What Did You Do in the Raj, Daddy?
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, dramatised by Dave Simpson
Library Theatre Company, 1996
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Sara Crewe, the Little Princess, is lucky in that she is accompanied home to England from India and introduced to her new school personally by her loving father. She is less fortunate, but sadly typical, in being left there alone.
At the height of the Raj (as the period of British control over India was called, from the Sanskrit word for rule), army officers and senior civil servants stationed there were expected to send their children home to be educated, mainly for reasons of health, but also so that that they wouldn’t become unduly influences by their servants. Britons throughout the Empire had always felt that their standards were superior to those of the natives in whose country they were living.
“Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is – Obey!”
Rudyard Kipling
There had been a strong British interest in India since the early 18th century, when soldier-administrators like Robert Clive had first brought vast areas of the subcontinent under Empire rule. It was a rich and fertile land, ripe for exploitation, and for a hundred years the British East India Company grew fat on the trade it controlled. Then in 1857 the natives rebelled and the Indian Mutiny, although I was crushed within a year, altered forever the relationship between the whites and the local population. From then on, the country was administered by the Indian Civil Service which, for the next three generations, would be staffed by the locals but firmly run by Britons abroad.
The style of life in the Raj was well established by the late 1880s and didn’t alter much over the next sixty years. Bungalows up country (away from the settled and civilised areas) were spartan and functional. The heat was kept down by an overhead punkah, or large flap, swung back and forth by a punkah wallah pulling on a string outside. People washed in hip baths, slept under mosquito nets, and stood their furniture in saucers of water to discourage ants.
In a land as different from Victorian Britain as it was possible to get, the British decided to carry on regardless and simply overcome the conditions by ignoring them. Temperatures in mid-summer could soar to 120°, but the British made no attempt to modify their clothing. To do that would have been to “go native”, the worst crime an Englishman abroad could commit. So the British soldier and civil servant would wear tight, starched clothes on parade or in the office, and children would never be allowed to have anything other than wool or flannel next the skin whatever the weather or the season.
Because of its remoteness from the mother country, India produced a breed of Briton more British than the British. Holding on to cherished institutions, attitudes and habits long after they had gone out of fashion, they were even more class-conscious than their countrymen back home. Everyone knew their place, the done thing was the only thing to do, and heaven help you if you tried to be different.
Anglo-India was a second home for the British Army, whose regulations and strict divisions of rank echoed the classes in society. Regiments were sent to garrison out-of-the-way stations, and the ordinary infantry foot soldiers were looked down on as a necessary evil to be ignored as much as possible.
Similar contempt was shown towards the offspring of mixed marriages between Indian and European. Even though the parents may both have come from the highest echelons of their own cultures, their children were regarded as ‘tainted’ and, like all other Eurasians, prevented from holding the higher posts.
Even among the Britons, the officials felt themselves to be above the tradesmen. Men of humble origins could, by hard work and application, amass considerable fortunes in India, but those ‘in trade’ were still never fully accepted by the old-money Brits who could race their families’ interest in the country back generations. Though they might buy freely from them, the toffs would never mix socially with their inferiors.
“The moral behaviour of all classes of Europeans should be extremely discreet, not only to preserve that inestimable blessing, health, but to command the respect of the native community.”
Official Handbook to the Presidencies
India, of course, had always had its own class system with its various ‘castes’, but the British version produced a sense of moral righteousness and a feeling of superiority that was both absurd and obstructive. On the other hand, it also inspired a sense of duty both to the crown and the country that could drive a man to achieve great things. The tradition of service became firmly rooted and generations of sons followed their fathers into a posting on the subcontinent that could make, or in many cases, quickly break them.
In the civil service, young men were expected to assume responsibility early on, so most tended to fall back on tried and trusted procedures to see them through. Every English person in India benefitted from the respect shown the administrators, which was why fitting in was seen to be so important – one bad apple could start the rot of the whole barrel.
Difficulties arose where an individual didn’t have the means to uphold such traditions. It was assumed, for example, that all officers would travel first class, but those young cadets who could not comfortably afford to had to suffer discomfort elsewhere and make economies. Debt and poverty were commonplace among the lower ranks, which is one of the reasons why men often married late in India, and to much younger women. Although it was a man’s world, a memsahib (wife) was a luxury younger officers or administrators could rarely afford.
Women came out by boat from mid-October onwards to take part in the seasonal Cold Weather round of parties, balls and receptions. Those young men who failed to find a fiancée then had to try their luck back home. Wives who had grown up in England were often shocked at the primitive conditions they found and lived bored, miserable and lonely existences out in the sticks. To survive, they too had to fall back on the way of doing things established by other officers’ wives, and the British way of life was almost more fiercely guarded by the female colonists then by their husbands.
Better equipped to survive and prosper were those girls who had been brought up in India and returned after their schooling to be reunited with family and friends in the hope of marrying well. Anglo-Indian children on the whole could expect to have a pretty good time of it while they were small. Life was colourful and entertaining – there were parties and gymkhanas, sports to play, places to explore, and always their own servant or ayah to do their chores and generally keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t get up to too much mischief. The England they were sent to for their education must have seemed a very dull, cold place compared to the bright heat and hot colours they had grown up with.
But such sacrifices were simply seen as part and parcel of the responsibilities of Empire, the so-called self-imposed ‘white man’s burden’. By the time India achieved independence in 1947, the world had changed and even the backward-looking exiles could no longer withstand the new reality. But while it lasted, Lord Curzon, who as Viceroy presided over the heyday of the Raj in the first five years of this century, had no doubts as to the colony’s importance: “To me the message is carved in granite, hewn in the rock of doom: that our work is righteous and that it shall endure.”
The Raj, it is true, brought peace, stability and the rule of law to a country which had been fighting fruitless, petty wars within its own borders for centuries. The invader, while not always devoted to India’s interests first, loved his adoptive country with a fierce loyalty. But to the sentimental empiricist, India always represented the best of Britain. It demanded extraordinary feats of ordinary men, and in return gave him character, pride and a sense of achievement. No wonder it was always known as the jewel in the crown.