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Buildings, as we have built and peopled the buildings. Now we have gone too far to retreat, being ‘tied and bound with the chain of our own sins.’ The speech continues. We made that florid sentence. That torrent of verbiage is Ours. We taught him what was constitutional and what was unconstitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. Calcutta smells still, but We must listen to all that he has to say about the plurality of votes and the threshing of wind and the weaving of ropes of sand It is Our own fault.
The speech ends, and there rises a grey Englishman in a black frock-coat. He looks a strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will say, ‘Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true talk, but there’s a vile smell in this place, and everything must be cleaned in a week, or the Deputy Commissioner will not take any notice of you in durbar.’ He says nothing of the kind. This is a Legislative Council, where they call each other ‘Honourable So-and-so’s.’ The Englishman in the frock-coat begs all to remember that ‘we are discussing principles, and no consideration of the details ought to influence the verdict on the principles.’ Is he then like the rest? How does this strange thing come about? Perhaps these so English office fittings are responsible for the warp. The Council Chamber might be a London Board-room. Perhaps after long years among the pens and papers its occupants grew to think that it really is, and in this belief give résumés of the history of Local Self-Government in England.
The black frock-coat, emphasising his points with his spectacle-case, is telling his friends how the parish was first the unit of self-government. He then explains how burgesses were elected, and in tones of deep fervour announces, ‘Commissioners of Sewers are elected in the same way.’ Whereunto all this lecture? Is he trying to run a motion through under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known ‘cuttle-fish trick’ of the West?
He abandons England for a while, and now we get a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual reference to Hindus and Mahometans. The Hindus will lose nothing by the complete establishment of plurality of votes. They will have the control of their own wards as they used to have. So there is race-feeling, to be explained away, even among these beautiful desks. Scratch the Council, and you come to the old, old trouble. The black frock-coat sits down, and a keen-eyed, black-bearded Englishman rises with one hand in his pocket to explain his views on an alteration of the vote qualification. The idea of an amendment seems to have just struck him. He hints that he will bring it forward later on. He is academical like the others, but not half so good a speaker. All this is dreary beyond words. Why do they talk and talk about owners and occupiers and burgesses in England and the growth of autonomous institutions when the city, the great city, is here crying out to be cleansed? What has England to do with Calcutta’s evil, and why should Englishmen be forced to wander through mazes of unprofitable argument against men who cannot understand the iniquity of dirt?
A pause follows the black-bearded man’s speech. Rises another native, a heavily built Babu, in a black gown and a strange head-dress. A snowy white strip of cloth is thrown dusterwise over his shoulders. His voice is high, and not always under control. He begins, ‘I will try to be as brief as possible.’ This is ominous. By the way, in Council there seems to be no necessity for a form of address. The orators plunge in medias res, and only when they are well launched throw an occasional ‘Sir’ towards Sir Steuart Bayley, who sits with one leg doubled under him and a dry pen in his hand. This speaker is no good. He talks, but he says nothing, and he only knows where he is drifting to. He says: ‘We must remember that we are legislating for the Metropolis of India, and therefore we should borrow our institutions from large English towns, and not from parochial institutions.’ If you think for a minute, that shows a large and healthy knowledge of the history of Local Self-Government. It also reveals the attitude of Calcutta. If the city thought less about itself as a metropolis and more as a midden, its state would be better. The speaker talks patronisingly of ‘my friend,’ alluding to the black frock-coat. Then he flounders afresh, and his voice gallops up the gamut as he declares, ‘and therefore that makes all the difference.’ He hints vaguely at threats, something to do with the Hindus and the Mahometans, but what he means it is difficult to discover. Here, however, is a sentence taken verbatim. It is not likely to appear in this form in the Calcutta papers. The black frock-coat had said that if a wealthy native ‘had eight votes to his credit, his vanity would prompt him to go to the polling-booth, because he would feel better than half a dozen gharri-wans or petty traders.’ (Fancy allowing a gharri-wan to vote! He has yet to learn how to drive.) Hereon the gentleman with the white cloth: ‘Then the complaint is that influential voters will not take the trouble to vote? In my humble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting-papers. That is the way to meet them. In the same way — the Calcutta Trades’ Association — you abolish all plurality of votes: and that is the way to meet them.’ Lucid, is it not? Up flies the irresponsible voice, and delivers this statement, ‘In the election for the House of Commons plurality are allowed for persons having interest in different districts.’ Then hopeless, hopeless fog. It is a great pity that India ever heard of anybody higher than the heads of the Civil Service. Once more a whiff of the Stink. The gentleman gives a defiant jerk of his shoulder cloth, and sits down.
Then Sir Steuart Bayley: ‘The question before the Council is,’ etc. There is a ripple of ‘Ayes’ and ‘Noes,’ and the ‘Noes’ have it, whatever it may be. The black-bearded gentleman springs his amendment about the voting qualifications. A large senator in a white waistcoat, and with a most genial smile, rises and proceeds to smash up the amendment. Can’t see the use of it. Calls it in effect rubbish. The black dressing-gown, he who spoke first of all, speaks again, and talks of the ‘sojourner who comes here for a little time, and then leaves the land.’ Well it is for the black gown that the sojourner does come, or there would be no comfy places wherein to talk about the power that can be measured by wealth, and the intellect ‘which, sir, I submit, cannot be so measured.’ The amendment is lost; and trebly and quadruply lost is the listener. In the name of sanity and to preserve the tattered shirt-tails of a torn illusion, let us escape. This is the Calcutta Municipal Bill. They have been at it for several Saturdays. Last Saturday Sir Steuart Bayley pointed out that at their present rate they would be about two years in getting it through. Now they will sit till dusk, unless Sir Steuart Bayley, who wants to see Lord Connemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to move an adjournment. It is not good to see a Government close to. This leads to the formation of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, which may be quite as wrong as the cramping system with which we have encompassed ourselves. And in the streets outside Englishmen summarise the situation brutally, thus: ‘The whole thing is a farce. Time is money to us. We can’t stick out those everlasting speeches in the municipality. The natives choke us off, but we know that if things get too bad the Government will step in and interfere, and so we worry along somehow.’
Meantime Calcutta continues to cry out for the bucket and the broom.
Chapter 4.
On the Banks of the Hughli
The clocks of the city have struck two. Where can a man get food? Calcutta is not rich in respect of dainty accommodation. You can stay your stomach at Peliti’s or Bonsard’s, but their shops are not to be found in Hastings Street, or in the places where brokers fly to and fro in office-jauns, sweating and growing visibly rich. There must be some sort of entertainment where sailors congregate. ‘Honest Bombay Jack’ supplies nothing but Burma cheroots and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in Lal Bazar, not far from ‘The Sailors’ Coffee-rooms,’ a board gives bold advertisement that ‘officers and seamen can find good quarters.’ In evidence a row of neat officers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the ‘hotel’ door smoking. There is an almost military likeness in their clothes. Perhaps ‘Honest Bombay Jack’ only keeps one kind of felt hat and one brand of suit. When Jack of the mercantile marine is sober, he is very sober. When he is drunk he is — but ask the river police what a lean, mad Yankee can do with his nails and teeth. These gentlemen smoking on the bench are impassive almost as Red Indians. Their attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not wear braces. Nor, it would appear from the bill of fare, are they particular as to what they eat when they attend table d’hôte.