Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planterElliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
History
Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore: With chapters on coffee planting in Coorg, the Mysore representative assembly, the Indian congress, caste and the Indian silver question, being the 38 years' experiences of a Mysore planter
Elliot, Robert H. (Robert Henry)
Caste -- India; Coffee; Karnataka (India) -- Description and travel; Karnataka (India) -- Politics and government
But after all, the desired majority in the Indian Councils, which the
delegates rightly declared to be the key of the whole position, would be
insufficiently supported without an army and an armed population at the
back of it, and all in sympathy with the native soldiers in the English
service. These wants, however, are carefully attended to in Resolutions 5
and 8, which we will now briefly glance at.
Read by itself, the Fifth Resolution seems to be harmless, and even
laudable, for it expresses a desire (p. 123) for "A system of volunteering
for the Indian inhabitants of the country such as may qualify them to
support the Government in a crisis." But the writer of the introductory
article to the Report (p. 48) shows the great value the force would be in
bringing pressure to bear on the Government, and points out that, with
250,000 native volunteers, with many times that number trained in previous
years, and backed by the whole country, and with all the native troops (p.
49) more in sympathy with their fellow-countrymen than with the English,
the present system of government would be impossible. And it is further
pointed out in the introductory article that "This means a revolution--a
noiseless bloodless revolution--but none the less a complete revolution."
Then the writer reckons that these volunteers "will be backed by the whole
country," and this naturally leads to the consideration of the Eighth
Resolution, for the backing would obviously be of much greater value were
the whole population armed.
This Resolution (p. 147) demands the repeal of the Arms Act on account of
the "hardship it causes, and the unmerited slur which it casts on the
people of this country." Now as any respectable person can obtain a
license to carry firearms for under 4s., and as cultivators are granted
licenses gratis in order that they may, free of all charge, defend
themselves and their crops from wild animals, and as we know further from
the great number of licenses granted that there can be no difficulty in
obtaining them, it is evident that there can be no hardship in connection
with this Act--a conclusion which is further confirmed by the fact that,
in consequence of the number of guns in the hands of natives, wild animals
are becoming rarer, and, as I can personally testify, have in many cases
been almost completely exterminated. And if we consider further that the
necessity for taking out a license in India can inflict no greater slur
than is cast on the English in England by their having to take out gun
licenses, it is evident that the vehemently expressed desire for the
repeal of this Act is only explicable when read along with the previously
quoted remarks with reference to the native volunteering and the armed
population in sympathy with them at their back, and with the detonating
matter which appears in those seditious pamphlets to which I shall now
briefly refer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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