“_11th Dec._--Poona is an uninteresting place, without a vestige of Eastern colour. It stands in a bare plain, feebly relieved by a river bordered with acacia trees, and some shapeless hills of trappe formation. Great macadamized roads run everywhere, and modern buildings of debased Gothic with meaningless belfries and inscriptions to Sir Bartle Frere dot the landscape. Barracks, of course, and factory chimneys abound, and institutions of all sorts. The climate, however, is a healthy one. Poona is 2,000 feet above the sea, and at one time it was proposed to remove the seat of Supreme Government here from Calcutta.
“We were taken by Miss Dillon, with whom we are staying, to see the Deccan College, an absurd building, from the tower of which we viewed the scene described. It contains a hundred and twenty boarders, all Hindus but half a dozen, only one Mohammedan. Ninety of the Hindus are Brahmins. I talked to some of the pupils in the reading rooms. They told me they read the ‘Bombay Gazette,’ which represented their views better than any other English paper, but the best native one was the ‘Hindu Prakash.’ The English Director struck us as being rather a weak vessel, contrasting unfavourably in the point of intelligence and knowledge with a learned Brahmin who explained to us the connection of Hindi, Mahratta, and Hindustani with Sanskrit. On the other hand, I noticed this learned man thumbing without ceremony palm leaf manuscripts of the eleventh century in a way which would have made a book collector’s blood run cold. In these two incidents the difference between the East and the West is exemplified.”
In the afternoon a friend of Rangiar Naidu came to see us, and gave us a number of interesting statistics as to the state of agriculture in the Bombay Presidency. It is hardly worth, however, transcribing them here, as they do not differ essentially from those we received elsewhere, and I have incorporated the result of all my agricultural inquiries omitted from my diary in the chapter on “The Agricultural Danger” given at the end of this volume.
On the 12th we went on to Bombay, where we spent a couple of days in the society principally of a Europeanized Mohammedan to whom we had brought letters, Mr. Mohammed Rogay, a wealthy man, advanced and liberal, and the head of the Moslem community. His ideas were all of the most modern type, far too modern on some points quite to please me. “He drove us through the native town, which is most picturesque and cheerful, very unlike Madras. Rogay would like it all pulled down, and built up again in rows of sham Gothic houses.” A more interesting personage was Mr. Malabari, editor of the “Indian Spectator,” a friend of Colonel Osborne’s. “He is a Parsi, but says his sympathies are rather Hindu than of his own people. He is an intelligent, active little man, going about constantly from place to place on philanthropic and political business. He confirms everything we have heard elsewhere as to the agricultural misery, and promises to take us a round of inspection on our return, as well as to get up meetings at which I can express my views, and agrees that there will be no improvement until India has gone bankrupt--bankruptcy or revolution, as Gordon suggested.[4] He also described how such English officials as dared to protest against the over taxation were persecuted. If any of them espoused the wrongs of the natives he was bullied out of the service, and then his evidence was scouted on the plea that he was only ‘a man with a grievance.’ Such had been Colonel Osborne’s case. Malabari is only thirty, though he looks eighty. He has written, among other things, certain loyal poems which are sad trash. He is, however, a great admirer of Lord Ripon, and he exhorted me to support him with prudence.”