India, July and August 1895
The orator stood in a square just outside of the Dal Bazaar, amid a gathering crowd. It was dangerous for him to speak, and just as dangerous to listen: he and his kind had been banned from Gwalior, and the memory of the massacre three years past still hung over the city. But that very memory, and all the others that had been laid down since, made the listeners willing to take the risk.
“They want home rule in the Raj,” the speaker was saying. “We have home rule here, or so they tell us. But what have we gained by it? Instead of bowing to a governor’s whims, we bow to a maharajah’s. In the Raj, they play at elections; here, we don’t even have that. Your life is worth nothing if the maharajah’s men want to take it – how much was six-year-old Lakshmi’s life worth when they shot her the other day? The people deserve more than a tyrant who doesn’t care if they die, doesn’t care if they starve…”
The orator fell to silence as a new sound came into the square: the noise of many horsemen, led by a captain in a splendid uniform. Their swords were drawn, and their rifles gleamed in the sunlight.
The crowd cursed and jeered as the cavalrymen formed a line, but they knew they could do no more, not against such force. Some began edging backwards; others turned to flee.
“You are commanded to disperse,” began the captain, but the orator spoke over him: “They’ve come to silence me, but the people can’t be silenced forever…”
And just then, his words were proven true.
Shots rang out from the buildings on either side of the bazaar – many shots, carefully aimed, from repeating rifles. The captain went down before he ever knew he was under attack, and half his men with him. More fell as the men in the houses kept firing.
Screams came from the crowd as they realized what was happening – screams of fear and hatred, screams of pain from those who had been caught in the crossfire. But there were also shouts of defiance from men in the crowd who were now waving flags overhead – men who had known all along that this would happen.
“To the palace!” they shouted. “To the palace! Down with the tyrant!”
Some still fled, wanting nothing of what the rally had now become. But others took courage from the men with the flags, and “Down with the tyrant!” came from hundreds of throats.
The crowd surged forward into the cavalrymen, who were still in shock and without leadership. Some stood and fought, and dozens fell to their sabers, but they fought for themselves, not as a unit, and the crowd surrounded them and dragged them down.
“To the palace!” the orator cried again, mounted on a black horse that had lately been the captain’s. “The palace!” the crowd shouted, and followed.
Long ago, the maharajahs of this land had lived in Gwalior Fort, and if they still had done, the revolution would have ended there: the fort was impregnable to a force of poorly armed citizens. But they had quit the fort long since, preferring the lavish palaces they had built in the heart of the city. And the palace where the current ruler lived was less than half a mile from the Dal Bazaar.
He had warning before the citizens invaded his palace, but nowhere near enough.
“You understand, don’t you, Saunders,” said Lord Stanley of Preston, “that this is not what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t think any of us did, your Excellency,” Saunders answered dutifully. He was the viceroy’s liaison to the Central India Agency, several ranks below Stanley in the administration, but right now, he was among the most critical men in it.
“So we have a revolution in Gwalior?”
“That’s the thing, sir – the maharajah has one, but we apparently don’t. The provisional government gazetted a decree this morning reaffirming all Gwalior’s treaties with us. They’ve also declared war on the enemy in their own name, if that can be believed, and directed all men of military age to register for conscription.”
Stanley humphed. “Still a princely state, then? A princely republic?”
“There’s precedent, sir, in Africa…”
“And it’s a bloody disgrace,” interjected Lambert, the chief political officer. “We shouldn’t have allowed it in Africa and we damned well shouldn’t let it get started here.”
“Send in the troops, then, sir? And turn the Congress against us for good?”
“Bugger the Congress if this is what they’ve stooped to…”
“It seems to me we’ve got two choices,” said General Eckley. “Restore the Scindias to power and lose the Congress, or don’t restore them and lose the maharajahs.”
“Too right,” Stanley answered. The unspoken agreement between the Raj and the princely states was that, in exchange for their submission to Britain, the British government would protect their privileges. If the Raj decided to let a revolution in one of the princely states go unanswered…
“The provisional government may also have solved that one for us, your Excellency,” Saunders said. “They’ve named a Scindia cousin as president, and it seems like that branch of the family is going along with it.”
“Have they, now. Clever bastards. Do you think we can pass it off as a power struggle within the family?”
“The maharajahs will never believe that, sir – not with a Congress cabinet, and not with Abacarist and Ahmadi slogans all over their manifesto. But…”
“If part of the family isn’t objecting, maybe we have time to study the situation.”
Lambert seemed apoplectic. “Are you really suggesting we do nothing?”
“I’m suggesting we not act rashly, sir!” Stanley answered. “Not when half our soldiers in the field are Indian, and another tenth are African. Do you even begin to comprehend what a disaster it would be if they turned on us?”
“With that said, though” – it was Courtenay, an Executive Council minister who had thus far been silent – “some of those field troops were raised in the princely states. The maharajahs won’t give us any more troops if they see revolutionaries under every bed, and they might even try to call home the troops they’ve sent already.”
“The Congress regiments outnumber them ten to one, though…” began Eckley.
“We’ve got to keep that in mind,” Stanley agreed, exhaling heavily. “But we’ve also got to face the fact that most of the maharajahs that haven’t outlawed the Congress already will do so now, and they’ll want our help doing it. We have to help them, but how we’ll do it discreetly enough to keep the Congress on-side…”
“There’s another thing we have to do that may make that easier,” Saunders responded. “I’ve looked into where the guns for the Gwalior revolution came from, and the indications are that Russia was involved.”
“Russia, and we’re talking about…” shouted Lambert.
“But it’s equally clear,” Saunders continued, daring to talk over his superior, “that neither the revolutionaries nor the Congress had any knowledge of its involvement. The Russian agents, if I’m right about there being any, concealed their presence very well, and as things turned out, they misread their men badly – the Congress in Gwalior had a grudge against the maharajah, not against us. But if there are more of them, we’ve got to root them out…”
Stanley saw where the liaison officer was going. “And if we find them, they won’t be able to supply guns and money for use against the princely states.” He sighed. “Returning the favor for Kazakhstan, are they? Very well, we’ll concentrate on that first, and I don’t bloody care if the Indians don’t like the way we hunt them. I’m not making any compromises where Russian spies are concerned.”
“If we let the provisional government in Gwalior stay in place, even temporarily, that’s a compromise right there,” Courtenay cautioned. “The maharajahs won’t look with favor on that kind of temporizing, and I suspect Lord Cranbrook won’t either.”
“Cranbrook knows how many Indian troops we have, and how many we still need to recruit. If we find out that anyone in the Congress is in bed with the Russians knowingly, we’ll come down on them like the wrath of heaven. But for now, other than active agents, we’ll take the path of least resistance.” He sighed again. “We’ll settle with the Congress as a whole after the war… if we can.”
In most other Indian princely states, Romesh Chunder Dutt would have been a wanted man, liable to arrest the moment he stepped onto their soil. Baroda was one of the few that he could still visit openly, and one of only two or three – or maybe not even that – where he could be a guest of the maharajah.
Sayijarao III was different, and not only because he had promoted industry and allowed a legislature. He was that rarest of birds, a genuinely liberal monarch who identified with the people and believed that self-rule was a necessary adjunct to modernization. And that made him one of a very few princely rulers who was still willing to look at the Congress as a potential partner rather than an adversary.
That, Dutt reflected, was something the Congress needed very badly in these times, for its own sake as well as India’s. He could understand why the people of Gwalior had risen up – the late maharajah had been a right bastard – but for them to do so in the middle of a war, and for Russians to be found in the woodpile… Well, to say that complicated things would be a monumental understatement.
The maharajahs, the Raj and the Congress had put their differences on hold at the beginning of the war, but they’d always been uneasy partners, and now they were hardly even that. The princely rulers, seeing their worst fears realized in Gwalior, had responded with raids and arrests, and in a few cases, their prophecies had proven self-fulfilling when the local Congress cells fought back. And while the Raj was still keeping its hands off Gwalior and the two other princely states where revolution was a fait accompli, it hadn’t hesitated to help crush rebellion in the others – which, in turn, bid fair to cause the Congress itself to splinter.
Dutt had emerged as the leader of the moderate faction, urging the Congress cells to lie low, supporting the prosecution of anyone found in bed with the Russians, and advocating continued cooperation with the Raj despite the help it was giving the maharajahs. But there were others who’d had enough – who thought that the repression in the princely states, coming on top of the disappointing Government of India Act, was the final insult. Many of them had walked out of the Congress at its last meeting, and many of those who’d stayed cursed Dutt for his timidity.
They’re fools, Dutt thought – if we splinter, we’re no longer useful to the Raj, and if we aren’t useful, they’ll crush us. The only way to advance is to stay united and to not make ourselves a great power’s enemy. That seemed only rational to him, but calm and rationality were in short supply right now.
If we’re going to return to a state of affairs we can live with, it has to begin here. “Your Highness,” he said.
“Sit down,” Sayijarao answered. “You may have wondered why I called you here.”
“To discuss the legislative session, I assume.” The Baroda parliament had a Congress majority – the only princely state in India where that was the case – and if the maharajah didn’t plan to dissolve the legislature or expel the Congress deputies, then Dutt would have a strong influence over the agenda.
“After a fashion, yes,” the maharajah said, and why, at a time like this, did he have that smile on his face? “I imagine that you’d be working with the legislature a great deal if you became my dewan.”
For the first time in years, Dutt was speechless. “Your what?” he said at last.
“You heard me. I’ve decided to implement responsible government in Baroda. If you become dewan, you will appoint a government, subject to my confidence and that of the legislature.”
“But why now? Why at a time like this?”
“I’m disappointed in you, Romesh. Times like this are exactly when bold moves are most needed. I look at the other maharajahs acting out their fears, and fear will destroy them in the end. We need to go forward instead of letting fear pull us back, and we need to find ways to work together.” The maharajah looked at the Congress leader keenly, the old India regarding the new. “I’m serious. Do you accept?”
It could hardly make things any worse, could it? And if it shows us another way forward, it might help us all step back from the cliff.
“Your Highness, I think I do.”
The orator stood in a square just outside of the Dal Bazaar, amid a gathering crowd. It was dangerous for him to speak, and just as dangerous to listen: he and his kind had been banned from Gwalior, and the memory of the massacre three years past still hung over the city. But that very memory, and all the others that had been laid down since, made the listeners willing to take the risk.
“They want home rule in the Raj,” the speaker was saying. “We have home rule here, or so they tell us. But what have we gained by it? Instead of bowing to a governor’s whims, we bow to a maharajah’s. In the Raj, they play at elections; here, we don’t even have that. Your life is worth nothing if the maharajah’s men want to take it – how much was six-year-old Lakshmi’s life worth when they shot her the other day? The people deserve more than a tyrant who doesn’t care if they die, doesn’t care if they starve…”
The orator fell to silence as a new sound came into the square: the noise of many horsemen, led by a captain in a splendid uniform. Their swords were drawn, and their rifles gleamed in the sunlight.
The crowd cursed and jeered as the cavalrymen formed a line, but they knew they could do no more, not against such force. Some began edging backwards; others turned to flee.
“You are commanded to disperse,” began the captain, but the orator spoke over him: “They’ve come to silence me, but the people can’t be silenced forever…”
And just then, his words were proven true.
Shots rang out from the buildings on either side of the bazaar – many shots, carefully aimed, from repeating rifles. The captain went down before he ever knew he was under attack, and half his men with him. More fell as the men in the houses kept firing.
Screams came from the crowd as they realized what was happening – screams of fear and hatred, screams of pain from those who had been caught in the crossfire. But there were also shouts of defiance from men in the crowd who were now waving flags overhead – men who had known all along that this would happen.
“To the palace!” they shouted. “To the palace! Down with the tyrant!”
Some still fled, wanting nothing of what the rally had now become. But others took courage from the men with the flags, and “Down with the tyrant!” came from hundreds of throats.
The crowd surged forward into the cavalrymen, who were still in shock and without leadership. Some stood and fought, and dozens fell to their sabers, but they fought for themselves, not as a unit, and the crowd surrounded them and dragged them down.
“To the palace!” the orator cried again, mounted on a black horse that had lately been the captain’s. “The palace!” the crowd shouted, and followed.
Long ago, the maharajahs of this land had lived in Gwalior Fort, and if they still had done, the revolution would have ended there: the fort was impregnable to a force of poorly armed citizens. But they had quit the fort long since, preferring the lavish palaces they had built in the heart of the city. And the palace where the current ruler lived was less than half a mile from the Dal Bazaar.
He had warning before the citizens invaded his palace, but nowhere near enough.
*******
“You understand, don’t you, Saunders,” said Lord Stanley of Preston, “that this is not what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t think any of us did, your Excellency,” Saunders answered dutifully. He was the viceroy’s liaison to the Central India Agency, several ranks below Stanley in the administration, but right now, he was among the most critical men in it.
“So we have a revolution in Gwalior?”
“That’s the thing, sir – the maharajah has one, but we apparently don’t. The provisional government gazetted a decree this morning reaffirming all Gwalior’s treaties with us. They’ve also declared war on the enemy in their own name, if that can be believed, and directed all men of military age to register for conscription.”
Stanley humphed. “Still a princely state, then? A princely republic?”
“There’s precedent, sir, in Africa…”
“And it’s a bloody disgrace,” interjected Lambert, the chief political officer. “We shouldn’t have allowed it in Africa and we damned well shouldn’t let it get started here.”
“Send in the troops, then, sir? And turn the Congress against us for good?”
“Bugger the Congress if this is what they’ve stooped to…”
“It seems to me we’ve got two choices,” said General Eckley. “Restore the Scindias to power and lose the Congress, or don’t restore them and lose the maharajahs.”
“Too right,” Stanley answered. The unspoken agreement between the Raj and the princely states was that, in exchange for their submission to Britain, the British government would protect their privileges. If the Raj decided to let a revolution in one of the princely states go unanswered…
“The provisional government may also have solved that one for us, your Excellency,” Saunders said. “They’ve named a Scindia cousin as president, and it seems like that branch of the family is going along with it.”
“Have they, now. Clever bastards. Do you think we can pass it off as a power struggle within the family?”
“The maharajahs will never believe that, sir – not with a Congress cabinet, and not with Abacarist and Ahmadi slogans all over their manifesto. But…”
“If part of the family isn’t objecting, maybe we have time to study the situation.”
Lambert seemed apoplectic. “Are you really suggesting we do nothing?”
“I’m suggesting we not act rashly, sir!” Stanley answered. “Not when half our soldiers in the field are Indian, and another tenth are African. Do you even begin to comprehend what a disaster it would be if they turned on us?”
“With that said, though” – it was Courtenay, an Executive Council minister who had thus far been silent – “some of those field troops were raised in the princely states. The maharajahs won’t give us any more troops if they see revolutionaries under every bed, and they might even try to call home the troops they’ve sent already.”
“The Congress regiments outnumber them ten to one, though…” began Eckley.
“We’ve got to keep that in mind,” Stanley agreed, exhaling heavily. “But we’ve also got to face the fact that most of the maharajahs that haven’t outlawed the Congress already will do so now, and they’ll want our help doing it. We have to help them, but how we’ll do it discreetly enough to keep the Congress on-side…”
“There’s another thing we have to do that may make that easier,” Saunders responded. “I’ve looked into where the guns for the Gwalior revolution came from, and the indications are that Russia was involved.”
“Russia, and we’re talking about…” shouted Lambert.
“But it’s equally clear,” Saunders continued, daring to talk over his superior, “that neither the revolutionaries nor the Congress had any knowledge of its involvement. The Russian agents, if I’m right about there being any, concealed their presence very well, and as things turned out, they misread their men badly – the Congress in Gwalior had a grudge against the maharajah, not against us. But if there are more of them, we’ve got to root them out…”
Stanley saw where the liaison officer was going. “And if we find them, they won’t be able to supply guns and money for use against the princely states.” He sighed. “Returning the favor for Kazakhstan, are they? Very well, we’ll concentrate on that first, and I don’t bloody care if the Indians don’t like the way we hunt them. I’m not making any compromises where Russian spies are concerned.”
“If we let the provisional government in Gwalior stay in place, even temporarily, that’s a compromise right there,” Courtenay cautioned. “The maharajahs won’t look with favor on that kind of temporizing, and I suspect Lord Cranbrook won’t either.”
“Cranbrook knows how many Indian troops we have, and how many we still need to recruit. If we find out that anyone in the Congress is in bed with the Russians knowingly, we’ll come down on them like the wrath of heaven. But for now, other than active agents, we’ll take the path of least resistance.” He sighed again. “We’ll settle with the Congress as a whole after the war… if we can.”
*******
In most other Indian princely states, Romesh Chunder Dutt would have been a wanted man, liable to arrest the moment he stepped onto their soil. Baroda was one of the few that he could still visit openly, and one of only two or three – or maybe not even that – where he could be a guest of the maharajah.
Sayijarao III was different, and not only because he had promoted industry and allowed a legislature. He was that rarest of birds, a genuinely liberal monarch who identified with the people and believed that self-rule was a necessary adjunct to modernization. And that made him one of a very few princely rulers who was still willing to look at the Congress as a potential partner rather than an adversary.
That, Dutt reflected, was something the Congress needed very badly in these times, for its own sake as well as India’s. He could understand why the people of Gwalior had risen up – the late maharajah had been a right bastard – but for them to do so in the middle of a war, and for Russians to be found in the woodpile… Well, to say that complicated things would be a monumental understatement.
The maharajahs, the Raj and the Congress had put their differences on hold at the beginning of the war, but they’d always been uneasy partners, and now they were hardly even that. The princely rulers, seeing their worst fears realized in Gwalior, had responded with raids and arrests, and in a few cases, their prophecies had proven self-fulfilling when the local Congress cells fought back. And while the Raj was still keeping its hands off Gwalior and the two other princely states where revolution was a fait accompli, it hadn’t hesitated to help crush rebellion in the others – which, in turn, bid fair to cause the Congress itself to splinter.
Dutt had emerged as the leader of the moderate faction, urging the Congress cells to lie low, supporting the prosecution of anyone found in bed with the Russians, and advocating continued cooperation with the Raj despite the help it was giving the maharajahs. But there were others who’d had enough – who thought that the repression in the princely states, coming on top of the disappointing Government of India Act, was the final insult. Many of them had walked out of the Congress at its last meeting, and many of those who’d stayed cursed Dutt for his timidity.
They’re fools, Dutt thought – if we splinter, we’re no longer useful to the Raj, and if we aren’t useful, they’ll crush us. The only way to advance is to stay united and to not make ourselves a great power’s enemy. That seemed only rational to him, but calm and rationality were in short supply right now.
If we’re going to return to a state of affairs we can live with, it has to begin here. “Your Highness,” he said.
“Sit down,” Sayijarao answered. “You may have wondered why I called you here.”
“To discuss the legislative session, I assume.” The Baroda parliament had a Congress majority – the only princely state in India where that was the case – and if the maharajah didn’t plan to dissolve the legislature or expel the Congress deputies, then Dutt would have a strong influence over the agenda.
“After a fashion, yes,” the maharajah said, and why, at a time like this, did he have that smile on his face? “I imagine that you’d be working with the legislature a great deal if you became my dewan.”
For the first time in years, Dutt was speechless. “Your what?” he said at last.
“You heard me. I’ve decided to implement responsible government in Baroda. If you become dewan, you will appoint a government, subject to my confidence and that of the legislature.”
“But why now? Why at a time like this?”
“I’m disappointed in you, Romesh. Times like this are exactly when bold moves are most needed. I look at the other maharajahs acting out their fears, and fear will destroy them in the end. We need to go forward instead of letting fear pull us back, and we need to find ways to work together.” The maharajah looked at the Congress leader keenly, the old India regarding the new. “I’m serious. Do you accept?”
It could hardly make things any worse, could it? And if it shows us another way forward, it might help us all step back from the cliff.
“Your Highness, I think I do.”