The Indian Government to all appearance must always work in extremes.
It never seems to hit the happy medium. The Lieutenant-Governor for
the time being impresses every department under him too strongly with
his own individuality. The planters, who are an intelligent and
independent body of men, have seemingly always been obnoxious to the
ideas of a perfectly despotic and irresponsible ruler. In spite
however of all difficulties and drawbacks, they have held their own. I
know that the poor people and small cultivators look up to them with
respect and affection. They find in them ready and sympathizing
friends, able and willing to shield them from the exactions of their
own more powerful and uncharitable fellow-countrymen. Half, nay
nine-tenths, of the stories against planters, are got up by the
money-lenders, the petty Zemindars, and wealthy villagers, who find
the planter competing with them for land and labour, and raising the
price of both. The poor people look to the factory as a never failing
resource when all else fails, and but for the assistance it gives in
money, or seed, or plough bullocks and implements of husbandry, many a
struggling hardworking tenant would inevitably go to the wall, or
become inextricably entangled in the meshes of the Bunneah and
money-lender.
I assert as a fact that the great majority of villagers in Behar would
rather go to the factory, and have their sahib adjudicate on their
dispute, than take it into Court. The officials in the indigo
districts know this, and as a rule are very friendly with the
planters. But not long since, an official was afraid to dine at a
planter's house, fearing he might be accused of planter proclivities.
In no other country in the world would the same jealousy of men who
open out and enrich a country, and who are loyal, intelligent, and
educated citizens, be displayed; but there are high quarters in which
the old feeling of the East India Company, that all who were not in
the service must be adventurers and interlopers, seems not wholly to
have died out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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