Star.
London, England, 1829-10-26 00:00:00

MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 26, 1829.

EAST INDIANS' MEETING AT THE

TOWN HALL, CALCUTTA.

At a General Meeting of the Subscribers to the East Indians'
Petition to Parliament, held at the Town Hall, un Monday fore-

noon, the 20th of April, 1829 :
On the motion of Mr. F. D. Kew's'', seconded by Mr. Wats
Bran, Mr. J. W. RICKETTS was unanimously called to the Chair.
The CHAIRMAN opened the Meeting with an introductory ad-
dress, in which be detailed at full length the nature and import-
ance of the business which had brought them together on so inte-
resting an occasion. After much discussion on the subject, it was
nnanimoudy resolved as follows :
1. That, in order more actually to promote the objects of our
Petition to Parliament, this Meeting consider it to be a matter of
. .

first-rate importassco that some individual from among their own
lowly be deputed to aietompany the Petition to England. and that
the Individual 'aimed fof this purpose be authorised to place him-
self in communication with the General Committee of the 'Muhl-

tants of Calcutta, in order to seek such aid and assistance in the

matter as they tniy be able to afford.
2. That Mr. J. W. Ricketts be chosen as our agent Cur deputa.

Lion to England on this occasion.
3. That subscriptions be raised for the formation of a fund for
promoting the great and important objects contemplated by us.
4. That, under the present vacillaney of things in respect to a
suitable name for their class, this Meeting consider it proper to re-
cognise themselves as " East Indians,"—a designation which, as
including the wiled body to which they belong, they prefer above
all others. _ _ _

5. That the hands of the Committee of East Indians, as now
constituted, be strengthened by the accession of Messrs. E. Barn-
field, Wale Bryn, P. D' Mello, and W. Stormer ; and that the
Committee be authorised to appoint one of their own number to
officiate as their Secretary during the absence of Mr. Ricketts on

deputation to England.
6. That the thanks of this Meeting be given to the gentlemen of
the Town Hall Committee. for the use of the Town Hall on this
occasion.
7. That the thanks of this Meeting be given to Mr. Ricketts for
his disinterested offer to proceed to England on deputation, and for
his able conduct in the Chair. _ .

_______
JOHN W. RICKETTS, Chairman.
EAST INDIAN COMMITTEE.
Messrs. E. Barnfield, W. Byrn, W. Dacosta, P. D' Mello, J. L.
Heady, A. Duluth H. Martindell, C. Reed, J. W. Ricketts, W.
Sturmer, G. Wodsworth.
Secretary, Mr. J. W. Ricketts.
Messrs. W. Byrn, J. W. Ricketts, and W. Sturmer, are duly
authorized to sign, in an associated capacity, all receipts for dona-
tions to the East Indians' Petition Fund; which done, they are to
be made over to Mr. W. Dacosta for recovery of the sums sub
scribed. All collections to be lodged in the Bank of Hindoostan.
N.B. At the final.close of our work, a printed account of receipts
and disbursements will be rendered to each donor or subscriber to
the fund.
PETITION OF THE EAST INDIANS.
_ _

To the Hon. the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled. The Peti-
tion of the undersigned Christian Inhabitants of Calcutta,
and the Provinces comprised within the Presidency of Fort
William.
Humbly showeth,—That your petitioners are members of a nu-
merous, increasing, and widely-dispersed class of subjects of the
Crown of Great Britain, living within the territories at present go-
verned by the United Company of Merchants trading to the East
Indies, in the province of Bengal, and in the town of Calcutta.
2. That the body of which they compose a part forms a distinct
class of society in British India, which dates its existence more re-
motely from the time when the East India Company first formed
permanent establishments on the continent of India, but chiefly
from the more recent period, when the acquisition of immense ter-
ritories required the presence of an increased number of Europeans
to maintain and govern them.
S. That they are descended, in most instances, en the father's
side, from the European subjects of the Crown of Great Britain,
and on the mother's side from natives of India ; and that, in other
instance., they art the children of intermarriages between the off-
spring of such connections ; but that, although thus closely allied
to the European and Native races, they are excluded from almost
all those advantages which each respectively enjoys, and are sub-
ject to peculiar grievances from which both are exempt.
4. The first grievance which your petitioners beg leave to bring
to the notice of your Honourable House is, that a very large
majority of the class to which they belong are entirely desti-
tute of any rule of civil law, to which they can refer as a
standard that is to regulate their conduct in the various rela-
tions of society. Those of your petitioners who live in Calcutta,
within the limited jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, are guided
in their civil relations by the laws of England ; but the mo-
ment they pass beyond that jurisdiction, to reside either tem-
porarily or permanently in the interior, they are thereby placed
beyond the pale of all civil law, whether British, Hindoo, or
Mahomedan. By the rigid interpretation which sucessive
Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort Wil-
liam have given to the phrase " British subjects' in the various
Ac:s of Parliament relating to India, your petitioners are excluded
from coming under that denomination, and are consequently pre-
vented front enjoying the bet:efits of the law of England; and, by
their profession of the Christian religion, they are equally debarred
from the adoption of the Hindoo or Mahomedan civil law ; while
there is no other civil code to which they can have recourse as
their guide in the various transactions and relations of life. How-
ever extraordinary the fact may appear, your petitioners affirm,
without fear of contradiction, that there is no law which regulates
their marriages, and makes them lawful—there is no law which
shows the rule that is to define the legitimacy or illegitimacy of
their Issue—there is no law which prescribes the succession to their
property—there is no law which points whether they possess the
right of bequeathing by will, and if so, to what extent—there is no
law that declares which of their children, or whether one or all, shall
succeed in case of intestacy. In these, and in other equally Important
particulars, they have no law to direct or control them ; and they are
thus treated as utterly unworthy of any one of those rights which it is
the expren object of a code of civil law to define, and the primary de.
sign of society and Government to protect. Your petitioners thus
liter ally'compose a great body of outlaws, not made so by any crimes
of their own, and on that very account feeling the more deeply the
legalised wrongs that have been inflicted on them. and the con-
temptuous indifference and neglect with which their anomalous
civil condition ha. been regarded. It is not, however, the invidious
judicial construction of the doubtful language of Acts of ParlL-
ment that has alone tended to degrade their civil condition ; nor
have they ever been p..rmitted to enjoy the full advantages that
would have 41 iSCIO to
.tjtem Irons the absolute and totatal neglect or
that condition by their immediate rulers. A rule and regulations* of
the Government of the East India Company has, by cle..r and ex-
press definition, included your petitioners in the class of
" native suisjects of the British Government," and has thereby
subjected them to, the numerous 'lnabilities of their Hindu., and
Mahomedan fellow-subjects; while, by another enactmentt of the
Local Government, they have, 413 belonging to the above-men-
tioned class, been deprived in a body of the protection of the Act
of Habeas Corpus ; having been made liable to be taken up
•on suspicion by any of the local authorities, and confined
as state prisoners, without the legal possibility of ever
obtaining their release ; since the only appeal they could have
would be to the Local Government. Thus they are, not virtually
. and by impliCation, but directly and immediately denuded of the
first and most important of all civil rights—personal security ; and
they may, therefore, be justly considered as holding their property,
their liberty. and even their byes, at the discretion of every power-
ful public functionary.
5. The second grievance under which your petitioners labour is,
that they are amenable in the interior to Mahomedan criminal law.
---a law in itself barbarous and imperfect. founded on the most
intolerant principles, and intimately interwoven with a system of
religibn and state of society wholly unpfised to their opinions and
habits. 'Eby law of Mahomed was promulgated only for believers in
the Koran; and towards all who are Ciiiisidered Infidels it bears a
most oppressive aspect. Many of the ppnishipepts, when specific, are
of a sanguinary cisscription ; and, in others, an almost unlimited
cretlon is given to the Judge. It arbitrarily'administered ; and,
•thougit,
_a right of aPPOIOO. in many cases. allowed to the superior,
Court ol" criminal jurisdiction of, the East nibs Company, called
'ttie fillsinnit Adaivhit, yet ihat tiihmiXl possesses the extraordinary
• pubrer, on. such meal, of increasing the punishment which is,
. awarded at their dinintiqn, and without bearing fresh evidence.
modibcaiisins which the Mabomeslao criminal cede has re-.
• Reg. viii. of 1813. t Do. iii. of 1813.

ceived, in its application to your petitioners, have been produced by
the supplementary regulations of the East India Company, which,
instead of softening and mitigating its inflictions, have, in some in.
stances, even increased the harshness of its character. In proof of
this statement, year petitioners beg to cite the third regulation of
the year 1821; by the express provisions of which they are made
liable in all cases to be dealt with as Hindu° and Mahnmedan na-

vties of the lowest rank, and to be fined, imprisoned, and corporally
punished, not merely at the discretion of the European Judges or
Magistrates of the East India Company, but even of the Hindoo
and Mahomedan officers of justice; while from the operation of
this regulation not only British subjects, in the restricted applica-
tion which has been given to that appellation, but also European
and American foreigners resident in the interior, are exempted.—
Thus the law recogniees the existence of your petitioners only for
the purpose of puniahment, and never for that of protection ; while
the criminal code, to which they have been made amenable, is dis-
tinguished by the hanks's.** of its spirit, by the aggravated severity
of its provisions. by its total incongruity with their religious belief
and social condition, and by the deep-felt degradation to which, in
his actual demonstration, your petitions are subjected.
6. The third grievance to which your petitioners are subject
is. that they are excluded from all superior and covenanted
offices in the Civil and Military services, and from all sworn
offices in the marine service of the East India Compauy. The
invariable preamble to the appointment of an individual to any
of these services runs thus : " Provided A. B (the person re-
ceiving the appointment) be not the son of a native Indian,"—a
restriction which was first adopted by the Directors of the East-
India Company on the 9th of November,.l79l, and which is al-
ways republished in the Gazette of Government, on the notifica-
tion of the appointment of any one who may be then residing in
India. Your petitioners do not dispute the right of the Court of
Directors to give the appointments in their service to those whom
they may deem most worthy ; but they humbly submit that no wise,
just, or beneficent Government will ever impose any other gener+l
condition on candidates for employment than fitness for the offices
which they may seek ; still less will it exclude any clan of men on
the ground of birth or colour, when it does not possess the power
of limiting their increase or of diminishing their number i and least
of all, will it wantonly add insult to injury, and to proscription a
load of public and gratuitous contumely.
7. The fourth grievance of your petitioners is, that they are not
only expressly excluded from all those offices of trust and emolu-
ment in the Civil, Military, and Marine Services of the East India
Company's Government which are open to British subjects ;"
but that they are also treated as ineligible to most of those
subordinate employments in the Judicial, Revenue, and Police
Departments and even in the Military Service. which are open
without reserve to the Hindoo and Mabomedan natives of the
country. Your petitioners are prohibited from being appointed to
the situations of Moonlit, Sheristadar, and almost all other inferior
judicial offices ; they are prevented irons practising as Vakeels or
Pleaders in every one of the Courts of Justice of the East
India Company from the highest to the lowest ; they are
shut out from all the subordinate offices in the departments of Ge-
neral Revenue and Police; and, in the Army, they are not per-
mitted to fill the posts of native commissioned or non-commissioned
Officers, nor even that of naick ur corporal in a native Regiment,
although leave is given them to shed their blood in the ranks as
privates, and to officiate in the regimental band as drummers and
musicians! Thus, of the many thousand subordinate employments
under the local Government, there ate few from which they are
not excluded, except on condition of abjuring the Christian faith;
in which case their eligibility as natives of India would be at once
restored.

8. The fifth grievance of which your petitioners complain is, that
they are expressly declared to be disqualified from bolding his Mae
jesty's Commission in the British Indian Army. The Comman-
der-in-Chief for the time being of his Majesty's Forces in India, on
the 27th of February, 1808, issued a General Order, still in force,
by which no person can be recommended in India for any vacant
coinmissi .n in his Majesty's service who belongs to the class of
which your petitioners compose a part. Your petitioners humbly
trust that his Majesty, in the exercise of his Royal prerogative, will
see fit to mind this invidious order ; and, although they are aware
that it does not belong to your Honourable House to free them
from the galling disability to which it has subjected them, yet they
have deemed it important to be mentioned its this place as an ad.
ditional proof of that system of cruel proscription of which they
have been made the unoffending vi, tines.
9. The sixth grievance imposed upon your petitioners is, that, by
stipulations in treaties with all the Powers of India, which still
preserve a shadow of independence, they are debarred from employ.
ing your petitioners •in any capacity without the permission of the
Supreme Government of India. It is true that in those treaties
only " Europeans and Americans" are expressly prohibited from
being so employed ; yet, although these are denominations under
which your petitioners cannot be classed, the restriction is
practically applied to them also. Thus, by the limited signifi-
cation which has been given to the phrase '• British sub-
jects," so as to exclude your petitioners, who are subjects of
the British Crown, they are exposed to intolerable grievances ;
and, by the extended meaning which has been given to the terms
" Europeans and Americans," so as to include your petitioner.,
who are natives of Asia, they are prevented, except under special
license—seldom given, and always liable to be recalled—from em-
ploying their talents and industry in the service of any of the Na-
tive Princes. In both cases, but by contrary means, alike cruel
and unjust to your petitioners, the one great object of exclusion is
effected ; and thus, whatever step they take in life, and to what-
ever quarter they look, exclusion, disability, and proscription meet
them at every turn.
10. The last grievance to which your petitioners will advert is
that every plan proposed by others, or adopted by themselves, for
the improvement of the class to which they belong, instead of
receiving the fostering countenance of a paternal Government, has
met with positive disapproval or cold neglect, strongly contrasted
with the active and liberal encouragement that has been laudably
given by the local authorities to various institutions formed fur
the benefit of other classes of the population. In support of
this statement your petitioners beg to refer to the benevo-
lent plan proposed by the late Colonel Kirkpatrick in 1782,
having for its object to secure a provision for the sons of European
Officers by native mothers, by educating them in England, and
obtaining Cadetships for them in the Indian Army. This scheme,
which received the approbation of the wle.le Military Service,
and was not oppcned by the local Government, was rejected in
the most unqualified manner by the Court of Directors; the resi-
dence of such children in Europe for education being that part of it
which especially called forth their reprobation. In the same man-
ner, at a more recent period, two Institutions, commenced by the
exertions of your petitioners, and devoted to the education of their
children, called the Parental Academic Institution and the Calcutta
Grammar School, amid severe pecuniary difficulties, and with the
certain prospect of great advantage resulting from even a slight
measure of assistance from Government, have been refused a parti-
cipation with other similar Institutions in those funds which the
East India Company is required by Act of Parliament to apply to
the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives of India.—
Thus their European parents are fr wned upon for endeavouring to
send them to Eatgland for education. Your petitioners themselves
are discouraged in their humble attempts to extend the blessings of
education among their own class in India. Every avenue of honour-
able imbition and of social improvement is shut' against them; and
it is with a keen and long-cherished conviction of the wrongs which
they have suffered from the race of their fathers, that they now
bring themselves to the notice of your Honourable House, and
_respectfully ask for that tquility of rights and privileges to which,
in common with every other ones of his Majesty's subjects. they
are unquestionably entitled.'
11. Your petitioners have now briefly enumerated the principal
grievances for which they seek redress item your Hon. House; but
the statements they have made are very far from expressing the
depth and extent of the degradation which his been entailed upon
them, and the numerous ramifications of the evils which they suffer.
What they have styled their grievances are not individual cases nt
grievance peculiar to one person. one time, and one occasion ; but
they are classes of grievances, each class extending to the whole
body to which your Petitioners belong, and all of them spread over
the entire period of existence, pervading every transaction in rela-
tion at life, and doubly felt—first, in their own perfons and for-
tunes ; and, tiecondly, in the condition and prospects of their rising

_
offspring. -
12. However diVersified and pervading the particular effect%
of the grievances your Petitioners suffer. there is One unvatying
general result. which they produce, there is One point to; which they
are all made to tend—at.il that is, to place your Petitioners id
the situation of a proscribed class. to present their amalgamation
with the European population, and to create and perpetuate
4 gains : them the must mortitying and injurious prejudices. Your

PRICE SRVENPRPICF.

petitioners are aware that the abolition of those social prejudic. s,
of which they are made the object, cannot be brought within the
scope of Legislative enactment ; and it is with no such view that
they seek for the interposition of your Honourable House.
They trust to the loyalty and rectitude of their own conduct for
that place and consideration in society which belong to them; but
they think they have a right to complain %then the acts of the legis-
lative and governing powers, instead of having a tendency to
neutralize and destroy the prejudices that exist against your i-
tioners. have had the direct and certain effect of calliag them into
existence. Your petitioners neither ask nor expect any special in-
terference in their behalf; but they warmly protest against those
invidious distinctions which mark them, in the land of their birth,
as outcasts and aliens, bereft of all privileges, and strangers alike to
the rights of society and to the feelings of humanity. It is surely not
the characteristic of a paternal and an enlightened Goveniment, which
should be common and equal protector of all its subjects to scatter
with its own hands the seeds of discoed, ind to array the different
classes of society against each other in bitter contempt and impla-
cable hatred. Yet such is the undeniable tendency of the exclu-
sive and contumelious system of mis-overnment under which your
petitioners have long suffered. and Chiefs, if continued, must pro-
duce in the class to which they belong, hitherto free from the
slightest reproach of disloyalty or disaffection, permanent dissatis-
faction, and even entire alienation of mind from the British au-
tbority in India.
13. Your petitioners disclaim every invidious or unfriendly feeling
in the contrast which they have had occasion to present of their oat
depressed condition with the superior advantages and privileges
enjoyed by other part. of the population. There are numerous and
weighty grievances which they sulfa in common with British-borer
subjects on the one hand, and with Hindoos and tiahomedans on the
other ; but which, as the organs of a distinct class, your petition, rs
hive not considered it proper on the present occasion to detail.
These common grounds of complaint have produced in their minds
a sympathy with those classes; and in those instances in which your
petitioners labour under peculiar disadvantages, they are far from
wishing to bring their fellow-subjects to the same level with them-
selves, or to claim any exclusive countervailing privilege. Although
professing the Christian religion, speaking the English lanetiagto
and assimilated in dress, manners, and education to their paternal
ancestors, they do not, on these or on other grounds, ask for any
favours or immunities which they would not equally solicit for their
fellow-subjects of the Hindon and alahomedan religions. But being
Christians, and descendants of Englishmen, your petitioners hum-
bly submit that it is cruel and unjust to make their belief and de-
scent the grounds of civil outlawry, of degrading disqualification,
and of a uniform and persevering course of contumelious and in-
sulting treatment ; and that it is especially in..onsistent and impoli-
tic in a Christian and a British Government to adopt and reduce to
practice such an odious system of exclusion, and thus to fix marks
of deep contempt and degradation on the partakers of their own
blood, and the professors of a common faith. t
14. Your petitioners may be permitted to observe that, however
strong the language they have deemed it requisite to employ in tt
expositions of their grievances, and however acute the feelingsjA
which that language is the feeble and imperfect expression, they
have never lust sight of the obedience and respect which have been
claimed by their immediate rulers. From them, indeed, the con-
dition of your petitioners has not receiver' the consideration which
they had a right to expect, and which receiver'
earnestly hope your
Honourable House will bestow. Their complaints, when pre-
sented in the most respectful terms through the proper channels,
have been treated as futile and unfounded ; nor has any disposftioti
been shown to alleviate the acknowledged extreme hardships under
which they suffer. To the Eaat India Company. therefore, in its
own character, or to its local Government, your petitioners as a
body feel that they owe nothing. They have received from it n,i
sympathy or redress—nothing but studied insult, contemptuous
indifference, or at best, empty profession. But in that Company
and its servants, your petitioners see the legally constituted repre-
sentatives of British power and authority in India ; and they have,
therefore, conscientiously discharged the duties of peaceable and
obedient subjects, in the iund, although hitherto vain expectation,
that their peculiar grievances would attract the attention of those
who have the ability and, they trust, the will to remedy them.
15. Your petitioners hope that it is only necessary to bring to
the notice of your Honourable House the evils which have been
entailed upon their body to produce at once the disposition to
remove them. With regard to such matters as may appear fit
for the direct interference of Parliament, your petitioners cannot
doubt that an immediate remedy will be applied ; and with re-
gard to such as seem to reside, during the existence of the
present Charter of the East India Company, within the pro-
vince of that body and their local Government, your petition, rs
pray that to them their rights and interests may no longer be com-
mitted without appeal; and that, in any new Charter which the
Legislature may grant, a clause may be inserted expressly pro-
hibiting, in all its parts, that system of exclusion directed against
your petaioners which has hither to formed a distinguishing feature
in the policy of the Company's Government. They pray to be
delivered from the state of neglect and abandonment, in which
they have hitherto been allowed to remain beyond the pale of civil
law ; ignominiously driven from all community of rights and privi-
leges with any of the denominations of the aociety in which they
reside. They pray your Honourable House to admit them to the
fellowship of their lathers, to rescue them from subjection to insti •
tutiona the most degrading and despotic, and to treat them as sub-
jects of the British Crown, to which alone they recognise their
allegiance to be due; and to which they desire to bind themselves
and their posterity by the indissoluble ties of justice and of gratitude.
And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.