Sindh raised some interesting problems for the British. Their attitude was nearly summarized by Burton who said: T he chief merits which Sindh in its present state possesses are its capacity of improvement and its value to us as a military and commercial position’.13 In theory at least Sindh was a country with unlimited possibilities. Apart from its strategic importance it had the incomparable advantage of the river which was central to all schemes of improvement and from which most of its strategic importance was derived. Napier and Ellenborough were convinced that once all restrictions and taxes were removed and its navigation made free to the nations of the world, the river would be filled with a great concourse of traders. This would naturally result in prosperity for the people

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and wealth would accrue to all classes. Agriculture would flourish as peasants were delivered from bondage, enlightened laws were enacted, and irrigation of the country undertaken by proper scientific means. Ellenborough saw the justification for the conquest in the benefits that would be conferred on the country: ‘A state may be justified in making war upon another in order to relieve a whole people from the most oppressive misgovernment.... and yet more when that fall enables the conquering state to extend to the people it releases from thraldom the benefits of a beneficent and enlightened rule... and it endeavours to cover the banks of that river with cultivation as perfect as ever was that which in ancient times gave wealth to banks of the Nile’ 16 By 1843, eighty-six years after the battle of Plassey, the British had been ruling Indian territories for nearly a hundred years and in that period they had accumulated considerable experience of Indian conditions and problems of administration. They were, therefore, bringing to Sindh some of the ideas derived from this experience. In a sense Sindh was unique. It was a country where the majority of the population was Muslim, which was not often the case in India. The Punjab had not been conquered yet and Sindh had more purely a Muslim past than any other Indian territory. One of the most interesting questions to be answered is, therefore, how, if at all, this fact in any way coloured Sindh’s response to the British rule. Perhaps the field in which this particular question may be studied most satisfactorily is the field of education. How would the Muslims regard any incursion into this traditional stronghold of the Mullah? Would they turn away in repulsion from a secular education when so far their education had been deeply connected with religious studies? In Sindh the effects of the new policy on the Muslim system can be studied all the more clearly as the province came into British possession at a time when the pattern of vernacular elementary education and English higher education had already been set in Bombay and was, therefore, readily applied in Sindh. The break with the old system was, in theory at least, sudden and its effects presumably more visible.

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In spite of some basic differences, the British in Sindh were faced with many problems similar to those they had met with in other regions in India. First of all, they had to pacify the newly conquered territory, and either secure the cooperation, or at least the acquiescence of the traditional upper classes, or alternatively to render them impotent by setting up new groups to act as a counterpoise. These new groups would be completely loyal to the British because they would be completely dependent on them. It is important in this context to remember that Sindh was a frontier province and considered to be inhabited by ‘wild and turbulent tribes’, and the government was anxious to preserve peace by disturbing the scene as little as possible. Closely linked with the question of favoured classes was that of land settlement and revenue assessment. This was one of the. tests of the advocates of a laissez-faire policy. Land was potentially one of the most important sources of wealth but needed careful investment and employment of effort in order to realize its potential. In theory, the aim of the government was to create conditions under which the cultivators would be induced to extend cultivation in the hope of increased reward. For such conditions to be created, more needed to be done than the creation of property rights and making land available in the market. All legal rights and the largest free market would be useless without a comparable increase in the water supply obtained through an extension of irrigation. This problem baffled Napier and his successors, though the more intelligent officers saw the link between the increase of cultivation and the extension of irrigation. Neither the small farmers nor the large holders appeared to take advantage of inducements in the shape of available wasteland, low rents, and comparatively long periods of settlement, and consequently a succession of settlements was tried in the country but with little success. Another question to be examined, therefore, is what were the preconceptions, if any, that the new rulers brought with them when they came to deal with the problem of land revenue and what modifications took place in these ideas as a result of

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experience. Further, what was the response of the cultivating classes and the visible effects of the various experiments? The question of land revenue assessment has always been central to any serious discussion of Indian problems, and it is usually axiomatic in the Indian context that any government must be judged by the degree of success attending its revenue policies. In Sindh perhaps this rule could be varied a little and irrigation put in the place of revenue. For no matter how just or indeed how benevolent the assessment rate might be, its success depended entirely on the government’s efforts to keep the canals in full working order. This fact was recognized by all indigenous governments, but the British had no previous experience in India of an agriculture entirely dependent on irrigation. It must be said to the credit of Napier that he recognized the importance of government action in this field and established a canal department, and to the discredit of his successors that it was not given a fair trial before it was abolished. Irrigation policy was, therefore, one of the most important aspects of government administration is Sindh and its development would help to illustrate the success or failure of the British administrative ideals in Sindh. In their hopes and plans for the increase of the trade of this region, the British looked both at Sindh and beyond it. Bumes had given a warning that not much could be expected from Sindh itself as a market until considerable development had taken place in the country. Sindh was, therefore, primarily important because of its geographical position vis &vis the north­ west and as a key to the regional system of trade which the British hoped to establish between India and the countries of Central Asia. In order to establish this system it was of the utmost importance to develop the Indus as a channel of communication. British administrators in Sindh began with high hopes of the Indus route and the trade that would flow from it, but the realities of the situation, the unsuitability of the river for navigation, the difficulties of increasing trade with the countries beyond the passes, and eventually the conquest of the Punjab changed the complexion of this particular aspect of government

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policy. The acquisition of the Punjab and the coming of the railways especially did more than anything else to bring about a revolution in this field. Immediately after the conquest Napier was put in complete charge of the province directly under the supervision of the Governor-General himself. Ellenborough and Napier were determined that they would make the new province a model of good administration run by the most enlightened laws of the age. They had no doubt that, there unhampered by the old bureaucracy of India with its fixed ideas, they could allow full and free play to economic forces, and that once the obscurantist laws of the Amirs were abolished, laissez-faire type of economy would transform Sindh into a progressive nineteenth century state. Ellenborough expressed these sentiments in a letter to Napier in which he referred to the abolition of certain duties: The abolition of transit dues will diminish the revenue, but in Sind we must do all for futurity, we have to create an Egypt, and we must not allow little views of present advantage to interfere with the realization of the greatest future objects. We must redeem the character we have lost in India, on this new field for the exercise of European mind in the administration of an Asiatic Province. We must do as much by the people and for the people as we can, not only by and for ourselves. We must look to our reward hereafter, in the certain improvement of the country under a really enlightened government.17

These noble sentiments were, however, much easier expressed than acted upon. Napier ruled Sindh with full powers and fairly generous allowances from the central exchequer till the end of 1847. But the end result of his experiments in Sindh was very far fiom the laissez-faire paradise that had been visualized. The fact of the matter was that even if it had been possible to bring about the desired transformation in Sindh, Napier was not the man to do it. As a ruler he resembled Don Quixote of la Mancha to a remarkable degree. He was similarly prone to exaggerate the circumstances in order to increase his own importance. His ideas about the business of administration were extremely hazy. Apart

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from his faith in laissez-faire, he had a vague notion that the abolition of tolls on the river and transit duties throughout Sindh would produce the circumstances in which such an economy would flourish. He failed to see that the river accounted for a very small part of the trade traffic in Sindh most of which was carried on camels from Karachi to Shikarpur and then on to Kandahar and further. Napier’s policy regarding transit taxes, in spite of his belief in laissez-faire, was apt to be inconsistent and fluctuated according to the financial situation. Jacob had some bitter experiences of the gap between practice and avowed policy in this respect when he tried to buy grain to feed the Scinde Horse regiment. Not even the fact that the supplies were being brought for a section of the armed forces could persuade the Collector of Hyderabad to waive the transit taxes on the grain.18 As for the question of revenue and land tenure, Napier had derived certain ideas from his short acquaintance with India. One such idea was that the Ryotwari system of Munro was ‘good’. Another simplistic belief that he held in contradiction to the actual complexities of the situation was that jagirdars were the ‘natural aristocracy’ of Sindh and that zemindars were the ‘middlemen’ who were parasites on the land. In accordance with this belief he made extravagant promises to jagirdars and took some steps to undermine the position of the zemindars.19Napier’s policy towards Jagirdars though somewhat confused in execution, was basically sound as events were to prove. But as far as detailed arrangements were concerned, both the jagir and the attitude towards zemindars were sorted out by Frere who laid the basis for a rational arrangement in the land tenure of Sindh. Similarly it was Frere who was left to pick up the pieces of a basically sound but hopelessly mismanaged policy for canal and public works in Sindh. By organizing the Canal Department, Napier recognized a fundamental need of agricultural production in Sindh which was dependent entirely on water from the river. But as was usually the case with Napier’s arrangements, they went hopelessly awry in execution. Vast amounts of money were spent in building a bund near Shikarpur which was not only unnecessary but positively harmful to the agriculture in the area. Work had begun at the

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Karachi harbour but was conducted with so little care that large sums of money were wasted without very much being accomplished.20 Once again it was Frere under whose supervision and with much greater financial difficulties than Napier ever had to face, that substantial progress was made with the harbour. Almost the only notable accomplishment of the Canal Department during its brief existence was to give employment to Richard Burton, later the famous explorer and orientalist. Bad luck also attended N apier’s incursions into the educational field. An idea was put forward by the Collector of Hyderabad, Captain Rathborne, that a school might be established to teach English to the sons of the Talpur Sirdars. The scheme was enthusiastically pursued for some time but delays occurred and eventually it perished when Sindh was attached to Bombay. By the time Napiers term came to an end in October 1947 he had very little to show in the way of positive achievements in Sindh. He had set up a Police organization which proved a success and was copied in the Punjab, Bombay, and Madras when the Police system was reorganized in those areas, but apart from that, Napier’s administration had hardly lived up to the optimistic predictions that he had made for it. ‘We should be under no delusion’, says Lambrick, ‘that the face of the Province had been much altered by Napier’s rule’. Lambrick adds, ‘If we look to positive material achievements under each department of administration, there seems surprisingly little to show for four and a half years rule’.21 It was to be left to Napier’s successors, working under many more restrictions and greater handicaps than those that troubled Napier, to put the Province on a sound administrative basis and to create conditions for future progress. The most fierce controversy during Napier’s rule and for long afterwards was the concern with the question of Sindh finances. Even with the expenses cut to minimum, as they were in Sindh most of the time, there was never enough for the province to pay its way. All Ellenborough and Napier’s hopes were disappointed in this respect. It was not until extensive irrigation projects were undertaken in the 1930s and it

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had achieved autonomy that revenues of the province became sufficient for its needs. Thereafter, and specially after the Second World War, Sindh became a ‘surplus’ province. Characterized by one journal as ‘a grotesque self-willed character in high authority’,22 Napier himself remained ever a subject for controversy and fierce partisanship. Charles Napier and his brother William proved extremely clever publicists and the spate of books by William Napier about his brother were largely instrumental in building up his great reputation as a soldier and statesman. Two years after his departure from Sindh when the Second Sikh war, which resulted in the annexation of the Punjab, was going somewhat badly, there was great agitation in England to send Napier to deal with the situation. Napier’s appointment as Com mander-in-Chief was supported by the Duke of Wellington and eventually the Directors were induced to send him out. However, by the time he arrived in India in May 1849, the war was over. In his ideas of warfare in India, Napier continued as ever to tilt at windmills. Regarding operations in the Punjab he confided his plans to his brother. He would require William as his Governor at Bombay, and ‘if Parliament allowed him discretion, he would start by crushing the Nizam to ensure a secure base of operations.’23 At the end of Napier’s eccentric regime in Sindh, the Calcutta Government, heaving a sigh of relief, incorporated Sindh with the Bombay Presidency and proceeded to forget about it. For the next ninety years, Sindh, a ‘non-regulation’ province, was administered by an officer designated Commissioner-in-Sind. As Sindh was largely isolated from the headquarters at Bombay, the Commissioner inevitably had a great deal of freedom of action and had to rely on his own independent judgement in many important matters. If more was to be done in the province than merely to keep the peace and mete out justice, that is, if an economic base was to be created where free enterprise might flourish, if roads, canals, and railways were to be built, it was essential that the Commissioner should be himself a man of imagination, enterprise, and perseverance. R. K. Pringle, the senior Bombay civilian who became the first Commissioner

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was not such a man. In his early days in India Pringle had achieved a certain fame as an advocate and exponent of Utilitarian theories as applied to the Land Revenue settlement in the Bombay Presidency.24 These had proved a failure. Since then he had pursued an unremarkable career as a covenanted civil servant in the Bombay Secretariat, and was Secretary to the Government at the time of his appointment in Sindh. Pringle’s training in the well-settled ’regulation’ provinces was not a suitable training for his new charge and without the elaborate machinery of government and an established routine, he was lost. He relied heavily on the subordinate officers he had inherited from Napier with the result that his main purpose, which was to collect basic unbiased information about the country and to organize the government afresh, was defeated. The Government at Bombay wanted someone who could spend a large part of the time on ‘tour’ in the different districts and get a firsthand knowledge of the land and the people. Pringle was unable to adapt himself to these ‘frontier’ conditions that prevailed in Sindh and towards the end of 1850 he resigned. The Bombay Government was now faced with a problem. It was obvious that seniority in service was not a useful criterion in selecting a man for Sindh. The Government was also keen that the civilian nature of the administration be emphasized, hence military officers were not eligible for the post. By a happy chance, Lord Falkland, the Governor of Bombay, hit upon the idea of sending Bartle Frere, the ex-Resident at Sattara, out to Sindh. The selection was at first vehemently opposed by his Council. Frere was only thirty-five years of age and there were many officers who were senior and, therefore, according to the Council, more entitled to this most important Commissionership in the Presidency. Lord Falkland remained firm, however, and the appointment was approved by authorities in England. Early in January 1851, Frere accompanied by his family, landed in Karachi and began one of the most remarkable pioneering periods of administration seen anywhere in the colonial world. If any one could have realized the Ellenborough-Napier dream in Sindh, Frere was the man. He was dynamic and optimistic. At the

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same time his optimism was based firmly on reality and he did not indulge in flights of fancy that had characterized Napier’s rule. Frere realized at once the importance of constructing an economic base in Sindh which would facilitate progress. This base would be roads, railways, canals, and an adequate harbour at Karachi jointly constituting a framework of communications. While endeavouring to construct this framework, Frere also became aware of another problem which baffled many nineteenth century advocates of colonial progress, that is, how to create economic men out of the tradition-bound and apathetic peasants of India. Frere, while he did not discover any fool proof solution to the problem, did realize that government would have to initiate and actively participate in the growth of industry and commerce. Frere encouraged experiments with cash crops, imported new varieties of cotton seed into Sindh, and took interest in different methods of improving agriculture. He encouraged trade fairs and set up schemes for annual fairs which would bring together merchants from north-west territories and from Bombay. The trade fair at Karachi became a popular and useful annual event. He made enquiries into the possibilities of trade with Central Asia, a market which if captured could be a useful political investment. In pursuing these many schemes, Frere was constantly hampered by the lack of adequate funds. Sindh was very low down on the list of priorities for the Bombay Government and the Government of India, and although the various Governors of Bombay and Lord Dalhousie at Calcutta were sympathetic, this sympathy was rarely translated into money. Frere tried to do his best with the means at hand. Irrigation was not a luxury but an essential need in Sindh. A great deal of money had to be spent annually on the clearance of canals. Nevertheless, with Jacob’s invaluable advice and help, some major works were undertaken during Frere’s Commissionership. Frere laid the foundation of the first part of the railway which was to become the Nprth-Westem Railway of India. It was under Frere’s aegis that Colonel Fife produced his report for the large scale improvement of irrigation in Sindh, a scheme only a part of which could be implemented by Frere himself. Similarly

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education in Sindh needed urgent attention by the time Frere arrived in Sindh. The established system of the Islamic type with its village mosque schools at the base of the apex and madressahs of higher learning at the top had been allowed to decay through lack of government support. It was necessary now to substitute some other system. Frere set up an educational organization similar to that existing in the Bombay Presidency. His unique and notable contribution in the field of education was the pioneering of the ‘grants-in-aid’ system for schools. This system which was established throughout India by a Court direective in 1854, had already been working in Sindh for at least a year. Here again the comprehensive scheme for a network of schools throughout Sindh could not be fully implemented. Further cuts were made in it when retrenchment in government expenditure was made throughout India after the Revolt of 1857. When Frere left Sindh in 1859 to go as Councillor to Calcutta, Sindh had already taken important steps on the road to modernization. The service that he had above all rendered to the country, had been to lay down the guidelines for future development. Frere visualized Sindh as the natural outlet of the Punjab and the channel for trade with the north-west. He also attached importance to the Baloch and Sindh mountain territories on the west as a ‘natural’ and ‘safe’ frontier for the Indian empire. Frere and Jacob continually emphasized the importance of garrisoning Quetta as an outpost to guard the Bolan Pass,29 an idea which was recognized and followed up much later. The frontier policy of the ‘Sindh school’ as exemplified by Jacob’s policies fully backed by Frere, was a notable achievement of these two imperial administrators and was responsible for a lasting peace in this area. In dealing with the existing social classes, in assessing the land revenue, in developing irrigation, trade, communications, and education, and of course in establishing the mechanics of administration, the British Government in Sindh was called upon to make decisions which were vitally to affect the social and economic development of the country. In the Indian subcontinent the importance of government action cannot be over-estimated.

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No myth could be more misleading than that of the selfsufficient Indian village, going about its business unaffected by the world outside, and nowhere could it be less true than in Sindh, where administrative efficiency was vital to the condition of the local k a r i a which took its water supply from the main canal, and which was dry or full depending on whether the government had done its duty in clearing the canals. The only source of wealth for the majority of the people was land. The government, too, derived the major part of its revenues from the land, sharing its produce with the cultivator and leaving him enough to be comfortable, but not rich. Under these conditions private enterprise could not flourish and needed initiative and encouragement from above. Sindh was a poor, thinly populated country but the Sindhi had always enough to eat and just that degree of contentment that would make any extra effort difficult.27 It was the country least likely to be galvanized into action by any but the most dynamic rulers. The question was whether the British administrators would prove dynamic enough. If the British failed to go far and quickly enough or failed to create a new society, it was not for want of administrative talent. Some of the greatest names in the history of British Indian administration were associated closely with Sindh, and of these the most illustrious in the early period. Napier himself would rank as the best known though perhaps not the most talented. But, however, one may disagree with or deride the somewhat eccentric method of Sir Charles’ administration, he was undoubtedly a good soldier and general, and was in his time considered a great enough hero to have his statue erected next to that of Nelson in Trafalgar Square. During his regime, with Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General, Sindh was in the forefront of public and government attention, and hopes were high of its progress and prosperity. At no later date was there to be a similar opportunity for obtaining money and expertise from all over India for its development, and inevitably one wonders what Frere would have achieved with the same opportunity. Sindh has always drawn strong loyalty and affection from those familiar with it, particularly the European officers who

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served in it. Sir Richard Temple who visited it as Governor of Bombay but was otherwise an outsider as an ex-Punjab man, remarked on this phenomenon: European officers who serve there love the province, nowhere in the empire is local attachment more intense than in Sind. Apparently the Indus permeating the country from end to end, rolling down in mighty volume of drainage from Himalayan and trans-Himalayan regions and bestowing at least a partial fertility upon rainless regions affects the imagination of educated men.2*

Apart from the numerous travellers and ‘politicals’ such as Alexander Bumes, Henry Pottinger, Charles Masson, and numerous others who recorded information of considerable historical value, the man who did more than any other to collect information, and write about the history, legend, literature, and anthropology of the country was Richard Burton. Burton, who developed his interest in the Islamic world while in Sindh, was employed as an officer in the Canal Department set up by Napier and while he may not have been an ideal Canal officer, there can be no doubt that Sindh owes him an immense debt of gratitude for not only writing books which gives an invaluable picture of life in the country at this time and again in the seventies, when he revisited it, but also for making an extensive study of the Sindhi language and for writing a memorandum on it which drew attention to its considerable literature and thus helped to revive linguistic and literary studies in it. Another scholar, whose name is, however, confined to the province, was George Stack, the Assistant Commissioner for Jagirs, who found time to write a dictionary and a grammar of the language. Sir James Outram, the ex-Resident in Sindh and John Jacob of Jacobabad, were men whose fame spread far and wide. The latter spent all his life on the frontiers of Sindh and initiated some of the most successful administrative measures that were adopted in the country. Napier, Outram, Frere, Jacob, and Burton are well known names but there were others. F. J. Goldsmid, the biographer of Outram, during his many years of service in Sindh completed

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the work of Jagir settlement and laid the foundations of the educational system in the province. Jacob’s close associate, (Sir William) Merewether, became a successful Commissioner and was in the province from 1868 to 1877. Sir Lewis Pelly did useful work on Jagirs. J. G. (afterwards General) Fife was the brilliant Superintendent of Canals, who drew up a scheme of canal improvement for Sindh which formed the basis of major irrigational projects carried through nearly eighty years afterwards. Old Sindh loyalties lasted. Some of Frere’s closest associates, when he was Governor of Bombay, had been his Sindh subordinates. He continued to rely on the judgement of such men as Barrow Ellis, Fife, and others. Sindh was well served by her officers and it was not their fault that their plans and ideas often found little sympathy in the Bombay Secretariat. By 1865 Sindh had passed through its early stages of adjustment to British rule. The framework of its regular administration had been largely set up under Napier, Pringle, and Frere. The period from the conquest in 1843 to Frere’s departure from Bombay in 1866 offers what may be termed an intelligible field of study. It was just over two decades since the conquest and in almost every case of administrative experiment the first phase was over. The Jagir policy had been settled in 1862. The early sixties saw the survey and the first revenue settlement. Ten years had passed since Ellis had presented his scheme for education in the province in 1854. Just over ten years too, had passed since the first commercial fair had been started in Karachi to encourage trade with north-western countries and since Fife had projected his irrigation scheme. Frere’s departure thus offers a good point for an assessment of the twenty years since the conquest and for attempting some anticipation of the future.

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NOTES 1. A.W. Hughes, A Gazetteer o f the Province o f Sind, 1876, p. J. 2. E. H. Aitken, Gazetteer o f the Province o f Sind, 1907, p. 1. The final shape was given to the British Province of Sindh in 18S1 when districts covering S,412 square miles were ‘resumed’ by the British Government from the State of Khairpur. 3. Aitken, op. cit., p. 185. 4. Ibid., pp. 154-5. 5. R. Burton, Sind, and the races that inhabit the valley o f the Indus, pp. 309-37 (later cited as Sind). 6. Aitken, op. cit., p, 110. 7. J. Bumes, A narrative o f a visit to the court o f Scinde, p. 26. 8. R.A. Huttenback, British relations with Sind, 1799-1843, pp. 18-19 9. M. E. Yapp, British policy in Central Asia, p. 445. 10. Huttenback, op. cit., p. 114. 11. .H. T. Lambrick, Sir Charles Napier and Sind, pp. 60-61. 12. Lambrick, op. cit., pp. 239-40. 13. Ibid., p. 240 14. Punch, Vol. 6, 1844, p. 209. 15. Burton, Sind, p. 2. 16. Ellenborough to Secret Committee. No. 17,13, March 1843, S.L.B.I. Vol. 28, 1843, p. 151. 17. Ellenborough to Napier, 12 April 1843. Quoted in Lambrick, Sir Charles Napier and Sind, p. 181. 18. Lambrick, op. cit., p. 321. 19. Chapters 2 and 3. 20. Chapter 4. 21. Lambrick, op. cit., pp. 341-2. 22. Pall M all G azette, quoted in J. Martineau, The Life o f Sir Bartle Frere, Vol. I, p. 81. 23. Lambrick, op. cit., p. 351. 24. E. Stokes, English Utilitarians and India, p. 99, passim. 25. Martineau, op. cit., p. 237. 26. Karia or kara—an opening in the embankment of a field by which water may flow from one field to another. 27. C. Masson, Narrative o f Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, Vol. 1, p. 378. Masson who spent some time travelling in Sindh disguised as a mendicant gives a vivid description of the character and habits of the people. 28. R. Temple, Men and Events o f My Time in India, pp. 483-4.

Chapter 1 THE STRUCTURE OF ADMINISTRATION On conquering Sindh in 1843, Sir Charles Napier inherited from the Talpurs a system of administration which, though it could not be described as dynamic, was particularly suited to the state of semi-isolation into which Sindh had fallen since the decline of the Mughal empire.1In the workings of this system and in its revenue and judicial administration could be discerned the signs of a Mughal system, the sharp outlines of which had become blurred by the patriarchal and tribal nature of the Kalhora and particularly the Talpur regimes.2 Under the Mughal Government, Sindh was divided into the sarkars of Bakhar (Upper Sindh) and Thatta (Lower Sindh) in die subah of Multan.3 In the sarkar of Bukkur were the important towns of Shikarpur, Sukkur, Rohri, and Sehwan. Thatta was the most important town of Lower Sindh and it controlled the ports of Shah-bunder, Lahri-bunder, and Aurangbunder. Sindh was united under the Kalhoras in 1701, the first Sindhi dynasty since the fall of the Sammas in 1521. The Baloch Talpurs who replaced the Kalhoras in 1783, set up a confederacy of chiefs, each ruling his share of the country independently from his capital, Khairpur, Mirpur, and Hyderabad. The Amirs of Hyderabad were recognized by the others as the first among equals. In Hyderabad itself there were four Amirs ruling in partnership.4 The system of administration in Sindh at this time though conforming to the Mughal type in many respects had been considerably modified by the internal conditions of the country.

2

THE MAKING OF MODERN SINDH

These conditions and the trends of development differed from the main trends in the Indian development. This was especially true of the revenue administration where practice was necessitated by an agriculture dependent not on seasonal rainfall but almost entirely by the vagaries of the river Indus. In its dependence on the river, both in inundation or irrigation, the agricultural experience of Sindh was different from that of most other areas in India. The uniqueness of Sindh’s experience was reflected in the persistence of the batai or grain sharing system of revenue collection, the difficulties in imposing a cash assessment5 except in a very limited sense,6 and the elaborate code of remissions which provided for all contingencies. It was also apparent in the rules governing the maintenance of canals which bound the government, the zemindars and the cultivators in a system of shared responsibility and made the role of government an important one in maintaining agricultural production and the prosperity of the country. The responsibility for public works was therefore a necessary part of the government’s function in Sindh and one which it could afford to neglect under any circumstances. The Kalhoras had a great reputation as builders of canals7and under the Talpurs the names of Nasir Khan of Hyderabad and Nawab Wali Muhammad Khan Leghari, the famous minister of the Talpurs, were associated with canal building.8 The signs of the Mughal Imperial system could be clearly seen in the administrative and revenue divisions of the country which were known as parganas. The parganas of lower Sindh were Thatta, Chachgam, Kakralo, Dhareja, Imamwah, and Sundra. The parganas of Upper Sindh were Sundra, Shahdadpur, Khairpur, Gambat, Halani, Bhelani, Lahri, Sehwan, Chandko, Mogalli, Rupari, Kacha, and Chappa. The officer in charge of each pargana was known as sazawalkar or mukhtiarkar, with a small establishment of munshis (clerks). The sazawalkar was the chief revenue officer and the chief law enforcer of the pargana. Each pargana was subdivided into tappaf which were put in charge of revenue officers known as kardars who had

THE STRUCTURE OF ADMINISTRATION

3

smaller establishments. Larger towns were in charge of Foujdars and daroghas and the smaller towns in charge of kotwals. Foujdars and kotwals usually commanded a small mounted police force but their criminal jurisdiction was limited. The police force itself was very small as on the whole prevention of crime was made a local responsibility, each village community being held responsible for any theft that was traced to.it, and paying a fine if it was unable to find the thief. An efficient system of crime detection was maintained through paggis or trackers.9 The system of local responsibility worked well as the zemindars made it their business to keep a check on the lawless elements in the society. The mukhtiarkars and the kardars were the judges and the magistrates as well as the revenue collectors of the district. In all important matters, however, justice was administered by the Amirs themselves, in accordance with Muslim Law. Thus in theory punishments that could be imposed were mutilation, flogging, imprisonment, fines, and the death penalty for murder.10 The law was interpreted rather leniently in practice and the death .penalty was seldom inflicted,11 the payment of blood-money was frequently accepted by the injured party as com pensation. There were no regular prisons and the government made no allowance for the maintenance of prisoners who, when unable to pay for themselves in prison, went out in the streets to beg for food. Sometimes the accused persons went through a ‘trial by ordeal’ to prove their innocence if there was no direct proof. A man was not considered guilty of a capital offence if he killed a wife or female relative suspected of adultery.12 On the whole, Sir James Outram reported: ‘In Scinde the penal code is milder than in most Muslim countries, and during the whole period of our connection with that province, mutilation was seldom, if ever inflicted save for offences, which according to our code would have been punished with death’.13The country as a whole was remarkably free from crime except for cattle stealing which was hardly regarded as a crime.14Rathbome, one of Napier’s favourite deputies and usually a severe critic of the

4

THE MAKING OF MODERN SINDH

Talpur regime, paid a tribute to the working of this system.‘...The Meer’s system would have been just as good as ours, and much better for the country, as at present circumstanced, than the most perfect system of English law, for under it, the people have what they could not have under a more perfect system, the speediness of decision, accompanied by a freedom from costs....’.13 Civil and criminal justice were both administered by the same authorities. When civil cases were decided by a government agency, one-fourth of the amount in litigation was taken as the government share. All civil disputes were, however, in the first instance referred to arbitration and in most cases the decision was accepted by both parties. Muslim private law regarding marriage, inheritance, etc. was administered by qazis, and for the Hindus by panchayets made up of the eminent men of the community.16 A great deal was written and discussed at the time of the conquest about the lack of village organization in Sindh. But the tribal organization of the vast majority of the Sindhi population, whether indigenous or Baloch, was very strong,17 and the authority of the chieftain, the sardar or the wadero was unquestioned in the village. In Sindh the authority of this headman stood in the place of a village organization, and around it the village community grouped itself. The majority of the Muslim population was tribal and lived mainly in rural areas. The Hindus of the Thar and Parkar districts, bordering on Rajputana, were also organized into tribes.18 In 1843 Sindh had been at peace for over half a century. It had begun to recover from the civil wars of the Kalhora period when the British pressure began to be felt. The towns of Karachi, Hyderabad, Shikarpur, and Sukkur were rising in importance, and a general sense of law and order prevailed in the country. It was remarked by a British observer: ‘The laws and institutions of Scinde were such as suited the genius of the people and the progress they had made in civilization—an expression of the

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natural mind of Scinde as our own constitution is that of England’.19 On the occupation of the country after the battles of Miani and Dubba, a Martial Law regime was established and Napier was appointed Civil and Military Governor of Sindh,20 with the monthly salary of Rs 8000.21 Sindh was to be administered as a detached Province directly under the Supreme Government and every effort was to be made to make its administration a model for the rest of India.22 In order to achieve this model administration, Napier was given a completely free hand and the full moral and financial support of the Government of India under Ellenborough.23 Napier lost no time in making arrangements for the administration of the country. He communicated his plans to Ellenborough, enclosing a diagram ‘to exhibit at a glance the construction of the Government I have begun to arrange for Sind’.24 The system Napier devised divided the Government into four branches: 1. The purely military branch or regular troops on which all power in a freshly conquered country depend. 2. A force of Irregular Horse more convenient than regular troops ready to march at a moment’s notice. These men mix with the people more than the regular troops, but they hold the rank of yeomen and do not allow of much familiarity. 3. The Police; this force is never very cordial with the community, therefore, the Policeman is generally the point of collision between the rulers and the ruled in the first instance. These three powers form an echelon. The Policeman leads the attack. If he be too weak the Irregular Horseman comes up to his aid, and lastly if that does not do, the regular soldier enters into battle.

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4. The civil branch, this has one chief and is constructed on the same gradatory principle as the military.25 The heads of each department reported to the Governor, who made sure that the machinery of the Government worked well, both in the civil and the military branches. Napier divided the province into three Collectorates, apart form Upper Sindh Frontier which was entrusted to a military commander who discharged military and political duties.26 He chose his Collectors from his most trusted officers, in whom he had greater confidence than in any covenanted civilians that could be sent from the Company’s territories.27 He sent Lieutenant Rathbome to Hyderabad ‘to assume duty of the magistrate of the town and to collect revenue in Lower Scinde on the bank of the Indus’.28 Revenues on the Right Bank (the Karachi Collectorate) were to be collected by Captain Preedy, and Captain Pope was sent to Sukkur and Rohri (Upper Sindh) to carry out revenue and magisterial duties.29 Lieutenant E. J. Brown was to be the Governor’s Assistant, ‘the Commissioner for civil administration for the whole of the conquered territory’.30 The three Collectors were to send monthly reports to Brown stating receipts and expenditure of their respective districts from which the Commissioner was to draw up a general report for the Governor. Certain general principles of administration were circulated for the guidance of the newly appointed officers:' The above officers are not to make any avoidable change in the ancient customs and laws of the country as we now find them. The conquest of a country is sufficient convulsion for the people of that country without adding to their disturbance by abrupt innovations on their habits and the usual routine of their social life.... Officers are, therefore, requested to confine their exertions to the correction of those numerous evils which the late tyrannical government of the Balooch conquerors had inflicted upon the government of Scinde to make the people hail the coming of the British as a memorable redemption from slavery and oppression, or look upon it with apathy as mere change of cruel master.31

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Below the Collectors, who combined the revenue and judicial functions, were put the Deputy Collectors, with more limited revenue and judicial powers than the Collectors. There were five such Deputies in the Shikarpur Collectorate, seven in Hyderabed, and three in Karachi.32 The office of sazawalkar was abolished, the incumbents being made kardars with onefifth of their former pay, the actual kardars’ salaries being reduced to half the former pay.33 The kardars, whom Napier saw as the equivalent of ‘primates in Cephalonia’ and ‘answerable to the Amirs for everything’,34 were confirmed in their offices, and instructions were issued to them to reassure all classes of people that ‘their happiness and prosperity will be the first object of the British government.35 They were further instructed to collect revenue according to traditional usage and to collect information and prepare statements about the population, land cultivated and waste, the nature of crops, shares of the cultivators, zemindars and of the government, and a list of all the landholders. They were also to make reports on canals, their extent and condition, and who was responsible for their maintenance and expense.36 In short, they were instructed to collect all information that would be useful for the new rulers of the country. The kardars, the traditional subordinate officers of the Amirs, were the bottom layer in the ‘gradatory’ system of administration set up by Napier. ‘The Kardar of the village’, wrote Napier, ‘collects the revenues from the ryots. The subordinates receive it from the kardar; they in turn collect and deliver it in large masses to a deputy Collector who brings it or its value to Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Kurrachee whence the Collectors account for it to the Commissioner’.37 The judicial and police systems were closely linked with the system thus defined: ‘The magistrate or Collectors also decide cases between man and man, and from this decision there is an appeal first to the Commissioner and again to the government. The magistrates also assemble punchayets. If the Kardar has difficulty with the people he calls in the Policeman who in turn is supported as aforesaid’.38

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THE MAKING OP MODERN SINDH

In Napier’s scheme of administration the police played an important part, and its creation and organization was an enduring contribution to the system of Indian administration. It was the model followed in the reorganization of police in the Punjab and elsewhere in India.39 The chief characteristic of Napier’s police was its separation from magisterial functions. The police was confined to the duty of preventing or detecting crime, while the magisterial authorities were to be limited to the duty of investigating judicially the cases brought before them by the police.40 In organizing the police, Napier relied partly on the example of the Irish constabulary, but largely on his own ideas worked out when he was governing the Ionian island of Cephalonia.41 Napier explained the organization in a letter to Ellenborough: This Police would consist both of Horse and Foot, the latter being large in number. They should be stationed in small bodies in various parts of the country having reference to the collection of Revenue. An European officer to be placed at the head of the Establishment and denominated the Captain of Police. To him the three lieutenants of Police at Hyderabad, Kurrachee and Sukkur should be subordinate, the other officers should be natives. This force should be charged with preserving the internal peace of the country, and assisting the District Collectors in getting the Revenue. The Policemen instead of being kept separate from the people (as I have proposed the Scinde Horse should be) would mix among them as much as they pleased. I would arm the Horse police with carbines and swords and the Foot Police with carbines and bayonets. My motives for keeping the Scinde Horse distinct from the people.... are that they will be more faithful, more disciplined, and hold the peasantry more in awe of them, seeing them rarely. On the other hand, the Police by mixing with the people, would acquire great local knowledge both of what was going on and of the country, which would make them especially useful in collecting the revenue, detecting conspiracies and as guides in case of war. In case of disturbance they would rely on the Scinde Horse.42

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R. K. Pringle, who succeeded Napier in the Government in Sindh reported in 1847 that police force, then, was altogether composed of 2,210 men, mounted police being 838 men, the rural police 896 men, and the city police 476 men.43 They were under the exclusive direction and control of a ‘captain and three lieutenant and posted in a manner best calculated to secure the peace of the country and to provide for the various jail guards and other civil duties’.44 On his tour of Sindh, the Governor of Bombay Sir George Clerk found the police department the one branch of administration worthy of praise. ‘From all I can learn the police seems to have been formed on a principle combining simplicity with efficiency’.45 The system of police thus established was continued with only slight modifications under Frere, as it was found well suited to the needs of the province.46 The authority for criminal and civil justice was vested in the Collectors and Deputy Collectors to a limited extent.47 They were given no instructions except to keep the general principles of Court Martial in mind.48 Their decisions needed confirmation by a military commission whose decision was then subject to revision by the Governor in whose hands lay all final decisions of any importance. The pressure of judicial work soon grew so great and with it the need for expert opinion that it became necessary to acquire a legal adviser. Captain Keith Young of the Bengal Army was duly sent in September 1847, to become Judge Advocate-General in Napier’s government.49 On his arrival in Sindh, Young found that court proceedings were generally characterized by a lack of proper procedure and appeared to be ‘a combination of irregularities’.50 Napier was, however, loath to make any changes in a system which he considered perfectly adequate, military as opposed to civil and well suited to the inhabitants of the country: The system I pursue is this. All men accused of crimes liable to the punishment of death I bring before a military commission composed of a field officer and two captains or lieutenants above seven years service. All minor criminals 1 leave to the various magistrates, reserving to myself the confirmation of their sentences, in a certain

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THE MAKING OF MODERN SINDH

class of offences that are of a grave nature, though not deserving of capital punishment. I leave to the said magistrate the decision in chief on small cases. The right of appeal is left open to all these courts.... It is a simple scheme of military government, in some degree aided by the intervention of powers vested in the civil magistrates. The state of the country rendered this necessary.31

Napier was implacably opposed to introducing any ‘system of ‘politics’ in another form’, which he believed any proper civil and criminal code of procedure would mean.52 In his drive for justice and reform Napier became very concerned with wiping out practices in the country which appeared to him savage and barbarous. One such practice was the frequent murders of unfaithful wives (the practice known as karokari in Sindh and Balochistan). Early in his regime, Napier had announced that all murders would be punished with death and had proceeded to carry out his threat.53 As a consequence it was discovered that the incidence of female ‘suicides’, had greatly increased. Surmising correctly that these suicides were in fact murders, Napier threatened to visit with dire punishment any village where a woman was found to have committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. A fine was to be levied on the whole village, the kardar was to be dismissed, and all the dead woman’s husband’s family to be brought to Karachi. This, he pronounced, ‘will cause such danger and trouble to you all that you shall tremble if a woman is said to have committed suicide in your district, for it will be an evil day for all in that place’.54 The crime decreased but for a short while only, and soon Napier was writing again: ‘I beg of the magistrate to warn the kardars that they must find out the truth; they can do so with ease; and if they do not, they too shall suffer. It is just one of those fearful conspiracies to baffle a just law, that must be met with great firmness, and punished with great rigour’.55 In the long run the crime did not decrease in any significant sense, and between June 1852 and April 1853, no less than 42 cases were reported.56 The murder of unfaithful wives continued to rank with cattle stealing as a popular crime.

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The death penalty did not prove to be an adequate deterrent to murder, and finally the Judge Advocate-General was forced to seek some other method of punishment which might prove more effective. After consulting local opinion, he came to the conclusion that only transportation would do: It is dreaded as something terrible by the people of these provinces, and the punishment of death is, I believe regarded with comparative indifference... In the opinion of Meer Khan Muhd. The very name Kala Panee (banishment across the waters) is enough to subdue the heart of the greatest villains. The natives of Scinde are particularly attached to their own soil, and expatriation to them is the greatest of horrors, for they must bid adieu to their families, friends and even language as well as their native land, why you know the ex-Ameers thought little of their being deposed compared to their being expatriated.57

Civil and criminal cases were both decided by the same authorities, but no attempt was made to put civil procedure on a proper footing.38 A five per cent institution fee was ordered,59 but the cases when filed were referred generally to panchayets or qazis, whose decisions were often upset by the magistrate or his deputies, without any reason being recorded. Very few cases were presented for trial.60 In spite, however, of the shortcomings in the administration the prevalent opinion was that justice was available under Napier’s regime. As Young put it, ‘..... I believe so long as Sir Charles is here, they will have most good and substantial justice done, whatever it may be administered to them; but still in a matter of such very great importance, no individual, however high he may stand in public estimation, should be trusted an instant longer than it con be avoided, with irresponsible power now enjoyed by Sir Charles’.61 The ‘irresponsible power’ enjoyed by Napier soon came to an end, as in August 1847, he felt compelled by the ill health of his family to send in his resignation.62 The Governor-General had recommended as early as 1846, that after the retirement of Napier, Sindh should be attached to the Bombay Presidency,63 though

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any immediate change in the status of the Province was inadvisable. As Lord Hardinge put it: ‘A warlike and military people are more likely to be disposed to obey the chief who conquered than any other public officer who could be selected by the Government’.64 Unsettled conditions in the Punjab in 1844-5, ntade it necessary to maintain a strong force in Sindh under the command of Napier, which in turn made it necessary to administer Sindh independently. But by 1846, the situation had become calmer and Hardinge felt that the time had come to think of long term arrangements for Sindh: ‘the state of affairs in the Punjab and in Scinde are now sufficiently disclosed, and have arrived at such a settled state of tranquillity and order as to justify me in recommending a system for the future management of Scinde’.65 Hardinge proposed that a Commissioner, ‘the most able civil officer in the Presidency’, with ‘an active and judicious military officer’ to assist him, should be sent to administer the Province. A detailed scheme of administration could be worked out later.66 The officer chosen for this post was R. K. Pringle, the most senior civil servant in the Bombay Secretariat. Pringle took charge from Napier on 30 September 1847. Napier sailed from Karachi the same day.67 The Governor-General had also suggested in his Minute of August 1847, that Sir George Clerk, the Governor of Bombay, should take the earliest opportunity to visit Sindh and see for himself the conditions in the new province and make the necessary recommendations for its administration: ‘His Lordship is convinced that 2 or 3 months can be most profitably spent by His Honour in making himself acquainted with the local peculiarities of the Province and the state of the various departments as they now exist’.68 The Governor was asked to wait until the Province was formally attached to the Presidency, so that he could have full authority to make any changes he might wish to make on the spot. Meanwhile, the Government of Sindh was divided into the civil and military branches, the former was the responsibility of

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the Commissioner officially designated Commissioner-in-Sindh, and the latter the charge of a senior military officer.69 For the time being the Commissioner was assigned the help of Lieutenant Lester of the Deccan Revenue Survey and Captain E. J. Brown, the Secretary to the Government of Sindh under Napier.70 The Commissioner was asked to submit a comprehensive report covering ‘the extent, population, revenue and resources of the several territorial divisions, the nature of the land tenures and the system of revenue management, the customs and other branches of revenue, the character of the people and their feelings towards our Government, the system of civil and criminal justice and police, the means of conducting it and their efficiency, the establishment in the several departments,....and generally all the points which may appear to the Commissioner requisite for conveying such a view of the condition and resources of the country as will be necessary to give effect to the instructions we may eventually receive for its adm inistration’.71 The Commissioner was to correspond with the Governor directly and the correspondence with the subordinates was to be carried on through the Secretary to the Government of Sindh.72 On taking over charge of the Province, Pringle, in response to these instructions, drew up a report sketching the administration as he had found it. He was unable to send a full and accurate account of the revenue arrangements and rural administration, but tilled in the picture of the administrative establishments under Napier. Apart from the separation of the military and civil authority, the Commissioner felt that some reform in the judicial system was urgently necessary, as the system Military Commissions was unsuited to a civilian government. He suggested that judicial system in Sindh should be modelled on the one established in the Deccan ‘under the sole Commissioner, the Honble. Mr Elphinstone, on our first acquisition of that country’.73 The method of judicial administration was duly amended and brought in line with the civilian status of the Province. Regular tribunals were established and cases ordered to be disposed of according to the spirit of the code of 1827.74 The Commissioner

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exercised the highest judicial as well as executive functions' and was assisted in his judicial duties by an officer known as ‘the Judicial Assistant to the Commissioner’. The court of the Judicial Assistant regulated all the procedure of civil law and as a final court of appeal corresponded to the Sadar Diwani Adalat, and in a criminal sense corresponded to the Sadar Foujdari Adalat confirming all sentences requiring its sanction, except those of death and transportation for life, for which alone the order of the Bombay Governor in Council was necessary. On the introduction of Criminal and Civil Procedure Codes in January 1862, the power of life and death was thenceforward to be exercised by the Commissioner-in-Sindh without reference to the Bombay Government. This combination of judicial and executive responsibility lasted till 1866, when the Sind Courts Act 186675 declaring the constitution of Courts of Criminal Judicature in Sindh was passed. This Act abolished the judicial function of the Commissioner and provided a Sadar Court for Sindh, over which the Judicial Commissioner was to preside. The court of the Judicial Commissioner which was the highest court of appeal in civil matters in the Province had three or more judges, the Judicial Commissioner and at least two assistants, one of whom was to be a barrister of not less than five years’ standing. The Judicial Commissioners were to be appointed by the local government and were removable by them. The Judicial Commissioner also controlled all other civil and criminal courts throughout the Province, besides having supervision over all the jails in the Province. At the district level under Pringle and later under Frere, criminal and civil jurisdiction was to be exercised by the Collectors (who were designated Collectors and District Magistrates) and their deputies.76 These officers had powers of criminal jurisdiction higher than those of a magistrate in India.77 Sixteen officers (Deputy Magistrates in charge of districts), had powers to dispose of all cases requiring less than seven years’ imprisonment, all sentences above one year being subject to the confirmation of the Commissioner. Four officers, the three Magistrates and the Deputy Collectors, Thar and Parkar, had

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powers to dispose of all cases including cases involving capital punishment, sentences of above seven years’ imprisonment requiring confirmation from the Commissioner. With reference to the crimes that came before these courts, Frere noted that they seldom required punishment that exceeded the seven year imprisonment limit except in cases which came under the head of capital offences. There were in the Province in 1851, therefore, four courts for the trial of murders and other capital offences, and sixteen for the trial of lesser crimes. Frere found that the number of courts was still not adequate for the needs of the Province: ‘This number of courts has not been found by any means too great; indeed notwithstanding the fact that the powers of the Magistrates’ Assistants at detached stations (the Deputy Magistrates) far exceed those of the same rank of officers in India, the great evil most loudly complained of, and one of the great obstacles to a good system of criminal justice, is the immense distances which the parties and witnesses have to travel to reach the courts of justice’.78 The only solution that Frere could find to this problem was to increase the judicial powers of the traditional subordinate officials, the kardars. At first when he put forward this proposal, the other European officers were sceptical of the results, but Frere acted on it nevertheless and found that it worked well.79 The kardars had in fact long exercised an ‘irregular and unrecognized sort of Judicial authority’,80 when in, August 1851, Frere conferred civil and criminal powers on them, hoping thereby to make justice more accessible to the people and also to relieve the European officers of many of the petty details of administration.81 The ordinary powers of a kardar authorized the infliction of a fine of Rs 15 or imprisonment for twenty days, and he might be empowered to pass sentences of fine up to Rs 100, of imprisonment for four months and of flogging not exceeding twenty-five stripes. Authority was also given to the kardars’ head munshis to exercise jurisdiction during the absence of their superior.82 The Magistrates and the Deputies were directed to ‘revise’, mitigate or annul, but not enhance, any sentence passed by a kardar. When a sentence appeared too

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lenient, it was to be annulled and the case sent up to the Magistrate or his Deputy to be tried by them.83 The European officers were reminded that the beneficial exercise of powers conferred on the kardars ‘would best be promoted by interfering as little as possible in the way of alteration or mitigation of their sentences, which should only be altered when it was absolutely necessary to prevent in justice; but that every error or omission should be pointed out for their subordinates’ information and future guidance, and it was suggested that this would be better done by personal communication and example than by increasing the amount of correspondence’.84 In the winter of 1847-8, Clerk made his scheduled visit to Sindh. The report that he drew up as a result of this tour on the condition of the Province and the method of its administration became the basis of the future government of the Province.83 In his Minute of April 1848, Clerk reviewed all aspects of the civil and military administration of the Province, and made recommendations for the improvement and organization of the establishment, and on the advisability of adopting the vernacular as the language of revenue and judicial administration.86 The most important sections in the Minute were the ones dealing with the alienated lands and revenue arrangements in the Province.87 Clerk’s main criticism of the system that had been followed in Sindh was that no use had been made of the traditional village authorities, the jagirdars and the zemindars, in administering the country. The result had been that the European officials were overburdened with work and the efficiency of the administration had suffered. The use of traditional authority was basic to Clerk’s recommendations for Sindh. He argued that it would ensure the cooperation of this powerful class of the population and identify its interests with those of the Government and it would leave the European officers more time to devote to their other duties. The simplified revenue system in which settlements had been made with the zemindars and the jagirdars would allow the Collectors to undertake additional duties of looking after the canals, thus removing the present friction between an independent Canal

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Department and the Collectors. Thus police, revenue, and canal administration would all be simplified, and, economy would also be ensured in government expenditure. A system such as this was in Clerk's opinion suited to the country ‘even in a more advanced stage; it serves public treasury, and enables the state to avail itself of the men of the most influence and intelligence in the country’.88 Regarding the financial arrangements of establishment, Clerk suggested that reductions should be made in the expensive establishm ent m aintained in Sindh, starting with the Commissioner’s salary which was to be Rs 5000, the amount received by Elphinstone’s successor in the Deccan.89 The administration of the Province below the district level was carried on as hitherto with very few modifications,90 and some changes were gradually introduced at the Provincial and C ollectorate level. Until 1890, Sindh continued to be administered by military and uncovenanted officers. The only exceptions were the Commissioner himself and Secretary to Government, both of whom were members of the Bombay Civil Service.91 Officers serving in Sindh formed a special service known as the ‘Sind Commission’.92 Administratively Sindh fell into the category of a non-regulation sub-province under a Commissioner, whose powers were considerably larger than those of a Commissioner of a Division, as were those of the Collectors below him.93 Under certain Acts the Commissioner was empowered to extensive powers in the Province to appoint judges94 and had powers that in the Presidency were in the hands of the heads of the departments of customs, salt, opium, and abkari.95 Under Act V of 1868, the Governor of Bombay in Council was authorized to delegate to the Commissioner-in-Sindh wide powers in local government. The non-regulation nature of the Province of Sindh was only nominal, however, as the principal regulations and acts of the Regulation Provinces were extended to it as the need arose.96 The special problems of Sindh and its differences from the rest of the Presidency were also recognized in its position, as a

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‘Scheduled’ area. It was thus ‘not necessarily brought within and was from time to time removed from the operation of general Acts of legislature and the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts judicature’.97 For administrative purposes, the three divisions of the Province under Napier, the Collectorates of Shikarpur, Hyderabad, and Karachi, were retained. Since 1847, John Jacob had been in charge of pacifying the northern frontiers of Sindh bordering on Balochistan, the district known as the Upper Sindh Frontier covering 2,225 square miles. Jacob exercised full administrative and magisterial powers and was also the Commandant of the military force in the area. Under him were an Assistant Political Superintendent, a Deputy Collector with magisterial powers, and below that kardars as in other districts. The joint civil and military command thus established by Jacob continued to be exercised by his successors long after this region had become a regular District.98 On his arrival in Sindh, Pringle was unable to understand the nature of Jacob’s authority on the frontier and with his civilian experience disapproved of political and military authority being exercised by the same person. He ordered Goldney, the Collector of Shikarpur to take charge of the political affairs, that is, the relations with the tribes across the frontier. In the short controversy that followed, the Bombay Government backed Jacob’s authority and political powers were restored to him.99 The other frontier on the Kutch border was the Thar and Parkar district covering 12,729 square miles. It was administered by a political Agent at Bhuj till 1856, when it was incorporated in the Hyderabad Collectorate. Hyderabad proved, however, too remote for the desert people of Thar and Parkar. After some trouble in 1859,100 and also because of the need for a check on the marauders from the Rajputana tribes, the Desert was made a Political Superintendency in the Hyderabad Collectorate.101 The Collector exercised extensive powers of revenue and magisterial superintendence. In his capacity as revenue officer, the Collector saw to the general collection of revenue of the district in all its branches, the superintendence of the expenditure

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of local funds, and the construction of local public works, the latter through the agency of the local funds engineer of the district. He was responsible through his deputies for the clearance of the canals and various other matters that would arise in the' administration of the district. He was also the highest judicial authority in the district.102 The number of Deputy Collectors was made uniform and six were assigned to each Collectorate.103 Some members of the Talpur family were also taken into service as extra Assistant Collectors ‘in order that they might under British rule exercise some share in the administration of their native Province’.104 There were also the Public Works department under a Superintending Engineer of the Province, a Customs department at Karachi under a Collector of the Customs, a Postal department under a Post-Master General, and an Educational department under an Educational Inspector, whose duties until 1871, had been performed by the Covenanted Assistant Commissioner.105 There was also a Civil Medical department with five Civil Surgeons. A Telegraph department was established in 1864-5. A short time after he had been in the province, it became apparent that Pringle with his ‘Regulation’ background of experience, was not able to organize a newly conquered territory like Sindh. Clerk had implied as early as January 1848, that Pringle had not taken all the trouble he might have done to collect proper information about the Province.106This developed into an ill-tempered correspondence between the Commissioner and the Bombay Government about what was considered by the latter to be a lack of zeal and attention to duty on the part of the Commissioner. It was claimed that the latter had not toured the country as extensively as he should have done to gain firsthand information for the government, instead of relying on ‘old N apierian hands’ for what was presumably prejudiced accounts of the administrative situation.107 Sir John Hobhouse Member court of Directors East India company, famous for his friendship with Lord Byron, the poet, wrote to Lord Falkland, the new Governor of Bombay, ‘I am sorry to leam that Mr Pringle does not do quite so well in Sindh as you expected. If he

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continues to disappoint he must be removed’.108 When it became absolutely clear that the Government would not be satisfied with his administration, Pringle resigned.109 The question of filling the Commissioner’s place proved somewhat troublesome. It was the most important post the Bombay Government could confer, yet a senior civil servant was not necessarily, the obvious choice, as had been proved by Pringle’s failure. The country had only recently emerged from a Martial Law regime, its borders were as yet unsettled, but the choice of a military man was not favoured as the civilian nature of the Government needed to be emphasized.110 Dalhousie was of the opinion that an average officer from Bombay should be chosen rather than one from another Presidency ‘which may cause resentment’.111 On his own initiative and in the face of the opposition of his Council, Falkland chose the comparatively junior and young Bartle Frere, the ex-Resident at Sattara, as Commissioner-in-Sindh.112 Attached to a highly developed and cohesive Presidency, but removed from it by sea and a difficult terrain, Sindh felt at the same time effects of its remoteness and the non-recognition of its special problems. To make its presence felt and its problems understood in Bombay, where the hostility to Napier had left an aftermath of impatience with Sindh,113 the Province needed an advocate like Frere who was both aware of the necessity for development and not afraid to present his case. Within four months of his arrival, Frere had toured most of the country except Nagar Parkar and was pleased to see its capacity for improvement: ‘As regards the country I have been agreeably surprised with few exception—as about Halla—the Munchur lake, and the district north of it—neither land nor water seem to be made the most of. Parts as between Thatta and Kurrachee—Shikarpoor and this place, are nearly unreclaimed desert. But all is improvable and that not by any difficult or costly process but by means at once simple and familiar to the people. It will be I think purely our own fault if the country and the revenue do not improve rapidly’.114 The Government had, however, so far failed almost entirely to develop the country or

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even to adm inister it efficiently. Frere was especially disappointed as he had heard so much of Napier’s abilities : ‘My impression of the civil administration of Sindh has been one of disappointment, believing as I did, and do, that Sir Charles Napier’s natural talent would be conspicuous in civil as in military matters. Indeed it has proved so wherever as in the case of the police, any branch forced itself on his personal attention; but matters which did not press were left to men who had no experience, nor great natural ability to supply its place. The result is that no part of the Revenue or Judicial administration is either satisfactory in itself or uniform’.115 Lack of experience was in Frere’s opinion largely responsible for the chaotic scene in Sindh: Every man did what was right in his own eyes and in the most material points, every Collectorate, and often every Deputy Collectorate has a system of its own. As might be expected, men are generally very well satisfied with things as they have themselves made them; not conscious of the existence of any defect; and very sceptical as to the superiority of the Indian management. Consequently instead of benefiting by our dear bought Indian experience and starting from the point, still far short of perfection to which we have there attained, they have in Sind repeated all our early Indian errors of management. I believe there is not a mistake in the revenue and judicial management of the last century to which I could not from the little I have already seen produce a parallel in Sind’.116 The one exception to this general rule of mismanagement, Frere found in Jacobabad, ‘a spot least favoured by nature to be found in Sind’, where Jacob had settled Baloch tribes and where Jacob himself lived ‘like a Baron of old with his officers and men, and a daily Durbar of as wild hill savages as you could find this side of the Black Sea’.117 While retaining the administrative structure set up by Napier and developed under Pringle, Frere sought to improve its efficiency by intensive but tactful personal supervision. He was severely handicapped by the lack of financial support from

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Bombay, which meant that he could not improve the establishment by recruiting experienced civilians from Bombay, as they expected salaries considerably higher than Sindh could afford to pay. When a vacancy occurred in the post of the Judicial Deputy Magistrate, Frere wrote to Elphinstone of his difficulties: ... an officer of much experience and judgement is required, and the pay is no more than an Assistant Judge—700 rupees. During the absence of the Collector and Magistrate, he is for 6 months—the busiest in the year—the only civil officer on the spot—and every kind of duty is thrown upon him... the losses caused by an inexperienced or careless officer are often very serious, blunders made, you hear but a part... the late judicial Deputies have within the last two years, made very serious mistakes, some of them costing Governments large sums in various ways—and all doing more or less injury to private parties.118 The struggle to get an adequate allowance for the province was continued by Frere all the time he was in Sindh. He wrote to Elphinstone in 1855, of yet another disappointment when he got a decision rejecting an increase in the allowance for the civil establishment in Sindh: I received by the last steamer the Resolution of Government on the Court decision regarding Establishment. This throws us all back as far as Establishment are concerned, pretty much where we, our ancestors, were in the year of grace 1843.119 As the problem of money practically ruled out the possibility of getting experienced officers, Frere had to rely on his young recruits, whom he sought to turn into efficient and hardworking officers by example and encouragement.120 He familiarized himself with the country and its administration by extensive tours every year in the winter months121 and at the same time delegated powers to his subordinates, fully backing them in their decisions. In his reply to a farewell address presented to him in Sindh, Frere explained his administrative policy:

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In other branches of administration to which you specially allude, if I have been successful it has been by exposing to the utmost of my power the centralizing fashion which has of late years been so common and which I have always considered to be one great cause of our late disasters....I feel convinced that however, earnestly or ably I might have laboured, the results would have been comparatively insignificant had I acted on any other principle than that of giving to every workman the free scope and best aid I could, to do in his own way that work which, God put into his heart to attempt’.122 Early in his career in Sindh, Frere realized that it was vital, any development or improvement was to take place, and the administration made efficient, to build roads and bridges, improve the harbour and generally to undertake public works. For purposes of trade and Imperial defence, it was especially important to improve the harbour and to make alternative arrangements to the difficult navigation of the Indus delta by building a railway or canal.123 To enlist aid for these projects, Frere embarked on an extensive correspondence with the Government of Bombay and the Supreme Government at C alcutta. Dalhousie was sym pathetic, but the Bombay Government less so. It certainly did not expedite matters as Dalhousie noted, ‘I have seen with great pleasure the many efforts towards progress and improvement that you have been making in Scinde. I should be better pleased if official questions took something less than a year or two before they reached this Government. It is a long road from Kurachee to Calcutta via Bombay and certainly the travelling very slow upon it for official correspondence’.124 The attitude of the Bombay Government towards Sindh was marked by a persistent lack of sympathy with the latter’s problems. Not only was there the Napier past of military despotism but Sindh was now a deficit Province125 and needed a large amount of capital expenditure both for public works and in order to maintain an efficient establishment. The characteristic response to a request for money was the one given to a proposal for road building,..... ‘with the silent highway of the Indus we

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want no roads in Sind’.126 The invariable reply to development schemes submitted for approval was a plea to economize. In despair Frere wrote: The Government do not object to any single specific proposition I make. They do not name any one Department in which I have exceeded, nor any sum to which I ought then or now to confine my suggestions in a lump, but they call for fresh statements ‘on a more economical plan’—the old story which has been going on ever since Sir Charles Napier went, and accompanied with a sermon on economy in vexatious and semi insulting language precisely as if they wanted me to follow Pringle’s example and resign.127 While Dalhousie was Governor-General some money was usually forthcoming for roads and other projects though tempered by Bombay’s caution, but after the Revolt of 1857, and ensuing financial difficulties of the Indian Government,128 even the ‘importunate widow’ as Falkland called Frere, was unable to get money for much needed projects. Thereafter Sindh came very low on the list of the financial priorities of the Bombay Government as is obvious from the slowness of work even of Imperial importance such as the Karachi harbour, which was only gradually improved, the first important stage in its works being completed in 1873.129

NOTES 1. H. T. Sorley. Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit, passim. Sorley discusses the Kalhora and Talpur determination to preserve the isolation of Sindh after the relaxation of the Mughal control over the country. 2. Ibid, p. 14. 3. Abul Fazl, Ain-e-Akbari (trans. H. S. Jarre) Vol. 2, pp. 325-41 4. The ruling Amirs of Hyderabad at the time of the conquest were Mir Nasir Khan, Mir Mahmood Khan, Mir Shahdad and Mir Sobdar; in Khairpur, Mir Rustam, and in Mirpur, Mir Sher Muhammed. 5. Abul Fazl, Ain-e-Akbari, ed. cit. p. 33, mentions division of crops of ghala baksh as being the prevalent form of assessment. 6. Some areas with cash crops paid mahsuli or cash assessment.

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7. M. R. Haig, Settlement Officer in Sindh over two decades (1862-82) gives a testimonial to the Kalhoras: ‘It was they who dug the Larkana canal called the Ghar, and first made Chanduka the garden of Sindh, and wherever they carried their lawless self assertion they turned the wastes into productive fields M. R. Haig. The Indus Delta Country, p. 112. 8. H. T. Lambrick, ‘Early canal administration in Sind’, Journal o f the Sind Historical Society, August 1973, Vol. 3, part 1, Sorley op. cit. part 1, passim. 9. R. Burton, Scinde, The Unhappy Valley, gives an account af a personal experience of the skill of the paggis or peris. Also K. Young, pp. 1854 (H.C.) Vol. XLIX, P. 273. Replies to Queries, Criminal Justice. 10. A. W. Hughes, A Gazetteer o f the Province o f Sind, 1876, pp. 47-8. 11. E. B. Eastwick, Dry leaves from Young Egypt, pp. 68-9, relates that he saw a man confined to a cage for murder at Thatta. A Sayyed by birth he had killed his brother to obtain some property, and being proved guilty, the Amirs had sentenced him to confinement for life: for said they ‘we cannot slay the seed of the Prophet’. 12. H. James, ‘The pergunnah of Chandookah’, pp. 1854 (H.C.) Vol. XLIX, Part V, p. 134. The practice of killing female relatives suspected of adultery appears to be a widely prevalent custom not only among the tribes of Sindh and Balochistan, (Karo Kari) but also of Arabia. In contemporary Iraq for instance this crime in legal language is known as Ghaslan lil Arr (washing away shame with blood) and is punishable in urban areas with a short imprisonment, while not regarded as a crime in the desert area. The Muslim law prescribes corporal punishment for the adulterous paitners. Al-Quran, Chapter 24, sura 2. 13. J. Outram, The conquest o f Scinde - A commentary, Vol. 2, p. 501. 14. H. B. E. Frere, Rough Notes on Sind, S. R. B. G. No. XVII. N. S. pp. 662-3. 15. A. Rathbome, Collector of Hyderabad, Replies to Queries, pp. 1854 (H.C.) Vol. XLIX. part X, p. 230. 16. Collector of Hyderabad, Shikarpur, and Karachi, ibid. 17. Hughes, op, cit., pp. 85-90, and Burton, Sind, Chapters IX, XII. 18. The main Hindu tribes were the Rajput Sodhas; some of the aboriginal tribes were Bhils, Kolis, Dheds, Shikaris, etc. Aitken, op. cit., p. 161. 19. J. Outram, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 475. 20. Ellenborough to Napier, 12 April 1843, R.C.O.S., Vol. 201, pol. 21. Aitken, op. cit., p. 139. 22. Ellenborough to Secret Committee, 22 April 1843, S. L. B. I., 1843, Vol. 28, pp. 259-60. 23. Napier-Ellenborough Correspondence, R. C. O. S., Vols. 200-201 pol. passim.

24. Napier to Ellenborough, April 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, pol. p. 11. 25. Napier to Ellenborough, April 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, pol. p. 11.

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26: The Upper Sindh Frontier was unsubdued till the arrival of John Jacob in early 1847, who pacified it and assumed full control. See below in the chapter. 27. Napier, Life o f Sir Charles Napier, Vol. Ill, p. 339. 28. General orders, Governor Scinde, to April 1843, S.L.B.I., 1843, Vol. 28. 29. The Collectorates were as follows:Karachi 16,000 sq. miles up to the Lasbela frontier. Hyderabad 30,000 sq. miles including Thar and Parkar. Shikarpur 11,532 sq. miles including Sukkur, Upper Sindh, Frontier and Larkana districts. 30. General orders, Governor Scinde, S. L. B. I., 1843, Vol. 28. 31. Ibid. 32. R. K. Pringle, Commissioner-in-Sindh to Governor Bombay. No. 2804, 1 October 1847 P. M. R. Selections X and XI, p. 370. 33. Hughes, op. cit., pp. 49-50. 34. Pope to Napier, 18 May 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, p. 35. Napier was very keen on putting into practice in Sindh ideas of administration he had worked out when governor of Cephalonia. One of these was the organization of the Police, the other die Kardars: ‘These men are the chiefs or head men of each village, to each of which there is one; he appears to have been answerable to the Ameers for everything. When I was Resident of the Island of Cephalonia, each village was in a like manner ruled by the head, called the Primate. The duties of these men perfectly coincide with the functions performed by the Kardars of the Scindian villages’. Napier to Ellenborough, May 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, pol. 35. Ibid. 36. Napier to Ellenborough, May 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201. 37. Napier to Ellenborough, April 1843, R. C. O.S., Vol. 201, pol. 38. Napier to Ellenborough, April 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, pol. 39. H. B. E. Frere, 15 February 1859, in J. Gibbs, Memorandam on the Sind Police, Bombay 1859, p. 9, part 1. 40. Ibid, para 2. 41. Ibid, para 3, also Frere quoted in Martineau’s Frere, Vol. 1, p. 81, ‘This (Sir Charles) police system was at the time he introduced it, far in advance of any other in India’. 42. Napier to Ellenborough, 20 April 1843, R. C. O. S., Vol. 201, pol. 43. Commissioner-in-Sindh to Governor Bombay, 1October, 1847, P. M. R. Section X and XI, p. 374. 44. Ibid. 45. Sir G. Clerk, Minute 24, April 1848, para 62, p. 1854 (H.C.), Vol. XLIX, part 1. 46. J. Gibbs, Memorandum on the Sind Police, Bombay 1859, p. 1.

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47. Magistrates were empowered to enforce punishment up to six months’ imprisonment, fifty lashes and Rs 100 fine. J. Gibbs, ‘Brief sketch of judicial administration in Sind 1843-1860’, S. R. B. G. LVI, N. S. Preface, p. v. 48. A. F. Scott, Scinde, In the Forties, p. 31, 49. Ibid, p. 29. 50. A. F. Scott, op. cit., p. 34. Lambrick, Sir. C. Napier