CHAPTER V.

CAUSES OF THE MUTINY CONTINUED.-CONDITION OF

OUDH.

The sepoy class form the peasantry of Oudh.-It had long been oppressed. Its characteristic feature, viz. that of village communities.— Land-tax, how assessed.-Subdivision of land causes many to seek service.—The chief enemy of the sepoy class has been the talooqdar.— He had an enemy, also, in the revenue official of the native Government.-Extreme poverty and wretchedness of the people of the Province.-Chiefly attributable to the talooqdars, who sought to acquire the right of property belonging to the villagers.-The talooqdaree system saved trouble to the native Government.-Origin of talooquahs. -It answered sufficiently well before it was abused.-Its abuse.-How effected.-Fraud and violence practised by talooqdars.-Gives rise to violence among the people.-The expelled villager becomes a dacoit.Hundreds of such when we entered Oudh.-How they ceased. The peasantry under the native rule sought the aid of British authority against this injustice.-Each family made a point of having a relative in our army.-Theory of those who attribute the sepoy mutiny to the annexation of Oudh-explained and refuted.-The sepoy class was that most benefited by the introduction of the British rule.

THE sepoy class form the peasantry of Oudh. In considering, therefore, how the sepoys were affected by our annexation of the Province, it is manifestly necessary to possess some just idea of the condition of the peasantry. This had been long in a lamentable state, from the exactions and venality of the king's officials, and from the oppression and violence of the talooqdars. Oudh, though long governed by Mahomedan sovereigns, is essentially a Hindoo province, its population is chiefly Brahmin, and chutree, or rajpoot: and Hindoo institutions form the characteristic of the country. Of these the most marked and universal feature

is that of the village communities. The brotherhood which resides in each village is the only real proprietor of the soil, and among its members the ancestral fields are divided. The only person competent to alienate the right in each field, whether by sale, gift, or mortgage, is the individual sharer whose patrimony it is; and each village forms in itself a complete community, or, as the late Lord Metcalfe justly termed it, a separate little republic. Every village has its accountant, and its public servants, the priest, the carpenter, the smith, the washerman, and the watchman, who are generally paid by dues claimable from the grain produce of each shareholder. The payment of a landtax is one of the oldest institutions of the country. It is levied from the several shareholders, by a rate upon the land, the shares, the ploughs, or the grain produce, and is paid to the Government officer through the head man of the village. The tenacity with which the Hindoo sharer clings to his ancestral fields, and his affection for the soil which he inherits, is unsurpassed in any country. As the numbers of these communities increase, their land no longer affords them a sufficient maintenance, and numbers leave their villages to seek service, returning on leave of absence to visit their families; and retiring when pensioned to live and die in their ancestral home. Such are the features which distinguish the class from which our sepoys are drawn. They are, it will be observed, proprietors, the only proprietors of the soil; and they value this right of property in the land above all earthly treasure.

But in Oudh they have had many enemies who have disturbed them in the enjoyment of this right, and their chief enemy has been the talooqdar.

True he was not the only one. The greedy and

rapacious Government official could and did inflict infinite injury on the villager, by enhancing to an exorbitant amount the demand for Land Revenue; and even where no talooqdar intervened, hundreds of villages have been ruined and desolated by exactions of this nature. Possessed of the most superior natural resources, I have never met with such evidences of general poverty as in Oudh. Miserable and starved cattle, unable to drag the wretched implements of husbandry in use, squalid and deserted villages, ruined wells, and a naked and starved peasantry, sufficiently evidence the wretchedness which prevails.

Much of this misery lies at the door of the native officials of the kings of Oudh; much more, however, lies at the door of the talooqdar; for he has aimed not only at grinding the peasant by heavy exactions, but has also endeavoured to rob him of his birth

right, the property in the soil. The term talooqdar means "holder of a tâlooquah," or or "collection of villages;" for the payment of the Land Revenue assessed upon which villages the talooqdar or holder was admitted to engage. The single engagement with one person for a number of villages saved the native Government trouble, and has long obtained; but it used to convey no right of property to the talooqdar in the villages for which he engaged. He paid to the State a lesser sum, and realized from the villages a somewhat larger one, which constituted his remuneration. The size of his talooquah was constantly liable to change. If the central Government was weak and the local official his friend, his talooquah would rapidly expand. If a new official arrived unfriendly to him, he would lose many, or all the villages which he had acquired. It should be observed, that the best native rulers of Oudh were always opposed to the

growth of large talooquals. The Newaub Vizier Saadutalee Khan broke up a number of them, and reduced all to a very moderate size.

These talooqdars varied greatly in their origin. Some, and the greater number, were hereditary heads of rajpoot tribes settled in the neighbourhood. Others again were new families, sprung from some Government official, whose local authority had enabled him to acquire a holding of this description.

Until this system was abused, it no doubt answered well enough; especially where the talooqdar was chief in the tribe for whose villages he engaged. As chief he was the natural medium between his tribe and the Government, and received from the spontaneous regard of his people many perquisites and dues.

But for nearly half a century the talooqdaree system has been greatly abused; and the great aim of the talooqdar has been to supplant the villager in the property of the soil and to constitute himself sole proprietor. Where he succeeded, the owner became a tenant, and was charged with a rent for the land which he occupied without reference to the Government land-tax.

The more usual mode by which this change was effected, was to outbid the owners of a village at the yearly settlement of the land-tax, which generally obtains under native Governments. A talooqdar, possessing a fort and guns, would agree to pay double the tax properly leviable upon a village. He would then draw up an exorbitant rent-roll, which it would be impossible that the cultivators should pay, throw the village into balance; and then seize and confine the villagers, until they signed away their birthright, and executed a deed constituting himself proprietor. These deeds were termed "bye namahs," or deeds of sale;

and were a by-word of fraud and oppression through

out Oudh.

Sometimes some of the more daring talooqdars would dispense with this somewhat lengthy process for obtaining a bye namah, and would proceed at once to harry a village, burn it, kill the cattle, and drive out the inhabitants, until the required deed was executed.

Against this oppression exercised by the talooqdars little or no redress could ever be obtained. Accordingly the people took the law into their own hands. The dispossessed rajpoot drew his sword, and retired into the jungle, and committed raids upon any one whom the usurping talooqdar endeavoured to settle upon his paternal acres. Driven to this lawless mode

of life, he did not confine his attacks to those who trespassed upon his own village, but learnt to prey upon the public generally. He became a dacoit, or professional robber, and a price was set upon his head. There were hundreds of such public offenders in Oudh when we entered the country. And with our rule they ceased. The robber came in and claimed his own, and his own was restored to him. His house arose again on his long-deserted homestead, and the sword and shield were laid aside. Faces that had not been seen for years, and men, at whose names the country side trembled, were seen to enter the crowds, where an English officer presided; and became peaceful citizens.

Now the class against which all this injustice had been committed was precisely that from which our sepoys have been drawn. Under the native Government their complaints were brought to the notice of the Oudh authorities by the intervention of the British Resident. Each family made a point of hav