TOD'S AMENDMENT.
The World hath set its heavy yoke
Upon the old white-bearded folk
Who strive to please the King.
God's mercy is upon the young,
God's wisdom in the baby tongue
That fears not anything.
The Parable of Chajju Bhagat.
Now Tods' Mamma was a singularly charming woman, and every one in
Simla knew Tods. Most men had saved him from death on occasions.
He was beyond his ayah's control altogether, and perilled his life
daily to find out what would happen if you pulled a Mountain Battery
mule's tail. He was an utterly fearless young Pagan, about six
years old, and the only baby who ever broke the holy calm of the
supreme Legislative Council.
It happened this way: Tods' pet kid got loose, and fled up the hill,
off the Boileaugunge Road, Tods after it, until it burst into the
Viceregal Lodge lawn, then attached to "Peterhoff." The Council
were sitting at the time, and the windows were open because it was
warm. The Red Lancer in the porch told Tods to go away; but Tods
knew the Red Lancer and most of the Members of Council personally.
Moreover, he had firm hold of the kid's collar, and was being
dragged all across the flower-beds. "Give my salaam to the long
Councillor Sahib, and ask him to help me take Moti back!" gasped
Tods. The Council heard the noise through the open windows; and,
after an interval, was seen the shocking spectacle of a Legal Member
and a Lieutenant-Governor helping, under the direct patronage of a
Commander-in-Chief and a Viceroy, one small and very dirty boy in a
sailor's suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a lively and
rebellious kid. They headed it off down the path to the Mall, and
Tods went home in triumph and told his Mamma that ALL the Councillor
Sahibs had been helping him to catch Moti. Whereat his Mamma
smacked Tods for interfering with the administration of the Empire;
but Tods met the Legal Member the next day, and told him in
confidence that if the Legal Member ever wanted to catch a goat, he,
Tods, would give him all the help in his power. "Thank you, Tods,"
said the Legal Member.
Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half as many saises.
He saluted them all as "O Brother." It never entered his head that
any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the
buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of
that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the
dhoby to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit
from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-
mates should look down on him.
So Tods had honor in the land from Boileaugunge to Chota Simla, and
ruled justly according to his lights. Of course, he spoke Urdu, but
he had also mastered many queer side-speeches like the chotee bolee
of the women, and held grave converse with shopkeepers and Hill-
coolies alike. He was precocious for his age, and his mixing with
natives had taught him some of the more bitter truths of life; the
meanness and the sordidness of it. He used, over his bread and
milk, to deliver solemn and serious aphorisms, translated from the
vernacular into the English, that made his Mamma jump and vow that
Tods MUST go home next hot weather.
Just when Tods was in the bloom of his power, the Supreme
Legislature were hacking out a Bill, for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a
revision of the then Act, smaller than the Punjab Land Bill, but
affecting a few hundred thousand people none the less. The Legal
Member had built, and bolstered, and embroidered, and amended that
Bill, till it looked beautiful on paper. Then the Council began to
settle what they called the "minor details." As if any Englishman
legislating for natives knows enough to know which are the minor and
which are the major points, from the native point of view, of any
measure! That Bill was a triumph of "safe guarding the interests of
the tenant." One clause provided that land should not be leased on
longer terms than five years at a stretch; because, if the landlord
had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, he would squeeze the
very life out of him. The notion was to keep up a stream of
independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and
ethnologically and politically the notion was correct. The only
drawback was that it was altogether wrong. A native's life in India
implies the life of his son. Wherefore, you cannot legislate for
one generation at a time. You must consider the next from the
native point of view. Curiously enough, the native now and then,
and in Northern India more particularly, hates being over-protected
against himself. There was a Naga village once, where they lived on
dead AND buried Commissariat mules . . . . But that is another
story.
For many reasons, to be explained later, the people concerned
objected to the Bill. The Native Member in Council knew as much
about Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross. He had said in
Calcutta that "the Bill was entirely in accord with the desires of
that large and important class, the cultivators;" and so on, and so
on. The Legal Member's knowledge of natives was limited to English-
speaking Durbaris, and his own red chaprassis, the Sub-Montane
Tracts concerned no one in particular, the Deputy Commissioners were
a good deal too driven to make representations, and the measure was
one which dealt with small landholders only. Nevertheless, the
Legal Member prayed that it might be correct, for he was a nervously
conscientious man. He did not know that no man can tell what
natives think unless he mixes with them with the varnish off. And
not always then. But he did the best he knew. And the measure came
up to the Supreme Council for the final touches, while Tods
patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played
with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and listened,
as a child listens to all the stray talk about this new freak of the
Lat Sahib's.
One day there was a dinner-party, at the house of Tods' Mamma, and
the Legal Member came. Tods was in bed, but he kept awake till he
heard the bursts of laughter from the men over the coffee. Then he
paddled out in his little red flannel dressing-gown and his night-
suit, and took refuge by the side of his father, knowing that he
would not be sent back. "See the miseries of having a family!" said
Tods' father, giving Tods three prunes, some water in a glass that
had been used for claret, and telling him to sit still. Tods sucked
the prunes slowly, knowing that he would have to go when they were
finished, and sipped the pink water like a man of the world, as he
listened to the conversation. Presently, the Legal Member, talking
"shop," to the Head of a Department, mentioned his Bill by its full
name--"The Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment." Tods
caught the one native word, and lifting up his small voice said:--
"Oh, I know ALL about that! Has it been murramutted yet, Councillor
Sahib?"
"How much?" said the Legal Member.
"Murramutted--mended.--Put theek, you know--made nice to please
Ditta Mull!"
The Legal Member left his place and moved up next to Tods.
"What do you know about Ryotwari, little man?" he said.
"I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know ALL about it. Ditta
Mull, and Choga Lall, and Amir Nath, and--oh, lakhs of my friends
tell me about it in the bazars when I talk to them."
"Oh, they do--do they? What do they say, Tods?"
Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel dressing-gown and said:--
"I must fink."
The Legal Member waited patiently. Then Tods, with infinite
compassion:
"You don't speak my talk, do you, Councillor Sahib?"
"No; I am sorry to say I do not," said the Legal' Member.
"Very well," said Tods. "I must fink in English."
He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very slowly,
translating in his mind from the vernacular to English, as many
Anglo-Indian children do. You must remember that the Legal Member
helped him on by questions when he halted, for Tods was not equal to
the sustained flight of oratory that follows.
"Ditta Mull says:--'This thing is the talk of a child, and was made
up by fools.' But I don't think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib,"
said Todds, hastily. "You caught my goat. This is what Ditta Mull
says:--'I am not a fool, and why should the Sirkar say I am a child?
I can see if the land is good and if the landlord is good. If I am
a fool, the sin is upon my own head. For five years I take my
ground for which I have saved money, and a wife I take too, and a
little son is born.' Ditta Mull has one daughter now, but he SAYS
he will have a son, soon. And he says: 'At the end of five years,
by this new bundobust, I must go. If I do not go, I must get fresh
seals and takkus-stamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of the
harvest, and to go to the law-courts once is wisdom, but to go twice
is Jehannum.' That is QUITE true," explained Tods, gravely. "All
my friends say so. And Ditta Mull says:--'Always fresh takkus and
paying money to vakils and chaprassis and law-courts every five
years or else the landlord makes me go. Why do I want to go? Am I
fool? If I am a fool and do not know, after forty years, good land
when I see it, let me die! But if the new bundobust says for
FIFTEEN years, then it is good and wise. My little son is a man,
and I am burnt, and he takes the ground or another ground, paying
only once for the takkus-stamps on the papers, and his little son is
born, and at the end of fifteen years is a man too. But what profit
is there in five years and fresh papers? Nothing but dikh, trouble,
dikh. We are not young men who take these lands, but old ones--not
jais, but tradesmen with a little money--and for fifteen years we
shall have peace. Nor are we children that the Sirkar should treat
us so."
Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table were listening. The
Legal Member said to Tods: "Is that all?"
"All I can remember," said Tods. "But you should see Ditta Mull's
big monkey. It's just like a Councillor Sahib."
"Tods! Go to bed," said his father.
Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and departed.
The Legal Member brought his hand down on the table with a crash--
"By Jove!" said the Legal Member, "I believe the boy is right. The
short tenure IS the weak point."
He left early, thinking over what Tods had said. Now, it was
obviously impossible for the Legal Member to play with a bunnia's
monkey, by way of getting understanding; but he did better. He made
inquiries, always bearing in mind the fact that the real native--not
the hybrid, University-trained mule--is as timid as a colt, and,
little by little, he coaxed some of the men whom the measure
concerned most intimately to give in their views, which squared very
closely with Tods' evidence.
So the Bill was amended in that clause; and the Legal Member was
filled with an uneasy suspicion that Native Members represent very
little except the Orders they carry on their bosoms. But he put the
thought from him as illiberal. He was a most Liberal Man.
After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got
the Bill recast in the tenure clause, and if Tods' Mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of
fruit and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded
the verandah. Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees
before the Viceroy in popular estimation. But for the little life
of him Tods could not understand why.
In the Legal Member's private-paper-box still lies the rough draft
of the Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment; and, opposite
the twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signed by the
Legal Member, are the words "Tods' Amendment."
