P. J. Griffiths To Guard My People

To Guard My People

To
All Ranks of
The Police Services
In British India
and
Their Successors
In India and Pakistan

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

Preface

The history of British administration in India has suffered from a tendency to concentrate unduly on the activities of the Indian Civil Service and its predecessors, to the comparative neglect of the work of the other great Imperial services. As a former member of the corps d’elite of India, the writer is painfully aware of the injustice that has been done to the Indian Police in this respect and this book represents his attempt to give that service its proper due. It was his privilege in the difficult days of civil disobedience and terrorism to work in close conjunction with the police. He learned to respect and admire them and while the co-operation of British police officers could, perhaps, have been taken for granted, the loyalty and courage of the Indian policemen of all ranks was a remarkable phenomenon. This book should be as impersonal as possible, but the writer must place on record the fact that in the troublous times of the twenties and thirties, he was never once let down by a member of the Indian police force. That force was led and inspired by the officers of what is technically described as the Indian Police and if justice is ever done at the bar of history, the officers of that service will rank high amongst the small body of British servants of the Crown who helped to modernize India.

As regards orthography, we have wherever possible followed the Hunterian system. There are, however, common technical words such as Sudder, Foujdari, Adalat, which have been spelled differently in different provinces or Acts, or at different times. In such cases we have tried to use the spelling which those concerned would have used, rather than to pursue etymological correctness or consistency.

Help in the writing of this book has been received from so many sources that it would be invidious to single out individuals. The gratitude of the author is, above all, due to the History Sub-Committee of the Indian Police (U.K.) Association, and if the writer has at all succeeded in this task, the credit is due to many retiied Indian Police officers who have written vivid accounts of their own share in the maintenance of law and order. They are, however, neither directly nor indirectly responsible for the opinions and judgments of the author. Those whose contributions have not been directly used will realise that considerations of space have enforced rigorous selectivity.

It goes without saying that a book of this kind could not be written without the constant help of Mr. S. G. Sutton and the staff of the India Office Library. Much help has also been received from the Home Office, the Surrey Police, the Thames Valley Constabulary, the Orders and Medals Research Society, the Intelligence Bureau, New Delhi, and the Intelligence Bureau, Rawalpindi. Thanks are also due to those who have worked behind the scenes—the publishers, who have provided expert help and advice; Daphne Hammond who has now been concerned with the author’s literary activities for so long that he would be lost without her expertise; and Dorothy Holt who has done much of the secretarial work. Last but not least I have to thank my ever-patient wife who, many years ago in remote Bengal stations, shared with the writer the fellowship of the Indian Police.

Chapter 1

Introduction

‘On the night of 23 January 1935, a Sikh of Poona City shot dead a Mussulman and an Arab woman. Mr. O’Gorman was summoned to the scene where he found that the Sikh had ensconced himself with a breach loading gun in a strong position on the top storey of a large building, occupied by a number of men, women and children, from which he commanded the common staircase. The Sikh threatened to shoot anyone who approached, and to have rushed the staircase would almost inevitably have led to heavy loss of life. Having thrown a cordon round the building, Mr. O’Gorman with a party of armed policemen occupied a room at the top of an opposite house from which rifles were trained on the house where the Sikh was hiding. It was of importance that the Sikh should either be made to surrender or be rendered harmless by shooting; for any ineffective action by the police would probably have resulted in the Sikh firing indiscriminately and causing several casualties. The Sikh however did not expose himself, and subsequent attempts by Mr. O’Gorman and a Sikh priest who arrived on the scene, who both addressed the murderer from the front of the house, merely elicited a determined reply from the Sikh to the effect that he would never surrender, and would shoot anyone who came near him. Finally however the Sikh told the priest to bring up the ‘Sahib’. Mr. O’Gorman thereupon accompanied the priest to the top storey. There he discovered a passage leading to a room where the Sikh stood with his gun. In front lay the body of one of the murdered persons and, stepping over this, Mr. O’Gorman entered the room, calling out that he was unarmed and asking the Sikh to surrender, which he did. He had six live cartridges in his possession.

The cool and patient manner in which Mr. O’Gorman handled the situation undoubtedly prevented further loss of life. He displayed admirable personal courage and power of leadership in himself incurring the great risk of going unarmed up the stairs to confront the armed murderer.

Mr. O’Gorman has already been awarded the King’s Police Medal with a Bar. He is now awarded a second Bar.’*

‘In Madras during 1942, Sub-Inspector Gaddam Matthews with his men successfully repelled an attack from a very large mob of hostiles for about two hours, and by determination prevented the mob from burning down the police station. The Sub-Inspector exhibited rare courage and presence of mind when faced by a mob of 4,000 strong with only one armed constable. He stood firm even when he was threatened that the members of his family would be put to death.’*

In the bitterness of the struggle for Independence during the last two decades of British rule, it became the practice of the Indian National Congress to take an annual pledge which included the declaration that Britain had ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. In the calmer atmosphere of today, few reputable Indian historians would subscribe to that condemnation, and an increasing number of Indians have come to see in Britain the catalytic agent by which India was transformed into a modern State, able to take a proud and honoured place amongst the great nations of the world. That transformation had many aspects, and with regard to some of them reasonable men may differ as to the ultimate loss or gain. The break-up of the old village economy, the impact of the West on the age long Hindu sense of values and the introduction of Western political institutions may be thought to have brought evil as well as good in their train. In this book, however, we are concerned with a department of administration where no such doubts arise. The firm establishment of law and order and the inauguration of a system of justice unsurpassed in the world were achievements of permanent value which even the most severe critic would credit to the British account, and the Indian Police can claim a large share in those achievements.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the rulers of India before the British had been unmindful of the first duty of any government. In the best days of the Moghul Empire, the maintenance of law and order and the administration of justice had been one of the personal cares of the Emperor, and the common man in much of India had enjoyed a high degree of security of life and property. It so happened, however, that when the British began to assert themselves in India the Moghul Empire was on the point of collapse, and in many parts of India anarchy had supervened. The East India Company thus had to start afresh in this field and inevitably it followed patterns with which it was familiar and introduced a system largely informed by Western ideas. Amongst such ideas those of the rule of law and of at least an approximation to equality before the law were dominant.

The necessary changes could clearly not have been introduced by a handful of British officers acting alone. They needed the willing and active co-operation of Indians at all levels, and nowhere was that co-operation more striking or of greater importance than in the Indian police force. In the nineteenth century the superior ranks of the force were entirely British, and perhaps the most important feature of the period was the close and mutual confidence and, in many cases, affection, between British officers and Indians working under them. In the twentieth century, Indians began, slowly at first, to take their rightful place in the police hierarchy, and the same spirit of trust which had existed between the different ranks now extended itself to the relations between equals of different races united by a common purpose. Thus there came into being a strong, closely knit police force fully equipped for its modern duties. At its head was the Indian Police.

In this book our task will be threefold. We shall discuss the process by which, after much trial and error, the modern Indian police force was created under the leadership of the Indian Police; we shall examine its operations against crime; and we shall observe it at work under the stress and strain of the half-century before Independence. The nature of that strain and the reaction of the Indian Police to it will appear as the story unfolds.

Chapter 2

The Police in pre-British India

In the early stages of social and political development, society tends to rely on Draconian punishments rather than on any effective police organization for its defence against crime. There is perhaps little need for any elaborate machinery for criminal investigation as long as the overwhelming majority of people never leave the immediate neighbourhood of their own villages. Each inhabitant lives under the constant observation of his neighbours and the village elders and it can seldom be difficult to identify the culprit when any heinous crime is committed. If the village authorities fail to fix the guilt upon a murderer, it is highly probable that they are deliberately shielding him and it is therefore reasonable to charge them with responsibility for producing malefactors. In medieval England, as in India, this principle of communal responsibility was fundamental. Since Anglo-Saxon times the hundred had been liable to be fined if it failed to pursue and surrender offenders, and in the reign of Edward I the hundreds were ‘put under constables bound to see that the men of the hundred have proper armour for the pursuit of malefactors and the repelling of enemies’.* The duties of the constable were thus both military and civil, but as the centuries passed the military side of his work became less important and he became more purely, in our terms, a police officer. The constables were neither trained nor professionally employed. They were elected and every able-bodied person was liable to be called on to serve as a constable. Even as late as the second half of the eighteenth century, there was nothing approximating to a regular police force in England. Towards the end of the century, certain large towns began to employ paid watchmen and in 1792 London began to establish a force of paid constables.* There was, however, still strong public feeling against this development and in 1818 a parliamentary committee expressed the view that ‘the police of a free country was to be found in rational and humane laws, in an effective and enlightened magistracy . . . above all in the moral habits and opinion of the people’.*

Underlying this attitude was the fear that a police force would be an instrument of tyranny, but in the disturbed conditions of the early nineteenth century the strength of this argument was less than the need to check disorder. A committee under Sir Robert Peel recommended the establishment of a police force for London and the suburbs and in 1829 the Metropolitan Police Act was passed to implement this recommendation. In 1839 a Royal Commission recommended that local authorities should be empowered to institute similar systems, but progress was slow and even as late as 1853, only twenty-two counties had availed themselves of this power.*

Almost simultaneously with the inauguration of a police system, Peel carried through a number of Acts abolishing the death penalty for various felonies and a little later transportation for life was abolished. Penal reform and the establishment of a police system were logically connected. Greater efficiency in the prevention of crime and the detection of the criminal removed the justification and the necessity for savage penalties.

The Hindu Period

In many respects there is a close parallel between these developments in England and the corresponding process in India, though there is the important difference that the police in India never enjoyed the esteem and affection which in modern England have characterized the relations between the force and the public. From such scraps of information as are available about the early Hindu period, it appears that there were four main elements in the organization of society against crime—communal responsibility, village watchmen, espionage and severe penal provisions. For the period of the Mauryas in the fourth century B.C. light is thrown on this subject from two sources. First, there are the reports of Megasthenes, the Greek Ambassador to the Court of the Emperor Chandragupta at Pataliputra, the modern Patna. Megasthenes was a fair minded though perhaps not very accurate observer, and he gives an interesting description of the administration of Pataliputra towards the end of the fourth century B.C. The standard of maintenance of law and order was high, but it depended largely on the great severity with which malefactors weie treated. Mutilation was a common punishment and the death penalty was awarded even for such events as evasion of taxation, injuring a sacred tree, or intrusion on a royal procession going to the hunt.* News-writers, or intelligence agents, were employed throughout the country and espionage was developed to a fine art. Megasthenes, unfortunately, tells us nothing of other police machinery.

The second source for this period is a remarkable work known as the Arthasastra* (which may be translated Manual of Statecraft). It was probably written by Kautilya, otherwise known as Chanakya, who was a Minister and trusted Counsellor of Chandragupta. The work breathes a spirit of cynicism and Kautilya has often been compared to Machiavelli. In form the Arthasastra sets forth the ideal system, but to a great extent it almost certainly reflects the existing state of affairs. The picture presented is far from complete, but it seems that the general administrative system was built round the collection of revenue. The chief executive officer of the State, the Collector General, was responsible not only for the collection of revenue but also for nearly all other departments of administration. Underhim were three Commissioners of Divisions, and under them again were the Nagarikas—in later days known as Kotwals—in charge of cities, while in the rural areas a regular hierarchy also existed.

The duties of the Nagarikas are set forth in detail in a chapter which also embodies a great deal of what today would be called municipal law. Masters of houses were to report the arrival or departure of strangers on pain of themselves being responsible for any thefts that were committed; wayfarers were to catch hold of persons possessed of destructive weapons; watchmen neglecting their duties, or stopping those whom they ought not to stop, were to be punished; suspicious persons were to be arrested and examined; and persons throwing dirt into the street were to be fined. All these matters, as well as the general maintenance of law and order, the administration of jails, the daily inspection of the defences of the city, and the custody of lost property, were the responsibility of the Nagarika; in addition he had to enforce the elaborate regulations for the prevention of fire, under which every householder was required to maintain fire fighting equipment in readiness at all times.*

There were other officials, too, who carried out what could be regarded as police duties. There was the Superintendent of Passports, the Superintendent of Liquor—since considerable control was exercised over the consumption of liquor—and the Superintendent of Gambling, who had a special responsibility for being on the look out for criminals. Even the Superintendent of Commerce was not free from police duties, for no second hand or old article could be sold without his consent.

In the villages, organization was naturally less elaborate and a good deal of responsibility was thrown on the village community. There was, nevertheless, an administrative organization in which the Sthanikas perhaps corresponded to Commissioners of Divisions or Deputy-Commissioners of Districts, in modern times, while a Gopa was in charge of each group of villages. These officers, whose duties were not different in principle from those of the Nagarikas, were remunerated by grants of land. Under them were watchmen, who were evidently persons of some importance who might easily take advantage of their position and special punishments were therefore provided for a watchman who had carnal connection with a woman.

The system was largely based on continual vigilance and the Arthasastra therefore gives guidance as to what are reasonable grounds of suspicion. In terms that would not be rejected by a modern police officer, Kautilya tells us that

Persons whose family subsist on slender means of inheritance; who have little or no comfort; who frequently change their residence, caste and the names, not only of themselves, but also of their family (gotra); who conceal their own avocations and calls; who have betaken themselves to such luxurious modes of life as eating flesh and condiments, drinking liquor, wearing scents, garlands, fine dress, and jewels; who have been squandering away their money; who constantly move with profligate women, gamblers, or vintners; who frequently leave their residence; . . . who hold secret meetings in lonely places near to, or far from, their residence; who hurry on to get their fresh wounds or boils cured; . . . these and other persons may be suspected to be either murderers or robbers or offenders guilty of misappropriation of treasure trove or deposits or to be any other kind of knaves subsisting by foul means secretly employed.*

Espionage is treated in great detail in the Arthasastra. Spies were indeed ubiquitous and assumed many guises: ‘Spies under the guise of a fraudulent disciple, a recluse, a householder, a merchant, an ascetic practising austerities, a classmate or a colleague,’ and many others are mentioned specifically. The recluse spy,

provided with much money and many disciples, shall carry on agriculture, cattle-rearing, and trade (vartakama) on the lands allotted to him for the purpose. Out of the produce and profits thus acquired, he shall provide all ascetics with subsistence, clothing and lodging, and send on espionage such among those under his protection as are desirous to earn a livelihood (vrittikama), ordering each of them to detect a particular kind of crime committed in connection with the king’s wealth, and to report of it when they come to receive their subsistence and wages.

The ascetic spy, ‘surrounded by a host of disciples with shaved head or braided hair may take his abode in the suburbs of a city, and pretend as a person barely living on a handful of vegetables or meadow grass (yavasamushti) taken once in the interval of a month or two, but he may take in secret his favourite foodstuffs (gudhamish-tamaharam).*

The activities of spies were not only concerned with common criminals. Even the King’s ministers and army commanders were to be spied upon and plied with all manner of temptations, though Kautilya charmingly says that the King shall not make the Queen ‘an object of testing the character of his councillors’.

Side by side with espionage went the use of torture as a means of eliciting confessions, and the different forms and degrees of torture are described in some detail. Here and there, however, humane touches appear and we are told, for example, that ‘torture of women shall be half the prescribed standard’, while the aged, lunatics, pregnant women and ‘persons suffering from hunger, thirst, or fatigue from journey’ are not to be tortured. Kautilya was fully aware that even an innocent person might confess under torture and he insisted, therefore, that corroborative evidence must be produced. He was perhaps in advance of his time in proposing fines as an alternative to the mutilations and other savage punishments which were prescribed.

There are considerable gaps in the information to be obtained from Megasthenes and Kautilya, but we can at least perceive the general character of police administration under the Mauryas. For succeeding centuries less systematic information is available and we have to rely on scraps here and there. It is, however, clear that the system outlined above continued without much change during the Hindu period. The author of The History of the Madras Police quotes a passage from a Tamil classic of the seventh century, in which the activities of village watchmen are portrayed.

Darkness is thick and as black as an elephant’s skin. The thieves, dressed in black and armed with sharp knives and implements of house breaking and collapsible ladders of rope wound round their waists, lurk in darkness. Unmindful of the pouring rain, the patrolmen, renowned for their mastery of the ways of thieves, their leonine courage, indefatigable energy and relentless vigil, pursue these nocturnal hawks like prowling tigers ready to spring upon wild elephants.*

Similar references appear in other dramas, but more light is thrown on the subject in the sixteenth century by Fernao Nunez, a Portuguese traveller who visited the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar.* The kingdom was divided into provinces, each under a captain who was personally responsible for law and order. An aggrieved person had the right to petition the King, ‘lying flat on his face on the ground till they ask him what it is he wants’. Then

If he complains that he was robbed in such and such a province and in such and such a road, the King sends immediately for the captain of that province, even though he be at court, and the captain may be seized and his property taken if he does not catch the thief. In the same way the chief bailiff is obliged to give an account of the robberies in the capital, and in consequence very few thefts take place; and even if some are committed, you give some little present and a description of the man who stole from you, and they will soon know by the agency of the wizards whether the thief be in the city or not; for there are very powerful wizards in this country. Thus there are very few thieves in the land.*

It is not unreasonable to guess that the ‘Wizards’ were intelligence agents.

Neither in the chronicle of Nunez nor in that of his contemporary Paes, is there any mention of police organization, but a good deal of information regarding such organization in Vijayanagar is given in a minute by a senior Civil Servant, A. Falconer, quoted in The History of the Madras Police.

Each village constituted a petty commonwealth, having a complete system of municipal police in which the regal, ecclesiastical, and general interests were represented and respectively provided for. . . . In each village, town, city, and district were stationed officers of police, with gradations of rank and numbers of territory, . . . from that of the humblest Kavilgar to that of the most powerful Poligar.* These Kavilgars having a concurrent jurisdiction, were charged with the internal security and tranquillity of the country. They were armed and paid by means of certain contributions from every inhabitant, in addition to an assessment amounting, perhaps, to about one and a quarter per cent on the annual gross produce of the country, the protection of which also was thus made their duty and their interest. Being thus entrusted with the safety of the public property, armed with the means and paid for the purpose of protecting it, they were held responsible for all losses by theft, robbery, or depredation, for the detection and apprehension of all public offenders of this description, and for the extinction of all offences committed by them. The formidable power thus delegated to these Kavilgars organized by an able minister and controlled by a despotic government, was competent to every purpose of vigorous and energetic police. But it was counterbalanced by a concomitant evil. Under any relaxation of the controlling authority, the Poligars and higher officers of it attained and usurped a power which was employed in maintaining personal quarrels. They extorted and amassed wealth, which was dissipated in a jealous rivalry of magnificent pageantry.*

We learn from another source that the funds for the maintenance of the police force in the capital of Vijayanagar were raised by dues collected from dancing girls and the Madras police historian makes the delightful comment that this may be considered a tax on art.*

The Period of Muslim Rule

We must now turn to the period of Muslim rule. The first Muslim invaders of India were Arabs who entered Sind in the eighth century, but they had little permanent influence and of much greater importance were the invasions of Turks, Persians and Afghans beginning in the eleventh century. In the course of two or three centuries, much of northern India came under their sway, but most of them displayed little ability for large scale administration and their kingdoms were unstable. At the end of the fifteenth century, a fresh wave of invasions brought into India men of a mixed race in which the Persian and Turkish elements had been strengthened by an infusion of Mongol blood—the Mongols by this time having become Muslims. These invaders shewed a greater genius for administration than their predecessors had done and they soon established what was known as the Moghul Empire. It was at its zenith under the wise and tolerant Emperor Akbar, a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his administration was perhaps the most efficient that India had ever known. The two succeeding reigns formed a period in which art and architecture reached high levels, but there were signs of a weakening of the Imperial power. In the seventeenth century, the Emperor Aurangzeb, a narrow-minded Muslim Puritan, alienated his Hindu subjects and extended the bounds of empire so widely that they could not be maintained. Thereafter, the Moghul Empire rapidly disintegrated and in the hundred years or so before the British period, chaos prevailed.

For the period of Muslim rule, there is a vast amount of documentation—contemporary records of Europeans and others are abundant. Unfortunately, they tell us remarkably little about police administration, though they are full of lurid accounts of drastic sentences inflicted for many different crimes. Here and there, a ray of light is shed. Its first gleam appears in the fourteenth century when the Delhi Sultans ruled parts of South India. Here, their most important official was the Amir-Dad or Viceroy, but the official mainly concerned with police administration was the Muhtasib. His duties were complex. He was an Inspector-General of Police, a Chief Engineer of Public Works, as well as an Inspector of Morals. In his police capacity he was able to delegate his duties, at least in the cities, to the Kotwal.

The kotwal was a minor luminary under the Muhtasib. The wide powers of the latter and the nature of his duties required him to keep his eyes and ears always open. Fie utilized spies as well as the regular police for this purpose. The routine duty of the police was patrolling the thoroughfares at night and guarding vantage points. Leading men were appointed wardens in every quarter of the city and thus public co-operation was enlisted. The kotwal maintained a register of inhabitants within his limits, noting down their addresses and avocations, so that particulars of people without jobs and those living on other people’s cupidity or gullibility came to his notice without any delay. It was therefore easy for him to note the arrival and departure of strangers and keep track of them. He was also a Committing Magistrate. The force under him was entirely civil in character and though the term ‘kotwal’ is sometimes used for military commanders of cantonments also, it can only be in relation to their civil work.*

For the Moghul period we have available a great work known as the Akbarnama—compiled by one of Akbar’s counsellors, Abul Fazl ’Allami—one portion of which, the Ain-i-Akbari, contains a general account of the administration. Even here, direct references to police administration are scarce, but we are at least told something of judicial organization and of the duties of the most important police officers. Over each territorial division ruled the Fouzdar, who was equally responsible for external defence and action against rebels. In criminal cases, justice was the joint responsibility of the Qazi, who was responsible for investigation, and the Mir A’dl who carried out the findings. They were specifically warned in the Ain that ‘no dependence can be placed on a witness or his oath’. When these officers had completed their investigation they would turn to other matters for a time and then return—presumably with fresh minds— to ‘reinvestigate and inquire into it anew’.*

In the towns the responsibility for police functions rested on the Kotwal and it is worthwhile reproducing much of what the Ain has to say about this important officer.

The appropriate person for this office should be vigorous, experienced, active, deliberate, patient, astute and humane. Through his watchfulness and night patrolling the citizens should enjoy the repose of security, and the evil-disposed lie in the slough of non-existence. He should keep a register of houses, and frequented roads, and engage the citizens in a pledge of reciprocal assistance, and bind them to a common participation of weal and woe. He should form a quarter by the union of a certain number of habitations, and name one of his intelligent subordinates for its superintendence and receive a daily report under his seal of those who enter or leave it, and of whatever events therein occur. And he should appoint as a spy one among the obscure residents with whom the other should have no acquaintance, and keeping their reports in writing, employ a heedful scrutiny. He should establish a separate Serai (or inn) and cause unknown arrivals to alight therein, and by the aid of divers detectives take account of them. He should minutely observe the income and expenditure of the various classes of men and by a refined address, make his vigilance reflect honour on his administration . . . . When night is a little advanced he should prohibit people from entering or leaving the city. He should set the idle to some handicraft. He should remove former grievances and forbid any one from forcibly entering the house of another. He shall discover thieves and the goods they have stolen or be responsible for the loss. . . . He should use his discretion in the reduction of prices and not allow purchases to be made outside the city. The rich shall not take beyond what is necessary for their consumption. He shall examine the weights and make the sér not more or less than thirty dáms. . . . He should not suffer a woman to be burned against her inclination, nor a criminal deserving of death to be impaled nor any one to be circumcised under the age of twelve.*

In theory the Fouzdar was similarly responsible for law and order in the rural areas, but ‘his jurisdiction was too large to allow him to attempt the supervision of the police of all the villages in that region’. Rural policing was in fact in the hands of local chaukidars

who were servants of the village community and maintained by the villagers themselves out of the village land or by a share of the crops, and who were not considered as officers paid and supervised by the State. Instead of the Mughal Government undertaking responsibility for rural peace and security, it made the villagers responsible for the safety of their own property and that of travellers in the neighbouring roads.*

The work of the Fouzdar and the Kotwal was supplemented by the news-writers, or intelligence agents, and in particular by the Khufia-navis or secret writer who corresponded direct with the Imperial Court. In an official manual the Khufia-navis was given a shrewd warning.

Report the truth, lest the Emperor should learn the facts from another source and punish you! Your work is delicate; both sides have to be served. . . . In the wards of most of the high officers, forbidden things are done. If you report them truly, the officers will be disgraced. If you do not, you yourself will be undone.*

Under an exceptional Emperor, the system probably worked fairly well, but it easily degenerated into tyranny. Sir Thomas Roe, the Ambassador of James I at the Moghul Court, has preserved for us a spectacular example of how what was called justice was at times administered.

This empty day of other business envites mee by the strangenes of the action to mentien breefly a sentence of the King and execution accordingly, too theeves were brought chayned before him and accused. Without farther ceremony, as in all such cases is the custome, the King had carry them away and lett the cheefe be torne with doggs, kyll the rest. This was all the processe and forme. The prisoners were devided to severall quarters of the towne, and openly in some street, as in one by my howse, wher 12 doggs tare the princepall; and 13 of his fellowes, having their hands tyde downe to their feete, had their necks cutt with a swoord, but not quite off, and so left naked, bloody, and stincking to every mans vew and incomodytie.*

After the death of Akbar in 1605, a gradual decline set in and authority in the hands of local officials was less restrained. The Jagirdars, or revenue farmers, were responsible for the maintenance of law and order, but, in a letter to Colbert written in the seventh decade of the seventeenth century, the famous French traveller Bernier describes them as cruel and oppressive beyond imagination.

There is no one before whom the injured peasant, artisan, or tradesman can pour out his just complaints; no great lords, parliaments, or judges of local courts, exist, as in France, to restrain the wickedness of those merciless oppressors, and the Kadis, or judges, are not invested with sufficient power to redress the wrongs of these unhappy people. This sad abuse of the royal authority may not be felt in the same degree near capital cities such as Dehly and Agra, or in the vicinity of large towns and seaports, because in these places acts of gross injustice cannot easily be concealed from the court.*

Bernier’s contemporary Tavernier—also a great traveller—paints a more favourable picture and tells us that in the reign of Shah Jahan (in the fourth and fifth decades of the seventeenth century), ‘the police system was so strict in all things and particularly with reference to safety of the roads, that there was never any necessity to execute a man for having committed a theft.* Tavernier, however, was more interested in buying and selling jewels than in studying administration and all contemporary evidence is against his conclusion. A sounder judgment is that of Peter Mundy who travelled in Upper India early in Shah Jahan’s reign. He describes the country as swarming with rebels and thieves and refers to innumerable masonry pillars studded with the heads of condemned criminals. The editor of The Oxford History of India rightly observes that justice was crude in its operation.

The British thus inherited a system which, even at its best, would have been unsatisfactory and which largely broke down in the declining days of the Moghul Empire when every powerful man became a law unto himself. The new British rulers nevertheless had to build on what existed and initially they had no choice but to accept communal responsibility and severe penal provisions as the only means of maintaining order—a position in which they were not much worse off than their contemporaries in England.

Chapter 3

The Constitutional Background

English readers, accustomed to thinking of British India as a political unit, might well assume that the police system would have been developed uniformly throughout the country. In reality the three Presidencies differed from one another completely in their origins and for a considerable time could almost have been regarded as independent entities, linked only by the remote control of the Directors of the East India Company.* Madras, the oldest of the Presidencies, consisted originally of a small area held on a grant from an Indian overlord. The vicissitudes of Indian power struggles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant that the overlord changed from time to time, but not until near the end of that period could the Crown, acting through the East India Company, be said to have acquired sovereignty in South India. In Bombay the situation was quite different. Bombay City was ceded to Charles II by the Portuguese and the Crown enjoyed full sovereignty. The King could therefore delegate to the East India Company whatever judicial, legislative or administrative powers he considered appropriate.

In Bengal, the situation was more complex. It will be discussed in some detail in a later chapter,* and here we need only say that for a considerable period the Company’s authority was derived partly from the Royal Charter and partly from certain grants of the Moghul Emperor or his representative.

In 1698 the East India Company acquired what were known as zemindari rights in three villages on the site of modern Calcutta. This meant that they collected the revenue and paid it to the Moghul Emperor’s representative and that they were responsible for the administration of justice, civil and criminal, subject to the authority of the Moghul Viceroy. A little later, similar rights in certain other areas were obtained as the result of treaty or agreement. The legal theory at this time was that when territory was acquired by British agency, whether by conquest or by cession, the sovereignty passed to the Crown. It was very doubtful if any of these transactions now described amounted to a transfer of territory, but after the Battle of Plassey—and still more after the Battle of Buxar in 1764—the Company was master of Bengal. ‘It must be assumed that by this date the sovereignty over Calcutta, the Twenty-four Parganas and the three Districts was definitely British, subject to whatever value might be attached to the vague claim of the Emperor to be paramount sovereign in India.’*

So far the position was fairly straightforward. The Company had practical sovereignty in certain limited areas, but had no authority in the rest of Bengal. In 1765 the Moghul Emperor granted the Company what was known as the Diwani of Bengal. It will be sufficient here to state that this conferred on the Company the right to conduct the civil administration of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. After some years the Company began to exercise this right, and indeed extended it in such a way that it became the de facto ruler of Bengal with the Emperor as a kind of suzerain. It thus had two different foundations for its authority. In Calcutta and the ceded areas it was governed by its charter and exercised jurisdiction on behalf of the Crown, while in the rest of Bengal it was in theory the representative of the Moghul Emperor.

For over a century and a half, two separate sets of Courts of Justice existed—the Royal Courts in Calcutta and, in the rest of Bengal, the Company’s Courts based on the Moghul’s grant. Two separate sets of laws were also in force. Outside Calcutta the Company made Regulations, but they were not binding on the Royal Courts in Calcutta. The resulting conflict of authority between the two jurisdictions, and between the Royal Courts and the Governor and Council of Bengal, made the problem of establishing a police administration somewhat difficult.

It is not surprising that three Presidencies differing so widely in their origins and legal foundations as Madras, Bombay and Calcutta should, for a considerable time, have proceeded more or less independently in matters of administration, subject only to the controlling power of the Company, which at so great a distance was able to do little about a concerted policy.* The first real step towards coordination was taken by the Regulating Act of 1773, which gave the Governor-General and Council an authority for certain very limited purposes over Madras and Bombay. A further degree of subordination of the other Presidencies to Bengal was established by Pitt’s Act of 1784, but it was not until the passing of the Charter Act of 1793 that the Governor-General’s authority became really effective—and even then Wellesley was to discover to his cost that it was not difficult for a Presidency Governor to ignore the authority of a distant Governor-General. For a time, indeed, Madras and Bombay seemed often to have been more influenced by the Directors at home than the Governor-General and Council.

The position as to the legislative authority of the Presidencies, and of the Provinces created later, now requires consideration. Neither the businessmen who founded the East India Company, nor the monarch who granted its first Charter, thought in terms of anything but trade. The possibility of acquiring territory was not in their minds and there was therefore no need to endow the Company with elaborate legislative powers. It was only authorised to

make orders and constitute such and so many reasonable laws, constitutions, orders and the ordinances . . . as shall seem necessary for the good of government of the said Company and of all factors, masters, mariners and other officers employed or to be employed on any of their voyages and for the better advancement and continuance of the said trade and traffic.*

This limited legislative power is to be contrasted with the wide authority given to the Massachusetts Bay Company to make laws for the government of the lands to be occupied.* The powers given to the East India Company were merely those necessary to regulate their trade and to control a handful of Englishmen who, while serving with the Company, would be out of the reach of the ordinary English courts.

It will be noticed that the power to make laws and ordinances was vested in the Company and not in its representatives in India, and the Company was given no authority to delegate those powers. Even the Court of Directors had to make their laws and orders in a formal manner, and when, in 1687, Sir Josiah Child, the Governor of the Company, sought to argue that even letters from the Company had the force of law, his claim was easily shown to be without foundation. The Charter of 1698 made it clear that the Company could make reasonable regulations for the purpose of the Company, including the government of the agents, factors and other employees, provided that those orders were not contrary to the laws of England, but still gave no power to the Company’s officials in India to make such regulations.

The first delegation of legislative authority was in 1726 in connection with the establishment of Mayor’s Courts in the Presidencies. Governors and Councils were then authorised to ‘make byelaws and ordinances for the several corporations and to impose penalties for any breach of them’. The meaning of this is not quite clear, but it was a limited authority and, moreover, the byelaws and ordinances had to be approved by the Directors before they took effect.

In 1753 a more general delegation was made and in the Regulating Act of 1773, the Governor-General and Council were authorised to make rules, ordinances and regulations for the good order and civil government of Fort William in Calcutta and the factories subordinate to it. The regulations could be annulled by the King, but would be valid in the meantime, provided they had been registered in the Supreme Court with its approval (a provision which was a fruitful source of strife between the executive and the judiciary). The geographical limitations of this delegated power of legislation should be noted. In the first place, it was limited to Bengal and even there it only applied to the areas over which the Crown now claimed sovereignty. In the rest of Bengal, the Crown had no jurisdiction, but the Company, by virtue of grants from the Emperor, could presumably make regulations for general government and particularly for the administration of civil justice. In the criminal field, the law- making power remained in theory with the Nawab, but he was under the Company’s control and Warren Hastings had no hesitation in making regulations for all aspects of administration and justice. These regulations were codified by the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey, and were recognised as valid by the Act of Parliament of 1781, which also gave the Governor-General and Council power to make regulations for Bengal without registration in the Supreme Court.

Cornwallis made a number of such regulations, but he was not satisfied as to their validity under the Act of 1781; when he had consolidated them into a Code in 1793, he procured the enactment by Parliament of an Act endorsing them.*

In Bombay and Madras, a legislative power more general than that provided by the charter of I726 had been assumed to be implied in the charters of 1753 and 1774. In 1807 the Governor and Councils of those two Presidencies were more formally given powers of legislation similar to those contained in the Regulating Act for Bengal. Shortly after Mountstuart Elphinstone became Governor of Bombay in 1819, he appointed a committee for the codification of existing regulations

The whole of Bombay Regulations were formed into a Code regularly arranged according to the subject matter. This Code consisted of twenty-seven regulations . . . it refers to the same subjects as the Bengal Regulations, but differs from them in the circumstance that it contains a body of substantive criminal law which remained in force until it was superseded by the Criminal Code.*

A similar Code was prepared in Madras.

In the 1830s, the whole question of the legislative authority of the Crown and the Company in respect of India was reviewed and, in a valuable minute to the Select Committee of Parliament, it was pointed out that in reality the Crown had acquired sovereignty over the whole of the Company’s Indian possessions and that the overlordship of the Moghul Emperor was a mere formality. The system under which the Company exercised two sets of powers, one direct from the Crown and one from the rulers whom the Company had supplanted, had become an anachronism.* By the Charter Act of 1833, these anomalies were removed and the Governor-General and Council were empowered, subject to certain limitations, to make laws for all persons, British or Indian, and for all purposes, throughout the Company’s possessions. At the same time, the legislative powers of the Madras and Bombay governments were withdrawn. From 1834 until shortly after the transfer of power from the Company to the Crown, Parliament and the Governor-General and Council were the sole legislative authorities for British India. In this period, therefore, a Police Act, even if it applied only to one Presidency, had to be enacted by the Governor-General and Council.

In 1861 the Indian Councils Act restored the legislative powers of the Councils of Bombay and Madras and established a similar Legislative Council in Bengal. The Governor-General’s assent was required to all Acts of the Councils and for some kinds of legislation his prior consent to the introduction of Bills was necessary. The jurisdiction of the provincial and central Legislative Councils was concurrent, but central legislation overrode conflicting provincial acts. A Police Act might now be enacted either at the centre or in a province. Provision was also made in the 1861 Act for the exercise of similar legislative powers by any legislative councils which might be established under Lieutenant Governors in future, and such powers were in fact conferred in 1886 on the North West Provinces and in 1897 on the Punjab and Burma. No such legislative authority was granted in the case of Chief Commissionerships, and in their case legislation was enacted either by the Central Government or by the Province to which they were attached.

We are now in a position to consider the development of the system of justice and police in the various provinces.

Chapter 4

Two Centuries of Experiment I: Madras

When the first English traders arrived in India in 1612, nothing could have seemed more unlikely than that they would be concerned with civil administration. They expected to live under the rule of the Moghul Emperor and his lieutenants and they do not appear to have been thinking in terms of the extraterritoriality with which other English merchant-adventurers were familiar. In the disturbed conditions of the time, however, they soon found it necessary to construct forts and to build factories or places of business and residence. The grants of land made by the local authorities for these purposes generally conferred on the East India Company’s representatives the right to govern themselves, and although, initially, this might affect only a few Europeans, more difficult problems of jurisdiction arose when considerable numbers of Indians came to live within the limits of the factories or forts. The East India Company at this stage claimed no jurisdiction over the surrounding countryside, but at the factories and forts some elementary police organization was a necessity if only for watch and ward purposes, and provision also had to be made for settling disputes.

At the beginning of the fourth decade of the seventeenth century, the Company had factories at Surat and Broach on the west coast, at Agra, and at Masulipatam and Armagaon on the Coromandel Coast. Shortly after that, two factories were established in Bengal, followed at the end of the decade by the foundation of Madras. Within the next two decades, Bombay came into the possession of the Company and other factories were also established. At each of these settlements the problem of providing a small scale judicial and police administration had to be faced. In the early days, as we have seen, Madras, Bombay and Bengal proceeded in these matters independently of each other. We begin our story of this process with Madras, and we must first explain briefly how it came into the Company’s possession.

In 1564, after a long period of continuous warfare, the Muslim King of Golconda virtually destroyed the old Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar and put the Raja to death. The Raja’s brother fled and succeeded in establishing a small kingdom at Chandragiri, south east of the present city of Madras, where he asserted a sovereignty, which was often only nominal, over a number of local chiefs known as Naiks. In 1637 the Council of the Company’s factory at Masulipatam sought to escape from the exactions of the local Naik, and Francis Day, a member of that Council, was sent to explore the possibilities of a settlement further south. He struck up a friendship with the Naik of Ghingleput, and through his agency secured from the Raja of Chandragiri a grant of territory some three miles in extent from north to south and stretching one mile inland. The Firman* empowered the Company to build a fort—for the construction of which the Raja promised to advance the money—to mint its own coinage and ‘to govern and dispose of the government of Madraspatam* for the term and space of two years’, after which the Company would continue in possession subject to payment to the Raja of half the customs duties of the fort.* The Raja did not in fact fulfil his promise to advance funds, but in 1640 the Company’s agent took possession and the construction of the fort, named Fort St. George, was begun.

In 1646 the King of Golconda overran the Carnatic,* but, in return for the presentation by the Company of a brass gun, he confirmed the Company’s privileges. ‘Otherwise’, reported the agent ‘hee would not have confirmed our old priviledges formelye graunted us by the now fledd Jentue King’.*

Relations with the King of Golconda and with his general, Mir Jumla, who became virtually independent of him, were often difficult but in 1657, after an armed struggle, Mir Jumla agreed to leave the Company in possession of Madras on condition of an annual payment of 380 pagodas* in satisfaction of all demands.*

In 1672 the payment was raised to 1200 pagodas and it was, agreed that Madras ‘should be wholly under the English with unrestricted power of commerce, government and justice*—an agreement which was in fact a confirmation of the authority which the Raja of Chandragiri had specifically conferred upon the Company in 1645.

In 1687 the Emperor Aurangzeb finally defeated the King of Golconda and became the overlord of the Company in Madras. In 1690, his general, Zulfiqar Khan, confirmed the Company’s privileges in Madras and Masulipatam. The position now was that ‘the English power of government was plenary, but the sovereignty of the Emperor was fully recognised by the payment of a substantial quit-rent’.*

The Moghul Empire now began to disintegrate and the Nizam-ul-Mulk, nominally the Emperor’s Viceroy, became for all practical purposes independent and the Company had to look to him for its privileges. In the eighteenth century, however, his power also waned and complicated struggles involving the English, the French and several of the country powers, had the effect of making the Nawab of the Carnatic practically independent of the Nizam. Theoretically this should have made him the overlord of the Company, but he became increasingly dependent on the English, and in 1801 a usurping Nawab installed by the English handed over the entire administration to the Company.

Early Administration of Justice

This brief historical sketch is relevant to our purpose since it shows that until the end of the eighteenth century the Company always had an overlord and that for the first hundred years or so the overlordship was a reality. In framing its policy with regard to judicial and police matters, the Company therefore had to be careful in its early days not to encroach on the prerogatives of the overlord or the Naik who represented him. The effect of the resulting hesitation was apparent as early as 1641, when an Indian woman was murdered for her jewels by two men of an untouchable caste. The Company’s agent

notified all the passages to the naique who gave us an express command to doe justice upon the homicides according to the laws of England; but if wee woold not then he woold according to the customs of Kamatte; for he said . . . if justice be not done who would come and trade here.*

In 1645, in confirming the earlier grant, the Raja of Chandragiri made the position even clearer, for his grant distinctly stated that ‘for the better managing of your business, we surrender the government and justice of the towne into your hands’. The legal position thus was that as regards Indians, judicial authority was derived from the Company’s suzerain, while that over Englishmen rested on the Act of 1623* which had authorized the Company to grant commissions to its Presidents and chief officers for the punishment of offences committed by the Company’s servants on land, subject to the provision that in capital cases trial must be by jury.

Although the Company was thus armed with authority from both the Crown and the Raja, it was still unwilling to be embroiled in these matters and for some years it continued the practice by which the Indian adigar* dealt with cases where only Indians were concerned, while the Council adjudicated in cases affecting only the Company’s servants. In 1653, however, various abuses made it necessary to oust the adigar from his jurisdiction, and two members of the Council, Leigh and Martin, were ordered to sit during alternate weeks at the Choultry—or Court House—to administer justice.*

The charter of 1661 extended the jurisdiction of the Company’s officers to include Indians and others living in the settlement, and authorized the Governor and Council in each Presidency ‘to judge all persons belonging to the said Government and Company or that shall live under them, in all cases, whether civil or criminal’—an authorization which appeared to be valid in view of the Raja’s grant of jurisdiction. When Sir Edward Winter arrived in Madras as Agent in September 1662, he brought with him orders that ‘all considerable differences or disputes that shall happen to arise amongst any persons under your jurisdiction’, should be judged by the Agent and Council. Petty disputes were to be settled by ‘an honest Englishman’—’noe natives to have that power in any place that belongs to the Company’.* Nevertheless, a year or two later, an Indian was again made Judge in the Choultry. This seems to have led to collusion between him and the Agent, and in 1665 the new Agent, Foxcroft, therefore appointed an English Justice to the post.

The Company’s officers were still uncertain as to the extent of their authority, particularly as to the infliction of capital punishment. In 1665 the Agent sought instructions from home as to what to do in a case where a Portuguese woman had beaten a slave girl to death. The Company replied after consultation with counsel that ‘the respective Governors and Councells established by us in any of our fortes, townes etc., have power to exequute judgment in all causes, civill and criminal!’.* There was, however, the technical difficulty that the Company’s chief officer in Madras was only an Agent, while the Charter of 1661 had conferred the necessary authority on the Governor and Council of any of the settlements. To remove this difficulty, the Agent was now appointed Governor and George Foxcroft thus became the first Governor of Madras in 1666.

No immediate action was taken under the new powers, but the population of Madras had indeed grown to such an extent that systematic arrangements for the administration of justice were required. Two Justices of the Peace were appointed to sit in the Choultry to perform magisterial functions and also to collect customs duties and register sales of land. The first Justices were not servants of the Company, but it soon became customary only to appoint members of the Council to those offices. At about the same time an embryo Court of Judicature was established to deal with more serious cases. In 1678, Streynsham Master, the Governor, earned the process of systemization a little further, largely on the Bombay model. A more important in dependent development occurred in 1687. In the previous year an attempt to impose a house tax had met with resistance and in order to obtain the support of the European inhabitants of Madras, a Corporation and a Mayor’s Court were established.* Aldermen replaced the earlier Justices and it is interesting to note that it was provided that no more than three of the thirteen aldermen, in which number the Mayor was included, should be English, while seven were to be Indians, the other three being Portuguese. The Mayor and Aldermen heard civil cases, but also acted as Justices of the Peace for criminal matters. In serious cases appeal lay to the Admiralty Court, though later they were transferred to the Governor and Council. The position of the Court with regard to Indians is not very clear. They were apparently subject to its jurisdiction, but disputes between Indians were only heard by the Mayor’s Court if the parties agreed to abide by English law. In practice the Choultry Court continued to deal with minor disputes between Indians until the establishment of a Recorder’s Court at the end of the eighteenth century.

The Pedda Naiks

The judicial machinery had thus been improved, but it would have been of little use without a more efficient police organization. When Fort St. George was established, the Company simply took over the existing organization. This was administered by a hereditary Indian official known as the Pedda Naik, whose functions perhaps corresponded to those elsewhere performed by a Kotwal, in that he was responsible for law and order, and particularly for the prevention of theft and robbery. In accordance with the general Indian tradition, he was liable to compensate victims of theft or robbery for their losses and in return he received certain customs duties. He was assisted by a force of twenty talliars or watchmen. For a time the arrangement worked tolerably well, but as population grew the force was quite inadequate; at the same time the opportunities for oppression by the Pedda Naik increased rapidly. In the late 1650s he complained that his work was much too heavy and resigned his office. The Council seems to have been convinced that the complaint was genuine, and in 1659 he was persuaded to resume his office and his remuneration was increased to a grant of eighteen paddy fields, together with a variety of petty customs on paddy, fish oil, betel nut, pepper and other similar articles. He was now required to employ fifty peons and his responsibilities were laid down clearly by the Council.

If any man shall be delivered by us into your custody, and shall make his escape, that you shall pay the debt the person escaped owed. . . . Also if any house is robbed that you shall make satisfaction for what is lost. And if any merchant or inhabitant of this Town shall run away, and any of your people having knowledge thereof shall conceal it, that you are to bring that party run away again, and correct him that knew of his departure.*

As population grew, the Pedda Naik’s income from customs dues rose proportionately, and in 1686 the Directors came to the conclusion that he was over paid. They accordingly resolved that the Pedda Naik’s office should be farmed out to the highest bidder. No action appears to have been taken on this resolution, but the Governor determined to enforce the Pedda Naik’s responsibility to make good losses by theft, and declared in November 1688, ‘divers of the inhabitants of this Town, have made their complaints to us, that they have been great sufferers by the many robberies that have been committed of late’. Moreover, it was stated that the Pedda Naik and his talliars

have concealed some of the stolen goods, and imprisoned one of the thieves for fear he should make a discovery of others among themselves and that the said talliars do make it their constant practice to receive half the stolen goods and let the thieves escape with the rest.*

The records do not show if the Council succeeded in putting an end to these malpractices. The next important reference to the office of the Pedda Naik is in 1701. In October of that year the incumbent, Angarapa Naik, died and a number of local poligars wrote urging the claim of one Timapa Naik to the office. Timapa, who was a relative of Angarapa, had apparently been struggling to become Pedda Naik for some years, but he had been rejected; partly because Angarapa had the better hereditary claim, and partly for the relatively minor reason that Timapa had committed murder. The Council found itself in a quandary. It dare not offend the poligars and it feared that Timapa might persuade the Nawab to intervene on his behalf. The Governor decided to forestall any such action and he appointed the infant son of the deceased Pedda Naik to the post on the understanding that the infant’s uncle would officiate for him. At the same time, the obligations of the office were increased—a hundred regular peons were now to be provided and the Pedda Naik was to supply twelve deer and twelve wild hogs every year ‘as an Acknowledgment that you hold your place from and under the Rt Hon’ble Company’.*

In 1717 the President complained that the Pedda Naik ‘has forfeited his Cowle by open and notorious transgressions of every part thereof; that he is become utterly incapable of discharging the duty of that post’.* He was therefore dismissed, but a few years later his successor resigned and it was necessary to reinstate the dismissed Pedda Naik.

Even if the Pedda Naiks had been honest they would have been hard put to it to carry out their multifarious duties with an exiguous staff. They were required not only to maintain law and order in general, but also to deal with the continual disputes between the left hand and right hand castes, to keep the ‘Untouchables’ in order, to protect the property of the Company, to prevent the exporting of children as slaves, to supervise markets and to provide escorts for high personages. The system was clearly an anachronism and from about 1770 the Council began to consider how more effective methods could be introduced. In that year the Council instituted a Board of Police which in fact consisted of the President and Council meeting twice a month for specifically police purposes. The Council and Board, however, dealt with many matters which might not today be regarded as within the purview of the police: settlement of civil disputes between Indians (which did not come before the Mayor’s Court unless both parties consented), the construction of pavements, the destruction of pariah dogs, the fixation of prices, the employment of servants, all fell within the province of the Board. It can have achieved little and it is not a matter for much regret that in the following year the Company directed that the Board should be abolished, apparently on the ground that its establishment was not covered by any Charter.* A few years later a Superintendent of Police and a Kotwal were appointed, but as they were in reality only overseers of markets, their designations were misnomers and we can ignore them.

In 1783 a Mr. Popham—later Government Solicitor—submitted a detailed scheme for the organization of a police establishment which would be responsible for many other matters besides crime. The only result of Popham’s labours was that he was included in a Committee of Regulation which was established ‘for fixing the Wages of Servants, the price of Provisions and for preserving personal cleanliness in the Black Town’.* Nothing appears to have happened as the result of the appointment of this Committee, but in 1791 the Governor, Lord Herbert, revived it under the name of Committee of Police. At this time there was virtually no police organization in Madras city at all, since, for reasons which are not clear, the emoluments of the Pedda Naik had been abolished some years previously, and he had therefore ceased to perform his functions. Crime increased alarmingly and in 1798 the Council had the unusual experience of receiving a petition from the inhabitants asking for the re-appointment of a Pedda Naik and offering to pay the necessary fees. Action was taken accordingly and all Indian inhabitants were required to pay three fanams a year to the Pedda Naik.*

Reorganization

In the judicial sphere, this was a period of innovation. Under the Company’s Charter of 1793 professional Judges were appointed and in 1798 the Mayor’s Court was superseded by a Recorder’s Court. This in turn was replaced in 1801 by a Supreme Court of three Judges. In police matters, however, there was still an unwillingness to face the real issues. The Company had inherited an unsatisfactory system from the past and the consciousness of having an overlord had made it hesitate to make revolutionary changes. Fortunately the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 forced the Company’s hand, since it showed how completely the Company was out of touch with local thought and feeling. In the ponderous official language of the day:

From the absolute want of that regular chain of combination and connection by which the Government might be enabled to exercise a salutary superintendence over the proceedings of the community of this Presidency, in that important branch which relates to the duties of police, the channel of intercourse between the ruling authority, and those of its subjects, whose actions it is particularly required to observe with vigilance, is in a great degree cut off; and transactions the most immoral, or intrigues the most dangerous, may be continued and executed in the secret retreats of this populous settlement, without the means being left to the Government of prevention or of punishment.*

Once again a committee was set up to consider the establishment of an effective police force in Madras City, and this time immediate action resulted. The office of the Pedda Naik was abolished, since as set forth in the terms of reference of the committee ‘the Polygar establishment may, therefore, so far be considered to be obstructive of Public Justice’.* It was decided that police arrangements for the city should be placed under the charge of a European superintendent, and in 1806 Mr. Walter Grant, a senior magistrate, was appointed to that office. He was provided with a force of ten Europeans (known as constables, who were paid the princely salary of ten pagodas a month), a number of darogas or inspectors, five hundred peons, thirty mounted peons and twenty hircarrahs who can best be described either as messengers or subordinate intelligence agents. The additional expenditure was to be met partly from the proceeds of a lottery and partly from a house tax levied on all inhabitants of the city, European as well as Indian.

Two years later the emergency had passed and economy was the order of the day. The number of peons was reduced and the posts of darogas were abolished. An equally important change was the combination of the post of Superintendent of Police with that of the Collector of Taxes.

In 1812 the Regulations for Establishment of an Efficient System of Police effected another change. The Superintendent of Police for the town of Madras was also to be a magistrate. He would not take his regular turn on the bench, but would sit with another Justice of the Peace for cases where two justices were required. Before long he became the presiding magistrate. The other magistrates also sat at the police office, and in 1815 Mr. Thomas Harris, Superintendent of Police, who was directed by the Government to report on the working of the police, stated firmly that: ‘The sitting of the Magistrates at the Police Office, gives high respect and strength to the Superintendent’s general powers and that the removal of such authority from this office would on the contrary, have a most injurious effect.’* There is scope for endless argument as to the propriety of combining magisterial and police functions in a single person, but the system had some practical advantages. Police duties at this time still covered a wide field, including the issue of passports, the inspection of weights and measures, the control of prices, the supervision of the quality of goods sold in the market and the apprehension of military deserters, in addition to normal police work. It is interesting to note from one report that one of the constables, having been a butcher, attended daily at the markets to report the quality of the provisions brought their for sale.*

The 1812 Regulations covered all these matters, but perhaps their most interesting provision was that which empowered magistrates to set idlers and vagabonds to work on the public roads.

Attempts at a partial separation of the magistrates’ office from that of the Superintendent of Police do not seem to have proved satisfactory and in 1819 it was reported that law and order had seriously deteriorated, and that ‘respectable inhabitants no longer dared to sleep with their usual ornaments on their persons . . . that drunkenness had increased to the scandal, inconvenience and danger of the respectable members of the community.’* The experiment of partial separation was dropped and it was ordered that ‘the whole Department of Magistracy at the Presidency shall be united under the general control of the Superintendent of Police’.* The police organization of Madras City had now reached a position of some stability and except for the appointment in 1834 of the first Indian police magistrate, Vembaukkam Raghavachariar, little change took place in the next two decades. We must now turn to police work in the mofussil.*

Madras Mofussil Police

Until the third quarter of the eighteenth century British possessions in South India were confined to the city of Madras—to which a few square miles of immediately adjoining territory had been added—besides three small factories on the Coromandel Coast. In 1765 four of the Northern Circars were granted to the Company by the Moghul Emperor, while towards the end of the century vast areas of South India came into the Company’s possession by conquest or treaty. The Company was now faced with problems of law and order far more formidable than those with which it had to cope in Madras City. As a result of long continued wars and the breakdown of nearly all central authority, ‘the completest anarchy recorded in the history of Hindustan prevailed over a greater part of the Northern Circars. The forms, nay even the remembrance of civil government, seemed to be wholly lost’.* A similar position prevailed elsewhere in the territories acquired by the Company. There were indeed areas, such as part of Mysore, where a strong ruler had been able to exercise some kind of restraint on the amildars or other officials appointed by him to administer his territories but over most of South India rule was exercised by numerous poligars or petty chieftains concerned only to plunder and to exact the utmost possible revenue, or by revenue farmers whose motives differed little from those of poligars. The ancient police agency, consisting of village headmen and watchmen had, in the hands of the poligars or renters, become only an instrument of oppression.

The problem of replacing this worthless and oppressive organization by a more satisfactory police machine had to be faced by newcomers who knew little of the local language and had no experience to guide them in bringing order out of chaos. Inevitably they reacted strongly against the existing state of affairs, and failed to see what had once been good in the traditional method of administration. They were influenced too by that thorough Westernizer, Cornwallis, the Governor-General, who instructed the Governor of Madras to establish a police system completely independent of poligars or landholders.

The Governor General in Council considers it to be of the greatest importance to the maintenance of peace and good order, as well as to our political security, that the Police of the Country should be superintended by officers especially nominated by the Government.

The exercise of this important branch of the public authority in the hands of the individuals is more particularly objectionable in the territories under your presidency, as tending to keep alive those sentiments of independence which have characterised the landholders, and which must be completely extinguished before they can become useful and good subjects. While any portion of public authority is allowed to devolve to them by inheritance in virtue of their possessions, they will never be brought to consider themselves as mere proprietors of estates.

Independent of these important considerations, to abandon the charge of the Police of the country to the landholders must always give rise to the most flagrant abuses. In the enquiries which preceded the resumption of this charge from the landholders in Bengal, it was established that the offices of Police were held chiefly by most notorious robbers who paid large sums of money to the Zemindars, or to their officers and departments, for these situations; the possession of which enabled them to carry on their depredations with impunity.*

These principles were enshrined in the Regulations of 1802. A Court, under the superintendence of a Zillah* Judge, was established in every district, and the Zillah Judge was also Magistrate and Superintendent of Police. He tried petty cases himself, he apprehended offenders, he committed serious cases to the Court of Circuit, and in theory he controlled the police who were organized under paid darogas and thanadars. Landholders, village headmen and watchmen lost their responsibilities and no longer had to deliver up culprits or pay compensation for losses of robbery or theft. Naturally, the new system did not work and crime increased rapidly.

In 1806 Lord William Bentinck, the Governor of Madras, appointed a Committee to enquire into the Administration of Justice and Police, but no action seems to have resulted from its recommendations. The Court of Directors was dissatisfied with the position, and in 1813 they appointed a committee of their own to examine the position. As a result of that committee’s investigations, in 1814 the Court condemned the system which had been introduced in 1802, and insisted on a revival of the traditional village police arrangements. The Court pointed out

that the village police secures the aid and co-operation of the people at large in the support and furtherance of its operations, because it is organised in a mode which adapts itself to their customs; that any system for the general management of the police of the country which is not built on that foundation must be radically defective and inadequate; and that the preservation of social order and tranquility never can be effected by the feeble operations of a few darogas and peons stationed through an extensive country, wanting in local influence and connection with the people, insufficiently remunerated to induce respectable men to accept the office, placed beyond the sight and control of the Magistrate and surrounded with various temptations to betray their trust.*

The Court was, nevertheless, also opposed to the idea of investing zemindars in general with police powers, although it considered that this might be tried in approved cases.

There was much divergence of opinion as to what should be done, but in 1814, Munro, who had very definite views on the subject, was appointed as head of a commission to reorganize the police system. He was firmly convinced of the necessity of re-establishing the village police and of associating Indian officers and traditional institutions with the administration wherever possible. He strenuously advocated the view that only revenue officers had or could have the intimate local knowledge on which the maintenance of law and order depended. He was strongly opposed, not only by those who wished to exclude native elements wherever possible, but by others who, though not sharing that narrow view, were convinced of the unsoundness of the ryotwari system* which Munro advocated and which was closely connected with his proposed police reform. To a great extent Munro’s views prevailed and were implemented in a batch of regulations in 1816. Under Madras Regulation XI of 1816, the powers of a District Magistrate were transferred from the Judge to the Collector, though the Judges on circuit were also empowered to look into police matters. The principle of uniting police and revenue functions was, indeed, followed at all levels. Collectors and Tahsildars became magistrates and heads of the police in their respective jurisdictions, and village headmen were once again made responsible for reporting crime and apprehending offenders. Village watchmen were also reinvested with their traditional duties, though the liability to make good losses resulting from undetected robbery and theft was not re-imposed. Dual supervision of the police by two authorities cannot have been very satisfactory and it became even less so in 1843 when the powers of the Judges on circuit were vested in the District Judge. In 1832 a Select Committee of Parliament passed strictures on the police system of India, but no action was taken in Madras as a result of that Committee’s report. The system laid down by the Regulations of 1816 remained unchanged in principle until the late 1850s, when what may be regarded as the period of experiment came to an end.

Chapter 5

Two Centuries of Experiment II: Bombay

The early circumstances of the English in Bombay differed in important ways from those which attended the growth of the Company’s settlement in Madras. First, unlike the English in Madras, in Bombay the Company had no Indian overlord, but exercised supreme authority subject only to the sovereign rights of the English Crown; secondly, there was no indigenous organization in Bombay corresponding to that of the Pedda Naik, and police administration had to start from scratch; thirdly, the small but well entrenched Portuguese element in the population gave rise to difficulties in Bombay from which Francis Day and his successors in Madras did not suffer; while fourthly, in its early days, the founders of Bombay were more seriously harassed by hostile forces than their contemporaries in Madras. Whatever the balance of advantages and disadvantages may have been, many years were to pass before the Company could establish any police organization worthy of the name in Bombay. To understand this situation, we must touch briefly on the early history of Bombay City.

What is now called Bombay City originally consisted of seven islands, which were ruled by a succession of Hindu dynasties, until in 1348, a Muslim ruler of Gujerat absorbed them into his kingdom. The Gujeratis took little interest in this acquisition and in 1534 the Portuguese, who had waged naval battles for three years against the fleets of Gujerat and Egypt, acquired Bassein and the seven islands or villages of Bombay from Sultan Bahadur.

During the Portuguese period the name Bombay was applied only to the village in which the shrine of the Hindu goddess Mumba Devi had once stood (an area surrounding the present main railway station), but in the course of time the neighbouring localities of Mazagon, Parel and Varli were amalgamated with Bombay proper for administrative purposes. Mahim, a mile or so to the north, was considered of greater importance and included with it were Sion, Dharavi and Vadala. Colaba to the south remained more or less independent and belonged to the Kolis. During the century of Portuguese rule, lands in Bombay proper and in Mazagon were granted to distinguished Portuguese individuals, while the Jesuits and Franciscans held much of the land in Mahim and elsewhere in the ceded territories. Under these grantees were tenants, perhaps mainly Hindu or Indo-Portuguese, but at the end of the Portuguese period the total population of Bombay did not exceed 10,000.*

From the purely economic point of view there was nothing particularly attractive about Bombay in the middle of the seventeenth century, but its potential as a naval base was obvious, and the East India Company—which had been established at Surat since 1612—had given thought to the possibility of acquiring it from the Portuguese. ‘They had endeavoured to seize it by force in 1620; the Surat Council had urged the Directors of the East India Company to purchase it in 1652; and the Directors in their turn had urged upon Cromwell the excellence of the harbour and its natural isolation from attack by land.’* In 1661 the Treaty of Marriage between Charles II and the Infanta of Portugal provided for the transfer to the English Crown of the absolute sovereignty of ‘the Island of Bombay in the East Indies with all the rights, profits, territories and appurtenances whatsoever thereto belonging’, subject only to the stipulation that Roman Catholics must enjoy the free exercise of their religion.*

The Portuguese on the spot greatly resented this cession, and when a fleet including five men-of-war and 500 troops was sent from England to take possession, every possible obstacle was put in the way of Sir Abraham Shipman, the Governor-Designate. The Treaty itself was extremely vague as to the area covered by it—a fact which is not surprising when it is remembered that even the generally well-informed Lord Clarendon, who had signed the Treaty, referred to ‘the Island of Bombay with the towns and castles therein which are within a very little distance from Brazil’.* The Portuguese firmly contended that the Treaty did not cover Mahim and its dependencies, and in 1665, Humphrey Cooke, who had succeeded Shipman, was only able to secure possession by signing a Convention which limited English occupation to Bombay proper and the associated villages of Mazagon, Parel and Varli. Cooke also had to give the Portuguese advantageous terms with regard to customs duties and similar matters. The Convention was never ratified and soon after it had been signed, Cooke took possession of Mahim and its dependencies. All of the modern town of Bombay was then in the possession of the English except Colaba and Old Woman’s island.* In 1677 Charles II formally repudiated Cooke’s Convention on account of its ‘manifest injustice’.

The position resulting from the transfer of Bombay to the English Crown was to some extent anomalous, since Surat was administered by the Company under its Charter while Bombay was under the administration of royal officials. Friction inevitably resulted, but the difficulties were resolved when, in 1668, Bombay was transferred to the Company to be held ‘in free and common soccage, as of the manors of East Greenwich’, at an annual farm rent of £10. The Charter of 1668 conferred on the Company the full powers of government in Bombay and its dependencies, including the exercise of judicial authority and provided that the inhabitants of those territories should be English citizens.* Bombay and its government were placed under the control of the Company’s President at Surat and it was not until 1687 that Bombay became the seat of the Company’s government in Western India.

For reasons which are not clear, little seems to have remained of the Portuguese judicial and police systems and the Company had to start virtually from scratch. The history of police administration in Bombay under the Company’s rule falls naturally into three periods. In the first period, which lasted for more than a century, certain watch and ward bodies existed, but they were under no specialist direction and were subject only to the general control of the magistracy. In the next period, supervision of those bodies was exercised by an officer styled either Lieutenant of Police or Deputy of Police or Superintendent of Police, who combined executive police functions with magisterial duties and had the power to inflict punishment. In the third phase, which continued almost throughout the last four or five decades of the Company’s rule, the operating control of the police was divorced from the exercise of judicial functions, but there was still nothing which could be called trained professional direction. We must now consider these phases in detail.

Early Organization

Shortly after the transfer of Bombay to the Company, one of the most remarkable of English proconsuls, ‘that chivalric and intrepid man’ Gerald Aungier, became President of Surat and Governor of Bombay. Circumstances limited the length of time he could spare in Bombay, but he at once realized that, apart from his concern with trade and defence, he had to face the three-fold problem of promulgating law, establishing courts to administer it and setting up some organization to enforce it. For the first of these purposes, he had some instructions from the Court of Directors for his guidance,* and on that basis a rough code which, together with the English Common Law, was to be the basis of criminal law for Bombay, was published in 1670. Two years later, George Wilcox, the first whole-time Judge of Bombay, embellished the code, but he appears to have dealt mainly with matters of procedure.

In 1670 Aungier laid the foundation of the judiciary. He divided the territory into two divisions in each of which he appointed a Court of five Justices, over which the Customs Officer of the division was to preside. The Justices were empowered to deal with small civil cases and minor criminal cases, while the Deputy Governor and Council were to try serious criminal cases and civil suits, and to act as a court of appeal from the Justices. In the superior court, trial was to be by jury.

In the laws and orders sent out by the Company in 1669, provision had been made for the establishment of a Court of Judicature under a Judge appointed by the Governor and Council. In 1672 Aungier therefore proposed the appointment of a salaried judge, but the Directors were averse to the engagement of ‘a judge versed in civil law, being apprehensive that such a person might be disposed to promote litigation and might not obey the orders which the President and Council might find it for the interest of the Company to give him’.* Aungier compromised and appointed as a whole-time Judge George Wilcox, a factor who had received some legal training.* His salary was fixed at Rs. 2,000 per annum, and as compensation for being debarred from private trade, he was given perquisites consisting of ‘a horse or palanquin, a sumbrera or sun-shade boy, and one new gown a year’.* Justices of the Peace prepared indictments and assisted the Judge in the monthly sessions at which criminal cases were heard, juries being empanelled for the trial of major offences. Appeals lay to the Governor and Council who also themselves tried cases of unusual public importance.* Capital sentences were referred to the Governor and Council for confirmation. The Judge was kept very busy and his court was evidently popular. In 1673 he reported to the Company that: ‘The noise of it has filled our neighbours to admiration being amazed to see that our justice outruns their expectations and great reason for it when our courts are neither dilatory nor partial.* Wilcox and his immediate successors, however, were not professional lawyers and in 1683 the Bombay Government decided to strengthen the judiciary by appointing Dr. St. John—who had been sent out as a Judge of the Admiralty Court—a Judge of the Island of Bombay. The change did not produce as much benefit as had been hoped and indeed it led to friction between the judiciary and the Governor and Council.

Codes and courts obviously needed to be supported by some organization for the apprehension of offenders and the prevention of crime. In about 1670 Aungier established a kind of militia, mainly recruited from lower caste Hindus, known as bhandaris, although at least in theory service in it was compulsory for all landowners. This was primarily a military force, but it was also employed on police duties, and in 1673 Aungier reported that: ‘These companies are exercised once a month at least, and serve as night watches against surprise and robbery.’* The strength of the force at this time was about 500, but as a result of a drive for economy in the early 1680s the officer establishment was reduced to one ensign with three sergeants and two corporals.

In 1683, Keigwin’s rebellion, brought on mainly by the Company’s parsimonious attitude towards its factors and soldiers, interrupted orderly government and the militia joined the rebels. Fortunately this unhappy episode was soon terminated and the militia resumed its normal duties. The need for such duties was indeed great, for the last two decades of the century and the first decade of the eighteenth century were a period of boundless confusion. The hostility of the Sidi, the Marathas and the Portuguese had combined with the presence of interlopers and the rivalry between the East India Company and the new rival Company* to undermine authority. Serious epidemics and a decline in population had made matters worse. In 1694 an attempt was made to deal with the general lawlessness by strengthening the militia and establishing regular night patrols which were made responsible for arresting robbers and ‘sundry base people, who went about work in company in the night, designing ill to some of the inhabitants’.* The order to the militia passed by the Governor is of interest:

Being informed that certain ill people on this island go about in the night to the number of ten or twelve or more, designing some mischief or disturbance to the inhabitants, these are to enorder you to go the rounds every night with twenty men at all places which you think most suitable to intercept such persons.

No substantial improvement resulted from this reinforcement of the militia and in the closing years of the century Bombay City was in a sorry state. ‘Looseness of morals prevailed everywhere. There was no control over the factors, for there was none over their masters. Intemperance was rife to a degree . . . and Bombay was governed by a handful of tipsy councillors.’* Moreover, at this time the judicial machinery had almost broken down. As a result, first of the serious quarrel between St. John and the Governor and Council, and then of the struggle between the two rival companies, there was a period during which the office of Judge was vacant. It has indeed been said that the doors of the judicature were closed, but a more accurate statement would be that important judicial functions were performed by the Deputy Governor in conjunction with the representative of the English Company and later by the Governor and Council. Not until 1726 was a more regular procedure resumed.

A Period of Experiment

As can be imagined, little effective action against crime was taken during this period of confusion, but by the second quarter of the eighteenth century, conditions had in some respect returned to normal and Bombay was again on the upgrade after a long period of decline. Steps were taken to improve the judicial machinery by the establishment in 1728 of a Mayor’s Court.* It consisted of a mayor and eight aldermen selected from the principal inhabitants and was empowered to hear civil cases of all kinds subject to an appeal to the Governor and Council. The Charter also authorized the Governor and Council to hold Quarter Sessions and appointed the President and five senior members of the Council as Justices of the Peace. Unfortunately, the value of the Mayor’s Court was to some extent vitiated by the continued friction between it and the Governor and Council, and by the fact that the members of the Mayor’s Court ‘had no more knowledge of law than could be derived from a manuscript book of instructions sent them by the Court of Directors’* From time to time during the eighteenth century, modifications were made in the number or method of selection of Justices of the Peace, and in 1753 a Court of Requests was set up to deal with minor civil cases, but no really important change was made until 1798, when a Recorder was appointed. The Mayor’s Court was replaced by the Recorder’s Court—which included the mayor and three aldermen—and the Governor and Council ceased to be a Court of Oyer and Terminer and of Gaol Delivery.*

During the first three quarters of the eighteenth century, reform of the police organization had lagged behind improvement of the judiciary, and the militia continued to be the sole agency concerned with the prevention of crime. It was very inefficient and the Government exercised no direct control over it. Its activities were, in theory, supervised by the magistracy, but as the Justices at that time had no executive officer other than the Sheriff, this supervision cannot have amounted to much. Moreover, it does not appear that there was any organization for the investigation of crime and the detection of criminals, as distinct from the simpler task of apprehending offenders caught redhanded. Naturally, crime abounded and public dissatisfaction grew. By the eighth decade of the century, the population of Bombay had grown to over 100,000,* and the police organization of the earlier days was now hopelessly inadequate.

In 1771 steps were taken to reorganize the militia and to employ it on regular police duties. The Bombay bhandaris were formed into a battalion composed of 48 officers and 400 men, which furnished nightly a guard of 12 officers and 100 men ‘for the protection of the woods’.

Three posts were established and from these posts constant patrols, which were in communication with one another, were sent out from dark until gunfire in the morning, the whole area between Dongri and Back Bay being thus covered during the night.

The duties of the patrols were to keep the peace, to seize all persons found rioting, pending examination, to arrest all robbers and housebreakers, to seize all Europeans without passes, and all coffrees (African slaves) found in greater numbers than two together, or armed with swords, sticks, knives, or bludgeons.*

This new force was to be paid by results.

The Company agreed to pay the Bhandari police Rs. 10 for every coffree or runaway slave arrested and placed on the works or on a cruiser; Re.1 for every slave absent from his work for three days; and Rs. 2 for every slave absent from duty for one month; Re.1 for every soldier or sailor absent from duty for forty-eight hours, whom they might arrest; and 8 annas for every soldier or sailor found drunk in the woods after 8 p.m.*

When this regular force was formed, the inhabitants generally were presumably relieved of the liability to serve in the militia, although this does not appear from the records. Twenty respectable Portuguese landholders were, however, appointed, to attend singly or in pairs every night at the various police posts. It is not clear what their function was.

This was indeed a period of unsuccessful experiment. Neither the reorganization of the militia nor the substitution for it of patrols of sepoy marines brought about any real improvement, and in 1778 the Grand Jury complained bitterly that ‘the frequent robberies and the difficulties attending the detection of aggressors, called loudly for some establishment clothed with such authority as should effectually protect the innocent and bring the guilty to trial’.* They proposed that His Majesty’s Justices should apply to the Government for the appointment of an officer with ample authority to effect the end in view. It had indeed become clear that much greater regular supervision of the patrols was required, and in 1779 a Mr. James Todd was appointed Lieutenant of Police. James Todd seems to have gone to work systematically, but the economically-minded Directors disliked the expense involved in the appointment and before long they provided that his salary should be met by an assessment on the public. At the same time, they changed Todd’s designation to Deputy of Police. Todd himself came to an unhappy end and was found guilty of corruption. In 1787 the Grand Jury again referred to the inefficient state of every branch of the Police. Policemen seldom get a square deal from the public anywhere, but it seems a little hard that the Grand Jury should have blamed them for ‘the filthiness of some of the inhabitants, being uncommonly offensive and a real nuisance to society’.*

There was, nevertheless, a great deal wrong. After Todd’s departure, the post of Superintendent of Police was created. The Superintendent was vested with magisterial powers and was authorized, acting by himself, to inflict punishments for minor offences. In due course all kinds of additional duties were imposed on him. He had, for example, to become Surveyor of Roads and Clerk of the Markets—and perhaps for this reason there was no increase in the efficiency of the force.

Regulation I of 1812

Many unsatisfactory aspects of the police and judicial organization came to light after the appointment of a Recorder. In 1809 a Police Committee was appointed under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, Mr. F. Warden, to review the whole subject. Warden’s report and the comments on it by Sir James Mackintosh, the Recorder, are most illuminating. Warden and Mackintosh agreed on all essentials. They emphasized the need for the appointment of stipendiary magistrates; and they pointed out that many of the ordinances made by the Justices, and even the Legislative Acts of the Governor in Council, were invalid, in the terms of the Charter. Of greater importance, however, was their condemnation of the system under which the Superintendent of Police acted as a magistrate and inflicted punishments. They objected to this system on two grounds. In the first place, it was both unjust and illegal for punishment to be inflicted by a single magistrate; secondly, it was manifestly wrong that the officer responsible for the apprehension and prosecution of criminal offenders should also try them. Here, Mackintosh was particularly scathing in his comments. After pointing out that in a single year the Superintendent of Police had banished 217 persons and condemned sixty-four to hard labour in the docks, with chains,* he maintained stoutly that all these sentences were illegal and he summed up thus: ‘A superintendent of Police may arrest forty men in the morning; he may try, convict, and condemn them in the forenoon; and he may close the day by exercising the Royal prerogative of pardon towards them all’.* Mackintosh proposed that the post of Superintendent of Police be abolished as it would be quite wrong for such an officer to exercise magisterial powers and yet Warden reported: ‘If the Superintendent be not a Magistrate he must be useless . . . he cannot even search or apprehend; he can only do that much worse which a constable can do perfectly well.’* In place of the Superintendent, a High Constable should be appointed to act under the Justices. The office should be held by a ‘European of tried integrity, of a bold character and robust constitution, and of a rank not above the duties of his office. To give it to a gentleman is a mere expedient for increasing his allowances.’*

The arguments of Warden and Mackintosh were irresistible and they led to the enactment of Regulation I of 1812, under which three stipendiary Justices of the Peace were appointed as Police Magistrates, while the executive Head of Police was the Deputy of Police and High Constable on a salary of Rs. 500 per month. A Superintendent of Police was also to be appointed to exercise ‘control and deliberative powers’ as distinct from executive authority. Mackintosh then stated that, under such an arrangement, there could be no objection if the Superintendent were also a magistrate, since he would not be directly concerned in the investigation of cases or the prosecution of offenders. Mackintosh’s view on this matter seems to have been followed.

The strength of the police force at this time was as follows:*

1	Deputy of Police and Head Constable	Rs. 500	per month
2	European Assistants (at Rs. 100 each)	Rs. 200	〃
3	Purvoes (Prabhus, clerks)	Rs. 110	〃
1	Inspector of Markets	Rs. 50	〃
2	Overseers of Roads (respectable natives at Rs. 50 each)	Rs. 100	〃
12	Havaldars (at Rs. 8 each)	Rs. 96	〃
8	Naiks (at Rs. 7 each)	Rs. 56	〃
6	European Constables	Rs. 365	〃
50	Peons (at Rs. 6 each)	Rs. 300	〃
1	Battaki man	Rs. 6	〃
1	Havaldar and 12 Peons for the Mahim patrol	Rs. 80	〃

If to this we add the Harbour Police and the Water Police, the cost was about Rs. 31,500 per year.

Even now, the hoped for improvement did not occur and the harsh punishments inflicted produced little effect. In 1828 the Chief Justice addressed the Quarter Sessions in the following terms: ‘The calendar is a heavy one. Several of the crimes betoken a contempt of public justice almost incredible and a state of morals inconsistent with any degree of public prosperity. Criminals have not only escaped, but seem never to have been placed in jeopardy. The result is a general alarm among native inhabitants’.*

Not even the installation of lamps from 1834 onwards seems to have made the streets safer at night, and altogether the period was one of insecurity. Friction between the judiciary and the Government has been held to be one reason for this unsatisfactory state of affairs, but the real cause appears to have been the amateurish handling of the police. The Superintendent was generally a fairly junior army officer with no previous knowledge of police work and until 1855 none of the Superintendents remained in the post long enough to acquire experience. The great lesson of this period was indeed the need for trained professionals to supervise the police force. That lesson, however, was not learnt until in 1858 a popular outcry against the general insecurity led to enquiries by Charles Forjett, a professional police officer. His report in due course resulted in a complete reorganization which will be considered later.

Bombay Mofussil

After the close of the Maratha War in 1818, vast new territories came into the Company’s possession and a Mofussil police force on an extensive scale had to be organized. Some years previously the Court of Directors had condemned the system of darogas which had been introduced in some provinces and had urged the importance of maintaining the village police. It was not, however, until 1827 that the plans of the Governor and Council of Bombay had crystallized sufficiently for them to implement the Directors’ views in Regulation XII of 1827. Thereafter, the Mofussil police organization consisted of three elements—the village police, the stipendiary district police, and certain irregular corps. The District Magistrate, who was also the Collector, was the head of the entire organization in his district and under him the Mamlatdars or Mahalkurries—that is to say the paid officers of the Government for the collection of revenue—were district police officers. Those officers had under them staffs of peons or sebundies who discharged both police and revenue duties. Of perhaps greater importance were the village Patels, or headmen, whose appointments were in many cases hereditary and who had under them village watchmen. The Patel, as village police officer, was directly responsible to the district police officer and was empowered under Regulation XII to punish offenders in trivial cases of abuse or assault, to apprehend persons committing more serious crimes, to take action to prevent breaches of the peace, and to hold inquests. For these purposes he was authorized to compel the attendance of witnesses and to search without warrant for concealed articles, even entering houses for this purpose. He was enjoined ‘by every means consistent with the object in view’, to avoid intrusion on domestic and religious privacy. It is particularly interesting to note that the section laid down that ‘a house belonging to a person of any of the higher classes of society be not searched, except on order by the district police officer, or higher authority’.* Armed with these powers, the Patel was a true village police officer and indeed an important person in his community. Apart from his other duties, he was required to report to the district police officer ‘individuals adopting habits connected with a predatory or a desperate course of life’.

The district police officer’s duties were similar to those of the Patel, but on a larger scale; in cases of assault, abuse or theft, he could impose a fine of up to Rs. 5, or confine the offender for eight days or place him in the stocks for twelve hours.

In each district there was also, under the orders of the District Magistrate, a disciplined, stipendiary police corps—a para-military body, under European officers, which, not only performed police duties, but provided escorts for treasure and guards for gaols. In some districts there was also a corps of Irregular Horse, under European officers, whose services the magistrate could requisition, and he ‘has frequently also a small party of undisciplined native horsemen under his sole orders’.*

The district police officer was specifically declared by Regulation XII to be subordinate to the District Magistrate: ‘He shall act in immediate subordination to and execute all processes issued by the Zillah Magistrate and shall in a similar manner have control over the village police officer. . . . He shall report to the Magistrate all instances of neglect, oppression, or extortion, committed by subordinate police officers.* This was a degree of subordination not contemplated in other Provinces and although it resulted naturally from the fact that the district police officers were revenue subordinates of the Collector, it had its influence when the Bombay police reforms were effected in the middle of the century.

The Magistrate in his turn was responsible to the Court of Foujdaree Adawlat,* which in the main acted collectively, but its duties of supervision over the police system were delegated to the Judicial Commissioners of Police (members of the Court) when they were on circuit. As we shall see later, this system did not work well. The Judges had neither the time nor the local knowledge to carry out their supervisory duties and according to the author of a contemporary Memoir, it had the effect of making the Magistrates too legalistically minded in their police duties, ‘by showing, not that all had been done which man could do, but that the Regulations had been acted up to’.* It also stated that:

For a number of years past, Government had become increasingly conscious that the Police throughout this Presidency was in an unsatisfactory state; that crime had not diminished; that no adequate protection had been afforded to its subjects. . . . The number of men employed for police purposes was, however, great, and the aggregate cost considerable; but at the same time, many subsisted on a pittance which was inadequate to remunerate any valuable service, while of those who were well-paid, some were incompetent from various causes, and others were engaged in important duties, distinct from and occasionally discordant with, those of police. . . . It was found that in three years property to the value of Rs. 2,283,118 had been lost by plunder, of which little more than one-tenth was recovered, and 3,127 daring robberies and 136 murders had been perpetrated in the same period, without any clue being obtained of the offenders. It was thus clear that the impunity of crime was greater than ever, principally because the duty of preventing or detecting it was not performed. It had been seen in several cases of rebellion, that in all that relates to an early perception of danger, speedy detection of the parties concerned, and the consequent certain punishment and early suppression of disturbances, the Police had been lamentably deficient: the outbreaks had taken the authorities by surprise, and had run a long and prosperous career before they were put down by the cumbrous and costly aid of the Military power.*

Minor amendments were made by Act XX of 1835, but matters remained in this unsatisfactory state until wholesale reorganization was effected in the fifties.*

Chapter 6

Two Centuries of Experiment III: Bengal

The first attempts of the East India Company to organize a police system in Bengal were made by Warren Hastings in 1774 shortly after the Company had stood forth as Diwan. In order to explain those attempts it is necessary to refer to some of the salient features of Bengal history in the preceding hundred years.

Before the foundation of what was to become Calcutta, the Company had no territorial possessions in Bengal, but carried on trade from factories on sites leased from the local authorities at Patna, Kasimbazar, Balasore, and two or three other places, with a headquarters at Hugli. A period of prosperity was followed by serious trouble with local officials, exacerbated by the foolishly aggressive policy initiated by Sir Josiah Child, the Governor of the Company. In 1686 the English were expelled from Hugli, but the Nawab of Bengal soon had second thoughts as to the wisdom of losing the Company’s trade, and in 1690 Job Charnock, the Company’s Agent, was allowed to settle at Sutanati on the site of the modern Calcutta. Freedom from all Imperial dues was obtained in return for an annual payment of Rs. 3,000. In 1698, permission was obtained to rent Sutanati and the two adjacent villages of Calcutta and Govindpur for Rs. 1,200 a year. The Company now became the zemindar* of these three villages. The responsibilities and the rights of the zemindar at this time were much more extensive than those connected with the collection and payment of revenue. Although the Nawab was the head of the administration, he maintained no Courts in the mofussil and the zemindar was responsible not only for maintaining the peace, but also for the trial of civil and criminal cases, subject to appeal to the Nawab.

The Company, therefore, had to establish a zemindari court, which was held by one member of the Council. Its jurisdiction, of course, only extended to those areas in which the Company was zemindar. Appeals lay to the Governor and Council. In the case of capital sentences, the Nawab’s confirmation was required, but this proviso was soon allowed to lapse.

In respect of the Company’s English servants it relied on the Charter of 1661 which provided that the Governor and Council of factories or places of trade ‘may have power to judge all persons belonging to the said Governor and Company or that shall live under them in all causes whether civil or military according to the laws of this Kingdom’. In 1698, the affairs of the Company in Bengal were only under an Agent, but in 1699 this technical defect was remedied by the appointment of a Governor and Council.

The Charter Act of 1726 put the Company’s jurisdiction in Calcutta on a more satisfactory basis. It set up a Mayor’s Court and Courts of Quarter Sessions on lines similar to those which we have already described in the chapters dealing with Bombay, and we need not repeat the relevant provisions here. It must be noticed that neither the Emperor nor the Nawab had ever given the Company permission to establish its own separate jurisdiction within the Imperial Territories in Bengal in this manner. The Courts now set up thus existed by the mere toleration of the Nawab, who was perhaps glad not to be embroiled in the affairs of the Company and its settlement.

Just before the battle of Plassey the Company’s sovereignty in Calcutta was recognized in a treaty made with Mir Ja’far, but neither that treaty nor the battle made any difference to the Company’s legal position outside Calcutta. When in 1759 the Company acquired the district known as the Twenty-four Parganas, it still obtained merely zemindari rights. Nor was the situation much different when, in 1760, Nawab Kasim Ali Khan granted Burdwan, Chittagong and Midnapur to the Company ‘in part for disbursement of their expenses, and the monthly maintenance of 500 European horse, 2,000 European foot, and 8,000 seapoys, which are to be entertained for the protection of the Royal Dominions.’*

After the battle of Buxar in 1764, which established the English as the masters of Eastern India, the Company reinstated Mir Ja’far as Nawab of Bengal, and two events which followed made the Company’s mastery complete. First, the death of Mir Ja’far furnished the Company with an opportunity of extorting a favourable bargain as a condition of recognition of the accession of his eldest son Najm-ud-daula, a boy of eighteen. By a treaty between Najm-ud-daula and the Company, made on 17 February 1765, the Company undertook to support him in the defence of the Provinces and helpfully added that

as our troops will be more to be depended on than any the Nawab can have and less expense to him, he need therefore entertain none but such as are requisite for the support of the civil officers of his Government and the business of his collections through the different districts.*

At the same time, the Nawab agreed to appoint as his Naib Subah or second in command, Muhammad Reza Khan, a nominee of the Company, and not to displace him without the Company’s approval. A few months later, in return for an annual payment of Rs. 53 lakhs,* he undertook to ‘throw all the affairs of the Government into the hands of Muhammad Reza Khan’ and two other nominees of the Company. These three were indeed to collect the revenue for the Company and pay the agreed sum to the Nawab monthly. The Nawab, who was described by the Resident at the Durbar as being ‘extremely polite and very tractable’* had in fact delivered himself body and soul into the hands of the Company.

The second event of importance was the grant by the Emperor of the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Here a word of explanation is required. In the best days of the Moghul Empire, these Provinces had been jointly administered by two officers. The Nawab was responsible for defence and law and order and exercised jurisdiction over criminal matters, while the Diwan collected the revenue, paid the agreed sum to the Emperor, and controlled the administration of justice in civil and revenue matters. In the declining years of the Empire these two officers were combined in the person of the Nawab. The Emperor’s Firman of 12 August 1765, in effect, restored the ancient division, granted the Company the Diwani as a free gift (since they were his ‘faithful servants and sincere well wishers’), and required them to be security for the payment to the Emperor of the fixed revenue of Rs. 26 lakhs per annum. In form, the dignity of the Nawab was preserved, since the payment to the Emperor was to be made in his name. The civil and financial administration was thus now legally vested in the Company, while its dominance over the Nawab, backed by the treaty with him, gave the Company control over criminal and military administration it it chose to exercise it.

For tactical reasons, the Company did not immediately assert its new authority. It allowed administration to continue much as before, regarding itself as merely concerned to receive the revenue from the Naib Diwans, Muhammad Reza Khan and Shitab Rai, and to accept responsibility for the due payments to the Emperor and the Nawab. With the might of the Company apparently behind them, the local revenue officials had unlimited opportunities for oppression, which they did not fail to utilize.

It is true that the appointment of Supervisors to the Districts in 1769—with the warning that almost every decision of the local judges was ‘a corrupt bargain with the highest bidder’—represented a praiseworthy attempt to remedy a sorry state of affairs. The Supervisors, however, had no executive powers and were, in practice, helpless. In 1769 the Company’s Resident in Murshidabad declared that the people were worse off than before the Company became Diwan and that the country was verging towards ruin.* It is true that this happened to be a period of unparalleled famine but the ruthless exactions of the revenue officials were an undoubted factor in producing the prevailing distress.

The Administration of Warren Hastings

In 1772 Warren Hastings, who had become Governor, decided to ‘stand forth as Diwan’, that is to say, to assume direct control of the administration. The offices of Naib Diwans in Bengal and Bihar were abolished; the Treasury was removed from Murshidabad to Calcutta, partly as a symbol of the fundamental change now made; and Collectors were appointed to collect the revenue, with the assistance of Indian Diwans.

Hastings now sought to establish a satisfactory judicial system in the mofussil, where, as we have seen, the administration of justice was in the hands of zemindars. Verelst comments with regard to Zemindari Courts that ‘trifling offenders are frequently loaded with heavy demands and capital offences are as often absolved by the venal judge’.* ‘Corrupt judges and a corrupt government added to the defect of the legal system and in the absence of any register of judicial proceedings rendered appeals most difficult.’* The Collectors, who were European servants of the Company, were now available to assist in Hastings’ projects of reform which he implemented in 1772. For civil cases, a provincial Court of Diwani, generally presided over by the Collector, was established in each District. Appeals lay to the Sadr Diwani Adalat, or Chief Civil Court, presided over by the Governor, with whom two or more other members of the Council were conjoined. District Criminal Courts Fauzdari Adalats—were also established. The Collectors were not members of these Courts, which consisted of the Qazi, the Mufti, and two Maulvies,* but the Collector supervised their proceedings. Appeals lay to the Sadr Nizamat Adalat, or Chief Criminal Court, over which one of the Nawab’s officers, styled the Daroga Adalat, normally presided and was assisted by a Qazi, a Mufti and three Maulvies.

It may be mentioned in passing that the Regulating Act of 1773 made no difference to the mofussil arrangements except in so far as it extended the jurisdiction of the Royal Court of Judicature to all British subjects anywhere in Bengal, Bihar or Orissa. The system underwent an important change in 1774 when, for reasons outside the scope of this book, the Collectors were abolished and replaced by Indian Diwans, who were supervised in regard to civil trials by the Provincial Councils now set up. In criminal matters, the disappearance of the Collectors meant that there was no real supervision over the local Fauzdari Court officials, though appeals still lay to the Sadr Nizamat Adalat.

Hastings now applied himself to the organization of a system of police and on 9 April 1774, he put his plan before the Council. His Minute began by attributing the alarming prevalence of dacoity and other crimes to three main causes: the disappearance of the old official Fauzdari system, the resumption of lands originally intended for the maintenance of local police officials and watchmen, and the rigorous proof now demanded in criminal cases. In the case of dacoity he declared that the practice of the former Government ‘has ever been to ascertain the identity of the men and to condemn them without waiting for further process to establish any specific charge against them’. Some such summary procedure appeared to Hastings the only means of restoring law and order. He went on to propose the appointment of Fauzdars at the fourteen places most notorious for violent crimes, and the imposition on zemindars of an obligation to assist the Fauzdars and obey their orders. The Minute is of such importance in the history of the police in Bengal as to justify an extensive quotation.

I propose, that Fouzdars be appointed to the stations hereafter mentioned, for the protection of the inhabitants, for the detection and apprehension of public robbers within their respective districts, and for transmitting constant intelligence of all matters relating to the peace of the country to the Presidency; that the zemindars, farmers and other officers of the collections be enjoined to afford them all possible assistance in the discharge of their duty, and to obey such orders as they may have occasion to issue for that purpose; that the farmers do make over to them the land servants allowed for their respective districts, who shall be under the absolute command of the Fouzdars; that an office be established under the control and authority of the President, for receiving and registering all reports from the Fouzdars, and issuing orders to them; that such of the zemindars or farmers, as shall be convicted of having neglected to assist the Fouzdars in the execution of their trust shall be made responsible for any loss sustained by such misconduct or otherwise fined according to the nature of the offence; but that all persons of whatever degree or profession, who shall be convicted of receiving fees or other pecuniary acknowledgements, from robbers knowing them to be such, or of abetting or conniving in any shape at their practices, shall be adjudged equally criminal with them and punished with death; and that this be immediately made public throughout the province.

After naming the localities where the system was to be established, he went on:

The only objection to which this plan is liable is the expense; but I with confidence hazard the assertion that this will not equal the loss to which the cultivation and revenue are liable from the continuance of the present disorders; although not reducible to any estimate. I am assured that many villages, especially in Jessore and Mahmudshahee, pay a regular malguzarree to the chiefs of the dacoits, from which if they can be freed, the reiats will certainly be better enabled to pay their rents to the Government, independently of the improvements which their lands may be expected to receive from a state of quiet and security.*

The scheme was approved by the Council and orders were passed for its immediate implementation at four stations. Unfortunately, Hastings at this time was overwhelmed with problems, and therefore, in October 1775, he appointed Muhammad Reza Khan, who had formerly been the Naib Nizam, as head of the Sadr Nizamat Adalat—the superior judicial and police authority throughout the country, excepting Calcutta. Very little was done to implement Hastings’ plan and violent crime continued rampant. In April 1781, a resolution of the Governor-General and Council ordered that ‘the establishment of Fouzdars and Tannadais which was intended for the preservation of the peace and to assist in the due and effectual exercise of the jurisdiction of the criminal courts throughout the provinces has by experience been found not to produce the good effects intended by the institution, it be therefore annulled and that the Nabob be accordingly requested to recall all these officers, the Fouzdar of Houghley only excepted, the different nature of whose office requiring it should be continued at least for the present’.*

At the same time, the Province was divided into eighteen districts. In fourteen of them, a Government servant of the Company was appointed as Judge, while in the four frontier tracts, the Collectors—who had not been withdrawn in 1774—remained in office. By the resolution just quoted, the Judges were invested with the powers of magistrates for the purpose of ‘apprehending dacoits or other persons charged with the commission of any crimes or acts of violence within their jurisdiction’. They were not to try such persons but to send them to the nearest Fauzdari Court for trial—this, of course, would be one of the courts which Hastings established in 1772. The resolution went on to lay down that in special cases zemindars might be entrusted by the Government ‘with such part of the jurisdiction now exercised by the Fouzdars and their officers in the several districts as they heretofore enjoyed under the ancient Mogul Government’. Where this was done, the Judge and the Zemindar would have concurrent responsibility for the apprehension of offenders. The posts of Collectors were created again in 1781.

The Cornwallis Policy

In 1786 ‘the Districts were re-organised into thirty-five more or less fiscal units’* and the Collectors were given full responsibility for revenue matters. An instrument was thus to hand for the judicial reforms which Cornwallis, who became Governor-General in 1786, was instructed to carry out. In 1787 the office of Collector was again combined with that of District Judge (who, as will be remembered, tried civil but not criminal cases) and the Collector not only retained the magisterial powers which the Judge had exercised, but was also given the power to try minor criminal cases. Revenue, judicial and magisterial functions were thus combined in one person. The Collector soon became the head of the District—an arrangement which only lasted for six years. At the same time, the number of Districts was reduced to twenty-three as a measure of economy.

The attitude of Cornwallis to these problems was radically different from that of Hastings, who had a profound interest in all things Indian and believed in making use of indigenous institutions wherever possible. Cornwallis, who could not unfairly be described as pedestrian and unimaginative, though a man of great sincerity, was on the one hand very amenable to instructions from London and on the other hand, to some extent, in the hands of his officials. He distrusted all Indian institutions and built his policy on the principle of putting as much control as possible in European hands. This led him in 1792 to remove Muhammad Reza Khan from the control of the Sadr Nizamat Adalat. That Court was brought down to Calcutta and once again it was presided over by the Governor, assisted by his Council, a Chief Qazi, and two Muftis.

Much more important changes were made by Cornwallis in the Regulation of 7 December 1792 which was later re-enacted and amplified in Regulation XXII of 1793’* the opening paragraphs of the Regulation, Cornwallis laid down the principles to be followed.

The police of the country is in future to be considered under the exclusive charge of officers of Government, who may be specially appointed to that trust. The landholders and farmers of land, who keep up establishments of Tannadars and police officers for the preservation of peace, are accordingly required to discharge them, and all landholders and farmers of land are prohibited entertaining such establishments in future. Secondly, landholders and farmers of land are not in future to be considered responsible for robberies committed in their respective estates or farms, unless it shall be proved that they connived at the robbery, received any part of the property stolen or plundered, harboured the offenders, aided or refused to give effectual assistance to prevent their escape, or omitted to afford every assistance in their power to the officers of Government for their apprehension, in either of which cases they will be compelled to make good the value of the property stolen or plundered.

The Regulation then specified how these principles were to be implemented. Each District was to be divided into police jurisdictions of about 400 square miles, and each jurisdiction was to be under the charge of a daroga appointed by the Magistrate of the District. The daroga was authorized to arrest persons found in the act of committing a breach of the peace, or persons accused of murder or other violent crimes, and was instructed either to send them to the Magistrate or in minor cases to take security for their appearance. The daroga’s duty was confined to apprehending the persons concerned. He was not to enquire into the complaints or to inflict any punishment, though he was to record the statement of witnesses on oath. In this respect the Bengal system differed radically from that in Bombay and Madras. The Regulation went on to provide that village watchmen were to be under the orders of the daroga and to apprehend and send to him persons caught in the act of committing violent crimes. The Regulation did not specify the staff to be placed under the daroga, but in general it consisted of: the watchman, the writer, one or more jamadars, and an establishment of from ten to forty matchlock men.*

The Regulation also dealt with two other matters of interest. It prohibited the building or use of certain types of large boats normally used by river dacoits, and it laid down the procedure to ensure that the Magistrate obtained speedy information of crimes committed. Letters despatched by a daroga were to be delivered by the dawk officer* to the proprietor or headman of the village on the post road nearest to the daroga’s station, and that person was to deliver them to the addressee up to a distance of five miles. If the distance was greater than five miles, he was to forward them to another village proprietor or headman nearer the station. A similar procedure applied to letters sent to the daroga. The daroga was warned that ‘any daroga who shall insert in such letter any matter not relating to the public service . . . shall be dismissed’.

In divorcing zemindars from police work, Cornwallis was breaking away from immemorial tradition, and not surprisingly, as we shall see later, his system did not work. He was, perhaps, also mistaken when in 1793 he reversed his earlier decision and divorced the Collectors from all judicial or magisterial functions. The District Judge, who was still primarily concerned with civil suits, now tried minor criminal cases and committed persons charged with more serious offences to the Court of Circuit now established. The arguments in favour of the view that only the Collectors could have enough contact with the people to be able to cope with the problems of law and order were cogent, but it was not until 1831 that the offices of Collector and Magistrate were again united and even then the union only lasted a few years. From 1793 to 1830 the two chief officers in a Bengal district were the District Judge and Magistrate and the Collector. In 1831 the office of District Magistrate was taken from the Judge and given to the Collector. In 1838 it was again decided to separate the offices of Magistrate and Collector.

One other change effected by Cornwallis needs to be noticed. In 1793 he combined the Sadr Diwani Adalat and the Sadr Nizamat Adalat into a single Appeal Court with the Governor-General and Council, the head Qazi, and the two Muftis as its members. The Governor-General and Council were soon overwhelmed with work and in 1801 they were replaced in the combined Court by three Judges.

Little change took place in the next twenty years and the only matters requiring notice are an unfruitful attempt in 1807 to associate selected zemindars with police work, and the appointment in 1808 of a covenanted servant of the Company as Superintendent of Police with jurisdiction over Calcutta, the Twenty-four Parganas, and the Divisions of Dacca and Murshidabad. The Superintendent roughly corresponded to the Inspector-General of later days, but he was not a professional police officer and in the absence of any real police organization in the Districts above the level of darogas, he could not make any serious impact on so vast an area. The post was abolished in 1829, and the supervisory police duties which he had been expected to perform were transferred to Commissioners of Divisions.

The Fifth Report

After the reforms of Cornwallis, the next landmark in the history of the police is the Fifth Report of the Select Committee appointed by the House of Commons in 1808 to enquire into the affairs of the East India Company. That Report, issued in 1812, deals with police and revenue matters in Bengal and contains a detailed account of the police system then existing.* The Committee stated categorically that ‘the establishment of an efficient Police, though an object of the first importance, appears to be a part of the new internal arrangements in which the endeavour of the supreme Government has been least successful’. They referred to the reasons which had led Cornwallis to displace the zemindars in the police organization and pointed out that the defectiveness of his system had been explicitly acknowledged in the preamble to Regulation XII of 1807. The Committee made an interesting comparison of the inadequacy of the existing police establishment in Bengal with the resources available in earlier days.

Besides the usual establishments of guards and village watchmen, maintained for the express purpose of Police, the zemindar had, under the former system, the aid of his zemindary servants, who were at all times, liable to be called forth for the preservation of the public peace, and the apprehension of the disturbers of it. The officers employed in the collection of the sayer or impost duties, before the abolition of them, and stationed at the gunges, or commercial depots of grain, in the bazars or markets, and at the hauls or fairs, possessed authority and officiated for the preservation of peace, and the protection of the inhabitants and frequenters of those places. To convey an idea of the means possessed by a principal land-holder for the purposes above mentioned, it may be sufficient to notice the case of the zemindar of Burdwan: This zemindary, on a rough estimate, may be taken at 73 miles long, and 45 broad comprehending about 3,280 square miles; nearly the whole of which was in the highest state of cultivation, and well stocked with inhabitants. His Police establishment, as described in a letter from the Magistrate of the 12th October, 1788, consisted of tannahdars acting as Chiefs of Police Divisions, and guardians of the peace; under whose orders were stationed in the different villages, for the protection of the inhabitants, and to convey information to the tannahdars, about 2,400 pykes or armed constables. But exclusive of these guards, who were for the express purpose of Police, the principal dependence for the protection of the people probably rested on the zemindary pykes; for these are stated by the Magistrate to have been in number no less than nineteen thousand, who were at all times, liable to be called out in aid of the Police.

The village watchmen, and such as remain undismissed of the zemindary servants, are by the public regulations, required to co-operate with the darogahs; but a provision of this nature without the means of prompt enforcement, has not been attended with the desired effect; the influence of the zemindar as it existed in former times, being wanting to bring forth these aids into active exertion, while the darogahs who are represented as insulated individuals, are in their respective divisions, viewed with fear by some with jealousy by others, and neglected by most of the inhabitants, possess not that personal consideration in the public mind, so necessary to aid them, in the efficient performance of their duty.*

In principle, the Committee had no doubt that the reintroduction of something like the pre-Cornwallis system was desirable; it was, however, open to question whether it would now work well in view of the considerable curtailment of the power and influence of the zemindars. The Committee criticized the Government of Bengal for its failure to tackle the problem earlier, but made no positive recommendations as to what should be done.

In 1815, the Governor-General, Lord Moira, (afterwards Marquess of Hastings) re-examined the whole subject and produced a minute of considerable length but doubtful soundness. He rejected the main criticisms of the Cornwallis reforms and contended that Cornwallis had left village institutions untouched. He thus ignored the fact that, in Bengal at that time village institutions were meaningless without the backing of the zemindars, whose authority had in fact been undermined. He went on to defend the Cornwallis system on the ground that it had had the satisfactory result of leading to the replacement of violence by litigiousness—a view in serious conflict with the evidence placed before the Select Committee and indeed with all available evidence at that time. It is difficult not to feel that the minute was either the work of a theorist and a newcomer to India, or that it was written by a secretariat officer with little practical experience of dealing with crime and police. Be this as it may, the only practical outcome was a provision in Regulation XX of 1817 that police officers should be appointed by the Magistrate. The Regulation also consolidated all existing Bengal police rules.

Four Decades of Hesitation

Although little was done in the first half of the nineteenth century to improve the police administration, it was a period in which intensive study was made and long notes written. Three reports written in the 1830s throw much light on the existing state of affairs and on conflicting views as to what should be done, and they deserve to be studied. The first is a paper written in 1837 by the Hon. Frederick Shore, an experienced District Judge.*

Shore gives an excellent description of the duties and problems of the daroga.

The darogah (or Inspector) is expected to proceed in person, to investigate all minor crimes; to hold inquests upon bodies; to attend fairs and markets, to preserve the peace; and perform some other duties; all this sounds well; but let anyone look at the average size of each jurisdiction—nearly sixteen miles square—and judge whether it be possible for him to do this. But few of the divisions are compact. Some of them straggle for more than twenty miles, while the police station is at one end; others are divided by a river, to cross which, in the rainy season, occupies three or four hours by a ferry. The Inspector is, accordingly allowed to depute the writer, or the Jemadar (Sergeant), and not infrequently the inquiry, although contrary to law, is conducted by a common constable; but, unfortunately, with all this assistance, the investigation is sometimes delayed so long after the crime has been committed, that the clue is lost, which, if at once followed up, might have led to the immediate detection of the offenders. The great size of the police division is evidently well known to Government, as is shown by the clause allowing the watchmen of distant villages to communicate only once a fortnight with the police station.

Shore goes on to attribute the unsatisfactory state of affairs partly to the absence of any local authority able to settle petty cases, and partly to the fact that the commonest offences—abuse and slight assault—were not within the cognizance of the police.

In towns, many an affray which begins in a slight quarrel, but ultimately ends in murder, or serious wounding, might be checked in the outset; but no! abuse and slight assaults are not within the cognizance of the police; it is not until swords are drawn, or serious club-blows inflicted, that the police may interfere—that is, when the mischief is done. The want of a local authority is severely felt in many other points. Some of the most serious affrays arise out of the trespass of cattle; the people cannot afford to waste a month in travelling and waiting at the Magistrate’s office, or to spend ten or twelve rupees in petitions, summonses to witnesses, and other legal expenses, when the original loss they have suffered sometimes scarcely amounts to above a penny, seldom above a few pence; they, consequently, take the law into their own hands, of which the first step is, that the owner of the land, or corn, into which the cattle have trespassed, attempts to drive them off to his village, with a view of exacting a small fine from the owner before releasing them; and, should he be perceived by the other party, an affray, accompanied by loss of life or severe injury, is the consequence. Had the people some local authority to appeal to, who could immediately investigate the case, oblige the owner to pay the damage which had been done, and inflict a small fine on the offender for his carelessness, they would soon learn to refer to such constituted authority instead of seeking redress themselves.

In the absence of such a local authority the victim even of a robbery might not find it worth while to undergo the expense and hardship of going to the court of a distant Magistrate.

Should a traveller who is proceeding in an opposite direction from that in which the Magistrate’s office is situated be robbed of some petty article, and the thief be secured, money is exacted from him to allow him to proceed on his way, without the loss of a month’s detention by being sent to the Magistrate, that the case may be heard; the thief, on the other hand, willingly pays a good sum to be released.

Unlike some of those who have written on this subject, this experienced Judge had no doubt as to the practical remedies required.

The police established by the British-India Government is, in its outline, precisely similar to that of London; the former is considered by the people as an intolerable evil, the latter is universally allowed to be a most admirable establishment, highly conducive to the public good. The requisites for the improvement of our Indian police are, first respectable salaries for those employed, second, rewards and promotion for good conduct; third, additional powers in certain petty cases, thus destroying the anomaly which at present exists in the extent of their authority; fourthly, some authority to be intrusted to the upper class of landholders, who would then be induced to give that assistance which they now withhold; and lastly, that there should be the strictest surveillance on the part of the Magistrate, over every one connected with the establishment.

In 1838 yet another enquiry into police administration was conducted, this time under the chairmanship of a Mr. Bird. It recommended that the Collector should cease to exercise magisterial functions or control over the police, and that these duties should be transferred to an independent Joint Magistrate in each District; that the Districts should be divided into subdivisions in each of which there would be a Deputy Magistrate with authority over the police; and that thanadaris (officers in charge of police stations) should be grouped into three grades whose salaries would be Rs.　100, Rs. 75 and Rs. 50 respectively. The Committee also proposed that the village chaukidari system should be re-organized, that the chaukidar should be better paid and that the responsibilities of the village officers with regard to the chaukidar should be defined and enforced. Some of these recommendations were sound enough and were accepted, but they did not touch the essential point—the absence of whole-time superior police officers. Mr. F. J. Halliday (afterwards Sir Frederick), a member of the Committee, wrote a partially dissenting minute.* He stated that ‘the whole police is abhorred and detested by the people’ and he proposed that ‘there should be a Superintendent-General of Police at Headquarters, and 23 local Superintendents, 32 Assistant Superintendents, 888 darogas (Rs. 120), 888 Sub-Inspectors (Rs. 25), 4,440 jamadars (Rs. 10), and 66,600 burkandazes* (Rs. 5), i.e. 75 to each thana.’ To meet the cost of this force, Halliday proposed to abolish village chaukidars and to divert the savings to the regular police. It was, however, pointed out by the Chairman of the Committee, that chaukidars were not paid by Government and the change would have involved the imposition of a special tax—a course which was considered impolitic. Halliday’s proposals were nevertheless partially implemented by the appointment of a Superintendent of Police to every District. At the same time a Joint Magistrate was appointed in each District to perform the magisterial functions which had for some years been discharged by the Collector. No further change took place for the next twenty years—and developments then will be discussed in a later chapter.

The Calcutta Police

We must now turn our attention to the Calcutta police. In 1720, the Company appointed one of its servants as zemindar of Calcutta, primarily responsible for the administration of the Company’s zemindari, and the Calcutta police force was placed under his control. In the middle of the century it consisted of 64 pykes or watchmen and a head pyke. In 1778 this force was quite inadequate to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, and the Governor-General and Council appointed a Superintendent of Police in Calcutta together with thirty-one thanadars, thirty-four naibs or deputies and 700 pykes, and, on the strength of an English statute of 1714, provided for the resulting expenditure by levying a tax on houses and buildings. This tax was in due course disallowed by the Crown as illegal,* presumably on the ground that the 1714 Act had been repealed. In 1793, however, the Regulating Act provided for the creation of a municipal fund in each of the Presidency towns. It was to be administered by the Justices assembled in General and Quarter Sessions who, besides attending to conservancy, were to ‘order the watching and repairing of the streets’ and to raise funds for this purpose by assessing the owners of houses and buildings on the basis of annual values. At the same time they were empowered to license the sale of liquor. The proceeds of the liquor licences went to general revenues and the municipal fund was derived solely from the assessments, which were made at the rate of 5 per cent. In 1827-28 the assessment amounted to Rs. 336,532, but only Rs. 265,972 was realized.*

In 1800 Wellesley appointed a committee to enquire into the working of the Calcutta police, and, presumably as a result of its recommendation, Regulation VII of 1806 was passed, giving the Justices magisterial powers in the Twenty-four Parganas and some other districts adjacent to Calcutta. In 1829, Lord William Bentinck appointed a committee, consisting partly of officials and partly of non-official European residents of Calcutta, to enquire into the reasons for the widely alleged inefficiency of the City police and to propose remedies. The Report throws a lot of light on the organization of the Calcutta police at that time.*

Under the Chief Magistrate there were four departments—the Report, the Felony, the Misdemeanour and the Conservancy Departments. The Police were under the control of the Justices in charge of the Report Department. They did not normally try cases, but investigated offences and sent accused persons either to the Felony or the Misdemeanour Department, each of which was presided over by two Justices. These Departments could award sentences of up to six months imprisonment, but serious offences were sent to the Supreme Court for trial.

The Police Force consisted of the Thanadari Force and the Town Guard besides a Boundary Force and the River Police. The Thanadari Force was composed of forty thanadars to each of whom was attached a naib or deputy and twenty to thirty chaukidars, as well as a Patrol Force of naibs and chaukidars. The Town Guard does not seem to have been concerned with ordinary thana work, but apparently formed an armed reserve which was particularly useful in dealing with riotous sailors and deserters. It was under the control of the Town Major and four European sergeants of the East India Company’s army. European constables were also attached to thanas in certain areas to help them in dealing with European offenders. The Boundary Police were apparently a cause of great harassment to persons entering or leaving Calcutta, while the River Police appear to have distinguished themselves mainly by sharing in the proceeds of thefts from boats. The Committee, nevertheless, found that the police system was in general satisfactory and that there was very little serious crime. They did, however, complain that Magistrates were irregular in their attendance at the Police Office; that the procedure by which offences were first considered by the Report Department and then went to the Felony or Misdemeanour Department led to great delay; and that the Report Department was too ready to shield its police officers from just punishment. They strongly recommended that the Chief Magistrate should be relieved of all non-magisterial duties and should be assisted in his executive functions by a Magistrate from the Report Department.

In 1830 these recommendations were in the main accepted, but the Governor-General decided that the Chief Magistrate must remain in charge of the Conservancy Department. In regard to the Chief Magistrate’s police duties it was decided that he should be assisted by a Superintendent of Police, who would not be a magistrate in the full sense, though he would be a Justice of the Peace. Under the scheme now put into force there were, below the Chief Magistrate, four Stipendiary Magistrates, and there was to have been a barrister to help the Magistrates in difficult cases, but nobody appears to have been appointed to that post.

The sums realized by assessment of houses and buildings now fell short of the expenditure and in 1840 a new principle of assessment was adopted to remove the shortfall. At the same time, a Deputy Superintendent of Police was appointed and put in charge of the Town Guard, and the number of thanas was reduced to thirty-three, special arrangements being made for the European part of the town. Perhaps the chief defect of the scheme was that, in spite of the Bentinck Committee’s recommendations, it imposed undue burdens on the Chief Magistrate, who not only continued to be the executive head of the police, in spite of the appointment of a Superintendent, but dealt with case work, managed the Conservancy, made assessments, and was Chairman of the Municipal Committee.

In 1845, Lord Dalhousie set up yet another Committee of Enquiry,* this time under the chairmanship of Mr. Patton. The Committee recommended the retention of the post of Superintendent of Police in Calcutta, but proposed that the Superintendent should confine himself to detective work, leaving the Deputy Superintendent to control the preventive work of the police. It also made various suggestions for the organization of the Calcutta police in divisions and wards, and it recommended increases of pay for thana officers, eighteen of whom were still only being paid Rs. 16 per month. It did not, however, consider that the existing thana officers were worth the proposed increases—new men of a better type should be selected. The Committee repeated the earlier proposal for the appointment of a barrister to assist the Magistrates and also made the revolutionary suggestion that the taxes raised by assessment in each division should be spent on the police of that division alone.

The Governor entirely disapproved of the proposal that the Superintendent of Police should be the head of the detective force, leaving the Deputy Superintendent in charge of the preventive force. He also rejected the proposal for the appointment of a barrister and the suggestion that police funds should be expended in the areas in which they were raised. On the general question of the position of the Chief Magistrate, the Governor agreed with the Committee that the Chief Magistrate should be in reality the head of the police ‘it being the duty of the Superintendent to see to the execution of the Chief Magistrate’s orders’.* Most of the detailed recommendations of the Committee regarding the organization of the Calcutta police were approved by the Governor and the Governor’s ruling was accepted by the Government of India.

A moderately good system of policing had now been established in Calcutta, and further reforms were to await action by the Government of India. They will be considered later.

Chapter 7

The Age of Reform

We have seen that up to nearly the middle of the nineteenth century the East India Company had not succeeded in establishing a satisfactory police system in any of the Presidencies. Commissions and Committees had reported and experiments had been tried with systems based either on ancient traditions or modern theories. None of these experiments had been successful. Crime was unchecked and oppression by police agencies continued unabated. In 1832 a Select Committee considered these problems, but little effective action resulted from its report.

This state of affairs caused great anxiety to the home authorities, and in the forties and fifties much thought was given to the matter by the Court of Directors, the Government of India and the Presidency Governors. It was, however, that practical-minded administrator of Sind, General Sir Charles Napier, who took the first effective steps towards establishing a modern police force. Mr. George Clerk (later Sir George) soon followed suit in Bombay and a few years later the Report of the Torture Commission led to police reforms in Madras which were to provide a useful model for other provinces. The annexation of Oudh, and the rapid settlement of the Punjab, provided opportunities for similar action there, while Bengal followed a somewhat independent course. When an All-India Police Commission was appointed in 1860, it thus had much material on which to work. It will be convenient, therefore, before we discuss Act V of 1861 to begin by considering the reforms already effected in the various provinces.

Police Organization in Sind

The conquest of Sind in 1843 provided an opportunity for a fresh approach to police problems. Before the conquest, contrary to what has often been said, there was a useful indigenous police system, consisting of watchmen and trackers, ‘kept up in each community according to its requirements and paid by the villagers at harvest time like the artificers and other village servants’.* The value of the system was, however, lessened by the fact that the Amirs, who completely dominated the Sindhi Muslims and Hindus, were a law unto themselves, restrained only by the blood feuds amongst themselves or by the mutual fear resulting from what Napier called ‘this rotary system of plunder’.* Almost equally oppressive was the tyranny of the kardars or indigenous district magistrates, who possessed in fact, though not in theory, the power of life and death.

The starting point of Napier’s reforms was to divide Sind into the three Collectorates of Hyderabad, Karachi, and Shikarpur, and to place in charge of each of them a British military officer, with European Sub-Collectors under him. These officers performed both revenue and police functions and also tried criminal cases, subject to the limitation that a Collector could not impose a sentence of more than six months imprisonment. For more serious cases a somewhat complicated procedure was followed. The Collector took preliminary evidence and forwarded it to the Judge-Advocate General, who then placed the record before the Governor with his own comments on it. The Governor, if he considered that a case had been made out, set up a military commission to try the accused. The commission’s findings were then referred to the Governor who finally passed sentence, though we are told that he never augmented the punishment recommended by the commission.*

Napier next turned his attention to the organization of a police force, and he started from the principle that the civil police and the military forces must be kept quite separate. ‘Soldiers . . . were instituted to fight declared enemies, not to be watchers and punishers of criminals.’* His first difficulty was in the choice of personnel, since the Sindis ‘had suffered in person or family from the cruelty of these princes (the amirs) . . . and were at first timid, the natural result of oppression . . . but by mixing with them bold adventurers, Patans and Rajpoots . . . and by giving them a handsome uniform, and a military organization under European officers, the necessary courage was created’.*

In the early days of British administration ‘the police were used much more as troops of the line would be for protective purposes’. The thanas were therefore few in number and very strong and

it was not until the effects of Sir G. Napier’s proclamation forbidding the wearing of arms had become general and the people were reconciled to our rule, that the police became distributed in small but numerous bodies throughout the province.*

Napier’s system was based on two principles—the police must be completely separated from the military, and they must be an entirely independent body ‘there to assist the Collectors in discharging their responsibility for law and order, but under their own officers’. A principle was thus laid down which was to be followed throughout India in due course.

In each district the police consisted of three classes: mounted (regular or irregular) police, rural police and city police. The mounted police were the best paid and of superior status. Their duties were partly protective—providing guards and patrols—and partly detective. The rural police, which consisted only of infantry, were confined to providing guards for treasuries, gaols or headquarters, escorts for prisoners, and support for other branches where necessary. The city police were of two classes—nujjeebs who acted as watchmen, guards and patrols, and trackers ‘selected from amongst the best puggies or trackers in Sind . . . among the most valuable and important members of the police force’. Although attached to the city police the trackers were in fact distributed throughout the province, one or more at each large thana. A little later it was found necessary to improve their status and prospects by enlisting them in the mounted police. All the police of the province were under the command of a Captain of Police, directly responsible to the Chief Commissioner, and under him in each district were a European Lieutenant of Police and an Adjutant, both Army officers.

In charge of each division of a district was a thanadar, generally a commissioned officer of the mounted police, whose duty was to apprehend offenders and collect evidence, ‘leaving to the magistrate the preparation, trial and record of the case’. Gibbs makes an interesting comment on the advantages of the separation of the police and the magistracy:

The police are ferreting out all they can, riding here and there, talking and asking questions of everyone, while the recording officer is quietly seated hearing and taking down such portions of the statements of the parties sent before him as may be evidence to elucidate the case, his presence at the same time acting as a check to the police being overbearing in the performance of their duty.*

Wherever a crime might have been committed, the thana where the information was laid was responsible for taking up the case. Gibbs remarks that this rule was necessary to prevent a thanadar from shirking a case on the pretence that the occurrence was not within his jurisdiction.

By 1859 a complete police network had been spread all over Sind, and for its two million inhabitants occupying 55,000 square miles, there were 245 thanas. At the same time the village police was carefully encouraged. It remained under the Patels and was not interfered with by Government, though the Patels were held responsible for reporting offences and aiding the police.

Mr. H. B. E. Frere (later Sir Bartle) discusses frankly the problem of clashes between the police and the magistracy.

The magistrates are apt to charge the police with exceeding their authority in arresting persons on insufficient ground or keeping them in custody on frivolous pretext without at once bringing them before a magisterial officer for examination. . . . The Police are apt, on the other hand, to charge the magisterial authorities with inflicting inadequate punishments . . . requiring redundant proof or the like.*

He did not think that the resulting conflicts were serious, since ‘if the magistrate is a reasonable and zealous officer, the lieutenant of police becomes to him much the same as an Extra Assistant for Police purposes; and all goes smoothly’.* This has its parallel in modern times. A District Magistrate examines the records of the subordinate magistrate; inspects police stations, not from the point of view of the internal economy of the police, but in relation to action against criminals; and studies the gaol sheets of under-trial prisoners to see if detentions pending trial are too long or unjustified. In the two activities last mentioned, he and the Superintendent of Police are partners.

Perhaps only the English could have invented an arrangement so open to criticism by theorists and politicians—but it worked. Thanks to this system, in 1859 it was possible to assert that ‘many crimes such as Gang Robbery, Highway Robbery, by armed or mounted men, and cattle lifting by armed bands . . . all of which were very common are now almost unknown’. Napier had in fact established a pattern which was soon to be followed in other provinces.

Bombay Presidency

When Clerk, then Governor of Bombay, visited Sind in 1847, it is said that he was much attracted by Napier’s police system and that this led him to embark on police reforms in Bombay. There is, however, no reference to Sind in Clerk’s elaborate Minute of 28 April 1848 and we must treat his proposed reforms on their own merits.*

Clerk’s general comments on the police of the Presidency were scathing.

The Police throughout the Presidency is on a footing in several respects most unsatisfactory. On the one hand, the number . . . employed . . . for Police purposes is great and the aggregate cost ample; on the other, those so employed are in themselves incompetent for the service, and in some grades have other important duties to perform, or for the most part have to subsist on a pittance which is inadequate to remunerate efficient service of any kind.

The number of district officers had been doubled but crime had not decreased and there was general insecurity of life and property. The police establishment cost over Rs. 30 lakhs annually and included over 70,000 personnel and yet ‘no confidence is felt in the Government Police, even by the European residents in civil stations or in military cantonments’. Clerk went on to analyse the reasons for this sorry state of affairs and he put first the decline in the efficiency of the village police. This could be partly attributed to the legal system which weakened the tradition of village communal responsibility, but that was not the whole explanation. Lack of proper supervision had resulted in apathy, which Clerk illustrated by describing a typical case.

A robbery is committed in the village and the traces of the robbers carried beyond the village boundary. The villagers have so far cleared themselves and instead of following up the traces, sit down to make over further trouble and responsibility to the neighbouring village; the latter disputes the clearness of the marks, which before the dispute is settled by the district officers, are effaced by rain or passers by and the robbers get clear off; all parties are intent, not on doing their best to secure the thief, but to do just what is required to shift their responsibility . . . . How different is the result when, from any peculiar circumstances, the search is prosecuted with real activity; nothing can then exceed the zeal, patience and tact of the village watchmen; escape from them seems almost impossible.

In other words if the village authorities really bestir themselves, they can generally catch the criminal—but why should they bother if they are not supervised?

As for the district police, they were also revenue officers and they knew from experience that ‘no degree of efficiency, as a police officer, will do much to advance a man, unless he be also a good revenue officer’. Police work was therefore neglected in favour of revenue duties. A complete separation of revenue and police functions would nevertheless present difficulties. Apart from the expense involved, it would considerably lessen the influence of the mamlatdar.* Clerk’s solution was to appoint as deputy to the mamlatdar, a joint police amildar entirely concerned with police duties, but enjoying the power and prestige which would come from his being a colleague of the mamlatdar.

Clerk next dealt with the unsoundness of leaving the supervision of police work in the hands of the Suddur Adawluts. Even if the judges had the time and knowledge required, there were sound psychological objections to this system. ‘The personal zeal and interest with which the Police Officer tracks the criminal, are diametrically opposed to the temper of him who can evenly hold the scales of justice and who is expected, in administering justice, to lean in all doubtful cases to the side of mercy.’ Clerk proposed, therefore, to divest the Suddur Adawluts of their functions and to transfer them to the Government, which would exercise them through a Police Commissioner for the Presidency. He was prepared, as an interim measure, to let these functions be performed by the Judicial Commissioners to be placed in charge of Ranges, but this was very much of a pis aller.

The problem of the incompatibility of police and judicial functions arose particularly in the case of the District Magistrate, and here Clerk proposed to give him an assistant who would be solely concerned with the superintendence of the police, and for this purpose, in each district the Commandant of the Police Corps would be appointed as Superintendent of District Police. He would have magisterial powers, but ‘as long as he had any police duty to do’, was not to try cases. The subordinate District Police Officers would report to and receive their instructions from him. Clerk likened the proposed relations between the Superintendent of Police and the District Magistrate to those between the Commander-in-Chief of an Army and the Government of a country. The superior ‘exercises no interference in technical details of his subordinates’ measures, though he has the means of preventing or checking glaring misconducts in professional matters.’

Clerk was very critical of the para-military police corps which had existed for some considerable time and proposed that they should gradually be replaced by undrilled, and in the military sense, undisciplined units, to fulfil escort and guard duties. ‘Strict orders should be issued to abolish everything military in their dress or equipment which has not reference to their efficiency as police.’ This recommendation simply meant that the semi-military organizations which were necessary when the Company first took over large tracts of ceded territories, had become an anachronism, (though exceptions were to be made in the case of the Bhil Corps).

Clerk’s proposals may be summed up as involving the divesting of the Suddur Court of its supervisory functions and their transfer to a Commissioner of Police; the subordination of the Superintendent of Police to the District Magistrate; the revival of the Village Police under the District Police; and the disbandment or reduction of the para-military corps.

It might have been thought that so penetrating a report by the Governor would lead to early action, but the wheels of government then turned as slowly as they do today. Clerk’s successor, Viscount Falkland, recorded a long Minute on the subject in February 1850; members of his Council expressed widely differing views on the issues involved; and in July 1851 the Governor wrote yet another Minute.

His proposals had to be submitted to the Government of India and in the meantime the Court of Directors grew impatient. They commented acidly that two years had elapsed between Clerk’s Minute and Falkland’s first Minute, and that since then another two years had passed without any action, even on matters regarding which there was no divergence of opinion. They desired ‘that no further time may be lost in effecting this improvement in efficiency and diminution in the expenses of the Police establishment’. They saw no need for the appointment of a Commissioner of Police, but they approved of the proposal to disband the para-military corps and to change the character of others.*

This letter produced quick results. The proposals of the Government of Bombay were submitted to the Government of India on 9 December 1851 and finally approved by that Government on 21 May 1852. In July the Governor-General’s Acts XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX of 1852 increased the police powers of the Patels, and divested the Suddur Foujdaree Adawlut of its duty to superintend the police in the Presidency. The other proposals of the Bombay Government regarding the police were not the subject of legislation but were implemented by executive orders. The most important Orders were as follows. Executive duties were to be handed over entirely by the Magistrate and Collector to the Superintendent of Police and, of the combined force previously employed by the Magistrate indiscriminately on police and revenue duties, the appropriate proportion would be transferred to the control of the Superintendent and would be employed solely on police duties. It was, nevertheless, made clear that the Superintendent was to be the Deputy of the Magistrate whose real authority over the police was to be maintained and who was, in some matters ‘to exercise a jealous supervision of the Superintendent’s proceedings and to check that officer wherever he exceeds his particular province of detecting and apprehending the guilty’. The Superintendent would in fact act in ‘subordinate co-operation’ with the Magistrate.

At the next lower level of the hierarchy a compromise was made. A police officer to be known as the joint police amildar was to be stationed in the Court Office of each mamlatdar, and would have the same authority over the District Police Force as that formerly exercised by mamlatdars. He would be in subordination to the mamlatdar, but would have his own department and would also be under the control of the Superintendent of Police in matters of discipline and the like—a typically British, illogical, arrangement which would have shocked theorists, but which made sense.

At the next level, the Village Police was to be re-animated, and attempts were to be made to revive the old principle of communal responsibility, which Elphinstone had described as ‘a coarse but effectual remedy against the indifference of the neighbourhood to the sufferings of individuals, which it would be better to regulate than to abandon’. For this purpose it was important that every village resident, especially the village servants, should be made amenable to the authority of the Patel. This made it necessary to confer additional powers on the Patel and by Act XXVII of 1852, his judicial powers were extended to imposing a fine of Rs. 5 or to confining offenders in the stocks for six hours. The village establishment was to be under the Patel, who in his turn would be under the sole authority of the Magistrate. The village police would obey the orders of the Superintendent of Police, but that officer would have nothing to do with the discipline and internal economy of the village system.

The new system came into force in 1852, but, presumably in deference to the wishes of the Court of Directors, no Commissioner of Police was appointed and the superintendence of the police, which had been removed from the Sudder Court, was left with the Home Department of the Government of Bombay. It was soon found that this superintendence could amount to little or nothing and in 1855 a Mr. Bellington was appointed Commissioner of Police and Inspector of Gaols. This appointment was apparently not favoured by the Magistrate-Collectors* and it is possible that here there may have been an element of professional jealousy. When Bellington went on leave, the appointment was allowed to lapse, and as Act V of 1861 was not applied to Bombay, the Province remained without such an officer until 1885. No further change in the police system of Bombay was made until 1867.

The Punjab — The Dual System

Police arrangements in the Punjab, which was annexed in 1849, followed a somewhat different course. Under the guidance of Sir Henry Lawrence, a ‘dual system’ was evolved, its essence being that the police organization consisted of two branches. There were Military Preventive Police under the direct control of the Chief Commissioner, and Civil Police—burkandazes or matchlock men—under the District Magistrates. The Military Police were recruited from amongst disbanded soldiers of the Sikh Army and their function was to provide escorts and guards for gaols, and to assist in dealing with serious threats to established authority.* The Civil Police were concerned with the prevention and detection of crime and were organized throughout the twenty-nine directly administered districts on much the same lines as in Sind. They were recruited mainly by selection from amongst the old chaukidars,* or from the numerous private trackers who had been employed by individuals in the unsettled last days of the Sikh Raj. The District Magistrates were generally responsible for law and order. Under them the tahsildars—who were primarily sub-divisional revenue officers—had a similar responsibility, but unlike the District Magistrates, they could not interfere in routine police matters, though they could ‘animate police officers if they were neglectful and overawe them if they were corrupt’.* This new force was remarkably successful and in the Administration Report for 1849-51 it was stated that

with the police force of 14,000 men, internal peace has been kept from the borders of Sind to the foot of the Himalayas, from the bank of the Sutlej to the bank of the Indus, and this when a disbanded army of 50,000 men had mingled with the ranks of society; when countless adherents and servants of the late government were wandering unemployed about the country . . .. All violent crime has been repressed, all gangs of robbers and murderers have been broken up and the ringleaders brought to justice.*

The success of the police in maintaining law and order, together with a demand from the Directors for economy, led to the conclusion that the military wing could be abolished or absorbed into the Civil Constabulary. In 1859, Mr. Forsythe, the Commissioner of Lahore, put up a scheme under which a European Lieutenant of Police was to be appointed to every district to act as an Assistant to the District Magistrate in the Police Department. A Captain of Police, to be known as Divisional Inspector, was to be appointed in each Division and was to correspond with the Commissioner and with the Lieutenant Governor. At the same time, the responsibility for reporting crime was to be fixed firmly on land holders and lambardars* in the rural areas, while in the cities kotwals* and their subordinates were all placed under the control of a European Superintendent. All this had been done before the appointment of the Police Commission of 1860—to which we shall refer later—and shortly after that Commission was convened, the Punjab Government carried its reforms still further by appointing an Inspector-General for the whole Province. The scheme of the 1861 Act was in fact largely anticipated.

Reorganization in Oudh

The British annexation of Oudh in 1856 has been much criticized by modern historians and it was indeed carried out against the advice of the Governor-General, Dalhousie. Its practical effect was that the Government of India took over a tract so disgracefully governed that no serious pretence of administering impartial justice had been made for several generations. Major-General Sleeman, the British Resident at Lucknow in 1850, wrote a graphic account of the miseries of the people under a King of whom Sleeman reported that ‘his time and attention are devoted entirely to the pursuit of personal gratifications; he associates with none but such as those who contribute to such gratifications—women, singers and eunuchs; and he never, I believe, reads or hears read any petitions from his suffering subjects’.* Sleeman’s record as the suppressor of thuggee reveals him as an officer with a penetrating and accurate mind, not given to exaggeration, and his narrative of the atrocious robberies and murders which were of daily occurrence in Oudh provides convincing evidence of the worst extremes of misrule. Landlords had become leaders of robber gangs and, by way of illustration, Sleeman reported of one family, that ‘hardly a night passes without their plundering some village or other, though they continued to enjoy possession of a lucrative estate with official approval. Of another local freebooter, Bhoree Khan, Sleeman tells us how he dealt with a wealthy and respectable merchant who would not surrender his valuables at Bhoree’s demand.

He brought with him the merchant’s son Nychint, and commanded him to point out the place in which the valuables lay concealed. He would not do so, and Bhoree Khan then drove four tent-pins into the ground in the courtyard, placed Nychint on his face, and tied his hands and feet to these pegs. He then had him burnt into the bones with red-hot ramrods, but the young man still persisted in his refusal. He had then oil boiled in a large brass pot which they found in the house, and poured it over him till all the skin of his body came off. He became insensible for a time, and when he recovered his senses he pointed out the spot. Gold and silver ornaments and clothes of great value, and brass utensils belonging to the family, or held as pledges for money due to the old man, were taken up, with one hundred and fifty matchlocks and the same number of swords. They found also many pits, containing several thousand maunds of grain. The valuables, and as much of the grain as he could find carriage for, Bhoree Khan and his gang carried off, and the rest of the grain he gave to any one who would take it. The value of the whole plunder was estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand rupees.*

This account is relevant to our purpose inasmuch as it shews the nature of the problem which the Government of India and the police had to tackle when Oudh was annexed. Before any real change could be effected, the Indian Mutiny broke out and for a time the British were dispossessed of the Province. When Lucknow was recovered, the rest of the Province was still in the hands of the mutineers and the police force then established had of necessity a para-military character. It consisted of five regiments of cavalry and fourteen regiments of infantry and it advanced behind the Army to reestablish civil administration. By the beginning of 1859 this task had been accomplished and the country subdued. The police were therefore converted into a purely civil organization, free of all duties of a military kind. At the same time, ‘Colonel Abbott organised a constabulary for Lucknow on the model of the London police’.*

The success of the police in restoring order was so great that early in 1860, all the special tribunals which had been set up to deal with cases arising out of the Mutiny were discontinued and Oudh was in fact the first Province which was able to revert to the ordinary courts of law for the trial of political offences. It is indeed remarkable that within a year of the suppression of the Mutiny, the British authorities were able to give serious consideration to such matters as civil and criminal procedure, the rules of evidence and the registration of deaths.

The police organization of Oudh at this time followed what was now becoming the standard pattern. District Superintendents of Police were appointed and ‘were made directly subordinate to the Deputy Commissioners and placed at their disposal for the performance of police duties, without prejudice, however, to the absolute control of the Inspector-General in all matters appertaining to the discipline, interior economy and organisation of the forces’.* The new system obviously worked well and the fact that the force was smaller than before the Mutiny and that a considerable saving was effected, gladdened the hearts of The Court of Directors, who were still economically-minded even though they had long since ceased to have any commercial interest in the administration of India.

Development in Madras

In Madras in the 1850s, investigations into a long continued campaign of assassination by Moplahs, culminating in the murder of the District Magistrate of Malabar, brought to light the unsatisfactory state of police organization in much of the Presidency. Mr. W. Elliott, a member of the Madras Council, thus commented:

It appears incredible that a band of men should traverse a great part of the district for a period of six weeks, with the avowed intention of destroying the principal person in it, that this intention should be known to hundreds, probably to thousands, and that not a whisper of it should be conveyed to those entrusted with the preservation of order or if known should be completely withheld.*

The Court of Directors was evidently disturbed by these occurrences and in August 1854 addressed the Government of Madras calling attention to the fact that, since the abolition of the Courts of Appeal and Circuit in 1843, no local supervision had been exercised over the officials responsible for the administration of justice and police. Control was exclusively in the hands of the Government itself or the Suddur Adawlat, the Board of Revenue, or the head of some department, all stationed at the Presidency. The Government of Madras was directed to consider if the Bombay system should be introduced into the Madras Presidency. ‘The elements of police under the Madras Presidency,’ stated the despatch from London,

are essentially the same as in other parts of India, consisting of two parts, viz. village officers paid by law exempted from assessment and succeeding hereditarily to the office, and stipendiary servants paid by Government and appointed and dismissed by the District Officers. As the Bombay system of placing the establishment under the immediate direction and control of a Superintendent of Police, although still experimental, has been reported to work satisfactorily, we are desirous that you should consider whether a similar arrangement might not be advantageously introduced under your Presidency.*

The Directors added the usual caution that there must be no unnecessary expense.

The Judges of the Court of Foujdarry Adawlat pointed out that the statement of the Directors regarding supervision was not accurate, inasmuch as the powers formerly exercised by the Courts of Circuit were now vested in the Sessions Judges. They did, however, consider this system unsatisfactory since ‘the Zillah Judge is too much on a par in respect of position with those over whom he has to exercise control’. Moreover, the Magistrates, in the view of the Court, were too much occupied with their revenue duties to exercise supervision over the police. It would be advantageous if the offices of the Magistrate and Collector were separated and the police placed under the control of a Superintendent, himself subordinate to the Magistrate.*

While these matters were under consideration, the Government of Madras had found it necessary to enquire into allegations that torture was widely used in the collection of revenue, and in September 1854, a Commission was appointed for this purpose. A little later the scope of the enquiry was enlarged to include the use of torture in police cases. After exhaustive enquiries, the Commissioners found that the use of violence by revenue and police officials was widely prevalent and that

the practice of Torture prevails in a much more aggravated degree in Police cases than for realizing the Revenue. The modes resorted to in the former appear to be more acute and cruel, though we doubt if anything like an equal number of persons is annually subjected to violence, on Criminal charges, as for default of payment of Revenue.*

The harrowing list of the forms of torture used in order to elicit confessions fully justified the Commissioners’ use of the words ‘acute and cruel’. The Commissioners went on to suggest remedies. They considered that the existing laws were inadequate to deal with abuses of authority by the police, but they attached greater importance to the fact that Revenue, Police and Magisterial authority were combined in the same set of functionaries. At lower levels, this combination of all power in one agency gave unlimited scope for oppression and made it nearly impossible for a sufferer to obtain redress. The Commissioners suggested that ‘it would seem not only plausible but reasonable to look for such a remedy in the separation of the Revenue and Police functions’.* They emphasized, too, the need for more European officials in the Districts, and they quoted a Mr. Cherry, who stated: ‘I am the sole European to conduct and overlook the Police duties among a population of no less than 572,860, and superintend the collection of upwards of 6 lacks of revenue from a county extending over some 4,000 square miles’.

As regards the general quality of the police the Commissioners stated bluntly that ‘the whole police is underpaid, notoriously corrupt, and without any of the moral restraint and self respect which education ordinarily engenders’. In this connection they quoted a graphic report from a Mr. Saalfelt:

The Police establishment has become the bane and pest of society, the terror of the community, and the origin of half the misery and discontent that exist among the subjects of Government. Corruption and bribery reign paramount through the whole establishment; violence, torture and cruelty are their chief instruments for detecting crime, implicating innocence, or extorting money. Robberies are daily and nightly committed, and not unfrequently with their connivance certain suspicious characters are taken up and conveyed to some secluded spot far out of the reach of witnesses; every species of cruelty is exercised upon them, if guilty the crime is invariably confessed, and stolen property discovered; but a tempting bribe soon releases them from custody. Should they persist in avowing their innocence, relief from suffering is promised by criminating some wealthy individual, and in the agony of despair he is pointed to as the receiver of stolen goods. In his turn he is compelled to part with his hard earned coin to avert the impending danger.*

It would perhaps not be unfair to say that the Torture Commission’s Report, which was submitted in April 1855, galvanized the Madras Government into much needed action and in August of that year proposals were submitted from Madras to the Government of India. Their urgency was emphasized by the fact that in the year 1854 alone there were 1724 gang robberies in the Madras Presidency. The proposals were based on two principles: first, police and revenue functions must be separated and District Police confined absolutely to police duties; and secondly, the force thus set apart must be placed under close and undivided European superintendence. The Government of Madras proposed that

as in Bombay, a Superintendent of Police be appointed in each District to be in general subordination to the Magistrate, but to have immediate charge of the District Police Force and to be vested with the special duty for the prevention and detection of crime.*

A Commissioner of Police for the whole Presidency was to be appointed and the entire force, including the City Police, should be under his surveillance. For purposes of control of the police, he would replace the Foujdarry Adawlat. The village police would continue for the time being under the control of the Magistrate.*

In July 1856, the Court of Directors—signing themselves, as customary, ‘your loving friends’—expressed doubts as to the wisdom of appointing a Commissioner of Police since ‘frequent clashes of authority might be apprehended if the Superintendent of Police in each district were subordinated, at the same time, to the Magistrate and also to the proposed Commissioner’. The Directors were also perturbed that the measures suggested would involve as great an increase of expenditure as Rs. 643,000 annually. They nevertheless promised to consider the proposals carefully when they learned the views of the Government of India.*

The Government of Madras were not impressed with the observations of the Directors, and a triangular correspondence between the Government of India, the Government of Madras and the Court of Directors went on for some time. In June 1857, having regard to the preoccupation of the Government of India with the problems of the Mutiny, the Directors again addressed the Government of Madras. The ‘loving friends’ in London now accepted in principle the proposals of that Government, with certain modifications. The most important of the decisions now taken were as follows. A Commissioner of Police should be appointed for the entire Presidency, with Deputy Commissioners under him in Districts; the police functions of the Magistrate should cease; and the village police should be under the control of the District Deputy Commissioners of Police.*

The Directors made an interesting observation on the question of the separation of the judicial and police functions of the Magistrate. They pointed out that this was a subject on which intelligent men held conflicting views and that some officers of great experience were opposed to the separation proposed by the Government of Madras. They therefore considered that the matter should be tested empirically. ‘A satisfactory solution of it will best be attained by a practical application of the two systems in different localities . . . tried to the best advantage under the supervision of those who respectively favour them.’ In other words, let Bombay and Madras go their own separate ways and see which works best.

Mr. G. W. Robinson, who had distinguished himself as a police officer in the Moplah troubles, was appointed the first Chief Commissioner of Police and was directed to work out details. Before the new scheme became law his title was changed to Inspector-General, and, similarly, Deputy Commissioners of Police in Districts were to be designated Superintendents. The financial sanction of the Government of India was obtained to a salary of Rs. 2,500 per month for the Inspector-General and for the appointment of twenty Superintendents and twenty assistants on salaries of Rs. 700 and Rs. 300 per month respectively.*

The relations between the Magistrate and the Superintendent obviously needed greater definition, since the statement that the Magistrate was to be divested of his police functions might be misunderstood. A Government instruction on this point was therefore issued when the relevant Bill was being drafted.

You will therefore understand it to be the distinct and unanimous intention of the Madras Government. First, that the local Superintendents of Police are to be entirely under the orders of the local Magistrates. Secondly, that the functions of the Commissioner or, as he should more properly be styled, the Inspector General, will be confined to the organisation of the establishment, and to the maintaining it in a state of efficiency, by a proper attention to promotion, discipline and other details of management.

The primary object of the plan . . . is to place an improved instrument for the prevention and detection of crime at the disposal of the Magistrate.

The instruction went on to make it clear that

while it is proposed to vest in the local Magistrates the most ample powers of control (save in the matter of drill, discipline, etc.), oyer the District Superintendents and their Establishments, it is yet meant that such supervision should be of a general character; that the Superintendents shall, as far as possible, be left to provide for the prevention and detection of crime in their districts by means of the Police Force under their orders; the Magistrate exercising a general control and interfering more immediately, only on occasions when he may deem his intervention really necessary.*

Act XXIV of 1859 implementing these decisions was passed by the Legislative Council of India and received the Governor-General’s assent on 6 September 1859. Within twelve months of the passing of the Act, its operation had been extended to fifteen out of the twenty districts of the Madras Presidency. It was not applied to Madras City.

Bengal

In 1854 Dalhousie, as Governor of Bengal, applied his powerful mind to the state of the police in Bengal and stated emphatically that the separation of the offices of Magistrate and Collector effected between 1836 and 1845 had been a mistake.

For the result has been that there is now in the Lower Provinces one class of officers, of mature standing, highly paid and with very little work; while there is another class, the magistrates inadequately paid, with very heavy work and without sufficient experience to enable them to do that work in such a maimer as fully to command the confidence of the community.*

The question of the relations between the Judge, the Magistrate, the Collector and the police was to dominate discussions of police reform for a decade and it will be well, therefore, first to recall the history of the relationship in Bengal and then to state the points at issue. In 1774 the Judges—and the Collectors in the four districts from which they had not been withdrawn—were vested with the powers of magistrates but were not given executive authority over the newly appointed Foujdars. In 1781 the Collectors were reappointed but they had no magisterial powers and were of little importance. In 1786 the post of Collector was combined with that of Judge-Magistrate, but again in 1793 the Collectors were divested of judicial and magisterial functions. From 1793 to 1831 the two chief officers in a Bengal district were the Judge-Magistrate and the Collector and the Judge-Magistrate was the head of the police force in his district. In 1821 a regulation was passed under which the Governor-General could invest the Collector with the powers of a Magistrate. In 1831 the Judge was divested of his magisterial powers; the Collector again became Magistrate and head of the thanadari police force. In 1838 the Collector was again divested of his magisterial functions and of control over the police, and those duties were transferred in each district to an independent Joint Magistrate. This was still the position at the beginning of the period with which we are now concerned.

Two issues were matters of controversy. Should the posts of Magistrate and Collector be combined and should the Magistrate have control of the police? The arguments in favour of the combination of the two posts were that it would economize scarce high-level manpower and that it would be in accordance with the Indian tradition, under which authority was concentrated in one person. The second point of controversy raised a question of principle as to whether an officer responsible for trying criminal cases should also control the detective and prosecuting agencies.

Dalhousie’s view that the Collector-Magistrate should again become head of the district and of the police was strongly rebutted by John Peter Grant (later Sir John), a member of the Governor-General’s Council. He alleged that many of the Collectors he had known in Bengal were not fit for magisterial charge of a district, and he also argued that the prevalence of torture now under enquiry in Madras illustrated the evil resulting from the combination of police and revenue powers in one hand.*

In 1856, Halliday, who was now Governor of Bengal, joined in the fray and wrote a Minute of outstanding quality. It is not necessary to deal in detail with this Minute, as it covers ground much of which has already been covered.* A few points must, however, be made. Halliday had changed his mind as a result of experience on two matters. He now advocated the union of the offices of Magistrate and Collector, and his remarks on this topic are of great interest. He pointed out that in the thirties a great deal of special revenue work had been necessary and the Collector-Magistrate (for the offices had been re-united in 1831) was so overwhelmed with revenue work that the magisterial side of his duties was neglected. This had been assumed to be a permanent state of affairs and the offices had been separated. Revenue work had in fact now become comparatively light, and uniting the offices again would make it possible to put the supervision of the police into more experienced hands. Halliday strongly stated the case against the separation of judicial and executive powers.

The European idea of provincial government is by a minute division of functions and offices and this is the system which we have introduced into our older territories. The Oriental idea is to unite all powers into one centre. The European may be able to comprehend and appreciate how and why he should go to one functionary for justice of one kind and to another for justice of another kind. The Asiatic is confused and aggrieved by hearing that this tribunal can only redress a particular sort of injury; but that if his complaint be of another nature, he must go to another authority, and to a third, or a fourth kind of judicature, if his case be, in a manner incomprehensible to himself, distinguishable into some other kinds of wrong or injury. He is unable to understand why there should be more than one ‘Hakim’,* and why the ‘Hakim’ to whom he goes, according to his own expression as to a father for justice, should be incapable of rendering him justice, whatever be the nature of his grievance, or whatever be the position of his adversary.

Halliday had also revised his former view about the village chaukidari system and attached much importance to reviving it and giving the Magistrate power to see that chaukidars were properly paid by the village authorities. Dalhousie had proposed that the tax imposed on towns by Regulation XXII of 1816 should be extended to the rural areas to pay for the rural police, but had dropped this proposal since he was advised that it would be a violation of the Permanent Settlement. An investigation had nevertheless been made as to the long standing liabilities of villagers in respect of the maintenance of the village police and Halliday evidently contemplated legislation under which these liabilities could be enforced.

Another matter which Halliday considered very important was an increase in the pay of the lower ranks of the police, since that had not been done when new scales of salary were introduced for darogas.

It was a step in the right direction doubtless when the Government of Lord Auckland determined thenceforth to pay no Darogah less than Rs. 50 per mensem, and to allow to one hundred of the number Rs. 75, and to 50 of them Rs. 100 per mensem. But the good of all this was tarnished by the omission to do anything for the lower grades of Police officers. For it was impossible to become a good Darogah without an apprenticeship; and when the apprenticeship was to be served in the midst of great power, great temptation, and the traditions of unavoidable corruption in the station of Thannah Mohurrir on Rs. 7 a month, what was to be expected from such a training?*

Halliday’s other main recommendations were that more experienced officers should be appointed as District Magistrates and that the number of uncovenanted Deputy Magistrates should be increased considerably. The Mutiny delayed action on these recommendations and it was not until 185p that most of them were implemented.

A few months after Halliday had recorded his Minute, the Court of Directors had called for an immediate and thorough reform of the police in all the old provinces of India. The Governor-General, Lord Canning, saw no reason, however, to wait for views from other provinces now that specific proposals from Bengal were before him and he dealt with the subject in a Minute dated 18 February 1857. He pointed out that the Court had favoured the idea that

in each Presidency or Government there should be one Superintendent of Police; that there should be a force under him consisting of Horse and Foot superintended in its larger divisions by European subalterns and equipped, clothed and disciplined, so as to render it efficient and serviceable without giving it an absolute military organisation; that the duties of this force should be purely of a preventive character . . . that the detective force should form a constituent portion of each battalion of the preventive police . . . that the police of each district should be taken out of the hands of the Magistrate and given to a European officer with no other duties; . . . that no native police officer should be entrusted with fiscal powers.*

The Governor-General was strongly opposed to giving the Bengal Police a para-military organization, though some semi-military forces must continue to exist, for the suppression of disturbances in particular localities.* He also disapproved of the proposal to have a General Superintendent of Police. Such an office had been created in 1839 and abolished in 1854 on the basis of experience, the duties concerned being consigned to Commissioners of Revenue.

As regards the vexed question of the relations between the Magistrate and Collector and the police, in spite of strong opposition front some members of his Council, the Governor-General decided in favour of Halliday’s proposals to re-unite the posts. He minuted thus:

I think that in Bengal especially the efficient administration of the penal laws requires all the force and influence which the Government can bring to bear upon it and that this force and influence will be increased by substituting for the divided authority now partially existing in these Provinces that union of local control which, as it seems to me, is much better suited to the character and wants of the people.

He proposed that the Joint Magistrate under the general orders of the Magistrate, ‘should have the control of the executive police and take the initiative in the prevention and detection of crime’, but there was no need for any hard and fast line of demarcation between the police and the judicial duties of either the Magistrate or the Joint Magistrate. The Governor-General also recommended the appointment of persons of respectability as honorary Magistrates. On receipt of these proposals the Court of Directors regretted that the Governor-General and the Lieutenant-Governor had not proposed more extensive changes, but were unwilling in so important a matter to urge upon them the adoption of any system not in accordance with their own views and they therefore sanctioned the proposals as they stood.

It will be convenient here to summarize the position then reached in Bengal. Superintendents of Police had been appointed in every district; the pay of the darogas had been raised to reasonable levels; though similar action was still required in the case of lower ranks; magistrates had been appointed to all sub-divisions; the offices of Magistrate and Collector had been re-united; and an examination was in progress as to how village chaukidars could be better organized. The way in fact had been prepared for the measures proposed by the Police Commission in 1860.

The Indian Police Commission 1860

The Court of Directors at this time showed continuous anxiety about the whole question of police work in India, and as we have seen, on 24 September 1856 it addressed to the Government of India a letter of great importance which stated the conviction of the Court that ‘an immediate and thorough reform of the Police in all the old Provinces of British India is loudly called for’.* The Directors went on to state:

that the Police in India had lamentably failed in accomplishing the ends for which it was established, was admitted to be a notorious fact; that it was all but useless for the prevention and sadly inefficient for the detection of crime was generally admitted. Unable to check crime, it was with rare exceptions unscrupulous as to its mode of wielding the authority with which it is armed for the functions which it fails to fulfil; and has a very general character for corruption and oppression. There is moreover a want of general organisation; and the force attached to each division is too much localized and isolated.*

The Court went on to commend to the Government of India the very principles which were being adopted in Madras. Presumably, the Government delayed any general action until the Madras scheme had been finalized.

On 17 August 1860, it appointed a Police Commission, composed of four members of the Civil Service, (including Robinson, Inspector-General of Police, Madras, who had played an important part in drafting the Police Act of 1859). The Commission’s terms of reference were as follows:

To ascertain the numbers and the cost of all Police and quasi-Police of every description at present serving in each province throughout the British Territories in India, who are paid by Government from the general revenue.
To suggest to Government any measure whereby expenditure may be economized or efficiency increased, in the existing Police forces.*

The Company was at this time experiencing considerable financial stringency, and emphasis was therefore put in the Government Resolution on the need for economy. Accompanying the Resolution was a Memorandum setting out the Government’s view as to the characteristics of a good police for India.* The most important points stressed were four in number. The duties of the police must be entirely civil, not military, though some degree of military organization and discipline would be necessary; the Police must be completely divorced from the judicial functions; the organization of the police must be centralized in the hands of the provincial government (and this raised the much debated question as to what the fink should be between the police and the magistracy); and the foot policeman must be paid ‘something more than the highest rate of wages for unskilled labour . . . thus securing the best and most respectable of that class for the Police’. It was implicit in the Memorandum that Superintendents of Police should be European, but it was laid down categorically that there were to be ‘no European Constables or Non-Commissioned Officers . . . except at sea-ports and large Military stations, where they are required to deal with Europeans’.

The principles contained in this Memorandum were already to a considerable extent in operation in several provinces, and the Commission was therefore able to submit its report in a very short space of time.* It proposed that in each province all existing bodies concerned with the civil administration including regular police, men employed in watch and ward duties from whatever public source they might be paid, the cantonment police, the Thagi and Dakaiti Departments, and the Detective Branches, should be consolidated into one civil police force, under the control of an Inspector-General responsible to the Government and free from all duties other than the supervision of the police. The force would have no military duties and, on the other hand, the military arm would have no police functions.

The Military arm should confine itself absolutely to the occupation of the country, for its proper function of preventing invasion, and supporting the Civil power only in event of rebellion or extended insurrection. The Military arm should be relieved from all non-military duties; and the peace and order of the country should be preserved, on every occasion of tumult and apprehended disturbance, by the Civil power, and not by a Military force.*

The Commission went on to propose that in each district there should be a European Superintendent of Police, departmentally subordinate to the Inspector-General, but bound to obey the orders of the District Officer in matters relating to the prevention and detection of crime and preservation of the peace. The Commissioners devoted much thought to the question of the relations between the police and the magistracy. They started from the position ‘that the official who collects and traces out the lines of evidence . . . should never be the same as the officer, whether of high or inferior grade, who is to sit in judgment on the case’.* An exception must, however, be made in the case of the District Officer, since it was impracticable to relieve the Magistrate of his judicial duties, and yet it was essential to maintain his general supervision. The police—divorced from all judicial and penal functions—were to be ‘an efficient instrument placed at his [i.e. the District Magistrate’s] disposal for the protection of life and property, for the suppression of crime and the repression of local disturbances’.*There should, however, be no combination of police and judicial powers in any grade below District Officer.

The Commissioners considered it essential that the Inspector-General of Police should maintain constant communication with District Officers, though exercising no kind of authority over them. In consequence of the appointment of Inspectors-General, Divisional Commissioners would cease to exercise the functions of Superintendents of Police. The Commission reaffirmed the Government of India’s view that the pay of the force must be adequate. That of Inspectors must be on ‘such liberal scale as will command the services of Europeans, East Indians of respectability and education or of Indians of the higher class’. The pay of the lowest rank of the constables should be at least equal to that of wages of unskilled labour, while that of head constables and sergeants should be sufficient to place them above temptation. The police should be trained in the use of arms, but should normally carry only a truncheon or baton.

The Police should not be used as an agency for the record of any evidence, confession, inquest or the like; but a system of keeping faithful, accurate and minute diaries should be maintained. These diaries should specify, concisely, but in detail, all duties in which any Police Officer may have been engaged, and every occurrence and information that may have required the attention of the Police within their respective ranges.

The Commissioners dealt in a separate report with the village police. They considered it essential to maintain the institution of village watchmen and to revive it wherever it was moribund. Tn the existing condition of the interior of the country,’ stated the Commissioners, ‘the organised Police cannot be informed of all that occurs of public consequence, unless they have some tolerably reliable agency in the villages. . . . The Village Watchman is, of course, just such a person. He is a man of the village; not enough of an official to be alien from or obnoxious to the villagers and enough of an official to be amenable to system and reliable for duty’. These may sound pompous words applied to the village chaukidar, as the writer and many others knew him, but anyone with experience of the mofussil will know how indispensable he was. Voluntary agency alone, in the Commission’s view, might not be enough to support the institution of village watchmen. Their remuneration must therefore be fixed—and the necessary funds realized—by the District Officer, and they must be under the orders of the organized police.*

A Bill based on the Commission’s draft was presented by the Governor-General to the Legislative Council in September 1860, and was the subject of an interesting discussion. There was still some disagreement as to the degree and nature of the desirable link between the police and the magistracy, and criticism was also directed against the inclusion in the Police Act of substantive or procedural provisions of law which would perhaps be covered by the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code which were then under consideration. Nevertheless, the Bill was enacted with only minor alterations as Act V of 1861. It is not necessary here to analyse the provisions of the Act since they carried out the intentions of the Commission. It must, however, be pointed out that under Section 46, the Act was not to come into force automatically, but would only apply in any province when so notified by the Governor-General and Council. A spokesman for the Government of India made it clear that they did not intend to force the Act upon reluctant provinces. ‘Its progress,’ said Sir Bartle Frere in moving the first reading of the Bill, ‘must be gradual . . . and it was essential to carry with it the consent of the officers by whom it would be worked.’* The Act was never, in fact, extended to Bombay or to Sind.

Chapter 8

The Working of Act V

Act V was gradually extended from province to province and before the end of the century it was in force throughout India, except in the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay and the Presidency Towns. The Madras Act differed little from Act V, but the Bombay system diverged considerably from the plans recommended by the 1860 Commission, particularly in regard to the relationship between the police on the one hand and Commissioners and District Magistrates on the other. Nevertheless, it is roughly correct to say that for more than a hundred years the policing of mofussil India was administered according to the pattern of Act V, as modified by Act III of 1888 and Act VIII of 1895. The former of these Acts removed the difficulty arising from the fact that under Act V a police officer belonging to one province could not be employed in another province—a matter of practical importance in the case of the North Western Railway, which was the concern of seven different police forces. The Act empowered the Governors-General to create districts extending over more than one province. The 1895 Act dealt with matters of discipline, but also gave the local authorities greater discretion in selecting the persons from whom the cost of additional police should be realized in areas where disturbances had made such additional police necessary. It also clarified the powers of a Superintendent of Police to attach conditions to licences issued for assemblies or processions. Neither of these Acts made any fundamental change in the scheme of Act V. It must, however, be remembered that the organization of the police continued to be provincial and not central.

Madras, having secured the passage of the 1859 Act before the Police Commission was convened, got off to a flying start, and by 1863 had an elaborate cadre consisting of an Inspector-General, an Assistant Inspector-General, four Deputy Inspectors-General, and thirty-eight Superintendents or Assistant Superintendents, with a full complement of subordinate ranks. In 1877, the Madras Government created a cadre of uncovenanted Assistant Superintendents of Police, the forerunners of the Deputy Superintendents of modern times.

The only other provinces requiring comment at this stage are Bombay (which did not at this time adopt the Act) and Bengal.

In the Bombay Presidency, no Inspector-General was appointed for some decades. Bombay Act VII of 1867 was mainly concerned with consolidating the law affecting the police, but it also spelt out in clear terms the subordination of the police to the Magistrate, and gave the Divisional Commissioners authority over the police similar to that which was exercised in other provinces by the Inspector-General. Few modern administrators would regard this principle as being sound, and in 1885, the Bombay Government at last appointed an Inspector-General. This change was followed by the enactment of the Bombay Act IV of 1890 which laid down that

the District Superintendent shall, subject to the orders of the Inspector-General and of the Magistrate of the district, within their several spheres of authority, direct and regulate all matters of arms, drill, exercise, observation of persons and events, mutual relations, distribution of duties, study of laws, orders and modes of proceeding, and all matters of executive detail in the fulfilment of their duties by the police force of this district.

The Act went on to lay down that

the District Superintendent and the police force of a district shall be under the command and control of the Magistrate of the district.*

In Bengal, where the police force had been considerably strengthened and improved in 1857-58, the provisions of Act V were at once applied. An Inspector-General was appointed and in 1862 he had nine Deputy Inspectors-General under him, their jurisdictions being coterminous with those of the Commissioners. Colonel Bruce, who was temporarily appointed Inspector-General of India and was entrusted with the duty of implementing the provisions of Act V wherever it was introduced, considered that Deputy Inspectors-General were only required when the jurisdiction of the Inspector-General was so extensive that he could not hope to accord more than nominal superintendence,* In 1862, the number of Deputy Inspectors-General in Bengal was reduced to eight, and in 1864 a further reduction to six was effected. Bruce wrote interestingly on the subject of the duties of a Deputy Inspector-General.

The Deputy Inspector-General is the schoolmaster of the District Superintendents to instruct, advise and guide them. He takes care that every district in his division works with the other and not independently. He is kept perfectly informed of the state of crime in each district. He is, in the opinion of the Lieutenant-Governor, the backbone of the system. His position enables him particularly to study professional crime, tracing it from one district to another, and all this he does without in the least distressing his District Superintendent.*

The strengthening of the Bengal police force in 1857-58 had perhaps proceeded too rapidly, with the result that many non-Bengalis were enlisted. Bruce commented on this subject:

When the first constabulary was started it was found that neither the old Burkundazes nor the local inhabitants presented themselves freely for enrolment and large bodies of men from the North-Western Provinces and even, I believe, the Punjab were consequently imported. Anyone can prove how the efficiency of the Police force must be impaired when it consists chiefly of foreigners, and although the Government of Bengal has now placed a limit upon the admission of foreigners, I feel they still, in reality, greatly exceed the limited complement assigned. Even now Bengalees do not present themselves as they are expected to do for enlistment; and this fact has been mentioned as showing the necessity if not for actually increasing the pay of the constables, at any rate for not reducing it. I am not at all sure that high pay will not tend rather to exclude than attract Bengalees, inasmuch as it might hold out greater advantages to the vast number of foreigners now in the police to draw towards it their own relatives, to the exclusion of the people of the locality.*

In 1890 the Beames Committee examined certain aspects of police work, but its recommendations were only of a minor character and no important action resulted from it. No other important change in the organization of the district police or their relations to the magistracy in any province took place during the nineteenth century, but in the early 1890s much consideration was given to the recruitment, salaries and training of the superior police services throughout India. The Secretary of State had suggested the employment in the police of a larger number of military officers than had been customary in recent years. The Governor-General reported that nearly all the local governments were opposed to this proposal and he observed that unless the salaries and prospects were much improved, it would not be practicable to attract efficient military men.

The Inspector-General of Police in the Punjab was particularly emphatic on this point. When the constabulary was first organized in that Province, seasoned officers who had served through the Mutiny were available and they were offered salaries as police officers considerably in excess of those attached to their military rank. At a Intel stage, attempts to recruit from this source failed and moreover ‘it was found that military officers could only be secured at the expense of superseding’ officers of perhaps fourteen years satisfactory service. The source had in fact practically dried out and could never be restored.*

For some years a fair proportion of superior police officers had been recruited by nomination from non-military sources, but while there were able individuals amongst them, there were too many who have been described as ‘the amiable detrimental, the younger son or the sporting public schoolboy, too lazy or too stupid to get into the army’.* At a later stage the Fraser Commission exaggerated the defects of these men, who did in fact bring with them the much needed standards of honesty. Moreover, they often displayed great courage and in many cases they cultivated excellent relations with their men. Nevertheless, the need for an improvement in the system of selection was clear. The Governor-General proposed that the arrangement by which superior police officers were recruited both in England and in India should be placed on a more systematic basis, though in both countries the principle of open competition should be followed, subject to certain qualifications.

Consideration had been given to recruitment by the same competitive examination as that for which candidates were chosen for Sandhurst and Woolwich, but in 1893 it was decided that the examination in London for the Indian Police Force should be simultaneous with, and in the same subjects and papers, as the examination for the Indian Forest Service. Candidates were to be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. Each Province was to indicate year by year the number of Assistant Superintendents of Police required and the Secretary of State would then allot successful candidates to Provinces at his discretion, though the Government of India would have the right to transfer them to other Provinces. Their agreements would be with the Secretary of State, but they would be under the orders of the Government of India, and either the Secretary of State or that Government, or an officer authorized by that Government, could discharge them for dereliction of duty or on certain other grounds. A few years later this provision was modified in such a way that only the Secretary of State could dismiss a police officer appointed by him The first open competition for the police was held in England in June 1893 and the ten top candidates were appointed as Probationary Assistant Superintendents of Police. The number of candidates to be recruited in England during the next few years was to be as follows:

	1894	1895	1896	1897
Madras	3	2	3	2
Bombay	1	—	1	—
Bengal & Assam	2	2	2	2
N.W. Provinces & Orissa	1	2	1	2
Central Provinces	—	1	—	1
Totals	7	7	7	7

No recruitment in England during these years was originally proposed for the Punjab, since there were already in that Province, candidates with claims to appointment to the grades of Assistant Superintendents; but one officer was in fact recruited in 1896. The Provincial governments would continue to recruit the balance of their requirements in India. Candidates nominated by the local governments would be subjected to a system of examination prescribed by the Government of India but conducted by the local governments, and the recruitment would be only from amongst domiciled Europeans. The Governor-General also envisaged a continuance of the practice by which local governments appointed Inspectors of exceptional merit and ability to the superior ranks, but assumed that the number of Indians in the higher grades would probably be small.

Rules for the training of probationers were now laid down. Local governments were to select District Superintendents of Police to watch over the probationers’ training and studies, and in general a probationer who did not pass the riding tests or the qualifying department examinations within two years after his recruitment was to be removed from employ. Seniority in the service was to depend on the order in which the probationers passed the departmental tests. The details of the course of study and the system of training were to be prescribed by the local governments under the general control of the Government of India.*

In modern times police officers recruited by the Secretary of State have generally been said to belong to the Indian Imperial Police, but this much respected name never appears to have been officially promulgated. There has, indeed, been a remarkable vagueness about the designation of this great service and it is not even possible to pin-point a date on which it could positively be claimed that the Indian Police Service came into being. In one sense this can be said to have happened when the Secretary of State first undertook the recruitment of superior police officers, but the term was not used in the relevant documents or in the agreements of those appointed. Moreover, they wore the shoulder badges of their provinces P.P. for the Punjab, B.P. for Bengal and so on. In 1894 the Secretary of State enquired from the Governor-General and Council as to whether Assistant Superintendents of Police were to be appointed to the Imperial or provincial service and was told in reply that the police service had not been, and probably would not be, divided into those categories. In the Police Proceedings for 1902 to 1905 a variety of terms is used: the Police Commission, the Police Department, the Superior Grades of the Police Force, and there is also a reference to ‘vacancies in the Indian Police Service’. To arrive at a more definite use of the name Indian Police, we must go beyond the period with which this chapter is concerned. In 1907 the Secretary of State’s officers were directed to wear the letters ‘I.P.’ on their epaulettes to distinguish them from Deputy Superintendents or other officers not recruited by the Secretary of State. In this sense, 1907 could be regarded as the starting point for the Indian Police Service, but even as late as 1912 those concerned are referred to as members of the Imperial Branch of the Police Service. In the Report of the Islington Commission, the Indian Police Service is referred to under that name and from this time onwards that designation appears to have been used regularly. In 1932, in deference to the wishes of the Indian Police Association, the word ‘Service’ was dropped and the simpler designation ‘Indian Police’ was officially adopted.

The Fraser Commission

A Committee under the chairmanship of Mr. C. L. Tupper dealt only with minor matters and we need not stop to consider it.

In 1902 the Governor-General appointed a Commission under the chairmanship of the Honourable A. H. L. Fraser, Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, to enquire into the administration of the police in India, and the Commission was particularly enjoined to remember that while there were matters in respect of which uniformity throughout India was desirable, there were other heads under which it was neither desirable nor possible. They were not to aim at ‘mechanical symmetry’, but to have regard in each area to such considerations as the criminality of the people, the number and gravity of the offences to be dealt with, and the density of population. Practically all aspects of police work were included in their terms of reference.*

The judgment passed by the Commissioners on police administration in India has generally been considered too harsh, and was not entirely accepted in the subsequent Resolution of the Government of India. Nevertheless, it provides a reasonably good guide to the working of Act V, and it is adopted as the framework for this chapter. The Report makes it clear that the Act had not fulfilled the hopes of its authors, and quoted the statement of the Government of Bengal that ‘in no branch of the administration in Bengal is improvement so imperatively required as in the police’.* The Commission considered the same remarks applicable to every Province of India, though the necessity for reform was even more urgent in Bengal than elsewhere. The reasons set forth by the Commission for the failure of Act V may be summarized as five in number: unsatisfactory recruitment and training of superior officers of the Department; undue interference with the police by Magistrates and Commissioners; inadequate staff, both superior and subordinate; insufficient remuneration of all ranks from Inspectors downwards and the consequent employment of ill- educated and unsuitable men; and the failure to make enough use of the village police. A fair comment would be that most of these deficiencies resulted from the necessity for severe economy imposed on the Government of India by financial stringency, and by the fact that a mild, foreign Government could not impose heavy taxation on a poor country.

The Commissioners supported their strictures in the first place by reference to popular opinion.

Everywhere they went the Commission heard the most bitter complaints of the corruption of the police. These complaints were made not by non-officials only, but also by officials of all classes including Magistrates and police officers, both European and Native. It was generally admitted that constables possessed very much the characteristics of the classes from which they were recruited; and that corruption was no more an essential characteristic of the constable than of the revenue peon, the process-server or the forest chaprasi. But the corruption of the constable is more intolerable because of the greater opportunities of oppression and extortion which his police powers afford. . . . The police system seems to the Commission to have aggravated the evil both by under-paying the constable and by assigning to him duties which he is not qualified to perform. To pay a constable Rs. 6 or even Rs. 7 per mensem, especially when certain deductions are made for uniform, etc., is to offer strong inducement to dishonesty.*

The subject of corruption is one about which it is easy to take an exaggerated view and to forget that it is endemic in all societies and that a reasonable degree of integrity in the public services has only been found in small areas of the globe and during limited periods of time. The corruption described by the Commission was undoubtedly rampant, but the Commissioners themselves admitted that ‘the majority of the accused sent up by the police are guilty’.* They also referred to a fact which is within the knowledge of every district officer that a proposal to abolish a thana or to reduce its strength leads to loud and genuine protests by local inhabitants. The public presumably feel that the protection afforded by the police at least outweighs the evils to which the Commission referred.

The Superior Police Services

Of the five principal defects described by the Commission the first related to the recruitment and training of the superior ranks of the police. The key figure in those ranks was the Superintendent of Police. It may be noted in passing that whereas in all other provinces this office was so designated, in Bombay he was known as District Superintendent—which perhaps better described his real position. Although open competition in England had been the main source of recruitment of Assistant Superintendents since 1893, there was also an ancillary system of competition in India amongst nominated candidates. The 1902 Commission condemned this ancillary system, under which not only had men who had failed in England been recruited, but in some cases ‘unsuitable young men, sometimes without a sound education, had been nominated and gained appointments’.* The Commission had no hesitation in rejecting the suggestion that Superintendents should be recruited from the ranks of the Indian Civil Service. Such an arrangement would indeed have destroyed the professional character of the superior police services, and made it impossible for them to achieve the high standards by which they were characterized in the twentieth century. The Commission did, however, consider that Assistant Superintendents of Police were sent out to India too young, and they recommended that these officers should be given a two-year probation at an English university, where they would study criminal law and Indian history and languages.

It was quite clear that better methods of recruitment would not be enough by themselves, and that the pay and prospects of the superior police officer must be much improved. The rates of pay were not adequate as compared with those of officers in other departments and the initial pay of an Assistant was ‘too little for a young man to live on respectably in India, when he has to keep a horse and cannot make cheap arrangements for his board and lodging’.*

The Commission then considered the positions of the Inspectors-General in the various provinces, and it had in mind the intention of the framers of Act V that in each province the Inspector-General should be in every sense the head of the police force. In the Bombay Presidency, when the post of Inspector-General was revived in 1885, the system established was unsatisfactory, since it involved a dualism between the authority of the Inspector-General and that of the Divisional Commissioners. Moreover, that dualism took such a form that the Inspector-General was practically excluded from supervision of the work of the police in the prevention and detection of crime. The matter is of sufficient importance to justify extensive quotation from the Report.

The work of the police is divided into two spheres of authority. In one of these, the Superintendent is subordinate to the District Magistrate: in the other to the Inspector-General. In the former the Commissioner is the superior of the District Magistrate. The result of this system has been to introduce a dual control which has been condemned by all the witnesses who have given evidence on the point. The Inspector-General has no concern with the most important parts of police work. There is want of concert in police action throughout the presidency: every Commissioner is practically the head of a separate police force for his Division. The Commissioner is generally prevented by his other duties from even exercising effective control over the portion of the police subordinate to him. And there is no central control, no real head of the department, no responsible adviser of Government in regard to police matters.*

There can be no doubt that the Commissioners were right and it is unfortunate that at this stage Act V was not applied to Bombay. Before the end of the century, in every province except Bombay, the Inspector-General occupied the same position as he does today.

It is unfortunate too that in most provinces adequate use had not been made of the provision in Act V for the appointment of Deputy Inspectors-General. They were too few in number and were not given sufficient responsibility.

The Police and the Magistracy

The second factor to which the Commission attributed the failure of Act V was undue interference by magistrates in police administration. The question as to the proper relationship between the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police was not easily answered, and in the days when Superintendents were not genuine professionals and were often men of inadequate education, the tendency for District Magistrates to seek to control the internal working of the police was perhaps inevitable. Nevertheless, it needed correction when men of the right calibre came to be appointed to the superior police services.

The Commission recognized that the work of the Superintendent must be done ‘under the general control and direction of the Magistrate’ and ‘subject to his orders’, but in some provinces the degree of control exercised was far beyond that contemplated by Act V or even of the Madras Act of 1859.

For example, the law leaves appointments in the departments to be made by the officers of the department; but this power has to be exercised under rules to be made by the Local Government. The result of these rules as framed in some provinces is that the appointment of constables is subject to the District Magistrate’s veto, and that of any officer above the rank of constable cannot be made without the approval of the Magistrate being previously obtained. The law leaves punishment to be regulated by rules to be made by the Inspector-General subject to the approval of the Local Government. The rules of most provinces prescribe appeals not to departmental superiors but to the District Magistrate and Commissioner: even a constable cannot be reduced by the Superintendent without an appeal to the District Magistrate. All this weakens the influence of the Superintendent, is prejudicial to discipline, and tends to destroy the Superintendent's sense of responsibility and his interest in his work.*

What the Commission recommended was in fact a return to the plain intention of Act V. That result was indeed achieved in the twentieth century when it came to be understood that the two officers thus constitute an interesting duumvirate. They are jointly responsible for peace and good order in the District. They discharge separate functions designed to serve the common purpose.* As with all human relationships, that between the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police depends on personalities, but in his own experience of Bengal in the twenties and thirties of the present century, the writer can testify that it was, in general, one of mutual help and genuine co-operation. This had not been the case in the period of which we are writing.

Recruitment and Training

The third reason, in the Commissions’ view, for the defects in the police system, was the simple fact that the police at all levels were too few on the ground: too few superintendents, too few inspectors and sub-inspectors and in some areas too few head constables and constables. It is unnecessary to expand on this subject, since it was merely the result of the financial stringency to which we have referred.

We may then pass on to the fourth factor—the inadequate pay, the poor methods of selection and the lack of any proper training of inspectors, sub-inspectors, head constables and constables throughout the nineteenth century. The constables were nowhere paid a reasonable minimum salary; they were employed on duties for which they were not fitted, instead of being confined to ‘escort, guard and patrol work, limited powers of arrest, the suppression of disturbances (under orders)’, and the like.

Inevitably they acquired the habit of taking bribes, and as head constables were normally recruited by promotion from constables, they too continued the bad habits which they had acquired earlier. Head constables were often employed as officers in charge of stations or for investigations—a task which they were not competent to undertake. Moreover, neither constables nor head constables received any proper training in district schools. ‘The Superintendent’s absence from headquarters during the greater part of the year, necessarily prevents his exercising any real supervision over the recruits; . . . he puts a head constable, or at best a sub-inspector, in charge of the school, and ordinarily selects him because he is not very fit for station duty’.* Training was constantly interrupted by the need to use the recruits for some emergency.

Nor was the case much better with regard to sub-inspectors, since they were commonly appointed by promotion from the ranks, and were themselves ‘generally credited with all the corruption that characterizes the lower ranks of the police. . . . They are neither honest and intelligent themselves, nor are they capable of enforcing honesty and maintaining discipline among their subordinates.’* As elsewhere in their report, the Commissioners were perhaps a little too sweeping in their statement, but they were certainly on the right lines in recommending direct recruitment of men with matriculation or higher educational qualifications, and the limitation of promotion from head constable to sub-inspector to a small percentage. As with head constables, the training of sub-inspectors was unsatisfactory. ‘The probationer has at best been attached to a police station to learn his work; the pupil is not above his teacher; and the best that can be expected is that when his course of tuition is complete, he shall be as his teacher.’

It is perhaps strange that the Commissioners did not qualify this criticism by reference to the training school established in the Punjab in 1893 at Phillaur for sub-inspectors and inspectors.*

As regards inspectors, not only were there too few of them, but they were ordinarily promoted from the ranks of sub-inspectors, whose defects have been described. Moreover, they were employed haphazardly and used in the work of investigation, instead of being required to supervize police work in a definite area. The essence of the Commission’s proposals in this respect was ‘to make the officer in charge of a police station wholly responsible for the work of his charge, and to have an inspector in charge of a circle including several police stations, and responsible for the supervision, control and general efficiency of all police work therein. . . .’ The inspector’s position ought, said the Commissioners, to be assimilated to that of the tahsildar and his salary should be raised to from Rs. 150 to Rs. 200 per month.

The Village Police

These defects by themselves would have prevented the police force from achieving satisfactory results, but added to them in certain areas was the inefficiency of the village police and the failure of the authorities to make proper use of that institution. In other areas the village police system worked well and it is necessary, therefore, to glance briefly at this subject separately in several provinces. The most satisfactory provinces in this respect in the nineteenth century appear to have been Madras and Punjab, while Bengal was perhaps the worst, though attempts to improve the position there were made in 1870 and in 1892. In Madras, as we have seen, at an early stage in British rule the village headman—whether part of the traditional organization of the village or created artificially by Government—was the focal point in the local system of police. He tried petty cases and he supervized the work of the village watchmen, of whom the Commission wrote that ‘most of the reports of crime at police stations are received from village magistrates through taliaris* and not from beat-constables; and without the help of the village authorities the regular police could effect comparatively little.’* Indeed, the best evidence of the value of this system in Madras was the difficulty which had been experienced by the police in the permanently settled areas where it was not in operation until Madras Act II of 1894 created it in an unavoidably artificial form.

In the Punjab the key figure was the lambardar, or individual responsible not only for the payment of revenue to Government but also for the appointment and supervision of the village watchmen and for paying them their wages from the fund collected for this purpose. It was realized at an early stage that some supervision over the lambardars was required and that this should not be left to the regular police. Honorary police officers, known as zaildars or inamdars, were therefore appointed for this purpose.

The zaildar supervised the headmen of the villages of his circle which included as far as possible, people of one tribe or villages who had some connection or affinity. He also reported certain offences. . . . He received an honorarium of Rs. 150 per annum and was considered immune from the punishments the police department inflicted on its own men.’*

This semi-official organization was reinforced by a system existing from time immemorial in the Punjab and known as tikri-chaukidari. Under this system,

when crime is rife in any locality, the villagers aid the chowkidars, especially on dark nights, in protection of the village area. . . . Its essential feature is that the additional patrols are drawn by lot from among the villagers. The man on whom the lot falls either performs the duty himself or gives a suitable substitute.*

The combination of the tikri-chaukidari and the lambardar systems seems to have worked well and the 1902 Commission found that little change was required.

The Bombay system was based on the police Patel, remunerated as a rule by a grant of land and responsible for controlling the village watchmen, who were either paid in cash or given grants of land or remunerated by perquisites paid by the villagers. Although the Commission referred to the need to appoint more suitable men as Patels and to empower them to take up petty criminal cases, they admitted that ‘the village police do not a little good work, and that this system is admirably adapted to the conditions of the country.’*

The only other province to which reference need be made in this connection is Bengal and there two special difficulties arose. The first was that in large areas of Bengal the permanent settlement and the application of the sunset law* had lessened the authority of the zemindar, who had been the pivot around which the village system revolved, where it existed at all. Moreover, the introduction by Cornwallis of the daroga system had antagonized the zemindars whose remaining influence was ‘used in support of, or in antagonism to, the law, just as may appear to be most advantageous to their interest’.* The old sense of responsibility had disappeared. The village watchmen had been placed under the darogas, but they were also in some respects the private servants of the zemindars. The result was that they performed few useful public functions. Secondly, on account of the permanent settlement, Collectors were not necessarily drawn into that close contact with the villages which was inescapable in areas where revenue had to be settled periodically.

In 1870 Bengal Act VI of 1870 was intended to improve matters by placing the control of the chaukidars in the hands of the villagers through the medium of panchayats. Unfortunately, in the areas to which we have referred, no real tradition of village organization existed and the new system was therefore not found to work well. A Commission appointed in 1883 to enquire into the subject led, at length of days, to the passing of Bengal Act I of 1892 which transferred the power of appointing and fixing the salaries of the chaukidars to the District Magistrate. He was also empowered to collect the chaukidar tax if the panchayat failed to do so, and he or his subordinates paid the chaukidars and exercised discipline over them. This was not really a system of village police at all and in the opinion of the Commission it was made even more unsatisfactory than it need have been by the failure of many Collectors to interest themselves in it, or to take sufficient care over the appointment of panchayats. The problem of creating a village system where no tradition of it existed was not seriously tackled until, in 1919, under the Village Self-Government Act, Union Boards were introduced.

The Commission’s view as regards India as a whole was that the chaukidar must be the servant of the village headman, who in turn must be responsible to the District Magistrate and not subject to constant supervision by the police. Where this system prevailed, as in some of the areas we have described, it fulfilled the purpose of securing the co-operation of the villagers in the prevention and detection of crime.

Conclusions

The Commission had much of interest to say on the subject of the investigation and prevention of crime, with particular reference to such subjects as surveillance, criminal tribes and bad livelihood cases but these matters can more easily be dealt with in later chapters. Special forces, such as Railway and River Police, whose most important developments occurred in the twentieth century, will also be considered later. Here we conclude this consideration of the Report by summarizing the Commissioners’ views in their own words.

The police force is far from efficient; it is defective in training and organization; it is inadequately supervised; it is generally regarded as corrupt and oppressive; and it has utterly failed to secure the confidence and cordial co-operation of the people. The proposals for reform submitted by the Commission are not, however, of a revolutionary character. They do not involve a complete subversion of the present system, though they aim at its radical amendment. They consist mainly in suggestions for the maintenance and development of indigenous local institutions so as to obviate the vexatious interference of the police in cases of little importance and to promote the co-operation of the people with the police in those of a more serious character; for the restriction of the lowest classes of officers to the discharge, under closer supervision, of those more mechanical duties for which alone they are qualified; for the conduct of investigation by trained officers drawn from the better educated and more respectable classes of the community; for inspection of police work by carefully selected and trained officers of capacity and tried integrity; for supervision and control by the best European and Native officers available; and for organized and systematic action against organized and professional crime. They aim also at the removal of abuses which have been brought to light in connection with police work; at the employment of native agency to the utmost extent possible in each province without seriously impairing the efficiency of the service; at the attraction to the service of good Native officers by offering them suitable position and prospects; at the recruiting of superior European officers of a higher class and insisting on their coming more into touch with the people; and at the adoption on the part of the whole force of a more considerate attitude towards all classes of the community so as to secure as far as possible the confidence and co-operation of the people.*

It would be easy to criticize the report as being too sweeping and perhaps too dogmatic, but it cannot be disputed that the efficiency of the police and the devotion to duty of many of its officers in the decades before independence, were largely due to the searching enquiries made first by the Commission of 1860 and then by that Commission whose work we have discussed at some length here.

Chapter 9

The Presidency Towns

It is natural that police organization in the Presidency Towns should have differed considerably from that in the mofussil. First, because they came into existence well before the East India Company had acquired territorial possessions in the interior, and secondly, because conditions of life and opportunities for crime in the big cities differed so widely from those in the rural areas.

We have considered the growth of the Presidency police forces up to the middle of the nineteenth century and we must now take up the story from there.

It must be remembered for that some decades prior to 1861 the Provinces had no independent legislative authority, and when police reform was much in the air in the years before the passing of Act V for the mofussil areas, developments in the Presidency Towns depended on central legislation. Act XIII of 1856, and Act XLVIII of 1860 were therefore passed by the Governor-General and Council to regulate the police in the cities of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, and to consolidate the existing laws on the subject. The most important effect of Act XIII was that it created the post of Commissioner of Police in each of the Presidency Towns, and gave the Commissioner complete control, subject to the orders of the Government, over the local police forces in that town. The principle of the separation of police and judicial powers was respected to the extent that the Commissioner was not to sit as a magistrate for the trial of cases, but would be appointed as a Justice of the Peace for such purposes as the arrest of offenders and the preservation of the peace. Other magistrates were to be appointed in each of the Presidency Towns to hold police courts for the trial of minor cases and for the commitment to the supreme court of more serious cases.

By the Indian Councils Act of 1861 the Provinces regained their legislative powers and although the Governor-General and Council could pass overriding legislation, in practice the Provinces were allowed to a great extent to follow their own policies in police matters. Act V was only extended as and where provincial governments wished and it was not applied at all to the Presidency Towns. Police administration therefore developed on independent lines in the cities of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta.

Calcutta

It was in Calcutta that use was first made of the independent power of police legislation. In 1864 Colonel Bruce, the temporary Inspector-General of Police for India, was asked to report on the police system in Calcutta and apart from detailed matters of organization, he had to consider two problems. They were in fact inter-connected. The first was whether the post of Commissioner of Police was to be combined with that of Chairman of the Justices; the second was whether the Deputy Commissioner of Police, who was to be in charge of the executive work of the Calcutta police, should or should not be under the control of the Inspector-General of Police. In other words, was the Commissioner to be the completely independent head of the police and magistrates of Calcutta?

This question was to agitate discussion for several decades. The leading exponent of the view that the Calcutta police should be brought under the Inspector-General had been Mr. F. J. Halliday, who twenty-five years or so before Bruce’s enquiry had written:

Separated, the two systems of police will, whenever they come into contact, injure each other, as in practice they do now. United, they would in very high degree assist each other’s efficiency. In the districts which immediately surround Calcutta, the greater crimes all emanate from the capital. . . . The Superintendent-General of the moffassal police must be for the most part powerless in Hooghly, and Nadia, Midnapore, Burdwan, Jessore, Baraset and the 24-Parganas, unless he be at the same time Superintendent-General of the Calcutta Police.*

Bruce considered that circumstances had changed greatly since Halliday expressed that view and he regarded it as essential that the Calcutta police should be under the undivided control of an officer combining the two posts of Commissioner of Police and Chairman of the Justices. Bruce was supported by the Chairman of Justices in this recommendation. Bruce’s view was accepted and Bengal Act II of 1866 created a single urban police area—including the suburbs of Calcutta—with a homogeneous and independent police organization under the Commissioner. In the same year Bengal Act IV (the Calcutta Police Act) provided for the constitution of the Calcutta Police and repeated many of the provisions of the 1856 Act.

The question of the relationship between the Calcutta and Mofussil Police was raised again in 1874, on the motion of the Inspector-General who at that time strongly pressed for amalgamation. The Lieutenant-Governor, Sir George Campbell, applied his mind to the problem in considerable detail. Up to this stage, the Inspector-General had been concerned only with the internal administration of the Mofussil Police and not with the operations against crime, but the Lieutenant-Governor had now made the Inspector-General a co-ordinating officer in matters relating to crime throughout the mofussil. He, therefore, saw no difficulty in a measure of amalgamation which would ‘remedy the evils that at present arise from the entire isolation of the Calcutta Police’.

It has been matter of constant remark and complaint that the bad characters who, living quietly in Calcutta, never render themselves obnoxious to the metropolitan police, find in the surrounding country a field for predatory operations, where they can practise with much impunity, while many criminals from the outside and not known to the Calcutta Police find their way to Calcutta. There is no such intimate connection between the two bodies of police as to admit of their working readily together for the suppression of crime, irrespective of locality, and very serious offences have been committed in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta without their being detected, chiefly owing, it is alleged, to the state of things above described.*

The Lieutenant-Governor, therefore, proposed the following arrangement:

The Deputy Commissioner of Police in Calcutta should stand to the Chairman of the Justices* precisely in the same relation that a District Superintendent holds to the Magistrate of his district. He would be the Chairman’s subordinate for police purposes, while relieving him of all detail of police management. The Inspector-General of Police would receive from Calcutta, as from any other district, the returns and information which enable him to keep together the clues of organized crime and to lay before Government the report of police working in relation to crime for the whole of Bengal. In this way the Chairmanship of the Justices and the immediate control of the police would be united so as to ensure smooth working between the police force and the employees of the Justices, while for special police purposes, the police working would be supervised and assisted by the officer at the head of the police of the country.*

The proposal was approved by the Government of India and the Secretary of State in 1874, but was strongly opposed by the new Commissioner of Police, Sir Stuart Hogg, who maintained that ‘a system which set aside the Commissioner for an officer devoid of local experience, who passes many months of the year in the interior of the province . . . would probably lead to grave error and confusion’.* Hogg had his way and the scheme was quietly dropped. The Commissioner remained king in his own castle.

The controversy, however, was by no means at an end. In 1887 Mr. A. H. Giles, a Superintendent of Police who had been Deputy Commissioner in Calcutta, was directed by the Government of India to examine the working of the police in the Presidency Towns. He advised against any amalgamation of the Calcutta and Mofussil forces under a common control, but the Government of India suffered from an undue passion for organization and tidiness and, in spite of Giles’ report, in 1892 again asked the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal to consider the proposal which Campbell had made in 1873. The local officials concerned now strongly opposed amalgamation and the proposal was again dropped.

In 1902, the question was considered in great detail by the Police Commission. The old arguments for and against amalgamation were reproduced at some length and emphasis was put on two considerations which had not received so much prominence in the earlier discussions. On the one hand, the case for amalgamation was supported by considerations relating to personnel.

City police work is of great importance and requires picked men, but if the Inspector-General is to have no responsibility for the administration, it cannot be expected that he will be willing to part with his best officers and thus diminish the efficiency of the service for which he is responsible. This is true also, though in a less degree, of the subordinate staff, the members of which are often obtained from the district police.*

As against this it was contended that conditions in the Presidency Towns were such that the Commissioner often had to take prompt and decisive action, and that it was essential, therefore, that he should be free from the possibility of interference by the Inspector-General, The 1902 Commission to some extent brushed aside the arguments against amalgamation, and made the comment that ‘the Inspector-General will usually be an experienced District Magistrate, whose general control and guidance in respect of the unimportant magisterial functions of the Commissioner would probably be for the public advantage, while, if interference in those matters is considered undesirable, it would be easy to exclude it’.*

Although they had formed this opinion, the Commission shirked the issue and did not go beyond expressing the view that ‘the absolute separation of the city police from the police of the rest of the Province does not seem expedient’. It referred the question back to the local Governments.

The simple truth is that the controversy was one in which intelligent and experienced men might well hold conflicting views and a theoretical argument about it might have gone until the crack of doom. Perhaps for this reason the subsequent correspondence between the Government of India and the Government of Bengal was marked by some confusion and indecision—a kind of balancing act between ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’. The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal changed his mind twice and in its Resolution on the Commission’s Report, the Government of India avoided a decision and deferred final orders pending further discussion. The matter was then referred to the Secretary of State, who seemed to be the first authority capable of taking a decisive line. He rejected the proposal for amalgamation and thought that any difficulties could well be met by the Bombay proposal that the Commissioner of Police should continue to be independent of the Inspector-General, but should be under an obligation to assist the Inspector-General’s office in the detection of crime committed in the Mofussil—an arrangement which had long been in force in Bengal and must in any case have resulted from the common-sense of the two men concerned.

Two other matters of interest in this period require brief mention. The first is the enactment of the Calcutta Police Act (Act I of 1898) which applied certain Sections of Act V of 1861, with some modifications, to the Calcutta Police area. The second matter requires us to revert to the enquiry by Giles. That enquiry had its origin primarily in the anxiety on the part of the Government of India at the apparently high cost of the Calcutta Police. The figures which had led the Government to be disturbed about this matter are of some interest:

	Calcutta City	Calcutta Suburbs	Madras City	Bombay City
Area (sq. miles)	27.9	21.5	27.0	22.0
Population	405,019	251,439	405,808	773,196
Police strength	1,497	716	729	1,388
Police per sq. mile	189.5	31.8	27.0	63.0
Police per 1,000 people	3.7	2.8	1.8	1.8
Annual cost (Rs.)	4,67,415	1,59,870	2,02,253	4,11,648
Cost per sq. mile (Rs.)	59,166	7,105	7,491	18,711
Cost per 1,000 people (Rs.)	1,154	637	498	532

Giles contended in spite of these figures* that conditions in the three Presidency Towns differed so widely that straight comparisons on the basis of either population or crime were meaningless; that the only proper approach depended on an examination of efficiency by which he meant ‘a thoroughness of system; the best procurable material distributed to the best advantage, guided by appropriate rules restrained by wholesome discipline, and maintained at a reasonable cost’. In the light of these criteria, Giles considered that the Madras City Police was not so well organized as the corresponding bodies in Calcutta and Bombay, while the Calcutta Police was as efficient as that in Bombay though it worked under more difficult circumstances. This conclusion leads us to the consideration of developments in Bombay and Madras.

Madras City

By the middle of the nineteenth century the population of Madras City had overgrown the existing police system and in 1853, Mr. Edward F. Elliot, who had held the post of Chief Magistrate and Superintendent of Police for many years, was directed to prepare a Police Code. The starting point of his considerations was the fact that police court work was heavily in arrears and could not be handled by the existing staff. At the same time he realized that any radical improvement of the police force would be so expensive that it could not be brought about quickly. His recommendations were, therefore, very limited in scope, his most important proposals being that the Superintendent of Police (now to be known as Commissioner) should be assisted by two Deputy Commissioners, and that the Commissioner would continue to be Chief Magistrate. It is interesting to note that the subordination of the magistrates to the Superintendent of Police was illustrated in 1853 or 1854, when a Mr. Ramanujacharloo was appointed a Police Magistrate. It was specifically laid down that he was not to perform the general duties of a magistrate but would in effect be the Superintendent’s assistant though ‘he should be available for the occasional duty when the Superintendent of Police asked him to sit along with the other magistrates’.* It was at this time assumed that an Indian magistrate should not sit singly and at the time of considering a draft bill on the basis of Elliot’s report the Governor of Madras gave an assurance to this effect. These proposals were then implemented by Act XIII of 1856, passed by the Governor-General and Council, which applied to all the Presidency Towns. That Act also dealt with such matters as discipline and superannuation funds. The first Commissioner of Madras under the new Act was Lieut.-Colonel G. C. Boulderson, and he had under him a force of 732, of whom 533, including 11 inspectors, formed the preventive branch, while there were 179, including 11 darogas, in the detective branch. In 1862 he was authorized by Madras Act III to make bye-laws.

The District Act XXIV of 1859 did not affect the position in the city, but in 1867 a drastic change was made by Madras Act VIII of 1867. The City Police Force was absorbed into the general police of the Presidency, and the Commissioner—now to be called Commissioner of Police—was subjected to the authority of the Inspector-General. As we have seen, the relationship between these two officers was to be a matter of controversy for many years, but it was only in Madras that for a time the advocates of amalgamation gained the field. The position of the Commissioner was now in a sense assimilated to that of a Superintendent in a District and was governed by the relevant provisions of Act XXIV of 1859, and those of the Criminal Procedure Code. The decision was almost certainly a mistake.*

The 1867 Act contained other important provisions. Although it created the Commissioner of Police a Justice of the Peace, and designated him Presidency Magistrate, it was laid down that he was only to act as a Justice of the Peace for what might be called executive magisterial purposes: the preservation of the peace, and the detection and apprehension of offenders in order to bring them before a Police Magistrate and the like. The Commissioner was also empowered to carry out such important duties as the regulation of processions, the licensing of firearms, the supervision of weights and measures, and the registration of printing presses and newspapers. Except for his subordination to the Inspector-General he was still the chief of Madras City. The Deputy Commissioner was also created a Justice of the Peace, but was not to try cases. At the same time an Indian Assistant Commissioner was appointed. The organization of the force was strengthened and systematized and included European or Eurasian inspectors and sergeants, all other ranks from sub-inspectors downwards being Indians, The position regarding the detective branch is a little obscure. Previously, as we have seen, there was a separate detective branch, but it appears that under the 1867 Act there was merely an addition to the strength of the force from which the Commissioner could draw personnel as required. Those selected received special allowances. It is interesting to note that there were no prosecuting officers and it was left to the magistrate to question witnesses on the strength of an abstract of evidence with which he was supplied.*

In 1887, Giles’s recommendations led to the passing of Madras Acts III and IV of 1888, under which the Commissioner regained his independence of the Inspector-General and the City Police Force was separated from the Mofussil Police. Giles’s report also led to some upgrading of the salary scales of various ranks and to the creation of a cadre of European sub-inspectors.*

In 1898, a Government order was passed which might appear of importance but for the fact that it was merely a reinforcement of what had been laid down in 1867—it is not clear why this reaffirmation was necessary.

The order provided that

the Commissioner of Police, Madras, shall not, in his capacity as a Presidency Magistrate, exercise the power of taking cognizance of offences under section 190 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, except so far as may be necessary to receive ‘Occurrence Reports’ under section 157 and to deal with such reports under section 159, and also to receive and dispose of reports submitted under section 173, and to make orders under subsection (3) of that section.*

The staff of the Madras City Police at this time consisted of the following: ‘One Commissioner, one Deputy Commissioner, one Assistant Commissioner, who was the ministerial head, one Chief Superintendent, 12 Inspectors, 21 European and 9 Indian Sub-Inspectors, 14 European Head Constables, 140 Indian Head Constables and 1,214 Police Constables’.*

Once again the Government of Madras vacillated over the relationship between the Commissioner and the Inspector-General and in 1900 it decided on a kind of halfway house. There had apparently been serious friction between the two officers, and the Government decided to resolve it by authorizing the Inspector-General to inspect the City Police Force and its offices and records, and to call for information from the Commissioner—an unsatisfactory arrangement which merely shirked the real issue.

There the matter rested until the somewhat half-hearted view of the Police Commission in 1902, that the Commissioner should be subordinate to the Inspector-General, was accepted by the Government of Madras. The Commissioner was graded as a Deputy Inspector-General and, at the same time, the posts of Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents were abolished and Deputy Superintendents of Police were from time to time deputed for duty in the city.

Bombay City

In dealing with the history of the police in the cities of Madras and Calcutta, much of our attention had to be concentrated on the question of the relations between the Commissioner and the Inspector-General, and of the City force with that of the Presidency. In Bombay no such problem arose, since from 1860 to 1884 there was no Inspector-General, and even when that post was revived the Inspector-General’s functions were narrowly circumscribed. The task facing the Bombay City police authorities was purely one of expansion and improvement of quality, and this gives us an opportunity to look more closely at the actual work of the police in one of the big cities of India than we were able to do in the case of the other two Presidency Towns.

From 1829 to 1855, the officials responsible for the police administration of Bombay City were a Senior Magistrate, a Junior Magistrate and a Superintendent of Police, who at times had a Deputy Superintendent to assist him. The Superintendent, alternatively known as the Constable, was generally an army officer of the rank of Captain with perhaps no previous experience of police work. These Superintendents were badly paid and ‘secured very little control over the criminal classes and effected no real improvement in the morale of their subordinates.’ ‘Corruption was prevalent in all ranks of the force. . . . Bands of ruffians infested the thoroughfares and lanes of the native city, and no respectable resident dared venture unprotected into the streets after nightfall.’*

Matters could not be allowed to continue like this and in 1855 Charles Forjett, an Assistant or Deputy Superintendent, was appointed as Superintendent of Police in the City with instructions to enquire into the whole subject of necessary reforms. Forjett was an interesting character and will be the subject of a brief sketch later in the book. Here we need only say that his appointment inaugurated the regime of the professional police officer in Bombay City. His position was of course strengthened by the passing of Act XIII of 1856, but on the other hand he had to dissipate his energy on extraneous duties as one of the three Municipal Commissioners and as Superintendent of the Fire Brigade, whose European members belonged to the regular City police force. He undertook a comprehensive reorganization of the force and under the influence of his strong personality, the morale of the police improved and there was a noticeable decrease in serious crime. When Forjett retired in 1864, Bombay City was a better place than when he assumed office. Nevertheless, when Bruce studied the situation in 1864, he found that the police force was quite inadequate to deal with a population which had risen to over 800,000.

His recommendations led in 1865 to an increase in the strength of the force to six superintendents, twenty-two inspectors, a number of sub-inspectors, eighty-six jamadars and havildars, and 1,229 other ranks, beside Harbour Police numbering 101. At the same time the senior police officer was made Police Commissioner and was relieved of all executive responsibility for conservancy and similar matters, though he still had to remain in charge of the Fire Brigade. Police magistrates and the Court of Petty Sessions continued to deal with criminal cases, but in 1877 Act IV, passed by the Governor-General and Council and applied to all the Presidency Towns, created the posts of Presidency magistrates who not only took over the work formerly done by the police magistrates and the Petty Sessions, but also dealt with certain cases which formerly went to the High Court for trial.

The stimulus to commerce resulting from the American Civil War led to a temporary increase in the population of Bombay City in the early 1860s, but thereafter numbers declined and the census of 1881 recorded a population of 775,000. Police work had nevertheless increased since 1865. New streets had been opened, several thousand more houses had been built; and, moreover, the police were now required to take vigorous action under the Arms Act, to supervise weights and measures used by shopkeepers, and to implement the Contagious Disease Act, which meant, to a great extent, the registration of prostitutes. Drunkenness had also become more common not only amongst Indians of the lower classes, but also amongst the ‘floating European population, connected with the harbour and shipping’.* In the ninth decade of the century, the number of cases before the courts in the City increased by over 30 per cent. The strength of the police on the other hand had declined and in 1883 the Commissioner considered that his men were overworked and underpaid. Statements of an official seeking to implement his force should always be discounted to some extent and it is interesting to note that in 1887 the Chief Presidency Magistrate suggested that the police were concentrating on minor offences in order to make the statistics of work done more impressive. Nevertheless, it is clear that the force was inadequate and only the usual financial stringency prevented any significant expansion from being undertaken until 1893-94, when the strength was increased by roughly 50 per cent.

The seventies and eighties were notable for the development of the detective branch, which had in fact been founded by Forjett. Its work was brought to a high pitch of efficiency under Mir Abdul Ali, Superintendent of plain clothes police, and as a result, many gangs of thieves were broken up.* It is not surprising, therefore, that in the nineties Bombay was prominent in the use of the new system of fingerprints.

At this stage, a serious outbreak of plague in 1896 presented the Bombay City police with special problems. Vast numbers of people fled, leaving their property unprotected and providing an unparalleled opportunity for the criminal classes. The police might have been able to cope with this problem, but for the fact that they were constantly engaged in assisting the medical authorities over the segregation of victims and suspects, and the inspection of houses. The authorities had in fact a serious dilemma to face. If they adopted rigorous measures, which would necessarily involve some invasion of domestic privacy, this would stir up trouble; if, on the other hand, they took no such action, the epidemic would continue and perhaps increase in intensity. There was necessarily a period of trial and error in which an understandable and even justifiable excess of zeal on the part of those concerned with anti-plague measures not only aroused genuine resentment amongst householders, but played into the hands of those who wanted to make trouble for the Government. An attempt to remove a plague-stricken person from his house in March 1898 sparked off widespread rioting and arson, which was quickly brought under control with military and naval help, but the strain of all these occurrences on the police was considerable. They had for some years had to cope with the communal tension connected with Tilak’s militant Hinduism, but that subject can more suitably be discussed later.

Besides tackling these problems and dealing with the normal forms of serious crime, the police during the last quarter of the century also had to deal with gambling on a considerable scale, with prostitution, and with communal riots. A brief reference to each of these problems will provide some idea of the extra burdens which the police had to bear. One of the most interesting forms of gambling rife at this time was that known as rain-gambling. To anybody except a puritan, this might seem harmless enough in itself, but it occasioned such serious loss by people who could not afford it, that the police were obliged to try to suppress it.

This form of wagering used to take place during the monsoon at Paidhoni, where a house would be rented at a high price for the four months of the rains by a group of Indian capitalists. There were two forms of Barsat ka satta or rain-gambling, known familiarly as Calcutta mori and Lakdi satta. In the former case wagers were laid as to whether the rain would percolate in a fixed time through a specially prepared box filled with sand, the bankers settling the rates or odds by the appearance and direction of the clouds. In the latter case, winnings or losses depended on whether the rainfall during a fixed period of time was sufficient to fill the gutter of a roof and overflow. The gambling took place usually between 6 a.m. and 12 noon, and again between 6 p.m. and midnight, the rates varying according to the appearance of the sky and the time left before the period for the booking of bets expired. The practice, which was very popular, was responsible for so much loss that in 1888 two of the principal promoters of rain-gambling were prosecuted by the order of Government. The Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. Cooper, who tried the case, decided that rain-gambling was not an offence under the Gambling Act, as then existing, and his decision was upheld on appeal by the High Court. Consequently Colonel Wilson applied for the necessary amendment of the Bombay Gambling Act, and this was in due course effected by the Legislature. Since that date rain-gambling has been unknown in Bombay.*

Other forms of gambling took its place, and indeed at this time the inhabitants of Bombay were compulsive gamblers. It may be doubted if police action did anything to curtail what in moderation might be a reasonable relief from the drabness of the ordinary man’s life, but which in Bombay had become a serious social evil.

In dealing with prostitution the police were primarily concerned with European prostitutes, who were attracted by the growing European population of Bombay. The general attitude of the authorities was one of non-interference with the women, but of giving short shrift to ‘peripatetic procurers’. It appears that the worst features of prostitution in Europe were not present in Bombay. There was little in the way of decoying women for this purpose and there was no evidence that they were ill-treated in the organized brothels. Nevertheless, by the end of the century, Bombay ‘had become a regular halting point in the procurer’s disgraceful itinerary from Europe to the Far East’,* and the police could not close their eyes to the resulting problem. It added considerably to their burden.

Far more serious, however, was the strain imposed on the police from time to time by communal riots. Communal strife will be discussed in a later chapter and here we need only say that in 1893 it broke out in Bombay with unprecedented fury, but that within a few days the police were able to bring it under control. The credit for their success in dealing with this problem must be given not only to the rank and file, who were remarkably steadfast even when their own community was involved, but also to the great improvement in the organization of the police which had taken place in the last half of the nineteenth century.

The force, however, was still inadequate for the needs of Bombay City and a fair criticism of British administration in this period might be that it tried to carry on administration with an impracticable degree of economy. In spite of the continually growing strain which the Bombay City police force had to undergo, no significant increase in its strength was made during the period we are discussing. One difficulty in this connection arose from the fact that under Bombay Act III of 1888, a considerable proportion of the cost of the City police was paid for by the Bombay Corporation, which was reluctant to take on a heavier burden. This difficulty was not removed until 1907 when the Government accepted responsibility for the entire cost of the police force. The only other important development during this period was the passing of Bombay Act IV of 1902, which consolidated and brought up-to-date the law enshrined in Act XLVIII of 1860 and Town Police Acts I of 1872, II of 1879 and IV of 1888. The Town Police Acts applied solely to Bombay and dealt only with minor matters.

Chapter 10

The Thagi and Dakaiti Department

In the forties of the present century, the office of the Intelligence Bureau in Simla was known to rickshaw wallahs as the Thagi Daftar* and the memory of a great British success in suppressing an odious crime was thus kept alive in the speech of humble folk. Thuggee may be briefly described as the practice of gang robbery and murder by means of strangling, and, although it was sanctioned by an ancient and superstitious association with a Hindu goddess, it does not appear to have been widely prevalent until the Muslim period. The first reference to it of which the writer is aware is in the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, or history of the Sultan Jalal-ud-din Firoz Khilji, written by his contemporary Zia Barni, early in the fourteenth century.* That Sultan had many good qualities, but the chronicler tells us that he lacked the essential virtues of kingship, and that his misplaced clemency made him kindly disposed even towards criminals. Thieves brought before him were often set free on their own promises to behave better, and Zia Barni illustrates this statement by reference to Thugs:

Some Thugs were taken in the city and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a thousand being captured. But not one of these did the Sultan have killed. He gave orders for them to be put into boats and to be conveyed into the lower country to the neighbourhood of Lakhnouti [Lucknow] where they were to be set free. The Thugs would thus have to dwell about Lakhnouti and would not trouble the neighbourhood [of Delhi] any more.

The Draconian treatment of criminals under the Moghuls did little to check the growth of the Thugs and in the eighteenth century the breakdown of all authority enlarged their opportunities. When therefore, the East India Company was in a position to turn its attention to the problems of law and order, in much of the interior of India its officers soon discovered that thuggee was a very common occurrence.

As early as in 1809 the Magistrate of Chittoor, in Madras, wrote a report regarding:

Those extraordinary associations of persons called Phansigars* who take extensive journeys under the disguise of travellers for the purpose of committing murders and robberies . . . a gang sometimes consisting of from thirty to forty persons who used to divide into small parties of about ten or twelve persons, and each party taking different routes. They had fixed places of rendezvous in advance; where they all met and divided their booty, and again prosecuted their journey in the same way. The Phansigars received encouragement and protection from petty Polygars and Headmen of villages, who shared in their plunder; and fathers brought up their children to murder and rob, which constituted a regular profession, by which many families subsisted from generation to generation.*

The Magistrate went on to say that although the attention paid by the Company to the police had to some extent improved matters, many murders were still committed annually by Phansigars in the Company’s territories. The evil was indeed so widespread that in 1810 the Commander-in-Chief found it necessary to warn sepoys going on leave that they were particular objects of the depredations of Thugs. Sepoys were, therefore, strongly advised:

To be strictly on their guard against all persons (particularly those unarmed) whom they fall in with on the road, who evince a solicitude to keep them company on pretence that they are going the same way, and are inquisitive about their affairs.

Not to quit the serais at a very early hour in the morning, before the rest of the travellers.

Not to receive pawn, tobacco, sweetmeat, etc. etc., from such persons, or smoke their hookahs, particularly if offered to them in solitary spots on the road; and, lastly, to avail themselves of the protection of sowars (horsemen), when opportunity offers, or travel as much as possible with large bodies of people.*

The Marquess of Hastings in the second decade of the century wrote of a ruler’s tolerance of an evil so perfectly ascertained, merely because the assassinations were seldom committed within his own dominions’, but went on to express the view that ‘by this time the pest in question has been rooted out’.*

Hastings’ optimism was quite unfounded and although energetic steps against the Thugs had been taken in many districts, it was evident by the third decade of the century that some more coordinated effort was required. The impulse to such an effort was supplied by Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, but before we discuss the measures then adopted we must describe in some detail the activities of the Thugs. Their most important characteristics were that

they worked in gangs, that they confined their attention to travellers, that their customary method of murdering was by strangling and that their children were regularly trained in this nefarious profession. Unlike the highwaymen of mediaeval European repute, they robbed the poor as well as the rich and their readiness to commit murder for the sake of a few rupees is a striking testimony to their sense of security and the helplessness or indifference to the authorities.*

In his fascinating book on the Thugs, Thornton, a contemporary observer, has described their modus operandi:

Some variations have existed in the manner of perpetrating the murders; but the following seems to be the most general. While travelling along, one of the gang suddenly throws the rope or cloth round the neck of the devoted individual, and retains hold of one end; the other end being seized by an accomplice. The instrument of death, crossed behind the neck, is then drawn very tight, the two Thugs who hold it pressing the head of the victim forwards; a third villain, who is in readiness behind the traveller, seizes him by the legs, and he is thus thrown on the ground. In this situation there is little opportunity of resistance. The operation of the noose is aided by kicks inflicted in the manner most likely to produce vital injury, and the sufferer is thus quickly dispatched. . . . Such are the perseverance and caution of the Thugs, that, in the absence of a convenient opportunity, they have been known to travel in company with persons whom they have devoted to destruction, for several days before they executed their intention. If circumstances favour them, they generally commit the murder in a jungle, or in an unfrequented part of the country, and near a sandy place or dry watercourse.*

There was a regular hierarchy amongst these criminals.

Rank is acquired by methods not dissimilar to those which procure the same advantage elsewhere. On Captain Sleeman’s inquiring, of an approver, what gave a man the rank of Jemadar the latter answered, that a man who has always at command the means of advancing a month or two’s subsistence to a gang, will be called so;—a strong and resolute man, whose ancestors have been for many generations Thugs, will soon get the title; or a very wise man,whose advice in difficult cases has weight with the gang;—or one who has influence over local authorities, or the native officers of courts of justice;—or a man of handsome appearance and high bearing, who can feign the man of rank well. By such means a man is enabled to get around him a few who will consent to give him the fees and title of Jemadar; but it requires very high and numerous qualifications to gain a man the title of Subahdar.*

Within each gang, well accepted rules prescribed the proportions in which the plunder was to be shared.

The normal rule of sharing was, at least in Southern India, that portions were first set aside for the local polygars or chieftains whose connivance was important; then something was provided for the extensive performance of religious ceremonies and for a kind of family pension fund. Thereafter two shares went to the leader, a share and a half to the actual murderer and a share to each ordinary member of the gang.

To Western readers it may seem incredible that a share of the plunder should have been set aside for religious ceremonies, but the evidence as to the important part played in the affairs of the thugs by superstitions and ceremonies is so strong as to be beyond doubt. Although many thugs were Muslims, thuggee was closely linked with the cult of the Hindu goddess Kali—the goddess of destruction—to whom the victims were regarded as sacrifices and on whom the thugs relied for protection. The thugs traced their origin to the great encounter between the goddess and an all-devouring demon who threatened the newly created human race with extinction. From every drop of the demon’s blood, another demon arose, and when that demon in turn was cut down, the same process recurred. At length the goddess decided that the demons must be slain without loss of blood, and for this purpose she formed two men from her own perspiration and gave them a strip of cloth. With this they strangled the demons and were rewarded with the protection of the goddess and with the command to strangle men henceforth as they had strangled the demons. . . .

Omens were of the highest importance, and before every expedition the auspices were taken in a most elaborate manner and with this invocation: ‘Great goddess! universal mother! if this, our meditated expedition be fitting in thy sight, vouchsafe us thy help, and the signs of thy approbation!’ Even after favourable auspices, subsequent ill-omens such as a sneeze or a woman with an empty pitcher, might compel them to abandon the expedition.

Amongst the thugs the pickaxe with which the victims’ grave was dug was an emblem of the highest importance. It was forged in secret, ceremonially washed four times, consecrated in a most elaborate priestly ceremony and thenceforth guarded with the utmost care. No omen was regarded as more sinister than the falling of the pickaxe from the hand of the favoured thug selected to carry it on a journey. Equal solemnity attached to the initiation of a novice to the art of strangling, which took place only after a long period of preparation. In brief, the whole cult and practice of thuggee was surrounded with all the superstitious ceremonies that imagination could devise.*

It is perhaps not surprising that a calling so lucrative, and so strongly supported by superstition, should have attracted many adherents. By the time Bentinck applied his mind to the problem, Thugs were a menace through large areas of India. ‘The whole of Central India from Hyderabad to Oudh, and Bundelkhand to Rajputana, provided a vast and profitable field for the display of their skill as secret murderers,’* while further south in Mysore, thuggee was rampant on such a scale that it was reported that hundreds of persons were murdered annually. The need for action had become urgent and in 1829 Bentinck commissioned Mr. F. G. Smith, Agent-General in the Narbada Territories of Central India, to proceed against all Thugs, wherever they might be. Captain (later Sir William) Sleeman, was appointed as Smith’s assistant. Other officers were also detailed for similar duty, but Sleeman was outstanding amongst them. When the Department of Thagi and Dakaiti was formally established in 1835, it was natural that he should be made General Superintendent. In 1839 his status was raised to that of Commissioner.

The Department under Sleeman

Four main difficulties confronted Sleeman and his colleagues of which the first had been pointed out as far back as 1809 by the Magistrate of Chittoor:

The scene of their crimes is always out of their own district, and seldom within thirty miles of their usual places of abode: they are sometimes absent from their homes for several months together, and take journeys of many hundred miles: their victims are generally travellers, with whose circumstances they become acquainted at public choultries: they frequently change their names, and sometimes go by several names—the latter, to prevent detection: they murder their victims at a distance from towns or large villages, in public roads leading through jungles or uncultivated land, in which they bury their bodies: they sometimes take with them some of their children (boys under twelve years of age), the less to attract notice and suspicion, the head man of the gang sometimes rides on a horse; and they have generally with them some bullocks, or tattoo ponies, to carry the plundered property; and by these means they more readily pass for merchants, the character they frequently assume.*

A second difficulty was the connivance of many chiefs, officers and zemindars who shared in the ill-gotten gains of the Thugs. Captain Vallance, writing of the area between Midnapore and Nagpur, reported that:

These Thugs were for years protected by a petty independent Rajah on the western border of the Pooree District, but in late years his exactions became so severe, that they quitted his territory, and found shelter in the villages in which the body of them were arrested, under the protection of a Serbarakar, or Revenue officer, who was well acquainted with their practices, and well paid for his protection; this man is to be brought to trial for his connexion with the Thugs.*

Another Magistrate reported from Etawah that ‘the Thugs formerly residing in Sindouse have settled in the Gwalior territories where they are sure of protection; . . . I am told by the most respected of zemindars that Rs. 5,500 was the average payment made to these states for the Thugs at the rate of Rs. 25 per house, this being the number of 220 houses.’* An approver from that State deposed that his father, a local official, used to receive a rupee from every Thug house at the conclusion of an expedition.

A third difficulty was that ‘many Thugs had alternative sources of livelihood and, indeed, carried on a Jekyll and Hyde existence spending most of their time in a respectable occupation and practising thuggee occasionally’.* We read indeed of a linen draper who sometimes comes with the gangs on thuggee; and sometimes as a merchant with cloths for sale’—and as he apparently never mixed up his two occupations, he was well regarded by the people of his town. Thornton comments shrewdly that ‘it would strike us as extraordinary if tradesmen in Cheapside or Bond Street united with their respective occupations that of murder: yet this state of things exists in India’.*

A fourth difficulty in the early stages was that the very proper attempts of the courts to apply British standards of evidence and proof resulted only too often in the acquittal of notorious Thugs. In 1827 the Zillah Judge of Sanan sent a report to the Superintendent of Police in the Lower Provinces regarding a notorious Thug gang whose members had been active as far back as 1810. In that year, stated the Judge, sixteen of the gang had been apprehended, but all were released

in consequence of numerous witnesses, most of whom belonged to the gang, declaring them to be men of good character, and highly respectable; and I believe every man in the district would have said the same thing, for no man’s life was safe a moment who dared inform against them: but, independent of what is contained in the present inquiry, the bad character of many that were then apprehended, has been subsequently proved.*

The same thing happened when some of the gang were apprehended again in 1814 and again in 1821. In two instances in which the gang were concerned ‘the informers were punished, and the accused got off; and one informer met his death by persisting in acting against the gang. It is not therefore to be wondered at that no other person has since dared to come forward against them, until now.’*

It was indeed clear that under the ordinary law the odds in favour of the acquittal of a Thug who was unlucky enough to be accused of a specific murder were heavy. To meet this difficulty, Act XXX of 1836 made even membership of a Thug gang punishable by imprisonment for life, whether the accused could be proved to have been concerned in a particular crime or not. This was a useful step forward, but it would have availed little without the determination and intelligence with which Sleeman and his colleagues tackled a problem that lesser individuals would have regarded as insoluble. It must be remembered that in 1829, although a number of individual magistrates had apprehended Thugs, very little systematic knowledge of the system existed. The starting point of the new Department’s investigations was an order to officials throughout the Company’s territories to send in reports of all cases of actual or suspected thuggee. For many months, Sleeman and his colleagues pored over these reports in the hope of discovering the organization and methods behind them. Sleeman then set himself, not only to learn the peculiar dialect known as Ramasi used by the Thugs, but also to discover the meaning of the many signs by which they communicated with each other in the presence of strangers, or gave warning to their fellows or summoned other members of the gang to their assistance. He discovered, for example, that:

The operations of the Thugs are facilitated, and their designs cloked, by a peculiar dialect: they have recourse also to a variety of signs, both for concealment, and for the purpose of communicating with comrades beyond the influence of speech. Drawing the back of the hand along the chin, from the throat outwards, implies that caution is requisite—that some stranger is approaching. Putting the open hand over the mouth, and drawing it gently down, implies that there is no longer cause for alarm. If an advanced party of Thugs overtake any traveller whom they design to destroy, but have need of more assistance, they make certain marks on the roads, by which those of the gang who follow understand that they are required to hasten forwards. A party in advance also leaves certain marks, where a road branches off, as intimations to those who are behind. They draw their feet along the dust in the direction they have taken; and if their friends are to follow quickly, they leave the dust piled up at the end of the line where the foot drops, or make a hole in the dust with the heel. If the road afford no dust, they leave two stones placed one upon the other, in the line they have taken; and strew a few leaves of trees along the road. If their coadjutors are to make haste, they make a very long line of leaves. They have many other signs for similar purposes.*

Sleeman and other officers of the Department at once encountered the difficulty that the friends and relations of the victims were often unwilling to give evidence or even to supply information.

We often find it extremely difficult to verify, by a reference to the friends of the deceased, a murder that has been correctly described in these narratives; and we are very often obliged to authorize the local authorities to give a pledge, that they shall not be summoned to give evidence in a court of justice, before we can induce their nearest relatives to acknowledge that the deceased actually disappeared, and answered the description given of them by the murderers.*

Captain Whiteford reported from Berhampore that ‘the proprietors of the money taken from murdered treasure-bearers, respectable bankers, had been found; but they are now so much in the habit of denying that they have ever sustained any loss, that even in this case we may have to commit the prisoners upon the general charge, under Act XXX of 1836’—this, stated Whiteford, was amongst a hundred instances.*

Baffled in this direction, the Department, under Sleeman’s influence, began to rely more and more on the evidence of approvers. It was not just a question of identifying those concerned with particular crimes; it was of greater importance to use the approvers’ evidence to unravel the secrets of the trade and to know the composition of the many Thug gangs. In a sense, progress was circular. Approvers gave information which enabled Sleeman to acquire the necessary information, and the fact that Sleeman was able to amaze other Thugs with the extent of his knowledge led many of them to confess and reveal the identity of their colleagues. Bit by bit case histories were compiled, maps of the localities where the victims had been buried were charted, and Sleeman was even able to construct family trees of the principal gangs—a matter of importance since the calling was hereditary.

The officers who conducted these investigations were not professional police, for indeed the days of the superior police services lay in the future, but their proceedings are of great interest, inasmuch as they constitute perhaps the first systematic and co-ordinated approach to the detection of large-scale organized crime in India. It seems worth while, therefore, to give an account in some detail of one typical case in which a gang was apprehended by Captain Borthwick at Indore on their return from an expedition into Guzerat. The first approver in the case was a Muslim, Amanullah, the main parts of whose statement were as follows:

I am one of the gangs of Phansigars now in confinement and, with my associates, was stopped in the month of Bysak last, at the village of Dekola, about seven or eight cose northward of Bheelwarah, as we were returning to our homes in Hindostan. At this place, a party of eight or ten horsemen came upon us and said that Captain Borthwick having heard that we were carrying opium out of Malwa, had sent them to stop us. On hearing this, our minds were relieved from suspicion or fear that the object of the horsemen was any other than what it professed to be, or had any reference to our habits and pursuits. We readily consented, therefore, to return to Bheelwarah with the horsemen, who, we thought, would of course allow us to depart, after searching us and finding that we had no opium. After our arrival there, we learnt the true cause of our being arrested; . . . and, as the only chance that appeared of saving my own life, determined to confess the truth, and to make a full and true disclosure of our habits and acts. I accordingly went immediately to the horsemen, and offered, on assurance of my life being spared, to make a faithful avowal of all our doings. I received the assurance I required: on which I confessed to them, that we were actually the Phansigars they suspected us to be.

Our Jemadar Mandun, having collected his men, set out from his country in Bundelcund upon an excursion of that nature, at that season last year. Our course was southerly; and passing Dhuttea, on our sixth stage we came to the banks of a nullah where there was a good deal of jungle. There a Mussulman traveller, on his way to Baroda, who called himself a Moolah, was prevailed upon to join us. Shortly afterwards, every thing being arranged, he was murdered, and his property plundered. A Koran was found upon him, which, to avoid detection, we burnt.*

Another approver, a Hindu, Khaimraj, was equally frank as to his motives in confessing:

It is not usual with persons of our character, when apprehended, to make disclosures from intimidation or the application of severities; and I should never have made confession had such a course been resorted to with me: indeed, I was firmly resolved to keep silent; but finding that two or three of my companions had already told all, and had pointed out the spots and bodies of the different individuals whom we had murdered during the last few days previous to our being seized, I considered it would be very foolish in me to abide by such a resolution, particularly when I found I might probably save my life by a full and true confession, while remaining silent would not avail me, or any of my companions, any thing.*

One item m Khaimraj’s evidence justified the warning given by the Commander-in-Chief many years before:

The stage following, about the middle of it, we came to a river; where we found four Sepoys cooking their meal, whom, after making arrangements for the purpose, we murdered, and possessed ourselves of their property: this occupied some time, and was not effected without difficulty. When the Sepoys saw us, they seemed to have entertained suspicion of us; for having, in a hurried manner, got through their meal, they quickly commenced their journey, and stopped at a village a short distance from the river, where our spies followed them, and saw them fairly lodged. We halted at another village, at a short distance from the one they were at; and at night sent a select party to effect our object. The Sepoys commenced their journey the next morning, followed by our party, who, watching their opportunity, when at a distance from any village, fell upon them, and murdered them as they were going along the road: one of the Sepoys, who must at the moment have perceived the design of the party, from his extraordinary efforts to save his life, got away a few paces, and raised his spear in his defence; but he was instantly overpowered, and murdered also. Two thousand rupees was the amount of plunder obtained on this occasion.*

The gang, however, did not long enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Borthwick and his colleagues did not in these cases act just on the uncorroborated testimony of the approvers, but used the information so obtained to discover the graves of the victims or tools of the Thugs’ trade or other incriminating evidence. In the case which we have discussed, bodies were found in the places described by the approvers, and the property in the possession of the gang was identified by its owners. This particular case gave rise to legal difficulties, since the murders were perpetrated in territories belonging to the various Indian chiefs, and there was no particular prince to whom they could be delivered for punishment. The Governor-General took a robust and sensible line. Borthwick was authorized to inflict capital punishment on all who had been employed as leaders or stranglers, and to sentence those who had acted as decoys to transportation for life or imprisonment, according to the circumstances of each case. Of the seventy-nine Thugs who had been arrested, thirty-nine were condemned to death, twenty-one to imprisonment for life, eleven to limited imprisonment, and three were acquitted. Five approvers were pardoned, and it must have gone much against the grain with Borthwick to release Khaimraj, who had deposed to seventy-one murders.

Sleeman’s reports on the depredations of the Thugs are a model of objective reporting—calm, unemotional, factual accounts of episodes which were in reality highly dramatic. They typify the cold logical analysis which underlay his methods and which led to a remarkable degree of success within a decade. By the end of the fourth decade of the century, the Department could claim that the only parts of India in which there were any Thugs not entered in its list were in East Bengal and in the neighbourhood of Midnapore and Nagpur, and in 1840 Sleeman was able to claim that except in those areas and in Oudh, ‘the roads are now from one end of India to the other, free from the depredations of the Thug gangs’.* Complacency was, however, not in Sleeman’s make-up, and he was at pains to warn the Government that many of the leading members of the old gangs were still at large and would either return to their old trade or teach it to their sons if pursuit was soon relaxed. Fortunately, no such relaxation occurred and in the course of a few decades thuggee had practically ceased to exist. Much attention was also given by the Department to the rehabilitation of hereditary Thugs, and to a careful surveillance of all who might take to the old ways. By 1879 there were only 340 names remaining on the register of Thugs and gradually the work of the Department changed its character. Its energies now began to be directed against the almost equal menace of dacoits and poisoners.

Poisoners and Dacoits

Information regarding the organization of the Department after Sleeman left it is scanty, and the first available detailed report relates to the two years 1859 and 1860. It was written by Major (later General) Charles Hervey, who had been an assistant to Sleeman but at this time was General Superintendent of the Department. The Department was organized in seven circles: Punjab, Agra, Oudh, Ellichpoor, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Bombay, each under an Assistant General Superintendent. There had also been agencies in Etawah and Indore, but they had been merged with the Agra Circle. There appears also to have been an agency in Bengal but it is not mentioned in the report. The Department was responsible for dealing with Thugs, poisoners, dacoits, rebels, coiners and mutineers, but by this time thuggee had been brought fairly well under control, and the Department was in fact now mainly concerned with professional poisoners and dacoits.

In 1863—presumably because the Provincial police were thought to have been sufficiently well organized to deal with all forms of crime—the Department ceased to have any executive functions in British India. It remained in that area as a kind of central intelligence agency of the Government of India; and in some provinces officers were specially deputed to maintain contact with the General Superintendent. The main work of the Department was now in the Native States, and here of course it was dependent on the co-operation of the rulers which, in turn, often depended on the degree of influence exerted by the Resident or the Agent to the Governor-General. In the case of the major rulers, it was generally possible by one means or another to secure their co-operation, but difficulty was often experienced with subordinate feudatories, who were in some cases themselves in league with those whom the Department sought to bring to book.

Fortunately for us, Hervey kept a diary, and thirty years later he incorporated it in a fascinating book which throws much light on the operations of the Department.*

To some extent poisoning had succeeded strangling as the endemic crime carried out by professionals. The poisoners were in some cases small parties detached from the main Thug gangs, not strong enough to use the traditional methods. Robbery was almost invariably the motive and this is illustrated by a case in which the victims were powindas, who were in the habit of coming down from the mountains of the North-West Frontier in the cold season to trade. Within a single fortnight in December 1866, as many as eighteen powindas were admitted to the Mazagon Hospital in Bombay suffering from what appeared to be dhatura poisoning. These powindas are necessarily a hardy race, and only one of them died, but in the resulting enquiry it was found that ‘systematic poisoning had for some time been practised by some unknown criminals upon that class of strangers.’*

Hervey tells a most interesting story of one Rora, a hereditary singer, who was evidently very accomplished in the art of poisoning. When under arrest and on his way to trial in Jaipur

He asked his two custodians on his way there, to let him go into his house which was on the road, and the visit being allowed, he brought away some sweetmeats, which by-and-by he produced and offered to the men of his escort ‘for their kindness to him’; who, seeing him eat thereof, accepted and ate some too. In due course they dropped senseless on the road, the sweetmeat having been drugged. His next feat was to poison at Majra, in this vicinity, the driver of a bullock hackery or cart which he and a companion had hired, and to appropriate both cart and bullocks.*

Bullock cart drivers appear to have been frequently the victims of this particular crime, since once the driver became insensible, it was easy to take the cart across country and dispose of it at a safe distance. Rora evidently specialized in this technique for his next exploit was to lure a camel and to run away with it after poisoning the owner. In his next venture he displayed considerable ingenuity. Having ingratiated himself into the confidence of one Oodnee, he undertook to find him a suitable bride, and on the appointed day he called at Oodnee’s house and undertook to conduct Oodnee to the house of the prospective bride. They stopped to rest by the side of a tank* and on the excuse that, being of a low caste he could not offer Oodnee food, he proffered him some sugar. The unsuspecting Oodnee ate the sugar with some parched grain and as a little later ‘felt his senses whirling and his limbs too became powerless, presently he lost all consciousness. When he rallied, he discovered that he had been robbed of all that he had as well as of a new coat he had proposed to put on when he appeared before his prospective bride.’ This artist in crime went on from strength to strength, but the Rohtak police, under a very energetic superintendent, tracked him from place to place, and he was duly convicted. It is a little sad that in the interests of uncovering other gangs, the police had to make him an approver, so that he finally escaped the well deserved penalty.

Hervey had indeed come to the conclusion that two measures were necessary if this odious crime was to be suppressed. The first was to make the mere possession of poisonous drugs or minerals punishable, and the second was to extend to these cases the system of pardoning approvers which had been used so successfully against the Thugs. Hervey gave a lot of thought to this system and disapproved of ever giving an approver a promise of pardon before his trial, since experience showed that in such circumstances, his disclosures were often very incomplete. Hervey’s proposal was that the prospective approver should be tried and sentenced as rigorously as possible, and thereafter offered conditional remission of sentence in return for full information as to his accomplices. He would then be kept under lifelong surveillance, but would be maintained by the Government. The Government did not react favourably to these proposals and were fortified in their view by the adverse opinion of most of the provincial governments. One reason for this opinion was said to be that the crime was becoming less frequent. Hervey was nevertheless free to follow his proposed policy in the Indian States, wherever the rulers could be persuaded to agree.

The main attention of the Department soon began to be directed to dacoity, and here too, it appeared that the occupation was often hereditary and was particularly common among certain tribes or castes. Some of these tribes belonged to a common stock known by different names in different parts of India and in many cases they took up service as chaukidars. The Department now followed methods similar to those which had been used by Sleeman, and built up detailed dossiers of hundreds of people known to be or suspected of being professional dacoits. Laborious and systematic research was required. In respect of every person whom the Department was watching, a file was prepared ‘containing . . . every piece of information respecting the career of the man it purports to be record of, from the time his name first cropped up in the operations of the special Department, and of the several criminal acts imputed to him (each one of these being also recorded on its own distinct file), up to the date of his capture and final committal for trial’.* Not only patience but also circumspection was required, and in March 1867, Hervey wrote to his assistant at Indore in regard to two men then in custody for an opium dacoity. The assistant was warned

to keep a sharp look out on his office employees, that nothing may happen to spoil the case, the prisoners and their associates having the amplest means (Hurgoolal, their general receiver, particularly) to swamp all our endeavours by means of bribes: ‘Pray therefore examine every witness yourself personally. Keep every document connected with the case in your own box, under lock and key, and do your best to enable me to take up these new operations with the same success we have been conducting them against the Meenas, and previously did against the Khaikarees and the Khunjurs, and are now directing against the present generation of the latter tribe, who, too, had been similarly neglected as these Moghyas have been; and pray write to me at all times very freely and fully about them. Perhaps Khema will turn approver. By skilful angling you may lead him to do so’.*

Progress was necessarily slow, but in the more important states the police organization gradually became more efficient, and some change in the nature and scope of the work of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department was therefore possible. In 1877 the Department was reconstructed, the status of General Superintendent was raised to that of a Resident of the Second Class, and he was given the additional duty of collecting secret and political intelligence, an arrangement which was formalized ten years later when he was definitely placed in charge of the Special Branch. In 1879 the General Superintendent’s Headquarters were transferred from Jubbulpore to Simla, and the only remaining agencies then were in Upper and Lower Rajputana, Indore, Baroda and Hyderabad. A depot of approvers had for some years been established in Jubbulpore, where former Thugs and dacoits were taught a trade—or, in modern jargon, rehabilitated. At this time eighty-five Thug and 175 dacoit approvers were undergoing such training.

Further reorganization in 1893 and 1896 was concerned only with minor changes, but in 1904 the whole position of the Department was reviewed by the Government of India. In its Despatch of 11 February 1904, the Government of India referred to the accepted policy, illustrated by the withdrawal of the Department’s executive operations from the provinces of British India in 1863, that the duty of dealing with organized violent crime should be entrusted to the regular police as and when this became practicable. A connected principle had been that the authority of the Durbars must not be impaired in respect of the suppression of ordinary crime within their States. In accordance with this principle, the Government of India now decided to place the Hyderabad agency under the control of the Nizam’s Government. Hyderabad would thus in this respect be on the same footing as Mysore. It was not felt that the circumstances in Central India and Rajputana were sufficiently advanced to justify a similar change, though in Rajputana the Department had for some years acted mainly in an advisory capacity, but a compromise was adopted by which the assistant to the General Superintendent in Central India and Rajputana was placed under the control of the Agent to the Governor-General. The post of General Superintendent then became superfluous so far as the regular duties of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department were concerned. However, as that officer had, since 1877, been in charge of the Special Branch, his post was kept in existence pending the formation of a Central Intelligence Department. For all practical purposes the Thagi and Dakaiti Department had now come to an end. It had served India well, not only in controlling thuggee and poisoning and reducing the incidence of dacoity, but also in establishing sound principles of criminal investigation and thus helping to lay the foundations of the modern police force.

Chapter 11

The Criminal Law

At the time of the passing of the Charter Act of 1833 criminal law in India was in a state of confusion. In the first place, two different sets of Courts administered two different systems of law. In general terms, it might be said that the jurisdiction of the Royal Court extended to all persons in the Presidency towns and to British subjects wherever they might be, while that of the Company’s Courts covered the rest of the Company’s territories. There were, however, exceptions to this division. After 1813, British subjects living more than ten miles from the Presidency towns were amenable to the civil jurisdiction of the Company’s Courts, and in respect of petty criminal offences were tried by Justices of the Peace. Serious criminal cases affecting them were still tried by the Supreme Court, and even in civil matters they had the right of appeal to that Court. The meaning of the term ‘British subjects’ was by no means clear and the Supreme Court sought constantly to extend its jurisdiction to certain classes of persons of non-British descent outside the Presidency towns.

The Supreme Court administered English law—except in matters of contract, succession or inheritance where the parties were Hindus or Muslim—and followed English procedure. The Company’s Courts administered the Company’s Regulations together with Muslim criminal law, so drastically modified in the interest of humanity, as to be scarcely recognizable. In Bombay, indeed, Muslim criminal law had been almost discarded. Neither of these systems was satisfactory. English law at that time was admitted to be in great need of reform, while Muslim criminal law was vague in procedure, unscientific in its treatment of evidence, and uncertain in its substance.

Even worse than the defects in the two systems was the difficulty experienced in many cases of knowing what the appropriate law was. A Supreme Court Judge in Calcutta wrote thus in 1829:

No one could then pronounce an opinion or form a judgment . . . regarding which doubt and confusion might not be raised by those who might choose to call it in question. . . . There were English acts of parliament especially provided for India and others of which it was doubtful whether they applied to India wholly or in part or not at all. There was the English common law and constitution of which the application was in many respects most obscure and perplexed; Mohomedan law and usage; Hindu law, usage and scripture; charters and letters patent of the courts; and regulations of the government, some requiring registration in the Supreme Courts, others not, whilst some had effect throughout India and others were peculiar to one presidency or one town.*

A second cause of confusion was the fact that to a great extent different laws prevailed in each of the three Presidencies—for, as we have seen, until 1833 they made their own Regulations.

When the Charter Act was passed in 1833, it was laid down that a body of law ought to be established in India applicable to all classes, Europeans as well as Indians. In pursuance of that objective, in 1834 an Indian Law Commission was established, with Macaulay—who had become the Legal Member of the Governor-General’s Council—as its President and moving spirit. Macaulay was always unreasonably contemptuous of Indian institutions, but it is impossible to disagree with the Law Commission’s view that no existing Indian system was fit to furnish a groundwork for the Penal Code which the Commissioners at once set out to draft. Nor did the Company’s Regulations afford the Commission any help.

The British Regulations, having been made by three different legislatures, contain, as might be expected, very different provisions. Thus in Bengal, serious forgeries are punishable with imprisonment for a term double of the term fixed for perjury; in the Bombay Presidency, on the contrary, perjury is punishable with imprisonment for a term double of the term fixed for the most aggravated forgeries; in the Madras Presidency, the two offences are exactly on the same footing. In the Bombay Presidency the escape of a convict is punished with imprisonment for a term double of the term assigned to that offence in the two other Presidencies; while a coiner is punished with little more than half the imprisonment assigned to his offence in the other two Presidencies . . .

In Bengal the vending of stamps without a license is punishable with a moderate fine; and the purchasing of stamps from a person not licensed to sell them is not punished at all. In the Madras Presidency the vender is punished with a short imprisonment; but there also the purchaser is not punished at all. In the Bombay Presidency, both the vender and the purchaser are liable to imprisonment for five years, and to flogging.*

In Bombay, the law had largely been codified, and to this extent attracted the Commissioners’ interest. Nevertheless, they found it full of inconsistencies and anachronisms, as illustrated by the fact that ‘the breaking of a window of a house, the dashing to pieces a china cup within a house, the riding over a field of grain in hunting, are classed with the crime of arson, and are punishable, incredible as it may appear, with death’. ‘It was indeed,’ wrote the Commissioners, ‘owing not at all to the law, but solely to the discretion and humanity of the judges, that great cruelty and injustice is not daily perpetrated in the Criminal Courts of the Bombay Presidency.’

The Commission, therefore, looked abroad:

We have derived much valuable assistance from the French code, and from the decisions of the French Court of Justice on questions touching the construction of that code. We have derived assistance still more valuable from the code of Louisiana prepared by the late Mr. Livingston.

With these models to guide them, they went ahead rapidly, and before Macaulay left India in 1837 they had drafted a Penal Code. It was circulated for opinion and many Judges were opposed in principle to codification. With Macaulay’s departure the driving force of the Law Commission disappeared, and although in 1845 the adoption of the Code was recommended by two gentlemen who had been appointed to examine the draft in the light of the opinions received, no action was taken for a considerable time. In the 1850s, considerable reforms in the law of England were made, and attention was once more given to the Indian criminal law. In 1853 a new Law Commission, based in England, was appointed under the Charter Act of that year. It examined and revised the original draft and, as a result, the Indian Penal Code was passed as Act XLV of 1860. The delay was in some respects fortunate, for it enabled the coming into force of the Indian Penal Code to synchronize with that of the Criminal Procedure Code which was passed in 1861 and the establishment in 1862 of provincial High Courts, which took the place of the Supreme Court and the Company’s Courts. The old dichotomy was ended, and it was now possible to administer a unified Penal Law. It does not do this by any explicit exclusion, but by Section 2 made it more probable that the new law would be enforced.

Two general remarks about the Code must be made. First, it makes no use of the traditional English distinction between the three types of crime: treason, felonies and misdemeanours. Secondly, the Indian Penal Code almost completely excludes English Common Law. It does not do this by any explicit exclusion, but by Section 2 which lays down that ‘every person shall be liable to punishment under this code and not otherwise for every act or omission contrary to the provisions thereof of which he shall be guilty within the said territories’. There are offences which escape this net—for example, contempt of court—but for our purpose they can be ignored.

It is not relevant to our purpose to give a detailed account of the Indian Penal Code, but a few of its main features must be mentioned, of which perhaps the most interesting is the use of ‘illustrations’ in the Code. This can best be made clear by quoting an actual instance. Section 191 of the Indian Penal Code states that ‘Whoever being legally bound by an oath or by an express provision of law to state the truth . . . makes any statement which is false and which he either knows or believes to be false or does not believe to be true, is said to give false evidence’. Two explanations follow and five illustrations are then appended. Two of them will serve our purpose.

Illustration (a): A, in support of a just claim which B has against Z for Rs. 1,000, falsely swears on a trial that he heard Z admit the justice of B’s claim. A has given false evidence. Illustration (c): A, knowing the general character of Z’s handwriting, states that he believes a certain signature to be the handwriting of Z, and in good faith believes it to be so. Here A’s statement is merely as to his belief, and it is true as to his belief, and therefore although the signature may not be the handwriting of Z, A has not given false evidence.

It must be remembered that the illustrations (unlike the explanations) help to elucidate but do not define the law. On that subject, the Commission wrote as follows:

These illustrations will, we trust, greatly facilitate the understanding of the law, and will at the same time often serve as a defence of the law. In our definitions we have repeatedly found ourselves under the necessity of sacrificing neatness and perspicuity to precision, and of using harsh expressions because we could find no other expressions which would convey our whole meaning, and no more than our whole meaning. Such definitions standing by themselves, might repel and perplex the reader, and would perhaps be fully comprehended only by a few students after long application. Yet such definitions are found, and must be found, in every system of law which aims at accuracy . . .

We hope that when each of these definitions is followed by a collection of cases falling under it, and of cases which, though at first sight they appear to fall under it, do not really fall under it, the definition and the reasons which led to the adoption of it will be readily understood . . .

We have, in framing our definitions, thought principally of making them precise, and have not shrunk from rugged or intricate phraseology when such phraseology appeared to us to be necessary to precision. If it appeared to us that our language was likely to perplex an ordinary reader, we added as many illustrations as we thought necessary for the purpose of explaining it. The definitions and enacting clauses contain the whole law. The illustrations make nothing law which would not be law without them. They only exhibit the law in full action, and show what its effects will be on the events of common life.*

Perhaps the real justification for the inclusion of illustrations in the Indian Penal Code lay in the fact that many of the Judges and Magistrates who would have to administer it had no legal training and needed more guidance than hard legal phraseology might provide. The present writer certainly found the illustrations of great help.

The chief characteristic of the Code is its extremely logical arrangement. Before dealing with specific offences, it sets out general principles in the form of explanations, classification of punishments and exceptions, which take an act which would otherwise be an offence out of that category. Some of the explanations are a little more than dictionary definitions which could almost be taken for granted, but others of them expound with great clarity important principles. Dishonesty, for example, is distinguished from fraud. Whoever intentionally causes wrongful gain or loss to any person acts dishonestly, even if the element of deceit, which is an essential ingredient of fraud, is absent. Of equal interest is Section 34, which provides that ‘When a criminal act is done by several persons in furtherance of the common intention of all, each of such persons is liable for that act in the same manner as if it were done by him alone’. It will be noted that the act must be ‘in furtherance of the common intention’ The original section in the Act of 1860 did not include those words and, says a well-known Indian authority, ‘without those words the Code would be widely at variance with the English law, where a person not cognizant of the intention of his companions to commit, say, murder, was never held liable though he may have joined his company to commit an unlawful act’.* The necessary words were accordingly added by an amending Act in 1870. Again the definition of the word ‘voluntarily’ deserves comment. A person is said to cause an effect voluntarily when he causes it by means whereby he intended to cause it, or by means which he knew or had reason to believe to be likely to cause it. Here, the Commission deliberately made no distinction between the two ingredients and justified this decision by quoting the example of a case where a man ‘set fire to a house in a town at night, with no other object than that of facilitating a theft but being perfectly aware that he is likely to cause people to be burned in their beds’. If in such a case he causes loss of life, he is to be punished as a murderer.

The chapter dealing with punishments is relatively simple and it need only be noted that it provided for transportation at a time when that punishment was being dropped in the United Kingdom; that in the case of Europeans penal servitude was substituted for transportation; and that the Code did not provide for whipping, though that punishment was added in certain cases by an amending Act in 1864. The authors of the Code had proposed to prescribe minimum sentences in a number of cases, but subsequently a Select Committee decided against this proposal, except in certain aggravated cases of dacoity or robbery. Provision for enhanced punishment was, however, made in cases where a person was convicted for a second offence under Chapters XII and XVII, the former of which is concerned with offences relating to coinage, while Chapter XVII covers theft, robbery, dacoity, cheating, mischief and other offences relating to property.

With a characteristic attention to logic, the Code deals with a case where an offence is made up of parts, any one of which is in itself an offence. In such a case the offender is not normally to be punished separately for each part and the illustration makes the position very clear. ‘A gives Z fifty strokes with a stick. Here he may have committed the offence of causing hurt to Z by the whole beating and also by each of the blows which make up the whole beating. If A were liable to punishment for every blow, he might be imprisoned for fifty years one for each blow, but he is liable only to one punishment for the whole beating.’

Next comes a chapter dealing with general exceptions; principles in general analogous to those of English law, which would need to be stated separately in every section dealing with an offence if they were not collected here. Many of the exceptions are matters of common sense, as for example that relating to accidents or to acts justified by law, or to cases coming within the principle de minimis non curat lex. Three of the exceptions, however, are worth comment here. The first applies to an offence done with the knowledge that it is likely to cause harm, but done in good faith to prevent other harm and the explanation makes it clear that the Court will have to decide if the harm sought to be prevented is of such a nature as to justify the act done. The second illustration to this section makes the intention very clear.

A in a great fire pulls down houses in order to prevent the conflagration from spreading. He does this with the intention in good faith of saving human life or property. Here, if it is found that the harm to be prevented is of such a nature and so imminent as to excuse A’s act, A is not guilty of the offence.

Another interesting exception covers the case where harm is caused with the consent of the person concerned, and here the authors of the Code gave the amusing example of a person who sells his teeth to a dentist and suffers harm in the process of having them extracted. The doctrine of consent, however, had necessary limitations. The act done must not be intended to cause death or grievous hurt. There is, however, an important extension of this principle to the case where an act not intended to cause death is done for the benefit of the sufferer and with his expressed or implied consent. The word implied is important and is generally understood to cover cases where a sick person is in such circumstances as to be incapable of giving consent to a surgical operation.

The only other exception to which we need refer arises from the right of private defence. This is an extremely complicated subject, and even the logic and comprehensiveness of the Law Commission’s draft has not obviated the necessity for much case law. In general it may be said that a person has the right to defend his body and his property against offenders but that the right only arises when there is no time to have recourse to the public authorities. Moreover, no more harm must be inflicted than is necessary for the purpose of defence. The right does, however, extend even to the causing of death, if there is reasonable ground for apprehension of death, grievous hurt, or certain other consequences. The dividing line between reasonable and excessive use of force in the exercise of the right of private defence is difficult to draw, and there have been many apparently conflicting rules in cases of defence against house breaking. This is a subject which space does not allow us to pursue, but it can fairly be said that the section dealing with private defence enshrines as much common sense as can be put into statutory form.

The other general chapter of the Code deals with abetment, the definition of which can be summarized as involving instigation, joining in a conspiracy, or intentional aid in the commission of a crime. The subject is too technical to be dealt with here and in any case the author is not competent to discuss it in detail. It need only be said that the persons covered in this chapter would be treated in English laws as accessories before or at the fact.*

On the foundations provided by these masterly general principles, the Code proceeds to deal with different classes of offence. Here we shall not attempt even to summarize its contents and will merely state that logic and clarity prevail throughout. In modern times, some legal critics have reacted against the general admiration of the Code. It has, however, been accepted as a model in other countries and perhaps here the writer may add a personal note. As a young magistrate he seldom found himself in doubt as to the meaning of a section, whereas he was constantly perplexed by the Criminal Procedure Code. The stamp of Macaulay on the Penal Code was unmistakeable and beneficial. In Bengal, pleaders never enjoyed themselves more than when quoting High Court rulings. The writer used to ignore those rulings, not from any disrespect for the High Courts, but doubting his competence to weigh them up. He contented himself with considering what the text of the code seemed to mean on a plain interpretation of English. This did not often land him in difficulties.

The Criminal Procedure Code

A good police officer had, of course, to be fully conversant with many sections of the Indian Penal Code, but the far less satisfactory Criminal Procedure Code had to be his bible. In 1853 the second Indian Law Commission established in London was charged with the duty of examining the recommendations of the earlier Commission regarding judicial procedure, as well as considering measures necessary for the amalgamation of the Supreme and Sadr Courts in each Presidency, in order to ‘avoid the embarrassment which a diversity of procedure threw in the way of an appellate jurisdiction’. Up to this time, there had been no systematic body of law relating to procedure, though there had been a number of Acts or Regulations dealing with certain aspects of that subject and the Criminal Procedure Supreme Court Act (Act XVI of 1852), had improved matters in the Presidency towns. Unfortunately, when the Law Commission drafted a Criminal Procedure Code, there was no Macaulay at hand to give it logical form and it was in fact ‘put together with very little regard to arrangement and without any general plan’.* It came into force simultaneously with the commencement of the operation of the Indian Penal Code on 1 January 1862.

Three amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code, made almost at once, merely dealt with minor alterations in the powers of various magistrates in certain cases, but it was soon realized that more radical amendment was required. In 1868 the Government of India proposed to re-enact the Code and expressed the view that ‘at that moment there could scarcely be said to be a Code of Criminal Procedure’.* A Bill to carry out this purpose was published, but the Secretary of State instructed the Government of India to confine its attention to matters of detail and leave major alterations to the Law Commission. The amending Act VIII of 1869, therefore, merely cleared up a few points regarding which there had been conflicting rulings and consequent confusion. Other minor amendments were made by Act XXVII of 1870, but in the meantime the Law Commission in its seventh report opined that ‘should it be thought convenient to consolidate the whole law of procedure in a single Act, this could be effected without difficulty by a process little more than mechanical’.*

On the basis of the Law Commission’s Report, the Government of India introduced a Bill re-enacting the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Bill was passed as Act X of 1872 in April 1872, but four months later another Act postponed its operation until 1 January 1873. There has been much speculation as to the reasons for this postponement. The official explanation was that translation of the Code would take some time and that if the Evidence Act, the Law of Contract and the new Criminal Procedure Code came into operation together, the Courts would not be able to cope with such a mass of new legislation. Cynics, however, suggested that the Government of India were dissatisfied with the Code and were already contemplating its amendment. They would, indeed, have had justification for misgivings about the Act, for its lack of clarity has for generations been the bane of magistrates.

The Code of 1872 was originally applied only in the Regulation Districts, but it was gradually extended to all of British India except the Presidency Towns, and as the years passed it came to be adopted by most of the Indian States. It did not in the first place regulate the procedure of the High Courts or the Courts of the Presidency Magistrates, and it was not until 1875 and 1877 respectively that the various Acts affecting those Courts were replaced by the High Court Criminal Procedure Act and the Presidency Magistrates Act. By Act X of 1882, those two Acts, together with the Criminal Procedure Code of 1872, were consolidated into a comprehensive Code but the police in the Presidency Towns continued to be controlled by the local City Police Acts.

In 1898 further amendments were made by Act V, and minor amendments were made during the next twenty-five years. In 1923, Act XXVIII made radical alterations in the Code, partly in order to clear up the confusion resulting from many High Court rulings. Six minor amendments were made in the following decade, but in substance the Act continued unaltered until the end of British rule though once again conflicting High Court rulings on its provisions made confusion worse confounded.

It is approximately—but only approximately—true to say that whereas the Indian Penal Code laid down the substantive criminal law, the Criminal Procedure Code defined the adjective law or law of procedure. In fact the two Codes have to be read together and although the Criminal Procedure Code contains definitions of many of the terms employed, Section 4 expressly lays down that in the absence of any such definitions, those terms should have the meaning assigned to them in the Indian Penal Code.

It is not necessary for us to comment on the provisions of the Code dealing with the judicial hierarchy, the procedure in trials and the like, and we shall only discuss briefly the main factors which affected the daily work of the police. In the first place, we must call attention to the somewhat complicated fourfold classification of offences: cognizable and non-cognizable, bailable and non-bailable, compoundable and non-compoundable, warrant cases and summons cases.

A cognizable offence was defined as an offence for which a police officer might arrest without warrant and a list of such offences was provided in the Second Schedule to the Act. It was only in respect of such cases that an officer in charge of a police station was empowered to investigate without the order of a magistrate, or that he could, without a warrant, arrest a person intending to commit such an offence. The fact that the police were limited in their powers of investigation to cognizable offences was to a great extent the continuation of the provisions of early laws and regulations which prevented a police officer from taking action in unimportant cases.

In the second classification of offences, the use of the term non-bailable is misleading. It does not for a moment mean that in such cases bail cannot be granted. The principle, rather, is that as a general rule a police officer who arrests a person accused of a bailable offence must release that person on bail or on his own recognizances. Here again, no attempt is made to define bailable offences in any abstract way, but they are listed in the Second Schedule, and it will be noticed that although most non-bailable offences are cognizable, the two classes do not completely coincide. For example, extortion by putting a person in fear of death is non-bailable but non-cognizable, as also are certain types of forgery, and circulating a false rumour with intent to cause an offence against the public peace. On the other hand, the great majority of cognizable offences are bailable.

The principle regulating compoundable offences is simply that in certain classes of cases it may be reasonable to regard the injury done as being of importance only to the person who suffered it and that person may therefore be allowed to forgive the offence. Even here, however, reliance is placed not on abstract formulae but on a list of compoundable offences in the Second Schedule.

The most misleading of all the classifications is that of warrant cases and summons cases. The distinction has nothing to do with the question of whether a summons or a warrant should issue in the first instance. It is concerned with the different rules of procedure for the trial of offences punishable with more than six months imprisonment—that is warrant cases—and lesser cases. It concerns the magistrates rather than the police, as also does the distinction set out in the Second Schedule between cases in which the magistrate should issue a warrant and those in which the first process should be a summons. This latter classification does not at all coincide with those other classifications which we have described, but it is worth noting that, logically enough, in non-bailable cases a warrant was to be issued.

The most important part of the Code in relation to the work of the police is Part V, ‘Information to the Police and their Powers to Investigate’. As a rule the starting point of a police investigation into a cognizable case is what is known as the First Information Report, though those words are not used in the Code. The relevant section lays down that any information relating to the commission of a cognizable offence, if given orally to an officer in charge of a police station, should be reduced to writing and signed by the person giving it—a provision completely opposed to that dealing with statements made later on, once the investigation has begun. It is to be noted that the first information need not be by a complainant or even an interested party. Even in the absence of a First Information Report, if the officer in charge of a police station has reason to suspect that a cognizable offence has been committed, he is in general required to make an investigation. For the purposes of his investigation, he may require the attendance of witnesses and they are bound to answer any relevant questions other than those which might incriminate them. They are not examined on oath, but false statements might in some cases render them liable to prosecution under the Indian Evidence Act. The officer making the investigation is also empowered to search without warrant any place where he has reason to believe that anything necessary for his investigation may be found, but he is only to exercise this power if undue delay would result from his applying or a warrant. No statement made during the investigation is to be signed and neither an unsigned record made by the investigating officer nor an oral statement made to him can be used by the prosecution at a trial. It can, however, at the request of the accused, be used to contradict a prosecution witness.

If the investigation leads to an arrest, the accused cannot be held in custody by the police without a magisterial order for more than twenty-four hours. If the investigation is not then complete, the police officer must forward the accused to the nearest magistrate, with a copy of the relevant entries in the station diary which he is required to keep. The magistrate can then order the detention of the accused from time to time, for a period not exceeding fifteen days in the whole, and this detention—which must not be confused with the gaol custody of an under-trial prisoner—will normally be in the custody of the police. Thereafter, one of two courses must be pursued. If there is found not to be sufficient evidence or reasonable ground of suspicion against the accused, the investigating officer is to release him, taking from him a bond to appear before a magistrate if so required. If, on the other hand, the evidence justifies sending the accused for trial, the investigating officer will forward him to a magistrate who will then take cognizance of the offence and proceed in due course to try the accused and commit him for trial. Here again the terminology of the Code is confusing, since a magistrate may take cognizance of a non-cognizable offence, though this will generally be on complaint or report from, a private person. It is not necessary for the purpose of this book to consider the procedure followed by a magistrate after he has taken cognizance.

Apart from his general duty of investigation, the officer in charge of a police station is specifically enjoined to investigate a case of suicide, accidental death, or death under circumstances raising a reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed. His investigation is to be conducted on the spot where the body is, and in the presence of two or more respectable local inhabitants, who are required to sign the police officer’s report if they concur in it. In actual practice this is often more difficult than would at first appear and the following comment by an experienced police officer is of interest.

The intention of the law is excellent, but the way in which it is carried out is often farcical. The two or more respectable inhabitants of the neighbourhood have a strong objection to being polluted by being brought into contact with a dead body. They will therefore sit down at a distance and afterwards sign anything that they are told to. These gentlemen, if they are subsequently cross-examined in court, frequently cut rather a sorry figure. If necessary, the body may be forwarded for examination to the nearest civil surgeon, provided that the state of the weather and the distance admit of it being so forwarded without risk of such putrefaction on the road as would render the examination useless. Here again, the folly of subordinate officers may defeat the object of the legislature. A medical officer in Madras has recorded that, ‘I have had corpses sent to me from a distance, the escort of which having been changed, I could get no information as to whose corpse it was supposed to be, the police report reaching me perhaps some hours afterwards or next day; and I have been obliged to say I examined the body at such an hour and said to be brought from such a direction, but could not say if it was that of the deceased’.*

We must now consider the duty of the police in the prevention as distinct from the investigation of crime. Three different types of activity are involved. In the first place every police officer is directed by Section 149 to prevent, to the best of his ability, the commission of any cognizable offence and for this purpose is authorized to arrest, without a warrant, any person intending to commit such an offence. This essential power involves action of a more summary character than that taken when a magistrate acts after due enquiry. A relatively subordinate police officer may have to act on his own initiative and on imperfect knowledge. The section is mandatory, unlike the allied section which empowers the police officer to take action to prevent injury to public property, or the section under which a police officer may arrest vagabonds, persons concealing their presence under suspicious circumstances, or persons who are by repute habitual robbers.

The second kind of preventive action by the police is in relation to an unlawful assembly—defined in the Indian Penal Code as an assembly of five or more persons with certain illegal common objects—or an assembly of five or more persons likely to cause a disturbance of the peace. An officer in charge of a police station may order such an assembly to disperse and may if necessary disperse it by force. For this purpose he may require the assistance of any male civilian, but, unlike a magistrate, he may not call on the military to disperse the assembly. In exercising these powers, a police officer is protected from prosecution for any action done in good faith.

The third type of preventive action prescribed by the Code is concerned with requiring certain persons to execute bonds, with or without sureties, to be of good behaviour or to refrain from specific acts. The orders to this effect are passed by a magistrate, but in nearly all cases the initiative will have been taken by a police officer, who submits a report to the magistrate. This kind of prevention forms an important part of police duties. The three main relevant sections of the Code are Sections 107, 109 and no. Section 107 deals with persons likely to commit a breach of the peace, while Section 109 is concerned with vagrants or persons concealing their presence under suspicious circumstances. Such persons can be required to execute a bond, with or without sureties, for keeping the peace for a period not exceeding one year. Section no is much more complicated in its operation and perhaps of greater importance. It empowers a magistrate to take security from a person who is a habitual robber, thief forger, receiver of stolen property, or habitually commits cheating, mischief and certain other crimes, or is so desperate and dangerous as to render Iris being at large hazardous to the community. The importance of this section is that it enables a magistrate to deal with bad characters who are so powerful that no villager will come forward to give evidence against them in a case in which he has been the victim, though villagers collectively may be prepared to come forward to testify to the bad character of the accused. In such a case evidence of general reputation is admitted. Its admission is based on the simple fact that in the relatively closed community of an Indian village, the local inhabitants do in fact know who the bad characters are.

If it is proved that a man who lives in a particular place is looked upon by his fellow townsmen, whether they happen to know him or not, as a man of good repute, that is strong evidence that he is a man of that character. On the other hand if the state of things is that a body of his fellow citizens who know him look upon him as a dangerous man and a man of bad habits, that is strong evidence that he is a man of bad character.*

The preparation of a ‘bad livelihood’ case involves much patient work by the police and throws a great responsibility upon them. Let us suppose that a number of dacoities occur within the jurisdiction of a thana officer in a short space of time and that in no one of them can the crime be brought home to a particular individual. The villagers and the police officer may nevertheless know well enough that there is one man amongst them who is almost certain to be the culprit. The officer in charge of the police station then spends perhaps weeks or months enquiring as to the reputation of the man concerned and when his dossier is complete, he lodges information with a magistrate suitably empowered. Very often this will be the sub-divisional officer and if that officer is wise, he will conduct his enquiry in the locality where the suspected person resides. A large number of witnesses will be called by the police to testify that the person named is the bane of their lives, but if that individual is really powerful, he may, on the other hand, be able to produce a formidable host of witnesses to declare that he is a philanthropist and a protector of the poor. It is not generally difficult for the sub-divisional officer, sitting under the shade of a banyan tree and helped by his intimate knowledge of the local people, to decide on which side the truth lies. If he is satisfied, he will pass an order requiring the person to execute a bond, with or without sureties, to be of good behaviour for a specific period. If that person cannot provide the sureties required—and if he is really a bad hat this may well be impossible—he will be sent to gaol for that period. In such cases it will be found more often than not that the dacoities or other crimes come to an end. The section will in fact have justified its existence.

An appeal lies against an order of this kind and some appellate courts, not unnaturally, regard these cases with a good deal of suspicion—not only because this kind of condemnation by reputation is uncongenial to the legal mind, but also because a police officer could so easily concoct a case of this kind. Such concoction would not necessarily proceed from dishonesty. It might be the result of excessive zeal and a determination ‘by hook or by crook’ to pin down a known offender. In either case, however, the courts will necessarily frown upon it, and with some High Courts a bad livelihood case has always had a hard passage. As a young sub-divisional officer, the writer was apt to be irked by the attitude of High Courts in this matter, but on more mature reflection he feels that the protection thus provided against injustice in this class of case was necessary.

The amendments of the Criminal Procedure Code between 1923 and the end of our period were of a minor character and need not be discussed.

The Evidence Act

The third pillar of Indian criminal law, the Indian Evidence Act, an intellectual masterpiece, put the English Law of Evidence into a positive form and seldom left a trying magistrate in doubt as to the admissibility or otherwise of evidence. For our purposes, it is only necessary to make brief reference to three of its Sections.

Section 24 lays down the sound principle that a confession by an accused person is irrelevant if it appears to have been caused by an inducement or a threat. Of greater importance is Section 25, which provides that no confession made to a police officer shall be proved as against the accused person (a principle which could not be impugned in the light of the report of the Torture Commission). Here, however, there is the sensible qualification that if a fact is discovered in consequence of information obtained from an accused person in the custody of a police officer, the information may be proved in court. If, for example, a Thug or dacoit stated during the course of an investigation that a weapon used in a particular crime would be found buried in a particular place, that statement could be proved against the accused. Section 26 takes the matter further and excludes confessions made by a person in police custody unless made in the immediate presence of a magistrate. It is to be read in conjunction with Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code which requires the magistrate to give the appropriate warning to the person confessing and to certify that he believes the confession to have been made voluntarily. This whole question of confessions bristles with difficulties and it is a matter of common experience that even confessions made before a magistrate are often withdrawn during the trial. The weight to be given to a retracted confession has been the subject of many conflicting rulings and one experienced police officer has gone so far as to suggest that all confessions made previous to trial should be declared irrelevant.*

We have now studied in outline the main body of the criminal law of India and it cannot be doubted that the codification of this law has been of great benefit. It has engendered a belief in the rule of law and of equality before the law; it has given the public a sense of security and of confidence in the impartiality of the authorities; and it has helped to convert the police from an instrument of oppression to the main prop of public order. As against this it has encouraged the growth of litigiousness and it has weighted the scales in favour of the criminal. Nevertheless, India would not have been a progressive country today if these codes had not been enacted.

Chapter 12

The Police at Work

So far we have dealt mainly with reports, commissions, legislation and Government decisions. These, however, were only the means of providing the police with the tools of their trade. The real work was done far from the secretariats by officers and men walking, riding or, in modern times, driving continually about their elakas,* investigating difficult cases, getting to know the bad characters, developing that indefinable instinct for suspecting the right man, and perhaps, above all, gaining the confidence of the public.

In this chapter we shall try to see the police in action before the reforms resulting from the Report of the Fraser Commission. It would be well to remember at the outset that, in the nineteenth century, since superior police officers were neither satisfactorily recruited nor adequately trained, nor equipped in many cases with a sufficient knowledge of the language and customs of the provinces, much of the outstanding detective work in this period was done by inspectors or sub-inspectors. Some of these had an uncanny instinct for smelling out crime, even when there was no evidence. They often got into serious trouble as a result of using illegal methods to extort a confession, but perhaps nine times out of ten they had correctly picked out the offender.

Reminiscences of a Stowaway,* written by a police officer on the basis of papers left by a brother officer in Bengal, tells an amusing story of the method by which in the sixties Sub-Inspector Narain Tiwari put a stop to a series of burglaries and secured conviction in case after case. Although the Judge convicted the accused on the evidence put before him, he was highly suspicious of gang after gang appearing in court with property, which they openly admit they have stolen from certain houses and shops, the owners of which identify every article.’ ‘I am convinced in my own mind,’ said the Judge in a report to the Inspector-General of Police, ‘that there has been torture at work’—though the accused made no complaint and had no mark of injury. There was no evidence against the Sub-Inspector, but he retired in high dudgeon. Many months later, a constable complained bitterly that he had received no credit for Narain Babu’s success since he exclaimed, ‘it was I who put the men on the chabutra’.* Now the truth came to light. In the words of the constable:

When I took the first man to the chabutra. I asked him if he was innocent of all or any of the burglaries recently committed. He declared he was; then I said to him, quite mildly, ‘Just lie down there, my son,’ and I laid him gently on the chabutra, but with his feet on the higher end and his head on the lower. Then poured some water from my budna* slowly on to the channel of his upper lip. I continued this for about a minute till the water, running down his nostrils, perhaps into his brain, his eyes seemed as if about to start from their sockets, and he looked like one on the verge of suffocation. Being afraid now that he might die, I let him get up, then, when able to speak, the first words he spoke were, ‘Take me to the babu.’ I did so at once, when falling down at Narain Babu’s feet, he cried, ‘I’ll confess all, your honour, and will tell you of all the thefts I committed years ago, which have never been discovered, and give up what is left of all I stole, but, for God’s sake, put me not on that chabutra again’.*

It must not be assumed, however, that the only too common allegations of torture were always justified. Very often they represented a desperate attempt on the part of an accused to clear himself by retracting a genuine confession and this continued to be the case even in the twentieth century. In 1909, for example, after a most careful enquiry into a particularly gross allegation of torture by the police, the Punjab Government issued a report completely exonerating the officers concerned. Indeed, most persons in a position to judge would agree that by the twentieth century torture had become comparatively rare.

Dacoity and Poisoning

We must now consider how the police grappled with the various forms of crime and perhaps the best way of doing this will be, wherever possible, to quote accounts—written by individual police officers of typical cases, and it would be appropriate to begin with dacoity, which may roughly be defined as robbery or attempted robbery by five or more persons. Gouldsbury, who described dacoity as more manly than thuggee since it is done openly, goes on to say that the crime is almost invariably committed by organized bands having expert leaders, who arrange it days beforehand, having already selected the village and the particular house in it, . . . which is to be the object of the attack.’* The victims were often unwilling to give evidence, but in spite of the difficulty, the proportion of dacoity cases in which the police did track down the offenders is surprisingly high. The Bombay Administration Report for 1879, for example, records that of 168 cases of dacoity, 104 came before the Court and convictions were obtained in eighty cases. This report gives an interesting analysis of dacoity during the year and shows that it was to a great extent the work of organized bands, with four centres of organization. One of the four gangs was responsible for eighteen dacoities in three months, moving continually through the hills in the west of the Poona district. Even the cold official account illustrates the courage and determination with which dacoits were tackled.

Before long the action of the police with the aid of the military resulted in the suppression of all these gangs, and together with an improvement in economic conditions in the Presidency, led to a considerable decrease in the number of dacoities in the next few years. A similar story could be told of other provinces at this time.

The crime of poisoning, which by its very nature is cloaked in secrecy, but which was endemic in India in the nineteenth century, presented the police with an even greater problem than dacoity. The commonest form of poisoning was by means of the dhatura,* a pretty plant which grows almost everywhere, and of which the leaves, stalk and seed are all alike poisonous, though the seed alone was generally used by poisoners. According to an experienced police officer

Cases of dhatura poisoning are most difficult of detection, for two reasons. Unlike arsenic and other mineral poisons, vegetable poisons, as a general rule, leave no trace which can be discovered by chemical analysis. Further, one of the most frequent effects of dhatura is to deprive the victim of his memory. He is consequently unable to give any useful description of the circumstances under which, or of the person by whom, the poison was administered to him.*

Indeed, the authority just quoted goes so far as to say that although he has known a number of cases of dhatura poisoning, he has never known one that was detected—though sometimes the offender has been discovered by accident.

Cox apparently regarded poisoning as the crime of an individual or at most a couple, but John Warburton of the Punjab Police—one of the most famous of all Indian policemen—was responsible for running to earth a gang of poisoners who had been concerned with at least sixty-nine crimes of this nature. The story deserves to be recounted in some detail. The leader of the gang was one Sharf-ud-din, a native of the Hoshiarpur district of the Punjab, who began his adult life by abducting a girl, and went on a little later to cut off her nose because he suspected her of an intrigue. For this he was sent to gaol where he came into contact with Tikka Ram, the head of a gang of professional poisoners. For a time after their release, the two men worked together, but before long they fell out and Sharf-ud-din then organized his own gang. He was evidently a man of enterprise for he began by enlisting in the Agra police, and went on to take into partnership the wife of Tikka Ram, who had been sent to gaol for twenty-eight years.

In his home village of Kaithan, Sharf-ud-din now organized a fresh gang, fourteen strong, and proceeded to carry out operations on the system he had learnt from the imprisoned Tikka Ram. From the latter’s poison gang he had acquired a perfect command of the Purbiah dialect of the North-West Provinces. He next disguised himself as a respectable native of Oudh, and, accompanied by one of his new associates, to represent a servant, he frequented the Grand Trunk Road, waylaying natives of Oudh, returning with their wages. He gained their confidence by passing himself off as a ‘Kaith’, or Munshi, from whom, being of a menial class themselves, they felt it an honour to accept an invitation to share meals—especially at his expense. Serving himself first, he then gave them their portions, into which he had introduced a preparation of dhatura and opium. He also preceded the meal with an aperitif of country spirits, so that their suspicions were not aroused by the symptoms which the drug produced.

They were soon insensible, and Sharf-ud-din and his companion then sprinkled the remainder of the spirits over their victims, left the empty bottle to suggest that they were simply intoxicated, and, having robbed them of all they possessed, chose a short cut across country to a fresh point, taking the precaution of exchanging their Purbiah Hindu disguises for ordinary Punjab costume.*

For the next five years Sharf carried out several operations without arousing any suspicion, but in 1871 he poisoned yet another victim and happened to arouse Warburton’s interest. Moreover, he made the fatal mistake of quarrelling with Tikka Ram’s wife, and before long, Tikka Ram and his wife gave Warburton a full history of Sharf’s career. A price of Rs. 500 was set on his head, but it was not until 1879 that his identity was discovered. By then he was in Agra gaol under an alias.

He had disguised himself with his old consummate skill, not only having his beard shaved but only a ‘choti’ or tuft of hair left uncut on his head, and these devices, combined with his prison dress, so baffled Tikka Ram, his old chief, and Mussammat Wilayatan, who had lived with him for years, as his wife, that neither could recognise him with any certainty.

Fortunately, an able Deputy Inspector and Sergeant who had gone with them, were able on the basis of intimate descriptions, including indelible marks and distinguishing features, to establish beyond doubt that this was indeed Sharf-ud-din himself. Before long the entire gang was arrested and a considerable amount of plundered property was recovered.* Sharf evidently now felt that the game was up and made a full confession of his many crimes. In 1881 he was hanged, but it was feared that his ‘pupils’ might emulate him. Fortunately, under Warburton’s inspiration, the police were able to break up the gang.

Impersonation and Forgery

Cases of fraud and forgery perhaps brought the police less renown than the more spectacular crimes of dacoity and poisoning, but they demanded even greater patience and a capacity for sifting complicated facts. One such case, concerned with military pension frauds in the South Konkan which had long been a favourite recruiting ground for the Bombay army, is worthy of notice in some detail.

Pensions were paid quarterly from the Paymaster’s Office at Dapoolie, and the rules required that the paying officer should compare the pensioner’s descriptive roll with his actual appearance. This precaution had begun to be neglected and by the time with which we are concerned—about 1860—impersonation of a pensioner by anybody in possession of his descriptive roll was simple. This provided certain moneylenders with a golden opportunity. They had already in many cases secured a stranglehold over indebted pensioners. When a pensioner needed a loan, he was compelled to hand over his roll, and at the time of his next payment his roll would be returned to him only on his execution of a fresh bond, generally for a higher amount than the previous one. The process was repeated quarterly, and the pensioner sank deeper and deeper in the mire. So far, however, there had been no question of impersonation, but moneylenders disliked parting with the pensioner’s roll at all, and they were enabled by the slackness of the paying officers to adopt new tactics in collusion with the clerks at the office. Many usurers

refused to let the rolls pass again into the hands of their pensioner debtors. Thus a system of dummy pensioners grew up with the connivance of the clerks of the Pay Office, who, of course, were regularly remunerated by the usurers, or not unfrequently had shares in the loans. The usurers then privately handed over their clients’ rolls to the clerks, and on an appointed day dummies deputed by the usurers went up, answered to the clients’ names, drew the money, received the rolls, and handed the whole (money and rolls) to the usurer at the end of the day’s work.*

The suspicions of Colt, the local Assistant Magistrate, had been aroused by an anonymous letter, and although he took no direct action on that letter, for two years he secretly collected evidence with the help of two constables, who afterwards rose rapidly in the Bombay City police. Particular help was given to the Assistant Magistrate by a young Parsee shopkeeper named Fulloo, who had for some time suffered from the fact that the malpractices of the moneylenders made it impossible for his pensioner clients to pay their bills. For some time, the Assistant Magistrate and his constables kept diligent watch, and they soon learned that the principal impersonator was one Tannak. At last their patience was rewarded.

One evening Fulloo rushed in from the brook, and reported that Tannak had drawn three heavy pensions, and that another dummy had drawn others, and that they probably had both the cash and descriptive rolls on them. Colt and the doctor had just time to issue certain orders to his own police and to ensconce themselves behind the garden hedge, when the little procession emerged from the Pay Office, Tannak leading, loaded with one bag of coins, a pensioner carrying another, the treasurer and another clerk and a peon bringing up the rear. Allowing them just time to enter the quarter-guard, Colt and the doctor raced to the door, entered and shut it, and Colt, turning to Tannak, said, ‘Tannak, I take you prisoner! You have just drawn the pensions of Subedar-Major Ramnak, Jamedar Babaji, and Rowji Naique, and you have the money and the descriptive rolls in your waist-cloth’!

Without a word, but in abject terror, Tannak produced what he was taxed with, saying, ‘The sowkars and the clerks have taught me.’*

In due course a Court of Inquiry was held, and although those concerned employed every resource that ingenuity could suggest—including an unsuccessful attempt to bribe the junior member of the Court—its report was damning and the entire staff of the Pension Pay Establishment from the Paymaster downwards were dismissed. Tannak, however, was destined to a better fate. He was obviously a remarkable character, the son of a Subedar-Major, who had got himself into the toils of the moneylenders. After the Inquiry, he delighted in relating his experiences

and acted over and over again how he used to go up and salute the Paymaster sahib, and say ‘Huzzur’ to any particular name called out for which he was to answer. He rarely drew more than two pensions in one day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, lest the sahib might remember him; but on special occasions, such as that on which he was arrested, he had drawn as many as five, making some slight alteration in his dress and voice, and manner generally.*

The man was, in fact, a born actor and he helped considerably in the Court of Inquiry and, needless to say, was enrolled later as a member of the Police Detective Force.

One case of forgery in the Punjab is of particular interest. In 1892, Karim Baksh, a clerk in the Multan Club, where he assisted in keeping the accounts, forged a cheque for Rs. 2,000 in the name of the Club Secretary, and disappeared with the proceeds. Patient enquiries by the police into this and other forgeries by him led to his arrest and conviction. While serving his sentence in Multan gaol, he was employed as a copyist. This gave him an opportunity to forge an order in the name of the Assistant Commissioner of Multan, requiring his presence in court on a given date. The order was smuggled out of the gaol to his mistress who sent a friend dressed in police uniform to the gaol with the order. Needless to say, once outside the gaol he disappeared. Again the police tracked him down to Kasauli in the Simla Hills, where he had another mistress, the ayah of the Multan Club Secretary’s wife, and he was convicted and returned to gaol.* The story is amusing, but its importance is that it illustrates the relentlessness and efficiency with which the police hunted offenders.

The public heard little of all this work and as a rule the police were content to be out of the limelight. Occasionally, however, the human craving for recognition of good work became strong, and in 1872, Mr. S. Wauchope, the Commissioner of Police, Calcutta, thus reported:

One great difficulty I have had to encounter, was the desire of the Police for publicity. They all thought it necessary in every case in which they had failed or been successful to justify themselves in the eyes of the world, and to publish abroad all that they had done, were doing or were about to do. . . . I have endeavoured to put a stop to this system . . . by invariably refusing to promote or otherwise reward an officer if he trumpeted his own praises. The first qualification in a police officer is unquestionably his ability to preserve the strictest secrecy regarding all matters which may come to his knowledge.*

There can be no doubt that Wauchope was right, and he was expressing the view held by the majority of the police in India.

It would perhaps be well to conclude this selection of cases with a brief mention of a less dramatic aspect of police work—the problem of the British or American loafer. It was reported in 1861 that there were at least 300 Europeans and Americans who wandered about the country without ostensible means of subsistence. As many of them were old offenders, they were naturally of interest to the police and in 1862 it appeared from the Commissioner’s report that, thanks to the attention paid to them by the Calcutta police, most of them were scattered over the North-West Provinces or the Punjab. During the next half-century, the number of these loafers diminished, but the type was by no means extinct and their modus operandi, though in a sense harmless, was fairly uniform. A loafer would approach the District Magistrate or Superintendent of Police with a story that he had had the offer of a job in a distant part of India, but had no means of getting there. The soft-hearted official would pay the fare from his discretionary fund, and the loafer, having forgotten all about the job, would live on this benevolence for a time before wandering off to the next district to repeat the experience. In his young days, when the present writer was only half-wise to the ways of the cadger, he would not give the loafer his fare, but would buy him a rail ticket to the station designated. Undaunted, the beggar would walk to the next station up the line and surrender his ticket for cash—a process which was permissible in those days.

A nineteenth-century police officer writes interestingly on the professional loafer before he had developed the technique just described.

Much as great a puzzle was, and perhaps still is, the dusty, dirty British loafer to the up-country policeman or to the village Patel. They do not know what on earth to do with him. The man had probably slouched in the village from nowhere in particular soon after the sun became hot, and had either betaken himself at once to the village rest-house, or to some outlying, shady-looking shed, extending himself full length, with a log or his scanty bundle for a pillow. A mighty serviceable-looking shillelagh reposes besides him. The village curs bark at him—from a distance, bien entendu. The village children, leaving their dung pies half kneaded, peep in fearfully at him. Two or three women, carrying water-pots on their heads, pass by, glance at him, and hurry on, gathering the folds of their ‘saris’ over their faces, and muttering a few words of prayer for protection to their favourite deity. The trusty Mhar, or village watchman, soon hears of him, comes and looks, and makes off to report that a ‘Sahib’ is lying asleep or drunk at such a place.*

The story goes on to relate how the local police officer would interrogate the loafer to no purpose, how the Patel—anxious only to avoid trouble with a sahib—would give him a straw bed—and a charitable shop-keeper would give him some curry and rice. The loafer ‘may or may not (usually he does not) try it on with the liquor shop; he has a splendid night, and by the time the village is astir he is well on his leisurely way to some other village’.

These few anecdotes chosen at random from hundreds, illustrate the versatility, the loyalty and the courage of the Indian police. There were, however, periods during which they had to undertake duties of a somewhat different kind arising out of the need to control a social evil which the Government had decided to suppress. To these activities we must now turn.

Suttee

In their fight against dacoity and thuggee, the police could hope at least for the passive sympathy of the public, but when they were required to enforce the prohibition of suttee,* they ran counter to immemorial traditions sanctioned by religious sentiment. The practice of suttee does not appear to have existed in the Vedic age, but it was well-established by the time of the Epics, and gave rise to an interesting passage in the Mahabharata.

King Pandu had retired into the jungles with his two wives there to devote himself to acts of penance. At the same time a curse was imposed upon him, which doomed him to instant death should he dare to have intercourse with either of them. The passion which he felt for the younger of his wives who was extremely beautiful, overcame all fear of death; and, in spite of the fact that for several days she continued to represent to him the dire results that must necessarily follow his incontinency, he yielded at last to the violence of his love; and immediately the curse fell upon him. After his death, it was necessary to decide which of his two wives should follow him to the funeral pyre, and there arose a sharp altercation between them as to who should enjoy this honour.

The elder of the two spoke first, and, addressing the assembly of Brahmins who had gathered together for the purpose, she urged that the fact of her being his first wife placed her above the second. She should, therefore, be given the preference. Besides, she urged, her companion had children who were still young, and required their mother’s personal care and attention for their bringing up. The second wife admitted the seniority of the first; but she maintained that she alone, having been the immediate cause of the sad death of their common husband in allowing him to defy the curse which doomed him to perish, was thereby entitled to the honour of being burnt with him.

In spite of the eloquence of the younger wife, it was at last unanimously agreed by the judges that the first wife should have the preference—a decision at which the latter lady was greatly delighted.

Suttee was never in theory a religious obligation, but only a highly meritorious act which must secure its due reward in the next life. Under Brahmanical influence the dividing line between a meritorious act and a social duty became almost invisible and before long a stigma came to be attached to a Hindu widow of good class who did not become sati. Moreover, the resulting disgrace affected not only her but her relations and was indeed considered an affront to Brahman orthodoxy. In many cases the pressures on the widow were therefore almost irresistible. On this subject, a Superintendent of Police reported thus in 1812:

It is generally supposed that a suttee takes place with the free will and consent of the widow, and that she frequently persists in her intention to burn, in spite of the arguments and entreaties of her relations. But there are many reasons for thinking that such an event as a voluntary suttee very rarely occurs; few widows would think of sacrificing themselves unless overpowered by force or persuasion, very little of either being sufficient to overcome the physical or mental powers of the majority of Hindoo females. A widow, who would turn with natural instinctive horror from the first hint of sharing her husband’s pyre, will be at length gradually brought to pronounce a reluctant consent, because, distracted with grief at the event, without one friend to advise or protect her, she is little prepared to oppose the surrounding crowd of hungry Brahmans and interested relations, either by argument or force. . . . Should utter indifference to her husband, and superior sense, enable her to preserve her judgement, and to resist the arguments of those about her, it will avail her little—the people will not be disappointed of their show; and the entire population of a village will turn out to assist in dragging her to the bank of the river and in keeping her down on the pyre.*

It must, nevertheless, be recognized that in many cases suttee was a genuinely voluntary act of devotion.

However strong the sanction of superstition or religion for this practice may have been, it was wholly repugnant alike to the Muslim rulers of India and to their British successors. A romantic story of intervention by the Emperor Akbar to rescue an unwilling victim is told in the Akbarnama. When Jaimall, an official of the Moghul Court, died from heat stroke and over exertion, his widow refused to commit suttee as demanded by the customs of her family.

Her sons and other relatives insisted that willing or unwilling she must burn. Early one morning Akbar heard the news . . . and resolved to prevent the sacrifice. He jumped on a swift horse and rode to the spot, unattended. . . . He was in time and his unexpected arrival stopped the proceedings. At first he was disposed to execute the guilty parties, but on consideration he granted them their lives and merely imprisoned them for a short period.*

Throughout his reign, Akbar sought to prevent widows from being forced to burn themselves against their will, and indeed in the Ain-i-Akbari it is laid down that the Kotwal ‘should not suffer a woman to be burned against her inclination’.

Akbar, however, did not seek to prevent voluntary suttee, nor did his successors, except to a limited extent in the area round Delhi.

In the early days of British rule, the East India Company found itself in a very difficult position in this matter.

When the problem first came to the notice of its servants the Company was only just beginning to consolidate its power, and it had, moreover, declared its intention of respecting both Hindu and Muslim beliefs and allowing the free exercise of religious rights. Warren Hastings, with whom this principle was fundamental, caused an enquiry to be made as to the orthodox Hindu view of suttee, and the very definite replies of the pundits in favour of the practice led him to decide against intervention.

In the time of Cornwallis, a British magistrate who had on his own initiative stopped suttee from taking place, referred the general question for orders and was told that he must in future confine himself to dissuasion. Other British officials from time to time prohibited suttee, but no official policy was forthcoming. William Carey then set to work to collect evidence as to the prevalence of the practice in Bengal. The results of his investigation were indeed startling and their publication in 1805 coincided with another specific reference to the Government by a magistrate. Wellesley, never the man to shirk an issue, referred the question to the Nizamal Adalat, or Chief Criminal Court, with a view to action. The judges did not advise the abolition of suttee, but recommended strict enforcement of the limitations placed on it by Hindu law. It must be strictly voluntary from start to finish, and no pregnant woman or mother with young children should be allowed to become a sati. Unfortunately, Wellesley left India a few weeks after the judges made their recommendation, and his successor, Lord Minto, left the problem alone.

For seven years no action was taken by the Government. In 1812 yet another magistrate raised the question, and the Government issued orders on the lines suggested by the judges. They also directed that notice of all suttees should be given to the police, who could attend to see that the limitations laid down were observed. This was a most unfortunate order, for it meant in effect that the representatives of the British Government gave the sanction of their presence to such suttees as were in accordance with Hindu law. It created a reaction in favour of the practice.*

Individual officers, however, were often prepared to take risks within their own jurisdiction which the Government could not face on a larger scale, and in 1828 Sleeman, the District Magistrate of Jubbulpore, issued an order

prohibiting anyone from aiding or assisting in suttee and distinctly stating that to bring an ounce of wood for the purpose would be considered as so doing. If the woman burned herself with the body of her husband, anyone who brought wood for the purpose of burning him would become liable to punishment; consequently the body of her husband must be first consumed and the widow must bring the fresh supply for herself.*

On Tuesday, 24 November 1829, Sleeman received an application from a very respectable Brahmin widow for permission to burn herself with the remains of her husband, Omed Sing Opuddea, who had died that morning on the banks of the Nerbudda. Sleeman refused permission and threatened with condign punishment any who might assist her. The sequel is so dramatic that it must be told in Sleeman’s own words. After the cremation of the husband,

all strangers dispersed before evening, as there seemed to be no prospect of my yielding to the urgent solicitations of her family, who dared not touch food till she had burned herself, or declared herself willing to return to them. Her sons, grandsons, and some other relations, remained with her, while the rest surrounded my house, the one urging me to allow her to burn, and the other urging her to desist. She remained sitting upon a bare rock in the bed of the Nerbudda, refusing every kind of sustenance, and exposed to the intense heat of the sun by day, and the severe cold of the night, with only a thin sheet thrown over her shoulders. On Thursday, to cut off all hope of her being moved from her purpose, she put on the Dhujja, or coarse red turban, and broke her bracelets in pieces, by which she became dead in law, and for ever excluded from caste. Should she choose to live after this, she could never return to her family. Her children and grandchildren were still with her, but all their entreaties were unavailing; and I became satisfied that she would starve herself to death if not allowed to burn, by which the family would be disgraced, her miseries prolonged, and I myself rendered liable to be charged with a wanton abuse of authority, for no prohibition of the kind I had issued had as yet received the formal sanction of the government.

On Saturday, the 28th, in the morning I rode out ten miles to the spot, and found the poor old widow sitting with the Dhujja round her head, a brass plate before her with undressed rice and flowers, and a cocoa-nut in each hand. She talked very collectedly, telling me that ‘she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink’. Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a lone and beautiful reach of the Nerbudda river, she said calmly, ‘My soul has been for five days with my husband’s near that sun—nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this I know you will in time suffer to be mixed with the ashes of his in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or your usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman’. ‘Indeed it is not,—my object and my duty is to save and preserve them; and I am come to dissuade you from this idle purpose—to urge you to live, and to keep your family from the disgrace of being thought your murderers’. ‘I am not afraid of their ever being so thought—they have all, like good children, done everything in their power to induce me to live among them; and if I had done so, I know they would have loved and honoured me; but my duties to them have now ended. I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Omed Sing Opuddea, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three times mixed’.*

All Sleeman’s entreaties failed to deter her from her purpose, and in the end

satisfied myself that it would be unavailing to attempt to save her life, I sent for all the principal members of the family, and consented that she should be suffered to burn herself if they would enter into engagements that no other member of their family should ever do the same. This they all agreed to, and the papers having been drawn out in due form about mid-day, I sent down notice to the old lady, who seemed extremely pleased and thankful.

After the appropriate ceremonies, she approached the fire with a calm and cheerful countenance, then she

walked once round the pit, paused a moment; and while muttering a prayer threw some flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately and steadily to the brink, stepped into the centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed without uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony.*

At last, in December 1829, Lord William Bentinck, with the support of the home Government—but against the advice of enlightened men such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who strongly opposed the practice of suttee but nevertheless felt that its prohibition would lead to rebellion—issued Regulation XVII prohibiting suttee. No such uprising in fact took place and the only outward reaction was a petition to the Privy Council from Bengal against this interference with their liberties. The petition was rejected and from this time onwards the magistrates and police officers were diligent and even enthusiastic in suppressing this barbarous practice. The fact that Native States were almost autonomous in their internal affairs made it impossible to prohibit suttee directly within them, but pressure was brought to bear and gradually the Rajput States, where the practice had been prevalent, enacted laws in line with Regulation XVII. Thanks to the energetic action of officials, suttee became the exception rather than the rule within a few years, but isolated instances of it still occurred even in the twentieth century.

It is easy to imagine the difficulties which confronted the police when they attempted to enforce Regulation XVII against fanatical opposition by local Brahmins. Even in modern times, when enlightened public opinion might have been supposed to be unanimous in condemning the practice, the task of the police could be formidable, and it seems worth while illustrating their difficulties by recounting two twentieth-century instances. The first occurred in 1922 in a district north-east of Delhi.

Early one morning, I received a special report from a rural police station not far from the Ganges that preparations were being made in the village for a young widow to perform suttee at the cremation of her husband that day. In his report the Sub-Inspector said he was proceeding to the village with all available constables and hoped to reach the spot in time to prevent the woman carrying out her intention. I was extremely interested in this report—the first of its kind I had ever received—and decided to go to the village myself. This meant a journey of some twenty miles over a very indifferent district road, and a four-mile trek along a cart track. In those days there was no police motor transport except in the big cities, and the only vehicle I possessed was a motor bike and sidecar. After a hurried breakfast I set off with a police orderly in the sidecar, hoping to reach the village in time to be of some assistance to the Sub-Inspector. The motor bike started giving trouble soon after we left headquarters; but I was able to keep her going to within a few miles of the cart track where she finally gave up the ghost. Leaving the motor bike on the side of the road, we proceeded on foot to the village which we reached in the early afternoon. The Sub-Inspector was surprised to see me and when I asked him what had happened, he told me that the funeral party had left for the burning ghat. ‘But what about the woman?’ I asked. He replied, in what I thought was a non-committal sort of way, ‘There was no sati, Sir, because I would not allow the widow to go with the funeral party’. I was about to ask him to give me details of what happened when he added ‘But, Sir, I am sorry to say she is dead’. ‘Dead’ I repeated, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If your Honour will come with me’ he said, ‘I will explain everything’. Realizing that something unusual must have happened, I indicated I would follow him. He led me to a well-built but pretentious looking house in the centre of the village belonging obviously to a well-to-do man. We entered by the zenana courtyard in the centre of which was a group of wailing women squatting round a string bed on which was what looked like a corpse covered with a sheet. The Sub-Inspector walked up to this bed, removed the sheet and there to my horror was the naked body of a young woman with the most frightful burns. I turned on the Sub-Inspector and demanded an explanation and this was his story. When he arrived in the village, preparations were in hand for the dead man’s funeral. His widow had publicly declared her intention of burning with her husband, and had donned suitable garments for the occasion. She could not be persuaded to give up her intention of accompanying the funeral procession and had it not been for the authority of the Sub-Inspector who prevented her, she would undoubtedly have gone with the party. The Sub-Inspector told the villagers that he would not let the woman go to the burning ghat and would arrest anyone who encouraged the woman in her intention. After a good deal of argument and discussion, it was finally agreed that the widow should be taken back to her house. Accompanied by her female relatives the woman went to her home and the funeral party set off for the river. The procession had not been long gone when the most frightful shrieks were heard coming from the widow’s house. On ascertaining the cause it was found that the widow, stung with remorse at being prevented from becoming sati, had deliberately poured oil over herself, set light to her clothing and rushed out screaming into the courtyard. By the time the flames were extinguished she died from extensive burns and shock. Although this incident was never recorded as a suttee, since it was not carried out in the traditional manner, it seemed to my mind just as much a suttee as if she had perished on her husband’s funeral pyre.*

Another case which occurred in 1927 at the small town of Barh on the Ganges, so well illustrates the determination which the police showed in their efforts to suppress this evil, that it deserves to be recounted at some length.*

Early in the morning of 22nd November, 1927, Lal Bihari Lal’ sub-inspector in charge of Barh police station, set out with his junior sub-inspector for the railway station to catch an early train to Patna. On their way they overheard some men talking about a woman of Sartha village who had come to Barh to become sati, and on hearing this they turned back at once to the police station. In the meantime the news of the proposed sacrifice had been brought to the station by a constable, Ramayan, who, while passing the Court-house, had learnt of it from a small assembly of persons there. Among them he had seen a woman seated on a litter in which was a man’s corpse, with a maidservant. On hearing this report, Nurul Haq, the head constable who had been left in charge of the station, went with Ramayan and another constable, Mukhlal, to the Court-house, where they found forty or fifty persons assembled and eight Brahmins seated beside the litter. The woman openly gave out her intention of becoming sati. They reasoned with her, but to no purpose. Then they brought the head constable of the Treasury guard, who was a Brahmin, but he also failed to shake the woman’s determination.

The two sub-inspectors, who had learnt on their return to the police station where the woman was to be found, then joined the party . . . and Lal Bihari warned the woman and the Brahmins that they were contemplating an unlawful act, but at first they paid no heed. When he threatened a prosecution, however, and said he would not allow the corpse to be moved, the woman gave way, got off the litter and in proof of her changed intention broke her sacrificial bangle.

The Brahmins twice persuaded the police that the suttee had been abandoned, but almost at once took the widow in a country trap to the burning ghat. On learning of this development the Inspector and seventeen constables hurried after them, but the Inspector’s remonstrances were unheeded and the crowd threatened the police with violence. Meanwhile,

four of the Brahmins built a pyre, a barber, Ramdhani, shaved the corpse’s head, cut the widow’s nails and dyed her feet, [after which] the widow bathed in the Ganges and put on clean clothes, handed to her by the maid-servant, behind a screen of cloth held up by two of the Brahmins. . . . Then the widow ascended the pyre, escorted to it by the eight Brahmins and took her dead husband’s head in her lap. In her right hand she held a book, handed to her by her brother-in-law, which she read for a short time and then gave back. Her left hand was hidden beneath her clothes. In the meantime the inspector posted a cordon of constables round the pyre, to see that no one set fire to it.

What followed may best be described in the words of some of the witnesses. Constable Mukhlal said: ‘About five or six minutes later fire broke out from her clothes in front, as she was sitting on the pyre. Then the crowd broke through, shouting and pushing, and I could not see much. When next I saw the widow, she was in the Ganges. The Pandes [Brahmins] and the crowd were shouting to her to drown herself.’ . . . It seems that when the widow’s clothing burst into flames, there was a rush from all sides of people, who threw sticks on the pyre, which was also burning, and the cordon of police was swept aside. The widow jumped into the river and Hardeo gave her the corpse. She held it for a short time; then, letting it sink, she swam down stream. Two constables put out in a boat, which they poled after her, while the rest of the police followed along the bank, a constable unrolling his turban and throwing her one end to catch. But she showed no wish to be rescued. After swimming about two hundred paces she came naked out of the water and sat on the bank. . . .

Though Sampati’s burns were severe, neither she nor the Brahmins would listen to the police, who pressed her to go to hospital. Early in the afternoon a Magistrate was brought to the ghat to record her dying declaration. She told him that she had been burned by miraculous fire and was in pain, but she could not record her declaration, on account, as she said, of the uproar. She refused again to go to hospital. About two o’clock the Assistant Surgeon came and wanted to treat her, but could not do so because those with her threatened him. As no one cared to risk a riot, with which the small force of police would have been powerless to deal, by removing her against her will, she was left lying by the shrine.

Four days after her burning, Sampati died and in due course sixteen persons were charged with abetment of suicide. The facts were clear. The Sessions Judge refused to accept the story of the miraculous fire and in regard to those who had taken Sampati to the burning ghat, he observed:

There is a mass of evidence to show that they acclaimed her suicidal intention as something divine or at least inspired, assisted her to reach her objective, instructed her in all the ceremonies required of a sati, and overawed the authorities by their own violence and by enlisting the sympathy of a vast rabble.

The jury perversely brought in a verdict of not guilty, but the Sessions Judge referred the case to the High Court, which found ten accused persons guilty and sentenced them to terms of imprisonment of from one to five years.

The most significant aspect of this case was the attitude of the local public. Witnesses to the preparation for the suttee, and to Sampati’s declaration of her intention, refused to admit having seen or heard anything at all. A Sub-Deputy Magistrate and an Assistant Surgeon who stated that they were intimidated from doing what they went to the ghat to do, could not or would not identify those who had threatened them; and the accused were convicted on the sole testimony of the police. An Indian Honorary Magistrate indeed stated quite frankly that:

It is considered an honour to have a sati in one’s family. It would also be an honour to a town, to have a true sati. By a ‘true sati’ I mean a case in which fire was caused by a miracle. I cannot say whether there was a true sati in this case, but all the residents of Barh think it was. They consider it to be a great honour to the town.

Nor was support for those concerned in the suttee confined to the neighbourhood of Barh. A provincial paper spoke of voluntary sati as the acme of moral perfection and complained that ‘High Court Judges were unfamiliar with Indian social life and outlook and belonged to another civilization’. It must be remembered that this attitude was taken up nearly one hundred years after the enactment of Regulation XVII and only twenty years before India attained self- government.

That the police involved in the Barh case—all of them Indians and some of them Brahmins—were not deterred by strong public sentiment from attempting to enforce the law, well exemplifies the high sense of duty with which many of them had become imbued. Indeed, the incidents which we have described in this chapter, taken together, show how a police force which was described in disparaging terms by the 1861 Commission, had gradually evolved into an efficient organization which could be relied on not only in times of crisis, but also (and this is a much harder test) in the continuing fight against crime.

Chapter 13

Police Organization in the Twentieth Century

In the Statement of the Moral and Material Progress of India for the year 1904-5, the India Office, perhaps over-dramatically, described the Report of the Indian Police Commission as ‘the most important event that had ever taken place in the Police Administration of India’, and in their Resolution of 1905, the Government of India referred to it as ‘an admirable and valuable piece of work’. These official tributes did not prevent the Government of India from being very critical of certain aspects of the Report. That Government commented somewhat acidly on the failure of the Commission to mention the important correspondence and enquiries from 1888 onwards which had led to many improvements in police administration. Moreover, they were clearly touched on the raw by the Commission’s statement that police efficiency had been sacrificed to financial considerations. In spite of this repudiation, an impartial observer may feel bound to come down on the side of the Commission over this criticism. On the other hand, it is difficult not to agree with the view taken in the Resolution that the Commission had exaggerated the defects of the police in India. ‘The Commission have produced a picture’, observed the Government of India somewhat pompously, ‘which would . . . give to any outside observer a somewhat over-coloured idea of the ordinary conduct of a police inquiry or of the habitual behaviour of the police, at any rate in the majority of Indian Provinces. It seems to him [the Governor-General] that the Commission have perhaps hardly made sufficient allowance for the tendency of the Indian witness to exaggerate, especially when he has a genuine grievance’.* It is perhaps the old story of the struggle between the enthusiastic reformer and the very proper, conservative, defenders of the public purse. When, however, those defenders observed that police administration in England before the time of Sir Robert Peel was ‘very nearly as much open to criticism as it is now in India’, their remark will strike modern students of the subject as singularly irrelevant.

Having thus defended themselves against the accusations of negligence or complacency, the Government of India took a realistic view of the Commission’s recommendations. Here we need only summarize the main decisions taken. Beginning at the lowest rung, the Government of India directed that constables should be locally recruited, except in Bengal and the Central Provinces where suitable recruits might not be forthcoming; that they should be trained at central schools in each province; and that their pay, together with that of head constables, should be increased. They went on to direct that sub-inspectors should in the main be recruited directly, rather than by promotion, though in each province the percentage of promotions from head constables should be fixed. Sub-inspectors, too, were to be trained in provincial centres, and their pay was to be so upgraded as to put them on a level with naib tahsildars.* The position of inspectors was to be assimilated to that of tahsildars, and to the extent of 90 per cent they were to be recruited by promotion.

Some of these decisions could almost have been taken for granted, and of greater importance and difficulty were the orders passed in relation to the higher ranks of the Service. It was now decided that officers in the superior police service should normally be recruited in England, but that the Governor-General should be authorized to appoint Europeans in India in special cases. It will be noticed that these appointments were to be of Europeans, and however this may savour of racial arrogance, the decision was almost entirely right in Indian conditions as they were then. The new recruits were to be appointed as Assistant Superintendents and were to be trained in India—not at English universities as suggested by the Commission. They were to be paid salaries of Rs. 300, Rs. 400 and Rs. 500 per month in three grades according to seniority during their time as Assistant Superintendents.

At the same time, the Government of India decided to create a Provincial Service, to be filled by Indians designated Deputy Superintendents, who would have a status similar to that of the Assistant Superintendents. Where their fitness was fully proved, they would be eligible for promotion to the post of Superintendent, but no fixed proportion of posts to be so held was laid down.

The Resolution next dealt with the position of Deputy Inspector-General. A maximum pay of Rs. 1,800 per month was fixed as compared with the Rs. 2,000 recommended by the Commission, and it was ordered that these posts should be filled by selection from amongst District Superintendents. They were to be regarded as the highest appointments absolutely reserved for the police department. The post of Inspector-General would normally be held by a selected District Magistrate, but in exceptional cases, police officers should be eligible for appointment. Local governments were left with discretion in this matter.

The Resolution dealt in some detail with the organization of police reserves. The principle laid down in 1860, and reaffirmed by Lord Lansdowne’s Government in 1889, had been that there should be no division of the force into an armed and an unarmed branch. An armed reserve should be maintained at the headquarters of each district, and all recruits should pass through it and be expected to serve in it as occasion required. The Governments of Bombay and the United Provinces had not adopted this plan, but had maintained separate armed and unarmed branches. The Government of India now allowed those two governments to retain this division, but urged them to fall into line with the general policy as opportunity offered. A military police force was also to be continued in Assam and Bengal.

As regards the relations between the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, the Resolution criticized the Commission’s recommendation as being indefinite, if not inconsistent. The Government of India now laid down the position as follows:

Since the district magistrate is and must continue to be the chief executive authority in the district, and in that capacity is responsible for the peace and good order of his charge, the police must be completely under his control and direction, and he must, subject to the usual control of the Commissioner and the Government, have unquestioned power to employ them as he thinks best for the maintenance of law and order and the detection and suppression of crime. He should not, however, interfere in matters of departmental management and discipline, except where the conduct and qualifications of a police officer affect the criminal administration of his district. Even then his power of intervention should be exercised, not by issuing direct orders, but by bringing the case to the notice of the superior officers of the police.*

Commissioners of Divisions were to be given no special police powers, though where they existed as local heads of administration, they would exercise supervision and control over the actions of the District Magistrates, in respect of police matters—a power which, in Bengal at least, fell largely into disuse except where the Commissioner happened to be a very strong personality.

It was pointed out that some of the proposals would require legislation. In this connection, it was also resolved that there should be a single Police Act for the whole of British India, though some latitude would be given to the local governments by means of the power to make rules subject to the approval of the Governor-General and Council.

The Resolution next dealt with the police force in the Presidency Towns and the relations between the Commissioner of Police and the Inspector-General, and here, the Government followed respectable precedent by taking no decision at all. Most of the Commission’s proposals for the internal organization of the police forces in the Presidency towns were, however, accepted, including the recommendation that the posts of Superintendents should be abolished, with certain exceptions, and should be replaced by a smaller number of Deputy Commissionerships.

The organization of special forces was also considered, and orders were issued that the jurisdiction of railway police forces should be coterminous with that of provinces; that in each province the head of the Railway Police should also be in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department; and that the Railway Police should not undertake watch and ward of railway property.

The last matter considered by the Government in this Resolution was finance. The Commission’s proposals would have involved an additional annual recurring expenditure of about £1 million, but the Government found that it would be unable to provide more than Rs. 50 lakhs* in the year following the Resolution—a conclusion which, however sensible, hardly fits in with the Government’s indignation at the suggestion that police efficiency had in the past been sacrificed to finance. Within the available sum, priority was to be given to the strengthening of the armed reserves, an increase in the pay of constables, and an increase in the numbers and emoluments of sub-inspectors.

It was decided in due course that no legislation was needed for the implementation of these decisions and the implementation of the Resolution was therefore left to the provinces, which were, nevertheless, expected to comply with the views of the Government of India. It is not possible here to examine the action taken in all provinces, but we shall pick out a few provinces in illustration of the results of the Commission’s recommendations.

Bengal

In the case of Bengal, our task is facilitated by the existence of a review of the situation written in 1916.* We have already discussed the decisions taken regarding the relations between the Calcutta Commissioner of Police and the Inspector-General. With this question finally settled, the Government of Bengal was free to turn its attention to more practical matters. Statistical comparison of the strength of the Bengal police force in 1916 with that which the Commission had recommended is difficult in view of the considerable alteration in the boundaries of the Province in 1905 and 1912, but it is clear that in spirit those recommendations were implemented. The following table shows the strength of the force in 1916.*

Rank	Sanctioned strength on 31st December 1904	Present sanctioned strength (1916)	Ultimate sanctioned strength
Inspector-General of Police	1	1	1
Deputy Inspector-General of Police	2	4 (plus 1 temporary)	5
Superintendents	31 (plus 2)	48 (plus 1 temporary)	48
Assistant Superintendents	31 (plus 2)	47	49
Deputy Superintendents	—	23 (plus 2 temporary)	23
Inspectors	138	239	239
Sub-Inspectors	1,104	1,603	1,612
Sergeants	22	44	50
Head Constables	1,121	2,298	2,356
Constables	12,848	17,024	17,276

The salaries of all ranks had by now been revised, more or less in line with the Resolution. Nearly all sub-inspectors were now recruited direct, only a small proportion being appointed by promotion from head constables, but in the case of inspectors the converse was true. They were almost always promoted from amongst the sub-inspectors, as had been recommended by the Commission.

One of the most important steps taken was the creation of a provincial police service and by 1916 it consisted of twenty-three Deputy Superintendents—a cadre which was to prove of great value in the difficult years ahead. Of almost equal moment were the establishment of a Criminal Investigation Department under a Deputy Inspector-General and the foundation of an excellent Police Training School at Sardah. The Sardah institution was not meant just for the lower ranks. All Assistant and Deputy Superintendents were also to be trained there.

There were some parts of the Resolution or the recommendations of the Commission which could not be implemented. In the first place it was found impossible at this stage to recruit an adequate number of Bengali constables from the respectable classes and Bengal continued to depend largely on up-country recruits. Secondly, Bengal could not conform to the suggested standard of one thana* to every 150 square miles—inadequacy of finance and personnel alike ruled out any such possibility.

In other respects, also, practical considerations made it necessary to proceed more slowly than the Commission had hoped, since as always, financial stringency was the order of the day. Nevertheless, the Bengal police had been brought more or less up to the standards demanded by the Resolution. Similar steps had been taken in regard to the Calcutta police and we need only note that in 1916 the force there consisted of a Commissioner, six Deputy Commissioners, one Assistant Commissioner, two Superintendents and a cadre of ranks below those grades somewhat in excess of that suggested by the Commission. As the population of Calcutta at that time was nearly one million, the force cannot be considered excessive.

Punjab

In one sense the process of re-organization in the Punjab may be said to have begun in 1898, when the practice of appointing army officers to the post of Inspector-General was discontinued. Mr. Turton Smith was the first professional police officer to hold that appointment. He assumed office at a crucial time, since on the one hand the Punjab police had been through an exceptionally difficult period as a result of famine, plague and frontier war, and on the other hand, considerations of economy had led to a reduction of the superior ranks of the police to a level at which efficiency was unattainable. In 1861 it had been considered that there must be one Deputy Inspector-General to six districts, but this standard was progressively lowered until in 1894, one Deputy Inspector-General was responsible for sixteen districts. The Inspector-General then rightly commented that ‘at this point the vitalizing power of the superior staff may be said to have broken down; there was not enough leaven to make the loaf rise’.*

The success achieved by the police under these circumstances in dealing with dacoity and coping with natural calamities was remarkable, but a strengthening of the force was long overdue. Nothing substantial was done, however, until after the Report of the Police Commission had been considered by the Government of India, and even then it was not until 1910 that all the reforms recommended were carried out.* By that time, a Deputy Inspector-General had been appointed to have charge of Railway Police and the Criminal Investigation Department; eight Deputy Superintendents had been appointed; the number of inspectors had been increased and their pay considerably raised; head constables in charge of police stations had in all cases been replaced by sub-inspectors; the pay of constables had been raised to the princely sum of Rs. 8 per month, rising to Rs. 9 after three years, with a special grade at Rs. 10. A third Range Deputy Inspector-General had been appointed, and there had been a much needed access to recruits from England for the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police.

Armed reserves, generally consisting of two head constables and twenty-five constables, had been formed in each district. In conformity with the Commission’s recommendation that there should be no separate recruitment for the armed and unarmed branches, the reserves were usually composed of men who had just completed their initial general police training. They were then trained further in the armed reserves for six months, and their course included drill, musketry practice, and riot tactics, as well as general police duties. The Inspector-General was empowered to transfer reserves from one area to another to meet emergencies.

In spite of these developments, the organization was still far from sound, and an experiment in decentralization was made in the Lahore District in 1910. The District was divided into three subdivisions, each being placed under an Assistant Superintendent or a Deputy Superintendent, to whom most of the powers of Superintendent were delegated. The intention was to make each sub-division into a microcosm of the District.

In 1914, the whole question of police organization in the Punjab underwent a searching examination by the Inspector-General. The numerous proposals which had been submitted to him for increases in the establishment had led him to suppose that the distribution of the officers in the District was based on archaic methods of work. His enquiry showed this to be the case.

Fluctuations of population; the growth of new and the decay of old towns; the extension of irrigation; improved rail and road communications, and altered economic conditions, had produced marked changes in many Districts, and proportionate increases and re-arrangement of the Police Force had been made without reference to any policy or system.*

A Deputy Inspector-General was then put on special duty to consider what re-organization was necessary, and as a result of his recommendations, the Punjab police assumed its modern shape.

For the sake of readers not familiar with the Indian police system, it is perhaps worth while in the case of this important Province, to give extracts from an account contained in the autobiography of a well-known police officer:

The Punjab had a population of about 24 million and an area of about 99,000 square miles (about the same size as England, Scotland and Wales) and the total strength of the police in the province was some 21,000 officers and men. This was divided into twenty-nine district forces, the district being the main administrative unit for civil control and roughly corresponding to a large English county. The average strength of a district force was therefore about 700 men, each of these forces being commanded by a District Superintendent of Police with its own headquarters. The District Forces were grouped on a regional basis into three Ranges of about ten districts each—the Eastern, Central and Western Ranges—each of these Ranges being controlled by a Deputy Inspector-General. The Inspector-General with a small administrative staff controlled the whole force from the provincial capital of Lahore. There was a fourth Deputy Inspector-General in charge of the provincial C.I.D. with an expert staff including two British Superintendents, one in charge of the Crime Branch and the other in control of the Special or Political Branch. This organization included the Railway Police under an Assistant Inspector-General, with headquarters in Lahore and two District Superintendents under him, one in charge of the Southern Railway District and the other in charge of the Northern Railway District.

Each of the District Forces was a self-contained unit responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of law and order in its own police district much on the lines of a county constabulary in England, the District Superintendent taking the place of the Chief Constable. But there were no separate borough Police Forces, each of the District Forces being responsible for the policing of all towns in the area; and being a centralized system of police, there were no local police authorities.

Each district force jurisdiction was divided into police station areas controlled in the main by sub-inspectors or by inspectors in the case of the larger and more important stations. Each station had its complement of constables and head constables, who were accommodated at and worked from the station. In the rural tracts the average police station jurisdiction would cover some 250 square miles, including about forty villages, with perhaps a market town of 5 to 20 thousand people. No constables were stationed individually in the villages but were kept under strict supervision by the officer in charge of the station who was responsible for sending them out on patrol and for investigating all crimes in the ilaqua [jurisdiction]. But each village had a headman or lambardar, and a certain number of watchmen who had obligations in respect of the prevention and reporting of crime; this local indigenous system was an integral part of the machine for the preservation of order.*

There were minor variations from province to province, but the general pattern just described prevailed throughout India.

Madras

Madras appears to have been the only province in which the Commission’s Report was considered to have had an adverse effect initially. Mr. W. O. Home, Inspector-General of Police, called attention in 1923 to the lack of success of the police in securing the punishment of criminals, and by way of explanation wrote as follows:

For my own part I am inclined to think that one result of the Police Commission’s enquiry and of the enquiries and public discussions preceding it, has been to considerably reduce the power of the police for evil and concurrently, or perhaps consequently, for good. There can be no doubt that increased attention has been attracted to the faults and shortcomings of the department. . . . The courts have undoubtedly become more suspicious of police work and of police cases, convictions are harder to obtain . . . with diminished credit and prestige, the influence of the police has declined throughout the country and the respect in which it was held, has decreased, with the inevitable further result of diminished efficiency.’*

The soundness of this view is open to doubt although Mr. Home’s successor did refer to a falling off in detection. It is, however, clear that the Report and Resolution necessitated more radical reforms in Madras than in some provinces. Before the changes were made

the Madras Police Organization . . . differed from the rest of India in two important features: the first was the larger number of police stations, the second the absence of the rank of sub-inspector, with the consequence that all police stations were in charge of head constables, who conducted the investigation of offences under the supervision of a relatively large number of inspectors on comparatively low pay*

The Madras Government readily agreed as to the desirability of changing this system, and after the publication of the Resolution, created the grade of sub-inspector on pay of Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 and put them in charge of all police stations. Most of the sub-inspectors were recruited direct, promotions from amongst head constables being limited to 15 per cent of the cadre. From the point of educational qualifications, recruitment was disappointing, and it was reported in 1911 that as a result there had been a decline in detection. This change of system involved considerable expense and to compensate for it the number of police stations was reduced in spite of loud protests from many areas though some new outposts were created. The pay of head constables and constables was revised upwards, but the replacement of head constables in charge of police stations by sub-inspectors naturally created discontent, and the Inspector-General considered this to be a partial cause of the decline in detection to which we have referred.

The Training School at Vellore, established in 1896, was expanded to provide training for probationary Assistant Superintendents of Police, inspectors and sub-inspectors, while schools for the training of constable recruits were set up in four centres. The Inspector-General reported that the schools for constables were unpopular, since they took the recruits away from their home districts for six months and this he thought had had an adverse effect on recruitment.

Another important change was the creation of a new rank of Deputy Superintendent. By 1911, thirty-three such officers had been appointed, and many of them had been placed in charge of subdivisions. They were recruited, partly from outside, partly from other Departments of the Government, and partly by promotion of inspectors.

In the course of a few years new districts were created, and the police strength of the Province correspondingly reallotted. Difficulty arose in this connection from the fact that, in some districts, recruiting was hampered by tempting rates of pay for agricultural workers but in the province as a whole, the proportion of illiterate constables steadily decreased. By 1908-9 it had fallen to 10.9 per cent of the total force,*—though it must be remembered that for this purpose, the test of literacy was very elementary.

The other important development was the creation of a Criminal Investigation Department, which soon began to do useful work, and made excellent use of the Fingerprint Bureau.

In Madras City little change was required. An additional Deputy Commissioner was appointed, an Assistant Superintendent was placed in charge of the Intelligence Department and ‘the City Police was brought still closer to the District Police by the introduction of the maintenance of the first information reports, case diaries, charge sheets and final reports and general diaries kept in Mofussil Police Stations’.*

It only remains to note that the reforms in the Province of Madras proved more expensive than had been anticipated, and within ten years of the passing of the Resolution, police expenditure had risen by Rs. 44 lakhs annually.

Orissa

In writing about police organization, it is easy to concentrate on its dramatic and spectacular aspects and to forget that efficiency depends largely on a system and on carefully thought out routine. It seems worth while, therefore, to glance briefly at the Police Manual of a minor province, and for this purpose, we have chosen Orissa. Much of the Manual is necessarily concerned with departmental technicalities and is of no general interest, but some features deserve notice, and the Manual will illustrate the meticulous attention to detail of the British administration in India.

This particular Manual has a mixed parentage. It is a lineal descendent of the Bengal Police Code which was first issued in 1884, but in 1911 Bihar and Orissa were separated from Bengal, and a fresh Manual was required for the new Province. Local patriotism, which it would be unfair to describe as excessive parochialism since the ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences between the inhabitants of Orissa and those of Bihar are fundamental, led in 1936 to the formation of the separate Province of Orissa. Once again a new Manual was required and it was issued in 1940. Its author followed the Bihar and Orissa manual in the main, but since two districts from Madras Presidency had been transferred to the new Province, the Governor of Orissa took the opportunity to borrow from the Madras manual, where that seemed advantageous.

The Manual begins with an outline of the police organization of the Province, goes on to lay down general principles governing the duties of the force, and then enjoins, in particular, the need to win the respect and good feeling of the public by ‘the exercise of forbearance, civility and courtesy’, together with firmness in the execution of duty. Next comes a chapter specifying the duties of particular ranks, and some idea of the thoroughness with which this was done can be gained from a perusal of the section regarding the Deputy Inspector-General.

It is the duty of the Deputy Inspector-General of a Range to maintain the efficiency and discipline of the force under his charge; to satisfy himself that Government funds are properly and economically expended; to be in close touch with and to control his Superintendents and be ready to assist and advise them; to watch the training of Assistant and Deputy Superintendents; to establish uniformity of procedure and harmonious cooperation between districts of his Range as well as co-operation between them and the districts of other Ranges, and between the Police and the Magistracy. He shall superintend the prevention, registration, investigation and detection of crime within his jurisdiction, and shall see that all necessary measures are taken by the Police in those matters, that the investigation of important cases is properly supervised by a suitable agency, and that gazetted officers do not neglect this part of their work. These duties the Deputy Inspector-General shall endeavour to carry out, as far as possible, by frequent inspections, not only at the headquarters, but in the interior of the districts.*

The time-worn subject of the relations between the District Magistrate and the Superintendent is then the subject of detailed attention, and the position is set forth with great clarity. The District Magistrate is not to interfere with the internal management of the police, but he is, however, required to inspect the police stations in his district at regular intervals, with special attention to the Station Diary, the working of the Arms Act, the general state of crime, the sub-inspector’s knowledge of his area, and the like. One matter not mentioned in this section, but to which in Bengal in the time of the writer the District Magistrate paid much attention in his inspections was the justification for arrests and the length of time taken in preparing the case while the accused was in custody.

Instructions in the Manual regarding inspection by superior police officers contain a warning against undue reliance on crime statistics, since statistics are of

value indicating as they do the officer whose work needs special scrutiny . . . and the areas or kind of crime on which they should concentrate their energies. But to use them as the chief means of appraising work is deceptive and teaches subordinate officers to believe that credit can only be gained by a high ratio of convictions to cases and a low return of crime.*

The procedure to be followed in cases under Section 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code (bad livelihood cases) is set out in some detail. It is laid down that they must be submitted through the Superintendent, who is required to satisfy himself that they are supported by sufficient evidence. Guidance as to the kind of evidence required, and as to the meaning of ‘habit’ or ‘general repute’, is given in a useful appendix. For example:

The grounds upon which a bad reputation is based should be carefully examined, as it is open to the defence in cross-examination to assail these. Thus, if numerous witnesses affirm that the person proceeded against is universally suspected of being a thief, this is good evidence against him under the section. If in cross-examination they say that the reason for his being universally suspected is because he lives above his means, or absents himself in suspicious circumstances, or was seen in the vicinity of the commission of crimes, the evidence is unimpaired (or rather strengthened); but if they give as the only reason the fact that the police searched his house on several occasions, or that the police frequently made enquiries about his character, then the evidence of general bad repute is worth little. . . . When the only evidence against a person sought to be bound down is evidence of general repute, that repute must be proved to be universal and beyond all doubt*

The Manual also dealt with the Criminal Investigation Department and the taking of fingerprints, but these matters can more conveniently be considered in later chapters. It should perhaps be emphasized that the Orissa Police Manual was not of any special importance as compared with the manuals of other provinces. It has been picked because it was easily available and illustrates the great thought given to the planning and control of police organization in the present century.

Bombay Presidency

Many of the reforms introduced in the Bombay Presidency were in line with those described in relation to other provinces, and we need not detail them here. There were, however, two respects in which police organization in Bombay had differed from that in other provinces: the dual responsibility of the Inspector-General and Divisional Commissioners for police administration and the fact that there were no Deputy Inspectors-General.

The dual role had proved unsatisfactory and was now abolished, the police functions of the Commissioners being gradually transferred to the Inspector-General. At the same time, four posts of Deputy Inspector-General were created: one for Sind, one for each of the two Ranges into which the Bombay Presidency was divided for police purposes, and one in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department. Initially, the Deputy Inspector-General of the Criminal Investigation Department was also in charge of the Railway Police, but in the difficult period through which Bombay was passing, the work of the Criminal Investigation Department was heavy and before long the responsibility for railway police was transferred to the Range Deputy Inspectors-General. There seems to have been some hesitation at first as to the functions which should be included in the responsibility of the Deputy Inspectors-General and they were employed mainly on inspection and supervision. Gradually their authority was increased and they soon filled the same role as in other provinces.

In Bombay City more drastic reorganization was required in view of the great strain placed on the police by the communal riots of 1904, the Bombay postal strike of 1906, the serious strike in the textile mills in 1907 and 1908, and the police strike of 1907. To these difficulties must be added the problems arising from the growth of the revolutionary movement, to which reference will be made in a later chapter. All these difficulties arose at a time when the Commissioner ‘was working with a machine designed for dealing mainly with ordinary urban crime against person and property, and numerically inadequate even for that purpose’.* The proposals for improving the force submitted by the Commissioner, H. G. Gell, were not acceptable to the Bombay Government and in September 1908 a Committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Morison of the Indian Civil Service, was appointed to make recommendations for the organization of the force. The Committee submitted its report within two months but four years elapsed before action was taken on all the main proposals. In the meantime, in 1907 the constables whose pay had fallen well below the general level of employees of comparable grades in industry and was clearly inadequate to maintain them, had resorted to a strike. The Government, of necessity, acceded to the constables’ demands and the force was back to work again within a few days.

The Morison Committee came to the conclusion that in dealing with political crime, the City police

were handicapped by the absence of educated Indians in the subordinate ranks of the force. . . . Concentration of staff . . . in properly equipped stations . . . and the inclusion in the force of a new cadre of Indian officers for the divisional investigation of crime were two obvious desiderata.*

The work of reorganization was spread over several years and was hampered by the fact that the Bombay Government was directed by the Government of India to restrict the additional annual cost to Rs. 2½ lakhs.* The essence of the system now introduced was ‘the creation of a special agency for the divisional investigation of crime’, which involved the provision of properly equipped self-contained police stations, each with a staff consisting of one inspector, one deputy inspector, three Indian sub-inspectors for criminal investigation, together with plain clothes and clerical staff as well as the ordinary complement of constables.

The number of constables was now considerably augmented and the strength of the Criminal Investigation Department in all ranks was increased, an additional Deputy Inspector-General being appointed to be in charge.

The work of the Department was thus described by the Commissioner:

In addition to the investigation of cases . . . the department made confidential inquiries, often of a delicate character, into political, religious and social movements; it scrutinized plays for performance licenses, amending or rejecting those that were objectionable; it took vigorous action under the Press Act, confiscating on occasions as many as 21,000 copies of proscribed books; it maintained a constant watch upon the arrivals and departures of steamers, assisted the Excise authorities, collaborated with the police of other districts and provinces, supervised and, if necessary, prohibited the songs sung by the melas* at the annual Ganpati celebration, and performed an immense amount of confidential work in connexion with the Muharram. It also assisted or secured the repatriation of all manner of destitute persons stranded in Bombay, including English theatrical artistes, Arabs belonging to French territories, ladies from Mauritius, Bengali seamen, Pathan labourers expelled from Ceylon, and deportees from the Transvaal.

The establishment at the beginning of 1911 of a ‘Police Gazette’, appearing thrice in the twenty-four hours and containing full details of all reported crimes, persons wanted, property stolen or lost, etc., was a further step in the direction of increased efficiency.*

At the end of the long drawn-out process of reorganization, the Bombay City Police can be said to have been well equipped for the difficult task ahead. The only other matter requiring comment at this stage in connection with that force is the reaction in 1909 to the appointment of an Indian Civil Service officer, S. M. Edwardes, as Commissioner. His appointment naturally aroused criticism amongst the Imperial Police Service, who felt that they had a claim to the post. In ways which are not clear, the resulting discontent spread to the rank and file and in January 1910 a number of them refused to receive their pay. They were promptly dismissed and the trouble was at an end.

It is not necessary for us to follow the reorganization in provinces other than those which we have discussed. It can be said that by the time of the outbreak of the First World War, the recommendations of the Police Commission, as modified in the Resolution of 1905, had been well implemented throughout India.

Village Police

An important section of the Commission’s Report had dealt with village police but in most provinces only minor changes were required. In the Punjab, for example, the old voluntary tikri-chaukidari system was made obligatory, and in the United Provinces the duty of appointing or dismissing chaukidars was transferred from the District Magistrate to the Superintendent of Police. Armchair politicians in the United Provinces, more familiar with the towns than with the villages, never understood the usefulness of the chaukidars, and in the twenties and thirties of the present century, tried hard to abolish these important posts. They did eventually succeed in reducing their number considerably.

In Madras, little change was found necessary. The taliaries or watchmen continued to combine revenue with police duties and had indeed to assist in such matters as opening and closing irrigation channels, looking after cattle pounds, and lining the railway when the Viceroy or a Governor passed through the district. On these latter occasions, sadly comments an experienced official, ‘some would sleep at nights with their heads on the rails, with occasional fatalities’.

It was in Bengal that the chaukidari system was least satisfactory and drastic change was required. The problems involved were difficult, and over a decade was to elapse before any substantial improvement was made. In 1913 the Bengal District Administration Committee was appointed to examine the machinery of district administration and its recommendations led in 1919 to the passing of the Bengal Village Self-Government Act. That Act may be regarded as an attempt either to re-create a village community organization long since lost, or to establish something like the English system of rural district councils. Its most important provisions, which were applied gradually in one district after another, established in each group of villages a Union Board, consisting of a President and nine members, six of whom were elected by the local inhabitants, while three were nominated by the District Magistrate. Circles, each of which consisted of a number of Unions, were created and each Circle was put under the charge of a Sub-Deputy Magistrate who was responsible to the Sub-Divisional Officer. In each Union there were a number of daffadars who exercised immediate control over groups of chaukidars and the relationship between daffadars and chaukidars was somewhat similar to that between head constables and constables in the regular police force. Chaukidars wore a blue tunic with a blue pagri and their own dhoti; daffadars, a khaki tunic with a red pagri. Both wore brown leather belts. The daffadars and chaukidars were the employees of the Union Board and were under the control of the President, but were also responsible to the Superintendent of Police through his subordinates. They were paid by the Union Board, which was empowered to raise Union Board rates for this and other purposes. In some of the more advanced areas, Union Benches and Courts for the trial of petty civil and criminal cases, were established and the chaukidars were required to assist these Courts and to serve their processes. In criminal matters, the chaukidars continued to have much the same responsibility as those imposed by the Chaukidari Act 1870, but they were now much more an integral part of the village community than had been the case previously. In many districts the system worked well and proved of considerable assistance to the regular police.

Indianization of the Services

The only other important development in police organization in India during the present century was the gradual Indianization of the superior ranks. In 1912 a Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Islington, was appointed to report on the organization of the Civil Services, with special reference to the existing limitations on the employment of Indians. The Commission devoted an important section of its Report to the police service, and it may be noted that it recommended that the distinction between the Imperial and the provincial police services should be maintained and it made the first official use of the term ‘Indian Police Service’.

It will be remembered that from 1893 onwards the main method of recruitment for that service had been open competition in England and that only British subjects of European descent had been allowed to compete. The Commission now recommended that Indians who had been educated in the United Kingdom for five years prior to the examination, should be allowed to sit, and that the Governor-General’s power to undertake direct recruitment in India, which up to then had been limited to the recruitment of domiciled Europeans, should now be extended to provide for the appointment of Indians. The Commission also proposed that this channel of recruitment in India should be used more freely than in the past. A related recommendation was that in every province at least 10 per cent of the posts of Police Superintendent should be filled by promotion from the provincial services, and that this percentage should gradually be raised to 20. This Commission also proposed that the system of salary grades suggested by the 1902 Police Commission should in most cases be replaced by incremental scales, applying equally to persons wherever recruited and whether Europeans or Indians. A further recommendation was that the system, under which in nearly all provinces the Inspector-General of Police was selected from the ranks of the Indian Civil Service, should be discontinued now that so much improvement had been effected in the quality of the personnel of the Indian Police Service.

The Commission then dealt with recruitment of the Provincial Police Service, to which there were then three methods of entry direct recruitment, selection of officers from other departments, and promotion of inspectors. The second method had only been adopted in some provinces and the Commission proposed its discontinuance, while at the same time it suggested that at least half the vacancies should be reserved for direct recruits, who should be selected by a committee of three officials and two non-officials, including two Indians.

The First World War broke out before any decisions had been taken on the Committee’s Report. Political conditions were now changing rapidly, and in 1918 the authors of the Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms considered it necessary to accelerate the recruitment of Indians to the superior services in order that those services should ‘be substantially Indian by the time that India was ripe for responsible government’. At the same time ‘there must be no such sudden swamping of any service with any new element that its whole character suffers a radical alteration.’* In the case of the police services they made no specific recommendation, but those services were included in their general statement that ‘for all the public services for which there is recruitment in England open to Europeans and Indians alike, there must be a system of appointment in India’, and a definite proportion of recruitment to be made in India should be fixed. In 191g effect was given to this recommendation and recruitment of Indians to the Indian Police Service was fixed at 25 per cent in all provinces except the North-West Frontier Province and Burma, where percentages of ten and twenty-two respectively were laid down.

In 1924 the whole matter was considered again by a Commission under the chairmanship of Viscount Lee of Fareham, which was appointed by His Majesty’s Government in response to a Resolution passed by the Legislative Assembly in 1922. This Commission recognized that it was necessary to proceed cautiously, but some further advance was, nevertheless, necessary and they recommended that of every hundred recruits to the Indian Police Service, fifty should be Europeans recruited directly, thirty should be Indians recruited directly by open competition and twenty by promotion from the Provincial Service. Here the Commission tried to strike a balance between the desirability of attracting young men of good family and the requisite physical and mental qualifications, and the importance of making the Provincial Service more attractive, and it was with this latter object in view that they raised the percentage of promotion from that service from the figure of 11 per cent at which it had stood since 1919. They also recommended that in any year in which the full quota of 30 per cent of direct Indian recruits was not obtained by open competition, the balance should be made good by additional promotions from the Provincial Service. Such additional appointments should be filled as far as possible by young men of not more than five years service who had been directly recruited as Deputy Superintendents. Progress was rapid and whereas in 1924 Indian officers of the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police and upwards accounted for only 10 per cent of the total, by 1946 that figure had risen to 30 per cent. But for the wisdom of the three Commissions which dealt with this subject between 1912 and 1924, India and Pakistan would have faced a very difficult situation when Independence was achieved.

The Islington and Lee Commissions were concerned not only with Indianization, but also with organization and conditions of service. For some time before the appointment of the Islington Commission, Indian police officers had been far from happy about either their existing terms of service or their prospects. In 1911, therefore, an Indian Police Association was formed to make representations on these matters and it was later given full recognition by the Government of India. Branches were started in the provinces and they became very active after the First World War, when there was in fact a good deal of dissatisfaction amongst Indian police officers. The Association did particularly good work when a number of officers availed themselves of the right to retire on proportionate pension, and its representatives showed great wisdom in combining determination to keep their difficulties before the authorities, with complete loyalty to their duties and to the Government. After independence, an Indian Police (U.K.) Association was formed in Britain and the publication of the present book is due to the keenness and service spirit of its members.

Chapter 14

The Police in Burma

Although Burma under British rule was administered as part of India, the conditions of the two countries and the characters of their people differed so greatly that it is desirable to devote a separate chapter to the work of the police in Burma. We shall only be concerned with the period before Burma was separated from British India.

The annexation of that country by the British was carried out in three phases, the first of which coincided with the period of experiment in police organization in India. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Burmese were in an expansionist mood. They had conquered Arakan, they had defeated the Siamese and they had repulsed the Chinese, and as a result, they considerably overestimated their own military capacity. They had nevertheless admitted a British envoy to the Court of Ava and the King had made various commercial concessions to the East India Company. Obstructions by Burmese officials made those concessions of little value, but a greater cause of friction soon arose in connection with the several rebellions of the Arakanese. Refugees from Arakan fled into Chittagong in considerable numbers and there played an active part in assisting the rebels. Burmese troops made frequent raids into British territory in pursuit of them and when Wellesley rejected the demand for the expulsion of the refugees the Burmese threatened war. Wellesley was fully engaged with the Marathas at that time and an uneasy peace was preserved.

The Burmese invasion of Assam in 1817 and of Manipur in 1819, and in 1823 the Burmese seizure of Shah-Puri—a river island on the British side of the boundary—heightened the tension. In 1824 the famous Burmese General Bandula, who had been appointed Governor of Assam, began to concentrate troops for a march on Chittagong. War could no longer be avoided. The East India Company’s forces easily occupied Rangoon, but the campaign which followed was marked by such inefficiency on the British side that nearly two years passed before it was brought to a successful conclusion. On 24 February 1826, by the Treaty of Yandabo, the Burmese ceded Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim to the British and agreed to accept a British Resident at Ava and also to pay an indemnity.

It can fairly be claimed that the aggression which led to the war was entirely on the Burmese side and that the East India Company had shown exemplary patience. In the second Burmese War the case was somewhat different. It is true that the British had many just causes of complaint. Indignities were heaped upon their Resident at Ava to such purpose that in 1840 he had to be withdrawn, and in 1851 the Burmese arrested two British sea captains on charges that were plainly false and flatly rejected Dalhousie’s demand for compensation. Dalhousie was still strongly disinclined to embark on war with the Burmese, but his hand was forced by the precipitate action of Commodore Lambert, the bearer of the demand for compensation. When the Governor of Pegu contemptuously refused to see the British delegates, Lambert blockaded Rangoon and destroyed every Burmese war-boat in the locality. Dalhousie recognized that there could be no withdrawal and war followed, but it has rightly been said that Lambert was not the cause of the war, which had in fact become inevitable. The campaign was well organized and soon led to the complete defeat of the Burmese. Dalhousie refused to be led into annexing Upper Burma and at the end of the war, on 20 December 1852, the Proclamation of Annexation was limited to the Province of Pegu.

In the succeeding two decades, a conciliatory attitude on the part of the Burmese King Mindon, together with a strong British desire to open up trade routes from Burma to China, resulted in reasonably satisfactory relations between the Government of India and the Court at Ava. A trade by steamer to Bhamo was established and British enthusiasts made plans for the construction of a railway into China. Towards the end of the 1880s the situation changed abruptly. The attitude of King Mindon towards the British became less friendly and the Resident was withdrawn from the Burmese Court, but it was not until the accession of King Thibaw in 1878 that friction became serious.

Three separate factors were now at work. First, Thibaw’s wholesale massacre of members of the Burmese royal family shocked the British public and alarmed the British and Chinese mercantile communities in Rangoon. The Government of India proposed taking a strong line even at the risk of war, but the Home Government counselled ‘forbearance’.*

Secondly, the situation in Burma rapidly deteriorated. ‘Dacoity became rife, the Kachins of the north rebelled, Chinese guerillas burned Bhamo, and most of the feudatory Shan States threw off their allegiance to Thibaw.’* Trade therefore became difficult and the commercial community in Rangoon began to press for strong action by the British Government. Thirdly, the French had now begun to take a general interest in South-East Asia and the obvious intention of Thibaw to form an alliance with them, even to the extent of depriving the British Steamship Company of its monopoly of steamer traffic on the Irrawaddy, brought into play the spirit of colonial rivalry which had already influenced events in other parts of the world. At this time British policy was moving towards a more imperialistic approach and when the Burmese Government refused to accept arbitration in a case in which the Bombay-Burmah Trading Corporation had been heavily fined for alleged breaches of its agreement, the Government of India sent a steamer to Mandalay with an ultimatum. On the rejection of the ultimatum the British went to war. Within a fortnight the operations were at an end and on 1 January 1886, Upper Burma passed into British possession.

Arakan and Tenasserim

The first phase of British rule in Burma, from 1824 to 1852, is not of great interest from the point of view of the work of the police. It was felt that Arakan could easily be assimilated with the adjacent Province of Bengal and it was constituted a division of that Province. Tenasserim, in the remote south-east of Burma, presented a more difficult problem and for some years the Government of India contemplated its retrocession to the Kingdom of Ava. Little attempt was therefore made to introduce the Indian system of administration in Tenasserim. In the towns, kotwals were appointed and the old practice of paying night watchmen by a voluntary assessment was continued. Even when, in 1827, a Mr. Gouger, Master Attendant in charge of the port and harbour at Moulmein, was appointed as Superintendent of Police, he was not paid in that capacity and merely combined it with his other duties. He was succeeded by an army officer—the first Superintendent of Police in Burma to draw pay as such.*

In the rural areas the indigenous system, under which headmen were responsible for law and order, was unchanged. In 1838 a military police unit was raised from Talaings—the hereditary enemies of the Burmese—but it was concerned more with internal security and external defence than with the maintenance of law and order in the ordinary sense. A few years later it was converted into a general police corps, but the change made little difference. Even in the towns it was not until 1846 that the system of voluntary assessment came to an end and indeed a modern writer has gone so far as to say that twenty years after annexation the system of police in Tenasserim was no more elaborate than on the first arrival of the British. Here it is important to preserve our sense of proportion by remembering that at the time of the annexation, the population of Tenasserim was probably only about 70,000.

In Arakan a somewhat more positive policy was followed, but before we describe the changes then effected, it will be convenient to give a brief account of the system of district administration which, with various local modifications, had existed under the Burmese kings. The country was divided into districts or provinces, the Governors of which and their Chief Assistants were appointed by the King and were not as a rule local men. Under them was an organization based on the grouping of villages.

Each village had its head or Gaung. Villages were grouped into circles or Taiks under a Taikthugyi or Circle Headman. Circles were grouped into townships under a Myothugyi . . . and townships were under the immediate control of the Provincial Governors.*

The taikthugyis and myothugyis ‘were men of substance and local standing and succession to these offices tended to be hereditary’. They administered justice, they collected the revenues and they were in executive control of their areas. Their organization was semi-feudal inasmuch as ‘certain lands were held from the Crown on tenure that required the furnishing of a certain number of armed men on demand by the King’,* and under the myothugyis and taithugyis regiments were formed of villagers on a similar tenure. They were, in fact, ‘the backbone of the social administration in Upper Burma’.* The gaungs were of relatively little importance.

The system, however, proved quite inadequate to cope with the situation which arose when refugees returned from Bengal to Arakan in large numbers. Food and money were scarce and crime broke out on an alarming scale. A new system was clearly required and in 1825 an Arakan Local Battalion of military police consisting of Arakanese and Manipuris was formed to assist in restoring order, and in 1828 the regular police were reorganized more or less on the Indian system.

Police stations were established at many strategic points and some idea of their scale can be gained from the fact that at Myohaung—the first station set up—the establishment consisted of a daroga on a salary of Rs. 40 per month, one clerk, two jamadars, an interpreter, twenty burkandazes or matchlock men, and a boatman. The police personnel were Indians and neither they nor their officers knew enough Burmese to be able to communicate freely with the local people. The fact that the greatest concentration of police posts was on the frontier of the Kingdom of Ava, suggests that the primary function of the police was defence. Law and order were indeed still left to a great extent in the hands of the indigenous authorities.

The difficulties confronting British officers in Arakan at this time were appalling. Sickness was rife and in one year, ‘of seventy-nine English officers who served in Akyab, eighteen died and twenty-two were invalided’.* Moreover, local officials were controlled from Calcutta in almost unbelievable detail.

The Commissioner could not buy a cupboard, create a sweepership on five rupees monthly, or pay three rupees reward for killing a crocodile, without previous sanction from Calcutta, and in 1832 the assistant at Ramree was censured because, during an outburst of dacoity, he had on his own initiative, hired some villagers as temporary constables.*

In spite of these difficulties, the administration was gradually built up and was able to cope with an Arakanese insurrection which led in 1836 to the burning of Akyab town. At that time the incidence of dacoity is said to have averaged annually 290 per million people, but the authorities steadily gained the upper hand and law and order were restored. The British provinces soon began to attract immigrants from the Kingdom of Ava, so much so that between 1826 and 1852, the population under British rule was doubled.

When Pegu was annexed by the British in 1852, it was placed under the Government of India, and its organization followed the Tenasserim model, which meant that the Commissioner was left very much to his own devices. Lieut.-General Fytche, later Chief Commissioner of British Burma, has left a vivid account of his experiences as Deputy Commissioner of Bassein District in 1852. The armed retainers of the former officers of the Kingdom of Ava who remained in Pegu formed themselves into bands of dacoits, and to cope with the resulting disorder, Fytche had available only an English garrison in Bassein town. He was a resolute character and without delay he formed the dacoits into a battalion of military police, and to use his own words,

I admitted no man into the corps unless it was shown that he had been a bad and dangerous character. In dealing with such scoundrels the strictest discipline was of course necessary Fortunately, I had been invested with great and responsible powers, extending to death, within the limits of my district.*

This battalion, which had a sanctioned strength of 600 in 1854, was known as the Bassein Police Corps, but it was clearly a para-military body. Fytche had a heavy task ahead of him, and he was not exaggerating when he wrote thus: ‘Their management for some time to come will be a source of anxiety and demand the whole of my leisure time in drilling and disciplining them’.*

Gradually more systematic arrangements were introduced throughout the three divisions, and the strength and organization of the police are given in a report submitted to the Government of India in 1860. It appears that in the Pegu Division, there were four battalions of regular police, besides gaol guards, together with forty-seven guard or despatch boats, each manned by seven to twelve armed men. In support there was the Pegu Light Infantry, a corps on a military footing but under the orders of the Commissioner. Unfortunately, it is not clear how far the duties of the four battalions were of a general police character and we know nothing of the work done in the detection of ordinary crime. A point of interest is that the position of the indigenous local authorities had now been changed inasmuch as gaungs and all higher ranks had become salaried officers of Government.

At this time somewhat similar arrangements existed, though on a smaller scale, in Tenasserim and Arakan, but in Martaban—which had been added to the Tenasserim Division after the second Burmese War—the police strength was more than double that of the more settled districts. In all districts the police were under the control of the Deputy Commissioner.

Important changes were now at hand. As we have seen, even before the appointment of the Police Commission of 1860, there had been correspondence between the provinces and the Government of India regarding the reorganization of the police. In the report from the three divisions already quoted, proposals were made on lines similar to those put forward by some of the other provinces of India, and they included the appointment of an Inspector-General and of five, four and three Superintendents of Police to the divisions of Pegu, Tenasserim and Arakan respectively. In 1861 these proposals were implemented and the Inspector-General became the Head of the Department, while the relations between the Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police were those laid down in Act V The Act was applied to the Pegu and Tenasserim Divisions in 1861 and to the Arakan Division in 1864. It is, however, said that in modern times the superintendent of Police has in practice been more independent of the Deputy Commissioner than the Act proposed or than was the case in other provinces. In 1862, sub-divisions of districts were established, each with its appropriate quota of magisterial and police officers. At the same time, a distinctive police service was created and the Arakan Local Battalion and similar units in other divisions were disbanded. In the same year, the three divisions were constituted into the province of British Burma under a Chief Commissioner, who was, however, given no legislative powers though he exercised full executive and judicial authority. Burmese administration was now gradually assimilated to that of the rest of India.

The assimilation had disadvantages, one of which was that scales of pay for the police were fixed at rates quite inappropriate to Burma. In a memorandum on his administration of British Burma from 1867 to 1871, the Chief Commissioner writes interestingly on this subject:

The coolies, who cannot make in India more than five to seven rupees per mensem, can easily earn from twelve to fifteen rupees per mensem in this province, and during the four months of the rice season can make from thirty to forty rupees. When, however, I received charge of this province in 1867, I found that the police were still paid at rates varying from nine to eleven rupees; and the consequence was, that the police was a kind of refuge for the destitute, and those men only enlisted who were too weak or idle for coolie work, or who, it is feared, maintained a secret understanding with thieves and dacoits, and added the wages of corruption to their small salaries.*

In 1869 higher rates of pay were introduced with satisfactory results. Men of a better class came forward to join the police and the incidence of dacoities in British Burma decreased in a striking manner.

From a description of the police organization in 1878, written by Mr. H. T. White* (later Sir Herbert), it appears that the rank and file were mostly Burman, and that inspectors and head constables were all men who had risen from the ranks. The superior officers were all British—including still a few military officers—with the exception of one Talaing Maung Shwe Kye, who was later awarded the C.I.E.

Perhaps the most important police activity at this time was the manning of posts on the frontier of non-British Burma. Here trouble was always imminent and the posts were evidently constructed with an eye to defence. A typical post consisted of

a quadrangular enclosure . . . of stout bamboos interwoven with a bristling array of bamboo spikes. . . . Beside the gate stood a watch-tower. In the midst was a station-house and office, with a barred wooden cage for prisoners. . . . The posts were garrisoned entirely by local Burmans armed with das* and muskets.

We are told, however, that the Burmans did not take kindly to discipline and that it was never a surprise to find a police post on the frontier with ‘the great gate ajar, the watch-tower empty, and the sentry either absent or peacefully sleeping.’*

In the interior crime had decreased considerably, though White tells us that in his first sub-division only one murder was committed during the year. This statement leaves one wondering how much unreported crime there was, but it is nevertheless clear that in British Burma relatively orderly conditions now prevailed.

In 1886 Upper Burma was annexed and a new set of problems arose, the first of which was that of providing an administration for people who resented foreign rule. For a short time the authority of the old Burman Council of Ministers—the Hlutdaw—was maintained, but this soon proved impracticable and all power was assumed by the Chief Commissioner. The country was divided into districts, each of which was placed under a British officer of the Burma Commission, assisted by a Superintendent of Police and such force as could be made available. Indian criminal law was introduced, except in the hill districts which had not been under the direct administration of the Court at Ava. In those districts things were allowed to continue much as they were.

The problem of restoring law and order was grave indeed, for at this time Upper Burma was infested by dacoits whose ranks were swelled by the many Burmans who hoped to throw off British rule. Insurgency and dacoity thus went hand in hand. The most urgent task of the new administration was the suppression of these robber bands and the military force available to assist in this task was quite inadequate. According to a contemporary, ‘Flying columns often arrive too late to save the villages. The villagers having cause to recognize that we are too far off to protect them, lose confidence in our power and throw in their lot with the insurgents.* Even apart from the inadequacy of the military force, there was an obvious need for armed police at the disposal of the civil authorities. Two military police battalions were raised in February 1886 from the Indian Army, and a policy decision that a further battalion should be recruited on the basis of half Indians and half Burmese was soon found to be unworkable—partly because of the natural resentment at foreign rule and partly on account of the disinclination of Burmans at this period to accept discipline. When further military police battalions were raised, they were, therefore, recruited from India, with the addition of a few Karens. Gradually the number of military police battalions was raised, and eventually there were five battalions on the frontier, whose duties were essentially military—though it is said that they were called military police out of respect for an agreement by the Government of India not to station soldiers near the Chinese frontier. There were also two military police battalions in Rangoon and Mandalay. They were used in escort and guard duties, but also played a part in operations against dacoits.

Burmese resistance was far more determined than had been anticipated and ‘pacification’ took four or five years. Not the least of the difficulties was the lack of officers who knew anything about either Burma or police work. Amateurs in the field of police work had to be employed. In 1890 it was, therefore, found necessary to appoint two experienced British Indian police officers to go round Upper Burma and instruct the new British officers in their duties. Bit by bit authority asserted itself and in a relatively brief period of time, the country settled down though it was not long before dacoity again became common. Gradually the military were replaced by police forces and the normal British-Indian pattern prevailed.

In the meantime, Lower Burma could not be neglected. In 1886 a rebellion in three districts, which was put down with the aid of the military, led to an increase in the police force and to the establishment of police reserves at headquarter stations. Although there were honourable exceptions, it was the general experience at this time that Burmans still did not adapt themselves well to police work. Over one thousand Indians were, therefore, recruited and at the same time levies were raised from the Karens, whose character differed markedly from that of the Burmans. These levies were disbanded in 1888.

For the first two or three years after the annexation of Upper Burma, Upper and Lower Burma had each its own Inspector-General of Police, but in 1888 the two posts were united. Two Deputy Inspectors-General were then appointed, but the division of their functions was not territorial—one dealt with the civil and the other with the military police. In 1890 a Judicial Commissioner, independent of the control of the Chief Commissioner, was appointed for Upper Burma, thus continuing the principle of separation of the executive and judicial functions at top levels, which had been applied to Lower Burma in 1872. No such separation was effected in the districts.

During the early days of the pacification of Upper Burma, ordinary police work—as distinct from the suppression of large-scale dacoity and insurgency—was left largely in the hands of the indigenous organization of headmen. In the chaos of those years the system broke down in many places but perhaps more serious was the fact that British officers, used to conditions in India, misunderstood its working. As a result they undermined the influence of the myothugyis and the taikthugyis and gave an artificial importance to the gaungs.

The process of standardization already begun in Lower was now applied to Upper Burma, where indeed it received fresh impetus during the disorders that followed the annexation. It proceeded on the assumption that the village, or group of hamlets within sight or hail of each other, was in Burma, as in India, the basic social and political unit; and it had two objects in view, the first to maintain and strengthen this unit and the second to use this unit in the restoration of order by enforcing the joint responsibility of the village community for crimes committed within the village tract. It admitted the existence of myothugyis, taikthugyis, and other such officers but they were considered, on the basis of Indian experience, to have overshadowed and usurped the rightful power of the village headman. In fact later research makes it appear that the myothugyis were an institution at least as vital and important as that of the village headman. However, myothugyis and the like were gradually eliminated first in Lower and then in Upper Burma, in order to strengthen and popularize the position of the village headman. In doing so the largest indigenous social and political unit was destroyed.*

The Upper Burma Village Regulation 1887 and the Lower Burma Village Act 1889, were passed to give police powers to village headmen, and to require them to report not only the commission of serious crime, but also the resort to their villages of dacoits, robbers or notorious receivers of stolen property. For this purpose, rural policemen were appointed and placed under the orders of the headmen and certain obligations were imposed on the public to pass on to the headmen any information that they might obtain regarding crime 01 criminals. These provisions in themselves were salutary, but against the advantages gained must be set the fact that for all practical purposes the authority of the taikthugyis and myothugyis was replaced by that of subdivisional officers—members of the official hierarchy. This may have made for mechanical efficiency but it meant that administration now became remote from the public. These new arrangements applied only to half of Upper Burma, and the hill peoples were perhaps fortunate in that they continued to be under indirect rule as they had been under the Court of Ava.

No important changes in police organization took place in the next decade. In 1897 the Chief Commissioner was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant-Governor and provided with a Council. This had no direct effect on the work of the police, though it meant that legislation could now be enacted in Burma specifically for that province. The police force continued to expand, but it still consisted of a civil and a military branch. In 1898 we learn from the Administration Report that the civil branch consisted of an Inspector-General, two Deputy Inspectors-General, ninety-five Superintendents or Assistant Superintendents of Police, and 159 Inspectors, and that with other ranks its total strength was just over 13,000. It is indeed interesting to note that there were no sub-inspectors. There had been discussions as to the creation of that rank but they did not lead to action until after the Fraser Commission of 1902 had made its recommendations. The strength of the military police was at this time somewhat greater than that of the civil police. It provided escorts for the Boundary Commission and for civil officers travelling in unsettled areas, and its duties were hardly those which we should normally associate with the role of the police. As regards the civil police the author of the Administration Report just quoted makes the interesting comment that

so far as the regular visiting of villages and the surveillance of bad characters are concerned, beat patrol constables appear to carry out their duties satisfactorily.. . . They are [however] content on arrival at a village to ask the headman for news and to record it if there is any. . . . They should be encouraged to work with more intelligence.*

This comment does not leave one with the feeling that any high degree of efficiency had been attained. Beat constables were eventually abolished, but had to be replaced by surveillance constables who checked the movements of known criminals and looked for absconders. Their search was not always very thorough and there is a story to the effect that an absconder wanted for murder was eventually found working in the house of the officer in charge of a police station.

In 1899 an important change took place. The Rangoon Police Act (Act IV of 1899) constituted the Rangoon Police Force a separate establishment under the charge of a Commissioner of Police who was independent of the Inspector-General. Its strength in 1904 consisted of the Commissioner, three District Superintendents or Assistants, thirty-one inspectors or other officers, sixty-eight head constables and 750 constables. In its Resolution of 1905, the Government of India expressed the view that since the Commissioner had only become independent in 1899, it might be desirable to revert to the arrangement previously existing, but the matter was deferred for further consideration, and as we have seen, it was dealt with more generally by the Secretary of State.

In the Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902 and the Government Resolution thereon, Burma was treated incidentally as a part of India, and only a few of the recommendations and decisions require comment. The most interesting of them is the reference in the Report to ‘the serious block in the upper ranks owing to the abnormal recruitment at the time of the annexation of Upper Burma’. Nearly two-thirds of the superior officers had entered the service in the three years from 1886 to 1888; such recruitment as took place thereafter had been somewhat haphazard, officers being chosen from military or other sources in India as they became available. Because of the block, for some years before the Commission reported recruitment had ceased altogether. The Commissioners recommended that special pensions on a liberal scale should be given to men of any grade who were desirous of leaving the service, and that certain classes of superior officers should be allotted to other Provinces.* The Government Resolution made no reference to this proposal at all, and indeed the whole question of qualifying length of service for pensions was shelved. In 1905 normal recruitment of Assistant Superintendents was resumed, and the first English probationers arrived in Burma from England.

The Commission proposed a rate of pay for constables in Burma higher than that in India, and this was accepted in the Resolution. Burma now came into line with the rest of India in that posts of sub-inspectors were created, but whereas in other Provinces there were to be five grades in that rank, in Burma the Resolution authorized the appointment of an additional lower grade on a pay of Rs. 40 per month since ‘men of good vernacular education but no knowledge of English’* can be obtained for that pay.

Two other exceptions from the general Indian scheme were now sanctioned by the Government of India. First, since most police recruits in Burma were married, it was decided that constables should continue to be trained at District Headquarters and not in a central school. Secondly, the ‘beat system’, under which constables had a roving commission to make periodic visits to certain areas, was to be retained, though it was condemned in other Provinces. The functions of beat constables were to be preventive not detective, and the rules were to be modified ‘so as to render them less rigid and to guard against the constable’s visit becoming an occasion of oppression’*

The Commission had tentatively suggested the abolition of the military police, but the Government of India decided to maintain that force in Burma and ‘to look to this branch of the police force for the maintenance of order in times of emergency’.*

Within two or three years the orders contained in the Resolution were implemented, except that a difficulty arose in filling the posts of sub-inspectors. The Government of India had restricted the promotion of head constables to be sub-inspectors to 15 per cent of the vacancies, the balance of 85 per cent being recruited direct. In Burma it was impossible to find enough qualified direct recruits, and for a long time about a hundred vacancies every year remained unfilled.* The difficulty continued until in 1913 the permissible proportion of promotions was raised to 30 per cent.

No important changes in organization took place during the next two decades, but two particular difficulties continued. The first was the high incidence of dacoity and other crimes of violence as compared with other Provinces. Various explanations have been put forward for this phenomenon. One modern author has stated that in both Upper and Lower Burma the most marked increase of crime occurred about twenty-five years after annexation and he attributed it to boredom under foreign rule. Another writer has suggested that as a result of large-scale emigration from Upper Burma to Lower Burma ‘towns and villages have many transients who do not become well-known to the headmen and local police officials, thus making detection and suppression more difficult and removing the restraints that come with a settled population’.* Others again have written of the natural hot temper of the Burman. None of these explanations is altogether convincing, but the facts are unmistakable. An experienced police officer writes thus on this subject,

The Burmese attitude to dacoity always amazed me. Most villagers paid lip service to decrying it, but to most it was not a particularly heinous crime, even when attended by serious wounding and even murder. On return to his village, the convict was in no way ostracised. On the contrary, he was quite a lad amongst the lads and started at no disadvantage when looking for a bride amongst the village belles.*

The Burma Administration Reports year after year tell a monotonous tale of the high incidence of violent crime. The Report for 1921, for example, shows that there were over 10,000 such crimes in Burma during the year as compared with 7,000 in Bengal 11 000 in the United Provinces and only 9,000 in the Punjab, in spite of the very much larger populations of those Provinces.

In their fight against dacoity the lower ranks of the police were armed with dahs, but a few firearms were allotted to police stations outside district headquarters. Originally the firearms were .577 Snyders, but early in the twentieth century they were replaced by .450 Martini Henry carbines. ‘Poor weapons though they were, they were generally superior to anything the dacoits could then produce, though not as effective as the 12-bore guns loaded with buckshot the dacoits later acquired.’*

A second difficulty was that service in the subordinate police continued throughout this period to be unpopular. Recruits were hard to get and many who joined did not stay long in the service. In 1911, for example, nearly 1,700 men resigned, deserted or were dismissed, and in 1920 the corresponding figure was about 1,200. A police force seriously under sanctioned strength thus had to cope year by year with a high incidence of crime. Moreover, from time to time the normal habit of violence erupted into some special local form. This may be well illustrated by events in Myinmu in the District of Pegu in 1909. The story would be entertaining but for its tragic end.

Well, on this evening Maung Than and his friend were whispering and giggling with the girl, smoking the while the saybawlaik—the whacking big cheroot of Kipling’s poem—when a stray spark from the cigar set fire to the sleeve of Maung Than’s cotton jacket. Laughingly they put out the fire, the friend remarking letyo ga mee touk de—‘fire came out of his arm’—a quotation from a well-known zat or historical story, the Zat of King Kyanyittha, a famous king of Pagan in the long ago. The zat tells of a prophesy made at the death of this king that he would one day be reincarnated and that his reincarnation would be recognized by fire coming out of his arm. Jokingly Maung Than was teased by the girl and his friend and hailed as Kyanyitta Winsa—the reincarnated king’.*

Incredible as it may seem, the incident soon assumed the character of a miracle. Maung Than deluded both himself and many local villagers that he was destined to be king. Pongyis* blessed him and a considerable number of followers gathered round. A favourable date having been chosen, the little ‘army’ over a thousand strong ‘armed with spears and dahs, with banners waving and heralded by the beating of war drums’ set out on its pathetic little rebellion. It attacked the Myinmu police station, but the District Superintendent of Police had been forewarned and ‘a volley or two fired from the police station, followed by a few casualties in the rebel ranks, begat a doubt in their minds of the efficacy of the charms against bullets’. The rebels quickly dispersed and Maung Than with four or five devoted followers escaped and went into hiding. A year or two later they were caught and Maung Than was hanged. This affair was of no consequence except as illustrating the proneness of the people to violence and the need for constant police vigilance.

Life in Burma in the next decade or so may be said to have gone on at two levels. The rural people and the pongyis, though perhaps resentful of foreign rule, were scarcely politically conscious in a modern sense, but there was also a western-educated minority amongst whom nationalist political aspirations were rapidly developing. Those aspirations were strengthened when Burma was excluded from the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals, and the resulting agitation led in 1923 to the application to Burma, with some modification, of the reforms which had been introduced into India by the Government of India Act 1919.

One of the most important reforms involved an increase in the number of Indians in the superior services, and as we have seen this matter was referred to the Lee Commission for examination. In its Report the Commission devoted a separate chapter to Burma, and expressed the opinion that in view of the backwardness of higher education and the reluctance on the part of Burmans to attend Indian colleges, it must be some years before an adequate supply of qualified Burmans could be available to man the public services. On the other hand, they realized that Burman public opinion would not accept proposals which fell short of those for India. They perhaps wisely shirked the issue by making their all-India proposals applicable to Burma, leaving it to the Government of India, in consultation with the Government of Burma, to make the necessary adjustments. It will be remembered that in the case of the Indian Police Service the Commission recommended that of every hundred recruits, fifty should be Europeans recruited direct, thirty should be Indians recruited direct and twenty should be obtained by promotion from the Provincial services. At this time the term ‘Indians’ included ‘Burmans’, but in practice direct recruitment in Burma now was confined to Burmans or Anglo-Burmans.

Burma was now about to enter on a difficult period. In spite of the division between Reserved and Transferred Subjects introduced by the 1923 Reforms, a considerable measure of popular control over administration was in fact obtained. This affected the police in two ways. First, they became more liable to political interference and less sure of themselves; secondly, the public became less amenable to authority. In 1924 the Extremist Party, Hlaing-Pu-Gyaw, launched a campaign for the non-payment of taxes and disorder spread rapidly. The country was in a state of transition between the old autocratic rule, in which lawlessness was put down with a strong hand, and democratic rule in which law and order can only be maintained chiefly by public opinion’.*

In 1925 an attempt was made to bridge the resulting gap between the administration and the public by the constitution of Public Police Advisory Committees. It was reported that where the Superintendents of Police encouraged them, the Committees proved useful, but unfortunately, at this critical juncture, the recommendations of a Police Inquiry Committee led to serious retrenchment in the police department. The posts of five District Superintendents and several Sub-Divisional Police Officers were abolished; the charges of Circle Inspectors were increased in size; and no fewer than 254 police stations or outposts were closed.* At the same time, the strength of the military police was reduced by about 25 per cent. The Inspector-General rightly protested and declared that the reduced force was inadequate to carry out its duties. He was quickly proved right by the further rapid increase in crime, particularly in districts where the reduction had been most severe, and during the next two or three years it was found necessary to augment the strength of the force to some extent and to reopen some of the stations and outposts which had been closed. Unfortunately, the sanctioning of increased numbers did not necessarily mean that suitable candidates would be forthcoming, and in 1927 great difficulty was still experienced in recruiting Burmans with the right educational qualifications. The situation was thus far from happy when Burma entered on a troublous period which lasted from 1930 to 1932. The troubles began with an outbreak of communal violence in Rangoon, where in May 1930 Burmese mobs attacked Indian labour. The immediate cause of the outbreak was the fact that Burmese labourers, who had been employed to break a strike of Indian dock workers, were dismissed at the end of the strike. It is generally considered that this dismissal was a grave tactical error. The Burmese labour were not particularly effective in the docks, but they had flocked there in large numbers and with enthusiasm and resented what they regarded as ingratitude. The real cause of the outbreak, however, was the growing Burmese resentment at the dominant position which Indians had acquired in the economy of Burma. Not only were they remarkably successful as traders and moneylenders, but they acquired much of the land in the Delta, and even at the level of under-tenancy and field labour, Indian immigrants undercut Burmans in competition. At the same time ‘the multiplication of great steam-driven rice mills employing Indian coolies drove the small Burmese rice-millers out of the trade’. In many spheres cheap Indian labour also drove the Burmans out of their traditional occupations.* There can be little doubt that the superior efficiency of the Indians brought prosperity to Burma, but it also aroused anti-foreign feeling.

This feeling was indeed a factor in the Tharrawaddy rebellion of 1930-31. That rebellion took authority by surprise, and even today its causes are not fully understood. They can best be described as due to a combination of economic factors, resentment at the presence and position of foreigners, and superstition. The rebellion was not political in any modern sense, and Burmese politicians played very little part in it. It began in the distinct of Tharrawaddy and its leader was an ex-pongye, Saya San. The rebels apparently aimed at setting up a kingdom under his rule and ‘crowned the monk-magician in the royal palace (of bamboo decorated with tinsel paper)’. The first overt act of the rebellion was the murder of a Deputy Forest Ranger, after which Saya San and a few followers took to the jungles at the foot of the Pegu Yomas with little idea as to their next step. There they fortified their camps with bamboo stockades. trenches and booby traps and settled down to await attacks by Government forces. Their most difficult problem was the collection of firearms. The licensing laws of Burma practically restricted the possession of firearms to headmen or officials, and a very select few non-officials. The manufacture of breech-loading weapons was in general too difficult for the rebels, but they showed considerable ingenuity in improvising muzzle-loading guns from galvanized iron pipes. ‘It had long been known to the police as well as to the villagers, that the ¾-inch bore of the railings of the P.W.D. bridges neatly took a 12-gauge cartridge’—and lead bullets and gunpowder presented no difficulty.* However primitive their weapons might be, the rebels were strongly armed in superstition. Their leader, Saya San, claimed magical powers and by ‘tattooed charms, pills, oils, needles buried under the skin, he made men invulnerable, invisible. . . . They advanced on to our machine guns believing these things, and they continued to believe even after they were wounded’.* Their faith in the virtue of tattooing, accompanied by certain conditions, was almost unlimited. ‘For instance, the subject must not cohabit with his wife in the next fortnight and if he later managed to collect a rifle bullet, it was due less to the inefficiency of the tattooing than to his own unrestrained uxoriousness.’* An amusing story illustrates the pathetic faith of these villagers.

A police officer visiting a village in the Sagaing District came across a tattooer selling immunity to dah-cuts at a rupee a time—On being questioned by the policeman the tattooer, who had himself been tattooed, held out his arm for the policeman to take a cut at it. He did so and cut it clean off. It is difficult to decide who was the more surprised.

It was in keeping with this superstitious spirit that the rebels called themselves galons, that being the name of a mythical bird.

The first efforts of the authorities against the rebels were not at all effective and the civil police were evidently discouraged by the murder of a Deputy Superintendent of Police in the Prome District. Neighbouring villages were soon deserted and when military police and the Burma Rifles arrived in the locality where the rebels were gathering, all sources of information as to their whereabouts had dried up. Professional criminals naturally joined the deluded insurgents. Combing the jungle

produced nothing better than rebel camps recently evacuated or a rapid exchange of shots with nothing much to show for them. The rebels, however, lost any initiative they had and retired into camps deeper in the jungle. Except for occasional raids on villages to restock supplies, the rebels concentrated on evading Government forces.

It soon appeared that they were getting tired of such fruitless activities, but unfortunately a fresh outbreak in the Thayetno District gave the rebellion fresh life. There the same pattern was repeated and for a time the Government forces had much the worst of the exchanges. More than half the district was soon in the hands of the rebels.

More effective action by the authorities was clearly required and at this stage an infantry brigade from India was brought in, together with additional military police, including five troops of mounted infantry. The advent of the troops by no means lessened the responsibility of the civil police.

The troops knew nothing of the country or its people. Even such simple matters as obtaining guides was generally beyond, them. And ‘intelligence’ of the enemy and his plans was quite impossible. Civil officers worked closely with the military

and often had to advise them against going in at the point of the bayonet and inviting unnecessary casualties. From now on, the rebels were harried continuously. Saya San was caught and the relentless pressure now exerted on the rebel gangs at last convinced wavering villagers that it was better to be on the side of Government. In January 1932 a final local rising was put down and the rebellion was at an end. The civil and military police had played a distinguished part in its suppression and it must be remembered that in spite of the military character of the military police, they too were under the orders of the Inspector-General and indeed formed part of the police force with which this book is concerned.*

Law and order were gradually restored and the attention of the authorities now began to be concentrated on the relations between Burma and the rest of British India. As a modern writer has put it, ‘the feelings of the Burmese for Indians in the mass were compounded of contempt, dislike, and a fear of being undercut by them because of their lower standard of living’* and in 1920 an unofficial delegation to London pressed unsuccessfully for the separation of Burma from India. In 1923 a resolution demanding separation was passed in the Burma Legislative Council, but before long the Burmese began to have second thoughts. India was clearly moving rapidly towards a greater degree of self-government, and if Burma were separated she might not share in that advance. The result of the general election in 1932 ‘was an almost solid, if very surprising, vote against separation’.* The British Government nevertheless decided that separation would be in the best interests of Burma, particularly as a pledge had been given that this would not prejudice the political progress of that country. Separation was in fact effected from 1 April 1937. It was ‘forced upon Burma and accepted with a sigh of relief. There was no audible criticism and the issue passed out of politics’.*Burma ceased to be part of India, a separate Burma Police Service was formed, and the history of the police in Burma thereafter is outside the scope of this book.

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Part Two — The Impact of Politics

Chapter 15

The Political Background

The half-century immediately preceding the transfer of power was a period of deep-seated political unrest and serious communal tension, during which the Indian police were subjected to great physical and psychological strain. The important part played by the police in controlling the situation will be discussed in later chapters, but we must first survey in some detail the political and constitutional developments in this period.

Early in the nineteenth century such wise British administrators as the Marquess of Hastings,* Mountstuart Elphinstone, Munro and Metcalfe, looked on British rule as an interlude, and Elphinstone in particular ‘never ceased to preach the importance of training Indians for that self-government which . . . must eventually come’.* When, in 1833, Macaulay’s influence secured the passage by the Governor-General and Council of a Resolution that all funds available for education should be devoted to the promotion of the knowledge of English literature and science, new forces came into play. Henceforth, the impact of British liberal thought was bound, in the fullness of time, to lead to a passionate Indian demand for self-government, and indeed the first early stirrings of such a desire led in 1852 to the foundation by Dadabhai Naoroji of an important political association. Its keynote was loyalty to the British Crown, but it demanded the admission of Indians to a larger share than they had hitherto enjoyed in the administration of the affairs of the country.

Unfortunately, in the second third of the century a change came over the attitude of the British. Narrow evangelicalism had led to a disrespect for Hindu thought and tradition, and at the same time, British secularists began to equate progress with Westernization. The Mutiny encouraged the British to become more aloof from the people and ‘in the quarter of a century after the Mutiny many Englishmen developed an intolerant and arrogant attitude towards educated Indians which would have shocked men of an earlier generation’.* India in this period suffered from a widespread spiritual malaise. The British were aloof and suspicious; the Muslims were sullen; while educated Hindus were restless and understandably impatient for some signs of progress towards a share in the business of government.

There were, however, hopeful signs. The Mutiny had compelled the home Government to give thought to the state of India, and when the Crown assumed the government of India, the famous Proclamation of 1858 re-affirmed the promise of 1833, that British subjects of whatever race or creed should be freely admitted into the public service. The earlier promise had been somewhat hollow, but after 1858, although progress was slow, the process had begun. The fact that the open competition for the Indian Civil Service was held only in England made it difficult for Indians to compete, but, nevertheless, in 1864, one Indian joined the Service, and in 1871 three more Indians passed into it. In the meantime, the Indian Councils Act of 1861 had led to the appointment of Indians to the Legislative Councils of the Governor-General and the Governors.

A number of Indian political associations came into being in this period. Their importance lay in the fact that public opinion was beginning to emerge, and that the British rulers did not in general seek to suppress it. Nevertheless, such a movement could easily become an embarrassment to a foreign government, and in the seventies the critical attitude adopted by a remarkably free press made the Government of India apprehensive that disaffection would spread. Certain restrictions were, therefore, imposed by the Vernacular Press Act in 1878. That Act was resented by the numerically small but important class of educated Indians, and the position was made worse by the controversy over the Ilbert Bill. A Bill introduced by Sir Courtney Ilbert in 1883 sought to remove the provision under which European British subjects outside the Presidency towns could not be tried by Indian magistrates. Ilbert’s proposal was fully justified, but it was vehemently and irresponsibly opposed by the British community. The Bill was withdrawn, but the frenzied and successful opposition to it had not only inflamed racial feelings, but had also taught Indians the dangerous lesson that even the powerful Government of India could be coerced.

Fortunately, there were still amongst the British in India, men who clung to the ideals of their wisest predecessors. In the seventies, local committees had been formed in most provinces to deal with such matters as health, education and communications, and although their powers were very limited they were intended as a means of affording training m self-government. In 1883, Lord Ripon re turned to this theme and in a resolution proposing the establishment of certain institutions of local self-government, stated frankly that they were not aimed primarily at administrative improvement, but at giving ‘a measure of political and popular education’. The Secretary of State took a narrower view of the Resolution and it was only partially implemented.

The Indian National Congress

In 1885 there occurred one of the most momentous events in Indian history: the foundation of the Indian National Congress. Allan Octavian Hume, an Indian Civil Servant of unusual independence and sensitivity, had long been conscious of the need to bridge the gulf between the Government and the people, and in 1883, after his retirement, he issued a circular pleading for fifty Indian graduates to volunteer as founders of a new national movement. His appeal ended with what this writer has elsewhere described as the most moving appeal ever addressed to any people by a foreigner.* The appeal was successful and in December 1885, the Indian National Congress was born, not only as the result of British initiative, but with the blessing of the Viceroy. At the inaugural meeting, the President set the tone for the following two decades. He paid tribute to the British achievements in India and he affirmed the loyalty of the Congress to the British Government, but he urged that ‘the basis of the Government should be wide and people should have their proper and legitimate share in it’. The specific subjects discussed in this session were the desire for an expansion of the Legislative Councils, simultaneous recruitment in India and Britain for the Indian Civil Service, and the re-imposition of the import duty on cotton textiles.

In its early years, the Government of India was not unfriendly to the Congress, and within a few years, in view of the moderate-tone of most of its leaders, the British Government felt justified in taking another small step towards representative government. By the Indian Councils Act 1892, the powers of the Provincial Legislative Councils were expanded—they were given the right to discuss the Budget, but not to vote on it—and a system which was, in practice, though not in theory, a form of indirect election of additional non-official members of the Councils was introduced. Moreover, those additional members were given the right to elect four non-official members of the Imperial Legislative Council. On the whole, the new Councils worked well and, in general, criticism was temperate though not always well informed.*

The next decade witnessed a considerable hardening of the nationalist attitude, to which several factors contributed. The intelligentsia were growing in numbers and self-confidence, and were increasingly resentful of their insignificant place in the top ranks of the administration; opportunities of employment for middle-class Hindus were few; and, perhaps most important of all, a Hindu revival in militant form was in progress. As we shall see later, the revolutionary movement came into being first in Bombay and then in Bengal and although at this stage the Congress did not in general support terrorism, its demands became more strident. In 1906 Dadabhai Naoroji, now the ‘Grand Old Man’ of India, made the first official demand for Swaraj, or self-government, ‘like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies’, while the official Resolution of the Congress supported the swadeshi movement* and authorized the use of boycott as a political weapon.* In the following year, there was an open breach between the extremists led by Tilak and Arabindo Ghose, and the moderates led by G. P. Gokhale and Sir Surendranath Banerjea, and when, in the 1907 August Session, the moderates refused to re-affirm the Resolution regarding swadeshi and boycott, the Tilak party broke the meeting up in disorder.

The attitude of the moderates was justified by the enactment in 1909 of the Morley Minto reforms which represented a great political step forward. The most important changes then made were the abandonment of official majorities in the provincial Legislative Councils, the acceptance of the principle of election rather than nomination of the majority of non-official Council members, and the provision that Muslim non-official members should be elected by purely Muslim constituencies, an arrangement which had become unavoidable after the communal tension resulting from the partition of Bengal. Of almost equal importance was the fact that the Act ‘was accompanied by a declaration of intention to secure the appointment of an Indian to the Governor-General’s Council’,*—a declaration which resulted in the appointment of Mr. S. P. Sinha (later Lord Sinha). These reforms satisfied moderate Indian opinion, but the extremists grew in strength and pitched their demands ever higher, while the terrorist groups inspired articles in the press of such virulence that no Government could have ignored them. Therefore, the Press Act, 191 o was passed to empower the Government to forfeit the security deposit of a press which printed inflammatory matter For a time the Act had a marked effect on the tone of the press.

When the First World War broke out, although terrorism was still active, the general political scene was not unsatisfactory.

The war evoked a spontaneous outburst of loyalty from all classes of Indians. Mr. Gandhi offered himself for active service, and declared that Indians in the U.K., ‘should place themselves unconditionally at the disposal of the authorities’, while in the 1914 Session of Congress, the President spoke of British and Indians mingling their blood in the cause of ‘honour, liberty and justice’.*

By the end of the war, this harmony had been completely disrupted. The moderates had lost control of the nationalist movement and India was about to enter on a long period of violent struggle. Several factors had combined to bring about this change, but by far the most important of them was the ferment of ideas created by the war. In the Western world, there was widespread talk of the principle of self-determination, and Indian soldiers who had come into close contact with Western peoples, returned to their villages with new ideas as to their rights and their relationship with the rulers of India. ‘The freedom for which the Allies were fighting must mean freedom for India too—surely if Indians were fit to die for a great cause, they were fit to govern themselves?’* Moreover, educated Indians had for long had their eyes on Ireland, and the rebellion of that country in 1916 stirred them considerably. Personal factors were also at work. Tilak again began to carry on a highly militant anti-Government propaganda, and Mrs. Besant founded the Home Rule League, declaring her intention of ‘waking up all the sleepers so that they may work for their motherland’. At the same time, the Muslims, who had been profoundly disturbed by the annulment of the partition of Bengal, were genuinely distressed at the action of the Allies against Turkey. This brought politically-minded Muslims closer to the Hindus, and in 1916, the Lucknow Pact was a bargain under which the Congress accepted the Muslim demand for separate electorates and for ‘weightage’ in the legislatures, and in return the Muslims undertook to join in the fight for self-government. The alliance did not last long, but for a time it considerably strengthened the anti-Government forces.

The British Government was not unresponsive to the new mood, and in 1917, Mr. E. S. Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, made his famous pronouncement.

The policy of His Majesty’s government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.*

Within a short space of time, Montagu and the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, produced a report, the essential provision of which was the establishment in the provinces of a dual form of government, which came to be known as dyarchy, so called because power was divided between an official and a non-official wing of government. The proposals were enacted in 1919, and came into force in 1921. The basis of the new scheme was two-fold. First, subjects of legislation and administration were classified as either central or provincial—a classification which has been described as ‘the first step on the road to federation—the first breach in that unitary character of the Indian Administration which had been established after the bitter struggles of Madras and Bombay against the authority of the Governor-General in the eighteenth century’.* The second main feature of the scheme was the division of provincial subjects into ‘reserved’ and ‘transferred’ categories.

The ‘transferred subjects’ would be under the charge of Indian ministers, and the Governors would normally act on their advice in respect of them. The intention was that ministers would regard themselves as responsible to the Legislature—as an embryonic ‘responsible government’. In the case of the ‘reserved’ subjects the government would go on very much as before and Governors were given the necessary powers to secure the passage of any legislation necessary to their handling of these subjects. Since dyarchy was regarded largely as a process of training for Indian ministers and legislators, the more important subjects such as law and order and finance were ‘reserved’, while the ‘transferred’ subjects included what are generally known as the nation-building departments.*

Although the reforms were not as far-reaching as the nationalists had demanded, they did in fact constitute a very real advance, and in normal circumstances would probably have satisfied reasonable men. As it happened, however, the atmosphere was vitiated by the highly emotional outcry against the Rowlatt Report. We shall consider in a later chapter the reasons which led the Rowlatt Committee to propose arming the Government of India with special powers to deal with revolutionary activities. Here we need only remark that in times of emergency, similar powers have been found necessary by many governments, including those of nearly all the Commonwealth countries which have attained self-government in recent years. Grossly exaggerated stories as to the implications of the proposed legislation were circulated and considerable resentment was aroused. The skilful and unscrupulous exploitation of this feeling by extremist politicians made it impossible for the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms to receive sober consideration and at the Congress session in December 1918, they were condemned. The tone of the proceedings of the Congress session was nevertheless moderate, but the extremists carried on an intemperate campaign in the country. At this stage, Gandhi lent his support to the extremists, and in spite of the disapproval of the moderates, threatened to launch a civil disobedience campaign. When the Rowlatt Act was passed he called for a hartal* throughout India on 6 April 1919. He was arrested and this led to violent disorders in the course of which an Indian official was deliberately burned alive. Gandhi called off the movement confessing that he ‘had called on the people to launch civil disobedience before they had learned the lesson of peace’. It was, however, too late to undo the mischief he had caused and before long the Punjab was aflame.

Non-Co-operation

The disturbances in that Province and the action taken by the authorities to cope with the movement will be discussed later, and here we are only concerned with their effect on political movements and constitutional developments. Their effect was indeed traumatic and it is beyond doubt that the tragedy of the Jallianwala Bagh and its sequel did more than any other single act or event to strengthen the position of the extremists. ‘It inflamed hatred in Indian hearts which was not extinguished for many years.’* In the political sphere it led, in a special Congress Session in September 1920, to the adoption of a Non-co-operation Resolution, sponsored by Gandhi in spite of his earlier confession that the people were not yet ready for non-violent movements. The Resolution called on Congress members to resign from seats on local bodies; to boycott British courts; to withdraw their children from Government schools and colleges; to refuse to buy British piece goods; and to embark on a large-scale campaign for the encouragement of hand-spinning and hand-weaving. ‘A new phase in Congress activity had begun and the history of India for some years to come was to be largely the story of non-co-operation and boycott’.* The charka* and the Gandhi cap now became the symbols of the nationalist movement and India entered on one of the most sterile periods in her long history.

Although there had been a sharp division of opinion in the Congress as to Council entry, the Party did in fact boycott the 1920 elections, and allowed the seats in the legislature to be filled by liberals—a course which Congressmen soon came to regret since it meant that the liberals stole the limelight. Before the next elections were held in 1923, the civil disobedience movement had led to violence, and although Gandhi had suspended it after the tragedy of Chauri-Ghaura,* he had been sent to gaol. In his absence, C. R. Das, who had never approved of the boycott, persuaded the Congress to enter the Councils. The majority of the Party did so only in order to wreck them, and in two provinces they so far succeeded that dyarchy was temporarily abandoned in favour of Governor’s rule. Elsewhere dyarchy gave Indian ministers valuable experience, though, thanks to the obstructive tactics of the Congress, they had to lean more heavily on their official colleagues and on the nominated members of the Councils than the authors of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms had contemplated.

Although the Councils were thus made to work, the position of the country was increasingly unhappy. During the next decade or so, suspicion and antagonism characterized the relations between Englishmen and educated Indians, while a great cleavage developed between the Hindus and Muslims. The masses were now, under the tremendous influence of Gandhi, brought into the struggle for the first time. On a long term view this may have been to the good, since it did much to develop a true sense of Indian nationality, but its immediate effect was to create widespread disorder and to inculcate a disrespect for authority which was to continue even after Independence.

Once again, the home Government recognized the need for further progress, and in 1928 the Simon Commission examined the position anew. The Commission consisted entirely of members of the British Parliament, and the Congress Party therefore refused to cooperate with it. That Party then set up an independent Committee under Motilal Nehru to make its own constitutional proposals, which in effect tore up the Lucknow Pact and rejected the Muslim demand for separate electorates. In January 1929, the Muslims therefore stepped up their demands.

The Constitution of India must be federal, with complete autonomy and residuary powers vested in the constituent provinces; there must be separate communal electorates; Muslims must have ‘weightage’ where they are in a minority; and Muslims must have a statutory share in the Central and Provincial cabinets.*

It is not necessary to summarize the provisions of the Simon Commission Report as it was in fact overtaken by events. In 1929 the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, announced that ‘the natural issue of India’s constitutional progress is the attainment of Dominion status’, but that assurance did not calm the atmosphere, since the Congress leaders replied by demanding that Dominion status should be conceded at once, not step-by-step. This demand was unacceptable and in April 1930, Gandhi launched a civil disobedience campaign. It must be remembered that there was no difference of opinion between the Congress and the British Government as to the goal to be achieved. The only disagreement was to timing and ‘it was on this narrow issue that Mr. Gandhi launched a campaign which was to produce seventeen years of disorder and violence’.*

Provincial Autonomy

In spite of these discouraging factors, the British Government proceeded with its determination to move towards responsible government in India. Three Round Table Conferences failed to produce agreement between the different Indian communities and in August 1932, after the second Round Table Conference, the British Government made a Communal Award which created separate electorates not only for Muslims, but for the Untouchables—‘depressed classes’ or ‘scheduled castes’ as they were now called. Gandhi accepted that part of the Award which related to the Muslims, but declared a fast unto death against its application to the ‘depressed classes’. The reaction of the educated Indians to this fast can only be described as hysterical, and in the end the ‘depressed caste’ leaders gave in. Under the Poona Pact, certain seats were to be reserved for the ‘depressed classes’, but except for the first ten years their representatives were to be elected by all Hindus.

After all these struggles and deliberations, in 1935 the Government of India Act laid down a new Constitution. The Act confirmed the quasi-federal principle which had been introduced in the 1919 Act. It created autonomous provinces, exercising legislative and executive authority, not by delegation from the Centre, but in their own right, and subjects were classified for these purposes as Central Provincial or Concurrent. Defence, foreign affairs, including external trade, and the most important sources of revenue, were reserved to the central government, while law and order and what were generally regarded as the ‘nation-building subjects’ were included in the provincial sphere. In the provinces full authority, subject to certain qualifications, was vested in the Ministers and the Legislatures, and the system of responsible government was established, not by a section of the Act, but by Instruments of Instructions by which the Governor was directed to choose his Ministers in consultation with the person most likely to command a majority in the Legislature. Thereafter he was to act on their advice, subject to certain matters on which he was to act on his individual judgment or in his discretion.

The federal part of the Act provided for a kind of dyarchy at the centre, ultimate authority being reserved to the British Government acting through the Governor-General, but this part was only to come into force if and when half the Indian Princes were ready to accede to the Federation. Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, made great efforts to persuade the Princes to accede, but many of them were blind to their own interests, as a result of which blindness they were swept away after Independence. The federal part of the Act thus never came into force and the Central Government continued much as before.

Although the Act established what was virtually provincial autonomy, the Congress was so suspicious of the special powers of the Governors, that when the Act came into force in 1937 after fresh elections, they declined to participate in the formation of Cabinets unless the Governors undertook not to use their special powers. No such assurance could be given, and for some months Congressmen remained in the wilderness in provinces where they had a majority. In June 1937, Linlithgow found a face-saving formula which meant nothing, but enabled the Congress members to accept office. They soon found that provincial autonomy and responsible government were realities and that any limitations on the authority of Ministers arose, not from actions by the Governor, but from the dictatorship exercised over them by the Central Congress authority known as the Parliamentary Board. The Congress high command ‘began to regard themselves as the only guardians of the true faith. . . . Minorities were entitled to protection, but must seek it within the Congress fold’.*

This attitude soon began to make Muslims in Congress majority provinces very apprehensive. They had hoped that they would be taken into coalition governments in those provinces, but the Congress high command soon laid it down that only Muslims who joined the Congress could be so admitted. As a political party, the Congress was fully justified in taking this line, but it was unwise and resulted in great bitterness on the part of the Muslims, which was to lead in due course to partition. The Muslims began to complain of oppression in the Hindu majority provinces, and Jinnah went so far as to demand the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into their grievances. Whether the Muslims in any particular province were in fact oppressed or not is a matter on which we need not form a judgment. The important thing is that they believed it to be true. They began to condemn the 1935 Act which in their view would entrench the Hindu majority in the Government of India, and they began to doubt if any of the safeguards to which they had attached importance would in fact avail to protect them in independent India. They now followed the example set earlier by the Hindu Mahasabha and recruited Muslim national guards and other para-military organizations.

When war broke out in 1939, the position thus was that while the bogey of Congress civil disobedience had disappeared, the Hindus and the Muslims were seriously estranged and the Muslim League had begun to consolidate itself round the person of Jinnah.

Most Indians sympathized with the Allies in the struggle against fascism, and Gandhi’s first reaction was to offer moral support to Britain. Nehru and the Working Committee on the other hand seized the opportunity to bargain for immediate independence, while the Muslim League demanded that no constitutional advance should be taken without its consent. When the bargaining tactics of the Congress failed, the Working Committee refused to co-operate in the war effort, on the ostensible ground that India had not been consulted over the declaration of war. Congress provincial Ministers resigned, much against the wishes of many of them. Congress non-co-operation did not have much practical effect on the prosecution of the war. Adequate recruits for the fighting services were forthcoming, industrialists seized the opportunity to forge ahead with production, while labour recruitment was stimulated by higher wages. The Muslim League did not offer official help, but in practice League provincial Ministries co-operated whole-heatedly and encouraged recruitment for the forces.

Towards Self-Government and Partition

Politically the position was one of stalemate and this might well have been allowed to continue until the end of the war, but in 1942 the imminence of the Japanese threat led the British Government to make another attempt to break the deadlock. Sir Stafford Cripps flew to India with an offer of complete self-determination after the war and a considerable share in power during the war. The Congress rejected it, nominally on grounds connected with the war-time plan but really because the Cripps offer implied the right of Muslim provinces to break away from the Union when India became independent. The Muslim League then thought it tactically wise also to reject the offer, but Muslims were in fact convinced that they had scored a great success. The Congress now found itself in a dilemma. Gandhi would have been content to see allied troops withdrawn and ‘to leave India to God or anarchy’, but Nehru and many of his colleagues had never shared Gandhi’s pacifist views and had no illusions about the Japanese. Nevertheless, in August 1942 they launched a rebellion which they intended to be short and quick. Even Gandhi now changed his attitude and supported the rebellion, while recognizing that it might lead to violence. The measures taken to counter that rebellion and the tremendous strain on the courage and resources of the police will be recounted in a later chapter. Here we need merely note that the authorities completely crushed the movement, the leaders were put into gaol, and India remained relatively peaceful for the rest of the war.

At the end of the war, Britain proved the sincerity of her earlier promises by sending out a Cabinet Mission, in which Cripps was the moving spirit, to try yet again to achieve agreement between the Congress and the Muslim League, and to offer India self-government. By this time the Muslim demand for partition, which had perhaps not been supported by a majority of the community when it was first made by Jinnah and the League in 1940, had become almost universal amongst Muslims. In the 1946 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly every Muslim seat was captured by a pro-partition candidate. Under these circumstances there was no possibility of agreement and although it established Constituent Assemblies which were to provide the necessary framework at a later stage, the Mission failed completely in its main purpose. After that failure, the situation deteriorated rapidly. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, exerted himself to the utmost to implement that part of the Mission’s plan which envisaged the formation of an interim Government including representatives of the Congress and the League. This was a task for which this great soldier was quite unfitted, and his inept handling of the negotiations made relations worse. Communal madness now seized the country in its grip. On 16 August 1946, which had been chosen by the Muslim League as Direct Action Day, communal fury broke out in Calcutta, where, in the course of what came to be known as ‘the Great Calcutta Killing’, 20,000 Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus were killed or seriously injured. Repercussions in other parts of India were equally violent and the country appeared to be moving inexorably towards anarchy. Any hope that the situation would improve when the interim Government including representatives of the Congress and the League was formed in October 1946, were soon proved illusory. The world was treated to the spectacle of an open struggle between the two wings of the Cabinet, each of which sought to thwart the legislative or financial plans of the other.

Matters could not long continue like this and Wavell proposed the abandonment of India with no Constitution at all. The British Government were not prepared to accept this policy of ‘scuttle’ and so, on 20 February 1947, they sought to inject reality into the situation, by a declaration that power would be transferred by June 1948 whether agreement had been reached or not. The terms of this statement were drafted with great skill. The Muslims were made to realize that they might find themselves handed over to a Unitary Government of India, while the Congress had to recognize that the transfer might be on the basis of partition. The forceful personality of Lord Mountbatten, the new Viceroy, who had been largely responsible for the issue of this statement, set a rapid pace for the political leaders. By June 1947, agreement had been reached on a constitutional settlement which in fact made partition a certainty. The satisfaction which Mountbatten must have felt on achieving a settlement—even though he had done all he could to avoid partition—was seriously marred by the tragedy of the Punjab, where Sikhs and Muslims were equally determined not to fall under the domination of the rival community. Serious communal riots in that Province in March 1947 had been brought more or less under control, but in June what has been called a ‘war of succession’ broke out. At this stage, Nehru suggested that the cities of the Punjab be turned over to the military, but neither the Governor nor the military commanders favoured this proposal, and the magistrates and the police had to bear the burden.

We are not concerned in this book with the details of the Transfer of Power, or the mechanics of partition. Our object in this chapter has been to sketch the political events of a hundred years which provided the background against which the police had to work. Financial stringency has always conditioned administration in India and the police have at many times been numerically inadequate for the ordinary duties of suppressing crime. In the period described they also had to cope with terrorism, non-co-operation, civil disobedience and communal strife. To the story of their struggle with these evils, we now turn.

Chapter 16

The Revolutionary Movement

Up to 1890, in spite of occasional inflammatory articles in the vernacular press, the general tone of the nationalist movement had been moderate and peaceful and its all-India leaders had done nothing to encourage subversive activity or to add to the difficulties of the police. There were, however, two distinct elements among the nationalists—those who admired Western thought and institutions, and those who sought to revive Hinduism in a militant form, antagonistic alike to the British and the Muslims. As the years passed the latter element gained in strength, but it was only in Maharashtra, where the tradition of the Maratha conquest was much alive, that the Hindu revival assumed an aggressive political form in the nineteenth century.

In 1878, Wasudeo Balwant Phadke ‘planned the systematic looting of government treasuries and post offices aiming to collect large funds to raise battalions of young Mahrattas for a guerilla war against the British’.* The attempt was premature and fizzled out, but in the next decade the reaction against the westernizing tendencies of many leading educated Hindus gained strength and created more favourable circumstances for the extreme forms of nationalism. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a Maratha Brahmin, now appeared as a fiery apostle of the new spirit. He collaborated in the publication of two newspapers, the Mahratta in English and the Kesari* in Marathi, and in due course became the editor of the latter paper. Both journals frankly advocated revolutionary tactics in the political struggle. In 1890 the Age of Consent Bill, introduced by the Government of India to prohibit the consummation of a marriage before the wife was twelve years of age, provided Tilak with an opportunity to stir up anti-government feeling. The Bill was supported by many progressive Hindus, but while Tilak did not defend child marriage, he vehemently opposed the Bill—as did many orthodox Hindus—and alleged that the real object of the Government was to undermine Hinduism. Independence must come first, he maintained, and social reforms would follow. In modern times there has been much controversy as to whether Tilak was or was not a reactionary at heart, but the plain fact is that he opposed every measure of social reform which came before him. Tilak thus became the focal point of an orthodox Hindu opposition to the British Government. That opposition spread rapidly from Bombay to other parts of the country and manifested itself in mass meetings and anti-Government speeches.

Tilak was, however, faced with the difficulty that the most enlightened sections of the Hindus—including true nationalists like G. K. Gokhale—disagreed with him profoundly and it was therefore necessary for him to broaden his base further and to rally round himself still more closely the less progressive elements in Hindu society. Presumably for this reason, his speeches began to assume an anti-Muslim tone and he constantly accused the Government of favouring the Muslims at the expense of the Hindus. This attitude became of practical importance at the time of the serious Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay in 1893. We shall consider those riots and the difficulties they created for the police in a later chapter. Here it is sufficient to note that Tilak and others chose this time to revive the ancient Hindu festival of Ganapati* in a most aggressive form, and to glorify the Maratha hero, Shivaji, who had treacherously murdered a Muslim General, Afzal Khan, in 1659, and had been the spearhead of a revolt against the Moghul Emperor. During the Ganapati festival in 1894,

bands of young men paraded the streets of Poona, singing verses calculated to intensify the feeling against the Mohammedans and Government. At the same time, leaflets were circulated by schoolboys and others . . . calling the Hindus to arms, urging the Marathas to rebel as Shivaji did . . . and urging that a religious outbreak should be made the first step towards the overthrow of the alien power.*

Shortly after this episode, Tilak himself, in a speech during the Shivaji festival at Raigarh, declared that ‘the Divine Krishna tells us in the Bhagavad Gita that we may kill even our teachers or our kinsmen and no blame attaches to us if we are not actuated by selfish desires.’* This was indeed the first public distortion of the Hindu Scriptures to justify political murder under British rule.

The severe outbreak of plague in Poona in 1897 furnished Tilak with another opportunity to build up the campaign against the Government. The British authorities took drastic steps in the hope of suppressing the epidemic and in the process certain officials adopted a number of unwise measures. House to house visitations were made in a most tactless manner in search of suspected cases; domestic privacy was ruthlessly invaded; and men, women and children were forcibly removed to segregation camps. Great resentment was aroused, and Tilak published in the Kesari highly provocative articles, ‘imputing not merely to subordinate officers but to the Government itself a deliberate direction to oppress the people’,* and abusing Mr. Rand, the Plague Commissioner. On 22 June 1897, two frenzied Hindus murdered Rand and a Lieutenant Ayerst who was with him. Two attempts were made in February 1899 on the life of a police officer in Poona, who had been concerned in the investigation, and the two brothers whose information had led to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Rand, were murdered, but thereafter the overt terrorist movement in Maharashtra came to an end for a few years. There was no suggestion that Tilak was connected with the murders, but, on the strength of the articles already mentioned, he was tried for sedition and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour. His trial caused a considerable stir in other parts of India, and a fund for his defence was raised in Calcutta. According to Tilak’s most recent biographer ‘the first sedition trial of Tilak ushered in an era of new force and vitality to the Indian political scene’.* For the next seven or eight years the Kesari confined its articles within the bounds of more or less reasonable criticism, but other papers sprang up which observed no such restraint.

In May 1908, Tilak threw off the restraint which he had imposed on the Kesari, and published articles indirectly extolling the perpetrators of the murder of Mrs. and Miss Kennedy in Bengal.* He considered the technique of the murderers of Rand superior to that of the Bengal bomb party, but: ‘Considering the ends and the means, the Bengalis must be given the greater commendation’, and he extenuated the bomb outrage because of ‘the supposition on the part of the perpetrators that they were doing a sort of beneficent act’.*

Once again Tilak was convicted and sent to prison for six years. In London, in the meantime, Shyamaji Krishnavarma had founded the India Home Rule Society which soon became a notorious centre of seditious propaganda directed to India. Its members began to practice revolver shooting and in July 1909, one of them assassinated Sir William Curzon Wyllie, Political A.D.C. at the India Office. At this time the moving spirit of the London association—the headquarters of which was generally known as India House—was Vinayak Savarkar who worked very closely with his elder brother Ganesh in India. Towards the end of 1909 Vinayak despatched a messenger to Bombay, with twenty Browning pistols and ammunition concealed in the false bottom of a box. The intelligence work of the Bombay police at this time was excellent and they were fully aware of the correspondence between the two brothers. Police officers will understand the difficulty in such circumstances of bringing the guilt home to the person for whom the arms were intended, but as it happens Ganesh had published highly inflammatory verses which brought him within the power of the law. He was charged with ‘waging war against the King’, and in sentencing him the Marathi-speaking Judge referred to Ganesh’s writing as follows:

The writer’s main object is to preach war against the present Government in the names of certain gods of the Hindus and certain warriors such as Sivaji. These names are a mere pretext . . . no one who knows Marathi can or will understand them as preaching anything but war against the British Government.*

On 21 December 1909, Mr. Jackson, the Magistrate who had committed Ganesh for trial, was shot dead. The police investigation into this murder disclosed the existence of the Abhinav Bharat, or Young India Society, which aimed at founding a revolutionary organization on the Russian model. It also transpired that, in the preparation of the Society’s text book on bombs and explosives, Vinayak had played a considerable part. A widespread conspiracy was now revealed in which the principal actors were a small closely inter-connected group of Chitpavan Brahmins who had been to a great extent inspired by ‘the virulent anti-British writings’ of the Chitpavan Press in Poona, appealing both to religious and racial sentiments. Fortunately they were in a small minority and the great majority of the leaders of the nationalist movement continued to believe in constitutional methods of agitation.

Anusilan Samitis

By this time, the centre of the revolutionary movement had shifted to Bengal, where its leaders were Arabindo Ghosh (who had passed into the Indian Civil Service but was then rejected for his inability to pass the riding test) and Bepin Chandra Pal. Both were enthusiastic followers of Tilak. The ground had been well prepared for subversive activities by ‘growing impatience at the British delay in giving Indians a greater share in the superior services and in the Council’,* by the University Bill which was regarded quite unjustly as a measure intended to discourage the higher education of Bengalis; by Curzon’s attempt to control the Calcutta Corporation; and above all by the bleak economic prospects of the Bengali middle classes. In spite of these causes of discontent, an attempt in 1902 by Barindra Ghosh—brother of Arabindo—to organize a revolutionary movement in Bengal had failed, and Barindra had left Calcutta. Within the next two or three years, two events had made conditions in Bengal favourable for another attempt. In the first place, the Japanese defeat of the Russians had been hailed with delight in India. Not only was it a blow to the Russian autocratic regime to which Indian extremists were never tired of likening the British bureaucracy, but it also destroyed the. belief in the invincibility of the Europeans. Why could not Bengal follow the example of Japan?

The second factor predisposing to subversive activity was the partition of Bengal. From the British point of view, since India was under a virtually unitary government, the division into provinces was merely a matter of administrative convenience, and clearly the province of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa was too large for efficient administration. In October 1905, Curzon therefore partitioned it and formed a new province of East Bengal and Assam. Bengali Hindus—always an emotional people, easily inflamed by oratory and ever ready to rebel against authority—claimed that the Bengalis were a nation and that their homeland was being vivisected. The position was complicated, too, by the fact that in East Bengal the Muslims were in a majority and the new province would be a Muslim stronghold. The cry was at once raised that the Government of India had deliberately set out to undermine the influence of the Bengal bhadralok* and to favour the Muslims against the Hindus. In the words of an outstanding moderate leader, Sir Surendranath Banerjea, ‘we felt that the whole of our future was at stake, that it was a deliberate blow aimed at the growing solidarity and self-consciousness of the Bengali-speaking population’.*

The effect of the partition was indeed electric and Bengal came rapidly into line with Tilak.

Barindra Ghosh, who had returned to Bengal in 1904, became the chief organizer of the terrorist movement. An organization and a supporting press were both required—and both were provided rapidly. The former need was supplied by the foundation of Anusilan Samitis.* That Society was founded in Dacca in 1905 by Pulin Bihari Das after Barindra Ghosh had visited that city. A branch was then started in Calcutta and the ramifications of these two societies were soon extended in all directions. Before long there were 500 branches in towns and villages. Another great revolutionary party, named after the Bengali newspaper Jugantar* was also founded at this time. Its sphere of influence was mainly in Calcutta and the neighbouring districts, but to some extent the two parties overlapped. The Anusilan was the bigger party of the two and extended its influence to other provinces.

A supporting press was ready to hand, since Barindra Ghosh had founded the journal Jugantar. It indulged in frank exhortations to murder, of which the following is a sample.

Will the Bengali worshippers of Shakti shrink from the shedding of blood? The number of Englishmen in this country is not above one lakh and a half, and what is the number of English officials in each district? If you are firm in your resolution you can in a single day bring English rule to an end. Lay down your life, but first take a life. The worship of the goddess will not be consummated if you sacrifice your fives at the shrine of independence without shedding blood.*

Other newspapers devoted to the same end soon appeared, but perhaps of greater importance were the remarkable Bengali textbooks produced for use among students. One of the most effective of them was Mukli Kon Pathe.* Its author scoffed at the Indian National Congress, explained that not much muscle was required to shoot Europeans, advocated tampering with the loyalty of Indian soldiers, and stated frankly that when the movement had gathered sufficient strength, money for the purposes of the revolution would be extracted from the public by force.

Other pamphlets dealt with practical matters such as the making of bombs, while yet others were manuals advising local office bearers of the Samiti how to organize their circles, or giving instructions as to the successive vows which an initiate should be required to take at various stages of his progress. Clearly there were good organizing brains and much intelligence at the back of the terrorist movement.

Middle-aged men often gave encouragement to the spread of revolutionary ideas, but active participation was confined to the young, and propaganda was mainly directed to students. There is a strong strain of idealism in the Bengali youth and the terrorist propagandists played on it. Their methods of recruiting were based on the principle that bad characters are not the stuff of which terrorists are made. Young idealists were taught to regard revolutionary activity as the highest form of patriotism and the recruitment agent often began by interesting himself in the social or moral welfare of a few boys in a rural high school. The emphasis would be on character building and the need for self-sacrifice. The next step would be to suggest that there could be no better object than one’s country for which to sacrifice oneself, and a little later the idea would be finked with the thought of the iniquity of foreign rule. In the early days of terrorist recruitment much use was made of a perversion of the doctrines of a great religious teacher Swami Vivekananda and of false interpretations of one of the most important Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita. In the later phases of terrorism, when the forces of nationalism had gathered strength, less use of religious or moral motive was made, but they were of great importance to the earlier period. It is noteworthy that, of the persons convicted of revolutionary crime in Bengal between 1907 and 1917, students formed by far the largest class.

There is scope for endless argument about the ethics of terrorism. Persons in authority must necessarily take the line that murder is murder by whatever name it is called, and this argument was a constant embarrassment to Congressmen or others who sought to defend the terrorists, even if they disapproved of their actions. As a philosophical proposition, however, it is possible to contest this view, and in her unpublished life of Sir Charles Tegart,* Lady Tegart quotes the Irish rebel in a play who thus defended terrorism: ‘A few hundred scrawls o’ chaps with a couple o’ guns and Rosary beads again’ a hundred thousand thrained men with horse, fut an’ artillery . . . an’ he wants us to fight fair! D’ye want us to come out in our skins and throw stones?’ Be this as it may, the present writer—who had no cause to wish well to the Bengal terrorists—came to regard them as genuine, though misguided, patriots, much more worthy of respect than the middle-aged men who egged them on from safe positions behind the scenes.

The attitude of the Congress Party to terrorism was of importance in view of its influence on young men. The leaders of that Party must be acquitted of any positive encouragement of terrorist activity, but except for Gandhi few of them ever condemned it roundly. Necessarily the two aspects of anti-Government activity overlapped, and again and again it transpired that persons concerned in a revolutionary conspiracy were prominent members of the local Congress organization. The popular press, largely of the Congress complexion, was consistently unhelpful and the praises of men such as Bhagat Singh, the murderer of Saunders, were sung continually and enthusiastically. Perhaps the only realistic approach to this subject is to regard terrorism—whatever view one takes of its ethics—as an inevitable concomitant of agitation against a foreign government. It thus calls for understanding rather than condemnation.

With this background, we are in a position to study the history of terrorism between the two World Wars.

The Terrorist Campaign

Terrorist crimes fell into two classes: those designed as acts of vengeance on officials, and the many dacoities whose object was to collect funds with which guns or pistols could be bought or bombs manufactured.

The campaign opened with three outrages of the former class. In December 1907 the train in which the Governor, Sir Andrew Fraser, was travelling was derailed by a bomb. In the same month, Mr. Allen, who had been District Magistrate of Dacca, was shot in the back, but survived. A little later a missionary, wrongly suspected of being a government spy, was the next victim, but though seriously wounded, he recovered. The first fatal outrage of this period occurred at Muzaffarpur on 30 April 1908. The intended victim was Mr. Kingsford, the Judge at Muzaffarpur, who as Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, had tried cases against members of the Party. Some time before the outrage, a parcel containing a bomb had been sent to Kingsford in Calcutta, but thinking it only contained a book returned by a borrower before his transfer to Muzaffarpur, he did not open it. It did indeed contain a book, but ‘the middle portion of the leaves had been cut away . . . and in the hollow was contained a bomb with a spring to cause its explosion if the book was opened’.

Having failed in this attempt, the conspirators threw a bomb into a carriage believed to be Kingsford’s. As it happened, the occupants were two ladies, Mrs. and Miss Kennedy, and both were killed. Steps were promptly taken by the District Magistrate to close all possible escape routes and one of the murderers, Khudiram Bose, was arrested on the following day. A few hours later, Sub-Inspector Nanda Lal Banerji attempted to arrest Khudiram’s accomplice, Prafulla Chaki, at a railway station. Prafulla pulled out a Browning pistol and ran down the platform, firing as he ran. A constable, Jamil Ahmed Khan, though narrowly missed by a bullet, tackled Prafulla, who then shot himself dead. In the following November, the Sub-Inspector was shot dead as a reprisal.

Fortunately, the fact that the terrorist organization was closely knit meant that in the investigation of one crime, details of other outrages or intended outrages often came to light.

Often members of several groups or societies were involved in one conspiracy and trying to follow up the clues and trace the extent of the growth was like trying to trace an underground growth of bindweed. One root splayed into twenty branches, the ends of which were lost sight of or broke off before the earth could be dug away from them; one growth overlapped or intertwined with another. Only too often the surface fibres were dug out while the source of growth escaped eradication.*

For example, in May 1908 what was known as the Alipore conspiracy came to the notice of the police during the investigation of two other outrages. The first of them was an attempt to derail the Lieutenant-Governor’s train, while the second was an attempt to murder the Maire of Chandernagore, who had collaborated with the Calcutta police in preventing the import of firearms into his territory by revolutionaries. The investigating police officer, Mr. Denham, soon discovered that the pleasant house of Arabindo and Barindra Ghosh in Māniktala was something more than a house.

It was a bomb factory, a training centre for revolutionaries and a school for future manufacturers of bombs, Hem Chandra Das being the chief Professor. This was the man who had spent so much time in Paris for the specific purpose of studying the craft under a Russian instructor and his most promising pupil at Maniktolla was a man named Ullaskar Dutt, who was supposed to be able to take over instructional duties if necessary. Dutt had already been something of a bomb-maker on his own account but not such an expert as Hem Chandra Das, who had spent a year in a mechanical workshop before graduating under his Russian teacher. A manual of bomb-making was found on the premises which gave weights and measures in French and explained how to convert them into their English equivalents. . . . The Ghosh garden was more useful than ornamental. Buried in the earth were not, as one might expect, seeds and young plants but boxes of sporting guns and rifles. At a little distance was a forge with all the machinery for making bombs and acids for making explosives; near at hand was a completed bomb ready for use, enough picric acid to work a small fountain, 25 lbs. of dynamite and enough dynamite cartridges to sow drills in all the flower-beds. . . . Among Arabindo’s belongings was the sweets letter which afterwards became the chief piece of evidence for the prosecution against him. It was signed by his brother Barin and said ‘Now is the time. Please try and make them meet for our conference. We must have sweets all over India, ready for emergencies. I wait for your answer.’ Sweets was the terrorist code word for bombs.*

A widespread conspiracy was thus revealed in connection with which thirty-four persons were charged. One turned approver and fourteen, including Barindra Ghosh and Hem Chandra Das (who had manufactured the bomb with which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy were killed), were convicted. The terrorists soon had their revenge. The approver was shot dead in gaol by two revolutionaries while the trial was pending; within the next two years, the Public Prosecutor and the Deputy Superintendent of Police who appeared for the prosecution in the appeal against the convictions were murdered. The successful prosecution of the Alipore conspiracy case broke up the Calcutta branch of the revolutionary party for the time being and the centre of activity shifted to Dacca, where the Anusilan Samiti was becoming dangerous.

In the case connected with the murder of the Deputy Superintendent, the accused made a statement which throws a lot of light on the way in which young terrorists were recruited.

I was introduced to a gentleman named Jotindra Nath Mukherji . . . in the month of September. By reading the ‘Jugantar’ I got a very strong wish to do brave and violent works and I asked Jotin Mukherji to give me work. . . . He told me about the shooting of Shams-ul-Alam, Deputy Superintendent, who conducted the bomb case, and he ordered a boy named Satish Chandra to make arrangements for this case. I asked Jotin for such works and he asked me whether I shall be able to shoot Shams-ul-Alam. I answered that I will be able. . . . I make this statement so as not to injure Jotin, but as I have come to understand that anarchism will not benefit our country.*

Up to 1914 the revolutionaries had obtained their pistols and revolvers by thefts or through their contacts in Chandemagore. Various types and calibres of weapons thus came into their hands and often the ammunition was unsuitable for them. In August 1914 a more satisfactory source of procurement was found. A young Bengali employee of Rodda & Company, a well-known firm of gun-makers in Calcutta, was sent to take delivery from the customs authorities of a consignment of arms. Six cartloads reached the firm, but the employee and the seventh cart, loaded with fifty Mauser pistols and 46,000 rounds of ammunition, completely disappeared. The weapons were at once distributed to various revolutionary groups by the Jugantar Party, which had organized the coup, and they were used in nearly all the terrorist outrages which were committed during the next few years.

The Sedition Committee found that nearly two hundred outrages had been committed in connection with the revolutionary movement in Bengal during the years 1906 to 1917. That this campaign of murder and dacoity must have imposed a great strain on the police is obvious, but probably few people realize that in this period no fewer than twenty Indian police officers or constables were murdered, while a similar fate befell a number of approvers or prosecution witnesses.

The courage with which the police faced this danger is worthy of the highest praise, but almost equally remarkable is the resolution and ingenuity with which they sought to track down the perpetrators of outrages. To some extent they copied the pattern set by Sleeman and others in the old Thagi and Dakaiti Department. Careful case histories, a close study of the links between different members of a revolutionary group, the interchange of information between the Bengal Intelligence Branch and the Calcutta Special Branch, and between provinces, and house searches based on information believed to be trustworthy—all played their part. In addition, use was made of approvers and informers, and here some of the outstanding police officers displayed a remarkable faculty for knowing what to believe and what not to believe.

All through their investigations they were necessarily hampered by the very proper limitations imposed on them by the law. Houses could only be searched on proper authority; confessions made to a police officer could not be used as evidence; and the laws of evidence themselves were loaded in favour of the accused. These difficulties were the result of the sound principles erected by the British as safeguards against the conviction of the innocent, but in the exceptional circumstances of this period, some relaxation of them was required.

In 1908, Criminal Law Amendment Act XIV provided for the trial of certain offences by a special Bench of High Court Judges without jury or assessors, and also enabled the Governor-General and Council to declare certain classes of associations unlawful. Such declarations were in fact made in respect of the Dacca Anusilan Samiti and certain other associations.

It was believed that the Criminal Law Amendment Act XIV of 1908 would protect witnesses from exposure. So far as the lower courts were concerned this was the effect, but it was discounted by the fact that as soon as a commitment order is passed the names of the witnesses and their depositions are given to the accused.*

The Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act (Act X of 1911) was meant to provide a check on subversive propaganda, but it could not seriously hamper the underground propaganda activities of the revolutionaries. There was also an old Regulation HI of 1818, which was originally intended to enable the Government to deal with rebellions by princes or other persons of all-India importance. It was also used in connection with the terrorist movement, but only in the case of important leaders.

In 1915, war conditions necessitated the enactment of the Defence of India Act which inter alia authorized the internment of dangerous persons, and in the following year, vigorous use was made by the Government of these powers as well as of those conferred by Regulation III of 1818. These enactments, together with the Newspapers (Incitement of Offences) Act 1908 and the Indian Press Act (Act I of 1909) enabled the Government to exercise some control on seditious writings and meetings and strengthen the forces of law and order.

By 1917 terrorism in Bengal was to some extent under control for the time being, though in that and the following year there were five murders and three attempted murders in pursuance of the terrorist movement. In 1919 and 1920 the situation improved in the sense that only one terrorist murder was committed.

The Campaign by Punjabi Sikhs

The revolutionary movement in the Punjab differed from that in Bengal in three ways: it was largely inspired by returning Sikh emigrants; the general body of Sikh public helped to suppress it; and although short-lived in its first phase, it was potentially very dangerous because of the martial character of the Sikhs and their importance in the Indian Army. As early as 1907, the virulent anti-British propaganda of extremist agitators, based partly on exploitation of economic grievances, had created much unrest. ‘The police were being pilloried as traitors . . . and were advised to quit the service of government, while the same invitation was addressed to Indian soldiers’.* The leaders of the movement—Lala Lajpat Rai, a Hindu, and Ajit Singh, a Sikh—were deported and for a time all appeared to be quiet on the surface. Behind the scenes, however, Lajpat Rai was in touch with ‘India House’ in London which, as we have seen, was the centre for the dissemination in India of seditious literature, while Har Dayal, a former student of Delhi University and then of Oxford, was actively preaching in India the need for the ‘bringing to an end of the British Government by a general boycott combined with passive resistance of every kind’.*

In December 1912, at the State Entry into Delhi, the new capital, of the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, a bomb, thrown at the elephant on which he was riding, wounded him and narrowly missed killing him. This attempt was loudly applauded in the Punjab and a group led by a Bengali, Rash Bihari Bose, who had actually organized the throwing of the bomb, distributed a leaflet declaring that: ‘The Gita, the Vedas and the Koran all enjoin us to kill all the enemies of our Motherland, irrespective of caste, creed or colour’.* Har Dayal was now in America where he started a newspaper called the Ghadr,* published in several Indian languages, which was widely distributed amongst Indians there. It urged them to go to India with the express object of committing murder, causing revolution and expelling the British. German agents, including a German Consul in America, helped considerably in the distribution of this literature. Har Dayal also addressed meetings in a number of places in the United States and advised Indians to help Germany in the war which he saw was likely to break out.

In September and October 1914, large numbers of Sikhs who had been indoctrinated with these ideas returned to India. Many of them seem to have expected to find India in a state of acute unrest and on their voyage talked openly of starting a rebellion when they landed. Some of them were interned for a time, but on their release they embarked on revolutionary propaganda endeavouring to seduce troops from their allegiance. Others became concerned in mail robberies, attempts to derail trains and other violent crimes. The Punjab Government were prompt to realize the danger and proposed to the Government of India the enactment of an Ordinance dealing with the prosecution and suppression of violent crime. While these proposals were under consideration, in January and February 1915 there was a serious outbreak of crime in which the returned immigrants played a leading part. There were also a number of ‘political’ dacoities, that is, dacoities carried out in order to raise funds for revolutionary purposes.

In the course of investigation of these outrages, the Punjab police discovered that a much more serious conspiracy was in process of incubation.

A young Maratha Brahmin, Vishnu Ganesh Pingley, who had returned from America with some Sikh revolutionaries, arrived in the Punjab in December 1914 and assisted in making plans for the plundering of government treasuries, the preparation of bombs with expert help from Bengal, and the collection of guns. In collaboration with Rash Behan Bose, Pingley planned for a general rising on 21 February, with Lahore as headquarters. Rash Behari also tried to organize the collection of gangs of villagers to take part in the rebellion. ‘Bombs were prepared; arms were got together; flags were made ready; a declaration of war was drawn up; instruments were collected for destroying railways and telegraph wires.’* The Punjab police, however, were very vigilant and, on information received, Rash Behari’s house was raided and material to be used in the revolution was discovered. Other houses were then searched and ‘it became manifest that the plotters had designed simultaneous outbreaks at Lahore, Ferozepore and Rawalpindi’. It appeared later that Benares, Jubbulpore and Dacca were also included in the plan. As the result of the timely action by the police, the entire plot was uncovered. The conspirators were tried in several batches and in all twenty-eight persons were hanged, and a considerable number were sentenced to transportation or imprisonment. Orders of internment or restriction were also passed under the Defence of India Act or under the Ingress into India Ordinance on nearly 400 persons.

At this stage, the main body of Sikhs rallied to the support of the Government. Sikh advisory committees were formed in connection with the various orders of restriction on known terrorists and their efforts had much to do with the restoration of order. Those efforts would not have been forthcoming unless the Government had shown its determination to govern and they would have been fruitless without the patient and skilful intelligence work of the police.

The Benares Conspiracy

At this period terrorism in other parts of India was almost entirely an overspill from Bengal, and it need therefore not be discussed here in detail, but reference must be made to the Benares conspiracy. In 1908 a young Bengali named Sachindra Nath Sanyal started a club in Benares known as the Anusilan Samiti, which later converted itself into the Young Men’s Association. Its ostensible object was the moral, intellectual and physical improvement of its members, but it soon became a seditionist organization. Sachindra, however, did not regard it as sufficiently aggressive and formed another group which eventually came under the control of Rash Behari Bose. Rash Behari gave instruction in the use of bombs and revolvers and in 1914 he promised to extend his tuition to members of the Ghadr party. In January 1915, Rash Behari, Sachindra and their group announced that a general rebellion was pending and that members must be prepared to die for their country. Members were detailed for various duties and some were to collect bombs and arms from Bengal, while others were to attempt to seduce the troops in various places. The arrangements were muddled and on the day planned for the rising, Sachindra, who was to lead it in Benares, failed to appear. In the meantime, events at Lahore had exploded the conspiracy and many arrests had been made.* The police were well aware of what was being planned and when Pingley, who had evaded arrest in Lahore went to Meerut with bombs ‘sufficient to annihilate half a regiment’, he was promptly arrested and in due course sentenced to death. The contrast between the efficiency of the police and the amateurish methods of the conspirators is noteworthy.

It is interesting to note once again the interlocking between different revolutionary groups and the way in which a police investigation in one area often brought to light conspiracies in other areas, of which the authorities had previously had no suspicion. During the investigation of the Benares conspiracy, for example, an informer stated that he had stopped at the house of one Suresh Babu in Chandernagore.* That house had not previously come under suspicion, but a police raid now led to the discovery of a whole armoury of weapons and seditious literature. Again, in the house of a Patna suspect, the police discovered a life of Mazzini—with appropriate passages underlined—which gave them a link with one of the Benares conspirators.* In this difficult period as in the nineteenth century, the building up of case histories by the police paid handsome dividends.

Chapter 17

Civil Disobedience and the Police

The disorders with which the police had to cope between the two wars fell into three classes: non-co-operation and its successor, civil disobedience, terrorism, and communal or sectarian strife. Communal troubles and the terrorist campaign will be considered in later chapters. In this chapter we are concerned with civil resistance to authority. The difference between non-co-operation and civil disobedience was one of methods rather than objects and has been thus defined by an experienced police officer.

There was a clear distinction in the Congress mind between non-violent non-co-operation, as it was defined in the Calcutta Congress in September 1920, renunciation of titles; refusal to attend functions, withdrawal of children from State schools etc.; boycott of Courts, refusal of military service in Mesopotamia; refusal to vote for non-Congress candidates in the Reformed Councils; boycott of foreign goods; and civil disobedience. The former does not necessarily bring the non-co-operator into conflict with the authorities; the latter courts any punishment which the law will give.

It was, however, not likely that the ordinary man would draw fine distinctions between different forms of disrespect for authority and in practice the two movements constantly overlapped. From the point of view of the policeman, both confronted him with the need to control the resulting mob violence, and both alike subjected him to serious social and domestic pressure. In either case his wife might belong to the anti-Government camp, or again civil resisters might boycott him and make it difficult for him to obtain the necessities of life or to enjoy the amenities of society. Social pressures were often a greater trial than the physical hazards with which he was confronted. Fortunately, both non-co-operation and civil disobedience in their acute stages were short-lived. The first phase may be said to have lasted from 1919 to 1924, while civil disobedience in its more formal aspect and its concomitant, terrorism, were a continuing cause of anxiety from 1929 to 1935 with a partial break in 1931.

Civil Disobedience

The civil disobedience campaign opened with a threat to law and order so serious that it can only be described as an incipient rebellion. The political tensions which gave rise to this threat have already been described, but their more immediate cause was the anger created by the Rowlatt Acts, which spread far beyond the Punjab. The starting point was a meeting on 24 February 1919 at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad at which it was decided to inaugurate a campaign of Satyagraha and to offer civil disobedience against the Emergency Regulations just passed. In our study of this campaign we have for our guidance the report of the Committee presided over by Lord Hunter, formerly Solicitor-General for Scotland, and consisting of four British and three Indian members. A minority report signed by the Indians dissented from the majority view of the measures taken to suppress the disorders, but there was substantial agreement as to the facts.

On 1 March Gandhi proclaimed a hartal for a date about which there was some uncertainty and great excitement was aroused all over India. The first outbreak was at Delhi and although events there were far less serious than in the Punjab, they are of interest as showing the difficulties which faced the police right from the beginning of the campaign. On 30 March an attempt to compel a railway station refreshment vendor to join in the hartal led almost at once to the assembly of a large and excited crowd, which demanded the release of two men said to have been arrested and refused to believe that nobody was in custody. The crowd at once became violently hostile to the small police force which had been hastily assembled under Mr. Jeffreys, an additional Superintendent of Police, and even when that force was strengthened by the arrival of a small detachment of soldiers, the crowd continued to be aggressive. A considerable proportion of the small police force was injured by stones and missiles thrown by the crowd, and eventually the police had to open fire. The crowd then withdrew to the Town Hall where the battle was renewed. Jeffreys’ horse ‘as well as himself were hit time and time again; finally he had to get off and the horse bolted’. The crowd continued to advance and the situation was not brought under control until a picket of British soldiers arrived and fired into the crowd, ordering them to disperse. This was one of many similar incidents which occurred in several parts of India and it is of interest as showing how easily a hartal could lead to violence, even when as in this case there was no organized conspiracy on the part of those who participated.

The main theatre of trouble was the Punjab. In Amritsar the deportation on 9 April 1920 of Dr. Satyapal and Dr. Kitchlew—the leading organizers of the movement against the Government—led almost at once to events which were to convulse India. They began with a minor incident. An angry crowd, determined to force its way to the house of the Deputy Commissioner, attacked the picket which barred its advance. The picket was compelled to open fire in self-defence, but thereafter still larger crowds congregated and gave every sign of being both violent and resolute, until, under the orders of the Deputy Commissioner, the police opened fire. The crowd dispersed, but in the meantime, violent mobs in other areas of the city had entered on an orgy of destruction and brutality. The National Bank was set on fire and gutted; the Manager, Mr. Stuart, and his assistant, Mr. Scott, were beaten to death; the Town Hall was set on fire; the goods yard was looted; much damage was done to the Telegraph Office; attempts were made to cut telephone and telegraph wires; and looting on a considerable scale took place. The Manager of the Alliance Bank, a British Military Works electrician and a railway guard were also murdered, and a missionary, Miss Sherwood, was beaten and left for dead on the road.

It is painful to record that Amritsar proved a general exception to the determination and courage of the police in dealing with such a situation. There were indeed many gallant acts by small bodies of police in defence of property and life in that city, but the Hunter Committee pointed out that the armed reserve of seventy-five men, under a Deputy Superintendent of Police at the Kotwali,* remained inactive from start to finish. ‘Helpless’, ‘muddle’, ‘lack of initiative’—these are the words used by the Committee regarding the Reserve. The Committee also pointed out that there were about a hundred unarmed constables scattered through Amritsar. They were not used at all on this fateful day. These facts ‘explained why the mobs were left uncontrolled and almost unchecked’. The city was in fact completely out of hand and the civil authorities handed over control to the military. The tragedy of the Jallianwala Bagh, the excessive firing under General Dyer’s commands, and the infamous orders passed by him thereafter, are therefore outside the scope of this book except in two respects. First, they shocked India and gave greater impetus to the anti-Government movement. Secondly, they gave many thinking Europeans a sense of guilt, which may well have led British officials to hesitate unduly in other cases where the use of force was necessary.

After recording the partial failure of the police at Amritsar, it is a relief to be able to describe the courage and resolution with which they dealt with the situation in Lahore, which might well have been equally tragic. In that city, the news of Gandhi’s arrest and of the outbreak in Amritsar sparked off trouble. On the afternoon of 10 April, an angry crowd, diverted by the military from the Mall, was gallantly held up for a time near the Lawrence statue by two Indian police officers and a handful of men. Before long the crowd became bolder and advanced in small rushes, catching hold of muskets in the hands of the constables. After displaying much patience, the police opened fire under the orders of the Deputy Commissioner. The mob began to disperse and the order was at once given to cease fire. Still larger crowds soon gathered and for three-quarters of an hour the Superintendent of Police, Mr. Broadway, and a small police force had to face a bombardment of stones and bricks from a crowd estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000 people. Broadway was hit five or six times and now the wilder and more active rioters harassed the police by further assaults of brickbats from the roofs of low sheds and houses. At this stage, the Deputy Commissioner returned with reinforcements and after vain attempts to persuade the crowd to retire, he again ordered the police to open fire. Eighteen men were wounded and the crowd dispersed. Discord continued throughout the city and leaflets advocating the murder of Englishmen were widely distributed.

On 12 April, police pickets found themselves faced by crowds which were ‘dense, hostile and armed with lathis’—and anybody who has seen a brass-bound Punjabi lathi will know what a deadly weapon it can be. Once again it was necessary to fire on the mob and the Hunter Commission later commented that

the fact that the police, armed with buckshot, were made to take the brunt of the collision with the crowd, instead of the troops with service ammunition; the small number of shots fired by the police and the warnings given to the crowd, show in our opinion that the greatest care was taken and the least possible degree of force was used.*

The patience of the police paid dividends and within a few days order was restored.

Boycott and Non-Co-operation

It is not necessary for our purpose to discuss the serious disturbances in many other places, either in the Punjab or in the Bombay Presidency, and we can pass to the next phase of the struggle. At the Amritsar Congress in December 1919, Gandhi advocated co-operation in working the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms and forced his view on a very reluctant Congress, but by the middle of 1920 he had thrown his lot in with the majority and decided to support a combined Congress-Khilafat non-co-operation campaign. A special session of the Congress was held in September 1920 and, in spite of the opposition of such men as C. R. Das and Jinnah, Gandhi carried a resolution inaugurating a full-scale campaign of non-co-operation. The British treatment of Turkey after the War and events in the Punjab were the main justifications urged for this decision. The programme included the ‘Triple Boycott’ of Government schools, law courts and Legislative Councils, and Gandhi declared that it would lead to swaraj within a year. Much emphasis was put by Gandhi—to the disgust of some of his supporters—on the adoption of swadeshi in piece goods on a vast scale and on the revival throughout the country of hand-spinning and weaving.

The inculcation of contempt for constitutional authority was bound to lead to widespread disorder and in 1921 ‘there were no fewer than sixty outbreaks of varying seriousness in different parts of India’.*

A few incidents which illustrate what was involved in the campaign. In the Punjab, there were no fewer than eighty-nine assaults on the police in 1921, the worst of which was an attack by a mob led by non-cooperators on the police station and tahsil at Firozpur Jhirka in the Gurgaon District. The magistrate and several policemen were injured and the police had to open fire. At the same time, numerous attempts were made to seduce the police from their duty and that indeed became general Congress policy in October 1921, when the Working Committee declared that it was the duty of every Government employee, soldier or civilian to leave the service of the Government. The Committee called the pointed attention of the police to the honourable alternative means of livelihood offered by hand-spinning and weaving. In Bengal and elsewhere, the police at this time were boycotted, attempts were made to cut off their food supply, they suffered social ostracism, and they were harassed in every conceivable way. In one instance, medical attention was refused to the sick child of a sub-inspector.*

By the end of the year, Congressmen in general were impatient with Gandhi’s unwillingness to declare mass civil disobedience as distinct from non-cooperation. At a session of the Congress in November 1921, a Resolution was passed authorizing provincial Congress Committees to inaugurate civil disobedience on a non-violent basis. Gandhi himself proposed to offer civil disobedience in Bardoli on 23 November, but before that date the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee called for a hartal in connection with the arrival of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in Bombay. Gandhi addressed a public meeting which was intended as a counter-attraction to the official ceremony of welcome. The meeting itself was peaceful but thereafter there was a serious outbreak of violence as a result of attempts to compel people to observe the hartal. Tramcars and motorcars were burned, two Parsees were murdered, Europeans, Anglo-Indians and Parsees were assaulted and in the course of the riots fifty-three persons were killed and about 400 injured. Gandhi appeared to have been genuinely shocked and postponed his Bardoli plan, but the Congress had no intention of being deterred by his scruples. Indeed, the action necessarily taken in Bengal and elsewhere to deal with hartals enforced on unwilling individuals and attempts to interfere with the legitimate activities of the citizens strengthened the position of the extremists, and in the Congress Session of 1921 one group began to advocate the use of violence against the Government.

Mass demonstrations against police stations in Bihar and Bengal early in 1922 and numerous instances of the burning of stations, justified Gandhi’s apprehension that civil disobedience would lead to violence, but the pressure on him was very great, and the swaraj which he had promised within a year had not arrived. He felt bound to go ahead and on 4 February he announced his intention to organize civil disobedience in Bardoli within seven days. Within a few days of his announcement, a great tragedy relieved him from the necessity of implementing it. Early in February, an attempt by Congress volunteers to picket a bazaar in the Gorakhpur District of the United Provinces had been frustrated by the police of the Chauri Chaura station. By way of revenge the volunteers determined to picket the bazaar forcibly and on the morning of 4 February,* a procession of about 2,000 villagers assembled, headed by four or five volunteers in khaddar uniform, some of whom had swaraj flags in their hands. The mob moved towards the police station, where it began to throw brickbats at the police and then to attack them with lathis. The situation became dangerous and the Sub-Inspector, in order to frighten the mob, fired a few shots in the air. What followed is best described in the words of a correspondent of The Pioneer:

This infuriated the mob, who made a rush towards the thana with lathies and spears. A few policemen were knocked down, and the remainder of the police went inside the thana for protection. One or two of the police must have fired on the mob in earnest, as some of the rioters received gunshot wounds, but whether the firing took place before the rush or after, is not yet known. By this time several of the policemen had been killed outside the police buildings, and one party fetched oil and straw and set fire to the thana at various points. This drove the entire police force out of the buildings. They were immediately set upon by the mob and done to death in the most brutal manner. Their heads were battered with hinges torn from the doors of the thana, and then the bodies were soaked in oil and burnt. After having completely destroyed the police station, the rioters dismantled the railway line in two places, and cut the telegraph wires. They threatened to kill the stationmaster and postmaster, if they sent any messages to the authorities in Gorakhpur. In all twenty-two policemen, including two sub-inspectors, one head constable, fifteen constables, four chowkidars, and a servant of the sub-inspector were killed.*

Immediately after this tragedy, at a meeting of the Working Committee at Bardoli, Gandhi suspended mass civil disobedience and ‘instructed his followers to abandon every preparation of an offensive nature’, and to confine their activities to spinning, organizing national schools, preaching temperance, carrying out the salvation of the depressed classes and forming local committees for the settlement of disputes.* Many Congressmen bitterly resented this surrender and when the All-India Congress Committee met at Delhi, Gandhi was only able to secure the confirmation of a decision to suspend mass civil disobedience by agreeing that individual civil disobedience might be commenced by permission of a provincial Congress Committee. The All-India Congress Committee had in fact found a polite way of rejecting Gandhi’s proposal and this, indeed, marks the decline of his influence. In March 1922 he was sent to gaol for six years. At his trial he admitted that he could not dissociate himself from the events in Bombay and Chauri Chaura. ‘I knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk and if I were set free, I would still do the same.’ Although Gandhi was released in February 1924 on grounds of health, six years were to pass before he regained his ascendancy.

The non-cooperation movement now began to lose its momentum. It had achieved nothing and was described in an official report as ‘being in the position of a Bank which had closed its doors.* The abolition of the Khilafat and the favourable treatment accorded to Turkey in the Lausanne Conference weakened the enthusiasm of Muslims for non-cooperation, and moreover, the Moplah rebellion seriously estranged the two communities. The Congress Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee unanimously agreed that mass civil disobedience throughout the country was not practicable, and a strong section of Congressmen who favoured Council entry had formed the Swaraj party. Many Congressmen had begun to realize that the Central Legislature and the Legislative Councils had more influence than had been supposed, and it was galling to see the Liberals in the corridors of power. In theory, Council entry was to be a means of wrecking the machinery of the Constitution from within, but before long a group of Swarajists and others modified their policy to one of co-operation, within limits and on conditions. For the next few years, the civil disobedience movement may be said to have been dormant, but unfortunately the communal struggle which we shall describe later proved an even more potent cause of violence and disorder.

Not until 1930 did civil disobedience again become of importance, though the foundations of trouble were laid in 1928 when the Simon Commission began its work. That Commission was in fact a Committee of the British Parliament and could therefore include no Indians. The Congress Party resented this omission and decided to boycott the Commission, and even Sir John Simon’s proposal that the Commission should take the form of a Joint Free Conference including representatives of the Indian legislatures, was rejected by the Congress. Nevertheless, all the Provincial Legislatures except one appointed Committees to co-operate with the Commission, and Simon and his colleagues had ample opportunity to study the various currents of Indian feeling.

During the next two years, the Congress largely concentrated its attention on a sterile discussion as to whether its aim should be Dominion Status or Independence. It was, in fact, drifting away from reality and it was perhaps the consciousness of this drift, and of the possibility that self-government might be achieved without its assistance, that induced a reaction towards militancy. At the Congress Session in Lahore in January 1930, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had for some time taken up a position much more extreme than that of his less emotional father, was the stormy petrel of the party. He made it clear that he accepted non-violence, not as a principle, but only because the nationalists did not possess ‘the material training for organized violence and individual or sporadic violence is a confession of despair’,* and he went on to declare, ‘the real thing is the conquest of power, by whatever name it is called’. Under his influence the Congress declared that the word swaraj in the Congress Constitution should mean ‘complete independence’. It was resolved to embark once more on an organized campaign of non-cooperation. Congressmen were directed to boycott the legislatures and not to participate in any future elections and the All-India Congress Committee was authorized, whenever it deemed fit, ‘to launch upon a campaign of civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes, whether in selected areas or otherwise and with such safeguards as it may consider necessary’.* At the same time, a Resolution was passed instituting an Independence Day, to be celebrated on 26 January each year by the reaffirmation of the belief that ‘the British Government has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom . . . but has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually.’

The emotional language of this Resolution was bound to cause trouble and Gandhi, who since his return to active politics had counselled moderation, was by no means happy about it. Indeed, a few weeks after the Lahore Congress he had gone so far as to state that India was unfit for civil disobedience.* Before long, however, he yielded to pressure and himself initiated the movement by a symbolic violation of the Salt Law.

In theory, the manufacture of salt was a Government monopoly let out to licensees, but the inhabitants of the coastal districts had long been in the habit of making salt for their own consumption. Their action was illegal and from time to time an Excise sub-inspector would swoop on a group of culprits and either prosecute them, or more commonly, accept a small bribe for taking no action. The salt-tax had thus become synonymous in the public mind with oppression by government officials, while to intellectuals it seemed to have some affinity with the hated Gabelle of revolutionary France. No form of civil disobedience could therefore have had a more popular appeal than that which Gandhi now proposed. On 12 March 1930, after informing the Viceroy of his intention, Gandhi set off with seventy-eight followers on a 240-mile march from his Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi on the Bombay coast. The march lasted three weeks and the picture of Gandhi, striding along, staff in hand, was soon imprinted on every Indian mind. The little column swelled in number as it moved, and by the time it reached Dandi on 6 April many thousands had gathered to see Gandhi scoop up salt and technically break the law. Gandhi’s action had exactly the effect he intended. All around the coast of India the Salt Law was openly defied and illegal salt factories were set up. Congress leaders thronged to the sea and were arrested in batches.

At Patna Rajendra Prasad accompanied a vast crowd towards one of the new salt depots. When the road was blocked they stayed where they were for forty hours. Prasad refused to disperse them. Mounted police galloped furiously; the crowd lay flat, the horses shied and pulled up, demonstrators had to be hoisted bodily into trucks.*

This was typical of a problem with which the police were to be faced all over India for the next three or four years. What were they to do with large numbers of passive resisters who merely lay down and blocked the entrance to an official building? How were the Courts and the Treasuries to be kept open? Passive resistance did not and could not long remain passive. Within three months, more than fifty serious riots occurred and at the same time terrorism (with which we shall be concerned in a later chapter) again assumed serious proportions. The fiery Jawaharlal was arrested on 12 April, but three weeks later Gandhi planned a more positive defiance of law. He proposed to lead a band of followers to Dharasana to take possession of the salt works thus ‘asserting the right of the people to occupy State-owned property’.* The Government had shown exemplary patience with Gandhi up to now, but they could not overlook this new threat to all authority; on 5 May he was arrested. Many other arrests followed and for twelve months waves of disorder spread over India.

Provincial Violence

Hardly any part of India was unaffected, but here we can only refer to what were perhaps the worst areas: Bengal, Bombay, Bihar and the North-West Frontier Province. The people of Bengal are of an emotional temperament and react quickly to mass propaganda, particularly if its objects are disguised under a veneer of idealism. Civil disobedience committees to recruit volunteers and conduct propaganda were formed throughout the Province and many meetings were held to preach defiance of the law. The Governor rightly observed that an attempt was being made ‘to bring government to a standstill, to loose the forces of disorder and to break the prestige of law’ and he went on to state the obvious fact that only the police force of Bengal had stood between its inhabitants and chaos.* Attacks of varying degrees of seriousness on police officers were of almost daily occurrence, one of the worst of them being in the notorious Midnapore District, where on 6 January 1930, two sub-inspectors of police were battered to death by a crowd of civil disobedience volunteers and villagers. Nearly 500 members of the Bengal and Calcutta police forces were injured during the year, but in addition to this many police officers were deprived of social amenities and at times even had difficulty in buying their food. The writer, who was serving in Bengal at the time, cannot speak too highly of the moral courage of the Bengal police throughout this period.

The Bombay Presidency was perhaps as badly affected as Bengal and the activity of the Congress was particularly intense in Bombay City. Immediately after Gandhi’s march to Dandi, the Congress turned its attention to the salt works in Bombay. The sequel was thus described by a Deputy Commissioner of Police who was present at the time.

Hundreds of Congress volunteers were taught elementary drill and practised advancing and retreating at the sound of a bugle call. They were paraded in areas north-east of Bombay Island, where the Government salt works were situated, and they were accompanied by thousands of followers. . . . Their intention of raiding the salt works was widely publicised beforehand and a body of several hundred police was therefore despatched to prevent the volunteers and other followers from invading the area of the salt works and removing the salt. . . . The volunteers and their followers advanced on the thin single line of police in dense crowds, but stopped when confronted by the lathis held in front of them by the police sepoys.

The volunteers retreated, then came on again and this movement was repeated many times.

After the police had been on duty for some six hours . . . and the sun was very hot in Bombay in April . . . they began to show signs of fatigue simply as a result of standing without a break, turning or pushing back the crowds that pressed upon them. . . . I was beginning to wonder how long the police would be able to stand up and deal with the situation without food or water when the Congress bugle rang out ordering the retreat and the whole crowd rapidly turned away and left the neighbourhood of the salt works. This absurd performance was repeated on three or four successive Sunday mornings.*

From April to the end of the year, hardly a day passed in Bombay City without a procession, a demonstration or an outbreak of some kind of disorder, and the strain on the police was very great. ‘They were exposed to every kind of abuse and vilification in public and in the press and were at times assaulted in the street’.* The police morale under these trying circumstances was beyond praise. There were practically no resignations and the number of men who reported sick was no greater than in the previous year.

In the Bombay mofussil, the police displayed both tenacity and gallantly, but considerations of space allow us to quote only one example. In July 1930, when a villager was being tried for assault on an octroi clerk of the Junnar municipality

a rowdy mob of one thousand villagers . . . marched on the Administrative Offices with the object of dragging the mamlatdar from his Court and of forcing him to discharge the accused. Jamadar Jan Gul, the senior police officer, with only five constables, held up the mob at the main gate of the Court and later in spite of the showers of stones, succeeded in driving them back without resort to firing.*

These disturbances had two unfortunate by-products. In the first place they necessarily distracted the attention of the police from ordinary non-political crime—which accordingly showed a noticeable increase—and secondly, they created an atmosphere of disrespect for authority in which labour troubles or ordinary disputes led to violence on a scale far worse than would normally have resulted.

In Bihar too the situation was serious, and the official analysis of the crime statistics shows beyond doubt that the atmosphere of violence engendered by the civil disobedience movement, and the serious inroads made by that movement on the energies and time of the police, led to a considerable increase of ordinary crime. It is significant that as the civil disobedience movement declined, crime in general decreased. Here, as in Bengal and Bombay, the police were attacked again and again. In Balasore, for example, ‘a police encampment was raided by a mob of persons who were breaking the Salt Law; the police were overwhelmed and some of the constables were stripped of their uniform’. Many other instances of such attacks and of the courage displayed by the police are recorded in the official reports. Special tribute must also be paid in connection with events in Bihar, to the staunchness of the village police. We read, for example in the Administration Report of a daffadar and a chaukidar facing a mob of 500 men who were obstructing a liquor vendor; and again of a chaukidar in Monghyr rescuing an injured head constable who had been assaulted by villagers; and yet again of a daffadar organizing a force of chaukidars to arrest two burglars. The high degree of moral courage which this devotion to duty entailed can only be realized when it is remembered that, all the time, regular and village police were being taunted by their own people as traitors.

It is not possible to follow this story throughout the other provinces, but special reference must be made to the North-West Frontier Province, inasmuch as the civil disobedience movement there differed in one important respect from that elsewhere. In most of India the movement was mainly Hindu inspired and Muslims tended to hold aloof from it. In the North-West Frontier Province, Muslims were in an overwhelming majority, and yet the popular movement there allied itself vigorously with the Congress. This alliance has been attributed by some authorities to the understandable but excessive caution of the British Government. The North-West Frontier Province had by no means been unaffected by the general ferment of ideas in India, but it had, nevertheless, been excluded from the operation of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms.

The British administration was too slow to recognize all the signs of a new found pride in the Pathans. In the constitutional field, progress was halted by counsels of prudence, while political ambitions were subordinated to considerations of all-India strategy and defence. Right up to the time of the Simon Commission, the theory of the powder magazine was allowed to rule decisions. From 1920 to 1923 nothing was done to enlarge the political horizon and resentment grew and flared. . . . There arose a new political party in the villages, a party which, in the complete absence of the ballot box or any form of expression by parliamentary means, was necessarily conceived, first as a pressure group and subsequently as a mass movement for agitation against the established order.*

The Congress seized the opportunity, and under the leadership of two remarkable brothers, Dr. Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghafiar Khan, the new party in the North-West Frontier Province entered whole-heartedly into alliance with the predominantly Hindu Congress. Uniformed, but unarmed, bodies of volunteers, officially known as Khudai Khidmatgars, or ‘Servants of God’ (but commonly called Red Shirts from the colour of their uniforms), were enrolled and drilled. At this stage the passing of the Sardar Act, which prohibited the marriage of girls under 14 years of age, was represented as being an attack on the Muslim religion, and provided useful material for Abdul Ghaffar Khan and other propagandists who began to tour the Province in April 1930. They soon succeeded in stirring up trouble. Savage rioting broke out in Peshawar and, at first, troops were used to quell the disorder. On the following day, the troops were withdrawn and the police were left to cope with the situation. They soon found this beyond their power in view of the large numbers of volunteers massed against them. For several days the city was in the control of the civil disobedience party, and it was not until the military were again called in that order was restored. The trouble soon spread to the interior, and the pattern only differed from that which we have studied in other provinces inasmuch as the Pathan is a born fighter. Conflicts with authority were often even more violent than was normal elsewhere in India, so much so that on numerous occasions the police had to be reinforced or replaced by the military. Co-operation between the police and the army was close and within a few months it resulted in the restoration of order.

Altogether, 1930 was an unhappy year throughout India. Civil disobedience, communal strife, and terrorism in Bengal dominated the scene, and only too often poisoned relations between the British and Indians. In March 1931, however, a new hope of peace appeared though it was soon destined to prove illusory. The Irwin-Gandhi Pact to which we have already referred was accompanied by a Congress undertaking to discontinue civil disobedience and to participate in the Second Round Table Conference. In some provinces the truce was fairly observed, but in the United Provinces, Jawaharlal Nehru, in an extremely aggressive mood, started first an agrarian agitation and then a ‘no tax’ campaign. In the North-West Frontier Province, the Red Shirts continued to circulate inflammatory propaganda, to hold military parades, and to stir up feeling against the Government. The Government of the United Provinces exercised great patience and went as far as possible by way of remitting arrears of rent and revenue, but the situation was getting out of hand and in December Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested. Almost simultaneously, Abdul Ghaffar Khan was arrested in the North-West Frontier Province.

When Gandhi returned from the Round Table Conference on 28 December 1931, conscious of having failed over the communal issue, he challenged the Viceroy to embark on a discussion as to the measures taken in the United Provinces and the North-West Frontier Province. The Viceroy rightly declined this proposal and Gandhi answered by announcing the revival of the civil disobedience movement. The Government of India took rapid action. Gandhi and others were arrested, many Congress organizations were declared to be unlawful associations, and wide powers to deal with the emergency were taken by Ordinance. The Government rightly judged the mood of the majority of the people who ‘were tired of agitation and discord and were prepared to wait and see what results could be produced by co-operation on the basis of the declared policy of His Majesty’s Government’. The firm action taken soon justified itself by results and although outbreaks of violence continued from time to time, the movement never really regained momentum. The pressure on the police never became as severe as in 1931, except in Bengal where terrorism continued unabated.

A constructive spirit was in fact beginning to develop in the ranks of the Congress, and when in June 1933, Asaf Ali wrote to Gandhi declaring that civil disobedience had been a failure and that the Congress should concentrate on the capture of the Legislatures, he was expressing the feeling of the great majority of Congressmen. Gandhi, who by this time, had been released from gaol was not in sympathy with this new approach and he decided to revive individual civil disobedience by marching from Sabarmati to Khaira. This attempt was cut short by his arrest and re-imprisonment. This action and Gandhi’s hunger strike in August 1933 created relatively little excitement, and in April 1934 the more practical approach now popular in the Congress Party led to the final suspension of the civil disobedience movement.

One general comment must be made before we turn to other aspects of the struggle. Throughout these difficult days, the police in general showed remarkable patience and restraint, and it may be doubted if, anywhere else in the world, so widespread and dangerous a movement either could or would have been controlled with so little display of force. Although they did not know it, the Indian public had cause to be grateful to those officers of the Indian police who throughout several generations, by training and example, had fashioned the Indian police into a highly disciplined and dependable body of men, capable of self-control under great provocation.

Chapter 18

The Terrorist Movement

In between the two World Wars the police in many parts of India had to cope simultaneously with two separate subversive movements—civil disobedience and terrorism. In dealing with civil disobedience, the main task of the police was to contain or disperse aggressive or obstructive crowds, and the qualities required were patience, discipline, self-restraint and physical courage. There was no concealment about the actions of the civil resisters and detective skill on the part of the police was rarely required. In the fight against terrorism, however, the task of the police was not only to discover who had perpetrated a particular crime, but also to unravel the network of organization behind it. Great courage was indeed required, particularly from Indian Intelligence Officers, but of equal importance were powers of observation, a good memory, tenacity and the ability to put together clues from many sources, and to discard those which were false. The best intelligence officers developed an uncanny flair for knowing whom to believe or what clues to pursue. This work naturally devolved on a comparatively few men of all ranks, trained for the purpose and experienced in handling agents, watchers, approvers or informers, and in conducting house searches.

The cardinal principle in dealing with agents was that their identity must on no account be disclosed, even though this might mean that valuable and certain knowledge could not be used to prevent the commission of murder. This can best be illustrated by the example of an agent who, having reported that X had recently acquired a revolver, gained possession of it for a short time in the absence of X, and showed it to an intelligence officer in confirmation of his statement. The safety of the agent perhaps depended on his replacing the revolver before X discovered that it was missing. In such a case, the intelligence officer was bound to let the agent return the revolver, even though the officer himself might be the person against whom it was intended to be used. There was no escape from this harsh necessity. Common sense suggested—and experience showed that if the identity of an agent was disclosed, even indirectly sources of information dried up.

Of great importance to the intelligence officer was his ability to organize a reliable staff of watchers.

The difficulty of this task is rarely appreciated by outsiders. It is a common belief among officials, judicial as well as executive, that it is perfectly safe to enlarge a suspectedly dangerous person on the ground that he can be ‘watched’. This, more often than not, is completely fallacious; it is the most difficult thing in the world to set a watch on a person who is bound to be on the lookout for it without his soon becoming aware of it; the longer the watch is maintained, the more certain it is to be discovered; for instance, if a suspect enters a house in an unfrequented or obscure quarter of the town—and conspirators are apt to gravitate to such localities—any watcher who follows him and dawdles about, waiting for his man to reappear, is simply asking for discovery, even if he has not been spotted during the ‘tailing’ process. To keep under observation a haunt of conspirators may require something like a team of watchers, the second of whom can inconspicuously relieve the first if he is likely to be spotted, and so on.*

Information from agents and watchers often led to house searches for the discovery of weapons or correspondence. The utmost secrecy had to be observed beforehand, and the searches themselves were at times highly dangerous since the suspects might be armed and would often have posted guards and sentries. ‘Discoveries which were of the utmost value to the police were often the result of these searches; arms dumps, literature and organization plans of terrorist groups, wanted murderers and suspects might all be included in one haul’.*

All these methods, however, would have been of little use without a detailed knowledge of the general organization and methods of the terrorists and of the particular groups to which prominent terrorists belonged. Much of the time of intelligence officers was, therefore, taken up in the preparation of elaborate history sheets.

With this background we are in a position to describe the main events and developments of the terrorist movement between the two wars. It will be convenient, since there was no all-India direction of the movement, to consider these matters province by province and, in this grisly story, Bengal can claim pride of place.

Terrorism in Bengal

An analysis of the incidence of terrorist crime in Bengal might suggest that the movement had two main phases: the first from 1923 to 1927 and a second phase which darkened the years from 1929 to 1935. In reality, however, there was one long terrorist campaign ‘interrupted only by the periods of prostration after the terrorists had been attacked by special legislation’.*

By about 1920 the police had brought the movement to some extent under control, but the year 1923 witnessed a recrudescence of terrorist crime. Early in the year information was received that revolutionaries in Bengal were planning a large-scale campaign of armed robbery to raise funds for party purposes. In August, after a series of crimes of that kind, three Bengali youths attacked the Sankaritolla Post Office in Calcutta and murdered the postmaster. The post office staff and some members of the public showed great courage in pursuing the raiders, who fired at their pursuers. One of the raiders was caught and was in due course condemned to death. The police investigation of this case brought to light a widespread anarchical conspiracy organized by Satish Mitra and his party. The police obtained much information about these activities, but the conspiracy case failed for lack of proof and once again it was clear that the ordinary law was inadequate in the existing situation. The special legislation enacted to deal with the terrorist movement had been repealed, but Regulation III of 1818 remained in force and recourse was had to its provisions. Public comment on the use of this Regulation was unfavourable, partly because it was impossible to publish all the evidence of the existence of terrorist conspiracies. Certain sections of the press behaved irresponsibly in this matter, and their general attitude can be gauged from the fact that the anniversary of the death in October 1915 of Jatindra Nath Mukherjea (who, after a series of daring murders and taxicab robberies, had attempted to organize a revolution with German help), was celebrated in different papers by long and laudatory notices.* In 1924 the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act came into operation and enabled more effective action to be taken against Satish’s gang. They were interned and it is noteworthy that when they were released, they gave no further trouble.

In 1924, terrorism assumed serious proportions in Bengal. The aims of one of the conspiracies was to murder Charles (later Sir Charles) Tegart, the Commissioner of Police in Calcutta, and two of his officers. Although detailed operations against the terrorists in Calcutta were the responsibility of the Deputy Commissioner in charge of the Special Branch, Tegart naturally had an overall responsibility for the campaign and in the public eye he represented the anti-revolutionary forces. Moreover, in earlier days, both in the Special Branch and in the Intelligence Branch, Tegart had been the scourge of the terrorists and was therefore a marked man. A young Bengali, Gopi Mohan Saha, was therefore deputed to murder Tegart, but on 12 January 1924, by mistake he murdered Mr. Ernest Day, a businessman who resembled Tegart. This incident has been vividly described by Lady Tegart.

The murder took place in the early hours of the morning when it was still pleasantly cool. Day had paused during a morning walk to look in at the window of Hall and Anderson’s, a large European shop facing the main thoroughfare of Chowringhee and near the right-angle turn to Kyd Street, in which Tegart’s house was situated; he was about the same build as Tegart and was wearing a khaki shirt and shorts; as he was gazing into the windows, his back to the street, a young Bengali suddenly came up behind him and shot him in the back, shooting him again repeatedly after he had fallen to the ground and then running away. The murderer was chased by several people and fired at them as he ran, wounding two of them severely, but he was eventually captured.*

The mental processes of a young terrorist were well illustrated by a statement made by Gopi Mohan Saha in court.

In the beginning of last year I read in the newspapers that a European gentleman of the name of Mr. Tegart, after going all over the world and collecting information regarding freedom for India, was returning to India with a view to obstruct our endeavours. I began meditating very much on this question of obstruction to our freedom. While thus contemplating over it I would feel my head get heated. I could not sleep or eat. In this state I heard the call of the Mother (i.e. India) which was ‘Follow him’. . . . While meditating I got the call from the Mother: ‘Remove him from this world.’ I first saw him on the day of the distribution of the King’s Police Medal. I saw him many times at the flower stalls of the New Market and I passed close by him many a time. I followed him when he left his house, with firearms in my possession, to many places. I even opened the safety catch of my revolver to be ready to shoot him while following him, but did not actually shoot him because I had not received the final call from my Mother. I began meditating deeply as to whether I would kill him or not. Two or three days before my arrest I got back into my previous state. I felt my head heated. I had no sleep or appetite for food, could not stop inside my room. . . .

The day on which I was arrested I came out in the morning. I went to the Maidan [open grass space or park] and walked absent-mindedly for a long distance. I saw a Sahib and thought this was Mr. Tegart. Then I shot him. I fired many shots at him. I do not remember how many I fired. My idea was lest by any chance he should survive. Before I fired and even when I fired I did not have in my mind the idea whether I myself was going to live or not. When many people shouted out ‘Robber, Robber! Murder, Murder! Catch him’, then I began to run.*

During the investigation of this case the house of a member of Gopi Mohan Saha’s group was searched and ‘six very well made bombs loaded with ammonium picrate, a quantity of picric acid and tools and materials for making more bombs were found there’. Searching for bombs was clearly a hazardous undertaking as will appear from an unpublished account by Mr. F. W. Kidd, a Deputy Commission of the Special Branch, Calcutta, of a house search conducted early in 1924.

A few minutes later when poking round the room the Inspector found a smallish wooden box up against the wall. Opening the lid he found inside four or five rough imitations of Mills bombs. Some of them were already primed and the balance filled, but not primed. Elsewhere we found some empty shells. On the floor were a couple of bags filled with yellowish powder and some of this powder was spilt over parts of the floor. Elsewhere in the room there was another powder, reddish in colour, similar to the substance on the primers of the bombs. . . . I managed to get the assistance of the Government Chemist. He identified the yellow powder as ammonium picrate, a violent explosive which requires a spark to explode it, but the Chemist said he would not guarantee this roughly made composition. We got it into buckets of water as quickly as possible, but we often wondered afterwards whether we might have set the whole place off by stepping on the spilt powder with boots with nails in the heels. The Chemist then wanted my assistance to get rid of this ammonium picrate now in solution. He decided it was too dangerous to pour the solution down drains; again too dangerous to pour into the river from a wharf. Finally we got a launch and poured it out gradually in midstream from the stern. About the live bombs, I got the assistance of a young R.E. Officer from Calcutta. The bombs had to be taken to the Fort. The R.E. Officer drove a car and I sat in the back with the box on my knees and prayed that nothing would be so rash as to give us a good bump.’*

In July 1924, a Red Bengal leaflet announced to all and sundry the opening of a campaign of assassination of the police and of members of the public who sought to interfere with the activities of the terrorists. The leaflet read as follows:*

Bande Mataram

Notice

The public is hereby informed that the Bengal Revolutionary Council has passed a resolution of a campaign of ruthless assassination of police officers. Anyone in any way actively or passively putting obstruction to our comrade when in action or retiring; or helping the government of this country as by taking brief from the government or giving evidence in favour of prosecution, etc., when any such comrade is in the hands of the government, or inciting the government to take repressive measures shall be considered as doing acts highly prejudicial to the best interests of our country and from the moment any such action is taken by any one he shall be considered as condemned to be despatched forthwith.

President-in-Council, Red Bengal.

This leaflet might have been regarded as an idle threat but for the fact that at least five proposals to murder police officers or other officials had been brought to the notice of the police before the end of the year.

In October 1924, as we have seen, an Ordinance, afterwards embodied in the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, provided for the placing under restraint of persons involved in terrorism, and for surveillance in the case of less important suspects. Where personal restraint was proposed, the case had to be submitted to two Judges. Armed with these new powers, the police mobilized a force of 600 officers and men, and carried out fifty-eight searches in Calcutta and elsewhere, after which nineteen persons were detained under Regulation III, and sixty-six under the new Ordinance. Those arrested included two members of the Bengal Legislative Council, as well as Subhas Chandra Bose, Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation, and afterwards notorious for his connection with the so-called ‘Indian National Army’.

In 1925 certain elements in the Anusilan and Jugantar Parties combined to form a new group calling itself the All-Bengal Revolutionary Party. Its activities came to light as a result of highly intelligent work by watchers of the Calcutta Special Branch. Their watch on certain frequenters of a house in Sovabazar Street, led on 10 November to simultaneous searches of that house and another in the Twenty-four Parganas. Revolvers, ammunition, a loaded bomb and material for the manufacture of explosives were found and eleven important revolutionaries were arrested. All of them were convicted and it then appeared that their plans included the import of arms from the Far East, as well as widespread insurrection, guerilla warfare and the murder of officials. ‘There is no doubt that this party was preparing for some spectacular outrage when its plans were interrupted by these fortuitous arrests.’* A few months later, there was a sequel which was a matter of particular regret amongst police officers. Rai Bhupendra Nath Chatterjee Bahadur, Special Superintendent of Police, Intelligence Branch, had played a great part in fighting terrorism in Bengal, and in view of the fact that the Rai Bahadur was in constant danger of assassination, Tegart had suggested some time previously that he could honourably retire. Bhupendra gallantly refused to leave and so it came about that in May 1926 he visited a gaol in which some of the conspirators had been confined. As he was leaving, a gang of these men armed with an iron crowbar set on him and brutally murdered him.

In January 1927 a further discovery of bombs and revolvers led to the conviction of three more members of the party and a similar result soon followed the commission of an armed robbery in Hooghly. Before long it appeared that these crimes were part of a conspiracy which had important ramifications outside Bengal. A house search in Deoghar, in Bihar, revealed the names of sixty-eight party members in Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa, the United Provinces and the Punjab. A list of eighteen persons whom it was proposed to assassinate was also found. In due course, eleven Bengali revolutionaries were convicted of conspiracy, while two others were convicted under the Arms Act. As a result of these operations, the provinces concerned were undoubtedly saved from a series of very serious outrages.

These successful prosecutions, together with the orders of restraint passed under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, produced a lull in terrorist activity in Bengal. In 1928, however, the Government of India embarked on a policy of conciliation, and by the beginning of 1929 all detenus under the Act and all state prisoners under Regulation III had been released. This policy may or may not have been wise on broad political considerations, but it hampered the police considerably in their struggle with terrorism. Not only did it enable the revolutionary movement to regain its former momentum, but it also disheartened those who had laboriously collected the evidence on which the orders of detention had been based. In 1929, terrorist outrages increased in number and there was an amalgamation of terrorist groups similar to that which had taken place in 1925. The successful prosecution of some of its members in the Mechuabazar Street bomb case temporarily dislocated the party* and it was not until 1930 that the full effect of the new Government policy was felt. Mass civil disobedience, orgies of communal rioting and an intensive campaign of terrorism combined to make that year one of disorder without parallel since the Mutiny, and to those without knowledge of the vast resources of Britain and of the strength of the Indian administration it must have seemed that the fabric of government would collapse.

The Chittagong Armoury Raid

The most spectacular act of terrorism in Bengal in 1930 was the Chittagong Armoury raid. The police had amassed a good deal of information about Chittagong terrorists and widespread house searches had been planned for 19 April. As it happened the terrorists struck first on the evening of 18 April. The raid produced strong emotional reactions from officials and Europeans, but at this distance of time the story is perhaps best told in the unemotional language of the Bengal Police Administration Report for the year.

On the 18th April at about 10 p.m. four batches of varying strength set out from the Congress Office and Ganesh Ghosh’s shop, one to capture the police armoury, one to capture the auxiliary force armoury, one to massacre the Europeans in the club and the other to destroy the telephone exchange and the telegraph office. The club party, finding the club practically deserted, split up and joined the police armoury and auxiliary force parties. The police armoury party consisted of about fifty youths. All were dressed in khaki and the leaders wore officers’ uniform. The leaders rushed the sentry and shot him down. The remainder then followed and broke open the armoury and magazine and armed themselves with muskets and revolvers with which they drove out the unarmed constables from the police lines.

The auxiliary force armoury party consisted of about seven persons. The leader, dressed as an officer, walked up to the sentry and after replying to his challenge, shot him and another sepoy fatally. Sergeant-Major Farrell, on coming out of his quarters nearby, was shot dead. The armoury was then forced open and pistols, revolvers, rifles and a Lewis gun were taken away. The ammunition, which was in the magazine, was fortunately overlooked. The building was then set on fire with petrol, and the raiders, after loading their cars with arms drove to the police lines to join the main party. While in possession of the armoury they fired on all motor cars passing on the road killing a railway guard, the driver and assistant driver of a taxi and a constable who was in the District Magistrate’s car, and wounded the driver of the District Magistrate’s car and a villager who was in a passing taxi. This party therefore murdered seven persons and wounded two.

The telegraph office party consisted of about six persons. They seized the telephone operator and chloroformed him, hacked the telephone board to pieces, and set it on fire. The telegraph master was shot at when he came to the operator’s assistance, but he returned with a gun and drove them off without their having succeeded in destroying the telegraph office. They then went to the police lines and joined the main party.

The number of raiders at the police lines then amounted to about sixty; having armed themselves with muskets they were being instructed in using them. At about midnight, however, Mr. Farmer, Deputy Inspector-General, Mr. Johnson, Superintendent of Police, Mr. Lewis, Assistant Superintendent of Police, and Mr. Barraclough, a member of the auxiliary force, opened fire on them with a Lewis gun secured from a subsidiary armoury. The raiders returned the fire and also threw a bomb which failed to explode. Himangshu Sen, one of the raiders, while setting the guardroom on fire with petrol, got so severely burnt that he subsequently died. Two of the leaders and two others took Himangshu Sen away in a motor, abandoning the rest of the party who thereupon retreated to the lulls north of the town, each carrying a musket, at least one revolver or pistol and a haversack full of cartridges. Nineteen rebels were shot dead during the skirmishes which took place when the police attempted to round up the absconders. During one of these skirmishes constable Prasanna Barua of the Kolapole beat house, displaying magnificent courage and tenacity, seized and clung to one of the rebels although mortally wounded. Meanwhile, another batch had destroyed railway and telegraphic communications by de-railing a train and cutting the telegraph wires at Dhoom, 40 miles from Chittagong, and another had cut the telegraph wires and made an unsuccessful attempt to de-rail a train near Laksam, 70 miles away. A case . . . against thirty-five persons was still under trial, and seventeen persons were absconding at the end of the year.*

Most of the leaders, including such well-known terrorists as Surya Sen, escaped to the hills and were not brought to book until some years later. It then transpired that nearly all of them were former detenus who had been released under the policy of conciliation to which we have referred. The Chittagong raid forced the Government of Bengal to reverse that policy and an Ordinance was promulgated restoring some of the sections of the repealed Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act. Under the powers then conferred the authorities placed 155 known terrorists under restraint.

Four Years of Murder and Crime

Outrages nevertheless continued and amongst them there was another attempt on the life of Tegart by two Bengali youths. One of them, Dinesh Mazumdar, threw a bomb at Tegart’s car just after it had passed and in the process killed his fellow conspirator, Anuja. With great courage two unarmed constables dashed at Dinesh and seized him. In July 1931 he was executed and the Calcutta Corporation passed a Resolution expressing its grief at his execution and referring to the way in which Dinesh had ‘sacrificed his life for his ideal’. It is interesting to note that in the course of the investigation of this crime, the police searched the house of a Bengali doctor with a good practice as a consultant, well regarded by European medical men in Calcutta. It then appeared that he had been working for eight months in the preparation of explosives for a terrorist group and had in fact taken lessons in the manufacture of bombs from an expert in Delhi. He was tried by Commissioners and sentenced to transportation for twenty years.

The Chittagong Armoury raid seems to have had an electrifying effect on all parties and, in particular, it galvanized into activity a party known as the Dacca Sri Sangha which had been formed a year or so previously as a group of the Jugantar party. The Sri Sangha had an offshoot known as the Bengal Volunteer Group, which was of a very dangerous type and had the advantage that it was comparatively unknown. It was responsible for a serious outrage in Dacca at the end of August 1930. Mr. F. J. Lowman, Inspector-General of Police, and Mr. Eric Hodson, Superintendent of Police at Dacca, had been visiting a sick colleague in the Mitford Hospital and afterwards stood about in the hospital compound chatting to the Civil Surgeon. A young Bengali appeared from behind and fired twice at Lowman and three times at Hodson. Two days later Lowman died, while Hodson, whose condition had been thought to be the more critical, recovered. Lowman was well known for his liberal opinions and his sympathy with Indian aspirations, and his murder well illustrates the fact that these qualities were no protection against the terrorists. This action stirred up considerable anger amongst Europeans and responsible Indians, and it was one of the few occasions when a real desire for reprisal manifested itself.

The murder of Lowman was followed by an outrage in Writers Buildings, the headquarters of the Government ofBengal on 8 December. Three Bengali youths, one of whom had been Lowman’s assailant, asked for an interview with Lieut.-Colonel N. S. Simpson, Inspector-General of Prisons, and when the chaprassi asked them to fill in the usual interview slip, they brushed past him into the office and shot Simpson dead. They then ran down the corridor firing at random. Mr. H. P. V. Townend, who tried to stop them, was wounded, and Mr. J. W. Nelson, Judicial Secretary to the Government of Bengal, who came out into the corridor, was shot in the thigh. In neither case were the injuries fatal. By this time, Mr. E. B. Jones, Assistant Inspector-General of Police, had arrived and fired at the murderers. ‘Soon all was quiet. One terrorist was found dead from poison which he had taken and one was shot in the head and was dying.’ The third was shot in the throat, but survived and in due course was convicted and hanged.* A few days later, a police inspector was assassinated at a railway station, having been mistaken in the dark for Mr. T. J. A. Craig, the new Inspector-General of Police.

In 1931 the sorry tale continued. The victims included a Commissioner, three District Magistrates, a European businessman (Mr. Villiers of the European Association) and Khan Bahadur Ahsanallah, an inspector of police who had taken a prominent part in the prosecution of the Chittagong Armoury raiders. In the case of two of the District Magistrates and the Khan Bahadur, the attacks were fatal. Reference in a little more detail must be made to two of these cases, the first being the murder of Mr. J. Peddie, District Magistrate of Midnapore, in April 1931. Peddie was generally regarded as the most outstanding of the ex-Servicemen who were recruited to the Indian Civil Service after distinguished military service in the First World War. A strong personality, and a man of liberal views and constructive ideas, he represented the British Raj in its best aspects and perhaps for this reason was a particularly likely target for the terrorists. He was the first of three District Magistrates of Midnapore to be assassinated in three successive years. That District had long had a reputation for turbulence even as far back as the eighteenth century. It had played a conspicuous part in the most aggressive phases of the civil disobedience movement and because of its proximity to Calcutta, provided a propitious background for terrorist activity.

Another murder in this year to which attention must be drawn was that of Mr. G. C. B. Stevens, District Magistrate of Tipperah. Stevens was a delightful character—a man of great ability, a musician, an eccentric who played bridge with his servants, and a man of whom perhaps more amusing stories were told than of any other European in the service. He was so sympathetic to Indians that he refused to believe in the existence of a terrorist movement until shortly before his death. On 14 December 1931, two girls, aged respectively sixteen and seventeen, brought a petition to his house. In many districts, they would have been treated with suspicion and in the circumstances at the time might not have had access to the District Magistrate unless a woman were available to search them first. The liberal-minded Stevens went out on to the verandah to hear their troubles. One of the girls immediately drew a revolver from under her sari and shot Stevens dead. There is some evidence that this incident caused a revulsion of feeling against terrorism amongst large sections of the Indian community, but it did not deter the important members of the revolutionary party from pursuing their aims.

Judged by the number and gravity of terrorist outrages, 1932 was indeed a grim year in Bengal.

Terrorist crimes were committed at almost regular intervals throughout the year and reached a total of ninety-seven. Of these, ten were murders, twenty-seven attempted murders and fifty-seven dacoities. Amongst the more spectacular outrages were an attempt by a girl student to murder the Governor;* the assassination of yet another District Magistrate at Midnapore* as well as of a Deputy Magistrate, a British police officer* and a British military officer engaged on police duties.* Another British police officer and a jail Superintendent were attacked and two attempts were made on the life of the editor of the Statesman, Sir Alfred Watson.*

In September an organized raid was made at Pahartali, near Chittagong, on the Railway Institute which was, at the time, full of European and Anglo-Indian subordinate railway officials. A gang of terrorists threw bombs into the hall and opened fire with guns and pistols. An elderly European lady was killed and thirteen persons were injured.

Throughout the year the atmosphere was tense, but two events gave ground for optimism. The first of them was the appointment of Sir John Anderson (later Lord Waverley) as Governor of Bengal. Anderson was a man of great experience and strength of character and at once gave a new tone to an administration which had hitherto lacked leadership. Officials now felt that they had proper backing. The second encouraging feature was the strengthening of the law to deal with terrorism. The Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act 1932 continued an Ordinance which gave the Government wide powers to order detention without trial, while the Second Criminal Law Amendment Act 1932 made attempts at murder an offence punishable with death. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the power of detention in dealing with terrorism. ‘Next to shooting a terrorist dead, nothing can be comparable in importance as an instrument for paralysing him to one by which one can lock him up.’* A mere order of restraint on a leading terrorist would simply invite him to abscond.

There were, however, numbers of lesser fry for whom a different kind of treatment was effective and to meet their case, the Bengal Suppression of Outrages Act conferred extensive and extraordinary powers on the District Magistrate. There was indeed a rule under the Act which empowered the District Magistrate, for the purposes of the Act, to direct a person to reside or not to reside in a specified area or ‘to conduct himself in such a manner, to abstain from such acts, or take such order with property in his possession as may be specified in the order’. This power will seem to English readers so drastic that some explanation is required as to why it was necessary and how it was used, and here the writer feels qualified to comment as he was one of those who had to operate the Act in Midnapore. Experience showed that, although terrorist acts were committed by youths, older men, often occupying responsible positions, encouraged them and gave them facilities for meeting and plotting. In one district for example, the Treasurer of the Collectorate had four sons deeply involved in the terrorist movement and gave them encouragement behind the scenes—and he was only one amongst a number of influential men who played similar parts. It was essential to cut off these elderly instigators from contact with actual and potential terrorists. Then again, terrorists seldom acted alone; they needed the moral support of the company of other members of their groups. A serious blow could therefore be struck against terrorism by confining particular individuals to particular areas and thus isolating them from harmful contacts. The Bengal Suppression of Terrorist Outrages Act was used for this purpose with considerable effect in Midnapore and elsewhere.

The powers under the Act were exercised by the District Magistrate, but the information on which they were based necessarily came from the police. The operation of the Act without injustice was only possible, first because the police had built up a great body of knowledge of terrorism, which their superior officers used with the utmost fairness, and, secondly, because it was still the responsibility of the District Magistrate to use his own judgment before applying the Act.

At this time, several battalions of the Indian Army were brought into Bengal to give moral support to the district authorities. They acted under the general orders of the District Magistrate and in collaboration with the police. They assisted, when required, in cordoning houses or villages which were to be searched by the police, and at least in Midnapore District, the parties for these combined operations always included a Magistrate. They were also made the occasion for anti-terrorist propaganda carried out by civil officers.

At the same time, the Bengal Intelligence Branch was strengthened and it could indeed be claimed that, by now, the Bengal intelligence service was unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

After the intense terrorist activity of the first half of 1932, the latter part of the year witnessed a marked improvement. ‘Plot after plot was discovered and foiled and one leader after another was captured.’ Nevertheless, the terrorist campaign continued to be vigorous. ‘There were still a large number of individuals abroad who were prepared to commit isolated outrages and apparently had no difficulty in securing arms.’ Three of the outrages in 1933 were of a sufficiently dramatic character to warrant description. In March the Commissioner of Police, Chandemagore (in French territory), along with two constables, chased two absconders, one of whom fired three shots at the Commissioner. One of these shots proved fatal. The assailants also wounded a boy who stood in their way and a constable who tried to stop them. The assailants were in due course arrested and convicted for another offence.

A lull in acts of terrorism then followed, but in September 1933, Mr. Burge, District Magistrate of Midnapore, was assassinated as he walked on to the football field to take part in a match between two local teams.

Two persons who had mingled with the players closed in on him and riddled him with bullets. He died almost immediately. Mr. Norton-Jones, Additional Superintendent of Police, Midnapore, and Mr. Smith, Inspector of Police, who were both unarmed rushed at the assassins while they were still firing, brought them down and struggled with them on the ground until armed guards rushed up and shot both assassins dead. They were Mrigendra Datta and Anath Panja, both of Midnapore. The investigation which immediately followed this murder disclosed a deep-rooted conspiracy to terrorise Government officials by such insensate acts of brutality. Forty-seven persons were arrested, of whom six were ultimately charged, two were externed under the Suppression of Terrorist Outrages Act and twenty-six were dealt with under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act. Thirteen persons were tried by a Special Tribunal for the offence of conspiracy to murder and of these Nirmal Jiban Ghosh, Ram Krista and Braja Krishore Chakravarti were sentenced to death. Four others were sentenced to transportation for life and the remainder dealt with under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act.

The accused all belonged to Midnapore District, and it is to be noted that Burge was the third magistrate of that District in succession to be murdered.

In October, fourteen or fifteen youths armed with guns, revolvers, daggers and axes attacked the Hili railway station on the main line between Calcutta and Darjeeling, and looted the mail chest and the railway cash.

They also damaged the telephone apparatus, but did not succeed in putting it completely out of action. While the dacoity was going on the dacoits fired at random and injured several people, one of whom, a postal peon, subsequently died of his injuries. The next day, after some brilliant work by a constable, seven of the culprits were arrested with a part of the loot, a loaded revolver, a loaded pistol, a gun, cartridges and three daggers. Six others were arrested later and more of the loot was recovered.

An important event in 1933 was what was known as the ‘Inter-Provincial Conspiracy Case’. At the beginning of the year, Prabhat Chakravarti, the leader of ah important Anusilan group, had been arrested. Cipher addresses of connections all over India were found in his possession and a widespread conspiracy with ramifications in many provinces was revealed. Forty persons were tried and ‘many witnesses were examined who had been for a time revolutionaries or had at some time or other toyed with the idea of becoming revolutionaries’. One of the most dangerous of the accused, Dhirendra Nath Bhattacharji, had been in the habit of disguising himself as a sadhu (or holy man) and carrying on propaganda in the Punjab. ‘His method was to excite youths with books . . . then to encourage individual acts of terrorism as a means of organizing the party and increasing its funds and prestige and ultimately to work for a general uprising. Thirty-one of the accused were convicted and as a result of this case this branch of the Anusilan Party was much weakened.

The situation in 1934 was therefore easier, but a number of terrorist murders and dacoities occurred, and there were two unsuccessful attempts at the murder of high officials. In the first of these attempts, the intended victim was Mr. Cleary, Superintendent of Police at Chittagong. On 7 January, he ordered his armed orderly to search two youths who had aroused his suspicion.

Observing that this was being done perfunctorily, he was proceeding to search them himself when one of them hurled a bomb at him which burst doing no more than slightly wounding one of the orderlies over the eye. Mr. Cleary promptly grappled with his assailant and told his orderly to fire, which he did. Two shots were fired, the second hitting the assailant who succumbed shortly afterwards. The other youth attempted to escape and was pursued and shot dead.

In May an attempt was made to murder the Governor, Sir John Anderson, as he sat in his box at the racecourse at Lebong in Darjeeling. One assailant drew a revolver and opened fire but was shot almost simultaneously by the Governor’s personal bodyguard and the Superintendent of Police, Darjeeling. The second assailant then fired directly at the Governor, but was seized and disarmed, and the Governor and his party escaped injury.

In spite of these dramatic incidents, there was a marked diminution in terrorist activity. Only eighteen terrorist crimes were committed in Bengal in 1934, as against about a hundred in the previous year. The improvement continued in 1935 and the Anusilan Party was further weakened as a result of the Titagarh conspiracy case. In the course of a house search at Titagarh, weapons, cipher material and documents containing instructions for the manufacture of explosives were recovered, and after a lengthy investigation, three accused were sent to gaol.

Gradually the situation was being brought under control and by the latter part of 1935, the Governor was able to state that the main onrush of the last wave of terrorism had been broken.

The Movement in Northern India

Although the terrorist movement in Northern India was never as formidable or complex as that in Bengal, it made great demands on the vigilance of the police for more than a decade. The release in 1920 of persons who had been interned under the Defence of India Act, did not lead to an immediate resumption of terrorist crime but the leaders of the movement lost no time in preparing the ground for action later. Sachindra Nath Sanyal, a Bengali domiciled in Benares began to carry on propaganda amongst young men in the United Provinces, and wrote a book which has been described as ‘one of the best known gems of terrorist literature’. In 1924 he went underground and his place was taken by another Bengali, Jogesh Chandra Chatterji. The activities of these two revolutionaries resulted in the formation of the Hindustan Republic Association, which issued a pamphlet describing the revolutionary movement as ‘the manifestation of the new life that has taken birth in the nation’. Before long the Association had branches in twenty-three districts of the United Provinces, and an elaborate code of rules and regulations for members was formulated.

By 1925 the party was ready for operations, and after the occurrence of a number of dacoities suspected to be the work of terrorists, on 9 August

a large party lay in ambush near Kakori [a town near Lucknow] for a train which three other members (who had insinuated themselves into the guard’s van at the last stopping station) halted at the appointed place by pulling the communication chain. The guard was overpowered and the passengers were warned not to leave the train. One passenger who braved the firing and alighted was promptly shot dead. Meanwhile, a safe containing the earnings of various stations up the line was removed and was later found broken open and rifled, the loss being Rs. 4,500.

At first sight, this looked like an ordinary dacoity, but the police were quick to recognize that it was the work of revolutionaries. It soon appeared that the connection between the perpetrators of this crime and the terrorist organization in Bengal was close, and that they were in fact associates of Jogesh Chatterji. After a careful and prolonged police investigation, a conspiracy case was lodged and at the end of it four accused were hanged, while sixteen others were sentenced to transportation for life or to imprisonment. This greatly weakened the party in the United Provinces, but in the meantime the police had to cope with another subversive movement.

Mr. M. N. Roy, in 1924 and 1925, operating from an address in Berlin, set out to organize a conspiracy on behalf of the Third Communist International, for the purpose, not only of overthrowing British rule, but also of sweeping away the middle and upper classes in India and establishing the rule of the proletariat. A People’s Party whose actions would be above suspicion was to be formed, and under its cover there was to be an inner core of ‘all revolutionary nationalists’. Roy was beyond the reach of the courts, but a number of the conspirators in India were tried and found guilty. At the conclusion of the trial, the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court commented on the close personal attention given to these activities by Colonel Kaye (later Sir Cecil Kaye) Director of the Intelligence Bureau, and the way in which ‘the remarkable efficiency of the Department frustrated and hampered them at every turn, their proceedings were known from day to day and when the evidence against them was complete, their arrest followed’.* There can be no doubt that only the vigilance of the police prevented the growth of a dangerous alliance between international communism and Indian terrorism.

In this period, the Punjab authorities too had to face a new anarchical movement of a formidable kind. ‘A gang of revolutionaries who posed as enthusiastic exponents of the Sikh cause, committed a series of coldblooded murders’* of persons well disposed to the Government. At the same time, cyclostyled leaflets advocated the use of violence and ‘called on the people at large to kill all foreigners’. A large force of extra police was drafted into the affected districts, and before long the gang was crushed and its members rounded up after desperate resistance. Fortunately, the majority of responsible Sikhs strongly denounced these revolutionary activities.

The successful action of the police in all these cases seriously weakened the revolutionary party in Northern India, and for two or three years overt terrorist activities ceased. The interval was, however, put to good use by the revolutionaries in making intensive propaganda and planning. As a result of these plans, in 1928 the terrorist parties in the Punjab, the United Provinces and Bihar were amalgamated under the name of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army with its headquarters in Delhi. The programme of the new group included the rescue from gaol of Jogesh Chatterji and Sachindra Sanyal, as well as the commission of terrorist acts of the more normal kind. Bomb makers from Bengal were also invited to instruct members of the party in the United Provinces in this art. The immediate plans of the group for dacoities failed as a result of bungling, and, indeed, the contrast in this period between the amateurish methods of the terrorists and the professional competence of the police was striking. At the end of 1928, an entirely mistaken belief that the death of Lala Lajpat Rai was due to his having been beaten by the police, induced the amalgamated group to resolve on the murder of Mr. J. A. Scott, Senior Superintendent of Police, Lahore.

An unmarked member of the party watched Mr. Scott’s movements for several days, and then the 17th December was fixed for the outrage. On that day, Mr. Saunders, Assistant Superintendent of Police, went to his office on a red motor cycle and was mistaken for Mr. Scott. The conspirators made elaborate plans for their escape on bicycles, and when Mr. Saunders left his office Shivram Rajguru fired at him, causing him to fall from his machine. Thereupon Bhagat Singh ran up and fired several shots into Mr. Saunders as he lay on the ground.

Shortly after the murder of Saunders, Bhagat Singh visited Calcutta and arranged for a Bengali, Jatindra Nath De, to instruct a group in Agra in the making of explosives, and similar activities were carried on in Lahore. In April 1929, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Baktukeswar Dutt, organized a bomb outrage in the Legislative Assembly. The House had just finished debating the Trades Disputes Bill and the President was announcing his intention of proceeding to other business, when two bombs flung from the Visitors’ Gallery burst among the benches occupied by the official members. Bhagat Singh also fired two unaimed shots from a pistol, and it was afterwards established that this was the pistol with which Saunders had been shot. Six persons were injured but the culprits were arrested. A few days later, the police raided the headquarters of the party in Lahore, arrested three well-known revolutionaries and found bomb-shells, chemicals and notebooks containing formulae for the manufacture of explosives. Twenty-four persons were prosecuted in the first Lahore conspiracy case, and in due course Bhagat Singh and two others were sentenced to death, while a number of other persons received sentences of imprisonment. In the prevailing mood of the country, the execution of Bhagat Singh, and the death of another accused while on hunger strike, attracted popular sympathy, and one journal went so far as to write regarding Bhagat Singh that ‘Heaven is all the happier that he is there’. A few months later, two party members planned to wreck the Viceroy’s train.

They used Indar Pal, who had been enlisted by Yashpal, to watch the railway line near Delhi in the guise of a Sadhu, and persuaded Hans Raj ‘Wireless’, who had a reputation for great skill in electrical matters, to arrange a mine to be exploded by electricity. The mine, which contained TNT, was laid under a sleeper and connected by over 300 yards of ‘flex’ wire buried three inches in the ground, to a battery and switch hidden near the Purana Qila, Delhi. Yashpal, dressed for this occasion in a military uniform complete with breeches and gaiters, and accompanied by Bhag Ram, exploded the mine on December 23rd, 1929 hut fortunately no loss of life occurred, although two feet of rail were blown and some fragments were forced through the floor of a coach to find lodgment in its roof.

At this time circulation was given to a remarkable leaflet entitled The Philosophy of the Bomb, drafted for the Hindustan Socialist Republic Association by Bhagwati Gharan. Much of this leaflet was devoted to countering the Gandhi-sponsored Congress Resolution deploring the attempt to blow up the Viceroy’s train, and the writer of it expressed the view that the Resolution did not represent the honest convictions of Congressmen, but had been passed mainly out of loyalty to Gandhi. The pamphlet continued with a closely reasoned statement of the failure of non-cooperation, the futility of non-violence and the essential place of terrorism in the revolutionary movement. There can be no doubt that this leaflet and others similar to it had a considerable effect in nourishing revolutionary ideas amongst the young intelligentsia.

Northern India continued to be disturbed during 1930. It is not necessary to catalogue the numerous outrages during this period, but reference must be made to some of the more spectacular of them. In July, seven persons connected with a terrorist group attacked the Gadodia Stores in Ghandni Chouk, a well-known business centre in Old Delhi, and after threatening the proprietor and those with him with pistols, extorted the keys of the safe and made off with Rs. 14,200. Enquiries into this case confirmed the police in their belief that Delhi was the headquarters of an inter-provincial group of revolutionaries under the command of one of the persons concerned in the Ghandni Chouk robbery. Dhanwantri, one of the persons involved in that robbery, was recognized by a constable, Mahammad Afzal, who chased him and in spite of being wounded in the abdomen by a pistol shot, felled Dhanwantri to the ground. For this act of gallantry Afzal was awarded the King’s Police Medal. As a result of this capture and subsequent raids, various explosives were recovered and the conspiracy was found to extend to the United Provinces, Gwalior and Ajmer.

Bomb outrages continued to occur at many places in the Punjab, and on 4 October 1930 an attempt was made to murder Khan Bahadur Abdul Aziz, an officer on special duty with the C.I.D.

As the Khan Bahadur was being driven along the canal bank near Lahore, his car was fired on. The driver pulled up thinking that a tyre had burst, whereupon a fusillade of shots was fired, fatally wounding an armed personal guard and injuring the driver. The Khan Bahadur and a companion returned the fire but the assailant escaped.

A third incident in that year which requires mention is an attack on the Governor of the Punjab as he was leaving the Convocation at the Lahore University Hall on 23 December 1930.

Hari Krishan, of Mardan, fired at short range, but fortunately only injured His Excellency in the arm, although an Assistant Sub-Inspector, Chanan Singh, was shot dead. An Inspector and a lady doctor from Delhi, who was at the time talking to the Governor, were both wounded. Hari Krishan and another were arrested on the spot. The former was sentenced to death and, subsequently, Rambir Singh, Durga Dass and Chaman Lal, his associates, were convicted of conspiracy and also sentenced to death.

Similar occurrences took place in the United Provinces at this time, one of which deserves mention. Early in December 1930, an absconding member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, Salig Ram Shukla, was challenged by a police inspector at Cawnpore. He and his companions fired on the police party and Shukla wounded no less than three officers before he was himself shot by the Superintendent of Police. ‘He was encountered in the early morning and circumstances indicated he was about to accompany friends outside the town for revolver practice.’

The year 1931 opened in the United Provinces with a series of bomb outrages. Some of them could not be brought home to particular individuals, but in one incident when Asok Kumar Bose attempted to assassinate an inspector of the C.I.D., his pistol misfired and although he escaped he was subsequently arrested and convicted. In February 1931 a dramatic encounter occurred between the police and a notorious terrorist absconder, Chandra Shekhar Azad, in the Alfred Park at Allahabad.

Mr. Nott-Bower, Superintendent of Police on special duty joined Thakur Bisheshwar Singh, Deputy Superintendent of Police, in the Park, and approached Azad and his companions who were sitting under a tree. Azad and his companions drew revolvers and began firing, whereupon a revolver duel took place at short range between Azad and Mr. Nott-Bower, both of whom were wounded before they took shelter behind trees. Azad’s companion had run away. Thakur Bisheshwar Singh tried to outflank Azad, and fired at him, probably wounding him in the head, but he himself received a bullet in his lower jaw. Azad fell back dead. Meanwhile, many students had collected and were urged by Azad to help him before he died, as he was selling his life for his country.

The magnitude of the problem with which the police had to cope can be gauged from the fact that during 1931 in the Punjab alone, no fewer than 163 persons were charged with terrorist crimes. By the end of the year forty-six of them had been sentenced, fifty-seven were still under trial, while eighteen persons had been outlawed and were living hunted lives. Outrages continued on a considerable scale in 1932, but that year must, nevertheless, be regarded as a period during which the police gained the mastery of the revolutionary movement in Northern India. At this time, too, except in Bengal, there was some change in the public attitude towards violence. The attitude of the Punjab Legislative Assembly to the Punjab Criminal Law Amendment Act 1932 was encouraging, and one important factor—however ill it might bode for the future of India—was the growth of communist ideas. The leaders of the terrorist movement were members of the bourgeoisie whom the communists regarded as their natural enemies, and although at one time it had seemed likely that communism would add strength to the terrorist movement, this did not prove to be the case.

Other Provinces

Terrorism never secured a hold on other parts of India comparable with that which it had in Bengal and Northern India. Bihar indeed could not expect to remain unaffected by the revolutionary movement in Bengal and the United Provinces, and in 1928 a branch of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was established. Sporadic outrages occurred and ‘the terrorist virus and the cult of the bomb could not be completely eradicated’. Nevertheless, vigorous action by the authorities prevented the growth of a really effective terrorist movement, and it is noteworthy that no special legislation was required to control revolutionary activity. In Madras, terrorism never took root, and terrorist incidents there were the result of organizations outside the Province. In Bombay, although the terrorist spirit was at times manifest, relatively few incidents occurred as the result of it, and the movement never reached serious proportions.

The Central Provinces remained almost unaffected by serious revolutionary activity, although a revolutionary group, calling itself ‘Bharat Seva Sangh’ was established in 1930. This group was badly organized and proved ineffective.

Assam enjoyed a long immunity from revolutionary crime, but between 1931 and 1934 dacoities believed to be of terrorist origin were fairly frequent. In 1934, the police uncovered the Sylhet Revolutionary Organization, which was apparently connected with the Sri Sangha in Dacca. The organization had an elaborate set of rules, but is chiefly of interest for two reasons. First, the rules laid down that members should never be recruited from any community other than Hindus, and secondly, the organizers recognized that, though individual terrorism might be necessary, it could never achieve any long term success, and the real objective must be attained by mass revolution. Efforts were made, therefore, to obtain information as to the movements of troops, to recruit signalmen as rebels, to infiltrate into the C.I.D., and to procure arms. On the whole this organization proved ineffective and terrorism did not become a serious menace.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, by a combination of intelligence, courage and pertinacity, the police had mastered the terrorist movement and no praise can be too high for those of all ranks who were responsible for this important success.

Chapter 19

Communal Troubles before World War I

Onerous though the task of the police was in coping with civil disobedience and terrorism, a greater burden was cast on them by the communal strife which flared up fiercely in the three or four decades before Independence. At a time when passions were high, a police officer might often have to take action against his own community, even to the extent of firing on them. The staunchness of the police on these occasions is perhaps the surest of all signs that by the twentieth century they had been welded into a reliable and completely loyal force. In this and the following two chapters we shall be concerned not only with Hindu-Muslim riots, but also with intercaste strife, the savage Moplah Rebellion in 1921, and the formidable Akali movement a little later.

For the sake of the reader not familiar with the Indian scene, we must briefly outline the causes of the antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. We must begin by emphasizing that it was not ‘analogous to the separation between religious denominations in contemporary Europe’,* and that even the bitterness between Catholics and Protestants in seventeenth-century England provides no real parallel to it. The ways of life and thought of the two communities were wholly different, and as the writer has put it elsewhere:

It is important to emphasize the fundamental difference between the psychological foundations of the two religions—Islam, clear-cut, individualistic, democratic, simple; Hinduism, abstruse, caring little for the individual, essentially undemocratic and extremely complicated. In the simple things of everyday life, too, these differences continue. As soon as you hear a man’s name, you know at once whether he is a Muslim or Hindu — Mohammad Khan could not be a Hindu, and a man named Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru could not be a Muslim. This may sound a superficial distinction, but when it is remembered that the man named Mohammad Khan could not, without breaking all the laws of his own society, many the daughter of the man named Jawaharlal Nehru, it will be realized that the gulf between the two communities is by no means imaginary.*

If this had been all, the two communities might have been able to live separately, but in amicable relations with one another. More serious difficulties arose from two practical manifestations of their religious differences. The first was the simple fact that the Muslim custom of cow killing, either for food or for sacrifice, offended one of the most sacred principles of the Hindu religion and was a continual cause of strife in the many cases where Hindus and Muslims lived cheek by jowl. A second factor was the conflict which arose when religious festivals of the two communities clashed, or when one party decided to take a noisy procession past a place of worship of the other community. All officials with district experience will agree that cow killing and music before mosques were the commonest causes of communal riots.

Before the days of British rule, one or other of the two religions was dominant in any particular area and the party professing the creed which was not that of the ruling power had to submit, though occasionally rebellion resulted. The British rulers of India sought to be impartial in religious matters and protected the rights of both communities. Admirable though this was in principle, it meant that ‘there was a general tendency towards the assertion of religious privileges on both sides’. This became of great importance in the second half of the nineteenth century when the Muslim revival, initiated in Bareilly some decades earlier, had gathered momentum, while at the same time the Arya Samaj had embodied the Hindu reaction against earlier Westernizing tendencies and had given rise to a new militancy. There was also the fact that the Muslims were just beginning to realize how far they had been left behind in the race for power and office—a realization which led Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan to advise them to hold aloof from the Indian National Congress. Nevertheless, ‘as long as authority was firmly established in British hands and self-government was not thought of, Hindu and Muslim rivalry was confined within a narrower field’.

As the prospect of self-government drew nearer, political considerations accentuated communal differences and made the last three decades before Independence a period of profound communal unrest. Indian politicians have alleged that this antagonism was deliberately fomented by the British, but it is doubtful if serious Indian historians will subscribe to this view in the future, and the writer like every other Indian Civil Servant, knows that it is not true. In this connection it is of some interest to refer to the Punjab Police Rules 1934.

Rule 21.19 lays upon Superintendents of Police the duty of watching and reporting on political or communal movements as such. As part of his general duty to maintain touch with the progress of activities, which may have consequences likely to disturb public tranquillity, it is incumbent upon every officer in charge of a police station and officer superior thereto, to keep himself fully informed of all developments or offshoots of such movements in his jurisdiction. To this end such officers must know the persons who take the lead in such matters, and the attitude towards them of men of influence. As soon as any such movements shows signs of developing on lines which are likely to cause animosity between sections of the people and breaches of the peace, or to be otherwise clearly subversive of law and order, the Superintendent, in consultation with the District Magistrate, shall take such action as may be most appropriate to the occasion.

Unless one makes the unlikely assumption that this was a colossal piece of humbug on the part of the Government of the Punjab, the desire of the British to keep the peace between the two communities seems obvious.

The first serious communal riot to which we need to refer occurred in Bombay in 1893. Tilak at that time was on the warpath. He had not yet revived the Ganpati festival which later did so much to inflame communal feelings, but his speeches had already taken on an anti-Muslim tone, and tension between the two communities was growing. In the middle of the year, in the course of the Muharram celebrations, a Muslim mob had indulged in an orgy of violence in Kathiawar, in the course of which Hindu temples were destroyed. The inevitable reaction to the news of this incident was unscrupulously exploited by Hindu fanatics in Bombay, who began to demand vociferously that the Government should prohibit the killing of cows and even of sheep and goats. Muslim extremists stirred up the lower classes of their community by telling them that their religion was in danger and ‘shortly after midday on Friday, 11 August, a large Muhammadan congregation emerged from the Jama Masjid and amid cries of Din, Din (“the Faith”) commenced to attack an important Hindu temple in Hanuman Lane’.*

The Commissioner of Police had expected trouble and had kept a large proportion of his force on duty until three a.m. that morning. They then had to be withdrawn for a much needed rest, and it thus happened that it fell to the lot of a small body of police to hold the rioters in check until reinforcements arrived and drove them off from the temple.

Meanwhile the spirit of revenge spread rapidly, and within a short time the whole of Parel, Kamathipura, Grant road, Mazagon and Tank Bandar were given over to mob-law. The tumult was enormous. The Muhammadans attacked every Hindu they met; the Hindus retaliated; and then both sides rounded on the police. Stones and lathis (iron-shod bamboo cudgels) were the rioters’ chief weapons, and they were used with murderous effect. Little care was taken by the Muhammadans to confine their attacks to the enemies of the Faith. Peaceful wayfarers were brutally assaulted; tram-cars and carriages were murderously stoned; post-office vans were attacked; messengers carrying money were savagely beaten and openly robbed.*

All business was suspended and the whole city was thrown into the greatest consternation. Troops were called in, eighteen European citizens were appointed as special magistrates to assist the Presidency Magistrate, and order was gradually restored. For some time, ‘the police were fully occupied in efforts to restore order and in prosecuting fifteen hundred persons arrested in the riots’.

Cases of ordinary crime—which were naturally encouraged by the general atmosphere of disorder—had to remain uninvestigated and the criminals were never brought to court. Although the communal situation had been brought under control, the riots left behind them a bitter legacy of sectarian rancour which was exacerbated when Tilak, in 1894, organized the public celebration of the Ganpati festival. An unhappy new pattern was now established and the troubles which recurred annually, on the occasion of the Muharram and the Ganpati festivals, added greatly to the burden of the police. Nevertheless, firm but judicious police action prevented the recurrence of riots on the 1893 scale for some time, and the next serious trouble of this kind in Bombay was sectarian rather than communal.

In India, as elsewhere, the Muslims are divided into the two sects of Sunnis and Shias, who disagree as to the legitimate succession to the Prophet. The majority of Indian Muslims are Sunnis, but in Bombay at this time there were a considerable number of Shias, an important sub-sect of which were known as the Bohras. At the end of the Muharram celebrations each year, it is the custom for Muslims to take out processions carrying taboots (models of the shrine of the martyrs Hussain and Hassan) and immerse these taboots at the conclusion of the celebrations. In March 1904, the determination of the Sunnis from one area to play music and beat tom-toms in front of a Bohra mosque led to street fighting, and when the Commissioner cancelled the licence for the procession, unruly Sunni mobs, aided by hooligans, attacked the police at various points. It was not until the Commissioner had summoned the military to his assistance that peace was restored.

Far more serious, however, were the disturbances at the Muharram four years later, when a fracas between Sunnis and Shias rapidly assumed grave proportions. The arrest of some of the Sunnis seems to have created a wave of madness, and spasmodic attacks on Bohras were the preface to serious rioting in the Parel area.

Shops were looted and set on fire; all traffic was stopped and the tramcars were stoned. General panic supervened. As the mob was truculent and refused to disperse, Mr. Gell [the Commissioner of Police] ordered the European police who were facing the mob in Parel Road to use their revolvers. The firing put a stop to the actual rioting, but in view of the general demeanour of the crowd, troops were called out.

Gradually sanity returned but for the next seven or eight years ‘rowdiness and obscene licence . . . characterized the progress of the procession through the Shia Bohra locality of Dr. Street and neighbouring lanes’. In 1911, hooliganism excelled itself and after the police and the military had displayed incredible patience and contained wild mobs for hours on end, the Commissioner of Police was compelled to advise the Presidency Magistrate to order the troops to fire on the mob. A considerable number of casualties resulted but the disorder was soon suppressed. It was, however, necessary to lay down a policy to prevent the recurrence of these disgraceful scenes year by year. At the conclusion of the 1911 Muharram the Commissioner thus reported:

There is no vestige of religion or religious fervour in the toli-processions and the tabut-processions. On the contrary, the Moharram has become, and is utilized as merely an excuse for rascality to burst its usual barriers and flow over the city in a current of excessive turbulence. For ten days every year the Hindu merchants are blackmailed and harassed until they pay a contribution to the cost of the processions; the police, who are not half numerous enough to guard the whole area involved, are kept in the streets for ten days and nights and ordinary police work simply disappears, as there is no officer at the police-stations to record complaints and no native police to take up an enquiry; a large portion of the Shia population has to evacuate its houses and take refuge in Salsette for fear of insult and assault; and in the end, if the police hold fast and insist upon rascality keeping within certain limits, the city has to face the distressing spectacle of open disorder and its complement of drastic repression.*

As a result of this report, fresh rules were framed by the Commissioner under which taboot licence holders were required to furnish a deposit of security for the good behaviour of their processions, the routes were completely revised, the help of responsible Muslims was taken to discourage turbulent processions, and in 1922 Edwardes, who had coped with the disorders of 1911, was able to write that ‘the processional part of the Muharram with its tolis, its blackmail, its terrorism and its obscenities, ceased to exist'.*

During the two decades of communal disturbances in Bombay, there were from time to time outbreaks in Madras, Bengal, Upper India and Bihar, but by comparison with what was to follow in the twenties and thirties of the present century, the troubles were mild in character. Such Hindu-Muslim riots as occurred were due to the same causes as those which had operated in Bombay: cow-killing, music before mosques and the like. We need only illustrate the pattern by reference to the riots in the Madras Presidency in 1912. At Tiruppattur in the north Arcot District, feelings between Hindus and Muslims had been strained for some time ‘owing to the proximity of the Hindu temple to a mosque’.

It so happened that the last Muharram procession of the festival fell on the same day as an important Hindu festival. Mr. Hall, the Joint Magistrate, issued orders so timing the processions that they would not clash, but the Muslims refused to comply with the order. Hall displayed great tact and tried to get the Muharram procession through peacefully in spite of the processionists’ disregard of his orders. He was attacked and driven into a shop and was only rescued by the timely arrival of a police party which showed remarkable courage in defending the Magistrate. Two sub-inspectors and two constables—one of whom was a Muslim—were injured in the fight with the Muslim mob and received appropriate rewards in due course. ‘Simultaneously with the attack on the Joint Magistrate several Hindu temples were attacked and plundered’. Altogether, thirty people were wounded and removed to hospital for treatment. A strong police force, which had just returned from Delhi, was then assisted by a double company of infantry and peace was restored. It was, however, necessary to employ a special police force throughout the year.

A similar riot occurred in Berhampur in the Madras Presidency the following month, when following a dispute about music before a mosque, a few Muslims took refuge inside the mosque which was then raided by a band of Hindus. The Sub-Magistrate and the police inspector were powerless to restrain the mob and opened fire. This only made matters worse and an orgy of looting of Muslim shops followed. The Joint Magistrate and the District Superintendent of Police then arrived and were remarkably successful in pacifying the mob, which then dispersed. Sixty persons were subsequently tried and twenty-eight were convicted, of whom eleven were acquitted after an appeal. These events were typical of what happened whenever and wherever communal feeling ran high and we need not dwell on them.

The Lucknow Pact of 1916 ushered in a short period during which, in spite of communal outbreaks here and there, feelings between the Hindus and Muslim were to some extent relaxed, but a grim setback was caused by what is known as the Moplah Rebellion.

Chapter 20

The Moplah Rebellion

This tragic episode differs from other communal outbreaks in that it originated in joint Hindu-Muslim anti-Government propaganda, rapidly assumed the character of a full-scale rebellion, and yet culminated in the slaughter and forcible conversion of Hindus on a considerable scale. Fortunately, it was confined to four taluks in the south of the Malabar District of the Madras Presidency, but within this limited area of some 2,000 square miles, it exceeded in savagery any previous outbreak during the British period. The population of that area was made up as to about 70 per cent by Hindus of the caste of Nayars, and as to 30 per cent by the fanatical Muslim farming community known as Mappillas, anglicized as Moplahs. The Moplahs came originally from the Arab countries, but in the course of time inter-marriage with low caste Hindu women and forcible conversion considerably augmented their numbers. The natural fanaticism of the Moplahs was stimulated when Hyder Ali enlisted their support in his struggle with the Zamorin of Calicut, and enabled them to butcher many Nayars in South Malabar, where there was no Hindu chief strong enough to resist them. The invasions of Hyder Ali and of Tipu Sultan ‘had left the Mappillas free to indulge in atrocities against the Hindus’ and the dominance of the Mappillas was made certain by the despatch of the most warlike or influential amongst the Hindus to other parts of the Sultan’s dominions.*

The East India Company thus inherited a difficult situation and they first tried to deal with it by appointing one of the most notorious of the Moplahs as a kind of ‘chief of police’. This arrangement was soon found to be useless and in the first decade of the nineteenth century the Company raised a force of 1,200 armed police. For a time peace was maintained, but a quarter of a century later the turbulent Moplah spirit again broke out, and between 1836 and 1852 there were no fewer than twenty outbreaks requiring military force to repress them. A special Commission appointed in 1852 to enquire into the situation reported that

The Hindus in the parts where the outbreaks had been most frequent stand in such fear of the Mappillas as mostly not to dare to press for their rights against them, and there is many a Mappilla tenant who does not pay his rent and cannot, so imminent are the risks, be evicted.*

In 1854, in the hope of bringing the situation under control, the East India Company raised a special police force in Malappuram, and it had to deal with fresh Moplah outbreaks almost at once. A lull then followed, but in 1884 it was found necessary to disarm the inhabitants of the Ernad Taluk. ‘Parties of troops collected by visual signalling traversed the whole Taluk and some 9,000 firearms and 12,000 swords were taken.’* Peace was maintained for a few years but an outbreak in 1894 was followed by a savage Moplah campaign of murder and forcible conversion inspired by such fanaticism that, when opposed by troops, many Moplahs deliberately courted death. Drastic measures were taken by the authorities, and it was not until the First World War that a belief that the Turks and the Germans were about to land in India triggered off another round of violence.

By this time, the Moplah population had increased considerably and economic opportunities had contracted, so that there was a background of unrest when the Congress Satyagraha campaign was launched in 1919. Gandhi himself might not have had much influence among the Moplahs, but the Khilafat movement had an irresistible appeal for them. When Shaukat Ali visited Calicut in August 1920, his advice was taken by the Moplahs to mean that ‘if they were strong enough, they ought to fight, and if they were weak they had no right to remain under such a government and should emigrate’.* In February 1921, a well-known agitator, Yaqub Hasan was imprisoned for breach of an order prohibiting him from speaking in Calicut and the Moplahs immediately made this a religious issue on which to fight. A crowd of some 12,000 armed with knives and sticks soon collected, and advanced with frenzied shouts right up to the bayonets of a small party of policemen under the orders of the District Magistrate. A party of the Leinsters arrived and drove slowly through the mob in a motorbus. ‘The Leinsters then reversed and returned through the mob and again advanced; this time the police advanced on each side of the bus and the mob slowly gave way.’ Except for some stone throwing no violence occurred.

This, however, was only a warning signal and the real storm did not burst until August 1921, by which time inflammatory speeches by Muhammad Ali and others, and the Khilafat Conference of July 1921, had created great excitement.

The Outburst of Violence

The month opened with an incident in which a Hindu police inspector displayed remarkable courage. On 1 August a combined force of some 2,000 Moplahs, drawn from the whole countryside, armed with knives, country-made spears and swords, and wearing Khilafat badges, gathered on the main road from Malappuram to Calicut to support one of their number in bringing a trumpery charge against a Hindu official. It soon appeared, however, that their real object was to convert the kavilgam* into a mosque and that their attitude was one of complete defiance of all authority. The local Circle Inspector who had been called to the spot faced the crowd calmly, reasoned with the leaders and persuaded the crowd to disperse. This, however, was only a temporary respite. During the next few days, the mood of the local Moplahs became ever more aggressive, the shouting of religious slogans was almost continuous and prohibited knives for the use of Moplahs were being manufactured on a considerable scale. Organized bodies wearing a distinctive dress and headgear roamed about with an evident determination to resist authority by force. The stage was soon reached when the local police could neither make arrests nor search for arms, nor even question an accused person. The situation was indeed so serious that the District Magistrate directed the removal of the wives of two European rubber planters from the Ernad Taluk.

Military help now had to be sought and on 20 August a column of the Leinster Regiment was sent to assist the police in arresting some of the principal trouble makers at Tirurangadi. After the arrests had been made, a false rumour was spread that a mosque had been desecrated, and a large mob of Moplahs in a very truculent mood was soon seen advancing. What followed is best told in the language of the official report:

The Reserve Police immediately fell in with the Special Force in support and advanced to meet the mob leaving the Leinsters to follow. The Deputy Inspector-General of Police led the Reserve; the mob was advancing in good order, singing war songs and with banners in front; they were armed with specially-made sticks, most of which appeared new. About 50 yards from the mob the Deputy Superintendent warned them to stop, they took no notice indeed it is doubtful whether they could have heard anything above the Tekbir in which they all united—and the order was given to the reserve to charge . . . . The mob did not retreat; but freely used their formidable sticks. A few men of the front rank of the police then opened fire in which they were justified, several having been hit, including Mr. Lancaster [Assistant Superintendent of Police in charge of the Special Reserve], and the mob showing no signs of retreating. Fire was brought under control as soon as possible and the mob retreated about 50 yards still facing the police. As they had meanwhile spread into the parambas [gardens] on both sides of the road, the police extended to outflank those and a slow advance was made before which the mob retired at the same pace and still facing the police. After a short distance a mosque was reached which was full of Mappillas upstairs, among whom Ummayandakath Kunhi Qadir, the Tanur leader, was identified. . . . This party was thoroughly cowed. They were persuaded to come out on a promise that they would not be shot. Kunhi Qadir was arrested and was told to order the mob to return to their houses.*

The mob obeyed him slowly and sullenly, but owing to a misunderstanding, the main body of the police was sent away, and the mob were able to wreck the station and the telegraph wires.

A second mob, in an equally bellicose mood, now arrived at Tirurangadi and a detachment of the Armed Reserve, under Mr. Rowley, Assistant Superintendent, supported by a small detachment of the Leinsters, went out to meet the mob. Rowley approached the mob to parley with the leaders—against the advice of two experienced head constables, who nevertheless, with the full knowledge of the risk involved, accompanied him. The party of three, together with a Lieutenant Johnstone, an Indian Army officer attached to the Leinsters, were cut down and killed. The police and the detachment of Leinsters then had to fight their way out, and this they only succeeded in doing because of the opportune arrival of a Lewis gun-party, which opened fire killing thirty or forty of the mob.

The District Magistrate’s car with a motor bus close behind arrived at the ferry at 2 p.m. The Special Force Inspector, Mr. Reedman, who had been unable to reach Tirurangadi with the Special Force owing to a severe attack of asthma pluckily came in the car. They found an enormous crowd at the ferry; nevertheless the Inspector crossed the river and nearly reached the cross roads on foot unmolested. It was then raining and he took shelter in a shop and asked for an umbrella. The Mappillas became abusive so he pushed on; they then started stoning him and he retreated towards Tirurangadi firing with his revolver. Near Chalilakath Ibrayan Kutti’s house, Thyil Ahmad Kutti felled him from behind and the mob closed on him and murdered him, his body being eventually thrown into the river at the ferry. The District Magistrate’s driver was murdered at the ferry and the two motors were thrown into the river. The driver of the bus and his assistant were spared their lives on condition that they accepted Islam but, while proceeding to Vengara with the mob, they met Odakal Moideen Kutti Mussaliar at the head of the Urakam Melmuri contingent making for Tirurangadi. He ordered their immediate death and his order was carried out on the spot.*

When a combined force of Leinsters and police had left Calicut on the morning of 20 August for the scene of the troubles, a detachment of thirty men of the Leinsters had been sent to join the twenty men of the Special Police Force who had been left in their headquarters at Malappuram. The Malappuram garrison was soon completely cut off, and on 25 August the garrison commander at Calicut, Captain P. McEnroy, set off with a force of 100 British soldiers in lorries and seventy men of the Special Police Reserve on foot to relieve the Malappuram party. They covered the first eighteen miles to Kondotti without incident, but then reached an area where trees had been felled across the road and culverts and bridges had been destroyed. Progress was so slow that only four miles were covered by nightfall, and the party had to bivouac for the night. The next morning progress was again slow, but all was quiet until they reached the village where the troubles had occurred on 1 August. Here the party was ambushed. The rear of the column was fired on from three sides, and when it moved up into close formation, a typical fanatical assault by Moplahs armed with swords was launched upon the head of the column, the attackers dying to a man. Sniping from trees and houses which resulted in the death of Lancaster, prevented further advance until, after much hand-to-hand fighting, the snipers were silenced. After a final fanatical charge in which many more rebels died, the column eventually reached Malappuram that evening after seven hours of almost continuous fighting.

Martial Law

According to the official report, this complete rout of the rebels at last destroyed any idea that the Moplahs might succeed in establishing ‘Khilafat Raj’. Moreover, together with the measures taken in Calicut and the arrival in that port of H.M.S. Comus, it had the fortunate result that serious trouble was confined to the three inland Taluks, until two months later, when the south-east corner of Calicut Taluk was also involved.

By this time it had, nevertheless, become clear that it was impossible for the civil authorities to retain control. Almost every police station in the three Taluks had been looted, and although the gallantry and loyalty displayed by all ranks of the police had been beyond praise, much more drastic action than the ordinary law would allow them to take was clearly required. On 22 August the Government of Madras applied to the Government of India for the introduction of Martial Law in the three Taluks and Calicut. The Government of India seemed to have hesitated—perhaps because of the tragedy of the Jallianwala Bagh—and it was not until 25 August that the necessary notification was issued. Colonel E. T. Humphreys was then appointed Military Commander of the Martial Law Area, and a member of the Indian Civil Service, Mr. F. B. Evans who knew the district well, was seconded as his civilian adviser. For the next two months, combined military and police forces had to cope with the ‘tip and run’ methods adopted by the Moplahs in dense jungle. The turning point came on 25 October when a detachment of the Dorsets (who had relieved the Leinsters) raided an important Moplah centre and inflicted 246 casualties. The effect of this raid on the morale of the rank and file of rebels was very marked, and offers to surrender began to come in from all quarters. On 14 November, the Moplah leaders tried to retrieve the position by an attack on Pandikkad military and police camp. The rebel force was considerable and consisted of picked men, but although the first fanatic onrush breached the walls of the market where the police and military were lodged, the attack was a complete failure and over 230 rebels were killed.

The failure of the attack therefore affected the whole area. The men lost faith in their leaders who had made the usual promises that the bullets of the troops would prove harmless; the leaders lost faith in their cause as their forces dwindled and began to consider their own safety. They then took mainly to the foothills, and unable to exist under the pressure of the troops operating after the drive towards the end of November from a series of posts, some surrendered, others more fanatical sought death in the traditional way and a few, very few, attempted to escape, most of whom were captured.*

Nevertheless, during the next three months there were no fewer than nine serious engagements in which ‘the fanatics sought death either by rushing on the troops from some building in which they had taken post, or by recklessly exposing themselves’.

By the end of February, the authorities had gained the upper hand. Most of the military forces were withdrawn—although a battalion of Indian infantry remained in the area for the next three months—Martial Law was withdrawn, and the police were left to do the mopping-up. That operation involved almost as great a strain on the police as that which they had already endured. From March onwards, Moplahs began to surrender in very large numbers, and altogether over 80,000 persons were taken into custody. The gaols could not contain more than a fraction of them. Cages had to be built at convenient centres and these had to be guarded and administered by the police while, at the same time, escorts had to be provided, witnesses summoned and marshalled to the court, and police officers had to attend the many criminal trials in Calicut. There were over 7,000 cases in which murder, arson, dacoity or ‘waging war on the King Emperor’ were alleged. A Special Tribunal, three courts of Special Judges and nine Special Magistrates sentenced 175 persons to death, 400 to transportation for life, and 6,000 to transportation for lesser periods or to imprisonment. A particular difficulty arose from the fact that many records had been destroyed when police stations were looted, and a Rebellion Branch of the district police had to be created to prepare substitute records, as well as to collate information from many different sources. All this work occupied many months, and it was not until the second half of 1922 that conditions returned to something like normal.

Three comments remain to be made. In the first place, the rebellion had a dual aspect. It was directed not only against the Government, but also against the Hindus. Many Hindu temples were defiled or destroyed, and forcible conversion on a considerable scale took place.

The procedure was generally to shave the heads of male victims as soon as consent had been forced from them, and make them put on a Mappilla cap and cloth; all, women included, were supposed to recite the Kalima [the Muslim declaration of faith] but when large batches were being treated, it was held sufficient to form them into a line one behind the other each touching the individual in front on the shoulder and for one to repeat the Kalima for all. The women were given jackets and cloths and their ears were pierced round the edges to be ready for the rings Mappilla women wear.

Circumcision was performed some days later if at all. In some places attention was paid to the daily repetition of prayers by the new converts, in others this was ignored.*

The second feature of this rebellion was the part played in it by women and children. Apparently fanaticism was not uncommon amongst the Moplah women, and it is officially reported that one woman whose son was wounded in the 1894 outbreak declared: ‘If I were a man I would not come back wounded.’ The same spirit animated the Moplah women in 1921. ‘Two were known to have been shot fighting with the men . . . and 157 were known to have taken part in definite offences, chiefly dacoities and thefts.’* Boys also took a prominent part in the outbreak, and ‘458 boys are known to have been concerned in crimes, ranging from murder and actual fighting to mere dacoity and ordinary crime. In age they vary from children of 8 to lads of 18’.

Police Courage and Conduct

A third matter for comment is the courage and reliability of the police throughout the rebellion. As usual, they were calumniated in certain sections of the press by individuals who had been far from the fighting, but a more just view was taken by the Government and by the Commander-in-Chief who paid special tribute to the invaluable work of the police and the local civil officers. More impressive, however, than these general expressions of admiration, are the many stories of heroism of men of all ranks and communities throughout the Rebellion. We have, for example, the cases

of a small group of Indian police officers (two inspectors and three sub-inspectors) who, at considerable risk to themselves conducted to safety two Privates of the Leinsters who were cut off by a crowd of several thousand Moplahs; of the sub-inspector who, despite friendly warnings from local Moplahs, remained with his men for two days and nights and finally led them, unarmed, to safety outside the rebellion area; and of the devotion to duty of a Hindu sub-inspector who, as Intelligence Officer attached to a party of Special Police formed to round up a particularly desperate rebel gang, went forward alone to beard the gang in their hill-top lair, and accepted their surrender together with a .303 rifle, ten police carbines and a large quantity of ammunition.*

Nor can we leave this subject without special mention of the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Khan Bahadur E. V. Amu, himself a Moplah.

Leading small parties of armed police into areas within reach of Battalion headquarters, he cleared up numerous pockets of resistance and negotiated the surrender of many wanted leaders. On 20 December 1921, for instance, he set out with a sub-inspector and four armed constables in search of a leader reported to be in the vicinity with his gang around him. He was found in his brother’s house. Cut off from supplies by the advance of troops into thick jungle, he had dismissed his gang, fifty-three of whose names he gave. He surrendered his arms and twelve of his followers later surrendered with five guns and seven swords. In the first half of December 1921, no less than 5,000 Moplahs surrendered and produced thirty-six guns and 2,352 war knives and choppers. The Khan Bahadur’s knowledge of the terrain and the people proved of inestimable value to the military commanders with whom he worked. Not only did he play a leading part in the initial engagement near the mosque on 20 August but he accompanied the troops who, ten days later, went to arrest the malefactors on that occasion and accepted the surrender of the leading rebels and seventeen firearms in the mosque.*

The Khan Bahadur was rightly awarded the rare distinction of a bar to his King’s Police Medal.

We can fittingly conclude this discussion of the Moplah Rebellion by referring to the close co-operation between police and military—a co-operation based on mutual confidence and respect, and largely due to R. E. Hitchcock, the historian of the Rebellion. Never was this harmony better illustrated than at the time of the mass surrender of rebels, thus described by Hitchcock:

It was the harassing done by the troops which drove the rebels to the hills and forced them to a frame of mind in which they were prepared to surrender.

It was the restraint shown by the troops to those who had surrendered—no easy matter for foreign troops, for there was often nothing to distinguish those who surrendered from rebels except their own word—which enabled the police to open communication with the rebels.

It was the police who guided the troops and who enabled them to keep the rebels hemmed in the hills.

It was the conduct of the individual Police officers and the confidence which even rebels had in them which influenced the rebels to come out of the hills, where otherwise the search for them must have continued for months.*

The police can indeed be proud of the way in which they acquitted themselves in the most serious rebellion experienced since the Indian Mutiny, and it is abundantly clear that this fine record was largely the result of the remarkable confidence between officers and men.

Chapter 21

Communal Troubles 1921-1940

We have seen that the Moplah Rebellion was primarily directed against the Government but had also a sinister communal aspect. The Akali Movement, on the other hand, was in its origin a struggle within the Sikh community for- control of the Gurdwaras, but soon assumed an anti-Government character. ‘The Sikh Gurdwara is more than just a place of worship. It is also a school, a meeting place and a rest-house for travellers . . . an integral part of Sikh religious and social life’. The Mahants, or priests, who manage the Gurdwaras, were in many cases not orthodox Sikhs and their tenure of these positions began to be resented when, under British rule, canal irrigation enormously increased the income of the Gurdwara lands. Many of the Mahants became corrupt. Moreover, they sought to become independent of the Sikh congregations which had previously controlled them. About 1914 a Sikh reform movement, known as the Akali Dal, set itself to dispossess the Mahants of these shrines. In many cases, it was possible to achieve this result by persuasion or pressure, but the obduracy of the few was intolerable to the Akalis, who were inspired with a new militancy by the events of 1919 in the Punjab. The Indian National Congress encouraged this mood and sought to direct it against the Government.

In 1920, a committee known as the Shriromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (S.G.P.C.), was formed to manage Gurdwaras, and in February 1921, it passed a resolution demanding the resignation of Narain Das, the Mahant of the shrine at Nankana, north of Lahore. He replied by hiring and housing professional ruffians, and when a band of Sikhs entered the Gurdwara to pray (and perhaps also to assert their right to possession) these hirelings set upon them and cruelly massacred over a hundred of them. Three of the assailants were sentenced to death, but the Akalis were stirred to anger at the failure of the Government to enforce what they considered their just claims to possession, and at the action necessarily taken by Government to curb the resulting Akali terrorism.

Towards the end of 1921, trouble arose over the Guru-ka-Bagh shrine, ten miles from Amritsar. The Akalis had for some time been in occupation of the shrine itself, but the Mahant still enjoyed the lands belonging to the Gurdwara. In August a number of Sikhs cut trees from this land, and when the Mahant complained, they were arrested. The operation was repeated with a similar result, and before long the S.G.P.C. began to organize daily despatches of jathas (small bands of Sikhs) to the Gurdwara. The bands were non-violent, but assemblies on this scale were clearly intended to intimidate, and day by day the police had to disperse them. A large force of additional police with a full complement of gazetted officers was despatched to the neighbourhood. Pickets were stationed near the Gurdwara to prevent the arrival of jathas, and to cut off the supply of rations from the Akalis living in the Gurdwara. A little later, the Gurdwara itself was enclosed within a barbed wire fence, so placed ‘that while ingress and egress for legitimate purposes was unrestricted, the residential quarters of the Mahant and the disputed land was inaccessible’.* The jathas continued to come and to be dispersed, and by the middle of November, more than 5,000 Akali leaders had been arrested. The utmost publicity was given by the Akalis and the Indian National Congress to the very minor injuries received by the members of the dispersed jathas. The S.G.P.C. organized a regular service of lorries to bring in ‘the dust stained, bandaged and apparently exhausted Akalis’ from the scene of the struggle. Very few of the Akalis required any serious medical treatment, but for propaganda purposes ‘all were treated as serious casualties. . . . Every man was labelled and numbered and his injuries were duly entered in a register.’* The Amritsar gaol could not accommodate the large number of Akalis arrested, and open air booths were constructed and enclosed. The Punjab Government made it clear that it would go on making arrests for as long as necessary, and announced that it was providing accommodation for 10,000 prisoners. This seems to have convinced the Akalis that they could not win.

A few months later, fresh trouble arose when the S.G.P.C. demanded the restoration of the Maharaja of Nabha, whom the Government of India had persuaded (or forced) to abdicate. Again the technique of despatching daily jathas—this time to Jaiton within Nabha State—was adopted, and in January 1924 a jatha of over 500 Akalis designated as ‘Shahids’, or martyrs, proceeded on foot to Jaiton, a journey which took over three weeks. The Akalis remained true to their tradition of non-violence, but the jatha was joined near Jaiton by ‘a disorderly mob of several thousand persons armed with axes, swords and spears. A number of bad characters carrying firearms also joined the mob’. Before long, this huge crowd charged the police and military posted to bar its progress. ‘Several officials who had advanced to persuade the mob to halt were chased back to the troops in imminent peril of their lives.’* The police force had to open fire and the mob was dispersed with twenty-one killed and thirty- three wounded. Strictly speaking, these incidents in Nabha are outside the scope of this book, since they took place in an Indian State which had its own police force and the Indian police were not concerned. They do, however, show the rebellious atmosphere which prevailed amongst the Sikhs, and they throw light on the previous affairs at Nartkana and Guru-ka-Bagh.

In the Punjab, the firm attitude of the Government paid dividends. Eventually the Sikhs became discouraged and when, in 1925, the Government of India enacted legislation which provided for the control of all historic shrines by the S.G.P.G., and for the constitution of a tribunal to deal with disputes, the agitation came to an end.

Hindu-Muslim Strife

With the grim exception of the Moplah Rebellion, the first few years after the end of the First World War were relatively free from serious Hindu-Muslim riots, but by 1922 the unity of the two communities in opposition to the Government was breaking down, and tension between them was rising rapidly. For the next fifteen years or so, the annual Administration Reports recorded, with almost monotonous regularity, communal outbreaks, or occasions when police vigilance had been able to avert such troubles.

The first significant outbreak after the lull had its origin in a dispute arising out of the Muhurram procession in Multan in September 1922. The police intervened promptly, and to such good purpose that the casualties were fewer than might have been expected, but the Multan affair helped to revive communal differences throughout India at a time when other factors were tending in the same direction.

Perhaps the most important of those factors was the new Hindu militancy which expressed itself in the Suddhi and Sangathan movements. The organizers of the Suddhi, or ‘Purification Movement’, aimed at reclaiming to Hinduism certain communities which had become Muslim, at least in name, and although leaders constantly explained that they were not actuated by hostility to the Muslims, nobody took these disclaimers seriously. There was moreover a more alarming manifestation of aggressiveness on the part of the Hindu Mahasabha. The Sangathan movement had as its object the formation of volunteer bands and the systematic physical training of Hindu youths, since it was felt that the Hindus must be in a position to resist Muslim aggression. Lathi play and gymnastics amongst young Hindus were organized in many parts of India, and although Hindu intentions may have been primarily defensive, Muslims could not fail to think otherwise. Indeed, they responded with the Tanzim movement which had similar aims. Responsible Congressmen saw clearly the dangers ahead, and C. R. Das and others attempted to draw up a pact which, by settling such matters as communal representation in the Services in a manner favourable to the Muslims, would remove at least one of the causes of antagonism. This generosity, however, was too much for the rank and file of the Hindu Mahasabha, and if anything the proposal only made matters worse.

Communal divisions became more serious and 1923 and 1924 were bad years, particularly in the Punjab, the United Provinces and the North-West Frontier Province. Trouble often arose out of some comparatively trivial incident or out of an injury done to an individual. In April 1923, for example, an insult to a Hindu girl led to a two-days’ orgy of rioting in Amritsar, and again two or three weeks later, the communities were at each other’s throats. Rioting, mischief and arson were widespread, and according to the official report ‘that murder was not committed can be attributed only to the quickness shown by the local officials in dealing with each fresh outbreak of violence’. In July, Panipat, just north of Delhi, was the scene of trouble. The Hindus complained that an unnecessarily large number of cows were being slaughtered on the occasion of the Id-ul-Zoha, while the Muslims objected to the noisy Hindu ceremonies in temples adjoining their mosques. Serious rioting broke out, in the course of which many persons were injured, and after the police had restored order, it was found necessary to impose a large punitive police post on the city to prevent a recurrence of the trouble.*

Similar incidents occurred in the United Provinces, but the worst outbreak in these two years was at Kohat City in the North-West Frontier Province in September 1924. The immediate cause of the trouble was the circulation of a pamphlet containing a virulent anti-Islamic poem. So bitter was the resulting conflict, that there were over 150 casualties and house property to the value of Rs. 9 lakhs was destroyed, while looting on a large scale also took place. The entire Hindu population evacuated the town and only returned some considerable time later.

This mounting communal strife must obviously find a place in the history of the Indian police, but it is not as easy as in the case of civil disobedience to recount the part played by the police in containing it. Very often the measure of their success was the absence of incidents, and in any case it would be difficult to construct a dramatic story out of the hundreds of occasions on which the police patiently shepherded processions past danger spots, or directed angry crowds from their targets, or kept excited crowds apart. Perhaps the most fitting tribute to the police in this aspect of their work is that recorded by the Simon Commission.

It will be natural to ask how such a force as this, recruited from various communities and often operating in times of tension, is affected in its duties by religious divisions. We have been assured that the record of the force in this respect is extremely good. A distinguished officer, who was in charge of an area notorious for the frequency and violence of its communal riots, told us that the Muhammadan constables in his force could be trusted to escort a Hindu procession playing music before mosques, and the Brahmin constables to perform the same service for a Muhammadan procession leading cows to slaughter. We put on record this very remarkable evidence of the loyalty and discipline of the rank and file. It seems to us no less credit to the fine leadership and strict justice of the controlling officers of the service.*

One incident illustrating the undramatic, preventive action of the police in time of trouble may be described here.

In August 1925 in the town of Panipat, a Mohurram procession was passing through the main bazaar when it was met by a large mob of Hindu Jats estimated to number not less than 1,000 who had armed themselves with staves, scythes, pitchforks and other weapons. . . . The Mohurram procession was speedily reinforced by large crowds of Muslims armed with sticks. The local Magistrate and Deputy Superintendent of Police with fifteen or twenty constables had forced themselves in between the rival mobs. At this point the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police arrived from Kamal. The Superintendent took charge of the small body of police and at once charged and dispersed the Jats and the affair was at an end.*

Only those who have seen a crowd in action will realize fully the courage and determination involved in this kind of operation.

In 1926 communal antagonism became even more intense and widespread. Hardly any part of India was exempt, but Bengal, Bihar, the Punjab and the United Provinces were the worst affected areas. In the Statement of the Moral and Material Progress of India for the year 1926-27, it was recorded that ‘Since April 1926 every month has witnessed affrays more or less serious between partisans of the sister communities’. As in previous years, petty disputes between individuals, or the celebration of religious festivals, or music before mosques, were in nearly all cases the causes of the outbreaks. Bengal, as might be expected, had its full share of violence, July 1926 being a specially bad month, during which the Muharram celebrations in Calcutta were marred by riots so serious that twenty-eight deaths resulted and 226 persons were injured. For the best illustration of the difficulties of the Bengal police in this period, we must however turn to the mofussil, and fortunately we have available to us an unpublished account by the Superintendent of Police of Backarganj District of occurrences in that district in 1927.*

Here, too, the trouble started with music before mosques, and Muslims retaliated by throwing dead cattle into Hindu temples. Violence flared up all over the district and at one time the District Superintendent ‘was striving to maintain the peace in thirteen different theatres of war’, and the special armed force as well as a large proportion of the Range Reserve were distributed throughout those areas. Here the Superintendent pauses in his account to tell the charming story of how the principal Hindu leader, Satin Sen, promised that there should be no trouble while the Superintendent went down to Calcutta for three days to meet his wife on her return from England. Satin kept his word, but as soon as the Superintendent was back in Barisal, trouble broke out with renewed vigour. Information was received that Hindus proposed to take a large procession with music past a mosque in the village of Kulkati during prayer time.

The Hindus had formed up in procession just short of the mosque, and a large crowd of Mohamedans had massed just outside the village prepared to take action as soon as the procession began to move. The police force had been drawn up in single file on a narrow track running through the fields to face this crowd which we estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 4,000. They were in a defiant and angry mood being armed with spears and other dangerous weapons, and were making a tremendous din. We endeavoured to argue with the leader, but this had no effect, and part of the crowd started to surround the police force thrusting their spears at us as they did so. I quickly turned every other man about and shouted to the leader to disperse the crowd. This had no effect, and as the mob was becoming more and more threatening, I told Mr. Blandy [the District Magistrate] that in my view it would be necessary to open fire to disperse them. He agreed and gave the necessary warning to the crowd. They continued to thrust their spears at us and I ordered my men to fire one round each. This they did, and some of the rioters immediately in front of the police dropped. After a noticeable hesitation the crowd wavered and then ran for their lives. This incident had the effect of putting to an end the ‘music-before-mosques’ trouble in the Bakargunj District.*

In this case, the police force under the command of a resolute officer was adequate to deal with the situation, but this was by no means always so. There were so many points of danger that the police were often too thin on the ground at the spot where trouble broke out. In 1929, for example, we read in the Punjab Administration Report of an incident where a mob of well-armed Sikhs demolished a recently built slaughter-house in the presence of a small police party who were powerless to prevent it.

For our next illustration, we must turn to Bihar and Orissa. In 1926 there were no fewer than seventy-one communal riots in that Province. The first outbreak arose out of a drunken brawl between a Hindu and a Muslim. This trivial quarrel generated fierce religious passions and led to a series of eighteen riots within two or three days.

A strong force of military and armed police was promptly concentrated and order speedily restored, but before reinforcements had time to arrive one serious clash occurred in which the Hindus suffered twenty-five casualties and the Muhammadans fourteen. Three Hindus died and twelve were treated for gunshot wounds. At one critical stage a handful of police under the Superintendent were all that lay between a mob of 5,000 men preparing to sack Sasaram, and kill the Muhammadans. The tact and persuasive tongue of Mr. J. D. Sahai, Assistant Superintendent, induced them to desist from their object, although the summons to collect had gone round and attackers had actually arrived from places as far as twenty-four miles away.*

In 1928, communal trouble was on a relatively small scale, but early in 1929 it broke out again in full force, and this time the starting point was Bombay, which up to then had suffered less than most provinces from this evil. The outbreak had an origin altogether different from those of the other incidents which we have described. The Oil Company’s installation in Bombay was staffed mainly by Hindus, but when a strike broke out in December 1928, Pathans were brought in to carry on the work. This led to clashes between the strikers and the Pathans, and these were followed by rumours that Hindu children were being kidnapped and sent to Baroda for sacrifice. The scare soon gathered force and ‘the disturbances developed into a regular Pathan hunt by the millhands’, during which seventeen Pathans were killed and many injured.*

Within a few weeks, general murderous assaults by Muslims on Hindus and by Hindus on Muslims were the order of the day, and in many cases there appeared to be no specific reason for the attack. On the afternoon of 5 February 1929, Detective-Inspector Priestley with ten armed policemen made a heroic attempt to separate a mob of Hindus and Pathans, and the Inspector lost his life in the process. The situation took a turn for the worse and the military were called in to assist. ‘The police and military had frequently to disperse riotous mobs and on no fewer than eleven occasions were compelled to open fire.’ A ‘curfew’ order forbidding people to be on the streets between sunset and sunrise helped the police to control the situation, and gradually order was restored. In the meantime 149 people had lost their lives, property worth Rs. 4½ lakhs had been stolen, and Muslim shops suffered damage valued at over Rs. 4 lakhs.

Dacca was also the scene of grave communal trouble during this period. The population of Dacca town was very mixed, but in the centre of the town the well-to-do merchants and shopkeepers were Hindus, while the petty shopkeepers and stallholders were mainly Muslims. In the early months of 1930, the Congress Party in Dacca was particularly active in promoting hartals week after week, which the Muslims—who were not much interested in the aims of the Congress—were compelled to observe. The loss suffered by small Muslim traders was considerable and occasioned great resentment at a time when all over India Hindu-Muslim tension was acute, and when the Hindu Mahasabha was actively encouraging the Suddhi and Sangathan movements to which we have already referred. There were also irresponsible Muslim elements in Dacca which set themselves to stir up anti-Hindu feeling, and for this purpose they were able to make use of the closely knit Mahalla (a local area) organization of the Anjuman Islamia, or Muslim Association. By the beginning of the hot weather feelings were so inflamed that even the most trivial incident was likely to start trouble.

In May, two boys, one a Hindu and one a Muslim were playing with tops in the main street of the town—a mainly Hindu street—into which debouched a side street whose inhabitants were Muslims. One boy’s top accidentally hit the other boy on the head and a fight began. The parents came down from their houses and joined in, and within a few minutes Hindus from one side and Muslims from the other rushed out to join in the fray. It is sufficient to say that the same night 500 houses in the city were burned down. The Superintendent of Police lost no time in mobilizing his forces, a curfew order was imposed and some degree of order was restored. The lull, however, was short-lived and a few days later another incident, of no importance in itself, sparked off fresh disturbances. For ten days, turmoil continued, and although the police had to employ a good deal of force to control the situation, they confined themselves mainly to the use of their lathis. Very little firing took place, and gradually an uneasy peace returned. It is useless to discuss the question as to which community started the troubles—they followed almost automatically from the antagonism engendered by the political controversies. It was alleged at the time that the police were pro-Muslim. It is indeed true that the continual harassment which they had suffered as a result of the civil disobedience movement through many months had exasperated them with Hindu leaders, but the writer can state from personal observation that they unhesitatingly suppressed disorder and dispersed rioters, whatever the community of the aggressors at any particular time might be. We have dwelt on the Dacca riots—although they were on a small scale compared with occurrences during the year in other parts of India—because they illustrate how tension can be built up and how insignificant causes can then appear to generate mass hysteria.*

More serious were the riots in the same period in Calcutta, Sholapur and elsewhere, but we must select by way of illustration the savage communal riots in the United Provinces. By this time, the apparent acceptance by the Princes of the principle of federation seemed to bring self-government nearer, and the anxieties of the Muslims deepened. Moreover, the attempt of Gandhi and the Congress to divide the Muslims and to treat the Nationalist Muslims as representative of the community as a whole, had aroused considerable anger. The Irwin-Gandhi Pact, too, was considered by the Muslims to have given the Hindus a privileged position. Even before the conclusion of that Pact, there had been serious communal rioting in Benares, and here, as in Dacca, the proximate cause was the attempt on the part of the civil disobedience leaders to compel Muslims to join in hartals and similar demonstrations. In February 1930, a Muslim trader in Benares who defied the Congress picketers was murdered and rioting followed at once. A much worse situation arose in Cawnpore a few weeks later when

Congress workers had gathered to induce Muslim shopkeepers in Cawnpore to close their premises in honour of Bhagat Singh. The Muslims resisted and fighting thereupon spread throughout the city with extraordinary rapidity. For at least two days the situation was altogether out of control and the loss of life and destruction of property was appalling.*

The death-roll was probably between 400 and 500, a large number of temples and mosques were desecrated or destroyed, and a very large number of houses were looted.

The difficulties of the police were by no means at an end when order had been restored.

Government appointed a special staff under Mr. Thomas, a senior and experienced Superintendent of Police who had held charge of the Cawnpore district for some years, to investigate these cases. This investigating staff was confronted with unprecedented difficulties. The city had for three days been subjected to an orgy of murder, arson, and robbery. The people were hysterical, and nerves were jagged and frayed. The wildest and most extravagant charges naturally resulted. Each community blamed the other for the bloodshed and pillage that had occurred, and private individuals seized the opportunity to try and wreak vengeance on their enemies. Mr. Thomas and the whole of the special investigating staff under his control, showed the greatest patience in sifting the conflicting evidence that was laid before them in support of the most impossible charges. . . . The evidence in each of the 2,875 cases reported was examined and it was found that in 2,004 0f these cases the charges were either false or could not be substantiated. A further 321 cases were definitely proved false as the accused were able to prove unassailable alibis.

The Khaksars

The incidents described in this chapter have been chosen not just on account of their gravity, but in the hope that they will illustrate different aspects of the communal strife which affected most of India and occupied much of the time of the police from 1923 until the introduction of provincial autonomy in 1937. The almost universal militancy of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs naturally led to the formation of communal armies. We have already seen how the Hindu Mahasabha gave systematic training in lathi play and similar activities to Hindu youths. By 1931, the Muslims felt that it was their turn to embark on a similar exercise and for this purpose they organized in Lahore a body known as the Khaksars.

The Khaksars, or ‘Servants of the Dust’, were a highly organized body of Muslim volunteers founded in 1931 by Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, a retired member of the Indian Education Service, who has been not unfairly described in an official report as ‘an unbalanced megalomaniac’. The professed objects of the Khaksars were social service and their strange blend of egalitarianism with a semi-military discipline (so rigid that, on at least one occasion, the local commander was able to have a flogging administered to an absentee from parade) led some observers to regard them mistakenly as semi-communist in their attitude. In reality, Mashriqi was influenced by the German rather than the Russian model. The members were armed with belchas or sharpened spades, were drilled and at times put into uniform. Mashriqi, the Amir or Commander-in-Chief, was a virtual dictator who suffered from the delusion that he would be the future ruler of a Muslim India. Not unnaturally, these goings on greatly alarmed the Hindus and that alarm was strengthened in 1934 when the Khaksars began to stage mock wars in the Punjab. ‘On all such occasions an air of realism was lent to the proceedings by the use of fireworks to depict gunfire.’*

The dangerous communal character of the organization appeared very clearly in July 1934, when the Khaksars acted as the spear-head of the Muslims in the communal fighting at Shahidganj in Lahore, which originated in the demolition by Sikhs of a Moghul building which may once have been a mosque, but which had been in the possession of the Sikhs for 170 years. The situation soon became serious and

the central police station was practically besieged by huge crowds which assumed a most menacing attitude. The military were called out and after repeated attempts to disperse them without the use of firearms had failed, the troops had to fire twice on 20 July and eight times on the 21st. In all twenty-three rounds were fired and twelve persons killed. Casualties, mostly of a minor nature, were numerous amongst the military and the police.*

The situation was in due course brought under control, but the occurrence had considerably enhanced the prestige of the Khaksars, and Mashriqi soon came to regard himself as the supreme arbiter in all Muslim disputes. In the following few years the movement rapidly gained strength, and by 1938 it was reported to have a following at seventeen places in the Punjab, ten in the North-West Frontier Province, seven in Sind, eight in the United Provinces, and it was also active in Delhi, Calcutta and the Deccan. In 1939, the Khaksars introduced a new form of spade, with a detonator operated by a spring,* and discipline was considerably tightened. By the beginning of the Second World War serious trouble seemed imminent.

Even more serious than these occurrences was the extremely aggressive attitude of the Khaksars in the first year of the War. In view of this attitude, and of the similar mood in the Hindu and Sikh organizations concerned—at a time when the communal situation was deteriorating rapidly—the Punjab Government issued orders under the Defence of India Rules, ‘restricting drill of a military nature and prohibiting the carrying in procession of arms or articles capable of being used as arms’ in Lahore and certain other districts. Mashriqi openly announced his intention of defying the order and ordered contingents of Khaksars to assemble in Lahore and ‘lay a bed of corpses round Sir Sikandar’s charpoy’.*

Early on the morning of 19 March 1940, the City Inspector Lahore, informed the Senior Superintendent of Police that there would be a deliberate and calculated defiance of Government orders some time that day by a group of 313 Khaksars who would march in formation, attired in their uniforms and armed with sharpened spades and other weapons from the Unchi Mosque, where they were assembled, to the Badshahi Mosque. The number of 313 was of considerable significance being the number that had accompanied the Prophet of Islam in his first battle. Moreover, it was believed that each Khaksar would be carrying a white sheet (i.e. his burial sheet) so very serious trouble was to be expected.

The Senior Superintendent immediately called out his Police Reserves and informed the District Magistrate and Deputy Inspector-General of the message he had received. The three officers met within the hour at Police Station Tibbi which lay on the direct route between the Unchi and Badshahi Mosques having instructed the Police Reserves to follow with as little delay as possible. Following a hasty conference in Tibbi the three officers decided on an attempt at a direct approach to the Khaksar leaders on the spot and walked down together to the Mosque. On entering they were given a most hostile reception and were summarily pushed aside, nobody deigning to speak to them. It was clear from the outset that a peaceful solution was out of the question and the three officers therefore withdrew. As they emerged the Khaksars followed and paraded in the street outside. All were in uniform and seemed to be armed with a variety of weapons in addition to their spades. The Senior Superintendent ran up the road to marshal his forces to meet the Khaksar challenge but events had moved too fast; the police reserves had not yet arrived. There were a mere eighteen to twenty unarmed men available and these were ordered to take up a position on the road outside to stay the onward march of the Khaksars. The latter, however, were not to be deterred. The small police force was quickly overwhelmed, three of their number being killed and the others, including the Senior Superintendent, being seriously wounded. Striding on, the Khaksars reached the top of the road at the moment of the arrival of the Police Reserves and attacked them as they debussed, seriously injuring many including the Deputy Superintendent who was the officer in charge. Taken completely by surprise, the police opened fire killing thirty-one Khaksars and injuring sixty-three others. Some seventeen of the police party were seriously injured. The Deputy Superintendent later died in hospital.*

Thereafter the military were called in, the Khaksars were declared an unlawful association and many arrests were made, including that of Mashriqi.

In October 1940, when Mashriqi himself was undergoing a short sentence of imprisonment, his lieutenants sent hundreds of Khaksars into the United Provinces in defiance of an order under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, with the avowed intention of forcibly settling a dispute between Sunnis and Shias.

Clashes with the police inevitably followed, culminating with a major one in Bulandshahr on 8 October in which 300 Khaksars from the Punjab and the United Provinces were involved. The police were constrained to open fire resulting in the death of six Khaksars and the wounding of fourteen others’*

The movement then gradually declined.

The War now ushered in new problems, which will be discussed later in this book. Here we need only repeat our tribute to the steadfastness of the police during two decades under the triple strain of civil disobedience, terrorism and communal disorders of a grave kind.

Chapter 22

The Transfer of Power

By 1946 it had become clear that the transfer of power could not long be delayed and this realization ushered in a period of intense struggle between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. The bitterness of the contest inflamed the feelings of Hindus and Muslims throughout much of India and, before long, communal violence broke out on an unprecedented scale in Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab. It would be useless, either to attempt to apportion the blame between the communities concerned, or to recount in detail the horror of the last year before Independence. It is sufficient for our purpose to quote an extract from a speech by Nehru—then virtually the Prime Minister of India—in the Legislative Assembly on 14 November 1946.

A succession of events which are known to this House led to the great Calcutta killing. That was followed by the great tragedy of Noakhali in East Bengal and that again led to the terrible happenings in Bihar and now Bihar is leading to other outbursts of brutality and violence. . . . I found that during the Calcutta killings a large number of Biharis had lost their lives. Their relatives had returned to Bihar together with many other refugees and had spread out all over the rural area carrying stories of what had happened in Calcutta. The people of Bihar were stirred profoundly. Then came news of Noakhali in East Bengal. These stories and more especially the accounts of abduction and rape of women, or forcible conversion of large numbers of people, infuriated the populace. For some time they looked to the Central Government and hoped that this would give them relief and afford protection. When they did not see any help or protection forthcoming, they grew bitter.*

The Central Government, itself deeply divided on communal lines, was indeed in no position to help, while in at least one province the fury was being deliberately fanned by persons in high political positions. It must be remembered, too, that whatever the legal theory might be, the stage at which the Viceroy could effectively intervene was already past. The only remaining bulwark against the communal storm was that provided by the magistracy and the police in the districts affected. Those officials worked under great difficulties at the time. British officials had too long felt themselves to be temporary caretakers and though they continued to do their duty, in many cases the old self-confidence had gone. For Indian members of the services, there was an even greater difficulty. They were never quite sure if strong action against a particular community, or against the forces of disorder generally, would recoil on their heads after the British had left. Mountbatten rightly observed at a later date that there had been a general run-down of the administration, and for a time the intelligence organization of the police did fall below its previous well-known competence. What is more evident is that the war-time cessation of recruitment to the superior services had left both the Indian Civil Service and the police below their normal strength, and officers had been promoted to posts for which they were not quite ready in terms of experience.

A weakened police force was thus confronted with the greatest threat to law and order which India had experienced since the Mutiny, and it is a matter for astonishment that they coped with it with such determination and efficiency. In Bengal, Bihar, and later in the Punjab, heroic efforts were made to bring the situation under control, and such uneasy peace as the inhabitants of those provinces enjoyed in the months before partition, was entirely due to the success of the police in achieving the impossible. Up to the limit of human endurance they had been faithful to the motto inscribed on the King’s Police Medal: ‘To Guard My People’.

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Part Three — Operations and Technique

Chapter 23

The Fight Against Crime in the Twentieth Century

By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the organization of the police had been modernized, and its strength had been brought up to somewhere near what was required. The efficiency of the fight against crime in the twentieth century, when the criminal himself was beginning to adopt up-to-date methods, would obviously depend largely on the training of the police and the 1902 Police Commission had attached much importance to that aspect of police organization. The arrangements for training varied in detail from province to province, but it will serve our purpose if we describe them as they were in a typical province. Colonel Halland has written an account* of the system as it was when, as a probationary Assistant Superintendent of Police in 1909, he attended the Punjab Police Training School at Phillaur, and again when he was Principal of that School in the 1920s.

The School was divided into an Upper School, primarily intended for the training of probationary sub-inspectors or head constables selected for promotion, and a Lower School, where constables were trained before promotion to the rank of head constable. Probationary Assistant Superintendents of Police were also sent to Phillaur for basic training on first appointment and formed a small class of their own. At a later stage, an additional class was established for the training of law graduates who had been selected for appointment as Court inspectors or sub-inspectors. When Halland joined the School the course for Assistant Superintendents of Police lasted throughout one cold weather, after which they were sent to districts to continue practical instruction and language study under the personal supervision of a Superintendent of Police. Each of the other courses was of five months duration.

The first task of the trainees was to master the criminal law of India, the Punjab Police Rules and a number of special and local laws. For the British Assistant Superintendents of Police, it was of equal importance to learn Urdu and Punjabi, and several hours every day were spent with a Munshi for this purpose. Early morning parades including all classes of trainees were an essential part of the course.

The School was marched out as a Company, divided into platoons and sections, and then split up for instruction by the Drill Staff, under the chief Drill Instructor. As experience was gained probationers took command of the platoons and, in turn, of the whole company, thus perfecting their words of command and developing powers of leadership.*

A Provincial Finger Print Bureau was located in the School and the training of all classes included some time spent in the Bureau and in learning how to make casts of footprints. Medical jurisprudence was also part of the course, and instruction was given by the Civil Surgeon of the district in first aid to the injured. As can be imagined, it was far from easy to assemble a good team of instructors in law and police work for the Training School. They were as a rule hand-picked sub-inspectors who had proved their ability as officers in charge of police stations, but it often happened that ‘men who were outstanding at practical policemanship were not always proficient at imparting their knowledge to others’. Moreover, a really good sub-inspector might feel that instructional work in Phillaur was less likely to lead to promotion than success in investigating crime. These difficulties were, however, overcome and the School soon acquired a reputation for efficiency. The probationers were worked hard at the School, but they still found time for shooting duck and snipe or for fishing. Throughout India indeed, the passion of the average young British officer for shooting often helped him to lay the foundations of an intimate knowledge of the country and its people.

At the end of the course, all trainees had to sit for departmental examinations conducted by a Board of Examiners under the chairmanship of a Deputy Inspector-General. The examinations covered law, practical police work and drill and, in the case of British Assistant Superintendents of Police, there were also fairly stiff tests in Urdu. After passing their departmental examinations, the probationers were sent to districts where perhaps the most important part of their instruction consisted in accompanying the Superintendent of Police on tour, and learning how to investigate cases or how to inspect a police station. At the end of two years, during which time the probationers were expected to learn a second language, they became fully fledged Assistant Superintendents of Police, entitled to wear two silver pips. They now began to be of some use in the force.

In the case of the probationary sub-inspector he, too, was posted to a district to continue his training after passing out of the School, and indeed he still had much to learn.

He is attached to one office after another until he has an opportunity of seeing the working of the whole machinery at close quarters. Thus he serves an apprenticeship with the Court Prosecuting Inspector, who handles all the more important police cases, which are not yet important enough to demand the services of the Public Prosecutor or a lawyer of special eminence. He begins by helping to keep the office registers, and next, under guidance, examines and checks the briefs and papers from the police stations. Later he prepares briefs himself and works as an assistant to the Inspector in Court. Finally he conducts a case.

He works at the Police Headquarters, where he studies the working of the office which issues stores, clothing, ammunition, accoutrements and similar requirements to the fifteen or twenty police stations of the district. Here also he watches in detail the training of the armed Police and the methods by which their discipline is maintained. . . .

He hears, or perhaps as deputy to the Reader, reads to the Superintendent, reports of offences and crime diaries, and the vast flood of vernacular reports in which are mirrored the daily life and circumstances of the police stations. . . .

Having mastered all this he is ready to go out with the officer in charge of the police station to watch him investigate cases and to learn to perform such general duties as may be assigned to him.*

In the second decade of the century, the course at Phillaur for probationary Assistant Superintendents of Police was lengthened to twelve months, but in the early twenties a further change was made, partly on account of the unhealthiness of Phillaur during the monsoon period. Under the new arrangement, probationers spent the period from 1 November to 31 May at Phillaur, and were then sent to selected hill stations to see something of the practical side of police work under the supervision of the Superintendent of Police, while still continuing their studies of law and language. They then returned to the School in October for a final two and a half months, spent mainly on revision.

Men recruited as constables were not sent to Phillaur but were trained in the District Police Lines by the Reserve Inspector under the general supervision of the Superintendent of Police and the Assistant Superintendent of Police. This system of local training had the advantage that it gave the superior police officers of the district the opportunity of watching the development of their men right from the start, but there were also disadvantages. If crime was heavy, the Superintendent of Police and the Assistant Superintendent of Police might in practice be able to devote little time to supervising the training of recruits, and at the same time, there was often a tendency to use the recruits for routine duties, in which case, of course, their training suffered. Moreover, it was not always easy to obtain competent instructors in every district, and the quality of the training must have varied greatly from district to district. For these reasons a proposal to centralize all training of constables was considered, but financial considerations ruled it out—though Recruit Training Centres were established later.

We need not consider methods of training in other provinces. Enough has been said to show that well before the First World War, the police were well equipped by their training for the fight against crime. To that fight we must now turn.

Technique in the investigation of crime improved greatly in the twentieth century as a result of what was known as the modus operandi system. This was based on the knowledge that a particular criminal or group of criminals tends to specialize in a particular class of crime, and to adopt unvarying methods of operation. The burglar will continue to burgle rather than to commit dacoity or arson, and, moreover, one burglar or group will operate time after time by cutting a hole in the wall of a house, while another burglar will consistently work by drilling holes in a door and unfastening the inner bolt.* The author of the standard work on the Indian Police tells us that the modus operandi system was developed by Major Atcherley in England, and he goes on to describe its application in India.

The basis of the system is the fact that thieves and other criminals tend to specialize in their methods of committing crime. . . . What has now been accomplished is to invent a system by which an immense number of facts concerning individual criminals and individual crimes can be classified, indexed and recorded in such a way as to render the knowledge concerning them available to every investigating officer. . . . About each such burglary there are a number of personal idiosyncrasies. When these details have been collected and classified with regard to all the habitual criminals, the detective engaged on a case can arrive by a process of elimination at a small group of burglars who are likely to have been concerned in it.*

Crime maps were of considerable use in connection with this method, but here too, it was only with the passage of time that the police learned how to extract the best value from them. It was gradually realized that a map which indiscriminately recorded crime of all kinds was of little help, and the next stage was the preparation of separate maps each showing only crimes of one kind—for example, burglary—in a particular area. Even this map classification was too wide, and the system was refined further by the preparation of maps showing the localities where a particular modus operandi had been employed. This technique was, of course, a development of the Sleeman method, and it depended largely on the compilation of large numbers of case histories. No individual history might be of much use, but put together they threw light on the working of the underground world. This work was unspectacular and critics of the police had no idea of the patient research which it involved, or the marked effect which it had in the fight against crime.

Burglary and Drugs

We can best show how training and the development of new techniques produced the desired results, by describing a number of typical cases. Here, as in an earlier chapter, we shall make as much use as possible of reports of individual police officers. To the layman the crime of burglary sounds dull, but a leading authority on this subject tells us that burglars are in a sense the aristocrats of the criminal classes. ‘Many an old burglar had administered the severest of beatings to a hopeful son for lowering himself by taking part in anything so vulgar and unintelligent as a common rowdy dakaity’.* The same author tells an amusing story of the protective shrewdness of a burglar.

A burglar had broken into a large and crowded house and had entered a little room a few feet square in which a man and his wife were sleeping. Inadvertently he had made some noise which had awakened the woman, who was at the moment literally between his feet. She called out to her husband in a frightened voice. The man sat up, told her to be quiet and to listen. The burglar remained motionless for as long as he could hold his breath, and then imitated the squeak of a rat as if, while unprepared and listening for further movements of its human disturbers, it had been suddenly attacked by a more courageous enemy. He then ran his fingers along a beam above his head and plunged his hand into the thatch, where he kept it, again maintaining breathless silence. The listening pair at his feet gave a sigh of relief, agreed that it was only rats, and settled themselves to sleep again. After a while the burglar finished his thieving without further mishap, securing a large amount of booty.*

Another authority throws more fight on the methods of the police in investigating cases of burglary. Early in the third decade of the present century, a series of burglaries had been committed in Bombay City, and from the modus operandi it seemed probable that they were the work of one Ramchandra. The officers of the C.I.D. watched Ramchandra and his associates for a considerable time until at last they caught him with stolen property in his possession. Ramchandra was convicted but escaped from custody, and had the effrontery to break into the office of the C.I.D. and remove the property which was the subject of a second offence with which he had been charged.

Again a watch was kept on his haunts and on the shops of his receivers. Incredible though it may seem he went to one of these shops on 20 July. With all his cunning and versatility he could not find new channels through which to work. . . . It says much for the police-craft of the C.I.D. constable who was on watch that Ramchandra did not learn of his presence until he reached the shop; but as soon as he saw him he drew a revolver and fired. The constable, a Maratha, made a very plucky attempt to arrest this armed desperado, but he missed him in the crowd when he fled round the corner and up a narrow lane’*

Ramchandra now left Bombay by train for Nagpur, but this time, luck turned against him. He was seated quietly, when another criminal, who had a grudge against Ramchandra, told a head constable of the Railway Police that Ramchandra was in the train and was armed with a revolver. ‘The Railway Police had, of course, received a copy of the police notices which are issued thrice daily from the Police Head Office.’ The head constable reported the fact to the British sergeant on duty at the station. The sergeant ‘strolled casually past Ramchandra and throwing himself upon him pinioned his arms’. This time Ramchandra did not escape, but went to gaol for nine years.

Another case of burglary reported by Curry illustrates how much depends on detailed knowledge of the underworld by the police. The story concerns a jeweller’s shop in Bombay City, south of the Victoria railway station. One Sunday morning in April 1928, three local hooligans pretended to have been sleeping on the pavement and hung up a large garment to dry outside the side door of the shop—a practice so common that it attracted no attention. When the watchman went out for a few minutes, the gang, under cover of the garment, forced a panel in the shutter of the door, and one of them entered the shop where he lay quietly until the watchman again went out in the evening. He then removed watches and jewellery worth Rs. 90,000, and as the watchman had previously noted nothing unusual, there was no clue of any kind when the police came to investigate. The Superintendent of the C.I.D. had a vast knowledge of the receivers who were most likely to be approached with the stolen goods, and he immediately warned them that he was on the look out for these articles. Shortly thereafter one of the gang did in fact take the property to one of the receivers and such was the reputation of the Superintendent, that the receiver detained the thief on some pretext or other and sent for the police. The stolen property was almost entirely restored and the gang went to gaol.

Anybody familiar with the casual way in which property is left unattended at Indian railway stations, will not be surprised to learn how frequently railway thefts or robberies occur. An interesting case of a train robbery occurred near Amritsar in the autumn of 1935. The Gold and Silver Merchants’ Association of that city were in the habit of melting gold down into thin bricks and despatching them to Bombay by train. The goods were never insured and the merchants said frankly that the profits on the transaction were so handsome as to cover all risks. Strangely enough, the bullion was often left lying about on the station platform unguarded. One night, on the arrival of the down Bombay mail, the bullion was conveyed to the guard’s van and, instead of being loaded into the safe, was left on top of a box and the door of the van was not locked. One Sher Gul, the ringleader of a gang of thieves, concealed himself in the van, and when the train was nine miles out of Amritsar, flashed a signal to his confederates, who were waiting at a lonely spot, and heaved the box of bullion on to the track. The gang promptly picked up the loot and took it back to Amritsar, while Sher Gul slipped off the train at the first stop. The loss was discovered when the train reached Delhi, and suspects who were known to commit this kind of crime were interrogated. Nothing resulted from these interrogations, but trouble for the gang began when they quarrelled as to the price at which a goldsmith was prepared to buy the bullion from them. The disappointed goldsmith aired his complaint to a friend, who in turn passed it on to an acquaintance, who happened to be a Deputy Superintendent of Police. The goldsmith was questioned by the police and his statement led them to raid the homes of all gangsters in the locality which he indicated. ‘The speed and secrecy with which the operation was conducted took everyone by surprise, and it was only a matter of hours before details of the original robbery, its planning and execution were laid bare.’ The ringleader’s house in the hills above Abbotabad ‘was then searched and a gold brick was discovered. The house of another gang high up in the mountains was also searched and a lump of gold the size of a large matchbox was unearthed from under the roots of a cherry tree.’ The other member of the gang had used his share of the booty to buy instruments and set up as a dentist. History does not record if the stolen gold was used for dental purposes, but the dentist, too, was brought to book.*

Another aspect of police work was concerned with the traffic in illicit drugs, and this we can illustrate by the story of Mumtaz, the notorious ‘cocaine king’ of Lahore, who began his career by selling cocaine in one grain packets, well adulterated with bicarbonate of soda. He soon became wealthy and influential, and he eluded all the attempts of the Punjab police to bring his crimes home to him, until a new Excise Branch of the C.I.D. was formed. The first attempt of the new Branch officers was unsuccessful. They raided his house, only to find that his excellent intelligence system had forewarned him of the raid. Nothing incriminating was found. A close watch was now kept on his movements and before long the police learnt that Mumtaz was about to collect a fresh consignment of cocaine.

An ambush of police and excise officers, disguised as donkey drivers, ploughmen and hawkers, was laid on the route which was most likely to be used by the returning smugglers. Mumtaz was known to be of a very amorous disposition, so a head constable disguised as a female in a burka was sent to try and entice him to the spot, where the trap was laid. . . . The head constable loitered about in a tonga in the vicinity of a place where Mumtaz and his companions were known to have gone and, on catching sight of him in a conveyance, beckoned to him and drove off. Mumtaz nothing loath, promptly took up the chase and, together with his friends, followed the elusive female. They were led right into the middle of the ambush and Mumtaz never realized that he was in the toils until a burly bearded figure jumped into the road, stopped his carriage and stuck a revolver under his nose. He confessed to me afterwards that, at the time, he was really under the impression it was the jealous husband of the woman he had been following. The outcome was that a large quantity of cocaine was seized from his possession and he and his companions were in due course sent up for trial, convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and heavy fines.*

In another case, the success of the police was due not to any great detective skill but to the courage and ingenuity of an individual constable. Two sepoys had deserted from their regiment with a rifle, a large amount of ammunition and other government property. While attempting to steal a camel in the Ferozepore district, they shot the owner dead. The case was of great importance and half the country was turned out to hunt down these desperate criminals. The constable on duty at Bhatinda Station had what was rightly described as the ‘seemingly impossible’ task of watching the thousands of transit passengers, for two men whom he had never seen, but he had carefully read and memorized their descriptions. Ten nights after the start of the search,

he followed on to the long over-bridge two men who seemed to answer to the description. They had a bundle and a large stick. The constable had a difficult and dangerous task to perform on a very dark night, and he had to be most astute. His first move was to say what he was and accuse the couple of carrying illicit liquor. They offered him a bribe of Re. 1-4 which was all they had, but not before he had handled the suspicious ‘bottle’ bulging a little from the bundle. He accepted the bribe, then pretended that it was all a joke, that he had met the couple before and would be glad to stand them their dinner and a drink. They were very hungry, having been in hiding for days, and readily followed the constable to a baker’s where dinner was ordered. Leaving them sitting by the oven watching with relish the cooking of some nice chapattis our friend said he would go and buy a bottle of liquor to grace the occasion. He strode off into the dark, only to creep up quietly behind the squatting couple, snatch away their stick, and eventually tie them back to back with their own pagris. He then placed the bundle between their necks so as to have his own hands free, and proceeded to lead them into the police station, which was not far off. Inside the bundle was the rifle with stock and barrel separated, and the rest of the property taken from the regimental depot.*

The Master Mind

From time to time, the police found themselves up against a master mind who organized crime on a large scale, while remaining behind the scenes himself. Such a case occurred in the United Provinces in the first decade of this century and the crime concerned was kidnapping.* Isolated cases of the kidnapping of unmarried girls for sale as brides or to a brothel did occur now and again, but in the present instance the police were disturbed and baffled by the fact that a hundred girls had been kidnapped in the Province within three months. There were two unusual features about this outbreak. In the first place, about half of the girls were Muslims, whereas all previous experience suggested that Hindu girls were the usual victims, and secondly, quite a number of the girls involved were married. The modus operandi of the kidnappers was fairly consistent and was thus reported by a C.I.D. Inspector:

the girls were kidnapped just after dark when they left their homes to draw water from wells. . . . In several of these cases fast trotting bullock carts were noticed in side streets nearby and in some of them strangers were seen putting a bundle into the carts and driving off. In rural areas, girls were usually seized as the children of the village were driving the cattle home in a cloud of dust just after sundown. The kidnappers were never noticed by the other children and the absence of a girl was not discovered until the cattle had been sorted out in the village.

The police officer making this report went on to remark that, in his previous experience, married women were never kidnapped in villages, but only in towns.

The C.I.D. took this matter up with great diligence. Enquiries were made at all the known brothels in the Province, but none of the inmates complained that they had been kidnapped. Nor did it appear that there was any shortage of brides in the United Provinces. It soon transpired that there had been similar occurrences in the two Indian States of Rampur and Benares within the United Provinces. The head of the C.I.D. came to the conclusion that it must be intended to smuggle the girls out of the United Provinces to other provinces by rail, and, therefore, orders were issued that

constables must travel on every train and go from carriage to carriage. Every girl on the train must be questioned as to whether she is the daughter or other relative of the woman with whom she is travelling, and if she makes any complaint she and the woman must be detained.

These methods soon produced results. Four girls who were questioned in the train, stated that they had been kidnapped, and it appeared that they were being taken to Delhi. This in itself left much unsolved, since there was no shortage of girls in Delhi, but much was discovered about the methods of the kidnapping agents. In the case of the first girl so discovered, the custodian was a chamarin, or woman of the ‘sweeper caste’.

One evening she was accosted by a stranger and he asked her if she wanted to earn a little money. . . . He then told her that his brother and his wife had gone to Delhi to visit some relations, leaving their little girl with him. They had decided to remain in Delhi for some time and had written and asked him to send their daughter to them by a reliable woman. The fares of the woman and the child were to be paid and the woman was to be given Rs. 10 for taking the child to Delhi.

The woman was further instructed not to take the girl to her parents’ temporary home in Delhi, but to stand outside the shop of a silversmith named Fateh Chand with a white paper fan in her hand. The girl’s father would then come along and claim her. The story of the chamarin was corroborated, and this was in fact the method followed in the case of all the four girls recovered from trains. The technique of the kidnappers was now known, but the object of the exercise was still not clear.

Suddenly the head of the C.I.D. guessed in a flash what the solution was. Large areas of the Punjab were being colonized after the construction of canals, and young and vigorous tenants, many of whom were unmarried, had been settled on the colonization grant. The demand for brides was naturally great, and an enterprising person named Akbar Khan appeared in the colony as the self-styled agent of a matrimonial bureau in Lahore. Several hundreds of the colonists obtained brides through this obliging bureau, the price quoted being Rs. 500 per girl. The hunch of the C.I.D. head was found to have been correct. Then the story had an ending which, to Western readers, will seem strange. The fathers of six kidnapped girls and the husbands of two abducted women were taken to the Punjab colony, presumably expecting that their daughters and wives would return with them. To everybody’s astonishment, all the girls decided to stay in their new homes. The police officers concerned must have wondered if all their efforts had been worth while, but there was nothing more to be done; they had in fact carried out a remarkable piece of investigation.

Murder by Plague

We must now turn to the more sensational crime of murder. Here the modus operandi system did not usually afford much help, and painstaking investigation of individual murders was required. This is well illustrated by a case which may perhaps be unique in the annals of crime, and is certainly without parallel in India. As far as possible we shall tell the story in the words of Mr. E. H. Le Brocq, the Officer-in-Charge of the Detective Branch of the Calcutta Police at the relevant time. In January or February 1934, a petition was received alleging that one Amarendra Chandra Pandey of the Pakur Raj, while on a crowded platform at Howrah railway station, had been pricked in the arm with an infected needle and had died of bubonic plague a few days later. It was further alleged that the murder had been instigated by Amarendra’s half brother, Benoyendra Chandra Pandey, a loose-living character, who held half of the ancestral Pakur estate in trust for Amarendra and had converted much of the income to his own use. When Amarendra came of age, he began to enquire into Benoyendra’s misdeeds.

At an early stage in their investigation, the police discovered that, in 1932, Amarendra had mysteriously contracted a tetanus infection and they enquired into that episode in great detail.

We take up the story in the Puja holidays of 1932, when Benoyendra and Amarendra were visiting their aunt, Mani Surjya Bati, at Deoghar. Amarendra’s eyesight had always been poor and during the visit Benoyendra found occasion to produce a pair of pince-nez and try them on his brother’s nose, with sufficient pressure to cause a small scratch. Within a few days Amarendra fell ill and a local doctor diagnosed a tetanus infection. Under his treatment with anti-tetanus serum, Amarendra was improving slowly, but a telegram was sent to Benoyendra, who had gone suddenly to Pakur, to return to Deoghar with the family doctor. Benoyendra did return, but with a Dr. D. R. Dhar, who was connected with a drug manufacturing concern in Calcutta and was not known to the rest of the family. He changed the treatment and though Amarendra eventually recovered, it was some months before he regained his normal health. Dr. Dhar did not impress the family very favourably. Round about this time Benoyendra’s efforts to collect more than his fair share of the estate’s income were in full swing, leading to the bitter ill-feeling of which mention has already been made.*

There were no further unusual occurrences until the autumn of 1933, when Amarendra decided to leave Calcutta for the family seat at Pakur. In spite of the strained feelings between the half-brothers, Benoyendra decided to see Amarendra off at Howrah station.

Benoyendra was at the station well in advance of the travellers and was seen by other witnesses in the company of a dark-skinned low caste man, dressed in ‘Khadder’. This person had been seen with Benoyendra on previous occasions but was nowhere in evidence when Amarendra and his aunt arrived at the station. Benoyendra was most helpful and shepherded the family party on to the platform, which was as usual a noisy mass of jostling humanity. Suddenly Amarendra gave a cry and clutched his upper arm, saying that something had pricked him. He rolled up his sleeve and there was indeed a puncture from which blood and some oily liquid were coming. Foul play was at once suspected by the relatives and Amarendra was urged to stay in Calcutta where first-class medical attention would be available. But Benoyendra made light of the incident and persuaded the party to leave for Pakur as planned.

Amarendra was nervous and upset, however, and returned to Calcutta after a couple of days as he was not feeling at all well. When the first doctor consulted failed to effect a speedy cure, other doctors were called in by the family, a common enough practice in Calcutta. One of these took a blood sample which he handed over ‘unofficially’ to a doctor friend of his working in the School of Tropical Medicine, for examination. Amarendra’s condition worsened rapidly and painful swellings developed in his armpits and glands. He died on the morning of 4 December—just eight days after receiving the puncture in his arm at Howrah station. Dr. Shivapada Bhattacharji, an officiating professor of the School of Tropical Medicine in Calcutta, who had attended Amarendra during his last days, issued a certificate showing that death was due to septic pneumonia. He was well known and had a flourishing practice.

On the following day, as was his duty as head of the family, Benoyendra arranged for the cremation of Amarendra’s body at Kalighat. The body was duly reduced to ashes in accordance with Hindu rites, and ‘that’, as Benoyendra doubtless thought to himself, ‘was that’. And so it probably would have been but for one small sample of blood which was being examined ‘unofficially’, and incidentally irregularly, by a doctor in the School of Tropical Medicine. The examination took some days and the doctor was astounded when he eventually detected the bi-polar rods of the deadly bacillus pestis. The results were shown to the Principal of the School, who at once passed them on to the police. So Amarendra had indeed died of plague, contracted in a city which had only one recorded case of that disease in the past five years.*

The facts now known to the police were not, however, conclusive and it was necessary for them to discover who had supplied the plague culture. Careful enquiries showed that Dr. Tara Nath Bhattacharji, a well-known Calcutta bacteriologist, who was a close friend of Benoyendra, had made repeated attempts to obtain live plague culture to assist him in experiments he professed to be making for the cure of plague. Armed with a letter of introduction from a highly reputable Calcutta medical research worker, Bhattacharji secured permission to carry out research at the Arthur Road Infectious Diseases Hospital in Bombay, which was regularly supplied with plague culture. He worked there for five days and then, on some flimsy pretext, left for Calcutta and never returned. His object had been achieved. He had secured live plague culture and, within a few days, Amarendra met his death. The chain of evidence was now complete and Benoyendra and Bhattacharji were convicted and sentenced to death.

There are two interesting features about this case. In the first place the murderer himself—the one who actually injected the plague culture—was never identified, though it was surmised that he was the ‘dark-skinned low caste man’ to whom reference has been made. Secondly, no post-mortem was held, the cause of death being established after the cremation of the body, from a blood sample taken before death. The case was indeed a remarkable example of the patience and perspicacity of the Detective Branch of the Calcutta Police.

The Body in the Trunk

The other murder case which we have selected, must be recounted in some detail since its interest lies chiefly in the careful combination of detection and observation which characterized the work of the best police officers.

When the down Punjab mail train from Kalka via Delhi arrived at Howrah station, Calcutta, early in the morning of 3 October 1924, a trunk, first noticed by passengers entering an empty intermediate class compartment at Moghul Serai station, was opened in the presence of the Railway Police, and the naked corpse of a man was found inside. His knees and neck were tied together with a torn piece of dhoti [loincloth] and his face was covered with a piece of shirt. The throat had been cut, and there were stab wounds in the stomach and elsewhere. The body was in a decomposed state.

At this stage, the investigation was handed over to the U.P. Police, and Inspector Govind Behari Lal of the C.I.D. was deputed to the case on 24 October. He made a fresh examination of the trunk and the clothes found with the corpse, a careful perusal of the post-mortem report and the Railway Police reports, and a study of the train timings. Then he reasoned as follows:—

1. Since the Howrah Police had learned nothing from their enquiries at railway stations, it was most probable that the trunk had been placed in the train by the murderers (two persons needed to carry it), and at night.

2. The murderers would not have taken the risk of putting the trunk in the train without buying tickets. Intermediate class tickets on mail trains are not issued for less than 200 miles. It was probable that they had bought a ticket or tickets for a destination distant 200 miles or more, but would not have travelled so far, in which case the tickets would not have been collected at the destination. The railway authorities were asked to report about this.

3. Very little blood was found in the trunk, and there was no blood in the compartment. It was assumed therefore that the body was placed in the trunk some little time after the murder, when blood had practically ceased to flow.

4. No bones had been fractured and, as the body was found in a doubled-up position, it was reasonable to assume that it had been put in the trunk soon after the murder, before it was stiff.

5. Since the food found in the stomach was vegetarian, the Inspector concluded that the dead man was probably a Hindu. Hindus usually eat between 10 a.m. and 12 noon, or between 5.30 and 8.0 p.m., so the murder was committed either in the afternoon or early night.

6. From the train-timings and post-mortem report, it seemed that the trunk was placed in the train between 7.35 p.m. on 1 October, when it left Kalka, and 4.0 a.m. the next day.

7. The piece of shirt, with which the face of the corpse had been covered, also had a laundry mark, and had no cut marks, which would have been the case if the dead man had been wearing it when he was stabbed. The presumption was that it belonged to one of the murderers.

8. The piece of dhoti with which the body was tied was only slightly bloodstained. If it had been worn by the dead man at the time of the murder, it would have been soaked in blood. This then probably also belonged to one of the murderers.

9. The photograph and post-mortem report showed that the deceased had his hair cut in English fashion. This showed that he was probably of upper or middle class status, as lower class Indians usually keep their hair in Indian style.

The Inspector made further inquiries about the trunk, and the opinion of the trunk merchants he consulted was that it was made in Delhi. Inquiries from washermen about the laundry mark also pointed to Delhi, where it was the custom for marks to be made with thread taken from the hem of the garment. The Inspector went to Delhi, deciding not to show the trunk to Delhi trunk-merchants again, but visiting every shop where trunks were sold, until finally he saw a similar trunk in a shop. He bought this, and got a receipt. Later, with the cooperation of the Delhi Police, the shop-keeper was called to the local police station and was asked whether the new trunk had been bought at his shop. He admitted it, and said it had been made in his workshop, with others of the same design. At this juncture the murder trunk was brought in, and he had to admit that it was made in his workshop. His books showed that he had sold one such trunk on 29 September and another on 1 October, but there was no record of the purchasers. At this point, luck took a hand. When the Inspector was discussing the case with officers of the Delhi C.I.D., one of them mentioned casually that a friend of his had been away since the floods of the river Jumna. The Inspector remembered that the down Punjab Mail on 1 October had been the last direct train to leave Delhi before the floods. He therefore asked for further details of the missing friend, who was a goldsmith called Udey Chand, and whose description tallied with that of the dead man. Inquiries showed that he was a man of loose character, fond of wearing a bit of jewellery, and had been away since eating his evening meal on 1 October. The Inspector now began to work on the assumption that the murdered man was Udey Chand, and that the method of disposing of his dead body was to draw attention away from Delhi. This seemed to indicate that his murderers would be found either among his relatives or associates. None of his relatives bore him any ill-will. One associate, however, on being questioned, aroused the Inspector’s suspicions. His name was Janeshwar. The Inspector persuaded one of Janeshwar’s associates to drink with him, in the hope of making him talk or, failing that, to spill his drink over his own clothes and induce Janeshwar to lend him a shirt. This bore fruit, and the shirt was found to have the same laundry mark as the piece of dhoti found on the corpse. With the aid of the Delhi Police, Janeshwar’s house was searched. A carpet in one room had stains on the under side which appeared to be bloodstains, and there were other marks of blood on the floor and walls. His servant’s room was also searched, and a pair of pants was found with the laundry mark of the shirt on the corpse. The servant had only been employed in the last month, and said that he had received the pants from the last occupant of the room, Inayat Ullah, a friend of Janeshwar. Inayat Ullah’s house was now searched, and more clothes found with the same mark. Janeshwar and Inayat Ullah were arrested.*

The two men confessed and their statements confirmed the Inspector’s line of reasoning in remarkable detail. In due course, the men were hanged.

Riots

To give a balanced view of the duties of the police, we must now recount two instances where the police were occupied not with detective work, but with the suppression or prevention of riots.

The State of Bastar was a wild country between Madras and the Central Provinces, inhabited by primitive people in the ‘bow and arrow’ stage. For some years, the Raja’s heir presumptive had been intriguing with the Raja’s stepmother against the ruler, and matters came to a head when, in 1910, it was announced that the Raja’s wife was expecting a child. The heir presumptive succeeded in stirring up the rising (which was afterwards described as ‘a revolt against civilization, against schools, against forest conservancy, against Hindu settlers, in short a movement of Bastar State for Bastar forest dwellers’). Murder, arson and looting were widespread; school houses and police posts were burnt; and violence was shown to non-aborigines. In February, the Raja sent a telegram to the Central Provinces Government asking for help. Special armed police were detailed to the State from Madras and the Central Provinces, and a detachment of the 22nd Punjabis accompanied them. Fifty armed aborigines were at once captured, but a large body of aborigines surrounded the police, who had to open fire. Once again the aborigines attacked, but the police captured 511 of them. The ringleaders were arrested, the remainder were whipped and released. The State began to return to normal, but villages in the hills refused to surrender rebel leaders, and when the police went in to fetch them, the police were attacked so fiercely that three of their number were killed and eleven wounded. The police remained in the State for three months, by which time the rising had been brought completely under control. The police had displayed great determination and courage in this rebellion, and it is satisfactory to learn that six King’s Police Medals were awarded: two to Superior Police Officers, one to an inspector and three to head constables or constables.

There were also occasions when the police, instead of having to suppress riots, were able to prevent their occurrence. One incident of this kind is related by Sir Richard Crofton, in his foreword to S. T Hollins’ book No Ten Commandments. In 1937, trouble arose at Nander in the State of Hyderabad, where Hollins was Director-General of Police. This incident is so typical of the little known work of the police, that Crofton’s account deserves quotation at length.

When he reached Nander, Hollins found that the situation was dangerous indeed. Two or three days previously the police had caught two local Sikhs in some petty crime, but they had resisted arrest and broken away after injuring a police constable. They had then joined three other Sikhs, who had recently come down from the Punjab with an unsavoury reputation, and all five had taken refuge on the roof of one of the out-houses adjoining the Gurdwara. They then gave a religious colour to the affair by proclaiming that they would stay on the roof and resist arrest by force until certain imaginary religious grievances connected with the Gurdwara had been rectified. The news of this spread quickly through Nander, and a crowd of some 5,000 Sikhs, armed with kirpans [daggers] assembled in the courtyard of the Gurdwara. The five recalcitrant Sikhs stood on the roof of the out-house, in full view of the crowd, waving their swords and shouting that they would remain there until death or until their religious grievances were remedied.

The crowd was quickly worked up into a white-hot religious fervour. The Nander police made an effort to enter the courtyard, but it was at once obvious that unless they used their firearms freely they had no hope of getting near the building, and it was very possible that they themselves would be annihilated if they made the attempt. It was obvious also that if firearms or force had to be used in the precincts of the Gurdwara the incident would be proclaimed an outrage against religion and Sikh jathas [bands] from the Punjab would begin to descend on Hyderabad to rescue their brethren in Nander. Such an event would have done incalculable damage to the Hyderabad State.

This was the situation when Hollins arrived. Accompanied by the Nazim [District Magistrate], Iyenger, and the local Superintendent of Police, he went straight to the Gurdwara, pushed his way into the shouting, demonstrating crowd, took up a position on the steps of the shrine, and held up his hand for silence. For some minutes the demonstration went on, and it was a toss-up whether Hollins and his companions might not at once be swept away. In the end the crowd’s curiosity—malicious curiosity, for the crowd was thoroughly hostile—prevailed, and it became silent. Everything depended on the next few seconds and on what Hollins might do or say. What he did was to shout loudly in Urdu, so that his voice was audible to the crowd as well as to the men on the roof: ‘Stop prancing about on the roof like monkeys. Come down here and face me like men.’

Of all the words the crowd expected to hear these were the last. The shock kept all present silent for a few seconds, and then Hollins shouted that if they had any religious grievances he would listen to each one and state his decisions on how they would be remedied, and that if they were not satisfied then the recalcitrants could go back to their roof-top. This appealed to the imagination of the crowd and soon a large section of it was shouting to the men on the roof to come down and explain their grievances to the Sahib.

Incredibly, they did come down. One by one they climbed down the outside ladder from the roof to the ground, and went and stood before Hollins. A table and a chair were brought, and the five Sikhs, standing before it, detailed their grievances, which were recorded along with the decisions Hollins made for their remedy. The longer the talk went on, the lower the temperature and excitement of the crowd fell. Finally, Hollins asked the men if they were satisfied. They said they were. ‘Ah,’ said Hollins, ‘so far I have listened to you. Now it is your turn to listen to me. There is one condition. You five must leave by the night train for the Punjab and never return to Nander.’

As we have seen, police organization was mainly a Provincial rather than a Central matter, but it was obvious that there ought to be some pooling of the knowledge gathered in each province in the fight against crime. For this purpose, in 1927 the practice of holding biennial conferences of Inspectors-General of Police was inaugurated. The proceedings of the first three conferences are not available, but the agenda for the 1933 conference will give some idea of the diversity of subjects discussed. They included the lessons to be derived from the civil disobedience movement, terrorist crime, the investigation of theft and burglary cases, the training of Special Branch officers and the organization of the Finger Print Bureau. In 1934, the conference considered inter alia the relations between the Central and Provincial Intelligence authorities, military aid in support of the civil power, the inadequacy of administrative and inspecting staff in some provinces, action against communism, and inter-provincial cooperation. A modern note now appeared in the discussions regarding the use of tear gas and the employment of wireless by the police. The conference also considered that important advantages would flow from the appointment of Inspectors-General of Police as Secretaries to the Government—a recommendation which was not implemented although in the Punjab and Assam the Inspectors-General were appointed Joint Secretaries in 1934 and 1935 respectively. In the 1936 conference, consideration was also given to the housing of the police force, the appointment of officers to the Indian Police, the extension to other provinces of the Punjab Habitual Offenders Act, motor traffic control, and the internal security duties of the police under the Constitution about to be introduced.

Conferences of this kind were not held regularly after 1936, and although it is generally stated that the onset of the Second World War was responsible for their partial discontinuance, it seems more probable that, in view of the fact that law and order were now provincial subjects, the conferences were considered inappropriate. They were nevertheless held in the middle forties. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that they had served a useful purpose and strengthened the hands of the police in the fight against crime.

Chapter 24

Science in the Service of the Police

We have seen that the campaign against thuggee and dacoity led to the formation of what was really a Criminal Investigation Department in India, long before any such organization existed in Britain. It was because of the same readiness to adopt new scientific methods that India was ahead of Scotland Yard in the use of fingerprints. All police officers know that one of their most difficult problems relates to the identification of persons concerned in crime. A witness may have had only a brief glance at the culprit, and in any case visual memory is very fleeting. Again, appearances may change due to the passage of the years or be changed deliberately, and last, but not least, there is always the possibility of a deliberately false identification. In England, the famous Tichborne case, and the grave miscarriage of justice over Adolph Beck, illustrate the honest mistakes which can be made, and the unreliability of personal identification. No police officer looks forward to an identification parade without apprehension. In some cases, photography helps, but even here the pitfalls are many and obvious. At the beginning of the modern police era, much thought was therefore given to the possibility of working out more objective methods of identification.

In India, the first practical approach to the problem was that of Sir William Herschel, who realized the potentiality of the fingerprint system. There was nothing new about this idea. Over two thousand years ago, the seal used on a document issued by the Chinese Emperor had his thumbprint impressed upon it, and the first known Chinese case of the recording of the fingerprints of prisoners occurred as early as the thirteenth century A.D.* It was in that century, too, that a Persian historian made the categorical statement ‘that no two individuals have fingers precisely alike’, but it was not until four hundred years later that attention was called by two European scientists to the detailed arrangement of the ridges on which the sweat glands open. In 1788, a German scientist amplified the statement of the Persian historian, and declared that the arrangement of the skin ridges was never duplicated in two persons. In the following decade, a certain amount of scientific research on finger ridge patterns was done, but it was not yet given a practical application. The next step forward was taken in 1858 by Herschel, then a young Indian Civil Service sub-divisional officer, in the Jangipur subdivision of Murshidabad District in Bengal. In order to frighten a road construction contractor out of any thought of repudiating his signature on an agreement, Herschel asked him to put the stamp of his hand upon it. A little later Herschel was impressed with the superiority of fingerprints over stamps of the entire hand, and he began to take such prints systematically for the identification of pensioners and convicts. There is an amusing story to the effect that a mummified thumb of a dead man who used to sign his weekly pension payment roll with a thumb was used for this purpose long after his death.*

Herschel’s researches, carried on for nearly twenty years, led him to conclude that the fingerprints of an individual did not change significantly over a long period of time. He submitted a report to the Government advocating the adoption of the fingerprint system, but ‘the subject had not then been sufficiently popularized and the recommendation met the fate of many other good suggestions’.* Herschel left Bengal and the matter was dropped by the Government. In the meantime, Sir Francis Galton, the well-known scientist, had done much research in this field and in the nineties he collaborated with Herschel, who had retired to England. At Herschel’s request, the Special Sub-Registrar of Hooghly, Babu Ram Gati Bannerjee, obtained repeat fingerprints of some of those persons whose fingerprints had been taken by Herschel fourteen years before. Galton now not only confirmed the existing belief as to the permanence and infallibility of such prints, but also stated that even blurred fingerprints taken by an ordinary non-specialist official were decipherable and that their validity could easily be demonstrated to a jury.

In many fields of science, parallel advances have been made by different individuals simultaneously. Leibnitz and Newton invented the calculus independently, but simultaneously, and in our field, while Herschel and Galton were at work, Dr. Henry Faulds of the Tohakye Hospital, Tokyo, was pursuing the same line of thought. In 1880, Faulds wrote on the subject to Charles Darwin, who passed on to Galton the doctor’s idea that fingerprints could be used for the identification of criminals. The two streams of thought thus united.

At this time, however, a rival system of identification was in the field. Alphonse Bertillon, Prefect of Police at Paris, had devised an anthropometric system based on the measurement of such physical characteristics as height, width of outspread arms, length and breadth of head, length of limbs, colour of hair, shape of nose and the like, and had maintained that the combination of these indices gave a certain means of identification which, for all practical purposes, would not change with the passage of time. In 1893 a Committee was appointed by the British Government to enquire into the relative merits of the Galton-Herschel and the Bertillon systems. The Committee came down in favour of Bertillon, while recommending the use of fingerprints for secondary classification.

In 1891, Edward Richard Henry (later Sir Edward) of the Indian Civil Service became Inspector-General of Police in Lower Bengal. He at first favoured the Bertillon system, but a little later began to enquire more closely into the merits of its rival. In 1892, he secured the services of Aziz-ul-Haque, a sub-inspector, who turned out to have a remarkable flair for investigating this kind of subject. He began by attempting to simplify the process of classification by the anthropometric system, but formidable difficulties soon arose, and it appeared more profitable to do similar research on the fingerprint system. He was successful in evolving a system based on the digits instead of just the thumb as had been the previous practice, and he invented a classification based on number. That classification is too complicated to be described here (even if the writer were capable of describing it), and it need only be stated that the skin ridges of the fingers were classified as arches, loops, whorls and composites and within these broad divisions sub-classifications based on numerical indices resulted in an infallible system of identification. Aziz-ul-Haque was assisted in this work by another sub-inspector, Hem Chandra Bose, who at a later stage introduced a method of classification of single digits, and again much later, invented a telegraphic code for communicating fingerprint classifications. Work on the subject was also begun in Madras in 1895, when E. A. Subramaniam Iyer, a police inspector who had been trained by Henry, inaugurated the Madras Provincial Fingerprint Bureau.

In 1897 Henry was sufficiently confident to ask the Government of India to appoint a committee to examine his system and that of Bertillon. The committee came to a unanimous conclusion in favour of the Henry system, which they considered superior to that of Bertillon because of simplicity, cheapness (always an important consideration for the Government of India), and the certainty of its results. The Henry system was then officially adopted by the Government of India. In 1899 the Indian Evidence Act was amended to make the evidence of fingerprint experts relevant. It is satisfactory to record that Aziz-ul-Haque was in due course made a Khan Bahadur, that Hem Chandra Bose became a Rai Bahadur, and that each of them received an honorarium of Rs. 5,000 from the Government of India. It only remains to add that, in 1899, the Home Office of Her Majesty’s Government appointed a second committee to examine this method of identification and that committee was so impressed by Henry’s evidence that it reported unanimously in favour of the adoption of his system in England and Wales. In 1901, Henry became Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and it fell to him to introduce his own system. He afterwards became the Commissioner.

It is perhaps not generally known that there is a science of footprints, though it has not been so highly developed as that of fingerprints. It appears that ‘there are twelve features for each foot based on the metatarsal and phalangical joints, and the size and projection of the foot. Each of these features has as much character as the features of a face’,* and the trained person can identify an individual as easily by his footprint as by his face. In everyday police life, however, less use was made of the scientific classification of footprints than of the traditional skill of trackers known in various areas as pagis, or kojis, who worked by some kind of intuition and were not hampered by the fact that the culprit might be wearing a shoe. Their prowess may be illustrated by the following account of an incident which occurred in 1938. An Australian race-horse had been stolen from the Lahore cantonment. No clue was found, but the police were convinced that the thief would return for another horse. In due course this happened, and an experienced tracker, Head Constable Allahdad Khan, was at once sent to the spot. He

was quick to make certain deductions—the off hind foot pointed, very slightly, outwards, one shoe was slightly larger than the others. Despite the fact that the road outside was a tarmac one Allahdad was able to detect the direction the thief had taken and was soon following the tracks across the polo ground and then on to a rifle range nearly two miles distant. There followed a difficult moment while the tracker picked out the tracks from among several other impressions on the Lancers’ parade ground but that over the trail became easier. On went Allahdad. He was now some eighteen miles from the scene of the crime and had been five days on the road. He had been able from enquiries in the villages through which he passed to learn something of the man he was pursuing, and hoped soon to overtake him, but at this psychological moment there came a heavy shower of rain. Even so Allahdad was not defeated although the speed was greatly reduced. He managed to keep the trail going for another two days but finally lost it after a further eight miles. Convinced that the quarry was lying up somewhere in the vicinity, he phoned Police Headquarters at Lahore and asked for immediate assistance. A selected sub-inspector was at once sent to him. At the same time Allahdad requisitioned the assistance of the local police. An intensive search of the whole area was put in hand and resulted, after four days, in the capture of the thief.*

In some types of investigation, what is required is not identification of an individual but comparison of handwritten or typewritten documents. There is a story in an old Tamil classic, according to which the claim of an old Brahmin that the father of one, Nambiyurar, had executed a deed binding himself and his progeny to serfdom, was supported by a document which had been executed on a palm leaf. Nambiyurar disputed the authenticity of the document, but the handwriting in it was compared with a known specimen of the handwriting of Nambiyurar’s father, and the old Brahmin won his case.* This drama has been repeated again and again in modern India, and the comparison of handwriting is often of importance. ‘The system is based on the principle that each writing is characteristic of the writer which in short means that it cannot be simulated by any other except by recourse to methods similar to painting which can easily be detected by photography.’*

Early in the present century, Mr. C. R. Hardless, a Superintendent in the Office of the Accountant-General of Bengal, acquired a reputation as an expert in handwriting, and was frequently called as a witness in criminal cases when handwriting was involved. In 1904 he was placed on special duty by the Government of India for this purpose, and in due course the post of Handwriting Expert became permanent. Later, this officer was known as the Examiner of Questioned Documents.

As we have seen earlier, the crime of poisoning was very common in nineteenth-century India, and the need for the employment of officers capable of detecting the different types of poison was realized very early. The matter was dealt with by local governments rather than by the Government of India, and we can best illustrate the general position by reference to the first Report of the Chemical Examiner for the Punjab issued in 1879. He had a very wide field on which to report (human poisoning, cattle poisoning and abortions were only a few of the classes of case coming within his province), and he had to cope with the fact that in most rural areas there were no doctors capable of diagnosing any except the simplest cases. The report went into great detail. The Chemical Examiner pointed out that, on account of the ignorance of the populace and the absence of highly qualified doctors, many cases of natural but sudden death were reported as suspected cases of poisoning, and that on the other hand, cases of poisoning were passed over as being due to disease. The burden of enquiring into suspicious circumstances therefore fell on the police, which meant, in practice, that a head constable or constable was deputed to enquire on the basis of a routine set of questions. Only too often the constable replied ‘“Yes” unhesitatingly to every question, apparently under the impression that in all cases of poisoning every one of these symptoms should be present’. After such an enquiry, in many cases the viscera were forwarded to the Chemical Examiner, even though there was no evidence indicating poisoning. That officer occupied a position quite unknown to English law, since his reports were received as evidence merely on his signature and without cross-examination. In practice, his examination necessarily resolved itself into a search for the poisons most commonly used in India. Thereafter, his report was confined to statements of fact ascertained beyond doubt. He was not allowed to express views as to probabilities and his report merely said that ‘certain named poisons or classes of poison were examined for and their presence or absence made out’. Even the general statement that ‘poison was not found’ had to be avoided, since it might lead to erroneous conclusions. The difficulties which often confronted a jury to whom a report so circumspect was presented are obvious, but they were unavoidable. As medical and forensic science progressed, these difficulties were perhaps lessened, and the assistance in practice obtained by the police from the Chemical Examiners correspondingly increased.

Ballistic science has also been pressed into the service of the police. The basic fact is

that the striations caused on a bullet by firing it from a weapon are characteristic of each weapon. They are on the same footing as the fingerprints of a person, infallible and unalterable, so it is possible to ascertain with certainty whether a certain bullet which is recovered from a body or from the scene of an offence, has been fired from a particular weapon or not.*

The procedure followed was described by Sir F. H. Du Heaume, an ex-I.P. officer in the Punjab.

Crime and test bullets and cartridges were studied under a comparison microscope—two separate linked microscopes with lenses, as seen in each eye-piece, brought together in a split field for viewing. The bullets for comparison are attached to two spindles, one under each microscope, and are rotated individually until striations caused by barrel-boring variations are matched up and appear continuous through the split field. The bases of fired cartridges can also be comparatively examined, as the explosion causes the base of the cartridge to receive an individual print of the manufacturing marks on the breech or bolthead of the weapon. An incorporated camera can be swung over the combined eye-piece to record results.

The same officer quoted the case of the Kalka and Simla hold up of a motor-rail coach.

Two offenders blocked the line in a cutting with large boulders and lay in ambush on the bank a few yards away. When the coach stopped they fired some ten bullets into it, killing three persons and wounding others. They then forced the remaining passengers to alight and systematically robbed them. The investigation disclosed that a Pathan employee in the Railway Workshops at Kalka was missing immediately after the outrage. Two weapons were shortly afterwards recovered, and were marvels of ingenuity, having been manufactured by the employee in the Railway Workshops. The revolving mechanism was a coach stud-axle, turned down and chambered for seven bullets (moulded from Railway lead seals). The gunpowder and igniters were from fog-signals; the hammer was a large iron rivet, used to fasten the hasps of goods wagons against theft, and the barrel was a length of high-pressure steam tubing. As might be expected from such individually made weapons, the barrels left their imprints on both the crime and test bullets and the case was proved.

Ballistic sections with supporting photographic equipment were installed in most provinces during the twentieth century, but elaborate photographic apparatus for more general purposes also came into use in this period. Here again, we have a useful account from the Punjab of the use of ultra-violet radiation and fluorescence.

The only tangible clue in a burglary case was a set of three finger impressions on a cup bearing a multi-coloured floral design. It was realized at the outset that none of the standard fingerprinting powders would yield complete decipherable prints. It was therefore decided to dust the cup with finely powdered anthracene—a coal tar derivative which has the property of fluorescing blue under a source of U/V radiation. The test was carried out in the darkroom so that the only light falling on the cup was U/V. A filter was used on the camera lens to cut out U/V light, and the resulting photograph revealed the complete fingerprints in a uniform density against a faintly visible floral pattern. U/V light was also used to detect a false seal on an envelope which had been opened and from which a quantity of currency notes had been extracted. Although to the eye the seals at opposite ends of the envelope appeared to be of identical wax, exposure to U/V in the darkroom showed a considerable difference in fluorescence, due to the difference in the material composition of the two waxes. A homelier touch with U/V radiation ensured a pure supply of cooking ‘ghi’ at the Police Training School. It was found that contractors were adulterating pure ‘ghi’ with quantities of cheaper and less desirable vegetable oils. The difference in fluorescence under U/V of these commodities led to a series of test-tubes being prepared, with measured percentages of ‘ghi’ and vegetable oils in the admixtures. The contractors were required to witness samples of their products under the U/V compared with the tubes of pure ghi and the listed adulterations. No wonder that they considered the ‘black light’ an invention of the devil.*

The development of radio communication in India is outside the scope of this book, but it was inevitable that sooner or later this important branch of technology should be put to use in police work. Radio telephony was, indeed, employed in the Moplah Rebellion and was introduced into police work in Bombay City in 1930, but the enthusiasts had a long struggle against conservatism in high places. Progress was largely the result of enthusiastic amateurs in the police service and experience at the time of the Kumbh Mela—a bathing festival on a vast scale—left no room for doubt as to the value of radio communication in maintaining law and order. Nevertheless, it was not until conditions in the Second World War—and the civil disturbances in 1942—made further delay impossible, that the application of radio technology to police work became generally accepted.

We must conclude this account with a reference to the use of science for preventive purposes—in other words, the part played by tear gas in suppressing disorder. Its main theatre of use was in the Punjab, where extensive research was carried out at Phillaur on the respective merits of two rival products, in one of which the gas was generated in the form of smoke, while in the other, glass phials were shattered by local explosion in the shell and the gas thereby released. The latter type was adopted in 1939, and this gas was used to good effect in dispersing riotous crowds of Khaksars in Lahore and of Sikhs in Delhi. As might be expected, the use of this new weapon gave rise to angry protests in the press, but gradually a more balanced view prevailed. Its only use in Calcutta, before the troubles of 1945 and 1946, was in smoking out an armed and mentally deranged American G.I. who had taken refuge in a house. In the difficult last two years before independence it had to be used frequently, but, before long, the leaders of riotous mobs showed their followers how to combat some of the effects of the gas by wrapping wet cloths round their heads. They could then assemble elsewhere as a fighting mob for the next round. On the whole, the Calcutta police did not find this gas as useful as did their colleagues in Bombay, but this seems to have been the result of the fact that a different kind of situation had to be faced.

There are several other minor ways in which science has been of assistance to the police, but enough has been written to show that the police were flexible in their approach and ever ready to avail themselves of modern scientific resources.

Chapter 25

Police Intelligence

India can fairly claim to have been ahead of Britain in realizing the need for specialist organizations for the investigation of certain forms of crime. Until 1869, the only agencies of that kind in the United Kingdom were fifteen detectives who formed part of the headquarters staff of the Metropolitan Police Force. In that year, similar officers were appointed to every division of the Force, and in 1878 a Criminal Investigation Department was formally constituted.

In India, 1835 saw the formation of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department, which was in effect a Criminal Investigation Department concerned with particular forms of crime. As we have seen, in 1863 the Department ceased to have any executive functions in British India, and in 1877 the General Superintendent of the Department was given the additional duty of collecting secret and political intelligence. All the modern organizations with which this chapter is concerned were a natural development from the new and expanded functions of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department. The multiplicity of names of these organizations—Special Branch, Central Criminal Intelligence Department later styled the Intelligence Bureau, Provincial C.I.D., Crime Branch, Central Intelligence Officers and, in the case of Bengal, the Intelligence Branch—might suggest to an outsider that there was overlapping. In reality, the pattern was logical and resulted from two main facts. First, although the Government of India had an overriding responsibility for law and order, the local or provincial governments were responsible for its administration, and secondly, that the Government of India and the provincial governments were concerned not only with crime, but also with the collection of information regarding political or social movements which might affect the stability of the country.

In 1878, the Viceroy called the attention of the local governments to the fact that

in some provinces of the Empire, there is no special officer whose duty requires him to receive, and to submit to the head of the Government confidential or secret communications on subjects of political or military importance. And, further, there is no recognized channel through which suspected persons can be watched, or suspicious phenomena traced from one province to another. On occasions, confidential information of a very important character reaches the Secretary to Government, or the Private Secretary to the Head of the Government; and Inspectors-General of Police often write to each other about suspected criminals. But the Commissioners of Police of the Presidency, the Railway Police Officers, and Political Officers are outside and beyond the ordinary chain of police correspondence. It must often happen that observant Civil Officers in the interior, especially officers of the Railway Police, and Political Officers, come across circumstances, opinions, and reports which they might not care to put into an official report, but which they would send to a special central officer, whose business it was to collate such information. It is by no means desirable to create an extensive system of secret police, but it is certainly expedient to pay great attention to all secret sources of information regarding foreign emissaries, intrigues, or unusual political or social phenomena.

His Excellency the Viceroy, and his predecessors, have found much advantage from making the General Superintendent of Thuggee a confidential agent in matters of this kind. And he suggests that each Local Government, and each Agent to the Governor-General, should assign a corresponding duty to a selected officer attached to their headquarters.*

The officers now deputed by the local governments to carry out these functions were not necessarily police officers. In Madras, Bombay and Bengal, for example, they were respectively the Chief Secretary, the Under Secretary in the Judicial Department and the Private Secretary to the Governor, while in the Punjab, and also in Assam and in Burma, this responsibility devolved on the Inspector- General of Police. Experience soon showed that this arrangement was altogether too informal, and its inadequacy became of importance in the disturbed conditions of 1887. In that year, the Governor-General and Council directed that, at the headquarters of each local government, a Special Branch of the Police Department should be formed, and explained the idea behind this directive as follows:

By requiring the submission of regular news-reports to the Supreme Government and by establishing there a Central Office for the collation of such reports, there is no intention of exercising any interference with Local Governments or encroaching on the powers hitherto exercised by them within their own limits. The main object of the new scheme is to establish an organization, hitherto wanting, by means of which Local Governments may systematically obtain both from their own and other provinces, information necessary and desirable in their own interests, and may communicate so much of their local information to the Government of India and other Provincial Governments as may be of advantage for the latter to know. It is clearly of importance that intelligence of more than merely local interest should be communicated inter-provincially and also furnished to the Supreme Government, so that the authorities responsible for the maintenance of law and order may be enabled to exercise a watchful control over the movements of the criminal classes, over the conditions which predispose to crime, and over important political, religious, or other movements throughout the Empire.*

The Special Branches were required to collect information regarding (a) all political movements and publication of seditious literature, (b) religious sects and changes in doctrine and practice having a political significance, (c) the arrival, sojourn, departure and proceedings of suspicious characters and foreigners, special attention being paid to foreign emissaries and the movements of notorious gangs of foreign criminals, the presence in any place of notorious criminals and any circumstances regarding their habits that may come to notice, the movements, change of residence etc. of notorious known depredators, (d) rumours or published opinions disturbing the public peace and popular feelings, (e) religious excitement such as caused by kine-killing contrary to rules, and comments by the people on laws and Government’s measures, (f) illicit trade in arms and ammunition, special notice being taken of all Arms-Act cases, (g) recruiting for Indian army or native states, (h) affairs in native States and rumours regarding them, (i) constitution, objects and proceedings of native societies whether established for political or ostensibly for other objects, (j) indication of distress or anticipation of famine, scarcity of food or water for man or beast, with statement (in cases of famine or pressure) of number of deaths from starvation, (k) emigration and immigration and the causes thereof, and (l) arrival, sojourn and departure of men of note.*

At the same time a Special Branch of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department to collate all this information was established under the charge of Colonel Henderson, the General Superintendent of the Department, assisted by Mr. McCracken, the Assistant to the Inspector-General of Police of the Punjab, in which Province a Special Branch had been in existence for some years. No further developments in this field occurred during the nineteenth century and the strength of the Special Branches during this period was exiguous. In Madras, for example, the Branch consisted of an officer designated as assistant and an inspector. Both officers worked in the Chief Secretary’s office.

Criminal Investigation Departments

In 1901 the Government of India began to consider the formation of a small detective force under the orders of the Inspector-General in each province. Various proposals to the same end had in fact been made during the previous half-century. The Police Commission of 1860 had rejected the idea of a separate detective service, and in 1869 a proposal of the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces for the appointment of separate Chief Constables for detective work had been turned down by the Government of India on the grounds that it would lead to abuse and oppression. In 1884 Lieut.- Colonel Ewart, a Deputy Inspector-General of Police in the Punjab, proposed the establishment of a Detective Branch in every Province and the appointment of an Inspector-General of Detectives, who would have general control over the provincial detective establishment. That proposal, too, had been rejected. Nevertheless, in 1884, a Bombay City police officer, with special qualifications, was relieved of ordinary duties and employed solely on detective work, and a somewhat similar arrangement was made in Calcutta. Towards the end of the century, a Chief Constable employed solely on detective work, with a very small staff, was appointed in Poona and plans for the extension of the system to other districts of the Bombay Presidency were considered. In Madras, a skeleton Intelligence Department of the City Police was established in 1887 and a similar department was set up in Calcutta.

In 1901 the approach of the Government of India to this subject was more positive than it had been hitherto, and they recommended that the Central Special Branch should be extended by the addition of ‘a small staff of selected detective agents, to be employed in watching political movements and in dealing with those forms of organized crime which extend beyond the limits of a single province’. The Secretary of State was doubtful as to the wisdom of this proposal and it was referred back to the local governments for their opinion. Before any decisions had been taken, the local governments were also consulted as to the desirability of organizing small detective forces in each province under the orders of the provincial Inspector-General of Police. Both these questions were referred to the Fraser Commission, but so much importance was attached to the proposal relating to a Central Criminal Intelligence Department, that decisions regarding it were taken in advance of the main resolution on the Commission’s Report. In 1904 the Government of India addressed the Secretary of State proposing the immediate appointment, as Director of Central Criminal Intelligence, of a selected Inspector-General of Police who would usually, but not necessarily, be a member of the Indian Civil Service. He would have under him a Deputy Director, two native assistants—one a Hindu and one a Muslim, selected from the police or civil service—and the existing clerical staff of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department. The functions of the Central Criminal Intelligence Department would be to collect and communicate information obtained from the provincial Criminal Investigation Departments or otherwise, and this should include:

(a) dealing with special forms of crime, some of which have been rendered more difficult of suppression by the recent extensions of railways and the increased use of the Post Office and Telegraph by natives. Under this head the Department would organize and supervise operations directed against criminal tribes, organized dakaits working over large areas, wandering gangs of criminals, note-forgers, coiners, professional poisoners, etc. (b) collecting and testing intelligence upon political matters, including social, religious, and political movements not necessarily of a criminal character.*

The Government of India's letter went on to state that

its intervention in the investigation of offences should ordinarily be confined to such special and technical crimes as currency note forgeries, but that it should also assist local authorities by obtaining for them the services of officers acquainted with the personnel or methods of criminals who come from outside the Province.

In approving these proposals, the Secretary of State uttered the caveat that ‘he would not regard with approval any attempt to assume for the Supreme Government, by means of an establishment working under their direct orders, the duty of investigating crime’. Nor did he sanction the appointment of a Hindu and a Muslim assistant, since he considered that the head of the Department ought himself to be qualified ‘in gauging native feeling and opinion’.* The new organization came into being in April 1904, when Sir H. A. Stuart was appointed Director of the Central Criminal Intelligence Department.

In practice, political intelligence work occupied the whole time of the Department and its functions in relation to special forms of crime were quietly dropped. For this reason, after the First World War the name of the Department was changed to the Intelligence Bureau.

The connected proposals regarding provincial organization were left to be dealt with by the Fraser Commission. The Commission proposed the establishment in each province of

a Central Provincial Bureau for the collection and distribution of information regarding certain kinds of crime and certain classes of criminal. . . . A small staff of trained detectives to be available to help in investigation when required by local officers.*

The Commissioners also proposed that the Provincial Criminal Investigation Department should be under the charge of the Deputy Inspector-General Railway Police, who would also have under his control the Special Branch already existing in each province. In its Resolution of 21 March 1905, the Government of India accepted the Commissioners’ proposals and by 1907 a Provincial Criminal Investigation Department, in which the Special Branch was included, had been established in every province.

Although the Provincial Criminal Investigation Departments had been formed under the direction of the Government of India, their administration was a matter for provincial governments, and details therefore varied from province to province. It will be sufficient for our purpose to glance briefly at developments in several provinces, and we shall begin with Madras. The Criminal Investigation Department in that Province was started in August 1906, and it consisted initially of the Deputy Inspector-General, six inspectors, six sub-inspectors, twelve head constables and twelve constables. It was not at that time formally split up into a Special Branch and a Crime Branch, and in fact, in the early days, the investigation of nonpolitical crime was its main preoccupation. Almost at once, it had to cope with a series of very complicated frauds regarding life assurance companies and provident funds. It also took over responsibility for publishing the Madras Police Gazette, which had long been in existence and of which we are told that ‘its range of topics extended from changes in uniform to enunciation of abstract legal principles’, while one section of the Gazette contained lists of stolen property and wanted criminals. The new Department also gave much attention to devising new forms of crime maps. It suffered from periodical economy drives, but the volume of work grew constantly, and in 1929 it was found necessary to divide the Department into a Crime Branch and a Special Branch, under a Deputy Superintendent and a Superintendent respectively, both, of course, working under the Deputy Inspector-General. In 1931 the Deputy Inspector-General was relieved of Range and Railways duties.

Some years before this time, detective staffs had been formed in two districts of Madras as an experimental measure. It was now decided that this principle must be applied generally, but that arrangements for the co-ordination of their work were essential. A District Intelligence Bureau, under a sub-inspector, was formed in each district, and at the same time a Central Intelligence Bureau was established in the Provincial Criminal Investigation Department. The instructions issued to the District bureaux were to the effect that they were only to deal with habitual criminals whose activities extended over more than one district. History sheets, physical peculiarity indices, and other mechanical aids were to play an important part in the work of the bureaux. From 1932 onwards, Crime Branches, each under the charge of an inspector, were formed in the most important towns. A good deal of attention was also given to the organization of a shorthand bureau in connection with the Special Branch, the object being to facilitate ‘the task of keeping track of persons whose speeches may tend to produce violent upheavals in the body politic’.*

With differences only of detail, this account of the Madras Provincial Criminal Investigation Department will serve to show the general pattern of organization followed throughout India, and we need only refer very briefly to the arrangements in several other provinces. In Bengal, much the same pattern was followed as in Madras, but the seriousness of terrorism in that Province led in 1912 to the formation of an Intelligence Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department. Its function was to collect information on the activities of revolutionary groups and it therefore took over the duties previously performed by the Special Branch. It worked under a Special Superintendent of Police and, as has rightly been said, its officers ‘had to be men of exceptional courage, who had a flair for obtaining information from persons working within the revolutionary groups themselves and who could be relied on absolutely not to give away secrets’. The main brunt of this burden was, of course, borne by Bengali officers, and no tribute can be too high to the courage and intelligence which they displayed. It was indeed fortunate that two of the first Superintendents of the Branch were men of the calibre of Mr. C. A. Tegart (later Sir Charles) and Mr. G. G. Denham, and that its Bengali officers were men of outstanding ability and moral fibre. From 1917 onwards, in districts where terrorism was a particular menace, District Intelligence Branches were created, each under the charge of an additional Superintendent of Police. The District Intelligence Branches worked under the Intelligence Branch, and between them they achieved a remarkable degree of success in containing the terrorist movement. The growth of that movement necessarily required a corresponding expansion of the Intelligence Branch and in the last years of terrorism, no fewer than four Superintendents, one Assistant Superintendent, eleven Deputy Superintendents, and twelve inspectors, worked in that Branch under the Deputy Inspector-General—in addition to which, in the early thirties, five or six Military Intelligence officers were brought in to assist the professional police officers.

As far as organization is concerned, the Punjab Criminal Investigation Department did not differ much from other provinces, but it will be of interest to quote the relevant extract from the Punjab Police Rules of 1934, which described the duties of the G.I.D. in relation to the District police in great detail.

The following are the chief duties of the Criminal Investigation Department in so far as they affect the district police:

To promote co-operation between the police of different districts and different provinces.

To undertake or assist in the investigation of cases or classes of crime which have provincial or inter-provincial ramifications if the Inspector-General or Deputy Inspector-General, Criminal Investigation Department, considers that such action is in the interests of the criminal administration.

To watch and report on all communal, political and subversive movements affecting the province and India as a whole; to maintain close co-operation with district authorities in all such matters and to direct investigations connected with them.

To collect, co-ordinate and disseminate political and criminal intelligence.

The Criminal Tribes Branch to deal with all aspects of die control of Criminal Tribes which fall within the sphere of the Inspector-General of Police as prescribed from time to time by the Provincial Government.*

The Rules also specified the cases in which Superintendents of Police might ask for help from the Criminal Investigation Department. In Delhi, the police had many special duties in connection with security arrangements for the Viceroy, high officials and the Legislature. We need only note that the Criminal Investigation Department dealt exclusively with political crimes, other forms of crime being the responsibility of a separate branch known as the Central Investigation Agency, under the control of the senior Superintendent of Police. The sanctioned strength of the Criminal Investigation Department operating in Delhi in 1930 was as follows: one Superintendent, one Deputy Superintendent, two inspectors, three sub-inspectors, fifteen head constables, thirty-three foot constables.

In the North-West Frontier Province prior to 1933, the intelligence organization consisted of three separate units: the Intelligence Bureau at Peshawar, the function of which was similar to those of the corresponding body in other provinces; the Military Intelligence organization; and the Tribal Directorate. The system had not worked well, and in October 1933, the Director of the Central Intelligence Bureau stated explicitly that ‘accurate information regarding the affairs in Afghanistan, Chinese Turkestan and beyond, has of late years been deficient in quality and accuracy’, and that moreover, there had been a lack of co-ordination. The consequences in frontier conditions of these defects were serious and ‘on several occasions troops found themselves fighting very much at a disadvantage because the Commander had accepted political intelligence, which though given in all good faith, proved to be completely misleading’.* In November 1933 the three separate organizations were replaced by an Intelligence Branch in Peshawar under the control of the Director of the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi. Apart from the need for an improvement in the efficiency of the existing arrangements, there was also the consideration that provincial autonomy was imminent, and the military importance of accurate information as to events and conditions on the frontier, made it necessary for the intelligence organization of that Province to be under the ultimate control of the Governor-General, rather than of a Minister. In the words of a memorandum on the subject by the Director of the Intelligence Bureau:

the new organization will be directly responsible for the collection of information required by the Governor-General personally, the Army, the Agent to the Governor-General and his Political Agents, and the Governors of neighbouring provinces, regarding what is going on in the North-West Frontier Province proper, Tribal Territory, Afghanistan, Sinkiang, and the parts of the U.S.S.R. most adjacent to India; in addition, it will have to provide information regarding subversive activity connected with, or directed by, the Communist International and the intrigues of the Ghadr Party emanating from Moscow and other places in Europe, and Afghanistan; it will have to watch in close consultation with, and with advice from, Political Officers, movements and potential dangers in Tribal Territory; it will have to supply the Army with technical information such as the Army must have in anticipation of being called on to function outside the settled Districts; and generally it will have to be the eyes and ears of those watching one of the most troublous frontiers of the world.

The new system headed by an Indian policeman worked well and was made permanent in 1935. In that year, a similar arrangement was made in Quetta to cover the Baluchistan frontier.

By the thirties, it can fairly be claimed that the intelligence system of India, both in its political and its non-political scope, had been well organized, but the inauguration of provincial autonomy in 1937 necessitated one important change. The police in each province came under the authority of the Minister for Home Affairs, who was responsible for the day by day administration of law and order. At the same time, the Governor-General had an overriding responsibility, and was empowered to intervene in certain emergencies. It was, therefore, clearly necessary for the Governor-General to have his own sources of information independent of Ministers. For this purpose, a Central Intelligence Officer was appointed in each province and was made responsible for reporting direct to the Director of the Intelligence Bureau. The Central Intelligence Officer was of the rank of Superintendent of Police, and was seconded from the local police force with the approval of the Inspector-General. ‘This implied that he was acceptable to the Head of the Special Branch. . . . Thus close liaison and mutual confidence, so important to the success of the C.I.O. system were ensured.’* The Central Intelligence Officer was also expected to make a careful study of the press, both English and vernacular, to keep in touch with political organizations, and to make contact with important local business people. In other words, he was to be the eyes and ears of the Central Government in the period between the inauguration of provincial autonomy and the achievement of independence.

The Second World War added considerably to the work and responsibility of the various Intelligence Branches and a considerable expansion of their strengths was found necessary. There was, however, no general change of principle or methods, although particular benefit was derived from the close connection which had been built up over the years by the central intelligence bodies with similar organizations outside India.

Action Against Communism

That co-operation was of particular importance in connection with the attempts of international communists in the twenties and thirties to build up an effective organization in India. Here we find ourselves in a difficulty. Action against communism imposed a very heavy burden on the police, and was indeed one of their most important tasks. Yet from its very nature, there is little that can be written about it. Patient intelligence work, interception of letters and funds, preparation of dossiers and the like, all this work went on behind the scenes and only appeared in the limelight occasionally, when important communists were put on trial.

Almost immediately after the Russian Revolution, plans were laid in Moscow for the ‘liberation of India’ and M. N. Roy, afterwards the leader of the Radical Democratic Party in India, was one of the earliest agents of the Russian communists. The early efforts of the communists in India were not very successful, and their comparative failure may be attributed to four factors. First, there was recurring disagreement in Moscow as to how far use should be made, initially, of the hated bourgeoisie in India. Secondly, bickering amongst the Indian emissaries of the Party was endless. Roy himself, though a man of great ability, was an intolerant egoist who could never work long with anybody. When his failure was realized by his principals, new agents were sent from Britain, but police action frustrated their efforts. Police vigilance was, indeed, the third obstacle to communist progress. In 1922 eight of the original agents were convicted in Peshawar of ‘waging war against the King’, and in 1924 the much more important Cawnpore conspiracy case and the sentences passed interfered with the activities of the Party for a time. The revelations of the revolutionary aims of the conspirators, and at the same time of the ‘general futility’ and inefficiency of their proceedings, gave the movement a considerable setback. In 1926 Roy himself declared that there was no massive communist party in India, and that the vigilance of the police, combined with the timidity of the population, had thwarted the recruiting campaign.

The fourth factor in the communist lack of success was the astonishing ascendancy which Gandhi had by this time acquired over the majority of the people of India. It need hardly be said that his whole teaching was diametrically opposed to that of the communists.

Nevertheless, in the next year or so, the Indian Communist Party which had been formed independently of Moscow made some progress and was given a new impetus by Philip Spratt and other British communists who were sent out secretly to India at this period. To some extent, the communists infiltrated into the trade union movement. The strike on the India Peninsular Railway and the riots of the Calcutta bullock-cart drivers in 1930, were at least partly due to communist influence, but by this time the police had collected the evidence which enabled them to bring the Meerut conspiracy case against Spratt and thirty of his colleagues. The trial was protracted, but in January 1933, twenty-seven of the accused were convicted and received sentences varying from three years rigorous imprisonment to transportation for life for conspiracy to deprive the King Emperor of the Sovereignty of India. The convictions were upheld on appeal, though the sentences were reduced in consideration of the fact that the accused had spent four years in gaol pending trial. In its judgment, the High Court paid tribute to the work of the police.

The detection of the conspiracy was a difficult matter and it was very creditable to the Criminal Investigation Department that in spite of every attempt having been made by the accused to conceal their designs and cover up their communications and correspondents, the police managed to find out practically everything that the accused did or that passed between them.

Before the Meerut case was concluded, Roy returned to India surreptitiously, but he was picked up by the police, prosecuted for his part in the Cawnpore conspiracy and sent to gaol for twelve years, the sentence being reduced on appeal to six years.

So far, action against communism had been primarily a matter for the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi, but the general body of the police in Bombay was soon drawn into the struggle. In 1934 those communist leaders who were still at large, turned their attention to industrial matters, and were successful in stirring up or intensifying strikes. In the Bombay textile strike, serious clashes with the police now occurred. The strikers began by abusing and jeering at the police, but soon became bolder and ‘progressed to rather timid stone throwing and finally indulged on the fourth day in murderous attacks on the police and loyal workers, which were only repulsed by firing after several policemen had been seriously injured’. The Communist Party of India was now declared unlawful and its leaders went underground, so that the responsibility for countering the movement was again passed back to the Intelligence Branches. In Bengal the situation was complicated by the forging of a link between the communists and the terrorists, and by the infiltration of communists into the newly formed Congress Socialist Party. It is not necessary for our purpose to follow these developments. We have seen that the intelligence system was fully adequate to counter the communist movement in either its international or its purely Indian aspects.

Chapter 26

Criminal Tribes

In a country like Britain, where even gypsies are few in number and do comparatively little harm, it is not easy to realize that in India there are several million people dedicated by heredity and inclination to a life of crime. Many theories have been put forward to explain the origin of the criminal tribes of India. Some of these tribes are undoubtedly aboriginal, but this explains little since there are many other aborigines, such, for example, as the Santhals, who exhibit no traces of criminality. Nor can the suggestion that they are low caste people—debarred by their place in society from satisfactory or honourable occupation—be accepted without qualification, since it is within the experience of all who have served in India that many ‘Untouchables’ are amongst the most honest and hard-working classes. In this book, we need not probe further into the origin of the criminal tribes, but can accept their existence as one of the many burdens that the police have had to bear. They are to be found in nearly all Indian provinces, but the greatest concentrations of them are in the Punjab, Rajputana and the United Provinces. They may be classified broadly as nomadic or settled tribes, and with many exceptions it would be true to say that cattle theft was the favourite form of crime of the settled criminal tribes, while the nomads lived to a great extent by robbery.

The nature and activities of these tribes can perhaps best be illustrated by a brief account of the Sansis in the Punjab and the Minas in the Punjab, the United Provinces and Rajputana. According to their own tradition, the ancestor of the Sansis, Sans Mai, was the son of a Chohan Rajput woman and a low caste man, who were driven out into the jungle in accordance with normal caste practice. There they ‘wandered from place to place, eking out an existence as best they might. They soon took to a life of petty crime, living partly by hunting and partly by plunder.’* Other outlaws joined them and before long the Sansis began to roam the countryside in gangs, avoiding villages and camping well off the beaten track. They spread gradually over much of India and it appears that in the north they specialized in theft or burglary, whereas in other parts of India they often engaged in robbery or occasionally, dacoity. A police officer with considerable experience of the criminal tribes has written an interesting account of their modus operandi.

Calling themselves Bazigars, i.e. acrobats, they pitch their camp on the outskirts of a village and by beat of drum attract the inhabitants to them to witness an acrobatic display the main feature of which consists of tight rope walking by two of the youngest and prettiest women of the tribe. Very soon the village is deserted and as the ‘show’ reaches its climax two or three male members of the gang slip away to lay their hands on anything valuable they can find. They are careful not to break locks in their search for valuables or to disturb belongings in any way. Content with small pickings they come and go undetected leaving no indication of their illegal entry. Warnings to the thieves of any sudden move on the part of the villagers to leave the show ground and return to their homes are given to them by means of a particular beat on the drum. The operation completed the gang immediately breaks and departs putting as many miles as possible between them and their victims in the shortest possible time.*

The Sansis were natural vagrants and until action was taken to restrict their movements, they lived under portable reed huts and gangs moved about in two parties, old men, women and children travelling separately from the active criminals. They kept dogs to guard their camps and if ever they remained stationary for any length of time, it was not uncommon for them to obtain the protection of local landlords through the charms of Sansi women.*

The Minas, perhaps the most important criminal tribe in Rajputana, resembled the Sansis in the fact that they too claimed a Rajput origin, but differed from them considerably in their habits and the forms of crime to which they were addicted. They settled more or less permanently in villages, often acquired considerable wealth, and were very charitable—but none the less they were hardened and hereditary criminals. Their settlement in Shahjahanpur, north of Lucknow, attracted the particular attention of the General Superintendent of the Thagi Department a little before 1870, and he wrote an interesting report of their substantial masonry houses, of their fine wells, their fleet camels, their lavish living and bejewelled women. ‘Plenty they have, plenty they spend, and plenty they bestow,’ but they had very little land and no ostensible occupation, for in fact they lived by robbery committed at a considerable distance from their habitation.* Unlike the Northern India Sansis, they were not at all averse to the use of violence, and we read of a case in 1861 when six of them ‘mounted on camels and armed with muskets surrounded a convoy, knocked the plaintiffs off their camels, beat them with the butt end of their muskets and carried off the camels, the money and all their clothes’. In another case, ‘ninety thousand rupees worth of gold mohurs and precious stones were carried off on three camels after a sword fight’. On other occasions, they roamed as much as a thousand miles away to the south to commit robbery or dacoity.

When it is remembered that the criminal tribes numbered hundreds of thousands, or at some periods millions, it will be realized that the police had a formidable problem with which to cope. The first attempt to tackle it seems to have been made in 1856, and it was realized at that early date that restrictions and penalties alone would achieve little, unless they were accompanied by attempts to provide the criminal tribes with an honest means of livelihood and to educate them into habits of earning a living. In 1856 the Judicial Commissioner of the Punjab issued an Executive Circular placing five criminal tribes under restrictions as to their movements and making them subject to surveillance. At the same time, Mr. E. G. Prinsep established kots or settlements for the notified criminal tribes in the Sialkot district. Certain government lands were made over to the Sansis and other tribes and money was advanced to them for the construction of wells and the purchase of bullocks. The Sansis strongly resisted the process of rehabilitation and in the earlier stages, they collectively punished a Sansi who allowed himself to be persuaded to handle a plough or otherwise to co-operate in the implementation of the scheme. Apparently, the principal penalty imposed by the Sansis in these cases was a fine of Rs. 100, but the offender had the option of killing one of his children in lieu of a fine.* After much perseverance, the Deputy Commissioner induced some of the leading Sansis to plough the allotted lands in the presence of many spectators. Resistance was now broken down and the Sansis began to submit to the process of reformation. Some years later, it was officially reported that, although surveillance was no longer exercised, for a reason which will appear in the next paragraph, many of the Sansis voluntarily continued to reside and work in the settlements and the number of those who continued their predatory habits was reduced.

In 1867, however, the Chief Court of the Punjab declared that the circular of 1856 was illegal and for the next few years the criminal tribes were free from all restrictions, except those which could be imposed under the preventive sections of the Criminal Procedure Code. In 1871, Act XXVII in effect gave legal force to action similar to that which had been taken under the executive authority contained in the 1856 circular, and in 1873 the Sansis were brought under its provisions. The rules under the Act were operated with common sense, and the areas to which members of a criminal tribe in any particular locality were restricted were so defined as to permit of their going for employment to neighbouring villages or to places where railway or canal construction was in progress. Kots were reestablished and, although one officer considered that the Act had the effect of inducing certain members to take again to a nomadic life, the general opinion seems to have been that its results were beneficial, though no one was so optimistic as to believe that habits of crime which had persisted for generations could be eradicated within a single lifetime. In 1876 the Act was applied to the Minas, but insufficient land was available for their maintenance and they were in any case not inclined to turn to an honest way of earning a living.

In 1880, Colonel Baillie, the Deputy Inspector-General, despairing of reforming the Minas in their restricted settlements, proposed pulling down the houses of Minas who absented themselves, so that, in due course, lack of house room would compel them to take their families away and leave the settlement permanently when they went on their plundering expeditions. In this case, ‘the Mina colony of Shahanabad would in fact gradually disappear.’* In 1882 the problem attracted the earnest attention of Mr. Christie, Superintendent of Police of the Gurgaon District. He considered that the rigour with which the Criminal Tribes Act had been enforced without provision for maintenance had produced undesirable results, and, in collaboration with the Deputy Commissioner, he followed much the same lines as those of Prinsep nearly thirty years earlier. This method bore some fruit and in the nineties it was reported that the Minas evinced an increasing tendency to settle down to an honest livelihood.

In the early stages of the working of the 1871 Act, difficulties arose from the fact that

the more restless and wily of the gangs appear to have escaped notice and they have been wandering about ever since, driven about on the one hand by the fear of being registered . . . and pursued by the notice to quit policy which had been evolved by the police under the guise of surveillance on the other.

This fact and the problem of finding finance to enable the registered and settled gangs to earn a living, limited the application of the Act, and when the Police Commission studied this subject in 1902, they observed that ‘every Province is overrun with gangs of varying degrees of criminality and much of the dacoity, highway robbery, burglary and theft is committed by them’.

Collection of information about these wandering gangs was to be one of the tasks of the Criminal Investigation Departments which the Commission recommended should be established. The Commission therefore proposed that a special provision should be inserted in the Criminal Tribes Act to empower the police to take the fingerprints of male members of gangs, without applying to those gangs the more elaborate provisions regarding settlement and the like. This would provide a ready means of identification when members of a gang were caught far afield on a predatory expedition and would enable the Government gradually to accumulate enough information to decide on the appropriate action. The Commission criticized the practice of deputing a single constable to watch wandering gangs and pointed out that the unfortunate constable

has sometimes even been made to drive the donkeys of the gang; sometimes he is left tied to a tree; while only too often he accepts a bribe to wink at the doings of the gang he is supposed to be watching.

As regards the success or otherwise of the policy of settlement, the Commission reported that the results had varied greatly from province to province, and that too much had been left to the fortuitous enthusiasm of individual officers.

These recommendations led in due course to the passing of Act III of 1911, but before that Act was put into force, the Government of the Punjab appointed a committee consisting of Pandit Hari Kishen Kaul of the Punjab Commission and L. L. Tomkins, of the Indian Police, to consider the administrative problems involved. The Committee, which was appointed in November 1913 and reported in April 1914, collected a mass of valuable information and concluded that the attempts at reclamation in the previous half-century had not been in vain. They laid down three principles which should govern future action, the first of which was that strict and effective control over the worst tribes must be accompanied by the provision of opportunities for them to earn a living within their restricted area. Such opportunities, they observed, had been admirably provided in Salvation Army settlements. Secondly, the Committee attached importance to the system under which individual members of criminal tribes might, by continued good conduct, earn relaxation from restrictions. Thirdly, the Committee insisted on the necessity of providing for the education of the children of the criminal tribes. They went on to make detailed recommendations, which after a long delay were implemented in Act VI of 1924, which consolidated and strengthened the relevant law.

It is not necessary here to discuss that Act in detail. It is enough to point out that its provisions fell under several main heads. In the first place, it empowered the provincial governments by notification to declare a tribe or a class of persons to be a criminal tribe, and thereafter to require them to register themselves in the manner prescribed by the District Magistrate, to allow their fingerprints to be taken, to notify their place of residence, and to report to the police at fixed intervals. Secondly, the provincial government might restrict the movements of a criminal tribe or any part of it, or direct it to live in a specified place. Thirdly, the provincial government might establish industrial, agricultural or reformatory settlements and order the tribe to live in them. Fourthly, the provincial government might direct that the children of such a tribe should be separated from their parents for purposes of education, and fifthly, the Act provided for enhanced punishment for certain offences if they were committed by notified members of a criminal tribe.

The apparatus for controlling criminal tribes was now complete, but settlements and reformatories still had to be established, and action to see that the orders under the Act were obeyed had to be taken by the police. In the first of these requirements much help was received from missionary bodies. In South India, the London Missionary Society did yeoman work and all over India the Salvation Army played an important part. In 1928, there were nearly 10,000 members of the criminal tribes in Salvation Army settlements, eight of which were mainly agricultural, the other eighteen being industrial. Each settlement was supervised by a European manager and his wife, with an Indian assistant, and expert foremen for the various industries were appointed. The local government met the cost of supervision, education and building, and other expenses were met from the sale of the commodities produced. There can be no doubt that these settlements helped considerably in the work of rehabilitation of criminal tribes, but on the police fell the onerous task of rounding up the members of the tribes and dealing with those who would not obey the laws. In most provinces, special police officers were put in charge of this work, but we shall confine our account to operations in Madras and the Punjab.

In Madras one of the officers who played a prominent part in this work was Mr. L. E. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police in the Chittoor District, who had to deal with a notorious forest tribe known as Chenchus. ‘They robbed pilgrims going to the Srisailam Temple . . . and they were armed with bows and arrows which they used with deadly effect. Saunders lived amongst them for two years in the hope of reforming them, but during some months they were drunk continuously and scarcely capable of being influenced at all. Many of them had two wives who supported them by working as coolies or digging roots. The men were as a rule idle, quarrelsome and dangerous in liquor, and a terror to the countryside. The District Officer, who was perhaps a die-hard, disapproved of Saunders’ methods, and considered that the Chenchus had been excessively ‘coddled’ so that they had become a greater menace than they had ever been. It is impossible for one who was not in Chittoor at the time to adjudicate between these two views, and every experienced official knows the difficulty of striking the right balance in matters of this kind.

The difficulties of the police may be illustrated by the situation which arose when the Kallars of Madras were brought under the provision of the Criminal Tribes Act. In one village, they refused to appear for registration, and when a party of fifty armed police under a sergeant was sent to execute warrants for their arrest, about a thousand Kallars gathered to resist arrest by force of arms. The Magistrate and the police showed great patience, but a large and menacing mob surrounded them and the police were compelled to open fire. This incident, unfortunate as it was, opened the way for progress, and Mr. Rajah Ayyar, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, introduced the elements of local self-government amongst the Kallars, started cottage industries and persuaded many of the Kallars to send their children to the schools which had been founded. Gradually, it was found possible to relax restrictions under the Act. Ayyar’s achievement was remarkable, but he was by no means the only police officer who devoted himself to this work, and there can be no doubt as to its value.*

In the Punjab in 1931, the post of Assistant Inspector-General for Criminal Tribes was created. An extensive round-up of criminal tribes was undertaken, and the serious attention given to this problem can be gauged from the detailed note by the Inspector-General, extending to forty-seven typed pages, instructing police officers how to tackle it, and giving them a wealth of information as to the character and habits of the particular tribes. Each District Superintendent of Police was made personally responsible for supervising this work and much attention was directed to it in the Police Training School at Phillaur.

It is indeed impossible to read the Inspector-General’s note and the accounts of typical cases of crime committed by members of the criminal tribes, without admiring the intelligence and tenacity with which the police approached a part of their work which, though of great importance, was often unspectacular and brought them no tributes from the politically-minded public. It is perhaps unfortunate that false considerations of national prestige and a misinterpretation of the meaning of democracy led to the repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act shortly after India became independent.

The Hurs of Sind

Although the Hurs of Sind were not to begin with criminal tribes within the definition of the Criminal Tribes Act, their activities were of such a character that they fall naturally within the scope of this chapter. It is customary for Muslims to become murid or followers of a spiritual leader known as a Pir, and the most important of those leaders in nineteenth-century Sind was the Pir of Kingri, better known as the Pir Pagaro. Amongst his followers were the fanatical sect of Hurs who were characterized by ‘their blind devotion to his person, to the exclusion of all other religion or allegiance; their addiction to violent crimes; and the close secret union maintained in their brotherhood.’* In the early 1890s, a Hur leader named Bachu, who had for some years been absconding on a charge of murder, gathered a small band of desperadoes around him and committed dacoities (on such a scale that they could only be described as a war upon society) in the Eastern districts of Sind and in the adjoining Khairpur State. A reign of terror was in fact instituted and all the normal methods of dealing with such a situation—strengthening the police force, the establishment of punitive police posts, the cancellation of arms licences and the taking of security from those who harboured criminals—failed to produce any improvement. In 1895, when Mr. W. H. Lucas, of the Indian Civil Service, became Deputy Commissioner of one of the affected districts, he found ‘villages of important zemindars fortified against attack, and dogs picketted all round them by night to give the alarm; while on the other hand the Hur population were hardly troubling to disguise their enthusiasm.’*

At this stage the Commissioner brought pressure on the Pir Pagaro to such purpose that the whereabouts of three of the most important leaders were revealed. Bachu surrendered and the remaining members of the gang were rounded up. The Hurs were then proclaimed a criminal tribe. ‘Their principal villages were constituted settlements under the Act, the movements of the main inhabitants being put under restriction and punitive police permanently posted there to supervise them and take roll call twice daily.’ The movement was thus brought under control and a recrudescence in 1913 was easily suppressed.

In the 1920s, however, new influences were at work. A boy of fourteen became the Pir Pagaro and at once fell under the influence of the worst of the Hur leaders. He became a focal point of violent crime, and a search of his house revealed arms and ammunition in great quantities. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, but even from jail he managed to send inflammatory messages to his followers, and in the late thirties, after his return to Sind, he advised the Hurs to support the Congress, since that body was pledged to repeal the Criminal Tribes Act. In 1939 he began to enrol Hurs in a private army and to train them in the forests of Khairpur or the deserts of Sind and Rajputana. Before long, he organized courts parallel to and excluding the jurisdiction of those of the Government, and he even published a newspaper and distributed it amongst his followers. Crimes committed by Hurs grew alarmingly, but political conciliation was in the air and no adequate action against the Pir and his brigand followers was taken until the situation had become almost out of control. Before long, the movement assumed the character of an armed rebellion and in October 1941 an order was served on the Pir requiring him to reside in Karachi and not to leave that City without permission. He broke the order and was placed under detention, but unfortunately the other leaders of the Hurs were left at large.

Under the leadership of the son of Bachu, the outlaws became increasingly bold and according to H. T. Lambrick, the leading authority on this subject,

instead of one small gang of outlaws there were at least half-a-dozen large bands operating simultaneously in every part of the area. The police were demoralized, not as individuals, but collectively; peaceable people had migrated in large numbers; large villages of Hindus, when not altogether abandoned, were paying blackmail to the Hur leaders . . . public passenger buses were being driven off the road; cultivation was at a standstill; reaped crops were destroyed; and demands made by the Hur leaders for payment of taxes to them instead of to the Government.

The police, who had for some time been mainly cooped up in their stations in the defence of Government property, now adopted an active policy of patrolling, and lying in ambush for the gangs. The effect of this new policy on police morale was remarkable and it led before long to an aggressive action in which 300 Hurs were rounded up and sent to gaol. A detachment of the Frontier Constabulary was now seconded for duty in Sind and combined operations against the Hurs commenced in earnest. Three flying columns were sent out, one of which was attacked by a gang greatly superior to it in numbers. The police picket was overwhelmed, but the Frontier Constabulary counter-attacked vigorously, though in the end they had to withdraw. So far the advantage had remained with the Hurs, but after they had derailed and looted a main line train, the Government of India were at last, in 1942, prevailed upon to introduce martial law in Eastern Sind—an act which cannot be considered unjustified since the Hurs had committed over 200 crimes of violence and caused the death of over 200 persons in just over half a year.

About a division of the Upper Sind force was employed and aircraft were also used. These operations would, however, have been ineffective but for the close co-operation of the police and the admirable intelligence work organized by Mr. F. S. Young, an Indian Police officer from the United Provinces. Gradually, the Hurs were driven from their strongholds, while action was taken against those who harboured them. By June 1943, the movement had been so far brought under control that it was considered possible to withdraw martial law and leave the mopping-up operations to the police, supported by a special armed force, the Sind Police Rifles, raised for the purpose. Resistance was, however, still offered and three years passed before the menace had been fully overcome. In the meantime, the police led hazardous lives. Many attempts were made on the lives of prominent officers or their families, as well as on the loyal members of the public. The Pir Pagaro was convicted of ‘waging war against the King Emperor’, and was executed in March 1943, but the Hurs still refused to believe that he was dead.

Finally, much thought was given to measures for reforming the Hurs. Many of the less dangerous members of the sect were placed under police supervision in village settlements, and since it was realized that it might be impossible to remould the character of adults, plans were made for the education of the young and, when necessary, for their segregation from their elders—a policy which had been followed not unsuccessfully with the criminal tribes in the Punjab and elsewhere. This policy had not been in operation long before the period covered by this book came to an end and it is not possible, therefore, to assess its results.

Chapter 27

The Police in Time of War

In time of crisis or calamity it was natural that heavy demands should be made on the only highly trained and disciplined nonmilitary body which was present throughout India. When famine, floods or epidemics occurred, the Indian police invariably had to come to the rescue, and it is not therefore surprising that the authorities relied heavily on them in time of war. In the First World War, the danger to India was fairly remote, it will be convenient here to confine our account to the events of the Second World War. The Quit India movement will be considered later in this chapter, but first we must discuss the work of the police in connection with enemy activities at home and abroad, the measures taken for internal security, and the formation of special police battalions. In the areas on which the war impinged most directly—Assam and Bengal—the maintenance of public morale, the early organization of A.R.P., and assistance to and liaison with the Army will also require to be mentioned.

Some of these matters cannot be discussed in detail since they were, and remain, shrouded in secrecy, and there will therefore be gaps in our narrative. We must first mention the attempt of the Germans to suborn Indians under their control and here they had the active collaboration of Subhas Chandra Bose. There were a number of Indians in Germany before the war, and they included unpolitically-minded businessmen, bona fide students and also men primarily interested in politics and in opposition to the British. In Berlin before the War, Subhas Bose with the support of the German Foreign Office had founded an Indian Students Association, one element in which was strongly anti-British. In 1941 Bose managed to escape from house arrest in India and made his way surreptitiously to Berlin. Here he helped to establish a Central Free-India Bureau, the main purpose of which was to recruit Indians for the Freies Indien Legion which had been established early in the War. Comparatively few Indian civilians associated themselves voluntarily with this body, but after the German advance on France in 1940, considerable propaganda was carried on amongst Indian prisoners of war to induce them to co-operate. The campaign was not very successful and by July 1942, apparently only 150 volunteers had been recruited. When Indian prisoners in fairly large numbers arrived from North Africa, the propaganda was intensified. Many of the prisoners were segregated in transit camps where they were removed from the influence of their British and Indian officers, and the propaganda was reinforced by methods of physical or mental coercion or by promises of favourable treatment if they co-operated. Two battalions, each of ten skeleton companies, were eventually formed and were known as the 950th Regiment, with a distinctive German uniform and with badges on their arms showing a springing tiger superimposed on the Congress tricolour, and with the inscription ‘Freies Indien’. The regiment included rifle companies, heavy machine-gun and mortar companies and anti-tank detachments.

In the Spring of 1943, Bose had departed for Japan in a German submarine. After his departure, a mutinous spirit broke out amongst the ‘volunteers’, and to restore discipline the German military authorities sent one company to the Italian front—where their performance was very unimpressive—and dispersed others amongst the many German coastal defence units.*

While the prisoners of war were in German hands, there was little that the British authorities could do other than to maintain intelligence as to what was happening, but some time before the Allied invasion of Normandy, an Indian Security Unit was formed, composed of half a dozen Army officers, three of whom, including one Indian, belonged to the Indian Police. The unit was under the control of S.H.A.E.F. and its members were attached to the counterintelligence sections of the different Army groups as they advanced into Germany. Their object was to round up and neutralize the activities of those prisoners of war and civilians who had been assisting the Nazis. Those found to have been so engaged were sent back to India to be dealt with by due process of law, in the same way as those who had similarly collaborated with the enemy in South-East Asia. The work of interrogation demanded considerable linguistic skill, combined with a knowledge of the technique of intelligence work, and it could hardly have been done if Indian Police officers had not been seconded for the purpose.

In India itself, the corresponding work of the police was mainly concerned with the activities of Japanese spies or agents. Attempts were made by the Japanese at the end of 1943 to land spies or propaganda agents on lonely stretches of India’s long western coast-line. They were not on a big scale, but they are of interest in showing the vigilance of the police. Dwarka is a well-known place on the west coast of India and it had two advantages for the purpose of the Japanese. In the first place, before the War, Japanese cargo ships had been in the habit of calling at various small ports on the Kathiawar coast, and so the Japanese had the necessary local knowledge; secondly, since Dwarka was a Hindu place of pilgrimage, the presence of strangers there would not necessarily give rise to comment. The first Japanese attempt to land Indian agents there was made from submarines, but it appears that the party gave themselves up. At the end of December 1943, it was reported that a ship’s boat had been found abandoned near Dwarka, and although this proved to be a false scent, a transmitter was found on the shore.

A search by the local police revealed no explanation as to its origin, but a few days later the Intelligence Bureau reported that a former Muslim postal employee had volunteered a statement to the head of the Indian Field Post Office Unit in Bombay. According to that statement he and seven other Indians had been captured while serving in the Post Office in the Western Desert, had been indoctrinated by Subhas Bose in Germany and, after being sent to Singapore for training, had been landed by submarine in Kathiawar. They were well equipped with money and weapons and had wireless transmitters with them. For some reason or other, the informant had abandoned the enterprise, throwing away the transmitter on his way to Bombay. So far, this story was without corroboration, but enquiry by the Intelligence Bureau presently showed that it was true, and further revealed that the rest of the party had split up, one pair being sent to the Punjab, one to Bombay, one to the United Provinces and one to Calcutta. The Calcutta pair were particularly charged with the duty of transmitting to the Japanese in Burma information about military movements. A chance conversation overheard in a train directed the attention of the C.I.D. to a possible suspect—a Sikh who was staying at a chemical factory at Baroda. On being questioned, the Sikh confessed, produced the transmitter and informed the C.I.D. that his Calcutta companion would shortly be visiting him. When the Calcutta man arrived at Rajkot station, he approached a plain clothes sub-inspector and asked about the train to Ahmedabad. The sub-inspector was evidently a shrewd intelligence officer, for his suspicions were aroused and he arrested the man, who in due course confessed. The other agents were soon picked up, and the conspiracy was completely unravelled.*

Before long, the problem of identifying enemy agents became more serious, and since nearly all the cases had inter-provincial ramifications, some special central investigating agency was obviously needed. Such an agency, with certain powers to direct the provincial police to make enquiries, was established, and the enemy agents detected by it were tried under the Enemy Agents Ordinance, which provided for the secrecy of the proceedings and secured quick execution of sentences.

When large numbers of evacuees began to arrive from Burma in 1942, it was obvious that the Japanese would not neglect this opportunity of securing the entry into India of their agents. The provincial governments of Assam, Bengal and Madras were asked to establish check posts, but it soon became clear that this task would be far beyond the resources available to them. It was decided therefore to establish a line of military government posts at which refugees would first be contacted, a second line of transit camps where refugees from these posts would be collected and transferred in batches to a third line of examination centres, where they would be interrogated. The Army was responsible for establishing and manning the posts, but the interrogation was carried out by police officers specially appointed by the Central Government. The burden of this work was immense, and even the preliminary weeding-out operations took up all the energies of the police officers available. The task of interrogation was therefore transferred entirely to the military authorities.

Wartime security measures included not only action against enemy agents and subversive movements, but also protection of aerodromes and ports. When Japan entered the War, all civil aerodromes were taken over by the military authorities, but, initially, the police were responsible for providing guards against landings by paratroops and for protecting aircraft against sabotage. This, however, was beyond the resources of the already overstrained police force, particularly as new aerodromes and landing strips were constructed in many places. A new division of responsibility was therefore introduced, under which the duty of the police was confined to warning the R.A.F. Command of the approach of persons with hostile intentions and arresting such persons where possible. Before long it was found that the R.A.F. Regiment was not available in sufficient strength to carry out the duties assigned to it in this connection, and the responsibility was partially handed back to the police, who were directed to treat aerodrome protection as having a preferential claim on the available police resources. Plain clothes police intelligence officers continued to be employed at R.A.F. stations. Similar considerations arose with regard to the protection of ports, but here the military continued to bear a major share of the responsibility, though general control remained with civil security officers working under the port security committees.

Precautions also had to be taken against anti-war movements inside India, and in this respect the Forward Bloc, which had been formed in May 1939 with Subhas Bose as President, was a cause of anxiety. This organization made no secret of its plans to take advantage of the situation to overthrow the British Government, and at a conference in Ramgarh, a resolution was passed calling for the organization of a struggle with Government from 6 April 1940. The police acted promptly, the leaders were arrested, and the plan came to nothing. Bose himself was in gaol for the second half of the year, but at the beginning of 1941 he disappeared. A little later the news or rumours of his negotiations with the enemy, and of his alleged instructions that money was to be collected for a rebellious movement, stimulated the Bloc to further effort. Once again the police lost no time and the arrests of a few selected individuals weakened the organization considerably. In June 1942, however, the renewal of plans for such a rebellion led to the declaration of the Bloc as illegal under the Defence of India Rules. Nevertheless, it was able to play its part in the Quit India movement. After that movement had been controlled, the underground activities of the Bloc were intensified, and at a meeting in Bombay plans were made for the organization of risings, particularly in Assam and Bengal. The Bombay Intelligence Service was alert as usual and the police arrested the nine leading Forward Bloc workers. Documents then obtained revealed evidence that an insurrection had been contemplated. Action was promptly taken by the police and the failure of the conspiracy put an end to the importance of the Bloc until after the end of the War.

At the beginning of the War, the Communist Party indulged in anti-war activities, and a number of its leaders were arrested and detained. Soon after the entry of Russia into the War, however, on the side of the Allies, Communist policy changed. From this time onwards the Party worked whole-heartedly in support of the War effort and played an important part in maintaining the morale of labour in munitions and similar factories. The Party thereby ceased for a time to be a cause of immediate anxiety to the police.

At an early stage it was obvious that all these war-time duties would necessitate a considerable expansion of the police force in one form or another, and this had to be done at a time when the prior claim of the Army for both men and equipment had to be recognized. After the entry of the Japanese into the War, it was realized that the allocation of arms must be put on a systematic basis, and a committee was formed to apportion the available supply between the police and military forces. The Central Government gave financial assistance to provinces for the expansion of the police, and in spite of all the difficulties, the strength of the armed police all over India was increased by 15,000 during the first half of 1943 and by 42,000 before the end of the War. One difficulty was that no province could hope to raise a police force adequate to deal with the worst possible emergencies if it happened to be the sufferer, and consideration was therefore given to the establishment of a Central Pool and a Home Defence Force under military control, to which both the army and the police would supply contingents. As a result of provincial jealousies and practical difficulties, this scheme was dropped.

While this project was under discussion, plans were made for the organization of village patrols for the protection of important sites and railways.

It was realized that these patrols would have to work in cooperation with the railway administration under a measure of military or police control or both; that they would have to receive some form of payment; and drat no single or uniform system could be devised to meet the widely varying conditions in different parts of the country.

As was to be expected, the scheme worked well in some areas and not at all in others. In Madras, for example, Mr. G. Harvey, the Provincial organizer of the National War Front, effectively mobilized parties of village toughs, who worked in collaboration with the police at a time when an enemy invasion seemed to be more than a distinct possibility. In most provinces, the effects of the scheme were, perhaps, mainly psychological and as the danger receded, the enthusiasm diminished to vanishing point. Similar attempts were made in towns to recruit civic guards.

The success of these attempts varied greatly from area to area and in some provinces, greater importance must be attached to the formation of Special Armed Constabularies. It will serve our purpose if we give a brief account of such a force in the United Provinces.*

Several battalions were raised, of which all the N.C.O.s were recruited from the police force, while each battalion was commanded by an officer of the Indian Police, with a Deputy Superintendent of Police as his second-in-command. Although the battalions were formed from the police force, they were under military command and their main function was to provide armed guards at key points, such as railway bridges, war factories, electric supply stations and the like. The Commandant of one of these battalions reports how he himself was put through his paces by the Army in his spare time. He obviously approached his new task with great enthusiasm and before the battalion was formed he travelled extensively looking for likely N.C.O.s. Difficulties arose in the early stages from the fact that some of the sepoys had been under the impression that they were joining the police and not a military unit, but the enthusiasm of the Commandant seems to have overcome this problem. Soon after its training was complete, the unit was made responsible for the patrol of railways throughout an extensive area—a task of great importance during the troubled times of the Quit India movement. The work of the battalion was exacting and often monotonous, but even war-time work had its humorous moments and the Commandant tells an amusing story of an unusual kind of fifth column activity.

There was the occasion when one of the platoons guarding a bridge on the line from Jhansi to Bombay was put to rout by wild bees. I happened to be inspecting this detachment on that morning. The men had just stood down from their alarm posts; and were proceeding to where their kits were laid out when a solitary engine came along and stopped on the bridge; and the crew commenced to rake out hot cinders into the stream below. This did not meet with the approval of the bees that had built enormous combs on the under side of the track, and on the supporting girders. They swarmed out bent on murder, and most of my young men disappeared into the Bush. Only those of us old timers who had encountered bees previously, and knew that if one stood dead still, one was far less liable to be stung. So we remained like the Old Guard at Waterloo, maintaining a steady front, while everyone else fled in disorder. The engine and its crew, the cause of all the trouble, was last seen disappearing at speed in the direction of Bombay. The insects concentrated on one wretched Jawan more than on any of the others, and he must have run the best part of half a mile before he was clear of his persecutors.*

The unit was armed with rifles captured from the Italians in Abyssinia and the Commandant remarked that the Italians were evidently not believers in weapon cleaning since the barrels were dirty and rusty. Well-trained members of the Special Armed Constabulary soon put this right, though the extractors or the bolts had to be replaced. Till this had been done, ‘the last round in the breech, which a defective extractor had failed to extract or eject, was apt to go off startlingly close to one’s nose when the command “ease springs” was given’. Fortunately, Indian Police officers had the British characteristic of keeping their sense of humour in time of trouble, and thanks to that gift, and to the training and devotion of the rank and file, these battalions fulfilled an important war-time function.

Quit India

The sternest task which confronted the police and the authorities generally during the war was that of countering the Quit India movement, which grew partly from failure to believe in the sincerity of British intentions and partly from the conviction that the Japanese would win the war. In this chapter we are not greatly concerned with the political background to the rebellion, but it must be remembered that, in April 1942, Gandhi began to demand the physical withdrawal of the British, hoping thereby to prevent India from becoming a battlefield. Many of his colleagues did not share his belief that India would then remain unharmed, but nevertheless, after much argument, in July 1942 the Congress Working Committee succumbed to Gandhi’s persuasion to the extent of demanding the withdrawal of British power, after which the Congress would co-operate with the United Nations in defending India. The demand was accompanied by the threat of a mass struggle if it were not accepted.

The saner elements in the Congress must have known that the demand was unrealistic, but when it was clear that it would be rejected no time was lost in preparing for a struggle, and instructions for the coming fight were circulated by various Provincial Congress Committees. In theory the struggle was to be non-violent, but it is incredible that the leaders can genuinely have thought that a campaign on the scale contemplated could remain peaceful. Gandhi himself went so far as to say that dislocation of traffic, cutting telegraph and telephone wires, destroying bridges and the like, were permissible, provided life was not endangered. Mira Ben, the daughter of a British admiral was an emissary of Gandhi, and she explicitly warned the Viceroy that ‘if the struggle led to violence Gandhi would not call it off’. On 8 August the Working Committee resolution launching a mass campaign was confirmed. The Government of India, which had made careful preparations, acted promptly, and Gandhi and all the most important Congress leaders were at once arrested, while an Emergency Powers Ordinance and an Amendment to the Defence of India Rules armed the authorities with the necessary powers.

Disturbances occurred at once in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Poona and spread elsewhere on the following day, but it was not until 11 August that the storm broke in all its fury in Madras, Bombay, Bihar, Bengal, the United Provinces, Orissa and the Central Provinces. The main attack was directed against railway lines, bridges, police stations, telegraph lines and other government or public buildings, with comparatively little damage being done to private buildings. The simultaneity of the outbreaks and the technical skill with which the operations of destruction were conducted, suggest that the campaign was centrally planned in some detail, but of this there is no direct evidence. Its scale can be appreciated from the bare statement of the official report that in the course of the rebellion the police—who had to open fire on 301 occasions—suffered over 2,000 casualties, that over 200 police stations and 1,200 other government buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, and that there were 600 cases of sabotage to electrical installations, roads, canals, or similar public utilities. In addition, 332 railway stations were destroyed or seriously damaged, and there were 268 cases of damage to rolling stock. Damage to railway tracks was so widespread that it was impossible to give meaningful figures, and a better idea of the situation can be gained from the fact that a large part of the East India Railway, and practically the whole of the Bengal and North Western Railway were put out of action. Bengal was almost completely cut off from the north. The seriousness of this interruption of rail communications at the time of maximum danger from Japan needs no emphasis.

As might be expected the trouble began in the big towns but soon spread to the rural areas where ‘thousands of rioters gave themselves up to an orgy of destruction . . . and whole districts with their small defending forces of Government officials and police were isolated for days on end’.*

These general statements give a very inadequate idea of the problems which faced the police and the military, and a better picture can be obtained by taking extracts from official reports or statements of individual officers.

For this purpose we shall begin with Bihar, since that Province and the eastern part of the United Provinces were the worst affected areas. In the case of Bihar, we have available a detailed statement from the Inspector-General’s Annual Report for 1942, and we shall cull snippets from it. A widespread outbreak of mob violence, looting, arson, murder, attacks on police stations and other public buildings or sabotage resulted in the complete isolation of several district headquarters. In Gaya District alone, fourteen police stations had to be evacuated; in Minapur the police station staff courageously resisted a mass attack but were overcome, the sub-inspector being burned alive and several constables seriously wounded; at Sitamarhi the Sub-Divisional Officer, the Circle Inspector, a Havildar and a chaprassi were murdered. In Darbhanga only five police stations escaped attack, while at Singhia an assistant sub-inspector was murdered and the officer-in-charge barely escaped with his life. In Purnea District, the police in one thana fought gallantly against a determined attack by a large mob, but the sub-inspector and two constables were eventually overpowered, drenched in kerosene and burned alive. The rest of the staff held out and inflicted severe casualties on the attackers.

These instances, picked out almost at random from the Inspector-General’s Report need not be multiplied, for they sufficiently illustrate what was happening in many areas. The great majority of the police stood up to the ordeal magnificently and although there were a few whose nerves failed, almost all of them were young recruits who had not completed their training. The police force, however, was quite inadequate to cope with such a widespread and determined rebellion, and military assistance was obtained at the outset. Within a few weeks, as the result of combined police and military operations, the rebellion was suppressed, though as we shall see later, it had an aftermath.

For the United Provinces we have available two detailed reports of the Chief Secretary, and a personal diary by G. Waddell, the Deputy Inspector-General of one of the worst-affected Ranges—a diary which, though too laconic in its style to permit of quotation, gives verisimilitude to the official narrative. The story is much the same as that in Bihar, except that serious trouble was confined to the east of the Province, which in some respects had closer links with Bihar than with the west of the Province. The Hindu University at Benares was, at this time, a hotbed of sedition, and this fact no doubt contributed to the violence of the outbreak. As in Bihar, there were numerous attacks on government buildings; roads and rail bridges, railways and signal apparatus were destroyed; telegraph lines were cut and telegraph poles destroyed; fifteen police stations were attacked by mobs of up to 10,000; twelve police constables and one officer were beaten to death or soaked in kerosene and burned alive in their buildings.

In general, the situation was handled well by the District authorities, but the Chief Secretary comments frankly that in some cases the lack of firmness in dealing with the initial outbreak led to trouble, and that in some of the outlying parts there had been signs of weakness. A notable instance of this was a district in which the Chief Secretary’s report makes it clear that the District Magistrate followed a policy of appeasement in the mistaken belief that the Congress programme was one of non-violence, but Waddell says more bluntly that the District was virtually handed over to the Congress. On the other hand, there were many stories of great courage, as when a probationary sub-inspector in charge of an armed guard opened fire and dispersed a large mob, or when Subedar Raghunath Singh of the Special Armed Constabulary ‘defended his fighting train at Zamania railway station . . . repelled crowds at Dildamagar and Dheena railway stations and captured seventeen and rescued a party of forty R.A.F./I.A.F. marooned further out’.*

In this Province the Civic Guards distinguished themselves by their steadiness and bravery, and the Chief Secretary reports that the members of the A.R.P. Service also acquitted themselves well. The Special Aimed Constabulary too came in for special commendation. Thanks to the courage of so many of those involved and the excellent co-operation between the military and the police, before the end of the month the Chief Secretary was able to report that the period of mass attack was over and all Districts were under control.

In some other provinces, particularly Bombay, the situation was for a time almost as serious as that in Bihar and the United Provinces, but as events followed much the same pattern wherever rebellion occurred, we need not prolong this account by discussing them. Throughout India, the open rebellion was over by the end of 1942, but it left behind it an unhappy legacy. Rebels went underground and carried on a widespread movement of individual violence and terrorism, while at the same time a spirit of lawlessness had been engendered. ‘The mob violence that attended the August Rebellion revealed to the criminal the inherent weakness of the ordinary forces of law and order’,* and crimes of violence increased to an alarming extent. In Bihar it was therefore decided in 1943 to raise the permanent police force from 13,090 to 21,600, to reorganize the District Armed Police, and to enlist a battalion of military police. Similar steps were taken in other provinces and the situation gradually returned to normal. The overtones of the movement nevertheless lingered and it is not unreasonable to believe that the appalling events of 1946 and 1947 were partly due to the fact that the minds of large numbers of people had become conditioned to violence.

We can fittingly conclude this brief account of the Quit India movement by quoting two of the twenty-six cases in which the K.P.M. was awarded for service during the rebellion.

On 16 August 1942 a crowd of about 250 persons led by a Congressman approached Police Station Ashti (Wardha District) in the C.P. and demanded its surrender. Sub-Inspector Ram Nath Misra refused and the mob attacked the building but was driven off by the fire of two constables who killed three, wounded four and arrested two—the ringleaders of the rioters. Later, the crowd which had by then increased to 1,000, surrounded the police station which was defended by the sub-inspector and a party of seven police armed only with two muskets and a shotgun. After repeated attacks the crowd rushed the building which by now was defended only by the sub-inspector and one constable, the other members of the staff having taken refuge in their quarters. The two fought on until their ammunition was exhausted, when the sub-inspector was taken and beaten to death. Constable Vinayak fought on beside the sub-inspector, and was one of three constables burned to death by the mob.

The second case concerns the Minapur incident to which we have previously referred.

On 16 May 1942 a mob of about 5,000 persons led by men carrying Congress flags attacked Police Station Minapur (Muzaffarpur District) in Bihar. The sub-inspector in charge had five constables with him, including Ghulghuli Rai and Madho Singh. For some time the sub-inspector parleyed with the mob but without success. When they advanced on the building he fired his shotgun twice. It was then snatched out of his hands. Thereafter he was able to fire about half a dozen rounds from his revolver, but eventually he and his small party of police were overwhelmed and forced to take refuge in a neighbouring maize field. The mob pursued them to the field and assaulted them savagely. Constables Ghulghuli Rai and Madho Singh stayed by their superior officer to the end and valiantly attempted to defend him with their lathis. They were both beaten until they lost consciousness and were left for dead. The rioters then collected the records and furniture from the police station office, made a bonfire, carried the sub-inspector to it and burnt him alive.

Eastern India

Although Assam was not affected by the Quit India movement as seriously as the United Provinces, Bihar or Bombay, the immediate impact of the War on this area was considerable and threw much strain on the police force. Much of the extra work involved was unspectacular, but it was of great importance in view of the necessity of facilitating military movements, maintaining the morale of the civilian population in a forward province, assisting in the organization of the influx of refugees, and, as we have already seen, taking precautions against the entry of Japanese spies. Sabotage on the only railway through the Brahmaputra Valley made it necessary to create a Rail Force of about 2,000 men, who were enlisted and trained by the police and then placed under the charge of a British Gurkha officer. Similarly, the Civil Defence Force, which was obviously of great importance in view of the proximity of the Japanese, was initially raised and trained by the police, although at a later stage officers were recruited from outside to command the force. The patrol of aerodromes was undertaken partly by the police and partly by a battalion of the Assam Rifles, a special force of which we give an account later. The other battalions of the Assam Rifles were put under the operational command of the Army during the War, but their administration remained under the Inspector-General of Police.

These duties may be regarded as a necessary extension of ordinary police work, but from 1942 onwards the impact of war confronted the Assam police with problems of a type to which they were not accustomed, and which have been vividly described by H. F. G. Burbidge, a police officer who helped to solve them.

Many thousands of people of all kinds came through the mountains and had to be cared for. School buildings were taken over as hospitals and that was the start of our troubles in requisitioning buildings and motor vehicles for war purposes. Remnants of the defeated army came from Burma with the refugees and then troops of all nationalities started arriving in Assam and there was an endless demand for buildings or land for use by the line of communication troops.

The police had ample powers to requisition what was needed, but in each case fair compensation had to be settled, and there was also the more difficult task of dealing with the many military and civil authorities, all of whose demands often seemed equally urgent.

Since Assam was unfamiliar territory to most of the military and Air Force officers who were now concerned with preparations for the hoped-for offensive, or with the important but precarious flights over the ‘hump’, much assistance from the police was needed in the sphere of intelligence. Fortunately, this was a domain in which police officers were thoroughly at home, and, at an early stage, two officers of the Indian Police were attached to the Army, one with V Force and another with an independent brigade operating in the Naga Hills. A little later, both of these officers had to be recalled for general police duties, but by that time they had no doubt introduced Army officers to the mysteries of their trade.

This indeed was only one element of the general work of liaison between the police and the military. This work demanded endless tact, for while junior army or air force officers naturally felt that it was their War, the police were rightly conscious of the superiority of their own local knowledge. Friction there was bound to be at times, but senior officers in all services were determined that there should be co-operation. A particularly delicate situation was reached from time to time when the police had to protect the local people against harassment arising from zeal or ignorance on the part of the military. The police officer whose note we have quoted reports that when some minor harassment was brought to the notice of a junior commander, he was very likely to reply ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ With patience these difficulties were overcome and indeed protection of die public from unnecessary annoyance was an important part of the task of the police in maintaining public morale—a task in which they were as successful as the circumstances and the character of the local people permitted.

Bengal was not so immediately in the front line, but, as might have been expected, Midnapur lived up to its traditions, and advantage was taken of the war situation to organize an ugly-looking insurrectionary movement which was only ended as a result of a disastrous tidal wave. To the ordinary British or Indian citizen in Calcutta, it might have seemed that life was not seriously disrupted by the War, although supplies of luxuries became difficult to obtain. Nevertheless Calcutta felt the full impact of the problems of accommodation, transport and increased crime. It was, however, in East Bengal that the real impact of war occurred. Here we have available to us an unpublished report by Le Brocq, a police officer who was concerned in 1943 with the frontier district of Chittagong. His first success, as he later triumphantly claimed, was when he ‘winkled’ a jeep out of the Army. Chittagong was virtually a military camp and the main base for the campaign in the Arakan. In later days, it contained seventeen airfields, and for this reason it was the one Bengal district which suffered frequent air raids. Le Brocq reports that he heard the air raid siren several hundred times in two years, and that it was not unusual for there to be as many as five or six alerts in a day.

Here, too, the police had two main duties to perform: to assist the military authorities, and to protect the local people from the ill-directed efforts of security-minded officers.

To some of them every ‘local’ was a potential saboteur and it was often difficult to convince them that all the Chittagonian wanted was to be allowed to live his life as usual and to make as much as he could on the side out of the situation which the war had brought about. They built hospitals and camps galore, burnt bricks and built the road from Comilla to Bawli Bazar. They cheerfully worked for the troops in a hundred different ways and even during the famine of 1943 public morale in the district remained remarkably high.

After the British Army had pulled out of the Arakan, and the Japanese lay just across the River Naaf, there was no panic, and it is quite clear that the steadiness of the police was an important factor in keeping people calm.

An interesting light is thrown on the morale of the police by the remark of an assistant sub-inspector, when a period of air raids was at an end, that life had become dull—and this in spite of the fact that, in the first air raid on the station concerned, ninety coolies and perhaps two or three policemen had been killed. The relationship of mutual respect and trust between officers of the Indian Police and their subordinates was largely responsible for this staunchness and is well illustrated by a story told by Le Brocq.

At the time when I left Sardah for Chittagong, common rumour had it that the East Bengal port was a smoking ruin. Both Dedar and Madhu came with us without demur and my faithful bearer, who had been with me for twenty-four years when I left India in 1947, accompanied me in car and jeep on all my trips down the Arakan Road, often in the greatest discomfort. Wherever we had spent the night—and we had some odd resting places in those days—he always contrived to produce a mug of hot shaving water and a breakfast of some sort for his sahib. He unfortunately died of blood poisoning a year or two after I had parted from him at Sealdah Station on Independence Day 1947.

Occasional failures there were, of course, for there are limits to what human nature can stand, and we have a report of a Bengali constable who deserted after an air raid in which a brick shelter had been hit and a dozen or so people killed.

He had duly accompanied his sub-inspector, collected unattached arms and legs and helped to tie pink labels on to corpses, certifying that they had met their deaths from enemy action. He had then gone to the ‘thana’, packed up his bits and pieces and made for home. After he had been prosecuted and had done his month in prison, I had him up and asked him why he had deserted. He was, I think, genuinely ashamed of himself and said: ‘Sahib, after I had dealt with all those dead bodies, I just couldn’t stand any more so I went’.

Against this sad story is to be set the report by the same authority that when he arrived at a police station which had suffered a direct hit, he found the police as perky as a dog with two tails. ‘The Japs could not hurt them’.

The Evacuation of the Chinese 5th Army

If we were writing the general history of India during the War, we should at this stage have to recount the dismal story of the I.N.A., but as this episode belongs rather to military than to police history, we can ignore it, and conclude this chapter with two stories of remarkable courage and tenacity on the part of two small police parties.

The first of these stories concerns the evacuation of the Chinese 5th Army from Burma. That army and the British Army, in retreat before the advancing Japanese, arrived together at Monywa, just west of Mandalay, in the middle of 1942. From there, the British followed the route north-west along the Chindwin River into Imphal but the Chinese struck north along the railway line in the hope of making their way back to China. Before they could reach Myitkyina, they found that they were blocked by the Japanese, and they were forced to take the track which would lead them towards the Pangsau Pass and thence to Ledo. For some days they wandered through the sparsely inhabited country, with inadequate supplies of food and suffering great hardship, and for a time air reconnaissance could not locate them. Eventually they were found on the Chindwin River at Dalu. A few days later their leading regiments arrived at Shingbwiyang in a semi-starved condition, competing with civilian refugees for the very inadequate supplies of food available. By this time the Pangsau Pass—the only known route—was becoming impassable. ‘Tens of thousands of refugees with horses, mules, bullocks and elephants fleeing before the Japanese had by this time churned the road into a hopeless morass of mud four feet deep horribly lined with the corpses of those who had died of malaria, dysentery, cholera and sheer exhaustion’.

The military authorities now turned for advice to Mr. E. T. Lambert, an Indian Police officer in Assam who had served for many years on the frontier. As a political officer his duties had been very diverse. He had stopped human sacrifice amongst an aboriginal tribe; he had surveyed the densely-forested border area; and earlier in 1942 he had organized the rescue of many thousands of refugees. In view of the impracticability of the Pangsau route, ‘Lambert recommended an unknown trail across the Naga hills which was most difficult necessitating the crossing of two 7,000-foot passes’. The path went straight up and down hillsides, but it did at least have the advantage that it had not been turned into a quagmire by traffic.*

The Chinese, however, would clearly need to be shepherded over this route and it was arranged that Lambert with a party consisting of a havildar, five riflemen of the Assam Rifles, a sub-assistant surgeon, a Chinese interpreter, a Chinese liaison officer and about 150 porters should go forward as far as Hpachet Hi, where it was hoped that an advance party from Shingbwiyang would meet them and decide on the practicability of the route. When Lambert’s party arrived at Hpachet Hi there was no sign of the Chinese. The party now had only sufficient food for four days, but fortunately it was found possible for supplies to be dropped by air. Lambert himself had an attack of high fever, but he and the party pushed on towards Shingbwiyang, constructing cane bridges on their way and building bamboo palisades round the villages they passed in order to protect the inhabitants against possible revengeful actions by the Chinese when they arrived. These precautions were by no means unnecessary, for when Lambert reached a village on the route to Shingbwiyang he found that the advance party of Chinese had turned up and had begun to pull down houses for firewood—a situation with which he dealt rigorously. In due course, Shingbwiyang was reached and ‘very weary, exhausted troops with feet swollen from leeches and maddened by pestering sandflies’ were safely brought to Ledo, a journey which a fit man would have accomplished in nine days, but which actually took them several weeks.

It is impossible in an account which must be limited to a few paragraphs to convey any idea of the hardships involved in Lambert’s expedition or of the courage and resolution, combined with his unique knowledge of the frontier areas, which enabled him and his party to accomplish it. It is very satisfactory to record that, in addition to being decorated with the King’s Police Medal, he was invited to China, feted for a week by the Chinese Army and decorated with the Chinese Army Medal of the 1st Class.

The other episode to be described here is of an altogether different, but no less heroic, character. Mr. D. A. McCarthy, an Indian Police officer serving in the United Provinces, had been on duty in the Andaman Islands at the time of the Japanese invasion of 1942, and in October of that year, in view of his knowledge of the Island, and his good relations with certain headmen there, McCarthy volunteered to land surreptitiously, in order to make an appreciation of conditions under Japanese occupation. He was commissioned in the Sikh Regiment and chose as his companions a B.O.R. wireless operator, two ex-military policemen and two former Ranchi coolies. The party, equipped with two small boats and armed with .22 rifles and Sten guns, were landed from a Dutch submarine on the west coast of Middle Andaman, about seventy miles from Port Blair. They had with them a small supply of ghi, rice and dehydrated vegetables, but intended to live off the jungle, and their first few days in the Andamans were spent in learning how to do this.

At the end of a week, McCarthy and two members of the party began to travel along the west coast by night in one of their small boats, and after a number of narrow escapes from the Japanese, they hid their boat half-way up a hillside near Barataga Creek, and began a somewhat dreary trek through the jungle, during which McCarthy tells us that ‘to avoid leaving traces we did not cut a way through thorns which can be very exasperating’.* The leeches were still more troublesome. In due course, McCarthy and one of the former military policemen, Jemadar Habib Shah, made their way to the house of a headman, whom McCarthy had known well before the invasion. Secrecy was of the utmost importance and the headman ‘took them to the bhoosa store in between the walls of the house so that his wife and son who were asleep would not get to know that we were there.’ While they were talking to the headman, a Japanese patrol arrived to ask for a list of all the people in the village and to warn the headman that anybody moving about at night would be shot. After leaving the headman’s hut, the party were just stepping into the main road, when they saw two Japanese soldiers in the moonlight less than ten yards away, but the Japanese did not bother about them and they slipped into the jungle.

For a fortnight they wandered about gathering the desired information, and then started back by a different route for the place where the boat had been left. Several big creeks had to be crossed on the way, and as Habib Shah could not swim, a small raft had to be constructed. Then followed tragedy. ‘Habib Shah slipped and banged the butt of his sten gun on the ground and the gun went off. The bullet passed right through him, killing him almost instantly.’ They buried poor Habib Shah and trekked on to the Baratagi Creek where they retrieved their boats. They then paddled by day and lay up in mangrove swamps at night until they reached the camp, where the B.O.R. and another member of the party were awaiting them. A wireless signal was sent to Allied Headquarters, as a result of which three ‘Flying Fortresses’ came and bombed the target indicated.

We then put up two canvas squares on the beach as a signal and when the crew of the submarine saw them, they were to elevate the periscope high in recognition when we were to take down the squares. Right on time the periscope was spotted in calm water. Almost immediately came up not only the periscope but some of the conning tower as well. Later we learned that we had not been seen, but the submarine had grazed a coral reef and torn off the Asdic and surfaced involuntarily.

One wonders what would have happened to the party if the submarine had not struck the reef. McCarthy and his colleagues were taken off after leaving a cache ashore and they returned to Calcutta. McCarthy had lost three stone in weight, had a very low blood count, and had to be invalided home.

With these two stories of high individual courage on the part of police officers, we end our account of the work of the police during the War. Some of this work was spectacular, some was tedious, and much of it demanded great courage and perseverance. These are qualities which the officers and men of the Indian Police possessed in full.

Chapter 28

Special Forces

In this chapter we shall consider certain types of units which, though partially or wholly engaged on police duties, were in some ways separate from the general body of the police force. They include the Irregular Corps of early days, the Punjab Military Police, the Frontier Constabulary, the Special Armed Constabulary of modern times, and bodies such as the Railway and River Police which differed from the general police only inasmuch as their duties were specialized.

When the East India Company began to extend its authority into the interior of India, its primary concern was not the detection or punishment of crime by the individual, but the prevention of widespread disorder and the maintenance of its own authority. For this purpose, it employed irregular units, one of the first of which appears to have been the Bhagalpore Rangers, raised in 1792. Such units

were usually raised by junior officers of the Bengal, Bombay or Madras armies, who were then given command of the units they had raised. They consisted of both infantry and cavalry, while regular cavalry and infantry battalions had up to twenty British officers each, the Irregular Forces had only two or three—and in the case of Military Police units often only one.*

Walker, who has done much research in this field, listed 158 Irregular Corps and Special Units in existence before the army and police reforms of 1861-62, but it would be a mistake to think of all, or even of the majority of them, as being engaged on duties which could properly be described as those of a police nature, though they might from time to time be used to suppress widespread organized dacoity or armed robbery. H. T. Lambrick, a considerable authority on Western India, points out that confusion often arises from the use of the term irregular, which as applied to cavalry merely meant Silladar (that is to say, the soldier provided his own horse and arms). The Scinde Horse and Jacobs Horse, for example, two of the most famous of irregular units, are categorically stated by Lambrick to have been regiments of soldiers, not policemen. Nor, according to the same authority, was the Poona Horse ever anything like a police corps. Its nearest approach to police work was in providing escorts for treasure or prisoners, or assisting in the capture of dangerous outlaws. Even Gardner’s Horse, which was raised in 1809 specifically for ‘police and revenue duties’ in the ceded area between the Jumna and the Ganges, appears to have been mainly employed on semi-military operations, including the suppression of disturbances in Bundelkand and, at a later stage, in the invasion of Arakan.*

In 1822 the Merwara Battalion (Civil) was raised for the purpose of maintaining order, keeping open the passes and suppressing dacoity and cattle-lifting, but the first irregular corps raised purely for police purposes was the Khandesh Bhil Corps. When the British took Khandesh from the Mahrattas, disorder and chaos were widespread. Those notorious robbers, the Pindaris, were at large in Khandesh, but they were fairly easily expelled. A more difficult problem was provided by the Bhils—a primitive pre-Aryan tribe, who in better days had provided a kind of hereditary police force, but who, in the disorders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the villagers could no longer pay them, had taken to the hills. There they formed gangs and lived by descending on the plains periodically for the purposes of robbery. Mountstuart Elphinstone, one of the wisest of the British rulers of India, realized that the Bhils were not a people who could be coerced into an orderly way of life, and after the suppression of an insurrection in 1825, he decided to form an irregular corps of Bhils and thus serve a double purpose. The much-needed police force could be restored, and the Bhils could be provided with an honest living and brought under civilized influence. Captain Briggs, a highly intelligent officer, who had been deputed to occupy the territory ceded in 1818, opposed the scheme, since he despaired of disciplining so savage a people. Elphinstone, nevertheless, went ahead and in 1825, Lieutenant James Outram, later of Mutiny fame, was appointed to raise and command the Bhil Corps. He was instructed that:

A conciliatory disposition towards the Bhils convincing them that you feel an interest in them and a pride in seeing them do well, are of all others the points that are most likely to earn their regard and to excite in them those better feelings which it is the chief wish of Government to generate.*

The Bhils were in fact shy of enlisting, and the first three or four recruits were frightened away by a report that they were being enticed to transportation.* But Outram had infinite patience, and within a few months nearly a hundred men had joined his Corps.

Within two years, it had risen to the strength of a battalion. From the outset Outram divided the Corps into two classes, ‘the one consisting of men for general police duties, the other of those whom I hope to train and discipline as light infantry’. They soon proved themselves capable of apprehending Bhil offenders and in September 1825, Outram referred to

the circumstance of the country for fifteen miles round Durrangaum which had been most particularly a prey to the rapacity of the Bhils, having been perfectly free from their depredations. Since the establishment of the Bhil Corps at this place, not a single robbery has taken place . . . and travellers who then never ventured out without the protection of horsemen or sebundies,* now proceed unarmed alone.*

Before Outram left Khandesh in 1835, he was able to report that the Corps

was entrusted with many posts hitherto occupied by the regular troops, and soon gave every proof of its efficiency and good faith by attacking the insurgent Bhils in every quarter and never failing in immediately subduing or bringing to justice all who opposed the law.

This good work started by Outram continued after his departure, and the efficiency of the Corps was illustrated in 1836 by a case where ‘not only did a score of Bhil sepoys seize upwards of 500 Bhils and other desperate characters, but they also provided the evidence necessary to convict the guilty’.

In view of the uncertainty as to which of the irregular regiments actually performed police duties, lists or statistics are not of much use for our purpose, but it may be noted in passing that, in 1845, the Bengal and Bombay Army Lists included twenty-eight and six such regiments respectively. By the time of the Mutiny, many more irregular units had been raised, the most important additions being the battalions of the Punjab Military Police to which we have referred earlier, and ten battalions of Military Police raised in Bengal from 1855 onwards. The first of these ten battalions was raised by Captain Rattray in 1855 for service in the Santhal Parganas, and it is not at all clear if any of the other battalions performed duties which could fairly be described as pertaining to the police. In Oudh, as we have already seen, Military Police battalions were formed for the pacification of that country when the British first occupied it.

Shortly after the Mutiny, the Government of India took in hand the reorganization of the Army and of the police, and at this time the Commissioner of Police in Madras commented somewhat scathingly on the irregular forces in that Presidency:

They are all bodies of men of a purely military formation on military principles—not police at all—merely a kind of Deputy Native Army loosely disciplined, without the means of cooperation amongst themselves or with the ordinary Police; without status or prestige in the country, having the defect of the Native Army without any of its safeguards or guarantees, and without one single recommendation as a Police.*

That judgment may have been a little unfair, but the simple fact was that these forces were now an anachronism. They had served their purpose well when conditions were unsettled and when only para-military bodies could afford adequate support to the civil power. From 1861 onwards, they were either disbanded or merged into the Army or the regular police force, though the Khandesh Bhil Corps was not absorbed by the Bombay Police until 1891. It then became the Khandesh Armed Police (Bhil Corps), thereby retaining its name and its regimental pride.

Frontier Constabulary

The North-West Frontier Constabulary differed in its character and purpose from the irregular forces which we have described and had its origin in the policy of the buffer state in which Britain followed the example set by the Romans.

As soon as a new state or province was taken over, so beyond it a buffer state was erected to protect the newly acquired territory. The time came when . . . this buffer state was in turn conquered or fell into a state of anarchy which endangered its neighbouring lands, so it too had to be taken over.*

The process repeated itself until progress was halted by a definite international boundary. When the Punjab was annexed, and Peshawar and surrounding districts came under British rule, the tribal territories between those districts and Afghanistan became in effect a congeries of buffer areas. There was no question of administration there, but it was necessary to provide protection for the people of the settled areas—which at that time were included in the Punjab—against the incursions of the wild tribesmen. Before 1878 this was regarded as a purely military duty and was entrusted to a regular army garrison, assisted by the Punjab Irregular Force raised by Sir Henry Lawrence and later supplemented by a Corps of Guides at Mardan.* A Border Defence Committee then considered the problem anew, since

it had come to be realized that the regular army was an imperfect and also expensive weapon to employ for the purpose of dealing with the ordinary day to day troubles of the border, regular troops were not sufficiently mobile to deal with the rapidly moving raider groups.

It was therefore decided to create a Border Military Police, commanded by police officers, to garrison a chain of forts along the entire border. A few years later it was found unnecessary to maintain all these forts, but the Border Military Police assisted by local levies continued to protect the 700 miles of Frontier. In 1895 the force numbered 512 of all ranks, but it was never very effective and, as the trans-border tribes acquired modern weapons, it became quite inadequate for its task. Its work was, therefore, supplemented by several corps of para-military units including the famous Khyber Rifles and the Samana Rifles, but after the North-West Frontier Province was separated from the Punjab in 1900, fresh thought was given to the whole question of frontier defence.

In 1913 a new force to be known as the Frontier Constabulary was constituted, with an initial sanctioned strength of 2,200 infantry and 200 mounted men. It was recruited from Pathans of the Province, was armed with modern rifles, and its officers were seconded from the Indian Police. It was solely concerned with defence against raids from across the frontier and it was not allowed to operate in the tribal territories, except in actual pursuit of raiders. It was not involved in the ordinary police work of the districts of the North-West Frontier Province, which was the responsibility of the regular police.

Their main function is to hold posts and pickets at points along the border where it is possible that a tribal invasion may be expected, and to be ready at a moment’s notice to take the field against a gang who may elude the watchfulness of pickets.*

The Constabulary’s personnel were not highly trained in the military sense, but were tough men, natural guerilla fighters and accustomed to a hard life.

More often than not, drinking-water supply is through the ponds where rain water collects and is two to four miles away from their posts. Water is therefore fetched by means of mules. At one place water is brought from seven miles distant on a truck. Their food is of Spartan simplicity. Manning forts, posts and picquets in the far-flung inaccessible hilly tracts the men of the Frontier Constabulary conduct themselves as veritable ‘eagles’ with the difference that they build their own eyrie. Away from civilization, perched high in the midst of howling, barren wilderness, they get busy after morning prayers, rifle in hand, and simple food in the haversacks, they patrol for miles on their beat. They ‘dive’ on a gang of armed cattle lifters, dacoits or a raiding party and ‘restore the property to whom it belongeth’. At night ‘when evils are most free’, their vigilance acts like a powerful searchlight on mischief-makers.

As a proof of their devotion to duty can be cited the fact that from the year of its inception [1913] to the present day, there has not been a single desertion with arms and ammunition and that nowhere have they disobeyed orders and shirked from fighting against their own kith and kin.*

The new force soon proved its efficiency and its strength was increased in 1916. In 1926 it was reorganized on a platoon basis and before long it began to be occupied not only in the defence of the province against raids, but in offensive operations of a purely military kind against the Afridis and others. Since that time its strength has been further increased, but its organization has not been essentially changed.

The work of the Frontier Constabulary was not police work in the ordinary sense of the term, but the force had the fortune to be commanded by some of the most distinguished officers of the Indian Police—men like E. C. Handyside and A. F. Perrott, who seemed to know no fear and to be indifferent to hardship. Fifty years ago, every schoolboy knew something of the exploits of this force, but today, when admiration for our forebears is out of fashion, it seems worthwhile concluding this brief account with some extracts from an appreciation written by a frontier officer who later became Governor of the North-West Frontier Province.

Who, for example, can hear unmoved the exploits of the party of police in the village of Karrak in the Kohat district, invaded and sacked in January 1920 by a lashkar of 600 transborder savages drunk with lust and loot; of the close-pressed siege, by a handful of constables, of superior numbers of the finest guerilla fighters of the border strongly holding the little mission church? What is to be said of these men who, regardless of their own increasing casualties, hung on to their precarious positions through the long day to rise at dusk and consummate their ineffable impertinence by a mad charge straight at the enemy’s throat? . . .

What, again, of Head Constable Faqir Muhammad and Lance Naik Sher Azam who, with police and village levies, tracked and pursued, through twenty-four searching hours over thirty-five miles of tangled mountains, the gang of Badshah Gul, ‘outlaw king of the Bazid Khel’ and twenty times a murderer? What of the final effort of these desperately weary men, their limbs scarce able to drag them through the burning rocks; ‘sustained by the enthusiasm of Faqir Muhammad’, so runs the report, ‘they pressed on’—pressed on till they came up with this outlaw chieftain and killed him like a dog? And what, finally, of Foot Constables Gul Ahmad and Zabat Khan, on recruiting duty in Badaber, who, armed with a butcher’s cleaver and an axe, led the villagers out to meet an Afridi raiding gang killing one and wounding four of the raiders and capturing two rifles? What of the captives rescued, times without number, from the clutches of these merciless gangs—rescued at such cost!*

The North-East Frontier

On account of the fighting qualities of the tribesmen and the continual threat from Russia, the North-West Frontier has always loomed larger than the North-East in the eyes of the Government of India—an imbalance which was to have serious results in the Second World War. In reality, the North-East Frontier was an unsettled and indeed explosive area for many decades after the assumption of power by the British in Cachar in 1830 and in Upper Assam in 1838. The early problems of that region were not so much those concerned with the maintenance of law and order in the plains, as those connected with the defence of the frontier.

The responsibility for this defence was initially that of the Army, but in the interests of economy a body known as the Cachar Levy, with a strength of 700 in all ranks, was raised. ‘It was to be a cheap, semi-military body, clothed like the civil police and armed with the old Brown Bess rifle, but it was badly paid though slightly better than was the case with the ordinary police.’* Although its duties were really of a military nature, it was officered by civilians. This principle was soon extended to other areas and for nearly three decades the levies, the civil armed police and the military in Assam shared the duties of frontier defence against raids by Abors and other wild tribesmen. In 1863 the Cachar Levy was replaced by a Frontier Military Police unit commanded by a civil police officer, and within the next few years the other levies were similarly reorganized. In 1865 a Recruiting Depot for all the Frontier Military Police was opened at Sylhet and ‘European police inspectors, some of whom had been in the Army, were attached to all Frontier Police headquarters to supervise the military training and musketry of the men on lines similar to those in force in Light Infantry Regiments’.*

These units were made responsible for the watch and ward of the frontier, but by 1882 it was realized that this was a military rather than a civil task. In that year, the Frontier Military Police were therefore reorganized and converted into what was really a military organization, officered mainly from the Army, though for a time Indian Police officers commanded two of the battalions. The force was under the general control of the Inspector-General of Police and, in addition to frontier defence, was available for internal security purposes when required. In 1917 a further organizational change took place and the Frontier Military Police became the Assam Rifles.

Individual officers of the Indian Police now began to undertake the responsibilities and duties of political officers on the frontiers of Assam. At least one Indian Police officer had a frontier administrative charge in the 1870s, but ‘it was with the appointment of J. F. Needham as Assistant Political Officer, Sadiya, in 1882 that the real link between the Indian Police and the North-East Frontier of India was forged’.*

When Needham joined this post, the area round Sadiya in which the British Government exercised any influence was very limited. Within that area, Needham had criminal and civil jurisdiction, but of equal importance was his responsibility for developing close contact with the Abors. Needham had a special flair for this work, combined with the almost inexhaustible energy which enabled him to travel extensively and almost continuously, mainly on foot, and it is not too much to say that ‘by his exploration and discoveries he acquired an international reputation—and in his work between 1882 and 1905 laid the foundations of the modern North-East Frontier of India’.*

In the course of his tours he established the fact that the River Tsang-Po which rises m Tibet, did not, as had been supposed, flow into the Irrawaddy but ran through the River Dihang into the Brahmaputra. As Political Officer, in 1894 he accompanied the expedition of Gurkhas and Frontier Military Police against the Abors who had consistently raided British territory, and in 1899 in a similar capacity he accompanied the punitive expedition against the Mishmis. That expedition was undertaken in consequence of murders and abductions in British India, and it is of interest to note that whereas Needham proposed a force of only sixty men, over a thousand of all ranks were actually employed—a fact which drew forth a very caustic comment from Lord Curzon, the Viceroy.

Needham was succeeded by Noel Williamson of the Indian Police, who in turn was followed by another Indian Police officer, W. C. M. Dundas. They, too, were involved in punitive expeditions, but the only point requiring comment is the fact that, in the course of Williamson’s tour, he discovered that the Chinese had occupied Rima, south of the Tibetan frontier with India—a forward movement which led in due course to the Simla conference of 1912 and the Police, who in turn was followed by another Indian Police officer, W. C. M. Dundas. They, too, were involved in punitive expeditions, but the only point requiring comment is the fact that, in the course of Williamson’s tour, he discovered that the Chinese had occupied Rima, south of the Tibetan frontier with India—a forward movement which led in due course to the Simla conference of 1912 and the establishment of the McMahon Line, which was, however, disowned by the Chinese Government.

In 1912 frontier organization was put on a more systematic basis by the formation of two districts—the Sadiya Frontier Tract and Balipur Frontier Tract—each of which was placed under the charge of an Indian Police officer. There were, at this time, two notional boundaries, an inner line and an outer line. The latter was the international boundary, while the inner line marked the actual limit of British administration, the area in between the two lines being unadministered, but regarded as British territory. Subsequent developments, however, are outside the scope of this book and we are here only concerned to show that the consolidation of the British position on the North-East Frontier was largely the work of officers of the Indian Police.

Developments in Bengal on the frontier followed a somewhat different course and only require brief mention. The Chittagong Hill Tracts Frontier Police was raised in 1862 and was under the command of an Indian Police officer. It played an important part in the Lushai expeditions of 1871-72 and 1889-90, after which its role ‘was virtually that of a civil police force’, except that it also had to act as a kind of intelligence service, keeping the Commissioner of Chittagong Division—who was, ex officio, Inspector-General of Police for the Hill Tracts—informed of all events of importance. The force was recruited almost entirely within the district, but its training was organized in conjunction with that of the Eastern Frontier Rifles—the military police unit of Bengal, commanded by Army officers, though under the orders of the Inspector-General of Police, Bengal. Unlike the other North-East Frontier forces, the Chittagong force was not merged into the Assam Rifles in 1917, but continued its separate existence under the command of police officers to the end of our period.

The River Police

We now have to consider two special forces which, though wholly employed on police duties, were differentiated from the general police force by their specialized functions. Dacoities and robbery on the rivers of the Lower Provinces had been endemic from time immemorial, but it was not until the twentieth century that a serious and sustained effort was made to tackle this evil. In 1863 the heavy incidence of such crime led to the establishment of a River Police staff for Hooghly and the Sunderbans at an annual cost of Rs. 82,000, but in 1866, one of the periodical bouts of economy resulted in the abolition of the force. River patrol boats on a smaller scale were now attached to the District Police, but ‘the patrol boats were used for process serving and for the conveyance of police officers when out on investigation work as well as for patrolling’.* A report by the Commissioner in Dacca led to an enquiry by a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, who reported that ‘in many parts of the river boats will not travel at night, but congregate together for mutual protection against dacoits’. Boats were then sanctioned exclusively for patrol purposes, but the matter received little serious attention until 1885, when it was realized that organized gangs of criminals from the United Provinces were operating regularly on the Bengal rivers. Even then, no effective action was taken until the end of the century, when certain Indian newspapers began to ventilate the problem. A conference of police officers in December 1900 reported that river dacoities and thefts had become a serious menace and that many of the crimes committed were suppressed, but for reasons which are not clear, a second conference made light of these conclusions. The Inspector-General of Police, Bengal, was evidently not satisfied with this view and in 1902 Inspector Amdad Ali and another inspector were placed on special duty to ascertain the facts. Their report left no room for doubt that serious crime was rife on the rivers of Bengal.

At this stage the 1902 Police Commission referred to such crime as a serious blot on the police administration, and it recommended the constitution of a special force under a Superintendent of River Police. There was reason to believe that in many cases the criminals came from the United Provinces and in 1904 Mr. Bramley, Superintendent of Police, Benares, was deputed to study this aspect of the problem. Bramley found that, even as far back as 1833, the Bengal rivers had been infested with piratical gangs of boatmen from the United Provinces and he analysed the reasons which made the Lower Provinces attractive to them.

The comparative wealth of the inhabitants of Eastern Bengal; their manner of living in detached and isolated residences instead of big villages; the rottenness of their mat and thatched houses; the extraordinary habit of keeping all their money and valuables in an iron safe, with the key invariably kept in an ordinary wooden box beside it; the proximity of rivers which afford a safe means of attack or retreat; the exceptionally timid character of the people who, having exaggerated ideas of the prowess and daring of up-country criminals, allow themselves to be very easily overawed; the unsatisfactory supervision apparently exercised over the village police, a great number of whom are recruited in certain districts from the very castes in the United Provinces which form the subject of this report; the total absence of any arrangement for the maintenance of law and order on the water-ways; the failure of the Bengal Police to make a sufficiently vigorous use of the preventive sections of the Criminal Procedure Code, combined with the increased vigour displayed in recent years in this respect in these provinces; the entire want of systematic and organized co-operation between the police of the two provinces; and the frequent transfers of Superintendents in most of the districts affected; all these are factors deserving of careful consideration when dealing with the question of Inter-Provincial crime and criminals.*

On 26 August 1904 the Government of Bengal addressed the Government of India and made three connected proposals. First, they recommended that the waterways of Bengal and Orissa, and those from the United Provinces to Bengal, should be constituted into a single police district and placed under the control of a senior Superintendent of Police with two European assistants. Secondly, a river station under the charge of a tahsildar should be established at the junction of the Gogra and the Ganges to watch boats coming from the United Provinces. Thirdly, there should be a large number of River Police stations, each normally consisting of one sub-inspector, one head constable and five constables, and having attached to it a fast boat and crew. The River Police would be required to patrol the waterways constantly, each station linking up with that of its neighbours. It was estimated that the total cost of the scheme to be shared between Bengal and Assam, would be just under Rs. 2 lakhs annually.

The Indian Government in those days was, perhaps rightly, suspicious of all proposals for increased expenditure and before action was taken yet another report was required, though in the Government of India’s Resolution on the report of the 1902 Police Commission, an interim scheme was sanctioned. Mr. C. W. G. Plowden of the Indian Police in Bengal was directed to examine the matter further and submit proposals. His enquiries confirmed Bramley’s findings. He reported that any boat unfortunate enough to be caught on the river after dark was sure to be attacked, and that most of the crimes committed were not reported.

The reason why mahajans (or moneylenders) and merchants who are robbed refrain from reporting the case to the police is, because, as they say, no good can come of it. As a rule only cash, and unidentifiable property is taken, and except in rare instances it would not be possible for them to recognize their assailants who are careful only to attack on dark nights, and take the additional precaution of disguising themselves.*

Plowden considered that continual pressure must be applied by a special department for some years, and that a strong River Police under a centralized head was necessary.

The possibilities of delay were still not exhausted and it was not until 1911 that a system of river police was approved by the Secretary of State. The sanctioned strength was 140 and the River Police were placed under the control of a Superintendent of Police, whose headquarters was at Narayanganj in the District of Dacca. The River Police jurisdiction, which covered the network of rivers in East Bengal, was divided into a number of smaller areas, each having a floating and mobile police station, from which parties consisting of constables under an assistant sub-inspector or head constable patrolled in boats. Its activities covered a large area, throughout which crimes committed on the rivers or by persons using the rivers as a means of communication for the commission of crimes on land, were prevalent. The duties of the River Police were purely preventive, investigation being normally left to the staff of the regular police station of the area in which the crime was committed. The strength of the force was raised in 1912 and 1913, but was reduced in 1932. It then stood at one Superintendent of Police, two inspectors, twenty-two sub-inspectors, eighteen assistant sub-inspectors, two head constables, and 152 constables. They had fifteen launches, eighteen floating thanas (police stations) and twenty-one country boats. Unfortunately, India at this stage had entered on a period of financial stringency which was particularly severe in Bengal, and the Retrenchment Committee of 1932 recommended the abolition of the posts of inspector and upwards in the River Police, while the remainder of the force was to be absorbed into the District Police. These recommendations were implemented, and although the reasons for them appeared cogent, it is impossible not to regard this decision as a retrograde step.

The Railway Police

The duties of the Railway Police did not differ essentially from those of the District Police. It was brought into existence in 1862, in Bengal, to operate on the East India Railway, and was placed at the disposal of the Agent to the Railway. The Railway met the cost of the force, but it was under the charge of a Superintendent of the regular police and under the general control of the Inspector-General. In the case of offences under the Railways Act, the police took orders from the Agent, but they acted without such orders when offences against the ordinary law were committed. In 1868 a similar system was introduced on the Delhi and the Punjab Railways, which had previously maintained their own watchmen and chaukidars. The system of drafting men to the Railway Police from the District Police did not work well and in 1884 the practice of calling for volunteers was introduced.

The duties of the Railway Police at this time were threefold: the detection and prosecution of cognizable offences committed within station limits, the maintenance of order at stations, and watch and ward of goods and railway property. The work was arduous, the men were not provided with proper quarters near their work, and the force was therefore not popular. In 1888 the Railway Police in the Punjab were reorganized, three separate branches dealing respectively with law and order, detection and watch and ward being created.

When the Police Commission examined this system in 1902, they found three different systems in force. First, there was the district system under which the Railway Police formed part of the regular police in each district; secondly, there was the provincial system; while, thirdly, there was the railway administration system under which there was a separate railway police for each railway administration, irrespective of provincial boundaries. The Commission had no hesitation in finding in favour of the provincial system and this was, in fact, adopted with minor modifications. They disapproved of entrusting railway watch and ward duties to the Railway Police since ‘the custody of private property is the duty of the owner’, and this recommendation, too, was accepted by the Government of India. It was also laid down that the Railway Police of each province should be under the charge of a Deputy Inspector-General, and that, normally, a Superintendent’s railway charge should not exceed 1,500 miles in length. The Government of India agreed with the Commission that the officer in charge of a railway police station should be given the power of search in all police station limits through which his section of the railway ran, since the work of the Railway Police had often been hampered by the fact that they had previously had no right to search premises such as porters’ quarters close to the railway, but outside their jurisdiction. The Commission also drafted rules regulating relations between the District and Railway Police and these included the provision that the District Police should employ plain clothes constables to watch for the arrival or departure of known criminals or suspicious characters. The Government of India, however, adopted the rules in force in the United Provinces, which differed in some detail from the Commission’s recommendations.

The organization of the Railway Police was examined in 1907, and again by the Railway Police Committee in 1921, but no significant changes were made and the system in force at the end of our period was substantially that introduced by the Government of India’s orders on the recommendations of the 1902 Police Commission. The work of the Railway Police increased in volume and importance with the growth of the travelling habit, and, though from time to time a dramatic murder or robbery fell within their purview, more often they were occupied with humdrum crimes, such as theft from passengers in waiting rooms or in trains, or from goods sheds. Here an experienced police officer tells us that:

It is not surprising to note what might be called a tendency to specialization amongst the criminal element. Thus we find the platforms, waiting-rooms and sheds haunted by the pickpocket variety. The sneak-thief makes a fair livelihood on the running trains, especially at night and in the hot weather, when windows remain wide open for the sake of coolness. Goods trains used to be equally vulnerable until the introduction of rivetting. The writer recollects the perennial trouble on the Lahore-Karachi line every summer when the Punjab wheat crop was transported nightly en route to the port and Europe. Gangs of Janglis from villages lying along the track would pull up the signals, hold up the entire train and unload as many sacks as they could remove on their waiting camels. The wagons were merely secured with seals and bits of string, the snapping of which presented no difficulty. The guard was usually asleep and the driver and fireman were too terrified to intervene. It was eventually found necessary to provide armed guards to deal with the nuisance until more effective measures as outlined above could be introduced.*

Ticketless travelling was an everyday occurrence on a substantial scale, but of greater importance was the wholesale dishonesty of the booking office staff and ticket collectors. Here we may end on a lighter note by reproducing a police officer’s account of one aspect of this dishonesty at one of India’s main stations.

My officers told me that the ladies in the booking-offices, as a rule descendants of Anglo-Indians who had done good service at the time of the Indian Mutiny, imposed a tax of one anna on every third-class ticket issued. As there were one hundred trains a day, and all these were packed with third-class passengers, it is obvious that the takings were on a scale, which made the salaries of these ladies mere pocket-money. To test the truth of this I once concealed myself behind a pillar and as the purchaser of a ticket was coming away from the booking-office, I stepped out and asked him what he had paid for his ticket. The sum stated by him was one anna in excess of the fare. As I was questioning him, I saw the booking-office clerk waving her hand and heard her cry out that he had left one anna behind. These clerks were shaken up a few times by checks of their receipts and I did not worry them after that. After all who was I to disturb the immemorial customs of the East? The flat rate of one anna represented a kind of Purchase Tax. The passengers were quite happy to pay it, the collection involved the employment of no extra staff, and the Railways were enabled to pay low salaries to the staff.*

Chapter 29

Notable Police Officers

In this book we have in the main written of the police in general terms, but the quality of any force depends largely on that of its leadership, and it seems right before we draw to a close to give brief sketches of the lives of a few of those who have made the Indian police force great. The subjects have been selected by a sub-committee of the Indian Police Association and officers still alive have been excluded.

Charles Forjett

No name could more suitably stand at the head of this series than that of Charles Forjett, a man of mixed European and Indian parentage, who embarked on his service in the Bombay Presidency police with an intimate understanding of Indian beliefs and customs and a sound knowledge of several Indian languages. He was by nature an exceptionally good linguist, and as his hair was black and his complexion sallow, the stories told of his ability to disguise himself as an Indian are not—as such stories often are—apocryphal. According to a contemporary account he was ‘small in person, endowed . . . with no great strength he united the cool courage of a practised warrior to remarkable powers of endurance’.*

His first important public service was the re-organization of the police in the Belgaum Division, and his success in that task led the Bombay Government to place him in charge of the Bombay City police at a time when there had been many complaints of police inefficiency and dishonesty. Before assuming charge, he decided to investigate the character of those whom he was to command, and for this purpose he lived amongst them in disguise for a fortnight.* He soon discovered that not a single European constable was above taking a bribe, and within a short time of taking charge he had weeded out many of the worst offenders and begun a thorough reform of the whole organization.

By the time of the outbreak of the Mutiny, he had not only gained the confidence of the Governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, but had established a remarkable ascendancy over his own force. He was more alive than most of his fellow countrymen to the dangers which were imminent, but he refused to be stampeded into suspecting every Indian, and indeed it was because of his cool assessment of the facts that a well-known millionaire, Jaganath Shankarset, was cleared from entirely false accusations of treason made by prejudiced parties.*

The military force in Bombay City when the Mutiny broke out was fairly substantial, but there were only 400 British troops, and Forjett had definite information as to the unreliability of the sepoys, whom indeed he regarded as the only source of danger. The General Officer Commanding, however, like so many of his fellow military officers, refused to doubt the loyalty of his men, and when the Governor entrusted to him the arrangements for maintaining peace during the Mohurram (a period of mourning by Muslims for the deaths of Hassan and Hussain), the General proposed to disperse Forjett’s small force ofEuropeans into scattered units. Forjett realized the dangers of such a proceeding, and courageously informed the Governor of his intention to disobey the order. Elphinstone’s reply became a classic. ‘It is a very risky thing to disobey orders, but I am sure you will do nothing rash.’*

The Mohurram passed off without disorder, but on its final day the arrest by the police of a Christian drummer in the 10th Native Infantry, who had insulted a Hindu god, led to a tumultuous outbreak of the sepoys. Forjett confronted excited and menacing sepoys, sat calmly on his horse facing them, and called out to them that ‘if your men are bent on mischief the sooner it is over the better’. Forjett’s assistant then arrived with the fifty-five European policemen whom Forjett had refused to disperse. ‘The excitement of the sepoys subsided as if by magic and they fell back upon their lines.*

A greater danger, however, was ahead and there was only too much reason to fear an outbreak at the time of the Diwali (an autumnal festival). Meetings were being held by disaffected sepoys at the house of one Ganga Prasad. ‘Fertile in disguises, Mr. Forjett subsequently became an eye witness by means of holes made in the wall . . . of the proceedings of the sepoys.’ Moreover, he induced a Major Barrow to accompany him, and in this way was at last able to convince the General that the sepoys were indeed unreliable. The General then took action promptly and a number of sepoys were executed or transported for life. The danger was at an end and Elphinstone was able to release British troops for service against the mutineers elsewhere.

Forjett had in fact saved the situation and, although on his retirement he was allowed to receive a purse of £3,850 subscribed by both British and Indian residents of Bombay City, it is sad to record that no decoration was conferred on him and that when the value of the rupee declined, the British Government did not allow him to draw his police pension in sterling at its original equivalent. It is fortunate that Forjett and his like were not as fearful as the gentlemen in Whitehall of creating precedents.

Khan Bahadur Sheikh Abdul Aziz, C.I.E., O.B.E., K.P.M.

Khan Bahadur Sheikh Abdul Aziz can be said to have been a born policeman, one of those rare individuals with an uncanny instinct for unravelling crime. It led him to rise from the ranks of the Punjab Police to the Imperial Police, an achievement which must have had few parallels either at that time or since. His first posting in 1899 was as a head constable with the Railway Police, and before long he was in charge of that force in Amritsar. Here his natural flair showed itself almost as once in solving a sensational murder case. A European girl, travelling by rail between Mooltan and Lahore to be married, was found raped and with her throat cut. The difficulties of dealing with crime on the railway are obvious, but Abdul Aziz was not deterred by them, and after a most careful investigation he brought the crime home to an Indian Christian who confessed his guilt and was sentenced to death. Abdul Aziz was then promoted to the rank of inspector.

When the First World War broke out, he was transferred to the C.I.D. in Lahore, and soon found himself dealing with a case outside the normal range of a police officer’s duties. An attempt at mutiny by the men of the 23rd Cavalry in 1915 could not be regarded lightly in time of war, and Abdul Aziz was deputed to investigate it. He broke the conspiracy down and in due course twelve men of the regiment were hanged and others were sentenced to transportation. He received the King’s Police Medal and was made a Deputy Superintendent of Police. This promotion was followed by the conferment of the title of Khan Sahib on him in 1918, and a few years later he became Khan Bahadur and was given a grant of land.

Many men with his background would now have been content to rest on their laurels, but the Khan Bahadur was still full of energy.

In 1922-23 a gang of armed Sikhs known as the Babbar Akalis (the Akali lions), terrorized the central Punjab and committed many murders. Abdul Aziz was deputed to round them up and bring them to justice. This he finally achieved but not without great difficulty as the men were desperate and prepared to sell their lives dearly, whilst the villagers were too afraid to give evidence against them. For these services, Abdul Aziz received a further three squares of land and on 1 May 1924 was appointed by the Secretary of State for India to the Indian (Imperial) Police with the rank of Superintendent of Police—a most unusual distinction. In June 1925 he was made an O.B.E.*

In 1926 he left the C.I.D. for District work, but at the end of 1928 he was recalled to assist in unravelling the bomb outrage in the Legislative Assembly, and the murder of a British police officer and his orderly in Lahore. His investigation contributed to the success of the prosecution in the famous Punjab/U.P. conspiracy case. None of these activities was free from hazard and in 1930 his car was shot at and his driver received fatal injuries. After the conclusion of these cases, Abdul Aziz returned to District work and in recognition of his services he was awarded the C.I.E.

Abdul Aziz could not be spared for long from the special work of the C.I.D. and in 1934 he acted for a time as Deputy Inspector-General in charge of the Punjab C.I.D. Shortly thereafter, he retired full of honours and respected by all his colleagues and not without justice was he known amongst them as ‘the Sherlock Holmes of India’.

Eric Charles Handyside, C.I.E., O.B.E., K.P.M.

It is difficult to write about Eric Charles Handyside without appearing to exaggerate, and it would in any case be impossible within the space of a few hundred words to do justice to this tempestuous son of a Cornish father and a Russian mother, who grew to understand and respect the Pathans perhaps more completely than any other European of his time. The first twelve years of his service in the Indian Police were spent in the Punjab, where his exploits in capturing a band of dangerous escaped convicts, after three days hard marching in scorching heat with little food and practically no water, were rewarded with the King’s Police Medal.

It was, however, after his transfer to the North-West Frontier Province in 1913 that Handyside, who did not seem to know the meaning of fear, really came into his own. In that harsh region, the call was not for secretariat officials, but for men of action and Handyside’s love of danger and hatred of office work now met that need exactly. A police officer serving under him describes Handyside’s office as something ‘which would have made the Augean stables look like a trim lady’s boudoir by comparison. Telegrams, D.O. letters, memoranda marked Immediate or Most Urgent, were piled about on chairs and on the floor . . . all unopened’. Out in the field, however, a very different Handyside appeared—decisive, quick, brave and, in all, a man never to be forgotten.

In 1913, the tribal militia was expanded into the Frontier Constabulary and Handyside was appointed to command its senior formation in Peshawar, an ideal post for a man of his temperament. No sooner had he arrived, knowing nothing of the Pathans or their language, than he commanded a round-up of the Khudakhel tribe, who were sheltering criminals and had refused to pay a fine.

The round-up was a great success and Handyside and his men arrested the leading recalcitrants, captured more than enough Khudakhel cattle to pay the fine and the Khudakhels ate humble pie. But with the captured train there marched back the most dejected and pathetic Handyside. Not a shot had been fired; the tribesmen were the most miserable contemptible set of rats.*

This cause of dissatisfaction was soon removed, and much of his life in the next few years was spent in pursuing armed raiders or rounding up desperate criminals.

In 1919, at the beginning of the Afghan War, when Handyside was Superintendent of Police at Dera Ismail Khan, he hastily collected a small force and hurried out to intercept a much larger body of Mahsuds and Wazirs, who were advancing towards the strategically important town of Gomal. He held them off, and when a strong body of Afghan traders, subjects of the Amir, happened to arrive on their way home, they were induced by his personality and prestige to fight for him against the attackers. With their help he held Gomal until a British column arrived to relieve him. By that time the enemy dead were lying in front of his position, and the story is told that, when Handyside handed over to the relieving Brigadier, he saluted smartly and said with the suspicion of a wink: ‘This is your job, sir, I am only a civilian.’*

Two years later, Handyside became the Commandant of the Frontier Constabulary. Under frontier conditions, few things created more anxiety than the theft of rifles, and when in January 1923 forty-one .303 rifles disappeared from the Magazine of the Kohat District Police Lines, harsh things were said by the Government of India. It soon appeared that the rifles were in the possession of a notorious Basti Khel Afridi just across the frontier, and Handyside and his men were sent out to regain them. After surrounding the Basti Khel tower and placing a mountain battery on the height above it, Handyside announced his intention of searching for the missing weapons. The women were allowed to leave—

two of them had surprisingly hairy hands and another did not sufficiently conceal his beard under his veil. One of these fairies was found to have four Mills bombs concealed in his pyjamas. All three were outlaws.

A careful search of the tower revealed nothing, but Handyside noticed that, when he stamped on the floor at the base of the tower, it gave a hollow ring. Digging soon led to a secret tunnel and there twenty-one of the stolen rifles were found.*

In police service on the frontier death was always just round the corner, and for Handyside the end came in April 1926 when he accompanied one of his officers, Mr. E. Ridley Taylor, on an expedition which had as its object the capture of a gang of raiders, including two outlaws, who had taken refuge in a village not far from Peshawar.

The informer was not certain in which house the outlaws were concealed, and while Ridley Taylor was putting a cordon round the village, Handyside accompanied by a subedar and a sepoy, went to search the houses. As he was crossing the compound he was shot twice. The first shot passed across his abdomen and would probably not have been fatal. But the second shot caught him between the shoulders and passed through his heart killing him instantly.

Ridley Taylor assumed command, and after one outlaw had surrendered the house was bombed and another raider was killed. The others then surrendered.*

Handyside had always dreaded retirement and had hoped that he might die on the frontier. Now after thirteen years of hazardous service in the Frontier Constabulary, his wish had been granted. His death, however, was felt as a grievous loss throughout the service, for in the words of a usually dull official chronicle

some of his exploits were of epic quality and he himself had become a theme of border legend and song. Even the wild tribesmen against whom he had so often fought, shared the widespread grief at his death.*

At the entrance to the Kohat Pass a memorial column was erected and inscribed with the one word HANDYSIDE. The fittest comment on his passing is that of his biographer: ‘Felix opportunitate mortis.’

John Paul Warburton, C.I.E.

John Paul Warburton has been described as India’s greatest detective, and while it is not necessary to adjudicate on that claim, it can safely be said that few men have possessed his power of unravelling criminal problems—a power which led to his being known as ‘Controller of Devils’ though he was also perhaps more widely known and affectionately called ‘Button Sahib’. There is a certain amount of mystery about his birth. His mother, Shah Jahan Begum, a relative of the King of Afghanistan, was first married to one Sirdar Faiz Talab Khan, and after he divorced her she became the wife of Robert Warburton, an Ensign of Artillery. It is not clear which of the two men was John’s father, but, as his name before his mother’s escape from Afghanistan was Jahan Dad Khan, and as Robert evidently did not regard him as on the same footing as John’s younger brother (who was undoubtedly Robert’s son), it seems probable that he was wholly Afghan by birth.

His marriage in 1863 was almost as romantic as his birth and infancy. He went out one day for an early morning run when he came on a young woman being attacked by a rabid dog, and he rushed without a moment’s hesitation to her rescue.

He at once fell in love with her and the couple were soon married in Ludhiana.

John’s father did well in the Army and became a Lieutenant-Colonel, and this may be the reason why, in 1864, John was able to secure an appointment as Assistant Superintendent of Police in the Punjab. He was naturally fluent in the local languages and when, in addition, he showed signs of considerable detective skill, it was clear that he was marked for early promotion. In 1872 he became Superintendent of Police in Ludhiana at a time when crime was rife in the Punjab, and his first opportunity of showing his mettle there was in connection with a troublesome criminal tribe, the Baurias, who were active in committing highway robberies and in kidnapping and selling girls. Within a year he had dealt with the ringleaders and put an end to Bauria terrorism.

His reputation was now made, but was still further enhanced by the skill with which he dealt with the case of Sharf-ud-Din which we have discussed in an earlier chapter. For the next few years, he was concerned with routine police work, but when a widespread series of dacoities baffled the police and frightened the public in 1881, ‘Button Sahib’ was the obvious man to deal with the situation. He followed what may be called the Sleeman method and having discovered that the dacoits belonged to the Sansi tribe, he induced some of them to become approvers. Before long he had broken up the gang and restored peace to the countryside.

Legends now began to accumulate regarding his methods, and they included the familiar but probably untrue stories as to his ability to adopt various disguises and so obtain access to criminal haunts. Nothing so simple underlay his success. He achieved his results by a remarkable understanding of criminal psychology and by a capacity for relentless, logical deduction from ascertained clues. Thus equipped, he went from strength to strength. He suppressed widespread criminal operations conducted in various parts of India by Pathans and he put an end to the depredations of robbers in Ludhiana. In quite a different field of activity, on one occasion, by sheer force of personality, he compelled mutually hostile mobs of Hindus and Muslims to retire. Perhaps his most difficult assignment was the investigation of charges of corruption against a District and Sessions Judge. His report led in due course to the appointment of a Commission of Enquiry which found the Judge guilty on seven charges.

On his retirement in 1900 from the Indian Police, he became Inspector-General of Police under the Maharaja of Patiala, where he distinguished himself at the time of the bubonic plague, when a frenzied mob attacked a dispensary in the headquarters town. His timely arrival saved the lives of the British doctor and his assistants.

It is generally believed that Warburton was the model for Kipling’s character of a police officer, Strickland, about whom he wrote in the Civil and Military Gazette. It is, at least, certain that Kipling met Warburton and derived much of his knowledge of police matters from him. Warburton was indeed a remarkable man who might well have been the subject of a work of historical fiction, and it has been truly said of him that ‘he went through life with a brave heart and clean hands’.*

Khan Bahadur Tasadduq Hussain, M.B.E., K.P.M.

Khan Bahadur Tasadduq Hussain was one of that small band of men who, by sheer force of ability and personality, rose from the rank of sub-inspector to that of Superintendent and to membership of the Imperial Indian Police. He was born at Hapur in the Meerut District of the United Provinces in 1884, and came from a family with a splendid tradition of police service. He entered the service as a probationary sub-inspector in 1907, and within four years he was assigned to the Provincial C.I.D. wherein he gained rapid promotion and became a Deputy Superintendent in 1917. He was then placed on special duty in connection with the Ghadr movement and the connected conspiracies in which the Germans played an important part in South-East Asia. This involved trekking on foot over the most difficult country in Burma, Siam and the Strait Settlements, accompanied only by an Indian sub-inspector, a party of coolies and half-a-dozen ponies. The hazards of a journey of this kind in the hunt for revolutionaries can best be realized from the fact that

the sub-inspector was murdered en route by a gang of the conspirators . . . all the ponies succumbed to the appalling climate and conditions of the journey; all save two of the coolies bolted; and on one occasion Tasadduq only saved himself by his ready wit when he was caught by one of the men he was following and had an automatic pistol pressed against his chest.*

Apart from the danger, the physical hardships of this eighteen months tour of duty in these unhealthy areas were considerable.

By way of precaution against various kinds of enemy, from prowling men to more ordinary beasts of prey and snakes, he would make his bed of an inadequate waterproof sheet or two spread over a branch of some great tree and then sleep as best he could, in swarms of buzzing, stinging insects.

At the end of the eighteen months which the investigation occupied, his health had suffered considerably, but he had been successful and several of the conspirators went to the gallows as a result of his determined and skilful investigation.

At this stage he was appointed to the Central Intelligence Department. By now he had become an expert on communism and terrorism and it was natural, therefore, that he should have been employed in investigations in connection with the Kakori and Meerut conspiracy cases. This work still further enhanced his reputation and in 1921 he was confirmed as Superintendent of Police. He had already been made, first a Khan Sahib, and then a Khan Bahadur, and in 1928 he was awarded a much-merited King’s Police Medal. In the following year he became Assistant Director of the Intelligence Bureau, but, unfortunately, he only lived four years after his appointment to that key post.

He was robust of body and mind, indifferent to danger or hardship, and possessed of the highest kind of patriotism. He was indeed a true Indian patriot, who deplored political extremism and was convinced that he could best serve India by helping to protect her against disorder, whether from outside or inside. He was greatly respected by his colleagues and particularly by his last chief, Sir Horace Williamson, who wrote of him that ‘his epitaph may be written in the words of the inscription on the King’s Police Medal he so well earned—’To guard my people’.’

Frederick S. Young, C.I.E., C.B.E., K.P.M.

Frederick Young, one of the many Scots who have distinguished themselves in the Indian services, passed into the Indian Police in 1909 and was posted to the United Provinces. Almost the whole of his police life was spent in the fight against dacoity, and his initiation into that struggle took place in 1913 when he was Assistant Superintendent of Police at Gorakhpur. That District is on the borders of Nepal and dacoity based on that country was endemic. In June 1913 he set off with a force of armed police to raid a house where two notorious Nepali dacoits were being harboured by a prostitute close to the border. After a cordon had been thrown round the house, Young with an inspector and one or two men broke into it and ‘rushed on the two dacoits, both of whom were armed with pistols’. Young grappled with one of them and held him until the rest of the police party arrived. He was rightly awarded the King’s Police Medal for gallantry—-and there must be very few police officers who have been decorated within four years of joining the service.

The most spectacular incident in his service occurred in 1919, when he set off for a village where it was known that an armed gang was planning a dacoity the following night. Young and his party arrived just in time. He rushed into the courtyard of the house, where the dacoits had already arrived, and was charged by a dacoit armed with a spear. Young promptly shot him down and for this and other similar episodes he was awarded a Bar to the King’s Police Medal.

By this time, his reputation had been established, and when a special Dacoity Police Force was formed after the First World War to destroy a well-organized and formidable gang of about 200 dacoits belonging to the criminal tribe known as Bhantus, Young was the obvious choice to head it. The leader of the gang, one Sultana, had organized his followers on para-military lines, and had developed a highly efficient intelligence service which made it extremely difficult for Young’s men to carry out surprise raids or to approach Sultana’s camp without being seen by the sentinels posted round it. A number of successful raids were nevertheless made, several members of the gang were captured, and an attempt to ambush Sultana and his gang as they were crossing a bridge was only foiled by the accidental discharge of a constable’s rifle.

By the end of 1923 as the result of constant raids on the gang, it was apparent that the police were gaining the upper hand. There were also definite signs of demoralisation in the Bhantu ranks, so much so that Young thought that Sultana might be thinking of making a surrender. Accordingly, Young sent messages to Sultana suggesting as the game was up, he should surrender and avoid further bloodshed. Sultana’s reaction was to suggest to Young that they might meet alone and unarmed in a remote part of the forest to discuss surrender terms. Young agreed and a rendezvous was fixed which was a clearing in the densest part of the jungle. At the appointed date and time, Young with two of his trusted orderlies emerged from one side of the plain and Sultana and his two men from the opposite side. After a discussion which lasted some two hours, the outcome was that Sultana announced he was ready to surrender provided a promise could be given that he would not be hanged for the murders his gang had committed. Young, of course, would not give this promise and insisted on unconditional surrender or no surrender at all. Sultana was not ready for unconditional surrender and the two antagonists left the scene in opposite directions on more or less amicable terms. But before they left, Sultana warned Young not to expose himself unnecessarily as he had done in the past when, according to Sultana, he could have shot him and other British officers with him on their treks through the jungle. That he had not done so was, he said, because he had great respect for Young and for the way he was conducting the campaign against him.*

After this incident, operations continued for another three months, at the end of which Sultana and four of his followers were captured in the jungle by a party of Special Dacoity Police led by Young. This was the end of the gang, and 120 dacoits were prosecuted on evidence proving their participation in 200 dacoities. Sultana and others were hanged and others received long terms of imprisonment.

The Special Dacoity Force continued to operate for the next seven years, after which Young served with outstanding success as Inspector-General of Police in the Jaipur State. In 1939 he returned to the United Provinces as Deputy Inspector-General, but in 1942 he was seconded to the Sind Province to assist in the suppression of the Hur rebellion. When that rebellion led to the establishment of martial law in the Province, Young was appointed Police Intelligence Officer to the Chief Administrator of Martial Law, and was responsible for the deployment of police forces in the disturbed area. As we have seen earlier, the rebellion was brought under control after some eighteen months of martial law, during which a large number of Hurs were arrested and convicted. Throughout these operations, Young played a conspicuous part. In recognition of his services in Sind, he was awarded the C.B.E. in 1944.

In 1945, Young retired permanently from the Indian Police to become Inspector-General of Police of Bhopal State. His health deteriorated, and on 21 December 1948 he died in Bhopal. Few men have ever done better than Young in their struggle against the forces of disorder.

Sir Charles Augustus Tegart, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., M.V.O., K.P.M.

It is difficult for a former Bengal Civilian to write with restraint of Charles Tegart, whose place as a legendary figure in Bengal can only be compared to that of Handyside in the North-West Frontier Province, or Warburton in the Punjab. To describe Tegart as imperturbable in the face of the danger which beset him for many years, would be a ridiculous understatement—and yet Tegart himself would have hated overstatement of his achievements. He was one of those men who radiate confidence, and during the worst days of the terrorist movement, the sight of Tegart driving through the streets of Calcutta in an open car with his faithful dog perched on the hood behind him, did more than almost anything else to keep up the morale of those who were fighting the revolutionary movement. Those who worked with him felt that somehow or other he could not fail.

Tegart, the second son of an Irish parson, entered the Indian Police in 1901 and was posted to Bengal, and after a few years of the normal routine of a police officer, in 1906 he became a Deputy Commissioner of Police, Calcutta. Almost at once, he became closely concerned with the investigation of the Maniktola conspiracy, and when in 1913 he joined the Intelligence Branch, it was clear that he would be the spearhead of the fight against terrorism in Bengal. He inspired that Branch with his own personality on the basis of complete trust between himself and those who worked with him, and his insistence on participating himself in the most hazardous raids and searches, won him the unlimited admiration of officials throughout the Province. To recount Tegart’s many achievements during the next two decades, would be in great measure to repeat what has already been written about the terrorist movement.

Brief reference must, however, be made to the part played by him in countering the German plot to assist an armed rising in Bengal during the First World War. When information was received of the link between the Germans and the terrorists, he led a raid on a revolutionary hideout in the jungle. The revolutionaries opened fire, the police returned it, and the rebel leader, Jotin Mukherji, was killed. ‘The terrorists believed . . . that it was Tegart’s bullet which had killed him. From that time until he left India in 1931, Tegart’s life was sought by the terrorists’.* Tegart was too much of a realist to underrate the constant danger under which he lived, but he never showed the least sign of fear or lost his zest for life.

In 1923, after a few years spent with the Army in France, and then with the Army of Occupation, Tegart returned to Calcutta as Commissioner of Police. He continued to be the main driving force against terrorism in Calcutta, where he worked in close co-operation with the Intelligence Branch which was responsible for the campaign in Bengal as a whole. At the same time he waged an intensive campaign against the robbery and violence which were prevalent in Calcutta at that time. That campaign had a marked effect, and even papers violently opposed to the British Government paid tribute to him. One indeed went so far as to state that Tegart was an example of the fact that ‘a public officer may be popular and dutiful even though he may be employed by the Police Department of a bureaucratic Government’.*

In spite of this heavy burden of work, Tegart found time to play, and there is a delightful story told about him which illustrates his sense of fun.

Tegart had for some time used a small iron bomb as a paperweight on his desk on the assumption that it had deteriorated and was harmless. One day when engaged in a chat with two friends, he picked it up and threw it across the room at a map, saying ‘Lets have a shot at Bogra’ [an unattractive up-country station.] Instantly there was a shattering explosion, part of the wall blew out, dust and debris littered the room, and members of the staff came running in convinced that yet another assassination had taken place.*

In 1926 Tegart was knighted. After a short leave, he returned to Calcutta to deal with what was perhaps the worst phase of the terrorist movement. In 1930, yet another attempt on his life led to a remarkable meeting in which Europeans and Indians of many differing shades of political thought united in expressing their relief at the escape, and stating that: ‘No man is less of an oppressor and it was a great injustice that he should be attacked just because he does his duty’.*

Tegart had now served for thirty strenuous years and it was a fitting recognition of what he had done that he was appointed to the India Council, the first police officer ever to hold that high post. His name is permanently imprinted on the mind of every individual who served in the Indian Civil Service or the Indian Police in Bengal at that time. He was in fact a model which many of us would have wished to follow had we been capable of doing so.

Epilogue

On 15 August 1947, amidst scenes of great warmth and colour, India attained independence and the British Raj was at an end. The occasion was surcharged with emotion and the thoughts and feelings of the participants were strangely confused. The Indian mood was one of exaltation, but there were overtones of sadness at the division of the country. For the British, the pattern was complex. There was the inevitable nostalgia at the passing of a great institution; for some, there was the knowledge that their life’s work was over; while for all, there was pride in the fact that Britain had kept her word. Only for the Pakistanis in Karachi was satisfaction unalloyed.

As emotion subsided to make room for thought, the minds of many must have turned to the past and to an assessment of the successes and failures of British rule. Prominent amongst the successes which they must have recalled were the introduction of the parliamentary system and the firm establishment of law and order. It is, however, unlikely that many of those present on this historic occasion paused to remember how much India owed to the men of the Indian police—the lai pagri-walas, the underpaid but loyal inspectors and sub-inspectors, and the British and Indian officers who had given the force its cohesion and its high sense of duty.

On this day of rejoicing police officers had little time for such musings, but when the tumult and the shouting were over, no doubt some of them cast their minds back to the time when the foundations of a modern police system were laid by Act V of 1861. Much indeed had been achieved in ninety years. Thuggee and the cult of poisoning were things of the past; dacoity had been brought under control; scientific technique had been applied to the detection of crime; and life had been made secure for the ordinary citizen. A man could now send his wife or children from one end of the country to the other in safety, and a merchant could remit funds knowing that they would reach their destination.

This indeed is what the British Empire in India had meant, and one of its main instruments had been the Indian police system. In these developments a leading role had been played by the officers of that great service, the Indian Police. Many and diverse were the gifts which they brought to their task. Some had a flair for the detection of crime; others were born organizers of men; and nearly all had moral and physical courage of a high order. More important even than these qualities was the capacity for leadership which so many of them possessed. By virtue of this quality they welded men of many races and creeds into an effective force, and they bequeathed to independent India a reliable instrument for the maintenance of law and order.

Bibliography

Chapter 2

Abul Fazl ’Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, translated by H. S. Jarrett.
Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire A.D. 1656-1668.
The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India 1615-1619, edited by William Foster.
The History of the Madras Police (Centenary Number).
Kautilya, Arthasastra, translated by R. Shamasastry.
J. M. M'Crindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian.
F. W. Maitland, Constitutional History of England.
Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration.
Robert Sewell, A Forgotten Empire.
Travels in India of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, edited by William Crooke.
E. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform (Oxford History of England).

Chapter 3

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. V.
Charters Granted to the East India Company. A bound volume in the London Library.
J. S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone.
P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935.

Chapter 4

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. V.
Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812.
W. Foster, ed., The English Factories in India.
The History of the Madras Police.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935.
H. D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras.
Report of the Indian Police Commission, 1902.
J. Talboys Wheeler, Madras in the Olden Times.

Chapter 5

Philip Anderson, The English in Western India.
S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police.
S. M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay.
W. Foster, ed., The English Factories in India.
Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island.
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. VIII.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935.
P. B. M. Malabari, Bombay in the Making.
W. H. Morley, An Analytical Digest of Indian Cases.
Selection from the Records of the Government of Bombay. Judicial Department, 1853.

Chapter 6

F. D. Ascoli, The Early Revenue History of Bengal.
William Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs.
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. V.
Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the affairs of the East India Company.
W. R. Gourlay, A Contribution Towards a History of the Police in Bengal.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935.
Frederick Shore, Notes on Indian Affairs.
Henry Verelst, A View of the Present State of the English Government in Bengal.

Chapter 7

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. VI.
J. Gibbs, Memorandum on the Sind Police.
W. R. Gourlay, A Contribution Towards a History of the Police in Bengal.
Government of Bombay, Selections from the Records of the Police Branch of the Judicial Department.
P. Hari Rao, The Indian Police Act (Act V of 1861).
The History of the Madras Police.
William Napier, History of General Sir Charles Napier’s Administration of Scinde.
N. A. Razvi, Our Police Heritage.
Report of the Commissioners for the Investigation of Alleged Cases of Torture in the Madras Presidency.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1860.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.
W. H. Sleeman, A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 1849-50.
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India.
Selections from the Record of Government Papers Relating to the Police of India (1861).

Chapter 8

J. C. Curry, The Indian Police.
W. R. Gourlay, A Contribution Towards a History of the Police in Bengal.
The History of the Madras Police.
B. R. Kallia, A History of the Development of the Police in the Punjab, 1849-1905.
N. A. Razvi, Our Police Heritage.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.

Chapter 9

S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police.
W. R. Gourlay, A Contribution Towards a History of the Police in Bengal.
The History of the Madras Police.
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. VIII.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.

Chapter 10

D. C. Boulger, Lord William Bentinck.
P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
Charles Hervey, Some Records of Crime.
Report of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department.
W. H. Sleeman, Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India.
E. Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs.

Chapter 11

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. VI.
Edward C. Cox, Police and Crime in India.
H. S. Gour, The Penal Law of India.
The India Code of Criminal Procedure, edited by Fendall Currie.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935
L. S. S. O’Malley, Modern India and the West.

Chapter 12

Abul Fazl ’Allami, Ain-i-Akbari.
T. C. Arthur, Reminiscences of an Indian Police Official.
Bombay Police Administration Report, 1879.
Edward C. Cox, Police and Crime in India.
C. E. Gouldsbury, Reminiscences of a Stowaway.
P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
G. D. Martineau, Controller of Devils.
Punjab Police Administration Report, 1894.
W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official.
V. Smith, Akbar, the Great Mogul.
The Police Journal, Vol. II, 1929.

Chapter 13

S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police.
W. R. Gourlay, A Contribution Towards a History of the Police in Bengal.
G. H. R. Halland, Punjab—Some Memories of an Indian Police Officer.
The History of the Madras Police.
Orissa Police Manual.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.
Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms. (The Montagu-Chelmsford Report).
Report of the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India. (The Islington Commission).
Report of the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services of India. (The Lee Commission).
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India, 1908-9.

Chapter 14

F. S. V. Donnison, Burma.
F. S. V. Donnison, Public Administration in Burma, Royal Institute of International Affairs.
D. G. E. Hall, Burma.
G. E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma 1824-1942.
Cambridge History of India, Vol. V, Chapter XXX, Vol. VI, Chapter XXIV.
Sir Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma.
Lieut-General Albert Fytche, Burma Past and Present, Vols. I and II.
Sir Charles Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma.
Major J. L. Christian, Burma and the Japanese Invader.
J. S. Furnivall, The Fashioning of Leviathan: The Beginnings of British Rule in Burma, Journal of the Burma Research Society, Vol. XXIX, 1.

Chapter 15

The Cambridge History of India.
Reginald Coupland, The Constitutional Problem in India.
P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide.
A. J. Berriedale Keith, A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935.
E. W. R. Lumby, The Transfer of Power in India.
V. P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India.
Report of the Indian Statutory Commission. (The Simon Commission).
Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms.

Chapter 16

Bengal Police Administration Report, 1909.
By Which Path to Salvation? (A collection of articles from Jugantur)
Valentine Chirol, India.
P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
Report of the Sedition Committee 1918.
D. V. Tahmankar, Lokomanya Tilak.

Chapter 17

Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi.
Olaf Caroe, The Pathans.
J. C. Curry, The Joy of the Working.
Has Congress Failed?, by a Student of Public Affairs.
History of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement. Government of India, 1925.
Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to Investigate the Disturbances in the Punjab, etc. (The Hunter Report).
Pattabhi Sitaramayya, The History of the Indian National Congress.
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India 1921-34.

Chapter 18

Bengal Police Administration Report, 1930.
Report on the Disturbances in Chittagong on 30 August 1931 and the following days.
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India, 1923-1933.

Chapter 19

S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police.
P. J. Griffiths, The British in India.
Madras Police Administration Report, 1912.
Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms.

Chapter 20

P. J. Griffiths, The British Impact on India.
R. H. Hitchcock, A History of the Malabar Rebellion 1921.

Chapter 21

Bihar and Orissa Police Administration Report, 1926.
A Note on the Guru-ka-Bagh Affair, 1922.
Punjab Police Administration Report, 1923.
Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms.
Khushwant Singh, The Sikhs.
Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India, 1923-35.

Chapter 23

J. C. Curry, The Indian Police.
W. A. Gayer, The Detection of Burglary in India.
S. T. Hollins, No Ten Commandments.
G. G. B. Iver, In an Indian District.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.
E. M. Rogers, ‘The Delhi Trunk Crime’, Indian Police Journal, Vol. I, no. 2, October 1954.

Chapter 24

E. R. Henry, The Classification and Use of Fingerprints.
he History of the Madras Police.
The Patna Journal of Medicine, Vol. XXXI, nos. 2-6, February-June 1957.

Chapter 25

Correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Government of India and the Provincial Governments. (Papers in the India Office Library, London.) As quoted in the text.
J. G. Elliot, The Frontier.
The History of the Madras Police.
K. M. Panikkar, The Foundations of New India.
Punjab Police Rules.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1860.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.

Chapter 26

K. R. Eates, The Kingri Pirs and Hurs of Sind.
H. K. Kaul and L. L. Tomkins, Report on Questions Relating to the Administration of the Criminal Tribes in the Punjab.
H. T. Lambrick, The Hurs of Sind.
Punjab Police Administration Report, 1895.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.

Chapter 27

Bihar Police Administration Report, 1943.
Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances 1942-49. (Government of India Press, 1943).

Chapter 28

P. B. Bramley, Report on River Crime and River Police Reorganization Scheme.
A Brief History of the 2nd Lancers (Gardner’s Horse).
Frontier Constabulary, Fortieth Anniversary Reunion Booklet.
Sir Edward Gait, History of Assam.
B. R. Kallia, A History of the Development of the Police in the Punjab, 1849-1905.
North-West Frontier Police Administration Report, 1940-41
Peshawar District Gazetteer, 1931.
Haig Rees, The Poona Horse.
Report of the Indian Police Commission 1902.
Report of the Railway Police Committee 1921.
Sadiya Frontier Tracts District Gazetteer, 1928.
A. H. A. Simcox, The Khandesh Bhil Corps.
L. W. Shakespear, History of the Assam Rifles.

Chapter 29

John Coatman, Eric Charles Handyside.
J. C. Curry, Tegart of the Indian Police.
S. M. Edwardes, The Bombay City Police.
J. W. Kaye and G. B. Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, Vol. V, p. 31.
G. D. Martineau, Controller of Devils.

To Guard My People

Growth and Organization

The Impact of Politics

Operations and Technique

Preface

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

The Police in pre-British India

The Hindu Period

The Period of Muslim Rule

Chapter 3

The Constitutional Background

Chapter 4

Two Centuries of Experiment I: Madras

Early Administration of Justice

The Pedda Naiks

Reorganization

Madras Mofussil Police

Chapter 5

Two Centuries of Experiment II: Bombay

Early Organization

A Period of Experiment

Regulation I of 1812

Bombay Mofussil

Chapter 6

Two Centuries of Experiment III: Bengal

The Administration of Warren Hastings

The Cornwallis Policy

The Fifth Report

Four Decades of Hesitation

The Calcutta Police

Chapter 7

The Age of Reform

Police Organization in Sind

Bombay Presidency

The Punjab — The Dual System

Reorganization in Oudh

Development in Madras

Bengal

The Indian Police Commission 1860

Chapter 8

The Working of Act V

The Fraser Commission

The Superior Police Services

The Police and the Magistracy

Recruitment and Training

The Village Police

Conclusions

Chapter 9

The Presidency Towns

Calcutta

Madras City

Bombay City

Chapter 10

The Thagi and Dakaiti Department

The Department under Sleeman

Poisoners and Dacoits

Chapter 11

The Criminal Law

The Criminal Procedure Code

The Evidence Act

Chapter 12

The Police at Work

Dacoity and Poisoning

Impersonation and Forgery

Suttee

Chapter 13

Police Organization in the Twentieth Century

Bengal

Punjab

Madras

Orissa

Bombay Presidency

Village Police

Indianization of the Services

Chapter 14

The Police in Burma

Arakan and Tenasserim

Part Two — The Impact of Politics