Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier: A Record of Sixteen Years' Close Intercourse with the Natives of the Indian MarchesPennell, T. L. (Theodore Leighton)
Religion
Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier: A Record of Sixteen Years' Close Intercourse with the Natives of the Indian Marches
Pennell, T. L. (Theodore Leighton)
Afghanistan -- Social life and customs; Afghans; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) -- Social life and customs; Missions -- Asia, Central; Missions, Medical -- Pakistan -- North-West Frontier Province; Pennell, T. L. (Theodore Leighton), 1867-1912; Punjab (India) -- Social life and customs; Pushtuns
The outlaws have made their living by raiding and robbery for
generations, and have no inclination to give up their profession for
more peaceable but less exciting and less profitable employment.
Not only have the Mullahs an antipathy to those whom they consider
kafirs, or infidels, but they know that under the changed conditions of
life, their influence, their power, and their wealth must all suffer.
Besides this, there are two elements in our rule which are
equally repugnant to all. One is the protection which we give to
the money-lender, and the other is the dilatory nature of our
justice. Usury is unlawful to the Muhammadans, but as they are
spendthrift and improvident, the Hindus are able to make a living
among them by lending them money in times of necessity. The Hindu
was formerly prevented from charging too high a rate of interest
or running up too long an account, by the fact that if he did so,
his Muhammadan masters, who held the sword, would come one night and
burn his house over his head, and let him start afresh. Under British
régime, however, the usurer is protected. He is able to recover his
debts from the impecunious Muhammadan by a civil action, and may
get the latter thrown into prison if he does not pay; while if the
Muhammadan tries to burn his account-books, he will find himself an
inmate of His Majesty's gaol.
The justice which the Muhammadan of the frontier appreciates is a rapid
and appropriate justice, such as used to be meted out by officers in
the days of Nicholson, when the offender might find himself accused,
arrested, judged, and visited with some punishment appropriate to
the crime all within the course of a few days. At the present time he
can, if rich enough, call in a pleader, and get any number of false
witnesses, and his case is inevitably dragged out by the magistrate
by successive postponements for getting the attendance of these
witnesses, or through some technicality of the law; and even when
he does--it may be after the lapse of some months--get a judgment,
the losing party in the suit is at liberty to bring an appeal to the
Sessions Judge, and from him another appeal can be lodged at the High
Court of Lahore, which has so many cases on its lists that it may be
his case will not be taken till after the lapse of two or three years.
The real strength of our administration on the frontier is the
personnel of our officers, for it has always been the man, and not
the system, that governs the country; and there are names of officers
now dead and gone which are still a living power along that frontier,
because they were men who thoroughly knew the people with whom they
had to deal, and whose dauntless and strong characters moulded the
tribes to their will, and exerted such a mesmeric influence over
those wild Afghans that they were ready to follow their feringi
masters through fire and sword with the most unswerving loyalty,
even though they were of an alien faith.
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