Posted on 09/15/2001 10:19:38 PM PDT by JasonC
"The Political Officers who accompanied the force, with white tabs on their collars, parleyed all the time with the chiefs, the priests and other local notables. These political officers were very unpopular with the army officers. They were regarded as marplots. It was alleged that they always patched things up and put many a slur upon the prestige of the Empire without ever letting anyone know about it. They were accused of the grievious crime of 'shilly-shallying', which being interpreted means doing everything you possibly can before you shoot.
"We had with us a very brilliant political officer, a Major Deane, who was much disliked because he always stopped military operations. Just when we were looking forward to having a splendid fight and all the guns were loaded and everyone keyed up, this Major Deane - and why was he a Major anyhow? so we said - being in truth nothing better than an ordinary politician - would come along and put a stop to it all. Apparently all these savage chiefs were his old friends and almost his blood relations. Nothing disturbed their friendship. In between fights, they talked as man to man and as pal to pal, just as they talked to our general as robber to robber.
"We knew nothing about the police vs. the crook gangs in Chicago, but this must have been in the same order of ideas. Undoubtedly they all understood each other very well and greatly despised things like democracy, commercialism, money-getting, business, honesty and vulgar people of all kinds. We on the other hand wanted to let off our guns. We had not come all this way and endured all these heats and discomforts - which really were trying - you could lift the heat with your hands, it sat on your shoulders like a knapsack, it rested on your head like a nightmare - in order to participate in an interminable interchange of confidences upon unmentionable matters between the political officers and these sulky and murderous tribesmen. And on the other side we had the very strong spirit of the 'die hards' and the 'young bloods' of the enemy. They wanted to shoot at us and we wanted to shoot at them. But we were both baffled by what they called the elders, or as one might put it 'the old gang', and by what we could see quite plainly - the white tabs or white feathers on the lapels of the political officers.
"However, as has hitherto usually been the case, the carnivorous forces had their way. The tribes broke away from the 'old gang' and were not calmed by our political officers. So a lot of people got killed, and on our side their widows have had to be pensioned by the Imperial Government, and others were badly wounded and hopped around for the rest of their lives, and it was all very exciting and, for those who did not get hurt or killed, very jolly.
"I hope to convey to the reader by these somewhat irreverent sentences some idea of the patience and knowledge of the Government of India. It is patient because among other things it knows that if worst comes to worst, it can shoot anybody down. Its problem is to avoid such hateful conclusions. It is a sedate Government tied up by laws, tangled about with parleys and many intimate relationships; tied up not only by the House of Commons, but by all sorts of purely Anglo-Indian restraints varying from the grandest conceptions of liberal magnanimity down to the most minute obstructions and inconveniences of red tape. So societies in quiet years should be constructed; overwhelming force on the side of the rulers, innumerable objections to the use of any part of it. Still from time to time things will happen and there are lapses, and what are called 'regrettable incidents' will occur.
"Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seen to harmonize with their environment.
"Except at harvest time, when self preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges etc, complete. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid.
"For the purposes of social life, in addition to the convention about harvest time, a most elabprate code of honour has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The slightest technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse population.
"Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech loading rifle and the British Government. The first was an enourmous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance.
"The convenience of the breech loading, and still more of the magazine rifle, was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away. One could lie in wait on some high crag, and at hitherto unheard of ranges hit a horseman far below. Even villages could fire at each other without the trouble of going far from home.
"Fabulous prices were therefore offered for these glorious products of science. Rifle thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect with the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced.
"The action of the British government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organizing, advancing, absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathans made forays into the plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair), but a whole series of subsequent interferences took place, followed at intervals by expeditions which toiled laboriously through the valleys, scolding the tribesmen and exacting fines for any damage which they had done. Nobody would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come, had a fight and then gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the "butcher and bolt policy" to which the Government of India long adhered.
"But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to insure the safety of these roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went. But the whole of this tendency to road making was regarded by the Pathans with profound distaste. All along the road people were expected to keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and above all not to shoot at travellers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source."
- Winston Churchill, "My Early Life"
I thought Churchill's insight on the nature of the place and its people might be of some interest. Of course he is recording impressions from a century ago, but then he has the eye and mind of a genuis.
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