262 Financial Jugglery in India t 1 !? 00 - 



other, they got him to give a verbal promise that a lease should be 

 granted, the Nizam being partly drunk at the time. In the morning he 

 would have backed out of his promise, but Curzon threatened to depose 

 him and forced him to sign the document desired. Thus Lord Ripon's 

 promise that the Berar province should not be taken was evaded by 

 the officials. The Nizam is said to have been so angry at what had 

 been done that he refused to take food for four days. Now there is 

 a new intrigue, which has for its object to get hold of the two other 

 Provinces, Arungabad and Parabhani, they being, after the Berars, the 

 richest of the Nizam's territory. I asked Khaparde his opinion of 

 the Viceroys who succeeded Lord Ripon. Of Dufferin he said he was 

 a diplomatist, who gave fair words but did nothing. On arrival he 

 announced that he intended to carry out Lord Ripon's policy, but he 

 made no step in advance of the Municipal Councils, Lord Ripon's first 

 instalment of self-government. Lords Lansdowne and Elgin also did 

 nothing, letting the officials have their own way. He holds Curzon to 

 have had the ambition to make himself Viceroy for life of India, and 

 to revive the state and splendour of the Mogul Emperors. The great 

 Durbar of 1903 cost £5,000,000 sterling, though only £50,000 figured 

 for it in the budget, the deficit being made up by charges credited to the 

 Public Works Department. This was made easy by the arrangement 

 according to which the provincial budgets are subject to approval and 

 alteration at Calcutta, so that extra expenses can be charged on these if 

 required by the Imperial Government. In Curzon's time all the Coun- 

 cils were officialized, and the management centralized, so as to destroy 

 their independence. He told how the famine accounts had been man- 

 ipulated in 1900 in Berar and the Hyderabad state. During the famine 

 no accounts were kept by those entrusted with the distribution of re- 

 lief, the money wanted being drawn from a fund at Hyderabad, which 

 consisted of the surpluses of six or seven years, paid from the Berars 

 and kept there in hand, but when the famine was over those who had 

 administered the relief were called together and were told to write 

 out accounts, so much for one thing, so much for another, so as to make 

 up the sum taken from the Fund ; thus there was no real check at all 

 upon the expenditure. 



" I asked him about loyalty to the Crown. At this he smiled. There 

 was at one time, he said, a certain feeling towards Queen Victoria, on 

 account of her proclamation of 1858, but all that was long past. The 

 Nizam was bitter about the Berars, and had no love at all for the 

 Imperial Government or for the present King. The Duke of Con- 

 naught had good manners with the Indian princes ; in this a great con- 

 trast with others, but his appointment as viceroy would not alter the 

 situation now. As to the Mohammedans there would be difficulty aris- 

 ing from them in a restoration of self-government, except in the Pun- 



