A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & IISleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
History
A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II
Sleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
Oudh (India) -- Description and travel
Officers who have to pass through Oude in their travels or sporting
excursions have of late years generally complained that they receive
less civility from villages in which our invalid or furlough sipahees
are located than from any others; and that if they are anywhere
treated with actual disrespect, such sipahees are generally found to
be either the perpetrators or instigators. This complaint is not, I
fear, altogether unfounded; and may arise from the diminished
attachment felt by the sipahees for their European officers in our
army, and partly from the privilege of urging their claims through
the Resident, enjoyed by native officers and sipahees, now ceasing on
their being transferred to the invalid establishment.
But the privilege itself is calculated to create feelings of
dissatisfaction with their European officers, among the honest and
hard-working part of our native army. Such men petition only when
they have just cause; and not one in five of them can obtain what
they demand, and believe to be their just right, under an
administration like that of Oude, whatever efforts the Resident may
make to obtain it for them; and where one is satisfied, four become
discontented; while the dishonest and idle portion of their brother
soldiers, who have no real wrongs to complain of, and feign them only
to get leave of absence, throw all the burthen of their duties upon
them. Others again, by fraud and collusion with those whose influence
they require to urge their claims, often obtain more than they have
any right to; and their unmerited success tends to increase the
dissatisfaction felt by the honest, and more scrupulous portion of
the native officers and sipahees who have failed to obtain anything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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