THE MEANING OF THE LAHORE DURBAR.
THE Durbar held on the 17th October at Lahore was not a great political event, but it was a most striking ceremonial, one which had it occurred in any other country of earth would have been described by a dozen special correspondents, commented on in every European language. It is not often that civilization armed -and regnant is seen face to face with the Middle Ages, that the -calm man in black who to day represents political power can be heard uttering decrees irreversible as those of Heaven to a bejewelled aristocracy, still proud of pedigrees which stretch back to the region where mist settles on history, still retaining de jure and de facto the right of the haute justice, the gallows and the dungeon, still able to order thousands of armed men to meet death without an apology or a reason. Many causes combined to induce Sir John Lawrence to make the investiture of the Rajah of Kuppurtholla with the Order of India a magnificent ceremonial. The immense reverence so shown by the Government to that decoration indefi- nately increases its value, and there is a special policy in specially honouring the Rajah of Kuppurtholla. He is par excellence the British noble of Upper India. Representative of a Sikh house old for the Punjab, but comparatively poor and with a very limited sway, he when the mutiny broke out chose his side as definitely as an Englishman might have done. He announced that he shouldstand or fall with the white men, and without waiting for orders or making stipulations poured his two thousand wild followers onto the road to Delhi, performed such share of the siege operations as light troops could undertake, and when Delhi fell marched with the British into Oude. His example had such an effect, and his services in the siege and in Oude were so valuable, that Lord Canning resolved to depart for nce from the skin-flint maxims which more than any single causc have weakened our hold over the Indian aristocracy, to re-
ward for once as the Mogul would have rewarded—with both hands. He flung to the Rajah a prize at which an Archduke might have leaped, an estate undervalued at 40,0001. a year, secured by the Imperial word to him and his heirs for ever, raised him by a fiat which even these pedigree-worshippers respect to the first place hi the technical rank of his own claw, and when he married ordered every European guard she passed to present arms to the Lady of Kuppurtholla. She is a Christian of the half-blood, he though not baptized is a Christian too, and Sir John Lawrence gratified his own feeling and carried out a great policy when he made the in- vestiture of the only great native Christian noble a solemn act of State. He was pleased, too, we dare say, to summon a grand Durbar at Lahore, in the province specially his own, to give the native chiefs who had known him first as an official, then as Lieutenant-Governor, one opportunity of seeing him in all his gran- deur, as " Lat Saheb," Viceroy, Lieutenant-Emperor—for that is the real impression on the native mind—of the Indian Continent.
His summons included every chief in the Lieutenant-Governor- ship, from the Suleiman to Delhi, a province half as large as France and as populous as Spain, and save the sick and the blind all were present, for the call was not only that of the Viceroy. It was that of "Jan Saheb," the man whose hand they had felt so heavily, who had quelled so many rebellions and defied so many threats of rebellion, the unswerving, unfearing foe of their whole Order, who had ground half of them to powder, and might, if they even allowed themselves to think of dierepect, grind the remainder down. Sir John Lawrence has among them some personal friends, for the Hindoo has a loving devotion towards strength which the European can scarcely follow, and Sir John is grateful for service, but to the Order as such he is known as a strong enemy, a man who maintains haughtily the rights of the State and the claims of the peasants, who would risk a revolt rather than allow land to go untaxed, and strike down a Rajah rather than leave a ryot's just petition unfulfilled. They love him as a class much as the Russian owners of serfs love Alexander, but they fear and respect him, and they came up readily enough to do him honour. Men who, we believe, were never before seen at a durbar were present in the green plain outside Lahore; the Maharajah of Cashmere, who is summoned as a. noble, but is not strictly speaking a feudatory at all, who though not head of the Sikhs is the last. Sikh with an independent army ; Pertab Cluind of Kangra, a mediatized prince, but born heir to a throne before which all thrones are of yesterday, whose ancestors—by adoption, not blood—have reigned in native belief for more years than popular chronology gives to the human race, and who were certainly reigning when Alexander crossed the Indus ; Sunpurun Siugh, lineal heir of Grooroo Nanuk first apostle of the Sikh faith, himself a high priest, and, says the official account, influential as the Pope among Catholics ; and Rughbir Dec, heir of the hereditary lords of Cashmere, now finally dispossessed by the Sikh intruders. A strauge and touching incident in connection with this man is hinted at in the official nar- rative. He was seated far down among the feudatories, eigh- teen or twenty steps below the Kuppurtholla Chief, a man of yesterday, and far above him on the dais, seated in equality with the Viceroy, resplendent in yellow turban covered with emeralds, was R.unbeer Singh, the " usurper " of his dominion. As he was presented the poor Prince touched the Viceroy's knees in utter abasement, praying as to a Providence on earth, a Ciesar set there to do justice among Kings, that some portion of his heritage might be restored by british power. One can imagine his rival's face gazing down on the scene not five paces off, and knowing that an emotion, a caprice, a sudden impulse in the Viceroy would so fax as any power in Asia was concerned reseat the suppliant as certainly as a decree of fate. Imagine the last Stuart kneeling before the German Emperor to ask back his throne with the Hanoverian Elector looking on, or better still, a son of Herod Agrippa plead- ing with Titus for some small portion of the heritage of his House. It is in much such a durbar, a tent vast as a hall, but full of light as no hall can be, that the Cesare must have received the many subject princes whom their policy left in the East, and the blaze of costume and jewellery cannot have contrasted with the Roman simplicity more strongly than the Itajahs in white, and striped, and lavender silks, blazing in gems and gold, contrasted with the tall portly man—so like the portraits of Cromwell-- who accepted their homage. The position loses little by contrast, for if that of the Cwear were more unique on earth he ruled fewer human beings, if his social sway were more terrible his political power was by no means so resistless, and he himself was not beyond the reach of the dagger or the cord. The Viceroy of India wields not only a power comparatively as great as that of Rome among
her provinces, but one which no subject prince can reckon up, or hope to deal with, or understand—the irresistible congeries of forces which we term civilization, and he is, moreover, the holder of an office no personal calamity can affect. Hyder All may die, or the Nagpore State perish because its dynasty is at an end, but the Viceroyalty is independent of death, or infertility, or any of the accidents upon which in Asia all other royalties turn.
The scene in the tent must have been a strange one, that wide semicircle of Oriental chiefs, dressed as Europeans dressed when
Buckingham shook diamonds from his short cloak, all men of ancestry, all full of the consciousness of sway, all distinguished either in battle or as inheritors of historic names, all listening to the few words in which with haughty suavity the representative of the conquerors thanked them for loyalty, described the good deeds the invaders had done, bade them "love justice and hate oppres- sion," and hoped God "would give them all that was for their realbenefit." (independence of me, you perceive, my friends,—that is not good for you.) It is not, however, for its picturesqueness that we have alluded to the ceremonial. The assemblage may teach Englishmen the fact they always forget, that there are people in India besides the bureaucracy, and the settlers, and the "natives," people with claims, and wills, and when needful swords. They think of their vast possession as an empire, while it is really a continent full of races, and creeds, and languages, more diverse than those of Europe,—of the Punjab as a province, whereas it is a country like Germany, full of cities and principalities, and ruling houses and mecliatized estates, with divisions as hostile and as different as Austria and Prussia, classes as much opposed as the Liberals and the Junkers, families as powerful and as jarring as the Wittelsbachs and the Coburgs. That Durbar tent held six hundred men, of whom every one retained in himself some morsel of real power, or possessed some definite influ- ence, or represented some great passage in history not to know which was to be ignorant to insolence. The six hundred to- gether could place a hundred thousand men in the field or call a warrior nation to arms, and though their sense of individual right prevents combination, that sense does but make each one more fiercely jealous of his individual claims to respect. Each as he attends this Darbar feels as the Highland chiefs felt when they waited on King James, that his attendance is in some sort an humiliation, sighs for the feudal power threatened by the mere existence of so irresistible a suzerain, and resents more than oppression that cold calm justice which takes no heed of personal claims, or hereditary rank, or mere sovereign power, but levels, or seems to level, the family-celebrated in the " Ramayuna ' with the family which has purchased larger estates out of the wealth gained by fraudulent contracts. 'The nobles do not deny the right of the sovereign to make new men even out of caprice, to seat a Rajah of Kuppurtholla above them in the hall of audience or to declare the Chief of Cashmere first among Sikhs, for the Sovereign's will confers in their eyes rank, but they resent fiercely that dead level before the law, that equality before a magistrate, which is the essence of British rule. If the Viceroy chooses to befriend a peasant in Jheend, the Rajah makes no objection—the ruler has a right to his caprice, but that he should listen to all peasants in Jheend as readily as to their lord, call on each equally for explanation, give no more weight to the dignity of the one than of the other, this is to them an intolerable oppression. They hate British rulers as the Scotch hated Cromwell's judges for being " kinless loons," or, as they themselves express it, being so utterly barbarian. They sigh for more liberty, more excite- ment, greater freedom of career, the power of governing their own people uncontrolled by a lad in black with his oppressive "advice," for the chance of carving out kingdoms as their forefathers used to do.
British rule may bring much to others, but to them?—it is not Mont- morencies or De Rohans who shriek for the reign of equality. It is this chum which we hive still all over India to conciliate, to find some niche in the constitutional temple where they can be as dignified and as much felt by inferior men as of old. We have found place for the Peerage in England, but imagine the tone of English landed proprietors who, retaining their estates, retaining their feudal hold over the soil, retaining a magical power over the black coats the Oriental gorgeousness of the scene. When these men are conciliated the Punjab is secure, till they are conciliated even a durbar tent must be commanded, as this was, by European rifles.
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