MAHARAJA DHULEEP SING-H. F EW careers have ever been more instructive
to those who can see than that of the Maharaja Dhuleep Singh, who died in Paris on Sunday of apoplexy. He finished life a despised exile, but no man of modern days ever had such chances, or had seen them snatched, partly by fate, partly by fault, so completely from his lips. But for an accident, if there is such a thing as accident, he would have been the Hindoo Emperor of India. His father, Runjeet Singh, that strange combination of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, had formed and knew how to control an army which would have struck down all the native powers of India much more easily than did any of the Tartar conquerors. Without its master at its head, that army defeated the British, and but for a magnificent bribe paid to its General (vide Cunningham's "History of the Sikhs ") would have driven the English from India, and placed the child, 'Dhuleep Singh, upon the throne of the Peninsula, to be supported there by Sikh and Rajpoot, Mahratta, and Beharee. Apart from the English, there wad' nothing to resist them ; and they were guided by a woman, the Ranee Chunda Kour, who of all modern women was most like Mary of Soots as her enemies have painted her, and of whom, after her fall, Lord Dalhousie said that her capture would be worth the sacrifice of a brigade. How Dhuleep Singh would have reigned had Runjeet Singh's destiny completed itself is another matter —probably like a Hindoo Humayoon—for even if not the son of Runjeet Singh, who, be it remembered, acknow- ledged him, he inherited ability from his mother ; he was a bold man, and he was, as his career showed, capable of wild and daring adventure. He fell, however, from his throne under the shock of the second Sikh War, and began a new and, to all appearance, most promising career. Lord Dalhousie had a pity for the boy, and the English Court— we never quite understood why—an unusually kindly feeling. A fortune of 240,000 a year was settled on him, he was sent to England, and he was granted rank hardly less than that of a Prince of the Blood. He turned Christian—apparently from conviction, though subsequent events throw doubt on that— a tutor, who was quite competent, devoted himself to his education, and from the time he became of age he was regarded as in all respects a great English noble. He knew, too, how to sustain that character,—made no social blunders, ecame a great sportsman, and succeeded in maintaining for years the sustained stateliness of life which in England it held to confer social dignity. Confidence was first shaken by his marriage, which, though it did not turn out unsuccess- fully, and though the lady was in after-life greatly liked and respected, was a whim, his bride being a half Coptic, half English girl whom he saw in an Egyptian schoolroom, and who, by all English as well as Indian ideas of rank, was an unfitting bride. Then he began over- spending, without the slightest necessity, for his great income was unburdened by a vast estate; and at last reduced his finances to such a condition that the India Office, which had made him ad- vance after advance, closed its treasury and left him, as he thought, face to face with ruin. Then the fierce Asiatic blood in him came out. He declared himself wronged, perhaps believed himself oppressed, dropped the whole varnish of civilisation from him, and resolved to make an effort for the vengeance over which he had probably brooded for years. He publicly repudiated Christianity, and went through a ceremony intended to readmit him within the pale of the Sikh variety of the Hindoo faith. Whether it did readmit him, greater doctors than we must decide. That an. ordinary Hindoo who has eaten beef cannot be readmitted to his own caste, even if the eating is involuntary, is certain, as witness the tradition of the Tagore family ; but the rights of the Royal are, even in Hindooism, extraordinarily wide, and we fancy that, had Dhuleep Singh succeeded in his enter- prise, Sikh doctors of theology would have declared his readmisSion legal. He did not, however, succeed, He set out for the Punjab intending, it can hardly be doubted, if the Sikhs acknowledged him, to make a stroke for the throne, if not of India, at least of Runjeet Singh; but he was arrested at Aden, and after months of fierce dispute, let go, on condition that he should not return to India. He sought protection in Russia, which he did not obtain, and at last gave up the struggle, made his peace with the India Office, took his pension again, and lived, chiefly in Paris, the life of a disappointed but wealthy idler. There was some spirit in his adventure, though it was unwisely carried out. The English generally thought it a bit of foolhardiness, or a dodge to extract a loan from the India Office ; but those who were responsible held a different opinion, and would have gone nearly any length to prevent his reaching the Punjab. They were probably wise. The heir of Runjeet might have been ridiculed by the Sikhs as a Christian, but he might also have been accepted as a reconverted man; and one successful skirmish in a district might have called to arms all the "children of the sugar and the sword," and set all India on fire. The Sikhs are our very good friends, and stood lyy us against any revival of the Empire of Delhi, their sworn hereditary foe ; but they have not forgotten Runjeet Singh, and a chance of the Empire for themselves might have turned many of their heads.
Dhuleep Singh, though treated fairly enough by the Court and by the India Office, received too hard a measure from English opinion ; our countrymen judged him as if he had been an English noble, and forgot that an Asiatic has in his blood hereditary qualities which education cannot destroy, and which differentiate him materially from the European- The first of these qualities is the power of his will in propor- tion to his mind. The will of an Asiatic, once fairly roused, closes on its purpose with a grip to which nothing in the mind of a European can compare, though Miss Wilkin declares that the same peculiarity exists in New England,—a grip which seems too strong for the conscience, the judgment, and even the heart. The man is like one possessed, and can- not, if he would, change his own self-appointed course. H his will is for a small thing, we call it a "whim," and wonder that a man so keen should be so childish. If it is to beat down resistance by cruelty, he becomes a tyrant capable of acts such as are attributed, perhaps falsely, to Wellington's Maharaja of Coorg. He is utterly mastered by something within himself, and will do acts which seem to Europeans evidences of insanity. A quiet Hindoo trader, as respectable and ordinary as any man in Fleet Street, being movedBmoevneadrtehse and thereto by an internal impulse, will resolve to go t there sit a naked Sunyasee, living on alms, and will carry out that resolve for twenty years, unflinchingly, uncomplainingly, till death releases him from his sufferings. He may half disbelieve all the while ; but his will has closed, and, happen what may, earthquake included, there he will sit, unmoved, until his resolve has been fulfilled. It is this potency of the will which is the first secret of all the strange penances of India,—of Suttee, of sitting in dhurna, as well as of half the " wild" acts which stud the history of the native dynasties, and sometimes for Europeans take all in- terest out of those marvellous romances, their heroes appear- ing to the better-balanced minds of the West beings too un- accountable to be interesting,—a whole series, as it were, of Charles the Twelfths, who was just one of their kind. The man, for instance, who moves a capital suddenly from one spot to another by bare fiat, because it is his will to move it, though the moving ruins a whole population, is inconceivable to Europe; and the notion that when his will has not closed he may be a cool and successful statesman is rejected as absurd ; yet that has occurred in India over and over again. A similar " possession " is seen constantly in private families ; producing the strangest dramas of love, vengeance, adventure, and, though that may seem bathos, sometimes of cupidity,—as witness the history of the Koh-i-noor. Nothing would stop an Indian whose will had closed on obtaining possession of a jewel from obtaining it, except sheer physical impossibility. The late Maharaja, as we believe, felt just this impulse, moth. fled probably in strength by his knowledge of its hopelessness, but irresistible nevertheless, and the pardon which was ulti- mately accorded him was, morally, only just.
It is this which constitutes the inner perplexity of the education of the Princes of India. We may teach them as lads all we like, send them to Europe, give them European habits as second natures, turn them out apparently fit to be English nobles; and then the tutor who has devoted his life to them will shake his head and acknowledge the presence, perhaps in his most promising pupil, of something he knows nothing about, which is stronger than all his teaching, and which will always to the end of life render the results of his devotion absolutely uncertain. The lad who seems so like an Etonian may turn out a saint or a Nana. What is certain is, that if his will closes, he will obey the dictate of that will, be it what it may, and be the consequences as the Destinies shall choose. It is as if each man had, like Socrates, his daimon outside himself, whom he was bound, by something stronger than himself, to obey. Had Dhuleep Singh reigned in the Punjab, he would have burst out some day just as he did here, and have been declared a hero or a madman by sober Europeans, according to his success. That is no reason why we should cease from educating— we speak, of course, without reference to methods of doing it—for we can but go on according to our best lights ; but it is a reason why we should not hope for too much, and why we should not be surprised when we fail. The essential difference between a Maharaja Dhuleep Singh and a Duke of Norfolk is deeper than we dream, and is not curable except in ages by any dis- cipline. Nor is the difference altogether to be scouted as an evil fact. The English think of the Maharaja's great escapade as if it were a mere relapse into savagery,—indeed, one of tbe evening papers says so, comparing him to Mr. Grant Allen's Fantee clergyman—but suppose he had succeeded, and then imagine, if that be possible, how a Sikh historian would have written of his mind and his career !
Previous page
