Tempo:
HISTORY OF THE SIKHS
12S 1809-18.
Perplexities of British authorities
regarding the rights of supre-
macy, and the operation of international laws.
CHAP. V
The history of the southern or Malwa Sikhs need not be continued, although it presents many points of interest to the general reader, as well as to the student and to those concerned in the administration of India. The British- functionaries soon became involved in intricate questions about interference between equal chiefs, and between chiefs and their confederates or dependants; they laboured to reconcile the Hindu laws of inheritance with the varied customs of different races, and with the alleged family usages of peasants suddenly become princes. They had to decide on questions of escheat, and being strongly impressed with the superiority of British municipal rule, and with the undoubted claim of the paramount to some benefit in return for the protection it afforded, they strove to prove that collateral heirs had a limited right only, and that exemption from tribute necessarily implied an enlarged liability to confiscation. They had to define the common boundary of the Sikh states and of British rule, and they were prone to show, after the m.anner of Ranjit Singh, that the present possession of a principal town gave a right to all the villages which had ever been attached to it as the seat of a local authority, and that all waste lands belonged to the supreme power, although the dependant might have last possessed them in sovereignty and intermediately brought them under the plough. They had to exercise a paramount municipal control, and in the surrender of criminals, and in the demand for compensation for property stolen from British subjects, the original arbitrary nature of the decisions enforced has not yet been entirely replaced by rules of reciprocity. But the government of a large empire will always be open to obloquy, and liable to misconception, from the acts of officious and ill-judging servants, who think that they best serve the complicated interests of their own rulers by lessening the material power of others, and that any advantage they may seem to have gained for the state they obey will surely promote their own objects. Nor, in such matters, are servants alone to blame, and the whole system of internal government in India -
rupees. The head of the family, Jodh Singh, had recently .returned with Ranjit Singh's army from the capture of Multan, and he was always treated with consideration by the Maharaja; and, bearing in mind the different views taken by dependent Sikhs and governing English, of rights of succession, he had fair grounds of dissatisfaction. He claimed to be the head of the 'Krora Singhia' Misal, and to be the heir of all childless feudatories. The British Government, however, made itself the valid or efficient head of the confederacy.
12S 1809-18.
Perplexities of British authorities
regarding the rights of supre-
macy, and the operation of international laws.
CHAP. V
The history of the southern or Malwa Sikhs need not be continued, although it presents many points of interest to the general reader, as well as to the student and to those concerned in the administration of India. The British- functionaries soon became involved in intricate questions about interference between equal chiefs, and between chiefs and their confederates or dependants; they laboured to reconcile the Hindu laws of inheritance with the varied customs of different races, and with the alleged family usages of peasants suddenly become princes. They had to decide on questions of escheat, and being strongly impressed with the superiority of British municipal rule, and with the undoubted claim of the paramount to some benefit in return for the protection it afforded, they strove to prove that collateral heirs had a limited right only, and that exemption from tribute necessarily implied an enlarged liability to confiscation. They had to define the common boundary of the Sikh states and of British rule, and they were prone to show, after the m.anner of Ranjit Singh, that the present possession of a principal town gave a right to all the villages which had ever been attached to it as the seat of a local authority, and that all waste lands belonged to the supreme power, although the dependant might have last possessed them in sovereignty and intermediately brought them under the plough. They had to exercise a paramount municipal control, and in the surrender of criminals, and in the demand for compensation for property stolen from British subjects, the original arbitrary nature of the decisions enforced has not yet been entirely replaced by rules of reciprocity. But the government of a large empire will always be open to obloquy, and liable to misconception, from the acts of officious and ill-judging servants, who think that they best serve the complicated interests of their own rulers by lessening the material power of others, and that any advantage they may seem to have gained for the state they obey will surely promote their own objects. Nor, in such matters, are servants alone to blame, and the whole system of internal government in India -
rupees. The head of the family, Jodh Singh, had recently .returned with Ranjit Singh's army from the capture of Multan, and he was always treated with consideration by the Maharaja; and, bearing in mind the different views taken by dependent Sikhs and governing English, of rights of succession, he had fair grounds of dissatisfaction. He claimed to be the head of the 'Krora Singhia' Misal, and to be the heir of all childless feudatories. The British Government, however, made itself the valid or efficient head of the confederacy.
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