But this policy of Hastings drew the Company into a war with the Ruhelas. The fertile country of Ruhelkhand, lying at the base of the Himalayas to the north-west of Oudh, with a population of about 6,000,000, the bulk of whom were Hindus, and governed by a confederacy of Ruhela chiefs under the leadership of Hafiz Rahamat Khan, had been threatened by the Marathas since 1771. The Nawab of Oudh also coveted the province of Ruhelkhand and there was no love lost between him and the Afghans of that tract. But the common Maratha danger led the Ruhelas and Shuja-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Oudh, to sign a treaty on the 17th June, 1772, in the presence of Sir Robert Barker. It provided that if the Marathas invaded Ruhelkhand, the Nawab of Oudh would expel them, for which the Ruhelas would pay him forty Iacs of rupees. The Marathas invaded Ruhelkhand in the spring of 1773, ‘but they were repulsed by the combined British and Oudh troops and could not think of repeating their incursions owing to the disorders at Poona after the death of the Peshwa, Madhava Rao 1. The Nawab of Oudh then demanded from the Ruhela leader the payment of the stipulated sum of forty lacs of rupees, which was, however, evaded by the latter. On the strength of the Treaty of Benares (September, 1773), Shuja-ud-dALLlah demanded, early in February, 1774, the help of the Company to coerce Hafiz Rahamat Khan. A British army was accordingly sent under the command of Colonel Champion; and the allied British and Oudh troops marched into Ruhelkhand on the 17th April, 1774. Six days later, the decisive battle was fought at Miranpur Katra. The Ruhelas were defeated though, as the British commander observed, they exhibited “great bravery and resolution”. Hafiz Rahamat was killed fighting bravely; about 20,000 Ruhelas were expelled beyond the Ganges; and their province was annexed to the Oudh kingdom, only a fragment of it, together with Rampura, being left in the possession of Faizullah Khan, son of ‘Ali Muhammad Ruhela, the founder of the Ruhela power.
Opinions are sharply divided on the merits and demerits of Hastings’ policy in the Ruhela War. It was one of the main points of attack on Hastings in Parliament in 1786. Not only Burke and MacALLlay but also most of the older school of historians, like Mill and others. have condemned it in severe terms. In their opinion, Hastings “deliberately sold the lives and liberties of a free people and condoned horrible atrocities on the part of the armies of the Nawab of Oudh “. But the policy has found defenders in some modern writers, notably in Sir John Strachey, who has tried in his Hastings and the Rohilla War to justify it wholly. Though some of the expressions of Burke, Macaulay or Mill may be regarded as unjust invective, the policy of Hastings cannot escape reasonable criticism from certain points of view. One has to note that the expediency of the transaction was doubted by Ha-stings himself and still more by his Council, and they treated it during its initial stages with vacillation. Hastings might have thought, while concluding the Treaty of Benares, that the occasion for helping the Nawab of Oudh would never arise; but to be committed to a course of action, without duly weighing the remote consequences involved in it, is not, in the words Mr. P. E. Roberts, “the happiest or most efficient kind of political conduct”. It is also difficult to support the view that Hastings was in duty bound to lend assistance to the Nawab of Oudh as the treaty between the latter and the Ruhelas had been concluded under British guarantee. Sir Robert Barker had merely witnessed the signatures of the two parties and did nothing else regarding it.; Further, it is improper to argue, as Sir John Strachey has done, that the Ruhelas deserved expulsion from their province as they had established their rule over its Hindu population only twenty. five years b -fore. It is clear that their title to the province was as good as that of many of the Indian States of the time which were rising on the ruins of the Mughul Empire. We have contemporary evidence, which could not be quite ignored even by Sir John Strachey, to show that the Hindus of Ruhelkhand were well governed and enjoyed prosperity under the Ruhelas; it was the new Oudh rule that proved to be oppressive to them. Even Sir John Strachey has to admit that Hastings’ policy was “somewhat cynical”. Lastly, the Ruhelas cannot be accused of having. in any way offended the English. Sir Alfred Lyall very reasonably observes that “the expedition against the Rohillas was wrong ‘m principle, for they had not provoked us, and the Vezir could only be relied upon to abuse his advantages”. The whole transaction smacks of selfish motives, mainly of a mercenary character, and it undoubtedly set a bad precedent. Its nature is clear from what Hastings himself avowed: “The absence of the Marathas, and the weak state of the Rohillas, promised an easy conquest of them, and I own that such was my idea of the Company’s distress at home added to my knowledge of their wants abroad, that I should have been glad of any occasion to employ their forces, that saves so much of their pay and expenses.”
The Chait Singh Affair
Mercenary motives led Hastings to commit two more indefensible acta. In one case, he made exorbitant demands on Chait Singh, the Raja of Benares. Originally a feudatory of the Nawab of Oudh, Chait Singh placed himself under the overlordship of the Company by a treaty in July, 1775, whereby he agreed to pay an annual tribute of 22* 1/2 lacs of rupees to his new masters. But with the outbreak of Anglo-French hostilities in 1778, Hastings demanded from the Raja an additional sum of five lacs as a war contribution, which he paid. The demand was, however, repeated several times, and the Raja after pleading for time and exemption complied with it on every occasion. This did not suffice to satisfy Hastings. In 1780 he ordered the Raja to furnish 2,000 cavalry, reduced at the latter’s request to 1,000. The Raja gathered 500 cavalry and 500 infantry as substitute, and informed Hastings that they were ready for serving the Company; but he received no reply. Hastings had already determined to inflict on him a fine of fifty lacs of rupees. “I was resolved,” he said, “to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company’s distress. . . . In a word I had determined to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for his past delinquency.” To carry out his plans Hastings went, in person to Benares and placed the Raja, under arrest. The Raja submitted quietly; but the indignity inflicted upon him infuriated his soldiers, who rose suddenly, without their master’s instigation or his knowledge, and massacred a number of English sepoys with three officers. Hastings retired for his personal safety to Chunar, but soon gathering all the available troops sup. pressed the rising. Chait Singh justly argued his innocence in regard to complicity in the massacre; but to no effect. He was expelled from his country and found shelter at Gwalior. His kingdom was conferred upon his nephew, who was to pay a tribute of forty lacs, instead of 22 1/2 lacs, to the Company. Whatever might be said by the modern apologists of Hastings, there is no doubt that his conduct in the Chait Singh affair was cruel, unjust and oppressive”, as Pitt observed at the time of his impeachment. Chait Singh was wrongly described as a more zamindar, and not a ruling prince, by the defenders of His. Even if they could have proved him to be a mere zamindar, one might very well question the justice of fleecing him and him alone and not imposing a common tax on all the zamindars. The treaty of 5th July, 1775, which still regulated the relations between the Raja and the Company, definitely laid down that “no demand shall be made upon him by the Hon’ble Company, of any kind, or on any pretence whatsoever, nor shall any person be allowed to interfere with his Authority, or to disturb the peace of his country”. So legally the Raja ‘was not bound to pay any extra contribution. Forrest makes a gross misstatement of facts when he says that the Raja’s conduct was ” contumacious and refractory and deserving -of punishment”. As a matter of fact, Chait Singh was all along submissive and his men rose in insurrection without his connivance only when their master had been humiliated. Unbiased writers must accept the reasonable verdict of Sir Alfred Lyall that ” Hastings must bear the blame of having provoked the insurrection at Benares ” and that there was “a touch of impolitic severity and precipitation about his proceedings against Chait Singh” due to & “certain degree of vindictiveness and private irritation against the Raja”. It is amply clear that the whole transaction was iniquitous from the moral point of view. It was also inexpedient. Dr. V. A. Smith has tried to defend Hastings’ exorbitant demands on the ground of expediency in view of the “grave necessities” of the disturbed political situation of the time. But the Governor,General did not make any financial gain, as the Raja took away with him a portion of his wealth, and the remaining twenty-three lacs was looted by the troops to be divided among themselves. The Company on the contrary was put to the strain of bearing the cost of the military operations that followed. Thus the Court of Directors justly criticized Hastings’ policy as “unwarrantable and impolitic “. Further, the Company obtained the enhanced tribute of forty lacs from the new Raja of Benares at a great sacrifice of the interests of the principality, the administration of which became worse under their protage.
