The educated gentleman planter of the present day is above suspicion, and before showering titles and honours on native gentlemen, elevating them to the bench, and deluging the services with them, it might be worth our rulers’ while to utilise, or try to utilise, the experience, loyalty, honour, and integrity of those of our countrymen who might be willing to place their services at the disposal of Government.  ‘India for the Indians’ is a very good cry; it sounds well; but it will not do to push it to its logical issue.  Unless Indians can govern India wisely and well, in accordance with modern national ideas, they have no more right to India than Hottentots have to the Cape, or the black fellows to Australia.  In my opinion, Hindoos would never govern Hindustan half, quarter, nay, one tithe as well as Englishmen.  Make more of your Englishmen in India then, make not less of your Baboo if you please, but make more of your Englishmen.  Keep them loyal and content.  Treat them kindly and liberally.  One Englishman contented, loyal, and industrious in an Indian district, is a greater pillar of strength to the Indian Government than ten dozen Baboos or Zemindars, let them have as many titles, decorations, university degrees, or certificates of loyalty from junior civilians as they may.  Not India for the Indians, but India for Imperial Britain say I.

CHAPTER XIV.

A native village continued.—­The watchman or ’chowkeydar.’—­The temple.—­Brahmins.—­Idols.—­Religion.—­Humility of the poorer classes.  —­Their low condition.—­Their apathy.—­The police.—­Their extortions and knavery.—­An instance of police rascality.—­Corruption of native officials.—­The Hindoo unfit for self-government.

One more important functionary we have yet to notice, the watchman or chowkeydar.  He is generally a Doosadh, or other low caste man, and perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the chowkeydars of the neighbouring villages.  It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness.  At times it is not an unmusical cry, but when he howls out close to your tent, waking you from your first dreamless sleep, you do not feel it to be so.  The chowkeydar has to see that no thieves enter the village by night.  He protects the herds and property of the villagers.  If a theft or crime occurs, he must at once report it to the nearest police station.  If you lose your way by night, you shout out for the nearest chowkeydar, and he is bound to pass you on to the next village.  These men get a small gratuity from government, but the villagers also pay them a small sum, which they assess according to individual means.  The chowkeydar is generally a ragged, swarthy fellow with long matted hair, a huge iron-bound staff, and always a blue puggra.  The blue is his official badge.  Sometimes he has a brass badge, and carries a sword, a curved, blunt weapon, the handle of which is so small that scarcely an Englishman’s hand would be found to fit it.  It is more for show than use, and in thousands of cases, it has become so fixed in the scabbard that it cannot be drawn.