HOW the 70-year-old chief of Hoti-Mardan was unjustly arrested in 1912 for alleged “attempt at familiarity” with two young Englishwomen and honourably acquitted by the Bombay High Court “without a stain on his character” is one of the interesting episodes I came across while browsing through the pages of Comrade of that year.
The Comrade, as readers will no doubt recall, was published and edited by the great freedom fighter, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar. The Maulana was so incensed by the incident that, in his newspaper, he strongly condemned the bureaucracy of the North-West Frontier Province in the matter.
The story, as culled from two editorials of Comrade, goes like this: The Khan had authorized his chauffeur, King and Mrs King, to go to Bombay to secure the services of a governess and a teacher to coach the children and “put the ladies of the family in the ways of English society.” From among a number of persons recommended to them for the assignment, the couple selected two English girls, Elsie Swennel and Daisy Coutts.
Miss Swennel had been a salesgirl at Whiteway Laidlaw’s, a well-known fashionable establishment of general merchandise in Bombay, while Miss Coutts had served as a hospital nurse. These young women reached Hoti on September 25, 1911, along with King and Mrs King.
The evidence presented to the court showed that the Khan, who had himself gone to the railway station to make the girls’ acquaintance in the waiting room, protested to King and his wife that the girls were both young and unmarried. Five days later, the girls were informed that they should get ready to go to Rawalpindi, since the Khan had decided to settle with them and send them back to Bombay or wherever they wanted to go.
For 11 days, Elsie Swennel and Daisy Coutts stayed in the dak bungalow in Pindi, probably undecided as to their future plans. Then suddenly, in consequence of a communication received from the Bombay police, the District Magistrate of Pindi had them sent to Bombay under police escort.
On arrival in Bombay, the statements of the two girls were taken, and on the basis of these statements, the District Magistrate, Peshawar, issued a warrant of arrest for the chief of Hoti-Mardan. Apparently, the action was taken on the strength of three remarks made by Elsie Swennel in letters to the Sister Superior of the Foundlings’ Home in Bombay, where she had once worked for some time.
One was “The chief came yesterday. He brought a lot of fruit and sweets. He seems a very kind man but...” The second comment was that she could have stayed on “had the Khan had a begum or a rani” (of course he had since he was married). The third was that the Khan was very kind but, on two occasions, “he was rather familiar with his hands.”
The girls had also complained in their letters that they had been put in a bungalow which was in the market, that there was only one bedroom for both of them, that the room opened out on to the verandah and when they were on the verandah, a large crowd would gather and stare at them.
On such flimsy and inconsequential evidence was the old and respected chief arrested and humiliated. The presiding judge of the Bombay High Court, Justice Daver, in his judgment, also made a judicial aside which amounted to a severe comment on the methods of the Northern Indian police and the administrators concerned. Otherwise, his observation was that “when the two girls were at Hoti, the accused could have taken advantage of them, but he, beyond being a few minutes with them, did not interfere with their liberty.”
Justice Daver also observed that during their 11-day stay in Rawalpindi, the girls made no complaint against the conduct of their host, that they did not want to be taken to Bombay where the Pindi police took them, and that in their evidence which went on for three days, “the only impression that can be produced on one’s mind is that there were certain acts of the accused which Miss Swennel apprehended to be acts of familiarity, but they were acts of the most trifling nature.”
The judge acquitted the Khan, his chauffeur and Mrs King. In the earlier part of his judgment, he took note of the fact that the Chief of Hoti-Mardan had been testified to be a cripple of 70 years of age by three eminent army doctors, all Englishmen, and that “he has been subjected to a great many indignities, and the procedure followed seems to me to be beyond understanding.”
In one of the editorials, Maulana Muhammad Ali condemned the “cruel arrest” of the chief, while in the other he disclosed that the Chief Commissioner of the NWFP, Sir George Roos-Keppel, was so displeased with the editorial censure of his administration that he cancelled the annual subscription of Comrade which still had eight months to go, and decided to forego the unutilized amount.
The Maulana had quite a bit to say about this. “We have hitherto had on our subscribers’ list practically every member of the Government of India and head of a Local Government.... We would be less than human if we did not feel gratified at this token of appreciation of a journal yet in its infancy.... Sir George Roos-Keppel had been a subscriber of Comrade since the paper was started in January 1911, and we have been grateful to him for having given us the opportunity of reaching him in this manner.... Had Sir George decided to forego any sum paid out of his private purse, we should only have laughed at his tactics. He would have benefited us when he wanted to hurt us. But it is the Chief Commissioner that does so, and we should like to know who authorized him to play ducks and drakes with Rs8, one anna and two pies. The paper was ordered by the administration and paid for out of the taxes which we and our clients pay. It is not for Sir George Roos-Keppel to show his pique at our and their expense. We hope Finance would take note and ask Sir George to refund the money out of his private purse.”
Such was the power of the pen wielded by Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar.
