Rulers of India: The Earl of MayoHunter, William Wilson
History
Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo
Hunter, William Wilson
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; Mayo, Richard Southwell Bourke, Earl of, 1822-1872
The other example which I shall cite of Lord Mayo's frontier policy
will be taken from the opposite extremity of India, and it may seem
at first to point to views different from the above. In 1871 the
Viceroy sanctioned an expedition against the Lushai tribes of the
North-Eastern border. These races occupy the then _terra incognita_
which stretches from the Cachar valley to the Chittagong District on
the Bay of Bengal; and from Hill Tipperah on the west to the great
watershed which pours its eastern drainage into the rivers of Burma.
As regards the event {116} of the expedition, it may be briefly said
that it was perfectly successful, and that, by the infliction of the
smallest possible amount of temporary suffering, it introduced, for a
period, order and peace into tracts which had been from time
immemorial the haunt of rapine and inter-tribal wars.
Lord Mayo, however, would have been the last man to claim any special
credit for success in such operations. 'The affair,' he wrote,
'should be conducted with as little parade, noise, and fuss as
possible. It must not be looked upon as a campaign, for no formidable
resistance is anticipated. It should be looked upon more as a
military occupation and visitation of as large a portion of the
Lushai Districts as possible, for the purpose of punishing the guilty
where they can be traced and found, but more particularly for showing
these savages that there is hardly a part of their hills which our
armed forces cannot visit and penetrate.'
But while Lord Mayo dealt thus firmly, and at the same time
considerately, with the Indian Feudatories and wild frontier tribes,
he clearly perceived that our whole relations with the Native States
of India must undergo a profound change. The Indian Feudatories had,
as I have repeatedly insisted on, ceased to be semi-foreign allies of
a commercial company. They had become an integral part of the India
of the Queen. It was Lord Mayo's earnest desire that a new generation
of Native Princes should be trained up to discharge the new and
higher functions involved by this change. {117} He believed that this
could only be done by a carefully devised system of education,
adapted to the various classes of Chiefs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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