Commentary/T V R Shenoy

Hastings, Bentinck and the thugs of today

I have not been driving myself around too much of late, enjoying the luxury of being chauffeured around town. Now, cabbies -- like bartenders -- are proverbially free with their opinion. One grey-beard was vociferous on the subject of 50 years of independent India.

"Isse achha," was his considered opinion, "Angrez hi the!" Which loosely translates as "The British Raj was better."

Let's face it, all of us have heard that sentiment. And a look at the headlines on almost any given day will tell us why. Where, as a man with a taste for history, may exclaim, are the Hastings and the Bentincks of yesterday?

Hastings and Bentinck who? They were governor-generals of India over a century and a half ago. And certain things they did are worth recalling in the day of Inspector Abhay Singh.

Inspector Singh, as you may recall, was the policeman from Delhi who took on a dacoit gang as his train passed through Bihar. He didn't need to do so, as he was, quite literally, passing through. It wasn't his beat, but he acted anyway. And he got shot for it. Every Indian bows down to Abhay Singh's courage. He lived up to his name ('Abhay' means 'the fearless one'.).

Yet I fear our heads will drop further yet -- in shame, not in respect -- as we consider our lords and masters...

Neither the Union government nor that of Bihar is willing to accept an ounce of responsibility for the breach of law and order. (One of many, I could add.)

Ram Vilas Paswan, railway minister and a Bihari to boot, cheerfully stated that the security of the Indian Railways was the responsibility of the states. Laloo Prasad Yadav, chief minister of Bihar and hero of the 'secular forces', was having none of it. To which Paswan blandly replied that his party president was just plain wrong.

As a tennis fan I appreciate the fine art of rallying as much as the next person. But what was graceful in a McEnroe is merely obscene in this context. Putting the ball in somebody else's court isn't going to make life any more secure for travellers in Bihar. (Leave alone the citizens of the state!)

At this point, you may wonder what connection, if any, there is between Inspector Abhay Singh and the peers of the realms mentioned earlier. Simple -- they were the kind of bosses who would have truly appreciated men of his calibre.

In 1817, Lord Hastings undertook what is now called the Pindari War. I have heard some bleeding-hearts speak of the Pindaris as patriots who look up arms against the East India Company. This is wonderfully woolly-headed and amusing. But history shouldn't be written by P G Wodehouse!

'They were men,' writes a chronicler of the period, 'of all lands and religions.' (How beautifully secular!) 'They generally avoided pitched battles,' says another historian, 'and plunder was their principal object, for which they perpetrated horrible cruelties on all whom they could get hold of.'

Lord Hastings, no bleeding heart he, destroyed the Pindaris with scientific precision. It look him over 100,000 men to bring peace to the badlands. But the job was finished in a matter of months. And so efficiently that the Pindaris have never since been a menace to law and limb.

Thirty years later it was the turn of another group to face the wrath of a grim reformer. Lord Bentinck, the governor general who made sati illegal, set out to crush the Thugs.

Boasting an ancestry far older then the Pindaris, this quasi-religions group had been killing and stealing with utter abandon for centuries. It took Bentinck several years to crush them. But by 1837 the Thugs had ceased to be a factor.

It is relevant to note that Bentinck's officers ruefully noted that the Thugs were often sided by powerful local chiefs. The fact didn't, however, stop them from doing their duty.

They knew that their own boss would back them all the way. And that is where the policemen of today fall short.

How many members of the Bihar police can be secure that their masters won't betray them? Or, come to that, those of Uttar Pradesh, a state which the Union home minister prophesied as heading for 'chaos, anarchy, and destruction'?

Woefully few, I'll wager, perhaps none. It didn't take the Vohra Committee report for honest policemen to accept that a 'criminal politician nexus' is a fact of life.

I can accept that there may be policemen as courageous as Abhay Singh in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh too. (The Delhi police inspector too was a Bihari.) But everyone knows the likely fate of any lawman foolish enough to take on the mafia.

The crusade against crime -- violent or white collar -- must begin at the top. What it boils down to is political will and honesty.

Bentinck and Hastings had them. Their subordinates could rest assured that neither man would be bribed or threatened. (Why didn't other governors-general act equally decisively?)

For 50 years we have been taught that the British cared for nothing but looting India. Of course, this is true to a very large extent.

But not entirely. Some also held a thought for the men and women they ruled. That seems to be much more than I can say of the buck- passers of today.

My cabby had probably never heard of the Thugs and the Pindaris -- a testimony of sorts to Hastings and Bentinck. But had he come across those words, I think he would have used them. If not on the men who took Abhay Singh's life, then certainly on, the lords and masters of independent India!

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