The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [6]
There was worse, wrote Hilary, to follow, for it affected the lives and livelihood of many people. Throughout the district, the occupier of every piece of land that had at any time belonged to any previous Rajah of Tanjore was turned out of his possession and ordered to come before the British Commissioner to establish a title, and all those who had depended on the expenditure of the state revenue were panic-stricken at the prospect of being left without employment. Within a week Tanjore, from being the most contented area in the Company's dominions, had been transformed into a hot-bed of disaffection. Its people had venerated their ruling house and were infuriated by its suppression – the very sepoys refusing to receive their pensions. In Jhansi, too, there had been a child of the royal house – a distant cousin only, but one formally adopted by the late Rajah – and Lakshmi Bai, the Rajah's lovely widow, had pleaded her husband's long record of loyalty to the Company; but to no avail. Jhansi was declared ‘Lapsed to the British Government’ and placed under the jurisdiction of the Governor of the North-Western Provinces, its institutions abolished, the establishments of the Rajah's government suspended, and all troops in the service of the state immediately paid off and discharged.
‘Nothing,’ wrote Hilary, ‘could be more calculated to arouse hatred, bitterness and resentment than this brazen and ruthless system of robbery.’ But the Great British Public had other matters to think of. The war in the Crimea was proving a costly and harrowing business, and India was far away, out of sight and out of mind. Those few who clicked their tongues disapprovingly over the reports forgot about them a few days later, while the Senior Councillors of the Honourable the East India Company pronounced the writer to be ‘a misguided crank’ and attempted to discover his identity and prevent his making use of the mails.
They had not succeeded in either task, for Hilary's reports were sent home by unorthodox routes. And though there were officials who regarded his proceedings with suspicion – in particular his close friendship with ‘a native’ – they lacked evidence. Suspicion was not proof. Hilary continued to move freely about India and took pains to impress upon his son that the greatest sin that man could commit was injustice, and that it must always be fought against, tooth and nail – even when there seemed to be no hope of winning.
‘Never forget that, Ashton. Whatever else you are, be just. “Do as you would be done by.” That means you must never be unfair. Never. Not under any circumstances. Not to anyone. Do you understand?’
Of course he did not, for he was as yet too young. But the lesson was repeated daily until gradually it became borne in upon him what the ‘Burra-Sahib’* (he never thought of his father by any other name) meant, for Uncle Akbar too would talk to him of this, telling him stories and quoting from the holy book to illustrate the theme that ‘A man is greater than Kings’; and that when he grew up and became a man he would find that this was true. Therefore he must try always to be just in all his dealings, because at this time there were many and terrible injustices being done in the land by men who held power and had become drunk with it.
‘Why do the people put up with it?’ demanded Hilary of Akbar Khan. ‘There are millions of them to a handful of the Company. Why don't they do something? – stand up for themselves?’
‘They will. One day,’ said Akbar Khan placidly.
‘Then the sooner the better,’ retorted Hilary, adding that, to be fair, there were any number of good Sahibs in the country: Lawrence, Nicholson and Burns; men like Mansel and Forbes, and young Randall in Lunjore, and a hundred others, and that it was ones in Simla and Calcutta who