CHAPTER XI

A BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATION IN ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF INDIA, 1901-25

T

HE period dealt with in this chapter is covered by the Vice-Royalties of Lord Curzon, Lord Minto, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, Lord Chelmsford and Lord Reading. Lord Curzon had succeeded Lord Elgin as Viceroy and Governor-General early in 1899 and was the youngest of the Governors-General with the exception of Lord Dalhousie. Lord Curzon had travelled widely in the East, being an acknowledged expert on Eastern affairs, and had also been Under Secretary at both the India and Foreign Offices. Next to Lord Dufferin, therefore, he took up the office with a much greater experience than many of his predecessors. During his tenure Lord Curzon carried out innumerable administrative reforms which had the effect of sweeping away a great many ancient shibboleths which had served as clogs on the administration for far too long. And in every case the changes were made after the Viceroy had satisfied himself by a personal study of the administrative methods of the particular measure or department concerned that improvements were both needed and possible. The great energy and the powerful brain which he brought to the task are well known to all who served in India during his administration. A consideration as to whether Lord Curzon went too fast in his changes lies without the province of the present work. That Departments were in some cases moving too slow is certain and the Forest Department in one respect that of research-is a case in point. To Lord Curzon's wide administrative outlook and to that of the InspectorGeneral of Forests of the time, Sir S. Eardley Wilmot, the Department owes its start in this important direction, a start which has, in some degree, almost revolutionized its whole outlook.

In chronological sequence the first of the events occurring within the period having a bearing on forestry administration was the great famine of 1899-1900, a disaster all the more formidable since it followed so soon after that of 1896-7, the latter believed to be the worst ever experienced in India. Lord Curzon and his officers in the afflicted Provinces exhibited great energy in relieving the distress, but it was considered open to doubt whether too great a lavishness in expenditure had not been shown in the Central Provinces. A Famine Commission, under the presidency of Sir Antony (later Lord) MacDonnell was set up and issued its Report in 1901. A curious oversight in this Report was that it contained no reference to the great assistance the forests of the country were capable of affording to the people and their flocks on such occasions; and this, in spite of the fact that the value of the forests was far better understood in 1901 than in 1880, when an allusion to the forests in the Report of Lord Lytton's first Famine Commission was made (II, p. 459).

A notable event of the period was the Tibet Mission or Expedition, 1903-4, under Sir Francis Younghusband, the great explorer, who at the age of twenty-four, whilst yet a subaltern of the King's Dragoon Guards, was the first white man to cross the Mustagh Pass in his great journey from Pekin to Kashmir and India in 1887. The Mission eventually went to Lhasa, thus temporarily occupying this previously impenetrable capital for the first time. Whether the political objects gained were not thrown away by subsequent orders from the Home Government need not be entered into here. But it seems not impossible that benefit may ultimately be carried to the great forest tracts at the lower levels which are now better known as a consequence of the expedition. The more recent Everest Expeditions have also proved useful in this respect.

A more important step in its effects on Forest Administration was the formation of the North-Western Frontier Province. The main object was to facilitate the management of the tribal frontier until then under the Punjab Government. Lord Curzon adopted with modifications Lord Lytton's idea and created in 1901 the North-Western Frontier Province under a Chief Commissioner with headquarters at Peshawar. All the territories to the west of the Indus, with the exception of the Dera Ghazi Khan District, and also the Hazara District, were included in the new Province. To prevent confusion the old North-West Provinces were renamed the Agra Province and

the whole of this Province was called the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, or U.P. for short.

Another transaction which to some extent had some influence on forest management in the locality was the settlement of the longstanding Berar difficulty. Berar had been for years a separate Province attached to the Central Provinces, managed by British Officers on behalf of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Lord Curzon had a confidential personal discussion with the Nizam on this question and, as a result, Berar was made over to the British on a perpetual lease on certain financial and other terms which had for their object the preservation of the nominal sovereignty of the Nizam. Berar was then made a division of the Central Provinces. The Hyderabad Military Contingent thus came to an end.

In reply to criticisms on the land revenue, Lord Curzon replied in an exhaustive Resolution written by himself in January, 1902, pointing out that famines were due to drought, not to over-assessment, and he laid down principles designed to ensure greater elasticity both in assessment and in collection. With the object of making an endeavour to reduce the indebtedness of the ryots to the trading and moneylending classes, which constantly led to the transfers of ownership or tenant-right to these classes, a Land Alienation Act (XIII of 1900), was passed, applicable to the Punjab, where the situation was particularly bad in this respect. The main clause of the Act stated: "that moneylenders, shopkeepers and professonal men cannot buy land from hereditary cultivators or hold such land on mortgage for more than 20 years without the consent of the State." The sale of land to the excluded classes under decree of Court was also forbidden. The principle of the Act was extended to certain other territories, but the difficulties of working it were considerable. Probably a more hopeful departure was the establishment of co-operative rural banks, modelled on the German system.

Lord Curzon also gave earnest study to the educational problem. These labours aided by a Committee and then by a Commission resulted in the enactment of the Universities Act, 1904. This Act reduced the excessive numbers of Members of the Senatus, reformed the constitution of the Syndicates or executive bodies, placed in the hands of the Government of India the final decision concerning the affiliation or disaffiliation of colleges and provided for the official inspection of affiliated colleges. That reforms were needed, especially in

Bengal, was undeniable. Lord Curzon's object had been to raise the level of higher education. But unwittingly he roused a storm in educational and other centres who quite incorrectly maintained that he was doing the reverse. The reforms were long overdue, but they did not produce the effect anticipated, and the question, as will be shown, was reopened later, and as far as the Forestry Department and, in fact, the Services generally are concerned this became a question of import

ance.

There was another measure which gave rise to an outbreak of feeling, and worse-to serious unrest. This was the so-called partition of Bengal. This partition originated from the desire. which amounted to a necessity to do something towards lightening the burden of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal who was administering a territory of 189,000 square miles with a population of 78 millions. The part of the overswollen Province which perhaps suffered most from neglect, both financially and otherwise, was Eastern Bengal. Certainly during the three years the writer was stationed at Chittagong we saw the Lieutenant-Governor once for a bare two days when he visited the port in a R.I. Marine Ship. Under the partition the Divisions of Dacca, Chittagong and Rajshahi were separated from Bengal and attached to Assam which was raised to a Lieutenant-Governorship with the designation of the "Eastern Bengal and Assam Province," the capital being at Dacca. This arrangement gave rise to great hostility both in Calcutta and throughout Bengal, where it was said that the Bengali nation was being rent asunder; and unrest and crimes were the outcome. The excitement was, however, considered to have died down by 1910, and Eastern Bengal had begun to feel the benefits of having a Government on the spot.

From the scientific point of view the two achievements of Lord Curzon in India which will be remembered were the formation of the Agricultural Institute at Pusa and the appointment of a Director-General of Agriculture, and for the Forestry Department the equally important creation of the Imperial Research Institute at Dehra Dun. The latter was in one sense a sequel to the first. The Forestry Research Institute will be considered in greater detail later.

Lord Curzon went home for six months in 1904 on the understanding that he should return to India for a further term of office, Lord Ampthill officiating as Viceroy during the period. On Lord Curzon's return to India a controversy arose between