[Editor’s Note.— The following is a new translation from the original Russian text of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Письмо из Индии” (“Letter from India”), written at Poona, February 18, 1880, and first published under her Russian pseudonym Radha-Bai in Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger), Vol. 147, No. 5 (May 1880), pp. 447–455. An earlier English translation appeared in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. II, pp. 293–302. The present translation has been made directly from the Russian, with reference to available transcriptions of the original 1880 printing, and aims to preserve as closely as possible both the meaning of Blavatsky’s text and the natural character of her English prose.]
Twenty years ago there was triumphantly paraded throughout India—as though for the greater intimidation of the public—Nana Sahib, shut up in an iron cage and delivered into English hands by his cousin, the Maharaja of Gwalior. For nearly six weeks they dragged him about, glorying in their capture, and ceased doing so only when, after making inquiries, they discovered that the prisoner was not the bloodthirsty avenger at all, but a false Nana Sahib—some unfortunate shepherd. What became of the poor wretch is unknown.
It seems that, to ease their consciences, they killed him, lest he should talk; while how the Maharaja contrived to wriggle out of the affair, and what explanation he gave for so clever a substitution, remains shrouded in darkness. It is said, however, that he excused himself on the plea that he had never personally seen the man who had been captured, but, relying upon the statements of his subordinates, had sent him straight to the English.
Now, in Madras, we have another exhibition of a rebel—this time, however, not a living one. The curious public may behold, preserved in a jar of spirits, the head of Chendria, the famous leader of the Rumpa rebels.
For more than a year this Chendria, without any material resources, with a mere handful of men and weapons dating from time immemorial, successfully fought the armed forces of one of the mightiest nations in the world. He entered upon the dangerous arena after declaring beforehand that he sacrificed his own life and those of his family; and he kept his word.
The Amrita Bazar Patrika—representative of the native opposition party in Calcutta and of all the malcontents of India—proclaims Chendria a hero, placing him incomparably above Phadke, the leader of brigands who has just been exiled from Poona.
“While the latter,” says the paper, “never rose in the eyes of Government above the rank of a chief of dacoits, Chendria, from the very first day of his career, was elevated by Government to the high dignity of a rebel.”
The outbreak at Rumpa began with the inhuman treatment of its inhabitants by the police. The Abkari law—an old law dug up by Sir John Strachey and brought again into force by him as a pretext for new taxes upon toddy, or coconut liquor—had never applied to their district, and they had been exempt from its exactions. Suddenly and without the least warning it fell upon their heads, through the sheer arbitrary will of the police. From time immemorial the people of Rumpa had drunk their toddy without paying anything for the palms growing upon their own lands.
The police demanded a tax upon every bush and tree, and not only beat all those who resisted them, but, while assisting the tax-collectors, outraged their wives and daughters in the most shameless manner.
The people of Rumpa killed a police official. They were declared rebels, and an armed force was sent against them.
At that very time Chendria, renowned for his strength and then hiding in the mountains of Narsapatam, hastened to the assistance of his countrymen at Rumpa and was unanimously chosen by them as their leader.
Chendria’s first move was towards the Vizagapatam Hills, where he burned several police posts, killed the police agents, and, taking from them their clothes, ammunition and weapons, dressed his own men in the uniforms of the unfortunate sepoys they had slain. A large detachment of police, sent to capture him and his whole band, was routed and put to flight by the Rumpa men, who, being dressed in uniforms identical with those of the police, could not be distinguished from the sepoys.
Chendria next fought Captain Blaxland hand to hand and put him to flight. After the Captain came Mr. Millett, chief inspector of the Godavari district, to avenge him; but Chendria not only completely defeated his detachment, he pursued the fugitives for nearly seven miles, after which he besieged him at Chodavaram and kept him there for three days. The detachment was saved only by the timely arrival of the garrison from Godavari.
It is remarkable that Chendria not only attacked no one else, but actually protected both natives and Englishmen who did not belong to the police. All his energy and furious vengeance seemed directed solely against the police and everyone connected with them. He slaughtered police sepoys and agents with calculated cruelty. Having caught a victim, he would take him to the nearest pagoda, compel the doomed man to walk three times around the idol of the goddess, and then, with one stroke of a sharp sword, cut off his head.
A fanatical believer in his idols, he held that no offering could be more pleasing to the gods than the heads and blood of police inspectors and sepoys. Until quite lately, the mere name of Chendria was enough to make the latter tremble and turn pale.
At last his audacity rose to such a point that he sent a direct proposal to the Government, as from one belligerent party to another. He proposed that the English release from prison his mother, wife, and brother, and recognize him himself as chief and leader of the people of Rumpa. In that case, he promised to trouble them no more and to spare the lives even of the police whom he so detested….
During this past year Chendria drove the English authorities almost frantic.
And now, although Chendria’s head has fallen from his shoulders, the Rumpa men are by no means disheartened. An hour after the death of their chief they elected another leader, one who is just as little inclined to shrink from anything, and is ready for the wildest exploits.
On the very day when Chendria’s head was sent to Madras, four hundred rebels attacked a strong police post. But this is not all. The authorities are expecting a second edition of the Rumpa rebellion in the Mysore district, where a band of four or five hundred dacoits has appeared.
This time their leader is again “a young and daring Brahmin”—of the Phadke type—but cleverer and braver than he, according to the Amrita and other newspapers, which advise the authorities, who do not know what next to do with Chendria’s head, to send it to the “Brahmin”—that he may meditate upon it while there is yet time.
“The head of Chendria,” observes the same newspaper, mocking the authorities, “appears to have possessed very little arithmetical capacity. The calculations performed within it were so feeble that it did not even take the trouble to reckon what awaited it in this fruitless struggle with the Government. But if the head lacked the gift of arithmetical deduction, it was nevertheless full of logic—that peculiar kind of logic which alone is capable of bringing an obstinate Government to its senses.
“Chendria’s logic must at last convince the Government of what all its well-wishers have vainly tried for so many years to impress upon it—namely, that there are burdens capable of breaking the back even of the most patient and enduring camel. Chendria’s logic has opened the eyes of Government and proved to it that there are limits both to the continual increase of taxation and to the arbitrary oppression of the police.”
“This head,” argues another newspaper, “might be sent from one police post to another, where the officials, while contemplating it, could draw from their recollections the most philosophical reflections.
“Then, with great advantage to India, it might be converted into a paperweight and placed in the study of Sir John Strachey, where he is accustomed to squeeze out of the bottomless depths of his creative imagination new schemes of taxation. The severed head might thus, by reminding the noble gentleman of the limits of human endurance in the matter of taxes, serve him as a measure for his future speculations; it might whisper in his ear that there is a point beyond which even he cannot compel the most patient of peoples to go—a point, finally, at which the meekest and most trustworthy of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects lose not only all patience, but, without any pun whatever, their heads.
“With equal advantage our rulers might send ‘the head’ to those members of their clique who first devised and enacted the law for the universal disarming of the country—the Arms Act.
“This one severed head alone is capable of settling the question: to what extent did the aforesaid law prove a serious obstacle to plans and armed action against the Government, even in the case of its former owner, the ‘dacoit’ Chendria?
“And only when this question concerning disarmament, and consequently the ‘helplessness’ of India in the event of another projected rebellion, has been categorically settled—only then, we repeat, will the Government have a perfect right to exhibit such heads in the public squares and proclaim loudly to the whole world: ‘Look and tremble! Thus perish, in the countries conquered by us, those who dare take up arms against British authority!’…”
Expressions of discontent in the native newspapers can, of course, carry but little weight with the British administration of India. But an outside observer may naturally ask: how can sixty thousand Europeans make themselves masters of a dissatisfied mass of two hundred and forty millions, even though that mass has been disarmed by law?
It is neither weapons nor courage that the Hindus lack, but unity of thought and concord.
The hatred of centuries between sects and castes—there lies Great Britain’s plank of salvation in her Indian Empire; and, above all, there is the almost total extinction of patriotism and the absence of any sense of personal dignity. The Brahmin who grinds the Shudra into the mud beneath the sole of his bare foot himself grovels in the dust before every European.
Only yesterday, one of the most distinguished descendants of a princely family of Poona, while standing upon the railway platform where he had gone to see off a friend, received a gross insult—and swallowed it without a word.
Without the slightest provocation, a half-drunken Englishman passing by cried loudly:
“There goes one of those traitors and intriguers—a Poona Brahmin!”
And with one sweep of his hand he knocked the Brahmin’s turban from his head beneath the wheels of the train.
A number of native policemen stood all around; and the Brahmin, personally acquainted with the Governor of Bombay, and at whose house Sir Richard Temin very often dines, merely turned pale and, with his mouth open, looked helplessly about him.
The law does not permit a native policeman to arrest an Englishman, even were the latter to commit murder before his very eyes; and there happened to be no European constable upon the platform at the time. Had there been one, ten to one he would not have arrested his countryman at the complaint of a native, but would very likely have appeared in court as a witness on behalf of the former.
The tipsy Englishman entered a railway carriage and drove away laughing….
I describe this scene as an eyewitness.
The native princes, in their turn, have every reason to be dissatisfied with the English Government, and very little reason either to love the English or to cherish sentiments of loyal devotion.
True, both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh were received with honour by these princes, praised, feasted, entertained, and assured of their loyalty. The princes appear to live in perfect harmony and friendship with Lord Lytton; through the political Residents they constantly send assurances of their complete affection and devotion to the Government.
When the Prince of Wales became dangerously ill and the doctors feared for his life, the Indian princes ordered the Brahmins to perform public prayers for his recovery; they fed beggars, spent large sums upon idols and priests, and sent telegrams to London every day. When the Prince recovered, the Maharajas nearly ruined themselves in public festivities.
Many of them were the first to offer assistance during the war in Abyssinia; and, finally, when the Afghan War was declared, every one of them, without exception, offered both aid and money.
And yet, in spite of all this, the British Government can scarcely place much reliance upon such apparently sincere devotion.
The Examiner, summing up the matter, comes to the conclusion that it is impossible for the Indian princes—if only they are men and not wooden idols—to love the English.
The newspaper reminds its readers that when the Government took India from the East India Company, the most solemn proclamation was sent throughout the country, in which the Queen gave her sovereign word to the native princes that, so long as they remained loyal, no one would ever interfere in their internal affairs.
The inviolability of their rights and privileges, the customs of their country, their religion and their laws was especially guaranteed; while the honour and dignity of their rank—the proclamation assured them—were henceforth placed in the most jealous keeping of a paternal Government.
And what happened?
The Indian Government has observed not one of the promises expressed in the Royal Proclamation. One after another it has evaded every one of them; and while the princes fulfilled all the conditions imposed upon them, they were persecuted and insulted upon every convenient occasion. Interference was carried not merely into the official affairs of government, but even into their own domestic arrangements; every step they take is under the strict guardianship of the Residents.
These princes are played with like pawns. Their lawful inheritances are taken from them; they are shifted from place to place; they are deprived of their thrones.
The Maharaja of Rewah, who more than all the others helped the English to suppress the rebellion of 1857, and whose services were so great that the Queen herself ordered him raised to the distinguished rank of Grand Commander of the Star of India—this same Maharaja has been ordered either to abdicate his throne and receive a pension, or to await a disgraceful deposition; and all this without any cause beyond an entirely unsupported suspicion.
What, then, may be expected of Scindia, the richest and foremost of the independent Indian princes?
“During the rebellion,” says the Examiner, “he stood by us throughout the whole of our adversity, and since then has repeatedly proved his loyalty and goodwill towards us; while we—we have fulfilled not one of the promises made to him. We have interfered in his public and private affairs, insulted him with false denunciations, and treated him with the utmost suspicion.
“We declare, without the slightest hesitation, that the most solemn assurances of three Viceroys have proved false….
“Although Scindia also has been made a Grand Commander of the Star of India for the loyalty shown to us in 1857–58, our troops occupy his capital and fortress, and our guns are pointed at his palace….
“At this very moment there is in England a Raja whom the Indian Government has deprived of his lawful rights. The throne to which he possessed a legal claim became vacant; but the Indian authorities, in defiance of right, custom, proclamation, and everything else, refused him his right of succession.
“They placed upon it in his stead an illegitimate relative, whose conduct became so disgraceful that they were compelled to remove him in less than a year….
“And having removed him, they themselves undertook to govern the state and administer its revenues.
“The true heir, as we have said, is in London, where he lives almost like a beggar. There is no obstacle whatever to his succession. He is a loyal and capable man, and, above all, the direct heir.
“And thus, while he is starving in London in his attempt to obtain justice, the British Resident receives six thousand pounds sterling out of his revenues and reigns peacefully in his place.”
The voices of “alarmists” such as the Examiner, however, are of little importance. The English Government feels secure in the permanence of its rule in India.
Whom have the English to fear in this land of conquered and enfeebled slaves? ask the local organs of the press. (In India more than three thousand daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and journals are published in English and in more than fifty native languages and dialects.)
Certainly not a union of the native princes, whose every movement is watched by English Residents, who keep them upon a leash and never lose sight of them even in their own bedrooms.
These princes, divided among themselves by mutual distrust and jealousy, demoralized by an English education, are no danger to England.
There remains the people.
But can such a people be dangerous to anyone?—these millions of cowardly, patient beasts of burden, despised by the higher castes, spat upon both by their own people and by strangers, ready for a penny and a morsel of bread to sell their gods, their father, mother and children; accustomed to centuries of bondage and remaining utterly indifferent as to who governs the country, provided only that they are beaten less and given a little more to eat; and dimly conscious, finally, that if the English were to leave tomorrow, they would fare still worse at the hands of their own people?
A general uprising is inconceivable in India; while the English are accustomed to isolated rebellions and will always know how to suppress them.
Nevertheless, this dominion is purchased at no small price.
During recent years India has cost England more than all her other colonies together since the time of their acquisition. England neither sleeps nor eats for thinking how to guard not merely the high road to India, but every crack and crevice around it.
Gibraltar, Malta, Aden—all these places serve as sentry-posts and require soldiers and money. For India alone England has bought up almost all the shares of the Suez Canal, obtained Cyprus from the helpless Turks, and Hong Kong from the Chinese.
For India’s sake England is continually embroiled with China, Burma, Persia, Afghanistan and, above all, Russia. Her chief concern at present is to watch every movement of Russia.
The newspapers here assure us that all these difficulties would disappear if the English Government would only resolve to place the whole administration of the country in native hands, granting them the right to choose and enact their own laws and to govern the country according to their own best judgment.
For the conduct of foreign affairs the newspapers would admit an English Governor appointed from England.
The collection of taxes should remain in native hands, they undertaking out of the revenues thus collected to pay for the maintenance of a certain number of English troops in India.
It is permissible to doubt very seriously whether such a plan would meet with the sympathy either of the English Government or of the English people. . . .
Radha-Bai
Poona, February 18, 1880